NEW ORLEANS SAINTS: The Bounty Program

I recently wrote a short post for another publication concerning the wrongful death action that the family of former professional football player Dave Duerson is bringing against the NFL.  Duerson’s family alleges that the player committed suicide in part due to the concussions he suffered as a player.

I received a short response from a reader as follows:

     “Bulls***, money loving bastards.”  (The asterisks are mine.)

It seemed to me like a bit of an overreaction.  It’s interesting that the commenter takes a shot at the supposed greed of Dave Duerson’s family while not mentioning the greed of the NFL, whose annual profits are in excess of $8.5 billion.  Still, I do give the commenter credit for spelling the offending words correctly.  I also believe he was sincere.  Probably no thoughtful reader with the capacity for self-doubt would have posted such a comment.

Besides the reader having an empty heart and empty head and probably being emotionally wound too tight, what are we to make of such a comment? I’m guessing he’s the type of person that represents a kind of insanity all too common.  We haven’t quite reached the point where we’ve had a soccer riot that’s left 75 people dead, but we do gamble away hundreds of millions of dollars every year on long shots that exceed ten-to-one.  Some of us threaten to kill a fellow Chicago Cubs’ fans that allegedly interfered with a foul ball.  Following the most horrific scandal in college history, Penn State football fans riot over Joe Paterno being fired rather than over the molestation of several young boys at their campus.  Finally, certain Saints’ fans are more outraged at Jerome Shockey, who may or may not have been the source for the New Orleans Saints bounty program leak, than they are by the fact that players were being paid to end other players’ careers.

It now seems the Saints specific bounty program has been going on for some time.  The owner of the Saints, Tom Benson, had ordered the Saints coaching staff to end their bounty program a couple of years ago.   Still, Head Coach Sean Payton and then defensive coordinator Greg Williams while promising to put an end to it continued with the pay-offs.  Eventually it was exposed through overheard conversations recorded on the sidelines, by a possible whistleblower whose identity remains unknown, and by some questionable shots on Brett Favre and other players during key games.  The program’s existence has since been verified by defensive coordinator Greg Williams.

I don’t think anyone should be too surprised about what was going on.  Players have probably always been trying to take out other football players on the other side in any case and there has been some give and take as far as this is concerned.  Quarterbacks have long been a target.  I once saw a film clip of Joe Namath being leveled close to three seconds after he had thrown the ball.  Namath like so many other great players from the 1960s is barely able to walk anymore. 

Such practices of course have continued.  One notorious example involved Charles Martin, a former defensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers, who in 1986 carried a “hit list” of opponent player’s names on a towel onto the field.   One of the names on the towel was Quarterback Jim McMahon who Martin subsequently threw down and injured after a play was over. 

And what has happened in New Orleans did not involve the first bounty program of its kind.  Variations of such programs go at least as far back as the fabled Oakland Raiders in the 1970s, and there probably was a similar type bounty program going on these last couple of years in the Washington Redskin organization as well.   Such programs may have been going on among several NFL organizations.

Still, the New Orleans bounty program was exposed at a bad point in NFL history when the league is under fire for not doing more to protect its players from concussions.  Roger Goodell for some time has been all about “player safety” to avoid the same type of Congressional Hearing that baseball faced concerning the use of steroids.  It seems Goodell does have some reason to worry as such a hearing has now been proposed by Senator Dick Durbin – not specifically about concussions but about bounty programs.

Goodell has now acted.  The Saints’ coach Sean Payton is suspended for the entire 2012 season and General Manager Mickey Loomis for at least half of the season.  The organization has been fined $500,000 and they have now lost two second round draft picks.  Greg William, who contributed money to the bounty fund and who claims to be primarily responsible for the bounty program’s organization, is no longer with the Saints but nevertheless faces an indefinite suspension. Several players are expected to face suspensions in the coming weeks as well.

As far as football punishments go, these were some of the stiffest ever handed down in league history.  As far as player safety goes, it will probably only make a marginal difference.  The punishments probably will lessen the use of such bounty programs.  It is also likely that the NFL will monitor concussions more closely than they did in the past.  Yet there is only so much that can be done as the sport is a violent one and players are hitting harder than ever.  Improved padding and equipment has only made such hits all the more possible.

I live in Minnesota where there is current debate going on to build a brand new football stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.  What used to be called the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and is now called the Mall of America Field no longer seems to suffice.  I remember when the domed stadium was first built back in the 1980s.   Supporters of building the dome said that, though it would be expensive, such a structure would be a solution concerning the housing of our various sports’ teams.  The Vikings, the Twins and the Minnesota Gophers would all be able to call the domed stadium their home.  And almost from the beginning what instead happened was that none of the franchises were happy about this domed stadium.   We’ve since built separate stadiums for the Twins and for the Gophers.  So now instead of having what stadium for the three teams, we have three separate stadiums (presuming that the Vikings’ stadium does get built) at who knows how many more times the cost.

I predict the Vikings will get a stadium.  The reason I predict this has nothing to do with business factors, contributions to the community or development of neighborhoods.  Those arguments will certainly be brought up in support of building such a stadium.  The reason why I believe it will be built is because there are so many unreasoning individuals in the world such as the commenter I mentioned above.  They couldn’t put together more than a four word response as to why a new stadium is necessary, but there is no reasoning with them.  They’re interests are quite narrow.  They do not have lives outside of watching professional football.  They’re willing to insult a family whose member committed suicide.  They are willing to threaten a fan that allegedly caused their team a chance at a championship.  And many such individuals are the type of fanatics that will vote out a politician for no other reason that we lost a professional sports franchise. 

I am a sports fan. I’ve written many times about sports on this website.  I admire the skills and dedication of professional athletes and have no grudge against them for the money they make.  They simply have a job to do.  I would rather see a professional athlete take home the millions of dollars than any business executive or Hollywood star.  At least I know that the athlete had to exhibit more real talent and perseverance to get where they are at.  There’s very little politics that goes into running a 4.4 forty or bench pressing more than 500 pounds.  If only more sports fans could learn from at least some of their examples rather than live vicariously through such athletes instead.

The New Orleans Saints fans can live a season without Sean Payton.  They can go without a couple key draft picks.  The Saints had their world championship a couple of seasons back and it’s yet to even be seen if they will be in the doldrums next season.  Even so, the fans that think they know everything now believe their world is ending. 

March 27, 2012

© Robert Miller 2012

AL DAVIS AND THE OAKLAND RAIDERS: “Just Win, Baby!”

The Pittsburgh Steelers were the dominant football team in the late 1970s, but their chief rival was on the opposite coast.  In 1975, Oakland defensive back George Atkinson delivered a blow to the Steelers’ great receiver, Lynn Swann, and in the process Swann suffered a concussion.  In 1976, Atkinson again delivered a blow to Swann in a regular season game and this caused the receiver to suffer a second concussion.  So outraged was Pittsburgh Steelers coach, Chuck Knoll, that Noll was quoted as referring to Atkinson as being part of the “criminal element” of the National Football League.  Few people doubted that Noll was referring to the Oakland Raiders overall when making his statement.  It was a statement that Noll would come to regret.  Not only was Noll fined by the NFL for making this statement, he was also sued by Atkinson for defamation.

Atkinson lost his lawsuit, but it proved to be a victory for Al Davis.  The Raiders have always been renowned as the dirtiest professional football team in the league.  However, introduced as evidence in the lawsuit were film clips showing other professional football players -including members of the Pittsburgh Steelers – taking dirty shots at their opponents.  Al Davis was allowed to put on display the hypocrisy of Noll and others like him that hurled accusations of dirty play by the Raiders while not cleaning up their own actions.

It seems ironic that Davis, who for a number of decades ran the team that produced the highest winning percentage in all of football and who for four years was the commissioner of the AFL, was disliked and considered an outsider by most of the other football owners.  It’s understandable, however, because Davis was never hesitant to take the NFL to court if they objected to any of his proposed moves.  It seemed like Davis could never decide whether he wanted to play in Oakland or Los Angeles.   Any effort to block him from moving from one city to the other resulted in an antitrust suit being filed by Davis against the league.  Davis actually openly supported the creation of the USFL, which was competing directly with the NFL. 

Davis was long time enemy and tormentor of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle.  Rozelle probably long resented that Davis, while involved in the AFL, was aggressively scouting and recruiting players that it was taken for granted would sign with the NFL.  So successful was Davis in his pursuit of such players that the NFL finally decided to merge with the AFL rather than continue to compete against them.   Rozelle certainly must have suffered each and every time that he had to award Davis the Vince Lombardi trophy after the Raiders won the Super Bowl.  The Raiders won the Super Bowl three times while Rozelle was commissioner.

Probably the most fascinating aspect of Al Davis as an owner of a professional football franchise was the colorful characters that he introduced and/or brought to the AFL and NFL as members of the Oakland Raiders franchise.  These would have included: Darryle Lamonica, George Blanda, Gene Upshaw, Jim Otto, Willie Brown, Ted Hendricks, Ben Davidson, Fred Biletnikoff, Art Shell (coach and player), John Matuszak, Jack Tatum, Lyle Alzado, Ken Stabler, Jim Plunkett and Howie Long.  John Madden, Tom Flores and John Gruden were some of his head coaches.  Many of these players were either recruited directly by Davis or brought in after being rejected by other franchises.

Sadly, Davis was probably a victim to his own ego when he continued trying to fully control a football team while not keeping up with football trends.  The scouting techniques he had used so successfully during the 1960s through the 1990s was not conducive with the internet age.  Davis, who used to personally scout every player that he drafted to get an edge on his opponent, couldn’t understand that other owners and coaches could now effectively scout through use of a wireless connection.  And his habit of micromanaging his football team became counterproductive.  It seemed like during the last dozen or so years of his life Davis could not go a season without having to fire the Raiders’ head coach.  The Raiders could no longer claim to be the most successful team in the NFL during these last years, and much of the reason could be blamed on Al Davis.

It’s probably been overstated about how much Davis cared for his players.  Many of his players adored the miscreant, but others didn’t seem to come to such a great ending in their playing careers.  Matuszak and Alzado both had their lives cut too short – the former because of known substance abuse and the latter allegedly by steroid use.  I use the term “allegedly” here because, though Alzado claimed the brain tumor that would eventually kill him came about due to steroid use, no medical specialist has yet to give his claim any credibility.

There are few things I do admire about Al Davis.   One was that he seemed more concerned with his football team’s success on the football team that he did about any ledger statement.  The other was that he kissed up to no one and ran his team exactly like he wanted it to be run.  It’s remarkable story that he could have so much success in a league that wanted nothing to do with him or his organization.  From the day he took over as head coach and general manager of the Raiders in 1962, he put his personal mark on the team that was to be his until the date of his death almost fifty years later.  At the age of 33, he was the youngest individual to ever play these two roles.  Besides revolutionizing the scouting of players, he opened up the passing game and created what was to become known as the “west coast” offense.  Only Al Davis, someone with enough assets to run a professional sports franchise, could have been viewed as an anti-establishment outsider.  The logo of the Raiders, one of the most famous in all of football, was one that Davis created.

In one real sense Davis had a positive influence upon the game.  Davis was well ahead of his time for an owner of a football team when it came to race relations.  Davis scouted heavily for black players in the early 1960s.  Davis refused to allow the Raiders to play a preseason game in Mobile, Alabama and also refused to allow an AFL “All Star” game being played in New Orleans because of segregationist policies in both cities.  Davis was the first NFL owner to hire a black coach.  The rest of the owners were far behind Davis in these practices.

For sentimental reasons, I wish that there could be more owners of sports franchises like Al Davis.  I grow tired of a media that covers sports as if all great athletes were plaster saints.  Al Davis was at least open about his own flaws.

October 29, 2011 

© Robert S. Miller 2011

SUPER BOWL XLII: What Could Have Been “The Perfect Season”

The New England Patriots as a football team are about as loveable as the New York Yankees are as a baseball team.  Almost everyone in America outside of the New England area hoped to see them beat at least once during the regular season (most people preferring the Indianapolis Colts to the Patriots as a team that they would have liked to see go undefeated).  The Patriots scored an NFL record 584 points during the regular season.  They went into the Super Bowl with a record of eighteen and zero.  They’re coached by Bill Belichick, fined early in the season $500,000 for allegedly videotaping defensive signals of the New York Jets during the September 9^th Jets-Patriots game.  (Pennsylvania Senator Arlan Specter was so offended that he now feels a Senate investigation is in order.)  Belichick’s response to the allegations was to then run the score up on a number of opponents throughout the first half of the 2007 season.

 

 In addition, during the off-season, the Patriots acquired receiver, Randy Moss.  Moss has made a number of public relations gaffs throughout his career, but none as significant in the fans’ minds as when, while as a Minnesota Viking, he did a mock “mooning” to Packer fans in Lambeau field.  That so many in the football establishment were outraged at Moss’ behavior (in particular, Joe Buck in the announcer’s booth) says they are more worried about image than actual behavior, and that they haven’t been paying enough attention to some other off-field events of football players (including the time that Moss almost ran down a city worker with his car in downtown Minneapolis).  Fortunately for Moss, he will be forgiven almost anything for catching 23 touchdowns and gaining more than fourteen-hundred yards during the season.

 

Much of the pre-game hype involved Patriot’s Quarterback, Tom Brady.  Brady was the AFC’s Most Valuable Player.  More importantly to those who support the paparazzi, Brady formerly dated Bridget Moynahan, who gave birth to a child back in August (and who may or may not be Brady’s son), and Brady is now currently dating “Supermodel” Gisele Bundchen.  After winning the AFC Championship game, Brady was seen leaving Bundchen’s apartment during the morning hours and wearing a walking cast for his injured right ankle.  It’s remarkable what the tabloids made out of all of this.

 

Now Tom Brady only made sixteen million dollars in salary during the 2007, though this does not count residuals from personal promotions.  It must seem heartbreaking to his agent that he didn’t make more considering that Richard Seymour, a defensive tackle for the Patriots, made $24,691,160.  (In fact, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, and Bryant McKinnie and Steve Hutchinson of the Minnesota Vikings all have higher salaries than Brady.)  But let’s stick with Tom Brady for a moment.   Brady’s salary compared to other professional athletes is really not out of line.   A baseball player that bats .330, hits more than forty homeruns or wins close to twenty games during a season has a chance to make a couple hundred million dollars during his career.  So what’s a quarterback who threw a record fifty touchdowns during the season and who won eighteen straight games going to be worth? 

 

Three days before the Super Bowl was played, I heard a radio state his reasons for hoping that the Patriots win the game.  His logic was irrefutable.  To paraphrase what was said: a Patriot victory would be good for the economy.  Now there’s no question that the Super Bowl is a huge economic event to begin with.  It is broadcasted to more than 200 nations and seen by more than a billion viewers; Las Vegas had more than one hundred million dollars change hands in their city (and this is only a small portion of the monies that will be wagered on this game); advertisers paid more than three million dollars for thirty seconds of airtime, and it’s estimated that the value of stocks for those who do advertise rises on average 1.3 percent.  But only a Patriots victory would satisfy the greediest, as millions of dollars of memorabilia was to be sold commemorating the first ever nineteen and zero season.  To the powers that be, a Giants’ victory meant  a great upset, but not an upset that would bring in the profits they desired.*  The Giants only won ten games during the regular season and did not even win their own division.  They won football games mostly through defense, which doesn’t excite the most dilettante of fans.  No player would emerge as a celebrity on the behalf of the Giants.  In particular, their Quarterback Eli Manning (not to be mistaken for his older brother, Peyton) was not “Broadway Joe” Namath and did not make good headlines (like Tom Brady).   Thus, a Giants victory would not generate any real or lasting interest.

 

Alas, the economy will have to suffer because the perfect season was not to be.  The Giants as it turned out had a defense.  This should have been no surprise to those having viewed the NFC playoff games, but on a playing field where weather was not a factor, most of the commentators seemed to feel that the Patriots would have an easy time.  Tom Brady, as pretty as he was, could not keep James Butler and Michael Strahan away from him, and Randy Moss could seldom distance himself from Corey Webster.  And then there was the pass from Eli Manning to David Tyree.  The game was not a fluke.  The Giants outplayed the Patriots, and without question this was one of the best Super Bowls ever played.**

 

Like many other areas of entertainment, professional sports bring in a disproportionate amount of revenues.  Unlike most other high-paid professions, the performance of the athletes who are paid the salaries can be statistically measured to a remarkable degree.  If the same standards of measurements were applied to politicians or CEOs as is applied to the starting lineup of any number of championship teams, we’d eliminate the national debt.  Steroid use, drug use and other off-the-field antics of many professional athletes has brought professional sports into disrepute.  It must be said, however, that their actions are generally transparent because of exposure all over the tabloids, and the consequences of their behavior has often been mild compared to the behind the door decisions of those in power.  With this in mind, a nineteen and zero record certainly would have been an accomplishment of note.  For now we will still have to put up with the 1972 Dolphins team that remain the only unbeaten Super Bowl winner and who are alleged to celebrate anytime a team with a perfect record is beaten – thus making their own perfect record seem all the more impressive.  Maybe next year.

 

*Vegas apparently lost $2.7 million in revenue because of the Giant’s straight-up win, which does not seem like a particularly significant amount.  The figure becomes even less significant when one figures most people probably lost the money they won before even leaving Nevada on liquor, prostitution and other wagers.

 

** Any commentary about the overall spectacle of the Super Bowl requires some dull trivia about viewer enjoyment unrelated to the actual playing of the game.  It’s estimated that more than half of the viewers that tuned into to the Super Bowl did so for reasons other than those related to watching the players play football.  There is for these other viewers the commercials, the halftime show and the National Anthem.  Many of the commercials concerned advertisement of beer, and the most popular ads contained adorable depictions of animals.  The halftime show, which was scheduled to last close to thirty minutes, featured Tom Petty, the fifty-seven year old rock star whose most popular songs were written between the late 1970s and early 1980s.  All four songs that he sang could be heard about any fifteen minutes on a “Classic” Rock station anywhere in America.  There’s nothing like featuring a “contemporary” artist that sounds like a cross between John Mellencamp and a Bob Dylan wannabe.  And the national anthem was sung by a winner of the American Idol contest whose name I can’t remember (with that patriotic touch of having the passing of a formation of F16s over head while the anthem is being concluded).  I’m glad I enjoyed the game.

 

February 9, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

THE 2008 OLYMPICS: XXIX Olympiad in Beijing

Opening Ceremonies in the “Bird’s Nest”

 

As NBC commentator, Bob Costas, reminds us in his conciliatory (and therefore irritating) voice, this is China’s coming-out party.  And indeed, even in China, one would have to be the most naïve of ideologues to believe that forty billion dollars spent on the opening ceremony by the Chinese could not buy something spectacular.  Why do the Chinese want to make such a great impression?  In what promised to be the most controversial Olympiad held since 1972, the Chinese have been harshly criticized in other parts of the world for human rights violations, their continued occupation of Tibet, the censorship of internet communications coming out of their nation, ill-treatment of dissidents, the jailing of foreign journalists, the air quality throughout their country, and the relative isolation of the people and culture of China since 1949.  The torch relay leading up the Olympics proved to be particularly embarrassing since pro-Tibetan forces protested the carrying of the torch throughout every major city in the world.  President Hu Jintao, in essence “thumbing his nose” at the critics, seemed to be saying with such a lavish ceremony that China could be as economically advanced and modern as any free market nation while being repressive at the same time.  Yet even he wanted to be careful about one particular period in history.  The chronicling of Chinese history during the opening ceremonies skipped from the Ming Dynasty that ended in 1644 (leaving out the Qing Dynast that ended in 1911) all the way to1978 following the death of Mao Tse Tung and the demise of the infamous “Gang of Four” led by Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing.  Even some thirty years later, the Chinese know that Mao would have disapproved of the ceremony.  More importantly, though his portrait continuously is displayed almost everywhere in the country, the Chinese leadership knows that Mao’s reputation in the west precedes him.  It’s a tad bit difficult to justify one’s own human rights record while at the same time revering a man who may have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin and Hitler combined.  So be it.

 

Now critics of Chinese human rights violations like President Nicolas Sarcozy of France and President Bush of the United States could easily have boycotted the opening ceremony.  For President Bush, such a boycott would have been fairly senseless since no President has ever before attended an opening ceremony in any place but the United States.  Such gestures would have been futile in any case since really the idea for having the Olympics in China is in hopes that the country will open up and maybe change some of its practices (such as exporting grain to other nations while letting its own people starve).  Probably, human rights violations will continue whether trade is opened up with China or not.  Boycotts often also have the reverse effect in that it provides unwarranted amount of attention on the Olympic games for other things than for which the modern games were ever intended.

 

The opening ceremonies were to symbolize the “three” great traditions in Chinese thought including I-Ching, Buddhism, and Taoism.  Confucianism was understandably not referenced since the Red Army has long considered the philosophy to be reactionary.  In any case, we had beatings of the drum and dancing in tangent to show-off the cooperative aspects of Chinese culture.  All this notwithstanding, it’s difficult to call the ceremonies an education about Chinese society since so much of what took place in front of our eyes was an illusion.  The fireworks display we now know was enhanced for television by computerization.  There was lip-syncing by a young Chinese girl to a song because the actual singer was considered too homely to appear on international television.  The children dancing with the soldiers came the closest to being a representation of propaganda.  The soldiers we are reminded are the protectors of the state and the Chinese children.

 

A Short History of the Modern Games

 

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is generally credited with reviving the Olympic games in Athens in 1896.  Coubertin held that the games should accord with five principles: (1) with few exceptions (notably, the period of World War II), the Olympic games have been held every four years since that time (recently, the practice of holding winter and summer games during the same year has been discontinued); (2) all sporting events would be modern and would not emulate the ancient Greek games (no mortal combat, etc.); (3) competition would be limited to adults; (4) only amateurs could compete (there should be no “dream” or “redeem” teams); and (5) the games would move from city to city every four years.

 

Some critics decry that the events are no longer limited to just amateurs.  It doesn’t seem fair that a basketball player such as Kobie Bryant, making in excess of $20 million annually, should be allowed to compete in his given sport.  Actually, though, I believe this leads to less hypocrisy.  When amateur status was “strictly” enforced, you had nations “sponsoring” athletes to compete.  The occupation of the players of the famed Soviet hockey teams was to do nothing but train for world competition.  Also, allowing professional athletes to compete opened the games up to all athletes and not just those whose families happened to be rich enough to allow their pampered children to train without engaging in any meaningful employment.

 

The fifth principle has been the one to create the most havoc.  As we are simple-mindedly reminded of again and again, politics and the Olympics often become entangled.  We had Berlin in 1936 where Hitler wanted to put on for display the superiority of the Nordic athletes (too bad Jesse Owens had to step up and win four gold medals).  We had Tommy Smith and John Carlos give the black power salute on the Olympic Medals stand in 1968 in Mexico City.  We had President Carter call for the boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  We had the Soviet Union retaliate against Carter’s decree four years later by boycotting the Olympics held in Los Angeles.  Most tragically, we had the killing of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972.  Possibly, if we held the Olympics every four years in the same location (say Athens), less likely would be the chances that political intrigue would interfere.

 

Pierre de Coubertin imagined a competition where nationalism would play no role and individual accomplishment would be honored for its own sake.  But if this was the imagined goal of the Olympic games, team competition would have to be eliminated and the only flags waved would be that with the Olympic insignia.  Nations love parading around how many gold medals their athletes have won and will even shop around and bid millions and even billions of dollars to recruit potential medal winners to their countries.  And there’s enough flag waving to appease even the most fanatical of nationalist for any nation.  When the United States won the gold medal in hockey during the 1980 winter games, it wasn’t the medal game but the defeat of the Soviet Union utmost in the memory of most American hockey fans.  After the Soviet Union went down, the winning of the gold medal became mostly a footnote.

 

I don’t want to degrade the accomplishments of the athletes, however.  Just getting to the Olympics is a great accomplishment in itself.  The three gold medals won by Johnny Weissmuller, the four won by Owens, and the seven won by Mark Spitz are a testament to the training and discipline of these athletes.  In 1972, Lasse Viren fell down in the 10,000 meter run, but he was able to get up and win the event.  That same year, Kip Keino won the 3,000-meter steeplechase without ever before competing in the event.  Abebe Bekilla of Ethiopia won back-to-back marathons, the first while running barefoot through the streets of Rome.  Women like Mildred “Babe” Didrickson, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Nadia Comenichi came into their own by competing in front of the world.

 

Yet I lost much of my fascination for the Olympics in general when Ben Johnson, after running the 100 meters in 9.72 seconds, was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for steroids.  I honestly don’t know anymore if any Olympic record set since that time has legitimacy.  Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey lifted twenty-five pounds more than three times his weight over his head in 1988.  Did drugs play a factor?  Jackie Joyner-Kersey won medals in 1988 and 1992.  Was this accomplished without the use of any banned substance?  Or what about Carl Lewis, the man awarded the gold medal after Ben Johnson was disqualified in the event?  Occasionally, a commentator will suggest that such substances do more harm than good for the athlete.  However, I remember 1972 Marathon winner, Frank Shorter, once stating that athletes are almost always ahead of the game when it comes to use of such substances.  Shorter stated that when 1/10^th of a second can mean the difference between winning a gold medal and not being on the medal stand, athletes are acutely aware of what will give them that extra fraction of an advantage to defeat their adversaries and are willing to gamble on masking agents shielding them from testing positive on any drug test.  We no longer know if athletes are winning due to dedication or due to technology.

 

Let the Games Begin

 

Within one day of the opening ceremony, an American tourist was murdered on the streets of Beijing and the Russian military inflicted almost 2,000 casualties upon the former Soviet satellite and now sovereign nation of Georgia.  Vladimir Putin left Beijing to return to Russia immediately after the opening ceremonies.  With this as a backdrop, the first Olympic competition I was to witness on television was the historically significant sport of Beach Volleyball.  I should be careful not to complain about this too much, however.  If not for the showing of Beach Volleyball, the NBC coverage of the Olympics would mostly have been confined to gymnastics and swimming.  And so long as no American athlete is prominent among a particular sport, there is little chance it will ever be shown on television.

 

Without question, the highlight for most American viewers was the spectacle of Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals.  Granted, with so many different type of swimming events and with Phelps participation in various relays, an athlete could probably not have accomplished this in any other sport.  Still, what Phelps did was remarkable.  Phelps can now look forward to endorsing whatever product he chooses for much of the remainder of his life.  (Now there have already been complaints about his signing a contract with Kellogg’s to endorse Frosted Flakes because it does not seem conducive with what an Olympic athlete would actually consume and, so the health gurus say, he seems to be setting a bad example for our children.  At the same time, consuming 12,000 calories a day as a part of his training regimen is probably not something we would want most of our children emulating.)

 

But then what about Jamaica’s Usain “Lightning” Bolt?  He set world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter dash, and in the 4 x 100-meter relay race.  His performance may be in every respect as impressive as the one put in by Michael Phelps.  Should I say that he won the gold medals in a manner reminiscent of the disgraced Ben Johnson?  He ran the 100-meter dash in 9.69 seconds and spent the last ten meters or so beating his chest and looking over his shoulder.  He was criticized by the IOC President for showboating – the President trying to maintain the fiction that all great athletes should be gentlemen.  But we know with great athletes like Ty Cobb, Muhammad Ali or modern athletes like Barry Bonds that great performance is often much more complex than simple dedication combined with good manners.  We’d like all athletes to have that wonderful smile like a Shawn Johnson, the female gold medallist on the balance beam.  But surliness, an amount of gloating and a unique and grating personality may be required to motivate other athletes to one-upmanship.  Every champion wins their battles in their own way.

 

The Chinese won the most gold medals while the United States boasted of winning the most medals.  This was already pretty much predicted.  The controversies surrounding the actual competitions were relatively minor.  The United States dropped a couple of batons, a wrestler felt slighted during a match and tossed down his bronze medal after the flag raising, and an American gymnast whose score equaled that of her Chinese competitor lost her chance for a gold medal in the uneven parallel bars because of a tie-breaking technicality.  The one enduring controversy that will probably outlast the games was the insinuation that some of the female Chinese gymnasts were underage and thus would have been disallowed from competing in the Olympic games.  It’s a bit silly to complain about this too much because the Chinese girls otherwise defeated the American women head-to-head in competition.  The policy behind the rule was intended to protect young girls from the consequences of training at such an early age.  It wasn’t intended to prevent one nation from getting the edge in competition over another.  It’s also a policy that is almost impossible to enforce because I doubt the Chinese will be cooperative or bow in anyway to the wishes of the International Olympic Confederation (IOC).

 

 

The Closing Ceremonies

 

The Olympic ceremonies ended with the passing of the Olympic flag from the Mayor of Beijing to the Mayor of London.  Then we had Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame play a Whole Lot of Love followed by more fireworks (again, probably enhanced for television).  I suppose the Chinese did deliver a quality game in that the Chinese citizens were cordial hosts.  It must be said that the citizens had little choice since any dissent on the streets was immediately quashed by possibly the most expensive security methods ever employed in any Olympic game.

 

But in the end, it was not the Chinese that made these games worth viewing but instead the athletes themselves.  These were the world best athletes, and hopefully every medal winner won their medals while abiding by the rules of the Olympic games.  These athletes worked at their crafts in a way the rest of us can barely fathom, even the Beach Volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh who won back-to-back gold medals.  Though sports like boxing, gymnastics and diving are subject to what sometimes seems like arbitrary judging standards, for the most part the results were something that we can truly quantify.  We can’t say that the man elected President is necessarily the most qualified politician, or that the richest businessman is the one with the best business sense.  We can at least with reason suggest that Usain Bolt is the world’s fastest runner and that Phelps is the fastest swimmer.

 

August 29, 2008 

© Robert S. Miller 2008

THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: And How Fantasy Football Has Ruined the Sport

For almost twenty years I’ve been in the damndest fantasy football league ever created.  The league was created by members of a church for which I will never be a part.  I was lured into the league by a friend who originally had been welcome as a prospect and later shunned for his Catholicism.  Not to dwell too much on the religious aspects of being in such a league, but there is considerable irony in a devout individual “owner” in our league trading away one of his injured players to another unsuspecting owner that was unaware of such injury.  In this league perhaps only fantasy football is taken as seriously by the owners as say the Ten Commandments.

One of the more peculiar aspects of this league is that it has always been referred to as a “keeper” league.  What this means is that a certain number of players can be retained from season to season that no other league member can claim except by a trade or waiver.  Yet this league has given the name “keeper” a full new meaning.  Originally, the dozen team owners in the league could keep exactly twelve (12) players (thus placing 144 players off limits).  Though I’ve been in the league since 1993, the founding members continue to have such significant voting power concerning any amendments to the rules that reducing the number of keepers has become virtually impossible.  Once I made a motion that we reduce the keepers from twelve (12) to ten (10).   What instead occurred was that the original owners decided to create an additional taxi squad for each team made up of three players.  Thus, each team now has fifteen (15) keepers instead of twelve (12), and leaving 180 players off limits.  We have a draft that is held before the beginning of each NFL season.  The draft usually lasts several hours because it goes a minimum of seven rounds, and the owners always get in a big argument over protocol before the draft ends.  I’m not sure why there is so much contention.  The only players available in the draft are rookies or discarded veterans that nobody wants in any case.  To make matters worse, there’s no way to alleviate the tedium, even if one is a heavy drinker.  Consumption of alcohol would need to take place before or after the draft since it is held in a church basement where no drinking is allowed.

I’ve asked myself for the past seventeen years why I’m still in the league and have come up with no answer.  At the beginning of each season I hope to win a championship, but this has never occurred.  One season I made it to the championship game, but I lost because of a missed field goal.  As luck would have it I also lost that game because two of my premier running backs were sitting out that week.  Our league insists on holding the championship game on the last week of the regular season, so many of the best players remain on the bench to prevent them from being injured just prior to the playoffs.

I do want to make it clear that fantasy football insanity is not limited to my particular league.  Every member of any fantasy league I’ve ever known dreads the thought of a prolonged draft where they will have to sacrifice a beautiful fall afternoon to endure the harangue of other demented owners.  Some such owner will know in precise detail the combined yardage totals of noteworthy players like Frank Gore, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Adrian Peterson during the past three or four seasons.  They probably also know the average yards per carry for the backup running backs to these elite stars as well.  The most fanatical of owners will call in to radio sport talk shows.  During the 1990s there was a running back named Derrick Moore whose NFL career lasted three years.  I recall a fantasy football owner calling into a radio station making it clear that he wanted Moore to suffer a season (if not career) ending injury.  Why?  Because Moore was a backup to the great running back, Barry Sanders, and Moore’s being in the game was depriving Sanders from carrying the ball on every single down (thus reducing Sanders’ fantasy football points).  Now a small subset of football fans have always been bloodthirsty and have wanted to see opposing players injured or maimed so that their own favorite team can go onto win.  But in the above example, a fantasy football owner wanted to see a player injured that happened to be an NFL teammate of a player this owner had selected in a fantasy football draft.

Without question, the most successful of fantasy football owners have lost all devotion to any particular NFL team.  Once one becomes sentimental towards a particular player, once one refuses to acknowledge that any player on their favorite football team can deserve anything less than universal recognition all hope of fielding a successful fantasy football team is lost.  Being from Minnesota, I know of owners partial to drafting Minnesota Viking’ players.  Generally, these owners finish last.  There are owners that refuse to believe their running back will never again rush for one-thousand yards and have kept that running back on their roster to the point where all trade value for that player is reduced to little or nothing.  The successful player can live with the ambiguity of cheering for an opposing player to score against what was at one time his favorite NFL team.  The successful owner will spend hours studying the injured reserve chart and make adjustments to his lineup accordingly.  Maybe because I have no desire to spend more than five minutes per week reading through the waiver wire and trying to pickup players that were somehow not a part of the 180 players that are off limits in my league, I have never had that successful season that gave me lasting satisfaction.

One would think with the advent of the internet, fantasy football would become less time-consuming because now most of the statistics used for scoring can be found online.  In fact, just the opposite is happening.  Since the computer helps fantasy commissioners manage their league so much more easily, participants are now joining more and more leagues.  This creates additional mental anguish in that the player that may help you in one league may mean the defeat for another team you have in a different league.  In any case, if one participates in four of five leagues that person may have to keep track of a hundred or more players each week.

Don’t fool yourselves that fantasy football participants are in it for the sake of enjoyment and camaraderie.  If an owner happens to win, they will boast about it.  If they lose they will sulk.  Fantasy Football owners will gamble (and often lose) large sums of cash.  The league owners often pool their money with the winner of the league taking everything.  Actually, the real winners in a fantasy football competition are limited to the NFL, the television networks and Las Vegas.  Most fantasy owners end up watching more football games than they ever were truly interested in because the activity has taken over their lives.  I forgot to mention above: to be a successful owner you need to give up on everything that will make for the highest quality of life.  Health, the outdoors, children, spouse, and a successful career – these are secondary interests.

NOTE:  I’m sort of hoping that members of my fantasy football league never read this posting.  In fact, I also hope that they never read my website.  They probably wouldn’t approve.

September 30, 2010

© Robert S. Miller 2010

THE MITCHELL REPORT: “To Maintain the Integrity of the Game”

I’m not the only baseball fan apathetic about what was written in the Mitchell Report. The one major surprise for me concerning this report was that Former Senator George Mitchell, the Democrat from Maine, actually did his job.  The report names 89 players involved in taking steroids or human growth hormones (HGH) including star players such as Lenny Dykstra, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Tejada and Mo Vaughn.  To avoid the accusation that Mitchell concentrated only on batters taking the banned substance, Andy Pettitte (who now “admits” he took steroids for a two day period in 2002 while recovering from an injury) and, of course, Roger Clemens were pitchers whose steroid use was disclosed.  And to add balance, unknown players such as Alex Cabrera, who only had 80 major-league at bats in his short career, and Paxton Crawford, who pitched a mere 65 innings over two seasons before leaving Major League Baseball, were also named.  (That players such as Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez were not named gives the report credibility in that it shows Mitchell refrained from using hearsay in preparing his report.)  Brian McNamee, a personal strength trainer and conditioning coach for many professional players cooperated with the investigation.  Kirk Radomski, a New York Mets clubhouse employee, not only helped out, he also produced copies of hundreds of checks, money orders and Fed Ex receipts showing the exchange of great sums of money for the banned substances.  Mitchell estimates that as many as thirty percent of current major league players are guilty of using the banned substances.  (Jose Canseco, probably not the most credible witness in the world, claims it was a high as eighty-five percent.)

 

Released on December 13, 2007, the 409-page Mitchell Report (and 37 page executive summary) is almost as thorough, dry and factual as the notes from an autopsy, yet it is “supposedly” bringing attention upon the steroid problem.  The Major League Baseball executives hired Mitchell on in the guise of uncovering the truth – like there was anything in the Mitchell Report that was truly unforeseen.  Realistically, we had some idea that the predictable outrage was coming more than ten years ago when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa started shattering all of the homerun records.  The indignation finally only bubbled over when Barry Bonds, a known steroid user, became the homerun king in August of 2007.  (A congressional commission in 2005 to investigate baseball steroid usage was probably geared up in anticipation of the inevitable breaking of Hank Aaron’s home-run record by Bonds.  And it is now a “wait and see” to discover how the November 15, 2007 criminal indictment of Bonds will actually turn out.)  Yet during this same ten years, baseball revenues did not decrease.  In 2007, baseball took in more than six billion dollars.

 

What I believe Major League baseball truly wants to do with the report is to use it to bring down the powerful union, the Major League Baseball Player’s Association (MLBPA), for which Major League Baseball players are members headed up by Donald Fehr.  The MLBPA has historically not been patsies for the executives as say the players’ union for the NFL.  Since the days of Marvin Miller and free agency, the baseball players' union has won out in almost every negotiation.  Now Major League Baseball is holding a baseball bat over the union’s head.  Fehr now looks more sheepish when delivering his press conferences.  The Major League Baseball executives not only have appearances on their side by “looking out” for the interests of vulnerable children who are prey to the examples of their Major League heroes, they now have the government joining in to do their bidding on both sides of the aisle.

 

Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona stated in Iowa: “It is time for the player’s union to step forward to help save the reputation of the game.”  Congressman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, is quoted as saying: “We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines while some players destroy the integrity of this sport by engaging in the culture of cheating.”  In other words, let’s get the federal government involved.  It’s interesting that baseball is being singled out for this kind of treatment since steroid use in professional football and other sports is probably far more rampant.  The potential physical damage that can be incurred from steroid use, in any case, is obviously more prevalent in football than in baseball.  The physical contact in baseball that does occur is often, though not always, unintended.  In football, we now have defensive lineman weighing in at 280 pounds that run the forty in 4.4 seconds and who can bench press almost twice their weight tackling other players.

 

Mitchell, himself, had reported that the MLBPA had been uncooperative in his investigation, and this resulted in his not turning over his report to the union for review before its actual release.  Only two active players cooperated with Mitchell: Frank Thomas, who has not been implicated in any steroid use; and Jason Giambi, now 37 and at the tail end of his career, who is named as a substance abuse user in the report.  However, I think Mitchell understands more than many of the commentators why such cooperation was not forthcoming.  Nothing in the report would in anyway enhance any player’s reputation, and every player has a right to fear the consequences of being named.  Despite Mitchell’s recommendation that no retroactive measure be taken towards any of the named players, Mitchell has no control over what Major League Baseball will do.  As Bud Selig commented, “His report is a call to action, and I will act.”  And then there’s the anticipated follow-up by politicians and federal, state, county and city prosecutors.  Probably it will all mean nothing.  Named players may only face a two-week suspension from the game.  Next year’s season will probably see even more revenues brought in at the various baseball parks.  There will be no asterisks assigned by any broken record by a steroid user.  And in two years it will be all forgotten – or maybe we’ll have a new controversy to take its place (the most likely controversy of course being whether we allow any of the named players into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame).

 

Hiring Mitchell on to create this report makes baseball management look respectable by creating the impression that they take this problem seriously.  More likely, baseball hoped that the whole controversy would be brushed under the rug.  The policy banning steroid use in baseball was not actually implemented until 2005 after the BALCO scandal came to the forefront implicating Barry Bonds.  Baseball had good reason to put off implementing the policy.  Homeruns, forty-year old pitchers who can throw the ball in the high nineties and other feats of athletic prowess bring baseball fans into the parks.  Major League Baseball probably is not interested in the truth, and their interest in the kids is at least partially (if not mostly) a public relations ploy.  What brought attention upon the actions of BALCO and increased steroid usage was the increased media scrutiny.  Until the 1960s, the media handled the subject of Major League Baseball tenderly.  And it took another forty years after that before the media even began addressing performance-enhancing drugs.  The media historically has been almost as neglectful in addressing any wrongdoing in baseball as the many executives who have a financial incentive in keeping that same wrongdoing quiet.  For example, I wonder how many editorials were actually written before 1947 concerning Major League Baseball not having a single black player in its lineups for the first fifty years of its existence.  I wonder if reporters ever went through the police blotters to discover domestic disturbances or alcohol related crimes involving ballplayers when such notables such as Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx and Hack Wilson played the game.  Who before the 1960s even gave a thought to the fact that baseball is 100% exempt from any federal anti-trust provisions?  The policy always was to hide the truth.  With the media treating baseball like it was entertainment, the Major League Executives treating it like it was a money making venture, and the United States Supreme Court proclaiming that it is vital to the very fabric of America’s way of life, baseball has achieved an iconic status that it does not deserve.

 

Major League Baseball Players are not responsible for any drug epidemic in this country.  We spend fifty billion dollars or more each year on the drug war and the results are negligible.  We actually think that changing the appearance of professional athletes as drug users to clean upstanding citizens is somehow going to make fewer children take drugs.  Forget about the role of good parenting and education.  Whether a Major League Baseball player does or does not take drugs is between he, his families, his teammates, his employers and nobody else.  If you as a citizen do not like it, stop buying the tickets and turn the television set off.  Hero worship to influence young and impressionable minds is not good public policy.

 

Unfortunately, one of life’s lessons is that simply because someone has the discipline to learn how to hit .300 or become fast enough to steal second base does not mean that the same person is an all around positive role model.  Nor is that athlete required to be so.  Even if we cleaned up the game, having a child propped up in front of the television for three hours while munching down bags of potato chips is not going to make them any better.  Sports can provide great physical and mental benefits to a child who would otherwise be locked up inside.  I agree that it can teach some young people about life.  But we have to use the sport as a means to make the child think as well as provide physical exercise.  An intelligent and well-adjusted child who does not believe all of the hype about the greatness of public personalities is the one who is going to make the right choices later in life.

 

Many fans only care because now it’s obvious: records will be broken by players that took drugs, and these players will be identified as cheaters.  The problem is now so prevalent that we will never entirely know what accomplishments are legitimate.  If we take away Bonds' homerun records, do we then make the record holders Sammy Sosa or Mark McGuire (or in the future Alex Rodriguez)?  Do we take away records from players that took steroids that were not banned by professional baseball until 2005?  And how will we ever know that the new record holders were also not steroid users – unless we go all the way back to the 1970s before the use of performance enhancing drugs became widespread?  Baseball can’t do that because that would be the equivalent of a death sentence for the game.  And so, like with Pete Rose who holds the all time lead in base hits while being permanently banned from the game, Major League Baseball and its fans have to learn to live with the ambiguity of just not knowing what records are or are not legitimate.  What’s more, so long as we continue to call baseball entertainment while spending billions of dollars on the game, hypocrisy concerning baseball will continue. 

December 16, 2007
© Robert S. Miller 2007