May we never speak of it again. At some point during the second half I began entertaining visions of ESPN cutting into its telecast with Scott Van Pelt and Ryan Clark in the studio, the latter reminding us that the Horned Frogs “aren’t just football players, they’re human beings!”*
*Kudos to my former student Jack for that one.
Seriously, though, at least Damar Hamlin came back to life one Monday night earlier on ESPN. The Horned Frogs, after briefly giving its audience hope at 10-7, surrendered 55 unanswered points.
For posterity’s sake, this was the largest point differential (58) in the history of bowls. Not in the history of championship games, but in all bowl games. I don’t recall Fowler and Herbie noting that. I do recall Herbie twice saying, “I have no idea what to say.” He could’ve said that.
The 12-team playoff means we won’t be seeing games like this in the championship game, but rather in the first and second rounds. It’s becoming more the way we choose a president. Multiple layers of vetting to keep out the great unwashed (and occasionally, once every century, a demagogue steps in). But for the near future, expect to see only SEC schools, perhaps Ohio State or Michigan, or maybe even Clemson or USC, in the natty. Once we get to 12 teams.
Imagine being an Ohio State fan last night. Knowing your school blew a 14-point second half lead to the Dawgs and also could’ve won it at the end with a sub-50 yard field goal. That wasn’t just for a win; it was for a national championship. And, yes, we all know Alabama would’ve kept this game close. SIngle digits, most likely. Or even flat-out won.
A bizarre night. A trio of white dudes named Stetson, Ladd and Brock leading Georgia to the most convincing championship ever. Rain crashing sideways into SoFi Stadium, which has a roof but no walls in some parts so that only TCU fans were being drenched. Sometimes Mother Nature supplies the metaphors gratis.
It Never Rains In Southern California
Some of America’s most idyllic towns—Montecito, Malibu, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Ojai—were absolutely pummeled by torrents of rain yesterday. Some areas received as much as two inches of rain. Pray for the Golden Globes this Sunday!
Yesterday’s Answers: 1. True, 2. 51 3. Both Northern 4. Hollywood Squares and The Brady Bunch, 5. Jackson and Hamilton.
Today’s quiz is a tough one but should teach us all something:
The winner of the inaugural Indianapolis 500, Ray Harroun, had help from a clever device that he devised himself. What was it? (the year was 1911)
Which one of these was not among the original 13 colonies: Vermont, Georgia, Rhode Island?
If the distance from home plate to first base is 90 feet, and all bases are equidistant, you can calculate the distance in a straight line from home to 2nd base using what? (I will not accept “tape measure” as an answer).
Which one of these three were NOT named to the five-player charter class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936: Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, Cy Young?
What surviving women’s tennis player has the highest career win % (minimum 500 matches won)?It’s just a hair below 90%.
*The judges owe that hed to SportsBrain, who suggested it unsolicited yesterday. For those not in the know, SportsBrain is a former ASU student of mine.
Really, Brazil? Your national hero has only been dead 10 days and you’ve already fallen apart? Where did you conjure such a reckless idea of storming the national capitol (don’t answer that)?
We have questions: Why does Brazil’s capitol area look like some early 1970s director’s idea of a futuristic city? Couldn’t everyone just have waited until Carnevale? Is it more than just coincidental that former heads of democratic states who pushed for an authoritarian government (after losing the election) end up in Florida (that’s where Jair Bolsonaro is)? And how does Gisele figure into all of this?
Rodgers, Out—And Over?
The Green Bay Packers were eliminated from the NFL postseason at Lambeau Field for the second January in a row, except this time it happened in Week 17. The Detroit Lions, who less than an hour before kickoff learned that their playoff hopes were dashed (when Seattle won in overtime), nevertheless played with spirit and fire. You might even argue that Detroit, with nothing left to lose, played with a healthy dose of reckless abandon.
Remember when Amon Ra St. Brown’s butt ended the Packers’ season?
The Lions won 20-16 and you might say that more than a couple fourth-quarter plays were harbingers for Green Bay’s demise: 1) Amon-Ra St. Brown’s third-down leg catch, which kept the game-sealing drive alive, 2) Before that, Green Bay’s Quay Walker being bounced for shoving a Lions’ medical personnel staffer (of all the weeks to know better than to do that…) 3) Detroit going for it on 4th-and-1 when a field goal would’ve made it 23-16 but given Green Bay the ball back, 4) Detroit declining Green Bay’s intentional offsides, which was done so that Green Bay wouldn’t have to waste another play in what would be an inevitable Lions first down 5) Detroit’s gutsy third-down modified hook-and-lateral play, complete with Penei Sewell destruction of a Packer d-back downfield.
What does it all mean? That may have been Aaron Rodgers’ final NFL game (if so, his last pass was n interception). He turned 39 in December. Or, maybe he’ll take a clue from Brady and head south to play in his forties. After all, everywhere is south of Green Bay.
We hear the Las Vegas Raiders need a quarterback. So do the Texans. And Denver, who may install Jim Harbaugh as coach. Stay tuned to your State Farm ads for updates.
Also, Dan Campbell is in danger of turning Detroit into a relevant franchise. You have to be impressed with some of its young talent (Aiden Hutchinson, Sewell) and also with the fire with which the Lions play.
Tom And Tom Again
By far the most intriguing of next weekend’s six wildcard matchups will not occur until Monday night: the Dallas Cowboys at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Here’s your index card of cheat-sheet knowledge:
Tom Brady is 7-0 lifetime versus the Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys are 0-8 in road playoff games since 1992, when Brady was in high school
Brady has been to the AFC championship game 14 times, more than any single quarterback. The Cowboys have been to the NFC championship game 14 times, more than any NFC team. However, Brady and the Cowboys have never met in the postseason
And Dallas has not been to a conference championship game since Brady was a freshman at Michigan(Basically, the Cowboys owned the NFL before Brady arrived and he has owned it since)
Both teams opened the season, on a Thursday night, against one another in the same venue: Tampa Bay won 19-3. It was one of only two wins the Bucs had this season versus playoff-bound teams.
This is Brady’s first regular season with a losing record (8-9) since his rookie year of 2000 when he only attempted three passes, completing one.
Stock Bits
Not for nothing, but have stocks hit bottom? Take a look at three popular-then suddenly unpopular stocks of recent vintage:
A) META (the artist formerly known as Facebook): $88/share on Nov. 4, $131 this morning. That’s a 55% leap.
B) RIOT (crypto block chain company that may or may not be ethically compromised): $3.25 on Dec. 28, $4.91 this morning. That’s a 51% jump.
We’re not advising anything. Just pointing stuff out.
Dollar Quiz
True/False: Madagascar is larger than Spain.
What number did Dick Butkus wear for the Chicago Bears?
Ethiopia and Malaysia: both Northern Hemisphere, both Southern Hemisphere, or one of each?
Name two TV shows that deployed a 3-by-3 box setup.
Two men whose faces are on U.S. currency were involved in and shot in duels. Name them.
Allow me to save you thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours by distilling reporting into one sentence, a command, actually: ANSWER THE SIX QUESTIONS.
That’s the job, folks. That’s all there is to it.
Who? What? When?
Where?
Why? How?
That’s it. That’s all every story, and any story, needs. The rest of it is just garnish. Alas, far too often, and particularly this week in terms of the Damar Hamlin saga, most of the meal has been garnish. And a couple of sports media reporters that I know of, people with national platforms, lapped up the garnish as if it were a meal and then walked back to the kitchen to shake the chef’s hand and exclaim, “Bravo!”
And that is sad.
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
We must begin with ESPN for a couple of reasons: 1) The incident occurred on its airwaves and 2) ESPN proclaims itself as the “worldwide leader in sports” and this was easily the biggest sports story of our nascent year.
Three of the six questions are elementary and any of the millions of Americans who had tuned in to Monday Night Football to see the Buffalo Bills at the Cincinnati Bengals could answer them within seconds of the collision between Tee Higgins and Damar Hamlin taking place. In fact, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that I already answered them in that previous sentence.
WHO: Bills and Bengals, specifically Hamlin and Higgins.
WHERE: Cincinnati, specifically Paycor Stadium (we miss the days before naming rights were re-awarded on a seemingly annual basis…we miss the days before naming rights, period)
WHEN: Monday Night Football, specifically the first quarter of the game.
It’s the last three questions that distinguish true reporters from hacks, and this is where ESPN failed miserably, as have those who rushed to pat them all on the back.
WHAT: Well, there was a seemingly innocuous tackle in which Hamlin brought Higgins down but Higgins helmet appeared to strike Hamlin directly in the chest. Higgins stood up after the tackle, then a moment later appeared to do a trust-fall backwards. Bills medics observing immediately noticed that something was amiss and communicated to one another that they needed to reach Hamlin immediately.
ESPN, as the rights-holder to this game, had licensed access to the footage. And yet, as if to spare our delicate, handfan-waving sensibilities, opted to not air the footage. Which is completely irresponsible.
Let me take a moment of digression here:
No person with an IQ higher than the combined score of the game at that moment (7-3) needs to be reminded by Ryan Clark or anyone else that a human life is a precious thing. Anyone reporting on the event and sticking to the six questions, and also endeavoring to answer those six questions (i.e., his or her job) is no less empathetic or humane than anyone who makes a public showing of support for the recovery of Hamlin. Or prays on air on his behalf, as Dan Orlovsky did. The fact that you are answering those six questions, or attempting to, does not make you any less sensitive. It simply makes you a professional.
In a sentence: ESPN needed to air the hit. Not on a loop. And not to be exploitative. But to inform its audience why we were at this impasse and to illustrate what had happened. Even if just airing it once per SportsCenter. So, thousands or tens of thousands rushed to Twitter or TikTok or YouTube to uncover the footage that someone in Bristol (and perhaps the league offices in NYC) didn’t want us to see. It’s the same reason Pentagon officials during Vietnam blew their tops when bodybags were shown being loaded onto planes in Saigon. It’s not the war they are against; it’s the chance that transparency might just turn public opinion against the war. That is what the Pentagon or the NFL or even ESPN is really at odds with.
HOW: The answer to this question often overlaps or gets confused with WHY. For our purposes, I like to think of HOW as “HOW DID IT HAPPEN?” and WHY as “WHY DOES THE AUDIENCE CARE ON A VIEW FROM 30,000-FEET LEVEL?” That is, what are the greater issues at play here beyond the incident itself.
So, back to HOW: My guess is that neither Scott Van Pelt nor Ryan Clark nor Lisa Salters nor any of the team-based reporters for ESPN.com (Have you noticed how they’re all so young? If you’re curious as to why, you may want to think about salaries versus experience and the potential risks ESPN exposes itself to by putting such relatively inexperienced reporters on air on a story of such magnitude, where a life literally hangs in the balance). Anyway, how a seemingly typical NFL hit led to a player not breathing is not a question for anyone but a medical professional to address. Of course, Van Pelt, a consummate professional, was above speculating as to the cause of Hamlin’s distress. That’s smart. But where his producers hung him and the rest of ESPN out to dry was by not being able to locate a single medical professional to opine on this.
America is watching. America is asking, What about that hit led to this dire predicament. HOW? And ESPN is not even pretending to bother to care to answer that question. ESPN brings on its Bills reporter, who talks about how popular Hamlin is in the locker room. That’s great, but if Hamlin were a complete ass, would she have mentioned that? Moreover, is any of it relevant in the moment? No. It’s garnish. It’s tap dancing as ESPN waits for some real news.
CNN, not a sports channel per se, was up against the same after-midnight-on-a-Monday-night constraints that ESPN was, and yet CNN was able to located two emergency room physicians who spoke directly, yet with restraint, about what the most likely medical causes of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest were. And it wasn’t wild speculation to say that Hamlin had gone into cardiac arrest. After all, Bills staffer were seen giving him CPR. This was not off-the-cuff speculation by these physicians with decades of experience. It was an educated diagnosis, and it was dispensed with the caveat that they did not know for sure. This is not irresponsible. It is informative.
WHY: This is almost always the most difficult question to tackle. But before we do, let’s address something that should be common sense but for the sake of the Twitterati, needs to be said. Every time you return from a commercial break, whether you’re Van Pelt or CNN or anyone with an FCC license, you repeat the headline (“A Buffalo Bills player appeared to suffer a life-threatening injury during MNF”) and you provide the latest update on Hamlin’s condition. You note that the hospital where he is staying will not be holding a press conference and you assure your audience that as soon as any credible source is able to provide an update, you will share it.
Then you answer the WHY? Why is this important? Well, for context, it has been more than 50 years since the one and only NFL player to die in the course of playing a game, Chuck Hughes of the Detroit Lions, did so. You note that these are two of the top three teams in the AFC and that the incompletion of this game creates a conundrum for the NFL, in terms of playoff seeding, with one week remaining in the season. Such a situation is, as far as we know, unprecedented.
Is that more important than the life of Damar Hamlin? Of course not. Does that need to be repeated to us as if we are five year-olds? I think not. Every time there’s a serious traffic accident, someone is taken to the hospital and maybe they die en route, or were dead at the scene, but the police there are still responsible for creating an avenue for traffic to continue. The motorists do not all turn off their engines, alight from their cars and form a prayer circle. And the police are not doing their jobs if they don’t put up cones and find a way for traffic to continue. They don’t pause, assess the gravity of the accident, and then decide whether or not to do their jobs. Because it’s not a policeman’s job to pray or to remind other motorists how precious life is in that moment. It’s his job to make sure the paramedics are able to access the scene, get in and out as soon as possible, and then to keep traffic moving. This is why the first call is after an accident is to police and paramedics and not your pastor.
*****
The true irony of the day, and it’s not something I expected ESPN to mention but perhaps some sports media writer (besides this one), should have, is what transpired earlier that day on the same network. In the fourth quarter of the Cotton Bowl between Tulane and USC, ESPN took a moment to reflect on the odyssey of former Tulane football player Devon Walker, who had been paralyzed after making a play in 2012. ESPN showed a still photo of the hit, and I think they aired footage (or maybe it was a photo, I’m not sure now) of Walker being administered CPR. Then they cut to a live shot of the wheelchair-bound Walker watching the game and spoke of how he’d gone on to earn a master’s degree. One of the ESPN announcers intoned about how life is not about what happens to us, but how we react to it. ESPN, the worldwide leader in sermons on the mount.
There’s nothing wrong with doing that story. At all. But maybe mention that Walker’s case is a blunt reminder of what a dangerous game these young men play. Not long after, a USC defensive back crashed into a Tulane wideout, helmet to helmet, after a catch. Both players fell to the turf and lay limp for a few moments. Were both players knocked out? Had one or more of them suffered a neck injury? Nobody knew in the moment.
ESPN re-aired the hit. As they needed to. It was a decisive moment in the game. It was also a far more brutal hit than the one between Hamlin and Higgins. Football is a violent sport. We all knew that, didn’t we?
(At this point I must leave… I’ll try to return and continue later)
In San Fran, Saddiq Bey of the Detroit Pistons splished the Splash Brothers. The 6’7″ Bey hit an off-balanced three-pointer after taking an inbounds pass with 1.0 on the clock to give the Pistons a 122-119 win at the Chase Center. Moments earlier, Klay Thompson had buried a game-tying three to knot the score at 119 apiece. The Warriors trailed almost the entire game.
Once again, the NBA is koo koo. The Warriors entered the game with the NBA’s best home record 17-2. The Pistons were 10-30. It was Golden State’s first home loss to a sub-.500 team this season (the others, to West-leading Denver in October and to Indiana last month). All of this chaos took place inside while outside San Francisco was being racked by a hurricane bomb of a storm with 55 mph winds, etc.
Sure, upsets can happen but in this NBA one seems to occur on a nightly basis. There’s no sense of urgency when an 82-game season serves only to cleave the bottom third of each conference. Teams are far more concerned with stars resting, first of all (Steph missed yet another game) and being focused when April comes. All of these winter months are pure prologue, like how Rocky Balboa suggests to Hulk Hogan that they just dance around the ring and give the folks a decent show. Remember?
Worth noting: The Dubs and the Suns are now both 20-19 but sports books still have the Suns as the favorites to win the West and the Dubs at No. 3, behind the Clippers, who are 21-18 and in 6th place.
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Just when you thought Joe McCarthy had a lock on “Worst McCarthy To Ever Serve In Congress” (I mean, they coined a term off his surname that is synonymous with gas-lighting and reckless paranoia), along comes Kevin McCarthy. The California Rep. has now lost, as of our count, four five six votes to be named Speaker of The House.
OK, I really don't like the rule, but it might be time to start the next Speaker vote with a runner on second base
It’s the worst showing for a majority member seeking the Speaker-ship since 1856 (when Chuck Grassley was just a junior member of Congress). Speaker-ship matters for, among other reasons, this is the guy who is third in line for the Oval Office. Just imagine if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris chest-bump and simultaneously experience commotio cordis! Sure, Dan Orlovsky will say a prayer for them on-air, but if they both perish the Speaker would inherit the job. Who was drunk in the framing of the Constitution when they added that clause?
Snow Bowl
This photo from the BC game was voted "Best in Show" in my professional org's latest monthly contest. Cool. That means I have to do a blog article about it. Wanna know what's going through my mind at a football game? (really…?!?) Here y'go: https://t.co/F2jSa7TgiJpic.twitter.com/VAxxGArjul
For no other reason than that Matt Cashore took yet another magical photo, we present this. Cashore, a Notre Dame alum, is also a licensed pilot. He has mad skillz.
13.5
We were a little surprised to see TCU open as 13.5-point underdogs to defending champion Georgia. The Horned Frogs are being Dangerfield’ed for the second game in a row. A reminder that TCU were the ones up 21-3 in the first half versus Michigan (and they never trailed in the second half despite the Wolverines’ many runs) and that Georgia trailed for all but the final minute versus Ohio State.
Should the defending champion Dawgs be the favorites in LA? Yes. But TCU’s lone loss this season came in overtime and they’ve demonstrated over and over that they are physical and have playmakers. Also, like Georgia, they have a QB who doesn’t wow you on photo day but seems to be able to always make plays when it matters.
We’ll be surprised if this is a double-digit game. We think the boys in the desert were expecting a lot more money to come in on Georgia. This spread, now at 12.5, could be down to 10 or 9.5 by Sunday night.
Dollar Quiz
T.J won yesterday, which gives him two wins, we think. Remember and please: If you have to Google an answer, that’s not what we’re striving for here.
What day marks the first real day of Breaking Bad (there is a flash-forward scene that precedes it that we will not count)?
A 6-4-3 double play involves which three fielders?
Name one professional team on which Bud Grant (still living) played.
In terms of latitude, order these cities from southern-most to northern-most: London, Montreal, Vancouver.
In a game of blackjack, how many cards in the deck have a value of “10?”
Aussie ‘baller Josh Giddey, whom neither of us has ever heard of, poured in a team-high 25 points at the middling Oklahoma City Thunder crushed the NBA’s best-record Boston Celtics last night, 150-117. If you needed any more proof that NBA games are a crapshoot thus far this season, this game is it.
The Thunder were minus their one true All-Star, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who’s averaging more than 30 points per game this year (NBA’s Most Improved Player award goes to….). The rest of the lineup is comprised of duded such as Giddey, or Isaiah Joe, true Witness Protection Plan players. Flyover ‘ballers in a flyover state. Thunder Buddies.
And yet the Thunder crashed, putting ONE FITTY on the mighty Celtics, who do have the league’s best record… even if they’ve now lost to the Thunder and the even worse Magic—twice, at home, in a three-day span in mid-December—in the past three weeks. The Celtics hadn’t lost by 16 all season; the Thunder hadn’t won by more than 16. The Thunder won last night by 33—without SGA.
We wonder if allowing 10 teams per conference into the playoffs has dulled the sense of urgency for players and coaches about the regular season.
Tesla, One Year Later
We realize we have a preoccupation with Tesla, but today marks an important anniversary.
One year ago today, January 4, 2022, shares of Tesla (TSLA) peaked at $402. Yesterday, just before market close, Tesla shares were selling at $104. That’s nearly a 75% loss in value in just one year. Piggyback that with the $44 billion CEO and founder Elon Musk spent to acquire Twitter and, well, no single human being has lost more money in a 365-day span. Ever.
Tesla may be an electric car, but its stock in the past three years has operated more like a rocket ship, like a Space X product. Consider this: as horribly bad as the stock has performed in the past year, it is still up 100% from where it was just before the pandemic began. Three years ago today, it was selling for $30. So it’s still up more than 200% in that time.
— Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show (@ultCLEsports) January 4, 2023
It’s worth listening to every word this gentleman has to say about Damar Hamlin’s bonus, his annual salary, the fact that he is not vested and would not receive a pension or health coverage if he were to never play another game. He does not even mention that NFL players are still paid in increments by the game, so that Hamlin would not receive any pay for Buffalo’s final game this season if the Bills were to release him… which they might have done before the age of social media and the public wrath that would follow such a move.
Near the end he says, “So it is all about money.”
No.
Duh.
It’s always all about money, and here’s the other half of this that the speaker, who refers to NFL players as “these young kids,” fails to acknowledge: no one is forcing anyone to play professional football. This man makes the naive and wrongheaded point that since the Bills owner also owns the Buffalo Sabers and is worth $6 billion that these players should be paid more. This is the kind of arguments I’d hear my grad students make last winter and in my head I felt like Rebecca DeMornay in Risky Business: “Go to school, Joel. Go learn something.”
What a company is worth or what its owner is worth has ZERO impact on how you as an employee should be paid (“Well, it should…” “And I should be 6’3″, but I’m not”). I used to preach this to my students, and I’m sure this is one of many reasons I was canceled: A company pays you the least amount of money it possibly has to in order to keep you from leaving for another job. That’s it.
I was paid $4,000 per class at Cronkite, which if you figure for 16 weeks’ work, nearly four hours of class per week, at least double that time for class prep and grading of papers, not counting answering a litany of texts and emails, preparing and grading a final, that comes out to about $20 an hour, not counting gasoline expenses (or hours wasted when your dean schedules one of your classes at 7:30 a.m. and another at 1:50 p.m.). It was a garbage salary, but nobody forced me to take it. And, just like Hamlin, I enjoyed the ego boost of this job and, also like Hamlin, I enjoyed the opportunities it gave me to hopefully improve the lives of others. There’s a self-esteem boost to being known as “professor” or NFL player, but there’s also the opportunity to use that platform to help others. For Hamlin, it was his charity. For me, it was helping young people realize their dream of being in the sports media profession. Not equating our paths, only comparing them.
I wanted to do the job and while ASU has billions in endowment money that it could afford to free up in order to pay qualified professors more, it astutely looks at the market for unemployed sports journalists, Arizona’s sublime weather, and its needs, and factors in that the brand name— Cronkite School (he never attended school there nor did he even finish college himself) will more than offset the fact that it compromises on instructor quality. What 18 year-old or his/her parents is going to know the difference between an instructor with 30 years’ experience in the field at the most prestigious outlets and a 25 year-old who posts selfies of herself at a presser teaching the same course? Not enough to force the folks in charge of Cronkite to make paying qualified profs a priority (also, journalism is one of those vocational choices where three decades’ of experience trumps anyone’s Masters degree, and most PhDs, as anyone in the field knows… but it’s not the true pros making the calls there, now is it?).
Anyone, I seem to have digressed. 🙂
But the point holds. The folks who run the NFL know that Twitter will clutch its pearls for a few days and SVP and Ryan Clark will hold hands and sing kumbaya, but they’re paying Damar Hamlin just enough (actually, much much more) to prevent him or anyone like him (talented athlete with few other truly marketable skills at this age) from saying, “Take this job and shove it.” And they know you’re going to tune in to watch the Bills play on Sunday because underneath the helmet and uniform everyone looks pretty much the same. And it’s the game you love, not the players (the players feel the same about you, by the way).
He’s risking his life to play this game, they say. And this is where I’m reminded of the sage words of Don Draper: “That’s what the money’s for!”
Dollar Quiz
Who was the first president to take office without being elected as president himself (hint: “Joe Biden” is not the correct answer… nor is Gerald Ford)?
Who holds the NFL record for most passing yards in a single game (we’ll accept player or franchise)?
At what SEC school was Bear Bryant a head coach before Alabama?
4. Name major rivers of the world, no two located on the same continent, with four, five, six and seven letters in their names.
