by John Walters
Giddey Up!
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.
A Truth Bomb—At Least Half The Story
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.
No quiz today?
Also – I got busy the last few months and must have missed it – you got canceled?! I picked up that you’re no longer a prof at ASU, but were you really canceled?
Lastly, I think we all realize that football is a very dangerous sport. You can get anything from a twisted ankle to suicided-causing CTE and (as we’ve been reminded this week) literal heart-stopping situations. But, as you pointed out, they get paid pretty well (of course, the gentleman on the video pointed out some loopholes in the system when serious injuries occur).
Additionally, there are other very dangerous sports in America. If one looks to motorsports, and while it isn’t recent history, it wasn’t that long ago Dale Earnhardt died while racing at Daytona. That’s nearly the equivalent of the Devan Hamlin cardiac arrest occurring during the Super Bowl. (I realize NASCAR has made some changes to ensure that same incident doesn’t occur again, but it’s still very dangerous.)
I suppose to sum it up for me is, they know what they’re getting into at this point. The head injuries/CTE stuff is no longer a secret. The possibility of death tied to the sport is now well-documented. So, the question to young American athletes is, is it worth it? To some it is. To some it won’t be. But, it’s not like they’re getting into the sport with their eyes closed.
Pardon the interruption… quiz is now up.
No one ever had the courtesy to tell me, after I taught 3 courses per semester two semesters in a row (I don’t know of another prof personally who taught 3 courses there…certainly not an adjunct like me), why I was not brought back. Calls went unreturned, texts unanswered.
I do know that in one of my last weeks of class, a student of mine visited a dentist who’s a childhood friend of mine (and he knew that) and said, “I can’t believe the sh*% Professor Walters has to put up with from my classmates.”
Believe it.
Well, that’s the university’s (and the students’) loss. I think I’d have really enjoyed your class – but then, again, I’m nearly twice the age of your former students.
Do you have any job leads? I see the Athletic didn’t have your Bubble Screen column this year – which was sorely missed.
1) Andrew Johnson
2) Norm Van Brocklin
3) Texas A&M
4a) Mississippi River – North America (4 letters – M, I, S, and P)
4b) Rhine River – Europe (5 letters – R, H, I, N, and E)
4c) Amazon – South America (6 letters – A, M, A, Z, O, and N)
4d) Yangtze River – Asia (7 letters – Y, A, N, G, T, Z, and E)
Good guesses, but some not correct. Will have answers tomorrow if no one else tries.
Just for the record – which of these were incorrect? I realize #1 for sure – that John Tyler was elevated from vice president to president when William Henry Harrison died a month after he took office (which proceeded Lincoln’s assassination’s and Johnson’s elevation from VP to P).
But, is Texas A&M wrong? It’s a current SEC team. I had originally thought that this was some sort of trick question since at the time T A&M was in the Southwest Conference (before the Big 12 and then the SEC). I hadn’t known he coach at Kentucky.
Same w/ Mississippi. Is that incorrect? Again, thought this was a trick question with all the repeating letters, it still has only 4 unique letters, no?
Okay, so you understand why I cannot “grade your paper” while the quiz is still active.
Yes, Tyler was the correct answer, not Johnson.
As for the other two, by the way I worded the questions you are technically not wrong. I’d imagine you understand that 1) Texas A&M was not in the SEC when Bear was coach there and 2) I was looking for a four-letter river name, but you are correct. Because of how I worded the question, I’d have given you credit. Now that I’ve written a few quizzes and tests, there’s a fine line between stipulating so much that you give away the answer and hoping that common sense prevails. I wonder if you honestly thought those were the best answers or if you were just Susie B’ing your way into my blood pressure levels. 🙂
1) John Tyler
2) Norm Van Brocklin
3) Kentucky
4) Nile, Rhine, Amazon, Yangtze
Correct!