Most people like Anthony Davis. Most people also think he is going to be a very good NBA player. He is the clear #1 overall pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. Is he a finished product? Not in any way. He could definitely use a bit more weight on him, he could also learn some post moves, as well as perhaps get a better overall offensive game. Of course he is only 19 years old. So while I really like Davis a lot, I'm not sure I am in the same camp as David Steele. He has Davis pegged as one of the top NBA centers of all-time. That's probably a bit much. I'm not sure the point of writing an article claiming Davis is ready to be one of the NFL's top centers of all-time. Maybe the point is for David Steele to be able to write another article in 20 years that says, "See, I told you he was going to be as good as Bill Russell. I am smart." Of course, if he's wrong about Davis, we'll never hear that he was wrong. That's just the way it goes.
His own coach at Kentucky and the one competing in the same state, John Calipari and Rick Pitino, both made the Bill Russell comparison last weekend.
Wow, a Bill Russell comparison. Haven't we heard one of these type comparisons before? I remember there was another center who came out of college who was the next great center and was compared to Bill Russell prematurely. Oh yeah, it was Greg Oden. He was also an offensively limited center who blocked and changed shots while in college. I remember how bright of a future he had in the NBA. He not only looked like Bill Russell, but also played like him.
I know injuries took Oden's career, but he also serves as a lesson to not compare players to NBA Hall of Famers until that players has actually entered the NBA. Regardless, David Steele ain't got time for caution because he's all about the hyperbole.
Calipari even asked directly: Do you, Anthony Davis, know who Bill Russell is?
Monday, April 16, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
2 comments I Say I Want Bill Simmons to Write More Columns...But Do I?
Bill Simmons has written a "But we are all hypocrites for enjoying football, so everyone jump off your high horse" column for Grantland about the Saints bounty scandal. I guess his choices were between writing this column or writing a column ranking the NBA coaches as if they were characters from "90210." Bill wrote this because audio from this year's NFC Divisional Round became public and it allows the public to hear Gregg Williams exhorting his defense to injure 49ers players and even makes a reference to injuring Alex Smith for money.
I kind of figured this was coming since immediately after the tapes were released Bill wrote a Tweet in disbelief that the Saints would follow what Williams told them to do and injure a fellow player. It seems Bill hasn't paid attention to the whole bounty scandal (though in his defense, it didn't involve the Patriots in any way so Bill probably didn't care to pay attention). The Saints DID try to injure opposing players for money at the behest of Gregg Williams. So I do believe the Saints players would do what Williams had asked of them, especially since money was involved. Still, Bill doesn't believe it and while he is capable of making a few good points, overall he's on the wrong side of right with this column.
I don't know if the Saints intentionally were trying to injure Alex Smith or Michael Crabtree's ACL, as the tape suggests, but the idea conveyed to the Saints defense stayed the same. Hit them hard and you may make a few bucks off it. I don't know if I would go the distance of some columnists who want to ban Williams for good, but the murky water of NFL celebrating hard hits is being cleared up by the NFL. The NFL is probably late in making these type changes, but that doesn't mean they should just give up on changing the perception of hard hits nor go hard on teams who run a bounty program.
Yeah, I heard the audio of former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams urging his players to injure various 49ers before their January playoff game.
Since Bill is aware of the audio, it does actually exist. Nothing exists in the world until Bill has acknowledged its existence. The world revolves around Bill and his thoughts on a certain topic.
It's pretty compelling — not just because he wanted to maim Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis, and not just because he may have been illegally taped without his consent, but because Williams might be the worst motivational speaker in recent American history.
If Bill is trying to write a serious column, he may want to stay away from his typical "here's a quick joke based on pop culture" comments. Get your point across and try not to compare real life events to a movie.
If that was a sports movie scene, the director would have fired Williams and replaced him with another actor.
And if that were a porn movie scene, he would be doing it all wrong! If Williams were speaking in church, he wouldn't be invited to speak in church again! If Williams were speaking to a group of people who only speak Chinese, no one would have understood a word he said!
You get the point. It wasn't a sports movie scene, it was real. Yes, Williams doesn't reach the level of "fictional head coach who makes an impassioned speech" and it doesn't really mean anything in this situation. Fictional accounts of a non-fiction event are usually more dramatic. It's hard to tell this to Bill who seems to consistently believe there is a direct connection between what life is like in the movies and what happens in reality. So the fact Gregg Williams didn't seem like an impassioned fictional coach probably had no effect on the message to the Saints players.
Of course, it's 2012 — the Year of Internet Self-Righteousness — which means we need to feign disgust, pile on the Saints, argue for Williams to receive the NFL's death penalty and basically freak out that a football coach would ever do that.
Disgust isn't being feigned. No one is piling on the Saints, simply suggesting appropriate punishments. Also, no one is freaking out a football coach would ever do that, but commenting on the idea this would happen in an NFL locker room where players on opposing teams may have gone to college together or had some other prior affiliation. That's all. There's no self-righteousness and Bill Simmons isn't our voice of reason. He isn't the voice of anything, other than that slightly nasal, Boston-accented voice those who listen to his podcasts are hearing.
So let's concede the following points. No, you shouldn't instruct your players to hurt people. Yes, you should be fined and suspended for that. Yes, Gregg Williams came off like an insensitive Neanderthal, and yes, it would be difficult (if not impossible) to take him seriously as a coach again. His professional career is over. The tape is pretty damning.
So basically Bill is conceding everything said about Williams is accurate and he should be punished. He's just asking we don't judge Williams for it because football is a violent sport and we are all hypocrites for enjoying the sport. To an extent, Bill is correct, but to another extent he is incorrect.
Bill is correct that football is an inherently violent sport and to ever expect it to be non-violent is naive and misguided. Bill is incorrect in putting the bounty scandal in with the inherent violence of the NFL. Placing bounties on players is outside the realm of the inherent violence during a football game. It's not part of the normal course of the game.
Is there a thin line? Absolutely. It's the same thin line in NASCAR between two drivers getting into an accident on the track and one of those drivers intentionally wrecking another driver or an accident being just that, an accident. It's the same thin line between a pitcher accidentally hitting a batter in the head and intentionally throwing the ball at that batter's head. Yes, both sports are inherently violent at times, but the actions taken in each situation (to place a bounty, to intentionally wreck someone, to intentionally throw the ball at someone) is outside of the normal course of events. The outcome is the same, but the intent is different. The intent is what disturbs people about the bounties placed on opposing player's heads by the Saints.
So the whole "football is violent and the NFL is at fault in some ways," while being true overall about concussions, isn't true in this case. There was a specific rule on the books to prevent bounties being placed on opposing players.
Even if it's far-fetched that any Saint listened to that speech and thought to himself, Maybe my creepy weirdo of a coach is right, maybe I SHOULD go after Michael Crabtree's ACL!
This shows Bill's disconnect with reality in two ways. The Saints players don't consider Williams to be a creepy weirdo. Many of them have come out in defense of Williams. They clearly followed the bounty program he set up. This shows they don't consider him to be a creepy weirdo. You don't break NFL rules and defend a guy you think is a creepy weirdo.
Even though the Saints didn't intentionally go for Michael Crabtree's ACL, the message was clear and it was followed. The quotes from the 2009 NFC Championship Game involving Brett Favre show the Saints were clearly trying to injure him. Don't let the specificity of Williams' request fool you. It wasn't like the entire team was aiming for specific body parts of the 49ers players, but going after Michael Crabtree's ACL was a metaphor for "whatever it takes, even if you have to hurt your opponent, get it done...oh and here is a little bit of money on the table as an incentive." So yes, I believe the Saints did follow what Williams said. Otherwise they wouldn't have bought into the bounty program.
But there's a bigger story here: the laughable notion that anyone can change an ingrained culture of violence overnight.
No, this is a completely different story and topic. This story is related to the bounty program, but the NFL's previous inability to do anything about concussions and head-related injuries to players doesn't mitigate the Saints bounty program in any fashion. There was a specific rule against bounties. The punishment of the Saints isn't occurring because the NFL has suddenly decided bounties are wrong. Few people, the commissioner included, believe the culture of violence overnight. That doesn't mean the NFL shouldn't try.
The league never turned off its "We're gonna look the other way, keep being violent and keep those hits coming" switch until the 2010 season, after that infamous October weekend with all the signature hits, when Roger Goodell said, "Oh, crap, maybe I should start fining these guys because the Sports Legacy Institute has accumulated three-plus years of rock-solid concussion evidence and lawsuits are coming.
Yes, football is inherently violent and the NFL realized it needed to crackdown harder on illegal hits after that weekend. I'm not going to defend the NFL being late to the concussion game. The league saw what was on the horizon and knew they had to crack down on illegal hits. They only cracked down once research came out showing the effect of violent hits on retired players. The NFL is late and was in the wrong on this issue for a long time.
Better later than never!"
No sarcasm, it really is better late than never. The lateness can't be excused, but the fact the NFL is finally doing something about illegal hits and had grown concerned about the concussion-related symptoms of players is progress. It wasn't timely progress, but it was progress all the same.
And so the league started cracking down. Less than 18 months later, we're supposed to be baffled and appalled that the Saints would shrug off those warnings, that they wanted to win money for crippling opponents or knocking them out
In a simple word, "yes." The Saints knew it was against NFL rules to run a bounty program. There is really no way around this. I think some people are appalled the Saints so blatantly ignored this rule and this is understandable. It was against NFL rules and teams were warned not to run a bounty program.
Fans know players want to knock the shit out of opposing players, but the idea NFL players would put bounties on each other appalled a few people. This is because bounties are out of the realm of the normal course of an NFL game. It's really that simple. I personally wasn't shocked or appalled, but I can understand how some would be. Don't make me use my NASCAR and baseball analogies again to show how the difference in injuries caused during the normal course of a competitive event and injuries caused out of the normal course of a competitive event.
(Watching ESPN this morning was pretty funny — it's like every talking head took an oath to forget the network was running "JACKED UP!" segments a few scant years ago.)
The media are hypocrites at times! We need to tell someone about this. Quick, alert the med---
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Belichick uttered something more ominous than that. That's football, a sport in which coaches holler things like, "NOW GO OUT THERE AND KILL THEM!" Do they mean, literally, to murder them? Of course not.
Right, but when Gregg Williams says, "Go hit Alex Smith in the head as much as you can" while rubbing his fingers together as if he were counting money and the team has a bounty system in place where the players receive money for hard hits...you can see how the literal and figurative get mixed up in the Saints locker room.
Bill consistently misses the point that there was an understood bounty program in the Saints locker room. Everything Williams said has to be looked at while understanding this fact. If a player knows he could get money for intentionally injuring another player and his coach says, "Go hit Crabtree in the knee," then this figurative bit of speech takes on a literal meaning. Bill seems to miss this point.
When it came out that Williams (and his players) crossed the line, the Saints became The Scapegoat Du Jour for a league that desperately needed one.
Absolutely. Just like Pacman Jones and the entire Bengals roster were the scapegoat for the commissioner's new (at the time) personal conduct policy. This doesn't mean the scapegoat doesn't deserve it.
In case this wasn't clear, everyone, the NFL is taking player safety seriously now! Emphasis on the word "now."
No one is arguing the NFL was timely on player safety. The NFL's player safety concerns are exhibited in the punishment the Saints received. The act of placing bounties on players was taken seriously enough by the NFL that there was a specific rule against this.
It's a transparent ploy to make up for decades of real negligence,
No, it is a transparent ploy to take player safety seriously. What would Bill have the NFL do? Nothing? Just ignore and not care about player safety (like they have done for decades) because they wouldn't want to be seen as making up for negligence prior? So the right move would be to throw up their hands and say, "We were wrong for so long about this, it would be hypocritical to try and do anything now." Is that what Bill thinks the NFL should do? It's fine to thrash the NFL for lack of concern about player safety, but he can't thrash them for trying to change this and expect to be persuasive.
It is not like the Saints had no clue what they were doing violated an NFL rule. I can't emphasize this enough. The punishment for the bounty program isn't a result of the NFL waking up in early January and deciding they will start punishing teams running a bounty program.
Football is a really violent sport. There is no right way to play football that doesn't include the words "exert your physical will."
Yes, football is a very violent sport. Trying to take away the violence of the sport changes football in many ways to where it wouldn't look like the current sport being played.
So deconditioning them (and their coaches) is going to take time.
I'm pretty sure no one has indicated it would be easily done overnight or by next week.
Hey, Roger: If you cared about the welfare of the players, you'd shorten the season to 15 games and add another week of byes. Right? But hey, that would cost owners money. Instead, you'll continue to position yourself as the Sheriff of Player Safety, puff out your chest, crack down on hard hits and swagger around like you're Tim Olyphant in Justified."
I'm not sure anyone calls him "Tim Olyphant," but call him "Timothy Olyphant" and he isn't a sheriff on "Justified" but he was a sheriff on "Deadwood." Great analogy by the way. Spot-off.
Of course who am I to argue with Bill about Hollywood actors? As Bill tells us repeatedly, he knows people in Hollywood. For all we know Timothy Olyphant is Bill's neighbor. Of course, I'm sure Bill would have found a way to slip that little fact into a column by now if it was true.
Allow me to add the following: When will Goodell admit publicly that he waited waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to start cracking down on violence (and the culture behind it), or that he'll always regret looking the other way as evidence mounted that concussions were infinitely more dangerous than we originally believed?
It appears Bill's basic argument is the NFL has no room to sanction the Saints for the bounty program because they are hypocritical themselves when it comes to player safety. If this principle were true, no parent could ever discipline their child for doing something wrong because that parent had done something wrong in their life as well.
Don't blame me for child-parent analogy, Bill is the one who brought up the parent-child analogy for the Saints and the NFL earlier in this column saying:
Any parent knows that kids never listen the first time — it takes four or five times, and usually a raised voice or a threat, before they heed your wishes.
Maybe that's not as bad as what Gregg Williams did, but Goodell's not exactly one of the heroes of this sordid story, either
No one is stating Goodell is a hero. As the commissioner of the NFL, he has to punish the Saints for violating an NFL rule. He chose a very harsh punishment.
The truth is, the NFL doesn't know what the hell it wants.
You are not breaking new ground here, man. The NFL makes money off a violent sport that can't be too violent. It's a tough predicament. The violence is what makes the sport great and is also what could bring the sport down.
If they change how football is played and turn it into a glorified version of the Pro Bowl, there's a chance people won't like the sport as much.
So what do you do? You pretend you care.
I think the NFL really does care. They care because it could affect the bottom line, but they still care.
You make an example of the Saints.
Have I mentioned the Saints broke a rule that was already on the books before the NFL cared about player safety? Yes, the NFL made an example of the Saints. They didn't make an example of the Saints because of player safety only, but because they want to make sure the stars of the NFL are able to play as many games in a season as possible. That's why the NFL protects quarterbacks so much. The quarterbacks are the stars of the NFL and the league doesn't want T.J. Yates starting a playoff game against Ryan Mallett, so quarterback safety is a concern. Notice how most of the posted bounties were against quarterbacks (Newton, Favre, Rodgers). So yes, the NFL made an example of the Saints because they were the first team to get caught running a bounty program.
Before yesterday's Cardinals-Marlins game, I watched Muhammad Ali (one of my childhood heroes) trembling so severely that he couldn't throw the first pitch.
This reminds me...remember how Bill said Tiger Woods road back was more difficult than Muhammad Ali's road back after Vietnam? Bill would prefer we don't remember this.
Yes, I will keep watching boxing.
That's what the NFL is banking on these next few years — hypocrisy, basically — as more stories emerge about the tortured lives of retired players. Many of them can't walk, sit down or remember anything.
Please remember just a few paragraphs ago Bill Simmons was stating it will take time for the NFL to turn the culture of hard-hitting around, but he is also criticizing the NFL for trying to turn the culture around. I'm not on the NFL's side, but if this is going to take time to change, at least give the NFL for attempting to affect this change...even if it is financially driven and not driven by actual concern for players.
A few weeks ago, Jim McMahon confessed in an interview that his short-term memory was gone, then admitted he wouldn't even remember the interview as he was giving it.
Did this really happen? How is this shocking at all? Jim McMahon knows he has short-term memory problems. So during the interview would be the time he would mention he wouldn't remember the interview.
Now, it would be shocking if McMahon didn't remember what was going on during the interview, but McMahon's admission in time of full lucidness doesn't seem that shocking to me. He knows his situation and he is merely acknowledging that situation. So the emphasis on McMahon saying he wouldn't remember the interview as he gives the interview makes sense. It's like a victim of Alzheimer's apologizing for getting people's names wrong during a period of lucidness. The Alzheimer's patient knows there are times of non-lucidness and will apologize for them (perhaps) in a time of lucidness.
and then you go back to looking forward to the next football season. Gregg Williams crossed the line; he won't be there.
Which is probably a justified punishment.
I just wish someone would decide, once and for all, where that line really is.
Whoa! Deep thought there. Someone has decided where the line really is. Hits deemed illegal are going to be fined and punished. The line on what an illegal hit is defined by the game officials and fines and suspensions are determined by NFL league officials. Bounty programs are against NFL rules, just as they have been for a while now. The NFL is drawing lines and figuring out where to draw new lines. Are they drawing lines too late? Probably, but the lines are being drawn. Since Bill admits it is going to take time, perhaps he should give it time.
I kind of figured this was coming since immediately after the tapes were released Bill wrote a Tweet in disbelief that the Saints would follow what Williams told them to do and injure a fellow player. It seems Bill hasn't paid attention to the whole bounty scandal (though in his defense, it didn't involve the Patriots in any way so Bill probably didn't care to pay attention). The Saints DID try to injure opposing players for money at the behest of Gregg Williams. So I do believe the Saints players would do what Williams had asked of them, especially since money was involved. Still, Bill doesn't believe it and while he is capable of making a few good points, overall he's on the wrong side of right with this column.
I don't know if the Saints intentionally were trying to injure Alex Smith or Michael Crabtree's ACL, as the tape suggests, but the idea conveyed to the Saints defense stayed the same. Hit them hard and you may make a few bucks off it. I don't know if I would go the distance of some columnists who want to ban Williams for good, but the murky water of NFL celebrating hard hits is being cleared up by the NFL. The NFL is probably late in making these type changes, but that doesn't mean they should just give up on changing the perception of hard hits nor go hard on teams who run a bounty program.
Yeah, I heard the audio of former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams urging his players to injure various 49ers before their January playoff game.
Since Bill is aware of the audio, it does actually exist. Nothing exists in the world until Bill has acknowledged its existence. The world revolves around Bill and his thoughts on a certain topic.
It's pretty compelling — not just because he wanted to maim Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis, and not just because he may have been illegally taped without his consent, but because Williams might be the worst motivational speaker in recent American history.
If Bill is trying to write a serious column, he may want to stay away from his typical "here's a quick joke based on pop culture" comments. Get your point across and try not to compare real life events to a movie.
If that was a sports movie scene, the director would have fired Williams and replaced him with another actor.
And if that were a porn movie scene, he would be doing it all wrong! If Williams were speaking in church, he wouldn't be invited to speak in church again! If Williams were speaking to a group of people who only speak Chinese, no one would have understood a word he said!
You get the point. It wasn't a sports movie scene, it was real. Yes, Williams doesn't reach the level of "fictional head coach who makes an impassioned speech" and it doesn't really mean anything in this situation. Fictional accounts of a non-fiction event are usually more dramatic. It's hard to tell this to Bill who seems to consistently believe there is a direct connection between what life is like in the movies and what happens in reality. So the fact Gregg Williams didn't seem like an impassioned fictional coach probably had no effect on the message to the Saints players.
Of course, it's 2012 — the Year of Internet Self-Righteousness — which means we need to feign disgust, pile on the Saints, argue for Williams to receive the NFL's death penalty and basically freak out that a football coach would ever do that.
Disgust isn't being feigned. No one is piling on the Saints, simply suggesting appropriate punishments. Also, no one is freaking out a football coach would ever do that, but commenting on the idea this would happen in an NFL locker room where players on opposing teams may have gone to college together or had some other prior affiliation. That's all. There's no self-righteousness and Bill Simmons isn't our voice of reason. He isn't the voice of anything, other than that slightly nasal, Boston-accented voice those who listen to his podcasts are hearing.
So let's concede the following points. No, you shouldn't instruct your players to hurt people. Yes, you should be fined and suspended for that. Yes, Gregg Williams came off like an insensitive Neanderthal, and yes, it would be difficult (if not impossible) to take him seriously as a coach again. His professional career is over. The tape is pretty damning.
So basically Bill is conceding everything said about Williams is accurate and he should be punished. He's just asking we don't judge Williams for it because football is a violent sport and we are all hypocrites for enjoying the sport. To an extent, Bill is correct, but to another extent he is incorrect.
Bill is correct that football is an inherently violent sport and to ever expect it to be non-violent is naive and misguided. Bill is incorrect in putting the bounty scandal in with the inherent violence of the NFL. Placing bounties on players is outside the realm of the inherent violence during a football game. It's not part of the normal course of the game.
Is there a thin line? Absolutely. It's the same thin line in NASCAR between two drivers getting into an accident on the track and one of those drivers intentionally wrecking another driver or an accident being just that, an accident. It's the same thin line between a pitcher accidentally hitting a batter in the head and intentionally throwing the ball at that batter's head. Yes, both sports are inherently violent at times, but the actions taken in each situation (to place a bounty, to intentionally wreck someone, to intentionally throw the ball at someone) is outside of the normal course of events. The outcome is the same, but the intent is different. The intent is what disturbs people about the bounties placed on opposing player's heads by the Saints.
So the whole "football is violent and the NFL is at fault in some ways," while being true overall about concussions, isn't true in this case. There was a specific rule on the books to prevent bounties being placed on opposing players.
Even if it's far-fetched that any Saint listened to that speech and thought to himself, Maybe my creepy weirdo of a coach is right, maybe I SHOULD go after Michael Crabtree's ACL!
This shows Bill's disconnect with reality in two ways. The Saints players don't consider Williams to be a creepy weirdo. Many of them have come out in defense of Williams. They clearly followed the bounty program he set up. This shows they don't consider him to be a creepy weirdo. You don't break NFL rules and defend a guy you think is a creepy weirdo.
Even though the Saints didn't intentionally go for Michael Crabtree's ACL, the message was clear and it was followed. The quotes from the 2009 NFC Championship Game involving Brett Favre show the Saints were clearly trying to injure him. Don't let the specificity of Williams' request fool you. It wasn't like the entire team was aiming for specific body parts of the 49ers players, but going after Michael Crabtree's ACL was a metaphor for "whatever it takes, even if you have to hurt your opponent, get it done...oh and here is a little bit of money on the table as an incentive." So yes, I believe the Saints did follow what Williams said. Otherwise they wouldn't have bought into the bounty program.
But there's a bigger story here: the laughable notion that anyone can change an ingrained culture of violence overnight.
No, this is a completely different story and topic. This story is related to the bounty program, but the NFL's previous inability to do anything about concussions and head-related injuries to players doesn't mitigate the Saints bounty program in any fashion. There was a specific rule against bounties. The punishment of the Saints isn't occurring because the NFL has suddenly decided bounties are wrong. Few people, the commissioner included, believe the culture of violence overnight. That doesn't mean the NFL shouldn't try.
The league never turned off its "We're gonna look the other way, keep being violent and keep those hits coming" switch until the 2010 season, after that infamous October weekend with all the signature hits, when Roger Goodell said, "Oh, crap, maybe I should start fining these guys because the Sports Legacy Institute has accumulated three-plus years of rock-solid concussion evidence and lawsuits are coming.
Yes, football is inherently violent and the NFL realized it needed to crackdown harder on illegal hits after that weekend. I'm not going to defend the NFL being late to the concussion game. The league saw what was on the horizon and knew they had to crack down on illegal hits. They only cracked down once research came out showing the effect of violent hits on retired players. The NFL is late and was in the wrong on this issue for a long time.
Better later than never!"
No sarcasm, it really is better late than never. The lateness can't be excused, but the fact the NFL is finally doing something about illegal hits and had grown concerned about the concussion-related symptoms of players is progress. It wasn't timely progress, but it was progress all the same.
And so the league started cracking down. Less than 18 months later, we're supposed to be baffled and appalled that the Saints would shrug off those warnings, that they wanted to win money for crippling opponents or knocking them out
In a simple word, "yes." The Saints knew it was against NFL rules to run a bounty program. There is really no way around this. I think some people are appalled the Saints so blatantly ignored this rule and this is understandable. It was against NFL rules and teams were warned not to run a bounty program.
Fans know players want to knock the shit out of opposing players, but the idea NFL players would put bounties on each other appalled a few people. This is because bounties are out of the realm of the normal course of an NFL game. It's really that simple. I personally wasn't shocked or appalled, but I can understand how some would be. Don't make me use my NASCAR and baseball analogies again to show how the difference in injuries caused during the normal course of a competitive event and injuries caused out of the normal course of a competitive event.
(Watching ESPN this morning was pretty funny — it's like every talking head took an oath to forget the network was running "JACKED UP!" segments a few scant years ago.)
The media are hypocrites at times! We need to tell someone about this. Quick, alert the med---
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Belichick uttered something more ominous than that. That's football, a sport in which coaches holler things like, "NOW GO OUT THERE AND KILL THEM!" Do they mean, literally, to murder them? Of course not.
Right, but when Gregg Williams says, "Go hit Alex Smith in the head as much as you can" while rubbing his fingers together as if he were counting money and the team has a bounty system in place where the players receive money for hard hits...you can see how the literal and figurative get mixed up in the Saints locker room.
Bill consistently misses the point that there was an understood bounty program in the Saints locker room. Everything Williams said has to be looked at while understanding this fact. If a player knows he could get money for intentionally injuring another player and his coach says, "Go hit Crabtree in the knee," then this figurative bit of speech takes on a literal meaning. Bill seems to miss this point.
When it came out that Williams (and his players) crossed the line, the Saints became The Scapegoat Du Jour for a league that desperately needed one.
Absolutely. Just like Pacman Jones and the entire Bengals roster were the scapegoat for the commissioner's new (at the time) personal conduct policy. This doesn't mean the scapegoat doesn't deserve it.
In case this wasn't clear, everyone, the NFL is taking player safety seriously now! Emphasis on the word "now."
No one is arguing the NFL was timely on player safety. The NFL's player safety concerns are exhibited in the punishment the Saints received. The act of placing bounties on players was taken seriously enough by the NFL that there was a specific rule against this.
It's a transparent ploy to make up for decades of real negligence,
No, it is a transparent ploy to take player safety seriously. What would Bill have the NFL do? Nothing? Just ignore and not care about player safety (like they have done for decades) because they wouldn't want to be seen as making up for negligence prior? So the right move would be to throw up their hands and say, "We were wrong for so long about this, it would be hypocritical to try and do anything now." Is that what Bill thinks the NFL should do? It's fine to thrash the NFL for lack of concern about player safety, but he can't thrash them for trying to change this and expect to be persuasive.
It is not like the Saints had no clue what they were doing violated an NFL rule. I can't emphasize this enough. The punishment for the bounty program isn't a result of the NFL waking up in early January and deciding they will start punishing teams running a bounty program.
Football is a really violent sport. There is no right way to play football that doesn't include the words "exert your physical will."
Yes, football is a very violent sport. Trying to take away the violence of the sport changes football in many ways to where it wouldn't look like the current sport being played.
So deconditioning them (and their coaches) is going to take time.
I'm pretty sure no one has indicated it would be easily done overnight or by next week.
Hey, Roger: If you cared about the welfare of the players, you'd shorten the season to 15 games and add another week of byes. Right? But hey, that would cost owners money. Instead, you'll continue to position yourself as the Sheriff of Player Safety, puff out your chest, crack down on hard hits and swagger around like you're Tim Olyphant in Justified."
I'm not sure anyone calls him "Tim Olyphant," but call him "Timothy Olyphant" and he isn't a sheriff on "Justified" but he was a sheriff on "Deadwood." Great analogy by the way. Spot-off.
Of course who am I to argue with Bill about Hollywood actors? As Bill tells us repeatedly, he knows people in Hollywood. For all we know Timothy Olyphant is Bill's neighbor. Of course, I'm sure Bill would have found a way to slip that little fact into a column by now if it was true.
Allow me to add the following: When will Goodell admit publicly that he waited waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to start cracking down on violence (and the culture behind it), or that he'll always regret looking the other way as evidence mounted that concussions were infinitely more dangerous than we originally believed?
It appears Bill's basic argument is the NFL has no room to sanction the Saints for the bounty program because they are hypocritical themselves when it comes to player safety. If this principle were true, no parent could ever discipline their child for doing something wrong because that parent had done something wrong in their life as well.
Don't blame me for child-parent analogy, Bill is the one who brought up the parent-child analogy for the Saints and the NFL earlier in this column saying:
Any parent knows that kids never listen the first time — it takes four or five times, and usually a raised voice or a threat, before they heed your wishes.
Maybe that's not as bad as what Gregg Williams did, but Goodell's not exactly one of the heroes of this sordid story, either
No one is stating Goodell is a hero. As the commissioner of the NFL, he has to punish the Saints for violating an NFL rule. He chose a very harsh punishment.
The truth is, the NFL doesn't know what the hell it wants.
You are not breaking new ground here, man. The NFL makes money off a violent sport that can't be too violent. It's a tough predicament. The violence is what makes the sport great and is also what could bring the sport down.
If they change how football is played and turn it into a glorified version of the Pro Bowl, there's a chance people won't like the sport as much.
So what do you do? You pretend you care.
I think the NFL really does care. They care because it could affect the bottom line, but they still care.
You make an example of the Saints.
Have I mentioned the Saints broke a rule that was already on the books before the NFL cared about player safety? Yes, the NFL made an example of the Saints. They didn't make an example of the Saints because of player safety only, but because they want to make sure the stars of the NFL are able to play as many games in a season as possible. That's why the NFL protects quarterbacks so much. The quarterbacks are the stars of the NFL and the league doesn't want T.J. Yates starting a playoff game against Ryan Mallett, so quarterback safety is a concern. Notice how most of the posted bounties were against quarterbacks (Newton, Favre, Rodgers). So yes, the NFL made an example of the Saints because they were the first team to get caught running a bounty program.
Before yesterday's Cardinals-Marlins game, I watched Muhammad Ali (one of my childhood heroes) trembling so severely that he couldn't throw the first pitch.
This reminds me...remember how Bill said Tiger Woods road back was more difficult than Muhammad Ali's road back after Vietnam? Bill would prefer we don't remember this.
Yes, I will keep watching boxing.
Which makes me a hypocrite.
So does this make me a hypocrite for watching football when players are getting injured? It probably does. I'm not a hypocrite for watching football and wanting the Saints to be punished for their bounty program though. I like the sport of football, but I think a bounty program hops over that thin line. A bounty program has no place in the NFL I care to watch.That's what the NFL is banking on these next few years — hypocrisy, basically — as more stories emerge about the tortured lives of retired players. Many of them can't walk, sit down or remember anything.
Please remember just a few paragraphs ago Bill Simmons was stating it will take time for the NFL to turn the culture of hard-hitting around, but he is also criticizing the NFL for trying to turn the culture around. I'm not on the NFL's side, but if this is going to take time to change, at least give the NFL for attempting to affect this change...even if it is financially driven and not driven by actual concern for players.
A few weeks ago, Jim McMahon confessed in an interview that his short-term memory was gone, then admitted he wouldn't even remember the interview as he was giving it.
Did this really happen? How is this shocking at all? Jim McMahon knows he has short-term memory problems. So during the interview would be the time he would mention he wouldn't remember the interview.
Now, it would be shocking if McMahon didn't remember what was going on during the interview, but McMahon's admission in time of full lucidness doesn't seem that shocking to me. He knows his situation and he is merely acknowledging that situation. So the emphasis on McMahon saying he wouldn't remember the interview as he gives the interview makes sense. It's like a victim of Alzheimer's apologizing for getting people's names wrong during a period of lucidness. The Alzheimer's patient knows there are times of non-lucidness and will apologize for them (perhaps) in a time of lucidness.
and then you go back to looking forward to the next football season. Gregg Williams crossed the line; he won't be there.
Which is probably a justified punishment.
I just wish someone would decide, once and for all, where that line really is.
Whoa! Deep thought there. Someone has decided where the line really is. Hits deemed illegal are going to be fined and punished. The line on what an illegal hit is defined by the game officials and fines and suspensions are determined by NFL league officials. Bounty programs are against NFL rules, just as they have been for a while now. The NFL is drawing lines and figuring out where to draw new lines. Are they drawing lines too late? Probably, but the lines are being drawn. Since Bill admits it is going to take time, perhaps he should give it time.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
0 comments David Stern Is Just Being an Asshole Now
I'm not a big fan of David Stern. A full discussion on this issue is probably better suited for a different post where I can explain better. He seems like a man who believes he is more competent at his job than he truly is. He has vetoed NBA trades, let the Sonics leave Seattle, and is commissioner of a league where the players have all the power and can determine what personnel moves his team makes. He really believes he does a fantastic job and I'm not sure sure this is true. Mostly, Stern is still annoying me by taking a shit on the NCAA with the one-and-done rule and then asking the NCAA to clean up the mess.
I'm not going to deny the NCAA has problems and issues. I could probably spend 10,000 words describing them to you and you would already know what many of these issues are. As I have written repeatedly, the one-and-done rule is an NBA rule. It wasn't created by the NCAA nor does the NCAA like the rule. This doesn't stop Dictator Stern from giving suggestions on how the NCAA can work around the rule. NBA Dictator David Stern a few weeks ago decided to take shots at the NCAA concerning the one-and-done rule, as if this is something the NCAA needs to figure out and has nothing to do with him.
I'm not going to argue the NCAA shouldn't do more to figure out how to handle one-and-done players in terms of having them go to class and graduate. The NCAA needs to figure out how to better handle the one-and-done players, since this rule isn't going away completely anytime soon. Stern had smug and completely unrealistic ideas in a recent press conference for what the NCAA should do in order to help fix the problem the NBA has created. He's so damn smug for a guy who exercises his NBA dictatorial powers only when it is convenient for him to do so.
David Stern has some ideas about how to solve the problem of so-called “one and done” players at the college level — you know, guys who go to school for just one year simply because the NBA’s age limit makes it impossible to declare for the draft straight out of high school.
I'm not asking for David Stern to solve all of the NCAA's problems, but if he sees the one-and-done rule as some sort of a problem (which he seems to) then why can't he see the NBA's own culpability for part of the problem? I have a great idea about how to solve the one-and-done "problem." Let players come to the NBA straight after high school. Or, make the players stay in school for two years and then go to the NBA. There are solutions, but Dictator Stern chooses to be a dick about it and refuse to discuss any solutions outside of the one-and-done rule or making college athletes stay in school for two years and then go to the NBA. Much like what happened in the lockout, his inability to compromise is hurting a third party.
But they aren’t necessarily serious, and they aren’t necessarily ideas that the NCAA might want to hear.
Because the ideas suck and aren't really ideas, but snide comments Stern has made that aren't workable in reality. I would hope Stern wouldn't be such a smug asshole to the NCAA since it helps market future NBA players for the NBA. The NCAA puts these players on the radar to become more popular in the eyes of basketball fans prior to entering the NBA. How many people would know much about Anthony Davis if he didn't play at Kentucky this year? Not very many. The NBA doesn't want to lose the NCAA as a free marketing wing of the NBA, so they refuse to budge on the one-and-done rule.
He essentially put the onus on the schools for making sure the players keep their ends of the bargain where classes and scholarships are concerned.
So as opposed to putting the onus on the NBA owners and general managers to properly evaluate high school talent, Stern keeps the rule and forces the NCAA to adjust so the NBA can look better? He puts the onus on colleges to make sure students who have zero interest in attending class and participating in school, are attending class and participating in school. Dictator Stern is smart because he knows NBA owners and general managers are a generally incompetent bunch and won't be able to properly evaluate high school players and the NBA will get negative publicity if players come straight from high school and bust. Typical Dictator Stern. I know he is looking out for the NBA's best interests, but does he have to do it on the back of so many other people?
Granted, there are egregious examples of poor evaluation of college talent who aren't one-and-done. Hasheem Tha-bust and Jordan Hill are great examples of this. Both players were drafted too high and have struggled in the NBA. Teams are going to miss on talent and it happens in every sport. The issue is a public relations problem when the NBA has players come straight from high school and don't succeed in the NBA. Therefore the one-and-done rule was implemented in order for the NBA to say, "Hey look, this player went to college for a year. NOW he is mature enough for the NBA."
I favor players having to stay in college for two years, then going to the NBA, but I also realize this is unrealistic. While I think going to college for two years and learning significantly can help a player's overall game, I also understand this isn't necessarily fair to the student-athlete. There are certain players who are ready for the NBA after high school.
“A college could always not have players who are one and done,” Stern said.
That is absolutely true and some programs choose not to take on one-and-done players? Someone is going to end up taking these one-and-done players that other schools will choose not to recruit. David Stern knows this, so his simplistic solution won't work. It would not be in the best interest of the student-athlete if basketball programs banded together and said they would not recruit this specific person because he is going to be one-and-done. At that point, Stern and the NBA's one-and-done rule would possibly be denying this student-athlete even a year's worth of an education in college. It sounds easy to just say, "don't recruit these players," but it is much harder to do in practice.
“They could do that. They could actually require the players to go to classes.
How do you require John Wall to go to classes after he has declared for the draft on April 2? Take away the scholarship he isn't going to be using? Don't worry, Dictator Stern has a solution for this as well. This is a guy who can't resolve the NBA's issues sufficiently, but he certainly thinks he can fix the NCAA's problems.
“Or they could get the players to agree that they stay in school,
Good luck with that. If the intent is to have more high school players go overseas like Jeremy Tyler and Brandon Jennings, this would be the way to do it. I think it would be 100% easier just to get rid of the one-and-done rule, but I guess I'm not quite as smart as David Stern believes himself to be.
and ask for their scholarship money back if they didn’t fulfill their promises.
Haha! These kids, many of whom come from a background to where they couldn't afford college without a scholarship, are going to PAY BACK their scholarship for daring to pursue their goal of playing in the NBA? You think the NCAA is viewed as treating the players like unpaid employees now? Imagine if the NCAA essentially forced the students to work off their athletic scholarship or forced them to pay it back all because the NBA and Dictator Stern won't allow them to join the NBA out of high school. This idea simply won't work.
There’s all kinds of things that, if a bunch of people got together and really wanted to do it, instead of talk about it …”
Right, because a bunch of people should get together and really try to figure out a way to work around the inane one-and-done rule that the NBA has imposed on college basketball in order to make themselves look like they give a shit about their players. The easiest solution isn't to simply abolish the one-and-done rule and replace it with a better rule that isn't a restraint of trade, but for the NCAA to get together and "talk about it." Again, in his typical smug way David Stern is passing off the one-and-done rule as an NCAA problem, which it is, but only because he fails to recognize the NBA's culpability in creating this problem. Stern passes the buck to NCAA colleges because he doesn't want to deal with the issue of players coming to the NBA directly after high school. Yes, how to manage the one-and-done rule falls to NCAA colleges, but the NBA is creating the problem the NCAA has to manage.
But Stern was largely light-hearted in his suggestions, and talked bigger picture about young players whose primary goal is to secure a place in the NBA.
As long as he can be lighthearted about a serious subject, no big deal. It's all fun and games for Dictator Stern as long as we aren't talking about his brilliant guidance which has led to many NBA teams losing money. Of course Stern doesn't think that is his problem either nor does he believe it is a reflection on his leadership.
“Years ago, I said to the NCAA, I’ve got a great idea,” he said
The NCAA should institute a dress code for players?
The NCAA should randomly prevent players from transferring to certain colleges even though the college the player is transferring from has no issue with it?
The NCAA Tournament should last for two months until the average fan is simply tired of watching them?
These are all brilliant NBA idea that could translate to the NCAA!
‘We’ll insure a select group of basketball players. And that will make them more likely to stay in school, because they won’t feel the loss of a big contract.
But these players want to play in the NBA. This is the issue. The issue isn't whether Anthony Davis is concerned about losing a big contract or not, the issue is he wants that big contract RIGHT NOW while playing in the NBA.
We’ll designate a pool, and those that are lucky enough to be drafted and make money will pay us back, and those that don’t, it’s our expense.
I'd love to know how this select group of players would be chosen. David Stern doesn't tell us that. This doesn't sound like a bad idea, except for the fact the NCAA has players who want to go pro in different professional sports who want this same guarantee. I'm sure Title IX would have something to say about this policy as well. This is yet another simplistic solution from David Stern that is nearly impossible to institute.
The NCAA I think took it to a committee, that takes it to a census, that took it to a conference, then they have a congress and they came back to me and they said, well, it will only work under our rules if we do that for all sports. And I said, I don’t think that’ll work.”
I like how Stern mentions all the levels this idea had to pass through. It's weird not having a dictatorship in place, isn't it?
Yes, so this idea wouldn't work. It was not a bad idea, just not a workable idea.
But what would work, at least for the NBA, is a longer period of time to evaluate talent at the college level.
Because Dictator Stern views the NCAA as a free farm system for the NBA. In return for providing a free farm system, Stern provides the NCAA with the inane one-and-done rule.
“I agree with the NCAA that it would be great for us — I’m not concerned about NCAA, and our rules are not social programs,” Stern said.
But the rule is a social program. It causes high school basketball players who may want to go to the NBA to go overseas, play in the D-league or go to college for one year. It's intent isn't to be a social program, but in a few ways that is what it has become.
“We don’t think it’s appropriate for us to lecture kids as to whether they should or shouldn’t go to school.
And yet, that is exactly what the NBA is doing. They are saying, "We don't want you in the NBA immediately after high school, but wait one year and then you can come to the NBA. We're not saying you should or should not go to school, but we are saying you should not be in the NBA." Kids know their best chance for exposure is to play college basketball for a year, hence they go to school. I don't care what the intentions of the one-and-done rule are. That's irrelevant. What is relevant is the impact the one-and-done rule has on colleges and from what I understand it isn't a positive impact.
For our business purposes, the longer we can get to look at young men playing against first-rate competition, that’s a good thing.
I understand business. I get how the NBA views the NCAA, as a free farm system for future NBA talent. I do believe it is a bit unfair for the NBA to view the NCAA this way, but that's reality.
Because draft picks are very valuable things.
These aren't college athletes to David Stern, they are draft picks, which are "things."
For us, it’s one more year. We proposed to the players two more, and it was sufficiently contentious around that.
I know this is irrelevant, but have you asked your free farm system, the NCAA, what they want? Not that it matters of course. Getting kids to go to class is each specific college's problem, not David Stern's. He is comfortable with the one-and-done rule because it absolves him from much criticism and places the criticism on NCAA head coaches who dare to recruit a player who may want to stay in college for only one year.
We agreed, as all good negotiators do, we referred it to a sub-committee and we’re going to have meetings about it to see how that works out. “
More meetings is always the best solution. Fortunately David Stern has provided a resolution to this issue earlier in this press conference and he didn't even know it. Here's what David Stern could do to fix this issue...
What if you get a bunch of people together in one room, and you really wanted to resolve this issue, instead of talking about it...
Stern and Silver were careful to point out that they have an excellent relationship with NCAA president Mark Emmert, and again, even the shots came with big smiles and laughs all around.
It's just part of the smugness of David Stern. He can't help but smile at his good fortune. He rules like a dictator and has had quite a few controversies on his watch, and yet he seems to have a better reputation than every commissioner except Roger Goodell. So I can't blame him for pushing the one-and-done rule back on the NCAA. He'll get away with it.
I realize Stern has been commissioner for a while, but in the last fifteen years Stern has overseen two lockouts (both causing NBA games to be missed), a betting scandal among NBA officials that called into question the legitimate outcome of playoff games, and as of December Stern was overseeing the personnel moves of a team the NBA owns because the league still hasn't found an owner for that team. Just imagine if this happened in baseball. Imagine if Bud Selig has presided over two lockouts in the past 15 years and an umpire had been caught fixing playoff games. People, mostly Murray Chass, would be calling for his head and for Selig to immediately retire. After all, we are told to see Bud Selig as a bumbling idiot who doesn't really know what he is doing.
Dictator Stern still lives on though. What's irritating isn't that he is really incompetent, because he isn't incompetent, but his hubris makes you wonder what the hell he is so proud of. David Stern has helped bring the NBA to the point the players are more important than the owners and coaches to where one unhappy player can topple the direction of a franchise. He's presided over a league that has seemed to alienate many of those who became fans of the NBA during the 1980's and early 1990's, so Stern's response to this was to institute a dress code, which naturally fixed everything. Attendance is up...sort of and if people weren't so apathetic to the NBA, many would probably be wondering why the growth of the league has felt so stagnant.
I'm just ranting now.
But it’s clear that Stern believes the “one and done” problem is an NCAA-only issue,
That would be true...other than the fact the one-and-done rule is an NBA rule. I know, details, who needs them?
and it isn’t one that he seems to have any interest in helping to solve at any point in the immediate future.
Of course not. Stern is comfortable with using the one-and-done rule as a way of getting free marketing for future NBA stars, while not being concerned with how this rule affects the NCAA. The one-and-done rule is a good situation for the NBA. It prevents NBA scouting departments from having to do their job as well as they should have to do their job. I am personally not enamored with the one-and-done rule and can live with it to an extent, but as long as David Stern and the NBA Player's Union don't let high school basketball players go to the NBA directly from high school, then David Stern should stay away from making any more lighthearted or serious "suggestions" for the NCAA.
I'm not going to deny the NCAA has problems and issues. I could probably spend 10,000 words describing them to you and you would already know what many of these issues are. As I have written repeatedly, the one-and-done rule is an NBA rule. It wasn't created by the NCAA nor does the NCAA like the rule. This doesn't stop Dictator Stern from giving suggestions on how the NCAA can work around the rule. NBA Dictator David Stern a few weeks ago decided to take shots at the NCAA concerning the one-and-done rule, as if this is something the NCAA needs to figure out and has nothing to do with him.
I'm not going to argue the NCAA shouldn't do more to figure out how to handle one-and-done players in terms of having them go to class and graduate. The NCAA needs to figure out how to better handle the one-and-done players, since this rule isn't going away completely anytime soon. Stern had smug and completely unrealistic ideas in a recent press conference for what the NCAA should do in order to help fix the problem the NBA has created. He's so damn smug for a guy who exercises his NBA dictatorial powers only when it is convenient for him to do so.
David Stern has some ideas about how to solve the problem of so-called “one and done” players at the college level — you know, guys who go to school for just one year simply because the NBA’s age limit makes it impossible to declare for the draft straight out of high school.
I'm not asking for David Stern to solve all of the NCAA's problems, but if he sees the one-and-done rule as some sort of a problem (which he seems to) then why can't he see the NBA's own culpability for part of the problem? I have a great idea about how to solve the one-and-done "problem." Let players come to the NBA straight after high school. Or, make the players stay in school for two years and then go to the NBA. There are solutions, but Dictator Stern chooses to be a dick about it and refuse to discuss any solutions outside of the one-and-done rule or making college athletes stay in school for two years and then go to the NBA. Much like what happened in the lockout, his inability to compromise is hurting a third party.
But they aren’t necessarily serious, and they aren’t necessarily ideas that the NCAA might want to hear.
Because the ideas suck and aren't really ideas, but snide comments Stern has made that aren't workable in reality. I would hope Stern wouldn't be such a smug asshole to the NCAA since it helps market future NBA players for the NBA. The NCAA puts these players on the radar to become more popular in the eyes of basketball fans prior to entering the NBA. How many people would know much about Anthony Davis if he didn't play at Kentucky this year? Not very many. The NBA doesn't want to lose the NCAA as a free marketing wing of the NBA, so they refuse to budge on the one-and-done rule.
He essentially put the onus on the schools for making sure the players keep their ends of the bargain where classes and scholarships are concerned.
So as opposed to putting the onus on the NBA owners and general managers to properly evaluate high school talent, Stern keeps the rule and forces the NCAA to adjust so the NBA can look better? He puts the onus on colleges to make sure students who have zero interest in attending class and participating in school, are attending class and participating in school. Dictator Stern is smart because he knows NBA owners and general managers are a generally incompetent bunch and won't be able to properly evaluate high school players and the NBA will get negative publicity if players come straight from high school and bust. Typical Dictator Stern. I know he is looking out for the NBA's best interests, but does he have to do it on the back of so many other people?
Granted, there are egregious examples of poor evaluation of college talent who aren't one-and-done. Hasheem Tha-bust and Jordan Hill are great examples of this. Both players were drafted too high and have struggled in the NBA. Teams are going to miss on talent and it happens in every sport. The issue is a public relations problem when the NBA has players come straight from high school and don't succeed in the NBA. Therefore the one-and-done rule was implemented in order for the NBA to say, "Hey look, this player went to college for a year. NOW he is mature enough for the NBA."
I favor players having to stay in college for two years, then going to the NBA, but I also realize this is unrealistic. While I think going to college for two years and learning significantly can help a player's overall game, I also understand this isn't necessarily fair to the student-athlete. There are certain players who are ready for the NBA after high school.
“A college could always not have players who are one and done,” Stern said.
That is absolutely true and some programs choose not to take on one-and-done players? Someone is going to end up taking these one-and-done players that other schools will choose not to recruit. David Stern knows this, so his simplistic solution won't work. It would not be in the best interest of the student-athlete if basketball programs banded together and said they would not recruit this specific person because he is going to be one-and-done. At that point, Stern and the NBA's one-and-done rule would possibly be denying this student-athlete even a year's worth of an education in college. It sounds easy to just say, "don't recruit these players," but it is much harder to do in practice.
“They could do that. They could actually require the players to go to classes.
How do you require John Wall to go to classes after he has declared for the draft on April 2? Take away the scholarship he isn't going to be using? Don't worry, Dictator Stern has a solution for this as well. This is a guy who can't resolve the NBA's issues sufficiently, but he certainly thinks he can fix the NCAA's problems.
“Or they could get the players to agree that they stay in school,
Good luck with that. If the intent is to have more high school players go overseas like Jeremy Tyler and Brandon Jennings, this would be the way to do it. I think it would be 100% easier just to get rid of the one-and-done rule, but I guess I'm not quite as smart as David Stern believes himself to be.
and ask for their scholarship money back if they didn’t fulfill their promises.
Haha! These kids, many of whom come from a background to where they couldn't afford college without a scholarship, are going to PAY BACK their scholarship for daring to pursue their goal of playing in the NBA? You think the NCAA is viewed as treating the players like unpaid employees now? Imagine if the NCAA essentially forced the students to work off their athletic scholarship or forced them to pay it back all because the NBA and Dictator Stern won't allow them to join the NBA out of high school. This idea simply won't work.
There’s all kinds of things that, if a bunch of people got together and really wanted to do it, instead of talk about it …”
Right, because a bunch of people should get together and really try to figure out a way to work around the inane one-and-done rule that the NBA has imposed on college basketball in order to make themselves look like they give a shit about their players. The easiest solution isn't to simply abolish the one-and-done rule and replace it with a better rule that isn't a restraint of trade, but for the NCAA to get together and "talk about it." Again, in his typical smug way David Stern is passing off the one-and-done rule as an NCAA problem, which it is, but only because he fails to recognize the NBA's culpability in creating this problem. Stern passes the buck to NCAA colleges because he doesn't want to deal with the issue of players coming to the NBA directly after high school. Yes, how to manage the one-and-done rule falls to NCAA colleges, but the NBA is creating the problem the NCAA has to manage.
But Stern was largely light-hearted in his suggestions, and talked bigger picture about young players whose primary goal is to secure a place in the NBA.
As long as he can be lighthearted about a serious subject, no big deal. It's all fun and games for Dictator Stern as long as we aren't talking about his brilliant guidance which has led to many NBA teams losing money. Of course Stern doesn't think that is his problem either nor does he believe it is a reflection on his leadership.
“Years ago, I said to the NCAA, I’ve got a great idea,” he said
The NCAA should institute a dress code for players?
The NCAA should randomly prevent players from transferring to certain colleges even though the college the player is transferring from has no issue with it?
The NCAA Tournament should last for two months until the average fan is simply tired of watching them?
These are all brilliant NBA idea that could translate to the NCAA!
‘We’ll insure a select group of basketball players. And that will make them more likely to stay in school, because they won’t feel the loss of a big contract.
But these players want to play in the NBA. This is the issue. The issue isn't whether Anthony Davis is concerned about losing a big contract or not, the issue is he wants that big contract RIGHT NOW while playing in the NBA.
We’ll designate a pool, and those that are lucky enough to be drafted and make money will pay us back, and those that don’t, it’s our expense.
I'd love to know how this select group of players would be chosen. David Stern doesn't tell us that. This doesn't sound like a bad idea, except for the fact the NCAA has players who want to go pro in different professional sports who want this same guarantee. I'm sure Title IX would have something to say about this policy as well. This is yet another simplistic solution from David Stern that is nearly impossible to institute.
The NCAA I think took it to a committee, that takes it to a census, that took it to a conference, then they have a congress and they came back to me and they said, well, it will only work under our rules if we do that for all sports. And I said, I don’t think that’ll work.”
I like how Stern mentions all the levels this idea had to pass through. It's weird not having a dictatorship in place, isn't it?
Yes, so this idea wouldn't work. It was not a bad idea, just not a workable idea.
But what would work, at least for the NBA, is a longer period of time to evaluate talent at the college level.
Because Dictator Stern views the NCAA as a free farm system for the NBA. In return for providing a free farm system, Stern provides the NCAA with the inane one-and-done rule.
“I agree with the NCAA that it would be great for us — I’m not concerned about NCAA, and our rules are not social programs,” Stern said.
But the rule is a social program. It causes high school basketball players who may want to go to the NBA to go overseas, play in the D-league or go to college for one year. It's intent isn't to be a social program, but in a few ways that is what it has become.
“We don’t think it’s appropriate for us to lecture kids as to whether they should or shouldn’t go to school.
And yet, that is exactly what the NBA is doing. They are saying, "We don't want you in the NBA immediately after high school, but wait one year and then you can come to the NBA. We're not saying you should or should not go to school, but we are saying you should not be in the NBA." Kids know their best chance for exposure is to play college basketball for a year, hence they go to school. I don't care what the intentions of the one-and-done rule are. That's irrelevant. What is relevant is the impact the one-and-done rule has on colleges and from what I understand it isn't a positive impact.
For our business purposes, the longer we can get to look at young men playing against first-rate competition, that’s a good thing.
I understand business. I get how the NBA views the NCAA, as a free farm system for future NBA talent. I do believe it is a bit unfair for the NBA to view the NCAA this way, but that's reality.
Because draft picks are very valuable things.
These aren't college athletes to David Stern, they are draft picks, which are "things."
For us, it’s one more year. We proposed to the players two more, and it was sufficiently contentious around that.
I know this is irrelevant, but have you asked your free farm system, the NCAA, what they want? Not that it matters of course. Getting kids to go to class is each specific college's problem, not David Stern's. He is comfortable with the one-and-done rule because it absolves him from much criticism and places the criticism on NCAA head coaches who dare to recruit a player who may want to stay in college for only one year.
We agreed, as all good negotiators do, we referred it to a sub-committee and we’re going to have meetings about it to see how that works out. “
More meetings is always the best solution. Fortunately David Stern has provided a resolution to this issue earlier in this press conference and he didn't even know it. Here's what David Stern could do to fix this issue...
What if you get a bunch of people together in one room, and you really wanted to resolve this issue, instead of talking about it...
Stern and Silver were careful to point out that they have an excellent relationship with NCAA president Mark Emmert, and again, even the shots came with big smiles and laughs all around.
It's just part of the smugness of David Stern. He can't help but smile at his good fortune. He rules like a dictator and has had quite a few controversies on his watch, and yet he seems to have a better reputation than every commissioner except Roger Goodell. So I can't blame him for pushing the one-and-done rule back on the NCAA. He'll get away with it.
I realize Stern has been commissioner for a while, but in the last fifteen years Stern has overseen two lockouts (both causing NBA games to be missed), a betting scandal among NBA officials that called into question the legitimate outcome of playoff games, and as of December Stern was overseeing the personnel moves of a team the NBA owns because the league still hasn't found an owner for that team. Just imagine if this happened in baseball. Imagine if Bud Selig has presided over two lockouts in the past 15 years and an umpire had been caught fixing playoff games. People, mostly Murray Chass, would be calling for his head and for Selig to immediately retire. After all, we are told to see Bud Selig as a bumbling idiot who doesn't really know what he is doing.
Dictator Stern still lives on though. What's irritating isn't that he is really incompetent, because he isn't incompetent, but his hubris makes you wonder what the hell he is so proud of. David Stern has helped bring the NBA to the point the players are more important than the owners and coaches to where one unhappy player can topple the direction of a franchise. He's presided over a league that has seemed to alienate many of those who became fans of the NBA during the 1980's and early 1990's, so Stern's response to this was to institute a dress code, which naturally fixed everything. Attendance is up...sort of and if people weren't so apathetic to the NBA, many would probably be wondering why the growth of the league has felt so stagnant.
I'm just ranting now.
But it’s clear that Stern believes the “one and done” problem is an NCAA-only issue,
That would be true...other than the fact the one-and-done rule is an NBA rule. I know, details, who needs them?
and it isn’t one that he seems to have any interest in helping to solve at any point in the immediate future.
Of course not. Stern is comfortable with using the one-and-done rule as a way of getting free marketing for future NBA stars, while not being concerned with how this rule affects the NCAA. The one-and-done rule is a good situation for the NBA. It prevents NBA scouting departments from having to do their job as well as they should have to do their job. I am personally not enamored with the one-and-done rule and can live with it to an extent, but as long as David Stern and the NBA Player's Union don't let high school basketball players go to the NBA directly from high school, then David Stern should stay away from making any more lighthearted or serious "suggestions" for the NCAA.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
0 comments MMQB Review: Peter King is on the Fence About How Morally Corrupt Sean Pamphilon Is
Last week Peter King told us all about how New Orleans fans were protesting and wanting to "Free" Sean Payton from the terrible penalties that were forced upon him for doing absolutely nothing. It's not Payton's job to oversee the coaches in the Saints organization, who do these Saints fans think he is, the head coach? That was last week. This week Peter talks about the audio tape where Gregg Williams displayed his pre-game speech abilities for the public, Peter talks about what role Steve Gleason had (should have had) in the bounty program revelations and then he tells us all what non-deep and insightful thoughts he thinks that he thinks.
Part of the method is I'm so damn sick of all the other bounty-related crap that keeps oozing from the NFL's pores, and I figure you must be too, that I want to lead with actual football.
Oh sure, after beating any Brett Favre or Tim Tebow story into the ground for the last four years, NOW Peter wants to give us a break from an over-saturated story...even though new details are still developing and there are still parts of the story to report upon.
The draft is usually America's fourth-biggest sport (behind the NFL, major league baseball and the NBA), but the spate of bounty and Peyton Manning coverage has relegated the draft to a lesser pastime. So let's spend a couple thousand words on the draft, and the teams drafting, here at the top.
Please, let's do this! I can't get enough talk about the three draft picks that will get chosen in the 2012 NFL Draft...those three draft choices being Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill, and Robert Griffin III.
Teams with the most 2012 draft choices in the top 85 overall picks: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, New England, St. Louis (four).
The Raiders are actually doing things right,
We don't know that yet. It's a bit premature to say the Raiders are actually doing things right, since it is mid-April and we've heard this before about the Raiders.
Think about it: An 18-year scout finally gets his chance to run a team and pick the players he wants ... and he's hamstrung by the worst cap situation in the league, and one of the worst draft-choice pools in NFL history
I'm thinking about...and I'm also thinking no one forced Reggie McKenzie to take the Oakland Raiders job and he could have chosen to not take the Raiders GM job. It's amazing how free will works isn't it?
And one more thing: Peyton Manning just walked into his division.
Yeah, but the Raiders have Carson Palmer! He's worth a first and second round draft pick! That's better than having Peyton Manning!
"Never thought, 'Woe is me,' '' he said the other night from his office in Oakland.
Which is probably a good attitude considering he chose to take the Raiders General Manager position fully knowing the team's draft pick issues.
I asked McKenzie if he wished he could have the Carson Palmer trade back. Last October, then-coach Hue Jackson dealt first- and second-round picks to Cincinnati for Palmer. "You can beat that doggone story 'til it's worn out,'' said McKenzie. "But I know this: We've got a quarterback we think can win the division and take us to the playoffs. Losing a one and a two doesn't bother me one bit."
McKenzie is already a good liar. No General Manager wants to lose a 1st and 2nd round draft pick. Sure, it netted them Carson Palmer, but a new General Manager likes having the ability to choose his quarterback and probably prefers to have a 1st and 2nd round draft pick every year.
• New England has five picks in a 66-pick span in the first two days of the draft (27, 31, 48, 62, 93). How smart would they be to deal No. 31 to a live-for-today team in the top 12 of this draft (Buffalo?) for a first-rounder next year?
Umm...smart if there isn't a player they want to draft at the #31 selection in the first round. Otherwise, if there is a player they want it would make sense to keep the pick.
• Denver could be a package team. By that I mean the Broncos like to move around (they have in recent years), and they've got three picks in a 30-pick span (108, 120, 137). Suppose the league gets scared of Janoris Jenkins because of his sketchy background, and the best cover man in the draft is sitting there early in the second round.
I'm not sure if Peter is suggesting the Broncos trade two 3rd and one 4th round draft choice for an early 2nd round draft choice, but I'm not sure if there is a team that would accept this trade. I don't know, maybe there would be. It depends on how early in the second round we are talking the Broncos would have to trade up.
Also, Janoris Jenkins may or may not have been fired by his agent. It sounds odd for that to happen, doesn't it? Regardless, John Fox traditionally doesn't like guys with character issues. Of course this is the wild and crazy John Fox we've seen in Denver, so God only knows if he sticks to not liking guys with character issues or not. For all I know, John Fox is now unafraid to knife a bitch if she talks back and doesn't mind drafting a guy with character issues either.
• Atlanta will have to make the picks count. The Falcons pick 55th and 84th, then not again until 157 in round five.
This is as opposed to other teams who can simply waste their draft picks because they have so damn many of them?
It's impossible to have a one-way, clinical view of the Gleason-Pamphilon mess. At least for me it is.
Of course, there is nuance in the story, but there are certain questions about the bounty program, mostly why didn't Gleason speak out on the bounties given his current state, that do make a person wonder whether Gleason should have spoken up.
This article (yes, from Bleacher Report) makes you think a little bit about Steve Gleason and the Saints bounty program. The wording is a little stronger than I would use, I will say that. I would not say "ashamed" is what Gleason would be, but I do think given the link between head injuries and ALS, it puts Gleason in a tough position. He's part of the Saints organization and probably shouldn't feel obligated to blow the whistle. It does make you wonder if Gleason thought about being the whistleblower, and if he didn't, then why not?
I flew to New Orleans in November to begin reporting on the story. Gleason and his shadow, documentarian Sean Pamphilon, met me for lunch. Pamphilon had been working for months with Gleason and wife Michel on a project that they hoped would turn into a marketable documentary or movie about Gleason's life of dealing with this fatal disease. For Gleason, an added motivation was that his infant son, Rivers, would have footage he could always see of his father, no matter how long his life lasted.
This is a great idea by the way. It's going to be great for Gleason's son to look back and see his father closer to his best and not being destroyed by this terrible disease. I think we can all agree on this.
And for the next couple of months, whenever I was around the Gleasons and Michel's tightly knit New Orleans family, Pamphilon was a combination of videographer and mother hen. I thought he was as close to the Gleason family as anyone could be without being in the family.
I can also see why Pamphilon chose to release the footage against Gleason's wishes. I'm not sure I totally agree with the release of the footage, but Pamphilon seemed to have felt a need to show the public the barbaric talk in NFL locker rooms that led to the bounties being placed on players. In a way, I am sure Pamphilon felt the need to show what helped lead ALS to Gleason's doorstep and affect his life as it has in such a terrible way. He thought it was a public-policy sort of move of showing the violent NFL culture and getting this documentary some publicity.
Last fall, the Saints surprised Gleason, who last played for the team in Payton's first year as coach, 2006, with a Super Bowl ring, even though he didn't play on the 2009 Super Bowl-winning team. The owner of the team, Tom Benson, thinks so much of Gleason that he commissioned a bronze statue of Gleason blocking a punt in the first post-Katrina game in 2006 for the outside of the Superdome.
Of course Gleason doesn't want to provide evidence that may in some way harm the Saints. This is understandable.
3. Pamphilon tried to convince Gleason to allow him to use the audio damning Williams. Gleason, who never played for Williams, didn't like what he heard in the meeting either, but he didn't want the audio released.
I would be interested to hear why Gleason didn't want the audio released. I know the Saints have helped Gleason a lot during his fight with ALS. It is pure hyperbole and just plain stupid to pretend the bounty program run by the Saints is more responsible for an ALS diagnosis in an ex-NFL player any more than the normal, legal hard hits that take place during an NFL game. So I don't think I could ever go far enough to pretend any bounty program was responsible for Steve Gleason's current condition. It's a tough spot for Gleason to be in because he has ties to the Saints team and doesn't want to hurt them. Pamphilon had no such ties, so he released the audio.
Obviously, if what they heard in the meeting was going to be made public by Gleason or Pamphilon, the Saints would never have let either in the room.
Well yes, obviously.
Gleason knew if the tape came out, he'd spend much of whatever cogent energy he has left on something he never intended to fight -- the rantings of a renegade coach -- instead of focusing on what his aim is: trying to make ALS patients live more productive lives.
The problem is I don't think Gregg Williams is a renegade coach. This is somewhat of a naive train of thought and I can't imagine Steve Gleason would be this naive. I seriously doubt Gregg Williams and the Saints are the only team to run a bounty program like this. So fully believing Williams and the Saints are the only ones who run this bounty program, wouldn't Gleason be doing more than just fighting the rantings of a renegade coach? He would be shedding light on illegal bounty programs in the NFL and can point to himself as a living example of how head trauma from violent hits can affect a person. I'm not saying what Gleason should have done, but football is already a violent sport and the hard hits Gleason took during his NFL career probably have a connection to ALS, so he may want to have brought the bounty program to light.
The majority who have responded to me on Twitter (I'd say 60 percent) have said Williams' words were so reprehensible that they, in essence, gave Pamphilon sufficient reason to break his relationship with Gleason and release the audio to the public. He's being seen as a whistleblower the public should applaud, not condemn.
And we all know Twitter is the best place for a reasonable discourse on any issue to take place.
By blowing the whistle, though, what has Pamphilon accomplished? He has shone a light on a dark story.
He's shown the public exactly what the bounty program sounded like inside an NFL locker room. I think that's a pretty significant thing. It's the difference in hearing about a bounty program and hearing exactly what a bounty program sounds like in action. It makes the bounty program more real for those who have followed this story. It's the difference in hearing trace amounts of feces were found in a grocery store's meat and seeing the trace amount of feces in that store's meat. If Peter can't see what Pamphilon accomplished, then he doesn't want to see what Pamphilon accomplished. It made the bounty program real for the public.
The release of the audio didn't affect the league's probe, except perhaps to slam the door shut on any chance Payton -- an innocent in Pamphilon's eyes -- had to get his appeal reduced. I got the distinct impression sniffing around the probe Friday that the audio corroborated the league's investigation but did not advance the story.
I don't think the audio released was for the NFL's benefit. It was for the public's benefit. It was so the public could hear what an NFL locker room sounded like and how the bounty program went down. Pamphilon wanted to show what the bounty program sounded like. It wasn't intended to affect change any more than it was intended to give the public more information on the bounty program. He presumably wanted to show the violent culture that led to Gleason's disease more than he wanted to be a rat.
What's morally right is that Pamphilon, who never would have heard what Williams said without being attached to Gleason, shouldn't have released the tape without Gleason's permission.
Unfortunately Peter, you aren't the judge of what is morally right or wrong. Last time I checked you are not a high moral authority. I think the word "ethically" should be placed in this sentence instead of "morally." I don't think it is correct to say Gleason was morally wrong to release the tape. If anything, he was morally right, but ethically wrong. Releasing the tape without Gleason's permission was ethically questionable, but morality has very little do with it. If this were true, we could say Gleason is morally wrong for championing the cause of ALS patients all while ignoring a bounty program he knew existed with his ex-NFL team.
I enrolled in college to study journalism in 1975, one year after the Watergate burglary and coverup forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency. I'm all for the public's right to know. And in the end, I'm tempted to say the more clarity about this story the better, just so the public understands why Goodell acted with such an iron hand. But I can't get over the way the material was acquired and made public. It's just not right.
Perhaps Peter is a bit too close to Gleason and to this issue to judge appropriately.
Let's say Nike hired a filmmaker to film a documentary about the company. During the documentary, the filmmakers come across visual evidence Nike stealing copywritten information from a rival shoe company. Would the filmmakers have an obligation to release this visual evidence? Peter King would argue "no." Actually, Peter King would argue "yes" because he would be able to make an independent, unbiased judgment on this specific issue. If we believed Peter's opinion on the Gleason/Pamphilon tape set a precedent for his opinion on similar matters, then he would have argued the filmmaker would be morally wrong to release this tape against Nike's wishes.
I cannot find it in my heart to quite call Pamphilon a rat, but I cannot call him a hero either.
How about you just don't call him anything?
Is it possible for Williams to stand up in front of a group of men, all of whom will know he advocated aiming for knees and wounded heads in fiery speeches, and reach them? What about having Williams on your coaching staff, and going into free agency trying to recruit players? Money talks, yes. But will the presence of Williams be a free agent repellant?
No, it won't be a repellant. Money talks and we've learned many times in the NFL (and in sports in general) a person gets a chance or two for redemption. I think if Williams makes it back to the NFL as a coach then he will be given a fair shot and players won't mind playing for him at all.
Which is why I cannot see any reduction in the sanctions to Payton and Loomis. Goodell didn't buy Payton's I-didn't-know-this-was-going-on stance six weeks ago, and I doubt sincerely he heard anything from Payton on Thursday to change his mind.
Even if Goodell bought the fact Payton didn't know it was going on, Sean Payton is still the head coach of the Saints. He is responsible for his defensive, offensive and special teams coaches. At some point, he has to be somewhat culpable for a lack of control over these coaches.
"This is the most heinous, egregious thing in the history of the this game ... Not for one second would I sit in a room and listen to someone say, 'We're going to take out someone's ACL,' without standing up and saying, 'What the hell are you talking about?' ''
Free agent Demetress Bell signed with the Eagles to play left tackle last week.
(Bell's life has been an odd one in another way. He was born out of wedlock to ex-NBA star Karl Malone and a fellow resident of Summerfield, La., Gloria Bell. Malone didn't take an active role in Demetress' upbringing, talking to him but once, according to a story by the late Allen Wilson in the Buffalo News in 2008.)
In Malone's defense, he did spend the majority of his NBA career busy while hunting for little Mexican girls.
Tweet of the Week I
3. I think these are the Petrino words that ring the hollowest: Out of my respect for you. In other words, if I may paraphrase, Out of my respect for you, I am walking away from a valid five-year contract after 11 months, in the middle of a season no less, because the task is hard and I found a sap university that would pay me a sick amount of money. And now that sap university is living with the consequences of handing control and nearly $3 million a year to a married father of four who rides a motorcycle around town -- helmetless -- with an engaged 25-year-old university employee he admits having an inappropriate relationship with. What a tangled web he weaves.
Petrino would have been better off running a bounty program. Peter seems a bit more forgiving of running a bounty program than he is the idea of breaking a contract. Obviously both aren't exactly the most honorable of decisions, but at least Petrino was only looking to harm his own health by riding helmetless.
4. I think the NFL needs to send Warren Sapp to the Rookie Symposium this year -- and I'm serious -- to explain how a player at the heights a decade ago could declare bankruptcy today. It's the kind of cautionary tale players can learn from. I can think of only one word for Sapp's story: sad.
I thought of another word! Wasteful. Or another? Idiot.
People who blow through millions of dollars aren't exactly people I would immediately define as "sad." So Warren Sapp is telling us he wouldn't participate in a bounty program now or while he was a player? It's not like he needs the money or anything...
6. I think, as much as I'd love to see it, "Hard Knocks'' and the Jets would be a stupid marriage. Not for HBO. For the Jets, if they're serious about winning.
"Serious about winning," you said? Why would the Jets be serious about winning when they are getting all of this attention for not winning?
9. I think Lions fans are about to get lucky.
Every single one of them? That's one way to increase your fan base.
k. The greatest thing I heard about the one-and-done Kentucky hero, Anthony Davis, in the aftermath of the Kentucky win is that Davis' high school team won 13 games in his last two years of prep basketball. Who'd he have playing with him? Four Peter Kings?
Actually, Davis didn't really blossom until his junior year in high school, so he wasn't the type of player he showed as a freshman at Kentucky until his senior year. It also takes more than one good player to win a basketball game. I feel like all this hype of Davis is helping to overlook the fact he played on a very, very talented University of Kentucky team. So while he was great during the 2011-2012 season, he had a lot more talented surrounding him on the Kentucky team than his high school team had.
n. I really want to see Bully. And I will. But I'm not looking forward to the two weeks of depression that would be sure to follow.
Sort of like reading MMQB sometimes.
p. Red Sox closer ERA: 63.00 (Aceves, Melancon).
How to make Peter feel better...at least the Red Sox are scoring runs. That's a start. Not to mention the Red Sox were playing the Tigers. At least they were swept by a quality team. Bullpen by committee anyone?
q. Orioles, Mets: 6-0. Red Sox, Yankees: 0-6.
My world is spiralling. All those Northeast teams have records that are different from what we expected and there are only 159 games left in the season!
s. RIP, Blair Kiel. I didn't know him, but those who did say he was a good and decent man. Gone way too soon.
Peter is now publicly eulogizing people he has never met nor does he seem to have any sort of affiliation with. Blair Kiel is Gunner Kiel's uncle. I wonder if Les Miles had anything negative about Gunner after hearing about his uncle's death?
t. Coffeenerdness: Easter morning, Starbucks Italian Roast. Not a better coffee smell in the world than that wafting through the home.
Other than Brett Favre farting of course. It's like a dreamy mix of pancakes, last night's Coors Light, the smell of leaves, baby's breath and that new car smell you can never ever replicate no matter how hard you try.
u. Beernerdness: Hate to be boring,
It's ok, we're used to it by now.
There aren't many beers I've had that are as good in the bottle as on tap -- and I'd still prefer this one on tap, with a lemon --
What drink did your husband order Peter?
Part of the method is I'm so damn sick of all the other bounty-related crap that keeps oozing from the NFL's pores, and I figure you must be too, that I want to lead with actual football.
Oh sure, after beating any Brett Favre or Tim Tebow story into the ground for the last four years, NOW Peter wants to give us a break from an over-saturated story...even though new details are still developing and there are still parts of the story to report upon.
The draft is usually America's fourth-biggest sport (behind the NFL, major league baseball and the NBA), but the spate of bounty and Peyton Manning coverage has relegated the draft to a lesser pastime. So let's spend a couple thousand words on the draft, and the teams drafting, here at the top.
Please, let's do this! I can't get enough talk about the three draft picks that will get chosen in the 2012 NFL Draft...those three draft choices being Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill, and Robert Griffin III.
Teams with the most 2012 draft choices in the top 85 overall picks: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, New England, St. Louis (four).
Teams with the least 2012 draft choices in the top 85 overall picks: New Orleans, Oakland (zero).
Shocking, astounding. Why are there 85 picks in the draft if there are only three players entering the draft?The Raiders are actually doing things right,
We don't know that yet. It's a bit premature to say the Raiders are actually doing things right, since it is mid-April and we've heard this before about the Raiders.
Think about it: An 18-year scout finally gets his chance to run a team and pick the players he wants ... and he's hamstrung by the worst cap situation in the league, and one of the worst draft-choice pools in NFL history
I'm thinking about...and I'm also thinking no one forced Reggie McKenzie to take the Oakland Raiders job and he could have chosen to not take the Raiders GM job. It's amazing how free will works isn't it?
And one more thing: Peyton Manning just walked into his division.
Yeah, but the Raiders have Carson Palmer! He's worth a first and second round draft pick! That's better than having Peyton Manning!
"Never thought, 'Woe is me,' '' he said the other night from his office in Oakland.
Which is probably a good attitude considering he chose to take the Raiders General Manager position fully knowing the team's draft pick issues.
I asked McKenzie if he wished he could have the Carson Palmer trade back. Last October, then-coach Hue Jackson dealt first- and second-round picks to Cincinnati for Palmer. "You can beat that doggone story 'til it's worn out,'' said McKenzie. "But I know this: We've got a quarterback we think can win the division and take us to the playoffs. Losing a one and a two doesn't bother me one bit."
McKenzie is already a good liar. No General Manager wants to lose a 1st and 2nd round draft pick. Sure, it netted them Carson Palmer, but a new General Manager likes having the ability to choose his quarterback and probably prefers to have a 1st and 2nd round draft pick every year.
• New England has five picks in a 66-pick span in the first two days of the draft (27, 31, 48, 62, 93). How smart would they be to deal No. 31 to a live-for-today team in the top 12 of this draft (Buffalo?) for a first-rounder next year?
Umm...smart if there isn't a player they want to draft at the #31 selection in the first round. Otherwise, if there is a player they want it would make sense to keep the pick.
• Denver could be a package team. By that I mean the Broncos like to move around (they have in recent years), and they've got three picks in a 30-pick span (108, 120, 137). Suppose the league gets scared of Janoris Jenkins because of his sketchy background, and the best cover man in the draft is sitting there early in the second round.
I'm not sure if Peter is suggesting the Broncos trade two 3rd and one 4th round draft choice for an early 2nd round draft choice, but I'm not sure if there is a team that would accept this trade. I don't know, maybe there would be. It depends on how early in the second round we are talking the Broncos would have to trade up.
Also, Janoris Jenkins may or may not have been fired by his agent. It sounds odd for that to happen, doesn't it? Regardless, John Fox traditionally doesn't like guys with character issues. Of course this is the wild and crazy John Fox we've seen in Denver, so God only knows if he sticks to not liking guys with character issues or not. For all I know, John Fox is now unafraid to knife a bitch if she talks back and doesn't mind drafting a guy with character issues either.
• Atlanta will have to make the picks count. The Falcons pick 55th and 84th, then not again until 157 in round five.
This is as opposed to other teams who can simply waste their draft picks because they have so damn many of them?
It's impossible to have a one-way, clinical view of the Gleason-Pamphilon mess. At least for me it is.
Of course, there is nuance in the story, but there are certain questions about the bounty program, mostly why didn't Gleason speak out on the bounties given his current state, that do make a person wonder whether Gleason should have spoken up.
This article (yes, from Bleacher Report) makes you think a little bit about Steve Gleason and the Saints bounty program. The wording is a little stronger than I would use, I will say that. I would not say "ashamed" is what Gleason would be, but I do think given the link between head injuries and ALS, it puts Gleason in a tough position. He's part of the Saints organization and probably shouldn't feel obligated to blow the whistle. It does make you wonder if Gleason thought about being the whistleblower, and if he didn't, then why not?
I flew to New Orleans in November to begin reporting on the story. Gleason and his shadow, documentarian Sean Pamphilon, met me for lunch. Pamphilon had been working for months with Gleason and wife Michel on a project that they hoped would turn into a marketable documentary or movie about Gleason's life of dealing with this fatal disease. For Gleason, an added motivation was that his infant son, Rivers, would have footage he could always see of his father, no matter how long his life lasted.
This is a great idea by the way. It's going to be great for Gleason's son to look back and see his father closer to his best and not being destroyed by this terrible disease. I think we can all agree on this.
And for the next couple of months, whenever I was around the Gleasons and Michel's tightly knit New Orleans family, Pamphilon was a combination of videographer and mother hen. I thought he was as close to the Gleason family as anyone could be without being in the family.
Which is why I can think of only one word to describe the disagreement and gulf between Pamphilon and Gleason this morning: sad.
I'm pretty good at seeing both sides of things (normally). So I can see how Gleason would feel totally betrayed by Pamphilon. He hired Pamphilon to document his struggle against ALS for his son, not to use footage obtained as a way of giving the public credible evidence of the bounty program the Saints were running. What happens in the locker room is supposed to stay there.I can also see why Pamphilon chose to release the footage against Gleason's wishes. I'm not sure I totally agree with the release of the footage, but Pamphilon seemed to have felt a need to show the public the barbaric talk in NFL locker rooms that led to the bounties being placed on players. In a way, I am sure Pamphilon felt the need to show what helped lead ALS to Gleason's doorstep and affect his life as it has in such a terrible way. He thought it was a public-policy sort of move of showing the violent NFL culture and getting this documentary some publicity.
Last fall, the Saints surprised Gleason, who last played for the team in Payton's first year as coach, 2006, with a Super Bowl ring, even though he didn't play on the 2009 Super Bowl-winning team. The owner of the team, Tom Benson, thinks so much of Gleason that he commissioned a bronze statue of Gleason blocking a punt in the first post-Katrina game in 2006 for the outside of the Superdome.
Of course Gleason doesn't want to provide evidence that may in some way harm the Saints. This is understandable.
3. Pamphilon tried to convince Gleason to allow him to use the audio damning Williams. Gleason, who never played for Williams, didn't like what he heard in the meeting either, but he didn't want the audio released.
I would be interested to hear why Gleason didn't want the audio released. I know the Saints have helped Gleason a lot during his fight with ALS. It is pure hyperbole and just plain stupid to pretend the bounty program run by the Saints is more responsible for an ALS diagnosis in an ex-NFL player any more than the normal, legal hard hits that take place during an NFL game. So I don't think I could ever go far enough to pretend any bounty program was responsible for Steve Gleason's current condition. It's a tough spot for Gleason to be in because he has ties to the Saints team and doesn't want to hurt them. Pamphilon had no such ties, so he released the audio.
Obviously, if what they heard in the meeting was going to be made public by Gleason or Pamphilon, the Saints would never have let either in the room.
Well yes, obviously.
Gleason knew if the tape came out, he'd spend much of whatever cogent energy he has left on something he never intended to fight -- the rantings of a renegade coach -- instead of focusing on what his aim is: trying to make ALS patients live more productive lives.
The problem is I don't think Gregg Williams is a renegade coach. This is somewhat of a naive train of thought and I can't imagine Steve Gleason would be this naive. I seriously doubt Gregg Williams and the Saints are the only team to run a bounty program like this. So fully believing Williams and the Saints are the only ones who run this bounty program, wouldn't Gleason be doing more than just fighting the rantings of a renegade coach? He would be shedding light on illegal bounty programs in the NFL and can point to himself as a living example of how head trauma from violent hits can affect a person. I'm not saying what Gleason should have done, but football is already a violent sport and the hard hits Gleason took during his NFL career probably have a connection to ALS, so he may want to have brought the bounty program to light.
The majority who have responded to me on Twitter (I'd say 60 percent) have said Williams' words were so reprehensible that they, in essence, gave Pamphilon sufficient reason to break his relationship with Gleason and release the audio to the public. He's being seen as a whistleblower the public should applaud, not condemn.
And we all know Twitter is the best place for a reasonable discourse on any issue to take place.
By blowing the whistle, though, what has Pamphilon accomplished? He has shone a light on a dark story.
He's shown the public exactly what the bounty program sounded like inside an NFL locker room. I think that's a pretty significant thing. It's the difference in hearing about a bounty program and hearing exactly what a bounty program sounds like in action. It makes the bounty program more real for those who have followed this story. It's the difference in hearing trace amounts of feces were found in a grocery store's meat and seeing the trace amount of feces in that store's meat. If Peter can't see what Pamphilon accomplished, then he doesn't want to see what Pamphilon accomplished. It made the bounty program real for the public.
The release of the audio didn't affect the league's probe, except perhaps to slam the door shut on any chance Payton -- an innocent in Pamphilon's eyes -- had to get his appeal reduced. I got the distinct impression sniffing around the probe Friday that the audio corroborated the league's investigation but did not advance the story.
I don't think the audio released was for the NFL's benefit. It was for the public's benefit. It was so the public could hear what an NFL locker room sounded like and how the bounty program went down. Pamphilon wanted to show what the bounty program sounded like. It wasn't intended to affect change any more than it was intended to give the public more information on the bounty program. He presumably wanted to show the violent culture that led to Gleason's disease more than he wanted to be a rat.
What's morally right is that Pamphilon, who never would have heard what Williams said without being attached to Gleason, shouldn't have released the tape without Gleason's permission.
Unfortunately Peter, you aren't the judge of what is morally right or wrong. Last time I checked you are not a high moral authority. I think the word "ethically" should be placed in this sentence instead of "morally." I don't think it is correct to say Gleason was morally wrong to release the tape. If anything, he was morally right, but ethically wrong. Releasing the tape without Gleason's permission was ethically questionable, but morality has very little do with it. If this were true, we could say Gleason is morally wrong for championing the cause of ALS patients all while ignoring a bounty program he knew existed with his ex-NFL team.
I enrolled in college to study journalism in 1975, one year after the Watergate burglary and coverup forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency. I'm all for the public's right to know. And in the end, I'm tempted to say the more clarity about this story the better, just so the public understands why Goodell acted with such an iron hand. But I can't get over the way the material was acquired and made public. It's just not right.
Perhaps Peter is a bit too close to Gleason and to this issue to judge appropriately.
Let's say Nike hired a filmmaker to film a documentary about the company. During the documentary, the filmmakers come across visual evidence Nike stealing copywritten information from a rival shoe company. Would the filmmakers have an obligation to release this visual evidence? Peter King would argue "no." Actually, Peter King would argue "yes" because he would be able to make an independent, unbiased judgment on this specific issue. If we believed Peter's opinion on the Gleason/Pamphilon tape set a precedent for his opinion on similar matters, then he would have argued the filmmaker would be morally wrong to release this tape against Nike's wishes.
I cannot find it in my heart to quite call Pamphilon a rat, but I cannot call him a hero either.
How about you just don't call him anything?
Is it possible for Williams to stand up in front of a group of men, all of whom will know he advocated aiming for knees and wounded heads in fiery speeches, and reach them? What about having Williams on your coaching staff, and going into free agency trying to recruit players? Money talks, yes. But will the presence of Williams be a free agent repellant?
No, it won't be a repellant. Money talks and we've learned many times in the NFL (and in sports in general) a person gets a chance or two for redemption. I think if Williams makes it back to the NFL as a coach then he will be given a fair shot and players won't mind playing for him at all.
Which is why I cannot see any reduction in the sanctions to Payton and Loomis. Goodell didn't buy Payton's I-didn't-know-this-was-going-on stance six weeks ago, and I doubt sincerely he heard anything from Payton on Thursday to change his mind.
Even if Goodell bought the fact Payton didn't know it was going on, Sean Payton is still the head coach of the Saints. He is responsible for his defensive, offensive and special teams coaches. At some point, he has to be somewhat culpable for a lack of control over these coaches.
"This is the most heinous, egregious thing in the history of the this game ... Not for one second would I sit in a room and listen to someone say, 'We're going to take out someone's ACL,' without standing up and saying, 'What the hell are you talking about?' ''
-- Former NFL defensive tackle Warren Sapp, to Steve Corkran of the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, concerning Williams' speech the night before the San Francisco playoff game.
I don't believe Warren Sapp would do this. If anything, my perception of Warren Sapp is that he would be the ringleader of a bounty program. This is a guy whose Twitter handle is "qbkilla."Free agent Demetress Bell signed with the Eagles to play left tackle last week.
(Bell's life has been an odd one in another way. He was born out of wedlock to ex-NBA star Karl Malone and a fellow resident of Summerfield, La., Gloria Bell. Malone didn't take an active role in Demetress' upbringing, talking to him but once, according to a story by the late Allen Wilson in the Buffalo News in 2008.)
In Malone's defense, he did spend the majority of his NBA career busy while hunting for little Mexican girls.
Tweet of the Week I
"ColtsFans,roster reshaping exciting n producing a very physical MONSTER!Things have always pointed toward #12 but eval process is OpenMinded''
-- @JimIrsay, the Indianapolis owner
This isn't Peter King-related, but am I the only one who is becoming more and more annoyed with Jim Irsay and the world's obsessions with this Tweets? I liked it better when he didn't have a Twitter account and silently ran the Colts organization.3. I think these are the Petrino words that ring the hollowest: Out of my respect for you. In other words, if I may paraphrase, Out of my respect for you, I am walking away from a valid five-year contract after 11 months, in the middle of a season no less, because the task is hard and I found a sap university that would pay me a sick amount of money. And now that sap university is living with the consequences of handing control and nearly $3 million a year to a married father of four who rides a motorcycle around town -- helmetless -- with an engaged 25-year-old university employee he admits having an inappropriate relationship with. What a tangled web he weaves.
Petrino would have been better off running a bounty program. Peter seems a bit more forgiving of running a bounty program than he is the idea of breaking a contract. Obviously both aren't exactly the most honorable of decisions, but at least Petrino was only looking to harm his own health by riding helmetless.
4. I think the NFL needs to send Warren Sapp to the Rookie Symposium this year -- and I'm serious -- to explain how a player at the heights a decade ago could declare bankruptcy today. It's the kind of cautionary tale players can learn from. I can think of only one word for Sapp's story: sad.
I thought of another word! Wasteful. Or another? Idiot.
People who blow through millions of dollars aren't exactly people I would immediately define as "sad." So Warren Sapp is telling us he wouldn't participate in a bounty program now or while he was a player? It's not like he needs the money or anything...
6. I think, as much as I'd love to see it, "Hard Knocks'' and the Jets would be a stupid marriage. Not for HBO. For the Jets, if they're serious about winning.
"Serious about winning," you said? Why would the Jets be serious about winning when they are getting all of this attention for not winning?
9. I think Lions fans are about to get lucky.
Every single one of them? That's one way to increase your fan base.
k. The greatest thing I heard about the one-and-done Kentucky hero, Anthony Davis, in the aftermath of the Kentucky win is that Davis' high school team won 13 games in his last two years of prep basketball. Who'd he have playing with him? Four Peter Kings?
Actually, Davis didn't really blossom until his junior year in high school, so he wasn't the type of player he showed as a freshman at Kentucky until his senior year. It also takes more than one good player to win a basketball game. I feel like all this hype of Davis is helping to overlook the fact he played on a very, very talented University of Kentucky team. So while he was great during the 2011-2012 season, he had a lot more talented surrounding him on the Kentucky team than his high school team had.
n. I really want to see Bully. And I will. But I'm not looking forward to the two weeks of depression that would be sure to follow.
Sort of like reading MMQB sometimes.
p. Red Sox closer ERA: 63.00 (Aceves, Melancon).
How to make Peter feel better...at least the Red Sox are scoring runs. That's a start. Not to mention the Red Sox were playing the Tigers. At least they were swept by a quality team. Bullpen by committee anyone?
q. Orioles, Mets: 6-0. Red Sox, Yankees: 0-6.
My world is spiralling. All those Northeast teams have records that are different from what we expected and there are only 159 games left in the season!
s. RIP, Blair Kiel. I didn't know him, but those who did say he was a good and decent man. Gone way too soon.
Peter is now publicly eulogizing people he has never met nor does he seem to have any sort of affiliation with. Blair Kiel is Gunner Kiel's uncle. I wonder if Les Miles had anything negative about Gunner after hearing about his uncle's death?
t. Coffeenerdness: Easter morning, Starbucks Italian Roast. Not a better coffee smell in the world than that wafting through the home.
Other than Brett Favre farting of course. It's like a dreamy mix of pancakes, last night's Coors Light, the smell of leaves, baby's breath and that new car smell you can never ever replicate no matter how hard you try.
u. Beernerdness: Hate to be boring,
It's ok, we're used to it by now.
There aren't many beers I've had that are as good in the bottle as on tap -- and I'd still prefer this one on tap, with a lemon --
What drink did your husband order Peter?
Monday, April 9, 2012
7 comments Drew Sharp Doesn't Want the Brandon Inge Dream to Be Over
Now that his cheering against John Calipari in the NCAA Tournament didn't really really work out for him, Drew Sharp has turned his attention to more important matters. Specifically, Drew Sharp is glad the Detroit Tigers aren't being so quick to make a decision on Brandon Inge. The Tigers have put Inge on the 15-day DL and Drew Sharp thinks the Tigers just need to give Inge more time with the team. The topic of Brandon Inge would be decisive for Tigers fans if it didn't seem most Tigers fans wanted Inge gone as soon as possible. From what I understand, the best part about the Prince Fielder signing was that it meant Cabrera could go to third base and Brandon Inge could go away from the field and not be a threat to get 400 at-bats in a season. Anyway, Drew Sharp is part of the Brandon Inge fan club and says there is no need to rush a decision.
Inge is one of those players that sportswriters seem to love. He's a dirt dog, a guy who grits out every bat, and what they seem to love most about him, he now has limited baseball skills. The Tigers have a few better, younger options available to them than Inge. Danny Worth can play multiple positions and the same thing for Don Kelly. Danny Worth is especially (sorry) worth taking a look at as the backup at third base. He's only 26 and has been hitting the ball well in Spring Training. Still, Drew Sharp disagrees. It's too early to make a decision on Brandon Inge and he doesn't believe the Tigers should base any personnel decisions on Inge's Spring Training stats from this year or Inge's regular season numbers for the last six seasons. Sharp apparently believes Inge may buck his career trends and start walking and getting base hits at the age of 34 (35 in May). He wants Tigers fans to calm down and implores Tigers management to not make a drastic decision that could improve the Tigers team.
The fate of Detroit's most polarizing professional athlete could come today, but if the Tigers' officials were truly wise, they'd buy themselves a little more time.
I guess my question would be, "What are they buying time for?" Time to make a decision they know they have already made? Inge can hit home runs, but he doesn't get on-base and the time has come for younger guys to get a shot as a backup.
Inge still is hobbled with a strained groin. Shut him down for two weeks. Put him on the 15-day disabled list,
This is, in fact, what the Tigers decided to do. The issue becomes when Inge comes back, he will end up cutting into the playing time of others and take up a roster spot. I'm sure he is well-liked in the locker room, but I don't see a reason he should take playing time away from guys like Danny Worth.
Inge spent most of Spring Training trying to convince us his 2011 season .197/.265/.283 was no aberration, as he posted a batting average of .180/.226/.300 during Spring Training. Mission accomplished. I don't in any way believe Inge's 2011 season was an aberration. These numbers can be compared to Worth's .308/.391/.513 average during Spring Training. I do realize Spring Training stats aren't the best type of data to base a conclusion upon, but Worth is 8 years younger than Inge and has posted a line of .270/.308/.324 in 37 at-bats during the 2011 season. For Worth to get more statistics upon which to judge him, the Tigers would actually have to give him more at-bats...which means not give Inge at-bats. The Tigers are trying to win a championship and I think Worth gives them the best chance to do that as a backup, especially since he is more versatile at this point than Inge. Worth can play shortstop and second base, as well as third base.
followed by the requisite rehabilitation assignment in Triple-A Toledo.
And then keep Inge in Triple-A or perhaps...see if another team wants Brandon Inge to play in their minor league farm system, if you know what I mean.
Let him heal. Let the season start. Let Miguel Cabrera show he can handle third base regularly without a goalie mask.
This is as opposed to Inge being able to handle the bat without the pitcher throwing underhand to him. Besides, Cabrera is worth much more to the Tigers at third base compared to Inge even if he ends up being a butcher with the glove.
There's no need to rush a decision.
Of course, the Tigers have only had all offseason and Spring Training to decide if Inge is worth keeping on as a backup. No need to rush this decision. Inge will still be an effective hitter once he is no longer on the DL, especially since he hasn't been an especially effective hitter before he was on the DL.
Sure, cutting Inge now would appease those so irrationally obsessed with the guy.
This is as opposed to keeping Inge on the roster, which would appease those so irrationally obsessed with the guy. These people tend to be Detroit sportswriters who love themselves some Inge and what he provides "beyond" the box score or seemingly overly care about his current status.
Such news would trigger a "celebration" reminiscent of the destructive idiocy on display Saturday night in Lexington, Ky., after Kentucky advanced to tonight's national championship game.
Just another reason it is tough to cheer for John Calipari, right? If Calipari didn't have all those one-and-done players that are an abomination to college basketball I bet there wouldn't have been any rioting.
But determining Inge's remaining value can occur only when he's healthy enough for an honest evaluation.
So we should judge Inge when is healthy...
Like in 2010 when he hit .247/.321/.397 with 13 home runs, 134 strikeouts and 54 walks?
Or like in 2009 when he hit .230/.314/.406 with 27 home runs, 170 strikeouts and 54 walks?
Or possibly his other healthy season in 2007 when he hit .236/.312/.376 with 14 home runs, 150 strikeouts, and 47 walks?
Or we could use his "career" year in 2006 when he hit .253/.313/.463 with 27 home runs, 128 strikeouts, and 43 walks?
These are his healthy years of late. I think that's a pretty good indication of Inge's value. He hits some home runs, doesn't get on-base and enjoys a good strikeout. I'm not sure how using his three healthy years since 2007 doesn't given an honest evaluation of Inge as a player. 2006 stands out as Inge's best year and it hasn't been much better since then.
Don't waste your breath arguing about Inge's sub-.200 spring-training batting practice as the last convincing argument against him staying on the roster.
Oh, I won't. I will use his terrible (if not injury-driven) 2011 statistics and every year since 2007 as proof he probably shouldn't be on the roster at the expense of other younger, more versatile, higher ceiling players. Don't waste your breath pretending Inge's sub-.200 spring-training batting average is completely out of character for him.
If Florida numbers are the predominant yardstick for measuring regular-season success, somebody needs to explain how Jhonny Peralta was an All-Star last summer with nearly 90 RBIs for the season when he didn't drive in a single run during the exhibition season.
Florida Spring Training numbers aren't the yardstick for Inge being on or off the roster, but Inge's performance over the last five years (and the fact he has had injuries last year gives the Tigers more reason to not keep him around), PLUS the Spring Training performance of other potential backup third basemen are a good reason to not have Inge on the major league team. It's fine to not hold his Spring Training numbers against him, but the Tigers can't ignore another third baseman who is hitting the ball better than Inge. At a certain point, a team has to go with the best player for that team, regardless of how nice of a guy a player is or how long he has been with the team.
Manager Jim Leyland told reporters recently that he doesn't consider himself a "performance guy."
It's a good thing a World Series isn't won based on a team's performance or else this statement would be troubling.
He doesn't exclusively rely on hard numbers when making hard decisions.
Tigers fans understand that Jim Leyland has made the fact he doesn't rely on hard numbers quite clear over the past few years, especially regarding Brandon Inge. Inge would be a great backup third basemen for a team. It's just the Tigers have third base backups who could potentially be better backups AND can also play shortstop, second base and even the outfield.
When asked specifically about Inge's performance, he pointed to how it's perhaps more important that he was better squaring the ball on the meaty center of the bat.
It's much better than Danny Worth, who keeps getting base hits, but unfortunately all of his base hits are on the fatty part of the bat.
He's just unfortunately hitting the ball directly at people.
And apparently this issue has been happening for what---five or six years now? It's almost like it is getting to the point Inge's struggles could be attributed to more than bad luck. But he is hitting the ball on the meaty part of the bat...so there's always that to hang his hat on.
Inge has to hit to keep his place on the roster.
No, he doesn't. This type of statement is unconvincing. Why does he HAVE to keep his place on the roster? You like him? He's a veteran Tigers player? This is idiotic thinking that a player HAS to have a place on the roster, performance be damned.
But if Cabrera smoothly handles the defensive transition to third, as hoped, he only has to hit enough to maintain his spot as role player/insurance policy.
But what if there is a younger player who is more capable than Inge of handling this role? This is why Inge doesn't have to be on the team?
What Leyland and GM Dave Dombrowski must determine is whether Inge is more capable than Danny Worth of sprinkling a few extra-base hits in that batting average barely hovering over .200.
Based on a comparison of Worth's minor league numbers and Inge's recent statistics it shows Inge seems to have more power and would possibly be capable of a few more extra-base hits. We have not seen Danny Worth get 200 at-bats in the majors yet, so it is possible Worth would be a better extra-base hitter at this point. Of course, Drew Sharp has created his own criteria to determine who should win the backup third base man job That criteria is "whether Inge is more capable than Danny Worth of sprinkling a few extra-base hits into the average." If you add "which player would get on-base more, is more versatile and has the potential to help the Tigers more two years down the road with regular at-bats now," then the answer could be Worth.
The money's irrelevant. He's getting $5.5 million this season, plus there's a $500,000 buyout.
Right. The money is irrelevant. It is a sunk cost, so unless the Tigers can get another team to pay part of Inge's salary in a trade it should not factor in to whether the Tigers keep Inge or not. What else is irrelevant is how much you like Inge personally and whether he has been on the Tigers' roster for a while or not. From a business point of view, Don Kelly or Danny Worth may be the better choice. Inge is what he is. He doesn't get on-base a lot and he isn't going to continue improving. In fact, he will probably regress more as he ages and he is 34 years old now. The same can't be said for Danny Worth. He is 26 years old and should be close to his playing prime.
If he stays, it'll have nothing to do with what they're paying him, but rather how much he could still contribute, if only in a limited reserve role.
Well, he is hitting the ball on the meaty part of the bat. He just keeps hitting the ball to the other team, so apparently Inge either isn't a great hitter or he has really bad luck.
The criticism surrounding Inge has officially crossed the border into the ridiculous. How long until he's blamed for Detroit's financial crisis or the bounty scandal that decimated the New Orleans Saints.
Don't give Sean Payton or the New Orleans Saints any ideas like this one. They will do anything to "Free Sean Payton."
Inge is now a caricature, becoming part punch line, part piñata.
These things tend to occur when a player is very obviously declining or doesn't generally perform well on the field and the manager keeps trotting that player out there. It may not be fair, but Inge makes $6 million and his performance doesn't reflect a person who should be making that much money. Fans get frustrated seeing certain players get put in the lineup or kept on the roster who just don't seem to perform on the field.
He's responsible for some of that with an overly inflated sense of self-importance and, when you've hit as poorly as he has, you make yourself an easy target.
So Drew Sharp thinks the criticism directed at Inge is absurd, but also acknowledges Inge hasn't the ball well and believes himself to be better than he truly is. So is the criticism absurd? Inge is overpaid, underperforms, and (even the author admits) has an inflated sense of self-importance. Aren't these the type of athletes who deserve criticism?
But he has maintained a professional presence
As long as he conveys his ineptness in an professional manner then I see no problems with his staying on the roster until he is at least 45 years old.
and remains a solid enough defensive player that he could still help the Tigers late in a tight game.
This does have value. Is it wise to spend a roster spot on a guy as a late inning replacement when there are other players on the roster who would also be an upgrade from Miguel Cabrera defensively and could hit better than Inge as the regular backup third baseman? I'm not so sure.
There's nothing lost in keeping him around for a while and seeing what develops.
Yes, there is. After Inge gets off the DL, there is something lost in keeping him around. What is lost is a roster spot and at-bats for younger players who may be able to contribute more to the team. What is there to see develop? Inge will be 35 years old in May, he isn't going to suddenly get on-base.
Drew Sharp criticizes those who don't want Inge to make the Tigers roster, but his only reasoning for keeping Inge around amounts to "maybe he will magically improve as a baseball player despite all evidence to the contrary" and "why is everyone so mean to him?"
Inge is one of those players that sportswriters seem to love. He's a dirt dog, a guy who grits out every bat, and what they seem to love most about him, he now has limited baseball skills. The Tigers have a few better, younger options available to them than Inge. Danny Worth can play multiple positions and the same thing for Don Kelly. Danny Worth is especially (sorry) worth taking a look at as the backup at third base. He's only 26 and has been hitting the ball well in Spring Training. Still, Drew Sharp disagrees. It's too early to make a decision on Brandon Inge and he doesn't believe the Tigers should base any personnel decisions on Inge's Spring Training stats from this year or Inge's regular season numbers for the last six seasons. Sharp apparently believes Inge may buck his career trends and start walking and getting base hits at the age of 34 (35 in May). He wants Tigers fans to calm down and implores Tigers management to not make a drastic decision that could improve the Tigers team.
The fate of Detroit's most polarizing professional athlete could come today, but if the Tigers' officials were truly wise, they'd buy themselves a little more time.
I guess my question would be, "What are they buying time for?" Time to make a decision they know they have already made? Inge can hit home runs, but he doesn't get on-base and the time has come for younger guys to get a shot as a backup.
Inge still is hobbled with a strained groin. Shut him down for two weeks. Put him on the 15-day disabled list,
This is, in fact, what the Tigers decided to do. The issue becomes when Inge comes back, he will end up cutting into the playing time of others and take up a roster spot. I'm sure he is well-liked in the locker room, but I don't see a reason he should take playing time away from guys like Danny Worth.
Inge spent most of Spring Training trying to convince us his 2011 season .197/.265/.283 was no aberration, as he posted a batting average of .180/.226/.300 during Spring Training. Mission accomplished. I don't in any way believe Inge's 2011 season was an aberration. These numbers can be compared to Worth's .308/.391/.513 average during Spring Training. I do realize Spring Training stats aren't the best type of data to base a conclusion upon, but Worth is 8 years younger than Inge and has posted a line of .270/.308/.324 in 37 at-bats during the 2011 season. For Worth to get more statistics upon which to judge him, the Tigers would actually have to give him more at-bats...which means not give Inge at-bats. The Tigers are trying to win a championship and I think Worth gives them the best chance to do that as a backup, especially since he is more versatile at this point than Inge. Worth can play shortstop and second base, as well as third base.
followed by the requisite rehabilitation assignment in Triple-A Toledo.
And then keep Inge in Triple-A or perhaps...see if another team wants Brandon Inge to play in their minor league farm system, if you know what I mean.
Let him heal. Let the season start. Let Miguel Cabrera show he can handle third base regularly without a goalie mask.
This is as opposed to Inge being able to handle the bat without the pitcher throwing underhand to him. Besides, Cabrera is worth much more to the Tigers at third base compared to Inge even if he ends up being a butcher with the glove.
There's no need to rush a decision.
Of course, the Tigers have only had all offseason and Spring Training to decide if Inge is worth keeping on as a backup. No need to rush this decision. Inge will still be an effective hitter once he is no longer on the DL, especially since he hasn't been an especially effective hitter before he was on the DL.
Sure, cutting Inge now would appease those so irrationally obsessed with the guy.
This is as opposed to keeping Inge on the roster, which would appease those so irrationally obsessed with the guy. These people tend to be Detroit sportswriters who love themselves some Inge and what he provides "beyond" the box score or seemingly overly care about his current status.
Such news would trigger a "celebration" reminiscent of the destructive idiocy on display Saturday night in Lexington, Ky., after Kentucky advanced to tonight's national championship game.
Just another reason it is tough to cheer for John Calipari, right? If Calipari didn't have all those one-and-done players that are an abomination to college basketball I bet there wouldn't have been any rioting.
But determining Inge's remaining value can occur only when he's healthy enough for an honest evaluation.
So we should judge Inge when is healthy...
Like in 2010 when he hit .247/.321/.397 with 13 home runs, 134 strikeouts and 54 walks?
Or like in 2009 when he hit .230/.314/.406 with 27 home runs, 170 strikeouts and 54 walks?
Or possibly his other healthy season in 2007 when he hit .236/.312/.376 with 14 home runs, 150 strikeouts, and 47 walks?
Or we could use his "career" year in 2006 when he hit .253/.313/.463 with 27 home runs, 128 strikeouts, and 43 walks?
These are his healthy years of late. I think that's a pretty good indication of Inge's value. He hits some home runs, doesn't get on-base and enjoys a good strikeout. I'm not sure how using his three healthy years since 2007 doesn't given an honest evaluation of Inge as a player. 2006 stands out as Inge's best year and it hasn't been much better since then.
Don't waste your breath arguing about Inge's sub-.200 spring-training batting practice as the last convincing argument against him staying on the roster.
Oh, I won't. I will use his terrible (if not injury-driven) 2011 statistics and every year since 2007 as proof he probably shouldn't be on the roster at the expense of other younger, more versatile, higher ceiling players. Don't waste your breath pretending Inge's sub-.200 spring-training batting average is completely out of character for him.
If Florida numbers are the predominant yardstick for measuring regular-season success, somebody needs to explain how Jhonny Peralta was an All-Star last summer with nearly 90 RBIs for the season when he didn't drive in a single run during the exhibition season.
Florida Spring Training numbers aren't the yardstick for Inge being on or off the roster, but Inge's performance over the last five years (and the fact he has had injuries last year gives the Tigers more reason to not keep him around), PLUS the Spring Training performance of other potential backup third basemen are a good reason to not have Inge on the major league team. It's fine to not hold his Spring Training numbers against him, but the Tigers can't ignore another third baseman who is hitting the ball better than Inge. At a certain point, a team has to go with the best player for that team, regardless of how nice of a guy a player is or how long he has been with the team.
Manager Jim Leyland told reporters recently that he doesn't consider himself a "performance guy."
It's a good thing a World Series isn't won based on a team's performance or else this statement would be troubling.
He doesn't exclusively rely on hard numbers when making hard decisions.
Tigers fans understand that Jim Leyland has made the fact he doesn't rely on hard numbers quite clear over the past few years, especially regarding Brandon Inge. Inge would be a great backup third basemen for a team. It's just the Tigers have third base backups who could potentially be better backups AND can also play shortstop, second base and even the outfield.
When asked specifically about Inge's performance, he pointed to how it's perhaps more important that he was better squaring the ball on the meaty center of the bat.
It's much better than Danny Worth, who keeps getting base hits, but unfortunately all of his base hits are on the fatty part of the bat.
He's just unfortunately hitting the ball directly at people.
And apparently this issue has been happening for what---five or six years now? It's almost like it is getting to the point Inge's struggles could be attributed to more than bad luck. But he is hitting the ball on the meaty part of the bat...so there's always that to hang his hat on.
Inge has to hit to keep his place on the roster.
No, he doesn't. This type of statement is unconvincing. Why does he HAVE to keep his place on the roster? You like him? He's a veteran Tigers player? This is idiotic thinking that a player HAS to have a place on the roster, performance be damned.
But if Cabrera smoothly handles the defensive transition to third, as hoped, he only has to hit enough to maintain his spot as role player/insurance policy.
But what if there is a younger player who is more capable than Inge of handling this role? This is why Inge doesn't have to be on the team?
What Leyland and GM Dave Dombrowski must determine is whether Inge is more capable than Danny Worth of sprinkling a few extra-base hits in that batting average barely hovering over .200.
Based on a comparison of Worth's minor league numbers and Inge's recent statistics it shows Inge seems to have more power and would possibly be capable of a few more extra-base hits. We have not seen Danny Worth get 200 at-bats in the majors yet, so it is possible Worth would be a better extra-base hitter at this point. Of course, Drew Sharp has created his own criteria to determine who should win the backup third base man job That criteria is "whether Inge is more capable than Danny Worth of sprinkling a few extra-base hits into the average." If you add "which player would get on-base more, is more versatile and has the potential to help the Tigers more two years down the road with regular at-bats now," then the answer could be Worth.
The money's irrelevant. He's getting $5.5 million this season, plus there's a $500,000 buyout.
Right. The money is irrelevant. It is a sunk cost, so unless the Tigers can get another team to pay part of Inge's salary in a trade it should not factor in to whether the Tigers keep Inge or not. What else is irrelevant is how much you like Inge personally and whether he has been on the Tigers' roster for a while or not. From a business point of view, Don Kelly or Danny Worth may be the better choice. Inge is what he is. He doesn't get on-base a lot and he isn't going to continue improving. In fact, he will probably regress more as he ages and he is 34 years old now. The same can't be said for Danny Worth. He is 26 years old and should be close to his playing prime.
If he stays, it'll have nothing to do with what they're paying him, but rather how much he could still contribute, if only in a limited reserve role.
Well, he is hitting the ball on the meaty part of the bat. He just keeps hitting the ball to the other team, so apparently Inge either isn't a great hitter or he has really bad luck.
The criticism surrounding Inge has officially crossed the border into the ridiculous. How long until he's blamed for Detroit's financial crisis or the bounty scandal that decimated the New Orleans Saints.
Don't give Sean Payton or the New Orleans Saints any ideas like this one. They will do anything to "Free Sean Payton."
Inge is now a caricature, becoming part punch line, part piñata.
These things tend to occur when a player is very obviously declining or doesn't generally perform well on the field and the manager keeps trotting that player out there. It may not be fair, but Inge makes $6 million and his performance doesn't reflect a person who should be making that much money. Fans get frustrated seeing certain players get put in the lineup or kept on the roster who just don't seem to perform on the field.
He's responsible for some of that with an overly inflated sense of self-importance and, when you've hit as poorly as he has, you make yourself an easy target.
So Drew Sharp thinks the criticism directed at Inge is absurd, but also acknowledges Inge hasn't the ball well and believes himself to be better than he truly is. So is the criticism absurd? Inge is overpaid, underperforms, and (even the author admits) has an inflated sense of self-importance. Aren't these the type of athletes who deserve criticism?
But he has maintained a professional presence
As long as he conveys his ineptness in an professional manner then I see no problems with his staying on the roster until he is at least 45 years old.
and remains a solid enough defensive player that he could still help the Tigers late in a tight game.
This does have value. Is it wise to spend a roster spot on a guy as a late inning replacement when there are other players on the roster who would also be an upgrade from Miguel Cabrera defensively and could hit better than Inge as the regular backup third baseman? I'm not so sure.
There's nothing lost in keeping him around for a while and seeing what develops.
Yes, there is. After Inge gets off the DL, there is something lost in keeping him around. What is lost is a roster spot and at-bats for younger players who may be able to contribute more to the team. What is there to see develop? Inge will be 35 years old in May, he isn't going to suddenly get on-base.
Drew Sharp criticizes those who don't want Inge to make the Tigers roster, but his only reasoning for keeping Inge around amounts to "maybe he will magically improve as a baseball player despite all evidence to the contrary" and "why is everyone so mean to him?"
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