Should Tom Brady have (stayed) retired?

Tom Brady is the greatest football player in history, but did this last disastrous season hurt his reputation?  Or is his career so impressive that it really didn't hurt him?

He originally retired a year ago, and then came back for one more season.  If he had stayed retired then everyone would have thought "Of course he could have played longer; he went out at the top."  Now it's pretty clear that while he is still a great quarterback, he's not what he was a couple years ago.

Thoughts?

A note to the NFL

You may think that we've forgotten how you let everyone take a knee during the National Anthem.

 We haven't.  Not watching your dumb sportsball, you un-American jerks.

Oh dear, whatever is causing Americans to tune out the Olympics?

Dan Wetzel at Yahoo Sports writes about the "cataclysmic" drop in viewership for the Olympic opening ceremonies - down over 40% from four years ago.  And the events viewership is worse - down two thirds from Sochi.  Wetzel points out that NBC paid almost $8B (yes, that's billion) for the broadcast rights through 2032.

Wetzel proposes many reasons for the apathy:

• Dissatisfaction with China for various geopolitical reasons,
• Anti-Covid measures are making things difficult for athletes,
• Difficulty in visiting results in very small crowds of spectators,
• "Olympic fatigue" - the delayed summer Olympics were held only 6 months ago.

None of this explain why the American public no longer cares about the Olympic games.  There's quite a simple explanation, one that Wetzel interestingly does not explore.  American Olympians have for a couple decades now acted as spoiled, unpatriotic brats.  They've taken a knee during the national anthem at awards ceremonies.  They've given interviews generously larded with examples of how the Republic has oppressed everyone under the sun.  Displays of patriotism and gratitude to their country - and to their fellow countrymen - have been notable by their absence.

And we're supposed to watch these impolite, unpatriotic brats "represent" us?  No thanks.

The American Olympic Committee has brought this on themselves, by allowing this behavior for far too long.  Me, I don't care if I never watch another Olympics.

Three comments on the Superbowl

1. There is no question whether Tom Brady is the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT).  The biggest loser tonight is not Kansas City, it's the New England Patriots organization.  They worked hard to get rid of the GOAT.  Heads need to roll. 

2. How is Tom Brady like Donald Trump?  The are both going to sleep with supermodels tonight. 

3. I don't need another National Anthem.  I don't think I will ever watch another NFL game.  I've posted about the commercials in the past; all y'all are on your own now.

Here's what I don't understand about the Superbowl

What I don't understand #1:

Black National Anthem at the Superbowl.  I don't get it: did the Tuskegee Airmen who flew escort duty against Hitler's Super Race not have a national anthem?

What I don't understand #2:

Who took a knee for the Black National Anthem at the Superbowl?  It doesn't look like anyone kneeled down.  It's like those Tuskegee Airmen who flew escort duty against Hitler's Super Race did not have a national anthem.

Gosh, it's almost like someone wants to divide America or something.

UPDATE 7 February 2021 20:38: What I don't understand #3:

So when the Black National Anthem gets played, do we need to stand up, take our hats off, and put our hand over our hearts?  What about the Native American National Anthem?  Asking for a friend.

The NBA will be gone in ten years

 Via Chris Lynch we see this stunning drop in viewership for the NBA championship:

Game 1 averaged only a 4.1 rating and 7.41 million viewers on ABC, “comfortably the lowest rated and least-watched NBA Finals game on record (dates back to 1988),” Sports Media Watch reported.

But if the league thought things might improve for Game 2, it had a bitter pill to swallow because the second in the series did even worse than the first.

Game 2 cratered with just 4.5 million viewers and a dismal 1. 9 in the ratings. This embarrassing showing was down 68 percent over Game 2 in 2019.

Emphasis added by me.  But hey, at least we have good sportsmanship to watch, right?  Wait, what?

[Lebron] James was seen leaving the floor with 10 seconds left and off to the side before the buzzer sounded and the game officially ended.

The NBA's TV contracts expire in 3 years.

Why The Queen Of The World and I will not watch the Superbowl

NFL rejects "Stand for the Flag" advert:



NFL allows Michael Bloomberg's gun control ad.

Remember when the NFL banned a pro-second amendment ad a few years back?

Screw you guys.  Just when it seems like saner heads might prevail and let the whole festering pustule stop swelling and oozing, the jackwagons running the NFL clown show shoot themselves in the foot.  Again.

Sideways with a chainsaw.  I don't need to watch your dumb game to see the funny ads anymore because they're all online.  This one is really funny, and has a cameo who will be recognizable to Red Sox fans:



UPDATE 2 February 2020 20:25:  I have to say that The Queen Of The World and I are enjoying the Puppy Bowl way more than I expected.  Wolfgang isn't paying any attention, but TQOTW tells stories about her old Golden Retriever, Skipper.  He would watch with doggie fascination.

And speaking of Golden Retrievers, the Suburu adverts are simply brilliant:

Major League Baseball rocked with scandal

The Houston Astros fired their General Manager Jeff Luhnow and also their Manager AJ Hinch over a sign-stealing scheme.  This is a big deal - the Astros went to the World Series last fall, and you would expect the team to try to protect their management.  But they're not just gone, they're banned from Baseball for a year.

And Red Sox Manager Alex Cora is also out, agreeing to resign his position.  The Red Sox won the World Series two years ago, but Cora is said to be the one who came up with the scheme when he was coaching for the Astros.  

The post-season chances for both the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox have just taken a hit.  The teams only have a month to come up with replacement managers, which isn't time enough for a very thorough search.

Smart baseball fans are waiting to see who else is implicated in the scandal - who else did this but hasn't been caught yet?  So what (I hear you ask) is sign stealing and why is it a big deal?  This video is pretty good about sign stealing as it has been done for years and years.  There's nothing illegal about any of this, but it will set the stage:

That's not what the Astros did.  They didn't use a base runner to steal signs, they used a camera.  That's a huge No No:

Costas spends some time on the fact that only managers have been punished.  Lots of players knew all about (and even participated in) the scheme, but nothing is happening to them.  Pete Rose - who was banned for life from Baseball for betting on his team when he was a manager - had some interesting thoughts on this:

“So they fire the GM, they fire the manager, and (MLB) probably is going to get (Red Sox manager) Alex Cora, who was the (Astros) bench coach at the time,” Rose said. “But what about the players who were behind this and taking the knowledge? Should they get off scot-free?

"Don’t you have to do something to the players who were accepting the stolen signs? Nothing’s been done. Is that fair?”

When Pete Rose says that more people should have been banned from baseball, that's something.

UPDATE 15 January 2020 13:49: I should have noted that (as you'd expect) Sports Firings is all over this.

The highest paid athlete of all time

As a change of pace from Climate Change and the impending Electric Boogaloo in Virginia, here's some interesting trivia.  The highest paid athlete of all time lived in the Roman Empire:

Gaius Appuleius Diocles (104 – after 146 AD) was a Roman charioteer who became one of the most celebrated athletes in ancient history. He is often cited as the highest-paid athlete of all-time.^[1][2]

Now it's notoriously difficult to compare prices in societies two thousand years apart, but Diocles seems legit:

His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, equivalent to 358,631.20 gold aureus or 26,000 kg of gold. As one modius (6.67 kg) of wheat in 79 AD Pompeii cost seven sestertii, Gaius Appuleius could have acquired 34.172 metric tons of wheat, equivalent to US$6.49 million in 2019. His earnings could provide a year’s supply of grain to the entire city of Rome, or pay the Roman army at its height for a fifth of a year. Classics professor Peter Struck describes him as "the best paid athlete of all time".^[1]

Wheat is a lousy measure for comparison, because modern agricultural productivity is so far beyond what the Romans had that wheat is essentially free.  A better comparison is that whole "pay the Roman army at its height for a fifth of a year".  Taking the US DoD budget as around $800B, this gives us a modern equivalent wealth of around $160B - around 100 times what Michael Jordan made (the top modern athlete in terms of earnings).

And a note about the 35M sesterces - you needed to be worth 1M to qualify for Senatorial rank, so Diocles would have been in like flint.  However, the social status of gladiators and charioteers (no matter how popular) was very low, in fact just one minor step up from the status of slaves.  So there's no way that the Romans would have considered him for the Senate.  Probably just as well since it was a stuffy body full of hot air and nonsense by this time.  While it's not true that the Emperor Caligula appointed his horse to that body, he should have.

You want a hero?

Offered without comment"

Nike can suck it.

Andy Griffith explains football

Saturday is College Football.  For readers overseas who are unaware of American Football, here's Andy Griffith explaining the game for you.

Don't turn off the computer, Dad!

He turned off the computer.

How to be a better shot

At basketball free throws.  The centerline technique seems like a good trick.

Quote of the Day - Kentucky Derby edition

This QotD goes to The Queen Of The World, from the Book of Faces:

With all the controversy surrounding yesterdays HORRIBLE Derby decision, there’s one very interesting point receiving no recognition at all. 

Neither of the top 2 horses in this race were what we’ve come to know or expect in the Kentucky Derby. One was a 65/1 long shot and the other was a $16,000 claim horse!  This just proves you can buy what’s considered to be the best bred horses available, buy top facilities, hire top trainers, and the best jockeys, but what you can never buy (or create) is that one thing that makes these 2 horses so special: the heart of a champion. 

There’s no denying they have that.  (Example: what happened to three Baffert horses?)

Pretty smart, right there.*  For  those that don't follow the ponies, Baffert is sort of the New York Yankees of horse racing - long term success, well funded, the favorite in many of the races his horses enter.  It's interesting that the Machine lost to these horses.

* She's not just a pretty face, she's also exceptionally insightful.  I mean, she married me, amirite?

LOL

Congratulations to the Rams for winning the Kentucky Derby

— Buffalo Wild Wings (@BWWings) May 4, 2019

That's outstanding.  Here's the reference:

Is the Kentucky Derby crooked?

I guess that this is more properly phrased as "Is Churchill Downs crooked?" - Churchill Downs is the racetrack in Louisville, KY that hosts the Kentucky Derby.  They also handle the wagers placed on the race, both at the track and remotely (they heavily advertised their betting app during the TV coverage of the race).

When it comes to gambling, there's an old saying - the House always wins.  Churchill Downs is the House.

I don't blame the owner of Country House, the second place horse who complained about obstruction - although Maximum Security did not obstruct Country House, and none of the owners of the horses allegedly "obstructed" complained.  Country House's owner saw a chance to complain himself into the $3M winner's purse, and did so.

But what was the motivation behind the folks at Churchill Downs?  Me, I'd like to see the payouts they would have had to make for Maximum Security at 9-2, and the payouts they actually made on Country House at 65-1.  Sure, the odds were a lot longer on Country House, but the wagers were way heavier on Maximum Security.  The suspicion is that Churchill Downs scored millions of dollars by overturning the winner.

Libertyman left a comment to yesterday's post about the race:

You don't think things involving gambling may, just may, be fixed?

Motive and opportunity.  Makes you wonder.

Kentucky Derby prediction

The Queen Of The World and I like Maximum Security* and have our money where our mouth is.  The track looks really sloppy, but he runs well on sloppy tracks.  We're not the only ones - he's the favorite at 4-1.

* Me, liking security?  Duh.

UPDATE 4 May 2019 18:54:  Yay, Maximum Security.  He was on sale in December for $16,000 (!!!) and just won the $3M purse.  I wish I tossed a couple bucks on Country House at 65-1 who came in second.  Yowza.

UPDATE 4 May 2019 19:15:  Oh good grief - the claim of foul against Maximum Security is nothing but sour grapes.  There's no way that Maximum Security impeded Country House.  And Country House's owner was a (ahem) Maximum Douchebag when he was interviewed.

UPDATE 4 May 2019 19:22:  It looks like Maximum Douchebag was successful.  I call foul - it sure doesn't look like a foul to me (heck, Maximum Security was ahead the whole race).  There's no way you can say that Country House "won" the Kentucky Derby.

On the plus side, at least I'm not a bookie, having to pay off all those 65-1 bets.

UPDATE 4 May 2019 20:58:  Holy cow, Facebook and Twitter are blowing up over this.  It's becoming the George Brett Pine Tar incident of horse racing.  People will be talking about this for the next fifty years.  The Derby folks clearly are not smart enough to know that they need to protect their brand from ultra competitive participants.  Country House's owner threw a Hail Mary pass, and there was no downside to him in doing so.  There sure was a downside for the Derby folks in letting him get away with it.  Boy, howdy.

Well that certainly didn't age well

One week ago:

On the quest to become one of Los Angeles’ most revered sports institutions, a victory Sunday in the Super Bowl is only the start. What comes after will be almost as important for the Rams.

If President Donald Trump invites them to the White House, they have to decline.

Today:

Problem solved, I guess.

Thoughts on the Superbowl

The NFL clearly laid down the law on taking a knee.  None of the players I saw did.  The NFL knows that this is ratings poison and didn't let it happen.

Despite what the haters will want to say, this should pretty much end the debate on who is the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.

It probably should (but won't) end the debate on what the greatest NFL franchise of all time is.

The Halftime show was idiotic music, but there wasn't anything politically controversial.  The Queen of the World recognized him but I didn't have a clue until they played that song that was covered by the Axis Of Awesome.

A lot of the commercials were hilarious.  Michael Bubble and T-Mobile had us laughing out loud.  The Verizon commercial with the guy meeting the EMTs who saved his life was touching.

All in all, we did not expect a Superbowl with basically no political bull***t.

Americans don't have a lock on the term "Redneck"

Europe has a thriving redneck community.  Sometime last week, the Queen Of The World and I were out where the TV was tuned to the "Sidecarcross" championships.  Think Motocross with sidecars attached.  It's a two man event and what looks to be as close as you can get these days to the chariot race scene from Ben Hur.



The only way this could be cooler was if the wheels had rotating knives attached.

While this sport is done all over the world, it's more popular in Europe and really popular in Eastern Europe - where the world championships are held.  The ones we watched were from Estonia.

American Rednecks, y'all need to up your game.  Maybe Pickuptruckcross with sidecars?