Yes, I know it is Labor Day. This should prove to all of you that these rants are a labor of love. You're not buying that? Does that mean you are all turning into curmudgeons? How sad for you…
There are lots of nits to be picked today – even though this is a holiday – so let me start out with college football over the weekend. It is a good thing that the Washington Huskies turned the program over to their former offensive coordinator because think of how bad it would have been if the team had no offense. Uh, excuse me? Against Ohio State, the Huskies ran the ball 24 times and gained 7 yards net. That game was as good as over in the second quarter.
I caught only a few minutes of the Wisconsin/West Virginia game on one of the ESPN channels and heard a woman doing the play-by-play. It sounded like Pam Ward but I am not positive. Let me say that whoever that was, she was doing a really good job of describing what was happening and keeping the shtick to a minimum. I've liked the studio work that Pam Ward has done on ESPN for the WNBA coverage and if she was also doing that play-by-play, then I'm ready to say that she is underemployed and needs to be given a shot at big time broadcasts.
Auburn was ranked #6 in the pre-season polls. [Don't get me started on how dumb pre-season polls are; 4 of the top 25 teams lost their first game of the year.] Playing at home against USC, Auburn managed to gain a total of 164 yards on 48 offensive plays. That is less than 3.5 yards per snap and that will lose just about any football game for you.
Meanwhile, Alabama began their season with a win over the University of South Florida. Mike Shula won his first game at Alabama convincingly. I think that Mike Shula should be known as “Tie-breaker” in the Shula household. After all, that family has a record of 1 and 1 when it comes to coaches. Don Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history and is in the Hall of Fame. David Shula stunk out the joint in Cincy and has left football to take up a career managing the Shula Steakhouses. Mike Shula will break the tie.
One step up from college football is the CFL. Their season has been going on for a while now and all is not going perfectly in Montreal. The Alouettes' head coach was in a bad mood one day and refused to talk to reporters. So the next day, all of the Montreal media – print and electronic - ignored the Alouettes completely as a protest. One reporter in Montreal explained that this could get ugly and that the media and the fans might lose interest in the Alouettes. He said that the Expos had been dismissive of the media and you see what that got them. Excuse me. Montreal fans are bandwagon fans – even for Les Canadiens. When they win, they get crowds; when they lose, they get bupkis. If this is the Montreal sense of why the Expos will be leaving town, then Montreal is the capital of the Province of Denial.
Moving one step higher on the football food chain, we come to the NFL. Here is where the players are the best and here is where the stupid statements reach cosmic proportions. The Packers and the Titans played an exhibition game that was interrupted by a lightening storm. Since it was an exhibition game and no players of any importance were actually going to do any playing after the game was resumed, one might wonder why they did not just call the game. A Packers' official stepped into the breech here and said that it was done to preserve “the integrity of the preseason.” Don't go back and read that again or you might send your brain into overload as it tries to wonder what integrity the NFL preseason might have or need. Here is what was being preserved - - the money paid by the fans to attend this meaningless exhibition game. If they called the game, someone might demand a refund or a partial refund. That might lead to a discussion of exhibition game pricing and that is an area that the NFL owners would not like to talk about.
I glanced ever so briefly at the US Open Tennis matches over what seems like the last month. Anna Kournikova was prancing around pretending to be a reporter in the sense that she would try to bring information to the public about an event that at least a few members of the public actually cares about. In this role, she is about as useful as a trap door on a lifeboat. Given her inability to win tennis tournaments, you might find it shocking that I would offer her the advice not to quit her day job in order to take up reporting. But then again, I consider her day job to be modeling and not playing tennis…
At this moment in time, the Utah Jazz have the lowest payroll in the NBA for the upcoming season at $26.5M. I was surprised to read that and so I went to check out the details and found something that goes beyond surprising and all the way to stupefying. The highest plaid player on the Jazz at the moment is Greg Ostertag at $8.66M. That's right; Greg Ostertag accounts for 32.7% of the Jazz payroll at the moment. Now to go even one step further, Greg Ostertag will make almost 6 times as much as Karl Malone will make next season since Malone signed with the Lakers for $1.5M.
There was a time in my life and my career when I was concerned about important workplace issues such as “pay for performance” and “equal pay for equal work” and all those things. I have to say that the NBA cannot worry about such things because if they did, someone would go screaming into the night over the fact that Greg Ostertag will make almost 6 times what Karl Malone makes for playing basketball. That is wrong on so many levels. Greg Ostertag does provide support for naturist theories that man is made from clay because he has all of the mobility of a statue.
I must confess that I will need to take a greater interest in NASCAR over the next month because I am scheduled to attend a NASCAR race in Dover Delaware later in September. I must have had far too many glasses of wine when I agreed to join my wife and a former colleague of hers for this event, but as an honorable person, I will do my duty and check this out. The NASCAR Babe and my long-suffering wife have made all the arrangements and now I have to do something to make it seem as if I know at least a little bit about what is going on.
I sent The NASCAR Babe a note saying that I had found the driver I wanted to root for. I liked a commercial he was in even though I would never buy the product. The driver is Matt Kenseth and the commercial is for Smirnoff Ice where Kenseth does a “drink responsibly” bit. I got a note back from The NASCAR Babe informing me that he was also the “points leader” for this year in terms of the NASCAR championship. I did not have the heart to tell her that I had never heard this guy's name until I saw that commercial. So I do have a lot of studying to do…
Finally, Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC has the nickname The Blue Hose. I trembled when I read that; I had to go and check to make sure the mascot was not an anatomically correct Papa Smurf. It wasn't. Whew…
But don't get me wrong, I love sports...
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