I am not the next Usain Bolt or the next Michael Phelps.
I am the first Simone Biles.
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Today
May 25th, 1965.
A couple of weeks later, for the first time ever, I heard my dad speak about a black man in respectful tones.
"Quick as a cat."
"I guess that first fight was no fluke after all."
"Never seen a heavyweight move like that."
"He can run his mouth all he wants - he knows how to back it up."
Sunday, March 21, 2021
Today's Shero
Dawn Staley is a force of nature. A giant at 5-foot-6.
In the terms of my high school football coach: Looks for all the world like he can't run, can't throw, can't catch, can't block or tackle - can't do anything but beat you. And even if you come out of it with a win, you're gonna feel like you're on the losing side in a brick fight.
Dawn Staley, another title in sight, won’t stop speaking out: ‘I can’t not do it’
At practice one afternoon in December, the South Carolina women’s basketball players spread out on a carpeted space away from the court. The university president wanted to talk to them.
Before games this season, most of the players, wanting to bring attention to systemic racism, had been sitting during the national anthem. Even with few fans in the arena, the act hadn’t gone unnoticed: There were boos, threats of boycott on Twitter and a Facebook rant describing the players as “unappreciative b----es” and suggesting their head coach be imprisoned as an American traitor.
But in Columbia, S.C., the team’s coach, Dawn Staley, will sooner get a court named after her than face serious blowback. Since her arrival in 2008, she has built a women’s basketball dynasty on Southern football turf, making nine straight NCAA tournament appearances, capturing six conference tournament championships and winning the national title in 2017. On Sunday, her team opens the tournament as a No. 1 seed for the fifth time in the past eight years.
After winning that 2017 title, the state’s second-largest newspaper named Staley the most powerful person in South Carolina sports, ahead of Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney. The Republican governor once demanded an apology from a rival athletic director who criticized Staley after a rowdy game at Columbia’s Colonial Life Arena. A South Carolina lawmaker recently introduced a bill to name that court after her.
So when her players filled the socially distant chairs that afternoon, they could safely assume their coach would have their backs. Still, this was South Carolina, where sitting for the anthem, as one Gamecocks alum told Staley in an email, is viewed by many as “despicable.”
The university president, Robert Caslen, is a retired Army lieutenant general. He told the players how he had sworn to defend the Constitution and supported their right for free speech, according to interviews with Caslen, Staley and players. He also mentioned how he had soldiers die in his arms. He didn’t tell them what to do, but his background made it clear what he does. He stands for the anthem.
Then, Staley, sitting beside her team, found herself doing what she had done all season. She began to speak up.
The Book of Staley
She had come home with scratched legs after battling all day with the boys. Staley, the smallest thing around the Raymond Rosen housing project in north Philadelphia, kept her mother worried but held her own on the basketball court. Near 23rd and Diamond streets, the intersection where she used to shoot jumpers at a crate fashioned to a light pole, the sign now reads “Dawn Staley Lane.”
Staley brought her North Philly toughness and natural leadership to the University of Virginia. In the final seconds of overtime in the 1990 NCAA East Region final, Coach Debbie Ryan called a play, but Staley raised another idea. Virginia ran Staley’s play, and she drilled the midrange jumper, clinching the team’s first trip to the Final Four.
The next year, a teenage girl stood on the top ledge of a Charlottesville parking garage, threatening to jump. The only person who could talk her down was her hero, Staley.
Staley started her coaching career in her hometown, at Temple University, but she moved in 2008 to South Carolina, where her mom was born and raised. Estelle Staley was a nice, churchgoing lady, Staley says, but one whose eyes you wouldn’t want to meet if you stole her parking spot at the mall.
“Oh, she ain’t letting them get away with it,” Staley says, laughing at the memory. “No, no, no! That window’s coming down.”
Staley is her mother’s daughter in that way. In her early days in Columbia, she went to the same local pizza place almost every day, tweeting love letters to her favorite pies. One day she and her family sat at an outdoor table. No one came to serve them, and the family felt mistreated. Miss Estelle wasn’t having it. They left.
Though her mother died in 2017, Staley hasn’t returned since. In the Book of Staley, right is right, and wrong is wrong.
“I grew up in a house like that,” she says. “There’s really no gray area.”
In Columbia, Staley inherited a program that hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in five years and averaged only 1,802 fans per game the season before she arrived. After her first home loss, as fans headed for the exits inside the nearly-empty gym, Staley searched for a microphone.
She urged everyone to stop walking. She thanked them for their loyalty and made them a promise: If you stick with me, you won’t see many more nights like this.
Twelve years later, they see her around on campus, with a green tea-lemonade in hand, that Starbucks plastic stopper hanging from her mouth. Staley, 50, attends everything from softball games to welcome events for first-year Gamecocks. Students admire her. The bravest approach in awe and introduce themselves.
“Like she was Beyoncé,” says A’ja Wilson, the most decorated athlete in school history, who now plays for the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces.
Beyond campus, Staley has built a fiercely devoted following. In the six seasons before the pandemic, the Gamecocks led NCAA women’s basketball in attendance, averaging 12,185 fans during the 2019-20 season. Beyoncé has her Beyhive; Staley calls their superfans the “G-Hive.” After the title in 2017, fans got into a bidding war for the right to have the special edition, state-issued Gamecocks license plate, “WB 33” (the team went 33-4 that season). The queen of this hive rolls around in a matte black Mercedes-Benz SUV nicknamed “Michelle” after the former first lady, and her license plate reads: “WB 1.”
“When she came to the program, you could pick wherever you wanted to sit in the arena,” says Judi Gatson, a veteran newscaster in Columbia and avowed G-Hive member. “[Now] tickets to her program are the hottest ticket in the state.”
She has accomplished this with unapologetic Blackness at a school, in a state, that in many ways clings to its Whiteness. The Gamecocks won their 2017 title with an all-Black roster; only two years before, the Confederate battle flag still flew over the South Carolina State House a few blocks away. The university erected a golden statue of A’ja Wilson outside the arena. But on this same campus, the wellness and fitness center named after Strom Thurmond, a segregationist politician, remains.
Last summer, when a group of current and former athletes called a news conference in front of the fitness center, demanding a name change, Staley showed up to speak.
“She’s the head ball coach in South Carolina,” says Kayin Jones, executive director of Black Lives Matter South Carolina. “Being an African-American woman and really excelling in her craft … taking them to national prominence, she’s done a hell of a job. And in doing so, it has allowed her voice to be that much louder. Her bullhorn, she can turn the volume up on it.”
‘I can’t not’
In May, Staley couldn’t keep up with her thumbs. Days after watching George Floyd die under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, her fingers pecked out her raw response, typos and all.
The tweet started Staley toward becoming one of the state’s most outspoken advocates for racial justice. She wrote an essay in the voice of a fed-up Black woman. She hopped on Zoom calls with local reporters, knowing she was the only prominent Black coach at South Carolina to speak about Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times in the back by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis.
“Activism has always been here,” U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) says of Columbia, the state capital. “It just hasn’t been very well known.” Staley, he says, is “reflective of that kind of attitude that’s been in Columbia for a long, long time.”
Her Twitter account was her biggest pulpit, and she has made a habit of going back at people, even if they identify themselves as Gamecocks fans. When a disgruntled fan claimed to be done with Staley after her support of Blake, she vowed to be herself: “Take it. Leave it.” It’s a strange sight, an SEC coach urging someone to get off her timeline, but Staley does it routinely. She delights in leaving trolls “at the altar,” as she calls it.
“I say what’s on my mind,” Staley says. “I can’t not do it. I can’t not post it because I don’t want to live with thinking that I should’ve said something and I didn’t.”
Staley knows she has upset some fans with her tweets and her takes on race in America. She knew there would be backlash, especially when all nine Black women on the team decided before the season to stage a silent protest.
The Gamecocks coaches, including Staley, and one White player typically stand for the anthem. The other White player, sophomore Olivia Thompson, started the season sitting with her teammates. Then, before the Dec. 3 game against North Carolina State, Thompson told Staley that sitting didn’t send a strong enough message for her. She wanted to take a knee.
“ ‘They’re going to tear her ass up.’ That’s what I said to myself,” Staley recalls. So before the anthem played, Staley walked over to Thompson, placed her right hand over her player’s shoulder and took a knee beside her.
“A big thing with her is how she stands up for the people she cares about and the things she cares about,” Thompson says. “I feel like there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us as players.”
Soon after that game, Caslen met with the team. He’s a fan of Staley — “She’s a national icon and everybody loves her. When I get around her, I get a little nervous,” Caslen says — but he wanted to talk with her players about sitting for the anthem.
He maintained that their method wasn’t working with the people who needed to hear their message. Staley encouraged them to listen, but she also encouraged them to speak their minds, and they did.
After Caslen left, Staley addressed her team. She told them she wanted them to know the other side of the argument — to try to understand where people who shared Caslen’s views were coming from. She told them to take it all in.But, like Caslen, she never told the players who had chosen to sit what to do. Before the next game, and every game since, they sat.
One quick highlight:
Staley played for Team USA throughout her career. In 1994 she competed in the World Championships and was named the USA basketball Female Athlete of the Year. She led the 1996 team to an undefeated record of 60–0 and the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. She was also a member of the 2000 Olympic team that defended the gold medal.
WaPo: (pay wall)
At practice one afternoon in December, the South Carolina women’s basketball players spread out on a carpeted space away from the court. The university president wanted to talk to them.
Before games this season, most of the players, wanting to bring attention to systemic racism, had been sitting during the national anthem. Even with few fans in the arena, the act hadn’t gone unnoticed: There were boos, threats of boycott on Twitter and a Facebook rant describing the players as “unappreciative b----es” and suggesting their head coach be imprisoned as an American traitor.
But in Columbia, S.C., the team’s coach, Dawn Staley, will sooner get a court named after her than face serious blowback. Since her arrival in 2008, she has built a women’s basketball dynasty on Southern football turf, making nine straight NCAA tournament appearances, capturing six conference tournament championships and winning the national title in 2017. On Sunday, her team opens the tournament as a No. 1 seed for the fifth time in the past eight years.
After winning that 2017 title, the state’s second-largest newspaper named Staley the most powerful person in South Carolina sports, ahead of Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney. The Republican governor once demanded an apology from a rival athletic director who criticized Staley after a rowdy game at Columbia’s Colonial Life Arena. A South Carolina lawmaker recently introduced a bill to name that court after her.
So when her players filled the socially distant chairs that afternoon, they could safely assume their coach would have their backs. Still, this was South Carolina, where sitting for the anthem, as one Gamecocks alum told Staley in an email, is viewed by many as “despicable.”
The university president, Robert Caslen, is a retired Army lieutenant general. He told the players how he had sworn to defend the Constitution and supported their right for free speech, according to interviews with Caslen, Staley and players. He also mentioned how he had soldiers die in his arms. He didn’t tell them what to do, but his background made it clear what he does. He stands for the anthem.
Then, Staley, sitting beside her team, found herself doing what she had done all season. She began to speak up.
She had come home with scratched legs after battling all day with the boys. Staley, the smallest thing around the Raymond Rosen housing project in north Philadelphia, kept her mother worried but held her own on the basketball court. Near 23rd and Diamond streets, the intersection where she used to shoot jumpers at a crate fashioned to a light pole, the sign now reads “Dawn Staley Lane.”
Staley brought her North Philly toughness and natural leadership to the University of Virginia. In the final seconds of overtime in the 1990 NCAA East Region final, Coach Debbie Ryan called a play, but Staley raised another idea. Virginia ran Staley’s play, and she drilled the midrange jumper, clinching the team’s first trip to the Final Four.
The next year, a teenage girl stood on the top ledge of a Charlottesville parking garage, threatening to jump. The only person who could talk her down was her hero, Staley.
Staley started her coaching career in her hometown, at Temple University, but she moved in 2008 to South Carolina, where her mom was born and raised. Estelle Staley was a nice, churchgoing lady, Staley says, but one whose eyes you wouldn’t want to meet if you stole her parking spot at the mall.
“Oh, she ain’t letting them get away with it,” Staley says, laughing at the memory. “No, no, no! That window’s coming down.”
Staley is her mother’s daughter in that way. In her early days in Columbia, she went to the same local pizza place almost every day, tweeting love letters to her favorite pies. One day she and her family sat at an outdoor table. No one came to serve them, and the family felt mistreated. Miss Estelle wasn’t having it. They left.
Though her mother died in 2017, Staley hasn’t returned since. In the Book of Staley, right is right, and wrong is wrong.
“I grew up in a house like that,” she says. “There’s really no gray area.”
Queen of the ‘G-Hive’
In Columbia, Staley inherited a program that hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in five years and averaged only 1,802 fans per game the season before she arrived. After her first home loss, as fans headed for the exits inside the nearly-empty gym, Staley searched for a microphone.
She urged everyone to stop walking. She thanked them for their loyalty and made them a promise: If you stick with me, you won’t see many more nights like this.
Twelve years later, they see her around on campus, with a green tea-lemonade in hand, that Starbucks plastic stopper hanging from her mouth. Staley, 50, attends everything from softball games to welcome events for first-year Gamecocks. Students admire her. The bravest approach in awe and introduce themselves.
“Like she was Beyoncé,” says A’ja Wilson, the most decorated athlete in school history, who now plays for the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces.
Beyond campus, Staley has built a fiercely devoted following. In the six seasons before the pandemic, the Gamecocks led NCAA women’s basketball in attendance, averaging 12,185 fans during the 2019-20 season. Beyoncé has her Beyhive; Staley calls their superfans the “G-Hive.” After the title in 2017, fans got into a bidding war for the right to have the special edition, state-issued Gamecocks license plate, “WB 33” (the team went 33-4 that season). The queen of this hive rolls around in a matte black Mercedes-Benz SUV nicknamed “Michelle” after the former first lady, and her license plate reads: “WB 1.”
“When she came to the program, you could pick wherever you wanted to sit in the arena,” says Judi Gatson, a veteran newscaster in Columbia and avowed G-Hive member. “[Now] tickets to her program are the hottest ticket in the state.”
She has accomplished this with unapologetic Blackness at a school, in a state, that in many ways clings to its Whiteness. The Gamecocks won their 2017 title with an all-Black roster; only two years before, the Confederate battle flag still flew over the South Carolina State House a few blocks away. The university erected a golden statue of A’ja Wilson outside the arena. But on this same campus, the wellness and fitness center named after Strom Thurmond, a segregationist politician, remains.
Last summer, when a group of current and former athletes called a news conference in front of the fitness center, demanding a name change, Staley showed up to speak.
“She’s the head ball coach in South Carolina,” says Kayin Jones, executive director of Black Lives Matter South Carolina. “Being an African-American woman and really excelling in her craft … taking them to national prominence, she’s done a hell of a job. And in doing so, it has allowed her voice to be that much louder. Her bullhorn, she can turn the volume up on it.”
‘I can’t not’
In May, Staley couldn’t keep up with her thumbs. Days after watching George Floyd die under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, her fingers pecked out her raw response, typos and all.
The tweet started Staley toward becoming one of the state’s most outspoken advocates for racial justice. She wrote an essay in the voice of a fed-up Black woman. She hopped on Zoom calls with local reporters, knowing she was the only prominent Black coach at South Carolina to speak about Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times in the back by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis.
“Activism has always been here,” U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) says of Columbia, the state capital. “It just hasn’t been very well known.” Staley, he says, is “reflective of that kind of attitude that’s been in Columbia for a long, long time.”
Her Twitter account was her biggest pulpit, and she has made a habit of going back at people, even if they identify themselves as Gamecocks fans. When a disgruntled fan claimed to be done with Staley after her support of Blake, she vowed to be herself: “Take it. Leave it.” It’s a strange sight, an SEC coach urging someone to get off her timeline, but Staley does it routinely. She delights in leaving trolls “at the altar,” as she calls it.
Staley knows she has upset some fans with her tweets and her takes on race in America. She knew there would be backlash, especially when all nine Black women on the team decided before the season to stage a silent protest.
The Gamecocks coaches, including Staley, and one White player typically stand for the anthem. The other White player, sophomore Olivia Thompson, started the season sitting with her teammates. Then, before the Dec. 3 game against North Carolina State, Thompson told Staley that sitting didn’t send a strong enough message for her. She wanted to take a knee.
“ ‘They’re going to tear her ass up.’ That’s what I said to myself,” Staley recalls. So before the anthem played, Staley walked over to Thompson, placed her right hand over her player’s shoulder and took a knee beside her.
“A big thing with her is how she stands up for the people she cares about and the things she cares about,” Thompson says. “I feel like there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us as players.”
Soon after that game, Caslen met with the team. He’s a fan of Staley — “She’s a national icon and everybody loves her. When I get around her, I get a little nervous,” Caslen says — but he wanted to talk with her players about sitting for the anthem.
He maintained that their method wasn’t working with the people who needed to hear their message. Staley encouraged them to listen, but she also encouraged them to speak their minds, and they did.
After Caslen left, Staley addressed her team. She told them she wanted them to know the other side of the argument — to try to understand where people who shared Caslen’s views were coming from. She told them to take it all in.But, like Caslen, she never told the players who had chosen to sit what to do. Before the next game, and every game since, they sat.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Monday, November 30, 2020
Oy
There's a very strong sense of "Why bother?" when I look at the whole sportsball thing right now, but there's also something compelling about people trying to muddle through and stumble forward.
The NFL’s effort to complete a season during a pandemic reached a farcical stage Sunday. The Denver Broncos played without a quarterback on their roster, resorting to practice-squad wide receiver Kendall Hinton, a former college quarterback, after Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles were deemed to have been in close contact with fellow quarterback Jeff Driskel, who tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Broncos did not complete a pass in the first half of their 31-3 loss to the New Orleans Saints. They finished with one completion and two interceptions in a game that bore scant resemblance to NFL football.
“This is a challenging year,” Saints Coach Sean Payton said during a video news conference. “I felt bad for the cardboard fans.”
The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers saw their game postponed from Thursday to Sunday to Tuesday as a rash of Ravens players, including reigning MVP Lamar Jackson, tested positive. If they play, the Ravens will use a husk of their roster. As of Sunday night, Baltimore had 20 active players on its covid-19 reserve list, including nine Pro Bowl picks from last year.
The San Francisco 49ers scrambled to find somewhere to practice — and, once they return home, play — after Santa Clara County announced emergency measures that included a prohibition on contact sports. They might play home games in an empty stadium in San Diego.
The possibility that the NFL might not finish the season has been real since the start. “I tell people, ‘I think we’re going to start, hope we’re going to finish,’ ” Ravens team doctor Andrew Tucker said in August. The season has never felt more under existential threat than this week.
Within the league and within broader society, the coronavirus is going in the wrong direction. Some of the damage is self-inflicted. The Broncos’ quarterbacks were ruled ineligible in part because they did not wear masks during a position meeting. The Ravens suspended a strength and conditioning coach who ignored some protocols in the facility.
If the season can finish, it will be because some players and staffers handled an unfair burden. Hinton is one of them. On Saturday morning, he was a rookie practice-squad wide receiver who last played quarterback in 2018. On Sunday afternoon, he started against the Saints and completed one pass on nine attempts. It was an unfair situation that somebody had to endure, and Hinton deserves credit for doing so.
Tyreek Hill reminded everyone he is the NFL’s ultimate weapon. Usually, Hill’s value to the Kansas City Chiefs lies more in what he is capable of than that what he does. Defenses rearrange themselves to account for his world-class speed, and it allows more space and favorable matchups for the rest of Patrick Mahomes’s receivers. It’s a trade opponents are willing to make, because treating Hill like any other receiver, even any other very good receiver, is inviting defeat.
On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dared to treat Hill like any other receiver, to let their safeties hang in the middle of the field and read Mahomes’s eyes rather than shade behind Carlton Davis, the cornerback assigned to him. It led to one of the greatest receiving days in NFL history.
Hill had two touchdowns and 203 yards — before the end of the first quarter. He finished with 13 catches for 269 yards and three touchdowns. He backflipped into the end zone on one score. On another, a 75-yard strike, Mahomes’s pass traveled 61 yards in the air, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
Mahomes, who threw for 462 yards as he toppled Tom Brady, would be an all-time great if he passed to traffic cones. With Hill at his disposal, the game becomes unfair.
It’s Derrick Henry season. The Tennessee Titans seized control of the AFC South by stomping the Colts in Indianapolis, 45-26, while scoring 35 points in the first half. Henry, capitalizing on the absence of Colts defensive lineman DeForest Buckner, carried the Titans with 178 yards and three touchdowns on 27 carries.
Given the calendar, Henry’s performance came as no surprise. Henry has been exceptional all season; he leads the NFL with 1,257 rushing yards. But this is the time of year when he dominates. In the past three years from Week 12 on, Sunday included, Henry has rushed 248 times for 1,541 yards (6.2 per attempt) and 19 touchdowns in 12 games. Over a full 16-game season, those totals would project to 2,054 yards and 25 touchdowns.
Last year, the Titans rode Henry to the AFC championship game as he ran for more than 100 yards in seven of his final nine games, playoffs included. It may be happening again. The Titans are 8-3 and in position to host a playoff game.
The Minnesota Vikings had a good day. The Vikings started 1-5 and suffered an inexplicable loss to the Dallas Cowboys last week. They still suddenly emerged in the NFC playoff picture Sunday. They overcame Carolina Panthers rookie safety Jeremy Chinn scoring defensive touchdowns on consecutive snaps and survived kicker Joey Slye’s last-second, game-winning field goal attempt, which sailed wide left.
The Vikings’ 28-27 comeback victory put them in the playoff race at 5-6, and other NFC wild-card contenders stumbled. The Arizona Cardinals’ loss at New England, during which Kyler Murray seemed physically compromised after he sprained the AC joint in his shoulder last week, dropped them to 6-5. Tampa Bay’s loss knocked it back to 7-5.
The 49ers also put themselves on the edge of playoff contention with an upset of the Los Angeles Rams. As good of a coach as Kyle Shanahan is, though, they might have too many injuries to be considered a realistic playoff threat.
The Detroit Lions got what they deserved. With their season circling the drain after an unsightly Thanksgiving loss to the Houston Texans dropped them to 4-7, Lions ownership made the inevitable choice Saturday to fire coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn. Patricia and Quinn were dismal stewards of the franchise, with Patricia going 13-29-1.
The Lions emerged from the woebegone Patricia era looking like fools. They chose Patricia after they fired Jim Caldwell, who went 36-28 with three winning seasons in four years, including one 11-5 season. That might not sound like much, but for the Lions, Caldwell’s tenure represented a miracle. They had not had three winning seasons in four years since 1997, and they had not won 11 games since 1991.
The Lions fired Caldwell because he had not won a playoff game and they felt they needed a new coach to reach that level. After Patricia’s two-plus seasons, they are much farther away from that goal. Patricia alienated players and, despite coming from New England as a defensive coordinator, leaves behind a defense ranked 26th in points allowed last year and 30th this season.
The Lions need a coach capable of resetting the culture, someone players will play hard for. Maybe they can give Caldwell a call.
Anthony Lynn is in trouble. The Los Angeles Chargers have a promising young roster and, in rookie Justin Herbert, a burgeoning superstar at quarterback. They may have to ask if they have the right coach to lead them into the future.
Seven of the Chargers’ eight losses this season have come by one score. Part of that may be rotten luck, but clock management contributed to that record. The end of Sunday’s 27-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills may have been Lynn’s most troubling moment yet.
The Chargers probably would have lost no matter how their final drive unfolded, but their bizarre decision-making eliminated any chance they had. Herbert heaved a Hail Mary on fourth and 27 to Tyron Johnson at the 2-yard line. Down 10, and with no timeouts and the clock ticking below 40 seconds, Herbert handed off to Austin Ekeler. The Bills stuffed it, and the clock ran down to six seconds, turning an improbable comeback to impossible.
Lynn called it “completely miscommunication,” declining to elaborate. The Chargers’ offensive line pass-blocked, which suggests Herbert thought a run had been called even when it hadn’t. Even if Lynn and his staff didn’t call the run, it remains an eyesore in an overall picture that also includes a 3-8 record.
Don’t overlook Raheem Morris. He improved his record as an interim coach to 4-2 as the Atlanta Falcons flattened the favored Las Vegas Raiders, 43-6. Morris would be 5-1 had Todd Gurley II gone down inside the 5-yard line rather than scoring with the Falcons in position to drain the clock against Detroit.
Morris going 4-2 after taking over an 0-5 team is impressive enough. His résumé goes far deeper. He has already been a head coach; he became one of the youngest in league history when the Buccaneers hired him in 2009. Morris lasted three seasons, which included a 10-6 year with Josh Freeman at quarterback. He has been both a defensive coordinator and, briefly with the Falcons, a passing game coordinator, giving him rare experience on both sides of the ball at a high level.
It would be understandable if the Falcons want a fresh start after firing Dan Quinn. Morris would be a candidate for any team in need of a coach. A charismatic New Jersey native with his experience sounds like exactly what the New York Jets could use.
The NFL’s effort to complete a season during a pandemic reached a farcical stage Sunday. The Denver Broncos played without a quarterback on their roster, resorting to practice-squad wide receiver Kendall Hinton, a former college quarterback, after Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles were deemed to have been in close contact with fellow quarterback Jeff Driskel, who tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Broncos did not complete a pass in the first half of their 31-3 loss to the New Orleans Saints. They finished with one completion and two interceptions in a game that bore scant resemblance to NFL football.
“This is a challenging year,” Saints Coach Sean Payton said during a video news conference. “I felt bad for the cardboard fans.”
The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers saw their game postponed from Thursday to Sunday to Tuesday as a rash of Ravens players, including reigning MVP Lamar Jackson, tested positive. If they play, the Ravens will use a husk of their roster. As of Sunday night, Baltimore had 20 active players on its covid-19 reserve list, including nine Pro Bowl picks from last year.
The San Francisco 49ers scrambled to find somewhere to practice — and, once they return home, play — after Santa Clara County announced emergency measures that included a prohibition on contact sports. They might play home games in an empty stadium in San Diego.
The possibility that the NFL might not finish the season has been real since the start. “I tell people, ‘I think we’re going to start, hope we’re going to finish,’ ” Ravens team doctor Andrew Tucker said in August. The season has never felt more under existential threat than this week.
Within the league and within broader society, the coronavirus is going in the wrong direction. Some of the damage is self-inflicted. The Broncos’ quarterbacks were ruled ineligible in part because they did not wear masks during a position meeting. The Ravens suspended a strength and conditioning coach who ignored some protocols in the facility.
If the season can finish, it will be because some players and staffers handled an unfair burden. Hinton is one of them. On Saturday morning, he was a rookie practice-squad wide receiver who last played quarterback in 2018. On Sunday afternoon, he started against the Saints and completed one pass on nine attempts. It was an unfair situation that somebody had to endure, and Hinton deserves credit for doing so.
Tyreek Hill reminded everyone he is the NFL’s ultimate weapon. Usually, Hill’s value to the Kansas City Chiefs lies more in what he is capable of than that what he does. Defenses rearrange themselves to account for his world-class speed, and it allows more space and favorable matchups for the rest of Patrick Mahomes’s receivers. It’s a trade opponents are willing to make, because treating Hill like any other receiver, even any other very good receiver, is inviting defeat.
On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dared to treat Hill like any other receiver, to let their safeties hang in the middle of the field and read Mahomes’s eyes rather than shade behind Carlton Davis, the cornerback assigned to him. It led to one of the greatest receiving days in NFL history.
Hill had two touchdowns and 203 yards — before the end of the first quarter. He finished with 13 catches for 269 yards and three touchdowns. He backflipped into the end zone on one score. On another, a 75-yard strike, Mahomes’s pass traveled 61 yards in the air, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
Mahomes, who threw for 462 yards as he toppled Tom Brady, would be an all-time great if he passed to traffic cones. With Hill at his disposal, the game becomes unfair.
It’s Derrick Henry season. The Tennessee Titans seized control of the AFC South by stomping the Colts in Indianapolis, 45-26, while scoring 35 points in the first half. Henry, capitalizing on the absence of Colts defensive lineman DeForest Buckner, carried the Titans with 178 yards and three touchdowns on 27 carries.
Given the calendar, Henry’s performance came as no surprise. Henry has been exceptional all season; he leads the NFL with 1,257 rushing yards. But this is the time of year when he dominates. In the past three years from Week 12 on, Sunday included, Henry has rushed 248 times for 1,541 yards (6.2 per attempt) and 19 touchdowns in 12 games. Over a full 16-game season, those totals would project to 2,054 yards and 25 touchdowns.
Last year, the Titans rode Henry to the AFC championship game as he ran for more than 100 yards in seven of his final nine games, playoffs included. It may be happening again. The Titans are 8-3 and in position to host a playoff game.
The Minnesota Vikings had a good day. The Vikings started 1-5 and suffered an inexplicable loss to the Dallas Cowboys last week. They still suddenly emerged in the NFC playoff picture Sunday. They overcame Carolina Panthers rookie safety Jeremy Chinn scoring defensive touchdowns on consecutive snaps and survived kicker Joey Slye’s last-second, game-winning field goal attempt, which sailed wide left.
The Vikings’ 28-27 comeback victory put them in the playoff race at 5-6, and other NFC wild-card contenders stumbled. The Arizona Cardinals’ loss at New England, during which Kyler Murray seemed physically compromised after he sprained the AC joint in his shoulder last week, dropped them to 6-5. Tampa Bay’s loss knocked it back to 7-5.
The 49ers also put themselves on the edge of playoff contention with an upset of the Los Angeles Rams. As good of a coach as Kyle Shanahan is, though, they might have too many injuries to be considered a realistic playoff threat.
The Detroit Lions got what they deserved. With their season circling the drain after an unsightly Thanksgiving loss to the Houston Texans dropped them to 4-7, Lions ownership made the inevitable choice Saturday to fire coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn. Patricia and Quinn were dismal stewards of the franchise, with Patricia going 13-29-1.
The Lions emerged from the woebegone Patricia era looking like fools. They chose Patricia after they fired Jim Caldwell, who went 36-28 with three winning seasons in four years, including one 11-5 season. That might not sound like much, but for the Lions, Caldwell’s tenure represented a miracle. They had not had three winning seasons in four years since 1997, and they had not won 11 games since 1991.
The Lions fired Caldwell because he had not won a playoff game and they felt they needed a new coach to reach that level. After Patricia’s two-plus seasons, they are much farther away from that goal. Patricia alienated players and, despite coming from New England as a defensive coordinator, leaves behind a defense ranked 26th in points allowed last year and 30th this season.
The Lions need a coach capable of resetting the culture, someone players will play hard for. Maybe they can give Caldwell a call.
Anthony Lynn is in trouble. The Los Angeles Chargers have a promising young roster and, in rookie Justin Herbert, a burgeoning superstar at quarterback. They may have to ask if they have the right coach to lead them into the future.
Seven of the Chargers’ eight losses this season have come by one score. Part of that may be rotten luck, but clock management contributed to that record. The end of Sunday’s 27-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills may have been Lynn’s most troubling moment yet.
The Chargers probably would have lost no matter how their final drive unfolded, but their bizarre decision-making eliminated any chance they had. Herbert heaved a Hail Mary on fourth and 27 to Tyron Johnson at the 2-yard line. Down 10, and with no timeouts and the clock ticking below 40 seconds, Herbert handed off to Austin Ekeler. The Bills stuffed it, and the clock ran down to six seconds, turning an improbable comeback to impossible.
Lynn called it “completely miscommunication,” declining to elaborate. The Chargers’ offensive line pass-blocked, which suggests Herbert thought a run had been called even when it hadn’t. Even if Lynn and his staff didn’t call the run, it remains an eyesore in an overall picture that also includes a 3-8 record.
Don’t overlook Raheem Morris. He improved his record as an interim coach to 4-2 as the Atlanta Falcons flattened the favored Las Vegas Raiders, 43-6. Morris would be 5-1 had Todd Gurley II gone down inside the 5-yard line rather than scoring with the Falcons in position to drain the clock against Detroit.
Morris going 4-2 after taking over an 0-5 team is impressive enough. His résumé goes far deeper. He has already been a head coach; he became one of the youngest in league history when the Buccaneers hired him in 2009. Morris lasted three seasons, which included a 10-6 year with Josh Freeman at quarterback. He has been both a defensive coordinator and, briefly with the Falcons, a passing game coordinator, giving him rare experience on both sides of the ball at a high level.
It would be understandable if the Falcons want a fresh start after firing Dan Quinn. Morris would be a candidate for any team in need of a coach. A charismatic New Jersey native with his experience sounds like exactly what the New York Jets could use.
John Madden once described linemen in general (and defensive players in particular), from the era when he played for the Eagles as "just a buncha fat guys who tried to get in the way."
This season kinda reminds me of a time in pro sports when there was a very small number of really great athletes who could dominate an entire league while everybody else was there because the teams needed warm bodies to fill out the rosters.
Over the last 40 or 50 years, those warm-bodied-roster-fillers have been developed into some pretty terrific athletes. But now that a lot of teams are being stripped of talent in "support roles" - guys who're very good in their own right - those few truly elite players can really shine.
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Sportsball
Don't get me wrong, I love those silly games. There's greatness in sport that's important as a way to learn and reinforce life-lessons for us.
But when it becomes an obsession, or we substitute a game for our actual lived experience, then we lose perspective and it becomes a real problem. Bread-n-circus and all that.
So anyway, we've crowned an NBA champion, and a hockey champion, and now a baseball champion - all of which has gone almost unnoticed, and the unnoticing of which I think is an OK thing.
It's still there. The scribes have written it all down. It's just that there's no great chunk of intellectual or spiritual real estate being occupied as team owners and TV executives demand we pay billions of dollars just to watch grown men chasing small inanimate objects around.
I'm just sayin' - anyway:
ARLINGTON, Tex. — Validation came at 10:37 p.m. Central time, wearing the classic home whites of the Los Angeles Dodgers and streaming out of the first base dugout for a dogpile near the pitcher’s mound of Globe Life Field. The World Series was over. The Dodgers’ tortuous, 32-year wait for another championship was over. The 2020 baseball season, bent and misshapen by a global pandemic, was over. And validation had arrived to drape itself on each and every one of them.
“This is our year!” Manager Dave Roberts roared at the trophy presentation.
The line for validation was long and illustrious in the wake of the Dodgers’ 3-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 6 of the 116th World Series, and all of them — the players, the manager, the brain trust, the franchise and the sport itself — would get their turn.
But before that could happen, there were other matters to deal with — this being a baseball season being played in a pandemic. As the Dodgers celebrated their championship on the field, many of them wearing masks, one key figure was missing: Third baseman Justin Turner, the longest-tenured Dodgers position player, had been pulled before the seventh inning after his latest coronavirus test came back positive, a result that arrived midgame. He was immediately put in isolation but was later spotted on the field celebrating with his teammates.
“It’s a bittersweet night for us,” Commissioner Rob Manfred told Fox Sports on the field. “ … We learned during the game that Justin was a positive. He was immediately isolated to prevent spread.”
It was the first positive test for a player in more than six weeks, and coming in the middle of the final game of the World Series — it was perhaps a fitting conclusion to a season that at times seemed endangered by the spread of the virus. It also appears baseball barely avoided a messy outcome had the series been extended to a seventh game.
And for a while Tuesday night, Game 7 seemed to be a strong possibility. The fact the series never got there was due in large part to the stunning and highly questionable pitching move the Rays made in the bottom of the sixth inning, when they pulled ace Blake Snell from a magnificent performance — a move that backfired immediately when the next two Dodgers hitters, Mookie Betts and Corey Seager, gave Los Angeles the lead.
“I’m not going to ask any questions,” Betts said of the Rays’ pitching change. “[Snell] was pitching a great game … They made a pitching change. It seems like that’s all we needed.”
Maybe the Dodgers would have won anyway if the Rays — who make no apologies for their analytic bent and data-driven decision-making — had left Snell alone. But no one will ever know.
“Analytics is a huge part of our success,” Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier said. “And sometimes it can bite you in the butt.”
In any case, few who watched this series could walk away with any other conclusion than the better team prevailed in the end — an outcome that itself provided a measure of validation for the legitimacy of the 60-game regular season and 16-team postseason, both of which were dominated by the Dodgers.
“This team has been incredible all throughout the season. … We never stopped,” said shortstop Corey Seager, who was named World Series MVP, adding that trophy to the one he earned as MVP of the National League Championship Series. “You can’t say enough about what we did this year.”
Monday, October 28, 2019
What Goes Around
The universe wears a karmic smile today.
Imagine a World Series game where the crowd has turned out to root root root for the home team, and they don't just boo when POTUS is introduced - they chant "LOCK HIM UP. LOCK HIM UP."
Then imagine the owners of the Washington Nationals preemptively asking the White House not to put them in the position of having to decline an invitation from POTUS to join him at the game.
Any given POTUS gets too much credit when things are good. And sometimes, when things are bad they get blamed too much.
You know things ain't right when POTUS is such a colossal fuckup that not even a baseball game comes away without the guy leaving a giant shit stain on it.
Imagine a World Series game where the crowd has turned out to root root root for the home team, and they don't just boo when POTUS is introduced - they chant "LOCK HIM UP. LOCK HIM UP."
Then imagine the owners of the Washington Nationals preemptively asking the White House not to put them in the position of having to decline an invitation from POTUS to join him at the game.
Any given POTUS gets too much credit when things are good. And sometimes, when things are bad they get blamed too much.
You know things ain't right when POTUS is such a colossal fuckup that not even a baseball game comes away without the guy leaving a giant shit stain on it.
Sunday, July 07, 2019
Overheard Today
Rapinoe: Fuck that Trump guy - I'm not goin' to the fuckin' White House.
45*: You haven't won yet - maybe you shouldn't be trash talking.
Rapinoe: Hold my beer, assface - and watch this.
Tuesday, April 09, 2019
Monday, April 08, 2019
Wednesday, July 04, 2018
Keeping It Real
In honor of the World Cup, I wanted to show a little clip of young soccer players working hard to emulate the very best of heroes.
Friday, February 16, 2018
The LeBron Thing
“The climate is hot,” James said. “The No. 1 job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn’t understand the people. And really don’t give a fuck about the people. When I was growing up, there was like three jobs that you looked (to) for inspiration. It was the president of the United States, it was whoever was the best in sports and then it was like the greatest musician at the time. You never thought you could be them, but you can grab inspiration from them.”
“It’s at a bad time. While we cannot change what comes out of that man’s mouth, we can continue to alert the people that watch us, that listen to us, ‘This is not the way,’” James said. “It’s not even a surprise when he says something. It’s like laughable. It’s laughable and it’s scary.”
Here's the whole video:
“It’s at a bad time. While we cannot change what comes out of that man’s mouth, we can continue to alert the people that watch us, that listen to us, ‘This is not the way,’” James said. “It’s not even a surprise when he says something. It’s like laughable. It’s laughable and it’s scary.”
--LeBron James
Here's the whole video:
Saturday, November 05, 2016
Today's Tweet
My interview of the night ended with Bill Murray asking if I recycle. He handed me his champagne bottle. #WorldSeries #Cubs pic.twitter.com/66jzAshLL9— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) November 3, 2016
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Muhammad Ali
Dead yesterday at 74
Once upon a time, there was a Meat Market type bar in southeast Denver called The Sports Page, and the gimmick was that they showed old movies of sporting events on a coupla big projection screens. My all-time fave was this fight between Ali and Cleveland Williams. The first time I saw it, I was so mesmerized that I just sat there swilling beer and watching - I got drunk enough to fall asleep in my car out in the parking lot afterwards.
Here's what I posted on his birthday this year
Here's what I posted on his birthday this year
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Today's Tweet
.@HasanMinhaj @alikrieger @beckysauerbrunn @hopesolo on soccer's pay gap https://t.co/Z6prgL1KVd #EqualPlayEqualPayhttps://t.co/klQk75dkK8— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 7, 2016
Saturday, February 06, 2016
Pretending It Matters
On the eve of Super Bowl 50!!!
So I guess the NFL needs to lose the bullshit Roman numerals thing when it comes to their annual biggest fucking thing in the whole world ever? 'Cuz the 'L' looks like a typo or something? Or it looks more like "Super Bowl - LARGE". I've never quite understood why we feel the need to dress that kinda shit up by using substitutes for numbers - like we're trying to make it look more important than it actually is - why can't we just let it be what it is?
So anyway, fuck that shit. But wait - Roger Goodell had to sign off on the '50' thing, so maybe Mr Goodell is of more use than tits on a bull after all(?) Or maybe, actually, somebody in Goodell's office handled it; well, more likely, it was somebody in the marketing department; or the PR firm that the NFL outsources all the important decisions to...so yeah, Roger Goodell is about as useful as tits on a bull.
So anyway, fuck that shit. But wait - Roger Goodell had to sign off on the '50' thing, so maybe Mr Goodell is of more use than tits on a bull after all(?) Or maybe, actually, somebody in Goodell's office handled it; well, more likely, it was somebody in the marketing department; or the PR firm that the NFL outsources all the important decisions to...so yeah, Roger Goodell is about as useful as tits on a bull.
Anyway, here's an oldie from Jay Smoothe - it starts as a reaction to some weird shit that flew around the web because of LebRon and Miami and the NBA and whatever, but Jay does a good job widening it out into a decent perspective on the pathology of Sportsball Mania in general.
Anyway - Go Donkeys! Losing a 6th Super Bowl is a record that could stand for a very long time. Make me proud, fellas.
Anyway - Go Donkeys! Losing a 6th Super Bowl is a record that could stand for a very long time. Make me proud, fellas.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Today's Quote 2
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." --Yogi BerraYou don't have to be a baseball fan to love a guy like Yogi.
Wednesday, September 02, 2015
Plays Like A Girl
Yeah right - not even in my dreams on my best fuckin' day. Get hip, Dub - this ain't your grandpa's feminism.
AMAZING pic.twitter.com/OzyS12yF5P
— Things Athletes Like (@Things4Athletes) August 21, 2015
Friday, May 08, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
Don't Look Now
First of all, Keith is again dancing perilously close to the edge of the abyss. Implicit in the piece is a criticism of ESPN. Big rich companies don't like it when you let "outsiders" peek behind the furniture. And your colleagues don't like being called out for their willingness to devote way more time to their hair and their investment portfolios than they spend on actually doing their jobs as reporters.
Second - substitute "government agency" every time Keith refers to a sports figure or a team or a league. And now we've got the typical (ie: huge fucking) problem of "reporters" acting in the capacity of PR flacks instead of telling us everything we need to know to make well-informed decisions on just about anything.
Wanna know what's killing off our little experiment in self-government? Well, there aren't any simple answers to that, but we could start with this: Press Poodles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)