Don't Go to the Olympics for Any Reason You Can Think of

As yet another highly ranked golfer decides not to go to Rio to compete in the Olympics, the question is, why should anyone go to Rio?

I have been boycotting the Olympics for years, though I did watch some of the track and field, my favorite sport, on the internet in 2012. Why boycott? What are the Olympics, really? They are a monumental waste of time wrapped in layers of hype and propaganda. I object to so much.

First, the nationalism is reprehensible. Who cares what country produces the best runner/archer/rower? It should only matter who the best is, and not very much even then. Instead of bringing people together, the Olympics continues the tribalism that drives people apart. For every encounter between Iranian and American athletes that shows we can get along on a personal level, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people viciously rooting against rival nations' competitors and embracing ridiculous stereotypes while keeping a running tally of medals for each nation in order to justify their political and nationalist beliefs.

Second, the whole scene is a bloated mess. I understand most of these sports are so bogus no one cares about them in between the Olympics, but quit pretending anyone really cares about them during the Olympics except people sadly lacking in better things to do (granted, a group larger than it should be). The athletes are almost universally so single-minded and self-centered it takes a crack team of editors and producers hours to make anyone care for them more than any other average person working hard to get their family ahead. The "human interest" side of the broadcasts has become an industry unto itself, and it may possibly be the most annoying thing about trying to watch some of the competitions.

Third, where does all the money go? The greatest racket in sports involves getting people to volunteer to work their asses off for almost nothing while charging huge rights and ticket fees to watch them do it. Meanwhile the poobahs in the IOC must stay in presidential suites for free and walk around in tuxes while their cousins get the catering contracts. It is all so pathetic you have to keep your head in the ground to watch it in good conscience.

Fourth, it is financially untenable for the host countries. No one should have to foot the bill for this outside the IOC itself. Best case scenario is the IOC builds its own facilities somewhere easy to get to with a lot of space (Canada?) and they have the games there every four years. But no taxpayer money should be spent on events of this nature. There is no way it is going to help your city or your nation in the long run, especially now, with all the events and sports you have to find places to stage.

Fifth, and more specific to Rio, it is a serious risk to your and your family's health to go to that place. The Zika virus is bad enough, but Rio is not a safe or healthy place to compete at anything save perhaps best bikini backside as long as you stay out of the water.

Finally, do we really need an Olympics to find out who is best? Every "sport" represented has its own governing body and championships or it wouldn't be eligible for the Olympics. All that is missing from any of them is the blanket network coverage, the talking heads, the corporate sponsors, and the VIPs bathing in privilege. In short, everything that is wrong with sports is amplified (off the charts) during the Olympics, all for diversions and for nothing important at all.

So, again in 2016 I will not be watching. I hope nothing terrible happens, but there is no way things are going to go well.

Enough Nostalgia and Opinion! More Real Action!

The Golden State Warriors had a fantastic season, winning the most regular season games ever. They barely defeated the Thunder in the seventh game of the Western Conference finals, but then blew out the promising Cavaliers in the first two games of the finals. So, what are the featured articles on the ESPN website? One was Magic Johnson's claims his Laker teams could beat the Warriors. Prior to that, I have seen similar claims from Scottie Pippen about the Bulls. Is this news? Who cares? I guess I am writing about it on a blog no one reads, but what passes for news anymore? We have always heard these speculative things: Is Tiger better than Jack? Could Martina handle Serena? It begs the question: are sports so boring that thinking about possibilities is far more interesting than the events themselves? How many pregame hours were spent talking about the Super Bowl this year? The game itself was an afterthought to the pundits' opinions. Both were pretty boring to me. Today, while the fascinating NCAA track and field championships were underway, there were several articles on ESPN.com about college football rankings, some called the "way too early" ones. No articles about the remarkable performances by the fine student athletes on the track were on the main page.

We still watch lots of live sports, but outside the Super Bowl and NFL primetime games, audiences are scant. I have a terrible time watching live events: too many commercials, too many interviews and taped segments, too much talking and not enough action. I prefer this era to my childhood when we hoped against hope there would be some track on the Wide World of Sports, or that someone would show the Bislett Games. Still, at some point one has to wonder what it is all about. The athletes think it is all about them, but TV makes it seem like it is all about TV. Somewhere in the middle is me taking a nap.

Why I Like the Masters Best

Having just seen another fascinating Master golf tournament, I have to admit it is still the best one of all the majors and other professional tournaments, but it is still far from perfect and often extremely annoying to watch.

Why is it great? Of all the big tournaments, it is the only one at the same site every year. The only other yearly venue that comes close is the Players Championship. When someone eagles 15 at Augusta on Sunday, you know exactly what they face on the last three holes and what their chances are of success. Today, I noticed they had not shown one person hit a ball in the water on 12, and most of the contenders had hit very nice, if slightly conservative shots, into the green. It seemed pretty tame despite its notorious reputation. The 12th at Augusta is not the 17th at the TPC, but it is very tough and anything to the right of the flag is high risk. So, when I saw Spieth's swing on the tee, I immediately snapped to attention, as it looked like he hit it to the right. The rest is history: epic collapse, but without hitting that many bad shots (the chunk on the first penalty was one of those, though).

The Masters also has "tradition." While it overemphasizes this, like Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, we like some of our traditions for the Masters. About the only other major golf tradition is having the final round of the men's U.S. Open on Father's Day, which is not that big a deal. Even oversold tradition matters. Will they still be talking about Gene Sarazen's albatross in 30 years, or Nicklaus shooting 30 on the second nine at age 46 to overtake a choking Norman and Ballesteros? You betcha!

Finally, the course is spectacularly eye-catching and is a place where nearly anything is possible, from epic collapses to spectacular comebacks and surges up leaderboards. A little known French player shot 83 yesterday and 68 today.

That said, it is still a tough go at times watching it. The demands on the announcers to say "patrons" instead of crowd or spectators, "second cut" instead of rough, and "second nine" instead of back nine is the tip of the iceberg. From the pretensions of the CBS announcers, including "Sir" NIck Faldo and his blabbering (don't try to diagram his sentences) and Jim Nantz's funereal reverence, to the repeat on every broadcast of the honorary starters teeing off, the audioanimatronic spiel by the Vice President (I believe his mouth is the only thing that moves, and just barely), and the constant displays of the flora and fauna while actual golf is being missed try my patience. This year my pet peeve was every hole announcer's compulsion to drop some fact about the player they were showing at the time. Example, with only slight exaggeration: "Danny Willett, who was an outstanding junior golfer and who takes his truffle dog out every weekend he is not competing, has this 4 footer for a par." During the early parts of Saturday's rounds, the production team couldn't seem to restrain itself from showing prerecorded piece after prerecorded piece, all while the best golfers in the world were having fits due to the wind conditions. The wind blew Billy Horschel's ball into the water from the green on 15 and we never saw the end result, I presume because the Master's Museum needed a plug, like we could ever go there.

So, watch the Masters for the beauty, the tradition, and the possibility of something memorable happening, but maybe with the volume off and something to read during the commercials and promos, and you will have a pretty good afternoon.

The NFL's Boring Extra Point: An Exciting Solution (with bonus Field Goal fix)

This preseason, the NFL tried extra points from much further out, but they were still routinely made. The success rate at the current distance, with the ball snapped from the two yard line at the center of the field, makes the attempt a foregone conclusion. Though many things can go wrong, they almost never do at the professional level. NFL head coaches are risk averse; they rarely make any decisions other than the orthodox, so they are less likely to be critiqued after the game and can shift the blame on the players when things go wrong (tip of the hat to Gregg Easterbrook). They resisted the 2 point conversion and still rarely try them.

A possible solution that is certainly more complicated than the current one but which would make every approach to the end zone more of an adventure, is this:

If a touchdown is scored and the ball can be touched down in the endzone, rugby style, even if the ground knocks the ball loose: automatic 7 points. If 8 points is needed, can try conversion by two point rules, but for only 1 point. Failure takes a point off the board or gives the opponent the ball at its 40 yard line instead of a kickoff (the scoring team gets to decide which option).

If possession of the ball is maintained into the end zone, with feet/knees/buttocks/arms touching the area of the end zone, but the ball never touches the field surface, current rules apply: 6 points, with option to kick for one or a play for two points at current spot.

A "Break the plane" touchdown (see the famous Drew Brees poke of the ball across the line) with no other body part touching the end zone proper, would only be 5 points, with option to kick for 1 or 2 only, thus 8 points not possible. A play with the player in possession of the ball only knocking down the pylon would also only be 5 points. In my opinion, and many others', these sort of scores cheapen the touchdown, but they should still be worth something. A variation would be the team declining the 5 points to take the ball right outside the goal line for whatever downs remained for the potential for a "proper" touchdown.

The rules for the non-kick conversions would stay the same.

There are too many field goals (yawn) and kickers are too good. Those of you of a certain age will remember when the goalposts hung right over the goal line, with the base in the end zone in play. The NFL moved them back partly for safety but also because kickers were too good and field goals could be made without crossing midfield.

I would like to see one of these solutions, or combinations of them, to limit field goals. 1. Field goals from inside the red zone are worth three points and a kick-off opportunity. Outside the red zone, they are worth only 2 points (a team should be rewarded for advancing the ball farther down the field) and, whether or not they are made, the opponent gets the ball without a kickoff at the site of the spot/kick. 2. The variant of this is that the opponents can always take the ball, rather than allow a kickoff, at the site of the spot. This would preclude the current less gutsy take-the-field-goal-and-onside-kick way of losing when down 11 points or less, especially when inside the 10 (the opponents would always get the ball at least far enough from the end zone to do kneel-downs to kill the clock).

All of these ideas give the players and coaches more to think about and lessen the number of kick-offs and extra points, win-wins all around....

Fixing the PGA Tour's Fedex Cup

The Fedex Cup is intended to increase interest in the PGA Tour by providing side stories to the season, trying to make it about more than the money list, and making the end of the season more exciting. Most people don't know how the points are distributed (the tournaments are assigned points based on strength of field, and points are given to the top ten most of the time) and the play-offs at the end of the year have, at least to most people, a disproportionate influence on the final winner: you may crush the regular season, but a few lip outs in the playoffs could keep you far from the trophy. It doesn't matter too much how it is all set up; attention will always be more focused on who is winning and big names, but here are a few ways to generate more interest and encourage stats geeks to get more involved.

Don't just give points to the top ten, or whatever ranks at the end of the tournament that have been assigned points. Give points for outstanding play by anyone involved. Two points for every eagle, for instance. Ten points for having the low round of the day, and multiply that by whatever margin it is better: three shots better than everyone else would give 30 points. 50 points for a course record (in addition to whatever bonus points one might earn). Reward hot streaks with multiples of consecutive birdies - 6 points for 6 consecutive birdies. This way, even those who miss the cut or who are way out of the lead come Sunday can still get points. It would unhitch the points from the money list and add different names to the mix. Don't punish "others," either. Reward aggression and taking chances - positive reinforcement. Put all this on each player's page on the PGA Tour website. I guarantee this will generate a lot more interest every week and maybe encourage some of the stars to come out and play a bit more.

Fixing Big Time College Football

How to Optimize College Football’s FBS

         There are many forces at work both trying to keep college football as it is and to change it, either to bring big time sports under control and reoriented to the educational missions of the big football schools or to make it fairer and possibly even more lucrative.  The underlying issue will always be who is getting how much money; that is not the point of this article (though I will discuss it at times). I have come up with a mishmash of some common sense and commonly discussed changes coupled with some ideas of my own I have not read or heard anywhere else. This was written in 2013 before the current playoff system was created, but it is still better than what they came up with.

1.    Don’t use the bowls to decide any aspect of who will qualify for a playoff or to determine seeding.  The current, often-corrupt bowl system needs a complete overhaul, and it should only showcase the teams who meet any set standard of “bowl eligibility” who don’t qualify for the championship playoffs.  Any charities affected by the loss of bowl revenues should be compensated from what will surely be massive amounts of TV rights money and ticket sales at the playoff games.  In fact, I think charitable giving (rather than the NCAA coffers) should be one of the primary missions of the FBS playoffs, and most should be educational (scholarships, hardware and software purchases, teacher training.  See #8 for another idea).

2.    Yes, a playoff is the fairest and most lucrative way to decide which team is the best.  I take it for granted the vast majority of football fans are in favor of finding a single champion (there is some charm in the old arguments – they will probably still occur anyway).  I think, with an emphasis on safety, that more than 2 playoff games is uncalled for, so I propose 4 teams be seeded, with #1 playing #4 and #2 playing #3 at neutral sites, with the winners playing again in 7-10 days for the national championship at a neutral site.

3.    Here is one of my original ideas: every FBS team in an eligible conference must keep an open date on a weekend in November.  This weekend will be used to create match-ups between teams in contention for the playoffs and otherwise allow for more interesting pairings.  For example, this past season Alabama might have played Arizona, FSU played Baylor, OSU – Mississippi State, etc.  These games would be settled as late as possible to allow for efficient travel and ticket sales as well as the best match-ups, and each team would alternate a home and away game in this time slot every other year.  The gate would be split.  This would even include games like Tennessee – Colorado, Nebraska – Ole Miss, etc.  Everyone would get one game like this.  It would help keep the playoffs shorter by helping clarify which teams are most deserving.  It would be one of their 12 regular season games, not in addition to the other games.

4.    Along with this schedule shift, any FBS team wanting to be considered for the national championship would not be allowed to play any games against non-FBS schools.  No more lucrative easy games against FCS schools in the early season or to rest up at the end of the year before the conference championships.  The FCS schools will miss out on some money, but they shouldn’t be so worried about that money anyway.  This would also encourage more challenging match-ups between the big schools to help sort out the playoffs.

5.     I would also propose that, for integrity’s sake, any school with a graduation rate below some reasonable standard, say 50%-60% (I would hope it would be higher) in 6 years (with a 6 year scholarship – still only 4 years of eligibility - as well), would be ineligible for the playoffs.  This would be figured over the past 4-5 years (so, some teams with poor graduation rates might know before the season starts they would not be eligible. The student-athletes would be more motivated to keep each other on the right track.). It would be one area where NCAA or other enforcement would be needed to keep schools from cheating on the academics. Also for integrity and health, better and more uniform testing for PEDs (most schools do limited testing and only for drugs of abuse, a hidden scandal), with SCHOOLS receiving bans for players testing positive (yes, this may allow for sabotage, but how paranoid are we. Um)

6.    No game would be played after New Year’s Day (or the second of January should January1 fall on a Sunday).  The playoff games and championship games need not be played right away after the conference championships – time between would allow for students to finish their exams, etc.  There could also be a consolation game for the losers of the first playoff games on New Year’s Day.

7.    No team would be eligible for the playoffs if it lost its last game, even if its only loss was in its conference championship in an unforgettably awesome game. It still lost and is not worthy of further playoffs.  For example, a previously unbeaten Ohio State would not be eligible if it lost to Michigan St. in the championship game.  Since the Big 12 at present doesn’t have a championship game, it would have to have a superior team without a last-game loss to be eligible for the playoffs.

8.    Paying the players at the big football schools is likely inevitable, but I would propose also that revenue from these playoff games be set aside to give to players from the teams, either just in the playoffs, or in the entire FBS, who graduate in 6 years as “seed money” (say, $30-40,000) for their future careers or for graduate school, etc.  It would give even more encouragement to students to stick it out, especially that last semester, with the combines, etc. encouraging most to stop attending classes.

There will be plenty of money to go around as long as licensing fees, etc. continue on the current trend, and I think it will be an even bigger thing.  There will be plenty to talk about to generate more interest: who will be matched up on the open dates, what graduation rates are, feel good stories about student athletes making good with their seed money.  It is a win-win-win-win, with the only losers being some of the big bowl committees, which is fine with me.