My Champion of the Month for January is an easy choice: The entire staff at Charlie Hebdo.
Enough said.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
My Super Bowl blog.
Okay, let's face reality. 11 of 12 footballs did not deflate themselves. 11 of 12 from the Patriots and none of 12 from the other team? If you think that's just a coincidence you are deluding yourself. Someone deliberately deflated those footballs and quite obviously Tom Brady knew about it.
The question is what should the punishment be.
Deflate-gate reminds me a bit of the George Brett Pine Tar incident. For those of you too young to remember, in July of 1983 the Kansas City Royals were playing the New York Yankees. George Brett had just hit what appeared to be a crucial homerun that gave the Royals a late lead. But Yankee manager Billy Martin said "Not so fast!" and pointed out that Brett had too much pine tar on the bat he had used. Originally the homerun was disallowed and Brett called out. The Royals protested the game and their protest was eventually upheld. The homerun counted. The Royals won the game.
Now the question in the pine tar incident was never about if Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. He clearly did. The question was the punishment. "Let the punishment fit the crime" it is said. Did having too much pine tar on his bat mean that what appeared to be the game winning homerun should be overturned? Or did it merely mean that an umpire should tell Brett "Hey, take a little of that pine tar off your bat." MLB finally ruled (quite correctly I think) the latter should apply.
That's the question right now in deflate-gate. Does Brady & co. deflating the footballs mean they should be disqualified from the Super Bowl? Of course not. It's way too late for that. A $25,000 fine and a loss of a draft pick is what the rulebook seems to call for
Of course, I think most teams out there would quite willingly pay a $25,000 fine and lose a draft pick for the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl. I know the Minnesota Vikings certainly would!
Tom Brady and Bill Belichik did themselves no favors in speaking out over the incident with their "Golly gee whiz, how did that happen?" denials. They should have merely said "Hey, we have a game to prepare for" and let it go. Because this will be the real punishment for the New England Patriots: Loss of esteem. Like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire and all the others in baseball, we will no longer look at them as we did before.
Champions? No. Real champions don't cheat
Okay, let's face reality. 11 of 12 footballs did not deflate themselves. 11 of 12 from the Patriots and none of 12 from the other team? If you think that's just a coincidence you are deluding yourself. Someone deliberately deflated those footballs and quite obviously Tom Brady knew about it.
The question is what should the punishment be.
Deflate-gate reminds me a bit of the George Brett Pine Tar incident. For those of you too young to remember, in July of 1983 the Kansas City Royals were playing the New York Yankees. George Brett had just hit what appeared to be a crucial homerun that gave the Royals a late lead. But Yankee manager Billy Martin said "Not so fast!" and pointed out that Brett had too much pine tar on the bat he had used. Originally the homerun was disallowed and Brett called out. The Royals protested the game and their protest was eventually upheld. The homerun counted. The Royals won the game.
Now the question in the pine tar incident was never about if Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. He clearly did. The question was the punishment. "Let the punishment fit the crime" it is said. Did having too much pine tar on his bat mean that what appeared to be the game winning homerun should be overturned? Or did it merely mean that an umpire should tell Brett "Hey, take a little of that pine tar off your bat." MLB finally ruled (quite correctly I think) the latter should apply.
That's the question right now in deflate-gate. Does Brady & co. deflating the footballs mean they should be disqualified from the Super Bowl? Of course not. It's way too late for that. A $25,000 fine and a loss of a draft pick is what the rulebook seems to call for
Of course, I think most teams out there would quite willingly pay a $25,000 fine and lose a draft pick for the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl. I know the Minnesota Vikings certainly would!
Tom Brady and Bill Belichik did themselves no favors in speaking out over the incident with their "Golly gee whiz, how did that happen?" denials. They should have merely said "Hey, we have a game to prepare for" and let it go. Because this will be the real punishment for the New England Patriots: Loss of esteem. Like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire and all the others in baseball, we will no longer look at them as we did before.
Champions? No. Real champions don't cheat
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
I want to touch on a subject near and dear to my heart today: The deplorable state of the sport of boxing.
Last Saturday night a man named Deontay Wilder defeated Bermane Stiverne to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. Sort of. Well, not really at all, actually. I'm not sure anyone alive considers Deontay to be champion other than Deontay himself.
It wasn't that long ago when pretty much everyone could name the heavyweight champion: Frazier, Foreman, Ali (of course!), Holmes. I bet when Ali was reigning 90 to 95 percent of Americans would have identified him as champion. How many Americans today could name the true heavyweight champion? I would bet less than 5%. And even that might be pushing it.
That is partly because there are no fewer than four men claiming the current title. The WBA itself recognizes three! They recognize a super champion, who has the overall heavyweight title, but then the WBA must have its own champion along with that super champion. And then for some reason they also recognize something called the "interim" heavyweight champion. (Which leads me to believe the folks running the WBA have no idea what the word "interim" means...they just like the way it sounds.)
The situation is worse for the middleweights. That proud division of Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano and Marvin Hagler has no less than six champions at the moment.
Every sport expands. Some of you readers will remember when Major League Baseball consisted of 16 teams, eight per league. The top two teams in each league would meet in the World Series without any sort of playoff system. Now there are 30 MLB teams and eight of them make the playoffs. Football, basketball and hockey have seen similar expansion. But here's the thing. There is still only one World Series. Still only one Super Bowl. And only one team emerges as champion.
Imagine for a moment that instead of one Super Bowl each year we had three. (Or four. Or five.) Let's have Green Bay play New England in one. Baltimore vs. Seattle in another. And in still another how about Denver vs. Minnesota. Yeah, I know the Vikings don't really belong, but hey it's been so long since they've seen a Super Bowl and that match up would really sell!
As silly as that situation seems, that is exactly what goes on in boxing! So many fighters fighting for so many championships that no one really cares anymore.
Boxing needs to get it's act together. Literally. One champ per division. If something doesn't change in boxing soon, the sport is doomed.
Oh, and PS. The one true Heavyweight Champion of the World is Wladmir Klitschko. Sorry Deontay.
Last Saturday night a man named Deontay Wilder defeated Bermane Stiverne to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. Sort of. Well, not really at all, actually. I'm not sure anyone alive considers Deontay to be champion other than Deontay himself.
It wasn't that long ago when pretty much everyone could name the heavyweight champion: Frazier, Foreman, Ali (of course!), Holmes. I bet when Ali was reigning 90 to 95 percent of Americans would have identified him as champion. How many Americans today could name the true heavyweight champion? I would bet less than 5%. And even that might be pushing it.
That is partly because there are no fewer than four men claiming the current title. The WBA itself recognizes three! They recognize a super champion, who has the overall heavyweight title, but then the WBA must have its own champion along with that super champion. And then for some reason they also recognize something called the "interim" heavyweight champion. (Which leads me to believe the folks running the WBA have no idea what the word "interim" means...they just like the way it sounds.)
The situation is worse for the middleweights. That proud division of Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano and Marvin Hagler has no less than six champions at the moment.
Every sport expands. Some of you readers will remember when Major League Baseball consisted of 16 teams, eight per league. The top two teams in each league would meet in the World Series without any sort of playoff system. Now there are 30 MLB teams and eight of them make the playoffs. Football, basketball and hockey have seen similar expansion. But here's the thing. There is still only one World Series. Still only one Super Bowl. And only one team emerges as champion.
Imagine for a moment that instead of one Super Bowl each year we had three. (Or four. Or five.) Let's have Green Bay play New England in one. Baltimore vs. Seattle in another. And in still another how about Denver vs. Minnesota. Yeah, I know the Vikings don't really belong, but hey it's been so long since they've seen a Super Bowl and that match up would really sell!
As silly as that situation seems, that is exactly what goes on in boxing! So many fighters fighting for so many championships that no one really cares anymore.
Boxing needs to get it's act together. Literally. One champ per division. If something doesn't change in boxing soon, the sport is doomed.
Oh, and PS. The one true Heavyweight Champion of the World is Wladmir Klitschko. Sorry Deontay.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)