Stuff shouldn't matter this much

I came home from work the other night to bizarre message on Facebook from a friend of mine, apologizing for something he wrote during a baseball discussion, that he was having a bad day and shouldn't have taken it out on me.

I literally had no idea what he was talking about.

Actually, I knew what he was talking about, as he was taking part in some trash-talking I was doing with my Red Sox fan friends over the previous week. They were all happy that the Red Sox beat the Yankees a few games, delaying when the Yankees clinched the wild card, and then when the Astros beat the Yankees in the wild card game.

I asked if they enjoyed their team's third last-place finish in four years, with one fluke World Series thrown in (which I called the "Jonas Gray" baseball season because Gray was a scrub who had one great moment). I told them the Yankees would have trouble making tee times after being eliminated because the Red Sox took all the good ones in July, and said the next thing Red Sox fans had to look forward to was Dave O'Brien welcoming them to spring training. (O'Brien replacing Don Orsillo as the Red Sox NESN play-by-play man is both an injustice and a serious thing around these parts, so the reference was hitting way below the belt.)

But even though I think very little of Red Sox fans as a whole, I knew this was just friends giving each other crab, and didn't find any of it offensive, certainly not offensive enough to block my friend (which I didn't know I had done) and then him unfriending me. Blocks were undone, friend status re-established and everythng is cool now.

Always remember folks ... it's only sports. Nothing wrong with throwing yourself into it, but it's not that important in the grand scheme of most of our lives.

* * * * *

Guys, we really need to get over ourselves.

Yes, Jessica Mendoza called the Astros-Yankees game. If you think she analyzes poorly, fine. Maybe she makes bad points, and doesn't know a lot about the game but tries to sound like a know-it-all ... wait, sorry , just had Harold Reynolds on the brain because I saw him do an ad for the MLB At Bat app, saying it's where he gets his information from. Personally, I'd hate to see how uninformed Reynolds is if he didn't have that app.

But I digress.

Jessica Mendoza doing color commentary isn't going to ruin a game because she's a woman, in spite of what some idiots were saying on Twitter, which Molly Knight did a fine job of recording. No one will have to give up his man card for listening, and it won't do any damage to any of the various parts of our anatomy.

I promise.

* * * * *

"First of all I hope your entire family contracts HIV."

The article on the health problems faced by ESPN NFL reporter Ed Werder's daughter and son-in-law is a tough read, even without what the idiot Patriots fan wrote to Werder after he defended Chris Mortensen's Deflategate reporting.

However, while I think Deflategate severed the last bit of the twine tethering most Patriots fans to both humility and rationality, I'm not writing this to pick on them, because who knows if this person even knew of Werder's family situation?

And it could have been a fan of any team who was upset about anything, because apparently, wishing disease on a person's family is what you do.

Just ... stop.

Why should Leonard Fournette have to decide anything?

Today's USA Today has a column from Christine Brennan arguing that even someone as talented as LSU running back Leonard Fournette should be allowed to declare for the NFL draft before he's out of high school three years.

I don't particularly agree with her argument, especially her statement that she'd rather trust talented college football players like Fournette in the hands of college coaches and adminstrators than agents, but I also think we're looking at the whole issue of when college football and basketball players are eligible to go pro the wrong way.

Whether it's after one year out of high school (men's basketball, women's is a little more complicated, but bascially four years; otherwise Breanna Stewart wouldn't be getting ready for her senior year at UConn) or three years (football), when the time comes, we are asking 18- to 21-year-olds, plus whoever is advising them, to make irrevocable decisions about their futures.

Remember ... irrevocable. Once that final decision gets made, before the draft, you can't go back, even if it doesn't turn out as well as hoped. (At least for now ... it could change if a rule allowing basketball undergrads to test the waters goes through.)

Why should the player have to make that decision? Why shouldn't the teams, with the adults who are getting paid to make decisions, have to make them?

Let teams draft whatever players they want, whenever they want to draft them, even if it's after high school. Make the teams responsible for making offers to the players they draft, so the players know exactly what they're getting into. If the player likes the deal, go ahead and sign. If not, go to school and see what the next year brings.

There would be a deadline to sign, and a team that doesn't sign a player it drafts could get some form of compensation. Oh, I'm sure there would be some outcry, since teams wouldn't have full control over the futures of the players in their uncompensated minor league systems, but again, they hire people to make those decisions.

So force them to make them.

Roger Goodell can be a hero ... if he wants to ... but he probably won't

It's safe to say Roger Goodell's reputation isn't the greatest.

However, I have an idea for him that will instantly raise his standing among football fans, even here in New England, where he's the devil incarnate if he doesn't rescind Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension yesterday and grovel for forgiveness for daring inconvenience him in any way.

He can ask the Pro Football Hall of Fame to let Sydney Seau speak.

We learned today that no one will be allowed to speak on Junior Seau's behalf during the Hall's induction ceremony, not even his daughter Sydney, who was listed as his presenter. According to the Hall, it's their call, not the NFL's, and it's simply a fairly new policy that deceased honorees get a longer-than-normal highlight video, but no speakers.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt ... really, let's swallow hard and do it ... and assume there was no pressure at all from the NFL to sweep aside the whole "unpleasantness" of how and why Seau died and that it's just policy.

There's no way they wouldn't let Sydney speak if Goodell asked them to, policy or not.

But we all know that's not very likely.

It's not even as simple as whether Sydney would have called out the NFL about its concussion problem, and the fact that its players are destroying their bodies and their brains. She has said that wasn't her plan.

No, it's that every second spent on Junior Seau is a reminder that he's not there, and why he's not there, no matter the content.

So it's in the interest of both the NFL and the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- which is, after all, an institution that primarily honors the greats of the NFL and therefore has something to lose if the league's reputation is sullied -- to make sure that time is as short as humanly possible.

If I were in charge of sports

I have finally decided to do it -- to list the things I would do if I became Supreme Ruler of the Sports World, capable of making decisions by fiat. I am willing to be a benevolent dictator, in that if the people remember the "dictator" part, I'll try to remember the "benevolent" part.

And we'll start with the development in sports that has been making me pull my hair out all week ...

All NFL contracts would be fully guaranteed --  I've always considered the concept of the "non-guaranteed contract" to be someone oxymoronic. Isn't a contract by its very nature a guarantee that a player will play for a certain amount of time, and in exchange, the club will pay a certain amount of money?

Instead, what we have now in the NFL is a situation where if a team doesn't want to pay a player any more, it demands he rework his contract or cuts him outright. Strangely enough, it doesn't work the other way, that a player can demand more money, and if the club doesn't comply, he becomes a free agent.

Sure, it'll mean lots of bad contracts for aging players whose pay doesn't match their performance. Oh well, too bad ... players are expected to live up to contracts, and so should teams.

Of course, none of this could matter if ...

No salary caps --  Players are the game. Sports is the business it is because of them. No one buys tickets or turns on the TV to watch owners own. They deserve all the money they can get.

"But the rich teams will buy all the best players and win everything!!!" you cry. I know I certainly enjoyed that Dodgers-Yankees World Series last year, but I am willing to consider revenue plans that make sure everyone has a chance, although I don't think it's as big a problem as some claim.

Speaking of deserving money ...

All college athletes would be allowed to be paid -- Maybe the university would pay. Maybe boosters would pay. Maybe endorsers would pay. However, it's done, if someone wanted to pay college athletes, it would be legal.

If Kentucky wants to buy a team of great basketball players ... oh wait, bad example.

If every SEC football team wants to pay all its players ... oh wait, another bad example.

You get my drift.

Staying in college ...

The NCAA basketball tournaments would be run by a straight S-curve -- The top team would play No. 68 and have the No. 8 team as the second seed in its region. The second team would play No. 67 and have the No. 7 team as its second seed.

There wouldn't be any of this crap where Wisconsin might be the second seed in Kentucky's region, even thought the Badgers are definitely not the No. 8 team, because Cleveland is the closest site to both schools. (And is Wisconsin wins the Big 10 title game, it should be a No. 1, rendering the whole discussion moot.)

And while we're at it ...

So long, pods -- If the committee wants to give the top seeds early round games close to home (and congratulations, NCAA, for having yet another subregional in North Carolina; God forbid Duke or North Carolina actually have to travel), that's fine, but otherwise, teams go to the sites the S-curve tells them to.

If a team from the eastern half of the country is in the West regional, it'll have the change to see the country from 33,000 feet.

Generic floors go, too -- I have written about this before, and have not changed my mind.

Regarding who plays in the tourney...

New format for play-in games -- First of all, they would be called just that, "play-in" games. Also, they would all be the lowest-seeded at-large teams, not the split of at-large teams and 16 seeds. Teams that actually won something to get into the tournament should not have to win something else just to make the main bracket. Let the lower-ranked teams from power conferences, who otherwise have just about every advantage when it comes to being chosen, play for bids.

As for college football ...

Four teams are good, but more are better -- The college football playoff would be a minimum of 16 teams, and perhaps 20 or 24 with byes. Every conference champion would get in, plus the best of the rest.

And yes, it would run on an S-curve.

As for the sport that's about to start, even though you wouldn't know it with all the talk of NFL free agents ...

Day games are a wonderful thing -- This is why, with the exception of the ESPN Sunday night game and playoff weekends where there are three or more games in a day, all weekend games would be day games, starting at 1 p.m. locally.

Being able to see the end of a game ... what a concept!

Let's make Ernie Banks smile in Heaven -- Every team would play one single-admission Sunday doubleheader a month. They'd play the first game at 1, retreat to the clubhouse for a half-hour to get ready for the second game, and then play that one. One ticket price would cover both games.

It's a little bit of a break for the fans, and it would also shave about a week from the schedule, lessening the chance of November baseball.

Bring Pete Rose back -- I've always been torn on this one. He bet on his own team's games, so I can understand a lifetime ban, but he never bet on them to lose (and yes, I understand the argument that he may have indirectly by managing the Reds differently on days he did bet), and by this point, letting him back in probably just means he can go in the Hall of Fame and perhaps get work as an ambassador of some type. I highly doubt he'll be managing again.

So I'll let him back in the game so he can go in the Hall of Fame.

Be consistent on cheaters -- Until someone tells me why it's OK for guys who doctored baseballs to be in the Hall of Fame but not guys who doctored their bodies, I expect the writers to either vote for guys involved with PEDs or move to throw guys like Gaylord Perry out. And, by the way, they have to go tell Perry personally.

Shift away -- If a team knows where someone is going to hit the ball, why not let them arrange their defense accordingly? If hitters don't like it, they can actually learn how to hit differently. Yes, it might change their precious routines, but the best baseball players in the world (even Brendan Ryan) should be able to figure it out.

Changing gears (see what I did there?) ...

You're paid to race the whole race, so do it and don't whine -- I'm not tuning in to the Insert Sponsor Name Here 50; I'm watching the Insert Sponsor Name Here 300/400/500/600, so I expect drivers to try the whole time. If they don't, and they complain about guys who do, they can give back their prize money.

Let's go old-school -- NASCAR needs to find a way for its top divisions to race at North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, South Boston, the Milwaukee Mile and other tracks that may not be as lucrative or architecturally majestic, but are still fun.

A bit of a business lesson ...

If you don't take yourself seriously, no one else will, either -- If one of your best and most-recognizable players isn't playing this year because another team is paying her more not to play, that's a bad thing, and it makes you look like a joke. You really should do something about that.

Also, if there's an announcement about a famous player coming to play in your league, you should make sure he comes when you say he's going to. Otherwise, you also look like a joke.

And finally, even though I'm not sure what I would do to enforce it (although I have a few ideas, being Supreme Ruler of the Sports World and all), some words of advice for fans ...

Don't be f---ing idiots -- While the players are the game, it's your willingness to pay that makes people rich. I get that, but that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want, in spite of what you may have been taught.

You don't get to throw things. You don't get to run onto the field/court/pitch (unless it's a court-storming after a big college basketball win, which I will allow as long as it's safe). You get to boo, but you don't get to make racist, sexist or homophobic remarks.

And while we're on the topic of sexism, any woman athlete is a better athlete than you or I will ever be, and if you actually challenged her at her sport, she would embarrass you.

Think a female sports announcer should just "stay in the kitchen"? Give it a try yourself, and you'll be begging to make her sandwiches. Also, for every woman announcer who you think is terrible, there are 20 men who are as bad or worse. Trust me on this one. Actually, you have to; I'm the Supreme Ruler of the Sports World.

So those are the first-day items. More could be coming as I see fit.

The NFL wouldn't actually do this ... would it?

The other day, I came across a Sports on Earth post by Will Leitch in which he wrote that it's OK to watch the NFL and still be disgusted by the way the league has handled the Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson and Ray McDonald situations (although he doesn't mention McDonald by name).

I won't go too far into his argument (you should read the post for that), but he basically calls the NFL entertaining escapism and claims you can both enjoy the games and still want the league held accountable for basically doing everything wrong when it came to domestic violence among its players.

My feelings about the NFL have been conflicted in recent years. I still enjoy football, and I still enjoy watching the games, but the league's ridiculous, growing self-importance, aided and abetted by the media, repels me more than it attracts me. (I say that while admitting my fascination with both hockey culture in Canada and soccer culture in England, but then again, I don't live in either place.)

There's also the growing evidence that the players are maiming themselves for our entertainment and some fans' acceptance of it and even insistence that nothing be done to rectify it.

Between the two, I'm watching watching less and less than before, and that was even before the last couple weeks. However, my Chargers were on TV against the Seahawks Sunday, and I watched, and I enjoyed the win. I won't lie. I'm not like the friend of mine (who I don't think was wild about football to begin with), who not only won't watch the NFL, she posts photos on Facebook of whatever she's doing on Sundays while her husband watches football. It's actually quite entertaining.

And that was before recent events.

But then Leitch wrote this.

"We can't be so entranced by the games that we let things slide like we have in the past. You can already see how last week's events are going to be spun: It's not (commissioner Roger) Goodell -- who appears to have, in spite of it all, almost universal support from the owners, his bosses -- it's those unruly players. You're starting to see a narrative develop: Those players are out of control. It's time for the league to get tough. Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson ... they're just bad apples. The league just needs to police those players more. They need to come down harder."

When I read that, I thought, "They can't ... can they?" While Rice, Hardy, Peterson and McDonald are all at least allegedly very bad apples, the outrage has been that the league hasn't been tough enough by its own choice. Goodell could have come down on Rice before the in-elevator video was released, when Hardy was convicted, McDonald arrested or Peterson indicted, but he didn't, and neither have the teams absent public pressure.

To make this just about the players, while washing its hands entirely, would be a remarkable bit of verbal jiu-jitsu on the NFL's part.

What's worse, there's nothing to say they wouldn't get away with it.

You know it, and so do I.

Another reason for fans everywhere to hate Boston

"Missing: a seven-pound sterling silver symbol of football excellence. Owner: the New England Patriots. Information: our trophy has been misplaced since 2004 and despite a couple of close calls it has not been returned. The latest information indicates a Southern California surfer named Pete may have it in Seattle."

Just in case you don't get Chris Gasper's point in today's Boston Globe, the Lombardi Trophy belongs to the New England Patriots, even though they haven't won a Super Bowl in 10 years. (Fans in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and San Diego, among others, surely feel their pain.)

And the inclusion of the "Southern California surfer named Pete" is a nice touch, given that because Pete Carroll did not succeed as Patriots coach, he's high on the list of People Who Are Never Allowed to Succeed along with anyone from New York (self-explanatory), Joe Thornton (Bruins phenom who never panned out), Peyton Manning (because God forbid anyone dare think he's better than Tom Brady), Phil Kessel (left Boston for more money) and Drew Bledsoe ("He threw lots of interceptions!" "Brady's better!")

Funny thing is, once the entitled yahoo-ism subsides, Gasper points out relatively intelligently that the Patriots have to take advantage of opportunities to win, and this year could be a good one, given Darrelle Revis' arrival, Rob Gronkowski being healthy (for now), the wide receivers having another year of experience and the return to health of both Vince Wilfork and Jerod Mayo.

So maybe the part about the Patriots "owning" the trophy may have been just a rhetorical device designed to get people reading the column ... except for this at the end ...

"The 12-win seasons that are celebrated now will be painful reminders of championships that might have been if the Lombardi Trophy isn't returned to its rightful place at Patriots Place."

So clearly Gasper means it.

If you're a Boston fan and wonder why people who aren't from Boston hate you and your teams, it's stuff like this ... the belief that because your teams have had a pretty nice 10-year run, you're now entitled to championships. For more, see this from Deadspin. (In the interest of fairness, here's the one for San Diego, which made me feel ashamed to be a Chargers fan.)

But this isn't some idiot Patriots fan saying this; it's one of the lead columnists of the major daily in town.

Michael Sam would be a story if ESPN shut its doors tomorrow

I've seen several of these in the days since the Rams cut Michael Sam, especially since he hasn't found another NFL job.

ESPN keeps looking for excuses as to why Michael Sam is unemployed. Maybe they should look at themselves. Their coverage pushed teams away.
— Skip Bayless (@FunSkipBayless) September 1, 2014

(Yes, I realize I just posted from a fake Skip Bayless account, but it's both representative of what I've seen and not profane.)

Eric Wood of the Bills seems to think so, and so did whomever talked to Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report about it.

@RossTuckerNFL blame that on espn. No one wants the distraction
— Eric Wood (@EWood70) August 31, 2014

GM tells me: "Teams want to sign Michael Sam but fear the media attention." To me, that's cowardice. But that's just me.
— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) September 1, 2014

However, the people who complain about ESPN's coverage of Sam are missing a couple of points, one of which is that plenty of other media outlets have spent time on him, including Peter King's The MMQB, but more importantly ... that Michael Sam, and his attempt to make the NFL, is a legitimate story.

Michael Sam is a fringe NFL player, drafted in the last round, cut in the final cuts of training camp, looking for a spot on someone's roster or more likely a practice squad. All of those are true, and not particularly noteworthy, but Michael Sam being openly gay is a big deal, at least for now.

The NFL has never had an active openly gay player. Jason Collins is the first one in the NBA, and that's just this year. Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League have never had one. So he's unique in that way, but there are also societal and cultural implications to a male athlete being openly gay in one of our major team sports, especially the biggest one and seemingly the symbol for so-called "manliness," the NFL, especially when there are a lot of people who want him to fail not because he's not good enough, but because he's gay.

Granted, ESPN's "shower" segment on Sam was absurd, and they, like any other news organization, can be guilty of beating a story to death, but if a team can't deal with the media coverage he'd bring at the beginning, that's on the team, not the media.

It will be a great day when an NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL player being gay isn't a story, the same way a WNBA player or a Hollywood actor being gay isn't really a story for more than a few minutes. (When my father and I were discussing the news that Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" was gay, something revealed as almost a throwaway line at the end of a larger profile in the New York Times, in spite of the way the Huffington Post reported on it, he almost dismissively said, "I thought everybody knew that already." He, like I, loves the show.)

But for now, it is a story, and for Collins and Sam, it probably will always be a major part of their story, because they were the first.

The dumbest stories in sports (Part 2)

The NFL schedule for next season was released tonight, and apparently that is cause for much rejoicing.

The NFL Schedule will be released tonight. Block off your Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays accordingly.
— ESPN (@espn) April 23, 2014

So that got Mrs. Last Honest and I to thinking ... what sporting events would happen between tonight (April 23) and the first game of the NFL season Sept. 4? Here's what we came up with:

• The remainder of the NBA and NHL playoffs.
• More than four months of the Major League Baseball season, including the All-Star Game.
• The College World Series.
• The Little League World Series.
• The Baseball Hall of Fame induction.
• The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL drafts.
• The World Cup.
• The end of this Premier League season ... and the start of the next one.
• The French Open, Wimbledon and most of the U.S. Open.
• The British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship.
• The Indianapolis 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Grand Prix of Monaco ... all on the same day.
• The WNBA regular season. 
• The Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont.
• The opening of the Canadian Football League season (by the way, they announced their schedule in February).
• The Tour de France.
• The Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight.

But by all means, let's obsess over the NFL schedule.

The problem is TV and money, not just TV

"The view a fan gets at home should not be better than that of the fan in the worst seat in the ballpark." -- Baseball commissioner Ford Frick (quote from "Monday Night Mayhem" by Marc Gunther and Bill Carter)

Although I didn't specifically remember it coming from Frick until I looked it up, I thought of the quote almost immediately when I read Will Leitch's Sports on Earth piece about people not attending football games after a weekend in which three of the four NFL playoff games where threatened by blackouts.

Leitch writes:

"There are many reasons for this, most of them apparent: Games are too expensive to attend, it's often cold, the beer is lousy and overpriced, football games have a dramatically higher lout-to-normal-human ratio than any other sport (and perhaps any other recreational activity, with the possible exception of a Wall Street bachelor party). But the main reason, clearly, is television. Put aside expense, or possible proximity to this person. Football is a sport that is more fun to watch on television than it is in person, and I'm not even sure it's all that close."

I agree ... and I don't.

First of all, the TV-versus-at-the-game issue is not limited to football, and it's nothing new, as the Frick quote above points out. After all, he was baseball commissioner during the 1950s and 1960s.

With the possible exception of hockey because it can be hard to see the puck, despite Fox's best efforts, any sport is better on TV than it is in person and always has been. I remember when my father went to his first NASCAR race in Dover several years ago; he said one thing that took some getting used to was that he wouldn't be able to see a replay when an accident happened.

If you come across an old game on ESPN Classic, MLB Network or elsewhere, even those prehistoric broadcasts make for a better viewing experience than at the game itself. Since I was watching the "Studio 42 with Bob Costas" interview with Reggie Jackson this morning, I'll use his three-homer game in the 1977 World Series as an example.



With a few exceptions (perhaps the people in the right field stands), hardly anyone at Yankee Stadium that night had a better view of what happened that night than the folks watching on TV. But the people at the stadium where there, and they can brag on that for the rest of their lives.

I wrote about the concept of "being there" a little more than a year ago, but being at the ballpark, stadium, arena, rink, racetrack or pitch is the reason to go, even if nothing historic happens. It's about the experience.

The problem is that we may have reached a tipping point, that during a time when television can present the game in more and different ways to people in the comfort of their living rooms than ever before, the cost of being there has maybe, just maybe outstripped the allure of being there.

How far can the NFL go in London?

Last of what eventually did wind up being three in my series about going to England. You can see the first one here and the second one here.

There was an NFL game while I was in London. The Vikings beat the Steelers. Mrs. Last Honest and I are pretty sure we saw Wembley Stadium during the game on our way back from Liverpool.

But had it not been for all the Steelers jerseys we saw in London in the days before the game (there were also Vikings jerseys, but black and gold appeared to outnumber purple about 10-1 based on what we saw), we might not have known the game was even going on.

Perhaps that was a function of not reading a ton of newspapers or watching a lot of TV during that time, and the TV in our hotel didn't even have sports channels (the only soccer game I saw was the Champions League match between Manchester City and Bayern Munich ... in German), but coming from a place where preseason games get endless intense coverage, it didn't seem like there was a lot of hype for the game, even though it did pull in more than 83,000 fans.

We weren't exactly on the outskirts of town, either. We were a short train ride from, and spent a lot of time walking through, both Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, and the only signs we saw of the game were a couple banners one night.

Jacksonville and San Francisco are in London this weekend, and, as an example, the sports page on The Guardian's website as of this writing (Oct. 24 at just after 3 p.m., or 8 p.m. London time) has one NFL story, about the Dallas Cowboys playing in London next year as one of three NFL games in Wembley. The U.S. sport site is, as might be expected, dominated by the World Series, with the two NFL stories on the main page being the announcement of next year's games and how horrible Florida's NFL teams are.

Yet there is talk about an NFL franchise in London, or even a Super Bowl, to which I say, "Fat chance," for various reasons.

1. Getting beyond the inroads already made -- Even the SI piece linked above states that the fan base is not quite there for an NFL team.

"The 'core fan base' in the U.K. is now more than 2 million, according to Chris Parsons, the NFL's senior vice president of international.
That's more than double the figure when the league first brought regular-season games to Wembley in 2007, but still not high enough for a franchise here to be sustainable.
'We've doubled our fan base in the last 3 1-2 to four years," Parsons said. "I'd like to see that at least double again in the next three or four years. That would put us among the top five sports in the U.K. in terms of core fan base.'"

Four million fans sounds like a lot, but if that's over the entire United Kingdom, is it enough to fill a stadium the size of Wembley eight times a year? It will be interesting to see what the attendance figures are as the NFL adds games. Before anyone talks about ramping up to a full schedule, let's see what happens when it's not a once-a-year thing.

Not to mention that a full-scale commitment to the NFL in London -- most likely with an expansion team or a terrible NFL team like the Jaguars (whose owner, Shahid Khan, also owns the Fulham soccer team) -- would require taking on soccer, a sport that may be even more entrenched in the English landscape than the NFL is here. Granted, the lack of anything similar to Major League Baseball, the NBA or NHL in England (more on that later) may give the NFL a vacuum to slip into, but would being a likely distant No. 2 be enough?

2. Playing logistics -- This Kyle Baker blog post pretty much spells out the logistical problems of having an NFL team in London, namely that it's a long way from every other team. I made the flight from Logan to Heathrow, which presumably would be the flight involved for any New England-London game, and while the planes any NFL team would take are certainly much nicer than the very nice British Airways plane I flew, it's still a haul, and I didn't have to play a football game after landing.

And that's the shortest flight.

To make London work, you would almost have to put two teams there, like the Dodgers and Giants did when they moved, so any road team playing there would at least have two games before flying back, but that would still require setting up shop in London for more than a week and finding practice facilities and arranging the schedules so that one London team was always home while the other was on the road and that they played the same opponents (and each other), etc. etc.

It would be really hard. Let's put it that way.

3. Getting people to watch -- When you live in the eastern United States, you don't realize the time implications of traveling east unless you actually go to a city like London, which is five hours ahead.

If I lived in London, the only baseball games I would be able to watch, presumably online if my computer magically allowed me to do that, would be games that start at 1 p.m. in whatever U.S. time zone the game is being played (or the 4 p.m. Fox game on Saturdays), as that would be anywhere from 6 to 9 p.m. London time. American night games, which make up the majority of the schedule? Forget it. Even on the nights I'm inspired to stay awake, a midnight start in London (7 p.m. in the eastern United States), might get you an inning or two.

And the playoffs and World Series? Americans can't stay up to watch. What do you think Brits do?

I would imagine the time difference is a major reason why it would be tough for an American sport to fully catch on in England, although the NFL, with its 1 and 4 p.m. start times on Sundays, would have the best chance. However, I don't think NBC would appreciate "Sunday Night Football" airing at 1 a.m. in London, and it would be nearly impossible to have a Sunday night or Monday night ESPN game in London, no matter how good the team is, because it wouldn't fit a prime-time schedule.

And that brings us to the Super Bowl. As the video in this post notes, London would be an awesome place to hold a Super Bowl. Having been to both New Orleans and London in recent years, London may not be quite as much fun for the Super Bowl traveling circus, especially given the weather in late January or early February, but it wouldn't be far behind.

Except the game would have to start after 11 p.m. local time (which players, fans and media at the game would just love, I say sarcastically) or early afternoon Eastern time in the United States (say goodbye millions upon millions in ad revenue).

In the video linked above, Don Banks of Sports Illustrated suggests playing the Pro Bowl in London before the Super Bowl, which actually would likely serve two purposes if the NFL tried it -- killing the Pro Bowl once and for all and killing the NFL in London.

The NFL can apparently even change the holidays

Merry Christmas, everyone.
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) September 8, 2013

When I saw this, I got a little nervous.

If today is Christmas, I thought, where is my family? Where is the tree? Where are the presents, and what did I even ask for? Why can't I remember seeing my in-laws last night, and where did we go? What happened when Mrs. Last Honest and I went to England, and where are the photos and videos I took? How was Thanksgiving?

On the other hand, the Christmas-morning weather, especially for Massachusetts, was all kinds of awesome.

Then I realized, silly me, that the "Christmas" being referred to was not actually Dec. 25, but rather the first Sunday of the NFL season. I even managed to figure that out without putting on all 9,000 pregame shows that were on today. I swear, every sports network other than MLB Network, NBA TV and the NHL Network has one, and that's coming, I'm sure.

The national mania surrounding the NFL has fascinated me for several years now. How has a sport grown so much in popularity that it dominates the landscape not just during its season, but 12 months out of the year, to the point where the first Sunday of its schedule is cited as on par with the biggest holiday of the year?

There are probably a lot of factors, but the one that strikes me is that the NFL, over the course of the last 50-plus years, if you want to consider the start date to be when Pete Rozelle was named commissioner in 1960 (or, if you're so inclined, the 1958 NFL Championship game), has built to this point where it has convinced the sporting public, with a lot of help from the media, that everything it does is very important.



Between the draft, free agency, various mini-camps, actual training camps and exhibition games between seasons, there is NFL-related activity pretty much all year, and all of it is treated as vital, and therefore worthy of attention, even above sports whose actual seasons, and in some cases playoffs, are happening at the same time.

Another part of the narrative is that the NFL is very hard, and therefore requires intense preparation and maximum effort at all times all year, in a way not unlike the president has to approach the job. It's to the point where a beloved teammate and team leader being cut is only worth noting briefly, lest it take away any focus on the job at hand.

"When a veteran gets cut, we may discuss it privately amongst ourselves, but there’s no ceremony, no coach’s acknowledgement of the missing man. I never saw Mike collect his things from his locker, and I didn’t get to shake his hand. The next morning, it’s as if no one had ever occupied the locker that once read No. 26. In meetings, the agenda is the same as it was the day before: Win today. And somebody who’s no longer in the room isn’t a part of today."

The end result of the NFL taking itself so seriously and emphasizing the importance of everything attached to it, and making sure everyone knows this, is that the media and therefore the fans treat it the same way. It builds so much anticipation that the games are not events in and of themselves, but culminations, the end results of all that came before.

To be clear, the NFL didn't create this from nothing. Football has been popular for decades, but the NFL has done a masterful, textbook-worthy job of stoking that popularity to the point where it sometimes seems like nothing else matters.

Hollander's handbooks and a trip back in time

I don't really know why the New York Times decided to publish a story today about Zander Hollander, but I'm glad they did.

"From 1971 to 1997, Hollander edited sports yearbooks, brick-like tomes known as Complete Handbooks, which in the pre-Internet era were almost holy objects to a certain type of sports-crazed youngster. Here, in one glorious place, was information — statistics, team rosters, records, schedules, predictions for the coming season and more — freed from the restrictions of newspaper column inches and far beyond what a still embryonic cable system was providing."

I was actually thinking about the Hollander handbooks not long ago, remembering for some reason the story in the 1980 handbook (like the others I had as a kid, long lost to time and cleaning, so I'm working somewhat off memory here) about Nolan Ryan being the first player to sign a contract for more than $1 million per year, and how the story about his contract and all the others totalling $1 million fit on a single page, including the box listing all of them.

Actually, thinking of the handbooks I read as a kid reminds me of how different things were ...

... how they told you about every player in the NBA, right down to the last man on the bench, and the brutal honesty about them contained in a couple short paragraphs. Now, you can find out more about any end-of-the-bench player (I chose Fab Melo of the Celtics as an example) than you could ever imagine.

... how "fantasy football" meant the stories in my friend Kenny's NFL handbooks about a team of current stars playing a collection of greats from the past, or Super Bowls years in the future, including as I recall an American team taking on one from the Soviet Union.

... how the handbook was probably the definitive preview of your favorite team's season. Now, you can find previews everywhere, like the one my friend Rob did the other day on the San Diego Chargers that he asked me to review. (I told him, "You probably could have gotten away with five versions of 'Can they stop being undisciplined dumbasses?' and been fine.")

... how enthralled I was reading the handbook for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with the picture of an Eastern European team handball player soaring above a defender to shoot or a photo of the Soviet Union's Uljana Semjonova taking a hook shot. My preteen self wondered how a woman could ever be that tall. Now, people complain when the prime-time hours of the ungodly amount available on TV or online aren't live.

Thinking of the handbooks also made me think about how there has never been a better time to be a sports fan, and how that doesn't seem like enough anymore.

There are more ways to see more sports and read more about sports than there ever has been, and much like I think of my younger self as having lived in the Dark Ages, kids today will probably think of 2013 as a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

If you're willing to spend the time and effort, and sometimes the money, you can watch just about anything you want. During the Stanley Cup finals, I had a grand old time chatting with a Blackhawks fan from Chicago, and have struck up a Twitter friendship with a New England Patriots fan who lives in Miami.

Last night, after reading a terrific piece by Alyson Footer, I had a conversation with her about it. (To be clear, the Harwell example she gives is something positive, not part of the worst anyone did to her.)

@LastHonestSport thank ya!
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport nothing that is of any significance. Couple dumb things said by men in their 80s. I've been incredibly lucky.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport when I first started out in PR, a few male reporters didn't want my help when they called. Didn't think I knew baseball.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

@LastHonestSport In late 90s, Ernie Harwell came to me for a few things when Tigers player Astros. Never forgot that. Felt like mill bucks.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) August 13, 2013

All of that is great, but I fear it has the effect of not much being special anymore. Maybe the Super Bowl (although that may be as much a cultural event as a sporting one) or a rare instance of going to a game, but because so much sports is available so often, it becomes disposable. Miss one game? There's another one on today ... or tomorrow ... or the next day.

So most importantly, thinking about the handbooks reminds me of how good we sports fans have it today.

Call me naive

I had this chat on the Twitter machine with Dave Zirin the other day about the recent releases of Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo.

@LastHonestSport @EdgeofSports In case I missed it, do you think @brendon310 and @ChrisWarcraft were cut for their political outspokenness? 

@EdgeofSports @LastHonestSport @brendon310 @ChrisWarcraft Not entirely, but utterly naive to not think it was a factor.

@LastHonestSport @EdgeofSports Do you think it was the general outspokenness, the particular topic or that their arguments are more liberal?

@EdgeofSports @LastHonestSport yes

It's the easiest line in the world to draw -- player is outspoken advocate on divisive issue (gay rights) ... player gets cut ... player must have been cut for that reason. It's not like Zirin is the only one who sees it a possibly more than a coincidence. Even Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton thinks so.

"I just think sports officials ought to be honest about what the heck is going on, same way I think public officials should be honest about what's going on, so that bothers me probably as much, if not more, than the actual decision," Dayton said.

The thinking may even have the added advantage of being true, but ... and I say this as someone who thinks Kluwe and Ayanbadejo should have been Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year last year ...

... how do we know?

First, let me state the obvious. Forget about supporting gay rights; Adrian Peterson or Joe Flacco could check every box on the gay stereotype list so much that the ghost of Liberace says, "Dude, ease up," and they'd still be gainfully employed.

But that actually sort of proves my point. For instance, Kevin Seifert of ESPN, who does think that Kluwe's advocacy, if it didn't outright get him cut, didn't help him, pointed out that he didn't have a particularly good year, is over 30 and would cost a lot more money than his likely replacement, rookie Jeff Locke.

As for Ayanbadejo, even he said he was cut because he was a 36-year-old special-teams player and there are younger, less-expensive players who do what he does (after an initial report implied he may think otherwise), and he acknowledged that the Ravens have always supported him.

In other words, Kluwe and Ayanbadejo are in that vast class of players who are good enough to be on teams, but can easily be replaced by someone younger and cheaper who does the same thing. It's the same thing that could work against Jason Collins in free agency.

Could a team hold Kluwe's or Ayanbadejo's politics or Collins' homosexuality against them while hiding behind age, salary or production? Of course they could. But unless someone in an organization comes right out and says it, or gives a damn good indication of it, it may be impossible to know.

Call me naive.

CBS wants me to think Danny Woodhead = Arian Foster

So I'm watching the Patriots-Jaguars game, and the camera lingers on Patriots running back Danny Woodhead, complete with the announcement that he is only one of two players in the NFL with four rushing touchdowns and two receiving touchdowns this season.

The other? Arian Foster of the Texans.

Not only did the announcer say it, there was a graphic to go along with it. Clearly, the intent was to make me think, "Wow, Danny Woodhead must be really good if he and Arian Foster are the only to backs in the league to do something!"

I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that coming into today's game, Woodhead had ... exactly four rushing touchdowns and two receiving touchdowns. (He caught his third literally as I started typing this.)

As for Foster? He started today with two receiving touchdowns .... and 14 rushing touchdowns.

However, now that I think about it, Woodhead catching a touchdown pass means he's the only back in the NFL with four rushing touchdowns and three receiving touchdowns.

So to heck with Arian Foster or Adrian Peterson (he of no touchdown catches) ... give me Danny Woodhead!

Too far ... way, way too damn far

Like President Barack Obama, don't like President Barack Obama, I really don't care. I tend to like him more than not, but everyone's entitled to his or her own opinion.

But this, this is not acceptable. (Be warned; right from the title, there's a lot of a certain word starting with "n.") It would be bad enough if people were complaining that the president talking of an unspeakable tragedy was interrupting their football, but the language is vile and racist and unbecoming anything other than a sub-human.

(My friend KB sent me a note that while some people seemed proud of themselves when she checked the Twitter machine afterward, a bunch deleted their posts, deleted their accounts or apologized. Having not checked myself, I'll take her word for it. I'm guessing there are a lot of people who thought they'd never be found out in the vast Twitterverse and are feeling a serious bout of blabber's remorse.)

Is this what we've come to as sports fans, that the understandable desire for watching sports to be an escape -- more than once this weekend I switched to a random college basketball game to get away from Newtown coverage for a little while -- that we respond to real life daring to intrude with "stick to sports" at best and outright racism at worst?

No, I know we haven't. But it still makes me sad.

P.S. -- My guy Poopsie and I had been having a conversation on Facebook about my recent sabermetrics post, and he sent me a note that he had some new information on Adam Dunn, but didn't feel right, given current events. I told him to lay it on me, that the diversion would be nice for a few minutes. He did, and then I told him something I noted watching the Rockets-Celtics game after reading a story on the Rockets in Sports Illustrated. It was nice.

It's time to stop whining about safety

So it looks like we're going to find out what kind of brain injuries Junior Seau may have had, if any, and, as Dave Zirin puts it, the NFL "holds its breath" about the results, it's more than just the league hierarchy that needs to take a long, hard look at itself.

It would be nice if players like James Harrison who insist that hitting with their heads or hitting guys in the head is just the way they play the game could give it another thought now that one of their heroes is dead.

But if would also be nice if fans quit bellyaching over how the NFL has gone "soft" if it tries to actually, you know, keep players safe. Will Bunch wrote a terrific article the other day about the toll football takes on the body and the mind, and it contained this paragraph about the attitude among fans that needs to be overcome.

"Some folks say that these players knew what they were getting into, that they understood they were risking their future health for glory and riches in the present, and that there's nothing that can be done about this problem short of closing down the National Football League."

Which is easy for people like Jobe Morrison to say when they're commenting on stories like the Harrison one above. After all, it's not their lives.

"Harrison is grown up. It's the NFL that needs to grow up and understand fans want smashmouth football. Not pansy football. Not flag football. Football as we kno (sic) it is becoming too soft."

"players and the nfl need to UNDERSTAND this.... Once you sign the contract to step onto the field and play, you UNDERSTAND the consequences. You can't protect players from injuries, it is GOING to happen....... it's your risk. Don't like it? no one wants you around. LEAVE."

But some of the guys whose lives have been affected by the game understand what's at stake.

"Those who are saying the game is changing for the worse, well, they don't have a father who can't remember his name because of the game. I'm pretty sure if everybody had to wake with their dad not knowing his name, not knowing his kids' name, not being able to function at a normal rate after football, they would understand that the game needs to change. If it doesn't there are going to be more players, more great players, being affected by the things that we know of and aren't changing. That's not right."

Who was it who said those words?

One Junior Seau.

Does God care about sports? Has anyone asked?

As we prepare for The Most Important Football Game Ever (at least outside the SEC) tonight, there has been some thought that perhaps the Broncos have a 12th man the likes of which Texas A&M could never summon up.

But for all this talk, there's one thing I haven't seen ... any comments from Him.

You know ... Him.

I understand He's a bit busy these days with His creation and all, but He has lots of representatives down here. Surely there's someone who should be able to hook up a reporter for a quick Q&A with Him. After all, it doesn't have to be a long interview if He doesn't have a lot of time. It could just be one question:

"Do You have anything to do with who wins sporting events?"

Now, if a reporter manages to score this interview, and there is time for something a bit more substantial there are a few more questions I'd suggest:

(If yes to the first question) "Lots of athletes love You, but they can't all win. How do You decide?"

(If no) "Then why do so many people think You do? Is there anything You'd like to tell them?"

 "How do You explain someone being a great player in spite of the absence of 'God-given talent,' or 'You-given talent,' as it were?"

"Did you ever wish Evander Holyfield would just shut his pie hole?"

"Is the BCS a venial or mortal sin?"

Maurice Jones-Drew may hide concussions, but not cluelessness

Yes Maurice, the NFL is now worried about concussions because it's getting sued, and serious injuries are just an "occupational hazard."

Why don't you ask Ted Johnson about that "occupational hazard," while you still can?

Because you can't ask Andre Waters, or Dave Duerson.

And I don't know if you watch much hockey, but wouldn't be great to see Sidney Crosby on the ice?

How much for that game in the window?

"Are rising sports broadcast fees going to lead to pay-for-only-what-channels-you-want?"

The above Tweet from Darren Rovell linked to this video on sports rights fees and the possibility of a la carte sports programming in the future.






Whether or not it's through special packages of channels that only subscribers have to pay for or some other means, it's likely that sports fans (and all consumers of media, really) will eventually have to answer the question "How much is seeing that game worth to me?"

In a way, the option already exists, at least to a point. The money I pay to watch baseball online is worth it for me to see the Yankees when they're not on national TV or playing the Red Sox. Even though it costs a lot less, my wife and I decided to not renew our Hoop Streams subscription to watch UConn women's basketball online because the lousy games, uneven streaming and terrible announcing were no longer worth it.

I like to watch boxing on HBO, but we didn't order the channel for that reason; it's just a nice bonus, and I wouldn't have subscribed to it just for that purpose. I also don't think there's a fight I would order a pay-per-view for as opposed to reading about it the next morning or catching the highlights somewhere.

Even our choice of satellite provider and package had at least something to do with sports, as we picked the one with the most options. We also got a lot of channels we never watch, but that's the way it's set up right now.

So how far will this go? Will sports programming move beyond even subscribing strictly to sports packages into pay-per-view for the big events, including eventually the biggest of all ... the Super Bowl?

I don't know the answer to that, but it does seem like there's a lot of untapped financial potential for sports programming, and someday, someone's going to figure out ways to get their hands on more of that money.

Welcome to my world

So you've found your way here. Good. So what can you expect?

Well, basically, it's anything in sports that gets my attention ... whether it's funny, ticks me off or just gets me to thinking. I hope you'll agree with my opinions. If not, tell me why I'm wrong, but be prepared to back it up.

As for the name, it's just a wee bit sarcastic, but it's partly based on my belief that we don't have a lot of honest discussion in sports (or in life, for that matter), because we refuse to acknowledge one basic fact.

We are all hypocrites.

I'm not saying that as a criticism, because for the most part, I don't think it's a character flaw. It's human nature. For example, I'm a fan of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and can't stand Kyle Busch. (The only reason Kurt Busch isn't the biggest tool in NASCAR is because his parents decided to have more children.) If Kyle spins someone out to win a race, I'm probably yelling at my TV how that dirty little #@*!! punk wrecked someone again, but if Dale does it, I'd be cheering like a madman.

Since we all bring our biases, let me give you mine. I'm a fan of the Yankees (which can be rough, since I live in New England) , the Chargers, Syracuse University, UConn and the University of Wisconsin (by marriage), Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, the Bruins, the Celtics and Liverpool. You can probably figure out who I don't like based on that list.

So that's a little bit about me. Thanks for coming to my sandbox. Let's play.