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 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.

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.

If players want greater drug penalties, they probably can have them

Out of the latest chapter in Major League Baseball's history with performance-enhancing drugs, the Biogenesis scandal, comes word that players really, really want something to be done, that they're really, really mad about what the cheaters have done to their game. Richard Justice said as much in an interview last night. (To hear the specific comments, go to about the 2:03 and 4:22 marks.)

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And Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher David Hernandez expressed much the same sentiment.

"I think you should be out of baseball. It sounds harsh but at the end of the day you're making it harder on somebody else who is trying to make it in the game. You're essentially ending someone else's career if you're cheating and putting up numbers. You should be gone."

If what Justice is saying is true, and if Hernandez's beliefs are shared by his fellow players, this can happen, and maybe soon ...

... if the players ask for it.

Major League Baseball players have a union, actually, one of the few strong unions remaining in America. They have player representatives to that union, and the union has an executive director in Michael Weiner who is hired by the players to look out for their best interests. If the union membership wants stricter penalties for drug users, what's stopping them from going to Weiner and saying, "Make it happen"?

And if they do, what do you think Bud Selig will do if Weiner marches into the commissioner's office and says, "My membership demands this, and I demand it"? You don't think that Selig wouldn't love to have one of his last achievements as commissioner before he retires to be a suspension program that's not only stricter than anything he ever bargained for, but something the players demanded their union negotiate with him?

My guess is he'd run over a small child to make that announcement.

A blogger's Christmas wish

Dear Santa:

I wasn't actually planning on asking you for anything this year. You have a lot of kids to take care of, and I don't want to take any of your time that could otherwise be spent doing things for them.

However, I think I have been very good this year, if only because I didn't mock my Red Sox fan friends too much, and even helped talk a couple of them down off the proverbial ledge. (And rest assured, if I saw one of an actual ledge, I would make an honest effort to keep him or her from jumping.)

However, I would like to ask you to make this prediction from John Ourand come true:

"MLB leaves Fox: MLB will consolidate its rights with one media company rather than continue with its current structure across three networks: ESPN, Fox and TBS. NBC will make a big push to win the rights. But my guess is that the league opts for ESPN in a deal that will finally include the same TV Everywhere components that other leagues have rolled out. Keeping Turner involved in some form can’t be counted out; think of the NBA’s deal with ESPN and Turner. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some playoff games land on MLB Network, but look for most of the playoffs to be on ESPN (with, maybe, some on TBS) and the World Series to air on ABC."

Thank you,
The Last Honest Sports Fan

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.