ESPN's Leftism Eats It Alive

The idiocy of leftism is being proven by the collapse of ESPN and especially the kid-glove treatment of the deranged Jemele Hill.

For Roger Goodell It's Here We Go Again

The No More ad campaign against domestic violence was launched by the same people responsible for the Law & Order Special Victims Unit version - and now a lot of people have egg on their face with the New York Giants involved in controversy over former punter Josh Brown.


Here we go again.   Controversy erupted days before the New York Giants flew to London to face the LA Rams because documents related to Josh Brown were published.   Brown was charged in allegation of some twenty incidents of domestic violence with his now ex-wife; the charges were eventually dropped, and the NFL slapped him with a one-game suspension for 2016, this after their self-congradulatory promise to impose a minimum six-game suspension for incidents after the controversy over Ray Rice.   Documents from that previous investigation have now surfaced, including admissions on Brown's part to acts of abuse.

It led to an interview by Mike Francesca of Giants co-owner John Mara, and Mara's at-times evasive answering intensified controversy over the NFL's handling of domestic violence.   It intensified further when John Urquhart, the sheriff of King's County, WA that investigated Brown when he was with the Seahawks, angrilly responded when the league passed the buck of blame toward him in claiming he covered up for Brown when the league tried to investigate the allegation.  

It is of course impossible to do anything but call Roger Goodell a liar, having proven himself a liar in serial fashion in his multiple failures to objectively lead the league; when presented opportunity to lead, he instead launched aggression against the New England Patriots and the New Orleans Saints as well as numerous players and coaches, all out of personal spite.   As lawyer Peter Ginsberg now famously put it during the disinformation campaign against Tom Brady, "it's very difficult to have a genuine, authentic disagreement with Roger."  

Goodell's competence as commissioner has long been exposed as nonexistent.   Backstabbing and ass-covering define Goodell's governing philosophy, and complete inability to handle the inner workings of the game has more and more become the dominating characteristic of Goodell.   The league's operations department - and general command of situations - has dumbed itself down with Troy Vincent now Goodell's second-in-command, and the league's approach to investigations by now reflect Goodell's fundamental character - perfunctory and utterly insincere.


*****


But the issue here goes beyond the manifest dishonesty of Goodell and the incompetence of Goodell and his underlings.   Even a competent commissioner would not be able to adequately handle the issue of domestic violence because there simply is no simple answer beyond dealing with individual incidents on their own individual basis based on what the law says about it.    What the law says about a situation can't be dismissed by the league - if the law says charges against Josh Brown are dropped, the league can't deny him employment.   And has anyone else noticed that Ray Rice has by all accounts been a legitimate law-abiding citizen despite being railroaded out of the league by Roger Goodell's ass-covering campaign?

As it is the government - not the most dependable of God's creatures, to coin a Spencer Tracy phrase - has multiple and conflicting definitions of sexual assault.   It of course is an old story - back in 1990 (October 12 specifically) the Christian Science Monitor claimed (through Marilyn Gardner) there were five million women assaulted per year with an assault averaging one every fifteen seconds; as Thomas Sowell noted in The Vision Of The Anointed the figure was grossly unreliable, first for not differentiating between unmarried sex partners and legally binded husbands, second for not differentiating actual violence from a minor push or shove (where the figure was roughly 500,000 - and as Mike Florio shows, the actual incident that got Josh Brown suspended was him grabbing his now-ex's wrist ) - and even the ratio was mathematically wrong, as it would in fact be one every 6.3 seconds.  

And unnoticed is the hypocrisy of the media's umbrage about Josh Brown as with the earlier jihad about Ray Rice, for the media once again has been in essence advocating double jeopardy - punishing the individual for the same incident again.   At what point do people figure out that double jeopardy doesn't work?   Or that it's an actual crime to re-punish someone for the same incident? 

There are no winners in this - Roger Goodell proves again he has zero competence to lead the league, the media proves again it is not capable of rational analysis.   And a lot of people have egg on their face as a result.

To Sporting News And NFL - Real Resolutions

The Sporting News Football preview magazine is out and it includes a piece by writer David Steele offering ten resolutions the league ostensibly needs to address. "There is so much the NFL needs to do better," Steele writes, "the best route is resolutions.....the change what badly needs to be changed."

Reading Steele's resolutions warrants a response in the form of ten resolutions the league needs to address that are not quite the same as those in David Steele's piece:




The NFL needs to admit being wrong about Deflategate - "Either one side has to give or the two sides have to settle." It's actually simpler than that - the league in the person of Goodell lied about Deflategate from the beginning, has repeatedly been exposed as a liar by his own transcripts and by the league's own court admission to having no evidence, and has repeatedly been proven wrong about the CBA's much-heralded Article 46. This fight has dragged on as it has for only one reason - Goodell cannot bring himself to admit he was wrong, because to do so is to admit he was never qualified for his job, as the punishment is based exclusively on personal spite unsupported by legitimate evidence. It's been his pattern from his very first year and the "Spygate" lie he told the world.


Stop criticizing scouts for the questions they ask players - Steele rages about a Falcons scout asking Eli Apple a "transparently homophobic question," as though making players have to stand up to ugly accusation or ugly truth is somehow a violation of someone's rights. The real world is a nasty place and not making players confront it only makes them weaker.


Stop criticizing Thursday Night games for something that isn't true - It has been a stupid criticism since the league's Thursday Night package expanded first to half a season, then to the full season.   The gripe about safety concerns and work conditions is flat-out false.   There is no increased injury risk, and the lack of evidence of increased incidence of injury shows this.   We heard about how the games themselves aren't well played because of lack of preparation time - this is the one valid criticism to be made of the Thursday Night package.   The other criticism to be made is the decision to make teams wear horrid one-color uniforms that make no sense.


Cancel overseas games - This is a criticism Steele and others are correct about.  The fact is the London series has accomplished nothing for the NFL game, a game unique to the US and Canada and to a lesser extent Germany and Austria.   It cannot be spread overseas.   The NBA game is more fundamentally marketable overseas and even the NBA will not place a team or two in an overseas market.  

Instead, the league should work with other football leagues like the Canadian League, the Arena League, and leagues in Germany and Austria to better make the game stronger and in those markets that truly want it.   An NFL-CFL-Arena-Germany-Austria alliance absolutely can work.


Stop criticizing the Washington Redskins name - Oddly this controversy took a back seat in 2015 but the attack on the Redskins name remains utterly invalid - and frankly dishonest.  "Rubbing an insult in the face of an entire race of people" is a lie.  And who makes the accusation?  Intellectuals, who are not and never will be legitimate spokesmen for anything.   Intellectuals, as historian Paul Johnson has shown, were the ones who created the ethnic bigotry that destroyed the Versaille treaty after 1918 and thus helped create the second world war, and it has been intellectuals who have created ethnic and class hatreds for generations.   The Redskins are a football team, and their goal is the ultimate societal positive - WINNING.  

There is no validity to argument against Indian sports names, and there never will be.



No more franchise relocation and stadium blackmail - The Rams were forced down LA and everyone else's throats for no reason - and as ATHLON SPORTS showed, even the league saw there was no evidence LA even wanted a team.  St. Louis is a sports town where LA is not.   And the Raiders want a stadium in Las Vegas - a non-sports town proven to be such by non-support of minor league teams and the nearby Speedway - when they have the money to simply refurbish the old Alameda Coliseum.   Stadiums are worth building and worth having - that's not an argument for public financing of them - it's exactly the opposite.   The owners need to buy their own buildings and stay in their real home markets - of which Los Angeles, London, and Las Vegas have no claim to be. 



Players need to stop off-season training and instead rest - Baseball writer Tony Massarotti has noted why pitchers cannot reach 250 or more innings a season anymore - because they train so much in the offseason that they're worn out to where they can barely reach 200 innings - "Train less and throw more" is Tony Massarotti's alternative.  It is a valid criticism for football as well - players need to train less February-to-mid-July and instead hit more during OTAs, training camp, preseason games, and in-season practices.   Stop wearing yourselves out before OTAs or camp or preseason.


Make the teams play pre-season games for real - The last three seasons have all seen often-graphic lack of team preparation during the first month of the season, and the reason why is not only overtraining by players before camp starts but the approach to handling preseason games.   "Don't let players get hurt during preseason" is the wrong approach - the teams as functioning competitive units simply are not prepared enough once the season starts precisely because of conservatism during preseason.   It was never that way when teams made camp a true grind and made players play preseason games like they mattered - because objectively speaking preseason games do matter.  They serve as the competition that properly prepares team units to function.



Start giving the players benefit of the doubt - Goodell's tough-guy punisher approach to player discipline has been a spectacular failure not only because Goodell has no credible understanding of any aspect of the game - he is nothing but a marketing hack, not someone with any front-office or team experience or even credible study - but because it functioned on assuming players were automatically guilty.   The fact is they're not.   Having more diligence toward violent crimes requires more objectively examining individual cases on their own individual merit.   And this applies to the sports media as well, for the Ray Rice fiasco would have been avoided by accepting the fact that Rice told everyone the truth the whole time and by not blackmailing the league to committing double jeopardy.



The tie should always go to the receiver -   Eliminate offensive pass-interference from the rulebook.   Completely.   It is the most boneheaded oxymoron in pro sports.   The Dez Bryant catch in 2014 at the Packers should have counted.   Period.   When in doubt, the tie goes to the receiver.  



Let pass-catchers have a running start behind the line of scrimmage and eliminate the five-yard rule -  The hatred that exists in fan circles toward the five-yard rule is frankly astonishing, and the utility of the rule has always been dubious - it is blamed for the explosion in offense and the hoariest gripe is "now they can't touch a receiver," a trite cliche that is flagrantly dishonest.   The league also needs to catch up to other football leagues that allow pass catchers to have a running start behind the line at the snap - it's a good rule and allows more flow to the game.  



Start standing up for yourself in safety controversy - The league's lack of response on its own behalf as people cite the demagogic movie Concussion to attack the safety of football (a tack I've seen renewed following Calvin Johnson's premature retirement) is maddening. Because concern over concussions is unquestionably legitimate yet the game is faster, stronger, and SAFER now than it has ever been.   Much of the condemnation of the game over concussion issues stems from misunderstanding of concussion risk and cause-and-effect, and the game is only getting safer with not only improving helmet technology but also research into neck-support and related technology. The notion that the game is killing its players or even threatens to kill a player needs to be wiped out of the conversation.

Here the media needs to do a better job of covering such issues, and it can start by citing factual and objective data such as the International Conference On Concussion In Sport.



Less isn't necessarily more, David Steele - smarter is more.

ESPN Continues The Smear Of The Patriots

ESPN and also Sports Illustrated released pieces today rehashing long-discredited accusations of cheating by the New England Patriots, this in the wake of Roger Goodell's complete discrediting at the hands of Judge Richard Berman.   Goodel's discrediting by Berman showed how unfit for his office he is for it showcased his megalomania and complete ignorance of the game over which this ex-PR flack for the league office presides.

The ESPN and SI pieces rehash the mythology of cheating allegations made against the Patriots - that the Patriots stole playsheets and rigged transmitters in opponent locker rooms etc. - never mind that the security details of visiting teams control those areas, not the Patriots, and that Spygate was not about any violation of NFL rules, it was about the dishonesty and ignorance of Roger Goodell. It is noteworthy that the only real source for ESPN's story (it cites unnamed sources - and I will call out ESPN that these unnamed sources were made up by the writers) is long-discredited former assistant Matt Walsh, who was fired by the Patriots and was exposed as not credible by the league when it turned to him for what it thought would be a smoking gun of Patriots cheating - and merely got more sideline videotapes.   Walsh does not give information in good faith.

The piece's conclusion rehashes the excuses about the Brady verdict - "It didn't matter that Berman only ruled on whether the league had followed the Collective Bargaining Agreement, not on Brady's guilt or innocence."   False - Berman got the league to admit it never had any evidence against the Patriots - all it had were inferences from text messages, inferences that were never relevant to anything.  In short Berman proved Brady (and by extension the Patriots) were innocent.  "It didn't matter that the Patriots had accepted the league's punishment in May."   Again false - Goodell lied to Bob Kraft in May (and lied to and about Tom Brady from the beginning) and it showed in Kraft's training camp presser where he admitted being wrong in trusting the league.   The reason for the lying stems from Goodell's fundamental dishonesty, shown ironically in an overlooked angle - the effort to pry away trade secrets.

The ESPN piece has earned more notoriety for questions about a 2008 statement from ex-Rams coach Mike Martz.   Among the allegations made against the Patriots is they were able to key on Rams back Marshall Faulk in the Superbowl XXXVI win.  What the piece ignores is the real reason the Patriots are winners - the Rams were about trying to beat toughness, thoroughness, and situational football with athleticism and talent - and it failed. The reality is the Rams thought they were innovative and creative and they were not; they relied on athleticism, not smart play; if anything the Rams may have been tipping their own plays the way they leaned on Marshall Faulk. What Belichick did was expose that football is not about athleticism - and also that Tom Brady is the superior quarterback.


The simple fact is there never was any cheating by the Patriots.    The facts have long proven this.   The league needs to face that other teams need to define their game up, stop dumbing it down and stop punishing success. 

A Reminder About John Tomase

ESPN a week or so back had to apologize for an on-air assertion that the Patriots were caught illegally videotaping the St. Louis Rams walkthrough before Superbowl XXXVI.   That this assertion is still being made showcases the dishonesty of discussion about the Patriots.   One needs a reminder about the falsity of the story, made up by former Boston Herald writer John Tomase.

Patriots Derangement Syndrome

NOTE: Originally published May 20, it has been updated on July 28:


The decision by Robert Kraft not to continue fighting against the NFL over huge draft and monetary penalties imposed after the Ted Wells report on allegation of tampering with footballs won't lay to rest the hatred that has long existed toward his football team.   Kraft's reasoning not to continue fighting stems from fear of long-term damage to the game by pressing the issue, this even though objectively speaking Kraft is correct.   It is disappointing that Kraft has done this but understandable.

That it won't win him any support anywhere merely reinforces the reality of another wave of derangement that exists in the world - Patriots Derangement Syndrome.  

In the history of sports hated dynasties are fairly common, though in the NFL one struggles to recall national hatred of the Lombardi-era Packers or the Noll/Bradshaw-era Steelers or the Walsh/Siefert/Mariucci-era 49ers.   While the Oakland Raiders and their three Superbowls in the 1976-83 period earned a share of hatred due to dirty play on the field and dirty dealings by Al Davis off it, the long-standing poor play of the Raiders made them a joke rather than someone to genuinely hate.

The only two clubs to earn national hatred have been the Patriots of the Belichick era and the Dallas Cowboys.   Pronounced America's Team by NFL Films in their recap of Dallas' 1978 season, the Cowboys earned respect by twenty straight playoff seasons and the undisputed class of Roger Staubach and Tom Landry, but there was also a dislike of the team due to their national popularity.   When the Cowboys faltered after 1985 the hatred melted away, but returned with the surge to Superbowl success of Jimmy Johnson and the flamboyance of new owner Jerry Jones and players such as Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith, Nate Newton, and Charles Haley.   The 1995 Superbowl season was especially contentious as drug addiction, sexual misconduct, and ever-escalating arrogance led to ever-escalating condemnation of the team - ironically illustrated when Deion Sanders called out the media over its criticism of Barry Switzer's 4th down attempt against the Eagles, a counterattack that rallied the team to its third Superbowl of the decade.   When the 1996 Cowboys collapsed to the Carolina Panthers in the playoffs,  the hostility showed when Nate Newton openly blamed the media for Dallas' loss, a reference to the accusation, soon proven false, of a gang rape by Irvin and several others.


*****


But national derangement against the Patriots has gone beyond Cowboys hatred, beginning with New England's 2001 Superbowl surge; even today condemnation proceeds about New England's playoff win over the Raiders despite the objective reality of the correctness of an incomplete "tuck" call.   Complaints about the Patriots' physical play against the Rams began once Superbowl XXXVI was won, complaints that ignored that teams promptly used those same tactics to completely neutralize the Rams in 2002 to where Kurt Warner's career effectively ended by that October and the Rams deteriorated into irrelevance by the end of 2004.  

The hatred continued with constant mocking of Tom Brady's game.   "Dink and dunk" is the never-ending gripe; "he had to rely on his kicker" is also repeated against all evidence (and ignoring such instances as Joe Montana's first Superbowl win against the Bengals where the 49ers needed to kick four field goals).   That Brady plays smart football - taking what the defense gives him and not trying to make something happen that cannot - wasn't "sexy" enough; that he played methodical football instead of trying to make it up as he goes - something other quarterbacks with more impressive volume stats tended to do - also aggravated a lot of fans.

The hatred extended to Bill Belichick, whose monotone press conferences have long grated reporters feeling themselves more important than they are and whose system has refused to rely on Name players or high draft picks but instead focuses on undrafted players, free agents, and depth, to where turnover of the roster is frequent and Brady has won Superbowls plus two additional AFC titles with what amounts to five different rosters.   Criticism of trading Deion Branch in 2006 is curiously still prevalent in some fan and media circles despite the fact his immediate replacement, Reche Caldwell, was a better player, staying on the field where Branch frequently got knocked out and posting the same numbers (60 yards per game) in non-Superbowl playoff games as Branch; Branch's lack of production in Seattle illustrated his overrated quality.

A curious case of refusing to understand Belichick's approach to roster construction is the 2009 draft where the Patriots have been criticized for refusing to draft Clay Matthews, who went to the Packers, instead trading down and collecting several players; they flipped one pick to get Julian Edelman in the seventh round that year, and it's proven a better investment than the overrated Matthews.

The media and the league office's misconduct about sideline videotaping in 2007 transmuted Patriot Derangement Syndrome into a genuine syndrome; the media and new commissioner Roger Goodell misread the league rulebook, thinking sideline taping of opposing coaches is a violation of NFL rules even though it wasn't. It began a pattern of Goodell's tenure as commissioner of always being unprepared, acting as a bully (which helps explain why Kraft decided not to continue the fight, as Goodell's stubbornness and his own derangement (Matt Chatham has noted Goodell has constantly rewritten the rules to cover his own ass) makes him get his pound of flesh even when he loses; Goodell's passive-aggressive backstabbing of Kraft in his presser the day after Kraft's illustrated this also), and always being caught by surprise, and it also continued the Mainstream Sports Media's pattern of inaccurate or grossly incomplete coverage of such issues (notably Ray Rice, with seemingly no one outside of the AP noticing Rice had told the truth to everyone about the fight that initially got him a two-game suspension).

It accelerated with the tail-chasing embarrassment that has been the investigation in allegation of football tampering, an investigation that produced ZERO evidence that any tampering ever happened yet smeared Tom Brady (via Goodell's predetermined verdict) and two ball attendants based on treating irrelevant text messaging - and assuming the refusal to turn over his cellphone to an investigation that couldn't control itself constituted some kind of crime by Brady - as something other than heresay.  

Suddenly attacking the Patriots had become a headline story on national news (though articles by notable writers such as Sally Jenkins, Dan le Betard, and Dan Wetzel suggest the Mainstream Sports Media is starting to get it about what really happened) and even in books such as the "untold" story of Spygate on the Amazon website, and countering with the facts has been drowned out by the rage for blood.    That people are tired of the same team winning every year is a natural reaction; as a league fan I've wanted teams that have struggled of recent to become winners again (notably the Titans, one of a handful of worthy opponents the Patriots have faced in Superbowl runs, as well as Houston - yes i catch myself calling them the Oilers - the Vikings, the Panthers - the best team that didn't win the Superbowl - the Lions, etc.), and it is curious that overlooked in the interregnum between Patriots Superbowl titles, seven other teams (the Steelers and NY Giants twice, the Colts, the Saints, the Packers, the Ravens, and the Seahawks) won the Superbowl.   That the condemnation maliciously ignores the facts is what is wrong.  

The Patriots revolutionized roster construction philosophy for the league and built a sustainable model for championship success; they've elevated the game to a level Lombardi, Bill Walsh, etc. could never reach.   And it is curious that the Seahawks have lately become the butt of online belittlement over their popularity, critics mocking it as somehow phony despite all evidence to the contrary.  

It may be the price of success.   Derangement, though, goes beyond reason.   The Patriots changed the game for the better; they defined it up - the critics need to stop defining it down.


POSTSCRIPT - the AEI's examination of Deflategate further shows Goodell to be a liar.   And further implicating Goodell to be a liar is evidence further proving Sally Jenkins' point that Goodell was shopping for justification to punish success and promote parity - with an interesting take comparing it to the media smear campaign against Richard Nixon - while Jenkins laid out a realistic way out for Goodell. Goodell alas ignored the right thing to do and upheld his suspension based on Brady "destroying his cellphone," this even though the league had already obtained all the phone records and text messages it sought between Brady and John Jazstremski while there was no communication with ball attendant Jim McNally - the NFLPA also noted Goodell changing the rules to cover his own ass. So the league's position remains a crock and called out as such by the NFLPA.

Patriots Get Smeared By Media Again

Suddenly the mantra that the New England Patriots are cheaters has become the Mainstream Sports Media's rallying cry yet again, this time on allegations made by an Indianapolis Colts TV reporter (from WTHR TV; the story was almost certainly leaked to WTHR by the Colts, with some scuttlebutt being Jim Irsay himself leaked the story) than the Patriots were caught deflating footballs in the AFC Championship Game, a 45-7 Patriots win in rain.   A D'Qwell Jackson interception of Brady ostensibly began the story.

Jackson, though, has denied his involvement, and a subsequent story that the Baltimore Ravens alerted the Colts to impropriety has also been disproved.  It is the first of the immediate problems with the story.   The league controls the footballs on gameday and between referees, security teams, and video cameras it is physically impossible to tamper with them.   Also, deflated footballs tend to be inferior in throwing, thus quarterbacks insist they be properly inflated (Aaron Rodgers' now-famous CBS interview in the 2014 season is an example); moreover the allegation that deflated footballs offer more grip is not plausible in game conditions.  

The atmospherics of footballs do change in game conditions, like NASCAR tires - David Pearson for one famously always told Glen and Leonard Wood, "blow the right rear up" to stagger the car and make it turn better; in the modern day of radial tires prerace underinflation is necessary to get pressures up to proper levels under racing conditions - and they are prepared for specific weather accordingly.

But it isn't stopping the media from fabricating a litany of cheating by the Patriots such as the four-lineman formation used against the Ravens.   Sports Illustrated wants to portray this as a circumvention of NFL rules because the Patriots ran a hurry-up offense with it.   It's no circumvention of anything.   SI also tries to claim Patriot ball boys spy on opponent locker rooms, except it physically can't be done; visitor team security controls visitor team locker rooms.   The story also dregs up Spygate, ignoring it was refuted by the fact of what the rulebook actually says, and even claims a gigantic television screen atop the CBS Scene somehow helps the Patriots sideline when it cannot be seen from inside the stadium.  Even worse, the piece claimed the NFL made rule changes in the wake of Brady's injury in 2008 - except the change in question happened in 2006 because of injury to Carson Palmer. 

The bottom line is there is no evidence of tampering - and on the contrary the actual evidence is indicative that no tampering happened.   The much-discussed Chris Mortenson report that eleven game balls were found underinflated loses credibility with each hour - according to Andy Hart the actual figure given was 0.2, not two - and following Belichick and Brady press conferences there clearly is some kind of disagreement between the Patriots and the league over what constitutes "underinflation."

The media's hatred of the Patriots is based on hatred of their "no-fun" approach to football.   They approach it as a machine-like endeavor instead of as a slapdash freelancing exercise.    Thus they lack the "fun" of other teams that don't win.  There is also the groupthink mentality permeating the media in general and the sports media in particular, where analysis counter to the established storyline has a habit of being suppressed - a saner media would have by now given substantial coverage of exculpatory information regarding the Patriots.

The entire episode yet again showcases the need for a substantial ideological change in the sports media (an example of such dissension can be found in this point-by-point examination of the Michael Rosenberg piece).   There is not supposed to be any groupthink, and objective benefit of the doubt is supposed to exist.   Sports Illustrated should be mocked and ridiculed for posting a dishonest story about the Patriots; instead the fact of the story being false is widely ignored.

The other angle is yet another reappraisal of Roger Goodell's competence as commissioner.   Adam Schefter has reported extreme difficulty at finding evidence, but the more plausible explanation is the league is trying to save face with an investigation it had no business undertaking.   It is indicative of Goodell that an investigation was launched at all and has floundered on its own lack of credibility.

Also warranting condemnation are the Indianapolis Colts, whose complaints initiated the controversy and which clearly had no justification for being made. 

The smearing has to stop.

More Goodell More Of The Time

Roger Goodell went before media on Friday with a news conference where he again accepted blame for recent NFL controversies involving Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, etc.   The ensuing presser lacked much detail despite some tough questioning, and of course led to widespread media ripping of Goodell - much ink was spilled on Tedy Bruschi's call for Goodell to be removed as NFL commissioner, while lost in the shuffle was reporter Pam Oliver (one of the best sideline reporters in the business; she famously stood up to loudmouthed receiver Keyshawn Johnson for instance) and her positive assessment of Goodell's presser.

Following the presser came another Outside The Lines story, this one delving into the Baltimore Ravens and their lobbying of the courts and Goodell on Rice's behalf - that ESPN even sees fit to examine team lobbying for Rice makes it out to be sinister, as though a team shouldn't be lobbying for a player when it has legitimate grounds to do so - it is impossible, for instance, to see the New England Patriots not quietly lobbying the courts if some form of exculpatory information ever surfaced regarding Aaron Hernandez.  There is also that the report in effect lets coach John Harbaugh off the hook by portraying him as someone who wanted to cut Rice when the incident took place where team owner Steve Bisciotti and the Ravens front office lobbied for him.   The Ravens deny that Harbaugh wanted to cut Rice and the obvious implausibility of that angle of the Outside The Lines report lends credence to the denial.

Lost in the coverage and the continued round of media grandstanding is that it still does not make a credible case against Goodell's initial handling of the Rice incident.  Where Goodell and the Ravens warrant criticism was in hanging Rice out to dry - this after the media (specifically TMZ) launched a grandstanding/armchair lawyering campaign, trying to reverse the initial two-game suspension without facing that the objective facts of the incident meant it legitimately did not warrant more than a two-game suspension.  

The whole Ray Rice and domestic abuse controversy is not about Rice or even Goodell - it is about media grandstanding and armchair lawyering.   More responsible coverage would have noted that it wasn't an unprovoked attack and that Rice was a first-time offender who did what was required of him by the law enforcement people and the courts, and there would have been some significant dissent from the established narrative that Rice should have been punished more.  

And for all the "moralistic preening and voyeuristic pandering" (as Politico so superbly put it) about the NFL and domestic abuse, the league is far and away cleaner than societies here or abroad, and the umbrage over the league's ostensible lack of a domestic abuse policy ignores that the percentage of accusations that are false is far too high for the league (or anyone else) to ignore.  

Yet for all that, the answer may have been stumbled upon with the new suspension with pay approach used by the Arizona Cardinals, the Carolina Panthers, and the Vikings in their recent issues of certain players arrested on domestic abuse accusations.   This appears to be what teams will follow from here on.

The Mainstream Media (political and sports) warrants its share of criticism over Ray Rice etc.  It's not just "J'Accuse!" to be aimed at Roger Goodell or the Ravens.

Don't Buy Rolling Stone On Belichick.

Rolling Stone magazine took a major hit with its sick, sympathetic piece on "Flashbang," the surviving brother involved in the Boston Marathon bombing. Now it has come out with a piece on former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, standing trial for the shooting of semipro football player Odin Lloyd. Much has come out about Hernandez since he was caught by police destroying evidence in their investigation of Lloyd's murder, at least some of it self-servingly portrayed to implicitly indict the Patriots over drafting Hernandez in 2010 when other teams ostensibly took him off their draft boards over character concerns - stories that conveniently never came out until his arrest as opposed to in 2012 or earlier; when Hernandez was given a $40 million contract extension by the Patriots in 2012 no one in the Mainstream Sports Media objected.

 The problem with Rolling Stone is it is not and never was a credible journal - it has long engaged in reporting designed to indict people in the name of its deranged leftist ideology. Among myriad examples are its idiotic 2012 attack on Mitt Romney's business history, the magazine's attack claiming the existence of global warming by citing Australia, and an especially preposterous claim that the Army waged psycological war on members of Congress to support the war in Afghanistan.  There were also smears against General Stanley McChrystal and scholar Michael Ledeen in years past.

Now it has its anti-Belichick piece, and was aided in the piece by Ron Borges, whose own malice toward Belichick has long been documented by the Cold Hard Football Facts website.

 The piece also claims Urban Meyer, Hernandez's college coach, actively helped cover up Hernandez's involvement in a drive-by shooting - this right away damages the piece's credibility given the inherent implausibility involved - Meyer's reputation has been heavily pummeled over the years but it stretches credulity to believe a coach would risk indictment for aiding and abetting a murderer by hiding a drive-by shooting.

That once again a piece is attacking Belichick based on allegations only coming out after Hernandez was caught destroying evidence shows how the modern media works - and why the modern media needs to change.

 Belichick didn't aid and abet a murderer. Period.  The Patriots signed - and re-signed - Hernandez because at the time there was no credible reason not to.


UPDATE: Ron Borges as mentioned co-authored the piece, and he may have realized something was askew, for Comcast Sportsnet New England did a telephone interview with him tonight (August 28) and portions were aired on the network's 11:30 PM recap show with Bob Neumeier.  Borges in the clips aired makes a point of noting he is not accusing Bill Belichick or team owner Robert Kraft of malicious action in their handling of Hernandez - he in essence confirms the storyline of Kraft's, that the Patriots "were duped" by Hernandez.  

It is to Mr. Borges' credit that he makes this clear.

UPDATE II: The Krafts are now responding to the piece, providing detailed refutation of pertinent facts alleged in the piece. Mike Petraglia looks at the Krafts' response so far.

The Truth About Spygate

A look back at "Spygate" and how Roger Goodell proved he doesn't know his own league's bylaws.

Bob Ryan Out-Shanks Shaughnessy

The Dan Shaughnessy Blog does a great job dissecting the absurdities of Dan Shaughnessy writing, and when appropriate they also include deserving writers like Tony Massaroti and his ludicrous attack on the Patriots and their fanbase in the wake of Matt Walsh's testimony to the NFL.

But now Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan outdoes Shaughnessy (and Ron Borges) with a bitter and illogical attack on Bill Belichick It is worth some comment.

Ryan seems incensed that Belichick "still hasn't fessed up." Fessed up to what? Like so many others, Ryan refuses to understand exactly what Belichick did in Spygate. In casting that Belichick "was engaged in practices he knew were against the rules," Ryan ignores the facts about Goodell's malicious ignorance of the rulebook. Belichick was not engaged in activity he knew was against the rules - a fact Roger Goodell inadvertantly acknowledged with his comment that other teams wanted to tape, not doing so only because they felt it would be to no advantage.

Ryan also is outraged because the Patriots are "the most despised franchise" in pro sports. All that does is reflect poorly on the haters, who are as short on facts and long on vitriol as Ryan is.

Ryan is also ignorant on Watergate, to which he draws constant comparison. Watergate was not about an illegal break-in (in which nothing was stolen and no resistance to police offered) but about Democratic hate-mongering using the break-in as an excuse to persecute Richard Nixon for the crime of accomplishing more than they did, spelled out best in the book Bad News: The Foreign Policy Of The New York Times.

Ryan needs to reexamine himself here and while he's at it he can check Jeffrey Standen's examination of the Belichick-Goodell brouhaha.

NASCAR Troubles Get Ranted

"Peter DeLorenzo has long been the most outspoken national critic of NASCAR." So notes Janice Putman in the introduction to Autoextremist's April 18 rant on NASCAR's decline in popularity. This of course is a bit of an understatement, as DeLorenzo's attacks on NASCAR have often been vicious and periodically grossly unfair; even when he makes valid points, as he does in his April 18 Rant, he cannot pass up some cheapshots and offering some solutions that are either wrong and/or do not address the sport's problems.

DeLorenzo notes the massive drop in TV ratings from the start of 2004 - interestingly, the launching point of the Chase For The Championship, implemented ostensibly to boost ratings - onward across the country. "That the wheels are coming off the NASCAR money train shouldn't be a surprise to anyone." Indeed, as the decline in ratings and attendence have shown, NASCAR is not as hot as it once was, and the more it tries to market itself the worse it gets.

DeLorenzo runs off a laundry list of reasons for the sport's decline - "Sky-high ticket prices, empty seats, market oversaturation, too many sponsors creating a paralyzing amount of message clutter, the abandonment of traditional dates and racetracks, cookie-cutter cars that bear no resemblence to recognizable production car versions, too many races, etc."

The problem in this list is that some of the reasons are wrong. "Cookie-cutter cars that bear no resemblence to recognizable production car versions?" What is he talking about? Because the racecar versions of the Monte Carlo have an airdam, side skirts, etc. they do not resemble their production breathren? This is the revisionist history that permeates a lot of discussion, the notion that "stock cars used to really be stock cars." The fact of the matter is stock cars stopped being stock as soon as the sanctioning body was founded, and when superspeedways were built - by far the biggest single reason for the sport's growth - stock cars could no longer have any serious stock quality. They had to evolve into racecars.

And too many races? If anything the sport has too few races. The anger over some of the sport's markets would not be there to any extent if the sport had simply stayed at North Wilkesboro and Darlington - it was the way Texas and other tracks got onto the schedule, at the expense of North Wilkesboro and Darlington, that drives anger, not the fact of these new tracks themselves. What drives anger over now-abandoned projects in NYC and Washington State is that such tracks were aimed at replacing existing tracks instead of simply being added onto the schedule.

Certainly the reality of demographics argues against tracks in NYC and the Seattle area regardless of that, and one cannot deny that it is the "redneck" demographic that makes the sport - "Are we moonshiners, country music, banjos, and Route 66? Or are we merlot and Rodeo Drive?" as Humpy Wheeler has frequently asked. The fact is that merlot and Rodeo Drive do not account for any serious percentage of a sport's demographic, and the sport needs to stop trying to cater to merlot and Rodeo Drive.

Incredibly, DeLorenzo misses the most salient failing accounting for the sport's decline in popularity, and it it summed up in this question -

Where Are The Lead Changes?

It is telling that Talladega almost alone in the sport has not seen significant losses in attendence or TV ratings - with a per-race average of 40 lead changes from 2000 onward, it is all too easy to see why, and it is all too relevent to ask - why can't these other tracks also break the 40-lead-change barrier?

The sport's Dead-Lane Era of uncompetitive racing and a closed-loop of winning teams has done more than anything to alienate fans. Only ten teams have won races from 2003 onward, and one of them - Cal Wells - disbanded after 2006 while another - Morton-Bowers Racing - was bought out by billionaire Robert Ginn. On top of this several other teams in the sport - Ray Evernham, Robert Yates, and Petty Enterprises - are almost certain to be either bought out or take on big-money partners just to keep racing.

The sport's rules packages have for the most part done nothing to alter any of this, and frequently have made it worse. The Car Of Tomorrow is the most graphic such example; the roof spoiler package was abandoned after 2001 (though it returned for BGN in 2004); high downforce has given way to the 5&5 rule; and the hard-tire package of 2001-2 - which helped see 26 winners among 14 teams - was abandoned.

Whether coming from the view of Peter DeLorenzo or someone else, the fact remains that the sport needs to drop the "yes-man" coverage so depressingly common and start acting toward real solutions for the sport's real problems.

Borges Gets Burned For Real

It's a week of joy for a great many members of the fanbase of the New England Patriots, because the worst excuse for a reporter to cover the Patriots has been suspended without pay from the Boston Globe for plagurizing an article from a Tacoma, WA paper.

Seeing Ron Borges crash and burn is one of those rare examples of a story developing piece by piece in rapid fashion but it is also an example of sadistic joy. Borges has been a Broadsheet Bully for many years. Some, such as Glen Ordway of WEEI Radio in Boston, have stated that Borges is driven by a hard agenda, but that at least some of his critics are also agenda-driven in that they use his anti-Bill Belichick attitude as a reason on top of the plagurism to attack Borges until he is finished in media.

What those who offer this line of reasoning ignore is that Borges pushes an agenda that is contrary to reality and which in fact is detrimental to the success of the team he has covered. Bill Belichick does not cooperate with the sports media to any significant extent, because it does nothing to advance his cause - leading the Patriots to success. On the contrary, the media can help defeat a team by fostering acrimony, internal dissent, and so forth - most spectacularly seen by Dan "The Shank" Shaughnessy and his slanted reporting that helped lead to the Theo Epstein episode of late-2005.

Borges' coverage of the Patriots is aimed at discrediting their coach; that Borges has failed to do so does not stop him from this agenda. Why he pushes such an absurd agenda is a mystery. In any event Borges has let the general hate that permeates his reporting get the best of him, and for this his downfall should be greeted positively.

Borges Gets Burned

Incredibly, someone has published a piece on Broadsheet Bully Ron Borges trying to take his side of his controversial career, though few can take it seriously, especially when Borges tries to defend his infamous January 2006 intimation about Bill Belichick by claiming he was referring to golf trips by Belichick during Superbowl 39 week. Problem is that defense doesn't wash with the truth of the matter with Borges, and one gets the impression Borgie's lame excuse is because his intimation (unspoken but all too obvious to those who heard and read the transcript of the conversation in question) of a love affair by Belichick with a married woman blew up in Borgie's face with a recent divorce lawsuit by the estranged husband of the NY Giants' former secretary, a lawsuit that has swept up Belichick.

Borges is a regular guest host on Michael Felger's ESPN Radio afternoon show in Boston and his growling description of Bill Belichick as "a putz" on the November 1, 2006 broadcast (this in connection to Belichick not issusing a fawning praise of former PK Adam Vinitiari) is in keeping with the lack of credibility of Borges.

It's why, contrary to the puff piece on Borges, he's not needed for Boston sports - or anyone else's.