I Guess

     I do not gamble on games. I tried it once in Las Vegas over 25 years ago and it was on baseball. I did not win. After that misadventure, I never thought about doing it again. Despite my cousin's husband in California pestering me when it comes to betting on NFL football when he is in Nevada.

     Odds makers in Vegas know what they are doing. They are playing with house money and they make the odds with scientific precision based on mathematical principles. Given that I became a trial lawyer  as a profession, math was not my strong suit. Thus, bucking the odds like gamblers do, would be a foolish pursuit.

     I do not play fantasy sports. I find that the drafting and studying of rosters each week is too demanding for me. Why invest money like that based upon a player's performance, which is subject to too many variables. I leave my gambling like that to the stock market with the advice of professionals who have studied so many trends and corporations that their predictions are much more likely to lead to success than figuring out if Brandon Marshall will have a great day versus the Cleveland Browns or if Bryce Harper is truly the center fielder I want for my team given his sub-par 2016 season.

     Only rarely have I had the opportunity to participate in a Super Bowl pool. Those are based on number combinations for quarters, half time and the end of the game. I did not do too well there. Like a lottery, it is mere chance. I play the Mega Millions lottery for the sheer ridiculousness of believing that if I was to be lucky, it would be a huge financial windfall. I think the best I have done is win $10.00. My parents once won $1,000.00 which led to a nice day at Monmouth Park where the New Jersey lottery picked a winner of a $1,000,000.00.  It was not my family. 

     I have participated in NCAA Tournament basketball pools. I once finished third. Predicting the outcome of 65 games involving squads that can catch fire at any given time is a very difficult exercise. Since now I do not have access to a pool (besides they are technically illegal) and I scrupulously avoid the lure of CBS Sports, ESPN and other "sanctioned" pools, I make my selections for fun. Usually, by the end of the full first round I have routinely mistakenly picked the outcome of 6 to 7 games, one of them being the play-in games. 

     So my investment in gambling on games is a no odds pool that I jointly play with my daughter on NFL games. For 17 weeks, we try to figure out who is more adept and gives us hope that we picked correctly. The first couple of weeks are a crapshoot--how well a team can do based upon supposed experts feel for the team coming out of training camp or coming off of the prior year makes predicting the winners of 16 games nearly impossible. Who would have thought that the Jets would lose to the Bengals at home in Week 1, after a near miss for the playoffs last season? Could we know how good New England was going to be minus Tom Brady for four games as a result of his Deflategate suspension? 

     The first 3-4 weeks involves a lot of luck or the happenstance of a critical injury to a player, thereby dooming a team. Yet who could have foreseen the poor starts the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers had? That the Cleveland Browns weren't going to win a game until Week 16? Or that the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers, the latter in the last Super Bowl, would have crummy years? Who foresaw the Miami Dolphins making a concerted late run to a Wild Card berth? And the Philadelphia Eagles would start out red hot only to falter badly and fall out of playoff contention behind a promising rookie quarterback? With so many teams just above .500 and contending for the playoffs, it is hard to decide who to support on a weekly basis. 

     Last year we collectively won once. This season we were on the precipice of a possible winning weekend dependent upon the tiebreaker--how many total points would be scored in a Monday Night contest. We did not win. It is hard enough trying to get to a position of being in contention for winning the pool in any given week--figuring out how many points will be scored is even more unpredictable. 

     Here we are in Week 16. We started off with defying the odds that the New York Giants, who had a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs before the Thursday night game with the Eagles, would lose to the sub-.500 Philadelphia team. But the game was at Lincoln Financial Field, the Giants are much better at home than on the road and the Eagles had not been swept by the Giants in many years. Logic dictated to me to go with Philly.

     While there were many close contests this weekend, there were only a couple of upsets. Somehow I saw the Browns, at home, beating the San Diego Chargers; no team really loses all of their games in a season just as much as it is so rare to go undefeated during the regular season.  The Jaguars surprised me at home; then again could I have known that Tennessee star QB Marcus Mariota would break his leg? I went with the Chicago Bears at home despite their mediocre record, based on the prior week's close game versus the red hot Packers and a hunch that the Washington Redskins were overrated. Blew that one badly. Plus I gave the Seattle Seahawks way too much credit at home versus Arizona, but then again it was a meaningless game because Seattle was not going to do much to improve its stock from being the NFC West champs. 

     I have the feeling we are in the running for the weekly prize (which I have no idea what amount that is) based upon tonight's game between the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas. While the game means more to the Lions, even they would be playing the Packers next week at home for the NFC crown no matter what tonight's outcome is. Yet Dallas, who has only lost to twice to the Giants is our pick--they have only lost at home once this year, and that was by one point to New York on Week 1. 

     There you have it--my semi-educated prognosticating of NFL games. It is fun although somewhat addictive. Maybe we will win tonight. If not, there is next weekend, which may have nothing at stake for anyone other than Green Bay and the Lions nest Sunday night. My prediction is that game will go down to the wire. Whichever team I choose as my winner, after all, will only be based on a guess. 

                                                           Bowling

     For those aficionados of the Professional Bowlers Association Tour, this article is not for you. Then again, for those entranced with the present College Bowl system as it now stands including a four team playoff, then this also may not be agreeable to you.

     In 2016, there are a grand total of 41 bowl games slated from December 17 through January 2, 2018. Two of those games, the Peach Bowl, held in Atlanta, and the Fiesta Bowl, located in Glendale, Arizona, are hosts to the two semi-finals games for the College Football Playoff. On January 9, 2018, the winners emerging from the aforementioned two bowls will meet in Tampa, Florida for the National Championship.

     41 games in 17 days, largely because there are no contest held on Christmas Day in deference to religion (although the National Football League has scheduled a game and the National Basketball Association has games starting at noon into the night), and none on January 1 to allow the NFL to complete its regular season. That means 82 of 128 schools registered to play in the Football Bowl Subdivision are playing in the post-season.

     By comparison, there are 125 schools in the Football Championship Subdivision who only permit 24 teams to qualify for an actual single-elimination tournament overseen by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, known commonly as March Madness, is capped at 68 teams while drawing from a body of 347 colleges and universities. Division III, comprised of smaller schools in terms of enrollment, has nearly 250 football-playing members and has managed nicely to have a playoff which starts after all schools complete their 10 regular season matchups in November and ended on December 16.

     So why is there such a glaring, disparate percentage of FBS schools permitted to play in bowl games? Money drives the bus here. FBS schools have seen their schedules increase from 8 to 9 to 10 and now 12 regular season tilts. In most every FBS college, the main source of revenue comes from the football program. It is also the most visible symbol of the school, due to the oversaturation of games televised regionally or nationally. Alumni support is keyed directly to the success of the football team; the better the team, more money comes into the school from the alums.

     The costs of maintaining football teams and their palaces--training facilities with all the newest bells and whistles, dorms and stadiums--runs into the millions of dollars. Scholarships cost plenty, too. Thus given the economics of the sport, it is nearly vital for a team to make the post-season in order to generate necessary revenue for not just football but to operate Federally-mandated Title IX women's sports too.  

     As a result we get games in multiple locales, some in warm weather, others in colder climates. If there is a sponsor or a local Chamber of Commerce looking to advertise their town and ESPN/ABC, CBS or FOX is willing to shell out the dough, then there will be a game. How many times has the University of New Mexico hosted a game in chilly Albuquerque--no less this time against the University of Texas-San Antonio with its gaudy 6-6 record? Or that New Orleans Bowl, involving two 6-6 teams, Southern Mississippi and Louisiana-Lafayette? I am willing to bet that the bettors in Las Vegas do not get too excited. The hometown Las Vegas Bowl generated more excitement and more betting too as the two teams, San Diego State and Houston ONLY had 3 losses. A total of 12 teams had .500 records. Three teams had sub.500 records and mad the post-season largely due to having acceptable graduation for its teams. Acceptable? Mediocre? Really?

     Some of the big programs are seeing their elite stars now opt not to play in a bowl game in order to avoid injury in a meaningless contest and thus hurt their marketability to the NFL. Do the schools care about jeopardizing the futures of young men who now are practicing beginning in August and playing 13 games to line conference and athletic department coffers?

     I find that the whole bowl landscape has spun out of control. When I was younger there were the four New Year's Day bowl games without corporate sponsorships--Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Rose. They all were held during the day. The Sun Bowl in El Paso existed, as did the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. The predecessor to the Citrus Bowl was the Tangerine Bowl and that was for smaller schools from 1947 until 1968.

     Seemingly games appear in markets that should never have a game. Do we really need a Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium? The Military Bowl in Annapolis, Maryland on December 27 is a barn burner. The Quick Lane Bowl indoors in Detroit's Ford Field is a must; do players desire spending a week in a nearly bankrupt city? While Nassau in the Bahamas beckons with its bowl game, we even now can justify playing outside of the United State for its Popeye's Bahamas Bowl coincidentally owned by ESPN Events, Inc.
   
     Miami, New Orleans, San Diego, Orlando, Atlanta, Tampa and Dallas have the need to twice enrich their coffers as well as their partners, which includes the particular affiliated conferences and the associated teams. I get that these events are worth millions to the local economy from the legions of fans who travel to see their alma mater play. Still, many bowls suffer from mediocre attendance and they survive because of the television contract and the sponsorships.

     The biggest bowls and the CPP Championship max out with $18 million payouts. While that is obscene itself, that is what the market bears. Promising a recruit the chance to play for something big is only limited to a handful of games with more established reputations in the bigger markets. While it is novel to play on the blue carpet in Boise, Idaho, try selling to a kid that your above .500 squad who may have finished in the middle of the pack of its conference gets to play for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl trophy.

     I do not mean to diminish the efforts of those involved and dedicated to their bowls. It is just that there are too many games without the pizazz that should accompany a really successful season.

     It is my opinion that the major conferences need to cut back on the needless home games against lesser schools to fatten their resume as insurance for a tough season and institute a playoff like the FBS universities have. Notwithstanding the opposition from noted academics like former Ohio State University President Gordon Gee, presently the head of West Virginia University, whose reticence to a playoff was legendary, laughingly in the names of the students and academics,  whereupon only a handful of schools would find their way into the final four.

     I say take 16 bowls and make them into the championship. Situate them in areas where schools can readily play first round games without enormous travel. Four rounds would determine a champion, one which can be crowned in a big game in early January.  Then reserve another 16 games for those teams who reach a certain cutoff number of wins--let's day 8 victories in 11 games--as a reward for a nice season. This would permit some of the present sites to remain viable. Plus no site should host two games.

     To me this is a workable solution to an untenable situation. If their brethren in the FCS and Division II and Division II can make it work, then there is no reason this cannot succeed at the highest level.

     Until this happens, count me out of watching North Texas and Army tagle in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Or Mississippi State and Miami of Ohio meet in the mausoleum know as Tropicana Field, home to the Rays for baseball but very ill-suited for football games.

     You can do better, institutions of higher learning. Use your collective heads in the NCAA and reach a realistic answer for the plethora of meaningless games which fill up dead time on the airwaves. The public, the players and the cities deserve better.

   
                 

                                                        Catholics versus Criminals

     Last night ESPN aired the aforementioned in its 30 for 30 series. The focus was on the 1980's football rivalry between the University of Miami Hurricanes and the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, with the emphasis on how the T shirt with the slogan which captured many people's imagination and flashed so much anger came about.

     Patrick Creadon, a Notre Dame alumnus who was a student during the heyday of the games between the two bitter foes, told the story from a decidedly Notre Dame perspective. He chronicled the story of how hostile the games were, stemming from the Miami successes under Coach Jimmy Johnson, which included a National Championship in 1987. To Creadon, the genesis of such hatred came from the 1985 game in Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium.

     Gerry Faust had campaigned long and hard to become the Coach of Notre Dame. An Ohio high school coach with a legion of great teams on that level, he could not win enough games to satisfy the rabid Notre Dame fans who expected championships every season.

     Faust decided to resign--not be fired--before the contest versus Miami. The team had quit on him, but there was still pride on the line.

     Johnson, a star at Arkansas as an undergrad where he became close with teammate Jerry Jones who owns the Dallas Cowboys, had worked his way up the coaching ranks as a valued assistant at his alma mater, then the University of Pittsburgh prior to becoming the head coach at Oklahoma State University. Compiling wins at Oklahoma State with a no nonsense brand of football, he was handed the reigns of the Miami program.

     Miami had established a counter culture approach to football, as Howard Schnellenberger, Johnson's predecessor as head coach, had recruited inner city kids from South Florida with an attitude. Some of those kids went on to commit crimes. That, to the pious alums of the white, preppy elite of Notre Dame, was heinous. Johnson continued the recruiting theme that Schnellenberger had utilized to reap tremendous success on the field.

     And he taught his team to never stop putting the hammer to the floor. Which is why he stomped on Notre Dame and Faust in his last futile game. Which enraged a whole lot of Irish players and partisans.

     One subplot to this was that Creadon had 2 friends who were diehard Irish fans and Notre Dame students,, Joe Frederick and childhood chum Pat Walsh. They also interacted with some of the key players for Notre Dame, including the quarterback, Tony Rice, who was a Proposition 48 qualifier and had to bring his grades up during his freshman year before he became eligible to play. Thus the message that everyone knew everyone, including the Yale transfer Pat Eilers--that's right--a transfer from one America's top schools who actually walked on to Coach Lou Holtz's squad and who was instrumental in the notorious 1988 game.

     Then there was this whole Johnson-Holtz scenario. Johnson had been a top assistant at Arkansas under his mentor, Frank Broyles. When Broyles stepped down, it was all but assumed that Johnson was going to be the next head coach. Surprisingly, Holtz was brought into Fayetteville to assume control; Johnson wanted no part of that and he left for Pitt. While civil at the surface, the two men clearly did not like each other.

     Thus, when Johnson was running over teams at full steam, Holtz was rebuilding Notre Dame. He was starting off recruiting young men he wanted to have the pedigree necessary to win. As such, when he recruited Rice, he got into trouble with then Chancellor Theodore Hester and was reprimanded for promising a scholarship to someone who had not even taken the SAT. Hester magnanimously still honored the scholarship.

     Such was the prelude to the 1988 contest at South Bend. Miami was peeved that it was only ranked 8th at the start of the season after winning the national title. And they took it out on their opponents. Notre Dame played a rugged schedule and started to win games they had been previously losing. Both moved up in the polls as the fall progressed until they were ranked number 1 and 4 when they collided on a warm October day.

     Creadon's friend Walsh had built a small, illicit underground empire selling Notre Dame tshirts which the bookstore and in effect the school wanted no part of. This violated the school's rule of no business enterprises on campus as well as trademark and copyright infringement laws. He and Frederick came up with the logo of Catholics vs Criminals and the shirts sold like a wildfire grows. So much so that $36,000 was made by his friend on game day sales. However, Pat Walsh had been forewarned that continued tshirt selling would have significant consequences. So, notwithstanding that dire forecast and having invested some money that he needed to recoup, he nonetheless went ahead, even selling the shirts on campus near the stadium.  This cost Pat Walsh his childhood quest, to walk on as a member of Digger Phelps' Notre Dame basketball squad, which he had just made as a senior. As the documentary so succinctly captured, Phelps questioned why selling tshirts was worth more than  a place on the basketball team?

     The rivalry was so intense among the players that the tshirts only ramped up the rabid nature of the Irish faithful. From the clips of interviews of former players, the distaste for the rival was bitter and hostile. Before the kickoff, there was a rumble between the teams. The game was hard-fought and with many mood swings based on scoring. Steve Walsh, the Miami quarterback, spoke of the emotionality of the event. He also suffered a cut on the chin chasing after a Notre Dame player who had intercepted his pass and was trying to score. Holtz so fired up his team that he said he wanted a piece of Jimmy Johnson after the game ( to which he revealed that he would have gotten his ass kicked). In terms of Catholics versus Criminals, Steve Walsh reminded us that there may have been as many Catholics on his team as there were at Notre Dame.

     It all came down to a tale of conversions. First, Notre Dame going for and making a 2 point conversion using that little-used Yale transfer Eilers who Holtz was impressed with from his initial encounter at practice as well as his moxie in telling a doubtful Holtz that he did not transfer from Yale not to play football. Then Miami running back Cleveland Gary  seemingly broke the plane of the goal line only to have been ruled to have fumbled before crossing the line, thereby denying the Hurricanes the chance to win the game.

     Notre Dame exacted revenge for its seniors and absolution in defeating Miami. Miami still cries foul on the conversion. The bitterness of the rivalry, so exemplified in the alleged divergence between the two schools in their football teams philosophies, led to the halting of the series for a long period of time.

     So what do we come away with from this 30 for 30 episode? That the world that these two teams and their fans dwelled in in 1988 was screwed up as captured by Creadon. The emotionality that QB Walsh had noted was perverse in its universal application involving both schools. Football was beyond normalcy. Or was football the real normalcy among the Notre Dame fans and led to its sanctification as well as its banality? That so much was invested on all fronts that a rivalry needed to be discontinued so as to regain sanity? That the insanity provoked radicalness and racial stereotyping? An absence of morality cloaked in feigned elitist fidelity?And one boy was so caught up in his own world that he lost out on the thing he cherished most?

     So who were the Catholics and who were the Criminals? I think that they existed on both sides and to the detriment of all. And the fact is, it is not surprising in this day, that the tshirt still resonates among Notre Dame fans while it is vilified by those int was intended for--Miami players of the past and present. Because, in the end, both sides were and still are wrong about the game and its overtones.

   

   

                                                                An Athlete's Time

     I have been an athlete. I played college baseball. Post-graduate, I weight lifted, jogged, ran, sprinted, played tennis (predominantly singles), basketball, did elliptical, walked, hiked, bicycled (indoors and outdoors), swam. I played softball. And on the day before my 42nd birthday, I played my final baseball game against 21 year olds and younger.

     As I write this, I am 66 years old. I have endured a myriad of injuries related to sports leading to multiple surgeries since 1989, including 4 to my right shoulder. The last one has not healed like I wanted and the pain is only lightened by a recent cortisone shot. Presently I cannot go to the gym, reducing me to 3 miles of walking on a cold and windy early December day at the local track.

     I was weight lifting, biking and running only a couple of weeks ago. My body was in fairly good shape. I had even played tennis a couple of times, the first serious attempts at the sport since a foot injury followed by shoulder discomfort. After swimming for the first time in over a year and then doing weights the next day, all of sudden there was irritation and pain  near the surgical site. I thought this would never happen again.

     Instead, I look at my age and condition and wonder--is my time of being a gym rat over? As hard as I have worked, the countless hours of rehab and therapy--have I reached the end of the line as an athlete?

     I have done a great job of staying inside of a 34-36 inch waist for the last few years. But my weight has increased corresponding to my exercising or lack thereof. I feel bloated and heavier when I do not make it to the gym or run; undoubtedly some of this is psychological.

     With my current shoulder condition, I just want to return to normal activities--like typing this blog--without pain. Of course, there is the return to sports--will it happen or am I destined to be a walker for the remainder of my life?

     I look at so many professional athletes as they got older and how out of shape they appear to be. Contrastingly, I look at the number of men and women running at my age or older, or the ones playing tennis in the morning as part of their retirements. I know I am envious as I long thought that I would be one of them--so much so that I figured this last surgery would make the dream a reality and I would be swimming, hitting hard ground strokes and jogging merrily around the track. Not so fast.

     Am I resigned to the fact that my days of competition and self-regulation in the gym are over? Even with a vastly different diet, will I turn into another fat ex-jock?

     I recognize that my situation is nothing compared to so many others who have far worse conditions than I do.  Their plights are almost unimaginable.

     Which is why I complain about my shoulder and the attendant pain--I am not quite ready to cede my ability to stay in shape. But if I can no longer swim, play tennis or run without it hurting, then I look no further than in the mirror to say that I will be the best walker I can be for as long as I can walk comfortably.

     Then and only then will I have stopped being the athlete.  You can take away the tennis court or the gym but where there is a spirit to live this life to the fullest, then count me in.