football

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with ever fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.

Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization – an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there – to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules – but to win.

And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don’t say these things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of men or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”

- Coach Vincent T. Lombardi

For Troy Polamalu, financial success means getting rid of yes-men

Jun 11th, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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He replaced them with some excellent financial advisors.

“What’s this I hear about you getting another house?” says the voice on the other end of the line. It comes across as more of a challenge than a question.

“It’s a cheap house,” Polamalu insists. “Like, really cheap.”

The Steelers safety can certainly afford it. He has no debt, made $367,000 per week last season and has plenty of money in savings.  ”I made millions of dollars — what’s wrong with spending a small percentage of that?” he says.

The two volley back and forth for a couple of minutes about Polamalu’s wanting to invest in a third home, but the idea quickly gets shot down. “It’s not about whether you can afford it, Troy. It’s what that money can instead do for you over the course of your lifetime.”

And that was the end of it.

“As soon as the conversation was over, it was done, settled,” says Polamalu.

Here is how it works.

THE MAN ON the phone was Dusan Miletich, one of the managing principals of Arenda Capital. He’s not Polamalu’s agent or financial adviser but actually his partner.

Arenda is what’s called a multifamily office — there are around 4,000 in the U.S. — and is made up primarily of the pooled funds of four families, Miletich’s being one. Polamalu, who has netted more than $25 million after taxes since being drafted by the Steelers as the 16th pick overall a decade ago, is the office’s most recent partner.

Family office companies such as Arenda manage the net worth of wealthy families like a business. That means everything from cutting checks for car payments and mortgages to handling personal finances. It also means investing any income generated to make more money and managing wealth from generation to generation by resolving estate-planning issues. Because Arenda includes more than one family, investment decisions are made by the group for the group — everyone having something to gain, or lose.

The roots of Arenda go back to the 1960s with Miletich’s father, Vel, who partnered with Parnelli Jones, one of the most prominent race car drivers at the time. The two founded a family office with the goal of living off their real estate investments while accumulating enough to take care of future generations.

When the housing bubble burst in 2008, the company shifted its focus from retail, office and industrial properties to apartment buildings, which could be had cheaply. That year it also added the Meyer family, one of the oldest commercial landowners in Beverly Hills and Pasadena and started real estate investment funds so outsiders could take part in its growth; Arenda now has about $500 million in assets under management.

Polamalu was introduced to the business in 2010 by his brother-in-law, Alex Holmes, whose sister, Theodora, married Troy in 2005. Holmes had recently taken a job as director of business development with Arenda and had some concerns about the Polamalus’ finances and how they were being managed. This was family, after all. “He was being managed like every other athlete, and to me, that wasn’t good enough,” Holmes says.

He suggested Arenda.

Excellent Jim Trotter article on the problems of the Oakland Raiders

Jun 2nd, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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As found in Sports Illustrated

Reggie McKenzie knew he faced a significant challenge when he was announced as general manager of the Raiders on Jan. 6, 2012. Over the previous nine years the team had gone through six head coaches, and it had lost at least 11 games in an NFL-record seven straight seasons. Oakland’s last winning campaign, in ’02, was a millennium ago by NFL calendars.

Still, the depths of the struggle might not have truly hit McKenzie until several months after his hiring, when he changed into his workout gear and headed to the back of the team’s Alameda training facility, where his long jog around the practice fields was spoiled by wildly uneven footing and goose droppings.

If the choppy grass fields were hazardous to a 49-year-old such as himself, he thought, imagine the dangers for players. In the previous two seasons alone, running backs Darren McFadden and Marcel Reece, wideouts Jacoby Ford and Denarius Moore, defensive tackles Richard Seymour and Tommy Kelly and linebacker Rolando McClain had been hobbled by or missed significant time because of lower-body injuries.

When McKenzie asked who was responsible for the upkeep of the fields, which were riddled with dirt patches, the answer stunned him. The Raiders did not employ a full-time, on-site groundskeeper. Instead, the work was outsourced to a local company—astounding considering that the difference between the playoffs and a pink slip could easily come down to a turned ankle, a jammed toe, a tweaked knee or a pulled hamstring.

The field conditions were just the first of many reminders that restoring greatness to a franchise whose mottos had included “Pride and Poise” and “A Commitment to Excellence” would be about much more than just hiring a new coach and ridding the roster of its bloated contracts and underachieving players. It would be about transforming an entire culture and overhauling an organizational model that had become stale and outdated after nearly five decades under Al Davis, the iconic and imperious owner who died of heart failure at age 82 in October 2011.

It wasn’t just the grass that needed fixing

McKenzie knows he must be spot-on in this year’s draft. Oakland has the No. 3 pick and the fourth pick of the third round, but its second-round selection belongs to Cincinnati as part of a 2011 swap for Carson Palmer. He’d love to trade down for more choices, because the Raiders are far more than one player from being relevant again. But if he’s unable to find a trade partner, then he has to find impact players with his high picks. Imagine the best draft ever. If McKenzie replicates that, his team is mediocre at best.

And so, much of the G.M.’s energy the last 15 months has been spent on upgrading Oakland’s scouting and personnel departments. When he went to view the club’s draft room last year, he discovered that none existed, so he had one built from scratch. When he requested the team’s scouting questionnaires for evaluating college prospects, he learned there weren’t any, so he created them.

Such resources are givens in most NFL organizations—but not with the Raiders and Davis, who had his own way of doing business. He was the only owner who didn’t use one of the national scouting services for college prospects, and the only one who didn’t subscribe to the psychological-testing program available to each team before the draft.

Davis was so behind the times that even toward the end he didn’t allow employees to use direct deposit, and he kept the budget for coaching and support staffs in his head rather than on paper. In his video department, the software was tragically outdated.

Sadly the Oakland Raiders (as in Mark Davis) fired Oakland’s PR person, Zak Gilbert after the story came out.

We read the Trotter story this morning, and there are certainly aspects of it that would make any organization cringe. The Raiders fell behind the competition in many ways in the last 10 years of Al Davis’ life.

General manager Reggie McKenzie was portrayed as a man who inherited a pigsty, forced to tend to matters both minor (hiring a head groundskeeper, constructing a draft room, upgrading video equipment) and major (completely rebooting the team’s scouting and personnel departments, treating burns incurred in salary-cap hell).

The Raiders reportedly dumped Gilbert because the SI piece — which surely now will attract more eyeballs — delved into not just the team’s struggles in recent years but why and how the downturn occurred. The guts of the story focused on positive strides made by McKenzie over the last year, but that apparently wasn’t enough to save Gilbert.

The Raiders shouldn’t run from the last decade. It’s a dark period that the organization can learn from. Firing the PR guy over a story anchored in facts makes it look like the team is trying to will the bad old days into the ether. That’s not happening.

Yahoo!’s Mike Silver saw this coming a year ago.

Why Tim Tebow won’t make it in the NFL

May 31st, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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From Dave Fleming at ESPN

When the Broncos defense was on the field, offensive coaches would often tell Tebow the first series of plays they wanted to run when the team got the ball back. Tebow would nod, and they’d separate. And then, invariably, a short while later he’d ask for the information again. Sometimes this ritual would repeat right up until Tebow had to duck into the huddle and call the play. As a result, despite starting only 11 games in 2011, Tebow was flagged for delay of game an NFL-high seven times. Worse still was the fact that, according to scouts, Tebow almost never audibled because he struggled to quickly and properly read defenses. And of all the deadly sins Tebow committed against quarterbacking, this was the worst: lacking the self-awareness to recognize and fix these shortcomings. Maybe the most shocking part of Tebowmania isn’t that he has been cast out of the NFL after just three years but that he lasted as long as he did.

The weird part about reading this is that when Josh McDaniels drafted Tebow, all he talked about was Tebow’s football IQ.

In a meeting room at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, Broncos coach Josh McDaniels and Tim Tebow sat several feet apart, engaged in animated, rapid-fire conversation about football. They clicked almost immediately.

McDaniels was convinced Tebow was genuine. He came away even more intrigued with Tebow as a player.

Tebow, an All-America quarterback at Florida and the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, felt he had found a kindred football spirit.

“I was jacked leaving that room. I didn’t even want to visit another room. It was not enough time,” Tebow said. “We were excited, we were enthusiastic. There was passion. It was just intense, and it was ball, and it was juice. The juice level in that room was high, and it was awesome.”

The Dave Fleming has this.

But he scored a below-average (for QBs) 22 on his Wonderlic test. As a kinesthetic learner, Tebow absorbs information better through using flash cards and hands-on repetitive experience than the traditional method of memorizing diagrams, notes and Polaroids from a playbook.

I have taken the Wonderlic (and done quite well on it). it’s not that hard and if someone does poor on it, I would have some serious questions about their comprehension abilities. That may not be that important if you are cornerback or a defensive tackle but if you are a QB and you have comprehension problems, it is big deal.

The disturbing question in all of this is why then did Josh McDaniels draft him? It seems like they bonded personally and that made all of the other issues (like completing passes and reading offences) go away.

Cam Newton’s replacement in Carolina

May 21st, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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Amazing commercial for the NFL Play 60 program.

Tyrann Mathieu has a bumpy road ahead of him

Apr 27th, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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I can’t see this working out at all

For all the drama that went with Mathieu crying on television after being selected and then giving an emotional interview to ESPN afterward, execs weren’t buying it.

To most, the question came down to this: Why does he keep drawing so much attention to himself? Why was he on television at all? Why was he tipping off the network to the possibility that San Francisco might take him with the No. 31 overall pick? Why was he on the cover of ESPN the Magazine? Why was he lending his name to some party promoters, even if it was some misunderstanding?

“Every time you turn around, it’s something else,” another NFC exec said. “There’s a certain point where you just tune it all out.”
Before the draft it was reported that Mathieu was a no-show for visits to Houston and Seattle for interviews. He unnerved other teams by talking about how he is still chewing tobacco to “take the edge off.” While he has left behind some of the bad influences in his life, he still is hanging out with something of an entourage of people from a troubled past that includes him getting kicked off of LSU’s football team last year.

Sure, Mathieu has been seeking guidance from a pastor in Baton Rouge and from his high school coach. Sure, he’s not a malevolent kid. He’s just smoking marijuana, not assaulting people. But he’s also the kid who worked out, admitted he had a problem and seemed to think everything was fixed. It’s as if Mathieu put a Band-Aid on an open gash and thought, “All better.”

It’s almost as if getting kicked off the team wasn’t quite enough for Mathieu to get the concept of rejection. Hard lessons fade like a bad dye job when you have people like ESPN’s Jon Gruden calling you the best cornerback in the draft (even though Arizona and most teams saw him as a safety if he’s going to start) and when you’re fully armed with the notion that rules don’t apply (Mathieu admitted to failing at least 10 drug tests at LSU).

You have a kid that doesn’t listen to anyone, has a drug addiction, surrounded by bad influences and is now being paid about a million dollars a year. He’ll be cut by this time next year, signed by the Raiders or Bengals, cut, and in the CFL by 2014 where he will play about 6 games.

Cause and Effect in the NFL

Mar 23rd, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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I have been a fan of NFLosophy on Twitter for a long time and now he has a blog. He has a great post on the myth of balance.

About NFLosophy

I know how it works because I did it. I lived it, although only for a season. I am a former Football Operations Coordinator for an NFL team. I began as an intern for one team and then was an intern for the team that eventually hired me. My job was to manage the day-to-day operations of the team. Essentially, my job was to take all of the non-football related duties and handle them so the coaches and personnel department could focus on the football related duties. It’s a lot of work. I was removed with the football staff when our team had a poor season. It’s simply part of the business.

Here is comments on “balance in football”

The cause is running the football. The effect is winning football games. This logically leads us to the conclusion that maintaining balance and keeping with a solid run game will lead to more wins. This is why you hear analysts and talking heads discuss it all week long leading up to games — “Team A must stick with the run game. They have to stay balanced to win this game.” The stats support the theory — “They’re 3-0 when running the ball 20 times and 1-4 when they run it less than 20. So they need to keep pounding the rock.” If there’s logic involved and the stats support the statement, then it has to be true, right?

Nope. It’s all a lie. Balance is the biggest fallacy in football. It’s an illusion that people logically arrive at because we’re confusing the cause for the effect. Putting the carriage before the horse, if you will. Or more aptly, putting your ass in front of your face.

The cause is winning. The effect is running the football.

Put another way: Winning (or being ahead) is what causes teams to run the football more.

This is why balance is an illusion. Go look at the box scores at the end of games and you’ll typically see that the team who won probably had more “balance” to their playcalling. That’s because when they were leading in the 4th quarter they were trying to drain the clock and ran it 2 out of every 3 downs. After a couple first downs on a couple different series in the 4th quarter, the team that is leading has padded its rushing numbers by somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 rushes to 3-5 passes. Before those 2 series, that team could have had twice as many passes as it had runs, but now because of trying to melt the clock, they’re “balanced.”

So what is balance in the football?

To really determine a team’s balance I look at first half rushing and passing attempts. That tells me what a team wanted to try to do. I can take into account the number of called runs and passes along with the effectiveness of each playcall and discern what their intent was for the gameplan. A team who isn’t having a lot of success in yards per carry but is still calling an even amount of runs and passes is a team that is making a concerted effort to stay balanced. If they’re gashing our defense for 6 yards per carry, well then we can just attribute that to their playcaller following the production.

The other team could disregard balance entirely by throwing it 20 times and rushing it 10 in the first half. Coaches try to avoid this because a gap in balance like that allows the other team to adjust their personnel and packages accordingly. Under pass heavy circumstances, a defense can almost assume a pass out of one-back sets. They can switch to nickel, play more coverage, and focus more on pass rush. All of this is why I favor the idea that teams should stick with what is productive until the other team proves is can stop it. Once the opposing team adjusts to a personnel package filled with DBs to stop the pass, then start handing the ball off and gashing them for runs.

Makes sense to me, even if it confuses Phil Simms.

The idea of the renovated stadium

Feb 19th, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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No one likes to renovate a stadium, unless you are an American university.

In which case you are comfortable renovating one of the oldest stadiums in the United States. I find it funny that in Canada, the consultants reports always say, “tear it down” while American (nd many British) consultants almost always say, “renovate” and expand. There are different opinions about which is the right approach but personally I love the history behind American university stadiums vs. the sterile feel of pro stadiums. I also love the idea of building to expand later, which is something that a lot of pro teams can learn from. It’s a lot cheaper than tearing down and building again. Of course with a university as a tenant, they aren’t likely to pick up and move to the Alamodome or Los Angeles but the end result are almost sacred sports places full of history and memories.

The Cost of Professional Sports

Feb 9th, 2013

by Jordon Cooper.

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If you live in New York, this should infuriate you

You might have missed this in the pre-holiday news dump, which it was specifically timed for—it’s a good idea to downplay the implications of a story like this. An agreement was announced in a “hastily called news conference” to keep the Bills in Buffalo (actually Orchard Park) through at least 2020. But the real story is in the details: the Bills have been allowed to pick up just 16 percent of the costs to keep them in town. If you’ve ever had the slightest curiosity as to how sweetheart a deal an NFL team can possibly get, the full agreement can be read below.

It’s going to cost $271 million for upgrades to Ralph Wilson Stadium and 10 years of running the place on gameday. The Bills will pay just $44 million of that. Erie County will cover $103 million, while the state of New York is on the hook for $123 million. If that turns out to be not cushy enough, the Bills can buy their way out of the lease after year seven. We and others have railed against the outrage of public financing for stadiums for years, but it’s still shocking to see in 2012 a textbook case of a community held for ransom, forced to give in to every last demand of a franchise threatening to move.

My dream job

Dec 19th, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

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Norv Turner's job security

Via (my Denver Bronco and Notre Dame loving soulmate) Don Crawford.

The U vs. Notre Dame (deleted scene)

Oct 3rd, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

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The Old Ball Couch Needs a Hug

Sep 30th, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

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So the University of South Carolina’s football coach gets criticized in a column and instead of shrugging it off, gets mad at all media and then get this, is now trying to get the columnist fired. As Yahoo! Sports sees it.

Morris and Spurrier are enemies, we get that, but why penalize the entire media contingent? And why over this? Yes, Morris questions whether Shaw should have played in that game, but I think a lot of people were doing the same. Shaw looked pretty miserable during the bulk of the Vanderbilt game. He sat out the East Carolina game and many thought he should sit out UAB to be ready for the grueling SEC season.

In the end, Shaw’s shoulder proved not to be a big deal against Missouri as he completed 20 consecutive passes in a dominating 31-10 win.

So, I guess it’s kind of a “See, I was right all along” kinda thing to Morris, but still just another example of childish behavior by a coach toward the media, which seems to be happening far more often this year than in the past.

This is where it gets really stupid.

Apparently the contents of the article can not be tolerated by Spurrier in the future.

“I told my wife after the last article, ‘I’ve had it. I’ve had enough,’” Spurrier said. “‘I’m not going to take it anymore. I’ve had enough.’ Almost all of the Gamecocks say, ‘Coach, don’t pay any attention to him, he’s insignificant,’ which he is. He is not an important person. But they’re not having their name and reputation slandered. So, I’m the one. It’s not my mode of operation to not say anything about it. So, this is my voice here. He gets his voice in the newspaper, which he uses.”

The highlight of the segment comes in what Spurrier says next, where he eludes to the idea that he is going to get Morris fired from his job.

“I think we need to make some changes. I think some positive changes are going to happen,” Spurrier said. “They have a little problem over there that we know about, but they’re working on it. Our president and our athletic director, they’re all backing me in this.”

It’s hard to imagine someone saying they’d have taken a job somewhere else while in their current position, but that’s exactly what Spurrier goes on to say.

“When I came here, I didn’t know we had some enemies within our own city,” Spurrier said. “If Mike McGee, when he hired me, had said, ‘Steve, we’re going to give you a chance to run the football program at South Carolina. You hire your coaches, you do your thing, but you have to put up with the local media trying to trash you and try to ruin your reputation and they’ll try to portray you as a mean, evil, self-serving person.’ I would have said, ‘You give that job to somebody else. I’ll wait for the North Carolina [Tarheels] job to open,’ which opened the next year.”

Spurrier closes with reiteration of the idea that getting rid or Morris will bring the community closer together.

“I believe our city is going to be better off because we’re all going to get along better. That’s what it’s all about,” Spurrier said. “We’ve had some serious discussions about things. Basically, I said I’m not taking any more of this stuff that’s coming out of our local paper anymore. If that’s part of the job, I’ll head to the beach. That’s not part of the job. So, we’re going to get it straightened out.”

Like the calm before a storm, there’s a feeling that something major is about to happen in South Carolina. What does this mean for the future of the media that covers Gamecocks football? Will anyone who is critical of the team or Spurrier be subject to discipline? Who will the fans ultimately side with? Whether you like Steve Spurrier or not, it’s almost impossible to not look at what happens next.

I don’t know what the South Carolina media is like but I do follow the Notre Dame Fighting Irish media really closely and they criticize Brian Kelly, Charlie Weis, and even Lou Holtz when they are winning or losing. It’s part of the job. Ask Ken Miller how hard the media criticism can be and was one of the most successful Saskatchewan Roughrider coaches ever. Only in the United States is the “football coach” a title and not a job.

What’s sad is that this reverence for the “coach” is what leads to scandal like what happened at Penn State and like it or not, columnists like Ron Morris who question these guys are the counterbalance because the Athletic Director and university Presidents can or will not (notable exception was Arkansas in tossing Bobby Petrino). Steve Spurrier makes $2.88 million a year and has one of the highest profile positions in the state. With that comes criticism, not coddling.

Saskatoon’s Future: Being blackmailed by billionaires

Sep 26th, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

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As Saskatoon grows bigger, more and more people have talked about bringing a pro sports franchise to the city. Hockey has been dreamt about since Bill Hunter tried to bring the St. Louis Blues to Saskatoon in 1984. We saw one group try to bring the Phoenix Coyotes here for at least a couple of games a season and there has been been some talk of a CFL franchise coming to Saskatoon (even if it meant that it would kill the Riders). A pro sports franchise would be fabulous in the short term. We would sell out Credit Union Centre and cough up money for some much needed renovations and capital improvements. There may even a new stadium built downtown, where Credit Union Centre should have been built in the first place. That is how it will start out but let me tell you how it will end.

Over the weekend, the Edmonton Oilers’ owner and senior management went to Seattle to tour the Key Arena in an effort to get the City of Edmonton to pay for an even larger part of a $500 million dollar stadium deal. After getting the city to pay for the entire stadium up front and then giving billionaire owner Darryl Katz a sweetheart loan for his portion (to be paid back over 35 years), he wants an additional $6 million subsidy to run the arena. Instead of paying back his portion back $5.5 million a year, Katz is now demanding that he gets a free half-billion dollar stadium and $500,000 a year to run it. Where do I sign up?

Katz isn’t the only owner to behave badly. For every responsible sports owner with deep ties to his community, there are numerous ones that extort their community to buy them things or as the threat goes, they will move their franchise. The threat works as there is an empty hockey stadium in Kansas City and Seattle is building a new stadium to lure back the NBA (probably the Sacramento Kings). Hockey is an excellent second tenant to make even more money. Seeing everyone else do it, enables even local billionaires to behave badly. Katz which has deep roots to the Edmonton area and is a very profitable market with a very loyal fan base is basically blackmailing the Edmonton city council to give him the deal that he wants or he will move a team that has spent its entire existence in Edmonton to Seattle.

Now that Seattle has reached out to him (and he has reached back), expect a Kansas City visit as well. Why not play multiple markets off each other until Edmonton City Council responds to the bullying. While it doesn’t excuse Katz’s behaviour, many other owners behave the same way. The NFL has an empty Los Angeles market where the threat of teams moving to Los Angeles has gotten it better stadium deals in almost every market where the NFL has a new stadium. It will be used for leverage in the upcoming years in Jacksonville, Miami, Oakland, and San Diego. While FedEx Field in Washington is only 15 years old and still cutting edge, owner Daniel Snyder has already declared it as “half-life” and wants a new downtown, stadium. Instead of wanting Washington to pay for it, he is willing, if they give him a big chunk of land to develop for free. So why does a 15 year old stadium that is the largest in the NFL need to be replaced after only 15 years? He wants to keep up with the Giants/Jets/Cowboys and maybe even the new Rider stadium. EIther the Washington taxpayers pay for the stadium or give him premium land for his own profit. Either way, taxpayers pay. Just watch, if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will move the team. Threats of moving teams got a new stadium built in Miami even when there isn’t a great market left to move to and this was after Jeff Loria had already proven that he is the worst owner in sports (he destroyed the Montreal Expos).

Heading back to Seattle, the Key Arena was completely renovated in 1995 and brought to NBA standards. NBA commissioner David Stern called it state of the art but less than a decade later, he was in town demanding that Seattle build the Supersonics a new team, invest another $220 million into the stadium or they would move. When the city said no, the team moved to Oklahoma and became the Thunder. In 2002, the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans because of their antiquated stadium that was built in 1988. The fans supported the team through 364 consecutive sell-outs but even that wasn’t enough to keep the team in town. The stadium didn’t make it’s 20th birthday before being demolished (it was 13 years old when Charlotte had their first referendum on building a new stadium).

This is what happens. Billionaire owners of profitable teams want more and the expectation is that taxpayers give it to them. It happens all over the place and as Saskatoon grows, it will happen here, whether it is a NHL team, a CFL team or even a AHL team; it’s great for a while and then all of us have to pay up for the right to buy tickets to watch a team. It’s a sick system and I feel bad for the City of Edmonton, Edmonton Oilers fans, and fans of sport in the city because it’s not right.

Will the same thing happen in Saskatoon? If pro sports come to Saskatoon in a real way, of course it will. We will tell ourselves that it won’t happen, we have local owners, and we are a growing market in a booming economy; just like Edmonton told itself when Katz bought the team. It’s only a matter of time.

Hit the circle button

Sep 14th, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

1 comment

That was a move folks

The NCAA moves quickly against Penn State

Jul 22nd, 2012

by Jordon Cooper.

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Now if Joe Paterno and Penn State had acted as quickly and decisively against Jerry Sandusky as the NCAA did, there would be far less victims and no sanctions. Yahoo! Sports has the report.

Two sources with knowledge of the Penn State penalties said NCAA president Mark Emmert will announce Monday that he is personally sanctioning Penn State after receiving approval from the association’s Division I Board of directors, which is comprised of 22 college presidents and chancellors. One source told Yahoo! Sports Emmert’s sanctions will include a “multiple-year” bowl ban and “crippling” scholarship losses. Penn State will not receive the "death penalty."

The move will mark a first in NCAA history, in which the president will invoke a defense of the NCAA’s constitution as part of his reasoning for taking the unprecedented steps. The moment is groundbreaking in that Emmert is circumventing typical NCAA process and moving forward without an investigation by his enforcement staff. However, Emmert is expected to detail that the action is backed by a special provision allowing such a step if he receives approval from the NCAA’s board of directors. A source told Y! Sports the NCAA is prepared to defend the lack of an investigation by focusing on the Freeh Report, and Emmert’s determination that the report provided actionable evidence.

The report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh found that former coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz "concealed" facts tied to Sandusky’s abuse of children.