All Warm and Fuzzy

That feeling you get when you see your preferred football team’s logo painted for the Super Bowl…on the home field of your longtime hated rival.

Cooties!

So my preferred football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, did not beat the Oakland, um, LA, um, Oakland, um, Las Vegas Raiders in a Christmas Day football game. On the one hand, this is depressing. On the other hand, even when the Raiders win they lose, because they still have to be the Raiders.

But in the wake of the loss, we have opinions from two men I usually enjoy ignoring: Sports trolls Clay Travis and Skip Bayless. Both suggest the blossoming romance between star Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and singer/songwriter Taylor Swift had become a “distraction.” See, when guys turn their minds from pure football to things like girls, they stop thinking straight or being able to play well. Or so this thinking says. You may remember it from when you were six and did your best to exclude the opposite sex from anything you could because they were icky. But then you grew up.

Unless, apparently, you think like Messrs. Bayless and Travis. Travis, in fact, goes on to dredge up the Yoko Ono comparison. But Ms. Ono did not break up the Beatles - their own egos did a much more thorough job than she ever could have. And Ms. Swift has not jinxed the Chiefs. A less gifted offensive coordinator, an iffy receiving corps that has a bad case of the yips, defenses that are collapsing on Kelce because one defender apiece can handle the other guys? Yeah, those things have jinxed the Chiefs.

Sports reporters will explore some of those issues in upcoming stories. But not Mr. Bayless and Mr. Travis, who are too busy proving to the world they don’t have girl germs like Travis Kelce does.

A Voice About Nothing

I’m somewhat concerned to still be posting about one of my favorite football players and the world’s biggest pop star, but interesting things still crop up. For example, on Thursday The View’s resident sage, Joy Behar, opined that she doesn’t want to see Taylor Swift end up with Travis Kelce. The reason? Some tweets Kelce made in his early 20’s, back when Twitter was just a place people sometimes tossed out random thoughts.

It seems the young Kelce spelt not well, and, moreover, made judgmental statements about women’s appearance. Such tweets offend the author of SheetzuCacaPoopoo: My Kind of Dog and SheetzuCacaPoopoo: Max Goes to the Dogs. Said she, “He’s illiterate is more to the point. He’s obsessed with the girls looking good, that was his thing.”

Now, evidence suggests Ms. Behar was never a young man. Her only child is a daughter, but she does have a grandson nearing the teenage years. The number of young men “obsessed with the girls looking good” is sizable, and if she was previously unaware of that he may demonstrate it to her soon.

But all of this is moot, because these are the tweets from a dozen years ago. Had that young man come calling at a concert a dozen years ago, I suspect Scott and Andrea Swift might have shown him the door too. In Joy Behar’s world, though, dozen-year-old tweets define who you are forever. Even if you learn to spell.

It’s in memes all over social media, but it’s true: Thank goodness I didn’t have an online youth.

Tip of the Cap

As a Kansas City Chiefs fan, I of course despise the Raiders -- wherever they're from these days -- and all of their works. But anyone who's followed football knows about the coaching abilities of their former head man John Madden and respects his work.

And in a world where watching a football game means choosing between Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth or Tony Romo, Madden's work in the booth can't be valued highly enough. So a moment of silence and tip of the cap indeed to Madden, who passed away today at 85.

Give It Up for Buck O'Neil

It should have happened while he was alive, but at least it has happened. John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Right Thing -- Again!

The Womens Tennis Association continues to do the right thing in its ongoing standoff with the Chinese Communist Party in regards to the latter's silencing and censorship of its own star athlete, Peng Shuai.

After WTA president Steve Simons said last month that Chinese officials needed to investigate Peng's claims of coerced sex and sexual harassment by a top Chinese government official, instead of disappearing her and staging videos that showed she was completely OK and had "changed her mind," he backed it up by saying the WTA wouldn't stand for it if China didn't act.

China didn't act, and Simons announced today that the WTA would cancel all tournaments scheduled for the country indefinitely. Regardless, by the way, of the cost.

The WTA continues to demonstrate to sports leagues and companies how they should respond to a regime that tries to control and dictate the terms under which it will work with them. And, by the way, it's a good quick refresher for women's gymnastics groups about how one handles things when one's athletes claim to have been harassed or assaulted by one's own officials.

I'd suggest the International Olympic Committee take note as well, but I have trouble typing when I snicker.

Everything's OK Now

The truth is that over its recent history, the International Olympic Committee has proved that there are very, very few totalitarian dictatorial buttocks which it will not kiss a la Crash Davis, but their supernatural ability to do so while also assuming both supine and prone positions in front of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is a miraculous sight. Not a sight to behold, mind you, at least not in front of the kids, but certainly a miraculous one.

As noted earlier here and elsewhere, former Chinese tennis player -- and Olympian -- Peng Shuai first accused a former Chinese government official of coercing her into sex. Then she disappeared, and an obviously faked email claimed she recanted her accusation and just wanted to be left alone. The IOC, recognizing the danger facing its last tattered shreds of respectability and a lucrative partner relationship, acted swiftly.

IOC President Thomas Bach, either explicitly or implicitly, offered his organization's services in the fakery of convincing everyone that Peng was just fine. Bach claimed that he and other IOC members spoke to Peng in a 30-minute international video call and she's all A-OK, so there's no need to move the February 2022 Winter Games from China. Pictures that are supposed to represent the phone call were released, but the full video has yet to be (perhaps making sure all gun barrels aimed at Peng remain offscreen.)

I think there was a call, as I can't believe the IOC would go so low as to help with a photoshop that made it look like there was. But I'm almost certain that listening to it would make clear what a tissue of lies the CCP is trying to sell and how eagerly the IOC is to help close the deal so as not to endanger its commission. If this pattern continues and the IOC keeps participating, it's going to owe a lot of apologies to the former East German judges for impugning the honesty of their results.

Example

A few days ago Chinese women's tennis player Peng Shuai accused a high Chinese government official of coercive sexual behavior. The Chinese government reacted as totalitarian dictatorships do and she has now disappeared. The Women's Tennis Association received an email that almost no one believes that Peng sent, retracting the allegations and saying she was just fine.

Unlike the spineless National Basketball Association, which bent over backwards to grovel when a general manager tweeted support of Hong Kong democracy protestors, the WTA said no dice and that it would be happy to pull all of its business out of China unless Peng's allegations were investigated and definitive proof of her continued well-being offered. WTA Chariman and CEO Steve Simon's exact words were, “We’re definitely willing to pull our business and deal with all the complications that come with it.”

Meanwhile, LeBron James has yet to say the word Uyghur in public. One begins to wonder whether the spheres on the court are the only ones involved in that game. Except for Enes Kanter, of course.

Maybe...

On the 110th anniversary of Buck O'Neil's birth we find welcome news, as outlined here by Kansas City Star columnist Vahe Gregorian. The driving force behind both the creation of baseball's Negro League Museum and elevating the profile of that league and its all-but-forgotten players missed inclusion in the hall in 2006 by one vote. He died months later. Now a select committee that meets every several years has included him on its Early Baseball Era ballot for possible induction in 2022.

Gregorian quotes museum president Bob Kendrick's story of how O'Neil handled the news that day as evidence of his strength of character and graceful spirit. He also makes a point of saying that he doesn't want to look like he is pressuring the committee voting on O'Neil and the others. I, on the other hand, wish to make it clear that without Buck O'Neil, the Baseball Hall of Fame is nothing more than a storage shed for a bunch of bronze semi-likenesses hanging on its walls.

Solo

It's entirely possible that Enes Kanter is the only person with a conscience in the National Basketball Association.

Conditions

Noticed that friends have begun posting about preseason schedules for the National Basketball Association upcoming season. I'll watch another NBA game when someone from the league offers some indication that they know the Uighur people exist and are being systematically wiped out both culturally and literally by the government they won't even breathe crossways of and the only reason is cash.

Anglospherical

The Women's Final at the US Open Tennis championships was held yesterday, which was a busy day of local sports, so I didn't get to watch any video until today. The two young ladies playing -- Emma Raducanu of Great Britain and Leylah Fernandez of Canada -- put on a top match. Raducanu was the favorite, having not lost a set all tournament, but Fernandez did not go away quietly. They've faced each other before in junior matches at a number of tournaments.

They were gracious towards each other -- they're both likeable and probably like each other -- and grateful to the New York tennis fans. Raducanu noted the presence of Virginia Wade, the last Englishwoman to win a tennis major (Wimbledon '77 -- quite possibly before Emma's parents were born). Fernandez was equally gracious and grateful for the fans, taking note of the day she was playing, Sept. 11, and lauding her hosts' resilience.

Raducanu cracked up when the PA system borrowed the Boston tradition recently adopted by English soccer fans of singing along to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." Fernandez, seen over Raducanu's shoulder during her winner's interview, smiled and nodded in a "You bet we will" manner when the victor mentioned the possibility of more meetings between the two.

Sports that's an entertaining diversion between two fierce competitors each offering honor to her opponent and understanding gratitude towards the audience. What a splendid idea.

Corny...But Awesome

I would have posted something about this yesterday when it happened but I was so surprised Rob Manfred got something right I have spent the last 24 hours in a coma collapsed on my keyboard.

Building an actual "Field of Dreams" in Iowa in the cornfield 30 years after the movie of that name came out? Use the White Sox and Yankees as the combatants, as in the ghostly game in the movie? Have it introduced by the movie's lead, Kevin Costner?

I'm almost as stunned to type it as I was to see it.

And if anyone knows how to clean reversed keyboard letters off human foreheads I'd appreciate a little help...

The Thrill of Victory

One of the things that not having cable lets me do is surf clips from events that I might want to see on my own time, which I have found to be the best way to watch the Olympics. Medal celebrations, superb sportsmanship, displays of character and honor -- these are all great to watch. I think I've mentioned elsewhere that moments like that, in which athletes realize their dream, be it victory or just competing on this stage, are among the reasons the corrupt and hypocritical games leadership groups disgust me.

It allows me to skip the people whose protest gestures seem less about drawing attention to their causes and more about drawing attention to them. Although it's nice when some of the loudest voices skip themselves for you by falling well below expectations or missing a medal altogether.

As a final thought, I am a firm believer that medal counts mean nothing about a nation's actual merits. The United States won more medals than totalitarian China, as well as more golds, but had those standings been reversed this is still a better place to live.

On the other hand, "United States Olympians: Sending Commies home in second place since Lake Placid 1980" has a nice ring to it.

Sacrifice

I feel sorry for gymnast Simone Biles, although she won't ever know it and certainly doesn't need it. One of the comments she's made in recent weeks is that she feels like she has the "weight of the world on her shoulders." It's easy to see why. She is clearly the most powerful and gifted women's gymnast of her generation. She has the strength and speed to succeed at moves so far beyond her competitors that her sport's international governing body will refuse to award the difficulty points they merit just to keep the score close.

Competitors accept as justified the pressure of being No. 1 and having everyone gunning for you, Many thrive on it. But our culture has laid much more on Ms. Biles. So many different interest groups make her their hero because of the many roadblocks she had to overcome in her life -- foster care, abuse by USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nasser, the treacherous cover-up of that abuse by the adults running the federation that was supposed to look out and care for her and so on. She was expected to be a voice for persons of color during tumultuous racial times because she was a public figure who was African-American. And sports media's ridiculous obsession with hanging the albatross of GOAT (Greatest of All Time) on certain athletes, blathered (and cared) about mostly by people who only watch the competitions. All of this and more while she is, at 24, simultaneously very very young to handle this load but also approaching that cutoff point for her peak skills. And while she is in a weird Olympics without spectators and staged a year late because of a pandemic.

I feel sorry for Ms. Biles mostly because she may have thought stepping back from competing because all of these different pressures had finally unbalanced her superhuman focus would somehow relieve her of them. She anticipated, I am sure, those who would label her a "quitter," but just as one expects a toddler to make a mess in his or her diaper, one might expect such people to make that judgment.

What she probably didn't anticipate that she would gain an entirely new expectation she didn't ask for: Champion of mental health awareness. Instead of easing out from under the pressure of being the Slay! Queen! of gymnastics she is now also the new avatar of self-care. Everything that has ever happened in the sport will now be re-evaluated in light of the new most courageous person who has ever lived. Rather than value individuals as such, we will now have her as our new paradigm that will let us look with a little bit of sadness and a whole lot of pity on those who may have made different choices at their own crisis points of competition.

I've already seen the first Facebook post that compares her to Kerri Strug, whose vault while injured during the 1996 Atlanta Games has been considered an example of competitive courage. Rather than value each woman for the choice she made when she made it, the post compares Biles' wise decision with Strug's risky one. It blames the tyrannical Bela Karolyi, Strug's coach, for coercing her to make what turned out to be an unneeded vault so the poster can skirt around making a direct judgment of Biles over Strug, but that's certainly the hint the reader is desired to take. Does Simone Biles, born the year after Strug's vault, think of her decision in that way? Who knows? Who cares? We think of it that way, and we will control this narrative too, thank you very much.

I feel sorry for Ms. Biles because with her decision, she may have thought she escaped what everyone else wanted from her and moved into a place where she could do what she wanted when, how and as she wanted. Nope, sorry. This is the 21st century, and when we put someone on the altar of popular culture to sacrifice them to our expectations, we decide when they can get off. Not them.

Medalist!

One of the reasons to dump so heavily on the corrupt International Olympic Committee and corner-cutting dictatorships is for the times when people like Hidilyn Diaz win a gold medal. Diaz won a gold in women's power-lifting, meaning that for the first time in the history of the summer games, an audience heard Lupang Hinirang sung during the medal presentation. And I mean heard it sung.

Search for video of Diaz's lifts and you'll find a cell-phone video from someone in the Philippines watching from among the limited number of spectators. And when it shifts to Diaz's medal presentation and the hoisting of the flags, the Philippine Air Force sergeant snaps a precision salute as her anthem is played and the sounds of the phone holder and the surrounding people singing their anthem at full volume dominate the feed.

Every time we read about some sticky-fingered IOC official, or some stupid rule that women can't wear shorts in a sport where men can, or some totalitarian regime that will ruin a hundred lives to get one competitor -- or, lately, someone who thinks that Citius - Altius - Fortius adds up to Smarter and Better than You-ius -- we can forget people like Hidilyn Diaz, who was exiled to another country for two years by COVID when she went there to train. Who had to hone her style and strength in a carport because the virus closed the gyms. Who raised money while doing that so food packages could be bought and delivered to poor families locked down and unable to work back in the homeland she hasn't seen in two years.

I'm not unaware that the Philippines are currently run by a strongman-style regime less enamored of human rights than we might wish. I'd rather live here than there because I'm freer here and better off. But one of those blessings here is free speech, which a lot of us say we believe in. So if some athletes significantly more privileged than Diaz want to push the envelope and protest perceived injustices by drawing attention to themselves they should have our blessing.

But when we compare them to someone whose journey to the medal podium was like Hidilyn Diaz's, let's not pretend they should have our respect.

Conferencing

At whatever your preferred sports news website, you may read speculation, an actually tiny bit of certain knowledge, opinion and full-throated blatherskite about the idea that the University of Oklahoma and University of Texas might be invited to join the Southeastern Conference. I picked The Athletic, and learned what I could learn here.

What I didn't learn there, and what I wouldn't learn anywhere, was what academic changes this move might entail. Because of course it involves none. Whether either school's athletic programs have competed in the Southwest Conference, Big Eight Conference, Big Twelve Conference or whatever other alphabet combo cobbled together to soak up TV money has made absolutely no difference to the primary reason either school -- if indeed they still desire to be called such -- exists.

The only question about such alignments or re-alignments is which individuals make money off of the efforts of unpaid young people, often members of minority groups. Since the odds that those unpaid young people won't be among those making money, what difference does it make which "athletic conference" an institution belongs to?

Explanation

So my preferred team, the Kansas City Chiefs, did not win Super Bowl LV. As far as I can tell from my Facebook news feed, Tom Brady's performance as the quarterback of the victorious Tampa Bay Buccaneers cements his status as the GOAT, the usual acronym meaning Greatest of All Time. We'll talk another day, perhaps, about what a meaningless and impossible-to-determine title GOAT really is, but something else on FB following the game intrigued me.

A couple hours after the game was over I switched my FB cover photo to a picture of Kauffman Stadium, the home of my preferred baseball team, the Kansas City Royals. On it was printed the date for the 2021 season's opening day of April 1, 2021. During the NFL season I'd had the unofficial Chiefs 2020 season motto, "Run It Back" as my photo. A couple of people chuckled at my change and crowed a bit over how quickly I made it following the Chiefs' loss.

But to me it seems perfectly rational. I don't care about football if one of the teams I root for isn't playing. Once my alma mater won its bowl game I didn't watch another snap from a collegiate broadcast. Because of my overall flimsy interest in the sport, if my team didn't win I don't care about any of the postgame (and the presence of Tony Romo on the mike would kill graveyard dead any interest I might have had).

So why not turn my attention to a sport I like a lot better? I really do like the Chiefs; I like a lot of their players and as far as I can tell they're a pretty classy organization. But the business of football bores me without a peg to hang my team logo hat on, so I now turn my focus toward what I enjoy. And I, along with Rogers Hornsby, will now wait at my symbolic window until spring.

Motormouth

My distaste for sports announcer Joe Buck's work has been noted before. I'm pretty sure I now need to add Cris Collinsworth, who apparently does his color commentary on a pay-per-word basis.

Champeen

With the Los Angeles Lakers win in the 2020 NBA Championships, LeBron James now has his fourth title as well as fourth Finals MVP Award., reigniting talk about whether or not he or former Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan is the GOAT or Greatest of All Time. Jordan has six rings and six Finals MVP awards, which would seem to make the answer clear.

Nay, nay, O Tolerant Reader! Arguments over matters like this are what sports fans live for, especially when the players involved never went head-to-head. Multiple controlling factors are in play, such as whether or not Jordan would have been able to dominate as he did in today's game of professional basketball, or whether James would have been able to do the same in the 1990s. James, it is pointed out, has taken three different teams to titles, whereas Jordan won only with the Bulls. Exactly wrong, scoff the MJ crowd, who suggest instead that instead creating and maintaining a decade-long dynasty was the greater task.

William C. Rhoden, writing for The Undefeated, suggests that the tag of greatest clearly belongs to James. He cites the current superstar's impressive achievements but adds in the off-court dimension, where James' activism far outshines Jordan's well-known bottom-line reticence in political matters.

Figuring out whose on-court accomplishments top the other's is an exercise left for the student, but if we're going to add in off-court factors I have to point out that Michael Jordan never held the company line on its submissive pose to the Chinese market or side-stepped his league's subservience to a genocidal regime. MJ never suggested that a tweet supporting democracy protestors in Hong Kong was "misinformed." So I'm not willing to tip the cap to Mr. James just yet.

As for my own two cents regarding on-court matters? I'll cast my vote for and leave the last word to Bill Russell:

ETA: Tolerant Readers indeed. Many typos fixed today, 10/17/20