It's unanimous, and it's about damn time

The 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame class was announced yesterday, and it features names that surely are deserving in Edgar Martinez, Roy Halladay, Mike Mussina, and Mariano Rivera. How deserving each of them are is another question for another day, but what I found to be the biggest news of the day was that Mariano Rivera became the first player ever to be elected unanimously. Why it has taken this long for someone to receive 100% of the votes is the result of many things, but I am glad that Rivera was the first one to appear on every ballot, because I think it will open doors for future Hall of Famers, and eventually shine the light on how foolish it is that some voters have refused to do this before.

I thought that the first player to receive 100% of the votes would be Derek Jeter, but the fact that it was Rivera is totally fine in my eyes. The only reason I believed that Rivera might not be selected unanimously is because he spent his entire career as a closer, and that was really a position that didn't exist decades ago. While it is no doubt a very important position in the game today, relief pitchers in the early 20th century were usually just the guys who were not good enough to be starting pitchers, and I thought that a few old, crotchety voters would therefore see that as reason enough to leave Rivera off their ballots. Thankfully though, I was wrong.

Mariano Rivera is easily the best closer of all time, as he is the career leader in saves, has a career ERA of 2.21, and an amazing career postseason ERA of 0.70. It isn't like he only pitched a few innings in the postseason either. He was a member of the New York Yankees during a run in which they won multiple World Series championships, and he was a staple of the team. If you think Rivera isn't a Hall of Famer, then you simply just don't know baseball. The fact that he received 100% of the votes shows that.

Baseball fans everywhere might have their beliefs about why no other player has ever been selected to the Hall of Fame unanimously, and I think there are multiple reasons this has happened. The first reason is probably the easiest, and that is simply because most players just aren't good enough to be selected by every voter. There are borderline Hall of Famers, there are the good ones, and then there are the immortals. The immortals don't come around as often as those other ones, but Rivera certainly fits into that category. You can't mention the best players in the history of the game without eventually bringing up his name. His numbers show it, his accomplishments show it, and his character shows it.

Obviously, there are the steroid era players like Rafael Palmeiro and Barry Bonds who easily have the numbers, but have a glaring hole in the character category, and that has kept them out of the Hall of Fame so far. The same goes for Pete Rose and Joe Jackson, who are two of the greatest hitters to ever play, but were banned from the sport for gambling. You could make a legitimate argument that Ty Cobb is the greatest all around player in the history of the sport, but his temper and attitude, both on and off the field, turned many people in the game against him. Burleigh Grimes is a Hall of Famer, but was known for throwing a spitball, which is now outlawed, even though when he was playing, it was actually a legal pitch. You could even say that Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle could possibly have small flaws because they worked at casinos after their careers were over, even though it was in a very limited and innocent fashion. Outright racism could be another factor, as even though Jackie Robinson is a surefire Hall of Famer, some of the voters still did not like him only because of his skin color. The same goes for other black and Hispanic ballplayers. Thankfully though, Rivera's unanimous selection has finally broken down one of the barriers that has marred Hall of Fame voting for decades.

The initial elections that took place in 1936 were very loosely organized, and even though the first Hall of Fame class in 1939 contained nothing but all-time legends, none of them actually received 100% of the votes. Originally, some voters were chosen to elect 20th century players, while some were chosen to elect 19th century players. Also, there were no rules governing whether or not you could vote for active players. While the first class (Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Honus Wagner) contained nothing but legends of the game, because there were no standardized rules, no one actually received the vote of every writer, although they all did receive over 80% of votes, with Cobb receiving nearly unanimous selection, at 98%. Another reason that some of those old, crotchety voters throughout history had never selected anyone with 100% of the vote until yesterday was because none of those legends in the initial class received 100%, so therefore they believed no one should receive 100%, since in the eyes of many, Ruth or Cobb still could today be considered better than anyone on all the ballots after that.

Another reason I have heard discussed today is that ballots can be made public now, which was not the case in the past. Therefore, over the years, someone could be a contrarian and leave a legend off their ballot, and no one would know they did so. Now, voters can reveal their ballots, so the public can see who it is that may not have voted for someone who is clearly a Hall of Famer, and the embarrassment of being exposed would be bad for the careers of those stubborn voters.

I think a combination of all of these things is why Rivera was the first person to be unanimously elected yesterday, and I hope that it opens the door for it to happen in the future, maybe even starting next year with Derek Jeter. If Rivera, as a pitcher who did not play every day in a position that did not exist at the dawn of the sport, is elected by every voter, I really have no idea how any of these same people could justify not voting for Jeter next year. As I look ahead to future ballots, I think Ichiro Suzuki might have a chance to receive 100% of the vote, and maybe Albert Pujols could as well. It is too early to tell on guys like Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout, but they could potentially be unanimous selections as well.

That tier of Hall of Famers I spoke about before really has broken the ground on an even higher level now, and that is the unanimous Hall of Famers. The first class will obviously always be special, and the first ballot inductees deserve to be separated from the rest as well. It is far too late to turn back the hands of time and place the legends of the game who deserve to be there in their earned place as unanimous inductees, but at least that place now exists. It by no means should be a large group, but there is a group of people who will live on long after their time as the best of the best. Rivera is now the first, but my hope is that when the next ones are up for election, they can join Rivera in the class that he has now created.

Daily Rangers Update: No more games until after the All Star break, so it will be about a week before the Rangers are back in action.

Daily NBA Update: Trade deadline talk has begun, and it seems like the Memphis Grizzlies, who are in the midst of a very disappointing season, will be sellers. Carmelo Anthony was also dealt away by the Houston Rockets in a somewhat surprising move, and might end up as a free agent who can sign with another team, most likely one with hopes of a deep playoff run. I think this says a lot about Anthony, and it also brings about something that I am not really a fan of, as star players are dealt and then their contracts are bought out. I will have to write about those things another time, maybe if or when Anthony signs with a contending team.

Daily NFL Update: The Pro Bowl is this Sunday, and it is surely my least favorite game of the entire season. I would rather watch preseason games than the Pro Bowl. We are still over a week away from the Super Bowl, so it will be a long wait until we get that final taste of the NFL season.

The best overtime in football

The NFL conference championship games yesterday certainly lived up to expectations, and we now have a Super Bowl matchup set between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams. With the top two seeds facing off in both the AFC and NFC, the potential for a great day of football was there, and we got even more than we could have expected, as both games were decided in overtime. However, the day after overtime games is often when we get people complaining about the format of overtime in the NFL, and today has been no different.

In my opinion, games that go to overtime in the postseason, when you need to have a winner, should be decided by playing the actual game as it has been played throughout regulation. It is why I do not like penalty kicks in soccer. They might be exciting, especially on the biggest stages, but you aren't deciding a winner based on one team being better than the other. You are deciding the outcome based on something that isn't really soccer.

It is also why I hate the contrived, joke of an overtime that happens in college football, where teams are given the ball already in field goal range. Penalty kicks in soccer are at least exciting. What college football does in overtime isn't even exciting. In my opinion, it is easily the worst overtime format in all of sports.

On the other hand, baseball, hockey, and basketball overtime/extra inning games are all decided by playing the game exactly as it had been played in regulation time. They all get it right. There is nothing more exciting than overtime in playoff hockey. Play for as long as it takes, and the first team to score wins.

In the middle of this spectrum is the NFL. Football in general is a bit different because the nature of the game isn't totally similar to basketball and hockey, where possession changes hands so often. For that reason, people who say that NFL overtime rules are unfair always point to that. The Patriots won yesterday after they scored a touchdown, and the Chiefs offense never got to possess the ball in overtime. Those calling this unfair will say that the Chiefs should have gotten a chance at a possession. But in my opinion, those people are dead wrong. The Chiefs and Patriots played football yesterday after regulation ended, and the Patriots won fair and square.

Football isn't just about offense vs offense. Both teams pay players to play defense as well. If the Chiefs defense couldn't stop the Patriots offense, then that's on them. The Patriots weren't given the ball at the 25 yard line, already in field goal range, like they would have been under the college format. The Chiefs kicked off, and the Patriots had to drive the length of the field to score. New England converted multiple third downs on that drive. Kansas City had plenty of chances to stop the Patriots and force a punt or a turnover, but their defense didn't do it. They could have even forced a field goal and still gotten a chance to get the ball back, but that didn't happen either.

If New England scored a touchdown and then the Chiefs had gotten the ball back in the name of "fairness," then what happens if the Chiefs score a touchdown? The Patriots get the ball back again and it turns into sudden death then? If New England scored on that drive, then is it all of a sudden "fair" even though New England had two possessions and the Chiefs only had one?

The argument that each team should get an equal amount of possessions in overtime makes zero sense. The teams had plenty of time for plenty of possessions in the 60 minutes of regulation they had just played. Why should that change suddenly just because it's overtime and for some reason now you have to be fair to both teams?

The Chiefs could have stopped the Patriots just like the many times that happened during regulation time. It isn't like they had to dig deep into the history books to find the last time a defense made a stop on the first possession of overtime either. It had just happened about three hours earlier. The Saints won the coin toss in overtime of the NFC game, but the Rams intercepted a Drew Brees pass and then went on to win. People who want to knock the overtime rules just conveniently left that part out. It was "fair" earlier in the day, but I guess that doesn't matter when you are blindly trying to prove a point that isn't a good one.

I actually went back and looked at the regular season games that went to overtime for a bigger sample size, and the results were even more one-sided than I thought they would have been. Fifteen games went into overtime in the regular season. Out of those 15, three of them ended after one possession because the team that initially received the kickoff scored a touchdown. That means 12 times, defenses stepped up and did their jobs, and three times the losing teams complained about the format after their defenses didn't do their jobs.

The NFL extended an olive branch to bad defenses when they instituted the rule requiring a touchdown on the first overtime possession to end the game, and allowing the team with the failing defense to get a shot if the opening drive ends with a field goal. In my opinion, even that was too far, but just like the longer extra points, everyone seems pretty accustomed to it now, so the only time we hear complaints is when the losing team has a defense that can't make a stop. And don't tell me it isn't fair because the defense is tired either. Everyone was out there playing 60 minutes of football. The offenses are tired too.

This is a debate that will never end, no matter what the format of overtime is. The winning teams won't complain because their guys did their jobs, and the losing teams will complain because their guys didn't do their jobs. You know how you make it not matter? Do what the Rams did. Make a play, and don't let the other team march right down the field and score.

Both games were ended yesterday by playing football. There wasn't some stupid, artificial semblance of football being played like college, and there wasn't a shootout like regular season hockey and there wasn't penalty kicks like soccer. Play the same game in overtime that you played during regulation time. Force an interception like the Rams did. Don't allow multiple third and longs to be converted like the Chiefs did. It's how football is played in the first quarter, and it's how football should be played in overtime.

I have no sympathy for Chiefs fans or players complaining they were treated unfairly or the game was decided because of a coin toss. The game was decided by New England's offense being better than Kansas City's defense for the entire game. And because of that, the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl and the Chiefs are going home.

Daily NFL Update: Aside from sore losers complaining about overtime, yesterday was a great day of football. Now, the long wait for the Super Bowl begins.

Daily Rangers Update: After losing five straight, the Rangers have now won four of five going into the All Star break. Hopefully this week off can refuel the team because they are going to need a very strong finish to the season if they want to make the playoffs.

Daily NBA Update: If you want to really appreciate how great LeBron James is, you just need to look at the history of the Cavaliers over the past decade. When he is on the team, they are good. When he is playing somewhere else, they are awful. After making the NBA Finals last season, Cleveland now has the worst record in the league this year.

Experience really is the best teacher

There are many adages out there about young people not respecting their elders, or being ignorant about things that you never really understand when you hear them as a child. The only way you can learn about how true some of these adages are is simply to get older and experience them.

This is true in nearly all facets of life. You don't have to be a sports fan to learn that experience can indeed be the best teacher in many cases. You could play the tuba or install kitchen sinks or work at a factory that produces shoes. I have learned how experience can be the greatest teacher of all, and I probably still have much more to learn about it as well.

I'm sure this happens with athletes all the time. When you are a college football player, you aren't as experienced or knowledgeable as you are when you have played in the NFL for a decade. And just because I'm not a football player doesn't mean as a fan I can't learn this same lesson.

The middle of January is a good time for this lesson to be taught, and as I read or hear news about sports today, I realize that my perspective on what I am consuming is much different than it was not too long ago.

With conference championship games coming up this weekend in the NFL, television and radio hosts hype up their predictions and wait until the last part of the show to give the great reveal of who they think will win the games this weekend. Writers wait until the day before the games to give their predictions so their readers will hang on their every word until finally we get to find out who all the local sports columnists think will come out victorious.

For the sake of their shows and their columns, I understand why things are done this way. Hardcore listeners or readers will continue to boost the ratings of the shows and generate more clicks on their websites. It's how things work, and I am not criticizing these people for doing things like this. What I do realize though, and this goes back to that experience thing, is that none of these predictions by any of these people matter one bit.

What am I gaining from hearing or reading what these predictions are? Nothing. They don't have any bearing on how I will watch these games, and they don't have any bearing on how the games will be played either. Just because some local television host in Waco, Texas thinks the Patriots will win means absolutely nothing to me and it means absolutely nothing to anyone who will be playing in Kansas City on Sunday. So these predictions that are happening around the country really don't matter to the four teams still standing.

For the other 28 teams and their fans, aside from Sunday, the focus has mostly shifted to the NFL Draft this upcoming April. It is just the beginning of mock draft season. We will have expert after expert predict what players will be selected by what teams, and endless tapes and measurements will be analyzed again and again. All of this will be done by people who, in the end, will have absolutely nothing to do with what actually happens on the night of the draft.

When it comes to mock drafts, I must say that I do find them useful simply for reading about the players, most of whom I have never seen play before. I don't really need that information now though. It is actually the most useful after the draft ends. Then I can go back and find the analyses of the guys drafted. Even then though, it is often times useless because it is very hard to predict how these players will end up performing as pros. I used to worry about what expert had what prospect going to what team, but I realize now that all of these predictions pretty much mean nothing. I don't care who Expert A or Expert B says the Giants will select, because unless they happen to be Dave Gettleman or Pat Shurmur, it has no bearing on what will actually happen.

The next thing I have listened to and read about over the past few days that I used to worry about, but now could not care less about is All Star voting. Right now, Derrick Rose is second in the Western Conference of NBA All Star voting, and I hear people making a big fuss about it. How could he have more votes than James Harden or Russell Westbrook? That's outrageous! In reality, maybe it is. Harden and Westbrook are certainly having better seasons than Rose, but Rose has more votes than both of them. That's what happens when fans vote on the starters for these games though. The most popular players get the most votes. It's that simple.

It isn't like Harden and Westbrook aren't going to make the All Star team either. They are both having great years. The All Star teams have more than five spots on them. When the NBA All Star Game is played, both of those guys are going to be there. And right now, it appears that Rose will be there as well. And you know what? That's totally fine. Good for Derrick Rose. Being second in voting in the Western Conference means that fans like him, and the All Star game doesn't have any bearing on the standings, so what is so bad about him being a starter?

Many years in the future, when we look back on the careers of current players, we might use All Star appearances as a means of comparing them. And when we look at who was an All Star in 2019, I'm sure Westbrook and Harden will be on that list, as well as Rose. Twenty years from now, we aren't going to care who started the game in 2019, we are going to see that all three of them made the team, and then move on. We aren't going to check the box score to see how many minutes each of them played and how efficiently they shot the ball and who turned the ball over the most. They all were All Stars in 2019, that's it. Then we'll move on.

In all honesty, the likelihood that I won't watch the NBA All Star game this year is probably much higher than the likelihood that I will watch the game. It isn't the NBA Finals. It isn't even Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. What happens in the All Star game has absolutely nothing to do with what will happen in those games, so why do we care so much about who will be on the floor to start the All Star Game?

I don't remember who won any All Star games in any sport last year, and I'm totally fine with that. I could probably guess many of the starters for the games. They are probably many of the same players that will start the games this season, because the fans usually vote in the same players year after year. If I wasn't able to guess them all though, I really wouldn't care. As the years go by, the starters become less and less important anyway, and they really aren't important at all to begin with.

So listen to your favorite writers and analysts predict what will happen in the football games this weekend. Read all the mock drafts you want. Stuff the ballot boxes with your All Star votes. I will just enjoy the games and draft without having to worry about looking like I knew what was going to happen when what I thought didn't matter at all in the first place. Experience as a fan has taught me that none of that stuff matters one bit, and when the games are played and the draft is complete, all of those predictions will have not affected the outcomes one bit.

Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers got a nice win at home against a struggling Blackhawks team last night, and will play the Bruins tomorrow night. They have been able to recover a little bit from a very rough stretch, but still sit on the outside looking in on the playoffs right now, and will need a strong second half to even get into the postseason.

Daily NBA Update: DeMarcus Cousins will make his season debut for the Warriors tonight, and it is pretty crazy to think that a team already stacked with so much talent hasn't even played a game all season yet with a player the caliber of Cousins. I don't care about who fits where or who gets the ball when. Adding Cousins is only going to make the best team in the NBA even better.

Daily NFL Update: Weather seems like it might be a factor this weekend in Kansas City, as the temperatures are supposed to be in the single digits. If you look at the history of bad weather games though, often times it doesn't play as big a role as you might believe, so we will have to see what happens on Sunday and just hope that the games are exciting.

If you can dish it out, then you better be able to take it as well

Many fans of football would say that what we have coming up in two days is the best weekend of the season. The Divisional round of the playoffs is the first time we get all of the best teams playing against each other. The first round byes have given the top seeds a week to rest, and the Wild Card weekend winners are looking to make it two straight postseason wins. There were interesting and exciting games last weekend, and hopefully this weekend is no different.

The final game of the weekend will be the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles heading into New Orleans to play the top seeded New Orleans Saints. The two teams played earlier this season, and the Saints won convincingly by a score of 48-7. Obviously, the game wasn't very close, and Eagles' offensive tackle Jason Peters came out a few days ago and said he and some of his teammates were angry because they believed New Orleans ran up the score at the end of the game. Drew Brees hit Alvin Kamara for a 37 yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter to take the score from 38-7 to 45-7, and Peters claimed it was disrespectful for the Saints to do that. I never played football, so maybe I don't have perfect perspective on this, but I think his claims are ridiculous.

The Eagles won the Super Bowl last year. Peters was on the team. So, obviously they have had targets on their backs all season. When you see the defending champs on your schedule, you get up for the game, and that is what the Saints did. The Saints had a great year, but no matter how good your team is, you treat a game against the reigning champs a little bit differently. The Eagles had plenty of fun last season with their dog masks and that asinine outfit that Peters' fellow lineman, Jason Kelce wore during the Super Bowl parade. I'm sure as they were celebrating all of those wins, they weren't very worried about the feelings of the players on the teams that they beat to get to that parade.

When Kamara scored the touchdown that Peters was talking about, there was 13:15 remaining in the game. The drive that ended with that touchdown actually began in the third quarter. Does scoring on a pass with less than two minutes gone in the fourth quarter really count as running up the score? I can't agree with Peters that it does. Like I said, they are the defending champs, so teams were ready to play them all season. It wasn't like the Saints were going for a touchdown on 4th down with 10 seconds left in the game from the one yard line. I would consider that running up the score. Is scoring on a 37 yard pass on a drive that didn't even begin in the fourth quarter so bad that Peters should still be insulted by it months later? I don't think so.

I can't believe I'm going to use the Cowboys as an example here, but I looked at Philadelphia's schedule from last season and found a game in Week 11 (the same week that the Eagles and Saints game was this year) and found a case of what Peters must consider running up the score then too, and I don't believe he apologized for it a year ago.

The Eagles began a drive in the third quarter that went into the fourth quarter and ended with the Eagles scoring on a 17 yard touchdown pass to Alshon Jeffrey to go up by three touchdowns. There was 12:02 left on the clock when they scored that touchdown, so there was actually less time on the clock than when Kamara scored against Philadelphia this year. To make Peters' claim even more laughable, the Eagles actually tried to convert a two-point conversion after that touchdown instead of kicking an extra point, but failed to score.

What does Peters think teams should do? Run the fullback up the middle every play once a team gets ahead by a few touchdowns? Take a knee for the entire fourth quarter so the other guys don't get their feelings hurt? This is professional football. You're supposed to be tough both physically and mentally when you play. If you can hand out a beatdown and celebrate and dance, then don't be mad when the other guys do the same thing.

I feel the same about pitchers in baseball who complain and get angry when they give up home runs. You know how to stop the other guys from celebrating? Stop them. Strike them out. Don't complain that you aren't good enough, because you are getting paid to be good enough just like your opponents are.

Peters is a very good player. When he retires, I think he could possibly be a Hall of Famer. That makes it even more ludicrous that he claims the Saints were running up the score with nearly an entire quarter of football left to play. Peters has played plenty of games in his career, and he should know that crazy things can happen. Crazy like a huge fourth quarter comeback, or crazy like a team wanting to beat up on the team that beat up on the entire league the season before. It's easy to be on top, but when you aren't there is when you need to be even tougher.

Peters is certainly using that game and what he perceived to be disrespectful as motivation for the game this Sunday. And he should. He should also be happy that his team is getting a chance to avenge that loss. When the Eagles scored 51 points against Denver last year, the Broncos never got a shot at revenge. I'm sure everyone on Denver was pissed off about that. But they had to deal with it.

Now, Peters has to do the same thing. If they throw a pass that ends up resulting in a touchdown with 13:15 remaining in the game to put his team up by four touchdowns, I'm sure he won't be writing an apology letter to the Saints. He is going to be celebrating and most likely rubbing it into the faces of everyone on the New Orleans sideline. And he will have earned the right to do that. If you want to dance and pose for the cameras when you win, then don't be upset when the other team does the same thing. Go ahead and win this weekend Jason. If that is happening and you want the team to run up the score, then that's perfectly fine. We'll see if that happens on Sunday.

Daily Rangers Update: The All Star break cannot come soon enough for this team, as it has now been six losses in the past seven games after a 4-3 loss to the Islanders last night.

Daily NBA Update: LaMarcus Aldridge had a huge game in a double overtime thriller against Oklahoma City, and Nikola Jokic continues to be really good as well.

Daily Giants Update: Kyler Murray, despite my advice, seems like he is headed into the NFL Draft. I hope he does well, but I also really hope the Giants do not take him because, in my opinion, he is way too small to be a quarterback that lasts long in the NFL.

All of the guts, none of the glory

After a dominant victory by the Clemson Tigers last night to win the college football national title, Trevor Lawrence is a name that literally might not ever be more popular and praiseworthy than it is today. The true freshman led Clemson to a convincing win over the Alabama Crimson Tide, the big, bad, bullies on the block. 

We love to see dynasties fall and underdogs win. It's why everyone outside of Massachusetts cheers against the Patriots and everyone outside of California cheers against the Warriors. It's also why we love March Madness. The underdog stories are always the best ones. They are the ones that turn into movies years later and no one would believe if they didn't see it happen with their own eyes. And while Dabo Swinney referred to his team as "little old Clemson" after last night's win, I think we are getting to the point where there are two bullies on the block, and there is no such thing as "little old Clemson" anymore. 

That is a subject for another day though, because watching last night's game, I thought of something else as Lawrence was making throw after throw, play after play, converting third downs with ease, keeping cool, and smiling all the way to a 44-16 victory. 

I thought he started the game a little overhyped, but for a 19 year old true freshman, that shouldn't really have surprised anyone. What could have surprised a lot of people though was how he settled down and played the game of his life on the biggest stage of all. After a close first quarter, Clemson was completely dominant, outscoring Alabama 30-3 the rest of the way. 

Lawrence finished the game 20 for 32, with 347 passing yards and 3 touchdowns, as well as 27 yards rushing. Those are very impressive numbers, and watching the game made them even more impressive. He was making NFL-caliber throws against a defense filled with NFL-caliber talent. He stood in the pocket and got hit a few times, but he kept making plays, and I don't know how anyone could watch that game and not come away extremely impressed by what he did.

After the game, Lawrence said he wanted to come back to Clemson and win more titles, and I'm sure that was music to the ears of Clemson fans everywhere. He won't be eligible for the draft until 2021, so he could at least win two more championships. That made me think though, why should that be the case? Lawrence's stock is probably as high as it will ever be right now. Today. 

Could he win titles in 2020 and 2021 at Clemson? Sure, he could. No matter how good he is though, the odds of that are not very high, and it could be through no fault of his own that the Tigers don't win two more consecutive titles. However, because of the NFL rule stating that any player entering the draft must be three years removed from high school, Lawrence really has no other choice. 

I have never been a fan of the one-and-done rule in college basketball, but that's what the rules are, so that's just what we are used to now. I did believe, and still do believe, that if a player thinks he or she is ready to play professional basketball at the age of 18, then they should be able to enter the draft. If the player has the abilities, then they will succeed. If not, then they made the wrong decision. It shouldn't be anyone else's place to prevent someone from making a bad decision if that person really wants to. LeBron James and Kevin Garnett were 18 years old and made good decisions. Sebastian Telfair and Robert Swift were 18 years old and made bad decisions. It's the way of the world. 

I have said it before, and I will say it again. If an 18 year old fresh out of high school wants to try to become a world-famous violinist or mechanic instead of going to college, they have the right to do just that. And if an 18 year old fresh out of high school wants to try to become a world-famous athlete, they should have that same right.

Whenever I argue that point though, and I think whenever sports fans in general argue that point, they use basketball as their prime example. We have seen Hall of Fame players jump straight from high school to the NBA and succeed. Hockey isn't as popular a sport, but we do see very young players succeed. Sidney Crosby was only the fourth player in league history to score 100 points as an 18 year old. Bryce Harper won National League Rookie of the Year as a Major League Baseball player at 19 years old. These cases are rare, but it doesn't mean they are impossible.

Football has always been different though. For a variety of reasons, we don't see players that young in the NFL. The NFL has had the three years removed from high school rule for a while now, and we all seem to simply have accepted it. I always just thought the NFL game was too violent for players so young, so I never really questioned the rule. As I watched Lawrence last night though, I wondered why it was that I never even thought about how unfair the rule might actually be.

Why should Lawrence have to stay in school two more years? He was making NFL throws last night, he is 6'6" tall, and weighs 210 pounds, so he already has a body at least suitable for an NFL quarterback. 210 pounds might be a little light, but on an NFL diet and workout plan, he could add weight and have an NFL quarterback prototype shaped body pretty soon. 

He can increase his stock and value by playing two more years in school, but can it really get much higher than it is right now? If he entered the draft this year, I think he would have a legitimate chance to be the first quarterback taken. You can't get any higher than that. But, it doesn't matter, because he won't be able to enter the draft anyway. That brings into question why the NFL has this rule in place. I can't claim to know for sure, but I can make some assumptions that I would like to believe are at least somewhat possible. 

The NFL and the NCAA are two separate entities. They are controlled by two completely independent groups of people who have their own best interests at heart. However, Lawrence is a great example of how both the NFL and the NCAA can benefit from this draft rule. Since the NCAA does not pay its players (a subject for another day), they need guys like Lawrence to make money. Hardcore college football fans with serious rooting interests put their team colors first, but that doesn't mean they don't root for the players in those colors as well. Clemson is a big university with a big fanbase, but Lawrence only helps the Tigers brand grow by playing like he did last night. Where he helps even more though, is by bringing in the casual fan like myself and many others who watched the game last night.

I don't root for a specific college football team, but I do watch the sport, and stars like Lawrence are attractions that are more likely to make any causal fan spend money that eventually makes its way to the NCAA. Because Lawrence has no choice but to play in college for another two years, the NCAA can use his face to generate a whole lot of revenue and give him none of it. It seems pretty unfair, but until the draft rules change, that isn't going to change.

On the other hand, while the NFL wouldn't admit it, what we really watched last night was the championship game of their minor leagues. If you want to play in the NFL, you basically have only one option to get there, and that is by playing college football. So college football in that sense is like minor league football. Baseball players and hockey players get drafted and go through minor league systems before being called up to their professional teams. For the NFL, those minor league teams are really Clemson, Alabama, and all of the other college football teams throughout the country.

The difference between the Clemson Tigers and the Reno Aces or Hartford Wolfpack though, is Clemson plays on national television in front of the country, while Reno and Hartford play in places no one even knows. So before Lawrence ever even steps foot on to an NFL field, his face is going to be familiar. It's why the NFL Draft has become a prime time television event. We know the names and faces of most of the guys before they are even on professional rosters. 

The Giants were able to sell Saquon Barkley jerseys for $75 each before he had ever even played a game because the nation knew him from Penn State. The Detroit Tigers selected Casey Mize first overall this past year in the MLB Draft, and I guarantee you that he could walk through Detroit and not even be recognized, so there is no way the Tigers could sell his jersey for $75 because he isn't playing college baseball on national television. These football rookies are making millions of dollars for the NFL before even playing a single game.

That is why this rule preventing guys like Lawrence from turning pro until three years after high school is beneficial to everyone but the player. If he plays at this level for two more seasons, Clemson fans will continue to spend money to watch him, and the NFL will get a money-making star before he ever puts on a helmet. If his play declines, or even worse, if he gets hurt between now and the 2021 draft, then the NCAA will be on the hook for zero money since he wasn't getting paid to begin with, and the NFL will probably have plenty of other quarterbacks who can replace him and make them money, and they won't have paid him a penny either.

Just because this rule has been in place for many years now does not make it fair for everyone involved. The NFL has hidden under the guise of their sport being too violent for 19 and 20 year old kids and honestly, we have all just accepted it.

What Lawrence did last night was pretty close to unprecedented. I think that most NFL fans would agree that two of the biggest "guaranteed" superstar quarterbacks coming out of college were John Elway and Peyton Manning. When Elway was 19 years old, he was a freshman at Stanford who was probably closer to playing professional baseball than professional football. 

When Manning was 19, he actually led the Tennessee Volunteers to the third overall ranking in the country and came in sixth in Heisman Trophy balloting. His career obviously did ascend from there, but if he could have entered the draft after that season, maybe he would have at least considered it. The first quarterback taken in the draft the following season was Tony Banks, and Manning certainly had a better career than Banks, so why shouldn't he have been able to turn pro then? With a quarterback starved class like the one in 1996, he could have started earning a paycheck a few years earlier than he actually did.

Elway and Manning are two of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. At 19 years old, neither of them had accomplished anything close to what Lawrence just accomplished last night. Beating Alabama by four touchdowns to win the national title is literally probably as good as it can get for a 19 year old quarterback. Because he is a football player though, he is going to be exploited for two more years.

Some young basketball players have counteracted the one-and-done college rule by going overseas and playing professionally in other countries. It isn't ideal, but it at least does allow them to earn money playing the sport they will eventually try to turn into a career. In football, that isn't the case though. There are some American football leagues overseas, but the competition is nothing close to NCAA football. Therefore, Lawrence really has no option other than playing for Clemson for two more seasons.

Other quarterbacks like Tua Tagavailoa and Jake Fromm have to deal with the same thing. Tagavailoa won a national championship last year, and Fromm had a great season this year. Just like Lawrence though, they will have to wait to be drafted. 

Maurice Clarett did attempt to challenge this rule years ago, and it seemed like he might have a case, but legal problems and a decline in his play on the field really didn't give him a chance. Lawrence might be a new case with a better chance to win an appeal of this, but he has not given any indication that he would even think about doing that, and no one else I know of has given it any thought either.

Unfortunately, it seems like the players have just accepted the rules as they currently stand, just like fans have. If Lawrence's play declines over the course of the next two seasons, then even if he did try to take legal action against the NFL, he would have much less leverage than he does right now. If he were to get injured between now and 2021, the NFL could just toss him aside like they do with so many other injured players, and we would forget about him. 

A 6'6" kid with NFL talent should make teams in need of a quarterback salivate. And watching him play last night, I'm sure that NFL GM's and coaches were doing just that. I know as a Giants fan, I certainly was. Some of the quarterbacks coming out of school this year seem pretty good, but the ones I like the most all have to go back to school just because the NFL says so. They know kids will be lining up year after year to play in their league, so the more anticipation we have, the better it is for them. At the same time, Lawrence's situation greatly benefits the NCAA because they have two more years to make millions of dollars off him and not have to sign one paycheck for him. 

When two groups as powerful as them both benefit from the same thing, then why would they ever consider changing it? The answer is, they just won't. The only thing that might change this is a superstar player turning to the legal system to challenge it. As it stands now though, I cannot see that happening any time soon. 

At this point, I think Lawrence is much more likely to focus on Clemson defending their title in his sophomore year, and with all of the celebrations going on in South Carolina right now, he is probably already behind schedule, because I can guarantee you that Nick Saban is already on the recruiting trail and drawing up plays for next season in order to prevent Clemson from embarrassing them again. 

I can also guarantee you that the NCAA is thrilled because they know Lawrence is going to put a whole bunch of money in their pockets for the next two seasons. And the NFL is thrilled as well because after the NCAA loses him, that money will start going into their pockets. The 19 year old kid here is not going to earn a dime, but the people around him who already have plenty of money are just going to have to find somewhere else to put the boatloads of cash Lawrence is going to make for them. It sure isn't fair, but as we stand today, we all seem content to let it happen as long as we can get exciting football games because of it.

Daily Giants Update: Dwayne Haskins is officially entering the draft, and it appears that the Giants do have him on their radar with the sixth pick. Barring a trade, he will most likely be available when the Giants pick too. I do like some of the younger quarterbacks more than him, but he certainly does have the talent to be an NFL quarterback. I still don't really have a feel for what the team is going to do in the draft, and I'm not sure they even do because we are still months away from that. Until then though, we will have a million mock drafts to discuss before draft day. Once that day does actually come, one team will make some crazy trade or unpredictable pick and all of the mock drafts we spent months analyzing will be completely wrong. So basically, I have no idea what the Giants are going to do. At this point, all I do know is that Haskins might be available for them. Or he might not.

Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers are in the process of losing yet another game right now in Las Vegas, as the poor stretch they have been on looks bound to continue.

Daily NBA Update: Houston beat Denver in a showdown of two of the top teams in the Western Conference, and Giannis had another big night in a year that I think could be his first legitimate chance to win league MVP.

How ignorance has turned into carelessness

Mike Peluso might not be a name that is commonly known among sports fans in the United States, but if you were a hockey fan during the 1990's you might know him. It is likely though, that you only really think of him for one reason, and it isn't being a Stanley Cup Champion with the New Jersey Devils.

Like most teams during the 80's and 90's, everyone had an enforcer, and that job was often assigned to Peluso. In those days, many fans would refer to those guys as the "goon." The goons weren't on the team to score goals or play solid defense against the top scorers on the opposing teams. They were basically there for one reason, and that was to fight.

If you look at the single season totals for most penalty minutes, you see names like Joey Kocur, Tie Domi, Marty McSorley, and Mike Peluso. And if you do recognize those names, it isn't because they were leading the league in points, it's because they were some of the biggest goons in the NHL. So, that's why Peluso's filing of a lawsuit this past weekend against the league and the Devils should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Over the past decade, the sports world has certainly made significant strides in, at the very least, acknowledging that head injuries are a major concern for the leagues and the players. The NFL, as the most popular league in the country, has been at the forefront of this revelation, but that does not mean that it is the only league in which head trauma and CTE exists.

Peluso's lawsuit claims that in a 1993 game against the Quebec Nordiques, he suffered serious head injuries during a fight with Tony Twist, another well known goon. It doesn't take long to search for video of the exact fight that was mentioned, and it doesn't take a doctor to realize that his claim is certainly realistic, and most likely completely accurate. Twist hits him with multiple punches in the head, Peluso falls to the ice, and then Twist hits him again while he is on the ice. As Peluso is helped up, he clearly is dazed and injured. Yet, in the world of the NHL in 1993, that just came with the territory, and the game continued.

Peluso's lawsuit claims that the Devils hid information about the seriousness of his injuries from not only him, but other teams that Peluso played for in his career as well. Despite the claims of doctors, team trainers simply said he was fine to go back out on the ice. He played games without remembering them, and showed serious signs of head trauma that were ignored by the team.

If this sounds familiar, it's because we have heard it before. The class-action lawsuit filed by former football players against the NFL cites almost identical examples of how the teams and the league covered up things that have ended up causing serious long term damage to its players. The only difference between those and Peluso's case is he was playing in a sport that was much less popular then, and is also much less popular now.

Fighting in the NHL occurs much less than it did 20 years ago. In those days, games were advertised almost secondarily to fights. If Detroit was playing Toronto, it wasn't the Red Wings against the Maple Leafs, it was Bob Probert against Tie Domi. It is similar to NASCAR. Fans go to see the race, but they really won't go home happy if they don't see an accident as well. Sure, Detroit and Toronto might be a competitive game, but it wasn't complete unless Domi and Probert dropped the gloves and fought. Then the hockey fan got the true experience.

Because, as I mentioned before, the NHL is far less popular than the NFL, concussion issues and head trauma usually don't center around the league. Often times, sports fans actually claim that hockey does the best job as a sport of policing itself, because if two players have a problem with one another during a game, they can simply square off and fight one-on-one.

It isn't like baseball where a pitcher might throw at a batter because of something another person did, or football where a defensive player might try to take out a quarterback because that is the position that is usually the most important on a team. In the NHL, two guys can go at one another while everyone else watches, and then head to the penalty box for five minutes, and it seems like everyone is happy and the matter is ended.

Just like the NFL, the NHL offered to help Peluso, but it was on their terms. They recommended a doctor for him, but the doctor was in a different state, and because of the head injuries Peluso previously suffered, and continued to suffer from, it was suggested that Peluso not travel from state to state. Therefore, Peluso often times spoke with doctors via Skype, but that obviously cannot be considered a true examination, since the doctor and patient are not even in the same state as one another, let alone the same room.

What I found to be even worse here was when I saw reports that the NHL was willing to recognize its sport did cause head trauma, but to remain in the background because the NFL was taking the brunt of the blame on this issue. Then, after reading about Peluso's lawsuit, I went to the official website of the NHL, and I could not find anything mentioning it. I saw the story for the first time on January 5th, and all I could find on NHL.com about January 5th was a "This Date In History" mention of the 62nd anniversary of the first professional hockey game being broadcast on network television in the United States.

If you think these health issues are going away any time soon, then it seems to be an almost accepted fact that you are either wrong or unwilling something that can now be medically proven as true. And, if you think these leagues are going to all of a sudden begin to pull the curtains back and air all of their problems, then you are wrong there too.

Thanks to players like Peluso, as well as others involved in class-action lawsuits against both the NHL and NFL, the general public is starting to finally become fully aware of the every day struggles some of these athletes have to deal with long after they are retired and out of the public eye.

I think testimonials and books and movies can make fans more aware of things like CTE and head trauma and long term brain damage. It is up to the fans to decide what they want to do with that information though. Teams and leagues being exposed for withholding substantial, sometimes life-altering information, is undoubtedly a significant step in the process of changing the minds of the public, but if we choose to still ignore cases like Peluso's, then I think athletes should be less willing to pursue careers in such dangerous games.

Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals last season was the highest rated Game Five since NBC began airing the Finals in 2006 though, and there were more viewers during four of the five Finals games in 2018 than there were in 2017. Television ratings were also up significantly during this past weekend's NFL playoff games.

I think what that shows us is that even though many of us are at least somewhat aware of the risk these players are putting themselves through for our entertainment, we simply choose to ignore it. If we can get competitive, entertaining action for a night or a weekend, we will continue to disregard the years of pain that might occur because of it. I place myself squarely in that category too. I watched Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals last year, and I watched all four NFL playoff games this weekend. I will watch every game of the playoffs next weekend, and all of the Stanley Cup Finals this summer as well.

Now that these leagues are being outed for information that they previously hid from the public, I almost feel as though the blame is falling less and less on them, and more and more on the fans. If leagues acknowledge the dangers of their games, but people still flock to both play and watch them, then what else can the leagues do? They are exposing themselves, but in most cases, we as fans don't even care.

Does that mean the onus is on the leagues anymore? Or has it shifted to the consumers? Cigarette and alcohol companies literally list the dangers of their own products on their labels, but they still continue to sell by the billions. Maybe if instead of names on the backs of jerseys, we listed injuries those same players sustained, or would sustain in the future it mind change our minds. Until the fans choose to turn off their televisions or stop buying tickets, and as soon as young athletes choose to stop playing though, then I'm not sure any of this can really come to a complete stop.

And at this point, I think these leagues and owners have to be surprised to see that even as we learn about what can happen when we give them our money, we continue to give it to them game after game, week after week, and year after year.

Daily NFL Update: It seems quite cynical to write this after what I just spoke about, but here we go anyway...
There were some very good games this past weekend. Sadly though, two of them ended with the Cowboys and Eagles winning. The Eagles victory in Chicago was another example of how we literally have no idea what to predict in the NFL, and that the sport literally comes down to inches, as Cody Parkey's attempt at a game-winning field goal hit both the upright and the crossbar before bouncing out and ending the Bears' season. The big boys join the party next week, as the Divisional round begins and the top seeds in each conference will be back in action.

Daily Rangers Update: It has been an absolutely awful stretch for the Rangers, as they were beaten soundly by the Coyotes, who have one of the worst records in the entire league.
Tomorrow, the team will play in Las Vegas against the defending Western Conference champs, so things do not get any easier.

Daily NBA Update: The Toronto Raptors beat the Indiana Pacers in a showdown between two very good Eastern Conference teams last night, and tonight we get two very good Western Conference teams squaring off with Denver heading into Houston.

A fracture in the process?

I have spoken before about how the NBA has empowered it players to speak out publicly, and this has usually proven to be a good thing. However, sometimes it has not been, and we might be seeing an example of that in Philadelphia right now. The 76ers motto for years now has been "trust the process." What that basically entailed was multiple years of obvious tanking in order to secure high draft picks with the idea that the accumulation of a lot of young talent would eventually lead to success.

You can say what you want about whether or not that is good for the game, but over a three year stretch, Philadelphia had a record of 47-199. That is good for a .191 winning percentage, and it was by far the worst in the league over that span. It did allow them to select at or near the top of the draft for several years, and now is when the results of the process were supposed to be showing.

The team selected Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, two players who are centerpieces of the current team, but they also drafted Jahlil Okafor, who is now playing in Brooklyn, and Markelle Fultz, who has all kinds of problems, and is honestly in contention for one of the biggest draft busts ever, although that could still change. So, the plan to tank did indeed work, but turning all of those years of failure into success has not happened yet.

The team is still very young for the most part though, and they are coming off a nice year in 2018. They are currently 25-14, and three games behind Milwaukee for the top spot in the Eastern Conference, so they are certainly much improved. Part of the plan for this process was to be able to use all of their young talent to lure one or more big name free agents to Philadelphia, and the biggest name they could have asked for was LeBron James. I do believe that James probably did consider going to Philadelphia, but in the end, he ended up in Los Angeles. Even so, the 76ers were recently able to add Jimmy Butler in a trade with Minnesota, and while he is not on the level of James, he is still a talented player who the team planned would give them a boost in the race for the Eastern Conference crown.

Butler has had a pretty good career in Chicago and Minnesota, and has made multiple All-Star teams, while also winning the league's Most Improved Player award in 2015. Not a multiple time MVP and champion like James, but still worthy of moving the needle in terms of the standings. One problem with Butler though, is he has not been known as a teammate who fits in smoothly wherever he plays. It was the case in Chicago after a few years there, and it was also the case in his short stay in Minnesota. Now, it seems like that trend is continuing in Philadelphia.

The threesome of Butler, Embiid, and Simmons was worthy of excitement when Philadelphia made the move to get Butler from Minnesota. All three had different skill sets, and it seemed as though the 76ers were legitimate contenders in the East, and maybe even frontrunners. You can never really predict chemistry on a team though, and despite the talents of all three of those players, they do all have various weaknesses as well, and it seems like somewhat of a reticence by Butler to completely adapt his game to fit in with the rest of the team might be turning into something of a problem, and his biggest weakness.

Recent reports surfaced that Butler challenged 76ers coach Brett Brown on his role in the offense, and things may not be all fun and games behind the scenes in Philadelphia. Butler and Embiid are two strong personalities, and they may not be meshing perfectly on and off the court. The organization and head coach Brett Brown have tried to downplay Butler's claims, and they still remain steadfast in saying that they want Butler to re-sign with the team after this year and be a 76er for a long time. For now that might be nice, but if the team does not live up to expectations this season, I'm not sure this will all work out.

Embiid has a very strong personality and is more than willing to speak his mind about pretty much anything and everything. I'm not a huge fan of it, but he is confident in himself and his abilities, so I can't fault him for that. The lack of shooting prowess of Simmons is well known, but he does a lot of other things on the court that make him and his teammates better. Butler does many things well, but I am starting to wonder whether or not he is worth the trouble that seems to follow him.

Butler rose from a relatively unknown player to stardom in Chicago, but late in his career there, he publicly criticized some of his teammates and was fined and benched because of it. He wasn't exactly universally liked by the rest of his team when he left the Bulls to join the Timberwolves, but both sides moved on.

The addition of Butler to his former coach Tom Thibodeau's team in Minnesota to play with a young and talented group of players placed high expectations on the team, and they failed to live up to them, losing to the Houston Rockets in the first round of the playoffs last year. However, the team was still young and growing, and it seemed like better times might be ahead. Then, at the beginning of this season, Butler expressed displeasure with his situation in Minnesota, and said he would not re-sign with the team in the summer of 2019. Therefore, Butler's short stay with the Timberwolves ended as he was traded to Philadelphia. He had left Chicago under questionable terms, and talked his way out of Minnesota in a short period of time.

Now, it seems like he is struggling to adjust to life in Philadelphia as well. So, my question is this: What is Butler's problem? Minnesota underachieved last year, and it didn't take Butler long to try to get out of there. They traded him to a better team in a weaker conference, and it seemed like, for better or worse, his frustrations had gotten him into a better situation. Yet, it has only taken a short time for him to seemingly fail to fit in again.

Good players on championship teams are able to adapt. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant put aside differences to win multiple titles with the Lakers. Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James all made sacrifices on and off the court to mesh in Miami and win two titles. Kevin Durant did the same when he went to Golden State, and it has paid off for him. Not only is Butler not on the level of any of those guys in terms of talent, but it seems like he is much less willing to make sacrifices in the name of making his team better on the court.

76ers fans have been subjected to a lot of losing over the past decade. Brett Brown does not get enough credit for being a very good head coach. He was stuck with little to nothing on his roster, but he stuck in there, "trusted the process," and has a pretty successful team now. They undeniably made some missteps in the draft with Okafor and Fultz, but the 76ers are still contenders in the Eastern Conference. Many of the guys on that team have lost together and grown together over the past few seasons. They have all made sacrifices.

If Butler wants to fit in with this team, it is on him to be able to make some changes to his game. It isn't like they are asking him to sit on the bench and only play 10 minutes per night. The team acquired him with the idea that he would step right in and help them improve. If he has problems with the way the team is being coached or how he is being used, then that is on him.

I am reminded of Rajon Rondo when I see how Butler is acting right now. Rondo is a talented player, but he has been known to wear out his welcome in places throughout the league. When he did win a title, he had Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, all veterans and future Hall of Famers on his team. They were the alpha personalities, and Rondo was forced to fall in line. He did, and he has a championship ring because of it.

The difference here is Rondo was the young player on that Boston team. The 76ers brought in Butler because he was good, but also because it seemed like he might bring a veteran presence to the locker room and be able to step up as a leader. Criticizing the coach and the system of the team is not something that leaders do publicly though, and it doesn't seem like Butler understands that.

He got himself dealt out of a situation he didn't like to join a contender. This is seemingly what he wanted to happen, and he made it happen. If he fails now because of his own attitude and unwillingness to make some changes both on and off the court, then I am past the point of blaming other things around him. If he can't succeed where he is now, then I think we have to point the finger at him and wonder whether or not he will ever be able to change and experience success at the highest level in the NBA.

Daily Rangers Update: After allowing 7 goals to Pittsburgh, the Rangers followed that up by allowing 6 on the road to Colorado last night. I'm not sure a goaltender gives up 6 goals but is still the best player on the ice for his team very often, but that was the case for Alexander Georgiev yesterday. He got no help from the team in front of him, as it was a constant stream of penalties and poor defense that gave Colorado an easy win. Hopefully the team can recover tomorrow night, when they will be in Arizona to play a bad Coyotes team.

Daily Giants/NFL Playoff Update: Nothing new on the Giants front, but the first playoff games start today and I will be cheering for the Cowboys to lose. Aside from that, I hope we get some good games this weekend.

Daily NBA Update: You hear almost nothing about the Indiana Pacers, but following another win last night, they currently have a record of 26-12, and actually have a better record than Golden State. We still have more than half the season to play, but I think it is time to start mentioning them as real contenders in the Eastern Conference.

A problem for a later date

I saw a story today about the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and like most stories I have heard about and read about pertaining to that event, it contained a lot more questions than answers. In my opinion, the World Cup is the best sporting event we have. It is a month long celebration of a sport that literally unifies the entire world unlike anything else can. Iran, Russia, Iceland, and Mexico may have differing views on a whole lot of things, but for a month this past summer, they all agreed on soccer.

I had multiple problems with the World Cup being awarded to Qatar in 2022, the least of which was that they won right to host the tournament at the hands of a joint bid between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Those three countries did recently win the right to host the 2026 World Cup though, so the sting of losing out on the 2022 tournament really isn't as bad now.

FIFA is an organization that has always been known to be corrupt. It has a history filled with bribes and scandals, and I think that some sort of combination of those things did at least play some part in the tournament being awarded to Qatar. It will be the smallest nation in terms of both size and population to host a World Cup. Qatar has also never qualified for a World Cup. The only other time that a nation hosted the tournament and had never qualified before was in 1930, when Uruguay was the host, and that was because it was the first World Cup ever played, so no one had ever qualified for the tournament before.

It isn't like Qatar has been on the brink of contention either. In the final round of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, Qatar finished 11th out of 12 countries in its region, finishing with a record of 2-7-1 in 10 games, and a goal differential of -7. In 2014 qualifying, they finished the final round with a record of 2-5-1 and a goal differential of -8, which was good for 8th place out of 10 teams. That is not exactly what anyone would consider anything close to a soccer powerhouse of a nation. So, my biggest problem with Qatar being awarded the tournament actually was the fact that they were clearly a nation who in all likelihood would not have qualified in 2022 if they were not the host.

After doing a little research though, I found out that Qatar's actual soccer team was probably not even the biggest problem. Because of the location of the country, the 2022 tournament will be the first one held during the winter, because the temperatures in the summers in Qatar, which is usually when the tournament is played, can routinely reach triple digits.

There have already been reports of workers dying during the construction of stadiums in the summer in Qatar, so FIFA moved the tournament to try to avoid that happening to any players or fans. A red flag should be raised in the eyes of soccer fans around the world when a tournament has to be moved in order to lessen the likelihood of death at one of its games.

The cities, or what you could really refer to as, "cities" due to host games are still in many cases being built. The final game is due to be played in a city called Lusail, and when you look up information on Lusail, it is referred to as a "planned city" and all you can find are population estimates because it doesn't even exist yet. It just continues to get more laughable/unbelievable/disgraceful (depending on your point of view) when you look more into what the plans are for the 2022 tournament. Roads are still being constructed to connect the sites, and grass and trees are being grown outside the country and then shipped into Qatar to be artificially installed because the region is so hot and arid that greenery cannot actually exist there naturally.

Qatar sent officials to Russia this past summer to observe what sort of infrastructure will be needed when the tournament actually occurs, and more questions arose about Qatar's ability to host the tournament. Mass transportation will have to be vastly expanded, and as simple as it may sound, the country is going to need to significantly enhance its ability to even have enough bars and chairs and beer to host the event.

FIFA requires host countries to have 125,000 hotel rooms available for a World Cup. Right now, Qatar has less than half that amount of rooms available. It is really stunning how unprepared the country seems at this moment to host the tournament in 2022. I do understand though, that deadlines spur actions. We are still just under four full years away from the opening game of the tournament, so there is time for Qatar to undergo the significant transformation that it will need.

With all of this said though, that is why I was very surprised to hear Gianni Infantino, the current president of FIFA, say at a recent conference in the United Arab Emirates that the organization is considering expansion to the tournament for 2022. Under its current format, 32 teams qualify for the World Cup. That expansion occurred in 1998. A plan for another expansion, this time to 48 teams, was supposed to occur in time for the 2026 World Cup, but Infantino mentioned in this conference that FIFA was considering installing that into the 2022 tournament, with the possibility of surrounding nations hosting some games. Could that be feasible? Possibly, except for one somewhat troubling piece of information.

Just over a year ago, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates made a joint decision to boycott any type of political and economic relationships with Qatar, and some of those nations cited the possibility of Qatar supporting terrorism as one of the reasons for doing so. How then would Qatar and any of these neighboring countries unite on plans to co-host soccer games when they cannot co-exist in all of these other ways? It seems like that would not be possible.

When FIFA first awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, millions of people across the globe objected to the decision. They say that time heals all wounds, and maybe some of that ill will towards FIFA has at least died down a bit. With qualifying draws set for this coming March though, the 2022 tournament will slowly begin to creep back into the news cycle. It will take a while, especially here in the United States, where soccer is far from our most popular sport. However, it will happen eventually. We will start hearing about the tournament being played in the winter because of oppressively hot temperatures in the summer in Qatar. We will start to hear about Qatar's lack of preparedness for the tournament.

For FIFA to even consider expanding the tournament in 2022 seems like a horrible idea in my eyes. The original plan to wait until 2026, when the tournament will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, is a much better one. The combination of those three countries are much more suited to be the first hosts of an expanded tournament. It seems like Qatar already has enough on its plate in terms of preparing for a tournament that it really should not have been granted the ability to host in the first place. Adding another 16 countries into all of those cities that aren't actually cities and hotels that don't exist is not something that Qatar should be required to facilitate.

There have been World Cups and Olympics contested before in cities and countries that seemed unable to host such large events. There were serious concerns about water and air conditions in Rio de Janeiro prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics, but once the games began, we didn't hear too much about that. It is likely that by the winter of 2022, the games will take center stage in Qatar. Maybe fans who travel to the country to attend the event will encounter problems that we don't see on television, but the majority of the world only watches the event on television, so those things won't affect them at all.

However, if there were ever a time and place for a host nation to completely fail in front of the entire world, it seems like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would be a good candidate for that to happen. I'm not saying that it will, because the World Cup is as good as it gets, and I want the upcoming tournament to be just as good as the one we just watched, and all of the ones before that.

We still have a few more Super Bowls and plenty of March Madness before that happens to keep us occupied, but that 2,022 pound elephant in the room is there, and it will eventually make its presence felt. I just hope that on November 21, 2022, we will be able to deal with it and allow the best sporting event in the world to go on without having to worry about whether or not there is enough useable grass and seating in the country to prevent us from enjoying it.

Daily Rangers Update: I haven't missed many games this season, but I am glad one of the ones I did miss was last night, because the Rangers were embarrassed by the Penguins in a 7-2 defeat. Bad games happen, so hopefully the team can just move on to the next game, which will be on Saturday in Colorado.

Daily Giants Update: Dave Gettleman did not give any clear indication of the answer to what is probably the biggest question surrounding this team going into the offseason, and that is what the plan is going to be at quarterback next year. I do think Eli Manning will be back and starting Week 1, but I'm not sure if he is going to have an heir apparent on the roster waiting in the wings behind him, or if he will be given one more full year as the starter. We probably won't have a definitive answer to that until about 10:30 PM on April 25th. Until then, all anyone can do is guess.

Daily NBA Update: Gordon Hayward and Joel Embiid both had big games last night in wins. Russell Westbrook had another triple-double, but was absolutely atrocious shooting the ball. I will have to write about him some day in the future, because he is very unique for a whole lot of reasons that I believe can be both good and bad.

A league with no imagination

Now that the NFL season has ended for 20 of the 32 teams, the coaching carousel has already begun to spin. There are currently eight vacant head coaching positions, and with a long way to go in the offseason, we still might see a few more changes. Coaches come and go every year, and the saying goes that as a coach in the NFL, you are only hired to get fired. The only question is exactly how long it will take for that to happen. It is very rare for a head coach to retire on their own and then ride off into the sunset and never coach again.

People get hired and fired from their jobs every day throughout the world, so being a head coach in the NFL is no different than the world of the bartender or janitor or any other given field of work. When someone gets fired from a job, they are welcome to try to find a new job in whatever field they would like, and the same is the case in the world of football coaches. I have no problem with a coach being fired and then taking a job in the same position elsewhere. The head coach is usually the highest paid member of the staff, so who wouldn't want to be a head coach as opposed to a tight ends coach or a linebackers coach? However, what I do have a bit of a gripe with is organizations hiring coaches who have already been fired from previous jobs and not looking for new candidates who might end up being better suited for the position.

Last year, of the 12 teams in the playoffs, eight of them were led by first time head coaches. This year, nine out of the twelve playoff teams are led by first time head coaches. I don't mean that these teams are led by coaches in their first year on the job, but I mean that the current job they have is their first as a head coach. Frank Reich is a first year head coach, and he brought the Colts to the playoffs in his first season. Sean Payton has been the head coach of the Saints since 2006, but he had never been a head coach prior to that. Those teams, along with seven other ones, took a chance and hired someone new, and those teams have been rewarded for taking that chance. That is why when it seems like Mike McCarthy has almost already been given the job as the new head coach of the Browns, and Vance Joseph is a frontrunner for the Bengals job, I question the decisions of those organizations.

McCarthy was fired earlier this season from his position in Green Bay, and Joseph was fired less than a week ago in Denver. So why are these other teams so willing to scoop these guys up right away and install them in the same position? I understand that there are many different reasons for a head coach being fired, and each situation is different, but the performance of the team under the leadership of the coach plays at least some part in any firing. There are rare cases when head coaches get fired after successful seasons, and usually that is due to some sort of rift between the coach and some other part of the organization, usually either management or the players on the team. However, that is not something that happens often, and I don't believe it was the case with McCarthy or Joseph.

The Broncos finished this year 6-10, and while there certainly were problems with the roster, one of the biggest being a bad offense, it isn't as though Joseph was completely devoid of any blame. He was brought in with a defensive background, but the Broncos went from allowing 290 yards per game, third best in the NFL, to allowing 365 yards per game, which put them as the 22nd ranked defense in the league. So, clearly Joseph did not help to improve the defense.

McCarthy had been the coach of the Packers since 2006, and it was a common belief throughout the football world that he underperformed with the team he had. Green Bay won 10 playoff games in 12 years with McCarthy at the helm, despite having a very talented quarterback and often times a lot of talent around him on the offensive side of the ball. So, it seems like McCarthy was not as successful as he should have been in Green Bay.

Despite the shortcomings of those two men, they both immediately went to the top of the lists of the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. Part of this, I believe, is that Cincinnati and Cleveland are two of the worst run organizations in the entire sport, and I think their lack of imagination here shows that. However, it isn't as though those are the only teams that have picked out their head coaches off the scrap heap.

My favorite team actually currently employs a former head coach who was fired, but at least they didn't hire him immediately after he was fired from his last head coaching job. Pat Shurmur was hired by the Giants before this season, and while he was formerly a head coach, he went back to being a coordinator for a few years before the Giants hired him. I must say also, that I was not thrilled with their decision to hire Shurmur, but he did have some success as an offensive coordinator following his previous head coaching job, and the team improved somewhat this season, even though they still did not make the playoffs.

I already mentioned how successful Frank Reich was this year as a first time head coach with Indianapolis, but some of the top contenders in the league for the Super Bowl this year are all led by first time head coaches. The Chargers, Saints, Rams, Eagles, and Bears would be considered by most fans to be legitimate contenders to win it all. They are led by coaches who their organizations were willing to take a chance on, and those organizations have been rewarded for their decisions.

When I hear teams looking at guys like Matt LaFleur or Eric Bieniemy to be their new coaches, I applaud them for doing so. Those guys have put in time as assistant coaches, and will have earned their way to the top of the coaching chain. I commend teams for trying to get new blood and new voices into their coaching rooms. Will those men end up being successful coaches if they are hired? No one knows. But at least they don't have a history of failing in the exact same position.

The only coach who has his team in the playoffs right now that went straight from one NFL head coaching position to his current one is Andy Reid. Other coaches like Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick were previously head coaches in the NFL prior to their current jobs, but they moved on to new positions before being hired by their current teams I am not counting Belichick in this case because he was only the head coach of the Jets for one day, so he never actually coached a game for them. Carroll was also the head coach of the Jets in 1994, but he moved on to other positions before returning to lead the Seahawks.

The NFL is often known as a league that lacks imagination when it comes to playcalling, schemes, and also coaching. Guys who have made inroads with owners or general managers seem to be more likely to land higher positions, even if their track records are not exactly stellar. And again, I am not omitting the Giants from the discussion here. I do think hiring Shurmur showed a lack of imagination.

If your team hires a first time head coach and it doesn't work out, then that's ok. You can move on. You picked the wrong guy. That happens at law firms and schools all the time. But if that same school hires a math teacher a week after he or she was just fired from the same position at another school, that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

You can be fired from a job, take a new job in a new field or at a lesser position in the same field. You should use that as an opportunity to learn new methods to make you successful, and after being able to incorporate that new knowledge, you should be able to get another opportunity. So Pete Carroll going to the collegiate ranks to coach USC is fine. He experienced a great level of success there, and I am sure he would say that he used what he learned during his time there to better prepare himself to return to head coaching in the NFL, and he ended up winning a Super Bowl because of it.

Anthony Lynn began his coaching career in Denver in 2000 as a special teams assistant, and now he is the head coach of a 12-4 Chargers team that has its eyes on the Super Bowl. Doug Pederson started his coaching career as a high school coach in Louisiana, and now he is the head coach of the defending Super Bowl champions.

After Eric Bieniemy retired from the league, he got a job as a running backs coach at the University of Colorado. Since then, he entered the NFL as a running backs coach, and now has worked his way up to the offensive coordinator of the top seeded team in the AFC. A team like the Jets or the Packers should seriously consider him as their next head coach. Don't grab a guy who was just fired because he has a relationship with your general manager and they happen to be friends.

Out with the old and in with the new. My message to NFL teams is to think with some creativity. You might fail, but I would rather fail with a fresh mind and fresh ideas as opposed to failing with a stale method and a stubborn coach who is not willing to think outside the box. The next Sean McVay or Matt Nagy is out there somewhere. All it takes is a team to be willing to go find him, and instead of being in a never ending parade to the top of the draft, you might find yourself playing deep into January, and maybe even on the first Sunday of February.

Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers will try to make it three consecutive wins tonight at home against the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are currently seven points ahead of the Rangers in the standings.

Daily Giants Update: General Manager Dave Gettleman had an end-of-season press conference today. I didn't hear anything too groundbreaking from him, and it was pretty much just football talk that really told us very little about what he is going to do this offseason. Actions will speak louder than words, so once free agency and the draft occur, we will know what the real plans of the organization are.

Daily NBA Update: Jusuf Nurkic lit up the box score last night with a historic performance. I had never even heard of a 5 by 5 game until yesterday, as Nurkic had five or more points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. He finished with 24-23-7-5-5, and it was the first time in the history of league since blocks and steals became an official statistic that someone had a 5x5 game with over 20 rebounds. Truly remarkable.

The toughest team in the country to judge

New Year's Day brings about a lot of different feelings for a lot of different people. It is a day of resolutions for many, a day of hangovers for many, and for sports fans, it might be both of those mixed with college football. The NFL has Thanksgiving, the NBA has Christmas, and college football has New Year's.

There are seemingly more and more bowl games each year, and before January 1st, many of them do not have much significance to the common fan of the sport. The semifinal games did take place in December this year, but I can say with very little doubt that people were not running to their televisions on December 21st to watch BYU play Western Michigan in a battle of two 7-6 teams in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Now that it is officially 2019 though, the big games are here.

If you are a college football team playing today, you are most likely very good and well respected. The Central Florida Golden Knights were indeed on the schedule today. but I'm not sure if they can be labeled as both of those things. UCF went undefeated for the second consecutive season in 2018, but lost earlier to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl. This came one year after going undefeated in the regular season and then beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl. Until today, the Golden Knights had won 25 consecutive games, and they only lost by eight points to LSU, so it was certainly not an embarrassing defeat, as LSU is the 11th ranked team in the country. They were clearly more competitive than Notre Dame was in a 30-3 loss to Clemson in one of the national semifinal games last week. So the question now has become, should UCF be playing in those semifinal games in the near future if they continue to win?

The Golden Knights are in the American Athletic Conference, and while it is surely not on the level of the Big 10 or SEC, it is not as though UCF is playing a bunch of junior colleges with rosters full of walk-ons. It is no fault of UCF's that the other schools in their conference cannot beat them, and they will continue to put the college football world on notice if they keep finishing seasons with a zero in the loss column. The narrative in professional sports is that you can only play the teams on your schedule. If those teams aren't good, then you have no obligation to feel bad for them, so it seems that might be the case here for UCF as well. The only problem is, in college football, you might not be able to improve the teams in your conference, but you can control who you play in non-conference games. If UCF wants to take the next step and become a nationally respected team, they are not going to be able to mix in non-conference games with the likes of South Carolina State and Florida Atlantic to a schedule that is already much weaker than teams in better conferences. So that recently brought about an interesting offer for the Golden Knights to consider.

When you think of college football in the state of Florida, I highly doubt that the first team that comes to your mind is the Golden Knights. You most likely think of the Florida State Seminoles, the Florida Gators, or the Miami Hurricanes. Those are the big name teams. They might not be national title contenders every year, and recently all three of them have actually had more downs than ups, but they still remain the faces of college football in the state. If UCF wants to become a nationally respected team, they have to prove themselves against those teams. That's why when the Gators athletic director came to UCF with an offer to play three games in upcoming seasons with the Golden Knights, it was a chance to gain that respect. Despite that though, it does not seem like UCF is going to make that happen.

Florida offered to play UCF in a 2-for-1 series, with two home games for Florida and one home game for UCF in a three year span. College football non-conference opponents are determined five years in advance, so the earliest these games would occur is 2025, but if UCF really wanted to prove it was worthy of a shot to play for a national title, this could have been a start to that process, and I think they made a bad choice to pass it up. UCF athletic director Danny White said that because of his team's success over the past two seasons, they had earned the right to play a 1-for-1 series with Florida, instead of having to play the Gators on the road twice in return for only getting to play them once at home.

There is no question that the Golden Knights have been very good over a two year span, but before that, they were not exactly lighting up the scoreboard. In 2017 and 2018, the team went undefeated. However, in 2016, they went 6-7, and that included a loss to Arkansas State in a bowl game, and a road loss to fifth ranked Michigan by a score of 51-14. In 2015, the Golden Knights did not win a game all season, and the only ranked team they played all year was the 21st ranked Houston Cougars, and Houston won that game by seven touchdowns.

Going from a winless season in 2015, to consecutive undefeated regular seasons in 2017 and 2018, and capping off 2017 with a win over Auburn is actually quite a feat, and the team deserves a lot of credit for being able to do that. Three years ago, if anyone saw UCF on their schedule, they probably were not too concerned, and I am sure that if the Florida Gators saw them on their schedule, they would look at that game as not much more than an early season tune-up before they began conference play in the SEC.

Now, that isn't the case. Now when teams see UCF on their schedule, they know they will be facing a good team. If the Golden Knights can continue to win, then over the course of the next five years, maybe they could potentially get a shot at playing in the playoffs and for a national championship. The first step to doing that though, is putting big name schools on your schedule, and it doesn't get much more big name than the Florida Gators. If anything, UCF should be confident that they can beat the Gators, so they should have jumped at the opportunity to play them, no matter where the game was.

Respect in anything is gained over time. It isn't something that is earned overnight. UCF is on the road to gaining that national respect, but they are certainly not there yet. And it isn't as though the Golden Knights haven't played the Gators before either. The last time the two teams played was in 2006. That game ended with Florida winning 42-0 and eventually going on to win the national title. A rematch was scheduled for 2007, but UCF decided instead to pay a $100,000 buyout to not play that game. That certainly is not the move of a school that would be respected across the country.

I understand that 2006 was a long time ago. That Gators team had guys like Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin on it, and their NFL careers have both ended. So, it was a while ago. But, if UCF really thinks it is worthy of national credibility, then that means building a powerhouse program over the course of multiple years. If they continue to recruit well and perform well, maybe five years from now, they could beat Florida, even if it meant doing it on the road. Doing that would absolutely garner respect from fans across the country. That's why I believe that UCF's refusal to play by the rules of the Gators in this case is a mistake.

If the college football playoff does eventually expand to eight teams, then maybe the Golden Knights would have a chance to prove themselves on a national stage against the elite of college football. While I do believe that it will eventually expand, there is certainly no guarantee of it, and also no guarantee of when it will occur. Until then though, they are just going to be the team that finishes with zero losses because of a schedule that is much weaker than anything in the SEC or ACC.

Things in life are not always fair, and when you are a small school in a mediocre conference in college football, things are often times never fair. That is just a fact. The best way for UCF to make things fair is to take any chance they get, and by passing up this offer from Florida, they will continue to have to live with that fact.

By the year 2025, it is definitely possible that the playoff will have expanded. And if UCF wants to be playing in it, then a non-conference win against Florida would sure look good to the committee. It will mean more of a chance to win a title, more of a chance to recruit bigger and better players, and most importantly, a chance at a whole lot more money.

When college football began, powerhouse teams were schools like Colgate and Penn. No one gave any respect to Florida or Florida State. It took decades for those schools to rise, and now the tables have completely turned, and Colgate and Penn are not going to be playing for an FBS national title any time soon.

For UCF to get the ball rolling on their rise to national fame, they need to start with some concessions like this. They might not like it now, but they wouldn't be the first team to slowly garner respect and success. If they want an example of a school that did just that, then they wouldn't have to look very far. There is a team in Gainesville, not far from UCF's own campus, that is a perfect example of how small steps can eventually bring about big results.

Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers were somewhat outplayed last night in St. Louis, but they capitalized on opportunities when they did get them, Henrik Lundqvist had a great game, and the Rangers got the win. They will make a quick stop back home to face Pittsburgh tomorrow before heading out on the road again for three more games. With ten games to go until the All Star break, a nice strong finish of the unofficial first half of the season could mean legitimate playoff contention for the second half.

Daily Giants Update: Since the season is over and we are still probably a while away from any real significant news on the team, it's time to focus on the teams that are still playing. The playoffs start this weekend.

Daily NBA Update: James Harden and Russell Westbrook have made the triple-double almost a nightly occurrence now, which is pretty amazing since it is a feat that requires a whole lot of greatness on any given night. Stephen Curry also has made scoring a whole lot of points a common occurrence as well, but he has been injured recently, which has always been a problem for him. Even so, the Warriors won last night and are now tied with Denver back atop the Western Conference.

Daily Diamondbacks Update: Still waiting for a day to sum up this offseason, but it hasn't come yet.