NFL’s scheduling greed is finally taking a toll

Is the NFL suffering from oversaturation?

That is a question asked a lot last year when the NFL’s TV ratings dropped, although the league blamed first-half plummet on all the interest in the presidential election.

That’s why the ratings will be watched closely this year.

But it’s not the only barometer the NFL and its broadcast partners will be watching. The league also has to be concerned that advertisers aren’t rushing to make buys even before the season begins.

According to Advertising Age, some insiders say the ad buys are the softest since the 2008 recession.

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HBO’s ‘Ballers’ is bad TV but also a guilty pleasure

Here’s a fun fact for your holiday weekend: Would you believe that Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she is a fan of the HBO comedy “Ballers’’?

She revealed this earlier this year in her book This Fight Is Our Fight, claiming she and her husband binge-watched the show on Election Night, which really seems unbelievable.

Anyway,  I first heard about her interest in the show watching Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal’’ on TBS last week.

The senator said, “It’s actually a story about hard work, a story about perseverance.’’

That’s news to me.

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Tebow has no future in baseball, but the guy can still sell tickets

We now have the answer to one of the two major questions about Tim Tebow’s minor league baseball experiment.

After 64 games in Columbia, we have the statistical evidence that at age 29, he is not a major-league prospect.

What we don’t know is if he will continue to be the box-office smash he was in low-A Columbia now that he’s been called up to high-A Port St. Lucie by the New York Mets.

His showing in Columbia, though, provided no evidence he’ll ever make it in the majors. It’s not only that he hit just .220 with seven errors. That was enough to show a player wasn’t a prospect back in the day when I covered baseball before the NFL became a year-round beat.

But now there is a lot more statistical evidence that baseball isn’t his thing. Starting with Bill James and now with computers, baseball is the dream sport for computer-savvy types.

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Jackson just the latest to prove that no one can compare to Auerbach

The lack of a sense of history in sports – and in real life – is one of my pet gripes.

Everything that happens today is always the greatest or the best ever. The past tends to be overlooked or forgotten.

That brings me to the firing of Phil Jackson by the New York Knicks after a three-year reign of error.

Jackson showed that, for all his coaching skills when he had Hall of Fame players and won 11 titles, he wasn’t cut out to run a team.

To put it bluntly, Jackson is no Red Auerbach.

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Leftwich faces impossible task grooming Gabbert into legit quarterback

Imagine an NFL team drafting a quarterback with a top-ten pick twice in nine drafts.

Imagine that both of them are busts.

And imagine that one of them winds up coaching the other one.

Sounds a bit far-fetched, but that’s happening with the Arizona Cardinals this year.

Byron Leftwich, the seventh pick in the 2003 draft by the Jaguars, was hired as Arizona’s quarterbacks coach by Bruce Arians in the offseason.

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Reid’s hands look like they were all over Dorsey’s abrupt firing

Clark Hunt was, as they say, to the manor born.

He’s the grandson of flamboyant oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who was once one of the richest men in the world – if not the richest – and had 15 children with three wives. The J.R. Ewing character in the TV series “Dallas’’ was loosely based on his life.

Clark also is the son of late Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who changed pro football by co-founding the American Football League, which led to the merger with the NFL and the creation of the Super Bowl. He even named the game after a kid’s toy called the Super Ball. Lamar was very down to earth, always wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks and never showing the trappings of wealth.

Clark, now 52, was No. 1 in his class at SMU and took over running the Chiefs when his father died in 2006.

Clark, though, is showing that being smart and rich doesn’t always translate into being a good owner. Or from doing dumb things. In a family run business, the third generation is often the one that has problems keeping things on the right track.

Continue reading “Reid’s hands look like they were all over Dorsey’s abrupt firing”

Bashing of Kaepernick continues to know no bounds

Colin Kaepernick is like the guy at the county fair who sits above a tub of water while fair goers throw balls attempting to dunk him in the water.

Trying to dunk Kaepernick remains a popular sport in the NFL and the media these days.

In what amounts to blaming the victim, Kaepernick gets bashed for teams not signing him after he refused to stand for the national anthem. He doesn’t get saluted for standing on principle.

The latest bashing was by Albert Breer of The MMQB, who quoted a 49ers employee – it wasn’t clear if the employee is still with the team – bashing Kaepernick’s work habits. Kaepernick is gone, but the 49ers can’t stop taking shots at him.

Breer said the employee told him Kaepernick wouldn’t stay late at the facility, saying he would take the work home instead.

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The real reason Elway ended up in Denver? Frank Kush

When Frank Kush died Thursday at age 88, his obituaries featured his role in transforming Arizona State into a national football power and a university during his two decades there.’

He then had his Woody Hayes moment and punched punter Jeff Rutledge on the sidelines and was fired a year later in 1979. His players carried him off the field after his last game.

The way his career ended was obscured over the years by the memories of how he built Arizona State with his hard-nosed style of coaching.

Also overlooked was the fact that Kush leaving Arizona State wound up starting a series of events that helped lead to John Elway spending his career in Denver and ending up as the team’s general manager.

Kush was coaching the Baltimore Colts in 1983 when they had the first pick in the draft, and Elway was the obvious choice. But he let it be known he didn’t want to play in Baltimore.

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O’Callaghan’s story shows NFL may finally be gay friendly

The macho culture of the NFL hasn’t been noted for being welcoming to gay players in the past.

But that may be changing.

When retired offensive lineman Ryan O’Callaghan told Outsports that he is gay this week, he was only the 11th NFL player to publicly come out according to the website. Only Michael Sam did it as an active player.

O’Callaghan hid the fact he is gay so well that nobody knew it, not anybody in the NFL or even his family. Not even his mother.

In fact, playing in the NFL was one of the ways he hid it. And he planned to commit suicide once his playing days were over because he was so conflicted that he didn’t feel he could live openly as a gay man.

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Sapp latest victim in NFL concussion crisis

Add one more name to the list of NFL players who are paying the price for the brain damage they suffered playing in the NFL.

Hall of Fame defensive lineman Warren Sapp posted a video on The Players Tribune Tuesday saying he’s losing his memory at the age of 44 and will donate his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation after he dies.

“I wanted this game to be better when I left than when I got into it,’’ he said.

Looking at the video, you would never guess Sapp has a problem. He sounds the same way he did as a player, when he could always talk a good game even if some of his off-field actions were problematic.

Now he is very candid about the problems he is dealing with.

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