SIDE DOORS

 

               The two-year-old saga about rich people trying to buy their kids’ way into high-toned colleges now is playing out in the courts, with predictable results. A number of the 50 or so people charged with giving or receiving bribes have pleaded guilty and been handed prison sentences measured in months instead of years. It’s no news that our courts treat upper-class criminals more kindly than less-favored ones, and the trials now in progress in Boston should have similar outcomes.

               The connection with sports is that most of the finagling that was done involved phony athletic credentials that allowed bribe-getting coaches to sneak academically unqualified aspirants past their school’s admissions officers. This is a familiar feature of American academe, so familiar it has a name-- “side-dooring.” That entrance portal is available to jocks of many stripes with no criminal involvement. Ivy League schools routinely bend their admissions standards to improve their teams and so do other NCAA members that claim not to award athletics scholarships. That also goes for our national military academies, which additionally will arrange prep-school rides for the athletically talented who haven’t made the grade in high school.

               It’s been noticed by some that the Government minions behind the current prosecutions had to stretch to identify a victim in the frauds. That issue also arose in a 2018 episode in which an FBI “sting” operation netted some coaches and middlemen for funneling under-the-table money from the shoe-company Adidas to A-level basketball recruits being wooed by schools affiliated with the company. The immediate parties in that one (the kids, coaches and Adidas) all stood to benefit from the schemes so it was decided that the universities involved had been defrauded, even though their coffers would have swelled had they succeeded in landing the kids in question. If they were capable of doing so, prosecutors might have blushed advancing that theory.

               College-sports revenues didn’t much come into play in the present cases because its side-door portals were connected to such “minor” (i.e., non-revenue) sports as tennis, soccer and water polo. That was because sought-after football and basketball recruits tend to be so well known that unfamiliar names can’t be slipped into the mix. In the minor sports admissions people tend to take the word of coaches for who should and shouldn’t be given special treatment, thus opening the way to manipulations.

               About $25 million was said to have changed hands in the deals, funneled through William “Rick” Singer, a former basketball coach who ran a firm that facilitated college enrollments. One of his biggest conduits was Rudy Meredith, a one-time soccer coach at Yale who pocketed $400,000 in one admissions scheme and lined up $450,000 in another before investigators stepped in.

But while corrupt coaches got most of the money some went to the supposedly victimized schools. A case in point involved Stanford U and John Vandemoer, its former sailing coach. A September 27 story in the New York Times, by Billy Witz, tells how Vandemoer turned over to the university the $770,000 he received from Singer to help gain entry for two students. The story said he pocketed nothing but was fired nonetheless and spent a day in jail and six months in house arrest after a felony guilty plea for racketeering conspiracy he says he entered because he couldn’t stand the expense of a criminal trial.

Putting aside the question of why any university save the Naval and Coast Guard academies needs a sailing team, the episode sheds light on the role in the bigger college-sports picture of men’s non-revenue sports and just about all of those for women. Begun to create recreational outlets for students, they now are maintained in part to enable the big-timers to claim they’re not just football or basketball factories. They survive because of small but dedicated alumni factions and, since the 1972 enactment of the so-called Title IX, the need to satisfy a government requirement that women and men have equal access to athletics scholarships.

 Except for a few places like Eugene, Oregon (for track and field) and Iowa City, Iowa (wrestling), the teams don’t pay their own way and depend on various kinds of charity to continue. They live precarious existences, always waiting for the axe to fall in the next economy wave. Revenue losses from Covid-19 brought wholesale slaughter to the minor-sport ranks; by one published tally 35 NCAA Division I schools alone cut 112 such teams between January and June of this year.

The Times story made clear the ties between Singer and the august institution in Palo Alto, California. It said that when Vandemoer turned over one Singer check for $500,000 to Bernard Muir, Stanford’s athletics director, he was met with warm congratulations. When the coach tried to explain the source of the money Muir cut him off, saying “we know Rick.” The piece said Singer was known to other Stanford coaches and sometimes entered Vandemoer’s office unannounced even though a key card was needed for access to the athletics-department building. Stanford’s “side door” also included a front door, it seemed.

The list of colleges with which Singer did business was long, also including Georgetown, the U. of Texas, UCLA, Cal Berkeley and Southern Cal. One female student he “helped” was a family friend of a USC trustee. Far from being victims of the frauds, the universities involved were beneficiaries. The corruption that sustains their entertainment enterprises runs deep. At the least it should spur Congress to take a critical look at the tax-free status their athletics revenues enjoy.

 

 

 

LUCK

 

               Of all the adages swimming around in our heads maybe the dumbest is the one about how it’s better to be lucky than good. It’s a common one in sports, trotted out every time an errant play turns a game. Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and no-nonsense guy, wrote it off rightly as ridiculous. Said he, “In any competitive endeavor you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you.”

               This is not to say that luck plays no role in sporting outcomes—far from it. Every day a bloop hit or phantom pass-interference call decides a contest, to the glee of some and despair of others, and having money on the game multiplies the hurt to losers. Every gambler can regale you for hours about the “bad beats” he’s suffered, more than anyone else has had, for sure. The good breaks he’s received usually are forgotten in the recitation.

               In team sports as elsewhere, the role of luck can be quantified, more or less. The more games that are played in any competition the less luck figures into the final standings, and the more points that are scored the less it can determine any individual result. By those guidelines Major League baseball with its 162-game annual regular-season schedule, and NBA basketball, with its single-game point tallies of 200 or so, are the least luck-bound and low-scoring ice hockey and soccer are the most, with football somewhere between.  Hockey has a term to describe the games decided by fluke goals: “Puck Luck.” But even there random occurrences tend to balance out over an 82-game National Hockey League schedule and the best teams usually come out on top.

               Come playoff time, however, the leavening effect of the long run disappears, and randomness is magnified. Baseball’s post-season begins with a couple of one-and-done “play in” games that round out the final playoff fields of eight teams, four in each league. Those are total crap shoots.  The best-of-five games divisional series’ follow, then the best-of-seven league-championship and World Series rounds.  Taken together that’s a good chunk of starts, but sweeping one round doesn’t affect later ones, so survivors start from “go” each time.

               The subject of luck occurred to me because the Chicago White Sox, my No. 1A favorite team (the Cubs are No. 1), are in the playoffs. If luck in the broad sense really matters in baseball, then the White Sox are among baseball’s biggest losers.  But they recouped much of that in 2005 with a mind-boggling hot streak that resulted in their World Series victory.

               What the Irish call “bad cess” began for the Sox when they committed baseball’s all-time worst blunder by getting caught throwing the 1919 World Series, resulting in the lifetime suspensions of the heart of the roster that also had won the ’17 title. That would be their last championship in 88 years, a span of futility topped only by my Cubbies’ 108 years ending in 2016.   In that period the Sox won but one American League pennant (in 1959) and rarely challenged for another. Their best team in that era was that of 1994, when they led their division into August only to have the remainder of the regular season, and the playoffs, cancelled by a players’ strike. That never happened before and hasn’t since.

               Relatedly, the Sox have spent the last 40 years as the No. 2 team in a two-team market, trailing the Cubs in every financial category.  Bad management decisions contributed to that status, but so did geography, their South Side of the city trailing the Cubs’ North Side as an entertainment lure. That’s denied them the wherewithal to be regular title contenders in a money-driven game.

               As 2005 dawned few saw the Sox as world beaters, and man-for-man they weren’t. They wound up winning 99 regular-season games without leading any important league individual statistical category, taking a Golden Glove or Silver Slugger award or having anyone elected to play in that year’s All-Star Game. What they had was a group of solid veteran position players led by first-baseman Paul Konerko, outfielder Jermaine Dye and catcher A. J. Pierzynski, and that year’s best and luckiest starting-pitching rotation. Mark Buerhle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras went through the season injury free, each making 30-plus starts and pitching 200-plus innings. If that wasn’t lucky nothing is.

               The Sox’s good fortune really kicked during the playoffs. They swept the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series, beat the L.A. Angels four games to one in the ALCS and eliminated the Houston Astros in straight sets in the World Series. Their 11-1 record has been matched only once, by the 1999 New York Yankees, in the extended-playoff era.

               This is not to say the wins were easy or without oddities. With his team leading 4-2 in game two of their series, Red Sox second-baseman Tony Graffanino muffed an inning-ending double-play grounder that set up the Chicagoans’ winning three-run home run. Scott Podsednik, a speedy but light-hitting White Sox outfielder who’d hit no home runs in 568 regular-season at-bats, hit one against the Red Sox and a walk-off shot that gave the team a 7-6 win in World Series game two.

 Buehrle, Garland, Garcia and Contreras pitched consecutive complete-game wins against the Angels, an eye-popping feat 16 years ago and just about impossible now. Game three of the Houston series was won in 14 innings on a home run by Geoff Blum, a backup who’d had just one previous post-season at-bat.

In a play that still amazes, game two against the Angels went into the bottom of the ninth inning in Chicago tied 1-1. With two outs, the canny Pierzynski swung and missed a low pitch for strike three but saw that the ball might have skimmed the dirt and took off for first base while the Angels were leaving the field. After extended and spirited discussion the umps let him stay there. His pinch runner stole second base and scored on a Joe Crede hit for a Sox 2-1 win. TV replays showed the ball was cleanly caught but they weren’t used to affect decisions until three years later. Bad luck, Angels.

The White Sox team that’s going into this season’s playoffs looks like better on paper than the ’05 edition.  It features a cast of flashy young hitters, a good starting staff and the baseball’s best 1-2 bullpen pair of Craig Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks. Alas, though, it so dominated its weak division that it played few regular-season games of consequence and often seemed uninterested as it plodded through a near-500 second half.  At their best the Sox can beat anyone, but they can lose to anyone, too. A little good luck wouldn’t hurt.   

    

TOO FAT

 

               Another National Football League season is here—goody-goody—and as usual I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time watching it on the tube. I’m hard-pressed to explain this. Basketball players are better athletes than footballers and the numberless hours I spent on Chicago’s softball diamonds gave me a mental and visceral connection to the parent sport of baseball. By contrast, as a too-little kid I steered clear of the “F” sport, my participation pretty much limited to autumn games of "touch" in the alley behind my Paulina Street home.

               In recent years I’ve also developed moral qualms about football. Beyond a doubt it’s a gladiatorial sport that requires players to roll the dice with their health. I tell myself they’re volunteers, and adult pros accept the risks they face, but I doubt if many make the choice with the full understanding of what could be in store for them. Neurological injuries caused by the game’s incessant head butting are the main danger; a recently reported survey of 3,500 retired NFL players, average age 53, showed that 12% said they were suffering with “severe” cognitive issues, and 25% said they had symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety. That probably understates the true extent of the situation, because self-reporting usually minimizes such things and neurological damage can manifest itself many years after the causative blows.

On top of that is the damage to bones and joints that football brings. Rare is the NFL player who hasn’t gone under the knife at some point as a high-schooler, collegian or pro, and multiple surgeries are the rule for veterans. Mark Schlereth, who spent 12 seasons as an offensive lineman with the Washington (then) Redskins and Denver Broncos (1989-2000), underwent 29 operations, 20 on his knees (15 left, five right) and the rest on his back, shoulders and arms. A connoisseur of such things, he’s said “If I could take back the back surgery, I’d take another 20 knee surgeries instead.”  

Joint injuries generally aren’t life-threatening, but even when corrected surgically they tend to get worse over time. Joints that have been injured are more prone than others to arthritis and other ravages of age. I recall seeing Dick Butkus, the personification of football ferocity, hauling himself around stiff-legged 25 years after his playing days ended. As a result of his football injuries he has a metal knee replacement, and other surgeries left one leg 1 ½ inches shorter than the other.

But while brain and joint damage stem from the nature of football and, thus, are inevitable, another important football health issue isn’t. I mean the sort of intentional obesity to which some players, especially linemen, subject themselves. In brief, most of those guys are too fat, and have to be to keep their jobs.

 There was a time when a “big man” playing at or near his natural weight could have a fine NFL career; the starting O-Line of the 1965 Green Bay Packers, a great team by any measure, consisted of center Ken Bowman, guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston and tackles Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski, each of whom weighed in at between 230 and 250 pounds. Today, they’d have to buy tickets to get near an NFL field at those weights.

As late as 1985 300-pounders were considered freakish in football; remember the fuss when William Perry, a defensive lineman nicknamed “The Refrigerator” for his blocky build and love of food, debuted with the Chicago Bears at that weight? It turned out he was a pioneer. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the average weight of starting offensive linemen in the league jumped from 254 pounds in 1970 to 277 pounds in 1990, to 309 pounds in 2000 and to 315 pounds today.

The reason for the increase is simple: the bigger a lineman is the harder he is to move. Some of the increase may be muscle, but most is fat. One study I came across reported that the average body fat of an NFL lineman is 24.8%, 0.2% short of the clinical definition of obesity. That was about twice the body-fat average of players at the other positions.

Football players work hard and maintaining their weight is about as much trouble as gaining it. A case in point was Joe Thomas, a perennial All-Pro offensive tackle in his 11 seasons with the Cleveland Browns, ending with his 2018 retirement.  He played football in high school at about 240 pounds, bulked up to 300 at the University of Wisconsin, and added about 25 pounds more as a pro. His 6-foot-6 frame enabled him to do that without loss of mobility, but it was not without effort. A piece last year on overweight football pros on the ESPN.com website described his typical daily playing-days menu thusly:

               Breakfast—Four pieces of bacon¸ four sausage links, eight eggs, three pancakes and oatmeal with peanut butter.

               Lunch—Pasta with meatballs, cookies and “a salad maybe.”

               Dinner—A whole deep-dish pizza, a sleeve of Thin Mint Girl Scouts cookies and a bowl of ice cream.

               On top of that came a couple of daily protein shakes and between-meals and bedtime snacks. “If I went two hours without eating I’d want to cut off your arm and eat it,” he told the ESPN reporter. “We got weighed on Mondays and if I lost five pounds my coach would give me hell.”

               Fun it wasn’t, he continued, saying he “crushed Tums” nightly but still had constant heartburn, and gulped various pain meds and anti-inflammatories to cope with his aches. In the first two years of his retirement he began eating and exercising “like a normal human,” threw away the meds and lost 60 pounds. “The health benefits were amazing,” he exulted.

               The other side of the coin is grim, as personified by the abovementioned Mr. Perry. His weight crept up throughout a nine-year NFL career (1985-94) and kept climbing in retirement, eventually nearing 450 pounds. He lost most of that later, but not in a healthy way. Now, at age 58, he’s in a wheelchair, suffering from diabetes and circulatory issues, among other things.  One only can hope that the memory of the cheers he received in his prime eases his current condition.

               The NFL’s unhealthful fatter-the-better regime could easily be halted by the league establishing an upper limit on weight. Olympic freestyle wrestling did this in the 1980s after huge men, such as the 400-pound American Chris Taylor, had come to dominate the heavyweight division by size alone.  A top weight limit of 130 kilograms (286 pounds) was put into effect for the 1988 Games and by 2021 it had been adjusted to 125 kg (275).  That’s big enough, dontcha think?

              

 

 

 

BASEBALL ZOMBIES

 

               For some baseball teams September is the month for edgy watching of scoreboards for the progress of the divisional races, or, at least, a lingering hope for same. For others, that hope has been abandoned and the remaining games exist only for the accumulation of gate receipts and individual stats.

               Unfortunately, my home-town Chicago Cubs and my new-home Arizona Diamondbacks are in the latter category, and have been for some time. Indeed, both have been zombies since early summer, plodding along from defeat to defeat with no hope of reward. Such is the downside of baseball’s long, long season. It would have been merciful to put both out of their misery long ago.

               An interesting argument could be made over which of the two teams is worse. The D’backs have an overall edge with a 44-90 won-lost mark as of Monday (9/1) to the Cubs’ 58-75, but the Arizonans have been less terrible in recent weeks. They started the season well enough, posting a 14-12 record in April, but then took a cannonball dive by going 8-48 in May and June, a scarcely believable fall when it’s remembered that baseball is a game in which the best teams win about six of 10 while the worst go about 4-6. Included in that May-June swoon was a 24-game road losing streak, the worst in the sport’s officially recorded history.

               The Cubs have had a weird year, begun with the off-season trade of their best starting pitcher, Yu Darvish, for a passel of pink-cheeked prospects. The message sent out by that deal was clear, but the team began well enough anyway, winning 38 of their 65 games at mid-June. Gravity then set in, leading to losing steaks of 11 and 12 games since, with a record 13-game home losing streak among them. They engineered an epic salary dump at the July 31 trade deadline, erasing just about all human reminders of their 2016 World Series triumph. Since late June they’ve been the worst team in baseball, with no end in sight.

               Nobody expected much of the 2021 D’Backs, so the Cubs’ collapse was the most notable. Pending free agency dictated that they let go some of their World Series core, but few expected that Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant all would be jettisoned, along with the ace relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel. That was in addition to the veteran outfielder Joc Petersen, who’d been moved earlier. The haul the Cubs received in return included only two bona fide Major Leaguers, second baseman Nick Madrigal and relief pitcher Codi Heuer, both from the Chicago White Sox, and Madrigal already was out for the season with a hamstring tear.

               It would be nice to report that the Cubs had a bunch of promising young minor leaguers ready to debut at Wrigley Field, but such was not the case. MLB.com’s ranking of minor-league systems had the Cubs 22^nd among the 30 teams before the July moves, and they moved up only four spots afterward. Some of the newly acquired players are pups, too young to be reflected in such rankings, but it can’t be said that that other help from below is near at hand.

Instead, the Cubs have filled their roster with journeyman players with little long-term upside. The prime example of that is outfielder Rafael Ortega, who has played well in Chicago but is 30 years old and with his seventh big-league organization. Frank Schwindel, Matt Duffy and Patrick Wisdom are similar in age and biography. Two of the team’s remaining vets, Ian Happ and Jason Heyward, have struggled all year to get their batting averages above .200, and can’t be counted as assets.  Trusty vet Kyle Hendricks is their sole proven pitcher.

To create any interest among the Cubs’ faithful owner Ricketts will have to open his purse big time in the offseason. A reputed billionaire, and with one of the game’s highest ticket-price structures, he should have ample resources for that, but he does strange things so who knows? If he falls short my friend Eddie Cohen, founder of Cubs Fans Anonymous, is threatening to revive that organization and have followers march on Wrigley with torches and pitchforks.

The D’backs’ prospects are at least as discouraging. This season has revealed several useful young players, including second baseman Josh Rojas, first-baseman-outfielder Pavin Smith and catcher Daulton Varsho, and MLB.com rates their farm system as ninth best. But their pitching is beyond woeful, last week ranking 29^th among the MLB’s 30, and it will take more than minor-league help to correct that.

 The team went the big-money route in 2020, luring the San Francisco Giants’ World Series hero Madison Bumgarner to the desert with an $85 million contract, but he’s been mediocre at best and has three more years and $60 million owing. It got a pick-me-up a few weeks ago, when lefty Tyler Gilbert threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in his first big-league start, but he’s no kid at age 27 and got whacked for four runs on nine hits in five innings in his next start.

I can’t look into anyone’s pockets so I don’t know what resources the D’backs owners can command, but by rep they don’t match those of the Cubs. The team doesn’t draw well even when it wins so much help from that source is unlikely. The team stood pat last off-season, hoping for internal improvement. It’ll take a truckload of that to get it out of its present rut. 

 

 

  

NILISM

 

               The word “nil” means zero in soccer, but capitalized and turned into the acronym NIL it means a whole lot in college sports. The letters stand for name, image and likeness, and sale of the use of them will put legal income in the pockets of some college athletes without altering their competitive status. It’s a change that will revolutionize the games collegiates play, with results we now can only guess at. The saying “watch what you wish for” seems to apply here.

               The new era began legally on July 1 but the money has yet to start flowing in earnest. There will be rules governing what sort of income is and isn’t okay, but as yet they are unclear. Twenty six states have passed laws permitting NIL payouts, creating a hodgepodge of regulations.

The NCAA has given its reluctant approval, and has drawn its own lines, but it and most other actors in the field are hoping for Federal action that will unify and clarify. This in itself is revolutionary; heretofore the NCAA has resisted any Federal involvement in its affairs, the camel’s nose in the tent thing, you know. It’s not an idle fear and I’ll treat it later.

Even at this early time, though, a couple of things about the new era seem certain. One is that it will involve a lot more money than was previously imagined by me and, I’d bet, most other people. The other is that it won’t be distributed equally or nearly so. About 450,000 students in the NCAA’s 1,100 or so member schools are varsity athletes and the soccer-word nil will apply to most of them.  For a lucky few, however, it will be a bonanza, creating a new class of undergrad millionaires. A good thing, huh? Or maybe uhuh.

The magic word is this context is “followers.” Sure, jocks may be able to pick up a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand, signing autographs at a booster’s auto dealership or being teacher-counselors at summer sports camps. In one deal already announced, a Miami gym owner has pledged to pay each of the U. of Miami’s 90 scholarship football players $500 a month for each year they’re eligible, or $540,000 a year in total, for promotional services.

  Another avenue for spreading the wealth, at least among football and basketball players at the “Power Five” conferences, will be income from electronic-game makers. NFL players reportedly each take in $48,000 a year from those sources, and less-numerous NBAers $400,00 a year. The per-player divisor will be much higher among the colleges, but the haul still should be substantial.

But the real money will come from endorsements on the so-called social mediums. Being elderly, I don’t have much truck with these, but many (maybe most) under-40s do, and reputedly they can be persuaded to buy or do things suggested by the “influencers” that create content for the likes of Instagram and TikToc. According to online sources their followings can be sold to advertisers for annual rates of up to eight cents a year. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands of followers and by several advertisers, those pennies can turn into big dollars. To paraphrase Ev Dirksen, a hundred thousand dollars here and hundred thousand there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

That’s apparently what’s in store for Spencer Rattler, the quarterback of the U. of Oklahoma Sooners and Heisman Award candidate. With a catchy name, blond coif and strong arm, he’s big on social media, and his agency, led by the famed Leigh Steinberg, is painting quick millionaire status for him. Much the same goal has been set for Bryce Young, the projected starting QB for the U. of Alabama’s always-highly-rated football team, and he’s a sophomore who has yet to start a college game.

But while the big majority of social-media money will go to footballing and basketballing collegiate males, they won’t get it all. The Cavinder twins, Haley and Hannah, play basketball beautifully at Fresno U. and maintain a lively online presence for their reported four million (yep) followers. Margzetta Frazier, a UCLA gymnast with show-business aspirations, does likewise for a smaller but still sizable audience. A high-school hoopster, Mikey Williams from San Diego, also is said to be poised to cash in big from people mesmerized by his flying dunks.

Still, the economic prospects of, say, a second-string offensive guard at Purdue aren’t brilliant, and that could lead to difficulties. Income inequality is well established in professional sports, where players earning a measly one or two million per locker next to teammates pulling down 20 times as much, but it might not play as well in the college realm. Will the above-mentioned kid, living in a dorm and riding a bike around campus, go all out to block for his penthouse-living, Cadillac-driving QB?

 Maybe more importantly, playing a big-time college sport while pursuing an education (one hopes) already is a fulltime job and then some, so where will the time come from to make in-person or online commercial appearances? Rich or poor, the number of hours in a collegian’s day is fixed, and there are distractions aplenty as it is.

The NCAA’s retreat from its historic stance on amateurism already has had consequences. It’s both cause and effect of the loss of political clout that led to the retreat; years of its hypocrisy and money-grubbing has alienated even spineless pols who used to support alma mater no matter what.

 Further, no matter what the rules, income opportunities for jocks inevitably will turn recruiting into the Wild West and lead to the survival of the fattest. Traditional conference structures could collapse and “superconferences” form; for evidence see the recent move of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC from the Big 12 and the talks now underway between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12. The situation may make the just-pay-‘em folks happy, but everyone doesn’t root for ‘Bama or Ohio State. Like I wrote above, watch what you wish for.

                

O NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS: Simone Biles bows out of Olympics, citing mental health concerns.

               VIEWS: GOAT or “goat”?

               As the Olympics began there was no doubt about which of the 11,000 or so athletes in its various fields deserved to be called the star. It was Biles, the gymnast with the Atomic Ant physique, whose 2016 O Games all-around gold medal, and five other world-championship all-around firsts, stamped her as a performer without peer, the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) in her demanding sport.

               But then, shockingly, the 24-year-old packed it in after the first event of the all-around final last Tuesday, saying she wasn’t in the right “head space” to continue to compete. Her teammates carried on without her but could muster only a silver medal in the event in which they’d been heavily favored to win. 

               Reaction was swift, and while like just about everything else these days it divided along red-blue political lines, that which came to my attention was mostly positive. No definite diagnosis was offered but it was assumed that the gymnast suffered from a mental illness, and that was apt grounds for her action. USA Gymnastics, her sport’s U.S. governing body, applauded “her bravery in prioritizing her well being.”  The head of the World Health Organization said what she did put the seriousness of mental illness in a proper and overdue spotlight.

               One cannot judge Biles without having lived in her leotard, but a few observations seem in order. One is that she’d embraced her celebrity, even reportedly fashioning a “GOAT” emoji to decorate her texts. Another is that she constantly pushed the envelope of gymnastics by developing new and more difficult twists to her routines, thus bringing her closer to the edge of an already dangerous sport and increasing her possible anxiety about bringing them off.

 And while her leaving took the weight off herself it increased it on the teammates she left behind.  Said Sunisa Lee, the 18-year-old who took over team leadership by default, and whose gritty performance helped the U.S. team gain a silver, “it was the most pressure I’ve ever felt in my life.” Lee went on to establish her own stardom by winning the Games’ individual all-around gold medal.

Biles is a young woman with the biggest part of her life ahead of her. One hopes that her new self-knowledge will guide her future actions.

NEWS: Women make up 49% of 2021 Olympic athletes, bringing virtual gender equity to the Games.

VIEWS: It’s the U.S.’s Title IX at work worldwide.

This year’s sex breakdown compares with 44% women in 2012 and 46% in 2016 and caps a 50-year rise. The boost corresponds to the tenure of Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendment Act of 1972, which decreed that American schools and colleges provide women students with athletic opportunities equal to those of men. While still controversial in some circles, it unquestionably sparked nothing less than a sports revolution. U.S. world domination of women’s basketball and soccer has been one result, but it’s had global implications as well.

For proof one need look no further than the web site of the University of Southern California, which quadrennially leads the U.S. collegiate pack in producing Olympians. It notes that this year 65 Olympic athletes are present or past Trojans, representing 32 different countries. It’s a bigger contingent than that of 164 of the 205 nations represented in Toyko. Thirty nine of the 65 are female, led by Katinka Husszu of Hungary, a four-medal-winning swimmer at the 2016 Games. Additionally, two USC coaches are in Tokyo coaching foreign teams.

Foreign women (and men) athletes come to U.S. colleges for education (one hopes), but also for the superior sports facilities and coaching the institutions offer. The free room and board that comes with an athletic scholarship is a potent lure—most other countries offer no equivalent aid. Most imported jocks are represented in tennis and golf, but swimming and track and field also rank high. It puts a new twist on the term “home team,” huh?

NEWS: Skateboarding debuts as an Olympic sport.

VIEWS: Ouch!

Daredevil sports are nothing new to the Olympics, but usually when the daredevils crash they come down on soft materials, like foam, sand or snow. Not so in skateboarding. In an effort at verisimilitude the Tokyo Games laid out a “street scene” course of ramps, stairs and railings made of or set in concrete. No soft landings on that stuff.

I suppose that was okay for the male side of the event, where most of the contestants (and all three medal winners) were in their 20s and of the age of consent, but the “women’s” side was mostly teens, and some just barely-- the gold and silver medals went to kids of 13 and the bronze to a 16-year-old. When they crashed I expected their moms to run out to succor them.

   Clearly change is called for, something along the lines of gymnastics, which some years back raised its minimum O age to the year an athlete turns 16. If gymnastics were staged on concrete it’d long since have been banned.

NEWS: NBC’s Olympic coverage enters its 33^rd year, at great cost.

VIEW: Does the network own the Games, or vice versa?

NBC began broadcasting the Olympics in 1988 and its current contract, worth a reported $12 billion, runs to 2032. It’s the Games biggest single supporter by far but one wonders who’s getting the best of the deal.

The network’s previous Summer O anchor was Bob Costas, who sometimes added tart commentary to his hosting. This time it’s Mike Tirico, an affable sort whose style is best suited to one of those happy-talk morning shows.  Event announcing has been predictably rah-rah-USA, the features fawning to their subjects with dollops of pathos. The IOC loves it, I bet.

The worst example of NBC brown-nosing has been it’s parroting of the term “Russian Olympic Committee” in referring to the Russian team. You’d think those athletes compete wearing waistcoats and carrying briefcases. That’s the term the IOC decreed as a fig leaf for its capitulation to Russia’s horrendous cheating in past Games. They’re just Russian, folks, all 300-plus of them, and they look to be having as good a time as any in Toyko, God love ‘em.

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

              

OLYMPICS 'SI,' IOC 'NO'

 

               Let me say from the beginning that I like the Olympics. Indeed, I’m a big fan, having covered eight of them (Summer Games in Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney; Winter Games at Calgary, Albertville and Lillehammer), and rank the experiences among my most memorable.  For color, excitement and quality of athletic performance they can’t be surpassed. Many a grizzled pro has been touched by the Olympic aura and known to shed a tear on a medals platform.

               What I don’t like is the International Olympic Committee, which puts together the events.  It’s a self-appointed, self-perpetuating body that’s responsible only to itself, and a bunch of boodlers to boot. Its allegiance isn’t to the athletes or to sport in general but to itself—it’s perks, profits and whatever it can plunder. The world would be better off without it.

               For proof one need look no further than Olympiad XXXII (don’t you love those Roman numerals?), set to begin next Friday (July 23) in Tokyo. Already delayed for a year, it’s an Olympics that few really want, proceeding amidst a covid pandemic that has reached crisis proportions in its host country. Foreign visitors have been barred and domestic attendance sharply curtailed. Competitors must be masked and observe social distancing when they aren’t on their fields of play, even among their teammates. They’ve been asked to show up, perform and get out, with mingling or loitering not encouraged. So much for the international amity the Games are supposed to promote.

 Spectators must be masked throughout their visits. No cheering or shouting will be permitted, although one no knows how those edicts will be enforced. Be advised, though, that prime game seats will be filled by the VIP throng that always accompanies the Games— IOC functionaries, sports’ federation bureaucrats and sponsors and their pals. It’s estimated they’ll be more numerous than the 11,500 or so men and women who will compete. There’s no room for athletes’ families but plenty for them, and in Tokyo’s best hotels. The latter perk is ever the case.

The opposition to these Games has been most pronounced in Japan, a wealthy country with a disciplined population but one that was slow to react to the pandemic. Distribution of vaccines was hindered by the government’s refusal to accept international efficacy tests, insisting instead on ones involving only Japanese, and at first it allowed only physicians and nurses to administer the shots. Vaccines finally are widely available but the national vaccination rate of less than 20% lags well behind that of other developed lands, and hospitalizations have risen sharply of late. Ashai Shimbun, the country’s leading newspaper, last month called for the Games to be canceled on public-safety grounds. So did the Toyko Medical Practitioners’ Association.

Local opposition also has an economic basis. Like just about every recent Summer Games Tokyo’s costs far exceeded expectations, reportedly about doubling its $15 billion initial budget. The IOC put up only $1.5 billion, leaving the Japanese government and private interests holding the bag, and the ban on most foreign visitors rules out much recapture through tourism spending.   By contrast, the IOC makes most of its income from the awarded-in-advance sale of TV rights—coming to about $4 billion this time around—and will make out fine if the Games go off on schedule.

IOC members also do all right in the pocket-stuffing department, with bribery instances and allegations attending every recent Games, usually involving the awarding of the host cities. In this one, the chairman of the Tokyo Organization Committee had to resign when a French investigation showed his group made a $2 million payment to a firm run by the son of a prominent IOC member. And that’s just the one that came to light. “Swag bags” at IOC functions are famous for their opulence. No IOC member ever exited an airliner from the rear, it’s said.

It’s no wonder, then, that the “show must go on” mentality that’s long animated the Games also has obtained in this one. Hey, the show went on in Munich in 1972 after terrorists kidnapped and killed 11 Israeli athletes, and merely hiccuped in Atlanta in 1996 after a bomb blast in an outdoor evening concert in Olympic Plaza killed two people and injured more than 100. What’s a little flu compared to that?

The same ethos governs the way Olympic competitions are run. Putin’s Russia made a farce of the 2014 Winter Games it hosted in Sochi by sending out a battalion of doped-up athletes to dominate the medals board. Then it tried to hide its misdeeds with a B-Movie scheme to swap “clean” urine for dirty by passing the samples through a hole in the wall of the Games’ testing lab. It later doubled down on that offense by hindering efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate it.

 A few sports federations, including the one governing track and field, booted the Russians from their events, but the harshest penalty the IOC could muster was to prohibit the Russian flag and anthem from its parades and victory stands.  Russian athletes competed In Rio in 2016 under those terms and will again in Tokyo under the supposedly neutral banner of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).  Better for business if you keep ‘em in, don’t you know?

Some sports, such as basketball, ice hockey, soccer, skiing, boxing and tennis, are so thoroughly international they don’t need the Olympic platform.  Most of the others stage annual world championships whose titles equal Olympic gold in achievement if not acclaim.  If they seek a bigger stage those activities could combine their events every four years and sell a TV package.

But yeah¸ I know, that probably ain’t gonna happen, so we must hold our noses to enjoy the Games. I suppose it’s possible for the IOC to reform itself, but its scam is too successful for that. Such is life.