Sports Media Review

Tony Dungy and the Indiana Family Institute

Thanks to Big House Dawg for passing this story along from BeyondChron, an alternative publication in San Francisco:

Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy will be the honored guest at the March 20, 2007 annual banquet of the Indiana Family Institute (IFI), the state’s leading lobbying force against gay rights. The IFI prides itself on its sixteen-year history of “opposing all efforts to create or advance special civil or legal rights for homosexuals.” The IFI is closely aligned with Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, an anti-gay organization of long standing. On the Hoosier Family website, Dungy is prominently pictured in his Colts cap and jacket---confirming the team’s willingness to align with the IFI and giving supporters of gay rights reason to root for the Chicago Bears in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Virtually every article about Colts coach Tony Dungy praises him as a devoted family man of deep religious values. But Dungy’s values do not extend to tolerance for gays, which is why he will be the honored guest for Indiana’s leading anti-gay political organization."

The IFI is a leading proponent of SJR7, the proposed Indiana Constitutional amendment on marriage rights, and other legislative efforts to deny equal rights to LGBT folks. While claiming to protect “family values,” it promotes measures that undermine gay families and the broader LGBT community.

Here's what IFI's website has to say, in part:

The enemies of SJR 7 are far more dangerous than the media and even most Christians realize. They not only want to destroy marriage and create a society free from any and all sexual boundaries, they will spare no effort to attain their ultimate goal of silencing all those who oppose them. You need only look at Canada and Sweden for the logical conclusion of their "this is our right" mentality. In those countries, citizens who speak out against the homosexual agenda are being charged with "hate speech" crimes and threatened with fines and jail time.

Homosexual activists here in Indiana are using the same game plan as was used in those countries. Promoting marriage as defined in scripture is at odds with the views of these radicals. Thus, they define such ideas as "hate speech" and attempt to punish those who oppose them through the law. The Left embraces these activists, but we must strongly oppose them; for we may lose even more than marriage if we fail.

Yesterday, AOL Fanhouse ran a brief blurb on Dungy's involvement with the organization and received a bunch of comments, which I can't bring myself to read just now. Obviously, I'll keep my eyes and ears open for any traction this story gets among the hordes of media in Miami. But, needless to say, I find this, if not surprising, nevertheless dismaying. Such attitudes are common enough among sports personalities, and football is surely the most conservative of the major team sporting cultures. And, there is clearly a common link between the kinds of religious professions that Dungy makes and this sort of homophobia.

But, to hear Dungy talk proudly about what he's had to overcome as an African American, including the deep-seated prejudices that confronted him as he was growing up and then to turn around and lend his voice to an organization spewing similar kinds of hate-filled rhetoric - well it just begs the question in my mind: how does he reconcile these things? I know how he might answer, by reference to the bible, and God, and deeply held religious beliefs. But, there's no way to read James Dobson as anything other than bigoted and hate-filled, and plenty of racists have justified their own anti-Black sentiments down through the ages by reference to their own deeply held beliefs about God's intent, etc. 

Now, as far as I know, Dungy has not made any public pronouncements on the subject, and certainly hasn't pulled a Reggie White. But, headlining an event is itself an inescapably clear statement.

I suspect most sports media, if they cover this at all (and obviously some will agree with him), would draw a bright line between Dungy's presumed beliefs on this issue and his character more generally. That, itself, is morally dubious. But, what's most important to keep in mind here is that no one talks more politely to the media than Tony Dungy, and that's the true test of character.

The Statistical Abyss

Lee Jenkins' article in the New York Times today starts out well. Here's the clever opener:

On one side of the field Sunday will be a quarterback who completed more passes this season than Joe Namath in 1968, for more yards than Roger Staubach in 1977, at a higher percentage than Johnny Unitas in 1970.

He threw more touchdowns passes than Joe Montana in 1981, with fewer interceptions than Terry Bradshaw in 1979, and with a higher passer rating than Len Dawson in 1969.

On the other side of the field will be Peyton Manning.

For most of this week, Manning will be the one prompting comparisons to all those Hall of Fame quarterbacks in their championship seasons. As the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, Manning has stretched defenses and scorched record books.

But the real statistical marvel of this season is Rex Grossman, quarterback of the Chicago Bears, who has managed to put up numbers on par with some Super Bowl legends and yet is still regarded by some as the reason that his team cannot possibly win it all.

Jenkins is doing all kinds of cherry picking here to make a point: Unitas was at the end of his career in 1970, Staubach played in fewer games and at a much higher level of efficiency and Namath's greatness wasn't in his completion percentage, but in his extraordinary ability as a downfield passer in an era and league where everyone sacrificed short completions for deep passes. Passing-wise, pro football was simply a different sport than it is now. But Jenkins' larger point is well-taken: you don't have to get great quarterback play to win a super bowl, though it sure helps.

But Jenkins is really fudging when he says the following:

Take away the sound bites and the bloopers, and Grossman is a fairly typical Super Bowl quarterback. He ranked near the top of the league this season for interceptions (20), but also for touchdown passes (23) and yards (3,193). His completion percentage, 54.6, was respectable. His passer rating, 73.9, was not.

Grossman really was one of the worst in the league at throwing interceptions - only two quarterbacks threw more. He ranks seventh in touchdown passes thrown, and 12th in yards passing, hardly the equivalent good of his bad interception figure. And, in the modern NFL, 54.6 is not respectable. Of 32 qualifying quarterbacks this year, Grossman's figure puts him 28th. Jenkins makes it sound like the passer rating is somehow separate and apart from its components. But, add all these bad results up: the low completion percentage, the terrible interception rate and the fact that he didn't do anything exceptionally well and there's no mystery to the low passer rating.

Whether the league's passer efficiency statistic is the best way to evaluate QB performance (the Football Outsiders and Wages of Wins authors say, emphatically, "no!"), the Jenkins piece highlights an on-going problem in sports journalism: a failure to put numbers in any kind of context. One reason why many sports journalists are dismissive about the importance of stats (not that Jenkins is) stems from the fact that many of these same folks simply don't take the time to evaluate the meaning and limits of the data. Of course, there's more to life than a QB's yards per attempt. But, properly understood, statistics can give us a picture about the type of player we're talking about, how he stacks up to the competition and, by extension, what sorts of contributions he makes to winning games. It's fashionable these days, as I've complained before, to look at a QB's won-loss record, though that's a frankly inane and hopelessly circular way of determining whether a QB helped or hurt his team's chances. And it just doesn't really tell us much that we don't already know - we can look in the standings to see the Bears' record. But, reducing discussion of QB's performance to whether their team wins also relegates discussion of a player's actual stats to context-less and often inaccurate reporting.

If you don't believe the data matter, you can ignore them altogether. But, it shouldn't be too much to ask, if you're going to use the statistics, to make some sense of them. Of course, sports reporters aren't alone in this regard. See, for example, the economic "boom" we're now supposedly experiencing for a classic case of context-less use of data.

Norv Turner and the Rooney Rule (Update Below)

Super Bowl media week is in full swing and the ratio of blather to real insight is at an all-time high. One of the more interesting points of discussion concerns the Rooney Rule. Instituted after the 2002 season, the Rooney rule requires NFL teams to interview African Americans for head coaching vacancies. The rule does not, of course, require teams to hire an African American - merely to talk one. Of the talking heads I have been listening to today, including Mike and Mike and the "professor" John Clayton, there's strong support for the rule. Golic and Greenberg have both endorsed it and Greenberg noted that it was "frankly embarassing" that prior to Rooney in 2002, there were only two African American coaches. Adding to the support for the rule was Lovie Smith's comment yesterday that he never would have gotten the job had it not been for the rule. And, it's widely recognized that Mike Tomlin ended up getting the Pittsburgh Steelers' job because of the rule. Prior to Tomlin's interview, Russ Grimm had a stone cold lock on the job. But, apparently, Tomlin, who only got the interview due to Rooney, apparently blew the Steelers away and ended up with the job (as an aside, I would love, one time, a useful description of what prospective coaches are asked to talk about when they interview for a job).

But the subject has also come up today in connection with the Dallas Cowboys' head coaching search. Mike Singletary, universally regarded as a future head coach in the league, will be interviewing for the job even though there appears to be no chance he's going to get the job. Because of this, Mike and Mike have wondered whether Singletary should even bother, because it seems superfluous except to satisfy the rule. Technically, the Cowboys don't have to see Singletary, since they've already talked to a Parcells assistant, Todd Bowles. But, according to Nancy Gay of the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Before Singletary, Jones also interviewed a member of Parcells' staff, Todd Bowles, who is black. Some candidates get a more in-depth visit than others. Norv Turner, for example, received a lengthy interview with Jones, extending from Sunday into Monday.

Bowles' interview was much briefer. Maybe an hour. So brief, "The time he spent waiting outside the office for the interview was longer than the time he spent inside the office," one Cowboys' insider put it.

So, it doesn't look like Singletary is going to get much of a fair shake, at least not this time around. OK, now this is all a fine discussion as far as it goes. But, there's one thing missing: why isn't everyone in an uproar about the fact that Norv Turner is the likely winner of the job competition?

A couple of days ago, echoing ESPN.com's Bomani Jones, I said that we'll know we've made progress when there is a Black Gene Shue, a chronically bad coach who keeps getting jobs. Well, Turner is Gene Shue. Turner's been a head coach for nine seasons. In that time, he has made the playoffs exactly once and compiled a truly pathetic 58-82-1 record overall (he was fired midway through one season). Turner has a history in Dallas, having served as offensive coordinator for the first two of the three super bowl rings that the Aikman-era Cowboys won. But, seriously, aren't there two dozen guys, White and Black, who have a better shot at success than Turner. As an offensive coordinator, Turner was innovative and successful. As a head coach, he showed nothing - neither as a tactician, a motivator, or a developer of talent.

Can we please hear someone question owner Jerry Jones' judgment here. Why do hacks like Turner keep getting third chances while we wring our hands about whether minority candidates need the Rooney rule to even get a foot in the door?
 

Update: Chris Mortensen just reported that Singletary ended up spending seven hours with Jones today and is now a serious candidate. It still leaves unanswered the question of why Turner is a serious candidate.

Teaser (and other stuff)

1) George Castle, a long time baseball writer in the Chicago area has a new book out. It's titled, "baseball and the Media: How Fans Lose in Today's Coverage of the Game."

I've ordered the book and will have at it in the next few days. The book's publisher, University of Nebraska press (I'm curious as to how this book ended up at a university press), has made the preface available at its website. The first five pages or so is really just throat-clearing, but then comes this interesting claim:

"Baseball writers don't stay at their jobs long anymore, disrupting the continuity of coverage demanded by fans. Many on the beat eschew relationships with players in favor of roaming clubhouses and foul territory in packs or cliques in what one writer calls 'socialized journalism.' Elitism and arrogance, as bad as any practiced by wealthy players, exist among the pen and mike crowd. Columnists and radio sports talk-show hosts often don't show up at the ballpark. That in turn creates ill will among baseball folk when the opinion-meisters craft their output on the basis of second and third hand information to which their readers and listeners already have access. 'Entertainment' is liberally substituted for accurate journalism by ratings-hungry broadcast executives."

I don't know whether Castle marshals data to support his claims here, especially on the question of whether beat writers spend less time on the job than they used to. But, the point Castle raises here about elitists sports media strikes a chord with me - I've complained about it before. If the average working Joe on the street wants to complain about players' salaries, lifestyles and sense of privilege, that's one thing. But, when sports media - given their unbelievable good fortune in life to have the jobs they do - complain the way they do, that's tough to take. Especially when they're all hanging out in Miami for the week on the company dime.

2) The guys over at Cold Hard Football Facts are offering the best coverage of the Super Bowl I've seen so far. I don't always agree with their take, but they are not only really well-informed, but readily admit when they're wrong. They were convinced that Peyton Manning was going to gack against the Patriots and, when he didn't, they owned their mistake, lock, stock and barrel.

Today, they say they are tired of the two Black coaches story line and explain what they view as the real story of this Super Bowl:

The “pundits” want you to believe that “black” is the color of Super Bowl XLI. The Cold, Hard Football Facts want you to know that the color of this Super Bowl, and almost every Super Bowl that has preceded it, is Brown – as in Paul Brown.

 

Paul Brown died almost 16 years ago. And he never coached in the Super Bowl. But his pigskin progeny have lorded over “America’s Game” nearly since its outset. They’ll do so again here in Super Bowl XLI.

What follows is an entertaining and informative discussion of Paul Brown's extraordinary impact on pro football, spanning seven decades and counting. For example:

Students of the Paul Brown School have won 18 of 40 Super Bowls. No matter which team wins Super Bowl XLI, it will be another victory for Brown’s legacy: Indy’s Tony Dungy and Chicago’s Lovie Smith both came up through the coaching ranks under students of the Paul Brown School.

 

And, if you choose to play the race game, you can think of Paul Brown, too.

 

After all, it was Paul Brown, the colorblind visionary, who reintegrated pro football in 1946 – a year before baseball’s Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers.

 

Who is Paul Brown?

Paul Brown is the deeply rooted trunk of modern football’s most important coaching tree. You know that famous Bill Walsh coaching tree that everybody talks about? Any time you see or hear “Bill Walsh coaching tree,” just think Paul Brown.

 

But it goes much deeper than Walsh. The 49ers legend, after all, is just one of many coaches who dominated the Super Bowl and who learned much of what they know about football from Brown.

 

Paul Brown is the central figure behind not just one but two NFL franchises, the Browns (which were named for him) and the Bengals. He forged pro football's greatest dynasty, as his original Cleveland Browns played in an unfathomable 10 straight pro football championship games in two different leagues from 1946 to 1955, winning seven of them. We discussed the dominance of the Browns in this piece from two years ago.

 

Brown was born in Ohio, the heart of the Gridiron Breadbasket, and is the most important football figure in arguably the nation’s most important football state. He played and coached at Ohio’s famous football power Massillon (a few miles from Canton), he played and coached at Ohio State University, and he played at Miami (Ohio) University – a school known today as “the Cradle of Coaches.”

 

Brown himself posted a 170-108-6 record in 21 years as an NFL coach. He also went a remarkable 52-4-3 in four years coaching the Browns in the old All-America Football Conference.

Unlike Kincade, their goal in pooh-poohing the race angle isn't to whine irrelevantly about Chinese American discrimination in pro football. Instead, it's to inform and illuminate, which they do really well. You can read all of it here.

3) speaking of owning mistakes, as faithful readers know, I - like every other Knick fan I know - have trashed Isiah for his personnel decisions, cap mismanagement and, especially, his Eddy Curry trade. I've said all along that the problem isn't that Curry lacks talent (see, by contrast, Jerome James, a player Isiah inked for $30 million in the summer of 2005 who, in all seriousness, just doesn't belong on an NBA roster). Instead, it's that Curry's health problems made him seemingly untradeable (or so his GM with the Bulls, John Paxson, thought so) and Isiah behaved as if twenty nine teams were begging for Curry's services.

OK, this is not shaping up to be a "cold hard football" style owning up. And, it's not going to get much better. But, I have a friend in Chapel Hill who, every time I see him, says chidingly "Curry's pretty good." And, Curry's been a very productive offensive player this year, averaging 19.3 points a game and shooting a stellar 59% from the field. In fact, my friend argues, Curry is a young player who is developing under Isiah this season. Curry remains a piss-poor rebounding center, can't hit free throws and has one assist for every five turnovers, but until yesterday, despite all those flaws, I was going to write that, OK, Curry's got good upside, he's a legitimate scoring center and, you never know how lottery picks are going to work out. Of course, you do know that lottery picks won't cost you ten million a year for several years, but...(there I go again. For more on Curry, David Berri has his usual thorough analysis).

OK, so what happened yesterday that made me re-think my planned abject apology to Isiah? It was a piece I read in Sports Illustrated about the disappearance of shot blocking from the NBA (the article, by Chris Ballard, is excellent, by the way).  In discussing which big men are the worst shot blockers and why, Ballard writes:

"Perhaps the most docile big man is 6' 11", 285-pound Eddy Curry of the Knicks. Curry has tremendous strength and leaping ability, yet he has averaged fewer than a block a game for his career and was at 0.55 at week's end. Among players who have played in at least 25 games this season, 123 are averaging more blocks per 48 minutes than Curry, including 6' 4" Boston guard Delonte West. "He just doesn't make the effort,' one Eastern conference scout says of Curry. "He plays with his hands down and he's not active defensively."

Since I'm not really eating crow about Isiah and Curry, let me bring this whole Peyton Manning/eating crow thread full circle and offer a sure-fire credibility destroyer, from days of yore: I thought Ryan Leaf would be a better NFL QB than Peyton Manning.

There, I said it.

 

Really Bad Comparisons

John Kincade is fed up. ESPN radio's Sunday morning host of the John Kincade show has heard too much about the race angle and this Super Bowl. And, it's certainly true that sports media have given plenty of attention to the fact that Super Bowl XLI will be the first in history featuring Black head coaches. It's also true that Smith and Dungy are two of the most well-liked men in coaching, both regarded as strong leaders and as men of quiet integrity. So, maybe that angle has been played. And maybe Kincade was just ranting because that's a big part of what sports talk radio is all about - the rant.

But, Kincade's rant is worth a brief response. I heard it while driving to do my own radio show this morning and don't have the transcript. But, Kincade made three major points:

1) that Dungy and Smith's success have "absolutely nothing" to do with the fact that they're Black. This point was repeated numerous times in the ten minutes I heard.

2) good coaches are good coaches, period. Dungy and Smith are good coaches. So was Bill Walsh. Walsh's success had nothing to do with his being White. Ipso facto (Kincade didn't actually say: "Ipso facto'), Kincade's right when he says Dungy and Smith's race has nothing to do with their success.

3) No one is complaining about Norm Chow not getting a head coaching job, despite his credentials. Why isn't there a Chinese American coaches association complaining about that?

4) Kincade also believes there's age discrimination working against the likes of Chow (who's about 60), Eagles defensive coordinator Jimmie Johnson, and Tampa Bay Bucs' Monte Kiffin, whose 31 year old son just bagged the Raiders' head coaching job. Kincade asserted that age discrimination is a more relevant source of concern in hiring these days than is skin color.

It's tiring to even have to explain why one's Whiteness has been, historically, less of hindrance in getting ahead in executive and management positions than one's Blackness in American society. But, I assume Kincade would grant that, until relatively recently, that was undoubtedly the case in professional sports. How else would he explain the fact that there were no Black head coaches in the NFL until as late as 1989? Unless he shares Al Campanis' views on the matter, which I assume he doesn't.

If what Kincade meant to argue was that for a young Black coaching professional starting out in 2007, race will not be a hindrance to achieving top jobs in the NFL going forward, I'd be skeptical, but that'd be a worthy discussion. BUt, to suggest that Dungy and Smith had no more obstacles working their way through the ranks over the past 15-20 years than did Bill Walsh due to their skin color, is off the wall, really.

And, to back up for a second, I haven't heard sports media discuss how Dungy or Smith's success is due to their race. The focus of their stories has been on overcoming obstacles. Kincade's just being sloppy here.

On the third point, concerning Norm Chow and the absence of an outcry about the lack of Chinese Americans (his term) in head coaching ranks, Kincade's got a good point. After all, given the fact that 66% of the players in the NFL are Chinese-Americans, and there are dozens of Chinese American coaches with good credentials to be a head coach in the NFL, and given the history of discrimination, formal and informal, against Chinese Americans by the NFL and organized American football more generally, I can really see where the comparison makes all kinds of good sense.

That little stretch of Kincade's rant is one of the dumbest I've heard on sports talk radio in a long time.

On the fourth point, in contrast to the ridiculous point number three, Kincade does actually have an interesting point. Is there a "bias" against older coaches in the NFL? Are organizations increasingly interested in young, inexperienced guys, versus older guys with a track record? It should be pointed out that, of course, there are plausible performance-related reasons to pass over older coaches: they may not stick around as long as younger ones, they may not relate to today's players as well, and the ever-increasing demands of the position may be harder for older coaches to deal with. That does not justify ruling someone out just because they're 60 or 65 - it still ought to come down to whether a particular individual can get the job done. But, to repeat, there are legitimate performance-related reasons to at least wonder about the age issue. By contrast, there are no plausible reasons to argue that one's skin color, by itself, disqualifies someone from being a viable candidate for head coach. So, the fourth point is still missing some context, but the Kiffin family example was a good one.

I mostly chalk up Kincade's riff this morning to a slow news cycle in the middle of two-week pre Super Bowl hell. And, that pre- super bowl hype machine has a way of beating EVERY angle to death including, in this case, the race one. But, Kincade's really missing the boat. However much it has been changing, Blackness has been a unique marker historically in America. If Kincade doesn't know that, that's in part because he hasn't had to know it.

Money in College Sports

Picking up on a thread from a couple of days ago (see Item #3 of the linked post), I wanted to say something further about money in big-time college athletics. An article in the latest issue of Sports Business Review reports on the revenues and expenditures of ACC schools. According to the piece, despite the fact that ACC expansion was fueled by football. its basketball programs are still the big money makers, at least the four North Carolina schools that comprise the ACC's "Big Four." (UNC, Duke, Wake Forest and NC State). While Duke and Wake Forest lost money on football in 2005-06, the programs made $4 million and $5 million respectively, on the hardwood.

UNC did extremely well in both sports, making $7.3 million in football, and netting a whopping $12.5 million in basketball.

None of this is really surprising in itself - Wake Forest's stunning football success in 2006 notwithstanding, basketball is king in these parts. And, coming off a national championship and playing in a 21,500 seat arena, one would expect UNC to be raking in cash.

But, it's best to read all such reports with skepticism. Why? Because, as SBR itself notes, accounting methods differ from school to school, which means that one doesn't always know whether one is comparing apples to apples. And, that raises a larger point: do athletic departments and universities have a vested interest in putting a positive gloss on their major programs' finances?

In the case of UNC, one fact always gives me trouble: the Dean Dome, which opened in 1986, has never turned a profit. Now, one can assume that, on nights when the men's basketball team is playing there, the building does very well: 21,000 fans, at $35-40 a ticket. Repeat that fifteen times and you're looking at something like 10-12 million in revenues over the course of a season. And, that appears to account for the bulk of the $17million in gross revenue that the program raked in in the last reporting cycle. But, the Dean Dome was sold to donors, faculty, state legislators and other interested parties as a magnet for other revenue producers throughout the year, such as concerts and the like. But, the building appears to have been a flop in that regard, and rarely if ever any longer has non-basketball events there. Since the facility was built for basketball, does the expense of operating it year-round accrue to the basketball program? I don't know, and I can't find information on that question. My hunch is that it does not: it's common for unaccounted for expenses to be covered by state funds, and perhaps that's happening here. In other words, while the basketball program is clearly being credited with the revenue generation associated with basketball games, it's not clear that the program, or the athletic department more generally is being held accountable for the building's finances as a whole.

According to SBR, Duke's basketball program incurs double the expenses that UNC's does, about four million dollars more in the reporting year in question. And, some of that difference can be accounted for by the fact a Duke education is more expensive than a UNC education and, therefore, a scholarship to Duke is pricier than a UNC scholarship. But, with 15 scholarship athletes on each university's men's basketball team, that difference can only account for a fraction of the four million dollar difference in expenses. Coach K's university paid salary is higher than Roy's, so that's another chunk, but that still doesn't get us near four million dollars.

The reporting tool of the Department of Education's post-secondary education arm doesn't breakdown expenses in such detail, so we're left to speculate. But, to repeat, I have a strong hunch that the true total expenditures of UNC's basketball programs are being absorbed somewhere else in the University or in state funds.

I am not trying to pick on my employer, of course. I just happen to know a little bit more about UNC than I do about other schools. And, I don't assume that UNC is somehow more underhanded in its accounting of these matters than other major Division I programs. But, the larger issue is this: we hear media discuss the relative merits of the revenue-generating men's sports all the time, usually in very positive terms. The conclusions of the WRBS post about Rutgers to which I referred the other day are premised on those positive assumptions about the revenue sports: namely, that they really make money for their schools and that everyone benefits because they spread that wealth around to other athletic programs, including women's teams, and to academic units. But, we know that most programs, especially football programs, don't make money. And, we also have reason to be skeptical that, when it comes to the big grossing sports in general, that the expense side of the ledger may be understated, and often considerably so.

Just over four years ago, Michael Sokolove wrote a lengthy article for the New York Times Sunday Magazine titled "Football is a Sucker's Game." It's a tour de force - a brilliant analysis of the allure and potential pitfalls of investing in a major college football program. Sokolove profiles the efforts of the University of South Florida to establish a top flight program that would, in turn, enhance the prestige of the entire university. It's a path, Sokolove argues, that few have charted successfully:

"Schools get on a treadmill, and there's no getting off," says James Shulman, an author of "The Game of Life." "They have to stay on; they have too much invested." The former Princeton basketball coach Pete Carill once said of the big-time programs: If you want to get into the rat race, you've got to be a rat."

Another way to look at big-time college sports is as a sucker's game, one with many more losers than winners. Notre Dame, a great football team before it was a great university, is the prototype for all schools hoping to hitch a ride on the back of a popular sports team. Duke certainly has become more celebrated and academically selective in the years its basketball team has been a perennial Final Four participant. But Notre Dame and Duke are exceptions. For every Notre Dame and Duke, there are many more like Rutgers and U.A.B., schools that spend millions in a hopeless mission to reach the top.

Sokolove's conclusions are more pertinent to whether Rutgers' gamble on big time football will pay off than whether schools like UNC can run a successful basketball program. The jury's still very much out on whether, over the long run, Rutgers football will have the kind of sustained success, on the field and financially, that will yield revenue sufficient to be a net positive for the university as a whole. UNC, by contrast, is a Rolls Royce program. But, if there is at least room to question whether a program as ostensibly profitable as UNC's is fully accounting for all its expenses, it raises larger questions about whether we're getting an accurate sense of the balance sheet in high gross revenue college sports in general. Regarding football, Sokolove notes that there appears to be a good bit of accounting slight of hand:

U.S.F. calculates that the football team brings in, roughly, $4 million in revenue and spends about the same amount. But as in most athletic departments, the accounting makes no attempt to measure the true resources used.

One day, I stood in a humid basement room and watched the laundry -- muddy Bulls jerseys and pants, T-shirts, sweat socks, wrist- and headbands, jockstraps -- from 105 football players being cleaned. Several colossal washers and dryers were fed by three athletic-department employees. They perform this task early August through late November, six days a week, 10 hours a day. None of this -- the salaries, the utility costs, the $8,000 a year just in laundry detergent -- is charged against football. Nor is there any attempt to break out football's share of such costs as sports medicine, academic tutoring, strength and conditioning, insurance, field upkeep or the rest of its share of the more than $5 million in general expenses of the athletic department not assigned to a specific sport. In the papers I was shown, I also could find no evidence that a $2 million fee to join Conference USA (which is not a B.C.S. conference) as a football-playing member in 2003 was accounted for in football's expense ledger. The money was borrowed from the university's general endowment, and the athletic department is paying the interest. So when Jim Leavitt says that his football team is revenue-producing, that should not be understood as profit-generating. I would not pretend to know what football really costs at U.S.F., but it's clearly a lot more than $4 million, maybe even twice that.

I don't expect this situation to change - it's a lot of work for sports media to delve into arcane accounting matters and, after all, sports media folks are sports fans who put an inherent value on things like college football and men's college basketball. But, at the least, it's worth keeping in mind Sokolove's distinction: "revenue-producing...should not be understood as profit-generating."

Two Items

1) Johnny Hatchett has left several comments on my blog over the past few weeks and he's got his own blog (don't we all!). It's excellent, and I recommend it. He just started, and doesn't post daily (undoubtedly because he's got an actual life), but he's smart and succeeds in blending sports commentary with larger concerns. For full disclosure here, Hatchett has nice things to say about this blog. But, that's not why I am linking to him. I'm linking because his content is good and distinctive.

2)  Bomani Jones has this interesting take on the Smith-Dungy match-up and its historic significance.

Jones writes:

Word on the street is that wins by the Colts and Bears on Sunday provided evidence of the progress the NFL has made with regard to race and coaching. Some would say that, by doing their jobs, Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith provided a milestone in the NFL's quest to desegregate its coaching ranks.

Y'okay.  Not to ruin the joy of Black History Month coming a few days early, but such thinking is both ridiculous and dangerous.

This may be the first time a black coach -- let alone two of them -- has made the Super Bowl, but successful black coaches have been the norm for the last 17 seasons. Of the eight black coaches hired in the NFL's modern era, all but Cleveland's Romeo Crennel have made the playoffs at least once. Of the seven who have made the playoffs, only Marvin Lewis has not made the playoffs at least twice. But Lewis, in fairness, was busy shaking the Bengals from a decade-and-change-long slumber, which was no small feat.

Why have black coaches been so successful? Seems as though it's because a black man can't get a job coaching in the NFL unless he's uncommonly impressive. The eight black coaches in the NFL's modern era have a combined record of 442-368-1, a .546 winning percentage. They've made the playoffs in 29 of their 50 combined seasons.

These results mirror what University of Pennsylvania economics professor Janice Madden found in her 2004 study of the differences in job performance between black and white coaches. She determined that the success of black coaches was "consistent with NFL teams 'requiring' that African-American coaches be better than Whites to obtain and to keep their positions."

Just to riff on that for a second - it brings to mind the initial cohort of African Americans to play major league baseball. In the first few years of integration, when there were still few Blacks playing in majors, those players included Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella and Monte Irvin. And between 1951 and 1955, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson all came into the majors, durng a period when some teams had still not even integrated. That's an extraordinary group of players, no doubt a function, in part of the principle from the Madden study: that Black players had to be demonstrably better to get a equal shot.

There was not, of course, a formal line keeping Black coaches out of the NFL before Art Shell, just a history of hiring through networks of coaches that did not include Blacks and resistance from executives some  of whom, however decent they might otherwise have been, may have shared the sentiments that Al Campanis expressed to Ted Koppel on Nightline in 1987. In that interview, when Koppel asked the then Dodgers executive why there were so few Blacks in positions of authority in major league baseball, Campanis said, among other things, that perhaps Blacks lacked "some of the necessities" to be in such positions.

In any event, for Jones, the success of Black coaches as a group leads to a surprising conclusion:

"Counterintuitive though it may seem, the success of black coaches appears to be more a symptom of racism than its cure. That isn't to say there hasn't been progress in minority hiring in the NFL. It's just that more significant milestones in the fight for equity in hiring have been overlooked. There was greater cause for celebration when Ray Rhodes, fresh off two horrendous seasons coaching the Eagles, was hired by the Packers in 1999. The same could be said when Dungy, after a string of disappointing postseasons in Tampa Bay, was hired by the Colts shortly after being fired by the Buccaneers.

After years of black coaches being passed over for retreads, Rhodes and Dungy -- and, later, Dennis Green and Herman Edwards -- had become retreads themselves. They'd become insiders, part of the head coaching network. Their names were considered right alongside other guys that, for whatever reasons, hadn't gotten it done before but were still respected in the business.

On this latter point, I had a similar though before I read this article. I was thinking about Art Shell who, though he had a good initial stint in coaching beginning in 1989, was really an insider hire when Al Davis tabbed him for the Raiders' job in 2006. That's significant because it means that Blacks could be insiders, too (not to mention, bad at what they do). Shell's relationship to Davis is unusual, so I don't want to make too much of this, but Rhodes and Herm Edwards (a decent coach whom I like) are good examples of second-generation re-tread guys. But, I think Jones is right to point out that the striking success of Black coaches as a group (and a 55% collective winning percentage is a striking success) is itself a sign that the playing field may not be level. Dennis Green both deserved to be hired and fired, and that'a a good sign of the normalizing of Black coaches, but the superb credentials of Marvin Lewis, relative to how long it took him to get a head job (and who was hired over him before he got his head coaching job) is a reminder that there's still some resistance out there to the idea, or some way in which Blacks are not yet sufficiently network to get the same opportunities.

I don't think it's true, as Jones implies elsewhere in the piece, that Lovie and Dungy are themselves being asked to be more grateful for their success than other coaches. Both men have received lots of recognition that they've had more obstacles to overcome than the average head coaching bear and that they're getting credit for succeeding in spite of facing additional obstacles that white coaches, as a group, don't face.

But, if the Jones principle is right - real success comes when bad Black coaches keep getting jobs, then I guess we can look forward to the day when we have a Black Gene Shue. In five different stints spanning 21 NBA seasons (he actually coached 22, but was fired after six games in one of them), Shue had eight winning seasons, managed a .477 career winning percentage, made one NBA final (when his Sixers lost in an historic upset to Bill Walton's Portland Trailblazers in 1977), and won 39% of his playoff games.

Call it the Gene Shue principle of coaching progress.

Woe is Us, Part 3,764

I missed the beginning of the conversation, but Mike and Mike this morning had a lengthy conversation today about the terrible state that our society is in. I tuned in when Greenie was recounting Stephon Marbury's response to Harvey Araton of the New York Times about whether Marbury should be starting his own talk show during the middle of the basketball season. Marbury responded: "I don't have an answer; I don't answer to nobody." This response is, of course, the seventh sign of the apocalypse, so Mike and Mike picked over its entrails at some length (forgive the mixed metaphor).

Some of their conversation follows.

Greenie: "these guys have been stars on some level, from the time they were little kids.

Golic: "been told how great they are and put up on a pedestal."

Greenie: "They've been told 'you can do whatever you want and there will be no consequences and when you add to that money...beyond anything anyone could ever spend...unlimited riches beyond most people's wildest imaginations from the time they are twenty years old (or younger)...it's certainly easy to see how someone could go from there to  'I don't have to answer to you..."

The two then have a brief discussion about whether this is more prevalent in the NBA than the NFL. Initially, Greenie says no, but Golic disagrees.

Golic: "Listen, I'm not going to say there aren't prima donnas in the other sports...but it's mostly in the NBA and you just gave the reasons for it...they're put up on a pedestal and told how great they are at an early age...they're drafted out of high school...so, do they have to turn out that way, absolutely not, but it's good ground for it. In football, they're older, they've been to college and there three years older and you hope they're a little more mature...in baseball, for the most part, 99% they're going through the minor leagues, riding the bus for a while. The ground for that to happen in the NBA is most fertile because of the way it's set up."

After a break, Greenie described the conversation he and Golic were having as "important and worthwhile" and prompted by a New York Times article from Tuesday, which Greenie paraphrased as posing the following question:

"How did we get to a point in sports where a player like Reggie Bush, upon scoring a touchdownin a football game, before even reaching the end zone is pointing at the opposition in mockery...for no reason at all, beyond 'look at me.'"

Greenie and Golic then discussed Marbury's comment, nothing that he wasn't even being defiant and that they weren't really even criticizing him.

Greenie: "It's a completely accurate representation of the way that we have raised Stephon Marbury and others to think. When you make someone a star when they're ten years old, and you give them all the money in the world, and all the adulation and all the fame and allow them to bend, if not break, every rule along the way, because we can benefit from their talent, then don't blame them for becoming a little egomaniacal."

Greenie and Golic then return to the uniqueness of the NBA in this regard. Greenie offers the following analysis of football contracts, compared to NBA ones:

"you are not financially secure, and filthy rich, until you have made it. You have to accomplish something in pro football and even then, once you do, your contract is not guaranteed so you have to earn it year to year...and it's not just how you play, they are behaviorally monitored."

Greenie and Golic then discuss the contract situation in the NBA, though Greenie grudgingly admits that the rookie wage scale has brought a "modicum" of sanity to the NBA.

Finally (for our purposes), Greenie says "don't shoot the messenger, don't blame Stephon Marbury" for a situation we've all created.

Golic: "I'm not going that far.IThere's human nature, there's being just a good person and having just a little common sense and understanding someone's paying you and you have a boss sometimes...I'm not giving Marbury a pass and saying it's society's fault and it's the NBA's fault."

"If you believe we've raised a generation that's me oriented, it's about me, just notice me, I'm not concerned with what anyone else thinks, then certainly that is a larger issue than an individual."

Whew. Where to begin?

Let's start with whether Stephon Marbury is a good person. Golic says no. Why? Well, mainly, it appears, because Marbury doesn't think he needs to tell a reporter why he's doing a mid-season talk show. Like many sports commentators, Golic proceeds from the premise that employers. such as sports owners, are paying employees, including athletes, out of the goodness of their own hearts and, as a consequence, that these ingrate athletes should all genuflect before those wealthy enough to own franchises and other big businesses. Because, lord knows, Marbury's boss, the esteemed James Dolan worked awfully hard to be the son of Charles Dolan and has done nothing but sacrifice for the well-being of his players and the city of New York since taking control of Madison Square Garden.  Actually, Golic's comments are less coherent than I am giving him credit for, because Marbury doesn't draw a pay check from Harvey Araton, or the New York Times, or anyone else in the media.

Golic has articulated one standard for judging whether someone is good - does he talk respectfully to the media. Another standard might be to judge somebody by, oh, I don't know, the things they do for people who are actually in need (forgive me for not putting high-paid sports reporters on the top of my list of groups most worthy of our sympathy and charity).

Here, is what the highly respected Sports Business News, in its round-up of the NBA in 2006, has to say:

Stephon Marbury isn’t a marquee NBA player in the rarefied air Bryant and Wade belong to, but what Marbury contributed to the game in 2006 may the true lasting legacy one NBA player left the sports industry.

He has been named to The Sporting News list of “Good Guys in Sports” three times. He was one of the highest donors to the NBA Player Associations Katrina Relief effort, donating $1 million dollars to the effort. He currently has 7 barbers on hire in Coney Island giving free haircuts to neighborhood children. But it’s his Starbury Ones basketball shoes that represent what one day might become Marbury’s lasting legacy to basketball, to tens of thousands of children and their families – affordable shoes and basketball apparel for the community.

Earlier this month Footwear News, an industry magazine, recognized the impact Marbury’s product launch had on the industry by awarding Marbury its “Launch of the Year”. Footwear News’, who also publishes Women’s Wear Daily, award is thought to be the “Oscars of the shoe industry”. Marbury and his partners retailers Steve & Barry's last week also announced they are donating a free pair of Starbury One high performance basketball sneakers to every varsity high school boys basketball player in New York City. The donation of 3,000 pairs of Starbury Ones is part of a new agreement that makes the Starbury brand a partner of the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL). The PSAL directs all athletic competition among the 193 public high schools in the five boroughs.

Marbury launched his product ‘revolution’ on August 17, and followed that with a 21- city tour promoting the shoes and the accompanying clothing line. The product launch and the subsequent tour was timed to send a message to parents from lower income families as they were conducting their back-to-school shopping, you can afford to have your kids look and feel like an NBA basketball player. The shoes retail for $15 a pair. To date more than 3 million Starbury Ones basketball shoes have been sold.

Stephon Marbury said at the time of the release: "Kids shouldn't have to feel the pressure to spend so much to feel good about the way they look. I'm blessed to be in a position to do something about it, to help change the world. I couldn't find a better partner to create the Starbury Collection with than Steve & Barry's. For 20 years, their entire business has been about selling great quality clothes for much less than people expect they should cost."

Steve & Barry's co-CEO Barry Prevor added: “This is a very exciting moment for Steve & Barry's. When Steve and I founded our company in 1985, it was with a mission to bring people the most unbelievable values on clothes they've ever seen. That's exactly what Steph's vision for the Starbury Collection is all about, so this has been a fantastic partnership from the first day we met. Like Steph, we want to revolutionize how people shop, and this new line will help us continue to make that happen.”

Marbury commented, "It was very important to me that the Starbury Collection have a strong social component for kids and parents, especially in urban areas. Steve & Barry's and I decided to conduct the design contest so kids could give real input into how the Starbury line is created and as a means to give back to youth and the community."

Man, what an asshole!

There's plenty else that's wrong here. Baseball players drafted straight out of high school, if they're high picks, also sign multi-million dollar signing bonuses. High NFL draft choices make many times more money than do high NBA draft choices. The No. 1 pick in the 2004 NFL draft was Eli Manning. By the time he'd thrown his first NFL pass, he'd signed a $54 million dollar contract, including a $20 million signing bonus. By contrast, LeBron's first three years, 2004 to 2006, earned him a little less than $13 million total. (LeBron, of course, made a lot more in endorsements, but I think it's fair to say he's been worth it). I think we can quickly dispense with the question of who's earned their money, and who hasn't. Greenie used the phrase "modicum of sanity" to describe the NBA rookie pay scale. He either has no idea what he's talking about, or he's just being dishonest, if the goal is to characterize fairly how, salary-wise, the NFL and NBA stack up for players newly entering the league, especially among the top players.

Then there's the notion, expressed most forcefully by Greenie, that this generation of athletes has been spoiled and pampered from an early age, which leads in a straight line to their catastrophic refusal to explain themselves to reporters. Is Greenie suggesting, therefore, that he wishes he could have had Stephon Marbury's childhood? A child hood in which Marbury was one of seven kids growing up in an urban hell, as depicted in Darcy Frey's The Last Shot? Greenie himself grew up in New York City, the son of a lawyer. Did he really not hear himself suggest this morning that Stephon Marbury had had everything handed to him since he was eleven years old by contrast with, we are to assume, guys like Greenie, who had to scratch and claw his way through a brutal middle class child hood?

A few months ago, in writing about the T.O. O.D. episode, I picked on the staggering self-absorption and lack of perspective that afflicts many in the sports commentariat. OK, so that wasn't the only time. But, this morning's "important and worthwhile discussion" as Greenie put it, deserves its own place among the great moments in self-absorption and lack of perspective.

Update:  I forgot to add this:

The NBA Player's Association pledged $2.5 million to Hurricane Katrina relief in the Fall of 2005. According the NBAPA's press release:

New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury personally pledged $500,000 to $1,000,000 at the press conference.  An emotional Marbury fought back tears as he talked about the plight of Katrina's victims.  "I see those kids crying, and I think about my kids," he said.  Marbury also downplayed the significance of his contribution, saying, "It’s not about money. We have to take our cares to another level, just the way we treat people."

Shameless.

From the Blogs

There's been some worthwhile content from the sports blogosphere over the past couple of days.

1) following up on the Andre Waters story, Geoffrey Rapp of the sports law blog raises questions about the expert witness upon whom Alan Schwarz relied for his New York Times article (the link is dead right now). Rapp looked into the credentials of Dr. Bennet Omalu, whom Schwarz described as a leading expert in the field. Rapp notes that Schwarz misleadingly described Dr. Omalu as "of the University of Pittsburgh" when Omalu is only a volunteer there. Furthermore, Rapp suggests that Omalu may have a vested interest in having reached the conclusions he did with respect to Waters' autopsy because Omalu has reached similar conclusions in other cases. I am dubious that having previously testified about such matters constitutes a vested interest, but it strikes me as fair for Rapp to suggest that this is a new area of medical research and that while Omalu may be right, his conclusions cannot be considered definitive. Schwarz, perhaps, over-stated Omalu's credentials in order to add credibility to those conclusions.

Schwarz himself responded in comments and was quite defensive, noting that he did, of course, check on Omalu's credentials, and that he resented the insinuation that both Omalu and Chris Wolinski, the author of the book on traumatic head injuries featured in the article, had ulterior motives. It does strike me that, in a new area of research, early pioneers in the field may well come across as advocates in a way that researchers in an established field don't, merely because they need to speak more loudly in order to be heard.

2) Paulsen, at sports media watch, wrote a post a few days ago about the scrutiny Serena and Venus Williams have faced over the years.

Summarizing the ceaseless criticism of the two that he documents in the post, Paulsen writes:

They don't know how to play the game. They never understood; they got taught by their father and somehow lucked their way into twelve Grand Slam titles. They somehow lucked their way into being ranked numbers one and two in the world. They somehow lucked their way into backing up every seemingly arrogant statement they made at the start of their careers; they somehow lucked their way into dominating tennis for three straight years, playing each other in Grand Slam finals five times.

They fixed their matches, deserved to get booed. They wore beads on the court, and designed their own clothes. They were in TV shows and movies, and designing houses and doing everything backwards. How dare they have other interests than tennis?

Paulsen concludes:

Twelve Grand Slam titles will never be enough for Venus and Serena. No matter what they do, nothing will ever be enough. Because the elements in tennis pick and prod at every single thing they do, finding fault with every single aspect of their careers and lives. And it won't end until they finally leave a sport where they never were and never will be appreciated, a sport that didn't want them there and didn't want them dominating.

3) This post from the WBRS sports blog looks at what it's cost Rutgers to develop (and sustain) a competitive football team:

Two things can occur after a historic season such as the one experienced by Rutgers transpires...Either A, the head coach and even some of his assistants move on to other universities, accepting more prominent job offers from schools that can offer them greater salaries. When this occurs, in seasons to come the team continues to play well, but not at an 11-2 level. Then there is option B, the one that allows a university like Rutgers to continue to play top notch football. This involves offering the current coaches bundles of cash to stay together and turn an 11-2 season into a consistent outcome for many seasons to come. It appears Rutgers University seems set on the more appeasing "option B". But with this choice comes consequences, not all of which are positive...

Apparently Rutgers' state aid was cut $80 million this past year and it was recently announced that this lost money will force the university to dismiss 825 employees and cancel approximatley 459 course sections. Further, AD Robert E. Mulcahy III stated that the school will cut "six high-performing Olympic sports that cost a combined $800,000."

Meanwhile, as the school attempts to cope with this lack of funding they are showing their students, alumni and fans that a winning football program is extremely vital to the university. During this time of financial restraint rather than decreasing funding for the football program, the school is taking that "option B" and increasing spending by nearly $3 million.

"Most of Schiano's six-figure coaching assistants got double-digit raises even as the university reeled under state budget cuts that forced the elimination of 825 jobs...Salaries for nine coaches now range between $115,000 and $185,000, according to the contracts obtained by The Record under the state's Open Public Records Act. Each also gets a $7,200 annual car stipend and an additional one month's pay -- a bonus for getting the Scarlet Knights into the Texas Bowl."

Mini me, who wrote this post, thinks the expense is justified, in the hope that if Rutgers can sustain success, football will eventually become the kind of cash cow that not only turns a profit, but can fund other programs on campus, including academic ones.

There is a significant tendency to overstate how profitable college football programs really are. That's partly because while revenues can be very high, especially at the high profile programs, expenses are very high as well. Some programs, like Notre Dame, make enormous profits and the university as a whole benefits from that. But, this is the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, there's a lot of gimmickry in accounting at major athletic programs that make me wonder even about those programs that report high profits. That issue - of accounting gimmickry - deserves its own post and I'll try to get to that in the next day or two.

The Greater Good

Yesterday, Deadspin complained about the new MLB Extra Innings deal. As a result DirectTV:

is taking away MLB Extra Innings. If you don't have DirectTV this year (or for the next seven years), you're not going to be able to order the MLB Extra Innings package, because DirectTV just paid $700 million for exclusive rights over the next seven years. It will also be the exclusive home to a 24-hour baseball channel.

Currently, 75 million people had the opportunity to purchase Extra Innings; 750,000 took them up on it, including us. Now, both those numbers will be dramatically decreased (including us). Remember, there are still millions of houses in this country that couldn't install DirectTV if they wanted to. There are millions more who see DirectTV for what it is, an inferior service with poor broadband selection, terrible customer service and technology that'll be outdated halfway through that baseball contract. Because of this deal, there will be fewer people watching baseball next year.

You really shouldn't have wondered, but if you did, here's more proof: Major League Baseball will do anything for a short-term dollar, even sell out its most devoted fans. You knew this, of course.

Olney devotes a good portion of his blog today to fans writing to complain about this deal.

Here are a couple of samples:

Is baseball going back to its days of short-sighted decisions? From what I understand, your potential audience goes from 65 million to 15 million. I was born and raised in Chicago, and I'm still a huge Cubs fan. I used to have the luxury of watching almost all of their games on WGN, but a vast majority of those are now gone to feed the local Chicago cable channel to give the Cubs more money (at least they spent some of it now). Now, I won't be able to get the Extra Innings package to compensate. This decision is infuriating!!

-- Tom Coffee, Chandler, Ariz.

While MLB will make a ton of money with the new seven-year contract, the fans are the ones who are getting (it stuck to them). As a non-DirecTV customer (my house doesn't allow for a direct link to the satellite), I won't have the ability to subscribe to the MLB package. And I am not alone. Most of the US aren't subscribers to DirecTV. In an age when one's attention can be satisfied with numerous fields of entertainment, why would MLB cut so many fans off from its product? Maybe they'll learn from this mistake, but then again, seven years from now, when the new deal has expired, a baseball fan such as myself may already be lost.

-- Bill Murphy, Philadelphia, Pa.

This is part of a growing trend. Last June I blogged about the degree to which this trade-off - more money for less audience - was affecting radio broadcasts of major league games:

The Cardinals are the latest team to switch from a mega-watt station with significant range to a smaller station with much more limited reach. KMOX, which broadcast the Cards for half a century said it was losing money on the broadcasts and offered less than the team wanted when it was time to re-negotiate at the end of last season. So, the RedBirds flew the coop to 5,000 watt KTRS, a station with a barely 15-mile listening radius. The incentive – KTRS offered the Cards 50% ownership in the station. The Cards’ rationale, other than the financial boon from the transaction is, they say, that there are more platforms from which to listen to the Cards than there used to be. Satellite radio (baseball motivated purchasers comprise a significant percentage of all XM customers) and MLB.com are among the major new players in broadcasting. But, as the WSJ points out, there’s also this undeniable fact: fewer and fewer people can listen to the games for free. This trend has long been underway on television. In the early 1990s, 80% of local MLB broadcasts were still on free television. Now, only 23% are broadcast in such a fashion. Seven teams, including the Red Sox, won’t have any free TV broadcasts this season.

And, there is no sport in which the fans' radio-based relationship to its team is more important than baseball's, given the medium's suitability for broadcasting baseball games and the fact that radio itself has been so integral to the game's history. So, if the sacred cow of radio baseball can be sacrificed on the altar of more money, it should be no surprise, as Deadspin says, that MLB Extra Innings would get the same treatment.

Sports broadcasting has been heading this way for a long time. The move from over-air broadcasting to cable, let us not forget, involved the same trade-off, especially two decades ago when not as many homes had cable as do now. It's always nice to think that profit-making is win-win, and that's certainly what big time sports entities (like all big businesses) like to tell their consumers. But, when the reward for repeat sell-outs at Fenway or 50,000 fans a night at Yankee Stadium is higher ticket prices and the surest path to a windfall is to cut out two-thirds of one's audience, it's time to stop being naive about what's driving the bus here.