You Can't Fool Players or Coaches

What do Gregg Popovich, Leonard Fournette and all of Major League Baseball have in common?

They're not buying the hype.

Popovich is the championship-winning San Antonio Spurs coach who regularly flouts NBA rules by resting his best players for whole games, despite outrage from league brass and ticket-buying fans. Recently, LeBron James absorbed blowback for similarly agreeing not to make a trip to Memphis for the second half of a home-and-home series between the Cavaliers and the Grizzlies.


Fournette is the star running back at LSU who has chosen to skip his team's bowl game -- an advertising platform for Hyundai -- in order to prepare for his Major League career in the NFL, which will actually pay him a salary. The sporting public lit up Twitter and the radio and TV commentary universe with brick-a-brats for Fournette, Christian McCaffrey and others making the same decision.

All of Major League Baseball regularly sits its star players from time to time in order to rest them for the grueling six-month, 162-game schedule. No one comments.

Their Own Best Interest
The common thread is this: the people involved recognize, even if their hypocritical overseers don't want to acknowledge it, that their best interests don't dovetail with those of the money counters in their sport. Contrary to the Association's best efforts to bamboozle fans about the abject irrelevance of its interminable regular season, Popovich understands that his team will cruise into the over-stuffed playoff field regardless of its lineup in any given game. He knows that seeding is, as Harry Truman famously quipped about the vice presidency, as relevant as the fifth teat on a cow. And he knows that championships are won on fresh legs, not on victories in Game 26 of an 82-game season against an out-of-conference opponent. And finally, he is well aware that he answers to the owner of the San Antonio Spurs, not the commissioner of the NBA.

Fournette, McCaffrey, et. al. are unmoved by the NCAA's best efforts to befuddle them about their "amateur" status. They are professional revenue generators for their schools, no more so than during bowl season, when a single game kicks back a multi-million dollar payout, even if it is the desultory Buffalo Wild Wings Sun Bowl to which McCaffrey's Stanford squad has been relegated. Each of them is acting in his own best interest. The swami of the NCAA, whatever irrelevant personage that is today, won't reimburse these NFL prospects if they get injured or fall in the draft because they offered their talents for free to the university's capital engine for one more game.

Some of the derision aimed at Fournette, McCaffrey and their ilk has centered around their "abandonment" of teammates. This is hysterical. Both are leaving school after their junior year, a well-worn tradition against which no one has ever railed for "abandoning" teammates. Coaches regularly "abandon" recruits for better-paying jobs at bigger football programs. That die was cast long ago.

A Base Hit for Baseball
Once again, baseball gets it right like no other sport. It's commonly understood that in a long season players need occasional rest in order to perform at their best for the most games. Fans purchase tickets aware that their favorite player might play spectator that day. Ironically, unlike the NBA, MLB's regular season actually does matter. One game can and often does cost teams an opportunity to earn a playoff spot that can lead to a championship. Yet everyone involved readily accepts the notion that resting players is a long-term investment.

What really separates baseball from college football and the NBA is that the latter two sports are built on foundations of hypocrisy, inevitably propping up a precarious structure prone to a collapse of logic. For all its warts, Major League Baseball at least is what it says it is, which is why no one complains when its athletes skip a meaningless game.

Why Ben Roethlisberger Is An Asshole

Tracy Wolfson is a professional sports journalist, a knowledgeable sideline reporter with 10 years of experience, a wife and a mother of three sons. None of these descriptions are themselves reasons that she deserves respect.

Following the Bengals' epic collapse of composure against the Steelers in the Wild Card game yesterday, Wolfson asked Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger how his shoulder felt. Rothlisberger had been carted off the field after absorbing a big hit and returned to the game to lead his team on the winning drive seemingly absent the ability to throw downfield.

Evidently Roethlisberger didn't want to linger on the role his injury played in the game. He could have dismissed the question respectfully by saying his shoulder wasn't an issue or it felt good enough to play or he didn't want his injuries to diminish the team's achievement. Instead he said, on national TV, in different words and with a smile, fuck you, Tracy.

It actually sounded more like "I'm just glad we won." Tomato tomahto. It amounted to a disrespectful non-answer. If you invited your neighbor over your house and asked him or her about their ailing shoulder and they said "I'm just glad it's sunny today," you'd wonder what their problem was.

The answer didn't shock me, but her response did. Instead of pressing the question and at least demanding a respectful answer, she let him off the hook. "Why did I know that was going to be your answer?" is what she said.

Here's why, Tracy: because you've let him get away with this condescension before. Stand up for yourself!

A benign question and benign, rambling, cliche-ridden response later, Wolfson tried again, querying whether the shoulder would be ready for the next playoff game. Again, Roethlisberger could have said he'd be ready regardless, or they'd find out that week or simply that his shoulder was fine. Instead, he chose to repeat the first non-answer. That is, he chose to be a patronizing asshole, on national TV, one more time.

It seems that Bill Belicheck has made it fashionable to disdain reporters who are doing their job and asking reasonable, fair, even easy questions. Gregg Popovich is now lauded for treating interviewers like pond scum for no reason. I would like to see a reporter demand of him, in front of a live national audience, why he feels it's necessary to belittle the interviewer.

Of course, the real problem is that the networks interview these guys at all. When I was a reporter, if someone was a lousy interview, I wouldn't look to them for quotes. If Belicheck, Popovich and Rothlisberger can't be civil and respectful, find other people to interview. Everyone will be happier.

I worked as a radio reporter in one town that was having big issues with its water system. The town supervisor would purposely lower his voice or mumble when the questions got tough, so that I couldn't use those answers in my stories. As a result, I stopped calling him and instead sought out more critical voices. When he asked me why I didn't talk to him, I described why it was his own fault. We agreed that I would give him another chance and when I did he answered my questions directly.

It turns out that Roethlisberger may have a separated shoulder and miss the divisional round game against Denver. I wonder how smug he feels now that he can't insult Tracy Wolfson about it.