Top Sports Hypocricies of 2015

Major college and professional sports are presented to us by the leagues, the schools and their broadcast partners as noble competitions that distinguish the emotionally tough from the emotionally indomitable. While that is often an element of the games, what characterizes every single major sports contest is the pursuit of money, and ever more of it.

Money underlies the raging hypocrisies that gird our most popular sports today. Let's look at the big one:

1. The NCAA -- A fraud wrapped in a lie engulfed in a sham. The so-called "student athletes" competing in major college football and basketball are often functionally illiterate young men forced to support their sponsors' lies about high school "graduations" and  class "attendance" at major American research universities-- until the moment they are released to seek recompense for their labors. Everyone involved in the games -- except the NCAA, of course -- refers to their trade in work terms, such as coaches demanding that players "do their jobs." For this, athletes from low-income families not only get nothing of value (a university education is worthless to someone at a fifth-grade reading level) but are prohibited from earning income by working side jobs. Heck, they can't even get a free ride home from a coach or a fan.

2. The NFL and domestic violence -- Beat your girlfriend mercilessly behind closed doors; serve a short suspension and then sign a lucrative contract. Punch your now-wife once on video and earn the endless enmity of humankind, not to mention an effective lifetime ban from the game. And how about the NFL puking all over itself on the issue, initially all-but dismissing the incident, then over-reacting and violating the policy it had literally just written.

3. Hoopla about the NBA (and NHL, among those who care) regular seasons -- which are as meaningful as clown candidate policy pronouncements. Here are the conference playoff seedings of the last seven Stanley Cup Champions -- 4-6-1-8-3-2-4. Media coverage of these games would have you believe that teams are straining to win every contest down the stretch for the highest seed possible, when in fact they are trying to avoid strains so that their players are healthy for the two-month marathon that actually determines the champion.

4. The brainless patriotism attending the Olympics, World Cup, Rider Cup and Davis Cup -- Nothing swells our USA pride like millionaire professionals from the States defeating amateur Angolan hoopsters. Take that, ISIS!

5. Our varied responses to cheating in different sports -- In NASCAR, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'. That was the credo of the most beloved driver ever. In football, we could hardly care less who's juicing. In basketball there's an overt understanding that the rules are more lenient for big stars. But in baseball, the Wrath of God is unleashed upon those who take substances that make them better players.

6. Gambling laws -- After 30+ years of asking, I have yet to hear a coherent, much less convincing, argument supporting the prohibition. It's particularly indefensible that the laws are so gauzy that gambling is actually quite encouraged by law, except when it's not.

7.The anti-geek crowd -- Employing mostly red herring arguments, they dismiss the advances made to baseball analysis that have been adopted by every Major League organization and rely instead on old stats they're comfortable with but were discredited nearly 40 years ago.

8. The geek crowd -- Make no mistake, there's plenty of culpability on that side of the ledger too.The stat guys are starting to learn the algorithm for humility and it's about time. Their differential equations offer a 5% edge in a game where swings come in 20% packages.

Saved From the Perils of G-G-G-Gambling

News item: The New York State attorney general ordered the two biggest daily fantasy sports companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop accepting bets from New York residents, saying their games constituted illegal gambling under state law.

Oh thank you Mr. Schneiderman, you five-card stud, and your counterparts in neighboring states, for sheltering us from the scourge of gambling! Games of chance are dangerous for the public because they might spend more money than they can afford. Gambling is the devil's work. It's an addictive drug.

(No doubt, many of you read that news item while downing a cup of coffee, without which you're inert in the morning.)

Now, because of the heroic efforts of law enforcers everywhere, Americans from coast to coast are free from the ravages of games of chance.

• Except for state-controlled lotteries.
• Except for the entire state of Nevada.
• Except for casinos on Indian lands.
• Except for casinos aboard riverboats.
• Except for casinos aboard cruise ships.
• Except for Internet gambling sites.
• Except for NCAA office pools.
• Except for Super Bowl bar games.
• Except for church bingo games.
• Except for charity raffles.
• Except for Wall Street day trading.
• Except for season-long fantasy games.
• Except for the billions bet on sporting events every day.
• Except for horse racing venues.
• Except for Off Track Betting. 
• Except...well, let's not let details get in the way.

Good thing gambling is illegal in this country. Its comforting to know that government is keeping us all safe.

Pete Rose Colored Glasses

There has been a lot of good, smart discussion about Pete Rose since the most recent revelation that he bet on baseball while a player, and therefore, has never stopped lying. If the door was ever cracked to Rose's return to Baseball, that loud shudder you heard yesterday was the room shaking in the shadow of a slam.

For those still clinging to sympathy for the hit king, the argument against is tough to oppose. Rose is now in league with those inveterate liars -- Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Bill Clinton, et. al. -- who treated the truth as a strategy to be employed only when effective. MLB did then and does now exhort players endlessly about its absolute prohibition -- and the consequences if violated -- against gambling of any kind.

So therefore, goes the argument, Pete Rose, a 17-time All Star, .303 lifetime hitter, three-time batting champ, 15-time MVP candidate, and contributor of 79 lifetime WAR, that guy should be banned from the game and hence from the Hall of Fame. Smarmy creep. Lying bastard. And all that.

It's a convincing argument. Screw Pete Rose.

But how about me? How about you?

We want Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame because we want the Hall to mean something about baseball. We grew up with a Hall of Fame that welcomed Ty Cobb's virulent racism and Tris Speaker's KKK membership and Babe Ruth's serial infidelity and Mickey Mantle's raging alcoholism and Joe DiMaggio's mob ties and Gaylord Perry's career-long cheating and on and on. Now we're being asked to accept the exclusion of all-time great players like Rose, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and perhaps others.

It doesn't make sense. It's not just that he Hall shouldn't exclude those wanting in character; it's that it hasn't.

I say screw Pete Rose too. And Bonds, Clemens and the rest of them. But induct them into the Hall of Fame because it's not their Hall of Fame; it's mine. And I want the best players enshrined in Cooperstown.