At what price do we watch football?

The Dallas Cowboys have hosted a football game on Thanksgiving Day every year since 1966.
This is a photo fromthe Cowboys' 20-19 victory over Miami in 2011. (Photo By Will Brown)

By Will Brown

A lot of people watch football and eat on Thanksgiving. What made this particular Thanksgiving surreal was that the football game was witnessed in person and the meal was with one of the gladiators who put their body on the line that afternoon.

On the drive back from the game someone in the car asked a hypothetical question about how large the gladiator’s next contract should be.

The four mortals in the car had varying answers. Since, I was the person who worked in sports my response, which was nothing more than platitudes and probabilities, was believed to carry the most weight.

Then the gladiator mentioned his price. We all agreed to keep that figure in the car.

Four months later, I was sitting at my desk writing and researching when a colleague swung around to tell me how much money was being thrown at the gladiator. The contract on the table far surpassed the years and dollars discussed on our post game drive.

Thirteen months later the athlete in question was out of football. Repeated injuries made him replaceable.

The game extracted its pound of flesh and he decided the punishment was not worth a lifetime of limitations.

This spring dozens of football players will have seven or eight figures thrown at them to play a child’s game. A writer for Grantland.com estimated more than $1 billion has been doled out by NFL teams since the free agency period opened on March 11.

Most of us will look at the monopoly money being thrown at mostly twentysomthings and wonder why on earth anyone would complain about that lifestyle.

Here’s why. Less than 40 percent of the money thrown around this week in NFL contracts is “guaranteed. “Our gladiator said it’s rare that a player fulfills his entire contract in the NFL. Even the so-called “guaranteed” money is far from that as there is language in most contracts that prevents it from being guaranteed.

Think about this.

NFL franchises are worth more than other North American sports franchises. Its annual television revenue ($3 billion) is greater than the combined television revenue of the NBA, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League.

Football players make less on average than their professional counterparts, have the lowest minimum salary and it’s the only sport where the contracts are not completely guaranteed.

By the way, professional football is the most violent sport of the bunch. The NFL’s own website stated there were 57 anterior cruciate ligament injuries, 133 medial collateral ligament injuries and 228 diagnosed concussions during the 2013 season.

If you think this month’s spending spree in the NFL does not have a thing to do with you, think again.

If you have ESPN $13.68 of your cable bill goes directly to the National Football League every year. If you live in a city with one of the 32 franchises chances are your local tax dollars have funded stadium improvements, whether you like it or not. If you have other interests, they are frequently dismissed in water cooler conversations because football is omnipotent in American culture.

Those who own the 32 teams continue to mint money. Meanwhile, published reports found that those, who give their bodies, brains and sometimes more, find themselves paupers within years of graduating from a child’s game to men with less glamorous lives.

Football’s zeitgeist will focus on those who cashed in. But the fleeting dollars of free agency always require an older, broken-down body to be sacrificed so a younger, healthier replacement can call the Brink’s truck and a Realtor.

Our gladiator did not suffer that fate. He was too smart for that. He was wise enough to understand football was a means to an end, not endless means.

He traded the debasement, decadence and destruction of the game for doting on his daughter. The armor he once wore and the prizes he once won are tucked away. He is someone who used football’s relentless arms race to transition from a gladiator to just another guy.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Is North Carolina Central the best basketball team in MEAC history?

By Will Brown

North Carolina Central won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference for the first time in school history Saturday evening in Norfolk, Va.

The school’s 71-62 win over Morgan State was its 20th straight and the most wins of any team in the MEAC. Considering the streak, and the way the Eagles breezed through the conference this year, it’s worth asking whether this team is the best in the 43-year history of the MEAC.

North Carolina Central (28-5) went 15-1 in conference play. This was the 19th season that a team has lost one or fewer games in MEAC play — including the 2013 Eagles. Of those 19 teams, only 10 won the conference’s regular season and tournament title. (Only two of those occurrences have happened in the last 20 years.)

Florida, Wichita State, Harvard and Stephen F. Austin of the Southland Conference are the only schools that went through conference regular season and tournament play with one or fewer losses.

Saturday, the Eagles were tied with Morgan State at halftime, but used its patented defense to asphyxiate the Bears tournament hopes.

Morgan State made three field goals over a seven minute stretch in the second half and the Eagles took advantage of that spell to take a lead they would never relinquish. Morgan State made just 37.9 percent of its shots. Outside of the 26 points 7-foot-2-inch center Ian Chiles provided, the Bears shot 31.1 percent (14-for-45) from the field.

Central’s defense may what separates it from some of the other elite teams — the ’93 and ’94 Coppin State teams, the 2001 Hampton team that won a tournament game, the 2002 Hampton team that was even better and the 1988 North Carolina A&T team — that ran through regular season and tournament without worry.

The Eagles have the No. 8 scoring defense… in America (58.8 points) and the No. 2 field goal percentage defense (37.2 percent). Virginia, Arizona and San Diego State are the only other teams in the country that are in the Top 10 in both categories—and all three teams have been ranked in the Top 10 in the major polls.

The last great MEAC school that was among the national leaders in one of the major categories was the 1974 Maryland Eastern-Shore Hawks.

That Hawks team, which finished 27-2, led the nation in scoring at 97.6 points per game and ranked No. 20 in the Associated Poll at one point.

Maryland Eastern Shore was the first Historically Black College to accept a bid to the National Invitational Tournament, where they won a game and lost to Jacksonville in the quarterfinals.

The Hawks put three players, Talvin Skinner, Rubin Collins and Joe Pace on the All-MEAC team. Collins was the No. 18 selection in the 1974 NBA draft and Skinner was a third round draft pick of the Seattle Supersonics. (By comparison, only one Central player, Jeremy Ingram, made the First Team All-MEAC team this year.)

Ingram and the Eagles will not be playing in the NIT this year.

No, Central is on its way to San Antonio to play in the Division I tournament for the first time. Their opponent will bring a style that is the antithesis of the Eagles elixir for success. Iowa State led the deepest conference in America in scoring and assists en route to winning the Big XII conference tournament. The Cyclones (26-7) have the second best assist to turnover ratio in the country (1.76) and have been held to fewer than 70 points just once this season.

LeVelle Moton’s team will be heavy underdogs, partially because MEAC schools have won just five games in a combined 32 appearances. Then again, one of those wins was against — Iowa State.

If North Carolina Central can beat the Cyclones, it would be their 29th of the season, which would set a school record. A win would definitively make this the best season of any in MEAC basketball history.

An underreported “charm offensive”

By Will Brown

By now we are all aware of the political tension and protests that have taken place in Kiev and all across the Ukraine. Yet, with all the division in the Ukraine, and specifically the Crimea region, soccer is something that has united that country.

Sunday, while one Illinois senator was dubbing the recently completed Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia a “charm offensive” by Russian President Vladimir Putin on CNN, fans of Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev were playing a friendly soccer match over the weekend because the league game between the two teams was postponed. 

Ultras from Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev, the two most
successful club teams in Ukraine, met for a friendly over the
weekend after political unrest postponed the league
match between the two teams.
(Photo taken from Dynamo Kiev website.)

Keep in mind Shakhtar and Dynamo are rivals, the two most successful teams clubs in the country and separated by a nine-hour drive. The match was played in Kiev. Fans of both teams, as well as players made appearances. The final was 1-1.

American media jumped on Sen. Dick Durbin’s “charm offensive” comments about the Sochi games, but largely ignored the impact sports had on bringing Ukrainians together.

Whether Putin used a global sporting event to facilitate good press about his country is for others to debate and decide — even if he did he would not be the first to do so as the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1978 World Cup and 2008 Beijing Olympics attempted the same.

What has been debated and decided upon is that sports can be unifying, uplifting and even charming. Ukraine has proven that over the past four days, the most recent example was Wednesday’s match between its national team and the United States.

Ukraine was ranked No. 18 in the latest FIFA world rankings, which makes them the best team to not play in this summer’s World Cup. ESPN reported that all 11 of the Ukrainian starters are fluent in Russian and six of them played club soccer for the archrivals Shakhtar and Dynamo.

Despite all of that, when the Ukrainian national anthem was played, all 11 locked arms and sung the national anthem. Captain Anatoliy Tymoschuk and longtime goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov were singing loud enough during the anthem that the audio on the broadcast was clearly able hear their voices.

A cynic would say that half the United States starters did not make the trip to Cyprus because they were preparing for the upcoming Major League Soccer season, which would be true. But, it’s also worth noting that the only seven of the men who played for the Ukraine in its last competitive match in November were on the field Wednesday night.

Throw in the instability in their homeland, and it’s fair to say that the Ukraine had plenty of built-in excuses to not show up. Not only did the 2006 World Cup quarterfinalists show up, but their 2-0 win was certainly deserved.

Prior to the match, ESPN dubbed Wednesday’s match “a 90-minute window into a nation in crisis.” If that were indeed the case, the match was the “charm offensive” American media should discuss.

What Fulham’s failures mean for Shad Khan and the Jaguars

Shad Khan's Fulham (white) lost to English Premier League leaders Chelsea 3-1 on Saturday
to remain in last place and in threat of relegation. (Photo Courtesy of FulhamFC.com)

By Will Brown

English media has lamented the increase in foreign ownership of its soccer clubs for years. However, commentaries will not staunch the influx of overseas ownership in that country.

Friday, Richard Williams of The Guardian, wrote a commentary that once again wondered aloud about the impact of foreign ownership in English soccer. He used Fulham Football club as an example of a club that may have done it right.

The problem is Williams was referencing previous owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

Fulham has a 6-3-19 record, or 21 points, which is good enough for dead last in the English Premier League. Saturday’s 3-1 loss against league leaders Chelsea underscores how dire the situation is for Shad Khan’s other football team. Not only does Fulham have the worst record in the EPL, but they have the worst goal difference of the 20 teams in the league, and their 62 goals allowed is more than any top-flight team in the top five European leagues.

“Would they be in this demoralising position had Fayed stayed on? At least, unlike his successor, he was not one of those absentee owners who resemble the rich folk currently purchasing London mansions and penthouse flats as investments and leaving them empty,” Williams wrote. “Khan attends the occasional match at the Cottage — which is more than can be said for Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, the owner of Manchester City — but his physical commitment, like his knowledge of football, is at best semi-detached.”

Williams admitted Fayed had his quirks. Fans will tolerate eccentricities so long as their team is productive. The problem with Fulham under Khan’s leadership is they are not.

Fulham has 10 games to save its season. Unlike the Jaguars, Khan’s other investment will not be rewarded with an opportunity to sign some of the best talent around because of failures in previous seasons. If Fulham doesn’t win games, the more the better, the club will be relegated to a lower league.

So what you say?

Well, far smarter people have estimated that relegation from the English Premier League will cost a team more than $30 million in television revenue. That doesn’t even include reduced income from gate receipts, sponsor dollars and selling players at cut-rate prices.

Khan spent a reported £200 million to buy the club last summer. Anyone who spends that type of money on anything would not be thrilled if their investment substantially depreciated within a year.

The appointment of Felix Magath to be Fulham’s manager may be the latest ploy to save the season and secure top-flight status.

Magath has won a league championship in Germany with two different clubs. He has also fallen out with just about every club he’s managed in the last 15 years — occasionally with disastrous results preceding his exit.

“It wasn't lost on me that introducing a third manager in a season would appear, let's say, unconventional or unpopular — or both," Khan wrote in the program for Saturday's match against Chelsea according to the Associated Press. "I expected the scrutiny and know there will be more ahead. I accept this and welcome the responsibility, because the alternative was risking a non-stop slide in the table in the hope that better results would occur in time to save our season."

Khan, as well as other Jaguars officials, has repeatedly stated the two clubs will have strategic synergies. The New York Times devoted an entire feature about just that back in October when the Jags were in London to play San Francisco.

Fulham had just as many games televised nationally in the United States this season as the Jaguars did — yet another perk of playing in the English Premier League. If the club is to be self-sustaining in the near future, as Khan told the Times he prefers, second-tier soccer will not be satisfactory.

In order to avoid that fate, Fulham must have a late-season resurgence, like the Jags did in 2013. Otherwise, the consequences of relegation would reverberate across the Atlantic.