The number one album today in 1976 was Earth Wind & Fire’s “Gratitude” …
The number one British album today in 1999 was Fatboy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby,” and if you like it you have to praise it like you shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oould:
The Wall Street Journal writes about something Packer fans have known for years, and not always approved of:
The Packers have exactly two players drafted by other teams on their 53-man roster. No other team is so overwhelmingly composed of homegrown players—the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers are the closest, with all but six of their final 53-man rosters this year.
How the Packers have reached the playoffs for seven straight seasons while largely ignoring free agency owes much to the expert drafting of Green Bay general manager Ted Thompson. But it also speaks to the team’s distinctive approach to coaching up young players, the unusual practice habits of its star quarterback and a fanatical devotion to promoting from within that runs throughout the organization.
As they prepare to face the Arizona Cardinals in a divisional-round playoff game Saturday, the Packers’ approach has become the envy of the league.
The key to Green Bay’s system is the belief that if you bring in players as early as possible, they won’t have “ready-made habits that you get from a guy from another team, the way you did it with his old team,” said defensive line coach Mike Trgovac. “I don’t even know if you would call them bad habits, they are just different from what we would teach.”
Take the case of rookie cornerback Quinten Rollins, who was selected in the second round of the draft last May to fill in for Tramon Williams and Davon House, who had departed in free agency.
There are plenty of things that Rollins needed to learn to succeed at the NFL level, but the Packers had zeroed in on the one skill that he needed to improve, an attribute that is so seemingly innocuous that other teams may not even have noticed: eye control.
Rollins had a habit of peeking into the backfield to get a read on what the quarterback was doing. In college football, cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt Jr. said, players can get away with that. College quarterbacks can usually only throw effectively to one side of the field, the closest side to them, meaning defensive backs can sit back and wait for a quarterback to try to force it to the side they shouldn’t and—voila—snag an interception. Something Rollins did seven times in one season of college football.
“[But] if you use that technique here, you are going to get the ball completed on you,” Whitt said. “Your eye control is very, very important here. Once [the quarterback] gets in your blind spot, you have to change your vision and get it back to your receiver.”
This is the sort of detailed orientation that the Packers put all their new employees through. In fact, Rollins joined a secondary made up of a number of players who didn’t play defensive back very much in college. Demetri Goodson, just like Rollins himself, spent most of his college time playing basketball. Sam Shields played wide receiver. This is no accident.
“I don’t have to un-coach them,” Whitt Jr. said. “I know if they do mess up, it’s something that I taught them.”
The Packers have been remarkably consistent in their internal promotions. They have brought in players from other teams only on rare occasions in recent years—on the current roster, pass rusher Julius Peppers is the most famous example. The team also snagged star cornerback Charles Woodson in 2006.
But under Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy, they’ve mostly stuck to their plan, keeping talented draft picks—like quarterback Aaron Rodgers and linebacker Clay Matthews Jr.—and replacing the less talented draftees with newer, cheaper picks. Rodgers, a first-round pick in 2005, famously replaced the legendary Brett Favre as starter in 2008 after three years being groomed in the Packers system.
To ensure they have a constant supply of in-house candidates, the Packers also use the practice squad differently than most teams—specifically, they have rejected the widespread strategy of signing guys primarily to mimic that week’s opponent. Instead, the Packers practice squad is populated with players they expect one day to suit up for the team. With that in mind, assistant coaches say they coach the practice squad guys as often and as hard as top draft picks, a rarity in the NFL.
Having graduated through the system, Rodgers has even developed practice habits that work to reinforce the team’s developmental strategy.
Rodgers, a two-time NFL most valuable player, is perhaps the most feared quarterback in football these days. But in practice, he can often look downright human. That’s intentional.
For the Packers quarterback, practice isn’t “about getting his feet right or his decisions clean,” McCarthy said. “It’s really about establishing good, full-speed reps” for those around him. Inevitably, that means Rodgers tosses some interceptions in practice.
McCarthy is clear that Rodgers hates getting picked off. He’s rushed down the field to argue calls on make-believe interceptions in practice. But the Packers have come to see these practice sessions as more of a trust-building exercise than a tune-up for Rodgers. That means throwing plenty of what are referred to as 50-50 balls, where both the cornerback and receiver have a chance to haul in the pass.
“He’s trying to see the trust factor, who can come down with it?” said backup quarterback Scott Tolzien. “Who can he trust that, when he throws it up, nothing bad is going to happen? That at the very least, if they don’t catch it, they’ll knock it out of the defensive back’s hands. He’s trying to stretch boundaries and get those opportunities on tape.”
Rodgers’ distinctive approach to practice also showed up in training camp prior to the 2014 season, McCarthy said. Rodgers decided that running back Eddie Lacy needed more “checkdowns,” which are short dump-off passes to the tailback. Practicing these plays doesn’t do much for Rodgers, who could complete those passes in his sleep, but would be crucial in getting Lacy integrated into the offense. So Rodgers spent weeks peppering the running back with checkdowns.
This year in training camp, McCarthy said, Rodgers “wouldn’t pass up too many opportunities to throw to Davante Adams.” The Packers quarterback figured he had a good connection with star receiver Jordy Nelson, so he elected to work on his rapport with Adams, a second-round draft pick in 2015. When Nelson was lost with a season-ending knee injury in the preseason, the Packers simply promoted Adams into the starting lineup.
Packer fans know much of this, though probably not the interesting detail about Rodgers in practice.
The biggest upside to developing from within beyond having everyone on the same page from page 1 is that it costs less than importing free agents. It does, however, place a premium on making the right personnel decisions when no one can tell for certain how, or if (see Reynolds, Jamal), a 21-year-old college player will develop after college. It also runs the risk, as has happened repeatedly in Pittsburgh, of players you draft leaving once their contracts run out for more money elsewhere, forcing you to draft and develop their replacements.
Thompson worked for Ron Wolf, who probably is known better for his signings (Reggie White, Sean Jones, Santana Dotson, Keith Jackson, Andre Rison) and one obvious trade (one of the 1992 number one picks for 1991 second-round pick Brett Favre) than for his early draft picks. Wolf’s best picks came later in his drafts, showing the importance of scouting. Wolf’s approach was necessary because of the Packers’ lack of talent in 1991, yet workable because the NFL didn’t have a salary cap.
Fans blame Thompson not just for underperforming players (which are, after all, his responsibility), but for the Packers’ failing to sign better free agents. Woodson and Peppers worked out the best. Others have not over the years. (See Johnson, Joe.) It is the slow way to develop a team, whether there’s some talent or, particularly, when there isn’t any. (See Milwaukee Brewers, 2016-?). The slow part tends to annoy fans who realize they may well die before the team’s next championship. (Particularly Cubs fans since 1945.)
The number one single today in 1956:
The number one single in Great Britain …
… and in the U.S. today in 1964:
There were simultaneous signs of the high school sports apocalypse on opposite sides in the past week.
The Post~Crescent in Appleton reported first:
The tumultuous world of social media has hit home for Hilbert High School athlete April Gehl.
The three-sport star and one of the top scorers for the Wolves’ girls’ basketball team was informed by Hilbert athletic director Stan Diedrich on Wednesday that she would be suspended for five games during the current winter season due to a tweet that Gehl posted on Twitter early Monday morning concerning the WIAA.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Gehl said. “I was like, ‘Really? For tweeting my opinion?’ I thought it was ridiculous.”
Gehl’s tweet, which contained profanity directed toward the WIAA, was her off-the-cuff response to a WIAA email that took students to task for an increasing number of student-section chants at sporting events that mock the opposing team or school.
The email, from director of communication Todd Clark, concerns “sportsmanship” and what the WIAA feels is an increase in the “amount of chants by student sections directed at opponents and/or opponents’ supporters that are clearly intended to disrespect.”
Included in the WIAA email were examples such as “You can’t do that,” “Fundamentals,” “Air ball,” “There’s a net there,” “Sieve,” “We can’t hear you,” the “scoreboard” cheer and “season’s over” during tournament play.
That email was sent to member schools in December. It was forwarded by Hilbert school officials earlier this week to the school’s students and was also in their daily announcements on Monday, according to April Gehl.
Jill Gehl, April’s mother, said the WIAA sent Diedrich a snapshot of Gehl’s tweet with limited direction other than to “please take care of it.”
Diedrich was reached Friday morning about the suspension, but was unable to give specifics.
“I can tell you that the WIAA contacted me with information,” Diedrich said. “Once given the information, we dealt with the matter in accordance with board policy.”
Clark said in an email Friday to Post-Crescent Media that April Gehl’s tweet was brought to the attention of the WIAA. The school was then informed.
“To be clear, there was no language in our correspondence with the school that stated to ‘take care of this,’” Clark said. “That determination is for the member school to address. But these issues, like other sportsmanship issues brought to our attention, are shared with our members for their awareness.”
According to Jill Gehl, that school policy includes a section on inappropriate language, which her daughter was ultimately punished for.
If Gehl was punished for inappropriate language, the WIAA got punished for inappropriate overreaction, worldwide, also as reported by The Post~Crescent:
Attention the story has received includes:
• Daily Mail (U.K.): High school basketball player suspended over tweet
• Forbes: Wisconsin incident highlights need for adults to stop overreacting
• The Big Lead: Female HS basketball player suspended five games for tweet
• WTMJ in Milwaukee is featuring the story on the Jeff Wagner show as well as the nighttime sports show: WIAA bans chants; student-athlete tells them to ‘eat (expletive)’
How are the fans themselves reacting? The Dubuque Telegraph Herald’s Steve Ortman writes:
Student sections across the state responded on Tuesday night, as a group of students at Ashwaubenon High School attended a game dressed in black with duct tape over their mouths that read ‘WIAA.’ The student sections at the boys game between Platteville and Darlington High Schools remained silent throughout the contest.
“The intention of the message was misconstrued and morphed into something far beyond what it was and what it was intended for,” WIAA Executive Director David Anderson told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He also said he stands by the guidelines.
While I do feel the national exposure on this is blowing the matter a bit out of proportion and that the WIAA had the best of intentions, the whole idea of regulating what crowds can and can’t chant at a game is silly and simply absurd. These kids pay the money to come to the games and should be allowed to chant whatever they want (within reason, of course). And chanting such classics as “Air ball!” isn’t really hurting anyone’s feelings. In fact, after all these years, it’s to be expected at games.
The WIAA needs to ask itself what the point of coming to their games is exactly if you’re not allowed to have any fun while cheering on your friends and classmates?
The reaction included a letter from state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R–Brookfield):
I am disappointed by the recent actions taken by the WIAA targeting decades’ old fan chants and comments. I’ve been there. I was the 6’7” awkwardly skinny high school basketball player that came off the bench for the final 20 seconds of play after my team was already down by 20 points. On more than one occasion, I would take my shot for my first points of the season (although the season was already halfway done) only to miss the rim and backboard. There it was, the humiliating “air ball” chant. Hearing that quickly makes a 6’7” teenager feel like he would rather be 3’7” and quietly find an exit but today I look back with greater clarity on those moments. …
After putting in a significant amount of work, I ended up being just good enough to play at the local community college followed by playing D3 basketball at Lakeland College in Sheboygan. I had three different head basketball coaches during my college career and the high school “air ball” chant was relatively easy to deal with compared to what my coaches yelled at me when I failed to properly box out. Several years later I joined the Army and met my first drill sergeants – all of a sudden my previous coaches and opposing fans seemed reserved in comparison.
I can continue but here is my point. Having our young people in the sporting arena makes them stronger – an arena that builds character includes jeers and cheers. High school athletes are our future leaders. There is education in learning how to deal with the opponent’s fans, embarrassment and losing.
Even Aaron Rodgers chimed in, reports ESPN:
Apparently, if Aaron Rodgers were the ringleader of the student sections of Bayport, Ashwaubenon or De Pere high schools, he’d be in for a trip to the principal’s office.
After reading about the uproar the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association created recently by reminding schools of the chants it deems derogatory toward opponents — including “air ball!” “score-board!” and “fun-da-men-tals!” — the Green Bay Packers quarterback confessed Wednesday that he’d have been in trouble had such rules been enforced back in Chico, California, at Pleasant Valley High School basketball games.
“I led the chants when I wasn’t playing, and we said a lot worse stuff than that,” Rodgers said, shaking his head. Although he played basketball throughout his childhood, Rodgers gave it up to concentrate on football later in his high school career.
“I think we’re, as a society, dying a little bit each day if we’re not only dumbing down our masses but we’re also limiting the things that we can say. ‘Air ball’ and ‘scoreboard,’ from a chant standpoint, in 2001 when I was in the stands watching my high school basketball team, that’s like the ground floor of stuff we would say.
“Think about the fans at other stadiums we play at or at Lambeau Field. I don’t think that [high school competition] warrants censorship. What are we telling our kids, that freedom of speech doesn’t exist? And any type of negative comment, you’re going to get somebody in trouble for? I just don’t agree with that.
“I don’t agree with any type of racist or homophobic language, any of that type of stuff from the crowd to the people on the field. But ‘scoreboard’ and ‘air ball’ and ‘fundamentals,’ which is a great chant?”
The WIAA got some support from WSAU radio’s Chris Conley …
As a practical matter, there’s very little that can be done. Should a team be penalized because their fans are taunting? Should the game be stopped or suspended? Should students be disciplined for cheers that administrators deem inappropriate? Will be we playing in front of empty bleachers? And there may be some people within the WIAA who want to go down that road. That’s overreach. Playing in front of a crowd is also part of the experience for high school athletes. And I don’t know of a good way to separate the positive experience of having athletes playing in front of a crowd and the possibility that some cheering might be negative. It is not easy to create a great game-day experience without negativity. Sports creates an emotion response in those who watch. If people didn’t care that their team wins, they wouldn’t go. There’s nothing wrong with the spontaneous cheering, or booing, that comes after a controversial call or a close play. Just like with the athletes themselves, a spontaneous show of emotion is expected. But taunting cheers are different. It’s an area where people need to do the right thing… just because. It’s probably a fool’s errand.
But picture this: His team is trailing by one point in the state finals. The senior captain takes the final shot that will lead to a championship or a defeat. It’s the moment that every athlete has dreamed about. But as he’s shooting the ball slips out of his hands. The buzzer sounds. And it’s over. All of the work and practice and self-sacrifice has ended. He feels horrible and has that empty ache in the pit of his stomach; it’s the moment of defeat. A flood of emotion comes over the young man — he’s 18 — and he begins to cry as he walks off the court for the last time.
Are you going to be the person who starts the “air – ball” chant? Are you going to yell “season over!” at him? Is his final memory of high school athletics going to be the “scoreboard!” cheer? That’s not the environment I expect high school athletes to compete in. And fans who cheer that way should reflect on what they’re doing. And I’m on the side of the WIAA — the group that says that’s not right.
… though based on past experience I think the taunting Conley suggests could happen isn’t likely, because if your team just won state, you’re focused on that and not your opponent. (Also, a chant coming from the Kohl Center or the Resch Center is harder to hear than someone 15 feet away from you in a high school gym.) In fact, the taunts that concern the WIAA, I suspect, disappear after the game, unless something that happens during the game is controversial.
You can read an excellent WIAA takedown here, and from the Wisconsin State Journal’s Art Kabelkowsky:
The WIAA has published the guidelines in some form since 1997 (last revised in 2005) and sends out reminders at the start of each athletic season. Which is to say that fans, parents and even some administrators and coaches have been pretty much ignoring them for more than a decade.
Now, thanks to an epic bungling of the optics of the Gehl situation (and, in part, to the common-sense indefensibility of the policy in the first place), the WIAA has allowed this cracked hornet’s nest to bust wide open.
And the story lives on.
WIAA executive director Dave Anderson tried to quell the maelstrom Tuesday evening, sending an email to athletic directors with a “sincere apology” for a Dec. 22 email from communications director Todd Clark that reminded schools and students of the sportsmanship guidelines. By now, though, the horse already is out of the barn.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas drew kudos for simply repeating variations of the same obvious joke a half-dozen times on Twitter, such as this proposed replacement for the “Air ball” chant: “We note your attempt did not reach the rim, but only to alert the clock operator that a reset is unnecessary.”
(Of course, that chant ignores the fact that high school basketball does not use a shot clock. As such, it violates one of the WIAA’s mandated fundamentals of sportsmanship: “Know the rules of the game.”)
In the wake of this attention, noted former Wisconsin prep athletes have tweeted their support for letting fans be fans.
Even the particularly nasty comments and actions stuck with some of these athletes — some even have photos of the signs — and they all seemed to agree that, in hindsight, the negative comments helped to spark their competitiveness, thicken their skin and even make them laugh.
And there’s the problem. Skin-thickening isn’t a goal of high school athletics, or of anything else in today’s society — in which people seem to have assumed the inalienable right to never, ever see or hear anything that might be judged to be offensive or negative in any way. …
So here’s what the WIAA should have told student sections: “Have fun. Behave. Don’t be idiots. Police each other. Don’t say or do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the TV news. Learn to be responsible for your actions.”
Instead, they’ve gone and tried to mandate rules against the very things that make being a sports fan fun. To insulate kids from something that they just plain will not be insulated from in real life. Do that and you’ll be lambasted by national media. And you’ll deserve it.
Please let me begin by offering a sincere apology for any distress or dissatisfaction which may have come your way as a result of a sportsmanship email from Todd Clark dated December 22, 2015. The intentions of that email have become much scrutinized and misunderstood.
From our perspective, the email was simply a reminder in advance of the many holiday tournaments held every year across the membership. Nothing more, nothing less, than what has been shared across the membership via the Sportsmanship Manual since 2005.
To be clear, there has been no new directives, no new rules, no new mandates, no new enforcement expectations associated with the email.
We know that the challenges of keeping interscholastic athletics a fun, safe and educational experience for our athletes, students and fans are never ending. We see and respect the everyday efforts of individual members and conferences in striving to create the positive environment you are proud of — and we appreciate those efforts. Carry On! Please keep up the great work, just as you have been doing.
The Post~Crescent’s Ricardo Arguello adds:
Does it warrant a stern talking to from the Hilbert officials? Sure. Should Hilbert have requested Gehl take down the tweet and apologize? That’s seems fair.
And judging by the statewide, national and international attention, there are many folks around the world who agree.But a five-game suspension? That’s clearly going overboard, especially when other infractions such as underage drinking or fighting would possibly produce the same length of suspension. There seems to be an imbalance on transgressions. Perhaps athletic codes from high schools need to be a bit more clearly defined. Whatever the answer, five games, or 25 percent of the basketball season, is far too much.
It was the WIAA that informed Hilbert of Gehl’s tweet. That may or may not have led to the quick action by the Hilbert officials. But the WIAA sticking its nose in this kind of business is another column for another time.
At the very least, this story should trigger discussions about how adults approach discipline and how we inform student-athletes about the dangers of social media. A level-headed and honest approach is needed. Student-athletes, in my extensive experience in dealing with them the past 20 years or so, respond much better to blunt but fair handling than overbearing smothering.
In Gehl’s case, her punishment is so over the top that it borders on absurd. Believe me, her peers in the state and beyond will pick up on this perceived mishandling, and that could make the respect demanded by school officials a bit more difficult to keep intact.
Not to mention support of public schools by taxpayers. School districts don’t make much money from admission fees for games, but the WIAA does. If fans stop going to games because they don’t want to deal with the school Fun Police, particularly in this world of almost infinite entertainment options, they’re not likely to alter their work schedule to go to postseason games in far-off communities (Madison, Green Bay, etc.) either. There are people in some communities whose support for their schools, other than paying school district property taxes, extends only to high school sports. Unless some common sense prevails, watch what happens to future school district revenue-cap or building-project referenda.
Whether this is political correctness gone amuck, or an overreaction to bullying, shielding students from unkind expressions is not really education. Life is not easy, and some delicate little flowers are likely to have a rude awakening once they arrive in the real world.
The opposite side is reported by the Ripon Commonwealth Press:
At least one key member has left the Ripon High School boys’ basketball team amid concerns of “inaccurate statistics” that have been reported by the team, leading to an investigation by Ripon Area School District officials.
While the district did not identify who is alleged to have created those statistics, head coach Dean Vander Plas offered an apology at a team parents meeting Wednesday night.
While the district did not identify who is alleged to have created those statistics, head coach Dean Vander Plas offered an apology at a team parents meeting [Jan. 6].
“I can’t get into much more than that other than saying, when you are in a [coaching] position, you should be able to carry out your process so that things are done well, and when you don’t, you must acknowledge it,” Vander Plas said Friday afternoon.
What exactly has happened that led to this situation, though, remains unclear.
Though a prepared statement explained the issue came to light Dec. 31, athletic director Bill Kinziger hedged when asked to elaborate on how it became known.
“I’ve got to be careful how I say it,” he said, noting simply, “It was brought to our attention.”
He intimated that it was someone in the know about the team who brought it forward.
“It wasn’t just somebody off the street,” Kinziger said, adding, “I can’t give you the identity.”
What is known is that it involved inaccurate statistics being reported, and that the district now has reassigned the recording of statistics to its athletic department, and is disciplining at least one staff member.
This is about the chase for college athletic scholarships, which should not be the primary purpose of participation in high school athletics. This is not really about high school athletics except for what some think it should lead to, college athletics, even though the percentage of high school athletes who continue in college is very small. You’d have to ask the parents involved (some of whom are former college athletes) if they’re trying to relive their childhoods through their kids.
It takes a sports editor to point out that academic scholarships are much more readily available than athletic scholarships are.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Bob McGinn gives Packer fans guarded optimism about Saturday’s playoff game at Arizona because …
At 36 years old, this might be quarterback Carson Palmer‘s last chance to win a playoff game, let alone reach the Super Bowl.
The pressures are many as Palmer leads the second-seeded Arizona Cardinals (13-3) against the fifth-seeded Green Bay Packers (11-6) in an NFC divisional playoff game Saturday night in Glendale, Ariz.
“The pressure is only something you feel if you’re not prepared,” coach Bruce Arians said Tuesday. “I’m betting he’s going to be really prepared….I’m sure he’s going to be excited. My job is to not let him get too excited.
“He’s obviously more than just a quarterback. He’s the leader of the football team and our guys rally around him. He’s a very calming player.”
Since the Cardinals’ 38-8 romp over the Packers 2½ weeks ago, Palmer turned in a subpar performance in their 36-6 loss to the visiting Seattle Seahawks. With a win over Seattle and a loss by Carolina to Tampa Bay, Arizona would have clinched home-field advantage as the No. 1 seed.
Neither the Panthers’ big early lead nor the Cardinals’ big early deficit caused Arians to remove Palmer at halftime. He said his decision had been made six days earlier.
“I think Arizona really came out to win,” an executive in personnel for an NFL team said after studying the Seattle tape. “I wouldn’t say they were flat. They came out sharp, but Seattle imposed their will. Seattle was very much more the physical team.”
A personnel director for another team disagreed, saying, “You can disregard the Seattle game. Arizona had nothing to play for.”
Seattle had five starters on the inactive list.
Palmer completed just 12 of 25 passes for 129 yards, one interception, one touchdown and a passer rating of 60.3.
There were poor decisions, bad throws and two balls batted down at the line. He floated one interception and threw another deep ball into a three-man cluster of defenders that was even worse. The Seahawks dropped that one.
Arians blamed the receivers for dropping several passes, but it clearly wasn’t the way Palmer wanted to enter the postseason.
“What Seattle did well was eliminate the run game and force Carson to make quick decisions,” one scout said. “He kind of got out of rhythm and had an uncharacteristic day. He’s been really careful with the ball. He was trying to give guys a chance to make a play.”
Palmer didn’t practice much before the Green Bay and Seattle games because of the dislocated index finger on his right hand that he suffered following through into the hand and face mask of Eagles linebacker Connor Barwinon Dec. 20.
When Palmer continued playing, he developed a “very sore lat (muscle) from changing his motion,” according to Arians.
Last week, Arians added: “For a quarterback it’s a weird feeling, and it worried him some. But once we readjusted the tape job so that he could use his finger and come off the ball last, the soreness went away and he’s really good right now.”
Three days after the Seattle game, Palmer said the injuries no longer were an issue.
Palmer, who won the 2002 Heisman Trophy and recently was selected to his third Pro Bowl, is 0-2 as a playoff starter.
In January 2006, Palmer suffered a dislocated kneecap and other major damage on a hit by Steelers nose tackleKimo von Oelhoffen on the second play of Cincinnati’s playoff defeat.
In January 2010, Palmer played poorly (58.4 rating) as the Bengals, a 2½-point favorite, dropped a wild-card game to the Jets, 24-14. Last year, he suffered another blown knee in Game 9 and missed the Cardinals’ 27-16 wild-card loss at Carolina. …
Despite the 30-point margin, Arians indicated the Cardinals and Packers should be fairly evenly matched.
“I don’t really think we dominated them in any form or fashion other than we got a couple of good fumbles and picked them up and scored,” he said. “They’re too good, and we didn’t get their best shot because they didn’t have their best players.”
Said Palmer: “The way that game played out, we didn’t run much of what we had planned, and now things are so different this time.
“That game was not something we are hanging our hat on. The way that game turned out is not what we are expecting to happen again. We have to play our best football to beat this team, and we know that.”
Playoff games usually are not identical to regular-season meetings between the same teams, even when in the same venue. Recall that in 2009 the Packers beat Arizona toward the end of the season, then lost in the playoffs. One year later, the Packers lost at Atlanta, then dominated the Falcons in the playoffs on the way to the Super Bowl XLV win. The similarity among the three Packers–Bears meetings in the 2010 season was only that all games were close.
Interestingly, in the Super Bowl XLV season all three Packers opponents in the NFC playoffs were rematches of regular-season meetings. If the Packers win Saturday, they are guaranteed a rematch in the NFC championships, either against Seattle or at Carolina.
Today in 1967 was not a good day for fans of artistic freedom or the First Amendment, though the First Amendment applies to government against citizens and not the media against individuals.
Before their appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, the Rolling Stones were compelled to change “Let’s Spend the Night Together …”
… to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”:
The number one British album today in 1977 was ABBA’s “Arrival” …
I must have missed something. When state Rep. Bob Gannon, a Republican, made an obscene gesture to Democratic Minority Leader Peter Barca, the fake outrage was just silly. Reporters took to Twitter and Facebook to report the press releases of every Democrat that dared to comment on the issue of the middle finger.
Where did this sudden love for virtue and civility come from?
I don’t want to excuse Gannon’s behavior. I don’t want state representatives flipping the bird at each other when they get ticked off. In a perfect world, when Barca was attacking Gannon’s statement about crime in Milwaukee and calling Gannon a racist, Gannon should have walked up to Barca and hugged him. He could’ve whispered in Barca’s ear, “I know how hard it is to hear how liberalism has failed African-Americans. I’m sorry I’m causing you pain.”
But Gannon reacted in a human way and left his professionalism in the locker room. Later, Gannon apologized and shook Barca’s hand, momentarily ending the controversy until the next time Democrats try to get under Gannon’s skin.
Of course, unavailable for comment was Democratic state Rep. Gordon Hintz, who during the debate over Act 10 yelled at former state Rep. Michelle Litjens, “You’re (obscenity) dead!” I’m sure Hintz has some interesting thoughts on civility on the floor of the Assembly. Hintz would probably comment, “Bring an umbrella,” in case Democratic state Rep. Chris Danou gets frustrated and throws a cup of water at his colleagues, as several legislators saw him do during the same Act 10 debate.
Now that Barca has a newfound love for order and respect for his colleagues, maybe he’ll tell his colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle to stop calling Republicans racists and tools of the Koch brothers every time there’s a difference of opinion. The obnoxious name-calling by Barca and his colleagues is even more offensive than Gannon telling the Democratic leader he’s No. 1 with the wrong finger.
Perhaps Barca himself might actually read the memo on campaign finance from the Legislative Reference Bureau before he accuses his Republican colleagues of trying to get undisclosed corporate donations for their campaign committees. He might learn that the Government Accountability Board’s Executive Director Kevin Kennedy is not telling the truth about the law, and Barca could thank his Republican colleagues for getting rid of the GAB. Maybe these steps might encourage Barca’s newfound love of civility.
While Barca is at it, he could encourage Democratic members of the Legislature like Rep. Christine Sinicki and Sen. Dave Hansen to not use obscenities on social media when describing the governor. He could even suggest to Sinicki that to improve the reputation of the Legislature she might want to stay out of legal trouble.
Then Barca could walk out into the Capitol Rotunda and speak to the protesters. He could tell them that stalking legislative staff and Republican legislators around the Capitol is not encouraging civility. He could tell them that screaming protest songs, including new twists on Christmas carols that personally attack members of the Republican Party, at the top of their lungs every day at noon is not conducive to the professional environment he would like to see in the Capitol.
Barca might even comment on how, the same day he’s complaining about Gannon’s behavior, protesters are in the Capitol carrying signs with swastikas and calling Republican legislators Nazis. He might suggest to the protesters that it’s not very polite.
While we’re at it, perhaps Barca and his colleagues could apologize for publicly supporting the Government Accountability Board’s illegal spying on conservative organizations and activists. One local activist and political commentator, Brian Fraley, recently discovered that the GAB has been snooping in his email for four years without his knowledge. The only reason he was told was that the courts made special prosecutor Francis Schmitz tell everyone who was being spied upon. They have Fraley’s every movement, his tax records, and all of his personal contacts, even though he wasn’t the target of any criminal investigation.
So here is my advice to Barca who suddenly has found a love of civility and collegiality. If you really want to lower the tensions and increase the mutual respect on the legislative floor, you first.
That is the headline of James Taranto, who watched Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech so we didn’t have to:
“I stand here confident that the State of our Union is strong,” President Obama summed things up last night. To which one might have puckishly responded: Strong maybe, but what union?
The invited audience at the annual address included many human symbols of national division: culture-war conscientious objectors Kim Davis and the Little Sisters of the Poor; Jim Obergefell, victor in the Supreme Court battle that occasioned Davis’s objection; representatives from Black Lives Matter and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. There were even empty seats to show disrespect for the Second Amendment and opposition to abortion.
The president acknowledged the country’s divided state in the most interesting line of his address:
It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency—that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.
Likewise, there’s no doubt our column would improve if we wrote as well as Shakespeare: We thank God for our humility.
It would have been more interesting—and shown real self-awareness—if the president had acknowledged his political talents are in some respects wanting when compared not with the universally acknowledged great presidents but with the successful presidents of his own lifetime. We’re thinking here of Reagan and Clinton, who like Obama held office during fractious (if not quite as fractious) periods under divided government. In terms of both compromising with the opposition and emerging victorious from confrontations with it, Reagan and Clinton each enjoyed considerably more success than Obama.
There’s a glaring disconnect in Obama’s characterization of partisan “rancor and suspicion” as being among his “few regrets.” What he’s saying is that he does not regret his actions, only their inevitable consequences. In his 2008 campaign he aspired to unify the country, but he also aspired to “transform” it, “fundamentally” no less. Transformation turned out to be the priority.
His signature “achievements”—we’re thinking here of ObamaCare and the Iran deal—were won by bullying doubters in his own party, shutting the other party out entirely, and, crucially, ignoring overwhelming public opposition. He’d have accomplished a lot more had the country been on his side, but had the country been on his side, there would be no need for fundamental transformation. He seldom evinces any doubt that he is right and his detractors—even if they include the large majority of the American people—are wrong.
That attitude expresses itself in what David Gelernter, writing in the Weekly Standard, calls “the Obama sneer”:
FDR’s bouncy, feisty smile, Reagan’s geniality, Clinton’s one-of-the-boys grin, W’s good-natured earnestness are part of history; and Obama’s real “legacy” (aside from worldwide crisis) is that bitter sneer. His rudeness to political opponents has made a rotten political climate much worse.
The Obama sneer is polarizing, which serves him poorly in some regards and well in others. It makes him look weak and reactive and alienates people who are not already on his side. On the other hand, it’s an effective technique for rallying his partisans. And Obama has set the tone for the campaign to succeed him. Both parties’ leading candidates to succeed Obama—Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—are following his lead in that they are running campaigns of division.
The sneer was very much in evidence last night (note that these quotes are from the address as prepared; there were slight variations in the delivery):
Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction. … Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely. … I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. … As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. … Our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world stage. We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire. … We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. … When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.
Toward the end, he observed: “A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything.” But as the above, far-from-conclusive list demonstrates, he demands agreement on a hell of a lot.
The assertion that “it diminishes us in the eyes of the world” when “a kid is bullied” (“called names” in his ad-lib) is just bizarre. The idea that we can “try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis” is unrecognizable even as a caricature of any view anyone currently espouses. (It sounds like a caricature of George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural.)
The reference to carpet-bombing was an allusion to something Cruz said, but Obama seemed to be reacting to Trump more than anyone else. The liberal site Talking Points Memo has a list of “Obama’s Top 10 Shots at Trump in the State of the Union Address.” (Trump himself was in typical form last night, tweeting “The #SOTU speech is really boring, slow, lethargic—very hard to watch!”)
The Republican response was also widely understood as a rebuke to Trump. Real Clear Politics’ Caitlin Huey-Burns:
Nikki Haley’s response to the president’s State of the Union address on behalf of the GOP was much more a rebuttal to the Donald Trump-style of politics that has tainted her party in the race to succeed Barack Obama.
“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation,” the South Carolina governor said from the statehouse in Columbia, S.C., Tuesday night.
That Trump was evidently such an influence last night confirms his status as the most dominant figure in American politics today. He is likely to retain that status at least for the next four weeks, and he hopes it will be closer to nine years. Just how long it turns out to be will have a lot to do with the ultimate character of the Obama legacy.
The number one British single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1978:
The number one British single today in 1995 came from a Swedish group that did a wacky country-ish song:
The Los Angeles Times reports:
NFL owners voted 30-2 to allow the St. Louis Rams to move to Los Angeles for the 2016 season and to give the San Diego Chargers a one-year option to join the Rams in Inglewood.
The Rams’ home will ultimately be on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood in what will be the league’s biggest stadium by square feet, a low-slung, glass-roofed football palace with a projected opening in 2019 and a price tag that could approach $3 billion.
“We realized this was our opportunity,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said.
Goodell, while pointing out the Rams are returning to their former home market, also predicted the Inglewood stadium would change “not just NFL stadiums and NFL complexes but sports complexes around the world.”
The historic vote in a fourth-floor conference room at a suburban hotel left open the possibility of the Chargers or Oakland Raiders sharing the Inglewood stadium.
The league will also give the Chargers and the Raiders each $100 million to put toward new stadiums if they stay in their current home markets. No public money will be used to build the Inglewood stadium.
If the Chargers do not exercise their right to move to Inglewood by Jan. 15, 2017, the Raiders will have a one-year option to join the Rams.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke called the decision to leave St. Louis “bittersweet.”
The Times’ Bill Plaschke comes off as less than totally happy about the Rams’ return to L.A.:
The sports landscape around here has changed dramatically in the last two decades, and there are some things you should know.
First, we didn’t ask you to come back. Oh, we may have whined occasionally during Super Bowl weeks, but we didn’t hold giant rallies or send emotional letters or really miss you that much. We play fantasy football, we watch DirecTV, we drive to Las Vegas for a three-team parlay. We’ve had our fill of the NFL without actually having a team.
Live football? We’ve fallen in love all over again with the pro-style programs at USC and UCLA, just check attendance figures.
Sundays? We’ve done just fine watching the Dodgers on Sunday afternoons in the fall and the Lakers on Sunday nights in the winter.
Second, we’re not paying for you to come back. Every place else you’ve gone, the grateful locals have slipped you a few bucks to show up, but not here, not even close, which is probably why it took 21 years for you to return.
We didn’t pry open civic pocketbooks or agree to any special taxes like some of those other smaller towns. We’re sophisticated enough to understand that you’re not a hospital or firehouse, that billionaires shouldn’t need handouts to bankroll their pigskin parties.
So understand first that you’re here because you want to be here and because you think you can make money here, not because anybody was dying to see you again. Consider yourself lucky to be back on our turf. And while you’re here, you’ll have to play by our three simple rules:
You must win. You must entertain. You must do both with the sort of decency and integrity that makes us feel comfortable enduring long lines of traffic, long lines at bathrooms, and mosh pits in parking lots for a chance to watch you play.We’ve done that at Dodger Stadium and the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, and we’ll do that for you. But you have to earn it.
You must learn from Frank McCourt. The former Dodgers owner tried to cheat us and we ran him out of town.
You must learn from Donald Sterling. The former Clippers owner embarrassed us so we ignored him for years, until the NBAfinally ran him out of town.
The NFL has made plenty of money off a tribal mentality among its fans, but we don’t think like that. Sports is not our obligation, it’s our entertainment, and when the fun stops, we stop showing up. You lose, we’re gone. You take us for granted, we’re gone.
We don’t owe you cheers — even Kobe Bryant has been booed here. We don’t owe you unconditional love — even with three consecutive division titles, the Dodgers brand has been splintered by an ownership group that refuses to fix a contact that has left more than half their fans unable to watch on television.
Watching the NFL march back through our door is like watching the return of a quiet, beloved relative who left home to become rich and famous. Now that he’s back and wants everyone to join his party, well, hmmm.
When the Rams left town, they were viewed as a sweet neighborhood operation whose players weren’t too proud to participate in an infamously corny music video — “Let’s Ram It!” — and whose most ardent fans wore watermelons on their heads. But these Rams are coming back as an ATM for the reticent Stan Kroenke, and are a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in 11 years.
The Rams’ evolution has mirrored that of its league. The NFL has become the biggest and coldest of businesses, run by owners who have trivialized domestic abuse, covered up the effect of concussions, and mishandled legitimate cheating allegations against its most celebrated player, all in the last couple of seasons.
But there is much potential here, because the NFL is also about community. Just ask those purple-bundled fans sitting in below-zero temperatures in Minnesota last weekend, or the roaring sea of orange that can be found in Denver this weekend, or the thousands of screaming “12s” who show up all season in Seattle.
The NFL has become a shared experience like none other in sports, with a unique ability to connect even the most diverse neighborhoods in a weekly experience that for its most ardent fans has become sacred habit. Because it is as powerful on television as it is in person, because it owns every Sunday between September and February, and because its players represent helmeted superheroes unlike those found in any other league, the NFL owns the sports landscape in nearly every community it exists.
At least, everywhere else. And maybe here one day. But it’s not going to be easy.
The Rams and Chargers can’t just untie a bag of footballs, roll them across the Coliseum floor, and expect everyone to bow and pay $150 for the privilege.
The Lakers and Dodgers run this joint, and college football teams are giants, and nobody wins like the Kings, and nobody has more drama than the Clippers, and in 21 years Los Angeles has become arguably the nation’s most interesting sports town — without the national pastime’s help.
Welcome back, NFL. Now make us glad we missed you.
Next up on the relocation clock is either the Chargers, which moved from L.A. to San Diego in their second year of existence, or the Raiders, who moved from Oakland to L.A. in 1982 and from L.A. to Oakland in 1995. There’s also the Jacksonville Jaguars, whose owner has denied rumors of moving to St. Louis and London.
The San Diego Union Tribune’s Kevin Acee writes:
Chargers chairman Dean Spanos has the offer of an additional $100 million to help his stadium effort in San Diego that he didn’t have before Tuesday. He also has the fallback – or is it the first option? – of playing in a brand new stadium in Los Angeles in three years.
“I don’t want to mislead anybody or say anything that would not be correct,” Spanos said after leaving a press conference in which the decision was announced. “… In the next several weeks or so I am going to sit down and look at my options and make the decision in the near future.”
Yes, non-committal would be the most accurate way to describe Spanos’ commitment to engaging in stadium negotiations in San Diego.
However, the team has for months been quietly working on the possibility they would have to exercise such a Plan B in San Diego. Should they choose to try to stay, the Chargers would fund a citizens’ initiative with an eye toward a November ballot measure. The decision would have to be made in the next month. The language of a citizens’ initiative has to be final (with the same language that will appear on the ballot), and Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said a signature drive would need to begin in March.
This was, Spanos has maintained all along, about having options.
“I have created that situation,” he said Tuesday.Multiple owners said it was Spanos’ decision to maintain the San Diego option rather than join Kroenke immediately. However, too much should not be read into that. As one owne explained, there needed to be more exploration done by the Chargers on the partnership with the Rams.
The Chargers have until Jan. 17, 2017, to negotiate a deal with Kroenke to share his stadium in Inglewood before the rights to those negotiations would move to the Raiders.
Ostensibly, the Chargers have a year to get a deal done in San Diego. …
The league and the Rams have been working on the framework of a partnership agreement. The Chargers contingent met multiple times Tuesday with the league’s finance committee and on Wednesday will meet with league staff to go over the potential Inglewood deal. It is also believed Spanos and Kroenke will meet.
None of the three teams that were seeking to move to L.A. wanted to be the second team to arrive, and that will be among the Chargers’ considerations in the coming weeks. They may also commission polling to gauge how conditional approval to move would affect their chances at a successful campaign in San Diego. The team has long pointed to polling that showed a lack of support for a measure calling for public help building a stadium. …
Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said it was “unlikely” a second team will play in Los Angeles in 2016. However, regardless of whether the Chargers try for an election in San Diego, two owners said on the condition of anonymity they believe the Chargers would ultimately end up in Los Angeles.
Said San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York, whose team last year opened the first NFL stadium in California in almost a half-century years, largely with private money: “I think Dean genuinely wants to stay. He knows it will be an uphill battle.”
Up the state of California from both San Diego and L.A. is Oakland, whose Tribune editorializes:
With three teams vying to relocate to Los Angeles, NFL owners accepted the St. Louis Rams bid and offered the San Diego Chargers a one-year option to join. The Raiders were frozen out, told they could go only if the Chargers decide not to.
However, the NFL owners offered Davis a consolation prize: $100 million to help finance a new stadium in Oakland. It’s a nice parting gift, but it won’t bridge the funding gap he faces if he wants a new facility.
He’s essentially back to square one but without a viable threat of moving to Southern California. That means it’s time for him to stop trying to squeeze East Bay taxpayers for a subsidy and find another source.
It’s time for him to recognize what a good thing he has going here. The fans have been incredibly loyal despite his late father’s traitorous 13-season move to Los Angeles. The taxpayers continue to fork over money for the Coliseum renovations Al Davis required two decades ago as a condition of the team’s return.
And, despite all the grumbling now from the Raiders, the Coliseum location is superb, sandwiched between the BART station and the Nimitz Freeway and closer to San Francisco than the 49ers new stadium.
Mark Davis can keep threatening to move, perhaps filling the void in St. Louis or his latest rumored alternative, San Antonio. But that means building a fan base from scratch. Some of the Raider Nation followed him to Los Angeles three decades ago, but flights to Missouri and Texas will never be as quick, cheap or frequent.
He can look across the bay for a deal with the 49ers to share Levi’s Stadium, but it’s unlikely there’s enough room in the facility for both team owners’ egos.
Or he can talk seriously about the current Oakland site. Davis might need to find an investor to help him out. Or he could look at renovating, rather than rebuilding, the existing facility, which would be a good and cheaper option.
Meanwhile, Oakland has two teams to accommodate. The A’s, after the Supreme Court scuttled its San Jose bid, are seriously exploring options in their home city.
There’s plenty of room for the Raiders, too. And no one is talking about one stadium for the two teams again. But Davis will have to abandon his fantasy that he will be given control of the entire Coliseum site.
He’s welcome to stay. But he’s going to have to pay his own costs.
It occurs to me that instead of trying for a smooth writing transition here, a chronology of every team and city involved might be more efficient, beginning with …
1920: American Professional Football Association forms, including the Chicago Cardinals. APFA changes name to National Football League in 1922.
1936: American Football League forms, including the Cleveland Rams.
1937: Cleveland Rams move into NFL.
1946: Rams move from Cleveland to Los Angeles after winning 1945 NFL title. All-America Football Conference forms, including the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts.
1950: AAFC dissolves, with three teams, including the Browns and Colts, moving into the NFL. AAFC’s Los Angeles Dons merge with Rams. Colts dissolve after 1950 season.
1952: Dallas Texans form, but go bankrupt during the season.
1953: Dallas Texans move to Baltimore and become the Colts.
1960: American Football League forms, including the Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Oilers and Oakland Raiders. Chicago Cardinals move to St. Louis.
1961: Los Angeles Chargers move to San Diego.
1970: AFL and NFL merge, with Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns moving into the Amerian Football Conference with the 10 former AFL teams.
1972: Owners of Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams swap franchises.
1980: Los Angeles Rams move to Anaheim.
1982: Oakland Raiders move to Los Angeles.
1984: Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis.
1988: St. Louis Cardinals move to Phoenix. (Name changed to Arizona Cardinals in 1994.)
1995: Rams move from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Raiders move from L.A. back to Oakland.
1996: Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore and become the Ravens.
1997: Houston Oilers move to Memphis, moving to Nashville one year later and becoming the Tennessee Titans one year after that.
1999: New Cleveland Browns join NFL.
2002: Houston Texans formed.
This probably reads like the New Testament’s begats, or looks like a game of whackamole. What should be obvious is that the NFL abhors a vacuum, which in this case was L.A. after the Rams and Raiders left the same year.
The vacuum now is St. Louis, whose Post–Dispatch’s Jeff Gordon writes:
Our city’s sad pro football history got another painful chapter. We lost the football Cardinals to Arizona after their mostly inept run under the Bidwill family.
And now we’re losing the Rams after their mostly inept run under former showgirl Georgia Frontiere and her partner/successor, Silent Stan. What did one city do to deserve so much incompetence? Is St. Louis cursed as a football town?
Is it time to move on from the gridiron and pursue something new, like Major League Soccer?
In fairness to the Bidwill family, it did move the Cardinals from Chicago. And Frontiere moved the Rams from Los Angeles which — if we’re being totally honest here — is the rightful home for that franchise.
When a city steals a team, turnabout becomes fair play. That is why St. Louis so badly wanted an expansion team to start fresh. The Stallions would have been ours, for better or worse.
Still, it’s tough to lose teams after supporting through thick and mostly thin. Twice fans made an emotional investment in a franchise and twice they were jilted through no fault of their own.
Bill Bidwill was a bad owner here and in Arizona. The Cardinals only gained traction in the Valley of the Sun after Michael Bidwill replaced his hapless father as the franchise’s point man.
Kroenke was a bad owner, too, and there was no such relief from his regime in St. Louis. His son was busy in Colorado overseeing also-ran teams there. Stan took the reigns of a losing team and kept it on its sub-.500 path, against all odds.
Along the way he did nothing to revitalize support for the franchise. His team president, holdover Kevin Demoff, served as the Architect of Doom.
As the losses eroded and the franchise’s future became more uncertain, attendance plunged at the Concrete Circle of Death. That was totally understandable, as other owners saw. Intentionally or unintentionally, Kroenke poisoned this market.
The league-wide ill regard for Kroenke was evident in his struggle to move West. This shouldn’t have been so difficult for him. Remember, he moved boldly to solve the NFL’s decades-long LA problem.
He bought land in Southern California, a breakthrough move. He partnered with another developer to design a massive multi-use project that included a privately financed state-of-the-art stadium. He greased the political wheels in Inglewood to make sure the locals were on board.
Kroenke and his partners had everything needed to bring the NFL back to LA: The team, the land, the plan and billions of dollars to invest.
And still he met resistance. Amazing! All he had to do was co-opt San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos as the stadium’s second tenant and this was a done deal.
Understandably, Spanos wanted no part of Kroenke. He sought an alternative solution in Carson, Calif., and partnered with the Oakland Raiders in the process.
Playing from behind, those teams and that stadium gained significant support from owners, including five of the six on the committee studying LA opportunities.
Despite Carson’s support from owners who studied the issues most closely, the Inglewood proposal still had more votes as the meetings neared. So key owners and NFL executives tried to get Kroenke and Spanos together, working to broker a more favorable deal for the Chargers.
That didn’t happen until push came to shove at the end after one round of voting. These two antagonists needed significant third-party assistance to start finding common ground.
The ownership divide spoke volumes about Kroenke’s standing with fellow owners. NFL leaders hoped to come up with a Grand Compromise before the owners met in Houston.
But with commissioner Roger Goodell providing his trademark strong leadership, no resolution emerged from meetings last week.
Lobbying continued from both sides, with Spanos leading the charge toward the Carson project (with Raiders owner Mark Davis in tow, bowl cut and all) and Kroenke pushing his Inglewood plan, where groundwork for the development is already underway.
As the Houston meeting neared, the Inglewood initiative gained momentum. Then came the presentations and more chit-chat among the millionaires and billionaires who own teams.
When it came time to vote, Kroenke still didn’t get the number he needed to move forward. But he got 20 votes, just four short, and that gave him a commanding edge on the Spanos/Carson proposal.
That put the owners on the clock to bridge the gap and solve the problem. Ultimately they did, jobbing St. Louis in the process while rewarding the Raiders with a nice participation bonus.
The NFL made up the relocation process as it went along, but that is a Goodell trademark.
Now Dave Peacock and Co. have a stadium plan with no tenant. St. Louis barely cobbled together the stadium financing it had — failing to satisfy the NFL in the process — and now the city will encounter bidding wars if it tries to get back in the game.
Already there is noise about the Raiders playing Oakland off San Antonio and the STL. Oh, boy.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 