Cracks are forming in Goodell's Empire

First appeared on September 10, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

So Commisar Goodell has orchestrated the start of another NFL season. And as the shield reigns supreme over the landscape of professional sports, the good Commisar considers it all from his reviewing stand, looking surly and sublime. By the millions the masses, foam fingers flailing, faces painted and clad in Manziel jerseys, throw themselves daily at his feet begging for more.

His face is the picture of confidence, yet even the Gruden-like scowl he casts down upon the little people cannot drown out the whispers. Cracks are forming. Tiny fissures in the massive wall he’s so cautiously and callously erected around his kingdom are beginning to form.

There are many examples throughout history of empires outgrowing their reach, overestimating their power and falling upon their own sword. The Romans, Mongolians and America are but a few examples that immediately leap to mind. But the sun always shines in Commisar Goodell’s empire, for when it doesn’t, he simply changes his mind, or the rules.

Ripples of discontent first began forming when the Ravens’ Ray Rice was only given two games for assaulting his girlfriend. Storm clouds roiled when a few popular players were given longer suspensions for failed drug tests, toss in more rules in an already over-legislated sport and what you have is Perestroika all over again.

And as we loyally toil in the shadow of his greatness, Goodell’s heavy handed manner has turned inconsistent and his incessant tinkering with the rules of a game, already the most popular in North America, have left many wondering if he isn’t approaching the land of megalomania (and by many here we mean me, and you should you happen to agree).

The hailstorm of penalty flags we saw early in the preseason created an impressive stir considering they were thrown in meaningless games only season ticket holders and those in the Witness Protection Program were actually watching. And yet almost immediately they were silenced, as if Goodell himself had sent the league’s head of officiating on a media blitz of Siberia in order to assume control of rule enforcement himself.
Still it does appear more rules have been added to give Manning, Brady and Brees the best opportunity to continue obliterating NFL passing records. At the same time the changes conveniently bolster the chances of the greatest quarterback in NFL history scoring another title.

But all of this was forgotten Monday when Goodell changed his mind in the face of new evidence and suspended Rice indefinitely. The decision unleashed a torrent of negative reaction which could potentially become a tidal wave capable of destroying the entire infrastructure of his empire.

In the 1960’s the Communist Party of China pushed Mao Zedong aside when they feared he’d lost the people’s trust. If that’s the route we have to go to save football, John Madden seems the logical choice for a Liu Shaoqi-type figurehead puppet. That way, instead the blathering semi-apologies and incredibly shortsighted suspensions Goodell has given us, we’d get a “Boom! Pow!” or at the very least we'd have plenty of roasted turkey to go around.

For now the NFL remains king. The game has made instant replay cool, put some serious lipstick on rotisserie baseball and lined the pockets of every agent and small time bookie from Oxnard to Old Town. And while we haven’t reached the point where Goodell’s picture is hung above every locker room and his diary required reading for all 32 teams, the Commissar does loom large over his league for the time being. Still it would seem even Goodell, as polished and powerful as he may be, has chosen a path that could lead him to the point of no return.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

This just in...Baseball is Broken

First appeared on August 16th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

Baseball is broken. In fact Baseball is beyond broken, it’s flat-lining. Lying on the table, a team of despondent doctors surround Baseball, heads shaking at the impotent shell of a once proud national pastime, hobbled by scandal and decaying from extensive overuse of chemical enhancers. Things have gotten so bad that somewhere Babe Ruth has turned over in his grave, not before ordering a double and lighting a cigar of course.

All apologies to Apple Pie, but Baseball has gone so rogue America should file a restraining order as soon as possible to prevent the words “Baseball” and “America” from ever appearing in the same phrase again.

The American public is so over Baseball they’re feverishly awaiting the start of football, this despite a colorful offseason for the NFL which saw countless arrests and other off field issues. Maybe Charles Barkley was right when he said athletes are not “role models”.

So what does Baseball do to fix itself besides get tougher on PED’s and pray for a steroid scandal to hit professional football? Bringing Sosa and McGwire back seems illogical at this point. And this is way beyond increasing the quality of ball game give-aways and tackling concession stand prices. The Cubs could put a replay board the size of Mt. Rushmore in right field and it still wouldn’t heal the scar steroids has left on baseball. This is an issue that, like Babe Ruth and October, threatens to become part of the fabric of the game.

PSA’s and rookie orientation programs won’t scare this elephant from the room either. It appears far too large, too entrenched. You can forget about trotting Pete Rose out too. Nobody can argue his story is tragic and should serve to prevent players from making poor choices, but for players struggling just to break through the stakes are way too high to worry about somebody who hasn’t laced a pair of spikes up in thirty years.

Forget about “This Time it Counts” or replay in baseball, steroids appear destined to become Bud Selig’s legacy. If Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez have done anything other than thumb their nose at baseball while shattering the dream of thousands of Little Leaguers everywhere simultaneously, they’ve stranded the Commish at a crossroad as well. If Selig doesn’t do something decisive, something powerful, something Roger Goodell-like soon then steroids stand to bury him too.

Selig’s opportunity has been lost in the buzz surrounding A-Rod’s return and the ridiculous payday Braun will still enjoy despite running the hand that feeds him through a meat grinder. At this point it would appear the only logical move for Selig is to get tough with the Players Association and lobby for a lifetime ban for steroid offenders. The future of the game hangs in the balance.

And if you’re the MLBPA, now’s not the time to come to the rescue of guys like Braun and Rodriguez. Doing so only threatens your legitimacy and risks fracturing your clientele. If Baseball has any chance of getting off the table now all parties involved need to come together and foster real solutions.

A lifetime ban seems the only logical plan of action. When they’re serious, the powers that be will consider a punishment of this magnitude for first time offenders, but until then, this dance we’ve all come to know so well will continue. In the meantime, say a little prayer for Baseball because things don’t look good.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams

Time to cut the fake refs some real slack

First appeared on September 21st
in The Lebanon Reporter

We all misremember things from time to time. I’m sure you’ve misremembered to read my column at some point and I can’t get too upset considering I misremembered to write one worth reading this week. Roger Clemens once told Congress that the former teammate who accused him of using PED’s “misremembers things” while former President Bill Clinton simply misremembered that Americans, and Congress, are too smart to fall for semantics.

NFL fans are not above misremembering things either. We’re just two weeks into the season and so many have dragged replacement officials through the mud that it’s taught us just how easy it is for fans and the talking heads to misremember the fact NFL referees were never really all that good to begin with. Which is of course why we have replay.

The sudden love and unforeseen empathy America has for the formerly faceless NFL referee is not unlike the time Sally Jones dumped you in Junior High. The ethereal Sally Jones, whose stunning hair was more long and flowingly beautiful than anything man had seen since Secretariat, who left you so crushed you became convinced there’d never be another like her and that the times you shared during “talk time” in Homeroom were more precious than anything you’d ever know again. You’d gone so low that the decision to quit life altogether was a simple one and then the 1st period bell rang and you moved on.

Still the blathering, incoherent reaction you had to Sally’s “Did you know I’m dating
Kate’s cousin Ricky? Check Yes or No” note is not unlike the reaction America is having to the lockout of NFL Officials. One good thing to come of all this is the fact fans who for so long had berated the real NFL officials are finally admitting the existence of a competent referee. Which comes to us as if straight out of the Bizaaro World and something Roger Goodell is undoubtedly pasting in his scrapbook as we speak.

The truth is when it comes to Replacement Officials I expected much worse. In fact, given the speed of the NFL game, I expected to see something along the lines of a tribe of Kalahari Bushmen trying to referee a football game. Yes there have been problems, but by and large they’ve not been that bad.

What did one expect to see after the league scrambled together an army of men who weren’t good enough to referee at this level to begin with and put as much lipstick on them as was possible in a month before throwing them to the dogs? Asking these guys to call an NFL game is the equivalent of asking a nine year old who’s just mastered flying his remote controlled airplane to pilot the Space Shuttle. It’s like handing an M-16 to a Middle School Hall Monitor before asking them to eradicate Mexican drug runners from the border region.

The truth is officials are a necessary evil. And the human being, albeit sophisticated and well engineered, is still littered with flaws. And it doesn’t matter if they blow a whistle for a living or sack your groceries, everyone makes mistakes. The difference is some of us are fortunate enough to make them in a place and time that sees them go largely unnoticed.

And while there may be a small difference between stacking canned goods on top of a loaf of bread and blowing a call that decides a game upon which millions of dollars is riding, is it not the nature of human beings to forgive. Or is it forget? Either way the NFL Replacement Official wins.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

What now Commissar Goodell?

First appeared on September 13th, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

Upon further review, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's suspension of 4 players for the Bounty Gate fiasco has been reversed. This remarkable decision tells us either the evidence the NFL had doesn’t warrant the suspensions handed down, or it’s yet another clear sign the authoritarian regime Goodell has so meticulously created is another work stoppage or reversed decision away from spiraling into another Iraq.

For good reason he remains an insulated figure operating under a cloak of secrecy as both players and owners have taken to social media to openly question many decisions he has made in the past.

Americans love Goodell for being cocksure and an indefatigable warrior for truth whose blisters pus toughness; he’s John Wayne in a $300 suit. Fans of the former Soviet Eastern Bloc get teary eyed and wax poetic over his propensity for being heavy handed and uncompromising. Goodell’s approach has made him more commissar than commissioner and he remains the closest thing we have left to a Cold War Era dictator.

But, just as any good communist regime before him, Goodell’s world seems to be crumbling. The off season saw the NFL uncover one of the ugliest scandals in its history and, on a somewhat less significant note according to the league, the NFL Referees have undertaken their own Perestroika movement.

The time has come for Commissar Goodell to do some real soul searching. Is he destined to become the Mikhail Gorbachev of professional sports or is he going to fill the void and become the iron fisted ruler the world is so sorely missing. Now is not the time for compromise; after all, Glastnost did bring a Super Power to its knees. And if the Soviet Union has taught us anything it’s that nobody can look cool in an Ushanka hat and giving people a more open government doesn’t always translate to world domination.

Forget fines and suspensions. The North Korean government used to force citizens to pack their sports arenas to witness public executions. 50,000 men, women and children all clad in the most depressing shade of gray possible while sitting on the edge of their seats under a monotone voice droning over a crackling loudspeaker. Something about the sanctity of the State being compromised because someone had the audacity to jaywalk during rush hour. I don’t see any wardrobe malfunctions in the NFL’s future should Goodell adopt this policy for helmet to helmet contact.

So now the media wants full access to the Bounty Gate evidence and the phones in New York are ringing nonstop with frantic calls from Junior High Athletic Director’s everywhere begging for their referees back. And when the people call for change or demand answers the commissar must act.

What Goodell really needs most now is a convenient distraction. The NBA Lock Out was a godsend, but that league is currently on the rebound. He must remember that an uprising or highly public purging of your once most loyal underlings isn’t always a bad thing. In this case however Goodell might be surprised at the reaction should he simply announce that compromise is on the horizon before invading a smaller country.

In the meantime the Commissar will consider his options and we will eat unhealthy food and watch football. Still we are left wondering, had they not scrapped the idea, if the Ronald Reagan hologram the Republican’s planned to have at their convention was programmed to say “Vote for Mitt” or perhaps it was destined to utter a more effective, vote eliciting declaration such as “Mr. Goodell, tear down that wall!”


© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

A Real Man's Thoughts on the Olympics

First appeared on August 3rd, 2012
in The Lebanon Reporter

This one goes out to Real Men everywhere. Those who drink kerosene, belch fire and fart rocket fuel. The one’s who don’t consider a day complete until they’ve spit, scratched, cursed for no reason and blown something up. The one’s who sought professional counseling when Oprah took on the cattle industry and those who believe Roger Goodell is fast-tracking the wussification of America.

Real Men can’t be fooled. We realize until they’re replaced with “No Flavor” that low fat labels will always be a legal form of false advertising. NBC can’t fool us either. In this ultra sophisticated world of ours there is no way the Olympics can be broadcast in the same manner in which they were in 1992.

And so it was Real Men everywhere grilled a medium raw T-Bone, drenched it with sautéed mushrooms, grabbed a stick of butter from the fridge and sat down with a frozen mug filled with German inspiration to watch the Women’s Team Gymnastics finals Tuesday night. But what they saw instead was a travesty of broadcasting.

Real Men will unanimously agree the achievements of the newly dubbed “Fab Five” were both compelling and remarkable. The rub is the fact NBC went out of their way to fabricate a historic moment. After American Champion Jordyn Wieber had previously failed to qualify for the individual competition, the suits at Rockefeller saw an opportunity to create some history. Fans who tuned in were subjected to a heartfelt mini-documentary on Wieber’s rise and fall as an Olympian which culminated with a tease for the one chance Wieber had at rescuing her legacy from the jowls of humiliation.

It was a nice 3 minutes. The only issue here is that when NBC ran the “Can Jordyn Could Put Together that One Perfect Performance and Save Her Gold Medal Chances?” piece, she’d already done it; like 6 hours beforehand. NBC has to revisit business as usual. There is perhaps a small demographic who still huddle inside their homes beside their rotary phones avoiding any means of contact whatsoever to the outside world, all the while waiting until primetime to turn their televisions on like preprogrammed robots. But this group does not include many Real Men.

Real Men want to witness Olympic history. The Dream Team of ’92 completely embarrassing every team that was forced to take the court with them, Michael Phelps netting 8 Gold Medals in a single games or Kerry Strug’s dramatic vault which included an amazing landing with one good ankle. The trouble is for these to be authentic and memorable they also have to be spontaneous. They cannot be manufactured in the fashion NBC attempted Tuesday night. You cannot fabricate history, this is not a communist country or a Reality Television show.

So what is the solution you may ask? I have no idea. What I do know is that the rules are different now. After all any unemployed twenty something with a Smart Phone and access to someone who could actually afford tickets to an Olympic event can use a 140 character post on Twitter to bring the 70 year old industry that is television advertising to its knees.

So it’s not about hiding the fact the team representing the Isle of Man medaled in Synchronized Kayaking for a few hours, it’s about rethinking Olympic coverage. Broadcast it in Real Time, make the coverage straightforward and let history take its own course. Besides if Real Men have a plate of corn dogs and a Bloomin’ Onion garnished with deep fried butter chunks on their laps during the broadcast they won’t complain anyway.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

The only true prediction is: More will follow

First appeared on January 21st, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter

With the NFL playoffs upon us once more it’s important to remember Roger Goodell’s Fifth Commandment: “Thou shall take stock in the predictions of former quarterbacks and coaches”. Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” and it was in this spirit that we labored to understand the mass hysteria that is picking games before they happen by conducting a study of predictions.
Now before Brian Williams goes all “Fleecing of America” on us, this isn’t your run of the mill scientific study we’ve seen squandering tax payer dollars only to reveal the obvious such as “Friday afternoons are the most productive hours in a work week”. You friends of PETA will rest safe knowing that no animals were harmed during the research either.
There were no lumpish, axe-grinding professors or money hungry college kids willing to risk humiliation for spending money. It was simply one man, his couch, a young son playing with his Mr. Potato Head and a television broadcasting a network dedicated to nothing but sports.
There were 12 subjects in our focus group. Each person picked a winner from all four playoff games over the weekend. After 48 guesses were made came the ground breaking discovery that these subjects operated with just a 39% rate of success; which gives a whole new meaning to the term expert.
In an effort to avoid embarrassing anyone (and legal action) we’ll protect the names of those in our study. The most effective predictor however was the guy who runs the show; the same one who hands out all the nicknames. Two guys, a former defensive lineman (whose first name includes almost as many letters as the entire alphabet) and the old bear himself, missed all four picks.
Three experts picked against Indianapolis and only one (the only former Jet on the set) picked the Jets over the Chargers. If you’re trying to decide which of their “NFL Insiders” is more reliable, the old guy and the young guy were both .500 for the weekend.
Of course 39% begs the question, what other line of work could you be so wrong so often and still have a job? OK, besides meteorology, politicians and those who write horoscopes.
If seeing an anti-whaling vessel the size of a canoe get T-Boned by a Japanese whaling rig the size of a cruise ship has taught us anything, it’s that life can be very dangerous when we choose to make it so. The same is true for predicting.
In fact the world of predicting is often pressure packed and predictors who predict wrong would be right to predict the experience to be deflating. Deflating like that art academy advertised on television that evaluates your sketch of a turtle clutching a cluster of balloons only to cash your $75 check before crushing your dreams with a ten cent form letter stating you don’t have what it takes to be admitted into their school after all; (not that I’ve ever applied).
The findings of our study revealed that predicting is tough stuff. In fact we discovered the three most difficult jobs in the world are those guessing peoples weight at the county fair, those pretending to be part-time sports columnists and the lucky few granted the opportunity, and nationwide air-time, to predict the outcome of professional sporting events.
If we’ve learned anything here it’s that predicting is a lot like playing UNO, it’s easy to do- but difficult to do well. There is one true prediction that can be made however and that is that more predictions are sure to come.