Three VERY Fouled Up Stories Today

Eesh...

• Castor Semenya is back in the news.  The IAAF is refuting a report that they have declared Caster Semenya male and are attempting, in court, to change the rules such that she is no longer declared, because of her testosterone level, to be allowed to run with women. (BBC)

Good grief.  Get off her back already.  Used by homophobes and transphobes as a whipping post to try to impose bigots' will on the rest of us, Semenya has been forced to challenge the IAAF's expansion of rules on athletes such as her who are female but may have more testosterone than most females.  It is, now, likely that, even should she win, she's out for most of 2019.

So it really doesn't fucking matter, IAAF, if you call her "male" or not -- the fact is you ARE doing so by imposing those new restrictions on what the IAAF is terming athletes with "differences in sexual development".

The appeal will continue to be heard in courts in South Africa and the Council for the Arbitration of Sport.

• David Stern is back in the news.  And it's his mouth about Colin Kaepernick...  (Deadspin).

Reports today that, had the NFL bowed to the right wing and suspended Kaepernick, he'd be in the NFL today.

Two things about that:

First, the NBA does have a requirement for players to stand for the National Anthem -- unlike the NFL.  But history appears to indicate the NBA has it's own blackball stories.  The Deadspin article points out the most famous case to show for it:  Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf -- banned one game, fined $32,000, and not allowed to play in the NBA again until he certified in writing he would stand for the Anthem.

That was in March of 1996, the same season Abdul-Rauf led the Nuggets in scoring.

The Nuggets exiled him to Sacramento that summer, and he was blackballed from the league two years later.

Second, there's always been a question in people's minds as to how Donald Sterling could've gotten away with all he did in the NBA.

That smirking-ass moron of a commissioner for so many years probably is a good case for why.

• And speaking of NBA Commissioners in the news...

Real interesting story coming out today about Adam Silver.

Silver, on NBA All-Star Weekend, is reported in ESPN to have no real consideration of a story which has come out which is...  interesting to say the least.

Silver has now been NBA Commissioner for five years, and is, ironically, celebrating it in Charlotte, North Carolina at the NBA All-Star Game -- the site of one of Silver's greatest victories as Commissioner, as he threw his weight behind efforts to expel a transphobic law from the state of North Carolina.

North Carolina held it's ground for a time, and Silver expelled the 2016 event from the state as a result.  North Carolina rescinded the law, at least partially, and enough for this year's event to be held in Charlotte.

That said, there's an interesting report out there that ESPN discovered that a confidant of an NFL owner actually reached out to Silver to try to get Silver to be Commissioner of the NFL.  Obviously, Silver declined.

And now reports have come out that this has been a continuing process since Silver became NBA Commissioner five years ago.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...  Maybe the game-fixing has gotten too close to the surface?

How would Silver's inclusive nature (imposing race- and LGBT-friendly decisions on parties within the NBA who have refused such) be treated by the #NFLBoycott crowd?  (And (see above) his predecessor???)

Say it with me, Deadspin: COL-LU-SION.

We are now in the week pitchers and catchers report.

Neither Manny Machado nor Bryce Harper (among a host of other top-flight MLB players) has a home yet.

There is already significant work-stoppage talk around the league.  Only question appears when...

And would the owners not use that opportunity for complete replacement baseball??

Whoops, forgot this. We have a Super Bowl Fine Blotter...

• Los Angeles Rams:  Nickell Robey-Coleman, and that should be doubled, but WAS NOT.  He was fined $26,739 for unnecessary roughness for his first-quarter penalty.
• The Rams finish the season in dollar-for-dollar territory.  Fines in each of their three playoff games totaled $63,504, which put them over the Level 2 number.  So $25,000 for that to start, and then another $6,660 in dollar for dollar.  That means the Rams final total for the year is almost $299,000.

So that's it for the 2018-19 NFL Fine Blotters, finally.

The Rams actually finish the year as the fourth most-fined team in the NFL -- making one wonder if THAT may also have been a factor in the rig-job that got Brady and Belichick #6.

But perhaps something far more disturbing, when you look into it.

The Rams had TWO fines by Week 8, about $33,000 in total.  Both were in Week 1, and only one was a dirty hit.

Week 1:  Roughing the Passer, TD Celebration
Week 9:  One fine:  Small unnecessary roughness fine.
Week 10:  Four different fouls:  Two facemasks, a post-game altercation, and roughing the passer.  About $53,000 from that game, about $86,000 for the season.
Week 11 was the Offense Fest with the Chiefs, no fines.
Off Week 12.
Week 13:  A horse-collar, Suh's second fine of the season
Nothing Week 14
Week 15:  Small unnecessary roughness
Nothing Week 16
Week 17:  Lowering helmet
Divisional Round:  Late hit
Championship Round:  The no-call
And the one in the Super Bowl

If you want a great idea of about three different things in the NFL here, here you go:

• The fine policy does not work
• It is clear that dirty hits got the Rams where they were -- and weren't even called or fined when it was convenient for the league push.
• And it may well have had a hand in rigging Super Bowl LIII.

Final totals league-wide, as reported:

• Total fines and penalties for game misconduct this year exceeded $5.6 million.
• Half the teams in the league received additional penalties for accumulated fines.
• Five teams were further additionally penalized for a second level of accumulation.
• Four teams received single-incident player fines exceeding $50,000.
• There were slightly over $4.5 million in announced fines this year -- over $2 million of that came Week 12 and after, after the Kareem Hunt tape and when scoring was disintegrating.

Solution:

Frankly, suspensions and stripping wins are your only real option here.  But no one wants to do that, because that would require a level of transparency no one, especially Goodell, wants.

Two more obvious NFL happenings this week...

• You can pretty much cross off the Steelers for next year.

Antonio Brown now has a domestic violence situation out there, and it's becoming more and more clear there's a police cover-up going with it.

Last month, Hollywood, FL, Antonio Brown was involved in a domestic incident, and the police reports appear to state Brown pushed a woman down during it.  The NFL is investigating, but that's another star NFL'er who's just fucked his team without lube.

• And yet another media superstar learns you don't fuck the NFL.

The Bob Costas removal from the NFL was NOT consensual, it was learned today.

According to Gizmodo's The AV Club, on an ESPN:60 to air soon Costas admits his talking about concussions got him fired from the NFL coverage.

When are people going to learn that you don't piss off the NFL unless you have new career aspirations???

(Hat-tip to my anonymous friend for tipping me off on that one.)

Oh, and before anyone gets too excited for The Alliance of American Football league starting up tonight -- it's becoming clear it's a "second-chance" league for the NFL.  Half the games this year are on the NFL Network, for one...

Brady/Belichick Bowl VI: Final Ratings Are In...

First Super Bowl since XLIII not to reach 100,000,000 viewers.

Lowest viewer total since XLII.  Lowest rated since Super Bowl XXXIX.

41.1 rating, 98.2 million viewers for the latest Patriot rig-job.

But there is a very real part of this process.

For the first time, there is a verifiable link between the NFL's rigging of the sport and the fact that at least two cities decided to, to statistically significant effects, walk away from the game entirely.

Final rating in New Orleans was a 26.1 -- HALF last year's.  And the lowest rating ever in that city.

Kansas City also had a bit of a boycott too -- ratings there were down double-digit percent, though not quite as pronounced as New Orleans.

No word on St. Louis or LA, though.

But this is significant -- for the first time, there is a verifiable link between the rigging of a major American sports championship game and a significant drop in the ratings of an aggrieved team.

In this case, two.

(Current rating numbers from Sports Media Watch.  Long-term comparatives from a compiled Wikipedia chart.)

Brady/Belichick Bowl VI: How one can tell there's a problem...

Just saw this ESPN (Chalk) Tweet, and thought of the bettor who not only correctly predicted the 7-1 World Cup semifinal (a score which had never taken place in the tournament at that level before then), but also that host Brazil would fall to Germany by that score and an obscure German would score....

Here's one that gets me thinking "someone knew something"...

At least one bettor had an awful lot riding on that final missed field goal 💰 pic.twitter.com/9JGpQYRZ8i

— ESPN (@espn) February 4, 2019

When You Work For the Worldwide Leader, You Do NOT Piss Them Off...

Word has come across the transom that ESPN fired baseball studio host Adnan Virk on Friday.

And the "why" might make Virk unemployable anywhere...

Virk is now believed to be the source of leaks from within ESPN regarding future baseball content on the network -- and when the network investigated, Virk was less than cooperative, so he's gone.

Virk is lawyering up to sue ESPN (per Richard Deitsch), and, frankly, he probably better -- I could see this getting countersued in a Bristol minute.