Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/29
It’s the 119th day of the year
On April 29, 1967 Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight championship belt a day after he refused induction into the U.S. Army. On this day in 1986, Roger Clemens struck out a major-league record 20 Seattle Mariners.
Born on April 29, 1947 in Wichita was Jim Ryun and four years later the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Born on April 29, 1954 was comedian Jerry Seinfield.
And born on April 29, 1918 in Detroit was legendary football coach and philosopher George Allen (left). He began his coaching career at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa in 1948 and finished it up at the age of 72, when he took over the program at Long Beach State for one season. In between he coached 21 years in the NFL and two years in the USFL.
Here are some of the best George Allenisms from his coaching career:
- People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit.
- Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night
- Winning is the science of being totally prepared.
- If you want to catch more fish, use more hooks.
- Every time you win, you’re reborn; when you lose, you die a little.
- The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who can perform great feats before friendly crowds.
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell: I forget now, is it excess or imitation that’s the sincerest form of flattery? Either way, the NFL seems to have all angles covered. No other professional sport in the land has been able to capture so much of the public’s fascination, or the envy of so many other pro leagues as this mighty American sports conglomerate. If NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell decided to slap his league’s immediately recognizable star-studded shield on a TV test pattern with some smooth-talking baritone narrator reciting next year’s regular-season schedule, chances are that would outdraw most NHL or NBA games in the television ratings.
So seriously, why should anyone be surprised that Goodell is ready to move the NFL draft — which is basically a 3 ½-hour “athletic” event where absolutely nothing athletic actually happens — into weeknight prime time television? Will it be a ratings success in weeknight primetime? It’s the NFL, so of course it will. But perhaps that’s largely beside the point. Despite a crumbling economy that continues to create so many harsh lessons in reality throughout the sports world, some hardheaded souls continue to believe they live in a world dominated by outdated Gordon Geeko fantasies (greed is good).
Just because you can make an outlandish money grab doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Just ask the New York Yankees, whose ownership built this giant monument to wretched excess in the Bronx, and now struggle to find enough suckers … er, customers to fill the ridiculously overpriced seats in the lower bowl of new Yankee Stadium.
There will be a lot of discussion about this NFL idea of going prime-time and making the NFL Draft a three-day affair. But rest assured, if the league can make more money from the concept, it will happen. Can the NFL over-expose itself? Right now that doesn’t seem possible.
From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The Green Bay Packers made sure Brett Favre didn’t get his wish last year when the future Hall of Fame quarterback decided he didn’t want to retire after all and attempted to force his way to the archrival Vikings.
But this year there will be nothing to stop Favre from wearing purple — if that’s what he truly wants. The New York Jets, who acquired Favre from the Packers last year, released him off the reserve/retired list on Tuesday. The 39-year-old Favre retired, again, after last season and in a statement issued by the Jets on Tuesday said he doesn’t plan on coming back. For now. “[My agent] Bus [Cook] and Mike [Tannenbaum, the Jets general manager] have been talking about this for a while,” Favre said. “Nothing has changed. At this time, I am retired and have no intention of returning to football.”
Here we go again. There was a certain juice that Favre got by being in the spotlight; he enjoyed the attention. That’s not going to go away just because he’s supposedly retired. This will not be the last time we read about Favre and retirement and coming back to play. It’s a Freddie Krueger – a story that you can’t kill.
From the New York Times: Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices.
Going further, the team also announced it will provide significant numbers of complimentary seats to existing season-ticket holders in premium sections, including some of the critical, and very visible, real estate behind home plate.
The team’s price reductions and giveaways affect full-season ticket-holders in premium locations, but not those with partial plans. Those planning to buy premium seats for individual games will also get discounts that have not yet been detailed. Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.”
The sports economic world shifted just a bit this week as the Yankees realized they had over-priced their seats. They will not be the first. Things are bad out there folks and there is less and less extra income. In many cases there is no income. This is going to be a problem for every team, in every sport, at every level.
The Human race is F’d! Greed done it! It has it’s ugly gnarled hand in every thing that is wrong with our world. From ruining some thing as simple as family entertainment to the rapid destruction of the planet we live on. Oh hell, lets not forget that in less 50 years, we have F’d up the space that is immediately around Earth too.
Krokus
Eat The Rich!!
Please, God…PLEASE do not subject us to another Brett Favre soap opera this offseason.
And if you’re paying $2,500 for a ticket to a baseball game, then you’re making WAY too much money.
Right on Scott! I think George S. of the Yankee’s believes in the old motto’s, “build it and they will come” and ” A fool and his money are soon parted”. George Allen would have been Donald Snyder’s prototypical coach of the Redskins. Bring in over the hill aging veterans and overpay them, so you get what you get on the field of play.