Last Friday, stories came out in the press that Las Vegas Raiders Head Coach Jon Gruden had sent a racist email. Gruden apologized to the public, to the team, to anyone who would listen. I believed all weekend that Gruden would avoid any serious punishment and in fact, Gruden was on the sideline for the Raiders/Bears game on Sunday. I also wondered if the league or the Raiders could punish him because, when the emails were sent, it was 2011 when Gruden was an analyst on ESPN. He was not an employee of the league or the Raiders when the emails were sent.
Even though the Raiders lost to the Bears, there was nothing more than speculation as to whether Gruden would leave, then, but the time Monday Night Football was starting, it came over the wire that Gruden had resigned over a trove of old emails, frequently using misogynistic, racist and homophobic language while discussing the league, its players and officials.
Gruden’s behavior came under scrutiny when the Wall Street Journal uncovered an email he sent in 2011 in which he used a racist stereotype to describe NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith. That email, sent to former NFL general manager Bruce Allen, came to light, humorously enough as part of the league’s investigation into the workplace culture of the Washington Football Team. This investigation reportedly contains over 640,000 emails from many different people just as damning as Gruden’s according to the New York Times.
Reportedly, additional emails sent over a seven-year period ending in 2018, Gruden described NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in homophobic and derogatory terms and criticized the league for the way it handled player protests during the national anthem. I don’t agree with the use of homophobic terms, but Roger Goodell is often a buffoon; I have said as much here on evilopinion. The sheer number of emails sank Gruden.
To be a Head Coach in any sport, you have to be a loud, stubborn individual and often brutally honest to players and occasionally referees. Jon Gruden was a very successful football coach, winning a Super Bowl in Tampa, heading off to ESPN then returning to a huge, 10-year contract to return to the Raiders. You could tell that Gruden had the opinionated part in spades when he would host a show in which he would bring in the top college quarterbacks and watch film with them and critique their play as they prepared to enter the NFL Draft. It was a fascinating show, but sometimes I though he was particularly brutal. Well, he will never coach or broadcast again and he brought it on himself.

Hubris Does Pay
Urban Meyer is the ultimate Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sports figure. On the one hand, he has won football games everywhere he has coached, but controversy has followed him to every stop. He came to prominence as Head Coach at the University of Florida when he won two national championships. On the one hand, he coached Tim Tebow who won the Heisman Trophy and had some limited success in the NFL, but became a figure in the nation’s culture wars as Tebow was very religious and outspoken about it which endeared him to Christian Fundamentalists, but upset more progressive people who support a woman’s right to choose and other factors. (This of course was amplified when the league came down on Colin Kaepernick’s silent kneel during the national anthem, but no one said anything about Tebow’s open proselytizing on the sidelines.)
On the other side of the coin, there was Aaron Hernandez, the troubled future NFL tight end who was convicted of killing an acquaintance and then died in prison. It is said that Hernandez was indicative of a wild west type behavior by many in the football program. According to the Sporting News back in 2012, Meyer the tired “retired to be with family” excuse in 2010 was actually because the Florida program had problems including drug use among players, preferential treatment for certain players, a sense of entitlement among the whole team and roster management by scholarship manipulation.
Meyer left for ESPN for a year, professing that he did not want to coach again; that is until he got the chance to return to his home state of Ohio (he attended the University of Cincinnati) to take over at Ohio State. Starved for a national champion, Meyer came to Columbus and won a national title in 2014 and his teams would play in the playoff nearly every year.
However, the cloud of Meyer being a sociopath continued. Assistant Coach Zach Smith followed Meyer from Florida to Ohio State, which seemed appropriate since Smith is the grandson of Buckeye Hall of Fame Coach Earle Bruce. Unfortunately, Smith had anger management issues with his wife that could have started when the pair was at Florida, but certainly happened at Ohio State. Meyer reportedly knew about the spousal abuse and did nothing about it, not report it to the school or the authorities, nor try and help the woman. The reports made the media about Smith and Meyer; Smith was fired. One week later, the school placed Meyer on paid administrative leave. After an independent (?) investigative panel reviewed the evidence, the Ohio State Board of Trustees found that Meyer and Ohio State University Athletic Director Gene Smith did not uphold the values of the university and the school’s Board voted to suspend Meyer for the opening three games of the season. It cannot be strongly enough implied that the timing of the suspension was suspect – Meyer missed games against Oregon State, Rutgers, and TCU, certainly not major powers that season.
Ohio State finished the year with a 12–1 record, including winning the Big Ten conference, but was not selected for the College Football Playoff, instead receiving a spot in the 2019 Rose Bowl. On December 4, 2018, Meyer announced that he would retire from coaching following the team’s Rose Bowl game due to health reasons. Ryan Day took over the head coaching position and remains there to this day.
After his previous “retirement” from Florida, no one expected Meyer to stay out of coaching long, although no Power 5 conference school would take a chance on him. But Meyer remains a big name with a winning pedigree especially in Florida, something that would help put fannies in seats in Jacksonville. He was hired by the Jaguars as Head Coach with significant influence on personnel decisions. Despite having the worst record in the NFL in 2020, the Jags earned the first pick in the 2021 NFL Draft which everyone knew would be Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Not long after taking the reins in Jacksonville the trouble began.
One month after taking the job, Meyer hired strength coach Chris Doyle, who left Iowa’s program in 2020 amid multiple accusations of racism and bullying. Meyer defended the move by saying he vetted Doyle, but Doyle resigned days later. Then, he was fined by the NFL for violations during Organized Team Activities (“OTAs”). Reportedly, the Jaguars were in violation during a June 1 practice in which the coaching staff did not instruct players to go through live contact work. However, a few players, wanting to impress the coaching staff, overextended into live contact. It must have been severe because while the 49ers were fined $100,000 for the same offense and Coach Kyle Shanahan was fined $50,000 and the same size fines were imposed on the Cowboys and their Head Coach Mike McCarthy, the Jaguars were fined $200,000 and Meyer $100,000.(I’m not even going to mention the PR/nepotistic attempt to invite Tebow to Jaguars camp and try to turn him into a tight end that failed miserably.)
So far in the season, the Jaguars are 0-4, easily the most losses Meyer coached teams have suffered in at least since he was at Florida. Meyer, like most coaches, do not like to lose, at anything. There were jokes/speculation that Meyer may leave again, perhaps due to his health again on how losing has affected his “delicate” system.
Which brings us to the events of the past few days. After the Jags Thursday night 24-21 loss to the Bengals, Meyer did not accompany the team back to Jacksonville. Instead, he took a flight to Columbus, Ohio which would be a bit strange, except he was going to dinner with his grandchildren. With his track record, one cannot be surprised that he left that dinner to go to a bar that he has a financial interest in. In the bar, Meyer was filmed partying with a young woman. Doesn’t a 57year old man know that in these days of social media and a camera on every phone, there is no privacy? Celebrities or every stripe: singers, actors, athletes, no one is safe from being photographed and those image posted on social media and circulated around the world in seconds, especially doing something that even vaguely appears improper.
Since then, Meyer has apologized to nearly everyone he knows: in closed door meetings with Jaguars’ owner Shad Khan; to the media – for becoming a distraction and showing “bad judgement.” He has apologized to the team although there are reports that he has lost the locker room, the players have no respect for him. Khan said that Meyer’s actions were “inexcusable” and that Meyer had to earn the trust he had lost with the team, the players and the public. If he has truly lost the locker room, he’s done.
It is obvious that Urban Meyer is the worst kind of football coach: a psychopath who doesn’t believe rules apply to him and has no moral compass (despite all of his comments about being a devout Roman Catholic). His behavior was permitted as long as his teams won football games, but with a rebuilding team, he knew going in that there would likely be more losses than wins. Maybe that’s what led him to the bar? If given the chance, Meyer had better clean up his act, otherwise his next head coaching job will be at a Division 3 school in the hinterlands somewhere. Maybe that’s where he belongs?

For a 2-2 football team that has been mediocre at best and down right horrible in the four game span, more attention is being given the fact that the team signed a $167 million purchase agreement to purchase the old Arlington Heights race track location. The Bears, never the most astute organization especially politically, tried this before a couple of time over the years, and both Mayors Daley (J. and M.) told the Bears that if they moved out of the city, they could call themselves the Arlington Heights Bears. Back then, both mayors could count on votes for putting down the Bears. Then Chairman Michael McCaskey had all the warmth of an ice floe and foundered. It took Ted Phillips to even get the city to negotiate to build the “Close Encounters” arena inside the shell of the old Soldier Field.
Taxpayers are still paying for the $600 million renovation, made more palatable by the Bears supposedly ponying up $300-500 million of their own money (although there was a recent article that said that the Bears had only put in about $30 million, using the sale of seat licenses and other methods of generating the revenue). Soldier Field is nice, it is centrally located, has a picturesque location on the lake, perfect for aerial television shots. But compared with the billion-dollar edifices that have been built in Los Angeles for the Rams and Chargers, and the Las Vegas megalith for the Raiders, Soldier Field is small and quaint. Most important of course, is that the Bears don’t own their stadium – they ae still renters to the Chicago Park District, who have had a one-sided big bully relationship financially for years. Yes, the deal has become more team friendly over the years – parking, skybox and stadium sales money is mostly paid to the team instead of the Park District as before. Still, there’s very little drive more important to NFL owners than money and envy.
The problem has always been that the McCaskey family, lead by 98-year-old matriarch Virginia McCaskey have no significant businesses outside of the Bears. Other owners have major businesses so they can run their teams much more like a hobby – real life fantasy football. The McCaskeys don’t have billions, and there are a lot of pigs to feed from the Bears trough. I have been outspoken in saying that the Bears will be up for sale as soon as Virginia dies (not that I look forward to that happening). Son George McCaskey might hold on to the team for a few years in his mother’s memory, but the younger family members do not want to have their money tied up, like in an annuity.
My question has always been, the McCaskeys don’t have a billion dollars in cash lying around, they can’t afford to build a stadium. Taxpayer money would be political suicide to any candidate who backs it; even Arlington Heights’ mayor has said that the municipality would be happy to put up money to cover infrastructure, but that’s about it. Many people have said that the Bears won’t move, it’s all sabre rattling to get the Bears more at Soldier Field or inside the city boundaries. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has tried to take a hardline at first, then softened after the Bears signed the purchase agreement. The mayor has few options – Soldier Field cannot be fitted with a dome; seats can’t really be added; nor can skyboxes.
Let me tell you, the Bears are serious. Yes, the Bears can borrow money through the league’s line of credit, but they cannot borrow billions, and there are certainly banks who would love to finance a portion and perhaps get some naming rights. Naming rights will certainly be an income stream that will help. It will be interesting to see if sports betting companies, casinos, and other investors would step up to help finance a stadium. I would wonder that if there is a big money person behind building the stadium, there would be an implicit agreement to buy the team at some point in the future. The nice thing about this is that its going to take time to put a deal together; it might not come together until after Virginia is gone. Let’s be honest, there are millions of people who would love to own the Bears, most of us can’t afford it, but there are many billionaires who would love to own the storied franchise. And the Bears, currently valued at $4.08 billion, would see the value rise to the $5-6 billion range, nearer to the values of the top NFL teams, the Cowboys and Patriots. Plus, the Bears will still receive $321 million per year from the NFL television contract. So the McCaskey grandchildren and beyond will have an interesting decision – keep the cash cow, or cash out and go play.
That is going to happen, and in some ways, it will be much more interesting to watch than the team on the football field. And I predict that Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy will be out od work at the end of the season.

The Chicago White Sox have withstood all manner of injuries this season to post, at this writing, an 83-61 record. Of course, the AL Central may be the weakest in baseball. The Cleveland Baseball Team is 12.5 games behind the Sox at 70-73. However, if the Sox were in the East or West, they would be solidly second behind the Rays in the East and the Astros in the West. The White Sox actually have a sngle digit “Magic Number,” seven as of today’s games. Then why am I worried?
I have two reasons. First, they folded last season after winning the division, falling from the second seed to number seven, losing home field advantage (although not as important last year with no crowds) and eventually being handily dispatched by Oakland. Of course, that is the reason that Ricky Renteria is no longer the White Sox Skipper. Tony LaRussa, the controversial 76 year-old Hall of Famer, nine years away from a Major League dugout, became manager and, arguably, has done a good job amidst the injuries and other setbacks along the way to guide the team to the division title. LaRussa has already said he will start resting some players, especially All Star shortstop Tim Anderson who is just back from the IL with a hamstring issue, but in his long years of managing baseball teams, I don’t think he will let them atrophy like last season.
The second issue is more troubling. The White Sox have not done well against winning teams this season. They are 22-28 against winning teams and while they have played well against the Rays, A’s and Red Sox, they have faired less well against the Astros and Yankees. Yes, the White Sox are still a young team, but they should have learned from the late season collapse last season and perhaps be less awed by the great teams this season. Here is where LaRussa’s experience will be key.
Whenever a team I root for is going into playoffs (or the regular season for that matter), I always say that I am cautiously optimistic. That sentiment stands, but I always hope for more.

Yesterday, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun announced his retirement from baseball. It wasn’t exactly a surprise – Braun only played 39 games last year while dealing with a back issue, limiting him to 8 home runs, 26 RBIs and a career low .233 batting average. The Brewers declined a $15 million mutual option over this past off season, making him a free agent.
Braun has been one of the stars of the game since he came up in 2007 – six time All Star, 2011 NL MVP, Rookie of the Year in 2007. On the Brewers’ all-time list, Braun finishes 1st in Home Runs (352); second in RBI (1,154); second in extra base hits (809); third in hits (1,963); third in runs scored (1,080), and stolen bases (216). However, Braun, arguably the best Jewish baseball player in history behind Hank Greenberg, will always be known as a member of the PED (Performance Enhancing Drug) club.
ESPN reported that Braun has failed a urine test, showing very high testosterone levels in 2011 (a source to a newspaper called the level – insanely high, twice the level of the highest test to that time) . Braun challenged the test on procedural grounds, saying that the sample had been contaminated by not following the rules for testing samples. (It was not an egregious failure on the part of the sample taker.) Braun announced that he had been exonerated. That is until February, 2013 when his name showed up three times in the records of Biogenesis of America, the Coral Gables clinic that ensnared Barry Bonds.
One entry noted that Braun owed the clinic between $20,000 and $30,000, but his name was not listed to any specific PEDs, unlike some of the other players mentioned in the records. Braun released a statement maintaining that his attorneys had retained the clinic’s operator, Anthony Bosch, as a consultant during his appeal of his positive drug test the previous season, and denied any further dealings with the clinic. Later that month however, ESPN obtained a new Biogenesis document from April 2012 listing Braun among three other MLB players with the notation: “MLB Ryan Braun + 1500.” An ESPN source claimed the list was of players who obtained PEDs from Bosch and their respective balances, with a circle around the plus sign next to a player’s name indicating his balance was paid off. In late April, Bosch confirmed to ESPN that Braun’s legal team merely consulted with him during Braun’s appeal, and stated that he never spoke to Braun himself.
On June 4, 2013, ESPN reported that MLB was preparing suspensions for players linked to using PEDs provided by Biogenesis of America and Bosch. ESPN reported that Braun could have been suspended for as many as 100 games if found guilty, although the appeals process could have taken months and would not have yielded a suspension until 2014. On July 22, 2013, MLB suspended Braun for the remaining 65 games of the regular season, plus the entire postseason, for his involvement with the Biogenesis clinic. Braun, who lost $3.25 million as a result, did not appeal the suspension. There was the usual “heartfelt apology,” and it should be said that Braun was an All Star again in 2015.
It has to be noted that before his suspension, Braun averaged 34 home runs and 107 RBIs per year. Throwing out the suspension year and last year, Braun averaged 22 home runs and 75 RBIs per season. One has to wonder if he was a steroid inflated superstar, who, once he’d been caught and suspended, became a really good player but not a superstar?
That is an albatross that Braun will have to live with. With his numbers, he is a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, but until the Hall lets Bonds and Clemens and MacGwire and Sosa and all the rest in, Braun may not make it in. (Personally, I think there should just be a steroid wing of the Hall at this point – let them in, but only if they admit to PED use and then they go in the “tainted” wing – or allowed with everyone else but with an asterisk on their plaques.)

I have been busy with stuff recently, so I haven’t been posting as frequently, but, even though this happened almost 1½ weeks ago, I could not let this go without comment,
Long time readers know of my utter contempt for Big Ten football referees. They make more bad calls than any conference’s officials in the nation. Often, they don’t look like they even understand the rules, much less be able to interpret them on the field. They often appear to favor the more highly ranked team, meaning that Northwestern, Minnesota, Rutgers, etc. will never get a call against Ohio State, Penn State or even Michigan.
This is not the rant of a disgruntled Northwestern fan. People who sit near me at NU football games know that I am just as likely to complain about a call for my team as against. In my way of thinking, these young men are going their best to perform in these games, often risking their health; the conference should supply top flight officials to match the talent and drive of the athletes. All too often, the officials are part time, often it seems car or insurance salesmen who appear to be good old friends of someone at the conference. They get a night in a hotel, the best view of the game, a few bucks, and even if they make a horrendous call, the conference will fine any coach severely if they publicly criticize the refs.
That said, I thought I had seen every bad call under the sun, that is, until the Michigan State-Northwestern Game on /September 3rd. Before I start, let me say that this is not to say that the refs cheated for Michigan State in that game; no, the Cats lost this game fair and square. It was just that this call was ludicrous in the extreme. In the third quarter (I think), MSU had the lead and game well in hand and NU was trying to mount a comeback. Hunter Johnson threw a sideline route but the receiver cut of his route and curled in. The ball sailed 15 yards past the receiver incomplete. The idiotic referee called it intentional grounding, a 10 yard penalty and loss of down.
The penalty stopped a drive that could have made a difference, but that’s not my point. Johnson was not under extreme pressure; there was no hurry to get off the pass; it was an obvious miscommunication between new starting QB and new receiver. One of my friends said that the referees cannot judge intent, but think about it – how many times have you seen a receiver, running back, tight end not be on the same page with the quarterback, have the ball fall incomplete and there’s an intentional grounding call? Not very often (I cannot remember one in some 50+ years of watching football).
Again, not a vital play in the game, but this is emblematic of the incompetence of Big Ten officials and has been this way for decades.

For the past 22 years, there has been a Williams sister, or Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal playing, and more often than not, winning at the tennis Grand Slam tournaments. Federer and Nadal have 20 singles titles apiece, Serena Williams has 23 and sister Venus has 7. Of course, the sisters have another 14 Grand Slam Women’s doubles titles. Add Novak Djokovic’s 20 titles and it can be said that these 5 players have completely dominated tennis in this time.
To the casual fan, there’s a certain peace that comes with certainty. I admit that as a long-time tennis watcher, I admit to not being as knowledgeable on the younger players; the U.S. not having developed a great newcomer is a factor but that’s not an excuse. I will do better. It appears that I won’t have any choice…
At Wimbledon, Roger Federer, still playing at 40 but no longer dominant, announced that he needed a third surgery on his knee and will require at least six months of rehabilitation, meaning that he would not participate in the Olympics or the U.S. Open. To many, it looked like Federer’s farewell to professional tennis. Age and injury have caught up to Federer, he hasn’t won a Slam since 2018. Federer’s primary adversary, Nadal has suffered through his own injuries and he pulled out of the Olympics and U.S. Open. Still the greatest clay court player of all time, Nadal has won the French Open as recently as 2020 (and also the 2019 U.S. Open). Nadal is 35 and while as not as distant from his last win as Federer, Nadal is certainly in the twilight of his career.
Time apparently has caught up with Serena Williams. Still trailing Margaret Court’s 24 wins for women’s Grand Slam titles, pregnancy, injury and age have caused her to not win since the 2017 Australian Open (still the most incredible feat in all of sport, since she in the early stages of pregnancy when she won). Approaching her 40th birthday in September, she has announced that she will not participate in the U.S. Open this year either. Hew sister Venus, 41, also withdrew with an injury. Venus is a mystery to me. She has not been a significant factor in tennis for many years aside from the occasional streak. It would appear that Venus should probably retire, do something else until her eventual enshrinement into the Tennis Hall of Fame. But she still competes, losing to women that she is old enough to have birthed. However, it is not up to me to decide what she wants to do.
The 2021 U.S. Open, already strange in light of the pandemic, the Delta variant of the Coronavirus and the fourth wave of infections and deaths, will be stranger this year. Djokovic will be the biggest name playing, going for a calendar Grand Slam, the first by a man since Rod Laver in 1969 (last done by Steffi Graf in 1988). Djokovic’s surly personality will have many people rooting against him.
As I said though, I have been remiss in learning about the other players, the up-and-coming stars in the tennis firmament. No time like the U.S. Open to start…