Flyers miss Snider’s demand for excellence
As the Flyers went game-togame, year-to-year, decade-todecade, generation-to-generation without winning a championship, there was bound to be a target for criticism, and on that target there would necessarily have been a bullseye.
That would have been Ed Snider.
Visible and opinionated, the Flyers owner was, above all, impatient. Hardened by his earliest teams being beaten up, vowing never to allow that continue, Snider stressed that the organization would have one goal, and one goal only: To win the Stanley Cup. To that end, he tried. But when in-season trades and quick
coaching changes failed to produce parades, Snider was under pressure to back off.
In a way, in recent years, he did, allowing Ron Hextall to guide the Flyers’ hockey operation with patience. How’s that working out? Snider died just over a year ago, so there is no way to know how he would have reacted to what has been a Flyers’ season spoiled by inconsistency, underachievement and tolerance. It is fair, though, to declare that he would have retained a firm grip on a franchise that has spent the season being shoved around and shrugging off inconsistencies.
The rebuilding plan, or whatever it is called, eventually may work out. But it was just a whole lot easier to accept failure when the guy in charge was not accepting it at all.
For a man who was paid tens of millions of dollars to be able to read a defense and consider options and results, Colin Kaepernick never sensed one sack coming.
While in a San Francisco 49ers training camp uniform, Kaepernick chose to wear socks depicting police officers as pigs. Since he was under contract and because there are certain freedoms of speech, he was protected. But then he opted out of his contract. Since then, he has not been able to land a job in football.
Funny thing, those freedoms. Seems the 32 NFL owners had the right, too, to make individual statements. And as any seasoned player should have understood, in football, both sides have a chance to do the hitting.
• The NFL meetings are on, and for once, they could matter. Seems this time, the league will move to shorten the length of the games, which have in recent years morphed from a splendid way to spend a Sunday afternoon to an imposition.
Among changes being considered is the fitting of the referees with what everyone else in the stadium has: Hand-held communications devices. Entertaining as it was to watch the refs plod to the sideline to peer into TV screens covered by curtains in order to break down replays of close calls, they instead would check them out on their miniature devices and make quicker decisions. More, it is being proposed that the officials can announce their decisions in the stadium at once, rather than being made to wait until the end of a commercial break.
Also on the list of proposed changes is the elimination, of some degree, of the uni-color uniforms designed for Thursday night games. And as soon as the NFL shortens the games, maybe someone will actually watch one on a Thursday night game and see what they’re talking about.
Watch pro basketball. Watch college basketball. And notice that in one of those endeavors, something is done with more consistent excellence and precision than the other. Coaching? No. Officiating? Bingo. Unlike the college game, where every third play appears to be oddly interpreted, NBA events are virtually free of whistle-induced controversies. With a couple of veteran exceptions, the NBA refs are basically faceless arbiters, appointed by the league, assigned to games regardless of conference and never unhinged by fan reaction. There is no geographical difference in the way the games are played or officiated. At worst, there is the occasional need to hit the replay machine to sort out a bangbang out-of-bounds decision.
Don’t misunderstand: The NBA is a dysfunctional mess, dominated by players who often chose not to perform, overseen by a weak commissioner, trusted to coaches with no authority, ruined by inhouse noise and spoiled by over-priced tickets.
But those refs: They’re the best in sports.
The University of Connecticut has won its last 110 women’s basketball games. Something is broken. It’s broken because there is sufficient time, money, sweat and scholarships spent on girls and women’s basketball to yield enough players to fill dozens of rosters capable of winning a championship.
Then again, there is a value – isn’t there? – in the super team. Whether rooting for the UConn streak to continue, or praying for it to be shattered, it makes for captivating TV viewing. Since nothing else seems to be doing the trick, that expanded interest might inspire the improvement of that oneschool talent-distribution grid.
Jahlil Okafor continues to miss minutes, practices and games with a knee injury that a year ago was declared insignificant and that was supposed to have been cured after a minor knee surgery.
So how can Sixers fans be comfortable with the notion of Joel Embiid essentially following the same prescribed path to pain-free, low-risk, highlevel professional basketball?
• And exactly what was that fluid on the Wells Fargo Center floor, anyway, that caused the postponement of a SixersKings game?
Gladiator movies … I don’t get them.
Who was it, anyway, who had the idea to lop an entire hard-boiled egg on top of a salad?
So now there are movie theaters that double as restaurants. If you have to ask …
Just a friendly heads up: Memes are no longer original.