San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
There are no games, but still plenty of poor sports
Sports is taking some time off, but the bullcorn and blather will continue unabated. Honesty is now considered “outlandish.” Why can’t we get a break from this stuff? Some examples:
The NFL (Credibility rating: 0).
Team owners are desperate to expand the season to 17 games. Desperate! Which is fair. I think we all agree that the team owners are simply not making enough money for all their hard work. And that players have it too easy with their paid-vacation bye week.
But the owners are using that 17th game as a bargaining chip, so even if they don’t get their extra game, they will force concessions from the players in other areas.
Meanwhile, the number of owners suffering debilitating football injuries remains fairly low.
The Olympics (Credibility rating: minus-50).
The official motto for the 2020 Olympics is “What coronavirus? I don’t see any coronavirus around here, do you? I sure don’t. I feel great.” The medals will be much larger, to accommodate the motto. IOC member Ugur Erdener recently said this: “The coronavirus has nothing to do with the 2020 Olympics, as this outbreak won’t block the games.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said there has been zero discussion of possibly rescheduling the games. On March 3, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said, “We are going to have the games on the 24th of July.”
Are you listening, God? Taking notes?
When a member of the board of the Tokyo Olympics Committee, Haruyuki Takahashi, suggested that there could possibly be a delay of the Games, he felt the wrath.
“I have spoken to Mr. Takahashi and he has apologized,” said Tokyo Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori. “He certainly said an outlandish thing.” U.S. Soccer Federation (Credibility rating: rock bottom and sinking).
The USSF claimed in court papers that the women’s team doesn’t deserve equal pay to the men’s team because the women have less physical ability and less responsibility than the men.
The USSF also claimed that the women burned the meatloaf. (I made up that part.)
Thursday, USSF president Carlos Cordeiro resigned, and apologized, but not really.
“I did not have the opportunity to fully review the filing in its entirety before it was submitted,” Cordeiro tweeted, “and I take responsibility for not doing so. Had I done so, I would have objected to the language.”
“Our hero!” swooned the women players. (I made that up, too.)
Horse racing (Credibility rating: F-minus).
Twenty-seven people are charged in an international conspiracy to illegally dope horses to make ’em run faster, those lazy nags.
Among the accused is Jason Servis, trainer of Maximum Security, which won the Kentucky Derby but was DQ’d for interference. Turns out it wasn’t clumsiness, it was ’roid rage.