Tag: NFL

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News Politics U.S.

Donald Trump doubles down on division

Donald Trump is back to trying to divide people, this time by attacking professional athletes who protest racism during playing of the national anthem.

Faced with the failure of yet another attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the divider-in-chief used a speech at a campaign rally on Friday in Alabama to ridicule African-American athletes.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!’” Trump told the crowd, referring to players who kneel in protest, a gesture started last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they’re playing our great national anthem,” added Trump, speaking about black athletes to an overwhelmingly white crowd. In Alabama.

The president later disinvited the championship Golden State Warriors from the White House after opposition to him by Stephen Curry, their star player. The comments come roughly a month after Trump refused to criticize white supremacists and fascists who rallied in Charlottesville.

“The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling,” Leland Melvin, a retired NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver who is African-American, writes in a letter to the president. “Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially?”

For decades, Trump has preferred division and demagoguery. The president is the same person who, as David Remnick noted on Saturday, began his career in real estate with a string of discriminatory housing practices and his career in politics with a racist questioning of Barack Obama’s birthplace.

It’s also the same person who in 1989 called for the execution of group of teenagers who were convicted – only to be exonerated – in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park.

Trump’s equivocation over racism in August led a series of business leaders to abandon him. On Saturday, NFL owners – a group not usually prone to protest – criticized the president for sowing divisiveness.

“The callous and offensive comments made by the president are contradictory to what this great country stands for,” said Jed York, the 49ers chief executive.

“Our country needs unifying leadership right now, not more divisiveness,” said Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins.

The division that Trump practices follows a pattern. The less he succeeds at changing laws – he has proved unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act, abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement, build a wall along the border with Mexico or deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; all of which he pledged to do – the more he seeks to divide the country.

The divisiveness Trump sows highlights a desperation to hold a base of supporters who actually agree with him. That won’t be enough to remain president.

As Nate Silver has documented, the announcement by former FBI Director James Comey 11 days before the election that he needed to further examine Hillary Clinton’s emails probably cost her the election by erasing her lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.

Trump knows this, too. One way or another, he will struggle to stay in office.

The question now is how soon do Republicans in Congress abandon Trump for Mike Pence, who, were he to become president in the event of impeachment or resignation of Trump, would still assure the GOP and its supporters the tax cuts they covet.

Trump may have won the election, but he has lost the country. As Melvin advises him, “If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try.”

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Sports

The NFL eyes a return to LA

The NFL may be readying a return to the City of Angels.

Or not.

Owners of the league’s 32 teams are slated to huddle on Jan. 12 and 13 in Houston to weigh proposals from the Chargers, Raiders and Rams for relocating to Los Angeles. The owners also will hear from San Diego, St. Louis and Oakland — the teams’ current home cities — about plans to keep the teams put.

The showdown stems from a mismatch between America’s most popular sport (according to a poll last year by Harris Interactive) and its second-largest city, which has been without a team since the Rams and Raiders decamped following the 1994 season.

(For more on why the teams left Los Angeles and why no team has returned since then, read here.)

In February, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, formed a committee made up of owners of six teams. Goodell charged the panel with overseeing the application of the league’s relocation guidelines if a team or teams applied to move.

The guidelines reportedly give deference to keeping teams in place if their home cities can accommodate – generally meaning fork over their share of the cost of a stadium – them. But the owners can do what they want, according to a lawyer who represented the Rams in their move from Los Angeles.

“It doesn’t matter one iota,” Mark Levinstein, the attorney, told Sports Business Daily recently, referring to the guidelines. “It is written for litigation. The goal is to be able to say to jurors, ‘We had a good reason,’ when the reality is, ‘We had 28 guys voting for God knows what reasons. And we don’t want all the discussion and back-room dealing and all the rest the focus of the case.’”

The cities themselves have until this Wednesday to present proposals for blocking a move, which requires a three-fourths vote. Teams have until a week later, on Jan. 4, to apply for a move.

Rams owners Stan Kroenke – a billionaire who also owns a majority stake in the English Premier League club Arsenal, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, and Major League Soccer team Colorado Rapids – has announced plans to build a domed stadium in Inglewood, about 12 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.

The Chargers and Rams have proposed to build and share an outdoor stadium in Carson, about 14 miles further south.

For their part, officials in St. Louis have offered to build a $1 billion stadium using mostly public funds. Officials in Oakland, which is still paying off its share of upgrades to the stadium where the Raiders play currently, say they would like the team to stay and suggest they might forgive the $100 million in debt the team owes on the building in return for the Raiders’ agreeing to remain.

San Diego has proposed to build a $1.1 billion stadium for the Chargers, but the team has rebuffed the plan, saying the city will be unable to persuade voters to commit to paying roughly a third of the cost.

In early December, the Rams told the NFL they would consider partnering with the Chargers or Raiders (they didn’t say which one) on the stadium in Inglewood, a compromise that might help persuade owners to back the Rams’ bid.

Though taxpayers nationwide have paid 60% of the $10.5 billion spent on new NFL stadiums since 1990, researchers concluded in a study published in 2011 that local communities derive few economic benefits from stadiums, sporting events and franchises.

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Sports

Cricket All-Stars, NFL show globalization of sports

At JFK this week I passed a billboard for a financial firm that depicted a ball shaped like an American football but flatter at each end, like a rugby ball, with the pattern of a soccer ball.

The mythical mass served as metaphor for globalization, which two items in the news this week suggest is accelerating when it comes to sports.

First is a cricket match slated for Saturday at Citi Field in New York, the first of three exhibitions to be played in the U.S. this month by teams of retired all-stars. The other is an announcement by the NFL that it will play at least three games in London in each of the next five seasons after three contests there this year.

The moves mark a quickening of activity by two sports that have yet to arrive in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, on a national level. Of course, cricket has billions of fans around the world. Test matches between England and Pakistan, and between India and South Africa, are among the top events this weekend in all of sport.

The matches in the states will feature Sachin Tendulkar, who retired from the Indian national team two years ago after scoring 15,921 runs in 200 test matches, or 2,000 more than his closest rival; and Shane Warne, an Australian who retired in 2013 and ranks second of all time in wickets taken (getting a batter out) in test matches.

Tendulkar, 42, who may be the greatest batsman of all time, and Warne, 46, among the best bowlers ever, will helm opposing teams of former greats from Pakistan, India, England, South Africa, the West Indies, and Sri Lanka. “The vision is to globalize cricket,” Tendulkar told the Times. “Somewhere we need to start.”

That could be America, which in 1844 hosted the first international cricket match, between the U.S. and Canada. Today roughly 35,000 Americans play cricket, according to the United States of America Cricket Association.

The grounds at Citi Field will include a pitch that organizers of the matches have trucked from Indiana, where it was grown for the occasion by Mark Perham, the former groundsman at Eden Park, the largest stadium in New Zealand. The pitcher’s mound, which had a workout in the recently concluded World Series, will be lowered so as not to present a hazard for cricketers.

American football comes to rugby grounds

Separately, the NFL announced on Tuesday it has leased Twickenham Stadium, which normally houses rugby and recently hosted the sport’s world cup, for each of the next three seasons.

That brings to three the number of venues the league will use to host games in London between now and 2020. In addition to Twickenham, which holds 82,000 people, the league will play at least two games a year at Wembley Stadium over the coming five years.

The NFL also is slated to play two games a year at a stadium being built for Tottenham Hotspur when it is completed in 2018.

According to the league, the three games it hosted this season at Wembley averaged 83,777 fans apiece, a crowd roughly equivalent to the capacity of MetLife Stadium.

The push by the NFL to expand internationally will extend south as well. The league is expected to play at least one game in Mexico City in 2016 and says it is exploring matchups in Germany and Brazil.

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Sports

Yahoo stream of NFL game to mark a milestone for digital TV

For the National Football League, the action on the gridiron this Sunday may pale in comparison with what happens online.

That’s because Yahoo will stream a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars in London live, for free. The webcast from Wembley Stadium will mark the first time an NFL game has aired primarily via the Internet and a milestone in the evolution of online TV.

Yahoo, which reportedly paid $20 million for the rights to the game, will stream a live feed of the game produced by CBS. Other than in Buffalo and Jacksonville, where affiliates of the network will televise the matchup, the game will be available exclusively online.

Roughly 30 companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Snickers and Toyota, are slated to advertise during the webcast, which Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has called a “historic opportunity.”

The ability to watch live telecasts of sports typically requires a subscription to pay TV.

Experts say they’ll be watching Yahoo’s webcast to see, among other things, the size of the audience, its age and demographics, and whether viewers watch via mobile devices, TVs or desktops.

Neither the NFL nor Yahoo have said what size audience they anticipate for Sunday’s game. A game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins in London on Oct. 4. drew nine million viewers on CBS, compared with the roughly 20 million viewers who tune to network telecasts of NFL games played on Sunday afternoons.

“Broadband and Internet distribution has gotten to a critical place where it can support an NFL game,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president for media, told Adweek. “One of the reasons we’re there is to see if this could be viable distribution for more than one game.”

“We’ll know a lot more on [Monday],” he added.

Categories
Sports

Tom Brady destroyed evidence, Goodell concludes

This post has been updated as of July 29.

A decision by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to affirm a four-game suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady reveals that Brady destroyed evidence that may have explained his role in the scandal known as DeflateGate.

According to Goodell, Brady destroyed a phone that he used throughout the period that covered the AFC Championship Game and the first six weeks of an investigation by the league into a scheme by Brady and two former members of the Patriots equipment staff to lower the air pressure in game balls in violation of the minimum 12.5 pounds per square inch set forth in league rules.

The date of the phone’s destruction coincided with the day on which Brady was interviewed by a team of investigators led by Ted Wells of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison. The NFL hired the firm to conduct an inquiry into the scandal. In the ruling released Tuesday, Goodell writes:

“Mr. Brady explained that when he changes cellphones, he gives his old cellphone to an assistant with the instruction ‘to destroy the phone so that no one can ever, you know, reset it or do something where the information is available to anyone.’ But this conflicts with the fact that the cellphone he had used prior to November 6, 2014 was, in fact, available or [the forensic expert’s] review. Had Mr. Brady followed what he and his attorneys called his ‘ordinary practice,’ one would have expect that the cellphone that he had used prior to November 6, 2014 would have been destroyed long before [the forensic expert] was hired. No explanation was provided for this anomaly.”

Brady used the phone to send or receive nearly 10,000 text messages, the investigation found. “Mr. Brady willfully obstructed the investigation by, among other things, affirmatively arranging for destruction of his cellphone knowing it contained potentially relevant information that had been requested by the investigators,” Goodell concluded.

The NFL’s ability to investigate charges of wrongdoing depends on cooperation, Goodell explained, in part because the league lacks subpoena power. Brady’s lack of cooperation led the commissioner to draw what he termed “an adverse inference” that supports a finding of misconduct.

For his part, Brady disputes the significance of the phone. In a post Wednesday on Facebook, he states:

“I replaced my broken Samsung phone with a new iPhone 6 AFTER my attorneys made it clear to the NFL that my actual phone device would not be subjected to investigation under ANY circumstances. As a member of a union, I was under no obligation to set a new precedent going forward, nor was I made aware at any time during Mr. Wells investigation, that failing to subject my cell phone to investigation would result in ANY discipline.” (emphasis in original)

Brady says he turned over records of his cellphone account and emails that investigators requested, as well as asked the phone company if there were a way to retrieve the text messages from the phone at issue. “There is no ‘smoking gun’ and this controversy is manufactured to distract from the fact they have zero evidence of wrongdoing,” he writes.