Quiet, please!

Not so long ago, the PGA tour utilized local volunteers to hold up those obnoxious signs to remind thousands of golf fans that they should keep their voices down while a professional golfer was at work. 

Those placards won’t be necessary beginning this week, though, as paying fans will not be permitted on the golf course in Fort Worth, Texas. 

After a nearly three month C-Virus absence, the Professional Golfers Association returns to work today in Fort Worth at Colonial Country Club with the Charles Schwab Challenge event.

Sans fans, that is.

This tournament, which has been around since 1946, should be named the “Insert Sponsor’s Name here” event at Colonial.  According to one source, the golf tournament in Fort Worth has been sponsored by Southwestern Bell, MasterCard, Bank of America. Crowne Plaza Hotels, and, most recently, by Dean and DeLuca (which is a chain of high-end grocery stores, by the way). 

So, today “Chuck” Schwab becomes the newest sponsor to invest in the golf tournament in Fort Worth as an impressive field tees it up this weekend. 

Unlike other sports which have been affected by the C-Virus pandemic in 2020, professional golfers are not on a salary.   When golf isn’t being played, they earn a big fat zero.  Nada.

Men and women professional golfers must win enough prize money to pay their own bills and earn a right to remain on golf’s biggest stage year-to-year.   

Professional golfers are responsible for their own costs at every tournament they enter.  That includes travel costs, hotel room, caddy costs (usually a percentage of earnings with a weekly minimum pay), food/beverage and any other expenses they incur for the week.  With 144 golfers in the field for most PGA events, there is a cut after the first two rounds (36 holes).  If your score isn’t good enough to be in the upper 50% of the field playing on Saturday and Sunday, you won’t pocket a dime in prize money for that particular week. 

To insure that you continue playing year-to-year on the PGA Tour, you must finish in the top 125 golfers every year.   Though a professional golfer can earn a nifty salary without actually winning a golf tournament in a particular year, the pressure is always on every week to play well enough to make into the weekend’s final two rounds and cash a paycheck for the week. 

In this Tiger Woods era, the prize money in professional golf has been quite good.  In 2019, 113 of the top 125 golfers earned $1 million or more.   Even after weekly expenses and taxes, the bottom rung PGA players are still pocketing around 25% of their annual earnings made on tour.  

If you are fortunate enough to qualify to play annually on the big golf tours, you’ll also pocket some extra cash if you’re willing to (literally) sell yourself to sponsors.        

In case you haven’t noticed, make it a point this weekend to look at your favorite golfer and notice how many sponsors names are located on the golfer’s hat, shirt, golf bag, and even on the caddy.   I think I’ve seen up to four different sponsors on the hat for some golfers. 

Back to this week’s re-opening event in Fort Worth.  In addition to being played without the customary legions of faithful golf fans on the golf course, you’ll need to watch the event on Golf Channel and, on the weekend,

After pausing its regular season on March 11, the National Basketball Association announced last week that it plans to resume playing ball on July 31. 

If you’re an NBA fan (for this year only, via television or radio) who wanted to see the 2019-2020 season end with a winner decided on the basketball court, this is very good news!

Unfortunately, only 22 of the 30 NBA teams are invited into the so-called “Bubble” location of the Disney World complex in Orlando, Florida.   The league’s ownership group voted down options to resume play with all 30 teams competing and also voted down a motion to resume play with just the current top 16 playoff teams. 

In my opinion, the luckiest teams will be those eight NBA clubs who can shut-down right now for the season, heal and rest their players, and be ready to go when the next season tips-off yet again (now expected to be around December 1, 2020). 

Congratulations to Golden State (15-50), Minnesota (19-45),  Cleveland (19-45), Atlanta (20-47), Detroit (20-46), New York Knicks (21-45), Chicago (22-43), and Charlotte (23-42).   The players and coaches for these stumbling NBA franchises will not be forced to play any additional games in Orlando this summer and extend their fans’ considerable misery.

Let the extended vacations begin!  As TNT commentator Charles Barkley likes to say, “1-2-3, Cancun!” 

For the 2017 and 2018 champions in Golden State, this NBA season now mercifully ends after its team lost several starting players to injury.  The Warriors will benefit from the new delay in starting the 2020-2021 season as their long-time foes duke it out in the seemingly never-ending NBA 7-game series of playoff match-ups.    

With such a long delay in the season, you might think that the NBA would alter and/or shorten its playoff format this year. 

You would be wrong.

After these “lucky” 22 NBA teams conclude the regular season with a brief eight game schedule to establish the 16 playoff teams, the NBA playoffs at Walt Disney World will start (without fans) and be played as if nothing unusual has occurred this year. 

The top eight Eastern Conference teams will go head-to-head until a winner survives.  Same goes for the Western Conference teams.   And, in mid-October, those two survivors will slug it out for up to seven…more…games. Yawn!

By that time, the National Football League will be nearly halfway into its regular season.  Major League Baseball (if they play ball this year, that is) should be moving be into playoff games by then, too.  And don’t forget about college football (for those schools that are open to students, that is). 

Whose bad idea was it to begin the NBA Finals in mid-October? 

Take a bow, Commissioner Adam Silver! 

Instead of celebrating the uniqueness of this truly unique 2020 sports season, the NBA Commissioner has opted for the status quo on its playoffs.   The league will trot out the same old lengthy 7-game playoff formats again beginning in mid-August. 

For nearly three months, the NBA hopes that you will forget about football and baseball and watch two full months of playoff basketball games this fall. 

I understand that the NBA Commissioner has to compromise with both the team owners and players, but keeping the same playoff format for this particular 2020 season just doesn’t make sense to me.

Why not jazz things up this season with a one month (August) sprint to the finish?

It is difficult to write about sports in 2020 when they aren’t being played this spring (yet).  When the country shut down sports to protect the players, fans, and workers, the 2020 sports season is one big asterisk.

According to the Miriam Webster online dictionary, the character asterisk is “thought of as being appended to something (such as an athletic accomplishment included in a record book) typically in order to indicate that there is a limiting fact or consideration which makes that thing less important or impressive than it would otherwise be.”

It isn’t the fault of the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, or golf that their sports seasons were affected.  The unforeseen C-virus pandemic required a healthy dose of caution, so a delay or modification of certain sports seasons was certainly the correct call.

However…

I am reading more and more sports articles on various national sites where the writers opine that leagues like the National Basketball Association should find a way to conclude their seasons and crown a champion without a so-called “asterisk”.

Why? 

If the normal course of a sports season has been interrupted by a pandemic, labor dispute, war, or any other type of unforeseen reason, sports historians have marked those champions with a so-called “asterisk” to denote that the season had been shortened.

Regardless of the punctuation, a 2020 winner is still a sports champion!

In this unique sports world of 2020, the idea should be to either cobble together a modified schedule or just plain shut it down and try again next year.

Hall-of-Fame basketball player Shaquille O’Neal recently said that he believes the NBA should simply end their season right now without crowning a champion, allow the players to stay healthy and tip-off a brand new season, as scheduled, this fall. 

In the case of the NBA, I tend to agree with the big man on this one. 

I don’t think it’s fair to the basketball players to cram a lengthy end to their 2020 season and leave only a month or so prior to restarting again in October for a full campaign ending in 2021.   The NBA regular season plays more than twice as many basketball games than college basketball does.   

As of this writing, the NBA is currently considering an abbreviated season conclusion by staging the league’s games in Orlando at the Disney Wide World of Sports venue. 

To me, the key word should be “abbreviated”.  Crown a champion by the end of July, and I’m all in!

The National Hockey League is proposing a 24-team dash for the Stanley Cup to end their 2020 season.  Sounds great!  Go for it, but put those hockey sticks away before August 1 and the first preseason games of the NFL begin. 

What about baseball?  Simple.  Play as many games as you can (whenever you decide to start playing them) before the end of September.   On October 1, the playoffs start and the 2020 Asterisk World Series needs to conclude before the end of the day on October 31. 

The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) 2020 remaining schedule seems to have been written with a golf pencil.  In the goofy 2020 sports seasons, golf deserves a mulligan, too!

The men’s professional golf tour currently shows the PGA Championship back in August in San Francisco (great!), the US Open being played in September at Winged Foot near New York (terrific!), and they have even moved The Masters tournament from April into November.

On Sunday afternoon, I cleared my busy schedule (cough, cough) to watch the first “live” men’s professional golf match in the past couple of months.

The highly anticipated “Taylor Made Driving Relief” skins match was broadcast on NBC Sunday afternoon.  It featured four young guns of the PGA tour as Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson paired off against two former Oklahoma State Cowboys golfers, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff.  The match was played at the legendary Seminole Golf Club in southeastern Florida.

Sunday’s televised golf event was intended to promote the game of golf as about $5.5 million was raised (mostly from corporate sponsors) for a few charities which could use a financial boost due to the recent pandemic.

A skins game means that the two teams of golfers play against each other on a hole-by-hole basis with the lowest individual score for one team against the other team’s low score on the hole.  If both teams tie on a hole, then there is a carryover of the dollar value (in this case, for charity) onto the next hole.  The final six holes carried a significantly increased dollar values to increase the suspense and, theoretically, keep viewers watching. 

This one-time event was quite interesting in a number of ways.  Let’s examine a few.

***The golf course was unique and worth the time spent watching

For me, the most anticipated part of the event was getting a chance to see this exclusive seaside golf course which regularly shows-up as one of America’s top 25 golf venues.  Seminole Golf Club, which opened 90 years ago in 1930, is located along Florida’s Atlantic coastline in North Palm Beach.  It is quite exclu$ive with a relatively small number of well-healed members (including one their newest members, Tom Brady). 

Translated – you and I won’t be playing golf at Seminole Golf Club anytime soon, so it was “must see TV” if you wanted to see an iconic national golf treasure for the first time.

For visual optics, Seminole did not disappoint. 

This 7,200 yard seaside golf course features an abundance of sand, sand dunes, water, but very few and far-between skinny palm trees.  The fairways are generously wide.  The greens, though, gave these professional golfers fits as they are relatively small (by today’s PGA standards) and very tricky to read. 

That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, this relatively wide-open golf course (like so many others on tour) was reduced into a glorified four-man drive, pitch, and putt competition for these young golfers utilizing modern-day golf clubs and golf balls.   The rough (for what little I saw) was better manicured than most municipal golf course fairways.  Thank goodness for the abundance of natural sand areas and water to offer a little resistance to these golfers playing this classic links course.

* No caddies allowed! 

Yes, these four 30-ish golfers all carried their own golf clubs around this lovely golf course on Sunday afternoon.   That was primarily due to an abundance of C-Virus caution to keep as few people on the golf course as possible.  The golfers were allowed to utilize another technology (range finders) to determine the approximate yardage from the fairway to the greens. 

The good news is that the players were noticeably quicker (the match was over in about 4 hours and 15 minutes).  The reason?  There wasn’t all of the excessive back-and-forth chatting between the player and the caddy on shots from the fairway and around the greens. 

Though much of the country is trying to take one careful step at a time to come out and deal with life during this C-virus pandemic, the sports landscape has, for the most part, gone blank.

Other than the fortunate timing of the National Football League whose season had already concluded, sports fans of the other major sports (basketball, hockey, and baseball) have literally been shut down while we collectively figure out ways to deal with everything. 

In the short-term, there wasn’t a question that the right step was to shut everything down, keep people relatively safe, and work as hard as possible on both a cure and medicines/practices that would speed-up recoveries from effects caused by a worldwide pandemic.

For college basketball, no school this spring has meant no March Madness and Final Four conclusion.  For college baseball, the end of on-campus classes has meant there will be no baseball tailgating trips to Omaha this June, either.  The same goes for the annual women’s softball finals in OKC, too. 

Question #1:  What should the NBA and NHL do with their remaining seasons? 

As of this writing, the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League still have about 20% of their regular season games remaining plus their traditional three month slog of playoff games to go. 

Both sports feature a lot of person-to-person contact, so the only conceivable way to play any games would be to test the players and game officials prior to every single game – even if no fans were permitted into the stands. 

Since both leagues normally conclude play in June, a resumption of the 2020 season without adjustments would encroach on “King Football” as games would roll into the start of football season. 

That would be a very bad idea.

For a sports fan like myself, I would prefer that the two leagues immediately end the regular season and award the top 16 teams as playoff participants.  If there are any ties involved for the final spot, then a single play-in game would be needed prior to beginning the playoffs.  All other tiebreakers between playoff teams would be determined by current league rules.

Then, let’s play a two-of-three series in an empty arena (for example, playing all of the NBA’s playoff games at Disney World appeals to me).  For the finals, make it a best three-out-of-five series.  If started in June, you would still be finished before mid-July and not have to share the spotlight with football. 

If the virus breaks out on a playoff team, that team would be required to forfeit any remaining games in this 2020 abbreviated playoff season.    

To me, this year is much like one of those strike-shortened seasons of the past.  Just put an asterisk next to this year’s NBA and NHL champions and proceed into next season.

Question #2:  What about Major League Baseball?

I think the same concepts apply with baseball.  Finish the regular season (however many games are played) by September 30 and shorten all of the playoff series so the World Series finishes in the month of October. 

It’s going to be hard to “social distance” baseball players in a single dugout.  Perhaps they might want to send a few more players to the bullpen and even leave a few benchwarmers in the locker room. 

You will also need to run daily testing of players and officials, too.  Initially, it might be wise to play games in Florida and Arizona spring training venues to minimize travel issues for players.

In Dallas, the NFL’s Cowboys and their football fans are delighted with the team’s recent haul in the 2020 draft class.  This weekend, the NFC team for the state of Texas just grabbed a veteran NFL quarterback with a local connection for peanuts as one this season’s smartest insurance moves.

If you mosey on down 240 miles to the south on I-45 to Houston, though, it’s a quite different story.  The team’s head football coach, Bill O’Brien, is also the team’s General Manager.  Given the Texans’ questionable personnel moves over the past few months, pro football fans of the southeast Texas AFC team are wondering what the heck is happening to the football franchise located in America’s energy capital.

Geographically speaking, Texas is the second largest state (behind Alaska) in the USA.  The rivalry between the sports teams for Dallas and Houston can be as energetic as the state’s abundant oil, gas, and wind resources.

The Dallas Cowboys were the first NFL football team to plant their flag in Texas.  Born sixty years ago in 1960, the team’s success on the field under long-time head coach Tom Landry gradually built a national following.  Though football fans in Green Bay and Pittsburgh might argue otherwise, the media somehow dubbed the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s Team” despite the quiet persona of their reserved head football coach. 

Dallas won a couple of Super Bowls in 1971 and 1977 under Tom Landry and lost three other times in the big game during the 1970’s, too.  After going “0-for-the-80’s” and sliding out of the Super Bowl spotlight, the Dallas Cowboys NFL team was sold to an Arkansas native, Jerry Jones.

Jones, who made and built his early fortune in the oil business in Fort Smith, Arkansas, forked-over the most money ever paid (at that time) for an NFL franchise in early 1989.   For the now-paltry sum of $140 million, the 2020 version of the Dallas Cowboys are considered to be worth somewhere between $4 and $5 billion. 

Jones’ investment in the Cowboys has certainly paid-off a lot easier than drilling a 10,000 foot vertical dry hole somewhere in the Arkoma basin in the middle 1980’s.   

A few hundred miles to the south via I-45, the Houston Oilers of the fledgling American Football League are celebrating 60 years of professional football this season, too.  Unfortunately, it will happen in Nashville, Tennessee.

One of the original members of the AFL, the Houston Oilers won the league championship in both 1961 and 1962, and the team was granted entry into the NFL in 1970 with the merger of the two pro football leagues.  Playing in the so-called “Eighth Wonder of the World”, the Houston Astrodome, the team’s enthusiastic fans embraced the team with their “Luv’ Ya Blue” song and confident swagger in Houston. 

Though the Houston Oilers were denied a few chances to make the Super Bowl in the 1970’s by their arch-nemesis, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team made the NFL playoffs ten out of their 26 seasons after the AFL/NFL merger. 

As the NFL grew in popularity, Bud Adams, the owner of the Houston Oilers, wanted a larger venue than the cozy 50,000 seat Houston Astrodome.  On more than one occasion, “Bottom Line Bud” threatened the city of Houston that he would move the franchise if the city’s taxpayers didn’t build a bigger and more luxurious football stadium for his team.

After making a serious threat to move the Houston Oilers to Jacksonville failed in 1987, Bud Adams kept-up the pressure for the city to build his team a bigger facility. 

They didn’t. 

As reported last weekend, the New Orleans Saints have landed yet another castaway quarterback as former Tampa Bay starter “Famous” Jameis Winston signed a one-year deal with the Saints this week.

Over the past two seasons, the Saints’ have apparently gained the reputation as the NFL’s “Quarterback Rehab U.” 

Remember Teddy Bridgewater? 

Bridgewater was a late first round pick in 2014 by the Minnesota Vikings and had some initial success in the NFL as the Vikings quarterback.  In his third season, he suffered a devastating left leg injury which required a lengthy rehab and was eventually shipped to the New York Jets for the 2017 season. 

Fortunately, the likeable Teddy Bridgewater was dealt to the New Orleans Saints in 2018 to become a back-up for future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Drew Brees.    

After spending his first year in New Orleans on the bench and learning the system, Teddy’s confidence and career slowly became reborn.  In 2019, Drew Brees was injured, and Bridgewater led the Saints to a perfect 5-0 record as a starter until Brees returned to the line-up.

The rest of the NFL noticed.  Bridgewater recently inked a lucrative 3-year, $63 million deal to play for the Carolina Panthers (ironically, a Saints competitor in the NFC South).

Teddy Bridgewater (a fan favorite everywhere he has played) has been given a mid-career reboot after his time in New Orleans and is now financially set for life after spending a couple of years learning from the Saints’ quarterback brain trust.

Enter Jameis Winston.

Different than Teddy Bridgewater, Jameis Winston came into the NFL in from Florida State as a gifted athlete with a cannon arm.  Standing 6’4” and weighing 230 pounds, he won the 2013 Heisman Trophy in leading Florida State to the college football national championship that season.  Winston even pitched for the Seminoles baseball team. 

In the 2015 NFL draft, Jameis Winston was selected by Tampa Bay with the first overall pick.  His initial NFL contract guaranteed him nearly $17 million with the four-year deal paying him a total of $23.35 million.  Jameis Winston should be financially set for life no matter what happens over the remainder of his NFL career.

As in college, Winston immediately showed the NFL that he had great athletic talent.  Just last year in Tampa Bay, Jameis passed for over 5,000 yards.  That makes him one of only eight NFL quarterbacks to accomplish that feat.  He joins legendary talents like Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Matthew Stafford, Patrick Mahomes, and his new mentor in New Orleans, Drew Brees. 

Unfortunately, the 2019 version of Jameis Winston also set an NFL record by becoming the first player to pass for 30 or more touchdowns (33 in his case) and 30 interceptions in the same season.  He averaged nearly two interceptions per game in 2019 as the Bucs finished the year 7-9 for the season and just 2-6 at home. 

Turnovers lose football games.  You cannot give the ball to an opponent two additional times per game and expect to win more games than your team loses.  Statistics confirm this theory.

Despite his significant athletic talent, Jameis Winston’s decision-making on the field was losing the team too many games. 

Last season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hired a new head coach.  Two-time NFL Coach of the Year Bruce Arians was

*Note – Due to hosting issues, this post (initially published 4/22) is being re-posted. Sorry!

In this corner, it’s the three-time defending NFC South champion New Orleans Saints and their record setting leader, Drew Brees. 

To the northeast of New Orleans, long-time gunslinger Matt Ryan readies his Atlanta Falcons for another challenge in 2020. 

In Charlotte, the Panthers’ new quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater, and their new offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, reconnect after spending time together in New Orleans two years ago. 

But the NFC South’s biggest ripple is expected to come from Tampa Bay as former New England legend, Tom Brady, should add even more drama to this already-tough division.

In addition to Brady, the Buccaneers have now added Brady’s former swashbuckling tight end, Rob Gronkowski, after handing the Patriots a fourth round pick as Gronk ended his one-year retirement to play ball with his ol’ buddy from New England.

Look out for Brady, Gronk, and the Bucs in 2020!

Aghhh, matey! 

Tampa’s Buccos’ will now have even more of the sports media’s focus (good for Saints/Falcons/Panthers fans) with the former Patriots’ dynamic duo on the squad.  With that, the post-season expectations for the south Florida franchise just took another leap, too.

For the current NFC South kingpins, the New Orleans Saints, the Gronkowski addition in Tampa will add more fuel to the fire. 

Head coach, Sean Payton, and Hall-of-Famer quarterback Drew Brees will not lay down and anoint the Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Bucs as the best team in this division, either. 

With the NFL draft coming up on Thursday, the newest signings by Tampa Bay may alter the draft day decisions for New Orleans as well as Atlanta and Carolina. 

With an unexpectedly bad (5-11) season in 2019, the Carolina Panthers have been busy this year, too. 

They fired their long-time head coach (Ron Rivera – who is now the head coach in Washington) and then hired a “hot” college coach from Baylor (Matt Rhule). 

Along with the coaching change, the Panthers have been dealing with issues with key players, too.  Quarterback Cam Newton, a former overall number 1 draft pick and NFL MVP, has been told to hit the road due to his long litany of injuries and inconsistent play.   He is now a free agent looking for a new team to play for.

The Panthers replaced him with New Orleans’ Saints back-up quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater, and his former Saints’ mentor, Joe Brady, as the offensive coordinator.  Meanwhile, the team just locked-up their current best offensive weapon, Christian McCaffrey, with an expensive four year deal with $64 million contract extension.

Defensively, the Panthers’ formerly-dominating defense will start this season without their best player in five-time All-Pro linebacker, Luke Kuechly.  The 30-year old linebacker announced his retirement after eight seasons in the NFL citing possible long-term health concerns.

On the surface, it appears that Carolina has a number of holes to fill in the NFL draft and via other acquisitions to become competitive again in the NFC South.  Carolina can become the spoiler in this season’s drama if the team is rejuvenated by a new coach and attitude.

In Atlanta, the Falcons made one of the league’s biggest splashes in the off-season by signing running back Todd Gurley in a deal with the Los Angeles Rams. 

At times,

*Note – This story initially published on Tuesday 4/21 (hosting issues). My apologies…

Finally, a “normal” sports day is coming this week!  On Thursday night, Round 1 of the NFL draft will take place.  Round 2 and 3 are scheduled on Friday while Rounds 4, 5, 6, and 7 will wrap things up on Saturday.

Sure, there won’t be a big crowd to applaud and, for New York Giants fans, to boo their choices in person.  I’m going to miss that, aren’t you?

However, this is basically NFL’s version of going to the grocery store to select one or more items from various sections to complete their team. 

Some of the NFL’s best teams in the past few years (New England, New Orleans,  and, lately, San Francisco) have been known to trade down for more late round “hamburger” picks rather than go for a first round “steak”.   The best teams always seem to know what they are shopping for at the NFL Draft Supermarket and are ready to make a deal to the perennial losers.

Some NFL teams head to the annual draft with lofty aspirations and, a few years later, learn that their shopping skills are just plain terrible. 

Let’s take a look at the #1 pick in this year’s NFL draft.  The Cincinnati Bengals were 2-14 last season and are now on the clock.  The entire football world expects the Bengals to select LSU quarterback (and native Ohioan) Joe Burrow. 

However, Cincinnati’s track record for building their team with first round talent has been a bust.  Below is a list of the Bengals top picks for the past eleven seasons:

Other than oft-injured wide receiver A.J. Green, there aren’t many names you should recognize on this list.  Most of the past ten top draft picks by Cincinnati have not developed into All-Star talent. 

Though most of that blame is simply making bad decisions on draft day, blame can also be attributed to a coaching staff which is unable to develop the player’s skills and the athlete for failing to work hard enough to improve his performance and eliminate deficiencies.

Given that a franchise like Cincinnati needs a lot of help to become a playoff contender, would it make sense for them to trade this year’s number one overall pick and accumulate more high round draft picks to fill holes?

Many questions like this abound as the NFL draft approaches on Thursday.  Let’s play “NFL Draft – Deal or No Deal” and examine a few situations:

Question #1 – If Miami offers Cincinnati all three of their first round draft picks (#5, #19 (from Pittsburgh), and #26 (from Houston)) in exchange for Cincinnati’s overall #1 pick, should the Bengals take the deal? 

Evaluation:  Given the Bengals’ need to get a roster full of more talented players, this would appear to be a very good deal for the Bengals.  At the #5 spot, the Bengals could grab one of the remaining top quarterbacks (likely to be Oregon’s Justin Herbert or Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa) and then add two additional talented players with the other two first round selections. 

On the other hand, we’re talking about a team which has bungled the majority of its first round draft picks the past ten seasons.   The probabilities favor of Cincinnati making poor selections with at least two of the three first round picks.

SwampSwami says:  NO DEAL!  Cincinnati should keep the pick, draft Joe Burrow, and make better selections with the top pick of rounds 2 through 7.   The hopeful Bengals fans will buy more season tickets to see if Ohio’s Burrow tu...

*Due to hosting issues, this story (initially published 4/14/20) is being re-posted. My apologies!

It’s been a bone-crushing week for promoter and corporate entrepreneur, Vince McMahon.

The second reincarnation of McMahon’s spring football league, the XFL, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early this week.

On Thursday, McMahon’s wrestling corporation, the WWE, announced it has been forced to cut expenses as it released a significant number of the company’s wrestling performers. 

Vince McMahon, Sr. started his own wrestling business in 1953.  His son, Vince McMahon, Jr., has taken the company to new heights. 

The WWE went public many years ago (NYSE symbol: WWE) to generate more cash and allowed the family business to become a worldwide entertainment phenomenon.

In the case for both of his business ventures, the recent C-Virus pandemic has hit McMahon over the head with a virtual folding chair as the lack of paying customers put the nail in the coffin of the fledgling XFL spring football venture.  Meanwhile, McMahon’s WWE organization just laid-off wrestling talent and has cut other operating costs as revenues dwindle.

Let’s examine each of these issues separately.

For the XFL, the spring football league, which had just played five games in 2020, filed paperwork for Chapter 11 Reorganization bankruptcy earlier this week on April 13. 

The filing (which I have reviewed in detail – or the lack there-of) apparently isn’t required to reveal its assets, but it does list its top 25 creditors. 

Below is a list of those with a little more “color” than provided by the bankruptcy filing:

Remember, these are unsecured creditors and most will likely receive a percentage of amounts owed depending on the outcome of the restructuring/bankruptcy proceedings.

In the case of the latest reincarnation of the XFL, the inability of the league to continue playing football games due to the recent C-virus pandemic might have been a blessing in disguise for McMahon’s wallet. 

Though the television contracts and production for the new league were far superior than those for 2019’s ill-fated spring football venture named the Association of Association Football (AAF), the number of fans in the stands was strikingly similar. 

Weak.

At an average ticket price of $25-30 and average attendance of less than 20,000 fans per home game, the XFL’s revenue stream was simply incapable of covering the expenses of operating a professional football league.  Cash from operations is required to pay for coaches, players, referees, staff, stadium leases, and assorted other costs.

Even though McMahon’s XFL capped player salaries (except for quarterbacks) at $55,000 per year, the league’s expenses (like the departed AAF in 2019) simply are far more than the revenues being generated from television and the fans (tickets and merchandise).     

Yes, the XFL’s television presentations were more interesting to watch than the AAF and certainly had a solid production value.  However, just like the 2019 AAF, the television ratings and the number of fans in the stands were dropping by the week, too.

According to several reports, Vince McMahon personally sold hundreds of millions (up to $300 million) of his own WWE stock to adequately fund the XFL’s start-up and fund the league for at least a couple of years to give it time to catch-on. 

For Vince McMahon,