The Negro Leagues are now "major leagues"; this is progress?

 So, the ranks of former major league baseball players expanded dramatically this week when Major League Baseball declared that the Negro Leagues were "major leagues."  My first reaction is to recall the joke told by Ben Franklin in the musical 1776; when told that he has the honor of being called an Englishman he says while that may be, he does not have the same rights as an Englishman and “. . . to call me [an Englishman] without those rights is like calling an ox a bull; he’s thankful for the honor but he’d much rather have restored what was rightfully his.”

Let me be very clear here; I am not saying that the African Americans who were forced to participate in the Negro Leagues were inferior ballplayers.  It is the greatest stain on a sport I adore that for many decades some of the greatest athletes in America were unable to play merely because of their skin color.  The history of the Negro Leagues, which Ken Burns ably and rightly included in his series Baseball, is a necessary component of understanding the game.  I have been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and it was a shame that the exploits of those players were not documented as fully as those of players in the National League and the American League.

But it wasn’t “Major League” baseball, and calling it that I find a trifle insulting.  If anything, maybe it was better.  As Jackie Robinson demonstrated once he was allowed to join the “major leagues,” the style of baseball played in the Negro Leagues was faster, more daring, requiring more strategy than the style of White teams in the 1950’s, where power hitting was all the rage. 

Not only was the style of play different, but the teams also didn’t play a set schedule of 162 games like the “major leagues.”  Facilities were usually inferior and travel schedules were more taxing.  Pitchers pitched more frequently as staffs weren’t very deep.  They played shorter schedules, so adding them to Major League statistics won’t affect counting stats, but average stats will be skewed; according to the LA Times article linked above, now Babe Ruth and Ted Williams will no longer be in the top ten for batting average.  This isn’t because Negro League players were better; they just played shorter seasons and had shorter careers.

What I think is the real damage from declaring the Negro Leagues to be “Major Leagues” is that now MLB can deny that there ever was any discrimination in baseball.  African Americans can now no longer say that they were kept out of the Major Leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, because now Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson DID play in the Major Leagues.  Problem solved.

If baseball wants to do something about racial issues, there are other steps that can be taken.  Cap Anson, the architect of the policy of excluding African Americans from playing in the Major Leagues, should have that fact added to his plaque in Cooperstown, permanently labeling him as a racist.  This year MLB took former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis' name off the MVP trophies awarded at the end of the season; they should add a similar codicil to his plaque in Cooperstown as well (or just vote him out; what did he do, other than enforce the color barrier for 24 years?).

I will assume MLB meant well by “promoting” the Negro Leagues to Major League status, but it doesn’t make up for over a half century of overt, unabashed racism (and several more decades of covert, clandestine racism).  I consider it to be rewriting history to make past racism seem more palatable.  Once again, a mostly White organization takes symbolic action against racism; maybe eventually there will be some real, non-symbolic progress.

Does Colin Kaepernick have a job in the NFL?  I didn’t think so,

Are TV Comedies even trying to be funny?

 Many people have described the current TV landscape as a “Golden Age.”  Precisely, the third Golden Age; the first was the 1950’s, when TV technology was too crude to allow the filming of car chases or go on exotic locations, so TV dramas consisted of actors standing (or sitting) on a stage . . . [gulp] talking.  The second Golden Age was the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when Grant Tinker and MTM revolutionized the drama with groundbreaking shows like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.  We are now in the late stages of the third Golden Age, when pay cable unfettered content restrictions and revenue streams were divorced enough from “ratings” that daring new shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad could forge new ground.

This may be the Golden Age of Drama, but in my humble opinion it is the Lead Age of Comedy.  Of course, it is dangerous to discuss comedy rationally, as it is entirely subjective.  I won’t do the research, but I suspect that the audience for The King of Queens regularly exceeded that of the great TV classic Taxi.  But while I will confess that what I find funny is idiosyncratic, I still look at the recent winners of the Emmy for Best Comedy and wonder if this isn’t some joke on one of those prank shows.

At the last Emmy Awards the series Schitt’s Creek swept all the major awards.  That was for its sixth season; I have not watched it, but I did watch the fifth season (after having been told the first four seasons were not very good).  The show isn’t exactly bad, and my respect for great performers like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, both of whom I loved when they were on SCTV, is tremendous.  But the set up is cliched, and the writing didn’t seem to go anywhere.  In one episode a rumor starts on the internet that Catherine O’Hara’s character had died; people were surprised to see her, then it all stopped because a giraffe stepped on a kitten and the entire internet focused on that.  There was no pay off, no revelation for anyone about being happy to be alive, or being sad when the attention stopped. There was no plot development that I could detect.

As unsatisfied as I was about Schitt’s Creek, I liked the previous year’s winner, Fleabag, even less.  Again, I did not watch the season that won but the previous season, season 1.  For the life of me I could not understand why this was called a comedy, except that if it was called a drama it would be considered worse.  The sole joke was that the main character was devoid of redeeming qualities, which I suppose could be developed amusingly but there was no attempt to do so.  I gave up after 3 episodes, which may be unfair, but life is too short to watch a TV show you aren’t enjoying (besides, there were only 6 episodes so I watched half a season).

I was only able to watch episodes of the previous Best Comedy winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on a plane over the Atlantic, so I reserve judgement (but I will say that what I saw did not encourage me to seek out more episodes).  I have recently watched another Best Comedy nominee from that year, season 1 of the dark comedy Barry.  This is another show with one joke; a hit man in LA stumbles into an acting class while tailing a mark, and decides he wants to become an actor.  I have been able to keep watching Barry, as it is well made and well-acted, and the plot is developing into an absurdist existential farce.  But it isn’t “funny.”

It’s almost as if the modern comedy has evolved to the point where it isn’t supposed to be funny.  Lucy frantically trying to manage items on a speeding conveyor belt is so passé; now we are supposed to watch a character in an uncomfortable situation and chuckle (internally) at the character’s discomfort.  Eliciting laughter is not a comedy’s raison d’etre.

Frankly, the funniest show on broadcast television now might be Legends of Tomorrow, the CW’s pastiche of superheroes that is masquerading as a show about superheroes.  I will concede that my favorite comedy of the past four seasons, NBC’s The Good Place, often passed on doing jokes in favor of some absurdist philosophical point (but the show still had many, many moments of unbridled hilarity).

I think the problem is that the TV marketplace is now so Balkanized, so fractured, that there is no point in trying to appeal to a mass market funny bone.  Why try to appeal to 22 million viewers, like Friends did in its final seasons?  There are so many networks and platforms, it is futile to try and reach that audience.  I can’t even find data on how many people in America watched Fleabag (I didn’t try very hard) but I am guessing it is in the low single digit millions, if that.

And don’t get me started on what these shows call a “season.”  Barry is all of 8 less than half-hour episodes; Fleabag was 6 per season and ran out of ideas after two seasons.  Cheers produced 22-27 episodes per year for 11 years; yes, the Kirstie Alley were a slog at times, but that’s over 270 episodes.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say creators who can create 270 episodes of a TV show (while racking up 179 Emmy nominations and 28 wins) are more talented than ones who call it a wrap after 12.

So, there will never be another I Love Lucy, or All in the Family, or Cheers.  TV comedies aren’t even trying to be funny; maybe the last funny sitcom was Modern family, and that ran dry a couple of seasons before the end.  I guess if we want to find the humor in our modern world, we have to read the political news.

Dick Allen for the Hall of Fame?

 Ron Santo.

Marvin Miller.

Dick Allen?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has gotten into a nasty habit recently of denying entry to deserving people, then letting them in immediately after they die, when they are unable to appreciate the honor.  Marvin Miller, one of the two or three most influential people in the history of baseball, was kept out until after his death, but he said he understood why the owners, who control the Hall of Fame, would not want him admitted.  The case of Ron Santo I find harder to fathom, as he was a popular player and then a beloved announcer for the Cubbies.  The fact that he also lost a leg to diabetes and was in ill-health when he was not being voted in adds to my confusion.

Recently former MVP and Rookie of the Year Dick Allen passed away.  The objective case for his Hall of Fame induction is obvious.  According to Baseball Reference, his ratings for Black Ink, Grey Ink and the Hall of Fame Monitor all put him over the threshold (albeit marginally in some cases).  He put up impressive offensive numbers during one of the most pitching-dominant periods in baseball history, the 1960’s.  The fact that he picked up an MVP award during his career further solidifies his case. 

Yet he never garnered much support from the Baseball Writers Association, where he never got more than 19% of the vote, and far cry from the needed 75%.  The Veterans Committee came close to inducting him, giving him 11 o the needed 12 votes.  Since then the Phillies retired his number, and a revote on his induction was postponed due to COVID.

The case for Dick Allen entering the Hall of Fame is obvious, but so is the case for keeping him out.  You don’t have his numbers and peak at under 20% of the writers’ vote for no reason.  He was difficult to work with, attacked managers and teammates in the press, was a divisive locker room presence, and never led a team to a championship.  Bill James, in his seminal book What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame, recounts Allen’s tumultuous history and concludes, “And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut.”

But now that he has passed away, will he get in?  If he only missed by one vote before, I’m guessing the sentimental vote will put him over the top.  Also, a lot of his “difficulty” at the time can be attributed to racism, and in a more woke culture some of the complaints about him will be muted (Bill James acknowledged that Allen was the victim of racism, but pointed out that so were Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campenella, Bob Gibson, and others who weren’t excluded from the Hall because they were “difficult”). 

I do wish that the Hall would make an effort to indict players while they are alive so they can appreciate the honor.  I previously wrote that Pete Rose should be inducted after he dies, because his “lifetime ban” will have expired, and the point of the ban was to deny him the honor.  For millionaire superstars (like Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens) there aren’t many penalties that will deter them from bad acts, but not seeing themselves inducted in the Hall of Fame should make them think twice.

I’m not proposing that dead players be ineligible for induction, like deceased persons can’t win a Nobel Prize.  I’m just saying that for marginal persons who are kept out, greater weight should be given to how close the person is from meeting the Grim Reaper.  Come on, you know Marvin Miller should be in the Hall, so when he gets past 80 years old just put him in.   Ron Santo was the best third baseman during a pitching-dominated era and played in a pitcher-friendly park, and put in years as a broadcaster.  He should be alive when the inevitable and overdue induction takes place.

The Hall is not about numbers and statistics.  If it were, they would have an objective standard for entry, like golf.  Anyone with a lifetime OPS of .900 or career WAR over 60, come on down.  There are intangibles.  When Harold Baines was inducted, I protested that it is the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Pretty Good.  Sandy Koufax only had 6 or 7 good seasons, but he was the best pitcher when he was on, and he led his team to championships.  On the other hand, Rafael Palmiero had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, but never led his team to anything.  Koufax goes in, Palmiero stays out (although granted it is for the failed drug test).

So, Hall of Fame voters, if you are on the fence in the future, look at the player’s birth certificate and take that into account when voting yea or nay.

 

I defend analytics

 Something happened a month ago that I just didn’t feel like talking about, even though it was in my wheelhouse.  It was something where I would defend a decision that everyone in the world was attacking, but I guess the attacks were so ubiquitous I figured what would be the point?  I love tilting at windmills but it gets tiresome.  But the attacks have gone on for a month and at some point my natural contrariness gets backed into a corner and has to come out fighting.

The event I am speaking of was the decision of Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash to pull starter Blake Snell from Games Six of the 2020 World Series in the sixth inning while he was pitching a 2-hit shutout.  The relief pitcher, Nick Anderson, proved less capable and the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

Cash subsequently won the AL Manager of the Year award (for his work during the regular season).  Snell has said he was disappointed by the decision and he now is the subject of trade rumors.  Last week on ESPN one of their personalities opined that the award for “Turkey of the Year” should not only be given to Cash, but named after him in perpetuity for making the dumbest decision of all time.

The decision was motivated by analytics, namely the fact that Snell had gone through the Dodgers’ line-up twice and that he was not as effective when facing batters for a third time.  The most vociferous attacks on Cash have come from the anti-analytics community, who see the Rays’ loss as conclusive proof that analytics are stupid.

First of all, using analytics to make decisions does not me that the decision is always going to work out 100% of the time.  Analytics is about probability, that over time you will more often come out ahead if you make rational decisions based on past observation of outcomes.  Part of the allure of non-analytics is that practitioners remember when their “hunches” paid off and forget all the times that their gut led them astray.

Second, decisions have to be executed.  If Nick Anderson had come in and pitched two shut out innings, we might not be having this conversation.  But he gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Mookie Betts, and the Rays’ fate was sealed.  News flash—Mookie Betts is a pretty good hitter.  Maybe if he had faced Snell for a third time, he would have timed a fastball and hit a home run.  Anderson’s subsequent failure to execute does not impact the decision made to pull Snell before he started facing batters for a third time, which had historically proven to be a bad idea.

What might have happened if Snell had been left in?  Let’s go back to the 2015 World Series.  Mets starter Mat Harvey is pitching a gem in Game 5, cruising after eight innings.  Harvey, who had only pitched one complete game in his entire history (and that was a blowout, not a close game), convinced his manager to ignore what the numbers said and to leave him in.  Mets’ manager Terry Collins eventually gave in and . . . the results were not good.  Harvey blew the game in the ninth, the Mets lost the game in extra innings, and thus lost the Series 4-1.  Analytics doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

As far as I can tell, people who don’t like analytics have one thing in common; they aren’t good at math.  They hate what they are incapable of understanding.  Analytics are responsible for getting the low-payroll Rays into the Series in the first place; analytics is the only weapon teams like the Rays and the “Moneyball” A’s have to compete against teams who can afford to make mistakes and overpay players who don’t work out. 

I concede that analytics has made sports less interesting.  Analytics says home runs are the most efficient way to score runs, so we have to put up with most at bats ending in a strikeout, base on balls, or home run.  In basketball, the mid-range jumper is dying because the most efficient strategy is to combine dunks with 3-point baskets.  In football, the short passing game is preferred to a “ground and pound” rushing offence or unleashing a mad bomber at quarterback because it has proven most effective.

But it is evolution, not heresy.  Yes, I miss the days when Bob Gibson would have punched his manager in the nose before giving up the ball before the ninth inning of a World Series game.  Yes, I miss the days when the 1971 Orioles had four 20-game winners on their pitching staff, when now there aren’t four 20-game winners in all of the majors (in 2019 there were exactly two).  Yes, I wish modern hitters listened to Wee Willie Keeler who said the secret to success was to “hit it where they ain’t,” instead of hitting into a shift when a bunt down the third base line would be an easy double. 

I miss those days, but they are in the past, not the future.

Memo to Mets owner Steve Cohen--don't start planning your parade route yet

 

The Mets new owner plans to win World Series; isn’t that cute?

The New York Mets were sold to Steve Cohen, about whom all I know is that he is rich enough to buy a sports team in New York, which doesn’t predispose me to liking him.  At his press conference after the sale was announced, he said he would be “disappointed” if the Mets didn't win a World Series in 3-5 years.

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed.

Non-sports people often buy sports teams and announce that the reason why the team hasn’t won recently is that they haven’t tried hard enough, didn’t plan strategically, or just didn't have enough heart. The baseball people who had been in charge, who had spent 20-30 or more years in the game, didn’t have the keen business mind that allows people to succeed in any field.

Let me remind Mr. Cohen of a few facts from recent history.  The Chicago Cubs recently ended a 108-year drought.  The Red Sox, despite the best efforts of Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk, had 86 years of frustration.  Currently, the Cleveland Indians are at 72 years and counting for a championship.   The vaunted Dodgers, one of the premiere franchises of the National League (and one of the richest) just won their first World Series after 32 years.  The Minnesota Twins, who haven’t won in almost 30 years, have lost 18 post-season games in a row.  The Oakland A’s, who haven’t won it all in 31 years, this year won their first post-season elimination game since 1973,  47 years ago.  Currently, 15 of the 30 franchises have championship droughts of 25 years or more.  One of those teams is the Mets, working on a 34 year drought.

Heck, four teams, the Rangers, Brewers, Padres, and Mariners, have never won a World Championship: for the Rangers that’s a 6-decade span.

But this Steve Cohen guy is going to come in, take a team that had a losing record in 2020 (okay, the 2020 season was hardly typical; they did have a .531 winning percent in 2019), and by virtue of his superior intellect, make them World Champions in 3-5 years? 

Because of its rich history with statistical analysis, table-top simulation games like Strat-O-Matic, and the Hot Stove league busy every off-season, there is a long tradition of people thinking they know more than the managers and general managers that play the game.  In some cases, this may be true; but it’s rare.

I would direct Mr. Cohen to the words of wisdom from the late Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti, who once said, “Baseball breaks your heart.  It was designed to break your heart.” You may be planning a parade in Manhattan sometime in 2023-25, but the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Astros, Nationals, Cubs, Indians, Tigers, Reds, Royals, Rangers, and 18 other major league teams have other ideas. 

Mr. Cohen, prepare to be disappointed. 

 

Lucifer Season 5 Review; there's still life in the old Devil

 

Life is full of tradeoffs.  Taking a job for more money may mean less time to spend with your kids.  Buying something that is more affordable usually means getting something more cheaply made.  Going out and having fun means risking catching a potentially deadly virus.  What to do.

A perennial trade off is that of quality versus quantity.  Let’s take the example of television programs.  Once upon a time, a “season” of a TV show meant a lot of episodes.  For example, the 1950’s half-hour Western “Have Gun – Will Travel” produced 39 episodes in its first season.  At this early stage of network television, the “TV season” started in the Fall and literally ran a new episode every week until it was time for the “summer rerun season” when networks showed repeats.  As you can imagine, the pace was grueling on the regular actors.

The number of episodes in a “season” slowly went down to where, in the mid-1960’s, a season was an episode count in the mid-20’s, such as Star Trek’s third season which produced 24 episodes.  The number continued to fall until at some point an equilibrium set in at 22 episodes, usually an initial order of 11 and then a “back order” of 10 additional episodes if the show was successful.

But then came a revolution when Premium cable started producing original shows but only 13 at a time.  Imagine, a season with one-third as many episodes as a show in the 1950’s!  But here is where the trade off comes in; the shows are higher quality, but there are fewer of them.  It is a lot easier to maintain high quality in scripts if, like The Sopranos, you only have to do 13 instead of 22, or 39.  This is probably why the last network show to win an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series was 24 way back in 2006.  In 2019, Game of Thrones season 8 won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series despite producing only six episodes.

This is a long-winded way of my getting around to reviewing Season 5 of Lucifer, which was on Fox for three seasons and now resides at Netflix.  Fox gave the show a limited order for season 1, then showed confidence with an 18-episode order in season 2 and a 26 episode order in season 3.  But now that the show is on Netflix, fans have to comfort themselves with a paltry 10 episodes in season 4 and only 8 in season 5.

But here’s the thing—Lucifer has never been this consistently good during its run.  Don’t get me wrong, after a mediocre season 1 the show made some wonderful course corrections and proved to be a source of good-natured blasphemy thereafter.  But there were more than a few episodes where the case of the week seemed a little thin, or the plot twists with lucifer’s backstory seemed a tad arbitrary, or Lucifer’s sexual puns were more lame than usual.  I have seen the first five episodes of season 5, and they have been five of the best episodes the show has produced.

One thing possibly improving the quality is that, before Netflix belatedly decided on a sixth season, this was supposed to be Lucifer’s swan song, and as the saying goes there is nothing like the prospect of being executed at dawn to focus the mind.  The show has shaken up the loose bounds of its formula (Devil solves crimes in Los Angeles) and is having more fun in how it tells stories.  Just as the show’s best episode, Season 3's "Off the Record," broke with its format, the show is now rising to new heights reveling in its new-found freedom.

Gratuitous spoiler alert at this point; proceed no further if you want NO information about Lucifer Season 5 (then why are you reading this?).  Episode 1, “Really Sad Devil Guy,” adopts a wonderfully executed concept where Lucifer, in Hell, decides to investigate the same murder as Detective Decker, only Lucifer can only access the murder victim’s memories.  This means he is recreating experiences that happened about 36 hours before Decker visits the same locations.  The second episode trots out the long-spoiled revelation that Lucifer’s twin brother, Michael, will attempt to impersonate him, with star Tom Ellis doing very impressive double duty (even if his American accent is lame).  Episode 3 gets delightfully meta as Lucifer and Decker investigate the murder of a showrunner for a TV show called Lieutenant Diablo, about a crime solving Devil in LA with an attractive female partner. 

Episode 4, “It Never Ends Well For the Chicken,” goes two places where it is surprising the show has not gone before: a black-and-white filmed homage to film noir, and Lucifer telling Trixie a bedtime story (their relationship is one of my favorite ones since the first episode).  The last episode I’ve seen, “Detective Amenadiel,” teams up Lucifer’s brother with Decker, revealing new sides of him, and also gives us some much-needed back story for Doctor Linda.

The show has never been better at balancing the needs of a large and talented cast, with only Aimee Garcia’s Ella getting some short shrift (made up for by her playing mobster Tommy Stompanato in Lucifer’s retelling of the story of how he got his ring; you have to see it to understand).  But there are three episodes remaining, so maybe Ella gets another visit to the nudist colony she and Lucifer went to in season 4.  D. B. Woodside and Kevin Alejandro both get to flex their comedic muscles, Lesley-Anne Brandt gets more to do as Mazekean than just glower and kick ass (she sings!), and the always wonderful Rachel Harris does more than just look exasperated when Lucifer is in her office.

I still wish season 5 was more than eight measly episodes, but so far season 5 is looking better than the slightly larger (10 episode) season 4, which was mainly notable for the aforementioned trip to the nudist colony (of course Lucifer would be enthusiastic, but who would have pegged Ella as his equally enthusiastic companion; shame about the unfortunately very long [and strategically placed] hair).  Eight great episodes of Lucifer is better than no episodes, but is it preferable to 20 mostly good episodes? 

As Woody Allen said in Love and Death, “It’s not the quantity of you sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality.  On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely have it looked into.”

 

The beginning of the end for college football?

“When people of privilege lose their privilege, it feels like oppression.”—Source unknown

 

It has been a tumultuous couple of years, and I am not referring to COVID-19.   Before the pandemic started, women in Hollywood discovered that they had an option other than a) shut up and take it, or b) shut up and quit.  A group that had been marginalized since anyone could remember suddenly put their collective feet down, and suddenly Harvey Weinstein is doing in depth research on a movie about prison conditions. 

Then, four year into Colin Kaepernick’s exile from the NFL because teams agreed that having a Super Bowl caliber QB who cared about social justice was a “distraction,” a Black man dies in police custody and now entire sports leagues are embracing Black Lives Matter, much to the chagrin of those who continue to think Black lives don’t matter but remain politic and silent.

The latest earthquake to shake up the fault lines of American society are the demands of a group of Pac 12 football players, who made a number of demands relating to player safety, working conditions, and social justice.  College football players have been fighting the system for years, struggling against the monolithic NCAA juggernaut for a few meager crumbs of the billions of dollars generated by an unpaid labor system.  They had about as much chance as a AA baseball team against the Yankees, but the tide may have turned.

Why might this latest attempt succeed, when previous attempts to gain power by unionizing and other form of organizing have failed?  One reason is success breeds success, and the players have made gains in the area of name, image, and likeness compensation.  The NCAA dragged its feet but had to take notice when California gave student athletes rights, but then Congress joined in and they had to at least give the appearance of capitulating.

But a bigger and more important factor is that the Big Bad NCAA doesn’t look so big and so bad when COVID-19 threatens the billions of dollars generated by the system.  Suddenly, strength becomes weakness; the prospect of losing all that revenue shows how terrified the colleges and the various conferences are of the loss.  After all, the students won’t lose any money because they don’t make any; but the coaches and athletic directors who make millions have a lot to lose.  And that gives the students power.

It's an application of the jiujitsu principle, allowing a smaller opponent to defeat a larger and more powerful adversary.  The schools in the NCAA have far more to lose than the students, and the students, sensing the fear in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the prospect of no autumn football, are taking the upper hand.

The loss of football revenue also revealed the importance of that money, as schools started shutting down non-revenue generating sports that lived only while football money was flowing into the system.  Universities needed football revenue like junkies need fixes.

Also, the power dynamic is different than in the pros.  If a sizable chunk of the Dallas Cowboys demanded Jerry Jones kneel for the national anthem, he could fire them all and find descent replacements.  But the bench isn’t as deep for college football teams.  If a coach has to replace a good part of his football team, he can’t poach players from other teams; all he can do is recruit hard for the next class (or start recruiting walk-ons from assorted calculus classes and anthropology seminars).  And who would want to go to a team likely to lose because of all those defections?  After a couple of seasons, he just might lose that multi-million-dollar coaching job and have to find work at a less prestigious college.

Aiding the students’ position is the fact that the NCAA is not really a monolith.  It turns out to have little actual power over the college landscape and has no way of reining in schools, especially those in the “Power 5” conferences.  The myth of NCAA power has been exposed as an emperor with no clothes, as each conference has responded differently to the pandemic, with no central authority asserting control. 

If you read a list of the demands being made by the Pac 12 players, it is notable both for its audacity and its circumspection.  These are not orphans asking for more gruel, please.  Who can argue against safety measures to avoid becoming victims of the COVID-19 pandemic?  Given support for the BLM movement, who can argue for increased financial aid for Black students?  Does it make sense to give coaches making millions per year a small pay cut that would contribute to social justice, increased player safety, and better working conditions?  Of course it does.  These aren’t a bunch of hippies taking over the administration building and demanding an end to the war; these are Stanford and UCLA students making reasonable and extremely feasible demands. 

Pac 12 college students are asking the questions that were asked generations ago by those same hippies: if not us, who?  If not now, when?