Thursday, August 22, 2013

8/22 (What I'm Reading) Quickie

What I'm reading, last night and this morning:

*Mark Cuban analyzes Google's play for the NFL with the WSJ's Peter Kafka.

(Also, if Apple TV secures a la carte rights to ESPN isn't an extinction-level event for cable companies, but it changes the game in ways that are much bigger than anyone will predict.)

*Reuters' Jack Shafer (I'm a huge fan of his) totally mis-reads the "Grantland Model."

*Grantland's Bill Barnwell has a two-part piece on the myth of "momentum" in the NFL. It's excellent. Read Part 1 here and read Part 2 here.

*Wright Thompson writing longish on legendary Iowa wrestling coach Dan Gable.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Wednesday 8/21 (Very) Quickie

Apologies for the light posting as I work with a team of my USA TODAY Sports Media Group colleagues to (imminently) launch the next evolution of Quickish, coming (very) soon...

There's one point I want to make about this Von Miller suspension that has been nagging at me:

He was suspended for six games. If he was a baseball player, that would be 60 games, a nearly unprecedented suspension.

In MLB circles, a 60-game suspension for one of the game's Top 5 players would be cause for a five-alarm freak-out -- we have pretty good evidence of that, with Ryan Braun.

In NFL circles, a suspension for nearly half the season of one of the best players in the sport -- arguably the best defensive player in the game -- is met with... well, not much.

There is a bit about how it will impact the Broncos' chances in those first six games -- and what implications that might have on their playoff chances (Super Bowl or bust, and all that).

But there is basically zero outrage, both relative to baseball and in an absolute sense. Is that because everyone ("everyone") basically accepts that pro football is powered at its core by PEDs?

As someone who sides with the group that finds the moralizing in baseball about PEDs to be wearying, hypocritical and counter-productive (see baseball's entire "Golden Age" fueled by something now banned as a PED -- amphetamines), it's so fascinating to me that a massive suspension to one of the NFL's biggest stars doesn't move the needle among the moralizing faction.

-- D.S.