There’s an ongoing story involving strippers and prostitution at the University of Louisville in which the evidence strongly suggests an assistant coach paid for women to dance naked and perform sex acts with basketball recruits and players.

At this point no criminal charges in the incidents have been filed and there is some doubt as if a crime has been committed. The head coach of the basketball team, Rick Pitino, has emphatically declared that he knew nothing of the parties at Billy Minardi Hall.

There are a couple of issues on point here for me.

The first question I ask is why anyone is in any trouble at all? From reading the various accounts of the incidents the recruits, the assistant coach who paid for the parties, and the women were all adults and engaged in the various activities without coercion.

My second issue is Pitino’s denial of any knowledge of the events. I argue that if someone wants to pay consenting adults to dance and potentially have sex with them then that’s a private contract between those individuals. However, I despise the “I didn’t know about it” argument. If you didn’t know about it, you should have known about it. You’re the head coach! What goes on during your watch is ultimately your responsibility.

If it were not for the NCAA I don’t think there would be any problem with the events as they apparently occurred. Certainly the NCAA can have whatever rules they want for their organization as long as they don’t run afoul of the Constitution. Therein lies my third issue, my favorite whipping boy, the NCAA.

Why do they have these rules?

The argument is that without restrictions preventing schools from offering favors to recruits, the richest schools would offer the biggest rewards. I’ve got news for you, NCAA. They already do. They build enormous stadiums, weight rooms, luxurious dormitories, lush cafeterias, fancy game-day uniforms, and other benefits in order to lure the athletes. Television exposure is a powerful incentive to a student who hopes to go onto a professional career and even just a kid who wants to be seen. Rules to prevent a coach from buying a bagel with spread on it are trying to close the barn door when there isn’t even a barn door to close. It’s wide open.

So a school has sex parties to entice recruits. I have no more problem with that than I do with a school housing them in special dormitories. It’s a salacious story and people like that, but let’s look at the root of the issue. The schools are making money from the games and want the best players. The players are workers, like it or not, and just like you and me, should be compensated for their work. They get a scholarship, true, but they have a right to any compensation their employer wants to give them. Is your salary capped by an organization? Do you make exactly the same as all the other workers?

Unfair playing field for wealthy schools? Life is an unfair playing field, get over it.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s a pretty interesting story in the news about a pair of football players from John Jay High School in San Antonio who slammed into a referee during the course of a game.

The video is brutal and the comment sections were filled with hate, as one might expect. Many wanted the two boys to be put in jail for the rest of their lives and things of this nature. Some even advocated the death penalty. I wrote a comment about the incident in which I expressed the idea that the two boys were likely frustrated by a referee that was either plain awful or was actively cheating. That while I thought expulsion from the team and some community service time along with a fine for the school was in order, I didn’t think it needed to go further than that.

My opinion was not popular.

More information is coming in about the incident. The boys unit coach told them: “this guy needs to pay for cheating us” for his calls in the game. At this point it is admitted that the referee ejected the wrong player from John Jay earlier in the game and there are multiple reports he used racial slurs against the players. The assistant has been suspended.

Just as I suggested restraint on punishing the boys I also suggest holding off vilifying the referee and coach until more facts are available.

I can tell you from my own experience in playing sports that referees do cheat. They don’t like certain teams and certain coaches. The first time it happened to me was in little league baseball when an umpire called me out on a third strike that was, literally, over my head. I had looked back at him when he called the second strike on a ball that was pretty low. He didn’t like that and he sure showed me. He showed me that refs cheat.

I wrote an entire post about this subject a while back. It’s a subject that I’m passionate about. Cheating anyone is a perversion of the system. It prevents the person or team who is best prepared and plays better from winning. That undermines capitalism, it undermines truth, it undermines society. When you work so hard to achieve something and have it taken from you by someone you think is cheating, the rage you feel is difficult to express.

I stand by my original assessment of what should happen the players. I think suspending the coach for making the revenge statement is appropriate. If what the referee is accused of doing is supported then that person should be removed and never allowed to referee again.

The people who know the truth about this situation are the fellow referees. They know all about it. In this situation what we see all too often is the people with integrity refusing to turn over the person among them who doesn’t have it. Their rational is that if people knew about the cheating, it tarnishes all referees. I disagree. What tarnishes any referee is cheating. When those who are aware of it don’t report the cheating, that’s what destroys their credibility. When they allow cheaters to operate openly they only encourage more cheating and further disrespect by coaches, players, and fans.

I’m certainly not saying the boys and the coach don’t deserve punishment. I am saying that if the referee was cheating and using racial slurs, if his fellow referees were aware of it and said nothing; then it’s only a matter of time until someone gets frustrated and enraged enough to do what the boys did.

Believe me, I’ve been there. I never punched a referee but I wasn’t far away from doing it on a number of occasions.

I just read a headline that I think qualifies for my Misleading Headline of the Week although it’s not so much misleading as it is stupid.

Cards allow Pirates to gain in race with loss reads the headline.

A little background about the story. The St. Louis Cardinals are having an outstanding season. They have the best record in baseball. They are looking fairly certain to return to the playoffs although there are still a few games to play. The team immediately behind them in the National League Central Division is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I was at the game last night. The Pirates handed it to us 9 – 3. J. A. Happ pitched brilliantly keeping the team off balance all night. Those darn lefties! The Pirates have some excellent players including Andrew McCutchen who might well be the best player in the game. While the Pirates are second to the Cardinals in the division race they also happen to have the third best record in all of baseball and the second best in the National League.

So as to my point in all of this?

We didn’t “allow” the Pirates to gain on us. They hammered us because they are a good team. That happens.

The Cardinals came back today and beat the Pirates 4 – 1 behind stellar pitching from Jaime Garcia. Those darn lefties!!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s an interesting story in the news about the South Snohomish girls softball team in the Little League Softball World Series. It seems they rested most of their best players and were defeated in a game that didn’t matter to them but did matter to another team. The South Snohomish girls were handily defeated which knocked another team out of the tournament.

That team, Central Iowa, who earlier lost a close game to South Snohomish, protested the result. They claimed the result was invalid. The tournament officials agreed and decided that the two teams had to play a playoff game to see who advanced. Central Iowa won and advanced.

I wrote a blog back in August of 2012 about an Olympic badminton team that apparently intentionally lost a match in order to further their long term possibility of advancement. I’ll reiterate my points.

I understand the idea that everyone should do their best at all times but that’s just not the reality of the world when it comes to sports. In major league sports draft position becomes important and a team might well want to lose a game in order to get a better draft choice. In any round-robin sort of tournament, like the one in question, there are going to be situations one where team has guaranteed advancement and would prefer not to play too hard in the last, meaningless game.

Punishing South Snohomish for not trying hard enough is seriously hypocritical. What the administrators of the league are saying is that you have to pretend to try harder. They know the format makes for situations like the one that occurred. It’s hardly the first time a team has done what South Snohomish supposedly did.

Who is to make the judgement about the definition of trying hard enough?

In this case the coach of South Snohomish rested players and used bench warmers in order to have a better chance later in the tournament. Is that against the rules now? Should the tournament officials make out the starting lineup? If an error occurs in a similar situation should they have a do-over if an official rules it was intentional?

It’s so arbitrary.

The solution I offered in my original blog was that when it is clearly advantageous for a team to lose they should declare that they want to lose before the start of the game. Then play the game hard. If they happen to win, it counts as a loss anyway.

I know many people won’t like that idea but the alternative is that a team pretends to try hard while really trying to lose. Is that what we want? This illusion? This fantasy of effort?

I absolutely think the Central Iowa should be sent home and the South Snohomish team allowed to advance.

What do you think?

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

It’s time to put on white and play tennis at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club! This year a fellow named Nick Kyrgios stopped trying for a game because he was angry at the umpire’s decision in the previous game.

For those fans of mine who are not tennis enthusiasts I’ll let you in a secret. Tennis players stop trying, or “tank”, games all the time. The way tennis is scored with sets makes it useful for players to stop trying for a bit to recover their strength when the chances of winning a set or even a game is remote. Say a player is down 5-0 in a set. There’s not a lot of sense in going all out to win a game when coming back to win the set is all but impossible.

Wimbledon, in particular, facilitates this sort of behavior because the extremely fast surface gives the serving player a major advantage. Thus a returning player, like Kyrgios in this case, sometimes makes little attempt to win.

That being said, Krygios’ effort was far worse than normal for a player “tanking” a game. Generally there is at least a half-hearted try to return the ball in the hopes your opponent messes up. In this case Krygios made almost no effort at all. It was clear what he was doing. His opponent was ahead 2-0 in the second set so it had not reached an insurmountable lead as of yet. He ended up losing that set 6-1.

Krygios then started playing with more intent and won the third set before losing the match in the fourth. He played hard for both of those sets.

The question being asked is if Krygios “cheated” fans out of their money by not playing hard, or even at all, in that one game.

There is no doubt that athletes take plays off at times in all sports. They realize the energy necessary is not worth the result to be gained. They “tank”. What makes this case so different is the absolute indifference showed by Krygios. Fans booed, as would have I.

I do think Krygios’ behavior was very poor. It was disrespectful to the audience, his opponent, the officials, and the game itself. That being said, he did what they all do, just a lot more obviously.

I certainly prefer watching a player who gives it their all rather than one who slacks off during the game, even if for tactical reasons rather than simple petulance.

It’s my opinion Krygios will be under greater scrutiny in the future. Fans will dislike him and boo more frequently his efforts. However, the reality is sports is a results driven job. If Krygios wins tournaments he will get paid and our feelings about this incident are irrelevant. He can “tank” a game whenever he desires but if he wins tournaments he will succeed.

But to the question. Were the fans cheated?

I say no. One game or even set does not rise to that level if the other games and sets were played hard. I can see people disagreeing with me and I understand their point of view. It’s an interesting line. If he tanked two sets is that cheating? Certainly everyone would agree that if he lost three straight sets without trying that was indeed cheating the audience.

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition – Release date: late August 2015

Hope Solo is a Bad Person

She’s a bad person. Hope Solo was not born a bad person. I think what happened in her childhood shaped her into being bad, but in the end I just couldn’t bring myself to root for her or the team that ignored her transgressions because she’s good at being a soccer goalie.

I don’t want to cover why she’s a bad person. There are plenty of articles out there that discuss it at length. I hope she gets counseling and can avoid situations like this in the future.

Not Rooting for Team USA

As the USA women’s World Cup team continued to advance and I watched friend after friend post how excited they were on Facebook, my own enthusiasm refused to emerge. I just couldn’t find it in me to root for the team that so eagerly overlooked what she had done simply because she gave them a better chance to win.

The reality is that if Solo had been a bench warmer, a marginal player, then she would never have been allowed to play. Her transgressions were such that she would have been left off the team. Of this I have no doubt. And that’s why I just couldn’t be all that happy when Team USA won the World Cup in resounding fashion.

There are a lot of great stories from the triumph. Hat tricks, veterans going out with victories, national pride. But I wasn’t rooting for them. I’m not happy they won.

Winning is not Everything

The entire episode reminds me of what is wrong with this world where winning is everything. I’ll never believe that winning is everything. That the ends of winning justify the means used to achieve it. We become cheaters to win, we employ bad people to win, we enrich bad people to win, we sublimate our own ethics to win. When we do that to win … we lose.

It’s my opinion this World Cup win is really just a terrible loss for ethics, for morality, for human decency.

I sure wish they would have left Solo off the team. That would have been a real victory, win or lose.

I know my opinion here isn’t going to be popular but I can’t force myself to feel differently.

Tom Liberman

I just read an interesting opinion piece about how Hawk-Eye, the machine used to make correct calls at tennis matches, is ruining the sport. The piece was written in OZY and I was intrigued by the premise even if I personally disagree.

The argument is that people loved watching John McEnroe and others argue with the umpire and linesmen and that the decline in ratings for tennis might be associated with the decrease in such activity brought about by the sure-eyed calls of Hawk-Eye.

The ratings for tennis are down according to the article and I did note a downward trend in what ratings services I could find although they were not up to date. I have no reason to doubt the author. The ratings decline could be partially related to “the Hawk-Eye effect”, which engenders fewer personal confrontations but it is also likely based on other things as well. Name recognition, all the screaming and grunting, demographics, etc. I’m not going to discuss the accuracy of the position taken by the author.

I do want to discuss the argument itself because it is interesting. There are a number of analogous situations in other sports. Instant Replay in baseball, football, cricket, and other sports. The taming down of fighting in professional hockey. The question to be asked is if people tune into sporting events to see arguments and fights. And how important are those to the health of the game itself?

There is no question we are moving to a system of officiating wherein technology ensures the call is correct and arguments are less heated. Is baseball better because the umpires, managers, and players, don’t engage in screaming matches as often? Is it worse?

To my mind it’s better, without question. I prefer the sport. I prefer getting it right. The fighting is not to my taste. It’s not the game. However, I acknowledge my opinion is not universal. Many people love the fights and arguments. There is a certain titillation to watching a player, coach, or other team official lose their mind over a bad, or perceived bad, call. For me it gets old very quickly, it’s just an exercise of “me, me, me” largely. Others feel differently and I guess that’s the question I’m asking today.

Do you like all the arguing? Do you miss it? Do you hate it?

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition – Release date: late August 2015