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(DROP CAP) Who says the news slows down in the summer? Our Sports guys are playing goalie, trying not to let this stuff get around them. Such as:
--As of Wednesday afternoon, the Oakland Athletics were 13-50 in the first week of June. That's 28.5 games back. Their winning percentage is .206, which is what a good shortstop should be hitting. We can't keep from watching this tire fire. Halfway to 100 losses by June 7!
--Wally Hall was right: It would be hard to argue that TCU wasn't a better team.
The Arkansas Razorbacks had a tremendous year, again. Despite all the injuries, SEC coach of the year Dave Van Horn won the league's regular season title and set up his team well for the post-season. Only the TCU team that Arkansas drew in the regionals was smoking hot. Their batters couldn't miss. Their pitchers were nasty. Everything seemed to go their way in (almost) every inning.
Sometimes that works for the home team. When it doesn't, you have a weekend like this past one.
--Police say two Cleveland Browns football players were robbed the other night. Actually, the other morning.
Two defensive players for the team were apparently robbed at gunpoint at 3:30 a.m. Monday. Which confirms what Herm Edwards, a football coach of note, once said: Nothing good happens out on the streets after 2 a.m.
--About this golf civil war, which has apparently ended with the LIV tour merging with the PGA tour:
The first thing that jumps to mind about this topic: Be careful who you call out for being hypocritical. A week later, it may backfire.
When players began leaving to join the Saudi-funded LIV tour, other players--and notable media types--shook their fingers in protest. The Saudis, they rightly said, were "sports-washing" their country by gaining good PR by funding those golfers.
And those LIV players were accepting blood money. Everybody thinks that crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman had Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi killed. And let's not forget that most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis.
Not only professional pearl-clutchers but PGA officials said it was morally wrong to accept Saudi funding. The head of the association even tut-tutted that none of his players ever had to apologize about playing on the PGA tour.
Then the Professional Golf Association sold out. PGA players found out about it Tuesday on social media.
Business is business. The NBA plays in Red China, and the United States sends athletes to Olympics competitions in Russia and other countries with awful human rights records. Our presidents beg the Saudis to increase oil production on occasion. Most of us drive cars. There is a lot of hypocrisy to go around.
But when you accuse somebody of hypocrisy, it might not be wise to be negotiating in the background to join up with them. Call it a bad look.
Speaking of bad looks, we'd like to be in the beer tent the next time one of those PGA players--who in the last year or so refused multiple millions, maybe nine figures, from the Saudis--meets the PGA commissioner.
--The Southeastern Conference will change its football schedule next year. The big news coming out over the weekend might have been this: No longer will the league have divisions. The championship game will feature the top two teams in overall standings at the end of the year.
What this means to Arkansas: The piggies won't be in the world's most difficult division anymore. No longer will we have to play Alabama, LSU, A&M and Auburn. Every. Single. Year. But it also means that we might draw Florida and Georgia and an increasingly relevant Tennessee team on occasion. Or maybe Vanderbilt.
Scheduling Vandy one year and allowing South Carolina to handle Bama that season sounds like a good deal for the Hawgs.
--Most sports fans will remember the prime-time NFL game last season that was canceled when Damar Hamlin, a defensive back for the Buffalo Bills, went down with a heart attack after getting hit in the chest. The fact that he's still able to talk--and play--is a credit to medical staff, CPR training, and those external defibrillators that come in so wonderfully handy.
Young Mr. Hamlin is currently on a tour of several cities to distribute medical equipment and promote defibs and CPR training. The paper said more than 1,000 people were given CPR courses at the first stop in upstate New York.
"Growing up playing sports, I never really remember ever thinking about where an AED was, or ever thinking about CPR training," he said. "I don't ever remember a coach or a parent ever knowing where an AED was in a gym or stadium, or anywhere for that matter. As we learned from my personal experience, it is very important and life-changing. This program is very important because it gives life-saving care to kids in their own communities and on the field."
And this is what is called turning a bad story into a good one. Great play.