Nationals Arm Race

This should have been a seminal athletic moment of the 80s. It ended up being so, but for very different reasons. Photo unk via dailymail.co.uk

Editor’s note: there are spoilers in this review, and if you have not seen the film they are surprising enough that you may want to skip this post and see the film first.

The 2nd installment in the return of the “30 for 30” series aired on October 9th, 2012 and is titled “9.79*.”  Directed by Daniel Gordon (a decently acclaimed british documentarian), it tells the story of the 1988 100m Men’s final from the Seoul Olympic games.  As most sports fans would be able to tell from the title, the race was won by Ben Johnson in a then-world record time of 9.79, an astounding improvement upon the standing world record and a seminal event in the sports decade.

Soon after though, Johnson tested positive for the use of Steroids, was stripped of his medal and booted from the games, and the event was a shocking introduction to the world of doping and the use of performance enhancing drugs that has only exploded since.  Nowadays, we hear about Baseball players using steroids and the narrative is familiar.  The USADA just released its report by which it made the decision to charge and eventually ban Lance Armstrong and attempt to strip him of titles won 10+ years prior.  But in 1988, the only knowledge of doping that casual sports fans knew of was allegations of eastern bloc athletes (women mostly) who were astoundingly breaking records in Swimming, Track and Weight Lifting.

(Here’s an excellent review of the film, doing it much better than I: avclub.com)

As with before, I’ll break down talking about the Subject Matter and then the film-making.

Subject Matter: the film maker got all 8 participants in the 1988 100m final to appear on film and talk somewhat candidly about the state of the sport leading up to that race, the role of drugs, and the ethical dilemna they all faced.  Contrast this to prior 30 for 30 films about Allen Iverson and Michael Jordan which didn’t include any on-screen interviews from the subjects.  The fact that Johnson himself speaks at length and openly about the experience makes this a pretty compelling watch.  Even more-so based on points we’ll touch on later…

The film starts off with an anonymous quote, “If you don’t take it, you don’t make it.”  The implication is, if you’re a runner in the 1980s and you’re not taking drugs, then you’re not going to win.  At least one of the interviewees (Calvin Smith, he himself a banned doper who was awarded the Bronze medal upon Johnson’s disqualification) talked openly about this choice.  Runners train extremely hard to only have a shot at coming in 5th or 6th place in the face of other runners who were cheating, leading (much as we saw in the Cycling world) to an escalating arms race of doping to “re-level” the playing field.  It is an awful choice to make for an athlete; stay clean and never win, or cheat like everyone else and give yourself a shot at lucrative glory.  I don’t know what choice I’d make if forced to.

(Editor note; I mis-quoted Smith in this paragraph; it was someone else who spoke about doping, not Smith.  By all accounts, Smith never failed a doping test and many think he should have been retro-actively awarded the Seoul gold medal after the three men ahead of him all subsequently failed tests.  Thanks to a commenter for pointing this out).

The film doesn’t outright “accuse” Carl Lewis of doping himself, but the implication is pretty clear and pretty stark.  One person talks about how taking HGH forces adults to get braces (since the substance causes the jaw bone to grow far after it typically stops growing in adults), and then a few minutes later shows Lewis in 1987 … wearing braces.  Lewis himself doesn’t do himself any favors, nor does his coach and head cheerleader Joe Douglas, who seemed all too eager to brag about the sundry things that went on, or about the money that was greasing the skids in the mid 1980s in the sport.  I was left after watching thinking that Lewis was just as dirty as the rest of the competition, just that he got “out-roided” in the final.

A very frank interview with the head of the testing lab from the 1984 Olympic Games also raised some eyebrows; he accused the powers-that-be of outright ignoring the results they were seeing, and he seemed to imply that the 1984 Olympic organizers ordered him to sweep positive tests under the table so as not to sully those politically-charged games.  He kept previous samples and re-tested them years onward and found rampant drug use in the 1984 games, but he decided to destroy the evidence rather than re-open yet another investigation into past results.  I slightly disagreed though with the premise of the lab director that testing is a simple either/or principle; as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out on a recent “BS Report” podcast, to conclude that an athelete has tested positive for certain markers (especially testosterone) is incredibly difficult, since your natural testosterone levels ebb and wane on a day to day basis, are affected by your moods and naturally degrade as you age.  They’re even affected by what you eat!  And, as we learned in the Ryan Braun debacle, testosterone levels in samples can quickly change if not properly stored (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read my post on the topic from February 2012 and read Will Carroll‘s amazon story about what *really* happened.  It is well worth the read.  Or just read this piece at the HardBallTimes to understand why I don’t believe Braun cheated at all).  So unfortunately drug testing is more of an art form than something that provides conclusive proof.  And that is troubling, since in order to justify its existence a drug testing lab needs to, you know, find people who cheated.

The most outrageous point of the documentary made came from Johnson, and was a shocker.  He accused a member of Lewis’ camp of spiking his post-race beer after the 1988 100M final with the same steroids he then tested positive for.  The accused person refused to be interviewed on film but provided an incredible quote when asked whether he spiked the drink; he said something along the lines of, “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.”  What kind of answer is that??  Of course he’s not going to admit such a thing, but the lack of a powerful denial almost seems like proof in and among itself that this hanger-on of Lewis’ purposely spiked the drink.  The back-story of the bad blood between the runners and the massive competition for the fastest times in the season leading up to the Olympics, to go with the arrogance of Lewis and his coach makes the accusation of a spiked drink completely believable.

From a film-making perspective, I thought the documentary was very well filmed, with excellent b-roll shots of Toronto (where Johnson is from) and other on-location spots.  You can slightly quibble with the “faked” footage, but most of the b-roll is used as supporting shots being played during quotes from the participants.  It was a little difficult to understand all the interviews, mostly because of the heavy West Indian accent of Johnson and his country-mates.  But that also may be because I was watching the film late at night and trying not to wake my wife :-).  I’d place this film somewhere in the middle-range of the pantheon of 30-for-30 films.  It was an interesting watch but i’d probably not bother to watch it again.

I'll bet Mike Tyson wishes he still had some of this cash. Photo unknown via esquire.com

[Editor’s note: Non-baseball, non-Nationals post.  Originally written in early October right after this show aired but saved until baseball season was over.  If you have some time, I highly suggest either getting it on-demand or find a re-run].

The fantastic 30 for 30 series is back on ESPN.   The great news was first published in May 2012 and the first installment of the new series aired on 10/2/12.  I like doing reviews of the 30 for 30 series (if you search for “30 for 30” in quotes you can see some of the past reviews on this site), and I’ll try to do them for the new episodes.  If you’re interested in past looks at ESPN Films and my thoughts on the original series, you can click “30 for 30” in the Category Tab to the right and get all posts on the topic.

First up in the new series, “Broke,” a 1.5 hour documentary by director Billy Corben about the amazing propensity for professional athletes to go bankrupt soon after retiring despite having made millions in career earnings.  This is essentially a documentary version of the seminal 2009 Sports Illustrated article on the same topic.  The film had some decent  interviews and covered several of the typical pitfalls that cause athletes to squander money.  In no particular order; blatant overspending on cars, jewelry and houses, financing your family, neighborhood and your entourage, poor choices in advisors, poor financial advice from these “advisors,” squandered business investment, predatory women and marriages, child-support payments that are tied to a player’s salary, and of course the most basic one; absolutely zero retirement planning.

(If you want to read some  highlight quotes from the documentary, click on thisBusinessInsider.com link here.  If you want to read Jason Whitlock‘s op-ed piece inspired by the documentary, click here.  Lastly, a review from Hitfix.com on both Broke and the 2nd in the series is here; we’ll cover 9.79 in a separate post).

My quick review: liked the subject matter, didn’t like the presentation.

The subject matter continues to be topical, nearly every year we hear about guys who have gone broke.  The documentary listed dozens and dozens of them at the end of the film.  I’ve often wondered how these guys manage to go broke despite 10s of millions of dollars in guaranteed income, but in reality its relatively easy.  You can somewhat excuse it when a guy like Curt Schilling loses his baseball fortune attempting to start a software company, but its a bit more inexcusable when you hear about a guy who “makes it rain” in strip clubs with hundred dollar bills.  That being said, for every Magic Johnson (who has made a massive fortune owning/operating Movie Theatures and Starbucks franchises, of which he owns more than 100) there are dozens of tales of investments in Car Washes, Restaurants and Record Companies going bad.  The film prominently featured Jamal Mashburn, who has turned his lucrative NBA career into the next coming of Johnson; he’s followed Magic’s lead and purchased dozens of franchises in Kentucky; per wikipedia and the film he owns 34 Outback Steakhouses, 37 Papa John’s franchises and a number of car dealerships.  Just 40, he’s apparently amassed enough wealth to be in the discussion to purchase an NBA Franchise.

The most egregious examples of pro athletes going broke were not interviewed for the film; Allen Iverson (career earnings in excess of $200 million including salary and endorsements), Evander Holyfield (career earnings estimated at about $200M), Antoine Walker (career earnings of $110M before taxes), Vince Young (ALREADY broke despite a $26M guaranteed contract just 6 years ago!)  and the most ridiculous example being Mike Tyson (career earnings of $400M, all gone).   A bit of googling resulted in this interesting “Top 10 worst Financial Meltdowns by Athletes” and its a bit mind boggling.  The director noted that most of these guys who have been forced to declare bankrupcy for vast sums are far too embarassed to appear on the film, hence the rather random collection of on-screen athletes who did appear (among others, Bernie Kosar, Andre Rison, Keith McCants, Sean Salisbury and Cliff Floyd).   I’d say that Rison was probably the closest we’ll see to the blatant modern-day squandering of money that we hear stories about, while Kosar and Salisbury befell some of the other classical bankrupcy issues mentioned above.

The section on predatory women was kind of sad really; the film interviewed a blogger whose site (Baller Alert.com, I kid you not) sends out alerts to female subscribers if/when they find out that basketball players are going to be at a certain location.  The blogger noted that one time she announced that an NBA player was at a club in DC and an hour later 1,000 women showed up.   This isn’t the first time I’ve read about this culture in the pro sports world; the book Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan the author decided to find out how easy it was to bait a pro athlete into hooking up, so he recruited a former girlfriend, she got some “coaching” as to how to dress and act, and they inserted her into a bar situation where a known pro athlete was present.  Sure enough, the athlete sent over a handler and tried to press onwards with a relationship.

I was left with two overriding thoughts after watching the film:

1. It was really, really difficult to watch this film as a middle-aged white male and not pass judgement on the ridiculous spending exploits of predominantly young black males.  I alluded to salary just a couple weeks ago in this space, talking about how John Lannan was set for life on the basis of his $5M 2012 contract and how I didn’t necessarily feel sorry for the guy.  But the fact is that most athletes don’t see a singular payday this way.  The film certainly wasn’t apologetic for these guys getting into trouble; it merely analyzed what generally happens to these  young players.  They get paid, they spend money, they make mistakes, they have children out of wedlock and incur massive monthly payments, they buy 5 houses and 8 cars, they don’t plan for the future … and then suddenly they’re out of the game and they go from millions a year to Zero income.  It is a common tale.  This documentary certainly isn’t EXCUSING this behavior; it just explains how it happens.

2. I’m surprised that the pro sports don’t do more to heed this off.  The film showed Herm Edwards giving the incoming NFL rookies his speech at the Rookie Symposium … and then talked about how most rookies sleep through the sessions.  I’m surprised that the unions havn’t recognized this as a massive problem and forced some sort of IRA contribution out of their players upon entrance to the leagues.

From a “film critic” stand-point, while the subject matter was pretty interesting I wouldn’t rank this film with the upper echelon of 30-for-30 works (“The Two Escobars,” “Four days in October” being some of the best of the original run).  I thought it could have been done in an hour, I thought it should have done a better job focusing on the more egregious cases of players gone bankrupt, I thought they could have found better representatives to talk than guys like Homer Bush and Sean Salisbury (Homer Bush!?  I had to look him up on b-r.com: 409 career games?  And he’s talking about athletes squandering millions?  Well, he did manage to make $7.7M per his b-r page, so that’s not chump change.  Bush reportedly was not happy with the way he was portrayed in this film, as mentioned on Slate’s Hang Up and Listen podcast).  Lastly I thought having the SAME song playing for virtually the entire show got old, fast.  Critics didn’t like the “soundbyte after soundbyte” presentation, which lasted well into the film.

We're moving! Clipart via movingvans.blogspot.com

Hello readers!

As an fyi, the site will be taken down over this 6/23-6/24 weekend at some point as we physically re-locate the computer that it runs upon.  Do not be alarmed if you surf to the site over the next few days and get a 404 error.  We’re not going away;we’re just moving.

Technical details for those interested: we host www.nationalsarmrace.com (and a slew of other domain names, including bossconsulting.com, my personal email domain) on a 1-U pizza box running Free BSD out of my home.  I have 13 static IPs flowing into the house, and we NAT them through the fios router to support multiple virtual servers on the box.  We run 2 domain name servers, web, mail, filestore, and a mysql database to go along with at least 6 domain names (and possibly more; the cluster technically belongs to a former colleague of mine who hosts projects for his neesd as I do).  After 10 years, I’m moving and needed a hosting solution.  I just couldn’t run servers out of my home anymore so we’re moving the servers temporarily to a rack-space that my colleague controls and maintains, with the eventual desire to move the services to a managed cloud somewhere.

My big challenge is less with this site (its basic wordpress, seemingly hostable at most any where) as it is with bossconsulting.com, which hosts a large historical searchable database of professional racquetball matches (my other passion).  I need an email solution and a webserver like most people, but I also need a mysql database AND the web CGI ability to run old-school perl code against it.  The site is www.bossconsulting.com/irt for those interested; I havn’t updated the static docs for the end of the 2011-12 season yet.  If anyone has any recommended hosting solutions for this cluster I’d be happy to hear them.

Thanks, see you again soon, Todd

ESPN and Grantland announced today the 2nd installment of the fantastic 30-for-30 series.

I thought the network made a huge mistake by not keeping the 30-for-30 brand name when it released a slew of follow-on productions after the initial run of 30 ended.  Instead they branded them as “ESPN Films presents…” stories and made it nearly impossible for the DVR-age of TV viewers to find them.  Most of us depend on setting a “Record Series” job keyed on the name … but then they presented the follow-on films just using their titles.  To make matters worse ESPN kept changing the air times and the order, didn’t keep a regular weekly schedule of releases, and as a result the viewer numbers were down for the follow on shows.  I still havn’t seen half of the 2nd set, which is unfortunate because there’s some great stories presented.

I did a review of the first batch of 30-for-30s and tried to post thoughts on some of the follow-on shows when I happened to catch them (reviews for the Bartman episode, Dotted-Line, and The Real Rocky) but ran out of gas on the reviews when it became too difficult to get them recorded.

Either way, can’t wait to see the next installments.

RIP Gary Carter, one of only two Montreal Expos enshrined in Cooperstown. Photo via garycarter.org

This is your semi-weekly/periodic wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye.  I try to publish this about weekly or if it gets up to about 1500 words, so that it’s not to voluminous.

Nationals In General

• Mark Zuckerman writes about a favorite topic of mine w/r/t the current Nats 40-man roster and its construction.  See here for a similar discussion of the 2011 Nats (along with analysis of the 8 playoff teams) from last October.  Clearly the more players you’re using as your “primary 15” that were developed in house, the better you’re doing as a player development machine.  But there’s also the measure of cashing in those prospects in order to acquire resources.  (Coincidentally the “primary 15” of a team means its 8 starters in the field, 5 rotation members, setup man and closer).  By last year’s end, the Nats were starting 9 of these 15 as players developed in house and were down to just three acquired via FA/Waivers.  That’s a massive step up from just a few years prior, when most of the team was FA/Waiver pickups.  We’ll revisit this topic once the 25-man rosters for teams are finalized and play starts in April.
• The Washington Franchise leads the league in employment of Negative WAR players over the past decade.   A staggering 31% of our players in this time have shown negative WARs per season.   This is not surprising given what we know of the construction of the first few iterations of the Nationals; Zuckerman has done studies in the past related to the staggering number of players the Nats have played at the MLB level who, after leaving us, never appeared in a major league game again.   The last time Zuckerman did this study that I could find was Nov 2010, when he identified 59 such players just since 2005.  I don’t know what percentage that is of all players who appeared for us in that time-frame, but it seems high.  (note: I just did some analysis and will return with a blog posting on this topic soon).
• Back to the negative war topic, here’s a list of such negative WAR seasons for the 2011 iteration of the team: Alex Cora, Jesus Flores, Chris Marrero, Steve Lombardozzi, Matt Stairs, Livan Hernandez, Doug Slaten, Brian Broderick, Yuniesky Maya, Collin Balester and Chad Gaudin.  That’s 11 of the 44 players who appeared in the majors for us last year, or exactly 25%.  So we’re not exactly out of the woods yes; clearly we continue to employ a ton of players who end up hurting the team.  (For the record I used bWAR instead of fWAR for this, since its a bit easier to see that data.  But i’d guess the analysis would come out the same for either measurement method).
• Another article on Edwin Jackson and pitch-tipping.  Is it possible that a player could play for years and never have a hitter teammate tell him he’s tipping his pitches?  I think it depends on what team the pitcher plays for.  Mike Mussina infamously was told he tipped his change up once he moved to the Yankees, and he made the adjustment that enabled his stellar 2006 season.  Maybe the team should have just kept its mouth shut about their thoughts and not told every reporter in every press conference that they think their new $11M pitcher is flawed.

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

• Interesting thoughts on whether “4-A” players really do exist and how to quantify them from Fangraphs.com.  Read through the comments for some better thoughts.  For me, this issue touches on two opinions I’ve been growing.  1st; yes there does exist 4-A players; the Nats have shown to have a slew of them recently.  Guys whose minor league performance literally disappears upon reaching the majors.  I don’t know how to quantify it but there’s clearly guys who bounce freely between the two levels and seem destined to max out as such a 4-A player.  2ndly: Is AAA now a “lesser” league than AA?  Perhaps not with all systems (for example, Tampa Bay insists all their prospects play full seasons at each level, as does Atlanta), but for the Nats we’ve seen some interesting promotion behavior lately.  Stephen Strasburg got hit harder in AA than in AAA during his brief minor league apprenticeship, but the difference is rather slight.  But watching the games you got the distinct feeling that his AA competition was getting decent wood on the bat, while in AAA it was like he was pitching to little leaguers.  This goes to my theory that AAA is morphing into a “spare parts” league, where teams stash backup utility players (mostly catchers, middle infielders, relief pitchers) who are on the 40-man and can quickly be recalled to fill a spot, while AA is the place where your rising prospects play full seasons in preparation for promotion to the majors.  Jordan Zimmermann never pitched a AAA inning, rising from a full season in Harrisburg straight to our rotaton.  Strasburg probably could have done the same.  Will we see Bryce Harper jump straight from AA to the Majors or will the strategy of Mike Rizzo going forward be more Tampa-esque, requiring each prospect to “master” each level rising upwards?
• A surprise team lands Yoenis Cespedes, namely the penny-pinching Oakland A’s in a 4yr/$36M deal.  4 years and $36M!?  That’s more than they will spend in payroll on their entire TEAM in 2012.  Maybe.  That’s a lot of cash for a completely unproven, if talented player who I’d say is not entirely MLB ready.

General Baseball News

• Excellent article on the Demise of the Spitball and other Doctoring techniques from Grantland’s Jonah Keri, whose writing I’ve always liked and who is working on a historical retrospective on the Montreal Expos franchise.   Keri’s article talks about the Kenny Rogers pine-tar incident in the 2006 World series, but I don’t consider that “doctoring” the baseball.  That was simply using pine-tar to get a better grip on a cold, wet night.  Not that its legal; just different from the more conventional definition of a “spitball.”   Keri’s conclusion as to why the spitball has disappeared is attributed to the invention of the modern split-fingered fastball (attributed to Bruce Sutter) and to the lack of proper teachers (the craft of doctoring the ball has been handed down generation to generation by pitching coaches).  But honestly I believe the decline is more attributable to two other factors; the lingering stigma of getting caught being higher now post-PED era than every before, and the fact that the true “spitball” is damn difficult to throw (imagine trying to “throw” a baseball with the same motion you might use to squirt a pumpkin seed from your fingers?  That’s what throwing a spitball is like to a certain extent).
• In typical modern day sabrematrician blogger nerd fashion, someone at a stats-oriented site goes about attacking another writer’s observation column.  In this case, it is someone at Baseball Prospectus attacking the Verducci Effect.  I can’t argue with his stats (other than to quibble with the lack of publication of his control group for comparison), but I suspect he misses the point.  I don’t think Verducci passes this list off as a statistical study; i think its passed off as a subjective list of candidate pitchers who HE THINKS may regress.  See, there’s the rub.  He’s already done the breakdown from the “control” group of pitchers who may be candidates for his study but whom he thinks may not be in jeopardy.  So I’m presuming that, because of this pre-selection and expression of opinion this is no longer a statistical study but an opinion piece.  I’d liken it to analyzing statistically the results of an amateur scout’s player recommendations; sure you could run one in order to judge a scout’s prognostication ability, but there’s so much variation in what happens to players once they sign that it wouldn’t be meaning ful.  I guess my take away is this: Verducci does a pretty durn good job of predicting red-flags for these pitchers (84% over the past 5 years), that maybe we should just recognize his study for what it is, and not overanalyze it to try to discredit it.
• A nice article about another favorite topic of mine: the relationship between Wins and salary.  The familiar narrative is that payroll discrepancies are killing modern baseball, and to a certain extent I do agree; its no coincidence that the high payroll Yankees have only missed one playoff appearance in the nearly-20 years since the wild card era began.  But the ratio of wins to salary is dropping.  Why?  Because several teams have sacrificed several seasons to basically reset and start over.   Tampa Bay and Texas are the best recent examples, but we’re also seeing remnants of this theory here in Washington and starting anew in Houston and Chicago.
• Nice little Intro to Sabremetrics from Espn-W.  The author doesn’t go into the real in-depth stats that a lot of people are gravitating to but does cover the basics.  OPS, Fip, UZr, wOBA, Vorp and WAR.  Now if we could only decide on a standard WAR.  🙂
• Another classy move from baseball’s classiest organization; the Miami Marlins.  Yeah, lets un-retire the number of a former employee who died tragically since, well, he didn’t work for the current ownership group.

General News; other

• Excellent article at Grantland.com on the Effects of CTE and the possible future (end?) of Football as we know it.  This is something I have been saying for a while and agree with; the increased awareness of concussions and their relationship to the longer term effects (the affliction known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE) may soon start to really change the way that people think about the sport.  More to the point, as a parent does the thought of repeated concussions inflicted on your young football-playing son give you pause?  It would for me.  Read this article and it makes some very good points.  90,000 recorded pre-collegiate concussions per year?!

Rodgers, doing his wrestling belt move, which won him endorsement deals. Photo via businessinsider.com

Sports Illustrated is set to announce its annual “Sportsman of the Year” award on Monday December 5th, and there doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming favorite right now.  Or perhaps there is.

You can peruse the nominations in a photo gallery here: plus a number of SI writers have opined on why their nomination should be picked over the past couple of weeks.  However, perusing the photo gallery very quickly highlights the paucity of real candidates.  Frankly, most of the candidates I’ve never even heard of, especially from the “extreme” and olympic sports genres.  And I’d like to think I’m pretty well versed in sports coverage.

For me, your leading candidates are: Aaron Rodgers, David Freese, Dirk Novitzki, Novak Djokovic, VCU, and Rory McIlroy.

• Rodgers is, as I read elsewhere but can’t currently find so I can’t properly quote it, “the most important player on the best team in the most important sport.”  Enough said.
• Freese’s magical night helped game 6 of the World Series become, instantly, one of the best games ever played in the game.
• Djokovic went 10-1 this year against the two players (Federer and Nadal) that most tennis pundits label the two best players to ever play the game.
• Novitzki finally capped a hall of fame season with a well-deserved NBA title, vanquishing the hated Heat.
• All VCU did was blow through a series of teams easily favored over them and make the final four.
• McIlroy’s US Open accomplishments here in DC were otherworldly, but he didn’t end the season ranked #1.

Honestly, the most dominating player in his sport this year was Djokovic, hands down.  But the fall of tennis’ popularity in the USA over the past 10 years probably precludes him from really being picked.  If SI wanted to make a statement they’d pick VCU as a symbol of the rising tide of Mid-Major basketball schools … except that the major colleges will never really be threatened thanks to the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the NCAA industry in the modern era.  And, what VCU accomplished isn’t nearly as important as what George Mason did just a few years ago.  Freese had one night; is that worthy of an annual award?

So, get ready for Rodgers to garner the award.

Hmm. Turns out Stallone had some inspiration for the Rocky franchise. Photo screen-grab from Rocky I.

(latest in an ongoing series of “reviews” of ESPN films releases.  See here for Wikipedia list of all the original 30-for-30 films plus the add-ons).

“The Real Rocky” was an entertaining look into the life of Chuck Wepner, interspersed with snippets from the ongoing saga of his lawsuit against Sylvester Stallone, with Wepner narrating his life and all its ups and down in a matter-of-fact manner.  All the while, a treasure trove of old boxing clippings, never-before-seen video of fights from the 60s and 70s and other classic boxing memorabilia were shown as supporting graphics and gave the documentary a very nice feel as it played out.  The documentary does a good job of capturing the story of Wepner; a rather amazing story of a talented but relatively unskilled former marine who sold liquor by day and somehow ascended to be ranked the #8 Heavyweight boxer in the world in his spare time, during a time when Muhammad Ali ruled the sporting world and boxing never was more popular.  He picked up the sport on a whim and quickly won a Golden Gloves championship, rocketing him into the professional ranks in his mid 20s.

The documentary also serves as a great reminder of just how far the sport has fallen in the wake of corruption, unethical promoters, multiple sanctioning agencies, and general American attention spans turning to MMA/Ultimate Fighting in the wake of Mike Tyson‘s downfall and a lack of highly ranked Americans in the sport.  People forget that boxing used to be as popular a draw as the modern day “big-4” sports, with its champions regularly making front page sports news.  Perhaps this was mostly attributable to the incredible self marketing ability of Ali himself; certainly the sporting world has yet to really see someone like him since.

Throughout the movie, a small band of (mostly New York-based) newspaper writers held court in a dark, smoky bar setting and opined about Wepner, his fights, and the golden age of boxing in general.  I would have loved to see ESPN’s excellent set of boxing analysts be included in this round-table, as Bert Sugar, Teddy Atlas, Max Kellerman and Brian Kenny all are excellent analysts and have great opinions to add about boxing of yesteryear.  It was surprising that an ESPN production didn’t seem to use any of its own people, perhaps something they decided not to force on the film-maker.

One takeaway point that I found fascinating was the attempts (both covert and overt) by Ali to turn the fight into a “racial war;” he reportedly asked Wepner to call him the “N-word” in a press conference, and when Wepner declined Ali forced the issue by alleging it on a talk show live and “inventing” some conflict.  Clearly an act of showmanship, and an attempt to drum up even more interest in the fight.  I would have loved to see an interview with Ali himself; clearly his declining current physical condition prevented this.  But I’m surprised an attempt wasn’t made to at least get some film time for the former champ.

Wepner held his own when the fight eventually occurred, sticking to an aggressive game plan and even knocking down Ali before taking a barrage of punches from the champion and eventually being overcome in the 15th round.  The image of Wepner, who had such a reputation for bleeding that his nickname in the boxing world was “the Bayonne Bleeder” (he lived, and still resides, in Bayonne, NJ), bloodied and literally unconscious on his feet after the fight was stopped was gripping.  To me it was a clear example of why even a blood-sport needed to go from 15-rounds to 12-round competitions so as to protect its boxers.

The Stallone-Wepner connection, which was the subject of a lawsuit finally filed nearly 30 years after the first Rocky movie aired, became more and more clear as the movie went on.  Stallone clearly attributed his inspiration for the screen play to Wepner, and over the years called him frequently, met with him and freely spoke of using life experiences of Wepner’s in subsequent movies (both in and out of the Rocky franchise).  When it became clear that Wepner never had made a dime off Stallone’s success, and at the urging of his 3rd wife, Wepner filed suit to get some compensation for a lifetime of having his stories turned into profit centers for others.  Amazingly, in the face of a preponderance of evidence, Stallone was deposed and claimed to have never even considered Wepner as a source.  It was of little surprise to note that Wepner eventually settled out of court, though apparently the monetary settlement was “not very large.”  Wepner continues to work to this day, in the same liquor outside sales job he always worked, despite being in his 70s.  He has been able to cash in on his fame, and seems to enjoy the speaking engagements and appearances that he gets on a consistent basis.  That was great to see, and unlike so many other retired athletes who go bankrupt or who lose their earned fortunes in failed business deals or via shady advisers, Wepner lives a happy, comfortable life.

In conjunction with the release of the film on October 25th (one week earlier than it was supposed to air), Grantland’s Michael Weinreb posted a great story on the new ESPN off-shoot site, worth a read.  And the documentary itself is worth a watch, even if you’re not a boxing fan.

Scott Boras is probably the most well known agent to Nats fans, representing roughly a quarter of our 40-man roster. Photo Ezra Shaw/Getty images via espn.com

(this is an ongoing series of personal reviews of ESPN film’s newly released documentaries.  See here for some previous discussions).

ESPN Film’s latest documentary, by excellent film maker Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame), discusses sports agents and their role in the sports industry.  It is an excellent documentary and vaults into the upper echelon of the films that have been part of the original 30-for-30 series, in this person’s opinion.  Spurlock touches on the agent process for non superstars, talks to some big-name agents about corruption and problems in the industry, analyzes why agents exist and their role in professional sports, and takes a look at how sports agents (specifically David Falk) have enabled athletes to go from, well, athletes to world-known figures by virtue of negotiated advertising and sponsorship contracts.

The documentary first followed a smaller sports agency (ETL) as he recruited lower level football prospects, giving a pretty interesting viewpoint into the business of smaller-time agents not named Scott Boras or Drew Rosenhaus.  The cutthroat-ness of the industry came through loud and clear as one of ETL’s clients freely ditched the signing agent for a larger company after he had been drafted, despite ETL having nursed the player through the process and invested thousands of dollars in his draft preparation.  There’s no regulation, and seemingly no ethics, in the representation contracts that are signed and broken as easily as junior high school students date and then break up.

The interview with Michael Jordan super-agent David Falk was indeed eye-opening, if only because most of us now take sports commercials, Nike, Gatorade and Under Armour for granted.  In the early 80s, there was no such sports commercial market.  Falk and Jordan invented the genre and made each other rich and filthy rich in the process.  There was a telling quote; Nike expected to sell 3 million pairs of Air Jordan sneakers in the first two years.  They sold 150m instead.

Spurlock also talked about shadiness on the agent’s side, interviewing Josh Luchs, the former sports agent who disclosed years of shady practices in an eye-opening Sports Illustrated article in October of last year.  In typical Spurlock fashion, he took Luchs back to the “scene of the crime,” and Luchs showed how easy it remains to this day for agents to have access to players for recruiting.  I’m not sure what point he was making, proving that access to a public university campus is rather easy, but the intent was to Luch’s often repeated point about how the Ncaa and schools have done little to address the issues that Luchs himself admitted to.

For me, the salient point in the documentary was a quote towards the end of the piece, after discussing all the shadiness.  David Falk, when prompted, basically said that (i’m paraphrasing) “He didn’t see how it was possible to get started in the sports agent business without giving payments to athletes.”  That line appeared just before a commercial break and I audibly said, “Wow” to myself upon hearing it.  To have one of the most clean-cut agents in the business basically admit that rule breaking is nearly a requirement to break into the business was alternatively shocking and amazingly honest to hear.

I don’t think this documentary was powerful enough to actually cause its subjects to change their behaviors (McDonalds changed their menu options and decreased the sizes of their drinks and french-fry packages not long after the film embarassed the restaurant chain).  But it was an interesting watch into an industry that we often only see when a pro athlete has done something reprehensible.

So, after leaving this blog with the default WordPress theme for the past 18 months, I finally got around to figuring out why I couldn’t install themes automatically from the admin dashboard and put in a new one.

I like the fonts and the way pictures are presented here, and there’s more stuff in the side bar.  I still don’t have a twitter plugin (which i’d like but isn’t really that necessary frankly … the only time i tweet is to put in links back to this site), and I don’t use tags in the articles, so a tag cloud won’t work (a future todo item), but the theme looks good.

The one quibble I have, and I may need to keep looking for new themes, is that sometimes I cut and paste xls data into the blog and it looks bad in the thin column formats.  I may look for a wider blog format.  Look at all the wasted space to the left here; I could use that for content and the blog postings would probably be an easier read….

A quick comment on the VCU run through to the final four.

It seems to me that the rise of the mid-major schools and the lack of respect given by coaches and national media is coming to a head.  Perhaps George Mason’s run in 2006 was considered truly “cinderella” but Butler’s national championship appearance last year from a one-bid conference (not to mention their fantastic performance against Duke in the final) coupled with their return this year should be enough to give the national media pause.  When are these great teams from mid-major conferences going to get their due?

Lets talk about VCU.  4th place in the CAA, usually a one-bid conference.  This year though they earned 3 bids and probably would have fared better had ODU not been matched up with Butler to start the tourney.  VCU did not receive ONE vote in the final AP poll.  They were #49 in the final RPI rankings.  Yet here’s what they have done in the tourney:

• Beat USC by 13
• Beat Georgetown by 18 (ranked in the 22-25 range towards the end of the season)
• Beat Purdue by 18 (ranked 10-12 range towards the end of the year)
• Eke by Florida State in OT 72-71 (3rd place in ACC, probably better than a #10 seed)
• Beat Kansas soundly by 10.

I’m sorry, but when you beat two teams as soundly as they beat Georgetown and Purdue, on neutral courts and on the biggest stage possible, it tells me you are a team that belongs in the discussion of the best basketball teams out there.  Georgetown apologists (and there are many in this town) will tell you Wright was just coming back from injury.  I don’t buy it; that was a senior-heavy lineup that flat out got beat.  Wright played, by the way, and VCU controlled the game from the start.

I watched the Kansas game all the way through and it was no fluke.  They lead 41-27 at the half, weathered a massive run by Kansas to start the 2nd half, made key shots to get their lead back, and never allowed Kansas to really be “in the game” for the entirety of the last 4 minutes.  This may be a “massive upset” per the same national media members who couldn’t comprehend VCU being this good, but to me it was another dominating performance by a team that clearly merited mention prior to this run.

So the question is; why did no one know about VCU if they were capable of beating top-ranked teams so soundly?

It makes you wonder; if VCU was so soundly beating teams from these major conferences, imagine where we’d be if GMU didn’t have to play Ohio State so early, or if ODU-Butler was a first-round game instead of a regional final?  ODU and GMU were clearly better teams than VCU all year but suffered from being slightly “too good” and earning 8 and 9 seeds instead of the coveted 11 seed (which has an amazingly easy path to the elite 8 if their cards fall correctly).

In my opinion, college basketball is undergoing a fundamental change.  Sure you’re going to have your blue blood teams (Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky) that are always good and always have players.  But sooner or later people need to realize that the best team in a mid-major is clearly better than the 4th place team in the SEC.  Because we’re seeing it proven, again and again, on the floor.  Perhaps we can get to a point where there are more Gonzagas and Butlers in the rankings instead of Georgetowns and Louisvilles.