Recent Comments by jmauro2000

EA Loses in Court to Ex-NCAA Athletes

They didn't lose per SE, but were told by the appeals court that they cannot be dismissed from the lawsuit at this point. They still need to litigate the facts of the case and could still win on the merits.

posted by jmauro2000 at 05:00 PM on July 31, 2013

Penn State Fined $60 Million, Paterno Wins Vacated Since 1998

Rangers FC was not forced by the Scottish Football league to fold. They were forced to fold by the HM Revenue and Customs (British IRS) because after they audited their taxes it became apparent they owed the British government somewhere on the order of 130 million. Because of this the government liquidated the team.

All the Scottish Football did was deduct 10 points from their standings and ban them from playing in international tournaments for the year.

The reason that the new Rangers are now in the lowest league is that none of the SPL teams would let the reformed team back at any other level other than the very bottom of the pyramid.

posted by jmauro2000 at 08:35 AM on July 25, 2012

Cole Hamels Admits Hitting Bryce Harper on Purpose

The 5 days is more for the 5 days of salary than the games missed.

posted by jmauro2000 at 08:20 PM on May 07, 2012

Weaver Wonder Wins One for Woeful Angels

It only seats 45K for baseball. The 64k is when it was a football/baseball stadium. During the last round of conversion about 20k seats were removed when it was reconfigured for baseball only.

posted by jmauro2000 at 07:58 PM on May 03, 2012

NHL re-alignment halted by NHLPA

MLB has already completed their CBA. Did it with like a month ago.

It's been the only one of the major leagues not to have major troubles. I think 1994 got to the whole league that no one other than the owners or players care about labor disputes. The people who pay them money will just go elsewhere while they argue and might not come back when they're done.

posted by jmauro2000 at 02:52 AM on January 07, 2012

Game Over

Both are exceptions that prove the rule. If the opposite was true there would be hundreds of examples not just two.

posted by jmauro2000 at 08:33 AM on May 24, 2011

Washington Wizards Bring Back Old Colors

This has been in the works for a long time. You have to file a color change in the NBA almost 1.5 years in advance of the change. In addition the DC sports teams have appeared to have settled on red as their primary color scheme.

posted by jmauro2000 at 11:53 PM on May 10, 2011

Four Celtics Make All-Star Team

They should do like hockey: put all the players in a pool and pick them school yard style. It would be a more interesting game that way. Especially if they pick them right before the game on live TV.

posted by jmauro2000 at 10:34 PM on February 17, 2011

Cal Kills Baseball to Save Women's Sports

It's not Title IX, but football The rising costs of rebuilding the football stadium so it avoids a being closed for safety issues, the program had to start cutting other programs or run out of money. Part of this was a general reduction in total scholarships.

Title IX only effects the number of scholarships, which means if you can raise money, like Cal did, it's easier to keep women's sports as a balance against the 85 scholarships going to football. It's unfortunate that's the case, but if a school wants to keep football (and cut costs) they have to make these choices.

posted by jmauro2000 at 06:19 PM on February 13, 2011

Wisconsin Towel Maker Has Terrible Dilemma

They eliminated the one week gap in the 2001, but September 11, 2001 forced the whole calendar back a week and cause all sorts of heartaches for the 2002 Super Bowl in New Orleans (they had to pay to reschedule a National Automotive Dealers convention to free up the Superdome). They put the one week bye back in so they never have to do that again. On the other hand moving the Pro-Bowl into that week was a good idea since it at least gives something else for the writers to focus on.

posted by jmauro2000 at 10:54 AM on January 30, 2011

Boy Sent Home for Wearing Steelers Jersey

Wow, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

posted by jmauro2000 at 10:12 AM on January 15, 2011

Hines Ward: NFL Run By Hypocrites

On the beer sponsorshipscommercials, the NFL TV contracts give them quite a lot of control over who can sponsor TV ads (i.e. if they don't want you to advertise, you won't be able to). The Broadcasters won't want to offend the NFL in any way since the NFL games are kind of a cash cow for them, so the mere suggestion that something might possibly be unacceptable is enough to kill the ad (even if no one in the room has ever seen it).

posted by jmauro2000 at 04:41 PM on December 02, 2010

FIFA versus South Africa: a total victory

Yes it is fairly common that the host country loses a ton of money on the FIFA and Olympics. The only country in the last 30 or so years to host the FIFA tournament and make money at it was the United States in 1994, but that's mainly because we have a large number of very large football stadiums that site dormant over the summer so we didn't need to go on a building spree (which is where almost all the costs are).

Any yes it should be stadiums, stadia should only be used when referring to multiple Roman horse tracks, but those who speak something other than English as a first language get it wrong because the plural for modern stadiums in other Romance Languages is stadia because they're closer to the original Latin than the Germanic English.

posted by jmauro2000 at 10:03 AM on October 19, 2010

Pittsburgh Pirates make money by losing, leaked financial documents suggest:

I believe that was Major League. Where the owner wanted the team to lose so she could get out of the contract and then move the team to Miami and make more money.

posted by jmauro2000 at 08:07 AM on August 24, 2010

Catwalk costs Tampa Bay Rays AL East Lead

The catwalks are actually part of the stadium structure and unlike the Metrodome speakers cannot be moved.

The talk of the Rays stadium's demise is greatly exaggerated. The contract the Rays signed with St. Petersberg has them in the stadium until 2026 and it was written without any sort of out clause which exists in most stadiumsgovernment contracts. As such the Rays are lacking any real leverage to get out of it and get a new stadium (as well as the added bonus in that they don't want to spend any of their own money for a stadium and the surrouding cities and the state are broke and cannot help.) My guess we'll be hearing the ownership complain about it and have all sorts of proposals for a long, long time.

posted by jmauro2000 at 06:49 PM on August 07, 2010

Colorado To Pac-10

Missouri has no chance at the Big 10 or the Pac-10. They were specifically played by the Big 10 conference in order to start the process of breaking up the Big 12, then left to out to dry when the Big 10 got the fish they were looking from the Big 12 pond, (i.e. Nebraska). All because they thought the grass would be greener somewhere else instead of waiting for the contract renewal which would of netted them in the range of $17 mil per year.

They'll wind up in the Big 12Mountain West merger or wind up somewhere with Kansas pulling them, Kansas State, and Iowa State along. It'll likely be the Big East or C-USA if there is no merger on the table with the Mountain West. They have no chance on their own since as a football school they're no bigger fish than the others who are left, but at least Kansas has a top 3 basketball school that can add some cache to a conference in the lesser revenue generating sport.

It's kind of sad that Missouri's future now entirely depends on Kansas though. But that's what you get when you start chasing mirages.

posted by jmauro2000 at 04:37 PM on June 13, 2010

NCAA signs $10.8 billion basketball tourney TV deal

TruTV is owned by Warner Brothers and is part of the Turner family. It's a place to dump extra games they cannot show on the main channels. It's the same thing ESPNABC does with ABC Family.

posted by jmauro2000 at 06:45 PM on April 22, 2010

NASCAR Tests Possible Nationwide Series Car of Tomorrow.

I'm still hoping for the Car of Yesterday because that would be totally cool.

posted by jmauro2000 at 03:16 PM on January 04, 2009