Weekend Wrap

Lots to talk about today, and since my legs are fried we just might go long.  We'll start with what is the least interesting of our items...

Going Low - Fabian Gomez wasn't in the picture on Sunday at the Sony, until he was:

HONOLULU (AP) -- Fabian Gomez of Argentina closed with two birdies for an 8-under

62, and then made his 11th birdie of the day on the second playoff hole to beat Brandt Snedeker on Sunday in the Sony Open. 

Gomez won for the second time on the PGA Tour, and this one was much tougher.

Starting the final round four shots behind, the 37-year-old Gomez ran off seven straight birdies in the middle his round, let Snedeker back in the game with a pair of bogeys, and then holed a 10-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole and a 20-foot birdie from just off the 18th green to finish at 20-under 260.

Not sure I agree with that "tougher" assessment, as I think it's far more difficult to play with the lead.  But 62's rarely hurt a player, especially on Sunday and, as the commentators told us ad nauseum, this ensures that Gomez will represent Argentina in the Olympics...I know, contain your excitement.

Sharknado -  Word broke on Twitter last night and was confirmed this morning that our long national nightmare is over.  From the official press release:

FOX Sports announces that they will be making a change to their commentary team, and Greg Norman will not return to the network’s USGA Championships coverage in 2016. The announcement was made today by John Entz, President of Production & Executive Producer, FOX Sports. 

Both parties have agreed to an amicable separation and will continue to work together to broadcast the Franklin Templeton Shootout, which remains an important part of FOX Sports’ golf platform. 

“After careful consideration, we have decided to make this change to our USGA Championships coverage,” said John Entz. “We want to thank Greg for his contributions last year, and wish him success in all his current and future endeavors.”

Careful consideration should be read as scathing reviews...  I should also note that the photo above did not run with the press release, it was Shack's editorial comment.   When reached for comment, Norman added "I'm sorry to leave Fox, but I wanted to spend more time with my family bronze busts.

OK, I made that last bit up....Here's Geoff's comments from last night, including a preview of The Shark's replacement:

That source could not confirm, however, that Paul Azinger will be announced asGreg

Norman's after just a year as Foxgolf's lead analyst. However, Azinger has gone very quiet of late on Twitter and has been widely rumored in recent days to be talking to Fox. 

Furthermore, Azinger worked with Fox golf producer Mark Loomis when the trio of Mike Tirico-Nick Faldo and Azinger was widely revered for their fresh, fun and smart approach. 

Azinger has most recently been lead analyst on ESPN's golf telecasts, but with the network down to just The Masters, his much-needed smart approach to players, championships, courses and the golf swing would be a great addition to Fox. Azinger will be an enormous upgrade over Norman, whose first year was marked largely by sounding unprepared, appearing unaware of players who were born outside Australia, and most of all, seeming very impressed with former World No. 1 Greg Norman.

Martin Kaufmann makes it clear that this was not a mutual break-up:

During the final round of the Franklin Templeton Shootout in December, Fox put a third announcer, Brad Faxon, in the 18th tower with Norman and anchor Joe Buck. The hope, according to sources, was that Faxon’s presence would force Norman to become more engaged in the broadcast. Fox, however, apparently didn’t see a way forward with Norman.

And this little vignette sums up the unsuccessful experiment:

That was most notable at last summer’s U.S. Open. After Dustin Johnson three-putted on the final hole, Norman was at a loss for words, despite having endured many painful defeats in his playing career.

You mean like the time he three-putted  at Inverness in the playoff to gift a PGA Championship to 'Zinger?  Just like he's now gifted his analyst chair to the same gent...

Gary Van Sickle piles on with this:

Norman was paired in the booth with veteran sportscaster Joe Buck, who hadn’t done

golf before. 

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Norman wasn't very good on the air because "he didn’t do his homework and he didn’t know any players who weren’t Australian." Norman just wasn’t engaged in any of the FOX telecasts the way the network had hoped, the source said. 

"It was tough for the whole staff because he wasn’t involved in the shows like a lead analyst should be," the source said. "Maybe he thought just being Greg Norman was enough. He's been successful in everything he's done in business but he wasn’t good at TV. He was a team player but when the cameras turned on, he just went silent."

Like your humble correspondent, I'm sure you'tr confused as to how he was team player while not doing his homework... did he give Holly Sonders unsolicited back rubs?  Van Sickle also had this anecdote"

The U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club was another awkward wrinkle for the FOX team. Brad Faxon, a former PGA Tour player stationed at the 17th hole, wound up providing an unusual share of the analysis and commentary because Norman wasn't chiming in.

Announcing is its own art form, and it's no embarrassment if it's not in your wheelhouse.  On the other hand, Norman, d/b/a The Living Brand,  is so famously self-obsessed that the bit above about assuming that being The Shark was sufficient rings so very true...  But kudos to FOX for taking aggressive steps to improve their product...  Now, can we talk about Joe Buck?

The Big Short - My ski buddy Lee is a shareholder in his beloved Green Bay Packers...I know, Saturday night was tough on the lad.  But now comes news of another way to invest in the sports world:

When Fantex Holdings first announced its intention to offer athlete "tracking stocks" the concept was met with a lot of skepticism in the business press. That was in 2013, and in April 2014, the brokerage brought its first athlete stock public: Vernon Davis, then a tight end for the San Francisco 49ers. The skepticism hasn't entirely faded, but in the 18 months since, the company has brought five more football player stocks to market. And in September it signed a contract with Los Angeles Angels pitcher Andrew Heaney, its first athlete outside of football.

Who knew?  Now of course football and baseball players are under contract, so I really can't see this happening in our game.

Now it's getting into golf. Fantex has signed a deal with 26-year-old golfer Scott Langley, Yahoo Finance is first to report. 

Langley is best known for finishing 16th at the 2010 U.S. Open, where he tied for the best amateur score. He is also the first alum of The First Tee, a youth golf program started by the World Golf Foundation in 1997, to actually make it to the PGA Tour.

If you're best known for finishing 16th in en event six years ago, then you're really unknown.  Except, of course, to geeks like your humble correspondent.  Here's how it works:

How does Fantex actually work? The company pays every athlete it signs a one-time, upfront lump sum in return for a percentage of the athlete's future brand income—all future income tied to the athlete's brand, whether it's from the sport or from business outside of it. (That includes, for example, money from endorsement deals, fast-food franchising, speaking engagements, TV appearances and more.) In Langley's case, Fantex is paying Langley $3.06 million in return for 15% of his future brand income. Fantex raises that fee from the IPO process; if it fails to sell enough shares of the athlete in the offering, it can't pay him. It has successly brought all six of its attempted offerings public, but it had to cancel the offering of Arian Foster, who was planned to be its first stock. Foster is a bigger star than any of the athletes Fantex has brought public, but he was sidelined by a back injury shortly after Fantex announced the deal.

This is pretty interesting stuff, though Langley doesn't seem like he has a sufficiently high ceiling to place such a bet.  But you can see where this can only work with young players, those willing to trade off a piece of their upside for the security of a large upfront payment.

He can't possibly fit their profile, but I'd love to see them take DJ public, as that's a puppy I'd like to short.

The Hard Sell - Cam Cole has quite the head-scratcher in The National Post about celebrity endorsements, Using Spieth's Coca Cola deal as his tent pole. Here's the first bit of cognitive dissonance:

Which brings us to this week’s faux-controversy in the world of professional sports and the roles athletes play for money: Jordan Spieth, pitchman for Coca-Cola.
The ink hadn’t even dried on an endorsement deal some say rivals those signed by LeBron James and Taylor Swift for promoting soda-pop brands — tens of millions of dollars — before the first cries of protest from health watchdogs.

How could Spieth, golf’s new Golden Child, the No. 1 player in the world with his All-American Boy reputation and a natural grace and politeness and appealing personality, sell his soul to an evil purveyor of sugary death? Shame on him. 

Well, no doubt they have a point.

OK, so it's both a faux-controversy yet two graphs later he concedes that those objecting have a point.
And compare this from the middle of the piece:

We’re smarter than that now. But guess what? They’re still selling, and we’re still buying but it’s not as though we are, or ever have been, powerless in the equation. 

Professional sports would be lost without beer advertising. Does it work? Maybe, on some.

With this rousing coda:

So perhaps Spieth, when he inevitably is overcome with guilt, will sign a contract endorsing broccoli, or brussels sprouts, or something gluten-free or made from soy, and the children of North America will no longer be slaves to the Coca-Cola conspiracy, lured there by a golfer’s magnetism. 

Until then, we are only pawns in game of life.

Shack in his post takes Cole's piece to argue about the efficacy of such endorsements, whereas I read it to question, admittedly to the limited extent of its coherence, the moral case for endorsing such a sugar-laden product.  Both are interesting questions, though of course I'd like to see them in the hands of a better thinker or writer.

He's got all the usual overwrought suspects thrown in, of course, including accusing luxury car manufacturers of causing global warming that's going to kill us all.  And taking Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle to task for endorsing cigarettes, providing no context for the era or the economics involved.  To the extent that you vies Jordan's Coca Cola contract negatively, one of the obvious arguments is that he can't possibly need the money. You can readily see what a mess this piece is...

But nothing in it is stranger than his lede, where he rests his premise on the role of Mongo in Blazing Saddles:

“Mongo only pawn in game of life.” 

Possibly Alex Karras’s most famous line from his post-football acting career was nothing more profound than a bit of dialogue from a comic role in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, the role of a massive, supposedly villainous enforcer with a sensitive side that required a size-XXXL actor to deliver one coherent thought of sufficient surprise to be funny. 

No one asked Karras, may he rest in peace, if he thought it was doing the reputation of football players a disservice by portraying a big, monosyllabic oaf in the movies.

Seriously?  Don't break it to Cole that it was just a movie....  but who knew football players were a protected class?  But there's good news that Karras redeemed himself in the eyes of our arbiter of social mores:

Even Karras later made up for his Mongo offences by playing a gay bodyguard in the gender-bender Victor/Victoria, so he was redeemed. Blazing Saddles likely could never be made today, making fun of Jews, African-Americans (definitely not called that in the movie), Irish, Chinese, women, politicians, drunks — it would be shouted down as an affront to modern sensibilities.

Now, the fact that redemption lies in portraying a gay character is laugh-out loud-funny, but I've one last question for Mr. Cole.  The fact that Blazing Saddles couldn't be made in this ultra-PC environment: Good thing or bad?