Monday Morning Coffee

February 6th, 2017

That turned out to a be a much better Super Bowl than it appeared.  I’m not sure what was worse, the Patriots play in the 1st half, or all of the Super Bowl commercials.  Even the Cleveland Browns scored as many points as the Falcons and Patriots did in the 1st quarter on Super Bowl Sunday.  Bill Belichick was about ready to replace Brady with Lady Gaga as his quarterback.  Then came the second half of the game, which had to be extremely disappointing to the 8 Falcons fans that made the drive to Houston.  In the end, the Falcons looked like such big losers for blowing that lead, nobody would be surprised if they moved to LA next season.  This was like the Warriors blowing a 3-1 lead all over again.  I don’t know if Tom Brady is the best quarterback of all time, but he’s certainly in the discussion with Joe Montana.  Just listening to his teammates talk about him after the game made you realize how much they believe in him and their coach.  How the hell did Julian Edelman catch that ball?  I have never seen a team make second half adjustments like the Patriots do in all their games.  Bill Belichick is really that good.  Why did the Falcons keep throwing the football in the fourth quarter? They had two of the best running backs in football, and they didn’t take nearly enough time off the clock.  It was experience vs inexperience.  Roger Goodell congratulating Tom Brady on the podium when it was over was like Obama meeting Trump at the White House.  What a great finish to the NFL season.

The one thing I look forward to every Super Bowl is the commercials.  However, there was not a single commercial that was good.  Nothing made me laugh.  In fact, I think for the last several years, the Super Bowl commercials have been progressively getting more conservative, as well as less funny and entertaining.  Lady Gaga’s performance was good, but it was almost surprising that she wasn’t wearing less clothing, and didn’t make any kind of political statement.  I’m guessing the NFL gave her some pretty strict guidelines to follow for her performance, which did not allow for any of that.

The Lakers announced that Magic Johnson is returning to the team.  Magic says that he is available to the team in any way they would like to use him.  Good thing because I think it’s most ideal if Magic can be the team’s starting point guard and center.  Magic indicated that the Lakers are one superstar away from competing, so hopefully he was talking about himself, because acquiring one through free agency or a trade is going to be more difficult than ever before.  There is actually a lot that Magic can do for the organization right now, both on and off the floor.  In the eyes of the public, he immediately will add some much needed credibility to the front office.  If and when Jeanie Buss moves Jim out of basketball operations in the coming months, Magic will also pave the way for someone else to provide more help to run basketball operations.  Perhaps someone with some fresh thinking.  I also suspect that Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak will not be going anywhere, nor should they.  They will simply be ascending to higher advisory type roles.  We see Fortune 500 Companies do this all the time, bringing in new CEO’s after just a few years for that type of thinking.  Magic can also help mentor D’Angelo Russell, and work with him in practice to get him to fulfill all that potential he has.  Acquiring talent is going to be tougher than ever in the NBA, but if there’s somebody who can help the Lakers rebuild, it’s the Magic man.

This Lebron James vs the Cavs, and Lebron James vs Charles Barkley saga is so overblown.  Even though Lebron could have done it without going public, there is nothing wrong with him pushing his front office to make more moves to improve the team.  If you remember correctly, it was Kobe Bryant who did the exact same thing in 2007-2008, which pressured the Laker front office into making a big trade for Pau Gasol.  We always used to accuse Lebron of not being pathologically obsessed with winning.  As he’s gotten older and is trying to enhance his legacy, he has resorted to this type of “crack the whip” leadership with the entire organization.  You may not like it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be effective.  There’s a good chance Lebron already had this talk with the Cavs privately, yet they haven’t acted, so he resorted to scolding them publicly for not continuously trying to improve the team.  I have no problem with that an even admire him for it.  On the other hand, it’s Barkley’s job to give his opinion on these types of situations, and Leborn knows that.  There’s nothing wrong with Barkley’s criticism of Lebron, and it’s no disrespect toward his legacy.  There’s a difference between criticizing the person and the performance, and Barkley is able to separate the two, so there’s no reason Lebron shouldn’t be able to.  Lebron on the other hand felt the need to criticize Barkley on a personal level, which was totally unnecessary.

Normally it’s the Raiders that find a way to screw things up.  This time however, it’s the NFL that screwed things up for the Raiders, likely ruining any chance for them to move to Vegas.  That’s because the league advised the Raiders to negotiate a deal to move to Vegas without Casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson.  After months of talks with Adelson, the team went behind his back multiple times, in attempt to get the deal done without him.  The real stupidity behind this decision is the fact that Adelson practically owns Vegas.  To get the deal done without him, the Raiders need the support of the local politicians, and Goldman Sachs.  Too bad Goldman has been advising Adelson’s firm for decades, and Adelson is very close with those local politicians.  There’s no chance they would go behind his back and make the deal without him.  With each passing day, I get the sense that the NFL is really run by idiots, who naively believe their football product is invincible.  That belief didn’t hold up in San Diego, who let the Chargers go when they refused to use public money to build a stadium, and the same thing is happening in Las Vegas.  Ultimately, what could destroy the NFL years from now is the people running it.

I’m not a huge believer in the merits of College Football’s National signing day.  However, there was a stark difference in the recruiting classes of USC and UCLA.  When you have a top 5 recruiting class, you are pulling in the best of the best, and a handful of five-star recruits.  That’s exactly what USC did, finishing with a class as high as #4 in some rankings.  The Trojans absolutely killed it, headlined by linebacker Levi Jones, a four star recruit, wide receiver Joseph Lewis, and his high school teammate Greg Johnson.  That also goes along with five star running back Stephen Carr, and a number of other highly touted recruits.  That not only fills the void left by the Trojan players departing for the NFL draft or graduating, but also adds much needed depth we haven’t seen since the Pete Carroll era.  I think it’s safe to say that Clay Helton has no problem recruiting.  Whether he can develop and coach over the long-haul remains to be seem, but I don’t hear anybody complaining about him anymore.  USC has returned to not even really recruiting players, but just selecting the top ones because the football brand is strong again.  As for the Bruins, a recruiting class ranked as high as #19 doesn’t sound bad, except when you find out that there were no running backs or wide receivers recruited.  Considering those were two of the Bruins biggest problems last year, it’s hard to imagine the team getting a whole lot better.  For a while, it seemed like UCLA was back on track, and even eclipsing USC within the Pac 12 Conference.  That feels like a distant memory now, and Jim Mora’s job might actually be in bigger jeopardy than most think.

Why are the Dodgers trying to sign Giants reliever Sergio Romo? His fastball probably wouldn’t even get a speeding ticket on the highway these days, and he definitely knows how to serve up some home runs.  Then again, he was injured last season, and his arm is about to fall off, so it makes perfect sense why Andrew Friedman would be interested in him.  If the Dodgers are going to take flyers on relievers like this, it would be nice if they also signed Joe Blanton as well.  However, let’s not pretend like the bullpen and the pitching is going to be reliable beyond Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen.  Those two guys are probably going to be asked to do some stupid things come October, like pitching way more innings than they really should.

Finally, get ready for The Bachelor Tonight.  You don’t actually think that both Taylor and Corrine are going to get kicked off the show tonight do you? Don’t be surprised if not only Corrine stays, but Taylor as well.  I think in the last episode I heard the term “emotional intelligence” more than I did in my senior year psychology class in college.  Whether you like her or hate her, you had to have fallen out of your chair laughing when Corrine said “make America Corrine again.”  If a guy dated 25 girls at one time, a girl would call him a player and a jerk.  On The Bachelor though, that guy is the man of every woman’s dreams.  The hilarious part about that is that all of these women are being duped and that Nick really just out to get some tail.

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