So football began for real this weekend with real college and high school games. The NFL starts next Sunday and with it the barrage of fantasy and gambling coverage.
I can live with fantasy and gambling talk as like millions of Americans, I participate in both.
I have views on politics, just like all of you reading this newsletter. It’s been hard to escape the hostile political atmosphere of the summer. Events of June, July and August were bonkers, even by modern standards. But my sense is that sports this fall season will be a welcome reprieve from the noise than platform for stimulating culture war debate.
The Olympics were an early sign. Other than the trans boxing controversy, there really wasn’t much discourse. There was a purity about Paris that we as a country responded to. For two weeks in late July-early August, we partied like it was 1980. When a program was on, we watched it in real time. Of course, we now live in a prosperous society containing temperature-controlled central air conditioning and DoorDash rather than Sears-bought window fans and Hungry-Man. You get the point.
Legacy media companies that broadcast sports — ESPN, Fox, Turner — don’t want politics messing with their ratings. Times are lean, these companies have spent billions on sports rights fees. They are cutting expensive labor costs off books, willing to eat salary if the talent won’t stick to sports. The best way to maximize ROI is to not piss off the beer-drinking, disposable income demographic that watches the games. Advertisers are over the “woke” culture wars. They’ve learned its bad for business.
A lot of people, myself included, cringed at the site of NBA coach Steve Kerr speaking at the DNC. It’s personal with someone like Kerr, an athlete so associated with an era of greatness in Chicago sports. I’d prefer to keep those memories sacred. But he has every right to say what he wants, even if I disagree with his views on social or economic issues.
Kerr’s appearance at such a high-profile event was as much about celebrity (as was much of that convention) than politics. No one is going to consume less NBA games because Kerr didn’t shut up and dribble.
If Colin Kaepernick taking a knee represented its origins, the Trump with Nick Bosa/Joe Burrow non-event constituted the end of sports and politics activism integration. The NFL stars posted with Trump for goodness gracious! Fascists! Aside from some silly online trolling, eh, no one really cared.
Most of us are just over all of it. Let’s enjoy the games.
THE SIX
*when George Halas bought the Decatur Staleys and moved them to Chicago for basically a bag of onions 100 years ago, he never could have envisioned the value of NFL franchises. Get this: the average NFL team is now worth $6 billion. It’s so absurdly high, finding average rich guys to buy in is getting harder and harder. So the NFL is turning to private equity firms, previously disallowed. As this article from Sportico explains, not only does PE money allow team ownership to get much needed cash, but to increase valuations and potentially make sale prices higher down the line.
*Pew Research has come out with a new survey that asked teens whether or not being a teenager today is harder than it was 20 years ago. 44 percent of American teens say it is harder today than it was two decades ago, which incidentally is when I was a teenager (just kidding). Among those teens who think it’s harder, 31 percent said there’s more pressure and expectations, 25 percent said social media makes things harder, 15 percent said the world and country have changed in a bad way, and 11 percent cited technology in general. Cold bottles of Mello Yello and Frogger marathons at the arcade. Man, those were simpler times.
*A bit of a bobblehead controversy earlier this week (when was the last time anyone started a sentence with ‘bobblehead controversy?’) The Los Angeles Dodgers held their second Shohei Ohtani bobblehead night of the 2024 season. This time the bobblehead featured both Ohtani and his dog, Decoy. Given that they were giving out only 40,000 bobbleheads but the Dodgers sold over 53,000 tickets for Ohtani’s last bobblehead night, people were lining up outside Dodger Stadium five hours before the gates opened yesterday to ensure that they’d get one. Quick math…that’s more people than merchandise. So why in the hell don’t they just make the same number of bobbleheads as there are seats in the stadium? The LA Times has the story on how reality bites, even in the world of big time professional sports.
*The jersey worn by Babe Ruth in the game of the 1932 World Series where he was said to have called his home run shot sold for $24.12 million at auction last weekend, making it the single most expensive sports collectible ever. It’s a size 46 Yankees road jersey worn by Ruth in Game 3 of that series (we think). The previous record for most expensive memorabilia was a Mickey Mantle card that sold for $12.6 million. The same jersey was sold for $940,000 in 2005, but that was before it was conclusively linked — using photo-matching technology — to the specific “called shot” game.
*My new favorite show this past month is the doc “Chimp Crazy” on HBO. I’ve only seen two episodes but trust me, it’s bananas. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the director, Eric Goode, also directed the equally nutty “Tiger King” doc series. Vulture with an excellent profile of Goode, who has a fascinating background and who’s philosophy on making docs is to shoot for years, “identifying the subjects he’s most interested in and then waiting as long as it takes for a plot to develop.”
*finally, mad props to this golfer who reached back his putter and knocked in a yes, 154 yard putt. No way to verify the “longest putt” claim, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. Knock own those three footers, the long ones come so much easier.
Have a suggestion for The Kerr Report? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.