Good morning, all and happy Presidents’ Day!
The NBA held its all-star game last night. As I have written on this platform over the weekend, I used to be a big NBA fan and a fan of the all-star game. Not anymore, however, for reasons I have outlined in previous posts. When you have the commissioner of your sport, in this case NBA commissioner Adam Silver, admitting teams are “tanking” in order to improve their chances of getting a high draft choice, then your sport has an integrity problem.
There is a solution to restoring the NBA’s and for that matter all professional sports integrity. I provide a recommendation in the above video and podcast.
Here are some other thoughts for a Monday:
Nice win for Colin Morikawa at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Open, although they showed very little of the celebrity amateurs, like they did in the old days, which made this tournament so fun to watch. One of the PGA Tour’s most promising players, he went 847 days between winning tournaments. Look for him to win plenty more.
Switching between the golf and the Daytona 500, I could not help but notice the polos, sweaters and jackets the golfers were wearing, plastered with all those ads. They are beginning to resemble the cars the racers are driving on the NASCAR circuit.
Interesting thing about ads. Can you remember what they are hawking, when there are so many? I understand ad dollars, having been in radio for decades, but what I do not understand is one ad after another. A five-minute stop-set on radio (Much too long, IMHO.) contains so many ads, I cannot tell one from the next. Same thing for TV. Yet, I can still remember the Schaefer Beer commercial 55 years ago, which preceded the sports report on the 11:00 news on Channel 3, with the new truck driver singing to his fellow workers:
I can also tell you the 11:00 anchors (On alternate nights) were Bill Hanson and Norm Peters and that Hanson loved to wear a maroon blazer. I guess these “experts” have it figured out, but I would flunk any test, if hard pressed, to come up with one ad that sticks in my mind today. Schaefer Beer? 11:00 news? More than a half century ago? I’m your guy.
Being it is Presidents’ Day, here is a salute to President William Howard Taft, who was the first president to ever throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a big league game, tossing one to Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators on Opening Day, April 14, 1910. Don’t ask me if he tossed back a Schaefer beer during the game.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Thank you for being a subscriber!
DAN
