* Major League Baseball, of course, is the only professional sports league that doesn’t have a salary cap to help drive competitiveness and instill a sense of parity among the franchises. Bloomberg.com just quantified the disparities. The New York Yankees, to no one’s surprise, topped the 30-team MLB with a $3.3 billion valuation. The Los Angeles Dodgers were second at $2.1 billion, and the Boston Red Sox third at $2.06 billion. The Rays were listed 30th–at $530 million.
* By the way, Tampa Bay fared very well in the recent Players Choice Awards for Outstanding Rookie. Rays outfielder Wil Myers won in the American League and Miami Marlins’ pitcher Jose Fernandez, an Alonso High grad, won in the National League.
* I watched two football games last weekend: Florida-Georgia and Florida State-Miami. A few quick observations:
First, FSU’s back, UF’s back to the Zook years, and the Nov. 30 Florida-Florida State game in Gainesville won’t be pretty. Hearing a home-team head coach get booed is always uncomfortable.
Second, I’m tired of the euphemisms for boorish player behavior. Both the UF-Georgia and the FSU-Miami games had more than their share of posturing players pushing, shoving and mouthing off. The cameras focus on it, partisan fans seem to revel in it and the commentators and print reporters dismiss it with terms such as “animated,” “chippy” and “smack talk.” Referees calling multiple, off-setting “unsportmanlike conduct” penalties on both sides amounts to enabling.
It’s clearly a matter for coaches and what they demand in on-field discipline. It’s also a matter of who they bring in and how high they want to set the behavior bar and still be able to recruit enough blue-chip players to win–and justify those outlandish coaching salaries.
Third, it’s revealing what alums and boosters are permitted on the sidelines. Among those gracing the Miami sideline: Alex Rodriguez.