* Nice shout-out profile in Sunday’s New York Times on Tampa Bay Lightning rookie head coach Jon Cooper, 46. The piece, which included high praise from Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, underscored that Cooper definitely is “in the conversation for coach of the year.”
* Maybe the National Football League will dodge a bullet, and the weather for the Feb. 2 Super Bowl in East Rutherford, N.J. will merely be uncomfortably cold–and not polar vortex frigid. Regardless, playing the biggest football game of the season–and one of the largest sports and entertainment spectacles in the world–outdoors in February in northern New Jersey is still ridiculous.
No matter how much incentive Super Bowl XLVIII provided in the building of MetLife Stadium. No matter that the cachet crowd will still pay upwards of $3,000 a ticket. What they’ll likely be watching are players likely not at their best because of the elements.
* Even if you understand the salary reality of the parallel universe that is Major League Baseball, this is hard to fathom. No, not what the Tampa Bay Rays will pay starting pitcher David Price this season. He’s an elite player and a former Cy Young Award winner. But what another Rays’ starting pitcher Jeremy Hellickson will make this season.
Hellickson had an acknowledged off year in 2013. He was 12-10 with an earned run average that ballooned to over 5.00. That’s not good, especially on a team that is overly reliant on pitching. After trading James Shields, the Rays were relying on Hellickson to help make up the difference. He didn’t.
But he still made $503,000 last season, hardly chump change.
This year: He will make $3.65 million –or more than seven times that amount. Imagine if he actually had a good season last year? Or this year?
* This is still mind-boggling. This will be Rays’ senior adviser Don Zimmer’s 66th year in pro baseball. He broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization during the Truman Administration.