Mellinger Minutes: Kevin Harlan on his epic call, Chiefs, Hall of Fame ballot & more
Kevin Harlan is a national treasure, and you probably know what this is about, but either way the perhaps unprecedented way he called two games simultaneously with the delivery of a pro and the enthusiasm of a kid is one of the great moments of the NFL season:
Harlan, who lives in the Kansas City area and spent nine seasons as the voice of the Chiefs, is in his 34th year broadcasting NFL games. He’s also prominent with NBA and college basketball games.
All those games — thousands, has to be — and Harlan doesn’t remember doing anything like that before.
“Right place, right time,” he said by phone on Monday. “The intersection of all these things.”
First, some background. Harlan and his CBS crew obviously knew the implications of the Patriots-Dolphins game for the Chiefs: if the Dolphins and Chiefs both won, the Chiefs would get the AFC’s No. 2 seed and a first-round playoff bye.
Harlan broadcasts behind three monitors — one for stats, one a live feed of the game he’s calling, and a third on delay that helps when they go to the studio for updates.
Except on Sunday, Harlan asked for that third monitor to be on the Patriots-Dolphins game. He’d never made that request before.
But his call of that moment that shifted the Chiefs season could not have been the same without some serendipitous timing. Damien Williams’ second touchdown — the one that essentially iced the Chiefs’ win — and the ensuing extra point perfectly sandwiched Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick’s game-winning touchdown pass in real time.
It only took seconds for the crowd at Arrowhead to learn what happened at New England, and the energy lifted Harlan, even if he’s the type of broadcaster who doesn’t need much lifting.
“The only team I’m rooting for is CBS,” Harlan said. “I’m only rooting for us. I’m rooting for good shots and good graphics and good Rich Gannon and good everything. So, had it been different, and had the Chargers been going against a 5-10 Chiefs team and that happened for the Chargers I’d like to think I would’ve been just as excited and had the same amount of emotion.
“But what plays into it that people don’t realize, when you’re doing a game in a place like Arrowhead or Lambeau or Pittsburgh or wherever, the crowd is like a symphony orchestra. It fills the background and it rises to a crescendo. So there’s more energy in the building. You’re probably prompted by that energy, so with the crowd excited with the score, and knowing what that game meant it just kind of all came together.”
After the game, Harlan stopped for dinner on the Plaza before going home, where he started a fire and watched the 49ers-Seahawks in primetime. Every few minutes his phone buzzed with another message.
He said the ones that meant the most were from Gannon and his bosses, particularly because he genuinely didn’t know how it would come across.
“There comes a moment when you’re about to pull the trigger, like, ‘Uh-oh, does this make sense? Is this smart?’” Harlan said. “And I’ve been in those situations and felt like that and ended up being wrong, but it seemed at the time, the timing of all this fell right into place.”
In the aftermath of the call, Harlan joked that he was breaking “every FCC rule in the book.”
“I didn’t know, really,” he said. “I said that kind of in jest, but really, with everything, I thought, ‘Maybe I am screwing up.’ I thought I’d get a reprimand from New York. I didn’t know how they’d take it because they pride themselves on these live updates from the studio and I didn’t want to steal their thunder, but there was this moment of pause at our game at Arrowhead and it just fit so perfectly.”
If Harlan had any doubts, FCC Chairman and Chiefs fan Ajit Pai tweeted support and “blanket amnesty” for the call:
Harlan said he saw that message when he woke up on Monday. But even before that, he slept well.
This week’s reading recommendation is former Navy SEAL James Hatch on his semester with the snowflakes and the eating recommendation is the meatball at Ragazza.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and as always thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
There is not. I don’t mean this in the “probably not going to happen” way, or even the “it’s highly unlikely the Dolphins beat the Patriots” way. I mean it in the “Juan Thornhill is not returning to this game” way.
There is a zero percent chance of this happening.
Not small, not tiny, not infinitesimal.
Zero.
It would be tampering.
Now, I say all of that as a way to make this point: it would be the most badass organizational move in modern sports history.
I do not know what the penalty would be. The Chiefs lost a third-round pick, a sixth-round pick, and were fined $250,000 for violating the league’s anti-tampering policy for Jeremy Maclin a few years back.
That’s pretty steep.
But if the penalty would be a mere fine, honestly, I say it’d be worth it.
If there aren’t several customized Fitzpatrick Chiefs jerseys at the playoff game in two weeks then I don’t even know who Chiefs fans are anymore.
The difference between the No. 2 and No. 3 seed was always bigger than the difference between No. 3 and No. 4 for the Chiefs, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that it happened, and that’d be true even if the benefit was limited to a week off for a banged up team and extra time to plan the defense around Juan Thornhill’s injury.
But — *gameshow voice* — that’s not all!
The Chiefs also avoid playing the Titans, probably at all, but at least until the AFC Championship game.
Derrick Henry is going to have to get through the Patriots and then the Ravens if he wants another 188 yards and two touchdowns against the Chiefs*.
*Chiefs fans just shuddered with flashbacks.
That doesn’t mean the Chiefs will have an easy opponent a week from Sunday at 2:05. They’re likely to be between a 4 and 6 point favorite against any of them, but that’s closer to a coin flip than a lot want to believe.
But I do think the Titans are the last team the Chiefs wanted to see. I KNOW they’re the last team Chiefs *fans* wanted to see.
Anyway, your question. Lets go through all of them, in order of what I believe the Chiefs’ preference should be.
1. Buffalo. I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t feel this way simply because of the brand name, because it’s the Bills and the natural comparison here is with the Patriots.
And I’m trusting myself that I don’t. I’m trusting that I feel this way because the Bills beat just one playoff team, and scored just 14 points doing it. I’m trusting that it’s because the Bills haven’t scored more than 17 points since November, and that as good as the defense is — and they’re really good, fifth in DVOA with Jordan Phillips up front and Tre’Davious White* in the back — they’re not holding the Chiefs under 24 points or so.
*The Bills took the stud and now Pro Bowl corner with the first-round pick they got from the Chiefs in the Patrick Mahomes trade.
2. New England. There are some who’d argue the Patriots should be first on this list, and I get it. The offense is sputtering — the idea of Bill Belichick getting the ball with 1:40 left in the half and all three timeouts against the Dolphins and choosing to squeeze the clock is shocking — and the defense is terrific but not invincible against good offense.
But even with the debacle against the Dolphins, it’s worth remembering that the Patriots beat the Bills twice, still employ Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, and having to beat them twice seems like a suboptimal path to the Super Bowl.
3. Houston. You can find statistics both traditional and advanced that indicate the Texans aren’t quite as good as their reputation. They were outscored this season, for instance, and nobody gave up more yards per play.
They were exposed against the Ravens, gave up 38 to the Broncos, and their pass rush has been ineffective.
But J.J. Watt is back, and they have (at least to me) one of the AFC’s three elite quarterbacks. Their offensive line is much improved, most obviously in pass protection but also in power runs, which is one way smart teams should attack the Chiefs.
I might quibble a bit with the word “bust,” but maybe that’s just me taking the word too literally. If the Chiefs go 12-4, beat someone in the divisional round and then lose the AFC Championship game on the road against what might be of the NFL’s best teams in recent years I think it’d be a bit harsh to call the whole thing a failure*.
*I reserve the right to change my mind based on the way they’d lose, though, and maybe that’s the whole point because holy moly the Chiefs have had some playoff doozies.
Anything less than the Super Bowl can’t be a success, but to me a failure this year would be losing another home playoff game or worse yet not playing well enough to have a home playoff game.
I do think there is a slightly raised level of urgency around the organization this year, and maybe that’s what you’re getting at here.
Patrick Mahomes skipped a few steps on the ladder to stardom last year. That was supposed to be a transition season and it turned into a rocket ship. Based on reasonable expectations, losing to the eventual Super Bowl champions on a coin flip was significant progress.
The Chiefs had crossed that threshold from a steady organization that needed a lot of breaks to get to the Super Bowl to one that missed the Super Bowl after two significant breaks went against them.
It’s different now.
It should be different now.
The front office was aggressive in changing the defensive personnel, and even if it was a year later than it should’ve been, Andy Reid reworked the coaches on that side, too.
This is the type of team that can’t feel good without at least playing in the Super Bowl. That’s the next logical step.
But they’re also not established enough — successful enough — to act like an AFC Championship game is some giant disappointment.
Well, nobody can tell you how to be a fan, but yeah, I do think the offense is worth talking about.
It feels a little like bizarro world but the defense has outplayed the offense over the last month or so, including the last game. There are several logical explanations, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that they’re playing complementary football.
That’s said so often it can feel like a cliche, but a year ago the Chiefs had to score a bajillion points because they knew the defense was going to give up at least a bajillion. That’s not true anymore.
I haven’t seen this stat anywhere but here goes: the Chiefs are averaging 5.8 yards per play since Mahomes returned from the dislocated kneecap, compared with 7.0 in the six full games before the injury.
That’s worth noting because if anything the Chiefs played tougher defenses before the injury, and Mahomes has been healthier in his return than he was before.
His return coincides almost exactly with the defense’s emergence and — this jives with what we see on tape — it makes sense that the offense has felt less of a need to take chances.
One fact to support this theory: the offense’s most prolific game in Mahomes’ return was the 530 yards at Tennessee, the only game they’ve lost in that stretch.
Since the bye, they’ve given up 9, 16, 3, 3 and 21 points. They haven’t needed Mahomes to complete left-handed passes.
Now, there are other reasons we could look at. The offensive line had a slump that they seem to be getting through. Opposing teams seem to have adjusted to the Chiefs on the edges, understanding they can get away with devoting fewer resources against the run in general and runs up the middle in particular.
So, to me, this is worth concern, and thought, but no outright worry or panic. Mahomes’ most consistent mistake had been bailing pockets too early or unnecessarily, and generally not trusting his line or his health. It made some plays harder than they needed, and others impossible, even for him. His footwork suffered, which took the zip off some throws.
If that problem didn’t look fixed, I’d be more worried than I am.
If the diminishing fireworks on offense hadn’t coincided with the defense making this remarkable rise, I’d be more worried than I am.
I guess another way of putting it is this: the offense hasn’t been a weekly highlight tape, but it has had enough 2018 moments. And more to the point: that group has made every play that they’ve needed to make since Week 10 and even longer if you blame special teams for messing up the kicks that day in Nashville.
The Chiefs obviously had a great chance at last year’s Super Bowl. It is virtually impossible to get closer to a Super Bowl without actually making a Super Bowl than last year’s Chiefs.
But I do think they’re better now, even without the overwhelming offense, simply because the defense has transformed from henchmen to alphas.
I can’t swear that this year’s team could score 31 points in the second half against Bill Belichick’s defense, but I would bet a year of mortgage payments that this year’s defense would hold up better than a wet paper bag.
So, anywhere, here are the three biggest threats that come immediately to mind, listed in ascending order of threat level.
3. The defense holding up without Thornhill. We’ll get into this more in the next question, but this is a real thing, enough that it’s what I wanted my game column to be: Thornhill’s injury doesn’t have to be the fatal flaw, but it’s definitely something they need to adjust on.
2. The offense maintaining versatility. I’m curious what happens if the Chiefs face a defense intent on making the Chiefs win on the ground. I’m picturing a Cover 2 look in the back, shaded toward Tyreek Hill, combined with chips and doubles on Travis Kelce. I’m picturing lots of dime, with five-man fronts inviting the Chiefs to run up the middle.
Would they do it?
Could they do it?
Damien Williams appears to be healthy and near his best self, which helps, but I’m just not sure we’ve seen a defense sell out against the pass like that.
1. The Ravens. This is what I was setting up before. Football people are programmed to say they only focus on what they can control, and in that context, the Chiefs are better positioned for the Super Bowl than a year ago.
Except that the Ravens are better than last year’s Patriots.
And double-except that the Ravens are a bad matchup for the Chiefs.
The Ravens are (by far) the league’s best rushing team and, even if the Chiefs’ struggles against the run have been exaggerated over time that’s still their biggest vulnerability.
The Ravens also have speed in the secondary and some toughness up front.
There are some things the Chiefs can (and will try to) do to counter for all of this, and we’ll get into that more if and when the game happens. The Chiefs can beat the Ravens, and not just because they’ve already done it this season.
But beating the Ravens in the AFC Championship game would be a bigger challenge than beating the Patriots in last year’s AFC Championship game.
First, this: no, I do not think it means the Chiefs will or should reach out to Eric Berry.
OK. Let’s move on.
Outside of the name brand group of stars — Mahomes, Hill, Kelce, Chris Jones, Frank Clark and Tyrann Mathieu — Thornhill might be the worst injury the Chiefs could have right now.
You could make a case for Mitchell Schwartz or Eric Fisher, and you could make a case for Charvarius Ward.
But to me, Thornhill’s injury tangibly changes not just their talent level but the way they will try to win. In several ways.
Here’s something subtle: Thornhill’s range, athleticism, playmaking and growing feel have been part of Mathieu playing so well that (Pro Bowl snub aside) he should be chosen first-team All-Pro.
Mathieu knows he can trust Thornhill, and knows Thornhill can cover his territory and then some, which frees Mathieu to be more aggressive in other ways. Sam McDowell has pointed this out, but the best example is this interception against the Raiders:
Mathieu lines up in man coverage over the outside slot receiver in a trips formation and follows him downfield until he sees the inside slot receiver break for the sideline. At that moment, Mathieu leaves his man to make the interception.
It’s a next-level play, combining brains and feel and physical talent, but Mathieu could not have done it if he didn’t have trust that Thornhill would take his man downfield.
So, that’s a real thing. Nothing against Armani Watts, but there is no honest way Mathieu can have the same trust in a guy who played 26 defensive snaps before Sunday that he built with Thornhill over a full season.
And here’s something more tangible: the Chiefs’ improvement defensively came as coordinator Steve Spagnuolo shifted both personnel and responsibility away from the linebackers and toward the secondary.
They’ve been using a lot of dime packages, often with three safeties on the field. Even if Watts proves to be something like a plug-and-play answer to Thornhill’s injury, with such little inexperience he can’t have the same feel right away and physically he’s not as long or fast as Thornhill so he can’t have the same range.
That means the Chiefs will be more vulnerable to big plays — stopping big plays has been a HUGE part of their improvement — or putting extra responsibility on other defensive backs or (worst case scenario) both.
Look, one more time: losing Thornhill doesn’t have to mean losing in the playoffs. Like my man Gene Pendakiwskyj said, if a team can’t overcome an injury to a safety then they don’t deserve the Super Bowl.
But it is enough that the Chiefs will have to adjust the way they planned to get there.
I agree with you.
That LeSean McCoy was active, by all accounts fully healthy, and did not take a single snap would have been the day’s most shocking development if not for Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Dolphins winning at New England.
I’m just not sure how else to read this than an indictment on the confidence the coaches have in McCoy.
It’s true that the Chiefs had just 16 carries by a running back, and it’s true that their 48 offensive snaps were their second-lowest total of the season* and tied for the 16th lowest by any team this season.
*They ran 47 against the Texans.
But McCoy entered the game as the Chiefs’ leading rusher in both yards and attempts.
Let me be clear: I’m not criticizing the move. Damien Williams is the Chiefs’ best all-around running back and if — big if — the coaches feel they can trust Darwin Thompson in pass protection he provides more upside than McCoy.
It’s also worth noting that McCoy has missed three games and averaged just 3.5 yards per attempt since the game in Denver.
So, yes. I’m with the shift away from him and toward Williams.
It’s just surprising to see it happen so completely.
Oh, brother, they’ve been there.
You remember last year, don’t you? The Patriots completely manufactured some non-existent disrespect, and when I say manufactured I mean it literally: Julian Edelman sold “Bet Against Us” T-shirts.
I can imagine no scenario in which the Patriots don’t convince themselves everyone believes they’re non-functioning clowns by the end of the week.
But, more than all of that, yes, absolutely, that’s a thing with professional athletes. They all do this. Hell, Patrick Mahomes did it last week against the Bears.
Patrick Mahomes!
That guy hasn’t been criticized a day in his professional career. If the NFL held a draft in which every player was eligible I’m guessing 25 teams would take Mahomes first overall, and that might be conservative.
My favorite, and I know I’ve told this story before, came at the 2012 Olympics in London, where the United States men’s basketball team — LeBron, Kobe, Kevin Durant, James Harden, the whole thing — started in on “Shocked the World!”
It’s beyond comical, and I think for fans, with some exceptions, hearing that athletes or teams are using the chip-on-the-shoulder thing is almost self-referential humor.
But for athletes it’s very real.
Some of it, to be sure, is manufactured. That’s a hyper competitive world and any slight real or otherwise can’t hurt. Dabo Sweeney, who currently might be major sports’ most prolific peddler in manufactured disrespect, has taken to calling it “free fuel.”
But some of it, just as sure, is honest. There isn’t a single athlete who’s reached the NFL or any other high level or sports without hearing criticism.
Athletes don’t have a monopoly on that, of course. From politicians to sports writers to teachers to CEOs, anyone who’s ascended to a certain level of success has also been the target of criticism.
That’s true for someone like Patrick Mahomes, who was labeled by many as a gimmick or product of the Air Raid and I think for most of us the disrespect involved in being the 10th overall pick in the NFL Draft would be a life highlight.
It’s also true for someone like Charvarius Ward, who didn’t play high school football until his senior year and went undrafted out of Middle Tennessee State.
You’ve heard Frank Clark do it. Tyrann Mathieu. Chris Jones. They all do it. Tom Brady, who is considered by many the best to ever play his sport and is literally married to a multimillionaire Brazilian supermodel, still convinces himself that nobody believes in him. His actual and real life walkout song at Gillette Stadium is Nas’ “Hate Me Now”.
It’s stupid, but it’s no less stupid than my belief that I have to carry around three different drinks every morning to have a decent day.
If the person doing it believes it works, then it probably does.
Yes! Thank you!
First, my ballot:
That’s the first time I haven’t voted the full 10, but I didn’t mention that it’s also the first time I haven’t felt 100 percent sure about my votes.
Everyone has to come up with their own way of handling the so-called Steroid Era, and I can’t say that any view I’ve heard is fundamentally wrong. I’m not offended by it the way many are, for several reasons.
I believe PED use was so widespread and that the effects of PEDs are so misunderstood that any superficial judgments on who used and who didn’t are worthless.
I also believe that Major League Baseball tacitly endorsed PED use, because it was good for business, so I find the retroactive pearl clutching about something that all parties in power were hilariously slow in addressing to be missing the plot.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, the good ol’ boys network just put Bud Selig into the Hall of Fame so you can miss me with the idea that nobody who benefited from PED use should be honored*.
*I want to be very clear about something here. I respect Selig and, unlike many other executives enshrined, believe he has a strong case. But all of this happened under his watch and the finger-pointing at the union only goes so far.
So, anyway, that’s why I vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Manny Ramirez*.
*Every year I hear people ask why I vote for those three but not Sammy Sosa. To me, those three had clearly superior careers to Sosa. Bonds and Clemens might be the best ever at their positions, and Ramirez had a decade or more of being widely regarded as the game’s best right-handed hitter. Sosa’s peak has few peers, but in the context of when he played his greatness is isolated to a five-year stretch. He was, basically, a merely good player before and after. Nobody should care about this, but leaving Sosa off is particularly hard for me because he was my favorite baseball player before even before the hop. But, objectively, I just don’t see him as a Hall of Famer.
The others I feel strongly about:
- Derek Jeter. I think we can all agree on this one.
- Larry Walker. I believe he’s been the most undervoted player on the ballot for years, and I hope he gets in on his last chance before being pushed down to the veterans’ committee. My main hesitation on him is that he missed a lot of time with injuries, but the Coors Field stuff entirely misses the point. The guy hit everywhere and his road numbers are better than a lot of guys already inducted.
- Scott Rolen. I know his numbers aren’t overwhelming, and I’m a numbers guy, but this is one where I was swayed by people in the game. The way they talk about him is just different, about the subtle ways he tilted games in his team’s favor, the intensity he played with, the consistent and unwavering focus, all of that. He’s a solid yes for me.
- Curt Schilling. A central part of two World Series winners and solid contributor to another, his regular season numbers are good enough and his postseason success pushes him way over the top. I know many are uneasy about what he’s become in retirement, but to me that’s a misapplication of the character clause. He was one of the best pitchers of his generation, and one of the best postseason performers of all-time.
And now we get to the part of the ballot that came with some hesitation.
- Billy Wagner. He was, in many measurable ways, a more effective closer than Trevor Hoffman, who was inducted as part of the 2018 class. I love his strikeout rate, his peak, and his consistency at a position that doesn’t make that easy. But his case lacks the postseason success of Mariano Rivera, and the historical standing of Hoffman.
I guess my unease comes down to this: I’m still not sure how to measure closers. Wagner pitched 903 innings, and just 11 2/3 in the postseason. Andy Pettitte, who I didn’t vote for but will continue to consider, pitched more than that by August of his fifth season.
You can say Wagner shouldn’t be punished by his role, and that his innings are more important than most of a starter’s, but they’re still all outs. And because the role by definition limits a pitcher’s impact, the standard should be higher.
In the end, I voted for Wagner because he did his job as well and better than many who are already in. But that’s a question I’ll continue to think through, and might end up reversing the vote.
- Jeff Kent. I didn’t expect to vote for him but was swayed by the argument that he hit more home runs than any second baseman and has a case as the best hitter at his position since Joe Morgan.
His defense has been knocked, but as Tom Verducci has argued, the people who mattered the most — managers of contending teams going all-out to win — thought he was good enough for his position. Verducci’s point: Kent made 88 percent of his starts at second base, meaning the people who mattered most trusted him.
But I’m still a little uneasy that the entire argument centers around his position, and that his case is essentially that of a lesser version of Robinson Cano. He won an MVP, which is great, but if we’re honest that award probably should’ve gone to Bonds or even Todd Helton (more on him soon).
Kent was among the very best at his position for an extended time, which is my baseline criteria for Hall of Famers, but it’s not an overwhelming case and I sometimes wonder if that should be my baseline criteria.
I thought hard about others, in no particular order Andruw Jones, Todd Helton, Omar Vizquel and Gary Sheffield. I had one open spot on the ballot, and we can all make a good case for those four and more. If forced to fill all 10 spots on the ballot I probably would’ve gone with Vizquel or Sheffield, but every voter has to draw a line somewhere.
In all honesty, I’m probably closer to dropping Kent and Wagner from future ballots than I am to adding any of the others.
Please understand I mean no disrespect to any of them. They all had amazing careers. But in my eyes, the distinction of being a Hall of Famer loses some juice if some amazing careers aren’t enough.
Chiefs: Make good on your unicorn quarterback being paired with a good defense and let Andy Reid be known as something other than Perhaps The Best Coach To Never Win A Super Bowl.
Royals: Begin a successful transition for some of those pitching prospects and establish a tangible vision from new chairman John Sherman that fans can understand and believe in.
Sporting Kansas City: Make sure the system fits Alan Pulido, and make sure 2019 is seen as the fluke and not the beginning of a new normal.
Mizzou: For goodness sake make the 2020 football season about the promise of Eli Drinkwitz and not the regret of walking away from a high-floor, low-ceiling coach in Barry Odom.
K-State: I’ve been a Chris Klieman from the beginning, but let’s not forget that Ron Prince had some early momentum, too.
Kansas: Most people would say something about Les Miles showing improvement, and that’s important, but I also think it might be worthwhile to update that list of potential basketball hires.
Speaking of resolutions...
I’ve actually become a little better this in recent years. I used to be big on “I’m going to lose 10 pounds” or “I’m going to read more books” and do a great job with it right until about January the 8th.
The best way I know is to be realistic about the resolutions, and think through both how I’d accomplish them and what might need to be sacrificed.
For instance, I do want to get in better shape. It’s not really a weight thing, more of a health thing, so maybe the change will be to never drink during the week, or to reward myself with something if I workout at least three times in a week.
A few years back, my resolution was to achieve a better work-life balance. I love what I do for a living, but it’s not the most important thing and I knew if I was honest that I wasn’t living in a way that supported that. In other words, work was fine, work was great, but I can’t honestly say I was saving the best version of myself for my wife and kids.
That all sounds too life coach-y for me, but I’m not sure how else to put it. The change: I stopped working from home when possible because I found myself unable to turn work off when I did it. In my mind, I justified banging out some work during dinner or on my phone when I was with family because I could steal a few minutes during the day with them when normal people were at the office.
But that wasn’t totally honest, and it sure wasn’t the best way to live or work.
So now, when possible, I find somewhere else to work so that I can concentrate on that, so that when I’m home I’m home.
Let me be very clear: I struggle with this to some degree nearly every day. This is not me preaching about the right way to live, because I don’t know what that even is or looks like.
All I’m saying is that resolutions can be good, but at least for me, they’re useless without some actual thought behind them.
Part of me wants to delete this whole answer because it’s getting too close to presenting some myth that I’ve figured things out and that you should live like I do. I’m counting on me emphasizing that I don’t have one single thing in life figured out other than my Peanut order* carrying the day here.
*3 wings, blue cheese, a triple BLT and Tank 7. GET ON MY LEVEL.
I have very strong feelings about this, and they have nothing to do with team success.
Every team that goes begging taxpayers to subsidize their new stadium should have to set aside a large block of tickets that would allow a family of four to attend a game for fewer than $100. That includes tickets, parking, and a reasonable amount of concessions.
I don’t know specifics, but come up with something, so in the meantime lets just say it’s something like 2,500 seats for an NBA or NHL team, 5,000 in baseball and 10,000 in football. The tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for kids, and packages would be available for discounted parking or concessions if that’s what it took to stay under $100.
Also, those sections should have extra security, if required, because nobody should be hesitant to bring a 6-year-old to a game because of what he or she might here from the drunk two seats down.
I have absolutely zero patience for owners crying poverty over this, particularly when taxpayers routinely hand over hundreds of millions of dollars for stadium renovation and construction. If you don’t want to be told how to run your business then don’t ask for help.
I’m not a business expert, obviously, but I have to believe there’s some residual benefits to teams doing this.
Every kid is potential disposable income in the making, and how many of them who would go to games on these discounts would grow up to be hooked on sports?
How many families that feel priced out of major sports right now are raising kids who’ll never care about sports?
So it seems like this would be good business, but more than that, there should be more of a civic responsibility involved in owning a team, particularly once you put your handout for help building a stadium specifically designed to maximize revenue.
I’m saying tacos, and specifically street tacos, and there are a million good answers but I’m partial to San Antonio.
Minutes answers aren’t usually this short, but I’m not sure what else to say here.
Tacos, man.
Don’t be so arrogant to think your value is purely in brain power, and not in large part because of publishing power. Recognize that the Internet is going to close that gap, and that giving away the product for free is as stupid as it sounds.
I don’t know if that would’ve changed anything. People are much more open to digital subscriptions now than they used to be, but I wonder if we needed products like Netflix and Amazon Prime to cross that bridge.
One other mistake newspapers have made over the years is not telling their own story well enough. We’re awful marketers, and we’ve allowed others to tell our story for us.
It’s insane that anyone compares what a newspaper is now to what a newspaper was 25 years ago. The only comparison that matters is what a newspaper is now compared to what else is out there, and the story that newspapers need to be telling is the one that focuses on them (still) having (far) more resources dedicated to coverage of local news and sports than anyone else.
We’ve also been shamefully slow and bad with technology. Our websites aren’t as good as they need to be, both in appearance and function.
I know I come at this from a biased place, but I’m a firm believer in the content. There are a lot of strong options, but in the vast majority of markets the outlet with the most and best journalists covering a place is the local newspaper.
But even with all of this hindsight I’m not sure how different the current industry would be. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Maybe not at all. But I do feel strongly about the need for independent journalism, whether it’s a newspaper or radio station or TV or website.
And I’m not speaking selfishly, because I understand that sports aren’t all that important. Society doesn’t need watchdogs on whether the coach should’ve gone for that fourth-and-1 — EVEN THOUGH HE ALMOST CERTAINLY SHOULD HAVE — but we do need strong and smart journalists covering elected officials and public interests.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for a heated steering wheel. I bought a new (to me) car recently and didn’t think anything of that particular feature, but dammit if it’s not delightful on a cold day. In related news, this week I’m particularly shameful about how soft I’ve become.
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 5:00 AM.