Mellinger Minutes: Keep your social distance, and let’s get through this together
My Monday began with — and I cannot stress this enough — the beginning of one of the angriest columns I’ve ever written.
I’ve been there for Romeo Crennel changing out “ELIMINATE BAD FOOTBALL” for “PLAY GOOD FOOTBALL,” and I’ve been there for Trey Hillman arguing with a heckler midgame, and I’ve been there for Todd Haley skipping out on training camp early to catch a Lil Wayne concert, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so gobsmacked as watching the Missouri State High School Activities Association take a stand as the last state in the union to have high school athletes competing against each other during a global pandemic.
Hoo boy, I was hot. There were words like braindead and dangerous stupidity and perhaps a comparison to this idiot chasing Insta-fame by licking a toilet seat.
MSHSAA was not going to be on the positive side of that comparison.
But then, four paragraphs into it, the organization announced it was canceling the rest of its basketball tournament.
And I actually developed some empathy.
“It was more emotional for us because of how emotional it was going to be for those kids and coaches,” said Jason West, communications director for MSHSAA. “Even the coaches, the bonds they formed over the years with those students, and for some of them that’s the last they’ll be seeing them. It’s a decision that will affect the rest of their lives.”
Let’s state the obvious: MSHSAA made the only decision that could’ve been made, and the organization — which has a well-earned reputation for clumsiness — took too long to make it.
MSHSAA’s delay created uncertainty with an emotional constituency, and was counterproductive in the broader mission of slowing of coronavirus.
But, man. I get the temptation to do everything possible to play.
West said MSHSAA came “very close” to canceling last weekend’s games but hoped that extra measures such as limiting crowd size, providing extra sanitizer stations and screening all participants and fans for fevers could allow the tournament to continue.
The organization should have known better. Its top priority has to be safety, and it has to know it carries a public responsibility. The professionals who run the organization can’t be swayed by emotional pleas from athletes, parents or coaches. They have to be the adults in the room.
They failed that longer than they should have — longer than the NCAA, longer than the NBA, longer than the NHL, longer than MLB and longer than literally all 49 other states.
It’s a failure of leadership, and if executive director Kerwin Urhahn and his staff care about their collective reputation and credibility, they will have a level-headed self-scout about why they couldn’t see what everyone else could.
But at least for today, I do not come to roast. My frustration with the organization isn’t because I can’t recognize the difficulty of handling such a fluid and unprecedented situation.
My frustration is precisely because I can understand that and, even more, can understand the mixed instincts that coaches and especially parents and athletes would have in that situation.
MSHSAA and every other high school sports governing body in the country has an important job. None will operate perfectly. The unforgivable isn’t in waiting too long to cancel games.
The unforgivable will come if Urhahn and his executive staff don’t do some honest reflection and make themselves better prepared for the next tough decision.
This week’s eating recommendation is, literally, any meal you order takeout and tip as if you are eating in. Most restaurants operate on thin margins and a lot of servers and cooks are in danger of falling behind on bills.
The reading recommendation is from Lindsay Crouse, the ex-girlfriend of Lady Gaga’s new boyfriend.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook, and, as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
One specific request this week: I want to know how you’re dealing with all of this. I want to know if you work by the hour and are worried about what’s next. I want to know if you have a parent or grandparent you can’t see, or a restaurant you just opened, or a job you needed that just fell through.
I also want to know how you’re passing the time. If you’re taking up yoga, catching up with old friends, spending more time with your kids, reading that book you kept putting off or, hell, if you’re writing that book you kept putting off.
Please, I want to hear from you. If you have a friend with a good story, ask them to reach out. My email is smellinger@kcstar.com, you can always reach me through Facebook, and I opened my Twitter DMs for this.
OK, here’s the show:
Clearest sign yet that Patrick Mahomes changed everything.
I’ve been saying that for a while, of course, and it started as a joke (and hit a bump when Dee Ford lined up offsides), but the evidence is overwhelming.
Most every signing works out, the investigation involving Tyreek Hill ended without charges (and the Chiefs signing him to a more club-friendly contract), Mahomes’ dislocated kneecap only costs two games, Tom Brady finally gets old, a loss to the Titans means waiver position to pick up Terrell Suggs and still get the bye, the Titans’ win in Baltimore means still hosting the AFC Championship Game, a lost challenge gives Mahomes time to ask if they can run wasp, Jimmy Garoppolo misses Emmanuel Sanders deep ... we could play this game all day.
It used to be true that you never knew quite how the Chiefs would Chief, but you knew that eventually the Chiefs would Chief.
Well, as it turns out, that’s still true except in the opposite way. Because now Chief’n means Bill O’Brien is going to help you come back by biffing consecutive fourth-down decisions.
I’m not saying the Chiefs finally making a Super Bowl only to have it canceled by a global pandemic would’ve been the old Chiefs’ Chiefsiest Chief in the history of Chiefs ...
Wait, never mind. That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.
Brother, I wish I knew.
I want to be clear about something here, too: I know nothing and, if I know anything, it’s only from listening and reading to what the people who know a lot are saying.
We all have access to that, and we all have friends who work in hospitals, and the feeling seems to be that this will get worse before it gets better.
A week ago, I figured the NCAA Tournament would be on without fans — and that was more extreme than what most were saying at the time.
One of our kids’ spring leagues was canceled. I understand that all organizations like that are in a bind — if they don’t play, parents don’t pay — but it’s hard to imagine the other leagues playing, either.
Our school district’s spring break is this week. I think most around town are the same. That’s well-timed, even if it’s forced a lot of families to cancel plans (and eat money in the process).
The effects are everywhere, obviously. Our preschooler’s birthday is in three weeks, and the party is planned to be at one of these indoor jungle gym playground places. I’d be shocked if that still happens.
You can make your brain hurt going through all the scenarios, and looking at case numbers and how America tracks against countries that already went through this.
My guess is the kids are back in school the week of April 6 or 13 and that baseball’s opening day is around May 1*.
* Well, that didn’t take long. MLB announced opening day would be mid-May at the earliest.
But even then, we could have a long talk about what’s normal. Businesses will be gone and never come back. New habits will have formed. Perspectives will have changed.
I think we’ll get into this more later, but at least in the beginning it’s hard to imagine a more welcomed baseball season.
But you’re asking the question about when we return to normal, and maybe this is getting too esoteric, but that depends on what we consider back to normal.
Well, I have two answers here. They may seem contradictory but they are the answers I have.
The first is that, yes, Mahomes has a lot of influence and he could use it to help keep people safe. If he chose to post a video or release a statement there is little doubt that it would do at least some good.
If he decides to do that, cool.
But the second answer is that, at the risk of some of you yelling at me, who cares what Mahomes says?
I’m reminded of this by Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp:
I know this can sound weird coming from someone whose job literally depends on athletes and coaches sharing their thoughts, but I do not need to hear from athletes about how to maintain public health. I have only slightly more interest in hearing from politicians, but even then it’s only to know whether they’re listening to health experts, because if not we should vote them out next round.
And I have virtually no use for people who don’t listen to the experts on these things.
I used this analogy on the Border Patrol, but a few months back I got a flat tire. Ran over something in the middle lane on I-70. It was the second day after I bought a new car, so I was especially bummed.
I took the car to the dealer and they initially said no problem, we’ll get it patched, and then a few hours later they said the hole was too big. I needed a new tire. Screw that, I said, using my vast expertise on tire repair.
So I drove to a place closer to my house and they said no problem, we’ll get it patched, and then a few hours later said the hole was too big. I needed a tire and, at that point, as much as I wanted to say screw that, patch it up, well, it seemed more logical to trust the people who actually know what they’re doing.
So, now, with a virus that is spreading without vaccine or cure, and with health experts standing on the table and jumping — they don’t often do this — that our hospitals will soon be overrun if we don’t act ... people whose medical expertise could fit in one Advil pill think they know what’s better?
I’m going to walk even further to the edge now but some of this is capital-m Media’s fault, and some is the (I’m using this word intentionally) tragic consequence of such a polarized country.
Because there is a segment of the national/cable media that has predicted global crises before and proven to be wrong. That makes it easier for some to dismiss just about anything. The nuance of level-headed and non-political health experts giving logical warnings is lost, because to a lot of folks with busy lives it’s just one more stranger telling them the world is going to end.
Anyway, I know I’m off on a tangent here.
Yes, people would listen to Mahomes.
But I wish people would listen to the health experts either way.
Oh, I love this question, partly because I’ve thought about it a lot lately and I’ve come to a clear answer.
I hate the deal for the players. I really do. I believe the 17th game is the best leverage the players have ever had and are likely to ever have. The players had sincere health concerns with it and would’ve had public sentiment on their side on this particular issue, which happened to be the only thing the owners cared about.
NFL players are overmatched when it comes to bargaining against the owners, but this is a spot they had some power.
And they gave it away for less than a 50-50 split in revenue, relaxed marijuana testing, fewer padded practices and a bunch of other stuff the owners don’t and shouldn’t care about.
What’s worse, they locked themselves into this for a decade, at which point the owners are likely to want an 18th regular-season game. The players just caved on this so they’ll be more likely to cave again.
I believe with all my heart that the players should’ve been able to do better.
But I haven’t answered your question!
Because the answer is I probably would’ve voted for it. Which is part of the problem, I suppose.
The reality is that the same reasons NFL players should have a better deal (short careers, brutal on their bodies) are the same reasons NFL players take what the owners offer.
The grand success of baseball’s union in the 1994 strike is that they stuck together, and were willing to sacrifice some now for later — even if they wouldn’t be the ones to benefit.
Football players have proven unwilling to do that. I say this as a matter of fact, not a judgment, thought if I was making a judgment I’d probably come down on their side.
Because you’re asking me how I’d vote, which means I’d have to imagine being an NFL player, and because most of the league makes at or near the minimum I’d have to imagine whether I’d be willing to give up a year of the most money I’d ever made with the understanding that history has shown my stature in life to be replaceable.
I’d have probably voted to play.
It’s a strange thing, then. The baseball union’s strength is in its discipline, that it typically votes in terms of what’s best for the whole. The football union has never operated that way. It has voted in terms of what’s best for each player’s own interests, and there are a lot more minimum-wage linebackers than star quarterbacks.
So I can be disappointed for the players that they weren’t able to get more of what I would consider a fair deal.
But I can also be wholly empathetic with the pressures involved, and recognize that I probably would’ve done the same thing.
I do!
I wrote about that here, but one thing that keeps coming up in conversations with people in the business is the importance of the new CBA dropping the so-called 30 percent rule, which limited the raises and payouts that players could have.
Combined with the length of the CBA (through 2030) and expiring TV contracts (2022), it does seem like the Chiefs and Jones might have a path toward a continued relationship.
Again, I wrote more about it in the column but the short version is that if Jones’ market value is five years with $70 million guaranteed*, and he won’t take less than his market value**, then maybe the Chiefs can get there.
* And I’m not saying it is. This is just my guess. The Chiefs gave Frank Clark five years and $62.5 million guaranteed last summer, and the Colts just gave Deforest Buckner a contract reported to be worth $21 million per season (though like all NFL deals, the important stuff is in the guarantees).
** Which he won’t, and shouldn’t.
They could get there by giving Jones a big chunk of that guarantee up front (always the players’ preference) and another big chunk in 2023 (when the new TV deal will spike the salary cap).
I want to be clear: I don’t know that this would work.
The Chiefs may want to spread money around a bit more, to sacrifice some of the top of their roster for the second and third levels. Jones may have made up his mind that he wants to go to the highest bidder no matter what.
He may feel like the Chiefs had their chance last summer, and with that chance gone and him handling the situation like a model pro (on and off the field) maybe it’s time to see if another team values that more than the Chiefs.
I don’t know.
But I do see a path for Jones to stay with the Chiefs that either didn’t exist a month ago, or I simply didn’t see a month ago.
In a different financial structure — say, in baseball’s — Tannehill’s deal would put Patrick Mahomes in line for five years, $592 million including $591.9 guaranteed plus naming rights on Arrowhead Stadium, controlling interest in the franchise and personal use of his own rocket ship.
But the NFL doesn’t work like that.
The NFL limits what each team can spend, and the league has never paid players (especially quarterbacks) according to their worth as much as it has paid players according to the last guy at the same position to sign a contract.
So, in this calculus, it doesn’t matter that Tannehill signed for $118 million and $62 million guaranteed. Mahomes is twice as good as Tannehill, but he is not now in line for $236 million and $124 million guaranteed.
What Mahomes is in line for is to be the league’s highest-paid player in history. That was true last week, and it’s true right now.
Right now, Russell Wilson is the league’s highest-paid player at $35 million per year.
Mahomes will jump that number, probably to $40 million or so, and the Chiefs will sign that deal with satisfaction and then watch a replay of Super Bowl LIV.
Put another way: Tannehill’s contract is as relevant to Mahomes’ negotiation as the price of a banana is on ribeye.
Congrats Joe!
They’d have been the clear (if not heavy) favorite. They finished the season as the unanimous No. 1 team in the polls, and ranked first in every relevant metric.
This was as strong a chance as KU has had under Self, and I’m including 2008.
The Jayhawks defended like dogs, which you could see getting them through some tight moments. They had experience. They had two stars. They had a Hall of Fame coach. They had shown toughness and the ability to win close games against good opponents without playing their best.
That’s a pretty damn good case.
But facts are stubborn: Since the NCAA selection committee began ranking No. 1 seeds in 2004, only three of the top overall seeds have won the championship.
That’s three out of 16.
That’s 18.8 percent.
So if you could pick just one team, you could make a logical and strong case for that one team to be Kansas.
But if you were given the choice of Kansas or the field, you could not make a logical case to take Kansas.
The question you’re not asking here, but others have, is whether Kansas could or should hang some sort of banner. Bill Self gave the correct answer to Gary Bedore when asked about some KU fans wanting a championship banner:
“I wish I could agree with them,” he said. “But that’s not how this works. We put ourselves in a position I feel to give us one of the better chances we’ve had to compete for a championship. The bottom line is there was no champion. When there’s no championship, how can there be a crowned winner?
“No matter the competition, you’ve got to have the competition. I mean, no matter what it is. If you enter a spelling bee, are they going to reward you with the championship if it is canceled and you are the favorite coming in? Or you won it last year? That’s not how it works. This is going to be a vacant championship.”
I do wonder if there is some way for Kansas to formally recognize the season, beyond adding another year to the Big 12 championship banner. Maybe that’s with some sort of dedicated display somewhere else at Allen Fieldhouse. I don’t know.
Kansas is too big of a program to go all UCF on us and claim a nonexistent championship.
KU should be above that sort of nonsense.
Maybe a little bit of both?
One thing I keep coming back to is the idea that we are closer to the beginning of this than the end. I do believe it’ll get better, and relatively soon, but not before it gets worse. My hope, like everyone, is that the worse is as palatable as possible.
For my tiny corner of the world it feels like the most useful I can be is to be as present and involved as possible for my family (shoutout spring break) and tell the best stories I can.
I keep a notes file on my phone full of column ideas. Some of them will never happen. Others would’ve been good, but their time has passed. A precious few have just been buried under the constant churn of the sports world and I do hope to steal some time in the coming weeks or months to get to those.
But I’m of two minds, in some ways.
One, I do believe sports are as valuable as ever right now. We can only read or hear so many stories about a virus none of us control. That’s why this weekly silliness will continue, and why I hope that at least some of what I write during this (temporary) new reality is fun.
Like, if you’re gambling on computer simulated video games, let me know.
But, also, this is unprecedented. You can’t escape the reach of this thing, no matter how hard you try. Everyone is effected. All of us. That’s a massive shared experience and I love to write about massive shared experiences. Some of that will have nothing to do with sports. Real life is interesting, too.
Straight up, no exaggeration, I’d put my ribs against any spot in town. Once, and I’m not naming names here, but a neighbor had a well-known local barbecue proprietor make the ribs that he entered in our dumb little contest ... and guess who has two thumbs and won?
This guy.
I also make a baller burger (more in the style of Town Topic than Tannin) and my steaks are a little like Drew Lock’s rookie year — inconsistent, but showing promise and jaw-dropping when going right.
All that said, if you don’t think you make the best burgers or steaks I probably don’t trust you to pour me a bowl of cereal.
Other meals I’ve tried to recreate: Burrito Brothers, street tacos from basically anywhere on the Boulevard, and Granfalloon’s burnt end nachos. I also did Andy Reid’s recipe on prime rib once and, I have to say, the man knows his stuff.
But — and I know I’m an established cliche by now — the answer is the Peanut’s wings.
I worked on the blue cheese first, and have since put myself in position to be excitingly close to the wing sauce. The last hurdle is finding the right bird to use, but even with what I’ve been guinea pig’n with from the grocery store and Costco, I’m prouder than I should be of these things.
The key, I think, is nailing the butter/spice ratio.
It’s been a long journey. I feel like I’ve earned it. And, most of all, I respect the Peanut’s contributions to my life far too much to spread the secrets or stop giving them money in exchange for chicken.
Your question’s timing is amazing.
I had this grand plan in my head to get our kids excited for baseball this year. The night before opening day they were going to watch Sandlot and eat burgers and hot dogs with as much popcorn as they could handle.
Then they would watch opening day, with a free pass to skip bath and stay up too late. I have to work the home opener, obviously, but I want to take them to the second home game every year.
It was going to be great!
I still hope we do that, but obviously the plans have been jacked. I’m saying all of this as a way-too-long way to answer your question: Sandlot.
At least, that’s the answer in the short-term, because I think it’s the one movie they’re both old enough (6 and almost 4) to see right now.
But you also said “someday,” so the short list of long-term answers starts with Back To The Future but continues with Dumb & Dumber, Happy Gilmore, (and now we’re getting way down the line) Shawshank Redemption, Goodfellas and Gladiator.
These are in no particular order other than when they pop into my head:
Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. It probably can’t be considered a sports movie, though the main character was once an Olympic-level runner, but it’s the best book I’ve ever read in my life and it’s not particularly close.
Joe DiMaggio, by Richard Ben Cramer. Beautifully told, exhaustively researched. I have no particular interest in DiMaggio, but his life hit so many big American themes.
Dream Team, by Jack McCallum. Such a great damn time.
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. Does that count as sports? Sort of?
Where Men Win Glory, by Krakauer. The downside of reading this book is that with every flip of the page I felt a little less like a man.
Friday Night Lights, by Buzz Bissinger. All-time classic. I think this was the first adult book I ever read.
Ball Four, by Jim Bouton. This was the second adult book I ever read.
The Soul of Baseball, by Joe Posnanski. I’m biased by the subject and author, probably, but it’s a good time.
Sweetness, by Jeff Pearlman. He’s written a lot of sports books, and I haven’t read one that I didn’t enjoy, but this was my favorite.
The Fight, by Norman Mailer. Unlike anything I’ve ever read.
Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. Incredible.
I’m not going to build a bracket, but I can give you at least three tips for working from home.
1. Be comfortable. I know some people say you should shower and dress up and do everything you’d normally do to go to the office. Heck, my mom was one of those people. She worked from home for two years and put on makeup and did her hair and looked professional every weekday. I say bollocks. Be comfortable. Nobody will know but you.
2. Take a walk. It can get a little stir crazy, so just walk around the block. Play with the dog. Something. You can’t just sit at your desk all day.
3. Stay off social media. This is not a tip limited to working at home. This is a tip for all waking hours. It’s also a tip that I don’t follow.
I used to work from home all the time, when I wasn’t at a stadium. I’ve never been productive at the office because I just end up talking to people instead of working.
But even that became a challenge with kids, and I wish I’d realized that sooner. I thought I was beating the system by being home, so that I could steal five minutes here or there when most dads were at work.
But eventually I realized — OK, fine, my wife pointed out — that I wasn’t helping and too often was distracting or distracted and that I’d probably be better off with work and family by organizing my time a little better.
So I started going to our gym’s lobby, sometimes coming home for lunch. That was a much better fix, but now we’re sort of back to the part where I’m not really home or working.
The best advice, then: If you have to (and have the ability to) work from home right now and have kids, get as removed as you can from their world.
It’ll be better for both them and you.
But, by all means, take advantage of the snacks.
I cannot rank them in importance. You see, I love all my children equally.
But the first one I make is water. I drink more water than anyone you are likely to know unless you know one of those obnoxious body builders who carry around a literal gallon of water wherever they go.
The second one is coffee. We’re a 40 Sardines family, though I’m not so picky that I can’t drink whatever you have. But it will be black.
The third is a smoothie, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say taking the smoothie step a year or so ago changed my life. I love fruit in the morning, but a man can only eat so many apples. I was always starving mid morning or by lunch and, because I’m like a dog or a goldfish, would then eat myself sick to make up for it.
The smoothie has changed all that for me. It’s bananas, strawberries, kale, peanut butter powder, some chocolate-y powder that’s apparently good for me (but I can’t remember the name), oats and almond milk.
I hate that this is true, but I’m enough of a diva that I don’t feel entirely right if I don’t have all three. I know I look like a fool, carrying around three Yetis every morning. But dangit, I need each of them.
This is one more time when it’s painfully obvious that 25-year-old me would give current me a giant wedgie and I would deserve it.
News is changing so drastically and so often that only a fool would make a prediction like that. As you know by now, I am just the fool of this job.
I’ll take the under on long-term changes.
It’s easy to imagine a world in which people are more conscious of routine hygiene, so maybe stadiums and arenas will have more hand sanitizer dispensers. Maybe teams will have to be more mindful of how contractors like Aramark prepare, store and (particularly) serve food. Maybe there are other relatively minor changes I’m not imagining right now.
But if you’re talking about major changes, I think you’re basically talking about whether attendance will return to current levels.
My sense is it will, but I think we all understand leagues have found increasing struggles in selling tickets for years. Home technology is better and cheaper than ever, and those trends will only continue. Entertainment is seemingly more crowded every day.
What I’m trying to say here is that if attendance does dip — not just in the short-term, but I’m talking three- and five-year trends — I suppose it would be impossible to say whether it’s from the current scare or other trends that have already been in place.
I actually think this will end up being the most welcomed baseball opening day in years. No business is going to rush a return, because the potential for backlash is too great.
But when we get to the point that the public is generally satisfied with containment, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than going to a baseball game.
Through these last few days, it’s actually one of the things I’ve been most looking forward to.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for everyone who works in the health industry. They’re being pushed right now, and it’s largely in an effort to prepare for what’s coming. They will work long and stressful hours with impossible decisions. I literally cannot imagine the pressure they’re under now, and will continue to face every day. We need more of them, but bless the ones we have.
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM.