Hamlin collapses. NFL suspends game

CPR administered on field

Good morning, all and Happy New Year.

The year is not off to a good start. I wrote this newsletter Monday afternoon, hours before the Bills-Bengals NFL game began and the subsequent collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, after he made a tackle late in the first quarter. Hamlin required CPR, players were in shock, and the game was suspended. There will plenty of time for analysis later. The second guessing on social media by some, I find abhorrent. Obviously, by the time you read this newsletter the story will have changed. I pray for Hamlin and his family.

Here is the rest of the newsletter, which seems so trivial now, in light of Monday night’s events…

I hope you enjoyed the Rose Bowl on Monday. Like most everything else, it seems, the format is being changed. For decades the “Granddaddy of Them All” pitted a Pac-12 team against a Big Ten team. Next season the Rose Bowl will serve as a semifinal site for the College Football Playoffs and with the expanded playoffs in 2024, there is no telling which schools will compete in the 2025 game.

Money, of course, is at the root of the change. The college football power brokers essentially told the Rose Bowl Committee, embrace the CFB expanded playoff format or be left in the dust. It was similar to the choices they use to offer in The Godfather.

My Rose Bowl memories, like those of many others, were watching the game on New Year’s Day on NBC, with the legendary Curt Gowdy at the mike. Before Gowdy, the renowned Mel Allen, “Voice of the Yankees,” called the game. (In my collection, I have a Rose Bowl telecast with broadcasters Allen and Chick Hearn, who would gain notoriety as the “Voice of the Los Angeles Lakers.” I am sure a You Tube search would find the telecast.)

Allen and Gowdy each called 14 Rose Bowls. Later the game switched to ABC, where Keith Jackson called 15 Rose Bowls. The radio and TV booths at the Rose Bowl are named the “Keith Jackson Broadcast Center.”

I cannot even tell you who the broadcasters for this year’s Rose Bowl game are, things have changed so much. The game is not even televised on over-the-air TV and is left to ESPN on cable and streaming services. Things change and so will the Rose Bowl format. With college football in line to make billions with its new playoff blueprint, the Rose Bowl had to change. The committee was given an offer it could not refuse.

Patriots getting roasted

It is amazing that the Patriots, who lost two straight heartbreaking games, are now getting roasted in the Boston media, after defeating the Miami Dolphins on Sunday. If New England wins at Buffalo on Sunday, they will make the playoffs.

The jist of the criticism is even if the Pats make the playoffs, how far are they going to go? Really? What should New England do, purposely go to Buffalo and lose? Just not bother to show up and start preparing for next season? What a ridiculous argument. If we compare the “logic” being applied to the Patriots’ critics to the last two baseball seasons, the Phillies would have never won the 2022 National League pennant and the Atlanta Braves would have never been crowned 2021 World Champs.

Sports are no longer about the best team winning a championship but which club can get hot and launch a playoff run. If the Pats qualify for the post-season and then make some noise, it is because they earned it under the current system. It is no more complicated than that, regardless of what the critics surmise on what the Patriots should do.

Baseball 24/7

How has technology changed our sports’ consumption? Well, if you are a baseball fan there is never a shortage of stories about your favorite club. It used to be, once the season was over, there would be a stretch when the newspapers went weeks without a story about your team or about baseball. Then things would crank up after the holidays, leading up to massive coverage come spring training. Not anymore.

With apps, websites, channels and other internet outlets strictly devoted to baseball, the flagging newspaper industry is forced to right at least one story a day about the home town team. It doesn’t matter how inconsequential the story maybe, as long as it is a baseball story. To not write one risks getting scooped by another website, social media or paper. It is the way our media works today and not just for baseball.

There are websites and social media outlets devoted to college football, basketball, hockey, etc. This is not a criticism, just an observation. That said it is 79 days to Opening Day. Play Ball!

Remembering Sports Illustrated

Award-winning writer Dan Shaughnessy wrote in his Saturday Boston Globe column about eagerly anticipating his weekly copy of Sports Illustrated. He was not alone. Of course, the magazine has changed ownership several times since its halcyon days under the ownership of Henry Luce’s Time Inc. As Shaughnessy writes, the magazine has become “irrelevant” but not its annual subscription price of $99.61 for only 12 issues.

The same irrelevance can be assigned to the once “baseball bible” The Sporting News, another publication I eagerly anticipated each week. That too, has changed ownership and now is a website, which begins almost each story headline with a question, hoping to game the Google algorithms. It is why I have a subscription to SABR, Society for American Baseball Research. Part of the subscription includes access to TSN archives. Reading about sports from a bygone era reminds me, why I fell in love with the games in the first place.

Well that is it for this week’s newsletter. As always, thank you for your support and once again, Happy New Year to you all.

SPORTSCASTER DAN