Red Right 88

12 Aug 2010

In Defense of Randy Lerner

In the Premier League, not everyone is upset with Martin O’Neill’s decision to leave Randy Lerner’s Aston Villa. Least of all the players, who were reportedly texting each other images of champagne bottles after hearing the news.

Lerner issued a statement saying that he and O’Neill no longer “shared a common view” on the best direction for the club. Lerner planned to hold O’Neill to a budget, not allowing him to spend money on player transfers without selling a player first.

The Premier League is similar to Major League Baseball in that there is no salary cap, but all teams share in the TV revenue under the following system:

25% is paid in merit payments determined by where a club finishes in the final league table;
50% of the domestic revenue is split equally;
100% of the non-domestic revenue is split equally among the clubs.
25% is paid in facility fees, based on how often a club is shown on TV in the U.K., with each club guaranteed a minimum of 10 facility fees.

Every team gets a large share of the money pie, with Forbes reporting that, in 2009, Middlesborough received the smallest share (£30.9 million) while Manchester United received the largest (£51.1 million).

While £21 million is certainly a lot of money, it’s not on par with the differences in revenue between a team like the Yankees and the Indians. Even smaller-market teams can be competitive; it’s just not the big-market London clubs or Manchester United.

Aston Villa does take a hit at the gate, as Villa Park holds 42,500, compared to Old Trafford (76,000) or the Emirates Stadium (60,000) for example, which helps widen the gap a bit more.

One way to shrink the revenue gap is to qualify for the lucrative Champions League. O’Neill wasn’t able to break through – the team peaked at sixth place – and without the big payday and large crowds from Champions League games, Lerner has to keep an eye on the budget. Think about how much extra revenue the Indians used to produce when they routinely made the playoffs in the late ’90s – those extra dollars help.

O’Neill’s cries of not being allowed to spend money ring hollow, as he spent more than £120million on transfer fees alone for new signings during his four years at Villa Park and recouped just £39m in sales during that period – leaving him with a net loss of almost £82m.

Lerner is the best kind of owner, as he hires people and then lets them do their jobs without constantly micro-managing them. Some fans in Cleveland don’t understand that is a good thing, thinking that because Lerner doesn’t sit behind a desk every day in Berea that he “doesn’t care.”

It certainly is well within his rights to set a budget for the team. If O’Neill couldn’t deliver under those conditions, that’s on him, not Lerner.

I certainly don’t wish ill on Aston Villa fans, but if one of Lerner’s teams has to have coaching issues days before the season starts, better it be at Villa Park than at Cleveland Browns Stadium.

Posted in Martin O'Neill, Premier League, Randy Lerner

11 Aug 2010

Psst, want to buy a soccer team?

With Saturday bringing the start of the new Premier League season, it’s been a good summer for Liverpool.

First Steven Gerrard, aka the anti-LeBron, recommitted to the team, then Fernando Torres, fresh off a World Cup victory with Spain, announced he was staying at Anfield. Rafa Benitez, his ego and odd player rotations are in Italy, replaced by Roy Hodgson.

And it looked like, at long last, the team would be rid of goofball owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who after running the team into the ground since buying it in 2007 decided to put it up for sale last spring.

But even that hasn’t gone smoothly. At first, Chinese investor Kenny Huang appeared to be the front runner to buy the club. (His name should sound familiar to Cavs fans – he advised Chinese investors bidding to acquire a 15 percent stake in the Cavaliers, although the deal did not work out).

More potential owners have come out in recent weeks, although the Sahara Group has apparently pulled out; while the interest from Yayha Kirdi has left many fans cold.

Hicks and Gillett prefer Kirdi, of course, as he is reportedly willing to pay 600 million pounds for the club, twice the value of the other offers and enough to ensure the owners of turning a profit. The other offers would allow the pair to walk away without losing any money.

It’s not surprising that Hicks and Gillett can’t even get this right. Gillett, while he was owner of the Montreal Canadians, was part of the NHL when it closed down for a year because the owners couldn’t figure out how to control themselves from overspending on contracts.

Hicks famously bid against himself as owner of the Texas Rangers to give Alex Rodriguez $250 million, and recently sold the team out of bankruptcy.

Just the duo you want running your club.

And we think the Dolans are bad.

***

Finally, more good news from the always top-notch EPL Talk.

Posted in Fernando Torres, Liverpool, Premier League, Steven Gerrard | Leave a comment

11 Aug 2010

Recalibrating on Eric Mangini

As we slowly move through the month of August*, the Browns are winding their way through training camp, the first exhibition game sits on the horizon and the opening of the season is a month away.

Things are quite a bit different in Browns training camp. At this time last year, we were dealing with controversial bus rides, a ridiculous quarterback “competition” and contract promises from the “previous regime.” Most importantly, we were all wondering what we had in coach Eric Mangini.

Contrast that to this year: no contract issues, a clear pecking order for the quarterbacks and overall peace and quiet. In fact, it’s Randy Lerner’s other team that finds itself dealing with coaching issues just days before the start of the season.

As we move toward the start of Year 2 of the Mangini Era, I’ve been re-evaluating my opinion of Mangini as a coach.

One of the biggest frustrations from last year was the way he handled the quarterback duties between Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn. Clearly, neither quarterback was going to be a Pro Bowler, but Mangini made the situation worse by not naming a starter at the outset of training camp and letting that person get as much work as possible as the team installed a new offensive system.

Instead, the QBs were bounced in and out during the preseason, with neither playing the final game. What followed during the regular season was historically bad play at the position.

Mangini deserved a large part of the blame because he was unable to create a situation where either quarterback could succeed. And that’s one of the key responsibilities of a coach: you have to be able to put your players in position to succeed. For example, if you want to run an offensive based on a short passing game, you don’t turn the team over to Derek Anderson.

Which brings us to this year. To be fair, if the coaches are responsible for helping the players to succeed, then management (Lerner and Mike Holmgren) are responsible for putting together the framework for the coaches to succeed.

That framework wasn’t in place last year, as Mangini had free reign to do what he wanted, especially after running GM George Kokinis out of town, and it proved too much for him to handle. Now, with Holmgren and GM Tom Heckert firmly in place, Mangini, offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and the rest of the coaching staff can do the jobs they were hired for – nothing else.

With the national media continuing to beat the drum that Mangini is on the coaching “hot seat,” creating an atmosphere for the coaching staff to succeed is vitally important. Having Holmgren as another set of eyes is only going to help as well. While he’s not going to walk out at practice and contradict Mangini, if Holmgren spots a flaw in the way a player is performing – especially at quarterback – and corrects it, then everyone wins.

Holmgren also brought in Gil Haskell, his former offensive coordinator, to observe and offer suggestions to Daboll. The ability for Haskell to sit down with Daboll and talk to him about his game plans, why he called a certain play in a certain situation, and offer suggestions and support, can only make Daboll – and by extension the offense – better this year.

I’m still not 100 percent sold on Mangini as head coach. He has a losing record in his career, made one playoff appearance as Jets coach with Herm Edwards players, and his only success in the NFL came in a supporting role to Bill Belichick.

But with the way the team is progressing and being rebuilt from top to bottom, I feel a whole lot better than I did at this time last year. The picture is starting to fill in around the edges and Browns fans once again have something to be optimistic about.

*Isn’t August really one of the worst months of the year? If you’re a kid, the start of school is just around the corner, it’s ridiculously hot, the Indians are generally out of the playoff race, the big family vacation is over, even the pool doesn’t hold the same appeal as it did in June and July. Thankfully the Premier League starts this weekend.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Eric Mangini, Mike Holmgren, NFL | Leave a comment

10 Aug 2010

1 Comment

We Really are Spoiled

I was reading through Terry Pluto’s Sunday Q&A with Joe Tait when I came across this part of the article:

Q: Is this really going to be your last season?
A: That’s it. I’m done. A few years ago, the travel really started to get to me. I was getting off airplanes at 4 a.m. after flying all night … I realized it was time to go.

It took a few minutes for it to register, but then it hit me: Joe Tait’s retiring after next year! I’m still having some trouble processing it. Tait has always been there, doing Cavs games on the radio since the team started in 1970 (well, except for those two years when he wasn’t there, but you know what I mean). Can there be a Cavs game without Joe Tait behind the mic?

Tait is an old-school pro, someone who understands that people tune in for the game, not necessarily to just listen to him. He’s an announcer, not a personality, and he’s going to be missed once he leaves the building.

Growing up one of my friends had a 12-inch LP of The Miracle of Richfield, which featured audio from Tait’s game calls. We listened to that so many times I can still hear Tait’s words to this day.

Sunday’s New York Times had an article about how longtime broadcaster Dick Enberg has returned to calling baseball games with the San Diego Padres. In the article, Padres president Tom Garfinkel describes Enberg this way:

“Broadcasters in a way are the greatest brand ambassadors you can have,” Garfinkel said. “Dick brings a degree of credibility that’s very rare. He’s a great storyteller. He brings an enthusiasm and tells a story in a way that separates him from a lot of others.”

Those same words could be used to describe Tait. He truly is the Cavs, having been with the team through a multitude of players, coaches, wins, losses, arenas, uniform colors and logos. He is the Cavs brand.

Thinking about Tait made me realize how spoiled we have been as Cleveland fans to have the quality of announcers we’ve had over the past 40+ years.

I can remember Gib Shanley calling Browns games in the late ’70s & early ’80s, especially home games as the Browns rarely sold out at home during that period unless it was against Pittsburgh. Shanley gave way to Nev Chandler, one of the best football announcers. Who can ever forget his calls during the Browns playoff seasons of 1986 & 1987?

On the Indians side, everyone under a certain age grew up with Herb Score who, in a bigger market, would have received more acclaim than he did here in Cleveland. Hearing the voice of Tom Hamilton on a Tribe game has been the soundtrack of summer in Cleveland since 1990.

With the growth of satellite radio and more out-of-town broadcasts available, it’s easy to see that, even if the Cleveland teams haven’t always been winners over the past four decades, the local announcers have always been at the top of their games.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Joe Tait, professional announcers

06 Aug 2010

Can We Get Reception Here?

As the Browns reach the end of the first week of training camp, one of the biggest questions facing the team is the state of the passing game, both at quarterback and, even more importantly, at wide receiver.

Some are calling the Browns receivers the worst in the league. It’s hard to tell, though, just how good the receivers are, or can be, because they were paired last year with Derek Anderson (a big-armed QB who can’t hit the broad side of a barn, according to ESPN) and Brady Quinn (he of the tentative pocket presence and unwillingness to stretch the field, according to ESPN).

And therein lies the rub: were the receivers bad last year because the quarterbacks were horrid, or did the QBs suffer because Mohamed Massaquoi (34 catches), Brian Robiskie (seven catches) and company are just not that good?

We may not find out this season, either, which could prove problematic. If new quarterback Jake Delhomme struggles the way he did at the end of his tenure in Carolina, most fans will say that he’s washed up. But he may only be as good as the people he has to work with and what if what he has to work with is a group of No. 4 wide receivers?

Go back to Derek Anderson for a minute. When he had his big year in 2007, Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow and Joe Jurevicius were his primary targets. Those guys were able to grab all those passes that were over their heads, three yards behind them or at their feet, making Anderson look good.

The next year, Jurevicius was out with an injury, Edwards forgot how to catch the ball and Winslow was hurt and only played 10 games. Anderson – and Browns fans – suffered because of it.

I was listening to Sirius NFL’s Tim Ryan and Pat Kirwan when they were at Browns camp on Thursday. Kirwan was talking about how none of the Browns receivers had the extra gear needed to get separation on a defensive back and give the quarterback an opportunity to drop the ball in.

That’s going to be a problem this year, even with the Browns hopefully committing to the run. You have to expect that defenses will be stacking the box to stop the Browns running game, and if they don’t have to worry about anyone stretching the field, things could get dicey.

It’s not all bad though, as Kirwan had some positive things to say about the Browns in his NFL.com column, writing that:

“Delhomme, a free-agent acquisition from Carolina, believes return specialist Josh Cribbs has the ability to be a “Steve Smith-type receiver” and was quick to point out the strong hands Cribbs has to snatch the ball. Cribbs is so explosive after the catch, and he will get a lot more balls thrown his way than last year when he had just 20 receptions.”

“Delhomme said he really likes Brian Robiskie, and could see the second-year wideout having a big season. He also is intrigued by a hybrid player, Evan Moore, who is listed as a tight end but is more of a big wide receiver in the mold of Joe Jurevicius.”

“Credit goes to (Mike) Holmgren, who watched the Browns finish with a flurry of four straight victories, a stretch that convinced Holmgren that (Eric) Mangini had not lost the team and kept the players motivated in an otherwise forgetful season. Benefits of Holmgren’s first big decision is evident around training camp; the construction of a winning attitude, for one, can be seen within the franchise, from the coaches down to the players and all of the support staff.”

“The Browns have put second-round pick T.J. Ward right into the starting lineup. He showed in Thursday’s team scrimmage that he likes getting up in the box and being aggressive against the run. (Scott) Fujita said Ward is special.”

Clearly, while the situation isn’t ideal, things could be worse and there is reason for hope. We’ll find out more a week from today when the Browns open the exhibition season against Green Bay.

***

Sure he is.

***

A great read on what NFL training camps are really like.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Jake Delhomme, Pat Kirwan, wide receivers | Leave a comment

06 Aug 2010

That Didn’t Take Long

It only took a few weeks, but the injury bug finally caught Cleveland catcher Carlos Santana, who is scheduled to have knee surgery today at the Cleveland Clinic .

“Carlos is expected to make a full recovery by the beginning of the 2011 championship season,” head trainer Lonnie Soloff said in published reports.

Let’s overlook the championship season phrasing for a minute and focus on the recovery time, which Soloff put at four to six months, which puts Santana up against the start of spring training. If he’s not ready for the start of spring training, that probably means he won’t be ready for the start of the regular season.

Here’s the best part from Sheldon Ocker’s story in the Beacon:

”This [injury] is rare in baseball, and it could have been much worse,” Soloff said in the article. ”But any time a catcher has surgery on his knee, it’s considered serious.”

Of course it is. Cleveland’s sports teams just can’t have normal injuries; they have to be rare injuries.

So begins another day in Cleveland sports paradise.

Posted in Carlos Santana, Cleveland Indians, freak injuries | Leave a comment

04 Aug 2010

Mike Holmgren vs. the Hoopleheads

Browns GM Mike Holmgren delivered an overdue message to a certain segment of Browns fans who frequent Cleveland Browns Stadium on game days:

Grow up.

In an interview with The Plain Dealer earlier this week, Holmgren said the team will work to eliminate the hoopleheads that try to turn parts of the Stadium into Thunderdome:

“In the Mike Holmgren Era, which officially began this weekend with the opening of Browns training camp, fans will be enthusiastic and supportive.

“Not aggressive or obscene. Not spilling beers or vehemently taunting opposing fans. Not being obnoxious or offensive.

“After hearing too many stories of longtime season-ticket holders not renewing seats because they were disgusted with the behavior of out-of-hand fans at Browns Stadium, Holmgren is taking his first steps in overhauling the culture of the Browns organization by making a simple request: Please behave, Browns fans.

“Make Browns Stadium a difficult place for opponents to play, but don’t make it a place where some of Cleveland’s own fans won’t attend games because of disgust with your behavior.”

Now I took Holmgren’s comments to mean the team will enforce the existing rules on fan conduct; they’re not looking to turn the Stadium into a Gestapo-like police state. But not everyone agrees.

Taking a look at various sites that picked up on the story, and from the comments on the PD’s site, there’s a segment of Browns fans who think Holmgren is off his rocker. The opposition can be boiled down to “that’s the way we’ve always acted,” “that’s what Browns fan do” and “it’s my right to act that way because I bought a ticket.”

Thankfully, I haven’t come across anyone saying “that’s how we do it in the 216.”

Reading those comments make it all the more clear that Holmgren is on the right path here. “It’s always been that way” isn’t a good excuse. Just because you want to act like a feral animal doesn’t mean the rest of us want to go along. And buying a ticket only gives you the right to attend the game, not do anything you want once you pass through the gate.

If fans can’t police themselves in their behavior, then someone has to act as the adult in the room and, under Holmgren, that someone is going to be team security.

After all, we don’t want to be confused with Jets fans, do we?

In some ways, it’s refreshing that Holmgren has the time to deal with this issue. No contract holdouts, no silly quarterback battles, no horrific training camp injuries, staph infections, controversial bus rides or any other of the various nonsenses that have plagued the Browns over the past decade are present this year, and that’s so nice.

For some other viewpoints on the subject, be sure to visit Waiting For Next Year and Cleveland Frowns.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, hoopleheads, Mike Holmgren, obnoxious fan behavior | Leave a comment

01 Aug 2010

2 Comments

The True Heartbreak City

Some people just don’t get it.

In his latest ESPN column, Bill Simmons explains why he is bored by the Red Sox this season. He lays out some really good reasons, as always, but, as the national media is wont to do, he misses the mark when he compares Red Sox fans – and fans of other teams – with Cleveland fans.

His misstep comes when he talks about how, since the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007, the games don’t take on the “life or death” aspect they used to (we’ll overlook the fact that sports are entertainment, not life or death) and only a few franchises still have that hunger for a championship, writing that:

“Nobody wanted to live a full life, then die, without seeing the Red Sox win a championship. Cubs fans know what I mean. So do Vikings fans, Indians fans, Maple Leafs fans … only the true sufferers know.

“In just the past decade, five franchises lost life-or-death status. Boston in 2004. The White Sox in 2005. St. Louis in 2006. Philly in 2008. And really, the Yankees in 2009 – since every Yankees fan was secretly having a heart attack about the fact that they were 0-for-the-century, the Red Sox/Yankees dynamic had flipped and A-Rod had become the Reverse Curse of the Bambino, so we have to count them.

That leaves San Francisco and the Cubs as the last remaining big-market, life-or-death teams … although you certainly can count Cleveland, Houston and Milwaukee as well, and maybe even Seattle, San Diego and Texas if you’re feeling magnanimous.)”

So we’re lumped in with Houston fans, Minnesota fans, San Francisco fans? Seattle? San Diego? Really?

Here’s where Simmons tripped up, just like almost every other national writer:

All those other fan bases? They only have to live with their misery for one season out of the year. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series in more than 100 years? Well, those fans also get to root for the Bears and saw the Bulls win six titles over an eight-year period.

The Giants haven’t won a World Series since the team moved from NY? It must have been real hard after baseball season ended watching the 49ers win five Super Bowls.

Same with Boston. For all the “misery” and “why us” wailing from Red Sox fans, they still knew when baseball season ended the Patriots and their three Super Bowls or the Celtics and their 17 NBA titles would be there.

Cleveland? We live with our sports misery 365 days a year. The Indians (last championship in 1948) finishing another title less season rolls into the Browns (no championships since 1964) breaking our hearts which rolls into the Cavs (no titles ever) over and over, like the French distress signal playing on a loop on Lost.

Even when we get a taste of success, something always goes wrong. The Indians make it to the World Series in 1995 and become the only team to lose to the Braves. That’s followed up a few weeks later by the announcement that the Browns are moving to Baltimore.

Or consider 2007, collectively the greatest sports year in Cleveland in 40 years:

The Cavs make their first NBA Finals – where they are swept by San Antonio.
The Indians take a 3-1 lead in the ALCS – and lose the series to Boston.
The Browns finish with a 10-6 season – and miss the playoffs because of tiebreakers.

So you tell me, how can any other town even think they have suffered like we have? Simmons himself put all three Cleveland teams on his list of fully tortured sports fans, what does that tell you?

At least some people get it.

Posted in Cleveland sports, fans, heartbreak, misery

29 Jul 2010

The Well-Educated Fan

The august Cleveland Frowns made an interesting point in one of his posts this week. He was taking a critical look at a Tony Grossi article in Sunday’s Plain Dealer dealing with some of the top storylines for the Browns as they head into training camp.

Frowns took exception to Grossi focusing on off-the-field issues rather than writing about the players and strategy for the upcoming season. In the comment section, he made the following point about the PD:

“… the PD frames the discussion in this town, and that it’s telling that they go out of their way to avoid discussing football in “kicking off” the discussion in 2010 to manufacture needless and entirely speculation-based intrigue about the coach’s job.”

We had never thought about it that way before. While we certainly read the PD and the Akron Beacon Journal to follow the Cleveland sports scene, we also read national sites and magazines, local newspapers covering the teams that the Browns/Cavs/Indians are playing and other blogs.

We also follow the NFL on Sirius radio. Every year, the Sirius NFL Channel visits each team’s training camp and we learn more in the 3 hours they are at Browns camp than we would in a month of listening to WTAM or WKNR.

You can see a list of some of the sites we follow along the right-hand rail of this blog, (go ahead and look, it’s right over there). Any well-organized blog will have a similar list and those are a great source for finding new sites and information.

We assumed that the majority of fans did that as well, since the growth of the Internet and satellite radio, to name a few, make so much more information available if you want it. We no longer have to rely on a local newspaper or two and a blowhard radio “personality” for our sports news; the info is right at our fingertips.

But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that’s most likely not the case. A majority of the fans probably don’t have the time or the desire to seek out more news and information and use that to not only learn more about the local team, but about the leagues they compete in. And that’s too bad.

It’s much better if we, as a fanbase, absorb as much knowledge as possible to understand not only what is happening on the field, but what is happening off it. Then we can use the local media coverage to supplement our knowledge, not drive it, so we can form our own opinions.

***

As we pointed out a few weeks ago, the Browns are having trouble selling tickets this year.

Perhaps if the in-stadium experience were more like this, they would be moving ducats a little bit faster.

It certainly couldn’t hurt.

***

Yeah baby!

Posted in Cleveland Browns, educated fans, media coverage | Leave a comment

28 Jul 2010

The Changing of Sports Entertainment

LeBron James’ recent party at Tao in Las Vegas has taken on epic proportions, not just because of the nude women in the bathtub, but because ESPN originally posted an article about the party and then took it down off its website.

The full article was captured in a screen grab and posted on Deadspin, The site also posted ESPN’s explanation for pulling the article:

“The story should have never been published,” an ESPN source told Deadspin. “The draft was inadvertently put on the server before going through the usual editorial process. We are in the midst of looking into the matter.”

Now comes word, via Waiting For Next Year, that Sportscenter was going to discuss the LeBron in Vegas story but, during a commercial break, something happened and suddenly the anchors were no longer interested.

It’s not surprising that a higher-up at ESPN would spike an article or a TV report that portrayed an athlete they are developing a relationship with in a negative light. It wouldn’t be the first time.

ESPN wants to promote itself as the worldwide leader in sports, the place sports fans go to for all their sports news and entertainment. But day by day, ESPN is moving farther away from being able to present itself as a news organization.

Now, if you tune in and there isn’t a game on, you find yourself being yelled at by know-it-all personalities, have to deal with studio hosts bleating non-sensical phrases over and over again (boo yah!), or an over-abundance of promotional spots (Budweiser Hot Seat, etc.)

The network still does some things right – most notably the on-going 30 for 30 film series, which is phenomenal – but more often than not they are trying to be both a sports network and an entertainment network.

And by trying to be both at once, the network ends up not doing either one very well.

Posted in ESPN, Las Vegas, LeBron James, Tao | Leave a comment