Who's Worth What in Sports?

Hemingway Jay Brinker is priceless

I put out the Bat Signal yesterday, hopeful of resurrecting the (usually) Friday Hemingways. Youse came up big. Expect to see the guy/gal on the virtual bar seat next to you, offering wisdom in This Space in the coming weeks. Today, we start with the best, the wise and eloquent Jay Brinker. Take it away, Jay.

*

Good morning from the Sonoran Desert where yesterday was 70 degrees and cloudless and the next several days are projected to be the same. For those unfamiliar with the Sonoran Desert, it is the area around Phoenix. Perhaps it is because the weather is always so nice the ballot counters only work intermittently between hikes, bike rides, and ballot curing.

I appreciate Doc’s shout out yesterday about being a Guest Hemingway. More importantly, I appreciate him coming out of his retirement that lasted barely longer than Tom Brady’s to resume The Morning Line. Mornings are better when I have digested Doc’s musings and then checked in to see what Pogo, Patrick, Greg, and Kathy have had to say.

It has been nearly 18 months since the last time I helmed the keyboard. With the success of the Bengals the past two seasons I have not had much to complain about, other than Zac Taylor’s play calling. I would be foolish to complain about UC football. Complaining about the Reds would just be piling on. So, let’s see if we can come up with a few relevant topics worthy of discussion.

How Much Is Ego Worth? Even before the Carolina Panthers fired Matt Rhule last month, speculation began about him returning to the college ranks and taking over at Nebraska or Wisconsin.

Before he flamed out in Carolina, Rhule was successful at both Temple and Baylor. He made $22 million in two plus seasons in Carolina and is still owed $40 million under the massive contract he signed in 2020. However, any money he earns from a college job will offset what Carolina owes him. Unless the new job pays more than $7 million/year, he will be working for free.

If you are Matt Rhule, do you go back to the coaching grind of dealing with college kids, recruiting high schoolers, and dealing with alumni? Or do you hang out with your wife and kids, attend your children’s sporting events, work out, play golf, and travel?

Most of us have our dream list about how we would spend lottery winnings. Rhule has effectively won the lottery. $62 million is not the $1.8 billion in last week’s PowerBall drawing, but it is a significant sum.

If you are him, do you feel the need to vindicate yourself as a coach and return to college so you do not have the bad taste of getting fired from your last job? Or do you say $62 million rinses out all of the bad taste from that experience?

I would take the $40 million forthcoming and retire, but then I am not in the testosterone driven world of football. All of this precludes that the Nebraska job has become hopeless and that fans drove off two coaches who consistently turned in 9-3 records and deserve to be next to last in the mediocre Big Ten West.

No matter well Rhule can coach, he will not be winning national titles at Wisconsin either.

How Much Is One Recruit Worth? Isaiah Collier is the top ranked high school point guard in the class of 2023. Yesterday he announced he would attend USC. UC was among his finalists as were Mick Cronin’s UCLA Bruins and the University of Michigan. Kudos to Wes Miller for even getting UC into consideration.

The cynic would say that of course any hoops player would choose So Cal over Cincy (or Ann Arbor), but if that is the case the states of Florida and California would be loaded with NCAA championships rather than heartland states like Kentucky and Kansas.

The uber cynic would further say that in the era of the transfer portal and one and done, that any singular recruit does not make a huge difference. Then the realist would counter that the top PG in the country likely would have staved off a 13 point loss to a Horizon League team that used to count as an exhibition when it was DII along with the perennial game against Athletes in Action and the accompanying plea to stay afterwards.

How Much Is Enough? A local Phoenix story has a national theme. Arizona is the site of Spring Training for 15 MLB teams. Some teams, like the Reds and the Cleveland Baseball Team, share a facility. The city of Glendale (home of the Cardinals’ State Farm Stadium and site of the upcoming Super Bowl) built a Spring Training facility in 2009 for the Dodgers and White Sox to share. The city borrowed $200 million and only charges each team $1/year rent.

In 2021, after it started hiring female umpires, MLB decreed that teams have to provide separate dressing facilities for its female employees. So far, so good. However, the Glendale stadium does not have separate accommodations so a dispute arose over who should pay $200K for the dressing room for female umpires.

Unsurprisingly, the teams with respective annual revenues of $540 million and $273 million and a Spring Training lease payment of $1 each want the taxpayers of Glendale to pony up. Shameless is too polite of an adjective to describe these teams.

Applying this to our local burg, the Bengals want to ignore their lease and haggle over the one term (naming rights revenue) that they negotiated poorly a quarter century ago.

If you are a professional sports franchise, there is no give and take with the fans/taxpayers nor is their reciprocated love when money is involved – it only flows one way. Into the coffers of the billionaire owners.

How Much Is Your Reputation Worth? How many of you cringed watching all the commercials for crypto during the Super Bowl? How much has the cringe factor increased after watching the FTX meltdown/theft this week?

Crypto.com, for whom Matt Damon said “fortune favors the brave” is still an ongoing entity as of this morning and still has its name on the former Staples Center. Meanwhile, Tom Brady and Gisele made a commercial for FTX . Brady posted about FTX several times on Instagram lauding FTX. Those posts have since been scrubbed. Little did he know that he was representing needlessly burning assets and part of his reputation.

Brady was reportedly paid in FTX tokens for his appearance in the commercial. If he were lucky, he sold quickly or at a minimum divided that “asset” equally with Giselle during the divorce rather than take it and give her an asset worth equivalent value.

The lesson to be learned it never to take investment advice from the guy who lived next door in the dorm who always dressed like a schlub and slept in his bean bag chair no matter how smart he seems. Also, avoid an investment in something that you cannot explain to a sixth grader in 20 seconds.

How Much IS OBJ Worth? At lunch yesterday, I saw the ESPN talking heads debating whether the Cowboys should sign OBJ. I was astonished to think that this was worth 15 seconds of discussion much less 15 minutes. OBJ is coming off an ACL injury and has not played in 9 months. Even before that, he caught 44 passes last season and 23 the year before that. His production has basically declined every year since his third year in the NFL. He is no one’s answer to any type of receiving problems but he can help the media fill air time.

Related, watching the debate on OBJ made me check in on AJ Green. He has 12 receptions this season on a receiver depleted team and is averaging 5.5 yards per catch. Maybe that is better than his former draftmate, Julio Jones, who has 11 receptions but a 16 yard per reception average. When the wheels fall off for wide receivers, they fall off quickly unless they are Jerry Rice or Tim Brown.

How Much Is Integrity Worth? If you are FIFA and you are soliciting bids to host the World Cup, the answer is zero. The World Cup starts in three days in Qatar. It is problematic enough that the tournament has been pushed to the end of November to avoid the hot temperatures when it usually is played in mid-June. This year’s tournament is also befouled by the deaths of construction workers, the usual human rights violations in the Middle East, and the inability to purchase alcohol during the games (although purchase before the game and afterward is permitted).

FIFA is rumored to have benefitted from a $500 million television rights deal with Al Jazeera. Enough is never enough in sports.

How Much Is a Concert Worth? Doc touched on this yesterday with his Johnny Thinwallet lament about the ticket cost for the NKU-UC hoops game last night. In retrospect, that experience for an NKU fan is invaluable. I am currently second in the Ticketmaster queue to buy Taylor Swift tix at Paycor in June. If I get out for somewhere near $500 for two decent tix, I will be ecstatic.

As my daughter mentioned, she might be the only person attending with her dad because the dad is a bigger Taylor fan than the daughter. Yeah, I am an unapologetic Swiftie.

The 1975 is playing in Phoenix next Wednesday. I looked into tickets to take the family. I like the 1975, but don’t love them. I know that I do not love them at $125/ticket for four mediocre seats.

Similarly, Phoebe Bridgers played here in April. Once again, like don’t love. I was early in line on Ticketmaster and the lower theater seats were $350 each. As my buddy, Brian Keith, said, she is a $35 floor ticket at Bogarts, not $350 in a theater. It is nuts how much tickets cost now.

Song of the Day. Keeping with the theme, I should link Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel” or something similarly titled. Instead, I really enjoy everything today’s band does even if my son says that it sounds like a song from the end of a TV show or movie. The Reds, Pinks, and Purples is the moniker of Glenn Donaldson, a 50 year San Franciscan who works for the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy and makes Kitchen Pop in his spare time. I love the title and the imagery of this – Saw You at the Record Shop Today.

Thanks for reading. If you have not done so yet, subscribe to Doc’s Substack so you will receive The Morning Line in your email inbox. themorningline.substack.com

Hopefully, you will also occasionally see me subbing for him. As always, thanks to Doc for letting me write. Enjoy your day.