You can already hear it. New York Jets fans point out that: on a night when their “last play” quarterback made it four plays before his rotting body gave way, and on a night when the Bills blasted a game-tying field goal off the post and in, the fact that they still pulled it out on an overtime point back TD, means that the “Jetsiness” that hung over the entire game has been eradicated. Whatever has plagued this organization since Super Bowl III no longer applies.
Can’t you see it? The Jets never win that game. But on Monday night they did.
Robert Saleh is a good enough coach to get around this, you’ll hear. They went 7-10 last year and much of the roster is young and on the rise, they’ll say. They have a plan for Zack Wilson to minimize his uselessness, they will screech. The bills weren’t impressive (and they weren’t), and Tua is never more than five minutes away from his next trip to a darkroom. It’s all coming.
But no, Monday night was just a way to make things worse as the Jets crash-landed and became the Jets again. This was the last meal, the brief flash of euphoria before he drowned. A tease that Gang Green has known and fallen for before, but which shortly afterwards becomes reality as a right-wing Apollo Creed. It’s coming up for air through the hole in the ice sheet, only to have their heads bitten off by a waiting polar bear.
You know it’s true. These are the Jets. Everything is a false dawn and a true sunset. And it’ll be an 8-9 or 9-8 running-in-place thing, at. So they can grieve even more about where they might have been, what might have been, if Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles tendon hadn’t sought its own silent refuge. The promise of this season will never be too far out of reach, never out of sight, but certainly never within reach.
Don’t worry Jets fans, you’ll ward off the Mathew Barzal trade rumors soon enough. You know how this works.
Mel Tucker attempts Luis Rubiales’ desperate denial
Maybe Mel Tucker knows he’s going under and will miss out on that sweet, sweet paycheck after all. Maybe he’s never heard of Luis Rubiales. Perhaps positions of power like this blind a man so thoroughly that he is not only unable to understand his crimes and indiscretions, but also why anyone would question them. If you are in downtown East Lansing, MI, it’s probably not a stretch to think you’re infallible. The same as when you play Spanish football, or at least it seems that way.
Because Tucker uses Luis Rubiales’ defense.
We know why, it’s just about all he has left. When he admits what he did, that he committed a violation against Brenda Tracy, he is left out of a job and fired for cause, which means he also loses his money. If you let the research take its course, you’ll probably come to the same conclusion. So there’s this Hail Mary, a last desperate grab for the edge of power and fame before gravity snatches it from its grasp. It came for Rubiales the same day Tucker finally tried this tactic.
The A’s are basically broke, but it’s the owner’s fault
Forbes’ Maury Brown got a look yesterday behind the curtain of the Oakland A’s finances, and their claims of being so destitute that they had to flock to Vegas. It makes interesting reading, and Brown concludes that the $40 million came from owner John Fisher’s claim that the A’s would lose probably wasn’t far from the truth.
The problem is that most of that loss comes from the erosion of season ticket numbers and luxury suite sales, and Fisher is the one who should take the blame for that. He has dismantled the team so much in recent years that no one wants to watch it regularly anymore. Sponsorship money therefore decreases, because for whom will companies advertise? And while increasing the wage bill would mean more costs to overcome to reduce losses or even make a profit, that’s how the business works. Or at least it should.
There’s also the question of how much the A’s will get from their TV deal in the Bay Area, a top-ten TV market. It’s $67 million. In Vegas, which is number 40 in the market, they won’t come close to that. Fisher will say that will be offset by regularly selling out the league’s smallest ballpark, but it’s a real mystery that the A’s will be able to do that in Vegas during the summer months, no matter how many people travel.
The ten points may be on the decline when it comes to making a profit, but we all know that the real money in sports team ownership is franchise value. Something that will only skyrocket if Fisher gets this move to Vegas. Even if he doesn’t, the A’s are still worth $1.8 billion. That’s almost ten times what he paid for it. Whatever other problems the A’s have are caused by Fisher.
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