Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Big Brown - A True Champion

Since the great match up between Affirmed and Alydar in 1978 I have steadfastly thrown out the possibility of any Kentucky Derby winner going on to win the Triple Crown. It is just too grueling a challenge to run three races at a 1 1/4, 1 3/16, and 1 1/2 miles in five weeks.

Horses, especially those going two turns, and two turns against such stiff competition need at least three weeks or more to recover from a race as demanding as the Kentucky Derby.

I was wrong about Big Brown needing more conditioning and experience as a prerequisite to his winning the Kentucky Derby. Those two races were monstrous, and I like other handicappers, refused to believe that they were a substitute for additional experience on the race track.

That said, I am a believer. Marring any injury, Big Brown should be the first Triple Crown Winner in thirty years.

Clearly this horse has the physical maturity and the stamina to defeat this crop of three year olds. There may be another talented three year old out there who can fill out by June but it is unlikely. Remember, three year olds are like teenagers - every few months is like another year. But while a lot of colts, including several who skipped the Kentucky Derby,  will grow from February to June, it unlikely that they can reach the level of Big Brown. With the Kentucky Derby, he has now run three consecutive races with outstanding speed figures, and those races had demanding paces to match.

Kentucky Derby Take Two - Cowboy Cal

Update Monday May 5, 2008: For my post race comments Big Brown - A True Champion

The goddess of wagering is not going to take kindly to this. I changed my mind about the Kentucky Derby.

Friday night I reexamined the prep races, particularly the Blue Grass. My conclusion is that that race, synthetic track and all, is the secret to picking the winner. Cowboy Cal who led most of the way, is my new selection. The conventional wisdom that the published time for the half mile of :49 seconds was slow, very slow.

Cowboy Cal, leading most of the way , worked harder than the winner, Monba.  Pletcher trains both horses and he would not enter Cowboy Cal if he did not beleive the horse could win. But then again Pletcher knows very little about winning the Kentucky Derby.

If I am wrong, I am wrong, but given the racing surface and given the track variant that day, the half mile, adjusted is more like a :47.

In any case, the worst that happens is I now have the opportunity to look foolish on two successive days. Until the start of the race I will be muttering "Cowboy Cal and Smooth Air."

Colonel John, Z Fortune, Bob Black Jack and Gayego will round out my gimmicks. I will drop Recaputuretheglory and add Tale of Ekati.

When the race is over, I will do what most handicappers do. Figure out how close I came to picking the winner, and move on to the next race.

Kentucky Derby Winner 2008

Update Monday May 5, 2008: For my post race comments: Big Brown - A True Champion

Update Saturday morning May 3, 2008 8:54 am: I changed my mind about the winner.  For those who care: Kentucky Derby Take Two - Cowboy Cal

For the past two weeks friends have asked who I like in Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

Face it, for a hardened horse player, the Kentucky Derby is not the way to make money - you have to start out figuring out who will win the race. Except for an occasional, very occasional,  good year, all it is good for is bragging rights.

Here is the problem:

• Every horse in the race is asked to do something they never did before.
• Few of them have raced against one another more than once.
• They come from all over the country and despite Beyer 'figs,' comparing the varying racing surfaces distances, and weather conditions is a daunting task.
• This year the matter is complicated by three additional factors:
  • Many of the horses raced on artificial surfaces and handicappers are still having difficulty adjusting to the changes in time and pace.  The horses and jockeys are having an even greater problem.
  • The Wood Memorial had an extremely fast pace.
  • The Blue Grass had an extremely slow pace. Those last two races make it difficult to assess the fitness of about six of the entries.
• Rarely does the best horse win the race.

Anyway, I have not had a solid Derby since 2001 when I spent that Saturday morning walking around muttering "Monarchos and Invisible Ink, Invisible Ink and Monarchos." They went on to run 1-2, Monarchos winning,  with Congaree third. The $2 exacta paid over $2,458 and the $1 trifecta paid $6117.

Again, I have not has a winner since.

Undaunted, I offer up Smooth Air despite the fact that he was not 100% at the beginning of the  week.  As Andy Beyer noted, as strong as he looks, Big Brown just does not have the seasoning to go the distance with the furious pace.

I plan to mess around with Colonel John, Z Fortune, Bob Black Jack, Gayego, and Recapturetheglory in the gimmicks.

Green Bay Packers: Socialists, Maybe Communists, the Scourge of Capitalism

Green Bay Packer stock never paid a dividend, it cannot appreciate in value, and anyone who buys a share does it for sentiment, not their retirement.

In a few days the poor New York Giants will face the Green Bay Packers at frigid Lambeau Field. The team from the National Football League's largest market, that would be market as in free enterprise and capitalism, faces an over-the-hill quarterback, Brett Favre, and his band of youngsters.

This is the same Packers that sport the lowest median salary in the NFL at $440,520. The ousted Seattle Seahawks are at $959,200, the departed Dallas Cowboys are at $699,000, and those nasty Giants are at $724,000.

Somehow despite the small market, somehow without paying the highest salaries, somehow the Green Bay Packers will sit atop the National Football Conference Sunday night on their way to the biggest market share of the year, an appearance in the Super Bowl.

Based in a city of 100,000, the Packers are owned by 112,000 shareholders and the stock is worthless.

Packer stock has never paid a dividend, it cannot appreciate in value, and anyone who buys a share does it for sentiment, not their retirement.

It is a non-profit company.

The Green Bay Packers have won more Championships than any other NFL team and their total championships equals that of about half the league.

As Dave Sweet noted this week, Packers shareholders (all 112,000) are smiling:

...it all works — in fact, flourishes. The Packers offer more luxury suites, 166, than all but a handful of NFL teams.  This season, the Packers averaged more than 70,000 fans a game, 97 percent of Lambeau’s capacity. They are one of the top 10 NFL teams in terms of generating revenue, gathering more than $200 million in their last fiscal year. In addition, the Green Bay season-ticket wait list, at around 75,000 names, could fill Lambeau Field on its own with enough left over for a bustling tailgate party in the parking lot.

But if you asked Mark Belling, Charlie Sykes, and the rest of the free market New York Giant fans, they would tell you that, at best, the structure is stupid, at worst it is un-American.

I can just see them explaining to a twelve year old why this non-profit structure is wrong, it contradicts the American free enterprise system. Watch him look at you with incredulous eyes.

As Sweet noted, the kid may have an insight that right wing talk radio lacks, a human capacity to appreciate along with the rest of the fans that, "they will be looking for the best return on investment they can imagine — a trip to the Super Bowl."

Right wing talk radio has its ideology and its fanatical adherence to an uncompromising adherence to a free market system gone amuck except when it comes to showing some backbone and telling Wisconsin that the Packers should be sold to the highest bidder.

Squawk.

A Plague on the House that Ruth Built

The Report To The Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into The Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball is available for your reading pleasure.  After a while it becomes repetitious and it repeats itself as the title might suggest.

It is clear that this kind of shenanigans could not go on without the complicity of everyone associated with the game - owners, managers, general managers, players, and, of course, the press that covered the sport.

Screw all of them.

If a single one of the accused players ever ends up in the Hall of Fame, they should step aside and defer to the induction of a player worthy of recognition, Shoeless Joe Jackson.

I take comfort that some of the most notable and biggest, in terms of abuse, salary, and girth, of the named players were New York Yankees.

Rural Electrification, Town Roads, Grandma's Telephone, and the Packers on Cable TV

It was not Milton Friedman's free market capitalism that brought electricity to rural Wisconsin and America. It was not Ronald Reagan's dismissal of government regulation that paved roads from the farm to town. It was not some silly Neocon view of the world that installed a telephone in Grandma's living room in some poor neighborhood of Milwaukee.

All of those changes were the result of government interference in the market place through regulation, taxation, and the redistribution of both public and private resources.

After the 1936 passage of the Rural Electrification Act, bureaucrats worked to assist electric utilities to wire rural America with low-interest loans and technical assistance. Congress decided that the social value of rural electrification would mean progress for farmers and their families. It was not some invisible hand that lead to the mechanization of American agriculture.

State legislatures and county boards voted to build paved roads to small towns and farms. That was a redistribution of tax dollars, mostly coming from wealthy city folks. Some of it was self interest, some of it not. After all, getting goods to market, through these public subsidies benefited the producer and the consumer.

Eighty years ago the telephone was a luxury. Yet state legislatures and their regulatory public service commissions made it clear to AT&T that if the behemoth wished to wire wealthy neighborhoods, they would have to provide service to the poor ones as well.

In every instance there were policy makers and consumers who along with the industry, weighed the costs and benefits of the regulations.  We did pretty well.

Now comes football and cable television. The political leaders, the policymakers, and the industry heavyweights are all on the playing field.  No one is looking out for the consumer.

As for public education, fuhgeddaboutit.

Rep. Ryan Grandstands to Badger and Packer Fans

Not content to let Wisconsin state legislators meddle in disputes between cable TV providers and the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, self-styled Milton Friedman-school free enterprise advocate Representative Paul Ryan, Republican from Janesville, has called upon the FCC to mediate the issue.

A press release three weeks ago from Wisconsin legislators Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and Representative Kitty Rhoades, (R-Hudson) called for arbitration between cable providers and the sports networks so that Badger and Packer sports could be available to subscribers. We called it "political grandstanding."

Ryan, careful not to meddle too much in the marketplace, calls upon the FCC to mediate the dispute.

I understand the FCC has opened a rulemaking proceeding (MB Docket 07-42) to consider program carriage issues such as these - particularly as they relate to independent and diverse channels. I would urge the FCC to consider changing its rules to facilitate appointment of an arbitrator in disputes like the ones involving the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, so they can be resolved more quickly (preferably through negotiation between the parties) and with consumers' interests foremost in mind.

Pete Selkowe of the Racine Post reacts:

Paul Ryan, a Populist? Who knew?

Give Rep. Ryan, R-WI 1st District, credit. He's got his ear to what the voters really care about: Not the war going badly, the stock market in free-fall again, jobs and home buyers scarce as hens' teeth -- no, it's the damn cable blocking of Packers' and Badgers' games.

Monopolies on both sides of the line, the cable companies and the sports networks (ESPN, NFL  Network), have been bilking the public for years. Consumers received little assistance from the Congress or the Wisconsin legislature.

No one protects the consumer.

While the offensive sports networks tangle with the defensive cable providers, the yardage in dispute is your and my wallets.

It is given that we will pay and pay dearly.

The only question is how will they divide the spoils.

John Helyar nails it at ESPN.com:

...Bills have been tossed recently into a number of states' legislative hoppers which would require arbitration when networks like BTN and NFL are at loggerheads with cable operators. They've been introduced in Ohio and Wisconsin and another may be introduced in Indiana. But it won't get far in the last if the legislator whose committee handles such matters has anything to say. Rep. David Crooks knows Hoosiers are frustrated and will only get more so, when they find out how many Indiana basketball games are on the BTN.

But, he argues, the state has no business getting involved with what goes on TV. He'd rather see the two sides stew in their own juices and let the marketplace sort things out.

"This is all about greed," Crooks says. "Who's the greediest?"

The solutions are simple:

• On the state level, a veto of the AT&T legislation designed to allow the cable companies to play without an opponent, since the public is relegated to the sidelines.
• At the national level, it is the end of bundling, the obnoxious practice that forces those of use who wish to get the Discovery and Animal Planet channels to also buy ESPN.

Never forget, the Ryan resolution is not about protecting your wallet, but how the monopolies will divide it.

Enjoy the game.

Rooting for the Packers: A First

I am not a Packer fan. At least not until this week.

I grew up on Chicago's South Side so I was a Cardinal fan. The Chicago Cardinals of Ollie Matson. I lost interest in football after they moved to St. Louis.

In the fall of 1962 I came to Madison to attend the University of Wisconsin. That very first week I sat in the dormitory lounge and endured the Packer season opener against the Chicago Bears. In the opening minutes I took a lot of grief, since I came from Chicago. Before the end of the first quarter I was a Bear fan.

The timing was extraordinary.  The Bears beat the Packers in Green Bay and later that season soundly defeated them again in Chicago. I remember one Bear kickoff in that game that went over the end zone and hit the Wrigley outfield wall on the fly.  The Bears went on to defeat the New York Giants in the NFL Championship game.

After that it was pretty much downhill. The Packers went on to numerous championships and Super Bowls, and the Bears did little until they won the Super Bowl in 1985.

All along the way I rooted against the Packers in every game they played, expect for championships.  Loyalty to the league came first.

Last week after the Packers defeated the Carolina Panthers I decided to support the Packers and cheer them on for the rest of the year.

In a word, "Favre."

Given his history, his injuries, his age, he is nothing short of amazing. He plays at a level that inspires. Yes, that is hackneyed, but he deserves the accolades.

When the Packers faced  Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, it was the first time I ever supported them in a regular season game.

Things will return to normal on Sunday, December 23rd, when the Packers travel to Chicago.  But for the remainder of the season I will back the Pack.

Ouch.

NCAA's Exploitation Machine

Today's New York Times has an op-ed by Michael Lewis that really explains how the NCAA exploits colege football players (and us taxpayers):

College football’s best trick play is its pretense that it has nothing to do with money, that it’s simply an extension of the university’s mission to educate its students. Were the public to view college football as mainly a business, it might start asking questions. For instance: why are these enterprises that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with profits exempt from paying taxes? Or why don’t they pay their employees?

This is maybe the oddest aspect of the college football business. Everyone associated with it is getting rich except the people whose labor creates the value. At this moment there are thousands of big-time college football players, many of whom are black and poor. They perform for the intense pleasure of millions of rabid college football fans, many of whom are rich and white. The world’s most enthusiastic racially integrated marketplace is waiting to happen.

But between buyer and seller sits the National Collegiate Athletic Association, to ensure that the universities it polices keep all the money for themselves — to make sure that the rich white folk do not slip so much as a free chicken sandwich under the table to the poor black kids. The poor black kids put up with it because they find it all but impossible to pursue N.F.L. careers unless they play at least three years in college. Less than one percent actually sign professional football contracts and, of those, an infinitesimal fraction ever make serious money. But their hope is eternal, and their ignorance exploitable.

This goes for basketball as well. Shame on us all for allowing it to flourish.

- Barry Orton

Wisconsin Legislators Back Badger Fans; Tackle Big Ten Network Problem By Issuing Hard-Hitting Press Release

"I was misquoted."  Actually, I wasn't misquoted in the story, but the headline appeared to quote me saying something I never said.

The Capital Times story yesterday on two legislators' press release regarding a bill they wanted to have drafted to offer a solution to the Big Ten Network non-carriage problem quoted me accurately:

A legislative proposal to solve the stalemate between the state's two biggest cable companies and the NFL Network and Big Ten Network is nothing more than political grandstanding, said a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who follows cable issues closely.

"The state can't force its way into a negotiation between two private companies," said Professor Barry Orton, who advises many communities in their dealings with cable companies. "This bill would have zero impact. It's just a chance for legislators to look like they care about their constituents."

Is there an actual bill?  Nope. Just an idea that won't work:

Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, and Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, said their bill, which hasn't been written yet, would establish an arbitration system to settle disputes between the sports networks and cable companies.

No way the state could force arbitration on two greedy entities fighting over the fans' dollars.

The press release worked well, though.

But the headline?  Oy: "Football TV bill 'Phony'"

The subhead was better: "UW Prof: Pols talk, but can't force a deal"

When a newspaper uses quotation marks, it would be useful if that was actually what was said, not a headline writer's characterization of what was said. I would never say that the bill was "phony."  Nonexistent, maybe. But not "phony."

- Barry Orton