PATRICK McMANAMON
The ultimate picture of preseason NFL football occurred in the fourth quarter of the game Thursday night between the Browns and New York Jets.
Ken Dorsey, the Browns’ third-string quarterback, finished the game with 11 incompletions and one interception.
On his last drive, he threw 11 passes and did not complete one.
Yet, thanks to two penalties, he “drove” the Browns from their 45-yard line to the Jets’ 5 and had a chance to win the game.
If this makes no sense, it’s because it’s preseason football.
Which makes no sense, either, when the realization dawns that NFL teams actually get away with charging regular-season prices for preseason games that feature a third-stringer ending the game with incompletion after incompletion after incompletion.
This has to be the biggest scam in professional sports.
In truth, it’s hard to think of anything close.
And it’s an insult to the people who pay for the tickets and support the games.
NFL teams sell season tickets in strips of 10, for eight regular-season games and two preseason games. If a fan buys a season ticket, he has to buy the preseason games, as well. There is no price differential, even though the preseason is a glorified exhibition, a glorified practice.
The Browns have it correct with Family Night. They charge $5 and give the money to the team’s charity.
The league, in its quest for all the dollars it can get, has it all wrong for the preseason.
Let’s consider what fans received for their hard-earned dollar Thursday night.
A first-team offense that played well — for nine plays. Then came a rain delay of about an hour. This was needed because it looked like lightning was striking across the street.
When the rain ended, the starters might as well have been wearing Gilbert Arenas jerseys and reading Dostoevsky on the sidelines.
They never reappeared.
Fans did get to watch backup quarterback Brady Quinn, which kept their interest. But by the fourth quarter, there were maybe... maybe... 12,000 watching. By the end, there were fewer. Which is probably a good thing, because they didn’t have to watch the third-team quarterback throw all those incompletions.
Clang, clank, quack.
It’s not even Dorsey’s fault. He’s the third-team guy for a reason, and he’s playing with guys who will not be in the league in September.
Yet, the NFL teams charge full price for this pile of garbage — and then announce 70,000-some tickets sold as the attendance, with perhaps 10,000 in the stands when the announcement is made.
Look around the league.
In Arizona, quarterback Kurt Warner didn’t play because the Cardinals’ offensive line has so many injuries.
How’s that again?
A quarterback is too valuable a commodity to put on the field, yet the fans are charged full price for tickets for a game when players are held out at a coach’s whim?
Is this the federal government spending your money here?
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick regularly keeps regulars sidelined in preseason. His quarterback, Tom Brady, didn’t play at all in the opener. Doesn’t that action in and of itself say how important these games are?
It’s a glorified practice.
A practice can be indicative of a team’s attitude, and it can give coaches an inkling of who can play and who can’t, but it’s not full effort, full speed.
Coaches will say they need these games to evaluate talent. That’s fine, though in this day and age of offseason workouts and OTAs (offseason training activities), it does seem like teams could get away with two practice games.
No matter, if the league wants to play four exhibition games — and they used to be called exhibition games until the league urged everyone to say preseason and avoid the reality and embarrassment of the true name — so be it.
Just don’t charge full price.
Don’t hold fans hostage by forcing them to buy tickets for 10 games as season-ticket holders (on top of the personal-seat licenses, the other great scam in sports) and let them buy eight.
Throw open the doors, charge $10, $15 and $25 and let kids and families who normally can’t afford tickets attend the games.
Accept (GASP) a little less income, players and owners.
Use some of the TV gold mine to subsidize the preseason.
Or make up the difference by charging TV more. Heck, TV is always willing to pay more.
This offseason, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was rightly worried about some late-season games that had become meaningless.
Perhaps it’s time he turn his attention to the games before the season.
Because they are the biggest ripoff in pro sports.
On the Cavaliers
Dan Gilbert’s kids returned from camp Friday and immediately asked their father: Is LeBron James going to Europe?
The Cavaliers’ owner took a step back, said LeBron wasn’t going anywhere and asked where they heard that. Everyone, they told him, was talking about it.
This did not exactly thrill Gilbert. He has more or less shrugged off as offseason gossip the rumors of a Greek team paying James $50 million a year in 2010.
“The reason this thing is where it’s at,” Gilbert said, “is that we’ve got a bunch of bored, East Coast sports writers who have nothing to do because the offseason is a few months away and the Olympics [hadn’t] started yet.”
The story of Olympiakos making plans to land LeBron became the subject of much chatter last week. On Friday, the members of the “Redeem Team” discussed the possibility in China.
Naturally, they said they’d have to consider an offer like that.
But Gilbert pointed out that James is not a free agent, he has never told the Cavaliers he does not want to stay in Cleveland and he can’t be a free agent for two years.
Gilbert also said he felt Cleveland and James were being focused on unnecessarily.
“The undertone to the whole thing that I wonder is, why him?” Gilbert said. “Why not Dwyane Wade? Why not Chris Bosh? Why not whoever else is coming due?
“The only thing you can come up with is there are certain writers, or people who live on the East or West Coast, who think that Cleveland, Ohio, is not a good enough place for a superstar of LeBron’s caliber to spend his career.
“Despite the quality of the franchise, the quality of life in the Midwest, the fans — it’s a complete slap in the face from people who do not live in Cleveland, Ohio, to Cleveland, Ohio.
“That’s probably my biggest problem with the whole thing.”
He continued.
“If he were playing for the Lakers or the Knicks or the Nets or Miami, what they consider glamour teams, I don’t think there would be any of this talk. And the proof of it is there. Because there’s not talk of any of these other stars.”
Gilbert understands the U.S. dollar is not strong. As he said, “Anything in the U.S. is cheap now.”
“But two years from now, it’ll be a whole different world,” he said. “There comes a point, too, where if LeBron or anyone else went to Europe, even if he were paid higher than the max here, there’s definitely a cost for that.
“It’s not money-to-money comparison. It’s an opportunity cost. The U.S. is the No. 1 market for who he is and what he does — and I mean not LeBron but any player.”
Clearly, the Cavaliers will give James the maximum they are allowed to pay him under the rules. Gilbert knows that; James knows that.
The key is where James wants to play, and Gilbert said he has never heard James say he is unhappy or that he does not want to play in Cleveland.
“Not before his last contract, when all this same talk was going on, and not since,” Gilbert said. “Not ever. It doesn’t mean we don’t talk about things that can be improved. But never, not one time.
“I think people need to just leave him alone and let him focus on basketball and helping lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to a championship.”
As to whether the team around James is good enough, Gilbert said he believes that had Daniel Gibson not been injured, the Cavaliers would have defeated the Celtics in Game 7 in Boston.
“We might have been a Daniel Gibson injury in the seventh game from being in the NBA Finals again,” he said.
Random thought
The story of Lopez Lomong, the U.S. flag bearer, is what makes the Olympics compelling.
Kidnapped from Darfur by Sudanese soldiers at age 6, imprisoned with hundreds of other boys. Fed food that killed the boys slowly. Escaped in harrowing circumstances. Made it to a refugee camp in Kenya. Ran five miles to watch Sydney Olympics on a TV. Saw Michael Johnson cry, and decided that was his dream, to run for this country. Through a government refugee program, qualified in 2001 to come to the United States via an essay he wrote about his life. Housed in upstate New York. Became a citizen in 2007. Named to carry the flag this year.
Does it get any better?
McManamon is a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal. Reach him at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com.
