THANKS FOR COMING this Tuesday, where we're marking the
halfway point of 2020. One can only imagine what the next six months have in
store.
And what a moment it was: Today marks 48 years since the first
leap second, put into place because Coordinated Universal Time and the actual
mean solar day don’t quite match up. (The leap second, as it turns out, is a
pretty frequent occurrence — the last one was in 2016.)
Week 16 of being in the
Rink Rats bubble. The last few weeks the bubble has expanded into golf, more
trips to stores and visits by friends. But now with COVID-19 making a comeback
due to the knuckleheads of the world refusing to wear masks and follow CDC guidelines
we are in a pickle again.
The head of the World
Health Organization said that despite progress in many countries
"globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up" and "the worst
is yet to come" as many nations and world leaders remain divided on how to
combat the virus. Total worldwide cases now number more than 10.3 million,
including over 505,500 deaths. A quarter of the infections and fatalities were
in the U.S.
Money is the guiding
force, not health. Professional sports, restaurants, schools, concerts, travel,
all must realize this is far from over. Federal government and corporate leadership
are self-centered and dysfunctional. The COVID gloom rises briefly, we feel
elated and the worst is over. Then again, this past week virus returns in
greater strength. Let us hope we do not have another sixteen weeks of the bubble.
COVID-19
NOTES - A demographic breakdown of unemployment figures
shows that the recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women
more than men. In May, The New York Times called the recession a
"Shecession." The female unemployment rate had reached double digits
for the first time since 1948.
COLLEGE
CHRONICLES - A new survey by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover
Research finds college presidents "likelier than they were two months ago
to expect their institutions to reduce their portfolio of academic programs,"
55% now vs. 41% in April. Most significantly from the survey, 72% are either
very or somewhat concerned about a "perceived decrease in the value of
higher education" because of COVID-19, up from 60% of respondents in April
and 48% in March. More survey results reveal that "unbudgeted financial
costs related to COVID-19" are the biggest concern (96%) among the group,
while "Disproportionate impact on students from disadvantaged
backgrounds" is not far behind with 93% of the group worried.
Ithaca College Athletic Director
Susan Bassett issues an update on the fall sports situation, explaining that
she is serving in a leadership role on the college's Return to Campus Task
Force; team physician Getzin and Head Athletic Trainer Matheny have created a
comprehensive plan which adheres to the phasing in of athletics as specified by
the NCAA; Liberty League ADs have been meeting multiple times per week over the
past seven weeks and presidents of the Liberty League have met twice. "I
expect to know more soon, but for now, I want to assure you that across the
country, Division III schools are in similar circumstances with the planning
process. The Oct. 5 date for in-person instruction has not put us behind our
Liberty League opponents. As the situation has evolved, the later start
provides critical planning time that I am confident will be to our
benefit."
The SCIAC (Southern California
Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) notes that "while institutional
decisions...are still pending, the Presidents' Council agreed that any
permitted or approved competition will be conference-only in the fall. ...
Additionally, the Presidents' Council determined a minimal number of at least
four SCIAC institutions to sponsor a sport for conference play to occur."
Final decisions regarding specific schedules and structures for the fall are
expected to be made by mid-July.
UMass Boston is not
planning on resuming competition in the fall, per interim Chancellor Newman,
who sent the following in a memo last week: "We are hopeful that October
will bring reassuring news and that we will have the opportunity to open some
on-campus programs. We are even more optimistic that the spring semester 2021
will see the campus return to a 'new normal' that will allow for the
restoration of our full curriculum, research, residential and student life. For
the moment, however, we will adapt to the conditions we face with enthusiasm
and creativity even as we know it will permit neither a fall season for our
athletics program nor other on-ground student activities.”
COLLEGIATE
SPORTS - Four months into the pandemic, 40 D-I sports
teams have already been discontinued to save dough. The impact will be felt
from youth sports to the Olympics, and experts believe these moves make clear:
The college model is broken. So, how do we fix it?
As universities scramble
to cover virus-related financial hardships, they’re sacrificing a piece of
unique fabric in the American quilt: Olympic sports. In Division I alone, 40
athletic teams have been eliminated in eight weeks. Four schools have cut at
least three sports and a fifth, Brown, discontinued a whopping eight athletic
programs. According to one site tracking the cuts, more than 80 programs have
been eliminated across all levels.
Thousands of advocates
have rushed to the sides of coaches and athletes of discontinued sports,
challenging school leaders, signing petitions and raising funds. They fear that
the cuts are far from over.
“It’s clear that the D-I
model of intercollegiate athletics has been broken,” says Mike Moyer, executive
director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, “and COVID-19 is
exposing it.”
At mid-major programs,
deficits at athletic departments existed before the global pandemic struck. But
the shutdown of campuses and economic downturn has dramatically worsened the
situation, while giving cover to athletic directors already considering
discontinuing sports.
Colleges around the
country are bracing for significant losses in the coming fiscal year. Many
programs are projecting at least a 20% reduction in revenue from various
sources: cuts in state and federal funding; a decrease in institutional support;
loss in ticket sales; and a drop in donations. The reductions extend to the
university side. Even a giant like Ohio State is estimating a loss of $300
million in revenue, leading some to believe that a few D-I schools will do what
several smaller universities have done—shut down completely. “We’re going to
lose institutions,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick predicted last
month.
The Football Bowl
Subdivision level, which is the top 130 athletic programs in the nation, is
itself divided into two tiers: the Power 5 (members of the Atlantic Coast, Big
12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern conferences, plus Notre Dame) and the
Group of Five (members of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American,
Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences, plus independents). The sacrificing of
Olympic sports thus far has fallen along that fault line: No Power 5 program
has eliminated a sports team, at least not yet. Power 5 athletic departments
can lean on cash reserves and the possibility still for significant TV money if
the football season is played, but G5 athletic departments are strained by
their reliance on school and state funding. On average, a G5 athletic program
gets 62% of its revenue through institutional and state support. As enrollment
dips and state economies decline, the gravy train stops rolling. Take, for
instance, Central Michigan. In 2018, $30 million of CMU's $39 million budget
came from those funds. Even before the pandemic struck, enrollment at the
school had declined more than 10% from 2018.
Many administrators are
following a systematic route to downsizing—salary reductions, staff furloughs
and travel cuts—but when more is needed, “Olympic sports are being sacrificed,”
said Western Michigan athletic director Kathy Beauregard. “There’s nothing
worse you can ever have to do than cut sports.”
So far this spring,
tennis has been the most popular choice to cut. Of the 40 teams eliminated,
eight are either men’s or women’s tennis. Coincidentally or not, tennis is also
responsible for having the largest foreign participation of any sport. About
60% of tennis rosters are not native to the U.S. “There’s somewhere around
7,000 scholarships available (inclusive of D-I, D-II, NAIA, and JUCO), and
there are just not enough American juniors to fill the scholarships,” says Tim
Russell, the CEO of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. “There have been
some schools where the coach only recruits internationally, and there have been
some ADs saying, ‘Can’t have a program of all international students.’” There
are other reasons tennis is targeted, Russell says. The most common are costs
associated with an indoor and outdoor facility.
There is another sport
being targeted. In 1990, more than half of D-I membership sponsored men’s
swimming. That number is now at 37%, trailing 19 other sports in sponsorships.
In fact, women’s swimming, compared with other female sports, is also on the
low end: Just over half of D-I schools have a women’s swim team.
While trimming their own
budget, athletic directors are often hurting their university’s bursar office.
Sure, eliminating a men’s track team might save $1 million a year in the
athletic budget, but what is it costing the academic side? A men’s track team
is allowed 12.6 scholarships for an average of 39 athletes. According to a 2016
study from scholarshipstats.com, the average D-I male track athlete received
$11,260 in annual athletic aid, the lowest of any men’s sport. D-I football
players, who receive full scholarships, got an average aid of $36,070. A track
team could be generating over $1 million to the university side. “But the
accounting system in athletics doesn’t include that $1 million. “That’s on
somebody else’s books.”
There are ways, however,
that the math doesn’t work. If a university is at capacity, a school could be
costing itself by offering a discount (i.e. scholarship) to an athlete when a
regular student would pay full price. But very few schools are at capacity.
This spring marked the
ninth consecutive year that general student enrollment has declined nationwide,
according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Now is not the
time to intentionally hurt enrollment, yet some athletic departments are doing
it. Why? There is a disconnect between the academic and athletic sides.
BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes
and thoughts this week to Alexandra Clayton …famous publicist, Juli Inkster
(60), Huey Lewis (70), Sir Paul McCartney (78), Doc Severinsen (93), Ringo
Starr (80).
SIGN OF THE TIMES - Please Turn to Chapter 11: First J. Crew filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection. Then, it was Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. Who’s
next? The troubled companies say that they still plan to reopen stores once
it’s safe to do so and that they’ll operate “normally” throughout their debt
restructuring. But it is a strange new world for retailers, many of whom were
struggling to maintain their brick-and-mortar businesses even before people
were ordered to stay home.
Chapter 11 is a form of bankruptcy that involves a
reorganization of a debtor's business affairs, debts, and assets. Named after
the U.S. bankruptcy code 11, corporations generally file Chapter 11 if they
require time to restructure their debts. This version of bankruptcy gives the
debtor a fresh start.
MARKET
WEEK - Ahead
of the last trading day in June and the second quarter, the Dow was on track
for an almost 16.8% quarterly advance, which would be the best quarter since Q4
1998. The Dow was pacing for a nearly 1% increase in June, which would be the
third straight positive month. However, year to date, the Dow was still down
10% as of Monday's close.
Nearly
all of the largest U.S. banks said Monday they performed well enough on the
Fed's most-recent stress test to maintain their current quarterly dividends.
However, Wells Fargo said the Fed's assessment of its business will warrant a
reduction to its quarterly payout.
In a
scene reminiscent of Prohibition, craft breweries are sending gallons of perfectly
good beer down the drain.
With
too much aging beer on their hands, brewers are also putting their drafts into
cans, or even bags, to sell. Some are donating the brew to make hand sanitizer
as their beers approach their freshness dates. Above, kegs at a Vermont
distributor on their way to become sanitizer.
“Suddenly,
60,000 gallons of beer in my cooler are going out of code,” one distributor
wrote. The horror.
BASEBALL
BACK?
- MLB owners voted unanimously last week to impose a 60-game season that will
begin around July 24, assuming players sign off on health-and-safety protocols
and agree to arrive in home markets by July 1 to begin "spring"
training.
Details:
If the MLBPA agrees to the protocols and the July 1 arrival date by today's 5pm
ET deadline, the 2020 season will look something like this:
Number
of games: 60 (over ~66 days)
Spring
training: July 1
Opening
Day: July 24–26 range
Regular
season end: Sept. 27
Playoff
field: 10 teams (same as usual)
Salary
structure: Full pro rata, which for 60 games means players will earn 37% of
their full-season salary.
On-field
changes:
Extra
innings: MLB and the union previously agreed to adopt the minor league rule for
extra innings, beginning every half-inning after the ninth with a runner on
second base, per USA Today.
Universal
DH: The designated hitter could still arrive in the NL this year to protect
pitcher health, per The Athletic (subscription).
Health
and safety: We'll soon find out what changes have been made to MLB's original
67-page plan, which included, among other things:
Testing:
Multiple COVID-19 tests per week, plus multiple temperature screens per day.
Masks:
Managers and coaches would wear masks in the dugout, while players would wear
masks in the clubhouse.
Banned
actions: No high-fives, fist bumps or hugs. And no spitting, chewing of tobacco
or chewing of sunflower seeds.
What's
next: With spring training 2.0 set to begin in about a week, players will need
to travel to their home cities if they aren't in them already.
The bottom
line: In March, owners and players reached a deal that gave owners the right to
impose a schedule of their desired length. After nearly three months of futile
negotiations, that's ultimately what we got, with the two sides settling on a
season not by agreement, but by disagreement. The real question remains: Which
Houston Astro gets hit by a pitch first?
DRIVING
THE WEEK
- The Paycheck Protection Program closes to new applications at the end of
Tuesday … Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Lael Brainard and others speak at
Brookings’ Dodd-Frank anniversary event Tuesday … Senate Banking holds a
hearing on the digitization of money and payments Tuesday at 10 a.m. … Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell testify before House
Financial Services Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. … The House Small Business Committee
holds a hearing on the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program Wednesday at
10 a.m. The Supreme Court this week is in the final days of its term before
breaking until October. Opinions in monumental finance industry cases are
pending and could be issued today or tomorrow. Among them is one that could
curtail the powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Another pair of
pending cases will determine the fate of subpoenas seeking President Donald
Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank and accounting firm Mazars.
ON THIS
DATE – June
29, 1958: 62 years ago, Brazil won its first World Cup, beating host Sweden,
5-2, in the final.
Brazil
has won a record five World Cups (Italy and Germany both have four), and the
1958 tournament introduced the world to its young star, a 17-year-old Pelé.
Pelé
didn't debut until the last game of the group stage, a 2-0 victory over the
Soviet Union, which gave them a group-leading five points.
Quarterfinals:
Brazil narrowly defeated Wales, 1-0, thanks to Pelé's first career World Cup
goal in the 66th minute.
Semifinals:
Brazil clung to a 2-1 lead over France in the second half before Pelé took
over, scoring a hat trick in less than 25 minutes to lead his team to a 5-2
victory.
Finals:
Brazil cruised to another 5-2 victory, with Pelé and fellow striker, Vavá, each
scoring two goals.
"When
I saw Pelé play, it made me feel I should hang up my boots."
— Just
Fontaine, French forward who scored 13 goals in 1958 (WC record)
NHL
DRAFT LOTTERY JOKE - In the NHL, the random acts too often are comical and
dumb. The draft lottery was an embarrassment, and I know the rest of the sports
world doesn’t care if a Detroit team got jobbed. And maybe it’s our fault too
for not shrieking loudly about the possible consequences before the disaster
unfolded.
But
with one of the worst regular-season records in franchise history, the Wings
dropped from the No. 1 slot — and prized prospect Alexis Lafreniere — to No. 4.
And here’s the ridiculous part: It’s exactly what the NHL planned to happen.
How
else do you explain the Wings had only an 18.5% chance of landing the top pick,
yet the odds were a combined 24.5% that one of eight teams eliminated from the
upcoming 24-team tournament would get the prize? That’s what transpired,
turning the NHL’s little lottery show into a joke, when deputy commissioner
Bill Daly was forced to reveal the No. 1 pick by holding up a card with a
generic NHL logo.
So now
the NHL has to explain how a team in the postseason will end up with the No. 1
pick. Congrats to the unnamed place-holder! And don’t parrot the nonsense that
the first eight teams eliminated were participating in a qualifying round, not
a playoff series. Is it a best-of-five? Does the winner advance toward a shot
at the Stanley Cup? Shut up then. The lottery should’ve been the seven
non-qualifying teams and that’s it.
SWAMI’S
WEEK TOP PICKS – No more sports for a while, The Swami tries his
skills elsewhere:
1). Over and
under when we can go back to the workplace – August 1, The Swami likes the
overs.
2). The Swami predicts the Detroit
Lions season: Chicago (W), at GB (L), at Ariz. (L), N.O. (W), at Jax (W), at
Atl. (L), Indy (W), at Minn (L), Wash. (W), at Car. (W), Hou (L), at Chi. (L),
GB (L), at Tenn. (L), Tom B. (L), Minn (W). Lions start 6-4, finish 7-9.
3). Rocket Mortgage Classic: 07/01 –
07/05 Golf Channel and CBS: We like Rickie Fowler to win the fifth PGA
tournament of the COVID season, having Joe Skovron (La Verne ’04) on the bag
will help on the tight Detroit Golf Club course.
4). Premier League: 07/04. 7:00 am (PDT), NBCSN:
Leicester City Foxes (16-7-8) vs. Crystal Palace Glazers (11-9-12). The Foxes
should have no problem with the struggling Glazers from South London, 3 – 1.
2020
Season to Date (7-6)
To my
Canadian friends, Happy Canada Day, have a couple of barley sandwiches.
To my America
friends, Happy Independence Day, wear your frigging masks! Also, enough with the firecrackers in the
neighborhood, you all have been firing them off since Memorial Day. Love ya’.
Next Blog: Dear Rink
Rats and Word of the month
Until Friday
July 10, 2020 Adios.
Claremont,
California
June 30,
2020
#XI-6-412
3,258 words, eight minute read
CARTOON OF THE WEEK – Farley Katz
RINK RATS POLL – Do you think
Juneteenth should be a national holiday?
___ Yes
___ No
___ I'm not sure
QUOTE OF THE WEEK – “In America justice should be a
verb not a noun.”
—
Bakari Sellers
