Radio row at the Super Bowl
There is a lot of Super Bowl content to get to this week, and hopefully none of it involves Tom Brady's 5-year-old daughter.
We will start there. By now everyone knows the kerfuffle that occurred with the Boston sports radio dude who called Vivian Brady a pissant over the weekend.
Brady makes regular Monday appearances on WEEI, the station that employs Adam Reimer, a 25-year-old who dropped the insult. Reimer has been suspended.
Brady made his regular Monday appearance on WEEI but addressed the incident with the regular hosts Kirk and Callahan.
I thought Brady was mature and direct. He was not overly insulting but you could clearly hear in his voice he was insulted. And anyone who is a father completely understands that position.
Brady went one step further Monday night at the annual Super Bowl media session and said he hoped Reimer was not going to lose his job over this. All things considered, I hope that if I am ever in a similar situation I handle it with the same class and grace that Brady has displayed through all of this.
So we ponder this part of the issue this morning: Should Reimer be fired?
And let's add some context and clarifiers. First, sports radio in Boston has always - ALWAYS - been about pushing through envelopes and boundaries to places that in retrospect are quite eye-popping.
WEEI and the rival station there has in recent years mocked Roy Halladay's death, called Erin Andrews a "gutless b@#$%," mocked Celtics for a) missing a game because his wife was giving birth and made fun of one having heart surgery, and mocked protestors and sexual harassment accusers.
Side note: In the moment, it is really easy to take just about anything too far in a sports radio setting. As many of you likely know, I do a show daily with David Paschall and Wells Guthrie. Tippy-toeing the line between entertaining and enraging can be difficult. Finding the place between listeners saying, "Wow, I can't believe he said that," and "Wow, I can't believe what I just heard," is tough. And dangerous.
As for Reimer, his comment was stupid and if you think insulting kids is a fireable offense, well, we can completely understand it. But if this was Joe Q. Plumber's 5-year-old that Reimer blurted out his stupidity on, would it be the same? More succinctly, is Reimer in trouble for insulting a kid or insulting Tom Brady's kid? And the divide there is really important, at least in my view.
Brady has a personal agreement with WEEI to appear on that station on Mondays. He could easily break it, and we feel he and his Gisele, his super model wife who makes $30-million-a-year, will be able to make the ends meet.
WEEI has a multi-year agreement with the Patriots as the flagship station, and management has to wonder whether this stupid mistake from a 25-year-old on late night sports radio will affect that relationship.
That certainly blurs the line for all involved.
It also is part of the reason why so many folks in today's society view so many of us in the media with a wondering eye of who is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
And that makes me really sad.
Big game, big props, big chance to win
But here's our first Super Bowl props contest, affectionately known as the Super Duper bowl of Big Game Bet-Off.
Before we get there, we must talk about the anonymous gambler strolling around Vegas and has made multiple seven-figure wagers on the Eagles to win out right. (The money line is Philly plus-160, which means if you bet $1 million at +160, that's $1.6 million payout. Yowsers.)
According to this story, will be $4.76 billion on the Super Bowl. Only 3 percent of that will be bet legally.
Think about the extra revenue for the states and the federal government if/when sports betting is legalized? Nuts, right?
Here are the rules. Most correct answers out of 10 wins the prize pack, which will include some TFP swag lunch gift card to a fern bar-type establishment and maybe another trinket or three. On the open-ended questions, the Price Is Right rules are in effect. Meaning on question 1 of "How many passing yards will Tom Brady have in Super Bowl LII" if you answer 301 and he throws for 300, the person who guessed 1 is closer than the person who guessed 301. Deal? Deal.
(And yes, the over/unders set by Vegas are one side or the other, but considering the number of folks we expect to play, 10 either/ors could set us up for a lot of ties. As always it's free to play, so whatcha waiting for?)
1. Tom Brady's passing yards.
2. Person to score the first points of Super Bowl LII. (Please specify any offensive player or kicker. If you want to say defensive player, that includes everyone else and covers all returns, defensive scores and safeties.)
3. How long in seconds will the national anthem last?
4. Patriots minus-5, who you got?
5. Justin Timberlake's first song during the halftime performance.
6. Who will be the MVP?
7. Which will be longer: Longest made field goal, the first punt or longer pass completion?
8. The Eagles player with the most yards from scrimmage (rushing or receiving only) will be?
9. How many official sacks will be made?
10. Total points scored, over/under 47.5.
(FYI: We've had about two dozen entries so far.)
Titan-ic moves?
The Tennessee Titans are hiring Dean Pees, the former Ravens defensive coordinator, to the same gig for new coach Mike Vrabel. Pees had retired after the season, and that retirement lasted four weeks. I mean, how much golf can one guy play any way, right?
Pees has had success with the Ravens. He spent some time as the DC in New England too. That has to help. The Ravens had three shutouts last year and forced 33 takeaways and ranked sixth overall in points allowed.
The bigger move announced Tuesday morning was Vrabel landing his offensive coordinator, Matt LaFleur.
LaFleur was part of that Rams machine last year as their OC, which is kind of a misnomer since Sean McVay ran the offense in L.A.
Still, if LaFleur brings that innovated quick-paced McVay system that could mean a similar jump in numbers for Marcus Mariota next year as it did for Jared Goff in 2016. Let's compare:
In 2015, Goff was 0-7 as a starter, went 112-of-205 (54.6 percent) for 1,089 yards (an awful 9.7 yards per completion) with five TDs and seven picks.
In 2016, with McVay and LaFleur leading a hurry-to-the-line, assess, and signal in plays to Goff to maximize match-ups, Goff was 11-4 as a starter, went 296-of-477 (62.1 percent) for 3,804 yards (an NFL-best 12.9 yards per completion) with 28 TDs and seven picks.
Yes, despite throwing way more than double the passes, Goff had the same number of picks. More importantly - and this is huge for Mariota, who has battled a lot of injuries in his short time in the league - in more than twice as many games and way more than twice as many throws, Goff was sacked 25 times in 2016 compared to 26 sacks in 2015.
Yes, a big part of that was the Rams adding left tackle Andrew Whitworth. But another part of that was the presnap analysis the Rams coaching staff went through to make sure Goff and the offense was in the proper play.
This and that
- L.A. Clippers dealt Blake Griffin to Detroit for a slew of B players, including Tobias Harris. You've heard of trades that people describe as win-win for each side. Is this one a lose-lose? Think of it this way: What is the ceiling for a Detroit team with its two best players being inside-15-feet athletes Griffin and Andre Drummond? And if you are a Clippers season-ticket holder, in less than 10 months, your team's lineup went from Chris Paul, JJ Reddick, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and Luc Mbah a Moute. The next home game, it will likely be Austin Rivers, Avery Bradley, Tobias Harris, DeAndre Jordan and maybe Wesley Johnson. Good times.
- Extremely nice win for UTC men's basketball Monday night. A double-overtime win over UNC-Greensboro, a team that is 16-6 overall and 7-2 in the league. UTC made better than 47 percent of its 3s and got 30 from guard Nat Dixon. Yeah, the edge of 15 more made free throws and 20 more attempted free throws helped, too.
- Tom Hanks will play the role of Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers) in an upcoming biopic. So there's that. Hanks has had a lot of success in his last role, playing Ben Bradlee, the longtime editor of the Washington Post.
- TV trending: The Grammys down 24 percent for its smallest ratings in almost a decade. The Pro Bowl has its biggest ratings in five years and the 8.5 million viewers were more than those that watched Army-Navy, THE Ohio State-Oklahoma and the Auburn-Georgia during the regular season.
- Here's TFP preps ace Kelley Smiddie's story on Brainerd having its season suspended after the basketball brawl on Saturday. Here's the money quote from Smiddie's story from TSSAA bigwig Bernard Childress: "The main thing we had was what was on the security cameras," Childress said. "Brainerd sent us that early this morning. We watched video from that all day from different angles. We were just looking for information so we could get some idea of what happened. We saw everything we didn't want to see."
Today's questions
True or false, it's a Tuesday. That one is true for sure.
True or false, the radio doof who insulted Brady's wife should be fired.
True of false, you will be impressed with Donald Trump's State of the Union tonight.
True or false, you will make a bet on the Super Bowl. (And the above props game does not count because it is free.) And if you said false, answer this one: True or false you would place a Super Bowl bet if it was legal and you could stop by The Betting Shoppe in the strip mall next to the Food City.
Like yesterday, there feels like there are several noteworthy events that happened on this day.
The Beatles' last live performance was on this day in 1969.
FDR would have been 136 today. Gene Hackman is 88 today. Hackman has a strong Rushmore and then some when you consider everything from as far back as the French Connection to Hoosiers to the Royal Tennebaums to Mississippi Burning to Unforgiven to a slew of other highly rewatchable movies. Strong.
On this day in 1977, the final installment of Roots was viewed by almost 37 million people. Did you know that all eight of the installments are in the top-20 in terms of most viewers of non-sports TV programs all time. The mini-series finale is fifth all-time in terms of viewers of non-sports TV shows, trailing such all-timers, M*A*S*H series finale, Cheers series finale, Who Shot J.R. and the Seinfeld series finale.
Let's go there: Rushmore of TV miniseries. Roots is a no-brainer. And Lonesome Dove is a must have. What else?