What would you do?
Katie Ledecky had a cool moment last night, asking Bryce Harper to hold her Olympic medals as she threw out the first pitch at the Nationals game.
Good for her, and after her dominating performance in the pool at Rio, it was well-deserved and earned.
And speaking of earned, this story on Ledecky's current decision-making ordeal from Business Insider is amazingly interesting.
After Ledecky's overwhelming Olympic wins, marketing analysts gauge her endorsement power at roughly $5 million annually.
Ledecky is 19 and about to be a a freshman swimmer at Stanford.
Because of NCAA rules she can keep the money from her medals - remember the USOC pays $25,000 per gold, $15,000 per silver and $10,000 per bronze - and still be eligible. However, if she does commercials because of her swimming success, she no longer would be able to swim for Stanford.
Yes, she almost certainly will be the favorite in the Tokyo Games in four years, but with that fact out there, her earning power likely will never be higher than right now.
Forget the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit that netted football and basketball players over the last decade a few hundred bucks because of video games, this is huge, life-changing money in a sport that does not have a high-paying professional league waiting at the end of the college road.
Yes, there are a lot of ripples to this, and the first starting point should be re-working and potentially re-writing the NCAA rule book.
There needs to be different rules for the power five and the non-power five. They simply aren't operating on the same plain.
There also needs to be different rules for the revenue and the non-revenue sports. (And yes, that may cause us to have to reword Title IX, which in our view is long overdue.)
Because of the concerns of some football recruit getting a six-figure commercial deal with Yella Wood and then signing with Auburn because the Yella Fella is a big AU booster - and those concerns are real - a real hero like Katie Ledecky is forced to choose between her lifetime dream of swimming for Stanford and making life-changing money for her entire family.
Jay GreesonSay what?
OK, you know how around these parts we bemoan the "safe space" culture on college campuses and the knee-jerk internet morality mob who swoop in and take an easy stance of outrage behind FaceSpace handles and Twitter avatars?
Well, we've got another couple of crazy instances of those scourges on our society.
First, there is a professor at the University of Iowa who believes the school's mascot - Herky the Hawk - has a too-angry expression on his face and that fact conveys "an aggressivity and even violence."
Here's the email Resmiye Oral, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Iowa, wrote to Iowa athletic department officials, according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen:
"I believe incoming students should be met with welcoming, nurturing, calm, accepting and happy messages. And our campus community is doing a great job in that regard when it comes to words. However, Herky's angry, to say the least, faces conveying an invitation to aggressivity and even violence are not compatible with the verbal messages that we try to convey to and instill in our students and campus community."
Dude, if we are to a place that our next generation of educated leaders and professionals - a baseline expectation for the students working to graduate at any major state-funded university - are intimidated and then affected by a cartoon mascot, well, it's time to build the bunker and hunker down. The war's over; Werner dropped the big one folks.
The self-loathing embrace of safe havens and Clorox-washed, universally approved acts in every scenario for every individual is simply ludicrous.
It's impossible. It's unattainable. It's damaging to those who believe they want it and offensive to those of us who know better.
And more importantly it's anti-American
Which is worse?
Yeah we all know about Ryan Lochte, right?
Dude, who is not very bright, gets liquored up and early one morning in a foreign country gets a gun pulled on him and, likely foggy on the details, he exaggerates the story.
The media runs with because a) the Olympics by that point had become relatively boring considering the two biggest story lines were the fastest man on the planet still is the fastest man on the planet and all of us pretending that the U.S. men's basketball team was in for a fight in the medal rounds of the games and b) because the gloom and doom that we all projected these Olympics was simply not the case. So when the New York Times and all the heavy-hitting news organizations around the world, who sent their sports folks and at least one investigative news journalist to Rio for two weeks because of the sure-fire danger of terrorism or facility collapse or mosquitoes infected with diseases sent those news folks head-first in Lochte and GasStation-gate.
Well, the whole country knows about the Lochte and the Swimmers Gone Bad video is missing three full minutes and the contradictions for both sides the entire story has drawn. And we were outraged. Oh my, he lied we screamed and guffawed.
His sponsors sprinted - forget that it was a calculated business decision dictated more by Lochte's age and his diminished skills than his loose grasp of details of a drunken night in Brazil. And we all said, "Serves him right."
Well, what serves Antonio Cromartie right?
Cromartie got another NFL job Wednesday, signing a one-year $3 million deal with Indy. That's good for him, as he gets an 11th year in the NFL sun. That's good for the Colts, since after Vontae Davis' ankle injury the secondary is now a question mark.
It's also good for Cromartie's family; all of them. That's right Cromartie has at least 12 kids from nine different women, including twins with his wife born in May although he claimed to have a vasectomy last year.
Cromartie was facing jail time for skipping his child support payments to the oath of his first child since January, and at $4 grand a month that will hit 32 grand this time next week.
Cromartie has made more than $40 million in his NFL career and according to reports pays a reported $336,000 a year in child support.
FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2016, file photo, U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo takes the ball during a women's Olympic football tournament match against New Zealand in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Solo has been suspended form the team for six months for what U.S. Soccer termed conduct "counter to the organization's principles." The suspension is effective immediately. U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said Wednesday, Aug. 24, that comments Solo made after the U.S. lost to Sweden during the Rio Olympics were "unacceptable and do not meet the standard of conduct we require from our National Team players." (AP Photo/Eugenio Savio, File) This and that
- Speaking of troubled Olympians, Hope Solo was suspended for six months after the Games by the USOC. While a six-month suspension for a really tacky and tasteless postgame quote seems like overkill, the head of U.S. soccer said in a statement: "Taking into consideration the past incidents involving Hope, as well as the private conversations we've had requiring her to conduct herself in a manner befitting a U.S. national team member, U.S. Soccer determined this is the appropriate disciplinary action." Sounds more like a career embarrassment award for Solo. And while the suspension got the headlines, it's even more telling that U.S. Soccer terminated her contract, too, meaning the 35-year-old could be done in red, white and blue. (That said, if U.S. Soccer does not have an adequate replacement ready, well, talent and need cure all kinds of off-the-field miscues.)
- Happy 100th birthday to the national parks of this country. If you have not seen the IMax movie celebrating our national parks, we highly recommend it. Good stuff. Side note: That Teddy Roosevelt was a pretty aces president.
- OK, this Joey Bosa-San Diego Chargers thing is simply out of control. Bosa is still holding out and now the team has gone public and the whole thing is a mess. Here's the story and there's a real chance Bosa could miss the year and go back into next year's draft, something that has not happened since 1991.
- The Braves traded Jeff Francoeur to the Miami Marlins for a couple of minor leaguers. Whatever. So it goes, but we just now got comfortable spelling Francoeur's last name again without looking it up.
- The third week of the NFL preseason starts tonight with the Falcons-Dolphins, a game which can be heard on ESPN 105.1 FM starting at 8. This is the most important week in terms of starting jobs and watching guys in regard to fantasy or predictions. Starters play more this week than any other, so there are some items of intrigue out there. What are you looking for this weekend from your NFL team?
- Speaking of interesting football matters, we think this would be a very good move for Johnny Football, who has been invited to the CFL by the commissioner.
- Albert Pujols hit career homer 584 last night to move into 10th all-time in baseball history. Just passing it along.
Tennessee fifth-year senior Jason Croom, left, and coach Butch Jones are preparing for next Thursday's season opener against Appalachian State in Knoxville. Croom, a former wide receiver who missed last season because of injury, is now a 6-foot-5, 250-pound tight end.Today's question
First, there's very little college football because almost all of the mailbag is college football. Deal? Deal.
OK, great back-and-forth this week. We are having trouble signing in - yes, that is funny on several levels - so we have not participated in the give and take. Here are some of what we needed to say this week:
MT, we did not ask about the infamous chart. But we did ask him if he used predetermined phrases or had planned messages in news conferences to try to convey a specific message to his team or his fan base. Butch's answer was, swear to goodness, that he just speaks from the heart. Read that again.
Stewwie: Missed Cam and Usher, but Cam's show on Nickelodeon is pretty awesome in its awesomeness.
LSU in 5 words: Hand it to Leonard. Again.
Good stuff.
As for a Rushmore, well, today is Billy Ray Cyrus' 55th birthday. Yes we also thought he was older than that. It also is Rachael Ray's 48th birthday. Yes, we think she's annoying too.
So who's on the Rushmore of Ray - first, middle or last name or anything else (X-Ray for example) - and the Lil Miss 5-at-10, Madeline Ray, is certainly a contender.