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Braves’ next phase
As spring training starts to shape rosters and lineups and our hopes for our Boys of Summer, the biggest MLB news of this summer dropped Tuesday for everyone from the Florida panhandle to Frankfurt, Kentucky, and from the Mississippi River to Myrtle Beach.
The Atlanta Braves, the South’s Sons of Summer, are starting their own TV Network. It’s called BravesVision and will stream all the games — at a cost — and will be available to most cable providers across the South, according to a release Tuesday from the team.
The name of the outlet — BravesVision is rather blah to me; could we not go Orwellian and do a little Braves New World? — may have been the clearest answer we know.
I reached out to the EPB folks asking whether they will provide BravesVision to viewers and whether it will have an additional cost.
Here was the response I got this morning from the Chattanooga-based cable provider: “Hi Jay – Thank you for contacting us. We know it’s important Braves fans don’t miss a game. BravesVision was just announced (Tuesday), and we already have a meeting scheduled with the Braves organization to learn more. As we do, we’ll keep customers updated on how to keep up with Braves Baseball this season.”
That is fair, and I’ll follow up.
I recommend you do that with Comcast or whatever cable provider you may have in your locale, be it in Chattanooga or wherever.
My biggest question beyond whether I can find the Braves with a CoCola on a random June evening on my clicker without getting my teenager to come find the right stream and what it will cost centers on how the Braves use this media opportunity.
Fittingly, it’s the Braves doing this, since the team went from laughingstock from its arrival in the kid-1960s to juggernaut in the early 1990s primarily on the power of the money and fandom generated by TBS, the Ted Turner station that was a visionary in seeing sports (and teams) as TV content as much as sports entities.
This could be a golden goose. The Braves fan base may not be as large in terms of numbers of the traditional power names of Lakers, Celtics, Cowboys, Dodgers or Yankees, but what professional sports teams push the Braves out of the top two in more states than the Braves?
That footprint could generate nine-figures or more if BravesVision embraces the coverage area of this opportunity.
Will they? I believe they will. Braves corporate has proven exceptional at making money on almost every opportunity.
But my biggest question after year 1 of BravesVision will center on whether Braves Corporate will turn this potential cash spigot toward the bottom line of the spreadsheet or the budget for the baseball team.
We shall see the vision of BravesVision.
Providing our cable providers offer it, that is.
A state of disaster
I watched every minute. Listened to every word.
It was unexpected, and everyone involved should be ashamed.
The State of the Union? Lord, no.
Auburn basketball, which does not look remotely like a tournament team — NCAA or NIT, for that matter — after looking listless and disinterested in a must-have game before hundreds of Oklahoma fans in Norman.
The Sooners — and I get the SEC Network guys blowing the “Oklahoma is playing for a chance at March” trumpet, but please stop — dominated an Auburn crew desperate for a W.
The 91-79 final was somewhat misleading. It never felt that close, and the problems are deep. And big-pictured.
OK, the start to a season was unprecedented, assuredly.
Coming off a Final Four run to cap a season in which Auburn was consistently the best team in the country when healthy, AU had one returning player and lost its head coach at the 11th hour.
That led to a succession-like family transfer of power from Bruce Pearl to Steven Pearl, who was his chief assistant a year ago.
The layers and issues with that are myriad, of course, but in the macro, the top assistant from the staff of a historically nothing program promoting the top assistant from the single-best run in team history is not that eye-popping.
But this team is defensively deficient — have you seen the string of performances opposing guards have dropped on defensively indifferent Tahaad Pettiford? — and the lack of urgency and rebounding effort Tuesday was striking. And telling.
And firing Steven after one year is a mistake. (A mistake that if anyone will make, it’s Auburn, of course.)
It’s a mistake not because of who his daddy is or was, but because it puts the exclamation point on a very real talking point.
Auburn basketball was never a thing. Bruce Pearl basketball was a thing.
And make no mistake, as a daddy I understand doing whatever you can to give your kids any of their dreams. In that regard, Bruce did right by Steven, because he was the only choice to fill the void mere weeks before practice started last fall.
But Bruce Pearl’s decision — as we know it, which assumes it was not health or stress related — failed the Auburn fans and most importantly the Auburn players.
These Tigers, while nowhere as talented or as experienced as the Final Four version, were never expected to be that top-five juggernaut.
But conversely, these Tigers signed up to play for Bruce and what Bruce built.
This is assuredly not it. Which points us to another reason why keeping Steven makes a ton of sense — another caveat, AU consistently ignores common sense in matters like this — because the biggest win left on young Pearl’s to-do list is keeping a core of this team together.
There are several freshmen with bright futures, and a complete overhaul — again — will add WD-40 to the ski slope AU hoops face in year two A.B. as they ride the Clark Griswold sled to the “Wide World of Sports” theme.
Forget tournament thoughts — and look, AU’s resumé and conference affiliation could mean that three wins to close the regular season and an SEC tournament win or two means they sneak in for a game or two — the questions are deeper and more meaningful.
And for as much as Bruce built in and around Neville Arena, he pointed AU hoops toward this iceberg.
This is smart
So the UFL — no, not the Karmer and Weird Al cable movie; that was “UHF” — is coming.
Spring football, feel the magic.
Hey, who comes up with the marketing slogans for spring football?
Spring football, better than spring cleaning?
Spring football means OTAs are right around the corner.
UFL, better than UTI, am I right?
Where were we?
Yes, the UFL, but you know what? This is wise for a league looking for tracking.
The UFL is experimenting with a slew of rule changes that have been bandied about, and this is intriguing. Here are some of the coolest ones:
> Four points for a 60-plus-yard field goal. OK, but 60 feels a smidge too short, and yes, that was a sentence that made Mark Moseley and Jan Stenerud pass out. But it would be a strategery option, too, depending on score.
> No punting inside the 50-yard line. Teams can punt inside the 50 after the two-minute warning of either half. Interesting until a coach takes a knee on third-and-11 at the 49 so he can punt, right?
> The Tush Push is being banned. OK.
> Receivers only need one foot inbounds. Disagree with this one, to be honest. Catches should be more challenging, and college should go to two feet, in my opinion.
> Three-point conversion is possible.Traditional PAT is a 33-yard kick. Traditional two-point conversion from the 2-ish. The new three-point try — again the scoring changes allow scoring thoughts in terms of deficits and analytics to be even more in play, and both are good things — is from the 8. Love the idea, but think from the 8 is too close.
> The UFL will also be tweaking its kickoff. The above link explains this one in depth, but in truth, I am so lost on the current kickoff setup I was hoping the UFL was going to go back to the old kickoff format and study whether there really are more injuries so we could eventually go back to what makes sense to the majority of us.
One more they should have added: Replacing the onside kick with the option of a team getting one offensive play — a fourth-and-15 if you will — from its 30-yard line to move the chains.
Thoughts?
This and that
> Wow, that got lengthy, right? (Sorry, Clint.) Shocking loss for UT at Missouri last night. Here’s more from Paschall.
> State your State of the Union stuff, if you want. I did not watch, so there’s that. That said, all the over bets cashed since the speech was a record 108 minutes long. Here’s the TFP story on the event. Is 9:17 too early to have a cocktail?
> Rules, people. Here’s Hargis with the prep sports news of the day you need to know. Welcome to the TSSAA, one-time high school sports portal people. I’ll ask again, is 9:18 too early for a cocktail?
Today’s questions
Which way Wednesday starts this way — which UFL rule change is the most intriguing?
Which is the dumbest?
Which word describes your thoughts on BravesVision?
Which is more likely, AU makes the tournament or misses the tournament? Which word would you use to describe the State of the Union? And you get only one word. ONE. Yes, that means you.
Mine is ignorable.
As for today, Feb. 25, let’s review.
Ric Flair is 77. Wow, the Nature Boy is still kicking — and Figure Four-ing.
Rashida Jones — daughter of Quincy Jones — is 50 today.
Do these Jones make the Rushmore of father-daughter celebrities?