Gambling: Why Does the Media Continue to get Sports Betting so Wrong?

 Bloomberg: Odds are sports betting will bring trouble.

If you don't mind, take a minute before reading my response to read the article above.

Done?

Good, let's get started.

But, where to begin?

How about as his beginning, recapping the great betting scandals of the past. While all of them were pretty big scandals it's important to note one key point: In almost all of the cases the fraud was initially sniffed-out by the legalized sports books themselves. THEY presented the information to the authorities, worried about odd action on their boards.

Off-shore, gray-area sports books would, rightly, not do this, for fear of prosecution. Two wrongs do not make a right and what-not. But to act as if off-shore, illegal (in the United States) gambling is not happening is akin to pretending the Sun is not shining because you're in a room with blackout curtains and cannot see it.

The simple fact is, when it comes to uncovering fraud, better odds are with legalized, rather than off-shore books. History has shown this to be true many times over.

His second big point is about problem gamblers. And, he's right. Problem gaming is going to need to be something that the United States and the gambling industry are going to have to get a handle on quickly. They need to get ahead of the game.

Not surprisingly, the governments are not doing much to address it, other than some flowery words about "caring for the player" and what-not. The people actually doing the work are in the Industry.

Take, for example, the American Gaming Association and their page on responsible gaming. While I do feel that we're lagging behind on how to handle this, I was glad to see them mention a National Hotline for problem gambling, rather than the pock-marked system of State hotlines we have today.

It should go much further. An Opt-out request to the National system should be transmittable and transferable to all jurisdictions Nationwide. It should be a 1-800 number with qualified counselors on-call 24-7.

Casinos need to do more as well. They current track play, and they can see when someone is repeatedly hitting up the ATM.  They can back you off if they believe you are an advantage player, why can they not do the same when they suspect you are on Tilt? Probably not a permanent ban in this case, but a temporary pause. Possibly if you get too many hits on the pause button then something longer term is considered. But, and this is important, don't just make the "When the fun stops" pamphlets available, actively distribute them to a player you put on pause.

It's not often necessary to ban someone who is having a tough go. I've been there, on trips where nothing is happening and you just keep digging. Granted, I've never been so down that rabbit hole that I've taken funds needed for living, but I have lost my entire gaming budget for a trip. If you were watching me I was NOT having fun.

Today I know to take a pause, to just stop gambling for a while. I go for a walk or go back to the room and do some Yoga, I do anything but continue to pump money into those blasted video poker machines for a bit.

But, not all people do this, and alcohol is especially a retardant to doing so. I've been in casinos around the country who have let people continue to gamble despite the fact that they could barely put together a coherent sentence. Maybe pushing the pause button on them is a good idea?

There's a LOT more that goes into it, and a lot more that could be done, but arguing that liberalizing the gaming rules in States is going to lead to increased problems isn't necessarily true. The hard fact is, anyone who WANTS to gamble in the United States CAN gamble here. Either legally or illegally online or through a bookie or underground casino/game room. Those illegal options come with little to no security, player advocates or gaming commissions to make rules. They also come with no player protections or limits.

Tell me how that would be better?

We've seen that prohibition does not work, yet we continue to call for more prohibition on things we think might be risky with which we disagree.

Let's do better on this than let the media paint a false picture of what's really going on.

COVID-19: When does "Reporting" morph into "Rooting"?

Oh my GAWD it's a Doomsday Variant.

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say

The article under the bold headline goes on to offer a ton of scary predictions.

"COVID might be with us FOREVER!!!!"

"We've UNDERESTIMATED this virus every step of the way!!!"

and finally......

"Is there a variant coming that's going to be like HIV and kill us ALL???"

Let's stop, take a break and look at how these things have gone in the past.

First things first, there are a LOT of respiratory viruses hanging out in the world. The Common Cold, Flu, SARS, MERS, viral pneumonia.  All of them have been around a long time, they are impossible to fully eradicate, and we go about our lives living with them, and coping with them as a society without flipping the freak out every time a new variant comes along. 

The annual flu shot is basically an inoculation against a different strain of flu every year. Eventually, the goal should be to get our response to SARS-CoV-2 to a similar level to seasonal flu. Yes, we are at the beginning of this process and those mean pharmaceutical companies have done yeoman's work getting us to this point: A vaccine that works remarkably well given the time crunch for developing it, and a greater understanding of methods of transmission.

What has NOT changed is the breathless way the media is reporting on it, or how the ruling class is responding.  These are problems.

For the ruling class the problem is that we're still looking at solutions that do not work. Lockdowns, utterly useless, are being contemplated again, as are mask mandates (which might work some) and a renewal of capacity restraints and social distancing requirements (which probably DO work) but the we're getting perilously close to a time where we're going to start locking down parks again, against all common sense, and we're hearing rumors of a 2nd lockdown, which I've said before might be ruinous to the economy and what we (just) remember of our free society.

For the media this is morphing into sheer boosterism. Reporters WANT suffering, they WANT death, and now they are openly rooting for it. Why is this? Clicks and sales. It's no mystery that the media is suffering financially of late, and what better to spur sales than a good old fashioned extinction level event? So what if some freedoms have to be sacrificed in the meantime? We've even had media come out against the First Amendment, as it applies to you, not to them. This is not too terribly surprising since many of them truly feel the FA only really applied to them in the first place, and they're not afraid to carry the ruling classes water to ensure it does.

For now the only advice I can give is to mask up, maintain social distancing, maintain proper hygiene and, if you are so inclined, get vaccinated. Then hope like hell some common sense makes it into this World.

Because, if it does not, we're going to be dealing with this mess for years.  And it's only going to get worse and more restrictive.

Finally, take all of this reporting with a huge grain of salt. Even within the "OH MY GAWD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!" histrionics of the above article this author has to admit that the DOOMSDAY scenario Newsweek is pimping here is extremely unlikely because well....science.

In short, what he's writing is science fiction. A fever dream of something really bad that he saw in the movie Contagion.

Keep that in mind.

The on-going scourge of Social Media

The wife and I made an escape last weekend. After three months of work from home, of only making one trip per week. to the grocery store, wearing my mask. we decided that we needed to get out of the house, more specifically, I needed to get out of the house.

So we decided to pack our bags, our masks and around 2 gallons of hand sanitizer to make the trip to our "local" casino in Lake Charles.  We spent a fun weekend gambling, losing, eating good food, drinking good wine and cocktails, sitting in a pool cabana on Sunday, and generally just having a grand time.

Yes, we wore our masks, we had sani-wipes and used them to disinfect every machine that we sat down to, and we wore our masks for the most part, except if we were sitting at the bar drinking and playing video poker, at which point it seemed a little silly to keep them on when we'd have to touch them repeatedly to pull them down and keep drinking.

Was there a risk of contracting COVID-19?  Yes, probably so. But at some point we have to return to living life in the safest way possible, but we do need to get back into the swing of things and start being productive again. Virus gonna virus, we just have to adapt to our new realities.

We need human interaction, we are social animals after all.

What I did notice is that, after 3 months of lock down, my human interaction compass was mightily skewed by the cesspool that is social media.  If you believe Twitter, every conversation surrounding race etc. is fraught with anger, name-calling, one-upmanship and online "owns".  Drop the mic moments seem to be the goal, and there's no room for nuance. no room for those little moments in Houston interaction that allow for understanding.  Twitter. especially is a cold, brutal place full of awful people whose only reason for existing is to injure others. Not physically, they don't have the guts to do that, but there are different ways to ruin people's lives. You know about "SWATting" and you've certainly heard of "cancel culture" by now, these are just some of the ways bad actors on Twitter go about stifling debate.

Twitter is where the "Karen" meme revealed itself, and it's where the worst of humanity is placed on a pedestal to be mocked, knocked down and humiliated, where mob-rule is the rule and the powers that be seem little inclined to police their huge bot problem.  The government's "solution" to this is to cudgel them into submission, or extinction, by removing their "platform" privileges and making them responsible for what's posted by their users.

Like any government response, this is not going to work, it's only going to push cancel culture underground where, in my opinion, it becomes more dangerous.

The good news is that regular, decent society still does not operate like social media society but the gap is getting smaller., mainstream media reporters, too lazy to work their beat, scour social media for unvetted memes and broadcast them nationally, without question, and without applying journalistic principles such as verification and corroboration. This is leading to social media creep into polite society and, unless we do something to stop this, we're going to live in a society where mob mentality rules, and rule of law goes the way of the Dodo.

It's a big problem.  We're still, just, in a place where decent humans can have a polite conversation on difficult issues without resorting to cancel culture and mob anger.

Humanity needs to keep that, or we're going to regret that it's gone.

How Gambling Media Covers "Parlay Patz" will Reveal a lot About their Usefulness.

Parlay Patz, a 23-year old who's hit a rather improbable run on long-shot money line parlays, is getting some attention from gambling media these days:

50 Days, $1.1 Million in winnings and One Wild Ride. Darren Rovell, The Action Network

Who is Ben “Parlay” Patz? He’s a 23-year-old kid who has become the latest fascination of the gambling world, amassing more than $1.1 million in gross winnings via parlays — often seen as the sports gambling world’s version of the lottery — in less than two months.

Patz has stayed away from including spreads within his parlays almost entirely, instead opting to back big moneyline favorites.

It may not be a sound strategy over the long-term, but it seems to be working for Patz, who just landed at nearby Teterboro Airport after chartering a jet to take himself and three friends to the British Virgin Islands at a timeshare program he purchased with some of his gambling winnings. A private chef made them food.

These types of stories always seem to circulate from time to time.  Young gambler, decides to take up the craft because of one reason or another, goes on an improbable short-term run, and then is never heard from again.

In the interim though, their story is told, some lucky breaks are revealed, big wins are chronicled, and a jet-setting lifestyle is broadcast for all to see. Marketing blitzes are created, the lucky gambler's face is plastered across the Internet and, if they're lucky, a way for them to monetize their success is determined before they fall out of the public eye.

Rarely, in the past, have follow-up stories been done, there are few "where are they now?" features that run AFTER the luck runs out, after the plane trips and catered lunches and friends on beaches.

In other words, the "books" who market these people for their own benefit, don't want the public to see the downside of the game. That's bad for public relations obviously.

Enter the relatively new genre of "gaming media", whose job it is to ostensibly cover the industry with candor but who, more often than not, wind up being little more than independent PR firms for the books rather than dispassionate coverage of the same.

Because Parlay Patz luck will run out. I don't wish this on hem, and I hope he invests wisely, but a read of the article by Rovell suggests strongly that he's not doing this through strong analytics or anything of the sort. In short, he's getting lucky.  And the house edge (the Vig) is designed to wear away at luck over time. It's as persistent as water, it rarely loses.  In fact, there are probably less than 100 individuals who are good enough at this game to beat it consistently.  For most people (including me in a bit of full disclosure) gambling is a long-term losing situation. It's entertainment with a slight chance of coming out ahead.

Granted, you can study, learn strategy, build models, become good at algorithms or a host of other techniques but they do not build those big, extravagant casinos on the backs of winning gamblers.

So will Rovell, and the Action Network (and others) cover that?

The history is not promising.

The media, who are supposed to cover the network, have not, to my knowledge, started one project to track the records of so-called touts, many of whom claim remarkable (and unlikely) winning percentages of 75-80% over time. They have not, to my knowledge, covered the long-term hit percentages of many of the so-called "experts" in sports gaming. There are many examples that I could give you, but the purpose of this blog post is not to call out individual touts, it's to call out sports media for not doing their job.

On the podcast yesterday, I mentioned many of the faults with gambling Twitter as a whole, the biggest among them are inflated records, touting and general trolling. If gambling media wants to make a name for itself, it will call this out, identify it, and shine the disinfecting power of sunlight upon it.

If they continue to just report transient success stories with no questions asked?

They're not media, they are PR firms.

And you would be right to treat them as such.
 

Sports Betting: We are Here to Protect You from......You.

The ink was not dry on the SCOTUS ruling invalidating PASPA when the doom-sayers started to come out of the woodwork. Cries of "we're doomed" were only secondary to "Something! must be done" cries from those who would seek to protect us from our greater demons.

Granted, no one knew what that Something! actually was, but they knew it had to be done and it had to be done quickly. What has followed are a host of anti-gambling editorials and articles from media, former players, government officials and watchdog groups who claimed to only be on the lookout for 'the common good'.

The most common warning is gambling addiction which, yes, sadly exists. The second argument is Scandal! and dire warnings that something "bad" is going to happen.

However, this following Bloomberg editorial is perhaps the best collection of false flags and bogeymen that I have seen in quite some time, and it deserves a rebuttal because many of its claims and 'facts' are just entirely wrong.

Sports Betting is Legal, Watch Out. Bloomberg.com

One concern is addiction. More than 2 percent of U.S. adults suffer from gambling disorder, which can impose devastating personal and social costs. 

You will get no argument from me that gambling addiction is a great social ill. So is alcohol addiction, drug addiction, porn addiction etc. There is certainly more that can be done for addictive personality disorder in America, in all mental health treatment to be honest, but suggesting that legalizing sports betting is going to lead to a sudden spike in gambling addiction is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.

The fact is that a lot of the customers for legalized sports betting are going to come from the already mature illegal offshore betting market. This crazy influx of "new" gamblers are probably already betting on games online to a major extent. It's not going to be the case that a person who has never made a bet will suddenly find themselves chained to a sports book. For the most part these are in casinos or betting facilities such as race tracks. It's just a hollow argument.

Continuing on....

Another potential threat is corruption. Gambling has long provided a convenient conduit for organized crime. Point-shaving scandals have marred college sports in the U.S. for decades, while match-fixing is routine in some overseas leagues.

What this argument ignores is the fact that organized crime historically benefited from ILLEGAL gambling, not a legal, regulated gaming market. Benny Binion got his start in Dallas running illegal numbers games, then illegal dice halls, then illegal casinos before moving to Las Vegas and opening Binions.

Yes, organized crime and gambling have a HUGE history, but it's almost exclusively on the illegal, unregulated side of the ledger.  This is not to discount the early days of Vegas, through the early 80's when the mob ran the town, but regulation and passage laws that allowed for corporate ownership of casinos and stricter enforcement of laws coupled with IRS crackdowns on "the skim" all but put an end to the Las Vegas mafia except where there's still a presence in the unions.

The fact is that the Las Vegas where organized crime gained a foothold was largely an unregulated, or "self-regulated" market, and only the increased presence of the Nevada Gaming Commission and stronger enforcement, and bigger pocketed corporations, ran them out of town.

Then there's this....

 A final, less tangible concern is that gambling could diminish the social value of sports. Athletes are already being subjected to intrusive tracking technology that reduces their every move to data, the better to predict – and profit from – their performance. If civic or sentimental attachments to teams give way to a preoccupation with cash and probabilities, something will have been lost.

Given that cities frequently put Billions of taxpayer dollars on the line for new stadiums, stadium expansions, infrastructure improvement and other team-related expenses, I would argue that this loss of "civic pride" might go some ways to moving the pendulum away from corporate welfare.  Bloomberg is acting as if a city's frenzy for their sports team is a good thing, that taking Billions that could have been spent on education (or mental health services) to build a playpen for Billionaires is in the public good.  What Bloomberg is really angry about is that their sacred ox is at risk of getting gored.

I don't say any of this to suggest that legalized gambling is without its risks. Of course there are potential downsides. But, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The prohibition of liquor gave rise to the mafia, the prohibition of drugs gave rise to the cartels and the modern gang problem. The prohibition of gambling has created new networks of criminals operating in the shady black-market.  What we've learned, and continue to learn, is that Sunshine is the best way to rid the room of rats.

Could there be scandals?  Of course.  But having effective regulations and regulators surrounding an industry make them far easier to root out than would otherwise be possible in an unregulated market. The analytics of the modern gambling industry allow for warning flags of suspected illicit activity to be spotted early, and more easily ran down should such a thing occur.

One thing NOT needed is a Federal gaming bill. We've already seen what happens when the Feds get involved with PASPA, and with the Department of Justice's flawed ruling on the Wire Act which was really just a give-away to Trump donor (and casino owner) Sheldon Adelson, whose casinos don't have a strong online presence, and are trailing the industry overall.

Sports betting is, and should be, a matter left to the States. Not that they're perfect in regulation but they've been proven moderately effective over the course of time. "We're the Federal Government and we're here to help" is a phrase of terror, not a lifeline for success.

The media needs to hire people who truly understand gambling, and the gambling industry, before trying to tell us what we should think about it.  Either that or just get the heck out of the way.

 

Stop Trying to Become Gambling "Experts" Local Media.

Because you're not.

Gambling Point Spreads for Every 2018 Texans Game. Matt Young. Chron.com

"Las Vegas has a positive view of the Texans overall. The Texans are underdogs in just four games all season, which would put them in strong contention to bounce back and win the AFC South."

Let's talk about point spreads for a minute, and what they really mean.

When "Vegas" (or, more accurately, the offshore books) create point spreads they are NOT saying which team they believe is going to win the game. This is the most common misconception in sports betting and it's also one of the most mis-reported "facts" among non-gambling sports reporters.

What "Vegas" is really doing is figuring out where they need to establish a number in order to get the action to fall as close to 50/50 as possible on either side of the ledger.  Because the sports books always understand that they have the vigorish on their side. IF they can get the line correct they'll make money both on losing bettors, and on the Vig coming back to them when they pay out less than true odds.

So, what these lines REALLY mean is not that "Vegas" is bullish on the Texans but that they believe the public will be and are setting things up accordingly.  IF the Texans continue to come in as favorites as the games get closer, and too much money is bet either way, these lines will change in an attempt to balance out the betting.

Vegas, unlike local media, are agnostic regarding who wins and loses each individual game (the lone exception to this being the Golden Knights right now) what they really want is to not have too much exposure to the "wrong side".

Once you understand this fact you'll understand lines all the more.

NFL 2018: How The Offshore books see it.

More important than the release of the schedules (non-event) or the breathless announcement of the prime-time games (that fewer and fewer are watching) are the official releases of the number lines for win totals for the various NFL teams.

From a strength of schedule standpoint this is a MUCH better option than relying on 2017 team records, as most do.  However, even at this point it's not a perfect system due to the fact that the NFL draft starts on Thursday.

All of that said, here are the O/U win total numbers as first released be the offshore book 5Dimes*.

American Football Conference				National Football Conference
East		Projection		East		Projection
New England		11.5		Philadelphia		10.5
Miami		7		Dallas		9
Buffalo		6.5		Washington		7
New York Jets		5		New York Giants		6
North				North
Pittsburgh		10.5		Green Bay		10
Baltimore		8.5		Minnesota		9.5
Cincinnati		7		Detroit		8
Cleveland		4.5		Chicago		6.5
South				South
Jacksonville		8.5		New Orleans		9.5
Houston		8.5		Atlanta		9
Tennessee		7.5		Carolina		9
Indianapolis Colts		5.5		Tampa Bay		6.5
West				West
Kansas City		9		Los Angeles Rams		9.5
Los Angeles Chargers		8		San Francisco		9
Oakland		8		Seattle		9
Denver		7		Arizona		6.5

*On a funny note, when searching for these numbers I ran across this Houston Chronicle article calling these "Las Vegas Lines". They're not, of course, they're from an offshore book. Granted, Las Vegas uses the offshore lines in setting theirs, but we don't really have any "Las Vegas Lines" out yet (at the time of this publication)  It might help getting someone on staff that understands sports wagering before attempting to report on it Chron.

Don't overthink Michigan vs. Notre Dame, just enjoy that it's happening again.

News broke today that Michigan and Notre Dame will be renewing their excellent college football rivalry and already the pundits are going into full-on, over-analyze mode.

To whit:

Michigan Blog "Maize n' Brew" is worried about the cost.

For the Wolverines, they give up a home game to Arkansas and pay $2 million to buy out of that match-up in 2018 to head to South Bend. Not only will they play ND on the road, but they will also play Michigan State and Ohio State on the road in that same season, leaving them without a tentpole(sic) rivalry game on their home schedule.

This makes no sense for the following reasons:

1. $2 Million to buy out Arkansas is chump change compared to what the game will draw.

2. Arkansas???  While a home and home with an SEC team sounds grand, the Razorbacks didn't really move the needle.

3. They didn't have a "tent pole" rivalry on their home schedule before this. They still don't for 2018.

Even worse than this however was the usual blather from CBS who decided to go full-on listicle with their analysis.

Whatever the case is for these two star-crossed lovers in the long-term, here's what you should know about both of them while waiting for the 2018 reunion.

1. It's hard to see this as anything other than a good thing for college football fans:

2. This isn't the first time these schools have broken up and reunited:  

3. Which is good, because it is likely in both school's best benefit not to make it an annual game:  

 4. Michigan is dropping games against Arkansas to fit Notre Dame in:

None of these are "things fans should know" but instead are things the author is either amped, or bummed about.

Yes, it is a good thing for fans of college football and yes, this is not the first hiatus in the series and yes, it should not be an annual game.  Again, the game against Arkansas had zero buzz around it, except in the minds of bored-as-hell sports writers who envisioned some coach-fight happening between Harbaugh and Bielema.

None of that matters.

In the spirit of CBS' sub-par writing here's a listicle outlining what DOES MATTER:

1. Notre Dame and Michigan are going to play one another in College Football. 

2. 3. & 4. See point number one.

That's it. That's all that matters.  These are two schools with a long rivalry that need to play each other as much as is reasonably possible.  As much as they hate to admit it, both sides need each other because Notre Dame vs. the ACC doesn't move the needle as much as Notre Dame vs. the B1G.

So bring on the game in 2018 and Hail to the Victors.



But please just stop overthinking it.  This is one of the things that makes the older generation of sports writers, guys like Peter King, Rick Reilly and others, so tedious and unreadable.

We get exactly what we ask for in local sports talk radio.

Josh Innes is an idiot in an industry almost entirely staffed by idiots.

Because of this, and because he bosses pay and encourage him to be even more idiotic, I'm not really sure why people are up in arms regarding his "racial slur"?

For the three years that Innes plied his trade in Houston, I listened to his show a handful of times. As I've stated many times before "Bro" radio does not interest me.  But I would listen in after a big sports news story to see what people had to say.

First, Innes knows next to nothing about sports.  And I don't mean that in a disparaging manner it's just true.  Innes is the drunk frat kid standing around griping that the team "should throw the ball more".  His shtick in Houston was limited to making disparaging comments about the University of Houston and then acting surprised when the alumni called in and were angry.

Josh Innes is the inevitable result of dumbing down your product.  He also draws huge listener numbers because, on a whole, the entirety of the sports talk market is pretty dumb.

We are, talking about "fans" here, and "fan" is short for "fanatic".  If you consider yourself a fan of any team then you have a problem.  It's OK to root for teams, to pull for teams, to want them to win. But as a self-described fan of a team you are admitting that you throw logic to the wind and cheer for them unquestioningly.  Fans are why Bob McNair has been allowed to run the Texans as a profit center rather than a championship contender. It's why players are given a pass for criminal activity and why Greg Hardy is currently playing for the Dallas Cowboys.  Fans exist only to defend the indefensible and provide sports franchises with a steady diet of money.

And it's the fan that Innes was talking to when he called Travis Kelce a "house slave". It was the fan base that he guessed, correctly in most cases I'm sure, was angry at the Eagles for basically firing Andy Reid, and then hiring his protégé 3 years later in what is the ultimate of "Ooops" moves by a team.

To his credit, Innes knew this, and he did exactly what he was paid to do. He said something that has brought his radio show Nationwide attention.  Even his non-apology "apology" is designed to have the ultimate effect:

"I'm the dumbest human being on the planet," Innes said. "I apologize for that, I truly do. I'm an idiot ... I see people are making fun of me across the country, and you should be, because I'm stupid."

Here's the rub:  Innes really doesn't think he's stupid. He knows that what he said was controversial and that it will generate outrage. He also knows that, by writing an apology that basically apologizes for being stupid (and not for making the racist comment FWIW) he can turn the news story away from his racist ramblings, on directly onto himself. In fact, he's becoming the news here.

That's better publicity for Innes than any news scoop or interview could ever become.

Innes isn't sorry that he said those things, nor does he have any remorse for them. In fact, he's probably going to be laughing about it all the way to the bank.  The ONLY way he could face any consequences is if the sponsors of his show get cold feet and start pulling out.  Absent that, he's doing and acting exactly how his bosses expect him to.


And the fans are all buying right into it.

College Football: 22 Minutes of Pain.

University of Houston Head Football Coach Tom Herman is better than this.

Not that I blame him for going off on AM 610 Bro Radio host John Lopez for this article which stated (incorrectly and irresponsibly in Herman's view) that former aTm Quarterback Kyle Allen was in Houston meeting with Herman and UH Boosters "according to sources".  If aTm recent history is any indicator, then those sources were probably either Brent Zwerenemen or Billy Lucci.

Regardless of where the report came from the confrontation between Herman and the 610 Bro Radio duet did little to enhance the reputation of either party.  Who you think is right relies more on your attachment (or lack of) to UH or aTm than it does to any fealty to the facts.

(Side note: The 22 minutes in that clip above and a few minutes today are my entire catalogue of experience with what the hosts refer to as "The Loop".  I don't find that type of radio particularly entertaining and I wasn't a fan of Lopez when he penned a (bad) sports column for the Chronicle so I'm not sure why I should listen to him on AM radio.)


If you are a fan of UH, then you side with Herman. If you're somehow anti-UH or (more likely) pro aTm then you think Lopez and Wright were correct. As a Michigan fan I've got no horse in the game and I think both were wrong, but their reactions to being wrong will speak a lot about their character.


Tom Herman: In short, Herman let himself get baited by a group whose sole job is to try and create controversy and generate ratings. I'm sure, if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn't have given the hosts of "The Loop" the time of day. Young coaches need to learn lessons. This was a lesson for Herman regarding the media. (A lesson that he learned while winning it should be noted)

John Lopez: People forget that Lopez is an aTm alum. I'm not sure why this hasn't been more prominently mentioned but it makes this non-apology ring hollow. Not that Lopez is sharp enough to figure out a way to trap Herman like this, but he probably didn't write this article with "Houston sports fans" firmly in the front of his mind. He's not a reporter, he's a shock jock, and should be treated as such.

Nick Wright: I have only listened to him for a few minutes and I can only say that he's the one player in this act with no redeeming qualities. Any more time spent on Wright is time wasted.

Sports Radio 610: This is the flagship station of the Texans yet, this is not the first time this station has had controversial "news" stories printed on their website. The first time resulted in a "content manager" of little-to-no-talent being dismissed. I'm sure that Lopez won't be dismissed however because this is sure to be a brief ratings bonanza for them.  Hell, he might get a raise.

Overall this speaks to the diminishing impact on the sports world that AM Bro Radio possesses. The Texans themselves buy time from 610 and staff their shows with Texans employees. The Rockets do much the same on AM 790. 

The player shows that you hear on other stations?  The Texans charge for that, and getting the show involves following a contracted set of restrictions on questioning. Increasingly the pro teams understand that subjecting your team to shock-jocks who are hoping to create controversy for rating is of zero benefit.  Eventually Colleges are going to understand that as well, and will start buying their own time for their own radio shows (some of the bigger ones already are) and will squeeze out these relics of the past decade.

The death of Bro Radio is going to upset a few, those types who still think that "Cougar High" or "T-Sip" is a witty and clever put-down, or those who are hung up on past glory days that were way better in their minds then in reality. But, for most of us, we'll not notice it's passing nor will we care.

Houston is a bad sports media town. The coverage of sports here is lacking in almost every area. It's also a pro-sports town so this kerfuffle won't matter much to an overwhelming majority of people. It's just another tempest in a teapot on AM talk radio that will be used by the station to try and prop up a dying business model.

Meanwhile, Kyle Allen is transferring to Houston so, in the end, Herman won and he, once again, stood up for the University, a kid and his team which makes players and fans all the more loyal to him.  Correct that, he REALLY won.


And SportsRadio 610 just lost all access to the Cougar football team.  That might not be a big deal right now but it could be next year around this time.

How NOT to do a mock draft story (Part II)

In this chapter of the mock draft follies we expand our view to the national sports outlets where the Yahoo! based Shutdown Corner blog has presented this stinker by Eric Edholm.

In his blog, Edholm tries a novel approach to draft prognosticating, telling us who he thinks the teams will pick, and then who he thinks they should pick.  This is all well and good, except that Edholm's logic goes missing on quite a few picks.  Take the Vikings who Edholm says should pick Johnny Manziel:

We admit: We just want to see what a Manziel-Mike Zimmer-Adrian Peterson-Cordarelle Patterson-Norv Turner situation would produce. It would be fascinating and get people pumped about the Vikings again.

No, it wouldn't be fascinating, it would be a disaster.  Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer has already publically displayed his disgust with Manziel and, while that could all be misdirection, it's never a good idea to project a team pick just for the entertainment value.

The funny thing is that Edholm spends half of his post complaining about people "flaming" him for his picks.  Well, when you make picks based on logic this faulty you're bound to get flamed.

Turning back to ChronBlog we find that they've done it wrong again. Not only was McClain's Mock Draft 2.0 presented AGAIN in reverse slide-show fashion (32-1 instead of the normal 1-32 format) in a blatant grab for 32 page views but, according to talk radio (no, I didn't click through all 32 photos) he's changed his Texans pick from Bortles to Manziel.

When you consider that both Manziel and Bortles had equitable pro days, that little has changed since McClain's mock 1.0 and it's obvious that McClain has absolutely NO inside information coming from the new regime, it's very clear that the Manziel pick was only selected for publicity's sake.  Again, that's a horrible reason to do a mock draft.

The REAL problem here is that there are too many people with no idea what they're doing dipping their toes into the mock-draft kiddie pool.  Beyond that, mock drafts are useless in their entirety, even the best prognosticators get less than 50% of the picks correct year after year.  They also rarely take into consideration trades, which can (and do) throw everything off.  There are people I like to go to for draft analysis, Mike Mayock, Todd McShay etc. but there are very few mock drafts that I take all that seriously. Neither should you.




On a (sort-of) related note: Last week I tried my hand at handicapping the Texans' first round pick. I might be at a point where I'm going to adjust those odds based on Coach Bill O'Brien's comments at an event re: Jadeveon Clowney that included specific ways the team might use him in their defense. That being said, I'm going to give it a day or two to see how O'Brien addresses Bortles and Bridgewater to see if stating details such as this is just his style, or if there's meaning there.  If O'Brien doesn't offer the same detailed analysis of the other first-pick contenders after meeting with them, I might be making some changes.

How to take advantage of #BadMedia (Houston Ecomentalist Edition)

Last week I touched on some poor reporting by Chron Transportation reporter Dug Begley surrounding a ruling for a temporary injunction in Wisconsin that didn't do exactly what transit activists were suggesting.  This fact hasn't stopped Houston Tomorrow from doubling down on the mis-characterization of the ruling, and even going one step further and using the lazy reporting as a mask for credibility by appealing to the authority of a story they, quite obviously, fed to Houston's former newspaper of record.

Federal judge says sprawl, transit, must factor in to highway building decisions. Matt Dietrichson, Houston Tomorrow

A Wisconsin court ruling may require planners across the country to publicly consider the effects on sprawl and transit before approving highway expansions, according to The Houston Chronicle:

Never mind that the ruling, in no way, states what they are suggesting (a fact that was clearly established by reading the request for a temporary injunction). The real problem here is that Houston Tomorrow is using the implied authority of the Chronicle in a story where they provided much of the opinion themselves. 

Wisconsin court ruling could mean Houston thinks more about transit, Dug Begley, Chron.com

“It feels like it is almost the sky is the limit for our team on these kinds of issues to stop wasteful highway building and increase transit,” said Jay Blazek Crossley, program development and research director with Houston Tomorrow, an urban planning nonprofit.

(...)

Crossley said past decisions in the Houston region — building the Grand Parkway and Texas 288, widening U.S. 290 — were made with the full knowledge they would benefit future users and open up more land for development. The Wisconsin ruling, if it stands, helps ensure that planners have to explicitly study the effects of sprawl in a wider capacity than they do now, and have that discussion publicly.
“I think what the judge is talking about is meaningful public input,” Crossley said.

In fact, other than the snippet from the Natural Resources Defense council ALL of the "expert opinion" offered up in Begley's story comes from: Jay Blazek Crosby, Head of program development and research for......Houston Tomorrow.

So basically, Houston Tomorrow (and several other transit activists) displayed a stunning lack of knowledge about the trial process, were able to convince a reporter (who was either lazy or also possessed the same lack of knowledge about the legal process) to run a story touting the "ruling" as a potential game changer based SOLELY on their opinion, without bothering to include a dissenting opinion, and then touted that same story as being objective proof their opinions are correct.

Cozy relationship isn't it?

When bad reporting leads to confusing results. (Houston Parks edition)

First we're great.....(sorry for the link to the pathetic article FWIW)

How's about another heaping helping of Houston economy porn. Craig Hlavaty, The Texican at Chron.com

Everybody loves parks. Houston’s got more of them than any other top 10 metropolitan area.
Come to Discovery Green, take off your shoes, and watch a free concert on a Thursday evening. Make a night of it and take a nap in a nearby bush.

And then we're not.....

Houston ranks near bottom of national list of park access. Carol Christian, Chron.com

When it comes to parks, Houston ranks near the bottom of the 50 largest U.S. cities, according to a national conservation organization.
The Trust for Public Land's new report on urban park systems ranked Houston at No. 38 among the nation's 50 largest cities.

The problem lies in context, which (when reporting on studies where Houston ranks poorly) ChronBlog is notorious for leaving out, especially if that context would distract from the ideas fostered by the leadership of Houston's former news daily.

The idea being that Houston needs more parks.  Pocket parks, downtown parks, big parks, little parks, parks for things for the kiddies, parks for dogs, parks where people can lay out in the sun, parks where skateboarders can roll, all paid for by City Government and containing nice plaques containing the names of the current elected officials who oversaw their construction.  In short, legacy makers.  That's why parks are so popular with the elected set. Do you not think former Mayor Bill White and his wife Andrea still don't get a thrill out of the fact there's a walkway in Discovery Green that's named after them?

Never mind that the park access study was seriously flawed, failing to take into account geography etc.  It was negative toward Houston in a way that the Sardine Urbanists like to see so, ergo, it must be reported as fact.  The problem is....reality.  Which is often the problem when the sardine urbanists and Houtopians get together at their workshops and public forums.  The reality that yards substitute for the local park in many occasions, parks being more useful for those in multi-family establishments etc.

These things aren't mentioned, because it makes David Crossley and his acolytes angry when they are.  Their anger leads to silly little editorials and comments in comment sections of stories which cause normal Houstonians to want to pat them on the head and send them to bed with a cookie.  'Awwww....poor David, he's not getting his way again.  Time to stop telling us how stupid we all are Crossley and head off to bed."

This leads to more anger which leads to incivility which ultimately leads to somebody, somewhere deciding to take action in a marketable manner, which leads to the Ashby High-Rise situation.  All in the name of Sardine Urbanism when it should really be placed at the feet of a lack-luster media who refuse to admit to themselves that Houston is pretty good as it is.

If only the Astros would start winning.

#BadMedia Just tell us the truth KPRC

Last Sunday I tweeted my disappointment that KPRC Local 2 (Houston's NBC affiliate) decided to not broadcast live the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco.  It was unfortunate because the National Network (as well as NBC Sports Network) heavily advertised that the flagship would be broadcasting the race, live, at 7AM EDT.  Since KPRC Local 2 never offered up a notice saying they wouldn't broadcast the race, I was up for a 6AM (local time) broadcast only to be greeted with their morning news show.

Today then, KPRC has issued a "statement" regarding the incident, and it seems as if it was designed to insult the viewers.

A letter to Formula One fans. Jerry Martin, KPRC

I wanted to let you know that we heard from many Formula One fans this weekend regarding our decision to air our local news in lieu of the Monaco Grand Prix. We will reevaluate the decision for next year's race. That evaluation will not only be based off ratings data, but also the amount of viewer confusion caused by not airing the race after NBC promotes the coverage heavily in their programming. 

Our rationale for not airing the race was based on KPRC being a "news comes first" local television station, which includes holiday weekends

Yes, what you have just read is a flimsy rationalization.
Were there breaking news on Sunday that could cause the race to be preempted I would heartily agree, but there was no "news comes first" event that would call for preempting the race.  And, were the event Sunday Night Football or some higher rated show they would not preempt with a local newscast for regular news.

They based this decision on expected ratings, period. That's fine if you don't think enough people will tune in to watch who makes it through Rassgass unscathed to make it worth your while but don't insult our intelligence by claiming to be following some time honored "news comes first" principle that we all know doesn't exist.

If you choose to air local news because it will rate higher then that's fine. I can live with that.  F1, in America, is a very small niche sport and I don't have an expectation that it will run live on TV unless, that is, you constantly run advertisements with no disclaimer that it's running live on your station.

But then, when all is said and done, don't come back and lie to us.

Because, if you're telling the truth, then I expect to see the 10PM coverage of the upcoming Olympics to be preempted for the local news cast.  We all know that's not going to happen.

Either eye-witnesses are credible or they're not. (You can't have it both ways)

Recently there has been a lot of noise from innocence types about the flaws that run rampant in eye-witness identification.  If we're talking about murder, there could be 500 people that watch the event live and the good folks from the Innocence Project are going to do their darnedest to convince you that each and every one of them are a bunch of racist, classist buffoons who couldn't ID the President in a line-up if you spotted them two guesses and limited the sample size to the man himself. 

I say this not to disparage the work that the Innocence project is accomplishing, but to highlight the inconsistency as presented in the following....

Houston man shot multiple times while investigating noise outside. Dale Lezon, Chron.com

Racus said investigators don't know why the man was shot and have no descriptions of the suspects who shot him. He said investigators at the scene found several shell casings from two different guns. A witness said one of the suspects may have been carrying an AK-47 rifle.

Emphasis mine.

So, let's get this straight.  You have man who was tragically shot and killed while eyewitnesses stood around, none of whom could provide the police with any description of the shooters, yet the Mr. Lezon, and his editors presumably, have decided that the same people who couldn't tell who shot the man were experts enough on firearms to make a positive identification of an AK-47 to the point it had to be in the story?

This from a newspaper that publicly stopped, years ago, providing skin color information on shooters because of concerns people were 'scorekeeping'.  I understand not wanting to get it wrong when it comes to a suspect, but you can't have it the other way around and choose to possibly get it wrong on hot-button issues (gun control) just because it happens to be a belief you personally hold. You certainly cannot do this when your employer has run several opinion columns disparaging the accuracy of eye-witnesses.  Either eye-witness testimony is worthy of being included in a preliminary news story or it is not.  It really is that simple.

Leaving the pro-gun control bias out of the story what we do know is that a man was tragically shot multiple times and died.  He was shot by two men, for whom we have no description, using guns of what type we also don't know.  There is no credible eye-witness testimony available because the eye-witnesses in question were unable to provide even a basic description of the shooters.  We don't know what type of gun was used, nor does anything the eyewitnesses say regarding gun type have any credibility since they obviously weren't observant enough to provide even basic information to the police.

We also have a former newspaper of record who's trying to have it both ways on eyewitness ID.  They want it to not count when the death penalty is on the line because they oppose state executions, but they want to keep it in place when gun identification is on the line because they support the idea of banning certain types of guns from the public.  That's not journalism, that's advocacy.

Awwww Houston, if only you weren't as big.

Houston's been on a lot of lists lately, most of them pretty good.  Whether it's the coolest city in America or tops for jobs or income growth or paycheck size, our fair city matches up well with other places with lesser economies and equally poor local elected officials.  So well, in fact, that it seems the local media is struggling to find something bad to write about.

Sure, there's always going to be our refusal to accept a bad public transportation plan, or to not relegate ourselves to walking and biking in 100 degree weather, those things are always there.  But they ring a little hollow when the people advocating them are either wild-eyed with teh crazy or wearing a fedora and vacationing in the South of France. The Apple Dumpling Gang?  Pshaw.  More people use them for bird-cage lining and fireplace kindle than actually take advice on local politics. Yawn.

It is with a nod to April Fools' Day then that the Chron has hidden behind their paywall a take down of Houston for no other reason than we're just too damn big. ($$$)  Based on population size I'm not surprised that Houston is leading the pack in the raw number of smoking cars.  Given our propensity for driving like a hyper-self absorbed Lindsey Lohan that shouldn't be much of a shock either.  The fact is, there are a LOT of us here (barely) sharing the roads, and a few of us are trying to stretch that automobile out as far as it will go, sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of stubbornness. Cars in Houston are a necessity, like it or not, and they will be for years to come.

So, as you start your week today with news of Bacon Scope and reports that the Astros won on opening night. (Surprisingly, not an April Fools' story) remember this:  There are some things that are really worth worrying about, and then there are things dredged up by the local equivalent of the London Sun. It's best to just chalk the latter up to bad media and go about enjoying your day.

Still more negative potrayals of women on ChronBlog

Last weekend we discussed the hypocritical lecturing by the womynists at ChronBlog who constantly gripe how bad men are making it for women all the while running an entertainment/lifestyle section that frequently depicts women in an unflattering light all in the name of page views.

There's still more evidence of that on a recent Spring Break pictorial on Chron.com

What are women doing during Spring break?

According to ChronBlog they're taking off their clothes in a very public manner and partying hard.

And what are the men doing?

Well, in the same pictorial we see them building houses for charity and just being all-around good guys, hanging out, causing no problems at all.


I'm not suggesting that either sex has an advantage over the other when it comes to doing good work during Spring Break, or a disadvantage when it comes to partying down in various stages of undress.  It's Spring break for goodness sakes, and they are young adults who are out having a good time.

But again, before the good folks at ChronBlog lecture all of the rest of us about our deeply held cultural misogyny could we at least have a moment of introspection?

That's all I'm asking.

Pre-83rd Texas Lege Monday: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

On the Monday before the Texas Legislature fires things up for 140 days of hilarity and parties serious legislative work for the people we're always greeted with the spectacle of the State Comptroller providing us with the estimates of just how much taxpayer money the State will have to spend for the next biennium.  Today, Tx Comptroller Susan Combs did it again:

Combs says Texas will have $101.4 Billion for Budget. Aman Batheja, Texas Tribune

First: The good.

Combs predicted that the state will collect $96.2 billion in revenue from taxes, fees and other income during the 2014-15 biennium. The fund already had $8.8 billion left over from the current biennium. Of the new revenue, $3.6 billion will be transferred to the state’s Rainy Day Fund, which Combs predicted will grow to $11.8 billion.

That's an increase, which should help the Lege avoid repeats of the budget mess we saw two years ago.  Not that Texas is turning into a tax and spend blue state and there is every indication that Democrats will (surprise!) not be happy while Republicans are going to want to cut more, but there's enough money that, hopefully, the Lege will not have to leave sitting out there unfunded liabilities as they did in the last session.  Regardless of which side of the political aisle you find yourself on this is a good thing.  It means that the discussions this session should be focused on the margins, and not around more central items.

Second: The bad.

“$108 billion is what it takes to actually undo the last session and get us back to where we used to be,” said Eva DeLuna Castro, senior budget analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a left-leaning Austin-based think tank.
(...)
“A lot of that gets sucked up right away just paying for the last session,” Castro said.
Talmadge Heflin, a budget expert with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former legislator

To their credit, The Trib IS getting better at identifying progressive policy groups like the CPPP than they used to be.  However, there's still a lot of wiggle room between "left-leaning" and progressive, which the CPPP surely is. They have no problem labeling the TPPF "conservative" so I'm at a loss to figure out why correct identification of CPPP is so difficult?  Still, improvement is improvement and bad is certainly better than heinous, which has been their norm.

Last: The Ugly.

Combs said Monday that many economic forecasters did not foresee the size of the recession and that the ensuing volatility has continued to make budget estimates difficult to pin down.
In January 2011, Combs projected $72.2 billion in general revenue would be available for the current 2012-13 biennium.
“We had a whopper of a recession, and my hope is we don’t see a sort of European-style slowdown,” Combs said.
Combs offered a similar defense two years ago, when she acknowledged that her previous revenue estimate for the 2010-11 biennium had been overly optimistic by about $4.3 billion.

I asked this on Twitter and I'll repeat the question here:  Can anyone give me one reason we should trust the numbers provided by Comb's office? If there's a poster child for ineffective state-wide officeholders Combs is exhibit A. While financial projections can be tricky, they're not impossible.  The problem is Comb's doesn't provide much background behind how she came up with the number and I sometimes wonder if they have much behind "well, it just feels right doesn't it?"  The fact is her office has blown the forecast for the last two sessions, and now she's being allowed to punt and blame the mythical "others" when explaining her past failures.

In short, we're starting this legislative session on numbers that appear to be a hunch, which are big departures from currently developing trends and we don't have anything to base this on other than a Comptroller who thought it would be a neat idea to give a few Million dollars to Bernie Eccelstone.  Pardon me if I'm not filled with enthusiasm over this.

Finally, my thanks go out to the Texas Tribune and my apologies to you for the high amount of block-quoting in this post.  While my goal is to try and avoid it, there are times when you just have to copy things over to make a larger point.  I do encourage you to go visit the Tribune site and read Mr. Batheja's full piece.  It is an interesting read.