The Sweet Science Deserves a Sweet Home

Brett Favre has a clear path to Canton. Five years from now, Ken Griffey, Jr. will be in Cooperstown. But has Floyd Mayweather, Jr. accomplished enough in his career to one day be enshrined in....Canastota, NY?

The aura of Canton, of Cooperstown just doesn't work for boxing- a sport that hasn't felt old-timey since Muhammad Ali was called Clay. Like The Greatest, boxing's hall of fame should be the greatest, or at least the most hyped.

Instead, The International Boxing Hall of Fame offers its visitors a quaint, personal experience with the larger-than-life sport. It's basically a log cabin, and while framed pictures on the wall are nice, and historic, and honest, boxing deserves more.

The MGM Group or Steve Wynn should work out a deal with the IBHOF for a satellite museum in Las Vegas, at either a new sports-themed casino or the MGM Grand itself. New technologies would allow for a new Hall to be interactive and experiential with unlimited potential (imagine sparring with Ali or seeing how your straight right stacks up with Ivan Drago's).

MMA is growing in popularity faster and more inexplicably than Justin Bieber. A shrine befitting one of the world's oldest and greatest sports and its champions would give boxing fans their Graceland and any casino in Las Vegas a new draw.

Since opening in 1989, The International Boxing Hall of Fame has put Canastota on the map the way the MonoRail put Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook on the map. It was a great idea, and there was absolutely a need for a Boxing Hall of Fame, so all the credit is theirs. But in 2010, when even just seeing the date feels like science fiction, it is astounding that boxing of all sports isn't being fully exploited.

7.28.10

Note to NFL: Sunday Worked

Football season is almost here, and this year's schedule includes Thursday Night games from Week 10 through Week 16, in addition to the Minnesota/New Orleans tilt on NFL Kickoff Thursday, Sept. 9.

Did the NFL bring in The Other Guys for a focus group or something?

Under Commissioner Paul Tagliabue the league enjoyed a period of solid growth and in the past two decades has left no doubt of the sport's standing as the "national passion." Sunday has a feel to it, Monday Night has a feel to it.

Thursday Night has a feel to it too, and it feels wrong. Commissioner Goodell has responded to the need-it-now spirit of this high-technology age by expanding the Thursday Night schedule of usually two games (excluding Thanksgiving) to a six-week affair during the height of the season.

For fans, this means that from Week 10 to Week 16 there is only a two-day gap each week in between NFL games, and with college football in full swing, there are big-time football games on throughout the week. The NFL has watered itself down, and now lacks the anticipation that helped make Sunday football so special.

The NFL Network is also a primary culprit here; were Thursday Night Football games available to all fans across the county, it would certainly soften the blow. That way, at least when your team is forced to play on short rest you can watch them get beat.

MLB Realignment: A New Rivalry is Born

Major League Baseball should realign before the 2011 season. Of the 30 MLB teams, The NL has 16 and the AL has 14. Every division has 5 teams, except the crowded NL Central with 6 and the thin AL West, which has 4.

AL WEST
Los Angeles/Anaheim
Oakland
Seattle
Texas

NL CENTRAL
Chicago
Cincinnati
Houston
Milwaukee
Pittsburgh
St. Louis

This imbalance means that teams in the AL West only have to beat out three rivals to make the postseason, while teams in the NL Central have to outlast five. It also means that an AL West team plays around 60 divisional games per season, while an NL Central team plays closer to 100. This discrepancy works out to around 20 more mixed-schedule games for the AL West than all other AL clubs, and 20 more divisional games for teams in the NL Central than all other teams in the NL (and around 40 more divisional games than teams in the AL West).

In a sport already marked by financial disparity, the nuts-and-bolts setup of the league shouldn't be a hindrance to giving all teams an equal shot at winning their division.

The solution? Shift the Astros from the NL Central to the AL West.

In this scenario, all 6 divisions have 5 teams, and the AL and NL each have 15.

The result (in addition to a massive rager at the schedule maker's pad) would be a revenue boost and competitive jolt for an Astros team that clearly needs both. With the move, they'll have one less divisional rival to contend with every season and will get to play their in-state rival Rangers in 18 extremely meaningful sellout games each year, instead of six.

More importantly, not just the Astros but all 30 MLB teams will now have the same amount of divisional rivals to contend with all season, and will play nearly the same amount of mixed-schedule and interleague games.

As for tertiary effects, the A's, Mariners and Rangers won't object to adding Houston to their division or schedule, and the NL Central will be glad to get down to the normal five teams. It's geographically correct too; Houston is the westernmost city in the NL Central.

Financial parity in the league may never be attainable, but scheduling/divisional equality is a dream that's within our grasp, and should be handled just this simply this offseason.

So what do you say, MLB? Will you ask Houston to move into the AL West and restore balance to baseball's divisions? And Houston, will you answer the call?

New York's Mess: Ownership Must Own Up

Jerry Manuel should not be fired. A strong argument can be made that Jerry Manuel should never have been hired, but given that he was, he should not be fired. If Jerry gets the axe, Omar Minaya would get to pick his third skipper to lead the Mets-- an opportunity he has not earned.

For Minaya and the Mets, it simply hasn't worked. Ownership should recognize that it hasn't worked, still isn't working, and ultimately, won't ever work with Omar at the helm. He has no master plan.

In his time, Minaya has handed out millions to players that had been there and done that elsewhere, and gotten painfully little in return. His big-money busts include Luis Castillo ($25m), Oliver Perez ($36m), and how can we not now view Carlos Beltran ($119m; Free Agent in 2011) as a tremendous bust? Even "Hamdi" in You Don't Mess with the Zohan knew Delgado's $12 million in 2009 was one of the worst options ever picked up, and we may soon add Jason Bay's $66 million dollar name to this list. Omar also presided over the Julio Franco sideshow in 2006-07, during which he and ownership proved they were more interested in individual milestones and marketing than player development or playing to win.

For all his failures at building a winning team, Minaya's biggest mistakes have come outside the lines of play, and have revealed a man with little tact and less polish. In 2008, he fired Willie Randolph at about 3am Eastern Time, after having won 3 of 4 and directly following a win. Typically, when a manager is fired it's directly following a loss; as in, "enough is enough, that's the last straw" kind of thing. Not after a win, and certainly not after winning 3 of 4 at Texas and Anaheim. It is entirely possible that Carlos Delgado wanted Willie out, and Minaya made it so.

Minaya doesn't have the qualifications to be the General Manager of an organization of this size and scope. If he and I applied for the job of GM for a major league club tomorrow, my resume would include one thing his does not: a college degree. This is not to say a degree is required for the job, but it's a pretty advanced job these days. Minaya is a former ballplayer and talent scout who no one would've ever heard of if Sammy Sosa and Juan Gonzalez had laid off the 'roids.

If fans or the media would call for Jerry Manuel's head this summer, Minaya should be gone along with him. The team's wins and losses during his tenure dictate that, let alone epic collapses and squabbles with members of the press (thank you, Adam Rubin). Maybe they need to be reminded that he once traded Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore for an over-the-hill Bartolo Colon as Expos' GM.

The Wilpon family have Minaya under contract through 2012 with options for 2013 and 2014, so despite losing, they clearly like having him in charge. Either that, or they like having him appear to be in charge, while Chief Operating Officer Jeff Wilpon actually makes the decisions and gets less of the blame. At about $1 million per season, that's a lot of scratch to be paying a puppet.

One thing is for certain, any GM that truly had autonomy would have been fired by 29 other clubs by now, which brings the issue of baseball decision-making back into question for Mets fans, who dealt with this during the shrouded-in-secrecy Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano debacle in 2004. Until the Mets can be honest with themselves, they'll lack the direction to win, let alone everything else it takes.

Telling It Like It Is: A Blog for Howard Cosell

Boy do I wish I had an opening like Reading Rainbow so you would all just be hooked instantly. Butterfly in the sky, people...I've created a blog dedicated to my sports hero, Howard Cosell. I don't know what Howard would say about the role sports play in our lives today, and I would certainly fail in any attempt to put it anywhere near as eloquent. I would never speak in his stead. Rather, I am dedicating this blog to his spirit, his pursuit of the truth, and above all, to "Telling It Like It Is."