Affirmative Action Ruling

Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down the judgement that affirmative action should not be a guiding principle in college admissions. MSNBC immediately did a harbinger-of-doom piece suggesting that the world will now go to hell in a handbasket. Me? I'm ambivalent, but I have my own recommended solution.

My Background

I'm white, German/Polish, male, and from a small town and a relatively poor school district. By "relatively poor," I mean that when I was 15, some 23 schools in Pennsylvania were labeled as unsuitable and unsafe. Seven of those schools were in the collection of small mining towns comprising my school district. By "unsafe," I don't mean that people were selling drugs (much) or taking guns to school. It meant that the schools themselves were dilapidated and falling down around students' ears. 

I spent the first 10 years of my life in half a double my father was able to rent for $50 a month from the elderly women next door because my grandfather, the milkman, was considered an honorable and respectable man. My father did various chores for the two women to augment the $50 rent payment. Winter nights were somewhat cold in the Dietz household at that time. Heat was at a premium even though my grandfather also wildcatted coal at night from mines all over the county.

Being white, German, and male did not aid me in my attempts to go to college. What paid the bill was a National Merit Scholarship because I managed 1450 on the SAT and graduated first in my high school class. At Penn State, I still had "Popcorn Tuesdays" where all I ate was popcorn because my scholarship sort of covered my expenses, but not by much. And yes, I had a roommate in my studio apartment. And yes, my friend on the track team sneaked me into the athletic cafeteria for an occasional free meal. 

This is no "Coal Miner Elegy" riff. It was all banal stuff to be overcome. 

Ambiguity as a Plus

I have a friend who is half Caucasian and half Japanese. When applying for college and grad school, this prospective student had the option of labeling as White or Asian and opted for White because whites are held to a lower standard. I saluted the strategic thinking.

On Thursday, CNN's Abby Phillip interviewed Kenny Xu, one of the members of the organization that won the affirmative action case. When Xu rightly pointed out that admittance standards are lowered for Black students, Phillip (who is Black) abruptly ended the interview. Xu had stated that an Asian student must score 270 points higher to be on an equal admittance footing with a Black student. Evidently, one cannot have that on CNN. Would it have killed Phillip to end the interview with "Thanks for the facts," as opposed to "Thank you for your perspective." Recently, CNN seems to have a tough time understanding that "facts" and "perspective" are not synonyms.

I'm not going to weep because race has been downgraded as a college admittance factor. Of course, as  populations, Black and Hispanic students are at a disadvantage educationally in the United States. That isn't the fault of the current crop of White students and certainly not the fault of the current crop of Asian students. 

My Solution

I haven't mentioned recently that I'm left of Marx when it comes to most mega-societal issues like education, health care, and support of unions. I say that if people want en masse affirmative action, scale college admissions to socioeconomic status. My perspective is radical. Scale admissions to the proportion of candidates in distinct economic categories. Are you the child of a one-percenter? One percent of college admissions are reserved for you. And so on down to poverty levels. That would be interesting.

Okay, so nobody is going to buy that. To those of us who are left of Marx, it's still better than admitting on a curve based on race.

Bob Dietz

June 30, 2023

Submersibles, Race Cars, and a P-40: Halo Effects

Skydiving was never on my bucket list. In fact, I've never been a big fan of high-risk physical endeavors. As someone who's a consultant to high stakes sports gamblers, one might think I wouldn't be risk averse. But I am. Basically, my job for 45 years has been to cull 99.9% of all gambling opportunities and continually tell people, "No, that's a bad idea."

I never, as I said, had any interest in skydiving. As a student at Penn State's Pattee Library, I'd read quite a few skydiving magazines. The back pages were filled with listings of accidents, almost all of which had the tagline, "Death by impact."

My youngest brother drove an explosives truck for years, then helped manage a warehouse filled with blasting supplies. I never wanted either job. 

Halo Effects

One thing about gambling is that if you're wearing a halo because you did something great, it can quickly become an albatross, and eventually a noose, if you're not committed to an unrelenting process of self-evaluation. This brings us to the heavy burden of being a billionaire or thereabouts. And I'm not kidding. It cannot be an easy thing to be a billionaire or flagship business commander and to grasp, as Harry Callahan famously says at the conclusion of Magnum Force, that "A man's got to know his limitations."

In one week, a collection of older gentlemen all died doing things I cannot understand. The Titan submersible implodes 12,000 feet down, filled with a crew of fearless, intelligent men who really should have known better. Meanwhile, billionaire James Crown, 70, died at a Woody Creek racetrack near Aspen, Colorado on Sunday, June 25. Driving solo, he crashed into an impact barrier. Yesterday, Paul Ehlen, founder of Precision Lens back in the '90s, died shortly after takeoff while solo piloting a vintage P-40E.

Why did these accomplished men make such high-risk behavioral decisions? As athletes and human beings, they are well past their physical and reaction-time primes. Why put at risk your responsibilities to the vast resources you've accrued? So you could play John Wayne?

Maybe nobody told them that these were really stupid, irresponsible things to do. Maybe that's the burden of being uber successful and in charge. People around you tend to not proclaim when you're doing dumb things.

Halo effects perceived by others have those dangers. The real and ultimate issue, however, may be when supermen fail to understand that being superhuman in the past or being superhuman at one task doesn't carry over into new decades or different endeavors. We degrade. And being great at one thing is no guarantee of being competent at something else. The uber accomplished often shoulder the additional problem of being insulated from frank criticism or call-outs. In a way, their accomplishments have earned them added danger.

In the world of gambling, halo effects have done the best of the best no favors. For Stu Ungar, poker savant, it was sports betting. For T.J. Cloutier, another great poker player, he liked the dice. For some famous successful sports handicappers like Tony Salinas and Mike Lee, the ponies kept calling. Why does everyone want to conquer the world?

What kind of a culture drives the best and brightest to try to exceed their limitations? Why is sound judgement not as valued as swashbuckling? The irony of the Titan, of course, is that the arrogant use of non-standard design, materials, and protocols was used to seek out the Titanic, itself a metaphor for technological arrogance. The irony of it all should have served as a blazing red alert.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, all of the accomplishments of these men likely carried the seeds of their own destruction.

Bob Dietz

June 28, 2023

More Thoughts on the LIV/PGA Merger

I suppose my cynical outlook contributed to my getting so many aspects of LIV versus PGA correct. As I noted in my May 23 (2023) "LIV and Super Bowl III," Koepka stood in for Joe Namath, and the 2023 PGA Championship stood in admirably for Super Bowl III. Of course, just as with the NFL/AFL scenario in 1969, negotiations were clearly long in progress before the events' results sanctified the negotiations.

What right did anyone have to question, based on alleged competition level, Joe Namath's 400K bonus for signing with the AFL Jets? What right did anyone have to denigrate DeChambeau or Koepka or Dustin Johnson or Mickelson, based on competition level, for signing with LIV? 

On June 5, the day BEFORE the LIV/PGA merger was made public, I wrote "LIV vs. PGA: More Eamon Lynch." The closing paragraph implied that the LIV and PGA goals and priorities were virtually synonymous. The primary difference was simply the acronym used.

Did PGA Golfers Really Not See the Handwriting on the Wall?

I guess I'm surprised that many of the PGA golfers said that they were surprised by the merger announcement. Or perhaps most of it was feigned surprise. Surely, the PGA golfers had to have some sense of the scale involved. Back on July 5 (2022) in my "The Saudi Golf Tour (Part Two)," I wrote:

"Watching an attempted monopoly (the PGA) twist in the wind because it lacks the funding to compete on equal terms with what amounts to a proprietorship is...quite funny. All that American wealth overmatched by non-American wealth. It doesn't happen that often. We should appreciate the show."

Is the show now finished with the merger announcement? Well, not quite. American political factions will try to pick up some morality points by challenging the merger. Not as entertaining as watching the Saudi sharks gobble up the PGA guppies (to employ one of Eamon Lynch's metaphors), but hand-wringing and loud speeches on "sportswashing" will, at some point, make their way onto CNN. 

Until then, let's just enjoy the golf. The merger, in my mind, seemed likely from the beginning of all this. The PGA players' financial managers must have spelled it out for them. And yet none of the PGA stalwarts, buttressed by their unflinching morality, publicly anticipated the merger and jumped ship for the Japanese Tour. 

To quote the great philosopher, Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

Bob Dietz

June 16, 2023

Heat/Nuggets Postscript

Article Recommendation

Before delving into my personal take on Game Five and the NBA playoffs in general, I want to recommend DJ Dunson's "Nikola Jokic made a monkey of Heat culture" published June 13 by Deadspin. It's an entertaining piece that begins by comparing Jokic to Babe Ruth and rolls on with half a dozen great riffs and observations. I don't exactly agree with everything Dunson writes, but I love the way he wrote it. Really entertaining.

Game Five

Well, I talked up the Heat and Nuggets prior to Game Five, so of course they went out and got all raggedy. A lot of turnovers, including some dumb ones, and questionable shot selection/distribution from both teams, but the intensity was there from start to finish. 

Butler shrugged off a rough opening three quarters to give Miami a chance down the stretch. Denver, meanwhile, managed its way through myriad early foul trouble that created uncomfortable and rare court combinations during the first half. Christian Braun trying to guard Lowry was horrific, but somehow Denver arrived at halftime with a chance.

Officiating

Ten years from now, when AI is doing three-dimensional evaluation of what should or should not be called, we'll all know badly teams got the worst of it in these games. For the series, all I'll say is that the officiating did not favor Denver. In Game Three, when Miami halved an insurmountable deficit in the final five minutes, the Heat were beneficiaries of four to five calls/non-calls which were egregious. In this Game Five, again down the stretch, the Heat benefited from roughly a three call/non-call advantage. Butler drawing three foul shots, and the call not being overturned, was ridiculous. I'm sure the NBA would have preferred a Game Six and Game Seven, but a little massaging didn't get them there. The foul situation during the first half was bad enough as it compromised Denver's rotation, but the Nuggets managed their way through it, although not in a pretty fashion.

Kudos to Both Teams

Miami played a lot more zone Game Five, and it worked well. The zone principles suckered Denver into launching a lot of threes at the wrong times. They were reasonably good open threes, but not optimal shot distribution. How Braun wound up trying to guard Lowry a bunch of first half possessions is between God, the Nuggets coaching staff, and whatever they were smoking in that rarified atmosphere.

Congrats to the Nuggets, a middling regular-season defensive squad, for turning up the defensive intensity during the playoffs. Braun/Lowry aside, they had very few stretches of questionable or sloppy defense. Their length across the board played a role. Many of the tweener shots favored by Butler were more difficult because size was everywhere. 

It was a really good series.

Bob Dietz

June 13, 2023

NBA: A Salute to Denver and Miami

Denver is poised, with a 3-1 series lead, to wrap things up tonight versus Miami. 

My NBA interest peaked during the Bird/Magic days, with an older peak back in the time of the Laker 33-game win streak and Alcindor on the Bucks. While I have great respect and admiration for Steph Curry and the Warriors' consistent winning, I've never been in love with the modern NBA or the three-point shot, even at NBA distances, where all buckets are indeed earned and a testament to great skill.

Part of my distaste for the three stems from my first rec league game incorporating the three in the State College (PA) rec league. We had a good team, but our roster consisted of old men, two women, and one  Division 2-quality guard in his 20's. Our first game with a three-point line, we shot 21 of 40 from behind the arc. Being old men and textbook-adhering women, we were Hoosier style purists, so despite our success, we recognized how the arc could (and would) ruin the dynamics and decision-making of basketball. Our consensus after that 21 of 40 game was, "This'll ruin the game for sure, but oh well, we're old. It's not hurting us."

So it's with a sigh of appreciation that I watch Denver versus Miami, two old-school squads that shoot plenty of threes but play the game more like 1970's squads than today's Warriors. Nikola Jokic looks much like Bill Walton in 1977, when he was surgically torturing my beloved 76ers from the high post. Jimmy Butler is great; he plays like he means it. I have always been a Butler fan. There are only a handful of NBA players that I'd recommend high school players emulate, and Butler is one of them. He belongs in that collection of all-time textbook players like Ray Allen and Joe Dumars. 

Denver is the better team; Miami is overmatched. But the Heat are too solid and their decisions too savvy for them to collapse or surrender any given game. They are a classic pain-in-the-ass underdog. Denver had that brain dead five minutes in the second half of Game Two, and it cost them that game. The Heat effort is consistent and top of the line. You slip up or lie down, you go stupid for a stretch, and the Heat win. Meanwhile, Denver has been able to maintain reasonably consistent, solid defense minute to minute in an NBA where the officiating makes it almost impossible to do so. Denver's size undoubtedly helps in this regard.

I salute both squads. It's been a pleasure watching them.

Bob Dietz

June 12, 2023

LIV-PGA Merger: Sportswashing

As reported by Fox News, LIV golfer and former PGA stalwart Martin Kaymer had this to say, "I'm really looking forward to the reaction of all the people who said, 'We don't want to play for blood money...We don't want to sell our soul.'" Kaymer also suggested that the PGA golfers who refused to sully their checking accounts with Saudi money and lambasted those who did, could now play on the Japanese Tour.

I've always had some questions regarding the PGA's initial PR stance vis-a-vis LIV, especially as it came to defining and labeling "sportswashing." Sportswashing seemed, to me, to be a handy buzzword to go to war with the Saudis via a short-term PR blitz. It's a word that begged one not to look too closely at any national or corporate history. and to focus on the immediate now and the immediate target. I don't even know what to do with the Nike sweatshop angle and the entire subject of sportswashing. The biggest names in sport have rarely had squeaky clean resumes by today's Western standards.

High Profile Events Versus All Events

Accusing Saudi Arabia of sportswashing is all well and good, if your hands are Snow White clean. Getting caught murdering a journalist is horrific, but realistically, if the American CIA has been guilty of a single murder in the last five years, the U.S. is conceivably on the same moral footing as Saudi Arabia. And the U.S. was recently responsible for a drone strike on a misidentified target that resulted in the deaths of children. If you were going to refuse Saudi Arabia blood money for sportswashing, then you may as well refuse U.S. blood money for sportswashing.

Statutes of Limitations

Does "sportswashing" have a statute of limitations, an expiration date? Should it?

Who has the authority to assign statutes of limitations when it comes to "sportswashing?" Who sets the limits of what history counts and what doesn't when it comes to crimes? A long historical lens may view the U.S. harshly for the 200,000 Iraqi civilians who died because we invaded and for misguided drones killing children. Future generations and cultures may have very different views regarding statutes of limitations and sportswashing. Should the statute of limitations be a year, a decade, a century? How does one make that determination? Pragmatism? 

We spend a lot of energy judging the Saudis in the now, which is understandable, but not so much judging ourselves in the recent past. Perhaps the U.S. should be disqualified from all international sports due to its historical moral missteps. Perhaps most nations should be similarly disqualified.

Conclusion

As the LVA-PGA monopoly takes over the world of professional golf, all I can say is that I'm really looking forward to seeing Rory McIlroy on the Japanese Tour. I'm not sure how writer and PGA cheerleader Eamon Lynch's Japanese is progressing, but I'm sure he'll also do swell.

Bob Dietz

June 11, 2023

Revisiting March Madness

When you're right, you're right. 

I wanted to revisit the 2023 NCAA hoops seedings and brackets before they fade into the mists of history. Most of my criticisms of the seedings were laid out in my March 28 "Smoking the Seeds: 2023" and my March 30 "March Madness Meta." My main gripes, at the time, had to do with the beyond curious seedings and scheduling of Memphis and FAU and the shoe-horning into the tournament of the usual collection of Big 10 teams. 

History showed that I was more correct than I realized at the time. I was really, really correct. Concurrent with the NCAA tourney was the NIT. The two Conference USA teams that I mentioned as getting hosed with no NCAA invites were at-the-time 29-7 North Texas and 28-9 UAB. These two teams waded through the entirety of the NIT field to meet in the championship game. North Texas won, 68-61. FAU, meanwhile, was in the NCAA tourney (as a nine seed, 30-win team, no less), made it to the Final Four, and lost 72-71 to San Diego State.

So, the overall major point is that Conference USA went 18-2 in post-season play. One of those losses was the NIT final between two C-USA teams. The other was the one-point loss in the Final Four.

My second major point is that mainstream media basically ignored these outcomes, and here we are, three months later. Nobody remembers that C-USA got hosed, and nobody wants to do anything about it. The conference got screwed in terms of NCAA invitations, in terms of seeding, and (most importantly) in terms of checks written to schools. 

2024 and Beyond

The mirage of NCAA committee seeding legitimacy will go on, of course, as it always does. The brand names will dominate the media, and talking heads will continue to promulgate nonsense like "eye tests" to determine invitations, seedings, and checks written. 

But let's look at the bright side. Ten years from now, AI will be making the tournament seeding decisions. It'll be a better, fairer, sporting world. 

Bob Dietz

June 10, 2023

LIV vs. PGA: More Eamon Lynch

Brooks Koepka's PGA win was, predictably, followed by his coach, Claude Harmon III, calling out the PGA Tour's campaign against LIV golfers. And Harmon's spot-on PGA Tour critiques were, just as predictably, attacked by the PGA Tour's favorite sycophants, such as Eamon Lynch and Brandell Chamblee.

I must admit that I've put some thought into the sociology of this tour-versus-tour friction, and I have serious observations and even more serious questions, which I will broach another time. Today, I just want to revisit some of Lynch's latest nonsense and put a spotlight on this loudest of PGA sycophants.

Being Lynch, Being Wrong, Being Proud of It

First, I want to disagree with something Claude Harmon said regarding Lynch. Harmon said, "I think Eamon is a fantastic writer." I'm old school in that I think Lynch is clever, but (as in most things) the most important thing about cleverness is not relying on it. Generally, the cleverest lines in a piece of writing should be tossed out, as they distract and are too busy being clever to improve the piece.

Second, regarding Eamon Lynch, my God, has he no shame? In 2022, he basically labeled Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau as broken-down has-beens. Don't take my word for it. I quoted Lynch directly in my July 4, 2022, entry "The Comedic Writings of Eamon Lynch." Anyway, my point is that I have not seen a reporter be more wrong than Lynch since Rachel Maddow proclaimed that being vaccinated meant that you couldn't get or transmit Covid-19. Yowza. Wrong on all fronts, in all ways. He (and Maddow) could not have been more incorrect. 

Hard to respect someone who wrote in 2022 that Koepka, "is just an entertainer doomed to exhibitions against the washed-up veterans and no-name youngsters that he's long considered unfit to sniff his jockstrap." Putting aside the implication that Lynch has had insightful conversations with Koepka regarding jockstraps, Lynch has been proven to be the world's worst handicapper. As in, I'll say it again for emphasis, totally wrong. So how does Lynch keep a straight face in 2023 when he has no credibility? Who would give his yapping any credence (other than his PGA Tour taskmasters)? I have no idea.

2023 

Well, at least Lynch has a short memory. Amnesia has its benefits when you're blatantly wrong, I suppose. He's recently decided that Koepka is not a has-been. In his May 25, 2023, propaganda for Golfweek, Lynch says that "Koepka is a formidable predator who chooses to swim in a shallow pond."

Yeah, Lynch decided to close his piece with that bit of cleverness, while ignoring Mickelson and Koepka's Masters results and also ignoring the huge and irrepressible fact that three LIV golfers cracked the top nine at the PGA.

Anybody who edits out key facts whenever it suits him so as to make his narrative case is not a "fantastic writer." He's a hired PR goon, playing sycophant to the usual one-tenth-of-one-percenters who, in this case, identify as PGA rather than LIV.

Bob Dietz

June 5, 2023

An Origin Story and Book Recommendation

People often ask me how I got into this business of sports handicapping and sports betting. Many different threads contributed to this messy life tapestry, so I've never had much of a definitive answer until two years ago.

A couple of friends who had co-written and edited books together approached me about contributing a chapter to their new project about the seminal effects of cars during their youth. The book was about young men and cars that had unique impacts on them. Long-term memories and vehicular rites of passage.

At first I said that all of the cars of my youth were semi-junkers. Practical, beaten up, and more forgettable than memorable. But then one friend mentioned that he had seen a photo of me when I was 17 or so, standing with a group of youths in front of a black Lincoln parked in a cemetery. I responded, "Oh yeah. You know, that wasn't my car, but I guess I do have a car story for you."

My deadline for the piece was a couple of days, so I churned out what I realized was a kind of origin story. Maybe not quite as polished as I'd like, but not too shabby. I'm going to officially recommend the book, Driving Southern, edited by Ralph Bland and Michael Braswell. Published in 2022, it's available on Amazon and in most Barnes and Nobles. My story, "The Car Makes the Man," comes about halfway into the collection. 

If you wondered about my wayward origins, check it out. The other stories, by the way, are better written than mine. If you enjoy driving, classic cars, and revisiting the perceptions of youth, you'll love this book. Enjoy.

Bob Dietz

June 5, 2023

College Baseball Betting Scandal

So now Scott Googins, the Cincinnati baseball coach for six seasons, has resigned. He resigned even though he thus far appears to have done nothing wrong, other than be unaware that his assistant coaches and the father of one his players were betting games.

Well, as I mentioned in my previous entry, the question now becomes, "How ubiquitous is all of this insider betting on college sports?" Honestly, I haven't a clue, but allow me to speculate a bit. My specialty, after all, has been handicapping and betting college sports (specifically football) for 45 years. Surely, I must have a pithy insight or two.

Cheating Potential

Look, nothing defines American college sports better than Cam Newton's old man getting whatever it was (200K to 400K; reports vary) to ship Cam to Auburn. Auburn wins the national title. Everyone finds out that Cam's dad got the cash. The after-the-fact storyline is that Cam did not know, so it's okay. I mean, holy hell, the NCAA actually wanted people to believe that? NCAA must stand for Nabobs Corrupting All Athletes.

Please frame what I'm about to say in light of Cam and Auburn emerging unscathed from egregious profit-taking.

First of all, how difficult would it be to put together a network of savvy "runners" whose job it would be (I almost said "is") to wager for underpaid assistant coaches all across this great country? Not terribly, I would say. Pipelines already exist for using third parties to funnel money to potential college players. Just reverse the process and have the coaches employ runners surreptitiously. It can be done. Hell, I could do it. Not that hard, and really tough to get pinned down as to having done something "illegal."

Easy Money

My May 27 entry teased a way for assistant college coaches to make some spending money without directly wagering on teams. 

Hello, fantasy sports! In my July 24, 2021, entry, "When Fantasy Goes Bad," I summarized the insider trading that had been exposed at both FanDuel and DraftKings. Nothing has really changed. Insiders today can't do it directly; they need beards. Big deal. What an obstacle. Reminds me of the 12-inch Stonehenge from Spinal Tap.

Assistant coaches are perfectly positioned to have friends or family reap the benefits of their insider college sports knowledge. Much of fantasy scoring in college football, for example, hinges on the substitution patterns (or lack thereof) of heavy favorites when they have overmatched opponents beaten. Are they going to yank starters and, to use a wrestling phrase, "lay on them," or do they call plays to impress rankings voters and prop up the confidence of offensive skill folks? Assistant coaches have tremendous advantages over civilians. 

And really, how is the NCAA going to discover it? And really redux, how motivated would the NCAA be to discover it?

There's not a ton of money in college fantasy sports, but there's enough to help low end assistants make their monthly budgets.

Get Over It 

To quote The Eagles, "Get Over It!" College sports betting and college sports fantasy betting are here to stay.  There will be many more scandals in the months ahead. The lower profile the sport, the more assistants will be motivated to make some pocket money. Brace yourself.

Nabobs Corrupting All Athletes. I like it.

Bob Dietz

June 2, 2023