Enjoy Kevin Love while he lasts, right? While We’re Waiting

Happy Tuesday WFNY!

As I was driving in to work this morning, I was surprised by how light the traffic was. I don’t normally have too much traffic to deal with, as I leave before the worst of it. But even relative to my normal traffic, it was really light this morning. It wasn’t until I got into the office that I realized today is Veteran’s Day.

I have two uncles who served this country, one in Korea and one in Vietnam. It’s not something we talk about a lot in our family, but it is still a point of pride. We use the word sacrifice an awful lot in life, but perhaps nowhere is that sacrifice more tangible than in those who fight for our country. There’s a time and a place for discussions on the morality of armed services and war, but I don’t feel Veteran’s Day is that. Today is a day to remember those who fought and to give thanks to those who sacrificed for us, even those who have a moral objection to them being there in the first place.

So thank you to all the men and women out there who have served in the past, and a special thank you on behalf of all of WFNY to those still serving now!

*****

Time to start worrying about losing Kevin Love to the Lakers…

Did you guys hear the news? Kevin Love is unhappy in Cleveland and he and Russell Westbrook want to reunite in Los Angeles and play for the Lakers. Damn, that really sucks for us. Well, it was good run, boys. And it sure was fun while it lasted.

Knock it off. Everyone. Please. Just stop. This is pure nonsense and it angers me to my core that people are even humoring this [explitive(s) redacted]. I don’t even know where to start in pointing out how stupid this “story” is.

First of all, it’s been six games. Kevin Love has been a Cavalier for, what, two months? It is just way too early for Love to be either happy or unhappy in Cleveland. Lets give the guy some time to settle in and adjust before we start worrying about his comfort level or happiness.

Secondly, even if he really was unhappy or “eyeing a return to Los Angeles”, it could not matter less at this point in time. Last year at this time, did LeBron know he was going to return to Cleveland? I highly doubt it. Did Kyrie know how his future was going to shake out? No. It’s beyond stupid to be talking about this stuff now. So much can and will change over the course of the season. We have to let things play out and let nature run its course. Only when the dust finally settles can we really be concerned about whether a player is happy or wants to go somewhere else.

Finally, the wording of the report, which I will not link to here (you can find a link elsewhere on this site if you haven’t already seen it), says that Love “will seriously consider the opt out and has his eyes on a return to Los Angeles, where he attended college and where the Lakers long have had him on their free agent wish list.”

There is no question he will seriously consider opting out. So will LeBron. We’ve covered this exhaustively. Under the current climate of the CBA and the rising Basketball Related Income of the league, the players stand to get a bigger raise by signing a new contract every year. It’s all about having options.

Kevin Love might opt out and leave for the Lakers. That’s a real possibility. It’s his option and his right. He also might opt out and re-sign with Cleveland. Or he may not opt out at all. How many rumors did we have to put up with over the last couple years about how unhappy Kyrie was, and how he wanted out, and how he wasn’t likely to sign long term? And what did he do? He signed long term ten minutes after the signing window opened.

I hate this stuff so much. But when I have all kinds of people constantly asking me whether I think the “Kevin Love news” is true, I feel obligated to address it. All I can say is anyone who is worried about it needs to step back and calm down. How Kevin Love feels today is irrelevant to what he will do at the end of the season. It’s out of our control anyway. The Cavaliers need to just play out this season, keep improving, and then let things get sorted out at that time. But worrying about it now is a fruitless endeavor and loosely sourced reports that hedge with words like “indications are” and “seriously consider” will get no merit and from myself. If the Cavaliers make a deep playoff run, I’ll bet on the Cavaliers over the Lakers. And if Love does leave, we can worry about Plan C then.

*****

Does the NFL share the tobacco industry’s fate?

The NFL is the King of Sports in America. The sport just rakes in cash hand over fist. It’s popularity has never been higher. Sunday Ticket is a basic requirement of almost any bar with a TV in it. Households across this country slow down on Sundays so people can watch their beloved football. There seems to be no end in sight to this glory era of football.

Or does there? Time and time again we have seen once invincible industries topple in this country. Sometimes there are warning signs, others it happens so quickly and seemingly at random that the industries don’t even know what hit them. For the NFL and football in general, there are some warning signs out there.

Michael Sokolove of the NY Times has an in depth look at an attorney’s battle against the NFL and what the danger signs for the league might look like. In particular, Sokolove draws some parallels to the tobacco industry:

But what if the template for football’s future is not the fate of boxing but rather that of the tobacco industry? The parallels, of course, are not perfect. But tobacco, like football, was once deeply embedded in the American economy, culture and mythology. Its history, in fact, is inseparable from that of the nation itself. The first crop was planted by an early settler in Jamestown, John Rolfe (also known as the husband of Pocahontas), and it quickly became Virginia’s largest export and a primary impetus for the growth of slavery through much of the South. Cigarette smoking surged at the beginning of the 20th century, and into the mid-1970s, about 40 percent of American adults were smokers, and they could smoke everywhere they wanted — in restaurants, on buses and airplanes, in workplaces and college classrooms, in their cars with the windows up and their children in the passenger seats.

The fight against tobacco’s use has been long and has unfolded in stages, beginning with public-health warnings. A Johns Hopkins researcher reported in 1938 that smokers did not live as long as nonsmokers. A half-dozen years later, the American Society for the Control of Cancer warned that smoking might pose dangers but said “no definite evidence exists” that it caused lung cancer. In 1964, the U.S. surgeon general, Luther L. Terry, issued a landmark report. It linked smoking and cancer and set in motion decades of measures that deeply cut into smoking rates and tobacco’s profits and influence, beginning, first, with Congress’s passing measures that required health warnings on cigarette packages and later banning cigarette advertising on radio and TV. What came next were the lawyers, as well as more regulations and restrictions. After routinely defeating lawsuits brought by smokers (and families of deceased smokers), tobacco companies became more vulnerable. In 1998, they agreed to pay $206 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 46 states, who were seeking compensation for costs to the public related to smoking-related illnesses.

It’s worth noting the year that the first tobacco manufacturer acknowledged that cigarettes cause cancer: 1997. By then smoking was already in decline. In most cases now, people can no longer smoke inside their workplaces; inside public buildings and sometimes not even near the entrances of those buildings; in public parks or on beaches; and even not in some casinos, which were just about the last refuge for smokers. Many people who might still want to smoke can’t afford it: High taxes have driven the price of a pack of cigarettes above $10 in some states and above $14 in New York. About 18 percent of American adults now smoke — fewer than one in five. Tobacco’s shift from integral part of American life to its fringes took about half a century.

I still have a little bit of a hard time imagining American culture without football being an integral part of it, but we’re starting to see cracks in the system. As more and more parents are becoming increasingly worried about the safety and welfare of their children within the sport, fewer and fewer are letting their kids play. This stuff is generational. As fewer kids play the sport, the college level will thin out first and eventually it will trickle up to the NFL.

The league and the sport in general must start to put some meat on the bone when they talk about safety. Right now, it all rings hollow. Whether it be players dying from heat stroke or struggling with intense hardship for the rest of their lives due to concussions, joint damage, missing cartilage, etc, seeing the titans and legends of the sport wither away into depression and painful agony is hard to see. As the curtain is being lifted, we’re seeing the real carnage of the sport.

Football is a great game. Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s soul. I’d hate to see the sport go away completely. I hope the NFL and football as a sport at all levels can find ways to make the game safer for everyone without totally ripping out everything that makes the sport great. It’s a delicate balance and one that will be difficult to traverse. I just hope they make it out on the other side.

*****

New Foo Fighters today

I don’t have enough time to cover all the things I want to say about the Foo Fighters. I like them. I really do. I used to love them. They have written some of my favorite songs. But I dunno, I feel like the Foo Fighters have become sort of caricatures of themselves, writing safe and formulaic generic rock music for a while now.

Today they have a new album out, “Sonic Highways”. It’s definitely ambitious. The band travelled to eight different cities, talked to local music legends in each city, and recorded a song in a studio in that city. It was a pretty cool idea, and from I hear, the resulting HBO documentary has been pretty cool.

But listening to this album, does it really sound like eight songs recorded in eight different cities? Without the context being laid out for us, nobody would have detected the influences on this album. This sounds like a Foo Fighters album. Nothing new or different, the same safe, predictable Foo Fighters rock songs.

Which doesn’t mean the album is bad. It’s really not. It’s a fine album. But so far, there are no memorable stand-out tracks for me. I was hoping we would be able to hear the soul of each city in these songs. But we don’t. There’s nothing inherently DC about the song “The Feast and the Famine”, recorded in our nation’s capital. Grohl, who grew up in the DC hardcore scene, should have at least been able to pull more influence and soul of the scene into the song, but it really never achieves anything like that. Instead, it’s just another Foo Fighters song.

The album is worth checking out. If you’re a Foo Fighters fan, you will find the album pleasant and unobjectionable. If it sounds like I’m down on this album, it’s mostly because I feel like it fails to deliver on its own promise and premise. Had the band just released the album without the ridiculous pretense, maybe I would like it more, I don’t know. Or maybe I’ve reached my saturation point with the Foo Fighters’ music. It’s hard to say. I just wish I liked the album more than I do.

*****

That’s all I have, folks. After last week’s WWW, the Browns won on Thursday, the Cavs won on Friday, the Buckeyes won on Saturday, and the Cavaliers won again last night (we’ll pretend to forget that last Tuesday and Wednesday night happened for the Cavs). Here’s to hoping this week bears similar sports fruit. Have a good one.