Sunday Morning Coming Down

 Coach K, the great Duke Basketball Coach has announced his retirement at the end of the coming NCAA Men's Basketball season.  He's coached 40 years and I'm hoping he has a good retirement.  At his mid 70's he and the school have done a good job of picking a new coach early, sending the new coach out to recruit his own players and let Coach K have the good bye tour he deserves. The NCAA is in a state of flux. NIL (name, image, and likeness) is being implemented in a half assed manner that may hinder recruiting somewhat.  There will be more litigation regarding paying players something and the Supreme Court seems to have some interest in the anti-trust issues that exist in an amateur sports concept that is a fiction for schools, coaches, players and media and gamblers.  Blue chip players leaving early, the G League, the transfer portal and COVID 19 are making aspects of college coaching an increasingly difficult. He has little to gain by staying on.   T...

If  Bob Baffert of horse racing fame  had spent more time supervising his workers, his legal bills might have been avoided entirely.  He is not blameless. I liked Bob Baffert, he has trained some really good horses and won more than his share of Triple Crown races. However, a Washington Post article pointed to a fact that is hard to explain, refute or deny.  74 of his horses in California have died while he was their trainer since 2000.  The Washington Post story lists several other California trainers. “He’ll do anything to win, and he’s got all his bases covered politically,” Barry Irwin, owner of 2011 Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, said of Baffert. “And because of that, he has become arrogant as hell. He’s Mr. Teflon.”     Winning a race when you are an owner or a fan of the sport is fun.   If I am watching a race I almost always kind of close my eyes and hope every horse and jockey comes home in one piece.  I'm almost sure eve...

Three folks that shoulda, coulda, and woulda retired, if they had known then what they know now. Mike Flynn The general probably would have been fine if he had just done what most retired military folks have done.  Working in the military industrial complex for and industrial giant isn't a bad second career.  It's possible the plum jobs are reserved for academy graduates who are comfortable on Capitol hill. I recall watching an RT(Russia Today) broadcast on my cable system.  It mentioned General Flynn's attendance at a gala dinner being held by the Russian media outlet.  I really thought it was strange that he had a seat next to Vladimir Putin given his previous job in the Obama Administration.  On December 10, 2015, Flynn attended a gala dinner in  Moscow  in honor of  RT  (formerly "Russia Today"), a Russian government-owned English-language media outlet, on which he made semi-regular appearances as an analyst after he retired from U.S. gov...

Difficult does not mean impossible.  I have been in more than a few conversations about people not wanting to work.  Lately the reason given for people not wanting to work is that they are making more money in the latest round of COVID 19 UI. Moving right along, if you had a business that went out of business after getting a PPP loan you are not the only one.  Other businesses were able to hold on, some barely and others were better placed to survive.  Maybe they didn't need the money and some were crooks. If you are a landlord and you are having trouble collecting rent, the multiple choice answers for not getting your rent are, a) my tenant stopped looking for a job, b) where my tenant worked went out of business or has downsized, c) schools have not reopened, d) UI payments are too high.??   At long last, Florida’s state government is accepting applications for more than $800 million in federal emergency rental assistance funds designed to help struggling...

BB explained that some of the hay must have been contaminated by jimson weed and that a groom peeing in a horse's stall after taking a cold medicine caused another positive, and "salon pas" still another positive test and small amount of a cream for skin aliment left a tiny amount an allowable/ unallowable drug still in the horse's system.   And you believe the CDC's mask rules are a mess? The fans of Bob Baffert and D. Wayne Lucas are of the opinion that the Kentucky Derby test result were so tiny that it had no impact on the race result. All of the above may be true, and human nature being what it is still wondering.

The name of the drug which screwed up at least two Triple Crown races this year is Otomax.  It treats otitis in pets which is an inflammation of the ear and apparently dermatitis infections on a horse's coat. You need a vet's prescription and the label clearly says the product contains betamethasone which can be prescribed must be completely out of the horses system on race day. So out of an "abundance of caution" they continued to use Otomax, believing it would be out of the system by race day.  It's been reported that might take a few days.  Who knows for sure?  And in retrospect a small amount of betamethasone showed up in the post race test. Obviously, the Baffert stable of  owners wants to win and Baffert produces winners in the biggest races. Reviewing his behavior regarding Justify, a Triple Crown Winner, Charlatan, Gamine, and now Medina Spirit is troubling for Bob Baffert.  Sports need good stories and this is not a good story. Some will minimize t...

Horse Racing is a sport to some, a gambling platform for some, an entertainment venue, a rural farming enterprise, a business, a job, and a way of life. During this pandemic horse racing has had to fight for it's survival.  And just yesterday, the most famous personality in the sport of kings was busted for running a horse in the Kentucky Derby, that won, and was subsequently disqualified for having a drug in his system that could be a performance enhancer of sorts.  The party's involved have not been convicted but the drug showed up in a post race drug test. Is this a big deal?  For a sport and an industry that depends on gambling to survive, this is a huge problem.  Nobody makes you go to the races and bet on horses.  It's a voluntary activity, it can be thrilling and dangerous at the same time.  Some horses like to run more than others.  Some horses run faster than others.  Some jockeys are better than others and some trainers are better than...