Losing My Perspicacity May 24, 2024

Scottie Scheffler isn’t off the legal hook yet, Mahomes and Reid whiff on their Harrison Butker comments, A landmark NCAA settlement, James Dolan continues to suck, And hasn’t anyone made/eaten the Google pizza yet?

Author

Julie DiCaro
May 23, 2024

Happy Free Friday! A special shoutout to all my Premium subscribers, for giving me some grace for having to junk yesterday’s newsletter. As I said, what should have been a quick flight from Chicago to Nashville turned into an odyssey lasting nearly 12 hours, and by the time I made it to my hotel, I didn’t have the bandwidth to prepare for yesterday’s keynote speech and get the newsletter out. I wasn’t planning on doing a newsletter on Memorial Day, but since we had to skip yesterday, I’ll throw something together to make it up to all of you. And a friendly reminder that there will be no newsletter next Thursday and Friday, as I’m having surgery on Wednesday that will likely knock me out of commission for a few days. I’m planning to lay on the couch in a painkiller-induced haze and watch Bridgerton, but if any big sporting news breaks and I’m not out of my mind on drugs, I’ll try to get something out. Maybe even if I AM out of my mind on drugs, because I’m all for experimentation in my writing.

If you’d like to receive Losing My Perspicacity in your inbox five days a week, you can upgrade to a Premium subscription. This will help me avoid having to grovel at the feet of Big Media for another job that will probably lay off everyone in six months’ time. Media is so much fun these days.

In today’s LMP, it looks like Scottie Scheffler isn’t off the legal hook yet, for some reason we are still talking about Harrison Butker, a landmark NCAA settlement, James Dolan continues to suck, and why hasn’t anyone made/eaten the Google pizza yet?

LPD is still trying to jam up Scottie Scheffler

Generally, pro golf is not a place for huge scandalous headlines (at least not since Tiger got divorced), but the Scottie Scheffler story seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Last week, multiple outlets reported that Louisville prosecutors were going to drop the four pending charges against Scheffler, including second-degree assault on a police officer, because the entire incident, which led to Scheffler’s arrest and booking mere hours before his tee time at the PGA Championship, was a huge misunderstanding. Either that is no longer the case or it never was, because Louisville Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel says they will let the legal process play out. 

To its credit, Lousiville released two videos that kind of sort of showed what happened leading up to Scheffler’s arrest.

The legal process, however, might be more complicated than it first appeared, as the city released the results of the investigation into the officer who arrested Scheffler, and he has reportedly been disciplined for not turning on his body cam, which seems to be an epidemic among the rank and file in police departments whenever anything newsworthy is going down.

Moreover, the officer who claimed he was dragged by Scheffler’s car and sustained injuries in the process, seems to have a history of being disciplined for not following department procedures. Quelle Surprise.

(Office Bryan)Gillis was found to be at-fault in a couple of accidents and got in trouble for not showing up to court.

In December 2012, he drove an intoxicated civilian in a police vehicle with the lights and sirens during a non-emergency while on duty. He also did doughnuts in a business parking lot. LMPD suspended him for five days, unpaid.

In March 2019, Gillis got in trouble for a police pursuit. An internal investigation found he violated standard operating procedure by pursuing a vehicle where the driver didn’t commit a violent felony and wasn’t wanted on a warrant. He also failed to notify MetroSafe dispatch before beginning the pursuit.

It’s unclear what, if any, discipline Gillis faced for that incident.

I’d imagine that anyone who has been a cop long enough has some infractions in their file, though the whole “doing donuts in a business parking lot” is somewhat concerning, because (let’s be honest) it’s a certain kind of adult man who still finds donuts to be entertaining. But Scheffler’s attorney seems to have plenty to work with here, particularly if a video that shows the arresting officer exaggerated the whole “dragging” thing, which ESPN’s Bob Wischusen, who witnessed the event, seemed to suggest

When [Scheffler] drove past him, the cop got very angry pursuing the car. … My impression was he was kind of running alongside chasing the car, and maybe he tripped and fell,” Wischusen said.

For now, the saga continues. Scheffler’s next court date is June 3.

Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid weigh in on Harrison Butker

Gawd. Like two days after I praised Patrick Mahomes for his comments on women’s sports, he goes and says this garbage about Harrison Butker’s now infamously terrible commencement speech:

“I know Harrison. I've known him for seven years and I judge him by the character that he shows every single day and that's a good person. That's someone who cares about the people around him, cares about his family and wants to make a good impact in society. When you're in a locker room, there's a lot of people from a lot of different areas in life and they have a lot of different views on everything.

"We're not always going to agree, and there's certain things that he said that I don't necessarily agree with, but I understand the person that he is, and he is trying to do whatever he can to lead people in the right direction. That might not be the same values as I have, but at the same time, I'm going to judge him by the character that he shows every single day. That's a great person, and we'll continue to move along and try to help build each other up to make ourselves better every single day."

And while I never expect much out of Andy Reid, he also weighed in, which is more than we can say about the commutation of his kid’s sentence for putting a four-year old girl in a coma:

“I talk to Harrison all the time. I didn't talk to him about this. I didn't think we needed to. We're a microcosm of life. Everybody is from different areas, different religions, different races, and so, we all get along, we all respect each other's opinions and not necessarily do we go by those, but we respect everybody to have a voice.

"It's the great thing about America and we're just, like I said, a microcosm of that. My wish is that everybody could kind of follow that."

Maybe we need to start a #EndSexism and #EndHomophobia campaign for the NFL, because no, Butker’s comments were not emblematic of someone who has great “character” or opinions that must be respected. I love living in a country where telling women their greatest role is serving their husbands is chalked up to a “difference of opinion.”

The acceptance of Butker’s comments reminds me of when former NFLer Reggie White gave a speech wherein he stereotyped just about every race and ethnicity he could think of and was rightfully condemned for it. That was in 1998, and I guess people only cared because they assumed he was stereotyping the men of those races, religions, and ethnicities? Apparently reducing women to the stereotypical trope of a happy homemaker is just fine. Because women and the LGBTQ+ communities are the marginalized groups you can loudly and publicly be intolerant of, and then claim it’s your “religion” that made you do it.

Let me be clear: I do not care that Harrison Butker is nice to the other bros in his locker room. I don’t care that Andy Reid wishes we all could just get along. I don’t care that the Chiefs are in damage-control mode and want all this to go away. That’s Harrison Butker’s problem, not mine. I care very much that Harrison Butker was a fucking misogynist troll in a very public manner and the NFL is more concerned about not rocking the boat than calling out bigotry when they see it. Additionally, the fact that both Mahomes and Reid are ignoring Butker’s very obvious homophobia in an effort to get the women to calm down is infuriating and wrong. I expect less than the bare minimum from the NFL, and they managed to fall short of even that. If I were a Chiefs fan, which I decidedly am not, I would abandon this franchise faster than Harrison Butker wiping out on a kickoff.

NCAA deal to allow schools to directly pay athletes

The NCAA and the Power Five conferences are moving forward with a deal that will settle three outstanding anti-trust lawsuits and will result in allowing schools to directly pay student-athletes for the first time in history.

The NCAA will pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years to past and current athletes, sources told ESPN. Sources said the parties also have agreed to a revenue-sharing plan allowing each school to share up to roughly $20 million per year with its athletes.

"The five autonomy conferences and the NCAA agreeing to settlement terms is an important step in the continuing reform of college sports that will provide benefits to student-athletes and provide clarity in college athletics across all divisions for years to come," NCAA president Charlie Baker and the five power conference commissioners said in a joint statement Thursday evening.

****

All Division I athletes dating back to 2016 are eligible to receive a share as part of the settlement class. In exchange, athletes cannot sue the NCAA for other potential antitrust violations and drop their complaints in three open cases -- House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.

As in any legal case, the settlement still has to be approved by the federal judge presiding over all three cases.

Given that 10 years ago, the idea of paying student-athletes seemed like a pipe dream, it’s amazing how quickly the old guard fell in line. In hindsight, once the Supreme Court signaled its disdain for the financial exploitation of college athletes by their schools, the NCAA probably saw the writing on the wall. While there are still other fights out there to be had (whether or not student-athletes are university employees or can organize as a union are two big ones), this settlement seems to go a long way towards resolving, at least in part, the major problem of colleges essentially exploiting teen labor for millions of dollars every year.

The settlement is expected to be submitted to Judge Claudia Wilkin within the next month or so, but revenue sharing between schools and athletes will not kick in until sometime in 2025.

Several athletic directors told ESPN that they are hopeful the settlement lays the groundwork for a system in which success on the field is less dependent on which schools can spend the most money. Sources said some of the challenges to solve include figuring out how to distribute the revenue-sharing money in a way that meets market needs while complying with Title IX laws and whether schools can regain control of the marketplace for college athletes, which has been outsourced during the past three years to booster collectives, which pay athletes via name, image and likeness endorsement deals.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how all this plays out. I can’t wait to see how mad Dabo Swinney is about all this.

Knicks owner James Dolan continues to be the worst

Why am I not surprised to learn that the NBA owner who accused Anucha Browne Sanders of making up sexual harassment allegations against Isiah Thomas was the only owner to vote against a WNBA expansion team for Toronto?

Just as a jury found Browne Sanders’ claims credible (and ordered Dolan to pay her more than $11 million), the other NBA team governors voted to award Toronto the first WNBA team outside the United States.

This is great news for the WNBA. With both the addition of the Golden State Valkyries, who will begin play in 2025, and the Toronto team beginning play in 2026, there will be 24 more desperately needed roster spots for professional women’s hoopers. As I’ve written before, WNBA roster spots are extremely limited, and not every player drafted in the first two rounds is guaranteed to make a team.

As for Dolan, this isn’t the first time he’s voted against awarding a WNBA team to a city. He also voted against the Valkyries going to the Bay Area. And then there’s this:

The Madison Square Garden Company announced in November 2017 it intended to sell the New York Liberty. That coincided with a move out of Madison Square Garden to Westchester County Center, a much smaller venue that was both far outside of New York City and simply not suited for high-level professional basketball.

James Dolan is a small little man.

Whither the Google Pizza?

You can tell how far internet journalism has fallen in that no one has (as far as I’ve seen) yet created and eaten the AI Google pizza. If you didn’t see, Google’s fancy new AI search, which I am desperately trying to figure out how to bypass, suggested that we use Elmer’s glue to keep the cheese from sliding off a pizza, which is innovative if not edible.

From The Verge:

Imagine this: you’ve carved out an evening to unwind and decide to make a homemade pizza. You assemble your pie, throw it in the oven, and are excited to start eating. But once you get ready to take a bite of your oily creation, you run into a problem — the cheese falls right off. Frustrated, you turn to Google for a solution.

“Add some glue,” Google answers. “Mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer’s glue in with the sauce. Non-toxic glue will work.”

So, yeah, don’t do that. As of writing this, though, that’s what Google’s new AI Overviews feature will tell you to do. The feature, while not triggered for every query, scans the web and drums up an AI-generated response. The answer received for the pizza glue query appears to be based on a comment from a user named “fucksmith” in a more than decade-old Reddit thread, and they’re clearly joking.

Okay, so Google’s AI search results are a disaster, which I think we all anticipated. It seems the tech bros who run the world are hell-bent on cramming AI down our collective gullet, no matter how poorly it works or how little we asked for it. It’s almost like having a program scour the internet for “relevant” query responses is a bad way to go about this. I know! What if we hired people to write the things people want to know about? Just spitballing here. We could call it .. answering, or responding, or reporting... or something.

But if you’re looking for proof that internet journalism is all but dead, it’s this: No one, apparently, has actually made and tasted the Elmer’s glue pizza. I can confidently tell you, as someone who has been extremely online since 2005, that old-school Deadspin would have been all over this. And if not Deadspin, someone else. These days, everyone is busy writing about whatever Google Trends tell them to and making slideshows about which Kardashian is the richest or whatever, but there was a time when journalism was real! And wrote about issues that mattered to people, like the Google glue pizza.

Maybe if I get to 500 subscribers I will make and taste the Google pizza. That’s how dedicated I am to the craft. Make journalism great again.

Have a great long weekend. See you all on Monday.

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