Wrong Answers Only Wednesday: Brian Flores' lawsuit as a generational wealth explainer, Olympic bidding, and Erin O'Toole's playlist
Welcome back to where we take imagined questions as a set up for discussing what might not be talked about enough with the topics of the day.
Sags, how can white people back ex-Miami coach Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL, and the Indigenous-led bid for another Vancouver/Whistler Olympic games, without make it about themselves? — G.W., Barrie, Ont.
Trick question; got to defer to someone else — someone who is not a mid-40s treaty lead inhabitant who needs something stronger than SPF-60 sunblock in the summer. Also, our kind will always make it about ourselves and think we can improve on centuries-old customs and products. And that’s the story of how Beyond Meat was invented.
A thought bubble, though, is this all comes back to generational wealth, and who gets to tell the stories, and who gets to control the means of production. This is hardly an original thought. It is the through line of Stephen Soderbergh’s 2019 film, High Flying Bird, where André Holland plays a basketball agent who schemes to put “more power behind the ball” during an interminable NBA lockout.
Everyone knows the power structure of the NFL. The principal investors1 in the teams are white. Seventy per cent of the players are Black. (Note: This is the oft-quoted figure in the media, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says it is 57.5 per cent.) In between, at the middle-management level, five out of every six head coaches, general managers, coordinators and quarterback coaches are white.
The former wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson was on The Problem With Jon Stewart several weeks ago and pointed out that the economics of the NFL enforce the racial inequities. Even a mediocre midsized-market team — Minnesota Vikings, perfect example! — has a valuation of about US$3 billion.
Johnson pointed out that is way out of reach of the Black investor class in North America. (Fewer than 1 per cent of billionaires in the United States are Black.) Paraphrasing from memory, he noted there is only the scale of capital and clout to become the majority investor in an NBA franchise, à la Michael Jordan with the Charlotte Hornets.
Starting from scratch is impossible . Way back when, a teacher pointed out that this is the nature with money. It is hard to turn $5,000 into $10,000. But $50 million will inevitably become $100 million. No amount of sloganeering overrides that.
So, the reflexive opinion is that, wherever possible, equity and institutional structures should be signed over. There are a lot of perpetually unsuccessful NFL franchises that never win and are passed down through inheritances should be. Transfer them over at well below market value. The Ford and McCaskey families in Detroit and Chicago can get in queue for expansion franchises.
That will never happen, I know.
Switching to Canada, while it’s easy to be cynical about Olympic bidding, one should hear out the idea of the Lilwat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations taking the lead on a bid to host the 2030 Olympics. The word “legacy” should always send a chill down your spine, but at least the moving and the shaking would be shared better.
What is the one take on the Winter Olympics that you cannot get enough of? — B.A., Madison, WI
Oh, what the world needs now is another writer to call curling “ice shuffleboard,” someone to call the entire enterprise a glorified X-Games, and a third, probably from Postmedia, to bash the team event in figure skating.
Once in a while, even jerkasses have to make space just let a little fun in. Besides, my bliss is watching genetically superior people eat a mouthful of snow. Alpine, freestyle, does not matter.
“Washington Commanders” does not exactly roll off one’s tongue. Is there any reason why this was a good choice? — D.S., Richmond, Va.
Whelp, it is a perfect allegory for Washington, D.C.: taking an easy job and then failing spectacularly, in spite of having resources 98 per cent of the world would envy. MY COLUMN:
And how did no one perk up to the possibility that this would be shortened to Washington Commies?
What Neil Young song do you think Erin O’Toole has on repeat right now? — T.H., Brighton, Ont.
It would have to be “Campaigner,” old Neil’s 1976 ballad where he gave humanity to, of all people, Richard Nixon. A rumination that “sums up the melancholy, the slow motion sadness of doing the things that we know we need to do, but that don’t really make us human,” would be soothing on Erin’s ears now that he’s doomed never to be prime minister, the job he was raised to believe would be his one day.
The 21st-century journalist should feel a little for O’Toole. Both, after all, have spent their lives aspiring to a job that has gradually disappear. The centrist, blue-suit establishment Tory party O’Toole was groomed to lead was vaporized by Darth Harper in the early 2000s, right around the time newsrooms started shrinking.
Seriously, one has to feel for a dude who played by the rules, notwithstanding hiring the Canada Proud guys to shape his 2020 leadership campaign. O’Toole was born into the management class, and he was at that impressionable stage, pre-teen to early teens, during the Brian Mulroney landslide in ’84, and a repeat majority win the free trade election of ’88. That’s the landscape he lives in, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau probably lives in it too.
Although, for those scoring at home, Trudeau has now outlasted more Conservative leaders than his father did, in less than half the time in office.
But that late 20th-century electoral terrain is long gone. The big structural problem in Canadian politics is that we have pro-rep wishes and coalition-party dreams in a first-past-the-post reality. This is intractable, since it would take all-party agreement to create electoral reform, and the Conservatives’ official position is Does Not Play Well With Others.
Back in 1997, Bob Rae, a short-lister for the best living prime minister Canada never had, said conservative parties were hooped because they didn’t relate well to diversity.
For a time, Harper postponed the inevitable through data mining to discover voters open to the right kind of populist messaging. The Liberals, as they do, borrowed that and improved on that, but it also took the air out of any notions of a Big Tent existing again.
That’s how O’Toole ends up looking like a hapless substitute teacher in a classroom of clowns who only want to Own The Libs. Oh, the irony.
What tends to happen when a major sports championship matches two teams with little big-stage pedigree, like the Super Bowl matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams? — E.A., Kelowna, B.C.
Let’s do quick nuts-and-bolts football take first. Just say that you do not trust Cincinnati’s offensive line to hold up against the Rams pass rush that is fronted by Aaron Donald and Von Miller. Lines win championships.
But the experience when a final matches two teams that have never won it all in their current homes is not so good. Look at it that last time it happened in each of the big four ball/stick leagues. It feels like each of those matchups overpromised and underdelivered:
MLB
2010: San Francisco Giants over Texas Rangers, 4-1
The Giants were 0-for-51 on the west coast. The Rangers had never won a playoff series before that fall.
But the matchup was a dud. The San Frans of Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum, Pablo Sandoval, et al., outscored Texas 29-12 during a five-games win.
The real fall classic might have been in the second-last stage of the playoffs, when the Giants squelched the Philadelphia Phillies’ designs on becoming a baseball version of a superteam. Their six-game win deprived Roy Halladay of playing in the World Series.
NBA
2006: Miami Heat over Dallas Mavericks, 4-2
If David Lynch ever made a basketball movie, this would have been the script. All anyone really remembers is the shady, stage-managed feel from the third game onward, when Heat guard Dwyane Wade started getting every call from the officials. That helped the Heat, after double-digit defeats on Dallas’ home floor, surmount an 0-2 series deficit.
Wade played 178 playoff games across a hall of fame career. In Game 2, he had the 105th-best game score of his playoff career.
In Miami’s do-or-done Game 3, Wade pulled off what stands as his seventh-best playoff performance. And the Heat came back. Dallas suffered the dubious suspension of bench scorer Jerry Stackhouse for a flagrant-2 foul on Shaquille O’Neal, depriving them off a strong offensive option. Then there was the no-call on a possible backcourt violation by Wade on Miami’s last possession of the pivotal Game 5. Before he, you guessed it, got Miami over with two free throws.
All the material was there, but the studio, or NBA head office, had to ruin it. All anyone remembers is the refball. And Dallas got their title five seasons later, and Wade got two with LeBron James and Chris Bosh.
NFL (prior to 2021)
1999: St. Louis Rams over Tennessee Titans, 23-16
The NFL can build up the dramatic finish all it wants. As you remember, Rams linebacker Mike Jones tackled the Titans’ Kevin Dyson on the one-yard line as time expired.
However, the game took a while to get going. No one scored a touchdown in the first two quarters, when the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf did whatever it wanted until it reached the red zone. That caused people to start searching for the exits, and the Disney-produced halftime show cleared the room.
Disney Super Bowl 34 Halftime show - YouTube
NHL
2018: Washington Capitals over Vegas Golden Knights, 4-1
It captured the Gary Bettman era, so there is that.
On one side, a team from a big east coast media market, fronted by a justifiably promoted superstar whose sins are excused by hockey culture. Alex Ovechkin is the greatest pure goal scorer whose body has held up for 15 or more seasons, but are we not supposed to mention that he is a big Vladimir Putin supporter?
On the other hand, the Golden Knights making the Stanley Cup final in Year 1 fulfilled every vision that the forever-craving-validation NHL wanted when it decided to be the first major league to plant its flag in Las Vegas. As manufactured as that all was, especially with the terms of the expansion draft, the authenticity of the buy-in from the players and the city seemed credible.
Sports can be a solace and a welcome distraction. Las Vegas residents needed one after the mass shooting on the Strip just days before the Golden Knights’ first regular-season game.
The final was a fizzle. Like a new administration in the White House, or a long weekend in Las Vegas, it held immediate excitement and promise. Then it just went sideways.
Vegas won a Game 1 that had actually three lead changes. Then the Capitals adapted, and Vegas led for all of 10½ minutes as Washington completed a five-game win, all in mostly low-scoring games, because hockey.
What is the over/under on how many days before you do this again? — B.C., Temiskaming, Ont.
Let’s put it at 7½. It had been 112 days since the last post, but it won’t take that long till the next one.
That is more than enough for today. Please stay safe, and be kind.
Call me a bleeding heart, but this is the term I will use for “owner” until someone suggests an improvement.