The Daily Dose/November 2, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience…
WHAT IN THE HELL’S GOING ON HERE?: The NCAA recently announced they will allow athletes under their jurisdiction to earn money from whomever is willing to pay them for the rights to their names, images and likenesses. With California having already legalized it, and other states planning to do the same, the NCAA manfully decided there was no reason to stand in the way of it, especially since they couldn’t.
Fly In The Ointment: No one, much less the NCAA, has any idea how to implement this, though they better think of something because they set a start date of 2021, so someone better get on their horse here. The issues are so many and so complicated to detail is beyond the scope of this feature.
The NCAA yielded for two reasons, neither of which had anything to do with the best interests of their athletes:
- It won’t cost them anything. The costs will be borne by those paying the athletes. Sure, the NCAA might have to fork over a few bucks in administration costs, but they will gladly do this because:
- It allows the NCAA to put off the issue of paying athletes for for a little bit longer.
Stop Us If You’ve Heard This Before: No one, except maybe Congress, does a better job of simultaneously being pimp and whore than the NCAA. Don’t kid yourself: the NCAA could care less whether or not any of their athletes make any money off this. All they are doing is protecting their territory. The last thing they want to do is share the billions of dollars they take in with the talent that makes it for them. Their only concern is protecting the cash cow that their TV rights fees bring in.
But the first dollars rolling in will whet their whistle and once this door has been cracked open, players will want to open it wider. Eventually NCAA athletes will wise up and get organized and the NCAA will find themselves obliged to allow their member universities to pay their players.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow is cautiously optomistic the leaves might get cleaned up this week. Today’s Diary.
Looking at the forecast for the next few days, it’s supposed to be sunny and warming up above freezing leaving preliminary hope The Wife and I might be able to get some yard work done Thursday…The leaves are all fallen off the trees and we don’t want to leave them lie all winter like last year when The Wife was away working for the retailer for weeks at a time and while I could be bothered to rake the leaves into piles, I couldn’t be bothered to put the piled leaves into trash bags…This year, of course, we have the leaf blower I bought, but with our early winter we haven’t been able to use it yet.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
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On This Date
In 1953 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia is overthrown by his brother Faisal. It was a mere formality, as Saud had ceded power to Faisal in March when he was forced to make his brother regent. Saud went into exile in Geneva and other European cities before taking up residence in Egypt before moving to Greece, where he died of a heart attack in 1969. One of the reasons King Saud may have been deposed was from a complete lack of focus from having over three dozen wives and 109 children. King Faisal reigned until his assassination in 1975 by a nephew.
In 1997 – Eric Metcalf of the San Diego Chargers ties two NFL records when he returns two punts for touchdowns in a 38-31 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. The second return for a touchdown was the eighth of Metcalf’s career, tying the record established by Jack Christiansen and Rick Upchurch, a record he would break later in the season. Metcalf also tied the record for most punts returned for touchdowns in a game, a record that still stands and has been accomplished many times. Metcalf retired following the 2002 season with ten punt returns for touchdowns, and the record is now held by Devin Hester with 14.
In 1968 – The Beatles are at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the sixth of nine consecutive weeks with Hey Jude. The song went to #1 in 14 other countries, including Great Britain, Yugoslavia and Japan, was Billboard’s biggest song of the year, ranked 12th on Billboard’s 60th anniversary Hot 100 last year and remains the group’s biggest American hit. Hey Jude was the Beatles’ 16th #1 hit (of 20) in the US and their 15th (of 17) in their native Britain. The song was written by Paul McCartney to help console Julian Lennon following the breakup of his parents, John and Cynthia Lennon, and was originally titled Hey Jules.
Quotebook
The Buddha’s sacrifices are not of animals, but of the animal in the self.
Gore Vidal
Creation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The Rochester Royals won the 1950-51 NBA title, defeating the New York Knicks 4 games to 3 in the final round.
Today’s Stumper
How many #2 songs have the Beatles had on the Billboard Hot 100? – Answer next time!
