2026 Winter Olympics Thoughts

Every four years, the Winter Olympics causes millions of people to spend a couple of weeks paying attention to speed skating, luge, ski jumping, the giant slalom, and other sports they normally wouldn't care about. The 2026 Winter Games, held in various venues across northern Italy, has come and gone, and I have some thoughts:

All Hail Norway: More people live in the Houston metropolitan region than live in the entire nation of Norway, but that didn't stop the Folks from the Fjords from dominating these Olympics. They won the most golds (18) and the most medals overall (41) in the Milano Cortina Games. This is the third Winter Olympics in a row where Norway has ended up at the top of the medal chart. 

Norway's medal haul also makes them the most efficient country in terms of medals per capita, with the Norwegians winning a medal for every 140,000 people. (The United States, by comparison, won one medal per every 10 million people.)

How good is Norway? The IOC is thinking about eliminating some events because Norwegian domination of them has rendered them uncompetitive.

The United States Did Alright: Team USA came in second to Norway, both in gold medals (12) and number of medals overall (33). The 12 gold medals surpassed the United States' previous record of 10 set at the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, and the 33 overall medals they snagged was the most since their 37-medal haul in Vancouver in 2010. 

Highlights include team USA's Mens Hockey team, which snagged its first gold since the 1980 Miracle on Ice. The Womens Hockey team won gold as well. Alisa Liu brought home the first gold in womens figure skating since Sarah Hughes did it back in Salt Lake City in 2002. American speedskater Jordan Stolz set two Olympic records and claimed two gold medals in his performance at these games. I could go on, but suffice to say the United States represented well.

Host nation Italy, Germany and Japan round out the top five overall medal winners. For those who might be interested, Germany had the most "Aluminum Medals," i.e. fourth-place finishes. Norway was second in this category, suggesting that they were very close to dominating even more than they actually did.

Quad God Chokejob: One American athlete who did not do well was figure skater Ilia Malinin. I am a Houston sports fan, so I know what a good chokejob looks like. And I gotta say, because I watched it live: the "Quad God's" epic meltdown was indeed spectacular.

Much has since been written about the psychological aspects of Malinin's choke. And yes, the pressure got to him. But here's the thing: Malinin embraced the "Quad God" nickname (referring to his ability to perform quadruple-turn jumps on the ice). He even has an apparel line with that nickname. 

If you're going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk (or, in this case, skate the skate). Especially on the world's biggest stage. Malinin couldn't do it when it counted the most.

I hope the "Quad God" returns in 2030, because he truly is an amazing talent on the ice. But I also hope he brings a dose of humility with him next time.

South America's First: Before these Games, no South American nation had ever won a medal in the Winter Olympics. I've always found that fact curious, because countries like Argentina and Chile experience real winters and have legitimate winter sports facilities where those country's athletes can train. 

South America's Winter Olympic drought was finally broken in these games, not by anybody from Chile or Argentina but by Lucas Pinheiro Braathen of Brazil, who took gold in the giant slalom. 

As his last name might suggest, his father is Norwegian. Which likely explains his win.

In addition to Brazil, Georgia (the nation, not the state) also won their first-ever Winter Olympic medal.

NBC Olympic Coverage Update. Anybody who's read this blog for awhile (or who even read my Daily Cougar article from three decades ago) knows how I like to complain about NBC's Olympics coverage. In that regard, I really have nothing new to say. The live daytime programming was actually okay, if you were able to watch it. The prime-time coverage was its usual dreck, with heavy editing (they didn't even show the first performance of eventual mens figure skating gold medalist Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan) and the goofy human-interest stories (they seriously focus-grouped these things and got good feedback?) that interrupted the events they were trying to show. The attention the broadcast paid to Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart was just... weird.

All that said, I think we've reached a point of equilibrium when it comes to NBC's Olympics coverage: as long has you keep your expectations low and know how to navigate their offerings (via NBC, broadcast partners like USA Network, or streaming platforms like Peacock), you can probably make the overall coverage work for you. They'll still show their heavily-edited slop during prime time because old habits die hard, but the audience for that particular product continues to shrink and in the era of social media they know they can no longer present it as "live." 

And I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: replacing Bob fucking Costas with Mike Tirico was the best thing NBC ever did in regards to their Olympics coverage.

I wonder what it feels like

Last night, as I watched the Seattle Seahawks win their second NFL championship, I wondered what it must feel like to watch your football team win the Super Bowl and lift up the Lombardy Trophy. 

Unfortunately, I will never know, because my football team is the Houston Texans.

No, I'm not still bitter

Last June, I made a trip to Nashville, Tennessee for a family reunion. It was my first visit to Music City since I was a kid. 

While I was there, I spent some time walking around downtown. I listened to some live music, enjoyed some Tennessee whiskey, and took in some landmarks.

I got to see the Ryman Auditorium, which is the historic home of the Grand Ole Opry...

...and paid a visit to the interesting Johnny Cash museum. (Did you know Johnny Cash, while working as a radio interceptor for the US Air Force in Germany, was the first American to learn of Joseph Stalin's death? Or that the Man in Black appeared on Sesame Street in the early '70s?)

I also took a stroll across the Cumberland River on the pedestrian bridge. There I saw Nissan Stadium, the home of the Tennessee Titans. It opened in 1999, two years after Bud Adams moved what was then known as the Houston Oilers to Tennessee. 

As somebody who grew up a Houston Oilers fan, I saluted it appropriately.

I'm not still bitter. Not at all.

The Paris Olympics

Another Summer Olympiad has come and gone. I have some thoughts.

Did we win or tie? The United States won the most medals overall, with 126. China came in second, with 91. Great Britain, host nation France, and Australia rounded out the top five.

However, the United States is one of the few countries that prefers to tally national Olympics performance by overall medals; the rest of the world seems to prefer a "gold first" tallying system. Under that method, the United States and China are tied as the most successful National Olympic Committees in the XXXIII Olympiad, with 40 medals apiece. 

But even that method has a tie-breaker: the number of silver medals awarded. In that case, the United States still comes out ahead because its athletes won 44 silvers, to China's 27.

Italy had the most "aluminum metals," i.e. fourth-place finishes, with 26. I'd make fun, except that the United States came in second in that category, with 22. I've always felt bad for athletes who just miss the podium. It must almost feel better to come in 5th or 6th, rather than 4th.

Welcome to the medals club! Albania, Cape Verde, Dominica and St. Lucia all won their first-ever medals at these Olympics, the latter two winning golds. The Refugee Olympic Team, which has been competing since 2016, won its first medal as well. 

Botswana and Guatemala have previously medaled but won their first-ever golds in Paris.

Medals per capita. The aforementioned Dominica and St. Lucia leave Paris as the world leaders in the production of gold medals per capita, with one gold medal per 67,400 and 184,100 residents, respectively. For comparison's sake, the United States won one gold for every 8,397,000 residents, while China won one gold for every 35,242,000 residents. 

The most productive nation in overall medals is Grenada, with one medal per 56,300 residents. On the other end of the spectrum is India, which didn't win any gold medals and whose athletes only produced one medal per 235,152,000 residents. There are many reasons as to why the world's most populous nation underperforms in the Olympics.  

They weren't missed. Russia might be a traditional Olympics heavyweight, but that country (and neighboring Belorussia) were completely absent from the 2024 Olympics, both having been banned due to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 

Given that Russia's "ban" from the 2020 summer games (as well as the 2022 winter games) following a massive doping scandal was a complete joke, I can't say I was upset at the country's complete absence from this year's games. The IOC should continue to ban Russia from all Olympic contests until at least Vladimir Putin dies.

A handful of Russian and Belorussian athletes were able to compete in Paris as part of an "Individual Neutral Athletes" team.

Want to see how your favorite college performed in the Olympics? There's a table for that. It ranks the number of medals produced per NCAA-participating institution, regardless of whether the student-athletes of a given university competed for the United States or some other nation. Stanford is the clear winner with 39 medals, with Cal and Texas a distant second and third, respectively. 

The University of Houston accounted for two medals, both in the men's 4x100 relay. South Africa's Shaun Maswanganyi, who won silver, and Great Britain's Louie Hinchliffe, who won bronze, both compete on the Cougar track and field team under coach (and Olympic legend) Carl Lewis.

They just keep getting faster. Speaking of Carl Lewis, 40 years ago he won gold in the Men's 100 meter sprint with a time of 9.99 seconds. That wouldn't have even been fast enough to qualify for the final round of the 2024 race. American Noah Lyles broke a 20-year American drought in the event by winning gold with a time of 9.784 - just five one-thousandths of a second ahead of Jamaica's Kishane Thompson - in a finish that even had the announcer fooled.

Unlikely up-and-comer? The South American nation winning the most medals was Brazil, with 20 (and who thought that country would become a gymnastics powerhouse?). The South American country with the second-highest number of medals was... Ecuador. 

Four years ago I joked about Ecuador becoming an Olympic powerhouse after they won three medals in Tokyo. Obviously they've got a ways to go before they reach that level, but the five medals the Ecuadorians won in Paris matches the total number of medals the county has won in all previous Olympics combined. 

An Urban Olympad. I really enjoyed the city-focused format of these games. From the Opening Ceremony featuring a parade of nations along the Seine, to the Olympic flame being located adjacent to the Louvre (rather than in a stadium), to the beach volleyball court located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, to the bicycle races being held in the city streets, the games' organizers did a great job making all of Paris the backdrop, rather than the fancy, specially-built venues designed to be the centerpieces of previous Olympics. Most of the event venues used for these Olympics were either previously existing or were temporary.

A word on NBC's coverage. If you've read this blog for any length of time you know that I love to trash NBC's Olympics coverage. However, I really don't have a lot to complain about this time around.

For those able to watch it, NBC's daytime coverage was - dare I say it? - actually pretty good. They switched between events as they occurred and provided live look-ins on events being shown on other channels or streaming platforms (and told you where to find them if you wanted to continue watching). Since it was all live there was little in the way of maudlin "human interest" stories and other pointless tidbits that detract from the overall coverage of the games. Sometimes they even covered sports that did not feature American athletes! 

NBC's primetime coverage, on the other hand, was their typical formulaic, over-edited digest that we all love to hate. But even then they finally seems to be getting away from the fiction that their prime-time coverage - which is happening in the wee hours of the morning in Paris - is somehow "live." In an age of streaming services, push notifications and social media, NBC appears to have accepted that the days when a single network can gate keep the entire Olympics are now long gone.

I still think that replacing Bob Costas with Mike Tirico was one of biggest improvements NBC has ever made in regards to their Olympics coverage.  Tirico just needs to brush up on his vexillology before his next Olympics broadcast.

Time lists the twelve most memorable things of the 2024 Olympics, while Yahoo Sports breaks down the biggest events of the games by each day of competition.

Houston to host seven 2026 World Cup matches

The 2026 FIFA World Cup match schedule is set, and Houston is hosting seven games at NRG Stadium: five group stage matches, and two knockout round games.

Houston, we have our @FIFAWorldCup 26™ matches! 🚀

📆 Mark your calendars!

5️⃣ Group Stage matches
1️⃣ Round of 32 match
1️⃣ Round of 16 match #FIFAWorldCup #WeAre26 #WeAreHouston pic.twitter.com/igStlvHeBm

— FIFA World Cup 26 Houston™ (@FWC26Houston) February 4, 2024

It was already known that Houston was going to be a host city for the 2026 World Cup. Now we know the number of games and their dates. Houston is one of sixteen cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada to host the quadrennial tournament, which will be expanding from 32 to 48 teams. 

Next to the Olympics, this is the biggest sports event that Houston can possibly host. It's even bigger than the Super Bowl, when you account for the international audience. Needless to say, local leaders are excited:

Houston Mayor John Whitmire released a statement after Sunday's announcement, "I am thrilled to hear that FIFA has unveiled the game schedule for the 2026 World Cup, including the soccer matches that will be played in the City of Houston. Hosting such a prestigious event will provide an incredible opportunity for our city to showcase its culture, hospitality and infrastructure on a global stage. We are committed to working closely with FIFA to ensure that all preparations are in place to welcome the world and provide an unforgettable experience for players, fans and visitors."

Not to mention the boost it will bring to the local economy.

The opening game of the World Cup will be held at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on June 11, 2026, and the final will be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19, 2026. The entire schedule can be viewed here; if you're interested in tickets, you can register for updates here.

The Texans don't suck anymore

Last Saturday the Houston Texans were thoroughly defeated by the Baltimore Ravens, 10-31, in the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs. The Texans didn''t even score an offensive touchdown.

And I am not upset about it. Not in the least.

If you had told me last August that the Texans - with an 11-38-1 record over the previous three seasons, a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback - would win ten games, the AFC South and make it to the Divisional Round of the playoffs, I would have told you to lay off the drugs. To say that the Texans exceeded expectations in 2023 would be a bit of an understatement. 

Head coach DeMeco Ryans deserves to be named NFL Coach of the Year, and quarterback C.J. Stroud NFL Rookie of the Year, for what they have accomplished this past season. 

There's still a ways to go before the Texans can be considered an elite franchise. They still have some holes to fill and some big decisions to make as the draft and free agency negotiations approach. The NFL, furthermore, did not do the Texans any favors by giving them a brutal 2024 schedule. But the 2023 season laid the groundwork for a successful run: at the very least, the Texans have finally climbed out of the hole that former head coach Bill O'Brien left them in through his mismanagement.

And that is worth celebrating.

Sean Pendergast has more.

The NHL and Houston: be careful what you wish for

Apologies for the lack of new posts over the past couple of months; Corinne and I have been busy (finally!) becoming homeowners. I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

Last week, voters in Tempe, Arizona rejected a proposal to build a new arena for the National Hockey League's Arizona Coyotes. The hockey team, which relocated to Arizona from Winnipeg in 1996 and has previously played in Phoenix and Glendale but now plays in a 5,000-seat facility on the Arizona State University campus, is now left without any good options for a new arena in Arizona and may be looking to relocate to another city. Speculation has flourished that Houston could become the team's new home. 

At first glance it makes sense. Houston is the largest city in the nation without an NHL franchise, and hasn't had a hockey team of any kind since the AHL's Aeros, as well-supported as they were, relocated to Iowa in 2013. The Toyota Center can easily accommodate hockey, and local billionaire and Houston Rockets owner Tillman Fertitta, who holds the lease to Toyota Center, has expressed interest in becoming an NHL owner. The Coyotes are also a geographic fit; they play in the NHL's Central Division along with the Dallas Stars, which sets up the potential for a Houston-Dallas rivalry.

However, there are also some hurdles to be overcome. For one thing, Houston's not the only city looking for a major league hockey team. Salt Lake City and Kansas City (but probably not Quebec City) have also been mentioned as potential future homes for the Coyotes. There's the question as to whether Houston, as big as it is, is really a "hockey town" that can support an NHL franchise. There's also the question as to whether the NHL will accept whatever Fertitta might be willing to pay for the Coyotes. And that's if the Coyotes move at all; the NHL prefers to keep the team in the Phoenix area and will continue looking for new arena options there.

All of which leads to two points I want to make about this topic:

1. I'll believe it when it happens. Houston has been named as a potential home for an NHL franchise, either through expansion or relocation, since the 1990s. It hasn't happened. Over the past thirtysomething years cities like Columbus and Raleigh and Nashville and Las Vegas have received new or relocated teams, but the NHL, for whatever reason, has passed Houston over. 

There was last discussion about Tillman Fertitta bringing NHL hockey to Houston in 2017. Nothing came of it. Maybe this time things will be different, but I'm not holding my breath. Houston just doesn't seem like a priority for the NHL.

2. Be careful what you wish for. Houston getting an NHL franchise is one thing; Houston getting a *good* NHL franchise is something altogether different. Relocation doesn’t necessarily change a sports franchise’s culture, especially if that culture is one of mediocrity. And the Coyotes are, unfortunately, the paragon of mediocrity.

The Coyotes joined the NHL in 1979 as the Winnipeg Jets. They are the league's oldest NHL franchise to have never (!) played in the Stanley Cup Finals. The franchise had a 506-660-172 record in Winnipeg, and only advanced past the first round of the NHL playoffs twice in 17 seasons. That mediocrity has carried over to Phoenix, where the Coyotes' all-time record is 882-892-94 and where they’ve only advanced past the first round of the NHL playoffs twice in 25 seasons (not including the canceled 2004-05 season). The Coyotes have only one playoff appearance over the past 11 seasons and last won a postseason series during their run to the 2012 Western Conference finals. As a result, attendance has suffered: in 2021-22, their last season at the Glendale arena, Arizona averaged only 11,601 fans, which ranked 30th out of 32 NHL teams.

Given that Houston is a fair-weather, front-runner sports town, a poorly-performing Coyotes team would likely see a similar fate at the ticket office here in Houston, after the initial novelty of an NHL franchise in the city wears off. The Coyotes could become just another chapter in Houston's long history of underachieving sports teams, and the NHL could come to regret its decision to move a team into Houston.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to hockey, either. The Vancouver Grizzlies of the NBA had an abysmal .220 winning percentage in Vancouver; since moving to Memphis their all-time record is better but still below .500 (.480), and the franchise has only advanced past the first round of the NBA playoffs four times in 22 seasons. The original Charlotte Hornets were, likewise, mediocre, with a .486 record. After moving to New Orleans and becoming what are now known as the Pelicans, their record stands at .461. 

MLB's Montreal Expos had an all-time record of .484; their record since moving to Washington and becoming the Nationals is now .487, their 2019 World Series championship notwithstanding.

The NFL’s Cardinals had a 186-248-25 record in Chicago and a 186-202-14 record in St. Louis. Since they moved to Phoenix their record is 230-330-2 (although they have appeared in one Super Bowl since moving to Arizona). And let’s not forget that star-crossed football team originally known as the Houston Oilers; they had an all-time winning percentage of .494 here in Houston, along with multiple playoff heartbreaks that traumatize me to this day. They’ve only done marginally better since moving to Tennessee and becoming the Titans, with a .524 record and one gut-wrenching loss in Super Bowl XXXIV. 

This is not to say that franchises never improve when they relocate; there are a couple of examples of this happening in the NHL. The Hartford Whalers had an all-time record of 534-709-177 and only advanced past the first round of the NHL playoffs once in 18 seasons in Connecticut; they have done better in Carolina, with a current record of 933-957-86 and ten playoff appearances (their nine-year playoff drought from 2009-10 through 2017-18 notwithstanding), including the 2006 Stanley Cup. The Quebec Nordiques, likewise were mediocre in Quebec City with a 497-599-16 record over 16 seasons, but have a 1114-771-101 record (and three Stanley Cup Championships) since relocating to Denver. 

My point is simply that, on average, relocating a franchise doesn't automatically change that team's fortunes on the field or the ice or the hardwood. If a team without a winning culture is relocated to Houston, they might not be the draw we want them to be. And that would disappoint both local fans and the NHL alike.

The Coyotes will likely stay in Arizona for the 2023-24 season, but could be on the move afterwards.

 

Kuff and Jeff Balke have more.

The Astros claim their second World Series title

Although it's old news at this point, I want to belatedly acknowledge the Astros' second World Series championship. 

To the extent that there is such a thing as a "must win" sports title, this was it. A third-straight World Series loss would not only have been a grave disappointment, considering how well the team did this year, but it would also have solidified the "the Astros can't win unless they cheat" narrative from the team's legions of haters across the nation.  

This championship puts the sign-stealing scandal that tainted the Astros' 2017 title firmly in the past, and proves that the Astros in their current iteration are a team that can cleanly win it all. The haters can continue to hate, but they can't put an asterisk next to this championship. This one is legit.

Of course, it was also important for the Astros to win one for Dusty. Dusty Baker is a Hall of Famer regardless, but he needed that World Series win as a manager to round out his storied career. 

Finally, for longtime fans, this World Series title heals a wound that goes all the way back to the 1980 NLCS, when the Astros lost to the Phillies in heartbreaking fashion. Twice, they were six outs away from their first World Series appearance. And twice, they choked. 42 year later, the franchise gets a measure of revenge on Philadelphia.

To be honest, I wasn't particularly optimistic about the Astros's prospects for victory in this Fall Classic, because they were facing another NL East team that was red-hot coming into the World series, just as the Nationals were in 2019 and the Braves were in 2021. And indeed, after Justin Verlander's meltdown in Game 1, and again after Lance McCullers, Jr got blasted for five home runs in Game 5, I got that feeling of dread familiar to every Houston sports fan. 

But the Astros imposed their dominance in amazing fashion - the Game 3 no-hitter (only the second no-no in World Series history!), Chas McCormick's amazing home-run-robbing catch in Game 5, Yordan Álvarez's monster three-run blast in the deciding Game 6 - and won it all in front of their fans at Minute Maid Park. 

Justin Verlander finally got the "no wins in the World Series" monkey off his back. Jermey Peña became the first rookie position player to win World Series MVP. Trey Mancini winning a World Series after battling colon cancer. There's no shortage of happy stories with this team.

Since the 2017 season, the Astros have won five AL West titles, have gone to the ACLS six times in a row, have gone to the World Series four times, and have won it all twice. This is the longest sustained period of success in Houston sports history, so much so that the team is now being described as a "dynasty."

Add this to the fact that the Astros have utterly *owned* the fabled New York Yankees in the postseason during this run, and it becomes all the more amazing postseason, and it becomes all the more amazing for Houston sports fans such as myself. There was a time were I wouldn't have even conceived that this was possible. 

So congratulations, guys. You've made us proud.

Here's a compilation of the top ten plays of the 2022 World Series:

USFL 2.0 announces teams

Following up on this item... The new USFL has announced its teams, one of which will be familiar to Houstonians:

The new United States Football League is launching in April and the Houston Gamblers - the same name as the city's original USFL entry in 1984 and 1985 - are one of eight teams in the startup league.

Judging by the team's Twitter account, the Gamblers will utilize the same red-and-black color scheme and logo used by the original Gamblers.

The new USFL, which is owned by FOX Sports, will play its 10-game schedule in one location with teams expected to play in their own markets in future seasons.

The league's teams all have the same names from the original USFL, which lasted three seasons. Besides the Gamblers, the teams are: Birmingham Stallions, New Orleans Breakers, Tampa Bay Bandits, Michigan Panthers, New Jersey Generals, Philadelphia Stars and Pittsburgh Maulers.

Some quick observations:

• They've tweaked some of the original logos, but not Houston's, because the Gamblers logo was a brilliant design to begin with. Almost 40 years later and anybody in this city can still easily recognize it. 

• They've bringing back teams and locations from the original USFL as it existed in 1984. By the 1985 season, the Stars had moved from Philly to Baltimore, the Breakers had moved from New Orleans to Portland, and the Panthers had merged with the Oakland Invaders. (This was all done in preparation for the 1986 fall season that never happened.) 1984 was also the inaugural year for both the Gamblers and Maulers.

• With the exception of Birmingham (which is where all the games are expected to be played in 2022), all of the teams they've resurrected are in existing NFL markets in the Eastern and Central time zones. They're not resurrecting any West Coast teams (i.e. Arizona Outlaws, LA Express, Oakland Invaders, Denver Gold). This suggests that 1) they want to focus on generating viewership in established pro football media markets, and 2) FOX plans early kickoffs that won't get a lot of viewership out west. 

I'm not expecting too much from this league, since it's basically just a rebranding of The Spring League (that didn't even pay its players last year). But it will give me a football team to watch and root for this spring.

Things will really get interesting if this league makes it to 2023 and the XFL reboots in 2023. Could the Gamblers and Roughnecks co-exist in a local spring football market?

The new USFL will begin play in April 2022. 

CBS Sports has some thoughts about the teams and logos.

Astros fall to Braves in 2021 World Series

I guess I should be happy that the Astros have gone to three World Series in five years. There was a time not too long ago when I never thought I'd ever I'd be typing that sentence. 

To be sure, I wasn't expecting the Astros to win. Being a Houston sports fan, I'm pessimistic by nature, but the Astros really were limping into the World Series with a depleted pitching staff (their ace, Lance McCullars, Jr., was injured and unavailable), while the Braves were going into the fall classic as the hottest team in baseball. While the Astros might have had a chance if their hitting held up, the bats went cold instead. The Astros were shut out twice over the six games of the World Series; Alex Bregman went 2 for 21 at the plate, while Yordan Álvarez - the designated hitter! - was 2 for 20. Those kinds of disappearing acts normally get your picture put on the back of a milk carton. 

Obviously I wanted the Astros to win: because they're my team, and because they needed to prove themselves by winning a World Series without stealing signs (not that it would have made a difference to the team's legions of haters), and because manager Dusty Baker deserved a championship ring to cap off his Hall of Fame career (although he will return to the Astros next season). Alas, they fell short, just like they did two seasons ago. They are now 1-3 all-time in the World Series; they've also lost six out of their last seven World Series games at Minute Maid Park. 

With Carlos Correa likely gone after this season, the future of the team is somewhat murky. This could be the end of the an era of dominance; the Astros's 2017 World Series championship - the one that will always be tarnished because of the cheating scandal - could be their only championship for a long while to come. 

Such is life as a Houston sports fan.

Jeff Balke, Brian T. Smith and Dan Martin have more. 

Thoughts on the Tokyo Olympics

They were delayed a year, they were played in the sweltering heat, there were no fans in the stands, they were the most expensive on record, and its organizing body is still hopelessly corrupt. The 2021 2020 Summer Olympics, which ended a week ago, probably shouldn't have happened at all. But happen they did, and I have a handful of thoughts: 

We're (Just Barely) Number One: The United States "won" the 2020 Olympics, by earning the most gold medals (39) as well as the most medials overall (113). The United States has won the most number of gold medals in six out of the last seven Olympic Games, and the most medals overall for the seventh summer Games in a row. 

However, Team USA only barely edged out China for the most golds; the Chinese team, which had been leading in the gold count until the final weekend of the games, came in second with 38 golds (and 88 medals overall). Rounding out the top five in the gold medal count were host nation Japan, Great Britain, and the Russian Olympic Committee (which I'll say more about in a moment).

Fun fact: the Chronicle claims that, if Houston were its own country, it would have finished 20th in the medal count.

Welcome to the Club: Athletes from Bermuda, the Philippines and Qatar won their countries' first-ever gold medals, while Burkina Faso, San Marino and Turkmenistan won their first medals ever. San Marino is, in fact, the first European microstate ever to win a medal at the summer Games (Liechtenstein has won medals at the Winter Olympics). 

Given its small size, San Marino also ended the Olympics with the most medals per-capita: one for every 11 thousand inhabitants (the United States, by comparison, won one medal per 2.9 million people). 

On the other end of the medals-per-capita list is India. Even though Indian athletes had their most successful appearance in the Olympics ever, the seven medals they won represented a ratio of one medal per 197 million people.

Cheaters do win, if you're Russia: After Russia's blatant state-sponsored doping scandal, the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency decided to "ban" Russia from the Olympics. Russian athletes could still compete, however, as long as they called themselves the "Russian Olympic Committee," competed under a special flag, and played something other than the Russian national anthem at medal ceremonies:

At the medal ceremony here, the Russian national anthem was replaced by “Piano Concerto No. 1” by Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer. The flag raised was not the Russian flag, but one featuring waves of an Olympic torch … but using the Russian colors of blue, red and white.

No Russian flags are allowed at any venue (or the Opening or Closing Ceremony), but they can be hung about the Olympic Village. So there’s that. Not that it matters. The Russians designed their uniforms to mimic the beloved Trikolor.

“If the flag is not allowed, we ourselves will be the flag,” Rugby captain Alena Tiron told the Russian state news agency RIA Novostu.

In Russia, the Olympics gold medal you.

“We know which country we stand for,” Tiron said.

Everyone does. A country that is adept at embedding spies in the highest level of governments around the globe doesn’t even have to try to be sneaky over here.

These so-called "neutral athletes" - over 330 of them, in all - finished with 20 gold medals (and 71 overall). What a joke. 

The head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, had some choice words to say about this charade:

"Unfortunately, we’ve seen this horror film already – where the Russian state-sponsored doping programme walks free and Russia wins while the IOC and WADA leaders attempt to pull the wool over the world’s eyes by claiming Russia is ‘banned.’," said Tygart.

"All can now see this ‘ban’ once again for the farce that it is.

"It is barely a ‘rebrand’ and will do nothing to stop the corruption in Russia and likely will embolden others willing to win by any means.

"It’s a doomed system that allows, as it has here, one nation to make a mockery of the Games by their thirst for medals over values."

Russia is also "banned" from the 2022 Winter Olympics, but Russian athletes will be there, too. Vladimir Putin has to be laughing his ass off.

I would have punched that horse, too: the modern pentathlon is one of the weirdest sports of the Olympics. Okay, so maybe not as weird as artistic swimming or race walking, but a competition consisting of five very disparate disciplines - fencing, swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross-country running - is, well, pretty wacky. According to Wikipedia, this sport is "patterned on events representing the skills needed by cavalry behind enemy lines." Okay, but it's still somewhat ridiculous, especially since cavalry isn't really a thing in warfare anymore.

Anyway, there was controversy during the women's modern pentathlon when a frustrated German coach appeared to strike an uncooperative horse during the show jumping portion of the competition:

The International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM), the sport's governing body, announced Saturday it was giving a black card to Kim Raisner, dismissing her from the remainder of the Games, after reviewing video footage from a Friday event.

The footage "showed Ms Raisner appearing to strike the horse Saint Boy, ridden by Annika Schleu (GER), with her fist," the group said in a statement. That violated UIPM competition rules, they said.

The light punch came after Schleu, who was heading into the show jumping round with a commanding lead, was trying to get Saint Boy to respond to her commands. But the horse was obstinate.

Schleu, who was visibly in tears because she couldn't get her horse to cooperate, scored zero points in the show jumping segment and fell to 31st place by competition's end. 

This brings up another weird aspect of the modern pentathlon: unlike other equestrian events at the Olympics, the horses do not "belong" to the riders. Rather, horses are randomly assigned to competitors twenty minutes before the show jumping competition, giving athletes a very short time to "bond" with the animals. This would appear to create an element of luck that is completely outside the competitor's control: if somebody ends up with a wayward horse that refuses to jump, then their dreams of winning a medal are sunk through no fault of their own. This apparently happened to several competitors - not just Schleu - during the women's modern pentathlon.

The agency that oversees this weird-ass sport is reviewing the event and considering changes for 2024. Perhaps they should consider doing away with horses entirely, and replace show jumping with a skill relevant to a 21st century soldier, like rock climbing or mountain biking.

(Full disclosure: I'm not the world's biggest fan of horses. They've always creeped me out, for some reason.)

NBC's coverage still sucked: I've written about this so many times since 1996 that I really don't have anything new to say about it. So I'll hand off to The Guardian, which describes the coverage of the Tokyo Olympics as "televisual vomit:"

Viewers have been able to see everything at any given moment (provided you have the Peacock streaming service) while understanding fundamentally nothing about what’s going on. NBC has never met a night of swimming finals that didn’t need to be spliced up with bizarre human interest segments on Caeleb Dressel’s first ride through the Florida wetlands on an airboat, or a routine on the double bars that couldn’t be improved by a quick jump to an ad break and some random highlights of Denmark and Indonesia in the badminton. We all want to know who the athletes are, of course, if only at a superficial level; and since the whole Olympics is so overwhelming, with so much going on at once, some measure of discombobulation from the host broadcaster is always understandable. But when we switch on the Olympics, I think it’s fair to say that most of us want to witness elite athletes perform spectacular feats with their bodies, not hear a series of driving stories about how they handle their daily commute.

NBC’s programming choices have been consistently bizarre, even more so when you consider that whole chunks of the schedule in Tokyo – for swimming above all, but also in the athletics – were specifically rejigged to cater to the American TV audience, and at several points it’s been unclear to all but the most obsessive Olympics watchers whether what’s on TV at night in the US is live or a replay. On Sunday morning, the women’s triple-jump world record had just been broken, a thrilling men’s high jump had ended in shared gold and the starting gun for the men’s 100m – the biggest race at the Olympics – had just been fired. NBC was showing a replay of the equestrian eventing final. The point, of course, is to funnel viewers to watch the repeat in primetime. Which may have worked at Tokyo 1964 when you could avoid the result for 12 hours. But which viewer with even a passing interest in sport for Tokyo 2020 won’t already have seen the result on the internet or used a VPN to watch it on the BBC or CBC?

Time, The Los Angeles Times and TechDirt are similarly critical of the coverage, while Vulture suggests that the oftentimes-confusing array of coverage - NBC presented coverage of the Games across its broadcast network, multiple cable channels, and its Peacock streaming platform - was simply a case of viewers getting what they've always wanted:

Some of the complaining about figuring out “how” to watch the Olympics on the NBC platforms is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” After all, for years the rap on NBC’s coverage was that the network offered almost nothing but prepackaged, and often pretaped, extended highlights shows. Audiences would have to wait until prime time to see events which finished up hours earlier; sports fans who wanted deep coverage of less high-profile events were often out of luck. The fact that NBC now pretty much lets anyone with a cable login watch every event live, in real time, is a massive improvement over the status quo of a decade or two ago. And it’s certainly a lot better than it was back in the 20th century, when NBC — and previous Olympics hosts CBS and ABC — treated the Olympics as a prime-time soap opera, serving up only the story lines it felt would appeal to a broad audience (thank you, Roone Arledge). NBC still does this with its main coverage, of course, but audiences now have more choice than ever before.

The Tokyo Games ended up having the lowest viewership of any Olympics NBC has broadcast since they first picked up the Games in 1988. NBC, of course, had a litany of excuses ready to explain away their poor ratings - Coronavirus, the time difference, difficulties encountered by the athletes they overhyped the most (Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka) - and tried to put a positive spin on its viewership:

NBC says its coverage of the Games boosted everything from podcasts to broadcast programs such as the Today show and NBC Nightly News. 

But the days when the Olympics were appointment television for most TV viewers seem to be ending. The pressing question for NBC — which has spent billions for rights to air the Games until at least 2032 — is how to handle a media world where the hours of coverage are increasing while audience numbers are heading in the opposite direction.

I dunno, maybe try to make your coverage (and the ability of viewers to navigate it) suck less? Maybe present the Olympics as an actual sporting event, rather than a primetime reality TV show? Maybe fire Mark Lazarus, who is apparently the guy most responsible for this claptrap? I'm not holding my breath.

All Jazeera reviews the highs and lows of the just-completed Games, while the Daily Beast explores some of Tokyo's weirder moments and ESPN waxes sentimental on what the games are all about. And if the Tokyo Games left you yearning for more, don't fret: the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing are only six months away!

A new Olympic powerhouse?

Ecuador has won three medals (two golds and a silver) at the Tokyo Olympics. 

This exceeds the number of medals the country has won in all previous Olympics combined.

The USFL plans to return in 2022

We've reached peak '80s nostalgia, folks:

The USFL is relaunching in 2022, four decades after the spring football league's short-lived run that featured such stars as Reggie White, Herschel Walker, Steve Young and Jim Kelly, as well as future President Donald Trump as an owner.

The new USFL announced Thursday that it will play next spring with a minimum of eight teams and will "deliver high-quality, innovative professional football to fans."

Although the teams, cities, head coaches and schedule won't be announced until later, the league said it retains the rights to "key original team names." The USFL also is using the same red, white and blue stars-and-stripes logo it did from 1983 to 1985.

Before you go rummaging through your attic for that four-decade old Houston Gamblers or Chicago Blitz t-shirt, however, be aware that this may be little more than an attempt to re-brand The Spring League, a developmental league that doesn't even pay its players. In other words, don't expect to see it go head-to-head with the NFL for top football talent, like the original USFL did. 

"I'm extremely passionate about football and the opportunity to work with Fox Sports, and to bring back the USFL in 2022 was an endeavor worth pursuing," said Brian Woods, co-founder of the new USFL and founder and CEO of The Spring League. "We look forward to providing players a new opportunity to compete in a professional football league and giving fans everywhere the best football viewing product possible during what is typically a period devoid of professional football."

But wait... Isn't another star-crossed spring football league supposed to be returning in the spring of 2022 as well?

The USFL's return could result in two pro leagues playing football in the spring. The XFL has been targeting a 2022 resumption of play after owners Dany Garcia, Dwayne Johnson and RedBird Capital Partners purchased the league out of bankruptcy in 2020. Planning for the XFL's 2022 season has been on pause since March, when it entered into negotiations regarding a collaboration with the Canadian Football League.

Spring football has a poor track record as it is, so the chances of two leagues being able to thrive simultaneously are nil. However, the longer we go without hearing anything from the XFL regarding a 2022 season, the less likely it is to happen. The Spring League, on the other hand, is already established and is currently playing its 2021 season (although you probably didn't even know it existed). It's easier to rebrand an existing league than it is to start a new one. 

Even though there are still a lot of details left to be worked out, at least the new USFL knows what doesn't work:

The USFL was launched in 1983 but crumbled after three seasons because of out-of-control spending and an ill-conceived push led by Trump, owner of the New Jersey Generals, to compete directly against the NFL with a fall season.

Yep... Donald Trump was just as clueless at owning a football team as he was at owning airlines, owning casinos, owning universities, or being President. 

Fox Sports, which currently broadcasts The Spring League and which has a minority equity stake in the USFL reboot, will be the league's official broadcast partner.

A new look (and name) for the Dynamo

I'm not impressed:

The Houston Dynamo announced a “new club direction” on Tuesday.

The team made the announcement via its website that the new name of the club is “Houston Dynamo FC.” “FC” stands for football club, and is used by several American soccer teams. The women’s team will still be known as the Houston Dash.

The rebranding includes new crests for both teams, which were created with help from a Houston-based, minority-owned company 9th Wonder.

“Both crests share a unique hexagonal shape, which will also carry over to the Dynamo Academy and youth affiliate clubs, as well as Houston Sports Park,” the team announced.

The Hexagon, which has six sides, represents Houston’s historic six wards.

“Hexagons reflect strength, stability and unity," the club’s statement reads. “They are their strongest when arranged together, each one making its neighbors stronger and more stable. The six-sided design also gives a nod to the Club’s inaugural year in 2006 and the six wards that made up the original layout of the city. The Club called the Third Ward home for its first six seasons prior to moving to BBVA Stadium, nestled between the Second and Third Ward in East Downtown (EaDo), in 2012.”

                   From https://holditdownfc.com/live/

Meh.

Adding the "FC" to the team's name is a hackneyed and cliché attempt at making the team sound more "Euro," and the new logo itself is a poor design. It is difficult to read from a distance. The orange interlocking letters are derivative of the San Francisco Giants. The symbolism behind the logo, e.g. "the six sides of the hexagon signify the original six wards of Houston" comes off as cheesy and contrived.*

But the biggest problem I have with the rebranding is this: the Dynamo claim that this represents a "new club direction," but the organization appears to be doing nothing to improve the product on the pitch, which has quite frankly been lousy as of late.

Comments on the team's social media pages regarding the new name and design are generally negative for this same reason: "Quit smoke and mirrors rebranding and built a real team, not a bargain basement collection of journeymen," "It's like rebranding spam as a gourmet meal," "Lipstick on a pig, unless our slumlord owners open their wallets and spend money on real talent," "Our front office is repainting our front porch all while our backyard is on fire. Super." You get the point. 

The facts are these: the Dynamo have missed the MLS Cup Playoffs six out of the last seven seasons. They finished dead last in their division this just-completed season. They have one of the lowest player salary budgets in the MLS. Dynamo fans, having little to cheer about, are staying home: 2020's COVID-affected season aside, their attendance has been trending downward, from 20.6 thousand fans per game in 2015 to 15.7 thousand fans per game in 2019.

I'd be willing to accept this rebrand if it came with a commitment from the team's owners and front office to improve the actual product, by opening up the checkbook and signing better players. So far I've seen no indication that that's going to happen; as of right now this just feels like a cynical attempt to get the fans to buy new merchandise. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I'm not a rabid soccer fan, but I do go to a few Dynamo games every year (or at least I did, before COVID) and I generally have a good time, win or lose. But I also remember how good the Dynamo were their first few years in Houston, when they won back-to-back titles, placed first or second in their conference five out of six years, and Brian Ching came as close to a household name as a soccer player could in Houston. Those days are long gone, and rebranding alone is going to bring them back.

The "Club," if you must, needs to make a commitment to itself and its fans to start winning again.

*It's not even historically accurate. Houston originally only had four wards. Fifth Ward was added in 1866 and Sixth Ward was dded a decade after that. Wards were abolished as political subdivisions in 1915.

It's time for the Texans to trade J.J. Watt

I've said this on multiple occasions now (most recently, just a couple of weeks ago): the Texans need to trade J.J. Watt to a team where he a chance to win the Super Bowl ring he so richly deserves in the relatively short time he has left as an NFL athlete. His amazing talent is wasted with the Texans, who are currently 1-6 and have no prospects of improvement in the near-to-mid future.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the Chronicle's Matt Young, drawing a potential parallel between Watt and another Houston fan favorite whose time in this city had come to an end:

The Oilers once were in a similar situation and Bud Adams, who will receive no praises here, signed off on an unpopular deal that had to be done. The Oilers were off to an 0-6 start in 1984 and knew former coach Bum Phillips would jump at the chance to add Earl Campbell to his Saints offense. On Trade Deadline day, the Saints gave the Oilers a first-round pick for the 29-year-old Campbell.

To this day, Campbell is probably THE most popular football player Houston has ever known, but the deal made too much sense. Campbell would go on to rush for just 833 yards in 18 games with the Saints before retiring after the 1985 season. The Oilers used that Saints’ draft pick to select Richard Johnson, who would go on to play eight seasons for some of the most successful teams in franchise history.

Looking back 36 years later, we all remember Earl Campbell as an Oiler. And, if the Texans do the right thing and ship him off in the next week, everyone in the city will always remember J.J. Watt as a Texan.

Although Watt likely would never publicly admit it, giving him the Earl Campbell treatment would be doing him a huge favor. Give something to the man who has given so much to this city both on and off the field. Let him celebrate somewhere he can win and give him a chance to win a Super Bowl ring that will look nice when he slips on that gold jacket in Canton and thanks the city of Houston for a tremendous 10 seasons.

J.J. will always be not just one of the greatest athletes, but one of the best persons overall, to ever have played for a Houston sports team. Trading him will do nothing to diminish that fact. The Texans need to do right by him and let him move on to a franchise that gives him the chance to end his career on a high note.

The NFL trade deadline is November 3. 

Astros fall to Tampa Bay in (mostly meaningless) ALCS

The Astros made it to the American League Championship Series for the fourth year in a row, but could not punch their ticket to another World Series:

The Rays bullpen got a big strikeout of Alex Bregman to strand the potential tying run on base in the eighth inning as Tampa Bay held on to beat the Astros 4-2 in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Saturday at San Diego’s Petco Park.

The Rays advance to their second World Series in franchise history, while the Astros will spend the offseason thinking how close they were to becoming just the second Major League Baseball team to come back from a 3-0 series deficit. The 2004 Red Sox, who won the World Series, are the only team to do it.

I can't say I'm too crushed about this. The COVID-shortened 2020 MLB season, with its lack of fans and its gimmicky expanded playoff (that allowed the Astros to participate even with a losing record), is going to have such a huge asterisk next to it that few baseball fans are going to recognize its champion as truly legitimate.

That being said, the team's performance gave Astros faithful much to be happy and hopeful about, especially coming off the devastating fallout of the sign-stealing scandal that cost the squad its manager and GM (who still maintains his innocence) and made them the pariahs of the baseball world. The Astros were plagued by injuries to key players throughout the 60-game regular season - starting pitcher Justin Verlander, closing pitcher Roberto Osuna, and AL Rookie of the Year Yordan Álvarez were among the casualties - and limped into the playoffs with a losing record. 

From there, however, the Astros reverted to their dominant form, knocking off the second- and third-seeded teams in the AL to get to the ALCS, and pushed the top-seeded Rays to a game 7 after falling behind 0-3 (which happened for only the second time in history). You could all but hear the millions of Astros-haters around the country grind their teeth in fury as they watched them almost pull it off.

This was a rare instance of a Houston sports team overachieving, and it bodes well for a 2021 season which will hopefully be more normal for players and fans alike. 

Bill O'Brien fired from the Texans

Don't let the door hit ya, BOB:

The Houston Texans have started the 2020 regular season with four straight losses. They are 0-4. In the history of the NFL, there has been exactly ONE franchise to start a season 0-4 and go on to make the playoffs. (In case you get into bar trivia duels, that one team was the 1992 San Diego Chargers, led by the immortal Stan Humphries at quarterback!)

This Texans team doesn't look remotely ready to win a football game, let alone win the nine or ten games that would be required to make the NFL's postseason. Perhaps the most frustrating and infuriating part of the Texans' failure this season is that head coach Bill O'Brien was supposed to be an offensive expert (despite six recent seasons of Texans football that display the contrary), and the offense flat out stinks.

Players look confused, Deshaun Watson looks neutered, and in the end, the most productive output through four games was the 23 points they scored on Sunday against Minnesota. By Monday afternoon, Texans owner Cal McNair had seen enough, and he decided to move on from Bill O'Brien, firing the seventh year head coach and naming Romeo Crennel as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

While O'Brien amassed a (barely) winning 52-48 record and notched four AFC South division titles as head coach of the Texans, his playoff record was a meager 2-4, and his most recent postseason performance was an epic 24-point chokejob against Kansas City. Moreover, as GM he made some truly bizarre personnel moves, such as trading fan favorite and all-pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to Arizona for essentially nothing in return. In fact, O'Brien's ineptitude has pretty much screwed the Texans for years to come, as The Guardian's Oliver Connolly explains: 

It is a testament to the job that Bill O’Brien did with the Texans that the firing of a head coach/general manager who led his franchise to four division titles, only one losing record, and back-to-back double-digit win seasons was overdue.

As a reminder of the state of play when O’Brien was fired on Monday:

-- The Texans have the NFL’s highest payroll this year at $248m.

-- They are projected to be $6m over the salary cap this offseason.

-- Over the past 12 months, they have traded away Jadeveon Clowney and DeAndre Hopkins, two bonafide All-Pros, for a bag of nothing.

-- They do not have a first- or second-round pick in the next draft because of a trade that brought Laremy Tunsil from the Dolphins.

-- They have only four picks in the 2021 draft.

-- They are 0-4.

-- FiveThirtyEight projects them to finish the season with a 4-12 record, and gives them a 2% chance of making the playoffs.

It is about as grim a outlook as any team in the league. O’Brien leaves the team devoid of talent – or the assets to get any in the immediate future.

Indeed, the only question about Bill O'Brien's firing is why it occurred when it did. It would have made more sense to have given him the boot following last January's meltdown against Kansas City, when O'Brien proved beyond a doubt that - his four division titles in the weak AFC South notwithstanding - the AFC Divisional round was the furthest he would ever be able to take the team. 

Instead, the McNair family stuck with him, formally appointed him GM, and allowed him to make the boneheaded Hopkins trade, only to finally realize their mistake four games into the 2020 season. Now, the McNairs are stuck with open general manager and head coaching positions few people are going to want to fill, given the mess the franchise now finds itself in. ESPN's Bill Barnwell explains:

In the end, there was nobody left for O'Brien to use as an excuse, no power to grab and no promotion to achieve. The only person more powerful than O'Brien in the organization, McNair, is the one who made the decision to cut ties with O'Brien and his plan for the team after a month of bad football. I can understand why McNair made his decision, but it seems impossible to separate what O'Brien has done from the opportunity McNair gave him to make those decisions. McNair can right the ship and turn things around if the Texans make the right hires for O'Brien's old positions this offseason, but neither job looks particularly appealing. McNair also has proved he's not up to his job over the past two years, but as O'Brien was reminded Monday, you can't fire an owner.

Apparently, a recent altercation between O'Brien and J.J. Watt in practice may have been the final straw.  I feel badly for J.J. and think the Texans should trade him to a team where he has a chance to win the ring he so deserves. 

The Texans, meanwhile, are going to be a disaster for the next several years to come.

Did The Rock just save the Roughnecks?

It will be interesting to see where this goes:

The sale of the XFL to a group that includes actor Dwayne Johnson was approved Friday morning in a Delaware bankruptcy court.

U.S. District Judge Laurie Silverstein allowed the transaction after the XFL resolved a dispute over the $15 million sale price with the court's unsecured creditors' committee. Johnson, along with business partners Dany Garcia and RedBird Capital Partners, will officially assume control of the league from former owner Vince McMahon later this month.

The sale also includes nearly $9 million in payment of cure amounts.

So now that the XFL has new owners, can we expect a third reboot next spring?

The league had marketed itself as a made-for-TV product that could transition to a bubble concept during the pandemic, and Garcia said this week that the new owners are "planning" for a 2021 launch.

"We're doing all the steps that need to happen for the execution of that," she said. "But we're also being mindful to what has actually been successful. It has been really interesting to see that [in sports], when you create a bubble, your players are safe. When you don't, it's chaos. We are a league, because of the number of teams we have, that actually can create a bubble environment. Those discussions are active."

I'd be surprised if the new ownership group could re-staff the league and turn things around in time for a 2021 season. It could be doable with only eight teams, but it's just one of the many questions that still surround the league following this sale. Including the most important question of all: will it ever make any money?

This remains the elusive question for spring football. There hasn't been a successful alternative to the NFL in 50 years, largely because no one has figured out how to make it profitable.

Broadcast fees are the lifeblood of successful major sports leagues, but they take time to earn. The XFL's 2.0 plan called for three seasons of investment and proof of concept before that point would come. Its 2020 television deals with Fox and Disney (ABC/ESPN) covered only production costs.

A 2021 bubble concept would eliminate all the costs associated with placing teams in multiple cities, as well as much of the local revenue. It also would reduce the number of players the league would need to sign for training camps, a substantial savings. But the XFL 3.0 likely will need to secure broadcast fees on some level to ensure long-term success.

I wish Johnson and his business partners the best, and I hope a third time really will be the charm for the XFL. The Roughneck games I attended last spring (ahh, such sweet memories of the days before the whole world went to pot) were a lot of fun and I'd enjoy attending more in the future. 

Sean Pendergast shares his thoughts.

Pandemic Link Dump

Passing along a handful of random articles and topics I've come across over the last month or so...

Urban freeways are a product of racial injustice, and its effects are still being felt here in Houston.  I've touched on this before, and in the wake of the protests for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd, it's become a topic once again. Urban freeways were largely built through minority neighborhoods, dividing and displacing their inhabitants. Decades later, those scars remain:

Thousands of peaceful protesters in the Twin Cities occupied Interstate 94 over the weekend as they marched from the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to Minneapolis. 

For the region’s African-American community, which has been leading the ongoing protests over the fatal arrest of George Floyd and the use of police force on black Americans, the concrete they were standing on bears significant meaning. 

It was this highway that, in the 1950s and ‘60s, tore apart the once-thriving neighborhood of Rondo — the heart of St. Paul’s largest African-American community — and helped spur decades of racial segregation in the region. 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz acknowledged as much during a Saturday press conference. "It wasn’t just physical — it ripped a culture, it ripped who we were. It was an indiscriminate act that said this community doesn’t matter, it’s invisible,” he said. “This convenient place to put a highway so we can cross over this place and go from the city out to the suburbs.”

The once and future effects of these freeways remain a topic of controversy today, even here in Houston as TxDOT continues forward in it plan to reconstruct IH-45 north:

Members of the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s transportation advisory committee this week voted to keep portions of the I-45 project in the area’s short-term transportation plan, but with a host of caveats. Chief among those conditions is that the Texas Department of Transportation respond in detail to a set of requests from Houston planners outlining exactly what they can and cannot do to stay within the freeway’s existing boundary and agree in writing to protect displaced residents and businesses. 

The lack of clear commitments worries skeptics, who fear neighborhoods affected by the massive redesign from downtown north to Beltway 8, such as Northside, Independence Heights and Fifth Ward, will continue to bear the brunt of TxDOT and Houston’s highway expansion. For decades, neighborhoods along I-45, I-69 and I-10 north and east of downtown have felt the effects of living within shouting distance of the freeways, as mostly white officials routed the thoroughfares through black and Hispanic communities. 

“A vote on this project that continues those very systems of oppression, disparity and racial inequities without addressing the real problems is only supporting and continuing that system of racism,” said Oni Blair, a member of the transportation advisory committee and executive director of LINK Houston, an advocacy group that has organized opposition to the I-45 plan.

The IH-45 north rebuild provides an opportunity to improve the freeway while at the same time address the impacts that the freeway has historically had on adjacent communities. TxDOT needs to listen carefully, and not repeat the mistakes of the past:

“To leave I-45 as it is currently configured would be a mistake,” said Carol Lewis, director of Texas Southern University’s Center of Transportation Training and Research. 

Ignoring the issue of social justice would be, too, she said. TxDOT has gone to historic lengths to solicit comment but must now reconcile those concerns with its plans and the engineering analysis of how the new freeway and changes to it will affect how people and freight move. 

What is clear, Lewis said, is that TxDOT cannot brush aside how the freeways got where they are now. 

“I think historically TxDOT has been 100 percent guilty of being 100 percent insensitive,” Lewis said, noting what is now I-69 along the east side of downtown gutted Fifth Ward.

How do we get people back on the bus? I wrote a couple of months ago about the essential role of public transportation during the Coronavirus crisis. Now, as local economies reopen, transit agencies need to convince "non-essential" commuters that it is safe to start using transit again:

Masks are mandatory on subways and buses in Washington. San Francisco is betting longer trains will help riders social distance. Crews disinfect New York’s trains daily -- stations twice a day -- and are testing ultraviolet light devices to see if they kill Covid-19 on surfaces. 

As states gradually reopen, transit agencies are taking steps to coax back passengers who’ve been told for months to avoid just such tight quarters with strangers -- an effort that will ultimately influence the economic recovery. 

“For certain businesses teleworking isn’t really an option, so we still need to figure out ways to get those people to work,” said Ed Mortimer, vice president of transportation and infrastructure at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

Especially in urban areas, where many people don’t own cars, mass transit will be crucial to reviving economies. But enticing passengers back on board may require adding trains and buses so people can space themselves further apart -- adding stress to agencies already reeling from declining ridership and rising cleaning costs.

Public transportation might not be the disease vector it's feared to be, but it's understandable that people are going to be wary of crowding on board buses and trains with other strangers. Transit agencies are poised for a slow and difficult recovery, especially since people are likely to commute differently in a post-COVID world, and they probably need to re-think the way they provide service and define success both during and after the pandemic. That being said, our cities will not experience full economic recovery unless their transit networks also recover.

Could Houston become a climate policy leader? Maybe:

April was supposed to be a big month for Houston city planning. America’s largest unzoned city was poised to host the American Planning Association’s national convention for the first time, bringing thousands of attendees to town. Walking tours were arranged; awkward cocktail mixers were scheduled. 

Of course, with a global outbreak of the coronavirus, it wasn’t meant to be.

I cannot begin to express how much I was looking forward to the APA's National Planning Conference being here in Houston, as I had never attended this event before. Likewise, I cannot begin to express how bummed I was when it was canceled in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. I hope the APA makes plans to return to Houston with this is all over.

Undeterred, Houston quietly adopted the Bayou City’s first citywide climate action plan on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. If city leaders can pull it off, America’s sprawling oil capital could end up teaching a lot to more traditionally green urban strongholds.

The city's climate action plan is intended to be a blueprint to Houston reducing its impact on the environment. Given the city's characteristics - the refineries, the sprawl - that's going to be a challenge, so the plan includes both standard and innovative elements.

The plan includes plenty of mainstay climate-policy prescriptions, including calls to electrify the city’s fleet of vehicles, switch to renewable sources of energy, and improve energy efficiency in buildings. But then things become rather unique. The city’s first bicycle master plan, adopted in 2017, gets a lot of play, as does the MetroNEXT Moving Forward plan, a widely lauded $3.5 billion push to overhaul mass transit in the notoriously auto-oriented city. The emphasis on mobility makes sense, since nearly one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, and Houston maintains one of the highest rates of automobile use in the country. 

Toward this same end, one of the plan’s more innovative proposals calls on policymakers to eliminate minimum parking requirements by 2030. While Houston famously lacks zoning — meaning that it doesn’t segregate uses or restrict densities — it still enforces some conventional land-use regulations. These include minimum parking requirements, which mandate that developers build off-street parking for each project, regardless of actual demand. In Houston, this can mean up to two parking spaces for every apartment or four spaces for every thousand square feet of office space.

Houston's lack of zoning, furthermore, might make it easier for the city to redevelop in a sustainable manner, featuring more walkable, mixed-use, higher-density development, than other cities that are incumbered by an onerous development process that is subject to NIMBY interference.

The city has a long way to go before it becomes anyone’s idea of an environmental exemplar. But if all goes according to plan, Houston could soon rank among those cities that have scrapped out-of-date parking requirements — a group that conspicuously doesn’t include progressive stalwarts like Portland and New York City. In a city otherwise famous for its supposed lack of planning, easing up on the right rules might just turn Houston green.

Stay tuned.

"The right thing - just at the wrong time." Take a few minutes to read this excellent XFL postmortem by ESPN's Kevin Seifert. The article takes a look at why the well-funded league suddenly folded (it might not have been completely due to Coronavirus), it's prospects for revival, and the potential for spring football generally:

"We still don't know that spring football works in this country," said Andrew Kline, founder of the investment bank Park Lane, which specializes in sports investments. "Football season is so intense, and it's just associated with the fall season. You wonder if part of the cycle is that people need to come down from it for a while."

I'm obviously a fan of spring football, but its track record is dismal, and as even as the XFL winds its way through bankruptcy proceedings, I'm skeptical that we'll ever see another Houston Roughnecks game again. At any rate, it appears that we could have to go for awhile without any football at all. Which will make my fall miserable, to say the least.

The removal of Confederate statues and monuments should not be a "liberal" endeavor. I can't believe I'm actually linking to Rich Lowry in the National Review, but in this case he's right:

Conservatives […] reflexively oppose politically correct campaigns to destroy anything giving offense. 

They fear where the slippery slope of woke iconoclasm will lead — first it’s Jefferson Davis, ultimately George Washington. 

They value tradition and worry we are trashing part of our history.This impulse, though, is a mistake. Confederate statues and symbols deserve to be reevaluated, and often mothballed. 

The statues are an unnecessary affront to black citizens, who shouldn’t have to see defenders of chattel slavery put on a pedestal, literally. 

It is impossible to evaluate these monuments without considering the context of why they were created. Many of them were erected as part of the push to enshrine a dishonest, prettied-up version of the Confederacy.

Lowry ends by noting that "secession was a traitorous act that threatened to destroy the American nation, to create a rump republic built on slavery, and to make impossible the subsequent rise of the United States to a world power." Liberals and conservatives alike should understand the fact that the Confederate States of America was, quite simply, a racist and treasonous enterprise that was defeated over a century and a half ago.

I occasionally come across the argument that the removal of Confederate statues and monuments is somehow "erasing history." This is bullshit. There are no monuments to Hitler or Rommel or Göring in Germany, but we still know that county's history - a history the German people of today most certainly do not want commemorate.

These statues and monuments belong in museums, battlefields, and military cemeteries. They do not belong in our parks, our squares or our capitol grounds.

Last but not least, congratulations to Liverpool.