Scott Schultz Schultz hopes to someday
purchase the Boston Red Sox for $2 billion. Anyone wishing to
become a minority-share partner should immediately contact him at
[email protected].
The Muhammad Ali biopic starring Will Smith as the legendary
champion is out of the box-office top 10 after less than three
weeks. The movie, which was hyped to be a box-office gold mine, is
leaving Columbia Pictures scratching their heads, wondering what
went wrong.
The answer is obvious: nobody wants to spend $10 to watch the
Fresh Prince doing an extended impression of Ali. As a child of the
’70s, I can tell you that I look forward to new impressions
of Ali and Howard Cosell with about as much enthusiasm as
Enron’s accountants welcome an outside auditor. I mean,
it’s not like we haven’t already seen a million Ali and
Cosell impersonators already. Those impressions used to be part of
every hack comic’s repertoire.
As far as the story, there’s nothing there that we
haven’t had the opportunity to watch on ESPN Classic a dozen
times. Are there any boxing fans remaining who haven’t seen
the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman? I doubt it.
I’m 33 years old, and my friends and I were inundated with
Ali throughout the ’70s. Why would we want to pay good money
to watch a reenactment of events that were given away on free
television for years? (Yes, there was a time when television was
free.) I would be more interested in sitting through an E! True
Hollywood Story documentary on Mike Tyson. At least that would have
camp appeal.
If the producers wanted to make it worthwhile to attend
“Ali,” they should have bent the truth a bit and thrown
us a curveball or two.
Perhaps Ali could have helped the government to take down a
super-criminal as part of a covert operation. Surely there must
have been a lesser-known incident in which Ali was in an airport,
and he accidentally picked up the wrong briefcase that belonged to
an assassin. Now there’s an Ali movie worth watching.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the legend of
Ali and the Rumble in the Jungle, rent the classic 1996
documentary, “When We Were Kings.”
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The case of Thomas Junta ““ the hockey dad convicted of
involuntary manslaughter ““ is not about the problem of fan
control at a little league sporting event. It is about a 270-pound
man who could not control his rage. I’ve been around fields
and arenas as a player, coach, umpire and reporter for over 25
years. I’ve witnessed and participated in countless
altercations, as a result of competitive spirit, but I have never
witnessed anything as brutal as the episode that was described in
the courtroom.
The fact that this tragedy happened in a hockey arena during a
youth league game is coincidental. If it didn’t happen in a
hockey arena, it would have happened in a parking lot, or a bar or
alongside a highway. Although I’m sure he didn’t mean
to kill the man, unrestrained rage is a danger to society, and the
Massachusetts jury did the right thing by convicting him.
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As far as the notion of an NCAA football playoff, I don’t
see that happening in the near future, nor do I feel that it would
benefit college athletics.
As it stands right now, college football is the No. 2 revenue
generating football league. If the NCAA were to add a playoff
system, it would result in a bidding war between networks that
would ultimately involve a contract worth hundreds of millions, if
not billions, of dollars.
If this were to happen, the NCAA would have a greater challenge
by the burgeoning players union, the Collegiate Athletes Coalition.
Considering how the NCAA effectively blew off CAC Chairman Ramogi
Huma at last weekend’s NCAA convention, it’s not likely
to give the student-athletes any additional bargaining leverage
that a football playoff would create. Especially considering an
eight-team playoff would increase the champion’s schedule by
35 percent.
A four-game playoff added to the traditional 11-game schedule
would result in a massive increase in injuries to the participants.
The players would have no time to heal, like they do in the current
bowl and BCS scenario. And of course, they are supposed to be
studying for finals in December … right?
More importantly, a playoff system would virtually eliminate the
notion of a Cinderella champion. Unlike the traditional
powerhouses, which have a constant influx of top talent to replace
injured starters, the upstart teams who have to rebuild every four
years will have to rely on going virtually injury free to complete
the schedule. The odds of this happening are slimmer than Lara
Flynn-Boyle’s waist.
The current system is as close to perfect as the science of
ranking college football teams will ever be. As soon as a
low-seeded team team wins the championship, people will be
screaming for the efficiency of a computer.