The world according to Jim:
• As the NFL season gets underway – and we’ll get to the incongruity of the Chargers playing their “home” game against rival Kansas City some 6,200 miles from SoFi Stadium – this thought keeps running through my head: The career arc of Justin Herbert is starting out hauntingly similar to that of the guy he replaced under center for the Chargers. …
• Philip Rivers never quite got the national respect he deserved during his days as the Chargers’ quarterback. Some of it came from playing for that funny little team in that funny little corner of the continent, even as San Diego dominated the AFC West (four straight division titles from 2006-09). Rivers put at least one teammate in the Pro Football Hall of Fame – Antonio Gates will be happy to make Rivers’ own case for Canton – and was among the best quarterbacks of his generation.
But he didn’t get the national attention accorded Peyton or Eli Manning, or Tom Brady or Ben Roethlisberger or even former Chargers teammate Drew Brees, and from this view there was one reason why: He never got to a Super Bowl. (And trust me: The ’06 Chargers team should have – thanks, Marlon McCree – and in ’07 and ’09 they didn’t despite Rivers’ best efforts.) …
• See a pattern here? In many ways, Herbert is facing that same evaluation, that, “Yeah, he’s elite, but …” attitude. And before he can worry about the bigger prize, he’s got to get past that obstacle in his own division, Patrick Mahomes. …
• But that’s life in the NFL. If it goes wrong it’s the quarterback’s fault, even if it isn’t. (And that’s without factoring in curses, or Chargering.) …
• This was the question in our household the other night when Friday’s Chargers-Chiefs game in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was mentioned on the evening news: “Why are they playing there?”
Two pursuits, as far as I can tell: Merchandise sales and international broadcast contracts. The players and the games are just bargaining chips. …
• Consider: In the NFL’s quest to make American football the world’s game, they’re playing a record seven games abroad this season, and Commissioner Roger Goodell hasn’t been shy about his eventual goal of 16 games a season beyond this country’s borders. That might be a subtle explanation for a 17-game schedule that at some point will almost certainly expand to 18, given the NFL Players Association’s pliability. …
• Who could have imagined, a generation ago, that the best tales of illegal or at least shady compensation of athletes would come from the pros, not the colleges? …
• Admit it: The old stories of college coaches carrying briefcases full of cash, or express mail packages containing wads of greenbacks and conveniently falling into the hands of recruited athletes, might have been blatantly illegal, but they contained a certain amount of roguish charm. In the NIL era, we’re still waiting to learn how whatever rules remain will be breached.
A no-show job? That used to be the way college football coaches took care of their skill position players. And now, if podcaster/investigative journalist Pablo Torre has it right, it’s a workaround to NBA salary cap rules …
• What’s worse?
That, if these stories are true, the Clippers (i.e., Steve Ballmer) practiced salary cap evasion on Kawhi Leonard’s contract extension and might have put themselves in jeopardy of not only a humongous fine but maybe not having another first-round draft pick until, say, the 2030s?
Or maybe it’s that, as my colleague Mirjam Swanson laid out in her column on the subject, the Clippers/Ballmer did all of this to satisfy a player who hasn’t yet delivered the championship his organization expected? Kawhi won titles in San Antonio and Toronto but, with Paul George, never got the Clippers close to what Ballmer, at full volume, called the “Larry O’B” at the news conference to introduce Leonard and George six years ago? …
• Or was it the Clippers’ contribution, in players and picks, to the championship won by Oklahoma City months ago? …
• This week’s quiz: Which former local college player set a significant strikeout record recently? Answer below – and if you get this without peeking, you’ve really been paying attention. …
• A few years ago, during a conversation with Dodgers executive vice president for planning and development Janet Marie Smith, she noted the differences in the way people consume baseball since the place was built in 1962 and made this observation:
“I think we’re trying to address the way people live their lives today, even (something) just as simple as how having a phone with a camera in our pocket changes the way we communicate with each other, and the Instagrammable moments we find inviting around the park.” …
• Postscript: Los Angeles magazine reports that Dodger Stadium has been judged as baseball’s most Instagrammable stadium, based on what was described as “a measurement of MLB photos per seat and how many times the stadiums were tagged on Instagram.”
Janet Marie, take a bow. You called it. …
• Quiz answer: Former Cal Poly Pomona Bronco Cody Ponce broke the Korean Baseball Organization’s single-season strikeout record last week for the Hanwha Eagles with his 226th of the season. Previously this year, he set the league’s single-game strikeout record with 18. He reached the big leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2020 and is in his first season in the KBO after three seasons in Japan. …
• In remembering George Raveling, who passed away this week after a battle with cancer, many of the stories noted his post-coaching career and the fact that he was the guy who convinced Michael Jordan to sign with Nike. True, and significant in the history of both hoops and the shoe industry. But I prefer to think of Raveling as a coach and a teacher who made the people and the environment around him better.
And this is a small thing, but I’ll never forget it: After a USC loss in a Pac-12 Tournament game in Tucson decades ago, instead of sitting at the dais and answering questions like most coaches, he did his postgame presser while walking through the assemblage with a handheld microphone. In that case, as in so many other ways, he broke down barriers.
Rest in peace, Rav.
jalexander@scng.com