The Mexico City Wolves? Probably.

The National Basketball Association’s developmental “G League” will include an existing Mexican basketball team for the 2020-21. Could this be the portent of Minnesota losing the Timberwolves NBA franchise? For the second time?

My prediction is yes, although I take no joy in saying so. I will explain precisely why, although a history lesson is necessary.

The history of pro basketball in Minnesota

The Lakers (1947-60)

Pro basketball first landed in Minneapolis in 1947, when the defunct Detroit Gems of the old National Basketball League (NBL) were purchased and brought to the old Minneapolis Auditorium. Minneapolis Tribune sportswriter / sports salesman / huckster Sid Hartman helped engineer the deal. (It was the first of many instances where the concept of “conflict of interest” meant nothing to “legendary” Mr. Hartman.) Playing as the “Minneapolis Lakers,” the team actually won the NBL championship in their first season of play, 1947-48. The team then joined the Basketball Association of America (BAA) for the next season and won the 1948-49 championship. In the intervening summer, the NBL and BAA merged to form the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Lakers captured another championship in the 1949-50 season. Coached by John Kundla (another arrangement brokered by Hartman) and featuring George Mikan, the Lakers were clearly the dominant team of the era, winning championships again in 1952, 1953, and 1954. Awfully impressive.

The problems began when Mikan retired as a player in 1956, citing family needs and having sustained 10 broken bones during his career. The team’s performance sagged and attendance plummeted. And although Mikan returned for 37 games during the 1955-56 season, followed by a stint at coaching, this led to further failure and led Mikan to concentrate on law and business for a number of years. Losing, sinking attendance, and more financial woes continued unabated.

After the 1959-60 season, then-owner Bob Short moved the team to Los Angeles, becoming the NBA’s first West Coast team: The Los Angeles Lakers. It took 12 years, including the 1965 sale of the team to Jack Kent Cooke and 6.5 seasons in the old Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, but the Lakers returned to championship form in 1972 and have never looked back.

By the way, two American Basketball Association teams, the Minnesota Muskies (1967-1968) and the Minnesota Pipers (1968-69), were both failures. The state was (and obviously still is) far more enamored with hockey, chiefly the Minnesota North Stars, who were part of the National Hockey League’s “Great Expansion” of 1967.

The Timberwolves (1989-present)

On April 22, 1987, Minneapolis business partners Harvey Ratner and Marv Wolfenson secured one of four NBA expansion franchises, to begin play in November of 1989. After spending one season in the cavernous Metrodome (built for American football, not for baseball, let alone basketball), the Minnesota Timberwolves moved into their purpose-built 19,000-seat arena, Target Center, on the other side of downtown Minneapolis. Predictably, the expansion team had trouble winning, although attendance was strong. In their third season of existence (1991-92), the Timberwolves managed to win only 15 games, losing 67 others. A long string of coaching changes fixed nothing; their records in 1992-93 and 1993-94 were 19-63 and 20-62, respectively.

In fact, when the franchise should have been in precisely an enjoyable spotlight, the 1994 NBA All-Star Game at Target Center, owners “Harv and Marv” were in financial ruin, mostly because of the mortgage for their arena. As a result, they attempted to have a public or private entity take over ownership of the arena, while representatives from San Diego, California; Nashville, Tennessee, and Bob Arum’s shady boxing outfit Top Rank from New Orleans, Louisiana all vied for team ownership.

On May 23, 1994, Top Rank successfully purchased the Timberwolves from “Harv and Marv.” “Sold Down the River” was the Minneapolis Star-Tribune‘s headline on the next morning’s front page. Some locals and basketball fans cried foul, but the overwhelming reaction from most Minnesotans generally was, “go pound sand.” Part of that apathy was touched off by the very controversial franchise transfer of the Minnesota North Stars to Dallas, Texas by non-local owner Norman Green in the spring of 1993. Minnesota’s sports fans had been betrayed, again.

However, the sale of the franchise was fraught with problems almost immediately. On June 15, 1994, the NBA’s franchise relocation committee shot down the sale, citing the absence of concrete funding sources. The league then filed suit in United States District Court in Minneapolis, basically to protect themselves. One week later, Top Rank counter-sued. Shortly after that, local businessman Bill Sexton gave up on trying to purchase of the team after eight months of effort.

(In hindsight, Sexton’s “failure” was a blessing-in-disguise for him.)

Mankato, Minnesota billionaire and former State Senator Glen Taylor succeeded in buying the team in October of 1994, but the ownership change had no impact on the team’s fortunes in the 1994-95 season; the “Woofies” were 21-61. At least the arena ownership issue was “solved” when the City of Minneapolis bought the arena in 1995, with a couple of expensive renovations that followed. Target Center remains a nice building for basketball and rock concerts.

Anyway, in the 1995 NBA Draft, the Timberwolves selected Chicago high school standout Kevin Garnett. This should have been the launch of meteoric team success; the Woofies qualified for the playoffs that season, but were quickly eliminated. Garnett proved to be the backbone of the Timberwolves for several seasons, but his new 6-year, $126 million contract in 1998 touched off a firestorm of controversy over the sheer amount of money. Meanwhile, the team still had a violently revolving roster of players and coaches, and still had not won a playoff series.

More management blundering burned the Timberwolves when they attempted to secretly sign free agent player Joe Smith to a series of one-year contracts. League commissioner David Stern found out about the rules violations (of course) and ultimately stripped the team of three first-round draft picks, fined the team $3.5 million, and suspended Minnesota-born general manager (and retired NBA star) Kevin McHale for an entire season.

Eventually, after the 2003-04 NBA regular season, the Timberwolves actually won a playoff series. Two, in fact. Woofies fans were finally able to be delirious about actual playoff success, but then, Sam Cassell injured himself doing a stupid celebratory dance. Ultimately, the Los Angeles Lakers (remember them?) disposed of the Timberwolves, four games to two, on May 31, 2004. But at least the Timberwolves, after 14 seasons, finally had some shred of playoff success. Fans hoped for more.

Even I, who had no interest in basketball, hoped that after more than a decade, the Timberwolves might have some consistent success, because when they succeed, surrounding businesses, corporate sponsors, and more have a chance to succeed, too.

The problem is that the Timberwolves have not won another playoff series since. The team went a whopping 13 seasons without qualifying for the playoff tournament. The 2017-18 Woofies got into the playoffs, but the Houston Rockets chewed them up and spat them out, four games to one. Then in 2018-19, the Woofies went 36-46 and missed the playoffs again. And after 25 games of the current (2019-20) NBA regular season, the Wolves have stumbled badly to a 10-15 record.

Aside from the tragic deaths of player Malik Sealy on May 20, 2000 and two-time head coach Flip Saunders on October 25, 2015, the history of the Minnesota Timberwolves franchise has been an unending downhill train-wreck. The team is now on its 13th different head coach and 10th different general manager.

I will bypass the idiotic behavior of some of the most disgusting characters the team has employed; you can certainly read more about Isaiah “J.R.” Rider and Latrell Sprewell on your own.

The early years of ignominy were inevitable and should be excused. It is the four years from May 22, 2009 to May 3, 2013, when former sportswriter David Kahn “served” as the Timberwolves General Manager, that this franchise was at its absolute, bottom-of-the-barrel, hideous, Cop Rock-ian imbecility. During that stretch, the Timberwolves’ records were 15-67 (tied for the worst in franchise history), 17-65, 26-40, and 31-51.

Over 30 full seasons, the “Trembling Timber-Chihuahuas” (that name credit belongs to Patrick Reusse) have racked up only those two playoff series victories in only 9 winning seasons.

The best player in team history, Kevin Garnett, had to go to Boston to experience any real success. Fortunately for him, the Celtics won the 2008 NBA championship, in Garnett’s first year with the team.

Put succinctly, the Minnesota Timberwolves franchise has been arguably the most expensive, costly, and embarrassing mistake any of the major North American professional sports leagues has ever wrought. They are, for all practical purposes, forgotten but not gone, in Minnesota.

“Long Way to Mexico”

We are now at the potential “seed-sprouting” of the turning point of Minnesota Timberwolves history.

Since November 2, 1990, the NBA has held 32 regular season games (and many more exhibition matches) outside of their home arenas in the United States and Canada. Eleven of them have been held in Mexico City. A 12th game was supposed to be played at Arena Ciudad de México (“Mexico City Arena”) on December 4, 2013, but perhaps because the Timberwolves would have been featured, the game had to be cancelled because… get this – an electrical generator began belching smoke, ruining the air inside the arena.

Clearly the NBA wants to develop new and emerging markets and audiences. And why shouldn’t they? After all, the NBA is about money and growing their audience.

Through all of this absurdity, Glen Taylor continues to own and operate the Timberwolves. Mr. Taylor is not a fool; if he ever found this franchise unprofitable and unable to operate in the black, he could have sold the team long ago. In fact, as business journalist Nick Halter reported in July of 2016, Taylor sold almost 10% of the team to New Jersey businessman Meyer Orbach, and 5% to Chinese businessman Lizhang Jiang. Halter properly notes that bringing Jiang into the ownership picture might be with an eye toward building the NBA’s overall presence in China – an effort that went badly and infamously wrong only months ago.

Then on May 1, 2019, Colombian-born Gersson Rosas became the president of basketball operations for the Timberwolves. This is not “for diversity appearances only;” Rosas previously worked in the Houston and Dallas NBA franchises, as well as for Team USA Basketball. Coming from a non-basketball fan, IMHO, Rosas seems well-qualified for the job.

And now, on Thursday, December 12, 2019, the NBA has announced that they will bring an existing Mexican basketball team into their developmental “G League” for the 2020-21 season. Los Capitanes de Ciudad de México (“The Mexico City Captains”) will be part of the “G League” for a minimum of five years. They will play in the 51-year-old, 5,242-seat Gimnasio Olímpico (“Olympic Gymnasium”) Juan de la Barrera, for now.

The very next day in another article on the NBA’s own web site, staff writer Matt Petersen trumpeted that the NBA was “doubling down on Mexico.” Petersen wasted little time getting to the most important point behind current NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s plans:

The most oft-asked question: is an NBA team coming and, if so, when?

The question behind the question was clear. What were all the regular season games, clinics and youth academies from the last few years building towards?

Silver’s answer was emphatic.

“I think it’s an important signal to the market just how important we view the entire country of Mexico and all of Latin America,” Silver said.

Put more simply: Yes.

When? It’s impossible to say, but I refuse to bet against it. In my opinion, this is now inevitable.

Like all of us humans being, Mr. Taylor is not immortal. Born in April of 1941, he is 78 years old as of this writing. He became a successful billionaire businessman not by failing to plan for the future of his estate. And while passing on the franchises to his heirs is possible, we could also reasonably assume that Mr. Taylor might choose to sell any or all of the remaining 85% of his ownership stake in the Timberwolves, the four-time WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx, and the NBA G League’s Iowa Timberwolves.

The NBA desperately wants all of its franchises to be successful, because money and income drive everything the league does. The NBA’s blockbuster expansion of their development league to Mexico City is certainly no accident. In the last six days, four NBA teams played two games in the relatively new Mexico City Arena. Both were *smashingly* successful sellouts of over 20,000. A new NBA league store has opened in Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood.

And Rosas would seemingly have several advantages as the Timberwolves president.

Is all of this becoming clear, now?

The Timberwolves are clearly an afterthought in Minnesota. However profitable the franchise is for Mr. Taylor, the Minnesota Timberwolves are an almost useless, expensive, almost “scorched earth” stain on the overall body of the NBA.

In addition to the Woofies’ ineptitude, you must also consider the gobsmacking Minnesota Gophers basketball academic fraud scandal. The Gopher men’s program already had two ugly scandals during the 1970s and 1980s, but this one occurred right under the nose of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune‘s veteran sports reporter huckster Sid Hartman. When rival Saint Paul Pioneer Press reporter George Dohrmann‘s story exploded on March 10, 1999, just ahead of a Gopher men’s playoff game, Sid had a meltdown, as did many fans and supporters. But Dohrmann’s story held up under an NCAA investigation, and further resulted in other fraud discoveries within the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities athletic department.

Sid, far too “prestigious” or “important” to be concerned with actual news reporting nor his conflicts of interest, has never learned his lesson; he continues to shamelessly shill for Gopher sports 20 years later. In stark contrast, Dohrmann won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his work.

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Hockey reigns supreme in Minnesota. Not only do we have the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, we have not one, not two, but five universities playing NCAA Division I men’s AND women’s college hockey. Other states can only dream of having the successful boys’ and girls’ high school and junior hockey programs and tournaments we have.

Basketball is a fourth-tier sport in Minnesota, at the most. If you factor in Minnesotans who play golf, support professional and amateur tournaments, and have attended men’s and women’s major championships, and the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup Matches, basketball might actually be a fifth-tier sport, here.

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Put all of the above together with the NBA’s (intelligent) addition of “Los Capitanes” to their minor league next season.

Just as billionaire businessman Stan Kroenke brought the NFL Los Angeles Rams home after 20 seasons in Saint Louis, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is working toward making pro basketball work in Mexico City.

The business indicators and recent history overwhelmingly suggest that Silver, Los Capitanes, and the NBA’s Mexico strategy will succeed. Several years of sustained business and economic success will need to occur, but I refuse to bet against any of them.

“Los Capitanes” is the beginning of the end of the Minnesota Timberwolves – and very likely “the beginning of the beginning” of what may become Los Lobos de la Ciudad de México. Mr. Taylor (and/or his executors) will eventually sell the team. The NBA will triumphantly move the franchise from a useless Minneapolis market to Mexico City. All matter of marketing, publicity, perhaps under Mr. Rosas’s dynamic management, etc., etc., will ensue.

And for basketball fans in Minnesota, all that will remain will be memories, news accounts, photographs, videocassettes and archived digital media from a bygone era.

That, and probably at least one more major future Gophers basketball scandal.

Telling The Story: The Dodgers

Countless books have been written about business, from overall strategy to current management fads. Barbarians at the Gate remains a personal favorite in the former category, while anything by Scott Adams always fits nicely into the latter. I had been searching for a detailed story of Brooklyn Dodgers baseball franchise from a business standpoint, rather than the quasi-personal memoirs The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and the slightly better Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

That is because this writer teeters between being a casual fan and an interested fan of baseball. Certainly, baseball (like golf, hockey, and cycling) is more cerebral than American football and commands more intelligent storytelling than basketball. But it has been only in the last two years that I have wanted to learn more about the history of the Dodgers franchise and the behind-the-scenes story their transfer from Brooklyn, New York to Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers played in Brooklyn under several names for 74 years, then based in Los Angeles for the last 61 years.

While Kahn’s book is often more romanticized by baseball fans than Goodwin’s, both blend the Dodgers and with personal stories of growing up in the New York metropolitan area during the 1940s and 1950s. From 1947 to 1956, the Brooklyn Dodgers won the National League pennant in six of those ten years, but won only one World Series (1955). Both Kahn and Goodwin have given us deeply personal memoirs of that era, riding the cruel waves of victory and (mostly) defeat.

But in Forever Blue, author Michael D’Antonio provides a far more detailed and fascinating more interesting account of the Dodgers franchise and the actual story of Walter O’Malley and how he went from a consulting attorney to owning the franchise outright. Like Barbarians at the Gate, D’Antonio starts with the people behind the story – in this case, Walter O’Malley. The author provides a surprisingly even-handed account of O’Malley’s life and his gradual change from attorney to baseball team owner. And from there, the Dodgers’ increasing success in the National League, despite a gradual loss in attendance at Ebbets Field.

Again, baseball “purists” love romanticizing Ebbets Field, but D’Antonio has provided a slightly clearer and sober picture of that iconic ballpark. And where Kahn fell short in documenting the Dodgers’ declining attendance, both Goodwin and D’Antonio did proper justice to the so-called “white flight” from Brooklyn to the suburbs and exurbs of Long Island, and how Brooklyn’s demographics inevitably changed.

D’Antonio’s research, which includes an enormous trove of O’Malley’s written correspondence and personal notes, combines New York’s social history with O’Malley’s work to find an adequate replacement for Ebbets Field. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people were able to purchase cars and buy suburban single-family dwellings made Ebbets Field’s obsolescence a foregone conclusion. D’Antonio’s research appropriately included an excellent view of New York’s extremely powerful (and un-elected) public official:

Robert Moses.

At one point, Moses held 12 public office titles simultaneously – and he wielded that political and financial power with cunning and cruelty. He came into public office as a crusader who wanted to wipe out the corruption of Tammany Hall, the Democrats’ New York political machine. But gradually, he gathered much more and frightening influence and power for himself, such that his authority overshadowed that of New York’s various mayors. No structure of any significance in New York from the 1930s into the 1960s happened unless Moses gave it his personal blessing. And with Moses’ approval, several neighborhoods were completely destroyed while he wielded his imperial power to have infrastructure built.

D’Antonio has assembled a coherent and cohesive timeline of O’Malley’s efforts to build a new ballpark for the Dodgers, as well as Moses’ refusal to lift a finger to help. The author has diligently told of O’Malley’s work with Los Angeles officials, the four years of playing in an absurd configuration of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the smashing success of Dodger Stadium. D’Antonio also introduced us to O’Malley’s wife Kay, daughter Teresa, and son Peter, who would ultimately inherit control of the team from his father.

While countless New York baseball fans have compared Walter O’Malley to Hitler and Stalin, Forever Blue makes much clearer the case that the blame for the Dodgers and Giants franchise moves to California essentially lies in the hands of Robert Moses.

The byproducts of that episode were that the Dodgers went from winning just one championship in Brooklyn to winning five World Series in Los Angeles. And even though it is now 56 years old, Dodger Stadium remains a hallmark of ballpark design that is still a standard, having outlasted the regrettable concrete cookie-cutter designs in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, and Washington DC. It has even outlasted Moses’ Long Island successor to Ebbets Field, Shea Stadium (1964-2008).

And unlike Ebbets Field, which deteriorated beyond fiscally-reasonable maintenance, Dodger Stadium has been upgraded and refreshed with better spectator accommodations over the decades. More importantly, it is stronger and safer now than before, with gradual reconstruction to increase seismic resistance.

Also like Dodger Stadium itself, Moses’ failures finally forced Major League Baseball out of cross-regional scope and into a truly nation-wide game. Baseball’s expansion into the deep south, into Texas, the west coast, and the Rocky Mountain region was an historic inevitability, as was the National Hockey League’s Great Expansion of 1967. What Robert Moses did to baseball fans in New York was a travesty, but both Ebbets Field (Dodgers) and the Polo Grounds (Giants) were doomed to obsolescence, failure, and destruction.

Incidentally, after spending 44 years in the humid outdoor refrigerator that was Candlestick Park (such a great name for a baseball venue), the San Francisco Giants now have a truly purpose-built venue in AT&T Park, which has an uninspiring name but is a smashing success of baseball architecture.

If you are even a casual baseball fan, I recommend both The Boys of Summer and Wait Till Next Year. But for sports fan and business person alike, this writer strongly recommends Michael D’Antonio’s Forever Blue.

The Ol’ Saint Louis Toodle-Ooo

The curious episode of the National Football League’s twenty-season stop-over in Saint Louis, Missouri has ended. Over the winter, NFL Rams franchise owner Stan Kroenke said “toodle-ooo” to Saint Louis, moving the Rams back to Los Angeles, California, where the team was based from 1946 to 1994. (The franchise actually began life in Cleveland, Ohio.)

Kroenke is a fabulously successful real estate developer who married into the Wal-Mart fortune. In 1995, when the Los Angeles Rams’ then-owner, Georgia Frontiere, waltzed herself and the franchise into Saint Louis and the newly-constructed 66,000-seat domed stadium, Kroenke was able to purchase a 40% ownership stake in the team. During Frontiere’s ownership, the Rams famously won Super Bowl XXXIV and narrowly lost Super Bowl XXXVI two years later.

Frontiere died in 2008, after which Kroenke purchased complete ownership of the team in August of 2010. Because of NFL rules, Kroenke was forced to turn over ownership of his other properties (the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, Pepsi Center (the home arena of the Avs and Nuggets), and their affiliated sports channel Altitude to his son, Josh Kroenke. No matter, it remains in the family – and Josh Kroenke is an intelligent man.

The story behind the Rams’ move to Saint Louis in 1995 is another long, drawn-out saga that has already been well-documented by other writers — one I won’t attempt to recreate here.

But to this writer, the strangest and most absurd thing about that 1995 relocation is the domed stadium to which the Rams ultimately moved. The Dome at America’s Center, known for corporate sponsorship reasons as the Edward Jones Dome, was constructed between 1992 and 1995 as part of a larger convention center on the eastern side of downtown Saint Louis. The Rams played their first few Saint Louis games in the old Busch Memorial Stadium, a concrete cookie-cutter that opened in 1966.

When I first saw images of Saint Louis’ new domed stadium (then-named the Trans World Dome) on television in 1995, I was astounded and dismayed. It struck me as being a re-tread of the then-20-year-old Pontiac Silverdome, but much darker inside and more generic. I was appalled.

Oh sure, the design of sight-lines had to be a massive improvement over the Los Angeles Coliseum and the built-for-baseball Anaheim Stadium. And obviously, it also provided attendees some respite from the heat, humidity, and inclement weather the Midwestern United States can experience. In that respect, a domed stadium was a logical choice. The linkage to the adjacent convention center was also a plus; if the Rams and the City of Saint Louis were ever awarded a Super Bowl, the accompanying “fan experience” events would logically take place next door in the large convention and exhibit space.

But the terms of the Rams’ original lease at the Dome doomed the expensive experiment to failure. In the lease, the City had to ensure that the Dome remained among the top 25% of NFL venues. In hindsight, the Dome was arguably never in the top eight NFL venues, and needless to say, the TWA/Edward Jones/Dome at America’s Center was never good enough to host a Super Bowl. Not even close. An enormous brouhaha erupted over improving the Dome, but Kroenke (intelligently) would have none of it. Even installing a translucent roof would have amounted to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Saint Louis-area politicians came up with a design for a proposed replacement stadium. But the taxpayers of Saint Louis and the state of Missouri possessed nowhere near the amount of money to fund this pipe dream proposed replacement:

And now, even after the Rams’ return to California, Missouri taxpayers are still on the hook for $144 million in remaining debt and maintenance costs—without a primary tenant, no less. The stadium’s debt is supposed to be paid off in 2021.

California, here I come, right back where I started from… ♫ ♩
Kroenke decided to put himself in the best possible position to convince the 31 other NFL ownership groups to let him move the team back to southern California. First by being fabulously wealthy, second by using those fabulous riches to stack the proverbial deck. This happened in a series of steps that made the franchise’s return to California inevitable and unavoidable.

His first step occurred in January of 2014, when he purchased the former Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, adjacent to “The Fabulous Forum.” Interestingly, this is the same plot of land that both Mark Davis and his late father, Al Davis, coveted when they moved the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982. Kroenke’s purchase set the proverbial alarm bells started ringing in Saint Louis among fans savvy enough to look far into the future. The purchase of the adjacent land came along later.

And even before Kroenke filed his notice of intent to relocate the Rams, he set about private financing and the initial design of a new 80,000-seat football stadium. Not even concerns from the FAA over electronic communications and possible RF interference with aircraft transiting nearby Los Angeles International Airport have derailed Kroenke’s plans. They are, after all, telecommunications issues that seemingly can be solved through things like shielding material, directional antennae, and some engineering ingenuity.

Until that venue opens in 2019, the Rams will play in their original California home, the aging Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (right).

So now, the NFL has returned to southern California, finishing a 21-year absence during which the city was used as a bargaining pawn by several NFL owners. Stan Kroenke has his land in Inglewood — and following the 2019 NFL season, he is likely to have a new tenant in the form of the San Diego Chargers.

I feel somewhat badly for fans of American football in Missouri and Illinois, but we must remember that they were gloating and cheering after Southern California lost both the Raiders and the Rams following the 1994 NFL season.

And the shameless money-grabbing by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and 31 of the 32 owners continues, unabated. Only new Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula and team president Russ Brandon are not demanding a replacement stadium — because taxpayers in the Buffalo-Niagara region simply cannot afford it.

And along with the money grabbing, so continues American football’s continued large-scale mass experiment in chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

As comedian Yakov Smirnoff used to say, “what a country.”