Category Archives: baseball

Sports: Chiefs go 8-0; Tigers 0-2; Baseball Wheeling and Dealing Season Underway, and other stuff.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs are 8-0 for the first time since 2013 but they had to go into overtime to nail down the win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last night 30-24.  The Chiefs have won their first eight games only three times in their long history. The other time was 2003.

They hope to avoid the collapse at the end of both seasons this time.  In 2003, they went 5-3 the rest of the way and in 2013, they limped to the finish going 3-5.

The Chiefs now have won 14 games in a row and hit the 30-point mark for the first time since last November 26, twenty-two games ago.

Acquisitions Kareem Hunt and Deandre Hopkins were keys, Hunt grinding out 74 yards on the ground and Hopkins getting eight catches for 86 yards and two touchdowns. Hunt rushed for 74 yards.

The Chiefs again failed to score in the third quarter, allowing the Buccaneers to take a 24-17 lead before the comeback that tied the game late and forced it into overtime. Patrick Mahomes led them on a 78-yard 15-play drive at the start of overtime with a 15-play, 78-yard drive that ended with a five yard pass to Hopkins.

Mahomes finished 34-44 for 291 yards and three touchdowns, no interceptions.  Travis Kelce had his biggest game of the year with 14 catches for 100 yards.

(MIZROUNDBALL)—21 in a row in a familiar way for the Tiger men’s team; a big disappointment in Vermont for the women.

Missouri played a good first half against Memphis State last night and then couldn’t stop the home team in the second half.

Missouri was up by ten at the half but had no answer for Memphis’s P. J. Haggerty who picked up 22 of his 25 points in the second half and Missouri forgot how to hit free throws. Missouri finished 15 of 23 in free throws while Memphis shot 58% in the last twenty minutes. Haggerty started the second half with five points as Memphis went on a 16-2 run to rally from eleven down to go ahead 58-55 and an 83-75.

The Tiger men have a half-dozen softer opponents next as they try to get things sorted out.

The Tigers women’s team handed Vermont its first win ever over a Southeastern Conference team last night, scoring only 26 points in the last three quarters and falling 62-46, thanks to 26 turnovers that helped Vermont outscore Missouri 30-15 on TOs. Coach Robin Pingeton said afterwards that her players failed to play team basketball. (zou)

(BASEBALL)—Some folks live with the philosophy that if they can’t root for their home team in the World Series, they’ll root for the team that beat the home team in the playoffs.  As hard as it might have been, some Royals fans found themselves rooting for the Yankees against the Dodgers and found themselves disappointed again when the Dodgers took the New Yorkers in five games. But the Royals had a satisfying year and fans in KC are looking for the good times to continue.

The Cardinals?  Who knows how their offseason is going to shape up, given comments from the money folks in the front office.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have started the offseason by retaining part of the pitching staff that put them into the playoffs for the first time since 2015 while the Cardinals began the process of jettisoning some of the players who gave them a winning season in a rather torturous year.

Sunday, the Royals announced they have signed Michael Wacha to a three year deal that guarantees him $51 million with a potential of $72 million if a team option is exercised. Wacha had been considered a mid-rotation arm in the post-season bidding.

Wacha is 33, a seven-season starter for the Cardinals who never reached the expectations of some that he would be the next-in-line dominant starter in the Carpenter-tradition. He has bounced around with the Rays, Mets, and Red Sox in recent seasons.  But he says his family “fell in love with the city, fell in love with the team, the staff here, everyone involved in the stadium, and it was something where we didn’t want to go somewhere else…It was honestly a no-brainer.”

Wacha was a solid 13-8 for the Royals this year with a 3.35 ERA in 29 starts. His signing retains the front-line starting rotation of Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans.  The two remaining slots are expected to be a competition between Kyle Wright, Alec Marsh and Brady Singer. Some forecasters say the signing of Wacha frees the team to sign someone who can add muscle to the offense. Perhaps with the addition of some power in the outfield.

(CARDINALS)—For some Cardinals fans, Wacha’s re-signing in Kansas City ruined their hopes that he might come back to St. Louis.  But the front office has not been talking about big-contract off-seasons acquisitions and at the first move that has been made is to sign a hardly-all-star arm.

The Cardinals started the off-season by letting six guys enter free agency right off the bat, so to speak: Paul Goldschmidt, the NL MVP just a year ago although the team has said it might retain him “under the right circumstances.”; Lance Lynn, gone again despite continuing to be a solid inning-eating pitcher the ‘birds needed; and right-handed pitchers Kyle Gibson, Keyann Middleton—who didn’t play all year because of injury—and Andrew Kitteridge; and Matt Carpenter, who played sparingly and hit .234 in only 137 at-bats. Carpenter has shown interest in coming back next season. He will be 39 and has hit above .200 in just two of the last five seasons. He’s young yet and is considered to have potential.

(MIZFB)—The Tiger football team is in the second week of recovery from the beat-down at Alabama that left Quarterback Brady Cook even more battered, a hand injury adding to his high-ankle sprain. Missouri heads into next weekend’s game against Oklahoma ranked 22nd in the AP poll. Kickoff is scheduled for 6:45 at Faurot Field. Oklahoma is unranked, 5-4 after whipping the Maine Black Bears 59-14 in Norman on Saturday. The Sooners are only 1-4 in the SEC. Missouri is 2-2.

The game is the first between these two former Big 12 rivals since 2011 and the first one in Columbia since 2011, a year before Missouri joined the SEC. Oklahoma has not won a game in Columbia since 2006. They’ve lost in Columbia only twice in the last 44 seasons (1983 and 1998).

The Sooners are 67-24-5 all-time against Missouri. Oklahoma gave Missouri its worst loss ever, 77-0 in 1986. Missouri’s biggest win against Oklahoma was 44-10 in 1969. Missouri last beat Oklahoma in 2010 when Gary Pinkel’s Tigers won 36-27. Before that, it was Larry Smith’s Tigers that beat the Sooners 20-6 in 1998. The last time Missouri beat Oklahoma in consecutive seasons was under Dan Devine in 1965 and ’66.

The last word from Coach Drinkwitz on the status of Cook?  He expects him back at some point.

The Tigers are bowl-eligible with their six wins. Various forecasters are forecasting several bowl possibilities but nobody thinks they’ll meet the pre-season hype about making the playoffs.

(MIZBB)—Dennis Gates’ third edition of Tiger basketball officially opened last night—and against a significant opponent, unlike the football team and some other major basketball teams start the season against some small college marshmallows. Missouri is waiting until the opener to play the s’mores schools—Howard, Eastern Washington State, Mississippi Valley State, and Pacific, Arkansas State, and Lindenwood before facing Cal and then number one Kansas.                  -0-

Moving along to moving along—

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s chaotic season seems to grow more chaotic by the week. As the season has wound down, some teams have sued the series on what amounts to antitrust issues.  On the track, allegations of race-fixing have ratcheted up as the playoffs have narrowed to four contenders for next weekend’s championship finale.  Whoever finishes highest will be the champion even if they don’t win.

Defending champion Ryan Blaney had to win at Martinsville last weekend and he did, joining Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, and William Byron.

After the race, charges and counter-charges came thick and fast, starting with allegations that Bubba Wallace slowed on the final lap and allowed fellow Toyota driver Christopher Bell to pass him and gain enough points to tie Byron for the final playoff spot. Bell had the tie breaker because of a higher finish in an earlier race.  But after Bell passed Wallace, his car slid up the track in the third turn and banged against the wall through the fourth turn, a situation that was later deemed a violation of NASCAR rules against riding the wall to improve a position. That put Byron into the finals and led some competitors to suggest Wallace’s slowing was intentional. He denied it and said something happened with his car and he was trying to avoid causing a last-lap crash.

Bell, on the other hand, suggested Chevrolet drivers Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon blocked other drivers from passing Byron, also in a Chevrolet, from being passed by other competitors, and dropping back in the points.

The race next weekend in Phoenix matches Byron and Reddick against two former champions in Joey Logano and Blaney.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen’s 10-race winless streak has come to a spectacular end in San Paulo, Brazil to put himself on the verge of wining his fourth straight championship.  Verstappen, relegated to 17th starting position gained six cars on the first lap and ten more on the second and finished more than 19 seconds ahead of the next competitor—and it was done during an intensifying rainstorm. He has extended his points lead to sixty over Lando Norris with only three races left.

(picture credits: Kansas City Royals, NASCAR/Fox Sports)

“Winning for Education” Turns Casino Host Cities Into Bigger Losers

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So this is what they get for three decades of being the hosts of Missouri’s casinos—a financial knife in the ribs.

For three decades, ten percent of the casino gambling taxes have gone to the home dock cities and half of the admission fees, too, to pay for the police and fire protection, the infrastructure the cities provide so people can go to and from their casinos, use their bathrooms, and drink city water instead of some of the river water under the ‘excursion boat” where they gamble.

The cities have used some of that money for other improvements—parks, for example.

But not with Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot.

They’re cut out of it. Completely.

None of the sports gambling taxes will go to the home dock cities.

There will still be an admission fee charged for those who go into the casinos to place their sports bets. But Winning for Missouri, the committee that is, shall we say, gloriously overstating the public benefits of sports wagering, has an economic study saying that, eventually, more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.  There will be no admission fee paid by the casinos for almost all of the sports bets.  And there is no fee in lieu of the admission fee.  They’re going to keep it all.

None of the sports gaming revenue will go to the cities, as it does for present casino table games and slot machines. Admission fees going to host cities will be minimal.

Once again, everybody loses except the casinos and the sports teams—including the host cities (the formal name is Home Dock Cities, harkening back to the days when the industry convinced voters there would be real boats traveling on our big rivers, before they became boats in moats—which is a good thing; we might tell that story in a later entry).

The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick for all of these three decades. For more than a decade, fewer and fewer people have been going to the casinos. At their peak, casinos counted about 54-million admissions.  In the last fiscal year, the admissions continued their decline toward 27 million.

Adding insult to injury is the industry’s refusal to let the legislature increase the admission fees so those home communities admission payments could keep up with inflation. The equivalent of two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 was $4.31 when we checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator Saturday night.

Yes, we mean “let the legislature increase the admission fees.”  Your faithful correspondent has suggested increases to legislators for six years. One of the more frequent responses is, “The casino industry would never buy that.”

The suspicion in the hallways for some time that the industry is, in one way or another, buying something.  It has several political action committees with bottomless checking accounts.  And legislators have to run for re-election for an unfortunately limited number of times.

The influence of the casinos is so ingrained in the legislative process that their representatives don’t even try to justify their statutory or constitutional demands. They just make brief statements about how great sports wagering will be and then sit down.

Not making any accusations, mind you.  We’re just sayin,’ as the colloquial phrase goes.

Anyway—the $4.31 equivalency means the state is getting two 1993 dollars while the casinos keep $2.31 of 2024 money.

The casinos are making more off the admission fee than the state and the home dock cities are making. But the situation is even worse than what we’ve just shown.

Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of those two dollars to about 95 cents.  So, while the home dock cities and the gaming commission are starving for funding with two dollars that are worth 95 cents in contemporary money, the casinos are making $2.31, and the gap between what the casinos keep and what the state and the home dock cities receive widens each year.

Our extensive research and hours with the calculator indicate the home dock cities and the State of Missouri, since the first casinos opened in 1994, have lost almost $1.9 billion ($1,880,392,926) in outright cash payments and in purchasing power combined because the casinos have pressured the legislature into making no change.

Extensive research has calculated how much each of our thirteen cities has lost in the last eight years or so. The individual tables are available but we don’t want to spend the space here to print them. Perhaps that can be done at another time.

Has anyone told our thirteen cities they’re being taken for a ride by their “excursion gambling boats?” The cities are part of the Home Dock Cities Association that one might think would be working to keep the losses from continuing and increasing.  But we have seen representatives for the association spouting the casino line every time they’ve testified before legislative committees.  It’s okay with the association, apparently, that the people they represent keep losing funding and will see no improvement from sports wagering.

The association says it favors the casino position because casinos are economic drivers for the region.  Really?   Can they show any studies that prove it? They haven’t, and the industry’s own statistics reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission show a different story.

We started compiling comprehensive statistics three years ago with a five-year lookback and we have updated figures from the Gaming Commission’s annual and monthly reports. In the now-eight years of statistics, these are the combined losses in cash admissions payments and lost value of those payments for each of our casinos:

  1. Ameristar St. Charles  $46,399,739
  2. River City, Lemay $43,956,210
  3. Hollywood, Maryland Heights $42,069,051
  4. Horseshoe (form Lumiere Place), St. Louis $31,287,455
  5. Ameristar Kansas City $36,290,466
  6. Harrah’s NKC $29,250,328
  7. Argosy Riverside $27,274,214
  8. Bally’s KC $21,852,498
  9. IOC Boonville $13,568,851
  10. Century Cape Girardeau $12,712,770
  11. Century Caruthersville $7,200,880
  12. Jo Frontier $8,357,439
  13. Mark Twain, LaGrange $5,718,114

Amendment 2 will only increase those numbers.

Sports wagering backers say sports wagering will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will make a big difference for the pay of our classroom teacher.

That isn’t true.  As mentioned earlier, if voters approved Amendment 2, only a few million will be added to the $10-Billion dollar annual budgets of the elementary and secondary schools and the additional multi-million dollar budgets of our colleges and universities.

The industry has testified that increasing the admission fee to benefit our veterans would be a hardship on the industry, especially the smaller casinos. Bunk. It wasn’t but a few years ago when they paid $100 million a year, or more, for a decade and were not whining about the payments being an economic threat.

The industry has offered no statistical evidence to support its contentions.  It has shown no independent studies proving any of the claims made in their advertising leading up to the vote in a few days on Amendment 2.

The industry can’t or won’t supply that information to support its promises and claims.  But everything written in his series of posts is backed up by lengthy research.

Not only have the casinos fought efforts to maintain the value of the admission fee for their host cities, they have laid off about 5,500 of their employees since the number peaked at 11,658 in 2008.  In the most recent fiscal year, the total was down to 6,079.

Will sports wagering bring back those jobs? Not with 98% of wagers made remotely.  We can see a few more people serving drinks in the modest, at best, sportsbooks that will be created in our casinos to handle the few walk-ins. There might be a few runners taking bets to the I-T people—who might represent the biggest employee boost. But the jobs needle won’t move very much.

Let’s look at how much of an economic driver the casinos have caused in our five non-metropolitan areas, where one might suspect significant economic impact would produce community growth. Here are the population numbers for those communities, the census of 1990 first and the 2020 census next:

LaGrange  1,990-825

Caruthersville  7,389-5,562

Cape Girardeau  34,435-39,540

Boonville  7,095-7,969

St. Joseph  71,852-72,473

Five thousand jobs are gone. Limited population growth in some places or losses in others do not indicate casinos are causing their host cities to flourish. Admission Fees are dropping by the thousands, cutting funding for their host cities in half.

We mentioned in an earlier the industry’s claim that casinos “give back generously. Here’s the truth:

Casino “donations” or “contributions” to local causes are pennies on the dollar. Charitable giving during the last six fiscal years has averaged 0.000391% of their adjusted gross revenues. Their adjusted gross receipts have totaled almost $10.5 Billion in those years and their total charitable giving has been just $4.1 million. That’s less than pocket change.  And most of those who read these entries give far more than four-ten thousandth of our personal revenues to charities each year.

Again, we have charted the “giving generously” figures for each casino for the last six fiscal years. But we don’t have room for the charts in this post.  They are available, though.

A few years ago, casinos started reporting how much their customers left behind for charitable donations.  We have spotted six times when the customers provided more than the casinos did.

And that’s just fine with the industry, which fights every effort to restore funding to the towns that welcomed the casinos as great economic boosts for the area. Maybe for a while they were— thirty years ago.  But now?

The casinos also do not mention fees in Amendment 2, and for millions of reasons. The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick every year and it’s been getting worse for a long time. It is going to get even worse for host cities if sports wagering is approved next month.

I often wonder if the thirteen host cities ever get reports from their association or consider Missouri Gaming Commission annual reports that track how their fee income has fallen off a cliff and sports wagering will not save it.

Do not look for sports wagering to lead to reopened closed restaurants in our casinos. Not if only two percent of the sports bettors walk through the turnstiles. At one time, local restaurants feared the casinos would take away their business.  Today there’s far less competition from the casinos for the restaurant business in many of our towns.

One final thing before we go today:

The sports wagering proposal the casinos want to adopt in this election could be the prototype for expanded remote wagering in all other forms of gambling.  As walk-in traffic continues to dwindle, the casinos will be looking for more remote attachments to existing games.  Some casinos already have stuck their toes in those waters in recent years with hybrid table games—blackjack and other games in which people who can’t find room at the gaming table go to a computer nearby to place their bets.  The tests have not generated many dollars, relatively, but tests have been run.  Don’t be surprised if the casinos come back to our lawmakers and ask for remote slot machines and table games—again paying much less tax than those games pay now. It’s a characteristic of business that stacks the cards only for itself.

(We stayed at a casino hotel a few weeks ago and went to the breakfast bar where we placed an order and were given a tag for our table.  A few minutes later, a robot playing a catchy tune, came around the corner, and came down the aisle to my table, my order on its tray.  I took off the plate and the robot went back to the kitchen, trailing its little melody behind it. One nice thing, I suppose, is that I wasn’t given a choice of 15, 18, or 25 percent for a tip. I found myself wondering how soon there would be robots, not people, dealing the cards or spinning the wheel.)

There go more jobs.

Add the casino host cities  to the list of those whose situations will get worse if Amendment 2 is approved with its sweetheart tax rate, its deductions and carryovers, and its reliance on customers who carry casinos in their pockets.

This kind of thing should be handled by our elected representatives and senators, not written by two industries who place profit over any services to the people of the state.  But we have this proposal because our elected senators and representatives didn’t do their job.  Voters are well-advised to give them another chance by defeating a proposal that enriches the casinos and the pro sports teams and impoverishes our educators, our veterans, and the casinos’ own host cities.

Vote for Amendment 2 if you want.  But don’t do it if you think it will benefit anybody but the casinos and the sports teams, no matter what they tell you on the television or with misinformation you will find in your mailbox.

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“Winning For Education Makes Veterans Bigger Losers

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It’s about the time of year for the casino industry to put out its annual news release that the industry will “honor” veterans on Veterans Day, November 11, in “special ways.”  Veterans can get free or discounted meals (some specify the meals are from a limited menu) that day. They also can get a card for some free play, or spin a wheel for a chance at a free play card, or get complimentary tickets to a casino entertainment venue—stuff like that.

Of course, the casinos hope the veterans will drop a few dollars at the tables or the slot machines while they are there.

The truth is the casinos care about our veterans only in terms of how much they can take from their pockets and with sports wagering, their regard for veterans sinks to a new low.

“We give back generously,” says the industry’s Missouri web page.  Rubbish.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you today about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, and circulate it. It makes our veterans even bigger losers than they have been. The casino industry behind this proposition could have written it to solve a major financial problem affecting our veterans. It did not do it.

Should veterans vote for it?  It’s up to them. But they should understand that the proposal does more TO veterans than it will do for veterans.

Basic fact: Missouri has seven veterans nursing homes that provide 1238 long-term skilled nursing beds. They are in Cameron, Mexico, St. James, Warrensburg, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and St. James.

Their major source of funding is from the casino $2 admission fee.  Funds raised from that fee go to the Missouri Gaming Commission, which uses some of that money to pay for regulation of the casino industry.  Nine million dollars a year are earmarked for the Access Missouri College Scholarship program and the National Guard Trust Fund that provides money for military rites at veterans’ funerals. A tiny amount goes to deal with problem gambling, if the Mental Health Department asks for it from the commissoion. After those deductions are taken, the remainder goes to the Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund—which provides money for the seen nursing homes.

Admissions fees at our casinos that go to the veterans homes have been declining from $30.5 million in fiscal year 2012-2013 to just $11.2 million ten years later, a decline of 63%.

A report given to the Veterans Commission in July showed one-third of the nursing home beds were empty. It also showed the average daily cost of providing care had risen from $265 in 2018 to $469 in 2024, a 77% increase—and the purchasing power of each dollar was about 48 cents. .

Veterans Commission representative Aimee Packard told me last week, “Thankfully, the Governor and General Assembly have provided additional state funding to help ensure we are able to continue to care for Missouri’s Veteran heroes.”

Understand something else. These figures represent raw dollars.  Because the 1993 law that established the two-dollar admission fee had no escalator clause in it, the admission fee has never been increased to account for inflation.  The purchasing power of a 1993 dollar was only 47.5 cents in the most recent fiscal year, meaning the veterans homes are getting far less cash than they did a decade ago while the purchasing power of the buys a lot less at a time when the costs of care are substantially higher.

In other words, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated, as of Monday, the contemporary equivalent of two 1993 dollars is $4.42.  The casinos are paying the state two 1993 dollars with purchasing power of only 92 cents while they keep $2.42 in contemporary money. They are making more money on the admission fees than the state is making.

How’s that for supporting our veterans—which the industry has many times patted itself on the back for doing?

What does this mean for sports wagering and veterans?

Simply this:  Amendment 2 does nothing to stop this admission fee shortfall. Why?

Industry forecasts dating to 2019 were that 90% of all sports wagers would be done remotely within ten  years after the wagering is legalized, meaning there will be no admissions for 90% of all sports wagers.

Will the 10% of bettors who walk through the turnstiles to bet on sports be enough to offset the ongoing 2-3% in overall annual admissions?  If it does, the amount of money generated for veterans will be minimal.

And the casinos will pocket all of the revenue from remote sports betting without “contributing” (as they like to phrase it) a dime to the veterans nursing home fund.

Here’s the truth.  The casinos like to brag that they have “contributed” or “donated” (by now) $400 million to veterans nursing homes.

You know what donations and contributions are, don’t you?  That’s the money  you voluntarily drop into the red kettle at Christmas, the pledge you make to Alzheimer’s Walks and Cancer runs, the envelope you drop in the tray at worship services, the check you write to the United Way.

In 2012, when Governor Nixon asked the legislature to increase the admission fees by one dollar, the casino industry sent letters to Missouri newspapers saying (in excerpts): “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans…. No single industry in Missouri provides that kind of financial support to veterans programs…. We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so, and we ask legislators to find an equitable source of funding for veterans homes.”

No single industry provides that kind of support to veterans?  If the veterans homes had to rely on “that kind of support,” there would be a lot of boarded-up windows and “no trespassing” signs in a neglected yard.

“As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans?”  Doing their “fair share” for veterans. Their fair share has withered in the last decade. The casinos have an interesting definition of “fair share,” don’t they.

With friends such as this, who needs enemies?

Let us be abundantly clear: The casino industry has provided money to the gaming commission and its worthy causes that include veterans only because state law FORCES the industry to make those payments. If this industry was such a great supporter of veterans and their nursing homes, wouldn’t you think it would have voluntarily maintained funding for those it might give a free or reduced-cost meal to on Veterans Day?

The casinos and their sports teams enablers could have written their proposed amendment to establish some kind of remote wagering fee that would stop the financial bleeding for the gaming commission and the veterans nursing homes.

But, no. They didn’t. The casino industry wants to pocket every dime it can, veterans be damned.

So much for giving back generously.

The Veterans Commission Nursing Home program is able to operate only because the legislature for several years has taken money away from other programs to keep the nursing homes open, even at a reduced level.

Before you vote to legalize sports wagering in Missouri, think what you are doing TO  our veterans, not for them.

Ask yourself: to whom do we owe a greater allegiance: casinos and millionaires playing sports—or our veterans.  And our schools.

If a ten percent tax on sports wagering proposed in the sweetheart deal that is called Amendment 2 will generate $100 million dollars for schools in the next five years, that means the casinos are going to have revenues of more than One BILLION dollars.

A few table scraps will fall to the floor for veterans.

Who needs money more—casinos or veterans and schools? Amendment 2 might produce a drop in education’s bucket.  But the veterans bucket will be increasingly dry.

Maybe it would be better for the people you elect to have the courage to represent their constituents on gambling issues.  But it’s going to take more political courage than I have seen for several years to do it.

Think about it. Feel free to circulate these postings to your teachers, teacher groups, and veterans and their groups.

Vote how you want. But understand who will be paying for you to have a chance to lose money betting on a sporting event. Our schools and our veterans, that’s who.

There’s a third group that will get the shaft if Amendment 2 passes: the casinos’ own host cities.  The casinos don’t give a damn about them, either.   That’s next.

One last thing today: We have a comment box at the bottom of each of these entries.  Several months ago, a person with the industry was heard in a crowded restaurant where were having dinner with friends say to them—in a voice loud enough to be heard by many of the other diners, “Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

We invite the casino industry to use that box below to prove it.

Sports: Tigers Get Expected Win; Chiefs Off, Stunning NASCAR Announcement 

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(MIZ)—-Mizzou whomped Massachusetts last weekend. It would be news if they hadn’t, so let’s look ahead to a real-world game against Auburn next Saturday.

Auburn is 2-4 with a 31-13 loss to Georgia before their bye week. They come into the game against Missouri with three single-score losses to Cal, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

It’s Tigers against Tigers on Saturday,  Aubie against Truman in the mascot matchup. Missouri has won seven straight games at Faurot Field.

Missouri started rehabilitating itself against Massachusetts and gaining back two of the 12 slots it lost because of the Texas A&M debacle and heads into the game this weekend 19th and 16th in the polls.

Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze says he “couldn’t be more pleased” with the hard work of his defensive staff. But the Auburn Tigers have given up increasing numbers of points in four straight games with scores of 21-14, 24-14, 27-24, and 31-13.

Freeze says he and Missouri Coach Eli Drinkwitz are “made of a similar mindset of what coaching should be about.” Both were were assistance under Gus Malzahn during Malzahn’s eight-season stretch as head coach at Auburn. He says Missouri has “veteran guys that have proven to be some of the best in this lea whether they’re going against the top-tiered corners and safeties or not…It’s going to be a great test for us.”  Freeze says Auburn has to keep Missouri from making “explosive plays..” noting the matchup of Missouri’s receivers “is not one that you get overjoyed about” when you have a young secondary.

It’s Homecoming in Columbia, where the Tigers are undefeated. But they are 1-3 against Auburn, including a loss in the 2013 SEC championship game. The last time the two teams met, Auburn and Freeze beat Drinkwitz and Missouri 17-14 in overtime. Missouri has not beaten Auburn since 1973.

Missouri has been quiet about the apparent shoulder injury that forced Luther Burden III out of the game Saturday. Drinkwitz has said he will wait until the SEC injury report tomorrow to have more information.

(TIGER BASETBALL)—The media has pretty low expectations for Missouri basketball this season.  The conference basketball writers poll slots the Tigers men at 13th in the SEC this year. Missouri has been shut out in the pre-season list of the top three all-conference player list.

Statistician Kem Pomeroy’s KenPom rankings also puts Missouri 13th in the SEC and 53rd in the nation despite the Tigers having a top-13 transfer class and a top-five recruiting class.

Missouri will start trying to prove the raters wrong on November 4th when they open at Memphis.

The sports writers don’t expect much more from the Missouri women. They are picked to finish 15th in the SEC, with only Arkansas getting less respect in the pre-season outlook.  Tiger women were 2-14 in the conference last year which is two more wins than the men’s team got. The lady Tigers have no players on the first or second pre-season all-conference teams.

Tiger women tip off the season against Vermont, in Burlington.  They start the season with two true freshmen and four new transfers. (ZOU)

(CHIEFS)—Rashee Rice has had surgery on his injured knee. The good news is that it’s not a torn ACL.  The bad news, according to coach Andy Reid, is that it’s the posterolateral corner that was hurt.  “It’s probably the same result you’d get time-wise ,” says Reid. “It takes a while for that to come back.

Latest word on wide receiver Hollywood Brown: Don’t look for him this year. He’ll remain on the Il with his shoulder injury until the end of 2024.

And Isiah Pacheco: He has no timeline as he recovers from a broken fibula.

(BASEBALL)—The Royals finished off a gratifying season with a loss in the second round of the American League playoffs. The Cardinals packed it in after the regular 162 games.

Now will come weeks of speculation about trades, losses, desertions, free agent movements, and what the team should do and what trades it should make and so on and so forth.

When the teams DO something, it will appear in this column.

(SPORTS WAGERING)—Missourians will vote next month on whether to make betting on sports legal in this state.  Regular readers of bobpriddy.net know that your observer of the sports scene doesn’t mind people voting on the issue but they realize he considers the casino proposal disingenuous at best and filled with lies at the worst.

Do what you want, but don’t vote for sports wagering with the idea that you’ll be doing anything noble for education—or for anybody else but the casinos and the teams.  And watch for whether any of the teams expecting taxpayers to build them billion-dollar stadia or making millions of dollars in improvements on existing playing fields indicate they’ll spend any of the betting profits on those projects, thus lessening the investments they expect Missourians far from those playing fields to pay for.

So much for the stick and ball stuff.  Motorsports is in some turmoil as this article goes to press this week.

(NASCAR)—Is he in or is he out?  The answer for Alex Bowman is “out.” How can a car pass a technical inspection before a race and then lose so much weight during the race that it is ruled out of the playoffs after apparently making it to the semi-final round of eight?

It’s because Bowman’s car DID lose weight during the race.  Bowman was running 18th at the end of the race and would have been among the eight remaining drivers for the next three races before a final four drivers are decided.  But the disqualification of his car cost him 28 standing points and dropped him from sixth to ninth in the standings. Some of the points had been given him as the winner of the second stage of the race.  His demotion to last place, officially, means the stage winner was A. J. Almendinger, who is 46th in overall points.

A dash cam video from a competitor’s car saw Bowman’s car hitting a curb on the infield section of the Charlotte Roval, and a piece of the car’s underbelly flew off.  The piece appeared to be a rub block, a piece of hard rubber on the underside of the car that keeps the underbelly from hitting the pavement when the car becomes briefly airborne.

After reviewing events of the race, Hendrick Motorsports announced yesterday that it would not appeal the ruling.

Bowman’s disqualification puts two-time Cup champion Joey Logano back in the playoffs by four points.  Dropping out besides Bowman are Austin Cindric, Ty Gibbs, and Chase Briscoe.

Kyle Larson’s sixth victory of the year puts him back in the points lead by twenty points over Christopher Bell. They are trailed by Tyler Reddick, whose car was damaged in an early race crash that left him 26th in the late stages and below the cut line. Reddick ran a relentless final stage of the race and finished high enough to make the round of eight by three points over Logano. The Bowman disqualification  and Reddick’s run left Reddick third in the points standings heading to Vegas. He is trailed by William Byron, defending champion Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Logano.  Elliott won the championship in 2020. Logano was the series champion in 2018 and 2022. Larson got the Cup in 2021. Hamlin has made the final four four times without winning a championship and is spoken of as a latter-day Mark Martin who finished second in the standings five times but never won the big trophy.

The next round of races that will see the field cut from eight to four begins next Sunday at Las Vegas.

(INDYCAR)—The season is over but preparations for 2025 put eleven drivers back at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more testing of the hybrid powerplant the teams used for the second half of the season. Each team in IndyCar was represented by one of its drivers.

Series champion Alex Palou had the hot lap at 224.342 mph, slightly faster than defending Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden’s 223.973.

IndyCar returns March 2nd at St. Petersburg, Florida, a street race.

 

 

“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

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If you are a teacher, know a teacher, and/or are part of a teacher’s organization, you need to read what we are going to tell you about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, which is deceptive and hardly moves the financial needle for teacher’s salaries.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you on Wednesday about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2. It makes veterans even bigger losers than they have been.

Today we’re going to talk about the casino industry’s manipulation of voters with its campaign that will not deliver, by far, the great benefits to public education system the casino industry wants voters to think it will.

We are going to throw a lot of numbers your way today. The numbers are based on the casino industry’s own statistics as reported annually to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a couple of other sources.

They again suggest the casino industry is not shooting straight with us. But that’s not unusual.

We do not mind if you favor sports wagering.  But if you vote for it on the basis of the advertising by “Winning for Education,” the front organization for the casinos and their sports team bedmates, you need to know what you are doing TO our teachers, not for our teachers.

First: some basic information.  Missouri’s thirteen casinos generate revenue for state programs and services from two sources: a 21% tax on casino adjusted gross revenues (what’s left after all successful bettors are paid off) and admission fees ($2 per admission; we won’t distract you with the process of determining admissions; that’s for our next post about making veterans bigger losers than they have been for more than a decade).

Missouri had 521 school districts in fiscal year 2023. We will use that number in our calculations. It had 88,669 classroom teachers and 18,097 administrators and supervisors (including people such as guidance counselors, school nurses, and librarians), in 2,355 buildings.  The enrollment for the 2022-23 school year was 861,494.

The legislature approved a budget for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education of $10,394,092,704 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Gaming consultant Chris Krafcik estimates total state revenue from the 10% tax on sports wagering will produce $4.7 million in the first year and $38.7 million in the fifth year of sports betting.

If we divide those figures by 521, the number of school districts, we find that sports wagering will produce an average of only $9,021 per district in the first year.  In year five, the number rises to $74,280 per district.

If we divide those numbers by 88,669 (the number of classroom teachers listed above) we find the average teacher could get a raise of $53.00 in the first year and a raise of $436 in the fifth year. Not even close to keep up with the cost of living.

If we spread those amounts among teachers AND administrators, all 106,756 of them, the average wage increase in the first year is $44 and in year five, it is $369.

That’s less than a tank of gas in the first year and not many groceries in the fifth one.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

It’s even worse. These numbers only involve elementary and secondary education.  The proposed amendment says funds will go to higher education, too.

Missouri has SIXTY-SEVEN institutions that are accredited as degree-granting post-secondary education institutions. There are thirteen public universities.  There are 39 private universities (which are not excluded. The language of the amendment says only “higher education.”), and thirteen community colleges.  There also are some schools from other states that offer programs or degrees in Missouri.  The amendment contains no language limiting the funding to public post-secondary schools, not does it address in any way those out-of=state institutions with degree programs here.

We haven’t come up with how many faculty, staff, and administrative employees those higher education institutions would add to the pie.

But the school won’t get all of that money to begin with, assuming there is money from casino taxes.

Money for education will not be used for education until amounts are taken out for:

—Regulation.   The Missouri Gaming Commission can have some of that money if the various licensing fees casinos will pay do not fully pay the costs of regulation, and

—“the greater of 10% of such annual tax revenues or $5,000,000 to the Compulsive Gamblers Fund.”

Those paltry raises we’ve calculated for our elementary and secondary school folks might wind up being measured in pennies, or pocket change.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

And that doesn’t even calculate how much MORE education would get if sports wagering would be taxed at the same rate as other forms of Missouri gambling, 21%.  But Amendment 2 sets a rate at less than half of that and then has provisions that can significantly lower taxable revenue or even make it a deficit, meaning there will be some months when the casinos put NO money into the education fund.

The amendment also allows casinos to carry over the loss to the next month’s calculations, lowering tax revenue for that month too—or increasing the possibility that a casino can calculate another zero-revenue/zero tax month.

In the 2023 legislative session, a Senate bill proposed boosting the minimum teacher’s salary from $25,000 to $38,000 and increasing the salary for a teacher with a master’s degree and at least ten years of experience from $33,000 to $46,000.  The bill never came to a vote because of internal dissension within the Senate, thanks to the Freedom Caucus.

The National Education Association  April 24, 2023 released a report showing Missouri ranks 50th in starting teacher pay with an average of $34,502 with only 43 districts paying started new teachers $40,000 or more. The report calculated a minimum living wage was $46,944.

A World Population Review study of 2024 salaries lists Missouri as one of seven states starting teachers at less than  $50,000 with only Montana paying less.  The overall Missouri average teacher salary in this study is $53,999, ranking Missouri 46th ahead of Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida, and West Virginia.

Yeah, sports wagering will solve a lot of problems with our teacher salaries and other education system problems.. Suuuure it will.

Don’t bet on sports wagering because it will do wonderful things for our schools. It won’t.  Amendment 2 just makes the drop in the bucket even smaller, thanks to the sweetheart tax rate and the deductions that now will allow a reduction of taxable revenue.

We aren’t sure why any dubious proposition that appears on our ballots thinks it can succeed by telling you it will do great things for education. They don’t. And this one surely won’t.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.”   I interpreted the second half of that sentence to contradict the first.  But that’s the kind of disinformation campaign being waged by the casino industry and its bedmates, our major league sports teams.

But what do you expect from an industry that is built on the concept that you will be a loser more often than you will be a winner?

Give your local education leaders these numbers and see how many of your teachers would make commercials endorsing this proposal.

Amendment 2 will be a loser for our schools.  You can bet on it.

Sports: Kansas City Doubles UP; Mizzou Doubles Down (and more)

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(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals come home for a pair of games, starting tomorrow, after splitting two playoff games in Yankee Stadium.  Yankees starter Carlos Rodon’s fun night lasted three innings before longtime nemesis Salvador Perez ripped a fourth-inning home run that helped the Royals take a 4-0 lead.  The Yankees later cut the lead in half but the bullpen again held tight at the end.

The stars of both teams, Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr., were not factors in either game. Witt went 0 for five. Judge had a hit in three at-bats.

Royals starter Cole Ragans struggled through four uneven innings (five K’s and 4 walks, three hits and the Yankees’ first run) but four relievers kept the Yankees at bay until Jazz Chisholm’s solo homer in the 9th.  Rodon struck out the side in the first inning, finished with seven of them, but also gave up all four runs on seven hits.  The Yankees wound up using seven other pitchers.

(CHIEFS)—Now, this is more like it.  The Kansas City Chiefs are 5-0 for the first time since Patrick Mahomes’ first season, 2018.  Mahomes passing and power running by the rejuvenated Kareem Hunt gave the Chiefs a 400-yard offense and a 26-13 win going into a bye week.

The Chiefs had to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns four times, however, and none of Mahomes’ passes were for touchdowns.  Mahomes finished 28 for 39 with 313 yards including 102 to JuJu Smith-Schuster and another 70 to Travis Kelce.

(MIZ)—The real world has come to the Missouri Tigers.  They threw away their top ten ranking against Texas A&M in an embarrassing beat-down Saturday that dropped them from ninth in the ratings to 18th in one and 21st in another.

The results come after a four wins, one of which was a hairbreadth win over Vanderbilt.  But maybe that win was underrated against a team considered an SEC doormat.

The doormat beat previously second-rated Alabama 40-35 in Nashville.

USA Today’s Dan Wolken did a scathing review of the losses by Alabama and Missouri, among others last weekend:

Alabama’s flop at Vanderbilt leads college football Misery Index after Week 6 (msn.com)

The loss to A&M is the worst Tiger loss since the 66-24 hammering administered by Tennessee in 2022.  Missouri had only 254 yards of total offense while the devense was

It was the greatest margin of defeat for Missouri since a 66-24 loss at Tennessee in 2022. The Aggies out gained the Tigers 512 to 254 yards in a dominating effort, at least by A&M

Missouri has Massachusetts on the schedule for a feel-good fifth win against a lesser school next Sunday.  UMass is 1-5 after a 34-20 loss to Northern Illinois last weekend.

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have decided Turner Ward isn’t the answer to the team’s offense.  He’s been fired as the hitting coach after a year in which the Cardinals lacked a consistent offense, especially getting runners in scoring position across the plate.

Ward had a 12-year playing career. The Cardinals were his third team as a hitting coach. Oliver Marmol will be back as the manager but the team indicates his coaching staff is unknown for now.

The Cardinals finished 12th in the National League in runs, 12th in home runs  and 13th in runs batted in. Opponents outscored them by 47 runs.

Also not back, apparently, will be Matt Carpenter, who will start a broadcasting career on the MLB Network during the playoffs. He finished his fourteenth major league season (with three teams) by hitting .234 this year with four homers and 15 RBIs. He only batted 157 times.

(NASCAR)—Another non-playoff driver has played the role of a spoiler in the chase for the Cup Championship—Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who beat Brad Keselowski by six-thousands of a second. It’s not a record by a long shot (or short shot). But what is a record is the crash five laps from the scheduled end of the race that involved 27 cars. Thirteen cars were not involved in that one, a few that had been sidelined by earlier shuts. Seventeen drivers finished on the lead lap because their cars were not damaged or were not damaged enough to be sidelined.

The crash provided a reprieve for some drivers outside the cutline for the next round of the playoffs and was a setback to some others headed for much better finishers.

Next weekend’s race on the Charlotte Roval (the road course inside the oval course) will determine which eight drivers will stay in the hunt for the Cup.  Chase Elliott holds eighth place in the points, thirteen points ahead of Joey Logano and twenty up on Daniel Suarez.  Austin Cindric and Chase Brisco seem to need a victory to make the next round.

Stenhouse’s win is his first in 65 races. He becomes the latest driver to end a long winless streak this year. His win is the third one in the first five playoff races taken by a non-playoff driver.

(INDYCAR)—Michael Andretti has sent his fans a message—that “decades of running flat out doesn’t come without sacrifice” and it’s time to turn his team over to his partner, Dan Towriss.  He says it’s time “to spend more time with my beautiful family, including my 10-year old twins, embrace my new Nonno title and explore new things on a personal level and with my other businesses.”

Andretti, who is 62 and the son of Mario, has been racing cars for more than forty years either as a driver or an owner (he was a go-kart terror as a kid, winning 50 of 75 races, starting when he was 11. He drove his first championship-level open wheel race for the CART series in 1983. He won the championship four times. His 42 wins rank him fifth on the all-time IndyCar list. He holds the unfortunate record of leading the most Indianapolis 500 laps without winning the race—as a driver.

He retired from full-time racing in 2003 and bought into a team owned by Kim and Barry Green. The team has grown in the years since and is now known as Andretti Global. It has won national championships and he finally posted wins in the 500, as an owner.

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IndyCar is adding a unique race to its schedule in 2026—-a race in Arlington, Texas that will have the cars running a 2.73-mile course around the stadiums where the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers play.  The race is scheduled for March 26, after the football season and just before baseball season starts.

 

Sports: 7-Come-11 for Mizzou; Chiefs Escape Again; Royals in Danger; Cardinals Fans Send Message; and other stuff. 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(For the few who follow these sports musings, my computer seems to have become confused about posting sports entries.  So before the weeks is out, and for the historical record, this post is finally being posted, albeit several hours late).

(WANNA BET?)—-Before we dive into our weekly sports talk today, we want to call your attention to the first of a series of posts on your editor’s blog about the upcoming statewide vote on Sports Wagering.  If you go to bobpriddy.net and look for the entry for September 16, you will read about why sports betting might be fun for you but it will not be what the casino industry and our pro sports teams are telling you in their commercials.  We take no position on the issue itself but our pro sports teams have hitched their wagons to the casino industry and the casino industry is not shooting straight with Missouri voters.  In later posts, we’ll tell you why Amendment Two is not only NOT good for our schools, it’s terrible for our veterans and even for the host cities of our casinos.

Now, on with our regular show.

(MIZZ)—Missouri’s attempt to avoid a defeat from traditional SEC doormat Vanderbilt cost it some early-season esteem.  The Tigers dropped from 7th to 11th in the AP poll after slipping past the Commodores 30-27 in an overtime game more notable for what didn’t happen than what did.

Missouri won the statistical battle with 442 yards of offense to Vanderbilt’s 324, but erratic field goal kicking and the inability to cross the goal line once they reached the red zone left a lot of fans frustrated.  While the 442 yards might seem impressive, the 188 yards gained that did result in any scores is a telling statistic.

Missouri’s offense never seemed to find a rhythm while Vanderbilt’s quarterback Diego Pavia harassed the defense, beginning with a 60-yard TD pass that put Missouri into a 7-0 hole early. When Missouri was able to go up 20-13 in the third quarter, Pavia led Vanderbilt on an 80-yard touchdown drive to tie.

The fourth quarter provided a touchdown apiece but neither team could find the traction to take control.

Both teams scored touchdowns in the first overtime. In the second overtime, Missouri field goal kicker Blake Craig, who had an uneven day, got a field goal and when Vanderbilt stalled, its kicker, who had a slightly less uneven day, made his day, and his teams day, even worse by hooking the ball to the left.

Coach Drinkwitz, his staff, and his players have two weeks to figure out why the coffee hasn’t perked in the last two games.  They’ll play their first road game against Texas A&M on October 5. (ZOU)

(CONNOR WHO?)—Remember Connor Bazelack, who bolted from Missouri to become a high-expectation quarterback at Indiana?  He fled there for Bowling Green last year and decided to stay this year.  Last Saturday, Bowling Green played Missouri’s next opponent, Texas A&M and lost 26-20. Bazelak gave his team a chance to take a late lead when he threw a 65-yard touchdown pass but A&M recovered an onside kick with 38-seconds left to kill the Falcons’ chances.

Bowling Green is 1-2 with losses to then-eighth ranked Penn State, and then-25th ranked A&M by a total of 13 points.

Bazelak had two seasons at Missouri before one year at Indiana, where he set a school record with 66 pass attempts in one game. He threw for 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions before heading to Bowling Green for 2023. He led the Falcons to the Quick Lane Bowl against Minnesota. His team led 10-9 at the half but lost 3024. Bazelak passed for one touchdown and ran for another. Afterward, he said he would stay at Bowling Green in hopes of winning a MAC championship.

(LOOKING AHEAD)—We are only six weeks away from the first Missouri Tiger basketball game.  November 4, against Memphis, in Memphis.  Missouri will have a chance to win its first SEC game since 2022 when it plays Auburn on January 4.  Missouri has a 20-game SEC losing streak going, including a tournament loss in 2023, and all 19 games (including the tournament) last year.

On to pro sports—-

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs played just well enough to win against the Atlanta Falcons although Falcons fans think the refs were the 12th player in red Sunday night.
The Chiefs survived 22-17, thanks to two stout late-game efforts by the defense, one of which appeared to have some officiating help (at least, to hear Atlanta fans and players speak).

Falcons QB Kirk Cousins, with 4:12 left in the game, had receiver Kyle Pitts in the Chiefs’ end zone, with smaller Chiefs safety Bryan Cook covering him. Cook appeared to be face-guarding Pitts, not following the flight of the ball, and appeared to hit Pitts early.  After the game, referee Tra Blank told the Atlanta Constitution why no red flag was thrown—because the officials in the moment and from their positions “did not feel that there was a foul committed.”  Pass interference calls are not reviewable, so officials could not check other views in the video system.

After the game, Atlanta coach Raheem Morris refused to comment, perhaps fearing a fine frmthe NFL for criticizing the referees: “I like my money. I’m smart enough to be aware not to dunk on the officials. They made the call, or didn’t make the call, it is what it is.”  He also noted the Falcons had another chance to win it, on the final play but failed.

The Chiefs have gone fourteen games without scoring thirty points. They are 9-5 in those games.

Travis Kelce against was not much of a factor, with four catches for 30 yards. After the game, Patrick Mahomes told Sports Illustrated  after the game that a lot of plays are being called for Kelse but “it’s like two or three (defenders) are going to him…I’m going to do my best to keep feeding him the ball whenever he’s there, whenever he’s open.” Mahomes thinks things will open up for Kelce as Rashee Rice and speedster Xavier Worthy, joined by a robust run game, get more involved.

(CARDINALS)—Only three questions remain for the Cardinals: whether they will finish at .500 or a little bit better, who won’t be back next year, and whether Ollie Marmol one of those who won’t be.

Last Friday’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians put the final nail in the playoff hopes coffin.  This season is only the third time this Century the Cardinals haven’t had any postseason opportunities.

The ‘Birds started the week 79-77. If they play .500 ball in their last two series, they’ll finish above break even.

Cardinal fans have sent a message that they’re not attracted to mediocrity or worse for a second straight year.  The end of the last homestand of the year left total attendance for 2024 at 2,869,783, the first time it’s been less than three-million since the latest Busch Stadium opened in 2006.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals are in danger of playing themselves out of the playoffs after a season that has brought a lot of hope and expectation from the fans.  But a disastrous week that has resulted in seven straight losses six to the Tigers and the Giants, have them on the brink of failure to make the playoffs for the first time since their World Series championship year of 2015.  They started the week at 82-74, tied with Detroit for the second wild card spot.  Minnesota is only one game back with six games left.

Sports Illustrated reports the Royals are at the bottom of the statistics in home runs, slugging percentage ad OPS and they have missed repeated chances to get a runner home from second base.

They have six games this week against the Washington Nationals (69-87) and the Atlanta Braves (85-71 and hoping to make the NL playoffs), all on the road.

Minnesota dropped out of a possible three-way tie for a playoff spot by losing a doubleheader to Boston Sunday.  If Kansas City and Detroit finish with the same records next weekend, Kansas City gets in because it has a winning record against Detroit this year.

Motoring on:

(NASCAR)—The field of playoff drivers eligible for the NASCAR Cup this year was winnowed from sixteen to twelve Saturday night at Bristol won by Kyle Larson in the most dominating performance in track history.  He took the lead on lap 35 and led 462 of the remaining 465 laps, giving up the lead only during pit stops. It’s his fifth win of the year, the most of any driver.

The race eliminated Ty Gibbs, who finished 15th; Martin Truex Jr., who was 24th; Brad Keselowski, finishing 26th; and Harrison Burton, who was 35th.  Larson leads the points for the remaining twelve drivers: Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Willliam Byron, defending champion Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, Alex Bowman, and Chase Briscoe.

Both Gibbs and Truex, who are teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing, were fast enough to contend for a slot in the second round. But they were TOO fast at a couple of critical points.  Truex was .09 mph too fast leaving his pit stall and Gibbs was too fast coming into the pits. The penalties put both at the back of the pack.  Keselowski, who owns part of the Roush Fenway Keselowski racing team never found the speed he needed, starting 23rd but never running in the top tier and finishing three laps off the pace.  Burton, who entered the playoffs 34th in regular season points but eligible because he won a race, was 78 laps behind but still running at the end, when he finished 35th in the 37-car field.

The first race in the next round will be Sunday at the Kansas Speedway. The playoff field will be narrowed to eight after the next three races.

(INDYCAR)—IndyCar has established its charter system, seen as an underpinning of the future stability of the series.  Ten teams have accepted charters for 25 cars that will be guaranteed starting positions in all races in the series except the Indianapolis 500.  Penske Entertainment President Mark Miles calls the system “an aligned and optimistic vision” that “provides greater value for our ownership and the entries they field.”

The charter system guarantees 25 cars will compete for 22 positions in the series Leaders Circle program, a system that provides more than one-million dollars per car, based on a points schedule, to qualifying teams.  A team also has to make the field in the Indianapolis 500 to be eligible for the funds.

Several teams will have three regular-season entrants: Andretti Global, Arrow McLaren, Chip Ganassi Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan, and Team Penske. With two are A. J. Foyt Enterprises, Dale Coyne, Ed Carpenter,, Juncos Hollinger, and Meyer Shank Racing.

The first race for the new system will be March 2 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.

(FORMULA 1)—McLaren’s Lando Norris led from the start to a 30-second lead at the finish to win the Singapore Grant Prix and take another bite out of the big points lead Max Verstappen built up in the first half of the Formula 1 season.  But F1 numbers-crunchers say that there aren’t enough races for Norris to overtake Verstappen even if he wins all seven remaining races and Norris finishes second in all of them, a highly-unlikely event.

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Chiefs Win by a Foot But Break a Leg; Tigers Drop: Cardinals becalmed; Royals Having Historic Year; and some other stuff.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs have started the season 2-0 against stiff opposition, thanks to an opponent’s toe being out of bounds at the end of the game and then thanks to the foot of kicker Harrison Butker, who nailed a 51-yard field goal as the clock ran down to 0:00.

This one was another close call for Kansas City, a team once known for its high-scoring offense. The Chiefs have yet to hit 30 points this year and have done it only once in their last twelve regular-season games, and not at all in their last ten. Two years ago, the Chiefs had eight games of 30 or more and three in which they got 40 or more.  They’ve hit forty only once in their last 25 games.

The Chiefs announced yesterday that their featured running back, Isiah Pacheco, suffered a fractured fibula, the small bone in the leg, and will be out for at least six weeks. With Clyde Edwards Hillaire on the non-football injured list to deal with PTSD, the Chiefs have Samaje Perine and Carson Steele as the only running backs on the 53-man roster. Perine was signed after being cut by Denver after spending nine seasons bouncing around in Washington, Cincinnati, and Miami. Steele is a rookie. Both have seen limited action this year.

Reports indicate the Chiefs are bringing former running back Kareem Hunt in for a look-see.  He was with the Chiefs in 2017 and 2018, led the league in rushing as a rookie in ’07 and was second in the ROTY voting. He was cut after eleven games of the 2018 season after a video showed him knocking down a woman and kicking her.  He’s been with the Browns for most of the last five seasons but has never come close to his performance with the Chiefs.

Next week, the Chiefs play a Sunday night game against the Falcons in Atlanta. The Falcons opened the season with an 18-10 loss to the Steelers. Last night they were on the road against the Eagles.

(MIZ)—Missouri came back to beat Boston College Saturday, then the nation’s 24th ranked team, moving them up from 10th to 9th in the ESPN Power rankings. Mizzou was down 14-3 before reeling off 24 unanswered points and being far enough ahead that fans didn’t have to worry about a loss as BC headed for its final touchdown with little time left.

Missouri went into the game ranked 6th in the AP poll but dropped a slot as Tennessee hammered Kent State 62-0 while the Tigers at times struggled against a ranked opponent (that is no longer ranked this week).

Tennessee also vaulted past Missouri in the coaches poll where the Tigers are 8th, tied with Penn State.  Missouri is 3-0. Penn State is 2-0.

Quarterback Brady Cook moved into fourth place on the all-time Tiger passing yards list with a 21 for 30 day and 264 yards. He moves past Jeff Handy and James Franklin.

Next up is Vanderbilt, led by quarterback Diego Pavia, who has completed 65% of his passes for four touchdowns and 543 yards. He also has run for 195 yards on 54 carries. His top receiver is Eli Stowers with a dozen catches for 163 yards and a touchdown.

Missouri is 12th in the country in offensive yards. Vanderbilt is 77th. Defensively, Missouri is 8th in defensive yards. Vanderbilt is 57th.

(THE REGIONALS)—From time to time we’ll check up on our eight regional universities.

The Southeast Missouri State Red Hawks are 2-1 after beating the University of Tennessee-Martin 45-42 in double overtime Saturday. Paxton DeLaurent threw for a school-record six touchdowns, his fifth one for the tie (after the extra point) with 39 seconds on the clock.

Missouri University of Science and Technology is 1-2 after pounding winless Lincoln of California 45-6.

Truman State and University of Indianapolis had back-to back 96-yard kickoff returns in Saturday’s UINDY 41-34 win that dropped the Bulldogs to 0-2.

Northwest Missouri Bearcats beat 25th ranked Fort Hays state 32-20 Saturday to up their record to 1-2. Next up is Missouri Southern.

Missouri Southern dropped to 0-3 with a loss to Missouri Western 35-27.

Missouri Western is 2-1 after the win against Southern. Western scored on three of its first four possessions and got a 105-yard kickoff return from Javerious McGuinn at the end of the third quarter and then had to hang on for the victory.

Missouri State dropped beat Lindenwood 28-14 to go to 1-2 after season-opening losses to Ball State and Montana.

Lincoln University is 0-2 after a 34-19 loss to McKendree.

University of Central Missouri and Central Oklahoma lost a wild game that began with a scoreless first quarter, then saw 42 points scored in the second quarter, 27 in the third and 28 in the fourth.  Central Oklahoma prevailed 57-40 in a game with more than 1200 yards of offense.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have guaranteed they’ll have their first winning season since their 2015 World Championship year.  Saturday’s win over the Pirates was their 82nd of the year.  At 82-68, with eleven games left, they could lock up their playoff spot this week.  Their magic number is eight.

Michael Wacha picked up his 13th win on Saturday to run his season to 13-7. He’s 38-13 in his last three seasons for the Red Sox, Padres, and the Royals, the best three years of his career.  He’s expected to become a free agent after this year.

They started the week four games out of first place in their division but just five games behind the Yankees for the best record in the American League.

(CARDINALS)—-The Pirates swept a weekend series with the Cardinals and in the process eliminated any change they had of making the playoffs.  The Cardinals start the week at 74-75 as they play out the string on a season that saw them struggle to get to .500 and fail to stay above break even very long.  They peaked in July when they climbed six games above break even, at 48-42 on July 8th.

The monthly records show the slog through 2024:

March and April  14-16

May 13-12

June  16-12

July  13-12

August 12-16

September (through Sunday)  6-7

Remember Matt Adams, a slugger who had his moments but never became the “Big” to match his nickname, “Big City?”  He wants to retire as a Redbird, so he’s being signed to a one-day contract on Wednesday. He’s been playing minor league ball the last four seasons after the Braves dropped him at the end of 2020.  The Cardinals drafted him 2009 and he played his first game for them in 2012. He helped the Cardinals win the 2013 National League Pennant. He had seven years with St. Louis and also played for the Braves, Rockies, and the Nationals—where he won a World Series ring in 2019.  He and his family live in St. Louis. He finished with a .258 batting average, 118 homers and 297 RBIs in 856 games, mostly as a first baseman.

Motoring on:

(INDYCAR)—And suddenly, the IndyCar season is gone and a championship chase that had gone to the last race vanished in the opening laps. Colton Herta won the fiercely-contested race that saw 237 passes for position.

Alex Palou became the 13th driver in series history to win three championships, all in the space of four years. Will Power, who hoped to win HIS third series championship, saw those hopes vanish 13 laps into the 206-lap race when his lap belt came loose. He finished eight laps down, 24th, the last car still running at the end of the race.

He’s the second-youngest driver to win three series championships, at 27 years, five months, and fourteen days. He’s a little more than three months older than Sam Hornish, who won his third title in 2006, a year before he left IndyCar to race in NASCAR.

The last three-time champion was Dario Franchitti, who won three in a row 2009-2011 to go with another one in 2007. They have accounted for six of the 16 championships won for team owner Chip Ganassi.  Only team Penske has more series titles—17. Franchitti, who also won the Indianapolis 500 three times, retired in 2013 after being seriously injured in a crash. He remains with Ganassi as a driver coach and advisor.

Herta got past Pato O’Ward four laps from the end and pulled away to a 1.8-second win, his first on an oval..  IndyCar returned to the oval for the first time since 2008 because construction in downtown Nashville made the street circuit used in recent years unavailable.

Herta’s victory enabled him to jump to second in season points standings, 31 below Palou. He called his finish “awesome,” and said, “hoping to do a little better next year.”

IndyCar won’t race again until March 2 when the 2025 season begins with the traditional street race in St. Petersburg, Florida.

(NASCAR)—Sundays’ race at Watkins Glen was a general disaster for the 16 drivers still in contention for the NASCAR championship, leaving six drivers to scramble for two positions in the next round.

Chris Buescher, winless during the 26-race regular season, survived the chaos of the race that saw only two of the sixteen playoff drivers finish in the top ten.  He passed Shane VanGisbergen, a road-racing champion from Australia, on the last lap and won by almost a second. Playoff driver Chase Briscoe was the highest-finishing playoff driver, finishing fifth. Austin Cindric was tenth.

Buescher barely missed the playoffs when Brisco, winless until the 26th race, pulled off a victory that automatically put him in the playoffs but left Buescher a few points short of the field of sixteen.

Twelve of the sixteen playoff drivers suffered mishaps of various degrees of seriousness during the race. Several contenders didn’t make it through the first lap including points leader Ryan Blaney, whose day ended in a tangle that also included other playoff drivers, Christopher Bell, Brad Keselowski (a part owner of Buescher’s car), and Denny Hamlin.

Hamlin was involved in a second wreck that also included Bell, regular season champion Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and William Byron.

Both drivers were able to drive away from the scariest-looking crash of the afternoon late in the race when  Byron (24) crashed into Brad Keselowski with Byron’s car staying on the track only because of an extra layer at the top of the steel barrier.

(FORMULA 1)—Oscar Piastri picked up his second career Grand Prix victory on the Baku street circuit in Azerbaijan.  Piastri, who started second, battled pole-sitter Charles Leclerc throughout the race and held him off for the last 31 laps of the 51-lap race.  Defending Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen finished seventh but still leads McLaren’s Lando Norris by 59 points and Leclerc by 78.  Piastri’s win has moved him to fourth in the standings.

(Photo credits: Cook, Missouri Athletics; Wacha, MLB; Palou, Bob Priddy; Herta, Rick Gevers; Crash; NBC Sports screenshot)

 

 

 

 

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Sports: Royals Bounce Back; Tigers Move Up, Chiefs Win Because of a Black Shoe, Missourians in Paris, and other stuff. 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(The sports entry for last Tuesday never made it into print and we blame our computer.  The opening segment about Missourians at the Paralympics in Paris was the lead article and we have moved it to today because it’s important that they be honored for their efforts, even if we are a week late.  The same is true for our roundup of Missouri football players and the NFL).

(PARALYMPICS)—Several Missourians have been competing for Olympic medals in the last few days in Paris—at the Paralympics.

Colleen Young, who was born with albinism and is legally blind, was in her fourth Paralympics as a swimmer, a silver and bronze medalist in the Tokyo games and a bronze medalist at Rio de Janeiro. She brought home a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke. She is part of the women’s 200 meter Individual Medley team.  She was part of the women’s 200m individual medley that finished seventh.

St. Louis University Occupational Therapy Professor Sarah Adam is the first woman to make the USA wheelchair rugby team, which knocked defending champion Great Britain of the tournament. Team leader Chuck Aoki, who passed to Adam for the backbreaking score in the game said, “Sarah is a dynamic player offensively, and defensively too – she’s so fast and able to find gaps in the defense and attack, and that makes my job easier. Sarah is an absolute massive contributor.”  Also on the team is Eric Newby, a graduate of Maryville University in St. Louis, who was the co-captain of the team after winning silver medals in the last two Paralympics. The USA team, however, lost in the gold medal game to Japan. Adam returns to her job at St. Louis U with a silver medal.

University of Missouri-Columbia sophomore Amaris Vazquez Collazo carried the Puerto Rican flag in the opening ceremonies as a competitor in the long jump. Her parents moved to St. Louis when she was three years old, a year after she received her first prosthetic leg. She says she has told everybody since she was eight years old that she was going to compete in the 2024 Olympics. You can see her story at Bing Videos. She finished 12th in the long jump.

Spencer Seggebruch of St. Louis is the pilot in paracycling, an event that matches a sighted “pilot” and a visually impaired stoker in the second seat of a two-person bike.  He’s partnered with Branden Walton, a Windsor, California native who began losing his vision due to macular degeneration at age four. Their time of 4:10.29 in the 4000m qualifying race left them sixth and out of the running for the next round. They finished eighth in the trial for the 1000 meters.

Rachel Watts of St. Joseph nurse, who was diagnosed in 2018 with multiple sclerosis that fully affects her right side, finished her triathlon in 13th place in 1:42:15.  She told KSHB-TV in Kansas City she would use the Paris experience to prepare for future competition, “I get to go learn how to race better at this level and really prepare for LA in 2028.”

(MIZ-NFL)—All NFL teams have finalized their 53-player rosters and a flock of former Missouri Tigers have made the big time or are sticking around to start another season.  But some are not.

Cody Schrader impressed a lot of folks with the San Francisco 49ers but not enough to crack the backfield for the season. Almost immediately after he was waived, the Los Angeles Rams picked him up. He showed versatility for the 49ers with 48 yards rushing on 19 carries, four kick returns for 30 yards, and two pass receptions for eight yards. He’s likely to be a special teams guy with the Rams, a team that has three running backs on its roster already.

Darius Robinson, who went to the Arizona Cardinals in the first round of the draft, will miss the first four games of the season because he’s on the inured reserve list. He incurred a calf injury during training camp.

The Detroit Lions have kept cornerback Ennis Rakestraw and the Broncos start the year with cornerback Kris Abrams-Draine. Ty’Ron Hopper is on the Green Bay Packers roster. The Jacksonville Jaguars have kept tackle Javon Foster. The Indianapolis Colts have safety JC Carlies.

Where is Drew Lock now?  New York Giants. But he got hurt in training camp.

Mekhi Wingo, who committed to Mizzou out of high school and spent one season in Columbia before transferring to LSU, made the Lions’ initial roster.

Some guys we remember didn’t make it on the opening game roster but will be on a practice squad. Tyler Badie is with the Broncos practice squad for a third year.

Also homeless are former Tigers Xavier Delgado, let go in the last round by the Buccaneers. Likewise for placekicker Harrison Mevis, waived by the Carolina Panthers.

Former Tiger DE Shane Ray appears to have called it a career. He’s been dogged by injuries throughout his career but has been healthy enough to pick up a Super Bowl ring with the Broncos in 2016 and a Grey Cup Canadian Football League championship with the Toronto Argonauts last year.  (NFL-ZOU)

(TIGERS)—Missouri’s 38-0 win over Buffalo has boosted the Tigers in the polls.  They’re up to 6th in the AP Poll, 8th in the coaches poll.

Next up is Boston College, just outside the top 25 after wins at then 10th ranked Florida State and against Duquesne.  The Missouri defense, which has posted two straight shutouts, will face its stiffest test of the young season BU quarterback Thomas Castellanos, who has completed 75% of his passes this year and has seven all-purpose touchdowns. He hit 90% of his passes in the first half (9 of 10, 234 yards and four touchdowns) as the Eagles broke out to a 42-0 halftime lead.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs have established a toehold on their campaign for a third straight NFL championship with a 27-21 win over the Baltimore Ravens, the team they beat last year for the right to go to the Super Bowl.

A record number of season-opening game viewers watched the matchup, an average audience of 28.9 million, a million-plus more than watched the Patriots-Steelers opener in 2015.  The audience peaked at 33 million in the second quarter.

The Chief took the lead after Baltimore scored the first touchdown and led the rest of the way in  the intense game, but for a few minutes faced the possibility they’d have to stop a two-point conversion to get the win.

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson hit Isaiah Likely in the back of the end zone as the clock ran out and for a few minutes, Arrowhead fans held their breaths before referees ruled Likely’s right toe was out of bounds.

Patrick Mahomes broke Len Dawson’s all-time Chiefs record for passing yards in the first quarter and relied on receivers Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy for most of the night’s longest plays. Rice caught seven passes of 103 yards. Worthy, a rookie burner, scorched the Ravens with a 21-yard rushing touchdown and another one receiving, finishing with two catches for 47 yards.

When Mahomes was asked to comment on the overruled last-gasp touchdown, he suggested Likely wear white shoes in the future.

Next up for the Chiefs: the Cincinnati Bengals, upset by the New England Patriots 16-10. The Patriots held the Bengals to 224 total yards. Cincinnati was missing its star wide receiver, Tee Higgins, who has a hamstring injury. His status for the Chiefs game is uncertain.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals have bounced back from a season-high seven-game losing streak that dropped them out of a tie for the division lead by sweeping a three game series with the Minnesota Twins, their biggest competitor for the second division wild card playoff slot. The sweep, coupled with the Guardians’ loss to the Dodgers Sunday, pulls the Royals to within 2½ games of the Guardians.  Former Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty shut out the Royals into the seventh  inning before leaving. He’s 5-1 with the Dodger since moving over from Detroit, where he started the year 7-5, and is seen by some as LA’s number one starter going into he playoffs.

Former Cardinals pitcher Michael Wacha polished off the Twins Sunday with seven scoreless innings, giving up only five hits. He’s now 12-7. While the Royals have surged after the losing streak, the Twins have been going 6-14 in their last twenty.

The Royals are having a strong season on the mound as well as at the plate, led by four pitchers and three hitters.  Seth Lugo is 15-8 with a 3.05 ERA; Cole Ragans is 11-9 but has an ERA of 3.33. Brady Singer’s ERA is 3.35 although he’s only 9-10. And Michael Wacha is 12-7 and 3.34.  Lugo and Ragans have the only two complete games this season, out of 142 games played.

On the hitting side, three players were or are headed for 100 RBIs. Salvador Perez is at 95 RBIs with 25 homers. Bobby Witt Jr., is 30 and 98.  Before he went on the DL with a broken thumb, Vinnie Pasquantino was 19-97.

(CARDINALS)—The cardinals are a game over .500 after letting the Mariners score five times in the first inning Sunday and then five more times the rest of the way to be the Birds 10-4.  Miles Mikolas took the loss to drop to 8-11 for the year. He lasted just two innings, and gave up seven runs on nine hits.  Mikolas is 7-6 on the road but at home he’s only 1-6 and his Busch Stadium ERA is 6.54.

Speeding along—-

(Since our sports column wasn’t posted last week and because of important developments in IndyCar and NASCAR, we’ll recap races in those two arenas  as we report on the newest stuff)

First—NASCAR wrapped up its regular season and then on Sunday started its 10 race playoffs.  Here’s the regular-season wrap-up followed by the results of Sunday’s first playoff race.

NASCAR1)—Chase Briscoe wrote a bit of a Cinderella ending to the regular NASCAR season by winning the last race that could give him a place in the championship runoffs.  But his win meant curtains for the hopes of a couple of other drivers who were scrambling to get in.

Only sixteen drivers are eligible for the first three playoff races, after which the field is cut to twelve.  Drivers who win one of the first 26 races are guaranteed a spot among the sixteen regardless of how many points they accumulate.

Briscoe’s win left only two spots open for winless drivers to get in on points—Martin Truex Jr., and Ty Gibbs.  Gibbs and Truex ranked 9-10 in the regular points standings.  It also meant that a fight between Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace, and Ross Chastain for one of those spots became moot. Briscoe was 17th in the regular season points but his win put hm in the top sixteen.  Buescher had the 11th best regular season points total but he’s out, as is Wallace, who was 12th in regular season points.  Kyle Busch, whose mid-season poor finishes ruined his playoff chances, finished 16th in regular season points, but Briscoe leapfrogged him with the win.

Also in the playoffs is Harrison Burton, who finished 34th in the regular points standings. But he won a race, which guaranteed him a spot. One other winner was left out—Austin Dillon, 28th in overall points. But NASCAR ruled that his win would not count because he wrecked two competitors intentionally to finish first.

Tyler Reddick, who battled a severe stomach ailment throughout the race, finished tenth, confessing afterward that, “At one point, I was just waiting to puke all over myself. Thankfully they kept that from happening. A whole lot of other gross stuff.”  He appreciated his crew that was “feeding me the right stuff in the car to help me manage it best as I could. Just smart people. Able to put the right stuff in my drink to help calm my stomach down.” His persistence earned for him the regular season championship by one point over Kyle Larson.

Briscoe’s win is only his second career Cup victory and it comes at a bittersweet moment. He drives for Stewart-Haas Racing, a team that will not exist next year because co-owner Tony Stewart is withdrawing from NASCAR.  He’s moving to Joe Gibbs Racing next year and will replace Truex, who is retiring from fulltime Cup racing at the end of this year.

(NASCAR2)—Joey Logano had the lead when the last caution light came on in NASCAR’s first playoff race of the year and locked up a position in the next playoff round, when twelve drivers will remain in competition for this year’s title.

Logano will be going for his third Cup championship, tying Tony Stewart, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, and David Pearson for fourth on the most championships list.

Two playoff drivers exited early when Kyle Larson lost control on the 56th lap and crashed into last week’s winner, Chase Briscoe, taking both cars out of the race. An earlier wreck knocked Martin Truex Jr., out of the lead playoff pack. He’s now 15th in the standings, 18 points under the cutoff point for the next round. He has two races to either win his way into the round of 12 or to rack up enough points to squeak in.

Larson’s early crash wiped out a big points advantage he had going into the race. He’s now tenth, just 15 points above cut line. Briscoe is last in the field of sixteen, twenty points below the line and likely needing to win again if he wants to make it to the second round.

Tyler Reddick, who won the 26-race regular season title, came in sixth despite problems on pit road.

(INDYCAR)—Will Power has won 65 poles and 42 races including the 2018 Indianapolis 500 but is still looking for his first IndyCar championship.  He’s 43 now, and in his career twilight but still running strongly.

He had a chance to take the IndyCar championship points lead in the most recent race, at Milwaukee. But it slipped away and he goes to Nashville trailing leader Alex Palou by 33 points. IndyCar ran two races on the historic Milwaukee Mile—the oldest race track in continuous operation in the world—with Power finishing second to Pato O’Ward on Saturday, trimming eleven points off of Palou’s lead.

Then on Sunday, Palou’s entire season appeared in peril when his car would not start because of an electrical problem and he re-entered the race many laps down while Power was leading or running with the leaders and the Palou points lead was rapidly disappearing.  But Palou soldiered on, gaining points as other drivers dropped out.  Then things went sideways for Power who spun out while running in the top five. Power wound up the last car on the lead lap, in tenth place, while Palou, still 29 laps behind, had run enough laps to finish 19th.

(Powers’ teammate Scott McLaughlin won Sunday’s race, by the way)

IndyCar heads to Nashville next weekend for its last race of the season with Palou up by 33 points, and headed to his third IndyCar championship in four years.

(Photo credits: Screenshot of toe is from NBC Sports; Briscoe by Bob Priddy; Power by Rick Gevers; Logano and the playoff drivers, NASCAR)

Sports: One season fading away; Another dawning; And a possible plum race for the St. Louis area.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals, losers of 106 games last year, are on the verge of seizing the lead in the American League Central.  They started this week with a doubleheader sweep of the Cleveland Guardians yesterday to pull withing one game of Cleveland.  Salvador Perez had two home runs in the second game, one of them a grand slam.  His six career grand slams and his 17 multi-homer games tie team records.

(CARDINALS)—Mike Schildt returned to Busch Stadium last night for the first time since he was fired by the Cardinals two years ago over “philosophical differences.”  Shildt’s Padres scorched the Cardinals 7-4.  The Cardinals drop to 65-66.  San Diego is up to 75-58.

The Cardinals have lost Wilson Contreras again. This time it’s a broken little finger because he was hit by a pitch last week. Ivan Herrera has been called up form Memphis to  back up Pedro Pages (pronounced PAW-hezz for non-Cardinal followers), who has proven himself to be a solid backup for Contreras—who has been among the team’s leading hitters since coming back from a broken arm in another HBP incident.  Was hitting .262 with 15 homers when he was hurt again.

(BASEBALL)—We have only about 30 games left in the regular baseball season. On one side of the state we have frustration. On the other side of the state we have elation. For the sport in general we are looking at an unusual situation—we might finish this season with no team winning 100 games.

Fansided.com raised the issue during the weekend.  When we checked the standings Sunday, the Dodgers had 78 wins and would have to go 22-9 the rest of the way to hit the century mark. The Yankees will have to go 23-7; the Orioles 24-6. Cleveland and the Royals and Twins have to play at a 25-6 and 28-3 to reach 100 wins.

The Cardinals are 35 games short of 100 victories this year. If they go on a 31-game winning streak, they’ll top out at 96.  They need to go 16-15 to finish at .500.

Don’t give up, Cardinals fans.  It’s doable.  Finishing .500, that is.

Fansided.com excludes the COVID year of 2020 as it points out the last year for no team winning 100 games was 2014, a year in which only six teams had 90 or more victories (the Dodgers were on top with 98). That was the year that the Giants and the Cardinals, both wild-card teams, took seven games to decide the Giants would win the World Series.

The next year, the Cardinals were the only team to win 100 games. The Cubs, with 103, were the only team to hit triple digits in 2016, the year they finally won a World Series.

While we are wallowing in statistics:  The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has become the sixth player to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a season. His 9th-inning grand slam Friday night was his 40th home run.   He holds the record for being the fastest to reach both numbers. He has about thirty games to become the first member of the 50-50 club.

One other thing—-He threw off a mound for the first time this year during the weekend. Next year he could win his 40th game as a pitcher (assuming he doesn’t get activated before the end of this season).  He is 38-15 in five years as a pitcher with the Angels, for whom he was 25-14 before he was hurt in the 2023 season and signed with the Dodgers for ten years and $282 million.

Somebody else who had a good week last week was the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who had seven home runs in six games and had 51 starting this week and plenty of time to break his American League record of 62 set three years ago.

And while we are talking about statistics and excellence, let’s mention some statistics and failure.  The Chicago White Sox lost their 100th game this weekend to go 31=100.  They are on track to break the modern record for most losses in a season, now held by the 1969 Mets, who went 40-120-1 in their first season.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs have cut a dozen players to get their roster down to the 53 players permitted for the opening game of the season. The biggest “name” among them is fourth-string quarterback Ian Book a fourth-round pick of the Saints in the 2021 draft. He played for Notre Dame before signing a four-year deal worth $4.153 million including a $673,584 bonus. The Eagles claimed him off waivers in August of 2022 before waiving him in the 2023 preseason. He was on the Patriots’ practice squad briefly, tried out for the 49ers and the Bills before signing a futures contract with the Chiefs for this season. His career shows he started one game, for New Orleans, was 12 for 20 passing for 135 yards, two interceptions and no TDs. He also ran three times for six yards.

Also cut were cornerbacks Miles Battle, Kevin Joseph and Ekow Boye-Doe; Wide Receivers Phillip Brooks and Kyle Sheets, Defensive End Owen Carney, Defensive Tackle Alex Grubner, Guards Griffin McDowell and Nick Torres, Tight End Geor’quarius Spivey, and Safety Randen Plattner.

Some former Tigers:

Harrison Mevis was cut by the Carolina Panthers a couple of weeks ago, beaten out by Eddie Pineiro, now the only kicker on the roster.

Two former Tigers appear to have made the season-starting Denver Broncos roster—Cornerback Kris Abrams-Draine and (remember him?) Tyler Badie. Badie, who was 5-feet-8 and 197 pounds, was a second-team All-American for Missouri in 2012 when he rushed for 1,604 yards and caught 54 passes for 330 more yards. The Ravens picked him in the sixth round, waived him in 2022 and signed him to their practice squad.  The Broncos signed him for their practice squad at the end of ’22. He played his first NFL game at the end of last season and took a Russell Wilson pass 24 yards to his first NFL touchdown.  He signed a futures/reserve contract with the Broncos last January.

As we went to press last night we were waiting to hear the fates of other Tigers, most particularly Cody Schrader of the San Francisco 49ers. He has won praise for his work ethic but the 49ers are loaded with talent left over from their big  year in 2023 and a strong draft crop.

(THE GOLDEN DAYS ARE PAST)—Former Missouri Tiger Markus Golden, who finished his career in Columbia as one of the nation’s top pass rushers,  has called it a career after nine years in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals (second round pick in the 2015 NFL draft), New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Steelers. He had 51 sacks, 11 forced fumbles, and 343 tackles in a solid pro career.

(MIZ)—Thursday night.  First Missouri Tiger football game of the year.  Murray State Racers. Faurot Field.

The Racers have a new coach, Jody Wright, who knows what to expect from a SEC team. Last year, he was the tight ends coach at South Carolina that saw Trey Knox as a second team all-conference player.  He helped recruit the school’s recruiting class that year that was ranked 17th nationally.  He has been on the Alabama staff under Nick Saban twice, most recently as director of player personnel in 2015-2017.

The turnover in coaches and players with the Racers has made it hard for Tiger coach Eli Drinkwitz to map out a strategy for Thursday night’s game. He told reporters yesterday, “There’s really no way to watch Murray State film, they’ve got a brand new offense, defense, and special teams coordinator along with 60 new players. You can watch their schemes from last year to try to see what their players are, and so figuring out matchups is almost impossible. It comes down to us executing our plan and our schemes at a really high level.”

The Tigers depth chart released during the weekend seems to contain few surprises.

Brady Cook is the quarterback with sophomore Drew Pyne his top backup. Nate Noel or Marcus Carroll will start at running back with freshman Jamal Roberts, as their first backup with sophomore Tavorus Jones and freshman Kewan Lacy behind him. Noel gets the start.

Wide receivers are three familiar names: Luther Burden III, Theo Wease Jr., and Mookie Cooper. Mekhi Miller and Daniel Blood, a junior and a sophomore, are behind them. There is no shortage of wide receivers on the depth chart—ten of them including these guys.

Sophomore Brett Norfleet returns as the starting tight end with sophomore Jordon Harris or senior Tyler Stephens behind him. Harris is questionable for the Murray State game. He’s nursing a minor injury.

The starting offensive line looks like this:

Left tackle Marcus Bryant, a senior with Jayven Richardson, a sophomore, behind him; Cayden Green, a sophomore at left guard with freshman Logan Reichert as his backup. ; Connor Tollison, a junior, will be at center with either sophomore Triston Wilson or senior Drake Heismayer in reserve.  On the right side are senior guard Cam’Ron Johnson, ahead of sophomore Curtis Peagler, and tackle Armand Membou Jr., with senior Mitchell Walters behind him.

On the Defense:

Senior Kristian Williams and Junior Chris McClellan start at tackle. They are backed up by four players, Sterling Webb, Marquis Gracial, Jalen Marshall, and Sam Williams. Webb is a junior, Gracial and Marshall are sophomores and Williams is a freshman.

Defensive ends, depending on the situation, will be Johnny Walker Jr., a senior, Junior Zion Young or Junior Eddie Kelly with backups Joe Moore III, a senior; freshmen Jakhai Lang, Williams Nwaneri and Jaylen Brown.

Middle Linebacker Chuck Hicks, a senior, or another senior Corey Flagg, are tops on the depth chart.

Outside linebackers  will be Triston Newson or Khalil Jacobs. Newson is a senior and Jacobs is a junior. They’ll be backed up by freshman Brayshawn Littlejohn, a redshirt, and three pure freshmen: Jeremiah Beasley, Brian Huff, and Nicholas Rodriguez.

Senior Drey Norwood will be the starter at one linebacker with junior Toriano Pride or freshman Nicholas DeLoach on the other side. Their backups will be senior Marcus Clarke or Ja’Mariyon Wade, a sophomore, redshirt freshman Shamar McNeil and true freshmen Cameron Keys and Jaren Sensabaugh.

Starting safeties will be seniors Joseph Charleston or Tre’Vez Jonson. Marvin Burks Jr., a sophomore and senior Daylan Carnell with freshman Trajan Greco, junior Caleb Flagg, and Senior Sidney Williams or sophomore Phillip Roche. Freshman Jackson Hancock is in reserve.

Freshman Blake Craig will be the successor to Harrison Mevis as the place kicker with Nick Quadrini, a sophomore, behind him.

Senior Luke Bauer, who often filled this role last year is number one as the punter with sophomore Orion Phillips, behind him.

Bauer and Phillips will get the ball snapped ‘way back to them by sophomore long-snapper Brett LeBlank. Senior Trey Flint will be the long-snapper on field goals.

Look for Burden, Blood, and Wease to return punts, with Burden the top choice; Manning, Burks, and Marquis Johnson will return kicks with Johnson listed on the depth chart as number one. (ZOU)

(BEARS)—Missouri State’s Bears are in their two-year transition to the Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). They’ll play their last year in the Missouri Valley Conference this year before joining Conference USA next year and be given full FCS status in 2026.  They open against Montana from the Big Sky Conference next weekend.  The Bears were 4-7 last year. The Grizzlies were 12-1.  The Grizzlies have had only one losing season in the last 27 years, 2012, when the NCAA ordered five games forfeited for rules violations.

So much for stick and ball sports. Here’s the Zoom Department:

(NASCAR)—A purported NASCAR race schedule leaked last week says the Cup cars will race at World Wide Technology Raceway next September 7.  NASCAR says the schedule is “not entirely accurate.”

If, in fact, that date is true for WWTR, it’s a huge step up in status for the track, which is owned independently from NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports.

WWTR is in Madison, Illinois, just across the Stan Musial Bridge from St. Louis.  The scheduling is significant because it puts the track into the NASCAR playoff schedule, a ten-race series at the end of the season that determines the championship.

One of the skeptics is Dale Earnhardt Jr., who said on his podcast last week, “How in the hell did St. Louis end up in the playoffs? I would love to know…It’s bizarre. It’s fine. I mean there’s no sort of, ‘Oh you don’t deserve this’ kind of vibe, I just wonder how that even happened.”

Earnhardt says he didn’t think WWTR would ever become one of the ten playoff tracks. He wants to hear the reason for the scheduling. “I’m wondering where the reasoning is,” he said a few days ago.

Whether WWTR is, in fact, a playoffs track, the fact is that owner Curtis Francois and his folks have taken a track that was days away from being sold and dismantled to make way for a private developer and have turned it into a first-class multi-motorsport facility.  Its events have had enthusiastic sponsor support from the State of Illinois for the NASCAR race, from the Bommarito Automotive Group of St. Louis for the IndyCar event, and Mission Foods for its NHRA Midwestern Nationals.  It is a 1.25 mile oval with long straightaways and differing radius corners at the ends, basically flat, producing a challenging facility for drivers. Fan-competitor opportunities are excellent, parking is good, access to and from interstate highways is solid, and there’s plenty of concession and stage attractions space.

Plus, it plugs a marketing gap as the only NASCAR/IndyCar track between Chicago and Nashville.

(DAYTONA)— A feel-good story emerged from the mess that was the 400-mile race at Daytona Saturday night, with the win by Harrison Burton that gave Wood Brothers their 100th Cup win in a history that goes back to

Harrison Burton outdueled veteran Kyle Busch on the final lap of an Overtime finish of Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway to score his first career Cup Series victory and the 100th for his Wood Brothers team.

Burton, the son of former NASCAR driver Jeff and nephew of former driver Ward, went into the race 34th in the standings and knowing he won’t be back with the team next year, guaranteed that he will be one of the sixteen drivers running in the ten-race playoff series that starts after next Sunday’s race at Darlington.

Speedy Thompson gave the Wood Brothers their first victory in 1960. The team hasn’t won since Ryan Blaney won at Pocono in 2017. It’s the first win for the third and fourth generation of Woods to own the team.

Burton found himself in position to win in a race that had fewer than ten unbent cars at the finish because of three major crashes, two of which saw cars go airborne as the field started the final lap.  A push from rookie Parker Retzlaff on the backstretch put him in front of Kyle Busch, who desperately needed a win to make the playoffs.  Burton held off Burton to win by five one-hundredths of a second.

Burton’s win has a huge impact on the list of drivers who will make up the championship field of sixteen. His win has knocked Bubba Wallace 21 points outside the list of 16 and Ross Chastain 27 back. Busch is too far back to climb back into the playoffs on points. For all intents and purposes,  all three—Wallace, Chastain, and Busch—must win next weekend’s final race of the regular season.

(INDYCAR)—Will Power’s win at Portland Sunday moves him a bit closer to Alex Palou’s points lead as the IndyCar season heads into its last two races, both on ovals.  Palou’s lead is still 54 points on Power and 67 on Colton Herta, however.

Power finished where he started—first—on the road course but Palou finished second, minimizing any points damage Power made.
IndyCar runs two races next weekend at Milwaukee and then closes out its season September 15 at Nashville.

(FORMULA 1)—Lando Norris has taken another bite out of the once-huge points lead Max Verstappen ran up in the first ten races in F1 this year. Norris beat Verstappen by 23 seconds on Verstappen’s home track in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Formula 1 returned to the Zandvoort circuit in 2021 and this is the first time Verstappen has no won the race.

The race is the fifteenth of 24 Grands Prix in Formula One this year. Norris now trails Verstappen by only seventy points.

(photo credit: Wood Brothers Racing)