Category Archives: hockey

Sports: Not a Great Recruiting Class but a Good One; A Worsening Season; A Bowl Game to Wrap Up a Season and other stuff (

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MOSTATEBOWL)—-The Missouri State Bears are wrapping up their preparations for Thursday night’s bowl game against Arkansas State Red Wolves in Frisco, Texas—the home of the Dallas Cowboys training camp.  It’s the first Xbox Bowl and only the third time Missouri State has played a game in December (They were in the FCS playoffs in 1989, played in the 1948 Mo-Kan Bowl and played a cross-town game in 1910 against Dury. The game matches the Bears (7-5) against A-State (6-6).  The Bears are 88th in this week’s CBS Sports Rankings (Arkansas State is 101) and 100 in the MasseyRatings.com (Arkansas State is 108).

The game will be a week after Bears coach Ryan Beard left to become the new head coach at Coastal Carolina.   Offensive coordinator Nick Petrino, Beard’s brother-in-law, will make his head coaching debut in the game. Petrino’s offense is credited with developing quarterback Jacob Clark, who set several program records as the Bears posted their first back-to-back winning seasons in thirty-five years. Clark is finishing his record-setting career in Springfield. He needs 97 yards in total offense to reach 3,000 yards this year. He also can get there with 105 passing yards. He already is the only Bears quarterback to do that—and he’s done it twice. He holds the school record for completion percentage (.671), pass efficiency (162.80) and 200-yard passing games (21 of them). He’s second on the career passing yardags (7,587) and total offense (7,671).

Running back Shomari Lawrence will become the 11th Missouri State player to rush for 1,000 yards in a season when he get his 36th yard in the game. He’ll be the first one to hit that milestone since Chris Douglas did it fifteen years ago. Lawrence ranks 25th nationally with ten carries of at least twenty yards this year and his three rushing touchdowns of 50 yards or more ties him for third in the Conference USA in  that category.

(CHIEFS)—It’s over for the Chiefs this year although they’ll play out the string.  It appears all over for Patrick Machomes, who went down trying in another game to lead his team to a late go-ahead score against the Chargers. It’s a torn ACL and surgery is being contemplated.

Depending on the severity of the injury, Mahomes could be sidelined until well into the 2026 season, meaning the Chiefs have some serious thinking to do about a starting quarterback next year—and probably for a few games at least, a backup.

It appears Gardner Minshew will finish out the season for the Chiefs. He’s still young at 29. He was a starter in his first year, at Jacksonville where he went 6-6. Since then he’s been mostly a backup with Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and the Raiders.  He was 3 for 5 for 22 yards and a game-ending interception when he replaced Mahomes for the last couple of minutes in the 16-`3 loss to the Chargers that dropped Kansas City to 6-8 and headed for a lot of playoff watching.

In this otherwise futile year, Travis Kelce is having a superb season. He leads the team with 67 receptions for 797 yards and is tied for the team lead with five touchdowns. He was 11 for 70 against the Chargers and needs just 26 more yards to equal last year’s total—which needed thirty more catches than he has now. He needs 52 yards to reach 13,000 for his career. He needs 96 yards to reach number two on the all-time yardage list for tight ends. Former Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez hold the record, 15,127.

(MIZDRINK)—It says something about college football (maybe more than something) that the name of Eliah Drinkwitz is being mentioned as the future head coach at Michigan. The conjecture goes on even after Mizzou signed him to a lucrative extension.

(MIZKIDS)—A lot of schools fared worse than the Missouri Tigers in the early signings of recruits for next year’s team. But among the real powers, Missouri appears to have been about average, ranking 34th nationally and 13th out of the 16 SEC teams.  Five SEC teams (Alaama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Texas AM) ranked in the top ten recruiting classes nationally—or at least 247Sports thinks so.

Missouri announced 19 commits on signing day. Six teams reported fewer with four of them ranked above Missouri.

Whether rating the commitment classes on the basis of first-day signings seems questionable, though.  The whole business is a guess, a look at potential on a much bigger stage, just as the NFL draft is based on potential on the largest stage of all.

Plus, there’s the transfer portal that can reduce recruiting classes to shamble.

A better gauge of who had the best requiting class won’t be available unit until the end of  the 2029 season, he fourth season for this bunch.

247Sports a few days ago ranked Missouri’s 2026 class as fifteenth in the country at the end of the traditional four-year collegiate playing career. The Tigers in 2019 had one five star, eight four star and nine three star athletes among 22 commits.

Here’s the SEC rankings (national rankings in parenthesis): Alabama (2), Georgia (5), Tennessee (7), Texas (8), Texas A&M (9), LSU (13), Oklahoma (15), Florida (16), South Carolina (20),  Mississippi (22), Mississippi state 27), Vanderbilt (31), Missouri (34), Auburn (41), Arkansas (57), Kentucky (61).

The rankings can change with later signings. And the overall incoming class will be affected by portal transfers in and out before the start of the next season.

(MIZPORTAL)—The first Tiger starter to look for greater fortune elsewhere this year is wide receiver Joshua Manning. He’s been taken off the MU roster and now waits for the portal to open January 2 for two weeks.  He’s the fifth Missouri player to make he portal announcement.

Manning started all but one game in 2025, caught 29 passes on 51 targets for 318 yards and two touchdowns.

(MIZMOORE)—Missouri’s offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Kirby Moore has jumped ship before the Tigers’ bowl game, signing on as the head coach of the Washington State Cougars. School officials say he’ll get a five-year contract when the formal announcement is made today. School President Elizabeth Cantwell refers to Moore as “the real deal” who cares about the players being winners off the field as well as on.

Moore grew up in Washington. His father was a legendary high school coach. Washington State officials have praised him as an offensive-minded innovator and one of best young coaches in the country.  Moore calls the new job “a dream come true.”

Moore is credited with developing quarterback Brady Cook and running back Cody Schraeder and wide receiver Luther Burden III at Mizzou. He came to Missouri after one season in the same job at California State-Fresno, where he earlier was the wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator.

(MIZCOOK)—Speaking of Brady Cook: how did he do in his first NFL start Sunday?

To read MacGregor Walz on the Jets’ fan page, Gang Green Nation, it was a historically awful game:

The New York Jets took an early holiday break yesterday as they failed to show up for their game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars steamrolled the Jets in one of the more disgraceful displays of ineptitude in a disgraceful year of ineptitude from a disgracefully inept franchise. Someday the Jets will not be a disgrace. That day is not today. It may not be in my lifetime.

But The Athletic was less sanguine about Cook, saying his debut offered “hope, not results,” and continuing, “Cook’s final numbers in his first career start weren’t particularly impressive, but Cook showed enough that it should allow the Jets to wonder if he’s a prospect worth developing as a long-term backup for whoever they add in the upcoming NFL Draft — assuming they add a rookie quarterback. Cook authored an impressive scoring in the first quarter, capped by a perfectly placed 9-yard touchdown pass to Adonai Mitchell.

The touchdown brought the score to 14-7 — making it seem, if even for a brief moment, that the Jets had a shot at keeping things close against the Jaguars. He did throw an interception before halftime, though the pick was an impressive play on the ball by Jaguars defensive back Montaric Brown. His interception in the fourth quarter was less forgivable, a ball floated to Jaguars defensive back Ventrel Miller in the end zone at the end of what should’ve been another touchdown drive. Call it a rookie mistake — a brutal one.”

MIZLUTHER)—Before Luther Burden III left Sunday’s Bear’s win 31-3 against the Browns, he was 5 for 7 targets with 84 receiving yards. His seven targets were the most of his first NFL season.  He has 36 catches for 479 yards for the season.

(MIZBB)—The Missouri men’s basketball team polished off Bethune-Cookman in their last warmup game before the season turns serious, 82-60.  Missouri is halfway to a 20-win season.  Bethune-Cookman is 3-7.  Next up is 13th-ranked Illinois, 8-3 (the losses are to UConn, Nebraska, and Alabama).

The Missouri women’s team is 10-3 after their weekend win 82-66 over the St. Louis Billikens after a 70-62 loss to Illinois a few days earlier.

The Baseball—

The winter meetings finally got some bodies moving around. But no eye-popping huge-name free agent signings have been arranged. Our teams have had some action, though.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals have been active in the Rule 5 draft. They’ve lost pitcher Cade Windquest to he Yankees and right-hander Zane Mills to the Cubs. Righthander Sean Harney has gone to the Diamondbacks. Third baseman Matt Lloyd joins the Red Sox organization.

The Cardinals have picked up Matt Pushard from Miami. He’s a 6-4 righty with what is called a “dominating fastball.”

(A lot of baseball fans don’t know what the Rule 5 draft is (we were very fuzzy about it), so here’s what it’s all about:  Teams that do not have a full 40-man roster are allowed to poach players who are not part of the 40-man rosters of other teams. Any player signed at age 18 or younger have to be exposed to the draft if they haven’t been called up to the bigs after five years. Players signed at age 19 or older become eligible for the draft after four seasons.

Teams must pay $100,000 to the team whose player was taken. The player immediately becomes part of the 26-man roster for the next season. If he can’t cut it, he can be put on waivers and if nobody claims him, he must be offered to his original team for $50,000.  The player can be outrighted to the minors if the original team doesn’t want him back.)

Pushard is 28. He was 4-5 last year in Triple-A, had a 3.61 ERA in 49 appearances with 73 Ks in 62.1 innings.

The Cardinals also got right hander Ryan Murphy who was picked out of Lemoyne College by the Giants in 2020. He’s had some injury problems and finished the year on the DL. He was with the Richmond Flying Squirrels in Double-A this past season.

He has 387 career strikeouts and only 123 walks and a 3.72 ERA.

And the Cardinals picked up Zak Kent from the Guardians. He’s a 27-year old reliever who threw 17.2 innings in a dozen games last year, went 1-0 with 16 strikeouts.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have locked in third baseman Maikel Garcia for a long time. He had a breakout year last year, hitting .286 with 16 homers and 61 ribbies.

The Royals sent reliever Angel Zerpa to Milwaukee and got outfielder Isaac Collins and pitcher Nick Mears in return. Collins is mostly an outfielder but he also has time at third base and second base, showing a versatility the Royals like to see.  Zerpa was in 69 games last year for Kansas City with a 4.18 ERA and a 5-2 record.

The Royals also have signed three right-handed pitchers to minor league contracts: Jose Cuas, Adrian Rumardo and Andy Sanchez.

Cuas has been with the Phillies. Two years ago the Cubs claimed him from Kansas City then put him on waivers last year. The Phillies picked him up for the rest of the season. He’s 30.

The other two guys are unknowns.

(HOCKEY)—Every now and then we check in on the St. Louis Blues, who haven’t given much reason to be checked in on this year. They are 12-24-7, next to last in their conference. They are among four teams with the fewest wins at this point in the season.

Motoring right along:

(NASCAR)—The big anti-trust lawsuit between NASCAR and two of its teams was settled out of court with NASCAR giving two teams charters they were denied last year and some money on top of that. The settlement covers the 36 charters that guarantee starting positions and prize money in all races.  Two teams, 23XI—owned by NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin and retired NBA legend Michael Jordan—and Front Row Motorsports, one of the strongest second-tier teams in Cup racing get their six charters back and all teams get additional guarantees and a louder voice in determining NASCAR policy.

The Daytona 500 is now less than sixty days away.

(INDYCAR) The first INDYCAR race of the new year is less than 75 days away—and it will be run by an independent officiating system.

IndyCar had been in a somewhat awkward situation for sometime with the series owned by Penske Entertainment, an arm of the mega-corporation owned by Roger Penske, whose teams have won many series championships and Indianapolis 500s.

The new non-profit organization will be run by a three-person Independent Officiating Board. The news release announcing the new structure says it means there will be no oversight from Penske Entertainment or from INDYCAR.

The first race under the new system takes place March 1, a street race in St. Petersburg, Florida.

(Photo credit: Instagram)

Sports: Mizzou Can’t Stop A&M; Tiger Basketball Faces Toughest Opponent; Royals & Cardinals at the Start of Free Agency; Blues are Blue

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MUFB)—The Missouri Tigers are barely clinging to a top-25 ranking in one of the polls after Saturday’s disheartening loss to third-ranked Texas A&M.  They’ve fallen out of the coaches poll but the AP sportswriters gave Missouri four votes, letting them stay at 25th.

Missouri was able to stay in the game for most of the first half before quarterback Matt Zollers fumbled the ball in the air when he was hit while preparing to pass with one minute left in the half. The ball went straight into the arms of A&M defensive back Dalton Brooks.  Brooks took it to the two=yard line and A&M got a touchdown just before halftime to go up 14-0.

Zollers hand was “banged up” on the play and he was seen on the sideline afterwards flexing it. He later did some throwing on the sidelines and stayed in the game.

Missouri’s offensive line could have been stouter in protecting Zollers in his first collegiate start and in opening running space for Jamal Roberts and Ahmad Haley, both of whom topped 100 yards rushing, but not until well into the second half when Missouri was two or three scores down.

Missouri also was caught flat-footed in the third quarter by a fake punt turned into a touchdown for A&M.

Missouri’s offense missed the versatility of Beau Pribula, out indefinitely with hia ankle injury, who had added a running dimension to his position.. Zollars was 7 of 22 passing for just 77 yards and had negative yards on three rushing attempts.

The loss ended any hopes, although they were slim to begin with, of making the playoffs. The Tigers have lost three of their last four games with Saturday’s loss marking the first time Missouri has lost two in a row since 2022.

The last game of the year on Faurot Field is next Saturday against Mississippi State. They close on the road with games against Oklahoma and Arkansas. They have to win all three plus their bowl game to hit the ten-win mark for an unprecedent third straight year.

(MIZBB)—-The basketball Tigers are 3-0 in their first week on the court, hanging on for a win against Southeast Missouri State and a dominating victory over VMI.

The Tigers let the Southeast Red Hawks stay uncomfortably close because they couldn’t hit a free throw in the 89-84 win. They were just 19 of 31, a concerning figure because they were 10 of 21 in the season opener against Howard.

Mark Mitchell got his first double-double Sunday with 24 points and ten rebounds in the 106-68 win against VMI. The Tigers outscored the Kaydets 56-28 in the second half, showing a significantly tighter defense than they had displayed in their earlier games.

Ant Robinson’s versatility showed in his stat line—20 points (4 of 5 from the arc), four steals and four assists.

Missouri faces its first big-time test tomorrow night against Minnesota. One of those teams will lose its undefeated season.

(XMU)—Former Tiger place kicker Harrison Mevis has landed with one of the top teams in the NFL and hasn’t missed the chance to be around for a while. Mevis was signed to the Los Angeles Rams practice squad last week and was activated for Sunday’s game against the 49ers.  He was six for six in extra points as the Rams won 42-26.

(BASEBALL)—The talent pool for teams looking for a free agent is falling into place.  The Cardinals have a dozen minor league guys who want to play for somebody else. Michael Siani, who spent part of last season in the bigs, has been signed by Atlanta. Roddery Munoz has been claimed off of waiver by the Reds. Miles Mikolas has cut ties with the team by becoming a free agent. Mikolas was 18-4 when he joined the Redbirds after three years in Japan. He was 40-65 in the other six years in St. Louis.

The Royals have signed their first free agent, a guy they drafted in 2016. Outfielder Kameron Misner decided to play ball for the University of Missouri instead of signing with the Royals. He was designated for assignment by the Tampa Bay Rays after hitting .213 in 217 plate appearances. When he hit the ball, he hit it hard—nine doubles and five home runs. He also stole eight bases.  But 69 of the 217 times he stepped into the batter’s box, he struck out.

He made history with his walk-off home run on opening day, the first player ever to make his first homer a walk-off on an opening day. Kansas City gives up a player or cash to be decided later.

They have guaranteed that Salvatore Perez will retire a Royal. He has signed a two-year extension. They have several players eligible for free agency.  Sports Illustrated is reporting that the Tampa Bay Rays are strongly interested in signing Mike Yastrzemski, who joined the Royals in mis-season.

The Royals have lost Randal Grichuk, who has declined a five-million dollar deal to go into free agency. The Royals also have cut Michael Lorenzen loose

The Royals have moved to strengthen their hitting coaching staff by offering a job to Connor Dawson, who at 32 years old already has four years as the Milwaukee Brewers’ hitting coach and time spent as the minor league hitting coordinator for the Seattle Mariners.

(HOCKEY)—The St. Louis Blues got their season off on the wrong skate and find themselves winners of only five of their first sixteen games (5-8-3) and last in their division. They are averaging 2.3 goals per game. They’re giving up almost four goals.

Only the Calgary Flames have fewer wins, at 4-11-1. The Buffalo Sabers also have only five wins. But they have four ties—-5-6-4.

 

 

Bombs Away for Kansas City; Sweep for the Birds; Gem for the Battlehawks. Blues for the Blues. But first, some history for today.

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

May 6, 1917—-Bob Groom of the St. Louis Browns throws a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox a day after the Browns’ Ernie Koob had no-hit the Sox at Sportsman’s Park. The catcher for both games was Hank Severeid, the only catcher in MLB history to catch no-hitters on two consecutive days.  Groom went on to an 8-19 record that year and finished his ten  year career a year later.  Ernie Koob was 6-14 that year and out of baseball after another year and a five-year record with the Browns of 23-31.

The Browns were 57-97 that year, seventh in the then-eight team America League which is about what they usually were before they left St. Louis after the 1954 season to become the Baltimore Orioles (of which we will have some news in a few more paragaphs)

Baseball Reference records, “The St. Louis Browns are perhaps history’s worst Major League franchise. The Browns existed from 1902 to 1953 in the American League and managed just 11 winning seasons over that span. They lost more than 100 games eight times, finishing dead last in the AL 10 times. They finished as high as second in the AL standings just three times. The Browns won just one pennant, in 1944, when the majors were not at full strength due to World War II.”  (To which we add that they lost in six games to the Cardinals during the “trolley car series,” when all games were played in old Sportsman’s Park.

But for two days in 1917, the Browns were untouchable.

 

Severeid went on to a solid career, ten of his years with the Browns for whom he caught 100 or more games eight times. He had a solid major league career (.289 career batting average) and spent several more successful years as a minor league catcher and manager. He died in 1968 at the age of 77, still the only catcher to get pitchers through no-hitters on successive days.

Only one pitcher has ever thrown back-to back no-hitters: Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds beat the Boston Bees (later the Braves) on June 11, 1938 and no-hit the Brooklyn Dodgers in his next start June 15.

The only time there have been back-to-back no-hitters involving the same two teams was in 1968 when Gaylord Perry of the Giants beat Bob Gibson of the Cardinals 1-0 and the next day when the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn beat the Giants the next day 1-0. The last two outs he got that day were future Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.

Those two games are the only time in MLB history there have been no-hitters in two consecutive games.  The second Browns no-hitter had been in the second game of a double header. 

That’s your baseball history lesson for the day. Now let’s look at the history being made by today’s players.

(Royals)—The Kansas City Royals started their week against the Chicago White Sox last night  after finishing their previous week with a team-record seven home runs in one game.  They polished off the Baltimore Orioles 11-6 to go three games over .500 at 19-16.

It was a historic game for catcher Luke Maile, who homered for his first hit with the Royals. He’s the 29th player in team history to have a home run as his first hit.

Cole Ragans already was playing at a historic level going into the game. Although he’s just 1-1 with a 4.40 ERA so far this year, he has struck out 11.16 batters per nine innings through five starts this year and has allowed 0.69 home runs per nine innings.  OptaSTATS says only two other pitchers since 1901 have ever started a season with allowing fewer than 0.80 homers and at least 11 strikeouts through fifty starts with a team are Nolan Ryan and Kevin Gausman.,

We all know who Nolan Ryan is. But Kevin Gausman? He’s bounced around among five teams in thirteen years, has a career record of 104-105.

Ragans was dominant in his return to the mound Monday, tying a season-high with 11 strikeouts in five innings as the Royals shut out the Chicago White Sox 3-0 at Kauffman Stadium. With that, the Royals continued their current hot streak. KC won its 12th game in 14 tries and also improved its season record to 20-16.

Ragans didn’t appear to show any ill effects from his earlier problem.

(CARDINALS)—-A double-header sweep of the Mets gets the Cardinals within three games of break-even 35 games into the season. They can thank Mike McGreevy, who was called up from Memphis by a rule that lets teams add an extra player for doubleheaders. McGreevy relieved Andre Pallante in second game when the bases were loaded and there was only one out in the fourth inning. McGreevy shut down the Mets on one hit and one walk the rest of the way, struck out five, and got the Mets to hit into five groundouts.

The Cardinals had won the first game 5-4

Alex Burlison broke out of his season-longer homerless streak with a two-run rip in the first game. In fact, he hadn’t hit a home run since last August 17. He’d had only three extra base hits so far this season.

The Cardinals kept rolling last night, beating Pittsburg 6-3 in a series opened. Home runs by Jose Berrero hitting his first home run since 2023 with Alex Burlison and Wilson Contreras adding shots of their own to give the Cardinals the lead.

(ST. LOUIS BLUES)—The coach has turned into a pumpkin for the St. Louis Blues. There will be no Cinderella story for them this year.

Once almost written off as a playoff team, the Blues stormed through the last third of the season to make it in the field.  Down two games to none to Winnipeg in the first round of the playoffs, but Blues came back to force a seventh game.

The Blues led by two goals with less than two minutes to play but the Jets tied the game with 1.6 seconds left and got the game winner at the 16:30 mark of overtime.

(FOOTBALL)—-Spring pro football reached the halfway mark in the regular season last weekend.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—Two weeks after losing their first game of the year to Arlington, the St. Louis Battlehawks put together what was called a “defensive gem,” against the same team, 12-6.

The Arlington Renegades had  scored thirty points three times this year, including the first game against St. Louis, in Arlington.

Battlehawks linebacker Pita Taumoepenu was the key to the St. Louis defense. With less than two minutes to play, Taumoepenu slapped the ball out of the hands of Arlington’s quarterback and two teammates pounced on it. It was the fourth turnover forced by the Battlehawks, the second within the final five minutes.

The win keeps St. Louis’ title hopes alive as they go to 4-2 on the season and get back to 2-2 in their UFL conference.

Now we move to sports with another turnoff the wheel.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou heads to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with momentum rarely seen in INDYCAR—winning three of the first four races of the season and already building a big lead as he runs for his fourth series championship.

Palou calls his start from the pole and his win on the road course at Barber Motorsports Park “the best race” of his career. He led 81 of the 90 laps. “It was a perfect day, a perfect weekend,” Palou said. “The car was amazing, super-fast. I had a ton of fun. I was a bit lonely there, but I loved it. It was an amazing day.” He was lonely, it seemed. His margin of victory over Christian Lundgaard was sixteen seconds. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin, who had won the last two races at the track, finished third.

Palou’s worst finish in the firs four races is second.

Next up will be two races at the track that gives the series its name, a race on the infield road course next weekend and then the crown jewel of the year for the series, the Indianapolis 500, where Josef Newgarden will try to become the first driver to win three 500s in a row.

(NASCAR)—Consider last weekend’s NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway a breakthough run for defending Cup champion Joey Logan, who avoided trouble as he worked his way from 27th starting position to victory circle. It’s his first top-five finish of the year.

He had worked his way up to second place behind Michael McDowell but took the lead with four laps left in regulation.  McDowell, a lap later, got into some dirty air behind Ryan Blaney and wrecked. He finished 26th.

Blaney was passed by Ross Chastain, who had started 31st, on the restart. It’s Chastain’s best finish of the year.

Nobody led more laps than Kyle Larson  but the best he could do at the end was fourth.

For the first time after 21 straight races, Denny Hamlin did not finish on the lead lap. He lost an engine early. His string of 21 straight top fives is the eighty longest in NASCAR history.

(FORMULA 1)—Oscar Piastri picked up his fourth win of the year in the Grand Prix of Miami. Teammate Lando Norris came home behind him.

(Photo credits: Severeid–Becket Marketplace; Palou–Rick Gevers, Indianapolis 2024)

 

 

 

Sports:  Mizzou Draftees and UDFA’s; Cardinals championship architect dies; Blues tie, etc.

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(DRAFT)—More former Missouri Tigers signed on with NFL Teams as Undrafted free agents than were picked up in the draft itself.

The New York Jets have signed quarterback Brady Cook, who was praised by NFL analyst Lance Zierlein for his toughness, athleticism, and arm talent. He calls Cook a “developmental prospect.”

One of his receivers, Theo Weese Jr., is headed to the Miami Dolphins, as is running back Nate Noel.  and edge rusher Johnny Walker Jr., and the Denver Broncos appear to be getting together.

Tigers taken in the draft were tackle Armond Membou, who calls himself “a mauler.”   His performance at the talent combine elevated him to the seventh choice in the first round, takenby the Jets. Jets GM Darren Mougey he’s a “natural fit” who will compete right away for a starting slot at right tackle.

Receiver Luther Burden III went to the Bears in the second round. He’s the first tiger WR to be drafted since J’Mon Moore in 2018. He’s the highest drafted wide receiver since Jeremy Maclin went to the Eagles as the 19th choice in 2009. He had a 13.3 yard career reception average. Moore lasted one year with the Packers and had two career receptions for 15 yards.

(BLUES—The St. Louis Blues appeared on the verge of being blown out of the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs before bouncing back with a pair of wins against Winnipeg to even their best of seven series at two each. One of these teams is going to win two of the next three to advance.

The Blues have picked themselves up off the mat before this year. Until a coaching change early in 2025 the Blues were headed for an early end to the 2024-25 season before they ripped off a franchise-record winning streak that put them back into contention. It has been more than nine weeks since they lost a game at home.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals continued their mediocre season during the last week and at the end of it they lost the architect of their latest championship-contending years.

Walt Jocketty, the general manager whose trading expertise built teams that won a World Series (2006), six NL Central Division championships, two National League pennants. The Cardinals made the post season seven times in his 14 years. He was the executive of the year three times. He was 74. He knew he had been voted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame and reportedly was writing his acceptance speech when he died.

(THE TEAMS)—Looks like a long season, folks, especially in St. Louis.

The Cardinals dropped to 12-17 after yesterday afternoon’s loss to the Reds in the first game of a four-game series.

The Redbirds have called up Jose Barraro from Memphis and they’ve sent Thomas Saggese down. Saggese had come up to fill in for Masyn Winn while he was out with an injury.

Barraro signed as a free agent in the offseason and had an impressive spring she he played 24 games, hit two homers drove in eight runners and stole four bases. At Memphis he was hitting .299 with ten extra base hits (four homers, 13 RBIs) and a recent 19-game on base string. He’s 5/6 in steal attempts this year at Memphis.

The Royals went into a four game series with the Rays last night after a 6-4 week that brought them back to near break-even at 14-15.

-0-

Let’s return to football for a couple of notes.

(THICK)—The Thicker Kicker is ten out of eleven for the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL.  But he can’t hit them all—-and his first miss of the season became a spectacular touchdown last weekend that helped the Memphis Showboats beat his Stallions 24-20 in overtime.

Harrison Mevis is 10/11 in the UFL this year and remains consistent from mid-field.  But 63 yards was a little much. The Stallions trailed 10-3 as the first half wound down. Mevis’s field goal attempt was picked up by the Showboats’ Isiah Hennie, who took it 108 yards for a touchdown.

Mevis was an undrafted free agent last year who spent three months with the Carolina Panthers.

(ANOTER EX-TIGER)—Maty Mauk, an Ohio kid whose career with Missouri was cut short by three suspensions and an eventual dismissal from the team despite his talents, is now the head football coach at Principia High in the St. Louis suburb of Town and Country. He was an assistant coach at Springfield Glendale, along with his brother, while his father was the head coach there. His brother went to Monett last season with Maty and their father as assistants.

Principia was 1-9 last year. They are 3-33 in their last four seasons. Principia College used to have a football program but ended it after the 2009 season.

At Missouri, he emerged as a red shirt freshman in 2013 when starting QB James Franklin was hurt. The Tigers went 3-1 with him. He tied a school record with five TD passes in a game against Kentucky. He was a starter the next year and led the team to its second strait SEC East conference championship. But he had his problems and was finally dismissed in 2016. He finished his college career at Eastern Kentucky, and spent some time with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders in the CFL but injuries ended his pro career.

Speeding along—

(INDYCAR)—Thirty-four drivers aiming for the 33 positions in the Indianapolis 500 field a month from now have run 5,804 test laps (14,510 miles) in their first major test runs on the Speedway using the new hybrid power plant.

2024 Pole winner Scott McLaughlin had the hottest lap at 232.686 mph, with the extra boost allowed for qualifying. In race trim, the fastest driver was defending national champion Alex Palou, who was about ten miles an hour slower.

Takuma Sato, who has won the 500 twice, was second fastest to McLaughlin in the boosted runs at 232.565. But he crashed shortly afterwards and sat out the rest of the test day.

The day also ended badly for NASCAR star Kyle Larson, who is back for his second attempt at running “the double”—the 500 in the afternoon and the Charlotte 600 that night in his regular NASCAR ride. He crashed his car, too, ending his test session.

The hybrid engine debuted last year after the 500 so the test provided drivers with their first experience on the track, and at racing speeds. The added 100 pounds or so that the new system puts at the rear of the car left drivers feeling their cars were more ticklish. Palou said the added weight makes cars “tougher to drive, so it’s a lot easier to see people do mistakes.”

The new power plant provides for bursts of sixty extra horsepower for a few seconds. The tests gave drivers a chance to adjust to some new handling characteristics and a chance to test when and how to use the extra surge of horsepower. But Pato O’Ward, who has had two second-place finishes in the 500 says the new power plant will make the cars “less forgiving.”

INDYCAR runs at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama this weekend, then heads to the Speedway for a road course race and two weeks after that, the 109th running of the 500.

(NASCAR)—The Big One never happed at Talladega this time, leading to the last 69 laps being run caution-free and an eyelash win by Austin Cindric, ending a 30-race winless streak.

Cindric picked up the win over Kyle Larson with a last-lap pass and hung on for a in by .022 second.  It’s the first win of the year for Penske Racing.

The race was typical for a NASCAR superspeedway contest, with 23 drivers leading at least one lap and 67 lead changes. Cindric’s win makes him the tenth different winner in the last ten races on NASCAR’s longest track (2.66 miles). But the race was uncharacteristically free of crashes.  The  yellow flag came out only twice for on-track incidents.

(Photo Credit: Rick Gevers)

 

The King of the World

Posted on by
2

The big black limousine pulls to the curb and out steps a man in a pin-stripe suit, his shiny dark hair slicked back, a bulge on the left side of his coat indicating there’s something behind the handkerchief poking up from the pocket.

He looks around, warily, the toothpick shifting to the other side of his mouth, as he swaggers inside.

His cold, piercing eyes underline his words:

“Nice little university you got here.  Be unfortunate if something happened to it.”  (The implication is clear that it better toe the organization line or something, perhaps several hundred million dollars worth of business, will disappear.)

Or:

“Nice little museum you got here.  We’d like you to change it for us.” (There is a “or else’’ understood in his request.”)

“Nice little law firm you got here.  You crossed the boss one too many times. We’re gonna shut you down.” (No reason for the boss to be subtle about it.)

With some strokes of his pen that produce an unreadable signature, the boss assumes powers to extort tribute from numerous targets, the congress, the law, and the courts be damned.

One of his biggest a few days ago asserts the power to cut off funding for the Smithsonian Institution if it continues exhibits that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

And who decides what those programs are?  Who decides what policies degrade shared American values—values apparently established by one man?

Does this mean closing the Museum of the American Indian? The African-American Museum?  The Holocaust Museum?  And the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art with all of its meaningless modernist stuff?

Maryland Governor Wes Moore, the third African American elected to a governorship in
our country calls the effort “disrespectful” and told an interviewer this weekend, “Loving your country does not mean dismantling those who have helped to make this country so powerful and make America so unique in world history in the first place.” Moore is the third black governor in American history, the first in Maryland.

Trump’s says, “Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn instead of being “subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history”

That’s Boss Trump’s job.

He also wants to influence what we can read. He has ordered the Institution of Museum and Library Services to be eliminated. That organization provides support for libraries and museums in Missouri and the other 49 states. Can’t have “divisive” things in our libraries that serve diverse audiences.

He has set up the Federal Communications Commission to become a censor of news and entertainment programs.  One of the first targets is Disney and its ABC News unit and their diversity and inclusion practices.  Chairman Brendan Carr says he wants to make sure ABC “ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” and that he wants to make sure ABC has “complied at all times with applicable FCC regulations.”  And what about FOX and OAN, One America Network, that is known for its fawning over all things Trump while FOX has had the temerity from time to time to challenge him?  Don’t look for Trump’s FCC to censor OAN, but FOX is no longer above suspicion.

ABC has become just another target in his war on the diversity of voices available to Americans. And he has shut down the Voice of America, greatest international representation of American values, especially in countries under dictatorial governments.

We should be very frightened of his belief he can censor or shut down news organizations that don’t buy his lies.

He has taken over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts so that the only acts it can host are those that fit his definition of “American values.”

He wants to rewrite our history, especially eliminating references to times that non-whites have achieved breakthroughs in a white male-dominated society.

His rabid dog-like attacks on DEI has intimidated NASA into dropping its commitment to flying  the first person of color and the first woman on the moon, had led the Defense Department to eliminate postings about Jackie Robinson’s service during WWII, Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Pima Indian Ira Hayes, who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.

The fact-checking website SNOPES got an email from Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot proclaiming, As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the service’s core warfighting mission. The code-talkers website was later restored to the Pentagon website, as were the stories of Major General Charles Calvin Rogers, 1970 black Medal of Honor recipient and Ira Hayes, who was at Iwo Jima.

And don’t forget the silliness of the removal from the internet of the Enola Gay, the first plane to drop an atomic bomb on Japan===because the word “gay” was used in the plane’s name.

And now he thinks he can order European countries to follow this blatantly discriminatory cleansing of our history. He has sent a letter to some large European companies that supply services to our government threatening them unless they adopt his DEI strategy, says The Financial Times.

Like Jack Dawson standing against the railing on the bow of the Titanic and shouting, “I’m King of the World!” the Don, not content with being the Despot of the United States, is dedicated to running the world.

Give me a major segment of your economy to pay off what I consider loans, he has told Ukraine, and I will make peace—a demand and a boast that must include a willing third partner who is proclaimed as a good friend but who has no interest in a peace.

“Pay economic blackmail,” says the Don, not realizing countries don’t pay tariffs but his own citizens will, “and I will let you do business in this country,” while the other countries are beginning to grow closer together and are beginning to plan for themselves instead of bowing to his demands.

He wants Canada and he wants Greenland, the feelings of the people living there notwithstanding in his quest for domination.

However, the people of Greenland should be breathing easier now that “Little Me” Vance has told them the Don will not use the military, his national muscle, to take over their island. He has urged them to embrace “self determination,” apparently failing to understand the Greenlanders long ago determined for themselves that they want to be aligned with Denmark and they don’t want to be under the Don’s “protection,” when all he really cares about are the country’s mineral deposits. “We think we’re going to be able to cut a deal, Donald-Trump style, to ensure the security of this territory,” said Vance to people who think Denmark has done a pretty good job of protecting them from—-China? And Russia, which is far more interested in restoring the Soviet Union and absorbing all of Europe eventually with little apparent interests in little Greenland?

So there he is, the Don standing on the prow of our Ship of State proclaiming himself King of the World.

We know what happened to Jack Dawson and the ship that was once thought to be unsinkable.

Kind of like our Ship of State.

Others in the world can see the rip in the side of the hull caused by Executive Order icebergs.  Others in the world are seeing our great Ship of State going down by the bow.

Some Republicans are starting to wonder if there are lifeboats enough for them.

There aren’t.

And the water is growing colder.

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

Posted on by
1

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.

-0-

 

“Winning For Education Makes Veterans Bigger Losers

Posted on by
Reply

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.

“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

Posted on by
1

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.

The Jontay Thing

Posted on by
Reply

Just as Monday’s entry was being written came news of the tragedy of Jontay Porter, the Columbia kid, ex-MU Tiger, fringe NBA player who is the first person permanently banned from the NBA since Jack Molinas was banned 71 years ago for betting on games he played with the Fort Wayne (now Detroit) Pistons.

The Porter case is of special interest not only because of his Missouri roots but also because Missourians might be deciding whether sports betting should be legalized in our state—and what that might mean to the confidence we have in our big-time sports teams and their games.

Alex Kirschner, writing for Slate.com says Porter “did things worse than anything Pete Rose ever got up to.”

Jeff Zilgitt of USA TODAY was equally unforgiving when he wrote, “In all of Jontay Porter’s idiocy, he provided a service to other professional athletes who might consider placing bets on games in which they are direct participants or in which they have insider knowledge to provide to gamblers. It’s almost impossible to pull it off in a world of legal, regulated and monitored gambling. It’s even more impossible when you’re as blatant as the NBA says Porter was.”

Kirschner  notes that sports leagues “make a lot of money off of people betting on their games…It’s a cash grab, yes.  But from the leagues’ perspective, it’s also a payment in exchange for tolerating certain risks. Sports leagues profit from betting but they are also terrified of it.” 

 Porter, he says, committed two sins and flirted with a third.  He disclosed privileged information to bettors and manipulated in-game outcomes. In Porter’s case, he took himself out of a game early so he would not meet projected performance levels.  The third circumstance that terrifies leagues, says Kirschner is outright throwing of games. “The single easiest way to threaten a league’s multibillion-dollar business is for people to doubt that they’re watching a game left to chance…If that goes, everything could go.

Porter is only 24 years old. Kirschner says his career is in the dumpster because he has been involved in the biggest betting scandal involving a player since sports wagering was legalized in this country in 2018. “If the Black Sox were a 10 on the scandal scale,” he writes, “Porter probably is a 6 or 7.”

Zilgitt darkly predicts this will happen again. “Someone always thinks they can beat the system, and maybe someone can but not Jontay Porter and his simple attempt at trying to make extra money. It’s inevitable, just as it was inevitable it happened in the first place.” Porter, who has spent most of his pro career in the NBA’s minor league, was being paid $410,000 this year to play for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. The league investigation says he made $22,000 on the bets he placed on the game from which he removed himself, claiming illness.

The “idiocy” that Ziglitt attributes to Porter is explained by Kirschner who writes that the kid used the gambling companies that partner with the pro leagues to place his bets—-and those bets are monitored by the leagues. “If Porter were collaborating with underground bettors and bookies, his activity would have gone undetected,” he wrote.

In Kirschner’s view, pro sports teams are just asking for this kind of problem.  Sports wagering companies are aggressively advertising their “services,” leading to greatly expanding participation in betting. He bluntly observes, “A bigger pool of bettors means a bigger pool of potential crooks. In a subtle but real way, the NBA courted the Porter scandal.”

Pro sports leagues fought against sports wagering until the U. S. Supreme Court legalized it nationwide in 2018.  Once it was legalized, the leagues had no choice but to get in bed with the betting industry.  Pessimists might be forgiven for wondering if they’ll stay on their separate sides of the bed.

And whose reputation is damaged by this scandal?  Not the gaming industry.  It’s sports and those who play them.  A player has been banished for life. Pro sports worries whether its fans think its product is genuine and honest.

Zilgitt quotes NBA Commissioner Adam Silver saying the Porter case “raises important questions about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players.” Zilgitt notes Silver has advocated federal regulation of sports wagering and suggests outlawing or limiting certain kinds of bets.

Not considered by either columnist is what role state regulatory agencies can play or should play in terms of disciplinary actions against casinos that handle such bets or wagering companies that process them. In this case, the hammer has fallen on the player, deservedly so, but those who took, paid, and processed his bets appear to be facing no penalties.

Missouri’s pro sports teams are gathering signatures to get a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment legalizing sports wagering.

The proposal mirrors bills introduced in this year’s legislative session that grievously disadvantage the state and the programs that rely on gambling income for their budgets.  The Missouri Gaming Commission has warned that the legislation pushed at the Capitol by gaming interests does not raise enough revenue for the commission to adequately regulate sports wagering. Nor does it do anything to punish the betting industry that produced the measley $22,000 that Porter won.

“Measley,” as in how little he gained compared to how much he has thrown away.

The Porter scandal is a tragedy for him and for sports in general.  How will Missouri voters see the issue now that one of our own has become a self-induced victim of a system we are being asked to approve?  He might be the first but nobody expects he will be the last.

If Missourians approve the proposition, will they also undermine trust in the games that they love?  How many Porters are needed before we wonder about every missed free throw, every error, every missed tackle, every overthrown pass, every wide shot on goal?

(If you want to read the full articles on which we’ve based two entries):

Jontay Porter NBA betting scheme is a lesson in stupidity (usatoday.com)

Athletes beware: Jontay Porter NBA betting scheme is a lesson in stupidity (msn.com)

Sports: A Soccer Record; Blues Play Out the String; Battlehawks in the Fight; Daniel in the Booth?; and a Little Baseball and a Little Racing.

Posted on by
Reply

by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SOCCER)—-It’s “football” everywhere but here where it’s “soccer.”  But an American-football-sized crowd packed Arrowhead Stadium last weeend to watch a soccer game.

The crowd of 72,610 is the largest soccer crowd in Missouri history and the third-biggest crowd for a stand alone match in Major League Soccer history.

Unfortunately, the match, on the 28th anniversary of the first MLS soccer match at Arrowhead Stadium, ended poorly for Sporting Kansas City. Inter Miami beat SKC 3-2.

Soccer fans are likely to see some comparable crowds in a couple of years when Arrowhead plays host to four group stage games during the FIFA World Cup competition. It also will host a round of 32 matchup and a quarterfinal match.

(SPEAKING OF “FOOTBALL”)—Chiefs coach Andy Reid has emphasized he’s in a “wait and see “ mode when it comes to wide receiver Rashee Rice, who is in a heap of trouble in Dallas after he crashed his Lamborghini in a 120-mph freeway race with another guy. The other guy was Teddy Knox, a football player now suspended from the SMU team. Both left the scene before seeing if anyone was hurt in four other cars that got caught in the crash. Rice faces eight charges.

Reid says the Chiefs are waiting for “the law enforcement part of it to take place.”  He has talked to Rice but won’t say what was said.

The Chiefs are starting their voluntary offseason program but Rice will there only by Zoom.

Will Rice take part during in-person drills? Reid sayd the team is “just going to take it day-by-day here as we go.”

On Rice’s future involvement: “We’ll just see how it goes. I want to keep gathering the information from law enforcement people…”

Does the organization trust Rice’s decision making? “As long as he’s learning from it, that’s the important part of it. We’ll take it from there and see what takes place.”

(A FORMER CHIEF)—Chase Daniel, former Missouri Tiger Quarterback who had a 12-year NFL career in backup roles with several teams, including the Chiefs and the Saints, who won Super Bowls with him on the sidelines, is one of 24 people who took part in the NFL’s annual Broadcasting and Media Workshop, a three-day bootcamp for aspiring NFL broadcasters, last week.  He has been hosting a YouTube shw in which he analyzes NFL plays and players. Participants were given a chance to “call” a game on radio or television and to do a simulated in-studio analysis.

Before we move away from football:

(KA-KAW)—-That is the sound of a Battlehawk, or at least the sound a St. Louis Battlehawk fan makes during a UFL game, especially if the ‘Hawks’ take a lead or get a win, which they did last weekend against the San Antonio Brahmas, in San Antonio.

The Battlehawks are 2-1, one of four teams with that record in the eight-team spring football league. The Birmingham Stallions are the only undefeated team.

‘Hawks running back Jcob Saylors, ran for 62 yards and a TD. Hakeem Butler had a half-dozen catches for 87 yards and a TD. Quarterback A. J. McCarron was 19 for 27, throwing to eight targets.  He ran for one of the touchdowns in the 31-24 win.

The Battlehawks had fewer total yards, fewer first downs, and were far behind in possession time but they made up for those shortcomings with efficiency: converting five of nine third downs and and their only fourth-down attempt. And placekicker Andre Szmyt was good on field goals of 44, 43, and 46 yards.

(BASEBALL)—A look at stats for the first two weeks might tell us a little big why the Kansas City Royals are off to one of their best starts ever and why the St. Louis Cardinals are kind of wandering.

The Royals ended the week Sunday night with a 10-6 record, a half game behind Cleveland in their division. They’re getting solid pitching with a staff ERA of 3.04 and a team batting average of .250.

The Cardinals are struggling to get their offense going at the same time they’re pitching is going.  The staff ERA is 3.,92. But the team batting average is only .230.  Paul Goldschmidt, who struggled all spring, still struggles at the plate: .193, one homer, seven RBIs.  Rookies or near-rookies Victor Scott (.098) and sophomore outfielder Jordan Walker (.178) aren’t much help.  Together they are 25 for 153.  The Redbirds are last, again, in their division, 7-9 but already four games behind the Brewers.

(INJURIES)—A key player for the Kansas City Royals, catcher/first baseman Salvador Perez is out indefinitely with a groin and hip injury suffered in Sunday’s game against the Mets. The team says he’s day-to-day. He was held out of last night’s game against the White Sox.

The Cardinals say Tommy Edmund and Dylan Carlson have resumed “baseball activities.”

(HOCKEY)—The St. Louis Blues played their last home game of the year last weekend. They’ll put away the skates and the pucks for the 2-23-24 season after their finale Wednesday night against Dallas. A late-season comeback ended up seven points short of Las Vegas for the last wildcard slot.  A winning season at 43-33-5, pending the outcome Wednesday night but short for the second straight year.

(AROUND AND AROUND: RACING—Chase Elliott ended his 42-race winless NASCAR streak during the weekend, coming from a 24th-place start and outrunning the field for eight extra laps, two overtime sessions because of late-race cautions.  Brad Keselowski, who started 22nd, was right behind Elliott with William Byron, Tyler Reddick, and Daniel Suarez rounding out the top five.

INDYCAR resumes its points chase next weekend in downtown Long Beach, then goes to the Indianapolis road course two weeks later to kick off the Month of May activities leading up to the 108th running of the Indianapolis 500.

FORMULA ONE will see if it continues to be Max Verstappen’s playground next weekend with the Grand Prix of China in Shanghai.