Hello readers, welcome to the latest issue of O For 4. Thank you if you are a returning reader. This is going to be one of those episodes with a little bit of everything, from the WNBA to college football to a coach retiring to officiating controversies. Without further delay, let’s get to this week’s topics, and as always, please leave your comments at the end.
1. WNBA: Another Fork In The Road
2024 may best be remembered as the year that women’s sports really made its biggest advancements in relevance and popularity. And I am not talking about women’s soccer coming to the forefront every four years when a World Cup rolls around. No, I am talking about getting attention continuously with multiple headlines spread out over many months. Obviously, much of this is the Caitlin Clark effect. It started with the college hoops season and its tournament early in 2024, and it continued into, arguably, the WNBA’s most significant season to date.
The WNBA season just came to a conclusion on Sunday night with a deciding game 5 of the Finals needing overtime to determine a champion. Congratulations to the New York Liberty on winning their first title in franchise history. But really the ovation goes to the league as a whole. This past year felt like the ushering in of a new era, not just for the WNBA, but for women’s sports and its place in American pop culture. There have always been stars in this league, but not like what is going on now. For some reason unbeknownst to me, there has been a massive influx, certainly more than in the past, of highly personable and marketable women drafted in the past couple of years. This has, unsurprisingly, led to record ratings and, with that, a new TV deal (beginning in 2026) that is triple the size of the current one. And, naturally, there are tons of new sponsors throwing money at the WNBA.
So it should also not be the biggest surprise that the WNBA Players Association has elected to opt out of the current CBA after the 2025 season, two years before it was scheduled to expire. This means that if no new agreement is reached in the next year, that there will be a lockout. Now, logic leads me to believe that a new deal could be reached within the next 365 days. The conspiracy theorist in me leads me to believe that this whole story is being fabricated to ensure that the WNBA can remain in the headlines during its offseason, part of an effort to keep the momentum going from their “breakthrough” season.
Now all that said, I really do object to this move from the Players Association. And this isn’t even about me being principled and believing that the current agreed-upon structure should be honored through its expiration date. No, rather this is about the fact that the WNBA, despite having such a monumental season, lost $40 million in 2024. Obviously, that does not fall entirely on the shoulders of the players. But they do require some of the blame. The fact of the matter is that the surge in popularity the league saw in the last year was largely thanks to a small number of new players – Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink. Games with these three may have been selling out but plenty of other games are still being played with large amounts of empty seats.
Yes, the league is on the right track. And we already know there are more marketable stars coming from the college ranks soon (JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers). But until some more work is done and the league begins to produce a profit, the players do not really have a leg to stand on in demanding more money. If they are the draw and they are not drawing in the revenue, then they do not have an argument to take more money from the owners who are losing money. I hope this reality changes soon; I know I’ve been watching (Detroit does not have a WNBA team currently, otherwise I would go to a game). But until it does, Angel Reese can continue not being able to pay her bills from her WNBA money.
2. Ashton Jeanty: Another Star Is Born
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you all have been paying attention to a certain college football program that exists outside of the Power Four conferences. Every few years, we do see a team from outside the inner circle come along and establish itself as being on the same level as the big boys, at least for a season or two. Central Florida even went so far as to dub themselves the national champions after their 13-0 2017 season. Usually when we see a team from outside the Power Four rise up like this, it is because of a number of players developing to a level that makes their team supremely better than their conference foes.
And then there is what is going on in 2024 on the “Smurf Turf” of Boise St. The Broncos are the epitome of a one-man show, that man being Ashton Jeanty. I’ve been saying this for a few weeks already, really only deviating from it in the aftermath of the Alabama/Georgia game but then returning to it a week later, Ashton Jeanty is going to win the Heisman Trophy. His Broncos have played seven games so far, and this already feels like a foregone conclusion. Jeanty is so head-and-shoulders above everyone else he competes against that he is already drawing comparisons to some of the all-time great college seasons, and deservedly so. He has more than a 200-yard lead over the next best rusher in the land. His 8.7 yards per carry average is absolutely absurd for the volume of runs he gets; in fact, the only primary RB with a higher average than Jeanty has run the ball less than half as many times (Marshall’s A.J. Turner has a 10.1 average). And his 18 rushing TDs leads the nation among RBs (Army QB Bryson Daily has 19).
Ashton Jeanty has all the tools you want in your running back. He has the moves to elude opponents, the balance to stay up after a hit, the strength to stiff-arm would-be tacklers, and the speed to not be caught once he gets to the open field. What we are seeing from Jeanty is Barry Sanders-esque, and I say that as someone who saw that former Heisman winner’s entire career in person (at least all the home games). And Jeanty has a legitimate chance this year of breaking Barry’s single-season rushing record, set back in 1988. That year, Sanders rushed for 2,628 yards; back then, bowl game stats were not included as a part of season stats. Jeanty will have the benefit of having a bowl game performance counting toward his stats, or perhaps multiple postseason games as Boise St. would be the Group of Five’s representative in the College Football Playoff if the field were selected today. But he may even get to 2,628 in the regular season. Through seven games, he is already at 1,376, so he is just 1,252 away already. With five games left in the regular season, he would need to average 250 yards per game to reach Barry’s mark. He has already had two games above that mark this year plus a third with over 200. And looking at Boise’s five remaining opponents, there are four Mountain West opponents who all fall outside the upper tier of that conference in rushing yards allowed as well as Pac-12 remnant Oregon State, who allows just under 200 ground yards per game. All of those stats, of course, come from playing opponents who don’t have Ashton Jeanty on their team. It would be appropriate to expect Boise to surpass those averages with Jeanty in the game. It is not a foregone conclusion that Jeanty will break Barry Sanders’ record in the regular season. But it is close to one that he will break it with his postseason play.
When, not if, Ashton Jeanty is presented the Heisman Trophy at the end of this season, he will become the first player since BYU’s Ty Detmer in 1990 to win the trophy playing for a non-major conference team (BYU was in the WAC back then, a conference that does not even have football anymore). So, if you have not already, tune in for some Mountain West football. Stay up late (if you are on the east coast) to view Ashton Jeanty doing Ashton Jeanty things. Enjoy a historic performance as it unfolds and witness the next all-time great running back right before he goes off to the NFL. You are going to be hearing his name for the next decade or so. Get used to it.
3. Tony Bennett: Another Warning Shot
“The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot.” That was the quote from Virginia’s head basketball coach as he announced his retirement this past week. At age 55, Coach Bennett decided that the impact of the transfer portal and NIL payments had altered the game of college basketball to such an extent that he no longer recognized it, and he no longer felt like he could be effective in the new landscape.
I have two reactions to this headline. The first is that this is going to be the first domino to fall. My concern is that Tony Bennett may have inadvertently just inspired several other coaches, particularly those from the old guard, to follow him into retirement. And as an alum and fan of one of those schools, Michigan State, I worry that 69 year old Tom Izzo could use this as permission to follow suit. Izzo has been more than vocal about his displeasure with all the changes in college athletics over these last few years. I hope not, but I can see this as a catalyst to accelerating the changing of the guard as more older coaches decide they have had enough and are not interested in sticking around any longer in this new environment.
The second reaction I have, and one that I am actually hoping for, is that the NCAA will heed Bennett’s warning and realize that what they have allowed college athletics to devolve into is truly a mess and needs to be brought back from the abyss. The NCAA at this point, as I have mentioned numerous times now, has no plan and is simply maneuvering in a series of hasty reactions to the stimuli the world is throwing its way. There is no plan right now. No one is steering the ship. And we have seen the results of that. Recruiting has become an auction, with players going to the highest NIL payments rather than choosing a coach and system where they can develop further. Program continuity has become extinct with the unrestricted transfer capabilities now allowed. While some people may question the timing of Bennett’s retirement, less than three weeks before his Cavaliers begin their new season, no one is questioning the reasoning behind it. No one with their head on straight is disagreeing that “college athletics is not in a healthy spot.”
We have already “Crossed the Rubicon” in disregarding any semblance of tradition in college sports. And we know that players will always come and go. But coaches were the last pillar that provided some element of storylines and familiarity in college sports. If the legends of the coaching ranks all get frustrated and hang up their clipboards, the game will have no icons and mentors remaining to inspire the younger generation. And at that point, we will probably see even the younger coaches begin to not stick around so long with teams, either voluntarily or not, due to the increasing impossibility of sustaining success in this apocalyptic wasteland the NCAA has created.
It saddens me what has become. And as we continue to move further and further away from what it was, the disorder will continue to erode all that was good about college athletics. We will get to a point where the system simply collapses altogether because it no longer was sustainable. But at that point, it will be too late to fix it. And we all will just be left wishing we had listened when we had the chance.
4. Use Of Instant Replay: Another Controversy
On Thursday Night Football this past week, which in itself is a flawed idea, we saw another NFL game end, in effect, on an officiating blunder. This time it was a non-call on a blatant facemask that is the source of the controversy. Trailing by eight points with about a minute and a half remaining and backed up to their own 5-yard line with no timeouts, the Minnesota Vikings certainly had their backs against the wall. But they had the ball and a chance to tie the game if they could move all the way down the field and score a touchdown. On 2nd down, the LA Rams’ pressure got home and tackled Vikings QB Sam Darnold in the endzone for a safety. Immediately, Darnold began looking around for a penalty flag as he gestured that he had his facemask grabbed. No flags were thrown so the safety made it a ten point game, and with Minnesota now having to kick away to LA, it was over.
Then the replays began, and the facemask was very evident. Sam Darnold had his head twisted around Exorcist-style. If it would have been seen and called, Minnesota would have had the ball at their own 20 with 90 seconds to play, not an impossible situation. What made it worse is that the replays showed that not one, not two, but three referees had a pretty clear sightline to the infraction.
What happened the next day was completely predictable. All the sports shows were discussing if the rules governing instant replay and reviewable plays needed to be revised. The argument was simple: a game can’t be decided on a call, or missed call, that was this egregious.
Well, I am here to say that yes, yes it can. Any real NFL fan and even most players and coaches will tell you that the game of football is already over-officiated. Penalties, challenges, reviews, and officiating discussions have slowed the game too much, often disrupting the flow of the contest, and for those of us at home, leaving us watching way too many commercials. And the fact of the matter is that there are no shortage of plays in an average NFL game where a call is not made which could have been.
There absolutely cannot be an expansion as to what can be reviewed. Even if it is something that happens immediately from someone in a command center with access to all the camera angles, this will lead to further delays between each play while we wait for the head referee to announce whether or not there were any penalties on each play. Human error is a part of sport. Players are guilty of it. Coaches are guilty of it. And we need to accept that the referees are guilty of it. That is the reality of sports. Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I don’t think any of you want our football games lasting any longer than they already do.
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