For the NFL, does pink really mean green?

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Now in its third year, the NFL’s very public approach to breast cancer awareness has resulted in approximately $3 million in contributions to the cause, something that is unquestionably good. The campaign is not without its critics, though, who are asking a variety of questions. Some wonder whether, given the wide prevalence of public awareness of breast cancer, the NFL’s stage might more effectively be used to increase awareness within the male population– the league’s primary audience– of the risks associated with colon cancer, a disease with less attention but high incidence nationwide. Others, tired of the harsh pink visuals in the country’s most television-centric sport, constructively wonder whether the campaign might raise more money by letting people pay to somehow watch the game without seeing the neon-pink gloves, cleats, and other things, all of which seem to confound the color spectrum on even the highest definition televisions.

None of these critiques question the fundamentals of the NFL’s breast cancer awareness campaign, which is what makes the latest inquiry stand out. In an article posted last week, Business Insider asked, “Why is the NFL profiting off of breast cancer?” That doesn’t sound too good. The article explains that, while on-field pink equipment items are sold at auction, with the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society (an organization dedicated to “research, education, advocacy, and service”), “it is less clear how much of the sales of pink gear in the NFL Shop go towards research.” The article continues:

According to the website, by purchasing pink items in the NFL Shop, fans can “support the fight against breast cancer with pink NFL breast cancer awareness gear.” Of course, there is a huge difference between supporting “awareness” and donating money to research. In the case of the former, most of the money ends up in the pockets of billionaire NFL owners.

When we contacted the NFL’s online shop for clarification, we were told 5% of the sales are being donated to the American Cancer Society. If the pink products have a typical 100% mark-up at retail, that means the NFL is keeping 90% of the profit from the sale of Breast Cancer Awareness gear.

There’s more math to be done, though, because according to Charity Navigator, 70.8% of donations to the American Cancer Society go something called “Program Expenses,” which, according to the Business Insider article, is the designation for the organization’s research and educational programs. According to Business Insider, this means that “for every $100 in sales of pink gear, only $3.54 is going towards research while the NFL is keeping approximately $45 (based on 100% mark-up).” On Business Insider’s math, even this probably is a generous estimate, since the American Cancer Society does more than just fund research, as evidenced by their mission statement, quoted above.

The NFL issued a response:

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Narrow Margin Monday, take 2

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We find ourselves late on a Monday after another weekend of close games. On Saturday, woefully underachieving Michigan State lost in overtime to Iowa as a result of what one local radio host called the worst coaching he had ever seen in his life, and the man is neither young nor inexperienced in the field. In a real upset, LSU threw a monkey wrench in the SEC East race and beat South Carolina 23-21, Kansas State escaped Ames with a 27-21 win over Iowa State, Notre Dame beat Stanford 20-13 in overtime, and Texas A&M squeaked by Louisiana Tech 59-57. Even the Florida-Vanderbilt game was close into the fourth quarter before the Gators and their quarterback ran away with it. More on that game later this week.

Saturday had its share of blowouts, naturally, and the notable ones included Alabama’s 42-10 win at Missouri, which remains winless in its new conference, Texas Tech’s 49-14 embarrassment of one-time national championship contender West Virginia, still-undefeated Oregon State’s 42-24 win over BYU, and Michigan’s 45-0 muddy execution of Illinois on Wolverine homecoming. Michigan hosts Michigan State in another ALDLAND outing, more on which toward the end of the week.

The NFL had its share of close contests too, including the Lions’ overtime win over hapless Philadelphia, Buffalo’s 19-16 overtime win over Arizona, whose kicker hit a 61-yarder to tie the game but subsequently missed a 30-something yard kick to win the game in the final seconds, the Seahawks 24-23 win over New England, Atlanta’s come-from-behind win over Oakland to become the league’s final undefeated team, Miami’s 17-14 victory over the Rams, and Baltimore’s 31-29 capitalization on the Dallas (ongoing) Disaster. Baltimore payed a long-term price for its win, though, sacrificing defenders Ray Lewis and Ladarius Webb at last to the football devil (no, not the commissioner– separate office) in payment for their past defensive successes. Lewis and Webb are out for the season. Other high-flying teams went down in spectacular fashion on Sunday, including San Francisco, 26-3 at the hands of the Giants, and Houston, 42-24 to Green Bay on Sunday night.

In off-field NFL news, Jonathan Vilma, the embattled New Orleans Saint, reportedly will be allowed to play as soon as this weekend, although it isn’t clear if he will. Vilma continues to maintain a defamation suit against Roger Goodell.

In baseball, the final four is set and in motion. Detroit seized a 2-0 lead over the Yankees as the series heads to Detroit with AL strikeout kings Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer yet to pitch for the Tigers. The other road team, St. Louis, has a 1-0 lead in the NLCS battle of the two most recent defending World Series champions, though the Cardinals are down 5-1 in the fourth as I write this.

Let’s do it again/Do that one more time: Previewing Florida at Vanderbilt

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Duality abounds this weekend, when ALDLAND takes you live to Florida vs. Vanderbilt in Nashville on Saturday evening.

Magalan and I will be in the stadium, along with VSL‘s Bobby O’Shea, for another game against another nationally ranked SEC East opponent. Indeed, it appears it will be the third time this season that Vanderbilt has played a top-ten team, and each of those opponents– South Carolina, Georgia, and now Florida– has been an SEC East foe.

Vanderbilt was a play away from beating both Georgia and Florida last year. This year, Georgia destroyed Vandy. Will the Commodores’ rematch with the Gators go the same way? Many are calling this a trap game for Florida, sandwiched between an emotional home win over LSU and a big game against South Carolina next week. I don’t think Florida is as good as the national commentators say they are, but Vanderbilt has more problems than its coach and fans want to admit as well. Their win at Missouri was a big boost, though. My reasonable hope for this game is that it goes like the season opener against South Carolina: VU plays UF close all game and has a chance to win it in the fourth quarter.

A final note on similarities between the Georgia and Florida games is the photograph at the top of this post, which, like the one in the Georgia preview, depicts a game between these two teams on nearly the same day, sixty-six years ago. Also like that old Georgia matchup, Vanderbilt beat Florida in this one, 20-0. Looking forward to their meeting tomorrow. Stay tuned here for coverage after the game.

Topsy Monday

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As noted, last Saturday’s college football games featured a number of games between top-ranked teams. As discussed in this space before, every game generally is going to end with one team on the winning side and one team on the losing side, games being athletic events between two teams. This means that a bunch of ranked teams lost this week, and boy did they.

Keep reading…

The DET Offensive: Playoffs?!? Playoffs.

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Playoffs? Well yes, actually. The Tigers clinched the AL Central championship in game 160 of the season, thereby securing their position in the playoffs. Their first series opens tonight in Detroit. At the beginning of the season, everyone expected the Tigers to take this division and to take it handily. In the end (indeed, a few days before the end), they took it, but they certainly didn’t take it handily. In fact, as anyone tracking this feature (or, you know, watching the games) knows, this team has been down more than it’s been up this year, and it certainly has underachieved. Fortunately for Detroit, the White Sox, who led the division most of the year, were even worse down the stretch and allowed the Tigers to slip into the postseason.

The playoffs are a brand new season, though, and they start tonight, when the Tigers host the red-hot Oakland Athletics. (The ghost of Brandon Inge undoubtedly haunts this series.) There are some good points and some bad points for the Tigers as they enter the postseason. The regular season pretty well illuminated the bad parts. As for the good parts, the abbreviated nature of postseason series should allow Detroit to hide most of its weaknesses, which generally relate to depth. Pitching rotations and rhythms take on a whole new feel in the playoffs, which is a good thing for this Tiger team, which as a bullpen that is unreliable, to say the least. Local talk radio has been critical of manager Jim Leyland’s lineup decisions, but he seems very focused on putting his best offensive lineup on the field for the playoffs, and no longer appears interested in jockeying the batting order.

The first pitch of the A’s-Tigers series– a five-gamer– is just under an hour away, and Justin Verlander will be on the mound for the home team.

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Previously
You forgot about J(ustin Verlander) – 10/1
Get perspective – 9/12
Everybody knows this is nowhere – 8/31
Now it’s just offensive – 8/29
Explode! – 7/23
Halfway at the Half-way – 7/9
Interleague Play – 6/26
Call the Experts! – 5/26
Recipe for a Slumpbuster – 5/2
Delmon Young Swings and Misses – 4/30
Brennan Boesch’s Birthday – 4/12
Tigers open 2012 season with Sawks sweep – 4/9

An American Running Back in London (via WSJ)

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Mostly he walked. He walked all around London. Down narrow streets to Hyde Park, to the Thames River, to bustling Piccadilly Circus, hidden in the crowd like an anonymous tourist. “Just kind of hanging out, man,” Barry Sanders said. He saw “Les Miserables,” which he also saw in New York. He saw another show, but he couldn’t remember which one. Occasionally, somebody would recognize him. But usually they did not. He met some students from the London School of Economics. They talked a little football. American football.

Back home, everybody wanted to know why Barry Sanders had disappeared. … Read More

(via WSJ)

Going to the vault to preview LSU & Florida

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Being in existence for little more than a year, there really isn’t much of an “ALDLAND Vault” at this point, but week six necessitates a new approach to game previews. There wasn’t much in the way of top-25 matchups last weekend, but it’s a different story this weekend. Some highlights, in chronological order:

Ken Burns’ Old Mississippi

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Ole Miss feels a lot like the most literary team in all of college football, and while I can’t put my finger right on the reason for that, I don’t think it’s just because of Faulkner, although there is that. It’s been more than a year since we all noted what I thought was the final chapter of Ole Miss’ mascot tale, although that story’s had an extended epilogue, which probably isn’t surprising. I think “Mississippi” was the first word I remember learning how to spell.

In our America, of course, all great literary things get the film treatment, and the best of them get the Ken Burns treatment. Arguably proving my above-stated thesis, Ole Miss is no exception.


(HT: SB Nation)

Real talk: The media is completely blowing it on the Miguel Cabrera triple crown story

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Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers’ third baseman, enters tonight’s game against Kansas City, the last game of the baseball season, leading the American League in home runs, batting average, and RBI. The last time a player in either league finished the regular season with the lead in all three categories (i.e., won the triple crown) was 1967, forty-five years ago. This is a huge deal.

It’s a huge deal, and it’s failing to register a commensurate blip on the national media radar, and that’s a shame. This is not a Detroit-complex issue, a simple want of attention and validation (I’ve addressed that concept before), but if Cabrera was a member of the Yankees or Red Sox, to name two teams, Kansas City would be a media circus right now. The game would be on national radio and television broadcasts, and Sportscenter would have a running clock counting down the minutes until the first pitch.

There has been some national coverage this week, it’s true, and the national baseball writers, like Jonah Keri and Joe Posnanski, have been somewhat better about this than their broadcast counterparts, but come on. This is a readily understandable, offense-involving achievement that hasn’t happened in nearly a half-century, and it’s only happened about a dozen times ever. This should be receiving the Tebow treatment, the Brett Favre’s locker treatment, heck, even the Roger Clemens pitching a minor league baseball game treatment. The NFL draft gets more coverage than this story. And what coverage Cabrera’s story gets, as anyone who read the @ALDLANDia feed early this morning knows, is uninformed, manufactured, trite media banter.

Cabrera has been nothing but humble, deflecting, and team-oriented this entire season. He deserves the spotlight, but he’ll never ask for it. Even if he did, it’s too late now, the first pitch of the 162nd game moments away (it’ll be his 161st game of the season). He should be invited to the White House if he secures the triple crown tonight, but even those two are too busy.

Keep reading for update…

ALDLAND Podcast

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ALDLAND is back with its most intense baseball podcast yet.  We have playoff predictions.  We have triple crown coverage.  We even speak about the elusive quadruple crown.  Also covered: a stupid sport with stupid players and owners that isn’t even going to play a season this year.  Someone else needs to step up and listen to this while Pax is in the Alps.  Will it be you?  It better be.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here: