Thursday: Should sports get rid of the injury reports?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's our number two of the program, just after five
o'clock on this Thursday.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thank you for being a part of the day.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
We've got we've got Kathy Engelbert WNBA sound coming from
you here in a little bit, we've got Shade or
Sanders discussion. I will say this one thing about baseball
that I wish that we could do this a little
bit differently, because you never see this in the NBA,
and you certainly don't see it in the NFL or hockey.
And I understood it years ago when you won the

(00:29):
Pennant or you won the Pennant when there was just
two teams in the playoffs, but that you win a
wild card, and then you win the divisional series, and
then you win the ALCS or the NLCS, and then
you win the World Series, then you clinch a playoff
spot in the regular season, and then you clinch the
division in the playoff in the regular season. That's six

(00:51):
different times that you're having a champagne celebration.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
It just seems this a little much.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Oh yeah, don't give me. I think it's a conspiracy
that they have some type of clearly some liquid agreement
with with the Champagne companies or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
That's what I think it is. Well, it could be
whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
But but even Mookie Bett said last night, Yeah, we're
gonna celebrate this, and they went to the locker room
and sprayed champagne all over everybody. But all they did
was win a wildcard game. Yeah, congratulations, Yeah, yeah, next exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
It makes you miss the Spurs where it's just like, hey,
you're excited, congrats Tim You just you're.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Making When they win the NBA Championship, they're like Scotty Scheffler.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
They they it's good for ten minutes and then it's
on to the next year.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, they're like Nicola Jokic, Hey, you're excited for the parade.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm going when is it? It's Tuesday. I can't leave
for Serbia until Wednesday. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
H To be that great and to be that like boring,
I guess I don't know what the word is.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But anyways, Yeah, there's Scotty Scheffler.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Cut from from earlier this year was What's for dinner?

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah? I won, big deal. I got into their sixty million. Yeah,
let's go home and hang out with the family and
I'll play. I'll see in two weeks when we play
the next major all right, today, have the Colin Coward Show.
During one of their headline herdline news segments, Colin Jason
McIntyre was not very happy with the Baltimore Ravens for

(02:21):
not fully discussing and giving out the information as to
the extent of Lamar Jackson's injury and would he be
out two to four weeks or is he playing on Sunday?
And John Harbaugh the good Harbaugh, the good one. Yes,
he had nothing to say about other than that we'll
see what happens on Sunday, you know, right now, We'll
see what happens on Sunday. Well, your report says he's questionable.

(02:44):
Well maybe he is, maybe he's not. And John Harbaugh
really wouldn't give a solid answer. And Colin Coward said
something that I don't completely agree with. I kind of
agree with, but I certainly don't disagree with it. And
he said, I've been saying this a half a dozen
times over the last several years. We should get rid

(03:04):
of the injury report, which Jason McIntyre retorted, Wait a second,
we've got games to bet on, we've got fantasy football,
and we've got survivor pools. We've got money writing on this.
We need to know whether or not the guy's playing
or not, and to the extent of his injury. So

(03:25):
then Colin came back with, well, why is it fair
that if I go on a sick leave for three
days that Fox is an entity can't put out a
release and if you're filling in for me, you can't
say why I'm sick. But an NFL football player has
to be able to disclose every element of injury that

(03:46):
he has. The left guard for the forty nine ers
is out for the next two games because of this,
this and this. Why is that fair? Well, because of gambling,
because the boys in the desert need to know. Well,
the boys in the Desert knew before you even told us,
because somebody told them that before it was ever reported
on Thursday before the.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Game when it was leaked out.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Coaches for years have not given out the full in
college just has done this in the last couple of years.
But coaches do not want to give the other team
information in two different areas. Number One, they don't want
them to prepare for a second quarterback or a second
white running back or somebody that's that's undertrained, and they

(04:27):
also don't want you going after that player in the
area of where his weakness is because of injury. So
if I tell you my quarterback has a hamstring injury
and he may or may not play, and let's say
we're going to make him questionable or doubtful, and you
prepare for the other guy, now you've got a leg
up on me because you prepared for both.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
And if he does play, you're.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Going to send somebody out to try to make him
strain that hamstring a little bit more work on that ankle,
So you're gonna in football is a game of attrition.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
A lot of times anyway.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
So that's why coaches have been reluctant for years, especially
at the college level, to tell you why the player's
hurt or how a player's hurt. You can go back
to the Bowl game in twenty twenty two, when somehow
UTSA was able to keep it a secret that Frank
Harris wasn't going to play until thirty minutes before game time.
The line in Vegas didn't move until seven thirty that night.

(05:23):
The line was twelve and a half for three weeks,
and there was plenty of people that knew well in
advance of that game what was going on. But the
reason why it was done is because there was no
rule that said that the other team has to disclose
every injury that they have too. And if the other
team has to disclose every injury and be one thousand
percent honest about it, then okay, I'm on on the

(05:46):
side of let's have an injury report. But if you're
going to go John Harbaugh and tell me, well, I
don't know if he's going to play or not, maybe
he will, Maybe I'll wake up Sunday morning and have
an immaculate recovery and be able to play. All you're trying,
all you're doing is a gamesmanship. So the Texans have
to play up to work on Cooper Rush plays as
well as they do Lamar Jackson plays. And if Lamar's

(06:08):
in the game, I'm bleitzing on every play to make
him scramble and run and to strain that uh that
hamstring even further to or he can't play. And now
I get to go against the backup or not. And
in the college level, if you've got a freshman quarterback
that's never played before and he hasn't seen every package,
that the other team has had in live competition. You

(06:30):
don't want to throw that guy out there and say,
let's uh, let's let's uh, let's give the other team
three or four or five days or two weeks to
prepare for the guy. So, if we're gonna have injury reports,
they need to be one thousand percent honest, and the
fines for not being honest need to be damaging. I mean,
like ten million dollars to a college football program for

(06:51):
saying that the guy is hurt when he's not or
not hurt when he is. If you're gonna be if
you're going to have a legitimate neal and you've found
out that you light about your injury report, you get
fine big time because colleges won't then won't lie, they'll
be honest. But if it's oh, you're going to get,
you know, a five hundred dollars fine or something like that,
they'll pay the five hundred bucks just to protect their players.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
You know, there was a.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
There was a I was listening to I can't remember
his name, but he writes for the New York Times
and other places up in the Northeast, and he had
a conversation with Aaron Boone about how he deals with players,
and Aaron Boone says, it's not my responsibility as a
manager to tell people, the media or anybody else everything
about every one of my players. My job as a

(07:37):
coach a manager is to protect my players and always
have their back and always take the blame when we
lose and never take credit when we win. That's how
you build rapport with your players. And so the most
important thing to a coach is his players. And the
last thing that he's going to do is put that
put a backup in harm's way, put a player that's

(07:59):
injured in harm's way, all because you want to know
what the injury report is. And so I agree with
Colin that unless there's going to be major, major fines
for lying about an injury report, or an independent doctor
assigned to every team to go over evaluate the players
as to their pop their percentage of playing on the weekend,

(08:20):
then we should get rid of it and go back
to hiding injuries. And I don't really care whether you
gamble on the team or not. When you put money
on a team, it's fifty to fifty. Now you're trying
to educate yourself to be the best that you can
be with that, but I don't want to have to
give I don't want to have to disclose my injuries
and be honest about it if somebody else isn't going
to be required to do the same thing with a

(08:41):
very very hefty penalty for not disclosing it correctly. And
so I don't care that you're a gambler. I don't
care that you play fantasy football. I know a lot
of people do, but there's also a lot of people
that don't, and they're just there to watch the game.
And from a coaching standpoint, coaches aren't not allowed to
play fantasy. They're not allowed to gamble, and I'm allowed
to have survivor pools, and they don't really care if

(09:02):
you've got one. Their job is to protect their player
from injury and from being exposed because they're not as
good as your starter. And to me, I'm on the
on the Collins side with this one. I don't want
an injury list unless we're going to have punitive damages
for people that lie about their injury reports.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
So you want to know, funny thing, Andy is, if
you ask the ais the sky nets, why do injury
reports exist? Here is the sky nets answer. Injury reports
exist to document incidences, facilitate proper treatment and compensation, and
prevent future injuries by enabling investigators into the root or

(09:41):
causes of hazard. Sounds good, right, good, All.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Right, I'm not buying any of it. But here's where
it gets funny.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
In professional sports they ensure fairness and information the public
and betters about player available.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, that same thing can be said about college players.
And I'll bet you somewhere, someplace, somebody's betting on a
high school game here here or there too, especially when
you get to the big, you know, big state championship games.
Probably not legally, but I doubt Vegas has a line on,
you know, Dallas Carter and Permian Basin if they play
each other again, But somebody probably does, and somebody probably

(10:21):
has an idea of how they're kind of how they're
gonna deal with it. But now I understand what Jason says.
He wants to know who's playing so he can figure
out what fantasy team he's gonna suit up. But that's
not the responsibility of either Harbaugh or anybody else that's
coaching a team, and the boys in the Desert have
ways of finding out what's going on, and they've been

(10:44):
doing it for a long time. The old Jimmy the
Greek stuff when he used to be on the NFL
Today with with Brent, he had inside information way before
anybody else did. So, Yeah, I don't care about your
fantasy team. I'm I'm on the side of protecting the players.
And if if I'm playing defensive tackle and I'm I'm
trying to get off the block of a right tackle

(11:06):
that's got a bad ankle, I'm stepping on his foot
every play.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Wow, you're you're pulling a karate kid in swift.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
And you know they are.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
You know, No, there's nobody that's gonna now, you're not
gonna make it obvious, but occasionally he's gonna get his
footstepped off.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
I do like how again?

Speaker 1 (11:23):
How?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
The sky Net says that when it comes to sports
betting and gambling that historically, injury reports were mandated by
the NFL to provide the public with information on how
to bet, gamblers might already possess through their quote spot.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Well, Hey, hey, I was pretty spot on with that.
I know exactly what what we're doing here.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Again, if you want to get rid of the injury report,
that's fine, I don't care, but then don't complain about
UH not being able to or don't take the gambler
the bet MGMs don't take their money. Don't take them.
The NFL shouldn't take the money so they don't have
to answer to the gamblers, because we all know they're
in bed with each.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Other fan duel and draft teams and all that.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
And I just watched the baseball game here a second ago,
but there's a Foxwoods resort add on the backstop of
the baseball backstop, mahigan Son Arena, MGM, Betty. The money
is so so intoxicating and so large for these companies
to advertise that they have to get in bed with it.

(12:33):
And I can just see people like Pete Roselle and
Buie Koon who used to manage could be the commissioner
of baseball, even Peter Ruberroth in the eighties, when Susan
Waldman reads a live spot that says the inline betting
odds now on tonight's game, is this and this and
this that they're rolling over in their graves because what

(12:53):
are we doing. We're telling people who to bet on
on a baseball game in the fifth inning and then
we're surprised when a play doesn't walk off camp off,
or a player does it himself, or on the NFL side,
forgets to leave the facility before he places his bet.
Obviously not supposed to bet on on your own sports,
but they some do and some uh some get away

(13:14):
with it. But we're we've we've all, we've allotted in
the stadiums. There are stadiums in the NBA and NHL
where there's a sports book in the arena that's going
on for that game while that's being played. And I
guarantee you when they build that Taj Mahall Stadium that
the new owners of the Mavericks want to build up
in Dallas, they're gonna have such high speed internet in
that building that within a millisecond you're gonna be able

(13:37):
to bet on whether Kyrie Irving makes or misses a
free throw. And and you're gonna have an account, and
it's gonna be there on your phone, and you're gonna
start pushing buttons and you're gonna be five thousand into
the good or bad in about ten minutes or less.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
You can if you need to work off your your debt.
You know how they do like, if you can't pay
at a restaurant, okay, go clean dishes. Okay, congratulations, you
can't pay it off, you're gonna help clean clean the
bathrooms or something.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Well, yeah, we got a lot of toilets in this arena.
Getting to work.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
We love all of our degenerate gamblers, and if you're
a degenerate gambler, hey, if you need help gamble.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
The popularity of sports, especially football, is because of fantasy
football and gambling. When you've got something writing on it,
you pay more attention to it. And here's another one. Uh, well,
they just took it away. I couldn't see what the
what the.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
What the over under for Aaron Judge to strike out
would be yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Or hit a home run? You know it doesn't it's
it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're gonna we have sold our sould to that devil
and there's no going back. And there's's it's not, it's
not there's no recourse for going back.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
I haven't Andy. I still love the game for the
purity that is.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
I'm sure you don't. All right, coming up next, Shador Sanders.
He still doesn't get it, and somebody needs to tell
his dad how to be a better dad in this
particular situation, we'll tell you that next. It's five point
fifteen on the ticket.