Ring of Thieves

What do you get when the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs work together?  You get screwed, that's what:

In the more desirable seats at Yankee Stadium, an already pricey $10.50 draft beer will run you an eye-popping $12.60 thanks to an involuntary 20 percent "service fee" tacked on to the original price. If the sticker shock doesn’t make that brew bitter enough, consider this: Despite what you might expect, that extra $2 and change isn't going to the hustling server who sold it to you, according to a new lawsuit.
Legends Hospitality, the concessionaire co-owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and Goldman Sachs, allegedly pockets the 20 percent service fee attached to food and drink in violation of New York law, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the company by three Yankee Stadium servers this week. If certified as class action, the suit could involve more than a hundred servers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims.
At the center of the dispute is how hot dogs, sodas and other ballpark fare are served in the stadium's field-level seats, which typically cost between $100 and $350 a game. At field level, fans don't have to fetch their food and drink; they instead can place orders with servers carrying credit-card machines and get the orders ferried to their seats by food-and-drink runners.
Under this arrangement, the servers act a lot like salespeople. "They schmooze the customers, and they're trained to upsell, just like any other waitress," says the plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian Schaffer. "If somebody says, 'I want a hot dog,' they say, 'But wouldn’t you like a cold beer with that?'"
According to the suit, the menus field-level spectators find in their cupholders include this disclaimer: "A 20% service charge will be added to the listed prices. Additional gratuity is at your discretion." That phrase "additional gratuity" would seem to imply that the 20 percent is, in fact, a gratuity, but Schaffer says his clients don’t get that money. Instead, they receive a far more modest commission, between four and six percent, of their total sales for the game.

Stay classy, assholes.  It is way too appropriate that these three entities are working together in this deal.  All of them are pretentious jerkass operations used to making money hand over fist, and yet they can't get enough.  Not that I can feel too bad for the people in the expensive seats, but jeez, why jack it up 20% more?

Update: I think these three make up the sports and finance Axis of Evil.

Ohio State Investigates Car Sales

And the walls came tumbling down.  I'm definitely not going to lose any sleep if Tressel is sent packing.  OSU fans are remarkably quiet right now.  I remember a friend who was the editor of The Lantern, when talking about Lorenzo Styles, saying, "Lorenzo, Styling in his Benzo," back in the Cooper era. 

ESPN:

Ohio State's director of compliance is reviewing at least 50 car sales to Buckeyes athletes and relatives to see if they met NCAA rules, The Columbus Dispatch reported Saturday.... The Dispatch reported that a car salesman who received game passes from Ohio State athletes handled many of the deals at two different dealerships. Ohio State has since taken the salesman, Aaron Kniffin, off the pass list.
Athletes are prevented from receiving special deals not available to other students. They are not permitted to trade autographs for discounts. Both dealerships display signed Ohio State memorabilia in their showrooms.
One car, a 2-year-old Chrysler 300 with fewer than 20,000 miles, was titled to then-sophomore defensive player Thaddeus Gibson in 2009. Documents show the purchase price as $0. Gibson said he did not know why the title showed a zero for the purchase price and said he was still paying for the car.
State law requires dealers to report accurate information about all car sales for tax purposes.
School officials have seen no evidence of players getting special treatment in vehicle sales, Douglas Archie, associate athletic director for compliance, said in a statement Saturday.
"Consistent with our standard procedures, we are nevertheless reviewing these sales to assure ourselves that our policies were adhered to," he said.
Pryor's mother and brother also purchased cars from the dealerships. Kniffin loaned his own car to Pryor for a three-day test drive to Pryor's home in Jeannette, Pa.
Kniffin and the owner of one of the dealerships he worked for, Jason Goss, have attended seven football games as guests of players, including the 2007 national championship game and the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.

Also:

A graphics-based T-shirt produced by a Tampa, Fla., company is among other recent efforts at Ohio State's expense, according to The Blade.
The shirt by Smack Apparel, "Tressel's Tattoo and Pawn -- Turning a Blind Eye Since 2001," is a hot sell in Ann Arbor and other big college football towns, the report said.
"We knew that Michigan fans would eat it up, and they have," said Wayne Curtiss, Smack Apparel's owner.
Another T-shirt company has twisted the Big Ten's new division names, with the front displaying "Legends" along with a pair of Joe Paterno-style, heavy-framed eye glasses.
But the back of the shirt carries a similar punchline as the Michigan billboard. It's imprinted with "Liars" instead of "Leaders" and carries an image of Tressel's familiar sweater vest.
"People see it as something that's fun and something that's funny," Curtiss said, according to The Blade. "We just take a situation that has fans talking, and then try to have some fun with it. We hope people can laugh and take it the right way."

Life in the Infield at Churchill Downs

From the SI archive, a story about the NFL's Will Wolford's love of horses and the Derby:

"My goal was to play football long enough so I could own horses comfortably," Wolford says. "Treat them as an outlet, as a way to relax. It's not, 'Oh, gee, this horse has to win today because I got to pay bills.' I played five years in the league before I bought a horse. It's strictly done for fun."
Since Wolford was a boy growing up in Louisville, where Moe was a saloonkeeper-cum-horse-player, the Kentucky Derby has been his life's immovable feast. When Will was seven, on the family's way to Churchill Downs for the 1972 Derby, his parents dropped him off at a party of 20 other kids set amid a grim posse of baby-sitters. "We sat in front of the TV and watched Riva Ridge run around the track," he says. His ensuing Derby experiences extended through his four years at St. Xavier High and through four more at Vanderbilt University. The Kentucky Derby is a River City rite of spring, and for years Wolford partook of its rituals from the Catholic encampment in the infield at the far turn.
"If you went to a Catholic high school in Louisville and you went to the Derby, that's where you hung out," Wolford says. "It's a gigantic party. Everything and anything you want to do is in the infield at the Derby. You never see a horse when you're out there. Every once in a while there would be a wave, like at a football game, and everybody would scream, but you had a hard time seeing the horses. It got pretty wild. Drink beer and jungle juice—all kinds of juices mixed with grain alcohol. We used to hide it in the bottom of the coolers. In gallon jugs. Line the bottom of the coolers with beer, and line that with towels and ice. I always had a pint or two in my underpants."
Of his various physical accomplishments while attending St. Xavier, none is remembered more fondly than his last notable feat as a high school student. Wolford used to attend the infield bacchanal with a passel of athletic teammates—guys nicknamed Squirmy and Jaybird, Pygmy and Skinny—and at 9 a.m. on Derby Day of 1982, in the spring of their senior year, the boys found to their dismay that the lock was jammed on the trunk of the Mustang that held the day's ambrosia. The infield was beckoning. Chris Kurtz, one of Wolford's best friends, recalls that everyone looked to Will, then a buff 230 pounds, and began exhorting him: "You can do it, Will. You can do it!" Reaching under a corner of the trunk, he performed one prodigious squat thrust. It popped like a cap on a bottle. "He ripped the trunk right off," Kurtz says. "Amazing." To a chorus of cheers, of course.

This story reminds me of a friend's story about attending the Derby.  He said they took in 3 or 4 bottles of water, of which 1 or 2 were actually vodka, 3 or 4 bottles of orange juice, and then they poured vodka into the ice of the cooler.  When they wanted some vodka, they'd open the drain of the cooler and hold the cooler over a glass.

A Billboard I Like

From a friend's facebook post:

Just resign Jimmy T.

Jim Tressel's Watergate

Why is it that it is the cover-up more than the actual crime that ruins somebody:

In a sharply worded rebuke of Ohio State's Jim Tressel, the NCAA on Monday accused the 10-year coach of withholding information and lying to keep Buckeyes players on the field who had accepted improper benefits from the owner of a tattoo parlor.

In a "notice of allegations" sent to the school, the NCAA said Monday that the violations relating to the coach are considered "potential major violations."

Ohio State was not cited for the most serious of institutional breaches since Tressel hid information from his superiors for more than nine months. The university has 90 days to respond to the ruling body of college sports' request for information before a scheduled date before the NCAA's committee on infractions on Aug. 12 in Indianapolis.

In a 13-page indictment of Tressel's behavior, the NCAA alleged that Tressel had "permitted football student-athletes to participate in intercollegiate athletics while ineligible." It also said he "failed to deport himself ... (with) honesty and integrity" and said he was lying when he filled out a compliance

form in September which said he had no knowledge of any NCAA violations by any of his players.

He may survive this because Ohio State cares more about winning football games than class, but he'll never be able to live this down.

Jimmy T Has Trouble With Saying Sorry

Dayton Daily News:

Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith said Tuesday the $250,000 fine levied against Buckeyes football coach Jim Tressel for violating NCAA rules may not even cover the cost of the investigation.

“It’ll probably eat up the whole $250 (thousand),” Smith said. “I’m not sure. We haven’t done any projections.”

Declining to address the ongoing NCAA investigation into Tressel’s violation, Smith also said he didn’t know when Tressel’s problems would be resolved.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Smith said Tressel was supposed to apologize in March at a news conference on the situation but failed to do so, and that only after meeting with Smith did the coach finally say he was sorry in a public forum.

What a bum. Later in the story:

 

After Yahoo! Sports broke the Tressel story in March, Smith, who was about to chair the prestigious NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection committee, hastily called a news conference. Tressel was supposed to apologize that night, but did not.

“Then we got with him and he got better at it,” Smith said. “It’s an emotional thing.”

On Tuesday, Smith said he regretted that the hurried news conference did not go better and said there were a number of things he wished he had done differently.

Yeah, it's hard for a hypocrite to admit he did anything wrong.  There is a timeline included with the article, and it is pretty obvious that Tressel had no desire for this scandal to ever come to light.  But this section of the timeline really stood out:

Dec. 9: Tressel says this is the first time he hears what federal officials know about the items. He makes no mention to university officials of his email exchanges with Cicero or any knowledge he has of the matter.
Dec. 16: OSU interviews for the first time the six players found to be involved with Rife (Pryor, tailback Daniel Herron, Posey, offensive lineman Mike Adams, defensive lineman Solomon Thomas and defensive back Jordan Whiting). Smith later thanks the players for their conduct in these interviews, “because they were honest (and) forthright.” Tressel does not disclose his knowledge of the memorabilia sales.
Dec. 19: OSU turns in a self-report to the NCAA and declares the six players ineligible.
Dec. 21: The NCAA conducts phone interviews with the players and then asks for additional information, which Ohio State provides on Dec. 22.
Dec. 22: The NCAA notifies Ohio State of five-game suspensions for five players and one game for Whiting. All must also pay to charity the equivalent of the money and services they received. But the NCAA does allow the players to participate in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4.
Dec. 23: Smith and Tressel have a news conference to announce the sanctions. Tressel says the players must have known what they were doing was a violation of NCAA rules: “I suppose that would be something rattling around inside the head of each of them individually. We all have a little sensor within us, 'Well, I’m not sure if I should be doing this.’ ”

Way to be classy on December 23, coach.  I can't imagine many employers would be happy with their subordinate lying to them like this.  But then again, maybe we need to reconsider who's the boss:

March 8: Ohio State reports Tressel’s violation to the NCAA and calls a news conference to announce it has suspended Tressel for two games and has fined him $250,000. In the letter to the NCAA, Ohio State says, “The institution is very surprised and disappointed in Coach Tressel’s lack of action in this matter.” Yet at the news conference, university President E. Gordon Gee and Smith lavish praise on Tressel. Asked if he considered firing Tressel, Gee jokes, “No, are you kidding? Let me just be very clear: I’m just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

What an embarrassment.  You'd think the highest paid college President in the country would have a little more authority.  Why does that guy make $1.5 Million?  Ohio State football is a disgrace to this state.

NFL Ownership

Matthew Yglesias:

Stephen Squibb’s N+1 piece on the NFL lockout sheds light on something I’ve wondered about from time to time. How come you don’t see more teams organized as co-ops the way the Green Bay Packers are? Conversely, how come you don’t see teams organized as regular firms with shares listed on the stock exchange? Apparently it’s against the rules in both cases:

It is this kind of public—a universally available and voluntary association—that the league outlawed in 1961, when it stipulated that “No corporation, association, partnership or other entity not operated for profit nor any charitable organization or entity not presently a member of the league shall be eligible for membership.” The new rules demanded that each team be owned by at least one person with a minimum controlling interest of 30 percent. As the value of each team has risen, so has the height of this barrier to entry, which has recently become so high as to trigger a kind of succession crisis in Pittsburgh. There the problem was that no individual Rooney child had enough millions to buy out any of the others in order to create the necessary 30 percent share. Acting quickly to preserve one of its prized aristocracies, the league declared some owners more equal than others, allowing the combined 32 percent stake of the two Rooney boys to count as that of one individual.