This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Chris Korman is filling in for Andy Nesbitt.
There was a quaint time, not all that long ago, when we felt like each sport had its moment, and that extending beyond those boundaries was in some way unsavory.
Early April, for example, was baseball’s time. You could smell the peanuts roasting, the crack of the bat echoed across the land and fans of two different Chicago teams got to wonder why the heck anybody would play a sport outside in early April.
It was sacred.
But the sports world now belongs to the NFL, wholly and completely. We were reminded of that again on baseball’s Opening Day when a negative story — with astounding implications that should have shaken the professional football league to its core! — vacuumed so much of the attention.
What’s most amazing of all is that the NFL, unrelenting as ever, will soldier on. The league, willingly or not, has succumbed to our social-media driven desire for constant dopamine, unveiling a string of outlandish stories this offseason, one after the other after another like so many Tik-Toks.
On Thursday, it was two stories tied up in one: A pair of veteran coaches, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton, joined Brian Flores’ lawsuit alleging NFL owners have made a mockery of the Rooney Rule, meant to give minority coaching candidates more access to top jobs. Most shockingly, the evidence Horton provided includes an interview Mike Mularkey gave on a podcast called The Steelers Realm (Tagline: “A bias take on Pittsburgh Steeler’s news, stats, and season play”) in which he flat out admits that the Titans gave Horton a fake interview back in 2016 — after they’d already told him he would get the job.
This story layered over one that’s been bubbling for a while. Pro Football Talk issued a report confirming what Ben Volin had previously said about Tom Brady’s actual plans for this offseason: that he was going to become a minority owner of the Dolphins, help hire Sean Payton, and play QB there. It all fell apart due to the Flores lawsuit.
That’s nuts!
Instead Brady retired briefly, for reason unbeknownst to a single solitary person anywhere, before returning. He chilled momentarily but then, mysteriously, his head coach, Bruce Arians, was shuffled up to the front office. Hmm.
Meanwhile the Dolphins hired Mike McDaniel, who quickly said he wanted to stick with Tua Tagovailoa (whose average intended pass last year traveled just seven yards, third-lowest in the league) at QB. So then naturally the Dolphins promptly swung a ludicrous deal for Tyreek Hill, who will outrun Tua’s comfort zone in, by my calculation, 1.2 seconds.
We’ve been hit with a barrage of stories like this all offseason. A franchise QB in his prime was traded!
Of course it was Deshaun Watson, who stands accused of sexual misconduct by 22 different women who say he acted inappropriately while receiving massages. On Thursday, two of those women amended their suits to say that Watson acted negligently because — get this — he knew of his own proclivity for trying to turn massage sessions into sexual encounters and failed to stop himself. Their lawyers, a judge ruled, will be able to request a list of all women who’ve given Watson a massage since 2019. They will seek to find out how many of them turned into sexual encounters in order to establish this as a pattern.
There’s. Just. So. Much. Going. On. All. The. Time.
But that’s what we’re used to anymore. It never stops, just as we never stop trying to make sense of it. It just feels, more and more, like the second we get close to figuring it all out, another story drops. And so on we go.
Quick hits: Maybe Dr. J is the true GOAT … TIGER WOODS! … Adam Silver is very worried about players resting … The first home run of the year.
— Our Bryan Kalbrosky caught up with Julius Erving for an enlightening discussion on the evolution of the modern NBA star, dunking and the long-overdue changes in college sports.
— Tiger Woods used some advice from his late father to play an epic round on Thursday at the Masters.
— Mike Sykes brings you an update on what’s troubling the NBA commissioner: Finding a way to prevent star players from missing games due to “load management.” (Even though it hasn’t really been much of an issue this season!)
— And, finally, here it is: the first dinger of the new season. Happy baseball, friends.