BEST OF THE DECADE: The best sports moment of the 2010s was the Kick Six

As part of the special series of blog posts here on Apollo Corner about the best of the 2010s, let’s take a look back at the best sports moment of the decade. There was a lot of competition for this title, but I chose the Kick Six play from the 2013 American college football game between the University of Alabama and Auburn University as the best sports moment of the decade.

Normally, with an induction in this series, I would write a lengthy story explaining why I chose to induct something, in this case, a sports play, as the best of the decade. However, I’m instead going to post the SB Nation video about the Kick Six, as anything else I could add would be redundant:

Actually, I do have something to add. After defeating Alabama to finish the season, Auburn went on to win the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championship Game one week later, defeating Missouri, before losing the final BCS Championship Game to undefeated Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) champions Florida State. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the Kick Six was the best sports moment of the 2010s.

Megan Rapinoe leads Donald Trump in hypothetical general election matchup for President

The pollster Public Policy Polling (PPP) recently polled a nationwide sample of registered voters about a hypothetical general election matchup of Republican President Donald Trump against Megan Rapinoe, a member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team that recently won the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Although Rapinoe’s political party affiliation, if any, is not publicly known, the poll assumes a hypothetical scenario in which Rapinoe were to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and be nominated by the Democratic Party. A PDF file of the poll data can be found here.

The poll found Rapinoe leading Trump by one percentage point (42% for Rapinoe, 41% for Trump), with a relatively large number of undecided voters (17% for “not sure”). For comparison, Hillary Clinton got a 48% plurality of the national popular vote in 2016 to Trump’s 46%, yet Trump won a majority of the Electoral College that actually elects the President in 2016.

The undecided voters in the PPP poll appear to lean towards Rapinoe in a hypothetical 2020 matchup against Trump: the poll crosstabs show that 24% of those who self-identified as having voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election were undecided in a hypothetical Trump vs. Rapinoe matchup in 2020, whereas only 3% of those who self-identified as having voted for Donald Trump were undecided in a hypothetical Trump vs. Rapinoe matchup in 2020. The poll also showed that 16% of self-identified Republicans and 8% of self-identified Trump 2016 voters would vote for Rapinoe if she were the Democratic nominee against Trump in 2020. Additionally, Trump’s approval rating in the poll is 42%, and Trump’s disapproval rating is 52%; the Trump approval/disapproval portion of the poll was included in the FiveThirtyEight Trump approval/disapproval poll aggregator.

While Rapinoe would be legally old enough to run for President next year, I seriously doubt that Rapinoe would even consider running for president. However, the poll, aside from one crosstab that goes against conventional political wisdom (the crosstab showing Trump performing worse among male voters than female voters, most polling has shown Trump performing far worse among female voters than male voters), is very good for illustrating how narrow Trump’s path to re-election is. As it stands now, Trump would have to win over a fairly substantial amount of support of voters who currently disapprove of his performance in office in order to win re-election, meaning that Trump would likely lose re-election unless there is a noticeable increase in his approval rating for one reason or another and/or Democrats nominate a very controversial candidate.

Stop complaining about Team USA defeating Thailand 13-0 and start celebrating great athletic feats by women

I am as male as one could be, but the criticism by predominantly male commentators about the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) defeating Thailand by a score of 13 goals to zero in a Group F match at this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer tournament is extremely annoying and downright sexist.

I encourage everyone to read this column, written by Arwa Mahdawi and published by The Guardian, about sexist double standards against women in sports, and read the column in its entirety, even if you don’t agree with Mahdawi’s criticism of how the USWNT celebrated scoring goals after already being ahead.

There have been two main points of criticism that the misogynists of the sports community have leveled against the USWNT. First, the misogynists of the sports community have criticized the USWNT for running up a massive margin of victory, or running up the score, against Thailand. Second, the misogynists of the sports community have criticized the USWNT for celebrating goals that they scored after they were already ahead by a large margin late in the second half of their game against Thailand. Mahdawi’s column focuses mainly on the second point of criticism, so I’ll focus on the first point of criticism in this blog post, and every opinion in this blog post below the separator is mine.

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I’m going to rebut the criticisms of the USWNT scoring a massive amount of goals against Thailand by making a few points.

First, in the group stage of the Women’s World Cup, goal differential and goals scored is used as a tiebreaker should there be identical group points (which are determined by win-draw-loss records) for the winner of the group and/or a spot in the elimination stage. The USWNT’s strongest competition in their group appears to be Sweden, a team that is probably on par with the USWNT, so the USWNT couldn’t back off late in their game against Thailand and play to not lose or draw, as, if Sweden were to defeat Thailand by a very large margin, there is the risk of the USWNT not getting the higher seed of the Group F teams in the elimination stage if, for example, the USWNT defeats Chile and plays to a draw against Sweden. Complaints about running up the score where goal or point differential, goal or point ratio, and/or goals or points scored is used as a tiebreaker are absolutely absurd, since there is every incentive under such a system to run up a massive goal differential.

Second, aside from some exceptions, it’s an insult to an athlete or a group of athletes to tell them to not perform at their best. In sports car endurance racing, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that is taking place in the same country where the Women’s World Cup is being held this weekend, there may arise a situation where one car is leading the race by several laps or more ahead of the second-place car, thus, late in the race, there would, in that scenario, be incentive for the driver of the leading car to run at a pace less than full speed, but still fast enough to win the race. The risk of a crash or mechanical failure causing the car to not be able to continue in the race at any point in an automobile race is very high in an extremely long race like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, so there is incentive in that situation for the driver of a car with a massive lead to race to not lose. Soccer is a game played over 90 minutes of playing time plus any stoppage time added on to one or both 45-minute halves, and athletes in an elite soccer competition like the Women’s World Cup are conditioned to play their sport to the best of their ability for 90 minutes plus stoppage time. Unlike automobile racing, there isn’t the component of the equipment being used to play the game being as much of an athlete as the human competitor is in soccer, as neither team in a soccer match is going to lose a game if the ball is damaged in the normal course of play. To tell a team of soccer players to not play at their best for 90 minutes plus stoppage time is an insult to them; it would be like telling an elite swimmer to swim more slowly after building up a big lead.

Third, male athletes are a lot less likely to be criticized for dominant athletic performances than female athletes are. A famous example of a dominant performance by a male athlete occurred in the 2000 U.S. Open men’s golf tournament at Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, where Tiger Woods won the tournament by 15 strokes, which, to this day, still stands as the largest-ever margin of victory in a men’s stroke play major golf tournament, over his nearest competitor. There was very little criticism of Tiger by the sports media after his 2000 U.S. Open victory; in fact, Tiger’s performance at Pebble Beach was regarded by the sports media, and even some of his competitors, as a phenomenal achievement.

If you wouldn’t complain about dominant athletic performances by male athletes, don’t complain about dominant athletic performances by female athletes.

Trump’s businesses lost over a billion dollars from 1985 to 1994

According to a report by The New York Times, which has been reported by multiple news media outlets, now-President Donald Trump’s businesses lost over a billion dollars from 1985 to 1994, per tax documents obtained by The New York Times:

Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s businesses reported losses of $1.17 billion from 1985 to 1994, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing information from tax documents from those years.

It appears Trump lost more money than nearly any other individual US taxpayer year after year, the Times reports, according to the 10 years of tax information the newspaper acquired.

Trump ran for president branding himself as a self-made billionaire, touting his financial success, but he has been steadfast in his refusal to release his tax returns to the public, despite mounting pressure from Congress. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin formally denied a request from the House Ways and Means Committee for Trump’s last six years of tax returns, a period not covered by the documents reported by The Times on Tuesday.

In 1990 and 1991, Trump’s core business losses were more than $250 million each year — more than double those of the closest taxpayers in those years, the Times reports.

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Keep in mind that, for eight of the ten years in that time frame, Trump didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes because of the losses his businesses occurred.

Given the time frame covered by the tax documents, one of Trump’s business failures during that time frame was the New Jersey Generals, a professional football team that played in the now-defunct United States Football League (USFL). The USFL, as well as the teams that were part of it, folded in 1986 after Trump spearheaded an unsuccessful attempt to play a fall schedule of USFL games in competition against the well-established NFL.

One major reason, although not the sole reason, why Trump was able to get a large enough minority of the popular vote in order to obtain an Electoral College majority in 2016, and thus win the presidency, was because he was able to convince a significant portion of the electorate that he was a successful, self-made businessman who became a billionaire. As it turns out, Trump actually lost a ton of money as a businessman, which is not something that would happen to an individual who was actually a successful businessperson. To put that another way, Trump campaigned as someone who he actually is not. It’s becoming more and more obvious why Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, and it has nothing to do with being under audit.

Fox News is pro-Trump propaganda. Period.

Jane Meyer, a journalist for The New Yorker magazine, recently wrote this piece outlining how Fox News has become an outlet for pro-Trump political propaganda, complete with a revolving door between Fox News and the Trump Administration.

In the early 1990’s, Fox acquired broadcast rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games on Sunday afternoons with games predominantly featuring teams from the National Football Conference (NFC), starting with the 1994 season (Fox, which initially built its sports division, Fox Sports, around the NFL, but has now acquired broadcast rights to many other sporting events, has held the rights to the NFC-heavy Sunday afternoon NFL broadcast rights package to this day). There was an underlying political motivation behind Fox acquiring NFL broadcast rights, to the point that one could argue that the rise of the modern far-right in American politics had its roots Fox acquiring NFL broadcast rights:

Murdoch could not have foreseen that Trump would become President, but he was a visionary about the niche audience that became Trump’s base. In 1994, Murdoch laid out an audacious plan to Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President Bill Clinton. Murdoch, who had been a U.S. citizen for less than a decade, invited Hundt to his Benedict Canyon estate for dinner. After the meal, Murdoch led him outside to take in the glittering view of the Los Angeles Basin, and confided that he planned to launch a radical new television network. Unlike the three established networks, which vied for the same centrist viewers, his creation would follow the unapologetically lowbrow model of the tabloids that he published in Australia and England, and appeal to a narrow audience that would be entirely his. His core viewers, he said, would be football fans; with this aim in mind, he had just bought the rights to broadcast N.F.L. games. Hundt told me, “What he was really saying was that he was going after a working-class audience. He was going to carve out a base—what would become the Trump base.”

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Keep in mind that, prior to 1994, when Fox acquired NFL broadcast rights, Fox was a minor television network, much like the CW (which is jointly owned by CBS Corporation and AT&T’s Warner Media) is nowadays. Since 1994, Fox has expanded into cable television (with FX, FS1, FS2, the Big Ten Network, Fox Business Network, and Fox News Channel, among others), a large sports division with broadcast rights to major sporting events, and a cable “news” channel delivering far-right political propaganda 24 hours per day, every day. Fox is still, in some aspects, not as much of a player in regards to broadcast (i.e., over-the-air) television as the original Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). For example, Fox does not air much in the way of network news programming like the Big Three networks do, with Fox News Sunday, a Sunday morning political talk show, being the only news program of any kind on the Fox over-the-air network, with Fox News Channel being a far-right propaganda outlet masquerading as a cable news channel, and Fox, with rare exceptions for sports events (such as numerous matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup men’s soccer tournament), does not air any network programming in a morning or afternoon time slot on weekdays. However, if not for the Fox broadcast network gaining NFL broadcast rights in 1994, Fox would probably be a minor player in the television landscape today instead of the large and powerful media empire that is in real-life.

Meyer’s piece also mentions an instance where Fox News organized and aired a Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio. Meyer described how Trump was given advance knowledge of some debate questions that were asked by Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News employee and one of the moderators of the debate, as well as how Trump bullied the late Fox News boss Roger Ailes into ordering Fox to give Trump favorable treatment:

Against this strained backdrop, at the debate in Cleveland, Kelly asked Trump a famously tough question. “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’ ” she said. Trump interrupted her with a snide quip: “Only Rosie O’Donnell!” The hall burst into laughter and applause.

Kelly kept pressing Trump: “You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect President?” But he’d already won over Republican viewers. (Fox received a flood of e-mails, almost all of them anti-Kelly.) The showdown helped shape Trump’s image as shamelessly unsinkable. It also kicked off a feud between Trump and Fox, in which Trump briefly boycotted the channel, hurting its ratings and forcing Ailes to grovel. Four days after the debate, Trump tweeted that Ailes had “just called” and “assures me that ‘Trump’ will be treated fairly.”

Trump has made the debate a point of pride. He recently boasted to the Times that he’d won it despite being a novice, and despite the “crazy Megyn Kelly question.” Fox, however, may have given Trump a little help. A pair of Fox insiders and a source close to Trump believe that Ailes informed the Trump campaign about Kelly’s question. Two of those sources say that they know of the tipoff from a purported eyewitness. In addition, a former Trump campaign aide says that a Fox contact gave him advance notice of a different debate question, which asked the candidates whether they would support the Republican nominee, regardless of who won. The former aide says that the heads-up was passed on to Trump, who was the only candidate who said that he wouldn’t automatically support the Party’s nominee—a position that burnished his image as an outsider.

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This is extremely hypocritical, given that Trump loudly complained about Donna Brazille, then a political commentator for CNN who later became acting chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 general election, giving Hillary Clinton, who won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 before losing the general election to Donald Trump despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote, advance knowledge of questions that were to be asked during a town hall event televised by CNN. Trump became a strong favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination by his debate performance in Cleveland, meaning that Fox News helped foment Trump’s political rise, something that a proper news organization should avoid doing in regards to any political figure at all costs.

I encourage everyone to read the entire Jane Meyer piece here, since the four paragraphs that I’ve quoted of it are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Fox News played a significant role in Donald Trump’s political rise, and Meyer’s piece also describes the revolving door between the Trump Administration and Fox News.

It is the opinion of the author of this blog post that the Fairness Doctrine, which would have effectively prohibited Fox News from becoming a pro-Trump propaganda outlet, should be reinstated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).