Cleveland Frowns

“Whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it.” — Proverbs 26:27

“Whoseover diggeth a pit shall lay in it.” — Bob Marley

No NFL quarterback in history has ever been put under the microscope the way Deshaun Watson has through six games this season and it’s not close. Which only makes sense when you consider that no black* NFL quarterback had ever embarrassed his owners worse than Deshaun did in forcing his way out of Houston in 2021.

Case in point, the narrative that’s been flogged in the corporate media over the last two weeks that the Cleveland Browns would be better off if they benched the 29-year-old $230 million-dollar four-time Pro Bowler in favor of 30-year-old Jameis Winston, who was last considered an NFL starter, and only a serviceable one at best, five years ago.

While there are many examples of this—here’s Cleveland’s own Jason Garrett on NBC, Chase Daniel on FOX, Mike Florio and ultra-nepo-baby Chris Simms at Pro Football Talk, Rob Gronkowski at Sports Illustrated, Chris Trapasso at CBS, and Jason Lloyd at the Athletic (the latter of whom has been bizarrely obsessed with cancelling Watson since long before the season started), among other assorted bozos and folks who are supposed to know better—the most ambitious is the front-page piece that ran at ABC/Disney’s ESPN.com on Monday, featuring an extraordinary and extraordinarily lengthy 5,000+ word “analysis” by one of its leading NFL “analysts” Bill Barnwell (whose posts are usually paywalled, but, tellingly, not this one) bearing the headline, “It’s time for the Browns to bench Deshaun Watson: Here’s why.”

Barnwell acknowledges at the outset of this piece that “the Browns might not be a very good team with Jameis Winston at quarterback,” but goes on state that “their offense likely would at least vaguely concern opposing defenses on a week-to-week basis” if Winston were starting.

From this statement one would assume that the other ten positions on the offense were functioning at a high level, and that the Browns had been blown out in every game. But neither of these propositions are remotely true.

Rather, as Barnwell acknowledges, the offensive-line play has been a disaster in the wake of legendary offensive-line coach Bill Callahan’s departure, in no small part due to a rash of injuries that have required eight different linemen to have played at least 50 snaps for Cleveland, including second, third, and fourth-stringers, and rookies, who’ve been obviously overmatched. There have also been issues with play-calling and the installation of a new offensive coordinator and offensive scheme using backup running backs, which Barnwell’s piece doesn’t discuss. Nor is there any mention that the Browns pass-catchers lead the league in drops. And while Barnwell does note that the Browns lead the NFL with 36 offensive penalties through six games (a typical product of an undermanned offensive line), there’s no acknowledgement that two of these penalties dubiously erased game-changing plays by Watson, including a 68-yard touchdown pass to Amari Cooper in Oakland and a run that had the Browns set up with 1^st and 10 at Philadelphia’s 12-yard line to take a second-half lead with a touchdown, that likely cost the team wins against the Raiders and the Eagles.  

Of course, honest football analysis accounts for the fact that it’s the ultimate team sport and that a quarterback’s play will suffer if his blockers can’t block, his receivers can’t catch, his coaches haven’t installed functional schemes, not to mention if the officials aren’t calling the games fairly. And nevermind that scoring has continued declined league-wide for the last six years (another key fact that escapes mention in Barnwell’s piece). Because all of that has gone out the window for Watson, who’s instead assigned all the blame for his team’s failures based on hindsight-based claims and so-called “advanced statistics” that are entirely subjective and unverifiable, especially without access to the Browns’ playbook. Just take it from Barnwell, who says that he’s “watch[ed the] tape,” and “estimate[s that] at least 10 of [the league-leading 31] sacks [taken by the Browns this season (no other team has taken more than 20)] have more to do with Watson than with everything else around him.”

It would be a wild coincidence for the Browns to have the worst offensive-line play in the league by a mile (nevermind the dropped passes, the play-calling and execution under a newly installed scheme, and the penalties), with the failures of the offense nevertheless not only being mostly the quarterback’s fault, but to such a degree that a chorus of ostensibly credible football analysts would fairly be calling for this QB—who is, again, a 29-year-old $230 million-dollar four-time Pro Bowl QB, who by the way also led his college team at Clemson to a historic championship win over Nick Saban’s Alabama dynasty—to be benched for a backup who hasn’t taken meaningful snaps in five years. But at least one could imagine circumstances where the quarterback’s play would be so obviously poor, independently of the other 10 positions on the field and everything else, that this conclusion would be reasonable and the likes of Barnwell could get away with saying things like “[the Browns’] offense likely would at least vaguely concern opposing defenses on a week-to-week basis” if the backup were starting.

The problem for these “analysts” is that such circumstances not only don’t exist, any suggestion that they do is flatly contradicted by what’s actually happened on the field, where, if anything, the Browns offense would have performed substantially worse with the backup playing in Watson’s place.

In fact, it’s shockingly disingenuous for Barnwell to purport that the Eagles weren’t at least “vaguely concerned” by the Browns’ Watson-led offense last Sunday in Philly, where the All-Pro-laden home team escaped with a 4-point win after Watson completed 10 of his 11 passes and led his team into scoring position on three of four second-half drives. These drives resulted in field goal attempts and not touchdowns for reasons that not even an ESPN “expert” could pretend had anything to do with Watson’s play—namely, penalties, including (again) the especially dubious third-quarter holding call on third-string center Michael Dunn that turned 1^st and 10 at the 13 into 3^rd and 16 at the 34 that tilted the game in Philly’s favor, and a botched reverse to Cedric Tillman on 3^rd and 1 on a play where Watson wasn’t even on the field.

Similarly, the Raiders were surely more than “vaguely concerned” when they beat the Browns by 4 points in Vegas two weeks prior thanks only to (again) the absurd touchdown-erasing holding call on a long Watson touchdown pass to Amari Cooper in a game where Watson received the second-highest grade from Pro Football Focus of any NFL quarterback who played that week.

And of course the Jaguars were beyond “vaguely concerned” when Watson’s Browns beat them on their home field thanks to the quarterback’s play in leading three first-half scoring drives that were the difference in that game. As were the Giants when they needed a 4^th quarter Jerome Ford fumble and Cedric Tillman drop to escape Cleveland with a 6-point win. If these games had been officiated fairly — or just take away the two dubious game-changing holding calls late in the Raiders and Eagles games — the Browns would be at least 3 and 3 instead of 1 and 5, and if the ball bounces differently on a play or two against the Giants, 4 and 2 and tied for the lead in the AFC North.

So of course it’s obvious nonsense to suggest, let alone with any certainty, that the Browns would have been or would be any better with Winston having played over Watson in these games or for the rest of this season. Yet not only is this absurd narrative being mercilessly and shamelessly flogged in the national and local press, the talking heads are tying themselves in knots to justify their commitment to it. Thus, we’ve been subject to the equally baseless and absurd talking points that Kevin Stefanski, who’s won two of the last four NFL Coach of the Year awards has a gun to his head, and is somehow being forced to start Watson for some reason other than the obvious one (that he’s the best QB on the roster); or that the rest of the Browns players hate playing with Watson despite that they uniformly praise the QB at every chance they get, confirming the (again obvious) point that Watson’s play is about the least of this team’s many problems.

There’s also the disgraceful pining over mediocre white quarterbacks who used to play for the Browns, including a 40-year-old statue who threw pick-sixes on two consecutive drives to destroy the Browns’ chances in last year’s playoff game, and who no other team in the NFL deemed worthy of a starting position this season. And the usual suspects are also naturally talking about drafting a quarterback in the first round of next year’s draft, as if the Browns wouldn’t be restored to an immediate contender with the return of their injured starters and with a top draft-pick used on a contributor at any other position. Some prominent “influencers” are even going so far as to gleefully promote the shameful spectacle of widespread booing at the Browns return home this Sunday against the Bengals after three weeks on the road, in what will be Nick Chubb’s return from his long and heartbreaking absence from injury.

Which brings us to what some people (mostly not especially bright or grounded people) might call the “elephant in the room.” That being, whatever one thinks about the merits of the infamous sexual assault allegations against Watson—which, it bears repeating, mysteriously surfaced after the QB made clear that he wouldn’t play for the Houston Texans due to the apparent racism of their owners, the McNair family, coordinated by the same lawyer who’s friends and neighbors with the McNairs, on behalf of two-dozen accusers, not a single one of whom called the police on the QB or did anything else to credibility document the alleged assaults, or could get a single prosecutor to bring charges against the QB—it’s indisputable that Watson’s on-field play is being judged, and judged to an unprecedented degree, based on factors that are completely unrelated to what he’s actually doing on the field.

In other words, it’s indisputable that Deshaun’s on-field play is being severely misrepresented in furtherance of an ulterior agenda. This should bother everyone, not just because lies and misrepresentations in furtherance of secret agendas are inherently bad; there’s also of course the inherent evil in casting unwarranted judgment on another person, a principle that not only underlies every major world religion but is also a fundamental principle on which the United States of America was founded. Here, it’s simply a fact that it’s impossible to know whether the allegations against are true, and to the contrary there’s plenty of reason to believe that they’re not—including not least, and on top of the McNair family’s motive to retaliate against Watson, the well-documented fact that there’s a whole industry of “masseuses” and sex workers who service elite athletes who are groomed to keep their sex lives “professional” until they get married. 

So it’s as obvious as ever, and substantially more so after the first six weeks of this NFL season, that what you have here at best is a young black man being judged to an unprecedented degree based on accusations that haven’t been and can’t be proven; and at worst it’s an unprecedented character-assassination campaign being executed in retaliation for a young black QB having used his unprecedented stardom to levy unprecedented criticism and embarrassment upon his NFL owner.

An honest assessment of the evidence must account for the likelihood that the latter is in fact the most likely explanation for the unprecedented scrutiny Watson is facing in the corporate media, including the absurd hit-piece by ESPN, which is ultimately controlled by the NFL owners, and to a lesser degree the owners of the other major sports leagues. As if any more proof were necessary that these outlets make little to no pretense as actual journalism, not unlike the other corporate media outlets owned by mega-billionaires who wish to maintain solidarity with NFL owners and their ability to manipulate public opinion and destroy genuine solidarity among the masses, however dishonestly, including by keeping the boot and muzzle on their “workers” by whatever means.  

And what makes this especially obvious in the case of ESPN and the discourse surrounding Watson is that the primary weapon they’re using against him in misrepresenting his on-field play are so-called “advanced” statistics that are impossible to objectively verify and thus aren’t even “statistics” in any meaningful sense of the term. Foremost among these “advanced stats” is ESPN’s own “Total QBR,” cited nearly a dozen times in Barnwell’s piece, which is the first stat that Barnwell cites in trashing Watson’s play—as Watson, according to ESPN, ranks last in the league in with a “Total QBR” of 21.5. Sounds concerning, until one realizes that “Total QBR,” by ESPN’s own admission, is calculated by a secret formula that the company claims to be “proprietary.”

It’s therefore unsurprising that this secret “proprietary formula” would rate Watson’s excellent performance in the Raiders game—which was, again, rated by PFF as the third-best performance of any QB in the league for week 4 (as anyone with two eyes could see)—as a well below average 39.3, with a rating of 50, according to ESPN, reflecting “average” QB play under its “proprietary” “statistic.” This was a game where Watson used his legs and arms to overcome the Browns deficiencies along the line and elsewhere in making a series of improbable plays, completing 24 of 32 passes, throwing a touchdown and an interception that was the result of a drop by Amari Cooper of a pass that should have resulted in a long first-down gain, something that QBR is supposed to account for in the QB’s favor. Compare this to ESPN awarding the league’s new darling, Commanders rookie QB Jayden Daniels, a whopping 73.9 QBR for his performance against the Browns in week 5 in which Daniels completed fewer passes for a lesser percentage, 14/25, made no especially difficult throws to speak of, threw one touchdown, and an interception that, unlike Watson’s against the Raiders, was thrown directly to the opposing player. There’s simply no way to fairly evaluate the performance of these two quarterbacks in these two games and the Total QBR scores awarded by ESPN and conclude anything other than that this so-called “statistic” is an an egregious fraud.

Imagine being subject to accusations in court and the judge sending you to the gallows based on evidence that was secret and “proprietary.” It’s almost as if ESPN’s Total QBR were precisely designed to do just that to Watson’s career, or the career of any star quarterback who got too uppity or otherwise fell out of favor with the owners.

*And of course it’s understood that certain readers will be triggered by the first sentence of this post suggesting that this wouldn’t be happening to Watson if he weren’t black, but if he weren’t black, he wouldn’t have been inclined to force his way out of Houston in the first place. Also, of course, when guys like John Elway or Eli Manning decide they don’t want to play for a certain organization, it’s fine.

Anyway, ho-hum, billionaires using the “journalists” they own and “statistics” they invent to mislead and harm the public for their own personal benefit. Of course it’s the way of the world, and has gotten especially bad since the military-industrial complex killed JFK and destroyed all but an illusion of U.S. democracy in running wild all over the globe for six decades and counting and monopolizing media and public discourse to a degree that’s unprecedented since the founding of this Republic. As a 46-year-old lifelong Cleveland sports fan who’s been a licensed and practicing lawyer in Ohio’s courts for what’s going on decades I’m certainly no longer naïve enough to believe that anyone will ever chase the devil from the earth. But I know just as well that we can chase it from our communities and am even more certain that we should never stop trying. Of course, if this website is proof of anything it’s that every time they think they’ve buried us with their evil ways they forgot that we’re seeds. Oh and last I checked this is still America, a free country, where all people are created equal and are innocent until proven guilty. And this, of course, is still Northeast Ohio, the cradle of American football and the greatest athlete on the planet, where nothing is given and everything is earned.

All of which is not so much to say that the people who are responsible for all the hatred, judgment, and lies about Deshaun should be ashamed of themselves (Of course they should be); Or that we should all demand better from American institutions as influential as the NFL, at least in terms of adhering to the basic American values that are being trashed to a shamefully unprecedented degree in this whole Watson saga, and serving as a custodian of these franchises that should serve above all else as community assets and sources of genuine community solidarity (Of course we should. And we are!). Nor is it so much to address the type of so-called “sports fan,” “football fan,” “Browns fan,” or “Cleveland fan” who’s so insulated in a cocoon of privilege that they find it socially acceptable and even rewarding to trash Watson, even just to say that the QB is “creepy,” no matter whether their judgment is warranted—say, for example, your urban “young professional”-type, online sports “influencers”/clowns who drive outrage for clicks, effete NBA blogger-types, and others who go years on end without ever having a meaningful conversation with a person who lives paycheck to paycheck or who otherwise exhibit the far-too-common tendency to look down on anyone who prefers Team Red over Team Blue or vice versa in our kayfabe electoral system as a lower form of human. Though yes, of course, these people should work on falling out of love with the smell of their own farts and do much better as well. Not to mention the plain old racists who are eating this all up like pigs at the trough.

This post, rather, is more for the rest of us. The yin to the yang of the dark forces responsible for or taken in by the campaign against Deshaun. The folks who will drown out any boos at the Stadium on Sunday, or would if they could be there. The people who have enough brains, heart, or guts that they aren’t so easily influenced by liars or internet astroturf, and who can see that the way the Cleveland Browns organization, ownership, staff, and locker room has remained in solidarity with Watson in the face of the malicious, deplorable, and profoundly un-American campaign against him is actually something to be very proud of as a Browns fan, a Cleveland fan, an American, a football fan, a sports fan, and a human.

However corrupt the NFL is and however much it comes to resemble pro-wrestling-style football-like-entertainment-substance, football is still football, Cleveland is still Cleveland, the Browns are still the Browns, and there’s only so much the worst of them can ever take away from those who truly love and appreciate it (Not that they won’t keep trying, more on the unthinkable prospect of the Browns playing under a roof next to a Dave & Busters in Brook Park later. … Anyway …).

God bless America, go Browns, and thanks as always for reading Cleveland Frowns.

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With the big game on tap today in South Bend—which is hereby dubbed “Catholics v. Sponsored by Should-be Convicts”—it’s an especially good time to talk about how extremely shameful and dystopian it is that The Ohio State University continues to plaster the name of Jeffrey Epstein’s sponsor and confidante Les Wexner all over its campus and the City of Columbus, including on its hospitals and its football complex.

For those who aren’t in the know—which is far too many people given the way corporate media has whitewashed and buried the Epstein scandal—Wexner is a mega billionaire who founded “L Brands” (The Limited, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret) and is (or was) deeply connected to the highest and most clandestine levels of the U.S. and Israeli governments. In the mid-1980s Wexner was introduced to Epstein—whose connections to U.S. and Israeli intelligence operations are also well-established—and by the mid-90s had basically handed Epstein control of his entire fortune and business empire.

Whatever else can be inferred, argued, or established about Wexner’s involvement in Epstein’s child-sex- trafficking and sexual-blackmail operations, it’s indisputable that Epstein was for a long period of time Wexner’s closest advisor, and that Wexner was effectively Epstein’s sponsor, having paid (or given) him hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of their relationship and providing him the material support for everything he did. Wexner purchased Epstein’s vast New Albany mansion (which was next door to Wexner’s) and his $70-million Manhattan townhouse where many of Epstein’s victims are alleged to have been abused. Epstein also used his relationship with Wexner to lure his victims in with promises of lucrative modeling jobs and other positions within Wexner’s empire. And according to Whitney Webb’s excellent “One Nation Under Blackmail”—which is probably the best source on the relationship between Wexner and Epstein—“Epstein’s entry into Wexner’s world would dramatically alter [Wexner’s] behavior as well as his public profile. For instance, Wexner began dying his hair, hiring a live-in personal trainer, and began dressing differently soon after Epstein came into his life, adopting a new style of clothing that Wexner’s coleagues reportedly began to call ‘chairman’s casual.’”

Webb’s book also notes that Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “trawled high-end art galleries and auction houses for pretty ‘gallerinas’ to meet Jeffrey Epstein,” and quotes a former friend of Maxwell’s as saying, “The art world is full of pretty young girls and many of them are young and broke.” “It is worth explicitly noting,” Webb adds,” that Maxwell engaged in these activities on Epstein’s behalf while Wexner, Epstein’s principal benefactor, was on the Soetheby’s board [and was also a part-owner of Sotheby’s] and while his close friend, Alfred Taubman, controlled the auction house.”

Even a whitewashed 2021 Vanity Fair profile acknowledged that “Epstein used the money and legitimacy his work for Wexner and others afforded him to bring about unspeakable human suffering.”

Anyone with even surface-level understanding about even just the aspects of Wexner’s relationship with Epstein that are beyond debate should be revolted by the fact that this man’s name is honored on any public building anywhere on earth, let alone plastered on half the public buildings in Ohio’s state capital. Anyone with even a remotely realistic view of the world we live in would have to call this an especially grotesque and telling example of the contradictions that will manifest in a supposedly “free country” that’s authorized increasingly out-of-control elements of its government to lie to, spy on, keep secrets from, conduct psychological warfare on, and even sexually blackmail its own citizens (and presidents!) for seventy-five years and counting. Even if we can’t undo all that in a snap of a finger, you’d think we could at least maintain a modicum of decorum by removing the name of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent benefactor from our public buildings.

Finally, if you remain unconvinced by the above, it should also be pointed out (as much as a lot of you really aren’t going to want to hear this) that things have really taken a dive for Ohio State’s football program since news of the Epstein scandal broke in 2019. A 1-3 record in the college football playoff, zero national championships, and worst of all a 1-2 record against Michigan.

There probably aren’t many ways to bring worse energy to a football program than by taking boatloads of money from one of history’s most prominent sponsors of child-sex trafficking and plastering his name all over your facilities. And if there were a sports curse that people (even Ohio State fans) should want to believe in, The Curse of Les Wexner would be at the top of the list. Not that the Catholic church doesn’t have its own problems, but at least those have been substantially reckoned with.

I personally will be shocked if Touchdown Jesus allows the Buckeyes to win today but this, folks, is why they play the games.

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Last year, the Haslams gave Deshaun Watson an unprecedented guaranteed contract worth $230 million and the NFL retaliated against them mercilessly for it.

First, there was the league’s summer-long kangaroo court proceedings that hung over the entire off-season and into the pre-season whereby it first suspended Watson for six games, then, pursuant to a bizarre and unprecedented “appeal” process, increased the suspension to a season-destroying eleven games. This was all based on he-said she-said allegations of “sexual assault” that (A) didn’t involve any serious claim that Watson used force against any of his “victims” (recall that the only accuser who alleged that she was “forced” to have sex with Watson admitted, when questioned, that it was his “power and influence” that caused her to feel “forced” to have sex with him); (B) weren’t corroborated by a single piece of evidence apart from the word of “masseuses” who were apparently (if not obviously) more than willing to take Watson’s money in exchange for sex; (C) even if believed, didn’t amount to more than allegations that Watson had made unwanted advances on the accusers; (D) didn’t support a single criminal charge despite extensive efforts by the accusers’ lawyers; and (E) were apparently (if not obviously) orchestrated as part of a PR campaign by the Texans’ owners in retaliation for Watson having embarrassed them by calling them racists and refusing to play for their organization.

Once Watson was finally allowed to play for the season’s final six games, the Browns were subject to officiating that flipped at least two of the three losses sustained after his return. All three of these losses were winnable games wherein Cleveland was flagged for twice as many penalties and penalty yards as their opponents. In the loss to Cincinnati the Browns were flagged nine times for 98 yards, including four penalties on a single drive for a staggering 61 yards that handed the Bengals their first touchdown. The calls in Pittsburgh (nine penalties for 65 yards against the Browns against four for 20 for the Steelers, and worse) were as bad as you’ll ever see at any level of football. It also bears mention that the early loss to the Ravens with Jacoby Brissett under center was also heavily influenced by poor officiating that kept the Browns from starting the season 3-0 against AFC North opponents. And somehow the Browns’ offensive line, which is manned by three Pro Bowlers, managed to lead the league in holding calls last season.

Additionally, there was the heavily astroturfed character assassination campaign against Watson and the franchise that persists today. Despite how thin and apparently retaliatory the accusations against the quarterback are, and that Watson was never charged let alone found guilty of even a single misdemeanor in connection with them, many in the press (see, for example, these self-described “irreverent liberals” at the Defector website) have conclusively pronounced him as “a serial sexual predator” anyway. LeBron’s mentions turn into a sewer of fake accounts every time he tweets a word of support for Deshaun. And even a critical mass of more mainstream NFL voices—this absurd interview that Jason LaCanfora gave to 92.3’s Baskin & Phelps is representative—seem to want to pretend that Watson’s career is over as a result of the suspension. As if a 27-year-old world-class athlete in peak physical condition who’s taken tens of thousands of snaps of football at the highest levels and made three Pro Bowls in his first four seasons in the NFL is somehow going to forget how to play the game. That Mike Vick was able to come back at a Pro Bowl level at age 29 after serving three years in a federal prison for actual crimes, that he actually did commit, then it seems especially safe to assume that Deshaun will be able to shake off the rust as well.

Anyway, the historic campaign to unperson Deshaun, brought on by some of the worst people and forces on Earth, is reason enough in itself for the Browns to be America’s Team in a righteous sense of the term. That many of the players on this roster weathered this experience together will strengthen their bonds considerably heading into this season. And whatever else about the Haslams, their support for Deshaun through this firestorm is genuinely admirable.

Also admirable, the way the organization has loaded up its roster for this first full season with its new $230 million quarterback. There are nine established Pro Bowlers on this team, including six on the offense which boasts one of the top lines in the league and indisputably the top running back (who has as admirable a family history as any American). The offensive starters who aren’t Pro Bowlers are young first and second-round picks like David Njoku (expected to have a Pro Bowl season himself), Elijah Moore, and Jedrick Wills, and established starters in Ethan Pocic and Donovan Peoples-Jones. And apart from the three Pro Bowlers on the defense, including newly added Za’darius Smith to bookend the league’s top pass-rusher Myles Garrett, the Browns have added at least four other new starters, including Dalvin Tomlinson and Shelby Harris along a dramatically improved defensive line, who are expected to make major contributions in new coordinator Jim Schwartz’s scheme. This is more talent than the post-1999 Browns have ever had on both sides of the ball, and arguably more than even in the Kosar-led “glory days” in the late 1980s. Additionally, the organization heads into this season with as much stability at the head-coaching position since the Kosar/Schottenheimer era.  

Which is why it’s somewhat striking to see that most sportsbooks have set the over/under on wins for this season as 9.5. Sure, the AFC North is tough but what’s tougher is to see a nine-win season for this roster as anything other than a disaster. So does this betting market reflect the understandable perception that disastrous seasons are what’s to be expected from the Cleveland Browns until proven otherwise, or is there something more sinister at play here regarding the NFL’s increasingly egregious tendency to engineer sponsor-preferred outcomes?

This is why we watch the games, folks. Especially this year, where it’s Super Bowl or bust for the Browns, and Cleveland against the world in a sense that’s as real and righteous as it gets in today’s NFL. Anyway, best wishes for a safe and happy football season to all.

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It’s extremely wild the way America has gone from zero to light speed on “legal” sports betting. After decades of near-complete prohibition, all of a sudden everyone with a credit card has an online sportsbook in their pocket and is being relentlessly barraged with advertisements encouraging them to use it. I know I’m not the only one with a friend who wasn’t inclined to bet when it was “illegal,” and who never really cared for baseball, for example, but is now staying up past midnight to see if the under hits on the Padres/Diamondbacks game. With more Americans than ever living paycheck to paycheck or stuck in increasingly meaningless and soul-deadening jobs it’s an especially slippery slope.

Thus, with the new NFL season upon us today, I’m issuing this public service announcement in hopes of encouraging more mindful and responsible exercise of this new “power” that’s been conferred on us by our lawmakers, and also in furtherance of the sound and ancient principle that future suffering that can be avoided should be avoided.

First, please note that “legal” is in quotes here mainly as a reminder that what’s lawful on one hand, and what’s safe, right, or good on the other hand, have as little relationship as ever in this nation where not only has all manner of corruption and greed been made “legal,” but where our so-called civilization increasingly prioritizes over anything else the ability for people to be as greedy and corrupt as they want to be no matter what harm they cause to others. Land of the free! Anyway, the point is that no one should assume that those responsible for the sudden widespread legalization and normalization of sports betting have your best interests at heart, and there is in fact plenty of reason to assume the opposite: That they want you to keep you as tied to your screens and as comfortable in your pod as they can make you, and all the better if you’re immiserated and perpetually indebted to them.

Which goes to the importance of The Number One Rule of Sports Betting, which is really the only rule you need to remember about sports betting if you can understand it: This is simply that there are no shortcuts in life, including and especially sports betting, no matter how much you know or think you know about sports. Remember when LeBron said, after he lost to the Mavericks in the NBA Finals in the season after he first left the Cavs, that “all the people who were rooting on [him] to fail [would still] have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today”? Well, that was true then, it’s true now, and it’s especially true when applied to sports betting. In other words, just like rooting against LeBron was never going to be your shortcut to health, wealth, happiness, peace, or respect, neither will sports betting.

If it’s hard for you to accept this idea at first pass, I would urge you to give some thought to two principles that are more or less fundamental to most major religions and codes of ethics and which most people understand and accept to some degree. Those are, as the Hindus call them, karma and dharma.

Most people understand karma as the idea that what goes around comes around, and that a person ends up getting what they deserve in the end one way or another. While this principle might be especially questionable here on Planet Earth in 2023, it also helps explain why some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world are also, at bottom, some of the most miserable. Additionally, many have noted the connection between the notion of a universal law of karma and Newton’s third law of physics, which holds that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The basic idea here is that if you’ve got bad karma coming to you, you’re not going to escape it by betting on sports no matter how much money you might win on your bets. I must submit that anyone who accepts the most basic notions of karma would be an idiot to argue with this.

Relatedly, dharma is a Sanskrit term that translates to “duty,” and refers to the idea that every person is born with certain duties to fulfill to the universe (or the universe’s “creator”), and that fulfilling those duties as they unfold in one’s life is the only means a person has to any lasting happiness, peace, or glory. Importantly, one need not adhere to any particular religion or believe in any particular god or set of gods to derive substantial value from this principle. Rather, all you really need to accept to appreciate the concept of dharma is that you don’t know everything, including exactly why you or anyone was born, or exactly what will happen after you die. From there, it should be a short step to being able to muster at least some measure of respect and gratitude for whatever it is that gave you your life (call it God, a set of gods, a random accident, “the unknown,” or whatever you want). And with that measure of respect and gratitude should come a corresponding obligation to do right by that force (even if you must insist it’s a random accident), or, to put it another way, at least some obligation not to waste your life completely. If you’re a person who denies any such obligation entirely, this post is not for you! The rest should be able to easily accept that whatever duties arise from having been born (in other words, your dharma) can not be escaped by betting on sports, again, no matter how much money you might win at it. To believe otherwise would just be nihilism.

With that all having been made clear, please let me also clarify that this is NOT to suggest that sports betting isn’t fun, or that there aren’t good and natural reasons that people are attracted to it. Of course, if your ancestors didn’t have the drive to take risks you never would have been born. Plus, of course, sports are fun. Being right about sports, also fun, and something that people to this day spend hours waiting on hold to try and do on the radio without getting paid a dime for it. So the chance to get paid to be right about sports at the push of a button? It’s not too hard to understand why sports betting is now estimated to be an 80 billion dollar business. Whatever anyone thinks about it, I don’t suppose it’s necessary to deny that betting on sports, in moderation, can be a fine and rewarding hobby, especially when done in community and fellowship with friends and loved ones, and especially when one bets on the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl. Just please don’t be an idiot and get carried away with it. Thanks and a most blessed American football season to all!

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Recent events compel me to again write in defense of Deshaun Watson and to call for a lot more critical thinking about the recent blast of obviously coordinated propaganda from corporate media on this—including last weekend’s HBO “Real Sports” feature, Tuesday’s New York Times report on details from the discovery process in the civil cases recently released by the parties’ attorneys, and yesterday’s announcement by the accusers’ attorney Tony Buzbee, which was uniformly printed by national outlets including ESPN and USA Today without any critical analysis, that he would be adding the Houston Texans organization as a defendant in many of his clients’ two dozen sex-abuse lawsuits against Watson.

It’s disappointing (if unsurprising) to see so many folks taken in by the outrage machine on this because it doesn’t take much deeper of a look to reasonably see this as nothing more than an attorney, Buzbee, increasingly desperate to save his collapsing smear campaign after two grand juries declined to indict Watson based on his clients’ accusations. These accusations are similarly unlikely to hold up in civil court, so Buzbee’s only move is to keep trying to smear Watson in the court of public opinion.

First, it should be noted that the current cycle of corporate press on this, like all previous coverage, completely fails to account for the incentives the Texans owners (and the NFL owner/oligarch class more broadly) have to smear Watson. I went into some detail on that a few months ago here, but to briefly refresh your memory:

Right before the accusations from Buzbee’s clients began to surface in February of 2021, Watson and the Texans organization were embroiled in another massive headline-dominating controversy. This was over Watson—who was universally beloved by fans in Houston and league-wide after four years as the Texans QB, had just signed a hugely lucrative contract, and had star power that was unprecedented in league history for a young black quarterback—very publicly trying to force his way out of town due to highly controversial actions by the Texans owners that were creating the reasonable perception that they were racist. At this time, Watson was exercising his dissenting voice so effectively that the Washington Post ran a piece on the “resulting discord” within the Texans organization titled, “Deshaun Watson is taking a stand against disingenuous NFL owners.” This report credited Watson for having sparked “a player awakening that owners should acknowledge and respect rather than trivialize the men who enliven the sport.” It also described the Texans organization as “dysfunctional,” “particularly unstable,” and characteristic of “the NFL’s preset dehumanization.” Watson, in contrast, is described in this report as “thinking deeply about systemic inequality” and “want[ing] to be as far away from the Texans as he can get.” This was an unprecedented PR nightmare and disaster for the Texans owners, and to some extent NFL owners as a class, that happened to conveniently evaporate as the sex-abuse accusations started being lobbed by Buzbee, whose Houston mansion is next door to that of the Texans’ owners.

Which is to say that there’s plenty of reason to see this story as being much bigger than just one star player on one football team, and more about the ruling class’s ability to snuff out any dissenting voice that’s strong enough to threaten the balance of power between owners and laborers, which is exactly what Watson had done with his dissenting voice in Houston. This certainly is plenty to explain corporate media’s complicity in a witch-hunt here, completely apart from the clicks this sensational and lurid story drives.

And after two grand juries declined to indict Watson, this of course compounded the disaster for Buzbee and the beneficiaries of this witch-hunt. Hence, the current press blitz to try and kill Watson with another thousand desperate cuts in the court of public opinion. So now take a closer look at what these reports actually say because the narrative they are pushing doesn’t stand to the slightest of scrutiny:

First, even with the allegations of the new 24th accuser and additional anonymous sources quoted in these reports, the fact remains that only two or three of these accusers are even alleging any actual physical contact at all. And even these don’t include any allegations of rape or violence. Even if one were to believe all of the allegations against Watson, the most you have is that he was a sex addict or sex pest who was aggressive about trying to pay “masseuses” for sex.

Which goes to the especially remarkable fact, completely ignored in the corporate press, that the most that any of these two dozen accusers would be able to recover in a civil jury trial, even if a jury entirely believed them, would be somewhere in the four to five-figure range, and likely low five figures at that. So now ask yourself why Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who has won as many gigantic 8 and 9-figure verdicts as almost anyone in the U.S., would be chasing two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse cases with no allegations of physical violence, realistically worth 4 to 5 figures each at best. The idea that he’s doing this for altruistic reasons is extremely suspect.

Also, of course, the phenomenon of wealthy people, including (perhaps especially) pro athletes, paying for sex – including paying “masseuses” for sex, “happy endings,” etc. — is commonplace, and is almost never prosecuted. Indeed it wasn’t long ago that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft actually was prosecuted for solicitation in a human trafficking sting and not only suffered zero material consequences from it, but also was subject to only a tiny fraction of the public opprobrium Watson is receiving here. Funny how that works (again, of course). The term “lynching” is by no means unfair here, with so many so quick to want to hang a young black star NFL quarterback for being, again, at worst, an aggressive john or sex pest.

Finally, it’s revealing to scrutinize Buzbee’s announcement yesterday that he’s adding the Texans organization as a defendant in many of the sex-abuse cases, based on claims that they enabled Watson’s abuse. This, again, has predictably fooled laypersons reading uncritical reports in the corporate press, but any capable and honest civil lawyer can easily recognize and explain what a ruse this appears to be. So here I go:

Leaving aside how [sarcasm font] terrified the Texans organization must be by two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse lawsuits, with no allegations of physical violence, and realistic exposure in the 4 to 5 figure range at best; the more important point is that adding the Texans as a defendant can’t reasonably be expected to increase the amounts recoverable by the plaintiffs no matter how a trial were to go for them. This is because, due to the nature of the allegations, there’s no way the plaintiffs could prove the Texans caused them any damage on top of whatever damage they could prove that Watson caused them. And if Watson isn’t found to have caused damage to the plaintiffs, the Texans couldn’t be found liable for assisting him in causing any such damage. So at most the liability would be “joint and several,” meaning that the total amount recoverable is the same, but that Plaintiffs can collect that amount (and only that amount) from either defendant in whatever proportion.

In cases unlike this one, it can be useful for a plaintiff to add a secondarily liable defendant to a suit, as the Texans would be here (assuming these claims were to have any merit), because in many cases the primarily responsible defendant doesn’t have any money to collect. Here that’s obviously not the case. Watson is unquestionably collectible if the Plaintiffs were to get a judgment.

There’s also the fact that adding an institutional defendant to a case like this, particularly one with the means of an NFL franchise and its owners, substantially increases the Plaintiffs’ legal expenses. To do this with no reasonably conceivable gain in expected recovery of course only strengthens the inference that Buzbee has ulterior motives.

All of which goes to show that Buzbee is only adding the Texans as a defendant out of desperation to sentence Watson to death by a thousand cuts in the corporate-dominated court of public opinion; in other words, the only means he has left available to him in the only “court” he could conceivably get a meaningful “win” in.

Not to mention that Buzbee also benefits from deflecting from the inference that he’s running a smear campaign on behalf of the Texans’ owners (his neighbors). Which again simply doesn’t work due to the fact that the Texans’ lack any real exposure in these suits, further revealing this to be an all-too-convenient and transparent cover.

In summary: That there would be diverse reactions to and opinions on this story is of course understandable, only natural, and indeed essential to healthy civic discourse. But all such opinions should account for the incentives—whether acted upon or not—that the ownership class, including the oligarchs who own NFL franchises and the mega-oligarchs who own corporate press, has to smear dissenting voices that operate as powerfully as Watson’s was in the winter of 2021 before these allegations began to surface. These incentives include using the power they have to manipulate narratives to weaponize false accusations of misconduct, including, especially, “he said/she said” allegations of sexual misconduct, which are even easier to weaponize in situations where extremely wealthy and famous celebrities are engaged in the habit of paying for sex. That the corporate-media coverage of this story has been entirely silent on these incentives and the obviously relevant and critical questions raised by the undisputable facts set forth in this post is both predictable and telling of the fact that oligarch-owned media can only reasonably be relied on to produce anti-journalism.

Which is also to say please, don’t “believe women,” and don’t “believe men.” Believe evidence, believe in due process, use your common sense in considering all sides of a dispute no matter the gender of the parties involved, and remember that it’s a good thing that people in the U.S. are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Women lie. Men lie. All kinds of people lie. Especially when they’re paid (or are led to believe they’ll be paid) enough money to lie. Especially when they need money. And even more so when they’re (wittingly or not) under the influence of an oligarch running a smear campaign against a worker who threatens his power. And no matter what your opinions are about an unmarried man paying consenting women for sex, that wouldn’t justify a tiny fraction of what Watson has suffered here. This is, ahem, a “free country.”

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