KC sports talk including Chiefs, NCAA, Royals; analysis | The Kansas City Star

The easiest thing in the world is to criticize the NCAA, and the good Lord knows I’ve done it plenty, so I’m going to try to take a different approach here.

I’m not sure the NCAA Division I Council’s approval of a blanket waiver for all spring sports athletes to be granted an extra year of eligibility because their seasons were shortened or canceled by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is much more than a well-intentioned PR maneuver that will not solve heartache but will add headaches.

It sounds great, right?

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Athletes, particularly seniors, have in many cases worked as long as they can remember for this season. And now it’s gone, before it starts.

Who could be against wanting them to have another chance?

Well, nobody, that’s who.

But — who might be able to see that this will cause some problems?

Lots of people, that’s who.

Roster limits for baseball will be expanded, but it’s on schools and athletes to take on the added financial responsibility. There’s no indication that scholarship limits will be raised, so the same money (and same playing time) is spread over more athletes. Schools won’t be required to maintain a returning senior’s scholarship or scholarship level.

The high school classes of 2020 and 2021 and even beyond will be hurt by this, competing for the same roster spots against an older and deeper talent pool.

One more time: Nobody can be against these kids having another chance. It feels like the right thing to do. But there are unintended consequences that are going to extend to more athletes, more schools and more years.

The NCAA was put in a no-win situation. If it didn’t grand the exception — and this is without precedent, and wasn’t done for winter sports, whose seasons did not conclude — it would’ve been ripped from here to a vaccine.

And that’s why I don’t come here to rip.

The NCAA is not acting out of malice, or hypocrisy, or greed. It’s making a decision it believes to be in its own best self-interests, and in that way it’s hard to fault the logic.

But by addressing one problem it also created several new problems. Hopefully the NCAA comes up with a plan for those, too.

This week’s eating recommendation is any of your favorite locally owned restaurants that you want to help see the other side of our current crisis. I’m certainly not saying there’s only one way to do this, but my wife and I have designated one or two nights a week for takeout.

We have a short list of places we love and we’re rotating them through, getting takeout or curbside service and tipping like we’re eating in. If you can, it’s a good way to support our own.

The reading recommendation is Tom Verducci on Not Opening Day.

Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and, as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.

Two bits of housecleaning before we continue. First, I hope you listened to the first episode of Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears — a new podcast where I’ll make a point, answer your questions and have a bonus segment of audio. Some weeks that’ll be a conversation with someone I think you’ll be interested in, and some weeks it might be some audio I pick up in the normal course of reporting.

Last week, our guest was Royals manager/carpenter Mike Matheny. I won’t want to jinx it, because it’s not recorded yet, but we have another great guest lined up this week. I hope you check it out, and if you’d like to participate please call 816-234-4365. Leave your first name, where you’re calling from, and a question.

Feedback from the first week has been great, and I appreciate everyone who listened. Hopefully we can keep it up.

The second thing I want to mention here is that I’m grateful for everyone who has been writing or calling in about how they’re dealing with all of this. The stories have informed some of what I’ve written and guided some of what I’m reporting and thinking about going forward.

Please keep them coming. I want to know if you’ve had to cancel a wedding, delay a funeral, if you’re teaching yourself a new skill, connecting with old mentors, anything at all.

My email is smellinger@kcstar.com and you can always reach me through Facebook and Twitter. DMs are open.

OK, here’s the show.

I get that this is a joke, and there is part of me laughing, but there’s a bigger part of me that would walk barefoot from my house to Kauffman Stadium right now to watch baseball from the top row of 439.

Sign me up for watching every pitch, especially.

There are some positives to our current reality. Truly. Or, at least, there are some positives for those of us lucky enough to have them.

Because just being able to stay home is a privilege.

Having the ability to stay safe is a privilege.

Being around my wife more, and our kids more, is a privilege.

Having friendly neighbors who we can talk with (at a safe distance) to maintain some social interaction is a privilege.

But not having live sports is a comprehensive bummer. This is one of the best times of year for sports, too. We should be prepping for this weekend’s Final Four, and overanalyzing the first week of real baseball, and seeing if Sporting KC can continue its hot start, and watching the NBA and NHL transition into the playoffs.

Instead, bupkis, other than the NFL Draft leadup and offseason. Which we’ll get to.

But this week, the Royals would’ve played their first home game on Thursday afternoon. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous, if a bit windy. The next day, if Kansas was good and lucky enough, I’d have gone to Atlanta for the Final Four. If KU wasn’t still playing, I’d take the family to the game Saturday afternoon — again, the weather is supposed to be great.

So, yes. I would shove an old lady to the side rushing toward a ballpark right now.

Look, Veach’s performance — particularly over the last year — has been beyond reproach.

His low-risk, high-ceiling deals, like the one that brought in Bashaud Breeland, turned out terrifically. Veach has long prioritized depth at defensive line, which made last season’s slew of injuries there palatable, and then he took advantage of a lucky break in claiming Terrell Suggs off waivers.

You’re right about the $177 of cap space. It’s objectively hilarious, but also indicative of a front office making every effort to keep good players.

There is still flexibility. There’s always flexibility. The Chiefs recently restructured defensive lineman Frank Clark’s 2020 salary to add space, and receiver Sammy Watkins could be cut for $14 million in savings.

I do think the preference on both sides would be to restructure the number and keep him on the roster. He’s a good player and good fit, and I believe he’s been sincere in saying this is the happiest he’s been in his career. But it’s also a business.

It’s essentially unthinkable that Watkins would be back without his contract being tweaked, and I’m not sure the big-name restructuring would be limited to Clark and Watkins.

The Chiefs have a lot of goodwill right now and a lot of guys who want to stay with the team long-term. I’m curious whether they could move money around with Tyrann Mathieu, for instance, or Anthony Hitchens. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif could be cut for close to $5 million of cap savings, along with $4 million in dead money.

The cap is tight, but the cap is malleable. At some point the bill will come due, and the risk is putting off a little pain now in exchange for a lot later, but these are also good problems.

I haven’t yet made the time to go through individual players so I’m not going to name any except for one who I saw mocked to the Chiefs, and who makes sense.

But before we go any further, I want to say that it will not surprise me and should not surprise you if the Chiefs trade down or even up. Veach has a well-earned reputation for being aggressive, and he’s in a draft where that tendency could serve him well.

They’re a little short on capital at the moment — only five picks this year — but Veach has shown he’d rather have one guy he feels pretty sure about than two he’s guessing on.

The more likely scenario would be trading back, perhaps to get an extra pick in the second or third round. If Veach and his staff like the depth of the draft at certain positions this could make some sense.

So, there’s that.

But if we’re sticking with the 32nd pick — and, actually, even if the Chiefs trade out this still applies to the first two or three rounds — in general you want to see plug-and-play guys.

They’re the Super Bowl champions with a roster full of players approaching or in their athletic primes. This is not a team that should be looking for redshirt players, particularly early.

The position that makes the most sense to me early is cornerback. The Chiefs were light at the position last year and lost Kendall Fuller (who opened the season as their No. 1) and would need to move significant money to bring back Bashaud Breeland (who closed the season as their second-most reliable cornerback and biggest playmaker at the position).

Matt Miller had Utah cornerback Jaylon Johnson to the Chiefs in his last mock draft, and the profile makes sense. Johnson is big, athletic, experienced and would figure to play right away.

He doesn’t have the speed you’d want in an outside corner, but those who’ve watched him say his tape is faster than his combine time and, besides, the Chiefs have perhaps the game’s best pair of safeties (assuming a full recovery by Juan Thornhill) who can help make up for some of that.

I do want to get more into some draft stuff over the next few weeks, but in general I think the Chiefs should be targeting cornerbacks, defensive line, offensive line and running backs.

A bigger receiving target — doesn’t have to be a tight end, could be a bigger receiver — could be an interesting fit, too. That’s especially true if Sammy Watkins isn’t back.

I’m not trying to make light of your very real predicament here, but if your kid chooses Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes you deserve whatever you get.

Actually, more to the point — your son deserves whatever he gets.

The Chiefs are the NFL’s “It” team. They are the Super Bowl champions. They have the best and most exciting player in the league, at the sport’s most important position. The general age of the roster indicates they are tremendously positioned to be a championship contender for years.

The challenge shouldn’t be you losing your son to the Bears.

The challenge should be your neighbor losing his son or daughter to the Chiefs.

We are in wild times right now, the Chiefs basically today’s NFL version of the NBA’s Heat in 2011.

This is the team you should want to be in Madden, and the team you and your friends might agree is off-limits just to keep things fair. If you had no connection to Kansas City or the Chiefs my guess is they’d be the team you’d be most interested in watching.

I might be biased by my own personal experience here. But I’m telling you I’ve made absolutely zero effort to turn my kids into fans and, while the younger one quite literally could not care less about sports, the older one has a new jersey he wants every week.

He’s particularly hot on Sammy Watkins, by the way, so lets just say I’m interested in whether the Chiefs cut or restructure him for more than professional reasons.

But, anyway, I don’t mean to blow off your concerns here.

So some ideas: Show him videos, particularly of the Super Bowl and celebration. Show him highlights. Get him a football. When the season starts* you should have the games on and give him his favorite food at kickoff.

* Hopefully! And we’ll get to that soon.

Bribery works, is the point. If it didn’t then people wouldn’t bribe.

You are the Dr. Fauci of the Kansas City sports world.

Also, this would put me ahead of my brother 5 to 2 in our Mellinger Minutes challenge and one step closer to the Hall of Fame.

Congrats Joe!

Obviously I’m going to tell you that I am just a dumb sportswriter with a keyboard and not a health expert or league commissioner, but I do think that President Trump extending social-distance guidelines through the end of April makes it even more difficult to believe MLS is going to stick to its declared May 10 resumption or that baseball will be back in mid-May.

You may have seen that Virginia extended its stay-at-home order until June 10. That order can be amended, even shortened, but the message is clear. This isn’t going away in a week or two or even four.

I approached some of this with new Royals manager Mike Matheny in the first-ever Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears podcast* and he didn’t want to go there. Once we get to the other side of this, decisions about the length of spring training will be made above Matheny’s head and above general manager Dayton Moore’s head.

* Shameless plug! Please look out for and listen to the show on most Fridays!

My guess is you’d need at least two weeks, and probably more, but that’s just a guess. MLS could probably get back online a little faster, and my guess — again! Just a guess! — is that the NBA or NHL would be the first major team sports back.

I don’t know what any of this will look like, of course. But the general messaging from health experts seems to be that the outbreak will peak sometime in mid to late April and then (hopefully) taper off after.

If that’s the way it goes I suppose it’s possible to imagine teams being able to be together again sometime in June, with seasons beginning sometime after that. I’d sign up right now for baseball resuming on July 4. Maybe it’ll be sooner, but I’m not sure the last time we heard any good news with any of this.

You asked about games without fans. It’s something that leagues are and should be looking into, and I think we’d all take games sooner than later, but there are a lot of complications.

I’m just not sure how big the space is between Safe To Play Games Again and Safe To Play Games Again But Without Fans.

Teams still have to travel. A baseball team’s traveling party includes not just the 26 players but 10 or so coaches, another 7-10 support staff, including trainers, plus broadcasters and producers, public relations and others. You’re over 50 people, easy, and they’re interacting with flight attendants, hotel workers, security, grounds crew, clubbies, media, on and on the list goes.

Baseball has to be ready for the first player to test positive for COVID-19 and have a response in place. I don’t mean a PR response. I mean a response about whether games would be shut down.

Sports are deeply connected to American culture, so it’s easy to imagine a willingness to fast-track the sense of normalcy that would come with having games on again. I also recognize the (initial and brief) intention of the NCAA to hold its basketball tournaments without fans.

But I just don’t know how those mechanisms would work in baseball or MLS.

Would the policy be teams could practice again once social-distancing guidelines are eased, then play two weeks after that, then play with fans two weeks after that?

Would leagues be opening themselves to lawsuits from players if they resumed games too quickly?

We’re all just guessing here, but the more I think about it the more I think that playing games without fans is trying to thread a needle that just doesn’t exist. It’s also a fit for a reality different than this one, where it’s still extremely difficult to know who has it and who doesn’t.

So, anyway. I’m saying July 1 would be a fine time for sports to come back.

I’m with Dan Wetzel on this: Golf should be allowed.

I was actually surprised it wasn’t initially, though I know that in at least some places around town that’s been fixed. There’s a club not far from my house that re-opened recently with certain precautions — no carts, no sand rakes, no ball washers, no pins ... basically anything that’s touched is gone.

This does get into a common theme of the last few weeks, though: We’re all guessing.

As I’m typing this, a crew is working on the house across the street. It’s a small group — I see two or three of them — but my assumption is that at some point they’re going to violate the distancing guidelines.

Outdoor exercise is being officially and publicly encouraged, but that’s also an occasional problem.

Gyms are closed and with people stuck at home the desire to get outside is only heightened. That’s especially true as the weather is nice. So you have more people walking or running outside than ever, and crowds at public parks are inevitable.

We went for a family drive the other day. Windows down, sunroof open, it was great. Some of the parks we saw had police tape around the playground equipment and the rims on the basketball goals removed. But not all of them. My friend Nate Bukaty said he saw a 5-on-5 pickup game.

I’m not pretending to be perfect on this. I think the Mellingers have done a pretty decent job, but we also live in a neighborhood with smallish lots and a ton of kids around the same age. When one goes out to ride his bike, a friend is often close behind. Kids aren’t very good at measuring six feet.

But, honestly, golf is one of the best activities I can imagine for social distancing.

Rather than prohibit the sport, I believe it would be entirely reasonable to encourage it.

Think about it. You’re outside, you’re walking, you’re often with a friend so you have some social interaction, but it’s not a contact sport so keeping six feet should be relatively easy. Courses can even put in raised cups so there’s no chance anyone touches anything other than their own equipment and the ground.

Full disclosure: This doesn’t come from a selfish place. I’m not much of a golfer. I’m good for two or three times a year, and even then it’s usually on vacation. I’d love to golf more, but it takes a lot of time and money.

I know golf is easy to see as a rich guy’s sport, and it’s never been more fashionable to criticize the rich.

But I’m not sure about the argument golf is dangerous right now. Drive by a course today and I’ll bet you see a lot more social distancing than you would at a public park.

Let ‘em golf. I’ll wish I could join.

I passionately believe that all rules and typical etiquette should be blown to bits with packs of dynamite right now.

I’m officially at Just Tell Me If It’s A Video Or Conference Call So I’ll Know Whether To Put A Hat On level of self-isolation and I’m not apologizing for it.

I have friends who’ve cooked lunch for the kids, argued with their spouse and tried to get through a makeshift homeschool lesson while on conference calls.

Just remember to mute your line.

As a longtime work-from-home enthusiast it’s interesting to see this lifestyle go mainstream. Some of you are freaking out about not being able to concentrate around the kids, some are just giving in and watching too much TV, some are trying to keep up appearances and routine by showing and dressing like you would for the office.

I can’t say I’ve ever smoked meat during work hours, but am here to applaud your effort.

For me, it’s just finding your comfort spot. If it doesn’t have elastic it’s not going around my waist. I’ll brush my teeth, but I’m not shaving and might not be combing my hair except after a shower (and even then ... ).

The big adjustment for us is space. Our house isn’t big, and the times that my wife and I are both working from home are usually rare. When the kids are home, I try to get out of the house to work, even if it’s not to the office. Now, I’m up in the master bedroom while the kids are playing monster trucks or chase or magnet tiles downstairs.

I’m used to working through much louder conditions than that, of course, but it’s still a bit of an adjustment.

The main thing — and I know I’m risking a serious answer to a light-hearted question — is to do our best to extend grace to the other person.

That might mean some understanding if a video conference is interrupted by a cat or a kid, and it might mean some patience with a friend whose hair is standing up after struggling through a day of simultaneous work calls and parenting.

I think we all need to be willing to give each other and ourselves some breaks right now.

Oh hell yeah.

The Royals’ 2014 postseason run was as much fun as I can ever expect to have working, but it also buries the fact that most of that season was pretty miserable. They were below .500 in mid to late July, at which point I wrote a column saying that if the results didn’t improve the rest of the way Ned Yost and Dayton Moore would likely be fired.

At the time, the resounding response to the column was that I was too soft. People wanted them fired the day before, if not earlier. I retain a pretty hilarious mental inventory of what some in the local media were saying then, compared to what they were saying six weeks later, and the total amnesia with which the whole thing was treated.

I also remember that 2003 Chiefs team a little differently. The offense was an absolute joy to watch, particularly the offensive line. Those guys were so damn tough and talented they made the rest of it look easier than an offense was supposed to look back then.

But I also remember that awful defense and, in particular, coordinator Greg Robinson feeling a bit like a ticking time bomb.

I’m not saying you’re wrong for either of these choices. Nobody can tell you how to fan, and all that. I’m just saying it’s always interesting to see how different people process things differently.

If we’re keeping it local, maybe I’ll just do one from each team or school. Sound good?

2018 Chiefs. If you think it’s weird that I said what I said above about the 2003 Chiefs and then immediately choose the 2018 Chiefs ... well, it’s a fair point. My counter is that you and I could live another 100 years and not see something like 2018 Patrick Mahomes again. He was wildly hyped and somehow exceeded it all. He was a beautiful combination of athletic arrogance supported by Andy Reid’s system and a dynamic collection of skill and talent.

I actually believe Mahomes was better in 2019 than 2018, but some of the rough edges and the new experience made that season a once-in-a-lifetime watch.

2015 Royals. I know this is the easy choice, but that team played with such a palpable sense of “screw you” that it was impossible not to respect. They were pissed they didn’t win the World Series the year before and even more pissed that many believed they were a fluke. They fought, basically, anyone.

I mentioned this in the 56 games list the other day, but when they won the rubber match of a series against the A’s in which benches cleared every game with a walkoff, you could not tell those guys anything. The postseason was bonkers, too, with a list of comebacks and wild swings that would sound like fiction if we didn’t actually watch it all.

2003 KU basketball. Man, that team was loaded. They brought Wayne Simien and Keith Langford off the bench. They led the nation in scoring and assists, which meant that when the ball came out of the net it was going back the other way in a hurry and often into the other net with a bucket set up well by movement and passing.

2012 Mizzou basketball. These guys played like a dang symphony — they basically just went six deep, but they were so good, smart and experienced that they knew each other’s every rhythm. Each man had a specific role and filled it. Marcus Denmon was the best player and projected this almost tangible all-in fearlessness.

2009 K-State basketball. Michael Beasley was fun, but this team was more — Jacob Pullen was an undeniable force and Denis Clemente his perfect backcourt mate. They got enough from Curtis Kelly and Jamar Samuels and Dominique Sutton to make it work, and it’s wild that Rodney McGruder and Wally Judge hardly played. These guys ran and shot enough to finish 12th in scoring, but also defended like hell — the way Frank Martin demanded.

That Sweet 16 game against Xavier will live forever. This team also gets bonus points for being the one that emphatically answered whether Martin could actually coach or was a product of a specific recruiting pipeline.

2013 Sporting KC. I know I’m going with a lot of chalk here, but that team was hard not to like. They didn’t have a dominant goal-scorer but made up for it with depth and togetherness and a fierce defense. Graham Zusi was at or near the height of his powers. Matt Besler. Claudio Bieler led them in scoring. You could start to see that Dom Dwyer had some juice. And that championship, in the snow, won in the millionth round of PKs, was a classic.

I probably shouldn’t pick basketball for every local school, and there are some fun football teams being left out — in particular 2007, 2010 and 2013 Missouri, 2012, 2003 or basically anything 1990s K-State, or 2007 Kansas — but those are the first to come to mind.

There are some high school teams that stick out, too. Tony Temple’s Rockhurst teams, Josh Freeman at Grandview, Brandon Rush at Westport and Marcus Walker at O’Hara. There are shooting stars across all sports.

It’s our job as fans to enjoy them when we can.

Honestly, at this point, ours would probably be a monster truck eating a slice of pizza.

If there’s room for me in the background to have a beer inside a koozy then all the better.

I guessed early July a little earlier, but I do think it’s worth considering the possibility that we won’t have a season.

At some point, it just becomes unfeasible. I don’t know what that point is, but I can’t imagine it’s much past early July. Owners and players could potentially negotiate fewer off-days and/or more doubleheaders, but if the season started July 1 you’d really have to hustle just to get in 81 games without stretching the playoffs deep into November.

No matter what, this season will have a literal asterisk. Depending on the length of the delay, so too might the champion.

I want to be clear. I think it’s unlikely we lose an entire season. But it’s at least on the table.

My mind is a bit warped, but I sometimes wonder how this pandemic would play differently if it hit a different part of the year.

At first, I was thinking more about Thanksgiving and Christmas — the year’s most precious time for social gathering.

But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about football season, too. Right or wrong I believe a significant chunk of Americans would think and act differently if they believed the NFL season would be threatened.

Also, it’d make for some fresh one-liners if the season was shortened the same year the owners finally won their push to stretch to 17 games.

I suppose anything’s possible. It’s possible that social distancing works better than health experts expect, and it’s possible that the worst predictions come true.

But, you guys. If we’re still doing this in September and October we’ve got much worse problems than protecting a normal NFL season.

Probably, but a golf tournament nap is a gift from God and a fall afternoon with the windows open and football on the TV is hard to beat.

The difference with baseball is it’s omnipresent. Summer evenings at home in my childhood were Fred and Denny talking through the enormous speakers my dad brought back from Vietnam. When I started covering baseball I was never much nervous to talk to a player, but it took a while before I felt right approaching Fred and Denny.

Once I did, it felt like having a conversation with my childhood.

The plus about baseball as background music is you can tune in and out, focus on a story that catches your attention, or run to the TV when you hear the crowd roar or the announcer talk about a great play.

It’s easy to pick apart certain quirks of baseball announcers, and Lord knows I’ve done it. We tend to have blind spots for the weaknesses of those we like and never hear the strengths of those we don’t.

It’s a subtle and fickle art. You’re on for three hours at a time, plus pre- and postgame, a planned conversation that you don’t control and one in which you know you don’t have an edit button for any mistake.

But, anyway, I’m rambling. The answer is yes.

If Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken qualifies as sports-related, then the answer is Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.

If it has to be a biography, the answer is either Richard Ben Cramer’s DiMaggio book or Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory about Pat Tillman.

If it has to be about a specific team or season, the answer is John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink or Jack McCallum’s Dream Team.

Well, thanks, and obviously I agree. I think you’d probably get a different answer from each person you asked about how they came to The Star.

I’m probably biased, because he was the sports editor when I was hired, but (now president and editor) Mike Fannin is the person most singularly responsible. He inherited and then increased the sports section’s reputation for always finding the space and resources to execute ideas that were difficult and outside-the-box.

Back when print was still more important than digital, The Star was the envy of many for the space and priorities given for profiles. There was also an emphasis on finding young talent, and helping it develop. People want to be part of that.

At some point, too, it builds on itself. Jeff Passan wants to write something as good as what Wright Thompson just dropped. Joe Posnanski is inspired by something Mike Vaccaro wrote. We were all energized by Jason Whitlock’s profile.

When I covered baseball I wanted to know the game like Bob Dutton, and then when I got the column job I wanted to see football like Terez. Watching the way Blair and Herbie and Vahe treat their jobs and people is inspiring to me. Watching how Sam McDowell identifies and executes a story makes me think of things differently.

On and on it goes.

If you think about it, too, The Star is well-positioned. We have NFL, MLB and MLS teams and are in one of the most passionate college sports markets in the country. That’s a lot of content, but we’re also accessible to talented writers who haven’t had a platform. That helps.

This week, I’m particularly grateful for such great weather this past weekend. Other than the extremes — I’ll whine like a baby without a binky when it’s 101 and humid — I’m usually not much of a weather guy. Maybe it’s the shelter-in-place stuff. I don’t know. But being able to spend basically the entire weekend outside and around my family was a gift.