The Pac-12 abandonment gets political

Turns out we weren’t the only ones caught flat-footed by USC and UCLA signing on with the Big Ten. The governor of California — who as it so happens also sits on the Board of Regents that governs the 10-campus UC system — read about it. Let me say that again: He READ about it. This fact bothered Newsom because he repeated the word several times.

What’s he going to do about it, though? Well, he’s going to start by getting a report on how this is going to impact the UC system as well as UCLA student athletes.

Then there’s the question of whether UCLA is going to need to make some financial amends to Cal, the UC-brethren it has ditched.

At the very least, it’s fun to see someone with some political power get all hopped about not just what happened, but the way it happened.

Read more at “The Dang Apostrophe” | California schemin’ 

I recorded the “Say Who, Say Pod” with Christian Caple of The Athletic on Thursday, and we talked about some of these very same issues and I also got to discover the fact that I am excited to see what the Huskies do on offense this season.

Warning: I couldn’t breathe over the last minute of the podcast because I was laughing too hard.

Richard Sherman has not ruled out the possibility of playing again, but he took another step in his media career this week, moving his podcast from Pro Football Focus to “The Volume” a podcast network co-produced by Colin Cowherd and iHeartRadio.

I’ll always be interested in anything Sherman has to say. He’s interesting, he’s charismatic and he’s fearless when it comes to saying what he thinks.

But honestly, it’s been a few years since he’s said anything all that interesting. In fact, Draymond Green has become the kind of media figure I expected Sherman to be.

Maybe that changes as he segues out of his playing career, but I’m not sure.

Read more at Barrett Sports Media | Sherman isn’t a sports-media heavyweight yet 

On Wednesday, I wrote about an acne outbreak that was raging across my face and the unexpected difficulty of getting prescriptions in this city of New York where there is a pharmacy on every corner. I thought it was a decent idea for a gag or a bit.

Former co-worker and alleged friend Jim Moore felt differently.

He wasn’t done.

It continued on his radio show on KJR 93.3 FM, which he co-hosts with Jason Puckett.

Jim also stated that I must have too much time on my hands in New York. As I wrote on Thursday, Jim is probably right. I may have thought it was a funny premise, but it apparently didn’t land. Or at least not as well as I hoped, and I’ve always said that I value feedback. Finding out what doesn’t work is as important about finding out what does work especially in a new venture like this.

And a couple of people asked if I’m actually mad at Jim. Of course not. I wouldn’t expect anything different from him. To have any sort of friendship or working relationship with Jim Moore requires you to accept the fact that he is going to do things like this from time to time. To mock the work of people he knows, say he thought the Mariners error-prone fielding was inferior to a team of 15-year-olds or to repeatedly assert his disinterest in subscribing to something you’ve never asked him to support.

Or, after Richard Sherman expressed his frustration with a play call in 2016, to say to Sherman, “What I don’t understand is Darrell Bevell is calling plays that he thinks are going to work. What makes you think you have a better handle …”

OK, Jim probably had a point on that last one.

And if you ever do try to point out that something he’s said has crossed a line, he will feel bad but only because you’re upset. For the life of him he won’t be able to understand why. He was just giving you a hard time, and in Jim’s mind, he was just saying what he feels and why would anyone care about what he thinks anyway?

Besides, if I were to get upset at Jim, I would put myself in the position of defending a piece on pimples as if it meant something to me, which it doesn’t. I thought it was a humorous anecdote. Maybe it some people chuckled after reading it. Maybe everyone felt exactly like Jim did.

What I do know is that Jim Moore has been remarkably consistent in his ability — at one point or another — to enrage pretty much everyone that has worked with him or around him, myself included. After 10 years, I know better than to get upset about those kind of things as the cost of doing business with a guy who is really funny and ultimately really kind-hearted and an absolutely great Dad to his daughter Brooke as well as his two twins who graduated high school and are headed to Pierce College.

Most of the time, Jim is an exceptionally fun person to be around, and you get to hear his stories about the $1,000 bet Ricky Pierce reneged on, the $10,000 Jim paid to invest in a “gold machine” or all the different times he wrote about boner pills. But every once in a while there’s a tax that comes due and he says something you did was stupid or tells your parents “You know he chews, right?” within 5 minutes of meeting them. That’s just part of the package that is Jim Moore.