Food For Thought, presented by The Iron Horse Grill: Hoops ain't scared

Ole Miss finalized its non-conference basketball schedule this week, and it's impressive.

Ole Miss Basketball 2020-21 Non-Conference Schedule

Date Opponent

Nov. 10 New Orleans

Nov. 15 North Carolina A&T

Nov. 18 Charleston Southern

Nov. 23 at Cayman Islands Classic

Nov. 24 at Cayman Islands Classic

Nov. 25 at Cayman Islands Classic

Dec. 1 Rider

Dec. 5 Memphis

Dec. 12 UNCW

Dec. 16 at Middle Tennessee

Dec. 19 at Dayton

Dec. 22 UT Martin

Jan. 2 Wichita State

Joining the Rebels in the Caymans will be Kansas State, La Salle, Miami, Nevada, Northern Iowa, Oregon State and Western Kentucky.

It's a strong slate, and one that gives Ole Miss every chance in the world to solidify its NCAA Tournament resume before Southeastern Conference play begins in January. The schedule is a tribute to Davis' reputation, Ole Miss' willingness to take on all comers and a testament to the environment of The Pavilion.

The Rebels have to win games, but those games in the Caymans, as well as the dates with Rider, Memphis, Dayton and Wichita State, present real opportunities to be in great shape when league play rolls around. That schedule should also sharpen a veteran team for SEC play.

Major League Baseball can't get out of its own way.

And, as ESPN's Jeff Passan points out Friday, it's over very little money in the whole scheme of things. It's worth reading in full, but here's the nut graph(s) of pessimism:

Regardless of the number of games played, MLB's plans include a regular season that would end around Sept. 27. The league predicates the date on fears of a potential second wave of the coronavirus wiping out the playoffs, a cash cow MLB said in its financial presentation is worth nearly $800 million in media rights. Having staked out that position publicly via surrogates -- Arizona owner Ken Kendrick said as much on a Phoenix radio station Tuesday -- the league is unlikely to relent. If it did, it would look like it were treating player and employee health as a financial bargaining chip, a macabre optic for a sport already fighting a torrent of bad publicity.

Accordingly, between the time it might take to settle on a deal and the September cutoff, an 82-game season might be the most players can hope for. Seeing as they would settle for a full pro rata at 1,230 total games, the projected losses from owners based on the $640,000-per-game figure is crucial for this exercise: $787,200,000. Compared to the projected losses owners would face in the 48-game season they're ready to rubber-stamp, playing an 82-game season would cost $326,400,000 more.

And there you have it. Distilled to the simplest form, Major League Baseball is in crisis because of a $326 million problem.

The players will say: That is $10,880,000 per team. Or the cost of a decent No. 4 starter. And they are right.

The owners will say: That is another $326,400,000 on top of the $3.5 billion we are already set to lose. And though there is no publicly available documentation to substantiate those claims, the lack of gate revenues alone is a significant enough blow that some sympathetic to the union acknowledge the league's finances have been hampered.

Now comes the difficult part. The negotiating endpoints have been established. So has the chasm between the parties.

"Both sides have created through ignorance and deceit their own universes," said one source involved in the discussions. "The owners are convinced they're victims. They players are convinced they're aggrieved. It's two echo chambers.

"You can't talk money," he said, "without trust."

The opportunity to be a hero has been wasted. That window has closed. The chance to do something with common sense -- play games with socially distanced crowds, marketing the game for sports-craved young people during a pandemic -- is gone. The two sides hate each other, and they're apparently willing to ensure their mutual destruction. From Passan:

Throughout the process, as owners on the league's powerful labor-relations committee have stated they will settle for no less than a 30% haircut off the players' full pro rata, players have been steadfast: no further pay cuts. They already have forfeited their salaries for however many games wind up canceled. Part of their issue stems from the owners of teams, all of which are worth at least $1 billion, trying to socialize losses after privatizing profits for so many years. Teams' values have grown at a far quicker rate than players' incomes. What the players see as disrespect for their contributions to the game, epitomized by stagnant salaries and a sluggish free-agent market, has festered for years. This is the comeuppance.

As much of a hammer as the league holds with the schedule, the union is not without weaponry of its own. It's true: Players must play if MLB schedules games. Individuals sitting out without permission would be placed on the restricted list and not receive service time, per the March agreement. Players not reporting en masse would likely be deemed an illegal strike. Where the players can strike is at a pair of MLB weaknesses: money and marketing.

In its proposal, the union showed a willingness to accept the league's plan of expanding playoffs from 10 to 14 teams not just for the 2020 season but for 2021 as well. MLB's desire for more playoff inventory and the potential financial windfall that would accompany it is a chip the union can play at its behest.

Further is the ancillary harm players can cause by separating baseball and Major League Baseball. They have too much self-respect to allow baseball, on field, to suffer. In the absence of a deal, players would be exceedingly motivated to make Major League Baseball suffer. In-game microphones worn by players to enhance TV broadcasts? No chance. Interviews with MLB Network? Unlikely. Meeting with a sponsor, if ever stadiums reopen to fans? Sorry, just too busy. It would be a clinic in passive-aggressiveness, with players saying that if the game does not want to invest in them, it will simply return the favor.

It's mind-boggling, really. There's a solution in clear site. Get started and, by August, play games with fans. I wonder: How can people smart enough to accumulate generations worth of wealth be short-sighted? I'm not alone. Again, from Passan, this time in his closing paragraphs:

In these negotiations, an inch would amount to a mile. The clock isn't ticking anymore. The damn thing broke. They blew a soft June 1 deadline already. Baseball has taken so long to return that Texas is ready to allow fans into stadiums. Which could go a ways to undercutting MLB's main argument about lost revenues.

This, one might suppose, is just baseball. Simple? Nothing is simple. Not a solution that agents and general managers agreed this week they could hammer out in a day. Not the lingering feeling that accompanies a sport blowing whatever goodwill it might have left. Yeah, this is baseball, like in the old days: its own greatest enemy.

Kudos to Oxford. For the second time in a week, peaceful protests were held in our city. There was no destruction (I don't count graffiti on a statue as destruction). There were no incidents with law enforcement. Instead, people expressed their feelings, exercised their First Amendment right to peacefully protest and dispersed without incident when the proceedings were over.

Oxford catches a lot of hell for its past. Bad things happened here decades ago, and some don't want to let the past go. Don't get me wrong; Oxford has its issues, but this is a remarkably good place to live.

It's not perfect. No place is, but Oxford is tolerant and its people are kind and caring. That has been proven over these difficult weeks.