Sports Potpourri: Royal collapse, K-State & KU football, Mahomes

 

By Mac Stevenson

It’s difficult to place blame as to who the main culprit is in the total collapse of the Kansas City Royals’ major league baseball franchise. But there’s no doubt that the disintegration is complete and the so-called rebuilding process is just a dream. 

From here it appears that owner David Glass and GM Dayton Moore are the two administrators who are primarily responsible for the unnecessary breakdown of KC’s 2015 World Series champions.

Glass and Moore allowed one of the best farm systems in MLB to become the same as the Royals’ current team—one of the worst. That was caused by a lack of necessary money from Glass and mismanagement by Moore. The loss of the majority of the key players from the 2015 champs is understandable: salaries became too high for a small-market city like KC. But allowing the decline of the farm system was inexcusable and will haunt Kansas City’s fans for the foreseeable future.

If Glass and Moore had created a Kansas City Royals Pitching Academy about three years ago, their franchise would be loaded with talented pitching prospects. Moore’s inept leadership is well-illustrated by the yearly $20 million salary of left fielder Alex Gordon and starting pitcher Ian Kennedy’s $16 million paycheck. Neither player is worth more than 10 percent of those salaries; this was a terrible waste of money.

And if Moore had suggested and Glass had agreed to spend just 10-15 percent of those two above-mentioned salaries on a state-of-the-art pitching academy, the Royals would be well-stocked with talented young pitchers.

Currently, there’s little to be encouraged about concerning the KC Royals for the next few seasons; the failure could have been avoided.

Kansas State’s 2018 football team has just one issue concerning the September 1 opener against South Dakota University: The Wildcats cannot afford to be thinking about their game with Mississippi State on September 8 instead of South Dakota. Coach Bill Snyder and his top assistant, son Sean, will try and make sure that doesn’t happen.

South Dakota is a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) member and affiliate of the Missouri ValleyConference. The Coyotes had an encouraging season in 2017; SDU had an 8-5 W-L record (4-4 MVC). SDU made the FCS playoffs last season and defeated Nicholls State (27-24) before losing to Sam Houston State (54-42) in the second round.

South Dakota isn’t ranked in the top-25 of the FCS preseason coaches’ poll; nevertheless, SDU won’t be a patsy-type opponent. K-State can’t just show up and win. But the Wildcats are experienced and realize they have a chance to do big things this season—they’ll be ready to go in the season opener.

“The darkest night is often the bridge to the brightest tomorrow.” This quote by Jonathan Huie may or may not describe the 2018 Kansas football team. One thing is certain: The Jayhawks are one of the most-ignored and disrespected major college teams in the nation. They are picked to, once again, finish dead last in the Big 12 Conference.

David Beaty begins his fourth year as KU’s head coach; in the previous three seasons, his teams have shown no progress. Beaty’s dismal, overall record is 3 wins and 33 losses.

Coach Beaty’s fourth season could be a dramatic turnaround or more of the same; the guess here is there will be some improvement, but not enough for Beaty to keep his job. KU returns 32 players who started at least one game in 2017—20 on offense and 12 defenders. But those are players that were on last season’s 1-11 team.

The Kansas City Chiefs bounced back from an inept and losing performance against the Houston Texans to defeat the Atlanta Falcons (28-14) last Friday. In their first game, the Chiefs were flat. That could have been caused by tired legs from the heat of training camp.

In their win against the Falcons, KC had the necessary bounce and enthusiasm. That isn’t to say they were great, it was just another exhibition game. There was, however, one moment that stands out.

Just before halftime, QB Patrick Mahomes threw a TD pass to Tyreek Hill that carried 68.7 yards in the air; that was a longer in-the-air throw than any pass in any game in the NFL in 2017. That’s astounding. But KC fans shouldn’t get too excited; it’s difficult to throw deep in the NFL because QBs don’t have that much time in the pocket. Nevertheless, opposing defensive backs are going to have to play back to protect against long passes and that will open up the shorter throws.

It’s a sobering assessment, but Mahomes is a far cry from a polished NFL QB and there will be many speed bumps on the 2018 road.