James Franklin Byland

Educator, Historian, Basketball + Baseball Aficionado. Husband to Tamara; father of Elijah + Sarai. Assistant Professor -University of Louisville Sport Admin

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

https://t.co/rGrj3EC7df

sounds like little league! 😂

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

@pschofie79 we kinda already have that to a degree with pass interference. 😂

[Bob Nightengale @BNightengale]

Jordan Walker hoping his HR Derby title can help open doors in the Black community to play baseball

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

Jordan.
Walker.

[Price Carter @priceacarter]

World Cup massive success. Downtown ball park and another entertainment district. State of the art covered dome and practice facility ready to host year around events. Rugby World Cup coming soon…

Kansas City 🔥🔥

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

Infinite Jesterings: The Forgotten Heyday of Black Baseball in Springs Valley: A History of the French Lick Plutos and the West Baden Sprudels https://t.co/mRMMmpvFZB

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

https://t.co/rJaHvzG2nN

[Ellen Carmichael @ellencarmichael]

The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.

Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.

To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.

In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.

The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.

Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.

So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.

Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.

Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.

Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

this team might actually help me enjoy soccer! love the passion.

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

The Kansas City Current unveiled new renderings for the next phase of their $1.4 billion riverfront sports district.

• Expanding CPKC Stadium to 18,000 seats
• A parking garage
• New mixed-use development

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

Eliza Schuyler lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with her husband, Alexander Hamilton. Last year, Jane Kamensky examined Schuyler’s consequential life—and a book that conveys what the world was like for a woman at the center of the early republic: https://t.co/5fHYNVBnYk

[PowerMizzou @PowerMizzoucom]

Just opened voting in the Sweet 16 of the most hated #Mizzou opponents bracket

https://t.co/9LUe2inLHC

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

timeline cleanser

https://t.co/N3VI2PoDPX

[David McKenzie @mckenzielaw]

This feels awfully quixotic and as if we have been here before. Wait, we have been here before: Clarett v. NFL, 369 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2004).

Sorsby's lawyer calls the refusal a violation of "the CBA and the law," but the law is the problem. Two decades ago a far more gifted player made the same argument and discovered why it fails. Maurice Clarett, Ohio State's freshman sensation, sued to enter the draft before the NFL's three-season rule allowed it, calling that rule an illegal restraint of trade. He won in the district court and lost on appeal. The opinion against him was written by the future Justice Sonia Sotomayor: because the draft's eligibility rules are a product of collective bargaining, she held, the antitrust laws do not reach them. The league and the players' union may agree that a man "will not be hired or considered for employment for nearly any reason whatsoever," so long as they break no labor or anti-discrimination law. 9K bets, many of them on his own team, would seem to clear that modest bar.

After re-reading Clarett, I don't think he will like where this is going to end. The CBA gives the league sole discretion over whether to hold a supplemental draft at all, and no one can be shut out of a draft that does not exist. Nor has the union any reason to spend its capital prying one open for a nonmember who bet on his own team, least of all when seating him would cost a current member a draft pick.

The exemption that walls Sorsby out is one the players built and have defended for decades. (Ironically, Jeffrey Kessler — the gifted lawyer now fighting on Sorsby's behalf — represented the NFLPA as amicus in Clarett, defending the very exemption that now blocks his client.) This is not the law failing Sorsby. It is the law doing exactly what the players built it to do: protect their own "to the detriment of new employees and the exclusion of outsiders," as the court put it.

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

Buster Posey didn’t just fail to meet the moment, he made Giants’ Pride controversy worse https://t.co/gao3dixgDd via @sfchronicle

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

https://t.co/IHE85i57vR

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

The Soccer Capital of America Is Now the Soccer Capital of the World - https://t.co/CdwHLjTeOk via @FOS

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

Japan fans showed up to AT&T Stadium for the 2026 FIFA World Cup with their own trash bags—and stayed behind to clean the stands after the match.

[James Franklin Byland @jfbyland]

kansas city showing out!

https://t.co/bdsxFryuhC