RATLINKS: DO YOU REMEMBER
Sept-em-ber!
Back to school is here, summer is “officially” over this weekend is Labor Day and white pants are no longer acceptable. The last thing anyone wants is a run-in with the fashion police.
This month’s edition features:
Zen and the Art of Sports Entertainment
Original Fiction: Courgette
RUNNING IN PLACE
The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry
— Brooks Hatlen, Shawshank Redemption
I used to be Zen AF,1 then I lost the thread.
Mindfulness is a practice that is simple, but not easy. All you have to do is sit, they said.
As one sits focus turns to the breath with the goal of emptying the mind.
When a thought arises instead of focusing on it, you instead accept its presence and then return to the breath.
Over time the ability to focus on the present allows you to become grounded and more aware. Eventually, you will begin to notice the natural cues that are all around you.2 You know not paying attention can be very costly then why are you multitasking right now?
Mindfulness is a very powerful technique, but one that requires practice. Once you begin to master mindfulness it can be used on and off the cushion.
You can mindfully eat, mindfully work, and even mindfully play.
GETTING THE BALL IN THE HOLE
Over the past year, my interest in golf has dramatically increased due to a rather simple goal: advance from being a terrible golfer to less terrible and eventually good enough to join The Champions aka The Senior Tour.
To get better I took lessons, bought golf gadgets, and studied the game. Yet I found it perplexing that most golf books rarely teach fundamentals and instead focus on the mental game of golf or how to mindfully play golf.
Why is golf simple but not easy?
In all psychophysical skills we have this curious fact of the law of reversed effort: the harder we try, the worse we do the thing.
How do you play golf?
Find an effortless swing with these five keys:
Balance
Momentum
Steady swing center
Relaxed arms
Rhythm
How should you play golf?
To paraphrase Sam Snead, if you must get angry, get "cool mad." Otherwise, take Walter Hagen's advice and "stop and smell the flowers along the way."
NEW LEAGUE, WHO DIS?
What is this new LIV golf tour and what does it mean for the future of American sports?
The LIV tour is a new Saudi-backed golf league that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars recruiting some of the best players away from the PGA tour.
The LIV tour is called LIV because it plays a three-day 54-hole (LIV in Roman Numerals) no-cut stroke play tournament. LIV will then hold a final Team Championship, which LIV revealed would be a “seeded four-day, four-round, match play knock-out” event held at Trump National Doral Miami in October 2022.
LIV (54) is also the lowest score that a player could shoot if they were to birdie every hole on a par-72 course.
LIV is upending sports with techniques that feel oddly familiar.
MONDAY NIGHT WARS
In the late 1990s, the WWF today known as the WWE produced one of the top shows on TV known as MONDAY NIGHT RAW. At the time wrestling was so popular that the NFL offered millions of dollars for the WWF to move their Monday night show to any other evening.
It is said that nothing breeds competition like success and the WWF's success drew more than just the NFL’s attention.
Enter media mogul, Ted Turner an eccentric billionaire who is also one of the largest landowners in America and the owner of the restaurant chain Ted’s Montana Grill that exclusively serves bison.
Ted Turner at the time owned two TV channels: TBS: Turner Broadcasting System aka “The Superstation” and TNT: Turner Network Television.
Turner was fond of wrestling and more importantly, saw the ratings MONDAY NIGHT RAW was putting up. Demanding his own rasslin show since his network, TNT, was available in the same number of homes as the USA Network the channel that WWF’s programming was brandishing. Just like that WCW Monday Nitro was born.
WCW hired Eric Bischoff to run the promotion, Bischoff utilized the same strategy as LIV, signing as many big-name talents as possible. Bischoff poached WWE stars like Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash and eventually signed Lex Luger, Ric Flair, and Randy Savage. WCW signing another league’s talent was a first step in attacking the incumbent WWF. It is worth noting many wrestlers jumped from the WWF promotion to WCW but few jumped the other way, just like LIV.
As you likely know pro wrestling is not fake. It is pre-determined. Wrestlers take real bumps, suffer real injuries, and often lack adequate health insurance. Bischoff knowing that Nitro aired live on TNT while the WWF’s RAW show was pre-taped, allowed WCW to “spoil” its rival’s program by giving away the results of RAW’s card as the show opened.
Fans, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, do not. We understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here at one time as Cactus Jack, is gonna win their World title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh
Closed captioning where available is made possible by JollyTime popcorn!3
These unorthodox tactics allowed the originally scrappy upstart WCW to draw bigger ratings than rival WWF.
As WCW's popularity grew it led to talent demanding higher and higher value to re-sign. These big contracts also led to increased responsibility for individuals like Hogan, Nash, and Hall in the company with very mixed results. WWF unable to poach talent instead grew new talents such as Stone Cold Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
With wrestling producing huge ratings, Turner requested a second WCW show to air on TBS known as WCW Thunder. Thunder did surprisingly well even though it was a strain on management and the talent and bred more competition as the WWE launched another rival show known as Smackdown.
WCW Thunder’s ratings would have eventually collapsed since Thursday night was the most competitive night on TV. Going head to head with NBC’s juggernaut Must See TV airing new episodes of Seinfeld, Friends, and ER.
Interestingly competing sitcoms didn’t quiet Thunder, instead, WCW was killed by a Dues ex machina.
Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence
On January 10th, 2000, AOL purchased Time Warner for $182 billion in one of the largest and worst mergers in U.S. history.
Upon closing the AOL brass looked to cut costs throughout Turner’s empire. AOL likely thought the low-brow world of sports entertainment had no place in its glistening technology conglomerate, even though Thunder was the highest-rated show on TBS at the time. AOL made the decision to jettison WCW, which was generating north of $200 million dollars in revenue at the time.
Eric Bischoff emerged as a buyer for WCW but his offer was contingent on control over time slots on TNT and TBS networks, regardless of whether these slots would show WCW programming or not. An ask that was an obvious non-starter.
Instead, AOL decided to shutter WCW a potentially billion-dollar brand as it was able to eliminate the company’s roughly $65 million in losses via purchase accounting.
In the post-merger environment, the new conglomerate was able to 'write down' money losing operations, essentially eliminating those losses because of their irrelevancy moving forward.4
— Guy Evans NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW
AOL continued to show its savvy, selling the scraps of the former billion-dollar brand to Vince McMahon for pennies on the dollar. For approximately three million dollars WWF purchased it’s rival and gained monopoly power over sports entertainment for the time.
All of WCW's assets were purchased for just $3 million by Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. including trademarks and archived video library, as well as a select 25 contracts.
Shockingly, AOL poorly structured the shuddering of WCW
Only 25 contracts were transferred to WWF/E, all other remaining contracts needed to be honored even though WCW was shuttered. Since most of the wrestlers contracts were done directly with parent company Time Warner, the combined AOL Time Warner was forced to continue to pay many of the wrestlers of the now defunct league for years to come.
Today the merger of AOL and Time Warner is seen as one of the worst mergers of all time and what marked the top of the 90s dot-com bubble. Over time the assets splintered as Time Warner split into multiple companies with the publishing division Time Inc. sold to Meredith, Time Warner Cable acquired by Charter Communications, and Time Warner Media purchased by AT&T only to be unwound in under a year and sold to Discovery. AOL was spun off from Time Warner in 2009 eventually merging with Yahoo! The combined entity was then bought by Verizon.
The merger of WCW and WWF can also be viewed as a failure. The talent was integrated but the brand was never heard from again.
Is it possible that the WWF and its former leader Vince McMahon harbored such a grudge against the upstart promotion that he and his company would rather be vindictive than monetize a valuable brand?5
BACK IN THE FAIRWAY
LIV and seven players Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, Matt Jones, Ian Poulter, and Peter Uihelin are suing the PGA on antitrust concerns.
The lawsuit alleges that the PGA Tour players who were suspended have been denied their rights to compete due to a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The amended complaint argues the PGA Tour imposes restrictions that “make it risky and costly for players to affiliate with another promoter and prohibitively difficult for any would-be entrant to challenge the Tour’s monopoly.”
LIV Golf has asked the court to award “punitive damages for the PGA Tour’s bad faith and egregious interference with LIV Golf’s contractual and prospective business relationships.’’
Once again we have an upstart league with deep pockets competing against the incumbent and once again Trump is involved.
It is also worth noting Trump was involved in a previous anti-trust suit between the upstart USFL and the NFL, which led to the NFL being found guilty of anti-competitive behavior and forced to pay $3 in damages.
The LIV vs PGA battle should continue for the foreseeable future. With an outcome unlikely to be resolved by a deus ex machina unless AOL somehow buys Saudi Aramco.
Leaving one remaining question
Can the two promotions co-exist or will they eventually merge?
Editors note: A large well-known internet conglomerate that sells more than just books is willing to pay top dollar for original fiction no matter the quality. As a hyper-capitalist, RatLinks seeks to fill that void by producing original fiction no matter the quality. The below story will eventually be published behind a paywall because in 2022 what isn’t? It appears that the preferred genre for editors and readers of Kindle Vella is fantasy, both the dragon and sexy party type, so look for those storylines in the future, potentially.
COURGETTE
I.
Up and down. Up and down. My head bobs nervously checking my watch.
I can’t believe I’m doing this I hope I don’t lose my temper.
Sir, your table is ready. Do you want to sit or wait at the bar for your guest to arrive?
I look up from my watch long enough to see that bar is more of a bar cart in a dusty corner. Instead, I motion towards the dining room.
Right this way sir
As I sit down a calm comes over me. Maybe it’s the hot green tea, maybe it’s a willingness to embrace whatever happens next.
Instantly my calm is shattered. There he is.
Bud! How are you? What has it been? Three years
A bit more. I reply
Look at us back together. We were inseparable. Where has the time gone? Why haven’t we done this sooner?
We weren’t that close. We were fraternity brothers nothing more than that. Don’t even remember what you did to me? - I snap back
Remember what?
You punched me in the face.
I did what?
You got drunk and punched me in the face.
I made a lot of mistakes back then.
Do you know how hard it is for me not to jump over this table and fight you right now.
Seriously, why did you call me after this time?
About that.
Suddenly a waitress appears out of nowhere.
What will you have? The waitress asks
We both look down at the menu for seemingly the first time.
Maybe I can get you some drinks? She asks
Gin and Tonic - I say
I’ll have what he’s having - He says with a smile
After about 30 minutes of small talk. I begin to get restless when starts showing me photos of his “fur babies”.
Sensing my anxiousness he leans in
Remember my nickname?
I stammer at first because it’s the only name I know him by.
Wasn’t it Courgette?
It’s been so long that embarrassingly I don’t remember his real name.
Seriously why after all these years did you call me?
What do you want? You know I really don’t want to be friends.
Courgette pauses as he inhales deeply. His ability to calm himself strangely makes me more anxious. In a panic flag down the waitress.
Remember sake bombs? When was the last time you did one?
Uh, the night we got into that fistfight.
I’m game if you are?
Courgette who is not a slim gentleman again inhales deeply, but then proceeds to stand up and yell at the top of his lungs
GAME ON!!
The first one goes down real smooth and we both motion for another round. Again we smash our fists against the table and on cue shot glasses fall into our beers.
Suddenly other patrons are cheering us on. For a second, I forget about my deep-seated anger towards this man.
He disapprovingly shakes his head as the waitress comes over with the third round of sake bombs.
I try to wave the drinks off but she points at another table and says “their complements”
Things escalate quickly as the restaurant begins to “Drink it Forward.”
Where others buy every previously participating table a round as they join in the fun until everyone is involved. Luckily there are only ten tables in this restaurant.
Eventually, we try to stand up. The ground is unsteady and we embrace in order to waddle towards the door.
II.
A few hours later the sun starts to rise the noise of the city arising jolts me awake. I find myself in a pile of garbage bags outside the restaurant. I’m not sure how I got here or what time or day it is.
Suddenly three men with flashlights surround me. I try to spring to my feet but I’m still unsteady and fall almost immediately.
The men look at each other confused then grab me and try to pull me up. I resist holding onto one of the garbage bags that splits open.
Two of the men hold me as one flashes a passport and points to the photo.
How do you know this man?
He was an old friend. He asked to meet but I’m not sure why. We just ended up drinking and somehow I ended up in the trash.
Why were you meeting this gentleman? Why were you sleeping outside?
I understand it’s suspicious but but but but I stammer.
Who are you? Am I being charged with a crime? Can I see some identification?
How do you know this man? Why were you meeting? The men bark in stereo
Am I in trouble?
As I finish the sentence there is a noise from around the corner. As we turn Courgette emerges. One of the men withdraws a weapon from his pants and lurches towards Courgette.
I cower below the garbage as noises that sound a lot like gunfire rings out. Eventually, I emerge afraid to peer around the corner. I debate calling out, but think the better of it. Instead, I push myself up and try to walk moving at a slow labored pace until I see Courgette, standing over the men.
He gets close to me and as he is about to speak my subconscious takes over and I do the only thing I can - swing.
For more on being Zen AF see ratlinks: NOW SHE WANTS A PHOTO
For more on The Art of Noticing see ratlinks: Read This, Then That
Slashwrestling: Nitro Recap Jan 4, 1999
Guy Evans NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW. WCWNitroBook.com. ISBN 978-0692139172.
Bleacher Report: How WCW died and WWE made sure it never rose again