The COVID-19 pandemic is still out there, but some of the restrictions are off, and everyone can’t seem to wait for sports to return. If you live in St. Petersburg, Florida, you know we love our sports. But what can two elite personal injury lawyers in Tampa teach you as they banter about sports in Tampa? 

Matt Dolman still has a score from last year’s World Series to settle with the Rays’ Kevin Cash for his idiotic move of pulling Blake Snell, who was pitching a beautiful game. Matt thinks the Rays don’t have the proper setup or owner going into the new year. He thinks the Rays’ owner, Stuart Sternberg, is not committed to winning. 

Stan Gipe agrees. Of course, he does. The only thing sports fans in the community agree on is their love for their teams. For example, everyone’s a Bucs fan. So much so that Matt is worried about the Bucs’ next year and the guys looking to leave to seek big contracts and the Bucs’ capacity to bring in new guys. Something will have to give.

Unfortunately, some of these prima-donna professional athletes do not understand that something has to give. They want to be on monster contracts and still get to pick and choose when to play. Look at the Deshaun Watson situation or Kyrie Irving sitting out games without his coach’s permission. 

That’s not to say that the fact that there are so few black coaches in the NFL isn’t concerning, especially when most of the guys in the NFL are black. The same applies to the NBA. But the way Deshaun Watson is going about pushing his point is damaging to his brand. What more about sports did Matt and Stan talk about? 

Learn more in this David vs. Goliath podcast episode with elite personal injury lawyers Matt Dolman and Stan Gipe. Together, they discuss their love of Tampa teams, their hope and fear for the future of The Rays and Bucs, the racial challenges in sports, athletes, and coaches doing it right in different sports, and more.  

In this episode: 

• [00:49] Matt Dolman welcomes his co-host, Stan Gipe, and introduces the topic of the day: sports in Tampa
• [03:09] How The Rays will set up this year and what to expect
• [05:36] Sports bring us all together
• [06:03] Matt is worried about the Bucs next year, and you should too
• [08:41] Deshaun Watson and the professional athletes who think they’re being paid monster salaries to be happy 
• [11:50] Why are there so few black coaches in the NFL? 
• [13:21] How many former football players become coaches? 
• [15:25] Did Hugh Culverhouse have a thing against black athletes?
• [17:20] Is Bruce Arians the most inclusive NFL coach? 

Transcript

Welcome to another podcast episode, wherever you want to call it of Sibley Dolman Gipe. I’m here with my partner, Stan Gipe. He’s a board certified civil trial lawyer. Today we’re going to keep it kind of light. We talk about the law enough, sports is my passion. If you took a view around my office, you would see this is like an eight year old boy’s bedroom. I wouldn’t call myself a Sports Almanac per se, but I just love it. I love baseball, football, college football, basketball, and boxing. We’re going to talk a little about Tampa sports today and kind of an overview of the Bucs, but more starting with the Rays season. It’s about to start. We’re in spring training mode now. I don’t know, are they going to allow fans? What’s the story, first of all, with the fans at Tropicana?

 

This is one of the most interesting things to me, because as you know, Matt, I’ve got a 12 year old son who is a diehard fan of any Tampa sports team. We started looking, spring training popped up last weekend. We had our first game. I think it was Sunday down at Charlotte Sports Park at one against the Braves. There were some tickets.

 

Did you go?

 

No, we did not.

 

Okay.

 

We didn’t go. And I was looking at tickets, but that’s why I know they’re out there.

 

Next time you go, let me know.

 

Well, I, will.

 

We’re getting a little off topic in the podcast, but I would like notice of that.

 

Because I’d love to go/ what’s interesting when I was looking at some of the stuff from the game, obviously we’re still COVID. Charlotte Sports Park is a lot like our local Clearwater Phillies park here, where they’ve got like an outfield where the kids can go sit, kind of run and do that. Well, when you look, they’ve got little boxes painted in the outfield where you and your group has to sit in this box on the grass, the next group has to sit in another box.

 

Do you have to wear a mask, in the heat, which is just awful?

 

The story I saw, said you did have to wear a mask. But the photo accompanying the story showed about half the people in masks in the outfield. So I’m not sure how much they’re enforcing it.

 

Which makes it claustrophobic. And then if you’re wearing sunglasses your glasses fog up. It’s a disaster.

 

It’s the perpetual almost dance. Am I lifting off my sunglasses or pulling down my mask? Do I need to see or be able to breathe? Because as soon as your mask’s up, you can’t see because the sunglasses are fogged.

 

So the Rays going into this year after the run in the World Series last year, where they lost the Dodgers, which by the way, one can make a comment about Kevin Cash and the idiotic move he had by pulling Blake Snell, who was pitching a beautiful game, I think, what was that, game six. And now Blake Snell’s gone. The Rays do this every few years. They are unique organization that most of their players grew up in the system in their own farm system. The Rays traditionally have one of the best, if not the best farm system, according to Baseball America, it’s ranked every year. They have some really good homegrown prospects coming up again this year. But you have a pitching staff that is depleted by the loss of Blake Snell and Charlie Morton.

 

They just brought back Chris Archer as their number two pitcher. Ryan Yarbrough is going to be the third and Tyler Glasnow is obvious there ace, and I think his stuff is just nasty. But behind Glasnow, this pitching staff is kind of suspect. And I’m wondering if they’re going to go back to the starter, which was that where they have a guy coming out for one or two innings to start the game and then right into a deep bullpen, which I don’t know if that’s what they’re going to do this year.

 

Okay. I can’t tell you the last time we were at a preseason spring training where I said, I see exactly how Tampa’s going to pull this off. But I can tell you, I now have blind faith because I have doubted them forever. You’ve looked at the 40 million payroll and every year we’re in the mix. We field a competitive team ever since Joe Madden’s been here. There is no one that’s doing more with less than what we’ve got here.

 

And with an owner that’s not committed to winning in Scott Sternberg. He’s just committed to having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. It’s all about the farm system, homegrown talent. And then once they reach the point of where the contract eligible after four years, arbitration eligible if you will, they get rid of the stars.

 

Yep. And I think Stuart Sternberg’s big deal is the Mets.

 

Stuart Sternberg, not Scott. Yeah. Scott’s a good friend of mine by the way, who does workers comp down in Palm Beach. Shout out to Scott Sternberg. Got the two confused. Go on.

 

Yeah. But Stuart, he’s a Mets fan. Me too. I grew up worshiping Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.

 

I was a Keith Hernandez guy.

 

Little did I know, but these days I know a little bit more about what was going on in the dugouts than I did then. Sports is this magical thing that sort of brings us all together. If there’s one thing within the community we all agree about it’s almost universally our teams.

 

Yes.

 

Everyone’s a Bucs fan. You can get along with that. You can talk to strangers. When you’re wearing your Bucs gear, someone comes up to you. It’s almost like a comradery. It’s the same thing with the Rays and the Lightning. Tampa Bay, this is a great place to be a sports fan right now.

 

It really is. Going forward, we can finish up with the Rays in a minute, but I’m worried about the bucks next year. There’s too many guys that are trying to get a big contract right now. I think Lavonte David is probably going to go elsewhere. It looks like he’s going to wind up signing with the Cleveland Browns or showing the most interest. But you lose Lavonte David after losing Kwon Alexander the year before, what was the fastest line backing unit in football, it takes a big hit. Lavonte David and White from LSU. What’s his name again? Devin White. Devin White might be the best middle linebacker in football. I just forgot his name. First team all American LSU. And he’s been phenomenal his first two seasons. But when you have those two guys with that speed, it’s very difficult to run outside on them.

 

And you got Vita Vea and Suh blocking up the middle. That’s why the Bucs had the best run defense in football. I fear next year, if we lose Lavonte David and possibly Shaq Barrett going for a monster contract. And then you got the receivers. Who are you going to bring back, as Chris Godwin’s got to get paid? And then no one knows what Antonio Brown is going to want another one year deal, maybe a two year, just any type multi-year contract. And you think that he’d be very thankful to the Bucs for giving him this shot. But at the same point with the NFL, you only have a limited shelf life as a receiver, and I think he wants to get paid now. So where is the money going to be? It’s going to be spread pretty thin. The Bucs have a lot of cap space, but you’re looking to sign a lot of guys, and that’s the issue.

 

And I think your linchpins there, as you mentioned it, Shaq Barrett and Chris Godwin. Once you figure, one of them, they they’ve got to get at least one of them signed to a long term contract. They’ve got to get at least one signed to a long term contract. And more likely than not, the other’s going to get the franchise tag, if they can’t get long term. If they can get both of them signed to a long term contract, then you’ve got some leeway to use a franchise tag elsewhere.

 

Correct.

 

And I think that’s really, once we see that fall into place, we’ll know a little bit more. Some of the guys, and I really think there’s a difference when I look at the team, the guys who have already made their money, who’ve already got that big contract and been paid, I think they’re looking to stay around.

 

Some of those guys are willing to actually shave a little bit of money off their contract and make it easier to bring in other guys.

 

And that’s it. If you’ve got $80 million in the bank, shave a million off to stay happy. When you’ve got $2 million in the bank and you’re worried about the rest of your life, go sign the $100 million contract.

 

100%.

 

That’s kind where I think we’re at. So I think you’re getting some hometown discounts from the people that can afford to do it, the people that are already set for life, and they like it here.

 

Before we get back to the Rays, and I know we’re going off on a little bit of a diatribe. But what’s your opinion on Deshaun Watson? I understand his thought process. And by the way, blacks are underrepresented in terms of coaches in the NFL. There’s no two ways about that. It’s absolute bullshit. My point that I have though, is you got a guy making $40 million a year. He’s making $800,000 a week, which your average American makes about $28,000 a year. So it would take you 35 years to make what that guy makes in a week, and he’s bitching about having to come back to play in Houston. Does that make any sense at all? In any world, do you sit there as an employee and say, “Hey, I’m making 40 million next year, but I should have a say in who the coach is. They should have came to me and made the decision. The GM should have consulted with my opinions on who the next coach is. I’m going to sit out and not show up.”

 

This just only adds to the prima-donna aspect of professional athletes and only further disenfranchises your normal average everyday Joe, who can barely afford tickets to a game who now looks at this guy who’s making $40 million a year, $800,000 dollars a week. And why is he bitching to show up when I’m doing manual labor for 28, $30,000 a year. And I’m showing up every day, breaking my ass and I’m trying to feed a family of four.

 

I honestly don’t know how we got there in the Deshaun Watson situation. I don’t think it’s really a race issue as much as anything. Okay, he’s being paid $40 million a year to throw the football for the team. Okay. Certainly, if you could want to have something to say about who should be the coach, fine I’ll listen. But you don’t get to decide. As quarterback, it’s not your decision to make.

 

No. Honor your contract.

 

I tend to have a little bit more of a hard line approach to that. Fine, you don’t want to pay, you don’t want your 40 million, fine, you sit out, you don’t get your 40 million. But I’m going to tell you what, if this is a situation where Deshaun Watson’s got a reason to bitch, that line behind him is like 400 million people long because we all got stuff to bitch about. Do you want me to tell you everything I’m unhappy about right now?

 

My own personal life. You got Kyrie Irving just sitting out games, not even telling his coach why he took a leave of absence from the Nets and he apparently blamed it on the Capital riots. But meanwhile, he’s showing up at a nightclub with Drake and partying. He’s sipping bottles, but he’s supposedly so bent about what went on in the Capital riots. The guy’s making $40 million a year as a basketball player. What are you bitching about?

 

It sucks because, okay, it’s essentially sitting there going, “I’m being paid $40 million a year. I’ve got a job. I know I’m doing my job. I’ve signed this contract. But you know what? I’m just not entirely happy with everything.” Well, who cares? Who cares if you’re happy? That wasn’t in the contract. Nobody said we’re supposed to make you happy. You’re supposed to sit back there and throw the football and we’re going to give you $40 million. And you know what? Even if you don’t like it for 16, 17 weeks, you’re getting 40 million at the end of the day. Okay, suck it up.

 

I agree.

 

They give me four million, I will go out there and you can just beat the hell out of me each game.

 

And I’ll do it for $100,000 dollars. My point also though, is the rub is why are there so few black coaches in the NFL, and why isn’t Eric Bieniemy been given a job? Why is he still sitting out there sucking wind as a coordinator with all these retreads in the NFL, guys who keep getting jobs over and over again, who failed elsewhere but will get hired again and ahead of a black coach. Why is that?

 

I’m really not sure really what that is. We’re both fairly liberal, right?

 

Yeah. Extremely.

 

And to me, I sit there and it doesn’t make sense to me that there would be someone somewhere in a NFL organization going, “I don’t want to hire this guy because he’s black.” Well, everyone in the organization’s black, half the people. Why would you have that thought process?

 

The same reason why you had for many, many years, if you’re a black quarterback, you’re an athlete. If you’re a white quarterback, you’re cerebral. And Donovan McNabb obviously broke that mold. But I think there’s an almost precept to many of these individuals in the organization that black athletes fit a certain mold. Black executives fit certain mold and it’s underrepresented in professional sports. And obviously it’s bullshit. Most of the guys in the NFL predominantly are black.

 

Yeah.

 

Most individuals in professional basketball are predominantly black.

 

Yes.

 

Yet there’s so few coaches and so few retired players that are given a chance. I understand Deshaun Watson’s point. Well taken, it makes complete sense. The way he’s going about it is obviously nonsense. He looks like a prima-donna, he’s hurting his own brand. I don’t know what the answer to that is. I know we went off on kind of a tangent here.

 

And here’s something I haven’t really looked at because you brought it up and this may be a sort of a side to it. But when you look at it, white or black, what are the ratio of those coaches that were actually former players? Because there’s not a lot of white former player coaches either. You don’t really have many white people out there that are coaching in football that you can say, “This is a good former player.” You got one or two in management. John Lynch, some stuff like that, you got John Elway. But you really don’t have that former player pool.

 

And by the way, you probably saw me just checking my phone. And my producer was signaling me to look at my phone. And Noah pointed out that Doug Williams is the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. But I’m going to argue with him that wasn’t Doug Williams that broke the mold though. That mold has continued for the next two decades, where again, if you’re a black quarterback, you are an athlete. If you’re a white quarterback, you’re cerebral. Donovan McNabb, towards the second half of his career, his feet were like stuck in quicksand. He wasn’t an athlete. He was a pocket quarterback. And if you gave a number of black quarterbacks in pro football right now, I can give you a handful that their feet are stuck in quicksand as well. They’re not fast. For every Kyle Murray, I can give you five guys that can’t run.

 

Absolutely.

 

You have plenty of white quarterbacks who are colorblind and can’t throw the ball properly.

 

You got Vinny Testaverde.

 

Yeah.

 

That was the rumor with him, I remember back when I was young. But when you bring up Doug Williams, now we’re talking about a slightly different time. We’re talking about Hugh Culverhouse. We’re talking about a different era of Buccaneer football. The two things I can remember growing up about Hugh Culverhouse, just knowing this was that to some extent, I think it was fairly well known that he didn’t have the highest respect for black players. And he wore the funniest looking pants that would be like halfway up his chest to suck in his belly. And that’s what I can remember from being like 10 years, 11 years old being a Bucs fan. I think what happened with Doug Williams, I do believe that was race oriented.

 

I do believe Hugh Culverhouse had a thing against black athletes. And I do believe that was a big part of him leaving the Buccaneers. Now, I also believe at that point in time, those attitudes were accepted amongst a certain element of society, with a nod and a wink. These days you really have to go into some dark corners to find people who really embrace racism or find that this is something that’s acceptable. Now, I’m not saying it’s not out there, but you’re not going to sit down there and find your normal mainstream people out there expressing distaste for people of another race, at least I don’t see they it.

 

They don’t expressly state it, but it is deep within them and I think it’s within their thought process, which is even worse. I would prefer the Austrians who hated Jews versus the Germans who were outright, if you look at what happened… During World War II, I’m not trying to get into the Holocaust, the Austrians were very quiet about their hatred of Jews. The Germans were open about it, their vile hatred of Jews. You almost rather the individual who’s expressing it rather than the individual who’s quiet. At least you know how they feel, they’re wearing their emotions on their sleeve. I believe that many of the executives in the NFL are very reticent to hire a black head coach. And when they hire a black head coach like Todd Bowles, the slightest screw up, the first bad season, they’re quick to get the yank. Todd Bowles and Byron Leftwich are two black coordinators of the Bucs that both could be head coaches tomorrow and both be very competent. Bowles is given a very short opportunity, very short leash.

 

Bowles is doing fantastic. I had some questions about Leftwich and I think in the play calling a few different things like that ever for a number of years, but I can tell you, Bruce Arians, he seems to be one of the most inclusive individuals I’ve seen out there as an NFL coach. He doesn’t give a crap whether you’re white, black, one-legged-

 

One could argue, and many of the players are saying it, that it wasn’t Bruce Arians that ran the offense, and Bruce Arians is an offensive mind, it was Byron Leftwich. And Byron Leftwich is a quarterback guru.

 

Well, we had some questions. It didn’t always look like that. This year, it looks like that. But I can tell you from when Byron left, which was catching a lot of heat, Bruce Arians unfailingly had his back. And when you look at the dynamics of our coaching staff, the dynamics of the personnel within the Buccaneers, it’s very inclusive. We’ve got female coaches, we’ve got all different kinds of people out there. And I truly believe, at least with respect to Bruce Arians, his attitude is best person for the job, I don’t I don’t even need to see him.

 

Yeah. Why didn’t the Eagles hire Eric Bieniemy? We can continue going on about it. I’m not sure how familiar you are of the former Colorado, Buffalo’s great, he was great running back, back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. I still don’t understand why. He’s been given numerous opportunities, been interviewed for 14 different head coaching jobs, and the guy’s still sitting on his ass. Meanwhile, they continue hiring retreads over and over again, guys who have failed elsewhere, white guys, for God knows what reason.

 

Yeah. I couldn’t tell you that.

 

Same reason why the Yankees interviewed Dusty Baker, but they gave the job to Joe Torre, who was a failure everywhere. Joe Torre wound up looking like a superstar, but he was on a team with superstars. Hard not to win when you got Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill and he got a pitching staff five deep, and you got relievers like Mariano Rivera. You could throw me out and have me coaching the team, you don’t need analytics, I’m going to be winning 95 games a year. It wasn’t Joe Torre. Joe Torre was a failure with the Braves, he was a failure at the Mets. He was a failure his entire career. My point is eventually you stick these white guys in enough jobs, they’re going to succeed. You throw enough mud at the wall, something’s going to stick. Why aren’t these guys getting a chance? Dusty Baker’s the most crafty coach in Major League Baseball. He’s black. Why aren’t there more black head coaches in baseball?

 

Wait, let me ask you, Dusty Baker, who did they bring back to coach after the cheating scandal? Was that Dusty Baker?

 

It was Dusty Baker. Yeah.

 

Yeah. They brought Dusty Baker. Okay.

 

Do they miss a beat?

 

No. No they didn’t. And I think they brought in Dusty Baker because of his reputation within baseball.

 

No nonsense, class act, there’s not going to be any problems. He’s not going to tolerate any bullshit and he’s as smart as any coach out there. And we’re going to have to do a Rays preview on the next episode because we went off on a diatribe that we can’t come back from.

 

And I think what it comes down to is like everywhere else in society, it’s not systemic, but there are individuals within the system that harbor these feelings, which make it almost seem systemic.

 

But even the announcers, it comes down to the announcers. Is Deshaun Watson a scrambler or is he a pocket quarterback? He’s a pocket quarterback. Can he take off if he needs to? Yeah, but is he a runner? No, he’s a pocket quarterback. But you’ll hear them say, they’ll talk about his athleticism over and over again. But they never talk about how cerebral he is. But you got a white quarterback, first coming out of their mouth is how cerebral he is.

 

I’d be interested to see a study on that, if someone could do it, just the comments-

 

I have.

 

You have?

 

No. Anecdotally, I’ll tell you.

 

Well, I’m saying the comments about white versus black quarterbacks on the field, and just how often they refer to black quarterbacks as being very athletic versus referring to white quarterbacks that way. I’ve never paid attention to it, but now that you mention it, I’m going to be hyper aware. But I’d be interested to see what that came out like.

 

Yeah, the white quarterback is always cerebral and coachable, the black quarterback is always an athlete, fast twitch. Those are the comments that are always made about black quarterbacks, historically.

 

Now I’m going to start paying attention to that because I don’t doubt it. But now that you mention it.

 

That’s why when I watch sports, I put it on mute. I don’t even care what these idiots say.

 

All right. Another episode of the Sibley Dolman Gipe podcast. We’re going to stick a lot more to talking about sports, keeping it light, because there’s only so much about the law we can speak about. And we’ll keep talking about it, but the next episode, I guess we’ll talk about the Rays a little more because we kind of got off topic. But another great discussion, Stan.

 

Hey, and hopefully by the time we talk about the next step, I’ll get to tell you what the experience is like being at a game.

 

So if you want to talk about auto accidents, slip and falls, give us a call at 833-55-CRASH, or you can just call me and pick my brain about sports. I’m always available. I’ll talk to you about boxing, baseball, college basketball, college football and hockey. I’m always around.

 

Hey, it’s always a pleasure anytime anyone wants to talk about anything, they know where to find us.

 

Have a great day.