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    U.S. Open: A Super Saturday When the Big Stars Played On and On

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    Throughout its 143-year history, the U.S. Open has produced memorable matches and compelling story lines.There was the five-set semifinal victory for Manuel Orantes over Guillermo Vilas in 1975 in a late-night match in which Orantes saved five match points and then returned hours later to beat Jimmy Connors for the title.There was the final in 1995 between Steffi Graf and Monica Seles that Seles lost in three sets after more than a two-year hiatus following a stabbing attack by a Graf fan. And then there was the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi quarterfinal in 2001 where Sampras prevailed in four tiebreakers after midnight.There was also the quarterfinal in 2008 between Venus and Serena Williams when Serena won 7-6 (6), 7-6 (7). And the five-set semifinal in 2011 between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic during which Djokovic rallied from two sets down and then saved two match points in the fifth before winning four straight games for the victory.Fans had reason to clap during the finals match between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, which went to three sets.Jose R. Lopez/The New York TimesBut no day in U.S. Open history carries more cachet than Super Saturday on Sept. 8, 1984. That day, fans and television audiences were treated to more than 12 hours of play in which each match stretched to the limits of durability and drama. For a single admission price, spectators got to see 16 sets, 165 games and 979 points.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peter Oosterhuis, British Golfer Turned Broadcaster, Dies at 75

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      He won 20 tournaments before moving into TV. “He explained the game that was going out in front of him in a very relaxed manner,” a former CBS producer said.Peter Oosterhuis, a British golfer who won 20 tournaments around the world, played in the Ryder Cup six times and later distinguished himself as a commentator for CBS and Golf Channel, died on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 75.His wife, Ruth Ann (DuClos) Oosterhuis, said that his death, at a memory care facility, was caused by complications of Alzheimer’s disease. He retired from CBS in early 2015, almost two decades after he began working there and several months after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.That year, Oosterhuis (pronounced OH-ster-house) spoke to Golf Digest about his life and career.“The specific memories of those events are fading, but I have this nice overall impression of things,” he said. One detailed memory he still had: “In the 1973 Ryder Cup, I played Lee Trevino in one of my singles matches. Lee told his teammates, ‘If I don’t beat Oosterhuis, I’ll come in here and kiss your butts.’ Lee didn’t beat me.”Oosterhuis finished second in the 1974 British Open, four strokes behind Gary Player. Eight years later he took second place again, in a tie with Nick Price, one stroke behind the winner, Tom Watson. The Guardian said that Oosterhuis’s final-round 70 in the 1982 Open was “due reward for the stoutest heart and most patient temperament that British golf has produced in the modern era.”Oosterhuis at the 1972 Open Championship, held at the Muirfield Golf Links in Scotland.R&A Championships, via Getty ImagesOosterhuis was, for a time, one of Europe’s best golfers. He won the Harry Vardon Trophy, for the best scoring average on the European Tour, four consecutive times, from 1971 to 1974. He won seven titles on the European Tour, now called the DP World Tour. And while his six Ryder Cup teams (first Britain, then Europe) lost to the United States from 1971 to 1981, he had his share of success, including a record of 6-2-1 in his singles matches in the biennial competition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The N.F.L.’s New Play: Embrace Betting Ads, Watch the Money Pour In

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      The placement of gambling ads during football game broadcasts shows how much the N.F.L. has changed in its approach toward gambling.Betting has long been a part of the National Football League’s DNA. Two of its founding fathers, Art Rooney and Tim Mara, were gamblers.Rooney bankrolled the early years of the Pittsburgh Steelers with a small fortune he won at Saratoga Race Course. Mara, his close friend, was a bookmaker who bought the New York Giants for $500.For decades, however, N.F.L. officials went to great lengths to distance the league from the tens of billions of dollars wagered on its games — legally in Las Vegas but also with offshore sports betting shops, in office and bar pools and among illegal bookies. The N.F.L. backed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act of 2006 and fought New Jersey’s efforts to allow its casinos and horse tracks to take bets on football games.“We’re trying to do whatever we can to make sure our games are not betting vehicles,” Joe Browne, an N.F.L. spokesman, told The New York Times in 2008.“We have been accused of allowing gambling because it is good for the popularity of the game,” he added. “If that’s true, then we have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing gambling on our games.”What the N.F.L. once sold as a principled stand, however, has more recently given way to a far more pragmatic one. As betting on football ballooned into a multibillion-dollar industry, and as state after state acted to legalize it, the N.F.L. was left with a stark choice: to continue to fight gambling on its games, or to embrace it in exchange for a significant cut of casino marketing dollars.The proliferation of legalized gambling, like that at a FanDuel sports book in Phoenix, has led the N.F.L. to loosen its restrictions.Matt York/Associated PressAnd that money the league once spent on lobbying against gambling? This season, the N.F.L. is getting it all back. And then some.On its opening weekend, celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx headlined commercials that aired during N.F.L. game broadcasts, pitching betting as just a click away with a WynnBET, DraftKings, FanDuel or BetMGM account. The NFL Network included betting lines on its ticker for the first time.Belated or not, the N.F.L.’s embrace of gambling is, well, lucrative. League and industry experts expect the revenue from gambling companies for the N.F.L. and its teams to be several hundred million dollars this season.“Over the next 10 years, this is going to be a more than $1 billion opportunity for the league and our clubs,” said Christopher Halpin, chief strategy and growth officer for the N.F.L.Little more than three years after the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling in most states, sports betting companies are meeting an eager audience. GeoComply Solutions, a company that uses geolocation to help confirm that bettors gambling online are doing so from places where betting is legal, said it processed 58.2 million transactions in the United States during the N.F.L.’s opening weekend, more than double what it handled during the same weekend last season.“We expected high volumes, but what we have seen has surprised us nonetheless,” said Lindsay Slader, a managing director with GeoComply, which is based in Canada. “The level of demand across new markets, such as Arizona, indicates that consumers have long waited for the option to legally place a sports bet.”The company said the bets came from 18 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Soon, more states are likely to join.New York has approved online betting and is in the process of determining which operators will be allowed to take wagers. And sports betting measures are under consideration in heavily populated states such as California, Texas and Florida, where sports book operators are spending heavily to get a foothold.“You have to look at the size of the prize,” said Craig Billings, chief executive of Wynn Interactive. “I think this is going to be the same size of market as the commercial casino industry in the U.S., $40 billion annually or more.”That is why he hired Affleck to direct and star, alongside Shaquille O’Neal, in a commercial, and his company has plans to spend more than $100 million on advertising throughout the N.F.L. season.“Being part of the in-game broadcast is important — it’s our most popular sport with a core audience of early adopters that have been betting offshore,” Billings said. “It’s a rifle shot you have to take.”WynnBET is hardly alone.Through Sept. 9 this year, DraftKings’ spending on national television advertising is up 98 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, while FanDuel’s spending has more than doubled, according to estimates from the research firm iSpot.TV.Overall, gambling companies spent $7.4 million on advertisements during the first week of prime time games, 9 percent more than they did during last year’s opening games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, according to estimates from EDO, a TV ad measurement platform.“The dollars are starting to add up,” said John Bogusz, the executive vice president of sports sales and marketing for CBS Sports.The network saw a surge in advertising interest for N.F.L. broadcasts this year. Bogusz attributed “a good portion” of the growth to sports betting ads.“Overall, the volume is up among all advertisers, but that added to it as well,” he said. “I think it will continue to grow.”Dan Lovinger, the executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, said on a conference call that the surge from sports betting operators was “reminiscent to when the fantasy category opened up.”In 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings spent millions blitzing the airwaves with commercials to gain a larger audience for daily fantasy games, where fans pay an entry fee to assemble rosters of real football players to play against the rosters of other fantasy players.The blitz worked. Sort of.The campaigns attracted customers but also the attention of regulators and prompted complaints from viewers who grew weary of the repetitive advertisements. Both companies spent fortunes on lawyers and lobbyists and endured intact to pivot to sports betting.The average amount of actual game action over the course of a three-hour broadcast of an N.F.L. game is about 11 minutes. Halpin said the league’s internal research showed that among its fans age 21 and older, roughly 20 percent were frequent sports bettors who were mostly young and male, and that another 20 percent — mostly women over 55 — were “active rejecters.”To navigate this stark divide, as well as persuade those in the middle, the N.F.L. decided to limit sports betting ads to one per quarter along with a pregame and halftime spot — six in all per broadcast.It also largely eschewed talk of odds and spreads directly during the biggest N.F.L. game broadcasts.“We have to avoid oversaturation of the game with sports betting talk or risk alienating fans,” Halpin said. “My mother loves her N.F.L., but she doesn’t want gambling talk.” More

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      in Football

      At the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is Muddled

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballAt the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is MuddledThe N.F.L. espoused racial unity and praised health care workers. But its inaction on racial diversity, its stereotypic imagery and its decision to host a potential superspreader event said something different.Masked fans paid tribute to front line workers and displayed messages of racial unity during the second quarter of the Super Bowl.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:38 p.m. ETThe N.F.L. likes to project power and precision. Sideline catches are scrutinized with zoom lenses, first downs are measured in inches and Air Force jets fly over stadiums just as “The Star-Spangled Banner” reaches its peak.But when it comes to topics like race, health and safety, the league’s certainty dissolves into a series of mixed messages.That was the case on Sunday at the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s crowning game, which is typically watched by about 100 million viewers in the United States. The championship game provides the league a massive platform each year to promote itself as America’s corporate do-gooder, with the best interests of its enormous fan base at heart. That was harder to do this year as the country remained roiled by the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has exacerbated festering political division and racial unrest, issues the N.FL. had to plow past to complete its season.On Sunday, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the N.F.L. trumpeted its support for the fight against social injustice. The national anthem was performed by two musicians, one Black and one white. The poet Amanda Gorman, who wowed the country with her recitation at President Biden’s inauguration, read an ode to the three honorary captains — a teacher, a nurse and a soldier — frontline workers in different fields. The TV announcers spoke often of the work that the league and the players have done to battle racial inequities.Yet, moments later, when the Kansas City Chiefs took the field, the N.F.L. played a recording in the reduced capacity stadium of the made-up war cry that is a team custom. The prompt got fans to swing their arms in a “tomahawk chop,” an act that many find disrespectful and a perpetuation of racist stereotypes of the nation’s first people. Last week, the Kansas City Indian Center, a social service agency, put up two billboards in the city that read, “Change the name and stop the chop!”The Kansas City Chiefs took the field as the N.F.L. played the “tomahawk chop” on speakers inside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“At the start of the game it was all unify, unify, unify, and then there’s this racist chant,” said Louis Moore, an associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University who studies connections between race and sports. “Eight months after George Floyd, and you’ve done all this stuff, letting players put phrases on the backs of their helmets, giving workers a paid holiday for Juneteenth. They are putting a corporate Band-Aid on a problem instead of dealing with it.”Moore pointed to other inconvenient realities that were either dismissed, ignored or obscured by the relentless messaging.There was scant mention of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has not played since the 2016 season, when he began kneeling during the national anthem to shine a light on police brutality.That led to a sharp, viral rebuke on Twitter from the singer Mariah Carey.There was little talk of the league’s abysmal record hiring people of color as head coaches and general managers even as television cameras showed the Chiefs’ successful offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, who is Black and has been unable to land a head coaching position in multiple hiring cycles.Before the game, CBS Sports showed a segment that featured Viola Davis, the Academy Award-winning actress, saluting Kenny Washington, a Black player who in 1946 reintegrated the N.F.L., which had an unofficial color barrier for 13 years.Yet there was no discussion of a lawsuit brought by two former N.F.L. players who accuse the league of rigging the concussion settlement to make it harder for Black players to receive payments.The league spent considerable time lauding nurses and other health care workers on the front lines who have been helping fight the coronavirus. It had invited 7,500 vaccinated workers to the game, a signal to Americans that if you, too, get inoculated, you will be able to safely attend big events like the Super Bowl.Not discussed was that just hosting the Super Bowl could lead to a spike in the number of infections. Sure, the N.F.L. provided fans at the game with face masks and hand sanitizer, but little if any contact tracing was done to monitor exposure. Tracking infected fans will be made all the more difficult as people return to their homes in all corners of the country.Many people flocked to Tampa the week of the Super Bowl, flooding bars and restaurants.Credit…AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe Super Bowl, American sports’ biggest party, is not confined to TV and phone screens. The week of events leading up to the game was a magnet for tens of thousands of fans who attended parties or flocked to Tampa’s bars and restaurants, often unmasked. In the aftermath of the home team’s victory, mask-less revelers took to the streets of Tampa, an utterly predictable scene that has followed other major championships. Many of the people who celebrated without regard to social distancing or other guidelines will expose others to the virus as they travel home.For all the N.F.L.’s feel-good words and gestures to this moment in American history at the Super Bowl, and its attempts to use football to try to bring the nation together, the league’s carefully crafted message risked being muddled by its actions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More