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Hello again

Greetings. My name is David Barron, and I recently retired from 31 years of daily
journalism at the Houston Chronicle and 46 years in the newspaper business in
Houston, Dallas, Waco and Tyler.

For most of my 31 years in Houston, my duties involved writing about sports radio and television, sports business and law and Olympic sports.

My catch-all tagline for assorted items in the sports media column was Four DVRs, No Waiting, based on the fact that I really did have four DVRs around the house to record assorted programs. I still do, in fact.

Here’s a story about some of the things I’ve done over the years. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/David-Barron-31-years-of-stories-and-friends-at-15874700.php

As you may have guessed, old habits are hard to break. While I no longer
have daily deadlines, I want to keep up with things of interest in the realm of
sports media and law. I’ll write about them here, and I’ll pull out some
memories and some statistics on occasion, too.

I hope you’ll follow me through this phase of my career at Twitter @dfbarron,
and contact me at dbarron@comcast.net with questions or suggestions. Thanks.

Lombardi Award returns to familiar trophy, Rotary Club sponsorship

By David Barron

The 40-pound block of granite is back.

After a perplexing swerve from its traditional roots, the Rotary Lombardi Award will be relaunched in Houston this year as an honor for college football linemen or linebackers. The winner again will receive the granite-topped trophy that was inspired by the award’s namesake, the late coach Vince Lombardi.

The award, founded in 1971 by the Rotary Club of Houston, will be presented Dec. 8 at a dinner benefiting the American Cancer Society, the longtime beneficiary of the Lombardi Trophy banquet. The award was created with the cooperation of the Lombardi family in the wake of the coach’s death from colon cancer in 1970.

The Rotary Club ceded control of the event in 2017 to a newly created Lombardi Foundation, and the award was refashioned as an award for the best college football player of the year, regardless of position.

The dinner was refashioned as the Lombardi Honors event, with additional awards given to coaches, media members, former players and public figures.

There was no mention of those subsidiary awards in the release announcing the 2021 award. Also, as if to accentuate the return to tradition, the release announcing the relaunched award and Rotary’s sponsorship did not include the names of the last four winners of the redesigned award, which included two backs and a safety.

Under the restored rules, the Lombardi Award will go to a down lineman or end on offense or defense who lines up no further than 10 yards to the left or right of the ball or to a linebacker who line up no further than five yards from the line of scrimmage. Offensive players who come out of the backfield to be set on the line prior to the snap are not included in the eligibility requirements.

The trophy topped by a 40-pound block of pink granite, commemorating Lombardi’s college years with the “Seven Blocks of Granite” line at Fordham University in the 1930s, was the most recognizable symbol of the Lombardi Award.

It was replaced by a trophy featuring a figure of Lombardi standing alongside a player, first presented in 2017 to Stanford running back Bryce Love. Subsequent winners included Oregon safety Ugochukwu Amadi, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow and 2020 recipient Tulsa linebacker Zaven Collins.

That trophy, however, is now a thing of the past as the traditional rules, the familiar trophy and the longtime association of the Rotary Club of Houston return for 2021.

Baylor avoids more sanctions in Title IX lawsuit evidence dispute

By David Barron

The torturous path through evidence discovery continues in the long-running Title IX lawsuit involving Baylor University and 15 Jane Doe plaintiffs, but it will do so, for now, without major sanctions sought by the women’s attorneys against Baylor.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin on Monday ordered that plaintiffs receive 1,261 documents produced by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton for an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of female students at Baylor.

That investigation in 2016 led to the decision by Baylor regents to fire football coach Art Briles and demote university president Ken Starr because of the school’s shortcomings in enforcing Title IX protections for students.

Austin also ordered UnitedLex, a third-party vendor handling document verification duties for the lawsuit, to determine the status of an additional 4,200 documents that Baylor says have been accounted for but that plaintiffs say remain in dispute and should be produced as evidence.

As for another 815 documents in dispute, Austin ordered a May 7 hearing to determine whether they fall under a judge’s order requiring them to be handed over to the women’s attorneys.

Austin, however, declined to impose sanctions against Baylor sought by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Those actions included an instruction to jurors, if and when the case comes to trial, that Baylor had attempted to hide materials during evidence discovery.

The women’s attorneys also asked that Baylor be barred from further efforts to limit document production based on attorney-client privilege, and they sought daily fines and additional penalties against Baylor until discovery issues were settled.

While he turned down most of the requested sanctions, Austin ordered Baylor to turn over the thousand-plus documents and said Baylor would have to pay for additional expenses that could result from evidence contained in the material.

The Baylor-Jane Doe case has been notable for continued disputes between the parties related to evidence production. Austin described the dispute as “seemingly endless” and said “Baylor has been as aggressive as any party the Court has encountered” in trying to withhold items from discovery.

“The end result is that discovery has dominated this case for years and has made it take far longer and cost far more than it needed to,” Austin wrote.

The amount of paper involved in the case is considerable. UnitedLex said in 2020 that Pepper Hamilton provided 1.365 million documents for examination that were generated by the Baylor Title IX investigation.

After a series of examinations, UnitedLex came up with 12,129 documents from the Pepper Hamilton submissions for which it could find no matching record as having been either given to the plaintiffs or designated as privileged material.

In the final accounting, Baylor asserted that 1,793 documents were unaccounted for. Plaintiffs’ attorneys claim the actual number is 8,069. That dispute led to the plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions on which Austin ruled this week.

While Austin was critical of Baylor for its penchant to miss deadlines for evidence production and for “overlooking” documents it had been ordered to produce, he said he did not find evidence of misconduct that would warrant sanctions against the university.

However, he also wrote, “This does not mean that Baylor’s production of the Pepper Hamilton materials has been laudable. … The UnitedLex work has provided additional evidence that Baylor’s assurances and certifications were at best inaccurate. Further, Baylor has missed deadline after discovery deadline set by the court.”

“By failing to timely produce or log these documents, Baylor has waived all objections and privileges related to them,” he added.

While that document dispute continues, the parties are in dispute over whether Baylor should be entitled to any communications between the plaintiffs in the case.

Baylor says the plaintiffs continue to withhold communications to which it is entitled; attorneys for the women say the dispute was addressed by a previous court order with which it has complied.

Pepper Hamilton’s investigation into Title IX enforcement issues at Baylor resulted in the submission of more than 100 proposed enforcement reforms to the school, which in May 2016 adopted the firm’s suggestions while firing Briles and demoting Starr, who subsequently resigned.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Chad Dunn of Austin and Jim Dunnam of Waco. Lisa Brown with the Houston office of Thompson & Horton represents Baylor.

UH, Baylor helped bolster NCAA Tournament viewing in Houston

By David Barron

In keeping with the continued fragmentation of television audiences, viewership for the NCAA Tournament championship game between Baylor and Gonzaga was down from the last title game two years ago, according to the Nielsen Co.

The game on CBS drew a 9.4 Nielsen rating with a 21 share and an average audience of 16.92 million viewers. Virginia-Texas Tech two years ago had an 11.6 rating and 19.63 million viewers.

It was the lowest-rated NCAA title game ever on broadcast television but the best-watched non-football telecast since the dreaded Game 7 of the 2019 World Series between the Astros and Nationals, which was seen by 23.2 million.

As an indicator of the degree to which network television viewership has lagged, the 20th-ranked show of last week had just over five million viewers. That would have been an unbelievably low number for top 20 positioning in the pre-streaming era.

As for the Baylor-Gonzaga game, Houston’s audience on KHOU (Channel 11) beat the national curve, with a 12.1 rating and 476,100 viewers. KHOU also benefited from two other University of Houston games, including the Cougars’ national semifinal against Baylor.

That game had a 9.4 rating in Houston, more than double the 4.4 national rating on CBS.

Here are the 20 most-viewed NCAA Tournament games in Houston.

Watson lawsuits loom as ‘albatross’ for Texans QB, lawyer says

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay 

By David Barron

Three lawsuits filed against Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson may have been timed to place maximum pressure on Watson to settle out of court as he tries to leave Houston for another NFL team, a Texas trial attorney said.

The lawsuits, filed in Harris County district court on behalf of women who operate massage therapy businesses in Houston and Atlanta, loom as an “albatross” for Watson’s reputation and, perhaps, his career options, said Dallas attorney Rogge Dunn.

“Most of these cases are settled quietly out of court,” Dunn said. “But in terms of the concept of buying silence, that genie is now out of the bottle.

“The reputational damage has been suffered by Watson, and the question is does he go all the way to try to prove his innocence and risk that he loses? That can be a time-consuming and expensive process.”

The eventual outcome, Dunn said, “may depend on who has the mental and economic stamina to go the distance.”

The lawsuits were filed to coincide with the beginning of NFL free agency and the beginning of the new NFL operations calendar for the 2021 season. Watson is not a free agent, and the Texans have said publicly that they are not interested in trading the quarterback.

Watson on Sunday said he learned of the first of the pending lawsuits but had not seen it. He denied the allegations and said he rejected “a baseless six-figure settlement demand.” 

The allegations against Watson are said to have taken place in March 2020 and December 2020, in the case of the Houston womrn, and in August 2020, in the case of the Atlanta woman.

Filing suit months later at a critical date on the NFL calendar, Dunn said, proves the adage that timing can be key in legal matters.

“It seems to me that the timing was calculated,” Dunn said. “Some NFL teams may say they don’t want to touch him while this is pending and that he should get it resolved. This is baggage for him, and the timing of the lawsuit could be a strategic play.”

In two of the cases, Watson is accused of touching the masseuse with his penis and that he “committed civil assault” on the women, the lawsuit alleges. The third lawsuit, involving one of the licensed massage therapists from Houston, alleges that Watson forced the woman to perform oral sex.

Two of the lawsuits refer to Instagram exchanges with the women that Dunn said could be critical evidence if the case goes to trial.

“Documents and texts created contemporaneously with the events in issue are powerful pieces of evidence,” Dunn said. “To the extent that the texts say what they are alleged to have said, that would be strong circumstantial evidence that this wasn’t a typical massage.”

The suits were filed by Houston attorney Tony Buzbee. Watson is represented by Houston attorney Rusty Hardin.

Simone Biles selected to USA Gymnastics national team

By David Barron

Simone Biles, in her latest move toward another trip to the Olympics this summer in Tokyo, has been named to the 18-member USA Gymnastics senior women’s national team.

Biles, 24, was selected along with three other training partners at the family-owned World Champions Centre in Montgomery County to the team after a training camp in Indianapolis, the headquarters of USA Gymnastics.

The four-time Olympic gold medalist from Spring is joined on the squad by Jordan Chiles of Vancouver, Wash., who has been training with Biles since 2019, and by Amari Drayton, 16, of Spring and Olivia Greaves of Staten Island, N.Y.

Chiles won the all-around championship in the recent Winter Cup competition in Indianapolis. Biles, the five-time national all-around champion and five-time International Gymnastics Federation world all-around champion, did not compete in that event.

Other prominent gymnasts in position to qualify for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics who were named to the squad were former world all-around championship Morgan Hurd of Middletown, Del.; Jade Carey of Phoenix; Sunisa Lee of St. Paul; Grace McCallum of Isanti, Minn.; Riley McCusker of Brielle, N.J.; MyKayla Skinner of Gilbert, Ariz.; and three teammates from the Kansas City area, Kara Eaker, Aleah Finnegan and Leanne Wong.

Biles has not competed since 2019 but is expected to compete next month at an FIG World Cup event in Tokyo and at the upcoming USA Gymnastics championships in Fort Worth and the Olympic Trials in St. Louis.

The national team designation provides funding and training opportunities for gymnasts but has no bearing on the eventual selection of the Olympic team.

In another development involving an Olympic medalist who trains in the Houston area, 2016 women’s weightlifting bronze medalist Sarah Robles has been selected to the USA Weightlifting team that will compete in April at the Pan American Championships in the Dominican Republic.

Robles, who is from Desert Hot Springs, Calif., moved to Houston before the 2016 Olympics to training with coach Tim Swords. She is the 2017 world champion and 2019 Pan American Games championship in the women’s top weight class.

Winners at the Pan American Games can qualify spots for USA Weightlifting’s Olympic team. Four women and four men will be named to the team in mid-June.

CBS’ Nantz touts NCAA Tournament central sites, including Houston plan

By David Barron

Imagine, if you will, the entire NCAA Tournament unfolding in Houston and environs.

Jim Nantz can see it happening.

Based on this year’s Tournament, which will take place in Indianapolis plus the home courts of Indiana and Purdue, the longtime CBS Sports anchor thinks a centralized March Madness could be a viable alternative even in the post-COVID-19 era of sports.

His Houston model, for example, would have the Final Four at NRG Stadium and first-round games through the regional finals at NRG or Toyota Center, the University of Houston’s Fertitta Center and other venues such as Rice University’s Autry Court, Texas Southern University’s H&PE Arena and arenas at Texas A&M or the University of Texas.

Nantz’s suggestion came during a Monday video conference call with CBS Sports and Turner Sports analysts and announcers to discuss the return of March Madness, which will be staged entirely in Indiana, after last year’s COVID postponement.

“COVID has brought a new way of business in a lot of different industries,” he said. “I think this might be a model, a template, for the NCAA Tournament down the road.”

In support of a central group of venues, Nantz cited the previously vexing tendency of coast-to-cost subregional sites requiring the NCAA to send some schools to far-flung locations, such as Georgetown going to Boise, Idaho, or Maryland to Spokane.

“I think this has legs. I think this has a future with the NCAA if they want to go this way,” he said.

Nantz, who worked the 2002 Winter Olympics in Nagano for CBS, cited the Olympics as an example of potential benefits both for fans and players.

“You wash away all the crazy of figuring out how to travel a team from here to there – after winning two games at Salt Lake City, do they go back east only to return to Anaheim?,” he said. “All of that goes away.”

Such a revolutionary schedule change would take time to implement, since sites already have been established for the 2022 Tournament. But Nantz said he can envision it for future years, based on the upcoming Final Four markets of Houston (2023), Phoenix (2024), San Antonio (2025) and Indianapolis once again in 2026.

“It could be a very exciting option for the NCAA down the road,” he said. “I’m not sure if it doesn’t make it even a little bit better of an event, having people drop into a city and saying, ‘Can we try to get tickets today to Hinkle Fieldhouse? Son, do you want to go to Assembly Hall? Do you want to go to Bloomington?’

“It would be a phenomenal scene to see all those fans and teams in one city down the road.”

At first glance, and perhaps even second and third glances, Nantz’s plan sounds like a longshot. But it’s a good way to wile away time on a Monday afternoon, imagining the possibilities.

March Madness approaches with Sunday selection show

By David Barron

The NCAA Tournament is upon us. CBS has the selection show announcement at 5 p.m. Sunday, and CBS and Turner Sports this week announced their announcer pairings for games on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, with the Final Four airing this year on CBS.

Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery and Grant Hill with Tracy Wolfson return to call the Final Four from Indianapolis. The other regional announce teams will be Brian Anderson and Jim Jackson with Allie LaForce, Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel with Jamie Erdahl and Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner with Dana Jacobson.

The other opening-week teams are Carter Blackburn/Debbie Antonelli, Lisa Byington/Steve Smith, Andrew Catalon/Steve Lappas with AJ Ross, Spero Dedes/Brendan Haywood with Lauren Shehadi and Tom McCarthy/Avery Johnson. Handling the play-in games will be Anderson and Jackson plus the team of Brad Nessler/Steve Lavin with Evan Washburn.

Studio teams once more will be based in New York and Atlanta. The Atlanta team will be Ernie Johnson with Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Candace Parker and Greg Gumbel in New York with Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis and Wally Szczerbiak.

In addition to television, the Tournament also will air on SiriusXM radios and the SiriusXM app. News and feature coverage will air on Mad Dog Sports Radio, ESPNU Radio, SiriusXM ACC Radio, SiriusXM Big 12 Radio, SiriusXM Big Ten Radio, SiriusXM Pac-12 Radio and SiriusXM SEC Radio.

Astros’ TV opener Sunday

If you’re setting up the DVR weekend schedule, don’t forget that the Astros’ spring training game against the Nationals at noon Sunday will be the Grapefruit League’s first game televised by AT&T SportNet Southwest.

The Monday game against the Marlins also airs at noon.

New agreement for NHL, Disney

After a run of several years on the NBC networks, the NHL is returning to ESPN and ABC beginning for the 2021-22 season. The Stanley Cup Final will air on ABC in four of the seven years, 25 regular-season games each year will appear on ABC or ESPN and 75 will be on ESPN+ and Hulu.

It also includes the out-of-market streaming package, NHL.TV, as part of ESPN+, and it includes highlights rights agreements, which assures that you’ll be seeing a lot more hockey on ESPN “SportsCenter” and other news and talk shows.

I have covered one Stanley Cup Final game in my lifetime, at the Meadowlands Arena a couple of decades ago, and the main thing I remember about it is walking in the arena to say hello to Gary Thorne, who was calling NHL games for ESPN at the time. Maybe this new agreement, as Richard Deitsch of The Athletic aptly notes, will signal a return to hockey for Thorne, who along with the esteemed Kevin Harlan has one of the best zero-to-60 voice ranges in broadcasting.

NBA numbers down

The NBA All-Star Game averaged 5.94 million viewers on TNT and TBS, a record low for the event, but outpaced the much-hyped Prince Harry/Meghan Markle interview on CBS among viewers under age 49, according to Sports Business Journal. …

In a similar vein, James Harden’s return to Houston on the Wednesday before the All-Star Game break didn’t exactly do gangbusters on AT&T SportsNet Southwest. The game had a 2.5 Nielsen rating and an average audience of 100,600 viewers, which underperformed my expectations.

Braves honor local favorite

I have been privileged to attend church for many years alongside Ralph Garr, the longtime Houston area resident who was the 1974 National League batting championship with the Atlanta Braves.

Ralph is being honored this week as one of the namesakes of the Ralph Garr-Bill Lucas HBCU Classic between his alma mater, Grambling State, and Florida A&M. He’s a more than fitting honoree, and he is a good friend in good times and in trying times as well. 

Harden gets appropriate intro from Rockets announcer Thomas

By David Barron

Over the years, KBME (790 AM) sports talk host Matt Thomas and I have discussed the manner in which NBA arena announcers introduce visiting team players in bored, monotonal fashion, followed by shouted hosannas for the home team starting five.

I’ve always felt that it would be more respectful to adopt at least a semi-interested attitude toward the visiting team introductions. However, Thomas, who mans the PA microphone at Toyota Center, says he is merely following the industry standard by downplaying the other team during intros.

Thomas, however, made an exception Wednesday for the return of James Harden to Toyota Center with the Nets against the Rockets.

While he did not elaborate, Thomas said on his Thursday talk show, “I introduced (Harden) the way I normally would introduce him.” In other words, he put some enthusiasm into it.

The crowd reaction was mixed, as Jonathan Feigen recorded it, which is to be expected. But I am pleased that Matt used his big-league voice to introduce a big-league player from a visiting team.

Thomas said Friday that his introduction of Harden was standard operating procedure for the initial return to Toyota Center of former Rockets favorites.

“I did that with Chris Paul and Trevor Ariza and Russell Westbrook,” he said. “It’s my way of bringing people back and appreciating what they had done before.”

Disney to re-air Ali-Frazier I

The Disney channels next week will re-air the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier from 50 years ago, March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.

ABC gets the first re-air, at 1 p.m. Monday on KTRK (Channel 13). ESPN has it at 5 p.m., ESPNews at 11 p.m. and ESPN2 at 3 a.m. Monday. All three fights between Ali and Frazier also are available on ESPN+.

Don Dunphy, former champion Archie Moore and actor Burt Lancaster called the fight on closed-circuit TV. It later aired on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” and has shown up in recent years on ESPN.

ESPN, however, says it has remastered 461 segments of the original film to improve picture quality and color. The network also has prepared several new segments surrounding the fight, which Frazier won in a 15-round decision, focusing on the fighters and Ali’s comeback after being stripped of the title because he refused to register for the military draft because of his opposition as a Black Muslim to the Vietnam War.

Sunday’s version will use the Dunphy-Lancaster-Moore play by play with Howard Cosell’s “Wide World” commentary in Rounds 9 and 10.

Four DVRs, no waiting

ESPN+ will have the Texas-Houston baseball game at 2 p.m. Saturday, and SEC Network+ will have New Mexico State-Texas A&M at the same time. ESPN+ will have Longhorns-Cougars at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, and the Aggies game is at 1 p.m. …

ESPN says that Mike Greenberg will host the first two days of its NFL Draft coverage beginning April 29. He fills the role vacated by the unfortunate departure from the network of Trey Wingo, who hosted the last four years. …  

Skip Bayless has signed a four-year, $32 million contract with Fox Sports after being courted by ESPN, the New York Post reports. Andrew Marchand of the Post says that Bayless is in talks with Fox to add a second afternoon solo show to his morning show with Shannon Sharpe. …  

Rece Davis also has reached a new contract agreement to remain in his current role as ESPN’s top college football and basketball studio host.

Sign of the times: Ad Age reports that advertising for Disney’s digital channels, including Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+, totaled $882 million during the fourth quarter of 2020. At current growth rates, those channels will soon overtake ABC Television Network revenues, which totaled $984 million for the quarter. …

The New York Daily News reports that “Inside the NFL,” once a staple under the NFL Films aegis on HBO Sports and Showtime, is moving to the streaming side on the Paramount+ service. …

Former CBS and Turner Sports producer Mike Pearl has died. Mike was of great help to me a few years ago when I was compiling my collection of Super Bowl game films, including a copy of the rare Super Bowl XII pre-pregame show, which CBS did by the seat of its pants when the Phoenix Open golf tournament was rained out. …

UFC has a history in Texas, having hosted events in Houston as long ago as 2007 and as recently as February 2020, and UFC president Dana White says that the sport could return to Texas soon with the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions by Gov. Greg Abbott.

“I want to go to Texas ASAP,” White said this week.

Texans turmoil boosts Houston sports radio ratings

By David Barron

Sports radio generally thrives on chaos and controversy, and the continued series of upheavals involving Deshaun Watson, Nick Caserio, Jack Easterby, Cal McNair and David Culley, and the upheaval has paid benefits for the team’s flagship radio station, KILT (610 AM).

In the most recent Nielsen Audio ratings for Houston, KILT ranked in the top 10 for all four major day parts among men 25-54, the primary advertising demo for sports radio, for the first time in years.

The station was tied for 10th place between 6 and 10 a.m., ninth from 10 a,m.-3 p.m. and seventh from 3-7 p.m. in the men 25-54 demo. That’s the best ranking for KILT in afternoon drive in almost a decade, when the station was in the top 10 for 21 consecutive months from September 2011 through April 2013 and ranked as high as No. 4 in the afternoon.

Rockets flagship station KBME (790 AM) also had a high point in the latest ratings book, ranking 12th among all stations in men 25-54 from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. The station ranked 19th from 6 a.m.-7 p.m. in the demo to KILT’s 11th place finish. KFNC (97.5 FM) ranked in the mid- to low-20s among all stations in all day parts in men 25-54.

In the overall January ratings period, KODA (99.1 FM) and KTRH (740 AM) led the way among all stations in the persons 6-plus category, each with 7.5 percent audience shares. KILT was at 1.9, up six-tenths of a point from December, while KBME was at 0.6 and KFNC at 0.4 in the broadest demographic.

In other developments of interest this week:

— AT&T has sold a minority share of its video subscription services DirecTV, U-Verse and AT&T, which analysts say portends a change in affiliation for the NFL Sunday Ticket package once the current contract with DirecTV expires after the 2021 season.

— Only one Rockets game over the second half of the season has been picked up for national distribution, the Saturday, May 1, home game against the Warriors on ESPN. The March 3 game against the Nets also will be on ESPN. There are no Rockets games scheduled for TNT or NBA TV. That means that AT&T SportsNet Southwest has clear sailing the rest of the season as viewers’ only Rockets outlet.

— Baylor-Texas at 6 p.m. Monday on ESPN2 is among ESPN’s featured women’s games over the next few days.

— NBC plans to boost its Paralympic coverage from Tokyo this summer with 12 hours of live daily coverage on NBC Sports Network, prime time highlights on NBC and programming on the Peacock streaming channel and NBC Sports app.

— Local gymnasts Simone Biles and Colin Van Wicklen will not be competing, but there will be USA Gymnastics coverage at 6:30 p.m. Friday (men’s events live) and women’s highlights at 8:30 p.m. Monday (women’s taped highlights) on Olympic Channel.

— Looking ahead, March 9 will be MLB Network’s day to feature the Astros during the annual “30 Clubs in 30 Days” series.

Simone Manuel inspires Comcast donation to Fort Bend club

By David Barron

Simone Manuel, the two-time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer from Fort Bend County who has used her groundbreaking skills to support athletes of color and children of underserved communities, got a surprise boost in that campaign Thursday from Comcast, the parent company of Olympics partner NBC.

Comcast is contributing 100 laptop computers and 100 subscriptions to its Internet Essentials services to young members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston’s Fort Bend County location, the company announced Thursday during an interview with Manuel on the Peacock Network show “Brother from Another.”

Courtesy: Andres Garcia / Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston.

Manuel, 24, a graduate of Fort Bend Austin High School and Stanford University who now trains in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2016 became the first female Black athlete from the United States to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.

She won four medals at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and two years ago became the first woman to win seven total medals at the FINA world swimming championships.

Manuel, who also is working with Comcast on an Internet Essentials program in Northern California, equated access to Internet services to the access to swimming classes that she received as a young swimmer in Fort Bend County.

“When I was 12, I was struggling with my place in the sport of swimming. I wasn’t sure if it was the sport for me because of the lack of representation and some of the racism I faced in the sport,” she told “Brother from Another” hosts Michael Holley and Michael Smith.

“I asked my mom why there were not many people who looked like me in swimming. She didn’t know, but we researched the history and that showed me that black people could swim. We just didn’t have access to do so. I was fortunate to have access, and I’m going to pursue my dream.”

In similar fashion that swimming is a life-saving skill, she said broader Internet access through services such as the Internet Essentials program “opens doors and opportunities to people to take advantage of it.”

Manuel, who is in training for the scheduled 2021 Tokyo Olympic, has frequently discussed the difficulties she faced as a child as one of the few Black children in local swimming programs and also has been among the more active Olympic athletes in calling for social and economic justice reforms.   

She also has launched a website, simonemanuel.co, and did a brief film for Procter and Gamble, an Olympic sponsor, in which she discussed the “racial reckoning” of recent months in the United States, referenced her own confrontations with racial prejudice and her hope that her story and those of others “can incite positive change.”

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston operates more than a dozen locations in the Houston area, including the Fort Bend County center.

Fort Bend Boys & Girls Club location. Courtesy: Andres Garcia / Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston.

Comcast, which is the largest cable operator in Houston, last year announced plans for more than a thousand WiFi-connected “Lift Zones” in community centers nationwide and has donated tens of thousands of laptops to underserved communities.

The Internet Essentials program also has helped more than eight million low-income people to connect to the Internet at their homes.

Manuel, who continues to train at Stanford, said preparation for the limited swimming season leading up to the Olympic trials has been going well and that she’s been able to keep up her morale during the delay.

“The best thing I can do is to stay connected to the people I love. They’ll always encourage me and uplift me,” she said. “It’s about keeping things in perspective, connecting with your loved ones and taking it one day at a time.”

2016 Olympics photo Getty Images