Sunday Morning Coffee — April 5, 2026 — Sunday Morning Scramble
By Roy Berger, Las Vegas, NV
Good morning and Happy Easter to all those celebrating. May your day be filled with love, peace and family. And continued Chag Sameach, Happy Passover, with only three days left before bagels, pizza and pretzels once again become staples and we put the gefilte fish and matzah back into the cupboard for a year. So, let’s Scramble:
Moving and buying a house in Louisville? Well, you may want to rethink unpacking. According to a new study by real estate site Redfin, those moving to the Kentucky Derby city and purchasing a home have the shortest hold rate of any in the country. Louisville homeowners tend to stay in their houses for about 8.3 years before selling. Contrary, homeowners in Los Angeles top the tenure chart with an average stay of 19.4 years before listing. Also on the short side is Vegas at 8.8 years followed by Charlotte, Orlando and Raleigh. San Jose is second to LA with plenty of time to do renovations at 18.7 years with San Fran at 16.5. Obviously, the cost of housing is so high in California once someone gets in, they are hesitant to leave and start the process, and mortgage cycle, all over again.
Not everyone has swung a tennis racket, hit a baseball or blocked a shot on the basketball court. But at one time or another, everyone has gone bowling. Now HBO brings us Born to Bowl, a five-part series produced by Ben Stiller that takes us behind the scenes of the pro bowling tour. Part tongue-in-cheek, it’s narrated by Hard Knocks Liev Schreiber so you know it means business. It’s been a long time since the 1960s when ABC Sports greeted us every Saturday afternoon in the winter, as a prelude to Wide World of Sports, watching Don Carter, Nelson Burton Jr., Dick Weber and Carmen Salvino cover splits. The 1960s show, sponsored by Firestone Tires, was hosted by the incomparable Chris Schenkel with Billy Welu by his side. Born To Bowl introduces us to today’s Don Carter— E.J. Tackett—along with other non-household names like Kyle Troup, Anthony Simonsen, Cameron Crowe and Jason Belmonte. There are some cameos of the fiery Pete Weber, the bad boy of bowling, who on any given week goes from hero to villain. There’s no real money in the sport; competitors hoping to make a splash travel around the country week after week with a handful living in their cars unless they are lucky enough to cash a check and move into the plush accommodations of a Holiday Inn Express. Sadly, there are no beer frames on tour.
If you are a coffee drinker, savor each cup. The price of java has increased more than any other household grocery item and that’s saying something. Back in the prehistoric days, 2020, a pound of roast coffee cost on average about $4.17. Today it’s well over double— up to $9.46 a pound. A perfect storm of droughts in coffee production in caffeine powerhouse countries like Brazil and Vietnam in 2024 has led to crop shortages. Not to mention a 40% tariff slapped on Brazil, by far the largest US coffee exporter, has meant escalated costs passed on to consumers. Sip, don’t chug.
I’m an off again/on again book reader. No, not ones that someone reads to me but I still like to hold them and turn pages. My genre of choice isn’t self-help/personal development despite some of you thinking it should. The newly-released Let Them, by motivationalist Mel Robbins, was highly recommended to me and I needed something for a cruise a couple of months ago. I wish this had been on the market 20 years ago when I was still in the workforce. Let Them is common sense dished up practically focusing on finding your own peace and choices rather than the frustration of trying to change others’ habits and actions. Now I incorporate some of the logic and philosophy from Ms. Robbins’ writing in my thought process almost every day. What she professes makes too much sense. If you are still in career mode it will make you a better professional, guaranteed. If you are out of the workplace grind it will take a bunch of stress out of your daily life. And I plan to publish my own sequel entitled Let Andi.
Well, you can go ahead and cancel that behind-the-scenes tour of Graceland. LeBron James on my nephew Robby’s Bob Does Sports YouTube show Thursday said no thank you about playing for the Milwaukee Bucks or Memphis Grizzlies, but he was particularly candid about Memphis saying, “If they (the Grizzlies) would have won the lottery and picked me first in 2003, I might not have shown up.” The 41-year-old all-time leading NBA scorer lamented any trip he has taken to Memphis, saying other players around the league shared his sentiment. “Being in Memphis on a random-ass Thursday, come on. I’m not the first guy in the league to talk about this. We’re all like, ‘You guys have to move.’” LeBron did send some love to the state of Tennessee on the podcast adding the league should relocate the Grizzlies franchise to Nashville where according to LeBron, “They’ve got everything, the Titans and Vanderbilt. They even have a hockey team, don’t they?” Get that guy a Predators jersey and a couple of passes to the Grand Ole Opry.
Love is…wishing Ali MacGraw a happy 87th birthday. The 1970 Love Story star is well and living outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
And then there were none. The decline and consolidation of the newspaper industry over the past 40 years has forced many metro dailies to either fold or team up with a same market competitor in a joint operating agreement where one survivor absorbed their smaller brethren but maintained separate editorial departments. Once upon a time there were some 30 such operating agreements where you might find the Detroit Free Press a part of the Detroit News; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printing the Pittsburgh Press or the Denver Post incorporating the Rocky Mountain News into its fold as a few of the examples. By 2019 that number shrunk from 30 to five such entities. As of this past Thursday there are now none. Some 20 years ago the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun combined with the Sun a separate section daily inside the RJ. The relationship was combative almost from the get-go. Editorially it gave Vegas some balance down in the bullpen with the RJ throwing from the right side and the Sun from the left. The Sun had been the valley’s afternoon paper since 1950 under the legendary Greenspun family; the RJ in the morning since 1909 and now owned by the family of the late Sheldon Adelson. When what’s left of the few hard copy newspaper readers awoke on Thursday and went out to their driveway the headline told us the Sun was no more, the result of almost seven years of litigation between the hostile parties. Put another nail in the once great industry’s coffin.
This is probably not on his iTunes playlist. Mr. Trump doesn’t seem particularly enamored with Bruce Springsteen’s new anti-establishment ballad Streets of Minneapolis. On his Truth Social site, the president reviewed the song this way—“Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried-up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon and has a long and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. MAGA should boycott his overpriced concerts, which suck.” Otherwise, it appears the president liked the song.
Hypocrisy has always reigned supreme at the NCAA. Later this week, and over the next two years, the collegiate sports governing body with absolutely no teeth nor guts will become the ultimate hypocrites. Forever, the NCAA has frowned upon holding major events and championships in Nevada because of its past open sports betting policies. Now, sports betting is virtually nationwide and not only drives interest in all sports, but sportsbooks and casinos are welcomed and encouraged to spend their advertising and marketing dollars with the NCAA and its member schools. So for the first time ever, a major NCAA championship will be contested this week in Las Vegas when the Frozen Four, the Division I hockey championship, comes to T-Mobile Arena on Thursday. The final four includes North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Denver facing off for the right to play for the national championship on Saturday. It already has set a secondary ticket market record for the most expensive ducat in Frozen Four history. I’ve been a hockey fan all my life. Saw my first game in 1962 when I was 10 and hundreds more since then. The one thing I’ve never seen is a college hockey game. I will break that streak on Thursday. And the Frozen Four is far from the only NCAA championship headed here. In what used to be college sports Siberia, our phony friends at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis will also bring the College Football Playoff championship game here in January and the basketball men’s Final Four in 2028. And the NCAA brass will have absolutely no problem banking all the money it can get from playing in a city without rival to host championship events.
Conversely to the longtime NCAA boycott of Vegas, the NFL couldn’t wait to get back here. Owners voted on Monday to return the Super Bowl to the Strip in 2029 after an over-the-top successful maiden voyage in 2024. Next February’s big game will be in LA and 2028 in Atlanta.
And finally, when you speak of legends in sports, nobody has ever made the mistake of adding quarterback Geno Smith to the list. But according to New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn that is about to change. Glenn, arguably the worst coach in the NFL and odds-on to be the first one fired this upcoming season, said last week that he believes the broken-down Smith can take the Jets to the “promised land.” Which for a Jets fan is a four-win season. Which would make Geno a legend after all.
I’m proud that Medjet is sponsoring Sunday Morning Coffee. I spent 20 wonderful years with Medjet in Birmingham, Alabama, and can tell you unequivocally they are the standard-bearer for medical assistance membership programs. A talented staff, who cares about its members, is at the forefront of the company’s success. Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, domestic or international, a Medjet membership should be an important part of your travel portfolio before you leave home. Check out the Medjet website at medjet.com or just tap on the Medjet logo and you’ll be able to get a look at Medjet’s services, rules and regulations, pricing, and an overview of the organization. And remember, any opinions expressed in Sunday Morning Coffee content or comments belong to the author and not the sponsor. Safe travels with your Medjet membership! — Roy Berger
Roy, Thank you for always telling it like it is. Thank you for keeping it real. Be well.
Happy Passover!