USGA: Timing Of Fox Sports TV Deal "was consistent with good organizational practice"

The USGA appears to be working feverishly while quietly punching back throughout the weekend nights, trying to penetrate the (mostly) negative coverage of their despicable (but completely planned) decision on a new 12-year television contract in the middle of the PGA Championship.

Out of respect for the PGA of America, I'm not going to address some of the big picture issues related to the sport as revealed in this Ron Sirak story until tomorrow.  But for giggle purposes, this corporatespeak from USGA flak Joe Goode is right out of the Bank of America playbook and should brighten your Monday.

(Before you read how the money people have kidnapped and tied up the golf people at Far Hills, I remind you that the USGA is a non-profit organization running a few golf tournaments...err...championships...shaping the rules of a game, and doing some nice turfgrass research when the Executive Committee isn't chopping away at that research budget.)

From Sirak's story:

"The timing of our announcement was consistent with good organizational practice, a commitment to transparency, and involved a national governance organization and several large media companies whose stocks are traded publicly and applicable to disclosure laws and requirements," USGA spokesman Joe Goode said in a statement.

"The USGA and FOX Sports Media Group promptly made public our agreement, just as we made other applicable news throughout the day public," Goode said. "It would not have been proper, nor realistic, to withhold this news from the public in these circumstances."

As we learned in Adam Schupak's story, the USGA structured the timing of their decision to coincide with the PGA, so right off the bat they were going to be un-gentlemanly unless the 15-person committee that voted decided to sit on the news.

So again, this means the USGA Executive Committee could not be trusted to keep a secret.