Some thoughts on the 2008 NFL and college football season, some suggestions and theories on how best to improve both the NFL and NCAA football seasons going forward, and some predictions on how the game might change in the upcoming decade.
Sugar Bowl Thoughts — As TMQ would be inclined to say, the Football Gods surely chortled as Alabama sought to defeat the underdog and overlooked Utah Utes in the Sugar Bowl. Alabama, a once-proud and dominating football program, decided it was tired of all of the mediocrity that has befallen the school since its 1992 National Championship so they brought in Nick Saban during the offseason two years ago. Which is fine except that Saban turned his back on LSU to take the Miami Dolphins job, then turned his back on the Dolphins once he realized that he was exposed as being a not-yet-ready-for-primetime NFL coach (his record was 15-17). When Saban resigned from the Dolphins he told none of his coaches or players face-to-face; he simply boarded a jet to Tuscaloosa and signed a mega-lucrative deal that not only makes him one of the highest paid coaches in all of the NCAA but also allows him access to very private jets, country clubs, and golf courses.
You may be inclined to opine that this is par for the course, that sports has become so business-driven that Saban is simply one of many looking to get his. Except that if you court someone and drop a mega-lucrative deal on their lap who has a history of slipping out of contracts and moving on elsewhere, you are, at the end of the day, getting someone whose interests are not good and, more importantly, has negative karma in their account. The pundits almost universally agreed that Alabama dispatching Utah in easy fashion was a foregone conclusion… except that it didn’t happen that way and the Utes of Utah played inspired ball and shocked an Alabama squad playing right down the street in the New Orleans Superdome. (It is a 4.5 hour car ride from Tuscaloosa to New Orleans, compared to a 28 hour car ride from Salt Lake City.)
Some Dude always loves to see a college underdog win a big bowl game (the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl from a few years ago always gives me chills when watching the highlights on YouTube) but this year’s Sugar Bowl was doubly satisfying because it involved a Saban-led team, who is a sports media-emblazoned coaching “genius,” looking flawed against kids who were unimpressed with who they were lining up against (from the get-go the Utah kids had a swagger about them that they were unafraid of the feared Crimson Tide from the feared SEC). It is great to see balance played out in life, even if it is on display during a college football game. University of Alabama, expect more of this to come during the Nick Saban Era as the Football Gods will surely continue to exact revenge on this I’ll-follow-the-money coach. Again, following the money is not inherently a bad thing but bad character erases most good intentions.
College football coaching thoughts — I understand why Charles Barkley made the comments he did about how his alma mater Auburn took a pass on hiring Turner Gill, a black coach who has turned around the program at the University of Buffalo, in favor of Gene Chizik, a white coach with an abominable head coaching record at Iowa State. On paper, you could obviously argue that this is a racial thing: SEC school with predominantly white boosters (even if it’s not true, it’s still the image that first comes to mind) turning down a on-the-rise black coach in favor of a white coach who probably wouldn’t have been considered to be a head coach at Pepperdine, let alone a big SEC school. What Charles is missing here is twofold.
First, Chizik, before taking the job at Iowa State, was a defensive coordinator at Auburn. Second, college head coaches don’t just coach and recruit any more.
Auburn, already under an inordinate amount of pressure from the boosters to win in the SEC, most likely selected Chizik because he has experience working with the boosters who will likely call for his head in 3-5 years. College football has become so bloated at the top (it has become commonplace for factory schools to emulate NFL-sized coaching staffs, complete with copious amounts of assistants, consultants, and coordinators) and the booster’s expectations so delusional (honestly, your school is going to be in the thick of a national championship run every year?) that it is no wonder why big-time college football factories are terrified to bring in minority coaches. Factory schools are already waaay to quick to ascribe themselves as ultra-important fiefdoms—the cherry-picking of cupcake non-conference opponents to begin the year, the collusion between all the conferences that house factory schools to cash in on the BCS games, the slanted perspective that naturally attaches itself to all involved by virtue of the fact that football represents so much revenue for factory universities—and to bring in a black (or Mexican, or Asian) coach and give them the keys to this insulated fiefdom probably seems too risky.
Is it right to think like this? Absolutely not, but I think it’s the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about: certain groups of white people are afraid that a black coach (or Mexican, or Asian) won’t be able to deal with the boosters and the AD and the university boards.
So, yes, Barkley was right in voicing his anger at Gill being passed over. But the bigger picture (and, thus, more socially aware and better) point would have been to come out and said that Gill should have declined the job even if it was offered to him. Turner Gill should be thankful that he wasn’t offered the job, let some white dude take the fall in a couple of years. I don’t think it’s a case of blatant racism going on in the NCAA football world as to why there are so few black head coaches. If anything, black (or Mexican, or Asian) coaches should do everything they can to avoid head coaching positions at big factory schools. It’s not worth it. Taking the helm of smaller programs or taking a promotion as a coordinator in the NFL makes more sense. Craft a legacy somewhere else before jumping in over your head (and Auburn, or a similar-level university, would certainly have drowned Gill in his first year).
All white coaches—from Bear Bryant to Bill Walsh to Pete Carroll to Bill Parcells—started their legacies in small-time manners. By being pissed off that Gill wasn’t handed the Auburn job (he didn’t offer up any other alternatives other than apparent entitlement), Barkley inadvertently assumed that timing is always right and it’s not. Turner Gill could wind up being the next Tony Dungy; however, he probably has a better chance of accomplishing that by doing his time at Buffalo or being low man on the NFL totem pole like Belichick, Dungy, Fisher, Reid, and Coughlin all were at some point. Taking the Auburn job simply because it was there would have probably done more irreparable damage to Gill’s future than if he just stays put. Barkley may have correctly pointed out the possible racial undertones of the move but he missed the boat entirely the context of the situation as it pertains to Gill. It looked and sounded like Barkley had Gill’s back but he didn’t.
NFL parity thoughts — Once again sportswriters and analysts bemoaned the NFL’s parity and its playoff structure. First, the playoff structure.
Is it unfair that the 11-5 Patriots didn’t make the postseason while the 9-7 Cardinals and 9-7 Chargers hosted a playoff game? The liberal, there-are-no-losers parts of our brain would all say yes. Here’s my question regarding it: who cares? Every year, and this is almost certainly a guarantee, there will be one divsion out of eight that will be very weak and one division out of eight that will be very strong. This year, the NFC and AFC West were awful (the two aforementioned 9-7 teams) and the AFC North, and the NFC and AFC East were very tight (two teams from each of those three divisions made the playoffs) so it stands to reason that there will always be at least one team every year that gets shafted.
This leads people to suggest that a seeded playoff structure that combines best records between both conferences will eliminate these types of problems. And they will. But they will also eliminate the significance of a division title and the weight of division games. And, as the Cardinals are currently proving, sometimes a 9-7 team is still a pretty damn good.
While a seeded tournament sounds great in theory (watching a Bears-Colts playoff game might be more palatable than a Colts-Chargers game) but in practice it would make the NFL start to become the NCAA, which is certainly not fine. If you distill the importance of division titles you are basically undermining the foundation of the NFL, which is that divsion games are most important (for rivalry purposes, obviously) and that the conferences shouldn’t be joined until the Super Bowl (this theoretically allows for the two SB opponents to be blind going into the game—i.e.-odds are high that they didn’t play each other during the regular season).
And, if you still think a seeded tournament is important and vital to the NFL: quick, what team was “shafted” out of the playoffs during the ’04 season? It was only five years ago but even the most knowledgeable fan would probably not remember that the Vikings at 8-8 captured the #6 seed in the NFC while the 9-7 Bills, Ravens, and Jaguars all packed up and went home without a playoff spot.
The seeded tournament talk is no different than arguing about who was left out of the MLB All-Star Game. It’s only important and heated for about four days and then dies its quick and thankful death.
As for the parity argument (to graduate to a “true” sports analyst, you must speak of parity in thinly-veiled contempt) here is how you can fix it: the NCAA factory schools shouldn’t be allowed control over their schedules.
Am I the only one who thinks it is criminal that last week was the first time Florida and Oklahoma ever played each other? The University of Florida has been around since 1853, Oklahoma since 1890—these are not new schools. But factory schools like to pick their schedules and, if they can, schedule more home games than road games, and bring in creampuffs like Western Kentucky and Abilene State to come to their stadium to be humiliated before the home crowd.
To be sure, the SEC, Big 12, and Pac-10 are all very tough conferences and are filled with very talented players but the fact that almost every factory school within said conferences (mostly) plays only big games in their own conference and not outside affects the NFL draft which, in turn, affects who drafts whom and, finally, it affects NFL rosters to the point that teams chase after players that don’t improve and, thus, relegates certain teams into mediocrity which, yep, you guessed it, keeps the “parity” myth alive. For example:
Let’s say the Buffalo Bills are looking to draft Coveted Linebacker from Auburn and Coveted Linebacker played very well in losing efforts to Florida State and Alabama. Furthermore, Coveted Linebacker from Auburn played outstanding in an upset win on the road against Georgia Tech. Sounds good, right? But how does he play in the cold? What would his performance have been if he had to play in back-to-back road weeks when Auburn had to travel to Oregon then play on the road against Florida? This, to me, is the best way to “fix” the BCS debacle that riles up and incenses so many sports-yak pundits.
The idea of the Student-Athlete at football factory schools is so cynical that we will all just collectively agree that the “Student” portion of that term is a fallacy. That said, instead of adding a playoff system (and, thus, adding more games and more cynicism to the aura of big-time college football programs) why not mandate that if you finish the year in the AP/ESPN/coachs’ polls in the Top 30, the following year’s schedule will be significantly harder. This would weed out the pretender programs AND allow the truly gifted athletes to stand out amongst the herd (which, in turn, would theoretically help make the NFL draft more manageable for the Detroits and Clevelands of the league).
Why should Oklahoma and Florida’s non-conference schedule be lax just because they play in what is generally agreed upon by sports pundits to be a tough conference? (OU’s non-conference schedule looked like this in 2008: UT-Chattanooga, Cincinatti, @ Washington, TCU whereas Florida played all three of its non-conf games against Hawaii, Miami, and The Citadel all in Gainesville.) What if Florida had to make the long-distance flight to Hawaii instead of the other way around? Why can’t Oklahoma play at Wisconsin or at Michigan? This, to me, is the biggest crime that the NCAA is guilty of: they never step in and schedule legitimately thrilling (or, in terms of the little schools, beneficial) non-conference matchups. Why do schools like The Citadel, Rhode Island, or Appalachian State have to fly to factory school stadiums and get mauled? Why can’t USC or Oklahoma fly out to Rhode Island? Surely Rhode Island (team name: Friars) would get trampled by either, but the idea that the Trojans or Sooners would be arriving in Providence would be outstanding for the school and the community. And, conversely, why aren’t there more powerhouse non-conference games like Florida-USC, Texas-Miami, Florida State-Cal, Ohio State-Auburn, Michigan-Utah, Oklahoma-Boise State, West Virginia-Texas Tech? What, the casual fans and networks wouldn’t jump at a Texas-Boise State game played on the glorious blue turf in Idaho even if Boise State’s record was average?
The problem is that the factory schools want to preserve their records in the hopes of reaching the BCS so, consequently, they cherry-pick their non-conf games like bullies and pay a small school to travel to their stadium just so that they can beat them up in front of a national TV audience.
If you want to see the BCS bowl games become easier for the computers to pick and you want to see the NFL become even more competitive than it already is, it begins and ends with college football’s non-conference schedule-making being completely overhauled.
NFL parity thought #2 — Another reason for the perceived abundance of parity in the NFL is the very real notion that we are currently living in the era of the Three Year Superstar. The Three Year Superstar Era means that because the NFL is filled with athletes who are so much bigger and faster than their predecessors and, thus, much more susceptible to injury (or being reduced by quicker, faster, stronger rookies who crop up much more consistenly than in any other generation of NFL player), it is almost impossible for most superstars to go beyond three consecutive years of superstar-level play. Players like Chris McAllister, Shaun Alexander, and Chad Johnson who suddenly explode into superstars but then fall apart rather quickly and unexpectedly are going to be the rule and not the exception anymore.
The main reason why Peyton Manning has been a superstar for as long as he has is that he has been blessed by a consistently healthy offensive line and an ownership that has kept the GM, the offensive line coach, and offensive coordinator in place during Manning’s entire career. Even LaDanian Tomlinson has hit a wall due to injuries and the defensive speed of the game garnering him ineffective. It is foolish to think that players like Adrian Peterson and Jason Witten are shoe-in Hall of Famers–odds are they will be rendered obsolete in a couple of years and be forced to retire early and with career stats that will make us all wonder “What if?”
NFL predictions — Some random predictions that I think will come to fruition over the next 10 years:
— The Detroit Lions will win a playoff game in the next couple of years. Realistically, they can only go up after going 0-16 and with new management, an NFC Central that will only get weaker after Peterson inevitably gets hurt down the line, and a pretty stout draft that seems to be brewing in two years (led by Tim Tebow and possibly Nate Davis), the Lions will win the Central, host a playoff game, and go to the NFC Championship game. My guess is 2012, just a hunch.
— In the next five years or so, a team will consciously decide to trade high draft picks and high-quality skill position players for high-quality offensive linemen. Yes, we are currently in the throes of the “Wildcat” formation, the shotgun spread, and trips bunch but someone (my guess would be Bill Polian, regardless if he’s still with the Colts or a new team) will realize that while, yes, it would be nice to have a B-plus level QB or RB, but an A-plus offensive line with one A-minus TE can solve a lot of problems en route to winning a Super Bowl. As more and more college and pro defensive players learn to scheme against 4-WR sets, they are setting themselves up to mowed down by big offensive sets wherein the QB has 6 seconds to throw instead of 3-4. The elephant in the room that few people ever want to admit to is that the ’90′s Cowboys teams were a dynasty because of the offensive line first and Aikman, Smith & Irvin second. Someone will take advantage of the league’s copycat mentality for picking up speed guys and pull the second coming of the Jimmy Johnson heist on a couple of unsuspecting teams.
— The overtime format will change but not to a college-style setup. For some reason, I envisage a scenario wherein the kicking team kicks off 5 yards closer and A) the receiving team cannot take a touchback (they have to run it out) and B) if the kick goes out of the end zone the ball is spotted on the 10 yard-line instead of the 20. The NFL is all about showcasing its players, and allowing both teams to start at the 25 or the 30 yard-line (or wherever) just doesn’t seem to fall in line with that thinking. The NFL is all about the drive, not arbitrarily picking a spot to begin without a kickoff.