The Sports Curmudgeon

Washington sports fans focus all of their passion – or what passes for passion – on the Redskins. All of the other teams in town are merely borderline relevant and would remain so even if they were winning championships once in a while, which they are not. The Redskins’ fans desperately want to believe theirs is the best franchise in sports; they actually take a measure of pride in pointing out that Forbes Magazine rates the Redskins as the sports franchise worth the most money. Never does it occur to them that the only reason for that valuation is that they open up their wallets and pour more money at the team than do other fans in other cities; they are paying and rewarding Danny Boy Snyder for his stewardship of this team. Given its performance and the angst it has produced among the fans, you might begin to question their sanity or their acumen at this point. On the other hand, you may just choose to nod your head and acknowledge that throwing money at inefficient and ineffective things is a way of life for people in Washington…

It’s even worse than that. On the local sports talk radio station – I mean the one that is not owned by Danny Boy Snyder where all is well and the Skins are just a few breaks away from an eight or nine game winning streak – the focus of the fans today is that all the team needs to do in its bye week is to “find its identity”. Fans have latched onto this as the quick cure for what ails the Redskins. Using that as the cause of their disappointment also allows the fans to avoid asking some questions they really don’t want to contemplate:

1. Is the talent level on the Redskins really sufficient for the team to finish better than 8-8 without a half-dozen opponents having to play loads of third string players?

2. Is the coaching staff all it is cracked up to be? Translation: Has Joe Gibbs lost his mojo?

The fans will laugh off the first question and point to statistics for all the people that were brought in here last March and the March before that and to the grandeur of the college careers of all the draftees. Guess what, every team has players with positive stats; if players had really negative stats and nothing else, they’d be playing semi-pro ball for the Biloxi Buttmunchers. But when it comes to the second question, the Washington Redskins’ fans will recoil in horror; that is a heresy; for them even to entertain such a question is to invite the sudden appearance of Michael Palin announcing,

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

So when I’m accused of this heresy, I’ll just plead my innocence, explain my case and let the fans and Michael Palin – as Cardinal Ximinez – put me on trial.

Let’s review the bidding. After Steve Spurrier didn’t work out here in Washington – which was after Marty Schottenheimer and Terry Robiske and Norv Turner had not worked out here in Washington – Danny Boy Snyder decided to make a splash hiring a coach in addition to making lots of splashes hiring players. He went out and got Joe Gibbs to come back from NASCAR for about $5-6M per year. Gibbs is in the Hall of Fame; he’s a certified football genius; he even went out and got a bunch of his former assistants to come out of retirement to take the talent on the team and teach it how to win. In point of fact, one of Joe Gibbs’ first pronouncements here in Washington after he and his new staff had looked at film was that there was a whole lot of talent on the team and he was surprised that some of these guys had not been starters the year before. Two and a half years later, the team is 2-5 and “can’t find its identity”.

[Hint: Try looking at the team photo; that’s where the team identity is.]

You have to remember that in the 1980s when Joe Gibbs forged his reputation, there was no salary cap and Joe Gibbs worked for one of the two owners in the league who was willing to spend lots more money than any of the other owners were willing to spend. He also had two long-term GMs that worked with him and helped with player selections. Remember that two of his Super Bowl teams were in strike years and were it not for the replacement players lined up by the GM, the Skins would not have made it to the playoffs in 1987. That’s not the way things work in today’s NFL. Gibbs cannot just sign all the veteran players he wants to deals that no one else will match and store them on the bench and on the practice squad – it used to be called the taxi squad.

So, when Joe Gibbs hired his old coaches, the old techniques didn’t work. Assistant Head Coach for Offense, Joe Bugel, took the offensive line and molded it into a mediocre unit; there weren’t a bunch of competent vets sitting behind the guys on the field who could be plugged into the line to improve it. The guys on the bench were significantly below mediocre. So, the Joe Bugel miracle cure didn’t take.

Joe Gibbs also hired Assistant Head Coach for Defense, Gregg Williams. In the first year, the defense improved which isn’t saying much since under Steve Spurrier the defense was merely an afterthought. The defense was better than average in the second year; this year the defense is much less that adequate. How did this happen? Well, over the past two years, the Redskins lost 2/3 of their linebackers, a starting cornerback and have shuffled their safeties around. Meanwhile they have a defensive line consisting of one better than average DT, Cornelius Griffin, and a bunch of players that Bill Parcells would call “JAG”, Just A Guy. So the defensive miracle isn’t working either.

Joe Gibbs also hired Associate Head Coach for Offense, Al Saunders – he of the putative 701-page playbook and the 300 plays in the game plan last weekend against the Colts. That’s not working all that well either. Unless of course one of the Skins’ secret objectives for the year is to set the record for most screen passes attempted. If that’s the case, they may have that record in hand by December 1, which would give them 5 additional games to pad that record.

Meanwhile the Skins are the most penalized team in the league meaning that either they are disorganized on the field or they are emotionally out of control or they can’t play without doing illegal things. Frankly, I think it’s a bit of all three, but the fans around here are certain that it is a league conspiracy against the Redskins because everyone in the NFL hates the Skins and Danny Boy Snyder. Oliver Stone might not be outrageous enough to be a guest speaker at a Skins’ Fan Club colloquium.

The Redskins’ problems are very simple and painful for Skins’ fans to articulate. The Redskins roster is just not that good. On the offense, the line is sub-standard; they don’t pass block all that well and they don’t run block all that well either. If the line is sub-standard, it does not matter what else you have on that unit; the rest of the players cannot achieve their potential without good blocking.

In addition, the Redskins got away last year with Santana Moss as a big play guy that other defenses had focused on. They had an injured David Patten on the roster but thought they needed more “oomph” at WR and paid huge money to Brandon Lloyd and Antwaan Randle-El. I said in my pre-season piece on the NFL that I was not enamored with the Skins’ WRs and nothing has changed my mind to date. Defenses have decided to focus on Santana Moss; Brandon Lloyd had flashy stats on a horrendous 49ers team and the 49ers were happy to let him go; Antwaan Randle-El was the 3rd WR on the Steelers who allowed them to run a couple of gadget plays every game and that’s it. All three WRs are getting big bucks so it’s no surprise that there isn’t any cap room left to go out and get what the offense really needs and that’s a competent offensive line and a tight end that can actually do all the things that a tight end is supposed to do – block, be a possession receiver, stretch the field two or three times a game down the seam.

On defense, the line is mediocre when it is at the top of its game. They have one outstanding linebacker – Marcus Washington – and more “JAGs”. First round pick, Carlos Rogers, still needs help in most cover situations; sadly, the new safety for the year is Adam Archuletta who I said in my pre-season piece could not cover the goal line pylon. Think about it; the St. Louis Rams were miserable on defense last year and Archuletta was their strong safety and I think their leading tackler. They didn’t even make him an offer in the free agent market; but the Redskins paid him a bundle. Now, he chases receivers into the end zone wearing a burgundy and gold helmet instead of one with ram horns on it. Even worse news for the defense is that the other safety – Sean Taylor – can’t cover anybody either. He can hit people like the Hammer of Thor, but it is usually after they have caught the ball or run down the field for a long gain. That’s really satisfying to Redskin fans who love to point out that Taylor is “a beast”. Other teams are happy to let the Skins have a beast play safety for them so he can join Archuletta in being one or two steps short of making a tackle to prevent a TD.

The home loss to the Tennessee Titans should have embarrassed that defense so much that they would have “found their identity” by now. Tennessee had not scored more than 16 points in a game all year; in that game, they scored 19 unanswered points at Fed-Ex Field. Travis Henry carved up that defense to gain 172 yards and it looked as if all eleven guys on the field had never been taught to tackle anything that moved with more agility than a trash can. And no one on defense really appeared to give a rat’s ass that this less than mediocre team was jamming the ball down their throats and up their butts on four out of five running plays. After the game, Joe Gibbs said that it would be “life and death” struggles for the rest of the year and that the guys would have to “fight their guts out”. After that performance, all he could reasonably expect is that they wouldn’t go into a fetal position in some future game and soil themselves.

After one of the games – frankly, I don’t remember which one – Gibbs said that the team had to learn to win. Here’s a simple recipe for winning that the team might want to follow if they have the ability to do it and the coaches have the ability to plan for:

Open holes on offense for Portis and Betts to run through.

Protect Brunell so he doesn’t have to run around back there to save his life. His mobility these days is just slightly greater than the goal posts.

Have Andre Carter tackle someone on the other team. After seven games, I believe he is credited with 2 tackles; it may be only 1.5.

Have the safeties actually cover someone on pass plays.

Who got those players? Well, the story is that Joe Gibbs is President of Football Operations, so that means it’s his bailiwick. And even though I strongly suspect that Vinnie Cerrato – the racquetball partner for Danny Boy Snyder who has masqueraded in the past as a “personnel guy” – still has Danny Boy’s ear, maybe indeed this is a Joe Gibbs production. After all, he has to have a boatload of time on his hands with three Assistant/Associate Head Coaches and an offensive and a defensive coordinator working for those guys and a total of 20 coaches working under him. He does not call the offensive plays during the game; he says he does not draw up the game plans; he never did have anything to do with the defense. So, what does he do with all that time he spends in his office?

Might it be that Joe Gibbs is really focusing on the player-personnel issues here and that – heresy alert! – he just isn’t all that good at it? After all, the guys the Skins have gone out to get since Gibbs arrived here haven’t all been world-beaters. Remember, in order to get Clinton Portis – a really good RB to be sure – the Skins had to part company with Champ Bailey and the draft pick used to take Tatum Bell. In order to get Santana Moss, the Skins had to part company with – and eat a salary cap hit to divest themselves of – Lavernaeus Coles. At best, those swaps are a wash. The only free agent signing who is outstanding is Marcus Washington. And does he make up for Archuletta, Randle-El, Lloyd, Andre Carter, Mike Rumph, Kenny Wright, David Patten, TJ Duckett and James Thrash?

If Joe Gibbs has delegated offense and defense and special teams to his 20 subordinate coaches - who probably cost the team $10-13M in addition to Gibbs’ $5-6M – then he must be “the guy” when it comes to putting the roster together. If that’s the case, then maybe he ought to think about sharing that Hall of Fame podium in Canton with Bobby Beathard and/or Charlie Casserley who did that job for him back in the 1980s.

Or maybe he’s really still tinkering with the offense and its Vinnie Cerrato who’s putting the squad together in which case what does it mean for Gibbs to be “President of Football Operations”? He doesn’t do knee surgery on the offensive players who need it.

Or, maybe he’s just lost his mojo. Perhaps, he’ll find his mojo wherever the team misplaced its identity.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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If you’ve read these rants for any period of time, you have to know by now that I don’t hold the folks who run the NCAA in the highest regard. Notwithstanding that opinion, it’s interesting to ponder why the institution exists in the first place for several reasons. From my curmudgeonly point of view, it might give me hope that if the NCAA were ever to fall into “friendly hands”, maybe it could be a force for good. But there is a current events reason to think about this now because the NCAA has come under scrutiny from another institution that I do not hold in the highest esteem – the Congress of the United States.

Representative Bill Thomas (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The LA Times reported that he recently sent “a pointed eight-page letter” to Dr. Myles Brand at the NCAA inquiring about why the NCAA deserves to retain its tax-free status as an institution. Oh, you didn’t realize that the NCAA, which makes all that money from TV deals and March Madness, doesn’t pay any tax on that money? Well, that is the case. Just as a way to focus your attention, the NCAA budget for a recent fiscal year was just north of $520M and close to $500M of that money came from TV rights to March Madness.

Representative Thomas reportedly went so far as to say that huge athletic programs might actually be in opposition to the fundamental educational mission objectives for colleges and universities. I hope Dr. Myles Brand didn’t gasp too loudly here because he came into his job saying that he would unite the university presidents to rein in the out of control athletic programs and make them adhere to the mainstream mission of the member institutions. That sounds as if he thought then that athletics might not be part of the mainstream…Representative Thomas said that he fully supported educational institutions as tax-exempt entities but wondered if there should be a tax exemption for college athletics - - given his inclination to think that college athletic endeavors and educational endeavors might not always coincide with one another.

Remember, this isn’t just any jamoke in the House of Representatives; this is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and that is where tax code legislation originates in that chamber. By dint of his position, Bill Thomas is sort of related to E.F. Hutton; when he talks you ought to listen.

As you might expect, the NCAA’s initial response was a prepared statement that contained the following sentence:

“The NCAA disagrees with the fundamental assertion that intercollegiate athletics is not part of higher education.”

Let’s get something straight from the beginning. The Congressthing has an agenda and it would be highly unusual if all of his agenda to be out in the open for everyone to examine. That’s not how the Congress works. At the same time, the NCAA has an institutional agenda here and each person working there has an agenda because his or her livelihood would be at risk if the NCAA became an ordinary for-profit entity. So of course, the NCAA disagrees with this assertion in a blanket sense. So let me try to put this debate on a scale for sports fans to think about as this plays itself out.

On a scale of 1-10 where 10 indicates that something is critically important to educational pursuits of excellence, I think everyone can agree that libraries and laboratories rank at the 10 level. Fraternities and sororities rank at the 1 level because a college may provide excellent educational experiences for students without a “Greek System” and students who do not have anything to do with fraternities/sororities at schools where they exist can still receive wonderful educations. I don’t mean to say that fraternities are bad things by putting them at the 1 level here; I only mean to say they are not essential to the educational mission of the school.

So where might other college activities/institutions fall on this scale?

A school newspaper would not be a 10 but it ought to rank closer to 10 than to 1 because it does provide important learning experiences to journalism students and business students and writers.

A university thespian group or a college chorale would similarly rank closer to 10 than to 1.

A “semester abroad program” would probably be in the mid-scale range at most schools since the majority of students would not participate and so it cannot be critically important to the overall educational experience there.

Athletics would surely fall closer to 1 than to 10. Only a small percentage of students participate; watching athletic endeavors as a fan provides educational value to the fans only in the most concocted argumentation; many of the “students” who make up the major athletic teams would not even be considered for admission to the school were it not for their ability and availability to play their particular sport.

So, the NCAA disagrees with the fundamental assertion that athletics is not part of the educational experience; good for them. Do not let them define the debate that way because it is a bogus argument. Rather, people need to push the NCAA to take a stand on just how relevant and how important big time athletics might be to the core educational mission of its member schools. And remember, one way to tell if it is “vital to the mission” is to imagine that athletics is removed from the equation. Under those circumstances, would universities collapse and cease to be available to the public? Clearly, the answer is no.

The NCAA likes to say that it allocates the revenues it generates for the common good of its member institutions. I don’t doubt that this is the case for some of those distributed revenues. But I have to get off the train at the point where some big time college coaches in football and basketball are making about $2M a year and Dr. Myles Brand as the NCAA maven makes dangerously close to $1M a year Faculty members who have won Nobel Prizes don’t make that much. And where does the money come from to pay those coaches and Dr. Brand more than the Nobel Laureates – who are clearly at the university for academic prowess and not jock abilities. It comes from those TV revenues which become distributed NCAA revenues, folks. Maybe the NCAA thinks everyone within a university environment is equal but like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal House maybe some are more equal than others…

So, what is the transcendent purpose of the NCAA? I am fully willing to believe that in the current environment, the NCAA behaves like any other established institution with an internal pecking order; it’s “Prime Directive” is to assure it’s continued survival. But why is it there in the first place? And if anyone were to conclude that it is there because in aggregate the colleges and universities can better market their athletic products, then I think the tax-exempt status should be revoked in a millisecond.

Actually, I think that one of the transcendent purposes of the NCAA was to establish its Byzantine set of rules about recruiting and eligibility and all that nonsense. Much as I rail at the silliness of some of those rules, they are there for a purpose. The rules attempt to provide a level playing field for schools with regard to whom they may put out there in an athletic contest to represent the school. I‘m not even hinting that these rules work to provide that level playing field; they do not. But I do believe that may have been a primary purpose in starting this institution that has become bloated, pompous and feckless. And if that were in fact the transcendent purpose, then maybe – I said maybe – the tax-exempt status would be reasonable.

My guess is that some folks in the NCAA are hoping for enough of a change in the November elections to put someone else in charge of the Ways and Means Committee. If that happened and the new chairman never asked about the letter the NCAA received, you can rest assured that they would never bring the subject up themselves.

For me, I think the NCAA should pay tax on the money that it takes in. It could be some kind of special reduced rate for an entity that will distribute most of its net profit for a year to its member institutions and there should still be lots of money left for them to distribute. But if the citizenry is truly concerned about rich people and rich corporations not paying their fair share of the tax burden, then they ought to be concerned that this entity doesn’t pay a dime in taxes. I don’t want to put the NCAA out of business; I have my own agenda to work here. I use the NCAA as something to ridicule more than once in a while and I need them out there as a target for rants such as this. So don’t tax them into oblivion, but let the US Treasury take 10-15% of the gross revenues there.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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