I ran across a report recently that said as a result of firing head coaches with years left on their contracts, NFL owners are on the hook for “more than $500M” in payments to those coaches fired in the last 5 years. I have not put in the effort to verify that assertion; I take it as a fact and here are my reactions in the order they came to mind:
- That is a lot of cheese.
- Much of that total will be offset by coaches’ earnings in subsequent jobs.
- Nevertheless, that is a lot of cheese!
- That money is the consequence of a lot of bad decisions.
And that last reaction got me to thinking about why hiring decisions for head coaches in the NFL have such a failure rate. Sally Jenkins and others believe it is due to a lack of inclusiveness on the part of owners making these hiring decisions. Maybe they are right, but I think there is a more generic flaw in the process. I believe the “problem” here is that owners are making these decisions and owners have no idea what it takes to be a successful NFL coach.
NFL owners are billionaires; that is a given. Some of them got much of their wealth from family wealth – – the Fords, the Waltons, the Hunts the Johnsons. None of them got their wealth in the game of football unless you want to count George Halas’ oldest daughter as being intimately involved in the game of professional football. NFL owners are shrewd and competent in various fields:
- Jeffrey Lurie – Eagles – was a successful movie producer.
- Terry Pegula – Bills – made his money in the fracking business.
- Jerry Jones – Cowboys – was making oil and gas money before fracking was invented.
- Stan Kroenke – Rams – is a real estate mogul.
- You get the idea…
With the exception of Jerry Jones who played college football for a major college team (Arkansas), I do not believe that any of the other owners were ever part of a big-time football environment. With that in mind, it is not all that surprising to me that an owner faced with making a decision to hire Joe Flabeetz as opposed to Sam Glotz as the new coach of his/her team is taking a shot in the dark. I have no doubt that Terry Pegula would make an effective and informed choice if he were hiring a geological engineer to oversee a fracking operation; that decision is right there in his wheelhouse. When he has to hire a football coach, he is just as likely to hire a good one as he is to hire a bad one based on his football expertise. [Aside: I am not picking on Terry Pegula here. I use him as example of someone with lots of expertise and experience in a very specialized field who does not have the same level of expertise in the specialized field of “NFL head coach.”]
And then, the problem gets compounded… These highly successful billionaire owners are used to seeing events progress along a planned trajectory toward success.
- Jeffrey Lurie produces a movie; the movie is shot and edited; the movie is released; the movie is a success. Naturally…
- Rob Walton (Broncos’ owner) decides to expand Walmart stores into Lower Slobbovia; licenses are acquired; store sites are acquired; logistic chains are established; stores open; Walmart profits expand. Of course…
That is not always what happens when a new NFL head coach is hired. Sometimes a mediocre team gets a new head coach and becomes a bad team; sometimes a bad team gets a new head coach and does not get much better. It is in those sorts of situations where highly successful billionaire owners become impatient. In the bulk of their business experience things progress according to plan and if the plan needs to be tweaked somewhere along the way, the owner steps up and provides the tweak that moves things ahead smartly. When an NFL owner is playing that role in his/her field of expertise, that is a positive contribution; when an NFL owner behaves that way with his team, it is often nothing more than meddling.
In the NFL world, that sort of knee-jerk response by ownership to a plan that is not going exactly the way it was supposed to go translates to:
- Fire the guy you hired recently; pay him off and get a new guy in the job who will “get it right”.
And that is how the NFL owners as a group can build up a sunken cost of about $500M in what amounts to severance pay for fired head coaches.
Rather than thinking this “wasted money” is due to a lack of inclusiveness on the part of owners, I prefer to apply Hanlon’s Razor here:
“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Only I would change “stupidity” to “lack of understanding” in the adage…
Finally, I have spent today venturing into an area of speculation where one can easily question my competencies for such speculation(s). Therefore, let me close with this observation by author Christopher Hitchens – – sometimes labeled Hitchens’ Razor:
“That which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
The Maras, who own half the Giants, are a family operation – the founder of the team was Tim Mara, who was a bookie, which is, considering the ads the NFL promotes, fitting. . They only own half the team because the team was split between two brothers and one sold out. They made their money thru the team.
Ed:
Interesting. The Maras did not come to mind as I was putting that rant together.
Looking back at recent hiring decisions for head coach of the Giants, I would say that several have been “less than perfect”. Given his first year at the helm, it seems as if Brian Daboll was a good choice.
However, the trio of Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmer and Joe Judge prior to the arrival of Daboll is closer in quality to the Three Stooges than to the Three Tenors.