Jack’s Blog

Following the 1991-92 basketball season at USC (where I was an assistant coach), then-junior swing man Harold Miner, a fabulous basketball player, had a difficult decision to make.  It was whether to return for his senior campaign or leave school for the NBA draft.  Our head coach, George Raveling, had done his due diligence and found out that Harold was a surefire lottery pick, going possibly as high as seventh (he wound up the twelfth pick).

Someone, somewhere, at some time had stuck the moniker, Baby Jordan, on Harold years earlier.  He was about the same height and build as Michael, jumped like him (he won the NBA’s Slam Dunk competition twice) and had a shaved head.  But, we all, including Harold, knew he was not another MJ, nor was anyone else.  That kind of attention was both unrealistic and unfair.  It really didn’t matter where he was picked, however,  because Nike offered him sixth pick money, i.e. if he was selected in the sixth slot, he got that money, BUT if he were picked anywhere lower, Nike would make up the difference between the money he was offered and what the player drafted sixth got.  So, when he dropped to #12, he still received #6 money, what #12 got (all rookie contracts are preset), plus the difference between that and #6 which was picked up by Nike.

The reason I share this bit of history is to show that Harold Miner was a sensational college basketball player.  When he was deciding, one factor in favor of him returning to school was he absolutely loved campus life.  It was a real blast for him to go to the student center the day after a big game and hear his fellow students reliving the game and some of the jaw dropping moves from the night before.  Or hear praise from a professor.  Or a custodian.  Didn’t matter.  He found it invigorating.

Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M is the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.  This year, the school has announced that, because it is such a distraction whenever Johnny Football shows up on campus, they are allowing him to take his classes online.  Now, I am by no means comparing Harold Miner’s popularity in LA with Johnny Manziel’s in College Station.  First of all, Miner’s situation was twenty years ago.  And it’s an apples vs. oranges comparison because Los Angeles is a pro city and SC is a football school.  Yet, at 6′6″, black with long arms and a killer body, people knew who Harold Miner was.  Few would pass by without making a comment or asking for an autograph or picture.

Manziel related the following story when he received the Davey O’Brien Award as the nation’s top quarterback, according to Bernie Augustine of the New York Daily News.  “I went one day — it was a small class of 20 or 25 — and it kind of turned into more of a big deal than I thought.”  Regarding the decision to take classes online, he said, “It just happened to work out where it was good after the football season with all of the stuff going on.  It was a good time not to have to worry about being on campus and some other things, too.”

At his press conference declaring for the draft, Harold Miner made reference to how much he was going to miss not only the guys on the team, but also his fellow classmates.  He realized that experience would be gone once he became a professional - and he’d never again get to feel it.

Now, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel has become so popular in College Station that the Texas A&M quarterback can no longer attend classes with the rest of the student body.  Someday, he might wish he had found a way.

It’s a shame that:

“Some people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”

One day, while I was an assistant basketball coach at USC (early to mid ’90s), I was walking through Heritage Hall and bumped into one of our assistant football coaches.  His name was (and probably still is) Doug Smith and he was the offensive line coach.  On most football staffs, the assistants recruit geographic areas as opposed to positions since it’s more financially prudent.  Doug stopped me and said, “Hey, Jack, there’s a  guy in my area who plays basketball as well as football.”  Then he gave me his name and asked me if we were recruiting him.

“Yeah, Doug, we are but, from what I heard, he’s going to play football in college.”

Doug said, “He is but he loves basketball and wants to play both sports in college.”  A guy can play both football and baseball or football and track at a D-I school even though there are some logistical problems.  But for a guy to play both football and basketball in college, especially at a “BCS” type school, there are additional issues, one of which is he doesn’t start basketball until after football is over.

John Robinson and his staff had really gotten it going at SC which meant, even if he did sign with USC, we wouldn’t get him until conference play since football would most likely end up in a January bowl game.  However, since our staffs got along so well (as all of coaches in the department did - not always SOP everywhere), I assured Doug we’d recruit the kid.  Truthfully, we had pretty much written him off because of how good he was in football.  As far as which sport would scholarship him, it didn’t matter because NCAA rules dictate if a student-athlete plays football and any other sport, he counts toward football.  (If the s-a plays basketball and any other sport - besides football - the scholarship counts toward basketball).

“Doug, you can tell him we’d love to have him.  There’s no doubt he’s a good basketball player and he would definitely play for us because of his toughness, if nothing else.  Plus, George would do anything for JR.  I’ll go by the high school there in a couple days.  Hey, Doug, this guy must be some football player since I’ve never heard you speak about anybody like you have about him.”

“Jack, he will be a starter in the NFL as a rookie and will have a 15 year career.”  He didn’t go to SC.  He chose Cal.  The “kid” was Tony Gonzalez.  And Doug missed on his prediction.  Tony just finished his 16th year.  I guess Doug Smith subscribed to Jim Rohn’s philosophy:

“Better understated than overstated.  Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.”

Heading to Las Vegas for the grand finale for high school basketball players.  Nearly every university will be represented by one or more of its coaches.  See you in August.

A good portion of our nation loves TMZ - as long as those three letters aren’t exposing them.  It’s always been an American past time to laugh at others’ foolishness.  TMZ has taken paparazzi to new levels.  Its latest subject (although by now someone else has undoubtedly been embarrassed) is Marc Tyler, USC’s #1 running back.  Tyler was caught coming out of a club, more than ready to answer a question that his companions, judging by their reactions to his comments, knew shouldn’t have been touched.

What Tyler said wasn’t hurtful as much as it was idiotic.  Unless someone is an SC hater, e.g. a UCLA backer, it’s absurd to think a football player, at any school, would make more money in college than the NFL.  It was a trap question - for anyone who couldn’t pass a sobriety test - to illicit a moronic answer.  In the state Tyler was in, i.e. inebriation, not California, he was more than willing to make an ass of himself.

Yet the biggest concern is not young Tyler’s words but the fact that he’s had previous alcohol-related episodes.  USC suspended him for the first game of this coming season and is being criticized for not cutting ties with the senior.  True, he is a 23-year-old and ought to know better but if he were dismissed, what do we think would happen to him?  Now, he fully understands that any misstep will end his college career.

College is about educating people.  So is football.  Independent of his skill level, the decision was the right one.  Marc Tyler is an example of the line:

“Some people grow up later than others.”

Unfortunately, some never grow up.

Call it the curse of Lane Kiffin.  After Kiffin fled Knoxville after only one year, bad things began happening for the University of Tennessee football team.  First of all, I don’t believe Kiffin had planned on leaving UT after just one season but Pete Carroll pulled an unexpected departure of his own when the Seattle Seahawks gave him the opportunity to redeem himself as far as coaching in the NFL.

Granted the NCAA was coming down on USC but Carroll had rebuilt the Trojans program into the power they hadn’t been since their heyday.  Did he long for the pro game and a desire to show his first couple NFL stints weren’t the real PC?  Or did he bolt to stay one step ahead of the posse?  Either way, he is a rich man and according to most in the know has done a reasonably good job with Seattle.

No one in Knoxville believes there’s any better job in the college game than the Big Orange.  I can vouch for that having spent seven years on the basketball staff there and witnessing what UT football means to the entire state.  Just as I understand the Trojans faithful who would have been shocked and appalled if a college coach were to turn down SC if he were offered that prestigious position.

Whatever the case, Kiffin left and being a man of not so high moral standards, did so in such a way that the Vols’ program was in quite a disarray.  Even with all the facilities and resources UT has, it will probably take two years before the program is in top 25 shape.  If you don’t believe me, just ask current coach Derek Dooley.  Kiffin’s departure was so untimely that the Vols lost recruits for this season.  Some of those who had committed, including some already enrolled, were allegedly contacted by the new staff at SC, setting the integrity bar incredibly lower than even football coaches would stoop.

The season went on in spite of all their problems.  Losing talent in a conference like the SEC is bad enough, but creating depth problems on top of that is, as DeNiro says in the disappointing movie The Little Fockers (that my wife and I saw last night), “double dose.”  The new UT staff dealt with that rather courageously, although for a while it looked like the Big O might go oh-fer.

Then, the real bad luck began.  An apparent upset win (upset is putting it mildly) against LSU was taken away after the Vols were whistled for too many (as in two many) men on the field and the Bengal Tigers were given another play on which they scored.  The tragedy was that Tennessee outplayed LSU that game and deserved to win.  LSU’s clock management at the end of the contest (not exactly a one-time problem for the Tigers) was the picture perfect definition of SNAFU.

Behind Kingsburg’s own Tyler Bray, a freshman QB right out of the San Joaquin Valley, the Vols started playing better (against admittedly the weak part of their schedule) and strung enough W’s to become bowl eligible.  The bowl gods were smiling down on the crippled UT program by awarding them, not coincidentally, the Music City Bowl in centrally located Nashville.  Volunteer fans are the definition of a school that “travels well” and in a situation where they didn’t have far to travel packed the stadium.

But wouldn’t you know it, the end of regulation was basically a repeat of the LSU contest.  With Tennessee ahead of (equally battered) North Carolina, the last play of the game might not have been FUBAR (to use a different acronym with the same meaning).  Some of UNC’s players thought they were going to attempt a game-tying field goal, while others . . . didn’t.  The result was the Tarheels’ QB spiking the ball with one tick on the clock remaining.  With all the confusion, the referees correctly assessed the penalty on Carolina, but incorrectly marked off five, rather than the fifteen, the penalty deserved.  UNC’s kicker put the ball through the uprights and UNC won in double OT.  Would he have made the longer try?  We’ll never know but the way UT’s season went, there’s only one pertinent quote, and as a Dodger fan in the ’50s I know it all too well:

“Wait ’til next year.”

As anyone who has a passing interest in college athletics knows - and probably to some who don’t have ANY interest - Reggie Bush was forced to return his Heisman Trophy.  This action was taken after USC returned their Bush Heisman and was made to vacate wins during his era).  If all that wasn’t embarrassing enough to the intercollegiate’s governing body, this year’s sure-fire bet to win the coveted trophy, Cam Newton, was embroiled in controversy regarding breaking NCAA rules.

It turned out that, after the NCAA (thoroughly) investigated the situation, it was only Newton’s father who had committed any infractions, so the Auburn QB was cleared to play for the nation’s top team.  Lucky too, because ruling him ineligible - and forcing the War Eagles to forfeit wins, so late into the season, would have clouded an already foggy BCS landscape.

SC athletics director, Pat Haden, publicly questioned the NCAA’s ruling, stating that in the Reggie Bush case, it was also the parents who received from improper benefits.  Others brought up that in an earlier interview regarding his recruitment, Cam Newton made the statement that, one evening at a family dinner, his dad said, “It’s Auburn” and that was when the decision was made about his future.  In his most recent accounting of his choosing a college, the junior Newton claims he never spoke to his father about where he was going to matriculate.

Those two incidents haven’t been the only NCAA problems regarding student-athlete ineligibility.  Highly recruited players, Enes Kanter (Kentucky) and Josh Selby (Kansas), were ruled ineligible - the latter just recently being allowed to compete while the former still remains sidelined.

In addition Martinique native Guy-Marc Michel (Indiana) was declared ineligible for reasons similar to Kanter, i.e. that, for various reasons, each had violated amateur status.  Last week, Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelly were declared ineligible and, not to be outdone, five prominent members of the Ohio State football team were found to have broken NCAA rules.  None will be withheld from competing in their BCS bowl (making the NCAA look bad), all will have serve suspensions next year (hurting the Buckeyes’ chances) and OSU will appeal the ruling, dragging the story out even longer (making both look bad).

I’m not being cynical when I say that these reported violations aren’t first time infractions.  24 hour news availability, nearly every cell phone having the capability of taking pictures (or video), the meteoric rise of the “investigative journalist” (so many see Woodward and Bernstein as role models) and the acceptance of “anonymous sources” have brought instances like these to the public’s attention.  Therein lies the major problem for the NCAA.

It used to be that only the “little” guys got put on probation.  The big boys knew the rules and how to avoid getting caught.  Does anyone really think Heisman Trophy winners didn’t get items beyond room, board, books, tuition and fees?  Star athletes, especially from college towns, didn’t get preferential treatment?  Come on.  New technology has forced the NCAA’s hand.  The schools in the (negative) news nowadays are the organization’s cash cows.  Let’s make one thing perfectly clear:  Paying players is not the answer.

What many of these kids did wouldn’t be avoided if student-athletes were given a monthly stipend - even as much as $500/month.  This is a much larger problem that can be solved with a pittance.  In the following quote by Henry David Thoreau, the NCAA is the thousand.  What we need - and maybe it’s a panel of proactive, imaginative thinkers - is the one he was speaking about:

“For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.”

The official final score of the LSU-Tennessee game was 16-14 in favor of LSU, meaning the Vols tacked on another loss to a disastrous season which began when the Seattle Seahawks lured Pete Carroll away from USC.  The dominoes started to fall and Lane Kiffin, public enemy #1 in Knoxville, left to take over the Trojans’ program.  I truly believe that Kiffin had intended to stay at UT.  Although you’d have a hard time convincing any Big Orange fan that SC is a better football job than their beloved Vols, most present day football coaches - and others “in the know” - believe it is.

Kiffin didn’t just leave the program, he left it hurriedly and in a mess - at the worst possible time - when prospects had already selected their schools.  This meant that Tennessee had to try to re-recruit the kids who committed to it.  That’s tough to do without a coach - and tougher when the character of Kiffin and his staff was revealed in the way they may or may not have tried to talk the kids they told about Knoxville being the center of the collegiate football universe that that wasn’t exactly the case.  Consequently, the Vols are short-handed in the talent department - relative to the make up of a “normal” Tennessee squad.

This season has produced a double OT win vs. UAB and a bunch of good first halves against better competition.  Yesterday, in Death Valley, the Big Orange season was about to be given a major boost.  They were going to a signature win, against an undefeated, ranked Bengal Tigers team in Baton Rouge - if they could hold LSU for one play - albeit at their own 1-yard line.  Turned out they didn’t have to.  LSU held themselves by setting a record for poorest time management in a team sport.  They stumbled and bumbled, with the clock winding down, until an errant snap from center effectively ended the contest.

Wait!  A flag on the play.  Tennessee had too many men on the field or, in this case, two many men on the field.  Instead of the legal 11 participants, UT had 13 defenders - for, as it worked out, a play that didn’t need any.  When fans question why NCAA entrance requirements have gotten more strict, it’s because counting is a necessary skill for today’s players, what with instant replay and all.  No more winning a national championship on 5th down.

How could this have happened?  It turns out, according to Dr. Lou (Holtz), it shouldn’t have.  Volunteers’ coach Derek Dooley said as much in his post-game remarks.  Apparently, there’s a rule that states if the offense substitutes, a referee is to stand over the ball and give the defense an adequate amount of time to sub as well.  What took place in Baton Rouge resembled a poorly performed fire drill.  With broader use of instant replay, referees can’t win either.  As if their job weren’t hard enough.

What about LSU?  They had to be winners.  After all, when the final score of a football game is 16-14 and you’re 16, you win!  Not in this case.  This is the SEC.  Sure, Les Miles won a national championship for the Tigers and then withdrew his name from consideration for, according to sources claiming to know him well, his dream job - the University of Michigan.  Whether he regrets that decision now, keep in mind that LSU fans tend to be a tad more violent than Tennessee supporters and Cleveland Cavalier followers - and consider how those people reacted when Lane Kiffin and LeBron James left their areas.  As most people are aware, politics in Louisiana are at another level compared to anywhere else in the country, with the possible exception of Chicago.

So Les stayed.  And the Tigers’ program has gone downhill.  To many an LSU fan that would mean they haven’t won another national championship.  To sink to the depths LSU has in the past few years has considerably turned up the heat in Miles’ kitchen.  “Undisciplined,” say some - and the excessive number of penalties yesterday might been seen as proof of that allegation.  “Poor game management,” cry others.

During LSU’s final drive, down 14-10 and facing a 4th & 9, the Tigers failed to get off a play in time, resulting in a 4th & 14.  Although they had one time out left, some might have thought they wanted to save it for an emergency situation later in the drive.  So what ensues?  They call that last time out - right after the penalty is marked off.  It’s been said that a true LSU fan’s first word is, “Boo!”  After the TO was called, that syllable was echoing throughout the stadium.

Then came another reason the favorite cheer at LSU has changed from “Let’s go Les” to “Please go Les.”  Miles has a riverboat gambler reputation, something fans revere - when your unconventional calls work out.  All of them.  And you win games.  All of them.  Shuttling quarterbacks is Miles’ latest ploy.  He’s not the only coach in the country using this strategy, just the only one LSU fans care about.

He switched QB’s with the ball on the three-yard line and the play only netted a couple yards.  With the clock running (”damn, I wish we’d held onto that last time out”), it was decided they’d go back to the original signal caller.  Only the team couldn’t decide which formation to be in or which play to run or where they parked their cars - and as the snap went by its intended receiver and the clock hit 0:00, it’s safe to say words stronger than “Boo” were being uttered - loudly.

Then came the flag - and the subsequent LSU TD. It’s just that human nature being what it is, people who make the kind of statements rabid fans make are very hesitant to take them back.  They’ve already distanced themselves from the team and to start cheering wildly would lose face.  So they stick to their guns and call their favorite team lucky - and maintain the coach should face the guillotine.

Oh yeah, LSU is undefeated this year.  Only time will tell if Dr. Lou’s assessment of a college football season is true:

“To the fan, a perfect season is when the team goes undefeated - and they fire the coach.”

When polls are taken as to which teams fans like the most, the names that are mentioned most often are the Yankees, Lakers, Patriots, USC (football), UConn (women’s basketball and Duke & North Carolina (men’s basketball).  When the question that’s asked is which teams do fans hate the most, the same names appear.

People want to be winners and, aligning themselves with a winner, makes them one - or so the thinking goes for many I’ve known over the years.  For those who want to see competitive balance, the teams that win all the time are looked at as evil empires (as Geno Auriemma used to call the Lady Vols, and, ironically, what a good deal of the country now refer to his program).  After last night’s NIT semi-final game between the Tarheels and the Rhode Island Rams, that segment of society is in an uproar.

Near the end of a very competitive game (which URI had led, and had more than share of opportunities to seal it), there were four calls, all of which went Carolina’s way.  The first was a drive by a Rhody guard in which a Tarheel defender grabbed his arm, only to have the offensive player fight through it and score anyway.  Definitely a missed call, however.

The next were a series of calls on the final play of overtime.  First, a UNC guard apparently traveled (no replay, but a move that had color commentary Bill Raftery say, “Oh, could have been a travel” and it did look as though there was a shuffling of the feet), then an out-of-bounds call that could have gone either way (although a replay looked as though the refs got it right), followed by a scramble after a Tarheel missed shot, with the Heels up one, the Rams Lamonte Ulmer got the rebound and attempted to push it upcourt when Tarheel Will graves tripped him - with his hand.  It wasn’t a cheap shot, more like a reaction, but nonetheless, a foul should have been called.

ESPN’s “third man in the booth,” Fran Fraschilla, made the comment that not only was there a foul on the play, but that call is a point of emphasis for referees this season.  I know both coaches, Roy Williams and Jimmy Baron, quite well and honestly, I had no rooting interest in the game.  Maybe that’s why my first thought was, “the Tarheel haters will be out in force tonight” (and tomorrow).  The reason jealousy is unhealthy is summed up by Baltasar Gracian:

“The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.”

Fans know weird things can happen to their teams.  When they actually do, though, there’s still major shock value.  For youth, e.g. players, the first time something like occurs, especially when it directly affects them, their world can be turned upside-down.

Take, for example, a group of America’s finest football players who recently, after having their senior years adjusted so they could graduate early, enrolled in the University of Tennessee.  In many cases, these youngsters gave up winter and spring sports in which they may have excelled (not even taking events that become lifelong memories like the prom, the senior class trip and graduation parties into account).  No matter how cool a front a kid puts up, i.e. like he’s not really fazed by all the attention and gear (and that’s some pretty sweet swag), you know there’s an little man inside him jumping up and down, excited as all get-out.

One of those youngsters is the San Joaquin Valley’s Tyler Bray, player-of-the-year, billed as UT’s next quarterback savior - and if you think there’s no one the people of Knoxville have to compare him to, let me remind you of a guy who just won his (unprecedented) fourth NFL MVP.  It’s fair to say the bar is rather high for a QB in Big Orange Country.  Ty was an outstanding (6-7) shooting guard/”small” forward for KHS’s basketball team and an accomplished pitcher for the baseball squad. 

Yesterday, the man who recruited him, Lane Kiffin, as well as the guts of his staff, called an emergency meeting.  We can only wonder what went through his mind when the reason for the hastily called meeting was to inform one and all that the head coach was leaving to replace Pete Carroll at USC.  Obviously, this was a quick courtship of Kiffin, since SC seemed to be directing its efforts elsewhere.  Nonetheless, this has to be quite a shock for young Mr. Bray too.  I mean what if the Big Orange brass decide to hire a guy who prefers the “Wildcat?” 

At least he’s not alone.  His family recently moved to Tennessee.  However, all of this hubbub may not be any cause for concern.  In fact, if rumors are true that Duke’s head coach, David Cutcliffe, is being offered the job, Bray will be trading a young, talented and brash mentor for a wise football mind who tutored the Manning brothers, Peyton as QB coach at UT and Eli as the head man at Ole Miss.  

That depends on whether Tennessee can lure Cutcliffe to Knoxville.  While some may question whether SC’s a better job than UT, the opinion’s as close to unanimous as one can be that the Vols program trumps Duke’s - although Duke is certainly the superior academic school.  Then again, if the institution’s graduation rates really mattered in college football, Stanford and Vanderbilt (or maybe even Duke) would play each other for the National Championship every year.

What Bray and the other “new Vols” are experiencing is similar to what SC’s recruits are going through.  Some, allegedly, “uncommitted” to the Trojans when Carroll left.  With Kiffin and what may be the strongest coaching staff ever assembled coming to SC, they might wish they never reversed field, especially if some of them popped off about loyalty, etc., as young kids are prone to do.  They will surely welcomed back - after all, talent wins out in the end - but their first meal on campus may be crow.

As far as loyalty and breaking hearts, consider that Tyler Bray had verbally committed to San Diego State prior to changing his mind.  I remember one coach saying that a kid backing out of a commitment was akin to saying, “I’ll commit to you . . . unless I get a better offer.”  The coach then made the statement, “How would kids like it if schools offered a scholarship and then, withdrew it saying they found a better player?”  How prophetic.

Egos may be bruised, dreams (temporarily) crushed, but ultimately everybody will survive.  The lesson that will be learned is one articulated by the late John Lennon:

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

The overwhelming majority of people in and out of football - from those who know just a little something about the game to the “experts” claim that quarterback is the most important position on the team.

If that’s so (and who out there says it’s not?), then using a draft pick - especially a high one, e.g. the first three rounds - must take considerable thought and planning.  Yet, a number one overall pick like Peyton Manning threatens to break every record for that position in the history of football, while a number two overall pick (the same year) like Ryan Leaf threatens seemingly everything (and everyone) else.  Tom Brady gets drafted late and several other QB’s go before him.  I’d imagine there was considerable reevaluating the draft decisions that year. 

Bill Parcells, legendary coach and now president of the Miami Dolphins, seems to have found the “Rules to Draft by” when it comes to picking future signal callers.  These were announced during last night’s Dolphins-Jets Monday Night Football game and, while they may seem rather restrictive, Parcells (and his track record in the game) are not to be scoffed at, lest the “scoffer” be ready for battle, as Parcells has be known to threaten a time or two.

Whatever the case, here are the Tuna’s rules for drafting a quarterback:

1) He must be a senior.  (Bill’s not known for his patience and, usually, the younger the QB, the more time he takes to properly master the job).

2) He must be a graduate.  (Hey, if you’re paying your guy a lot of money and he’s going to handle the ball on every offensive play, he’d better not be a quitter.  Rather, you want someone who takes his responsibilities seriously, e.g. no blowing off the spring semester to get ready for the combines).

3) He must be a three-year starter.  (Once again, a lot of dough, as well as a good portion of the game plan, goes to this guy and it would be awful to get stuck with a “flash-in-the-pan,” someone who waited, got his opportunity but what was overlooked, was that he took over a veteran team that only needed someone to keep a ship from sinking, not one to direct it to the shore).

4) He must have at least 23 wins.  (It’s too easy to put up big numbers with a losing team who chucks it 50 times a game). 

Very stringent demands and not every year will they be met.  That must be exactly what’s behind the big guy’s thinking.  And if no one meets the standards, there’s always a trade, or easier yet, free agency.

After watching the show Chad Henne put on last night - in a game that Steve Young called the best duel he’d ever seen between two young QB’s (and Steve’s someone with the creds to judge quarterbacks), the Dolphins seem to have found their quarterback of the future - and maybe, the present.  Then, again, one-year-starter Mark Sanchez (whom even his own college coach, Pete Carroll - also no stranger to success - said he needed another year of college) looked mighty promising.

Yet, one of the qualities a leader must have is decisiveness and Parcells certainly qualifies in that category.

I have no idea who Eric Langmuir is, but, when his quote is put in the context of drafting a quarterback, it becomes one of the greatest understatements of all time:

“A decision without the pressure of consequence is hardly a decision at all.”

After watching football on TV for the better part (all?) of yesterday, I’ve come to the conclusion that watching at least one game ought to be required viewing for all parents - as well as each of their children.

Yesterday’s slate (and probably every week’s) taught a myriad of life lessons, among them: accountability, teamwork, humility, the value of a strong work ethic, loyalty and resiliency.  There was drama in most every game - and even in those that were blowouts from the opening whistle, there are valuable teaching points, e.g. for the members of the winning squads, they should realize that either hard work pays off or it’s easy to overpower an opponent not nearly so big, strong or talented as you are.  And when the score is overwhelmingly in your favor, act appropriately.  There’s no need to gloat, strut or trash talk - since you accomplished nothing that wasn’t expected from you - and, should you happen to be on the other end someday, remember the emtions of those on that side and, while displaying dignity in losing, find determination that you will not experience this feeling ever again (or at least for the next week).  Make sure no one ever says you couldn’t handle adversity, that when confronted with a seemingly impossible task to overcome - and you fail (sometimes even miserably) to overcome it, that you simply do not pack it in, i.e. you don’t quit.

If your team is fortunate enough to come out on top of a close, hard fought battle, make certain that you share credit with others who made the success possible (no one player can win a team game by him or herself).  Praise the effort of your opponents and keep in perspective that there might come a time (maybe a lot sooner than you think) when the outcome could place you on the less desirable side.  And, when faced with that reality, you’ll be able to handle it with the grace of a winner, albeit one who just happened to come out on the short end of the scoreboard.  No excuses, no finger pointing, no blaming teammates, officials, coaches, fans, the elements or pure luck and, although the loss stings, that you can’t wait until you get a chance to prepare for the next contest, so that the result will be reversed. 

There were times this weekend when things were going along swimmingly, until the very end, when a chink in the armor was revealed and the team that was winning the whole game found itself wondering how things changed so fast (think about Ohio State-USC) or when a team looked like they had the game sewed up, only to allow its opponent to get up off the carpet, punch them squarely in the mouth, . . . somehow they hang on (think UCLA-Tennessee, with Kevin Prince’s mouth being the recipient - and to add insult to pain, the mistake gave the Vols two points and the ball in excellent field position).

Following any games, but especially the close ones, you normally have to face second guessing - usually that of someone in your camp (although most people are empathetic enough and, thank goodness, lack the blatant rudeness that they wouldn’t confront you during a time where you’re attempting to put a loss behind you and look to the future.  In instances where the outcomes had far greater meanings than just which team was the winner and which was the loser (think ND-Michigan, Fresno State-Wisconsin, Oklahoma State-Houston), life is extra difficult.    

When faced with a second guesser, should you agree with the person posing the “what-if” decisions (often, the coach’s) that were made which may have precipitated or even led directly to the final result going against your squad?  This is an area where many in this country can’t wait to agree with the second guesser, especially if doing so might further their own cause.  No team can function successfully in that environment yet, unfortunately, that seems to be the overwhelmingly shared personality trait of our political world today. 

My (our) agenda is put over the team’s plan because, plain and simple, while I want my way, I, equally as much want need for you to fail.  In this case, the “team” is our country, our party, our organziation - and this attitude is gnawing away at the very fabric of the once powerful team we used to have.  ESPN’s Kirk Hirbstreit referred to living through this environment as dealing with negative energy.  It is following these outcomes, positive energy is not only what’s needed, but what’s mandatory. 

Sure, they’re “only games,” but it’s awful hard to tell that to the players and coaches on those units.  If athletics teams became as fractured as our society has become, football teams would suspend games and simply spread false and misleading information about the people they see as their opponent, misuse statistics and quotes to undermine the credibility of the opposition and lie in wait for a misstep by the other side, and then - treat it like a fumble, i.e. pounce all over it, as opposed to going all out to actually win on their own merits.

I recall years ago (probably more like decades now), the following comparison, which I think rings more true now than it did then.

“Someone once commented that the problem with sports is that they’re not enough like life; in reality, the problem with life is that it’s not enough like sports.”