Most people are aware that quarterbacks have wristbands with plays written on them in some kind of indecipherable code. Or some-such anyway. I wonder how long before someone figures out how to strap a cell-phone to their wrist with some kind of protector so the coaches can change the plays with the push of a button or in the middle of a drive or something.
It all sounds good, but running those guys isn’t enough. I don’t have any doubt that Miles knows the players involved. I’d be more apt to believe him serious if he’d declared that all those involved would be suspended for the 1st game, with further discipline to be determined as more facts come in.
But, as the article mentions, LSU has a pre-season rank of #4. And their first game is against pre-season #3 Oregon.
Got to keep those priorities straight.
Pat Forde has an article out about the Miami football debacle. He basically chronicles Miami football’s penchant for breaking NCAA rules and speculates about the severity of the coming punishment. He mentions that they may get the “death” penalty, which would basically kill football at Miami.
It looks to me like Forde is trying to setup the old “rotten apple” argument. I expect we’ll see this form of argument a lot in the weeks and months ahead. By sticking to that argument, it keeps the focus on the schools not enforcing rules properly and obscures the reality of the situation.
What’s the reality you ask? It’s the money making machine that is NCAA football. Thanks to NCAA football, we have football games almost every day of the week during the season. We’ve got multi-million dollar TV deals with conferences, multi-million dollar bowl games, multi-million dollar coaches and multi-million dollar facilities. We’ve got an entire parasitic culture (called “reporters” and “editorialists”) making money on the side for their 4 or 5 months worth of effort during the season.
Let me be more succinct. We’ve got everyone and anyone even peripherally involved with NCAA football making good money. With one notable exception. Have you noticed it yet?
No mention of the players. And without them, there is no money to be made. They are the lynch pin of college football- none of the above is possible without the players. Given all the money sloshing around the “amateur” apparatus, is it really so hard to believe that players might look at the occasional payout as a way for them to cash in?
I love the game. That’s what happens from the opening kickoff until time expires and a winner is determined. But the apparatus around the game; the rules makers and their apparatchiks from coaching staffs to the media, are rotten to the core. Playing whack-a-mole with the offenders won’t fix anything. For one, give Miami the death penalty and next year it’ll be Florida or Florida State.
More importantly, it obscures the real problem. That the system is the problem. A system where the very driver of the revenue is taken advantage of for 4 years of their lives. As long as that situation persists, so too will the Miami’s of college football.
Michael David Smith at ProFootballTalk.com points out some “highlights” for the coming storm at Miami. Perhaps if this had hit next year, the NCAA could brush it off again. But after the Ohio St. mess, well, perhaps not. There’s nothing so brazen as a bunch of guys protecting their money.
The thing that really has to be worrying the NCAA is the link at the end of the article. It’s to an article at Yahoo sports, which is in turn about the booster at Miami. Or, at least, he was. Now he’s in jail on securities fraud charges for running a $930 million dollar Ponzi scheme. The article has to be read to be believed.
I used to be a purist about college football, believing that the scholarship money they were given should be enough. The rest of us, after all, have to pay to go to college to figure out what we want. These guys get a free ride and get to do what they love.
But I now know it’s not that cut and dry. Especially when considering how the fat cats in the NCAA, the multi-million dollar coaches and everyone else skim plenty off of the sham that is “amateur” football. I’ve wondered in the past if there’s way to create a minor-league football system where high school recruits could go and train to join the NFL as well as earn money along the way without fear of reprisal.
Smith gets to the nub of the problem pretty well:
And that gets to the real problem in college football: As Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel writes, the allegedly amateur system of college athletics prevents players from earning money honestly and makes them more likely to turn to crooks like Shapiro when they need something. The entire college football system is corrupt. Miami is just the latest school to get caught up in that corruption.
I’m really starting to think the only way to come up with a “clean” amateur system is to destroy it and start anew.
By now, anyone clued into football knows that Randy Moss had decided to retire. Apparently, he wasn’t getting any offers from the teams he was interested in, so he decided to hang up the ol’ cleats.
It’s actually remarkable to think that he’s been playing for 13 years in the NFL. Frankly, it doesn’t seem that long and it certainly seemed like he could have milked his career for another 3 or 4 seasons. He had too much talent.
This list of highlights over at ProFootballTalk is pretty good. I remember a number of them; especially, the Thanksgiving Day game against Dallas during his rookie year. After that, I figured it was only a matter of time before he crushed all of Rice’s records.
For my part, I’d add 3 other memorable moments:
His first game as a Patriot against the Jets- he’s drawn triple coverage on a deep crossing route. Brady throws the ball to the sideline and there’s only 1 guy on the field who has any chance of catching it, and he does. Result, 40 or so yard touchdown pass in a Pats win. (First highlight, here.)
While still a Viking, I recall a remarkable over-the-should lateral that his teammate took for a touchdown. Watching it on replay, it was never clear how Moss even knew the player was going to be there. Check it out for yourself.
In the one Super Bowl he appeared in, the Patriots are down by 3+ and their offense has been stymied all day. Brady and Moss hook up repeatedly on a last ditch type drive, culminating in a Brady-Moss touchdown pass to give the Patriots the lead with only a couple minutes to play. It was his only touchdown of the day, everyone knew it was coming and it still couldn’t be stopped.
Ultimately, Moss played football his way. Not everyone agreed with it, but he held fast to whatever principles he played by. I’ve always liked him and felt sports media was constantly trying to cut him down to size. The problem for the media is that people still wanted to see Moss play- the sports media knew this and Moss knew this and he ultimately didn’t care what was printed about him. He was proof-positive of who truly holds the whip-hand in the sport media-player relationship.
That’s not to say he was perfect. Sure, I sometimes wish he been more in the mold of Rice. But then he likely would not have been the electrifying player he was. I think the simple fact is he was better than everyone else, period. After awhile, he got bored by the game because even at it’s pinnacle there was no one who could stop him. People might say Darrelle Revis managed it, but I don’t buy it. Moss owned him in Moss’ last Pats-Jets game. Revis is in his prime, Moss was well past his own at the time.
I’ve always liked the “If you had to choose a player for your game-of-the-century, who would it be?” question when evaluating greatness in a player. I think Randy Moss is the number 1 answer to that question for a lot of fans. Myself included.
OK, I’m trying really hard not to laugh…
And failing miserably…BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I’m pretty sure we all know how this ends.
The Vikings are close to signing Donovan McNabb.
I won’t say this is a terrible, horrible, awful idea. I’ll guess that the Vikings are hoping (not betting- hoping) that McNabb has 1 year left in the tank. And not just any year- a year like Favre gave them a couple seasons ago.
I will say that I think it’s an exceedingly bad bet. I don’t think McNabb was ever half the quarterback that Favre was. I think McNabb benefited from a real good coaching staff in Philadelphia and just enough offensive talent around him to have some real good years there. I think that Philly also had some really good defensive teams that gave McNabb and his offense a lot of margin for error.
But McNabb isn’t young anymore and his mobility isn’t what it was and I don’t think he is flexible enough to move from one system to another. Look what happened in Washington last year.
I think Minnesota will be in for another disappointing year.
Hardly news at this point, but my only prediction regarding the lockout was it would NOT shorten the season. There was just too much money on the line.
And I was right. Take that professional prognosticators.
A quick read through some articles at ProFootballTalk and ESPN indicate that, while the owners have approved the deal, there’s a lot of confusion on the player’s part. They claim the owners slipped things in at the last minute and, generally, they seem to be distrustful of the new CBA. Also, I get the sense that the owners are trying to rush thing along.
Given some of the assertions and claims, for example: the owners are demanding the players recertify as a union, the owners added revenue sharing rules that hadn’t been discussed before, claims the players haven’t even seen the owner’s proposal; I think the players would be best served to take a deep breath and resist the temptation to rush to vote.
This tactic in negotiations seems to be the latest fad: push the talks to the brink of a deadline, create the appearance of majority agreement in the eleventh hour, and then rush to get everything signed. Think back to the end of year tax deal signed by the government, the current debt talks, even the ACA and they all have that general pattern. Personally, I don’t think any of them have ended well, and I’m thinking that the same may likely be true for the players.
That’s just my two cents; the players and owners have a lot more than that riding on this stuff.
Reading this post about Alzheimer’s in pro football players, the thought occurred that maybe current football helmets should have a soft outer shell, as opposed to the current hard shell designs. A soft outer shell would have a dampening effect on shots to the head; as opposed to current hard shell designs which basically transfer energy directly to the noggin’. Going a step further, I decided to google it, because I can’t be the only one who’s had that thought.
Here’s one design. Here’s another.
They’re both a couple of different takes on the soft shell thought. One is supposed to be available this year, the other not until next year. I think soft shells would be most effective when all players are using them, since collisions between soft shell helmets should have twice the effect. Considering all of the focus on head injuries in recent years, it’ll be interesting to see if these kinds of helmets catch on.
As a final stray thought, I wonder if anyone is working on a combined shoulder-pad helmet design. The idea being that energy from a head collision is transferred to the shoulder pads. It would have the added benefit of taking some stress off of the neck during impact as well.
A few weeks ago, the guys at ProFootballTalk.com were writing almost daily about how talks were going well and a deal of some sort was imminent. Now, here we are, in some cases well passed the predicted conclusion of the lockout, and now we’re getting reports like this. So it’s safe to say that, regardless of their sources, nobody really knows anything. Excepting the fact that the negotiations are difficult. Breaking news that.
When the next prediction comes about, just keep this in mind.
I continue to believe that a deal will be in place for the regular season. I don’t particularly care about the preseason and my guess is more than a few of the players wouldn’t mind missing out a bit on the preseason. Yes, that’s some money lost, but it pales in comparison to the in-season money. I think they’d be fine with saving themselves a bit of wear and tear at this stage. It’s not like the quality of the game is going to suffer that much- these guys are professionals after all. The owners will suffer more from lost preseason revenue to my way of thinking.
That’s as close to a prediction as I’ll come.
Mike Florio has an interesting assessment about some of the cross currents in the negotiation process. He essentially says the players’ lawyers are using the players for their (the lawyers’) own ends. Or at least, he thinks the owners think that and also feels it’s a plausible concern. Florio hints at the lawyers seeing themselves as “making law”; perhaps he doesn’t mention a bigger paycheck because that motivation is so obvious.
I’ll add an anecdotal conversation I had with a football agent I know. He felt it was a mistake from the beginning to involve lawyers in the process because all lawyers know is law, as opposed to negotiating. Agents, in contrast, are all about negotiating on the behalf of the players and have established relationships with the owners. In other words, the interests of the agents are more in line with the interests of the players than those of the lawyers.
Given this line of argument, as well as the evidence Florio lays out, I hope some of the players are also thinking about these issues. If it’s correct, then they are facing 2 opponents: the owners and their own lawyers.
This won’t come as a great surprise to anyone who’s been half-paying attention- UNC’s football program has been notified of alleged violations now. So we’ll be moving on from Ohio St, and USC before that. Perhaps the NCAA, if they are truly serious about stopping these violations, needs to start axing these programs, basically telling them that “We will not allow you to field a team against other NCAA teams” or something. Clearly, the incentives do not work in the NCAA’s favor at this point in time.
To be honest, I don’t really think the NCAA wants to do anything other than look like they mean business.
The bad news is that the miserable sports season is upon us. After the Stanley Cup Finals end tomorrow, all we’ve got is baseball. Yuck.
The good news is it looks like there will be an NFL season. Sounds like good progress is being made in negotiations between the NFL and players. If that in fact comes to fruition, I predict zero damage done to the NFL’s popularity.
FOLLOWUP:
Here’s a followup outlining the steps that have to be played out. It strongly implies that the timetable as of now means everything can’t possibly be settled until after the start of the season. As such, some things will have to taken on faith. Interesting.
For Ohio St. that is.. Terrelle Pryor was a pretty good Big 10 QB and losing him won’t help Ohio St.’s chances this year. I wonder if that’ll be it?
And let’s not forget that USC was stripped of their ’04 BCS title as well. Though at this point, that’s mainly a meaningless gesture.
Via ESPN, Jim Tressel has resigned from Ohio St. I don’t know most of the details, but sadly it appears to be another case of a big time program paying the price for its success in the form of players accepting compensation, coaches knowing about it and so forth. These scandals happen so regularly anymore in college football that I think whatever “governing” body, or what-have-you, in charge needs to rethink the way college football is managed.
In one sense, perhaps with the competitiveness and the money on the line for the universities in questions these problems are endemic. In another, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t another way to setup the rules for recruiting and player responsibility and player behavior such that scandals don’t have to be a pattern.
Now, I’m not saying that just because these scandals are a regular occurrence changes should be made. I am saying that because these scandals area regular occurrence perhaps some more thought should go into what truly constitutes proper player behavior at the collegiate level. In other words, perhaps the frequency of these sort of things means the rules aren’t realistic. I’m more than willing to be wrong here, but I have to wonder, at this point, if that isn’t the case.
I’ll confess to being surprised that a deal hasn’t been reached between the players and owners. More surprised that some kind of deal isn’t imminent. Perhaps after the current round of court wranglings are over.
In the meantime, we get word of how desperate things are getting for some players. If stuff like that becomes widespread, it can’t possibly end well.
…your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Meet Johnny Sullivan- 12 year old wunderkind. I’m guessing the editing was not insubstantial, but still, the kid can throw a football. There’s a good chance we’ll be seeing him in about 5 years at a major college. As well as the video.
hattip: Patterico’s Pontifications
As of midnight last night, the players have been locked out by the owners.
I know the tendency is to try and figure out who the good guys and bad guys are and most times, social attitudes determine that balance. This time around, I really find myself in the middle. Owners seems to be airing legitimate business concerns and players are voicing legitimate employee concerns. Between the two groups, I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to screw things up.
Actually, no. I’ve been confident about the prospects of the 2011 season for the simple reason that football is the sport in the US and the example set by pro baseball a few years back remains. I don’t think anyone wants to jeopardize the money making machine that the NFL has in place. Owners and players alike have too many bills to pay. If the season is affected, both parties will suffer for years due to the damaged fan relationship.
In the end, that’s the only business decision that matters. So I continue to believe they will work their differences prior to the season starting.