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December 2007
Johnson pledges ‘fresh start’ with Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Boise, Idaho — For Georgia Tech football players, especially those who’ll return next season in search of prominence under a new coaching regime, Paul Johnson spent Monday inside the freezer that was Bronco Stadium as the invisible man, just the way he wanted it.
Like others, Calvin Booker responded to the news of Johnson’s presence with wide eyes after a valiant but futile comeback by the Yellow Jackets against Fresno State in the Humanitarian Bowl evolved into a 40-28 loss.
“No, I didn’t even know [Johnson] was there,” said Booker, Tech’s junior backup quarterback, whose brilliance down the stretch nearly helped the Jackets overcome the second of two 20-point deficits.
Johnson was there, all right. He really was, which caused raised eyebrows from freshman running back Jonathan Dwyer, another reason for Tech’s mighty spurt near the end. “This is news to me, because I didn’t know,” Dwyer said. “I’ve only seen him long enough [at Tech since his hire earlier this month] to say, ‘Hi.’ “
Booker. Dwyer. If you throw in a few nice moments from returning safety Morgan Burnett, wide receiver D.J. Donley and several other Tech players, the view was lovely for Johnson from the upper deck of the stadium. Above, you had an Idaho sky as blue as Boise State’s famous playing surface. Across the way, you had a rolling portion of the Rocky Mountains dressed with fresh snow. Below, you had the Tech team he was inheriting after the game doing all sorts of nice things.
Then crazy things.
Finally, there were a bunch of losing things for the Jackets under interim coach Jon Tenuta and his staff before some encouraging things from Booker, Dwyer and the rest. Through it all, Johnson braved the temperatures in the low 20s from his spot in the stands just like everybody else among the shivering 27,062.
Unlike everybody else, Johnson studied the action on the field more than he watched it, but only to a point.
“All of these guys will have a fresh start with me, and I’ll look at them and base my opinions on what I see in front of me,” said Johnson, taking a break at halftime, with Tech’s colors represented by his blue sweater and gold shirt under his heavy black coat. “I’m not going to go off what I’m seeing out there today. What I do want to see is guys compete.”
No problem for Johnson in the second half, when Booker delivered more than a few clutch plays while completing 7 of 15 passes for 116 yards and a spectacular touchdown. Then there was Dwyer, who relieved injured star Tashard Choice and carried 12 times for 62 yards and two touchdowns.
“I didn’t know who I was looking at — Jonathan Dwyer or Walter Payton or somebody,” said Booker, laughing, after resembling a pro star himself while improvising on a 20-yard pass to Donley between two defenders in the end zone. How about Montana to Rice?
There also was Burnett doing his Deion Sanders routine. Once, he flew out of nowhere on his freshman legs to knock away a pass that was destined for a Fresno State long gainer or worse.
Johnson would settle for a bunch of college guys who fit his system.
“For me, they’re going to find out that it’s all about the team. I’m more into the team than I’m into the individual,” said Johnson, owner of a 107-39 record after head coaching stints with Navy and Georgia Southern. “We’ll have plenty of opportunity over the next three or four months to have them show me what they can do. The big thing is, I just want to get our staff in and start to get our program installed.”
There was the meantime, when Johnson tried so hard to stay away from the Jackets through Monday’s game that he purposely didn’t fly into town until late Sunday night. He wanted those who remained from Chan Gailey’s regime to have their time. “That’s commendable, and it showed that he had enough respect for the coaches and our seniors to sit back and let us do what we were doing,” Booker said. “His time is here now, and we’re going to follow his program.”
Hopefully, for Tech’s sake, that program won’t lead back to this scenic but chilly setting. Translated: A better bowl.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Stafford’s chance to get ‘08 momentum
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New Orleans — Matthew Stafford has spent most of his football life as a centerpiece. This week, he has been closer to the water glass.
It goes with Georgia’s season, which had some early bumps.
It goes with tonight’s opponent, Hawaii, 12-0 and the cool story.
It goes with the opposing quarterback, Colt Brennan, who has thrown 131 touchdown passes, exactly 100 more than Stafford.
“People have been joking with me all week: ‘How does it feel to be the other guy?’ ” Stafford said.
And the answer?
“It doesn’t bother me at all, really.”
Of course, that’s the right thing for him to say, whether or not he actually believes it. But after acknowledging Brennan’s statistics, Brennan’s records, Brennan’s star status and all other things Brennan, Stafford eventually admitted something.
“Sure, it motivates me,” he said. “You always say you don’t want to compete against the other guy. It’s quarterback vs. quarterback — you’re not really going to play against each other. But it’s definitely something that motivates me. It definitely gets me going.”
Tonight’s Sugar Bowl ends this season for the Bulldogs. But if Stafford views this year’s 13th game more as the start of next season, it’s understandable.
He often struggled as a true freshman. That wasn’t surprising, but his play at the outset of this year was. He admits he was so intent on cutting down mistakes that he became overly cautious. His obvious talent notwithstanding, he didn’t resemble the aggressive, attacking, carefree quarterback who was recruited out of Texas.
Mike Bobo, Georgia’s offensive coordinator, disclosed that he met with Stafford in October before the Vanderbilt game to discuss the player’s mind-set. The Dogs were 4-2 at the time and had just been smacked in Tennessee.
“We had several discussions, and part of it was just not to play scared,” Bobo said. “Have fun. Don’t play extremely cautious. Earlier we were stressing ball security and I still wanted to do that, but I didn’t want him out there playing afraid that he was going to make a mistake, and I felt like he was doing that. That was really before the Vanderbilt game we had that talk. We didn’t play particularly well for three quarters, but he played well in the fourth quarter that enabled us to get
the win.”
Stafford actually remembers the conversation with Bobo taking place after the Vanderbilt game. No matter. He clearly was a different quarterback down the stretch, triggering a six-game winning streak.
In consecutive victories over Florida, Troy and Auburn, Stafford threw for 671 yards and seven touchdowns. In the previous three games against Mississippi, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, he totaled 519 yards and four touchdowns. He threw only one interception in those three games but he felt tight.
“[Bobo] told me just to go out there and play like I did in high school,” Stafford said. “Last year we had so many turnovers, I guess I just wanted to play it safe. It was hard for me because that’s not my personality. But now I feel like I’m back on track.”
Which leads to this evening. Stafford can’t erase what happened earlier this season. But his performance in the Sugar Bowl, especially against Brennan, can go a long way toward jump-starting next season and shaping his tenure in Athens. He can be the centerpiece
again.
“Every guy wants to be the guy — that’s why you recruit guys like that,” Bobo said. “I hope [the lack of attention] does bother him some. Colt Brennan is considered one of the best quarterbacks in the country. If that motivates Matthew to work a little harder and study a little more tape, great.”
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Sweet end to sour season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Well, I went to a funeral Sunday afternoon and it turned into a resurrection. You know how it has been with the Falcons this season, one disaster after another, until they finally hit bottom. They were playing the Seattle Seahawks this time, already champions of their NFL division, a match guaranteed to attract a lot of green seats. You may have been shocked if you noticed in the paper that the Falcons were favored to win this game, after all the stuff they had endured.
Never doubt those odds-makers. They were giving Seattle a point and a half, which is practically no gamble at all. The Falcons were at home. They had nothing to lose, and they know how to do that efficiently. But on the other hand, the Seahawks were just running through dressed rehearsal for the playoffs. The premise was that Mike Holmgren wouldn’t over-work his lead hosses. And he didn’t. After the first half you never saw Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander again, or Deion Branch or Walter Jones at all, some of the Seahawks most treasured investments.
But still, look at the Falcons. They hadn’t won since early November, and then their victims were the sickly 49ers and Panthers. For that matter, they probably couldn’t beat their own scout team straight up. I say that carelessly, for their scout team quarterback most of the season was the quarterback who beat the Seahawks.
What a curious Georgian wants to know is, how is it that Chris Redman was the scout team quarterback for so long before he finally was “discovered” by the late, departed Bobby Petrino, who was his coach at Louisville?
Emmitt Thomas couldn’t answer that question either. The interim coach did say, “He had been running the scout team, and winning.” (Scout team, I should say, is the lineup the Falcons regulars tune up against for their upcoming opponent.) Petrino ran through Joey Harrington and wasted $4 million bucks to sign Byron Leftwich before giving Redman, who’d been there all along, a chance. Then jumped ship himself. Petrino, not Redman.
As it turned out, this was one helluva wrestling match. Neither team would quit, and as the Falcons kept putting points on the board, and this titillated crowd of 60-some-thousand, generously announced, became so waxed up they broke out into a wave, this made you sad this would be the end of their season. Through it all, Holmgren kept calling more and more of his front-liners out of their abbreviated “vacation.”
He explained: “We wanted to win the game. I was disappointed we didn’t. We had our chances.”
At the half, the score was 17-17. After three quarters the Seahawks led 27-20. Then the Falcons broke out in a rash of points, put it away, 44-41, but it was not a closed deal until time ran out. What you saw was, two angry seniors turn it on. Alge Crumpler, who had been snarly because he wasn’t seeing much of the ball, scored two touchdowns, one on a sudden burst from 55 yards out. Warrick Dunn, whose brief body has been taking some serious cuffing, ran for 70 yards and one touchdown. Redman, not to be overlooked, completed 17 of 27 passes for 251 yards, and one of those mysterious 132.9 ratings.
It’s just a shame so many of you stayed home. It didn’t rain inside the dome, except in enthusiasm. You’d also have been treated to a view of Jim Mora, the deposed Falcons coach of a year ago. He is listed as “assistant head coach/defensive backs” of the Seahawks — he said he wanted to get back to Washington, on that infamous radio interview, and he has — and his minions had a tough day’s work. And, Arthur Blank made a return appearance on the field in the gloaming. There hadn’t been much to inspire him of late.
But say this, after the Falcons got Tampa Bay out of their system, they have played Arizona to overtime and now beaten the best of the Northwest. None of which has buoyed Thomas’ expectations about this job. He’s 64 years old, has no outspoken interest in his present mission, but encourages Blank to get on with “letting the players know who their leader will be.” With no expectations it would be him, though he did enjoy his first Gatorade shower delivered by his loyal troops.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Jackets stung by suggestion of blowout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Georgia Tech quarterback Taylor Bennett said “a bunch of people” told him about it, but that he couldn’t care less. The same went for Philip Wheeler, the self-motivated linebacker for the Yellow Jackets, who suggested he’d rather try to lick the blue off the field at Boise State today during the Humanitarian Bowl than discuss the comments of Lee Corso, the ESPN college football analyst turned notorious Yellow Jackets basher.
Well, Corso is Tech’s Great Satan, at least according to Tashard Choice, the star running back for the Jackets with the automatic tongue. In regard to Corso telling his national television audience this month that Tech was the most likely of the 64 bowl teams to get blown out, Choice was among the few Tech players to admit that he heard it, and that he saw it, and that he wasn’t going to take it.
Not only that, Choice wants his shrugging teammates to have a similar anti-Corso mind-set when they attempt to win twice this afternoon against Fresno State. To hear Choice tell it, the Jackets can do so by scoring more points than their favored opponents, and they also can do so with a competitive outing that would keep Corso from becoming prophetic.
Translated: No blowout. Not unless it involves Tech over Fresno State.
Even so, Choice said that he won’t use his role as the team’s vocal leader to make Corso the focal point of his Gipper speech before the game.
“They don’t need me to do that, because they already know themselves without me saying anything what’s at stake,” Choice said. “Everybody’s aware of what he said. Out of all the bowl games to pick, he picked our bowl game. So we have to go out there and show him. Plain and simple.”
Whatever works.
If it works.
It needs to work, because the Jackets need something as motivation. The last time they were in this situation, they embarrassed themselves. They quit. That’s because their underwhelming bowl back then was called the Emerald in San Francisco. They yawned early and often against a mediocre Utah bunch in the post-Urban Meyer era, and the Utes eventually smashed the Jackets by 28 points.
Bennett sighed with the memory, saying, “It was rainy out there, and taking nothing away from Utah, it was bad all around. Everybody was kind of upset, because we all wanted to go down to Florida with the warm weather.”
It’s not warm in Boise, where Tech is facing Idaho snow instead of northern California rain this time, along with frigid temperatures. So the Jackets need motivation, all right, and they’ll likely have it, even beyond knowing Paul Johnson is in town to study every breath of the Tech players he’ll inherit from interim head coach Jon Tenuta after the game.
The Jackets’ other motivation is into wearing the heads of mascots.
“I don’t know how other guys deal with it, but I don’t pay attention to the media, so I try to keep that whole emotional aspect out of the game,” said Bennett, referring to Corso’s comments. “Once you start getting involved in that kind of stuff, it’s never ending. Playing behind [often-ridiculed Tech quarterback Reggie Ball] for three years, you just kind of learn the ropes of it. You see what happened to Reggie, who got the worst end of the deal, and you learn you can’t listen to that stuff, because it’s all downhill from there.”
Yes and no. You have Choice, for instance, who might have the game of his life by imagining Corso’s face on the jerseys of Fresno State defenders as they keep chasing his back.
Said Choice, “They never have any respect for Georgia Tech and what we do, and that’s fine with us. Any time somebody tells you that you can’t do something involving any part of your life, you want to go out there and prove them wrong. Nobody can keep you from doing something, unless you believe that yourself.”
Here’s what Tech players and officials need to believe: They’ll suffer bashing from Corso and from much of the Yellow Jacket Nation with another lackluster performance in another lackluster bowl.
Permalink | Comments (77) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Blank can’t afford any more mistakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The world will little note nor long remember what happened here Sunday. The world will recall instead the epic awfulness of a season unparalleled in the annals of sports. But say this for these star-crossed Falcons: In their final act, they played like professionals.
Said Arthur Blank: “I’ve had a team with four wins [this one], and I’ll have a team with 14 wins. And I won’t be any prouder of those players than I am of these.”
The Falcons won what amounted to an exhibition game Sunday, the erstwhile insurance salesman Chris Redman throwing four touchdown passes against a secondary tutored by the erstwhile Falcons coach Jim Mora. (Good ol’ Jimbo: Never could win a regular-season finale.) It must be said that Seattle, which was already in the playoffs, didn’t appear to be trying very hard. It must also be said that the Falcons, who haven’t had a prayer from Day 1 of training camp, clearly were.
Said Alge Crumpler, who scored two game-changing touchdowns in 82 seconds: “It has been a very long season, but we tried to quash any talk this week about what we were going to do in the offseason. We said, ‘Don’t worry about anything except the three hours we’re going to be on the football field.’ “
And now those three hours are done, three warm and fuzzy hours at the end of a season that seemed to span three decades. And now the Falcons have a general manager and a coach to hire, not necessarily in that order.
“The most logical process would be to hire the GM and then the coach,” Blank said. “We’re in the process of setting things up. We’ll be on the road by the middle of this week.”
According to Blank, outgoing GM Rich McKay will be a part of the process to choose his successor. That might not seem to make sense, but someone has to do the logistics. And Ernie Accorsi, retired from the Giants, has agreed to be Blank’s sounding board.
“We will work on [finding a GM and a coach] on a simultaneous basis,” Blank said. “We do want to be patient and be very thorough.”
So: Don’t expect any news conferences today or tomorrow. And should we expect separate introductory briefings, or one big fat combo platter?
Said Blank: “I’m tired of doing press conferences.”
The year began — literally, on Jan. 1, 2007 — with Blank briefing the media after firing Mora. Within a week he’d hired Bobby Petrino, whose name Crumpler couldn’t bear to utter Sunday, referring to him only as “the old coach.” Within another week Michael Vick had run afoul of authorities at the Miami airport. Within three months Vick had bigger and more lasting problems, and soon the team he’d left behind was about to embark on a campaign of what Crumpler called “pain and suffering.”
It was bad, yes. It was worse than bad. But it ended more gracefully than anyone had a right to expect, with the Dome two-thirds full and the crowd alive and the Falcons exiting as winners for the first time in 55 days, winning for a career assistant who’d calmed the waters roiled by the old coach’s desertion.
“He told us at Tampa Bay,” said Crumpler, speaking of Emmitt Thomas after that abject loss two weeks ago, “that we’d lost a little character and a little class.”
They got some of that back these past two Sundays, and a battered organization can at least point to one surprisingly bright finale as it starts over yet again. “I did not expect that many people to be here today,” Blank said. “That speaks to the credit of Atlanta.”
Said Crumpler: “This town is starving for good football. To see the crowd cheer, to hear them doing the wave … that’s something I hadn’t seen all season.”
And now, mercifully, there’s no more to the season that always had something worse waiting around the bend. There’s only a future, a blank slate and Blank himself. His beloved franchise has fallen so far that it has hit bottom. Whom he hires next will determine how soon it will rise. He was wrong about Vick and wrong about Petrino — to be fair, so was I — but the rich man, for all his wealth and passion, cannot afford to be wrong again.
Permalink | Comments (104) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Richt’s the anti-Petrino
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New Orleans — We see coaches walk through the front door pledging loyalty, and then crawl out the back. We see them leap from a campus to the NFL, only to flop and cower behind their agents on the way out. We see them leverage one “dream” job for the next “dream” job, because dreams apparently have a limited shelf life.
And then we see Mark Richt. If the coaching landscape has become a strip mall with ever-changing storefronts, Richt is the lamppost on the corner. He is not going anywhere. He is not looking anywhere. He is not “Dollar World” today and “Video Barn” tomorrow.
This is Richt’s seventh season with Georgia. It will be a shock if he doesn’t complete another seven, or 10, or 20. The NFL does not appeal to him. Another college job doesn’t tempt him. The school gave him an eight-year, $16 million contract two years ago and, given the new inflated SEC standards, expect the deal to be rewritten any day now.
Some coaches leave for money. Some leave for new challenges or another ego stroke. But Richt wouldn’t seem to fall into any category. This isn’t a new mind-set. He has always embraced stability, noting that he stayed at Florida State 15 out of 16 years (save one season as a coordinator at East Carolina), and it wasn’t for lack of opportunity.
“I got offered the Pittsburgh job about 12 years ago and decided not to go,” he said. “I asked [my wife] Kathryn, ‘Do you want to live in Pittsburgh the rest of your life?’ She said ‘no,’ and I said, ‘Then we’re not going.’ She asked, ‘why not?’ I said, ‘Because I don’t want to go to a school, knowing that I’m just using that as a steppingstone to go somewhere else. I’ll just stay where I’m at.’ I told her my goal is to stay at Florida State for the rest of our career, and if we do move for a head coaching opportunity, we move only once.”
Welcome to Mark Richt’s world. It’s Bobby Petrino’s alternate universe.
Richt stayed at FSU for four more seasons. He estimates he rejected “six or seven” head coaching offers before taking the Georgia job in 2001. Seven seasons hardly represents legend status, but now you wonder if he’s Joe Paterno in the making.
“I always tease him about that,” athletics director Damon Evans said. “I tell him, ‘You’re going to be here another 25 years.’ He may outlast us all.”
The nurturing aspect of college so appeals to Richt that NFL coaching is hard to envision.
“I enjoy the relationships,” he said. “I enjoy recruiting a guy and watching him grow from a 17-year-old knucklehead to a mature man — some more mature than others. It’s fun to be in their homes recruiting them, and then see them at the senior gala with their parents, at graduation and at breakfast, as we take a big group picture.”
The NFL?
“I don’t think it’s for me. If I ever did something like that, I’d rather go as a quality control guy, and then maybe get a position job. To go from being a head coach in college to the pros and think you’re going to be ready for that — there’s just so many things you don’t understand about the business.”
There has long been speculation Richt would return to FSU when Bobby Bowden retires, or to Miami, his alma mater. But now neither seems likely. Jimbo Fisher is on deck in Tallahassee. Miami hired Randy Shannon last year. Richt isn’t interested, anyway.
“Truly, I just can’t imagine going into the team meeting room and telling the guys, ‘I’ve got a better place to be than with you,’ ” he said. “They can say it to me. Or an assistant coach may want to leave. But I’m not going to do it.”
He is aware of college coaching’s musical chairs. He doesn’t get it. Leveraging offers to get a new contract — that’s just business. But constantly jumping from one town to another — why?
“You can blow into town, do your thing, blow things up and try to get everyone’s attention, but sometimes that style doesn’t last very long,” he said. “After a while that gets old to people.”
Seven years ago, we saw Mark Richt walk through the front door. He turned into a rarity. He’s not looking for the back exit.
Permalink | Comments (80) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Humanitarian Bowl humiliating for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Boise, Idaho — Honestly, folks. Spending time in Boise, Idaho, is better than you think. Forbes magazine is among the many ranking it among America’s best cities. You can use its snowy slopes for tubing, something Georgia Tech football players just did. The winding Boise River features rainbow trout and breathtaking sights. Few state capitol buildings are more unique. In fact, this is the only one heated by geothermal water from 3,000 feet under ground. Added Dan Radakovich, Tech’s athletics director in his second year: “I’m sitting in my hotel room, and I’m looking at something that a lot of our student-athletes never get a chance to see, and that’s [part of the Rocky Mountains]. … It’s beautiful here, and it’s a great experience for them.”
Yeah, well. Now that we got that out of the way, the Yellow Jackets have no business playing in anything close to the Humanitarian Bowl ever again. Or at least not twice in five years, which will be the case after they take the blue field at Boise State on Monday afternoon against underwhelming Fresno State, which actually is favored over Tech.
This is humiliating. This is inexcusable, especially given the Jackets’ pretty recruiting in recent years.
Then again, this is what you get when your program has failed to escape mediocrity through underachieving during much of the new century. After ending the old one under former coach George O’Leary with consecutive trips to the Gator Bowl, the Jackets began this one with a splendid Peach Bowl appearance. Then O’Leary’s last Tech bunch in 2001 went to something called the Seattle Bowl to trigger this ugly run of long plane trips for the Jackets to bowls you’ve never heard of.
The Silicon Valley Classic Bowl. The Emerald Bowl.
The Humanitarian Bowl?
“Do we want to come out here every year, because [the Humanitarian Bowl] is the sixth or seventh pick [when it comes to bowl-eligible ACC teams]? No. We have definitely higher aspirations for our program,” said Radakovich, who showed as much in a hurry. First, he saw last year’s Jackets do the ridiculous by going from mighty to meek with three losses at the end to hated Georgia, Wake Forest during the ACC championship game and West Virginia in the Gator Bowl. Then came this season, when O’Leary’s successor, Chan Gailey, continued his habit of coaching the Jackets to highs and lows along the way to a fifth seven-victory season during his six years on campus.
Radakovich fired Gailey, the pro coach trapped in a college coach’s body, and hired Paul Johnson, the former Navy and Georgia Southern head guy with 107 victories and just 39 losses on his résumé.
Granted, Georgia Southern is just I-AA, but regardless of the Eagles’ stature, they did win a couple of national championships under Johnson. And, yes, his Navy teams also earned trips to bowls you’ve never heard of (Houston, Poinsettia), but you know what? At least his Navy teams were going to bowls. They reached five straight under Johnson, and they’ve been to only 14 overall in their long history.
“With Coach Johnson here and what he’s going to bring to the table, we do expect more,” said Radakovich, before a little chuckle. “I would hope that we would play in the Orange Bowl every year. I mean, that’s what we start off with. And it really goes beyond Georgia Tech. Once [the ACC] expanded to 12 schools, the ability to gather some bowl games for the fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth- [ranked] teams who want to play in bowls east of the Mississippi is very difficult to do.” Not really. All you have to do is not finish fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth in the conference, and you won’t have that problem. Given Tech’s resources, starting with its prime location in a highly desirable city, the Jackets never should have that problem in most seasons.
“As we evolve, certainly we want to make sure that we are giving, not only our student athletes a great opportunity for a postseason trip, but our fans as well,” said Radakovich, suggesting he knows the truth: Boise is nice, but it’s not that nice.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Terence Moore
Sun-kissed Hawaii rises on the bayou
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
furman bisher
Melikalikimaka and makahikiho, or merry Christmas, belatedly, and happy new year, as they would say in Hawai’i. We mainlanders say “haw-ah-yuh,” they say “huh-WY-ee,” but both hold a football with the laces turned to the right.
Now, if this had been written in the day when Tommy Kaulukukui had been in his prime, the heading would have been “Hoohoomalimali,” which was what the columnist Red McQueen loosely translated as “grab-bag” in his Honolulu newspaper. Tommy K. was University of Hawai’i’s first glorified athlete, only Warrior whose number has been retired. “Warrior” — that’s the name of the university’s football players. Once they were “Rainbow Warriors.” The rainbow part was dropped. Sounded too soft. Yet, native Hawaiians are some of the softest, most gentle people you’ll ever meet.
And the native tongue, while it may get yours in a twist, is simpler than ours. There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. It’s a state, yes, became one in 1959, but it has a culture all its own. It’s made up of eight main islands, but one is forbidden to anyone but natives. Niihau, they call it, appropriately known as “The Forbidden Island.” No tourism there.
Hawai’i is the longest state in the union, stretching from the Kure Atoll to the tip of the Big Island, roughly equal to the distance from St. Louis to Las Vegas. The most significant name in the islands is one forever engraved in American memory — Pearl Harbor. The name signifies its own infamous place in our history.
Enough geography for one day, shall we now move into the significance of it all? Hawai’i is about to move onto the stage of the most significant moment in its sporting history. The Warriors are about to play University of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day. Fancy that.
Usually, Hawai’i is where mainlanders go to find peace and leisure. For some college football teams it has been a sort of a destination of reward, usually at the end of the season. Oftimes the mainlanders let the pleasures of the islands get in the way of their football mission. South Carolina made the trip twice and twice came home the loser. Pitt, Northwestern and Michigan State found their trips turned into defeat. Four years ago Alabama ran into a Warrior buzz saw. Notre Dame made the trip and was stretched the limit to win by a bare point. Best part of it was, due to the time difference, the games were played at such a nocturnal hour most mainlanders were in bed and missed the telecasts.
This time, the Warriors hit the air in prime time, and get to put on their show for all of us to see. And it is a show, beginning with the pregame “ha’a” dance the Warriors stage before kickoff, even those imported mainland lads who wouldn’t known a ha’a from a polka. Chances indicate that Hawai’i will face a defensive factor they haven’t seen before, and the Bulldogs will fulfill their destination as the favorites. So they say. So did some of those teams that found their Hawaiian holiday wrapped in a cloak of defeat.
You’ve read the stories. Of June Jones, the Warriors coach, who was a Falcons quarterback for three seasons, then later coached them until his departure was hastened by that evening when the repulsive quarterback Jeff George screamed in his face and rebelled. Jones had been a Warriors quarterback in his youth, and what he has found there on return is a coaching haven. “His heart has been in Hawai’i since he left as a player in 1974,” so it reads in the Warriors press guide.
There are other regional connections. Jason Elam went from Snellville to Oahu to find his future as a placekicker, still in force with the Denver Broncos. Paul Johnson, the new Georgia Tech coach, was an assistant at Hawai’i for several seasons. You’ve read of the glorious exploits of Colt Brennan, a transplanted Californian, third finisher in the Heisman voting. Twenty-six players are transfers from mainland schools, but there is a solid core of 45 native sons, nine Honolulu locals.
This will be the Warriors’ bid for a place in the national sun, under the lights of the Superdome. They are not strangers to the mainland. They have played five games stateside this season, and had close calls at Louisiana Tech — where the Bulldog Dooley son, Derek, coaches — and San Jose State, a team on the mend, and Nevada. There’s nothing new here but the atmosphere and all the hoopla. When you’ve played Alabama and South Carolina and Michigan State, and all those other big leaguers, what’s so different about Georgia? Nothing, except it’s the Sugar Bowl, Georgia is not on a holiday and all that “hoohoomalimali.”
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Furman Bisher
‘85 Bears would be tough for Pats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
When it comes to defining greatness, at least in comparing teams from different eras, there are only two absolutes:
It can’t be done.
Of course it can be done, stupid. Just ask any former player.
“Well, you know what I’m going to say,” said Mike Singletary, the former linebacker for the 1985 Chicago Bears. “Of course I’m biased. But I think we would’ve done pretty well against New England.”
The Patriots are 15-0. Barring a sudden show of sympathy from Bill Belichick or a career day from Eli Manning, they figure to complete an undefeated regular season today against the New York Giants. Three more wins in the postseason, and Boston sports fans, reserved sort that they are, will start screaming something about old pansies like Ray Nitschke.
But New England’s greatest accomplishment isn’t necessarily this team. It’s this era. San Francisco and Dallas manipulated the salary cap with inflated bonuses, but they paid for it years later. The Patriots are the first NFL team to excel at football’s version of “Moneyball.” In 2001, they signed 20 mid-level free agents, giving modest bonuses or none at all. They’ve let free agents walk. It has been the blueprint for three titles — and counting.
They have the best coach (Belichick), the best architect (Scott Pioli), the best quarterback (Tom Brady). Then Oakland gift-wrapped Randy Moss for a fourth-round pick. So not fair.
But then, fortunately for the Pats, they don’t have to play the ‘85 Bears. So sayeth Singletary.
“We would’ve pressured the quarterback and stopped the run, and really made Brady do some things,” he said. “You can’t let Brady dictate things. We would’ve taken him out of his comfort zone.
“They would’ve had trouble with our defensive line. Those guys took it as a challenge every week: We’ll get the quarterback. They would’ve had a lot of problems with [Dan] Hampton.”
We’ll have to assume. It’s all on paper.
With that in mind, here’s one guy’s top five, knowing it can’t possibly please everybody, particularly fans from Washington, Dallas or Pittsburgh, one of whom I’m married to. But she’ll always have Franco.
1. 1989 49ers (17-2): Imagine. San Francisco’s best team came after Bill Walsh’s retirement. George Seifert let Mike Holmgren run the offense. Good choice. Joe Montana’s backup was a future Hall of Famer, Steve Young. Jerry Rice is in the best-player-ever argument. The fullback (Tom Rathman) had 76 catches. The defense nobody talked about included Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley and some cocky kid, Bill Romanowski. The two losses came by five points. The postseason was their own little scorched earth: 41-13 (Vikings), 30-3 (Rams), 55-10 (Broncos). I surrender.
2. 1985 Bears (18-1): They recorded the “Super Bowl Shuffle.” I guess the studio was booked in September. The Bears won their first 12 games (the last three by 104-3). They had the MVP (Walter Payton) and the defensive player of the year (Singletary). The front four: Hampton, Steve McMichael, Richard Dent and a Fridge. In the Super Bowl (46-10), New England QB Tony Eason looked like a Shih Tzu staring at a Winnebago.
3. 2007 Patriots (15-0, so far): They won their first eight games by 24, 24, 31, 21, 17, 21, 21 and 45. But they’ve looked dangerously close to mortal in the second half (wins over the Colts, Eagles and Ravens came by a total of 10 points). Their defense really isn’t that good, but in the salary cap era, you pay the price somewhere. And when Brady is the quarterback and Donte’ Stallworth is the No. 3 receiver, behind Moss and Wes Welker, does it matter that the defense is average?
4. 1972 Dolphins (17-0): The team gets knocked for playing a soft schedule (only two regular-season opponents had winning records). But Miami won eight of 14 games by at least two touchdowns, including 52-0 over the Patriots. It also played most of the year without starting QB Bob Griese. His replacement, Earl Morrall, 38, was acquired from the Giants for $100. The Fins were so unappreciated even that season that they went into the Super Bowl 16-0 … as underdogs. But they beat the Redskins 14-7, and as Larry Csonka said, “Perfection ends a lot of arguments.”
5. 1962 Packers (14-1): Going old school. This team had 11 future Hall of Famers, including coach Vince Lombardi. It outscored teams 415-148 (the first three games: 100-7). Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Max McGee on offense. Nitschke, Willie Wood, Herb Adderly on defense. The Pack won the title game over the Giants in New York, where the 20-degree reading didn’t factor in the 35-mph winds.
Admit it: You want to run through a wall right now, don’t you?
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Marvin Williams coming into his own
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It will happen one day. People will look at Marvin Williams and say, “Great player. Nice moves. Sweet jumper. Good kid,” and stop there.
There won’t be the contrasting thought, which hangs around like an albatross. One day, they won’t look at Marvin Williams and say: “Great player. Nice moves. Sweet jumper. Good kid. But he was drafted ahead of …”
There it is — the “but.” Williams knows it’ll hang around until the Hawks get really good for an extended period. It will happen one day. If it doesn’t, Williams may go down as one of the most underappreciated athletes ever to pass through this town.
“No question. I know that’s been talked about a lot,” the Hawks forward said Wednesday. “But I can’t take it personally. I know when I was drafted this team needed a point guard, and they already had Josh [Smith] and Josh [Childress] and they were bringing Joe [Johnson] in. It’s just how things played out. But I’ve never felt like people were attacking me personally.”
He knows. Hawks fans may forever debate whether Williams was the right pick three years ago, when the team drafted the small forward second overall, ahead of point guards Deron Williams and Chris Paul (who’ve become two of the league’s premier playmakers). But if it’s possible for a player to be a great pick without being the right pick, Williams is getting there.
The Hawks dumped Indiana on Wednesday, 107-95, for their fifth straight victory, words not written in these parts in eight seasons.
Williams (14 points, five rebounds, five assists) was not the biggest reason for this win. He made only two of six shots before two late buckets.
But he is a major reason the Hawks are 12-5 since a 3-7 start. In the six games before Wednesday, Williams averaged 21.2 points, and he ranks third on the team in points, rebounds and field-goal percentage. In short, he has made the jump the Hawks needed him to make.
“I think he would’ve made the jump last year if he wasn’t hurt,” coach Mike Woodson said, referring to a broken hand in the preseason that forced Williams to miss the first 17 games. “That set him behind big time. He lost so much conditioning, it was like he forgot how to play again.”
Probably culture shock.
Any player would have difficulty going from the winning tradition at Chapel Hill to the lack of same with the Hawks. But try this: Williams played only one season at North Carolina, and the Tar Heels went 33-4 and won the national championship. The Hawks went 26-56 and 30-52 in Williams’ first two NBA seasons.
Add youth — Williams would be a senior this season — the hand injury and the constant reminders of the Hawks’ void at point guard, and one of two things happen: The kid either melts down or toughens up.
Guess which way Williams went?
“I’m definitely glad I went through those tough times,” he said. “It was a learning experience. Coming off a national championship, going from not just winning almost every single night but winning big to losing almost every single night and losing big, it was a huge adjustment for me. But without those tough times I don’t think I would’ve been able to grow to where I am today. Everything happens for a reason.”
And what would that reason be?
Williams laughed.
“You just look back to where you were and you think, ‘I don’t want to be there anymore,’ ” he said.
He is smart and talented, and all you need to know about his work ethic is what happened Christmas Eve. Williams and a few friends drove to Philips Arena to practice — at 10 p.m.
“Coach Woodson wanted us to get some work in over the break — and I like practicing at night,” he said, smiling.
The comparisons to Paul and Williams neither surprise him nor bother him. “Chris and Deron were great players in college — I knew they would make an impact in the league,” he said. “People have asked me, ‘How do you feel when you see how they’re doing?’ But really, I don’t worry about it. All I can do is worry about myself.”
No worries. Wrong pick and great player somehow intersect.
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A Falcons town no more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There already were questions about the general manager’s personnel decisions. There already were obvious cracks in the quarterback’s leadership and maturity. But the Falcons really didn’t begin to jump the tracks in this town until about a year ago.
That’s when things turned goofy. That’s when a marketable product began to morph into a punch line. That’s when Jim Mora, a coach with some talent but lacking in leadership and maturity himself, went on a Seattle radio station to declare his love for the coaching job at the University of Washington.
Whether Mora was serious or joking didn’t really matter, because the two were equally disloyal and dumb in Arthur Blank’s mind. And Blank’s product was irreparably damaged. The Falcons were 7-6, coming off consecutive wins to resuscitate playoff hopes. But they lost that week to Dallas. They lost their final three games. They missed the playoffs. Mora was fired.
The Falcons mercifully close this season at home Sunday against, ironically, Seattle, which now employs Mora as a secondary coach. Mora is not the reason the Falcons are 3-12. He’s not the reason Michael Vick is in prison, or Bobby Petrino is loony, or the Falcons’ season-ticket waiting list is about to evaporate.
But Mora’s radio interview triggered the start of this franchise’s image trainwreck. And this is a town where you have to fight pretty hard to get on the radar.
Atlanta is the most fickle of sports cities. As a rule, fans pay attention to only two things: 1) The football team in Athens; 2) Something else.
The second is forever written in pencil. The Braves had their extended buzz moment in the early to mid 1990s. The Thrashers had their moment for about five minutes last season. The Hawks certainly have had their moments but locating somebody with a memory is the tricky part.
This was, from the time Blank became the owner and Vick became a starter in 2002, a Falcons town.
Even after the firing of Dan Reeves, they were viewed as a rising and vibrant franchise, largely because of their four corners: owner, general manager, coach, quarterback. Blank was invested with his checkbook and his heart. Rich McKay was bright, widely respected and had won a Super Bowl. Mora was fiery and engaging. Vick was a difference-maker.
Now Mora and Vick are gone. McKay is a name on the letterhead. Blank finds his own decision-making being questioned publicly more than ever. The only franchise considered in worse shape is the 1-14 Miami Dolphins - and they just convinced Bill Parcells that was a better job.
Blank knows. Rebuilding the front office and roster represents only part of the equation. This off-season also will be about regaining credibility, not just locally but league-wide. The Falcons have been a coveted destination for free agents. Players came here or stayed here, partly because of money but also because of perception of the team’s direction.
That’s gone now.
The Falcons’ win total the last four seasons has steadily dropped: 11, 8, 7, 3. As Blank searches for a new general manager and coach, candidates will stop to ask themselves why things haven’t been working. They didn’t stop before.
Ticket sales won’t be automatic next season. The most talented and marketable player on roster, DeAngelo Hall, also is the most disruptive one. Instead of trying to steady or unite the team last week, Hall held court in front of his locker, threatening a holdout or a trade demand if he didn’t get a new contract.
Go ahead. Try to market DeAngelo Hall.
This will make three straight seasons without a playoff game. The empty seats Sunday will serve as foreshadowing for next season. The only thing harder to do than building an image is repairing one.
This is Atlanta, and it’s not a Falcons town any more.
No. 2 is wide open again.
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Christmas notes from McSantas
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
(I know with a post box address you must get a few of these each year, a report on the activity on some old family friend, bringing you up to snuff on what’s new in the life of say, the McSanta family. The highs and even the lows, as you will see from this one.)
Well, here it is Christmas again. A jolly ho, ho, ho and off we go. There has been a lot of water over the dam - well, that doesn’t apply in Georgia this year, so let’s move on. I know you can hardly wait to get an inside uiew of how the year has gone with the McSanta family.
To start off, Clara has had one of those botox things, and darned if I can see any difference. Of course, my eye doctor says I need glasses, but I’ve been looking at Clara with these same old eyes for years and she’s still a beauty to me. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling me I have to give up martinis.
I was elected the Tail-Twister at the Lions Club, and that has been some fun. Of course, you can’t be as loose as we used to be. They’ve taken in female members, and I have to mind my manners. This was my 35th year at the bank, and man, did they ever put one on for me. The chairman came down from Winston-Salem to make a little pres- entation, and I’ll have to admit, I teared up.
But you want to hear about the kids. They’re all doing just fine, mostly. We added another grandchild. Gloria gave birth to a little boy, and after all those girls I’m finally happy to have a boy grandchild. Of course, he won’t have the McSanta name, but Schmidt ain’t too bad. That was the name of my high school coach, Francis Xavier Schmidt. Teddy finally made it through qualifying school, so he’ll be hitting the tour this year. Not the big one, the Nationwide. You have to start somewhere, and after five tries, this beats another year on the mini-tours, where you play for your own money.
Sorry to report that Claudia and her husband are getting a divorce. Now, it seems to me that after you’ve lived together 18 years and have two kids you ought to be able to make it the rest of the way. I’m not trying to place blame, but I’ve heard some pretty racy stories at the club about Sam. You know, he was a big football star in college and sometimes it’s hard for those guys when the cheering dies down. Ye gods, that was 20 years ago and you’d think he’d realize by this time you don’t get applause for mowing the lawn. And Claudia, she was the homecoming queen but she doesn’t go around wearing her crown.
Now, on the brighter side. It turned out that that Avery and Jo couldn’t have children, and we’re so proud of what they did. It took a while and cost a pretty penny, but they went to Russia and adopted twin girls out of an orphanage. If I sound like I’m bragging, I am. They’re 5 years old now and about the prettiest little things you ever saw. Don’t tell me nothing good ever comes out of Russia.
I don’t know if I ever told you about Chuck, a guy I used to car-pool with. Chuck’s a pretty free-wheeler and he does spend a lot of time in the bar at the club. Well, in June he was pulled over for speeding, a little tipsy and he hadn’t had his driver’s license renewed. That took care of car-pooling, so he rides a bicycle to work now. The car-poolers voted to keep him in, but he turned them down, and besides, he fancies he’s some kind of athlete. Let him try riding that bike home from the bar.
Now, let me tell you about or vacation. Clara and I went to a sort of out-of-the-way island in the Bahamas. Andros isn’t buzzing with tourists like the other islands, it was different. There’s only one telephone on the island, and it’s on a dirt road a mile away, and you have to book time to use it. Keeps the telemarketers out of your ear. No night clubs, no loud jazz, no casino, and great seafood right out of the ocean. It was what a vacation should be, and it isn’t already polluted by this by now, it will be in time.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but I didn’t want to brag. Clara was entered in the Mrs. America contest, for women over 40 with children, which, I guess, had something to do with the botox. No, she didn’t win but she came in third, and I’ll tell you this, she was prettier than both the other two. Of course, you might say I’m prejudiced, but you should be loyal to the woman you sleep with. Just wait’ll next year.
In the meantime, merry Christmas and a joyous Noel to all of you, and those you love, and even those you don’t.
- The McSantas
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Why would anyone want to run this team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Glendale, Ariz. — It was appropriate the Falcons spent Sunday playing inside a stadium shaped like something from outer space. That’s because their season from Mars continued against the Arizona Cardinals. In fact, the Marty Schottenheimer theories to the contrary, nobody from Earth is capable of making those little green men return this franchise to the vicinity of decency anytime soon.
There is the meantime, though, which is the Falcons’ problem. The more somebody of competency, or beyond, watches everything involved with this rebuilding process, spanning from a clueless front office to a flawed locker room, the more that somebody would rather shove a chinstrap down his throat than come to Flowery Branch.
Bill Cowher said no. Then Bill Parcells became Bill Parcells by playing the Falcons for suckers to get a better deal with the Miami Dolphins. That said, Schottenheimer and his accomplished resume as an NFL coach would do better than most with this ongoing mess, but two things: The Falcons still would need a miracle worker at general manager, and Schottenheimer still would have to agree to take the coaching job. At 64, and after a cushy stint as a football analyst for ESPN, he likely isn’t into self-inflicted pain.
This time, the Falcons went from a thrilling comeback at the end of regulation to a 30-27 loss in overtime for a slide to 3-12 overall.
“When you go out there and you put everything out there on the line, and you just come up a little bit short, it’s tough, man,” said Roddy White, who continued his coming-out party after two raggedy seasons with 12 catches for 141 yards. “I wanted to break down and cry after the game. All my teammates, we played hard. We give it our best. We just can’t get any breaks. It’s like somebody or something doesn’t want us to win football games.”
We’re back to that Mars thing involving the Falcons. Just this month, they watched their franchise quarterback go to prison for illegal dogfighting. Then their first-year head coach returned to the college ranks with three games left. Then their owner got embarrassed by watching both those high-profile NFL types say thanks but something such as “You must be kidding” when asked if they wished to run the Falcons’ football side.
So, if you’re an Atlanta player in this situation, you play hard, but you can’t focus enough to avoid the silliness that happened against the Cardinals.
There was the Falcons’ opening drive, when Chris Redman moved his offensively challenged team from its 44-yard line to the Arizona 6. He lofted a fade pass into the corner of the end zone, but courtesy of a mix-up with White, the pass was intercepted. Soon afterward, Falcons defensive backs Chris Houston and Lawyer Milloy missed tackles on a short pass play to Anquan Boldin that was turned into a long pass play.
Not only that, the Falcons were flagged for running into the punter. Twice.
Remember, too, that the Falcons were facing an Arizona team that wouldn’t be confused with anybody good. The Cardinals began the game at 6-8 and out of the playoff picture, which meant they had only pride as their motivator. The Falcons also were playing for pride, but you only can take that so far when you’re working for an interim head coach (Emmitt Thomas) with long odds of becoming permanent, and when your current general manager (Rich McKay) already has been told that he’s gone in that role at season’s end.
Even so, the Falcons had some impressive moments. There was that fake punt that went for 37 yards and led to a Falcons touchdown to tie the game at 7-7. There was Redman connecting with Laurent Robinson on a 74-yard post pattern for a score. There also was a Falcons offense going 48 yards on eight plays to tie the game at 24-24 inside the final five minutes, and then surging ahead near the end on Morten Andersen’s short field goal before the Cardinals eventually forced overtime.
None of that could change this: The Falcons still are ghastly.
From top to bottom.
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No holiday giving here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
After losing three of its previous four games, Georgia Tech easily handled that scrappy bunch from Centenary College on Saturday, reaffirming that it can still dominate schools with an enrollment of 910, to say nothing of teams nicknamed the Gentlemen.
Tech won, 86-41. It was a nice, stress-free way to begin a winter break, even if 86-41 was pretty much expected.
The Jackets were coming off a loss in a winnable game against Kansas. They also lost a winnable game at Indiana. But Paul Hewitt does not embrace the “good loss.”
Nor did Hewitt embrace being under .500 (4-5) through nine games for the first time in six seasons. This Tech team had exhibited enough cracks and hiccups that the coach mandated double practices during the break. He also gave his players a one-hour exam on the playbook Friday — believed to be significantly more difficult than the “Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball.”
“I think they thought I was kidding when they walked in there,” Hewitt said, “and I had all of the No. 2 pencils and the paper out.”
It has not been a good start to this season. If you live in the world of illogically high expectations, it hasn’t been Nirvana since the Jackets went to the national title game in 2004. Going to the NCAA tournament in two out of three years since should appease most, but Hewitt understands the landscape.
“Today in college sports, we just can’t win as coaches,” he said. “If we don’t go to the tournament enough but we graduate our players, we can’t win. If we go to the tournament all the time but we don’t graduate our players, then you’re prostituting the guys. So you tend to set your own expectations.
“If you look at where we were when I took over seven years ago, and if you would’ve told me we would go to four NCAAs, an NIT third round, a Final Four, I’m not going to say I would take it, but I’d be comfortable with it.”
Hewitt does not suddenly feel extraordinary pressure at Tech, nor should he. But these are uneasy times on campus. Athletics director Dan Radakovich fired the football coach, Chan Gailey. Last season, in the midst of a bad stretch of games, Hewitt admitted telling his assistants, “We’re not impressing the new guy [Radakovich].”
But the situation with Hewitt is much different than with Gailey. We saw Gailey’s best. It was generally seven wins and a second-tier bowl game. We’ve seen Hewitt’s best. It was one win short of a national championship. The football stadium has empty seats. Basketball season tickets are sold out. A football stadium obviously dwarfs a basketball arena, but that doesn’t discount that difference in perceptions about the respective directions of the programs.
A pro coach gets fired, it doesn’t quite have the impact with other pro coaches in a city as when a college coach gets fired. College coaches walk the same campus, eat in the same cafeteria, share the same support group.
It’s logical to assume Hewitt felt some of the aftershocks of Gailey’s firing in the athletics offices, but he chose his words carefully Saturday.
“We all know what we sign on for,” he said. “The day you become a coach, that takes you one step closer to being fired. You understand that. There are very few guys who leave on their own terms. Chan goes to six bowl games. He graduates his kids. But it’s just the way it is.”
The basketball team is 5-5. Such balance is not what an ACC coach strives for before even playing a conference game. But when you lose two freshmen (Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton) to the NBA, the team is going to take a hit.
So a coach doubles up on practices. And he gives them a written exam.
Hewitt said the 4-5 start “didn’t put any doubts in my mind what we can accomplish. What it does is put in your mind a little more sense of urgency that we have to get this turned quickly. We let a great opportunity get away against Kansas. We let a great opportunity get away against Indiana. But those games are lost now.”
The games are lost. The season’s not. Making it to a championship sometimes skews perspective.
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Huizenga had edge in chase for Tuna
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
First thing you have to understand, if you’re getting into the sports business, is that it’s only fun and games on the field. Otherwise, it’s pure cut-throat. “Every man for theirself,” as Dizzy Dean used to say.
So, when Wayne Huizenga heard that Bill Parcells was about to get back into football, he got on the phone and talked him right out of Arthur Blank’s drawing room. You’d read the news, that Huizenga had put the Miami Dolphins on the market. Tired of losing seasons. So emotional about it that when the Dolphins won a game last week, the prying camera caught him in tears. Thus, the ecstasy of victory fresh on his plate, the news that Parcells was about to make a comeback was just the juice that Huizenga need to refuel his NFL tank. Blank opened the door, Huizenga stepped right through it.
Blank and Parcells had even reached an agreement in principle, though not a lot of principle appeared to be involved. The phone rang and the Big Tuna slipped off the hook. You understand, Huizenga is a seasoned club owner. He had a baseball team that won a World Series, and when he couldn’t get a park built with public money, he sold it. And danged if the new owner didn’t win a World Series of his own with a manager older than coal.
Huizenga has made tracks where he has been. He started off in garbage, original source of his wealth -waste management, they call it, to give it an uplifting term. Then he got into movie rentals, Blockbuster his trademark. The Marlins were sort of a recreation, then the Dolphins, and you know how these corporate execs are. They don’t like to lose. So he was selling, until he heard about Parcells. They are old pals, have homes in South Florida, play golf now and then, may even go fishing, which Huizenga was doing when he called Parcells and crashed Blank’s party.
A fellow doesn’t make a billion and a half dollars being a bad judge of people. Blank and Bernie Marcus made Home Depot a household name across the land. When they dissolved their interests, Arthur Blank bought the Falcons from the family of Rankin Smith, and great joy abounded. Rankin had operated close to the vest until finally opening the vault and bringing Dan Reeves in. They even made it to the Super Bowl.
You put their records side by side, the Smiths’ last six and Arthur’s first six, and there isn’t a lot of difference. The Smiths exited with a closing record of 40-56 their last half-dozen seasons. Blank and family opened their run with 42-52-1, with two games left on the schedule. The public ripped the Smiths apart, panned them as penurious. Blank came on like the people’s choice. He lowered some seat prices. He coached manners and tried to make the Dome seem like home. He spread money about as if it were seed. He got involved in player procurement, one (Warrick Dunn) a wise one, another (Peerless Price) a crashing blunder.
Then Blank opened the treasury to Michael Vick, and that’s when the hammer fell. The lesson Blank should have been learning, following the most successful NFL owners’ pattern, you hire and designate, then get out of the way. You never saw Clint Murchison on the sidelines in Dallas, nor Dan Rooney in Pittsburgh. You do see Jerry Jones, but there’s a mite of difference there. Jerry played football at the highest college level, and he knows the game, but you can bet that when Parcells was there, Jerry never got involved in coaching.
When Parcells took the call from Huizenga, he knew the man he was dealing with. Blank was a stranger, a rookie in a dog-eat-dog (maybe there’s a less cruel term) world. Huizenga called, it was a done deal. He and Parcells were on the same page. Sad to say, Blank is left twisting in the wind, and in the process, he has neutered his ersatz general manager, Rich McKay. He went one step too far before he had Parcells locked up. Not that McKay gave a four-star performance. Check the history of Tampa Bay and you’ll find that the Buccaneers never really got rolling until Tony Dungy moved in.
What does this make Parcells? A double-crosser? A charlatan? Hardly, more a sly businessman playing his cards deftly. You can’t blame him. With the Falcons, he’d have been dealing from the bottom of the pile. With the Dolphins, he had a framework and an owner he could be comfortable with. So, Atlanta is left with another “now what?”
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2007 predictions: Wrong only when I wasn’t right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The annual Accountability Scoreboard begins with admission of a dual whiff. I was wrong about Michael Vick being a good guy and wrong about Bobby Petrino being a good hire. Give or take a billion dollars, this puts me in the same boat as Arthur Blank.
Such misses would put a crimp in any prognosticating year. In my defense, I’d note that 2007 also saw one of my proudest forecasting swoops: Asked to pick Georgia Tech’s football season game by game, I was right about the famously difficult-to-predict Jackets 11 times in 12. (I had them winning at Virginia, which they didn’t.)
Other successes: I tabbed Georgia to finish 10-2, which was spot-on in the grand scheme if not the details. (I had them losing to Alabama and Florida.) I suggested Auburn had a bound-for-the-Chick-fil-A-Bowl schedule, and guess where the Tigers will spend New Year’s Eve?
I was right about Virginia Tech winning the ACC, wrong about Florida winning the SEC. I was wrong about Alabama winning nine games, wrong about Brian Brohm taking the Heisman, wrong about USC and Texas playing for the BCS title.
More college football misses: West Virginia didn’t go undefeated, Florida State didn’t win the ACC’s Atlantic Division, and Phillip Fulmer didn’t get pushed aside in favor of David Cutcliffe. I was technically incorrect about Houston Nutt resigning before Thanksgiving; he actually quit four days after Thanksgiving.
For the first time since 2002, I pegged the eventual winner before the NCAA tournament began. I can’t brag, though: Florida was too good not to pick. I had two of the correct Final Four, which only placed me second under this roof. Elizabeth Bradley, who was 9 at the time, got three.
I thought Tech would win three games in the Big Dance, and the Jackets were gone after one. I thought Georgia would bank an NCAA bid, and maybe if Mike Mercer hadn’t hurt his knee the Bulldogs would’ve. (The Accountability Scoreboard, sad to say, doesn’t assign asterisks for injuries.)
As for the Braves: I said they’d finish third again, and they complied. I wish I’d had the guts to say flat-out the Mets were going to blow the NL East, but I only hinted. (The Accountability Scoreboard awards no credit for hints.)
I thought the Falcons would go 10-6 under their swell new coach, but I bumped that down to 9-7 after Rod Coleman and Demorrio Williams got hurt in the offseason. I readjusted that to 5-11 when Vick was indicted, and unless the Falcons win their next two games I’ll still have overrated them. I was convinced Jerious Norwood would have a breakout season, and for reasons still unclear he has barely broken a sweat.
Advocacy Department: I implored the Hawks to draft Al Horford with their first pick. They did. I also surmised that Javaris Crittenton might be their second pick. He wasn’t. I lobbied the Braves not to reacquire Tom Glavine. They ignored me.
I wrote that Chan Gailey needed to go, and two days later he went. I put forth Chris Hatcher as a replacement, and he was granted an interview before Tech hired Paul Johnson, who was my No. 2 choice. I advised the Falcons to pursue Bill Cowher in this latest coaching search — Norm Chow was my nominee to succeed Jim Mora, a notion the Falcons apparently dismissed — and Blank at least made the effort this time.
It’s a Scoreboard tradition to end each year with a bold forecast, and the 2006 installment included the assertion that an NHL team would upset Buffalo in the Eastern Conference finals and play Anaheim for the Stanley Cup. Trouble was, I believed that team would be the Thrashers, who didn’t win a playoff game, and not Ottawa.
That failure in mind, I offer another long-range pick: Georgia will go 11-1 in 2008, will win the SEC and play for the BCS title in January 2009. Kari Lehtonen might have let me down, but I just know Knowshon Moreno won’t.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, Thrashers / NHL, UGA / SEC
For Johnson, option is only option
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
If nothing else, you have to like new Georgia Tech football coach Paul Johnson for refusing to answer questions with an end-around. He prefers to burst up the middle, with legs still churning in search of extra yardage.
For instance: A visitor to Johnson’s office wanted to know about Sean Renfree, the nation’s 16th-best recruit at quarterback, according to Scout.com. Renfree became the first of three players to de-commit around the time previous Yellow Jackets coach Chan Gailey was fired. Before the visitor finished his question about whether Johnson’s love affair with the triple-option offense spooked the pass-oriented Renfree, Johnson began to answer.
“Don’t need him. Don’t want him. Doesn’t fit the system,” Johnson said, legs still churning, without blinking from his side of the couch across the way.
Well, then. We might as well get to the point. So are you going to use the triple-option offense at Tech as heavily as you did as the head coach at Navy for six years and at Georgia Southern for five years before that? If so, how will that affect recruiting, especially when it comes to acquiring quarterbacks and even a poor man’s version of Calvin Johnson at wide receiver?
Mostly, given the epidemic of empty seats at Bobby Dodd Stadium during most seasons (which contributed to Gailey’s ouster), will your offense that features a pass about every other presidential election attract folks or repel them?
Johnson answered each question, with legs still churning, and, yes, he will use the triple-option offense more often than not at Tech. And, no, he doesn’t think it will hinder recruiting — well, his type of recruiting that he said won’t exclude acquiring a future Calvin Johnson. And, yes, he understands that many around the Yellow Jacket Nation and beyond wonder if the triple-option offense is just another name for the boogeyman.
“They don’t understand it. What’s the first thing they think about when you say triple-option offense? Three yards and a cloud of dust,” Johnson said. “I know one year at Georgia Southern when I was there, Chattanooga led I-AA in passing. We had 25 plays of 20 yards or longer than they did, and we led the nation in rushing. I mean, you’ll see some 40-, 60-, 80-yard runs. That’s pretty exciting.
“Then, when we do throw, guys are petty wide open off of play action. At Navy, I know we were in the top 15 in passing efficiency [Actually, tied for 12th], which is the most important statistic. Not how many times you throw it.”
That’s Johnson’s story, and he’d better stick to it. His 8-4 Navy team led the nation in rushing this season, but it finished last in passing yards per game. In fact, the Midshipmen threw just an average of 10 times per game. Still, to keep Tech fans from rushing for No-Doz prior to games, Johnson suggested that Navy’s passing numbers deserve an asterisk.
There are size restrictions for those who enter the Naval Academy, which meant Johnson’s best offensive lineman was his center at 5 feet 9 and 275 pounds.
“I don’t want to be critical when I say this, because I love those kids, but there was a lot more factored in than what meets the eye as to why we did certain things,” Johnson said. “[Navy players] weren’t built for pass blocking. So it depends on the years and on the personnel. When we were at Hawaii [as offensive coordinator], it might have been 70 percent running and 30 percent passing, or even 60-40.”
The point is, said Johnson, Tech’s triple-option will evolve around the returning and incoming players that Johnson said he hasn’t had time to evaluate after barely two weeks on the job.
“I think that people have gotten too carried away with the triple-option, because that’s only one phase of the offense,” Johnson said. “If we have 75 plays, we’re not going to run 70 times. There’s a run-and-shoot package. There’s a play-action package. There’s different running plays besides the option. And, certainly, there are all kinds of options — counter option, speed option. We’ve got a sprint-out passing game. We’ve got draws. The key will be to come together with what our personnel here can do best.”
Remember, too, that Johnson’s triple-option has averaged nearly 450 yards per game to produce a 107-39 record during his time as a head coach. And here’s another thing: Hold the No-Doz.
“Everywhere I’ve coached, we’ve set attendance records,” Johnson said. “It’s an exciting offense. It’s fun to watch. You don’t know where the ball is all the time. It’s also pretty fast.”
Then Johnson eased into the biggest of smiles. That’s because his legs kept churning so much that he reached the end zone by saying, “You know what I’ve found? If you win, they like it.”
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Terence Moore
An odd year for Atlanta GMs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
When Falcons owner Arthur Blank released a statement this week, confirming in a “by the way” manner that Rich McKay was out as the team’s general manager, it punctuated a peculiar year for Atlanta’s sports’ GMs.
McKay likely will leave — unless he believes finding a new stadium and filing paper clips will be stimulating work.
The Braves’ John Schuerholz slipped into unofficial semi-retirement as team president, resigning his GM duties to clear the way for assistant Frank Wren.
Six days after Schuerholz’s exit, the Thrashers’ Don Waddell fired coach Bob Hartley following a 0-6 start and went behind the bench. He is attempting not only to save the season, but also his paycheck.
Finally, there is the Hawks’ Billy Knight. In his first four seasons as GM, the team lost more than 70 percent of its games (231 of 328). On Wednesday, the Hawks defeated Miami in overtime, leaving them at 13-12 — over .500. This might be the strangest occurrence of all.
DATA
Rich McKay: 48. Born: Eugene, Ore. Sign: Pisces. Ruling planet: Neptune, which explains the drafting of Jimmy Williams.
John Schuerholz: 67. Born: Baltimore. Sign: Libra. Ruling planet: Venus, also named for the goddess of beauty, but unfortunately few recent closers, of late.
Don Waddell: 49. Born: Detroit. Sign: Leo. Ruling planet: The Sun, which we’ve been assured will come out tomorrow, though tomorrow remains undefined.
Billy Knight: 55. Born: Braddock, Pa. Sign: Gemini. Ruling planet: Mercury, who in Greek mythology was a fleet-footed messenger who could dart across the heavens but couldn’t play the point.
READING THE OUIJA
Rich McKay: Finding another GM’s job right now will be difficult, but he’ll have no trouble getting work with the league — somewhere south of Goodell.
John Schuerholz: He’ll oversee Wren with one eye and golf with the other. And he’ll take breaks with both eyes to gaze at Bud Selig’s soon-to-be-vacant office.
Don Waddell: After last year’s quick playoff exit, the Thrashers need a strong a showing to prove to ownership that Waddell has made the right decisions.
Billy Knight: Logic screams he should be gone if the Hawks’ don’t make the playoffs for the fifth time during his tenure. But owners could allow him to use coach Mike Woodson as the scapegoat.
OH, THE MEMORIES
Rich McKay: Immediately following his hiring in 2003, the 3-11 Falcons finished the season with wins over Tampa Bay (his former team) and Jacksonville, then reached the NFC title game the following season.
John Schuerholz: Took over before the 1991 season. The Braves won the first of 14 straight division titles, five pennants and one World Series.
Don Waddell: After six mostly miserable seasons, the Thrashers started last season 23-10-6 and then scrambled at the end to win the Southeast Division and make the playoffs.
Billy Knight: He didn’t shake Steve Belkin’s hand.
OY, THE MEMORIES
Rich McKay: Jimmy Williams, Michael Jenkins, Jason Webster, Ike Reese, Jim Mora, Ed Hartwell, Jordan Beck, Joe Horn, Roddy White, Ovie Mughelli, Bobby Petrino …
John Schuerholz: For all of those division flags, only one World Series. And, of course, Dan Kolb.
Don Waddell: One playoff berth. Zero playoff wins. Player development has been mediocre to average, particularly on defense.
Billy Knight: Chris Paul, Deron Williams, last, last, last, seventh (out of eight in the old Central).
BEST LAID PLANS
Rich McKay: With a Super Bowl win with Tampa Bay, an NFC title game appearance in his first year with the Falcons and his perceived strong ties to NFL powerbrokers, McKay figured to be a top candidate when commissioner Paul Tagliabue retired. But the job went to Roger Goodell. McKay didn’t even make it to the final cut of interviews.
John Schuerholz: As a sort of memoir about the Braves’ success during his watch, he authored, “Built To Win. Inside Stories and Leadership Strategies from Baseball’s Winningest GM.” The Braves missed the playoffs the next two years.
Don Waddell: The first player he signed for the franchise was goalie Damien Rhodes, who flopped. Asked years later if he attended Rhodes’ wedding, Waddell remarked, “No, but I paid for it.”
Billy Knight: Signed Speedy Claxton as a free agent last year to be his point guard. Revelation: He’s not Speedy Recovery. Claxton has yet to play this season and has missed 66 games (so far) with injuries.
CHALLENGE FOR REPLACEMENT/INCUMBENT
Rich McKay: (Your Name Here) Find a coach, turn over the roster, make the playoffs, split the atom, solve time travel.
John Schuerholz: Frank Wren doesn’t have to do much — just replace Andruw Jones and make the playoffs (which suddenly would be a significant step forward).
Don Waddell: Settle the mystery of Kari Lehtonen, build the blueline, win a playoff game.
Billy Knight: Find a point guard, a center, a coach and the third week of April.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Falcons / NFL, Hawks / NBA, Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Time to wake up, Mr. Blank
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Proving that Falcons owner Arthur Blank isn’t familiar with Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity, here’s a quick summation:
It’s spending your public time either downplaying or ignoring a slew of things involving franchise quarterback Michael Vick (flipping off the hometown fans, water bottle, Ron Mexico, stolen watch, blunt on Internet), and then saying you’re shocked when he stands before a federal judge in black-and-white prison stripes on charges associated with illegal dogfighting.
It’s hiring college coach Bobby Petrino to run your NFL team, when you know college coaches historically reek in such a role, and when you know Petrino has a habit of lying and leaving. You hire Petrino anyway. Then you say you feel “betrayed” when Petrino becomes Petrino by lying and leaving with three games left in his first season.
It’s trying to hire the notoriously fickle Bill Parcells as your football guru despite everything in his past, ranging from a couple of ugly flipflops with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to his attempt to bolt the New York Giants 20 years ago for the Falcons while still under contract. Not surprisingly, after he reaches “an agreement in principle” with you, he reneges to play footsies with the Miami Dolphins.
It’s those things, combined with Einstein’s actual words on insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you don’t wish to believe Einstein, then take it from Ron Wolf, the legendary NFL general manager who built championship teams in Tampa Bay, Oakland and Green Bay.
“Obviously, somebody didn’t do their due diligence on Petrino. I mean, to me, what happened there? Golly days,” said Wolf, 69, chuckling over the phone from his home in Jupiter, Fla. “And how can you have a deal [with Parcells], and then all of a sudden, you don’t have one? Just how do you get to that point? First and foremost, you lose a player the caliber of Michael Vick. When that happens, you’re going to struggle, because everything you do is based upon him. You can say we’re going to do this and do that without him, but you just can’t.”
Exhibit A: The 3-11 Falcons, with horrors throughout their roster. They also have no permanent head coach and an overmatched general manager in Rich McKay, who is on the verge of a demotion.
So, if approached, would Wolf leave six years of retirement to become the miracle worker the Falcons need?
“No,” Wolf said quickly. “It’s very nice that you would ask me that question, but [being a GM] went past me.” Then Wolf laughed when asked if he still dabbles in consulting with pro teams, saying, “I’m nothing. I was a consultant with Cleveland for two days, and that was awhile ago.”
That said, Wolf is among the all-time experts on knowing how to blow a breath into a lifeless franchise. In the early 1960s, when the Raiders were even worse than they are now, he joined Al Davis in building Oakland teams that would win three world championships. In the 1990s, Wolf resurrected Green Bay’s glory days after the Packers managed just four winning seasons during their previous 24 years. He traded for a guy named Brett Favre from the Falcons, signed free agent Reggie White and went to consecutive Super Bowls.
In between Oakland and Green Bay, there was Tampa Bay, where Wolf was the vice president of football operations during the Buccaneers’ infant years. “People tell me how bad they’ve got it, but no one can top what I went through,” said Wolf, recalling a 2-26 stretch for his Buccaneers during the late 1970s. “It got done. In four years, that team was playing as an expansion team in the NFC championship game.”
Which means the expansion-team-like Falcons need to do what?
“I wish I had some form of wisdom that I could impart with you, but you don’t learn a darn thing in those situations,” Wolf said. “I mean, when you’re getting your guts kicked out every day, there is no enjoyment. But eventually, the worm turns.”
Well, if you don’t keep turning over the same worm.
Permalink | Comments (50) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Of odd men out, McKay’s situation oddest by far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The weirdest thing that happened Wednesday wasn’t that Bill Parcells changed his mind and made a team look foolish — he has done that before, several times — but that the Falcons chose to reveal Rich McKay’s impending demotion in such an offhand way. Here was the next-to-last sentence of Arthur Blank’s statement: “Rich McKay remains president of the club and will retain general manager responsibilities until a new GM is hired.”
Think about that: The No. 2 man in an organization is about to become something less, and it’s a footnote? How far and how fast has McKay fallen if he doesn’t even warrant his own press release, to say nothing of a full-blown news conference?
It took Blank almost two calendar years after buying the team to hire a GM, and when he did the move was hailed as a coup. McKay had helped build a Super Bowl champion in Tampa Bay, and now he was coming to an organization that had never known consecutive winning seasons. And for the first 13 months, everything was bliss. McKay found Jim Mora and Blank hired him as coach and the Falcons played for the NFC title in January 2005.
This was the hierarchy then: Blank, McKay, Mora, Michael Vick. Of the four, only Blank remains in place: Vick’s in jail, Mora’s in Seattle, McKay’s in flux. A franchise that seemed built to last has fallen to pieces, and we’re left to wonder the last time any of McKay’s decisions truly panned out? Signing Rod Coleman in 2004? Drafting DeAngelo Hall the same year?
(No, wait. Here it is: Picking Michael Boley in Round 5 of the 2005 draft.)
You could tell something was up when Blank spoke to reporters before the Saints game 10 days ago and referred to Bobby Petrino as “the CEO of our football team,” failing conspicuously to mention McKay. On Wednesday it became official, albeit in a backhanded way: McKay is out as a power broker, and now the Falcons are looking to fill two jobs, not just Petrino’s.
Blank is on his third coaching search and now his second GM hunt in four years. The preferred procedure would be to hire the general manager first and let him find the coach. (Given McKay’s history with Mora and Petrino, that seems a sound notion.) But making two high-profile hires in tandem will take a while, and Parcells has already done his part to gum up the works.
Will anything ever again go right for this star-crossed franchise?
Permalink | Comments (200) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Blank makes a mistake by rushing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch — Arthur Blank wants to light a fuse. Arthur Blank wants to end this nightmare. Arthur Blank wants to change perceptions, blow up images, save the world, create some buzz, salvage ticket renewals, sell sponsorships, win games, and he wants to do all of this in roughly seven minutes.
This is what Arthur Blank really needs to do: Take a breath.
Arthur, this is the holiday season, but you are no longer in retail. Chill.
Blank shot high. It’s great to shoot high. But only Bill Cowher qualifies as shooting high. Bill Parcells qualifies as shooting in the dark.
Bill Cowher coached one team for 15 seasons. Bill Parcells coached four teams, including three in a span of 14 years. He slept with several others.
The Falcons need stability. Bill Parcells has never so much as dated stability.
Blank has been lied to by his starting quarterback (Michael Vick) and played by his head coach (Bobby Petrino). He merely was used by Parcells. At least this time, he was misled by a guy with a strong resume.
But why Parcells? What was the rush?
“That’s one thing about Arthur — he likes to make a splash,” tight end Alge Crumpler said, when it appeared Parcells was heading to the Falcons. “When he hired Petrino — I know his search was thorough, but he seemed to hire him pretty fast.”
Splash is overrated. Buzz is overrated. Splash and buzz only get you to the opening kickoff. Blank is correct in believing that his next hire needs to create a sense of credibility. He is incorrect if he believes that credibility has to arrive in the form of a 72-point headline.
Blank has told Rich McKay that he’s done calling the shots. That’s a start. But the owner needs to step back and understand that there are several potential general managers capable of fixing this mess. Floyd Reese (formerly of Tennessee), Tom Donohoe (Pittsburgh and Buffalo), even Billy Devaney (Falcons assistant GM) come to mind.
Forget the headline. Just bring in someone with a plan.
Yes, Parcells would have brought credibility, at least initially. He knows football. He knows personnel. And, said Crumpler: “I know he loves football enough to keep dying his hair for that camera.” I think that was a compliment.
But there is one thing Parcells loves more than football: being pursued. He has retired and unretired so often that the WBC is considering ranking him. He takes jobs. He leaves jobs. He vows never to return. Then he plays footsy all over again. He is Hamlet in togs.
Blank should have known better. You do not speed through red lights to get Bill Parcells because he’ll just make you look bad. Ask the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who still have a signed contract by Parcells somewhere in a desk. “Parcells has coached here four times for 12 minutes,” said Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times.
Parcells knows how to motivate players. But he wouldn’t have been the coach. Can you motivate from the balcony?
He would’ve had to overhaul this roster. But he is 66 years old — older than the owner. When he resigned from the Dallas Cowboys after season, Parcells looked and sounded beaten down.
He won Super Bowls with the New York Giants and he made it there with New England. But he has not won a playoff game since 1998. He did not quit a job to the extreme that Bobby Petrino quit a job, but in a sense he did something far worse: He coached New England in the Super Bowl while negotiating his next job with the New York Jets.
A truckload of negatives should have screamed to Blank to proceed with caution. If at all.
In his statement Wednesday, Blank said: “We remain committed to looking at every option for building a championship-caliber team for our fans. I have stated we will leave no stone unturned in doing so, and this effort is one example of that.”
Looking under that stone: not a problem. But Blank’s chase of Parcells smacked of emotion at best, panic at worse. The Falcons’ problems aren’t going away with one hire. They’re certainly not going away with one headline.
Arthur: Take a breath.
Permalink | Comments (179) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Parcells stays nowhere long
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
If not the vagabond Bill Parcells in the role of guru for the Falcons, then who?
That’s the problem.
Guess Parcells is better than the alternative, whatever that is.
Even so, when it comes to flimsy commitments in sports, Parcells isn’t Bobby Petrino (nobody is that bad), but …
Parcells never has had an NFL job in which he hasn’t left or tried to leave within four years. And guess what? As the guy in charge of a Falcons franchise that needs absolutely everything, it’ll take at least four years to build just part of the foundation.
Remember, too, that Parcells once agreed to become the Falcons’ master architect in the past — in 1987. That was when he began his new-Petrino routine as an NFL head coach after he threatened to bolt the New York Giants after leading them to a Super Bowl victory. Parcells didn’t join the Falcons, only because the Giants wouldn’t let him out of his contract.
After the 1990 season, Parcells led the Giants to another world championship, and then he retired for health reasons. Even so, he resurfaced in 1992 to take the coaching job of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Then he changed his mind at the last minute, with former Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse saying famously that he felt like a “jilted” lover.
Years later, before new Tampa Bay ownership hired Tony Dungy, Parcells changed his mind again after accepting the Buccaneers’ job.
There also was the time when Parcells began negotiating to join the New York Jets as coach soon after he led the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl. With the Jets, he eventually retired a second time as an NFL head coach, but he resurfaced in 2003 with the Dallas Cowboys.
Before Parcells retired a third time earlier this year, and while still officially with the Cowboys, there was word that he was trying to become general manager of the New York Giants.
Parcells denied it, but Petrino also denied a lot of things.
We won’t even discuss in this space the ugly Clash of The Mighty Egos, when you just think about Parcells working for Falcons owner Arthur Blank. According to the agent of former Falcons coach Petrino, Blank was so controlling that he even complained “strongly” to Petrino about the wording in one of Petrino’s pre-game prayers.
Parcells doesn’t take too kindly to orders from people. Which brings us to a Parcells regime with Blank and the Falcons.
If it happens, don’t blink, because you might miss it.
*Comments have been suspended on this entry.
Permalink | Comments (126) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Bill. Birds. Good? Bad? Bueller? Bueller?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Welcome to The Tuesday Countdown - Wednesday Edition. Or: It’s early. I haven’t had my coffee, and I’m still trying to decide. Would Bill Parcells coming to the Falcons would be good news or bad news?
10: There are only a few names that immediately bring an NFL credibility. Bill Parcells is one of them. Then again …
9: This is a franchise looking for stability. Is Parcells really the best choice? This is somebody who has retired and un-retired a few times. He has alternated between four franchises and a few Sunday TV studio jobs. He seemed beaten down in his last season in Dallas last year.
8: Fewer coaches in NFL history have been able to motivate players as well as Bill Parcells. (Bill Walsh comes to mind.) But the plan wouldn’t be for Parcells to coach the Falcons. He wouldn’t be on the field to jab a player when needed. Then again, the jabs didn’t have as much impact in recent seasons.
7: Fewer general managers/personnel bosses have had a better feel than Bill Parcells for when to sign a free agent, who can fill a role, and who should be cut. (Bill Walsh comes to mind.) But fixing the Falcons’ roster will be a 24/7 job. At 66, does Parcells really want to work that hard?
6: Here is what you would read on a press release: Only 12 coaches have won multiple Super Bowls. Bill Parcells is one of them. Here is what you won’t read on a press release: He has not won a playoff game since 1998.
5: Bobby Petrino was the face of the franchise. Anybody is better than that. On second thought …
4: Bill Parcells coached one team in the Super Bowl (New England) while negotiating with another (New York). That might be the only thing worse than being a quitter.
3: The coffee is starting to kick in. Does Rich McKay still work here?
2: McKay is supposed to be the big picture guy for this franchise. We know what the big picture is now. So, if we were to assume that Parcells basically takes over some, or all, of McKay’s responsibilities, the picture can’t possibly get worse. Can it?
1: No. It can’t. At the very least, Parcells would bring a plan. More than likely it would be a good plan. McKay’s plan failed. Slowly evolving conclusion: Parcells to Falcons — good move. I think.
*Comments have been suspended on this entry.
Permalink | Comments (145) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Courting Parcells bold move for Blank
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Bill Parcells would buy back a sizable chunk of the credibility the Falcons have lost. He’s a big name, a big fish - heck, he’s the Tuna.
Having an outsize presence like Parcells would also signal an end to the Blank Way Of Doing Business. Arthur Blank believes that decisions should be a collective thing, and the Falcons, for both better and worse, have operated on that principle since he bought the team in 2002. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons Dan Reeves was fired in 2003, Reeves being an old-school football coach who didn’t much care what the marketing department had to say.
Parcells is so old-school that he built the gymnasium. He doesn’t much care for anyone’s input. He does things his way. He and Jerry Jones formed a fairly cohesive partnership in Dallas, but that was with Parcells as coach. If he comes here as CEO, he’ll have been given the freedom to make every football-related call. And that would be a brand new thing for Blank.
And that new thing might well be a good thing, given that every decision the Falcons have made lately has become a horror. But a front office with both Blank and Parcells - we can safely assume Rich McKay would have little or no role in such an arrangement - would be a combustible thing. And would a hierarchy so heavy at the top undercut any coach Parcells deigned to hire? How many heavy hitters can one franchise stand?
Those are questions that cannot be answered this minute and might well, given the Tuna’s penchant for changing his mind, be rendered moot in the next few hours. But say this for Arthur Blank: By apparently reaching out to first Bill Cowher and then Parcells, the much-derided owner is doing exactly what he should be doing. He’s being bold at a time when boldness is the only viable remedy for what ails these Falcons.
*Comments have been suspended on this entry.
Permalink | Comments (123) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Time kind to Kansas, not Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Over the course of nine months and three days, Georgia Tech and Kansas had built the beginnings of a beautiful rivalry. They’d played twice in that span, each game requiring overtime, each game a shining example of college basketball at an exalted level.
Tech won the first, outlasting the Jayhawks in the St. Louis Regional final along the giddy road to the 2004 NCAA title game. Kansas won the second, prevailing when Keith Langford hit a splay-legged jumper on New Year’s Day in a frothing Allen Fieldhouse, and the entire 2004-05 regular season didn’t see a better game.
They met again Tuesday, peers no longer. Kansas is still really good. Tech has become just another team, unranked and unassuming. Afterward, Paul Hewitt said of his losing Jackets: “We’re a talented team - we’re not a good team.” A harsher judge would say Tech is neither.
On this night 28 of the 30 NBA teams dispatched representatives to Alexander Memorial Coliseum. It’s safe to say that none of those men came to watch any Jacket. If you were to take the two rosters and choose a starting five, you might consider Tech’s Anthony Morrow for the fifth spot. Then again, you might not.
Kansas has depth and talent of the first rank. Tech has a middling collection of Division I players. “Put two first-rounders on this team,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, speaking of the departed Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton, “and how good would they be?”
But there’s the difference. Kansas lost a first-rounder of its own in Julian Wright, and the Jayhawks are ranked No. 3 in the land. Tech lost its two one-and-dones and is sub-.500, having lost to UNC Greensboro and Winthrop. Kansas is a premier program. Tech is an OK program that had a really big season a few years back.
“We’ve just got to realize we’re a good team,” Hewitt said, but the more likely outcome is that Tech will go through another winter with a couple of rousing victories but far more losses. The Jackets aren’t a factor on the national landscape anymore. They’re just another team.
About here, you’re saying: Didn’t Tech have a chance to catch the nation’s No. 3 team at the wire Tuesday? Isn’t that a sign of definite progress?
The answers: Yes and no. The Jackets had a chance to hoist a game-tying 3-pointer inside the final nine seconds but, being the Jackets, didn’t even find a shot. Zack Peacock threw a halting pass in the general vicinity of Matt Causey at midcourt, and Sherron Collins turned the gift into the clinching layup.
“I thought we were going to win the game,” said Hewitt, when asked if he felt he had a manpower advantage over Kansas at any position. And why did he think that? “Because we’re a good team.”
This would seem to be a case of hope (or maybe, to be generous, faith) trumping reality. Kansas can get away with missed free throws and silly turnovers because it’s gifted enough to override foolishness with athletic feats. Tech’s talent level is such that it has to play really well just to have a chance. It had a chance and didn’t know what to do with it.
“We did the things we’re capable of doing,” Hewitt said, and that was true - to a degree. Tech induced 18 turnovers and outrebounded a bigger opponent, but when Kansas didn’t throw the ball away it usually scored. The Jayhawks made 52.2 percent of their shots, and Tech was already last in the 12-team ACC in field-goal percentage defense. A team of modest ability must play barbed-wire defense if it’s to have a prayer along Tobacco Road, and the Jackets haven’t yet shown that capacity.
What Tech has shown, and showed again Tuesday, was its limitations. It doesn’t have a top-shelf player. It lacks a point guard to pull the tangents together. It lacks an inside scorer to keep the defense honest. In sum, it lacks what Kansas has in abundance. It lacks, for want of a better word, quality.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Salesman holds statesman’s job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
No doubt, major league baseball is robust and healthy to its financial core. It bores into the future looking neither right nor left, changing its rules as it goes. Estimate is that the two leagues took in six billion dollars last season, and that makes headlines in Fortune Magazine.
But, in reality, it is a headless monster, and has been since the day A. Bartlett Giamatti died. Tragedy is that Giamatti was able to serve only 154 days.
Here was a man who was as much a curator of the game as he was commissioner. Here was a man who preferred to be commissioner of baseball rather than president of Yale University.
He was your kind of commissioner. He preferred real grass to artificial, he disliked the designated hitter, preferred day games to night and wooden bats to the steelies colleges use.
If you were looking for a man to care for your game, here he was, Bart Giamatti.
He had exercised his authority by putting the ban on Pete Rose, but nine days later he died. He was only 51.
He had been moving ahead with grace. The deputy commissioner by Giamatti’s own choice, Fay Vincent, succeeded him, but the owners were lying in wait. He took his authority seriously. He was commissioner, behaved like a commissioner.
Baseball politics began to bore in. He put a ban on George Steinbrenner. He got cross-legged with the owners over divisional alignment - the Cubs and Cardinals were set up to be in the Eastern Division, Atlanta and the Reds in the West. Made no geographical sense to him. The air thickened, Vincent’s back stiffened, and in time he finally threw in the towel. The owners finally had their game back and they’ve been jacking it around ever since.
They had their own insurance policy right in their midst. They picked one of their own, the one least likely to make waves, and made him pseudo-commissioner. The original title was “interim,” but it was one of the longest interims on record. Allan (Bud) Selig was a car salesman who also owned the Milwaukee Brewers, but it is on record in Wisconsin that the Brewers eventually became the property of his daughter.
So baseball sailed merrily along. A World Series was canceled, the All-Star Game was remodeled, all roads led to the commissioner’s office. Bud Selig became every owner’s pal. No fuss-budget protector of the game to deal with.
Now, I don’t know that that includes the road paved with steroids, and other such body pollutants. I don’t know that any commissioner could have foreseen that, or that he could have intervened. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that Giamatti, and later Vincent, might have sensed it coming and moved into a preventive mode. Giamatti himself had such a grip on his place in the baseball corporation, and enjoyed such popularity with the owners, that it might have been a different kind of game. He moved with diplomacy. Vincent tried to rule with an iron hand, and the contrast created rebellion.
Bud Selig now finds himself in a whirl of contamination. He appointed a senator to check out the drug scourge in the major leagues, and George Mitchell came up with a boatload. Two major league power hitters have come clean, Jose Canseco and Jason Giambi.
Ah, but Mitchell Report has broken the ice. Not just some middle reliever or closer, but the big cheese himself, Roger Clemens. Andy Pettitte, friend and neighbor, has made a confession, and now Clemens is on an island of his own.
He’ll take each case at a time, the commissioner says, and that’s one that arouses deepening curiosity. It leaves him a hanging target, which way to go and how? Too late to call off the senator now, even if his major sources appear to be no more than shady clubhouse figures, most important of whom has been Clemens’ personal trainer.
Oops, Clemens just issued a denial.
Roger and out.
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Singletary’s the wise choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN..
(Or 10 things not worth a whole column.)
10: Bobby Petrino just took the West Virginia job.
9: If we can assume the Bill Cowher dream is dead, I’ve narrowed my Falcons coaching search to these top three candidates, eliminating almost anybody who qualifies as a re-tread or works for the NFL Network. I don’t know what you need a search committee for. This only took about 30 seconds.
8: Ideally, the Falcons should seek somebody for the offensive side of the ball, who can make the most out of the least - because personnel-wise, they are at the least. The top two up-and-coming offensive coordinators right now are Jason Garrett in Dallas and Josh McDaniels in New England. The other best option is San Francisco assistant head coach Mike Singletary. Singletary’s specialty is defense, but he was highly respected as a player and ranks as one of the best ambassadors for the NFL that the league ever has had. He could get players to follow him and unite both the team and the city.
7: Dallas Cowboys fans are blaming Jessica Simpson for Tony Romo’s bad performance against Philadelphia. OK, so I’m Tony Romo: I just had a bad day at work. I drive home. Look who’s waiting for me. I, like, so don’t care, about Barry Beergut in section 212.
6: There are unconfirmed rumors connecting Bobby Petrino with the Notre Dame job, should it open up.
5: Don’t look now but the Thrashers have fallen below the Atlanta Spirit’s Mendoza Line. Thirty-one games into the season, they have a worst record (14-17-1) than the Hawks (12-12).
4: Everybody on their feet. High school baseball coaches in Texas are re-thinking their plans to bring in Roger Clemens as a speaker next month.
3: Such protests carry a lot more weight than asterisks on records or even changing Hall of Fame votes. History will judge star players from baseball’s steroid era. Every canceled speech hits an athlete’s legacy like a sledgehammer.
2: The Falcons (3-11) are locked in a three-way tie for the NFL’s second worst record, and suddenly only two games “back” of Miami (1-14) in the draft order. So which teams are you backing the next two weeks?
1: Bobby Petrino admits being president of Venezuela has always been his “dream job.”
Permalink | Comments (118) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Not even steroids can kill baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Will the doomsayers ever realize one of sports’ greatest truisms?
Probably not, but here it goes anyway: Nothing can kill baseball.
You know as much, because long before the Mitchell Report revealed that the supposedly saintly Roger Clemens became just as potent through artificial means as the supposedly devilish Barry Bonds, the game survived all of those other things.
The Black Sox Scandal.
Those predicting gloom and doom after the Brooklyn Dodgers were the first to bring somebody darker than a resin bag into the major leagues.
Dead ball era.
Pittsburgh drug trials.
Hefty checks written by the owners for colluding against the players.
All of those work stoppages, including one that wiped away a World Series.
Pete Rose, as in the game’s all-time hits leader, who was banned from baseball for gambling issues before spending time in the slammer for income tax evasion.
“World wars,” said Ernie Johnson Sr., 83, chuckling and remembering. He’s a member of the Braves Hall of Fame after an impressive pitching career with the franchise in Boston and Milwaukee. Later, he completed his more than 50 years in baseball as a Braves radio and television announcer. So Johnson has seen much, especially when it comes to those doomsayers.
Added Johnson, “One sportswriter in Milwaukee wrote when our attendance was falling there [during the 1960s] that baseball was dead. There also was a time here in Atlanta one year when we didn’t draw 500,000 people. You’d meet people on the street, and they’d say, ‘Well, baseball is just gone.’ “
That’s funny. In the decades since Johnson heard and read those comments, Milwaukee lost the Braves but gained the Brewers, along with a state-of-the-art ballpark. Not only that, the Braves spent the 1990s reaching the playoffs every season while attracting 500,000 people — just after a few homestands. You’ve also had the state of baseball overall. It has set attendance records each of the past four seasons, and it has watched its revenues quadruple to $6 billion over the past 15 years.
Johnson chuckled, saying, “The game always bounces back. So I don’t know why people keep predicting otherwise. Well, unless they have a secret, or maybe it’s just that, when they say baseball is dying, they want it to happen.”
They want it to happen, but it won’t. Not even with President Bush saying the game has been “sullied” after George Mitchell delivered his findings last week on the massive use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball during the stretch drive of the last century.
There were 31 All-Star players and seven MVPs involved, said the Mitchell Report. The names ranged from former Braves David Justice, John Rocker and Gary Sheffield to current stars for other teams such as Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada and Eric Gagne. Mostly, there was Clemens, owner of seven Cy Young Awards, mentioned 82 times on nine pages of the report. As a result, Clemens joined Bonds, owner of seven MVP awards, as co-poster boys of baseball’s steroid era.
While Clemens and Bonds will remain the faces of this steroid mess forever, baseball will watch the majority of its fans suffer, but only from collective amnesia. We’re in the middle of winter, with nearly every other sport in high gear to help the Mitchell Report move closer to vanishing in the public’s mind within weeks, maybe days. In fact, by spring training, most folks will be discussing balls and strikes more than syringes and HGH.
“I don’t know if I agree with you on that, because nothing has happened in baseball to this degree,” Johnson said. “There is always going to be a question mark in people’s mind in regard to ‘what if?’ That’s why I feel sorry for guys who kept their nose clean and never took steroids. They could be hurt. I think somebody said the record book is going to be full of asterisks. I don’t know. Maybe I’m putting too much on what could become of these revelations.”
Yes, Johnson was. Then he quickly returned to that truism, saying, “In these situations for baseball, something always comes along that helps.”
Always.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Terence Moore
End Falcons’ cursed season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Tampa — For the good of the league and all who watch it, Roger Goodell needs to act. The commissioner needs to stop the Falcons before they play again.
This is the NFL, where on any given Sunday any team is supposed to be capable of winning. The Falcons can’t even come close. On any given Sunday — and there are, pending league intervention, two games remaining — the Falcons can only heap further indignity on themselves.
First this season went bad. Then it got embarrassing. Now it’s just plain sad.
The Falcons lost to Tampa Bay 37-3 here Sunday. They managed five first downs. Their latest quarterback, the overmatched Chris Redman, had a passer rating of 1.2 in the first quarter, and it went down thereafter. (At game’s end, his rating was 0.0.) The Bucs had returned 1,864 kickoffs in their 32-season history without scoring a touchdown but, sure enough, Micheal Spurlock took one the distance in the first quarter.
“Guys were having fun [post-Petrino], and that’s something that’s been missing from our ballclub,” said DeAngelo Hall, who made a nifty interception but also committed another really silly personal foul. “But obviously that wasn’t the answer, either.”
There’s no answer for what has befallen the Falcons. No team has had a season begin with its best player going to court and wind down with its coach bolting for Arkansas. No team has ever had more reason to abrogate professional responsibility. No team has ever been more deserving of a mercy stoppage.
This was Arthur Blank, delivering a message he apparently felt was so essential that he called a reporter 10 minutes after the two spoke in the hallway: “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for us. We’ll get back on track, and we’ll be fine.”
In that hallway conversation, Blank was asked where his franchise goes from here. “We’re going forward,” he said. “What else can we do?”
Sell the team, it was suggested.
“That’s not leadership,” Blank said.
“That’s quitting,” said his wife, interjecting an unsubtle dig at you-know-who.
“Leadership is going forward,” Blank said.
You’ll pardon the Falcons if they feel this season has been nothing less than a re- treat on roller skates. They’re professionals, yes, but they’re also human beings, and in the span of six days they saw their best player sentenced to 23 months in prison and their head coach quit to go call some Hogs and, almost as an afterthought, they lost two games by an aggregate 54 points. (And on Sunday they doubtless heard the ESPN report that Bill Cowher wants no part of coaching them.) What prepares even a rock-ribbed pro to handle all that?
Said Keith Brooking: “Obviously, this is unprecedented.”
Someone asked Brooking if, assuming he lives to a ripe old age, he’ll someday be able to look back on 2007 and laugh. Cocking an eyebrow, he said: “I’ll never be able to find that spin on this year.”
The defense actually played pretty well Sunday, but that effort was always fated to fail. Redman threw an interception that Ronde Barber took for a touchdown one minute in, and that was that. The offense didn’t covert a third down and lost the ball four times inside its 30-yard line.
“We came out with a lot of passion and hope,” said Emmitt Thomas, the stoic interim coach, and for all that the Falcons lost by 34 points. Imagine what might happen next Sunday, when they meet the Cardinals three time zones from home, or the next, when the Seahawks and Patrick Kerney (and yes, Jim Mora) come to what will be a half-filled dome.
“Pray for us as a staff,” Thomas said, “to get these guys to play like professionals.”
This wretched season, sorry to say, seems beyond even the power of prayer. A season like this calls for Goodell to announce today that, for the greater good of both the NFL and the Falcons, they’ll be granted a bye these next two weeks. Nothing good can come from them showing up to play. Nothing good can happen until this season comes to its bitter and blessed end.
Permalink | Comments (336) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
No stopping the Buford Bunch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
With only the notoriously hungry Wolves of Buford’s football team pounding everything inside of Tom Riden Stadium on Saturday night more than the nasty rain over northeast Gwinnett County, this was Lombardi’s Packers against those 0-14 Buccaneers. This was The Dream Team against Angola. This was Mike Tyson in his prime against anybody.
This was unfair. Then again, no offense to Lovett — a competent but overmatched foe that was smashed early, often and brutally during what officially was the Class AA state championship game. Unofficially, this was just another scrimmage in the playoffs for a Buford bunch that had to play somebody on its home field along the way to turning “The Great Ones” into its alternative nicknames for the century.
Given that, it wasn’t surprising this game was over about the time Demetris Murray used his legs bound for South Florida to rush over 100 yards.
In the first quarter.
Speaking of “first,” Buford’s defense, which began the evening with six shutouts, held Lovett without a first down until the last two seconds of the third quarter.
Through it all, those who composed the packed and noisy cheering section for the Wolves ignored the game-long drizzle combined with a wintry chill. Instead, courtesy of Buford’s 50-0 blowout to go with its other ones during the playoffs, they marveled like everybody else over the closest thing to perfection.
“By far, this is the deepest high school football team I’ve ever seen,” said Frank Fore, entering his third decade as a television announcer for the North Metro Game of the Week. “Even during the playoffs, they’ve been ahead so much that they’ve played their B-team in the third quarter. They’ve used ninth-graders in the fourth quarter. They put in so many non-roster guys in one game that, on the air, we had to say ‘That’s No. 48’ or ‘No. 57 did that.’ They’re more potent than all of those Brookwood teams, and those Parkview teams with Jeff Francoeur.”
We can go further. How about Southwest DeKalb’s 1995 powerhouse with future UGA quarterback Quincy Carter and Olympic sprinters Terrence Trammell and Angelo Taylor? Plus, few state champions have rivaled the efficiency of Southwest Atlanta in 1973, or that of Warner Robins three years later, especially since those Demons bodyslammed everybody with Ron Simmons, a future pro wrestler.
Now this 15-0 Buford team storms into that lofty company, or maybe the Wolves surpass it. They just won it all for the fifth time overall and for the fourth time since consecutive titles in 2001 through 2003. Not only that, a fifth title for the Wolves is likely another season away.
David Watkins beamed with the thought, and not only because he is Buford’s assistant athletic director under Dexter Wood. It’s also because he was an assistant football coach under Wood when the pair helped the Wolves’ transition from a Class A contender during the 1990s to the consistently scary thing they’ve become for Class AA opponents.
“That’s what we were working toward, and with (current Buford coach) Jess Simpson in his third year, we’ve managed to stay at a high level,” said Watkins of Simpson, who also was on Wood’s staff. Now Simpson is 39-2 overall as the head guy after coaching a roster for the ages.
In addition to Murray, at least six other Buford players will become the pride of Division I-A programs, ranging from seniors Omar Hunter (Notre Dame) to Jaytee Swanson (Air Force) to TJ Pridemore (probably Georgia Tech).
Buford’s third-string nose guard (Tevin Parks) was 6-foot-6 and 311 pounds.
Alex Hunt spent the season as Murray’s backup at tailback, but Hunt still got a scholarship to Indiana.
This also was a team featuring a bunch of former Falcons as daddies. You had Buddy Curry, with son Jessel Curry. You had Scott Case, with son Kody Case. You had Tom Pridemore, with son TJ. Then, during Buford’s finale on Saturday night, with heavy drops still falling from the sky, you had somebody playing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain” over the PA system.
That’s opposed to the past, present and future cry of Buford’s opponents: “Who’ll stop the Wolves?”
Permalink | Comments (63) | Categories: High School, Terence Moore
Petrino latest coach proven untrustworthy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
So far as I can tell, only two high-profile individuals have strongly defended Bobby Petrino since he lied to his owner, blindsided his assistants, rubber-stamped a shallow statement to the same players he preached unity to, and then slithered out of Atlanta in the dead of night:
1. Russ Campbell, the agent, who gets paid by Petrino to quietly negotiate in the shadows, then dance and spin.
2. Jeff Long, the Arkansas athletics director, who coincidentally negotiated with Campbell in the same shadows, and later proclaimed: “I’m an ethical person.” I’ve long had this theory about people: If somebody has to tell you what they are, they’re probably not.
A third potential defender bailed. Turns out Mephistopheles doesn’t like invertebrates.
But the fallout of Petrino’s exit goes well beyond charring what little credibility he had left. It represents another shot at collegiate athletics in general and college football in particular. Arkansas’ embracing of Petrino, like Rosemary’s Baby, which followed the Les Miles/Michigan romancing leading up to the SEC title game, which followed Nick Saban to Alabama, which is in line with other misdirection plays by universities, athletics directors and coaches, leads you to wonder: If you are the parent of a high school recruit, who can you trust?
Too many institutes of higher education have lost perspective. Too many coaches never cared enough to have it, because they’re too busy looking for their next job, or paycheck, or ego-stroke.
Even Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, who recently rejected overtures from Arkansas but was less than genuine when he bolted Mississippi several years ago, said of the recent stories: “It hurts the integrity of the game.
“I watched two talk shows the other day and coaches were called liars and thieves and everything else. It makes you wonder what this is all about, and that’s just perception. But I know most of the guys who are moving and changing, and most of them are in this business to coach football. It’s a hard business. It’s hard to juggle it.”
Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who dealt with liars at the highest levels of the retail industry, said: “I’ve had associates in the past who’ve done things. But not to the extent that it affected so many people and not as public as it’s been.”
Petrino has had five employers in the last seven years. He has held 12 jobs since 1986.
Question: If you were the parent of an 18-year-old recruit, would you trust turning your son over to him?
Blank was asked that. He paused before answering.
“I personally wouldn’t, not what I know now,” he said.
“Based on his track record and what happened more recently, you’d have to ask, ‘Are you gonna be there?’ “
In theory, college coaches aren’t supposed to be just coaches. In theory, they are helping parents raise kids, molding them into adults. Bobby Petrino: Molder of men?
Clemson coach Tommy Bowden, who also was approached by Arkansas before Petrino’s hiring, said: “When I go into a prospect’s home, like I did this week, the mom who’s fixin’ to give her son away does not want to know how much money I make. They want to know if I’m going to be there.”
Bowden and Tuberville both have buyouts in their contracts, decreasing the chance of either leaving. Tuberville’s is steep: $6 million. “Somebody asked me, ‘Are you leaving?’ I said, ‘The last time I looked at my checking account, I don’t have $6 million in it.’ “
That $6 million obstacle wasn’t there in 1999, when Tuberville took the Auburn job within days of telling Mississippi fans he would only leave Oxford “in a pine box.” But even that didn’t carry the same level of deceit as when Auburn and Petrino secretly discussed a potential job in 2003, when Tuberville hadn’t even been fired.
Tuberville bit his tongue when asked about Petrino’s exit. Something about not knowing “the whole story.”
But you know Petrino.
“Yeah. I know Bobby,” he said, smiling.
You’re not going to bite on this, are you?
“No.”
Bowden took a similar tack when asked if a recruit should trust Petrino will stay at Arkansas for four or five years.
“Y’all can document that,” he said. “Compile the data. But I don’t recruit against him.”
If he did, material to use against Petrino wouldn’t be a problem.
Petrino doesn’t indict an entire profession. But the contamination is spreading.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
And just who hired Petrino?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Personal memo to the reader: A columnist writes his own opinion, not someone else’s — or so it is proclaimed in our sports section. Therefore, this shall be a collection of my own after a stressful stretch which the One Great Scorer might label “The Week of Weird.”
It has been as if we are trying to save someone else’s sinking ship. But no matter how much we bail, the onus lies with Arthrur Blank, and if Mrs. Blank’s opinionating is getting in his way, I leave it to him to clear the air. A man who gets involved in a fray between a man and his wife, I’ve often heard it said, is a fool.
As many of us have said, the original sin goes back to the day Blank fired Dan Reeves. Many of us have it engraved on our minds. Jim Mora wasn’t such a bad hire — I’ve always wondered why he sneered at being referred to as “Jr.” — until we discovered that he’d rather have been at Washington, his alma mater, not the Redskins.
But then the situation is compounded. They hire an itinerant coach out of college, who has a reputation for underhanded dealing — entertaining Auburn and its surreptitious delegation — and with little or no credentials for handling the load of a head coach in the National Football League. His track record is that of an itinerant. It’s publicly recorded in the Falcons’ own press book — 16 moves since 1983. He just about covered the nation. There was nothing to suggest that that he could be a liar and triple-crosser.
He dealt through Jerry Jones, another of Blank’s fellow NFL club owners; Arkansas officials, and behind the Falcons’ back. Even Frank Broyles, who is retired as Arkansas’ athletics director, got involved, unwisely.
And there was the Arkansas situation itself, an institution scorned by its own coach, an alumnus with the fitting name of Nutt, who took a flying leap across the river to Ole Miss. Intregrity among football coaches is at a low ebb, college and professional.
An owner who got off to such an eloquent start with the Falcons, surfing along on a wave of relief that came with fresh ownership, now has instilled in us a guilt complex. Rankin Smith hadn’t been too bad after all. He brought in Dan Reeves. They won a division championship and played in the Super Bowl. And this is what Atlanta gets in return.
Tell you this, selling hammers and nails and siding and such is a lot less complicated than breaking in as a neophyte owner in a professional football league. I prefer what Bernie Marcus did with his Home Depot money. The Georgia Aquarium is a treat all of us can enjoy, from babyhood to seniority.
In the interim, the Falcons high command continues to indulge in creative controversy. With Hue Jackson on hand, an offensive mind with game-planning experience, they install the defensive veteran Emmitt Thomas as temporary head coach. Surely they don’t enjoy piling on more chaos.
That’s about all I have to say. You feel strangely detached riding the sideline, watching this disaster unveiled. You wonder how it could have come to this, from riding the crest of exuberation into the Georgia Dome, striking a vigorous relationship with fans eagerly cheering his arrival, to sinking into the mire of a franchise’s disintegration.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Falcons need to take some drastic measures
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Miami Dolphins are on track to finish 0-16, but it’s the Atlanta Falcons who have had the season from hell. Since Dec. 31, 2006, they’ve had four starting quarterbacks, the first of whom is in prison, and three head coaches, the latest being interim man Emmitt Thomas, who must be wondering what he did to deserve this.
But, as Arthur Blank said 23 hours before Bobby Petrino left to call the Hogs, “The beauty of the National Football League is that seasons come to an end.” This one, mercifully, will end 15 days hence. With an eye toward the future, here are six fixer-upper ideas for the franchise in extreme need of an extreme makeover.
1. Hire a head coach who really is “the CEO.”
For credibility’s sake, the Falcons must find a coach who commands instant respect in both the locker room and the industry. Bill Cowher, currently resting on his many laurels, would fit the bill. But Cowher surely wouldn’t sign on with the league’s most dysfunctional franchise to be one of three or four decision-makers. He’d have to have carte blanche. He’d want and need the freedom to run the draft and shape the roster. The track record for NFL coach/GMs isn’t the best, but this is a special situation that requires an extreme commitment to one driven and respected man.
2. Let Rich McKay stay president — but not GM.
A coach with total control will run his own draft. For all of his successes (DeAngelo Hall, Michael Boley, Jerious Norwood), McKay is riding a string of first-pick misses (Jimmy Williams, Jamaal Anderson), and lately his veteran acquisitions (Chris Crocker, Ashley Lelie, Joe Horn) have been tepid, if not wretched. He has also recommended two head coaches — Jim Mora and Petrino — who are no longer in place. Over the past 11 months, McKay has proved he’s better suited to be a procedural wrangler than a point man for an organization under duress. Put simply, he’s not a take-the-heat kind of guy.
3. Spend the No. 1 pick on Matt Ryan.
A case can be made that the Falcons should start with a left tackle, the rationale being that no quarterback will ever flourish behind this line, or a power back like Darren McFadden. But they’re going to have to find a quarterback at some point, and their lousy season affords them prime picking position. Ryan is the best combination of size and arm and even mobility in a draft that has its share of intriguing quarterbacks (Brian Brohm, Andre’ Woodson, Colt Brennan). And if anyone cares to argue that quarterback isn’t the most important position, here are three names to ponder: Joey Harrington, Byron Leftwich, Chris Redman. See a future in any of those?
4. Trade DeAngelo Hall.
Not because he didn’t get along with Petrino — in retrospect, who did? — but because he’s exactly the sort of player a purposeful new coach won’t want. He’s a me-firster. The penalties that turned the Carolina game had nothing to do with Petrino and everything to do with Hall’s overblown sense of self. His poster-carrying salute to Michael Vick before Monday night’s game seemed less a tribute than another way for Hall to get on camera. And he should, for all of his excesses, yield a fairly handsome return: He’s a Pro Bowl cornerback (mostly by reputation) who has a year left on his contract.
5. Rein in the irrepressible owner.
When he bought the team, it was important that Blank be visible to show that the Falcons were under new and better management. But this season his public appearances have had to do with him admitting he was wrong about Vick and/or Petrino, and the public is frankly weary of hearing Blank talk. His heart might be in the right place, but the hands-on method seems soiled and shopworn. He should make it a new personal policy to stay off the sideline, to issue fewer proclamations, to let his new coach/GM speak for the franchise. We all know he cares. Let’s see if he cares enough to delegate.
6. Lower ticket prices.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the Falcons took out a newspaper ad to say they’re sorry for this sorrowful season, but that’s cheap and easily forgotten. (Today’s full-page ad is tomorrow’s bird-cage liner.) A more meaningful message would be to say this: “We’ve let you down in a way no fans should ever be let down, and we want you to know we’re ashamed. As a sign of our remorse and our commitment to do better by you in the immediate future, we’re rolling back ticket prices 20 percent for 2008. Please give us another chance.”
They’ve floated the idea. They need to follow through.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Post-firing, Thrashers still on hook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It was somewhat ironic a few weeks ago when the Thrashers won a game in Washington so easily that it moved Bobby Holik to say of the Capitals: “They played like they wanted to get their coach fired.”
Because, well, this shouldn’t have been viewed as a completely foreign concept in Atlanta. The players in the Thrashers’ locker room had pretty much done the same thing to Bob Hartley during a 0-6 start. Holik would disagree. But then, it’s hard to be objective when you’re on the ice and you’ve convinced yourself that there is some reason other than quitting on a coach (consciously or subconsciously) for doing nightly face plants.
“I don’t know players who play to get a coach fired,” Holik said.
But you said it in Washington?
“Yeah, I said it. That’s how I felt. The guys didn’t play the way they should have.”
So how can you deny the same thing happened here?
“Because I don’t think that was the case on this team. If you want to say that’s how it looked, that’s fine. I won’t dispute that. I won’t deny it. But I won’t confirm it either. That’s not how it felt.”
This much we know. The Thrashers started 0-6. Then GM Don Waddell fired Hartley and went behind the bench. They won 11 of 15. The fact they have settled back into a mild funk and went only 3-5-1 thereafter — heading into Friday’s game against Toronto — doesn’t discount that they have reacted to the coaching change.
Taking nothing away from Waddell’s abilities as a coach, but even he would admit (probably) that he’s not Scotty Bowman compared to Hartley, who has coached over 700 games and won a Stanley Cup. Yes, Waddell has placed a greater emphasis on skating in practice and puck possession in games. But the biggest difference is that his players aren’t floating on the ice like zombies.
Waddell saw what happened in the playoffs. We all saw it. The Thrashers weren’t merely swept by the Rangers, they looked like strangers to each other and strangers to the game. Hartley’s contract extension (through next year) wasn’t a certainty. It wasn’t signed until just before the season.
Waddell admits he went into training camp looking for a playoff hangover, and signs that the players and Hartley were on different pages. Or in different libraries. He didn’t see it.
Quoting: “We had a great camp. Then we lost opening night and it was almost like that was the last straw. It’s like everybody said, ‘What are we doing here?’”
A coach-player disconnect had become obvious to him.
“Bob’s a great coach. But sometimes a coach’s shelf life wears out. But like I told the players after Bob was fired, ‘You’re not off the hook.’ They were more on the hook than ever. They had just got a good man fired.”
He said that.
When Waddell took over, he indicated it would be temporary. Truth is, he wanted it to be temporary. If Waddell wanted to coach, he wouldn’t have gone into management in the minors. But the candidate pool was thin, ownership is cash-strapped and already paying off one coach, and the team began winning.
The chances of assistant coach Brad McCrimmon taking over now are slim, Waddell said. You may have missed this foreshadowing: the word “interim” was removed before Waddell’s coaching title from team press releases two weeks ago.
The Thrashers are playing with more confidence, but they remain a team with issues. They are undisciplined on defense and overly dependent on Ilya Kovalchuk on offense (they are 12-6-1 when he scores; 2-9 when he doesn’t). Goalie Kari Lehtonen remains a long-term mystery.
They dug themselves out of a hole. That’s something. But does it qualify as justification for Hartley’s firing?
“I don’t know if you ever justify it,” Waddell said. “You’re dealing with human lives. Bob’s a friend of mine. Did I ever think I would fire him? No. Did I think I had to, to save the season? Yes. Have I justified it? I guess we have to wait until the end of the season to see how we end up.”
Post-script: Washington fired coach Glen Hanlon the morning after Holik’s comments. I guess some things just look painfully obvious to outsiders.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Well-traveled coach anchors at Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This is the Paul Johnson you don’t know. Mountain boy. Born and bred in the Blue Ridge. Hometown Newland, North Carolina, population 645 in his day, just about the same today.
One traffic light, a drug store, a supermarket, filling station and the Avery County courthouse. “We lived in the middle of town and I walked a block and a half to school,” he said. In his heart, he had his mind set on being a pro athlete. “By the time I was in high school I knew I wasn’t good enough, so after that I aimed at being a coach.”
His inspiration was close at hand, the coach at Avery County High School, an old-timer named Elmer Aldridge. As he looks back on it today, he reckons that Elmer Aldridge had as much to do with what he has become as anybody. He played football for Elmer, walked to and from the practice field to home. After high school, he went on to Western Carolina, across the mountains at Cullowhee.
He never went out for football, and when he tried his hand at basketball, he never made the team. That’s when he got on with the ambition he had set for himself. Coaching. Like Elmer Aldridge.
After college, he went back home to Newland to become Elmer’s assistant at Avery County High, then got a job at Lees-McRae Junior College, and at the same time worked on his master’s at Appalachian State, just a few miles away in Boone. Then he got aboard the carousel and the coaching merry-go-round was on.
By now, the year was 1983, and Erk Russell came calling from Georgia Southern. Johnson was a perfect choice for the Eagles. He didn’t cost much and they didn’t pay a lot. He was Erk’s offensive coordinator, and during one of Georgia Southern’s national championship games, Bob Wagner, about to become head coach at Hawaii, liked Johnson’s offense so much he hired him. From Statesboro to Honolulu … man, was that mountain kid from Avery County moving up in the world.
He spent seven seasons on Oahu, then Navy recruited him to coach the offense, and by this time, the kid whose playing career topped out at Avery County High was moving along. At last count, I came up with three Division I-A head coaches who never played college ball, Charlie Weis at Notre Dame, Mark Mangino at Kansas, and Paul Johnson. There was another, but at the moment, Dennis Franchione is adrift.
Well, the rest of the story is pretty well documented. After one season at Navy, he went back to Georgia Southern, and there won some national championships himself. Now, Navy discovered it couldn’t live without him and called him to save the ship. The devastating blow heard around the seas was delivered by Georgia Tech, oddly enough, when the heartless George O’Leary ran up a score of 70 points on the poor Middies, worst beating in the history of the academy. It was brutal.
Now, a coach has to have courage to walk into one of the academies, where recruiting is severely restrictive, and where the team’s previous two seasons had bottomed out at 1-20 — and that’s not an interstate.
“I knew you could win at Navy. I was going around in circles, to Georgia Southern and back again. I’d done all I could do at Statesboro, and since I’d been there before, I knew something about coaching at the academies,” he said.
He showed up at Annapolis with a show of bravado. “There is no excuse for not playing winning football at the Naval Academy. Recruiting is different. You have to work within the system, but it can be done,” and he proved it. He won the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award, took his Middies to bowl games, and “Anchors Aweigh” rang out across the seas with a new vigor.
That was the highlight of his career. Now he has another. He has the job that Dodd once had. He’s the new coach at Georgia Tech, and he may revive the vigor in “Ramblin’ Wreck.”
“I just wish Coach Eldridge were still alive to see something he played a part in,” he said. “I don’t try to pattern myself after any other coach, I just try to be myself, something I learned from Coach Elmer. That’s all I can do.”
Stand by for further developments. It ain’t going to be dull.
Permalink | Comments (76) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Years of baseball history tarnished
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The only run scored on the night the Braves won their only World Series was generated by David Justice, who was named Thursday in the Mitchell Report. There was no implication therein that Justice used steroids or HGH as a Braves player — indeed, Justice maintained to investigators he’d never used a performance-enhancing substance — but it makes you wonder.
Then again, the Braves were undone in Game 5 of the 1993 NLCS by a 10th-inning homer from Lenny Dykstra, also named. They were beaten 1-0 in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series by Andy Pettitte, also named. They were beaten twice in the 1997 NLCS by Kevin Brown, also named. They were beaten in three separate postseasons by Roger Clemens, also named.
What the Mitchell Report tells us is that most every accomplishment in the sport over the past two decades is suspect. Clemens, owner of seven Cy Young awards, is named. Barry Bonds, owner of seven MVP plaques, is named. Troy Glaus, MVP of the 2002 World Series, is named. Eric Gagne, the 2003 National League Cy Young winner, is named. Of the eight American League MVP awards bestowed from 1995 through 2002, five were taken by players named in the report.
The report, it must be said, is more anecdotal than evidentiary. (Clemens has already denied everything.) Few current players deigned to meet with investigators, which tells us something about the priorities of current players. If the intent is to poke holes in Mitchell’s methodology, we’ll be here until pitchers and catchers report. But the Mitchell Report, for all its flaws, carries the undeniable ring of truth. We, meaning all of us, knew what we were seeing these past two decades, and we, meaning all of us, chose to ignore it.
Said Mitchell: “Everyone involved in baseball these past two decades — commissioners, team officials, the players’ association and players — shares to some extent in the responsibility for the steroids era.”
There couldn’t have been a more damning indictment, but the beauty of this report was that it didn’t advocate returning to 1990 and replaying every game or striking down every fishy record. Baseball is where it is: It has marketed a product largely based on cheating, and nothing it can do now will override that chilling reality.
Baseball cannot go backward and affix asterisks to specific achievements of dubious merit because every achievement has been rendered dubious. Do we view the Yankees’ reign the same way knowing that Clemens and Pettitte and Justice and Mike Stanton and Gary Sheffield and Denny Neagle were named in the report’s 409 pages? Do we regard the Braves’ run of 14 division titles as pristine, seeing they’d also employed Justice and Stanton and Sheffield and Neagle?
There’s nothing to be gained from fighting the battles that, through the negligence of baseball and the resistance of the players’ union, went unfought. Clemens won 354 games. Bonds hit 762 homers. The Yankees took four titles in five seasons. Those marks must stand because any attempt to override them would have no beginning and no end.
Steroids changed the sport. The idea is, or at least should be, to change it back. Random testing has had an effect (though no effective urine test exists for HGH). This seems the moment for baseball to offer blanket amnesty and let the days of pharmaceutical excess recede into rancid history. Said Mitchell: “Letting go of the past and looking toward the future is a hard but necessary step.”
But then, two hours later, we saw how this silly sport got into this mess in the first place. The tin-eared commissioner met the media and essentially trashed the concept of amnesty. “Punishment will be determined on a case-by-case basis,” Bud Selig said.
On the day Mitchell advocated moving only forward, Selig sounded as if he means to go backward and pick every nit. He didn’t want to know anything a decade ago, and now, having received the report he belatedly commissioned, he needs to know everything. There’s a word for such a man. That word is “nitwit.”
Permalink | Comments (64) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Falcons have hit rock bottom
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Until this week, I wasn’t prepared to call this the worst Falcons’ season. I kept going back to 1989, when the team went 3-13 and Marion Campbell quit with four games remaining and two players died in car crashes and attendance for the final game was 7,792. But now …
This is the worst.
This is the worst season in the history of professional sports.
This week pushed it to the absolute bottom. (And hey, it’s only Thursday!) On Monday the franchise quarterback appeared in court wearing prison stripes. On Tuesday the coach appeared on TV doing “Whoo, Pig Sooey!” with the Arkansas cheerleaders. You couldn’t make this stuff up. You could barely believe it when you saw it with your own eyes.
Obviously, I was wrong about Michael Vick being a good guy, wrong about Bobby Petrino being a good fit, wrong in the belief that Petrino was actually warming to the NFL. “We need to finish the season and find something to build on,” he said Monday night, and 18 hours later it became known that he wouldn’t be doing either thing.
A lot of people distrusted Petrino from the start. I wasn’t among that number. I’m not going to pretend I knew him well, but I thought I knew a little about his methods and his aspirations. Turns out I knew nothing about anything. He was the first man to the exit. He didn’t even make provisions for his staff, which includes his brother Paul. What kind of guy acts like that?
The Falcons have lined up to take shots at Petrino, and every one of them is justified. He dishonored a team and a profession. I thought he was a real pro, but he was only pro-Petrino. For all the damage Vick did to this organization, Petrino has done just as much.
On Monday it seemed the worst was, finally and mercifully, behind the Falcons. On Tuesday the outbound Petrino didn’t even let the door hit him in the behind. And with that, this officially became the worst season ever.
Permalink | Comments (151) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Jilted Blank hurt himself
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Flowery Branch — The Falcons are a mess, and they will be for years, probably longer than that. So contrary to what general manager Rich McKay said on Wednesday at a news conference about how he has received some “unique names” among the slew of messages he’s gotten about his vacant head coach’s job, nobody with an accomplished resume is coming here.
Nobody with an accomplished resume should come here, not unless he has absolutely no place to go, especially given the depth of the Falcons’ mess.
This is a self-created mess by Arthur Blank, the owner, and by McKay, that normally invisible general manager who actually surfaced in public for a change. In other words, Bobby Petrino, who created that vacancy at head coach for the Falcons by leaving abruptly on Tuesday to do that “Woo Pig Sooey” thing in Arkansas, is getting too much blame for this franchise threatening to drop off the face of the earth again.
Petrino didn’t hire Petrino.
Blank and McKay did.
All Petrino did was become Petrino, and this is what Petrino does: He lies, and then he leaves. He almost did it when he coached Louisville and tried to sneak into Alabama in the middle of the night to take the job of Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. Later, Petrino signed a hefty extension with Louisville, supposedly as a sign of his loyalty, but he tried to get the LSU job a few days later. He also swore his allegiance to the University of Louisville, and then to the city, and then to college football two summers ago after he agreed to a 10-year deal worth $25 million. Several months later, he worked in the shadows to get his “dream job” in Atlanta.
Even so, Blank and McKay did a series of foolish things. First, they ignored Petrino’s historically deceitful ways - including the ones that got him to the Falcons - and then they shrugged over the fact that college coaches regularly flunk in the NFL, and then they hired the guy anyway.
That’s why it deserved just a yawn when Blank spent his portion of the news conference speaking of feeling “betrayed” and “let down” after Petrino did what Petrino always does. Blank also said he felt “abused” when he was told by Petrino that “You’ve got a head coach” after a firm handshake only to watch Petrino smile and grin and laugh the next day as the new head coach of the Razorback Nation.
McKay added later that Petrino expressed often during recent days that “He was able to communicate better with college players than pro players.”
Really? I mean, how could Blank and McKay not know as much before they did the ridiculous by giving the guy that five-year contract worth $24 million? The examples were everywhere (Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, Butch Davis, Nick Saban, Dennis Erickson) of college coaches who didn’t realize they were dealing with grown men in the NFL. “He couldn’t handle a lot of noise, so he didn’t even want us to speak that loud at team dinners,” said the normally taciturn Warrick Dunn, whose tongue was on automatic on Wednesday while speaking of Petrino. “It was like we were in kindergarten. He didn’t even want us to have the TV on in the locker room, and not even Coach [Bobby] Bowden or Coach [Mark] Richt was like that.”
This was just Petrino being Petrino, which contributed to a vivid microcosm of the Falcons’ mess this week. On Monday morning, the Falcons’ franchise quarterback stood before a federal judge wearing black-and-white prison stripes. On Monday night, they were flattened on national television by their archrivals from New Orleans. The next day, Petrino took a $2 million-a-year pay cut to bolt for a lesser job with three games left during his first season.
In general, the Falcons’ offensive line is abysmal, and their starting quarterbacks are underwhelming. Plus, the rest of their roster isn’t good enough to compensate for all of those other deficiencies along the Falcons’ way to more horrors at 3-10.
If that isn’t enough, the Georgia Dome has become a wonderful place for fans either to boo or to sleep.
There’s good news, though. Said McKay, when asked if he has learned from his mistake of ignoring the obvious when hiring a head coach, “My answer is yes, because we’re sitting up here [during a news conference]. … We learned a lot from it. I’m not sure I’ll sit here and enunciate all of those things.”
Here’s one: Don’t hire a coach who likes to lie and leave.
Permalink | Comments (113) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
In sports, it’s all lies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It’s come to this: If somebody involved with playing, coaching, managing or owning these days tells you that the sky is blue, you better look up.
Thrice, maybe.
These are the good old days in sports for pathological liars. Not only that, there is no end in sight.
Marion Jones was emphatic and angry when reports surfaced that she was juiced while winning all of those races. She eventually did her Jimmy (“I have sinned”) Swaggart routine, complete with gigantic tears and quivering lips.
At least Jones confessed. Martina Hingis still says with a straight face that she doesn’t know how she tested positive for cocaine during this year’s Wimbledon tournament, and Floyd Landis still contends that it was “a natural occurrence” when performance-enhancing drugs were found in his system after he (ahem) won the 2006 Tour de France.
Elsewhere, perhaps you’ve heard about the mess involving Barry Bonds, baseball’s poster child for the steroid era. He was accused by the Feds of fibbing four times during grand jury testimony. It’s called perjury, and it’s enough to send you to the slammer for a long time.
Then there were Michael Vick’s various lies before a combination of prosecutors, probation officers and FBI agents after his plea agreement with the Feds involving illegal dogfighting. Then there was Bobby Petrino repeatedly telling everybody - including his boss Arthur Blank, well, his former boss - that he wasn’t leaving the Falcons for a college job.
Guess Petrino’s pants are on fire, just like those of the others.
Oh, and LSU football coach Les Miles keeps saying again and again that he isn’t bolting the Tigers for Michigan, his alma mater. Which makes you wonder: Is Miles saying the sky actually is chartreuse and expecting us to believe it?
Permalink | Comments (243) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Morris starred in Tech’s Golden Age
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It was years ago, but I can still see that play. It just pops into my head now and then, the linebacker turning the corner, reaching up with one meaty hand, snatching the ball put of the air without breaking stride. I couldn’t remember if George Morris scored on the interception or not, but Bobby Dodd later assured me he did. Don’t even remember the opponent, but I’ll never forget the play.
It was during the golden age of the Dodd years, and the best of his seasons at Georgia Tech. Twelve-and-oh, victory in the Sugar Bowl, and a share of the national championship (with Michigan State). Six members of that 1952 team were All-Americans, Morris, Buck Martin, Leon Hardeman, Hal Miller and Pete Brown on offense, Bobby Moorhead on defense. Buck, Pete and Bobby are gone, and now George goes to join them.
Some years ago, when Dodd was included in a lineup of coaches chosen to name the greatest athlete they ever coached for a national magazine series, he settled on a player who had played only one season for him. Clint Castleberry, a freshman of such skill that he was credited with a startling upset of Notre Dame in South Bend. Dodd was still an assistant to Bill Alexander that season. Castleberry later disappeared in a World War II bomber he was piloting, and there could be no faulting Dodd’s choice.
“Besides,” he said, “there were too many great players on the ‘52 team and I just couldn’t choose between them.”
Later, though, privately he confessed. In his heart of hearts, the chosen one would have been George Morris. No muscle-head, George. He was more than a hulking linebacker; he was an Academic All-American his senior year. He could think, sniff out opposing strategy and react. And, no, “hulking” is not a fitting word, but it will have to do for the time. It was a rare kind of football in that era, and George was a trim example. He never carried more than 215 pounds on his lithe body when the game was on.
Georgia Tech was on an unbeaten streak that ran on for 31 games, into the following season, by which time Morris and Ray Beck, among other Yellow Jackets, were on their way to the Korean War, where they also played a little “scrap-iron” football. Back from the Pacific Rim, George reported to the San Francisco 49ers, who had drafted him. They wasted him as a snapping center, and after the season he came home and found a new line of business with a soft drink company.
He returned to football as an official, 30 years in the Southeastern Conference. “Bobby Dodd had him three years, I had him 30,” said Jimmy Harper, head of the crew on which they worked together many a season. “He never was a student of the rule book, but he was a fine official. He’d throw a flag and say to me, ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s wrong,’ and he was always right.”
Seldom was there ever a dull moment around George Morris. He still carried himself like an athlete, dealt in typical male humor, and the pride of his latter years came in serving as president of the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation, which, by the way, holds its annual selection meeting this very day. George won’t be able to make it. Talking on a cellphone from his pickup Monday with his friend, Jim Terry, another Dodd Foundation official, the conversation suddenly ceased. The light went out on his life.
He was 76, looked, talked and seemed, to those of us who had known him since his days with Dodd, as healthy as a horse. The old ticker just quit on him, only time, to my mind, there was ever any quit in George Morris. Now he goes to rest in the land of his upbringing in Vicksburg, Miss.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Blank should go get Cowher
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Arthur Blank seemed in an awfully good mood for someone who’d spent Monday night talking about his imprisoned quarterback and watching his team lose its 10th game. He was kidding the AJC’s Steve Wyche about the writer’s shirt-and-tie ensemble — “It’s beginning to grow on me,” Blank said — and he’d just seen the guy he’d identified as his team’s “CEO” hold an angered and aborted media briefing. And then the rich man walked with his wife and his security chief toward the Georgia Dome’s exit, surely believing the worst had passed.
Eighteen hours later, the CEO cut and ran.
Eighteen hours later, the worst got worse.
The franchise quarterback is in prison. The coach/CEO is bound for Arkansas. Once again, the rich man has been caught unawares by the true nature of one of his employees. Once again, the long-suffering Falcons are left to wonder if anything will ever go their way again.
What makes coach Bobby Petrino’s exit even more galling is that Blank had come to trust him. If the owner ever referred to Jim Mora as the “CEO,” I missed it. Indeed, Blank in conversation almost always paired Mora with Rich McKay, and speaking with writers before Monday’s game Blank mentioned the GM only when asked about the details of Vick’s contract. In Blank’s eyes, Petrino had become the man with vision, the man with the plan. (I should confess that I also held Petrino in high esteem and am stunned that he took a hike.)
The CEO takes a salary cut to become a Hog. What does that tell us about the state of the Falcons?
It might be funny if it weren’t so sad. Say what you will about Blank, but he has poured body and soul into this franchise, and today he looks like just another rich guy with more money than sense. I wouldn’t blame him if he sold the team to the lowest bidder — would the last man in Flowery Branch turn out the lights? — but I believe he’s in it for the long haul. Alas, the haul keeps getting longer.
For the second time in 11-1/2 months, the Falcons need a coach. At this late date, they should try anything and everything. They could round up the usual suspects, Steve Mariucci chief among them. Or they could try to lure Jimmy Johnson away from Fox. Or they could pursue Rick Neuheisel, the wild card in Georgia Tech’s search. Or they could do what makes the most sense: They could hire Bill Cowher.
Question is, would Cowher, having worked for one of the best organizations in Pittsburgh, want anything to do with the franchise now seen as the absolute worst? That’s where Blank would have to be brave. He’d have to spend big, sure, but he’d also have to be willing to let his coach become the focal point. He seemed to be moving toward that with Petrino, who didn’t stick around long enough for anything to take hold.
The Falcons are no longer Vick’s team and they never quite were Petrino’s, and the Blank Method — coddling and cajoling and empowering — has stopped working. No, the owner didn’t make Vick develop a thirst for dogfights or make Petrino turn tail, but it’s the owner who must clean up after them. Blank spoke Monday of the need to move forward, and 18 hours later his coach moved out.
The next coach needs to be made of stronger stuff. The next coach needs to be tough enough to ride out the losses and bend the organization to his will. The next coach needs to come equipped with an ego and a persona as outsized as the owner’s. Half-measures won’t rescue a franchise that has become a full-blown mess.
Petrino was a bold choice that didn’t work out. Having hit what surely must be bottom, there’s no cause to get timid now. Go bigger. Get bolder. Get Bill Cowher.
Permalink | Comments (201) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Petrino was never up to the job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
He lost his quarterback. But Bobby Petrino didn’t quit because he lost Michael Vick.
He lost players to knee injuries, ankle injuries — injuries because the JetSki went one way and his defensive tackle’s leg went the other. But Bobby Petrino didn’t quit because the Falcons’ roster was decimated.
Bobby Petrino quit because being an NFL coach isn’t just about Xs and Os. It’s about all of those things Petrino didn’t want to handle and clearly wasn’t equipped to handle. Salary cap issues. Players egos. The most basic form of communication.
Bobby Petrino quit because he couldn’t handle almost anything.
Michael Vick lied to Arthur Blank. Bobby Petrino lied to Arthur Blank. The second guy didn’t break any laws, but the two are closer than we could have imagined in the character department.
Petrino is a quitter. Thirteen games and he is checking out for a job back in the college ranks, where he can mold young men by stepping on them first, which is something you can’t do in the NFL.
Nick Saban couldn’t handle it either. Hey, at least Nick Saban lasted two seasons. By comparison, Nick Saban is a martyr.
Thirteen games. Are you kidding?
When Blank’s head stops spinning after all he has endured this season, he should breathe a sigh of relief. He should get past the fact he has to find another coach. Get past the fact that the franchise he would open a vein for has hit bottom and will take some time to turn around.
Arthur: Get past all of that, because things probably just got better. Save the balance on the five-year, $24 million contract you gave Petrino. Find yourself a coach who won’t melt down every time the temperature rises above 78.
If football is the ultimate game of physical and mental toughness, Petrino turned out to be the ultimate mushhead. This is the NFL. This is Big Boy football. The Falcons already have too many players who stomp their feet and hold their breath. The last thing they needed was a coach who did the same thing.
Petrino said the Falcons were his dream job. He said he wanted to work for Blank and Rich McKay. He said he wanted one season to see what he could do with Vick.
Things didn’t go as planned. Obviously. Petrino didn’t win. That wasn’t really his fault, given circumstances. But there were so many warning signs about how he handled situations, you wondered how he would function in the NFL environment, even without the extreme issues.
He rarely communicated with his players. He didn’t seek any input from the veterans he inherited — and while it’s certainly his prerogative as a head coach to do as he pleases, constructing such walls is counter-productive for a coach trying to build unity.
Petrino didn’t tell players when they were being benched, or why. Some found out when they got to the stadium on game day. Joey Harrington found out from reporters in a news conference that he might not start at quarterback that week.
Say what you want about Harrington — no professional athlete deserves to be humiliated like that. No man deserves to be treated like that.
Bobby Petrino. Not a man. He is running like a coward.
It has been apparent all season that Petrino and McKay were on different pages in personnel issues (Why make Ovie Mughelli the league’s highest-paid fullback if he’s not going to be used?)
Most of all, he had lost the team. That was never more apparent than in Monday night’s game against New Orleans. Hall walked into the Georgia Dome carrying a sign, and Roddy White wore a T-shirt, both reading, “Free Michael Vick.” Once you got past the vitriol directed toward Hall and White, you had to ask yourself: Would any player have done that if they liked, respected or even feared their coach?
Petrino took exception last week when I asked him about the possibility of leaving the Falcons for a college job (I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, and figured he would wait until after the season).
“My plans are to be here, there’s no question about that,” he said. “I get asked the same question every day, and that’s my plan.”
And now his plan is taking him to Arkansas. At least 13 games covers a full college season.
The Falcons now have one less quitter to worry about.
Good riddance.
Permalink | Comments (281) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Falcons moving forward without Vick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
When last the New Orleans Saints visited, the frazzled day ended with Michael Vick flashing two naughty fingers. That was 54 weeks ago, the longest 54 weeks any professional franchise has ever known.
“It’s a season that doesn’t seem to have an end to it,” Arthur Blank said Monday night, and what began last year only accelerated with the arrival of 2007. From the coaching change to the water bottle in Miami to the investigation in Virginia to an indictment and a plea and now a sentence, not to mention a lot of lousy football interspersed … how much can one club stand?
Here was Blank, finishing his thought: “But the beauty of the National Football League is that seasons come to an end and, because of free agency and the way the draft works, you can turn a team around fairly quickly. And I think Atlanta is fortunate to have an owner [i.e., him] who’s very competitive, is not very patient and has resources - and he’s going to use all three components to make sure we get back to being a competitive team as soon as we can.”
On the day Vick learned the depth of his debt to society, the team he wrecked lost yet another game by yet another wipeout score. But if you listened hard, listened between the boos directed toward the Falcons and the cheers of the visiting Saints fans, you could hear the rustle of a page being turned.
Blank wouldn’t say once and for all that Vick will never again play for this team, but it’s now certain he won’t play for anyone until 2009 at the earliest. “We’re going forward without him,” Blank said, and note the word choice.
These 54 weeks have been spent glancing backward and sideways, wondering who’s coming and who’s going and how many dogs died at 1915 Moonlight Road. With Vick otherwise occupied for the next 23 months or so, we turn our attention to the team he wrecked.
Blank again: “We’re really fortunate to have Bobby Petrino as the CEO of our football team,” a designation that must surely signal a demotion of Rich McKay, the titular president/general manager. “The way he has been dealing with adversity has proved to me he’s even better a head coach than I thought he’d be.”
So that, it would seem, is the new hierarchy: Blank spending, Petrino running the football operation, McKay looking for something to do, Vick locked away. The bad news: Things aren’t apt to improve much anytime soon. The good news: They can’t possibly get worse.
Even on a night when DeAngelo Hall toted a poster of Vick onto the field and Roddy White raised his jersey after scoring a touchdown to display a “Free Mike Vick” T-shirt, the feeling was that the city’s biggest newsmaker these past six years had officially been rendered yesterday’s news. He has his time to do, and the Falcons have matters to attend that no longer include him. They have a wrecked team to fix.
“We need to take a good hard look at ourselves,” Petrino said. “We need to finish the season and find something to build on.”
They’ll be able to work in relative solitude, not to be confused with solitary confinement. Nobody expects anything of the Falcons anymore. No network will dare display them in prime time after what happened Thanksgiving night and Monday. (Aggregate score: Visitors 65, Falcons 27.) They’ll move ahead without their franchise player but still with an NFL franchise, however torn and tattered.
Said Blank, speaking of Vick’s disinclination to come clean even after his plea agreement: “I’m disappointed in Michael, again. One day the light bulb is going to click on and he’ll realize he needs to be honest with people and with himself.”
Maybe he will. But what light there was in the gloom of Monday’s loss was a tiny beacon for the Falcons, a beacon pointing toward a tomorrow without Vick, without court appearances to monitor and apologies to make, a tomorrow in which the focus falls, finally and mercifully, on football.
Not the feds. Not felonies. Just football.
Permalink | Comments (73) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Vick’s reality hits hard in courtroom
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Richmond, Va. — Surely, as I sit here on Monday inside a packed federal courtroom, this is just a fleeting nightmare. Whatever the situation, it is a self-inflicted one. You can attribute this to someone who carelessly went from wearing No. 7 for the Falcons to the black-and-white prison stripes courtesy of becoming Case No. 07CR274 for U.S. prosecutors.
Is this really happening? When does the alarm clock sound?
If this isn’t fantasy, why did that someone continue to lie, even when those normally ruthless prosecutors gave him a second chance? Mostly, why didn’t that someone have the decency to save many of his Atlanta disciples from embarrassing themselves through blind loyalty by just telling the truth months ago?
There is Brenda Boddie, the grieving mother, weeping with her head dropped toward the floor. Now her sobbing and the whispers throughout the place have vanished in a flash. That’s because nobody can breathe. Not only did Michael Vick just enter from a back door with federal marshals, but he is dressed in an outfit normally associated with chain gangs from the 19th century. The only thing missing are leg irons.
Among those gasping is ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson, who says of the scene while recalling his 40 years of watching defendants come and go before benches, “Wow.” It’s a judge’s decision in these situations as to whether those before them wear a suit or dress as the criminal that they are. Even so, Munson says, “I’ve never seen anything like this, with somebody wearing that type of an outfit, and the imagery is striking.”
You have the white judge, Henry E. Hudson, a George W. Bush appointee, who doesn’t necessarily agree that the meek will inherit the earth. You have Vick, the African-American defendant, who has drawn the ire of animal rights folks everywhere for his role in fighting and torturing dogs when he wasn’t the Falcons star quarterback. You also have the sentencing for his role in the matter happening in a building that still proudly boasts through a plaque at its front door that it was the treasury building for the old Confederacy.
Not a good look. Still, if Vick doesn’t spend years financing something called Bad Newz Kennels, run by some of his thuggish pals on his Virginia property, he isn’t sitting over there looking worse than he did under a pile of defenders.
Now Vick’s lawyer, Billy Martin, is sounding un-Johnnie Cochran like, with a somewhat shaky voice and no bloody glove that doesn’t fit. He is telling the judge that Vick was “clinically depressed” when he violated his plea agreement by smoking marijuana afterward. You can tell that Hudson isn’t buying as much, because he is alternating between a little smile and a cold stare. Neither is the judge amused by Martin’s explanation on why Vick told the feds that he didn’t participate in the drowning or hanging of dogs, then was fingered by those thuggish pals for doing just that, and then later announced with tears after five hours of interrogation, “I did it. I did it all.”
Across the way, the grieving mother still has her head bowed, while Marcus Vick, Michael’s younger brother, sits to her left and softly rubs her back. They listen to one of the prosecutors tell the judge of the older Vick, “Unfortunately, he was not forthright in his role in killing these dogs.” Then they hear the judge say, “There were other matters where (Vick) was less than truthful or inconsistent.”
Twenty-three months in prison, says the judge, along with other things, but nothing trumped those 23 months.
Just like that, everybody is losing their breath again, because Vick rises after accepting the judge’s invitation to address the bench. After Vick apologizes to the court and to his family, he says what he also said through the years after all of those other Vick things (water bottle, flipping off the hometown fans, stolen watch, Ron Mexico). He says he “used poor judgment” and that he “made some bad decisions.” He says he “accepts responsibility for his actions,” and that he is “willing to deal with the consequences.”
Later, as spectators file from the room in silence, a sullen Vick stays behind at the defendant’s table. He rests his head against his left hand. That’s when it really hits Vick, along with everybody else.
This is reality.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Vick’s sentencing, Falcons converge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
To comment on the Vick sentencing, please go to the Talk of the Town blog.
The sentencing unfolds in a packed courtroom. It will be dissected on air and in print ad nauseam, catastrophe making for great theater.
The game unfolds in a relative 70,000-seat mausoleum. Thousands of seats will be left empty by blinded fans who stepped in it, mistakenly renewing their season tickets before the indictment, before the guilty plea, before one of the most extreme and tragic falls from grace we’ve ever seen, or ever will see.
Michael Vick will be sentenced Monday.
The Falcons will play Monday night.
We have lived at this intersection for too long.
“The electricity he brought to the team and the city was like something I had never seen,” said Bobby Beathard, who joined the Falcons as new owner Arthur Blank’s adviser in 2002. “To make the playoffs that first year, then go to Green Bay and win, you just thought, ‘They’re going places.’ It looked like the Falcons were set up for a long time.”
They were set up. Just not the way we thought.
While the Falcons’ season winds down, like an old Chevy dropping parts along the highway, Vick will be sentenced in Richmond for creating, funding, operating and lying about a dogfighting operation.
Some fans remain handcuffed to their anger. Others have transitioned into sadness. Both are understandable. No athlete ever had so much, money and power, on and off the field, and threw it away for something so mind-boggling and stupid.
Drug and alcohol problems, at least, could be rationalized as a weakness, even disease. But fighting dogs, refusing to cut ties with street punks you called friends, lying to the man who paid you, as well as the teammates you sweated with and the city of fans who bowed at your feet — that, you can’t rationalize. It’s a lethal combination of arrogance and immaturity that could smother any career.
We try to feel sorry for Michael Vick. We try to forgive. But he makes it so hard.
He pled guilty on Aug. 27. He made a statement in which he sounded humbled, embarrassed and contrite.
He said: “I will redeem myself. I have to.”
Two weeks later, he submitted a urine sample that tested positive for marijuana. It was a violation of the conditions of his release before sentencing — to say nothing of a violation of pure common sense.
Part of Vick’s plea agreement was that he would help federal authorities in other dogfighting investigations. He was given the opportunity to reduce his potential sentence. But if he has helped, it has been kept quite a secret. A recent report indicated government officials don’t believe Vick has been forthcoming.
“I need to grow up,” he said after his plea. But his level of doesn’t-get-it-ness just keeps rising. The birth certificate says 27. The actions say 12.
“I feel sadness for Michael,” Beathard said. “Sometimes I’d go back to his locker, and we’d just sit and talk. I liked the guy. He was charismatic, intense, and competitive. Michael gave you something. But he couldn’t get away from the entourage, the guys he grew up with. That can drain your career. It’s just so sad when you think of what he had.”
Yes, he had us at hello, as a rookie in 2001. He had us every Sunday. It was exactly five years last week when Vick’s 46-yard touchdown run in overtime at Minnesota ignited this city and blew up a nation of highlight shows.
He was a reason to watch. No. He was THE reason to watch.
The Falcons, 16-32 in the previous three seasons, went 7-0-1 in one stretch in 2002, Vick’s first year as a starter. They made the playoffs. They went to Green Bay. The Packers had never lost a playoff game at Lambeau Field. They lost that one 27-7. On the first possession of his first postseason game, Vick drove the offense 76 yards in 10 plays for a touchdown. He made the Pro Bowl. Only five other NFL quarterbacks had done that in their first year as a starter.
When Vick played, you couldn’t close your eyes.
Now, you don’t want to open them.
Creditors are lining up. Everybody’s suing. His former house is being auctioned off. His former employer wants $20 million back. A team is wrecked. A city is doubled over.
Monday he is sentenced.
Closure.
We hope.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Johnson’s the right fit for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Paul Johnson has already done what his predecessor couldn’t do in six years of trying: He has Georgia Tech football fans believing again. Tech people never warmed to Chan Gailey, not even on the day of his hiring. But here’s what Taz Anderson, the Atlanta entrepreneur who lettered under Bobby Dodd, said of Johnson:
“He’s the best choice we could have made. He’s perfect for us. He knows the state of Georgia. I like his bearing. … I think he’s the choice of all Tech fans.”
The same Taz Anderson
had become a persistent critic of both Gailey and his sponsor, former athletics director Dave Braine. It was Anderson who said of Gailey’s Braine-bestowed contract extension and Braine’s bizarre assertion that Tech would never win nine or 10 games on a consistent basis: “I’m disappointed Georgia Tech would expect mediocrity in anything. We certainly don’t teach it in architecture or chemistry or engineering. It’s kind of hard to build half a bridge.”
With one hire, Dan Radakovich has bridged the Gailey-generated expanse that had divided Tech fans. More than simply being unable to beat Georgia, the disenchantment was systemic.
Said Anderson: “It didn’t appear there was any real fire in the program.”
Now comes Johnson, who has worked the past 11 years as a collegiate head coach and who has had 10 winning seasons. (Contrast that with Gailey, who arrived in 2002 having been a college head coach for only three seasons, the most recent in 1993.) Now comes Johnson, who has done well with lesser talent and should do no less well with better players. If you can win national championships at Georgia Southern and bowl games at Navy, why can’t you win nine or 10 games at Tech and beat Georgia two times out of five?
As Gailey said the day before his team lost the ACC championship game to Wake Forest 12 months ago, “I think Tech people understand business.” Alas, the majority of Tech folks saw Gailey’s program as mismanaged. His Jackets would beat a good team — but never Georgia — and lose to lesser ones.
Johnson will bring consistency in both method and execution. His teams will run the spread option, and they’ll throw it more than you might think. (Johnson will surely turn Josh Nesbitt into a star.) Anderson again: “His team scored 74 points in a [non-overtime] game — how could you not be excited?”
This buzz, if you will, is what Radakovich had in mind when he spoke of the need for “energy” and “enthusiasm.” Some interpreted that as a call for Bobcat Gold-thwait to come coach the Jackets, but football coaches as a breed tend to be vanilla personalities. (Is Mark Richt a live wire?) The energy and the enthusiasm come from winning, yes, but also from the expectation of winning.
Tech again has that expectation. “Whomever we hired needed to be a fit,” Radakovich said Saturday, “and not just on the football field but with our student-athletes and in the community. We found that fit.”
Has he heard one note of dissent? “I have,” Radakovich said. “Exactly one.”
In the overheated world of college football, one negative is tantamount to unanimity. And Johnson, it must be said, has something going for him Gailey never did — the new man has the backing of an AD Tech people have come to like and trust. Braine, for various and curious reasons, never was viewed in the same light.
Give Radakovich credit: He conducted the first major coaching search of his career in an expert manner. He fired Gailey on a Monday and introduced Johnson 10 days later. In between he met with all the candidates he should have and with one intriguing wild card (Rick Neuheisel). It was so well done that even a guy Tech interviewed but didn’t tap could offer only compliments.
“They treated me well,” said Georgia Southern’s Chris
Hatcher, on hand at the Georgia Dome for the high school playoffs. “And they hired a great coach.”
Permalink | Comments (123) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Finals in Dome even better
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
We locals have gotten accustomed to the Georgia Dome. We drive by it on the way to work. We go there on Sundays to watch the Falcons lose. To us, it’s just another big building. But to a teenage athlete, nothing beats the Dome as a destination.
Campbell Wilson is a sophomore linebacker for Lovett, one of the ritzy private schools off Paces Ferry. He knows the Dome well, having, he said, “grown up going to Falcons games.”
On Saturday he played against Cook in the Class AA semifinals on the same field where he’d once watched Michael Vick. Was there anything familiar about the experience? “This was like a whole new world,” Wilson said. “It’s the greatest feeling I’ve ever had.”
Let’s carry that a step further. Let’s say that the Lovett-Cook game wasn’t just one of 10 semis spread over two days but an honest-to-goodness championship game, the kind with both memories and a trophy at stake. Wouldn’t that be even better?
Tune in next December, when all five finals will be staged here. (Two on Friday, three on Saturday.) For Georgia high school football, it will mark a clear upgrade.
Having the semis at the Dome, as had been the case since 1994, was a nice notion with an inherent conceptual flaw. Why gather teams for the season’s next-to-last weekend only to spread them out again? Imagine if the NCAA men’s Final Four consisted of two semifinals, and then the winners adjourned to the higher seed’s campus to sort out the title. Would CBS be ballyhooing “The Road to San Antonio and Wherever Else”?
“If you go to a high school in August, you’ll probably find a sign that says, ‘We’re going to the Dome,’ ” said Steve Figueroa, the Georgia High School Association’s director of media relations. “But even if you get to the Dome, you’ve still got to go somewhere else to win a state championship.”
It’s a big thing for any school, having a championship decided at its stadium. Dexter Wood, formerly a title-winning coach and still the athletics director at Buford, recalls playing host to three finals. (And Buford, which beat Dublin on Saturday, will stage the Class AA final against Lovett.) “The atmosphere was incredible,” Wood said, “and that’s where I’m torn. But after all is said and done, coming to the Dome [for the semis] is mighty close to that. And when you combine the Dome and the state championship, that’s an idea worth trying.”
Some might complain that the Dome’s immensity renders it outsized for this event. The largest single-day semifinal crowd has been roughly 30,000 in a building that can accommodate 71,250. But the alternative to empty seats isn’t a palatable one. The Class A title game will be played at Wilcox County, where the stadium seats 2,600. Both Wilcox and fellow finalist Emanuel County Institute took 2,000 tickets home. If both sell out, that means 1,400 folks will be standing come Friday.
Better to have the 10 finalists gather here. Crowds would surely grow if the imprimatur of “state title” is applied, and perhaps some enterprising Atlanta business might find it sensible to become a primary sponsor of Championship Weekend. Marketing oomph, even for a consistently superior product like Georgia high school football, would always be welcome.
And there is, it must be said, an innocence and an energy about high school football that no other Dome event — from a Falcons game to the SEC championship to the Chick-fil-A Bowl — can match. The biggest play in Lovett’s victory Saturday was Wilson’s second-quarter interception of a fourth-down Cook pass. He took the ball and fled goalward, and as he neared the culmination of his 68-yard touchdown return he resisted the urge to track his progress on the end-zone matrix board.
“I did not look up,” Wilson said.
Why not?
“Because my coach [Mike Muschamp] told us he was TiVo-ing the game. And he said, ‘If I see anybody looking at the screen, you’re going to run in practice.’ “
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: High School, Mark Bradley
Gaines turns into ‘warrior’ to boost Dogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Athens — No way Georgia’s depleted basketball team was supposed to spend Saturday afternoon at Stegeman Coliseum knocking the “Demon” and the “Deacons” out of Wake Forest. No way the Bulldogs were supposed to respond to all of their off-the-court issues with only a loss at stifling Wisconsin after seven games.
Then again, no way Sundiata Gaines would allow anything less. He is the Bulldogs’ Mr. Everything as their senior point guard. Mostly, he is the epitome of his name, which first belonged to Sundiata Keita, the 13th-century king of the Mali Empire in West Africa. To paraphrase, Sundiata means warrior.
“He was just a powerful leader who led his tribe through a lot of adversity,” said Gaines, after continuing his role as the Bulldogs’ 21st century Sundiata by pushing his frequently erratic but always energetic team to a 72-50 blowout of an ACC foe. It’s always the big things and the little things with Gaines. In addition to his game-high-tying 15 points, he led Georgia in rebounding (again) with nine, and he contributed five assists, two steals and zero turnovers in the second half.
We mention that turnover thing, because Gaines closed the first half with an uncharacteristic six. “I just came out too excited, and I was just trying to force a lot of things,” Gaines said. “In the second half, I realized that I had to calm down and be more relaxed. I was excited about the game, because we had a nice little crowd for the first time this year.”
What that noisy gathering of 7,800 saw was a group of Bulldogs failing to hold a pity party for themselves. They could, and they could start by whining over the Horrors of the Harricks that placed Georgia basketball in the NCAA slammer through much of this decade. There also was the program’s somber mood after the tragic death of Kevin Brophy through an automobile crash. Then came earlier this year, when several players decided that athletics director Damon Evans was just kidding or something when he enhanced the academic requirements and penalties for everybody on all Georgia teams.
Evans wasn’t kidding. Three Georgia basketball players were suspended a total of 30 games, and two eventually were kicked off the team. They were Mike Mercer and Takais Brown, the Bulldogs’ two leading scorers last season.
If that wasn’t enough, starting guard Billy Humphrey was arrested on a felony weapons charge after police searched the dorm room he shares with Mercer for marijuana. Even though Humphrey accepted a pretrial diversion program and rejoined the team, it still was more mess for a team that already was dealing with a lot of it.
It’s still early, of course, with pre-SEC games ahead for Georgia against Gonzaga and Georgia Tech after a Christmas tournament in Hawaii. Even so, those around the Bulldog Nation can rejoice over their 21st century Sundiata doing more than enough to help this bunch handle their messes for the moment.
Gaines has done so by example. It begins with his understanding that Evans wasn’t kidding. Not only that, Gaines wants to graduate on time with a degree in sociology, so he is taking 18 hours during each of his final two semesters. On a given day, he rises at 6:15 a.m., and then he goes to study hall, and then he goes to class, and then he goes to his tutoring session. “After that, we have practice, and after practice, I go back to another tutor, and that’s my day, which ends about 9 p.m., Monday through Friday,” Gaines said. “You want to set an example for everybody. It not only helps me out, but it helps my teammates out.”
In the meantime, the Bulldogs are helping themselves flirt with becoming the surprise team in the conference.
Added Gaines: “With the team we have now, we’re more focused. We’ve got better team chemistry. Nothing wrong with the guys that were here before, because they were great players, but now, guys are buying into what we’re doing on a daily basis, both offensively and defensively. Everybody’s playing hard, and we’re very unselfish.”
Especially Gaines, because warrior kings can do nothing less.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Johnson’s perfect choice, but get back to us
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The perfect football coach is always hired. The perfect football coach is never fired. Often they’re often the same guy.
Paul Johnson was the perfect choice Friday. He won at Georgia Southern. He won at Navy. He has a blank slate at Georgia Tech. Blank slates represent limitless possibilities. All is good.
“If I thought there was a ceiling here and we couldn’t compete for championships, I wouldn’t be standing here,” Johnson said Friday. “The one thing that drives me is a chance to compete for championships. Everything is in place here to accomplish that.”
Smiles. Applause. Hope. This is the way it works on hiring day. A coach is coming off resounding success elsewhere, then walks into the news conference at his next job, looking, sounding, and certainly is introduced as the cure for all that ails you.
Then comes the first game, and the smiles and applause either continue, or the opening kickoff bounces off your returner’s head, at which time the guy who made the hiring crawls under the nearest buffet table.
Meet Paul Johnson. Perfect choice. Start the clock.
We can’t possibly know if he turns out to be George O’Leary. We can’t imagine he turns out to be Bill Lewis, who also was thought to be ready for the next step (he went 11-1 his last year at East Carolina, then 11-22 in three years at Tech).
For now, he’s perfect. This was probably as good a choice as Dan Radakovich could make, given the parameters he had to work with, given how Georgia Tech is perceived right now: a tough academic school in a BCS conference, in the shadows of Georgia, trying to swim out of the middle of the Division 1 pool toward the deep end.
Radakovich hired the coach that SMU and Duke couldn’t. He hired the coach that Michigan and Arkansas wouldn’t. That’s where they are in the pool. The Johnson hiring won’t generate the overwhelming buzz Radakovich hoped for. But if the Jackets win, fans, financial support and buzz will follow.
Buzz helped Alabama draw 90,000 fans to the spring game. Buzz didn’t help against Louisiana-Monroe. Or five other teams.
“If you win most people leave excited,” Johnson said. “It’s not rocket science.”
He had eliminated offers from SMU and Duke but considered staying at Navy. “I wrestled with it a bit last [Thursday] night,” he said. “But I felt the opportunity here was too great.”
He’s not sure what time he finally made the decision. A snowstorm had knocked out power in his Annapolis home. No lights, no clock, no heat.
Win here, and he’ll have thousands building him a fire. He won at the I-AA level (Georgia Southern), and then at Navy. Trying to project that at a school in a BCS conference is difficult. The perfect choice has yet to win a recruiting battle in Louisiana, make a halftime adjustment in Blacksburg or conquer that school in Athens.
Notre Dame thought it had the perfect choice. Even before Charlie Weis, there was Gerry Faust. He won his first game over LSU, 27-9, in 1981. Then he lost six out of 10. Five years of mediocrity came ended with a splat: Miami 58, Notre Dame 7.
Sometimes, it works the other way. Frank Beamer lost his first game at home to Clemson. He went 24-40-2 in his first six seasons. But he has gone to 15 consecutive bowl games since.
While Johnson wrestled with his next career move Thursday, I wrote about the Jackets’ protracted coaching search. It seemed odd that a Navy football coach would balk at taking the job, given his options: SMU, Duke, Navy. Predictably, the column struck a nerve in AngryBlogNation. There never was a suggestion that Tech shouldn’t hire Johnson, or that he could not or would not win. He gets what all new coaches get — a blank slate.
Johnson dealt with demanding academics at the Naval Academy. He won. He is Southern.
Radakovich called his new hire, “the best fit, the best choice, the best man” for the job.
We’re about to find out.
Permalink | Comments (201) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Hawks are improved — sort of
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Even in victory, the supposedly improved Hawks have stretches when they look shaky, bored, confused.
On offense, they clench their teeth while contemplating whether to share the ball or respond with an attitude of “me” instead of “we.” On defense, they treat your average pick-and-roll as if their opponent has invented the NBA’s version of a nuclear warhead on the fly. In general, with lackluster rebounding and mindless turnovers, they play with the energy level of a deflated Spalding.
They play like they’re trying to get their head coach fired.
Mike Woodson smiled, maybe to keep from fuming or crying. “No, no. I really don’t think our guys are trying to do anything like that,” he said, easing into a chuckle. “At least I hope they’re not looking at it in that light. I surely as a coach don’t think that’s the case. I just think they’re still trying to grow as a team.”
That’s often debatable. Did you see how the Hawks went from disinterested to dreadful on Thursday night at Philips Arena? They nearly blew a 19-point lead to the Minnesota Timberwolves, only the league’s worst team. Even so, if we’re drawing a pie chart of blame in this case, Woodson’s slice is smaller than the others’, which includes ownership, management and the players themselves.
As for ownership, you have that ongoing mess involving one owner suing the other eight. As for management, you have a slew of weird personnel decisions, but none surpasses general manager Billy Knight ignoring two point-guard sensations during recent drafts in Chris Paul and Deron Williams and a possible one in Mike Conley Jr. As for the players, you have their habit of giving a lackluster effort, which should be foreign to professionals — no matter what their issues, concerns or talent level.
Then there is Woodson, who has clashed with his young players at times, but who has spent more than a few moments in his four seasons with the Hawks addressing problems and offering solutions. He’s done so during practices, meeting sessions and games. He’s done so in the heavy tones of his college mentor, Bob Knight, but he’s also done so with the softer tones of his pro mentor, Larry Brown.
Still, the 8-10 Hawks lost to the struggling Washington Wizards, the pitiful Seattle SuperSonics and the equally wretched Chicago Bulls. There also was that near disaster on Thursday night. Not only did uneven play contribute to the Hawks giving Minnesota hope for just a third victory, but the Hawks needed a shot at the final buzzer by Joe Johnson to survive with a one-point victory.
Now the Hawks will face a Memphis Grizzlies team at home tonight that isn’t as horrible as Minnesota, but isn’t close to becoming good. It’s another game that the Hawks are supposed to win. It’s another game that will make you wonder one of two things if they lose or look sorry in victory again: Are the Hawks players really trying to get their coach fired, or are we just missing something here?
“I don’t think it’s so much of a disconnect between what [Woodson] wants us to do and us doing it. I just think we get caught up in the moment,” said Josh Smith, among the seven lottery picks on the Hawks, which are trying to end their streak of missing the playoffs at a current NBA-high eight seasons. “We just get so hyped during games. The atmosphere is jumping, and you have that adrenaline rush, and everybody just gets so anxious that sometimes we forget what [Woodson] wants us to do.”
Sounds reasonable. Which means Hawks players aren’t trying to get their coach fired as much as they are trying to overcome the zeal of remaining one of the league’s youngest teams. You add that to a bunch that still doesn’t have a true leader and still needs management to spend some of its considerable money to add another significant piece to the roster, and the Hawks are just average.
That’s an improvement since the Hawks usually are just bad.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Anxious times for Tech, Radakovich
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There are two reasons for Dan Radakovich to feel good about his search for a new football coach.
One: He is not the athletics director at Arkansas, and therefore hasn’t been rejected by Jimbo Fisher, Tommy Tuberville, Tommy Bowden, Jim Grobe and, I believe, Topo Gigio.
Two: He is not the athletics director at Michigan, and therefore hasn’t been hung out to dry by Les Miles on national television and made to look like the last clown trying to stuff his way into a Volkswagen.
The positives pretty much end there. The best-laid plans of Radakovich were supposed to go like this: Fire Chan Gailey and quickly hire a replacement who would create excitement, buzz and hope. Instead, the Georgia Tech athletics director may have been hit over the head with the realization that the Yellow Jackets coaching job really isn’t all that. Or any of that.
High-profile candidates are not knocking each other over at the Hartsfield-Jackson baggage claim. Randy Edsall, seemingly the most coveted prospect, decided to stay at Connecticut.
Connecticut.
This is where Tech is right now: As of writing, Radakovich was still on hold with the Navy coach.
Nothing against Paul Johnson. But he is just Paul Johnson. He is with Navy and he was at Georgia Southern. That’s it. That’s the resume.
Do you know why Johnson has not yet been introduced as Georgia Tech’s coach? Because he’s also considering jobs at Southern Methodist and Duke.
SMU. Duke. Georgia Tech.
I know. You probably thought: One of those three shouldn’t belong with the other two. Oops.
SMU was the poster child of everything wrong about college athletics when the NCAA slapped its football program with the “death penalty.” The Mustangs were cheaters, really bad, disgraceful cheaters, even by Southwest Conference standards.
This year, SMU was clean. Also, 1-11 last season. It plays in Conference USA. The conference title game this season: Central Florida vs. Tulsa. Yes, Paul. We understand the lure.
The winner of the ACC goes to the Orange Bowl, at least.
The winner of Conference USA goes nowhere anybody really cares about, at best.
Duke is in the ACC. Orange Bowl? No.
If Georgia Tech can’t swiftly and overwhelmingly convince a coach that its football job is so much better than SMU’s or Duke’s or Navy’s, it might be time for Radakovich to get out of the excitement, buzz and hope business.
There was nothing wrong with the athletics director’s motives. Radakovich, like many in the Tech community, had burned out on seven-win seasons and bowls on the endangered-species list.
He fired Gailey because he wanted to reinvigorate the fan base. He fired Gailey because Tech needed to generate more revenue, whether through ticket sales, suite leases, sponsorships or alumni donations. He fired Gailey because he thought he could do better.
Still waiting.
The irony of waiting on Johnson is that he really doesn’t even fit the prototype Radakovich laid out two weeks ago at his news conference. Johnson might be a terrific football coach. But the buzz would have to come later, after the winning. There’s no sense that the name or the personality of Paul Johnson is going to sell.
The last thing a Tech fan needed was a humbling. (They’ve already been to Boise.) But look at the search. Edsall wouldn’t come. Fisher stayed at Florida State, given the promise of being Bobby Bowden’s heir apparent. There have been conversations with two highly regarded defensive coordinators, Charlie Strong of Florida and Will Muschamp of Auburn. For whatever reasons, they’re still there and Tech is still here.
There’s still Jon Tenuta.
Look, nothing against Tenuta. He might end up being a fine head coach someday. But if Radakovich really wanted to give him the job, don’t you think he would’ve done that by now?
If Johnson says no, he starts over. Maybe he goes back to Strong or Muschamp. Maybe he just gives the job to Tenuta and comes to the news conference with the standard line, “He was my first choice all along.” Maybe he phones Arkansas or Michigan, just for a pick-me-up.
But right now, there’s not much to feel good about.
Permalink | Comments (353) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Andruw’s agent gets last laugh
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The first response is to laugh really hard at mean ol’ agent Scott Boras, who for once didn’t get all he wants. He held up Andruw Jones as a $100 million man, and now they’re settling for $36.2 million? Chicken feed!
Second response: Hold that guffaw.
Going on average salary, Andruw Jones is set to become the fifth-highest-paid player in the sport. That’s coming off a season in which he hit .222.
The length of the contract — two seasons — is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ concession to Jones hitting .222. The pro-rated amount of $18.1 per year reflects the team’s hope/belief that Jones will hit 60 — OK, 50 — points higher in a new setting. And now the Dodgers, who have lately lived but mostly died with overpriced retreads, get to plug another big-ticket free agent into their new matrix of young guys plus Joe Torre. It will be an intriguing mix.
Boras’ office is in Newport Beach, just down the freeway from Dodger Stadium, which means he can console Andruw Jones in person whenever he strikes out four times in a game. L.A. is a better place for Jones than, say, New York, where the locals don’t take so well to four-strikeout games. And Torre is a players’ manager, same as Bobby Cox. And now Jones, due to the brevity of the deal, will essentially be playing for his next contract from the moment he signs this one. (This past contract year didn’t work out so well, but maybe he’ll get it right the second time.)
As for Boras: He didn’t get the $100 million package he could hang on his office wall, but he still got $18.1 million per annum for a guy who hit .222. Even if you despise Boras, which pretty much everybody does, you have to admit that’s a deft bit of agenting.
Permalink | Comments (197) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Tech needed win in the worst way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It was a big night for Georgia State — a home game in the walk-up gym against the high-falutin’ hometown program with national TV (even if was only ESPNU) on hand to transmit the doings. But this game was just as important for the high-falutin’ hometown program, which has already run itself into a low-falutin’ ditch.
If your aim is to make the NCAA tournament — and whose isn’t — losing four games before New Year’s Day puts you in mathematical distress. Georgia Tech suffered its fourth loss on Dec. 1, which means the remaining games in calendar 2007 have been rendered absolutely essential.
This marks the fourth time in Paul Hewitt’s eight years on the job that the Jackets have suffered four losses before Jan. 1, and in each of the previous three seasons Tech missed the Big Dance.
The Jackets aren’t apt to do better than 8-8 in the ACC — they’ve broken .500 in league play only once under Hewitt — and four plus eight equals 12. Throw in another presumptive loss in the conference tournament, and that’s 13 and your chance as an at-large team is gone.
Then again, such calculation likely misses the greater point: If you’ve lost four games already, you’re probably not a tournament team anyway. But Tech figured to be at least good enough to be a bubble team come March, and a loss to the crosstown school might have delivered the most premature “pop” in hoop history.
Georgia State has an ambitious athletics director in Mary McElroy, who arrived by way of Tech, and her first significant hire was a splendid one. Rod Barnes did nice work at Ole Miss, which is the worst job in the SEC by some distance, and he figures to get as much out of GSU as anybody can. Question is, how much can be gotten from a program that struggles to fill its walk-up gym in the best of times?
The Panthers will get better with time, which is a nice way of saying the season ahead won’t be strewn with roses. Georgia State lost its first three games by an aggregate 72 points, the most egregious being a 30-point pounding at Florida State. Given that the Seminoles were picked to finish ninth in the ACC to Tech’s seventh, the walk-up gym seemed a place for the Jackets to get, if not well, then certainly a bit better.
So it came as a surprise that the game was tied at the half and as an utter shock that the Panthers scored the next eight points to seize the lead. At least the losses to UNC Greensboro and Winthrop fell under the heading of semi-respectable: The former was picked first in the North Division of the Southern Conference, and the latter won a game in last season’s NCAA tournament. GSU was tabbed to finish 11th in the 12-team Colonial Athletic Association.
But now these unassuming Panthers had the lead and were looking like an actual viable team, and the walk-up gym — for once, nearly full — was pulsing to the beat of a major upset. “Three weeks ago I would have asked this game not be played,” Barnes said afterward, “because I thought they were that good and we were that bad.”
Instead it was Tech in trouble, looking bad and about to look much worse if State’s lead held. From finishing second in the 2004 NCAAs to being relegated to No. 2 in its hometown — how precipitous a plunge would that be?
Hold that thought. The Jackets buckled down and defended with a purpose lately missing, holding GSU without a basket over five telling minutes, and Lewis Clinch and Zack Peacock made enough shots to override the deficit. Loss No. 5 would have to wait until another night.
“This team needs to be tested,” Hewitt said, though it would seem his team is getting tested on a nightly basis. “It’s a long season. I’m hopeful this will be another step forward.”
Maybe it will. But Tech’s next game comes Dec. 18 against Kansas, which isn’t No. 11 in the Colonial but No. 3 in the land. That’s a big one, too. When you start as haltingly as Tech has, they’re all massive from here on.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
UGA better crush Hawaii
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
I thought about it. My ESPN pal, Jim Rome, said it.
Now I’ll write it: Courtesy of this lengthy and loud grumbling by Georgia folks over the Bowl Championship Series doing the right thing by putting LSU instead of the Bulldogs in the title game, their team is in the Mother Of All Binds.
So Georgia is among the elite two of college football? Then that means the Bulldogs just can’t go to the Sugar Bowl and beat Hawaii.
They must obliterate Hawaii.
After all, despite the nice storylines, including quarterback Colt Brennan as a possible Heisman Trophy winner and former Falcons coach June Jones turning a nothing program into something, the fact remains: Hawaii is among the most fraudulent teams ever to go undefeated.
And don’t let Georgia, supposedly among the most persecuted teams ever to miss the championship game, lose to the same Hawaii bunch that needed overtime to win at Louisiana Tech and San Jose State. Not only that, Hawaii had to surge in the last seconds to survive pitiful Washington.
No, shy of an absolute thrashing of Hawaii, the Bulldogs can’t win in this situation, and they better not lose.
Permalink | Comments (225) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
For Andruw, the price isn’t right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN:
(Or 10 things I don’t want to write a whole column about)
10: How does Les Miles stand up there and say he (or his agent) never had negotiations with Michigan with a straight face? I mean, do these guys go back into their hotel rooms and repent after news conferences, or do they just practice for the next one?
9: As far as I’m concerned, the only school that has any right to complain about anything is the only one that didn’t lose a game - Hawaii. Everybody else: You made your own bowl bed. Pass the poi.
8: Here’s the state of two college football programs in a nutshell: Georgia fans are complaining because their 10-2 team is going to the Sugar Bowl, the relative Holy Land for the SEC. Tech fans didn’t make a peep after their team was shipped off to Boise, home of the Humanitarian Bowl.
7: Excuse me, make that the “Roady’s” Humanitarian Bowl. Do you know what Roady’s is? It’s a chain of truck stops. The first 10,000 fans through the gate for Tech-Fresno State get a choice of Pop Tarts or road flares. The second 10,000 get committed. Be happy, Georgia. Be very happy.
6: And this: Georgia’s hot. We know, we know. But the Bulldogs’ defense remains suspect, and while some may think this is going to be some simple exhibition against Hawaii, it’s safe to assume there’s a reasonable chance that Colt Brennan (131 touchdown passes in three years) serves up Willie Martinez on a pu-pu platter.
5: A positive observation on the Falcons (honest): While Jimmy Williams seems to take Just-Doesn’t-Get-It to new levels every week, Roddy White is turning into a bonafide NFL receiver who runs hard on every play. So there’s one keeper for next season.
4: Either Georgia Tech didn’t offer the coaching job to Randy Edsall, or he was offered it and turned it down. If it’s the first, it explains why Edsall went back to Connecticut for a raise. If it’s the second, perception of the program is lower than we thought.
3: Ilya Kovalchuk has 22 goals. The next closest Thrasher has 10. Nine out of 14 forwards have scored 0-to-3 goals in 26 games. Overall, the team is skating better since the firing of Bob Hartley. But this is largely a case of one player carrying a team.
2: If you’re Joey Harrington, what does it do to your ego to be benched for a guy (Chris Redman) who was selling life insurance last year and spent three seasons out of football?
1: Andruw Jones is still looking for a five-year deal worth over $90 million, according to his agent, the Easter Bunny. (Scott Boras is one rejected contract offer away from rooming with Cheswick.)
Permalink | Comments (44) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
BCS did UGA a favor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Contrary to popular belief around the Bulldog Nation, this controversy that really isn’t involving the Bowl Championship Series is one of the best things to happen to Georgia football. In fact, any real or perceived slight associated with crowning the king of the game’s big boys is splendid, not only for those involved, but for the college game, period.
With Ohio State and LSU rightfully selected to meet for the national championship, here’s why Georgia folks should kiss the hand of the BCS instead of spitting on it: Nobody ever can prove that Georgia isn’t better than LSU, which the Bulldogs aren’t. Plus, nobody ever can prove that Georgia wouldn’t have won the national championship anyway. To hear Georgia folks tell it, if the BCS would have done the illogical by taking the Bulldogs anyway, Georgia could have at least continued its hot streak for a night.
Then again, we could have missed the drought if we had more rain, and Uga VI could have run for president if he were human instead of a dog.
That’s why Georgia folks can feel good about themselves. They can whine forever over their perception of getting robbed of a national championship by the know-nothings involved with the BCS system. Such rants have been the rage through the decades for a slew of others. You’ve heard them, from Auburn to Provo to Seattle, because they’ve contended their saintly teams were stiff-armed by the devils of the BCS, or by those of the old system involving bowl games and opinion polls.
The grumbling is fine. The grumbling is over the lack of a playoff system at the highest level of college football, and the grumbling also is about those who are just into grumbling.
This grumbling has been so detrimental to college football that, entering this season, attendance has risen every season for the past 13 years. We’ll likely see that streak increase to 14 straight years after the parity-induced upsets this season sparked enough debate, interest and passion to make turnstiles click even more.
So all of this wringing of hands right now around Southern Cal, Oklahoma and definitely between the hedges over the BCS placing Ohio State and LSU in the national championship game is substantiating a non-playoff system that always has been more heavenly than satanic.
Consider this: Right where the Rocky Mountains kiss the Great Plains, you’ll find Folsom Stadium, home of the Colorado Buffaloes. Along the façade of the club level, there is a message for the ages: “1990 National Champions.”
That’s funny. Just the other day, when former Georgia Tech quarterback Joe Hamilton was on the sideline at Bobby Dodd Stadium for the Yellow Jackets’ game against Georgia, he encountered Marco Coleman, a star for that Tech team 17 years ago that also claimed it won it all that season. “Marco just said, ‘I was part of a national championship team,’ ” Hamilton said, laughing. “It didn’t even come up that it was split that year.”
For the record, Colorado was the Associated Press champion back then, and Tech was the United Press International champion. As a result, they both claim they were the true national champions in 1990, which means two sets of large fan bases in the game are satisfied.
Elsewhere, you have that endless yapping over an undefeated Auburn team that won the SEC in 2004 but missed the championship game. Never mind those Tigers unofficially disqualified themselves for serious consideration by playing the likes of Louisiana-Monroe, The Citadel and Louisiana Tech. Still, you can’t tell Auburn folks that their Tigers wouldn’t have won it all over Oklahoma or Southern Cal.
We’ll never know. The same goes for 1969, when Richard Nixon declared Texas as national champions after watching the Longhorns win that particular Game of the Century over Arkansas during the regular season. While Texas finished undefeated with a bowl victory, so did Penn State, which still claims it was the best.
Just like those same Penn State folks could claim that, if Nixon were a dog instead of a human, he could have been a mascot instead of a president.
Permalink | Comments (179) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Petrino’s wrath felt at halftime
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
St. Louis — They looked like they did four years ago — beleaguered backups and emotionally comatose starters, playing as if they had other career options on the back burner. They looked as if they had quit on their season, and their coach.
In 2003, the Falcons’ 36-0 belly-flop in St. Louis on national television was considered such an embarrassment that owner Arthur Blank was moved to take out a newspaper ad to apologize to fans, and he wrote a letter of apology to ABC. His players merely cashed their checks.
At least those Falcons were flattened by a good Rams team. On Sunday, they trailed a 2-9 doormat, 14-0, after 11 minutes. Suddenly there was hope for Liechtenstein as a global power.
What do you do if you’re Bobby Petrino? Exactly what he did.
“He ripped us a new one [at halftime],” Alge Crumpler said. “We deserved it.”
“We played with more emotion in the second half, but emotion shouldn’t have to come from a coach screaming at you,” Warrick Dunn said.
So suddenly that’s what it takes? The Falcons don’t need brilliant X’s and O’s. They need a blowtorch.
The Falcons lost to the Rams 28-16. The tangible impact: The teams are now tied for second in the draft order.
The bigger obvious picture: Petrino’s words and actions reaffirmed he is building his offseason hit list, assuming he returns for more of this fun.
He benched guard Kynan Forney, a starter for most of his seven seasons.
He benched defensive back Jimmy Williams, a top pick two drafts ago, who has been a bust in the secondary and has only one special teams tackle in 11 games.
He blew through the locker room like Hurricane Bobby at halftime, when the Falcons trailed 21-0 and created hope for the Rams’ future, which is more than they’ve done in Atlanta.
“We’re looking for guys who want to hang in there, be professional, work hard, compete hard, stay together and keep a positive attitude,” Petrino said.
“What I was telling the coaches and myself was, ‘Let’s make sure we know who’s with us and who’s not.’ And that’s what I was happy about in the second half — the way we competed and the attitude that we played with.”
Yes, it got better. Here’s the problem: It’s not good when Chris Redman is the highlight.
Nothing against Red-man. He’s a nice story. He hadn’t played in the NFL in three years before this season. He was selling life insurance this time a year ago. He was signed by Petrino, his former Louisville coach, as a potential No. 3. Then … well, you know all of the “then.”
But when it takes Chris Redman to wake up your offense, it’s a bad sign.
He replaced Joey Harrington in the fourth quarter. He threw touchdown passes on his first two possessions. It was the first time all year the Falcons scored touchdowns on consecutive drives. Redman hadn’t thrown a TD pass since 2002. He brought the Falcons back to 21-16 before the rally fizzled (a drive died at the Rams’ 9-yard line after a fourth-down incompletion with two minutes left).
But is it just coincidence that the Falcon who looked the best Sunday was the only Falcon who probably feels indebted to Petrino?
When the players returned from their Thanksgiving break last Monday, Petrino told them the rest of this season was about playing with emotion and saving jobs. But for too long Sunday, they looked like they didn’t care.
“He wanted us to come out and show some emotion,” Roddy White said. “He told us we were kind of flat in the first half. I totally agree with him. Nobody picked it up.”
“We did the right things all week, and then we came out here and we spotted them 21 points,” Crumpler said. “We can’t afford to spot anybody 21 points.”
And then: “We’re all playing for our future.”
They are 3-9. If and when they wake up, it would be a good time to write a letter.
Permalink | Comments (125) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Coaches, polls got it right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
One by one, the news kept trickling into public view Sunday. The coaches got it right. Then came the pollsters with Associated Press.
They got it right.
Ultimately, when the decision was finalized on the two teams that should meet next month in New Orleans for the crown of college football, the Bowl Championship Series got it right. We’re talking about Ohio State, the winner of the Big Ten, vs. LSU, the winner of the SEC.
That’s opposed to Georgia, the winner of not even its own division, vs. nobody in the Big Game.
Yeah, they all got it right, but this isn’t to say that Georgia’s season isn’t a nice little story. You’ve had a thrilling middle and finish against the likes of Gators and Yellow Jackets after a shaky beginning against the likes of Gamecocks and Volunteers. Not only that, nobody is hotter than the Bulldogs. Their story also features the fancy legs of Knowshon Moreno, along with Matthew Stafford’s rise at quarterback and a maturing defense.
It’s just that Georgia’s epilogue deserves to be the Sugar Bowl, where the Bulldogs will play on New Year’s Day, and where Tennessee would have gone with a victory on Saturday against LSU. Instead, the Tigers did what a possible national champion should do. That is, LSU won, and LSU captured its conference championship.
Georgia didn’t. The same went for 2001 Nebraska and 2004 Oklahoma, but they still were selected for national title games. Since there isn’t a BCS rule against non-conference winners playing for it all, those Nebraska and Oklahoma teams were allowed to get smashed by Miami and Southern Cal, respectively. That’s not the point, though. Just because the pollsters and computers that compose the BCS blew it then by selecting non-conference winners, that doesn’t mean the BCS should repeat that mistake.
Which the BCS didn’t do when it came to Georgia. In addition to that conference championship thing, Ohio State has one loss to Georgia’s two, and LSU has 11 victories to Georgia’s 10. Plus, while LSU dropped both of its games this season in triple overtime, Georgia lost at home to a mediocre South Carolina team and was drilled by Tennessee.
That said, since this is the USA, you’re allowed to bark your disapproval around the Bulldog Nation over Georgia’s status. But those wishing to join the knee-jerk masses by claiming the BCS is a mess despite a wonderfully crazy regular season should put a muzzle on it.
If nothing else, everybody can agree with what I just typed, and that is, this was a wonderfully crazy regular season. You had Appalachian State shocking Michigan as a prelude to lowly Stanford doing the same to Southern Cal. While Hawaii couldn’t lose, Notre Dame couldn’t win. Every week, somebody ranked No. 1 or No. 2 got whacked, usually by an inferior foe, and Georgia even beat Florida.
Now here’s where many of us will part ways, but only because folks wish to ignore the truth: Playoffs. Playoffs! Given the current BCS setup, college football already has a playoff system at the top level. It’s called the regular season, which ends with a conference championship game for most. If you lose certain games at certain times during the season — and definitely if you drop your conference championship game — you’re out of this unofficial playoffs, or at least you should be.
That’s fair. So is this: No hint of a Georgia invite to the Big Game.
Yes, the Bulldogs used their six-game winning streak down the stretch to begin the weekend at No. 4 in the BCS standings behind No. 3 Ohio State. And, yes, Oklahoma did what many expected by embarrassing Missouri, a fraudulent bunch at No. 1. And, yes, No. 2 West Virginia did what many didn’t expect by choking against Pittsburgh. And, yes, if you go by simple math, No. 3 and No. 4 in this case should replace No. 1 and No. 2.
What’s simpler is that Georgia isn’t better than LSU. For proof, the Tigers were celebrating forever on Saturday in the Georgia Dome. Not the Bulldogs, who weren’t even there.
Permalink | Comments (462) | Categories: Terence Moore
BCS a shipwreck of a system
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
So much for that claim about how every week in college football constitutes a one-game playoff. If you’re LSU, you’re allowed to play a triple-elimination tournament. If you’re LSU, you’re allowed to flub two auditions as No. 1 and still have people say, “That team deserves another chance.”
We’ve known for years that the BCS is a sham of an arrangement. (To call it a “system” confers far too much dignity.) What we didn’t grasp until Sunday was that the BCS is devoid of rules, devoid of reason, devoid even of common courtesy.
Georgia got jumped without losing a game or even playing one. LSU was hoisted above the Bulldogs on the dubious strength of a seven-point victory in a game it was favored to win by 7 1/2 points. Georgia was No. 4 in the BCS standings last week — LSU was No. 7 — and two of the top three teams lost. Simple math should have put the Bulldogs in the title game. Turns out the BCS flunked math as well as logic.
What happened over the course of a week to make enough voters devalue the Bulldogs? Lobbyin’ Les Miles and ESPN happened. The LSU coach opined that a team shouldn’t play for a national title if it hadn’t won its conference — even though the BCS has repeatedly resisted making a league title a requirement — and a slew of cable-ready gasbags bought his line. It was known nine days ago that the Bulldogs wouldn’t be playing for the SEC title, but eight days ago the voters didn’t seem to mind. Came the only BCS poll that matters, they minded.
All night Saturday and into Sunday we were treated to ESPN’s nattering nabobs insisting Georgia couldn’t be considered for the BCS title game because it didn’t win its conference. (Said Mark Richt: “We were unofficially disqualified.”) Some of those same voices also claimed the Bulldogs didn’t win their division. Let the record show that Georgia was co-champion of the SEC East.
Alas, too many people — BCS voters obviously among them — believe only what they hear on television. Even Mike Slive, the BCS coordinator and SEC commissioner, admitted Sunday night that the BCS might need to educate its electorate. “That’s a good question, and it’s one I will take to the table in April,” he said. “We might need to say, ‘These are fundamental principles and concepts we expect our voters to think about.’ “
Georgia could and should have been considered. Georgia could and should be playing Ohio State. Instead it’s LSU, which has had more reprieves than Liz Taylor has had husbands. Instead it’s the team that managed one offensive touchdown against Tennessee and needed a late interception return to find the winning points.
The criteria for entrance to the BCS title game shift with the winds and the seasons. There was a time when the idea was to pair the best teams. At this moment, Georgia is the nation’s best team. And if you’re saying, “Georgia lacks LSU’s body of work,” are we to believe 10-2 is appreciably different from 11-2? Each beat Florida, Auburn and Alabama. Georgia beat Kentucky, which beat LSU. LSU beat Tennessee and South Carolina, which beat Georgia.
Here’s the difference: Since losing at Tennessee on Oct. 6, Georgia has moved ever upward, while LSU has wobbled all over creation. LSU has lost twice since Georgia lost last, and both of the Tigers’ losses came when they were ranked No. 1. The Bulldogs haven’t been, and won’t be, granted the chance to prove they’re No. 1 or even No. 2, but the fierce belief here is that they would beat anybody — LSU, Ohio State, Southern Cal, Oklahoma — on a neutral field.
What happened to the Bulldogs is worse than what befell Auburn in 2004. Those Tigers went unbeaten but were barred from the BCS championship game because Southern Cal and Oklahoma started the season Nos. 1 and 2 and didn’t lose. At least there was numeric consistency to that snub. Four years later Georgia climbed to No. 4 but somehow fell to No. 5 in final BCS standings while No. 7 bounded all the way to No. 2.
Yes, it’s amazing — an amazing disgrace.
Permalink | Comments (1019) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Dogs deserve title shot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia should play for the national championship.
Georgia, which didn’t win its conference title.
Georgia, which lost at home to South Carolina.
Georgia, which lost by 21 points in Knoxville.
Georgia should play for the national championship.
Georgia, not LSU.
A regular season that has beggared belief went crazy in its final throes Saturday. Missouri lost to Oklahoma, which was semi-expected. West Virginia lost at home to Pittsburgh, giving Appalachian State a bookend for most improbable upsets of an astonishing year. Pitt was a 28-point underdog and won. And now Georgia should get its chance to play for the national title.
Georgia, with its two losses.
Georgia, not LSU.
I know, I know. The Tigers are SEC champs. I sat at the Dome and watched them beat Tennessee and heard Les Miles’ loving descriptions of his team. “Anybody who saw this game would certainly understand this team [is] arguably the finest team in the country,” he said, and I would agree in theory but not in actuality.
LSU is the most talented team, but it hasn’t played to its abundant gifts. Even in dispatching Tennessee the Tigers nearly undid themselves: They trailed after each of the first three quarters; they outgained Tennessee by 121 yards but canceled out much of that with nine penalties (to the Vols’ none) and needed two inexplicable Erik Ainge interceptions to take and keep the lead.
Were football a beauty contest, LSU would be Miss World. But the Tigers haven’t overwhelmed a decent opponent since beating Virginia Tech on Sept. 8, and — here’s the key part — have already been afforded every chance to stamp themselves as great. They’ve been ranked No. 1 on two occasions and couldn’t hold it either time. They lost at Kentucky and at home to Arkansas, both times in triple overtime, but both times without ever throwing a hammerlock on an eminently winnable game. Miles can whine all he wants about how overtime losses aren’t necessarily a fair gauge, but what else, barring the defunct tie, do we have?
Miles: “I don’t exactly know how the votes will go, but we’re the champions of the finest conference in America. We played Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida. I challenge any other team in America to go through this conference and come out unscathed.”
Georgia isn’t unscathed, but it did beat three of the four teams Miles referenced. And it did beat Kentucky. And LSU has lost twice since Georgia lost last. And does anyone doubt that Georgia would have put up a better fight than the Vols and very possibly have won Saturday? Didn’t think so.
We can argue forever over the incongruity of a non-conference champ playing for the national title, but the arcane system continues to allow for such an occurrence. As Mark Richt said earlier in the week, “The people who run the BCS have had the opportunity to say that you must be a conference champion to play for the national title, and for whatever reason they haven’t said that.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that a non-champion has graced the BCS title game. And if you’re saying, “Wait a second — Georgia has two losses.” So does LSU. Someone’s going to become the first two-loss team to play for the title. Better to get the right two-loss team.
The greater injustice would be for LSU to lose its final regular-season game and then be allowed, on the strength of a seven-point victory in the conference title game, to pass a team that has won its past six. The greater injustice would be for the Tigers to get a third shot to prove it’s No. 1 when Georgia hasn’t yet had one. The greater injustice would be to penalize the Bulldogs just because they weren’t on TV Saturday.
Georgia should play for the national championship.
Georgia, not LSU.
Georgia.
Permalink | Comments (571) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Miles finds home at LSU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Les Miles went to a chapel service Saturday morning and was greeted by players asking about his travel arrangements. “Sounds like you’re catching a plane Monday,” he said, repeating what had been said to him. And that speculation led to a session unprecedented in the 16 years of the SEC championship game — a pregame media briefing by a participating coach.
“It was not a press conference I wanted to have,” Miles said. “But I was embarrassed.”
That famous journalist and former Buckeye Kirk Herbstreit had reported on ESPN that Miles, a Michigan alum, would be named the Wolverines’ coach next week. “An Ohio State plot,” Miles would say much later, at his second news conference of the day, this a longer and happier one. At 8:30 Saturday night, Miles sat behind the dais at the Georgia Dome — he’d stood throughout the earlier session — as champion of the SEC and coach of the LSU Tigers now and presumably for the next decade.
“There’s no wiggle room,” Miles said. “It’s very difficult for me to go somewhere else if I never talk to anybody.”
Miles met the hastily assembled press two hours before kickoff to say he wasn’t going to Michigan, but he never quite said that. (What he said: “I have no intention of talking to anybody else.”) This prompted LSU publicists to bang out a clarification and post it on the school’s Web site, the key sentence being: “Miles will not entertain any offer from the University of Michigan.” Take that, Herbstreit.
Amid all the weirdness, Miles and his Tigers actually found time to win a championship. It wasn’t pretty or dominating — they trailed after each of the first three quarters — but it was enough for Miles to say, “Anybody who saw this game tonight will see that this is arguably the most talented team in the country.”
And it is. It has been all along. But the Tigers still haven’t played to the fullness of their gifts: They outgained Tennessee by 121 yards Saturday only to undercut themselves with nine penalties to the Vols’ zero, and not until Erik Ainge threw two rather silly fourth-quarter interceptions was LSU assured of winning.
That said, it won. For the third time in six years, LSU came to the Dome and saw a backup quarterback — Ryan Perrilloux, furthering the tradition established by Matt Mauck (2001 SEC title game) and Matt Flynn (2005 Chick-fil-A Bowl) — leave as the MVP. It won on one of the strangest days any collegiate team has known since the Louisville Cardinals learned that coach John L. Smith was leaving for Michigan State as they were losing to Marshall in the 2002 GMAC Bowl.
“You look at this team and see a team that will overcome adversity,” Miles said, though much of LSU’s was surely self-inflicted. “And we stand atop the finest conference in America.”
On Friday, Miles admitted he planned to speak with Michigan reps after the SEC title game. What happened to change his mind?
“The school here wants me to stay,” he said, and word is that LSU threw Saban-like money — upwards of $3 million per annum — as a convincer.
“We’ve got a great team. We’ve got a great recruiting class started, and I think we can finish it. I’m not talking to anybody from Michigan, and if I’m going to stay, there’s no finer time to make it known than before the championship game.”
Sure, he could’ve said as much a week ago and spared everyone the drama (and Herbstreit the indignity), but Miles surely made himself a lot of money by waiting. And Saturday night, his decision made, he sounded like a coach at peace with himself and his world.
“I certainly love Michigan,” Miles said. “I will always be a Michigan man. I will wear those colors when it comes to the Ohio-Michigan game, and I will root for the Blue. And they will eventually win that game. … But I’m not going there. It saddens me at times. I can’t be in two places at once. I’ve got a great place. I’m at home.”
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