Category Archives: Johnny Manziel

Johnny Manziel, Michael Vick, New England Patriots, NFL, Nick Saban, Peyton Manning, Robert Griffin III, Seattle Seahawks, Tom Brady

The Notepad: No Huddle

When I was a younger man, and a much younger writer, I wrote a Sports Blog for a daily local around my hometown. Every so often, I would bust out what I deemed “The Notepad” – a wild, random mix of thoughts about sports that I had literally jotted down on a notepad. When I needed a column idea, I’d pull out that notepad and see if anything could be fleshed out into a full-blown opinion piece.
Usually, it couldn’t – but I found that I had enough nuggets of observation on those pages that I could piece them together in a way that provided a random-thought style approach to a piece. Like a list of jokes or one-liners a comedian deems unworthy of a full bit in his set, the notepad offered me the same freedom.
From time to time, I still jot things down – just usually on my iPhone. And since the beginning of the 2013 NFL season, I’ve had many thoughts. Since this Notepad is specific to football, we’ll call it the “No Huddle”.
–       I must repent. For years – and I mean years – I hammered Peyton Manning for his poor body language at certain times, most notably if a lineman dared to commit an untimely penalty or a receiver had the nerve to drop a pass that clearly landed in the basket. It drove me Lamar Odom crazy. Essentially, I felt that Manning was showing up his teammates in a very public way for imperfections. And then my man crush, Tom Brady, started throwing fits like a five-year-old at bedtime during the course of the first two games the Patriots played against the Bills and Jets.

Did I immediately want to ignore it and give Brady the benefit of the doubt I didn’t give Peyton? Of course. But I just couldn’t ignore Brady’s body language. Now, I won’t make a mockery of it the way Keith Olbermann did on his show last Friday, but I will say I’ve re-examined this whole thing and recognize that it must be incredibly frustrating for quarterbacks to work with young receivers. You spend a lot of time working and developing report with a player or a group of players and then circumstances, mainly business related ones, change the dynamic. Each year, as Brady, Manning and even the greats like Brett Favre, get further along in their career, they sense the time running out on the opportunity to stay or be elite. And when you’re breathtaking throws are dropped repeatedly, well, you start to snap like one might expect a mid-30s Hall of Famer to snap. Sorry for all the years I spent hammering Peyton for being rude.

That said…I have to admit Brady looks poor, and the reaction still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter who it is apparently. Show some decorum out there, fellas. Bite that lip, save it for later.
–       If I hear another person complain about the noise in the Seahawks stadium – especially from a visiting team or their fan base – I’m going to vomit. Too loud for you? Stay home. You chose to attend the game. If you are a player, sorry your team’s fans can’t make it as loud in your home dome as Seattle’s 12th man does. Sorry the architect of your stadium didn’t intentionally work the design to showcase noise. This isn’t church or a library.
–       Tampa Bay players don’t like the strict rules of head coach Greg Schiano, eh? I don’t like how poorly they have played or how they gave the Jets a win in Week 1.
–       Is anyone else confused by the fines, suspensions and then redactions of those fines and suspensions? Remember that old NFL Films clip of Vince Lombardi asking, in effect, what the heck was going on out there? Well, let’s cue that up right about now. These fines or suspensions are theoretically levied after the league has reviewed the tape and made a judgment on what they deem a questionable hit, etc. So by and by, on Monday or Tuesday, the NFL sends out announcements on fines and suspensions. And then within 24 hours, they change them? Why? Didn’t they look at it and make a decision? Are they that easily swayed by the appeals of the players? How does that work? Is it the Shaggy defense: “It wasn’t me!”
–       Can we stop with all the talk about how Johnny Manziel has a future in the NFL? He’s not out of college yet, and our sample size on these new age QBs isn’t large enough to know if this is a reliable system or a short-term success. I like what Manziel did against Alabama and Nick Saban’s vaunted defense. It says a lot about Manziel that he can hammer Saban’s defensive plans for more yards and touchdowns than he did in their first meeting. And I’ve professed how much I enjoy Chip Kelly’s speed offense. I also like Russell Wilson, RGIII and Colin Kaepernick. Their abilities are amazing, and frankly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
But so far, we haven’t truly seen sustained success. Michael Vick, the forefather of this style of play, has only played one, full 16-game season in his 11 years in the NFL: 2006. He’s had several 15 game seasons, but all pre-date 2006. Since returning in 2009, Vick has started over 12 games just once – in 2011.
RGIII shredded his knee in the playoffs 9 months ago. Yes, there have been advancements in medicine and rehab – but long term, will be last until he’s 35? Kaepernick’s started just nine games (not including the playoffs). I just wrote about not poo-pooing the fun style of play we’re enjoying a few weeks ago and now I appear to be doing it. That’s not my intent. My intent is to say, essentially, let’s just watch and see where this goes over the next year, two years before we say in the modern NFL, Johnny Football has a spot reserved as a starting NFL QB.
Final thought: Take how great Manziel was against Bama with a small grain of salt. In the 2008 SEC Championship Game, Tim Tebow threw for 216 yards and three TDs, then ran for an additional 57 yards as Florida upset #1 Alabama. And Tebow can’t even get the lowly Jaguars to give him a shot. Manziel is a different player than Tebow, but two things jump out at me: Saban’s defense is great, but can give up stats sometimes and many scouts are questioning Manziel’s arm strength. The difference is that Kaepernick, RGIII and Vick have pretty good arms – and legs.
–       Lots of injuries so far this season, but I don’t know if it’s any worse than in years past. Many pundits are pointing to the lack of padded practices during training camp and the season following the changes made during the lockout a few years ago as a reason, but aren’t there always injuries? I think we’re just dealing with a chasm between old-school players who are by-products of an era when hitting and full pads was all you did. And they think it’s cheapened the game a bit. But these some of these same players will or have complained about post-career health issues. Why can’t we admire how hard the game used to be while ensuring it’s safe to play in the future?
–       Ray Rice doesn’t think much of fantasy football, or those who troll his Twitter account to say nasty things about his early season statistical struggles. I love fantasy football, but I’m not one of these trolls who thinks Ray Rice or anyone else should be thinking about fantasy stats, I hear you, Ray. Then again, don’t lower yourself to actually responding with a tweet to let them know you’re reading that garbage. Just feeding the beast, my man.

–       The Broncos sure look good. The Steelers sure look bad. We’re been here before. 2-0 or 0-2, nothing has been settled, no fates determined. Denver fans are thinking about booking tickets to New York for a Snow Bowl appearance (seriously, check out the Farmer’s Almanac for a prediction on the weather next February around the stadium) and Steelers fans are ready to fire everyone. Slow down, put the season on a simmer and just let it matriculate. It’s the NFL, after all, you know – Not For Long?
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amateur athletics, Conference realignment, Jay Bilas, Johnny Manziel, NCAA, PEDs, TV

50 Shades of Green

Pop quiz, hotshot: which is worse: the PED plague taking over sports, or the seedy underbelly of amateur athletics? Which blows up sports first? What do we do?
(Bonus points for anyone who correctly guessed the Speed reference.)
In one corner, we’ve got doubt casting a long and eerie shadow over pretty much every sports feat we’ve witnessed over the past…past…what? That even makes this performance enhancing drugs business even more difficult to process. How long have we been living under a rock at the magnitude of this epidemic?
In the other corner, we’ve got athletes selling conference championship rings, signing memorabilia for cash and taking duffle bags of dough from agents. Again, the question of when this became more than an anomaly is vague as well, but I remember seeing Johnny Be Good, any despite immediately knowing it was a terrible movie, had a sinking feeling that recruitment of a high school athlete could indeed be that shady and lacking any moral regard.
For either issue, the how and when don’t really matter all that much. It’s more telling to focus on the why. Why do athletes take PEDs? Why do people prey on young athletes with a carrot of cash? Why are athletes dumb enough to take either when they know the rules?
And the answer lies in the green the runs the entire operation. It’s bigger than any system, bigger than any person. And if we learned anything from Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas is that money never sleeps. 
It’s a person’s desire to live a life different than a normal person. The same reason some people play the lottery – the want of more. But rarely can people tell you why, or at the very least keep answering why’s until they get to the root of it all.
As time has passed, because we don’t address either in a fully comprehensive manner, it has manifested and multiplied into this current state, slowly eating away at the fabric of sports, and in many ways, our culture.
People want to win. It’s why we keep score. But we’ve always acknowledged in life and in sports when it’s done the right way. When that started to change was when someone discovered you could win without doing things the right way – with shortcuts. We establish rules because they allow us to go fast. Think of brakes on a car in the same manner – they allow you to go fast, safely, with the idea that using them when needed prevents danger from becoming a reality.
This logic is the backbone of nearly everything we do. It’s there because 98 percent of us don’t need the rules to tell us what is acceptable and what isn’t, but rather to protect our hard work and honesty from the 2 percent that do not follow the rules.
And over time, in sports and in life, we’ve needed to add more rules because more and more people have lost that navigational compass – a conscious – that guides them along the way. But when you don’t address it, the problem gets worse. When you turn a blind eye instead of maintaining relevancy, you secure a future filled with less certainty and more chaos.
This is where athletes who get engaged in the use of PEDs find themselves. Caught in some fog of needles and pills. Is it right that the guy trying to take your spot might be taking PEDs and if you don’t, you’ll be cut or traded? No. Is it right for you to take them to gain a performance edge which allows you to get a raise and break records? To most, the answer is no.
But it is fair that your sport, for some reason, is targeted heavily while others remain blissfully passed over in the public eye? Again, no.
We cannot be naïve enough to believe that this has been largely limited to Major League Baseball, and if we are, there’s some oceanfront property in Utah I’d love to show you sometime. Then again, perhaps we’re not being naïve. Maybe we’ve just chosen this path, to stick our heads in the sand, for fear of what would happen to us trying to process that nothing is real anymore.
If we allow ourselves to start asking all the questions we should, it would require something that cannot be done: an alternate reality.
We already laugh when we’re told the 1992 and 1993 Fab Five teams didn’t make the NCAA Final Four. They did, and you can take down the banners and forbid them from school grounds, but it happened.
The same as if we’re to try wipe off McGwire, Sosa and Bonds juiced fingerprints off the home run records. We’re going to pretend Maris’ 61 still stands? Or what if we allow ourselves to wonder if a number of teams would have won a championship had a key player not been under the PED influence? Can it be wiped away? Did the Red Sox not win the 2004 World Series? The Yankees the 2009 title? Or would they? How can we know?
We begin entering some weird, strange reality where Doc Brown can’t even stop the space time continuum from being destroyed.
This state of chaos and confusion is also where the NCAA now finds itself. It’s been reduced to the media uncovering broken rules around eligibility and recruitment. It’s openly mocked in social media by a well respected former athlete turned lawyer turned intelligent analyst of college basketball, but really, so many things.
Yesterday, Jay Bilas pointed out the hypocrisy that has been occurring in the NCAA for quite some time. He tweeted screenshots of the official NCAA online store, that allows you to search the name of a player and actually displays matching results. So, if you type in Manziel, a Texas A&M #2 jersey comes up.
Ruh-roh.
To really drive the point home, the NCAA has repeatedly stated it does not make a profit off a player’s name or likeness. Which doesn’t pass the straight-face test at all considering when I play an NCAA football video game and there’s a right-handed QB #7 under center for USC who has the same skill attributes, as say, oh, Matt Barkley.
So yes, this is a problem. Big problem.
An even bigger problem for the NCAA, which is in the midst of a lawsuit with former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon that threatens to blow up their monopoly on making money off the athletes – even long after their amateurism ends. (Again, think video games, highlight videos, retro jersey sales).
Like anyone caught in the act, the NCAA turned off their search functionality by mid-day.
Too late.
On the other hand, you have the reigning Heisman Trophy winner dumb enough to be recorded doing a signing session and telling the broker to pretend it never happened.
Can all of these people actually be this dumb? Can the NCAA not have someone ensuring they are remaining compliant with their own claims? Can athletes who know the rules – especially in 2013, especially a Heisman Trophy winner already under fire – not be silly enough to break them.
Should college athletes be paid is a debate that has been going on for some time and will continue, but what cannot be debated is that currently, the rules don’t allow you to accept payment for your autograph, no matter what NCAAShop.com is doing.
At some point in time, it all made sense – student-athletes were just that. And for their time, effort and commitment in the extracurricular, they were awarded scholarships which paid for their school. But there was a tipping point, as there always is, where TV and merchandising made it painfully obvious that student-athletes weren’t really students first at these massive conference institutions.
Why?
Because TV pays lots and lots of money and the better you are the more you are on TV and the more merchandise and hype you sell. It’s fifty shades of green: from advertisers to broadcast media to colleges and universities to presidents and athletic directors and coaches.
Don’t believe me? Have you seen Oregon’s new center of football operations? 
This isn’t just an old building in need of refurbishment. This is like a apocalyptic movie where an entire major city is destroyed and only fragments remain.
If you think I’m being crazy and spouting hyperbole, you can read on and you will think again.
Imagine a world where college athletes could be treated more like free agents, or paid by schools or their conferences. Imagine a world without the NCAA tournaments or playoffs, where championships are driven completely by corporations and TV conglomerates who bid the highest amount to show the games.
Don’t believe that would ever happen? Why not?
What holds the NCAA together is member institutions. What happens when those institutions start breaking off. If conferences and universities can start creating their own networks – which they have, obviously – then they have already begun the process of removing the middle man.
We are only a few steps away from an agreement not between CBS and the NCAA, but between the Big Ten, Big XII and ACC and CBS. And as the conferences continue to re-align and grow into super conferences of schools who are good in multiple sports, there’s even more money to be had.
And where there’s more money to be had, there will be even more people with their hands grabbing for it.
So whether it’s the PED circus crushing baseball (and soon enough, the other major sports) or the shamatuerism of college athletics, the real question then isn’t going to be why, when or how. It will be: what’s next?
What lies beyond the end of the NCAA and the fall of non-professional sports seems less optimistic than what lies beyond PEDs. If history has taught us anything, what happens after the downfall ultimately determines the course of the future.

And where there are shades of green, there will be shades of gray. 

What do we do?

What can we do?


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