Mularkey Fuera!

You know that when I am channeling the ever-disgruntled fans at Atletico Madrid,* then thinks are not going well.  Here's the column.  As usual, I am complaining about the focus on Michael Turner:

Leaving the playoff struggles aside, the most basic criticism of Mularkey is that he doesn't understand the strengths of his own attack. The Falcons are at their best when Matt Ryan is throwing the ball around to the toys that Thomas Dimitroff has bought for him.

The Falcons' running game is overrated by people who only look at raw numbers. Michael Turner was 39th in the NFL in DVOA this year. Put another way, he was below average in terms of his success rate on a per-play basis. Collectively, the Falcons' running game ranked 25th in the NFL by Football Outsiders' numbers. If you look at the more conventional yards per carry number, the Falcons jump all the way up to 22nd. An objective observer would look at this team and conclude that their approach in January should have been to throw the ball and then use the run on occasion to keep the defense honest. Mularkey, whether because of ideological rigidity or a misguided notion of avoiding the Giants' pass rush, stubbornly gave Turner nine carries in the first half. Those carries produced a whopping 27 yards. Did Mularkey react to this evidence by refraining from wasting downs in the second half? No, he started the half by giving Turner three more carries that produced ten yards. The Falcons blew their chances when the defense was playing really well.

I heard a good call this morning on 790 by a fan arguing that the problem is that the running game is so uni-directional.  The Giants' runners can all change direction and cut back, but Turner just plods between the tackles whether or not the blocking is there.  Interestingly, the Falcons are above-average in their percentage of runs going outside, so I'm not sure that this criticism is valid, but it sure feels right after yesterday.

* - The full chant there is "[Insert name of inept manager or club owner], cabron, fuera del Calderon."  Catchy, no?

Mark Richt and the Cult of the Field Goal

My column about the import of Richt's colossal mistake against Michigan State is up at SB Nation. The criticism of the decision not to attack in the first overtime is obvious; here is the attempt to contextualize:

Richt's shockingly conservative disposition during the end-game of the Outback Bowl was and remains indefensible, but the passage of time reminds me of one truism: we all overrate the importance of late game decisions when evaluating a coach. When it comes to determining whether a program wins or loses, late game strategery is the easiest factor for fans to judge. We can put percentages on various courses of action, such as the odds of a turnover versus missing a 42-yard field goal. Additionally, because late game play-calling is the last impression that we have of a team for a week (or, in this case, for eight months), it sticks out in the memory and the recency effect takes over. However, this factor isn't nearly as important as the other things that a head coach does.

Recruiting is much more important and Richt has done a very good job in that department such that we can have the sense that Georgia had too much talent to go down the way it did yesterday. Managing a staff is more important and Georgia fans are pretty much united in their affection for Todd Grantham (and well they should be in light of the defense's performance this year). As the demises of Jim Tressel and Joe Paterno have shown this year, the CEO functions performed by a head coach are also critical. Dawg fans should have no concerns about Richt making the right decision if he were confronted with a potentially incriminating e-mail or a (alleged) pedophile assistant coach. Making timid decisions at the end of a close game is annoying, but in the grand scheme of things, it is only a small portion of the pie chart when evaluating a head coach.*

* - Take it from a Michigan fan. We all complained about Lloyd Carr making conservative decisions at the end of games that overvalued kickers, the clock and timeouts while undervaluing the possibility of winning a game with his consistently good quarterbacks. We didn't appreciate the fact that Carr was putting good teams on the field that were in position to blow close games in the first place. Three years of Rich Rodriguez were enough to bring Carr's positive attributes into full focus. For instance, the Big Ten Network had a timely showing of the 2000 Orange Bowl yesterday afternoon. In that game, Carr laid up for a field goal at the end of regulation. He could have put the game in the hands of future Hall of Famer Tom Brady, throwing to future top ten pick David Terrell and protected by four future NFL starters on the offensive line. Instead, he put the game in the hands of the immortal Hayden Epstein and was only bailed out by Alabama kicker Ryan Pflugner one-upping Epstein by missing an extra point. Carr deserves lots of credit for assembling a great team and a smaller amount of criticism for relying on the wrong aspects of that team. College coaches should not rely on their kickers unless all other resources have been exhausted.

If you want a more substantive criticism of Richt, it is this: eleven years at the helm in Athens has shown that he is dependent on Florida having a bad coach in order to be successful. When Richt came to Athens, Steve Spurrier was putting one of his best Gator teams on the field in 2001, a team that should have played Miami for the national title in Pasadena if not for a pair of injuries to Ernest Graham. Spurrier then flew the coop for Dan Snyder's filthy lucre. He was replaced by Ron Zook and Richt enjoyed his heyday: three division and two conference titles. Urban Meyer then came onto the scene*, and Richt did not take another trip to the SEC Championship Game until Meyer had fled the stage. Now, the elite programs in the conference are in Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge, a point that was drilled home in the second half of the title game against LSU. Is Richt going to require regression from one or both of those programs in order to win a third conference title? Quite possibly? More generally, can we accept that Richt is a good, but not great coach? I certainly can, but it will be easier if days like yesterday become more frequent.

* - It does bear mentioning that Richt's second title came in Meyer's first year in Gainesville when Urban was going through the growing pains of De-Zookification.

The point that I do not address is what part(s) of the pie chart do we use to reach the conclusion that Richt is good, but not great.  In other words, is his quality recruiting what makes him good and his staffing decisions prevent him from being great?  That question will require a lot more consideration.

An Attempt to Explain Paterno and Curley Imitiating Colonel Klink

In consuming the same news stories and opinion pieces about Penn State's remarkably limp response to the football program's former defensive coordinator's unique way of expressing his commitment to children, I've been trying to make sense of the reaction of Tim Curley and Joe Paterno, among other.  Short of murder, child molestation is about as bad a crime as there is.  Jerry Sandusky committed repeated acts of molestation, such that he was observed at Penn State's football facilities on at least two occasions performing sex acts with boys.  This is not a case where authorities would have to rely upon the testimony of a child to determine whether a crime has been committed.  Sandusky was so brazen in his conduct that he committed these crimes in a place where he could be observed by adults, first a janitor and then Mike McQueary, who was a graduate assistant at the time.  Confronted with eyewitness testimony from adults on at least two separate occasions, Penn State's authority figures did nothing. 

This sin is especially grave because it is fairly common knowledge that individuals who commit acts of pedophilia are highly likely to perform the same crimes again.  The offense has a very high rate of recidivism because of the psychological pathologies involved.  Sandusky's crimes cannot be written off as a crime of passion that is unlikely to repeat itself.  Thus, the failure on the part of Penn State authority figures to act appropriately made future crimes by Sandusky a likelihood.  Every child who was assaulted by Sandusky after the 2002 incident can legitimately point a finger at Curley, Paterno, McQueary, and others at Penn State.  Almost certainly, those individuals (or, more precisely, their parents) will be hiring highly-capable lawyers (the victims will have their pick of the best plaintiffs' lawyers in the country) to point those fingers for them and Penn State will ultimately have to respond by writing some very large checks.

So how does this happen?  I would posit that athletic departments at major universities are places where the default response to any wrongdoing is to try to handle it in-house and to avoid reporting it to the appropriate authorities.  Major college football and basketball, the games about which so many of us choose to obsess, live a lie in at least two major respects.  First, those sports involve massive amounts of revenue paired with antiquated British rules enshrining amateurism as a defining value. The natural place for the money to flow is to the players who generate it, but the NCAA seeks to prevent that water from flowing to its natural destination: the players who create the revenue.  Second, colleges and universities have to lower their academic standards in order to admit the players who can make the difference between winning and losing.  They have to operate under the fiction that an individual with a 2.3 GPA and an 850 SAT score from a below-average urban or rural high school can compete academically with students whose credentials far out-strip those of the athlete and come from an environment that makes them much better prepared to process what the professor is saying, understand the assigned reading materials, and create coherent answers to difficult questions based on what they have learned over the course of a semester. 

Thus, the mission of athletic departments, unofficially, has to be to ignore reality. They have to look the other way when a star player is driving a car that is well beyond his present means.  They have to ignore the extent to which tutors assigned to the players are doing the players' assigned course work.  Athletic departments have to put in place compliance regimes that look good and act to stop the most obvious violations of NCAA rules, but at the end of the day, they cannot be cultures based on reporting all rules violations.  To use an analogy from another black market economy, la cosa nostra has to be the default rule.

If you want two illustrations of that culture at work, look at Ohio State and Penn State. Jim Tressel - a man with a sterling reputation prior to last December - received information from a former Ohio State player about NCAA violations made by his players. He did not forward this information as he was required to do by NCAA rules.  Various media outlets then found story after story of potential additional violations, each time leading Ohio State's Athletic Director, Gene Smith, to cut and paste a version of "this is all news to us" into the school's response.  When confronted with media reports that Tressel had sat on evidence of violations, Smith and University President Gordon Gee believed that a two-game suspension would suffice for Tressel.  It was only after a media firestorm that became hotter as a result of Smith and Gee's comical response that Tressel was fired, a fact that Ohio State later touted to the NCAA as evidence that it took the scandal seriously. 

Penn State's scandal involves conduct that is worse by several orders of magnitude than that committed by the Tat Five, but it follows the same pattern.  University officials receive evidence of wrong-doing, they try to keep the evidence in-house, and then their efforts to keep everything quiet are foiled when the criminal justice system gets involved.  And just as Gee embarrassingly claimed "I only hope that he doesn't fire me" when asked if he would terminate Tressel (a move that Ohio State was ultimately forced to take), Penn State President Graham Spanier issued a press release defending his recently-indicted administrators, another colossal miscalculation of how the media would treat the scandal.  Again, the default response to violations of NCAA rules or, in Penn State's case, the criminal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was not to report the violations to the proper authorities.  Instead, it was sit on the evidence in the hopes that the problem would just go away and then for the university president to defend those who did the sitting.  Given the environment in which athletic departments operate, we should be upset, but we should not be surprised.

From Each According To His $15M Salary, To Each According To ... Good Lord, We Really Are Going To Blow This!

What the f***?

Those three words best describe the collective feeling of Braves fans on the morning of September 28, 2011? The Braves are one loss from completing one of the great collapses in baseball history. After all of their terrible play over the course of the month, they woke up on Saturday morning with a three-game lead and five games to play. Since that time, they have lost four in a row, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. Last night, with the season very much hanging in the balance, Fredi Gonzalez pulled a Bobby Cox in October special, sticking with the underperforming veteran - Derek Lowe - until it was far too late. Yes, the Braves are in a difficult spot because of the injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson,* but the rookies who have replaced them have been perfectly fine. Of the Braves' five starting pitchers this month, Randall Delgado and Mike Minor have the lowest ERAs of the five.  How much better would Jurrjens and Hanson have done than a 3.11 ERA in 52 innings?  Maybe they would have pitched a smidge deeper into games, but that's it.  Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, a guy who is taking up a smidge over one-sixth of the team's payroll, has an 8.75 ERA and a 1.99 WHIP in five starts.  He has been the losing pitcher in all five.  If by some simple twist of fate the Braves do make the playoffs** and Lowe pitches in any capacity other than long relief, then Frank Wren ought to relieve him of command on the spot.

* - Was anyone else completely non-plussed when Hanson and Jurrjens failed to return from the All-Star Break with their arms intact?  That's how baseball is now.  You have a good young pitcher and you immediately start counting the days until some arm injury that initially sounds innocuous, then the team can't figure out what's wrong, and then he's finally seeing Dr. Andrews.  Baseball manages to combine a turtle's pace with high-impact injuries.  Bravo, Abner Doubleday!

** - I'd put the odds at this stage at around 30%. They should win tonight with a favorable pitching match-up, but their odds in a one-game playoff will not be good.  The playoff would just be insufferable.  The Cardinals will be up 6-2 in the seventh and then Tony LaRussa will prolong our misery with a bevy of "look at me!" switches.  And G-d only knows what happens when he gets into the One-Game Playoff Supplement to his Compendium of Unwritten Baseball Rules.  Fredi could redeem a season's worth of frustration by decking LaRussa in a stupid, futile gesture at the end of a dispiriting collapse.  That would make the whole thing worthwhile.

And then, let's discuss the offense.  It has been a sore spot all year, with just about every offensive regular underperforming his PECOTA (or whatever Baseball Prospectus is calling it these days) projection, but September has been a total freefall.  The top of the order - Michael Bourn and Martin Prado - both have sub-.300 OBPs this month and have walked a grand total of nine times.  Brian McCann is in free-fall, having slugged .313 in September.  The team collectively has a .301 OBP in the month.  By way of comparison, the Giants - a team that is having a historically bad offensive season - have a .303 OBP for the year.  Parrish raus!

The glass half-full thought for a morning that desperately needs it is that I wouldn't trade places with a Cardinals fan for a second.  Yes, the Cards look likely to pull off a remarkable comeback.  All that gets them is a likely defeat at the hands of the Phillies.  Their franchise player is a free agent, which means that they are either going to lose him or they are going to have to sign him to a payroll-crippling contract.*  They don't have a single good, young position player now that their cantankerous manager chased off Colby Rasmus because his stirrups weren't perpendicular to his big toe or whatever else it is that LaRussa views as necessary to baseball success.  They rely on Dave Duncan to stitch together a pitching staff every year.  Their farm system is blah.  In contrast, the Braves have young keepers at first (Freeman), third (Prado), catcher (McCann), and right (Heyward), assuming that Parrish has not done permanent damage to some or all of them.  We finally have a lead-off hitter.  The Braves have five quality young starters and three quality young relievers, assuming that Fredi hasn't destroyed the relievers with overuse this year.  Do you detect a theme here?  The Braves' future is very bright if the on-field coaches don't screw it up.  Maybe the real silver lining here is that a collapse like this requires at least one fall guy in the dugout.

* - If you think that Derek Lowe making $15M next year is bad, think about paying twice that amount for Albert Pujols' age-39 season.

Organization Men

The primary impression that I took away from the Georgia-Boise State game last night was that Zig Ziglar would try to use it as a teaching moment to instruct middle managers paying $14.95 per head about organizing their teams.  It was clear that one coaching staff had put the summer to good use and the other had not.  Boise State looked crisp.  Their substitutions were quick and decisive.  Their players got lined up quickly and then engaged in a series of baffling shifts to force Georgia to declare its intentions defensively.  When they went to the no-huddle attack during their run to take control of the game, Georgia had no answers defensively.  Georgia, on the other hand, looked disorganized.  Players constantly looking over to the sidelines with their hands up, players not knowing whether they should be on the field, etc.  After having had months to prepare, Georgia looked unprepared.  Given that Mark Richt touted this game as being a positive because it would force the Dawgs to be focused for their entire offseason, the performance was a major indictment of where Richt’s program currently stands.

Another major indictment is that Georgia fans remember what happened the last time Boise State visited the Peach State.  In that game, Georgia dominated both lines of scrimmage, forced Jared Zabransky into a raft of mistakes, and D.J. Shockley went wild.  Six years later, the two teams met again and look at the contrast.  Now, Boise State is the team that dominates the line of scrimmage.  Look at the time that Kellen Moore had to make throws as opposed to Aaron Murray.  I cannot think of any instance in which Moore was pressured, other than when he was rushed up the middle in the second quarter and threw a terrible pick under duress.  See, even the best quarterback makes mistakes when he has a rusher in his face.  Other than that play, Moore had time to go through his progressions and make accurate throws.  Part of the credit goes to Moore for being decisive, part of the credit goes to Boise State for having intelligent pattern designs that consistently got receivers open in the 5-10 yard range,* and much of the credit goes to the Boise State offensive line.  Conversely, the Broncos put Murray under pressure on a regular basis.  Boise State sacked Murray six times (although that number seems high to me) and forced him into evasive action on a number of other instances.  If this is the beginning of the end for Mark Richt, then the performance last night was a fitting coda.  In 2005, his last team to win the SEC dominated a less athletic opponent.  In 2011, his last team was dominated by that same opponent.

* – In contrast, Georgia’s pass patterns were boring.  The Dawgs’ only attempts to threaten Boise State down the field before the game got out of hand at 28-7 were basic fly patterns down the sidelines.  In every instance, Boise’ corners were running the patterns better than the Georgia receivers.  You think that those corners had a good idea as to what they could expect from their charges?  

That last pair of sentences does not give enough credit to Boise State.  Chris Petersen has clearly gone about making his team stronger on the lines.  The Broncos are no longer the typical BYU-Hawaii Western mirage that can put up a lot of points, but has no prayer of stopping a quality opponent.  His team is now strong, deep, and aggressive up front.  I’ve seen nothing from Georgia to convince me that the Dawgs are in the top half of the SEC, so I’m not about to say that Boise State would be on equal footing with Alabama, LSU, or even Arkansas, but the question is no longer ridiculous.  It was a pleasure to watch a well-organized team operate in their opener with clockwork efficiency.  I miss the days when the same could be said about a Mark Richt team.  Remember how the 2003 opener against Clemson felt?  Remember what it looked like to see a well-coached team against a bunch of athletes running around like headless chickens?  Yeah.

The game against South Carolina now takes on massive proportions.  While a loss would not be a fireable offense in and of itself, it would leave Richt with no margin for error.  The mood of Georgia fans right now is not good.  The debate in the beer line at halftime was whether Richt should be fired or whether Bobo’s head would be enough of a sacrifice.  By the fourth quarter, most Georgia fans had left and a guy in my section was just shouting “you suck, Dawgs!” over and over again.  If Spurrier brings his charges to Athens and jumps out to a lead, there is real potential for a return of the atmosphere from the ‘99 Auburn game, the one where fans were so down on the team that recruits who were present started crossing Georgia off their lists.  A win will give Georgia fans the split that they would have taken before the year, put Georgia in the driver’s seat in the East, and send the Dawgs into the manageable part of the schedule with confidence.  To get that win, Georgia is going to have to put on a performance that convinces the fan base that the signs of rot apparent in the program are not real.

Thomas Dimitroff: Mr. Jones and me Tell Each Other Fairy Tales

Here is the abstract of Cade Massey and Richard Thaler’s academic article regarding the value of NFL Draft picks:

A question of increasing interest to researchers in a variety of fields is whether the biases found in judgment and decision making research remain present in contexts in which experienced participants face strong economic incentives. To investigate this question, we analyze the decision making of National Football League teams during their annual player draft. This is a domain in which monetary stakes are exceedingly high and the opportunities for learning are rich. It is also a domain in which multiple psychological factors suggest teams may overvalue the chance to pick early in the draft.. Using archival data on draft-day trades, player performance and compensation, we compare the market value of draft picks with the surplus value to teams provided by the drafted players. We find that top draft picks are overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets and consistent with psychological research.

Massey and Thaler conclude that the most valuable picks in the Draft are second round picks because the players taken with those picks are closer to first rounder than one would think in terms of quality and they are significantly cheaper.  (Note: changes to the salary scale for rookies might alter the analysis.  Always in motion is the future.) 

Massey and Thaler’s conclusion is consistent with what our own senses can tell us about the most and least successful teams in the league.  Which teams are the best run teams in the NFL?  The Patriots and Steelers immediately come to mind.  Do those teams trade up into the top ten?  No.  The Steelers generally stay put and take players in the late first round spots that they invariably occupy; the Patriots actively try to trade down, as they did last night.  Conversely, the Redskins are probably the worst run team in the NFL and what is their usual strategy?  Mortgaging a quantity of picks for a few stars.  How does that work out for them?

With that context in mind, I have a simple question for Thomas Dimitroff: what the f*** are you doing?  You just traded two first round picks, one second round pick, and two fourth round picks for one player?  It’s painfully clear that the Falcons’ brass went down to the dealership, fell in love with one particular car, and let the salesman jack them for it. 

This approach would make sense if the Falcons were truly one player away from being a Super Bowl team, but their brass are letting a lucky season cloud their judgment.  The Birds were outgained on a per-play basis.  At best, they were a ten-win team masquerading as the #1 seed in the NFC and they were ruthlessly exposed as a pretender by the Packers.  There are needs all over the roster, starting with the fact that they have only one defensive end who can generate pressure and he is about to turn 33 years old.  Assuming for the sake of argument that the Falcons would have batted 50% on the fourth round picks, the Falcons just traded four players for one.  In the modern NFL, this is a smaller scale equivalent of the Herschel Walker trade or Mike Ditka giving up the Saints’ entire Draft for Ricky Williams. 

And the worst part is that Dimitroff is a good evaluator of talent.  I wouldn’t care about the Hawks giving up draft picks because they are going to waste those shots anyway.  Dimitroff knows how to grade players.  Unfortunately, it also appears that he didn’t learn everything about pick value from his former employer.

Look, I’m the same guy who thought that the Falcons were making a huge mistake when they drafted Matt Ryan, that Arthur Blank was overreacting to Vickkampf by rolling the dice on a great white hope because Ryan made good eye contact in his interview.  Three winning seasons later, it’s safe to say that that assessment was wrong.  However, I’m also the person who didn’t jump on the bandwagon when the team was winning in November and December.  I think I have a good handle of where the Falcons are as a team and they are not at the stage where they can sacrifice five picks for one player. 

It’s the Losing, not the Lying

In a development that is entirely unsurprising, Atlanta Spirit is suing King & Spalding for malpractice, alleging that K&S made massive mistakes in drafting the agreement by which the entity would buy out Steve Belkin’s shares and then compounded the error in its representation of Atlanta Spirit in the litigation in Maryland against Belkin.  The suit is unsurprising because the source of the litigation was an ambiguously drafted provision in the sale agreement that allowed Belkin to try to control both of the appraisals for the value of his interest.  Atlanta Spirit ultimately prevailed on appeal in Maryland by convincing the Court of Appeals there that the appraisal provision was unenforceable.  The moment that happened, a malpractice claim was likely.  (Note: K&S will have plenty of defenses to the claim, one of which will be that, as the Maryland opinion notes, they had 30 hours to prepare a complex commercial document.  Another caveat: I’ve only followed this dispute through the media, so take my thoughts with a pound of salt.)

Atlanta Spirit’s Complaint makes for fascinating reading as a history of the legal wrangling regarding the ownership of the Hawks, Thrashers, and Philips Arena (albeit from the perspective of ownership).  One of the big issues that Atlanta Spirit faces is establishing damages.  OK, so K&S drafted a document with an imperfect provision regarding the determination of fair market value for the teams; what did that mean for you in terms of actual dollars and cents?  Atlanta Spirit’s claim is that they wanted to sell the Thrashers after the resolution of the 2004-05 lockout, at which point the competitive landscape would be better for a team like the Thrashers and the franchise’s value will be greater, but they were unable to do so because of the uncertainty as to who actually owned the teams: Belkin or the rest of Atlanta Spirit.  This is a somewhat embarrassing argument for the owners of a major pro franchise to make, but this is what happens when you air your grievances in the public litigation process.  Atlanta Spirit faced the same issue when it was litigating against Belkin in Maryland and had to put forward evidence regarding the vast sums that the teams were allegedly losing.  (Unrelated issue: this dispute illustrates the value of an arbitration clause in certain commercials contracts.  Atlanta Spirit would have been much better off if it could have fought with Belkin behind a wall of confidentiality.)

Naturally, Jeff Schultz has latched onto this argument to complain that we’ve been swindled by Atlanta Spirit.  Here’s his opening flourish:

They told you they cared. They lied.

They told you their biggest concern was putting out the best product for you, the fans. They lied.

They told you not to pay attention to any of those rumors of the Thrashers being for sale, although they eventually admitted begrudgingly that, yes, they were looking for “investors.” They lied.

The Atlanta Spirit is not looking for investors. They’re looking to sell the Thrashers. They’ve been looking to sell them for — ready for this? –six years.

Six . . . years.

Those are the caretakers of your franchise. Those are the ones who’ve pleaded with you since 2005 to support a mostly inferior product — and now they can’t figure out how they’ve burned so many bridges in this town why fans still feel too angry or worn down to show up for a pretty decent team. Reality never has been their strong suit.

This is hopelessly naive.  A decision to buy or sell a franchise is one of those topics about which we can fully expect owners to lie and with good reason.  If a team’s owners admit that they are looking to sell, then they immediately start to look desperate and their price goes down.  This is negotiation 101.  If I’m going to scalp tickets outside of a game, I want to create the impression that I’m not committed to getting into the stadium.  If I show up in team gear reeking of desperation, then a scalper is going to fleece me.  The apparent decision by Atlanta Spirit to lie about its intentions to sell the team is no different than a college coach denying that he’s considering leaving his program, a presidential candidate denying that he’s considering ending his campaign, or a president lying about surveillance flights over the Soviet Union.  If Schultz wants to be mad, then he ought to be mad at himself for assigning weight to the self-interested answers of Atlanta Spirit to questions that they could not answer honestly for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Schultz is absolutely correct in the conclusion of his column: “If Atlanta loses its second NHL franchise, it won’t be because the sport failed here. It will be because ownership and management failed.”  The reason why he’s correct has nothing to do with Atlanta Spirit claiming that it was trying to sell the team when it was, in fact, trying to do exactly that.  Rather, if hockey fails again in Atlanta, it will be because the team didn’t win nearly enough games to generate interest.  Atlanta fans will respond to a winner.  We turned out for the Hawks in the 80s, we turned out in droves for the Braves in the 90s, and now we’re selling out the Georgia Dome for every Falcons game.  Atlanta fans, unlike some fans elsewhere, will not pay for a bad product.  (This does not extend to our affection for our college football teams, whom we’ll pay to see even when they are 0-11.)  The Thrashers have made the playoffs once in eleven seasons and were promptly swept.  Let’s go out on a limb and say that that qualifies as a bad product.  Indeed, one of the first defenses that K&S will make regarding Atlanta Spirit’s damages is that its alleged malpractice didn’t cause a diminution in the value of the franchise; Don Waddell’s fumbling of the on-ice product is the proximate cause of the loss.  (K&S would also point to larger systemic factors, like the economic downturn and the NHL’s descent into irrelevance.  That said, they’ll try to resolve the case on legal grounds if at all possible.  They won’t want 12 jurors trying to make these complex analyses of market value.)  At this point, we would all be happy if Atlanta Spirit sold the team, but it’s not because they had the temerity to claim that they had no interest in doing so.    

There Must be Some Way Out of Here, Said Thousands of Falcons Fans to the Thief

So it turns out that the Falcons just aren't that good. The 13-3 record masked the fact that the team just isn’t that good on offense or defense. The shortcomings were exposed brutally by the Packers last night. If anything, the game was another illustration of the fact that a team is often not as good or bad as its record. I have no idea how Green Bay lost six games in the regular season. Coaching malpractice is the only explanation that makes sense. Now that the Pack have a functional running back, they are a team with no weaknesses. The Falcons, on the other hand, have a raft of issues to address. In fact, the silver lining to a loss like that is that it will prevent Thomas Dimitroff and the rest of the Falcons’ brain trust from buying the notion that the team is elite and needs only minor tinkering. The Packers showed what an elite team looks like and the Dirty Birds are still about two drafts away from getting there. What needs to change?

Let’s start with Mike Mularkey. There is a general criticism to be made and then a specific one. Generally speaking, the Falcons’ offense is underwhelming because it does not threaten the opponent down the field. Can anyone remember an instance where the Falcons took a shot down the field last night, other than the hurried throw-and-hope by Matt Ryan for his first interception? (And nice effort on that play, Michael Jenkins.) The Packers knew that the Falcons were going to be throwing in a certain short area and they jumped all over those routes. Look at the difference between the cushions given to Packers receivers and those given to Falcons receivers. You think that the ability to stretch the field isn’t a factor there? That brings us to the specific criticism: the play that ended in the back-breaking pick six was one of the worst playcalls in recorded history. Let’s count the ways in which it was a terrible idea. Mularkey decided to roll his right-handed quarterback left to throw a sideline pattern when the defense knew that the Falcons had no timeouts and would need to throw to the sidelines. Not to belittle him, but Tramon Williams had an incredibly easy read. You know you’ve dialed up a bad play when your quarterback is asked about the play after the game and he says he should have thrown it away. No shit you should have thrown it away, Matt; your offensive coordinator might as well have presented Dom Capers with an engraved tablet telling him where the throw was going.

Athough the Falcons’ defense was as bad as the offense yesterday, Brian VanGorder does not deserve the same degree of criticism for two reasons. First, there was evidence of good defensive coaching yesterday in the fact that blitzes dialed up by VanGorder got unblocked blitzers into Rodgers’ face on numerous occasions. Those blitzers whiffed repeatedly, which is a clear an example of a failure in talent as opposed to scheme. The team had the same issue against the Saints. Those missed sacks were critical because they deprived the Falcons of the ability to get the Packers off the field. Second, the offense is supposed to be the strength of the team. It’s the offense that has the #3 pick under center, the first round left tackle, the pair of first round receivers, the coveted free agent running back, and the Hall of Fame tight end. The defense hasn’t received the same attention until the last two drafts and it had a longer way to go when Dimitroff and Smith came to power.

That brings us to the second area crying out for improvement: the pass rush. The defensive line is critical for Brian VanGorder’s defense because he isn’t a blitz-heavy coordinator. The defensive game plans in the second Saints and Packers games were out of character in the number of blitzes (a point that Ron Jaworski made quickly) and were probably based on a recognition by VanGorder that his defensive line isn’t good enough to get pressure on Brees and Rodgers without help. We assumed after last season that the Falcons would look to upgrade the defensive line – specifically the defensive end spot opposite John Abraham - after a season in which opponents had great success throwing the ball. Instead, Dimitroff took the opposite approach to the pass defense, signing Robinson, and then he didn’t draft a defensive end at all. Given the available options in the Draft, this made sense at the time, but now, it’s time to get an upgrade over Kroy Biermann, a player who should be the first defensive end off the bench. The Falcons were 22nd in the NFL in sacks this year. If you prefer advanced stats, the Falcons finished 23rd in Football Outsiders' adjusted sack rate.

Last night’s game drove this inadequacy home. Aaron Rodgers had beautiful pockets from which to throw. When he felt pressure, there was always somewhere to go. Ryan usually had guys in his face. For the Falcons to become elite, two things have to happen on the defensive line. One is that either Peria Jerry or Corey Peters need to turn into a pocket crusher to go with Jonathan Babineaux as a penetrator. The second is that the Falcons need to find a bookend for Abraham, either in the Draft or in free agency. VanGorder needs to find his Quentin Moses (or 2002 Sugar Bowl Will Thompson) to go opposite his David Pollack.

Even if 13-3 flattered the team, this was a very good season for the Falcons. Three straight winning seasons and two playoff berths out of three means that this team isn’t a flash in the pan like every other good Falcons team has been. The days of a topsy-turvy NFL are long gone. Smart teams have figured out how to manage the salary cap. With limited exceptions, the AFC is consistently dominated by the Colts, Patriots, Ravens, Steelers, and Chargers (with the Jets seeking to join the club). In the NFC, the Falcons seem to have joined (or are at least close to joining) the Giants, Eagles, Packers, and Saints as teams that can be expected to contend every year. The keys for the team going forward will be figuring out how to unleash their offensive weapons in more dangerous ways (Mularkey needs to stop thinking like he has the Steelers defense in his corner) and improving the pass rush. If that happens, then maybe Falcons fans will stick around for all four quarters of a playoff game.

This is why you Fail, Exhibit 79

A commenter asked for my thoughts on the Big Ten’s New Year’s Day faceplant.  I don’t have much to add to what I wrote 384 days ago about Big Ten expansion.  The Big Ten operates at a disadvantage relative to the SEC because the South has far more blue chip high school players than the Midwest.  What the Big Ten does have is revenue, loads and loads of revenue because the Big Ten schools sit in populous (but shrinking) states and churn out sports-addled alums like yours truly.  Big Ten schools ought to plough that revenue into hiring the best coaches.  Instead, they hire Danny Hope and Greg Robinson.  Any league where Mark Dantonio is considered to be one of the hot young coaches is going to be a league that gets massacred on New Year’s Day when its teams start swimming in a deeper pool.

This brings me to Michigan’s current disaster of a coaching search.  In 2007, Michigan had an obvious candidate: Les Miles.  Because of infighting among the powers that were in Ann Arbor, Michigan either dithered while LSU locked Miles up, made an insulting offer that pushed Miles away, or never made an offer in the first place.  Michigan then lurched around, making offers to Kirk Ferentz and Greg Schiano, before hiring Rich Rodriguez.  Rodriguez was a good hire at the time, but one factor in his ultimate demise was Michigan skimping on hiring a defensive coordinator for him when the position was open after the 2008 season.  Michigan had figured out that to compete with the best in college football (read: the SEC), it needed to pay the market rate for a top head coach, but it had not learned that lesson for the coaches below the head man.

In 2010, Michigan again has an obvious candidate.  David Brandon has let Rodriguez wither on the vine for over a month, neither firing him for a lack of progress nor giving him an extension and a new defensive coordinator for recruiting purposes.  The only way that Brandon’s ludicrous “evaluation after the bowl game” mantra made sense was if he had Jim Harbaugh signed, sealed, and delivered.  Otherwise, Brandon was pissing away a month that could be spent with either Rodriguez recruiting his tail off or Brandon lining up a replacement so the successor could recruit his tail off in January.  Normally, a major program can take a hit to one class in order to make sure that it hires the right coach.  In this case, Rodriguez’s recruiting is one of the major reasons why Michigan is making a change, so UM cannot afford to give away another class. 

With Harbaugh apparently gone, Brandon’s process appears to be an epic failure.  Coming back to the SEC, I’m at a loss to think of an SEC program that has behaved this ineffectively.  Compare Michigan’s actions to those of Florida.  The Gators had an opening, they filled it quickly, they’ve paid top dollar for a coordinator to cover for the new head man’s weak side of the ball, and they are off and running in recruiting.  Michigan knew that they would need to make a change around the same time that Urban Meyer was retiring and yet, Michigan hasn’t even made the introductory step of making their vacancy official.  Assuming that the San Francisco 49ers showed Harbaugh more love, we can speculate that an SEC program would not have allowed itself to get outfought in the “show me love” department when trying to hire an alum like Michigan did.  However, we can say with a fair degree of certainty that an SEC program would not have dithered like Michigan has. 

Like Joan Harris, the Sunday Splurge is Late

We’re all Serfs on Nick Saban’s Estate.

As I was watching Alabama emasculate Florida on Saturday night, I was reminded of a tweet from Chris Brown from earlier in the day.  Responding to a tweet from Bruce Feldman about Texas Tech’s poor performance against Iowa State, Brown wrote:

But it's the same offense, right? RT @BFeldmanESPN Midway thru Q2 and Iowa State shutting out TTech 10-0. Red Raiders have 58 yds.

Yeah, Texas Tech’s offense looks the same and they’re trying to do the same things that Mike Leach did, but they aren’t the same without Leach actually calling the plays.  Florida is in the same boat.  The offense looks like the all-conquering spread that they ran in 2007-08, but it isn’t working the same because: (1) there’s a major difference between Dan Mullen calling plays and Steve Addazio calling plays; and (2) there’s a major difference between Tim Tebow running the offense and John Brantley doing the same because the former was a running threat and the latter was not.  Spencer Hall made an interesting point about Addazio:

You also know that there is no way, websites be damned, that Urban Meyer will fire Steve Addazio, or limit his playcalling privileges, or anything else that might calm the rabble calling for his head despite a general downward trend in production. This is the man who helmed the program while Meyer was in limbo. This is the man who landed this year's recruiting class, perhaps the best one to ever come to the University of Florida. He's lost two games as an offensive coordinator ever.

First off, Urban Meyer strikes me as the sort of guy who is WAY too competitive to allow his program to regress as the result of a substandard offensive coordinator.  If Addazio is a good recruiter and manager, but a lousy caller of plays, then Meyer will do the same thing with him that Lloyd Carr did with Fred Jackson after Michigan’s fourth straight four-loss season in 1996: he’ll move him from offensive coordinator to “assistant head coach,” give Addazio a position to coach along with staff management responsibilities, and then bring in someone who actually knows how the Spread ‘n’ Shred works.  (By the way, Jackson was the one assistant retained by Rich Rodriguez.  He’s still on the staff in Ann Arbor.) 

The reference to recruiting is also interesting.  I’m not sure whether we should blame Meyer, Addazio, or both for Florida’s quarterback recruiting, but it’s painfully obvious that their recent strategy has been to go after the best available players, regardless of fit, not unlike what I used to do in my PlayStation college football dynasty era.  I got an e-mail from a Florida friend quoting a guy named Gator Sid.  I don’t have a link, but I have to quote this because it’s exactly right:

Why are we having this problem at QB? Oliver Stone captures it best in his Wall Street movies: GREED! Greed for recruiting. Because Meyer had a hard time passing up on 5 star Brantley and [Jeff] Driskel even though no other spread option major college program would have recruited these guys. It was being 5 star greedy.

Tebow, Newton, Burton, Tyler, Reed, and Denard Robinson are players you recruit hard to run this offense. Sanchez, Manning, Ainge, Sims, Mallet, Stafford, et al you pass on. They don't make your board. Stay disciplined and true to your offense. [Tom] Osborn[e] wasn't going to even waste a postage stamp on [Peyton] Manning. If Brantley wasn't here, Newton would be.

Les.  Oh, Sweet Les.

Spencer, tell us about that penultimate play:

Then the ball is snapped with the game on the line between two major college football powers with one team having 13 men on the field and another with a non-running running quarterback who watches in horror as the ball is snapped over his head and covered for a game-ending busted play. THIS ALL HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE.

I missed this when it happened live because I was enjoying the final moments of a Greg Robinson special (curled up in a fetal position in my living room, thinking thoughts I never thought I’d think about missing Julius Curry and Jim Herrmann), but a quick glance at the explosion that was my Twitter feed got me up to speed.  My kingdom for a replay with Gus Johnson calling the game.  (CBS, you have the rights to the most exciting, passionate conference in college football American sports, you employ the most excitable, passionate play-by-play guy in the Solar System, and you can’t put the two together?  You have Johnson wasting away calling Oakland-Houston while the immortal Craig Bolerjack calls LSU-Tennessee?  To quote Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler, really?)

If I were Les Miles and I were coming out of a 2009 season that was marked by a memorably inept ending to the Ole Miss game in which LSU demonstrated the worst time management skills in recorded history, I’m pretty sure that I would focus on ensuring that my team doesn’t screw up another end-of-game situation.  We’re five games into the season and LSU has managed to one-up the disaster in Oxford and yet they won the game.  If Football Outsiders ever needed a pithy way to describe the fact that records are often deceiving, then all they would need to say is “2010 LSU, 5-0.”

An Unrealistically Optimistic Thought about Georgia.

Isn’t this year’s team just the polar opposite of the 2002 team that went 13-1?  By the time that team had played five games, they had nipped Clemson by a field goal, survived South Carolina running a potential game-winning play from the two-yard line (all in a game in which the Dawgs never crossed the goal line with the ball on offense), and kicked a last-season field goal to beat Alabama after blowing a lead in the loudest game I’ve ever attended.  This team has fumbled away a chance to tie the game in Columbia (funny reversal of fortune there), blown a possession to beat Arkansas and then allowed a lightning strike that would have made Heinz Guderian blush, collapsed in the fourth quarter in Starkville, and then fumbled away the winning drive in Boulder.  Is there a huge difference between this team and the 2002 team other than the fact that this team has a tendency for fumbling at the worst possible time?  (Answer: the 2002 defense was 15th in the country and allowed 4.5 yards per play; the 2010 defense is 39th in the country in total defense and is allowing 5.4 yards per play.  Much as I’d like to say that the ‘02 team was lucky and this team is unlucky, I can’t.)    

The Lies we Tell Ourselves.

Here’s Brian Cook on the Michigan “defense”:

Stop it. I've defended the three man rush but good lord you have got to be kidding me. I defended the 3-3-5 but that's when I thought it would be used to create a wide variety of four-and-five man fronts with unpredictable blitzing. Michigan probably rushed more than three guys 10% of the time in the second half, and when they did that it was four. I can't support having Craig Roh and using him in zone coverage on every snap.

What's worse was the inane substitution pattern. Every Indiana run in the second half was a wasted down, and probably would have been a wasted down even if you replaced Banks with Roh and brought in a cornerback. One of this defense's few assets is the pass rushing ability of the outside linebackers, but Michigan is going out of its way to avoid using it.

I’d add to that the fact that the defense is completely predictable.  Without seeing coaching tape, I can’t say this with total confidence, but it looks like Michigan is running the same basic defense on most passing downs.  If I feel like I know what’s coming, then I’m pretty sure that an opposing offensive coordinator putting in 16-hour days knows what’s coming and can call plays accordingly. 

The game with Michigan State this weekend seems like another coin-flip game.  I spent much of Saturday evening trying to figure out ways that Michigan could ensure that it gets the ball last against the Spartans by controlling the pace of its offense.  This is not a ringing endorsement of the defense.  Then, the irrational optimism that gives us the mental illness called fandom struck and I thought: “Maybe we’re just sandbagging.  Maybe Robinson is going to change everything up on Saturday, Craig Roh is going to be put to his highest and best use, we’ll unveil a bunch of exotic zone blitzes, and Mark Dantonio will be left muttering about pride coming before the fall.”  This sort of Happythink is going to be a major reason why I’m pulling my hair out when Kirk Cousins goes up and down the field on Saturday.

Question Time with the Right Honourable Gentleman from South Ribble.

Can we please stop using the words “Terrelle Pryor” and “Heisman” in the same sentence?

Is anyone else rooting for Oregon to go unbeaten so we can get a Saban versus Chip Kelly national title game?  Alternatively, should I be rooting for Ohio State to play the Tide so Jim Tressel can watch a team play Tresselball better than he could have dreamed?  (What’s that, Bob Dylan?  I shouldn’t let other people get my kicks for me?  Bob, you’re a baseball fan.  Stay out of this.)

If Florida wins the East and Alabama wins the West, what’s the point of the SEC Championship Game?

Is FSU quietly becoming a, gasp, good team in the ACC?

Nicky Santoro, Hawks Fan

My thoughts on the Joe Johnson contract:

Nicky: What the f*** is that supposed to mean? "He will be ejected from any casino in Las Vegas. And the casinos can be fined as much as ... every time he shows up." You believe this s***?

Ace: Yeah, I believe it. You got banned.

Nicky: "Because of notorious and unsavory reputation..." Motherf***er! Is there any way around this?"

Ace: No, there's no way.

Nicky: Let's say, for instance I wanna go in a restaurant, which happens to be in the casino to get one of those sandwiches I like?

Ace: Forget it. You can't even set foot in the parking lot. That's how serious it is.

Nicky: In other words, I'm f***ed.

Ace: In so many words, yes.

I May Not be a Smart Man, Layla, but I Know What Nepotism is.

Not since Forrest Gump has there been a figure who has found himself in more important positions despite having little or no aptitude for anything (other than being related to a defensive genius).

I didn't mind USC during the Carroll era. It was refreshing to watch a Pac Ten team play proper defense. It was certainly enjoyable to watch the Trojans humiliate Notre Dame on an annual basis. Now, that match-up has become a meteor game. USC - the program with its basketball program on probation for paying a player, the Reggie Bush investigation hanging over it like the Sword of Damocles, and fresh allegations that another star running back was being paid by, oh, I forgot, U.S./China Marketing - just hired a head coach who made NCAA infractions a part of his recruiting strategy in Knoxville. Did Michigan replace Steve Fisher with Jerry Tarkanian? Did Alabama replace Mike Dubose with Jackie Sherrill? Come on, NCAA, if ever a program was thumbing its nose at you, this is it. I don't root for the NCAA to hammer major programs because college football is more interesting when the major power are doing well, but I'm willing to make an exception in this instance. USC just moved to "utterly contemptible." And that's before we get to Ed Orgeron's apparent Jerry Maguire impersonation, desperately calling Tennessee recruits to discourage them from enrolling at Tennessee.

In terms of Tennessee's reaction, this is not the end of the world. Yes, the Vols are being dumped by their girlfriend, but it's not as if this lady was a keeper. If you buy the notion that a coach who commits a bevy of smaller violations is more likely to commit a big one, then Tennessee is dodging a bullet. And that's before we get to the fact that Lane Kiffin is not very good at coaching football. He's good at assembling a staff and he's an aggressive recruiter, but he was never going to be on anyone's list for the top ten coaches in the country. Isn't that what ultimately drove Tennessee fans crazy about Phil Fulmer? Assuming that he isn't tainted goods because of ElectricalShedGate, wouldn't Mike Leach be a major upgrade? After all those years of Big Orange fans suffering as Spurrier-coached Florida teams passed John Chavis's defenses to death, wouldn't a little reversal of fortune be sweet? How about an SEC with Meyer, Saban, Petrino, Miles, Richt, Nutt, Malzahn (the real brains behind the operation on the Plains), the Artist Formerly Known as Spurrier, and Leach? I was originally thinking this morning that Tommy Tuberville has to be kicking himself because he would have been a perfect fit in Knoxville, but now, I'm fixated on the coach whom Tommy is replacing.

Speaking of the coaching musical chairs this offseason and in an effort to expand from neverending World War Two analogies, does this offseason remind anyone else of Paris 1919? Old empires breaking apart, opening opportunities for smaller countries that are finally getting out from under the boot? No? Oh come on, just play along. The Pac Ten hegemon has lost its coach, replaced him with a buffoon, and has the NCAA knocking at its door, looking for reparations. The SEC hegemon lost its coach, then the coach came back, only we're not sure if the coach is going to be on the sidelines next fall. The teams that are third in the pecking orders of the Big XII and Big East had to fire their coaches for being abusive to their players. Georgia is thrashing about wildly in search for a defensive coordinator. Tennessee is now without a coach and its students are taking to the streets. For the first time in decades, Florida State (the Ottoman Empire of the aughts) has a new coach. Upheaval doesn't even begin to describe what's happening right now. G-d, I love college football.

Radiohead, Arrested Development, Woody Allen Movies...

This blog. (HT: Ryno.)

OK, So We Aren't Going Unbeaten this Year

Want to know what the top of the 8th inning was like last night at the Ted as the Mets turned a 5-1 lead into an 11-1 boil on the ass of Bravedom as the windchill dropped into the 30s? Here are the topics that were bantered back and forth between me and my friends Billy (the only Padres fan I know) and Victor (the only Reds fan I know and the sole commenter for this site who complains in German):

1. The guy in Section 119 wearing a full ski mask who caught a foul ball as it ricocheted off of the facing of the second deck was either an escaped convict or a second-tier WWF wrestler from 1986 named "El Matador."

2. Billy and Victor traded "coldest games at Candlestick" stories as trash blew all over the field. I was tempted to break out the story of the '95 Michigan 5 Purdue 0 thriller played in windchill below zero and alternating snow, sleet, and hail, but I fell like I talk about that game all the time.

3. "This is like the first 30 minutes of Major League." This remark became especially prophetic when Chipper missed a routine foul pop (to the extent that any foul pop is routine in 30 mph winds) that would have mercifully ended the inning and collapsed to the ground, Willie Mays Hays style. (OK, I made that last part up.) I decided after the game that the Braves should have some fun with BRAVESVISION!!! and make plays like that as the defensive play of the game to give the team incentives not to play like poo.

4. A lengthy discussion on Macay McBride's go-to order at Taco Bell.

5. The first "McDowell Raus!" of the year. (Keep in mind that we're coming off of a three-game sweep of the Phillies in which the Braves allowed seven runs in three games.)

6. A "favorite sequence from a soccer game" discussion. Like a stuck record, I went with the Ariel Ortega dive-headbutt-red card followed by the Bergkamp Wondergoal. Obligatory YouTube clip:



Victor went with Mark Hughes's seven-minute double in his first game for Bayern Munich against Werder Bremen during Octoberfest, followed by running into the entire Bayern backline, including the immortal Roland Wohlfahrth, coming out of the Paulaner tent.


Didn't every German player look like this in the 80s?

7. A review of the 1860 Munich roster to see if Gregg Berhalter and Josh Wolff are getting any playing time, followed by five minutes of mocking Landon Donovan with a number of statements starting with "The 2002 World Cup excluded,..."

8. Assorted obscenities directed at Jose Reyes for celebrating like a Duke point guard after his single extended the Mets' lead to 7-1.

9. I didn't share this, but the top of the 8th gave me major flashbacks to last year. Specifically, the last game I attended in 2006 was an August businessman's special where the bullpen contrived to turn a 3-1 lead against the Phillies in the 7th into a 9-3 deficit. McBride, Tyler Yates, and Oscar RoyalHouse are all holdovers from last year's dreadful pen and for one night (we pray), they reverted to their 2006 form.