Computer bookie

In one corner, you have the poster-boy for me-first NFL receivers with raging diva complexes. In the other corner, you've got the cantankerous, short-tempered head coach with the stubborn, old-school attitude, a penchant for acerbic media relations and a deep-seated disdain for anyone who would dare question his authority. And in the middle, attempting to serve as referee--or, perhaps more fittingly, as ringmaster--you have one of the most controversial owners in sports, trying to balance his longing for high-profile free agents with his promise to allow the coach to run his own show.
I've never been able to wrap my mind around the idea that an arranged marriage between Bill Parcells and Terrell Owens could work out, much less flourish, for the Dallas Cowboys. I've had my doubts ever since March 19, when Jerry Jones announced the acquisition of Owens, his latest splashy free-agent signing.
Sorry, but this cast of characters is a recipe for disaster, and I just don't see it ending well for any of the principals, much less innocent bystanders like Drew Bledsoe, who we all know will eventually join Jeff Garcia and Donovan McNabb on the list of quarterbacks thrown under the bus by Owens. It's just a matter of time.
Not much has happened since the beginning of training camp to change my mind. Not Owens' absence from 19 of 31 practices or Parcells constant harping to anyone within earshot that he "doesn't know the player." (I mean, really--shouldn't someone at least introduce these guys? They're going to spend the next few months making each other miserable. Even Owens and McNabb were on a first-name basis. Why not Owens and Parcells?) Not T.O. wearing a Team Discovery jersey, pedaling his exercise bike on the sideline and treating another missed practice like a photo-op while his teammates sweated their way through on-field drills. Not Parcells dropping hints that Owens might start the regular season as backup, and certainly not the organization fining T.O. a reported $9,500 for missing a team meeting and a rehabilitation session and being late to an offensive meeting over the weekend.
I mean, really--who didn't see this coming?
I'm guessing Parcells, for one, did. And, as tired as I find Parcells' cranky-old-guy routine, (which is, by the way, incredibly tired) I've got to give him some credit--for a guy who's known for speaking his mind in no uncertain terms, he's done an admirable job of maintaining his composure and letting Owens do what Owens does--separate himself from his teammates and make himself look every bit the petulant, selfish Rod Tidwell-wannabe that he is.
But I wouldn't be surprised if Parcells blows up before long. With every short, churlish response to a media inquiry regarding T.O.'s status, it's obvious that Parcells is inching closer to the meltdown that most of us have been expecting since the signing was announced. And, with the Cowboys set to kick off the regular season in Jacksonville in less than two weeks, it's a sure bet that the coach is only going to get more agitated, not less.
This thing's going to come to a head at some point, and if you're a Cowboys fan, you've got to be wondering whether your season's going to be part of the collateral damage in the Tuna-T.O. showdown.
It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.
Let’s face it--as football games go, Super Bowl XL wasn’t particularly pretty.
The Steelers and Seahawks took the biggest stage in American sports Sunday night and turned in a performance with just slightly more artistic merit than your average tractor pull. In fact, in comparison (at least on my scorecard) the average tractor pull was winning a close decision on points up until Antwaan Randle El hooked up with Hines Ward for a touchdown on one of Pittsburgh’s signature gadget plays, a fourth quarter reverse pass to give the Steelers a 21-10 lead, their eventual margin of victory.
But when it comes to winning championships, “pretty” isn’t a necessity, and style points are overrated. Sure, you can rack them up during the regular season and land yourself a Pro Bowl bid and an endorsement deal or two. But, as trite as it may sound, with a championship at stake there’s no such thing as an ugly win.
Jerome Bettis wasn’t concerned with style points when he paved the way to the goal line with a solid block that sprung Ben Roethlisberger for a controversial second quarter touchdown that gave the Steelers a 7-3 advantage at halftime. And Roethlisberger surely wasn’t worried about style points when he threw the chip block that gave Randle El the time to roll right, throw on the run and hit Ward for the score that effectively put Pittsburgh’s fifth Super Bowl victory on ice.
Of course, Willie Parker’s Madden-esque somersault into the end zone at the conclusion of his 75-yard third quarter touchdown scamper might suggest that maybe he didn’t get the memo. But, heck, we can cut a little slack for a guy who came into the NFL as an undrafted free agent--especially considering that he’d just set a record for the longest touchdown run in Super Bowl history.
No one has ever accused Steelers head coach Bill Cowher of being concerned with aesthetics, and style points were surely the furthest thing from his mind as the final seconds separating him from a championship ticked off the Ford Field clock. And when it was over he stood, drenched in Gatorade, with his arms raised above his head, celebrating the title that he’s been chasing since taking the reins of the Steelers franchise 14 long years ago.
While we’re on the topic of things that weren’t pretty, I’m sure Seahawk fans would offer up the performance of the officiating crew as Exhibit A. And it would be hard to argue against their point--NFL officiating has been horrendous throughout this postseason, and the Super Bowl was no different, whether you’re talking about a ticky-tack offensive pass interference call against Darrell Jackson that negated a first quarter Seattle touchdown, or an inexplicable 15 yard personal foul against Matt Hasselbeck for having the audacity to make a tackle after throwing an interception.
Memo to Paul Tagliabue: Your officials stunk, and you owe everybody--the players, the coaches and the fans--three things: an apology, an explanation and a plan designed to prevent history from repeating itself. Your fans and franchises expend an immeasurable amount of blood, sweat and tears over the course of an NFL season, and they deserve better than what they got from the officials this postseason.
But the Seahawks have to bear their fair share of the blame for their misfortunes. Regardless of how many setbacks the refs dealt them--and there were several--they also created plenty all on their own.
Defensively, Seattle committed three horrendous breakdowns, two of which went for touchdowns--Randle El’s touchdown pass to Ward and Parker’s long run. The other was a conversion on 3rd and 28 which gave Pittsburgh the ball at the Seattle 2-yard line and ultimately led to Roethlisberger’s rushing touchdown. And, despite moving the ball well at midfield, the Seattle offense failed to take advantage of enough opportunities to keep the Seahawks in the game.
In the end the Steelers simply made the most of their chances, and the Seahawks didn’t. Pretty? Not by a long shot. But I doubt anyone in Pittsburgh cares.
It was a patently imperfect ending to what was, up until a few weeks ago, supposed to be the perfect season for the Indianapolis Colts.
Umm, you do remember all that “perfect season” talk surrounding the Indianapolis Colts, right? Four or five weeks ago no one was particularly concerned with whether Indy would win a championship this year--that was a foregone conclusion. No, what we were all concentrating on was whether the Colts would jeopardize their quest for an unblemished 19-0 romp through the regular-season and playoffs by resting their starters after clinching home-field advantage.
Then, of course, came the tragic suicide of head coach Tony Dungy’s 18-year-old son, James, and losses in two of the Colts' final three regular-season games. Still, pretty much everyone considered the Colts, with their unstoppable offense and newly-swaggering defense, comfortably availed of home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs, to be the odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl.
But the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t seem all that intimidated by the allegedly invincible Colts.
Pittsburgh’s defense spent the better part of Sunday’s divisional playoff match-up with Indy completely disrupting everything that Peyton Manning and the Colts’ offense tried to accomplish. The Steelers’ defense beat Manning at his own game all day, brilliantly disguising their blitz packages until the play clock had nearly run down, patiently waiting for Manning to finish preening and strutting and flapping his way through his customary half-dozen pre-snap audibles. When Manning was done the Steelers would load up on the line of scrimmage, punch through the Colts’ offensive line, and knock Manning squarely on his ass. Then they’d go back to their huddle, pick the little bits of Colt out of their teeth, wash, rinse and repeat.
So, when Joey Porter and James Farrior sacked Manning on fourth down at the Colts’ 2-yard line with 1:20 to play in the game and a three-point lead, it seemed like they’d landed the knockout punch.
Of course, you know what happened next. The uber-dependable Jerome Bettis fumbled on the very next play, giving Indy one last shot with a minute to play. Four plays and 30 yards later, the game rested on the toe of Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker (statistically speaking) that the NFL has ever seen.
46 yards, at home, indoors, with time dwindling and an opportunity to tie the game and, in all likelihood, send it to overtime.
Vanderjagt, whose mouth has earned him distinction of being known as the most amusing kicker in NFL history not named Grammatica, didn’t just miss. He missed with authority. He missed so badly that if you added up the aggregate distance from the goal post of every clutch kick that has been missed by a Florida State kicker during Bobby Bowden’s tenure, and tacked on Scotty Norwood’s gaffe for good measure, they wouldn’t, combined, have missed by as much as Vanderjagt did.
Seriously, if a disadvantaged, sickly little kid--the kind of kid that Mitch Albom’s always writing about--asked Vanderjagt to fulfill his only wish, and his wish was for a missed field goal attempt, this is what I’d expect it to look like. From the moment of impact, it clearly had no chance.
As Vanderjagt’s kick rocketed twenty-five feet to the right of the uprights, FOX’s cameras simultaneously caught great reactions from four guys: Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher, Jerome Bettis and Peyton Manning. You didn’t have to be a trained lip-reader to see that all four guys uttered the same three words: “He missed it.”
Four guys. Four very different circumstances. The same three words. And, for the Colts, another long off-season to ponder what the heck went wrong.
It may take a while for the sting of Monday’s firing to wear off for former Detroit Lions head coach Steve Mariucci. Sooner or later, though, he’ll probably come to think of November 28, 2005 not as the day that he lost a job, but rather as the day that he regained his freedom after serving nearly three years hard time with one of the most blatantly incompetent franchises in professional sports.
While it probably wasn’t his intent--and, let’s face it, his first and only priority was clearly to preserve his own hide at the expense of the coach he was tripping over himself to hire less than three years ago--team president Matt Millen did Mooch a huge favor on Monday.
And I’m not just talking about the fat buyout check bearing William Clay Ford’s signature that Mariucci’s going to tote over the Mackinac Bridge on his way back to Iron Mountain.
Sure, the money is great. But being relieved of the obligation to watch the Lions play football every Sunday?
That, my friends, is priceless.
Don’t get me wrong--I like Mariucci, and I wanted to see him succeed in Detroit. Like everyone else who lauded his hiring, I believed that he would help restore the Lions to respectability. But I’m not about to absolve him of his share of the responsibility for this organization’s failures over the past three seasons.
What little life there was left in his tenure as field boss of the NFL’s perennial laughingstock was snuffed out during last Thursday’s embarrassing, nationally televised thrashing at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons. This wasn’t a firing. It was a mercy killing.
The 15-28 record? He earned that. The failure to develop young talent, the deeply divided locker room and the recent lack of competitive fire on the sideline? That all happened on Mariucci’s watch. And, perhaps most frustrating to Lions fans: the stubborn adherence to a stale, unimaginative offensive scheme? That’s on Mooch, too.
So maybe he deserved to be fired. But if Mariucci earned his fate, what about Millen?
The 20-55 record? The questionable evaluation of talent, wasting two years by hiring Marty Mornhinweg, the failure to sign a capable backup quarterback or assemble an offensive line that could block a doorway? The failure to bring in players who fit his hand-picked coach’s stale, unimaginative offensive scheme? That’s all the handiwork of one Matt Millen.
So neither guy has done much to enhance his resume in Detroit, but one guy is sent packing while the other breezes along with a brand spanking new five-year contract extension. If you can find the logic in that, enlighten me. Please.
Of course, on the bright side, we were all treated to a truly inspiring display of finger-pointing following Mooch's firing. In Tuesday’s edition of the Detroit Free Press alone, Jeff Garcia blamed management, Joey Harrington blamed the negative aura surrounding the organization, and Dre Bly threw Harrington under the bus, climbed inside, and hit the gas.
Trust me, Mooch, you're getting off easy. Don't be surprised if a few Lions fans ask to hitch a ride on your way to the U.P.
The latest chapter in the NFL Story That Won't Die was penned today when arbitrator Richard Bloch released his ruling upholding the Philadelphia Eagles' suspension of malcontented wide receiver Terrell Owens.
It's the first victory in weeks for the Eagles, who have suffered three consecutive losses on the field since announcing the suspension of Owens on November 5, not to mention a major personnel loss in quarterback Donovan McNabb, T.O.'s favorite sparring partner. McNabb will likely miss the remainder of the season after undergoing surgery on his nagging sports hernia.
Hopefully the organization will enjoy this off-field win, because there probably isn't going to be a whole lot to celebrate on the field for the rest of the season.
T.O. and his representative, super-duper agent Drew Rosenhaus, will undoubtedly gather the press in Owens' driveway in time for tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day NFL broadcasts, stumble awkwardly through a prepared statement and express their dismay at how such an enormously talented guy can be so misunderstood. Because, as they've told us before, poor T.O. is really the victim in all of this. The guy just wants to play football.
Unless, of course, he has to co-exist with his quarterback and head coach to do so.
Remember back in February, when Owens returned from a broken leg to turn in a gritty, gutty performance in Super Bowl XXXIX, and we all wondered whether the tempermental wide receiver had finally grown up? Sure seems like a long time ago now, huh?
I've got to admit, I was halfway hoping the suspension would be shortened, if for no other reason than to see whether head coach Andy Reid would have the cajones to have some fun with it. You know, maybe line Terrell up at quarterback for a series or two to see if Owens could fulfill his fantasy of throwing a touchdown pass to himself. Or maybe have Terrell take some snaps on special teams. That would have been fun.
Alas, though, it turns out that Bloch agreed with the Eagles' assessment that Owens' behavior is shoddy enough to warrant banishment. And, considering some of the behavior that we see athletes get away with on a regular basis, that's saying something.
Hopefully, though, this will be the last we'll hear of the Saga of T.O. in Philly, and we'll finally be able to move on to something new.
Sometime in the next few years, Mike Vick might just finally prove to be the player that his adoring throng of believers has already declared him to be. But he isn’t there yet. In fact, he’s not even close.
We all have a buddy or two who worships at the altar of Vick. You know the type...he’s the guy who, despite the fact that he lives in Dayton or Omaha or Kalamazoo, became a huge Atlanta Falcons fan right around the time that Vick did his first Gatorade commercial. Vick Fan subscribes to the NFL Sunday Ticket so he can watch his idol’s every move, he plays entire seasons of Madden ‘05 using an offense that consists solely of Vick rushing for 800 yards per game, and he’ll earnestly defend his theory that, if an expansion team had a choice between building around Vick or Tom Brady, it would be better off with Vick. And he does it all while wearing an authentic Michael Vick alternate jersey.
Vick Fan is a little bit delusional, but he’s your buddy, so you put up with him. Besides, if you stopped hanging out with him, you couldn’t revel in the satisfaction of pointing out that Ben Roethlisberger and Donovan McNabb both had more rushing yards than The Next Big Thing did Sunday, or that Joey Harrington passed for more touchdowns and yards than The Deity during the ‘04 regular season.
Vick isn’t a great quarterback, he’s an exciting quarterback. That’s a distinction that Vick Fan isn’t always able to make, but it was never more obvious than it was Sunday in the NFC championship game, when the Eagles defense frustrated Vick and the Atlanta offense to the extent that a four-point halftime lead seemed like a mortal lock. Philly was doing a great job containing Vick on the ground, and it was painfully obvious that, at least in that particular game, he wasn’t going to beat anyone through the air. It was a foregone conclusion that McNabb would make the plays necessary to take control of the game in the second half, and Vick wouldn't. Game over.
The NFL can’t offer many things that are more exciting than Vick breaking a long run. His speed and athleticism are breathtaking, but so are his mistakes. He runs like a phenom, but he throws like the bastard love-child of Ryan Leaf and Andre Ware. If you average 7.5 yards per carry, but can’t hit an open receiver in stride, you’re just as one-dimensional as a guy who can’t move outside the pocket.
If Vick learns to hit that open receiver with some consistency-- and it’s plenty early enough in his career for him to do so--he could be the next guy in the Elway-Young-Culpepper-McNabb line of quarterbacks who are just as likely to beat you with their legs as their arms. Until then, though, it’s all hype.
I’m not sure, but my heart may have actually stopped.
I was carrying on yet another perfectly meaningless AIM conversation Thursday afternoon with my buddy and former college roommate, Charles. He and I spent the better part of five years wandering around East Lansing looking for keg parties, watching football on television and skipping class to play hockey on Sega Genesis. (Honestly, we got to the point where we didn’t even have to verbally challenge each other to a game. We’d just give each other a look, and someone would flip on the game console.) Now, we’re both in our early 30's, with real jobs, living in separate cities. Despite our best efforts, I suppose we’ve even matured a little. But we can still waste an hour and a half debating important things, like fantasy football lineups or the most disappointing Michigan State football defeat of the past 15 years, via AIM in the middle of a Thursday afternoon.
So, as the witty banter bounced back and forth between our computer screens, I logged onto CBS Sportsline.com to finalize my fantasy football lineup. And that’s when I saw it. There was a breaking news alert posted, with a headline reading: “Portis out eight to twelve weeks.” The details, such as they were, only stated that Portis had suffered some unspecified injury in the weight room.
I desperately tried to think of another Portis. There had to be another Portis, right? I mean, it couldn’t be my Portis....Clinton “my freaking first round fantasy football pick” Portis?
Of course, it was Clinton Portis. I had no reason to doubt the veracity of the report. It was a perfectly credible site, a site I’ve used on a daily basis for years. It’s not like someone emailed me a photoshop-altered version of the Sportsline home page. I typed the web address in myself. Again, no reason to doubt it. Which meant that, as far as I knew, I was left with a running back corps of Curtis Martin, Quentin Griffin and Garrison Hearst.
At roughly 4:30 pm on September 9, 2004, before one single snap had taken place in the 2004 NFL season, I was thoroughly convinced that my fantasy football season was over.
Well, of course the report turned out to be a hoax. Sportsline took the bait...hook, line and sinker...on a clearly-fake, poorly-written report that was posted to a fake web site. Funny, I suppose, in retrospect, provided that you didn’t suffer an aneurysm when you read it. I mean, I’ve only got the guy in my fantasy lineup. I can only imagine what kind of an uproar Redskins fans were in.
Now, granted, I’m probably the world’s most mediocre fantasy football GM. Every year, it’s the same story. I go into the draft promising myself that I’ll take a running back in both the first and second round, and every year I cave in to the temptation to take a quarterback with my second pick, leaving myself thin at the most important position in fantasy football. Every year I start slow, get hot in the middle of the season, cool off the last three weeks, and lose in the second round of the playoffs. It’s a rite of fall, it happens every year, and it’ll happen this year. I suck. I’ve accepted it.
But there’s no worse fate for a fantasy sports geek than to be the first team in your league relegated to spoiler status. And, with my roster, in a twelve team league, where every running back with a pulse is drafted, I was about to set a record for the fastest team ever to be relegated to spoiler status.