Pardon me for my skepticism, but I’m not buying all the hype around David Beckham signing with the LA Galaxy in MLS. I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong to be a non-believer if events prove me to have been wrong, but I’m from Missouri on this one.
I do not believe for even a moment that his contract with the LA Galaxy means that he will pull down an average of $50M over the next 5 years from the club and/or MLS. The whole league isn’t worth $250M; the league could sign all of its assets over to Beckham and have him pay them the $250M in his contract and the league would come out ahead – by a whole lot. If you add in a whole lot of non-soccer activities that he will be paid for, maybe – I said maybe – he’ll actually see much of that money, but it won’t be for playing soccer in LA and Salt Lake City and DC and wherever.
In the wire reports on all of this, they call this “…a deal MLS hopes will boost the sport in the US in a manner similar to Pele’s arrival with the Cosmos in 1975.” It will indeed boost it in terms of the number of fluffy articles written about Beckham and the league and soccer in general. However, MLS better watch out what it wishes for. The Cosmos were part of the NASL; the NASL signed about a half-dozen foreign soccer legends well past the time when they were in their prime; the NASL got a short term shot in the arm in terms of attendance and publicity; the NASL then proceeded to go bankrupt. So, when/if you see an announcement that Zidane is coming out of retirement to play for some other team in MLS, don’t immediately think this is the dawn of a new era for soccer in the US. We’ve been down that path before and it leads to a toxic waste dump.
I asked my soccer guru about Beckham’s skills – since I wouldn’t pretend to be able to evaluate them. Here’s what he said in a note to me:
“…he’s a finesse player and one who sets up others to score more than he scores himself… He is a better player today than anyone in MLS today but his skills are no longer at the elite level in Europe. He only starts once in a while for Real Madrid anymore.”
Enough soccer, there’s football news to talk about. In Chicago, the owner of a place called Vienna Beef has created a “Monster Playoff Polish Sausage Sandwich”; for every sandwich sold, he’ll donate a dollar to a local charity dedicated to feeding poor folks. The sandwich is a polish sausage on a poppy seed bun garnished with chili, chopped onion, cheddar cheese sauce and blue corn chips on the side. The blue chips and the orange cheddar cheese represent the Bears’ uniform colors. This is a good marketing move by this establishment and donations to charities of this sort are never a bad idea. However, looking at the ingredients of the sandwich, maybe he could get a “corporate partner” here. A local cardiologist could give away coupons for $100 off on your next angioplasty when you buy two of these sandwiches…
Jax assistant coach, Mike Tice, was quoted in the St. Paul Pioneer Press to the effect that he would “have great interest” in the vacant University of Minnesota coaching position. However, one of the qualifications for the job as advertised is a college degree, and Tice is still “17 – 20” credits away from a degree. Remember the old ads that said, “To get a good job, you have to have a good education”? Here’s one example. Oh, and if they’re looking for a college grad, it might also help if your nickname around the NFL wasn’t “Meathead”.
I’ve been thinking about the Giants’ extending Tom Coughlin’s contract for one year and the more I think about it the more I think it was a bad idea. He’s been there 3 years and the team is 25-25 during that time including two cameo appearances in the playoffs. That’s better than the situation he inherited by a long shot but the Giants hardly looked like a team on the rise. Most importantly, Eli Manning didn’t look significantly better at the end of the 2006 season than he did at the end of the 2005 season; if he does not progress as the franchise QB there, the Giants are in deep yogurt. Jared Lorenzen can do a QB sneak when it’s third and short, but if the Giants had to go with him for a four game stretch or for half a season, it would get really ugly very quickly. The owners said that they believe that Coughlin has the right vision for the team. If so, why did they only extend the contract for one year? A man with the right vision and the right set of abilities is someone you’d hope to hang onto for a long while, no?
This is the time of the year when certain NFL owners get wrong ideas in their head and act on them. Danny Boy Snyder is famous for this and just last year he looked at his team that was coming off a playoff appearance despite having a passing offense ranked 21st in the league. Danny Boy and the Redskins’ braintrust saw what needed to be done and they went and did it:
They hired Al Saunders at $2M per year to be the offensive coordinator/play caller.
They signed Antwaan Randle-El for six years and $30M with $10 guaranteed in the first year even though Randle-El caught all of 35 passes in 2005.
They shipped two mid-round draft picks to SF to acquire Brandon Lloyd; then they tore up his existing contract and gave him $10M guaranteed in the first year and six years at $30M. Lloyd had only caught 48 passes in 1995.
So how did all that work out? Saunders play calling was suspect at best. Randle-El caught only 32 passes in 2006 and Lloyd caught all of 25 passes and was inactive for a game for “disciplinary reasons”. Oh, and the Redskins had a passing offense ranked 21st in the league again in 2006. But they didn’t make the playoffs this year; they finished 5-11 in 2006. But not to worry, Joe Gibbs is proud of his guys because they “fought their guts out” in each and every game. Whatever Danny Boy has in store for everyone this off-season, it will have to go a long way to equal the futility of last year’s “stategery”…
Oh, one more thing about the Redskins in 2006… They set a record for the fewest turnovers created by a defense since the stat was invented; the Redskins defense took the ball away only 12 times all year long. Back in the spring, the Redskins released Walt Harris who has been a “good but not great” cornerback in the NFL. Harris signed on with the 49ers and Harris had 8 INTs and 4 forced fumbles in 2006. That’s what the entire Skins’ defense accomplished. If Danny Boy had an employee working for him at Six Flags who was so consistently wrong about what needed to be done to improve the product, Danny Boy would have fired the guy years ago. But he can’t fire himself and he won’t fire Vinnie Cerrato. Cue Sonny and Cher please: “And the beat goes on…and the beat goes on…
Finally, a comment from Elliot Harris in the Chicago Sun-Times:
“Not sure what to make of Boomer Esiason’s observation on CBS’s The NFL Today that Rex Grossman ‘is the Paris Hilton of NFL quarterbacks.’ No way the Bears’ QB has been sacked that much.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…