Last week, ESPN cancelled Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith. Because of his boisterous delivery and some of his highly pompous turns of phrase, Smith is a target for a lot of criticism and – quite frankly – jealousy. Say what you will about his style and his on-air demeanor, Stephen A. Smith conducted more than a couple of very good interviews on that program. He asked the kinds of tough questions that most TV journalists avoid like six day old rotten meat. As you hear/read some of the snarky comments by folks about how ESPN announced that the show was ending on Thursday and then put on the final episode on Friday, recall that Quite Frankly had some – not many but some – excellent interview segments in its repertoire.
ESPN also announced that Tony Kornheiser will be back on MNF next year and that probably means the whole crew will be back for another season. The MNF telecasts on ESPN this year were disappointing to me and my fix for the situation would be to find a replacement for Joe Theismann and to stop bringing C-List celebrities into the booth for most of the second quarter. But that’s just me…
Going into the Seahawks/Bears game in Chicago last weekend, there were two powerful and opposing trends at work. The Seahawks had not won a road playoff game since 1983; the Bears had not won a home playoff game since 1991. So, which trend would prevail? Well, in case you didn’t notice, the game was tied at the end of regulation and needed sudden death overtime to put the Bears into the conference championship round.
The story continues that the Chargers may fire Marty Schottenheimer. Look, everybody and his mother knows by now that his playoff record is 5-13, but blaming Marty Schottenheimer for the loss to John Elway 20 years ago in the game that featured “The Drive” or blaming him for losing the game in which Earnest Byner committed “The Fumble” is ridiculous. And it is just as ridiculous to blame him for losing Sunday’s game. Marty Schottenheimer didn’t intercept a pass and then have the ball stripped from his hands creating a fumble to give the Pats a first down. That game did not turn on one coaching staff “out-geniusing” the other one; that game turned on the fact that Tom Brady threw the ball a lot more than normal and made some very accurate throws when he needed to. Oh, and the Pats defense didn’t make a lot of mistakes either.
Here’s something all of Schottenheimer’s critics need to think about. He’s been coaching for 21 years and he has 200 wins. That means he wins an average of just over 9.5 games per year and that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. That is more wins per season than Bill Belichick has amassed; that is more wins per season than Bill Parcells has amassed. If Schottenheimer is fired, chalk it up to one of two situations in San Diego:
The Spanos family who owns the team chose to cast their lot with their GM and there is no love lost between the coach and GM there.
The Spanos family has decided to fire both of these guys and have already gotten a preliminary agreement with the agent of one of the “boutique coaches” out there that everyone covets – - such as Pete Carroll or Charlie Weis or Bill Cowher or …
One more Chargers’ item if I may… Did the Pats sort of figure out how to neutralize Shawne Merriman on Sunday or did he forget to turn his lights on so he could show everyone how to turn them out? Shawne Merriman – the nandrolone kid – was AWOL for a playoff game. And he’s the one who sent Jason Taylor some popcorn so Taylor could watch him in the playoffs since Taylor said Merriman should not be eligible for league honors after testing positive for nandrolone.
Memo to Merriman: When you pull a grandstand play like that, you have to play like Batman. On Sunday, you played like bat sh*t. Now please just shut up for the next year or so.
You can send your sympathy cards to Ken Whisenhunt care of the Arizona Cardinals. Whisenhunt took the job as head coach of the Cardinals last weekend and becomes the eighth head coach in Arizona in the last 18 years. He signed a four year contract with a club option for a fifth year; by the end of three years he’s likely to look at a contract termination the way a death row inmate looks at a pardon from the governor. Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm were both assistants with the Steelers and both were considered as prime candidates to replace Bill Cower in Pittsburgh. If Grimm gets the Steelers’ job, he comes out the winner here.
Whisenhunt takes over a team that is supposedly loaded with talent at the skill positions but hasn’t won more than six games in a season for a while now. He has a very big job ahead of him to turn this group into a contending team. The last “coach” who had a similarly big job was the swimming instructor on the Titanic.
Bill Parcells has not indicated yet whether or not he will return to coach the Cowboys next season. Here are two reasons for Cowboys’ fans to hope that he does:
1. If Parcells is there, T.O. is probably gone. Despite Owens’ prodigious on-field abilities, I think it’s pretty clear by now that he’s a less than ideal team player. With Owens gone, the team might take some of the money it saves and spend it on a couple of offensive linemen who can actually play at the NFL level.
2. If Parcells is there, that protects the franchise from Jerry Jones going out and screwing up the hiring of the next coach. And if a Cowboys’ fan gets all huffy at that suggestion, the two important words to whisper to him would be – - Dave … Campo.
Finally, here’s an observation from former Alabama football coach, Bill Curry, on the way for new Alabama football coach, Nick Saban, to succeed in his job:
“The Alabama job is a great job, as long as you win every game. And if you can figure out a way to beat Auburn twice a year, all the better.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…