Surviving This Mess

Maybe if Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel had been more like University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun, the Buckeyes wouldn't have an interim coach for the upcoming season. But instead, as Memorial Day dawned, Tressel showed himself far more sensitive to the criticism and damage to his program than Calhoun ever could for his. And so, as Memorial Day dawned, Tressel held an early morning meeting with his players and his coaches and announced he was resigning.

The timing of Tressel's resignation could have been the impending story that George Dohrmann wrote for Sports Illustrated but if it was it's not necessarily for what the story contained but what it represented. This was a story that wouldn't end no matter how long Tressel had remained with the program. You can't move on until you move on.

With each passing day until the next media target emerges, and one always does, bits and pieces of the Tressel resignation story will emerge. Already it's being said that university officials encouraged him to resign and that's probably true. The only way to quit worrying about what's around the next corner is to start walking a straight line.

The sadness Buckeyes fans are feeling at the moment over this most miserable of stories is understandable. No matter what one thinks of what Tressel did or didn't do, he remains a great man and a great coach who deserved better.

Even as that sadness has taken hold for fans, it will compete with a healthy dose of anger as well, mostly directed at whoever they feel is to blame for this most stunning of developments.
As people pick over the bones of what remains of one of the all time great coaches in NCAA history, they will predictably stack up the blame for this result like so many cords of firewood.

The media, of course, is taking its usual blame not necessarily for reporting the story but for piling on. But blaming the media seems so Sarah Palin. The underlying story had to be reported and the fact that the coverage was incessant is more a function of the proliferation of news sites than anything else.

Still, the media in some sense is always to blame but let's face it, they had a lot to work with.

Terrelle Pryor, Boom Herron, Devier Posey and the rest of the crowd trading off their small-time celebrity status for privileges they didn't deserve are getting their share of blame as well. These kids, stupid as kids can be, are now classified as low character individuals and evidence of what happens when you shake hands with the devil.

Those players and others did have a responsibility to follow the rules and repeatedly did not. But it's still a little unseemly, isn't it, to talk about college kids that way? Heck, their character is hardly even established at this point. So let's ease off on harping on the kids, even the bad ones. Tressel, probably more than any other coach, seemed uniquely qualified to teach them life lessons and the testimonials from former players for whom he did just that back up this point. The fact that his success rate wasn't 100% is not much of a sin.

Still, in the law of negligence there is the concept called last clear chance and in this case Tressel had the last clear chance to avoid their negligence and did not. He had his reasons and it really doesn't matter what any of us think about those reasons. His decision making was flawed but so is most when judged in retrospect.

I still don't think that what Tressel did was a dischargeable offense. He was taking the medicine he deserved for the misconduct he had engaged in but he has a body of work to consider and all of those factors in my view more than weighed in favor of his remaining with the program. Indeed, I didn't think it was even a close call.

But there was blood in the water and there is a certain segment of our population that just loves to circle around those pools. In that sense then it's not a surprise that Tressel took the measure of the situation and realized that he'd never be able to swim safely to shore and neither would his program with him in the lead.

Some will see the Tressel resignation as a cut and run, for him and the university. In many ways, though, it was the ultimate act of courage and loyalty. The program is and always should be bigger than any individual.

Now what? That's very hard to figure. One thing though that is clear is that the question is far more significant now than when Tressel took over the program from John Cooper. What Tressel did for Ohio State can't just be measured in wins and losses, though his record is nothing short of amazing. It can't be measured in victories over Michigan, although his record their too was amazing.

Far more was the complete restoration of a storied program that took place under his watch. The head football coach for the Ohio State Buckeyes has always been a plum job but never more so than now and that's because of what Tressel did for this program.

Cooper left the program a mess. He recruited well but coached poorly. Discipline was lacking as was direction. Tressel brought a steady hand and methodically built the Buckeyes into such a juggernaut that his position became one of the top two or three coaching jobs in the country. Put it this way, Tressel made it so that no coach would ever leave Ohio State to become head football coach anywhere else.

Athletic director Gene Smith has an incredibly difficult decision on his hands and how he handles it will say a lot about where he and university president Gordon Gee want to take this program in the wake of all the criticism it's received. Surely they don't know yet what they want to do which is why Luke Fickell was named interim head coach for the rest of next season.

The speculation started months ago that Urban Meyer would be available in 2012 and perhaps he will. Hiring him would be tantamount to telling Buckeye faithful that the Ohio State program they came to know and love under Tressel will continue.

On the other hand, they could keep Fickell or go with a lesser name, like Michigan did in hiring Brady Hoke, as a way of staying off the radar screen for awhile and letting the program absorb the self-inflicted body blows.

I'll stay out of the prediction business. I thought Tressel would survive this and that was clearly wrong. But for those feeling sad and a little despondent over this all, just remember that no matter what comes next the program survived Cooper. It will survive this.

Connecting the Dots

The Ohio State Buckeyes are certainly entering the Season of their Discontent and there are many too willing to pile on. Whether it's the Columbus Dispatch, The Lantern (the OSU campus newspaper), ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, the Associated Press, Yahoo Sports and any other outlet looking for its own spin, the stories coming out of Columbus don't look to end any time soon.

There are no real victims in this story which is why it must feel so good for so many to pile on. Most everyone associated with this story did something wrong in some way so there isn't much sympathy that any of them can generate. But still there is a sense that the real story is being missed.

As all of these publications are busy trying to uncover their own little dirt on the Buckeyes program they can't seem to connect the dots. It's not that hard.

The “big” scoop this week, courtesy of The Lantern, was their interview with former Buckeyes receiver Ray Small. He talked about how he knowingly broke NCAA rules by selling his Big Ten championship rings so he could pay rent and then went all Maurice Clarett on it by saying “hey, everyone was doing it” as a way of justifying his own misconduct.

Predictably, Small is backpedaling in light of the abuse he's taking publicly from some of his former teammates. Small's inability to follow rules is almost legendary as his multiple suspensions from the Buckeyes program attest to. But that doesn't mean Small didn't do exactly as he said—break NCAA rules. He did and claims it was the smartest plan he could come up with to pay his rent.

There's nothing new in Small's revelations except to the extent that that Tattoed Five were not acting alone. I don't think anyone thinks they were anyway, including the NCAA. But if we're going to take Small at his word, then let's take him at all his words—he did it because he needed the money. That's a key dot.

In the last few weeks, another emerged when several Big Ten athletic directors, including the Buckeyes' Gene Smith, pushed for the Big Ten to increase the value of their scholarships so that they include stipends for players to meet every day living expenses.

The issue Smith and his counterparts are trying to address is the same that Small spoke to: money. College athletes are students and they like to do a lot of things that other non-athlete students like to do, spend money. I've been funding college education for three daughters since 2006 and I can personally verify that students like to spend money.

College athletics, even at the Division III level, demands a heavy price from its participants. Their time is rarely their own. There is practice and conditioning and drills and study. There is downtime, but not enough for most athletes to take on a part time job as well to get some spending money, assuming the NCAA would even allow it. You don't have to feel sorry for the athletes but they are just kids. And like any other kid in college they want money to spend when they go out.

The proposal by the Big Ten athletic directors is designed simply to account for this reality of every day life, but it's not without some controversy. Schools in the Mid American Conference, for example, oppose it not on philosophical grounds but simply on cost. Ohio State athletics has a budget to rival that of several small countries. It's a cost it can more readily absorb. Kent State, not so much.

Then there are the philosophical reasons. An athlete on a full scholarship at a school like Ohio State is already receiving around $80,000 in benefits, at a minimum, in the form of a college education assuming he or she sticks around for 4 years. At private schools, the value is even higher. That's a nice perk not available to 98% of the rest of the student population. To some, that is more than enough. Maybe it is.

Then there are those who feel that even the modest proposal by the Big Ten doesn't go nearly far enough. This is the camp who believes, with some justification as well, that colleges exploit their athletes. You could make the argument that the value the players receive in comparison to the money generated by just one BCS game is a little lopsided in favor of the schools and that would be true as well.

There is no right answer to any of this but that's not any reason to ignore it. The reason the media outlets piling on the Buckeyes at the moment are focusing only on the alleged dirt in the program is because it's the easiest of stories to communicate. We tend to like our narratives as simple as possible and what's more simple than the hero taking a fall?

But if you want to put another dot to connect on the map, then consider for a moment the deafening silence from virtually every other program as the Buckeyes take their turn twisting in the wind. Whether it's Michigan or Alabama or Florida or pick your favorite team, there isn't an athletic director out there that would dare come out and say that similar activities haven't taken place in their programs.

A simple search on Ebay will reveal that you can buy a Florida Gators 2006 national championship player's ring. With a little digging, I'm also certain you can find player rings from virtually every other team somewhere on the internet or some local pawn shop.

None of that is to excuse any aspect of what the Buckeyes players did. Unquestionably the NCAA has a rule against a player selling his own goods for money while still in college and the players broke that rule. But the trafficking in memorabilia is strong, the money is good and young kids are immature. It's a powerful confluence of events that makes probably every program dirty at some level.

The problem is trying to convey all of this to a public that likes its news in clever quips from snarky journalists. Most just don't have the time or inclination to see what's going on at Ohio State at the moment as a cultural turning point in our approach to college athletics. It's far easier to label Tressel a hypocrite, consider Pryor as just another loser who couldn't live his life any better than the rest of the general population and treat bragging loudmouths like Small as just another joke.

Perhaps the final dot on the map has everything to do with the raging debate over how exactly this great nation should go about crowning its college football national champion as if that is perhaps the most pressing issue of the day.

At the center of every debate I've ever read on the subject is the supposed money that can be made from a playoff system. That's because the only way to get something done is to appeal to everyone's most basic instinct: greed. The same journalists that are imploring college presidents to further sell their school and their football program for even more money are decrying the awfulness of Buckeyes players selling their rings and baubles for a pittance. And Tressel's the hypocrite?

What bothers me most about all of this is the abject failure of nearly any of these same people going after the Ohio State program with pitchforks in hand to put this in the larger context. There's a way to explain that doesn't have to come across as acquiescence.

Instead, they pick on the most vulnerable pieces of this entire equation, the kids, and rub their hands in smug self-satisfaction without ever recognizing they missed the far bigger story.

I think kids, particularly big time college student-athletes, need constant reinforcement in how to conduct their lives between the ditches of what's right and what's wrong. But when every adult in every room, whether it's those running ESPN, CBS or ABC, or the college presidents, or the athletic directors or the coaches, constantly send the message the cash is king, it gets awfully hard to really blame the kids who stupidly think that there's nothing wrong with getting a little cash of their own.

Lingering Items--Where Every "If" Comes True Edition

The Cleveland Cavaliers got a bit of convenient redemption when they won the NBA’s draft lottery last week. It wasn’t even close to the top sports thought on the minds of Cleveland fans. The top thought, and spots 2 through 7 as well, was the Cleveland Indians.

I was talking with a friend on Sunday who theorized that the rapture did happen, perhaps earlier than planned, and that the town had collectively died and all entered the same room in heaven—a room that gets one channel, SportsTime Ohio, and the Indians play on a continuous loop and win each and every time.

It certainly seems that way at the moment. The Indians, a far less talented team, at least on paper, then probably half the league are more than 40 games into the season and still have the best record in baseball. More to the point, though, they’ve given no hint that they won’t be able to sustain this level of play for the rest of the season.

Which gets me back to my friend’s theory. This is kind of what heaven must feel like for an Indians’ fan. It’s a place where all your “ifs” come true, as in “if Justin Masterson can pick up where he left off at the end of last season…” or “if Asdrubal Cabrera can return to a higher level of play promised by his rookie season…” or “if Josh Tomlin can baffle hitters like few other young pitchers…” or “if Grady Sizemore can finally stay healthy….” Ok, not every “if” is falling the way it should, but you get the point.

The Indians are a fascinating team by any measure you want to take. The roster is a patchwork of young, old, has beens and never quites. It’s incredibly thin, which most rosters of teams with budgets like the Indians tend to be.

And yet, and yet, game after game, week after week this team keeps moving forward, playing with nearly unbridled confidence even as the usual bumps and grinds of every team’s season approach.

Fausto Carmona, perhaps the team’s best if not most mercurial pitcher, is having a mostly mediocre year and no one even notices. Carlos Santana, counted on for so much at such a young age, is barely hitting his weight. The Indians’ one free agent signee, Austin Kearns, is hitting about as well as Austin Powers.

Still, the Indians are tied with the Boston Red Sox for the American League’s best batting average and they trail only the Yankees in runs scored. All that could change if Sizemore and Travis Hafner, two players who have been key to both stats, don’t return soon. You have to think those results would show up somewhere.

But perhaps that won’t matter. This is the season where every “if” comes true and that means that Shin-Soo Choo is about due to go on a tear and even Santana and Matt LaPorta should soon climb back to respectability.

The Indians’ offense has been great thus far as important to its success has been pitching. For proof, consider that the Indians are second only to Oakland in ERA but Oakland is two games below .500 while the Indians are enjoying life in the clouds.

The two worst regular pitchers on this roster have been Carmona and Chad Durbin. The former is a bit of a surprise, the latter not so much. Every one else above them has basically been unhittable. As good as the starting pitching has been, the bullpen has been even better. Chris Perez has the worst ERA of the group but it’s still below 3.00 and he does have those 12 saves. His walks tend to shake the ghosts of Joe Borowski but they really aren’t getting him into much trouble.

When you see all these great statistics about the Indians in print, the fact that they have the best record in baseball is obvious. But it still takes a heavy case of eye wiping to actually believe what you’re reading. You’d be hard pressed to find a team less spectacularly constructed playing so spectacularly well, in any sport.

The Indians are still about 50-60 games away from having to make some tough decisions about the direction to take this club in the season’s latter stages. And it is still difficult to imagine this level of play being sustained through the mid-summer heat.

But this is the season where every “if” seems to be coming true so who can really say what comes next. Perhaps the Indians will falter as the thinness of its roster runs head long into a season that is, after all, 162 games long. At this point though it seems just as likely that the Indians will continue its steamrolling of the American League unabated because this seems to be the year when every “if” comes true.

And for once, the Indians marketing department got it right. What if indeed.

**

The Plain Dealer’s Tony Grossi drew an unintentional chuckle in his weekly “Ask Tony” segment this past Sunday. A reader asked Grossi why, in the face of the lockout, he was even bothering to write about potential free agent signees. Grossi said that he was struggling to find something to write about other than the labor dispute.

See, this is funny because rather than write about news, Grossi would rather right about conjecture. It’s a shame, really, when he along with Mary Kay Cabot, the Plain Dealer’s two main football writers, all but ignore the lockout as if it is higher level calculus that they’re never going to understand.

But on the other hand maybe it’s a good thing they know their limitations. They could be like Mike Freeman at CBS Sports who recently wrote that Peyton Manning’s silence on the whole thing was benefitting the owners and not the players.

Manning, along with Tom Brady and Drew Brees, are the most prominent plaintiffs on the NFLPA-sponsored lawsuit against the owners in which they allege that virtually every activity undertaken by that cartel (their words, not mine) is illegal.

Freeman says that “the only” explanation for Manning’s silence in this battle royale is to keep his image and his commercial earning ability in tact. Freeman essentially accuses Manning of being a shill for the owners and paying lip service at best to the players.

It’s an explanation, but hardly the only one. You could start with the idea that the lawsuit, indeed the entire strategy employed by the NFLPA, was ill conceived from the outset. That Manning would put his name on the pleadings is actually more of an act of courage in this light.

Brees, certainly, has been the most visible player during this dispute and certainly acts as if this is a cause in which he believes. Brady, like Manning, has mostly been hanging out at home.

But this isn’t about any particular players anyway and for Freeman to act as if any one of these three or any of the others for that matter are at the forefront of some groundbreaking struggle is ridiculous.

Like everything else that takes place on the business side of professional sports, this is an argument about money. The tactics employed in this case are extreme and incredibly polarizing but they’re just that, tactics. It’s about finding leverage in order to extract the best deal.

Brady, Manning and Brees are mere scenery to this operetta. They could be as overbearing as Chelsea Handler after a few drinks and no one would notice. They aren’t being counted on to lead the charge. That would be the lawyers and the other fools who concocted this slow march to Bolivia, as Mike Tyson might say.

What Freeman and his ilk really need to see is that Manning is just being Manning. That he may be acting out of self-interest is hardly surprising. The first person on either side of this dispute that isn’t acting out of self-interest will be the first.

**

Right now, Josh Tomlin and Justin Masterson are a combined 11-3 and gave given up 35 runs collectively. CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee are a combined 7-7 and have given up 55 runs. This week’s question to ponder: Huh?

No Excessive Celebration

If the National Football League Players Association, a union re-purposed as a trade association so it could sue its employers, was dancing in the streets when Judge Susan Richard Nelson lifted the NFL imposed lockout, they'll dance no longer.

In a stunning but not unexpected rebuke of Judge Nelson's ruling lifting the lockout, the 8th circuit court of appeals not only kept in place the stay of her order that it issued a few weeks ago, it let the union know that their chance of winning in court is even less than the Browns' chances of winning back-to-back Super Bowls the next two seasons.

Ok, they didn't quite use that analogy but they might as well have. What the appeals court did in no uncertain terms is let the players and their trade association know is that their strategy of negotiation avoidance in favor of antitrust litigation was as ill-conceived as a Fox sitcom.

And while it's probably coincidental, how interesting is it that the appeals court issued its decision on the day the owners and the union returned to the mediation table? Very. What likely started out Monday morning as a strut by union leader DeMaurice Smith, who has been all full of himself since Judge Nelson's initial decision, ended up with Smith once again demonstrating the dignity and grace that has marked his short tenure in the job by deliberately misstating the nature of the owners' position.

Informed of the appeals court decision, Smith issued a snide congratulations to the owners for being the first sports league to sue its players in order to avoid playing the game. It was a repeat performance of the same lie he told just last weekend and was just as helpful to the underlying process.

Let's recap and throw in a little civics lesson as well by starting with the beginning of this particular lawsuit.

Just prior to the collective bargaining agreement expiring, the NFLPA filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board disclaiming its status as a “union” serving as the exclusive bargaining representative of the players. Immediately thereafter, a group of players, backed by the NFLPA and its lawyers, sued the owners, claiming that the collective action of locking them out constituted a violation of federal antitrust law. They asked the judge to issue an injunction preventing the lockout.

The owners didn't file any lawsuit of their own or otherwise sue the players. All they've done is exercise their right under federal labor law to exert economic pressure on the workers by locking them out. Regarding the various lawsuits, all the owners have done is respond to the litigation initiated by the players and their union. First, the owners filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that the decertification petition filed by the NFLPA was a sham. Next, they responded to the players' lawsuit by claiming that the district court lacked the legal authority under federal law to stop the lockout.

As we now know, the owners' weren't initially successful. Judge Nelson issued an injunction to prevent the lockout. In order to reach that decision, she had to reach two key legal conclusions. First, she ruled that a specific federal statute, known as the Norris-LaGuardia Act, didn't apply in this case. Under the Norris-LaGuardia Act, courts generally are prohibited from imposing an injunction to halt a labor dispute. Thus, if employees go on strike an employer can't get an injunction to prevent it. If an owner locks out its employees, a court generally can't grant an injunction to prevent that either.

Judge Nelson felt the Norris-LaGuardia Act didn't apply because the union's decertification meant that this was no longer a labor dispute but a commercial dispute.

Second, Judge Nelson ruled that she had jurisdiction to hear the dispute even though the owners were contesting the validity of the decertification before the NLRB. The owners contended the NLRB had the sole jurisdiction to determine if the decertification petition filed with them by the union was valid. Judge Nelson essentially ignored this argument and found that the union had validly withdrawn as the collective bargaining representative of the players. As a result, she said, it appeared likely that the owners were engaging in a violation of federal antitrust law. In order to prevent what she deemed to be irreparable harm to the players caused by the lockout, she issued an order preventing the lockout from taking place.

These rulings were always on very shaky legal ground, from the labeling of the dispute as commercial and not labor to the supposed irreparable harm by the players, and now the 8th circuit court of appeals has agreed. When the owners filed an appeal of Judge Nelson's underlying decision, they also asked the court to issue a stay of that decision, meaning that they wanted to put her decision on hold until the court of appeals could decide whether or not it she was legally correct. It's similar to a criminal defendant asking to halt the imposition of his sentence while he pursues his appeal to a higher court.

In order to get that stay, the owners had to show a number of things, a key one of which was that they had a likelihood of actually convincing the court of appeals that they would win the underlying appeal. After looking at the case and Judge Nelson's ruling, the court of appeals said just that: the owners have demonstrated that they will likely win their case.

In making that ruling the court of appeals completely undercut Judge Nelson's conclusion that this was not a labor dispute. In language that even Smith and every player could surely understand, the court said: “In sum, we have serious doubts that the district court had jurisdiction to enjoin the League’s lockout, and accordingly conclude that the League has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits.”

If there has been an “uh oh” moment in any of this it had to come when Smith and the players learned that their carefully constructed strategy of avoiding difficult negotiations with the owners was falling apart around them. And while the alpha male instincts of Smith and his followers will kick in immediately and make them more defiant, it should sink in rather quickly that the leverage they thought they once had as quickly disappeared and with it their chance of beating back the owners' will to change the economic equation within the NFL.

Sure, Smith will tell the players that there are more cards to play in court and that's true. But they aren't good cards. There's a chance that the court of appeals will reverse course when it issues its final decision, but that isn't likely. The players can ask the court to reconsider its decision, but they rarely do. The players can appeal to the Supreme Court, but it isn't required to hear the case and probably wouldn't because it doesn't present any real novel question of law. That means the lockout, in place now, will stay in place until the owners decide to lift it.

The players still have their main lawsuit, the one alleging violations of antitrust law, pending in district court. But that is likely a non-starter if not legally, then practically. With the lockout hanging over their heads, the players would have to be willing to forgo football and the paychecks it brings for the next few years. How many players would stand for that scenario?

The short answer is, few. The reason the players have never been successful at a strike is because they cannot make a commitment to solidarity. The average 12-year old manages his allowance better than the average football player manages his money. The could no more afford to go without paychecks for years than the average worker at the GM plant. Sure, they make more money, but then again they spend more money, too.

There's no question that the dynamics of this dispute have changed dramatically. Armed with the leverage that comes from beating back the union's ill-conceived strategy, the question for the owners is how exactly they want to use it. If they're smart, they'll follow the rule they've imposed on players when they make a play on the field—avoid any excessive celebration.

These are parties that have to live together for a very long time and just because Smith has pursued a search and destroy approach to the relationship doesn't mean it's necessary to return the favor in kind. This labor dispute always called for an even-handed solution and now is the best opportunity for the owners to use their new found leverage for good and not evil and craft the solution the union could never do for themselves.

Norma Rae in a Fedora

Next week the NFL owners and the trade group formerly known as the National Football League Players Association union are scheduled to resume another round of negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. Don’t expect anything to get done.

To this point, to call what the talks that these two parties have been engaged in “negotiations” is like calling “Dancing with the Stars” entertainment. It’s just not quite the right word. Instead, the players and their former union have been basically in a stare-down, each claiming they're fighting for what's best seemingly unencumbered by the thought that the game they both profess to love is being jeopardized by their very actions.

For now, union leader DeMaurice Smith, clueless and tone deaf as always, looks at the union's attempt to overthrow the owners and the game as a bit of a Holy War, if a Holy War is what you'd call a fight between the Corleone's and the Tattaglia's.

Invoking Clemenza on Friday, Smith said that the owners forced the players to “go to the mattresses” at the negotiating table. He said the owners had lied to the players and tried to trick them into a deal and as a result the union had to decertify in order to pursue this not as a labor matter but as an anti-trust violation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, was not nearly as strident or metaphorical. In a separate interview on Friday, Goodell, seeing no reason to attack the players or even Smith, just pointed out the obvious, saying that the vision that the union has for the game, as evidenced by the court filings, is detrimental to the game itself. The union has claimed, for example, that both the draft and the salary cap are illegal and both serve as underpinnings for the incredible success of the league.

But the one yarn that Smith continues to try and spin is to paint the owners' pursuit of an appeal of Judge Susan Richard Nelson's ruling that lifting the lockout as an unprecedented action in which a group of owners of a business are purposely suing to not do business.

They're not suing to stay out of business and Smith knows it. They're appealing a lawsuit filed by the union and the players. That alone is a world of difference. Further, they're appealing in order to keep this as a labor dispute to solve between two inextricably linked parties instead of an anti-trust action where one party's interest is in in hurting the other.

But perhaps the most tone-deaf aspect of Smith's rhetoric is simply that the strategy he's led, having his union actually decertify, is far more unprecedented of an action than a garden-variety appeal of an adverse legal ruling.

Simply put, the course the union is on has been pursued only one other time, by this same union. It's not been done in any other sport and as far as I can tell has not been done in any other industry. But Smith and his advisers believe that this strategy, launched early last year when Smith had each team's players vote during training camp on decertifying, is the most clever and innovative approach and that they are true trailblazers. Norma Rae in a fedora.

Smith meanwhile talks about the braveness of his players and their unbending commitment to their sport, invoking for example Drew Brees' getting together of players to work out as proof that all the players really want to do is play the game they love. In truth, the lambs are being led to slaughter.

Fundamentally, the standoff is about each side testing the other’s mettle. The owners want a bigger piece of the revenue pie and the players are adamant that the owners are going to get it and don’t need it anyway. As long as the owners can keep the players locked out, the players’ thinking goes, eventually they’ll crack. As long as the courts keep a lockout from taking place, the players’ thinking goes, eventually the owners will crack.

Right now the pressure is a bit on the players in the sense that the 8th circuit court of appeals doesn’t seem to be in a terrible hurry to lift their temporary stay of Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s ruling finding that the lockout was impermissible. Each day that passes the players aren’t getting the workout bonuses that supplement their income nicely during the spring and summer months.

But if the lockout is enjoined and the owners are forced to open their doors, those bonuses will once again flow, the season will go forward unabated and there will be game checks to eventually cash. If that becomes the case, the players and their advisers will surely sit their like petulant children who refuse the vegetables their parents shove in front of their faces and no meaningful negotiations will take place in the near term.

Eventually, though, the vegetables must get eaten. The question is when will the players and Smith come to that conclusion? If the lockout stays, that’s easy. The players will crack. They always do. If the lockout is lifted, things get far more complex.

You don’t have to be the Ghost of NFL Future to see how it all plays out because Goodell's has already laid it out for them. They just aren't listening.

In the near term, the owners will adopt some interim rules, careful not to violate anti-trust laws to meet the court’s requirements, but will otherwise be no more motivated to reach a new deal. That will be fine with the players, of course, because as long as they can play football under any rules and get paid, they really won’t see any need to say yes to any re-ordering of the leagues’ revenues.

Indeed, you can expect an almost party atmosphere from the players, at least initially. Unrestricted free agency for any player not under contract, hooray. No draft. A chastened ownership group that can’t work collectively to set the economic road map for the league. What could get better than that? Smith will be canonized by the players as the very re-incarnation of Marvin Miller.

Well, that may be right but only if you thing that could go on indefinitely, which it can’t.

If you believe, for example, that a cooperative, productive relationship between management and the workers is critical to the product produced, then it follows that when the relationship is broken, the product will suffer. Count on it.

As the product suffers, so does the interest others, like networks and beer manufactures, have in supporting it, at least at current levels. Besides, as current contracts like that expire, then the landscape for new deals becomes more fragmented. Teams won’t just be negotiating for their local radio rights, but for their local television rights as well because the owners’ ability to work collectively on these issues becomes severely hampered.

As the economic base begins to crumble, there will be no incentive, for example, for the owners to spend money in such an uncertain climate. Even in the near term, when media and sponsorship contracts still are fully in place, there will be plenty of owners pinching pennies.

There may be unrestricted free agency for any player not under a contract, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates open for new found riches. In fact, I’d expect the opposite to happen. Put it this way, there were plenty of teams in the NFL already spending the bare minimum when there was a salary cap in place. Do you think they would spend more without a cap?

At the same time, injured players would find themselves without protection and potentially benefits, including extended health or retirement benefits. In order to avoid a charge of illegal anti-trust activity, there probably won’t be league wide benefit levels. Instead, each and every one of those items would be subject to individual negotiations.

Maybe some of the top players might benefit from that scenario, the vast majority of the league’s players would not. You only need to see all the efforts underway in states to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees to understand that the lack of the union doesn’t generally raise the standard of living for the employees, it lowers it.

As that scenario plays out over several months and perhaps a year or two, eventually enough players will get fed up with the legal strategy that the union set in motion and make efforts to re-form a union. That would be the point at which the current union leadership might begin to realize that it’s rarely about winning the smaller battles when the outcome of the war is still in jeopardy.Next week the NFL owners and the trade group formerly known as the National Football League Players Association union are scheduled to resume another round of negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. Don’t expect anything to get done.

To this point, to call what the talks that these two parties have been engaged in “negotiations” is like calling “Dancing with the Stars” entertainment. It’s just not quite the right word. Instead, the players and their former union have been basically in a stare-down, each claiming they're fighting for what's best seemingly unencumbered by the thought that the game they both profess to love is being jeopardized by their very actions.

For now, union leader DeMaurice Smith, clueless and tone deaf as always, looks at the union's attempt to overthrow the owners and the game as a bit of a Holy War, if a Holy War is what you'd call a fight between the Corleone's and the Tattaglia's.

Invoking Clemenza on Friday, Smith said that the owners forced the players to “go to the mattresses” at the negotiating table. He said the owners had lied to the players and tried to trick them into a deal and as a result the union had to decertify in order to pursue this not as a labor matter but as an anti-trust violation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, was not nearly as strident or metaphorical. In a separate interview on Friday, Goodell, seeing no reason to attack the players or even Smith, just pointed out the obvious, saying that the vision that the union has for the game, as evidenced by the court filings, is detrimental to the game itself. The union has claimed, for example, that both the draft and the salary cap are illegal and both serve as underpinnings for the incredible success of the league.

But the one yarn that Smith continues to try and spin is to paint the owners' pursuit of an appeal of Judge Susan Richard Nelson's ruling that lifting the lockout as an unprecedented action in which a group of owners of a business are purposely suing to not do business.

They're not suing to stay out of business and Smith knows it. They're appealing a lawsuit filed by the union and the players. That alone is a world of difference. Further, they're appealing in order to keep this as a labor dispute to solve between two inextricably linked parties instead of an anti-trust action where one party's interest is in in hurting the other.

But perhaps the most tone-deaf aspect of Smith's rhetoric is simply that the strategy he's led, having his union actually decertify, is far more unprecedented of an action than a garden-variety appeal of an adverse legal ruling.

Simply put, the course the union is on has been pursued only one other time, by this same union. It's not been done in any other sport and as far as I can tell has not been done in any other industry. But Smith and his advisers believe that this strategy, launched early last year when Smith had each team's players vote during training camp on decertifying, is the most clever and innovative approach and that they are true trailblazers. Norma Rae in a fedora.

Smith meanwhile talks about the braveness of his players and their unbending commitment to their sport, invoking for example Drew Brees' getting together of players to work out as proof that all the players really want to do is play the game they love. In truth, the lambs are being led to slaughter.

Fundamentally, the standoff is about each side testing the other’s mettle. The owners want a bigger piece of the revenue pie and the players are adamant that the owners are going to get it and don’t need it anyway. As long as the owners can keep the players locked out, the players’ thinking goes, eventually they’ll crack. As long as the courts keep a lockout from taking place, the players’ thinking goes, eventually the owners will crack.

Right now the pressure is a bit on the players in the sense that the 8th circuit court of appeals doesn’t seem to be in a terrible hurry to lift their temporary stay of Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s ruling finding that the lockout was impermissible. Each day that passes the players aren’t getting the workout bonuses that supplement their income nicely during the spring and summer months.

But if the lockout is enjoined and the owners are forced to open their doors, those bonuses will once again flow, the season will go forward unabated and there will be game checks to eventually cash. If that becomes the case, the players and their advisers will surely sit their like petulant children who refuse the vegetables their parents shove in front of their faces and no meaningful negotiations will take place in the near term.

Eventually, though, the vegetables must get eaten. The question is when will the players and Smith come to that conclusion? If the lockout stays, that’s easy. The players will crack. They always do. If the lockout is lifted, things get far more complex.

You don’t have to be the Ghost of NFL Future to see how it all plays out because Goodell's has already laid it out for them. They just aren't listening.

In the near term, the owners will adopt some interim rules, careful not to violate anti-trust laws to meet the court’s requirements, but will otherwise be no more motivated to reach a new deal. That will be fine with the players, of course, because as long as they can play football under any rules and get paid, they really won’t see any need to say yes to any re-ordering of the leagues’ revenues.

Indeed, you can expect an almost party atmosphere from the players, at least initially. Unrestricted free agency for any player not under contract, hooray. No draft. A chastened ownership group that can’t work collectively to set the economic road map for the league. What could get better than that? Smith will be canonized by the players as the very re-incarnation of Marvin Miller.

Well, that may be right but only if you thing that could go on indefinitely, which it can’t.

If you believe, for example, that a cooperative, productive relationship between management and the workers is critical to the product produced, then it follows that when the relationship is broken, the product will suffer. Count on it.

As the product suffers, so does the interest others, like networks and beer manufactures, have in supporting it, at least at current levels. Besides, as current contracts like that expire, then the landscape for new deals becomes more fragmented. Teams won’t just be negotiating for their local radio rights, but for their local television rights as well because the owners’ ability to work collectively on these issues becomes severely hampered.

As the economic base begins to crumble, there will be no incentive, for example, for the owners to spend money in such an uncertain climate. Even in the near term, when media and sponsorship contracts still are fully in place, there will be plenty of owners pinching pennies.

There may be unrestricted free agency for any player not under a contract, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates open for new found riches. In fact, I’d expect the opposite to happen. Put it this way, there were plenty of teams in the NFL already spending the bare minimum when there was a salary cap in place. Do you think they would spend more without a cap?

At the same time, injured players would find themselves without protection and potentially benefits, including extended health or retirement benefits. In order to avoid a charge of illegal anti-trust activity, there probably won’t be league wide benefit levels. Instead, each and every one of those items would be subject to individual negotiations.

Maybe some of the top players might benefit from that scenario, the vast majority of the league’s players would not. You only need to see all the efforts underway in states to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees to understand that the lack of the union doesn’t generally raise the standard of living for the employees, it lowers it.

As that scenario plays out over several months and perhaps a year or two, eventually enough players will get fed up with the legal strategy that the union set in motion and make efforts to re-form a union. That would be the point at which the current union leadership might begin to realize that it’s rarely about winning the smaller battles when the outcome of the war is still in jeopardy.

Cracks in the Foundation

The allegation on ProFootballTalk.com that some unnamed NFL teams are talking with some unnamed and undrafted free agents should hardly come as a surprise. If there is one thing that seems to be universal when it comes to the NFL’s labor situation, it’s that no one is overly thrilled with it and would do anything to just have the whole thing behind them.

But labor disputes have a cycle of their own and so too will this one. At its flashpoint, both sides of the dispute are galvanized in their disdain for the opposition. Both promise solidarity among their ranks and, generally, talk a good game.

But as the cycle keeps on turning and the labor dispute lingers on, signs of wear and tear do emerge. In this case it may just be those unnamed teams covertly pursuing free agents in violation of the rules of the lockout. It may also be in the occasional frustration that boils over, usually via Twitter these days, from a player or two with too much time on his hands.

Perhaps the most honest reaction from a member of upper management in the NFL was from the Cleveland Browns’ own president, Mike Holmgren. It was Holmgren who was nearly over-the-moon giddy with the news that Judge Susan Richard Nelson had granted the players an injunction to prevent the lockout and said so publicly.

It was almost as if Holmgren forgot that he’s no longer a coach lamenting the fact that he’s currently without players to coach. But it would be best for him to remember that a far more entrenched member of management these days, even if he’s not quite an owner. As Randy Lerner’s de facto representative of all things Browns, Holmgren would more be expected to unconditionally support the lockout, at least publicly.

This isn’t to complain about Holmgren’s reaction so much as it is to underscore that management, at least that sliver of it that doesn’t pay the bills out of its pockets, isn’t any happier about the lockout then the players. It also underscores the one thing that ultimately tends to break a labor dispute: unrest.

Cracks in the management ranks are usually harder to discern. Players, like any other group of employees, are usually the first to fall apart, generally under the weight of all the overhead they take on by virtue of the salaries they earn. Plenty, probably too many, players are working on their second or third marriage already. There are kids to support and goods to purchase. Those multiple cars sitting in the garage aren’t just going to pay for themselves, you know.

Beyond just the occasional snipping from players who just want a deal done and say so publicly, the other way the frustration in the players is starting to show is their increasing willingness to publicly criticize NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for not being smart enough, strong enough, or something enough, to just get the owners to capitulate in this struggle. He’s an easy target and at the moment isn’t so much a person anyway but a symbol.

It's a measure of their frustration that they would take on the owners so overtly but ultimately harmlessly. It's also a measure of their lack of understanding of the issues in dispute.

Browns’ linebacker Scott Fujita, a member of the National Football League Players Association, has somewhat been the “go to” guy when a comment is needed to keep the pot simmering at a low boil. Follow the trail of what he’s talking about and you can get the sense that sooner or later his loose affiliation will collapse under the weight of its own naïveté.

When Goodell visited Browns’ training camp last August, Fujita wasn’t impressed and wasn’t hesitant to say so, according to an article in the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram at the time.

Fujita said that no matter what questions the players asked, Goodell didn’t have the answers. In truth, Goodell had answers, it just wasn’t ones that Fujita and hence the union wanted to hear. The biggest gripe then as it seems to be now, is that the owners won’t open their books to the unions’ band of forensic accountants, as if this was the Holy Grail to unlocking the labor dispute.

Fujita, articulating the sound bite given to him from DeMaurice Smith, the overmatched head of the NFLPA, at the time negotiations first broke off said that the players need to know what the owners are making before they’d be willing to give back any of the revenue pie they get. The fallacy of course is that as long as even one owner is making one dollar that will be more than enough for the union to claim that changes in the owners seek in the league’s financial structure aren’t needed. That’s why it’s a ridiculous and distracting issue in the first place.

Then came Fujita’s blasting of Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones who told 60 Minutes that a NFL lockout wouldn’t be the financial doomsday that may believe it would be. He called Jones’ comments the most irresponsible thing he had heard throughout this process.

Now I’m all for hyperbole, especially for hyberbole’s sake. But Jones’ comments aren’t even the most irresponsible thing I’ve heard today about the impact of the lockout.

Not content to sit on the sidelines and let her husband look foolish all by himself, Jacyln Fujita weighed in of her own accord in a lengthy editorial that appeared in The Nation. Essentially her view is that her husband, indeed all professional football players, are being exploited by billionaire owners who don’t really have the players’ best interests at heart. Yes, I know, professional athletes are our most exploited underclass.

Mrs. Fujita writes about the physical toll a NFL player takes, something that can’t be disputed. But she uses this as a platform to make vague complaints about how the owners aren’t really looking after the players’ health, forgetting all of the significant steps that Goodell, for instance, implemented even last season to reduce the number of concussions or other injuries. She doesn’t mention, by the way, how much resistance Goodell has met from the exploited players on these efforts because if James Harrison isn’t allowed to cheap shot two Browns’ players in one game without drawing a fine then the players might as well just go bowling.

While I certainly don’t begrudge a wife doing what she can to protect her husband, the last paragraph of her editorial seems particularly misguided in light of recent real-life events outside the bubble of the professional playground that’s given her the luxury to live better then she probably could have ever imagined:

That is my wish for tomorrow’s boys, men, mothers, fathers and wives who will build their lives around this American pastime. They will have something when their money runs out. And when their aches and pains become unbearable, they will have the comfort of knowing that their blood, sweat and tears will carry them for the rest of their lives. They did not sacrifice their health and well-being for nothing. They will not be forgotten.
Like our boys in Afghanistan or even Valley Forge.

It’s just inconceivable that her position is literally that anybody that suits up in a professional football game deserves to be set for life, but I guess you have to start somewhere. Oh well, there’s a reason it’s called rhetoric.

Finally, this past week, Mr. Fujita weighed in again, laying blame for all the labor woes at the feet of Goodell, evidence that the near final stage of the players' frustration toward a dispute that won't be resolved soon.

Fujita is now officially disappointed in Goodell because he's not the man he thought he was, not the man who Fujita thought could bring the owners together for a deal. If Fujita's being fair, he should similarly look at his own union leader and make the same assessment.

The issue isn't Goodell or a lack of consensus among the owners. It boils down to the simple fact that players like Fujita are interested in short term answers when the owners are posing long term questions.

But this divide, too, will eventually get bridged. If Fujita is really the barometer, the players are but a few months away from cracking completely.

Churning Tressel

When is a mistake too big to overcome?

That’s the question that Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith, Ohio State President Gordon Gee and each member of the Ohio State board of trustees is actively weighing when it comes to the future of head football coach Jim Tressel.

It’s been a few weeks now since the notice of infractions from the NCAA that everyone knew was coming finally did show up on Ohio State’s doorstep. Though it really didn’t contain anything knew, it provided another round of fodder for those who were looking to knock the Buckeyes down a peg or two anyway. That’s not the problem.

The problem is it also gave fodder for those who have been defending Tressel another opportunity to rethink their position and each time that opportunity arises, undoubtedly some will do just that.

For me, I won’t be revisiting where I landed on the Tressel situation initially. That said, I do understand those that are beginning to feel differently. If nothing else you just get the sense that Tressel’s dishonesty or naïveté or however you want to paint his reaction to emails from a Columbus attorney about his players trading memorabilia for tattoos is starting to spook some of his most ardent backers.

Smith, for example, all but threw Tressel to lions in a recent and somewhat bizarre interview with USA Today. Smith intimated, for example, that Tressel was supposed to apologize at that initial press conference and did not, requiring Smith to remind Tressel of his obligations in that regard. Smith further intimated that Tressel was even somewhat reluctant to apologize because of, essentially, pride.

Well, Tressel did apologize and took full responsibility at the press conference. Apparently it wasn’t exactly in the format Smith wanted. Fair enough, Smith is the boss and has the right to dictate the terms and the obligation to express his unhappiness when performance falls short.

But Smith going public about that small point, and it was a small point, is evidence that this incident has worn Smith’s patience thin and that for now and the foreseeable future Tressel has absolutely no margin for error. It’s also suggestive of a clear rift between the two.

This isn’t at all to demonize Smith. The responsibilities of his job make it absolutely critical that the inmates never be seen as running the asylum and in this circumstance and irrespective of his status, Tressel is still one of the inmates.

But it’s still a little unseemly for Smith act that way toward Tressel publicly. If Smith has lost confidence in Tressel, that’s understandable. If that’s the case, then replace him and move on. But treating Tressel publicly like a pariah says at least as much about Smith’s lack of leadership skills as Tressel’s lack of candor says about his credibility.

The irony in all of this is that neither Smith nor Tressel lack for leadership skills or credibility, generally speaking. Both have been extremely valuable additions to the Ohio State athletic family. Yet because a group of knuckleheaded 18-20 year olds with an entitlement attitude and a desire to cut corners put both of them in the most difficult of spots, both now find themselves having to account for careers that essentially were unblemished until then.

Then of course were the recent comments from B1G Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney seeking a little distance between himself and his involvement in allowing Terrelle Pryor and company to play in the Sugar Bowl. Delaney went down the predictable “if I had known then what I know now” road by suggesting that on second thought he shouldn’t have gone to bat for the group.

The national writers, like Stewart Mandel at Sports Illustrated, treat every story related to this sordid mess as more evidence to support a completely made up theory that Tressel’s job status is in trouble. Joel Hammond, writing recently for Crain’s Cleveland Business, made Mandel’s same points, just on a local level. So have many others.

And yet there really hasn’t been anything new in this story since that initial press conference because Smith isn’t commenting (except when he does), Tressel isn’t talking and someone put a harness on Gee, probably for good reason.

For those who are starting to question whether Tressel can or should continue, I understand the argument because it’s the easy one to make. Pull out a copy of his book, The Winners’ Manual, find a passage or two about honesty and integrity, and then label him a hypocrite unfit to coach young men.

The problem with that narrative is that it suffers from a false premise itself. Tressel isn’t a hypocrite, by text book definition or otherwise. A hypocrite is one who pretends to have certain virtues that he in fact doesn’t have. Where’s the evidence that Tressel meets any of that criteria.

Falling short on one occasion doesn’t make one a hypocrite or, if it does, then let the first person among us who isn’t a hypocrite apply for the Buckeyes’ head coaching job. It won’t be a very long line outside of Gene Smith’s office.

A hypocrite implies someone having a pattern of saying one thing but doing another, like Newt Gingrich running on a family values platform as he moves on to his third wife, or is it his fourth?

When it comes to Tressel no one has suggested such a pattern because there in fact isn’t one. Indeed, the reason virtually every former Buckeyes player not named Kirk Herbstreit, not to mention virtually every notable college football coach in the nation, has come out so strongly in support of Tressel is because his actions here were so anomalous.

That isn’t to suggest that any of them agree with Tressel’s actions here because they are indefensible. He had any number of other ways he could have handled this and chose absolutely the wrong one. He’s in the midst of being punished, may be subject to more, and the program is likewise going to be punished. It’s all deserved.

But the punishment, too, has to fit the crime. There is a reason that not every crime carries the death penalty and whatever else one may think about what Tressel did, he didn’t commit a death penalty crime.

There may come a point where Tressel’s future should be seriously reconsidered but simply because the formal allegations everyone expected finally arrived isn’t it.

Tressel will survive this mess and so, too, will the Buckeyes. It will be tough in the near term when the additional penalties finally hit. But there’s a cycle to this story just as there is with most others and I suspect that those writing Tressel’s death notice now will be the same ones writing about his remarkable resurrection sometime down the road. Because the thing to remember most is that if there’s one story people enjoy more than the one where the hero alls from grace it’s the one where the hero rises again and redeems himself.

The Picks Are In

If the question is, how did the Browns do in the draft, then the answer is simple: they drafted for the right positions. Of course on a team with the abiding level of need that the Browns seem to have each year, they could have gone in a completely different direction with each pick and the answer would still be the same.

Beyond just that statement of fact, there's almost no point in assessing the draft in terms of the quality of players because there is absolutely no way for anyone to offer up any sort of meaningful judgment on a group of college kids who played at different levels and haven't yet gone to to toe with one actual NFL player.

But of course that won't stop a few of the paid draftniks out there from offering curb side opinions and grades. My advice: give them all the attention that you did Tony Grossi's 10 or 12 different mock drafts.

The transition from college to professional football is a leap across a very wide canyon. It takes a special kind of player, a special kind of person to make that jump. It isn't always about talent. Desire, persistence and attitude are most often the difference makers. While projections can be made, the first test come in training camp. From there each exam is tougher than the previous one. At this stage there's just no real way of knowing who will fall and who will stand tall and to write authoritatively as if you do rings falsely.

Besides, most people who tend to offer immediate assessments of a team's draft do so by looking at the first two rounds and then the positions the players in the later rounds played in college. That's because outside of people who do this for a living, like football general managers, no one much knows anything about a fourth round player.

But it's just these later rounds and the players that populate them that make up the heart of any team's draft. Add to that group the 10 or so undrafted free agents that teams sign afterward and it's from that entire group where teams really build their depth and their special teams.

The problem right now is that with the NFL back in lockout mode, teams can't sign any undrafted free agents. That means the Browns' latest foray into mass player acquisition isn't yet quite complete. And yet if the Browns are truly going to have real success in this or any other draft, they simply have to do a better job then previous regimes did in every aspect of the draft, not just the first or second rounds.

While grading the draft is an exercise in thumb sucking, that doesn't mean there aren't other points to consider.

One thing that can fairly be pondered is simply that the Browns' first three picks all have character-related red flags to overcome. It's never surprising when teams draft these kind of high risk/high reward players. It's a little surprising when a team's first three picks fall into that category. Generally speaking character counts, whether it's hiring a new accountant or signing a new player on a professional sports team.

A player flagged as having the ubiquitous “character issues” is like the cheap stock of a start-up company with a killer new idea just looking for those one or two angel investors. There's a chance he could be the next Facebook but there's probably a much better chance that he'll be one of the hundreds of start-ups that never quite get the financing they need to really build their business.

It's always a great story though when a team hits on one of these character question marks. It becomes a heartwarming story of redemption, the chance taken being rewarded 10-fold because the player overcame the odds and his background to be even more productive than you ever imagined.
There are plenty of those stories sprinkled throughout professional sports, enough so in fact that it's no longer crazy to take the chance. Yet teams that take too many end up getting burned in the end. The story of the Cincinnati Bengals for the last 20 years is of a frugal franchise that kept taking fliers on players who known character issues because those players come more cheaply early on. Yet the Bengals having lived by the sword have died by it as well. They've had two winning seasons in those same 20 years but their off-the-field troubles have been 10-fold that amount.

None of that is to even suggest that the Browns are headed in that direction just because their first three picks have had their past problems. Indeed one of the few positives about the Browns' current roster is that it features a number of high-character players already. If you're general manager Tom Heckert, that has to weigh heavily into the thinking when you draft or sign someone who is a little more questionable.

The New England Patriots under Bill Belichick have had a history of populating its roster with high-character players who helped rehabilitate the more questionable players on its roster. Time and again its worked to the Patriots' advantage.

Contrast that with the Oakland Raiders. Al Davis seems to go out of his way every year to find as many questionable players as he can as some sort of tribute to a fading legacy of the Raiders being the outcasts, the badasses. That has tended to feed the worst instincts in its more questionable players and as a result the Raiders have struggled for years almost as much as the Bengals.

Given the composition of the Browns' roster, Heckert is clearly taking the Browns down the Patriots road at the moment. His plan may blow up in his fact but at least he has a plan and after seeing that it can work, there's no reason for anyone to panic about what the Browns did.

It's kind of self-serving to try and rationalize or minimize the trouble that led to Phil Taylor, Jabaal Sheard, and Greg Little getting tagged with issues as way of justifying drafting them. What is a little less self-serving though is to think that the rest of the roster can help them find the right path. So for now it makes sense to give Heckert a pass on this aspect of his draft for now.

The other more notable aspect of the Browns' draft is how it really is the story of Heckert's growing stature in the organization.

A year ago, Mike Holmgren seemed to have the loudest voice in the Browns' draft room. He was the looming father figure that hovered over the proceedings to occasionally make sure that the kids weren't doing something stupid. When Holmgren wanted Colt McCoy in the third round, he got Colt McCoy in the third round, even if Heckert had other ideas.

This year, according to all reports, Holmgren was far more in the background, leaving Heckert and his new head coach (key words, “his new head coach”) to fill out the roster together. It's what a good supervisor does, trust the people he's put in charge to make the right decisions.

Probably the best evidence of Holmgren's decreased presence on day-to-day matters is that there is no new quarterback on the Browns' roster. A hallmark of any Holmgren draft is the taking of a quarterback in the later rounds. In fact earlier in the week Holmgren even said he expected that to happen again.

Maybe it's the way the draft broke that the opportunity to draft a quarterback didn't present itself that makes it seem as though Holmgren's role was reduced. But the Browns had a chance to break the draft how they wanted and it was Heckert's deliberate moving around the draft that made it break for the team the way it did. If Holmgren wanted a quarterback, for example, Ricky Stanzi could have been had. Heckert didn't want to go in that direction and ultimately Holmgren allowed his voice to carry the day. Holmgren left Heckert to his own vision and with that Heckert addressed the holes on this team that he thought were far more of a concern than quarterback.

The only questions any of these really raises are exactly what will Holmgren's role will be going forward and how long will he be satisfied with it. After taking himself out of the running to coach again and then allowing his general manager (key words, “his general manager”) to fully take the reins in his second year, Holmgren has finally grown into the broader role of team president.

Maybe this was always the design—mentor a young general manager until he can fly on his own and then move on to the next challenge somewhere else. If that ends up being the case, then at least he will have left the Browns in better shape than they were when he got here.

Those are issues for another day, of course, but they are issues nonetheless. More pressin is for the NFL's labor situation to get some clarity so that the promise of the draft and the other signings to come and the overall direction of the franchise can actually be assessed and realized. That's when the real fun begins.