Lingering Items--Big Face Edition

As the Cleveland Browns effectively enter year 3 of the Mike Holmgren era, a light bulb finally went off in the head of the namesake.  Speaking to a collected media that’s heard the same old same old for so long that it could write the stories before a word is spoken, Holmgren instead veered off script.  Offering a mea culpa of sorts, Holmgren acknowledged what had previously escaped him—that instead of being a steadying influence on the franchise, he was becoming one of its most suspect members.

Holmgren is now going to become the face of the franchise, just as he was hired to be originally.  The Big Show is now the Big Face.  His general manager, Tom Heckert, is affable but is as dynamic as a librarian.  His head coach, Pat Shurmur, is too busy trying to keep his head above water to have time for the external niceties that go along with that job like coddling the media with substantive answers to mediocre questions.

Holmgren admitted that he’s heard the criticism that focuses on his shadowy existence in Berea and his penchant for talking to his friends in the Seattle media market while ignoring his obligations locally.  As a result the Browns have had a void since Holmgren was hired (to go along with the void that existed before he was hired) that has left the fans disconnected to a team with whom they crave closeness.

It’s never too late to admit a mistake as long as you’re going to go about getting it corrected so for now let’s take Holmgren at his word and give him the benefit of the doubt.  This week’s press conference was a good start, peppered as it was with self-flagellation and some honest insight into what he really thinks about the team he’s constructing.

The fans really would prefer arguing the merits of drafting Brandon Weeden and debating whether to trade or release Colt McCoy or Seneca Wallace instead of wondering whether the architect of all of this regrets taking the job in the first place.  Holmgren said he stood in the background in deference to Heckert and Shurmur because as a former coach that’s how he would have preferred it.  But what Holmgren failed to appreciate is that he never worked for someone like himself, a figure that for good or worse tends to cast a large shadow over everything that has very little to do with his expanding waist line. 

Besides, having a semi-iconic figure like Holmgren talk to the media on a regular basis takes the pressure off of guys like Heckert and Shurmur who clearly understand the difficulty of the task in front of them and need as much energy as they can muster to focus just on that.

The Browns haven’t been terrible the last two seasons because Holmgren stayed on the sidelines, but his staying on the sidelines did tend to make the fans more paranoid about the situation.  At this point it’s hard to know how committed Holmgren has been to the team but it’s been easy to assume the worst.  He’s fed that beast.  If he stays true to his word then that at least takes one thing off the ever expanding list of things to bitch about when it comes to this franchise. 

One of Holmgren’s endearing traits as a public speaker is that he’s anything but a poker face.  He can be alternately charming and irritating.  He’s politic when he remembers to be but mostly he’s a guy that tries to be as candid as a person can be when talking to the media.  The problem was that Holmgren’s visits to the podium were too infrequent for him to develop a rhythm with the fans and so they became distrustful.

The Browns are an improving team that still has too many holes.  But if Holmgren keeps his word and explains it all like a mustachioed Clarissa then that’s a positive step for a franchise known more for walking backward.  And if there is one thing above all else that this team needs, it’s more steps up then back.

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One of the main questions Holmgren faced was over the prospect of having Weeden, Colt McCoy and Seneca Wallace on the roster for all of next season.  Holmgren said that they haven’t quite figured it all out at this point but it wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise if either McCoy or Wallace got traded.

Here’s a newsflash.  It wouldn’t surprise anyone else either.

If the issue is economics, then McCoy gets traded.  He’s got a trade friendly contract owing to his status as a third round pick.  But the Browns aren’t having salary cap problems and that puts Wallace in play but for different reasons.

Wallace isn’t a likely candidate to be traded.  Other teams may want him because he fits the profile of a serial backup, but with a salary of $2.4 million for next season most wouldn’t want him at that price.  If he’s gone it will be because he’s released with another team paying him league minimum and the Browns picking up the difference and absorbing it as a one-year hit to their salary cap.  Big deal.

Frankly I’ve never quite understood the fascination that Holmgren has with Wallace.  It’s crystal clear that Holmgren doesn’t see Wallace as a viable long-term starter in the league or he’d be starting and Holmgren would stop taking quarterbacks in the draft.  The same is true for every other team in the league.  Wallace’s value seems to be limited to his knowledge of the offensive system despite a rather thin playing resume in his 8 seasons in the league.  Besides, Wallace is a whiner and he’s not all that good of a teammate.

Wallace made it very clear last season that he had no interest in helping out McCoy and then went about his business following suit.  It was a ballsy position to take for a guy making that kind of money but Shurmur let Wallace get away with it because he had much bigger fish to gut.  Now Wallace says he’ll help out Weeden but doesn’t want to stick around if he’s relegated to the third string quarterback behind McCoy, who he apparently detests.

Wallace is an expensive reserve and certainly not worth the trouble.  A team properly managing its salary cap can never overspend in anyone category, making McCoy a far better candidate to remain which is why he’ll probably be gone.  The better choice would be to cut ties with Wallace, the sooner the better.  But the Big Show likes Wallace and that’s a pretty powerful voice in the conference room when Heckert, Shurmur and Holmgren take on that debate in earnest.

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One of the odder moments of the Holmgren press conference was the few minutes he spent trying to reconcile with the Bob Feller of the Browns’ alumni, Jim Brown.  It was Holmgren who fired Brown taking away a half million dollar salary that Brown was getting for being some sort of consultant to Randy Lerner.  Brown didn’t much like losing his lucrative side gig and made his feelings known.

Now as part of Holmgren’s reinvention he’s welcoming Brown with open arms but not necessarily 

another paycheck.  For his part Brown seems to be open to coming back into the fold so it probably won’t be long before Brown starts singing the praises of Trent Richardson as he walks the sidelines of the Berea practice fields during training camp.

Having Brown hang around the facility is a net positive for the team.  He’s arguably the greatest running back to ever play the game and represents to the current crop of players a time when this franchise really was one of the league’s best.

But let’s not get all gooey wishing for some grand reconciliation.  Brown’s loyalty to the franchise is proportionate to the pay they give him and has been for years.  That’s not a criticism, just a fact.  If he’s back, great.  Welcome.  Hope you stay around a little longer this time.  But if he’s not, so be it.  Of the 2100 questions this team needs to answer, this one ranks about 1928^th.

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Here’s how ridiculous things have gotten months before the Browns play their first preseason game.  There was a story in your local newspaper about how Weeden and Richardson could both be in the conversation for NFL rookie of the year.  Technically, that’s true since they’re both rookies.  But shouldn’t someone at least see if either can actually play and play well at this level before wondering what accolades might follow?

But if we’re going to stupidly speculate about such things, wouldn’t it just make sense that Richardson is the more likely candidate?  All he has to do is run well.  That’s not necessarily an easy task on a team that doesn’t run block all that well, but it’s a mostly singular and hence simpler pursuit then what faces Weeden.

If there’s a harder position to play in professional sports than NFL quarterback I don’t know what it could be.  The best case scenario is that Weeden’s maturity matches his age and he’s able to adapt to all the nuances of the pro game more quickly than most rookies.  Even then he still doesn’t have much in the way of receivers to pass to.  No one gives rookie of the year honors to a quarterback simply because he can hand off well.  Weeden is going to have to display that strong arm and that advertised maturity in a way that yields at least as many touchdown passes as interceptions for him to get much notice as a budding rookie of the year candidate.

But why stupidly speculate about any of this?  I don’t much care how many interceptions Weeden throws  so long as at the end of the year the Browns have more than 5 wins to their credit.  That’s the only statistic that really counts anyway and will be the thing above all else that earns Weeden a second year as the putative starter.

**

LeBron James if nothing else is one of the more compelling sports figures of the last 50 years and his presence in the NBA Finals once again leads to this week’s question to ponder:  If James had not made such a public spectacle about his free agency and his Decision to leave Cleveland, would the NBA Finals be less interesting this year?

Lingering Items--Battle Royale Edition

When it comes to the NFL, the only thing Cleveland Browns fans want to worry about is whether or not this team will ever win more than 5 games in a season again. But if you want a fun NFL-related distraction that is more competitive than the Browns have been in years, keep watch on the battle royale shaping up between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.

Smith has made almost a cottage industry out of trying to reshape the image of Goodell from guardian of the game to a power hungry dictator more concerned with his stature then the welfare of the game or its players. Goodell for his part treats Smith like the pest that he is.

Smith's strategy was borne from the moment he ran for and won his current role following the death of the previous executive director, Gene Upshaw. Smith took a strident approach to his campaign by implying not all the subtly that Upshaw’s relationship with Paul Tagliabue was bad for the players, never mind that Upshaw and Tagliabue presided over the greatest expansion of wealth ever of their sport.

Smith took this approach because he knew that new commissioner Goodell has won his job by reflecting the desires of a strong and vocal group of owners who felt about Tagliabue like some players felt about Upshaw—that he was selling them out. When Tagliabue pushed a settlement of the previous collective bargaining agreement on the owners, there were many that felt he went to far in terms of the guarantees that went to players.

It was hardly a secret that the owners wanted to blow up the last agreement as soon as it was legally possible and reclaim their economic footing. The recession of 2008 helped their argument.

So it made sense for Smith to play to the fears of the players that Goodell was nothing more than a bag man for the likes of Jerry Jones in Dallas and that strong, strident, combative leadership was needed as a counterbalance.

Most players are about as vested in the inner workings of their union as you’d expect, meaning not much at all. In truth, most would prefer not to have their paychecks lightened by union dues. But they’ll go along to get along and so when Smith’s siren song found voice with the few who pay attention, his hiring was almost a foregone conclusion. I wonder, though, if anyone ever checked his resume. Smith had absolutely no labor experience when he got his job and then went about proving how disastrous that could be.

The owners weren’t exactly private about their intentions with respect to getting out of the last labor agreement and Smith wasn’t exactly private about what he was going to do in response. Relying on his training as a trial lawyer and his lack of experience as a labor lawyer, Smith turned to litigation to get his way. It didn't work.

Smith seemed to be under the impression that he could get the courts to stop the owners from not just exercising their legal right to get out of the contract, but also get them to force new terms and conditions on the owners that they wouldn’t want to accept. It was always going to fail.

Labor laws strike a decent balance between the workers and the owners in virtually all industries. Those laws certainly provide needed protections to workers who ban together to bargain collectively (as well as needed protections to help them ban together in the first place). But they also acknowledge that business owners are the ones at risk and thus don’t require those owners to agree to any particular proposal put forth. Both sides have the legal right to ask for anything and both sides have the same right to always say no as long as all of this is done in good faith.

The owners had, in their view, plenty of economic incentive behind their proposals. It could hardly be said they weren’t made in good faith. The players had good faith reasons for saying no. Eventually though the only place this could ever get settled was the bargaining table and not in court. No court or administrative agency can dictate the terms of anyone’s labor contract, simple as that.

Smith’s pushing the union into a legal battle delayed bargaining for months without meaningfully increasingly the union’s leverage. The owners were willing to lose the season if necessary to take back control of their economic future and the players, whose careers are fleeting, were always going to cave. A more reasoned leader would have seen this from the outset and set about to find the best bargain available in a bad situation. As it turns out, the deal Smith did sign was not appreciably different or better then what he could have had before he let his members get locked out.

So Smith has been smarting from this embarrassment ever since and has gone after Goodell at every turn. Hardly a day goes by when the NFLPA isn’t challenging one issue or another or reneging on one agreement or another.

Consider, three recent examples.

First, Smith agreed to HGH testing in the latest collective bargaining agreement and has since been walking back that commitment and it still isn’t resolved.

Second, the owners voted to make it mandatory that all players wear thigh and knee pads, which is well within their rights to unilaterally make that call under the collective bargaining agreement. It shouldn’t be particularly controversial given all the attention that player safety is getting these days. Not surprisingly the union is contesting the owners’ right to force players to wear this protection. Remind me again who cares more about safety?

Third, the union filed a complaint this week alleging collusion by the owners in the uncapped 2010 season. Whatever claim the union had over that matter they waived when they signed the new collective bargaining agreement. Both sides waived all claims, known and unknown, that either had or could have had about any issues under the old collective bargaining agreement, the uncapped year, or the negotiations for a new agreement. Despite this waiver, which Smith signed, he’s suing anyway buttressed by a failed legal strategy which depends on the union's direct disavowal of the agreement it signed—again.

In each case, and irrespective of what the NFLPA might say publicly, these actions are about Smith trying to build his stature on the back of Goodell. A more reasoned leader would find a more reasoned approach but that hasn't been Smith's style.

The owners and the players are under a long term labor contract at the moment so an all out labor war isn't in the offing. But these constant firefights aren't helping the game and they aren't helping the players. They aren't even helping Smith. The union should have strong leadership. Goodell does need a foil and a counterbalance. But Smith at the moment isn't helping his stature or the union's by constantly reneging on the agreements he's signed.

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When did Jim Brown turn into Bob Feller?

People who never saw Feller pitch tend to know about him through old photos and newsreels or, prior to his death, from his gig as a so-called goodwill ambassador for the Indians. He pull on a uniform occasionally and throw the ball around. He'd also wax cranky on just about everything and everyone. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the cartoon character Crankshaft was based on Feller.

But Feller had a certain charm anyway. Jim Brown? Not so much.

Arguably the greatest running back ever and certainly the best player to ever play for the Browns, Jim Brown used to serve the role with the Browns that Feller did with the Indians. But then Mike Holmgren was hired and for reasons that have never been explained, adequately or otherwise, Holmgren jettisoned Brown and his $500,000 salary from the Stadium while owner Randy Lerner wasn't looking.

Since that parting, Brown has turned into the cranky old guy. He raised a few eyebrows when the Browns drafted Trent Richardson by calling Richardson ordinary. And he still tweaking his old employer, Richardson and Holmgren, per an interview Tony Grossi conducted with him recently for ESPN Cleveland.

Brown stuck by his assessment of Richardson, calling him efficient. Brown just doesn't see greatness. Fair enough since Richardson hasn't even played a down in the NFL. But Brown did take another shot at Holmgren. He said the Browns are still a mess and it is due in large part to what he feels is Holmgren's lack of commitment to the team or the area.

Brown certainly is coming across as embittered. Losing a half million dollar salary will do that to a guy. But it's not as if Brown's comments lack a basis.

He explained in detail why he feels Richardson is ordinary, mainly due to what Brown feels is a lack of speed and quickness. Brown says Richardson has the opportunity to be a good workhorse type back but fans shouldn't be expecting the second coming of Emmitt Smith. On Holmgren, Brown rightfully points out his penchant for giving revealing interviews to Seattle radio stations while being mostly invisible to the Cleveland media.

The Browns have been a strange organization for so long that it's hard to tell what Holmgren is causing vs. what Holmgren is continuing. But alienating Brown was one of Holmgren's dumbest ideas. Maybe it was a money saver but that probably wouldn't have been necessary if Holmgren has not exercised his dumbest decision to date, wasting a year in this franchise's life by keeping Eric Mangini around for another year.

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There seems to be a growing consensus that Browns head coach Pat Shurmur isn't very good at his job, based mostly on the team's performance last season.

It's an unfair conclusion to draw.

Shurmur was hamstrung from the moment he got the job. First, he was hired a year too late because of Holmgren's aforesaid dumb idea of retaining Mangini and his system for an extra year. Then Shurmur was hamstrung by the NFL's labor situation which prevented him from having any contact with any players in the off season. That set Shurmur back and set the players back. At most, the offensive scheme he was implementing wasn't fully in place until late in the season.

Finally, Shurmur was handcuffed by the front office's refusal to provide Shurmur with one credible receiver, which is a kind of important position in the West Coast offense. Sure, they drafted Greg Little, but he hadn't even played in a year and when drafted he was immediately their best threat. That's how bad it was.

Shurmur's now had a full off season. The front office still hasn't helped him by again refusing to provide him with credible receivers, but at least he now has a good running back and a quarterback in whom he's more fully vested. This doesn't represent a make or break year by any means for Shurmur but it will tell us far more about what kind of head coach he might ultimately be.

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The Indians' sweep of the Tigers leads to this week's question to ponder: What's more surprising, the play of the Indians or the play of the Tigers?

Lingering Items--Controversy Edition

Here’s a case of what goes around comes around. In a recent story from ESPN.com, a NFL coach, discussing his quarterback situation and whether or not he was ready to name a starter for the regular season replied, "Who knows? Maybe we'll keep them guessing."

Sure it sounds like Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini circa 2009 vacillating over whether to start Derek Anderson or Brady Quinn at quarterback, but the coach in question is Arizona Cardinal’s Ken Whisenhut. Yet Anderson remains the common denominator. Same problem, different team.

If you really want to understand the difference thus far between this year’s Browns and last year’s Browns you only need to see the havoc that Anderson’s presence is causing for Whisenhut and the Cardinals to appreciate why teams simply can’t enter the regular season indecisive about their starting quarterback as the Browns did last season.

Mangini always seemed bright enough to understand that a quarterback controversy is never healthy for a team. Yet he got sucked right into a vortex of his own creation when he announced an open competition that ultimately divided the team and left them unprepared for the regular season. Mangini never could get comfortable enough with either Quinn or Anderson to give a full-fledged vote of confidence and as a result the offense suffered greatly. (The defense didn’t have any such excuse. It’s problem then as now is that there aren’t enough good players.)

But this isn’t about revisiting past sins so much as it is to illustrate why the Browns are on a better path now than the Cardinals unless Whisenhut does what either Phil Savage or Mangini should have done—dump one of the “starters” before this cancer spreads.

When Mike Holmgren became the president of the Cleveland Browns, he understood better than most the quarterback situation. It’s his raison d’être. It wasn’t just the pros and cons of each player that he grasped. More so he understood how Mangini’s frustration with each quarterback’s various deficiencies was making him indecisive about the key position in football and ultimately impacting the team.
Holmgren quickly determined that the Browns shouldn’t make any effort to re-sign Anderson. Holmgren was less certain about Quinn, mainly because Quinn never really had a chance to develop. But he was certain at least that Mangini wasn’t a Quinn fan. Having committed to Mangini, Holmgren deemed it foolish to force feed him a quarterback he didn’t want and had new general manager Tom Heckert trade Quinn, which actually worked out pretty well.

That paved the way, of course, for a far more settled situation at quarterback for the Browns. They signed Jake Delhomme and traded for a firmly established number two quarterback in Seneca Wallace. They then drafted Colt McCoy on the if-come. It’s really a textbook example of how to populate the quarterback position and it has settled this team in ways that the preseason can only hint at.
Meanwhile, in Arizona there is a churning controversy between Anderson, who thought he was signing as a back up, and former first round pick Matt Leinart. Somewhere between Anderson’s signing and now, Whisenhut and his coaching staff fell in love with Anderson’s strong arm and the cut of his jib and their infatuation with Leinart and his potential fell accordingly.

All of this culminated with Whisenhut unexpectedly naming Anderson as the team’s starter for the third preseason game, traditionally the most important game in the preseason, thus creating the inevitable quarterback controversy. Leinart didn’t help things of course by taking his case to the media.

If rumors are true, Whisenhut is actively trying to solve his problem by trading Leinart. Good luck there, on both fronts. Anderson has one year of superior performance under his belt. The problem is that it was in 2007 and since when he hasn’t been injured he’s been awful. And it’s not “awful” in the sense of it being bad-luck awful. The guy simply has no touch on the mid-range passes that are so crucial to an offense’s success. Couple that with an inability to scramble and a deer-in-the-headlights approach to reading defenses and you end up with someone who shouldn’t start for any team except in emergencies.

But Leinart hasn’t shown much either and probably never will. He was overrated coming out of college and eventually will become some other team’s pain in the butt.
All of this is of course a cautionary lesson about quarterbacks in general. They can have the right size and the right arm and still not make it. It really comes down to what’s between the ears and is why someone like Tom Brady can make it and someone like Matt Leinhart cannot.

Having learned that lesson, the Browns are now far better off. For Cardinals fans, it’s going to be a long year.
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The Jim Brown controversy continued nearly unabated this past week but in the most unusual way. For reasons that make little sense, Brown leaked to the media his letter to Mike Holmgren and Randy Lerner about why he won’t be part of the Browns’ Ring of Honor ceremony.

Accuse the Browns all you want of being tone deaf on this or any other matter, but Brown is at least as tone deaf, particularly if he thought this letter would somehow garner him much sympathy for his position in a dispute that is much ado about nothing.

As usual, and as he’s done with almost everything else in his life, Brown has decided to take the road less traveled and for no particularly good reason.
That Brown sees himself as the oppressed in every situation is a given and unless you’ve walked in his shoes as a youngster or even as an adult and were exposed to the kind of racism that formed the core of his belief system, it will always be hard to relate to his thought pattern, let alone make sense of it.

And yet, why is it that when all of this is stripped away it seems like Brown’s complaints really boil down to money? Owner Randy Lerner, of his own volition and probably just to show everyone that he really is a Browns fan at heart, kept Brown coming around. Sure Brown carried an “advisor” title, but really he was basically a well-paid greeter. Brown saw his role much differently, if you believe the letter he wrote to Holmgren. He claims he was paid to offer his intelligence and logic to advise Lerner on football matters, reporting only to Lerner.

It doesn’t seem like Lerner saw it quite that way since he went out and hired Holmgren to play that same role in a much more formal sense. For good measure, Lerner then foisted Brown on him.

But just taking Brown at his word on his role (which, by the way, explains plenty about why Lerner made such a mess of things), it still begs the question as to why Brown’s so offended in the first place. That’s where the money part comes in. Something tells me that if Holmgren would have kept Brown’s reportedly half million dollar salary in place, Brown would still be coming around offering his sometimes bizarre insights, even if it was to someone who knows better. But Holmgren wanted to formalize Brown’s role into what he essentially already was and cut the salary accordingly. Brown balked and hence the standoff.

Brown didn’t help his cause by intentionally misquoting Holmgren to make it appear as if Holmgren was a racist or that Holmgren’s invitation to Brown to attend the ring ceremony had any underlying racial implications. All Brown really did was make himself look like a fool and a whiner. The ceremony will go on, with or without Brown, and Brown’s name will be in the Ring of Honor, whether or not he’s there and whether or not he likes it.

Brown has always been a compelling but difficult personality and he’s proven that once again. With Brown both the good and bad about him is that you can’t change the past.
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There was an interesting segment on ESPN recently in which the talking heads debated the number of games the Browns would win. The over/under was 6. I can’t recall how that debate came out, as if it actually matters, but I appreciated the attempt by ESPN to build enthusiasm. Which leads to this week’s question to ponder: Are you more excited about the Browns or the Buckeyes?

Lingering Items--Tradition Edition

There’s a cloud hanging over the NFL at the moment and it probably isn’t going away any time soon.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, after first making his rounds of various training camps, unveiled this week what he had been hinting at all along, that the league and its union are heading toward a labor showdown and aan 18-game regular season will be one of the key issues.

Goodell has made the 18-game regular season, as early as 2012, a key priority. In making his pitch, Goodell painted it as good for the fans because it will lessen an already meaningless preseason.

Whether it’s really a good thing is all a matter a perspective.

For the owners, it’s a potential cash bonanza. The networks broadcast preseason games out of obligation knowing that the ratings are similar to a rerun of “Sisters” on the Lifetime Network. Turn those preseason games into something far more meaningful and suddenly the networks will take notice, in the form of higher rights fees. In a struggling economy it’s never a bad thing to find new revenue streams, even for a cash cow like the NFL.

For the fans, the preseason is as meaningless as an Indians game in September. They get charged full price only to witness glorified scrimmages in which starters make token appearances and a slew of undrafted free agents vie for the last 10 or so remaining spots on the roster. All these games do is whet the appetite for the real season but otherwise they’re mostly ignored.

From a head coach’s perspective, the preseason isn’t nearly long enough. If a lot of good evaluation can be made in 4 games, just think how much better 6 or 8 games would be!

For the players, it’s a potential nightmare. The one constant in the NFL is that players get injured, far more frequently and far more severely than in any other sport. All an 18 game schedule does is increase the risk even further. Players may be just commodities but they are the most important commodity. With injuries as a given, championships are won or lost on depth at all the key positions and that is simply something most teams don’t have.

But don’t expect the NFL to balance these perspectives because the only thing that matters are the owners. To them it’s a priority and in the NFL’s game of cards, that is like holding the ace of trump. It's just a matter of what they'll give up to get it in the upcoming negotiations.

The NFL will sell it to the union as a way of dividing up an even bigger pie. That will certainly get the union's interest. But I suspect that won't be enough. If they hold out for an expanded for a slightly expanded roster, that may work.. More jobs means more union dues.

Both the NFL and the union are spoiling for a fight. It’s been too calm for too long. But I doubt that the 18 game season will be enough to completely solve what ails them. All it will do in the end is make an already season too long while simultaneously making an already too short career for most players shorter.

**

Scheduling has also been on the mind of the good folks running the Big Ten and the millions of people that support and follow that conference. The addition of Nebraska to the mix will force the conference into a divisional format and a conference championship game. But it's this consequence that threatens the very traditions that make college football so great in the first place.

The Big Ten has a whole slew of tradition-laden rivalries that must be preserved, not the least of which is Ohio State/Michigan. While the game itself doesn't appear to be in any sort of near-term jeopardy, some of the traditions surrounding it might.

The series began in 1897 and since 1935 Ohio State has played Michigan on the last game of the season. For all the reasons that fans of both teams know better than their kids' birthdays, it is essentially “The Game.” It matters little if anything more than pride is at stake. Beat the other team and your season's been a success.

It cannot possibly be overemphasized how intimately the tradition of this game being played at season's end is intertwined with the rivalry. Irrespective of the bowl game that follows weeks later, The Game is the pinnacle of each team's season. Fans, players and coaches alike (with the exception of John Cooper then and Rich Rodriguez now) see every game preceding it as a mere distraction. All roads lead to that last game in November.

But those same people who pushed for expanding the Big Ten's reach are now trying to minimize the importance of when the Ohio State/Michigan game is played as part of the overall selling point for why the expanded conference isn't about money it's about the fans. Remember, when they say it's not about the money, it's about the money.

The reason this is an issue at all stems from a desire to not have Michigan and Ohio State play in the same division of the Big Ten. In that circumstance, the deep thinkers would want to preserve an intra-division game as the last game of the season because of its importance on who ends up playing in the conference championship. Additionally, by not having any inter-division games on the last week of the regular season you avoid the chance that those same two teams could meet the following week in the conference championship game.

Fair enough, but it begs the question as to why Michigan and Ohio State have to be in separate divisions in the first place.

Ultimately, those making these decisions, which, technically are the various colleges' athletic directors as guided by the various colleges' presidents, have to lay out their priorities. Is the tradition of The Game more or less important than the potential of having those two teams play each other in consecutive weeks?

Framed that way, the answer seems so obvious that I'm afraid it will be missed. Preserving all of the traditions of the Ohio State/Michigan game should be paramount. The Game isn't just of interest to Big Ten fans. It's one of the most anticipated/most watched games of any season in all of college football. It's traditions put the Big Ten in the best possible light at the best possible time.

If Big Ten officials want Ohio State and Michigan in separate divisions, though I'm not sure why, then an exception needs to be made for those two teams in terms of preserving that last week of the regular season for intra-divisional games. Sure, that opens up the possibility that Ohio State and Michigan will meet the next week in a conference championship, but why is it assumed that would be a bad thing? If anything, that game just becomes bigger and, again, it's the Big Ten that's ultimately the winner.

**

Traditions have certainly been on the mind of Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren with his announcement on Thursday of the creation of a Browns' Ring of Honor and the first 16 inductees.

It's certainly about time that the rich traditions of this franchise have been celebrated in such a meaningful way. But of course no good deed goes unpunished and the greatest Cleveland Brown of all, Jim Brown, is positively in a snit.

For cost-cutting reasons, owner Randy Lerner eliminated Jim Brown's paid advisory role with the team. According to reports, the Browns also have eliminated or at least significantly reduced their support of Brown's Amer-I-Can program.

Rather than be grateful for all the past support, Brown instead has hinted very strongly that he is too busy to attend the Ring of Honor ceremony, what's that date again?

In an interview with a Syracuse radio station, Brown intimated that he feels disrespected by the new Browns regime. Remember, when they say it isn't about the money but respect, it's about the money. If Brown's paid advisory role hadn't been eliminated and/or the support for Amer-I-Can continued, Brown would be on the first plane, sitting in first class, courtesy of a paid ticket from the Browns.

The Ring of Honor ceremony will certainly miss Brown if he doesn't attend but I don't see any particular reason for the team to again bend over backward to satisfy his demands. Brown hasn't always been the most respectful person when it comes to this organization in the first place, starting with his sudden and unplanned retirement and moving forward. It is a two-way street.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The NFC Championship game is over and Brett Favre and his latest potentially former employer, the Minnesota Vikings, have been left on the side of the road to the Super Bowl. That must mean it’s time for Favre to begin his yearly kabuki dance to the tune of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”

As this ritual plays out each late winter/early spring, the radio inside Favre’s head must be on an endless loop of Mick Jones singing “If I go there will be trouble and if I stay it will be double.” Meanwhile the fans of the Vikings, this time, will be holding their collective breath to see if Jesus-in-shoulder-pads will walk across the Great Lakes and back into their open arms.

Favre’s inability to know when to say when isn’t unusual when it comes to professional athletes. To localize the story a bit, Jim Thome just signed a 1-year contract with the Minnesota Twins, putting him two teams short of completing the rounds within the American League Central.

Perhaps Thome signed with the Twins because he thought that the state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities possessed magical powers of rejuvenation as Favre enjoyed an excellent regular season all while complaining about every ache and pain in his aging body. Maybe instead this is Thome’s last stop on a very long career.

In one sense, it seems a bit sad and a bit pathetic to see once great athletes continue to hang on because they seemingly have nothing else to move on to. It’s also a little exasperating to watch Favre play the role of drama queen each off season. But to be fair we do live in a capitalist society and it’s hard to begrudge anyone doing what he can to make a buck. If the owner of the Twins or the Vikings is willing to dole out millions, how are they the bad guys for being willing to take it?

The short answer is that they’re not.

Let’s face it, the life of a professional athlete at the tope level is far more peaches than beans, to quote noted sage Archie Bunker. The salaries make no sense in the context of most everyone else’s daily life. It’s a great, if limited, existence. The song that really should play in their heads is “Money for Nothing.” And if you scour sites life Deadspin on a regular basis, you also learn that for most of them, the chicks are free, too.

And yet both fans and athletes continue to struggle with the question of when enough is enough. It’s one of sports’ great rhetorical questions.

Everyone has their own view on this, of course, and it really is athlete specific. Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, for example, walked away with still plenty left in the tank. As they did so, they left many fans in their wake aching for more. Johnny Unitas looked positively ridiculous riding the bench in San Diego for one miserable season at age 40. For that matter, Joe Montana looked ridiculous in Kansas City.

It’s not just the big names, either. Did anyone really want to see Jamal Lewis back with the Browns this past season? But there he was anyway unable to walk away on his own. In truth he was brought back only because head coach Eric Mangini didn’t feel like there was any other option. Mangini looked at Jerome Harrison and saw a part time back. He also looked at the rest of the roster and saw a bunch of untested rookies.

The plight of Lewis actually illustrates exactly why this issue is such a struggle for everyone involved. When Mangini bit hard and brought Lewis back he didn’t then want to disrespect him by having him stand on the sidelines. As a result he stubbornly trotted Lewis out there game after game, to the exclusion of Harrison mostly, even though it was obvious that Lewis was done.

Indeed, if not for Lewis’ injury, Harrison likely would never have had what turned out to be a break out season. It’s also fair to say that the Browns’ late season win streak, which occurred despite and not because of the quarterback play, doesn’t happen unless Lewis gets hurt. So in a sense, Lewis ended up repaying Mangini’s early season faith by actually getting injured. It probably is the single biggest factor in what saved Mangini’s job.

This kind of situation plays itself out over and over again in city after city, sport after sport. Favre is a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback. But each year he comes back is another year in which the player behind him has a lost season of development. It’s actually why Green Bay forced Favre’s hand. They were tired of promising young quarterbacks that the team would soon be theirs as it became more and more obvious that Favre apparently had no intention of ever retiring.

For the Packers, it’s worked out well. While Favre has been bouncing around the country, Aaron Rodgers has developed into a pretty fair quarterback who still has a decent upside. It’s likely Rodgers wouldn’t even be in Green Bay at all if the Packers management had decided to accede to each of Favre’s demands.

The Twins signed Thome not only because he can still hit the long ball occasionally but also for the so-called “veteran leadership” position. It’s really the same role Mark Grudzielanek will play for the Indians this season. I suppose it’s an important role, but it’s also a roster spot that won’t go to a younger player.

It’s not even that the Twins or the Indians won’t get some level of production out of Thome or Grudzielanek. They will. But at what cost? For the Twins, the cost might be far less than the Indians. They are closer to the playoffs than the Indians and someone like Thome could put them over the top. Is that worth a lost season to a promising rookie? Most would say “yes.”

But for the Indians, the answer is more complex. It’s hard to calculate what a year of development at the big league level really means, but it obviously means something. How would the Indians have known the value of Grady Sizemore had they kept in buried in the minors in favor of somebody who used to be someone who now was just hanging by the bottom rung?

The other side of that argument, or at least the one Eric Wedge always used to put forth, is that you’d rather see that promising rookie play regularly at AAA than occasionally at the big league level. It’s an argument of convenience.

In the case of Wedge, he much preferred the Grudzielaneks of the world anyway. But being a major leaguer is much more than just playing on the field. It’s the bigger crowds, the increased travel. It’s one adjustment after another and stunting that part of a player’s development isn’t healthy, either.

In truth, there isn’t a professional athlete alive that ever completely solved this internal struggle just as there isn’t a team that’s found the right balance. The guess is that Brown and Sanders had moments in the few years after their retirement where they thought they left too soon. And as Favre was picking himself up off the ground last week in New Orleans it had to occur to him that he may be getting a little to old for this stuff.

The irony, of course, is that when they do retire, as they must, then end up in much the same place as other retirees, playing golf. And of all the sports out there, only professional golf has figured out how to solve the problem. It created the perfect way for players to gracefully put themselves out to pasture. It’s called the Champions Tour.