Football '18: Kaepernick for NFL Commissioner

[Issun]

So tired of these Pyhrric victories in Glendale. I mean, a win is nice but that stadium has destroyed the Legion of Boom.

[Meditative_Zebra]

USA Today has compiled the list of NCAA coach's salaries and Alabama's Nick Saban tops the list at $8.3m. But just remember, even though the top football coaches are making a combined $300m football programs can't afford to pay the athletes who play the games that make their coaches rich.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by Meditative_Zebra

USA Today has compiled the list of NCAA coach's salaries and Alabama's Nick Saban tops the list at $8.3m. But just remember, even though the top football coaches are making a combined $300m football programs can't afford to pay the athletes who play the games that make their coaches rich.

The thing that makes me puke is that most of these coaches come from public institutions. I remember reading an infograph a few years back showing the highest paid public employee in every single state was either a basketball or football coach at a public university.

These are places that are supposed to provide an education to the public. Instead, they're taking money that could put thousands of kids through school and shoveling it onto a guy who holds a clipboard and commands kids to beat each others skulls in. People are going to look back at this hundreds of years from now with disdain for our barbarism.

[muteKi]

That's not true though, WH.


I'm pretty sure the one in Vermont was a hockey coach.

[Dark Medusa]

I don't disagree with the idea, but it's sort of a flawed view of what's going on. Most of these funds come from rich donors who SHOULD be donating for education but specifically earmark their donations to the institution's athletic fund. However, I'm sure most universities take money from their athletic funds and funnel it towards education. I would know, since when I was at LSU, I got a scholarship from the Tiger Athletic Fund.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by Dark Medusa

I'm sure most universities take money from their athletic funds and funnel it towards education.

This is a presumption that most athletic programs make money for their colleges, when the truth is that most probably don't. LSU is one of the more storied programs in the country. But there's over 300 D1 schools out there, and there's no way even the majority of them make money off athletics. My alma matter, the year I first attended, made the switch from being a D2 to a D1 school. My tuition that year shot up 30% explicitly because of all the fees involved. It sure did feel great to be paying thousands of dollars more for my education, just so I could subsidize our football and basketball teams that I didn't care about, get curbstomped by D1 opponents. My university is one of the world's finest, but didn't have a self-sustaining athletics department. However, even more prestigious universities within the same system with prolific sports programs (like CAL or UCLA), which you'd think would make money for their schools, their student tuition was pretty much the exact same as mine. So even if money is being made by these schools, it's not being passed off to its students in meaningful ways.

[Issun]

All Hail Drew Brees

[Rascally Badger]

I can't stop laughing at this Blake Bortles "highlight" reel set to the Benny Hill theme.

[Issun]

Oh we get to stop pretending Bortles is good now? Yay!

[Issun]

Hmmm maybe giving Jon Gruden a 10 year contract was a bad choice.

[WisteriaHysteria]

The Raiders and Gruden deserve each other. Good riddance

[Meditative_Zebra]

Alex Smith could go out and throw ninety-one consecutive interceptions and still not have an interception rate as bad as Nathan Peterman.

(As seen on twitter)

[Meditative_Zebra]

Originally Posted by Issun

Hmmm maybe giving Jon Gruden a 10 year contract was a bad choice.

Just to harp on the point I've already made, it's free money to the owner so it won't be any skin off his back.

Originally Posted by Meditative_Zebra

[muteKi]

Originally Posted by Meditative_Zebra

Alex Smith could go out and throw ninety-one consecutive interceptions and still not have an interception rate as bad as Nathan Peterman.

(As seen on twitter)

Do you think Kaepernick watches footage of Peterman and Bortles and just laughs

[Issun]

Originally Posted by muteKi

Do you think Kaepernick watches footage of Peterman and Bortles and just laughs

I'm sure his lawyers are chuckling as they quietly file them under "exhibit ZZZ" and "exhibit AAAA".

[TheSL]

I saw that Chiefs/Patriots ending a mile away when Mahomes scored in like 12 seconds there at the end. It was an impressive pass, but shitty clock management and it pretty much handed the Patriots the game.

[Rascally Badger]

Shitty clock management from an Andy Reid coached team?! I don't believe you.

[Issun]

All coaches are bad at late-game time management. If Butler hadn't intercepted Wilson at the end of SB 49, the media would likely have been talking about Belichick's very questionable time out instead.

[Issun]

Paul Allen just passed away. He hasn't always been the greatest guy (though as NFL owners go he was far from the worst), but he still means a lot to this city. I'm kind of dumbstruck right now.

[Meditative_Zebra]

isgrudengoneyet.com is hilarious. It's just a counter and it's counting up the absurd amounts of money Jon Gruden has made and every second while you visit the website the counter just goes higher and higher. I hope somebody makes Jon Gruden see it.

[Meditative_Zebra]

So it seems the Browns are in full chaos mode and have fired both their head coach and their offensive coordinator. On the one hand that's great because Hue Jackson and his 1-31 exercise in futility is finally deservedly shitcanned. But, being the Browns, they couldn't have done this during the offseason when it would have made sense but instead make this firing in a way guaranteed to cause maximum chaos and thereby ensure continuing ineptitude.

Edit: I just read an article suggesting that the Browns should hire Lincoln Reilly away from Oklahoma. Which, yeah, it makes sense to hire a guy who has crafted some great college offenses and has had a lot of success coaching Baker Mayfield. But i can't imagine why a successful head coach of the OU football program would ever, ever leave that job to go to Cleveland and have to contend with worse job security, more intense scrutiny, less power over the football program, and a worse level of talent compared to the competition.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Man, ESPN's production of Monday Night Football seems like it's gotten really lousy. Jason Witten is completely lackluster as a color commentator and offers zero insight into the game, Joe Tessitore is an upgrade as the play-by-play guy over the lousy Sean McDonough but is still only an upgrade to merely competent, and Booger McFarland probably offers better color commentary than Witten (which is clearing a low bar) but as an on-the-field reporter riding around the sidelines in a scissor lift and just intermittently interjecting into the broadcast it just feels awkward. And the graphics department really seems to revel in cheesy CG graphics that seem more appropriate to that goofy Taiwanese news show on youtube but since ESPN is paying over $100 million per game just for the licensing rights maybe this is an indication that there's just no money left after the NFL gets their cut.

But most damning for me is that their streaming product still barely works. I can watch sports streams by NBC or Fox with minimal trouble. But ESPN's streams cut in and out and constantly dip down in resolution to something that looks like a 240p youtube video. It shouldn't be rocket science in 2018 for an enormous business like ESPN to figure out how to hire the right people and run the right equipment to offer a first-rate streaming service but instead they've stuck with something that feels a decade behind the times.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Nathan Peterman is the punchline that keeps giving. Forced back into the lineup after the guy the Bill's hired off the street got injured Peterman has responded through the first half with two interceptions and less than four yards per pass. This is historic ineptitude but the Bill's coaches felt so good about their quarterback situation that they traded away their backup. And those guys get paid millions of dollars, good grief.

[Issun]

Yet somehow they're still not the worst team in the state.

[Meditative_Zebra]

In a glorious development for football fans everywhere but particularly for Bills fans ESPN has announced that Nathan Peterman has been cut. It's at least three months later than it should have happened but I'm willing to offer the Bills organization partial credit for fixing the problem late rather than blundering on indefinitely.

[Mightyblue]

I expect to hear that Gruden hired him as a backup/replacement for the Raiders by tomorrow.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Fire Mike McCarthy now, please.

[Mightyblue]

Bad things happened to Rodgers again?

[Meditative_Zebra]

The Packers burned their timeouts and couldn't challenge a long completion late in the game that would have probably been overturned. Then on 4th and 2 in the waning minutes of the game McCarthy elected to punt despite their defensive ineptitude and lack of timeouts. The Seahawks had little trouble getting a first down and then they ran out the clock, Rodgers never got a chance to win the game.

[Rascally Badger]

Rodgers Never Got a Chance: The Story of the 2018 Green Bay Packers.