Let’s say you are the head football coach of a mid-major college team like Louisiana Tech University.

The school has a total enrollment of more than 10,000 students and is located in the picturesque small town of Ruston along I-20 in north Louisiana.  Louisiana Tech decided to step-up into the top level of college football in the late 1980’s.  The Bulldogs currently compete in Conference USA (which is considered a “Group of Five” conference).

Louisiana Tech’s football program has enjoyed success at times.  The Bulldogs have appeared in several post-season bowl games over the past few decades.  In recent years, the Bulldogs have struggled on the football field, too.

Sonny Cumbie (now entering his third year with the Bulldogs) spends much of his time recruiting high school student-athletes.  Though his school has an attractive campus and a fine academic program, Louisiana’s flagship university in Baton Rouge (LSU) will have the pick of the high school football litter in the state most every year.

It’s hard to compete with the glamour of playing a night game at LSU’s famed Tiger Stadium with 102,000 people cheering you on.  With the increasing amount of money being paid to college student-athletes for Name, Image, and Likeness marketing, the gap has become wider.

For a smaller college football program like Louisiana Tech, the ability to sign any 3-star and 4-star high school player becomes a huge accomplishment.  Signing just one top student-athlete may help lead others to come to your program, too.

Until the end of their first year in Ruston, that is.

Follow the greenback road

The NCAA Transfer Portal allows today’s student-athletes the opportunity to walk away from a school and move to another institution without having to sit-out the next year after transferring.

Mid-sized football programs such as Louisiana Tech (or Sunbelt schools like UL-Monroe or UL-Lafayette) have started to lose many of their best players after every season to the bigger programs.

Major conference football schools have started waving large amounts of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) cash in an effort to lure the best athletes to transfer from the mid-major programs to come play for them.

Each of the 133 FBS (upper division) college football programs allow up to 85 scholarship athletes on the roster.  Additionally, there can be up to 33 walk-on (non-scholarship) football players on the roster.  A maximum of 118 players are allowed on a college football team.

Did you know that walk-ons are now getting paid, too?

This week, I read a story which said that many of the wealthiest college football programs have started making NIL financial offers to “walk-on” players, too.  These non-scholarship football players are being handed enough NIL cash to cover his personal costs to attend school (tuition, room, board, and books) and still have some spending money left over.

This allows the 85 scholarship players and the maximum of 33 walk-ons to be paid to play football at the major college programs with plenty of cash in their school’s NIL “collectives”.

These “collectives” are relatively new.  Many are set-up as an IRS 501(C3) non-profit organization, too.  That allows donors to receive a tax credit for their sports donations.  As long as the coaches aren’t (wink, wink) directing the collectives on how to distribute that NIL money, it’s all perfectly legal.  At least for now.

Pay for play, anyone?

Mid-major teams such as Louisiana Tech University are at a significant financial disadvantage in this new game.

The NBA All-Star game was played Sunday evening.  The score was 104-89 – at the half!

In a (cough) basketball game which embarrassed everyone associated with this game, the East prevailed over the West 211-186.

The final score was just a 3-pointer short of 400 total points scored.   The East All-Stars made 83 of 146 shots from the field (57%), while the West converted 80 of 143 (56%) of their shot attempts.

A total of 289 shots were attempted in this 48-minute basketball game.  That equates to six shot attempts taken each minute.  That’s one every 10 seconds.  The Indianapolis crowd should have been handed a tube of SportsCreme on their way out of the arena to rub on their soon-to-be sore necks.  The pace of Sunday’s game felt like you were watching a table tennis match.

West back-up center Karl-Anthony Towns came off the bench and played 27 minutes in the All-Star game.  He connected on 23 of 35 shots for 50 points.  Towns averaged nearly 1.5 shots for every minute he played in the game.

Who are you calling a ball hog?

As for defense, there were just three blocked shots in Sunday’s NBA All-Star game.  A total of five free throws were attempted for the entire game.

*Special note to the NBA home office – Give the refs a day off next year.  They aren’t needed for this game anymore.

Embarrassing?  That’s being far too nice

Most of the top NBA writers agree with that sentiment.  The NBA All-Star game has turned into a farce.

“That was dreadful.  Again. I am beginning to think this game is irredeemable,” said long-time NBA writer David Aldridge.

“Once again, these NBA stars are showing no respect for the game. It’s another Dunkarama and 3-point farce,” tweeted Boston sportswriter Bob Ryan.  He added, “What a waste of time. (NBA Commissioner)Adam (Silver), you must do something. It’s embarrassing for your sport.”

 The stats confirm the increasing farcical nature of this game in recent years

Thirty years ago in 1994 (during the Dream Team seasons), the NBA All-Star game featured a total of 245 points scored by the two teams.  Defense was minimal, but the teams still hunkered down a little bit during the final quarter of play as winning the All-Star game mattered a little bit.

By 2014, the NBA All-Stars totaled 318 points in the game.  That calculated to an average of 159 points per team.  The total number of points was on the high side of credibility.  Still, the teams would generate a small amount of defensive effort during the final minutes of the game.

Sunday’s 2024 NBA All-Star game saw 397 points scored.  It was, of course, another all-time scoring record.

The good people of Indianapolis were fleeced if they came to the arena expecting to watch anything more than a friendly 48-minute intrasquad warm-up session.

The NBA remained the biggest winner at All-Star weekend   

This event is a great example of the concept of supply and demand.

Today’s NBA features 30 franchises.  That means that the All-Star weekend comes to your city just one time every 28 years (New York and Los Angeles have two teams).  It’s hard resist the chance to take your kids see the best men’s basketball players in the world if it finally comes to your market every third decade.

Each year, the host city rolls out the red carpet for this three-day event.  Hotels are filled.  Restaurants and night clubs are hopping.  The host city receives national media focus for much of the entire week.

At Indianapolis last weekend, the NBA hosted events on Friday and Saturday nights in addition to the Sunday evening All-Star game finale.  The Friday and Saturday events were played at cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium,

She is the best show in town wherever she plays basketball.  If you have a child or grandchild remotely interested in basketball, make it a point to get together and watch an Iowa women’s basketball game at some point before the end of the NCAA March Madness tournament.

After that, she is going to have a big decision to make.

As expected, Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s basketball scoring record on Thursday night at home against Big Ten rival Michigan.  The fourth-ranked Hawkeyes won 106-89 in front of another sell-out crowd to improve their season record to 23-3.

Needing just eight points to get the record, Clark drilled a 30-footer from near the school’s Hawkeye logo on the basketball court to take the scoring title in the game’s opening three minutes.

“You all knew I was going to shoot a logo 3 for the record,” said Clark.  The senior has scored 3,569 points in her four years at Iowa.  She also leads the nation in scoring with 32.8 points per game.

Clark connected on 8-of-10 shots from the field (hitting five of seven attempts from behind the 3-point line) for 23 points.  And that was just in the first quarter of the game.  She finished with a career-high 49 points on Thursday night in Iowa City.

“I don’t know if you can really script it any better”, Clark told the assembled media afterwards.

Where have I seen that shooting touch before?

Caitlin Clark’s incredible ability to shoot a basketball is an art form which young players would be wise to emulate.  Her shooting form looks a lot like Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors.  The 6-foot Clark has become a threat to score as soon as she crosses the half court line.

For those of us old enough to remember, her shooting skills remind me of former Purdue great Rick Mount (late 1960’s) and Indiana State’s legendary Larry Bird (late 1970’s).

Both of those players averaged more than 30 points per game in college.  Like Caitlin Clark, they possessed a classic smooth shooting touch with incredible range and accuracy.

By drawing so much attention from the opposing defenses, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark gets her teammates a lot of easy buckets.  She leads the nation in assists with nearly nine per game.

Her Iowa Hawkeyes are hoping to make a return appearance to the Final Four this season.  Last year, Coach Kim Mulkey’s LSU Tigers surprised Iowa 102-85 in the national championship game.

A brief dust-up between Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s emotional leader, Angel Reese, happened near the end of that game.  Though Clark scored 30 points in the loss, Angel Reese reminded Clark that LSU would be the team sporting a championship ring afterwards.

LSU’s 2024 team has struggled at times but still has a respectable 21-4 record at this point in the season.  Basketball fans across the country would love to see another match-up of these two women’s teams in the 2024 Final Four coming April 4-7 in Cleveland.  Last year’s game drew a women’s college record television audience of nearly 10 million viewers for ESPN.

Caitlin Clark is now a senior and finishing her fourth year of college basketball.  Since her career started during the COVID-19 outbreak, the NCAA will permit her a fifth year of college eligibility.

Heading to the WNBA next year would be an economic mistake

The top salaries being paid in the WNBA are just a fraction of those paid in the NBA.  The average pay for men playing in ...

As millions of people were putting the finishing touches on their home party preparations before Sunday evening’s big NFL finale, the largest outdoor party in America was taking place in Phoenix, Arizona.

On Saturday alone, more than 200,000 people gathered – on a golf course!  This year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open handled more than 500,000 people during the four-day event which concluded on Super Bowl Sunday afternoon.

To put it into perspective, Augusta National Golf Club (home of The Masters) shoehorns about 40,000 people onto the grounds each day for their event.

The Tournament Players Course (TPC) of Scottsdale, Arizona has a bit more room to spread out, but having more than 100,000 people on any golf course seems a bit excessive.  This event’s growth has also brought some unintended consequences, too.

What makes this particular PGA Tour stop such a big deal? 

Whether intentional or not, the Waste Management Phoenix Open (WMPO) has become the tour’s annual Super Bowl weekend party stop, too.  By early February, much of America is ready to come out and experience a little bit of spring weather.

However, this post-Groundhog Day PGA Tour stop has become better known for “Drunk-satawny Phil and Phyllis.”

The well-lubricated fanatics enveloping the Par-3 16th hole at the TPC-Scottsdale course have become their own story over the past few decades.

They surround this 170-yard hole from tee to green.  As each golfer steps onto the tee, a public address announcer gives the crowd the name of the golfer.  The fans cheer and await the golfer’s swing.

If the golf ball lands somewhere on the green near the hole, the crowd erupts into cheers.  However, if the golfer sends the ball into a sand trap or fails to make the putting green, the massive gallery of 20,000 fans boo the player for a less-than-stellar tee shot.

Most pro golf tournaments aren’t known for such a party-time atmosphere.  Those “Quiet Please” signs abound at most professional golf event for good reason.

Golf skills are developed in relative quiet

Speaking from personal experience (I started playing golf at age 8), golfers learn the sport and practice in relative solitude.  We generally prefer it that way.

Golf demands a great deal of concentration to play at the highest levels.  That doesn’t mean that most golfers don’t have a good sense of humor.  Resilience is quite important in golf.  You have to accept a certain number of bad shots (and a few lucky ones) which come along during every round.

Golfers are always pursuing perfection (which is, of course, impossible).  The intense focus required to play this game at a high level means that many golfers come across as quite serious while playing this difficult-to-master outdoor game.

Imagine if you had to compete against 143 of your peers to earn a paycheck every week.

Last weekend in Phoenix, the field of 144 golfers on Thursday was cut in half for the weekend based on the lowest scores.  The 72 golfers who went home on Friday night did not earn a penny for the week.  Ouch!

The good news for the weekend finishers was that last place on Sunday in Phoenix still paid about $20,000.  Not bad – as long as you made the cut!

The perfect storm converges at the Phoenix Open

The first big break for the Phoenix Open was being scheduled for the weekend of the Super Bowl game.

The PGA Tour starts in Hawaii in January every year.  It migrates eastward into California and Arizona for a series of tournaments prior to moving into Florida for the month of March.

Phoenix sports a pleasant climate for golf during February.  The city is a hotbed for the sport with dozens of golf courses within its growing metropolitan area of five million people (#10 nationally).

The next component of the “Phoenix phenomenon” is national television exposure.

***TUESDAY UPDATE – As expected, the 2024 Super Bowl game set a new TV ratings record with 123.4 million viewers.

The greatest marketing show in America is finally over.  Many fans reading this today will not be feeling very well after a Sunday afternoon and evening filled with excessive food and beverages.

For San Francisco 49er fans, you will undoubtedly question why your team decided to take the ball first during overtime on Sunday evening after winning the coin flip.  What was the San Francisco head coach thinking by allowing the best quarterback over the past five seasons (Patrick Mahomes) a chance for his team to know exactly how many points were needed to tie or beat you in overtime?

For Kansas City Chiefs fans, you had to sweat it out again (a normal occurrence during 2023).  However, your team rallied from behind and won in overtime 25-22.  Chiefs Kingdom has grown accustomed to winning several nail biters this season.   The KC dynasty has now captured three Super Bowl rings in the past five seasons.  Not bad!

If you had the numbers 5 and 2 on your Super Bowl final score squares (an extremely unlikely combination), you should be happy no matter which team you may have been rooting for.

Happy post-Super Bowl Monday!

No, I didn’t watch the festivities.

I spent Sunday night working on a family ancestry history project.  While I might have been watching football, I discovered a newspaper article from the home city of my deceased Mom.  The news story announced her engagement to a US Navy gent – just 18 months before the date she would marry my Dad (an Army veteran of WWII).  That certainly would have been an interesting conversation to have experienced prior to her passing a decade ago.

Back to the football game, I did listen to portions of it on the radio.  My lovely wife (who generally doesn’t watch NFL games unless the Saints or Steelers are playing) is an avid Super Bowl viewer – for the commercials.  She let me know that Arnold Schwarzenegger was now doing insurance commercials.

I’m sure Hanz and Franz from Saturday Night Live would be quite happy.

After the New Orleans Saints finally played in and won the Super Bowl more than a decade ago in February, 2010, my personal interest in America’s Big Game has been on the decline.

If your favorite team isn’t playing in the season finale, it’s getting harder to invest four hours (or more) in the Super Bowl experience.  Dallas Cowboys fans can relate.  It’s been 28 years since their last appearance in the big game.

The pre-game show on CBS started a full 4 ½ hours before kickoff on Sunday.  While that Super Stretch was underway, I watched a few hours of PGA Golf from Phoenix and a very interesting Alabama at LSU women’s basketball game.  That ended long before the kickoff at 5:37PM Central time kickoff.

The NFL’s regular season games generally conclude during a three hour TV window.  The super-sized season finale generally takes a full hour longer due to the added number of commercials and the annual “made-for-non-football fans” lengthy halftime show.

I don’t know exactly how many people watched this year’s event.  It has been widely speculated that Sunday’s Super Bowl would attract a record number of television viewers.

America was happy enough to see the match-up featuring quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs against the “ground and pound” running game of the San Francisco 49ers.

Several million non-traditional football viewers tuned into Sunday’s game to see someone else

CBS (this year’s TV host) gladly obliged the young mostly-female new fans.  Numerous camera shots featured pop star Taylor Swift from her stadium suite as she rooted for her Kansas City Chiefs’ boyfriend, Travis Kelce.

The sweet smell of financial success of major college football may quickly become its undoing.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, there is an incredible amount of money being poured into the most recent television deals to cover America’s largest college football conferences.

College football has been on television for decades.  Why has the pie been growing lately?

In the increasingly fractured television landscape (traditional networks, cable television operators, and now internet-based television providers such as Amazon and Peacock), Saturday’s college football games are now delivering the second largest weekly audiences on television.  Only the NFL delivers a larger weekly viewing audience during football season.

The four remaining major college football powers (the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC) are able to deliver a weekly TV audience ranging from three to ten million viewers every Saturday in the fall.  Like the NFL, college football games attract a fairly young mostly male buying demographic which is coveted by certain advertisers.

A variety of beverages makers (soft drinks, beer, and other alcoholic beverages), automobiles, insurance providers, fast food restaurants, investment companies, jewelers, and others have started to flock to Saturday college football games to reach their target market.

With annual increases in viewership for Saturday’s day-long slate of college football games, the competition for the rights to televise those games became red-hot, too.  ESPN/ABC, Fox Sports, CBS, NBC, and others have dramatically upped their monetary offers to secure years of televised major conference college football games featuring the upper tier of teams.

In recent years, these new television contracts have ballooned into the billions of dollars.

Who receives the money, and who SHOULD get the money?

At least for now, each major college conference receives the entire value of the television rights pie.  Conference members negotiate a formula to determine the payouts which go to the individual schools every year.  The SEC schools’ financial sharing arrangements may not be exactly the same as the Big 12 Conference, but they are likely quite similar.

Two years ago, the SEC’s perpetual last place finisher (Vanderbilt) pocketed the same $50 million share of the SEC’s television treasure chest as the national football champion Georgia Bulldogs.

Vandy loves the way the SEC carves-up the TV money pie!  However, some teams in another conference will be going on a financial diet beginning this fall.

The Atlantic Coast Conference paid its current members about $35 million per school in television money in recent years.

As part of SMU’s decision to join the ACC beginning this season, the Mustangs have agreed to receive a 0% portion of the ACC’s television rights package – for the next nine years!   Two other new members of the ACC (former Pac-12 members Stanford and California) will receive just 30% of a traditional share from the conference TV pie baked by ESPN.

The Baker gets to determine which pies it wants to sell 

Speaking of ESPN, this year’s 12-1 Alabama team made it into the four team College Football Playoffs ahead of 13-0 ACC champion Florida State.  Despite all the lame excuses put forward afterwards by the College Football Playoff selection committee, Bama was chosen for one reason.  The Crimson Tide reliably delivers a larger television audience than the Seminole Nation would have generated for ESPN.

That crimson-colored baked cherry pie (Alabama) brings more customers into the proverbial “store” than Florida State.

Yes, the baker (ESPN) owns the television rights to the Co...

About five months ago, we reviewed the unfolding tragedies within Louisiana’s Northwestern State University Demons football program in Natchitoches.

One of the team’s starting players, junior defensive back Ronnie Caldwell, was shot several times and killed at about 1AM on Thursday, October 12, 2023 at his off-campus apartment complex located near the school.

The local police arrested a 22-year old Northwestern State student from Memphis, Tennessee in connection with the murder.  That particular suspect was also a former NSU football player and no longer on the team.  Caldwell’s 27-year old roommate from Natchitoches (who did not attend the school) was also arrested for possession of a firearm in the presence of a controlled dangerous substance.

The Northwestern State University football program literally imploded within two weeks of this tragedy.

This was happening smack-dab in the middle of the 2023 football season, too.

The players were devastated from the loss of one of their teammates.  The football coaches had to deal with their own feelings about this sad event and provide emotional counsel more than 100 grieving players on the roster, too.

Two days after Ronnie Caldwell’s death, Northwestern State’s football game at Nicholls State University was cancelled.  Just a few days following the funeral services were held for Ronnie Caldwell, the winless Demons football team suited up for a home game against Southland Conference foe Southeastern Louisiana.

On Thursday night October 19, 2023, Northwestern State lost 37-20 to the SLU Lions and dropped to 0-6 (plus a forfeit at Nicholls State).

That’s when the wheels fell off the entire football program 

The team’s head football coach, Brad Laird, abruptly resigned.

Laird was a former quarterback at the school and was halfway through his fifth season as Northwestern State’s head coach.

The football team itself became sharply divided, too.  Some players were still grieving and did not want to continue practicing.  Others were ready to move ahead and honor their friend by continuing to play ball and finish the 2023 football season.

The family of the slain football player held a news conference within days of the funeral and announced that the family had retained legal counsel.  That’s never a good sign.

That is when Northwestern State University President Dr. Marcus Jones stepped in and surprised nearly everyone.

On Thursday, October 26, 2023, he declared that the remaining four games for the Demons were being cancelled.  The school cited the mental health and well-being of its student-athletes as the primary reason for the decision.

The Southland Conference approved a request by the Northwestern State University Demons to end its 2023 football season as the team forfeited its four remaining conference games.

Ouch.

*Note – At the time of this post, I have been unable to obtain any subsequent verifiable information about the status of the two men arrested in Natchitoches who may or may not have been involved in the shooting death of Northwestern State defensive back Ronnie Caldwell in October, 2023.  Likewise, I have not read news about the status of any lawsuits which may be (or have been) filed by attorneys for Ronnie Caldwell’s family relating to his death.  

A complete overhaul of the football program quickly began

Northwestern State’s Director of Athletics, Kevin Bostion, had been hired by the school less than two yea...

Happy Groundhog Day!  Just like the classic Bill Murray movie by the same name, today seems like the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are replaying the same day over and over again.

Today marks the opening round for LIV Golf’s season #3.  The upstart golf league is teeing-up for the first of 14 events this year starting in Mayakoba, Mexico near Cancun for a 54-hole event.

Earlier this week, LIV Golf announced a deal with a corporate sponsor to allow the league to return to this Mexican destination for the next two years.

At the same time, the PGA Tour is playing this weekend at lovely Pebble Beach near San Francisco at the annual AT&T event (formerly known as the Bing Crosby Clambake a few decades ago).

Unlike a traditional PGA Tour event with 144 golfers in the tournament on Thursday, this week’s stop at Pebble Beach marks the first limited field event of the 2024 season.  The top 75 PGA professional golfers are playing at Pebble Beach this weekend.  They are competing for a record $20 million in prize money, too.  That is nearly triple the prize money offered at traditional PGA Tour stops.

Not to be outdone, the LIV Golf event in Mexico will pay $25 million in prize money this weekend to its field of only 54 players.   Even the worst scoring player in the LIV Golf field will net $50,000 afterwards.

These two men’s professional golf leagues have just entered their third year of direct competition.

Wait a minute!  Weren’t they in the process of merging?

Perhaps.  Well, maybe.  It’s not looking too good right now, either.

After the PGA Tour announced a merger with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf last June, the parties said that the deal was expected to close by December 31, 2023.  That deadline passed without a final agreement (as predicted here).  However, the two parties have hinted that discussions were still underway.

As the weeks of January passed, nothing new came of the merger negotiations.  One sticking point has been LIV Golf’s insistence that any deal with the PGA Tour must include their successful team concept.

In addition to competing for prize money for the lowest scores in each tournament, LIV Golf features 13 teams with four golfers apiece.  The three teams posting the lowest composite score at the end of the week will divvy-up an additional $5 million in prize money.

This new team concept for LIV Golf has succeeded in motivating the golfers who are not atop the leaderboard starting the final round.  Even a player near the bottom can shoot a low score in the final round to boost his team’s chances of a top-3 team finish.

Why doesn’t the PGA Tour feature team competition like that?

The PGA Tour has rarely played team events outside of the biennial Ryder Cup matches.

Ownership of the rights to the Ryder Cup are shared by the PGA Tour (who cashes in when the event is played on US soil every fourth year) and the European Tour (when the event is played in Europe every fourth year).

Only one PGA Tour stop (New Orleans) is played utilizing two-man teams.  The players find their own partners for the event.

A few months ago, a mixed team golf event featuring players from the PGA Tour, Champions (Senior) Tour, and the LPGA Tour was re-introduced after years on the shelf.  The initial reaction from fans and the players to that golf tournament was very positive.

The Ryder Cup matches put a significant amount of money directly into the PGA Tour’s coffers.  The PGA Tour’s “less is best” approach to regular team events helps to whet golf fans’ ...

Believe it or not, part of my job history was working for several years as a re-employment counselor for a state government agency.

A little more than twenty years ago, the small energy company I had been working for was sold to a much larger corporation.  The new company opted not to retain me.  With two sons heading into high school, it was time to find another job in our hometown rather than uproot the family once again.

After more than a year of various part-time gigs to help pay our household bills, I took the state civil service test to qualify for a few government jobs within our locale.

Upon passing the test, I applied for a job opening as a Re-employment Counselor at the state’s local unemployment office.

If you’ve ever received unemployment insurance payments after losing a job, your state requires everyone receiving a weekly unemployment benefit check to conduct an active job search.  Our office required job seekers to pay a personal visit every few months to review their employment search efforts and, hopefully, speed the process along.  I tried to match a person’s skills with the available job postings with local employers seeking to fill local positions.

The job was surprisingly enjoyable and rewarding.  After a half dozen years, I eventually returned to my previous field (which paid more money).  It was time to leave my job interviewing skills behind.

Until today.

I was thinking about how interesting it might be to check on the job search efforts of a certain legendary NFL football coach who recently became unemployed.

***Note – This obviously fabricated totally phony interview never took place.  It is 100% fiction and is intended to be taken in fun.

“Bill Belichick…Come on down!”

SS:  What an honor to meet you, Coach!   Wow, it’s really hard to believe that you have won six Super Bowls and are now out of a job and looking for work.

BB:  Yeah, me too!  Without me around, I doubt that New England would have won half of those Super Bowls. 

SS:  So, why did your last employer decide to let you go after 24 years with the team?

BB:  This last season didn’t go very well.  The team finished 4-13.  We have struggled for a few years of late.

SS:  Yes, I’m a big sports fan.  I noticed that your teams haven’t fared as well in recent years.

BB:  Yep.  The Patriots finished 8-9 the year before, too.  Some people blame Tom Brady for leaving us.  I think our recent teams just weren’t tough enough anymore.  Plus, I’m going to be 72 years old this year.  Maybe nobody wants an old coach running their NFL team anymore.   

SS:   I saw that you listed on your job search form that you had a couple of in-person interviews with the Atlanta Falcons.  How did that go?

BB:  Well, the Falcons still haven’t won a Super Bowl yet for good reason.  Seven years ago, you might remember that we (the Patriots) came from 28-3 down in the third quarter to get the game into overtime and win 34-28.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that game so many times during my interviews with the Falcons owner.   He also didn’t seem to like that I called them the Dirty Birds, too.

SS:  Nice job, Coach!  Saints fans like me have been calling the Falcons that for years!  People in Atlanta are still sensitive about that second half choke job in the Super Bowl to your New England Patriots team.  I noticed that the Falcons just hired Raheem Morris the other day for the head coaching job.  How do you feel about another former defensive coordinator getting the Atlanta job?

BB:  He’s probably a good coach, but, hey, did I mention that I have six Super Bowl rings?

SS:  Yep!  Have you had any other interviews for NFL head coaching positions?

On Sunday afternoon and evening, two very different but equally interesting football games were played to determine the combatants in the next Super Bowl game in less than two weeks.

The NFL, of course, will come out the big winner once again.  Perhaps more than 50 million television viewers watched seven hours of back-to-back championship football games on Sunday.

The action on the field yesterday was compelling.  Both games were decided by seven points or less.  All four teams played well and entertained football fans with a valiant effort.

First, the AFC title game

The AFC Champion Kansas City Chiefs took to the road for the second week in a row and beat the top NFL team during the regular season, the Baltimore Ravens.  If you only watched the opening quarter of this game, the final score of 17-10 was quite surprising.

Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes completed every pass attempt in the Chiefs’ opening drive of the game as KC jumped to a 7-0 first quarter lead on a touchdown catch by Travis Kelce.

Not to be outdone, Baltimore’s electric quarterback Lamar Jackson dodged and weaved several oncoming tacklers and heaved a 40-yard dart to wide receiver Zay Flowers as the Ravens quickly tied the score at 7-7.

Wow!  This is going to be a “First team to 30 points wins” type of game.   As usual, I was wrong.

The remainder of the AFC championship game was a chess match featuring two underappreciated defenses attempting to stymie a couple of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

Baltimore had plenty of chances to mount a comeback.  However, Lamar Jackson (as he has been prone to do in playoff games) fumbled early in the game to end a drive.

He later threw a “What was he thinking?” pass interception into a crowd of defenders in the end zone during the fourth quarter.  That pick-off effectively ended the season for the hometown Ravens.

Final score – Kansas City 17, Baltimore 10.

Next, the NFC Championship game

I was pleasantly surprised that the weather conditions in San Francisco for the late game against Detroit were so pleasant.  There were even a few rays of sunshine along with pleasant temperatures in the 60’s for this title match.  The Lions certainly can’t blame the weather.

However, they can blame their head coach!

The Detroit Lions (one of the four NFL teams never to have appeared in a Super Bowl) completely dominated the first half of play in taking a 24-7 lead into the locker room.  The Lions ran the ball right at San Francisco’s defense.  The one-two running back punch of David Montgomery and rookie sensation Jahmyr Gibbs led the Lions to 18 first downs in the opening half.  The dynamic duo ran for 148 yards as Detroit controlled the ball for nearly 75% of the first half.

Playing in its fourth NFC Championship Game in five years and third in a row, San Fran rallied to score 27 straight points in the second half to earn a spot in the upcoming Super Bowl game against Kansas City.   Quarterback Brock Purdy keyed a few of those drives as he surprised everyone with a couple of lengthy runs for first downs.

For some reason, the Lions abandoned their running attack in the second half.  They clawed back to score a late touchdown in the final minute to get within three points.  However, Detroit was unable to recover an onside kick to get the ball back one final time.

Final score – San Francisco 34, Detroit 31. 

In two weeks, the Big Game will feature the familiar 49ers and Taylor Swift’s favorite team, the Chiefs!

Coaches have to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em

Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell did a tremendous job in leading his team into the NFC Championship game for the first time since 1991.  However, the coach’s decisions to gamble on fourth down during ...