Football coaches should take more chances

Only vaguely related but both are interesting reads:

1.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Deconstructing-The-grisly-demise-of-Tressel-Ba?urn=ncaaf,189322

"Jim Tressel is a dinosaur, and like all dinosaurs, not like for this world. And if I was the multi-talented Terrelle Pryor, stuck in the straitjacket of the OSU offense, I'd be thinking long and hard about where I might transfer to."



2.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/a-new-study-on-fourth-downs-go-for-it/
and
http://www.advancednflstats.com/2009/09/4th-down-study-part-1.html





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The connection? Obviously there are other factors at play, but Pete "big balls" Carroll has beaten Jim Tressel yet again. Was anyone surprised?

I know this is oversimplifying it, but its a blog: why don't coaches go for it more often on 4th down? Why don't they generally take more risks, when they see coaches like Carroll and Belichick (I know, he's a cheater) succeed year in and out?

My guess is two factors:
1. Lack of job security. If you lose a game because you took a risk other coaches normally don't take, it's easy to point to that moment and say you blew it. If you played conservative and lost, its too easy for the fans and media to say "they were just outplayed."
2. Generally, statistical analysis in football is behind baseball at this point. I'm not sure if this will change, but there is a fairly conservative organizational culture around football, especially in the NFL I'd argue.

Dying a thousand deaths

My wife doesn't understand how I watch football. She doesn't get the therapeutic value of going over every possible bad and worse scenario that could transpire for your team over the course of a game. She doesn't see that a blow to the gut isn't as bad if you see it coming. And if your envisioned bad scenario doesn't play out, and your team is victorious...it's like you've won twice over.

So I watch. And I bite my nails, and I assume the worse. All to soften the ultimate blow of defeat, and to enhance the elation of victory. That is why I die a thousand deaths during the course of a game, and thousands upon thousands of deaths in the course of a season.

But when my beloved Irish lose 38-34 in the Big House, after erasing an 11 point deficit, and taking a 3 point lead on the Statue of Liberty play, only to give up the winning TD with 11 seconds left, against a freshman QB well...Well you just feel dead inside.

Go Giants.

It's Official

The Pirates have clinched their 17th consecutive losing season. This is noteworthy, and not simply because this blog is somewhat Pittsburgh-centric. Their string of futility is now etched in the record books.

So, my optimism at the future of the Pirates isn't only based on me being a glass-half-full guy. During no point in the past decade was I under any illusion that the Pirates were headed in the right direction. That is until now.

During the past two seasons they've drafted well and have traded aging, expensive talent for good prospects. While I believe 2010 will be another record setting year with their 18th consecutive losing season, I think that streak will break in 2011 with a team right around .500. I'll go on the record predicting an 82 win season in 2011. Maybe that is the glass-half-full part speaking. Who knows.

Josh, Chad. Your thoughts?

One of those times when you just scratch your head and say "really"?

So like most people who work long hours, I catch the headline stories in sports in various ways. Sure, I check the major websites for the headlines, but many of us know where to get the real news: PTI.



For those who are unfamiliar, PTI is short for Pardon The Interruption and is a show where two longtime journalists shout absurdly at each other as if there was a relationship between volume and the coherence of a particular view. I try to catch it on my DVR because while I may already know what tonight's pitching matchups are, PTI is great at informing me of who the next athlete to have a breakout reality tv series will be. As someone who doesn't watch reality tv, I need Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser to remind me that truth really is stranger than fiction.



During today's episode, viewers learned that Tom Brady has joined the ranks of Tiger Woods and LeBron James and now has a logo - often a smart business move. Are you ready to see what the brilliant graphic designers Tom Brady hired came up with?










Like the aforementioned Lebron James, Brady was able to integrate both his initials and his number into the logo. So, you may be asking, how does a guy like Brady end up with a logo that looks like the Wal-Mart knock-off brand of the real athletic gear you really wanted when you were a kid. Trust me. I dealt with my fair share of knock-off stuff as a kid and can spot those cheesy logos in a second. And this is one of them.



So, how does Tom Brady, who without the heroics of David Tyree, would have an enviable collection of four Super Bowl rings, the guy who can pose in GQ without losing his credibility as a man's man, the guy who perfectly pulls off the stylish haven't-shaved-in-three-days stubble, the guy who's married to the stunning Gisele Bundchen, the guy who women want to be with and men want to be - how can a guy so suave come up with a logo that looks like it belongs on the shorts of an unwashed child who can't afford Nike shorts because dad spent the month's rent money on lottery tickets?



I have no answers for this riddle. Personally, I think Pam Beesly, who failed out of the Pratt Institute, could have fashioned a better logo in half the time for a fraction of the cost. But maybe I'm mixing fiction and reality with that assertion.



The bottom line is, will this embarrassingly bad logo affect Tom Brady's play? If he struggles, I'll insist it's the logo that's weighing him down, not the shoulder or the knee. But that's just me.