Eloquent Incoherence

The good news: five-star cornerback Donovan Warren, widely regarded as the best uncommitted high school football player left on the West Coast, verbally committed to Michigan on Thursday. Warren was widely expected to commit to USC, so his announcement came as a pleasant surprise.

The bad news: five-star cornerback/wide receiver Ronald Johnson (aka RoJo), the state of Michigan’s top prospect and the nation’s top cornerback, canceled an in-home visit from coach Lloyd Carr on Wednesday. This is significant because in-home visits from coaches from each of the other schools RoJo is considering–Florida, Michigan State, Ohio State, and USC–took place this week as scheduled. Losing out on RoJo would be a tremendous disappointment, since Michigan needs a lot of help in the secondary and was widely thought to be the frontrunner in the RoJo sweepstakes.

More (potentially) bad news: four-star wide receiver Martell Webb, who verbally committed to Michigan months ago, will visit the University of Miami during a Super Bowl trip this weekend.

Needless to say, national signing day is on Wednesday, but a lot can happen between now and then.

Many Michigan football fans (including yours truly) have speculated that 61 year-old Lloyd Carr will retire after next season, his thirteenth as head coach. A small yet significant change in the language of Carr’s contract indicates Carr might already have decided that the 2007 season will be his last, and that he has informed the powers-that-be of his plans. His old contract contained a clause that entitled him to a $300,000 bonus if he remained head coach through July 1, 2007. An addendum Carr signed on December 21 amends this clause to guarantee him the bonus if he remains employed by the University “in any capacity” through July 1, 2008. The only reason Carr would want to make such a change is to square the July 1 clause with another clause under which he would become an associate athletic director upon retirement from coaching.

There are strategic reasons related to recruiting and succession why Carr and the athletic department may want to keep the decision under wraps until (at the earliest) the beginning of next season. But if the change means what I think it means, the athletic department will very soon face the most significant decision with respect to Michigan football since 1969. I hope they’re prepared.

That’s right, $250 million. I didn’t add a zero by accident. Beckham will be the second-highest paid athlete in the world (behind Tiger Woods). He’ll make twice as much as baseball player Alexander Rodriguez, the highest-paid athlete in any of the four major American sports leagues (the NFL, the NBA, MLB, and the NHL). Beckham must have the best agent in the world, because most Americans could care less about soccer (or “football”, as it’s called outside of the United States and Canada) and are barely even aware that MLS exists, let alone a team called the L.A. Galaxy. The $250 million figure includes endorsement and merchandise deals, which athletes in the four major sports leagues typically negotiate separately from their playing contracts. But Beckham’s contract presumably allows him to pursue endorsement deals independent of those packaged with his playing contract, meaning that he could end up making even more.

Beckham’s deal is likely to spark discussion about the increasingly outrageous salaries of professional athletes. The deal is indeed ridiculous, but there are lesser-known people who make much more money than he does. Many CEO’s of Fortune 100 companies have annual compensation packages that run into the 9-figure range. Their deals often don’t make the headlines unless they become the subject of a corporate scandal (like Dennis Kozlowski). If a professional athlete performs poorly, his market value drops and he makes less money. If a corporate CEO performs poorly and resigns, his “golden parachute” kicks in and he gets a severance package worth upto hundreds of millions of dollars. And while professional athletes typically hail from working-class families, CEO’s and wealthy businesspeople are often born into privileged communities with high-powered connections and no shortage of opportunities.

It’s easy to direct our anger at Beckham’s deal because he’s a flashy celebrity and a public figure, but the people who profit from his athletic skill and celebrity status are drawn from the elite group described above and make even more money than he does. Unlike Beckham, they largely escape our scrutiny. For example, when players in the major professional sports leagues go on strike (MLB 1994, NFL 1987) or are locked out (NBA 1998, NHL 2004) because of labor disputes, our first reaction is outrage at how selfish and spoiled they are. But what about the owners? As much as the players don’t need their outrageous salaries, the owners of the teams they play for need their more outrageous profits even less. As ridiculous as the demands of players’ unions often are, the demands of the owners who oppose them are even more ridiculous in light of their massive fortunes. Yet most of our scorn and disdain is directed at the former and not the latter.

Sports stars and other celebrities are no doubt overpaid and spoiled. But they’re not the most powerful people in society, nor are they the worst examples of materialist excess. That distinction goes to the people in the shadows who pull the strings.

(courtesy of Manal)

Jake over at Motown Sports Revival offers some great in-depth analysis about who the next Michigan football coach should be.

Wow. I definitely didn’t see that coming. Florida’s complete domination of Ohio State was simply shocking. The Gator defense looked extremely well-prepared to face Troy Smith, and Jim Tressel had no answers for Urban Meyer’s innovative offense. Chris Leak finally lived up to his potential, and Troy Smith looked nothing like the QB who passed for 391 yards and 4 TDs against Michigan. I was rooting for Ohio State, but the choice was like choosing between a tetanus shot and a root canal. I guess Big Ten pride trumped my hatred of Ohio State, and I really wanted the SEC trolls to shut up (luckily, Penn State and Wisconsin did their part). It kills me to admit it, but our loss coupled with Florida’s dominating win pretty much renders the whole BCS controversy from a month ago moot. I still think the current system is dysfunctional and that a playoff is desperately needed, but this year is no longer exhibit A in that case.

Well, the 2007 college football season is over. It was a good season; there were a lot of great storylines. I’ll probably go through a period of withdrawal (especially since it ended on such a sour note for my Wolverines), and the number of college football-related posts will likely be kept to a minimum over the next few months (with the exception of national signing day).

Junior defensive tackle Alan Branch announced today that he is skipping his senior season and declaring himself eligible for the NFL Draft. So much for our defense next year…

Unsurprisingly, LSU blew out Notre Dame 41-14 in the Sugar Bowl. It was a great win for LSU and coach Les Miles (even if it came over the most overrated program in college football). But how much credit does Miles deserve? He’s in his second season with LSU, and the bulk of his starters were recruited by his predecessor Nick Saban. Saban pulled in the #1 recruiting class in the nation in 2003 and the #2 recruiting class in 2004. He was also partly responsible for massive upgrades to LSU’s facilities, including the construction of a new academic center and a state-of-the-art football facility. When Saban bolted for the NFL, Miles inherited the program in pristine condition. As well as LSU has done this season, they would have underachieved had they done any worse. And a strong argument can be made that 11-2 without a conference championship is an underachievement, given the level of talent on this year’s team.

What makes this relevant to Michigan is that Miles is a Michigan man, and the top job at Michigan is likely to open up in the not-too-distant future. Miles played and coached at Michigan under Bo Schembechler, and with 62 year-old Lloyd Carr entering his 13th season as head coach, Miles’ name has been widely suggested as a candidate to replace Carr when he retires. But in my view, Miles hasn’t proven much at LSU, and his teams have exhibited the same flaws that have plagued Michigan recently. LSU lost to Auburn this year because they didn’t throw the ball enough and refused to abandon a clearly ineffective game plan (sound familiar?). Their 5-turnover, mistake-filled performance against Florida was nothing short of embarrassing. Last year, they blew a 21-point lead and lost at home to a Tennessee team that finished the season 5-6. They were blown out in the SEC Championship Game later that year by an underdog Georgia team with less talent and an inferior record. In Michigan-like fashion, Miles has tried to build LSU’s offense around its running game, despite having a talented quarterback and receiving corps but an unproven offensive line. LSU fans have often criticized Miles’ offense as too conservative and predictable, the same complaint Michigan fans have voiced about Carr.

Don’t get me wrong; a 22-4 record is nothing to scoff at, and LSU will likely never have a “bad” season under Miles. However, the similarity of his teams’ few yet significant shortcomings to those that have recently plagued Michigan is further proof that Michigan sorely needs a change in philosophy, not another coach from the same mold. The program went on auto-pilot when Bo Schembechler retired 16 years ago and has changed very little since then. Les Miles is another Schembechler disciple who would likely do little to infuse the new identity that Michigan football needs.

“They’re a traditional straight up offense. If they line up one way, if they’re in certain formations, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to pick out what they were going to do,” said USC defensive end Lawrence Jackson following his team’s 32-18 win against Michigan.

From the Michigan Daily.

Well, what can I say? USC played a great game. They adjusted after a comatose first half that ended in a 3-3 tie, and we didn’t. John David Booty and Dwayne Jarrett had career nights, and our biggest playmakers Mike Hart and Mario Manningham were both non-factors. They pounded our secondary for 397 passing yards, most of it coming in the second half. They moved the ball seemingly at will on their fourth touchdown drive, going 85 yards in 4 plays. Even our usually reliable offensive line gave up six sacks. Overall, our defense looked unprepared and overwhelmed. And our offense looked uninspired and predictable. We failed to win our final two (and biggest) games for the seventh year in a row. We’ve lost four consecutive bowl games. An immensely promising season has fallen apart in dramatic fashion.

It’s becoming painfully apparent to all but the most naive that there is something wrong with the Michigan program. Lloyd Carr is a good coach and a class act, and I’m not jumping on the “Fire Lloyd Carr” bandwagon. But four consecutive bowl losses and a 1-5 record against Ohio State since 2001 are clearly indicative of a systematic problem. The offensive playcalling in the Rose Bowl was was horrendously predictable, which seems to have been the story in each of our last four bowl games. Defensive coordinators will privately admit that Michigan is an easy team to game plan against, given a month of preparation time. Defensively, things aren’t much better. We make the same mistakes and have the same vulnerabilities (running QB’s, option-heavy offensive schemes) year in and year out. After we lost the Alamo Bowl last year, ESPN analyst and former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz remarked, “Michigan has been running the same plays since we played them back when they wore leather helmets.”

Although the coaching staff shakeups last offseason helped alleviate our chronic inability to close out games, this latest bowl loss and our ongoing struggles in big games indicate that problems persist. I think it’s time for a change in philosophy. It may not happen as long as Lloyd Carr is coach (and again, he’s earned the right to go out on his own terms), but I think we should look outside the Michigan family for his replacement when he does decide to call it quits. I had mentioned in a previous post that I thought defensive coordinator Ron English would make a good successor to Carr, but Monday’s loss has convinced me that it’s time for a fresh perspective. Bringing in some new blood that has never been trained in the ways of Michigan football might be the best way to bring a fresh perspective to the program. Six years ago USC, another tradition-laden program, gambled on a coach who had no ties to USC and whose prior experience was almost entirely at the professional level. That coach, Pete Carroll, has since returned USC to national prominence and is regarded as among the best in college football. It’s true that the Michigan Way has yielded a remarkable pattern of consistency and stability. But in the era of spread offenses and creative playcalling, an ability to adapt, adjust, and innovate is essential to compete as a National Championship-caliber team.

(I highly recommend that every Michigan football fan read Michael Rosenberg’s two columns in the Detroit Free Press linked to above as well as Jake’s take on the issue of criticism of Lloyd Carr over at Motown Sports Revival.)

Miami Dolphins head coach Nick Saban has reportedly been offered $40 million to become the next head football coach of the University of Alabama. If the reports are true and Saban accepts, Alabama will have pulled off quite a coup with this hire. Alabama hasn’t been considered among college football’s elite programs since Gene Stallings retired ten years ago, yet the Crimson Tide faithful haven’t lowered their expectations. Saban would step into one of the most high-pressure situations in college football, a job that has killed the careers of two coaches and forced a third to run off.

But if there is someone who can revive the Alabama program, it’s Saban. He turned LSU into a national power, winning the BCS National Championship in 2003. He led chronically dysfunctional Michigan State to its only 10-win season in the past 15 years. Perhaps most importantly, Saban has the track record, reputation, and personality to get the same respect from recruits that Steve Spurrier and Bob Stoops get. Alabama hasn’t won any recruiting wars in the talent-rich southeast in a long time, which is essential to stay competitive in the SEC.

Saban has publicly maintained that he has no interest in the Alabama job, going so far as to state, “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.” But like Steve Spurrier, his foray into the professional ranks has been turbulent and seems to indicate that the college game suits him better. He has also privately expressed frustration at certain aspects of coaching in the NFL, such as coaches’ lack of control over personnel decisions.

I expect that Saban will end up taking the Alabama job, despite his vehement assertions to the contrary. He’s a college coach, and the type of guy who likes to be the top dog (he’s rumored to have left Michigan State because he was sick of being overshadowed by Michigan). He would be worshiped as a God in Alabama if he can turn that program around. That, plus an offer for a college job that pays more money than a lot of NFL jobs is probably too good to pass up.

UPDATE: Saban accepted Alabama’s offer Wednesday morning, and is set to become the highest-paid coach in college football. Wise move, in my opinion. He would probably have had to come back to the college ranks eventually anyway, and might have had to start at a lower rung of the ladder than the one he left.