In case you hadn’t noticed, football is a business. Fans buy tickets (or they watch on TV, which creates a huge advertising market, which creates huge TV contracts). The owners take the money from the tickets and the TV deals, and they pay the players. (Yes, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but you get the picture.) The end result is that people (say, Calvin Johnson) can sign contracts for $132 million. (Of course, keep in mind that the numbers you always hear are really just splotches of ink on paper; NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed and Johnson could very well be cut sometime before his contract expires. Pay attention to the guaranteed number; in Johnson’s case, $60 million. Still pretty good, right.)

To the 99% of us, that sounds like an exorbitant amount of money. And it is. But does he deserve it? Of course he does. The simplest argument is that someone is paying him that money; therefore, he deserves it. His owner and general manager are perfectly happy to pay him that money (well, I’m sure they’d have liked to have given him less, but Calvin Johnson wasn’t holding a gun to their heads and demanding $132 million).

Beyond that, consider how much revenue the NFL is taking in. For example, in 2008 the NFL took in $1.68 billion in ticket sales. (See lots of numbers here.) In 2007, the NFL made roughly $3.7 billion from its TV deals. Throw in licensing, local revenues from teams, and everything else, and the total adds up to somewhere around $9 billion.

$9 billion. Per year. Divide that by 32 teams and you’re looking at roughly $280 million per team. (The NFL shares more revenue than the other sports leagues do, so there’s not as much variation among teams as there would be in, say, MLB.) When a team is making $280 million a season, does paying a superstar $15 million seem ridiculous? I don’t think so. Sure, the teams have various other costs besides player salaries; that’s why there’s a collective bargaining agreement specifying how much money the players are going to get.

Now, I’ve explained how the NFL makes money. So why do the players command such salaries? Why don’t the NFL owners just pay the NFL minimum (a few hundred thousand dollars, if memory serves) to some CFL or Arena League players? For that matter, there are plenty of fans who’d certainly play for minimum wage. (And if you’re a college, you can get them to play for free! But that’s another story.) Why not drag some people off the street, coach them up, and then have them play in the Superdome?

The answer to that is pretty simple. It would be horrific to watch. People want to watch the best football players in the world. And I can assure you, the drop-off between the best players and the scrubs at the end of the bench can be quite drastic. Now, remember that the 53rd guy on the roster was probably the best player at the playground, the best player on his high school team, and probably got a full college scholarship. But he is nowhere near as good as the players ahead of him. A few years ago I was watching a preseason game (Dolphins at Saints) at the Superdome. The quarterbacks for the vast majority of the game were Joey Harrington and Chad Henne. Those were two and a half of the most miserable hours of my life. (On a side note, after that game I have almost never complained about any of the rules protecting quarterbacks. I’ve been spoiled by my years of watching Drew Brees and I do not want to watch a terrible quarterback play for my team ever again.) If the best players weren’t in the league, the quality would be much, much worse. The simple fact of the matter is that the best players, through their talent and hard work, have skills that are virtually impossible to replicate. People complain about how such-and-such a profession is underpaid (perhaps teachers, or policemen, or whatever). That’s because many more people can do those jobs acceptably well. Left tackle in the NFL? Much more difficult to pull off. Sure, maybe you could say that some of the people in those “underpaid” professions “contribute more to society”; but that’s virtually impossible to measure. What you can measure is what people spend their money on. And millions of Americans choose to spend it on the NFL.

The bottom line is that the NFL is an entertainment business. The players are entertainers. Is Taylor Swift overpaid when 20,000 teenage girls pay $100 a ticket to watch her sing? Is Drew Brees overpaid when 70,000 people pay $100 a ticket to watch him throw a football? Is (insert name of movie star here) overpaid when millions of people pay $10 to see him on a screen? There are two ways to approach those three questions. You can either respond with petty, jealous emotion; or you can rationally consider what those people did to inspire so many fans to part with their hard-earned time and money to enjoy the entertainment provided. Would I like it if my Saints season ticket was $100 a season instead of $480? I sure would. Is Tom Benson knocking at my door threatening to break my kneecaps if I don’t buy a ticket? No. If you don’t like the money that Calvin Johnson or Drew Brees or even Taylor Swift is making, then don’t spend your money on them. It’s as simple as that.

But this isn’t a diatribe against sleazy boosters or rule-bending coaches or corrupt governing bodies. This is about the absurdity of the very notion of amateurism and its roots in the snootiness of 19th century England. The lazy landed gentry with their public school educations (in England, “public school” means “school where the really rich people go”) were playing cricket or various forms of football and didn’t want to compete against the working-class rabble. The people who had actual jobs couldn’t afford to take the time off work needed to compete at the highest level, so sports were, at first, exclusively for “amateurs” (i.e. the elites). In some cases, not only was getting paid to play outlawed, but in the case of rowing, anyone who was a “mechanic, artisan, or labourer” was not allowed to compete. Heaven forbid the factory workers with their big muscles should compete against the upper class. However, in the late 19th century sports such as soccer and rugby started to attract spectators (i.e. money). This led to a desire for better players, and in 1885 soccer’s governing body in England, the Football Association, officially allowed professionalism. Rugby didn’t handle things so well, leading to the 1895 split that still exists today: rugby league (which allowed professionalism) and rugby union (which, shockingly, didn’t officially become professional until 1995).

Meanwhile, American universities were a major part of the nation’s sporting landscape. What started out as occasional matches between schools morphed into big business. In the 1920‘s, for instance, Illinois’s star running back, Red Grange, parlayed his college football fame into a huge NFL contract. And we know what college football is like these days: year-round press attention, 100,000 seat stadia, millions of dollars in donations to schools, multibillion dollar TV deals. From the humble beginnings of a simple extracurricular activity, college sports evolved into what it is today. And yet, the notion of amateurism hardly evolved with it. To be sure, it changed somewhat; at first, even the idea of offering athletic scholarships was forbidden. But the very idea that amateurism needs to exist at all is absurd. Universities sometimes attract outstanding high school students by offering them stipends along with full scholarships; at the very least, why shouldn’t they be able to offer athletes a few thousand dollars a year in spending money? And beyond that, why shouldn’t they be free to offer athletes what they’re actually worth? Why should the talent of a Kevin Durant or Tim Tebow subsidize the scholarship of some no-name middle-distance runner or gymnast? The vast majority of college sports are wastes of money, but the NCAA requires schools to operate many sports. For example, Division I schools must offer at least 14 sports (with at least six for men and seven for women). Why? So that the NCAA looks like it cares about all those student-athletes “who are going pro in something other than sports.” Now, I know that Title IX is going to require male-female parity regardless of what the NCAA says, but why should colleges be forced to spend money on any more sports than they have to? Keep college football and men’s basketball, then field however many women’s sports you have to in order to comply with Title IX. If you want to have wrestling or diving or fencing, make them club sports, not sports that give out athletic scholarships. I’d agree that sports are a worthy extracurricular, just as a debate team or literary magazine would be. And schools should fund them accordingly. But if a sport can’t produce a profit, why should a school take money from the profitable sports in order to fund the unprofitable ones?

In many cases, those unprofitable sports mean that the athletic department at a whole runs at a loss. (And of course, even football isn’t a guaranteed moneymaker, especially in a down economy.) Often that shortfall is made up for with mandatory student fees; even a student who doesn’t care about sports may be forced to pay fees that prop up the athletic department. Some schools take in millions of dollars annually thanks to student fees. (Last year, USA Today did a big piece about student fees going toward athletic programs.)

I don’t want to slight the effort and talent of the college students who play the lesser-appreciated sports. I respect the commitment they have to their sports and to their education. I don’t blame them for taking advantage of the system as it exists now. But does what they do for their university equal the expense the college pours into their sports (whether in scholarships, or, even at the non-scholarship levels, in travel costs, equipment, stadium upkeep, etc.)? Of course not, or every single sport would be operating at a profit. If a college (or even an outside group) wanted to fund scholarships for athletes just as they might fund them for good students or oboe players or left-handed people or duck callers or duct tape tailors (I’m not making these up), then so be it. But the NCAA–you know, the guys that control that $11 billion TV contract to March Madness–wants to keep up the idea that the BCS star quarterbacks are student-athletes just the same as the Division III women’s back-up soccer midfielders, so they force these unprofitable sports upon schools.

There are a number of proposals making the rounds. Some want to give students a few thousand dollars per year so they can pay for food and other living expenses. Some go farther and suggest that we allow students to sign autographs or endorse products. But critics say that those proposals would undoubtedly lead to bidding wars: coaches would say to recruits, “Come here and we can get you a car” or “We’ve got boosters who will pay $1000 for an autograph session” or whatever. Of course that would happen. But I say: so what?

I see no reason why professionalism shouldn’t be allowed in college sports. And I know I’m not the first person to suggest this, but why even make the athletes be students? We know that the graduation rates for many big-name programs are jokes. We know that schools stretch their academic standards to take in great athletes who wouldn’t have any hope of being admitted on their academic merits. Just pay the star players the same way you’d pay a professor or janitor or anyone in between. If they want to take classes, let them, but why force them to? Why bother with letting them have only four years of eligibility? Why not let “pro sports” and “college sports” be the same thing? Sure, some schools wouldn’t be able to pay their players as much, but that happens in MLB or in countless sports leagues around the world and they all survive.

Athletes, just like movie stars or musicians, are entertainers. Why should one category of entertainer be prevented from profiting from their talents while everyone else is free to make money? Child movie stars who go to college aren’t prevented from shooting a few films over the summer. (Of course, many athletes can go the Michelle Wie route of being a professional athlete and going to college, but that’s impossible for football and basketball players thanks to the NFL and NBA’s absurd age restrictions.) It’s time to relegate the Victorian concept of amateurism to the dustbin of failed ideas.

But he still sucks. He’s a left back, but he can’t defend, which is a pretty important skill to have if you’re a left back. He was terrible in the World Cup last year, and he was terrible today against Mexico in the Gold Cup. I realize we’re thin at left back, but is that really the best we can do? When Steve Cherundolo went down with an injury, not only did we have to bring Bornstein on, we had to switch Lichaj over to the right. Lichaj has looked pretty good on the left, but he didn’t seem comfortable on the left. So we got worse at two positions. In a perfect world we’d have had Timmy Chandler come on at right back, but he wasn’t called up, presumably because we wanted to keep his German club team happy, as he would’ve had no offseason had he played in the Gold Cup. (Some thought that it might have to do with him wanting to play for Germany, but that’s not happening, according to interviews with him and his agent.)

Again, I realize our lack of depth and experience along the back, but couldn’t we have brought on Spector? Or Ream, even if it meant shuffling some players around, which we did anyway? As soon as Bornstein came on, it’s like the entire Internet said, “Oh, shit!” (Well, the American parts of it, anyway. The Mexican parts we’re saying, “Hell yes! Look at this crappy half-Mexican defender the gringos just brought on!”) Everybody knows he sucks, except for Bob Bradley. Sometimes Bradley gets attached to players and those guys pan out. (Exhibit A: coach’s son Michael Bradley, who is an absolute beast in the midfield.) Other times, it just doesn’t—for example, Ricardo Clark get inexplicable minutes in WC 2010. It’s the same thing with Bornstein. He just sucks, and needs to be booted from the national team.

Right now the league dominates the American sports scene. I admit I’m a little bit biased, living in the football-mad South and Saints-crazed New Orleans, but the NFL is clearly the biggest of the Big Four North American sports leagues. The league is doing incredibly well on TV, and even in the recent economic downturn the vast majority of NFL teams routinely sell out their stadia for every game. It would be incredibly stupid for the teams and players to risk a nightmare along the lines of the 1994-95 MLB strike. That ruined baseball for years; it only made a decent comeback after the long-ball era and home run chases of the late 90s and early 2000s, an era that we now know was tainted by steroid use. I’m sure the teams and players of MLB must have cost themselves a ton of money due to the game’s decreased popularity. Why should the NFL take that risk? It’s in a great position right now. That doesn’t mean it’ll automatically always be the biggest league in the US, but a strike could certainly have damaging short and long term effects. What if a league such as the UFL makes a push for expansion and increased popularity during a lockout or strike, then tries to stick around? What if people decide they’d rather just watch college football, knowing that teams can’t threaten to relocate and there are no strikes or lockouts?

If these owners get taxpayer-subsidized stadium deals, billions in TV revenue, tons of money from tickets and suites and personal seat licenses and concessions, etc., and they still can’t make money, then they must be stupid. Which seems unlikely, given that most of them bought teams after acquiring vast sums of wealth in the business world.

To a certain extent, the players are the more sympathetic side. They play a violent sport and have incredibly short careers. Many face devastating health problems after retirement. There has been a great deal of talk about chronic traumatic encephalopathy and its side effects, with many suggesting a link between multiple concussions and later incidences of depression and even suicide. The players are (and rightly so) pushing for better health care.

But at the same time, it all eventually comes back to money. And while I can’t feel much sympathy for the owners, it’s hard to feel sorry for the players. There are tons of stories of athletes (in the NFL and elsewhere) who foolishly blow through their millions and end up bankrupt when they could have easily been set for life. (HBO’s Real Sports did a piece on one such player a few weeks ago.) Instead of living modestly, you get players living outlandish, extravagant lifestyles. Maybe they’re like Antonio Cromartie and they father so many children it takes quite a while just to remember their names. Seriously, how ridiculous is that? And he missed one, as this article points out. Those child support payments must really add up.

Now, to be fair, there are a lot of journeymen NFL players who never pile up the millions, and plenty of the superstars are responsible with their money. But it’s hard to feel sorry for NFL players when they burn through millions of dollars. Yes, I hope the NFL does a better job of dealing with concussions and their consequences. No, I don’t want an 18 game regular season. But I really don’t care what percentage of revenues the players get and how many expense credits the owners get to take before distributing revenues and all that other technical legal bullcrap. The bottom line is that I want a damn NFL season to start six months from now. And if the NFL and the players have any sense whatsoever, they’ll make it happen or they’ll end up kicking themselves in the long run.

As time has passed, more information has come out about how this situation is going to work. First, there were reports of a door-to-door 90-minute commute by private plane, which sounded a bit unlikely. Instead, according to an article in today’s Times-Picayune, Payton will live full-time in the New Orleans area during the season, with his family flying in for Saints home games; he also expects to move from Mandeville somewhere closer to Saints headquarters in Metairie.

Most rational Saints fans and New Orleanians acknowledge and understand Payton’s desire to do what he feels is best for his family. But just about everyone in the area, on at least some level, is emotionally appalled at Payton’s decision. You live in Dallas for a couple years, then you live here for five years, become more-or-less deified after winning a Super Bowl, then you decide Dallas is a nicer place to raise a family than here? New Orleans has had a long rivalry/inferiority complex with regards to Dallas and Houston and Atlanta. Everybody holds those cities up as crown jewels of the South, with their downtown corporate headquarter skyscrapers and their vast, sprawling suburbs filled with cookie-cutter houses and strictly regulated signage in commercial areas. But we in New Orleans steadfastly reject those supposed paragons of commerce and industry and wealth. We think it’s a good idea to take a mid-winter Tuesday off work, make enormous papier-mâché tractor-towed floats, throw silly trinkets from said floats, fight over said trinkets, and drink alcohol and eat king cake while doing these things. Clearly our way of life is different.

But is our way of life better? Obviously those of us who live here think so. And we can point to plenty of transplants who came here, fell in love with it, and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. And when someone comes here, lives here, then decides that the grass is greener in Westlake, Texas, it hurts us. Sure, we can realize that maybe this place isn’t for everyone. But when one of the two most famous men in the city, the orchestrator of the city’s happiest moment ever, when this guy rejects us—it’s painful.

I can understand why regular folks leave New Orleans. The schools, for one: why pay for a great education in New Orleans when it’s free (well, funded by the property taxes) in so many other places? Or crime: the city’s reputation as a crime hotbed is, along with the schools issue, one of the city’s severest black marks on its reputation. But for a multi-millionaire living in Mandeville, neither of these is an issue. He can send his kids to Jesuit or Newman or Country Day or whatever. I’m guessing there haven’t been any murders on his street. I’d like to know why this country club is so much nicer than, say, English Turn. What makes it so much better that it’s worth living away from your family for half the year? (Granted, I doubt most NFL coaches see much of their family during the season. And anyway, kids these days are often so busy they rarely see their parents! I remember being in high school and being so busy with play rehearsals that I’d go days without seeing my mother!) What makes life at the Vaquero Club worth leaving the New Orleans area behind?

Along with the article I mentioned above, the Times-Picayune also published a bunch of reader comments from its website. Here are the two I found most interesting.

“I was born and raised in New Orleans. My family now resides in Houston, Texas, with the exception of my daughter and son-in-law, who recently got married and reside in Shreveport. Our families still live in Nawlins. And as much as I love the city, I would never move back. We are constantly asked would we move back, and the answer is always an emphatic NO. The communities, schooling, everyday way of life, and endless opportunities in Texas are just so far beyond New Orleans. It’s sad to say, but true.” — Mike

Schooling? As mentioned before, I get that. “Endless opportunities?” I can understand that too, I guess. Texas is a big place—more people, more jobs, more places to work, and so forth. Communities? I have a sneaking suspicion that’s a polite way of saying “We live far, far away from the poor people.” “Way of life?” I have no clue what the fuck that means and how Houston could ever be beyond New Orleans in that category. Maybe some of you people who have lived in both places could fill me in.

The other comment I found most interesting:

“My rational brain tells me he has a right to live anywhere he chooses … no big deal. Emotionally, though, I feel like I just took a sucker punch to the gut.

“We New Orleanians are fiercely proud of our home and our way of life. We cling to the idea that anyone exposed to that for any length of time would never want to give it up. Sean Payton and his family have been immersed in our culture for five years, and it seems like they’ve had enough. To each his own, of course, but that doesn’t lessen the sense of rejection some of us feel.” — cbmarsh (Gee, I wonder who that could be?)

That pretty well sums up how I feel. We are incredibly, exceedingly proud of our hometown. (Where else would you have “Proud to call it home” bumper stickers?)* And when someone rejects us, especially someone we respect so much, even the proudest among us have to give in to some twinges of doubt? Are we blinded by love for our native or adopted homeland? Do we ignore the city’s failings? Are we crazy or stupid or both for living here? As I said before, I can understand why people leave when they can’t figure out how to make a living and support their families here. But me? I am fiercely—perhaps excessively—loyal. I didn’t want to leave the state for college; partly because I bought in to the whole TOPS stuff of staying in Louisiana, partly because I didn’t want to live in a dorm. I didn’t want to leave for grad school, either. And here I am now, almost two years after getting a master’s degree, 24 years old and bouncing between periods of unemployment and underemployment, leeching off my parents, steadfastly refusing to emigrate in search of a job. Is this the behavior of a sane human being with principles, standards, and a healthy sense of loyalty?

Yes, yes it is. Some of us have good taste in cities. Sean Payton, great football coach though he may be, clearly doesn’t. Enjoy your house and your golf course, but realize that, though you will still be respected here, you will never get the kind of worshipful treatment you got during the Super Bowl victory parade, as you stood atop a float, Vince Lombardi Trophy in one hand, can of Bud Light in the other. (Seriously, though: Bud Light? You buy a pricey bottle of wine just to prank Jerry Jones but you can’t splurge on some Abita? What the fuck, man.)

* I can’t remember if I’ve said this before here, but New Orleans and New York are by far the two most self-obsessed, self-absorbed, self-worshipping cities in the country. They’re also my two favorite cities, although the Big Apple is a distant, distant second in my book. Sorry NYC.

In case you don’t already realize how awesome this concept is, let’s go back to basics. What is the point of a business? To make money. What is the point of a sports team? To win. What is the point of a business that is a sports team? To make money and to win. But what happens when those two goals collide? Which one of them gets pushed by the wayside? Sure, some owners spend money lavishly, running their teams more to stroke their ego than to make money. Others are miserly, clinging to their investment and looking for every last penny.* The two goals—profit and winning—can come into conflict, and a team’s success is often determined by which of the two the owner would rather seek.

What’s the best way to solve the problem? Get rid of the owners—or, technically, have a lot more of them. The Packers’ structure is basically the perfect model for a sports team. There is no profit motive; of course, there is still an incentive to keep the team solvent, but a bare-bones operation benefits no one. The team is tied to its community, so the taxpayers can’t be forced into spending hundreds of million dollars on a stadium with the team threatening to leave if it doesn’t get its way. You won’t have a meddlesome owner interfering with the team’s on-field operation and doing dumb things (such as firing a coach who went 8-8 after your team had had seven consecutive seasons with double-digit losses). And your team won’t be inclined to lock out players and shut down an entire NFL season.

Unfortunately, the rest of the NFL doesn’t want more teams like the Packers. The NFL’s rules now prohibit any similar ownership structure, though the Packers were grandfathered in. The reason is obvious: one team out of 32 can’t really change the way the league is run, but if half the league were community-owned and had no profit incentive, the other owners would be screwed. The community-owned teams wouldn’t want to lock out players. They’d settle for reasonable ticket prices (the NFL shares ticket revenue). They’d look for TV deals that get exposure for their teams, not ones that shuffle games off to a cable network that isn’t available in many places. And so forth. Obviously, the owners of the other 31 teams don’t want competition from the community-owned model.

But is it impossible to have a league where many or all of the teams are owned by the fans? No. There are many fan-owned soccer teams in Europe. In England, most of them are fairly small, but the two biggest teams in Spain, Barcelona and Real Madrid, are owned by their supporters. Both are among the richest and most successful teams in history. Some other leagues go farther than that—Sweden and Germany both require that all teams be owned by their fans. Obviously, there are a great many differences in the business aspects of these leagues compared to the American ones. But those teams, as well as the Packers, prove that a community-owned team is a good idea.

In practical terms, of course, a change seems unlikely. But what if a lockout of the 2011 NFL season pisses off a lot of fans? What if they decide to abandon the NFL? What if there’s a vacuum for a new league to fill? Honestly, I have no idea how a new league with fan-owned teams would work, but it’d sure be nice if it did.

P.S. I had been planning on writing this article for a while, but this morning I came across an ESPN.com article on the same topic, and it gave me some motivation and insight.

* Digression: When leagues have a salary cap, especially a hard cap such as the NFL’s, this isn’t too big a deal, at least from a competitive balance aspect. The easiest way to improve a team is to “buy” more players. (A literal example of this would be the European soccer teams who spend huge amounts of money to buy players from other teams. In the American system, this basically just means going after big-ticket free agents, trading prospects in exchange for superstars, etc.) MLB, with no salary cap, has seen huge disparities in team payrolls, with the Yankees spending more than $200 million dollars and the Pirates spending about $35 million. Many would argue that MLB lacks competitive balance compared to the other leagues. To some extent, the NBA’s soft cap and luxury tax can also lead to a disparity between the haves and have-nots, with some teams happy to exceed the cap, and others (such as the Hornets under George Shinn) trying desperately to offload players to get under the luxury tax threshold.

Now, some of you may say that this is sour grapes, as my team is the one currently being affected. Well, of course I’m bitter. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Numerous times over the past few seasons teams with better records have missed the playoffs for the sake of champions of crappy divisions, or teams with better records have gone on the road to play a division champ with a worse record. In 2009, Green Bay finished 11-5 but had to go to Arizona to play the 10-6 Cardinals, losing 51-45 in overtime. In 2008, the 11-5 Patriots missed the playoffs (finishing tied with Miami for 1st in the AFC East but losing on tiebreakers) while the 8-8 Chargers won the AFC West and locked up the #4 seed.

Fundamentally, the problem is caused by guaranteeing 8 playoff spots regardless of the actual quality of the teams in each division. In the days of the 14-game schedule, most teams played 8 games against their division opponents. It was quite plausible that good teams could beat each other up within a division; a team that wins a division filled with good teams may not have a great record, but they still could be a great team. But now teams play 6 games (out of 16 total) within their divisions; it is highly unlikely that an 8-8 team played a drastically tougher schedule than a 11-5 team from another division in the same conference. A division champ that finishes 8-8 is probably just a mediocre team. For example, the aforementioned 8-8 Chargers team went 5-1 in their division (including sweeps against the 5-11 Raiders and 2-14 Chiefs) and just 3-7 outside of it.*

This year, it’s a real possibility that the NFC West champ could have a losing record; this has never happened before. If you think 8-8 teams deserve to make the playoffs, fine. But there is no reason a 7-9 team should make the playoffs when team with winning records are sitting at home in January. I’d like to make these two proposals:

1) A division champ with a losing record forfeits its playoff spot.
2) Teams are seeded based on their record, regardless of division champ/wild card status.

Arguably, we could go even farther and forget about division championships entirely. Keep the divisions for the sake of rivalries and scheduling, but pick the best six teams from each conference. Or, take another step and pick the 12 best teams in the NFL, with no attention to the conferences. Obviously these are more drastic proposals, but I think they’d be improvements. Why should it be etched in stone that the NFC and AFC must meet in the Super Bowl. The distinctions between the two conferences arise out of history and have frequently been set aside, with teams shifted between conferences as needed. Wouldn’t a New England-Indianapolis Super Bowl be great? Falcons-Saints? Packers-Bears? Shouldn’t the playoffs feature the best teams, not the teams that lucked out by being in bad divisions? I realize these two proposals are more controversial, but I think the first two I mentioned are common sense.

If you watched the Saints play the Rams, it was clear the Rams are not a very good football team. They’re not dreadful; surely they’re vastly improved over their past three seasons (3-13, 2-14, 1-15). But their only real offensive threat is Steven Jackson, and their defense in unimpressive. Sam Bradford looks to have a promising NFL career ahead of him, but he’s still a rookie quarterback. Yes, the Saints were the beneficiaries of a couple of key turnovers, but they turned the ball over too. The Saints are clearly a far better team. And a better team shouldn’t be penalized by having to go on the road in the playoffs.

The counter-arguments to my proposal are obvious, but quite weak. The snappy comeback is to say “Win your division or shut up.” If we were going to scrap the concept of wild-cards, maybe that would make sense. The reason we have wild cards is to ensure that a division with two great teams can get both of those teams into the playoffs. And if two great teams—in this case, the two best teams in the conference—are from the same division, why should one be forced to have a #5 seed. Why shouldn’t they be seeded #1 and #2? Bumping the Saints to a five-seed is horribly punitive; it means that in all likelihood, they would have to win three road games in order to get to the Super Bowl.** Should that be the reward for a team that could very well finish 13-3 but #2 in its division? Of course not. Back when there were only three divisions in each conference, at least the best wild-card team got a home game in the first round. Nowadays, great teams get screwed over way too often. It’s time for a change, NFL.

* Just to wreck this argument, they went on to beat the 12-4 Colts in overtime. But should they have had the privilege of hosting the Colts? I don’t think so.

** The only way a #5 seed can get a home playoff game is if it wins two road games, then faces a #6 team that also won two road games.

But should football be the one thing that determines everything in intercollegiate athletics? This move is great in football, but a complete disaster by any other standard. For basketball and the non-revenue sports, you’re shipping TCU’s athletes on trips of 1,000 miles or more. Just in case you actually thought the NCAA and the schools were concerned about the “student-athletes,” moves like this would surely dissuade you from that notion. For football, the travel argument doesn’t matter all that much. Fly out on Friday, miss class that day (if you can’t set up your schedule otherwise), and do that five or six times a year. No big deal. Football is one of the few sports where the travel demands on athletes aren’t unreasonable (although conferences whoring themselves out to ESPN for Tuesday or Wednesday night games is kind of ridiculous). But why on earth should we be sending soccer or volleyball or softball teams halfway across the country? It makes a mockery of the theory that these athletes are supposed to be students first. As a college sports fan, I’ll admit I’m part of the problem. I’ve got a Tuesday night basketball game on the TV as I type this. Fans watch, ESPN pays, conferences do anything for a buck.

Now, I realize that in this day of Blackboard and e-mail and lectures turned into podcasts that it’s not hard for students to make up work for missed classes. But you can’t deny that the fewer missed classes, the better. I’ve worked as an adjunct instructor at a I-A school and had a number of athletes from various sports in my classes. Mostly it wasn’t a problem because they were either in sports played mostly on weekends (track & field, football, and baseball) or weren’t in season in their sports. I shudder to think of what it would be like to teach basketball players at a Top 25 program, even one with great academics—the amount of missed class time would be ridiculous. I guess I can’t expect everyone to be like the Ivy League, where conference basketball games are on Fridays and Saturdays only—hell, even the Patriot League (which used to play Fridays & Sundays) now plays half its slate on Wednesdays—but there are better options than the present system.

Perhaps the simplest step would be to completely divorce football conferences from their counterparts—as it stands now, schools can only play in another conference for a sport if their main conference doesn’t sponsor that sport (there are ways to work around this; the Missouri Valley Conference and Missouri Valley Football conference, for example). Sure, some conferences might not want to change—I’d imagine the SEC would want to stay as-is. But it would give a school like TCU the chance to improve its football program’s position without subjecting the rest of its student-athletes to a grueling travel schedule. You could smush together some of the smaller conferences to make them more geographically compact. Perhaps take the Texas and Louisiana schools from C-USA and the Sun Belt, then split off the eastern half of the conferences. Then let schools hop football conferences (but not other sports) whenever they want—it’d be like a European promotion/relegation system, but with lots more politics. I know it sounds ridiculous, but in theory I guess if the NCAA could force through a football playoff and then use the proceeds to pay off the conferences and schools to go along with it. The smaller schools get to save money on travel for non-revenue sports (and get sizable checks from the new playoff system), the bigger conferences get to poach any rising football powers from the weaker conferences, and the weaker conferences come out way ahead with a share of the playoff money instead of getting screwed out of BCS money.

I realize that people who know more about the politics of D-I athletics could probably shoot a million holes through that fantasy, but oh well. Something should be done to keep football from wrecking the rest of the NCAA’s sports. And a football playoff and the money involved would probably be a factor in any major shake-up of the system.

The Saints were down 20-10 and had just kicked off to the Browns; twelve minutes remained in the 4th quarter. The Saints had a chance to force a three and out. Colt McCoy dumped off a third down pass to one of his receivers; Darren Sharper dove to make a play at the ball but missed. It seemed, however, that Sharper had touched the receiver, making him down by contact; but the receiver scrambled off for a 12-yard-gain and the first down. Sharper protested to the refs, but to no avail; however, Sean Payton and his staff saw what happened and got ready to challenge. But wait—there’s a flag on the opposite side of the field, well away from the play. From where it’s thrown, it could only seem to be defensive holding or something similar. Sure enough, Malcolm Jenkins had been whistled for illegal hands to the face, a five yard penalty that is also an automatic first down.

At that point, Sharper’s tackle became completely irrelevant. Sure, he actually did make the tackle, but an upheld challenge by the Saints would only lead to the Browns’ acceptance of the penalty. And it’s not as if there were tons of yards at stake; the difference would be 1st and 10 at the 36 or 1st and 10 at the 29. Obviously if the receiver had run for a touchdown a challenge would be the proper call; and obviously, had there been no penalty, a challenge would have been the smart thing to do.

But the fact that Sean Payton challenged the call in that situation suggests to me one thing: he didn’t know the rules. The only plausible explanation is that he didn’t realize that illegal hands to the face is an automatic first down; were it only a five yard penalty from the previous spot, the Browns would have played a 4th-and-1 and presumably would have punted.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Sean Payton’s offensive mind, but there is no reason that a guy who makes millions of dollars a year to coach a football team should not know the rules. At least with the players you can pass off their mental mistakes as being the ones of dumb jocks. Not everybody can run a 4.3 40 or bench press hundreds of pounds. But still, it’s pretty bad when Donovan McNabb doesn’t know about the overtime rules. However, with a coach it’s ten times worse. Sean Payton doesn’t have to lift weights. He doesn’t have to run wind sprints. His job is to come up with a great gameplan and then manage the game properly. Perhaps he’s struggled with the former at times this season, but he’s clearly done a good job in his career. It’s the second skill that I question at times. He’s made some dumb challenges. In his defense, he also made a great one today, challenging the ruling that Marques Colston had fumbled, when it seemed apparent that he was down before the ball squirted out. That challenge turned a dicey 4th-and-3 into a 4th-and-1; that two yard difference is pretty substantial, as suggested by this post at the excellent Advanced NFL Stats site.

For a challenge to be a good decision, two things have to be true: first of all, you have to be pretty sure that you’re right. Now, in some last-ditch situations you might challenge even when you’re not sure if you’ll be right; a successful challenge might be your only chance at winning. But generally speaking, you want to have pretty damn good video evidence before you throw your red flag. With the Sharper tackle, the Saints certainly had every reason to think the officials had made the wrong call.

But what was missing was the second thing you need for a good challenge: there has to be a lot to gain. Obviously, had the challenge made the difference between a 4th down for the Browns and a 1st down, it would be a great call. But due to the penalty, it was only a matter of seven yards of field position.

Consider this hypothetical: your running back runs for a twenty yard gain at midfield early in the first quarter, but the ball comes loose at the end of the play. Your tight end falls on the ball what would have been a 20-yard gain instead becomes a 19-yard gain. You look at the Jumbotron replay and it is absolutely clear that the runner’s knee was down before the ball came out. You are 100% that the referee would overturn his call, but why would you bother wasting a challenge? Keep in mind that a team can challenge at most three calls in a game, and only if the first two challenges are correct. You don’t want to waste a challenge when the results wouldn’t really matter. And besides, you’re never 100% sure of what the official is going to rule, so you’re also risking the loss of a timeout. And with the Saints trailing, they were probably going to need timeouts later in order to stop the clock. So you really don’t want to risk losing timeouts in that situation.

The bottom line is that Sean Payton had to have made one of these two mistakes: either he didn’t know the rules, or he thought it was worth it to waste a challenge for the sake of seven yards of field position. Either one is a colossal mistake, and my gut tells me that he made the former mistake, which is simply inexcusable. Once again, I’d like to suggest that the Saints hire me as game management consultant; I can be the person to scream in Sean Payton’s ear and say “Don’t you dare challenge that call!” or “Don’t waste a timeout!” or whatever the case may be. And if the Saints are too strapped for cash to hire me full-time, I suggest that they hire me part-time. I have a feeling that a certain hat-wearing coach in Baton Rouge could also use my services.*

* For example, I’d have told Les Miles not to have Jordan Jefferson spike the ball on 2nd-and-goal with time running out in the 1st half. You absolutely have to have two plays called in the huddle before 1st down. If the first is unsuccessful and doesn’t stop the clock, you can get up to the line and call the second instead of wasting a down.

I realize QBs are going to have bad games. It happens. Teams are obviously doing a much better job of adjusting to the Saints’ attack than they did last year. What bothers me about Drew Brees is the way he talked during the post-game press conference. (Transcript available here.)

Consider this quote:

“Any time you give up two defensive touchdowns, where you turn the ball over and that results immediately in a touchdown, you don’t even give your defense a chance to get out on the field and defend. When it happens once, you probably have about a 20% chance of winning after that. If it happens twice, you might as well throw it out the door. We have now had, in those two losses, four touchdowns scored against us where the offense turns the ball over and the defense scores. What is so frustrating is in both of those games if you take those touchdowns away, the defensive touchdowns, we score more points than they do.”

Note the way he uses the second person pronouns. Anytime “you” give up two defensive touchdowns. Now, a persnickety English teacher might dislike this use of the generic you. The grammar doesn’t bother me, but the lack of willingness to take personal responsibility does. The generic you shifts the blame that would be suggested by the use of a first-person singular or plural pronoun. Consider these revisions instead:

“Any time I give up two defensive touchdowns, where I turn the ball over and that results immediately in a touchdown, I don’t even give my defense a chance to get out on the field and defend.”

“Any time we give up two defensive touchdowns, where we turn the ball over and that results immediately in a touchdown, we don’t even give our defense a chance to get out on the field and defend.”

Even the second is a little bit weaselly. But the first? That would have been great. “It’s my fault. I messed up. I cost us the game.” Would it be true? Maybe, maybe not; but it’s better to have people taking too much responsibility for mistakes than not enough. Drew Brees needs to step up and admit that his mistakes have been a large part of two of the Saints’ losses this year. Yes, I know that interception returns for touchdowns are fluky and unpredictable, but it’s clear that Brees is not at his best. But being the quarterback and the unquestioned leader of the team means sucking it up, saying the right things, and taking as much blame as possible to protect your teammates. When asked about the interception thrown to Fujita on a pass intended for Ladell Betts, he had this to say:

“That was one of those option routes, where the guy has kind of a three way go. The guy can go in, go out, or he can hook. Obviously, the guy was on me, so his body language told me that he was going to hook so I threw it for him to hook and he ran away. There was a defender standing right there to catch it.”

Now, this is a situation where the Saints miss Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas, both of whom are dangerous receiving threats from the backfield. Bush in particular often runs these sorts of option routes. But Betts, who was cut during preseason and re-signed after the injury bug hit the Saints, doesn’t have anywhere near the same familiarity with Brees that Bush and Thomas do. Maybe it was Betts’s fault; maybe it was Brees’s fault; maybe it was simply a matter of not having had enough practice time together. But Brees is coming damn close to throwing Betts under the bus here. He needs to say “My fault.” Or, at most, “There was a mix-up.” Simple, non-confrontational, probably true, and not something that lays the blame on one of his teammates.