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.

I’m not sure if anyone has really crunched the numbers on this to determine when it’s a good idea. My guess is that an offense probably should call a timeout on 3rd-and-inches in a crucial situation rather than give up five yards. But the garden-variety first quarter 1st-and-10? Again, I’ll change my mind if someone shows me the numbers, but my guess is that holding on to that timeout in case you need it at the end of the half is better than using it just to save five yards. This is even more likely to be true in the NFL, where the clock doesn’t stop after a team picks up a first down; a two-minute drive is extremely difficult if a team doesn’t have any timeouts remaining.

Perhaps I’m wrong and a team should use its timeouts to avoid a delay of game (or similar penalty) on 1st-and-10. But clearly, there are times when a team shouldn’t. They punt from their own 30 on 4th-and-20. Surely a timeout wouldn’t be worth the five yards of field position when you’ve already resigned yourself to giving the other team the ball?

But perhaps the one situation that would most call for not taking the timeout occurred in today’s Saints-Bucs game. Even though I’m a Saints fan and the Bucs made a silly mistake, as a lover of football and hater of stupidity it pained me to see such idiocy occur.

Here’s the situation: the Bucs scored to make it 24-6 with 5:35 remaining in the game. They attempted an onside kick but were unsuccessful.* The Saints, taking over at the Tampa Bay 45, marched down the field with their running game (which was superb all day). They played a 1st-and-10 from the 11 and were stopped for no gain, but the Bucs had 12 men on the field, so the Saints had a 1st-and-5 from the 6. Two plays later they faced 3rd-and-1 at the 2 and converted with a Julius Jones run that left the Saints about a foot-and-a-half away from the end zone. Given the situation, it was just about a perfect outcome for the Saints, as the first down inside the one gave them a chance to burn more time off the clock. They let the play clock trickle down, and with two seconds left on the play clock and 2:26 in the game, the Bucs called a timeout! Why did they do that? Because they had 12 men on the field and didn’t want to get called for a penalty.

Now, I realize that the Bucs had virtually no chance of winning the game. But they were still competing, as were the Saints; the starters were still on the field for both teams, and had the Saints opted for a field goal to make it 27-6 it still would have been a three-possession game. This wasn’t a case of a team giving up on the game when they had virtually no chance of winning. This was just stupidity, pure and simple. It was pathetic: almost as pathetic as the fact that the Bucs were 3-1 and yet couldn’t sell-out their stadium, and almost as pathetic as the fact that the Rays cruised to a playoff berth but couldn’t draw fans during the regular season. Tampa, you are the crappiest sports town ever.**

It was stupid on a number of different levels. First of all, the clock had been running, so burning a timeout after 38 seconds came off the playclock is a horrible waste of a timeout. And even more egregiously, the Saints were already inside the one yard line! The penalty is half the distance to the goal! They wasted a timeout to save roughly nine inches. Now, the one valid concern I can think of is that you’re giving the Saints a free down: if they score, they decline the penalty, and if they don’t, it’s another first and goal. But this concern could be negated by taking a penalty for encroachment or for a player running unabated to the quarterback; those are penalties which cause the play to be blown dead before it’s begun. Am I asking too much of the players on the field to catch this? Perhaps. But at the very least, it’s sheer idiocy of the coaches to run onto the field to call a timeout.*** (Again, perhaps someone can show me the numbers and dispute this, but I seriously doubt that the extra down the Saints get makes up for the forty seconds you lose by wasting a timeout. Maybe it does on 4th down, but the Saints had four shots at the end zone anyway. Giving them a fifth chance probably wouldn’t matter.)

Once again, I want to stress that in this situation, the result of the game wasn’t likely to be affected. But it’s easy to imagine a situation in which a coach, poorly versed in the study of clock management, blows a timeout to save a penalty in a similar situation and then finds himself ruing his lost timeout a few minutes later. Let’s face it: Les Miles is about a 50/50 chance to do something like that before the end of the season.

* They actually executed it quite brilliantly. The Saints had their hands team on the field, but the kicker’s lengthy run-up fooled them into thinking the kick would go deep, and the Saints’ front line began to retreat. The ball went just past ten yards when a Buc dove for it, but it slipped away from him and the Saints recovered. It wouldn’t have mattered, as the Buccaneers were offsides; however, the offsides call seemed to me to be questionable at best.

** Spare me the excuses about the Rays stadium being an ugly dump in the middle of nowhere. Both of those things are true, but that shouldn’t matter when your team wins 90+ games. And Raymond James is a nice, conveniently-located stadium. So there’s no excuse at all on that one.

*** I assume it was a coach who called timeout, not one of the players on the field. If a player called the timeout, he’s an idiot for not thinking far enough ahead to encroach.

Quite simply, it’s a joke to see a Top 10 team playing a I-AA team. These games are glorified exhibitions. I can understand a weaker I-A team needing home games and scheduling I-AA teams, but a BCS conference school shouldn’t be playing a I-AA team, ever. Sure, you may have to pay a bit more to get a Sun Belt team to play you than it would cost to get someone from I-AA, but last time I checked your average college football powerhouse was doing okay from a money standpoint.

What I’d like to see is a ban on games against I-AA teams, or at least a rule that wins can never count toward the bowl eligibility total. Perhaps in conjunction with this we might also need a rule capping teams to seven home games, forcing a team that plays eight games within its conference to play at least one non-conference road game every season.

* Yes, I know I-A teams sometime lose these games. But a top team (and no, Michigan doesn’t count) isn’t going to lose to a I-AA team except in an absolute freak occurrence.

Here’s why you shouldn’t be mad at the Saints. Fujita, though he’s been a solid player for many years, isn’t getting any younger. He’ll be 31 in April and his body is starting to show the wear and tear of eight seasons in the NFL. The first five years of his career he played in every game. Then, in 2007, he missed one game. In 2008, two games. In 2009, five games. Though he’s been a productive player, one has to assume that he’s already reached his peak. One also has to assume that injuries may be a problem from here on out. The tendency when a team wins a title is to try to keep everything the same, to avoid making changes, to keep doing what you’ve been doing. But keeping all the same players means getting older, which means more wear and tear on bodies, the possibility of more injuries, of having players who are past their prime. I’m not saying Fujita is definitely past his prime; he may very well have a few good years left. (Just look at what Darren Sharper during a season in which he turned 34). But for the Saints to spend the kind of money on Fujita that the Browns were willing to throw at him ($8 million guaranteed, $14 million up to $16 million with incentives) would have been silly. Teams will see the success that the Saints have had and be willing to overplay for our players. What the Saints have to do is keep doing what they’ve been doing: scout out good talent and make good trades, draft picks, and free agent signings. So many of our stars were unheralded: undrafted free agent Pierre Thomas. Seventh-round pick Marques Colston. Drew Brees, whom the Chargers let go and whom the Dolphins passed on, taking Daunte Culpepper instead. (How’d that work out, Miami?) The aforementioned Darren Sharper. The list goes on. You always have to acquire new, young, talented players, whether you want to get to the top or stay there.

And here’s why you shouldn’t be mad at Fujita. According to sportscity.com, he was making about $3 million this year, with his cap value at $4 million (a player’s signing bonus is paid up front, but in calculating salary cap values is split equally across the years of his contract). Presumably the Saints may have been willing to offer him $3 million or so a year, but I doubt they were anywhere close to Cleveland’s offer. And yeah, I wouldn’t want to live in Cleveland, but if someone wanted to pay me a few million dollars more a year to do the same job, I’d be on the next flight there. It’s easy for a fan to criticize a player who moves to make more money; after all, if you’re making $3 million a year, why do you need $4 million? But if you had a job where you could be cut at anytime, where you’re only one injury away from never playing again, when you’ve got a wife and two daughters to support, you’re going to go to the highest bidder. If it were a matter of only a little bit of money would he have stayed? I don’t doubt it. But I’m sure the Saints were nowhere close to the Browns’ offer, and I believe I’ve explained why they shouldn’t spend that sort of money on an aging linebacker. And hopefully those of you who are upset at Scott Fujita understand what was going through his mind. And we should be grateful for what he’s done on and off the field. He just donated half his playoff bonus check to charity; part to Haiti, and part to coastal restoration. Coastal restoration? Now that’s a smart guy. Most jocks just go for schools or playgrounds or cancer research. But as far as New Orleans is concerned, coastal restoration is arguably a far bigger deal than any of those other (admittedly very worthy) causes. Because without a ton of funding and work for coastal restoration, there probably won’t be a New Orleans where anyone can go to school or get cancer. (Hat-tip to Drew Lambert for posting the link on facebook.)

Now, there’s one other thing I should address here. Since we’re in an uncapped year, the Saints can pretty much keep whomever they want on the roster, whereas in most seasons teams are more or less forced by the salary cap to cut veterans. So you might think the Saints would just keep everyone. But a couple of factors work against that. First of all, the uncapped season actually gives teams a big incentive to cut veteran players with big signing bonuses; normally those bonuses count as cap penalties against teams, but with no cap, there’s no penalty. That explains why Charles Grant is gone: his production wasn’t living up to his huge price tag. He was three years into a seven year deal that had more than $3 million a year in prorated bonus money against the cap, and something like $30 or $40 million remaining. Second of all, the lack of a salary cap also means the lack of a salary floor, so some teams may try to cut as much salary as possible. Now, Tom Benson can’t just cut everyone left and right; he’d have a riot on his hands. And I’m sure he wants to win football games. But he’s not a Jerry Jones or George Steinbrenner or Mark Cuban type who wants to spend as much money as he possibly can to win. If it’s a close call, he won’t want to see the money spent. I don’t like Tom Benson and I never will—I still think he’d have loved to have moved the Saints to San Antonio if Paul Tagliabue would have let him—but I can’t very well give Fujita a pass for letting the money do the talking and then turn around and bash Benson for the same thing. And with the salary cap, you have to be fiscally responsible—the new CBA may very well have a salary cap again, possibly with harsh consequences for any team that is overly profligate in free agency this year. Likewise, I can’t blame the Saints for not wanting to give Darren Sharper a 300% raise. But even if money weren’t an issue here, Fujita might not have been ideal: John Deshazier’s Times-Picayune column today suggests that the Saints should’ve been looking to upgrade at his spot even if they had resigned him. And I can’t say I disagree.

So Saints fans, calm the fuck down and remember that we won the Super Bowl as a team, and we’re a lot more than one or two players. I hope you’ve enjoyed what I believe is a rational, level-headed analysis of the situation.

That said, if Sharper leaves I want a refund on my motherfucking jersey.