That is, if the Twitter updates I saw yesterday aren’t false and the Bears’ 2 p.m. press conference officially announcing the firing of Ron Turner, Harry Hiestand, Pep Hamilton, Rob Boras et al is actually being streamed on Comcast Chicago.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I’m awesome and correctly predicted all four guys. The et al indicates assistants Luke Butkus and Charles London.
Posted in Chicago Bears, Liveblog | Tags: Lovie Smith, Ron Turner, Jerry Angelo
Word on the computer is that the axe won’t fall on Lovie Smith at the 2 p.m. press conference at Halas Hall today. I mean, one of these days his incredible arrogance and treatment of the fans and media as complete imbeciles that deserve nothing but his snide contempt will come back to bite him firmly in the fleshy bits, but all signs point to “not today.”
Damn.
I mean, I don’t think firing him and bringing in Cowher or Gruden or any other studio-analyst coach will make the Bears any better, I just want to see Lovie get a much-needed smackdown for being such a mixture of vinegar and water. I love it when arrogant coaches get the axe. Schadenfreude rules.
But someone’s gotta go. That’s just good business sense. You can replace some of the players, but canning a coach just makes better economical sense. So let’s run down some of the key position coaches, see what they’ve done to deserve to stay, what they’ve done to be shown the door and a final verdict. (We’ll take head coach as read, since it’s pretty firmly reported that he’s sticking around.)
Posted in Chicago Bears | Tags: Lovie Smith, Punting is fun!, Dave Toub, Ron Turner, Jerry Angelo
And, as I tweeted last night, worse than my gimpy-legged father, too.
There isn’t much to be said about this game. If the Bears lose to the Lions, Lovie Smith should not only be fired, but also given a firm spanking in a public forum. And then he has to perform “I’m a Little Teapot.” Oh, and Jerry Angelo should be dangled by his underwear from one of the Hancock Tower spires.
If the Bears win, then just fire them and let them keep whatever dignity they have left. Then do the underwear-dangle thing to Matt Millen because the Lions will have lost 30 games in two seasons and it’s still pretty much that idiot’s fault. And yet, he’s still getting a paycheck from the NFL on their flagship network. Baffling.
Okay, time to tend to birthday wishes on the Facebooks, football soon.
The reason Minor League Football has yet to go to a playoff system is because it cherishes its traditions. Saturday afternoon games. New Year’s Day bowl games. The Rose Bowl featuring the Big Ten and Pac 10 winners. The Cotton Bowl being relevant.
See what I did there? Anyway, the giant pile of pointless hooey that is the final month of the Minor League Football season — which I guess implies that the first four months mean anything — began with a bang last night. The BCS, in all its shifty glory, pitted the two undefeated non-BCS-conference schools against each other. Now, no matter whether Texas Christian or Boise State wins, the voters can still say they didn’t prove themselves against a BCS school.
Not because they didn’t earn it, mind you, but because the BCS refuses to let them sit at the big kids’ table. I’d love to see if Texas Christian could contain Tim Tebow, or at least have a shootout with him. As it is, Florida is facing Cincinnati, which was a non-BCS school until the great realignment in aught-3, so I guess that’s the BCS telling us to shut up and eat what’s in front of us.
The answer to all of this is, of course, a playoff. The BCS’s answer to playoff advocates is, “Well, then there’d be a debate about who the fifth team is.” Or the ninth. Or the 17th. What’s ridiculous is that playoff advocates are thinking so small, and that they need to look no further than the SAME FLIPPIN’ SPORT to find the best practice.
In Division III, the football playoff system is 32 teams. They play a bracket tournament until the champion emerges like in, oh, every other team sport in the NCAA or the pro level. They also play a 10-game regular season, with three non-conference games and seven conference games plus a bye week and fit it all in between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. The Stagg Bowl comes a week before Christmas.
Let’s live in a dream world where Minor League Football started a 32-team playoff this weekend. The championship game would be lined up for the weekend starting Fri., Jan. 8. Hey look! The BCS title game is slated for Thu., Jan. 7! A whole day would be added to the college football season!
Furthermore, I counted 34 bowl games in 31 different venues (San Diego, New Orleans and Pasadena each claim two bowls). A 32-team playoff would yield 31 playoff games. So make it a neutral-site playoff system like the basketball tourney and have each one of those venues host a playoff game. The minor bowl sites can host early-round games and the seven games in the quarterfinals, semis and finals can be rotated between the four current BCS sites plus, say, the Cotton Bowl and two of the New Year’s Day bowls. That way, those cities are appeased and probably draw a hell of a lot better attendance than Idaho-Bowling Green (2009 Humanitarian Bowl) ever could.
But that will never happen, and I just wasted the last hour of my life typing this up. Screw you, BCS.
