The news has hit Nashville like a ton of bricks

Listen, I’m not even really going to bang on Auburn or Cammy for not running obnoxiously long plays like “X-Y-Z, 22 front loaded, zebra red 457 Y jet, back set, shift right, 561 shark teeth shuffle slide, 671-p.” Because let’s face it their method of “simplistic=fast” is kind of the general direction CFB has gone, and it works. But come on Cam, didn’t you watch Gruden’s segments last year? He asked that same question to Two-Yard Timmy and Colt McCoy. How did you not see that question coming? Dude, prepare a bit, even lie if need be to save face. It’s not like you didn’t just thrive by playing that card last year at Auburn. If anyone can do it, you can, Cam.

On the Auburn front, with Newton gone Gus Malzahn may actually have to take the training wheels off and put some actual words into the playbook this year.

I really hope when Gruden is hanging with Darron Thomas in a couple years, DT comes up with a better answer than that. Though, even if he stuck with “Neil Everett’s magic county lines moose“, he would come off better than Cam’s “Uhh….”

PS- Nice Gun analogy, Cam. This isn’t the NBA, Czar Goodell suspends people for just not shaking his hand hard enough. Come on Cam, Gruden tried to even give you a mulligan there.

Because everybody loves the NFL combine…

Forget for a second whether you love or hate NFL combine stats – having a room full of coaches and colleagues yell and scream for you as you pump the shit out of 225 would be quite the adrenalin rush.

I’ll give it up to Paea for continuing the long line of NFL combine bench press all stars from Oregon (Igor Olshansky and Haloti Ngata to name a couple). He’s a beast, and plenty of former OS Beavers have made a big impact in the NFL. No reason why Paea won’t continue that, but he will have to show everyone that laying on your back and lifting circular objects doesn’t make you the world’s greatest athlete (unless you’re the person who uses weight lifting to justify why you’re a better athlete than Jonathan Stewart).

Former agent Josh Luchs spilled the beans on what many of us suspected, but had never confirmed: agents pay players, and players often ask for it. The idea that athletes are victims and that agents seek them out and trick them, somehow, into taking cash and gifts is ridiculous, as the column written by George Dohrmann of Sports Illustrated shows. According to the article, which will appear in the October 18, 2010 issue of SI, Luchs worked as an agent for 20 years, represented more than 60 clients and claimed to have paid thousands of dollars, given gifts, meals and trips to many more who signed with other agencies. This should scare the heck out of the NCAA and its football programs, especially the ones Luchs had in-lines with, such as UCLA, which he listed as the primary school he “recruited” football players from.

A common way for an agent to gain a foothold in the business is by getting in with a single school. How did Drew Rosenhaus become so big? He graduated from Miami and was embedded in the school when Ray Lewis, Warren Sapp & Co. went there. I had UCLA.

Luchs lists a lot of schools – mostly on the west coast; Oregon not included — that he represented players from. He said that his plan, as his career got going, was to give athletes a monthly stipend of around $500 to keep them in touch. He said if he gave them a lot of money in one shot that they’d forget about him and move on, but if he kept monthly tabs on the players, they were more inclined to stick with him when it was time to go pro. One of those athletes was Ryan Leaf, who eventually ditched Luchs for Leigh Steinberg.

At the hotel, Ryan made it clear that he had significant credit card debt, something like $5,000, and needed help. I knew that if I just paid off his debt, he would forget about me and have no reason to develop a relationship. “But I want to help,” I said. “How much do you think you would need each month to make your life easier?” He said he needed around $500 a month, which wasn’t much to pay for a player with Ryan’s potential earnings. In the bathroom of that hotel, he signed an undated representation contract and a loan agreement for the money. Soon afterward, Doc and I began paying him monthly with money orders, ranging from $300 to $700.

Leaf obviously knew the deal when he got to know Luchs. The meeting at the hotel, which was near the WSU campus, was set up just so Leaf could get help financially. Luchs claimed he was already paying money to four other players on the team: Torey Hunter, Singor Mobley, John Rushing and Leon Bender, who obviously clued Leaf into the deals they had with him. Luchs claimed that dealings such as these are widespread throughout the lower level agencies who need to sway players from others. He said when he got to the higher level he no longer had to pay players, which refreshed him, but named a lot of names of players whom he gave money to.

The cut throat lifestyle of sports agents lends itself to shady dealings, but what should scare the NCAA is Luchs’s claim that word spread he was hooking up players with things and that other players would seek him out. And also that all of the players knew about it and somehow coaches or administrators didn’t. Alabama head coach Nick Saban’s claims that agents act like pimps, and Florida’s Urban Meyer’s statements about how agents should be punished feel like weak attempts to cover their own rear ends. They bring elite athletes into their programs who have next to nothing and don’t instill in them the ideals that if they accept, let alone go after, things from agents that it could cost their school and them their own eligibility. Obviously there are shady agents out there, but what’s clearly laid out in Luchs’s story is that often times its the players who seek them out.

The next morning I went to the bank, pulled out some of my bar mitzvah money, $2,500 in cash, showed up at Kanavis’s door and told him, “Kanavis, I gave this a lot of thought, and I want to help you out. I know how I would feel if it was my mom.”

“Thank you so much,” he said. “You’re my boy, man. You’re really coming through for me.”

I went back to my hotel and for a little while I felt good, but then the phone rang. It was a teammate of Kanavis’s calling. 

“Hey, man, Kanavis told me you’re a pretty good dude,” he said. “I got this problem, and I need some help. My father is really sick and he is losing his apartment and I need $2,500. Do you think you can help me out the way you helped Kanavis?”

Luchs said he mostly ruled over Southern California schools when he was hired on and mentored by Harold (Doc) Daniels. He claims Daniels was rumored to have given cars to players due to an in he had with a Datsun dealership. He said it was a joke in the industry that if another agent saw a college athlete in the area driving a Datsun, he or she could forget about signing him because he was one of Daniels’s future clients. Luchs said he had a close relationship with UCLA WR Sean LaChapelle, whom he didn’t pay any money, but who introduced him to many teammates he did pay. The biggest name of those teammates and the biggest name in the entire article was Jonathan Ogden. Luchs claims he gave Ogden tickets to Janet Jackson.

The lunches, the money each month, the bail, the concert tickets, those were all NCAA violations, of course, but in my mind I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Doc would say to me, “We ain’t members of the NCAA. We didn’t agree to follow these rules.” I also justified it by remembering that the schools and the NCAA were making money while the players, many of whom came from poor families, weren’t getting anything but an education, which many of them didn’t take seriously.

That’s the mindset many of us think agents have, and why most people think agents are swindlers who take advantage of these kids. Luchs claimed while working with Gary Wichard in L.A. that they used to pay coaches to work college players out and steer them towards their agency. He also claimed that Wichard was good friends with ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. and that he would set up conference calls with Kiper and potential clients, still in college, to sway them. Luchs said Kiper would sway his NFL Draft player rankings in regards to whom signed with Wichard’s agency. 

In 2000, before a meeting with Stanford defensive lineman Willie Howard, Gary arranged for ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper to call. Gary and I were talking to Willie in Gary’s office when Gary’s phone rang, and he put it on speakerphone.

“Viper, how are you?” Gary said. That’s what he called Mel, Viper or Vipe. “Viper, I’m sitting here with the best defensive lineman in college football. Do you know who that is?”

“You must be with Willie Howard,” Mel said.

Gary used Mel like that all the time. In the agent business, people know Gary and Mel are close, and some people suspect that Mel ranks players more favorably if they are Gary’s clients.

Those are massive allegations against Kiper, which he obviously denies.

So what does the NCAA do with this information? The statute of limitations is four years on these types of situations, but they have a former agent admitting to regularly paying a player from Washington State thousands of dollars in the 1990s. Leaf is one of the players named in the article who refuted Luchs’s claims, but many of the others readily admitted to receiving gifts from him. Does the NCAA give them the same treatment they just gave USC? It would create a pretty stark double standard if they let all of the schools listed by Luchs get away with it. UCLA, for instance, has nine players listed by him. Most of them, including Ogden, admitted to SI that they received gifts from Luchs. This is pretty much what the NCAA has been dreading for decades. If one ex-agent fesses up, what’s to stop others from blowing whistles and shaking up the NCAA? They can’t punish every program, can they? According to SI, “neither the schools nor the players in this story are likely to face NCAA scrutiny. The NCAA has a four-year statute of limitations on violations, and the most recent violation alleged by Luchs occurred in 2005. There are exceptions to the statute, but none appear applicable.” So the NCAA has its pants down and its own rules cut off the arms that could pull them back up.

Names of players Luchs claimed to pay (with school)

Kanavis McGhee – Colorado

Greg Thomas – Colorado

Joel Steed – Colorado

Chuck Webb – Tennessee

Chris Mims – Tennessee

Mel Agee – Illinois

Carl Greenwood – UCLA

Othello Henderson – UCLA

Jamir Miller – UCLA

Matt ­Soenksen – UCLA

Chris Alexander – UCLA

Ryan Fien – UCLA

Bruce Walker – UCLA

Vaughn Parker – UCLA

Jonathan Ogden – UCLA

Kenyon Coleman – UCLA

Tony Banks – Michigan State

Delon Washington – USC

Travis Claridge – USC

Phalen Pounds – USC

R. Jay Soward – USC

Darick Holmes – Portland State

Rob Waldrop – Arizona

Ryan Leaf – Washington State

Torey Hunter – Washington State 

Singor Mobley – Washington State

John Rushing – Washington State

Leon Bender – Washington State

Alan Harper – Fresno State

Probably not gonna happen.  But he could certainly be a Raider!

Jeremiah’s Oregon days are over … and possibly his pursuit of an education.  Rumblings have Masoli entering the NFL’s supplemental draft held on July 15th.

via Gil Brandt (nfl.com):

Two more players — Oregon QB Jeremiah Masoli and Illinois DT Joshua Price-Brent have not yet formally filed, but are expected to do so soon.

I guess Masoli could be a 3rd down back in the NFL.  Kinda like a Justin Forsett in Seattle?  But with little or no film demonstrating his blocking and receiving skills, it could be tough for Jeremiah to convince a club to take a chance on him.  Especially after he has burned the one coach (chip kelly) that got his back.  Yeah, I don’t see Chipper giving any glowing reviews for his former QB.

Thought I’d mix things up a little bit this time and throw some brutal NFL nonsense at you all. Yesterday Vikings RB Toby Gerhart was a guest on the Dan Patrick Show and that got me thinking about his situation. All the talk has been about his status as a white running back in the NFL. This all complete BS! Especially the talk of him going higher in the draft had he been African American. The bottom line is that this dude has killed it everywhere he has played football. I’m not ready to say he’s the next Bo Jackson but I wouldn’t say that a comparison isn’t deserving. To be able to play another sport at the major college level is something that should attract the attention of everyone. There are plenty of athletes who say they could have done this but very few who actually do…and make a name for themselves.

We all know what he did last season at Stanford as he tore apart the Pac 10. On the radio they mentioned his high school career. I know this means nothing when it comes to the NFL but it’s hard to get excited about the 9,600 yards he ran for in high school. Only 1,100 of came his freshmen year so that means he rushed for 8,500 yards in his last 3 seasons…pretty epic. I happen to be one of those guys who believes there’s something to being a winner or a stud at levels that aren’t pro, even though scouts don’t like their skill set. If I’m drafting a team I’m gonna strongly consider guys like Tebow and Gerhart because of their pasts. I don’t read as much into athleticism or technique because it’s obvious that these guys are great athletes. They may not have the physical ability that some of the higher rated players have but I like the guys that have had previous success. I don’t think that is something that can be overlooked (similar to the multi sports athletes I mentioned earlier).

I feel like Toby Gerhart is going to have a very big impact on the upcoming NFL season. He’ll be backing up Peterson in one of the best offenses in the game. He’ll be good on short yardage and he may not be much different than Peterson himself. The Vikings lost Chester Taylor who was arguably the best backup runner in the NFL and they replaced him with someone that could very soon become the same thing.

Santonio Holmes made the catch of a lifetime in Super Bowl 43 to ensure the Pittsburgh Steelers as the team with the most rings.  Ben Roethlisberger was the guy that made the throw to give Holmes his chance for glory.  How quickly things can turn.

Holmes is now a Jet, along with Braylon Edwards, who came over via trade with the Browns last season.  Both are ballers and now teammates because of strained relations with their former teams.  A Super Bowl history maker and top-flight WR, turned 5^th round pick trade-bait, Santonio’s fall from grace, is all his own doing … but more importantly, it was also his team’s.

In professional sports, what defines a player as a ‘good’ asset for a team is extremely foggy.  Each team is like a state in the U.S., they’ve got their own set of standards — for their players.  Apparently, Holmes climbed over the Steelers moral barrier this off-season.  Now Ben Roethlisberger is edging ever so close to it.

Some teams grab guys merely for their balling skills, because to them, the only thing that matters, baby … is winning.  Getting to the final showdown is more important than a few criminal charges, or maybe an immature attitude, or both.  The Jets are the latest example of this Merc-style team building.  Rex Ryan seems to not care about the baggage a player is carrying around, as long as the dude can ball come Sunday (or at least turn off his iPod on the team jet?).

The current merc-hiring-super-maverick is Jerry Jones of Dallas, who has embraced guys like Pacman Jones, Michael Irvin, Deion Sanders, Nate Newton, and Eric Williams … all for the sole reason to obtain the shiny trophy.  And Mr. Jones, still smarting from passing on Randy Moss in 1998, took a controversial but very capable baller in Dez Bryant this April (whose dad was a pimp and mom, apparently, was not a prostitute).  Proving once again the Cowboys want Ws more than humanitarian awards.

The Oakland Raiders of yesteryear were the pioneers of the Merc recruiting, aka give me Ballers, not Boy Scouts.  Al Davis, the 60s-80s version of Davis, was the maverick that took on teams’ rejects and gave them one simple goal … just win, baby.  Those Raiders teams had dudes that were mean, weird, gritty, scary, reckless, and many more adjectives that were unsettling to other conservative squads.

With every rebel-yin, there is the conformist-yang, like Pittsburgh.  Santonio’s skill set was no longer wanted in Pittsburgh.  At least, to Steelers ownership & management.  Holmes is in the prime of his career, he’s no longer a Steeler, but shockingly, he’s still in the league and playing for an AFC team Pittsburgh will likely have to play in the playoffs.  Now, that amazing catch against the Cardinals has lost a bit of luster, at least in patches around Pittsburgh that are ripe with righteousness.

So when is bad, too bad?

The Philadelphia Eagles, like the Steelers, are another team that attempts to assemble a roster of anti-merc guys, or football Boy Scouts (really no such thing, just relative).  Except for the offseason they recruited Terrell Owens.  Philly was trying to walk the straight and narrow, but when the WR corp was weak and the team seemed one play-maker short of a Championship, they loosened their standards a bit.  Now TO is no criminal, nor druggie, nor female-slapper, nor dog-killer, but he is a rather large handful of babysitting baggage.  Somebody, that Reid thought he could reign in.

Year one of the Owens experiment went outstanding.  The Eagles reached the Super Bowl and lost to the Patriots.  But in the ensuing offseason, all hell broke loose.  Owens, whom seemed to be Boy Scout for his 1^st season as an Eagle, making the McNabb/TO combo look like a force for years to come, turned into a toxic player that had to be let go.  TO’s sit-ups in his driveway was the memorable lowlight of that offseason, amongst the bickering, the ‘next question’ press conference with his agent, and cheap shots at coaches and teammates.  Obviously, Reid probably would have chosen the blue pill if he had to consider the Owens option again.  Maybe not, because Reid would gamble again on another merc named Mike Vick in 2009.

Most stud coaches in pro sports believe they can turn a player into the cog that fits perfectly into their championship producing machine.  But more times, than not, it does not work out.  Maybe the greatest ironic merc-for-hire twist, was the Patriots stealing away Randy Moss from the Raiders.  How could Oakland (built for excel-merc-ness), lose one of the greatest WRs because he didn’t fit with the team anymore?

What do you do?

So, you are coach of a team, do you go baller or Boy Scout?  Do you care about how much of a criminal a guy is if he catches TDs in multiples?  Or dunks on fools regularly?  Or smacks HRs with such ease –like swingin a wiffle ball bat?  What is your price for the trophy?  Do you need your hero to be the guy that serves turkeys on Thanksgiving to needy people, as well as the guy that is MVP?  Do you care if your player slaps chicks at bars, shows up late for team meetings, as long as he gets his 2 sacks a game?

Of course all teams and fans would love the perfect player, the guy that is the best on the field and off the field.  These guys are scarce.

Boy Scouts with serious game-play skill sets like Joe Mauer, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, Tim Duncan to just name a few, are a rare breed indeed.  These are the kind of guys that even the owners are usually giddy towards.  The Boy Scout with MVP talent is certainly the golden calf in professional sports.

So is it not completely obvious that Broncos coach Josh McDaniels was blinded by the golden glare shining off of college football’s super hero Tim Tebow?  With pro-style ready QB Jimmy Clausen of Notre Dame still on the board, Josh rolled up his sleeve and reached reeeeeally high to take the super-project from Florida.  Wow.  Now if the Broncos have plans to add a church and a Boys & Girls Club to their football stadium in 2011, well then this was absolutely the right play.  But if they wanna win shiny trophies, I am not so sure.  No doubt super-human Timmy will inspire and be a great example to teammates and 10-yr-olds in Denver, but if he doesn’t live up to his 1st round value … an over-priced and much-hyped, cheerleader — he will become.

To each his own.

Some teams wanna win real bad, but they do not wanna sell their soul to the devil in order to do so.

Some teams wanna win real bad, and will not hesitate sidling up next to the devil to get one step closer to the big shiny trophy.

It seems to me it comes down to what makes a man sleep well at night.  Does a man (coach/owner/fan)  sleep well because the team won?  Or does a good night sleep come from the team giving its best effort with zero guilt?

At pick #38, the brilliance of Mike Holmgren led him to grab the human hammer. Brilliant men make brilliant picks, and this was brilliant. Cleveland in the playoffs, perhaps…?

I always said he was better than Taylor Mays, and I’m pretty sure this cements it as fact.

As an aside, is it just me or did Uncle Petey take a giant dump on Taylor’s head by taking another safety with the 14th pick?

#1 St Louis Rams – The Rams actions leading up to the draft are just as heinous as this pick.  Even if Bradford is a good QB the Rams are in no position to help a rookie QB succeed.  Horrible play up front on offense and a completely crappy defense need to be addressed before gambling the next 5-7 years on a big money rookie QB.  This reminds me of the Texans with David Carr.  Someone must have sold their soul to the devil to bring in the greatest show on turf because that is the only way this inept management staff could have any success. 

#10 Jacksonville Jaguars – The Jags selected Tyson Alualu with the 10^th pick.  For all I know Alualu could become a solid pro, but this is a bad pick because the jags could have traded down 8-10 spots and still picked Alualu and received a few later round picks as compensation.  It’s called value, and the Jags didn’t get full value for their pick, a NFL no-no.  Derrick Morgan, Jason Pierre-Paul and Sergio Kindle were all higher on virtually everyone else’s board for DE’s.

#22 Denver Broncos – Demaryius Thomas.  The Broncos selected a workout wonder over a proven producer in Dez Bryant.  Although that’s not terribly surprising as Josh McDaniels is on a mission to have the NFL’s first all choir boy team. Nice in theory, but the NFL is littered with people of horrible character.  If having good guys on your team in more important than winning I admire you, just go coach High School football instead.

#25 Denver Broncos – I am still to distraught to rationally express my thoughts over this pick.  It needs it own post at a later date.  

I thought everyone else did a pretty good job for themselves in the first round.  I do question the Bills taking Spilller at #9 since they already have a stable full of backs, but Spiller is probably the #2 playmaker of the draft and it’s hard to crack on a team for grabbing a playmaker.  Sometimes taking the best player is better than drafting for need.  The Seahawks probably could have used another OL with the #14 pick, but that is a small complaint.  The Redskins may have reached a little with Trent Williams at #4, but who am I to question the Mastermind.  Williams was going top 10 at worst so it wasn’t too much of a reach.

Geez Jimmy, probably didn’t see yourself falling out of the first round, did ya?

Tim Tebow was picked ahead of you, ouch!

I wonder who is more hurt over this, you or Mel Kiper?

Kiper, who always has delusions of grandeur when talking Notre Dame football, was so positive Clausen would go in the top 10, that he offered to quit in a bet with McShay, if he didn’t.

Well…he didn’t.

I’m not sure why anyone really believed Kiper and his assessment of Clausen. I mean just look at him, he actually looks like the mascot of his favorite NFL team. And who would really trust a crows cousin?

Creepy.

Hopefully when Clausen does get picked today, he shows up in his new city and throws on another fantastically pretentious press conference showing off all of his high school jewelry and his Hawaii Bowl ring!

Or maybe he can just show up in a speedo with his ‘brahs’, that would be kinda cool as well.

Mel, Jimmy, keep your heads up. You’ll get picked soon enough, and the Irish will have another 5 win season next fall.

Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame
Wake up the echoes cheering her name,
Send the volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky,
What though the odds be great or small
Old Notre Dame will win over all,
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to Victory.