It has been an interesting off season for the coaching carousel in the NFL this year. Several high profile coaches left the league (Bobby Petrino, Joe Gibbs) and several other new head coaches have been hired with resumes skinnier than an anorexic Tayshaun Prince. The decision to take a chance on an unproven coach or splurge on a veteran coach is fast becoming a big debate in the NFL. Do you as a franchise cultivate a potential star coach at a reasonable price like Mike McCarthy, Mike Tomlin or Sean Payton or spend big money and hope Marty Schottenheimer figures out how to win in the playoffs or Bill Cowher’s spit showers are enough to motivate your players to win it all?
Several teams have made the decision to hire veteran NFL coaches and promote them to Head Coach this off season. Eschewing recycled coaches and even coordinators in favor of hiring position coaches is all the rage in some NFL circles. Tony Sparano, Mike Smith, and John Harbaugh are all sitting in offices right now thinking to themselves, “How the bleep did I get here?” At this rate sometime in the near future, there will be age limits to prevent teenagers from becoming head coaches at too young of an age. It’s all spiraling out of control.
The lack of successful, experienced head coaches to recycle has been dwindling for years and forcing teams to make tough decisions. The past two years, Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells have called it quits with Tony Dungy and Mike Holmgren soon to follow. Due to the lack of salary cap on coaching contracts, sometime in the near future NFL teams will throw boat loads of money at Bill Cowher, Steve Mariucci or any coach with a decent resume and a pulse. Coordinators will start making head coaching money. Jason Garrett and Al Saunders have already cracked this barrier. Fans across the league will be lead to believe that without a 8 million dollar a year head coach, their team can’t win. It’s not inconceivable that over the next few years, the best head coaches in the league will be making close to $10 million dollars per year. So now as a parent instead of hoping your child is a left handed pitcher or has a freakishly strong kicking leg, parents will hope their children has a propensity to watch game tape and carry around large charts of plays. Kids will grow up hoping to be the next Holmgren or Dungy or Shanahan. The only exception will be when a son tells his father he doesn’t want to be a QB, he wants to be the next Bill Belicheck. It will be like the son slapping them in the face. Scores of kids will wear suits to recess and a fake moustache and stay up all night breaking down game tape instead of doing a book report on the Boston Tea Party.
What’s my point in all of this? The choice of paying John Harbaugh 2 million dollars to run your team or Bill Cowher 9 million dollars will soon be as important of a debate as Manning versus Leaf. As an NFL fan, brace yourself for an era in which head coaches are synonymous with star players and their salaries. And if you’re ambitious, start putting video of your Madden mastery on Youtube, because you never know the depths to which a desperate NFL franchise will reach to find the next great NFL coach.
Back with some NCAA Basketball thoughts, Super Bowl thoughts and more randomness in the near future.
jody |