Cleveland Browns

Michigan Lands $5 Million Dollar Michigan Man

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The figures are in and Michigan Man, Jim Harbaugh, has signed a seven-year, $35 million dollar contract with a $2 million dollar signing bonus. The deal also includes a provision where Harbaugh will be eligible for a 10 percent raise after the third and fifth year of his contract.

Harbaugh will not be the highest paid coach in college football, and that is better optically for the university and its coach, but Harbaugh won’t be shopping the clearance rack at Walmart for his khakis.

Watching the press conference today, there was a rising tide of good feeling and bonhomie associated with the selection of Harbaugh, but the cold, hard reality of Michigan football will eventually rear its ugly head.

This is not a school that hired Jim Harbaugh to win the Big Ten’s East Division, but a big time football program desperately in need of validation through a Big Ten championship and a national title. (This isn’t We Are Marshall.) Somehow, I don’t get the feeling the folks in the SEC are too worried about the resurrection of Michigan when Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide reloads year after year.

With Harbaugh at the helm, Michigan’s alums and fans expect to win a national championship, but are these people in touch with reality and the present landscape of college football? Harbaugh will need to challenge the power of the SEC, compete for elite recruits and make Michigan a destination for future pros. What high school quarterback, with NFL aspirations, wouldn’t want to be mentored by Harbaugh? Will that be enough for Harbaugh’s program to beat the SEC and Ohio St. for recruits that can make Michigan a perennial powerhouse? Michigan football is an unwieldy beast that has a voracious appetite for success, and this beast will not hesitate to devour a struggling Michigan man.

Want To Be an NFL Owner?

At the New York Jets press conference announcing the firings of General Manager John Idzik and Head Coach Rex Ryan, owner Woody Johnson started speaking extemporaneously about former Jet, current Patriot, and All World cornerback, Darelle Revis, who will be a free agent.

Johnson committed a blatant act of tampering, but what surprises me is the sheer stupidity of most NFL owners. Woody Johnson  has proven to be at the top of that class. Purchasing the Jets for $635 million in January of 2000, Woody Johnson has proven himself to be a poor communicator and an inept manager of a professional sports franchise, but his net worth makes him a Teflon Don that has a boot on the neck of Jets fans for years to come.

A person who lacks charisma and leadership skills will be tasked with hiring the next coach of the New York Jets. Johnson has hired Charlie Casserly and Ron Wolf as old school NFL consiglieres to assist him, but Woody Johnson will have the ultimate say as to whom replaces Rex Ryan.

If Woody Johnson wasn’t an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, would he ever amass wealth in today’s world?

In the United States, there are perhaps a few hundred people who can purchase an NFL team. I am not one of those people, but I am supremely confident that I could run the New York Jets more efficiently than Woody Johnson and the Atlanta Falcons better than Arthur T. Blank. After dismissing Mike Smith as head coach, the Falcons have decided to go in a different direction and bring in edgier players. How soon we forget Mike Vick’s dogfighting scandal, Bobby Petrino walking out on the team, and the culture of chronic dysfunction that plagued Arthur T. Blank’s Dirty Birds before Mike Smith took over the sideline.

The most successful NFL franchises are owned by men who can identify the right front office talent, hold employees accountable, and get the fuck out of the way when they have no fucking clue what they are doing.

The Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and the Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam are perfect examples of egocentric jag-offs who refuse to get the hell out of the way.

With his ubiquitous Jets hat, Woody Johnson has the air of a prep school dilettante who has found a club sport to occupy his time. The Jets give Woody street cred at the country club, but he lacks the ability to make difficult decisions. Woody rakes in the bucks for the RNC, but the Jets chose to stay under the salary cap for the 2014 season.

Rex Ryan should have been fired when John Idzik was named general manager two years ago. Idzik did not want Rexy as his coach, Rexy did not want Geno Smith as his quarterback, and Woody didn’t know what the hell he was doing. The Jets have a weak owner, and weak owners are routinely punished in the NFL, which should be in line with Woody’s political views.

Mike Grimm

Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm (R) is looking for a job, and he’d bring some Staten Island win or I’ll toss you off the third deck leadership to Met Life Stadium.

Rex

I would hire Rex Ryan to lead my team when he learns clock management, his sideline doesn’t constantly appear like a NASCAR pit crew on Adderall, and he takes an interest in grooming a quarterback.

I would hire Rex to make a socially acceptable sex tape, but he might refrain from making a sexually explicit fetish video as it could be potentially career damaging.

NFL Blues

The NFL bores me. The NFL is a chameleon that will alter its product for the greatest Return On Investment. Fantasy leagues explode and the NFL quickly shifts to a league that loves the pass and hates the run. Tackling is treated as a necessary evil, but we sure don’t want to alienate our viewers with images of players leaving the field unable to remember their own names, the name of their wife sitting in the Family Section, or the name of their girlfriend in Section 202.

Prep Schools

Woody Johnson gives prep schools a bad name.

Quick Hits : Johnny Football’s Middle Finger

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The Cleveland Browns have announced that Johnny Manziel will not start the season under center, but that Brian Hoyer will get the starting nod at quarterback from first-year coach, Mike Pettine. Manziel will be the starter no later than Game 4. In fact, on a Vegas prop bet, take the under for Johnny Football’s first start. 

I love that Manziel gave the finger to the Washington Redskins’ sideline.When did cursing and crude hand gestures become a criminal offense on a professional football field? The NFL will reach into Manziel’s pocket and get some cash for the use of his middle finger, but the NFL also fines its players for wearing their socks at an improper length. 

Johnny Football

When speaking about the militarization of local police departments, in conjunction with the violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, it has become common to report there are over 300 million guns in the United States of America. If that figure is correct, and there are over 300 million guns in America then there should be well over 300 million bullets available to Americans. With those numbers, how does the U.S. not survive a zombie apocalypse? Do the math and we should be okay. 

Did Robin Williams’ death raise awareness of depression or Parkinson’s Disease? When someone dies tragically, I cringe when someone states that this will “raise awareness.” Did the mass school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, raise awareness on our inept mental health system or the inadequacy of our gun control laws? I hope it raised something, but did it motivate change? Most people will mourn the loss of Robin Williams’ comic virtuosity, but it will probably make little impact on our society’s view of mental illness. 

Everyone has a favorite Robin Williams’ movie, and living in or just outside of Boston for a long time the natural pick would seem to be Good Will Hunting, but I’m going to dig a little deeper into the early part of Williams’ movie career and select another film set partially in New England, The World According to Garp. Williams plays it fairly straight as T.S. Garp, who is the only son of feminist icon, Jenny Fields. Director George Roy Hill stays true to John Irving’s  novel – Williams plays Garp as a teenager and as a father of two boys as the movie skillfully captures the full life of T.S. Garp. 

To quote Jenny Fields: “You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.”

John Irving raising the arm of Robin Williams (T.S. Garp) in victory. 

There will never be another stand-up comic like Robin Williams. His stand-up performances were a work of true incomprehensible genius. His improvisations were mind-blowing. 

To share my inner fantasy geek with my very large readership, I am a habitual viewer of TNT’s Falling Skies and FX’s The Strain. 

I want to go on Charlie Rose and converse with him in American Sign Language. 

Johnny Manziel should date Khloe Kardashian. 

If Steve Ballmer wasn’t worth approximately $18 million dollars after purchasing the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, would his 5-Hour Energy salesman motivational shtick be more appropriate for a late night infomercial, a sales seminar event at your local shitty motel ballroom, or found Sunday at a mega church? 

Ballmer

The last Super Bowl won by New England’s Bill Belichick and Tom Brady was on February 6, 2005. The Patriots defeated Freddy Mitchell’s Philadelphia Eagles, 24 – 21. The Patriots are once again anointed perennial contenders for a 2015 Super Bowl win, in Glendale, Arizona, but the Belichick and Brady show is going on nearly ten years without another piece of NFL hardware to put in owner Robert Kraft’s office. I get tired hearing of the Patriots’ superiority.  

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony both have clothing lines at Kohl’s. Apparently their divorce does not extend to this department store.