Meaningful change isn't here yet for Raiders
HE SAT BEFORE us last September conceding his Football operation would benefit from another authoritative voice, suggesting he would add one and that already he had identified the individual.
It was a concession startling in its candor, Al Almighty Davis admitting he needed help. The old wolf, it seemed, had learned a new trick.
Four months later, after concluding a sixth consecutive season of at least 11 losses, Davis is wavering on what then seemed a commitment to rediscover excellence.
"I'm just not ready," Davis said Wednesday, after introducing head coach Tom Cable and announcing the hiring of several assistant coaches but committing to no other changes or additions.
So the new executive, who theoretically could alter the dynamic of what has become a disastrous front office, who theoretically would give fans a new reason to have faith, may not be coming after all.
"I haven't made up my mind exactly what I'm going to do,'' Davis said later.
Ahem. Might Al's backpedal, this pirouette from his own self-analysis, provide a glimpse into the whims of the most mercurial professional sports franchise in America?
It has to be downright discouraging for those who wanted to think Al was ready to share high-level authority in hopes of forming a brain trust capable of leading the Raiders out of the NFL wilderness.
It means the Raider Nation likely will be fed another bowl of what it has been served for years. It may not be what's needed or wanted, but it's what Al decides to give.
Right now, that's Cable as head coach and offensive overlord, with Football lifers John Marshall (defensive coordinator), Paul Hackett (quarterbacks coach) and Ted Tollner (passing game coordinator) the most accomplished of the assistants.
That's it. No hot new coach eager to seize this wayward bunch, dragging it by its collective ankles and pulling it back to respectability and no sharp new executive to alternately invigorate and assuage Al, manage the coaching staff and, above all, provide meaningful input on personnel decisions.
Cable deserves better than what he is being given. Moreover, he deserves the best possible chance to prove somebody can succeed in Oakland.
Cable is no great innovator. And he will have his clumsy moments, as we saw last season when he called that infamous fake field goal, relying on the weakest element of Sebastian Janikowski's game: his ability to make tacklers miss.
But Tom is a solid Football man and a player's coach. His biggest challenge may be maintaining integrity with the players, keeping his identity as an authority figure.
The Raiders' eighth head coach since they returned to Oakland in 1995 and their fourth in five years Cable will attempt to finish what he started during his 12-game trial as interim coach last season. He'll try to coach his way through organizational obstacles that have demoralized and suffocated and ultimately run off his predecessors.
He, too, will fail.
And it won't necessarily be his fault.
Never mind that Cable will come to work each day attempting to exercise authority over a room of recycled assistants. Never mind the stubborn rumors about a piece of the team being available for sale. Never mind the persistent questions about JaMarcus Russell's commitment, or the ability of high draft picks like Robert Gallery and Michael Huff. Never mind Al's insistence on following his uniquely peculiar approach to running the draft, as well as his recruiting and signing free agents.
The problem for Cable and everybody else is that it's still the same organization.
So when he's talking, as he did Wednesday, about winning Football games and going to the playoffs and having the Raiders stand next to the New York Yankees and Boston Celtics as the elite franchises in professional sport, Cable is observing reality through a cracked Silver-and-Black lens.
Coaches can say anything they want, and many stretch the bounds of credibility. But coaches do not win championships. Not in today's NFL. There are no exceptions, including New England's wizardly Bill Belichick.
Championships are won by organizations. Ask Mike Tomlin and the Steelers. Ask Tom Coughlin and the Giants. Heck, ask Belichick and the Patriots.
The Raiders, by promoting Cable and making comprehensive changes among assistants, have not addressed their biggest issue. They've simply changed their appearance. They've put a different suit on a seriously ill man.
He might look a little healthier, but what he really needs is a cure.
(c) 2009 Fox Sports Interactive Media, LLC
Recession looms for NFL and Super Bowl
Since it entered the televised era in the 1950s, the National Football League has known only good times.
Wars, economic slumps, and oil embargoes barely registered on its balance sheets. The league seemed recession-proof.
This time, the league is feeling the squeeze. In the next two years, teams could see declining revenues and football players, especially those at the lower end of the scale, could see pay cuts.
Cheaper Super Bowl seats
The belt-tightening has already begun. The league announced last month it would trim 150 of its 1,100 staffers. This weekend's Super Bowl, the biggest US sports event where Americans will down acres of pizza and enough guacamole to fill Tampa's stadium with avocados 18 feet deep, has seen fewer parties, some TV ad cancellations, and - gasp! - the first price cut in Super Bowl tickets in history, according to the Associated Press. (Some $700 seats now cost $500.)
The outlook for next season looks worse. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league is looking at making it cheaper for people to attend the games. "We have to cut our costs," he said Friday
The deep recession "will mean that some teams don't sell out their stadiums," says Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College and author of several books on sports economics. If teams don't sell out their games, they can't broadcast locally. Sponsorship dollars will diminish, he adds. "Salaries will go down."
TV deals a cushion
The NFL's television contracts - its main source of revenue - run through 2011 or later, partially shielding the league from the economic storm. Other streams of revenue, however, are drying up.
"All sports are in a little bit of trouble because they depended so heavily on corporate clients, and the NFL is probably one of the most exposed," says Robert Boland, professor of sports management at New York University's Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.
The biggest collapse in revenue: the market for naming stadiums.
The Dallas Cowboys have not found a corporation willing to pony up the necessary cash to christen its new stadium, due to open in August. The New York Giants are in a similar quandary, after German financial-services giant Allianz pulled out after an uproar over the firm's old ties to Nazi Germany. Reportedly, the deal was worth some $20 million to $30 million for a 20- to 30-year agreement.
Player salaries at risk
Although team payrolls may be expanded next year because of the NFL's labor contract, analysts expect some pay cuts will hit players eventually if the economy doesn't turn around.
Salary cuts? Layoffs? Maybe this pricking of the Super Bowl bubble will return America's focus to the game itself (click here for an analysis).
After all, the "Greatest Game Ever Played" occurred years before skyboxes, $3 million-pre-30-second ads, or even the Super Bowl itself. It was the 1958 NFL championship, where the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 23 to 17 on national TV in a sudden-death overtime.
A memorable day. And no one cared about the ads.
Copyright (c) 2008 The Christian Science Monitor
Cardinals, Steelers once teamed as Card-Pitts
Students of NFL trivia know that this year's Super Bowl opponents, the Cardinals and Steelers, once were brothers in arms, a merged team known as the Card-Pitt. (Or, less kindly, "the Carpet," because it routinely was stomped on, losing all 10 of its games in 1944.)
A mere 64 seasons later, they share something entirely different, center stage in our nation's biggest sporting lollapalooza. There is no meek-inheriting-the-Earth moral to the tale; no coming of full cycle, from experiencing winless frustration - the 1944 Card-Pitt's leading rusher quit the team the week before its season finale - to scaling the football mountaintop.
Rather, this is a glimpse into the pro football attic.
"There was a World War II manpower shortage," football historian Jim Campbell said. "It wasn't the Paul Tagliabue, button-down, corporate operation it is now. There were probably a lot of players, especially linemen, still being paid by the game in those days."
Though college football had been enormously popular for decades, the NFL remained a niche project; Campbell guessed that "only the Giants, Redskins and Bears made money" among an unstable total of, usually, 10 teams.
The Rams, then calling Cleveland home, suspended operations in 1943 because of the war, then won their first game back in the league in '44 against the new hybrid Card-Pitt.
Ted Collins, manager of singer Kate Smith, who was active in selling war bonds at the time, purchased a new NFL franchise that year for Boston that he named the Yanks, who then absorbed the Brooklyn Tigers (formerly Dodgers) in '45.
In 1944, the second of four seasons in which World War II absences cut deeply into NFL rosters, the Cardinals were short 42 players and the Steelers 30. Then based in Chicago, the Cardinals had been 0-10 in 1943, the year the Steelers participated in the first NFL wartime merger, with the Philadelphia Eagles. (The "Steagles," occasionally featuring a heady lefthanded passer familiar to veteran Giants followers - Allie Sherman - finished a respectable 5-4-1.)
When Philadelphia ended the Pittsburgh collaboration after one season, the Steelers sought out a new blood-brother pact with the Cardinals. Reportedly, Steelers coach Walt Kiesling and Cardinals coach Phil Handler enjoyed a warm association that might have included more trips to the racetrack together than hours preparing their team for games.
Which was the opposite of the strained Kiesling-Greasy Neale Steagles relationship a year earlier, when one stuck to running the offense and the other to defense, a precursor of modern offensive and defensive coordinators.
According to football encyclopedias and newspaper articles from the time, a training camp decision determined that the Card-Pitt would use a T-formation offense in place of the single wing. But by late in the season, the team had gone through three quarterbacks and turned to the "Notre Dame box," a balanced-line version of the single wing. And it was Holy Cross grad Johnny Grigas, listed as a fullback and linebacker in most history references, who led the team in passing (690 yards) and rushing (610).
Grigas nevertheless was fed up after nine games. He wrote to management that he had taken such a physical beating that his "soul isn't in the game" and left the team. "I tried to win and worked hard," he wrote, "but The Workhorse, as I was termed by the newspapers, is almost ready for the farm." He was 24.
For their "home games," the Card-Pitt played four times at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field and twice at Chicago's Comiskey Park, drawing a total of 69,670 spectators all season. Road crowds were larger, and when the Card-Pitt lost to the Giants, 23-0, at the Polo Grounds in late October, 40,734 attended.
They wore the Cardinals' red jerseys, except for inexplicably donning blue against Washington, causing Campbell - who worked for the Steelers from 1970 through 1977 - to wonder if original owner Art Rooney was "trying to save money on uniforms." The Steelers' traditional black and gold also had been eschewed in '43, when they were the Steagles, Campbell said, in favor of the Eagles' green.
The Steelers do claim as club records the statistical marks compiled by both the Steagles in 1943 and the Card-Pitt in 1944. (The Cardinals' yearly leaders are listed only from 1945.) Thus Roy Zimmerman, who never played for the Steelers (as a single entity), is credited with leading their 1943 team in passing by both the Steelers and Eagles. And Ed Rucinski, a Cardinal in the years both before and after the Card-Pitt's season, is preserved in the Steelers' record book as their leading receiver in 1944.
And there is one other enduring link between the Cardinals and Steelers: This year's Super Bowl adversaries still are owned by the same families, the Bidwills and Rooneys, respectively, who were old Card-Pitt teammates.
BAD COMBINATION
The 1944 Cardinals-Steelers marriage resulted in nothing but heartbreak:
Sept. 24: Rams 30, Card-Pitt 28
Oct. 2: Packers 34, Card-Pitt 7
Oct. 15: Bears 34, Card-Pitt 7
Oct. 22: Giants 23, Card-Pitt 0
Oct. 29: Redskins 42, Card-Pitt 20
Nov. 5: Lions 27, Card-Pitt 6
Nov. 12: Lions 21, Card-Pitt 7
Nov. 19: Rams 33, Card-Pitt 6
Nov. 26: Packers 35, Card-Pitt 20
Dec. 3: Bears 49, Card-Pitt 7
Copyright (c) 2009, Newsday Inc
DOLPHINS SNAP UP WAKE
The Miami Dolphins today signed linebacker Cameron Wake, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year in the Canadian Football League.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but reports suggest the deal is worth US 4.9 million and includes a US 1 million guarantee, making it the largest contract ever signed by a CFL player heading to the NFL.
Wake won CFL Defensive Player of the Year honours in each of his last two seasons with the British Columbia Lions, registering 39 sacks and 137 tackles. He also forced eight fumbles and blocked two field goals.
After his collegiate career at Penn State, Wake signed with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent in 2005.
He was released before ever appearing in a game with the Giants.
(c)2009 Sporting Life UK Ltd
Hopefully, Panthers can learn from this disaster
CHARLOTTE -- The Carolina Panthers had better start thinking about the Arizona Cardinals.
It probably seems a tad late for that. But after the Panthers got beat by the Cardinals, 33-13, in an NFC divisional playoff game Saturday night, that’s exactly what must be done.
Because in this, the NFL era of throw, throw, throw, throw, throw, there will always be teams like the Cardinals, who aren’t well rounded but can win by putting up a ton of points - just like they did Saturday.
And if the Panthers are ever to win a Super Bowl, they'll have to be able to stop them.
The Panthers had a fine traditional defense this year. They were seventh in the league in points allowed, and third in rushing yards allowed. In the olden days, say 10 or so years ago, that might have been good enough to win a title.
Not anymore.
This is the 21st century and a black man has been elected president for real, not just on "24." It's not clear how that ties into football, except to say that the world is changing and the days when running and stopping the run were keys to winning are long gone.
Not when teams line up with guys like Larry Fitzgerald at one wide receiver and Steve Breaston at the other. That's a total of 2,496 receiving yards in the regular season. And 194 more on Saturday. And the Panthers didn’t even have to contend with Arizona's other 1,000-yard receiver, Anquan Boldin, who was out with an injury.
When the Cardinals had the ball Saturday, Bank of America Stadium was Fitzgerald's personal stage. Carolina stupidly began the game in single coverage, and he shredded them for 72 receiving yards in the first quarter alone.
The Panthers eventually adjusted, covering Fitzgerald with two men, and then three. But it got to be like a Bruce Lee movie - the more guys the Panthers brought, the more ridiculous they looked when Fitzgerald brushed them away.
While Fitzgerald was an A-list headliner, finishing with eight catches for 166 yards and a touchdown, Breaston was an adequate second lead, hauling in four passes. He especially shined in the third quarter, when Carolina focused more on Fitzgerald. They put up those numbers even though Arizona only attempted two passes in the fourth quarter, one that went to running back Tim Hightower.
Obviously, quarterback Kurt Warner had a big day, too. With little pressure on the veteran, he picked Carolina apart for 220 yards and a pair of scores.
Arizona's pass-heavy offense is a monster, no doubt. But what's scary is it's not a freak. Teams have won Super Bowls leaning on their air attacks - most notably Warner's old team, the St. Louis Rams, in 1999. Since then, others teams have won divisions and advanced deep in the playoffs that way as well.
The Panthers were ill-equipped to face Arizona's offense Saturday. And there's only one way the Panthers can counter that kind of firepower moving forward - by finding defensive players of equal talent.
That means a starting cornerback with the skill to cover a guy like Fitzgerald; a second starter at CB who can keep up with a player like Breaston; a nickleback who can shut down talent like Boldin's; two coverage safeties who can help blanket all three, even at the expense of run defense; and finally, four defensive linemen who can consistently put pressure on the QB.
It would be folly to suggest that Carolina's poor pass defense was the exclusive reason for Saturday's embarrassing loss. Jake Delhomme had a terrible day at quarterback, throwing five interceptions; when the team got down early, it was forced to abandon its running game, which is its strength; and even when Delhomme did have time to throw, receivers didn't get open.
But a good defense might have overcome all that. Instead, it just compounded the problem.
Today, Carolina needs to start moving forward. As it was this season, the goal for 2009 should be a Super Bowl title.
To achieve that, the Panthers need to realize that there are teams that can beat with them with the pass, and adjust accordingly.
And beginning this morning, they need to start thinking about the Arizona Cardinals.
Copyright 2009 - The Fayetteville Observer
Suit over 49ers policy has privacy implications
The California Supreme Court could set new ground rules for the clash between privacy and security in a case from an unusual setting - Candlestick Park, where 49ers fans are subjected to pat-down searches before entering the stadium.
The court hears arguments Tuesday in an appeal by a Danville couple whose lawsuit challenging the pat-downs was tossed out on the grounds that they consented to be searched when they bought season tickets. Their lawyers say any consent was coerced and that a company could give the same rationale for conducting body searches at work or wiretapping customers' phones, as long as it announced its intentions ahead of time.
"A commercial entity may not constitutionally require its patrons to give up their privacy rights as a condition of doing business," attorney Mark White said in written arguments to the court.
He said that's particularly true in this case because the National Football League, which ordered the search policy, is "the only game in town" - fans of big-time football can't simply patronize a competitor.
Sorry, the 49ers replied. White's clients and every other fan can either buy tickets, which tell them they will be patted down, or find "an alternate form of recreation," the team told the court.
Football fans spend hours in stadiums packed with tens of thousands of people and don't have much of a "reasonable expectation of 'privacy' in the sense of not being touched by strangers," said Sonya Winner, a lawyer for the team.
Many fans, she added, "may prefer to have pat-downs so as to decrease the likelihood that they and their families will be subject to a terrorist attack."
A ruling is due within 90 days. The justices may use the case to define the privacy rights of business customers in California.
The NFL required the searches at all games as an anti-terrorist measure in 2005, three years after Super Bowl spectators were first subjected to pat-downs. Screeners outside the stadium pat down fans' backs and the sides of their legs and upper bodies.
The policy has survived all legal challenges so far, including a 2007 ruling by a federal appeals court in Atlanta that said fans at Tampa Bay Buccaneers games agreed to be searched when they bought their tickets.
The current suit may be stronger, however, because California voters added privacy rights to the state Constitution in 1972 - rights that, unlike their federal counterpart, protect people against intrusions by businesses as well as the government.
The plaintiffs, Daniel and Kathleen Sheehan, sued the 49ers in December 2005 with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. By the time they got to court, the season was over, and the trial judge said they needed to renew their tickets to maintain their right to bring the case.
When they did so, the judge ruled that the Sheehans had consented to the pat-downs and threw out the suit.
In a 2-1 ruling in October 2007 upholding the dismissal, the First District Court of Appeal said a government agency can't require people to surrender their rights to receive services. But customers have more options, and thus fewer rights, when dealing with private businesses like the 49ers, the court said.
The Sheehans' lawyers say the appellate ruling gave short shrift to the privacy protections Californians endorsed in 1972.
Despite the couple's "coerced acquiescence," attorney White said in court papers, they are entitled to a trial at which the 49ers would have to show why the pat-downs were needed. A judge should decide whether the invasion of their privacy was justified or whether there were less-intrusive ways to prevent terrorism, White argued.
Taken to its logical extreme, White said, allowing companies to violate privacy rights merely by announcing they are doing so "would allow telephone companies to slip a notice into consumers' bills that in the future their calls would be monitored."
He said the case gives the court a chance to reaffirm the 1972 constitutional amendment's "vital role ... in protecting Californians' privacy in their daily encounters in the business world."
The 49ers countered that the privacy amendment was aimed mainly at limiting collection of personal data and had little to do with searches by businesses.
Winner, the team's lawyer, said the 49ers have a right to decide which patrons to invite, and their fans also have a right to security.
Unlike phone customers who might not see notices slipped into their bills, Winner said, the Sheehans "voluntarily bought their tickets with knowledge of the pat-down requirement and expecting that a pat-down would be a condition of entry to the stadium."
(c)2009 Hearst Communications Inc.
Bengals beat Chiefs 16-6 for third straight win
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Pacing the sideline in a bright red jacket and cap, coach Herm Edwards watched the Chiefs' season - and, perhaps, his days in charge of them - end with another dismal showing.
Cedric Benson ran for 111 yards and a touchdown Sunday, putting a little bite into the Bengals' depleted offense, and Cincinnati completed its late-season surge with a 16-6 victory over the Chiefs that sent both teams into an offseason of big decisions.
The Chiefs (2-14) have more to make.
The worst season in their 49-year history ended with another disjointed performance under Edwards, who urged the franchise to plunge headlong into a rebuilding mode. His rookie-filled team has lost 23 of its past 25 games, and has at least one major change ahead.
General manager Carl Peterson is leaving after 20 years with Kansas City. His successor will have a say in whether they replace Edwards, who insists that the Chiefs' future isn't as glum as it looks.
The Chiefs were as glum as could be against the Bengals (4-11-1), who will most likely to stay the course after their latest losing season. Coach Marvin Lewis has two years left on his contract, and there is no general manager to replace - owner Mike Brown makes the important decisions.
The Bengals closed out the season with three straight wins, two of them against teams that seemed to care less than they did. They shut out the Browns 14-0 and had little trouble with the lackluster Chiefs, who crossed midfield only once in the first three quarters.
The game served as a preview of next year's offense for Cincinnati, which was missing both tackles and top receivers Chad Ocho Cinco and T.J. Houshmandzadeh to injury. Benson, who is a free agent after the season, scored on a 2-yard run and had his third 100-yard rushing game.
Houshmandzadeh also is a free agent, leaving the Bengals with their major decisions on offense.
The Bengals sold 63,984 tickets for the game, setting a franchise record with their 44th consecutive sellout. The crowd got so bored that it did the wave in the fourth quarter. Some of the loudest cheers came for a halftime scrimmage between a youth football team and mascots for local sports teams, including the Bengals' mascot.
The kids won that one.
The overriding question in the Chiefs-Bengals game was which team wanted it less. Apparently, it was the Chiefs. Kansas City had the ball five times in the first half and managed only two first downs, setting a tone. The Chiefs didn't get closer than Cincinnati's 37-yard line until their final drive, which ended with Tony Gonzalez's 5-yard touchdown catch.
Copyright (c) 2008 The Associated Press
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