We were wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! This is appropriate, as part of TMQ’s column this week is the “bad predictions review”.
Why were we wrong? We predicted last week that TMQ would use this week’s column for lots of gratuitous TV bashing. Instead, there’s pretty much…none.
So how does TMQ fill column space in this, the most boring week in football? After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Vote for the TMQ Non-QB Non-RB MVP. The actual poll is about halfway down the page. We encourage you to vote in the best tradition of Chicago politics; early and often.
How would TMQ reform football? This is pretty much a rehash of The King of Sports (we know, we know), but it is kind of handy to have all of it in one place.
“Revoke the nonprofit status of league headquarters, and the ability of the league and individual clubs to employ tax-free bonds.” Oh, not this shit again, Gregg.
“Require disclosure of painkiller use club by club — as anonymous data, with names removed. Painkiller abuse may be football’s next scandal.” Maybe, Gregg. But if we’re going to disclose painkiller use by NFL clubs, why shouldn’t we also disclose painkiller use by ESPN employees? After all, the data is anonymous, so it isn’t like we’re revealing your medical records, Gregg. You might be able to argue that the NFL is special and this justifies painkiller disclosure. We’d like to see this fleshed out more. Is the NFL more special than MLB? Or the NBA? Should we require painkiller disclosure for all sports? And would this drive players to seek painkillers on the street or from non-team doctors in order to avoid disclosure?
“Change law so images of football games played in publicly funded stadia cannot be copyrighted.” Should we also not allow copyright for musical performances and other events that take place in publicly funded stadia? Or just football? Would a law targeting just football pass muster with the courts?
“Graduation rates should be factored into the new FBS playoff ranking system.” Yeah, yeah, good luck with that, Gregg.
“For FBS players, the year-to-year scholarship — which pressures them to favor football over the library, to ensure the scholarship is renewed — should be replaced with a six-year scholarship.” Actually, we’re pretty much in agreement with TMQ on this. Up until recently, NCAA policy actually banned offering multiyear scholarships; that changed in 2012, but there’s still a tendency to offer single year scholarships only.
“NCAA penalties should follow coaches.” We’d make this simpler: if you’re a coach at a program that gets sanctioned, you can’t coach at an NCAA school for as long as your program is sanctioned. One year sanction = coach sits out a year. “So if Coach A gets out of town just before the posse arrives and imposes a two-year sanction on College B, Coach A should face a two-year sanction from the NFL.” The NCAA and NFL are separate organizations, Gregg, so it is hard to imagine how the NCAA could enforce that without the agreement of the NFL. And again, we wonder how that would play out in court.
We’re also pretty much in agreement with TMQ’s high school proposals: no football from January to July, contact limited to once per week, and “impose on high school coaches the same ‘care and custody’ standards that apply to teachers.”
Eliminate kickoffs, ban three-point and four-point stances, only allow “four or five star rated” helmets? We need to think about those.
Football has become too much of a good thing. Tony Dungy told me for “The King of Sports,” “If I could change one aspect of football, it would be that we need more time away for the game, as players and as a society. Young boys and teens should not be doing football year-round. For society, it’s great that Americans love football. But now with the internet, mock drafts, fantasy leagues and recruiting mania year-round, with colleges and high school playing more games and the NFL talking about an even longer schedule — we need time off, away from the game.” We need less of everything about football.
Here is your list of previous winners of the TMQ yadda yadda. Followed by TMQ’s summary of the credentials of his four finalists: Doug Baldwin and Richard Sherman of Seattle, and Danny Trevathan and Louis Vasquez of Denver.
We’ve never been in love with a Jersey girl. (At least, not as far as we know; we suppose it is distantly possible that someone we’ve had a crush on had a Jersey past, but if so, we’re not aware of it. This ends the TMI portion of this column.)
The Crabtree Curse. (Sort of sounds like something Washington Irving would have written.)
We’re going to break this up into two parts, and post the second part later tonight. Our reason for this is that we want to maximize the amount of time you have to vote for TMQ’s Non-QB Non-RB MVP, and posting now gives you a chance to vote (or to write Perl scripts to vote for you) before noon tomorrow.
In part 2: cheerleaders!