The Sweetest Gig

The NFL needs to borrow the NBA's motto, "Where Amazing Happens". It doesn't make any sense for professional basketball. Good teams beat bad teams, the Finals are nearly set by February. The only thing amazing about the NBA is that the Nets have only won 3 games this season. That's as many games as the Jets have won in January alone. That's a football team, by the way.

But the NFL never ceases to amaze me. Not because of so-called "parity" or jaw-dropping skill. What amazes me about the NFL is the amount of horrible decisions that are made at a staggering rate of regularity.

For example, Norv Turner and Wade Phillips getting extensions. Now, I'm all for consistency and not making knee-jerk reactions by firing everyone involved, but extensions? It's the same mindset that Notre Dame used when giving Charlie Weis millions of dollars because he won a few games with somebody else's players. Not firing the coach is one thing, but giving more money and more years to a guy after he failed to meet expectations for the Xth year in a row?

The NBA gets it right with coaches. GMs have no problem canning a guy one month into a season because it's obvious he can't get it done. You don't hear things like "they just need more talent, it's not the coach's fault" in basketball. I mean, what's the point of a coach if you don't expect him to win with a team that isn't loaded from top to bottom? Any fan off the street could coach the Chargers into the playoffs. From there on out, it's strategy and motivation that keeps a team rolling.

Seriously, where is the bar set for NFL head coaches? Marvin Lewis got Coach of the Year basically for keeping his team from self-destructing. Then the playoffs happened. And they self-destructed. First year head coach Jim Caldwell decided to scrap a perfect season to let a team into the playoffs who might end up beating them. Brad Childress lost his head coaching job to Brett Favre. Wade Phillips got out-coached by Brad Childress. Must I go on?

Couple those decisions with the Bills hiring Chan Gailey (seriously?) and the Raiders interviewing head coaches before they even fired their current head coach, and I must ask, are the best football minds even working in the NFL? Or is there something I'm missing? Is there some kind of genius working behind the scenes that keeps Eric Mangini employed while Jon Gruden has to sit in a booth?

Perhaps the reason there is parity in the NFL is because all teams are equally inept at making the right calls. Even dynasties like the Patriots, who have arguably the smartest coach of all time, plagued themselves with poor decision making this year. Nobody's perfect, but hell, some of these teams aren't even trying. Maybe I'll be proven wrong with next year's Chargers/Cowboys Super Bowl, but I doubt it.

Every football fan in America couldn't possibly be wrong about this, could they? Amazing.