The Perfect Job for Deion Sanders in 2023 is the One He Already has- Head Coach of Jackson State

We need to talk about Deion Sanders.

Coach Prime has been at Jackson State for three seasons, and has won 11 games each of the last two years. Jackson State is on the verge of repeating as Southwestern Athletic Conference champions. Their last championship before the Deion Sanders era came in 2007.

Under normal circumstances, a coach that won back to back conference championships at an HBCU, and somehow managed to convince the consensus #1 recruit in the country in Travis Hunter to come and play for him, would be a hot name for any potential Group of 5 suitors. 

But this is Deion Sanders we’re talking about.  

His name has been linked to every opening in the country, and even some jobs that aren’t open, like his alma mater Florida State. Charles Barkley said he wants Deion at Auburn. Fans at last weekend’s Nebraska game against Wisconsin were spotted holding up “Bring on Neon Deion” signs. Arizona State President Michael Crow said on a radio interview that the name people feed him most often about their opening is Deion Sanders.

This week a report from Carl Reed at 247 Sports came out that Deion is at the top of two school’s lists– University of Colorado, and University of South Florida. Before this season, Deion was actually in the mix for the jobs at Colorado State and Texas Christian.

But there’s one school nobody seems to be talking about that is a perfect fit for Coach Prime’s personality, coaching style, and personal value system, plus is comfortable with both his past history as co-founder of the ill-fated Prime Prep Academy, and his business relationship with the often controversial Barstool Sports.

Deion Sanders’ next employer should be none other than his current employer.

That’s right, I’m saying Coach Prime should ride things out at Jackson State.

Deion Sanders got ESPN’s College Gameday to come to Jackson, Mississippi, and helped the show pull in its best week 9 viewership in 13 years. 

Deion Sanders convinced 22 NFL teams to fly representatives to Jackson State for an all-Mississippi Scouting combine, and called out the 10 NFL teams that didn’t make the trip. He also helped James Houston IV become the first Jackson State player to be drafted by an NFL team since 2008.

Deion Sanders helped Jackson State navigate an ongoing clean water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi that kept the team from being able to stay on its own campus, while calling attention to the issue nationwide, and pressuring the state’s Governor into action. 

At Jackson State, Deion Sanders has had the privilege of coaching his sophomore QB son Shedeur Sanders, who has thrown over 6,000 yards and 60+ touchdowns.

And most importantly to my point, when rival Alabama State head coach Eddie Robinson Jr. called Sanders out by saying he “ain’t SWAC,” Deion responded by saying “If I ain’t SWAC, who is SWAC?“

The best way for Deion Sanders to prove that he’s SWACv is to stick around in the SWAC and not make a jump to a middling FBS school that we can all agree would only be a brief stopping point until he proves to the SEC or ACC powers that be that he’s ready for the big leagues. 

Why jump from stepping stone to stepping stone when Jackson State provides you with the perfect platform to be who you are, and to do what you do? 

Just like Deion made 22 NFL teams fly to Jackson, if his ultimate goal is to be at Auburn or Florida State, or even to succeed his Aflac commercial co-star Nick Saban at Alabama, I believe he should make them come to him. 

Let that sink in.

If The New York Jets Want To Salvage Their Season, Zach Wilson Needs To Be Benched

We need to talk about the New York Jets and their quarterback problem.

Yesterday, the New York Jets had more punts (10) than pass completions (9). 

They lost a 10-3 game on a last second punt return to the rival New England Patriots, and after the game, second year QB Zach Wilson, who is supposed to be the franchise player, told the media that he didn’t feel like the offense let the defense down. 

The New York Jets defense had six sacks, eight tackles for a loss, and didn’t allow a touchdown for the first time since 2019, and Zach Wilson stood in front of the New York media and said “not my problem.”

Wilson is young. He’s going to make mistakes as he learns about the act of taking public accountability in this league. There are a lot of people piling on to Wilson for what he said, and I’m not going to join in. 

Partly because I’m not going to say anything that Dan Orlovsky or Colin Cowherd haven’t already said. But mainly because there’s no point in wasting energy scolding a quarterback that shouldn’t even be in the game. 

The Jets are in last place right now in what looks like the best division in football, and are wasting an opportunity to go to the playoffs for the first time in 12 years by attempting to develop a QB that might be ready for the moment someday, but definitely isn’t ready right now. 

Head Coach Robert Saleh choosing to play Zach Wilson over Joe Flacco, who has started four less games this season than Wilson but still has more touchdown passes, is going to alienate Wilson from his teammates, and stunt the development of everyone on the team for the sake of trying to bring along one guy. 

Wilson is having trouble seeing open receivers downfield, he’s repeatedly floating balls on short to intermediate routes, there’s no zip or urgency on his checkdown throws, and when he does hit an open receiver, the balls often get dropped because receivers start pressing when their opportunities are limited. 

Maybe the Jets are afraid of another Geno Smith situation, who got his jaw broken by a teammate in 2015, leading to Ryan Fitzpatrick throwing for a team-record 31 TDs in a 10-win season that still didn’t result in a playoff berth. Maybe they see Geno Smith balling out for the Seahawks seven years later and don’t want to miss out on a chance to patiently develop their own franchise QB- but Geno Smith is an extreme outlier. 

The Jets are much closer to ruining Zach Wilson the way they ruined Sam Darnold. The New York media has already latched onto Wilson saying he didn’t let the defense down the same way they latched onto Darnold saying that he was seeing ghosts on the field. The chances that Wilson lives that moment down are slim to none, especially if he can’t lead the team to a win this weekend against the QB the Jets passed on in Justin Fields.

The right thing to do for the New York Jets fans, the locker room, and for Zach Wilson himself, is to let Joe Flacco go out there and be the boring statue he’s always been, so you can limit mistakes and let this defense cook. 

The goal for the Jets down the stretch needs to be reaching 10 wins, and they’re not going to do that behind the arm of a man who can’t even get 10 completions in a game.

Let that sink in.

Hiring Jacque Vaughn Was the Right Call for the Brooklyn Nets

Sometimes boring is better.

And it doesn’t get more boring than the Brooklyn Nets hiring Jacque Vaughn to be their new Head Coach.

After Steve Nash, who never should have been brought back this season to begin with, and the Brooklyn Nets agreed to part ways last week, rumors immediately began circulating that owner Joe Tsai wanted to replace Nash with current suspended Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka.

It’s one thing to erroneously add water to a grease fire, like the Nets did when they traded for Ben Simmons. It’s another thing to try and put out a grease fire with a completely separate grease fire.

Ime Udoka is suspended for an entire season for allegedly carrying on a drama-filled affair with the spouse of someone else in the organization, with the added bonus of the affair also being with a subordinate. The rumors of Udoka’s willingness to leave the Celtics might not have been a surprise to anyone that cringes at the thought having people that were caught up in what Jada Pinkett-Smith would call “an entanglement” having to be in an office together, but the Celtics players were definitely caught off guard, and Udoka not getting the Nets job adds another level of drama to what’s going on in Boston.

While Udoka would have been a home run hire on the basketball end, between his personal life, Kyrie Irving’s personal beliefs, Ben Simmons’ personal vendetta against shooting the basketball, and Kevin Durant’s personality online, there might have been one too many issues to overcome.

Enter Jacque Vaughn- the most boring, but dependable, hire the Brooklyn Nets could have made. 

Jacque Vaughn was a steady and solid point guard at Kansas that benefited from having several first round picks around him, like Scot Pollard, Greg Ostertag, Raef LaFrentz and Paul Pierce. Despite never averaging more than 11 points and 7 assists per game in college, he was able to put together a 12-year NBA career.

The NBA has a long history of decent role playing guards with a solid college pedigree going on to be championship coaches. The obvious ones are Pat Riley and Steve Kerr, but you also have Rick Carlisle, Ty Lue and Doc Rivers. 

There’s something about guys that get the absolute most out of their talent as players that have the ability to unlock the same trait in others. That’s not to say that Steve Nash didn’t maximize his talent, he went from Santa Clara to winning multiple NBA MVP’s. But Nash was a star in college, and a lottery pick for a reason. He had elite base-level talent. We can’t just be saying that every good thing a white player accomplishes in this league is due to hard work.

But let’s get back to talking about the guy that ironically ended Steve Nash’s college career by holding him to 1/11 shooting in the 1996 NCAA Tournament, Jacque Vaughn.

Not only does Vaughn have the credibility of pushing himself past the limit of what he should have been able to accomplish in the NBA, he also has the credibility of having gone up against both Michael Jordan and LeBron James in separate NBA finals. How many coaches can say that?

Vaughn has both played in a playoff game as a member of the Nets, as well as coached the Nets in the 2020 playoffs after Kenny Atkinson resigned. He’s been around as a Nets assistant for the last seven years, so if anyone is aware of all the issues facing this franchise, it’s gotta be him. 

Sure, Jacque Vaughn’s first go-round as a head coach was a disaster, but he was in his mid-30’s and trying to make an Orlando Magic team relevant that had Aaron Affalo as one of its best players. Not even Phil Jackson would have had a chance down there. 

Sometimes it takes a coach getting an early shot and failing to find their footing. Just look at what Monty Williams has been able to do in Phoenix after flaming out in New Orleans.

The Nets have arguably the most talented starting five in the East, and have obviously been missing a focused, steadfast, diligent locker room voice to channel that talent into wins on the court. 

I’m not saying Jacque Vaughn is going to win this team a title, but now that his point guard’s suspension is coming to an end, if he can get Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Ben Simmons all rowing in the same direction, he’ll have worked a basketball miracle and earned himself the respect that he’s long deserved. 

Let that sink in. 

Kyrie Irving’s Suspension Is Ending, But We Still Need an Explanation For Its Length

It might be coming to an end, but we still need to talk about the length of Kyrie Irving’s suspension.

On November 3rd, Kyrie Irving was given a suspension of a minimum of five games. He missed

The reason for the suspension is that he had posted a link to a documentary that made the case that African Americans were of Hebrew heritage, and that the reason that’s not common knowledge is that there has been a century’s long cover-up that includes exaggerating the Holocaust. 

It was definitely something that Kyrie Irving needed to clarify, and when given the opportunity, it became clear to any honest observer that the only information that Kyrie had retained from this so-called documentary is the overall concept of black people in America having a much richer history than just being the descendants of slaves, and that he felt no need to apologize.

I’ve talked before about the factors that make people like Kyrie Irving search for meaning in their ancestry, and even got into the fact that as an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, there are millions of white Americans that actually do believe that the Book of Mormon teaches Irving’s heritage goes back to lost Israelite tribes. 

The backlash has never been about whether anyone believes they have Ancient Hebrew Heritage. The backlash was about whether Kyrie believed the anti-Semitic tropes presented by the film, and whether there has been a Jewish conspiracy to keep black people down.

That particular unanswered question might have justified Kyrie’s initial suspension, but Nets owner Joe Tsai said that he’s met with Kyrie and his family, and that ” it’s clear… that Kyrie does not have any beliefs of hate towards Jewish people or any group.”

Well if it’s so clear, why wasn’t Kyrie Irving back on the court right away?

According to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, “Whether or not Kyrie Irving is antisemitic is not relevant to the damage caused by the posting of hateful content.”

Maybe Adam Silver is right here, but his own track record in this area makes Kyrie’s continued suspension at the hands of the Nets seem rather excessive. 

Back in 2011, the NBA dropped a $100,000 hammer on Kobe Bryant for shouting a gay slur at at a referee. Kobe was allowed to apologize and make it clear that what he said was not a reflection of his feelings toward the gay community. David Stern was commissioner at the time. 

After Adam Silver took over as commissioner, Rajon Rondo did the same thing, calling a referee a gay slur in a much more aggressive manner. That official responded by publicly coming out of the closet as gay in an effort to help NBA players realize the impact of their words. And on top of that, Rajon Rondo lied about what he said, and only apologized on Twitter after witnesses and video review showed that Rondo was lying. 

Rondo received a one-game suspension amounting to an $86,000 fine. 

Kyrie is seven games and almost $500,000 deep in fines, has offered another $500,000 to the anti-defamation league, and is going to lose out on tens of millions of dollars in Nike endorsement deals. 

And in the words of Joe Tsai, does not hate Jewish people OR ANY GROUP.

The suspension was objectively excessive. It was historically excessive. And at the end of the day, it’s all because Kyrie Irving watched a documentary that it’s extremely clear he didn’t comprehend, and posted a link to it without context. 

Look, if a baseball pitcher posted a link to a place where he bought a “I love the KKK” t-shirt, we’d all be demanding answers. But if the answer was earnestly that he’s not racist, but instead that he’s just a little bit dumb and thought the K’s stood for strikeouts, how much punishment would be necessary before he was allowed to take the mound again?

The longer this suspension went on, the more backlash Adam Silver and Joe Tsai are risked. LeBron James has already called for Kyrie Irving’s reinstatement. NBPA president Jaylen Brown has taken it a step further, publicly blasting Nike and pointing out that Joe Tsai’s investment in companies that supply China with the technological means to spy on, and ultimately persecute, it’s Uygher Muslim population.

Influential players being willing to take on both of the NBA’s traditionally bulletproof untouchables- Nike and China, to get Kyrie Irving back on the court, is something I guarantee no one has a plan to handle.

It’s as simple as this- once it was determined that the comments cam from a place of ignorance and not malice, they should have immediately let Kyrie play, and do the work of learning about the very real history of the persecution of the Jewish people while on the court. 

Let that sink in.

Jim Irsay Hiring Jeff Saturday as Colts Coach Shows Exactly How Owners Circumvent the Rooney Rule

We need to talk about Jeff Saturday being pulled off the street to finish the 2022 season as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.

Look, I like Jeff Saturday. I have nothing against him as a person. I played against him, he always seemed like a great leader, and all of my old teammates that know him have nothing but good things to say about the man. This take isn’t really about Jeff Saturday.

That being said, it’s absolutely outrageous that they hired this man to finish out the season as the Colts head coach. 

I see people talking about “Jeff Saturday is a Colts legend.” 

Well if Colts fans want him to stay a legend, maybe there should be a better plan than handing the controls of a crashing plane over to someone without flight experience.

And speaking of Colts legends, doesn’t Indianapolis already have Reggie Wayne as a first year receiver’s coach, and Cato June in his seventh year of coaching college football or above?

It would be one thing if Jim Irsay was installing Jeff Saturday as an admission that this season is lost, the direction of the team needs re-thought, and the search for a replacement was going to start immediately. 

But that’s not what this is. 

Jim Irsay dared reporters to bet against Jeff Saturday as Colts head coach, and alluded to the possibility of making the playoffs THIS SEASON. 

I’ll take your bet, and your money Jim. 

But I at least want to thank Jim Irsay for perfectly illustrating the frustration with the ineffectiveness of the Rooney Rule when put up against a rich old white man’s “gut instinct.”

While Irsay said that the Colts have every plan to honor the Rooney Rule and go through a legitimate interview process after the season to gauge the vision of multiple candidates, including minority candidates, he also said this about Jeff Saturday:

“He’s the best man for the job, and there’s no question about it in my mind. I’ve been around it a long time. He’s extremely tough and he’s a leader. You have to be a great thinker, work with people, be open-minded, create a culture where people trust you. You have to have experience, draw on experience in your life. You know it when you see it.“


Jim Irsay has a good feeling in his tummy about a white player that was a solid leader in his playing days, and believes that despite no track record whatsoever of producing any kind of results that would prove those feelings to be rooted in reality, that Jeff Saturday is the right man to make the Indianapolis Colts a playoff team in 2022.


Since Jim Irsay is taking bets, how much do we want to bet that Jim Irsay is more invested in his gut being proven right so he can keep Jeff Saturday on as head coach, rather than earnestly following the NFL rules that were designed to keep the exact situation of a rich man’s nostalgia from costing overqualified minority candidates an opportunity?


We spent years and years hearing that “if only black coaches had more experience as a coordinator,” or “if only more black players got into coaching on the offensive side of the ball,” then the layers of prejudice that kept them from the penultimate opportunities of the profession would erode away.


That was bullshit.


Oh, and congratulations to the Houston Texans now having grounds to dump Lovie Smith for Josh McCown. The absurdity of the situation was the only thing keeping the Texans from making this happen last year, but now they won’t even be the first team in their own division to do it.


Let that sink in.

Kyrie Irving is a Searcher, Not an Anti-Semite. So What is Kyrie Searching For?

Put your listening ears on and open up that third eye because we need to talk about Kyrie Irving.

If you’ve been living under a rock, then you may or may not be surprised to find out that Kyrie Irving is sitting out right now, again, without being paid, for reasons completely unrelated to basketball. 

Life’s three guarantees: death, taxes, and Kyrie Irving being so gifted at basketball that he gets bored and engages in things that keep him from being able to use his gift.

But I think we’re all being a little hard on Kyrie, don’t you? And if you don’t, still stick with me, and see if you can’t put yourself in Kyrie’s shoes for a moment.

Which… technically, you can’t do anymore, because Nike is ending their relationship with him.

But I digress.

I don’t want to relitigate Kyrie Irving’s past comments about the earth being flat, or that employer-mandated vaccination was the world’s greatest oppression. But I do have to mention those things if for no other reason to establish two things-

1) None of the strange stuff Kyrie Irving has ever made news for saying were his own original ideas. They all came from somewhere other than inside his own head.

And 2) You don’t accidentally stumble into endorsing alternative ideas. You have to be actively searching for them. 

Kyrie Irving is a searcher. And this time, the thing he found has people accusing him of being anti-Semitic.

Kyrie Irving posted a link to the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake up Black America,” a movie that Ronald Dalton Jr. fashioned after his own book by the same name. The movie was on Amazon, and Irving didn’t provide any commentary about how he felt about the film. 

The main idea presented in the film, which includes and easily verifiably false quote from none other than Adolf Hitler, and the batshit crazy claim that the Holocaust was exaggerated 20 times over, is that black people in America have been lied to about their lineage as African slaves, and are in fact, kidnapped Hebrews.

The idea that dark skinned people in America can be traced back to “lost” Hebrew lineage is not a new idea. There are families six or seven generations deep in the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. Shit, it’s not even a “black idea.” Next time you’re hanging out with a Latter Day Saint friend, ask them what a Lamanite is. You’ll find out that nearly 2% of the entire population of the United States believes that Native Americans are also Hebrews. 

And Kyrie is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, so chances are there are a lot more white people that believe Irving is a Jew than there are black people.

But back to my point- every black family in America has at least one member of the family, or at least a family friend, that might not call themselves a Black Hebrew Israelite, but they certainly have what I’m going to call “Hotep theology.”

If you’re a white person watching this, let me make this relatable. You know that uncle you have that resembles the Randy Quaid character in Independence Day? Well, we have our own version of that same uncle. 

And Hotep theology, while it can be harmful, usually comes from well-meaning people that just want to participate in a pride-filled heritage and have a connection to where they come from. 

They’re searchers, or at least they were, before they became militantly attached to their ideals.

And that brings me back to Kyrie Irving. The searcher. Born in Australia. His mother, who was mixed race, passed away when he was four. He was raised going to Catholic School, in a family of world class athletes, of which he ended up being the best. His stepmother is a strong black executive business woman in a world with far too few of those, and despite her not being married to his father anymore, he still made her his agent. 

Kyrie Irving was brought up in such unusual circumstances that he was never going to be what anyone would consider normal. And not only was he cut off from his mother, tragically, he is also a black man in America. 

Talk to a white person about where they come from. And I’m not talking about the ones that are super into genealogy and can name every ancestor going back 15 generations. Just think of a friend, call them up, and ask if they know anything about their heritage. 

They’ll probably say something like “My dad’s Irish Catholic, my mom’s family goes back to Sicily, which sounds Italian but it isn’t.”

Imagine knowing where you come from, much less how you got here, and that history includes free people, perhaps oppressed, but likely free, making the decision to come here.

Maybe you take that simple knowledge of being able to trace a thread backwards for granted. The truth is, and I’m not saying this to make anyone feel guilty, but a lot of black people in America can’t even trace their family histories back to a forced arrival, because for generations and generations, black offspring were passed around by their owners like Pnini Select trading cards. Sure, there are some property records out there, but it’s not like there was a Slavery Carfax.

The truth is, America created people like Kyrie a long time ago, when it cut an entire people group off from its history for the sake of capital gains. Some of the things Kyrie is searching for can’t be found, so when someone comes along to tell him and people like him that they’re more than just the product of the American South’s need for cheap labor, that they’re not only special, but chosen, and connected to a greater story-

is Kyrie Irving really the monster we’ve made him out to be for wanting to believe it?

Should he have shared it without context? No. 

Should someone in Kyrie Irving’s life be working with him diligently on media literacy? Absolutely. 

But is Kyrie Irving, one of the most charitable athletes in the world, who has donated more to progressive causes than most liberal people will make in three lifetimes, an anti-Semite because he thinks he’s got Hebrew heritage?

No, and if you’ve put yourself in his shoes, you know that he’s hearing the question “are you an anti-Semite” as “Do you hate yourself?”

And if we know one thing about Kyrie Irving, it’s that he likes Kyrie Irving, at least enough to always be thinking about the question “who the hell is Kyrie Irving?“

Look, maybe you disagree with the take that we’re being too harsh on Kyrie. And I get the dangers of the ideas Kyrie is endorsing by sharing this film without context. History has taught us to stand on guard for language that delegitimizes or villainizes the Jews, because when we haven’t, the results have been one of our history’s greatest stains.

But hopefully you can digest the idea that Kyrie means well, and is simply on a quest to piece together his place on an earth that he recently realized was round.

Maybe what I said here today helped reshape your view of Kyrie Irving, and if that’s the case, you have more in common with Kyrie than you thought. 

You can both be influenced by videos on the internet.

Let that sink in.

Column: Beating the Astros is Bryce Harper’s Best Chance at Living Up to the Hype

We need to talk about Bryce Harper and the opportunity he has before him.

The Philadelphia Phillies are two wins away from their first world series since 2008, the year that a 15-year old Bryce Harper and his family began getting advice from Scott Boras on how to quicken his path to the major leagues. 

In 2009, the Phillies were in the middle of attempting to defend their title when Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci dropped an article called “Baseball’s LeBron,” detailing the life and times of a baseball prodigy in a sport that usually takes much of a prospect’s 20’s to prepare even the best players for a life of consistency in the majors. 

Within two years, Bryce Harper would be the Nationals #1 overall pick, and found himself hitting his first major league home run before the age of 20. 

Baseball fans love young stars. It’s a game that the most gifted players can play at a high level for almost two decades, and numbers-obsessed fans love the idea of a player having a chance to take a crack at some of baseball’s most exclusive clubs. People my age had the privilege of aging up with guys like Andruw and Chipper Jones, Albert Pujols,  Ken Griffey Jr and Vlad Guerrero. All of those guys are beloved beyond their own primary fan bases.

But Bryce Harper was different. Not only has Bryce Harper spent most of his career hated by opposing teams and their fans, he hasn’t been the most likeable guy in his own clubhouses. Matt Williams once benched him. Jonathan Papelbon once physically choked him. 

The list of grievances against Harper is long, and some of it is petty. But some of it, like the beef he had with Hunter Strickland that led to an on-field brawl that ended Mike Morse’s career, or the players getting together to anonymously vote Harper the most overrated player in baseball, is not. 

Bryce Harper upset Nationals fans with the way he negotiated his first contract at 19, and when it came time to decide which $300+ million dollar deal he was going to sign in free agency, he upset them again by drawing out the process and stringing them along, only to sign with their hated rival. 

Bryce Harper’s time with the Phillies has been fruitful, winning his second MVP award last season, and lifting Philadelphia to the World Series this year with his stellar play. He still has the same punchable face he’s always had, but he seems to be more mature. 

Maybe it’s turning 30. Maybe it was watching the Nationals win a World Series without him, and having Juan Soto erase every franchise record that Bryce Harper previously had as the youngest to achieve different statistical benchmarks. 

One way we saw Harper’s personal growth was earlier this year, when he was beaned on the thumb by his childhood friend Blake Snell, costing him 53 games in the middle of the season. Bryce Harper reacted to his injury in his usual over-the-top emotional manner, but he acknowledged in the moment walking off the field that Snell didn’t mean to do it. 

It was that same San Diego Padres team that Harper was injured against that he found himself facing last week in the NLCS, and his 8th inning 2-run shot ultimately sent the Phillies to the World Series. 

And now the moment is before him, to redeem himself from every complaint that any casual-to-serious baseball fan outside of the NL East has ever had about him.

I mean, I’m not stupid enough to think that Braves and Nationals fans are ever gonna love the guy.

But if there’s one thing that unites 98% percent of baseball fans, it’s a burning hate for the Houston Astros. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Bryce Harper has the opportunity to make a whole lot of new friends. 

It worked for LeBron in Cleveland against a 73-win Golden State Warriors team. Maybe it will work for “baseball’s LeBron” against the Houston Astros.

Let that sink in.

The Bryan Harsin Auburn Marriage Was Doomed From the Start. What’s Next for Both Parties?

We need to talk about Auburn and Bryan Harsin.

On Halloween, Auburn gave Bryan Harsin a trick and the War Eagle fan base a treat by firing their embattled head coach after a 3-5 start to the season. 

Now, two things can be true. You can have toxic working conditions, and a bad head coach. Some people might try to make it seem like Bryan Harsin was doomed from the start because he was brought in to a school that is notorious for dictating to its coaches which assistants to surround themselves with, but at the end of the day, for the school to be at blame, you still would have needed to see maximum effort from the coach in order for him to remain blameless. 

Now, I don’t think Bryan Harsin is worried about blame. He’s got another $15 million coming his way on top of about $8 million dollars worth of checks cashed for less than two years’ work. Nobody’s crying for Harsin, much less anybody with the last name Harsin. 

But let’s get into what exactly made Bryan Harsin such a bad coach. 

First, you can’t come into the SEC without a plan to recruit. Boise State spent over a decade as the Alabama of Group of 5, and if a west coast three-star recruit wasn’t getting offers from USC, UCLA, Oregon or Washington, they had as good of a chance at ending up at Boise State as anywhere else. Auburn doesn’t recruit itself, and even if it did, it’s not a task you can pawn off on assistants… and even if you can, you have to be surrounded by assistants that you trust and treat with dignity. 

It took just four games into Harsin’s tenure to fire wide receivers’ coach Cornelius Williams, a Birmingham native, who was then scooped up by rival Alabama. 

Bryan Harsin kicked offensive coordinator Mike Bobo out the door after one year, only to replace him with a 32-year-old Austin Davis, who resigned after six weeks. Defensive Coordinator Derek Mason took a $400,000 paycut just to not have to see Bryan Harsin’s face around the office anymore when he bounced to Oklahoma State.

But at least the players had Harsin’s back right?

Well, sort of. Every player is built differently, and you saw a pretty clear split between the Auburn players that wanted someone that was invested in who they were on and off the field, and the players that didn’t need anything but a coach to push them on the gridiron. 

Of all the players that left Auburn, one of the most common criticisms was that Bryan Harsin had no interest in who they are or where they came from. Smoke Monday, now with the Saints, said Harsin had no curiosity or interest in him as a person.

Former Auburn WR Kobe Hudson, now at UCF, said, “If Harsin learned to relate to the people … he’ll be the next Nick Saban.”

Maybe the best evidence that Harsin was an uncaring football robot came in his refusal to discuss the issue of vaccination publicly in fall 2021, when the state of Alabama was being ravaged by Covid deaths and hospitalizations. 

Harsin’s interpersonal issues, along with the program’s worst record in a decade and massive roster exodus, led to one of the uglier attempted booster coups in college football history, with rumors of an affair with a staffer dominating the headlines. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before the situation became untenable. Not only are the Tigers 3-5 at the end of October, their 22 total touchdowns this year is nine less than their former QB Bo Nix has produced in the last seven games alone.

So now Auburn is back in the situation of needing a new coach while two dozen influential boosters likely make some more of the “too many cooks in the kitchen” mistakes they made the last time around. Auburn is a circus, and a circus needs a clown. 

Jimbo Fisher already identified two clowns in the SEC, and you ain’t getting Saban, so it might be time to hop on the Lane train. 

Lane Kiffin, come on down.

As for Bryan Harsin, he’ll be fine. His track record and reputation out west will get him in the door for every interview that comes open, and it’s not crazy to consider him as a clubhouse leader for University of Colorado, or any Mountain West job that opens this offseason.

The marriage between Auburn and Harsin severely exposed the flaws of everyone involved.

If Auburn’s boosters can’t back off and let their next coach build his own program, and if Bryan Harsin can’t find a way to relate on a human level to everyone around him, the next chapter for both parties involved in this debacle is going to have the exact same ending.

Let that sink in.

The Seattle Seahawks Chose To Sit Out of the NFC West Arms Race, Now They’re In First Place

We need to talk about the Seattle Seahawks.

When everyone else in the NFC West was zigging, Pete Carroll and the Seahawks decided to zag. 

That zag has Seattle in first place in a division where they were the only team to not make the playoffs last year, sitting at 4-3 despite Las Vegas having their preseason win total odds at 5.5.

Outside of the Giants and Jets, the Seahawks have been this year’s biggest surprise. 

So how did they make that happen? Let’s get into it.

A few years ago, the LA Rams decided that the salary cap was imaginary and that future assets were better as current commodities. They dealt off second round picks for Sammy Watkins and Marcus Peters. They turned three first round picks into Brandin Cooks and Jalen Ramsay. 

And finally, they offloaded Jared Goff, their first three picks in this year’s draft, and next year’s first rounder for Matthew Stafford and Von Miller. 

The strategy to mortgage their future for a shot at glory in the present paid off, as Sean McVay got Los Angeles a Super Bowl Ring.

Now, we all know it’s a copycat league. Even before the Rams traded all their picks for Pro Bowl talent, it was clear that the rest of the NFL was obsessed with trying to find young, energetic coaches that either had worked with Sean McVay, or could be considered Dollar Store versions of him. 

But teams in the NFC West went beyond mimicking McVay’s coaching brand… in a league where trades are relatively rare, the 49ers and Cardinals began to engage in an arms race to keep up with the Rams.

In the last three years, Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers gave up picks for Trent Williams, traded off a bunch of assets for the ability to move up and draft Trey Lance, and just sent four picks to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for Christian McCaffrey.

Not to be outdone, the Arizona Cardinals committed felony armed robbery against the Houston Texans when they acquired Deandre Hopkins, and since then, they haven’t been shy about wheeling and dealing to try and shore up weaknesses. They added Pro Bowlers Zach Ertz and Rodney Hudson, and grabbed two more receivers in Hollywood Brown and Robbie Anderson.

Meanwhile, while the rest of the NFC West is out here putting everything on credit, the elder statesman Pete Carroll, who is the oldest coach in the division by 28 years, is holding two middle fingers up to the Millennials and their “instant gratification” by stockpiling assets for the future.

The Seattle Seahawks pulled the plug on the Russell Wilson era during the offseason, and in their trade with the Broncos, added what might be a franchise left tackle in 2022 #9 overall pick Charles Cross, had 10 total picks in the 2022 draft including Kenneth Walker, who looks like a star, and have almost as many picks in the first five rounds of next years’ draft (7) as the other three teams combined (9).

In free agency, the Seahawks didn’t overextend themselves. They rewarded some of the top performers on last year’s team, like Rashaad Penny, Al Woods, and Quandre Diggs, and they improved their pass rush by stealing Uchenna Nwosu from the Chargers. 

And despite wide receivers all over the league using Christian Kirk’s contract to price them out of a spot on their current roster, the Seahawks stood by DK Metcalf and gave him a long term deal. Things like that can go a long way in galvanizing a locker room.

Maybe the most important thing that Pete Carroll and Seattle did was to give an experienced starter that had been serving in a backup role for the last two years a shot at the starting quarterback job. 

Seven weeks into the season, Geno Smith is top-7 in Completions, Yards, and Touchdowns, and he’s having the third-best season in the history of the NFL when it comes to completion percentage. And if you think that it’s because Pete Carroll scaled way back on pass attempts since trading Russell Wilson to Denver, you’d be wrong. The Seahawks are actually airing it out more- they’re just not addicted to the deep ball. 

It remains to be seen if Seattle will be able to keep up their early season momentum. Injuries are piling up, and a look at their remaining schedule reveals two games left against the Super Bowl champion Rams, a trip to Kansas City, and games against the other two teams I mentioned earlier on- the Giants and Jets. If they can manage to play .500 football the rest of the way, they’ll shock the NFC by stealing a playoff spot, and potentially be in play for first place in an NFC West division that has sent a representative to the Super Bowl six out of the last 10 seasons. 

And even if they fall off, they’ll be sitting on the most draft picks while having more cap space in 2023 than the Rams, 49ers and Cardinals combined.

Let that sink in.

Massive Buyouts Take The Sting Out Of Losing For College Football Coaches Like Jimbo Fisher

We need to talk about college football coaching salaries.

Look, I’m never going to get mad at someone for cashing a check. You shouldn’t either. 

I’ve never been to a movie theater and seen empty concession lines. 

If someone wants to pay movie theater prices for M&M’s and Skittles, when pants pockets and purses are perfect for candy smuggling, that’s on them. What I’m not gonna do is hate on the movie theater for taking their cash.

But just like people standing in line at the theater, volunteering to get ripped off, these colleges continue to pay out the nose for college football coaches, stacking years of guaranteed salary and escalating outlandish buyouts because they think it will correlate to Alabama-like results. 

Well, two things about that-

1) You’re not Alabama, and…

2) Alabama is rewarding Nick Saban for years of results. 

Imagine going to a car dealership in hopes of purchasing a Lamborghini, but all the lot has available is a variety of used Kia Sorrentos. What would a normal person do in that scenario? Maybe look at a different dealership? Maybe delay their plans? Maybe settle for a Sorrento? I don’t know, I guess it depends on the person. 

What a normal person would NOT do is offer the dealership Lamborghini money for the Sorrento and just hope that a Kia magically gains the ability to hit 60 in less than four seconds. 

Now, you might be listening to me right now and thinking, “Wow, George is really going in on Texas A&M for having Jimbo Fisher locked up through 2027, and then handing him four more years and a raise on top of that despite a body of work that doesn’t even measure up to what Kevin Sumlin accomplished.”

And you’re right, I am. But it’s not just a College Station problem.

Halfway through the season, four of the top 10 coaches in annual salary outside of Nick Saban have losing records. One of those coaches, Mel Tucker, has NINE years left on his contract after this one. 

And you might be saying, “Sure, but Michigan State poached Mel Tucker from Colorado, so maybe they were just making sure they don’t get cheated on by the partner they cheated with.”

But Michigan State didn’t include a large buyout for Mel Tucker should he look to jump to the SEC. All they did was bid against themselves to ensure that if things in East Lansing went south, the boosters that volunteered to fund this contract were on the hook. 

And that Mel Tucker contract, which should have been an anomaly because of the way it’s being funded, ended up setting the market. If you are a Perennial top 25 team in the Power 5, or even if you’re one of these “Stella” schools like Miami trying to get your groove back, these coaches’ agents are going to point to Jimbo Fisher and Mel Tucker and Brian Kelly and say “unless you’re willing to drop $80-100 million, you’re out of the game.”

Nothing about the way these colleges keep falling for the con makes any sense. Why does any college coach need a 10-year contract? Think about it, any time Jimbo Fisher loses a game, which he’s done more in the last 13 months than Nick Saban has in the last six years, he gets closer and closer to Aggie fans demanding that he be paid a near-$86 million dollar buyout. 

Think about that ungodly amount of money while I read you a quote from former LSU Head Coach Ed Orgeron in my best Coach O voice:

Scott Woodward is a friend of mine today, really. Lot of respect for the way that they handled me. He said ‘Coach, you got 17.1 million dollars on your contract; we’re going to give it to you.’

“I said, ‘What time you want me to leave and what door do you want me to leave out of brother?’”

Scott Woodward is a friend of mine today, really. Lot of respect for the way that they handled me. He said ‘Coach, you got 17.1 million dollars on your contract; we’re going to give it to you.’

“I said, ‘What time you want me to leave and what door do you want me to leave out of brother?’”

Ed Orgeron

If that’s the way that Ed Orgeron reacted to being handed a check for $17 million to walk out the door, how do you think Jimbo is going to react to getting five times that?

Jimbo Fisher might just crip-walk from end zone to end zone in Kyle Field. 

I might be more upset at the lack of sense being displayed by college administrators if we didn’t currently live in a world where players could be compensated for their name, image and likeness. Seeing a coach get a 10-year fully guaranteed contract to be mediocre stings a lot less when you know Bojangles is writing checks to quarterbacks that are getting benched. 

But I want to circle back to one of the reasons so many of these colleges pushed back on the idea of players getting compensated at all. 

There is an entire economic network built on the idea that a group of athletes were giving their best effort because the only guarantee that their effort would be compensated is if they were good enough to make it to the NFL. 
Colleges worried that if the players were rewarded right now, their motivation to push themselves to higher heights would be diminished, and in turn, disturb the access to the pot of gold for everyone else. 

College administrators and the NCAA have done and said a lot of evil things in the name of keeping all the rewards for themselves, but this particular train of thought isn’t necessarily evil, in fact, it’s perfectly logical. We see it in boxing all the time- an athlete goes 30-0 on his way to a title fight, wins a belt and a purse, then struggles to make weight in their next bout and spends the next 10 years losing half their fights. 

While that train of thought isn’t evil, it is hypocritical, especially when schools have no problem handing out life-changing Saban-level money to coaches that aren’t Nick Saban. 

For guys like Jimbo Fisher and Ed Orgeron, they might be wired to give everything they have to try and win, but the industry of college football has taken away the sting of losing. 

For Jimbo Fisher, there is no such thing as a loss. There is only winning, and negative winning. 

That direct deposit hits no matter what. 

Let that sink in.