Monday 30 November 2009

The young and the hopeful

I was wrong. I may have slightly over hyped Joe Cox. Ok more than slightly. There was probably never any realistic chance that Georgia would ever get near an SEC championship with Cox under center. Unfortunately it took Mark Richt and Mike Bobo 12 weeks to figure out what might. Washaun Ealey and Caleb King broke out big time Saturday night in Atlanta. Just to clarify Georgia Tech is supposed to be the best rushing offence in the country, not Saturday. All year the Dawgs had disappeared in any kind of big games, national TV camera’s apparently give UGA players rashes these days. Having been picked apart by both Tennessee and Florida, then proceeding to crap all over the memory of Uga VII last week against Kentucky, would anyone have believed anything other than embarrassment would happen at Bobby Dodd. Well try these; surprise, elation, vindication, redemption. Joe Cox never became the player I was predicting but Ealey and King suddenly did. Of Georgia’s 44 carries Ealey and King combined for 38 of them. Those 38 attempts equalled 349 yards, that’s an average of 9.2 yards per carry. The amazing early success of the big play passing game, that was almost exclusively an A.J Green highlight reel, perhaps delayed the progress of this running game. The confusion over who was the guy to replace Knowshon Moreno also contributed., you only have to watch Alabama and the success of Trent Richardson working alongside Mark Ingram to see how it can work in the SEC. Despite coming 8 weeks to late to save the season the Bulldogs as a team, and I mean a complete team of offence, defence and special teams, rebounded from the troubles this year to pull out a win at the number 7 ranked team in the country. A lot of credit has to go also to the much maligned Willy Martinez and his defence. To hold the funky triple option to just 205 yards rushing and force the Yellow Jackets into passing 13 times shows how well the D played. Paul Johnson was sufficiently freaked that he threw out his playbook. If you’ve ever Josh Nesbitt on a football field you will know he is not a passing quarterback. So why make him throw? Was Tech so intimidated by the Bulldog that they felt incapable of using an offence that has been so successful for them both this and last year. It was a complete role reversal of the game in Athens last year, remember those desperation heaves by Matthew Stafford? Swap Stafford for Nesbitt this year. Remember Jonathan Dwyer tearing apart the Georgia run defence? Swap Dwyer for either King or Ealey.

There’s going to be plenty of chance to look ahead to both bowls and next year but I want to get an early jump. Cox had, unfortunately, proven inadequate. I said to a friend a couple of weeks ago “Cox is Big 12 or Pac 10 good, not SEC good” now I’m not even sure he’s that good. From now on, with the one exception in January, Joe Cox will no longer be the University of Georgia starting quarterback. It will either prove to be Aaron Murray or Zach Mettenberger. Most seem to think it will be Murray but, from what I’ve seen, do not count out Mettenberger. Next year both will have had a year as part of the team, they will have matured and they will have an incredible Sophmore and Redshirt Junior running back. There is suddenly potential, excitement and, dare I say it, expectation in Athens again. Whether it’s right or wrong I’m suddenly more excited about this Springs G-Day game than whichever bowl the Dawgs are in. It took 1 hour and over 300 yards hard labor but all of a sudden Georgia football has a pulse again.

Tuesday 24 November 2009

The Future's Bright...But not Orange

Tim Tebow, perhaps the greatest college quarterback ever, will not be playing college football in two months. For three years Tebow has been the face of the SEC. The most talked about, most competitive, most challenging division in all of college football has been encapsulated in this one young man. It has not just been his record setting on the field play, it has also been the immeasurable intangibles that Tebow possesses that has set him apart. He is everything and more a team wants out of it’s leader, throughout his collegiate career everything involving the University of Florida had been about Tebow. A quick review of the aforementioned numbers shows what an incredible player Tim has been; 8,335 career passing yards, 81 passing touchdowns, 2,743 career rushing yards and 54 rushing touchdowns. Despite those outlandish numbers Tebow is so much more than an outstanding football player. He is an outstanding person, both in and out of school. His missionary trips in the summer and spring breaks just go to show what a good person he continues to be, despite his growing public profile. He is academically outstanding. There is no doubt about that, he has been voted to the Academic All-American Team for the second consecutive season. He has an outstanding GPA of 3.66 in Family, Youth and Communications Studies which is the kind of example that Freshmen need to see. Last year was also the season that Tebow cemented his legacy, the was “The Promise” (in case you missed it You Tube ‘Tim Tebow Speech’) perhaps more impressive than the speech itself was the fact Tebow followed through on it. Then there was the scene in the National Championship, Tim charging down the sideline into a Florida defensive huddle. There wasn’t any other moment filled with more raw passion in the whole of college football. But by January 8th at the latest there will be no more Tim Tebow in the Southeastern Conference. This will leave a faceless conference, an SEC without a center piece. So who can fill this vacuum? Nobody will be able to supply the intangibles that Tebow has shown over the past 4 years; that’s just who Tim is. But someone needs to stand up as a good person, a good player and a good student.

It’s going to be easier carrying out this role if your playing on a winning team, that’s how you get national coverage, just ask Case Keenum. So immediately if you play for the University of Alabama there’s an immediate advantage. And there are two straight forward choices; Greg McElroy and Mark Ingram. If these two young men were combined into one then you have the perfect Tebow replacement, but their not and both have great merits of their own. McElroy is possibly the academic equal of Tebow, and this year statistically the equal but does he have the leadership skills? Maybe, they haven’t really been tested this year yet. Going toe to toe with Tebow in Atlanta in 10 days might answer these questions, but until then we can’t really know. Ingram is a little different to McElroy. He doesn’t have the outstanding academics and is to all intents and purposes purely a football player. This would make him a less obvious Tebow replacement, but maybe would put him ahead of McElroy for face of the SEC. It is after all a football conference. McElroy is unlikely to be in the Heisman competition next year, which will be his last year of eligibility. Ingram will very probably be in the conversation for the next 2 years, that could be 3,000 more yards and 30 more TD’s.
How about if another team starts wining? The most primed seems to be Ole Miss. Next year the team will be all Jevan Snead’s. This is either a really good thing, or a really bad thing. Snead showed earlier this year that, when he is surrounded by expectations, he struggles. He has excelled the last two years after Ole Miss has fallen out of contention, but he has at least excelled. He already has a certain amount of exposure and seems to have the same drive to succeed that Tebow possesses, does this mean he could become the face of the conference? Well, yeah if he can have a good year. Say Mississippi goes 11-1 regular season next year losing the SEC west by 1 game and goes to a BCS bowl, what’s to say that Snead won’t be the outstanding figure in the SEC.

The most ready to light up the record books like Tim Tebow has done looks like Ryan Mallett at Arkansas. He’s already profiled his physical gifts and has two potential years of eligibility left. If he was to lead Arkansas to any kind of success then he could gain the kind of cult status as Tebow has in Florida. He is also one of the higher profile players in the SEC, all it takes is for a good Arkansas season to gain Mallett a national stage. In Bobby Petrino, Mallett has a coach that can build a system to best use the young man’s skill set. He does need to grow into an out and out leader of this young Arkansas team, which would set him apart. He has the opportunity to do this in the next couple of years, if he stays. And that’s potentially the only thing that stands between Mallett being the next face of the SEC and someone else doing it; his leadership.

Whoever takes over Tebow’s crown as Prince of the Southeastern Conference they will be very different to the Florida quarterback. He is a once in a generation player, much like Herschel Walker and Peyton Manning. Much like those when those two individuals left whoever takes up the mantle left by Tim Tebow, the SEC will continue as the premier conference in America and that is a certainty.

Sunday 15 November 2009

(Inter)National Football League

I’ve waited a couple of weeks to write. I wanted to let the dust settle, reassess the situation, see if my opinion changed. It hasn’t so I thought I’d unload. In case you missed it, and if you follow sports it’s difficult to, on October 25th Wembley stadium in London, England played host to an NFL regular season game. For the third year running. I don’t have much of a problem with NFL teams playing games in England, just regular season games. In 2008 the San Diego Chargers played the New Orleans Saints at Wembley. Before the Chargers played the Saints they had to fly across eight time zones, EIGHT! Imagine flying from California to England alone, it wrecks anybody for about a week. Then they were asking these guys to play to the highest standard of their profession. Unsurprisingly they lost. There are now four pre-season games for NFL teams, play one of those at Wembley, it’ll keep the fans happy, it will make the NFL the same amount of money and it takes less out of the players both physically and mentally.

While I don’t like the idea of playing regular season games in London I positively despise the other idea that’s come out of it. An NFL franchise in London. Yeah double take, I always do. This idea is so unsustainable in so many different ways. It would provide a scheduling nightmare for the league figuring out how to plug a five hour time difference. Can you imagine trying to figure out how to work in 8 home and 8 road games for a team who are nine hours away from the closest current NFL franchise. Another big problem is talent. Where would the London teams players magically appear from? College is the obvious answer. Do you however really believe that a 21 year-old kid will want to move to a foreign country regardless of the pay check? Some of these kids will not have been out of their State never mind the United States.

This is different to Hockey, who opened their league season with games in Scandinavia. The easy reason this worked is because over half the NHL players are from Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. The distance however means that an NHL franchise in Norway or Sweden isn’t even being talked about. The influx of big name European players into the NBA also makes playing games in Europe a little more feasible as well. David Stern has mentioned an European NBA franchise but, like normal, no one listened to David Stern.

If the British public had an NFL franchise in London what is there that’s unique about the sport to this public. It is an American sport, and that is it’s appeal to a big group of people whether they know it or not. It doesn’t have the history or tradition as it does in America, because it’s American. Would people continue to go and pay the NFL prices if it was 8 weeks a year instead of 1. There’s the scary prospect of any London franchise becoming a cold weather Jacksonville with an increasing low attendances and dwindling fan bases.

What should be the final nail in this ideas coffin is this; look at how American sports have faired in Britain so far. They have become irrelevant, almost ignored and why? Because people lost interest. This has been one of the biggest things I noticed about this talk; people saying they fell in love with football in the 80’s lost interest in the 90’s and now have found fallen back in love. What if this happens with a franchise in London? What do they do if it becomes like British hockey and basketball? It would be a disaster for England, Football and the NFL and would be on the very first plane to Los Angeles.

Friday 6 November 2009

Brave new world?

We’re not 48 hours removed from the end of the World Series, congratulations to the Yankees are due, and I’m already thinking what’s ahead for the Braves in 2010. This has been a constant on my mind since the end of our play off push this year but seeing as today players filed for free agency and I got my e-mail trying to sell season tickets today I got thinking. Well number 1 this, officially for a change, will be Bobby Cox’s lat year as Atlanta Braves manager, this is plain emotional for anyone involved with the organisation, especially for the people who have had the chance to be involved over the last 2 decades. There is no doubt Bobby will one day be smoking his victory cigar in Cooperstown, NY of that there is absolutely no doubt, there will be no asterix alongside his name he’s just plain earned it.

This brings me to my first big unknown, will this also end up being Chipper Jones’ last season with the team? Chipper has never known anything in the majors except for Bobby Cox, hell Chipper could well be the Braves next manager, but that’s a half baked idea for another time. Chipper, as everyone including him knows, stunk last year, I mean good old fashioned stunk. In 12 months Jones dropped 100 average points, he has only been that bad 3 times in his career, 1995, 2004 and this year. The injuries are well reported as well as Chipper himself saying he would call it quits if he’s that bad again, so he’s already thinking about it. I just can’t think of a more fitting way for Chipper to go out than at the same time as the manager that brought him up way back in 1993. Of course this would involve Chipper having to boycott his last year of his contract and walk away on his own accord, not exactly the easiest thing to do, there is also the possibility that if he gets his production back to where it has been he will happily see out the contract and hopefully continue helping out the Bravos. Jones is purely me speculating on an idea that I’ve been thinking about for some time, however there are some other things about the Braves that make me a little nervous about next year.

The first is that we have over half our payroll hooked up in only 9 players: Javier Vazquez, Tommy Hanson, Jair Jurjenns, Derek Lowe, Tim Hudson, Kenshin Kawakami, Chipper, Brian McCann and Nate McClouth, one of those (knock on wood Lowe or KK) will be traded, that however still leaves a lot of money being spent for not many bodies however talented. Those 9 were almost exclusively, with the exception of Martin Prado and Matt Diaz, where our best players last year so where in the payroll do we have enough financial movement to bring in players to improve our team. Nowhere, that’s the answer.

Second, we have almost twice as many contracted starters as we do competent relievers. JJ, Vazquez, Tommy, Hud, D-Lowe and KK, in case you can’t count, that’s 6. Eric O’Flaherty, Peter Moylan, Boone Logan and Kris Medlan are the only relievers under contracts who you would want in a game. Medlan could possibly even start the year as a AAA starter, which personally I want to see, but it was certainly interesting to see the developing trust in Medlan from Bobby through the season but maybe not to the point that he becomes the Braves Phil Hughes. There guys like Luis Valdez, Todd Redmond and Stephen Marek who there seems to be some belief in, especially Valdez. Even in both Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez re-sign (and it’s unlikely both will) then that’s still a weak bullpen, and this is even without mentioning it was by far the most burdened in 2009. So even if our 6 starters are able to carry the team in each and every game how can we ask the bullpen to finish the job. Soriano’s meltdown at the end of the year is evidence enough of how hard the ‘pen worked throughout the year and even now there is very little help. The signing of Scott Proctor to a minor league contract is intriguing in that it happened before there was any attempt to sign back Gonzo or Rafa, and used money, even just a little bit, that could have gone towards either of those deals. Unless the starting rotation turns out to have 3 or 4 Cy Young candidates (which it could) this bullpen could end up churning out bull-something else by the end of the 2010 season.

The biggest concern is the Arizona Fall League. Last year Tommy Hanson went and became the first pitcher to win the winter league MVP and this year was supposed to be the year of Jason Heyward. Instead the AFL became a pain in the ass for Heyward, literally, the gluteus strain putting him out of the league. Then there was Freddie Freeman slumping like a rollercoaster, luckily he seems to be bouncing back but the start was worrying. Luckily Mike Minor, our number 7 draft pick, is throwing nicely, maybe not Hanson nice but promising nice. The worrying about the AFL is that it’s made me realise that the next generation of Braves superstars are maybe a little further away from Major League service than we hoped. Heyward will likely be starting the year in Gwinnett at AAA, Freeman at AA in Mississippi and I have no idea about Minor, I don’t even know if the Braves management do.

By the start of Spring Training Frank Wren may have made some of the kind of moves he did last year with the starting rotation and made me have a little more faith. I’m running on hope heading into the cold, dark winter months but does anyone else see this year being anything but a passing the torch one? All every Braves fan in the world asks, and we don’t care how, give Bobby the best baseball year of his life in his last one.