Jesus Effing Christ

Another day, another round of ludicrous stories about what's fast becoming the most comically disastrous franchise in the NFL. These are your Denver Broncos, courtesy of ESPN's Bill Williamson.

Pat Bowlen says he's old and can't remember if he had conversations with Bus Cook. It's becoming a pretty competitive race for who's the least intelligent person in this whole drama: Bowlen, Bus, Jay Cutler, Josh McDaniels, Cutler's dad, Williamson, or anyone who strongly takes the side of one of these jackholes.

At least Bronco fans can count on the new blood, the free agent class, right? Well, one possible starting running back is wrapped up in a drug trial. Let's just hope he's impregnated fewer than a dozen women. Any reason we can't find out about these things before handing out eight-figure contracts?

My favorite part about Buckhalter's alleged weed peddler is that he was popped with several hundred vials of dope. I've, um, been around the business end of a Michael Phelps respirator once or twice, and I may have even witnessed a sale of cannabis (for medical purposes only). I've never seen grass in a vial. This drug dealer must be a vial vile criminal indeed.
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Small Time Thinking, Big Time Problems

In the midst of the HoG's enormous birthday celebration (which consists of three dudes in three basements in three different area codes sipping from three jugs of Old Crow) I thought I'd try to place this whole Cutlertastrophe in context. Sure, we Bronco fans are faced with losing a Pro Bowl quarterback, albeit a whiny ballerina of the breed. We're faced with the probability that we just hired a coach with the common sense of a toothpick. And we've always known that our owner is a few sheets short of a ream, and Canadian to boot.

What we're looking at as well, folks, is a decrease in overall status. What was once seen as one of the finest homes on the NFL block, a model franchise, is now in danger of foreclosure. The weeds are starting to sprout in the yard, the shutters are beginning to droop, and there's a Cavalier in the driveway with tags that expired in 2005.

Now look--I personally don't care about how much prestige my team carries around the league. I care about winning games, and part of me loves the idea of slipping under the radar for a while before vaulting back to glory. But there are real cracks on the foundation of this team, people, cracks that go far beyond the foibles of Whiny Jay and Coach Littledick.

We're rapidly falling from Big Time to Small Time in the Mile High City. What's worse, our former laughingstock neighbors out in KC are travelling in the opposite direction. I'll be needing some aspirin, to be washed down with this rotgut hooch. Happy Birthday to us!

First, let's break down what constitutes a Big Time NFL Franchise. Both New York teams certainly are, as well as the Patriots and Cowboys. But mere market size does not dictate Big Time status. Pittsburgh and Indianapolis have transcended their crappy Rust Belt dwellings through professional operations and sustained success. Even losing teams can stay Big Time. Miami went Big Time the minute they hired Bill Parcells to run their show, and the Redskins will be Big Time so long as Dan Snyder, his bottomless checkbook, and his insatiable need to manufacture freak-show headlines are there.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Small Time clubs. You know who they are. If you lost 16 games last year and your owner was the last person in America to realize Matt Millen should be canned, you're Small Time. If you took a Super Bowl champion and ran it into the ground, San Francisco-Oakland-St. Louis, you're Small Time. If you play pro football in the state of Ohio, you're Small Time. As Jeff Foxworthy would say were he writing this post, if your stadium was a shelter for Hurricane Katrina refugees, you might be a Small Time. Small Time teams might occasionally win a few games, Jacksonville, but they're forever battling the stink of minor-league halfassery wafting up from the basement. They pay more for free agents, they wait in line for top-flight coaches, they get extensions from the league office to avoid home-game blackouts.

We all watched the Kansas City Chiefs wallow in this pit for many years, a time span roughly coinciding with the firing of Marty Schottenheimer and the hiring of Top Chef Hosea Pioli. We watched mediocrity become institutionalized, bad players become great in the eyes of myopic fans, and poor decisions get rationalized. Get a load of your garden-variety Chief Fan these days, and they're strutting around like the cock of the walk. Competent leadership and hope for the future will do that, and having the remainder of the division run by fucking retards doesn't hurt.

Which brings me to my Denver Broncos. A decision was made last January to whack Mike Shanahan, and that decision was pretty easy to justify. We've gone into these topics ad nauseum around here, no need to drag it up again. But while you can, on paper, defend the Shanahan firing as necessary to advance the team forward, you must understand that making that move results in a threat to Big Time status.

I am of the opinion that Pat Bowlen cares about such a superficial threat. I think he cares about it very much. Pat Bowlen has leveraged his team's Big Time image into hundreds of millions of dollars in personal gain. He's converted it into a new stadium. He's secured a spot on the NFL committee responsible for its lifeblood--the network TV contract--and almost singlehandedly created the NFL Network. Pat Bowlen likes being Big Time.

So here, torn between the Big Time cachet of Mike Shanahan and the decidely pedestrian route that comes with fighting ten other teams for head coaching candidates, Bowlen chose the riskier strategy, the one that seemingly threatened the Broncos' Big Time label. But the more you look at it, the more it is eveident that Bowlen's move was neither radical nor bold. It was incredibly conservative, actually, because Bowlen merely went back to a successful decision he made 14 years ago and copied it.

Just as Shanahan was hired as a young offensive Mastermind, Josh McDaniels had developed a bio filled with genius superlatives. All of Bowlen's rhetoric surrounding the Coach Doogie signing reflected the 1995 move to bring Shanahan in. Bowlen felt that by importing a product of another Big Time franchise, he could hold on to the tag forever. In this way, Bowlen showed the same weakness that lost Shanahan his job--he ignored the many signs of danger and distress and insisted he was one piece away from returning to the Super Bowl. McDaniels became Bowlen's Simeon Rice.

We're still waiting to watch Doogie's first game. We don't know who'll take the first snap, we don't know what play he'll script, and we don't know if the kid can handle an NFL season. Witnessing his first offseason in charge, he seems like he could use some seasoning. He does not appear ready for the Big Time. Winning, of course, can cure all of this. With or without Jay Cutler, a successful season under Josh McDaniels could restore Bowlen's Big Time ambitions and quiet the deep discontent in Bronco Nation.

If you care what I think, I don't see it happening. I do not see Coach Doogie morphing from March Moron into September Savant. I've no reason to believe that he can manage a defensive resurgence or patch together a respectable kicking game. There's zero in his background that tells me he'll build a ground attack that can win on days when his QB--whomever that may be--isn't firing with accuracy.

I could be wrong, in fact I usually am (except on Puerto Rico in the WBC). The combination of Doog and Colonel Xanders could fucking nail this draft. They could acquire the young talent necessary to replace all the ancient free agents they just signed. They could get lucky with their RB potpourri, they could seamlessly introduce an effective 3-4 defensive scheme, and their schedule could turn out to be less difficult than first thought.

They could also mend fences with Jay Cutler, his loony dad, his hack agent, and his debilitating battles with alcohol and insulin. Cutler could equal or surpass his '08 numbers and all could be well in Big Time Bowlenland. I don't buy it, but perhaps that's because my supply of blind optimism has dipped to Small Time levels.
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The Other Shoe

So the Post, lone broadsheet guardian of Denver journalism, reports that the big phone meeting between Coach Doogie, Colonel Xanders, Bowlen, Cutler and Cutler's useless hayseed agent didn't go particularly well.

I'm torn, right now. I want to side with Cutler, really, but McDaniels' position--especially considering the report via rumorville that Jay blew off Bowlen's calls--makes some sense.

You do have to wonder where this is coming from. Armstrong brought it up on The Fan today--what role does Daddy play, here?

Cutler's pop is constantly at practice. At games. In the boss' ears. Doing the Gator Chomp when the kid was playing at Florida in college. He was blustery after the draft, grumbling about his son being underrated by Mel Kiper--which was true, but still. You just don't see many stage dads in the NFL, right? Marv Marinovich?

The whole mess is bizarre. Ol' No. 7 might be faced with the possibility of rooting for a Texas Longhorn as Denver QB in '09. Heaven help us all.

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Advice & Consent

As we all count down the days until George Bush fucking leaves Tuesday's Inauguration, I keep stumbling across the same two questions. One, can I take the day off? And two, how come every single big appointment made by a president is grilled by a Congressional committee, yet an NFL team can hire coaches and not hire GMs without any oversight whatsoever?

As to the first, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. I took a half-day when we voted in Colorado's caucus in February, I ditched for nearly a week to attend the convention in Denver, and I was absent on both Election Day and the day before. I'm certain that if I play hooky over this election one more time I'll be joining the ranks of the unemployed.

But then I read this and wondered if I found my loophole. Either that or my caucasianality is once again a handicap to my social advancement.

Oh well, there's always my second idea--hauling Pat Bowlen before an elected council of Bronco fans and forcing him to testify under oath as to why the Denver Broncos are stuck in the mud...

Hold up there, mister, I can hear you saying. It's his team, can't he run it the way he sees fit? To which I say of course, up until the moment he asked me, the Colorado taxpayer, to buy his team a new house. At that point it became our team, and I demand more say in its assembly than the right to buy a ticket and a sweatshirt and yell.

I say any team that demands public financing for its facilities has to allow its fans to vote for a board of directors. This board gets to subpoena team employees and demand explanations for boneheaded moves. And every time a big hire is made, the board has to sign off on it.

In the U.S. Constitution, it's spelled out like this:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

If you don't like it, buy your own God damned stadium.
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Tradition Tuesday: Shortest Honeymoon Ever

If you need to research the origins of The Tradition, Tradition Tuesday, or the House of Georges, make like old man Bush, go back to your Google and figure all that out. We're hip deep in breaking news here, no time for pageantry.

When Coach Doogie was hired and thrust upon the football world yesterday, we all looked upon the move with some degree of skepticism. After all, the guy is an infant. Many who view the world through orange-tinted spectacles allowed themselves a little of that darned hope that's been in fashion lately. And the rest of you haters adopted a wait-and-see-please-God-make-this-kid-suck posture. The common theme with both viewpoints is that we'd allow more than one day before we passed judgement on the new regime.

I'm here to tell you, HoG Nation, that one day is all we need. This reconstruction of the Broncos organization is doomed to failure. Sure, the Chiefs nabbed the top free-agent general manager in Scott Pioli, the kind of surehanded front-office type that Pat Bowlen claimed to demand when he Cannahanned the Mastermind. But I never thought Denver would land Pioli--he's surely drawing a fat salary, and most of the available non-player Bowlen bucks are still going to the former coach. I did foolishly think that my team of choice would hire somebody to assess and modify this damaged roster, and not just hand the job to whatever poor schmuck was left holding the last hot potato.

But here, friends and enemies alike, is that schmuck. And so the Josh McDaniels Era is effectively over before it started.

The GM position in the NFL is unique among the major sports. In some ways it's only now being elevated to a premier position that widely recognized among fans. I doubt that even the most hard-core followers of NFL franchises could have named their GM ten or even five years ago. But because this is a year-round game and every fan plays GM in his fantasy league, we identify with the job much more than the old days when we simply flipped on the tube Sunday and watched our teams.

There's a bigger separation between the front offices and fields of play in Major League Baseball and even the NHL, simply because those sports have minor-league systems and the draft is not always immediately fruitful with talent. Baseball GMs once toiled in obscurity as well, but the rise of fantasy and Michael Lewis' Moneyball--which detailed Oakland's wunderkind GM Billy Beane--has made these employees much more visible.

Pro basketball relies on the draft for immediate help much like the NFL does, but the NBA has a gimmick that is still exceedingly rare in the NFL--the midseason trade. If you build a shitty team through free agency and the draft, ahem, Denver Nuggets, you can simply work a swap and try again.

Building a team in the NFL is unique, because you get one shot a year. Between now and July, every GM must look at what he has, see what's out there, and craft a roster. He hands his coach a little less than a hundred men, and then that coach starts weeding through those men. I don't even know what these GMs do once the season starts, other than scout malls for cell phone salesman that can play tailback in a pinch.

Which brings me back to Pat Bowlen. I was led to believe that Bowlen fired one of the best coaches the game has ever seen because his moves as de facto GM were crippling the Broncos. We as fans accepted the fact that we'd be stuck with a coach inferior to Shanahan in the short-term, but that the payoff would be an immediate front-office upgrade. We'd finally have someone signing free agents, drafting kids and manipulating the salary cap that was free of the old status quo.

Yet what we got was the embodiment of the old status quo. I don't know what you call that, but I'll bet it rhymes with bullspit. How exactly is Jim Goodman going to independently assess and evaluate the makeup of this roster when he had a hand in creating it? Somehwere in the Broncos' draft war room was the biggest advocate for George Foster, or for Jarvis Moss. How do I know that guy wasn't Jim Goodman? And how exactly is Jim Goodman going to cut Jarvis Moss loose, if that's the best thing for the Broncos to do, if Jarvis Moss is his pet project?

If you brought in an outsider, any outsider, you could at least get a fresh set of eyes on some of these vital decisions. By keeping the same dudes in place you don't address the problem, the problem that was so severe that it forced Pat Bowlen to make a move that for many was unthinkable.

So I wouldn't expect too many big changes, Bronco fans. This team may switch to a 3-4 or go after a big name in free agency like Albert Haynesworth or Julius Peppers. But it will fundamentally be the same as the club that choked harder than any NFL team ever has. By leaving the status quo in place as far as player personnel, it's a lock.

But hey, at least the Chiefs hired a successor to Carl Peterson. That's big news, right? Not really--Pioli blows. Belichick ran everything out there, except the cheating. That was all Pioli. So I see KC vastly improving in the areas of black ops and covert counterintelligence yet remaining awful everywhere else. Cheers to that.
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