* One thing I will be grateful for when 2011 comes to an end: no more end of year lists. "There sure were a lot of interesting storylines this year! I wish someone would summarize and rank them for me!" said nobody. Except, I suppose, those emerging from comas.
If I'm ever tasked with writing a "biggest sports stories of the year" story, I'm going to play it straight on numbers 10-2, and for No. 1 I'm going to select a par putt made by the world's 727th-ranked golfer on the fifth hole of the first round of the Africa Open.
* I usually stay away from "Hey, check out this funny vid!" stuff in my column, but I saw this live and I'm glad someone else picked up on it because I laughed out loud. If they ever resurrect the Batman cartoon, the producers need to give Kevin Harlan a call.
And while I have come to praise something in the Huffington Post, I also must bury it: I'm staying away from this whole Tim Tebow/Bill Maher brouhaha, but this contains a pretty glaring error which suggests that the writer didn't even comprehend the site he linked to: "Will Maher reprise his controversial tweet during next week's Broncos game? Either way he plays it, and whether the Broncos win or lose, they'll still win the AFC West title and earn the number 4 seed."
Uh, no. The Broncos will not win the AFC West "win or lose." They'll win the division if they win their game. They may win the division if they lose, but only if Oakland helps them out by losing, too. If the Broncos lose and Oakland wins, the Broncos are not going to the playoffs and will not be division champions. Stop putting entertainment writers whose interest in sports is limited to Kardashian husbands on the sports beat.
And while I'm piling on: "Will Maher reprise his controversial teweet during next week's Broncos game?" Can I go ahead and put all my money on "no?" I'm not very active on Twitter, but do people do that? "Hey, this tweet generated a lot of response! I'm gonna tweet the exact same thing again! I'm not even going to wait until the furor has died down from the first time I tweeted it! This time I will start it with, "I said..."
* In Brad Oremland's latest column, he noticed the same thing I did, that the announcers of the Green Bay/Chicago game pointed out repeatedly how Green Bay has actually been out-gained this year.
As he noted, we can chalk this up to the fact that turnovers, penalties, and special teams play a much bigger role in the game than we are apt to give credit for. Furthermore, I believe that discipline in regard to not committing penalties and taking care of the ball can be coached, and the coaches that don't emphasize it or ineffectively imbue these principles do so at their peril.
That said, it does potentially make for intriguing playoffs, because even sloppy undisciplined teams can get it together for one game. It's possible that Green Bay will play a team that commits few or no turnovers and penalties and stays with Green Bay on special teams, as well. If that happens, then Green Bay could be in trouble. As Brad said, the yards for/yards against statistic can be misleading, but it's not meaningless.
My own team, the Tampa Bay Bucs, are among the worst in the league in penalties and turnover ratio, and the players seem to give up in the face of adversity. It doesn't have to be this way. If I were a head coach, discipline of this stripe would be my number one priority. I would also endeavor to achieve two other goals that are sadly often overlooked.
1. I would be the king of clock management. I would never call a needless timeout, and I would never sit on a timeout when I needed to stop the clock. I just can't believe how often coaches screw this up. If it's say, late in the third quarter of a close game, I would not burn a timeout (except maybe on a crucial third down) because the other team's offense or defense was confusing me or we were having a problem getting the right personnel in (which should not happen if I'm doing my job as a coach anyway). I can't believe how many coaches are willing to burn a timeout or multiple timeouts to "save" a single play. The timeouts are usually more important.
2. If I was a college coach, I would recruit kickers heavily. How many colleges, major ones even, end up going for it on 4th-and-long from their opponents 25 yard line because they don't have a kicker they can count on to make a 42 yard field goal? Would never happen if I was in charge.
This is my last column of 2011. I hope everyone has a great new year, and I encourage you to eschew the bowl games and the NFL playoffs for the real sports action in January. I think there will be some clutch par putts made in the Africa Open again.
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