You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will

by Cowherd, Colin

  This trend doesn’t figure to end anytime soon. At least not before 2014, because most NFL draft gurus predict Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater—the best football player at a basketball school—will be the first quarterback taken in the 2014 draft.

  Nobody believes the path to future NFL stardom should begin in the Mid American Conference. The big programs are still going to get the highest-rated high school quarterbacks and surround them with the highest-rated offensive linemen, wide receivers, and running backs.

  But the evidence does suggest something fascinating: the guys who dominate our television screens on Saturdays aren’t the ones who will dominate them on Sundays.

  I Value What I Need

  First, an experiment. Please indulge me for a moment; it won’t take up much time, and you’ll see the results rather quickly.

  The next time your wife asks you to run a few errands, I want you to change it up a little. Ad lib, improvise, think outside the box. Consider it your version of a double reverse on third and inches.

  When you’re asked to pick up milk, eggs, and bread, stop by Home Depot instead and grab a garden hose. Buy a rake on your way out even though you’ve got a good one at home and no use for an extra one. Stop at the grocery store and grab some olives and licorice. The idea is to seek value over need.

  Obviously, this could create some tension at home. She’s going to wonder what you were thinking and how she’s going to make dinner with a rake and a garden hose.

  “Wait a minute,” you will say in your best lecturing tone, “let me explain how much value you got in return.”

  Tell her you found a coupon for the garden hose, the olives were buy one get one free, and the licorice was 60 percent off. And the rake? Oh, the rake.

  “Honey, they were practically giving that thing away.”

  How does this pertain to sports? Easy: it’s the exact same brand of nonsense NFL teams shovel down the media’s throats after every draft.

  Value is a word that’s easy to sell. Everyone supports value. How couldn’t you? But I have a different question: Can value actually cost a team wins and money?

  Your team’s secondary regularly gets torched, but instead of drafting the best available cornerback, it decides to grab a backup quarterback instead. Why? Because he was a “value pick.” In other words, he was just too talented to pass up even though the team already has a star quarterback.

  The New York Giants have Eli Manning, a two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback. He hasn’t missed a start in eight years and probably has another six years left in his arm. You could argue that Manning is just hitting his prime. And yet, on draft day 2013, the Giants drafted Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib—all in the name of value. The Giants had real needs to address, but they fell into the value trap.

  Hey, Giants fans … hope you like the rake. You’re out of milk and your kids want cereal, but now you have two rakes to take care of business when the autumn leaves begin to fall.

  I know what you’re thinking:

  Colin, who are you to tell Giants GM Jerry Reese what to do?

  It’s an age-old argument: you aren’t allowed to criticize someone for doing his job unless you’ve not only done the same job but done it better. That’s ridiculous, and in this case it ignores some important facts.

  1. Judging football talent is not rocket science.

  2. Judging football talent is not an exact science.

  Even highly regarded football executives make mistakes—big, steaming mistakes—and they make them more often than you might imagine. Take a look at the Denver Broncos. They’re rightfully given credit for signing Peyton Manning, but they’ve whiffed on two high-profile draft picks in the past decade. Their choice of Tim Tebow in the first round in 2010 and their 2005 fifth-round pick of Maurice Clarett were both widely mocked by fans and the media as soon as they were announced. This wasn’t a case of hindsight.

  Guess what?

  In both cases, the fans and media were right.

  We know all about Tebow’s shortcomings, so no need to rehash that topic. But Clarett ran a 4.8 forty-yard dash at the scouting combine—only slightly faster than a grocery cart and far slower than the average for a tailback. He was so bad Mike Shanahan made him essentially the first cut of training camp. Everyone saw this coming—everyone, it seems, except Bronco executives.

  A “lay” person debating NFL picks—whether the layperson is a radio host or a construction worker—is not the same as a dentist arguing with an antitrust attorney over state and federal trade practices. The attorney, with an advanced degree in antitrust law, is an expert and the dentist is not. Debating NFL picks is not the same as a car salesman arguing with a cardiothoracic surgeon over a heart-valve replacement.

  The surgeon is an expert.

  The car salesman is not.

  Even top NFL executives rely heavily on regional scouts whose level of acumen ranges from genius to barely employed. Those scouts file hundreds of reports on players in their area. Poor evaluations happen.

  The vagaries of the profession lead us to one point: value is staggeringly overrated unless accompanied by need. This isn’t exclusive to the NFL; it applies to almost any business.

  Think of an NFL roster as a grocery store.

  Shelf space is limited.

  Some items are perishable.

  Budgets are a necessary evil.

  If NFL teams were pawnshops, the calculus would be different. Watches, old maps, and baseball cards, over time, can grow in value. Milk and bread don’t. Expensive items sitting on the shelf—or, in our case, the bench—are nothing more than wasted revenue.

  Nobody would argue that acquiring players at the right price is a crucial aspect of building a team. Overpaying for a tight end might manifest itself in an inability to land a defensive tackle you desperately need. But what’s the point of passing on a player who plays a position of need in favor of a player you know will sit for several years or never play?

  The two deepest rosters in the current NFL are in Seattle and San Francisco. Both the Seahawks and the 49ers have used the past two drafts to “reach” for players because they had a need at a particular position—value be damned.

  Lacking playmakers on offense, the 49ers took Oregon running back LaMichael James in 2012. The Seahawks chose pass-rushing specialist Bruce Irvin in the first round, as many as two rounds higher than most teams felt he should be picked. In the 2013 draft, the 49ers traded up to grab safety Eric Reid from LSU; again, the pick was higher than most had predicted Reid to go, but it was meant to fill a need. Both clubs are bucking the concept of “value” drafting, and both are at the top of the league.

  Many don’t see the value—pun intended—in drafting for need.

  New England coach Bill Belichick has a fantastic resume, but he has been inconsistent with draft picks. He chose Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett in the third round of the 2011 draft even though the Pats’ defense was—and is—ranked near the bottom of the NFL. Mallett was chosen as a value pick even though Tom Brady had said a year earlier that he planned on playing another ten years.

  You don’t have to be a genius or a second-guesser to find several players who would have been more valuable to the Pats than Mallett. In fact, let’s take two examples from the same team: Pro Bowl cornerback Richard Sherman and top rookie linebacker K.J. Wright were chosen after Mallet by the Seahawks. No fewer than twenty-six cornerbacks were taken after Mallett, and many—Sherman, Chris Culliver of the 49ers, Chykie Brown of the Ravens—would start for a New England team so weak at the position that they’ve resorted to using receivers.

  Mallett, the value pick, has yet to take a meaningful snap in the league.

  His value is difficult to assess from the bench.

  There’s always a counterpoint, right? Sports and politics were invented to fuel the art of the endless argument. And if you’re going to counter my need-over-value argument, you’re probably going to start with one name: Aaron Rodgers. The Packers chose Rodgers
in the first round even though Brett Favre was still slingin’ and winnin’ at Lambeau Field. Rodgers sat for two years while a good Packers team could have used a player from that position of that draft in other areas.

  But look closer: Favre was in his fifteenth year in the league, and the retirement talk had already started. Ted Thompson, a new general manager, wanted to find a successor to Favre and simultaneously put his own stamp on the franchise. Favre was notoriously stubborn and unwilling to adapt for the betterment of the franchise. Rodgers, an elite talent who was under consideration to be the No. 1 overall pick, was the logical choice to draft and sit for two years. The same arguments can’t be made for Mallett or Nassib.

  A lot of old-line baseball people scoffed at the evidence-based analytics employed by Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. Those advanced statistics, used to unearth undervalued skills and documented by author Michael Lewis in Moneyball, are now used in some form or another by every team in Major League Baseball.

  By their very nature, sports are about rules, both official and unofficial. Once we latch on to them, we tend to hold on with a death grip. We cherish the histories of our sports and guard them like a junkyard Rottweiler. What has worked in the past should work in the future and all that. But the people who run sports teams are becoming more open and less tethered to tradition. Many come from Ivy League backgrounds and are paid to inject new ideas into old institutions. Hunches and gut feelings are—thankfully—being replaced by intelligence and reasoning.

  The NFL, despite its modern trappings, is the last sport to adopt quantitative analysis. Slowly, though, you can see the cavalry kicking up dust on the trail. The revolution is coming, and someday we’ll look back and realize value without need serves no purpose.

  Your NFL team needs the staples: milk, eggs, and bread. Don’t let them try to convince you that licorice, even at 60 percent off, is a legitimate substitute.

  There’re several different life insurance policies most of us could buy, but they all give me the creeps. There’s whole life, term life, and variable life, just to name a few.

  If I inadvertently get crushed by a bread truck—and who really wants to, so it’s almost always an accident—my wife will get a nice payout from Disney. They own ESPN. I could probably afford to buy a more lucrative policy but frankly, who wants to give her any crazy ideas? Secondly, and perhaps this is selfish—OK, it absolutely is—why would I want her to live a better life once I’m buried next to insects? There’s no need for a second Kardashian family.

  Oh please, like she wants me vacationing in the Hamptons or driving in a convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway with a bombshell once she dies. She should have enough for food, clothing, and the occasional night out, you know, at a local gas station.

  The entire life insurance industry is based on payouts after life. Some investment.

  So instead I purchase Sports Life Insurance. It’s foolproof and nobody has to kick the bucket for a payout. In fact, it delivers in some way almost every time. Think about that—straight cash without the embalming fluid.

  Sports Life Insurance is simply betting against your favorite teams.

  Years ago in Las Vegas while I was transferring from fandom to broadcasting, it really hit me. Every time one of my favorite football teams lost, it ruined my weekend. Especially college football, where one loss can discombobulate a season. Since most men get grumpier as they age (a British study says men over 50 laugh as rarely as two and a half times a day), who wouldn’t want to avoid surly weekends?

  So I began betting against all my teams and the result is obvious. If my team wins, I party like a rock star, or at least one that goes to bed by 9:45 p.m. If my team gets shelled, well, I still partially win.

  Now the only drawback, of course, is that you are always, at least partially, a loser. A slight kick to the shin. There is never pure nirvana, yet you never spend a weekend with the shades drawn and sharp knives scattered about, either. In betting parlance, the partial win covers the spread—and the pain.

  Listen, if you want to spend your life taking wild emotional turns, count me out. You try to turn two bases into a triple, I’ll just stand here at second base, admiring my commendable work. Hey, nobody ever got fired after leading the league in doubles.

  For those interested, this policy is available online and in a certain city with lots of neon. There is no money-back guarantee, just money back, guaranteeing certain football weekends are slightly brighter.

  The Drain Game

  As a kid, I hated math but loved sports. It never seemed like a conflict. They were mutually exclusive, right? Only later did I come to an important realization: sports is largely nothing but numbers. You can’t be an educated sports fan without some level of mathematical literacy. It’s just not possible.

  Derek Jeter wears No. 2, MJ wore 23, and Magic wore 32. Seven-hundred fifty-five is Hank Aaron’s home-run total. There are sixty-eight teams in March Madness; the scholarship limit in college football is 85. If I say 100 points, you instinctively say Wilt. You don’t have to be a Yankee fan to know that fifty-six straight games with a hit means Joe DiMaggio. Bill Russell has 11 NBA titles as a Celtic player; Phil Jackson has the same as an NBA head coach.

  Every sports fan has a little Russell Crowe Beautiful Mind thing working when it comes to sports. We argue and bet on the numbers. You rank players and teams, elevating and degrading, based on those same numbers.

  There are two lesser-known numbers that might be the most staggering and important in professional sports: 60 and 78.

  According to a story in Sports Illustrated by Pablo S. Torre, 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retirement. It seems impossible, but football players are worse: the study showed 78 percent of NFL players went bankrupt after two years of retirement.

  It’s nothing short of unbelievable, but the numbers—it’s always the numbers—back it up.

  Fans have a hard time coming to terms with such a wild paradox. How can people who have so much end up with so little?

  Whenever I’ve watched MTV’s Cribs or any other show glorifying the wealth of professional athletes, I come away with an odd mix of pity and bewilderment. On one hand, I completely understand: after a childhood of struggle and hardship—as is the case with many athletes—who wouldn’t display some extravagance? It’s natural to want to surround yourself with outward symbols of your hard work and status.

  Those television shows that give a voyeur’s-eye look into the mansions of hip-hop moguls and star athletes could just as easily be renamed My Garage Is Bigger Than Anything You’ll Ever Own. From gold-plated bathtubs to diamond-encrusted cutting boards, it’s a step-by-step guide to the excess of the celebrity lifestyle.

  I don’t admire the 15,000-square-foot castles. I don’t resent them, either.

  At the Union Plaza in Las Vegas, I once met a tanned, tall Texan in his early sixties. Drinking whiskey on the rocks and drawling out story after story, he told me he had recently sold several television stations in his home state. He came from a large family and possessed the confidence and perspective of a man who had been successful but had to fight for it.

  In the middle of one of his stories, he looked up from his glass and said, “If you resent success, you will never achieve it. Be excited about it, even if the success is not your own. Bitter people are rarely happy or successful.” Everything he said after that might as well have been an inaudible hum. Twenty years later that sentiment still resonates with me: celebrate the success of others.

  That’s why it nags at me when I become vaguely depressed watching young athletes parading around their paradise pointing out all the sunken, pool-sized bathtubs and lavish theater rooms. I want to celebrate their successes, and I do, but it’s hard when you can visualize the repo man, a few years into the future, knocking on the back door. It’s hard to be in a celebratory mood when you see your favorite NFL tight end squander $3.6 million on his retro jersey collection, only to have the IRS confisc
ate it for unpaid taxes.

  Let me repeat: I don’t resent the money. I am astonished, however, when I see what all that money becomes.

  The question that needs to be asked—how in the hell can you blow through so much money so fast?—is only partially answered by the images in those shows.

  It almost seems like it just disappears. Poof, like a magic trick. Scottie Pippen made $120 million, according to estimates, and has since fallen into financial ruin. Did he shower in Cristal for a decade? Is his roof made of diamonds? Former NBA player Antoine Walker lost $110 million and can’t blame a penny of it on Bernie Madoff. Do these guys have single-use, disposable Armani suits?

  Well, the complete explanation might not be as easy as it seems. There are several factors at work, and just one of them is ridiculous spending.

  Robert Raiola is a certified public accountant who specializes in sports and entertainment and calls himself Sports Tax Man. According to him, the first order of business for the disbelieving fans is to understand that athletes don’t actually get all the money you read about.

  Of course, we all understand taxes and most of us understand that athletes must pay agents and business managers, but sometimes those facts get lost in the haze of the headlines. When you see a story about a Los Angeles Dodger signing a contract for $96 million over four years, an easy vision springs to mind: $24 million a year.

  However, Raiola will tell you that our $96 million Dodger is taking home $11 million a year. Before you start playing an imaginary violin, let me be clear: I’m not asking you to cry for a guy who brings home eight figures a year.

  But … but.

  The public, including the player’s family and friends and associates and interior decorators and other assorted hangers-on, sees one thing: the headline. The $24 million a year. And what’s a million here or there when you’re pocketing 24?

  Let’s break it down:

  Gross wages: $24,642,857