Well it sure looks like Pete Carroll is pulling a Calipari.  After too many allegations against USC, Pete Carroll will be jumping ship and going back to the NFL to try and improve his career 33-31 coaching record.  He's over .500 so it's not actually too bad and he's even won a playoff game.  That's something Wade Phillips didn't even do until yesterday.  I'm not sure what it is, but I think it's going to work this time.  Maybe it's the experience of both leagues more than he ever had before or maybe it's that he knows what the job is going to entail, but Carroll seems like a coach that excepts his failures and moves on.  Sometimes you have to recognize your failures to understand your success.  I think more than ever Carroll will know to stick to his ways, his gut feelings, and do what he truly thinks is best for the time.  It's cliche to say it now, but the NFL is a copycat league.  The problem with this is once everyone else catches up then there's already someone starting the new trend.  So instead of following everyone else's lead and forming the wildcat formation in Seattle maybe he should go a different route.  I think Pete Carroll should recreate the 2005 USC Trojans; this time as the 2010 SeattleSeawhawks.

Now before I get into the contract side of things I want everyone to remember how amazing it was to watch that Trojan team.  Yes, they lost the Rose Bowl to Vince Young, but every game they seemed like a powerhouse above all.  There were talks during the season about if they could compete with the worst NFL team and they were considered one of the best teams of all time.  They had five players selected within the first two rounds eleven players overall in the 2006 draft.  Now being able to secure every integral part of that team maybe pretty difficult, but when you look at the impact players on that team, especially on offense, there is actually a good possibility that they could be acquired.

Do I know this team would be great? No.  Do I think they would be good? Yes.  Everyone talks about two things with collegiate athletes.  They're either considered great college players or they are products  of the system.  If you're not one of those two terms and are drafted then you are a blue chip player.  If you're a blue chip player it doesn't matter what team you're on, what league you're in, or what system you're playing with.  The 2005 USC Trojans had plenty of players who we thought were going to be great, if not really good, players in the NFL.  Some of them haven't panned out like we thought, but maybe, just maybe, it's actually because they were a product of the system or that they were great with the players that were around them.  Reggie Bush...good not great.  Matt Leinart...had some chances, still nothing special.  Lendale White...loses weight and rushes less.  Dwayne Jarrett...what team is he on?  Actually Steve Smith has had the most success based on his potential, but that will probably die down quick as well once the NY Giants get a legitimate number one receiver in there.  I say take those five players and a few more from that team and lets see what Peter could do with them.  Maybe the magic is recreated and the players feel that special bound again that made them great.  Maybe they can return to their 2005 form.

Now how is this all going to happen?  Simple.  All those players mentioned above would be semi-easy to obtain.  We know Reggie Bush and Lendale White are going to be out the door soon.  New Orleans could accidently hit someone swimming in the bayou with their pontoon boat and plug them in at running back and they'd probably still do better then Reggie.  He could easily be traded for with a third round pick at best.  They'd be happy to get rid of that salary and get anything in return for him.  Lendale White was in a contract year and didn't do anything to better himself.  He could easily sign to the Seahawks.  To go deeper into the 2005 team the Trojans could trade for Dwayne Jarrett and Ryan Kalil and probably do so without having to give up a lot.  They do have a solid amount of draft picks.  Steve Smith would be a little harder to acquire, but picks could help the Giants as well.  If you want to build the O-line even more then I'm sure any team would be willing to give away Winston Justice and the Seahawks could also get Sam Baker, Fred Matua, and Deuce Lutui.  The toughest player to get would be Leinart.  I say the Seahawks trade away Matt Hasselbeck to the Cardinals for Matt Leinart and pay a little of Hasselbeck's salary.  The Cardinals would then have a veteran QB to start if Kurt Warner retires and be able to draft somebody in this draft since Leinart hasn't panned out as much as everyone thought.  If Carroll really wants to pull out the bag of tricks he could even attempt to ressurect the career of wide receiver Mike Williams and maybe get Keyshawn Johnson to leave the booth and home decorating show for a chance to play with his fellow Trojans.

So it's far-fetched, highly unlikely, and probably a failure in the making, but it would still be awesome to see.  It would take the college camraderie interest that we love to see so much and put them together on a professional team and we'd get to see what the package could do together in the big leagues.  Maybe it will be the new trend in the NFL.  Teams will just trade with other teams for players from a specific college.  It will be like trying to capture the same colored properties in Monopoly; you know need Pacific Avenue to start building houses on all three green properties, but do you really want to give up Park Place to do so?  It's an idea that's never been done to the extreme.  It's a win-win situation though.  Even if Pete Carroll fails in the NFL he can just jump back into the college ranks again, and stay with that team until too many violations pile up again.

I wanted this column to be great today; you know, the type of column that you read and were taken aback from.  One that made you laugh, think, and cry all at the same time.  Jim Valvano said that if you laugh, you think, and you cry, all in the same day then you had a hell of a day.  I wanted to give you that day.  I knew I'd be getting some extra readers today (probably most of you reading this) since I was going to be on ESPN's Sportsnation, so I wanted to bring you a column like you've never seen before; or at least one that isn't typical of most of the sports blogs you read.  I knew I didn't want to write about the National Championship.  Was I going to be like everyone else and discuss how said it was for Colt McCoy to not be able to play, debate who would've won if Colt would've play, or even worse, dissect the Gatorade bath that Nick Saban received?  No way.  I'm above that typical stuff.  I want thought provoking pieces or at least a column that is going to piss a few people off.  After thirty minutes of contemplation I decided I was thinking to hard and just to write what I wanted to write.  Unfortunately what I wanted to write was something I've already written before. It was one of my first articles so I thought I might as well recover my idea and make it even better this time.  Even I can go green once in awhile.

So my original column discussed how the UFL should draft high school players so they could finally get paid, but the more and more I thought about it, I realized that this one idea could change the game of football for the better.  Let's think about college sports for a minute.  Currently the biggest sports are basketball and football.  Why are they so popular?  1)  The competition is great  2) There's lots of money being generated that keeps them prospering throughout many sorts of media and 3) There's no other league that competes with them.  College baseball and college hockey both have minor league systems that rival the college equivalent, while allowing the player to make some money while they play.  College football needs the same type of system and the UFL is the perfect place for high school kids to go.  We've already seen high school basketball players like Brandon Jennings cross waters to play professionally before they get to the big leagues leagues and this could easily be an increasing trend, especially with the success we've seen him have.  If the UFL was smart they'd listen to what I have to say here.

First let's look at it from the fans' perspective.  How great would it be to have a draft where some of the elite high school football players could get drafted to a team.  Some of the local kids we attended high school with or at least watched grow up into a solid football player would get the chance to play professionally right out of high school.  Yes, there's currently only four teams and the competition isn't great, but the increase in talent and the excitement of seeing some of these high school players get a shot against washed up NFL players would be very enticing to watch.  There's many of us out there that love to follow recruiting and this would take it to another level as the player would have the choice to attend college or to go make some immediate money.  We love football.  If the product is good we will watch it and currently the product isn't too good.  The UFL needs to do something like this to add a new layer to their product.

From the players perspective, they get a chance to make money immediately after high school.  They don't have to worry about classes and studies and they get to focus on what they're in college for anyway, to play football.  Instead of spending their time in class they would spend all day watching tape, training and getting stronger, learning the game from a professional level.  The goal of most people who go to college is to get a job and to make money with something they enjoy doing.  Some kids are meant for college and will capitalize greatly from academics and the athletic situation that colleges provide, but there are some kids that aren't cut out for it.  Usually these kids go to junior colleges and hope that a scholarship is still around once they graduate JC.  This would allow them to immediately compete professionally, focus on the game of football, and to make money, just like many other athletes do in baseball and hockey who don't go to college, but instead go to a minor league system.

Lastly, we have the UFL perspective.  This is basically a no-brainer for them because their product sucks right now.  Why not create a draft with players we actually care to see where they go get drafted instead of finding out that J.P. Losman got drafted to the Las Vegas Locomotives.  I think a team name change is in order as well.  They would give these players an opportunity to make money, while also getting them prepared to enter the NFL draft.  This is the big point right here.  The UFL would need to make sure that they focus on getting these players to the NFL.  They need to know that they will never be the NFL and that by creating a league that helps players get there, while also having some players who are ex-NFL players they finally have created a product that people would actually enjoy seeing.  There's lots of arguments against this as well.  People believe that players out of high school don't have the bodies to compete against ex-NFLers.  I don't think that's the case anymore.  People think that it could take away from the NCAA.  It may, but as we know, the NCAA isn't much of a fan to change so who really cares what they think.  NCAA football will still be great to watch even if some of the best players jump ship to the UFL.  There would be the same competitiveness and unfortunately we'd still have the BCS.

I'm sure there's going to be a lot of naysayers out there that think this would be horrible or not feasible in anyway.  I think it's possible.  I think it's the kind of idea that would improve the UFL, improve the lives of some high school players, improve the NFL product as these players would be much more ready for what they were getting into when they got to the NFL, and it would improve the game of football for all of us at home.

The sports world is in a state of aberration right now.  Just this week we have debates and uproars about the MLB Hall of Fame, Gilbert Arenas bringing a gun to work, the legitimacy of a BCS National Championship Game, and the off and on discussions about the Pacquiao/Mayweather fight.  Everything that happens is dissected, analyzed, and spat out across the globe through multiple types of media.  I don't think we realize that sports are just entertainment that is created through competition.  Of course there's more to it, but the base of it all is we want to see competition and we always want it to be the best or it to get better.  Even if we like seeing individuals excel it's still competition against the past greats.  If you want to see your local teams do well then it's the competition against neighboring cities.  Maybe the competition of sports have made us, as sports fans, more competitive as a whole.

I've discussed it before, but sports debates have gotten out of control.  We can't just enjoy the sport anymore.  Even when we watch a great Super Bowl like last year's Pittsburgh Steelers versus Arizona Cardinals classic, we immediately have to debate if it's the greatest, or better then the Pats/Giants.  Instead of appreciating sports we pick them apart and turn them into something they aren't.  There was so much discussion over the Indianapolis Colts decision to bench their players.  For what?  It doesn't mean anything to go undefeated if you don't win the Super Bowl and even then you are only the best for so long.  Another team comes in and demolishes teams so they're considered the best.  The NFL expands the season and a team goes undefeated and wins 21 games now so they're the best.  There is no such thing as perfection in sports because perfection means that nobody can debate against it and we all know that's never the case in the sports world.

Sports have changed in the modern era with the technology that's available to us.  We know every bit of information about every player and every team.  We know the score of every game immediately and we hear analysis and debates within the hour of every contest that we view.  It's me, you, the media, and everyone else involved that have created this monster and unfortunately there's no turning back now.  Sometimes it was nice to be unexpected.  Now we feel like we know everything.  It was special to witness a great player like Michael Jordan or Barry Sanders play.  Now when we attend games with the likes of Lebron James or Albert Pujols it doesn't have the same feeling to it.  We've seen them on television so much that it's just another game.  We're not satisfied anymore with just seeing the player, we need to see them do something great.  We want the best, expect the best, and the best to help us feel like we've seen the best.

So take the examples I discussed up top.  Did we used to care if a player made the Hall of Fame in his last year on the ballot or if a player did make the HOF on the first ballot?  No or not nearly as much as we do now.  Would a story like Gilbert Arenas' stupidity even made it out of the locker room and would it have caused such an uproar?  Probably not.  Would we be watching the national championship tonight and the whole time think about how much better a playoff system would be?  No Way.  Would we have all these back and forth battles in the media amongst two of the greatest fighters? No, we'd just have fight date and that's it.  People sometimes don't realize that as the world gets simpler to communicate with it's gets more difficult to actually communicate with.  (I really got my Sophocles on in that sentence).

So as I basically bitch about the state of the sports world I'm actually happier than ever of where we are.  Without the state that it's in I wouldn't have the opportunity to express my thoughts on here.  We as fans have come together to try to make sports better even though sometimes they seem like they currently are lackluster.  We know how much better a playoff system would be for college football or how screwed up Hall of Fame voting is in baseball and at least we try to do something about it.  So I may not be the man pushing everyone to donate to help cure cancer, but I'm trying to cure my own cause each and everyday.  That cause is the sports world.

Well I'm back folks.  After a semi-lengthy hiatus I have returned with my insight or ridiculous notions about the sports world.  I guess the snowstorms got to me and abundance of work kept me away, but I'm returning for the new year and hope to bring some content that is better then ever.  So as I hype myself up for the new year I wondering why I don't care about a single college football bowl game.  Did anyone know Boise State was playing TCU yesterday?  Does everyone know that Boise State won and went undefeated...again?  Do you know that Iowa and Georgia Tech play tonight in the Orange Bowl?  I'm sure you are psyched for that one as much as I am.  I think I'd rather watch Wes Welker tear his ACL and MCL again for the 1,000th time and then debate with myself if he should've been playing or not.  Either way it just goes to show you how much of a piss poor job the media has done to get us excited for bowl season.

There's been absolutely no hype.  None whatsoever.  The only bowls so far that we've actually set a reminder in our minds to watch were the Florida game and the Texas Tech game.  We only wanted to watch the Florida game to see if Urban Meyer would dehydrate on the sideline and Tebow would fly in with a Gatorade bucket to revive him.  I guess we kind of wanted to see one of the best college football player's last games, but then again, he was playing Cincinnati so I really could've cared less.  We learned after five minutes that the game was over and it was another sad attempt at a billed big time bowl game.  

Now the Texas Tech game was actually fun to watch.  We had a back and forth matchup with actual scoring by both teams.  We got to see fans hold up signs praising Mike Leach and we got to see Adam James get booed worse than Tiger Woods will at his next event.  I mean I'm sure the kid did think he had a sense of entitlement and if it was anyone else then Leach probably wouldn't have got fired, but did all the fans really need to boo the kid that bad.  There were so many boos that Adam James got another headache and was forced to sit in a production booth by himself, with no windows, and he couldn't get out for three hours.  Boo hoo!  Kids in high school who get in school suspensions face a tougher punishment then he did in a single-car garage.  I love that the notion that the garage could only fit one car was so inhumane that ESPN made it seem like he was locked in Gitmo.  The story got way too out of hand, but at least it made the game interesting, which is far more than any other bowl game.

I just want to know where the hype is for any of these games.  There's no storylines that build up the matchups.  Even Bobby Bowden's last game wasn't commercialized to let us know that it was his final game.  We haven't heard anything to get us interested for any BCS game and even the National Championship seems like a dud now.  I watch a fair amount of television and I peruse the Internet a great deal and there's nothing about any of these games.  Can't we get a story about how Colt McCoy is praying for Mark Ingram's dad in prison or something to make me want to watch the game or root for a team?  The NCAA basketball tournament has more hype for UNC versus Belmont then we do for the national championship of college football.  Maybe it's just the state of college football these days without a playoff system.  Maybe it's just the state of the media that sticks to the issue of not having a playoff system.  I think we forget a little about what these bowl games are about.  There is great tradition involved in all of them.  So they may not decide a definitive national champion, but at least let us know they mean something.

Coaches jump around every year in college football.  They're getting fired, retiring, going to the pros as a coordinator, taking over another team when they were a coordinator, taking a better opportunity elsewhere, and probably some other options in there as well.  Either way it shows that college football coaching positions are some of the most unstable career paths.  It's somewhat sports in general that teams are quick to hire and fire, but college football is the worst.  In college basketball you will at least have some coaches that really want to build up the program.  It's not always about finding the next stepping stone with them.  New programs emerge and became perennial contenders and tournament attendees.  Teams such as Creighton, Gonzaga, and Butler are ranked annually.  Other teams from the powerhouse conferences still can build up their programs as well.  Oklahoma emerged last year as a big time program in in the Big 12.  Teams like Florida State and Miami have even built themselves up amongst the elite of the ACC.  The coaches confront the obstacles in their way and try to make their program better instead of college football coaches that think it will be too hard to contend with the powerhouses so when a big name position opens up they leap for it.

The days of coaches being at a program for over 15 years seem long gone.  We just recently saw Bobby Bowden get excommunicated from the Seminoles for having a few bad seasons.  Would one more really have killed this team?  This is a coach that built the program up from nothing into one of the most notorious college football schools.  His track record speaks for itself and he deserves a whole lot more than what they gave him.  It's sad that this is the state of college football, but the reason this is the state of college football is money.  College football is unlike college basketball in so many ways and the biggest difference is money.  College basketball has the greatest tournament in the world, but did you know that the majority of the money earned from the tournament goes to the NCAA and not the schools?  This is the reason college football continues with the bowl system.  The bowl system provides the schools or conferences the money and we sure know that nobody wants to change that.  This is also the problem why the big time programs reign over everyone because they annually get the most amount of money and are able to build up their program larger and larger every year.  College football is basically Major League Baseball except there are a few more Yankees and Red Sox teams and a lot more Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals.

So hopefully someday we can have college football programs that are built up and continue to be built.  Programs like TCU and Boise State are trying to do so, but they really need their shot in a BCS conference to see if they could still succeed.  Hopefully someday we will have a college football playoff and the money earned can be distributed a little more evenly to help the lesser teams.  Hopefully someday we won't have such a coaching carousel every year.  It's easy to blame coaches for leaving and being upset over it.  I'm sure Cincinnati or UConn doesn't want to see Brian Kelly or Randy Edsall leave for Notre Dame, but that's just the state of college football.  We shouldn't blame these coaches for leaving either, because college football almost forces them to leave if they want to succeed with a a successful career.  If you want to be part of the Tampa Bay Rays and have a one year shot at the title you coach at a school like UConn or Cincinnati.  If you want to be part of the Yankees and Red Sox and have a shot every year then you go to Notre Dame or another school with lots of money that allows you to do so.  If college football continues it's powerhouse monopolistic program ways then we will continue to see coaches hoping around every year until they get to the top and we will never see coaches like Bobby Bowden build up a program to elite status again.