Mornings with Mr. Canoehead

Water off a duck's back, raisins off an Oldsmobile ... what's not bothering you know.

... Sports columnists who think they have a right to comment on Serena Williams' body. Shame on you, Jason Whitlock: "She'd rather eat, half-ass her way through non-major tournaments and complain she's not getting the respect her 11-major-championships résumé demands...seriously, how else can Serena fill out her size 16 shorts without grazing at her stall between matches?"

... Whoever at FOXSports.com came up with the "Jays' Halladay all but gone in Toronto" headline based on J.P. Ricciardi saying, "if something makes sense, we at least have to listen." Flimsy basis, much? New rule: If a list of teams a reporter believes someone might be traded to exceeds one-third of the league, it's straight out of Eklund country. Quoth Craig Calcaterra: "The Blue Jays ... cannot spend a decade talking about how impossible it is to compete with Boston and New York and then turn around and give them one of the best starting pitchers in baseball during a pennant race ... if it did, it would potentially kill baseball in Toronto forever, and the fact that Rosenthal spends any time on those options at all suggests that this is more of a 'throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks' column than anything else."


... Whatever possessed an Ohio sportswriter to say, "Let the rest of the world play rugby," after Team USA beat Canada in the final of the world junior football championship on Sunday. Far be it to point out Americans should be flattered some of their backwards neighbours throughout the world have taken up the gridiron game. No matter how bad the over-the-top chauvinism gets in Canada during the world junior hockey championship, you'd never catch someone saying, "Let the rest of the world play ringette."

... The rumour Leafs first-round draft choice Nazem Kadri did not put on a hat on draft day because of his Muslim faith. Brian Burke was hilarious shooting that down: None of the Leafs' choices put on a hat when called down to the podium at the NHL draft as per a team policy (Burke noted he wanted photographers to get a better shot of the players' faces), plus there were published photos of a younger Kadri wearing a Canadiens hat. Whoever started that is out of touch.

... Bob Uecker dropping hints on-air about the possibility of a Major League 4.

... idly wondering if ave people seen the blog, Tennis Has A Steroid Problem?

BT to the dub, Erin Nicks is back up and blogging at The Universal Cynic. It will get more traffic than this site without even trying, and that's OK.

Nazem Kadri and the Hockey Reflex

It might be a stretch, but whatthehell.

The way some media portrayed the Leafs drafting Nazem Kadri, a young man who is Muslim, might be a symptom of what a friend calls the Hockey Reflex. It's an umbrella term for a much larger identity crisis which envelops the national obsession. Canada is evolving faster than ever as a nation, albeit not in ways that can be 100% anticipated. That has stoked angst hockey will one day concede some of centre stage to other sports. If that happens (stress, if), it will be because it is cost-prohibitive and a sport of the middle class, which has been shrinking for more than 20 years.

Please bear in mind this is not directed at any individual. It's more of an attempt, as someone on the outside, to try to figure out what is at the heart of the Saturday Star describing Kadri as a "symbol of change" (beat writer Kevin McGran's story) and a sign "the cultural tectonic plates of the GTA just shifted a little bit." (Damien Cox's accompanying column.) The Globe & Mail also got in on the act ("The new face of the good ol' hockey game"). Here you thought the Leafs drafted Kadri because they thought he might be a potential 35-goal scorer whom you can already see skating on a line someday with Taylor Hall. Suspend your disbelief and presume that Leafs GM Brian Burke is waiting for next year to make a big move to snag a phenom from the OHL, instead of just talking about it so much).

Kazem being Muslim is part of the story, certainly. One could not get away with not noting it when only one other Muslim, early-2000s journeyman Ramzi Abid, has played semi-regularly in the NHL (68 games). There are certainly fans who are going to identify with a player who's of a similar background to them, or commit it to memory like his height, weight and junior team (case in point: On Newsday's blog item about Kington Frontenacs forward Ethan Werek being drafted by the New York Rangers, the first comment makes reference to Werek being a "dual Canadian-Israeli citizen").

This comes back to the Jason Whitlock saying that social agenda does not trump truth. One way to get away from a loaded word such as "agenda" is to say that labelling and packaging — Leafs draft Muslim player! — should not stand in for honest dialogue.

Think about it. It as if there is a nettle tugging at the heart that mandates reassuring people that newer Canadians are taking up the game en masse, even when they are not. It comes off as a Hail Mary, hoping there something will just magically happen to off-set trends which are working against sustaining the elitist youth hockey model in Canada.

That would include, off the top of one's head, urbanization, an aging population, the decline of the manufacturing sector in smaller Ontario centres (if the family breadwinner now works at a big-box instead of on an assembly line, it will be tougher to afford new skates for little Logan) and last but not least, the fact the cost of youth hockey is divorced from sanity. You can only count on families being willing to make a sacrifice for so long.

However, The Globe's Jeff Blair had a point when called BS on the Kadri coverage in his Monday column, writing, "Look, I like to sing Kumbaya as much as anybody but it's a stretch to see anything remotely altruistic behind the Maple Leafs drafting a Muslim player of Lebanese descent. Really." The Star, once it had time to flesh out a sober second thought, moved from "symbol of change" stuff to following up with a story headlined, "Immigrants won't flock to hockey for Nazem Kadri." The money quote probably came from minor hockey organizer named Paul Maich:

"We are still not seeing the numbers from the visible minorities that represent the percentages in the local population. I really don't think the short term effect will be that great but I'd like to be proven wrong."

Not to presume anything of some random minor hockey guy, but I'd like to be proven wrong is not far off from, It'd be nice, but I'm not gonna actually make an effort.

Point being, citing Kadri as a "symbol of change" is unfair. This is not out of concern for Kadri. It's presumed he has the head on his shoulders to handle being a hyped-up high draft pick and a Leafs prospect from Southern Ontario, plus being the team's first Muslim. That's for the Leafs and sports psychologists to handle.

The unfair part with some of the Kadri coverage is that it wrongly assumes a person who is a visible minority needs that role model. It's a little too close to the old liberal canard, add-minorities-and-stir. It is pandering. Just because your parents were born in another country does not you need a role model to get into a sport.

We can all find it on our own. Many already do this in Canada. The demographics of a Leafs crowd are distinctly different from Toronto's other teams, but it's a far cry from what it looked like at Maple Leaf Gardens in the 1970s and '80s. People from all walks of life are discovering hockey in Canada since it is the No. 1 sport, although it's overcovered. (There is even a side point that having the world junior here almost every year might be a good entry point, since it's the most publicized hockey event whose format is similar to the World Cup, with group play followed by knockout rounds. That is just a personal observation.)

The Kadri-to-the-Leafs love-in glosses over a larger truth. No matter what your cultural makeup is, you play a sport because there is an opportunity. It's like the riff Chris Rock did on blacks dominating U.S. sports — "and as soon as we get a heated hockey rink, we'll have that too!" (Oddly enough, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's story about the Thrashers drafting Evander Kane did not mention that Kane is black.)

Opportunity hinges on the values of one's family, community and society's ability to pay. On a macro level in Canada, that means there is a push to keep men's hockey on the front burner, even to neglect of other sports, which has passed the point of satire. Meantime, the way it works in this country is that if you want to be great at a sport, your family is expected to go out-of-pocket (unless said sport has a very thin field at the Winter Olympics).

That puts hockey beyond the means and interests of many families, pure and simple. That dictates a day is coming when the drop-off between No. 1 and whatever is the No. 2 sport will shrink. Exercising the Hockey Reflex only prolongs the inevitable.

(As a footnote, some recent examples of the Hockey Reflex. It is a gross generalization, to be fair, but you can see it in the sports section every day.

You can see at play with Canada Basketball having to scrap its successful beyond belief National Elite Development Agency or the fact our national women's basketball team's summer schedule is being subsidized by China and Cuba. Dave Feschuk, writing in the Toronto Star, noted sarcastically, "Thank goodness for Communists."

It's even prevalent within hockey. Earlier this month, ctvolympics.ca posted a story headlined, "Hockey schmoozers to gather at Olympic centre" which outlined how there will be a 80,000-square-foot entertainment and hospitality complex for rich folks and hockey players to hobknob during the Olympics.

On the same day, no less, the Calgary Olympic Oval scrapped its women's hockey program where national team mainstays such as Cherie Piper, Gina Kingsbury, Carla MacLeod, Colleen Sostorics, Delaney Collins, Tessa Bonhomme and Gillian Ferrari train. At least the schmoozers' needs are being addressed, eh!

As a second post-draft footnote, for any Sennies fans — love the choice of Jared Cowen — did you see this from the Columbus Dispatch:

"It's hard to believe how far the Ottawa Senators have fallen, and how fast they went from Stanley Cup runner-ups to one of the most dysfunctional clubs in the NHL.")

Related:
Newest Leaf's hockey-mad home; Kadri's father made sure son could play the sport his own parents couldn't afford for him (Kevin McGran, Toronto Star)
Immigrants won't flock to hockey for Nazem Kadri; New face of Leafs might help introduce the sport, but cost still a big factor (Lois Kalchman, Toronto Star)

The Castillo verdict: Don't press the panic button

There a couple ways to go with the story about "a major junior hockey player with an Ontario Hockey League team" (Toronto Star) being convicted of manslaughter in the death of 15-year-old Manny Castillo in a high school rugby game two years ago.

The first is to tell people not to panic about ramifications for collision sports. The fallout could be positive, if this leads to a more no-nonsense approach with regard to aggressive behaviour, without veering into nanny-state tactics or zero tolerance. Like Jason Whitlock says, "Social agenda does not trump truth." The second, since everyone has a little of the dirty gossip in her or him, is to wonder who is the hockey player; and wonder if hockey should get off scot-free in this since the killer presumably would have had to spend more time on the ice than on a rugby pitch to become a top-level player. (Wondering who it is not that important.)

Please keep in mind will have an impact in future cases, since Canadian jurisprudence is founded on the rule of precedent (which is why it's somewhat immaterial if the victim's parents did not wish to see the killer prosecuted; what if it happens again?). One practical application might be in terms of how much liability insurance cash-strapped schools have to carry in order to have a football, hockey or rugby team. As well, if this ruling had come 10 years ago, Todd Bertuzzi's fate could have been different:

" 'The force applied by the defendant was not within the rules of the game ...' the judge said. '... dangerous play inside or outside of the rules is not acceptable ... The defendant intentionally applied force that was outside the rules of the game or any standard by which the game is played. Manny did not explicitly consent to that force, and I am satisfied beyond any doubt that no such consent can be implied.' "

However, for our understanding here needs to be balance between realizing unchecked aggression which cost Castillo his life has no place in sports, but aggression will always have some place. Athletes need to go into a game realizing there are limits. It's not clear if Castillo's killer had listened to that lesson.

It is notable what the rugby coach at the victim's school, Lorne Park Secondary, said to The Star about how this should be handled:

"Coach Peter Mashinter said he could not support a review of contact sports in high school.

" 'It's all about preparation. You need the right people and experienced people,' he said. 'What happened (with Castillo) was an isolated incident. I don't think we need to drastically change things now.

" 'It's the coach's, players' and referee's responsibility to keep things in control. If you have a proper, disciplined team that plays the game the way it should be played, sure there will be injuries, but it will be played right.' "

That would be scoff-worthy if it was said by a hockey guy, complete with the usual word-vomit about "listen(ing) too much to outside influences when they don't know the spirit of the game, the culture of the game."

A honest, heartfelt belief is that people in football and rugby have been doing a good job with taking preventative measures. Football has cracked down on blows to the head, on dangerous tackling techniques that have caused paralysis or death (leading with the head).

As for rugby, Canada's men's national team coach, Kieran Crowley, was also quoted saying he couldn't recall an on-field fatality in his sport. It bears noting rugby, which sort of has that old-boys spirit about it yet has been much more welcoming to girls and women playing, is less imbued with the Domination Culture (hat tip: Chuck Klosterman) that imbues hockey and the Big 3 American team sports. There's more of an all-for-one spirit, a principle that you don't take advantage of a physically weaker or less experienced player. (One of the fascinating parts of rugby is that when the referee stops play, he or she will often explain to the players what they were doing incorrectly.)

The point is there will have to be some measures taken, but honestly, this was isolated. People are smart enough to realize Manny Castillo's death was somewhat isolated, and it's not cause for high schools to stop offering collision sports.

(As a sidebar, yes, one can wonder who is the player. The Globe & Mail story notes, "He has short blond hair." He is 18 years old, from Mississauga and would have started playing in the OHL after the assault occurred in 2007, since major junior teams typically bar players from taking part in other sports where they could incur an injury. That's as far as I'm willing to narrow it down.)

Related:
Teen guilty in rugby death (Bob Mitchell, Toronto Star)
Teen rugby player guilty in game death; Judge rules ‘playing field is not a criminal law-free zone' (Globe & Mail)

Fronts: Stewart headed to NHL (and about that Avery guy?)

A nice note for any Kingston Frontenacs fans, who could surely use one: Chris Stewart has been called up to the NHL by the Colorado Avalanche and will make his NHL debut tonight vs. the Dallas Stars.

(Any other former Frontenacs forwards going to playing in that Colorado-Dallas game? Oh right. Six games for Sean Avery -- two for insulting women, two for planning his stunt and two for his choice in fashion eyewear.)

Two seasons ago, there was much hullabuloo about the Frontenacs having six NHL draft choices in their lineup. Stewart, who was a first-round choice and the Fronts' captain back when they would actually have one player wear it on a permanent basis, is the first of that group to make the NHL. Stewart -- it was for the best there was never any movement started to call him Chris Crumple, although that is what the big man occasionally did to opponents, he crumpled them -- has been playing in the AHL with Lake Erie.

The other NHL prospects from that Fronts teams have had mixed results after escaping from Kingston Penitentiary moving on from the Springer Frontenacs. Bobby Bolt is in the ECHL. Bobby Hughes' career has been stalled by injuries. Cory Emmerton, who was the best of the lot, is in his first full AHL season with the Grand Rapids Griffins, meaning he's blocked by a ridiculously deep Detroit Red Wings roster.

Bobby Nyholm's hockeyDB page doesn't even list stats for this season. Defenceman Ben Shutron is playing an overage season with the Kitchener Rangers, where he's the captain, but as a one-time fourth-round choice in the NHL, you would expect him to be playing pro. Matt Auffrey, who was picked up at the trade deadline that season, was playing for the Augusta Lynx ECHL team when it folded this week.

In other words, they are all in about the same place as Wes O'Neill -- Stewart's teammate in Lake Erie for a few games this fall -- who refused to report to Kingston when he was drafted No. 2 overall by them in 2002. As Save Our Kingston Frontenacs noted this week, starting with O'Neill in 2002 through Josh Brittain, five straight Kingston first-round picks have finished their junior career somewhere other than with the Fronts.

Could we call it the Curse of the St. Lawrence, in homage to the river and the GM-for-life who should have been sent up it many moons ago?

Point being, Chris Stewart is going to The Show, yay!

Meantime, the Frontenacs play Peterborough tonight, 7:30 at the Kingston Memorial Centre, without three of the forwards who have scored 39 of their (paltry) season total of 78 goals. May they win, and win big.

The super-awesome Mister DB at Fronts Talk put together a tribute to the newest ex-Frontenacs, Brittain and Peter Stevens. Check out the expression on the linesman's face at about the 3:50 mark -- Pete Stevens is such a great young man, that even game officials were happy for him when he sniped a goal. And the Frontenacs traded him!



(Plans are to see the Frontenacs this weekend in Ottawa, but unfortunately, work commitments prevent going tonight when they play the Barrie Colts with Brittain and Stevens in the lineup ... which will mean going Sunday when they play the ... Kingston Frontenacs? Yeesh.)

Now for the 90-degree turn

Everyone is Averyed out, and it is pretty sly to bury it in a post about a last-place major junior hockey team, but what the hell.

Sun Media's Steve Simmons had a pretty good take on why the NHL overreacted, pointing out the league is sensitive about hockey's reputation for being a bastion of white male privilege. That seems to be the elephant in the room in Jason Whitlock's FOXSports.com column, although it's worth a read. As an American who didn't grow up with hockey on an almost chromosonal level, Whitlock says he "just can't fathom the Sean Avery controversy," although one could say that hockey people feel like the sport's culture of exceptionalism -- expressed in all the rhetoric that hockey players are unlike other pro athletes -- is threatened by this dunderhead.

"My real problem is with my peers in the media. I think we're too quick to go for the death penalty when it comes to verbal screw-ups. We can never see the gray areas and just want hard and fast rules.

"Avery might be just as dumb as Rocker, but Avery is not John Rocker ... yet. Avery isn't even Fuzzy Zoeller, who mean-spiritedly tried to diminish Tiger Woods' first Masters title with a fried-chicken joke.

"For now, Avery is a garden-variety simpleton."

Far be it to get on the high-horse after being guiltier than anyone than contributing to the echo chamber. It's crazy, though, that the country is splitting in half (62% majority, uh, OK), the economy's in the crapper, and Sean Avery commands so much attention. When Darryl Sutter , of whom it can be reasonably assumed has never sat in a journalism class, lectures the media on how to do their jobs and he's right, we'll, we're all going to hell.

(Terrorist fist jab to Kukla's Korner for the link.)

Related:
Avery is dumb, but Bettman overreacted (Jason Whitlock, FOX Sports)
Hockey's worst side (Steve Simmons, Sun Media, Dec. 4)
Media just as guilty as Avery, says Sutter; Reporters blamed for enabling Stars' pest (Scott Cruickshank, Calgary Herald, Dec. 4)

Another Buffalo football team Toronto can turn up its nose at...

Here's one for the too-funny-by-half files: The Buffalo Bulls are projected to play in the International Bowl at Rogers Centre next month.

This means Rogers will struggle to sell out the stadium for a another football game involving a Buffalo team with a fair-to-middling record.

The NFL Bills are 6-6 coming into Sunday's game vs. the Miami Dolphins. The Bulls, with ex-CFL QBs Turner Gill (pictured) and Danny Barrett as head coach and quarterbacks coach, respectively are 7-5, going in as heavy underdogs vs. Ball State in tonight's Mid-American Conference championship game. (Ball State is 12-0 and has an all-everything quarterback named Nate Davis, for anyone who hasn't watched proud alumnus David Letterman any time in the past few weeks, or read Jason Whitlock's epic takedown of the BCS and ESPN.)

This is going to come off shenanigans from a second guesser. Buffalo was on the shortlist of potential NCAA football teams for OOLF to clasp to its bosom (about that, seriously, Sager, join a gym). It was one hell of a post, but it just never progressed past the conceptual stage to the get-off-your-lazy-ass-and-write it stage. Part of the problem was the content had to wag the lede dog a bit. The first line was something like, "If this were written like a Lavalife ad, it would say, 'must be able to read Proust and a Tampa Two defence.' "

(To quote an older colleague: "Oh, you still don't think you're going to marry someone smarter than you, do you?")

It had got to the point where it seemed odd to have followed a brand of football for 20 years, getting caught up in the internecine hatred between rival teams, who's-No. 1 debates, Heisman hype, and BCS boondoggles without cheering for a specific team, or ever attending a game. Talk about geek love. But how could you have any moral high ground for razzing Notre Dame fans when you don't even have a team?

Plus, some big-time U.S. sportswriters -- Bill Simmons, Joe Posnanski -- during the past couple years have put out the call to readers to help them pick a soccer team to support. Poz, bless him, said for him it was about wanting to "feel international."

With all apologies to those better, more popular writers, how about actually being international? Supporting the Manchester I-Don't-Give-A-Craps or the London Not-A-Real-Sports does not make one any more worldly -- fact.

Clamouring to have a favourite college football team seemed a perfect protest of the weak. Everyone else wants feel international? I'll be parochial. This is the sporting analogue of Stewie Griffin hearing a banjo and exclaiming, "Mommy, I want a mullet."

Of course, this could never be as simple as picking one of the old-money powerhouses, or even an arriviste team such as Texas Tech. You can't pick a school such as Alabama or Southern California, not with what's known about the serfs of the turf.

A favourite college football team would have to represent a school with a modicum of academic integrity. That condition knocks off the whole Southeastern Conference except Vanderbilt. It would have to be a team which can compete for a championship of some kind on a regular basis. So much for Vanderbilt.

On and on it went over this season, following the "brain" schools every week to see how they fared. Northwestern is 9-3, but they're out for being in the Big Ten, which has ceased to be big or ten.

The same goes for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who are in their first season with a new coaching staff, also held appeal (especially since the Vikings might end up being their co-tenants yet). Minnesota's coach, Tim Brewster, is also a big proponent of helping create opportunities for African-American coaches; he has more black assistant coaches than any other team in the country. Minnesota could also be struck for playing in a border state -- if Syracuse, Washington and Washington State's woes have taught us nothing, it's that the population demographics in the U.S. augur poorly for major-college teams in northern states.

The search went far and wide, even dipping down to the Football Championship Subdivision. How about Villanova, or Montana? A couple of Conference USA schools, Rice and Tulsa, which have Ottawa natives Tyler Holmes and Scott Mitchell as their starting left tackles, have also been on the radar screen. They both play wide-open football, are academically prestigious, but C-USA teams very rarely have their games beamed into Canada, which would make it tough, sorry, fellas.

Anyway, Buffalo had a lot of desirable qualities. As a MAC school, they'll never get anywhere near a BCS game. If this season's Ball State team can't, who can? That doesn't mean they're not worthy. Elliott Smith didn't need to have his songs on the Billboard Top 20, right?

The Bulls seemed like an appealing underdog team. Until last season, they had averaged about two wins a season since joining the NCAA's top division in 1999. As noted, their coach, Gill, used to play in the CFL. They even had a QB with two first names in senior Drew Willy.

Besides, if Toronto interests, or any interests, are going to steal Buffalo's NFL team, one should adopt the Bulls in solidarity with Western New York football fans. It's only right.

Anyway, to sum up, that post never got written, but all you are probably better off. Buffalo is also going to the International Bowl, and one wouldn't want to do it disservice by not promoting the hell out of it.

(Yours truly is spoken for in NCAA hoops but it was noted that the UB basketball team only lost by four against the No. 2 UConn Huskies last night. Carleton beat Buffalo by 10 back in August, by the way.)

HEADACHES, FEVER, AND A CHILL

That cough-and-cold bug that is going around has dropped in, so apologies for the lack of posting.

It's worth getting Jason Whitlock's take on the Roger Clemens' witchhunt, though.

Gregg Zaun's blank-cheque alibi? Mike Wilner (granted, he works for Rogers too) looked at it closely and says it might check out.

Related:
In Clemens saga, we're blaming the wrong guy (Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star)

UNDER THE GUN TO JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS ABOUT A DEAD BLACK ATHLETE

Dan Le Betard's column on the coverage of slain NFL safety Sean Taylor is worth a read today, if you have the time...

"I can't imagine how terrible it must be for Taylor's broken family to watch the television and see their late son/brother/boyfriend turned into a talk topic and one-dimensional stick figure because we, the media, didn't and couldn't have a complete picture of their beloved and didn't have the time to wait for one to develop ... too much of Taylor's televised eulogy became noise and speculation and gossip-cloaked-in-journalism about his troubled past.

"A DUI and a gun-waving incident aren't irrelevant, but they weren't all Taylor was, either. Brett Favre, rest assured, won't be eulogized with excessive emphasis on his pain-killer addiction, especially not if he were to die this horrifically. How do you think your grieving family would like to see you defined on television by your one or two worst public moments?"

The absolute pits of the Taylor coverage on this side of the border was last night on Sportsnet Connected. A very blond pseudo-journalist who shall remain nameless as a public service asked Jamie Dukes of the NFL Network, "What can the commissioner (of the NFL) do about these unruly players?"

Is that an ignorant question, or a racist question? Way to blame the victim. That's right up there with, "she shouldn't have worn that dress."

Related:
Media has failed with Taylor coverage (Miami Herald)
Taylor's death a grim reminder for us all (Jason Whitlock, FOXsports.com)

(It doesn't really matter if the VBPJ in question was Martine Gaillard, Evanka Osmak or Sean McCormick ... everyone asked that question. Everyone should have thought better of how to frame it; Whitlock provides another side to the story.)

IT'S A WHOLE NEW FOOTBALL GAME...

Jason Whitlock, writing for FOXSports.com, would be the one to nail down the difference between coaching in the NFL and coaching college football, in his column on the spectacular failure Charlie Weis has been at Notre Dame:

"You have to teach kids to tackle. You have to teach them to be tough. You have to wear them out in practice and then ask them to think, make plays and be physical when they're exhausted. You do it in the spring. You do it in fall camp. And you do it to a lesser degree on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the season. When you take over a program and you're trying to instill your philosophy, the same week you're preparing for Michigan, you have to prepare a 30-play Tuesday scrimmage for your freshmen and sophomores not on the two-deep."

"... A great college coach can recognize the high-school linebacker who might be a nose tackle, defensive end or center in college. He can see the step-too-slow running back who would be a hard-hitting strong safety. An effective college coach knows what mental buttons to push on a pampered high school superstar to turn him into player who won't negatively impact team chemistry. A good college coach might look at a 6-foot-3, 205-pound, high-motor kid from a poor family and see a 250-pound pass rusher once he's been exposed to weight training, three square meals and a stable environment."

Compare that to Bill Simmons at ESPN.com, whose idea of tackling the NFL vs. college argument could be summed up by something he once wrote, which off the top my head, went like, "How hard can coaching college football be if Pete Carroll is good at it?" It just goes to show what value it has to have people writing about sports who do get into the nuts and bolts of the game. It's better than everyone trying to win an argument in two sentences or less. Hell, there doesn't even need to be an argument all the time.

Not that Whitlock can't do snappy... one irony is that The Big Lead called attention to his column was one of the all-time great similes: "Notre Dame is not the place to learn how to be a college head coach ... As fun as it might sound, you don’t want to lose your virginity to Jenna Jameson."

Charlie Weis with Jenna Jameson... thanks for the visual.

Related:
Weis' NFL experience not helping him now (Whitlock, FOXsports.com)
The Worst Football Coach in the Universe (Jonathan Chait, Slate, Oct. 25)