Bottom of the Bird Cage 3/16

It’s the 75th day of the year, with acknowledgement to those who wore No. 75 for the Chiefs over the years, led by the late Jerry Mays, Joe Phillips, Irv Eatman and the forgettable Chester McGlockton.

Forget history, all anybody cares about this morning are their brackets for March Madness and the NCAA tournament. Where are the upsets, who can advance to the Sweet Sixteen.

After years of filling out brackets, sometimes successfully, here’s a few things to remember: Cinderella lives among seeds #10 through #12; don’t pick a No. 16 seed to win, it’s never happened; pick the first 32 winners and then work your bracket from the top down, meaning pick the national champion and go backwards from there; remember, last year is the only time that the four No. 1 seeds all made the Final Four.

Always be prepared to finish behind the receptionist who made her picks based on team mascots.

Here’s some good stuff from over the weekend.

From the Miwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Though it has been a typically quiet free agency period for (Green Bay Packers GM Ted) Thompson, he told the Fan Fest crowd that he tried to make some moves in free agency, which drew a lukewarm response. “There were a few things that we tried that were a little crazy that just didn’t work out,” Thompson said. “We don’t keep score in free agency; a lot of the media seems to try to keep score. I think our main focus is the offseason program and the guys we have on our team.”

Apparently content with the current roster and its potential along with the prospects in the upcoming draft, Thompson also said he didn’t think he had to drastically alter his evaluation process to find the ideal linemen and linebackers to fit his new 3-4 defense. “No. Football players are football players at the end of the day,” Thompson said. “The 3-4 is a basic scheme alignment in our base defense but our good football players will be good football players in this. That’s the whole thing, whether it’s drafting or free agency or trades or retaining your own guys, you just want to get as many good football players as you can and that will take care of itself. I’m a big fan of this scheme. I played in the 3-4 defense and it does allow you more flexibility, and we’re looking forward to it.”

(Head coach Mike) McCarthy said the Packers’ inactivity in the free-agent market – their lone signing was Pittsburgh Steelers safety Anthony Smith – shouldn’t be mistaken for complacency. “We were 6-10 last year for a reason,” he said.

But once again the Packers didn’t see free agency as the way to improve their team, at least not with major players. Although the best – and most expensive – free agents are long gone, McCarthy said the Packers were still actively looking for free agents, saying “the talent pool still has a chance to change” as other teams make cuts.

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There are a lot of different ways to skin the football cat and the Packers under Thompson have really gone to the draft model, same as Pittsburgh. So far this off-season, Green Bay has added only safety Anthony Smith from Pittsburgh, who may not even be a starter in the new 3-4 defense. This is a team that went 6-10 last year and had problems on defense. Compared to the Packers, the Chiefs have been very active in improving their defense. It will be interesting to see how this plays out come December.

From the Buffalo News:
The Buffalo Bills’ first great controversial superstar thinks the team has hit a home run by signing Terrell Owens. Cookie Gilchrist, one of the iconic figures in Bills history, is on board with the addition of Buffalo’s latest controversial superstar. “The Bills are on their way,” Gilchrist said by phone from Virginia last week.

“When I read that news, I said, ‘Man, Buffalo is on the way up because they’re bringing a talent to the Buffalo Bills that the Bills haven’t had—or they did have it at one time and lost—a talent comparable to Cookie Gilchrist.’ ”

Gilchrist was, to a degree, Terrell Owens before Terrell Owens, as long-time Bills fans may remember. Cookie was outspoken. He was a rugged individualist. He could be offbeat. He was larger than life. He occasionally gave coaches gray hairs, although not as many as Owens has produced. And Cookie was, above all, a colossal talent. “Cookie was the greatest all-around football player I’ve ever seen,” says retired Buffalo News sports editor Larry Felser.

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This is a great story and a history lesson for folks who don’t know about Gilchrist. It’s also a reminder that outrageous personalities are nothing new in pro football. They just get more attention these days because of the 24-hour a day news monster that must be fed by ESPN and the like. Gilchrist was a remarkable physical talent and there’s no question he helped put Buffalo on the pro football map.

From Washington Post columnist Mike Wise:
At some point this week in Kansas City, Mo., where their respective teams were sent for the tournament’s first round, Williams and Bozeman will run into each other in a hotel lobby or at the arena and most likely share a word of encouragement. On the surface, there is not a lot of obvious commonality.

Williams is 64, white and a self-described lifer, who in the two decades he has coached in College Park can boast of never having his program tarnished by the same kind of NCAA violations that brought down Bob Wade before him. Embattled for much of this season, he has endured some of the most intense scrutiny the past two months. Anti-Gary sentiment ran amok this year until he got his kids to somehow reach another plateau — to reel off impressive wins, to implausibly knock off North Carolina and Wake Forest — and complete perhaps the best coaching job of his career.

Bozeman is 45 and black and was once a new-school prince in the profession, leading Kidd and the Golden Bears to a historic upset of Bobby Hurley and Duke in the second round of the 1993 tournament. But his inability to slow down and play the game right led to the NCAA sanctioning him for eight years. For paying a Cal recruit’s parents $30,000 in the mid-1990s, Bozeman was essentially sent to coaching purgatory. Any school wanting to hire him had to appeal to the NCAA infractions committee, to “show cause or reason” why he should be hired. The moment that penalty was handed down, most people in the game felt Todd Bozeman was done.

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A very good column on two coaches who will bring their Washington, D.C. area teams to Kansas City for the first-round NCAA tournament games. If you follow college hoops at all, you know the names Gary Williams and Todd Bozeman and what they’ve been through in their careers. If you are only a bracket fan of the tournament, then read this story anyway because it provides a great perspective of two basketball lifers who will call the Sprint Arena home for a few days this week.