Scraps From The Bottom of the Birdcage 2/24

I’ve searched for a couple of weeks for the right title for this daily roundup of stories that I think you will enjoy. I’m finally settling on “Scraps From The Bottom of the Birdcage.”

If you never had a bird cage around your house, then maybe you don’t know that back in the day, the bottom was lined with yesterday’s newspaper. That’s where the bird do-do collected, only to be replaced the next day by another piece of the newspaper.

The whole time I worked for newspapers, I always remembered that what I wrote would the next day wrap fish or line the bottom of the bird cage. There’s nothing more useless than yesterday’s newspaper.

But sometimes there are golden nuggets that are worth recovering from the media landfill. That’s what I will seek each day, whether they appear in print or live only in cyberspace.

From FOXsports.com:
Achievement Metrics claims it can forecast whether college prospects are at greater risk for future off-field problems by dissecting their speech patterns from media interviews. Automated text analysis is conducted through a computer model that measures more than 100 different factors, including the use of individual words, adjectives and verb tenses. Intrigued by the possibility that clichés like “110 percent” and “taking it to the next level” might actually have value, I attended a 15-minute presentation at a hotel near where player workouts are being held. The pitch opened my ears and eyes — especially when it came to Buffalo’s Marshawn Lynch.

The Pro Bowl running back has become the NFL’s newest poster child for criminal behavior. Lynch was recently arrested in Southern California on three misdemeanor weapons charges. Last summer, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor traffic violation following a hit-and-run incident.

According to Achievement Metrics research, Lynch entered the NFL with a significantly greater risk of future arrest or suspension than his peers. The study claims Lynch has a 26.6 percent chance of being booked on a drug or alcohol offense (marijuana was found at the scene of Lynch’s gun bust but he wasn’t charged for possession). Lynch also was placed in the same grouping as ex-Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones as a potential “distraction” for having poor relationships with coaches and teammates.

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If you’ve ever been around a golfer who has problems with his swing, you know the feeling; they go out and buy every DVD, book, swing aide, anything and everything that promises to provide distance and accuracy. They get themselves so tied up in thinking about their swing, it becomes paralysis by analysis.

In the search for potential players, NFL teams are no different. They are intent on trying to break down the personality and character of potential draft picks at the NFL Scouting Combine each year. Thus, they are susceptible to all types of psychological gadgets and trinkets that come along. This is not to say that some of these tests and programs may not be accurate or useful.

But the surest indicator of a player’s character is his history. The majority of troubled NFL players arrive in the pro game with baggage. They have a track record that can be discovered at the college and high school levels. As Colts GM Bill Polian says in this story: “We were told a long time ago by the psychologist we employ that the best barometer of future behavior is past behavior.”

From the New York Times:
Dungy won’t be completely divorced from football. He has a mission in mind that involves college football. He intends to lead the crusade to break down big-time college football’s resistance to hiring African-Americans as head coaches. While the win-driven N.F.L. has moved toward enlightenment when it comes to diversity among head coaches, there are only seven African-American head football coaches at the Football Bowl Subdivision level.

“To think that you would have a black president of the United States and two black men who have won Super Bowls before you would have a black head coach in a top-20 school is hard to believe,” Dungy said. “It doesn’t make sense. The baffling thing for me is that you can have African-American professors at these schools, you can be the head of the department, you can be the basketball coach, you can be the track coach, but you can’t be the football coach. How are we going to change that? I don’t know.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, head basketball coaches like John Thompson at Georgetown, John Chaney at Temple and Nolan Richardson at Arkansas mounted boycott and protest efforts against the N.C.A.A. over legislation they felt would discriminate against African-American athletes. The point is that those coaches had the clout and the reputations to command the N.C.A.A.’s attention. Few African-American college football coaches today have enough sway and job security to flex their muscles.

Dungy could hold the key. The Colts’ chaplain, Ken Johnson, told him as much after he announced his retirement. Dungy said: “He told me: ‘I know you’re going to be thinking about what you’re going to do, just remember you’re able to do some things that not everyone else can do. Don’t forget about that.’ ”

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The world of college athletics frequently has that Alice in Wonderland look. This is where bureaucrats have decided silly issues like the fact that teams can no longer carry nicknames like Indians because it’s supposedly offensive to native Americans. Yet, the college presidents have done nothing to address the obvious deficiency in black head coaches. Dungy will not be able to solve this problem himself, but his involvement will move mountains in this area. He has a chance to create a legacy bigger than anything he did as a coach himself.

From the Boston Herald:
Thomas Dimitroff never drank the Kool-Aid in New England during his six years with the Patriots. He sipped it. That has made for a distinctive difference in how he goes about his business. From his time working with Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli in Cleveland and New England – first as someone who painted the fields for the Browns and later as a national scout and, from 2003-07, director of college scouting for the Pats – Dimitroff learned much about how to evaluate talent and build a football team as well as how to think outside the box. That process started when he watched his father, a former Boston Patriot quarterback and lifelong scout.

However, unlike some of his colleagues who have departed the Patriots for other teams, Dimitroff learned not only what to take with him to Atlanta – where in one year as general manager he rebuilt the Falcons from a 4-12 train wreck to an 11-5 playoff team with a new franchise quarterback – but also what he wanted to leave behind. The latter doesn’t mean Dimitroff doesn’t believe in secrecy. He just doesn’t seem to think NFL really stands for CIA.

“Everyone is different,” the affable Dimitroff said yesterday. “There are different ways to approach things, and it often is dependent on your personality. I hired a coach, Mike Smith, who is a communicative and affable individual. “My feeling is, with all due respect to other points of view, that I respect our privacy, but I’m also respectful that the media is an occupation. In the end it’s a comfort level with the decision-makers in your organization on how you approach that.”

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It’s been interesting to watch my fellow media deal with the new lay of the land around Arrowhead with Pioli as the man in charge. They believe the Chiefs have become Foxboro West and that Pioli is a clone of Bill Belichick when it comes to dealing with the media and the public. Our friend Ron Borges has clashed often with Belichick in New England. But to be honest, Ron clashes with most everybody. That’s why we love him.

In Kansas City, Pioli has been on the job for six weeks, enough time to learn that he doesn’t speak often, but when he does the fans and media should pay attention to what comes out of his mouth. All the things he touched on in his introductory press conference back in January have played out as he said they would. The approach has been methodical, with the idea of getting it right, rather than getting it done fast. That was true with deciding the employment status of Herm Edwards. That was true with the employment of Todd Haley. That is true with the hiring of a coaching staff. Pioli has not been very visible. All of these things are exactly what Pioli predicted back in January.

Pioli told us that’s the way he would roll. Based on my e-mail, the only people that are bothered by this approach seem to be the media.