Vinny Cerrato: Man in Charge

There's a good discussion of the situation with the Washington Redskins in Jason La Canfora's blog today. He clarifies for his readers, many of whom didn't seem to get this point before (complaining as they have that the Redskins haven't hired a GM to run the show), that when Vinny Cerrato was made the Executive Vice President/Football Operations, he was made the equivalent of a GM, but with a fancier title. La Canfora gives us an NFL executive's inside account of how other teams are viewing the situation. Said the unnamed exec,

Vinny's running it, Vinny is the GM. This is the first time you can really put everything on Vinny, beginning right now. And his first act as chief of operations is to find a new coach and he's hired coordinators first and basically has his staff in place already. That's a completely outside-the-box way of doing business, and we'll find out of it was right or wrong.

It's evident to every football man in the National Football League that the Vinny Cerrato era has begun. Whether it works or not - and a lot of people are wondering if it can work - right now you can honestly say he's in charge. In the past he's always been under the radar, and he could blame Dan or blame a coach, but he can no longer do that. It's his team now.

Not only does La Canfora make this point, but he does a great job of telling us what that means in some detail. Vinny Cerrato's background in San Francisco means that he comes from the Bill Walsh tree of West Coast football. And already, we're seeing that develop on this team with the hiring of offensive coordinator Jim Zorn. Now Zorn's own approach comes from the Mike Holmgren branch of the West Coast offense, but it's the same idea, generally.

There are some real concerns that Jason Campbell won't be able to make the transition to the West Coast offense well. But there were real concerns that he wouldn't be able to make it anyway. The jury's still out. He has a chance.

La Canfora also let us know that the word is that Gregg Williams, former Defensive Coordinator and once the leading candidate to succeed Joe Gibbs as Head Coach, wanted to keep Al Saunders as the Offensive Coach partly to give Jason Campbell some continuity with the program, and that he wanted Saunders to curtail part of his 700 page playbook.

Now my take on that is that if Joe Gibbs, in conversation with Daniel Snyder, has supported the idea of Vinny Cerrato being the man-in-charge, then it makes sense that Cerrato would have wanted to take this team in a new direction offensively, and that may be the most solid reason we'll ever discover for why Gregg Williams did not get the job. (On the other hand, if they wanted Williams, it's hard to see why they couldn't have said--Look, we want you, but if you get the job, we're going to make some changes on offense. Then again, maybe they did say this, and maybe Williams was against it. Who knows?)

I hope that this will put to rest the clamor for a GM to be in charge of the Washington Redskins. But it won't. Vinny Cerrato probably deserves a chance to build this team. But everyone sees him as a 'yes-man' to Snyder, and they think (whether rightly or wrongly) that Snyder gets way too involved in the football decisions. Maybe they're right. But I continue to see Snyder as mainly an excited fan with the big money who likes to be close to the action. I think that Gibbs had almost total control the last four years, and now the reigns have been passed to Cerrato.

Obama's SC Victory Speech

This is why I still care about American politics.

Senator Kennedy is Joining Carolyn

Here's a NY Times article talking about Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama.

The major victory in South Carolina seems to have been what a number of people were waiting for. How can Hillary trumpet her "experience" factor when experienced Senators like Kennedy believe that Obama is experienced enough?

Obama Gets Caroline Kennedy Endorsement

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, has written an op ed in the New York Times endorsing Barack Obama.

Obama Wins South Carolina

It looks like there's some justice in the world after all.

South Carolina Democratic Primary
Candidate	Votes	%
Barack Obama	287,464	55
Hillary Clinton	138,110	27
John Edwards	92,256	18
Other	2,389	0
Key: Winner Precincts: 98% | Updated: 9:28 PM ET | Source: AP

Redskins: Moving Forward? I Hope

I had hoped that Redskins owner Daniel Snyder would opt for continuity with Gregg Williams as the new Head Coach. But that's not going to happen, and I can only hope that he knows what he's doing. It seems that most people are convinced he doesn't.

I'm not going to hang on to the past, though. I'll roll with the punches and see what happens.

What we know at this point is that Jim Zorn (above left), formerly of the Seattle Seahawks, is the new Offensive Coordinator, and Greg Blache (above right) is the new Defensive Coordinator. At least Blache represents continuity. He was our defensive line coach. It is also being reported that Kirk Olivadotti (right), the linebackers coach, has been resigned. Both Blache and Olivadotti are well-liked by the players. It is also being reported that there is an effort to keep most of the other coaches. That would include Joe Bugel on the Offensive Line, I presume. So, there is still a chance for continuity. It does make you wonder how someone new is going to come into a situation where all the other coaches have been picked for him already.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Have you seen the ventriloquist Jeff Dunham doing the skit "Achmed the Dead Terrorist"? There's something about being able to laugh at the whole problem that's so healing.




Laughter is nature's best medicine.

Barack Obama's Top 10 on Letterman

Have you all seen Barack Obama delivering the Top 10 countdown on Letterman?



Good for him!

Alienation and Bill Clinton

I have been very troubled this past week about Bill Clinton's new role in the presidential campaign. At least I'm seeing that I'm not alone. There have been a number of articles about this, and the Clintons are apparently realizing that they are alienating a large number of Democrats. One thread, the dominant thread I'm afraid, has been to point out how Clinton has alienated black voters. But it's not just black voters. It's Barack Obama supporters in general, and that includes me.

An interesting twist on this story appears in today's op ed from E.J. Dionne. One of the things Clinton has attacked Obama for is Obama's remarks that Reagan has had a long-lasting impact on American politics, and that the Republicans of that era were the party of new ideas. It's true enough to begin with. But more than that, Dionne writes:

It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn't allow to pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."

"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.

Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton a few days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan." Clinton's "readiness to defy his party's prevailing Reaganphobia . . .," the paper wrote, "is one reason he's a candidate to watch."

Dionne goes on to note that the great thing about Bill Clinton was his willingness to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans and to embrace innovative thinking. And he notes the irony that Barack Obama is following Clinton's example with his middle-of-the-road approach.

The worst thing about all this is what both Clintons are doing to their own legacy as pioneers of an approach that rejected, as Bill Clinton said in a 1991 speech, "the stale orthodoxies of left and right." The great asset shared by the Clintons is their willingness to bring fresh thinking to old problems.

All I can say is that as much as I've supported Bill Clinton in the past, this approach of his playing the role of a vice-presidential-like 'attack dog' for his wife Hillary has completely rubbed me the wrong way. Obama is right that they are running a dirty-tricks campaign. And if they keep it up, I and many others will be so alienated that we'll actually do the unthinkable and consider the Republican candidates if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination.

Jim Zorn

Today, as part of this Redskin melodrama, they hired Jim Zorn to be the new Offensive Coordinator. The hate-Snyder crowd scowls that Snyder has done something horrible in hiring the Offensive Coordinator before hiring the Head Coach. But what they're not getting is that both of the leading candidates for the job, Fassel and Williams, both had Zorn high on their lists, and will be happy with the Zorn hiring. As for Zorn, I'm actually very pleased by the hiring. The Redskins have struggled on offense for years. And they have lost to the Seahawks in the playoffs in two of the last three years. Zorn was the quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks, and is credited not only for the development of Hasselbeck as a quarterback, but also for coming up with key strategies that have helped the Seahawks exploit weaknesses in opposing defenses. Zorn will bring a west coast offense along with a mixture of other styles to Washington, according to Clare Farnsworth of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Farnsworth points out that Zorn has played and coached under a number of styles. He was the Seahawks quarterback himself, and coached for the Detroit Lions, as well as several college teams including Boise State and Utah State. Farnsworth has heard Seattle Head Coach Mike Holmgren praise Zorn for his imaginative approach to the game.

Joe Gibbs

I didn't know it, but Joe Gibbs has a website where he gives a weekly update on his life. I was glad to be able to hear where he was at in things at this point. The hostile mania in Washington over the coaching search has been growing to hysteria in recent days. It was good to hear that he says that he is continuing to advise Dan Snyder on the search for a coach. The Redskins fans are going nuts in Washington because they believe that Dan Snyder is blowing apart the team. The Washington Post reporters are fanning the flames. Jason La Canafora is the worst. He despises Snyder. No wonder Snyder cut the Post out. Anyway, every rumor is reported with as negative a twist as it can be reported in. And the fans are rebelling with rage over the Snyder approach to the team. Most fans wanted continuity with the Gibbs regime by an immediate hiring of Gregg Williams. I basically agree. I don't want Snyder to hire Jim Fassel. But as long as Gibbs has a hand in it, I think it will go all right. I guess that Snyder is going to wait to interview Steve Spagnuolo. If he wants to take a look at Spagnuolo, I can wait. It's fine. I don't think Spagnuolo would be a bad choice. But most of us Skins fans want to see continuity, and I don't see how we're going to have that without Gregg Williams.

Howard's End

Tara and I watched "Howard's End" last night. Howard's End was a novel by E.M. Forster, the British novelist. Forster is famous for writing about the division of classes in Edwardian England. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Club, which evolved out of "the Cambridge Apostles" society. Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and Henry Sidgwick were amongst the philosophers in the Apostles society. John Maynard Keynes was in both the Apostles and the Bloomsbury Club.

Howard's End is the story of two sisters, Margaret (Emma Thompson) and Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), who are part of the intellectual middle class and who meet in groups like Bloomsbury for discussion and edification. They both find themselves associated, on the one end of the spectrum, with the newly wealthy Wilcox family, and on the other end, with the Basts, who are struggling to stay alive. The question is how to stir Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) out of his selfish egocentrism, and to remind him of his social duties, and how to help the Basts weather the changing times. Sounds a lot like what we're living through.

Henry Wilcox epitomizes the wealthy businessman who lives out the Gospel of Wealth, and who has no conscience when it comes to the poor. When confronted with the Basts' plight, Wilcox warns against sympathizing with the poor, and says: "The poor are the poor, and one's sorry for them - but there it is."

The thing that I like about this film, aside from terrific performances all the way around and beautiful footage of old English homes, is that the women are intelligent characters. Watching them in action reminds me how, to this day, we see far too little of this. Margaret and Helen are heroines for a new age who become forces for good without completely rejecting their tradition. They drag the tradition along into the new world and a new consciousness of it.

The novel concludes with these lines:

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

The two sisters represent, to me, the integration of prose and passion, and their entire effort is to bring this union into society.

The Bible and Politics

One of the scarier moments of this election cycle was when Joseph Dearing from Dallas, Texas held up his Bible and taunted the candidates with his question: "I am Joseph. I am from Dallas, Texas, and how you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?"

The way he glared into the camera, he looked like a dangerous person ready to do damage to anyone who didn't answer his question with a straight-forward fundamentalist "Yes." I cringed when I saw him forming his question and thrusting the Bible into the camera's lens. He didn't get a straight-forward yes from anyone. It turns out he's a Ron Paul supporter, and he was disappointed that Paul didn't get to answer the question. Dearing says that Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas is a "typical liberal pastor." That's because Huckabee pointed out that some of the language of the Bible is metaphorical, and that we don't know if the world was created in 6 literal days or not. Is that liberal? God help us all.

Wizards

I have to take at least a moment today to celebrate the Wizards' back-to-back victories over the Celtics. They finished last night on a 25-6 run to complete a come-from-behind victory at 88-83 in Boston. This comes on the heels of an 85-78 victory on Saturday night in Washington. The fact is, the Celtics couldn't stop Caron Butler (above and right) when it counted. He scored 21 to lead the Wizards' scorers. He and Jamison are now the NBA's leading scoring duo.

When I turned the game on last night, the Wizards were down in the fourth, and then the Celtics completed a 16-4 run that left me thinking the Wizards were done for. Tommy Heinsohn was gloating about how great the Celtics were, and not a good word for the Wizards at all. Even when Haywood blocked Tony Allen's shot off the court, Heinsohn was still all about how great Tony Allen is. The Celtics are great this year. But I got so sick of hearing Heinsohn's one-sided commentary that I turned down the volume, and watched in silence as the Wizards mounted a terrific comeback. They went on that 25-6 run over the last 6:24 of the game, and only knew they'd won when Deshawn Stevenson put them up by 4 with a free-throw at .5 seconds left.

I can't say enough about what a joy it has been to watch this team this year. They lost their starting center, Etan Thomas (below), to heart-surgery before the season began. (And by the way, doctors have just cleared Etan to practice with the team! Good for him! Yay! I was afraid he'd never play again. They gave him a new aorta valve. Oh, the miracles of modern medicine.) And then they lost Gilbert Arenas early on for at least 3 months. And yet, without Arenas, they're still only a game and a half back from the division leader after starting 0-5. Their record without Arenas this year is 17-11.

Note the low scores in the Boston games. Boston has been winning more with their defense this year than with their offense. Washington, long the epitome of a porous NBA defense, has matched Boston's intensity of defense. And they're playing team basketball. What a novel concept! They pass the ball around and look for open shots. Eddie Jordan (left ) has done a great job with this team.

McCain

For the last week, we've heard that McCain, following his victory in New Hampshire, has gained front-runner status. I'm not convinced that New Hampshire might end up being the only win he gets, but we'll see how it goes today and through the next month. I'm writing about him today because I read an article in the Washington Post, interestingly titled "President Non Grata," that I thought was interesting and significant. 42% of the people who voted for McCain in New Hampshire said they are against the war in Iraq, versus 22% who voted for Romney being against the war in Iraq. What's strange about that is that McCain has been one of staunchest supporters of Bush's policy in Iraq. I can understand that Republicans who are against this war, and who didn't abandon the party, may feel they have no alternative. Romney's policy-stances are a continuation of the status quo in most regards. McCain is seen as a bit of a maverick. But he's also the one who said that he can see American troops in Iraq for the next 100 years, 1000 years, or even million years. No doubt McCain is making the point that Americans need to stay as long as it takes to do the job. But give me a break.

McCain had some appeal to me when he was standing up to Bush. He has lost all appeal to me with this empire-espousing foolish bravado.

Tonight, I went out to King's Tavern. The band was pretty darn good. Amy the bartender told me that it was called Crossroads. Anyway, I met the drummer during one of their breaks. He's a very good drummer, and looks very interesting with his caucasion Rastafarian-hippy kind of look. I had noted that he had a Ron Paul sticker on his drum. And when I told him that I teach philosophy, I started to hear all about a movie called "America: From Freedom to Facism." He was happy to know that I knew that the income tax and the IRS are unconstitutional, and he went on to tell me some of what he'd picked up from his research, including this movie.

Of course, he and I are coming at things from very different angles. He's an independent musician, and I work for the State of California as a university professor. I'm in favor of raising taxes so that we can pay for education. He, on the other hand, wants the government out of the income-tax-collection business, because he sees them as corrupt and using our money for so much evil in the world. I can't disagree with him about the misuse and the evil. So, where does that leave us? I went through a period when I was younger when I was very much under the persuasion of the libertarians. I was a big fan of Karl Hess, former speech-writer for Barry Goldwater, who wrote the line "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no extreme." I still agree with that to a large extent. Liberty is one of the greatest goods that we enjoy, and is one of the only things in this world that might be world fighting and dying for. Well, anyway, according to Hess, when Goldwater lost the election, the Johnson administration got the IRS after Hess as part of a political retaliation. I don't know if that's true, or not. But the interesting thing is that Hess sent the IRS the Declaration of Independence, and he started working on a barter system, welding in exchange for goods and services. He also went on to start a community in Washington, D.C. based on the barter system. He wrote a book about that called Community Technology. It's all fascinating stuff. Hess had people in D.C. growing crops on the rooftops and starting fish farms in the basement. His goal was to make an independent, self-sufficient libertarian community. I was fascinated with all of that. Anyway, read his book Dear America sometime if you're interested in Hess.

For my part, I decided that libertarianism was too extreme for me. I thought that government had a significant role to play in the world. I began to believe, as I still do, that we need a middle-of-the-road system that aims for an ideal where government is limited, yet does what we need it to do. I opted for the middle way of not too much, and not to little. But that's the trick, isn't it? Deciding where to draw that line! I was persuaded by George Will, Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp that government had gotten too big and too intrusive, and that it needed to be reigned in. It needed to be more efficient, and I still believe that. I read Jude Wanninski's The Way the World Works, and was swept up in the Reagan revolution of limiting government. I accepted what I still believe: that taxation can become such a burden that it needs sometimes to be scaled back so that we can stimulate more production. But as I argued in an earlier post, there is an optimal level of taxation. Society also needs some things that government does best, including stimulating the economy through some government spending. It's the balance that we must aim for.

To me, the Reagan Revolution went too far. Ronald Reagan had been a Democrat in his early life. He was a depression-era kid who saw the good that F.D.R. did. As far as I know, he didn't reject the New Deal. He just didn't want government to get too big. People like Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, were ideologues who seem to see government as bad, pure and simple, and wanted to go to the other extreme. I voted for Bill Clinton twice because he represented the balance to me. He wanted an efficient government that was neither trying to do too much, nor trying to do too little. The DNC was about taking a centrist approach. It was not a "liberal" branch of the Democratic Party, if you define "liberal" as negatively as "tax and spend." Well, everyone in government taxes and spends. Yes, even you Republicans. The question is always how much to tax and spend, and what the government should spend on. The problem for me is that it's not a question of either just spending more, or on cutting the programs. It's wise management of the government, and it's nearly impossible. We have so much to learn. On that last thought, I recommend Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, which argues for economies of scale. There are many things that the Federal Government tries to deal with that would be better handled at the state or local levels.

Anyway, meeting "Super Dave" was a kick, and very stimulating to me.

Ok, Here it Comes

The Pentagon is now saying that they're not sure if the Iranians were the ones who were threatening them over the radio. In fact, they're not sure who was being threatened over the radio, or who was making the call. It was the coincidence of the radio threats and the activity of the patrol boats that escalated this whole matter. Analysts have now said that the accent on the recording doesn't sound like that of an Iranian.

Notice, though, how quickly the President and others jumped on this, and exploited this, to build a case for action against Iran. It's difficult to believe what he says anymore.

The Country that Cried Wolf?

The U.S. says that they were threatened and harassed by some Iranian patrol boats. Iran says that the U.S. is exaggerating the story, and in fact making up the part about threats. I would have assumed, in the past, that our great and good government would not lie about such things. But we've heard too many lies to just assume that it's the Iranians and not our own government this time. Didn't they ever read or hear about the boy who cried wolf?

Iran has now released a video of their guys out at sea asking the US ships for their name and position. The battleships' response was that they were in international waters. Now, obviously, Iran could be showing a film from a different day. Maybe they're not the same patrol boats. But thanks to the behavior of our current president, I don't know who to believe at this point.

Better Late than Never?

George Bush has finally decided to act on the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Talk about too little too late! It's as if he finally realized, "Hey, my takeover of Iraq isn't going so well. The Middle East is a mess. And they don't seem to like us too much over there. I wonder why? Maybe it would help if we did something with the Palestinian issue." Well, it's better late than never, I guess.

True Courage

George Skelton has an interesting op-ed in the LA Times today, in which he says that Governor Schwarzenegger had to be shaken to his fiscal senses by Republican State Senator Tom McClintock. McClintock pointed out that state spending and budget deficits are growing at a faster rate under Schwartzenegger than in former Governor Davis's term. He writes that the governor, hearing that pleas that he was going to have to get the $14.5 billion deficit in order, responded "That is bad news that people don't want to hear. People want to hear only good news. I don't want to hear pessimism. I'm an optimist." But since that conversation, obviously Governor Schwarzenegger has decided to take a turn to the right. He had been trying to please everybody, and I guess he's decided that he can't do it. So, we got a demand from the governor for draconian budget cuts, across the board. A law that requires a certain level of increased spending each year in education is to be suspended under his plan. Health care for the poor is going to be cut. School lunch programs are going to be hit. This hurts the governor. I don't think he wants people to get hurt. I don't think he wants me to lose my job, as will probably happen. But he ultimately believes in what George Bush the elder once called 'voodoo economics': that by taxing less, we'll ultimately all be better off. It's the "trickle-down" supply-side theory. And so that's where he'll take his stand, I guess.

The Laffer Curve is ultimately correct, but simplistic. It says that if you tax people too much, less tax money actually flows into the state coffers because people stop producing as much. There comes a point when you have to cut back on taxation. True enough. But I have to believe that Jude Wanninski would argue that you can't just keep cutting taxes either. There comes another point when you've cut too much, and the tax revenues start falling again. I mean, it's obvious really. It shouldn't have to be said. The curve hits a crest and then falls again. But it does have a crest. You have to find the optimal level of taxation. And it seems to me we're not there right now.

It seems to me that enough is enough. If the governor truly had courage, he'd step
up to the plate and say that there are some programs that we must fund properly in order to improve the health of the state. And to do that, we can't keep cutting taxes. In fact, we face a crisis that demands that we raise revenues. We need to keep the State of California prosperous, and the way to do that is to spend just enough. Not too much. Not too little. That's what takes real courage.

Time to Rethink the War on Drugs?

Governor Schwarzenegger gave an alarming speech yesterday, suggesting again that California is in dire straights economically. He now recommends that we have a constitutional amendment saying that we should have automatic cuts when the State goes in the red, and that we should have automatic savings when we have prosperous years so that we can save for a 'rainy day'.

Sounds okay on the surface, but the only reason we need to do that is if we can't raise revenues (taxes). And some of us would argue that we have to get over the mindless mantra that all taxes are bad taxes. We have to pay for State services. We can't simply go decade after decade cutting our real spending on education, for example. I read an article in the LA Times that said we need to reconsider the Property Tax restrictions put in place by Prop 13. Warren Buffet apparently recommended that the governor do this, but it amounts to political suicide to even consider it. Everyone wants something for nothing.

This brings me to the tangential point that a friend and colleague told me last year that we could save lots of money in the state by relaxing our drug laws. As someone who has never, at any point, been into drugs, I didn't take this too seriously at first. But over time, his point has made more and more sense to me. According to the statistics that I've read, California has a prison population of more than 172,000. It costs Californians $8 billion per year. Non-violent drug offenders constitute nearly 21% of that prison population. If that is true, approximately $2 billion per year could be saved if we did not imprison people for drug use. That's not to mention the money that would be saved by not having to prosecute all these cases in the first place.

And it doesn't necessarily follow that eliminating prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses leads to complete legalization of drugs either. Drinking alcohol is legal, but public drunkenness and driving while drunk is not. Similarly, drug use can be regulated through fines and by putting people in jail just long enough for their high to wear off if they've endangered others. Can you imagine what our prison budget would look like if we imprisoned all the heavy drinkers in the state?

PEDS (Performance Enhancing Drugs)

On NPR this morning, sports commentator Frank Deford said that it was difficult to believe pitcher Roger Clemens' protests that he did not use steroids. For my own part, I also find it difficult to believe that his trainer would lie, as Clemens has suggested, because he was under threat from Feds that he might go to jail. The fact is that he was being threated with jail IF he lied, and to lie about someone the trainer looked up to so much in the face of that makes no sense at all. Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds went from being good, maybe even great, players in their 20s and 30s, to being extraordinary players as they approached 40. How did they do this when everyone else who had ever played experienced a downward slide to their career at that age? How did they get to be bigger, stronger, and faster than they'd ever been at a time when other people's bodies are begin to slip? When we hear that Clemens' trainer, under pressure, admitted to giving Clemens steroids, it fits what we saw too well to not be believed. It helps to explain the unexplainable. The tape Clemens illegally recorded--isn't it still illegal to record phone conversations without telling someone you're doing it?--doesn't prove anything. I heard a man who was still 'worshipping' Clemens seeking forgiveness and asking Clemens to speak with his ailing son. I feel sorry for the trainer to have been captured in such a pathetic position, but that's another point.

What I really wanted to write about here, however, is based on a theme that Deford brought up. He argued that while people look down more on actions like shaving points for gamblers, the fact is that all cheating in sports, whether the goal is to win or lose, is 'fixing' the games. It's just as bad, he said, to cheat to win as it is to cheat to lose. And you know, that's what people really believe, too. Clemens is angry because he has become a pariah. He has gone from hero to goat. What got my attention in this commentary is how much of a pariah people like Clemens and Bonds become once people know they've cheated with steroids. The message that goes out to young people now has to be this: if you cheat, far from being acknowledged as 'great', you could very well spend the rest of your life in disgrace.

(Cartoon by John Pritchett)

Joe Gibbs Resigns

I was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and have continued following the Redskins since my childhood.

The Redskins have announced that Joe Gibbs is resigning today, both as President and Head Coach of the Washington Redskins. Some have expressed great surprise. I cannot say that I am surprised. The fact is that he is 67 years old. He puts in 14-18 hour days during the football season. He has a wife who would like to see him not die from the stress of coaching. He has a grandson with leukemia. He experienced one of his star players murdered this year. He does not need the money. When you add to that the fact that this was a chance to go out on top, the stars were aligned for this second retirement after 15 years as head coach of the Washington Redskins. There are few observers of the NFL who would deny that holding this team together after the murder of Sean Taylor, and helping them to rally to win the last four games of the season and reach the playoffs, is one of the great coaching achievements and stories of NFL history. People watched and they thought, "Joe Gibbs must still be a great coach." Under the circumstances, I just can't see what he would have to gain in coming back for another try.

On the team end of things, the Redskins are a good team that often required some heavy lifting in the motivation department. Gibbs provided that. But even when motivated, this Redskins team is not good enough to consistently beat the better teams in the league. They had trouble staying on the same field with the Patriots earlier this season. The fact is that while this team is good, it is not good enough. If the Redskins are to continue growing, there will have to be some more painful moves that disrupt 'the family' that Gibbs has built. Some players will be cut, and some others will be brought in. There are some major improvements that are needed if the Redskins are to become a power in the NFL once more.

That said, the Redskins are considerably improved from the state that Gibbs found them in. To me, Gibbs has done what he came to Washington to do: he righted the ship. It's an impressive team. It's a team that is no longer taken lightly. It's a team that has pride. It's a team that has cohesion. It's a family. Gibbs built that family and recreated an ethos that the players believe in. At 67, Gibbs can leave knowing that he has restored dignity to the Washington Redskins franchise. As a fan, I'm very grateful for that.

Winning is fabulous, but contrary to what another former Redskins coach, Vince Lombardi, once taught, it's not everything. There is much to be said for simple dignity. There is much to be said for playing, or living for that matter, with honor. And that, to me, is Gibbs's legacy in Washington.