Patience, sports fans, you’ll have your day
Jan 25, 2013, 4:48 PM | Updated: 6:26 pm
The past two weeks have been sports radio nirvana, a veritable cornucopia of drama, mayhem and change. Coaches getting hired after coaches were fired; general managers making moves, personnel men getting promoted, local legends getting snubbed, VPs and presidents boldly putting their stamp on billion dollar franchises.
It doesn’t get any better than that in this industry, right?
Actually, it does.
People are outraged. Fans are promising to never support teams they have grown up with ever again. Season ticket holders are shaking their fists with a vow under moon, sun and sky to cancel their renewals. Sponsors have questions and they want answers or there’s going to be a reckoning in accounting. Daddy Warbucks don’t play that.
But wait, there’s more.
Multifarious players are coming, going, being defamed, demoted and otherwise deposed, while others rise up, seize their opportunity and claim their rightful place in the circle of power.
And I have never felt so inadequate.
I have been in a locker room my whole life. I have been a team captain at every level — in multiple sports. I have an older brother and a younger brother that experienced these same set or circumstances. Combined, we have 15 years of playing/coaching at the FBS level and over three decades at the NFL level, not including two decades of radio analysis. We have been inside and involved in professional sports for over half a century.
And after speaking with my warrior-siblings all I can do is hypothesize in front of a microphone.
I didn’t work with Ken Whisenhunt on a daily basis, but I believed he shouldn’t have been fired. I wasn’t sitting in the room when Ray Horton interviewed, but I went on the air and said I would have hired him as the Cardinals head coach. I have never managed a franchise worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more, but criticized Suns management for firing Alvin Gentry. I have never interviewed a coaching candidate at the highest level our species can generate, but I thought the Suns should have given the interim job to Dan Majerle. I have never managed a clubhouse, but believe Justin Upton was a horrible fit for the Diamondbacks. I have never tried to trade a potential superstar, but believe the Diamondbacks did not get equal value for Justin Upton.
Yet people are up in arms, standing outside the castle walls with pitchfork and torch — screaming for Frankenstein’s head! Retribution is what they want and they want it now, without the aid or comfort of the truth: like Frankenstein’s Monster didn’t mean to kill that little girl by the pond.
Relax. If the powers that be are wrong, there will be blood (figuratively speaking) because your voice has been heard. If they’re right, they’ll reap the benefits of what they’ve sown in the profession they are now employed and we’ll all wait for the next opportunity to shred their acumen, ability and attributes without knowing the truth when they make another franchise-altering decision.