Sal Palantonio has a column up on ESPN.com saying that Eagles coach Andy Reid needs to change his ways and relinquish some of his decision-making authority within the organization. He says, “the team needs an independent advocate, somebody separated from the management structure that has run the Eagles franchise with very mixed results.”
OK. The Eagles made the playoffs for five straight years before this season, when everything went to heck. They made the Super Bowl last year and only lost by three points. The franchise is much loved in the city, sells tons of merchandise, has been an attractive target for free agents for the last several years, has an impressive new stadium, and generates ungodly amounts of cash. This is “very mixed results”? I would love to have results that mixed in any of my personal projects. “Dave Thomer and his colleagues led Not News to very mixed results, with only 20 million readers, a book deal, and the first Pulitzer ever given to a blog-based philosophical treatise.”
That’s the crazy thing about sports. If you are not THE BEST, you are somehow failing. Imagine if every profession were like that? If there were only one sports journalist who could be successful at any given time, and the rest considered losers? Heck, even politics isn’t that much of a zero-sum game.
Ah well. Wait ’til next year.