A couple of years in, I’m finally starting to get the hang of this sports talk radio thing. Basically, what you do is you fill four hours a day making issues in the sports world seem as though the fate of mankind rests on the outcome, choose the side which you think will save mankind, defend said side vigorously as if your Sopranos DVD box set depends on it, and then sit back and count your money as the sponsors climb over themselves to back your show. Lather, rinse, repeat. That’s some sweet action.
Admittedly, I’ve gotten pretty good at the whole “make a topic seem important by ranting and raving part”, but I’m still having trouble counting my money. At any rate, once the clock turns to 7:01 p.m. and I watch some actual news of events going on in the world or right here in our community, I feel pretty stupid. Watching people walk amidst the rubble of what used to be Haiti will do that when you just spent the last thirty minutes of your life making things like College National Letter of Intent Signing Day out to be as historically significant as Election Day and 9/11 combined.
So that’s the world in which I work, and I have to say that even in that world where the importance of daily events is awash in hyperbole, I’m trying to wrap my brain around why everyone is treating the pending Gary Kubiak contract extension as if it should be part of Obama’s next State of the Union address.
To be clear, it isn’t just one side of the Great Kubiak Contract
Extension Debate that is exaggerating the significance of this deal.
It’s all THREE sides — Pro-Kubiak, Anti-Kubiak, and Texans’
Management.
Those who back Kubiak see it as vindication and a
reward for a job well done. Chief among this camp is my colleague
Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle,
who devoted his column today to giving kudos to the organization for
backing Kubiak (which I don’t have a problem with, if that’s his
stance) and making the 2-14 mess Kubiak inherited out to be messier
than those inherited by other coaching regimes around the league (which
is ultra-subjective and frankly irrelevant; there’s no such thing as a
good mess).
At the same time, those on the Anti-Kubiak side of
the Great Kubiak Contract Extension Debate have announced their
presence with authority all day long today that the extension is not
deserved. Hand-wringing abounds as callers to talk radio lament that
this means “four more years of Kubiak,” as if the Texans coach just
managed to win some sort of binding election. To be fair, many in
Houston probably spend as much on Texans tickets and apparel as they
pay in taxes, so this type of Pavlovian reaction to a four-year
extension is somewhat justified.
Finally, you have Texans owner
Bob McNair, the man who ultimately cuts the check to Kubiak, talking
about the virtues of inking his head coach (and the current assistants)
to a new “long-term” deal, the importance of continuity, and the ripple
effect a head coach’s job security can have on an organization.
Whatever.
Someone probably should have gotten to McNair before he got off this beauty, though —
“I
think Gary’s done a good job … I look at our results, and I look at
what some other coaches have done, and I evaluated his performance
against others.”
Look, I am fine with Kubiak coming back for
2010 (more on this in a second), but to say that this extension was
handed out after comparing his performance to other coaches is
completely disingenuous without telling us who those other coaches
were. Of course, after going and uncovering the numbers ourselves, you
can see why McNair would talk in generalities when it comes down to
“comparing” Kubiak with his peers.
Classifying Kubiak’s “peers”
as “first-time NFL head coaches hired between the end of the 2005
season and the beginning of the 2008 season” (so at least two full
seasons in their current positions for the ones who are still around),
the facts of the matter are this:
Between the end of the 2005
season and the beginning of the 2008 season, eleven (11) first time NFL
head coaches were hired. They are as follows (first season, team’s
previous season record in parentheses):
Ken Whisenhunt, Arizona Cardinals (2007, inherited 5-11)
Bobby Petrino, Atlanta Falcons (2007, 7-9)
Mike Smith, Atlanta Falcons (2008, 4-12)
John Harbaugh, Baltimore Ravens (2008, 5-11)
Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers (2006, 4-12)
Gary Kubiak, Houston Texans (2006, 2-14)
Cam Cameron, Miami Dolphins (2007, 6-10)
Tony Sparano, Miami Dolphins (2008, 1-15)
Brad Childress, Minnesota Vikings (2006, 9-7)
Sean Payton, New Orleans Saints (2006, 3-13)
Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh Steelers (2007, 8-8)
— Two (2) of these coaches were gone during or just after one season —
Petrino resigning via a yellow sticky note from Atlanta to go back to
college football, and Cameron fired in Miami when Bill Parcells was
brought in to clean house. The remaining nine (9) are all still in
their current positions.
— Of the nine who are still employed,
eight (8) have made the playoffs. Gary Kubiak is the only one who has
not coached in a playoff game.
— Of those eight playoff coaches,
six (6) have won a playoff game AND been to a conference title game,
and three of those coaches have been to the Super Bowl (including one
Super Bowl champion, Mike Tomlin). Two of the three Super Bowl teams
had never been to the Super Bowl in the history of their respective
franchises.
— Of the eight playoff coaches, six inherited teams
with 5 wins or fewer the season before they took over the reins. The
best record a coach inherited was 9-7 (Childress).
(Update: I realize my list above needs to technically include crap like Lane Kiffin, Scott Linehan, Rod Marinelli, and Erik Mangini’s Jet’s stint. My bad. Point was more to compare Kubiak to guys who were continuing to remain employed and getting deals extended, like the eight coaches who have made the playoffs. But thanks for the cards and letters.)
So the bottom
line is this — unless the coaches McNair was comparing Kubiak’s
resume to were Bobby Petrino and Cam Cameron, he should have just left
that whole “we compared him to other coaches around the league” thing
out of this.
And yet, my premise with these words I have typed
is that all three parties involved in the Great Kubiak Contract
Extension Debate — Kubamaniacs, Kubaphobics, and Kuba-employer — are
making a big deal about nothing. Have we not seen enough contract
extensions done for purely cosmetic purposes now to know that if the
Texans go 5-11 next season that Kubiak will be gone? Contract
extensions across sports are a joke; if the franchise has the resources
(and the Texans do), they’ll do what they think is best to win, even if
that means firing a coach with time left on his deal.
And
ironically, despite the mountain of evidence that I just presented two
paragraphs ago, I think Kubiak and his staff give the Texans the best
chance to win in 2010, and that’s all I really care about right now is
next season. The progression of this team, while glacial in speed, has
been apparent, and you have a young nucleus that has grown up
together. I’m fine with the man who assembled and nurtured the nucleus
seeing things through.
That said, it HAS to be this season, and
it has to be at MINIMUM a playoff appearance. If you ask me “should
Kubiak be back in 2010?” I would say “Yes.” If you ask me should he
have been given a contract extension beyond 2010, I’d say “No, he has
to make the playoffs.” Many would agree, and I think Bob McNair deep
down would agree that it’s high time his billion-dollar investment play
some games after the first week of January.
And therein lies my
biggest disappointment in McNair as an owner and CEO in this whole
story. In any company in any industry, at the very least you need to
run the organization with clear goals and clear consequences for
missing those goals. Rarely as a CEO do you get a chance to
justifiably manage with such organizational clarity as “Make the
playoffs, and we extend your deal; miss the playoffs and you’re
fired.” In some respects, that’s a CEO’s dream! (This is the
performance-based sales guy in me bubbling to the surface…) On top
of that, McNair has historical data from the 2009 season that shows
that his most important employees (coaches and players) actually
perform their BEST under these conditions when, at 5-7 with questions
of Kubiak’s future swirling, they put together their best month of
football (Rams game notwithstanding).
But McNair chose harmony,
perceived comfort, and complacency for a team that still hasn’t shown
the maturity to handle that environment over a chance to have everyone
on the same page with a clear goal and the ultimate motivation to
achieve it. He did this all in the name of making a bunch of highly
paid professional adults feel warm and fuzzy about their head coach’s
future.
Will Kubiak’s extension be a boon or an albatross in
2010? Ultimately, this team may just be ready to take the next step
regardless of its coach’s contractual status. We’ll find out soon
enough.
But IF the team shows the same scattershot focus from game
to game (hell, half to half) in 2010 that it did in 2009, we’ll have
our answer and we’ll remember the day where Bob McNair chose everyone’s
comfort over opening the gift that the “clarity gods” dropped in his
lap for 2010. And if the team misses the playoffs again, then when
we’re all done crying about another season gone awry, we’ll laugh at
everyone who made such a big deal (pro or con) about the four-year
“commitment” the team made to Kubiak when they end up firing him anyway.
Listen
to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 p.m. on the Sean & John
Show, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2010.
