Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Paging Alanis
If you're going to complain about a lack of floss in jail, you might as well deserve Isaac Yankem as your cellmate.

Couple of other notes:
-- With all the hand-wringing over Bode Miller's washout, remember that he struggled in World Cup competition this year (after winning the title last year). It appears he pulled a Summer of Bode after winning the title, and looks like he turned Turin into the Winter of Bode as well. Oops.
-- The NFL Scouting Combine has been some intriguing TV to watch, even if it is just guys doing drills. It's also stranger seeing it while working out at the gym, especially when the 40-yard dash is going on while I'm on the treadmill.
-- Speaking of the combine, my colleague Stewart Mandel has a good response to the Vince Young Wonderlic debacle.
This whole hubbub over Young, especially in relation to Jay Cutler's rise up the draft charts, shows again how all-over-the-place NFL scouting/evaluation can be. Tom Brady is often considered better than Peyton Manning, and Joe Montana over Dan Marino because they've won the big games. It's wins over numbers over physical tools, so goes conventional wisdom.
We know Matt Leinart has all three, and he's a very good, safe pick near the top of the draft. Young obviously has all the freakish athletic ability, but he too has both numbers and big wins (including a head-to-head victory over Leinart at the Rose Bowl). Cutler appears to have the physical tools as well as the stats, but he played at Vanderbilt, where wins were few and far between (although beating Tennessee last year was huge). And yet, Cutler is being listed above Young in a few mock drafts.
The Brady and Montana comparisons are somewhat applicable as both were lower-round picks despite winning some big games in college themselves. That is not to say winning is everything, or else that Ken Dorsey-Craig Krenzel rematch a couple of seasons ago in the NFL wouldn't have been considered a bit of a joke.
I guess winning in college can be a detriment until you actually win in the NFL, and then it's a wonder why these guys weren't drafted higher. Hmm...

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