RealClearSports: Did You Feel the Draft?

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By Art Spander

You tell yourself not to turn it on. That you can’t take one more analysis by Mel Kiper Jr. Can’t listen to any of the 10,000 announcers – well, it seems that many – tell us someone has a “big upside.”

Can’t sit there while the player who dropped 10 places from the projections says, “I’m just grateful to be in the NFL.” And yet, the draft is like wet paint. The sign tells us “Don’t touch,” and we tap our index finger on the fence anyway and find, indeed, the paint is wet.

And so there I was, from the start, paint figuratively on my hands, beginning at the Oakland Raiders headquarters, then moving 40 miles down I-880 to the offices of the San Francisco 49ers.

Had to arrive early. Had to get in the proper setting. Had to learn if the Detroit Lions really were going to pick Matthew Stafford. Yes, they already had signed him, but just once wouldn’t it be a hoot if a team pulled a fast one and called another player’s name, while all those people at Radio City without a life gasped and shouted as Stafford did flips in the green room?

No such luck. No practical jokes. Just a $41 million contract (recession, what recession?) and the opportunity to be a star. Or a bust.

Why is the draft so important if Alex Smith, first selection in 2005, hasn’t done much except get injured and lose games for the 49ers, not in any particular order, while Tom Brady, a sixth-rounder in 2000, has been an MVP and won three Super Bowls for the New England Patriots?

Never take a quarterback with the first pick, the experts advise. Unless he’s John Elway. Or Drew Bledsoe. But the Lions seemingly had no choice except Stafford.

If you don’t consider Mark Sanchez.

He was selected four picks after Stafford. Some people say he will prove to be the better player. Going to the New York Jets, unquestionably he’s with the better team. The Cleveland Browns, trading the No. 5 selection to the Jets, gave this draft the jolt it needed. And we needed. And maybe the player the Jets needed.

Sanchez, from USC, already was a celeb, as is virtually every top athlete in the Los Angeles area. He’ll have no problem adjusting from Sunset Boulevard to Broadway. Or replacing Brett Favre, at least mentally.

Nobody can judge a draft pick for a year or three. Look us up in 2011 and we’ll have our judgments. Still, Sanchez, given time, place and the New York tabloids, would appear to have landed perfectly. He’ll be allowed to develop with a franchise that already has developed.

The draft is usually too full of linemen, the necessary worker-bees of football. That’s how you build a team, we’re told, with left tackles and defensive ends. The heavy lifters, the “who’s he’s?” the guys ESPN’s Kiper says can stand up or knock down the man opposite him, depending on the requirement.

This time we had the two quarterbacks and a lot of receivers, the flash and dash people, including Darrius Heyward-Bey, B.J. Raji and Michael Crabtree. who was supposed to be chosen before the other two but was picked after.

Heyward-Bey, from Maryland, is fast, which is why the Raiders took him with the seventh pick, much to Kiper’s dismay. Crabtree, from Texas Tech, is productive, which is why the 49ers selected him with the 10th pick.

Once more we are reminded not to judge the soufflé before it is cooked. Brady, for example, the 199th overall selection nine years ago; Jerry Rice, who was said to lack speed; or Ryan Leaf, No. 2 in the 1998 draft, who not only failed but also had a personality like Ivan the Terrible.

We don’t know about anyone. Yet. Even though Kiper said of the Raiders pick of Heyward-Bey, “I’ve got to give it an F. I don’t know how you can pass up Michael Crabtree or if you want Hayward-Bey trade down.”

Raiders coach Tom Cable, however, said of Heyward-Bey, “This is the guy we wanted. Our biggest need was to get someone to score points.”

Crabtree scored a great many on his 41 career touchdowns. He mumbled something about showing the Raiders they were wrong immediately after Oakland took Heyward-Bey but later, after he was called by the Niners, diplomatically sighed, “I just want to work hard and prove I can do the job.”

Stafford and Sanchez, Heyward-Bey and Crabtree. Without any of them asking, two rivalries were created. They will be watched. They will be compared.

The season doesn’t begin for months, but unfortunately already we’re involved. That's what happens with the draft. Do you think there’s an upside?
As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.


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RealClearSports: John Madden: Great Announcer, Better Man

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By Art Spander

He was the voice, whose love both of his sport and his work was open and infectious. John Madden didn't just make us understand football, he made us understand ourselves.



The NFL and its television broadcasts will go on because institutions inevitably outlast the people who bring them to popularity and prominence.



Yet, cliché as the phrase may be, things never will be the same.



Madden truly was the guy on the next chair in the restaurant, or the next stool in the bar, the guy who had to get into the conversation. Then, unpretentiously, unlike so many others because he knew what he was talking about, John simply took over.



Or to borrow a Madden observation, "Boom!''



At age 73, John on Thursday announced he was retiring from the broadcast booth, a property he seemingly had held in perpetuity for four different networks, the last being NBC on Sunday nights. It was there he and Al Michaels kept us informed and entertained.



Now as Kipling would have said, like all captains and kings, John Madden departs, with his class, to our sorrow. We're not only losing a football mind, we're losing a friend.



His family had something to do with the decision. He'll be married to the wonderful Virginia 50 years in December, and they have two sons and six grandchildren, whom, from August to January, were virtual strangers to John.



The two Northern California teams, the Oakland Raiders, which Madden coached to a Super Bowl win more than 30 years ago, and the San Francisco 49ers, also had something to do with the retirement. They have slipped so far from their championship years they're not considered worthy of Sunday night TV. Madden thus never was able to get back to his Bay Area home during the NFL season.



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"I'm not tired of anything," said Madden, "but I'm going away."



So, this fall, for the first time since he was a freshman at Jefferson High in Daly City, the working class community dead south of San Francisco, John Madden will not be involved in football.



"What made it hard," he said during his morning radio spot on San Francisco's KCBS, "is I enjoyed everything so much. I always felt I was the luckiest guy in the world."



John Madden was everyman, with a sharper intellect. He liked to make us believe that on his cross-country bus journeys he only ate at places named "Joes," or slept in his clothes.



He is a closet intellectual who always made you feel good. Even when he was berating you, as he did now and then when he was Raiders coach and I was covering the team for the San Francisco Chronicle.



Some sporting leaders, coaches, managers, general managers, insist they never read the papers. Madden wasn't at all that disingenuous.



He'd come jogging and yelling across the Raiders old practice field in Alameda, waving the sports page and telling me in a few unsavory phrases I didn't have a clue what was going on. Then, when the workout ended, he would give me a clue and an explanation. Boom.



A few years back I was driving from Oakland to San Francisco, sitting in the line of traffic waiting to pass through the toll booths on the east end of the Bay Bridge. A horn sounded. And sounded again. Three lanes to my right, it was Madden, honking and waving - his arm, not a sports story he didn't appreciate.



John's pal from the time they were kids has been John Robinson, who went on to a successful coaching career himself, leading USC to Rose Bowl wins. "We were just a couple of doofuses from Daly City," Madden reminded of the pairing.



Part of their ritual among the group with which they ran was buying ice cream cones. "Another kid would yell 'First dibs,'" said Madden, "and he got to lick your cone. So we all would immediately lick our own cones to keep anyone else from getting some of yours. John Robinson would still eat my cone after I licked it."



Along the way, Madden has licked the world. He coached. He became a TV analyst. He did commercials for seemingly every product from Lite Beer - "Tastes great; less filling." - to Ace Hardware. He has a weekend home on the Monterey Peninsula. He owns huge hunks of the Diablo Valley beyond the hills east of Oakland. He was voted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has an eponymous EA video game.



And arguably, he's the biggest star ever connected to the NFL.



"There's nothing wrong with me," Madden said about leaving, repelling in advance any stories that he has a medical problem. "I'm not tired of traveling. It's just this is the right time, the right thing."



We'll miss you, John.



As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.
http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/04/john-madden-great-announcer-better-man.html

© RealClearSports 2009

RealClearSports: The $40 Million Man Comes Back

in
By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The pain is gone. The one in his shoulder that
is. And Alex Smith says the figurative one, that of being called a
failure, of being described as a $40 million bust, also has
disappeared. His second act is about to begin.

So much glory. So much disappointment. Alex Smith was the No. 1 pick
in the 2005 draft, a placement he seemingly began to appreciate less
and less as the months passed and the criticism grew.

The San Francisco 49ers threw the dice, if you will, but as we know
the NFL draft is more scientific than that. Then again, their new head
coach at the time, Mike Nolan, now deposed and departed, gave a few
weird reasons for grabbing Smith. Especially when in the Bay Area the
popular choice would have been another quarterback, Aaron Rodgers of
Cal.

We're a strange breed, the sporting community. Management makes the
selections, but if and when those selections do not meet expectations,
outlandish or legitimate, we take out our anger on the athlete.

Nobody booed Mike Nolan, whose future was tied to Smith. A great many booed Alex. Before they pitied him.

The Niners, through perception or luck, were a team of quarterbacks,
great quarterbacks, from Frankie Albert in the 1950s through John
Brodie, to the Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young, and then
after that, Jeff Garcia.

This wasn't three yards and a cloud of mud territory; it was a place
for the wide-open game, a style as irrepressible as the region in which
it was utilized, the place of cable cars, protest marches and residents
who sometimes seemed as interested in the tailgate party as the final
score.

Alex Smith, then only 20, was anointed the hero in waiting. Poor
lad. It's a theory that quarterbacks from unorthodox college offenses, the
spread, the run-and-shoot, don't adapt well to the NFL, where the
defenders are bigger, faster and smarter. And we are presented names
such as David Klingler or Andre Ware as examples.























At Utah, Smith played in the spread of Urban Meyer. OK. But Nolan
seemed less concerned with the how and what than with Smith's agility
and reaction time. Nolan ran Smith through some strange tests, not on
how far he could hurl a football but on how quickly he could jump a
rope.

That said, Northern California, having lost most of its sports
icons, Montana, Young, Jerry Rice, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and
shortly to lose Barry Bonds, was desperate for a new star. Alex was
shoved into the starting lineup, probably before he was ready.

He was injured while trying to run, not pass. The Niners changed
offensive coordinators, bringing in Norv Turner, and in 2006 Smith
showed progress.

But the Niners in 2007 changed offensive coordinators again. Smith
was injured again, more severely. Nolan publicly questioned Smith's
toughness. The Niners in 2008 changed offensive coordinators again, to
Mike Martz. Smith was injured again, the same shoulder, and was placed
on the injured reserve list, with a dispassionate Nolan adding, “No
specifics. All I need to know is if he'll be back on this football
team."

After a restructuring of that enormous contract, Smith is. Nolan,
however, is not. He was fired two months into the '08 season, replaced
by Mike Singletary. Shaun Hill became Singletary's quarterback, but
maybe Alex Smith could return to where he once was, without the baggage.

“That draft pick, all of that is not what I think about," said
Smith. The 49ers on Friday began a weekend mini-camp, a re-introduction
of Alex Smith, a newlywed with a new vision.

“My focus after the last two years is getting healthy and being out
on the field," Smith emphasized. "Kind of being with my teammates. It
was so difficult last year and the year before to sit on the sidelines
and watch or be in the training room. You're part of the team, but
you're not. You don't travel, aren't really there, have no
accountability to teammates. I want to get that back. It's something I
really missed. My goal is to be the player I can be."

What kind of player is that? A quarterback who has particularly
small hands and therefore fumbled an inordinate amount when he did play?

A quarterback whose legs are no less significant than his arm and could keep defenses off balance?

Smith wants to be a quarterback who, despite working under a fifth
offensive coordinator in five years, Jimmy Raye, has the adaptability
and perception to do what is required, most of all win games for a
franchise that had lost its way along with a great many games.

“What I learned through all this," Smith said, reflecting on his
mess of a career, “is to stop worrying about the stuff you can't
control. Early on, when you're a young player, it's easy to be
distracted. I want to focus on things on which I can really make a
difference."

He has the chance. Four years after he had it a first time.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports
history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his
long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has
earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has
recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of
America for 2009.

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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/03/40-million-man-comes-back.html
© RealClearSports 2009

London Daily Telegraph: Meek hero anxious to share glory

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He handled triumph the way he had defeat, with aplomb and no attempt to make us believe the credit awarded now was any more deserving than the blame given him in the past.


The Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl. Peyton Manning had shaken the monkey he denied was on his back. Finally, after the four years at the University of Tennessee, the nine seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, Manning had won the big one.


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