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My old cartoon friend, Snagglepuss, made the phase “Exit – Stage Right!” famous during the 1960’s and for decades afterwards.
After Sunday’s slate of football games, 18 of the 32 NFL teams have concluded their season. The other 14 teams are heading into the NFL playoffs starting this weekend.
In college football’s upper division FBS, the College Football Playoffs have now jettisoned eight of the newly-expanded group of 12 teams after last week’s games, too.
What went wrong for these teams and what should they do about it?
Let’s start with the NFL
Today is referred to as “Black Monday” in the National Football League. Over the next few days, you’ll read about a group of NFL coaches who have been fired by some of the teams which finished with losing records.
It’s always cheaper to fire the $5-10 million/year head coach than it is to blame an entire $255 million roster of 53 players.
The coaches are prominently seen roaming the sidelines every week by the paying customers in the stadium and millions more watching the games at home.
Do you remember seeing the team’s General Manager shown by the TV networks during a football game? Those folks usually only emerge as the team is being handed the AFC or NFC conference title or the Super Bowl trophy.
The majority of GM’s (unless you’re in Dallas, that is) make the critical decisions involving the hiring and pay for the team’s players. Unfortunately, most of these perpetually losing franchises won’t be firing their General Manager this week.
Watch how this works over the coming week.
The general managers and team owners are the biggest villains for failing franchises in every professional sport
The GM and team owner must sell “hope” to professional sports fans.
They are keenly watching the team’s bottom line (profits). When season ticket sales tank and the team is unable to pay its annual expenses from current cash flow, the General Manager’s job will finally be on the block.
That’s why the Dallas Cowboys didn’t fire head coach Mike McCarthy (who won a Super Bowl title in Green Bay in 2011) following last season’s opening round playoff debacle at home versus Green Bay.
Despite the pain of the loss and fan outrage in Dallas, team owner Jerry Jones’ income statement for his football team still looked terrific after last January’s embarrassing loss.
In the mind of Jerry Jones (whose team hasn’t played in a Super Bowl since 1996), you may think, “Why should I spend the extra money to pay-off the final year of your current coach (McCarthy), because the next coach will likely cost even more?”
Until Dallas Cowboys fans stop shelling out cash to buy season tickets at Jerry World (the team’s nearly 100,000 seat stadium which is also owned by JJ), the team owner has no profit motive to change anything right now.
Think about it from the owner’s perspective
Today, another former Super Bowl winning head coach was fired by the 4-13 Jacksonville Jaguars.
Doug Pederson won the NFL title while head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles in February, 2018. He was fired in Philly after the Eagles slipped to a 4-11-1 mark in the 2020 season.
The former quarterback at Northeast Louisiana University (now UL-Monroe), Doug Pederson was hired as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2022. He turned around a team which had finished 3-13 the previous season to a 9-8 record in his first season and won the AFC South title.
Doug Pederson finished third for the NFL’s “Coach of the Year” award for his first year as head coach in Jacksonville.
Last season in 2023, the Jags lost five of their final six games to finish with a disappointing 9-8 season. That team did not qualify for the playoffs.
The wheels fell off in Jacksonville this year with a woeful 4-13 record this season.
Based on his career record, Doug Pederson is a very good coach.
The problem in Jacksonville (and many other losing franchises) is having a roster filled with the draft mistakes and bungled free agent acquisitions made by the General Manager and blessed by the team owner. The coach has the job of molding the players (selected by the GM) into a winning team.
If you watched any of Jacksonville’s home games this year, you learned that (a) the Jaguars do not possess a lot of top level NFL talent and (b) there were often as many empty seats in the team’s 70,000 seat stadium as there were paying customers.
The Jags owner is not in business to lose money with his pro football team.
As we will see happen several times this week (just like every year), Jacksonville franchise owner Shad Khan fired head coach Doug Pederson today.
He had these comments in his effort to revive fans’ hope for the future:
“I strongly believe it is possible next season to restore the winning environment we had here not long ago. I will collaborate with General Manager Trent Baalke and others to hire a leader who shares my ambition and is ready to seize the extraordinary opportunity we will offer in Jacksonville.”
By the way, Jaguars’ GM Trent Baalke has one more year left on his contract. After replacing previously fired GM David Caldwell, Baalke’s next head coaching hire in J-ville in the coming weeks might be his last in northeastern Florida.
Doug Pederson came into Jacksonville and immediately turned the team around in his first season as head coach. After three years, he’s now out of a job.
The Chargers new head coach has become this season’s King Midas
Former University of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh won the CFP National Championship last January. He left Michigan and took the head coaching job with the Los Angeles Chargers this fall.
After the Chargers went 5-12 in 2023, the team’s new head coach led the Chargers to an 11-6 record and a playoff spot this season.
Jim Harbaugh has become this year’s NFL coach with the magic touch.
The Chargers also hired a new General Manager in the same week they hired Jim Harbaugh. The new Chargers’ GM, John Hortiz, spent years in the highly successful Baltimore Ravens organization. That means that he worked alongside of Jim Harbaugh’s older brother and coach of the Ravens, John Harbaugh.
A professional football franchise’s General Manager and head coach must be on the same page for the relationship to be successful.
Otherwise, the coach needs to remember these wise words from legendary Houston Oilers head coach Bum Phillips.
“There’s two kinds of coaches. Them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired!”
College Football Playoffs – From 12 down to 4 teams
Generally speaking, the first eight games of this year’s newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoffs have been a big dud.
All four first round games lacked much second half drama. The Round 1 victory margins ranging from 10 points (only due to a last minute score by Indiana vs. Notre Dame) to 28 points (as Penn State demolished SMU).
Check out the television viewership for each of those four Round 1 games:
Tennessee at Ohio State – 14.7 million
Indiana at Notre Dame – 13.4 million
Clemson at Texas – 8.9 million (going up against NFL competition)
SMU at Penn State – 6.6 million (also against an NFL game)
Last week’s CFP quarterfinals produced similar (mostly boring) results on the field.
Only the dramatic fourth quarter rally by Arizona State in a 39-31 double-overtime loss to Texas last week saved the quartet of CFP quarterfinal games from being a substitute for Sominex as a remedy for insomnia.
Those other three quarterfinal playoff games last week were quite forgettable.
For example, the formerly unbeaten Oregon Ducks were smashed by Ohio State 41-21. That game that was effectively over in the second quarter.
Penn State’s larger offensive and defensive lines quickly shut down Boise State in a 31-14 snoozer. Georgia’s second string quarterback never really threatened Notre Dame for most of the game as the Fighting Irish advanced with a relatively easy 23-10 victory.
Let’s check the television ratings for last week’s four quarterfinal games:
Rose Bowl – Ohio State vs. Oregon – 21.1 million
Peach Bowl – Texas vs. Arizona State – 17.3 million
Sugar Bowl – Notre Dame vs. Georgia – 15.8 million
Fiesta Bowl – Penn State vs. Boise State – 13.8 million
This week, it’s the CFP semifinals. How will they stack-up vs. last year’s two games?
A year ago, the two CFP semifinal games were both played on January 1 and averaged 23.3 million TV viewers:
Rose Bowl – Michigan over Alabama – 27.8 million
Sugar Bowl – Washington over Texas – 18.8 million
This year, the two semifinal games will be played on successive nights later this week:
Thursday, Jan. 9 (6:30PM CST on ESPN) – Orange Bowl – Notre Dame vs. Penn State
Friday, Jan. 10 (6:30PM CST on ESPN) – Cotton Bowl – Ohio State vs. Texas
Expect each of these two games to take about four hours to play. ESPN will force you to sit through a lengthy pre-kickoff show, a 20+ minute halftime onslaught of commercials, and lengthy commercial breaks throughout the game.
ESPN has $1 billion invested in this year’s group of college football playoff games.
For now, it looks like ESPN will be lucky to break even on their investment. With cold weather gripping much of the nation this week, this week’s semifinal games should track close to last year’s results.
Speaking for myself, this year’s new 12-team playoff has proven that we simply don’t need it
I’m still a fan of college football teams playing in a traditional bowl game as a reward for a good season. Afterwards, the two most impressive teams of the year should be selected to play for the national championship in the following week.
If that sounds familiar, it was the original BCS idea which emerged in 1998. Since it is now 2025, perhaps we should utilize Chat GPT to select the two final teams and allow AI take the heat.
Money talks, though. For the next year, we’re stuck with a 12-team playoff model.
The television networks and participating colleges are stepping all over each other trying to generate incremental revenue by adding more and more games – whether we need them or not.
I have wondered if we (the viewers) wouldn’t rather pay $10 to watch a 2 1/2 hour commercial-free championship college football game (even with a 15-minute halftime for the players) to save an extra 90 minutes of wasted time.
Perhaps we should confer with our tailbones this coming Saturday morning after two straight nights of 4-hour college football games on television!