Post by Harrier on Dec 30, 2014 5:04:54 GMT -5
Woody Johnson said a lot of things Monday morning, some of them encouraging, some of them puzzling, some of them falling into the vast chasm in between. The owner of the Jets will never be confused with, say, Teddy Roosevelt, when the time comes to list the great orators of all time.
But there were five words that were telling.
And will be especially telling if he meant them.
“We’re in the win business,” Woody Johnson said.
This may sound like the ultimate owner-speak platitude, but the truth is for a number of years under Johnson’s stewardship, the Jets were unabashedly in the PSL business. The last few years, it has seemed as if they were in the back-page business, as eager to sell newspapers as we are. The win business? That’s always felt like a necessary accessory to everything else.
So let’s take him at his word, or at least take him at those five words. If the Jets are truly in the win business, then they have to take a break from the standard NFL policy of hiring the hot coordinator. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it works for a while: Eric Mangini had two winning seasons here. Rex Ryan went to back-to-back AFC Championship games. Both men wound up fired.
They have to hire a track record. That isn’t the easiest thing to do in the NFL these days, because there aren’t a lot of them left. Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy and Bill Cowher are married to TV now. Whatever bloom Mike Shanahan had was rubbed off clean by his time in Washington. Jim Harbaugh is bound for Ann Arbor.
But there is one name that has to intrigue Woody Johnson right now, because if winning is an industry, he is as prosperous as the law allows. He is, in fact, the second-best football coach on the planet (and, not coincidentally, the professional spawn of No. 1).
Nick Saban.
Yes: Maybe only a fool would abandon a kingdom in Tuscaloosa for a condo in Florham Park, and Saban is no fool. Yes: As a close FOH (Friend of the Hoodie,) he will be given the chapter-and-verse reasons from Bill Homeless Hoodie why he should stay away (and remember, it was Homeless Hoodie’s concerns with “various uncertainties” about the Jets pending owner — Johnson — that caused him to pen his famed “HC of the NYJ” soliloquy two weeks before Johnson officially closed on the team in 2000).
And yes: Saban has been down this AFC East road before and it didn’t go well: a 15-17 record in two years in Miami, bequeathing a barren cabinet that rock-bottomed at 1-15 the year after he fled for Alabama.
That last point should be of the least concern. I believe Nick Saban 2.0 in the NFL would be identical to John Calipari 2.0 in the NBA if and when that ever happens. Both had done splendid rebuilding jobs — Saban at LSU, Calipari at UMass — to get their first crack at the pros. They weren’t interlopers, but they didn’t have near the surplus of credibility they own now.
This time around they have both not only revived royalty — Alabama football and Kentucky basketball are first cousins — but they have also recruited, seemingly, half the players in the NBA and the NFL by now. Even players who didn’t play for them swear by them now. They have that level of gravitas. And that will unquestionably translate.
AND BOTH MAY SOON HAVE TO ASK THEMSELVES A SIMILAR QUESTION … WHAT ELSE IS LEFT TO CONQUER IN COLLEGE? WHAT ELSE IS LEFT TO PROVE?
And both may soon have to ask themselves a similar question, if ’Bama wins another title in the coming weeks, and if Calipari wins another tournament in April: What else is left to conquer in college? What else is left to prove? And shouldn’t both of them test their unique skills at the highest-possible level when they’re both at their best?
So the onus is on Johnson, then, to make this a job Saban can’t turn down. It would involve reaching into his deep pockets, of course; Saban already makes $6.9 million a year at Alabama, so the $8 million Harbaugh is reportedly set to collect at Michigan is just a starting point (sure to grow once ’Bama tries to keep him). And since Johnson hinted that it was John Idzik’s idea to scrimp and save, not his, this shouldn’t be an impediment, right?
Saban is undoubtedly going to want the kind of power that Homeless Hoodie enjoys in New England. If that clinches the deal? You give it to him, even if it makes Johnson’s old-school advisers, Charley Casserly and Ron Wolf, turn blue. This is exactly the deal Pete Carroll was given in Seattle; he had the power to approve the GM, John Schneider, and that’s worked out as well as a thing can work out.
Saban holds all the cards here, so it’s Johnson who has to do the selling, and hard. It’s Johnson who has a perfect way to honor his new credo: “We’re in the win business.” And it’s also a salute to the Jets’ own history, to the two brief eras when they truly were a football dynamo. Weeb Ewbank and Bill Parcells both came to the Jets with two championship rings apiece. Ewbank added a third. Parcells almost did. THEY were in the win business, and the Jets went along for the ride.
Saban could do that, too, if only he could be persuaded to give it a try.
nypost.com/2014/12/29/woody-can-deliver-ultimate-gift-a-championship-coach-in-saban/
But there were five words that were telling.
And will be especially telling if he meant them.
“We’re in the win business,” Woody Johnson said.
This may sound like the ultimate owner-speak platitude, but the truth is for a number of years under Johnson’s stewardship, the Jets were unabashedly in the PSL business. The last few years, it has seemed as if they were in the back-page business, as eager to sell newspapers as we are. The win business? That’s always felt like a necessary accessory to everything else.
So let’s take him at his word, or at least take him at those five words. If the Jets are truly in the win business, then they have to take a break from the standard NFL policy of hiring the hot coordinator. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it works for a while: Eric Mangini had two winning seasons here. Rex Ryan went to back-to-back AFC Championship games. Both men wound up fired.
They have to hire a track record. That isn’t the easiest thing to do in the NFL these days, because there aren’t a lot of them left. Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy and Bill Cowher are married to TV now. Whatever bloom Mike Shanahan had was rubbed off clean by his time in Washington. Jim Harbaugh is bound for Ann Arbor.
But there is one name that has to intrigue Woody Johnson right now, because if winning is an industry, he is as prosperous as the law allows. He is, in fact, the second-best football coach on the planet (and, not coincidentally, the professional spawn of No. 1).
Nick Saban.
Yes: Maybe only a fool would abandon a kingdom in Tuscaloosa for a condo in Florham Park, and Saban is no fool. Yes: As a close FOH (Friend of the Hoodie,) he will be given the chapter-and-verse reasons from Bill Homeless Hoodie why he should stay away (and remember, it was Homeless Hoodie’s concerns with “various uncertainties” about the Jets pending owner — Johnson — that caused him to pen his famed “HC of the NYJ” soliloquy two weeks before Johnson officially closed on the team in 2000).
And yes: Saban has been down this AFC East road before and it didn’t go well: a 15-17 record in two years in Miami, bequeathing a barren cabinet that rock-bottomed at 1-15 the year after he fled for Alabama.
That last point should be of the least concern. I believe Nick Saban 2.0 in the NFL would be identical to John Calipari 2.0 in the NBA if and when that ever happens. Both had done splendid rebuilding jobs — Saban at LSU, Calipari at UMass — to get their first crack at the pros. They weren’t interlopers, but they didn’t have near the surplus of credibility they own now.
This time around they have both not only revived royalty — Alabama football and Kentucky basketball are first cousins — but they have also recruited, seemingly, half the players in the NBA and the NFL by now. Even players who didn’t play for them swear by them now. They have that level of gravitas. And that will unquestionably translate.
AND BOTH MAY SOON HAVE TO ASK THEMSELVES A SIMILAR QUESTION … WHAT ELSE IS LEFT TO CONQUER IN COLLEGE? WHAT ELSE IS LEFT TO PROVE?
And both may soon have to ask themselves a similar question, if ’Bama wins another title in the coming weeks, and if Calipari wins another tournament in April: What else is left to conquer in college? What else is left to prove? And shouldn’t both of them test their unique skills at the highest-possible level when they’re both at their best?
So the onus is on Johnson, then, to make this a job Saban can’t turn down. It would involve reaching into his deep pockets, of course; Saban already makes $6.9 million a year at Alabama, so the $8 million Harbaugh is reportedly set to collect at Michigan is just a starting point (sure to grow once ’Bama tries to keep him). And since Johnson hinted that it was John Idzik’s idea to scrimp and save, not his, this shouldn’t be an impediment, right?
Saban is undoubtedly going to want the kind of power that Homeless Hoodie enjoys in New England. If that clinches the deal? You give it to him, even if it makes Johnson’s old-school advisers, Charley Casserly and Ron Wolf, turn blue. This is exactly the deal Pete Carroll was given in Seattle; he had the power to approve the GM, John Schneider, and that’s worked out as well as a thing can work out.
Saban holds all the cards here, so it’s Johnson who has to do the selling, and hard. It’s Johnson who has a perfect way to honor his new credo: “We’re in the win business.” And it’s also a salute to the Jets’ own history, to the two brief eras when they truly were a football dynamo. Weeb Ewbank and Bill Parcells both came to the Jets with two championship rings apiece. Ewbank added a third. Parcells almost did. THEY were in the win business, and the Jets went along for the ride.
Saban could do that, too, if only he could be persuaded to give it a try.
nypost.com/2014/12/29/woody-can-deliver-ultimate-gift-a-championship-coach-in-saban/
