You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (29 page)

You know what America really needs? Another Tim Tebow column.

At this point, roughly seven years into our bizarre national obsession with the world’s most famous backup quarterback, there’s nothing I can serve up that you haven’t chewed, swallowed, and digested a hundred times. So I’ve decided to take a different approach by discussing the word
sustainability
.

You know the word. It’s trendy, a buzzword with chefs who seek seafood either caught or farmed in ways that take into account the impact on the long-term vitality of the oceans. It’s a buzzword in the construction industry, where a more enlightened approach has caused builders to use processes and resources that are more environmentally responsible.

From food to floors, people are seeking sustainability.

An NFL franchise is no different. Every general manager and player-personnel guy should be building his team with sustainability in mind. You look at
now
, sure, but you look at now with an eye on tomorrow. You’ve got to build something that not only lasts but doesn’t destroy all your future resources.

This is where Tebow comes in.

Damn it, Colin, you said this wasn’t a Tebow column
.

Sorry. I bluffed. But stick with me. This will be the most valuable Tebow column ever written. There’s a lesson to be learned for all mankind here, I promise.

Of all the fashionable words of our time—
fusion, fiscal cliff, web-friendly, pesto—sustainability
is the king. So why not link it with something we all love?

No, not Tebow.

Football.

The foundation of every pro-Tebow argument consists of two words and two words only:
he wins
.

That’s the homing beacon, the shining light in rough waters, pointing them toward safety.

For the record, he’s won eight, lost six, and split two playoff games. Statistically, he does win more than he loses—by two games. I’m willing to let the Tebowers have this one, though, because even the most ardent among them don’t claim he’s Peyton Manning.

Tebow’s problem in the NFL is more intrinsic to his style. His way of winning is not viewed as sustainable by the league’s sharpest minds. His quarterback ratings in his sixteen NFL starts read like interstate highways: 32, 88, 20, 38.

That’s not a six-lane highway to the Super Bowl.

If you want to win big and win regularly, your quarterbacks not only have to be consistent. They also have to be consistently good.

The average QBR of the last ten Super Bowl–winning quarterbacks is 93.3.

Tebow’s career average: 75.

That’s not close.

We’re not comparing Picasso to Matisse here. We’re comparing Josh Groban to a $50-a-gig wedding singer. For coaches, a 75 QBR gets you fired.

And consider the context. Tebow’s abysmal 75 rating is taking place amid a new, pass-happy, spread-offense world, with repeated rule changes that favor receivers. Nobody can regularly stop a good passing offense in the NFL these days, but Tebow can.

All by himself.

This isn’t a
scheme
or a
fit
thing. It’s not as if Tebow just hasn’t found the right organization to maximize a unique skill set. When
the Patriots shocked the football world by signing him—for no guaranteed money, I might add—the first question anybody could ask was what position he would play under Bill Belichick. What does that tell you?

All coaches and general managers are chasing the same white whale: a franchise quarterback they can build around for more than a decade. Does that seem like a grandiose plan? Maybe, but take a look at the top fifteen quarterbacks of all time based on passing yards: Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, John Elway, Brett Favre, Johnny Unitas, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Fouts, Fran Tarkenton, Troy Aikman, Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, and Warren Moon.

You see where they’re going with this? The average career length of those fifteen quarterbacks is 14.8 years. Three of them—Manning, Brees, and Brady—have years left. Staubach brings the average down slightly; he played only eleven years because of his military commitment. Moon started his career in the Canadian Football League and didn’t throw a pass in the NFL until he was 28.

The average career of those fifteen quarterbacks is more than four times longer than the average starting career of a college quarterback. This is precisely where the debate over Tebow—the crux of the
he wins
confusion—lies.

Tebow was perfect in Gainesville. But college football is transient. Almost everyone—players and coaches alike—are using their current job as a stepping-stone to something bigger and better and higher paying. Players leave after a couple of years, assistants want to be coordinators, coordinators want to be head coaches, and head coaches want to be head coaches at bigger programs or the NFL. Unlike past generations of head coaches, the Schembechlers and Hayeses, even the top college coaches bolt. Urban Meyer got sick, literally, and left Florida. Pete Carroll fled USC so fast he left
a contrail. Nick Saban absolutely loved LSU, until all of a sudden he didn’t.

The dynamics are different in the NFL. There are no stepping-stone jobs—the league is the final step. There are thirty-two of those jobs in the entire world. If you win, even in a spectacularly unglamorous place like Buffalo, you stay forever or until you get booted.

Some jobs don’t have an upgrade. In television, it’s the unwritten rule of the late-night talk-show host. You get that job, you keep it and hang on until retirement. It’s Mount Rushmore.

The college world is the coaching version of a three-day camping trip to a state park. Whatever keeps you warm for the night is fine. You survive today before you worry about tomorrow. Next week or next year might as well be a different lifetime. Everybody is playing the game within the game, angling for career advancement, determined to do one thing: win
now
.

Sustainability
doesn’t have the same currency in college football as it does in the NFL.

The only long-termers in college are the boosters. They’ll still be here complaining and giving twenty-dollar handshakes forever. But college football has no pension plan for assistants and the players don’t get paid, so the sooner they can leave, the better. College is a resume builder—no more, no less.

Pro football can be transient, but not necessarily by design. It’s similar to a mortgage, where longevity is rewarded with equity. The quick flip can reduce earning power. Longevity—sustainability, to stick with the theme—allows a coach to build a system that can sustain bad defenses, injuries, tough scheduling, free-agent misses, and bonehead drafts. All of this is predicated on building around a star quarterback who can overcome little defensive support and injured teammates by winning shootouts.

Coaches and players have pensions in the NFL, so once you land the top quarterback it’s a signal to tell the wife and kids, “Let’s put our name on the mailbox. We’re going to be here for a while.”

The single-bullet theory espoused by Tebow supporters
—he wins
—isn’t always the primary objective in the NFL. It might be hard for the ardent Tebowites to wrap their minds around, but it’s true. When Buffalo gave Ryan Fitzpatrick a contract extension on the basis of a four-game winning streak, the Bills were rightfully mocked. When Mike Shanahan allowed Robert Griffin III to play hurt, he was rightfully criticized. Those weren’t wise long-term decisions. Every individual win comes with too high of a cost if it derails the larger plan.

The way in which Tebow wins is not a viable option for long-term success. He’s a guy who wins low-scoring games by the slimmest margins, with single-digit completions and a sub-fifty quarterback rating every other Sunday.

He is the quarterback version of a battery-powered flashlight: bright at first, increasingly dimmer as it’s used, and eventually discarded.

So when fans want to preach the gospel of
Tim Tebow: Winner
, they’re thumbing their noses at sustainability and ignoring the bigger picture of the NFL: it’s not about winning
this
Sunday.

It’s about winning every Sunday for 14.8 years.

Respected baseball broadcaster Marty Brennaman called the idea nothing short of a travesty. Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon called it stupid.

What had Cuban defector-turned-overnight-lightning-rod Yasiel Puig done? In sports, the words
travesty
and
stupid
are generally reserved for serious offenses. For instance: crimes against humanity or the game. Maybe defacing property or cheating a teammate. In this case, though, Puig’s “crime” didn’t reach Al Bundy status, much less Al Capone.

The harsh words and hostility toward the 22-year-old Dodger outfielder stems from this: he had miraculously compiled the best first month of a career in modern-day history. As a result, he was being considered for a spot in the 2013 All Star Game.

That’s it.

No punch line here.

In the end, Puig lost out to Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman in the fan vote for the final spot on the National League roster. But the reaction from people in the sport—even Puig’s own manager, Don Mattingly, said Puig didn’t belong in the game—spoke volumes about baseball’s inflexibility and crankiness when faced with anything new and fresh.

It’s a three-pronged attack: push back, roll your eyes, and publicly mock.

The NBA and NFL embrace new faces. MLB interrogates theirs.

However, instead of condemning baseball, is it possible that we’ve sidestepped a very obvious explanation? Wouldn’t it make perfect sense for anyone who lives in the ten-year cultural tunnel
that produces major-league players to share the same rigid sensibilities?

The answer is that simple: they’re a by-product of a narrow culture.

Baseball players aren’t bad people. Tony Gwynn is probably my favorite
person
—not athlete, but person—in all the years I’ve spent in sports. But in general, baseball players are some of the most difficult and brittle athletes I’ve come across. They’re different from guys in other sports. They exist in an insular world that revolves around a series of individual battles, and it’s inevitable that some of that will seep into the personalities of its players.

Look at the trends. Domestically, baseball is becoming less and less of a high school sport. There are very few successful urban initiatives in baseball. The best players in this country are being produced by travel baseball programs, where parents and kids travel all over the country to play game after game in front of scouts and college coaches and other parents. It’s expensive, and it’s a closed society. Nobody outside of it cares about it, or even knows it’s happening. Kids used to play ball with other kids in their neighborhood, but now a growing number of them play on teams that draw players from a huge region. There’s very little camaraderie in that world, since every parent and every kid is chasing either a scholarship or a spot in the major-league draft. They’re always looking over their shoulders wondering who’s watching them and who’s gaining on them. Some of the fiercest competition comes from within the team.

As this system has flourished, it’s no surprise that baseball in the United States has become a wealthy, white suburban sport. It’s women’s soccer in spikes.

Nearly every kid in this country follows the same path: from travel baseball to either college baseball or the minor leagues.
College baseball is almost uniformly white, a direct extension of the suburban travel-ball programs. Minor league baseball is as insular a world as exists in professional sports. Players hang out together, but they hang with their own kind. White American players hang out together, Latin players hang out together, Asian players hang out together.

In the major leagues, nothing really changes. It’s very cliquey in a big league clubhouse. There are language barriers, so some of the cliqueishness is understandable. But there’s also something inherent in the nature of the game that tends to create a certain type of personality: a series of individual battles.