I took this info on contributing to relief efforts from Appscout.com:
* According to the Red Cross' Twitter page, you can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts. You can also donate online to Red Cross' International Response Fund.
* Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean's grassroots organization is accepting donations via text. By texting "Yele" to 501501, you'll automatically be donating $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund. Check out Yele.org for more information.
* The French organization Doctors Without Borders has been doing work in Haiti for years. Donate at DoctorsWithoutBorders.org.
Check out NPR.org and CBSnews.com for more listings.
Please do what you can to support the relief efforts financially.
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**Quick Summary**
NBC should have told Conan he was going to have to wait his turn and delayed handing over the Tonight Show reigns to him since Leno was #1 and not really showing signs of slowing down. The "next host-in-waiting" contract was a horrible idea for NBC to agree to, considering Conan has always wanted to host Tonight Show and could've waited another year...or five.
Florida State made the same mistake with their "coach-in-waiting" situation. A trend of messy situations that will probably continue until AD's wisen up and stop it. They disrespected the man who made their program and university and karma will get them for it. Similarly, NBC screwed Conan.
**End Summary**
So, Jay Leno is getting his old time slot back, thus forcing Conan O'Brien into limbo without a gig and uniting late night hosts in their one apparent common cause - hate of NBC executives. David Letterman, who apparently also still has beef with Jay Leno, has been
My solution? - Give Jay Leno one night a week, two tops, to do a comedy show. Let's call it Mondays and Wednesday at 10PM. NBC could stop fucking up and bring back some GOOD dramas at 10PM the other nights of the week. (They've been missing with their lineup choices recently.) Leno's an accomplished stand up comedian and his "everyman" comedy is a hit with the older viewers who have come to appreciate the Tonight Show. Conan is hilarious, but his audience skews a little younger and a little more educated. (He did go to Harvard and is the son of two pretty impressive people. Google it). It will take time for him to build that Tonight Show audience and/or connect with the older viewers (who are looking for a place since Letterman violated their value system with his affairs). Hell it took Conan 3 years to get his late night show to a point where it was even watchable. On his 10th anniversary special, Mr T came on and presented him with a present that had the number "7" on it. Conan said we've been on for 10 years. Mr T says "I know fool, but you've only been funny for 7".
I doubt it'd take Conan 3 years to get his footing on the Tonight Show since he went through that experience, but an adjustment time was to be expected. But hell, why am I even bringing that up? Conan's ratings aren't why the mess started - LENO's failure at 10pm is. But that'd be my solution. Its like when ABC overdosed on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It was awesome at one and two nights a week. Every day or whatever it went to was overdose, and killed it into syndication. I loved Millionaire. But too much of a good thing is never good. We all know that.. well, everyone except television executives apparently.
Since this is a sports blog, you may wondering why the hell I'm talking about late night TV. Well, for one, the shadiness and political machinations that took place for Leno to get his 11:35 timeslot back reminded me a lot of the bullshit that took place at Florida State University this year, which led to Bobby Bowden's untimely and unfair (forced) retirement.
If NBC wanted Jay Leno on the air, they never should've made him leave in the first place. They signed a contract with Conan that said he'd get the show in 2009, and Leno had had it for a while... but Leno was #1 in the ratings and hadn't particularly slipped recently. He should've been able to stay longer and they could've worked something out with Conan - a young man who attracts a young audience that isn't tuned in to NBC at 11:35 (...yet). Signing that deal probably seemed like a good idea 5 years ago, but as the time got closer, say in 2007, something should've been worked out.
Instead, they went with the silly idea of giving Leno a show at 10pm, but the show was trash (since they didn't want to duplicate the Tonight Show format...for some reason) and went 5 nights a week, so Conan - and more importantly the local station affiliates 11pm newscasts - didn't get the ratings lead-ins that used to come from strong 10pm programming like Law and Order.
Now there's a big friggin mess and Conan - a very very funny guy and apparently loyal to NBC (or at least his dream of getting the Tonight Show gig one day) - is getting screwed.
Hmmmm... perhaps Leno got screwed in the first place when NBC agreed to that dumbass "Tonight Show Host-In-Waiting" contract with Conan. He had nothing to do with that decision and as the current #1 in the late night wars, should've been able to leave when he wanted to or his ratings slipped behind Letterman (something nearly impossible since Letterman's been too busy wilding out to write good jokes).
But by unscrewing Leno, Conan gets screwed...
Ready for the analogy?
Bobby Bowden is to Jay Leno as Jimbo Fisher is to Conan O'Brien... more or less.
The first difference (that I'm going to point out on my own analogy) is that Bobby Bowden wasn't currently #1 in the ratings, and some people thought it might be a good idea to let Jimbo run the show full-time since that day was coming soon. As if Bowden had somehow forgot how to coach...
Bobby Bowden didn't forget how to coach, he just has really, really, really strong regional competition for recruits from Nick Saban at Alabama, his old coordinator Mark Richt at Georgia, Butch Davis at North Carolina, any coach worth his salt enough to figure out that elite athletes are all over the state of Florida since the kids gets 12 months to practice and play instead of 6 up north, and - most importantly - Urban Meyer at Florida.
HOWEVER... and I feel really strongly about this having attended college at the better school in Tallahassee *cough* FAMU! *cough* , Bobby Bowden is the only fucking reason Florida State University is important at all. It wasn't that long that FSU was a women's only college (until the end of World War II when they returned to co-ed status). And I'm not talking about the football team only, I'm talking about the entire flippin' university. Who the hell cared about FSU other than their alumni before they became known for something? NOBODY. Its not a great educational school with a lot of tradition like FAMU... The University of Florida in Gainesville is the state school that actually matters in the sunshine state. Trust me, I was there for 6 years. FSU is a football and party school. And they weren't shit in football - EVER - before Bobby Bowden came from West Virginia, turned down Alabama (his dream job), and built a MEGA POWERHOUSE PROGRAM that lead to two national titles and at least 10 near-misses.
Bobby Bowden IS Florida State University. And those
How DARE you push out the man who made your program. He really would be gone by 2012 at the latest. And him and Paterno were doing a battle to see who'd retire (or die) with the most games ever won. There's a statue of him outside the stadium. You can't fire him, he's got a friggin STATUE on campus! This is why I cheer for UF when they play the 'Noles, despite not really liking their coach. FSU has done a lot of other really shady shit throughout the years and if I got into the history of the FSU Law School and the FAMU-FSU Engineering School... we'd be here all day. So I'll move on...
Basically, the situation at FSU came to a head because the right decision was not made. Jimbo Fisher probably wasn't going to leave FSU. Where the heck would he go? Oh, well... I guess now the answer would be "Tennessee, perhaps" but let's be realistic. FSU (like USC) is a better destination than Tennessee for an aspiring coach. Like USC, its better weather in a better recruiting state with more tradition. Yes, UT won a national title the year after Peyton Manning left. But it wasn't like they were an annual powerhouse. Like Steve Spurrier said, "you can't spell Citrus Bowl without U-T".
(Sidebar - For those of you that don't know what that means, its a
UT under Phil Fulmer did well with recruits from other states, like Virginia and Florida. Well now there's a guy named Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Butch Davis at nearby North Carolina, and I mentioned Urban Meyer at UF already. (Remember all that when I actually start talking about Lane Kiffin because I don't feel like saying it twice. I'm already longwinded enough as it is. ) So the best chance for a coach to do well in the ACC or SEC is to be a coach at one of the schools IN Florida.
Did I mention the ACC is an easier conference than the NFL minor league that is the SEC? Yeah... so is the PAC10 (remember that for the Kiffin discussion too).
All that to say, the chances of Jimbo Fisher leaving Florida State while FSU let Bowden ride off into the sunset were slim. And if he was pressed enough to try to force something to happen - FSU's sports leaders are dumber than I already proclaimed them to be. FSU would be a fabulous place to be a coach and they'd have their pick of top coaches. So let his ass leave. But no, they named him the "Coach-in-waiting" and promised him the job withing a couple of years.
You know who else did the "coach-in-waiting" thing recently? The NFL Seattle Seahawks. They named Jim Mora Jr coach-in-waiting when it became clear Mike Holmgren wasn't going to coach much longer. The result? They fired Mora after one year and replaced him with USC's patriach, Pete Carroll...thus opening the job at USC and touching off this whole firestorm in the first place.
Note to NFL and NCAA football GMs, Presidents and AD's - DO NOT NAME SOMEONE THE COACH IN WAITING. YOU WILL LIKELY REGRET IT.
Texas currently has a coach-in-waiting. His name is Will Muschamp and he's the big-time-college-football-defensive-genius du-jour. They named him coach-in-waiting to keep him from leaving. Mack Brown gets whatever freaking recruits he wants from one of the top 2 football recruiting states and is beloved by the UT Faithful, despite my suspicion that he can't REALLY coach. Since he can't really coach, he needs good coordinators. Texas was losing a lot of good D-coordinators and it showed on the field. They pulled this coach in waiting deal and went back to the title game after this 2009 season and should've went after the 2008 season as well. For them, its working. But there are two caveats - Muschamp is pretty young and may not have the itch to run the show yet. Also, he's paid more than many head coaches without the responsibility.
That being said, Mack Brown ain't retiring NO time soon. So the whole coach in waiting deal is obviously a fraud/placeholder. At Florida State, they really were dumb enough to mean it. Muschamp is a University of Georgia grad, and Georgia is a "good enough" job for him to go back and coach at his alma mater once Mark Richt gets fired. That doesn't mean he'll go though. I mean, let's be real about this... the coach at the University of Texas doesn't even really have to recruit. They choose who they want within the state of Texas, and once they do that, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and pretty much everyone else is left to come after the other players in Texas. Luckily, there are enough good players there to go around (see: Oklahoma's success). So even if/when the Georgia job comes open, its not a slam-dunk that he'd leave when he will probably get the Texas job in...I dunno, 10 years or less. Austin's a nice place too.
But at least Texas is using the designation "in spirit" and the situation is clearly ambiguous - that being, no set date in the future that seemed like a good idea when it was set. People are living longer these days. It ain't nothing for a 70 year old man to be a successful coach, hell let's get to the Blue Nittany Lion Elephant in the room - Joe Paterno. He's older than everyone in this conversation combined damn near, and he's still the coach at Penn State. Does he REALLY still coach like he did earlier in his 40+ years as coach? Nope. But they didn't publicly force him out when they didn't have to, or a few years back when Penn State was struggling. And they were rewarded. Penn State is back as a perennial Big 10 contender, and JoePa gets the respect he deserves.
FSU could've had a similar arrangement with Bowden. But no, they wanted Jimbo Fisher, an unproven commodity, to be their head coach when - and I've said this before - any number of proven coaches would've LOVED to take that job once Bowden did retire. I don't even think FSU has been that bad recently. Yes, 8-4 and 6-6 suck, but its all cyclical, and it started going downhill with Chris Rix. FSU's recruiting classes have improved they'll probably be decent next year. Bowden was the head coach when those kids were recruited.
OK enough about the Dumbinoles. Summary - they disrespect Bobby Bowden and all he's done putting that football program and SCHOOL on the map and they'll rue the day.
The only difference with the FSU and Tonight Show situations is that there isn't a way to put Bowden in a position where he could come back and re-take over... well, unless they made him Athletic Director. That'd be hilarious, but it won't happen.
Florida State should've let Bowden coach forever. Should NBC have done the same with Conan and made him wait longer or walk? Absolutely. They held ALL the cards. Leno was #1 and Conan wanted the job so bad he'd be crazy to up and leave at the relatively young age that he is.
So what does all of this have to do with Lane Kiffin leaving Tennessee after one season to be the head coach at USC, where he was on the staff during the height of the 2000s Trojan Era? I could draw a better parallel if I really wanted to (and wasn't a little weary of writing for two hours straight) but I'll stick with the shady political workings of college football...or something like that.
Lane Kiffin is not the bad guy here...
(continued from Part 1)
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