Dave’s Football Blog

So I had all manner of goodies that I wanted to post over the weekend, but I couldn’t because my laptop went haywire again. All the same massive slowdowns and jittery audio from October returned Saturday night. This happened just hours after I finally put my gigantic MP3 collection into iTunes and started weeding out duplicate files. Seriously, I think Steve Jobs is trying to destroy my laptop — as if that will convince me to buy his crap.

Fortunately, I haven’t fallen victim to the reality distortion field that surrounds Jobs and his minions. Now that I’ve backed everything up, blown away the hard drive and gotten most of my necessary software reinstalled, I decided to try MediaMonkey to manage my music. So far, it’s doing just fine, and it’s not wrecking my PC in the process. Plus, the reinstall has my laptop running smoother than Carlito in the pool there — or Carlito in a supermodel’s bed, apparently. Even the ugly football stars pull the hotties. Suddenly, I wish I had learned to kick a ball in my youth…

Anyway, here’s some fun stuff for you to read while I finish getting the rest of this software installed:

• A soccer pitch inside a Milwaukee race track? Dream big, MLS. (Pitch Invasion)
• A video chat with Sav Rocca in Philadelphia. (PhiladelphiaEagles.com)
• Speaking of the Eagles, Donovan McNabb is a videoblogger. What a nerd. (Yardbarker)
• South Africa plans Zulu counter-haka. Awesome. (Das FanHaus)
• Michael O’Muircheartaigh says the darndest things. (Ireland Live)
• A interesting look at Australian footy in South Africa, China and Japan… (World Footy News)
• …and why Carlton might be perfectly willing to lose to teams from those countries. (Fox Sports Australia)
• Another recollection of Bill Walsh. (CBS Sportsline)
• The boys from It’s Still Football went to the Arena Bowl in New Orleans. It was all very nice. (Deadspin)
• Sean Bean? Not so much. (Who Ate All the Pies)
• Premier Leaguers: Watch out for Hawk-Eye! (The Offside)
• Look! A rugby blog! (Alan’s Rugby Blog)

Oh, and don’t forget to check out my FanHouse posts. Can you believe the FA Community Shield match between Man U and Chelsea is this weekend? Where has the summer gone?

Gridiron haters who don’t understand the über-strategic nature of American football there like to complain about the fact that some coaches actually script their first 20 plays in a game, as if this fact somehow makes the game less watchable.

Scripting plays was just one gridiron concept pioneered by Bill Walsh, who passed away yesterday at the age of 75. Walsh is best remembered as the innovative head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. He brought the West Coast Offense into vogue in the NFL in the 80s, using short passes as a common substitute for running plays and, in the process, turning guys like Joe Montana and Jerry Rice into Hall-of-Famers.

His biggest legacy, though, was in the coaching fraternity. As you can see from this coaching tree, more than a dozen coaches who were tutored by either Walsh himself or one of Walsh’s protégés are now head coaches in the NFL, and many of them have built upon the offensive concepts Walsh used to win three Super Bowls in San Francisco.

Walsh may have done more than any head coach ever could in making the National Football League what it is today. He will be missed.

(Additional tributes to Walsh can be found at NFL FanHouse.)

National Football League training camps opened this week, a welcome sign for the millions of American football fans who still believe sports begins and ends with their crappy fantasy teams the NFL. One camp worth watching will be the New York Jets’ camp, as 2nd-year head coach (and new USA Football spokesman) Eric Mangini returns from a season in which he turned a sad sack 4-12 team into a playoff-bound 10-6 squad — a turnaround that surely would have won him NFL Coach of the Year honors if not for Hurricane Katrina Sean Payton.

How did Mangini manage to turn things around in New York so quickly? I found out from one of his former players — in Australia.

Jethro Lamb played center for the Kew Colts of the Victorian Gridiron Football League in 1992. He stumbled upon this blog a few weeks ago when he found this photo of Mangini here:

“That’s actually me on the right holding up Eric’s left leg,” Lamb wrote in a email. Lamb played for the Naval Academy before finding himself in Australia, where he met Mangini, who was studying abroad at the time and immediately took up coaching while he was there. Under Mangini’s watch, the Colts, a semi-pro team that was based in Melbourne, won the VGFL championship in 1992 and 1993. As Lamb said in an email conversation, Mangini had a way of getting the most from his players.

Eric was a very very good motivator. He didn’t do a lot of training different than most coaches in relation to fitness and drills but he had a way of getting that extra out of you and also instilling pride in whatever you did and whoever you played…

His aim was to take fear out of the equasion. There was no one that could outplay us on the field and he made sure we knew that.

Interestingly enough, though, Mangini’s philosophy wasn’t centered around scoring points, but around play execution.

His philosophy was the way to win the game was play more perfect plays than your opposition and the points would come. He would sacrifice points for perfect execution. It was our pride that brought away the points for HIM. We felt if we didn’t score after playing perfect plays we let him down. And we never ever wanted to let him down.

Obviously, the competition in Australia wasn’t as good as the competition in the NFL, but according to Jethro, it wasn’t as bad as most people might think.

It doesn’t have a huge following here but I have seen it progress over the years and the standard is very good. Past junior college at least.

So for all intents and purposes, Mangini got to coach at something just above the junior college level for two years and won two titles by age 23. He parlayed that experience into a job with the Cleveland Browns, where his 18-hour workdays caught the eye of Bill Belichick, who hired him as a film editor for the coordinators. The rest, as they say, is history.

Sadly, so are the Kew Colts, who disbanded a few years ago after Gridiron Australia increased the insurance requirements for their clubs. Still, when people ask where “Man-genius” got his start, it wasn’t in Cleveland. It was in Melbourne.

Interestingly enough, the special teams captain of the Jets is punter Ben Graham, a longtime Geelong Cats star who became the first Australian to captain an NFL team. As Jethro points out:

With Basketball as big as it is (here), there are more aussies in the NFL than in the NBA. That’s a very nice stat to include.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Graham was “Geelong’s ‘Best First Year Player’ in the reserves team of 1992.” Geelong, of course, is a suburb of Melbourne. Graham was already a Jet when Mangini arrived, but I wonder if those two ever crossed paths back in the day…

That’s a model of Liverpool’s new $620 million stadium, which is currently scheduled to open in 2010. The boys at The Offside seem to think that this resembles a spaceship landing facility, but it doesn’t look quite as Area 51 as, say, the Arizona Cardinals’ new stadium.

Ultimately, the only two things these stadiums will have in common are A.) the seats in both will be red, and B.) Pink Taco Restaurants won’t be sponsoring either of them.

You know what? NFL fans are total pushovers compared to Brazilians.

Around 100 angry Corinthians supporters protested in front of the home of club president Alberto Dualib after their team lost 3-0 at home to Nautico on Sunday.

Brazilian media reports said the supporters went straight from the stadium to Dualib’s house in the Alto de Pinheiros district of Sao Paulo, where they threw eggs and firecrackers and chanted insulting slogans.

Photographs showed police cars protecting the house from the fans, who demanded Dualib’s resignation.

See that, Detroit? Corinthians actually won the Brazilian championship in 2005, too, and those fans are still ready to blow shit up. All the “Fire Millen” signs in the world won’t save your Lions. You’ve got to hit him where he lives. Good luck getting past the gate, while you’re at it.

Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs then:

“I am now prepared to sit out the year if the Bears don’t trade me or release me…. I’ve played my last snap for them. I’ll never play another down for Chicago again… People think I can’t afford to sit out the year, I can take out loans to get me through that year just fine because eventually I’ll have a deal somewhere. There are things I can do to make sure I’m fine financially if I sit out.”

Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs now:

Lance Briggs is going to play and not sit. The Chicago Bears Pro Bowl linebacker agreed to a one-year, $7.2 million contract Wednesday as the team’s franchise player…

The deal came together after the Bears agreed to not put the franchise tag on Briggs in 2008 and give the linebacker a $1 million advance, agent Drew Rosenhaus said.

Wuss.

Then again, I suppose it’s a lot easier to welch on your word when you’ve got $7.2 million guaranteed sitting on the table, isn’t it?

I’m being pulled in a dozen different directions by a dozen different projects right about now, but I wanted to take a minute to point you all to my Carolina Panthers preview on Deadspin. It’s not the most electrifying thing I’ve ever written, but it’ll get you a little more warmed up for the coming NFL season, and the comments, as always, are a hoot.

This is Port Adelaide’s Danyle Pearce making some highlight-reel moves against the West Coast Eagles a couple of weeks ago. Take a look at that run, NFL fans, and tell me it doesn’t remind you just a little of a young Warrick Dunn. I’m digging Port Adelaide’s style right about now.

Back from their brief stay at Herrang, new Barcelona teammates Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho use a break at training camp to practice a few moves they learned from Frankie Manning. Sources report they intend to recreate segments of this scene for future goal celebrations — and that Ronaldinho suggested the lessons for Henry after watching this…

For the record, I never would have pegged Ronaldinho as a follower.

(Spotted on Caught Offside.)

ESPN may have put on an expensive dog & pony show for David Beckham’s arrival in America, but for my money, there was no better football theater this weekend than the return of Ben Cousins to the West Coast Eagles.

Here you have a former Brownlow Medalist who led his club to a Premiership in 2006, then was suspended by that club early in because of his drug problems. Yet he got through rehab, persevered, and returned to the oval last night in Perth as his team faced their archrivals, the Sydney Swans.

Unlike Beckham, Cousins was healthy, he played nearly a full game, and he was brilliant. Coming off the bench four minutes into the first game, he racked up a stunning 38 possessions total, he fought for the ball constantly, and his play sparked a late 3rd-quarter run that helped the Eagles put the game away.

Unlike Chelsea v. Galaxy, West Coast v. Sydney counted in the standings, and it looked and felt like a Finals Series game, rather than an exhibition. Sure, there will be plenty of opportunities for David Beckham to create highlights for the Los Angeles Galaxy — after all, he’s here for five years, not five minutes — but the hype about his first game with the Galaxy last night was a lot sound and fury that signified nothing.

Saturday night in Perth? That game felt like it meant something. We could use a little more of that on ESPN, rather than a lot of manufactured events that feel more shallow than a Spice Girls record.