Feature on AOL Sports Fanhouse, “Behind Enemy Lines”:
Sportz Assassin featured myself and the Bengals lead blogger. We talk about how awesome it is to root for winless teams and together we ponder how on Earth our coaches still have jobs!
Here’s a sample:
"Sportz Assassin: Its no secret that both teams’ fans have some hate toward the ownership. Both are family run and are seemingly out of touch. How do you feel about your owners?Kevin Ferguson (Lions blogger): Yeah, you flip on sports talk radio on a Sunday around 4:15pm and you’ll hear the constant and pervading calls that say the same thing 10 different ways: “The Lions won’t do anything until Ford sells the team. Fire the owner.” blah blah blah. I don’t think Ford is a bad guy. You certainly can’t call him cheap. The Lions spend and spend and spend.The problem is that he doesn’t know how to win; he doesn’t know how to evaluate the people that are supposed to run the nuts and bolts football operation. Pre Millen, the fans weren’t happy with one round and out in the playoffs. They wanted more. The hot names on the docket were Bobby Ross and Dan Reeves. Mr. Ford paid big money for Ross. Then Millen was the hot name, he wasn’t going to accept anything but excellence, he blew up the team and it blew up in his face. I think Mr. Ford’s biggest mistake in the Millen era was letting him get yet another coach in Marinelli. It was a bad hire. Really the only good hires have been Mooch, Jauron and Martz.And even that didn’t work out, the team pulls the trigger too soon on good guys and yet still lets Marinelli stink this ship up at 0-7. As an owner you have to find someone that knows more about the sport than you and let them do their thing. As with any investment that nets 185 million dollars even if you’re a failure, I don’t think they’re inclined to sell it anytime soon so this is who we are working with for the foreseeable future.Josh Kirkendall (Bengals blogger): The most noticeable aspect with Mike Brown isn’t his business sense – though one could argue that in order to have a successful business isn’t cost cutting, rather a quality product. However, for a time Mike Brown was an apprentice, under his father Paul Brown, designing the business aspects of the newest team in the AFL. Fundamentally responsible for how the game is played today, Paul Brown’s brilliance came with building championship football teams through the draft; while his son Mike, took to the business side of things.Remaining steadfast without the background of scouting talent like his father, or the modesty of incorporating personnel that specialize in talent evaluations, Mike failed to fill the void left after his father’s death; believing he could judge talent equal to his father. I believe that Mike Brown is truly over his head, without the experience his father had judging talent and building championship-caliber football teams."