I've been wondering something lately. Why the hell is there no channel up-down button on the cable boxes from the computer store? This just doesn't make any sense. For starters, the remotes they give you suck. They are really small and easy to lose, and half the time when you push the volume up button, it changes the channel instead. But more importantly, if you ever can't find the remote, you better be happy with whatever channel your TV is stuck on, because there's no way to change it. If it's a channel like ESPN, it's not a huge deal, but sometimes you get screwed and get stuck watching Lifetime movies for a few days.
This past weekend, the TV in my room got stuck on Animal Planet, so I found myself watching an episode of "Animal Cops." In the show, officers working for the humane society go out and rescue abused dogs. Many of these dogs are very close to dying, so the animal cops often bring them to the hospital and nurse them back to health.
At first, it appears that the dogs are getting a great deal. But if you think about it, these dogs are now just going to adoption shelters. Unfortunately, a dog that's not a puppy and that is probably skittish from being abused is unlikely to get adopted. It's way more likely that pretty soon this type of dog is going to go "live on a farm."
So really, the animal cops are sort of just delaying the inevitable. In the short run, it's great, but it's not like prospects down the road look good.
Unfortunately for Dartmouth football head coach Buddy Teevens, the dogs in this episode kind of reminded me of how he might feel. It probably felt great to win this past weekend, but if Dartmouth does anything short of running the table for the rest of the season, all signs indicate that his prospects of coaching next year aren't too good. Teevens might have survived the week, but in the long run, it doesn't seem too likely that people will want him to keep coaching.
When sports teams do badly, especially football teams, the first person blamed is the head coach. He gets the glory when his team wins, but he also takes the fall when it loses.
Now, even though I have yet to get an e-mail from coach Teevens thanking me for coming up with the "Eff Columbia" mindset that probably won the game for Dartmouth, I'm not convinced that changing up the coaching staff is the answer, regardless of how Dartmouth finishes this season.
In fact, I think that many teams are too quick to pull the trigger on replacing a coach.
Take a look at the NFL teams with losing records in the 2008-2009 season that hired new head coaches this year.
The Chiefs are sitting at 1-6, and Larry Johnson recently tweeted about how the team's frequent coaching changes really hurt the team. The Raiders hired Tom Cable and are now 2-5. The Browns, who hired Eric Mangini, are 1-6. The Lions have improved since last year, but only have a 1-5 record. The St. Louis Rams, who have yet to be in a remotely close game, are 0-7 and are the most likely team to go 0-16. The Seahawks are 2-4, and one of those wins came against the Rams. Finally, the 49ers, the only team in this group with a .500 record or better, are 3-3, not much improvement over last year's 7-9.
As a group, these teams are 10-36 so far this season. That's a winning percentage of 0.175. The winning percentage of those same six teams last season was 0.177. That doesn't look like too much improvement to me. What's more, Tampa Bay, which was 9-7 last year, fired its head coach after the season and is now 0-7. Oh, and the four other teams that won less than eight games in 2008 but kept their head coaches now have an average winning percentage of 0.577.
Those numbers are pretty staggering. There's no evidence that changing coaches has helped losing NFL teams so far this season. In fact, losing teams that stuck with their coaches are doing much better than they did last year.
Should Dartmouth get rid of Teevens if the team loses a few more games? Well, aside from the NFL, there's something else to consider. Teevens was hired in January 2005, so this is the first season that the Dartmouth team is entirely composed of his recruits. All of these players have been under his system alone as college players, and perhaps the benefits of that are starting to show. Is it really going to help Dartmouth football to bring in a new coach with a new system?
The evidence is there that this team could be good under Teevens, and I think that switching up the coaching staff might ruin the chances for a group that actually has a lot of potential.
I'm just saying, I'm not sure that jumping on the "Buddy Teevens has to go" bandwagon is a good idea. The team is clearly improving, and until it stops improving, I don't think it's a good idea to change things up.
Besides, we should be more focused on fixing the cable boxes anyway.
