Sportsguy Ombusdman: Colts All The Way!

Bill Simmons asks is 11-0 in the playoffs possible? The answer is a resounding YES! But not if you don’t understand the sport. The sports guy does not. At least his column isn’t well thought out.

Now, anyone could have gone 2-2 in their picks on wildcard weekend - the issue is not the results. The issue is the process. To avoid the tedious and time-consuming effort needed to watch games, study film and learn about personnel, Bill has devised a set of "rules" he calls the Playoff Manifesto.

We need not go into all of the rules one by one, since they clearly aren’t any more effective than flipping coins. I will mention, as a starting point, that any set of rules – whether they be for investing, for relationships, for sports – whatever...any set of rules that has a built in George-Costanza-Do-The-Opposite-Of-What-You-Initially-Think Rule should be immediately discarded.

What we can get into is – why have these rules? Why say things like “** New rule: If you're taking a warm-weather team in a cold-weather road game, you'd better have a really, REALLY good reason. Like, "Half the guys on the home team are battling mononucleosis."” Really? What about Jacksonville over Pittsburgh last season or Carolina over New York in 2006. The Falcons beat the Packers in the snow in 2003.

Why claim, as Bill does, that the last 5 games matter more than the overall body of a team’s work? According to the Manifesto, NFL teams can’t just turn it on. “Doesn’t happen.” Simmons says, like a grizzled old coach. You would never know he’s relying entirely on the experience of several gritty co-ed flag football seasons in Lowell, Massachusetts. Hardly an inexorable law, by the way, as the Falcons, Colts and Dolphins each had better records over the last five games than the teams that beat them. But no one’s fact checking.

Quite simply – a manifesto replaces the need for actual evaluation of the teams. Bill proudly doesn’t understand coverages, blitzing, linebacker play, blocking schemes, receiver routes, or quarterback reads, so it stands to reason that he wouldn’t have any idea what matchups might be exploited in a given game. There is no insightful football knowledge here, and I think Bill would admit as much.

However, we must take this one step further. I understand that a detailed, technical analysis is not for everyone and some sports fans aren’t interested a Ron Jaworski style breakdown. But the Manifesto rules are either so obvious (Don’t pick the team with the crappy quarterback on the road, which is basically one step removed from advising – “Don’t pick the team most likely to lose!”) or are so ill-conceived that they don’t pass even the lightest due diligence (the warm weather vs cold weather teams, last five games etc etc).

To recap, there’s no in depth evaluation, and the more fan-friendly discourse isn’t well thought out. So what are we left with?

In conclusion, Bill Simmons could never cover me.