COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

Tommy Tuberville has been on quite a run at Auburn recently and he currently owns a 6 game winning streak over cross-state rival Alabama.  One would think all would be wonderful on The Plains, but with Nick Saban now working in Tuscaloosa, Tuberville and Auburn’s world will never be the same again.  It is one thing to beat the lineup of coaches that Alabama has run through their football program since Gene Stallings “retired”:  Mike Dubose, Dennis Franchione, and Mike Shula, but it is another thing entirely to beat Nick Saban on a regular basis.  Tuberville still has built a very good football program at Auburn, and there are plenty of athletes on this Tiger team to win every game in 2008.  Will they win every game?  Not likely, but here is our analysis of the 2008 Auburn season:

Tommy Tuberville and Auburn in 2008

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In the 1970 film Tora, Tora, Tora the actor playing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said after the attack of Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”  There are serious doubts that Yamamoto ever said such a thing, but no doubt he was thinking something along those lines, because he surely knew that a pissed off America was going to obliterate Japanese armed forces wherever we may have found them.  As the BCS Boys splash around in the infinity pool on their thousands of dollars junket at the Westin Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Florida, America, or rather college football fans, players, and coaches everywhere are watching all of this very closely.  The BCS Boys believe they can act however they wish, because they alone hold the keys to the game of college football, and whatever the players, the coaches, and the fans think, is merely the words of fools and not important to the mighty BCS Boys.  What the BCS Boys do not realize, is that no concerted effort has ever been made to bring pressure upon the game of college football by the fans to demand a legitimate way to determine the national champion.  No, the BCS Boys have been getting a free ride, holding their meetings in secret, and emerging to tell all of us serfs how the world is going to work.  How naive’ these BCS Boys are, because their arrogance is so apparent in the way the strut around the Diplomat Resort, acting like they are actually driving this train, when in fact the people that are paying for this trip are in the back and getting mighty antsy (Imagine pitch forks and torches BCS Boys, or rather a few scenes from the recent John Adams series on HBO.  More on John Adams later.)

One of the great World War II films that first displayed the shenanigans of war was In Harm’s Way starring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, and Henry Fonda.  In one of the scenes in the movie, after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, the character Captain Rockwell “Rock” Torrey (played by John Wayne) is invited to a formal party by the character Commander Egan T. Powell (played by Burgess Meredith).  For those of us that have been in the US armed forces, it is quite hard to believe that after Pearl Harbor such a party would be held, but for the sake of this argument against the BCS we will let the idea pass muster.  You can watch the scene with the party in it in this video on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6h_IQ7kqao&feature=related.  The scene opens with Captain Torrey being treated by Nurse Maggie Haines (played by Patricia Neal), who Torrey later meets at the formal party.  Before Torrey gets to the party though, there is a very entertaining scene involving Wayne and Burgess, where the plans to attend the party are made.  Now this is some great acting.

Unfortunately for college football fans, the BCS Boys are throwing their own formal party after they have inflicted the Bowl Championship Series upon all of us for the past 10 years.  The BCS Boys lay by the pool, hit the spa, enjoy restaurants where steak dinners go for $100 bucks a pop, and laugh at all of the college football fans that they believe they have under their thumb.  That is where the BCS Boys are mistaken though, and if they continue along with their arrogance and resistance to establishing a legitimate and fair way to determine a national champion, they will get a taste of the outrage of college football fans in America, and believe us they are not prepared for that onslaught.  Here at Coaches Hot Seat we have a few people that have worked in Presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill, and we fully understand how a group of people that believe in a cause can go about informing, educating, and organizing another large group of people against or for a just cause.  No, the end of the BCS and the establishment of legitimate way to determine the national champion in football is not up there with getting down oil prices, fixing our broken health care and immigration systems, nor even the disaster that looms in Social Security and Medicare, but how college football crowns its national champion is of interest to millions of fans, coaches, and players.  Here at Coaches Hot Seatwe have been working on various print, tv/video, radio, and internet advertising campaigns for over a year now that make the case that the BCS is a fraud, and that it is up to college football fans to speak out and make sure their voice is heard.  On all of those advertisements are the phone numbers, websites, e-mail and postal addresses, of the BCS Boys, which is made up of conference commissioners, bowl executives, network executives, the AD at Notre Dame, and the corporations that sponsor and support the BCS.  What the BCS Boys have never gotten are those calls that a few of us at Coaches Hot Seatgot when we were working on Capitol Hill in Congressional and Senate offices.  You see, the calls never end, and they all start with something like, “I am calling about this issue and how it affects my family, my state, etc…”  It is the job of Congressmen and Senators to both answer and to respond to these calls, and many of our elected representatives track very closely their call numbers, so they can understand what the electorate is interested in.  The BCS Boys and their employees inside these football conferences, bowls, corporations, and Notre Dame, have never gotten these types of calls on any kind of regular basis, but if they continue to thwart what a large majority of college football fans want, which is a legitimate way to determine the national champion, the calls will begin.  Jim Delaney of the Big Ten and Tom Hansen of the Pac-10 right now act with impunity, with little concern with what the fans think, but if they continue their arrogance on this issue, then they will get an earful from college football fans across this country, who will be more than happy to give them a piece of their mind.

That the BCS is a fraud is hard to argue.  At the end of the 2007 post-season, LSU was crowned the BCS champion, but they were certainly not the national champion.  By our count, there were 9 teams after the bowls that had 2 or less losses.  Here are those 9 teams:
1.  LSU  12-2
2.  USC  11-2
3.  Georgia  11-2
4.  Ohio State  11-2
5.  Missouri  12-2
6.  West Virginia  12-2
7.  Kansas  12-1
8.  Brigham Young  12-2
9.  Hawaii  12-1

Is anyone with a straight face going to argue that LSU deserves to be the national champion more than USC, Georgia, Missouri, or Kansas?  Please, the BCS has been a fraud from the get-go, or rather it has been a power grab by the conference commissioners and bowl executives to take control of the game of college football, and during the last 10 years of the BCS their behavior and arrogance towards a majority of fans that want a legitimate way to determine the national champion, is nothing short of the way two-bit dictators behave.  The arrogance of Jim Delaney and Tom Hansen is stunning, only because it happens in a country like the United States of America.  If this was the old Soviet Union, or even North Korea, we could understand their casual disregard of the fans, coaches, and players in their conferences, but this is America, and if the BCS Boys continue along their current path they are going to get a good ‘ole fashioned taste of democracy in action.  If necessary Coaches Hot Seatwill lead a national campaign that will encourage college football fans to contact and express their feelings about the BCS and how the BCS is a disgrace in a country like America.  We all tell our kids in sports leagues that if they play well, and their team plays well, they will get a shot at winning a championship.  That is not the case in the bizarro world of the BCS though, and once college football fans understand the duplicity of the BCS and role that the conference commissioners have played in both destroying any opportunity for a true champion, and their unchecked desire to keep their hobnail boot (thanks Larry Munson for a great career broadcasting the Bulldogs!) on the game of college football, then the BCS Boys’ world is going to be turned upside down. 

Hmmmmm, what would a print ad look like that helped to explain the fraud that the BCS is to the college football fans in America?  Well, it would have all the relevant info of course, some snazzy football graphics are a given, but most importantly will be the photos, names, and contact information for all the BCS Boys.  Yes, a full-page ad in about two dozen newspapers across the US should get the ball rolling nicely, but does it really have to come to that?  Is it really necessary for American college football fans to call conference offices by the thousands every hour for weeks and months on end demanding to speak with conference commissioners, pr hacks, and anyone else they can get onto the phone, to explain why their football team or conference isn’t given the opportunity to play for the national championship?  The calls would go something like, “College basketball has a playoff, college baseball has a playoff, every sport within NCAA athletics has a playoff, so why doesn’t college football?  Can you explain that to me Jim Delaney?”  Well, no he couldn’t, because trying to justify the BCS would take incredible mental gymnastics, and even then the bullshit would be flying from every direction.  Of course, you would have to catch Jim Delaney and the rest of the BCS Boys when they were not laying around 4-star resorts in south Florida, but they must go to their offices sometimes, right?  In the past 20 months we here at Coaches Hot Seat have talked to and interacted with thousands of college football fans, both in person and via e-mail and the phone, and we find very few people that are for the BCS.  Unlike the BCS Boys, who jet into college towns, are driven to sports venues, and rarely actually get to talk to real fans, we go out of our way to get the lay of the land and understand the general consensus of the fans.  On the BCS, at the dozen or so schools that have been jobbed by the BCS in the last 10 years, the feelings toward the BCS are unanimous.  It sucks!  At all the other schools, the fans rightly recognize a fraud when they see it, and of course the BCS is one of the greatest frauds in the history of sport going back to when the Greeks first dreamed up the Olympics. 

No, we don’t have any interest in launching a national advertising campaign to explain the bogus BCS to American college football fans and direct them to call the BCS Boys who have set up this sham of a system to determine the national champion.  No, we do not want to prominently feature head football coaches, former head coaches and players, non-BCS athletic directors, non-BCS conference commissioners, US Senators and Congressmen, famous Americans, and other people on those ads telling the American people that the BCS is a fraud.  No, we do not want to do that, but we will do that if necessary to help to bring an end to the bogus BCS.  Yes, we will do that, and there is plenty of money available to launch such a campaign, and there are plenty of people around Coaches Hot Seat that already design and implement such campaigns for brands and companies that all of us recognize from our daily lives.  We here at Coaches Hot Seat are a big believer in the Ted Turner quote, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.”  Yes, we are watching the BCS Boys very closely this week in Hollywood, Florida (a few of us have stood right next to the BCS Boys this week), and what you decide will of course effect what we decide to do.  If the BCS Boys continue their pigheadedness, their arrogance, their total disdain, and their outright contempt for the American college football fans, players, and coaches, then will note it duly, and respond accordingly.

As we mentioned earlier there is some dispute if Admiral Yamamoto said after the attack on Pearl Harbor that, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”  There is no doubt though that Yamamoto predicted to many of his aides the outcome of a naval war against the United States.  Yamamoto was reported to have said on more than one occasion:  “I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success.”  BCS Boys, you have had 10 years to run wild, and your actions with this bogus BCS have put at risk the very integrity of the game of college football.  You have sold the game off to the highest corporate bidder, and then have the audacity to claim that a legitimate way to determine the national champion, a playoff, would do what you have already done.  Shame on you BCS Boys, for you are the modern day equivalent of King George III, and you look upon college football fans and the game itself as just an afterthought that exists only to justify your own power.  That is where you are wrong BCS Boys.  The college football fans buy the tickets, watch the games, buy products from the sponsors, and if we tell the BCS Boys to walk on their hands down the beach from Hollywood, Florida to South Beach, that is exactly what they will do.  We are paying the bills and for this elaborate junket that all of you (the BCS Boys) are now enjoying at theWestin Diplomat Resort.  We are paying the freight here, and if a majority of college football fans want a playoff, a playoff is what they are going to get.  You have “six more months to run wild” BCS Boys, so choose as you wish, but the revolution is just over the hills ahead, and have no doubt Americans once engaged do not back down. 

We hope that all of our fellow citizens got to watch the terrific John Adams series on HBO starting Paul Giamatti playing Adams.  John Adams and our other Founding Fathers had the courage to stand up for what was right against an arrogant and imperial king (remind you of anyone?), and none of us should ever forget the sacrifices they made to establish this Republic.  The seven-part series was a triumph and many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat watched the series with our children, so that they too could understand the price that was paid by people that came before us, which allows us to live in this grand country today.  There are dozens of scenes in John Adams that will live on in our memories, but John Adams speech just before the signing of the Declaration of Independence is simply unforgettable:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Y1ougODMo.  After watching the John Adams mini-series, the theme music that accompanied the show is a powerful reminder to us of what this American Republic will always be about:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6DPeCXV5bI.  Enjoy!

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How appropriate that the BCS Boys are meeting in Hollywood, Florida this week at the swanky Westin Diplomat Resort.  The Diplomat is famous as a playground for Sinatra’s early rat pack days and Jackie Gleason when he was shooting the Jackie Gleason Show in Miami.  Now the BCS Boys plop themselves down in what the Diplomat Resort describes itself as, “Welcome to The Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa where rejuvenating accommodations, magnificent views, and an experience sure to inspire renewal awaits. From our infinity edged pool, with two waterfalls flowing in to a 240-ft lagoon pool below to eight on-site dining options, poolside and beachfront cabanas to shopping, charter boats along with championship golf, tennis and a full-service spa located at our sister property The Diplomat Golf Resort, we can empower you to restore, relax and refresh.”  How nice.  While the American people are paying 4 bucks a gallon for gas and food prices are spiraling out of control the BCS Boys are checking into a hotel with rates that start at $300 dollars a night, and if you act quickly you can get a Club Room suite for $500!  Yes, these BCS Boys are just common folk that are doing what is best for the game of college football!  Please, college football has been taken over by a gang of elitists that Lenin would have been proud of, because they consolidated power much quicker over the entirety of college football than Lenin and his Bolsheviks did over mother Russia.  Certainly no one should be under any illusion that the BCS was set-up to determine a “true” national champion in college football, but rather it was nothing more than a good ‘ole fashioned power grab by the conference commissioners and bowl executives, because they were fearful the NCAA might end up running the college football post-season.  The BCS Boys, or rather the Politburo that they have set-up and now bring together at posh resorts across the country (just like the Bolsheviks to claim to be for the common people, then live like kings!), laugh mightily at the sheep (the fans that support the BCS) in the stands and the reporters that they get to write positively about the BCS, but then turn around and laugh at and about when they are out of earshot of the press (more on that later!).

Newspapers across the land are filled with stories on what might come out of this meeting of the BCS Boys, but the general consensus is that the BCS will not change unless it is an unanimous decision that all of the Grand Poo-Bahs (the commissioners) agree on.  It is generally understood by most everyone that has been paying attention to this BCS debate that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney and Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen are dead set against dismantling the BCS, because they want to “protect and enhance” the sport.  Ha!  The facts are that these two men are head of football conferences that would get their asses handed to them if ever a NCAA basketball style playoff was brought to college football, and God-forbid the teams from their conferences have to be challenged by a playoff!  The character Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) said in the movie Wall Street, “Sun-tzu: If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not split and reevaluate.”  The two men running the Big Ten and the Pac-10 know that they do not have the hosses to compete on the big stage, and if the Rose Bowl went away, the teams from their two conferences would have little if no chance to ever getting a football team back into a National Championship Game.  It is not a coincidence that the Big Ten and Pac-10 have really hewed to their current line on continuing the BCS since Pete Carroll arrived at USC  and Jim Tressel at Ohio State, both arriving in 2001.  In the 10 years that the BCS has held a National Championship Game, the Big Ten and Pac-10 have won the national title twice, Ohio State in 2002 and USC in 2004.  The other 8 years the championship has been divided between the ACC, Big 12, and the SEC, and Delaney and Hansen surely realize that any Big Ten or Pac-10 teams that got into an 8 or 16 team playoff, would quickly find themselves at home watching the championship tournament play itself out.  It’s not the Carroll and Tressel are not very good football coaches, but that in the past 7 years they have gotten a practical free-ride, because the other teams in their conferences have been so far below the standard that USC and Ohio State have set.  It is a very rational decision by  Delaney and Hansen to do all they can to hide the weaknesses of their conferences, but as they lay around the Diplomat’s infinity pool, the game of college football, which they are confident they have their feet firmly planted on its neck, is changing mightily right before their eyes.  For several years now Jim Tressel has had a free run in the Big Ten, but things are a changing with the rise of Ron Zook at Illinois, Bielema continuing what Alvarez got going at Wisconsin, and most importantly, Rich Rodriguez’s arrival in Ann Arbor.  In the Pac-10, Pete Carroll restored USC to its normal spot atop the conference, but the challenges have mainly been slight, that is up to now.  With Dennis Erickson’s arrival at Arizona State, Jeff Tedford’s revival of the Cal program, and the very real chance that some young and up-and-coming head coaches will be entering the Pac-10 in the immediate future, Carroll’s job is about to get a lot more difficult (Just about the time the Pac-10 gets really tough, Pete Carroll will probably be in San Francisco rebuilding the 49ers into Super Bowl contenders).  What the public must realize is that Delaney and Hansen do not hold onto the bogus BCS because of the exhibition football game that is called the Rose Bowl, but because if the BCS goes away their two conferences will be little more than afterthoughts with the level playing field that a NCAA college basketball type playoff would provide.  Delaney and Hansen are doing the only thing people can do when they are standing in quicksand, and that is to stay very still so that they don’t seek any deeper, and hope and pray that someone throws them a lifeline to keep this fraudulent BCS alive. 

Arrogance or hubris is perhaps the greatest sin for the non-lawbreaker, and Delaney and Hansen have that trait in abundance.  Both men would rather see the game of college football destroyed, pillaged, ended, run into the ocean, and all together disbanded, before they would give up their precious exhibition game played in Pasadena, but the backstory of that exhibition game are the corporate interests that lead Delaney and Hansen around by their noses.  The great thing about America is that if you show up with a bag filled with enough money, you can get it any party, including parties surrounding that little exhibition game in Pasadena that also throws a parade.  If you work for a Fortune 500 company and show up with a bag full of money (actually just by writing a big enough check), not only can you get into any party, you can get the keys to the kingdom, and there are always things to be learned in places where people think they can talk openly about what they really think about college football fans and the BCS.  Just like at the Westin Diplomat, which has a very nice lobby and plenty of public spaces/places to mingle with other guests, truths more often pass the tongue when a few martinis have been served and drank.  The boys at Coaches Hot Seat have seen the Rockford Files enough times to know when it is appropriate to play a Texas oilman like Billy Bob Thorton, or a buttoned-up college president-type that is determined to keep those dirty bastards hands off the college bowl system (If you are an academic, the “dirty bastards” are the corporations, which in fact already own the BCS lock, stock, and barrel.  When the college presidents learn the full truth of the BCS, and how the conference commissioners have sold college football out to the highest bidder, Delaney and Hansen are going to need protection from the college presidents, forget the fans).  The BCS Boys never know who they might be talking to, because Coaches Hot Seat is well-schooled in the ways of the great private investigator that lived in a trailer at Paradise Cove in Malibu!  Ring, Ring, “This is Coaches Hot Seat.  At the tone leave your name and message and we will get back to you.”  Yes, you can watch the entire 1st season of the Rockford Files for free at:  www.hulu.com/the-rockford-files.

The most disturbing thing about the BCS is not that it is an illegal cartel akin to the OPEC cartel that is bleeding the American people dry.  No, the most disturbing thing about the BCS is not that all I-AA college football teams are not on a level playing field, and that the BCS is heavily tilted towards the main BCS conferences.  The most disturbing thing about the BCS is not that the BCS runs counter to everything that the United States is about and stands for, and that in every other sport on any level one may want to point to in the United States, championships are earned on the field of play.  All of those things are true, but the most disturbing thing about the BCS is the idea that a group of elitists, the BCS commissioners and bowl executives, have hijacked the game of college football to serve their own very personal and selfish interests, and would in fact destroy the game of college football to keep their hands around the neck of the game.  Yes, that is the most disturbing thing about the BCS, that the people running this sham care little about the fans, the coaches, the players, nor in fact the game itself.  Their only interest is retaining power, and they know very well that a legitimate national championship in college football would involve the NCAA setting up and running a NCAA college basketball-type tournament, and come Hell or high water the BCS Boys will fight for their fiefdoms, even if the game is destroyed or illegitimized in the process.  The BCS always has been and always will be a fraud, and the BCS Boys don’t mind that thought one bit, because their interests are only in the holding onto power, not doing what is best for the game.  Yes, these people care about the game of college football.

BCS Boys be on your toes, because you never know if that corporate executive looking guy in the Brooks Brothers suit at the next table over is not actually a member of Coaches Hot Seat!  Yes indeed, the Black Angus Rib Eye Steak (medium-rare), baked potato, served with a cold draft beer at the Rivals Watefront Sports Grill at the Westin Diplomat Resort is very good, and highly recommended (the bartenders and waitresses are hot, but the service is only mediocre!  Not what one would expect at a place that the BCS Boys would pick to stay at.  Next year why don’t we hold the BCS conference at Pebble Beach?)  Cheers!

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Paul Johnson brings his triple option flexbone to the big stage of college football and opposing ACC coaches can’t be happy with the thought of facing Johnson’s offense in the coming years.  An option is an option, and the better the players you have, the better the team is going to be, and Johnson will now have some hosses to work with at Tech.  If Johnson can get the Tech players to buy into his system, or rather his style of coaching that has won everywhere he has been, the ACC will be a much different conference in the coming years.  What will happen at Georgia Tech in 2008?  Here is our analysis:

Paul Johnson and Georgia Tech in 2008

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Coaches Hot Seat members have been hard at work in their day jobs lately and attending a few technology related conferences, two of which were in San Francisco recently.  Last week the ad tech conference was in town and this week it was Web 2.0 Expo.  Walking around both conferences and listening to the panels filled with experts, most of us can only think that a lot of people are divorced from the reality of the real world.  It is easy to say everything is going to be fine if you have $30 million dollars in the bank (Yes, there are a number of people in the technology business in the Bay area with that kind of money.  Just the interest from $30 million in Treasury bonds generates about $112,000 a month, and with that kind of money $4.00 a gallon gas is meaningless.  Thus, the detachment from reality for some), but in the real world the common folk are getting it hard both coming and going.  The current state of the economy and the emerging new media doesn’t have a whole lot to do with college football directly, but it is having a massive effect on the news media that covers college football.  The ad tech conference last week, which bills itself as “an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition.  Worldwide shows blend keynote speakers, topic driven panels and workshops to provide attendees with the tools and techniques they need to compete in a changing world” was particularly interesting as to where online advertising is going and how the current shift by many advertisers to online advertising will reshape the media landscape.  The average guy in the street probably doesn’t know it, but the current price that newspapers are able to get for online advertising is around .05 to .10 cents for what the same advertiser will pay around $1.00 dollar for in the print newspaper.  With all of the costs that are inherent in producing, printing, and distributing a newspaper, the rates that newspapers are getting for “print” ads are barely enough to get by, but if any newspaper had to go entirely online and try to make it with drastically reduced ad rates, it would be game over for most newspapers in this country.  Whether newspapers realize it or not, they are now in the middle of a revolution akin to when the printing press arrived on the scene, and that revolution is primarily driven by the number of people that are now turning to the Internet for news and entertainment.  Even some in the older crowd are embracing this shift in how they get their news, with everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat now getting all of their news from online sources (both paid and free), with none of us receiving any hardcopy newspapers at our homes or offices anymore.

The reason why this revolutionary shift in how news is delivered interests Coaches Hot Seat, is that we believe the most accurate and to the point news is being delivered by local newspapers who are “on the scene.”  ESPN, FoxSports, Sporting News, Rivals.com, Scout.com, and many other national sports/media companies do a very good job of covering the general scene, but it is the local reporter and columnist that can really provide the insight to what is really going on.  ESPN especially is making a big push to cover college football on a more regional and local level, and that is going to put more pressure on newspapers as almost all news will be covered in the future by either the AP or large media companies.  Unfortunately, the local newspapers, especially the one’s that are in communities with populations less than 250,000 people are increasingly on the firing line, and we hope that the publishers and editors at those newspapers/media companies are dealing with the massive changes that are on their doorstep.  Newspaper ad revenue, especially print ad revenue in the hardcopy newspaper is in a freefall as companies continue to move more of their advertising online, and it is imperative that local newspapers embrace this move of advertising and put their newspapers in a position where they can reap the many benefits that come from a strong online presence.  One thing is very clear, websites like Coaches Hot Seat, which is an opinion website put together by a group of football fans, can never be the primary source of information for college football fans.  Edited newspapers/media companies, that are “on the scene” and the larger media organizations like ESPN, FoxSports, etc., that have the resources to send reporters to the scene must continue to thrive into the future as the movement of advertising to the online environment reshapes all of our lives.  The big fish, the ESPN’s of the world will always have the money to do almost any kind of reporting they can dream up, but the local newspapers should be moving very quickly right now to focus most of their efforts on how they are going to engage, capture, organize, interact, and do business with the people that are visiting their websites.

If there is one thing that has been made abundantly clear to us in the last few years, it is that change in the 21st century is going to be a fact of our daily lives, and companies can either embrace that change or cease to exist.  Our economy will be facing some real challenges in the coming years, and every company, in this case newspapers, must establish itself as commodity that their users cannot live without.  In the 1990s it was easy to say that media companies were not going to commoditize themselves, because a commodity could easily be bought or sold in an instant.  News and news organizations are now a commodity, and in a very competitive news landscape they must find ways to distinguish themselves from the other news/media commodities in the marketplace.  In the past several months at both work and at conferences we have seen the future of news and digital media, and our warning is primarily to the medium to smaller newspapers around the U.S..  Yes, many large newspapers will go under (it has been rumored that the San Francisco Chronicle loses over $1 million a week right now), but the smaller newspapers are in the most danger as they lose their older hardcopy print customers and hopefully pick-up many more younger customers that read and interact with their product online.  There is the rub, and the very critical decisions that must be made inside the offices of publishers and editors to fully embrace the future and find ways to monetize the people that are visiting their websites.  The first order of business is to find a business model that can sustain local newspapers and the only sure way generate advertising revenues into the future is to attract and retain online users.  If the visitors to the website are there, the advertisers will come, because most other media especially television is fragmenting to such a degree that advertisers will increasingly be looking for places where they can reach captive audiences.  To that point, newspapers should certainly be looking around the country at what other newspapers/media companies are doing to attract and retain visitors, and they will find the best websites are increasingly places that people believe they cannot live without and a place where visitors can interact with the reporters/columnists and with each other.  In the future as more people turn to the Internet for their news and entertainment, online advertising rates will increase and paid advertisements will augmented with performance advertising where the publisher of the newspaper gets paid by either clicks on ads or actual purchases from a clicked on ad.  To many people in the newspaper business, most of this will be obvious, but the urgency and importance of newspaper companies moving to a sustainable online model cannot be overemphasized from our point of view.

Coaches Hot Seat is not in business to employ a large or even small group of people, and was in fact put together by a group of fans that love the game of college football, that also have an interest in the head football coaches that drive the game.  Many of the larger than life figures in the history of American sports were football coaches, Knute Rockne, Bob Devaney, Darrell Royal, Paul “Bear” Bryant, John McKay, Barry Switzer, Tom Osborne, Jimmy Johnson, Bobby Bowden, down to the great coaches of today, the Pete Carroll and Jim Tressel’s (we left out so many coaches in the above list).  All of these great coaches helped to define the game, as do the great football coaches of today.  Rich Rodriguez with his spread option read offense has changed the very nature of how many offenses play the game of football, and Pete Carroll has reminded all of us that there is more than one way to build a championship football program.  We are doing this website for fun and enjoyment, but newspapers are a serious business because not only do they provide a record of the news events of the day, they employ a lot of people and are a big part of their local communities.  If the local newspapers disappear or have to dramatically scale back their edited news reporting, the people that rely on those local newspapers will suffer, and the people around the country will know that much less about individual communities and local sports teams.  People have been telling us for about 15 years now that newspapers were dead, but this time we believe them, at least the way that newspapers have operated for the past few centuries.  Newsprint, and the distributing of a newspaper door-to-door is on the way out, and the survivors that emerge on the other side of this revolution will be the newspapers/media companies that embrace change and find a business model that will allow them to survive.  To that point, here are few local/regional websites that we have found to be on the cutting edge of the new technologies, and companies that are finding ways to monetize visitors to their websites:

www.sfgate.com (SF Chronicle is trying hard with a great new redesign of their website)
www.seattletimes.com (Bob Condotta’s blog on the Washington Huskies is one of the best around)
www.tidesports.com (The Tuscaloosa News does a good job of embracing Alabama fans with their forums)
www.freep.com (The Detroit Free Press does a very job of covering Michigan and Michigan State football)
www.gatorsports.com (The Gainesville Sun is all over Florida athletics)
www.govolsextra.com (The Knoxville News Sentinel does a good job of covering Tennessee football)
www.lsubeat.com (Glenn Guilbeau is practically a one-man news bureau on LSU athletics)
www.arkansasbusiness.com/sports_home.asp (ArkansasSports360.com is on top of Arkansas athletics)
www.journalstar.com/huskerextra/ (The Lincoln Journal-Star covers Nebraska athletics very well)
www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/ufblog/index.html (Lindsey Jones on Florida football)
www.kansascity.com (The Kansas City star cover several college football teams pretty well)
www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/cfb/index.html (Tony Barnhart takes a national view of college football)
www.finebaum.com (Paul Finebaum combines a column in a newspaper with a daily radio gig)

And for anyone interested in the future of the newspaper business, a great blog is:
Reflections of a Newsosaur

The above websites are a few of the newspapers/media companies/columnists that are doing the type of things that must be done in order to survive in the coming revolution.  The fact is though, all of the above websites could be doing so much more to interact and do business with their online visitors.  In the future, the number of unique visitors that one can attract to a website, and the number of times they come back to that website each day, will determine who the winners and losers are in the media world.  Advertisers will always be wanting to reach people that will buy their products and services, and websites that can leverage their visitors will find that they will get more than their share of their of advertising dollars, especially if they can really reach out and engage their customers.  Right now, most websites are little more than passive news dispensers that can see the amount of people that are visiting their websites, but really have little idea how to monetize all of those potential customers.  The key to success in the future is two-fold:  Newspapers must engage with their visitors by interacting with them in several different ways (blogs, forums, comment sections, online chats with customers, videos, etc. ) and newspapers must become indispensable to their readers and customers as the “go to place” for their particular product.  If your product is not indispensable, it will cease to exist.

As a side note, we here at Coaches Hot Seat look at several thousand newspaper stories each day and we end up posting 300 to 400 of those news stories on our homepage.  In addition to utilizing news readers to find relevant college coaching and college football news stories, we do search the web manually, and we know there are a lot of stories that we miss because a lot of newspapers do not broadcast their news stories in RSS/XML format.  One of the most important things for newspapers that hope to have their news product reach the widest possible audience, is to make sure that all news stories are placed in a RSS/XML format, so that websites like Coaches Hot Seat and readers across the Internet know the stories exist.  Newspapers/media companies that are not utilizing RSS/XML and other types of Internet formats that can broadcast their stories to the world are missing potentially thousands of website visitors, and the dollars that naturally flow to websites that generate more visitor traffic. 

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