Random Football Rant

Yesterday, longtime Florida State Defensive Coordinator Mickey Andrews finally put himself out of his own misery and announced he would retire after this season. This decision couldn't come soon enough, since FSU's defense is ranked 109th out of 120 teams...in other words, there's only 11 teams WORSE than we are on defense right now.

This creates an opening for next year, which poses a problem. Bobby Bowden only has one more year that he could possibly be head coach before FSU will have to pay Jimbo Fisher $5 mil. if they decide to keep Bobby. There is virtually no way that will happen, which means Bobby either retires this year, or next year. So, since Jimbo Fisher will apparently inherit the team after one more season, there is a question of who gets to pick the new Defensive Coordinator.

Normally the head coach gets to hire his coordinators, but if Bobby hired a new one, anyone interested in the job would have to realize they'd only have one year to prove themselves before Jimbo could replace them with whoever he wants. Who would take a job in that climate? Or, since Jimbo will be the coach after next season, FSU could let him choose the new Defensie Coordinator with the expectation that his choice would stay when Jimbo is elevated to Head Coach.

Today, Bobby Bowden announced he plans to select the next Defensive Coordinator. He might let Jimbo have some input, but he's still making the selection.

This makes me so angry I want to throw things. For starters, Bobby should be out at season's end. Our team is terrible, he's completely oblivious and saying things like how we're a few big plays away from being undefeated, and the boosters have lost faith in him. But he apparently intends to coach to the bitter end of his contract and continue to blindly believe that next year we'll magically have a good team even if all evidence points to Bobby and his handpicked staff having run the program into the ground.

But even if he wanted to coach one more year (something I wish the administration would strongly discourage), why the hell does he get to pick the Defensive Coordinator who will only coach under him for one dadgum year? When will he start acknowledging that starting in 2011 this is Jimbo Fisher's team, and his era is over?

There have been rumblings on the internets that Bobby intends to appoint Chuck Amato to the Defensive Coordinator position for 1 year. Amato was a former defensive assistant at FSU before he left to become head coach of NC State, where he was horrible. Now he's back with some bullshit title like "Executive Head Coach (who also pretends to coach linebackers)." Given how bad our defense is, I don't want anyone currently affiliated with the defensive coaching staff to even be in the running. In fact, I'd like to see virtually all of them replaced when Andrews leaves, hopefully with the input of the new DC.

But if Bobby appoints Amato to DC, nothing will change. The team will still suck. And all of us who care about FSU football will be sitting here twiddling our thumbs for another wasted year waiting for him to finally retire or die so that we can start rebuilding.

We have a fantastic quarterback in Christian Ponder, something that has been completely lost in this waste of a season. Ponder has the potential to be Heisman-worthy next year, if he could get the defensive support he needs to win games. By all but announcing his intention to stay next year, Bobby is probably dooming Ponder to the trash heap of wasted potential behind an inadequate defense. In all likelihood even the best Defensive Coordinator on the market wouldn't be able to turn around this shitty defense enough to help Ponder make a run at major glory next year, but at least we'd have a fighting chance and wouldn't be stuck in defenseless shootouts against the likes of USF, Georgia Tech, and N.C. State.

I wish someone in the Athletic Department or administration of FSU would FINALLY draw a line with Bowden. It's time, because this is unacceptable. If he stays next year and hand selects a Defensive Coordinator, I will not renew my season tickets or give another dime to the school until he's gone.

Stupidity

My firm has never had an official recycling program. Last year, an associate on our team who was a bit of an earthy-crunchy type took it upon herself to start an office-wide recycling program, buying large blue bins to go in the kitchen on every floor. She found volunteers to agree to take the contents of the bin to a recycling center every week, and encouraged us all to save up our water bottles and soda cans and put them in the recycling bin. It sort of worked, even though it relied upon the time of the volunteers and was not officially sanctioned by the office.

We just learned that the entire building has contracted with a company whose name I will not reveal because I don't want to get in trouble, to provide recycling services to the entire building. As part of that program, we are told that each of us will have a trash bag with a clear liner under our desks where we may throw paper, cans and bottles, and other clean recyclable materials. Apparently the program will involve sorting of the contents of that bin by some other person. We are advised that everything else should be thrown into the garbage cans (with black trash bags lining them...this is VERY IMPORTANT, we are told) in the kitchen on each floor.

I've had a trash can with a clear liner under my desk for over three years now. We didn't get NEW trash cans, they simply re-tasked them to the recycling program. The problem is that most of us have other things we throw away during the day that are not recyclable, such as the remainders of our lunch when we eat at our desks, the tissues when we blow our noses, the rind of an orange, etc. So some of us asked the office manager if we would be getting a separate trash can where were could throw these things away at our desks. The answer? We either have to all carry those things to the kitchen trash can, or we are "allowed" to bring a small trash bag from home to throw such items away in and take to the kitchen at the end of the day. They won't even provide the second trash bag!

So, to summarize: I am now only allowed to throw away clean paper, plastic and alumnium at my desk. If I want to throw away anything else, I have to either walk it halfway across the floor to the kitchen or have had the foresight to have found and brought in my own damn trash bag from home. All because they don't want to provide a second trash can at each desk for non-recyclables.

This is freaking STUPID.