DON McCORMACK
Paying a Sunday morning visit to the variety store...
Sitting pretty
If you’re Urban Meyer today, the world is your oyster.
Your University of Florida Gators are the No. 1 team in the land and will play Southeastern Conference rival Alabama for the conference championship and the right to play in the BCS National Championship game.
Your teams have not only played in said contest in two of the previous three seasons, but also took the crystal football back to Gainesville.
And now, you can have pretty much any job you want that comes open.
You’ve never hidden the fact that being the head football coach at Notre Dame is your “dream job.”
In a football sense, Charlie Weis is a dead man walking in South Bend, especially after Saturday’s 33-30 double-overtime loss to visiting Connecticut, Notre Dame’s third straight loss, dropping its record to 6-5.
You can bet the Golden Domers will be lining up truckfuls of Benjamins to toss your way, hoping and praying you will agree to take on the arduous tasking of being the savior for the Fighting Irish program.
Notre Dame has already proven there’s no shortage of green in South Bend after it was on the hook to pay off Tyrone Willingham to bring in Sorry Charlie, whom it gave a massive contract extension after one season at the helm.
Saturday’s loss dropped Weis’ career record to 35-26, a .573 winning percentage. That’s worse than the .583 winning percentage of his two predecessors, Willingham and Bob Davie.
Then, there’s where the big boys play — the National Football League.
Once Eric the Dread’s scorched-earth journey is put out of Browns fans’ misery after this season of muck, safe to say Randy Lerner will at least investigate your interest in perhaps moving up to the next level. If he doesn’t at least dip his toe into your waters to gauge the temperature, he’s a fool.
Then again, having said that, perhaps he won’t.
Regardless of where, you can bet, Urban, if you ever want to consider leaving Gator Country, there might never be more options than there will be after the 2009 season.
You’re a proven winner, be it during your days as a high school athlete at St. John, from which you graduated in 1982, to a minor-league baseball player, to an assistant college football coach, to highly successful gigs as a Division I head coach at Bowling Green, Utah and now Florida.
The world is your oyster... partake as you desire.
About the offense
Before Meyer to the Browns is dismissed out of hand because “that gimmick offense won’t work in the NFL,” consider this:
How’s that “professional offensive system” working out for the guys who don the pumpkin helmets each Sunday?
In fact, the Browns are on pace to become the lowest-scoring team in the NFL since it expanded the regular season from 14 to 16 games.
Any given Sunday?
When it comes to the Browns’ ineptitude, it should be changed to “every given Sunday.”
Medication
One thing Browns fans don’t have to worry themselves about is NFL officials wheeling into the parking lots in Berea in the drug-testing trucks.
Exactly what “performance-enhancing” drugs could these guys be on?
And finally...
I have precious few rooting interests anymore in sports, but God bless you, Jim Tressel, Jim Bollman & Co.
McCormack is the sports editor of the Star Beacon. Reach him at donmac@suite224.net.
