Monday Morning Referees

It drives me nuts when sports fans talk about what they would have done had they been coaching.

“Well, if you’d called a time out at 48 seconds you could have run the clock etc.”

“Well, if you’d told your defense to step up their offense wouldn’t have had a chance to score.”

Most of these observations are absolutely vacuous. I’m pretty sure that the quarterback who just took cleet to the guts probably thought “Hm, perhaps I wouldn’t be in this position if my offensive line hadn’t crumbled. When I stand up again, I shall have to confer with these chaps about Bill Swarkowski’s keen observation that they should ‘Grow A Pair and Stop Defending Like a bunch of little girls’.”

I’d always hear people talking about this (particularly at Texas during the Macovic years, ’twere dark times here in the Burnt-Orange belt). If I were so-and-so I’d fire the Defensive Coordinator and have called time out at 42 seconds and made a sneak play for an onside kick within the infield fly zone, blah blah blah. I mean, hell people, I’d like my team to have won, but it’s 9 a.m. and I’m trying by best to convince at least 3 brain cells to start thinking about the finer points of the Glass-Steagall act, can you put a lid on the Monday morning quarterbacking / offensive coordinating / defensive coordinating / ad spot programming?

Sweet goodness gravy, and this was in the days before Tivo. I can just see these guys now, rewinding each frame by frame becoming all the more sure in the superiority of their coaching.