One More Thought on Chip Kelly

In his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen observed that there were occasions where businesses atop their industries made decisions when they were on top that rendered them obsolete.  Much has been written about how decisions are made, how people innovate, who the early adaptors are, so I won't digress here or cite any links.  At the same time, many businesses go bust because they fail to adapt or heed warning signs.  And then their problems mount, and it's too late.

In the Eagles' case, Coach Chip Kelly, a respected innovator, took Andy Reid's team to the playoffs two years ago and followed that run with a 10-6 season and a near miss of the playoffs despite losing his starting quarterback and playing a patchwork offensive line for most of the year (along with an exhausted defense that was on the field more than any other defense in the league and that was undermanned in the secondary).  Conventional wisdom would have suggested that were Kelly to make minor tweaks, he could turn 10-6 into 11-5 or 12-4 and at least win a playoff game.  Or, at least, that's what I am inferring from the multitude of comments that are questioning Kelly's wisdom right now because of all the moves that he has made. 

But innovators do not act conventionally, and they do not follow trends that others set.  Chip Kelly didn't tweak his roster because that's not what Chip Kelly does.  Chip Kelly didn't tweak his roster because (with the exception of his curious Oregon bias which he has yet to explain), he's pretty blunt with himself about what works and what doesn't work.  He also has a vision -- which he hasn't totally shared -- about what he is building toward.  And he's not there yet.  Moreover, he didn't think that the roster, as constructed about a month ago, had enough talent to make his vision into an institution and make his team into a champion. 

So he's demolishing, tearing down, reconstructing, rebuilding -- all at once.  The renowned American chef Thomas Kelly, owner of perhaps the country's finest restaurant, The French Laundry in Napa, California, has been described as someone who is seeking perfection and wants his institution to stand for something beyond the selfishness and egos of those involved.  Anthony Bourdain described Keller this way and marveled at how wonderful the meal that he and three other chefs had in Keller's restaurant.  The reason:  it wasn't just food, it was about the messages within the ingredients and the presentation, the pairings with the wines, and the entire experience.  Keller had created something transcendant (it isn't cheap, but it was worth it).  And Bourdain writes in a blunt, direct style that doesn't pull punches.  He just loved the place, the meal, the experience. 

Perhaps that's what Chip Kelly is looking for -- a system, a process, and an experience that goes beyond having a 53-man roster populated with players mostly from the large football factories who show up, eat what they please, say what they say and look out for the one big contract they might get.  He's looking for players who buy in, and he probably has figured out to the penny what he should spend on what position, what his demographic breakdown should be, the size of his linemen, the hip rotation of his defensive backs, in the same way Keller grows his own produce on plots outside his restaurant and Alice Waters instructs farmers about the size of the lambs she wants.

Foodies get Keller and Waters easily.  Football fans want to get Kelly, but they don't see the nuances of building a winner in a collision sport where careers are short-lived the way a foodie might understand the art of pairing a good cassoullet with a certain wine from the Southern Rhone region.  But if the fans are patient and delve more deeply, perhaps they can try to understand that what Kelly is trying to do is to take football to a different level. 

Time will tell, of course, but before we all jump to conclusions that he doesn't know what he is doing as a player personnel guy, remember that he did good things in the role in college (even if it was college) and that he is an innovator.  Sometimes innovators come up with things that customers wouldn't have been able to ask for -- and yet they love those things (iPods, iPads) and stand in line to get the latest.  Chip Kelly clearly is challenging conventional wisdom, and while he might not be able to take an iffy-legged quarterback, heal him and turn him into a Hall of Famer, he probably has a better shot of doing so than almost anyone not named Belichick in the NFL.  He's won a lot more games than he has lost so far, and has that going for him.

Innovators might not be the greatest PR people of all time.  But they end up creating systems, processes, products that everyone wants and wants to emulate. 

Eagles' fans should be patient with Chip Kelly.  He might know more about what he is doing than the rest of us do.

The Philadelphia Ducks

As in, 10 players and counting who played for head coach Chip Kelly at Oregon.

As in, an offense now without many weapons and with an immobile starting QB.  At some point, the offensive linemen might have to yell, "Duck!"

A few years ago, Chip Kelly was touted as this innovative coach who would take the Eagles to a Super Bowl victory.  Fast forward to a review of his letting DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy and Jeremy Maclin leave and in trading Nick Foles and some good draft picks for oft-injured Sam Bradford, and it makes fans wonder whether a) Chip is acting like a below-average Fantasy League General Manager or b) he is blowing up the team on purpose because he's angry at someone for something.  It's probably the case that he isn't (yet) the next Vince Lombardi, but that he's certainly better than the likes of Joe Kuharich, Jerry Williams, Rich Kotite and Ray Rhoades.  The question is how quickly can he propel himself to the Lombardi end of the continuum.

Let's review some facts:

1.  He took a team to the playoffs in 2013 that had no business going there.  When he came in, the pundits figured he'd go 6-10 with the remains of a neglected Andy Reid regime.  Instead, the team went to the playoffs and almost beat a pretty good Saints team.  That, of course, was a real positive.

2.  He had an injured starting QB and replaced him with a back-up and still managed to win 10 games and just missed the playoffs.  Why is that considered a step back?   Yes, it was disappointing that after all the progress Chip Kelly made in 2013, the team missed the playoffs in 2014.  But the offensive line was decimated for the first half of the season and he lost his starting quarterback and his defensive captain and they still won 10 games.  How many coaches would have done that?  True, the tenth win was rather meaningless and a loss there would have given the Birds a better draft pick.  All that said, it's hard to view 2014 as a failure given all of the injuries.

But within Kelly's success arise some questions:

1.  Did the team suffer injuries because Kelly overworking them?  It's hard to know, but at least one player publicly complained that the pace Kelly was trying to sustain in practices was not sustainable. 

2.  Did Kelly begin to lose the locker room over the release of DeSean Jackson?   I'm not sure that he did or that he didn't, but the way that Jackson was released compelled more questions than it answered.  At best, there was innuendo, and, at worst, there were negative things said.  Either way, the release smacked more of a dictatorial college coach with the power not to renew a talented but troubling player's scholarship than a professional coach's media savvy panache in handling something like that more gracefully.  The manner of the release might have created some dissension and fear among players that was not helpful.  Memo to Coach Kelly:  You are not in college anymore.

3.  And that leads to Kelly's Oregon bias.  Is that helpful for the team?    The answer is probably not.  Sure, people like people they trained, know, want to work with, etc., but the Oregon bias more reflects a parochialism about what might have worked in polychromatic Eugene than what could work in the NFL.  The last time I checked, the NFL is a brutal meritocracy.  It could hurt a team's competitiveness if players start to believe that where you went to college matters as much as what you do on the field.  Where you went to college might help if you're looking for a job in investment banking or a New York law firm, but it shouldn't in the NFL.  Malcolm Butler of the University of West Alabama proved that in the last minute of the Super Bowl.

4.  Does Kelly know what he is doing as a head of player personnel?  Either he knows something that everyone else does not, or he is making a huge gamble with a gimpy quarterback.  And while Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy while excelling at Oklahoma and was the overall number one pick in the draft, he hasn't been able to stay healthy.  And he's not mobile.  So either Kelly sees something in him that no one else does, or he blundered big time.  Especially since the team's skill position depth -- once a major asset -- has been depleted.  Who, precisely, will Bradford throw to?

Of course, Kelly was supposed to be different.  Many college coaches have failed when trying to make the jump to the NFL.  Dick Vermeil, adored in Philadelphia still, did, and Kelly coming out of Oregon was supposed to be much better than Vermeil (who was the Eagles' sixth choice in the 1970's after winning the Rose Bowl at UCLA in a big upset).  Vermeil had a fire, affability and media savvy that Kelly lacks.  Kelly appears irritated with the reporters constantly, makes snide comments and doesn't care how he comes off.  Vermeil didn't live for the media, but he was great with them and, correspondingly, the fans.  Kelly doesn't come close to Vermeil.  Heck, he doesn't come close to Buddy Ryan (who got a lot of love despite never winning a playoff game). 

So here are the Philadelphia Eagles.  Are they better off going into the 2015 draft than they were a year ago? 

It's hard to argue that they are.

It's easy to argue that they are not.

And the buck stops not only with Kelly, but also with owner Jeffrey Lurie, who seems to have had a hand in helping create the atmosphere behind this current mess.

Perhaps there are some free agents still lurking who can help the Eagles' roster markedly.  Right now, it looks like the big winner out there is the Colts, who, while adding a few pieces, might just have added enough to help their superstar QB get to the Super Bowl.

Princeton Women's Basketball Team Finishes 30-0

Wow!

The Closing of Sweet Briar and How Much College Costs

While I didn't always understand Sweet Briar, I thought that there were enough people out there -- particularly Southerners with a particular view of the world -- who would keep it going forever.  A scan, however, of the Dow Jones 30 say fifty years ago reveals how much the world can change -- companies go bankrupt, companies get acquired, companies get smaller, and others emerge.  I do not know enough to know what prompted such a sudden announcement that Sweet Briar College would be closing (and quickly), because typically the indicators turn bright red for a troubled entity long before such an announcement -- and perhaps early enough where had the right decisions been made the institution wouldn't be faced with its closure. 

Mark Cuban has commented publicly, lamenting how expensive colleges have gotten and how much debt people are taking to go to college.  That's a problem for our society, because debt can do funny things to young people, including making them less confident about their futures and more willing to put off key decisions that traditionally have been at the foundation of a good society -- such as getting married, having children and buying homes that they can afford.  Demographics can play a huge part in the health of a nation (look at Japan, which is getting very old very fast) and in its outlook toward war (studies have shown that the more male-dominated a population is, the more willing it has been to go to war).  And when you look to Japan, you can look to it at a time when its economy was overheating and generating so much cash that the Japanese were investing everywhere.

Except that there was one problem -- that success created such a housing bubble at one point that people couldn't afford to buy houses.  They would take out 99-year mortgages, which meant that they would essentially be renting forever.  For while the Japanese have helped advanced technology, they have not found the Fountain of Youth just yet.  So what happened -- in all likelihood -- was that the subsequent generations saw the futility of trying to get ahead in Japan.  They didn't marry, they didn't procreate to the extent that their parents did, and now their economy has been suffering.

Now let's look at the United States, where brand envy can compel parents to pressure their kids to work exceedingly hard before they are 18 so that they can "get into the best college possible" because "we all know that those who go to the best colleges make the most money," and, further, they can be pressuring them into certain types of majors, again, the technical, business and scientific types that again "guarantee the most satisfaction because those graduates make the most money." 

But have all of those sayings been tested in an ironclad fashion?  Do those people live the longest, are they the happiest and do they turn out the most successful kids?  Do they make so much money that they can pay off their educational debts the most quickly?  And what happens to a society where liberal arts majors are dissed because solving a math problem right now can be more sexy than taking a philosophy course on leadership that might create a career for a young person where they can inspire society in a unique way? 

I wrestle with all these questions, believe that college is too expensive, that it should be cheaper, that community colleges should be strengthened, as should the curricula for eleventh and twelfth grades, that not all good jobs need four years of post-high school education (at least not right away), that people should negotiate the best deal that they can get and send their kids to that college, that at some point fairly quickly it's what you can do and not where you went to school that matters, and that parental snootery and pressure can compel kids to do things that go against the grain.  A putative writer needs nurturing from her parents and friends, not snide comments about "you cannot make a living doing that."  Those latter comments might ultimately prove true for many, but for the truly committed they are such a downer.  Because at the end of the day, a good writer in a nurturing environment could have a very satisfying life and have time to enjoy that life.  A so-so engineer whose parents get to brag daily with their car magnet and who works sixty-hour weeks to please difficult bosses while working on deadlines and who is trapped with all his debt might not lead as envious a life as the credential on the resume might suggest.

In other words, there are many ways for society to address this issue and many ways for students and parents to deal with it as well.  Some colleges will thrive, some will muddle through, and some will become extinct.  Those who excel will be akin to my favorite wine store, which is cooled to the temperature of a wine cellar and finds great values from niche vineyards, opting not to compete with the expensive rare wine dealers or the chain volume sellers.  That Darwinism -- and the aid that might accompany it -- will be interesting to watch. 

Parents and students must demand more, too.  The biggest schools have to offer "mini schools" within them so that they can prepare kids to read for content, write succinctly, make presentations and create and not just regurgitate.  They must not assuage themselves that big football weekends, a Greek life and lots of parties are as useful as they suggest -- kids need to develop.  By the same token, at the other end of the spectrum, we are not stamping out future engineers for IBM or Google without, hopefully, getting them to think broadly about what a good society looks like, as opposed to one where they can buy their first 3 series BMW in their twenties and buy $100 bottles of wine. 

It's a hard world out there, and something that none of us thought would happen -- the demise of a once proud, once elite liberal arts college -- happened.  Perhaps Sweet Briar became extinct because of fiscal mismanagement, because the brand became old and tired (and leadership failed to go the route of Tiffany and reinvent itself away from the image that only grandmothers shopped there), because the brand was all-women, because the brand was Southern, all women and pink and green.  Or perhaps because it was all that and viewed not as a serious player for developing women leaders (a la Wellesley) but as a finishing school, albeit a good one. 

The challenge for educators is to keep their schools robust, make them as diverse as possible, and to keep them innovating and relevant, as well as cost-effective (imagine Harvard offering a two-year A.A. program!).  The challenge for our society is to think broadly about our best possibilities and help drive ourselves and our children toward them, all the while demanding good value, good values and a cost-effective education.

And one which would include a course on French literature, Latin American history and the philosophy of leadership every now and then.  Accounting and engineering are noble professions, but they fit within a broader society, as do art and music and every other profession. 

It's sad to see an institution close its doors, but the lesson in Sweet Briar is a) institutions need to innovate and keep innovating and b) the education bubble that Mark Cuban warns of should be taken seriously.  At some point, as with "little boxes on the hillside made of ticky-tack" and with tulip bulbs in Holland about 500 years ago, someone will yell, "Sell!"  And then the selloff will continue for a while until people re-set the market, get their heads straight again.

A college education is a wonderful thing.

At the right price.

Daniel Orton disses Manny Pacquiao -- and gets booted out of the Philippines

Only in. . . Manila.

Journeyman big Daniel Orton, testimony to the fact that not everyone who goes and plays for John Calipari and leaves early has a scintillating career, was on a team in the Phillipine League up until last week, when he commented that boxer Manny Pacquiao didn't have a game.

That was akin to having say Wilson Valdez or John Mayberry, Jr. making fun of Michael Jordan's somewhat loopy swing when he played for Terry Francona and the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League.  Except that because this was the Philippines and the golden rule seems to apply (as in, "he who has the gold, rules"), the team that Orton was on jettisoned him quickly.

Why?

Not because he spoke the truth.

But because he dared to say that the emperor is naked.

So while Orton probably didn't take too many classes on the First Amendment or managerial courage in  Lexington, he also didn't take any in office politics.  Because apparently Rule #1 in the Philippines is that you don't publicly diss one of the wealthiest and best known citizens of the country where you are a guest and get a way with it.  It isn't Lexington, after all.

Orton was gracious in defeat, tweeting his goodbye as he now looks for a another destination sticker to put on an already fully piece of luggage for such a young man.

Apparently the Team Irkutsk in the Siberian Winter "D" League is looking for a few good men.

Lacrosse outside in February in the Northeastern U.S.

Okay, so they played an all-time doozie of a game in Baltimore, where Princeton defeated Johns Hopkins in overtime, 16-15.

In front of about 1288 lacrosse nuts, masochists, parents or significant others (pity the poor siblings who had to be there).

Now, it must have been a great game.

But outside?

In February.

For a college game?

That's either dedication or stupidity, and while you might be tempted to attribute it to the former because two smart-kid schools were playing, don't underestimate the stupidity of the academic/athletic materialism that these elite schools attempt.  Yes, they'll offer more sports programs than the SEC schools and try to beat you, but to jam a schedule so hard that they go outdoors in February?

Great game or not, that takes dedication, with a bit of stupidity mixed in.

On the Philadelphia Phillies

Pitchers and catchers have reported.

The best players, according to WARP, are your 36 year-old catcher and your 36 year-old second baseman, both of whom are injury prone.  Your first baseman is recovering from physical and mental injuries, the latter resulting from an awful fight with his parents and brother over the management of his money.  For Ryan Howard, that had to hurt worse than the popping of his Achilles' tendon at the end of the NLDS in 2011.  You traded the best shortstop in team history, and your #1 starter wants out.  Your #2 starter is thirty-five, coming off injuries and close to retirement, but you have to bet that he might welcome a change of scenery to a team, well, that isn't predicted to have the worst record in the Majors.  Atop that, according to Baseball Prospectus, the Phillies are projected to score the least amount of runs in the Majors since 1971.  And, to make matters even worse, ESPN the Magazine rated you dead last in terms of reliance on analytics to help make the team better.  And that's somewhat ironic, given that GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. has a degree in, of all things, economics, and, from all places, Stanford.

Tickets will be plentiful and inexpensive.  About 5 years ago, you couldn't get a full- or partial-season ticket plan.  Today, the team e-mails current and former subscribers offering them single-game seats -- including among the best in the house -- for any game.  You want Hall of Fame Club against the Red Sox?  You got 'em.

But the fans just might not be biting.  Instead, they'll accept funding from those fans who still have season tickets and who offer them for sale on secondary markets like StubHub.  Why?  Because while the club might sell you a Hall of Fame club seat for its face value, roughly $85 (don't hold me to that), you'll probably be able to get some for about $60-$65 dollars apiece depending on the game and how long you are willing to wait.  

In 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, there was demand.

In 2015, there is supply.

And watching both Carlos Ruiz and Chase Utley play out their distinguished careers, while Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee toil in too many 2-1 losses.

What a difference 5 years makes.