Last year the Saints were the improbable heroes of the NFL.  During the offseason they held a jazz funeral to bury simplistic notions of repeat glory.  They created the slogan "Earn it" to signal that they intended to work hard and stay focused.  During training camp coach Sean Payton gave the boys a surprise day off and took them to a water park.  Linebacker Scott Fujita got injured while horsing around.  This was the first sign the Saints were coming into the season ill-prepared for a difficult challenge.

Last night the Saints offense looked pretty good against Kansas City, even though this guy didn't play.  But he'll be back in time for the regular season.  Who 'dat?

The Heisman Trophy is named after John Heisman who died in 1936.  It is thought that the game of football might not have flourished if it had not been for him.  This New York Times article reveals some interesting things about Coach Heisman:

"Despite an Ivy League education in law, Heisman never became a lawyer, but he instinctively honed a talent for commanding, melodramatic locker-room oratory.  Heisman, standing before his players when he first met them, would hold aloft a football and ask, “What is this?”   Answering his own question, Heisman said: “It is a prolate spheroid in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing.”  Heisman would pause and add: “Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

Sounds like he would have been a formidable presence in a courtroom.  Especially from behind the bench.

One of the first classes you take in law school is 'Contracts.' The legendary Professor Kingsfield is sort of the unoffical Patron Saint of this discipline. In law school contracts is much harder than it is in real life. In real life, the thorny problems aren't mind-bending theoretical problems, but basic problems of gamesmanship and mock warfare.

How can I create a transaction that creates a lot of value for me, but doesn't require me to do too much? This is the quintessential thought-process of one who is contemplating entering into a binding agreement. Sometimes you can spend too much time thinking about tactics. Sometimes it pays to be just plain lucky. Like Ozzie and Dan Silna, the former owners of the St. Louis Spirits (an ABA basketball team). Remember them?

Probably not, unless you are old like my friend Steve Copley who is from St. Louis and told me the story of how these former ABA team owners struck a brilliant deal that has netted them $100 million dollars over the past 25 years. Here's the scoop:

After it became apparent that the NBA would only allow four ABA teams to join the NBA, St. Louis owners Ozzie and Dan Silna reached a famous agreement with the other remaining ABA owners. In return for folding their team, the Spirits' owners obtained the right to 1/7 of any future television money received by the surviving ABA teams (Denver, Indiana, New York and San Antonio) -- in perpetuity. In the late 1970's, the NBA's contract with CBS was modest in scope. But as the NBA's popularity exploded in the 1980's and 1990's, the league's television rights were sold to CBS (and then NBC), plus the TNT and TBS cable networks, for hundreds of millions of dollars. Over the past 25 years, the Silnas have collected approximately $100 million from the NBA, despite the fact that the Spirits never played an NBA game. The Silnas continue to receive checks from the NBA on a yearly basis, representing a 4/7 share of the television money that would normally go to any NBA franchise.

Coach Brian Billick, whose Baltimore Ravens won the Superbowl in 2001, says that his 'willingness to embrace technology in a focused way' is as important to his success as anything else that he has done.

"Behind his desk at the Ravens' home base, he is just another tech-savvy executive: two computers and a television at hand, complex Excel spreadsheets, FreeHand renderings and PowerPoint presentations at the ready. Instead of financial projections, he crunches his opponent's play-calling tendencies. Instead of selling products to clients, he works up colorful presentations to sell his game plans to players."

One of my old judicial clerk buddies tipped me off to a great book written by his brothers, Steve and Tom Ney, who are massive sports fiends. The UnOfficial Office Pool Handbook ($14.95) explains how to create, play and compete in workplace sports pools, including football, basketball, baseball, golf, horse racing and auto racing.

There is a lot of detail about Superbowl Pools, which is good because that HypeFest is coming up soon (Feb 1st). If you are planning a Superbowl party you need to have a pool, and if you are playing a pool it never hurts to figure out how to maximize your chances of winning.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has a great post about the recently reported settlement reached by the Cubs baseball team and the owners of the buildings behind Wrigley Field. The owners of the buildings have been charging people to view the Cubs games from the rooftops. The Cubs owners felt that this commercial enterprise was a copyright infringement.

Professor Volokh concludes that the Cubs owners' copyright infringement claims are 'almost frivolous' and then explains why sporting events should not be considered copyrightable. Why? Well, go read his post.

Last night's Sugar Bowl was a great game for Tiger fans. It's too bad that only one of the two talented teams could win, but since I'm an LSU fan I'm not too disappointed. And even though Oklahoma didn't win the game I have it on good authority that their fans made full use of the extensive party facilities in the French Quarter, so they have some good memories that they can take home (maybe). If you ever have a chance to see a Sugar Bowl or Super Bowl in New Orleans you have to take it no matter what the cost. This town is optimized for frolic and festive frenzy. Speaking of which, now it's time to gear up for Mardi Gras which comes early this year (February 24th, I believe).

Meanwhile, if any of you legal eagles want to take a quick contract exam that involves a BSC issue head over to Professor Bainbridge's classroom.

The Saints are playing the Giants on Sunday Night ESPN, and receiver Joe Horn just scored a touchdown. After his great catch he went to the goal post bumper and pulled out a cellphone that he had stashed in there and pretended to make a call as he walked off the field. Naturally, the officials assessed a 15 yard penalty.

Earlier this year Terrell Owens (San Francisco) pulled a Sharpies pen from his sock after a touchdown and signed the ball and gave it to a fan. What is it with these receivers? I'm tired of Terrell Owens, Keyshawn Johnson, and the other self-aggrandizing, undisciplined fools. Vince Lombardi once told a player who had excessively celebrated a touchdown "next time you're in the endzone act like you've been there before."

In the case of Joe Horn, his celebration is in a game against the Giants, a team decimated by injuries. He's celebrating a touchdown against the Giants? This is a team that has only won 4 games this season, and has lost their last five games in a row. The Saints are a pathetic team too, although they have a better record. Their quarterback can barely hold on to the ball (one fumble so far that led to a Giants TD) and Joe Horn is perfecting the art of being an embarrasment as a human being.

The only player on the Saints offense who is both disciplined and talented is Deuce McAllister. It's embarrasing to watch Horn do something that he had to know was going to trigger a 15 yard penalty, something that he carefully planned before the game even started. I'll bet if Bill Parcels was the coach he'd bench Horn for the rest of the game; of course, that's assuming that Horn would even think about attempting something like that if he played for Parcels.

I hope the Giants kick their ass. The Saints don't deserve to win, and they don't deserve anyone's admiration.

[Second Quarter action] Just now, for the third time this season, Aaron Brooks went back to pass, brought the ball back to throw and had it spastically fly from his hand (see previous post for at least one example of a previous spaz-fumble by Brooks). The Saints were on the verge of scoring a touchdown (if Joe Horn hadn't dropped the pass on a previous play they would have), but instead Tampa Bay wound up scoring a touchdown.

Brooks has also, during the season, fumbled the ball where he simply dropped the ball with no one around. Usually these mistakes wind up taking the Saints from a position of imminent offensive scoring to a position of having points scored against them. And lest my criticism of Brooks be deemed incomplete, he also tends to have stupid interceptions (which also wind up resulting in having points scored against the Saints). I would love to know how many points Brooks' mistakes have cost the Saints.

If you look at Brooks' overall statistics it's true that he gets a lot of yards passing; hey, the Saints are 3rd in the league in 3rd down conversions. But, statistics are often misleading. If you watched every Saints game this season then you know that Brooks is an amazingly talented athlete (which the statistics corroborate), but you'd also know that he makes some amazingly bone-headed plays.

The Saints are having a really poor season. But their problem isn't Brooks; it's the coaching. Haslett looks tough, but he's not willing to make the tough decision to bench Brooks. If the point of coaching is to reward good behavior and punish undesirable behavior then this is a no brainer. In football coaching you hear about the importance of teaching "fundamentals." That's because they are important (hence the name "fundamental").

"Fundamentals" are things like blocking, tackling and holding on to the football. Which brings us to Brooks' fundamental problem. It's one thing to drop the ball when you are getting hit. It's another thing to have it spontaneously fly out of your hand like you have a serious muscular disability. Brooks has two modes: (a) extremely talented and (b) worthless. His fumbling and poor pass decisions occur often enough to make him, overall, a very mediocre quarterback. Only a poor coach would fail to recognize this and fail to take some decisive action. The Saints have a poor coach and they don't deserve to go to the playoffs; in fact, they don't even deserve to have a mathematical possibility of reaching the playoffs.

Update [Fourth Quarter] Brooks, who had 3 fumbles in the game (2 lost) just fumbled again in the red-zone, foregoing a certain scoring opportunity. I've decided that I'm not going to pull for teams that have great players and bad coaching. I'm pulling for teams that have good coaches. So I'm thinking of pulling for Tampa Bay, except they have Warren Sapp. I don't like pulling for teams with loud-mouth blowhards (even if they are talented). If the Saints and Tampa Bay would trade Duece McCallister and Warren Sapp then I could root for the right team: Tampa Bay.

[Final Score 14 - 7 Tampa Bay] Aaron Brooks is singlehandly responsible for this loss. If he had not had the ball spontaneously fly from his hand in the 2nd Quarter then the Saints would have scored at least 3 points, and probably Tampa Bay would not have scored 7 points. If he hadn't fumbled the 4th time then the Saints would have scored at least 3 points for sure. You'll never hear the press report the truth, but this one was solely the fault of Aaron Brooks. Worthless, worthless, worthless...

Thanks to BeldarBlog for the heads up regarding the felicitous Return of Gregg Easterbrook. Apparently, his TMQ column will be a regular weekly feature over at NFL.com.

And if you want to follow baseball you should read Baseball Musings, which is a weblog by David Pinto, who for 10 years was the lead researcher for ESPN's Baseball Tonight. Has an RSS feed and everything.

The Colts came into this game undefeated. The 4th Quarter hasn't started yet and Peyton Manning already has the team record for TD passes in one game (6 TDs). Meanwhile, Aaron Brooks just had the ball spontaneously fly out of his hand as he went back to pass and a Colts defensive lineman ran it back for a touchdown. After that gaffe, with the score at 55 - 13, Brooks is out of the game on the sidelines. They just showed him smiling, and chatting with a fellow teammate. That's nice.

A lot of people would turn off the game. But not me. I'm pulling for Peyton to throw that 7th pass to tie the League record. I always root for hard-working, well-deserving athletes. And no doubt the Saints coaches will say that Aaron Brooks is hard-working. Maybe. But a guy who smiles after a blooper play like one that Brooks had doesn't deserve to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. He needs to work on fundamentals; so Haslett should give him a chance to work on his clip-board holding skills. See if he finds that entertaining.

The big news coming into this game was that the Titans' Steve McNair was injured (dislocated ring finger on throwing hand) and was going to have trouble throwing. Obviously the Saints defense was looking for the Titans to open up by running Eddie George. Instead, McNair opened with a 1st down pass for 17 yards over the middle. They went on to drive easily (McNair completing 4 crisp passes) and wound up with a field goal. McNair is passing at will and is 11 for 16 with 113 yards in the first half. Uh, maybe the defensive game plan was flawed.

What about the Saints offense? Well, fresh off last week's strong running performance by Deuce McAllister, they decided to do the obvious: try to establish the run. Did it work? Nope. It's 2 minutes to half-time and Deuce has -9 yards on 4 carries; so much for the offensive game plan.

Is there such a thing as a special teams game plan?. Apparently not. Last week the Titans' punter faked a punt and passed for a 1st down. You'd think the Saints special teams would be on the lookout for this. Nope, it worked again. Which brings me to my only question.

Who's going to yell at the coaches during half time?