Sports fodder for a Friday morning ... Did the Nevada Wolf Pack football team find its quarterback this spring? None of the three candidates (Tyler Lantrip, Cody Fajardo, Mason Magleby) was amazing, none of them grabbed the job by the throat and never let go and none of them made head coach Chris Ault forget the name Colin Kaepernick. But so what? Here's the deal with the Wolf Pack quarterback situation. It doesn't matter. When it comes to developing a quarterback, Ault can turn tap water into a fine wine. In the 26 seasons that Ault has been a head coach he has had a good-to-great player at the quarterback position in every single one of those seasons. The last position you should worry about when Ault is the head coach is quarterback.
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In the perfect world, Fajardo, the red-shirt freshman from Southern California, would have stepped onto the field this spring, a lightning bolt would have cracked the sky, the sun would have immediately risen in the east and fireworks would have shot into the heavens. And that would have been the start of a fabulous four-year run as the starting quarterback. That would have been the best scenario for the Pack because, for no other reason, it would be nice to go into the Mountain West Conference in the fall of 2012 with an experienced quarterback. But Lantrip, a senior, is a nice, safe choice for 2011 and he'll get the Pack a Western Athletic Conference title and a bowl appearance.
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While we're confident the Wolf Pack will be fine at quarterback in 2011, we can't say the same thing about the San Francisco 49ers. But his much we do know: Alex Smith and the 49ers need to part ways. The last thing Smith needs is another year in San Francisco and the last thing the 49ers need is another year of Smith. Jim Harbaugh has to be smart enough to know that he can't ever win with Smith at quarterback. And Smith has to be smart enough to know that he'll never satisfy 49ers fans. Both parties need a fresh start.
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The problem with the NFL has always been that it is made up of a bunch of frightened robots. Why aren't Kaepernick and teammates Dontay Moch and Virgil Green locks to be picked in the first round of the NFL draft? Didn't they test as well or better than every other available player at their positions? Yes, we know, all three of them have negatives attached to them: Green can't block, Moch is too one dimensional and Kaepernick has a windup that is slower than that of Hideo Nomo. But there isn't a player out there who is perfect. In the NFL, though, coaches don't coach. They don't want projects. They just want to win. Now.
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The University of Massachusetts football program is headed to the Mid-American Conference. That, of course, is so wrong on so many levels. But the biggest reason it is ridiculous is because UMass is headed for football oblivion. As a Football Championship Subdivision school, UMass won five conference titles in the last 13 years and one national championship (1998). How many championships do you think they'll win in the MAC? But that doesn't matter. College football is all about grabbing a piece of that sweet bowl game pie and smearing it all over your fat athletic director's face. There's no money, after all, in FCS (the Financially Crippled Subdivision) football. It's better to go 6-6 in the Football Bowl Subdivision (it's no accident that the word championship is not in the title) and go to a meaningless bowl than go 15-0 and win a FCS national title. Somewhere Amos Alonzo Stagg is crying.
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Why is it that major league baseball is the only professional sport that has a yearly race report card attached to it? Why do we need an annual update on how many black players are playing in the big leagues? Does anybody really believe that major league organizations are racially biased and prohibiting black athletes from joining their rosters? If you want to look at race in the sport of baseball, then you have to look at the percentage of black athletes playing Little League, high school and college baseball. That's where the major league players come from. If race is a concern in the sport of baseball, don't blame the major leagues. Blame amateur baseball.