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• Gene Therapy-The Flawed Logic of a Franchise QB

  Dec 24, 2021 Gene Clemons 0 Comments

  
  

   

  by Gene Clemons

   

  In a world where we want everything right now, the NFL has chosen to go the opposite way when it comes to the quarterback position. Year after year we see teams reach on potential while disregarding production at that position. The rationale is always the same, “We need to find our franchise quarterback.” If we were to take an honest look around the league, how many teams can make the claim that they have their franchise quarterback for the next 10 years? 

   

  Of the 30 franchises there are only a handful of teams that can make the claim. The Bucs and Packers cannot despite having two of the best quarterbacks in the history of the game because there’s no way either of those guys play for another 10 years. Teams like the Chiefs, Chargers, Cardinals, Bengals, Bills and Ravens certainly feel like they have their guy for the next 10 seasons but the ever-increasing salaries of quarterbacks and the ever-looming threat of injury leaves questions about their long-term sustainability. Every other team is trying to figure it out. They either have a young quarterback they hope is the guy, a guy they believe (correctly or not) they may be able to upgrade from, or a guy they need to replace ASAP.

   

  Then there’s the impatience of NFL fan bases and front offices. The more impatient the fan base, the more impatient the owner. After all the goal is to make money and a happy fan base is one that spends. What other type of fan base spends money? A hopeful one! So the NFL has become this revolving door of quarterbacks who fans hope are the franchise until they are not, and the team replaces them for the next hopeful. Organizations like the Broncos, Rams, Raiders, and Washington have been using this model for years to keep fans on the edge of their seats with their hands in their pockets trying to support whomever the new hope would be.

   

  Outside of a few teams, coaches turn over every few seasons. So, most of the time they don’t outlive the proving ground for a potential franchise quarterback which also stunts the quarterback’s growth. Jameis Winston had 3 head coaches and four offensive coordinators in his five seasons with Tampa Bay before they decided to give up on him when Tom Brady chose the Bucs. Justin Herbert is going to throw more touchdowns this year in LA with a new coaching staff in just his second season but he’s also going to turn the ball over far more. These coaches are essentially being asked to groom a young quarterback for their replacement coach. I don’t think that is what former LA Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn had in mind when he decided to take their lumps with a rookie Herbert who compiled a lot of statistics but they didn’t equal wins. It begs the question that fans and coaches alike should ask regularly.

   

  

   

  “Who cares if he’s the quarterback of the future; does he give me the best chance to win now?”

   

  If this question was asked more often than a lot of fan bases would be happy because their team would be winning more. The coaches would not be worried about sacrificing wins for development which would lead to more job security. We would also really know who the best coaches were based on how they developed game plans to utilize the quarterbacks who gave them the best chance to win. Winning should be the great deodorizer but in the NFL a quarterback’s ability to be the “face of the franchise” seems to be just as important as their on-field ability. This is why players like Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts continue to be doubted as franchise quarterbacks while people still hold out hope for Sam Darnold and think Tayson Hill just needs a consistent opportunity to play the position to be successful. Jackson and to a lesser extent Hurts do not have the requisite look of a franchise QB. For others like Tyrod Taylor, Teddy Bridgewater, Baker Mayfield, Ryan Tannehill and Jacoby Brissett they don’t put up the flashy numbers that make fans swoon but when healthy, they can run an offense well and usually keep their team in a game. There’s value in those abilities as well and a ton of talented players like that in college who get overlooked for some project who has the look.

   

  Two seasons ago quarterback Tyler Huntley was a Pac-12 first team selection in his senior season. He was named a third team All American. Yet when the 2020 draft rolled around he was not invited to the combine and was not selected in the draft. He had to sit and watch a quarterback he outplayed in the Pac-12 (Herbert) go top 10 and a bunch of other names that he undoubtedly never heard of be drafted while he waited for an undrafted free agent offer from Baltimore who already had three quarterbacks on the roster. In the three games where he has received significant playing time, he has performed like a starting quarterback in the NFL but this offseason, even if another team brings him in, you will hear people say things like they say about Hurts, “He’s capable but the team still needs to draft a franchise quarterback.” 

   

  So much draft capital has been wasted on quarterbacks who are not playing. In San Francisco the 49ers have a championship caliber team. They have a quarterback who is a liability in the biggest moments. Instead of upgrading the position this season, they decided to take a quarterback in Trey Lance that they have no intention of playing. They could have used that top five draft pick to bring in other talent that could make life easier on the quarterback that they chose to stick with. They were knocking on the door just a few years ago and Garropolo was the reason they did not bring home the trophy. So why not bring in someone who could possibly take him out of the equation either because you don’t need much from him or you have upgraded from him. It feels like it has already come back to bite them. Especially with how tight the playoff race is this season in the NFC. 

   

  Is a franchise quarterback, a franchise quarterback if he is not winning games? What about if he is not playing? Do statistics make a player a franchise quarterback? Or should the attributes that make a quarterback “franchise” worthy be based on how they fit within the framework of a particular team’s scheme? Philadelphia or Baltimore may not break any passing records, but they sure do seem difficult to beat when Hurts and Jackson are behind center. Both teams were also smart enough to put backups in place that allowed them the chance to have success even if the starter is out. That’s proper planning. Because not every team gets lucky enough to get Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady. The rest just need to focus on winning games the best way possible.

   

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  Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.

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• Gene Therapy: Against The Grain

  Dec 17, 2021 Gene Clemons 1 Comments

  

   

  by Gene Clemons

   

  With a stroke of a pen, the college recruiting landscape was flipped on its head during the early signing period. Consensus number one overall player Travis Hunter decided to take his talents to…….Jackson Mississippi? That’s right! The 6’1” 160-pound cornerback shunned the advances of Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, and every other major Power Five player in college football. On signing day, the Collins Hill High School product turned his back on his long time commitment to Florida State and at his ceremony flung the FSU hat off the table, caught the Jackson State “J” hat flying at him from off stage and revealed the “I believe” tee that he was wearing underneath his jacket. 

   

  It was a banner day for Hunter who stole the entire day. It was another step for Coach Prime to show that what they were doing in the spring was not a fluke but in fact a new normal and a warning to the establishment that they and subsequently other HBCU programs would have to be respected as a legit factor in recruiting. It was celebrated by countless people who considered it a win for all HBCU’s and a win for the culture. But any time you upset the “natural order” the ugly never takes long to appear. The negative shots always start subtle and then crescendos to blatant full-fledged disrespect. 

   

  The first slight came when ESPN announced him as the second ranked player in the country. It's not that various scouting services are always aligned but when the news announces something it is usually based on the consensus. Whether it was done purposefully to lessen the magnitude of the moment or not, we will never know but it was not lost on people who followed the timeline of the announcement. 

   

  The second came with backlash from Florida State fans who declared Deion Sanders public enemy number one and denounced him as a true Seminole. "How could he do this to us?" Was a familiar phrase posted among the social media posts. The Twitter space titled "Fire Mike Norvell" flooded with people who believed there must be something wrong with the 'Noles coach if he is losing recruits to an HBCU.

   

  The disrespect continued to go deeper. The rumors that a significant corporate involvement by Barstool Sports in conjunction with Coach Prime funded an NIL deal that lured Hunter away from FSU or the other P5 suitors and delivered him to Jackson State. People commenting that Hunter will be in the transfer portal next season and that Coach Prime bought Hunter permeated throughout social media and on mainstream media debate platforms. It reached a climax when radio personality and former college basketball player Doug Gottlieb compared choosing a top FCS HBCU over a P5 school to choosing a Jewish D3 school over a P5. He also said that the decision was an obvious mistake. 

   

  The question becomes why? Why is it a mistake? Let’s examine some reasons people lay out and debunk these baseless premises. 

   

  There’s more exposure at a P5. False

   

  This is usually the first point that the uninformed make. Exposure is relative to talent. Many of these top talents don’t need a college to provide exposure anymore. They do it themselves. Many of the top recruits in college athletics have thousands upon thousands of followers. It could be argued that they help the needle move at the school they attend. This is a dilapidated way of thinking that predates the social exposure world we live in now. In this particular case, no school, including the P5 best teams, received more exposure than Jackson State since the arrival of Coach Prime. 

   

  You have a chance to play in front of large crowds full of adoring fans. True but…

   

  Have you ever been in a packed stadium of 50,000 and a packed stadium of 90,000? Both create a seemingly deafening sound. Both are electric. But the opportunity to play in front of a packed stadium full of faces that don’t look like you will never trump the feeling of a packed stadium full of people who look like your mother and father or could be a cousin. Do the fans at Florida State love you, or do they love what you can do for their team. The fans at an HBCU rock with you and want to see you succeed because they feel like when you succeed, they succeed. That feeling can not be usurped by a few thousand more people in the stands. 

   

  The education is better. False

   

  This is one of the most infuriating lies that many of these schools tell. Very similar to the lies that private schools tell players in high school, the idea that your education is better because it might cost more money is preposterous. HBCU’s have been recruiting and producing some of the best and brightest in all fields for many decades. They have done that for many years while being denied the same federal and state funding as their PWI contemporaries. It has long been preached that when you are black you have to work twice as hard to make the same mark in the world so HBCU’s prepare their students for the rigors of being black in a world that is already difficult. When they emerge, they are usually well versed in their field and ready to conquer the world. Which is why there are so many alumni doing well for themselves. 

   

  The coaching is better. False

   

  We have all heard the saying, “It’s not the X’s and O’s, it’s the Jimmys and Joes.” We make coaching important whenever we want to make the argument but in college normally it comes down to who can recruit better. It is no coincidence that when PWI’s were not accepting black players, HBCUs fielded mighty teams. Segregation saw these same school pilfer talent like a midnight raid at an auction house. They left HBCU’s to fight for talent that used to routinely populate their rosters. The coaching did not improve, the players did. But for the sake of argument in this case Hunter is a defensive back. He gets an opportunity to be mentored and taught by the greatest defensive back of all time who happens to be a meticulous student of the game and tireless worker. No other school on the planet can offer him that level of coaching. 
  

   

  Why would these P5 schools spend millions of dollars just on recruiting budgets every year if they were not setting up the opportunity to make that money back 100-fold? The recruiting budgets of programs like Alabama and Georgia hover around three million per year but the amount of money they generate is in the 100 million range. Their care for the player is based on the ability to continue to generate that type of money. How disastrous would it be for the P5 if all of these top recruits decided to follow Hunter to HBCU’s? The endorsement dollars and television rights deals follow the talent so don’t expect these schools to take this move by Jackson State lightly. They will hit back. They have already planned their smear campaign if things don’t work out. They will conveniently forget what just happened at Ohio State where a quarterback went to the school to get his million dollar NIL deal and the next season he was in the transfer portal. They will forget BYU brokering a deal to pay the tuition of all of their walk-ons essentially giving the team unlimited scholarships. They will overlook the NIL deal that Texas brokered for ever offensive linemen who attended the school in Austin. 

   

  The truth is they have no choice but to fight. They can’t afford to lose these assets, they can’t imagine life where they actually need to develop players and be patient with the process of building a team when you can’t infuse it with the best players in the country year after year. Congratulations to Travis Hunter for going against the grain. You can believe he will not be the last one.

   

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  Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.

   

   

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• Gene Therapy: Time For HBCU Football to Bump Up!

  Dec 11, 2021 Gene Clemons 0 Comments

  

   

  by Gene Clemons

   

  Every season when we arrive at the postseason for college football, the lack of representation for HBCU’s is staggering. Yes, the Celebration Bowl exists but that only spotlights two teams. This season the SWAC was “fortunate” enough to get a representative in the FCS Playoff. Florida A&M was a top 25 team and because of the way the first round is set up, not only did they have to go on the road, they were given a difficult first round opponent because of proximity. Meanwhile Holy Cross and Sacred Heart were able to play each other and neither one of them were ranked. The disrespect for HBCU programs in the FCS Playoffs is a yearly tradition which sparked the creation of the Celebration Bowl but it is just not enough. There's not enough exposure and nowhere near enough revenue generated through sponsorships and television rights. 

  At the Division 2 level it is even worse because there are no automatic bids. So the CIAA and the SIAC have been consistently squeezed out of playoff slots. This year Savannah State had a great season and didn't get a bid to the postseason. Albany State and Bowie State were the only representatives from HBCU's and they were both put against D2 playoff staples.

  Without much in the way of postseason representation how do these teams get to prove their mettle when the most eyes are on them? Recruiting the best and brightest has been a mission that Coach Prime has rejuvenated and we can already see the results rippling throughout the landscape. But regardless of what is said, how can you tell a student to turn down a scholarship to Ole Miss or Miss State to go to Jackson State. It is hard enough to get them to choose the Tigers over Southern Miss. At the end of the day the SWAC and MEAC both are FCS conferences and therefore considered lower than FBS programs. So that is always the trump card FBS teams play when recruiting the best. At the lower level they use playoff berths to out recruit HBCU programs. Because they can not attract the best talent the teams lose and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and it is all recycled and used to continually paint HBCU programs in a negative light. 

  So what happens when a team begins to win? You would think everything would open up for them but unfortunately the preconceptions still exist and it is almost impossible to shake unless you do something to shake it. You have seen in recent years HBCU programs leave HBCU conferences with the belief that inclusion would allow them to further thrive but it has not taken shape. Storied programs like Tennessee State, Hampton and North Carolina A&T are treated as if they don’t belong in their new conferences.

  For years despite the product on the field fans have flocked to HBCU games. The pageantry that is supposed to surround college football is alive and well at HBCU’ s everywhere. The attendance numbers at many HBCU games rival or even eclipse those of teams in the Group of Five at the FBS level. The pageantry and fanfare at programs like Grambling, Southern, FAMU, Jackson State, Alabama State and so many more can make a tailgating situation outside of your favorite G5 school look like a mere picnic. After all, HBCU games are not just limited to the game itself. It is the night before and the night after. It is a true weekend experience when you talk about the football season at an HBCU. So why should the SWAC as the number one conference in attendance in the FCS subject itself to the Orphan Annie treatment at the hands of a lesser level. It is time to bump up and while doing so create a system that dramatically closes the gap between the FBS PWI and the new FBS HBCU’s.

  So how would it work? The college football landscape is changing and now is the time to jump up. It's not like the FBS is full of traditional historic conferences. Many have only been around for a short time so adding another conference would not hurt. Especially when that new conference would bring in attendance numbers better than the MAC. The SWAC has the most teams ready to jump to the FBS based on the teams that we've seen make the move recently. The conference would take a contingency of teams from all of the HBCUs and create a super conference of 16 teams divided into two divisions.

  The new FBS SWAC would be: Jackson St, Alabama St, Alabama A&M, Grambling, Southern, Alcorn St, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Texas Southern, Prairie View A&M, Florida A&M, Tennessee St, Hampton, North Carolina A&T, South Carolina St, Morgan State, and Delaware State.

   The new FCS MEAC would include: Bethune Cookman, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina Central, Howard, Norfolk State, Savannah State, Fort Valley State, Albany State, Morehouse, Miles, Kentucky State, Lane, Bowie State, Fayetteville State, Virginia Union, Virginia State.

   The new SWAC as a FBS to schedule a Power Five conference team and not cost them strength of schedule because they played an FCS school. That would allow these HBCU’s to still take guaranteed pay games.. They could then schedule a FCS from the new MEAC and guarantee them a payoff that would help their bottom line. The FCS teams could do the same if they scheduled the remaining D2 schools for a pay game. It would allow every team to increase their revenue and demand a place at the table of the level they are at. It is a "for us by us" philosophy that may never come to fruition. People should ask themselves why it doesn't make sense when we consider that three teams who do not draw nearly as well as some HBCU squads are about to ascend to the FBS with nothing more than hope. 

  The time is now for HBCU teams. They are raising the bar with coaches who move the needle. Coach Prime has paved the way for Eddie George and Hue Jackson to join the ranks. They have shed light on the other talented coaches already at HBCU programs and that has helped to increase the talent pool attending those schools but that only scratches the surface. They have already begun to position themselves by galvanizing a strong conference. They should not let the train pass them by. 

   

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  Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.

   

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• New Podcast Series from CWN Sports Writer - Gene Clemons!

  Dec 7, 2021 CWN Publisher 0 Comments

  New Podcast Series from CWN Sports Writer Gene Clemons!

  In this first episode of the Gene Therapy Podcast. Coach Gene Clemons is joined by Malik Spann of Blitz magazine and fellow CWN Sports podcast host and Chris James host of the Chopping It Up w/ CJ podcast to expand on the column "Where Are All the Brothers At?" They talk about the lack of black coaches in college and the NFL, why there is such a disparity, the impact it has and what can be done to rectify the situation. Come have a session.

  About Gene

   

  Coach Gene Clemons has lived on all sides of sports. He starred as a three-sport athlete in high school (football, basketball and track) and college where he majored in Journalism and Theater. After college he began his career as a teacher, coach, and journalist. In his 17-year professional career, Clemons has coached several future division one and NFL talents. He's been a head football, basketball and track coach, written for several local and national publications and broadcast football, basketball, baseball and track events. His daily Talk Spicy podcast is a morning staple for those in the sports world and his YouTube channel Coach Gene Clemons is a growing entity where you can find everything from prep broadcasts to his whiteboard breakdowns X and O The Joe's. CGC brings the unique perspective of someone who's experienced sports from all sides and his honest and raw emotion for the intersection of sports and culture shines through.

  CLICK ON THE IMAGE  TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST.

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  Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.

   

   

   

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• Gene Therapy: Where Are All the Brother's At?

  Dec 3, 2021 Gene Clemons 0 Comments

  

  The Issue!

   

  When the rumors began to trickle out that Marcus Freeman would be the next head football coach at Notre Dame, I was happy for him and even more happy for us. “Hey, we’ve got one!” That’s what I told a colleague jokingly; but as I began to raise my hands in triumph, I realized that this in itself was the problem. After all, why should a black man being hired to coach a team in a sport dominated by black men elicit such joy? Even at Notre Dame, a university where the team tends to be filled with more white players than people of color, it is almost an even split. It’s a surprise because when you get past the newly hired Freeman, and a couple other names around the landscape, it becomes extremely difficult to drum up names of coaches who look like the majority of the players on the teams. 

   

  More disturbing is that we hear about all of these up and coming coordinators, these fast risers, the coaches who are destined to be head coaches and none of them seem to be black. We see people get head coaching jobs who seem to have come out of nowhere and yet, still no jobs for black coaches. Even the lower level coach who is killing it or in some cases just doing a decent job. The white coaches seem to find that upward mobility much faster than black coaches or even worse, the black coach never gets the opportunity to reach that level. As a black coach, it is disappointing to not see men who look like me given the same opportunities to lead programs. So the Freeman hire gets reduced to throwing us a bone. It will be applauded and spoken about as if this is a point in history when everything changed but this yearly game of coaching musical chairs will undoubtedly end as it usually does every season. Most of the black coaches will be left standing and looking with no seat to sit in while they look at other coaches who never have to worry about finding a seat. 

   

  The Effect!

   

  The lack of minority leaders in this game has a deleterious effect on the young men who play the game. We have been programmed to believe that it is the league or bust and that making it to the league is achieved only through playing. Many black players don’t think about coaching or other jobs in sports until they have exhausted every other avenue to play the game. Why is that? When most black kids start playing the game, the youth league is full of strong black coaches with magnetic personalities who are looking to give back and set an example. But, as those young black kids progress they see less and less black men in charge. The high school level has a ton of black coaches but far less black head coaches and hardly any at the well-respected or well-funded schools. When they get to college, outside of the HBCU’s you will be hard pressed to find a wealth of black head coaches at any level. So who do they have to look up to in the profession; who do they gleam their example from? For most of my life I never believed a black man could be president but when I was in my mid-20’s I saw it happen. Over those eight years the amount of young black people who became more involved or interested in politics was astronomical. You can point to the interest and involvement in Golf once Tiger Woods came on the scene. Black men in football need to see black leaders in order to understand with certainty that they too can lead a football team. 

   

  The Solution!

   

  As always, complaining about a problem without a solution is useless. What makes this problem difficult is that there does not seem to be an easy solution in place. It is not as easy as just saying “hire more black head coaches.” I really wish it was but the problem is not a lack of qualified candidates like many would have you believe. We routinely see qualified black coaches in the NFL passed over for lesser experienced white coaches who have been deemed geniuses. We have seen the goal post move from defense to offense to special teams when it has suited those making the choices. The problem is value. The decision makers don’t see the value in hiring a black coach because they are getting the commodity without the black coach. But what would happen if the commodity dried up except in places where there were black coaches? Would that not streamline the process of more programs grabbing black coaches to lead their team? If at the end of the day: great players equal wins, wins equal eyeballs, and eyeballs equal dollars; then the solution is simple. Unfortunately the execution is hard. 

   

  As with most movements for equality, the youth must lead the way. The highly touted prospects need to shun schools being led by coaches who don’t look like him. Imagine if Notre Dame landed the top recruiting class four years in a row based solely off of who the coach was at the school. Copycat syndrome would ensue and other universities would follow suit. Imagine if the HBCU’s, who are already among the largest attendance-drawing FCS programs in the country, began to get four and five star talent regularly and directly out of high school. The landscape of the FCS would change so fast that the entire SWAC and MEAC might decide to go to the FBS that would then mean more scholarships and more of the best and brightest taking their talents to places like FAMU and North Carolina A&T. We have seen the impact that Coach Prime and his staff have made in less than a year at Jackson State. It would not take long. But it would mean that some of these young men would need to prioritize the cause, over 100 million dollar facilities. The allure of places like Georgia is not the history because as black people we understand there was a time when we were not welcome there. The allure is the amenities and the perceived fast track to the NFL. The truth is that the NFL doesn't care where you play, they care that you can play. So they will go where the talent is. As for the amenities, they follow the money and the money follows the talent. 

   

  Years ago, when one athletics program integrated, it was not long before the other programs followed suit. Why? Because the teams with black players were better. In the end it has always been about talent. The talent on the field will always trump the talent on the sidelines because in honesty at the collegiate level there is not a chasm between the winning coaches and the losing one's abilities, there’s usually a gap in talent. How long do you think it would take for these programs to start hiring black head coaches, if it meant keeping the talent coming?

   

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  Gene Clemons is a Sports Analyst and Contributor to CWN Sports. His weekly column and podcast - Gene Therapy focuses on Sports, Politics and Social/Urban issues.

   

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