Collegiate Times

Well, thank goodness the NFL season is finally over. Now I can tune into ESPN and catch coverage of college basketball. Nope. Hockey? Nope. Spring Training? Not a chance The NFL? Oh.

When did the NFL season become more year-round than sunrises. Seriously, over the next, as far as I can tell, month, SportsCenter will be running a short snippets each day about every NFL team. It’s everyone’s favorite experts, Sean Salisbury, John Clayton, Todd McShay and Michael Smith, breaking down the 2006 season and looking ahead to the 2007 season. Already.

First off, I don’t know about you, but for me, the 2006 season did a pretty good job of breaking down the 2006 season. Those standings really showed me how good each team was.

Normally, I would just ignore SportsCenter’s desperate grasp for anything NFL, but last Tuesday, I could not ignore.

That day’s recap covered my favorite team, the Washington Redskins, 2006 season slogan: “Oops.”

First off was Sean Salisbury, grading the season. He said the Redskins deserved a C minus for their 5-11 performance. Look, Sean Salisbury should never be allowed to discuss the NFL, since he’s about as knowledgeable as a panda bear is about, well, the NFL. This past summer, before the start of the season, he declared the Redskins the third best team in the NFL, during SportsCenter’s “Ultimate Depth Chart.”

Oops. I get the feeling if Salisbury were teaching a physics class he’d give Stephen Hawking a D.

If you don’t recall the NFL depth chart, during the summer months, the experts at ESPN ranked every NFL team in five major categories: The brilliant results? Seven of this year’s playoff teams were ranked outside of the top 12. The Arizona Cardinals were ranked eleventh six spots ahead of the Chicago Bears.

Predicting the NFL is a crapshoot, and I proved this over the summer, when in a column (what you don’t check out colllegiatetimes.com over break) I predicted, by flipping a quarter, that the New York Jets and New Orleans Saints would make the playoffs. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, except when you work for ESPN and still believe you are right.

Exhibit A: Sean Salisbury called the Redskins season a failure. For once he’s right. But in 2004 he predicted they would make the playoffs. They didn’t. In 2005, he predicted they wouldn’t. They did. In 2006 he predicted they would. They didn’t. He makes John Kerry look steady. I don’t need your opinion.

It didn’t end there. SportsCenter’s barrage continued with Clayton, discussing the Redskins free agency plans. He declared that the Redskins would be relatively quiet in free agency this offseason.

That’s quite a bold prediction, because the Redskins are to free agents as a bear is to salmon. Not only do they pick up as many as possible; they usually leave them for dead when they’re done.

John Clayton, who I like, has this one wrong and I expect a formal apology after Dan Snyder blows this year’s salary cap space on Asante Samuels, Lance Briggs, Mike Vanderjagt and the starting offense of the 1987 San Francisco 49ers.

It didn’t stop. Up next was the most ludicrous part of the segment, the Redskins 2007 NFL Draft analysis. If you follow the Redskins, you’ll realize that they regard draft picks like rich people do lottery tickets.

However, with the sixth pick in this year draft, ESPN’s Todd McShay (yea I’ve never heard of him either) predicted the Redskins would pick Clemson’s Gaines Adams to improve their defensive line.

While they might do that, it’s more like that they’ll trade the pick away when Tennessee Titans offer at the last minute their seventh round pick, Jeff Fisher’s moustache and six dead cows.

Unfortunately, the last of the ESPN experts, Michael Smith came in to tell us how the 2007 Redskins would fare. Already, only nine days after the Super Bowl, before free agency, the draft and any semblance of game planning has begun, Michael Smith already knows. Of course, he picked the Redskins to win the NFC East last year, which they only did the exact opposite. He’s been studying under the school of Salisbury.

This year, he went out on a limb, declaring that the Redskins would be “a bit better than last year.”

Yahoo. 4-12, here we come.