ON THE DL

Matt Sebek Co-Hosts to Talk About Charlie Weis, Bobby Bowden, Big Mac’s Return to StL, Jeter, Caray, Tiger and more...

Matt Sebek from JoeSportsFan.com fills in for Nick on today’s show to talk about coaches getting fired, Sportsmen of the Year and more on this Tiger Woods story.

First, we talk a lot about Charlie Weis and how, now that he’s been fired

from Notre Dame, he never really seemed to fit there. Doesn’t Notre Dame have a different standard of coach? Did Charlie Weis ever look like the head coach of Notre Dame? And this isn’t a weight issue -- it’s more a ‘rough around the edges’ issue. Notre Dame sells itself on prestige, and a guy like Weis -- Super Bowl rings and all -- does not exude the same prestige that Notre Dame wants people to think it still has.

You know who does -- Urban Meyer. Doesn’t that guy just look stoic. Professional. Shoot, Ty Willingham looked that way and obviously we know how that worked out. But methinks he had some other things working against him at Notre Dame.

But back to Weis...he just never looked like he was the right guy for the job. As Pat Forde wrote yesterday, he’s a great back room guy, but he doesn’t really look like a head coach. Especially at a place like Notre Dame.

We try to throw a list of names for the ND job together. Sebek brings up some pro names, but there is no way a pro coach would want to take less money to have to deal with all that pressure, and recruiting. It’s a no win situation, even if you have a winning record.

We also talk about the pending retirement of Bobby Bowden. Has the man called a play in the last decade? I’m not even sure he’s real at this point -- could an animatronic Bowden do any differently? It all circles the issue of what a coach is responsible for and at some point, how actually coaching has to be part of the head coach’s job.

Talkin Baseball:

Derek Jeter is the SI Man of the Year. Whoopie. There’s really nobody else we can think of who deserves it, but I take issue with awards like this being announced in November. What if, say, Tiger Woods had won the award. That’d look pretty silly right now, wouldn’t it?

But Jeter did have a pretty good year, what with the championship and the actress fiancee and the new stadium named after him. King of New York and all that junk.

Since Sebek is on the show, we talk about St. Louis and the recent news that Mark McGwire was hired as hitting coach. Does that absolve him of all wrongdoing in the mind of the team (and the league)? How much pull does Tony Larussa have with the local media to make sure that McGwire has a smooth transition into the role and isn’t bombarded? Will the local media be out for blood, or will they protect Mac from the national outlets who will undoubtedly swoop in?

And what about Albert Pujols? Was he okay with this? Is this his doing, and what does it say about the culture in the Cardinals locker room if Larussa is bringing back McGwire, thereby adding guilt by association to not only his name, but if you take a leap, anyone in the locker room,

Pujols included? By hiring McGwire, Larussa is saying that he doesn’t care about any of the steroid controversy and that he’ll happily bury his head in the sand like he was obviously doing with McGwire. So go ahead and take what you want to take, St. Louis. Your manager doesn’t care.

There are a lot of questions there. We try to answer most of them.

Oh, and we touch on Chip Caray leaving TBS’s national crew. I’ll never think of the word ‘fisted’ the same again.

Housekeeping:

We get Sebek’s take on the Tiger situation, namely why people are demanding that he speak. Isn’t this a duck and cover situation? And I come to find out that Richard Deitsch from SI, after pushing back an appearance on our show to ‘build more tension’ is on this week’s Joe Sports Fan show. Consider the tension built, Deitsch.

Thanks to Matt for filling in and thanks for listening.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009