They're Losers, Baby, So Why Don't We Help Them?

We all hear a lot about the big winners in professional sports. The Yankees and Braves grab all sorts of headlines. Ditto for the Lakers. Thank heavens the balance of power seems to have evened out in the NFL and we're not constantly bombarded with information about Brett Favre and Troy Aikman anymore.

I don't want to complain about the bad guys. Let the big bad Yankees get the biggest, baddest free agents. I'm not going to waste my time discussing any dominant team in the Big Three of professional sports this week. It's time for the little guys to shine - this week I'm talking about the big losers. As a additional favor to these pitiful organizations, I'll even offer a few suggestions on how to improve.

Let's start with football, as recently, teams seem able to rebound relatively quickly from poor seasons. Although they're struggling a bit now, the Rams serve as a model for success. They were in rough shape two seasons ago, and even worse for a long while prior to that.

Intelligent draft picks had a lot to do with pulling them out of the hole. All right, so you don't need to be a genius to know trading for Marshall Faulk may lead to fast improvement, but the acquisition of less obviously talented young players like Az Hakim and D'Marco Farr was key. The lesson? Hire a good talent scout.

The Eagles and Ravens are two of the biggest surprises in the league this year, mostly due to consistently strong defensive play. So it seems to be a simple solution for the cellar-dwellers, right? Stink it up during the season, get a good draft pick, and get yourself a linebacker and a cornerback!

If only it were so simple. The Patriots are the team that most obviously defies this logic. The defense is strong, especially the secondary. They've got a Pro-Bowler in Drew Bledsoe calling the shots, but essentially render him useless with a shoddy offensive line. On top of that, I gain more yards traversing my kitchen floor for a beer than their running backs gain on Sundays.

The Chargers face a similar predicament. No offensive line, no running game and to make things worse, they can't even claim the strong secondary the Pats can. Yikes. Oh wait, they also have the Ryan Leaf problem. He may have matured a little as a person but not quite as much as a quarterback. San Diego's got some serious deliberating to do in deciding how they'll use their number one pick in this year's draft.

Clearly these organizations need help. Since a football team is so multifaceted, one player doesn't have quite the impact he would on a basketball team. The key is to build the team in stages over the period of a couple years, Bill Parcells style. Fill gaping holes with draft picks and take a few chances on overlooked young guys. Make the scouts do the dirty work.

Speaking of dirty work, the Bulls have been the dirty birds in the NBA thusfar, sporting an embarrasing .111 winning percentage. This team is a bit of an enigma. Sure, Jerry Krause, the owner with the most chins in professional sports, promised a top-notch free agent pickup over the summer and his plans to acquire Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill bit the dust. But the Bulls have some talent. Elton Brand was a co-Rookie of the Year last year, Ron Artest was one of the best college players I had seen in some time while at St. John's and Ron Mercer has the talent to average 18-20 points a game.

So what's the problem? They look like they're playing in molasses. The Bulls look like they don't care, and that's the fault of Tim Floyd, their head coach, who's in the second year of his first NBA gig. He's continues to let Jamal Crawford, the eighth pick in last year's draft, ride the bench, while the starters display about as much heart as Skeletor on the court.

Another problem common to many of the NBA's lesser teams is the lack of a dominant presence in the paint. The Guiness Book of World Records lists Josh Nance as the world's tallest man at 7'8.² If that's not dominant, Vince Carter can't dunk. Consider the memo out to the Wizards, Clippers and Bulls - sign this guy, give him a #99 jersey, plop him in the paint and good things have to happen.

Good things didn't happen often for the Astros last year, who plummeted from a playoff appearance in 1999 to rock bottom last year. Part of their problem was economic. They simply didn't have the dough to hang on to Mike Hampton, Carl Everett and Derek Bell, dealing a severe blow to their hopes to compete with teams like Atlanta, the Mets and the Cardinals for coveted playoff spots. But who would have thought they'd be that bad?

This one's a little tougher to explain, especially since Houston still had All-Stars Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and Jose Lima on their roster. Much of the problem for the Astros seemed to revolve around psychological or personality issues, with Lima providing the most obvious example.

It certainly wasn't ³Lima time² very often last year, as the poor guy went winless throughout a large chunk of the season's first half, surrendering endless gopher-balls in the relentlessly hitter-friendly Enron Field. Spastic rookie catcher Mitch Meluskey didn't help much by ordering veterans around, drawing the ire of his teammates.

Luckily for the 'Stros, they have some expendable players, most obviously at shortstop where they have four mediocre guys competing for one starting job. The answer? Let one of them go and replace him with the best sports psychologist money can buy to calm Lima down and return him to '99 form. Give him a bonus if he gives good massages.

To the woeful organizations I've addressed, I hope this helps. Sure, some of these suggestions may seem off the wall, but shouldn't struggling teams be thinking in innovative ways to overcome their woes? Come to think of it, if an aforementioned club decides to drop a player from their roster in search of a private consultant, I just may consider myself available.