SIDELINE SLANTS- What a lot of teams need is to hire a ‘common-sense’ coach

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOE KLEINSASSER
Fans lose it frequently. Athletes lose it on occasion. Coaches can lose it, and so too, can sportswriters. And everyone questions if officials ever had it.

It’s common sense.

Consider the following scenario that occurs quite often in college and professional football. Team B trails by 10 points in the final two minutes, but drives inside Team A’s 25-yard line.

Rather than kick a quick field goal, most teams try to score a touchdown. They either wind up with no points, or score a touchdown with little-to-no time left on the clock.

Except for the point spread, what difference does it make it you lose by three or seven?

The only way to play it is to immediately kick a field goal and try an onside kick with time to throw a couple of Hail Marys. Although odds are still long, at least you have a chance.

Common sense also escapes coaches when managing the clock. New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin recently messed up the use of timeouts when trailing against the Colts in the first week of the season.

Here’s what happened: The Colts ran a play that finished with 2:48 on the clock, followed by Coughlin calling time at 2:45. That did absolutely no good, thanks to the 45-second play clock. The Colts ran the next play and the clock didn’t stop until the required 2-minute warning.

If the Giants coach had waited for the 2-minute warning and then called timeout on the next Colts play, he would have saved about 40 seconds.

I like the suggestion by ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons. Why don’t teams hire a common-sense coordinator, just a logical person who stands near the coach and handles timeouts, the 2-point conversion chart and any scenario involving the challenge flag?

The common sense coordinator also could advise the coach, “Hey, we’re up 40 points and it’s the fourth quarter. Maybe we should pull some of our starters to keep them healthy and run some time off the clock.”

Or, “Coach, I know you love that dive play, but it hasn’t worked the first 10 times we tried it tonight. Maybe you should try something else.”

And if the head coach loses his composure during a lopsided loss, rather than watch him berate the officials, the common-sense coordinator could say, “Coach, save your breath for a time when we’re not getting blown out and it means something.”

In basketball, a common-sense coordinator might remind the head coach that it would be wise to call off the full-court press when he’s winning by 30 with only a few minutes left in the game.

Of course, being a common-sense coordinator isn’t as easy as you might think. Just what is common sense anyway? If it’s so common, why do so many politicians, government officials, coaches, sportswriters, fans and players seem to lack it?

After all, President Bush and other government leaders probably thought they were using common sense and supposedly reliable information in determining that Iraq had and wouldn’t hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction.

At least in sports, a lack of perceived common sense doesn’t result in decisions of life-and-death importance.

As it turns out, our greatest enemy may be weapons of mass distraction. Rather than discuss the real and weighty issues of the day, most of us can talk ad nauseam about debatable decisions made by players, coaches and officials on the playing field.

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