The Only Thing: Jim Harbaugh's Success All That Matters

Bleacher Report wrote in 2012,

The point at which the world of professional sports diverges from the reality you and I know is how much a team is willing to tolerate if a player can help them win. There are countless examples of players whose bad behavior is overlooked as long as they produce. Once the points start to decline; when the 40 time starts to tick up...that's when bad behavior shifts from "disappointing" to "unacceptable."

So... as long as someone is contributing to your winning ways, you keep him. While he has the talent to help your organization, his personality and approach should not be criticized.

According to popular media and the fans who cannot think for themselves, this is the conclusion when it comes to San Francisco 49er head coach Jim Harbaugh.

But if you are going to say that about Harbaugh... if you want to say winning isn't everything, it's the only thing... then say it for athletes who do dumb, even criminal things.

Yea, an also-ran player who can't get it done on the court or field -- get rid of him, when he runs up against the law or is even just shown to have a bad attitude, isn't that right? However, an athlete who can go into beast mode should be "acceptable," no matter what.

Say it's all about winning instead of being furious at Ray Lewis for ten years after his blood-soaked night. Say that about Michael Vick and his dogs, instead of being angry that the NFL allowed him another chance... or about any number of troubled athletes with elite talent.

 

"But Harbaugh hasn't done anything to break a law or be moronic," you might say, "he is just hard to get along with. That's not really a problem."

 

Then why are Terrell Owens and Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson so despised? Why do NBA fans have such a love-hate relationship with the do-it-my-way Allen Iverson?

 

"Those guys didn't help their teams win."

Really? Their on-the-field numbers were pretty amazing. Whether you think they were too individualistic in play or personal behavior is simply your opinion.

"Yea, but... they blew up locker rooms, they were not 'team guys', they were distractions."

 

So Harbaugh's Chucky, Junior act isn't a distraction? So the reports that the coach "wears people out" and seems to not care about the defensive half of his team is team-friendly? Why would the Niner organization allow all of these negative stories to leak out about him if there wasn't fire beneath the smoke?

"Coach Harbaugh wins everywhere he goes and wins immediately. The University of San Diego won conference titles under his leadership. Stanford went from being dogs to humiliating Pete Carroll's USC Trojans at USC. And now Harbaugh has brought the Niners to the brink of three consecutive Super Bowls! He was one play away from winning one of them!"

And to do that, he has shown himself to be someone who is divisive and nearly impossible to get along with.

"Come on, man. Use wisdom. All successful men are tortured by the need to dominate. All powerful people are Type A personalities.  You deal with that to get what you want."

Okay, but who draws that line of what to accept, and how much?

This is not picking on Jim Harbaugh. If the everyday person's words, actions and attitudes were picked apart the way sports celebrities get dissected, few would escape unscathed. It is meant to poke at us, sports fans who have these weird standards that are just indefensible.

The bottom line is: We are in a culture where anything can be justified if we like the person. Right now, Harbaugh still is liked by most media talking heads and football fanatics. He is a "winner," and until that perception shifts (likely because of the same press that now deifies his coaching success), the answer we will hear is, Keep him and dump anyone in his way.

Super Bowl 2013: Predictions and Notes

Running tab of the big game:

PRE-GAME
First take: Ravens 31, 49ers 27. 

The experts seem to be picking San Fran based on overall talent. A few took Baltimore because of the emotive factor: Ray Lewis is playing his last game and the team has rallied behind him since his retirement announcement before the playoffs. I think the talent difference is overplayed on this stage. So is the 'win one for the Gip' stuff.

I tend to support people who are viciously, over-the-top hated, so I've got to admit that I'm rooting for Lewis a bit. Felt the same about LeBron James after the Cleveland exit, Terrell Owens being constantly blasted for his eccentric diva persona though he's never been in trouble or accused of PED use, etc. Self-righteousness stinks like roadkill.

Colin Kaepernick is cool and collected, but he's very young, and up against one of three Joe Cools in league history: Flacco. (Namath and Montana are the others, of course.) I think that will be the difference. Barely.

 

1ST Q

"Good drama would be kap gets hurt and smith comes and plays a strong game" says a text from my brother. Love that idea.

 

RayRay misses a couple of early open-field tackles and looked very slow. (ETA: He was pretty much at three-quarters speed of the other 21 players all game long.) Kinda deadens the whole PED thing, but the eye test is no proof when it comes to enhancers. I don't care what Bill Simmons says about before-and-after heads of athletes.

GoDaddy's shill Danica Patrick features model Bar Refaeli  and "Walter" trading spit in an irrelevant exercise. Refaeli must have needed a check badly. Can't even think of a good insult for this tripe. But then: It is GoDaddy.Their specialty is pushing out soft porn ads that have nothing to do with buying a web domain. Nothing to see here.

2ND Q

Back to back commercials with the usual agenda. Cross-dressing men eating Doritos...

...and then homoerotic Calvin Klein models. CK has always been mainstream porno.










Raven tight end Pitta catches a touchdown to put Baltimore up 14-3. I have a feeling that the Ravens better get a two or three-score lead... San Fran is a team that can be beat if they're up a bit. But if they're down in the fourth, they get all berserker (like their coach Jim Harbaugh) and score three times over the opponents' stupid prevent D.

Hyundai has an ad about every six commercials. None of them memorable; they're trying too hard. They must have spent their entire '13 budget; we'll see these spots all year.

"It's been chippy from the start," to paraphrase the CBS commentators. An on-the-field brawl after Ed Reed picked Kap off bring it to a head. That was the S.F. QB's first big mistake in his short and moist pro career... interesting to see how he reacts.

Kap has indeed looked just a tad hesitant after his high-stakes INT. Just a tad but enough to throw his timing off... then comes Flacco's TD pass to Jacoby Jones, where Jones burned Culliver twice. Been a while since I've seen a juke that good. Barry Sanders is smiling somewhere.

"Jim Harbaugh is going to eat the face off of a bench player to scare his team into playing better," I text my brother. Halftime score: 21-6.

HALFTIME SHOW

When Beyonce is involved, we are probably gonna see some satanic imagery. Remember last year's show with Madonna, Nicki Minaj and company--Baphomet worshippers galore. That was clearly a satanic ritual. Those who scoff at that simply are uninformed and have no idea what they are looking at. When we don't know something, we should find out about it.

Watch any of Beyonce's recent videos and know she is down with the beast, too. And no way will the agents of the prince of lies allow 100 million-plus viewers to avoid these symbols and sick agendas. No larger audience all year long. Can't-miss opportunity.

Twenty minutes later: More informed people than me will break this down. But first impressions reveal the usual homage to the enemy of mankind. Pyramid hand gestures and light shows... total absence of men and overwhelming feminine energy... nothing new here.

3RD Q
Not long after Jones' 109-yard kickoff return, most of the Superdome lights goes dark for a half-hour. (ETA: the official count was later changed to 108 yards.) Baltimore is up 28-6. The delay is obviously going to hurt the Ravens more, as they had ridiculously nice momenturm. Accident? Or conspiracy to prevent a total blowout game? It will be asked after this game. A conspiracy is simply a secret plan by two or more people, but that word makes "intelligent" people into mockers.

Paraphrasing commentator Phil Simms: The Ravens do a good collective job of keeping Kap from breaking a big one. It's been strange to see so many teams let him take the same angles toward the sidelines for 20-yard runs. Will be a lot of film on him... and Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, and Robert Griffin III too, of course. Defenses will catch up to these guys. At least as much as the league will allow.

As expected: Kap leads the Niners downfield, Michael Crabtree catches the TD, and the game has totally changed. It looks like the Ravens are going to fold faster than Superman on laundry day, to quote Bart Simpson. Ravens, 28-13, with 7:20 left in the quarter. I see the score being very close early in the fourth... Baltimore is taking their foot off the gas; the lights-out garbage was just in time for the Niners. So predictable.

Deion Sanders' "Leon Sandcastle" commercial is the only ad to get a positive reaction out of me so far. A forty-something rookie dominating the NFL combine... I like it. Every other commercial, as mentioned earlier, seems to be trying too hard. I guess if I paid hundreds of thousands per minute, I would sweat about making an impact too.

The Ravens are clinging to a 28-23 lead.

4TH Q

Still up 31-29 with under ten minutes to go, the Ravens have allowed 23 points in 12:00 of game time. They look totally shaken--or shook, as the rappers use to say. The first half fire is long gone. And I'll be surprised if Baltimore wins what looked like a sure thing not that long ago. Wow.

Fourth down, 1:49 to go, Kap in trouble, he floats a ball over Crabtree's head out of bound. What a thriller. Jim Harbaugh is crying about holding but 1) Crab was grabby too, and 2) the ball was out of bounds. It was uncatchable, even with a lay-out, fingertip catch, toe-dragging effort. A ref throws a flag in that situation, he should be fired. No ref threw. Ravens up, 34-29.

Baltimore runs three times and takes an intentional safety. San Fran didn't seem to see it coming and 8 of the last 12 seconds slip away before they push the punter out of bounds. Wow again.

The RayRay haters are frothing on the Inter-Web. And Jim is about to pop a vein. But then he always looks that way. He won't last long in this league with that kind of emotion and energy being constantly expended... just ask the original Chucky, Jon Gruden.

Baltimore wins, 34-31.