The Final GPR, Shirt Pocket Notes, and an Absent Friend, Grant Jackson

We are a little over 72 hours away from the ultimate game*, so it's time for the final Grandstander Power Rankings of the season.

Short and sweet:

1. Chiefs
2. Bucs

It's hard to differentiate these two teams at this point, and it's hard to put any team ahead of another team that has Tom Brady at quarterback, but there you are.  I think that this is a terrific match-up and that it's going to be a terrific game.  At this point, I am leaning towards the Chiefs, but will reserve my official prediction until Saturday or maybe even Sunday morning.

Patrick Mahomes vs. Tom Brady.  Couldn't get much better.

* I believe that it was Duane Thomas, the iconoclastic Dallas Cowboys running back of the 1970's, who said "If it's the ultimate game, why are they playing another one next year?"  I don't think that the powers-that-be in the NFL much appreciated that remark at the time.

********

Now for some shirt pockets notes that have been accumulating over the last couple of weeks.....

The Jacksonville Jaguars made a huge off season splash by hiring Urban Meyer to be their new head coach.  It will be fascinating to watch Meyer, who was, and presumably still is, a total control freak as a college head coach, as a first time professional coach.  It has been reported that after completing seasons with records like 11-1 or 12-2 in college, not untypical for him, Meyer would spend the entire off season obsessing over the games that his teams lost. It would inevitably lead to "health issues" that would cause him to resign his coaching positions.  How is that mindset going to translate on the pro level with a team that will probably lose more games in 2021 that Meyer's college teams lost in any given five or six given seasons?  Meyer's worst season as a college coach was in 2010 at Florida, when the Gators went 8-5, a season which lead to Meyer's health issues and resignation.  In seven seasons at Ohio State, Meyer went 83-9, plus 5-2 in Bowl games.  Eleven losses in seven years.  That ain't gonna happen in Jacksonville, not anytime soon, anyway.

Also, Meyer will not be able to out-recruit the NFL as he was able to do in the Big Ten or SEC.  Plus, professional players making hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars are going to be more likely to tell him to pound sand with his my-way-or-the-highway approach to coaching than a bunch of scholarship student-athletes on college campuses.

Meyer can coach on the college level, no question about that, but he's never done it on the pro level, so  this is going to be an interesting lab experiment to watch over the next few seasons.  Not sure what the length of his Jax contract is, but I'm betting he won't serve the full term of it.

********

The Pittsburgh Pirates began making news starting on Christmas Eve when they traded current "Face of the Franchise" Josh Bell to the Washington Nationals.   There then followed January trades of Joe Musgrove to the Padres and Jameson Taillon to the Yankees.  These three trades netted ten  "prospects", some of them highly regarded, for the Pirates.  Throw in the 2020 trade of Starling Marte to the Diamondbacks for prospects, and it becomes obvious what GM Ben Cherrington is attempting to do: a complete teardown of any tangible assets the team may have in an effort to restock the farm system and then become serious contenders by 2023 or 2024.

It's a great idea, in theory, and I hope it works, but in the meantime, it is going to mean seeing some very bad baseball teams plying their trade at PNC Park over the next few years.  Also, it is sad to see guys like Bell and Taillon being sent packing, because once, THEY were the young stars of the future around whom the Pirates would be building championship caliber teams.  How did that work out?

All three of the players sent away by GMBC are going to teams that figure to be contenders this coming season, so they are no doubt thrilled with the opportunity to escape Bob Nutting's Ship of Fools.  Good for them.  For Pirates fans, 2021 just promises to be another Groundhog Day season where the team will struggle to avoid 100 losses.

********

Speaking of the 2021 baseball season, isn't it fun reading about how the owners and players are engaged in yet another pissing contest over the terms of the upcoming season in a nation that is still gripped in the clutches of a pandemic and public health crisis.  Just like the lead up to the shortened 2020 season.  And a preview to the Armageddon that is sure to ensue after the 2021 season when the CBA needs to be renegotiated.  It is almost as if the MLB Owners and the MLBPA actually want their sport to shrivel up and die.

I will normally always take the sides of the players in these sports labor-management dustups, but I am getting so tired of these annual dances that surround Major League Baseball.  They will get around to playing games in 2021, and I will no doubt be watching intently, as I always have, but the day is surely coming when we will be subjected to these unseemly discussions, the game will come back, and the people are going to say "You know what?  I just don't care,"  and they will choose to watch NBA Summer League games and MLS instead.  I think that day has already arrived for people under the age of forty or so.

********

Finally, we bid good-bye to former Pirates pitcher Grant Jackson, who died this week of COVID related symptoms at the age of 78.  Jackson was a member of Pirates 1979 World Series Championship team, the winning pitcher in Game Seven, and for that alone he deserves recognition.  Another fact that I had forgotten was that Jackson also pitched in the 1971 World Series against the Pirates as a member of the Baltimore Orioles.  Jackson spoke of several occasions to the Pittsburgh SABR Chapter, and he was always an entertaining and lively speaker.  He was a part of a panel discussion on the '79 team at the SABR National Convention held in Pittsburgh in 2017.  After his career ended, Jackson remained in Pittsburgh and served as a vital member of the Pirates Alumni, the Pirates Fantasy Camp, and in Community Relations for the team.

Farewell, Buck Jackson, and RIP.