Sunday Smorgasbord 1-3

• Happy New Year Ladies and Gentlemen.  We guess we'll launch into the Redskins scrubs being unable to hold off the Chargers scrubs and losing in the closing minutes yet again..  That's four times now this season where all the high regarded and touted defense had to do was hold a team off the scoreboard at the end of the game and the Redskins would have come away with a victory, but the defense just could not do it.  Yet people think the problem with this team is the offense.  Folks, the problems run deeper than the Head Coach and whoever is under center as the quarterback.  And if you're stewing over the "Fall from Grace"  this 4-12 record is still better than Norv Turner's first year mark of 3-13.  Now the speculation turns to just how quickly will Jim Zorn be fired and Mike Shanahan be introduced as Head Coach.  Hopefully Zorn will hold onto his job through the flight back to Dulles but with the Ashburn Circus, you never know.
• And speaking of Jim Zorn's successor, we're disgusted by some of the reaction to Jerry Gray "interviewing" for Jim Zorn's Head Coaching position while Jim Zorn was still officially Head Coach.  First of all, it was pretty much common knowledge that Zorn had to not only make the playoffs, but make a run in the playoffs to keep his job because he was almost fired at the end of last season.  So when the 2009 season started going down the tubes pretty quickly; nobody should be surprised that the Redskins started looking for their next Head Coach.  And when you consider that Vinny Cerrato was "resigned" in the middle of the season and replaced in only two hours by Bruce Allen and the Redskins were deemed in compliance with the Rooney Tokenism Rule; it again shouldn't come as any surprise that the Redskins were also looking for a new Head Coach at roughly the same time.  The idea that Gray is "traitor" or "backstabber" to Zorn, a Dead Coaching Walking, is just mystifying to us.  Every coach in Ashburn knew that they were on their way out and so it is no surprise that it turned into an "every man for himself" situation.  Yet there are also those who are calling Gray a "sellout" and "Uncle Tom" for allowing the Redskins to properly make a mockery of the Rooney Tokenism Rule.  Aside from the Redskins being denied the opportunity to hire whomever they want to hire as quickly as possible, we're wondering where the problem really is.  Is Jerry Gray the first person to be given a token interview?  What about the interview given to Gregg Williams two years ago?  If that wasn't the very definition of tokenism, we don't know what is, yet nobody was complaining about that.  We wonder why...
  
• And speaking of NFL overreach, the fact that the NFL is going to discuss teams already qualified for the playoffs with nothing left to gain resting their star players late in season before the playoffs start shows just how out of touch they really are.  If there was no benefit whatsoever to resting your players at the end of the season, it wouldn't occur because the NFL is nothing but a copycat league.  But for those who think that there's no way the NFL could enforce a rule dictating star player participation, keep in mind the Rooney Tokenism Rule.  Where does the NFL get off telling its clubs who they have to interview for certain positions within the club?  But getting back to the topic at hand, the NFL is talking about expanding the regular season to 18 games.  Does anybody think that the teams heading to the playoffs won't start phoning it in earlier?  But what we want to know is how can the NFL take a look at this "issue" with a straight face while it still has a league-wide policy requiring tickets to pre-season games to cost the exactly the same as regular season games?  Better yet, why hasn't anybody called the NFL on the carpet about this?
  
• One final note on the Ashburn Circus; if this report is true, that Defensive Coordinator Greg Blache really did twist Albert Haynesworth's comments into criticism of his team mates when Blache knew that Haynesworth was upset with him, Greg Blache should be fired as soon as the team plane arrives at the gate tonight.  While Haynesworth's comments were wrong, the last thing any coach should be doing is fostering dissent among his own players.  We understand that things are crazy in Ashburn and that the inmates run the asylum, but Blache was doubly wrong in what he did and totally unprofessional.  He should have been dismissed immediately for what he did.
• We watched more College Bowl Games on New Year's Day this year than we have in the past years and we have to admit, we were happy with the Rose Bowl because normally in these College Bowl Games, the teams are going at best 3/4's speed.  You occasionally get a situation where one team is going full speed against one that isn't and that's where your routs and major upsets come from.  But Ohio State and Oregon went at each other full speed and as a result it was a joy to watch.  Furthermore, we've also come to the conclusion that Joe Paterno over at State Penn is senile and has no idea what is going on around him after watching his on-field interviews during the Citrus Bowl.
•  And because we were watching College Football on Friday, that means we weren't watching the Winter Clunker in Fenway Park.  We were boycotting viewing the game because of the NHL's continuing to snub the Caps and A.O.  But we did see from the box score that the Ultimate Fighting on Ice Fans finally got their wish and that a fight occurred in the game.  We're hope you're happy and note that the Winter Olympics will have higher TV ratings than the Winter Clunker primarily because there won't be any fighting in the Olympics.  And while we have no reason to doubt Tarik El-Bashir when he says that the Caps are the frontrunners to play next year; we are not surprised in the least that A.O. could very well be forced to share the stage with Canadian Diving Team Captain, Lowblow Secondary Assist Cindy Crosby.  As we've shown over and over, the NHL just can't help itself in that regard.
• We also went to the bookstore on Friday trying to find the Tim Donaghy book.  We were surprised to find out that it was a "print on demand" book according to the Barnes and Noble we went to.  That means that the publisher doesn't bother printing the book until somebody orders a copy of it.  That seems like an odd way to publish a book but in this day and age of everything being digitized, we guess it only makes sense.  We just don't think that is a good way to get a book into circulation.
• And speaking of the decline in publishing, as everybody knows, the Washington Times put their Sports Section out to pasture on Friday.  It is a bit of a shame because the people over there did good work.  We also feel a little nostalgic about the section because many years ago the Times was willing to run a letter we sent to the Sports Editor that blasted Susan O'Malley's stewardship of the Caps ticket office.  Our vast network of spies and informants told us that the fallout from the letter made us persona non grata in the Caps offices at the same time but there were many people both inside and outside the organization who were happy at somebody finally saying what needed to said.  And that was what the Washington Times Sports Section was good for.  The Times was always more willing than the (Com)Post to call things as they were as they quickly got into hot water in Ashburn in the early days of Dan Snyder's ownership.  However, the Times also knew how to criticize without going to far overboard into outright negativity.  That is something that the (Com)Post and certain local acts on ESPN 980 haven't figured out.  The Times Sports Section would have never run a total hack job like the (Com)Post did with their ticket articles last year and you never saw them going as so far as to criticize everything about FedEx Field, including the P.A. announcer (whom we happen to think does a very good job).  They will be missed and hopefully they can give a boost to the folks over at the Washington Examiner.
• This week, the Caps host Montreal and Ottawa on Tuesday and Thursday night before traveling to Atlanta on Saturday night.  The Terp Men are off again this week before opening ACC play next Sunday at home against F$U on Fox Sportsnet.  The Terp women are in Raleigh facing the Wolfpack on Thursday night.
  
• As always folks, please send all comments, criticisms, questions, suggestions, corrections, and Facebook Friend requests (we never reject them, but take forever to check them) to "capsnut" over at gmail dot com.