Pre-tentious

With the football season nearly over, I decided to decompress a little and take a break from blogging. Too many numbers running through my head and not enough brainpower to try and work through all of them, I guess, so I figured you'd be better off not reading anything from me than my trying to string together coherent thoughts linking a running back's skill to where his name comes in the alphabet (Adrian and Emmitt concur, though Walter disagrees) or about how penalties have little to no effect on how much a team wins.

Wait, that one's actually true. But I'll get into it tomorrow.

What I'd rather talk about right now, with the Super Bowl media frenzy in full force, is how little I care about said media frenzy these days. Apart from an occasional glance at Awful Announcing, I haven't paid any attention to the interviews, quotes, or special interest stories regarding the players and teams in Super Bowl XLIII. Hey, did you know Ken Whisenhunt used to be an assistant coach for the Steelers or that Kurt Warner used to stock grocery shelves? If you didn't, you've only had 8,671 chances to pick up on that information the last week and a half. It reminds me of the Chicago/Indianapolis Super Bowl a few years ago where we heard so many times that two black head coaches were in the Super Bowl that I half-wished Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith would have quit the week before the game and given way to white assistants.

On a broader note, though, it occurs to me that I've watched (and read) very little pre-game media coverage at all this year, and somewhat less post-game, as well. There was a time, back in high school and college, where I'd sit my butt down in front of the TV at 10 or 11 a.m. on Sunday (this was Central time) and not move for at least 10 hours, devouring ESPN's and the other networks' coverage of upcoming matchups, the games themselves, and the post-game shows. I'd plan my schedule around NFL 2Night (I didn't have much of a life; actually, that hasn't really changed) and would watch the full hour of SportsCenter just to catch whatever NFL-related tidbits it was pumping out, even if it meant suffering through NBA highlights in the offseason. I even used to watch upwards of three to four hours of pre-game stuff leading up to the Super Bowl.

This year, I was lucky if I caught 15 minutes of any pre-game show any week. I still like watching post-game highlights, but all the talk about why a team won or why a team lost (especially when it devolves into mindless claptrap about one team just "wanting it more") from the commentators bores me. As for the Super Bowl pre-game, I'll probably be playing video games and stuffing my face -- oh wait, I always did that second part on Super Bowl Sunday. No change there!

ESPN's fall from grace as a "catch-all" for sports information is well documented (as is SportsCenter's fall from grace as anything remotely watchable). But even if the quality was unchanged, I don't think I'd watch it as much any more because, quite simply, pre-game shows rarely tell me anything I don't already know. The Sunday morning shows just rehash news that I've either been reading about on the Internet all week or even have seen on other TV shows. Running Back X has an ankle injury and might not play? I've heard about that from PTI, NFL 2Night, Inside the NFL, ESPN's morning shows, and at least half a dozen web sites all week long. Player Y is unhappy with his contract? So what? Even when a halfway intelligent commentator wants to get up on his soapbox and foster halfway intelligent discussion about a topic, he'll either be drowned out by the other idiots on the show (who think all a team needs to do to win is "run the ball and stop the run") or will echo what the other 46 talking heads have been saying all week.

The Internet, of course, is partially to blame for this information devaulation, but it's not the only culprit. In their haste to duplicate the success of Pardon the Interruption -- which has been only barely watchable since Tony Kornheiser became self-aware a couple years ago -- ESPN launched Rome is Burning and Around the Horn to fill the timeslots immediately preceding PTI on weekdays, giving us three half-hour talk shows, all in a row, that usually cover the exact same topics. How can that be a good programming decision? I don't watch RIB and ATH except in extremely small doses, and I can't imagine anyone could watch all three without wanting to commit hari-kiri. And no, that's not the former Cubs broadcaster. Sports opinion shows are the reality TV of the sporting world, with PTI as its Survivor. They're cheap, get good ratings, and the cast is essentially replaceable. What's not to love, from a network's point of view?

So you can take your Media Day, your 13.5 hours of pre-game coverage (no idea if that's the actual amount, but it seems like it), and your endless stream of uninteresting (and frequently uninformed) opinions and stuff them where the sun don't shine -- a difficult task in Tampa, admittedly. I'll save my emotion and interest for, you know, the actual game. Or at least the commercials.

Pardon the Interpretation

While discussing Darren McFadden on Monday's Pardon the Interruption and whether he should be a top-five draft pick, one of the hosts -- Tony Kornheiser, I think -- said that he wouldn't want to draft a running back with a high first-round pick because (and I'm paraphrasing here) "running backs are too much of a risk and are too fragile, because they only last a few years before you need a new one." To "support" his argument Tony rattled off a few names, like Ki-Jana Carter and Curtis Enis, as "proof" that drafting a running back so high is risky.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that such an argument is the height of cherry-picking and ignores the several very good backs who have come out of the early part of the draft, guys like Marshall Faulk, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Barry Sanders. I could just as easily say that you shouldn't draft a quarterback with an early pick and point at Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, and Tim Couch while ignoring Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, and Carson Palmer.

But there is something to the point that running backs have relatively short shelf lives, and a primary back over the age of 30 is a rare thing. This is of special interest to Vikings fans, who hope that Adrian Peterson can take care of business for the next five to ten years or so, and to fantasy players who wonder when Tomlinson, age 29 and going into his eight season in 2008, will hit the wall that most backs do around the age of 30. And, since we're talking about your first-round pick here, you don't just want a decent player who lasts into his 30s -- you want a great player, one who will be a perennial all-star and have at least a shot of making it to the Hall of Fame.

With that in mind, I've scoured the draft lists on pro-football-reference and compiled every first-round pick from 1984 to 2003, 20 drafts' worth. To compare players' relative success across seasons and positions, I'll be using their Pro Bowl berths -- not the greatest metric, I know, but it's a reasonable enough way to compare the greatness of, say, a defensive lineman to a wide receiver. That's why I only include drafts to 2003; that gives every drafted player at least five seasons to make a Pro Bowl.

In those 20 drafts, there have been 583 first-round picks. Of those picks, 212 (36%) made at least one Pro Bowl in their careers. Here's how that breaks down by position (setting aside the only first-round kicker in the last 25 years, Sebastian Janikowski, who has never made the Pro Bowl):

Position	% IN PB	AVG PBS
WR	36.23%	1.41
TE	36.84%	1.37
RB	42.47%	1.14
QB	38.89%	1.14
OL	33.67%	1.43
LB	38.46%	1.48
DL	35.07%	1.07
DB	34.09%	1.15
Total	36.36%	1.25

Interesting. First-round running backs actually make one or more Pro Bowls 42.47% of the time, a large margin over the second-place position (quarterback, 38.89%). So, if you draft a running back in the first round, recent evidence would seem to indicate that he's got a nearly 50-50 chance of being a Pro Bowl player, at least once in his career. Barely one third of all first-round offensive linemen, on the other hand, barely qualify for the Pro Bowl in their careers.

But Tony Kornheiser's beef wasn't with short-term greatness. Instead, he questioned the durability and shelf life of a running back, and that's better expressed in the second column, which lists the average number of Pro Bowls made for each position, including players who played in zero of the games.

Here, the running back's fragility is more evident, with just 1.14 Pro Bowls made per career. Equally intriguing, though, is the similarity of that number to the average Pro Bowls made by first-round quarterbacks. If you take the numbers to one more decimal point, QBs actually win, 1.139 to 1.137, but it's still intriguing. However, I think it can be explained by the recent glut of very good non-first-round quarterbacks, such as Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Drew Brees, Matt Hasselbeck, and even Jeff Garcia, a four-time Pro Bowler who wasn't even drafted. Another factor is the relative reluctance teams have to play their highly regarded QBs too soon, while first-round running backs are often handed a heavy load right out of college, thus giving them an extra year or so to establish themselves (and, in the case of Adrian Peterson, to make the Pro Bowl).

As for the other positions, while O-linemen might have trouble making the Pro Bowl, it's no secret that once they're there, they're as hard to dislodge as, well, an offensive lineman. Only linebackers average more Pro Bowls in their careers, and one could argue that they're almost as tough to oust as linemen. D-linemen have the most trouble racking up the bids; it could be that it only takes one or two good games, where a d-lineman racks up five or six sacks, to virtually guarantee a trip to Hawaii, thus allowing more players to rotate through the ranks of Pro Bowlers. Seven sacks in 15 games doesn't usually get a lineman to the Pro Bowl, but that's what Osi Umenyiora did in 2007. Of course, he played in 16 games, including this one, which stamped his ticket to Hawaii. Defensive backs have sort of the same issue. A three-interception game can make all the difference between making the Pro Bowl and not.

In the end, it seems that Tony Kornheiser was at least partially right -- running backs do have relatively short shelf lives, even the great ones that you look for in the first round. Does that mean you shouldn't spend a high pick on one? Of course not. If a tremendous talent (like Darren McFadden or Adrian Peterson) is available, one that can lead your team for six to eight years, you'd be foolish not to snap it up. Very few players, from running backs to quarterbacks to linemen to any position last that long with one team anyway, and it's not really that much riskier than any other position, especially the premier position of quarterback.