A love letter to Dana White and the UFC.

I just kind of feel like the WEC is the MMA equivalent of Triple-A baseball. And it's sad, because it's the best organization in the world in two very exciting divisions.

So here it is, Wednesday night, prime time, WEC 50, a title fight on Versus, a network that has done nothing but promote this organization since it began carrying it. And I live in an urban environment where I subsequently have done nothing but attempt to get casual football fans to follow MMA. And oddly enough, everyone loves it. Any fight with Brock Lesnar, Rampage Jackson, Anderson Silva, George St. Pierre, BJ Penn: Cards featuring stars such as these I have no trouble getting all of my friends behind. In 2010, sports are all about marketing stars and making new stars. And sad to say, in the entire history of WEC, the only star to ever been made is Urijah Faber, who is not the top fighter at 145 lb at the moment, though possibly has more mainstream endorsements than every other MMA fighter combined at this point. Subsequently, I can't get anyone to watch WEC. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Only the hardcore fans are watching WEC.

So naturally the geniuses at Zuffa, owners of both the UFC and WEC, decided to promote a stacked card on Versus, a channel that Dish Network doesn't even offer on its basic package, on a Wednesday night, a night when the demographic that any MMA broadcast should be targeting should probably be more attentive to wives and children than to dudes banging in a cage live on a fairly unavailable channel. I am pretty interested to see what the rating is for the show, because it can't be very good, and it could have been a lot better had a little bit of foresight been applied...

I am the one hardcore MMA fan in my entire group of friends in Northern Virginia. I went to the sold out UFC Fight Night in Fairfax in January and paid 85 dollars to sit in the nosebleeds with no other friends at Patriot Center for a fairly crappy card. I try to market it as best I can to my friends who are less educated about the sport, but I am held captive by the cards that are offered. It is extremely difficult to convince my girlfriend to accompany me to the bar on a Saturday night, and pay a combined 10 dollar cover to watch a good UFC card with friends, much less an average or bad card. If it were my sole decision, I would watch every MMA card, because it is the most entertaining sport outside of football, and generally there is at least one great fight that is worth the time and effort, if not more. However, I do not live in a vacuum, and I have to convince others to watch as well, or otherwise, I can't legally watch my favorite sport without either sitting at a bar by myself (not advisable) or spending a huge amount of money to watch it at home (even worse).

My girlfriend was absolutely riveted by the Anderson Silva/Chael Sonnen fight at UFC 117 on August 7. She loved that a fighter that I, and the rest of the world thought had no chance of losing could be threatened for an entire fight by a guy who was essentially a nobody. The only other sport that offers this sort of a thrill to non-fans is college football, a sport where Appalachian State can knock off perennial power Michigan, or a Boise State can beat Oklahoma in a BCS bowl game. I was wearing a UFC 82 T-Shirt that night and even though I saw in person that a good wrestler like Dan Henderson or Chael Sonnen could take a round from the great Anderson Silva, I never imagined that anyone could take four in a row or actually come close to winning. My jaw stayed dropped for about twenty solid minutes. Then when Silva won in the fifth and order was restored, I saw something I never expected. The casual fans thought that Josh Rosenthal jobbed Sonnen, and were angry at the outcome. But the craziest thing emerged from this fight.

My girlfriend knew Silva would win in the fifth, and thought Silva was working everyone.

You have to understand, my girlfriend is the only person I’ve allowed in my life that is significantly smarter than I am. This was the third UFC card she’d ever watched, and the second involving Silva, as she watched the Damian Maia fight, which I might be the only person on Earth who thought was an awesome fight (another argument for another day). She has a black belt in Taekwondo (who doesn’t? I should probably work on one since I know four), and thus has an interesting perspective on a sport she doesn’t actually follow or care about in the slightest. Naturally, at the start of the fifth round, when the entire bar is contemplating a world with Chael “The World’s Most Pissed Off Real Estate Agent” Sonnen as the 185 lb champion of the world, my girlfriend drops this bomb:

“Uh, babe, look at Silva’s poise, guard, and limbs. Sonnen is reckless. And…..tap.”

It was incredible. I’ve watched all 117 numbered UFC cards. That might out me as something of a fight dork, but it’s true. I’m no amateur in following this sport (don’t quiz me, I haven’t watched them all twice, but Joe Rogan’s performance on UFC 17 is something we should all watch daily as a prime example of what happens when one goes to work stoned). But naturally, my girlfriend made me feel like a jackass after the third card she ever watched. It was like my mom telling me to watch Jordan make the jumper at the end of Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, only if Karl Malone was assaulting him from behind with a crow bar. There isn’t a great cross-sport comparison, just know that I felt like a moron.

So anyway, back to tonight. We’re out at a bar and I wanted to get back to the house for the 9 PM ET start for WEC 50, a card I was nearly as excited about as the stacked UFC 117 card, which might be the greatest card in the history of the sport. Did my girlfriend, the “choke whisperer,” the one who I felt might have been empowered considering she totally made me look like an ass after the last card we watched together, a whole 11 days ago, give a shit?

Nope.

And that’s the stigma of WEC. I watched the card tonight as she slept. Great card, as always, because the lighter divisions are generally fantastic. But you can’t market a second league to casual fans on weeknights in my age demographic that have to be up at 5 AM ET and go work. If Dominic Cruz had been fighting Joseph Benavidez for the 135 lb UFC Bantamweight Championship of the world, on a Saturday night, you’d better fucking believe people like my girlfriend would care. People like me would make sure of it. But WEC is a tough sell, and it’s time to kill it.

If UFC had 7 weight classes, we wouldn’t have these awful cards where a punch-drunk Chuck Liddell faces off with an underweight Rich Franklin as a TUF finale main event. People are supposed to want to pay money for these cards, and if people like me don’t want to, then who exactly does? Over the past four years UFC has averaged 13 numbered events per year. With 7 weight classes, we could feasibly have every card contain a title fight. This is what all fans want, hardcore and casual. Dana White and the Fertitta Brothers, it is time to do everyone a favor and strengthen your flagship product with the talent you already have, as quite frankly, no one wants your secondary product.

My hometown and football

I grew up in Johnson City, TN, a mid-sized Southern town in the Appalachia segment of the Bible Belt. The church I grew up attending actually taught that the NFL played on Sundays in an attempt to distract believers from worship and hinder church attendance. One byproduct of this line of thinking is that college football, despite the level of play being generally worse than that of the NFL, is infinitely more popular. The University of Tennessee Volunteers are the athletic kings of my hometown, and everything stops on Saturdays for them. Peyton Manning visits a country club near my parents' house for a charity auction every summer, and each time he does I get 700 pictures in my email inbox from my dad of the guy wearing a goofy visor and polo shirt signing autographs for awestruck 55 year old fat guys. The local media follows Jason Witten around as if they were some sort of redneck TMZ-lite. No one cares about the Colts or the Cowboys, but everyone cares that these were Tennessee Volunteers that made it big in the NFL.

Not surprisingly, college football became my favorite sport from a very young age. Growing up, my dad wasn't as fond of the roughly two hour drive to Knoxville to fight crowds as I was, so as a compromise he bought season tickets to East Tennessee State University's fledgling I-AA program, which constituted a 7 minute drive from our house in south Johnson City. To be fair, they played indoors in an ill-conceived disaster of a football facility affectionately called the "Mini-Dome", which despite being a total failure in every way to an adult observer, was perfect for a seven year old kid to learn the ins and outs of football without my dad having to worry about weather or crowds.

I owe a lot to this program. When I was twelve, in 1996, the Bucs (yes, that's right, the geniuses from my hometown decided to name the football team located in their landlocked mountain town after pirates) went on a little bit of a tear and actually made the I-AA playoffs. In fact, they went 10-3, losing only to the national champion Marshall Thundering Herd, who jumped to I-A the following year; Montana, the national runner-up and 1 seed in the playoffs, and their money game, East Carolina. While that doesn't sound like a whole lot now, that Marshall team played in Johnson City that year at the Mini-Dome. And they had a 6'5" wide receiver no one knew. Yet.

Randy Moss. Age 19. On Astroturf. Before he won the Biletnikoff Award, was a first-round draft pick, was the catalyst for the highest scoring offense in NFL history, ran over a meter maid with his car, coined the phrase "straight cash, homey", faked mooned Green Bay Packers fans on national TV, nearly drove Joe Buck into cardiac arrest, became the most logical member of the Oakland Raiders ever cast, then set the NFL single season TD reception record as a member of the 2007 Patriots. One of the five greatest receivers ever to play the game of football and someone criminally underrated because of his pedigree and stupid off-field antics. The most dominant offensive player on two of the five best offenses in NFL history. In my town. Did I mention it was on Astroturf?

When TV analysts comment about prospects, they talk about "the eye-test". Basically, that means that a prospect looks fantastic regardless of past performance and you can see him accomplishing the same feats again against better competition. No one, and I mean no one, will ever pass the eye-test the way Randy Moss did that day against ETSU. I watched Kobe score 31 in the second half of an NBA game while on vacation in Orlando during the lockout season of 1999 and predicted the eventual three-peat as a precocious 14 year old. But Randy Moss, now that was SOMETHING.

Fast forward to the fall of 1999. My dad suddenly decided he was OK with going on road trips with me and suggested one Friday night we go to Furman the following morning to watch ETSU take them on. After all, it was only a two hour drive from Johnson City and Furman was pretty good in the SoCon, the conference ETSU played in. Of course, the Tennessee Vols were defending national champions at this time and it was a similar drive, but I won't hold that against Dad. He was much more into ETSU football than UT, and he was driving. So we go to Greenville, SC, and my college search ended before it even began. Furman became the standard I held every other college to when I visited, and I was too young and sheltered to appreciate urban college settings, so Furman was where I eventually ended up. The game itself was whatever, but it's odd how dumb things like that shape your life.

In 2003, the ETSU football program ended due to budget cuts. Interest had always been minimal thanks to the shadow of the great program in Knoxville, and rather than continue to compete with such a juggernaut of a program, the leadership of the school elected to shut it down. As I went on to get my business degree I started wondering what it would have been like if the program had been run properly. Thursday night non-conference games, $5 general admission, unrestricted parking, gimmick giveaways worth attending for, increased concession prices, and an effort to time games so that they didn't conflict with UT Vols games would have saved the program over the long term. They did none of that, which indirectly helped Appalachian State, located one hour from Johnson City in Boone, NC, become the quasi-famous I-AA juggernaut that beat Michigan in 2006 as part of a three-peat national title run. As a degree holder from ETSU (I finished my MBA there last fall) that level of modest prestige and fame would be nice. While it is highly unlikely that the program would have ever reached such heights, not even trying to do so is pretty disheartening.

I went to the last game they played in the Mini-Dome against The Citadel, and the handful of people there were very distraught about this avenue of entertainment being taken from them so unceremoniously. A lot of them undoubtedly were able to attend college because of that program. That program lives on in the NFL through the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Mike Smith, as well as through Dallas Cowboys safety Gerald Sensabaugh, who transferred to UNC to finish his college career. While I'm not one of the 50 people still clamoring for ETSU football to return, as people didn't go to the games when it was there, the product on the field wasn't very good, and the school has adjusted to attract students that aren't concerned about football, it was a pretty special part of my growing up.

Don't Run Fat Albert Out Of Town Quite Yet

As a resident of Northern Virginia and a longtime Tennessee Titans supporter, I have been insanely entertained by the off-season "saga" involving perennial Pro Bowl defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth and new Redskins Head Coach Mike Shanahan. Haynesworth has been labeled a fraud, a pariah, and a fatass by the Washington media and Redskins fans who are friends of mine for his failure to attend mandatory OTA's over the summer after receiving a $21 million roster bonus in April. This is all rather confusing to a Tennessee supporter who watched Haynesworth be the best defensive player in the entire NFL the two seasons prior to his arrival in the DMV. Now he can't even pass a shuttle run test at training camp and will not be allowed to practice until he does, which is overshadowing everything else happening at camp. While this is a shame, in the long run, this is only a symbol of the Redskins' problem, not the problem itself.

As a Titans fan, I knew that losing Haynesworth would prove to be detrimental to the success of their defense in 2009, and boy was it ever. According to pro-football-reference.com the 2008 Titans were ranked second in scoring defense at 14.6 per game, second in turnover differential at +14, and seventh in total defense. This squad managed to have the best record and scoring margin in the NFL, in spite of being 28th in passing offense. In other words, this team was defense first, running second, and passing never, a recipe that might have been effective in 1976, but hardly a traditional model of success over the past 15 years or so. In 2009, everything flipped, and the club started the season 0-6 before re-inserting Vince Young into the starting lineup and making Jeff Fisher look like the biggest idiot in the league for not doing it sooner. For the season, the Titans were 16th in scoring, roughly the same as they were in 2008. Without Haynesworth, the defense was 28th in scoring defense. 28th. Egads. No further analysis necessary.

What fueled the 2008 Titans' defensive attack was the ability to rush the passer with only the front four linemen, enabling aggressive play by the defensive backs and permitting the linebackers to cover short passes and defend the run. The defense was dominant in spite of being vanilla on a regular basis, as few blitzes were needed. As great as this defense was, only three members were invited to the Pro Bowl: Haynesworth, Cortland Finnegan, who emerged as an elite corner that season in spite of the fact that he is tiny and struggles with bigger receivers (such as Andre Johnson, who torches Finnegan and every other Titans defensive back twice a year), and Chris Hope, a strong safety who played well, but won't be confused with Ronnie Lott anytime soon. The defense had other notables, including longtime veteran standout linebacker Keith Bulluck, injury plagued but always intense defensive end Kyle Van Den Bosch, and free safety Michael Griffin, who got in the Pro Bowl as an injury replacement with seven interceptions. While this defense certainly had a lot of talent and depth, it was based on Haynesworth up front being effective. With him gone to Washington in 2009, the Titans couldn't stop a high school team and at one point lost 59-0 to the Patriots with largely the same group other than Haynesworth.

But in spite of all the greatness Haynesworth exhibited in 2007 and 2008, it was hard to justify the contract the Redskins gave him. There was no reason to pay a defensive lineman the kind of money Haynesworth received regardless of his ability or character. Haynesworth has Hall of Fame ability. I know this from having watched his two previous seasons prior to his coming to Washington in 2009. But the money the Redskins guaranteed Haynesworth could only be a good investment if he produced in the manner he produced in 2007 and 2008, years in which it could be strongly argued that the guy was the best defensive player in all of football, for the entire life of the deal. Haynesworth was age 26 at the start of the 2007 season, so the Redskins did sign him at the traditional athletic prime age of 28. Unfortunately, in football, the average career lasts a shade over 4 years, and it was clear to anyone that watched the Titans' 2008 romp through the AFC South (and their stomping of eventual Super Bowl winner Pittsburgh late in the season) that the probability of Haynesworth maintaining his outstanding form for any significant period of time wasn't great. Well, clear to anyone not working in the Redskins front office, anyway.

The Redskins have failed over the past ten years for three major reasons. One, they sign free agents to deals that are based on past performance, not forecasted future results. If Albert Haynesworth was a Pro Bowl player for the entire life of his contract, he still would be overpaid. There was no chance that Haynesworth would be able to live up to his part of the bargain. He isn't even the worst example of Snyder doing this, as at least he can still be an elite player and isn't in his thirties. The Redskins essentially paid Haynesworth for being a great Titan. Second, there is no continuity in terms of schemes or personnel, because the owner fires the front office every other season. Since Dan Snyder bought the team in 1999 the team has had seven coaches, including Steve Spurrier of my hometown, Johnson City, TN; and famed NASCAR owner Joe Gibbs (OK, that was uncalled for as he won three Super Bowls, but he'd been out of football 12 years when they hired him). There's no rhyme or reason to these hires or fires, it's all the whim of the owner. And franchises that operate on the whim of the owner rarely win anything, unless a trade involving Herschel Walker takes place that yields an insane number of draft picks (not likely anymore). Despite this ineptitude, the fanbase would rather blame a player, who came from and was a part of winning traditions at both the college and pro level, rather than ownership for creating this situation. And that brings us to the biggest major problem concerning the Redskins: the fanbase enjoys bitching about being bad, and would follow this club no matter what Snyder does. How else could a club be second in the NFL in revenues while going 4-12 last year? Snyder's making money hand over fist because no one is holding HIM accountable for running a proud franchise into the ground. When you have a cycle of enabling, you fail. The Wall Street Journal wrote last year that Washington fans were jumping ship. Clearly the author of that piece has never entered a bar in the DMV. This place is rabid for the Redskins, and that won't ever stop, no matter how long they are terrible.

Incredibly, in spite of Mike Shanahan refusing to let Haynesworth practice in training camp and learn the change to the 3-4 defense, I have a feeling Albert Haynesworth is about to show some people what he is capable of doing. What he does on the football field is command double teams and routinely beat them. In other words, he's done in a 4-3 exactly what a nose tackle does in a 3-4. Mike Shanahan has handled this situation as if he were Bear Bryant and could pull Haynesworth's scholarship on a whim at Alabama. When you hand a guy a check for $21 million, you empower him. When you hand him a check that large and at the same time say "oh, by the way, we know you've never played nose tackle in your life but that's what you're going to do for us, suck it up and come practice, we paid you and we own you", rather than sitting down with the man you've just empowered and explaining team goals, then you're asking for this situation. I'm not saying Haynesworth is right. I think he's handled this situation like a pompous, idiot athlete, and the damage to his life and career is real and permanent. But let's see what happens on the field before we draw and quarter a man who can't complete a shuttle run. As Allen Iverson once said, "we're talking about PRACTICE!"