Good-Bye Mr. Tice

An open letter to Vikings Coach Mike Tice…

Good-bye Mike…but don’t go too far.

When you announced at your press conference today that Dante is out for the year, you looked like a man who just lost his job.

Well, you have, and everybody knows it.

Please have some grace and resign now, let’s start rebuilding for next year today.

That said, don’t go too far. You were a fantastic O-line coach, and we need you back there.

Do you recognize the irony here?

Your offensive line has become the Achilles heel of the entire team!

When you were running it, you were turning throw-away draft picks into All-Pros (see Matt Birk.)

Now they draw more flags than they throw blocks, so it was only a matter of time before your starting QB was knocked out.

Granted he should have slid after getting the 1st down, but that’s, well, that’s today’s news.

Maybe my own pride has blinded me to your abject failure this year, and that’s because I was 100% behind Red’s decision to make you head coach in the first place.

The “Sheriff” was being exposed as the phony he was, and they picked you to step into the breech.

I said “great!” The one coach with a little fire and some discipline on the staff is now the top dog; he’ll whip these guys into shape in no time.

Well, how wrong I was, you didn’t whip them into shape in anytime.

The Big Cheese turned into cream cheese.

And you know Mike; I always stood behind you, as I thought you were the answer, until your ticket scalping scandal.

I mean, if you’re making a measly $300K as an Assistant Coach (see Latrell Sprewell), maybe I can understand scalping your Super Bowl tickets for a couple grand to buy a round or two at Bunny’s.

But it was then I lost all respect for, certainly any of your “so called” intelligence, yet more so, for you as a leader.

Attn: Mr. Tice, you’re making a million dollars a year now, you don’t need to scalp your used pencils in the street corner anymore.

I mean, if the coach is scamming the system, what message does that send the players?

Well, we found that one out after the carnal cruise.

Mike, you are a big guy, but it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that you’ve taken on a job even bigger than you can handle.

So here’s my exit strategy for you: elevate Loney to Offensive Coordinator, and relieve him of his O-line duties (which in the NFL was too much for any man- even me!) and then you apply for the O-line job.

Feel free to use me as a reference.

Twins recap, ignored by the Strib

My compliments on your Sports section today, 10-2-05, it was superb.

I especially liked page C15, with the duel points of view from Patrick Reusse and Jim Souhan.

Both wrote about the Twins failures this year; I’ll start with Mr. Reusse.

I used to be in near lock step with his opinion columns, but the last couple years, not nearly as much.

I’m not sure if he’s changed, or if I have, but his take on the Twins was dead on.

Now, all through the month of April, I hammered Ron Gardenhire (hereafter referred to as: The Dunce) for his bringing up 4 catchers for opening day.

I railed about keeping Corky Miller constantly on my blog: mnsportsfan.blogspot.com.

I thought maybe I was the only one who noticed the stupidity of that decision, but today I see Mr. Ruesse was all over it too.

After all, they won 2 World Series with 2 catchers each time, this year “The Dunce” is so concerned about Joe Mauer's knee, that he needs 3 backups.

Like Ruesse said in paraphrasing the Twins mentality: “We’re so good, we can beat the rest of the AL Central with 24 players.”

And he hit’s on losing Restovich, and getting nothing in return! See my website, I was livid about all this as it was happening!

Next…

Possibly the best trade in sports history was ridding us of Dan Barreiro, in favor of Jim Souhan. He’s the William Tell of sportswriters, on target every time.

Barrero was amazing in the fact that he was a sportswriter in the 14th largest media market in the country, yet knew nothing about sports.

Back to Souhan…

His idea of signing Paul Konerko from the White Sox is brilliant. Get the power hitter we need, and simultaneously deplete the Sox of yet another big bat.

His other salient point is that the time is now for the Twins. They’ve got a fantastic pitching staff, but they also have a weak defense, and a pathetic offense.

They need a big bat from the outside, we can’t wait until hockey puck Mourneau figures out what pitchers are doing to him. Throw him three curve balls and his bat is back in the rack.

Yes, this is one of the best sports sections I’ve seen in a long time. Mr. Hartman says
this is the “best Sports section in the country” quite often.

If that were true, you would have reported to us that Bob Schnelker had been hired as Offensive coordinator of the Gophers football team.