I was originally going to write this post last year, but I decided to hold off until NFL free agency started, just to give the Chiefs a chance to prove me wrong.  So far, they have failed.  I also considered titling this post “Look out Silver Market, Clark Hunt is stockpiling Cash!”  All numbers were sourced from major news publications via Google searches.

Clark became the Chiefs owner after his father’s death in December of 2006, but it is reasonable to assume that he was involved in the franchise and management for at least the entire year of 2006.  So we’ll use 2006 as our starting point.

NFL Salary Cap Amount

2006: $102 million

2007: $109 million

2008: $116.7 million

2009: $128 million

Chiefs Player Payroll

2006: $85.4 million

2007: $63.7 million

2008: $83 million

2009: $83.2 million

Amount Chiefs spent short of the cap: (i.e. extra profits for ownership)

2006: $16.6 million

2007: $45.3 million

2008: $33.7 million

2009: $44.2 million

Total amount Clark Hunt has pocketed since 2006 by shorting player salaries?  $140.4 million.

Taxpayer assisstance and subsidies to the Kansas City Chiefs (aka business subsidies/bailout for Clark Hunt) since 2006: $32 million in yearly payments from city, county, and state governments, $250 million in stadium renovation funds, $25 million in tax breaks. Total: $307 million.

Chiefs average ticket price in 2006: $67.33, in 2009: $80.69

Chiefs Fan Cost Index in 2006: $368.91, in 2009: $445.76

Chiefs record in 2006: 9-7

Chiefs record in 2007: 4-12

Chiefs record in 2008: 2-14

Chiefs record in 2009: 4-12

To sum up and give some perspective on all of these sets of numbers, since 2006 the Chiefs have gone 19-45 in the regular season while raising ticket prices by 20% and slashing payroll by 15% (as a % of the salary cap).  At the same time the team has received $307 million in taxpayer funding, leading to Clark Hunt personally pocketing around $447.4 million in extra cash.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying anything with a Chiefs logo on it this year, and I’m certainly not going to any games until Mr. Hunt starts funding his own company at the same level fans and taxpayers are.  Wall Street isn’t the only place regular folks are bailing out billionaires right now, and personally, I want no part of it.

I really have a hard time comprehending just how horrible this is going to be.  Especially at the state and local levels.  We’ll start there.  For example, lets say a state appointed regulator makes a change that costs big corporation X (BCX) a lot of money, but is in the best interests of the states citizens.  BCX calls the Governor and tells them to fix the problem.  Governor refuses.  BCX then spends half of however many millions per year the regulators decision is costing them to defeat the governor who refused to fix the problem.  New governor appoints someone who agrees to repeal the regulation.  Corporation makes money in year one, and more going forward.

The really scary thing about this is that corporations won’t be just tempted to fiddle with politics by ideology, they’ll be driven to it by fiduciary duty to their investors.  There is literally no way this doesn’t go horrifyingly badly for consumers and non-corporate citizens.

OK, so imagine you’re Dayton Moore, the GM of the Royals, and the 2009 season has just ended in a massive disappointment. The relievers you picked up over the offseason turned out to be horrible, the power hitters you acquired over the offseason turned out to be horrible, the centerfielder you acquired over the offseason got hurt and will now be leaving because you can’t justify his $8 million option. You also have two catchers, who both kind of suck, and retaining them both would cost you around another $8 million. So what do you do?

Well, first you take stock of what you do have on the roster. What do the Royals have/do as well or better than anyone else in the AL Central? In all of MLB? Well, that’s actually an easy answer. Young quality starting pitching. Zack Greinke and Gil Meche (healthy version) stack up against any other 1-2 punch in baseball. And behind them you’ve got a bunch of young guys who may or may not put it together at any point (Banny/Davies/Hoch/Tejeda/Crow/etc). Ok, well a bunch of the younger guys really haven’t taken that step forward, so you think “What can I do to help them?” Well, looking at your roster, you’ve got possibly the worst two defensive catchers in baseball, plus this Pena guy that all your minor league managers are telling you isn’t so hot behind the plate either. So basically you’ve got three catchers that can all hit a little but can’t play defense. You cut the two most expensive ones and look for the best defensive catcher you can find. Somebody with experience who might be able to help your guys mature into the good-to-great pitchers you need them to be. Looking around the catching market this year, and checking out what’s likely to be available next year, you realize Jason Kendall is the only one who comes remotely close to meeting your criteria.

Sure, there’s some intriguing younger-than-Jason-Kendall guys out there like Yorvit Torralbea, but really, do you want to take any chances with the best and most important (and most effective) part of your roster? What if this Yorvit kid doesn’t work out? Have you potentially cost yourself a much more valuable starting pitcher or two in the hope of chasing lightning in a bottle? No, better to go with the known, more stable quantity on something this important, besides, you’ve got a bunch of great catching prospects in the low minors, two years from now they may be ready for full time duty, and all have higher ceilings than any of the younger guys available. So you start negotiating with Jason Kendall, you’re tying to get him to sign a 2 year deal at $2 million per, he wants more money, but it looks like he’s starting to come around. Then the Washington Nationals sign Ivan Rodriguez for 2 years at $3 million per. Crap. Now Kendall, who is in many ways comparable to I-Rod (both old, both past their prime, both have great reputations, albeit for different things) wants $3 million per year too. You try to talk him down, but he won’t budge. You look at the catching market again, and realize you don’t really have much of a choice if you want to protect your young pitchers, so you cave and tack an extra couple million on the second year of the deal – hey, you’ll have Guillen, Cruz, and Farnsworth’s contracts coming off the books, so it’s not like you can’t afford it, and it’s still cheaper than retaining Olivio or Buck for two more years would be.

Now you look to see what else you can do to help your young pitchers. You notice you have one of the worst defensive units in baseball. Alberto Callaspo is a disaster at 2B. Billy Butler isn’t a disaster at 1B, but he’s not about to win any Gold Gloves either. Alex Gordon is pretty good at 3B when he’s healthy, so you don’t have to worry about that at least. So you trade Mark Teahan for Josh Fields and Chris Getz. Getz should be a defensive upgrade at second, and Fields can fill in for Gordon if he gets hurt again or potentially play the outfield if Guillen is Guillen. There’s not much you can do about Yuni except hope he starts playing better or that Mike Aviles gets healthy fast, or that Bianchi is ready sooner than expected, besides, you don’t think Yuni is that bad defensively anyway. So you look at what you’ve got now and start assessing the outfield. DDJ is great in left, but he’ll be a free agent soon and you probably won’t be able to keep him. And with Guillen leaving next year and Coco gone now, you realize the outfield needs a lot of people. Fields is a potential outfielder, though somewhat unknown defensively, and Mitch Maier is ok, but really seems like more of a 4^th OF type than a regular starter. So you try to trade your most tradeable, expendable commodity (Alberto Callaspo) for a young ML-ready outfielder. You target Felix Pie and Brett Gardner - they’re both young, they both have potential, and they both play on teams where they don’t really have a place to play. It seems like a great fit. Unfortunately, neither the Yankees nor the Orioles are willing to trade their guys for Callaspo. So what do you do? You don’t want to sign someone to a long term deal because you’ve got Jordan Parraz and David Lough coming up, and a Parraz/Lough/Fields/Maier OF sounds like it might be OK and will definitely be pretty cheap too. So you sign a couple of guys who really aren’t that good, but maybe have one solid year in them – Brian Anderson and Scott Podsednik.

So you look at your roster and think about your goal. You wanted to make things easier for your young pitchers and increase their odds of finding success. You upgraded defensively at catcher, first base (no more Mike Jacobs innings) and second base. You got your pitchers an experienced catcher with a good defensive reputation that was paired with some young arms that developed back when he played in Pittsburgh (Jason Schmidt, Kris Benson, Kip Wells). You held steady in the outfield while not blocking any of your own prospects. You dramatically improved the relief corps by subtraction, so your young guys don’t have to watch their leads always get blown. And you did all of this while breaking even on payroll, which is important for a small market team like the Royals. It’s not ideal, you know that, but rebuilding is called rebuilding for a reason, and you’ve done everything in your power to protect and support the most important part of your team. All in all, a pretty decent job, yes?

Apparently not. Every time you turn on the TV or the internet all you see is people telling you you’re terrible and focusing on your mistakes. Can’t they see what you’re trying to do here? Don’t they understand that you’re building the team according to a plan? That there’s a process in place to make things better? Don’t they know you’re trying to edge up the win % every year to build the fanbase so you can afford better players and so that free agents will be more willing to come here? Haven’t you gotten ownership to spend money and beef up the scouting and minor league systems? Don’t people know that it will still be a few years before all the good prospects get to the majors, but that the farm system will be totally stocked behind them so it’s a continuous flow?

But you’re so hurt and angry about the criticism, you don’t make those arguments. Instead you argue that your moves aren’t that bad, and that the plan is good, and that the players you’re getting are better and greater than you know they are. Then you give up and hold a press conference announcing that the fans need to trust the process.

Imagine that and you’ll understand Dayton Moore.

I don’t blame them, after watching this disaster of a season, it’s nice to have a happy fantasy of a team making progress to warm yourself with during the offseason. However, if you really look at the Denver game, it provides even more reasons for sadness than for joy. Let’s start with Derrick Johnson. Two interceptions returned for touchdowns, five tackles and one assist. A great day by any measure, and it came at a position that has been a weakness on the defense all season long. Which begs the question: why was DJ sitting on the bench all season when the starting linebackers weren’t getting the job done?

Next we move on to Bernard Pollard who had an interception, a fumble recovery, five tackles and one assist… for the Houston Texans. Pollard was cut at the beginning of the year for no apparent reason other than, well, we really don’t know why actually, but he was cut, and now he plays for Houston, and we have a gaping hole at safety – which, coincidentally, is where Pollard played. So basically what the Denver game tells us about the Chiefs defense is that the teams’ best defensive players at two positions that were dramatic weaknesses were either benched or cut because the coach decided to throw multiple hissy fits. How many other players who should have been starting didn’t see play for the same reasons? We don’t know, but being able to point out two obvious examples with such ease, its likely there were more instances of this.

Now on to the offense. Jamaal Charles had a great day, a historic day, and didn’t fumble once, which is sort of historic in and of itself. I don’t think his numbers would have been nearly as good if the Broncos had actually managed to show up for the game, but good players are supposed to dominate in situations like that, and it’s nice that Charles did. That said, the Chiefs really need to get another back to supplement Charles or they’re going to end up with another LJ/Priest situation where they’ve got a dominating back who’s hurt a fair amount and done after 2-3 years of excellence. And just so this paragraph actually gets to some kind of point, expecting this kind of performance out of Charles on a regular basis is crazy. A 4.5-5.0 yds/carry average with 0-1 fumbles a game is more in line with what we can realistically expect from him going forward.

Matt Cassel continues to inexplicably earn more money than Best Buy while playing like Circuit City. The guy throws one of the most uncatchable balls I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I don’t know if there’s a stat or metric for this but it just seems like ¾ of Cassel’s passes are about a foot off the mark. I don’t know if this is his fault or the receivers’, but something is seriously wrong there. I think this has something to do with the high number of drops, although by and large, the Chiefs’ receivers do suck. Although the musical chairs Haley plays with the position as apparently directed by his Ouija Board certainly don’t help matters. I think Cassel would be a very nice backup QB, much like Brodie Croyle, and I think that casting him as a starter is just a horrible, horrible mistake that the entire organization is suffering for now. I mean, for heaven’s sake, the guy has had three games where he completed less than half his passes and six games where he averaged less than five yards per attempt. Those numbers are positively Jamarcusian.

A good reality check for where this team stands at the end of year one of the Pioli/Haley rebuilding project is to compare it to the team as it stood at the end of the Peterson/Edwards era (ie last year). At the end of last year the team had a new Arrowspread offense in place tailored to the skills of a young, raw (extremely raw), QB guided by a veteran offensive coordinator with head coaching experience. At the end of this year the team has just hired a veteran offensive coordinator to build a new-ish offense around the skills of a young-ish QB. At the end of last year the team had a young secondary that looked to be full of breakout stars. At the end of this year the team has a young secondary that looks to be full of breakout stars – except at safety which is now a gaping hole. At the end of last year the team had a suspect offensive line that seemed to play better after the QB change and the implementation of the spread. At the end of this year the team has a suspect offensive line that seemed to play better after the change at RB and the accompanying shift in the offense. At the end of last year the team had an unhappy, washed up running back and an all-pro TE. At the end of this year the team has a young, exciting RB and several all-no TEs. At the end of last year the team had a crazy washed up egotistical GM who loved leather trench coats way more than any man should. At the end of this year the team has a crazy young egotistical GM who loves making trades with his father in law way more than any man should. At the end of last year the team had a head coach who gave goofy press conferences and was widely respected around the league and widely disliked in KC. At the end of this year the team has a head coach who is widely mocked around the league after firing his offensive coordinator at the end of the preseason.

The point of all this is pretty simple. For every area where you can point to progress on this team, you can point to several more where there isn’t progress or where there has been backsliding. For every positive development (No more LJ!) there are negative ones (Lance Long? No more Chan Gailey?) The really troubling thing about all of this though, is that almost all of the problematic developments stem from erratic behavior on the part of the head coach and front office. That’s the kind of thing that’s likely to continue and get worse, not better, as time goes on.

Andrew Sullivan’s blog the Daily Dish has been an outstanding source of coverage on Iran and I encourage everyone to go read it.  Some highlights:

The hashtag #CN4Iran - designated by Chinese twitter users offering support to the Iranian uprising - is a trending topic on the twitter top 10  of trending topics. Ahead of Avatar, Singapore Idol, and Sezairi. Needless to say, twitter is blocked in China (though easy enough to get access to it).

Mousavi’s 20 year old nephew has been confirmed as being killed by the Basij (religous paramilitary police)

An Iranian opposition website said police forces refused orders to shoot at pro-reform protesters during clashes on Sunday in central Tehran, where it reported earlier four demonstraters had been killed. “Police forces are refusing their commanders’ orders to shoot at demonstrators in central Tehran … some of them try to shoot into air when pressured by their commanders,” the Jaras website said.

And of course, innumerable Youtube videos and camera phone pictures.

Iran has been on a slow boil ever since the regime falsified the June election results, mistakenly believing that the people only cared about the Islamic half of the name “Islamic Republic”.  Obviously, that was a mistake, as the Iranian people deeply care about both halves of that name.

As evinced by the Chinese twitter hashtag, the Iranian people are enjoying support from all corners of the world.  Pretty much everyone is inspired by their story - corrupt regime fakes election results, suppresses some protests, tries to go about its business, people say “um.. no.  Not only no, but HELL NO”.  Given the trend records of the current movement and the 1979 Revolution, its now highly unlikely that the current regime will be able to stay in power.

Last week protests broke out in the rural Iranian heartland and the city of Qom for the first time.  For Americans, the best equivalent would be rural Kansas farmers staging massive protests against Bush and the residents of Vatican City staging protests against an archbishop.

As noted above, this is the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri, there will be bigger protests on the 40th day of mourning.  Not to mention the upcoming seventh and fortieth days of mourning for Mousavi’s nephew.  This is largely how the 1979 revolution maintained momentum, at night, rooftop chants of “Allahu Akbar” shook the city, and during the day every cycle of mourning for martyrs led to the creation of more martyrs until the Shah was forced to flee.  With two such prominent martyrs already “in cycle” now, and the reported death toll of at least 12 people so far today, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that the current Achmanidedouche/Khamenei government will see much past the anniversary of the June election results, because, should they still be in charge by that point, the protests that anniversary will bring out are pretty much going to dwarf everything we’ve seen so far.

As an American whose forebears (not forefathers, my family came over in the 1860’s) fought for the right to vote, it really brings me joy to watch another people across the world do the same.

It’s now after the jump because while cool, it’s just too big of a picture and takes up too much space on the page.

I wasn’t at Arrowhead, so I didn’t see the game, but thanks the score a minute pace and the magic of the NFL’s redzone channel, we actually caught a fair amount of it.  Jamaal Charles had another nice day.. and put a couple of more balls on the ground.  Charles can run the ball, but with all the fumbling issues, a good team doesn’t give him more than change of pace work.  Since we’re not a good team, that isn’t an issue for us.

There was a fair amount of talk about Cassel’s good day and all the dropped passes.  I have two things to say about this.  One, congratulations, but I wouldn’t put too much value on performing well vs. Cleveland.  It’s kind of like doing well vs. KC - see Jerome Harrison and Miles Austin for examples.  Two, a lot of Cassels “drops” are bad passes the reciever made a great play to get his hands on (some of them aren’t, in all fairness, the Chiefs’ receivers are terrible), but this budding narrative about Cassel being held back by his team is crap.  Tyler Thigpen did better last year with largely the same group, who also had drop issues.  Maybe we’ll be treated to an Elvis Grbac “I can’t throw it and catch it” type moment in a press conference soon.  I’m also starting to wonder if maybe Cassel’s throws have some sort of weird spin on them, because I’ve seen a ton of dropped interceptions from him this year.  Like the one that somehow turned into a 23-yard Dwayne Bowe catch.

And now on to the highlights.

1) The team cannot tackle.  You’ve got to put your body on the runner.  Half of all tackles are just getting the runners way enough that they lose their balance and fall down.  The more, and the harder you touch them, the better this works.  Arm tackles and shoves often are not enough to cut it.  Unfortunately thats all the team was packing today.

2)  Cassel looked terrible.  In pretty much every sinlge highlight play he was throwing a bad pass, getting sacked, or yelling at someone.  Since he threw for 331 and 2 TDs no picks, that obviously wasn’t the case all day long, but from the limited bits we had to view, this had to be one fo the most unproductive high QB rating days ever.

3) Haley looks like some kind of deranged fan on meth that managed to sneak onto the sideline.  Seriously.  The guy just runs around and jumps and yells and cusses.  And thats it.  I’ve got no idea what’s going on in his head, but its gotta be wacky in there.  Dude looks like he’s about to have a stress related stroke or something, and not in a good way.

I’m still in favor of canning both the coach and the GM after the season, but honestly, until Clark decides to let the team spend up to the cap limit (we’ve been between $30 - $50 million under the last few years, maybe CH is saving up to try and corner the Silver market again?) it won’t make a huge difference.  Allard Baird pretty definitevely proved that it doesn’t matter if you’re good, bad ownership will wreck your time as the face of a franchise.