Picture this: The Dallas Cowboys, deciding they would really like a fourth round pick in the upcoming draft, decide to trade one of their starting linebackers and their second tight end, who was one of the best blocking tight ends in the league, for that pick. Just two years ago, that very tight end was a second round draft choice. The Cowboys would then use the upcoming second round pick to select a tight end to replace the very tight end they just traded away.

Well, I know it’s far-fetched, but…Oh wait, that really happened. What were they thinking, right? That was a really bad move, wasn‘t it? They gave up two solid players, Anthony Fasano and Akin Ayodele, for a measly fourth round pick; how many fourth round picks even make an impact in the NFL? That tight end they drafted in the second round to replace the departed Fasano, Martellus Bennett, looks like a Fasano clone. They used their 2008 second round draft choice on a position they’d already solidified before the pointless trade. So, to us rational beings, this was the epitome of a bad trade; I don’t see how anyone could argue otherwise.

Yet, according to numerous fans on Cowboys message boards across the internet, we aren’t qualified to say one way or another. They’ll trust that the coaches and personnel people know what they’re doing. Yep. Just like that, all our objections must vanish. After all, they are paid to do this job, not us. What do we know? We’re mere peasants; most of us college graduates (or, at the very least, students)…we peons are in no position to question the almighty coaching staff or the team’s front office personnel department. *Cue tongue-in-cheek music of omnipotence here*

Who are these people kidding?

There are idiots in all walks of life. There are incompetent doctors, incompetent lawyers, incompetent teachers, incompetent businessmen, incompetent actors, incompetent singers, incompetent producers, incompetent architects. There are incompetent burger flippers, incompetent waiters, incompetent auto mechanics, incompetent electricians, incompetent politicians…I’d better stop there.

If there’s one universal characteristic as far as humans are concerned, it’s that they are flawed creatures. Not a day goes by where someone doesn’t screw up royally, making people around him/her wonder how this person got his/her job in the first place. Human stupidity and incompetence are the main reasons comedians have their job (and, for the record, there are incompetent comedians, too). Even some really smart people screw up every now and then; once in a while, the stupid person is correct when the smart person is wrong.

Nonetheless, the most important thing is recognizing that stupid, ignorant, worthless, incompetent dolts exist in all professions and make the world a dangerous place.

But apparently this does not apply to NFL coaches. No, somehow we are expected to believe that there is no such thing as an incompetent FOOTBALL COACH. Everywhere else in life, there are people who just aren’t good at what they do. There are people who are flat-out idiots who are eventually fired from their job because of this fact. Then there are incompetent workers who are never fired, for reasons unknown. However, in football, where you don’t even need a college degree…these people are apparently always competent.

Excuse me for a minute, but I’m going to have to “go against the grain to satisfy that rebellious teen still eating away at my inner psyche and prove to people that I‘m cutting edge.”

Let’s just put this out there: Most people don’t get jobs in this world because they are the most qualified people hoping to work in that profession. They get those jobs because they are the “best fit for the criteria the particular employer is looking for.” In other words, Dick Jauron didn’t become coach of the Buffalo Bills because he was the best or one of the best at coaching football teams in the United States. He became coach of the Bills because ownership and management determined that out of the pool of potential head coaches, his personality and qualifications “meshed the best with the young football team at this current place in time and was the best fit for the organization in terms of economic and personal viability.” Or something along those lines; I don’t know exactly what the Bills would say about the hire, but you’d better believe it would be an even longer quote of BS than what I presented.

Anyway, it’s probably a good idea to look at how head coaches get their jobs. How do you go about becoming a head coach? It’s not as though you just pick up the newspaper and look for “head coaching vacancies.” When someone says to a message board poster, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you coaching in the NFL,” what is the truthful answer to that? Is it “I just don’t know enough about the game; I sent my resume to all 32 teams but they just determined I didn’t have enough football knowledge?”

Of course not.

The reason someone who is passionate about football isn’t working in the NFL is quite simple: This person either didn’t play football in high school and college, or he wasn’t a good enough player in high school or college to be looked at as someone who would make a good assistant. That’s it; that’s all it is. For a little research project, you might try looking up any NFL coach, be it a head coach or an assistant. Scroll down to the bottom of his coaching biography and look for a section titled “personal.” In this section, you will invariably see a reference to that coach’s playing days; playing days in which he made some sort of all-conference honors.

In other words, you don’t get coaching jobs by being good at coaching; you get them by being good at playing. But playing and coaching are two separate entities; being a great player does not necessarily mean you will be a great coach. That’s been firmly established.

But does not having been a great player at any level of football preclude you from being a good coach? We’ll never know the answer for sure because those people are never given the shot to prove it one way or another.

Still, think about it: Does it really make any sense to say that anyone who either didn’t play the game before, or didn’t play it very well, can never be a good head coach? Being a head coach is about managing personalities, leadership, ability to identify football talent, ability to devise schemes and game plans (usually with assistants), and ability to make quality coaching decisions during the game. How does any of this relate to a man having been good at bending his knees and maintaining his balance when blocking when he played offensive tackle? How does it relate to a guy lowering his shoulder before hitting running backs and then having lots of power and explosion to make game-altering hits? Would Randy Moss be great at devising game plans because he has superhuman hand-eye coordination, timing, and excellent measurables? Would Brian Urlacher be great at evaluating talent because he runs a 4.5 40-yard-dash and can fly to the football and deliver big hits? After all, a linebacker who is too slow to even play in high school can’t tell if a linebacker is fast, has good technique, is a big hitter, or anything that is of importance (loaded with sarcasm, as usual). Would Brett Favre be great at getting all his assistant coaches on the same page and managing the egos of everyone in the locker room just because he was able to get the respect of the other 10 people in the huddle, mostly because he had such a strong, accurate arm and was such a gifted passer? In fact, why don’t we just go right ahead and say that Michael Jordan would be the greatest coach in NBA history if he decided to do it…as well as a phenomenal personnel guy…we’ll just overlook the Washington Wizards fiasco.

So what’s the point here? It’s rather simple. I’ll summarize it here:

*Never blindly “trust” that the coaches know what they’re doing. If there comes a point where people even have to ask you to do this in the first place, there’s a 99.99% chance they just made an idiotic move.

*Using “I’ll take the coach’s opinion over yours because he is the expert” is fallacious in the same way that appeal to public opinion is. Just as “the majority can be wrong,” so, too, can these so-called “experts.”

* Football coaches don’t know nearly as much and aren’t nearly as reliable as people think. That tends to happen in a profession where “qualifications” aren’t qualifications at all.

One final point I wish to make is on something I like to call “over-glorification of the coach’s work.” Any time an argument on the aforementioned subject comes up on an internet forum, someone never fails to use this tactic of unintentional hyperbole. It’ll look something like this:

“The coaches are paid to watch hours and hours of game film all week long, studying every player’s strengths and weaknesses. You aren’t qualified to speak on *insert player here* because YOUR (intentionally misspelled for this example) not a coach and aren’t paid to examine this player’s strengths and weaknesses and know everything about him. Coaches not only have to know tons about the game, but they also need to know everything about each player individually. Things such as how their personal and family life are, other interests outside of football, their favorite color, and the fourth digit of their third cousin twice removed’s social security number.”

This is probably the crux of the coach groupie argument. I won’t deny that coaches work really hard, but I do wish to point out the inaccurate perception of what they actually do.

For starters, head coaches don’t spend hours evaluating individual football players, whether it’s members of their own team or an opposing team. They review a great deal of film, but it is mostly to examine the scheme and tendencies of opposing teams, as well as to review the crucial mistakes their own team made during a previous game. Certainly, every now and then a player will jump out at them during this film review process, but it isn’t as though John Fox spends 4 hours focusing on Richard Marshall for every play he was on the field during the season, then 4 more hours focusing on Thomas Howard every play he was on the field, repeating that process until he has seen every play from every player who played in the game. Many people actually seem to think that this is what they do. Many people also seem to think that they then move onto their opponent, reviewing hours of film just to watch each individual player on the opposing team. I’m here to tell you that that’s pure nonsense. Coaches divide up the film review work load and trust each other to make certain evaluations. This allows for quite a bit of bias, as position coaches generally develop somewhat of a relationship with the players they are responsible for, and leads to some tainted information being fed to those higher up in the coaching hierarchy.

Finally, we examine the “they know the details about their players’ personal lives, hence they have important information we’re not privy too.” That may or may not be the case. It certainly didn’t seem to be the case when Terrell Owens was in a hospital bed from a pain killer overdose and Bill Parcells didn’t even bother to call him. It didn’t seem to be the case when Michael Vick went to prison after lying to the Falcons about his involvement in his dog fighting ring. Head coaches have close personal relationships with some of their players. Not all. There’s a big difference.

If after reading this article, which is more like a novel, you are still convinced that the coaches are infallible beings of a higher order, try to find the time to talk to someone who coaches football, at any level. See if this person is some sort of brilliant mind who gives you the impression that if he doesn’t know the answer, there is surely no way you ever could. My bet is it won’t exactly be a life-altering experience.