Should you shoot me now or shoot me later?

I woke up this morning to a note from Mrs. Samichlaus that said the following: "Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.00. Go straight to my journal! Yeah baby!" It was there that I read that the Packers had decided upon their new head coach, a guy named Mike McCarthy, who last season was the 49ers Offensive Coordinator. That would be the same 49ers who were competing for the worst record in football the last week of the season. I was moritified.

To exacerbate the situation, I saw this "press photo" on the lead page. This was the first good look I had at the new coach:

Uh oh. My first thought was "I.Q. in the Mike Tice range".

The more I read about McCarthy the more doubts I had. On the positive side, he has the reputation of being a stratight shooter, tell it like it is sort of guy. He hosts an offseason Quarterbacks camp that Seattle's Matt Hasslebeck swears by, and believes in playing young players (almost to a fault: he insisted on playing rookie Alex Smith in San Fransisco over the pedestrian Tim Rattay). On the other hand, he has never been associated with a winning franchise, including Green Bay when he was the quarterbacks coach under the forgetful Ray Rhodes regime. Last season, San Fransisco's offense was ranked dead last.

The more I read, the more the doubts crept in. Despite the best attempts of the Stepfordesque Milwaukee press to spin it, I still wasn't buying into Mike McCarthy.

"Very intense, very intelligent and enthusiastic." Sure, so was my Junior year Latin teacher and no one respected him either.

"He's just a good, solid, down-to-earth guy" Yeah, so was Mike Tice, well until he started scalping Super Bowl tickets.

"McCarthy's father is a retired fireman who later owned a tavern. His parents attended games in New Orleans. Mike used to work in (his fathers) bar. He's from a tough section of Pittsburgh. Bloomfield. Blue-collar all the way. He comes from good stock." Hey, his dad was a fireman AND a bartender? That's like winning the Irish Sweepstakes.

I continued to stuggle with the choice of Mike McCarthy. Is he really the second comming of Mike Tice, or is he in the mold of Philadelphia's Andy Reid as the press has been spinning it. I pondered and waivered and then I came across this:


Oh.

Now I'm happy with the selection.


Note to all SBS fans: Things have picked up again at work, so my day time blogging has been once again curtailed. I will continue to write as often as possible, and yes I am aware that I still owe y'all my Mike Sherman blog, my Marcus Vick blog and a few others too...

Samichlaus