[revrew]

Riddle me this: Des Moines Dragons
By Edward Nigma, Pro Football Weekly


Riddle me this, Jack Ledger: What kind of lizard feeds on its own tail but never has enough to eat?

The answer is your Des Moines Dragons.

Mr. Ledger, it's time to declare your Iowa-only approach to NFL football a failed experiment. Yes, you snuck into the SuperBowl, and yes, your fans are still gobbling up tickets, but for how much longer? Your Dragons are consuming themselves, and the food supply is drying up. The well has gone dry. The cupboard is bare, and your roster has festering wounds with no hope of balm.

I will concede that your original scheme was clever. Give clever its due, I always say. Game recognizes game. The way you stuck it to the stuffy NFL suits, brought a flailing franchise back to life, and almost – oh, so close – won it all, was a stroke of genius.

But the joke is up. When football is dominated by powerhouse states of hefty population, like California, Florida, and Texas, it was only a matter of time before the flood of elite talent from outside Iowa was going to become a tidal wave to overpower the Hawkeye state's diminutive output. No fault to the land of corn and bacon, but its few million people just can't produce a crop of footballers to compete with the 350 million other Americans.

Now we look to the draft, and what do we see? We see a couple of Iowa players who might be solid contributors, but far too few stars. And every year you draft the one or two that Iowa can raise, while your opponents get seven rounds of even better talent to restock their rosters. Riddle me this, Mr. Ledger: What do you get when each year you add 1, and your opponents add 7?

It's a war of attrition, Mr. Ledger. And you're losing.

The gig is up. The punchline on this joke has expired. You just hired a new coach. Let him have his pick of the litter, because the Iowa-only approach is getting old, and you can't teach an old dog new tricks.