Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy.
Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary are in social contact; often, the appointer is inadequate to hold his or her own job or position of authority, and for this reason the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken him or her, or express views contrary to those of the appointer. Politically, “cronyism” is derogatorily used.
Today the Browns hired Brad Childress to be their offensive coordinator for the 2012 season. At first this seemed like it was going to be a potentially awesome hire. Then you start hearing some of the facts associated with Childress. For example, he’s only ever called his own plays once in his entire time in the NFL.
Yup, a guy we just hired to be the offensive coordinator of an offensively inept team has only once ever called plays. That means we’ll be treated to another 16 games of mind-boggling offensive play calls under the leadership of Pat Shurmur.
That sound you just heard was the bowels emptying from every Cleveland Browns fan I just killed with that statement.
To make matters worse, it’s beginning to look more and more like the Browns will be positioning themselves to take Robert Griffin III in the upcoming draft, at least if you believe what every single mock draft in the country is telling you. Why is this an issue? Well, when Childress was the head coach of the Vikings he chose Tavaris Jackson in the draft to be his guy at QB. Jackson is very similar to Griffin and well… things didn’t exactly go well. Unless you call the Brett Favre saga “things going well.” It wasn’t until Jackson moved on to Seattle and got away from Childress that he began to blossom into what could not be considered a somewhat capable quarterback option. Still not great, but not Charlie Frye either.
If the Browns choose RG3… it could be a death sentence for his career.
It also doesn’t help when you take into account just how hated Childress was by the people of Minnesota and the players on the Vikings. He once called Randy Moss a “programatic non-fit.” One could argue Childress was the programatic non-fit.
Programatic non-fit… who says something like that? Seriously?
Anyways, hopefully this goes well for the Browns. We really need to catch a break when it comes to this football team. Any more losing and the natives are likely to storm the headquarters out in Berea with torches and pitchforks.
However, this speaks to a much larger problem surrounding the Browns under the regime of Mike Holmgren. Holmgren, Heckert, Shurmur, and now Childress have the same agent… Bob LaMonte. Who knows who else has LaMonte as an agent but it wouldn’t surprise me if the janitor, secretary, and security guard out in Berea all do to.
Why is it that all of these people have the same agent? Is Holmgren even seeking out the best candidates for these positions or he just going through LaMonte’s roladex and using the eeny meeny miny mo method? I don’t really know. Honestly, I probably don’t want the answer to that question for fear of the worst. Given how well things have gone thus far I wouldn’t be surprised if cronyism is running rampant right now throughout the Browns headquarters.
If that’s the case… I need to get Bob LaMonte as my agent ASAP!
would be an understatement. This isn’t the big name hire that a lot of us were expecting when this search began. Many expected numerous interviews and numerous big name candidates to be thrown around. I listed roughly 8 or 9 names last week when the search began. Out of those names, the only candidates that have been interviewed thus far are Mike Mularkey, Perry Fewell, and Shurmur. One could make a case that Fewell was only interviewed in order to meet the requirements of the Rooney Rule, so does he really even count or was he a token interview? Meanwhile, names such as Gruden, Fox, Mornhinweg, Billick, and Childress etc. have yet to step foot in Berea. 
Buzzerhut
