Hard Knocks HOF

The new season of “Hard Knocks” premieres on HBO Wednesday night, charting the offseason progress of a semi-professional football club called the Cincinnati Bengals. This will be the show’s fifth season and the first that does not center on a team presently in the NFL. Personally, I’m excited. The relative merits of the show are hotly debated around these parts, with some of my colleagues dismissing it as an inaccurate and uninformative depiction of life inside training camp. My position is that if you sign up your team to appear on a program titled “Hard Knocks,” odds are you weren’t exactly a serious contender to begin with. (An assessment buoyed by the combined 28-36 record of the four previous teams featured on the show.)  Good teams tend not to hold up practice while cameramen from HBO compose a shot. It’s kind of a thing they have. At the very least, we may get to add one or two names to the ranks on “Hard Knocks” immortals, including:

APBrian Billick.

Brian Billick. The former Ravens coach almost killed the show before it began. Never one for grueling practice sessions, Billick’s first camp after winning the Super Bowl was light on football and heavy on standing around. The result was the show’s least interesting season, although Billick was an undeniably compelling figure: With his giant straw hat and endless supply of coach-speak, it was like he just got back from a weekend leadership seminar on the island of Dr. Moreau. He was famously introduced to audiences while lounging in a hammock.

Pacman Jones. Redemption stories are a staple of the “Hard Knocks” formula, but they’re very rarely interesting. Mainly it’s just the troubled player keeping his head down, giving clipped one-word answers and generally trying not to provide a grand jury any more ammunition. And then there’s Pacman Jones, who decided the best way to introduce himself to Terrell Owens was to douse the mercurial wide receiver with a bucket of water just as he was stepping out of his Bentley. Like Melville’s Bartleby, Pacman had a unique ability to unmask the incompetence of those around him, nobody more so than defensive coordinator Brian Stewart, who told Wade Phillips that Pacman was struggling because he was used to playing in a zone scheme in Tennessee. Yes, Brian — that famed read-and-react scheme of Jim Schwartz. To the surprise of no one, Stewart was stripped of play-calling duties in October.

Herm Edwards. Like George Costanza, Herm Edwards was at his most enjoyable when he was feeling his oats. Just vintage Herm — penny loafers at practice, last night personnel meetings with Dick Curl and Carl Peterson, chats with Mrs. Herm on speaker phone. He really raised the bar. Stranger still, the team started 2-2, prompting some to speculate the whole performance was a long con of Mametian proportions. Edwards put these doubts to rest by leading the team to a 2-10 finish.

Tony Siragusa. The main problem with the Ravens season was all the veterans auditioning for broadcasting gigs. Nobody was more shameless than Siragusa, who evidently thought his value to the Ravens defense went beyond weighing 350 pounds and getting out of Ray Lewis’ way. Enough has already been said about Siragusa’s limitations as a media personality so I won’t elaborate, except to urge everybody to check out Spike Lee’s commentary track for “25th Hour,” where the director expounds at length on Siragusa’s limitations as an actor. Classic.

Dave Campo. When the show centered around the Cowboys in 2002, Campo was head coach and required all players to punch a time card before practice. In a shocking development, he was fired after the season. When the show returned to Oxnard in 2008, Campo was back with the Cowboys, this time as secondary coach, and he fell in love with Pacman Jones. Needless to say, HBO is excited about his next project, “The Campo Mysteries.”

Kelli Croyle.

Mrs. Brodie Croyle. Chief among the program’s virtues is its depiction of stunning SEC wives with goofy husbands. Nobody was better at this than Kelli Croyle (nee Schutz), who watched as her husband, former Alabama star and current Mike Lombardi antagonist Brodie Croyle tried and failed to beat out 117-year-old Damon Huard for the Chiefs starting QB job. In the stratosphere of good-looking sports wives, she’s right up there with Gisele and Juli Boeheim.

Martellus Bennett. The best embodiment of another “Hard Knocks” staple: the hammerhead rookie. Hopefully, Rey Maualuga has been studying tape of Bennett’s performance last year, which included poor conditioning, fights with his position coach over an untucked jersey and an impromptu speech on the inverse relationship between fast food and the price of oil. Like Dwayne Bowe before him, Bennett somehow managed to turn in a solid rookie season, so go figure.

Jim Garrett. Hands down the most delightful “Hard Knocks” personality of all time. Sadly, the printed word fails to truly capture the man’s greatness. Imagine if noted character actor William Hickey had two sons on the Dallas Cowboys coaching staff. Now imagine if this man was allowed to hang around training camp, running laps on the track and badgering his sons about players he likes. Such was the Jim Garrett experience. Never before has a D-II coach from the 1960s wielded such influence at the pro level. Hopefully, Mike Brown brings him in to head up the nascent Bengals scouting department. He’d still be an upgrade over Marvin Lewis.

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