Bill Callahan and Free Riders

At the illustrious Michael Munger's blog Kids Prefer Cheese, I wrote:

I'm not an economist, but two things I'd like to lay out...

1. There's never, ever, "market failure." There are only market FACTS.

2. There's never, ever, a "free rider problem." If something is built, it benefits the people wealthy enough to build it, and they couldn't care less if other people enjoy it at no cost. Jerry Jones or Robert Kraft aren't angry at me that I don't support the NFL's main advertisers. In fact, they're HAPPY I watch the games at all.

And at Husker Mike's Blasphemy, I wrote:

I'll never believe Callahan didn't want to win that Super Bowl.

But if Tim Brown hates him, and I'm sure he does, I could see how he remembers this. Jon Ritchie and Jerry Rice seem to confirm it. My theories:

1. Callahan panicked and overthought the game plan. Consider his perfect game calling on the first drive of that Auburn Bowl game. After that, his play-calling sucked. This isn't sabotage, it's the sign of a bad head coach.

2.Al Davis intervened and changed the game plan that Friday -- totally believable.

3. The game plan DID change, but largely out of the Barrett Robbins disappearance and getting behind early in the game ,which seems to be what several team members remember (plus tens of millions of viewers.) Brown, et.al., are merging the timelines in their memory.

Can't blame him. Tim Brown's in the Hall of Fame right now if he has a Super Bowl ring. And Ritchie seems to back up his point. But it seems to me that this points to the Al Davis intervention theory, or Callahan's flakiness rather than sabotage.