The other day I heard the news that the NFL’s San Diego Chargers had fired their head coach, Marty Schottenheimer. From the reports that I read, there had been a power struggle between Schottenheimer and Chargers’ General Manager A.J. Smith, and team President and owner Dean Spanos decided to keep the GM and dump the Coach.

Never mind that Marty had the best record in the NFL last year at 14-2 and had chalked up a respectable 47-35 record over the past five years with the team (an impressive 35-13 during the last three years). Never mind that Marty is one of only five coaches in NFL history with 200 wins on his resume (200-126-1), or that the teams he led took the AFC West championship 2 of the last 3 years. Spanos bought into the big lie that MS couldn’t “win the big one” and unceremoniously fired a hall of fame bound coach because of the “dysfunctional relationship” between Schottenheimer and Smith.

This, folks, is what the Reverend calls “bad business” and, in the long run, bad business will net you bad mojo. Let’s analyze, shall we? On an NFL football team, the General Manager is ostensibly the coach’s boss, but in reality, it depends a lot on the people involved. The GM has a lot of say in the talent that is drafted or acquired through trades, working with the coaching staff and the coaches to put together the best team possible. The GM has the unenviable position of negotiating with player’s agents on deals and keeping the team under the league’s salary cap. The GM often also has to play the heavy, getting rid of non-productive or out-of-their-prime players and he takes the heat when a superstar leaves the team because there’s no money in the till to pay their obscene wages.

The team coach, on the other hand, is the engine that makes the team run. The coach has the responsibility to pull together a staff of coaches and coordinators that will work together to train and motivate the players to win. Although the coach certainly has input in player decisions made by the GM, especially on draft day, often times the coach is the one that has to make the best out of the player roster that he is given. The coach has the final say on game day, often calls the plays (or approves them), motivates the players and makes the final decision when the chips are on the line. Yes, winning coaches get paid a heck of a lot, especially in comparison to working-class louts like your humble scribe. But they’re usually the first or second body out of the door if a team doesn’t win, and they take their lumps from every amateur coach-wannabe calling their local afternoon sports talk show to gripe.

As I said above, getting rid of Schottenheimer was just plain bad business, an egg-headed move by an otherwise smart team executive. Yes, Marty had trouble “winning the big one,” but that’s really just an epitaph created by the sports media because they don’t have anything smarter to say and they don’t want to bore readers with the truth. The truth in the NFL is that 32 teams start the season, but only one wins the Super Bowl Championship. Fact. Yes, in spite of Schottenheimer’s impressive career record, his teams were dismal in post-season play. But there’s always next year and if I had a chunk of an NFL team, I’d rather place my bet on the coach than on the GM. It’s tough to make it all the way to the “big show” and a team has to have a lot of breaks, some good luck and a proper alignment of the stars…or, in the case of the New England Patriots, make a deal with the devil.

Last year, my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t the best team in the NFL, but they got hot at the right time, got a couple of breaks, and they walked off with a Superbowl victory. Coach Bill Cowher, himself often criticized for being unable to “win the big one,” finally had his championship ring and brought the Lombardi Trophy home to Steeltown for the Rooney family that had supported him for so long. Who did the Steelers beat in the AFC Championship game to go to the Superbowl? The Indianapolis Colts. The year before, the Colts were the best team in football (much like the Chargers this year) and they were beaten in the championship game then, too. What would have happened if Colts owner Jim Irsay had taken the San Diego route and gotten rid of coach Tony Dungy? It’s safe to say that he might not have this year’s Superbowl victory if he had. Dungy finally won his “big one.”

That’s life in the NFL, you say, and half the teams in the league have gotten rid of their coaches during the last five years. The lifespan of an NFL coach is short and proven winners command top dollar. However, here’s a business reality for you all: as long as the San Diego Chargers were winning games, the team was going to be successful. Fans may gripe about Marty not being able to win during post-season, but as long as the team was winning – and they had a winning record under Marty three years running – all of the team’s home games were going to be sold out, the LT jerseys were going to fly off the racks and TV ratings were going to hold strong.

Yes, yes, I hear you saying, “Rev, this is football that you’re talking about. What the hell does it have to do with music?” I once again submit that bad business decisions equal bad mojo, which you can define any way that you want. A few years ago, the auto industry in Detroit made the bone-headed decision that U.S. consumers wanted trucks and sports utility vehicles instead of gas-effective automobiles. It’s the same damn stupid logic they used during the late-70s to tout large, expensive, gas-guzzling cars when smaller, cheaper Japanese imports were beginning to eat Detroit’s lunch in the market. It almost ruined the American auto industry and it caused many changes in the decade to follow.

Today, nearly 30 years later, Detroit’s auto industry is on the brink of extinction and Detroit’s “Big 3” companies are in disarray. Ford lost over $12 billion last year, General Motors lost $3.9 billion and Chrysler, reportedly placed on sale by its parent company, lost almost $1.5 billion last year. Because of bad business decisions, Detroit has dropped 50% of the market over the last 20 years. Over 70,000 industry jobs have been lost during the last couple of years, with thousands more to fall to the axe in 2007.

So what does this have to do with music? The recording industry has made its share of bad business decisions during the last few years. Since 2003, on behalf of its member labels, the RIAA has filed lawsuits against nearly 20,000 consumers, angering the greater number of record buyers. The industry has ignored or fought changes in technology that might have propelled it to greater sales heights over the next decade. They have tried to foist expensive and unneeded formats on the consumer (can you say DVD-Audio?). Worst of all, the industry has treated its workers (the musicians) like so much chattel, cheating them out of royalties even while proclaiming their concern for the artists with every self-serving press release. This ruse has been revealed as so much bullshit, with the Internet throwing back the covers and revealing many of the industry’s dirty little secrets.

Today the recording industry stands at the abyss and it’s having a lot of trouble figuring out what’s staring back at them when they look into the future. Bad business decisions have alienated consumers, produced crappy music and cheated the artists and, as a result, overall music sales have suffered. The industry is not nearly in the dire straits that they would have us believe, as billions of dollars in music is still being sold every year. However, if they continue making bad decisions, the potential for self-destruction is there. As industry execs ponder technological subjects that they don’t understand (like DRM) and quibble with other media companies over payments for intellectual property, they stand at a crossroads…and there’s a bad mojo risin’.