Garth Meyer

At the end of Sunday’s NFC Championship game, Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman’s antics exposed him to the nation as the classless loudmouth he was already known to be in the northwest.

But he’s also smart.

He went to Stanford, where football coach David Shaw adamantly says the school does not lower entrance standards for athletes. He wasn’t the head coach then but there’s no reason to think Stanford’s policy was different just a few years ago than it is now.

What Sherman was right about was that 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick blew it. In the process, he pointed out a particular vulnerability of guys like him.

Sherman gave Kaepernick the choke sign like the hot-headed player we hate, but he also was about the only one to point it out.

Kaepernick, after throwing a point-blank interception earlier in the second half which Troy Aikman called “terrible,” had his team on Seattle’s 18-yard-line, 22 seconds left, first down with all three timeouts left.

That’s when he threw for the corner of the end zone. It was a risk he had no reason to take.

Sherman even said that as soon as the ball left Kaepernick’s hand, he thought they could make a play on it.

Earlier in the week, Joe Montana suggested the current 49ers quarterback should focus a little more on how he plays in the pocket. The pocket was where he threw that ball from, and the previous ill-considered interception.

Kaepernick brushed the comment aside, and subsequently ran for big yards in Seattle on Sunday.

But the man of the flat-billed cap, sleeve tattoos and Beats by Dre headphones proved to be undisciplined.

Don’t the cool guys always seem to lack discipline?

This was another piece of evidence. Two months ago, the Oregon Ducks, a program synonymous with being cool, got exposed by the oldest-school, traditional, conservative football strategy of Stanford. It was the second year in a row that the Cardinal, steady and disciplined, embarrassed the cool guys.

So cool guys have their place, but if you want to win championships, they’re proving overrated.

If only Richard Sherman had just said that.

Garth Meyer

Gazette Reporter