On Filtering From the Comments Section

There's a particular kind of commenter on sports blogs who's got a very clear idea of what posts do and don't belong on a given blog. (We don't have any of those here, of course. We barely have any commenters at all, but we love the ones we do.) They'll carefully read stuff that, by title alone, is guaranteed not to interest them, just so they can then comment that this particular post doesn't belong. Advanced cases will generally phrase these posts with "Normally I love your work, but-". Hardcases prefer, "I thought this was a [name of sport] blog, not name of thing they disapprove of]". Often there are proud announcements that because of this one post which they perceive to be off-topic, they're leaving the site (most of whose content they appear to like) and never, ever coming back.
The latest incarnation of this particular sort of bloggy puritanism is over at Hardball Times, where bloggers are getting roasted for following the Brian Cashman pajama bottom story. They feel, and they may be right, that it's not a baseball story; Craig Calcaterra and DJ Short and the folks who write for the site feel that since Cashman is the GM of the Yankees it's baseball-related and they'll put it out there for folks to see, which is also a reasonable position. What's not reasonable, though, is the attempt by a few people to deliberately work themselves into a lather as an excuse to try to dictate content.
Hey, kids, here's an idea instead. See the title of a post you don't like, don't click through and read it. Then, you don't feel morally obligated to point out how offended you are by it, and the folks who are interested can read and discuss it in peace. You get to concentrate on the part of the site you like, and everyone wins.
Or, to put it another way, if you've got six things on your plate at the local Chinese buffet but you hate seafood, there's absolutely no reason for you to go get a double handful of crab rangoon and then bitch about how since you don't like 'em, they shouldn't be served. Your reaction to any given bit of posting is appreciated, not required, and the choice not to read something is just as the choice to read it.
And really, everyone ends up happier that way. Even Brian Cashman.

Don't Tell Me They're Not Worth It

Once upon a time, I remember people bitching about how ballplayers got paid too much. "They're just playing a game," people said. "They don't need that money." And of course, "We should be paying people who are really important, like policemen and teachers."

These days, you still get people bitching about ballplayers being paid too much. The difference, of course, is that now they're saying that money should go to the owners instead, because the owners "take all the risk". Funny how times change.

Politics aside, however, it's an idiotic position to take. The players are paid, despite numerous attempts to artificially suppress their wages (draft slotting, luxury taxes, multiple years until free agency, etc.) what they're worth to the business of the team that employs them. The players are, after all, the product. The better the players, the better the product. The better the product, the more seats you fill, the more beers you sell, the more team merch goes out the door. It's a simple, direct, and obvious function, and it's purely capitalist - the best players outcompete their peers to get the most money.

And the owners...are in position to write those checks. Not because "they're taking all the risk." They're not. More often than not, it's the taxpayers who are taking all the risk. They're the ones underwriting the new stadiums, after all. They're the ones giving up city parking revenues and naming rights on public buildings, they're the ones paying the extra half-cent in tax that pays for the new parking lots, they're the ones stuck with the bill if the metaphorical pooch gets screwed. Team owners take all the risks? Just ask the suckers from New Jersey, still on the hook for a quarter-billion in bonds for the Meadowlands, who's taking the risks. Ask Dodgers fans how Frank McCourt's siphoning a couple of hundred million dollars out of the team and leveraging a Los Angeles landmark was taking all the risks. And meanwhile, team values rise and rise.

The people who are rich enough to own sports teams got that way because they're good at making money. If they didn't think they'd make even more money owning a team, they wouldn't buy one. They get tax breaks on the purchase, an asset that constantly increases in value, and boatloads of taxpayer money to play with. Where's the risk, apart from the risk of being called a jackass by call-ins on a local radio station you don't actually have to listen to? Money can soothe that hurt. So can the adulation of a city, if you buy a winner.

So you can bitch about a culture that puts athletes in position to sign multi-hundred million dollar contracts. But within their context, they're worth it - they bring in those revenues to their employers, and they're the best in the world at what they do. We, for are part, are willing to pay to see them perform, and thus pay their salaries. If we're willing to pay the freight to go see them, they're worth the freight it costs to get them in uniform. And until an owner suits up and leads the coverage team on a punt return, he's not the one taking any risks at all.

Yet Another Reason to Hate Super Bowl Halftime Shows

The local sports talk radio station has been running this Godawful commercial of late. Over what sounds like a knockoff of "Also Sprach Zarathurtra (DJ Concussion Mix), it announces that history is going to be made. For the first time, Madonna is going to perform in the Super Bowl 46 (I refuse to use Roman numerals unless they release lions onto the field, and I don't mean Matthew Stafford) Halftime Show.

Well, no shit. Of course she's performing for the first time in the Super Bowl 46 Halftime Show; THERE'S NEVER BEEN A SUPER BOWL 46 HALFTIME SHOW BEFORE. Everyone who performs in it is doing so for the first time, including Madonna, her cone-shaped brassiere, and whatever organic material is left in her face.

Look, I realize correct grammar is not high on the list of Super Bowl priorities. There are meaningless platitudes to dutifully record, Mannings to pursue, incantations by Bill Belichick to his lord and master Arioch to take part in, and so forth. But for God's sake, people, you've known about Madonna doing the halftime show for months. Is that long enough to get someone who hasn't suffered multiple concussions to check the text on your three line radio commercial?

Yeah, probably not. Forget I said anything.

Oswalt Roulette

The one guarantee of whatever contract Roy Oswalt gets is that it won't be appropriate for his production this coming year. Oswalt's aging, coming off a year where he spent a lot of time hurt, and about as uncertain a bet as you can imagine. On the other hand, when he finally got healthy last year, he was still Roy Goddamn Oswalt, as good a starter as you could hope for.
All of which means, of course, that he's going to get paid - but not too much. Whoever signs him - and right now, it looks like Texas or St. Louis, because Ruben Amaro Jr has an unhealthy fascination with Joe Blanton - is going to get him on a one-year, mid-priced deal. It makes sense; don't want to go all in, because he might not be healthy. Can't lowball him, because he can still own the park on any given night. So the contract will be somewhere in the middle, probably 1 year at $6M-$8M or so - a lot less than Edwin Jackson's gunning for. And Oswalt will either outperform it or underperform it by a wide margin, because pretty much the one guarantee is that he's not going to recreate last year's performance.
But he'll get paid like it, and someone will either make out like a bandit, or get totally screwed.

An Encounter With Angry Mutton

So it's Saturday afternoon, and I'm in Chapel Hill with my Delicate Bellicose Flower, i.e. my wife Melinda, for brunch. We are having brunch in Chapel Hill (home of the UNC Tar Heels, for those of you who are unable to hear the frequencies Dick Vitale broadcasts at) because we have tried and failed to have brunch in Durham multiple times, and because the restaurant at local landmark foodie haven A Southern Season does good brunch, and there's a big store to wander around in while we wait for our table.
Melinda (that's the Delicate Bellicose Flower, for those of you keeping track) starts looking at the tea. I wander off to try to find the restrooms, and instead I find Rameses, over by the deli meats.
Rameses, as the initiated know, is the mascot of the UNC-Chapel Hill Tar Heels. He is, in this incarnation, an anthropomorphic ram, as having real livestock on the court during a basketball game is generally not a good thing, and undergraduates in ram costumes tend to be better about relieving themselves than farm animals. Why a team named the Tar Heels uses an anthropomorphic sheep as a mascot is a story for another time; in the interim, readers are invited to ask themselves if they really want to see a sophomore botany major from Mebane or Elizabeth City dressed up like a giant foot with some gunk on it, doing pushups on the court at halftime.
In any case, there Rameses was, cavorting in the aisles, doing photo ops with small children and Heels fans of all ages, and more importantly, impeding my forward progress. Behind me, a guy nodded and smiled approvingly and said, as a statement of presumed solidarity, "Go Heels".
In retrospect, I probably should not have done what I did next. I channeled the fact that my aforementioned wife has a PhD from NC State, and said, "Go Pack."  The gentleman was horrified. And I got Rameses' attention.
He took a few steps toward me. His mascoty eyes, unblinking, locked in on mine. "Actually," I said, "I'm a Boston College fan." Which, for the record, is true. BC School of Arts and Sciences, MA in Literature with Distinction, 1994. You can look it up; I'm not sure they ever sent me the piece of paper but they do occasionally send me the alumni magazine and offers to buy Christmas tree ornaments shaped like the football stadium.
Well, that was enough for Rameses. He dropped into a fighter's crouch, cocked his head belligerently and started shadowboxing in my direction. I looked at the large anthropomorphic ram making Rocky shapes, thought about the basketball season so far (you don't mention football in Chapel Hill these days. It's still kind of a sore spot, apparently) and said, "C'mon, man. Boston College."
That would be 7-14 Boston College, with losses to 9-12 Holy Cross, 4-18 Rhode Island, 11-12 Boston U, and the second-worst Wake Forest team of recent memory. (Jeff Bzdelik's squads have bzeen bzad). I mean, look. I'm an alum. I'm a fan. But we're a long way from the Al Skinner glory years here, people. A looooong way.
Rameses stopped. He thought about it. Quite possibly, inside his suit he was checking the ACC standings. And then he dropped his hands and patted my head, in woolly pity, and moved on.

Colts / Arians

Saturday, the Colts hired former Steeler offensive coordinator Bruce Arians as their new offensive coordinator. Arians has always been a pass-first guy. He hasn't paid close enough attention to the offensive line, by virtue of having had the Incredible Hulk behind center. Is this a signal that they're ditching Manning (who needs good pass protection) or that they're keeping him (because Arians likes to air it out)?

As a Steeler note -- the offensive line has been in tatters since Russ Grimm left in a huff with Ken Whisenhunt a few years ago. If the Steelers had been looking for someone to fire in order to Make A Statement, they should have fired offensive line coach Sean Kugler (who joined the Steelers early in 2010, after 2 years of the Bills' offensive line letting Trent Edwards, JP Losman, and Ryan Fitzpatrick get body-slammed through the ice of Lake Erie).

You thought I was done talking about the US WNT

The US Women's National Team beat Costa Rica 3-0 last night, thereby qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics.

Hope Solo started in goal despite a mild quadriceps strain she'd incurred during the 4-0 win over Mexico. Other than injure herself, Solo had hardly had anything to do during the Mexico game (I counted just a handful of first-half touches). The Costa Rica game was a bit more of a challenge; Solo had to make a few saves in the first half. The injury didn't seem to do her any harm, as she registered her fourth clean sheet of the tournament.

Part of the reason that Solo hurt herself against Mexico was that -- as she admits -- she still isn't up to form after taking time off for Dancing With The Stars.

In the Costa Rica game, for the first time that I can remember, coach Pia Sundhage chose not to start Amy Rodriguez. Rodriguez is a reasonably talented player, and she's fast, but she makes terrible decisions when the ball is at her feet. She'll make a good run to get possession and then lose possession in mere seconds -- not to a tackle but to a poorly-chosen pass.

Why Sundhage persisted in starting Rodriguez through the 2011 World Cup run remains a mystery, since Sundhage had a talented midfielder like Megan Rapinoe on the sideline. Many of the team's late-game heroics during the World Cup came only after Rapinoe subbed in for Rodriguez.

Against Costa Rica, both Rapinoe and Rodriguez started on the bench; Rodriguez went on in the 70th minute for Heather O'Reilly, and Rapinoe went on in the 80th minute for Shannon Boxx.

Finally I must confess some curiosity as to why Alex Morgan never starts games. She scored plenty of times in the World Cup run, and has had several goals in this year's Olympic cycle as well. I can only assume that Morgan's fitness isn't yet up to snuff, and so she's used as a strong, fast attacking substitute in games where more offense is needed. She's young, and so I expect to see her getting some starts relatively soon.

The US will face either Canada or Mexico in the tournament final Sunday night at 8pm EST. For once, this game will be broadcast -- it'll be on the NBC Sports network (formerly known as Versus).

The Colts' Joint Statement

So Peyton and Irsay issued a joint statement today talking about how they wanted to dispel the groundless speculation and just move forward and so on and so forth. They're still friends, everything is fine, and they're not going to let a little thing like Peyton's jenga set of neck vertebrae and looming $28M roster bonus come between them.
Besides the fact that I can now only imagine this statement being read in creepy unison by Irsay and Manning like they're refugees from Torchwood: Children of Earth, this is laughable on any number of levels. It's not going to stop speculation. It's not going to stop anything. We have a completely uncompelling Super Bowl coming up, and the only interesting plotlines (the game is in Peyton's backyard! Is Peyton's brother better than he is [answer: No. He's just played more playoff games against teams with crappy punt returners]? are Peyton-centric. It's the only easy, compelling story that will always be there for storywriters to go to, at least until March, and so we're going to hear endless analysis and speculation and God knows what else, until one of them - Irsay or Manning - gets tired of saying "No comment" and tells the five hundredth ESPN beat guy who asks "So, are you two still pissed at each other or what"a bit of unvarnished truth.
At which point, the whole thing will start all over again.

Who the Hell's On First?

Once upon a time, most of the best first basemen in baseball were in the National League. Albert Pujols dominated in St. Louis. Prince Fielder was in Milwaukee. A-Gonz was in San Diego and Ryan Howard had both Achilles tendons, and Joey Votto was a rising star in Cincy. Hell, you can even reach and point out Mark Texeira's stay in Atlanta as roughly cotemporaneous.
And now...bupkis. Votto's the only one left standing (see: Howard, Ryan). Behind him, at least until Howard makes a comeback, is who? Ike Davis? Freddie Freeman? For the love of God, Mike Morse? As what is considered the premier offensive position on the diamond, the place where you're willing to live with a Dick Stuart's Strangegloveliness because he whales the tar out of the damn ball, there's nothing left. It's Votto and a vast wasteland filled with skulking Loneys and LaHairs and fossilized Heltons.
What this means, on one level, is that the NL - after some progress - has once again slipped back away from the AL in terms of quality. You just don't make up a Pujols' worth of offense anywhere else on the diamond, not unless you have a vintage A-Rod type at shortstop. And as good as Troy Tulowitzki is, and as many Scrabble points as his last name is worth, he's not A-Rod. (For one thing, way fewer pictures of him as a centaur.)
Part of this comes from various AL teams being cash-rich at the right time. A new TV deal for the Angels got them Pujols; the Yankee and Red Sox regional sports networks are licenses to print money. And part of it is the fact that the AL does have the DH - a place to stash those aging sluggers as they get older and slower, and still derive some benefit. Think back on the chatter on the Ryan Howard contract; one of the most common memes was that they'd have to trade him to the AL at some point on the back end of the deal because he'd just be a DH. AL teams don't have to worry about making that deal. They can just slide the immobile slugger over at some point without skipping a beat, and that allows them to go longer on contract offers than NL teams. That in turn means more money, which means lots of big guys who hit the ball a ton going to the AL.
At some point, hopefully, that will change. As the Freemans and Brandon Belts and Anthony Rizzos and Yonder Alonsos of the world get some time to develop, as the ownership situations in Los Angeles and Chicago settle down and those teams start flexing their market muscle, as the current crop of guys ages, then maybe the NL will catch up again. In the meantime, though, the AL's got the advantage, and that will show in the All-Star Game, and thus in the World Series. There's a lot of reasons to dislike the fact that the leagues play under different rules; this is one of the more subtle - but possible one of the most important - ones.

9 Years, $214M

Also known as "Mike Ilitch pulls a Ewing Kaufman" In nine years, the Prince Fielder contract will probably be a disaster. In five years, it may be a disaster. But Ilitch is 82 and he ain't taking Comerica Park with him when he goes. That $214M might as be a one year deal, as what Ilitch is buying is another shot at a World Series ring this year, right now, while he's still around to enjoy it.
In terms of a rational look at the numbers, no, it doesn't make sense. It's a loooong deal, Fielder's body type generally doesn't age well, it's a ton of money, and the Tigers already have a couple of slugging fire hydrants in Victor Martinez and Miggy Cabrera. Sure, Cabrera can stand at third with a glove on, but the man clearly knows the location of the Magical Fountain of Pie, and he's not giving it up for love or money. All three of those guys are owed a lot of money, and in the long term, if you're looking at the extended well-being of the Detroit Tigers as a franchise, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
But the thing is, we're not, or at least Ilitch isn't. His calculus is "I want to win now, and I will spend what it takes to do that". So he spent, and within that frame of reference it makes perfect sense. If the Tigers win the Series next year, it will have been worth every penny of that $214M to Ilitch and then some. And that's just fine.

US WNT

The US Women's National Soccer Team is participating, as it always does, in the qualifying tournament for the upcoming Olympic Games. Since FIFA is responsible for managing the qualifying tournament, the US WNT is playing other teams from CONCACAF, our regional* soccer federation.

Our opening group consists of Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

The US team beat the Dominican Republic and Guatemala by a combined total of 27-0.

Let me remind you that this is soccer. British soccer commentators have been known to use the phrase "a 1-0 drubbing" unironically.

(I am not concerned about the sportsmanship of a 14-0 win by the US team, by the way. This isn't youth rec soccer. These are adults and, allegedly, world-caliber players. When you get into top-level competition, as far as I'm concerned, the gloves come off.)

The only team the US WNT has yet to play in its group is Mexico. Mexico, 14 months ago, nearly knocked the US out of the women's World Cup by beating them 2-1. The US team got to the finals of that World Cup despite the Mexico loss; the finals were one of the most-watched soccer games in US history.

You would think the US-Mexico game might be a big draw. Kickoff is at 10:30pm EST tonight. You won't find it on TV, though. Neither ESPN, Univision, NBC Sports, Fox Sports nor even the Fox Soccer Channel is carrying the game. This is a ridiculous state of affairs.

I guess I'll make sure my laptop is charged. The game can be watched on CONCACAF's website.

* CONCACAF's teams come from North America, the Caribbean, and Central America

What Have We Learned From The Conference Championship Games?

1. The sportswriters busily canonizing Eli Manning are conveniently forgetting that, during the last five minutes of the game and overtime, he repeatedly spit the bit. It wasn't until the 49ers gift-wrapped the ballgame that he was able to seal the deal, somehow magically becoming "clutch" and "gritty" and "better than Payton" in the process. Without a generous assist from San Francisco's special teams, Eli's golfing this week instead of fielding questions about how legendary he is. But hey, it doesn't fit the narrative.
2. If you can hold your kick returner up to your ear and hear the ocean, it's probably time to get another guy out there. Of any and all the mistakes Jim Harbaugh made, this is probably the least excusable. According to the Giants - who were aware that Kyle Williams had concussion issues and deliberately tried to ring his bell as a result - they could see that he was wobblier than Community's place on NBC's schedule. If they could see it, Harbaugh should have seen it, and replaced Williams with someone who, when asked what day it was, wouldn't answer "Shostakovich."
3. Speaking of Kyle Williams, stay classy, Bay Area. Between the death threats you've been raining on the kid and Willie Brown's take on Elvis Grbac, you're out-Phillying Philly. And I say that as a guy who owns something once autographed by Marty Bystrom.
4. Everyone inclined to blame no one but Billy Cundiff for the Ravens' loss should check the angle on the laces on that ball. Then, they should look up the physics of the knuckleball, especially the bits about uneven airflow. To quote Sports Illustrated,

   "When the kicker sees a flash of white facing him [on his approach]," says Frost, referring to the laces, "nothing good is going through his head."

5. I'm still stunned the Ravens, instead of going to the end zone on 2nd and 3rd on that last series, didn't just bull forward and get the first down. They had a time out; they could reset their downs, used the time out, and been able to spike the ball to buy Cundiff enough time to get on the field properly.
6. But hey, blaming kickers is fun, because they're not real football players. The guys who turned 3 New England turnovers into 6 whole points? Perfectly blameless. Except for Lee Evans.
7. So, can we all agree that special teams are actually important now? Folks? Can I get an amen from somebody?
8. Just remember, folks - the Giants were outscored during the regular season, and were fifteen minutes' worth of Mark Sanchez removing his keister from his cornhole away from staying home for the playoffs. (Eli, for the record, was 9-27 that game. Gritty.)
9. As a professional game designer, I'm offended by the NFL's overtime rules. There's something about football and overtime that causes rules designers to channel their inner derpderpderp. College overtime rules are a cross between Dragonball Z and handing out participation awards during recess, and the NFL's aren't much better. Look, I'll make this very simple. You have a game. The rules work. If you have to go to overtime, all that needs to happen is that YOU KEEP PLAYING THE SAME GAME HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ALREADY LOVE. There's no need to get cute, or tack on conditional rules. Just add a quarter, sell more beer and pretzels at the stadium, and let the best team win by playing football instead of pachinko, mm-kay?

Yinzer-Free Conference Championship Games Edition

I had a bunch to say about this weekend's upcoming games but then Tom Carson went and said most of it, including, of the Patriots:

The simple truth is that reviling them is more fun than liking them could possibly be, and Pats fans don't know what they're missing. Whenever their Evil Empire falls short, a briefly united nation rejoices—and it feels really good.

Go read the rest -- it is excellent.

I had a thing worked out where I would look at preseason expectations for all four remaining teams, and the results of their first four games, and how they line up with recent results, but the fact is that these teams were expected to do pretty well. The only question mark was the 49ers, and they were given the benefit of the doubt because they play in the persistently awful NFC West. Three of them won their first game (the Giants lost to the Redskins, and doesn't THAT feel like a long time ago). No big surprises. So that tack was worthless for this post too.

But then I got weird and mathematical. This is something that happens to me. You get used to it.

That phrase I just used, "the persistently awful NFC West," started gnawing at me. I mean, yes, they are persistently awful. In the regular season. But then I thought, Seattle knocked New Orleans out of the playoffs last year. Arizona went to the Super Bowl a few years ago. The Niners just won pretty convincingly.

It turns out that since the 2007-2008 postseason*, the NFC West has the BEST collective postseason record of any of the conferences. They're 6-4. (The next-most-successful division is the AFC North, at 10-7 -- a lot more appearances, but a slightly worse collective record). (The least successful division in this span? The AFC South, at 4-8). The NFC West has gotten at least one playoff win in 4 out of 5 of those seasons.

What on Earth does this mean?

Well I have a theory. The NFC West doesn't generate a lot of regular-season wild-cards, because they're so awful. However, the NFC West champion hosts at least one playoff game every season. And all of the NFC West's teams are in the Pacific time zone. This, I think, is a big advantage. Teams from the east coast suffer through a six-hour flight; their internal clocks are screwed up; etc**.

If I were good at this sports-geek thing I'd go check the collective records of east-coast teams playing in the Pacific time zone... Maybe I'll do that during the big downtime after this weekend's games.

But this quick & dirty analysis does lead me to think that the spread -- currently 49ers by 2.5 -- may be right.

* I'm not deliberately cherry-picking my data set here. I'm just too lazy to do more than five seasons' worth of investigation.

** Why doesn't this happen with the AFC West, then? Denver.

Random Thoughts From a Day In Sports

• Russell Westbrook re-ups in Oklahoma City. Thunder fans cheer. Seattlites boo. Most of the rest of the country is briefly reminded that there's an NBA team in Oklahoma City, then goes back to hating on LeBron James.
• The Texas Rangers say they're most likely out of the bidding on Prince Fielder. This pretty much limits Fielder's possible destinations to the Washington Nationals, the Nippon Ham Fighters, and a "mystery team" invented by Jon Heyman with Scott Boras' assistance, most likely the Springfield Isotopes.
• Texas has signed Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish. While reports are conflicted about what we can expect from Darvish on the mound, they make it very clear there's one thing we should absolutely expect going forward: a veritable avalanche of crappy "Yu" puns.
• Clemson just hired a defensive coordinator. Because after their bowl game, they decided it would help if they had one.
• 49 year old Jamie Moyer signed a minor league deal with the Colorado Rockies who, despite storing their game baseballs in a humidor, still play in the Thunderdome. Moyer's fastball goes slower than my 8 year old nephew rides his bike. If Moyer does break camp with the team, this has the high probability of getting very ugly. And yet, you can't help but root for the guy, in part because he's one of a kind, and in part because as long as he's out there doing it, the dream's not entirely dead for any of us guys careening toward middle age who are still younger than him.
• Jorge Posada will not play next year. However, he has also not retired. Presumably this means he'll be playing in the IFL with Terrell Owens.
• Sorry, Illinois. Nobody looks good in orange shorts. Nobody. And that goes double for guys over 6'9"

14.2 Seconds to Glory

I was listening with UNC's Associate Athletic Director In Charge Of Media Or Something (also known as Minister of Propaganda For the Benevolent Blue Royocracy) of UNC called in to a local sports talk station to try to explain how exactly the sainted Roy Williams had managed to leave five kids and a couple of assistant coaches out on the floor when he pulled most of his team and staff into the locker room with 14 seconds remaining in Saturday's flogging at the hands of Florida State. To be fair, nobody questioned Williams for pulling his team; the FSU crowd looked ready to storm the court, UNC had suffered a bad experience earlier when a female manager was trampled by rowdy UNLV fans storming the court after an upset victory, and when you're in Tallahassee, there's always the danger of being mistaken for a chunk of turf and getting impaled with a flaming spear.

The problem was, the explanation given sounded, well, goofy. That Williams had talked to FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton and they'd agreed to let UNC go home early, that made sense. But then the story got wonky. Roy's instructions didn't get communicated. He didn't look at game film until much later, so he had no idea that five of his guys, plus some coaches, had been left out there. They went straight into the team prayer, so apparently noticed the guys who were missing, were missing, and, then a few days later, it was left to the assistant AD to call into 850 The Buzz to try to lay it all out for the masses.

You know, I believe it's possible that in the confusion, things got lost. Stuff didn't get communicated. Wires got crossed. And nobody got hurt, unlike in that UNLV game.

That being said, it's still not an excuse. If you think the situation is so dangerous that you have to get your kids out of there, you have to get all of the kids entrusted to you out of there, and you have to make sure that they all get accounted for. Elementary school teachers taking field trips grasp this concept; the ridiculously highly paid coach of a high-profile basketball program, a man who is known for his obsessive, meticulous attention to detail, ought to have it down pat, too. If nothing else, the fact that the refs were setting up for an inbounds play should have warned him that not everyone was down with the 14 second early dismissal; coaches are supposed to notice things like that.

So we're left with a couple of options here. One, it happened the way Roy Williams said it did, and he was guilty of sloppy carelessness. Two, Williams pulled his people off the court and didn't bother to check to make sure everyone made it out, then made up the "I didn't know story" later. That makes him careless and mendacious. Or three, he was interested in getting the key people - the starters - out of there, and the rest was smokescreen, with the AD sent to fall on his sword for the good of the program*.

I don't know which is the case, and I don't particularly care. As has been noted elsewhere, the Roy Williams era in Chapel Hill has been marked by high strangeness as well as spectacular success. And yeah, everyone makes mistakes once in a while, and that includes superstar coaches as well as workaday zhlubs. But no matter what actually happened - and we will never know, now that Williams has officially denounced anyone who dare question the official story - the fact remains that in a situation where the adult in charge decided things were dangerous, players somehow got left behind. One can only hope that next time it happens, Roy Williams takes the time, even if it's all the remaining time, to make sure everyone he's responsible is actually with him.

*Four, which makes even less sense than the rest of this, is that the guys who stayed out there, either coach or players, ignored instructions to get off the court to nab those sweet, sweet 14.2 seconds of PT. That being said, I don't see ignoring the coach's instructions in a potentially environment as a route to either more PT down the road or, in the case of the coaches, continued employment.

Yinzer-Free Super Bowl Matchup Thoughts

More incisive analysis from the mind of Sportsthodoxy football analyst Jim "Tenzil" Kiley

----------------

Every team I rooted for, and half the teams I picked, are out after yesterday. At this juncture, as a fan, I'm just hoping to see some good play. If either of the following two matchups make it to the Super Bowl, well... maybe Sid Crosby will get back on the ice soon!

Giants vs. Patriots:

It's 2007 all over again, kids! A rematch between Brady and Manning! A chance to ... oh, come on.

There are six Patriots left from that 2007 squad, including precisely zero members of the Pats defense. David Tyree and most of the '07 Giants are gone too. The average NFL career is 3.3 years long. In football terms, 2007 was a generation ago.

Nevertheless, if the Giants beat the 49ers this upcoming weekend, and the Patriots beat the Ravens, expect a full two weeks of Eli and Tom getting quizzed about this "rematch."

Ravens vs. 49ers:

Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh! Brother versus brother!

We'll get sepia-toned pictures of Jack Harbaugh's storied career at Bowling Green State University (go Falcons!*). Polaroids of the boys in their junior and high-school gear; footage of Jack on the sidelines at various universities. Probably a homey invite to the kitchen of Mama Harbaugh and her secret deep-fried recipe for deep-fried something-stupid.Let's ignore the fact that there are 106 well-compensated, intelligent**, hugely athletic gentlemen who'll be executing the plays out there. No, instead pretend that what we're about to watch is a game of Madden 2012 with the brothers at the controllers.

So please, Football Gods, if you're listening up there in Valhalla***, give us one of the other two possible matchups. My sanity can't handle these choices.

* Yr obt corresp, BGSU class of '94

** Some of them actually are really smart. Others less so.

*** or Canton, I guess?

Bold Prediction

No matter what happens from here on out, the following things will happen:

1. Some announcer on a Giants game will talk about how at one point this season, coach Tom Coughlin was nearly fired.
2. Next season, the Giants will lose 2 or 3 games in a row, and look bad doing it.
3. Giants fans and the New York media will demand that Tom Coughlin be fired.
4. The Giants will then rip off a season-ending hot streak and make noise in the playoffs.
5. Some announcer on a Giants game will talk about how at one point this season, coach Tom Coughlin was nearly fired.

Seriously, people, haven't we seen this movie before?

So Let's Talk About What Really Happened To Denver

The surprise yesterday was not that the air got let out of the Tebowmobile's tires. New England had done that before, after all, and there was no reason to expect they - even with their 31st ranked defense - wouldn't be able to do it again. Tebow's got no touch and no timing on his passes. What he does have is a cannon for an arm, which is why the only aspect of the passing game he's successful at is the deep ball - he just hoists it up there and gives his receivers time to run under it. That's how he beat Pittsburgh; the Steelers' decimated defense simply didn't have enough bodies to keep him honest on the vertical passing game. Short and medium range stuff, and timing routes, though, Tebow's wounded ducks simply don't fly.

And so the Patriots cut off the deep ball, rushed to contain rather than pursue, and when nobody downfield was open, stuffed the run and collected their sacks. End of story. It was the same model that everyone who'd beaten the Tebow-led Broncos had used - yes, even Buffalo. And it is worth noting, at the risk of beating a dead purple-and-orange horse, that even the games that Tebow won with his thrilling fourth quarter heroics weren't exactly offensive explosions. 18 points on Miami, most of them gifts. 17 points on the Chiefs. 13 on the Caleb Hanie-model Bears. Expecting the same sort of numbers Tebow had magically produced last week against the undermanned Steelers against a Belichick defense was, frankly, hoping for a miracle.

No, the initially surprising thing yesterday was how completely Tom Brady pantsed the Broncos' defense. John Fox is a defensive coach, and a good one. Even his worst Carolina Panthers teams - and there were some real stinkers - had strong defenses (at least until the annual Dan Morgan injury hit), and to see one of his units get so thoroughly and completely embarrassed was shocking. For all the Tebow-mania, it was Denver's defense that got them this far, holding opponents down long enough for the fourth quarter magic to happen.

Then again, if you think about it in context, maybe it's not so surprising. Denver's offense is not built for the comeback. A couple of quick scores to put the Broncos behind means forcing the Denver offense to do things it's not built to do, which means 3 and outs, which means more chances for the opposing offense to score against an increasingly tired Denver D. And that digs the hole deeper, which forces the Broncos even further out of their comfort zone, and, well, in retrospect it doesn't seem that surprising that track meet offenses like Green Bay and Detroit and New England buried the Broncos that deep, that fast. Yesterday was just the ultimate expression of that trend.

That won't be the story, of course. The drums are already beating in some quarters for Brady Quinn, in others they're proclaiming that Tebow was never given a chance to win. The defense, well, nobody's going to be talking about that.

Yinzer-Free 2nd Round NFL Playoff Picks

Courtesy of friend of Sportsthodoxy, talented writer and all-around good guy Jim "Tenzil" Kiley, here's a look at this weekend's games.

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I've been skipping SportsCenter all week because, well, I live in Pittsburgh. It's a penitent time here. We're all wearing Polamalu-hair shirts and flagellating ourselves. If only we'd cheered harder or bought one more Terrible Towel, maybe Ryan Mundy wouldn't have bit so hard on the play-action. You know how it is.

Although I haven't watched any of it, I'm sure the ESPN guys are doing their matchups and key factors and so on. What follows... is not that.

Denver at New England

POINTLESS COMPARISON: WORSE AIRPORT: Denver. Logan is a hole, but at least it's convenient to the city itself. Last time I was there, DIA was in the middle of nowhere and nothing worked. Maybe things work now but I bet it's still out in the wastelands.

Houston at Baltimore

POINTLESS COMPARISON: NATIVE CELEBRITY: Houston, going away. Beyonce is the queen of everything. Baltimore's got... Hasselhoff? I mean, bonus points for Frank Zappa and John Waters, guys, but you're falling behind.

New York Giants at Green Bay

POINTLESS COMPARISON: STUPID COMMERCIALS: Aaron Rodgers "discount double-check" Allstate commercial versus Eli Manning "double stufs racing league" Oreo commercial. God, I hate them both. But this isn't the first terrible commercial for Manning ("Eli Manning is... unstoppable"), so I'm giving the edge to Green Bay.

New Orleans at San Francisco

POINTLESS COMPARISON: SUMMERTIME CLIMATE: Gotta give the edge to San Francisco here. Give me cool and damp over, in the words of Owen's Momma, "sultry."

Actual Football Talk

Denver - New England: While watching my beloved Steelers get kicked in the junk this past weekend, I was impressed by the general quality of Denver's offensive line play. They got a good surge and controlled the line of scrimmage on running plays. This may have had something to do with the Steelers' Casey Hampton and Brett Keisel being out hurt, but Football Outsiders ranks Denver's O-line in the top third of the league on rushing plays.

It will surprise no one to learn that Football Outsiders ranks Denver's O-line in the bottom four in pass protection. (The real miracle this year is that Tim Tebow is still alive.)

Against the run, FO ranks New England's defensive line 29th. (They're in the bottom half against the pass.)

Saturday night we may see a pattern we've seen before -- when Denver gets the ball, they eat clock like crazy with rushing plays. It won't be enough against the Pats -- but I bet it'll be fun to watch.

Houston - Baltimore: Wow, the Oilers at the Colts!

No, that's basically all I have. This one's Baltimore going away. Flacco is middling at best, but TJ Yates ain't even middling.

New York - Green Bay: Some commentators are making noise about this game being very similar to the 2007 Super Bowl. I guess because no one gives New York a shot? I disagree that it's like the 2007 Super Bowl, primarily because the Packers are the embodiment of all that is good and right in football, while the 2007 Patriots were hideous otherworldly monsters who needed to be stopped at any cost.

A quick look at stats tells us that the Giants' offense and defense are both adequate playoff units. The Packers' defense isn't uniquely bad, although it isn't great. The league's conventional stats suggest that it's terrible, but those stats don't reflect the clear purpose of the Packer defense. The Packers seem to be designed to win shootouts rather than to win skull-grinding punishment low-scoring ("classic") games. They don't mind giving up yardage, field goals, and even a TD or two, because Rodgers is still going to get to do his car-insurance dance twice more before the end of the quarter.

I'd say that the Giants's best strategy is to keep the ball away from Rodgers. Try to win the time-of-possession game.

New Orleans - San Francisco: San Francisco's takeaway-giveaway differential is best in the league, at +28. This comes in part on the strength of 23 interceptions for the year, but also by virtue of having an offense that gives away very few balls.

New Orleans is a more pedestrian team in this regard. The Saints have a fairly average number of interceptions and fumbles taken away this season.

I have no idea if this will matter. Fumbles and interceptions are pretty random things and the sample size is awfully small. But I'm sure, after the game, someone's going to credit/blame a turnover for sealing a victory/loss.

Something I won't miss about Hall of Fame voting season

One of the standard arguments pulled out by old-school voter types when they're justifying their Hall of Fame votes is "I saw this guy play and you didn't, and I know what a Hall of Famer looks like." This is often phrased as "I saw this guy play while you were being pantsed in gym class by the cool kids, so suck it, nerds", but hey, polite discourse and professionalism is what these guys are all about, right?
Anyway, as long as we're talking Hall of Fame, as opposed to Hall of Strictly Analytical Selection - to which, incidentally, I am strenuously opposed - there's a place for "You had to be there" in the discussion. Maybe not an exclusive place. Maybe not a decisive place, but a place. Because, hey, there's that whole magical narrative thing going on, and there's something to be said for indelible moments and rising to the occasion, and so on and so forth - if it's stated in a way that isn't sneeringly condescending.
But there are two problems, above and beyond the obvious, with this approach. One is that while you may have seen a guy, a lot of the rest of us saw him too, and we may not agree on what we saw. You see Jack Morris and see a bulldog, an ace, a winner. I saw Jack Morris as a leaner Rick Reuschel, a guy who was always good but rarely great, and who got lit up far more often than an ace should.
The other, of course, is that different players look like Hall of Famers to different observers. To the young me, who watched every Phillies game he could, Greg Luzinski was way more "feared" than Jim Rice ever could be. Garry Maddox was the greatest centerfielder who ever lived - two thirds of the Earth was covered by water, and the rest by Gary Maddox. Ask me who I think is a Hall of Famer based on long-ago observations, and you'll get responses that would make Jay Jaffe's hair curl.
Which is why, ultimately, the "I saw him and you didn't" defense is hooey. You saw him, sure. Maybe I did, too. Maybe I saw different things than you did. But don't you dare tell me that only your hazy memories of youthful heroes are a noble and unbiased standard, to which all the giants of a younger day can be held.

What We Have Learned from Bowl Season

1-The BCS is poorly named. For one thing, it's not a series. Multiple bowls get played, yes, but the ones besides the championship game matter precisely as much as the Northern Illinois Beats The Crap Out Of Some Unsuspecting Sun Belt Conference School Bowl, played in Waukegan to fill three hours of ESPN programming on a slow post-New Years' Thursday. The championship game is 1 vs 2, and everything else is about the lovely gift bags for the players. Stanford vs. OSU was a great game, but by next season, nobody's going to remember where those two ranked in the final polls.

2-Taking anything away from bowl season as an indicator of conference strength is insanity. Long before the bowl games start, things happen. Coaches leave, voluntarily or otherwise. Dozens of players get suspended, or rendered hors de classroom for the bowl game. Other players decide that they're going pro, and sublimate the goal of winning the We-Used-To-Call-It-The-Poulan-Weedeater-Independence-Bowl-But-Now-It's-Something-Else Bowl. Teams that thought they should have gone to bigger bowls check out. Teams that know they were supposed to do better but ended up getting into a bowl by dint of a lucky pummeling of Northwest Rhode Island Welding Institute take a look around, see their opponent is from the MAC, and check out. In short, the teams that actually step out onto the field more often than not bear little to no resemblance to the teams that played the season. Taking anything of significance out of the fact that Louisville wasn't thrilled to be playing NC State in Charlotte or whatever, and trying to extrapolate it to mean anything, is just a bad idea.

3-Anyone who says the BCS is broken is correct. Any system that proclaims a team that couldn't even win its own division of its own conference "National Champion" is, for lack of a better word, screwy.

4-Anyone who then turns around and blames the computers doesn't actually understand the BCS ranking system, which is mainly derived from the human polls. Blaming "the computers" is a lot like blaming pixies for souring your milk; the explanation is right there for anyone who doesn't want to just mouth off instead of think.

5-The fun of bowl season used to be seeing two good teams that ordinarily would never play each other going at it. Sadly, in the age of 70 bowl slots, "good teams" can be a stretch, and conference affiliations with bowls means that similar matches recur all the time. Now, the fun of bowl season is trying to predict which BCS conference team is going to wind up with a losing record after being taken out behind the woodshed by a highly motivated C-USA squad who have no idea how they're supposed to behave when they're on television and it's not a school night.

6-If you're a sports-based television network and the product you're trying to sell to your viewers is a minor bowl game, it's probably not a good idea to kvetch on-air about how nobody bothered to show up to watch this one.

7-The notion that making a BCS Bowl implies some sort of level of quality is officially laughable in the wake of the VT-Michigan snoozer. Nobody even tried to pretend that these at-large selections were picked for any reason other than butts in seats. And if butts in seats is the only criterion for inviting a couple of teams - neither of which looked like they wanted to be there - to a BCS bowl, then holding up a BCS bowl as any kind of achievement is suspect and hollow.

8-Don't make Boise State mad. You won't like Boise State when they're mad.

New Postings Have Moved...

...to http://www.tumblr.com/tumblelog/sportsthodoxy

Twenty Things I’m Hoping To See This Baseball Season:

1. Someone on the MLB Network, when discussing an aging, no-field, no-run swing-from-the-heels hitter who’s got fading doubles power and slider bat speed, to say “He’s not a professional hitter, because he can’t hit.”
2. One last moment in the sun for Matt Stairs, the Wonder Hamster
3. Craig Calcaterra finally snapping and going totally Sneakers on Jon Heyman in an attempt to prove that Scott Boras is feeding him faulty intel directly. Presumably, this ends up with Derek Zumsteg demanding a Winnebago, Marc Normandin asking for the phone number of the attractive MLB.com sysadmin who helps bust them, and Sean Casey shouting “We’re MLB Network! We don’t DO that sort of thing!”

4. Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard doing a double steal during the All-Star Game.

5. Six or seven pitchers from Jim Rice’s heyday going public with a statement to the effect of “That dude? We never actually feared him. It was Dewey Evans who scared the piss out of us.”

6. Charlie Haeger winning double-digits worth of games.

7. Alex Gordon beating the snot out of the ball, just to shut everyone up already.

8. ESPN promoting a game that doesn’t have the Yankees, Red Sox, or some combination thereof in it.

9. Tim McCarver criticizing Derek Jeter. Just once.

10. Jeffrey Samson and David Loria to fall through some sort of interdimensional wormhole that lands them in the Miami where Burn Notice is real, just in time for them to accidentally rear-end cranky superspy Michael Westen.

11. Jamie and Frank McCourt to realize they’re both looking like complete asses. As they sit down to discuss how best to resolve their divorce quickly and with dignity, they reminisce over the wonderful time they had in Brussels on their honeymoon, fall madly in love all over again, and have enthusiastic makeup sex on Bert Fields’ desk. Then, united in purpose, they go get a real starting pitcher for the Dodgers, knocking Vincente Padilla – not Charlie Haeger – out of the rotation.

12. A Charlie Zink sighting.

13. Someone in the Kansas City front office to say “You know, it’s kind of weird that a dermatologist knows more about running our baseball team than our GM does.” Ideally, the next step is to hire said dermatologist.

14. Vernon Wells, BJ Upton, Nick Johnson, Josh Hamilton, Milton Bradley, and Manny Ramirez to all play like we’ve seen them play at their best.

15. Manny Ramirez to admit the whole “Manny being Manny” thing has gotten old, and that reporters really should come up with a new shtick. Conversely, I’d also go for Manny thinking he’s the reincarnation of the Atlantean priest Klarkash-Ton, and taking batting practice in ceremonial robes from the cat-haunted city of Ulthar.

16. Carlos Marmol, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and CJ Wilson pitching lights out, as a response to their managers no longer jerking them around.

17. Someone doing a Real Genius on Dusty Baker to convince him that God wants him to start using pitch counts. Then they can use a giant laser to fill the Reds’ dugout with popcorn.

18. The ghost of the billygoat to manifest at third base at Wrigley during a twi-night doubleheader with the Cardinals in order to call out Jay Mariotti for one too many phoned-in bullcrap columns. Unfortunately, nobody’s seen Mariotti actually at Wrigley since June of ’96, so the goat dissolves into a blob of ectoplasm that later causes Aramis Ramirez to slip and fall. Ramirez blows out a hammy in the incident, his replacements don’t hit a lick, and the Cubs miss the playoffs by one game.

19. A home run ball hit by a White Sox player knocking unconscious the next reporter to claim that Ozzie’s guys play “small ball” in a home run park so egregious, Joey Gathright can swing from the heels there. I of course wish no permanent harm to come to said reporter, but if there was a residual inability to say the words “productive out”, “pitching to the score”, or “gritty gamer”, I wouldn’t be too upset.

20. Jayson Werth yelling “Captain Caaaaave-mannnn!” every time he hits a home run. Hey, it could happen.

We Love You, Joe/LeBron/Anybody

One of the things fans in the rest of the country hate about New York fans is their open, entitled speculation about when the biggest stars on other teams are going to come play in New York because New York "deserves" them. (The irony of pairing this with bitching about competitive imbalance has thus far escaped most of Pinstripe Nation.) Case in point: Ian O'Connor's navel-gazing masterpiece on ESPN New York, as self-absorbed a piece of tripe as anything the Curly Haired Boyfriend horked out in the Boston Globe. In it, O'Connor pats Cleveland on the head and then explains why LeBron has to come to New York because, well, he has to come to New York and lots of New Yorkers say so.

I can only assume that O'Connor had a Joe Mauer version of this piece ready to go, and then hastily rewrote it when Super Joe signed with the city that apparently didn't deserve him quite as much.

I Don't Think Carolina Gets All The Calls...

...but tonight's NIT finals really should have been A10 vs. A10.

And the fact that the Heels couldn't close the deal on Dayton - Dayton! - should really scare all those suits at CBS who foresee a tournament that doesn't go chalk every year.

Why People Hate Duke

There was some discussion on the local sports talk radio station today about why Duke has been cast as the "villain" in this year's Final Four. The Christian Laettner foot-stomp incident was brought up and laughed off, and various and sundry other thoughts, but really, I think they missed the point.

Badly.

You see, by all rights I should be a Duke fan. Until Boston College joined the ACC (and for all of you locals bitching about how BC doesn't belong in the conference, it's actually closer to, you know, the Atlantic Coast than Duke. Or NC State. Or Wake Forest. Or Georgia Tech. Or Virginia. Or...you get the idea.) it was the most "northern" school in the conference, a plucky little bastion of higher learning with a tiny enrollment who somehow managed to beat the big boys at their own game. And that's exactly the sort of thing that should make Duke endearing.

Only they're not. I find I loathe Duke in a way I loathe few other schools, but it took until today to figure out why.

It's not that Duke's the "villains" of the piece. The Blue Devils aren't bullies, not in the way Tark the Shark's UNLV teams were. They're not openly flouting rules or being brutes or aggressively trying to intimidate anyone, Coach K's dark suits be damned.

No, the thing is precisely that they're not bullies. They're the spoiled rich kids. They're Draco Malfoy, the weasels who get everyone else in trouble and then turn into angels the second the grownups turn around. Watch a Duke player, any Duke player, when they get a foul called on them. It's always the same - the histrionics, the hands to the side of the head, the mouth wide open in Macaulay-Culkin-ese fake shock, the "Aww, you're kidding me!" that blind lipreaders beyond the orbit of Mimas could read. When the ref's not looking, they elbow and hook and shove with the worst of 'em. When the ref is looking, they flop and overact and do their best to get the other guy - the Harry Potters of the hardwood, as it were - in trouble. Seriously. I've seen video games with ragdoll physics less impressive than what J.J. Reddick used to do when someone got within five feet of him.

That's why Duke is so hateable. Because all of us, in school, knew a Duke. We all knew a kid who tormented and teased and bullied when the teacher wasn't looking, and who used their parents or their older brother or their willingness to clean erasers to magically avoid the trouble the rest of us caught double. We'll probably never see those kids again. But we will see their likenesses, their avatars, their nationally televised equivalents. We will see them in blue and white, and we will boo them heartily.

It won't change a thing. It certainly won't retroactively balance the scales of schoolyard injustice. But man, it'll feel good.

Dear Fans Who Felt Your Team Should Stay Home Rather Than Play In A Secondary Postseason Tournament:

Shut the hell up.

If you are really fans, you want the following:
For your team to play more games so you can watch more games.
For your team to play more games so you can watch players you presumably root for a little longer before they move on.
For your team to play more games so the school can make more money and provide better facilities, etc. for the team, which will then theoretically do better next year.
For your team to play more games so young players can get more time and get that much of a leg up on next year.
Did I mention "for your team to play more games so they can hopefully win more and you can cheer them on?" You know, that whole fan thing?

There are lots of good reasons for a team to participate in any post-season play offered to it. Any one of them outweighs idiot fan pride at a season that wasn't quite up to their replica jersey- wearing standards.

I say let the kids play. And everyone else can deal.

March Madness: Weekend 1

Possibly the most amusing thing I heard this weekend was some guy swearing that President Obama had gotten on the horn and used his power to force the refs to make calls against Robert Morris, in order to protect the sanctity of the Presidential Bracket.

Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Unfortunately, you don't need to make up some of the other blithering that goes on around this time of year. Now that the dust has settled on all the whining about seeding - and let's face it, if they got it perfectly right, the angry Joe Lunardis of the world would be out of luck and out of work because their primary role is to complain about these bits of floating nonsense - it's time for all-new inanity to take over. The major throughline today seemed to be focused not on Kentucky's new status as the overall favorite or the remarkable runs by teams like Cornell and UNI, but rather that "having so many low seeds advance was bad for the tournament". Because, you know, nobody was going to watch a Sweet 16 game that didn't have the big names in it. Xavier's made the second weekend for something like thirty-seven years in a row? Doesn't matter. Cornell's a ridiculously good story - revenge of the nerds, "after this, nothing but babies and memories", the first Ivy to go this far since the days of Bird and Magic - but it doesn't matter. St. Mary's avenging last year's snub and Purdue overcoming the loss of Robbie Hummel (yes, I picked Siena in round 1) and Washington's sneaky-good run and...naah, not important. What matters is that the big names - UConn, UNC, Kansas, etc. aren't there.

Now, there are two lessons to be taken from this. One, it would have been relatively easy for those missing big names to be there. All they had to do was do what they were supposed to: win games. Sorry, the tournament is supposed to be about putting the best teams together, not the best ratings. That's what the BCS is for, after all.

The other lesson is that the mainstream sports media guys bitching and moaning about how the games aren't interesting now are doing themselves and their readers/listeners/viewers a disservice. UNI's played some pretty entertaining games. So has Purdue. So have the bulk of the surviving teams, marquee or otherwise. The smart play would be to seize the opportunity, talk up these new teams, and hopefully build nationwide interest in more teams going forward. The idiotic play is to bitch about how the tournament's no good without Carolina in it, discourage people from watching (because a game with Xavier in it can't possibly be interesting), and moan about the ratings. None of which, of course, has anything to do with the actual games, but all of which reinforces college basketball's insane football-driven caste system.

If I were running a station and one of my guys moaned about this stuff, I'd rip him a new one. Getting people interested in this stuff is better for fandom and better for business. Whining is the easy way out. I'd rather have them tell me what's exciting about what's coming up, instead of complaining that the easy story lines are gone.

Random Spring Training Thought...

For all of the geshrying over the Phillies' trade of Cliff Lee for a 1967 Chrysler Aumont* and some spare parts, there's a vague hint of a whiff of suspicion that it might not have been the stupidest idea ever. Throwing at a guy's head in a spring training game - no, correction, at a backup catcher's head - is monumentally knuckleheaded. We're talking "Tommy Greene might have thought it was a good idea" dumb. Getting suspended five games to start the season when you're supposed to be one of the two lead sled dogs for your team, the prize off-season acquisition that's going to get the team off to a fast start, is just plain stupid. Sure, suspending starting pitchers is a lot like criminal sentencing for white-collar criminals - a lot less harsh than it seems - but even so, it's a hell of an idiotic precedent to be setting.
And so the sneaking suspicion remains. If he's doing something this Jersey Shore-ish to start the season, what happens next?
Maybe, just maybe, Cliff Lee was too big of a knucklehead for Philadelphia. And that, my friends, is a scary thought.

Give the NCAA Committee Credit

Their seedings are ludicrous, but the fact that the last couple of guys in included Utah State and UTEP over the easy choices of power conference pretenders Mississippi State and Virginia Tech. Mind you, both those teams are set up to get hammered in the first round, but 5-12 upsets are the annoying relatives of March Madness: they keep on popping up, year after year.

Comparative Analysis

The baseball equivalent of the Brady Quinn trade - first round flop traded off by new regime in exchange for serviceable spare part - is probably "Bill Pulsipher for Mike Kinkade".

And if you remember that one, you can see why I'm so utterly unimpressed with the hysteria over this one.

Random NFL Trade Thought

St. Louis needs a quarterback.
In an uncapped year, prior to a CBA renegotiation which will almost certainly produce a rookie slotting system for contracts, no GM wants to be on the hook for doling out the last of the ginormous rookie deals. Hence, teams in the top 10 or so in the draft will be scrambling to trade down. especially since there's really no elite offensive talent in this year's draft.
Even in a good year, GMs hate giving the really big money to defensive players. Cf Jimmy Kennedy, among others.
The undisputed best player in this year's draft is a defensive lineman, Ndamukong Suh.
Which means a GM with high draft pick - like, say the Rams' GM, is going to be doubly unwilling to pay top dollar for Mr. Suh as the top draft pick.
The Eagles have a surfeit of quarterbacks and cash to burn. And they have a desperate need on the defensive line.
It may not happen. But someone's probably going to at least sniff around it.

UR DOING IT RONG

Which is another way of saying I was watching some ESPN over lunch at a local pizza joint the other day and spotted their spring training coverage of the Dodgers. Included in the "key additions"? Angel Berroa.

That...pretty much says it all.

Thank you, ESPN

Without your relentless coverage of Saturday's minor league NASCAR race, I never would have known that Danica Patrick A)drives cars and B)has breasts.

48 hours after the biggest press conference in history...

...and I still don't care who Tiger Woods slept with.

Dear commercial media: This is not important news. Please stop treating it like important news. Please stop saying horrifically inappropriate things like insinuating Jesper Parnevik had "tried Elin out" before introducing her to Tiger. Please stop saying stupid things like "Tiger owes you an apology." He doesn't. He owes his wife an apology, and his kids when they're old enough to figure out what the hell happened, and maybe Jesper Parnevik. Not you. And please remember at some point that if you're even going to pretend golf is a sport, you should cover what's going on out on the links every so often. Just in case, you know, actual sports happens.

Thank you.

Sixers-Bucks Trade

After all the rumors, it's...Jodie Meeks and Francis Elson for Primoz Brezec, Royal Ivey, and a second round draft pick.

And I can honestly say - as someone who knows that Mo Cheeks was a second-round pick out of West Texas State and loved chocolate chip cookies - that I had to double-check to see which team these guys originally played for, and who was getting whom.

This is what passes for trade deadline excitement in Sixerland.

Mixed Messages

The NBA welcomed a record 108,000 fans to the All-Star Game this past weekend!
The NBA claims $400M in operating losses this year!

There could possibly have been a better time to announce the latter. Doing so at an event that highlights the league's resurgent popularity and ability to sell tickets gives it the whiff of mathematical monkeyshines. At this point, I'm skeptical of any pro sports league's claims that its owners - who enjoy ridiculous tax breaks, see their assets steadily rise in value, play accounting games that make Madoff's routine look like Candyland, and play in publicly-built castles with sweetheart leases - are losing money. but this one definitely comes with a side helping of "you're kidding me, right?"

Of course, the real thing they're going for here is to stir up anti-player sentiment among the fanbase. How can those players ask for so much money? How can they demand such a high percentage of gross revenues for playing a game? It's a time-tested PR strategy, and it works.

Left unsaid, of course, is that if the players aren't getting that money, the plutocrat owners are. Ticket prices won't drop. Concession prices won't drop. Parking prices won't drop. But hey, at least those greedy players won't be getting the cash!

Right? Right.

The Great American Race(TM)

"Hi! I'm a pothole! And I hate NASCAR!"

The irony of the biggest, baddest race on the NASCAR calendar being held up - twice - because of a pothole - is just too good. For all the talk of "the car of tomorrow" and how these "stock" car drivers are the best and most competitive on the planet, they still got derailed on national television by something a soccer mom in a station wagon - excuse me, "crossover vehicle" - would plow right through.

Yeah, I know. Hit a pothole at 190 and it's ugly. That being said, you'd think NASCAR would do a better job with the track at their showcase event. And really, apart from Alaskan Ice Truckers, who else can claim a two hour delay at work because of a pothole and get away with it.

Tournament of Everyone Ambulatory in Shouting Distance

The big topic in college basketball today - now that we don't have to worry about "Will Dick Vitale burst a blood vessel courtside and spray Duke blue from his femoral artery all over the Dean Dome?" for another year - is whether the NCAA tournament should expand to 96 teams.

The people this notion benefits are obvious. One, the coaches. 50% more of them get to say they led a team to the tourney. Two, the big conferences. They'll have more teams getting in, which means more tourney revenue to split. Three, umm, well, you've got me there. Really, this is about making sure that the #s 7 and 8 teams from BCS conferences make it in so that coaches can plaster "Made the tournament" on their resume. None of the teams potentially picked up by this would ever be a threat to win the Big Dance. Hell, most wouldn't make it out of the first round. All that would be achieved would be the final death of the venerable NIT, and the reduction of font sizes in order to squeeze 96 team brackets onto single pages for office pools.

Oh, and "student-athletes" missing more class for the additional games, the very same thing supposedly holding up a football playoff. But hey, consistency is the hobgoblin of the minds of people who don't rake in billion dollar television deals, right?

DuClina

There are three kinds of basketball fans in the Triangle: Duke fans, Carolina fans, and State fans, i.e. "fans who hope that the Dean Dome and/or Cameron will suffer a fortuitous meteor strike when Duke and Carolina get together". This is due in part to the relentless overexposure the rivalry gets, and in part to the fact that 98% of the carpetbaggers who move down here immediately become Duke fans because, hey, nobody in the Northeast can play college football, either.

(The closest thing I have to a rooting allegiance in college basketball is for the Big Five; I'm happy to see Temple, Penn, Nova, St. Joes or LaSalle take down anyone.)

Duke-Carolina really is the Yankees-Red Sox of college hoops: a stirring rivalry that has been relentlessly hyped and sold as the only rivalry in the sport worth paying attention to. What that means is that other, equally interesting teams don't get as much play, weakening the sport as a whole. It also means that when one of the two titans in blue is having a down year - like this year - all the Chicken Littles immediately start going off on how "the rivalry has lost its luster" - and the sport as a whole is diminished as a result.

Duke-Carolina is great. So's 'Nova-Georgetown. And Purdue-Indiana. And Louisville-Kentucky. And any number of other rivalries. Until Dickie V admits that he's actually Connor McLeod's great-grandpappy - which is not out of the realm of possibility - it should be clear: there can be more than one.

Super Bowl Afterthoughts

In no particular order...

• Was it just me, or was it mildly creepy that the NFL was using the same music for its ads that "Where the Wild Things Are" used for its trailer?
• The game turned, not on the pick, but on the Colts' inability to pick up multiple first downs at the end of the first half. The Saints' gamble was clear: go for it on 4th. If you score, you're tied. If you don't, bet your defense can hold and you'll get a decent chance at another crack at a three. The safe play would have been the bad one - kick the field goal and give Manning a couple of minutes left to march down the field and drive a dagger in. Of course, the gamble would have failed if Manning and company had been able to get more than 9 yards. The Saints took the punt in good field position, drove far enough to get a field goal, and had both a manageable game and the momentum going into the locker room. For all that Payton Manning made his patented "kickers are icky" face when Matt Stover's 51 yarder knuckled left at the last minute, he's not blameless in the loss.
• Why does anybody care about the halftime show? At this point, the acts they get are trying to cram so many song snippets in - you can't play the Super Bowl unless you had albums originally come out on 8-track at this point, which means a back catalog of hits you MUST get to - that it's basically like listening to a series of ringtones. Also, why was Roger Daltrey hunched up like that throughout the performance. He looked like he was either going to fall down or sprout wings.
• Perfect symmetry -Reggie Wayne and the Pride of Hofstra, Marques Colston, both had through-the-hands-and-off-the-facemask drops.
• I believe this is the first Super Bowl where tackling was optional. Joseph Addai hasn't seen holes like that since he dreamed he was trapped in a giant Swiss cheese, but the Saints' devotion to the matador tackle didn't help much.If the Colts had kept going to him - like they did on their last scoring drive - things might have turned out different.
• Gotta love the "Aww, man!" Payton Manning expression. You've just gotta. One got the sense that had Indy won, it would somehow have been solely Manning's work - never mind that monster offensive line that kept him off his butt all season long. But since they lost...
• That being said, any of the talking heads yammering about how Manning needed to win a second Super Bowl to "cement his legacy" needs to put a sock in it - and then fill the sock with concrete. Winning a Super Bowl, or not, does not make one a great quarterback. Jeff Hostetler won a Super Bowl. Brad Johnson. Trent @#$ing Dilfer. Even if these guys had somehow managed to win ten, they wouldn't have been great quarterbacks. Oh, and Brett Favre? The Greatest Quarterback Evar? One.
• Imagine how much damage Drew Brees could have done if the Saints' O-line had given him enough time to set his feet before he threw?
  
• Once the Colts started rolling Manning out, it was all over. Mannings don't run. They just don't.
• That being said, I think Dallas Clark is still open over the middle.
  

Big Fat Hairy Game Prediction

New Orleans lives by getting turnovers. Indianapolis doesn't turn the ball over.

Colts win.

Random Thoughts On Random Free Agents

• Orlando Hudson, 2B, Twins - People point out that Hudson was benched for Ronnie Belliard last year. People forget that this was in large part due to Joe Torre's predilection for playing guys in worse shape than he is.
• Adam Kennedy, 2B, Nationals - Because nothing is more important to a franchise that needs to develop its young players than keeping Christian Guzman on the field as much as possible.
• Johnny Damon, OF, Nobody In Particular - Because it wasn't that his salary demands got big. It's that the Yankees got small. (Seriously - when Buster Olney, the High Priest of the Yankees at ESPN, lays you out for dealing with them poorly, you've made a serious tactical error somewhere along the line.)
• Jason Bay, OF, Mets - Because if you can't play for the Yankees, at least you can play near the Yankees.
• Scott Hairston, Jon Garland, and a cast of thousands, Padres - Don't be too rough on those uniforms, boys. They're going to need them for someone else around July 30th or so.
• Placido Polanco, 3B, Phillies - Well, somebody has to stand out there. There is, however, no truth to the rumor that Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. dropped his iPod before opening contract negotiations began and got stuck on an endless loop of "Three (Is A Magic Number)" At this point, the only Phillies he hasn't locked up for three more years are Steve Jeltz, Bake McBride, and the ghost of Del Ennis.
• Adam LaRoche, 1B, Diamondbacks -No truth to the rumor that he keeps a bar chart on his wall tracking how much Damon's lost by overplaying his hand this offseason vs. how much he lost by turning down San Francisco.
• Bengie Molina, C/land mass, Giants - Because when Adam LaRoche turns you down, really, what's the point.
  

And the Super Silliness, It Continues

Overheard tonight on the drive home, a commercial for the Super Bowl (I'm not calling it The Big Game and you can't make me) huffing excitedly about how on Sunday, Drew Brees and the Saints will match wits with Peyton Manning and the Colts.

Now, call me crazy, but does anyone, and I mean anyone, sit down to watch the Super Bowl and say, "Boy, I can't wait for those two teams of freakishly large physical specimens in lightweight body armor to match wits!" People watch for the parties. People watch for the cheerleaders. People watch for the commercials. Some folks, especially those who have money riding on it (and let's not kid ourselves - 80% of the ghoulish interest in Dwight Freeney's ruptured ankle tendon this week is driven by betting) watch it because they want to watch the game. But very, very few people think, "Can't wait for the Super Bowl. They're gonna match wits*!"

*Yeah, yeah, I know. Quarterbacks are field generals, it's all very complicated with lots of planning, blah blah blah. That still doesn't mean anyone watches it for the wit-matching. Besides, if Terry Bradshaw could figure it out, how witty do you really have to be?

In the Ever-Raging War...

...between "mainstream journalists" (most of whom blog now, or think they're blogging) and bloggers (who may or may not be wearing pants as they perform their professional duties), there really is a clear differentiation between the two. Sure, you can argue about old school media versus new media and how the ESPN guys (except for Olney and KLaw) are giving the goods away on Twitter and so forth, but really, there's one insurmountable difference that clearly draws the line.

Mainstream media never, ever, gets schooled in the comments section by the subject of a blog post's Mom.

Define "Interested"

According to a tweet from Dan Hayes, Brian Giles' agent is claiming that 8-10 teams are interested in him.

8-10 teams. Roughly 30% of the teams out there. Somehow, I find it difficult to believe that there are that many teams interested in an aging, injury-prone corner outfield who hasn't displayed any power in years. Sure, there could be somebody who wants a bel0w-average fielder who slugged .271 last year - by comparison, that's lower than Willy Taveras' OBP number - as a "veteran influence", but with better options out there, why look at this guy?

To be fair, at this point it's not an offseason to me until Scott Boras claims that a "mystery team" is in on one of his clients for whom the number of bidders ranges between zero and one. After yesterday's attempt to link Johnny Damon to the Tigers (note to Johnny: you can't have wanted to be a Tiger all along and still be upset over not getting an offer you like from the Yankees. The timing, it doesn't quite work), it's becoming increasingly clear that by "mystery team" Boras means the Fort Worth Cats, but they're at least real. On the other hand, claiming 8 to 10 are in on a guy whose knees got more solid hits than his bat last year is just showing off. It's the old "I have a girlfriend. In Canada. Who's a supermodel" shtick, and just as believable. if there are 10 teams out there kicking the tires on Giles, I'm guessing at least one's made up of Skaven and halflings, three are actually bowling teams in the local seniors' league, and one is Team Venture. And no, Teams Edward and Jacob don't count.

(Also, considering how much of last year Giles was on the shelf with a knee contusion, whoever's kicking the tires had best do it very gently.)

Ultimately, I'm sure someone will give Giles an NRI. He was productive, if not powerful, in 2008, and if he's willing to take "aging outfielder money", there's probably a place out there for him*. That being said, I'm having a hard time coming up with five teams he'd be a reasonable fit for, let alone ten, and never mind that there are still offensive options like Johnny Damon and the Mighty Branyan out there. And really, a non-story like this is good news. It means the off-season's winding down, the agents who didn't hook their guys up are getting desperate, and pitchers and catchers will be reporting soon.

*San Francisco? I mean, he's an aging veteran who can't hit. It's a natural fit.

Why the Pro Bowl Sucks

Of all the major sports all star games, the Pro Bowl has always been, by far, the worst. This has been for several reasons, not the least of which is that it fails on the basic promise of an All-Star Game.

Simply put, the whole point of an ASG is to see the best play with and against the best. That's what sells the baseball ASG - the thought of Mariano Rivera trying to nail down a win against a Murderer's Row of, say, Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols and Chase Utley. It's Carl Hubbell and his screwball getting swings and misses from five Hall of Famers in a row. And for all that managers these days are careful about getting lots of players in and not scragging pitchers' arms, one gets the genuine sense that the baseball being played in the ASG is fundamentally identical to the baseball played throughout the season and the playoffs.

The same goes for the NBA All-Star Game; sure, nobody plays defense, but they're playing hard. It's Dream Team vs. Dream Team out there, the Garnett-to-LeBron-to-dunking-over-Tim-Duncan moment that's literally impossible in the "real" world for all those pesky salary cap reasons. We can't see this anywhere else. It offers us a cross between fantasy sports and gladiatorial combat in way that's compelling.

The Pro Bowl, on the other hand, throws this out the window by allowing everyone and their uncle to cop out of the game with the exuse that their kitten has a hangnail. It's played at a leisurely pace with a dumbed-down playbook and guys going half speed, because nobody wants to get hurt, and it's generally played after the Super Bowl, when we've all got sort of a football hangover. If the Super Bowl is the biggest feast of the football year (the Buffalo Bills' occasional participation notwithstanding), then the Pro Bowl has traditionally been that one bit of food you work out from where it's stuck between your teeth about two hours later.

And this year, they managed to make it worse. While the idea of raising the game's profile by sticking it before the Super Bowl was at least theoretically a good one, in practice it borks the game even worse. To start with, the best players can't play. When your fantasy of the best against the best fails to feature the best players on the best teams, well, it's like one of those Peter Gabriel "Best Of" collections that didn't have "Sledgehammer" but did have room for "Moribund the Burgomeister".

Second, the timing switch doesn't help. Nobody's going to be interested in watching half-speed competition in the two weeks between the ceremonial Brett Favre Throwing Of the Interception and what's supposed to be the most hotly contested game of the year. It's overshadowed by the game it's supposed to be warming us up for - as well it should be. As Bill Simmons might put it, you don't watch Godfather III in between I and II.

And the final insult, the thing that seals the deal, is the fact that they moved it to Florida. The only watchable thing about the Pro Bowl in the past was watching to see what percentage of the stands was filled with offensive linemen who'd been bought tickets to Hawaii by their Pro Bowl-bound skill players - and the endearingly awkward interviews that went with them. With the game in Miami, that's gone. The one goofily human moment of the whole charade is removed. Sure, these guys could fly their O-lines to Miami, but hey, that's just a couple of hours. Sending your long snapper to Hawaii? That was commitment.

Big Mac and Pete Rose

I think at this point it's safe to assume that precisely no one has had their mind changed about Mark McGwire, steroids, Pete Rose, or anything else by impassioned blog posts, poorly thought out blog comments, or columns on ESPN.com. On the other hand, it certainly does seem to be generating clickthrough, which apparently is making someone happy.

That being said, I would like to propose a set of rules for the argument going forward:

1-You cannot criticize Mark McGwire unless you spell his last name properly. This holds particularly true if his name is spelled correctly in the title or body of the article/blog post/poorly thought out Gene Wojciechowski rant you are commenting upon.

2-Anyone pointing to Andy Pettite and Jason Giambi as "guys who came clean" must be able to quote the line where Giambi admitted publicly he did steroids. This may take them a while.

3-Any gratuitous asides at cranky old time Murray Chass types will be penalized two semicolons and a link to a Joe Posnanski post. There's enough to take issue with in the posts without reigniting the whole "Mainstream Media Versus Nerds In the Basement" idiocy.

4-Anyone pointing out that we don't know how much effect, if any, PEDs actually have on baseball production must perform six minutes of interpretive dance on YouTube for failing to recognize that the argument is one of perception, and the perception is that PEDs turned McGwire into Popeye. The required time is cut in half if they can name at least eight scrubeenies (team and position included) listed in the Mitchell Report as users who still couldn't crack the Top 30 at any position in the Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Guide.

5-McGwire's Hall of Fame candidacy and McGwire's current employment as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals are two different things. Failure to recognize this is grounds for being forced to listen to a CD of Joe Morgan narrating recorded Bigfoot calls from rural Ohio.

6-Anyone claiming that since McGwire's steroid use was illegal, his Hall candidacy is forfeit must immediately make a blog post demanding the removal of Ty Cobb for his aggravated assault of Claude Lueker. However, the first commenter to note the extensive amphetamine use by baseball players in the 70s and 80s has their posting privileges revoked until the first commenter in the thread figures out exactly who Claude Lueker was.

I Don't Hate Brett Favre...

...because of the way he plays football. Indeed, being a fan of a team Favre likes to throw interceptions to during the playoffs has made me something of a Brett Favre fan.

No, I hate Brett Favre because the day after the conference championship games, one of which was decided in monumentally dramatic fashion, the lead football story on ESPN is "Will Brett Favre be back next year?"

Screw that noise. Can we have a little something about the guys still playing this year? Thanks.

A Question For Charger Fans

Funny how Nate Kaeding can make Norv Turner look exactly like Marty Schottenheimer, isn't it?

Penny Lane

Alas for poor, jilted Tennessee, whose mediocre football coach has abandoned them for greener pastures, or at least ones paved in greenbacks.

I can see feeling bad for his recruits. These are young men who had every reason to think he'd stick around and be their coach, especially since it was highly unlikely that anyone was going to swoop in and steal a guy whose head coaching resume consisted of one mediocre college season and a season-and-change of utter disaster in the NFL. Considering his paycheck, the dollars thrown at his assistants, and the fact that he really hasn't indicated that he's much of a head coach, he seemed as likely to be plucked from Tennessee as I am a candidate to go on Iron Chef.

And yet, USC nabbed him, largely because of past association and desperation, not to mention the fact that with the assistants he was bringing along, he was setting up to be the new lead singer for Pete Carroll's old band. Of course, that move always works well. Ask the guys in Journey about that one.

But I somehow can't find it in my uncharitable soul to feel the slightest sympathy for the University of Tennessee. Yup, their highly paid employees abandoned them at a critical time of the year (though ESPN tells us that every single day is critical for football, right?) How dare USC steal them away.

Except, of course, that UT did roughly the same thing with former defensive coordinator (and father of Lane) Monte Kiffin, whose senior(citizen)itis in his last half-season with Tampa Bay was so obvious it was painful. Everyone knew Monte was headed for Tennessee and a big paycheck, his Buccaneer defense fell apart, and nobody cared or bitched or blogged. But the lesson is simple - if you're going to poach, don't bitch when you get poached.

Speaking As A Writer...

...I look forward to seeing baseball players express outrage over the fact that Samuel Coleridge, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, and Marcel Proust, among others, used performance-enhancing drugs while writing.

So Speaketh Robothal

On recently fired Indians manager Eric Wedge:

"Someone is going to hire Eric Wedge on the rebound, and someone is going to get a great manager."

Just, presumably, not the team that hires Eric Wedge.