The BCS Isn't so Bad

ESPN ran a poll today on its website asking what college football teams would be selected for a possible eight team NCAA Football tournament. Seventeen teams were included.

The parity only proves the point I love to make. A college football tournament would never work.

My theory goes further: It would hurt the game far more than help it.

First of all, even those silly bowl games that get played on Wednesday nights in the middle of December mean a whole lot to the teams who participate in them. Having a major tournament would relegate them to NIT status. The games wouldn’t even make television. Seriously, they wouldn’t.

In fact, a large tournament would mean the end of bowl games as we know them.

Why is that such a problem?

Well to most fans, myself included, it isn’t. However, as boring as those games tend to be, think about how much good it does for the schools participating.

Teams trying to build their programs pride themselves on the one or two games they get to play on ESPN. The exposure for those schools means everything to making college football more competitive.

A case can be made that a four team playoff would work in conjunction with the bowl system, but that leaves at least two major conference champions out of the running every year.


An eight team playoff would have the same effect that the BCS does. Six major champions and then three or four teams fighting for two spots.

A real tournament would need to involve at least twelve teams and would have to start about two weeks before Christmas and end somewhere around the first Saturday in January.

The six major conferences would have to send an automatic bid.

In my opinion, the PAC 10 Big 10, and Big East would have to expand to twelve teams (something that will never happen) and play a conference championship game just like the Big 12, SEC, and ACC does.

The six at large spots would then be harder to decide than the two that the BCS gives every season. Example: Ohio State is clearly better than UCLA but it gets much cloudier when you start to look at say Miami and Georgia.

Let’s try and use this season as an example. The conference championships have not been played but I will assume that the favorites will all win.

1. USC
2. Texas
3. Penn State
4. Virginia Tech
5. LSU
6. West Virginia
7. Ohio State
8. Notre Dame
9. Oregon
10. Miami
11. Auburn
12. UCLA
Bubble Busted: TCU, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Texas Tech, and Alabama

If the tournament were to happen this season, the opening round would begin Saturday, December 17. Predictions – LSU over UCLA, Auburn over West Virginia, Ohio State over Miami and Oregon over Notre Dame.

Christmas Eve would see the top four seeds all survive with only Penn State even being threatened by Auburn.

The following week would prove just what those stupid computers and every writer in the country already knows: USC and Texas are the two best teams in the country.

The two would meet the following weekend in the title game.

I have no idea who would win and that isn’t the point of what I’m trying to say.

A real tournament would cause just as much confusion than the BCS already does and by eliminating the lesser bowls, would hurt a lot more teams in the process.

After all, this season, the computers are right.

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Random Rumblings 11/27

• I really want to thank anyone who actually reads anything I write. I truly appreciate it.
  
• The Houston Texans are embarrassingly bad but today was just awful. Up 21 at home, they managed to blow their lead and lose in overtime to the Rams. To make matters worse, Harvard grad Ryan Fitzpatrick, the team's third string quarterback was at the helm. The Texans couldn't be any worse, but at least they'll get Reggie Bush.
  
• Newsday published a great story about new Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado. Once while in Class A ball, Delgado was tossed for arguing strikes and upon being ejected, looked at the umpire and said, "That's okay. When I get to the big leagues, I'll send you a post card." New York is going to love this guy
  
• What does Florida and Florida State offer that tops the infamous 7th Floor Crew. If I was a football recruit, you know where I would be.
  
• Three reasons George Steinbrenner has to be fuming: 1. The Mets are getting all of the back page headlines in New York's major newspapers. Omar Minaya is quickly creating a contender and is still pursuing Billy Wagner and Manny Ramirez. 2. The Blue Jays just acquired the best relief pitcher available and are still in the market for Yankee target Brian Giles and AJ Burnett. 3. Josh Beckett pitching for the Red Sox in September at Yankee Stadium is a frightening thought.
  
• Preseason college rankings are ridiculous but it's hilarious to see just how wrong voters can be. Seven of college football's preseason top 15 have fallen out of the rankings this year.
  
• The Bears survived today but for them to win the Super Bowl, they will have to do it with the NFL's worst rated quarterback. It's not out of the question, just unlikely.
  
• My pick for college basketball's national champion (Memphis) played very well in the preseason NIT last week. The Tigers beat up on UCLA and proved that athletic defenders can stop J.J. Reddick. If only there was no Sheldon Williams...
  
• As I'm writing this, the Giants game is not over. But after watching them miss three field goals that would have ended the game, I’m convinced there is no way they are a Super Bowl contender.
  
• I still maintain hope that Texas could lose the Big 12 title game and LSU could lose the SEC title game, resulting in a Penn State/USC Rose Bowl.

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Analyzing the Beckett Trade

Louie from the Bronx: Whadaya thinkin? Beckett’s a bum. The guy is damaged goods. He’s been on the freakin’ DL nine times since being drafted.

Ben from Boston: Leave that Gahbage in the barrel. You know we just got a stud ace and didn’t have to give any of ahr major league talent away. He’s coming into his prime and he’s got wicked nasty stuff. Most of his problems ahr blister related anyway. It’s not like he has shoulder problems.

Louie from the Bronx: Whadabout the kid Ramirez? You bums can neva hold on to ya young talent. Look how Bagwell turned out. Not to mention da babe.

Ben from Boston: Listen bub, Ramirez isn’t that special. He has always been in trouble for being immature and he wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure in Bahston.

Louie from the Bronx: Eee’sa future all star!

Ben from Boston: He doesn’t hit for power and he doesn’t walk nearly enough. His defense is excellent but we ahrn’t tahlkin about Ozzie Smith heah.

Louie from the Bronx: And dis pitcha Sanchez, I tink he’s for real.

Ben from Boston: Ahr you retahded? Remember we traded Cahrl Pavano fah Pedro. That worked out. He might be a stud some day but Beckett is a proven ace who kills the Yankees.

Louie from the Bronx: That was like three years ago! You had to take on Lowell’s contract and everyone knows he stinks cuz he’s off da juice. Now ya not gonna be able to afford Damon.

Ben from Boston: Juice or not, Lowell is a dead pull hitteah. He will be putting balls off the monstah fah years to come. Face it, we got the best of this deal.

Louie from the Bronx: ::thinking:: ...... 1918 Clap Clap! ClapClapClap

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I'll Never Forget

Two of the greatest single game performances you’ll ever see took place this weekend.

On Saturday Reggie Bush ran up a ridiculous 513 yards of total offense on Fresno State to lead Southern Cal, the best college football team in my lifetime, to a come from behind win. Then on Sunday, Larry Johnson rushed for 211 yards to carry Kansas City and more importantly, my fantasy team to victory.

Which got me thinking. I may only be 19 years old, but I have seen some unforgettable moments in sports. While I’m sure that I must be missing a lot, I picked out sixteen moments that I’ll be recreating for my grandkids or praying they never ask about

In no particular order…

1. Janet Jackson flashing 140 million people during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII. What a priceless moment in the history of time. Truly amazing. One of the great Super Bowl games ever and all I remember is her right breast.

2. The 1995/96 Chicago Bulls going 72-10. It was a watered down NBA at the time with two brand new teams but no team in any sport will ever be able to achieve this level of dominance again.

3. Mike Tyson losing to Buster Douglas. I was too young to see it live but it’s one of the few sporting events that I can have an actual conversation with my father about. He swears it was fixed.

4. The 1994 baseball strike. I was only eight but I remember it well. What did people do that summer?

5. Juiced. Jose Canseco’s book only came out this year but it exposed what everybody knew but that never said: Baseball was full of cheats.

6. Nancy Kerrigan getting whacked in the leg by a hit man. What drama! One question: If figure skating is so fixed, how come Kerrigan lost the gold medal to that evil Ukrainian Oksana Baiul? Gold would have been perfect for the fallen star.

7. Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear. What can be said? He bit another man’s ear in the ring!

8. Michael Jordan’s foul, turned classic shot to win the 1998 NBA finals. What a picture perfect way to end a career….. (Washington never happened)

9. The 1995 UCLA basketball national championship. The O’Bannon brothers, Tyus Edney, Cameron Dollar, a great team. I remember this so well because Connecticut almost beat them in the regional final.

10. The 1996 Big East championship game. Ray Allen versus Allen Iverson. This was probably the greatest college game I’ve ever seen. Of course, UConn won and then proceeded to choke and lose to Eric Dampier and Mississippi State in the NCAA tournament.

11. The 1998 homerun race. I never really liked McGwire or Sosa. I was more of a Griffey guy. But not since the 1980 miracle on ice has a sports moment captured the country’s attention like it did that summer.

12. Hulk Hogan going heel. The gang gimmick in wrestling was outstanding. A generation of Hulkamaniacs suddenly started swearing and vandalizing property. Admit it or not, Hogan had an influence over any boy who grew up in the 90’s and every man who never grew out of the 80’s.

13. UConn overcoming a heavily favored Duke team to win the 1999 NCAA championship. I really love Connecticut basketball and this goes down as my favorite moment in its history.

14. Barry Bonds. What Bonds did from 2000-2004 is simply remarkable. As a man, I hate him but in my opinion, he is the best hitter who ever lived.

15. Michael Jordan trying baseball. A terrible idea. It took Bugs Bunny and company to convince him that basketball was his sport.

16. The 2003 and 2004 Red Sox/Yankees matchups. The rivalry dates back much farther but Aaron Boone was my generation’s Bucky Dent and the Yankees catastrophic choke job the following season was simply incredible.

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Almost Doesn't Count

Charlie Weis summed up his team best with five words when he took over the University of Notre Dame football team last December.

His statement still echoes today.

“You are what you are.”

Take nothing away from the accomplishments of the Fighting Irish this season. With mostly another coach’s players, Weis’ team would finish 9-2 with a win at Stanford next weekend.

This group is good. But not that good.

The Bowl Championship Series is designed for great teams and the Big East winner. This season, Notre Dame does not fall into either category.

It is certain that some team is going to be upset with how the BCS awards its two at large spots but the job is to find the two most deserving.

USC and Penn State are the only locks for a BCS game as of right now. Let’s assume that Texas, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia will also secure spots via conference championship.

That leaves the winner of the SEC and the two at large spots to be determined.

Notre Dame will then be in a battle with Ohio State, Oregon, and Auburn. If Georgia were to win the SEC championship game, LSU would also figure into this mix.

I have three problems with Notre Dame this season.

1. Almost beating USC is the team’s best achievement. If that should get them to a BCS game, then why doesn’t Fresno State have an argument?

2. The grueling schedule that the Irish boasts really wasn’t that tough this season. Of the teams they have played, only Michigan and USC, BYU and Navy are even bowl eligible.

3. They lost to Michigan State. Overtime or not, the Spartans stunk this year.

Furthermore, the team’s competing with Notre Dame have better cases.

Ohio State’s only losses were against two of the top four teams in the country. They defeated Michigan State and their schedule boasts seven bowl eligible teams.

Oregon doesn’t have a Michigan type win - like Notre Dame – but the Duck’s only loss is to the nation’s best team.

Auburn’s two losses are against a surprising Georgia Tech and BCS contender LSU. They blew away Alabama and South Carolina, and beat Georgia.

To reiterate, Notre Dame has had a nice season. Weis has done a remarkable job. Brady Quinn has played out of his mind. The team is competitive again. The Irish are almost back to being among college football’s elite.

Just not yet.

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Jason Bay: One of the Game's Best?

Last week, the Pittsburgh Pirates gave outfielder Jason Bay a new contract worth ::GASP:: a reported $18.25 million.

The four-year deal, which effectively ends any chance of arbitration, could be the smartest move the team has made in over a decade.

Why you ask? Well, by my findings, he may be worth somewhere around five times that much. In fact, it is safe to say that outside of Albert Puljos, the Canadian born Bay is the best hitter under the age of thirty in the game today.

Consider...

Bay plays for one of the worst offensive teams in all of Major League Baseball. The Pirates were not in the top twenty of any major offensive category and scored the third least runs in all of baseball.

Most significant, the Pirates were ranked 25th in baseball in on base percentage even though Bay had the eight best mark in the national league. How could he ever generate the numbers he is certainly capable of putting up?

I wanted to take away his team's inability to produce base runners to see just how talented a player he himself is. Of course, I needed to measure him up against some of baseball brightest young stars.

I asked a few people who the best "under age 30" hitters in baseball were and tried to also back it up with statistics. The general consensus and my analysis led me to six other players: Albert Puljos, Miguel Cabrera, Travis Hafner, Mark Teixeira, Andruw Jones, and Vladimir Guerrero.

After trying to compare batting averages and homeruns, The Baseball Reference provided me with the three most telling statistics I could find.

Outs - (AB - H + CS + GIDP + SH + SF)

RC - Runs Created - A runs estimator created by Bill James. A runs estimator attempts to quantify the entire contribution of a player's statistics to a team's total runs scored.

RC/27 - Runs Created per 27 outs - This is the number of runs a team of each player would score given their stats. IE: if you could create a team of 9 of the same player, how many runs would the team score per game?

(sorry for the lines)
Name-----------Outs-----r/c------r/c/27
Bay-------------436------134------8.30
Puljos-----------420------153------9.84
Hafner----------351------116-------8.92
Cabrera---------441------133-------8.14
Teixeira---------471------137-------7.85
Jones------------461------113-------6.62
Guerrero--------378------114-------8.14

If you notice, Bay finds himself in the middle of the pack when it comes to outs while only Puljos and Teixera have created more runs. If there was team full of Jason Bay's, they would generate 8.3 runs per game, good for third behind Puljos and Travis Hafner.

Conclusion...

Albert Puljos is in a league of his own. This is obvious. However, Bay compares favorably to any other player on this list and can very well be considered the second best of the seven.

At under $20 million for four years, the Pirates got a bargain on one of the game best hitters.

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If You Don't Know, Now You Know

Or you will know…This season.

It’s easy to pick Duke or Texas to win the national title in college basketball, but I won’t. The Blue Devils are almost an even money favorite in Vegas and the Longhorns aren’t far behind.

I love Connecticut but picking them might be a jinx.

Nope, when it is all said and done, the Memphis Tigers will become the first time in the current 64 team tournament era to cut down the nets a year after failing to make the NCAA tournament.

Now I know I’m going out on a limb here. There are plenty of other teams who are probably more talented and certainly more experienced. But the Tigers are fast and long and they have a flat out stud running the point.

Dee Brown may be the veteran and Daniel Gibson is certainly the most hyped but Darius Washington Jr. is the best point guard in the country. Dribble, pass, shoot, that’s the game and this kid can do all three.

The team’s lone senior starter, Rodney Carney, might be too much of a “tweener” for the NBA, but he will be one of college basketball’s most exciting swingmen. The key for the Tiger’s might be Shawne Williams, a top ten freshman who dropped 17 in his first college game versus Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The final four
Duke – The best senior class in the nation welcomes the best freshmen class in the nation.
Connecticut – The point guard for the time being is an issue, but here stands the deepest team in the country.
UCLA – This might be a long shot but Jordan Farmer is terrific and can take the young Bruins back to where they should be.
Memphis – I love Washington and Carney. Home matchups with Gonzaga right before and Texas right after New Year’s should be a good indicator of how talented this team is.

You have to love…
Texas' Schedule – The Longhorns aren’t as good as everyone thinks, but their schedule provides them with every opportunity to prove me wrong. The team plays West Virginia, Duke, Memphis and Villanova out of conference and Oklahoma twice in Big Twelve play.

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Give The "U" a Pass

The public release of a two year old rap song has resulted in the University of Miami football team coming under scruitiny once again. Surprise! Surprise! The “U” is in trouble.

Forgive me for not being shocked that a school that Ray Lewis and perennial cokehead Michael Irvin went to might have some shady characters in it.

This is the same university that had no problem admitting top recruit Willie Williams, a kid who had been arrested 11 times since 1999, and upon being accepted, was facing up to a year in prison.

However, this time, the players should not be punished and the university should not worry about its image being tainted. Honestly, didn’t the athletes at your school have “wild gangbangs with hoes” while you were in school?

Link to the song: http://media.putfile.com/7th-Floor-Crew

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