The first weekend of the college football season is upon us. It features marquee matchups such as Florida State-Samford, Penn State-Youngstown State, and Arkansas-Tennessee Tech. As I type this sentence at 2:03 CDT, there is not a single competitive football game happening. I realize that the big-name schools are always going to schedule cupcakes early in the season. There’s really no way of outlawing that. But there’s no reason that the NCAA shouldn’t adopt stricter rules against I-A teams scheduling I-AA teams. (I mean, FBS teams scheduling FCS teams. I hope I haven’t offended the NCAA’s political correctness police.) As it stands now, teams can schedule a I-AA team every year and have that more-or-less guaranteed win* count toward the six wins needed for bowl eligibility. If memory serves, a few years ago you could only count a I-AA win every other year; I believe this rule was changed when the NCAA went to a 12-game schedule every year and let 6-6 teams into bowls.
Quite simply, it’s a joke to see a Top 10 team playing a I-AA team. These games are glorified exhibitions. I can understand a weaker I-A team needing home games and scheduling I-AA teams, but a BCS conference school shouldn’t be playing a I-AA team, ever. Sure, you may have to pay a bit more to get a Sun Belt team to play you than it would cost to get someone from I-AA, but last time I checked your average college football powerhouse was doing okay from a money standpoint.
What I’d like to see is a ban on games against I-AA teams, or at least a rule that wins can never count toward the bowl eligibility total. Perhaps in conjunction with this we might also need a rule capping teams to seven home games, forcing a team that plays eight games within its conference to play at least one non-conference road game every season.
* Yes, I know I-A teams sometime lose these games. But a top team (and no, Michigan doesn’t count) isn’t going to lose to a I-AA team except in an absolute freak occurrence.
The rumor mill has been going full blast lately, with pundits around the country suggesting that Chris Paul will soon be headed out of New Orleans. And you know what? I don’t blame him. A few seasons ago this team seemed to have a lot of promise: a 56-win season in 2007-2008, followed by a Game 7 conference semifinal loss to the Spurs. The core of the team was CP3, West, and Chandler. All of them were young and seemed to have tons of upside: Chandler a dominant shot-blocker and alley-oop man; West a power forward with great range on his jump shot and the ability to score inside, and CP3 the best point guard in the game, a virtual lock for 20 points and 10 assists every night. And the supporting cast was solid: Peja Stojakovic a three-point assassin, Jannero Pargo a solid backup 1 who could also pair with Paul in the backcourt, Julian Wright a youngster with incredible (albeit unpolished) athleticism. Things were looking up. I don’t think anyone expected that the next two seasons would be completely downhill from there.
Now, some of the problems have been basketball-related. Peja’s huge contract started to surpass his productivity as age took its toll. A number of young players didn’t pan out, especially Hilton Armstrong and Julian Wright. This stuff happens. But what really sucked is seeing George Shinn be a total cheapskate, with salary dumping becoming the number one priority. In December 2008 they tried and failed to dump Tyson Chandler’s contract. After the 2008-09 season they did in fact deal Chandler, picking up Emeka Okafor, who was making slightly less but had a longer contract. In basketball terms it seemed like a reasonable move: a more polished offensive player instead of Chandler’s raw athleticism. Unfortunately, the trade didn’t seem to work out for either side: Chandler played in just 51 games for Charlotte and Okafor’s production dropped to 10 points and 9 boards a game—hardly dreadful, but not much for someone making $10.5 million a year.
Then the Hornets dumped Rasual Butler—one of the bright spots in the 08-09 season—for a 2016 second-round draft pick. What the fuck is that shit? I realize we had just gotten some young guards in the draft (Thornton and Collison), but this was a blatant salary dump, pure and simple. They did almost nothing to improve the roster. They tried to bolster their backup frontcourt—the biggest shortcoming in the 2008 playoffs—by picking up Darius Songaila and Ike Diogu. Songaila proved a useful addition, but Diogu missed the whole season with injuries. They dumped Hilton Armstrong—not that I blame them—for another 2016 draft pick. Then they dealt Bobby Brown for yet another draft pick. The number one concern was obviously with avoiding the luxury tax, with little regard for improving the basketball team. Continue reading ‘the cheapskate george shinn’
I know many of my readers may not be sports fans. And they probably won’t want to read this. But even they’ve surely heard about LeBron James, quite possibly the greatest athlete on the planet. He just left the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he’d been since entering the NBA at the ripe old age of 18. He left, heading to Miami to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in an attempt to win the NBA title that has thus far eluded him.
As you might expect, LeBron’s decision led to a great deal of turmoil in the cities he rejected, most of all Cleveland. And the apoplexy even came straight from the top: consider this incredible letter from the Cavs’ majority owner, Dan Gilbert.* Some choice excerpts: “cowardly betrayal”; “shameful display of selfishness and betrayal”; “shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown ‘chosen one’”; “heartless and callous action.” And my personal favorite: “Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.” What? Continue reading ‘people who are upset at lebron’
In case you hadn’t heard, the US national team advanced to the 2nd round of the World Cup after a late goal from Landon Donovan gave them a 1-0 win over Algeria. It was an incredibly tense affair for the American fans who saw their team dominating Algeria but not finding the back of the net until stoppage time in the second half. Well, actually, they did find the back of the net much, much earlier. Roughly 20 minutes in Clint Dempsey scored, only to have his goal disallowed for a supposed offside. Now, in fairness to the referee and the linesman, it did seem at first glance as though Dempsey could very well have been offside—he was lurking near the back post with no one around and tapped the ball into the back of the net with ease. I was outraged all day, but this morning I went back and looked at the videos again and it’s about as close a call as could ever happen (the relevant rule and official interpretation says that a player is in an offside position if “any part of a player’s head, body, or feet [not including the arms] is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent.” So maybe the refs don’t deserve too much bashing for that call by itself. But it’s pretty damn frustrating when it happens a game after that utterly bizarre call to disallow what would have been the USA’s winning goal against Slovenia. And had the US not advanced to the 2nd round, this post would involve lots and lots of curse words. Continue reading ‘world cup refereeing’
We’re just a few days away from my favorite sports days of the year—the first round of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, more commonly called March Madness. Or The Big Dance. Those are the days when we see the big upsets, Cinderella trying to knock off Goliath (if I may mix my sports metaphors). The tournament is entertaining after that, but nothing compares to the frenzy of the first round. (Sure, if your favorite team is fighting for a title, I’m sure the later rounds are better, but the neutral fan is hungry for the cinderella stories, not the title contenders).
Over the decades the tournament gradually expanded; at first, only conference champions were allowed into the tourney. In 1975 at-large teams were added, and the tournament grew to 32 teams, then 40, then 48, and eventually 64. Now it’s at 65 with a largely irrelevant play-in game. 64 was perfect. No byes, no play-in games, just a perfectly balanced bracket. A few years ago they added a 65th team. The rationale at the time was that the NCAA had just gotten another conference (and thus another automatic bid), so expanding the tournament by one would keep the same number of at-large teams. Which is okay, I suppose. All it does is put an extra at-large team somewhere around the 11-12 seeds and bump the champions of the tiny conferences down a spot, putting the worst of them into the play-in game.
Now some people are calling for an expansion of the field to 96 teams. There are a number of arguments in favor of this, some better than others. The number one reason it will likely happen sooner or later is money. The tournament is the NCAA’s cash cow. In 1999, CBS signed an 11-year, $6 billion contract extension with the NCAA. That’s a lot of cash. And with that contract ending soon (2013), and the NCAA having an opt-out clause after this season, they may very well feel that more games (i.e. more chances for networks to sell commercials) could increase their revenues. There’s the possibility of a bidding war between CBS and ESPN, so it’d make sense to expand now instead of in the middle of a contract. Continue reading ‘expanding march madness’
Free agency season just started in the NFL, and as should be expected, the Saints have already lost one prominent player, linebacker Scott Fujita. The thought of even one piece from our title-winning team going missing has sent some Saints fans into tears. There are two groups of people: those upset at the Saints for letting Fujita go, and those upset at Fujita for leaving the Saints. Regardless of which camp you’re in (or whether you’re upset with both), you need to calm down and realize that football is about two things a) winning games and b) making money. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not. While Scott Fujita is a class act, stand-up guy who has been a great friend to the city of New Orleans, it’s clear that the ownership and/or personnel staffs and/or coaches felt that he wasn’t worth what the salary he commanded on the free agent market. And for Fujita, it’s clear that the positive aspects of playing in our wonderful city for the defending Super Bowl champions didn’t outweigh the millions of dollars more he’ll be making in Cleveland. I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be mad at the Saints or at Scott Fujita. Continue reading ‘people who are mad that fujita’s leaving’
First of all, let me admit that I’m a casual, bandwagon Hornets fan. When I was a kid, my favorite team was the Orlando Magic (because of Shaq), and after he went from Orlando to Los Angeles most of my interest in the NBA faded. Sure, I’d watch a game here or there, but I mostly preferred the college game. So much of the NBA play was dominated by isolation plays for the stars, as opposed to the ball movement of the college game. The refs let stars get away with traveling and carrying. The 24-second play clock led to an uninteresting, back-and-forth style of play, and outlawing zones struck me as taking away a big part of the game. I remembered when I was little and we almost nabbed the Timberwolves; the Times-Picayune even ran a headline that said “Got ‘em!” above a Timberwolves jersey. This was pretty exciting, aside from the minor detail that we did not, in fact, get the Timberwolves.
When the Hornets came, I wasn’t all that excited at first. I’d watch the occasional game on TV, but didn’t pay too much attention. Then in 2003 I moved to a new house and got DirecTV, which didn’t have (and still doesn’t have) Cox Sports TV, so I couldn’t watch Hornets games aside from the occasional nationally televised game. But then the Hornets got Chris Paul and returned to New Orleans full-time after a Katrina-induced exile to Oklahoma City. And they started winning. I had to been to a Hornets game once before (2004, maybe?) when my dad got some tickets from a work colleague. But I didn’t go again until I decided to go in March 2008, when the red-hot Hornets were fighting for the #1 spot in the Western Conference. They were playing the Bulls and entered the 4th quarter down by nine, but came back to win by eleven. Chris Paul had 37 points and 13 assists. I didn’t start attending every home game or anything like that, but clearly the NBA and the Hornets had some appeal. Continue reading ‘that Hornets games are not on DirecTV’
Okay, I guess I’m a few days late with this post, but a certain sore loser from Russia won’t shut his trap, so why should I? I’m talking about Evgeni Plushenko, the silver medalist in men’s figure skating, who has spent the days since his loss (if one can call a silver medal a loss) bitching about the winner, American Evan Lysacek. Most of Plushenko’s criticism centers around one fact: Lysacek didn’t do a quad, and Plushenko did. In Plushenko’s mind (and in the mind of some commentators, such as noted mullet-loving Canadian figure skating great/he-man Elvis Stojko), the quad should be the sine qua non of men’s figure skating. In their minds, the sport hasn’t advanced in decades, while other sports have moved ahead in leaps and bounds—just compare this year’s halfpipe routines to ones from four years ago. Continue reading ‘evgeni plushenko’s whining’
I’m an Olympics junkie. Every two years, all I want to do is watch round-the-clock coverage of sports I wouldn’t otherwise care about, except that I’m sucked in by jingoism and sappy human interest stories. This year, NBC has apparently decided that it would like to do the crappiest job possible of televising the Olympics, and is making my life miserable.
The Olympics are in Vancouver, so that should be great for TV in the USA, right? No need to tape-delay stuff for ten or twelve hours until prime time. I’m cautiously optimistic that the live prime time coverage will be good, but it looks like NBC is going to suck horribly at everything else. I’ve been looking through the TV schedule and this is pretty much the way it works on the average day (all times Central):
NBC: mixture of sports/feature pieces from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. (weekdays) or 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. (weekends), the big-name sports from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., then recap/medal ceremonies/some sports coverage from 10:30-11 or 11-12.
MSNBC/CNBC/USA: USA curling & hockey matches, some other hockey matches. Continue reading ‘nbc’s olympics coverage’
So we just won the Super Bowl. The city is pretty much at a standstill as people celebrate. The Saints are on top of the NFL…and we’re still not the favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl. So I say, “Screw you, Vegas oddsmakers.” (The Colts are 6-1, the Saints and Chargers are 8-1). And I say screw you to all those commentators who talked about how Peyton Manning lost the game with his interception, which Tracy Porter returned for a game-sealing touchdown. The pundits treated a 13-3 team like miserable underdogs. Then we won. And they still think we’re not as good—consider The Onion’s take on things: New Orleans moves to No. 3 in NFL power rankings. Too bad—we have this:
and nobody else does. You can respect us or not. It really doesn’t matter to me. Quarterbacks like Mark Sanchez, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning got more commercial airtime than Drew Brees during the Super Bowl, but those three didn’t get to lift the MVP trophy and film the “I’m going to Disney World!” commercial. People are acting like Drew Brees is just now a member of the NFL’s elite QBs, when anyone with a brain would have seen the numbers Brees has been putting up ever since he arrived in New Orleans and realized just how phenomenal a player he is. Clearly he was already among the elite, and you moronic pundits are just late to the party. Continue reading ‘the fact that people still don’t respect the Saints’
