Shouldn't a playoff team win at least of half of their games?

It's pennant race time in baseball. I know these days a large portion of the country's sports fans are much more concerned with pre-season football than baseball. Call me old-fashioned, but give me late August baseball over late August football any day. I mean, I love football too, and I can't wait for opening weekend. But the games don't even count yet.

Anyone who follows baseball from year to year will tell you that this year is shaping for a particularly compelling stretch run. All but 2 division races are still very much up for grabs. As I write this, all 5 teams in the National League East are still within striking distance of the division crown, all within 6.5 games of the first place Braves. In the American League, 5 teams are within 5 games of the wild card, and in the NL, 5 teams are within 3 games. Barring a major run by a few different teams, this season promises to provide games loaded with playoff implication down to the very end. There is a lot to get excited about in baseball right now.

And yet, one fact really agitates me - the cespool that is the NL West, and the potential it has to completely undermine the credibility of the playoffs in baseball. At this moment, the San Diego Padres sit atop the division with a 4 game lead and a record of 61 wins and 62 losses. That's right, if the season ended today, there would be a team in the playoffs that lost more games than they have won. The Padres would be 5 games back in the wild card standings if they weren't leading their division.

Matters get even worse when you look beyond the record itself. Consider the fact that MLB uses an unbalanced schedule, meaning that almost one half of a team's games come against the other teams in it's division. The West is easily the worst division in the National League. The four teams other than San Diego have four of the six worst records in the league. Only 1 NL team has failed to win more games against the West teams than they have lost. (Oddly enough, the East leading Braves) And in 44 games against those teams, the Padres are 24-20. Four games over .500 against the worst competition out there? Are you kidding me? Put the Padres in the East and they'd struggle to stay within 15 games of the .500 mark.

And so I ask: Shouldn't a playoff team win at least half of their games? I generally support the current playoff system, and don't normally have qualms about giving division winners a pass into the playoffs. I can't remember ever once balking at sending a division winner to the playoffs while a team with a better record stays home, but even I have my limits. I know teams have been making the NBA and NHL playoffs with fewer wins than losses for years, but this is baseball, and only four teams from each league make the playoffs. In my book, that means the standards should be higher.

The fact that playoff baseball is dramatically different from regular season baseball only strengthens my position. A basketball or hockey team that squeaks into the playoffs still has to go out there and win with the exact same team that got them there. Not so in baseball. Once in the playoffs, a baseball team gets to dump it's worst (and in many cases it's 2nd worst) starting pitcher. They get more frequent off days so they can make more extensive use of their best relievers. Unlike the other major sports, a baseball team can be significantly better suited for the playoffs than for the regular season. So, if you want to maintain the importance of a 162 game regular season that occupies 6 of the 7 months of the baseball season, you have to require teams to earn their playoff spots. I think at a minimum that should include a requirement of winning at least half of your games.

So, keep the divisional system, let the division winners go under normal circumstances. But if you end the season below .500, you forfeit your spot and that league awards a 2nd wild card. At the very least, give the team that finished 2nd in the wild card standings a 1 game playoff for the spot. I really don't think that's too much to ask for. San Diego could make the argument moot for this year by beating up on the West teams enough over the last month of the season to end over .500, but if the system isn't changed, that would only be dodging an inevitable bullet. Perhaps the only benefit of the 1994 strike was that it saved baseball from this embarrasment in the first year of the current playoff system, as Texas was leading the West despite being 10 games below .500 when the strike hit.

Who cares that Notre Dame isn't dancing?

As I mentioned in my last entry, I love March Madness. By this time tomorrow, I will be fully doused in college hoops - watching the games, checking out my picks, watching in agony as one of my Final Four teams goes down in the first round, cheering on my favorite team (Duke, by the way), and everything else comes with it. I enjoy all the speculation and build up to the tournament, but ultimately it's all about the games.

What I do not enjoy is this period immediately following the bracket announcements, where every pundit weighs in on which mediocre teams got "snubbed", how Team A was more deserving than Team B, and so on and so forth. Dick Vitale, in particular, went on and on about how Notre Dame belonged in the tournament. He was joined by many others.

But really, let's look at this team that everyone was so convinced should be playing for the national championship. When Selection Sunday rolled around, Notre Dame sat with a 17-11 record, and were 9-7, good for 6th place in the Big East. They had lost 4 of their last 5 games, including being dumped in the first game they played in the Big East tournament. So, to recap, 11 loses, 7 conference losses, no wins in the conference tournament. And further more, this team that everyone was so high on, promptly went out 2 days later and lost in the first round of the NIT.

And so I ask: Who cares that Notre Dame isn't dancing? I exclude from this question the Notre Dame team and their fans. So they played a tough schedule. They lost 11 of the games. So they played in what was probably the toughest conference in the country this year. They finished 6th. Why should I cry because they, and many other teams with similar resumes, don't get to play for the national championship?

Yes, I understand that there are 65 bids available, and thus perhaps it is a fair discussion whether Notre Dame or someone else was more deserving of a bid than a team that received one. However, my bottom line is this: If you lost 11 games and were the 6th place team in your own conference, you aren't the best team in the nation, and so it's not going to keep me up nights that you didn't get to play for the national championship. Maybe you do have the ability to get hot and win the 6 games required to win the title, or to win fewer but still make a nice run. If you haven't done enough with your regular season schedule to at least rank you in the discussion for best team in your conference, then you haven't earned the right to take a shot at the national picture. Maybe you were more deserving than another team, but in my mind, you have no real room for complaint.

The teams that I feel bad for in the current system are teams from the smaller conferences who win their conference regular season, often handily, but fall prey to the upset in the conference tournament and thus don't get to dance because their conference is only going to get one bid. I'd much rather be spending at-large bids on teams like that (Miami of Ohio comes most prominently to mind), than on the Notre Dames of the basketball world.

Why play the season?

I'll be blunt. I live for March Madness. There is little about this time of year that I don't enjoy. You can't beat being able to turn on the TV at virtually anytime of day and being able to get a basketball game. I eat it all up - the bubble watch, the Cinderella teams, the pundits going back and forth, who's in, who's out, who got lucky, who got snubbed. Every year I fill out my bracket, and almost every year I've torn it up by the 2nd weekend, and yet I keep coming back for more.

In my view, the NCAA men's basketball tournament ranks right up there with the Super Bowl and a few other select events as one of the greatest and most exciting sporting events each year. Think about it: take 65 teams from across the country, toss them in 4 sections of 1 big bracket, and let them fight it out: Do or die, win or go home. Forget the records, this is all about winning 6 in a row. I can't think of a better celebration of basketball, or of sports in general.

And all of this is why what happened tonight offends me so much, as a fan of March Maddness and sports in general. For those who aren't keeping up, Oakland (Mich) of the Mid-Continent Conference, who ended the regular season with twice as many losses (18) as wins (9), will be in the NCAA tournament, complete with their 12-18 record. Seeded 7th in the Mid-Continent Conference tournament, Oakland went on a stunning 3 game run, culminating with a buzzer beating 3 pointer which gave them a 61-60 victory over top seed Oral Roberts (26-7) So, a team that still has won exactly 40% of its games will receive an invite to dance on the biggest stage there is.

And so I ask: why play the season? If, in the case of Oral Roberts, a season's worth of work can be flushed down the toilet in one unfortunate game, what's the point? Likewise, if a season's worth of ineptitude can be erased with one good week, why bother? But this is what we've just seen happen, and will continue to see happen as long as conference tournaments control NCAA bid destinies. This is not a shot at Oakland. They've won their bid fair and square, by the same rules everyone else plays by. And it's not like they are the first to do so. This is, in fact, the 4th year in a row that a team has been granted entrance to the national championship tournament with a sub .500 record.

Don't get me wrong: conference tournaments make for some great and exciting basketball. I'm sure that had I been able to watch, I would have found Oakland's run very exciting. And I understand why conferences put that automatic bid out there for grabs in the conference tournament. It adds incentive and urgency to the games, generating excitement and pulling in revenue. I get that, it's ultimately a money thing, and thus I know that it will likely never change. Still, call me a purist, call me old fashioned, but I think an invitation to play for the national championship should be earned by a body of work over an entire season, and that teams that play the best basketball all season long should be rewarded over a team that got hot for one week.

Even with the understanding that the conference tournaments are here to stay, can we at least make a rule that you have to have won more games than you lost to play in the national championship tournament? That doesn't seem terribly unfair, does it? Then again, maybe I'm just out of touch and misguided.

Will a real challenger please stand up?

Yesterday afternoon, I spent most of my time from 3 to 6 glued to the television. I watched enthusiastically as two of the giants of golf battled each other in a showdown that couldn't have been scripted better by the best Hollywood has to offer. In the one corner was Phil Mickelson, on one of the biggest rolls of his career, beloved as "the people's champion", if you will. In the opposite corner, Tiger Woods, at 29 already boasting career acheivements that rival the all-time greats, but coming off his least successful season as a pro. The two most popular golfers on tour, duking it out in the final group at Doral, with no one else close enough to make a realistic chase.

The two titans fought like gladiators throughout the afternoon, providing a variety of highlight reel moments, with Woods eventually prevailing by a slim one stroke margin. Lefty was not without his opportunities, and in fact came agonizingly close to holeing a chip on 18 which would have forced a playoff. But in the end, Tiger prevailed, regained the title of #1 in the world rankings, and had the majority of the sports media proclaiming "He's back." And that's hard to argue, given that he closed his tournament record 264 with rounds of 63 and 66, tracking down Mickleson, who had held at least a share of the lead in each of his last 10 stroke play rounds.

But the media also lauded Mickleson, saying that he had gone toe to toe with Woods, and stood up to the challenge. They praised his ability to recover from Woods' stunning eagle on the par 5 12, which gave Tiger a two stroke lead and seemed to close the door. Perhaps, it was suggested, if Woods was about to begin another run of greatness, Mickleson and others would be ready to provide stronger competition.

This may ultimately be true. Vijay Singh dominated the PGA in 2004 while Woods struggled through another swing overhaul. Ernie Els played similarly brilliant golf, and Mickleson had a fine season, highlighted by his first major victory at the Masters. We have yet to see how Vijay and Ernie will hold up against Tiger, if he is returning to form. But Phil's first attempt looks earily similar to things of the past, if you go below the surface.

Yes, Mickleson hung with Woods and made him work for his win. He didn't completely collapse, but it would be hard to say he didn't blink under the pressure. Normally a brilliant putter, Lefty missed a variety of short putts at key moments, putts he had been making all week. The most crucial of these was a 5 foot par putt on 16, which would have returned him to the lead after Woods made bogey on the hole. Entering Sunday, Mickleson's worst round of the tournament was 66, the exact score that Tiger carded on Sunday. Mickleson, however, carded a 69 - 3 strokes off his previous high for the tournament, 3 strokes worse than Woods, and enough to turn his 2 stroke lead into a 1 stroke defeat, Mickleson's 3rd failure in three tries when in the final group with Tiger. Perhaps even more telling - Mickleson's margin to Woods on Sunday's round was exactly the average margin that Woods has outshot his opponents in the final group of a tournament going back to 1999. So, for all his bravado about wanting to go toe to toe with Tiger, Lefty once again threw out an effort that was average at best.

And so I ask: will a real challenger please step up? For the whole of the 2004 season, we heard how there were golfers ready to challenge Tiger, to make a serious run at his pedestal. And it was easy to believe, as we watched Phil, Ernie, and Vijay rack up wins all over the world while Woods struggled. But the early returns from this season indicate that perhaps Woods really wasn't fighting last year. Perhaps prevailing opinion is right, and these other stars don't fear Tiger as they once did. However, maybe that fear was only in hiding, along with Tiger's best golf. The first challenger has taken their shot at the new Tiger, and came up with nothing but air.