I am Libertarian, hear me rant!

No sports story has drawn my attention today. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sports media has descended on the Super Bowl in force, and is determined to bring me such critical stories as the chick from the Spanish TV station who showed up at Media Day in a wedding dress of sorts and proposed to Tom Brady (which has to be near the top of the list of things you can do to make sure your organization does not get a media credential next year), and the Giants lineman who once castrated lambs with his teeth. So, as a result, you're going to get a rare political rant from me.

I am registered as a Republican, but as I've said before, I lean more Libertarian. In any election discussion, I have been very open about the fact that I have no intention of voting for the Republican nominee for president just because they are the Republican nominee. If the Republicans nominate someone I don't believe in, I'll find a 3rd party candidate I do believe in and vote for that person.

As you might expect, this position often draws a slew of objections from my Republican-type friends. Well, mainly just the same objection over and over again: "You're going to help get Hillary elected!" And on the most basic, practical level, I suppose that is very much true, given that no 3rd party candidate in this election stands a chance of defeating the Democratic nominee.

And yet, there's a bigger picture here that goes beyond the outcome of a single election, one that I didn't see for myself until just a few years ago. People seem to confuse political party affiliation with political ideology. Now, it's clear that at least, on some level, party affiliation reflects ideology, but the fact of the matter is that political parties exist to win elections, not to champion a particular ideology. Individuals certainly have their principles and ideologies, but on the grander scale, parties are only beholden to an ideology to the extent that it offers them the best chance to maintain power. That fact demonstrates the fallacy of continuing to line up to vote for "your" party's nominee, even if you don't particularly like person. "Your" party doesn't care that you don't like their nominee, as long as you'll keep showing up to vote for them. So those who continually grumble about the direction the party is going, while consistently voting for nominees they don't like, are only serving to reinforce that direction. For instance, if the Republicans know that core conservatives will vote for their nominee as long as they are at least marginally better than the Democrat, why would they put up a true conservative who would likely drive away moderates. Better to put up a more moderate candidate.

The objection to this line of thinking is that parties (in general) select their nominees via primaries, and therefore the voters make that choice. That's true, and yet at the same time, the overall party machinery continues to hold a significant amount of sway in those processes, and the party machinery is ALWAYS going to be at work on behalf of a candidate that they feel is the most electable in a general election. Never was this sort of practice more clear to me than a few years back when Senator Arlen Specter faced a heated primary battle against Pat Toomey, a much more conservative opponent. President Bush stumped rather heavily on behalf of Specter, whose votes generally go against the President 2/3 (or more) of the time.

Against that reality, the only way to keep the party from veering completely to the middle is to make it clear that the conservative wing of the party is not a locked in vote. If the party knows that making a serious play for the moderates will result in a large portion of the base either voting 3rd party, or just staying home, they'll adjust their strategy accordingly.

I've been told a number of times that I'll be throwing my vote away, but let's really examine what's going on here. If you and I both dislike "our" party's nominee, we have 2 choices. We can vote for a candidate we don't believe in but who stands a chance of beating the other major party's nominee. Or, we can vote for a candidate that we do believe in. From my perspective, if you do the former while I do the latter, one of us has thrown our vote away, and it isn't me. The fact that the average American believes that I am the one throwing my vote away in that scenario is one of the biggest problems of our political process. Grumbling and groaning about a particular candidate and then lining up to vote for them is just enabling the party to move in the direction you don't want it to move.

If the Libertarians or another conservative 3rd party were to siphon off 5% of the vote nationally, the Republican party would be falling over itself to try and win them back. The problem is that we've got such a short view of the political process, one that can't see past the upcoming election. In terms of this individual election, yeah, I should probably suck it up and vote for the Republican nominee. But I refuse to continue contributing to ongoing major defeat for an increased shot at a minor short term victory. That's just where I'm at these days.

The Problem of Pain

I believe when I announced that C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain was going to be the next one I pulled off of my non-fiction stack, my dear friend Amanda told me it was a "toughie". And she was certainly correct, not that I doubted her. I've read Lewis before, he's never the easiest read, and the whole "problem of pain" philosophical issue isn't exactly an easy subject to tackle. Add to that the fact that I'd been reading sports books for the last month prior to picking up The Problem of Pain, and I had a nice challenge before me on this on.

I just finished with the book today, and while I think my head spun around trying to stay with it on a number of occasions, it was definitely a worthwhile experience. I had a fairly good general sense of where Lewis fell on the larger parts of this subject, simply because my favorite contemporary Christian author, Philip Yancey, cites him quite often in dealing with similar subject matter in his books. And since I have a pretty good general agreement with Yancey's views on such matters, I expected to have a similar general agreement with Lewis.

While I certainly don't agree with every point of Lewis (and really, who ever does agree completely with another person on any matter of substance), I clearly do resonate with his overall message and the view of God that his take on the problem of pain illustrates. One of my favorite parts of the book came very early as he discussed God's omnipotence, as he is addressing supposed counterexamples to divine omnipotence, that are really simply intrinsic impossibilities: "... nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God." Creating creatures with free will and then not allowing for the possibility that those creatures would do evil is that kind of nonsense.

I also really appreciate his take on the issue of divine goodness, as it relates to the presence of pain. His assertion that in the normal course of this discussion, people have trivialized divine goodness to mean divine kindness, when what God really is is not kindness, but rather love, makes a ton of sense to me. Love (of the non-trivial form) allows for pain and hurt, in the interest of the greater good of the object of the love.

Definitely a worthwhile read, and I'll probably be adding some more of Lewis' apologetic works to my stack in the near future. For the immediate future, it's back to sports. I'll be starting Meat Market by Bruce Feldmen tomorrow. The book is an inside look at the world of major college football recruiting, as Feldmen shadowed recruiting efforts at Ole Miss for a season. You know if you've read this blog at all that I have some strong opinions on college athletics, so I'm very much looking forward to this one. I should also be wrapping up The Lord of the Rings within the week, and I have The Adventures of Tom Sawyer queued up and ready to go as my next fiction read.

SI goes to the birds...

So, I'm on my 3rd issue of Sports Illustrated this week, and we have an early frontrunner for the "Article I least expected to find in my SI" award: a 6 page feature article on pigeon racing.

That's right, pigeon racing. SI devoted a similar amount of type to pigeon racing in this week's issue as they did to last weekend's NFL conference championship games. Admittedly, it was a fun change of pace, but did it really merit a feature article in just about the most well known sports publication in the country?

I don't really have much more to say about this, except a friendly reminder that, no matter how much fun this article makes pigeon racing out to be, pigeons are evil, and should be eradicated from the face of the planet, along with their beach dwelling buddies, seagulls.

Taking the road less travelled

I was going to post about this story yesterday before the whole Carrie Underwood ticket incident occurred, and I really wanted to make sure I came back to it, because despite it's relative obscurity (I first heard about it yesterday, 2 weeks after it broke), this is probably my favorite sports story of the year thus far.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that (despite my recent anti-cynicism rant) I'm fairly cynical when it comes to the administration of major college athletics. I believe that cynicism is fairly well founded, however. And I've always done my best not to extend that cynicism to the athletes in a blanket fashion. That's fairly easy to do, since for the most part I see them as mostly cogs in a massive machine that isn't exactly designed to look out for them, though they can certainly derive some benefit from it.

Anyhow, seeing a story like that of Jonathan Meyers of Greenwich, Connecticut really makes me smile. You can read the full article for yourself if you choose, but to summarize, Meyers is a blue-chip high school football recruit, and has drawn scholarship offers from the likes of Florida, Michigan, and UCLA. Instead of taking one of those offers (most likely would have been Florida), Meyers has decided to play at Princeton, where he can pursue a great education, play lacrosse (he's an All-American in that sport), and play football on top of that, keeping alive his hopes of playing in the NFL. Oh, and by the way, Ivy League schools don't offer athletic scholarships, so he'll have to pay his own way.

Call me crazy, but I think it's all kinds of refreshing to see a kid who clearly has an excellent head on his shoulders and was able to look past the glitz and glamour of the major college football scene and make such a decision, in the face of any number of voices that would suggest he's a fool for doing so. That is not to say that I think that most blue chip football recruits ignore their education, but I do think you see a lot of players make decisions about their education in the context of a subset of schools that would be the best option for their football career. It's like if you have the option to go and play at a big time football school, you have to exercise it. I feel like a lot of players would be well served to look at the situation more holistically, as Meyers clearly has. This is especially true in a day and age in which lower D-IA programs, and even D-IAA programs are getting their players noticed by the NFL. While he may have not taken the "best" course for his football aspirations, he certainly hasn't abandoned them by going to Princeton.

I'm not sure how thrilled his parents will be about having to foot Princeton's 47k a year tuition, but I'm sure they are quite proud of his decision. I know I personally wish him the best of luck, in all his future endeavors, on and off the field.

Charity rewarded

So, I had an interesting day.

The Harrisbury country station had their annual radioathon to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital yesterday and today. I'd been toying with the idea of becoming a "Partner In Hope" with St. Jude the last couple years, and decided yesterday that I was going to finally go ahead and do it this year. I didn't call in yesterday though. As you probably know if you've ever seen a teleathon/radioathon before, there are often incentives offered to those who donate at certain times. I made the decision to donate independant of any "incentives", but since I had made up my mind to donate anyhow, I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait until an hour in which there was an incentive that I was at least mildly interested in.

As you might remember, a few weeks ago while handing out the OBNOTW award, I jokingly declared that Carrie Underwood was "my girl". From 2 to 3 today, the incentive was to be in a drawing to win one of 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and front row tickets to the upcoming Keith Urban/Carrie Underwood concert in nearby Hershey. Despite my professions of love for Carrie, I wasn't really jumping out of my seat to get into that drawing (not really big into concerts, especially BIG concerts), but it was getting towards the end of the event and I hadn't been even remotely interested in any of the prior incentives, so I figured I'd go ahead and call. Well, when 3 rolled around, they announced that I had won the 5th row tickets. (I'm positive they had the stack of papers upside down and I should have won the front row seats, but what can you do?) First time I can remember winning anything of real significance in a drawing or contest like this.

Anyhow, this rewarding of my charity has left me with a conundrum. For you see, I will have 2 tickets, and the concert just happens to be on Valentine's Day. As a rather single male, I don't have a built in, ready to go date for such occasions as these. I suppose I could attempt to use the lure of Keith Urban to attract a hot date for the evening, but I'm not sure how well I think it would work, as she would likely be spending half the concert gawking at Keith Urban, and I would spend the other half gawking at Carrie Underwood. And not being that into attending the concert, I'm not sure I really feel like just grabbing a random friend to go along with me. Of course, a quick scan of StubHub and eBay has presented me with a 3rd potential option, one which could be quite lucrative.

Decisions, decisions...

Vindicated?

One of the things that has consistently bothered me about the whole steroids issue is that the guy who basically blew the lid off the whole thing was Jose Canseco. In his tell-all book, Juiced, Canseco became the first player to name names, and despite massive outcry about the claims of the book, Canseco has yet to be sued, and a number of the names he named have been proven accurate. The problem I have with that is that Canseco isn't exactly a saint here. He was, by his own admission, a massive drug cheat in his own rights. And even that I could forgive, if he had come forward out of a repentant attitude and a desire to clean up the game. However, he cheated as long as it served his purposes, and then when he couldn't play anymore, he decided (rightly or wrongly is not something I can make a call on) that he was been black listed because of steroid use. He needed money, so he became a rat when it suited his purposes. All that aside, he did prove to be one of the few truly credible voices, at least among players/former players. And, I believed to be dangerous, especially when Canseco began promoting plans for his follow-up book.

For you see, Canseco has proven time and time again that he only cares about Canseco. It suited his purposes to be credible and truthful in the first book, and clearly he had some goods to work with. My gut told me he was going to use the perceived credibility the fallout from his first book had given him for less than credible purposes in the follow-up. Many times I heard in the media over the last months "Say what you want about Canseco, the guy's told the truth on this" As true as that was, the manner in which it was said was disconcerting. I especially did not like the way a number of media figures were ready to assume Alex Rodriguez guilty of something after Canseco announced his surprise that A-Rod was not named in the Mitchell report, and then hinted to revelations in that area in his forthcoming book Let's not forget the reasons Canseco's book and it's claims were initially dismissed. However accurate his first book may have turned out, the guy hasn't earned a basic level of trust, in my opinion.

It would seem my suspicions are beginning to be proven correct. Earlier this month, author/editor Don Yeager, who had planned on working with Canseco on his follow-up book, passed up the opportunity after reviewing Canseco's material. His statement about this was particularly noteworthy: "I don't think there's a book there. I don't know what they're going to do. I don't think he's got what he claims to have, certainly doesn't have what he claims to have on A-Rod. There's no meat on the bones." I for one, am not shocked by this.

And then we come to last night, and the revelation that Canseco may have tried to extort at least one current major leaguer with the threat of being named in the 2nd book. Scott Boras, agent for Maggilo Ordonez, filed a complaint with the FBI after Canseco allegedly contacted one of Boras' employees and told him that Ordonez would be left in the "clear" in the book if he invested in a movie project Canseco was promoting. Canseco denies the charge, and Ordonez has declined to go forward with the complaint, saying that he doesn't want to deal with the problems. So, this isn't exactly an iron-clad case, but clearly no one would be that surprised if it proved true, given the guy we're dealing with. Whether he has the goods on Ordonez and was giving him a chance to keep it hidden, or whether he was threatening to use his new found credibility to point the finger without any actual proof is inconsequential. If he was willing to alter his "revelations" based on financial contributions, that credibility is officially gone.

I don't doubt that he has at least some more credible information on steroid users, though perhaps nothing as groundbreaking as he would like us to believe. I'm sure he'll find a way to get the second book out there, and I'm also sure that at least some of what he alleges in it will prove true. I just pray that those in the media who have portrayed him as a credible, honest source on steroids are willing to take anything he might say in the future with the appropriate measure of skepticism, rather than taking the lazy way out and saying "Well, he told the truth last time." For Jose Canseco, honesty and altruism have been the exception, rather than the rule, and everyone would do well to keep that in perspective.

Say what?

Just a quick shot here, I'll probably do a longer entry about something else later tonight, but I thought it noteworthy that Barry Bonds requested a dismissal of his federal perjury charges yesterday.

Of course Bonds is going to make such a request, though it seems unlikely that it will be granted. What I find interesting is the nature of the request, in which his lawyers argued that "the indictment is 'scattershot' and noted for its 'striking inartfulness.'"

I post this here because I am hoping that someone with a broader vocabulary than I will stumble across this and be able to tell me what scattershot and inartfulness mean. I don't think they are in my dictionary.

Where is the benefit of the doubt?

The sports media and I are having another one of those days where we just aren't getting along very well. Two separate stories have caught my attention, and aside from the fact that they are both football stories, the actual facts of the stories couldn't be more different. Yet, some of the coverage I've seen around both stories leads me to the same question: What do people have to do to earn the benefit of the doubt these days?

The first story stems from Sunday's AFC championship game between the Patriots and the Chargers. As football fans know, San Diego went into that game with their 3 best offensive players banged up. Star running back LaDainan Tomlinson was suffering from a knee injury, as was QB Philip Rivers, and standout tight end Antonio Gates had a beat up toe. The latter two played, with varying limitations based on their injuries. Tomlinson, however, was only in for 3 plays before sitting down for the rest of the game in favor of backup Michael Turner. The Chargers were able to move the ball, but 4 deep drives stalled outside the end zone, and the Chargers managed only 4 field goals in falling by a 21-12 score.

In the two days since the game, Tomlinson has been absolutely killed by a number of national media figures, perhaps most prominently former player Deion Sanders, for a perceived lack of toughness in his unwillingness to gut out his injury and play in the biggest game of his career. That perception hasn't been helped by revelations that Rivers was actually playing on a partially torn ACL which will require surgery and a 6 month rehab, and in fact even had arthroscopic surgery last week just so he could play on Sunday. He also wasn't helped by the fact that, after he returned to practice on Thursday, the Chargers took him off the injury report completely, implying that they felt he was at 100%.

The second story broke yesterday, when Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy ended several days worth of speculation by announcing that he will return to coach the Colts in 2008. Dungy's family had recently moved from Indianapolis back to Tampa, where Dungy had been stationed for 6 years in his first stint as an NFL head coach. As a result, the prevailing notion was that Dungy, a noted family man who has spent years with his All-Pro Dad organization preaching faith and family over football, would retire from coaching and rejoin them.

While nationally there hasn't been a whole ton of commentary on this, I was alerted today to this article by Indianapolis Star writer Bob Kravitz. In it, Kravitz, while stating that he is "uncomfortable" doing so, suggests that by deciding to continue on with the Colts while his family is in Tampa, Dungy has revealed himself to be something of a hypocrite.

Maybe if you just look at these stories on the surface, you don't really see a whole lot for even a noted media critic like myself to seize on. And yet, let's go a step further with both. First, Tomlinson. LT is in his 7th year in the NFL, and prior to this year's playoffs, he had never missed a game due to an injury. His lone career DNP was a coaches decision in 2004 in the last game of the season, which was meaningless to the Chargers playoff postion. And he's done this while logging over 300 carries and more than 50 catches each year. He had 375 combined touches this year, for a career low. You don't do that as a running back in the NFL without playing through an injury or two. It just doesn't happen. LT has never done anything to demonstrate a particularly low threshold for pain. If there's a player in the NFL who has earned the right to be implicitly trusted when he says "I can't go", it's LT. And yet, here we are. What does LT have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Do I know for sure that LT absolutely couldn't go on Sunday? Obviously not. Really, only Tomlinson knows that for sure. But prior to Sunday, there was zero evidence to suggest he was the kind of player to "wimp out", and what happened on Sunday was hardly conclusive in that regard. So I'm going to give him a pass, and I think the media should be quicker to do so as well. If you want to harp on him, harp on him for his bench-sitting, helmeted, brooding act after he came out of the game. Of course, the sheer irony of Deion Sanders, who I'm fairly certain never actually hit anyone in his NFL career, questioning LT's toughness almost makes the story bearable.

And then there's Dungy's situation. First of all, I think it's rather arrogant of someone like Kravitz to assume the he knows what would be best for the Dungy family, especially so given that we don't have all the various details of the concessions the Colts made to Dungy in order to keep him on the sidelines for another year. And yet I respect the fact that, since Dungy has made his "family first" mantra a public thing throughout the years, he does open himself up for public scrutiny on such issues. Really, I get that. This isn't a "how dare you tell someone else how to raise their family" rant. And yet, Dungy isn't new to life as an NFL coach. 2008 will mark his 13 straight year in an NFL head coaching position. He has been involved with All-Pro Dad for about as long, as I understand it. And in all that time, I'm not aware of any significant suggestion that he was anything but the family first guy he presented himself as. And now you're going to assume that 12+ years down the road he's suddenly done an about face in that area? Again, what does the guy have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? I can't crawl inside Dungy's head, so I don't know what exactly he's thinking. And maybe he has really placed football first in this instance. Obviously, only he and his family know what went into the decision. But still, the man has a track record that merits being taken at his word when he says he believes this is the best choice for him and his family. At the first least, could we keep that word "hypocrite" in the sheath for a little while longer? I have to wonder if this story doesn't come more from Kravitz trying to explain away the fact that he, like the vast majority of the Indy media, guessed wrong on what Dungy's move would be.

So seriously, what does a person have to do to get the benefit of the doubt? Does the benefit of the doubt even exist anymore in a context where it would fly in the face of a more interesting story? I think it does, because I'm pretty sure I saw Randy Moss getting it last week in the face of battery allegations. Maybe that's it - if you win all your games and break records, you get a pass.

Regardless of the answer to the larger question, I think the level of cynicism illustrated here is unfortunate.

On coaches and decision making

A few weeks ago, prior to the match-up between the Patriots and the Giants in the last game of the NFL regular season, I stated that I believed the Giants would be crazy not to rest their players in the game, which was meaningless for them since they were locked into their playoff position regardless of the outcome of the game. (You can see that statement within this entry.) As you might know, the Giants did play their starters the whole way against the Patriots in that game, playing quite well before ultimately becoming the last victim of the Patriots' first ever 16-0 regular season. You are also probably aware that the Giants continued to play well in the postseason, winning 3 straight road games to become the first NFC wild card team to make the Super Bowl in over 30 years.

First, let me pat myself on the back (pat, pat) for bringing this topic back up, unlike many in the sports media who make brash statements and then "forget" about them when they go awry. At the same time, I don't necessarily bring this back up to concede defeat on the matter. It's certainly hard to argue that the Giants made the wrong move, given where they are, and given the number of teams that rested their players only to fall along the wayside - 2 of them at the hands of the Giants.

I am willing to concede that it may have been the best move for this particular team to go out and give the Patriots a game. And yet, I have to say that we constantly deal with this false idea that because a certain decision worked out, it was automatically the best decision to make. The reverse is of course also often assumed - that something that doesn't work out is the wrong decision. However, it's really unfair to view decision making through hindsight this way.

I essentially minored in statistics in college, and while lots of that knowledge has departed from head due to lack of use in the last 5+ years, I do still have a pretty good grasp on probability, or at least I like to think I do. And I know that choosing the option that has the highest probability of success doesn't always bring success when you are only looking at a sample size of 1. Sometimes, making the right decision leads to the wrong result. And sometimes, making the wrong decision still works out well anyhow. But the simple fact is that the guy who is consistently making the decisions that give his team the highest probability for success is going to have more success, in the long term, than the guy who is consistently making decisions that put his team up against longer odds.

I'm speaking theoretically thus far, so let me give some illustrations. First, from college football this year. In the Auburn/LSU game, LSU had the ball at the Auburn 22, trailing 24-23 with less than 10 seconds left, with no timeouts remaining. Rather than kick a field goal, LSU coach Les Miles had the team take a shot at the end zone. It was successful, with the touchdown catch coming with 1 second left. Masterful, gutsy coaching, right? Absolutely not. Anything other than a completed TD pass in that situation ends the game in an LSU loss. Kicking the field goal clearly offered the higher percentage chance to win the game. And we learned later that apparently Miles lost track of the time on the clock, and thought there was enough time on the clock to take the shot at the end zone and still kick the field goal if it didn't work. Miles gets burned on that most of the time, but this time he escaped. An example of a good decision that went bad would be Joe Torre sending Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in postseason history, in to the game to close out the 2001 World Series. I highly doubt you'd find anyone who would question that decision despite the outcome, and yet there are so many times when people are unwilling to get past a bad outcome when discussing whether the proper decision was made.

So, all of that is to say, just because the Giants made the Super Bowl doesn't mean that playing their starters the whole game against the Pats was the right decision. Let's remember, they lost a few starters for portions of the playoffs in that game, which clearly was a negative outcome of the decision. For my part, while I'm willing to give a little bit on this one, I think the Giants' Super Bowl run says more about just how wide open the NFC playoffs were this year, and how good the Giants have been on the road (10 straight road wins) than it does about Tom Coughlin's decision to play the whole game against the Patriots. Regardless, Coughlin's players went out and got the job done for him, and that's all that ultimately can said with any certainty, because we don't get to play the scenario out 100 different times and see which decision led to more success, we get to see one decision, one outcome. That's why I tend to be fairly easy on coaches when it comes to individual strategic decisions like this, because they don't go out on the field and play. Players can easily make a good gameplan look terrible, and a bad gameplan look good. You really have to look at the big picture when evaluating coaching.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I definitely think the Giants would be smart to play their starters in their next matchup with the Patriots.

Losing Their Religion

Once again, the last article in Sports Illustrated this week has piqued my interest. The article, Losing Their Religion, by Selena Roberts, gives an interesting take on the hiring of former Hawaii football coach June Jones at SMU.

I don't think I have to restate my views on what goes on surrounding major athletics. Clearly, I resonate with the suggestion of the article that the goals/methods of big time college football are not entirely compatible with the values of a Christian school. Big time college athletic are primarily about the money, and so yeah, I don't see that as a program that lines up with a Christian world view. Even worse, such a pursuit can pretty easily reinforce a negative stereotype of the modern day American church - that what the church is really after is people's money.

And yet, I do understand the point of the SMU AD, who says calls athletics the "front porch of the university". I saw that repeatedly during my time at Messiah College, a rather anonymous D-III school. People get an impression of your school through your athletic programs that would likely never come in contact with it in any other fashion. The image of Messiah College in the region, and indeed, even nationally, gets a tremendous boost from the school's athletic program, both from the conduct and character of the student athletes who represent the school, and from the kind of success that many of the teams have enjoyed.

Obviously Messiah is a D-III athletics program, that doesn't generate income from any of it's teams, so there's something of a case of apples to oranges going on here. At the same time, for a school like SMU to have a high profile program like football in total disarray does speak rather poorly of the school, and on much larger scale than what we're dealing with. All of that is to say, if SMU is going to have a D-IA football program, which they have for quite some time now, it's not good for the school to keep it as a bottom feeder (1-11 in 2007). Basically, they are left with only two viable choices - upgrade the program, or eliminate the program. It's obvious which course SMU has taken. And yet the whole situation does really illustrate the conundrum that the larger "faith-based" schools face when dealing with their athletics programs.

Yet another really bad idea

Okay, so today's topic is a bit more obscure than what I usually cover, but Jim Rome mentioned it on his show today, and I really felt the need to take it and run with it.

So, here's the story. You can read it for yourself, but the bottom line is that the Western Athletic Conference is cracking down on fan behavior at their games, specifically targeting "chants or cheers that contain obscene, vulgar, offensive or threatening language". The new rule is to be enforced with the calling of a technical foul on the home team.

Let me say, first of all, that I don't have a real problem with efforts to cut down the amount of profanity at sporting events. I've got no problem with heckling the opposing team and all the various back and forth that comes with sporting events. My favorite college basketball team, Duke, has fans that are notorious for their heckling and chants. However, in recent years, stuff like this has gotten out of hand in a number of venues, to the point where it's often just not a good environment for people (especially families with young children) to watch a game. And the chants that involve profanity and vulgarity are rarely that clever or amusing. I'm certainly a free speech guy, but I really don't have a problem with rules designed to allow for a certain amount of decorum at a sporting event.

This approach, however, is an absolutely terrible idea. I think you're treading on very dangerous territory when you start punishing the participants in a sporting event for the actions of the spectators. I can see going that route in extreme instances, like when stuff starts getting thrown on the field/court in large quantities. In cases like that, fan behavior is actually interfering with the game being played. But the simple reality is that players and coaches have zero actual control over what the fans do. They can give talks and make requests, but that's the extent of it. The idea that a team could potentially lose a close game because of the words of some obnoxious fans is very problematic for me. And the fact that apparently something as simple as a large group "You suck" taunt is in violation of the rule tells me they are taking things too seriously on top of that. And really, how long will it take in this day and age for a bunch of kids from the visiting school to show up in home team garb and break the rule in an effort to get a T called on their opponents. Not everyone in the home gym is rooting for the home team, after all.

Personally, I think at the college level, these sort of issues should be left up to the individual schools. If they are comfortable with the behavior of the students and others who attend their games, then that should probably be the end of it. However, if the conference feels a need to impose its will in this area, then they should do so in a fashion that doesn't actually impose penalties on the game being played. Fine schools for incidents that occur in their gyms, or something like that. Let's stick to keeping the players on the floor accountable for their own actions, and not the actions of their classmates in the stands.

Calling Cuban to Pittsburgh

Yesterday I completed reading through my first issue of Sports Illustrated, and I'm glad I was resolved to go through it from cover to cover, because the very last article caught my attention: A Changeup for Bud's Boys. In it, SI's Chris Ballard outlines his case for why the famous (even infamous, in some ways) owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban,, is the right choice as the next owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ballard is very much on point with his argument from my perspective. I think he's absolutely right, that having Cuban in Chicago would be great for baseball. However, I think there's a place where he would be better for baseball - Pittsburgh. That's right, I want Mark Cuban to buy the Pirates.

This is not a random whim, as Cuban has ties to the Pittsburgh area and has been linked to possible purchases of city sport teams in the past. And the reality of this case seems to be that, despite his interest, he won't be buying the Cubs, for the reasons that Ballard cites, which are basically about MLB owners not being comfortable bringing a pot-stirrer like Cuban in when they have another viable option. The Cubs are an attractive purchase, and so MLB is in a position of strength. For the small market Pirates, who haven't had a winning season in 15 years, the market would likely be much smaller, and so the other owners might not be left with much of a choice if Cuban wanted in.

To be fair to the current MLB owners, I understand their hesitations, to a point. I am not a big fan of Mark Cuban, the guy. The NBA certainly could do without his loud-mouth, attention-grabbing, referee berating antics. He's constantly in the news, usually for the wrong reasons, most often getting fined. What the NBA can't do without, however, is Mark Cuban, the intelligent and fan savvy team owner. During Cuban's tenure as owner, the Mavs have gone from one of the NBA's bottom feeders, to one of the marquee franchises, consistently being among the top handful of teams. Whether the NBA brass would admit it or not, Cuban has clearly brought more positive to the league than negative. And, for a number of reasons, it's quite likely that Cuban would not be as ever-present with a baseball team as he has been with the Mavs, so MLB shouldn't expect to deal with those issues as often as the NBA does.

Ballard's article makes a very solid case for why Cuban would be a great owner of the Cubs, and most of those points would translate to any team, so I'm not going to spend much time restating why I think he would be a great owner in Pittsburgh. What I seek to bring to this discussion is a case as to why having Cuban as a great owner in Pittsburgh is better for baseball than having him as a great owner in Pittsburgh. First of all, the Cubs don't need Mark Cuban. The team is a big time revenue generator as is, with a die-hard following that goes well beyond the city of Chicago. Any ownership group that isn't totally incompetent should be able to come in and find success in Chicago. In Chicago, Cuban is just another big market, cash cow owner, like the ones we already have in Boston and New York, among other places. Hardly noteworthy, and not really having any grand significance outside of Chicago.

Pittsburgh, however, is a different animal. It's a pretty small market in baseball terms, and one that has been downtrodden for the better part of the last 20 years. It does, however, have a strong baseball tradition. And the current ownership group has bought into the standard small market "party line" of bemoaning baseball's economic disparities and saying they just don't have enough money to compete with the big boys. Meanwhile, they turn some of the biggest year to year profits as that economic system that they decry takes money from the big boys and lines their pockets, with no formal expectation that they actually invest it in the team.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I think baseball's economic structure provides a perfectly level playing field. However, it is markedly improved from the pre-revenue sharing days, even if the small market teams refuse to acknowledge that fact. As long as these teams continued to be owned by groups who are concerned solely about the present day bottom line, they will continue as a group to rack up nice profit margins, while putting a poor product on the field. And, as long as no one "breaks ranks", they can continue to point the finger at the MLB system when their fans complain. However, my opinion is that, at present, there is at most 1 (and that's an extraordinary situation in Florida) team that doesn't have the resources to be consistently competitive, assuming they use those resources well.

This is where Cuban comes in. I understand that baseball is a business. I don't expect owners, who are obviously skilled businessmen, to come in and just lose money year in and year out to put a winner on the field. However, his tenure in Dallas demonstrates that Cuban understands the concept of spending money to make money. Cuban has also demonstrated a strong ability and willingness to invest in and build a fan base and a market. Listening to the fans to the extent that he does is a great way to start that process. In his 7+ years in Dallas, Cuban has almost tripled the value of the franchise (based on Forbes' yearly valuations), and has taken the team from the bottom 1/3 of the league in yearly revenues to the top 1/3 (also according to Forbes). Now, Forbes also shows that the Mavericks consistently lose money annually from the basketball operations, but given their high revenues, the Mavs could clearly be profitable if they chose to do so. Cuban seems to be willing to pour extra money into the Mavs in the name of his competitive spirit.

Now, it generally takes a little longer to turn a baseball team around, for a variety of reasons, so I wouldn't necessarily expect Cuban to be so quickly successful in Pittsburgh. However, I believe within 5 years he could have Pittsburgh in a very competitive position once again, and could keep them profitable, if that was his objective. Whether he was necessarily raking in money on a yearly basis, he would clearly be making out in terms of what would happen to the value of the team.

Instead of just another big market villain, Cuban would be someone that other small market fans can point to when their ownership groups cry poverty. He would blow away the lie that a lot of ownership groups are trying to sell: "We're doing the best we can under the current system." With Cuban putting the model on display in Pittsburgh, these owners would basically be faced with a choice of either putting forth a real effort to compete, or selling to someone who will.

From my perspective, those are better options than the present day, where they cry poverty and try to convince their fellow owners to vote them a bigger share of the big market revenues in the next CBA.

Game of Shadows

So, I just finished reading Game of Shadows, the expose on the famed BALCO scandal that blew the lid off the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports - particularly in baseball, and also in track and field. As BALCO's marquee baseball client, Barry Bonds was, of course, prominently discussed in the book as well. The litany of stinging revelations about Bonds within the book are, primarily, made it noteworthy, and Bonds shares the cover of the book with fellow juicer Jason Giambi of the Yankees.

I said as I was getting ready to start the book that I did not approve of the methods of the co-authors, who were reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle and broke a number of the key developments in the BALCO story. I definitely still stand by that. A number of the key breaks in the BALCO story came as a result of leaked grand jury testament. I'm not up on the law as it relates to leaking sealed grand jury testimony, so I don't know whether they are technically criminals, but I would assume they could at least be prosecuted as accessories if someone chose to do so. The fact that they've won awards for their journalism on the BALCO case strikes me as rather ironic, given that they were reporting on people who cheated to achieve awards and records. I won't call their work "cheating", but there was definitely some shadiness to their methods. I also came away less than impressed with their journalistic abilities, aside from those methods, because at several times throughout the book, a clear, personal, anti-Bonds attitude came through.

That being said, they definitely had the story nailed. I didn't expect to come away from this book with a lower opinion of Bonds the person, figuring I knew pretty much all the major details. However, I do have to say there were a number of revelations that did leave me with a lesser opinion of him. To be fair, many of the characterizations of him came from his spurned ex-mistress, and, as I said, the authors didn't give a real show of objectivity when it came to Bonds.

I've heard it said on a number of occasions that the fact that Bonds hasn't sued the authors of this book for defamation is tacit proof that their claims are accurate. I've always been a bit hesitant to buy into that argument, especially for active players. I could understand a player not feeling it would be worth dealing with during the context of preparing for and playing a long baseball season. I do believe that Bonds' team did actually try and prevent the book from being released, but on the grounds that it contained leaked testimony, not that anything was untrue. All that being said, if the claims made in this book are not at least substantially true, it's hard for me to believe a guy like Bonds (who has never backed up a step on this whole issue) wouldn't come out swinging at the authors.

One final note - I did not appreciate the authors grandstanding towards the end of the book about how baseball needed to go back and address all the records and accomplishment that had been tainted by steroid use. The book is presented as a journalistic work, a detailed accounting of the facts of the BALCO scandal. And yet here at the end we have an opinion which is ultimately passed off as a fact in the context of the book. My stance on dealing with the past has been made clear, and so I won't go into it again in this space. This was just another item that led me to question the kind of journalists we were dealing with here.

All in all, pretty good read, and more informative than I expected. I have a couple other books dealing with baseball and steroids in my pile, but the next book to come off the non-fiction pile is going to be C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. On the fiction side, I should be wrapping up The Two Towers this week and moving on to the third volume of the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Do part-time NFL refs still make sense?

Another NFL playoff weekend has come and gone, and, as has become all too common in recent years, the officials are at least part of the weekend's storyline. It seems like this happens at least once every playoff season, if not more often - a game where there a couple almost inexplicable calls in favor of one team. The game of choice this week was the Colts/Chargers game. Fortunately for the NFL and the referees, the team that got the perceived slight from the refs ended up winning the game, or it would be a dominant story.

I'm not going to go in blow by blow and analyze the calls in question. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, for one thing. Mistakes happen, and as long as humans are responsible for officiating sports, there will be officiating errors. It's a part of the game, albeit an unfortunate part. And even if actual mistakes aren't made, there will always be officiating controversies, as bias towards one team or another colors the views of fans on various instances. And the simple fact of that matter is that there are very few instances where you could convince me that officiating errors were enough change the outcome of a game. And yet, I've come to believe much more in the last few years that, even at the highest levels of sports, games can turn on good or poor officiating. An NFL football game can often turn (not be decided, necessarily) on a single play, and so a correct or incorrect call on a play can also turn a game.

The point I'm getting to here with the NFL is one I've been harping on repeatedly, ever since the much disputed officiating performance in the Super Bowl two years ago between the Steelers and the Seahawks. Again, I'm not going to dissect the officiating in that game, but the furor that arose surrounding that game led me to the following question: Why would the NFL, a 6 billion dollar industry, leave the credibility of its product in the hands of part-time employees, namely the officials. That's correct, NFL officials are part-timers, unlike the officials in all other major sports. Now, it's a fair point that the NFL only has a 16 game season, compared to the other 3 sports which all have at least 82 games. A few decades ago, it certainly made sense to only employee part-time officials.

However, the times have changed. The NFL is the most popular professional sports league in the US, and as such has millions of eyes glued to it every single Sunday, and hoards of media attention. The level of scrutiny of officials has never been higher. While the NFL can't really have refs work multiple games in a week, or use more time from officials in that sort of fashion, I have to believe that there would be significant value in having the referees focusing solely on officiating through out the week. There would be more time for tape review, for going over clarifications and interpretations. Like I said earlier, I understand that there will always be mistakes, and true consistency on a number of rules will be near impossible to ever achieve. That being said, it only stands to reason that the more times you go over what holding is, the more examples you see of what it is and what it isn't, the easier it would be for you to make the calls. I can't imagine that the extra money the NFL would have to invest to go to full-time officials wouldn't be well worth it in the long run.

My team, the Eagles, has not been a part of any of the major playoff officiating controversies over the last few years, so I've been able to come at them from a relatively unbiased perspective, and I have to concede that there have been serious issues, often seeming to favor one team. Some would have you believe that the NFL is trying to direct outcomes in these games, but I've never bought into that. The potential short term reward of getting a more "favorable" matchup the following week just doesn't seem to me to be worth risking the long term damage that any discovery of such a scheme would do to the league. And yet I have to concede, year in and year out, we play the same story over and over again, and it just doesn't seem like the NFL really is that interested in stepping up and doing everything they can to make sure officiating is as good as it can be. The obvious fact that it will never be perfect should not be justification for being satisfied with less than what can be attained.

Announcement

Okay, I could have technically done this before now, but I wanted to hold off until it really felt right. But since I've gotten hits from both Brazil and the Netherlands thus far today, the time has come.

I just want to thank everyone for visiting my internationally famous blog.

That is all, carry on.

The beginning of the steroids Gestapo?

I said a few days ago that I was disappointed at the way the Roger Clemens saga that arose due to the naming of names in the Mitchell report had deflected attention away from the other findings and recommendations of the Mitchell report. It's been one of the prominent stories in sports for the last several weeks, and likely won't be going away time soon, as Clemens and company will be in front of Congress on February 13th. And, it will likely continue to be the dominant baseball story, despite the fact that today we had the most truly significant development in baseball since the Mitchell report dropped. The commissioner's office announced a number of the recommendations of the report that will be implemented.

The most significant implementation will be the creation of a department of investigations within the commissioner's office to probe drug use. As I said, this was a recommendation of the Mitchell report that has just been sitting out in the open for almost a month now, but due to all the commotion around Clemens and the other names, it's gone completely unnoticed by the mainstream sports media, along with virtually every other recommendation contained in the report.

I'm a huge proponent of cleaning up the game as much as is reasonably possible, but at first glance, this department scares the crap out of me. I'm of the opinion that the only way to truly and effectively clean up the game is by fostering an attitude of cooperation between the union and the league on the issue, and this really sounds like MLB is about ready to go all Gestapo on their players. That is quite possibly the worst thing that MLB could do, aside from going back to looking the other way. I'm going to concede that I've only just seen this article within the last couple hours, so I'm going to reserve some judgment on this implementation for a while, and keep an eye out as more information comes out, but I'm not optimistic given how the Mitchell report was handled in the first place.

There's a simple fact of life at work here - the cheaters are always going to stay ahead of those chasing them, the only question is how far ahead they stay. There's always going to be a window between when a new drug comes out and when there's a test for it. MLB can really only get very aggressive about policing what actually goes on within their walls. Going crazy with investigations is simply going to completely chase steroid use out of MLB buildings, and not out of the game. From the perspective of addressing the issue going forward, the fact that steroid use had been relatively open in the past would actually be a good thing, if MLB were to handle the situation properly. If MLB goes big brother on the players to the extent that I suspect will happen, what it will primarily serve to do is break down what has overall become a rather good working relationship between ownership and the union. I can see a major war at the next CBA negotiation if this department is what I think it's going to be.

Let me be clear, I want to see more done to clean up the game. I'm in favor of independent drug testing. I would like to see the players consent to blood testing, and to allowing test samples to be saved so that they can re-tested as tests for new drugs are developed. I'm for fostering an environment where players feel comfortable working together with ownership on cleaning up the game. Turning clubhouses into police states where players have to be constantly looking over their shoulder is totally counterproductive to cleaning up the game, in my opinion. I wonder if ownership isn't being overly sensitive to the criticism that all this went on under their noses for so long. I don't necessarily believe this department would clean up the game, but it would certainly clean up the clubhouses.

My primary concern in all of this is that fact that it seems quite likely to me that this announcement will go largely unnoticed, as the original recommendation in the Mitchell report did, by the media and the public. If that happens, the media will have failed the public once again. This is the kind of story that the sports media should be pulling out into the light and subjecting to all kinds of scrutiny, but I just don't see that happening until it's too late. The "who juiced" stories are all much more interesting, despite being largely irrelevant to addressing the future of baseball.

Of course, the sad reality may be that the public wouldn't see any problem with this sort of setup anyhow. I'd like to hope that's not the case, however. We'll see.

Overblown Non-Story of the Week (Week of January 12th)

It's that time again folks. Time for the crowning of another ONSOTW. This week's story has actually been around longer than a week, but I've let it go up until now for a variety of reasons. This week, however, my frustration with it has finally reached a level worthy of mention.

If you follow football, you probably know that Dallas Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo is, at present, romantically linked to starlet Jessica Simpson. You likely are also aware that Ms. Simpson attended a game a few weeks back against Philadelphia,, and that Romo played particularly poorly as the Cowboys lost said game. It's also possible that you would be clued in to the fact that last season, Romo was similarly linked to country star Carrie Underwood, and that he also played very poorly in a Cowboy loss to Philadelphia that Underwood attended. As rabid fans often do, Cowboy fans seized on this connection, and the theory that Romo couldn't handle having his famous girlfriends around began to circle. The theory was perpetuated with comments by Cowboys wideout Terrell Owens, which he later said he was not serious about. Playing along, you began to see people wearing Jessica Simpson masks at Cowboy road games, and the media obviously picked up on the idea and speculation began. Simpson has been called Jessica Ono, Yoko Simpson, and, most cleverly, in my opinion, Yoko Romo. (Credit to Dan Patrick for that one.) And then, this week, the story broke that, during the Cowboys' bye week in the first round of the playoffs, Romo went on a vacation to Mexico with Simpson, along with teammate Jason Witten and his wife, and, oddly enough, Simpson's father.

Before I go much further, I have to make it clear that I'm not a Romo fan. First of all, I'm an Eagles fan, so no one that plays for the Cowboys is going to be someone I jump to defend as an instinct. I respect his abilities and what he's done on the field. I'd also respect him as a man for his ability to pull the likes of Simpson and Carrie Underwood, except that in the case of Underwood, he was scamming on my girl. That's right, I just called Carrie Underwood my girl. I do so even though she isn't technically my girl at the moment, since the only reason that's true is because she has no idea I exist. (Unless of course, she's one of the people who read this blog anonymously and never chime in. Carrie, if you're reading this, drop me line!) Once we clear that one minor obstacle, I'm golden. But I digress. Anyhow, I would have been willing to overlook Romo's betrayal once he dumped Carrie, had he not wound up with Simpson. You might think I have some claim on her as well, but this is not the case. Making the move from Carrie to Jessica lowered my opinion of him, because it convinced me that he's an idiot. I mean, perhaps Carrie was too beautiful, intelligent, and talented for him and he felt intimidated and needed to find someone who was a downgrade in all three areas, but come on man! Show some better judgment. I digress again. The point is, I don't like Romo.

Anyhow, ever since word broke of the Romo/Simpson excursion to Mexico earlier this week, I've been bombarded with endless discussion about whether his relationship with Simpson is distracting Romo, whether this trip was really the best idea, etc. I understand that this is a famous couple, and thus I'm not surprised or at all offended that I know when and where they vacationed. But come on, seriously? The guy had a week off and he went to a tropical location with his girlfriend. I can't believe he was the only Cowboy (or Patriot, or Packer, or Colt) to do something similar. In fact, I know he wasn't, since his teammate Witten was along on the same trip. And yet somehow, this particular trip merits daily mention and discussion with every football related guest that visits every sports talk radio show I listen to, in addition to similar treatment on ESPN and the like. I know we as fans sometimes like to think that our favorite players should spend every spare moment preparing for and thinking about the next game, but that's just not reality, and really, it shouldn't be.

The great irony of the whole story (I'm such a sucker for irony) is that the endless discussion about whether this relationship is a distraction for Romo only serves to create another potential distraction. Rather than answer questions about the upcoming game with the Giants, Romo (as well as his Cowboy teammates) have faced an endless barrage of questions regarding Simpson. It's crazy, and in a way, it almost because a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there is a distracting nature to this relationship for Romo, it almost has to be all the scrutiny and questions around it, rather than the actual relationship itself. Call me nuts, but I doubt you become the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys without having to deal with a few women throughout your football life. Simpson definitely is not the first girl he's had watching him the stands, and I'd be rather surprised if she turns out to be the last. I'm fairly comfortable that the guy could get the job done with Simpson around if he was just left alone, and I'm guessing he can probably do it anyhow.

Now, don't read me wrong here, I don't have a ton of sympathy for Romo on this one. He'd dated a star once before, and so he knew what he was getting into here, and could have chosen to go in a different direction. But seriously sports media, we're in the midst of the NFL playoffs. Is there really a need to create stories like this, rather than just reporting what's out there? I guess the upside for Dallas fans is that they have a scapegoat all ready if things don't go well for them this weekend.

A trip to the lighter side of things.

Okay, so I've been dealing with some pretty serious stuff in the world of sports over the last few entries. Today, I'm in a much lighter mood, so I thought I'd head back to the lighter side of things. Like for instance, this article, which is at present linked from the front page of ESPN.com: Seahawks kicker to wear heated pants vs. Packers. Now, I really didn't need to know what Josh Brown plans on having in his pants this weekend when he plays Green Bay. The fact that this was front page news indicates to me that it's been a rather slow news day. And yet, now that I am aware, I can't help but think of the possibilities.

Suppose it rains in Green Bay this weekend. Are his pants waterproof? If they aren't, are the battery powered devices he's going to put in the pants waterproof? What if it's raining or the field is wet? I can just see it now - the game comes down to a critical kick. The ball is snapped, Brown comes up to kick, and then one of the devices shorts out, with the resulting leg spasm causing him to send the kick hurtling into his long snapper's rear end, while nearly ripping his holder's arm off.

What if he has to make a tackle on a kickoff return, and the impact breaks open one of the batteries, causing battery acid to leak into his pants? I'm visualizing him being caught on camera dancing around the sidelines uncomfortably, while the commentators speculate on just what might be going on. Nature calling? Icy Hot in the jock strap? A sudden, uncontrollable urge to do the mambo?

Or maybe the devices malfunction and overheat, first causing him to break into an inexplicable sweat in the midst of the sub-freezing air at Lambeau, and then searing his legs and his uniform pants. I can't even begin to imagine what the announcers would do when the camera focuses on the smoke pouring from his pants. They are used to seeing steam rising from player heads during cold weather games, but this would be something entirely new and different. Unfortunately, John Madden won't be doing this game, because I'm not sure how we'd be able to get through this particularly without Madden going to the telestrator and circling the exact source of the smoke, while saying "I'm not sure Al, but it looks like smoke to me."

The reality is that none of these occurances is in any way likely, and the game will proceed without any of these humorous incidents. But darn it, if something were to go wrong, I can safely predict that Monday morning would be the best day in sports talk radio history.

Bowl Championship Silliness - The Third

Today I bring you the third (and hopefully final) entry in my tirade against the hypocrisy of those who hold the reins of major college football. You might have expected some analysis or insight into last night's BCS national championship game between LSU and Ohio State (LSU won 38-24), but no, you'll have to go elsewhere for that.

If you tuned into the sports world today, you should know by now that that quest for a championship playoff in Division 1A football has a new ally, University of Georgia president Michael F. Adams. Adams released his proposal for an 8 team playoff, to begin after the current BCS contracts expire in 2010, this morning, only hours after fellow conference member LSU raised the 2008 BCS championship trophy. As I've said in my previous entries on the BCS, I prefer a playoff system, so you might expect me to talk about what a positive development this is. And in some ways, perhaps it is. There's really very little of his commentary on the BCS that I disagree with. When he talks about how the system has lost public confidence and doesn't work, I'm right there. And yet, on a larger level, this proposal, coupled with its source and the timing of its release, really just serves as another perfect example of why the leadership of college football is a mess, and any progress towards making it less of a mess has been and will continue to be mind-numbingly slow.

I'm sure that even if you don't follow college football that much, based on the information I've given you thus far, it wouldn't surprise you to know that Georgia was the school that saw itself as being the most "wronged" by the system this year. Here's a brief rundown on what happened. Georgia lost two SEC games early in the season, and as such did not win their division and did not qualify for the SEC title game. However, they finished the season on a roll, winning their last 6 games and leading many "experts" to suggest they might be playing better than any other team at season's end. They were ranked 4th in the BCS standings going into the last week of the season, and so when #1 Missouri and #2 West Virginia both lost as Georgia sat idle, it would have seemed natural for Georgia to move up into the #2 spot, behind #1 Ohio State. However, voters were clearly uncomfortable putting a team into the national championship game that hadn't even qualified for their conference championship. LSU, the SEC conference champion, moved above Georgia into #2 in the final polls, and as a result into the #2 spot in the final standings.

So, call me a skeptic regarding Adams' motivation for his proposal. The fact that he couldn't even wait until 24 hours after the BCS title game doesn't exactly ease my skepticism. While virtually everything he cites in his proposal is true, it's been true since the BCS came into existence. For all the ceremony and bluster about the BCS rankings, and the various components that have been used in the rankings throughout the history of the BCS, the simple fact of the matter is the system has always been designed so that the human voters decide who they want in the championship game. The computers are there and used, but they are really only a deciding factor if the 2 human polls don't agree on who #1 and #2 are, since the human polls are 2/3 of the ranking. That's the system, that's how it's been, and that's how those in charge want it. Witness the 2003 season, after which USC, who was #1 in both BCS polls, was left out of the BCS title game in favor of the #2 and #3 teams. Outcry all over the place, and the rankings revised to place more emphasis on the human polls. The participants in the BCS title game being subject to the whims of the voters is not an accident - it's by design. The only improvement that the BCS offers over the way things were done for decades in college football is that it presents a defined #1 and #2 prior to the bowls, and ensures that those two teams play. None of this should be news to anyone who has been involved in college football for any length.

I suppose I could be led to believe that the overt manipulation of the polls to avoid an unpopular scenario is something that would have drawn Adams' ire even had Georgia not been involved. The problem is that a very similar situation occurred last year. Ohio State and Michigan entered their final game of the regular season both at 11-0, and ranked #1 and #2 in the country. That meant that the winner would be #1 and 12-0, and the loser would have only one loss, which would have come at the hands of the #1 team in the country. No other major conference team would be undefeated. When Michigan lost the game, a 1 loss USC team jumped them to #2 in the polls. Not particularly shocking given the way the rankings usually work. However, when USC lost the following week, SEC champ Florida and their one loss jumped idle Michigan in the polls, avoiding the "unpopular" scenario of the OSU/Michigan rematch in the title game. So, where was Adams at after that "injustice"?

Adams can dispute this publicly all he likes, but the simple fact of the matter is that, had Georgia been in the BCS title game this year over LSU, there would have been no playoff proposal from Adams. The system "failed" Georgia, and so in Adams' eyes, it must broken. It's that kind of blatent self-interest that has kept the current system in place, and until those attitudes are stemmed, any system put in place is likely to be flawed - even a playoff.

On witch hunts and blood lust

And so it begins....

As you might know, last night Roger Clemens, the highest profile baseball player who was implicated by the Mitchell report for the use of performance enhancing, appeared in an interview on 60 Minutes. The interview was the beginning of any real public efforts by Clemens to clear his name. Yesterday, just prior to the interview being aired, news dropped that Clemens had filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian McNamee, his former trainer and the source of the allegations against him contained within the Mitchell report. Clemens also held a press conference today, and will likely be testifying in Congressional hearings regarding the Mitchell report next week.

As you might imagine, the sports media, which has been all over the story anyhow, has totally pounced now that their are new developments. You might be expecting me to analyze Clemens' statements and pontificate at length about my beliefs regarding Clemens' guilt or innocence. I won't be doing that here. The media has been and will continue to dissect everything coming out, gleaning whatever worthwhile insight they can out of it, and a lot of less than worthwhile insight out of it. I can't pretend to offer much new or special to that discussion. I would suggest though, that if you are truly interested, make sure you've seen the 60 Minutes interview for yourself. I've already heard his statements misrepresented in both directions by various media sources today. The bottom line though is this: If you believed the allegations against Clemens prior to last night's interview, you're going to still believe them after watching the interview. The reverse is also true. There is nothing as of yet in the way of physical evidence linking Clemens to steroids, and so we're basically left to decide which voice we deem more credible in this discussion

What I really want to highlight is that the whole Clemens debate is the chief example of why I become more convinced on an almost daily basis that it was an absolute mistake to name names within the Mitchell report. The stated goal of the Mitchell investigation was to come to grips with the breakdowns that led to the prevalence of steroids in baseball, and to recommend the best course of action for cleaning up the game in the future. Despite the fact that the report has been very prominently on the lips of the media in the weeks since it was released, I can pretty much guarantee you that the average sports fan has zero clue as to what the report had to say regarding those stated goals. I heard one media figure today state that if McNamee's testimony wasn't true, then the report was a waste since the allegations against Clemens were the only real revelations it contained. And it's sad that perception has swung that way.

The truth of the matter is that whether Clemens juiced or not is only relevant as a matter of public curiosity. By itself, the question of whether Clemens is clean neither aids nor detracts from the quest to clean up baseball. However, feeding Clemens' name to the media and to the general public was successful in continuing to fuel and demonstrate the level of blood lust the public at large has on the issue. It seems that to the mob, cleaning up the game going forward isn't enough. We need to identify and retroactively punish the cheaters. Mr. Stevens used the term witch hunt when I made my first post on the Mitchell report, and I agreed that it was an apt term. The unfortunate thing is that the public at large has made it rather clear that they support this particular witch hunt, which means we can expect the media to be a willing accomplice. That puts a huge amount of pressure back on MLB to proceed in a manner that creates an environment in which the game can be cleaned up. While I think that the players could be more cooperative anyhow, the kind of decision-making that the commissioner demonstrated with the Mitchell report is not going to have the union knocking down Selig's door begging to help him clean up the game. It seems clear to me that in this instance, Selig caved to short term whims of the public, at the expense of progress towards the long term good of the game.

The simple fact of the matter is this - baseball will not make significant strides until both the owners and the players can put aside adversarial attitudes on this one issue. For that to happen, the commissioner is going to have to make a conscious decision not to throw players under the bus for their past transgressions. The way the Mitchell report has been handled leaves me serious doubts as to whether he's prepared to do that.

Bowl Championship Silliness - Part Deux

As you might remember, I expressed some rather pointed opinions about college football and the BCS back in early December. Well, it's BCS bowl week at last, and quite frankly, I really don't care. I'm a Notre Dame fan, so I haven't had any real rooting interest in the college football season since about mid-September. So I have no real investment in the outcome of any of these games. My primary concern is to be provided with compelling, and entertaining football, and once again, this year has convinced me that the BCS is basically powerless to even provide that on a consistent basis.

Take for instance, the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl was blessed with an automatic hold on USC as the Pac 10 champion. USC is the marquee program in college football right now, and after some midseason struggles was thought by many to be playing the best of football of any team out there by the end of the season. Whether that's true or not is a matter of opinion. Furthermore, since the Rose Bowl lost the Big 10 champion (#1 Ohio State), and thus had the first pick from amongst the remaining teams who were eligible for the BCS. Sitting out there was Georgia, who along with USC was widely regarded to be playing the best football in the country after a couple of early season losses. No brainer, right? Nope. According to BCS rules, since the Sugar Bowl lost the SEC champion to the national title game (LSU), the Rose Bowl was not allowed to pick another SEC team unless the Sugar Bowl consented. And then, rather than grab another compelling team like a West Virigina, the Rose Bowl decided to preserve the traditional Pac 10/Big 10 matchup by picking Illinois, a 3 loss team that was at the low end of the BCS eligibility rankings. So, instead of an incredibly compelling matchup between USC and Georgia, we were all blessed with two absolute yawners, as USC blew apart Illinois and Georgia routed Hawaii, who, perfect record aside, had no business going to a BCS bowl. The wonder that was last year's Boise State/Oklahoma game aside, the rule that forces the BCS to take a team from a non-BCS conference if they finish in the top 12 of the final BCS rankings is going to do more harm than good to the BCS in the long term, in my opinion. Lastly, the Orange Bowl, for reasons I can't begin to comprehend, chose to take a Kansas team that had beat exactly no one all year, over the Missouri team that had given them their only loss at the end of the regular season, giving them a Va Tech v. Kansas matchup that has all the intrigue of watching paint dry. It may end up being a great game, but I guarantee you, no one not associated with either of the schools involved is getting excited by it. So, of the 4 non-title game BCS bowls, exactly one, the Fiesta Bowl between WVU and Oklahoma, featured a truly interesting matchup.

This is the end result of a system where the parties sit down and do their best to provide equal protection to everyone's financial interests, rather than focusing on putting the best overall product on the field and allowing everyone to benefit from that. The rules are setup to make sure each bowl (the bowls being individual players in the system) gets one prime drawing card as often as possible, and to make sure the 6 BCS conferences are treated roughly equally from year to year.

As I said in my previous entry, I'm not really offended by the lack of a playoff, I'm bothered by the hypocrisy I hear coming from those who are BCS proponents. However, if we're going to be given this system, is it really that much to ask that it be designed to provide compelling matchups more often than not?

As an aside, I have gotten a laugh or two at the hypocrisy of some BCS proponents in the media who have been pushing the idea that either USC or Georgia, or both, should have gotten a shot at the title game, since they are playing the best football right now. One of the key arguments that people in favor of the BCS make is that it makes the regular season the playoffs, and makes every game important. Suggesting that team A should go over team B simply because team A is playing better at the end of the season completely invalidates that argument, because it makes the games at the end of the season more important. USC had a terrible loss to Stanford, and lacked any real signature wins. Georgia lost two games early, and didn't even play in the title game of their own conference. If there was a playoff, they'd probably have gotten a shot, but the simple fact is that they didn't earn their way into the top 2 spots with their entire regular season, and for a BCS proponent to give them bonus points for the way they finished is laughable at best.