A Brief Side Trip to the "College" Gridiron

It's that time of year when the sports talk monkeys begin speculating about which for-profit Minor League Football franchises loosely affiliated with major universities will earn bids to the playoffs, with the promise of extra revenue and alumni support.

The conversation always sounds the same: "If (Team X) wins out, can they make the tournament?"

Let me just save them all a lot of time, trouble and hot air right here. The answer is yes.

Because, if these professional sports observers had actually observed "college" football anytime in the last 30 years, they would have noticed that teams don't win out. Upsets happen. Teams ebb and flow week-by-week.

Cases in point already this year:

• Three touchdown favorite Clemson, the defending national champs, fell to ... Syracuse?!
• Seventeen-point favorite Washington lost at middling Arizona State. 
• Oklahoma minus four touchdowns, at home, after a bye, came up short against Iowa State.
• Undefeated Washington State was a two-touchdown favorite over California when they got shellacked by 34 points. 
• Mediocre South Carolina handled otherwise undefeated NC State in North Carolina. 
• LSU lost to Troy. Troy! Their last big win against Sparta required a trick play. And that was, like 2,500 years ago, so that's a pretty old team. Probably a lot of redshirts and graduate students.
• And so on. And on. And on.

Anyone actually paying attention has noticed that it all shakes out in the end. There are very few big-time undefeated and one-loss teams left in December. 

So if you're alma mater's football franchise has one loss on its record and can survive the remaining gauntlet, yes, they're going to qualify for the playoff. The problem is, they probably won't.

There, that's settled. Now the sports talk monkeys can spend their time learning something about baseball.

You Can't Fool Players or Coaches

What do Gregg Popovich, Leonard Fournette and all of Major League Baseball have in common?

They're not buying the hype.

Popovich is the championship-winning San Antonio Spurs coach who regularly flouts NBA rules by resting his best players for whole games, despite outrage from league brass and ticket-buying fans. Recently, LeBron James absorbed blowback for similarly agreeing not to make a trip to Memphis for the second half of a home-and-home series between the Cavaliers and the Grizzlies.


Fournette is the star running back at LSU who has chosen to skip his team's bowl game -- an advertising platform for Hyundai -- in order to prepare for his Major League career in the NFL, which will actually pay him a salary. The sporting public lit up Twitter and the radio and TV commentary universe with brick-a-brats for Fournette, Christian McCaffrey and others making the same decision.

All of Major League Baseball regularly sits its star players from time to time in order to rest them for the grueling six-month, 162-game schedule. No one comments.

Their Own Best Interest
The common thread is this: the people involved recognize, even if their hypocritical overseers don't want to acknowledge it, that their best interests don't dovetail with those of the money counters in their sport. Contrary to the Association's best efforts to bamboozle fans about the abject irrelevance of its interminable regular season, Popovich understands that his team will cruise into the over-stuffed playoff field regardless of its lineup in any given game. He knows that seeding is, as Harry Truman famously quipped about the vice presidency, as relevant as the fifth teat on a cow. And he knows that championships are won on fresh legs, not on victories in Game 26 of an 82-game season against an out-of-conference opponent. And finally, he is well aware that he answers to the owner of the San Antonio Spurs, not the commissioner of the NBA.

Fournette, McCaffrey, et. al. are unmoved by the NCAA's best efforts to befuddle them about their "amateur" status. They are professional revenue generators for their schools, no more so than during bowl season, when a single game kicks back a multi-million dollar payout, even if it is the desultory Buffalo Wild Wings Sun Bowl to which McCaffrey's Stanford squad has been relegated. Each of them is acting in his own best interest. The swami of the NCAA, whatever irrelevant personage that is today, won't reimburse these NFL prospects if they get injured or fall in the draft because they offered their talents for free to the university's capital engine for one more game.

Some of the derision aimed at Fournette, McCaffrey and their ilk has centered around their "abandonment" of teammates. This is hysterical. Both are leaving school after their junior year, a well-worn tradition against which no one has ever railed for "abandoning" teammates. Coaches regularly "abandon" recruits for better-paying jobs at bigger football programs. That die was cast long ago.

A Base Hit for Baseball
Once again, baseball gets it right like no other sport. It's commonly understood that in a long season players need occasional rest in order to perform at their best for the most games. Fans purchase tickets aware that their favorite player might play spectator that day. Ironically, unlike the NBA, MLB's regular season actually does matter. One game can and often does cost teams an opportunity to earn a playoff spot that can lead to a championship. Yet everyone involved readily accepts the notion that resting players is a long-term investment.

What really separates baseball from college football and the NBA is that the latter two sports are built on foundations of hypocrisy, inevitably propping up a precarious structure prone to a collapse of logic. For all its warts, Major League Baseball at least is what it says it is, which is why no one complains when its athletes skip a meaningless game.

Sports Predictions Are Like Confedrate Money: Worthless

This is the time of year that pundits make their predictions for the college and professional football season. It's a fascinating study in recurrent, global amnesia. And its lessons apply to punditry in all sports.

Take the college prognosticators who are busy predicting who will compete in this season's four-team championship tournament. Let's examine their myths and the truths:

Myth:  Determine the four best teams and you have your playoff.
Truth: Have you never witnessed a college football season? One or two plays can transform a team's season and launch them into or out of a championship. Consider the bizarre occurrences that put Auburn in the title game two years ago.

Myth: The team with the most talent going into the season is the best team.
Truth: Have you already forgotten Cam Newton? Honey Badger? Robert Griffin? Maurice Clarett? Jameis Winston? Johnny Manziel?  These relatively unheralded freshmen catapulted their teams to greater heights than anyone thought possible at season's start.

Myth: If you can name all the biggest stars and quote their gaudy statistics you have insight about which team will sweep through its schedule.
Truth: Even the "analysts" spewing this nonsense know it's not true. They know that an offensive or defensive line, whose accomplishments are hard to measure, can have an immense impact.

Myth: To determine the playoff teams, first determine which of the five BCS leagues will fail to earn a bid.
Truth: Were you not alive during the two-team playoff era? Because way back then (20 months ago), two teams from the same league played for the title several times. In addition, even last year the weak ACC produced an undefeated team, which made the playoffs. So two or even three leagues could fail to produce a single title contender if a team from a smaller league routs its opponents and garners a bid.

Myth: Determine a team's record by examining its schedule and figuring how many times they will be the underdog.
Truth: Sure, that's how it works. There are never any upsets in college football. Boise State never beat Oklahoma in the '05 Fiesta Bowl. Oregon State didn't take down undefeated USC in 2008. Navy didn't best Notre Dame in '07. App State never defeated Michigan. Jacksonville State's win against Ole Miss five years ago never happened. Neither did Utah over Alabama in the '08 Sugar Bowl. Or Division 1-AA  James Madison over Virginia Tech that same year.  Ohio State didn't take the championship from Miami in '03. Need I go on?

Myth: A team will win its league because it plays its tough opponents at home.
Truth: Which means it plays its weak opponents on the road. So a crippling loss to an inspired squad exhorted by a gleeful crowd is far more possible.

Myth: The experts know anything.
Truth: Thank goodness they don't or the season would be predictable. Did you know that Ohio State has earned the top pre-season perch seven times in the past and won the NCCA championship exactly none of them?

The best prediction you're going to read about the college football season:
Some unexpected things are going to happen. Yay.

Nevermind On the Whole R-E-L-A-X Thing

Okay, so maybe relaxing wasn't the right strategy. 

It didn't all work out in the end. 

It turned out there were six teams for four spots and they all had compelling cases. The music stopped without chairs for two teams of prodigious accomplishments.

So college football is still subject to the whims and vagaries of opinion. So sue me.

Even if last year's formula were in play, we'd have the same brouhaha. Undefeated Florida State, irrespective of their in-game woes against tepid competition, would have claimed one spot. Oregon would have had a strong case against Alabama for the other. Someone would have been screaming bloody murder, football-wise.

This year it's TCU and Baylor. But here's the lesson they have, painfully, learned: If you want to compete for a championship, don't schedule out-of-conference games again Northwestern State, SMU and Buffalo. These teams aren't just marshmallows, they're marshmallows that play below Baylor's level.

TCU at least played and defeated a Big "Ten" team (I almost wrote "school," tee-hee), Minnesota. But TCU fell to Baylor, which dropped them behind the Bears.

And who can blame the committee for choosing Ohio State, whose lone loss, early in the season, reflected the team's transition from Heisman candidate quarterback to second stringer, ugly though the defeat was. A shellacking of Wisconsin in the title game, with the third stringer no less, sealed their fate.

So you've got your playoff. And your endless debate. It's the best of both worlds.

What Happened To Baseball This Year?

As the first strains of Commissioner Bud's swan song begin to play, ESPN, FOX and other media outlets have been wondering aloud what happened to baseball. Why, they've asked, has the game receded from our consciousness this year?

There's some truth to the question. The pennant races are heating up and all the chatter is about NFL exhibition games, NFL fantasy leagues, the upcoming NFL season, colege football, the college football playoffs, football, football and football. LeBron and the World Cup dominated the middle part of the baseball season and the NBA playoffs and NFL draft stole the early season's thunder.

So what happened to baseball?

What's happened to baseball is ESPN, Fox and other media outlets. Four networks broadcast every NFL game played. But baseball games are broadcast almost exclusively by local networks. ESPN, the 800-pound gorilla of sports, has a big stake in the NFL and nearly none in baseball. Consequently, they spend more time talking NFL exhibition games than they spend talking baseball. 

They've probably mentioned the name of a quarterback who has yet to play a minute of professional football more times than they've mentioned all baseball players combined.

And when it's not the NFL it's college football. ESPN carries hundreds of college football games. Because, as Marshall McLuhan observed 50 years ago, baseball is best enjoyed at the park; football on the tube.

Well, ESPN doesn't care about the park. They're on the tube. They make their money from TV ratings, not from full ballparks. And they set the sports agenda, along with Fox, CBS Sports and their ilk, so the agenda is all football all the time.

Meantime, baseball fans have enjoyed an overflow of drama. Clayton Kershaw is making his Hall of Fame case while Derek Jeter tops off his. Yasiel Puig and Mike Trout have continued their antics while rookies Jose Abreu and Billy Hamilton are banging them out and tearing them up, respectively. Kansas City has ambushed Detroit while Seattle and Baltimore are elbowing the Yankees out of the playoffs. Milwaukee and Pittsburgh -- two of the smallest markets in baseball -- are challenging St. Louis for Central supremacy. And much of it is coming down to the wire.

And the national sports media are all missing it.

So nothing's happened to baseball. Something's happened to your television.

So T. Boone Pickens Walks Into A Bar...

Did you hear the one about the Oklahoma State Cowboys football team? They couldn't win consistently in the Big 12, so they spent more money and bought better players.

Ha! Ha! That's so funny! Everyone knows that college football is played by amateur student athletes who compete for school spirit and the love of the game, and are duly compensated with free college educations.

Everyone knows that you can't bribe students with money and sexy coeds and no-show jobs and in-kind gifts. That's illegal. The way you bribe them is with the best stadiums and biggest crowds and most luxurious facilities and sweetest TV packages and strongest pipeline to the NFL.

Even if you did try to bribe student-athletes the illegal way, the omniscient and omnipotent NCAA will conduct an investigation and, three years later, severely penalize the next generation of students and coaches who arrived at the school after the cheaters moved on to more lucrative bribery.

The new arrivals will earn their way into your fine institution of higher learning by scoring high enough on the SAT or ACT to demonstrate that they're above the level of functionally illiterate. Even if it's barely.

With billions of dollars on the line for players, coaches, TV networks, bookies, gamblers, agents and universities, what could possibly go wrong with this formula?

That's why we know that the Sports Illustrated story about scandal at OK St. is just yellow journalists twisting the facts to sensationalize a non-story. Just because T. Boone Pickens poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the university for the sole purpose of improving the football team doesn't mean anything untoward is going on in Stillwater. After all, scholarship, character, critical thinking, practical experience and a BCS Bowl Game are the hallmarks of a great university.

Fortunately, other BCS coaches are coming to Oklahoma State's defense, particularly in the Southeast Conference. They know that no matter how much of Pickens' money gets spread around, there's no way the Cowboys can compete with the big boys in the SEC. They also know that when fans watch games on national TV they want the best football on the field, not the best students in the classroom. So the hell with your stupid SI scandal-mongering. What's the spread on their next game?

Playoffs! Playoffs?

Finally, Still, college football is going to have a playoff starting in 2014. 

The braying of the uninformed aside, college football has had a playoff for a decade. It's a one-game playoff between the top two teams, as determined by the worst method in the world except for all the other methods.

(The method most people want used is the one in which they personally get to choose the two teams.)
 
The discussion now on the table involves four teams rather than two, which maintains the sanctity of the championship series while preserving the urgency of the season. It may, however, sap yet more relevance from the bowl games, particularly those that don't get to host a championship series game. Imagine the spectacular pyre of apathy facing, say, the Sugar Bowl, as it hosts two teams not involved in the playoffs.

Another seductive element under consideration is the removal of automatic qualifiers to the BCS bowls, particularly inasmuch as the conferences have all the coherence and permanence of Dennis Rodman's hairdo. Consider:

• The Big East includes teams in Houston and Dallas. 
• The Big Ten has 12 teams, but can't become the Big 12, because that's the name of another conference, which has 10 teams. 
• The Atlantic Coast includes Pittsburgh, 366 miles from the coast. 
• The Atlantic 10 includes a team from St. Louis, 950 miles from the Atlantic.
• Conference USA stretches from the NC coast to the Arizona border. 
• New Jersey Tech plays in the Great West conference. 
• The Southeast Conference will next year play in Columbia, Missouri, which is neither south nor east.

No wonder college athletes don't know anything: even the presidents of their schools are confused. Despite that, it appears we'll soon have an improved (and more lucrative, imagine that!) champion determinant in college football that won't undermine the weekly excitement of the regular season.
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Running of the Sports Media Bulls

On Sunday, Bill Belichick eschewed a punt on fourth and two from his 29 yard line with 2:03 on the clock and a six point lead. The tactic failed and the Colts scored the winning touchdown with 13 seconds left. On Monday, not to mention Tuesday through Friday, the recriminations flew.

This is a baseball post: I promise.

You can imagine the blowback from a coaching decision that defies conventional wisdom and then backfires. What particularly bemuses me is how the sports media has infused this decision with a moral characteristic. Repeatedly the decision is being called "arrogant."

This is a baseball post: I promise.

The advanced analysis of sabermetrics have been around for 30 years. But in the football universe, this kind of research is new. It'll be 20 years, at least, before the sports media figures it out. But here's what is already known about situations like this: If his goal was to win the game, Belichick's decision was easily defensible.

I won't crunch all the numbers for you, but on average, teams make fourth and two about 60% of the time. They prevent teams from entering the end zone from 30 yards out about 30% of the time. From 70 yards out, that number increases to about 70%. So on average, going for it could be expected to yield success 72% of the time (60% + [30%x40%]), about the same as punting.

It's important here to note that these are facts, not matters of opinion. People will argue against the above with "logic," but they are dueling with spirits. Conventional wisdom has been proven wrong by the experience of thousands of NFL games.

Of course, these are not "average"teams. The Boy Horses had scored touchdowns on their last two possessions and have this special Peyton tool they use to carve up defenses in the final minutes. The Patriots spin fourth and two into gold like Rumpelstiltskin. There was more reward and less risk than usual to going for it. It was a much better decision than "on average."

Aside: In fact, teams punt way too much in general. There should be virtually no punting at all between the 40s, because the real estate gain does little to decrease the odds of the opponent scoring. But giving up the ball reduces the chances of your team scoring nearly to zero. New research has found this to be fact. It's not debatable.

This is a baseball post: I promise.

Not content to be ignorant about football, the sports media feels the need to demonstrate ignorance about psychology. They've decided that because Bill Belichick appears arrogant, his decision must have been borne of arrogance. How else could he knuckle up his head so badly? I don't know how a decision designed to advance your team's interests can be "arrogant" or "humble." I don't know how it could be "generous" or "miserly." Or "weak" or "strong" or "tall" or "short" or "happy" or "sad." Calculations like his are either made with good information or not, either well-considered or not, and turn out either well or poorly. It's just another effort of the sports media to explain away what it doesn't understand by applying tags that are impossible to disprove.

So how is this a baseball post? The running of the football bull is perfectly analogous to the baseball kingdom, where most of the sports media still, 30 years after the proofs were written, doesn't understand that some conventional wisdom is wrong. Bunting is often a bad strategy. RBI are a team event. Pitcher wins are so close to meaningless that no one believes they're just friends. Great players go through cold streaks and hangers-on can get hot.

Adding character overtones doesn't shed any light on the subject. If, for example, Barry Bonds hits under .200 in a couple of playoff series, concluding that he "chokes" or "isn't a big game guy" or "hasn't stepped up" doesn't make you an analyst, it makes you a phony. Barry Bonds hit under .200 over a dozen games hundreds of times in his career, but no one noticed because they hadn't viewed those dozen games distinctly from others. (It's worth noting that Bonds hit like Manny Pacquiao in the Giants' 2005 World Series run.)

So the reaction to Belichick was a microcosm of how sports media covers baseball and explains it to fans. It is, in short, a fraud, a daily series of malpractice cases for which no one has ever been held accountable, and people who commit this malpractice are lauded for their perspicacity and insight regularly. But as maybe the greatest coach in NFL history can tell you, they don't know what they're talking about.

A Brief Digression

When I was in college, there was no Division 1A college football league (or FCS, god helps us). The Ivy League was a Division 1 football league just like the Big 12. (Except that there was no Big 12 then; there was a Big Eight featuring Oklahoma and Nebraska and a Southwest Conference featuring Arkansas and Texas and the two merged, spilling non-complaint programs into other conferences like the Southeast and yet-to-be-formed Mountain West and Conference USA. But I digress from my digression.)

One year, one or another collection of student-athletes representing an Ivy League school got off to a 4-0 start and was ranked in the Top 25, or at least that's how I vaguely remember it. For certain, they got a significant number of votes (not amount of votes, for you sports reporters who don't know grammar from your Gramma) for defeating the likes of Brown, Army and Lafayette.

Today, of course, the division distinction makes it obvious to us that even an undefeated Ivy League team probably couldn't beat the worst Big Ten team on its worst day, and certainly couldn't compete with a middle-of-the-pack BCS program, much less merit a Top 25 ranking. It's absurd. But absent any guides, some voters saw the record and put Yale or Penn or whoever it was on their big board.

All of which I've been reminded of lately as the radio and TV sports talkers bandy about hypothetical runs of the table for some teams -- notably Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State -- and, in many cases, bemoan the injustice of keeping them out of a championship game despite their unblemished won-loss record. The argument that an undefeated team should get some automatic bonus reward is just as absurd as voting an Ivy League team into the Top 25.

The truth is that as long as we don't have a playoff system or an objective way of comparing teams in far-flung conferences, we have to rely on subjective measures, like watching them play. If all we're examining is a team's record, we can have monkeys vote for the national champion, which is what we did in 1984, when a BYU squad that wasn't one of the 10 best teams in America was awarded the championship based on a zero in the loss column in a third-rate league and a signature win in the last quarter against a 6-6 Michigan contingent that finished sixth in the Big Ten.

Another truth is that your schedule matters. Playing as a championship contender in the SEC means that you're going to play four teams that can beat you even if you play well, and four more that can beat you if you don't. Going 10-1 in that crucible is mighty impressive. Playing as a national championship contender in the Big East this year means that there are only one or two games that you could lose without falling on your face.

It's not just that Florida or Alabama or Texas has more tough games than Cincinnati, it's the compounding effects those battles have. Cincinnati can rest a star player during the Syracuse game so he's at full speed against [insert whoever might be any good besides them in the Big East this year] the following week. (Try this argument on Boise State: they can rest regulars against Nevada, Louisiana Tech, Idaho, New Mexico State, Hawaii...indeed their entire league schedule in order to be fresh for the one game that will make or break their season. Plus, they can save their trick plays and surprise strategies for that one game.) Alabama can't rest anyone against Georgia and Tennessee in order to prepare for LSU. Boise State can hope for the breaks to go their way in their one tossup game against Oregon, but Texas can't expect to have luck on their side against Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Missouri and Kansas. They have to outplay most of those teams to go undefeated.

All that said, there's something to be learned by just watching teams play and observing that Cincinnati lacks Florida's team speed or size or tackling ability or whatever (probably all of these.) The reason you and I don't vote in the AP poll is that we're not experts; the voters are supposed to be. (Whether they are or not is another argument; I lack the expertise even to determine that.)

Besides, it's not as if Cincinnati slinks off back to chemistry class after earning the Big East crown. They would win a lovely BCS trip to Dallas or Tempe or Miami on New Year's week and an opportunity to show that, for one game at least, they belong.

As non-BCS schools, Boise State and TCU are different cases. Their first argument is for an invitation to a New Year's bowl game -- maybe against Cincinnati -- and that seems like a much more reasonable demand. We've seen repeatedly how an undermanned non-BCS team can turn a Bowl upside-down thrillingly and spill an elite 0pponent all over the grass.

Despite their impressive win over Oregon, Boise State has no case for the Championship Game this year even if they slay vaunted Idaho. Let's face it, if poll participants ranked teams based solely on how good they think the teams are, the Broncos wouldn't be in the Top 10, and maybe not in the Top 20. They would be a significant underdog on a neutral field against three-loss Oklahoma or two-loss Virginia Tech.

Now TCU, they're another story. First, the Mountain West is superior to the Big East this year, and the argument could be made versus the ACC as well. Certainly the Horned Frogs have significant challenges at BYU and at home against Utah, in addition to their modest win over Clemson. Should everyone else lose, they will get significant support for the title clash, and I'd be rooting for them. But I'd have a hard time justifying how 12-0 in the Mountain West is a greater accomplishment, or requires a better team, than 12-1 in the SEC or PAC 10. Slaying two dragons, two alligators and seven puppies is hardly the equal -- in my eyes -- of fighting off the Visigoths and sustaining one stab wound.

The bottom line is that if you want to play with the big boys, you're going to have to play the big boys as often as possible and be really impressive against the little ones. And I haven't seen too much of that.
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