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.

What Winless and Undefeated Starts Mean

Most baseball observers fit into one of two categories regarding the commencement of play -- their attention remains fixed on the NBA and NHL playoffs or they obsess about every defeat and victory.

April's games hold relatively little weight in a 162-game season, but they're not irrelevant. While it hardly matters that a team with low expectations leaves the gate 7-5 while a division favorite falls eight out of 13 times, early wins and losses do matter.

Take the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins.

The Orioles burst from the starter's line with seven consecutive wins. Because it began the campaign, we tend to add significance to the accomplishment, but suppose the O's had instead won seven in a row at some point in July, would anyone be anointing them kings? Even bad teams occasionally go on a run.

And yet, the history of teams that break off seven straight to start a season is encouraging. While hot starts are no guarantees of making the playoffs, they almost universally presage a contender. A first unblemished week suggests the Orioles are to be reckoned with, especially in the AL East, where it doesn't appear that there is a roster that can separate itself from the pack. That's true even as they gave back three of the next four.

How about the reverse? The Braves and Twins are unburdened this year by expectations, except to anchor the standings in their respective divisions. Each team won three straight following an 0-9 start. Are they doomed or did they merely stumble?

In short: the news is worse. It takes a bad team to lose nine straight in early April. History is littered with 100-loss teams who kicked off 0-9. Indeed, the last such squad was the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who lost another 110 times and won just 43.

And given that the rosters in Minnesota and Atlanta weren't sparking much enthusiasm to begin with, it's probably a sign of things to come. The three straight wins since aren't much salve for that.