Circle Change

The BCS

2011-12-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

The debates have already started all across America and in fact, they happened from the moment Iowa State finished off their improbable comeback against undefeated and highly ranked Oklahoma State to win 37-31 in double overtime. Up until that point, it appeared that Oklahoma State and LSU would meet in the BCS National Championship game and if you had to put money on which might have a loss in that game, the smart money would have been on LSU.

However, LSU negotiated their ridiculously brutal schedule without a hiccup and has put themselves in a position to add their name to the list of best college football teams ever. They have defeated 8 ranked teams this year, 3 of which were ranked either #2 (Alabama) or #3 (Oregon and Arkansas) at the time.

There is no question that LSU is the best team in the country is and they will be favored in the national championship game next month no matter what. The only question on the mind of pretty much everyone is who deserves the chance to knock the Tigers off of their pedestal.

Oklahoma State has a more impressive body of work. They beat five teams that are currently in the BCS top 25; Alabama has only defeated two. Unfortunately for the Cowboys, there’s really only one other thing that they have going for them; they haven’t played LSU yet.

Alabama ranks 16th in scoring offense (behind Oklahoma State’s 2nd ranked juggernaut) but they lead the nation in scoring defense at just 8.8 points per game (while the Cowboys are 61st allowing 25.8 points per game). Alabama’s sole loss was at home… to the team mentioned above that is thrusting itself into the conversation for best team ever… by 3… in overtime. Oklahoma State’s only loss was on the road to an unranked team that barely made it to bowl eligibility… and they were 27 point favorites. Alabama’s best win was a 38-14 demolition of Arkansas who was ranked 6th in the final BCS standings and has been shut out of a BCS bowl. Oklahoma State’s best win was their 44-10 destruction of then #10 Oklahoma who dropped to 14th in the final edition of the BCS.

Despite the fact that Alabama has already played LSU, they are widely considered the second best team in the country and there is no logical reason that, if they are the second best team in the nation, they should not play LSU again for the national championship.

THE SEC

Many people around the country are getting tired of hearing about the dominance of the SEC and for much of last year, I was among those people. Now, however, I am changing my tune. Yes, the SEC is dominant and yes, I was born and raised in Pac-10 country (way back when it was the Pac-10). Yes, I miss the glory days of USC’s incredible run through all comers (before we found out that none of that counts anymore).

The fact of the matter is this is a historic run that the SEC is on and if you can’t appreciate that, you can’t appreciate college football through the blinders of your home colors. When USC was dominant in that several year stretch, nobody else in the Pac-10 was making much noise. Cal had a good year and that was more or less it. Starting with 2003 and running through 2008, the Trojans won all 6 Pac-10 championships and no other Pac-10 team made it to a BCS bowl. What is truly remarkable is in the last five years, four different teams have won the national title from the SEC.

For a conference to produce one program that is that dominant is very unusual but not half as unusual as producing five national champions that hail from four different campuses in consecutive years. It is a feat that might never be duplicated. All of this has led to an aura about any team that comes from the SEC. If you finished 7-5, 5-3 in the SEC, there are ego building whispers that you would have finished 12-0 in the Big East and maybe 11-1 in the ACC. If you finish 12-0 in the SEC you’ll be playing for the national title and if you finish 11-1, you’re better by default than any champion from outside the BCS conferences and it’s a toss-up between your team and an undefeated team from the Big East or the ACC.

The major question that needs to be asked is whether or not that is the way it should be and the logical answer is that you shouldn’t make assumptions like that when you are trying to figure out who the best team in the country is. The problem is that, as far as the BCS bowls have been concerned, those assumptions have been put to the test and have been shown to have some validity to them.

In both 2006 and 2007 there was a consensus number one team in the country, the Buckeyes of Ohio State. I watched several games from that team and followed the rest of the country and I was in agreement; they were the best team on paper and they passed the “eye” test. Both times they went to the BCS National Championship Game and both times they were blown out by SEC teams. Florida beat them 41-14 and then LSU beat them the next year 38-24 in a game that wasn’t nearly that close. Clearly the Big Ten was overrated and Ohio State wasn’t as good as their record indicated.

What about the Big XII? In 2008 Oklahoma was the number one team in the final BCS standings (wiith ridiculous amounts of controversy because when people start clamoring that Texas beat them head-to-head, they always seem to forget that Texas was beaten by Texas Tech and they finished 7th in the BCS). The Sooners had an offense for the ages with the future number one overall pick at quarterback in Sam Bradford. Everyone knew that you could put that offense up against any defense and they would just pick it apart. So what happened? A team that scored 702 points (54.0 per game) and had scored 35 points in their only loss was held to 14.

The next year they had another shot with Texas trying to dethrone Alabama. The Longhorns actually had a good defense that year, allowing just 15.2 points per game while they scored 40.7 per game. Just as before, an SEC team held them to far fewer points and scored far more than the Longhorns had averaged in the regular season; Alabama 37, Texas 21.

In 2010, the Pac-10 had its first crack at the SEC in the title game with the blur offense of Oregon. I will never really understand why the Ducks abandoned (largely) their frenetically paced offense. While watching their first few drives in the first half, there was a definite methodical nature to their offensive cadence. When I watched them get behind big to Stanford and then blow the doors off of the stadium, they were at their breakneck pace for the entire game when they had the ball, not just one or two plays per drive. Anyways, I digress. The result was again the same when an SEC defense held a very powerful offense (49.3 points per game) to a fraction of their previous potency in a 22-19 win.

For those of you who hate the SEC so much, the past five SEC champions have taken on teams from the Big Ten (Ohio State twice), the Big XII (Oklahoma and Texas) and the Pac-10 (Oregon) who had a combined 60-2 record and were averaging 42.6 points per game and allowing 16.0 points per game and have defeated them all by an average score of 32.4-18.4.

Give me one good reason why the SEC is NOT the best conference and they shouldn’t have two teams in the title game this year and I might listen. The fact of the matter is, there isn’t one.

WHAT’S IN A CHAMPIONSHIP?

What is a champion? Is it a team that has had the best season or the best postseason?

For the rest of you clamoring about the injustice that the teams ranked numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 are not going to be playing in a BCS bowl we must remember that the BCS has just two purposes and the first and more important one is to rake in a boatload of money. The second is to provide a match-up between the teams most widely regarded as the #1 and #2 teams in the nation.

The job of the BCS is not to ensure that the Fiesta Bowl has a good match-up; that’s the job of the Fiesta Bowl. If the Sugar Bowl thinks that Virginia Tech and Michigan will sell more tickets and entice more advertising dollars than Boise State and Kansas State, that is their prerogative and it is not at all the fault of the BCS. All the BCS does for the other bowls is they determine the schools that are eligible. After that, the bowls themselves pick the match-ups. It should also be noted that two of the four teams mentioned that are in the top ten but didn’t make it to a BCS bowl were also from the SEC (#6 Arkansas and #9 South Carolina) so consider that before you say the BCS was overrated.

Let’s get back to the question posed at the beginning of this section; what is a champion? Ideally, it is a team that satisfies both of the requirements I set forth; they were the best team in the regular season and they were the best team in the postseason. The problem is that very few teams have ever satisfied both of those requirements.

The 1998 Yankees went 114-48 and then ripped through the postseason to win the World Series easily.

The 1985 Bears were 15-1 before destroying their three playoff opponents to win the Super Bowl.

The 1996-97 Bulls were 72-10 and easily won the NBA title that year.

Those are off the top of my head and with time, I could come up with several more examples but I can think of several that don’t fit that mold and are in fact the opposite.

The 2006 St Louis Cardinals were 83-78 before they won the World Series.

The 2009 Arizona Cardinals were 9-7 before they very nearly won the Super Bowl.

In the last four years, two teams have won the Super Bowl from the #5 seed (2007 New York Giants) and the #6 seed (2010 Green Bay Packers).

Last year, Connecticut’s Men’s Basketball team was 21-9 and ranked 21st in the country. They then won 11 games in a row to claim the national championship.

What do all eight of the previous examples have in common? They were all very exciting and they were all crowned champions by a playoff. We can very easily see (and possibly remember) that the 96-97 Bulls, the 85 Bears, and the 98 Yankees were the best teams in their respective sports that year but what about the other five I mentioned? They were far from the best teams that year and were some of the worst teams ever to compete for a championship (in the case of the Arizona Cardinals) or win one.

This is something that never happens in the BCS and we have to give them credit for that. This year, you don’t have to worry about #21 Southern Miss getting hot and knocking off #1 LSU. The regular season matters and if you don’t take care of business (like against a 27 point underdog who finished 6-6) you don’t play for the national title.

The top two teams rarely play in the Super Bowl or in the World Series or the NBA Finals or the Final Four but for each and every one of the last thirteen years, the top two teams in the country (by at least one definition) have met on the field to determine the national champion. If you can’t at very least stipulate that then you have an illogical dislike (or hatred) of the BCS.

NATURE OF THE BEAST

What is the best way to determine a champion? A playoff or a ratings system that boils down every play to a series of 1’s and 0’s and spits out two team names? This is where I have to take myself out of the dream world and come back to reality. The best way to determine a champion is through a playoff bracket but not with individual winner-take-all games but with series.

In February of 2008, the New York Giants entered the Super Bowl with a record of 13-6 while the New England Patriots entered the contest with a record of 18-0. They had played just a few weeks before with the Patriots winning 38-35 to finish off their 16-0 regular season. If they had played 100 times, who would have won more? In my opinion, the answer is the Patriots because they were the better team. On that Sunday evening in February, the Giants were better but overall they were the inferior team.

This is the beauty of series in playoff brackets. Any team in any league can beat any other team. Under normal circumstances, the 0-13 Colts could potentially beat the 13-0 Packers (although this might be the exception to the rule) but could they do it more than once when they had to? Could they win 2 of 3, 3 of 5, or 4 of 7? The answer for the most part is no. When two teams line up against each other 7 times, it is rare that the truly inferior team wins. If the teams are evenly matched, of course, all bets are off but the cases are rare where there has been a disparity of talent and performance and the lesser team wins.

That is a fair way to determine a champion. You have to achieve success and then maintain it and that idea works for basketball (at least on the professional side), baseball, and hockey. It does not work for football.

Football cannot be played in series unless you want one season to take three years. It is, as the heading suggests, the nature of the beast that is football.

IS IT TIME FOR A PLAYOFF?

What is the answer when it comes to college football? Personally, I like the bowl system (even though it is becoming a reward for mediocrity) and I like the BCS. It needs to be tweaked and it needs to be revamped but its essence is still pure. Every week matters and if you lose, you have to hope that everyone else does as well. Alabama is not getting a mulligan this year; they negotiated a difficult schedule with one small blemish against one of the best teams of the BCS era. They were better than every other team with one loss according to the combination of computer and human polls.

The formula for playing for a national title has always been simple; win. In the fourteen years of the BCS system, 30 teams have gone undefeated prior to the bowls and more than half (17) have played in the national championship game. While many people would say that it’s unfair that thirteen teams went undefeated and didn’t play for the national title, I disagree. I believe that the number of undefeated teams that had a legitimate claim to the national title are very few (Auburn in 2004 and then Cincinnati and TCU in 2009 and TCU in 2010).

The truth of the matter is that there will always be controversy until the NCAA does away with half of the regular season games and institutes a 128 team playoff bracket. I know that it sounds ridiculous but how else can you appease all of the people complaining about how unfair the BCS is? That way, every team has a chance to win it all. While we’re at it, maybe March Madness should expand to include all 300 Division 1 teams.

If you want to do away with the Coach’s Poll, fine. If you want to revamp the computer formulae to include every possible statistic and measure of a football team, fine. If you want to eliminate the automatic qualifying spots for conference champions, fine. However, the essence of the BCS is pure:

#1 vs. #2… just the way it should be.

The Super Committee and an American Aristocracy

2011-11-26T16:07:00.001-08:00

The Super Committee has failed. Given several months and the task of eliminating $1.2 trillion of the federal budget deficit over the next decade (when we are projected to spend over $44 trillion), they failed. So the question on the mind of many people across the country with regards to the deficit and the national debt is; what’s next?

Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball. Perhaps China’s recent meteoric rise will cool off considering that their manufacturing levels just hit a 32 month low. Perhaps Europe will pull itself out of its own debt crisis and will restore a little bit of hope to the economic markets around the world. Perhaps the United States will experience a resurgence or a development of a new market or industry that will propel our economy back to the status that it had ten years ago. Perhaps OPEC will just open the spigots and the price of oil will plummet back to where it was in the 90’s (around $22 a barrel) and the global economy will leap forward on the strength of cheap energy.

Nobody knows what will happen to any of those issues. China is somewhat likely to experience some sort of a slowdown but that is natural given the nature of their rise over the past few years (incredibly fast) and what is going on around the rest of the developed world. It’s possible that Europe can pull itself out of this crisis although with every report that comes out of that continent, the prognosis looks bleaker every single day. There are always new market and new industries to explore but the only question is whether or not they can survive on the open market and whether or not the United States can get their first. Lastly, the chances that OPEC opens the spigot when America has gotten used to oil prices between $75 and $95 per barrel are just on the other side of zero.

So when you throw all that in the hopper, what does that mean for the United States? To be brutally honest and in need of some serious sugarcoating, it means that the US economy is in for some rough times and it’s somewhat likely that it will be a period of years until we’re well and truly out of it.

How did we get here? Well, it’s a combination of factors (as it always is). In 2001, the federal government had a surplus of $128.2 billion and the national debt was $5.8 trillion. Inevitably, after the boom of the 90’s, the early part of the 00’s was significantly slower. After posting growth rates (in real GDP) of better than 4% each year from 1997 to 2000, the growth in real GDP fell to 1.08% in 2001 and then 1.81% in 2002. While real GDP grew 26.6% from 1994 to 2000, from 2001 to 2010, it grew by just 16.8%. I know that I’m throwing a lot of numbers at you but to give you a frame of reference, most economists consider 3% growth in real GDP to be a healthy economy. While 1% growth may not be “unhealthy”, it is considered poor and usually does not coincide with job creation.

Even worse than the actual downturn has been the wild swings our economy has undergone. In the period of time from 1994 to 2000, the average increase in real GDP was 3.92% per year with the lower and upper limits being 2.51% and 4.83%, respectively. From 2000 to 2010, the average was 1.66% but that set swung wildly between gaining 3.57% (in 2004) and losing 2.63% (in 2009). If you have the option of growing your economy 20% in the next decade by either growing 1.8% each year or gaining 10% one year and losing 8% the next, you should always take the slow and steady approach.

So now we know that the economy has been a bit of a roller coaster in the past ten years. This isn’t exactly news. What is news is that despite the unstable economy, the government has very infamously increased our national debt from roughly $5.8 trillion ten years ago to $14.5 trillion today. Can we continue to rack up a larger and larger debt and pass it on to future generations without taking any steps to actually pay if off? That question strikes at the heart of what I’d like to address in this post; a sense of complacency and affinity for the status quo amongst American citizens and the formation of an aristocratic class in modern America.

COMPLACENCY

The recession that hit our economy in 2008 and 2009 was arguably the worst economic climate since the Great Depression and we are still recovering from it. While the majority of the wrong-doing was simply the result of a skewed moral compass, there are rumors everywhere that some of the wrong-doing was actually illegal as well. This, among other things, helped to shape my opinion of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Why would the banking industry change any of the things they do because there are a few hundred people camped (oops, not anymore) outside their offices? The answer is they wouldn’t. The only reason they would change the way they do business is if Congress enacted more laws to govern they way they lend money or if the US Attorney started an investigation into their lending practices over the past several years.

This led me to say that if the Occupy Wall Street movement ever gets serious about getting things done and not just making a lot of noise, they need to be protesting in Washington, D.C., at the Capitol building. Why haven’t they? Why isn’t the country in an absolute uproar over the banking industry, Congress’ near inability to avoid a debt crisis, and Congress’ inability to reach a deal that would involve modifications that amount to somewhere between 2% and 3% over the next ten years? The short answer is we’re complacent but there’s more to it than that.

The other part of the reason is for as bad as things are, they really aren’t that bad. It is true that in 2009, our inflation adjusted GDP actually decreased for the first time since 1991 but it dropped by only 2.63%. Since then, our economy has posted economic growth in nine consecutive quarters. Between 1929 and 1933, the United States lost 46.2% of its wealth or 26.7% when it is adjusted for inflation. We currently sit at 9% unemployment but that is nothing when you think about one in four Americans being out of work at the height of the Great Depression.

The reason that there aren’t more Americans in the streets calling for drastic reforms is simply because it isn’t that bad right now. The vast majority of Americans are still working, they are still getting paid, and they are still paying their bills. For the citizenry to mobilize and march on our government and demand changes, it will have to get a whole lot worse than it is now.

AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

A simple internet search on the definition of aristocracy reveals five primary results (at least that’s what you get on dictionary.com). The definition that I think is most appropriate in the case I’m going to present is the second one; a government or state ruled by an aristocracy, elite, or privileged upper class. Historically, when the term aristocracy is thrown around, the line between the aristocracy and everyone else is drawn along monetary lines. Also, historically speaking, the wealthy were also the ones who governed the country or had the most influence over those who did.

The United States Congress is a different sort of aristocracy. They are not among the highest paid people in the country and if you compared their salaries to even professional athletes, the difference is staggering. A salary of $400,000 as a government employee means that you are more than likely calling the White House home these days whereas that same salary in Major League Baseball or in the NFL means you are struggling to hold onto a job. Before you start feeling sorry for our elected officials, many of them do come from family money and at the end of the day, their salary is much higher than most of the rest of us.

If not money, then what is the divide between the aristocracy and the rest of us? Is that even an accurate term to use? I believe it is and the divide is power. Representatives and Senators wield a truly tremendous amount of power and will do many things to hold onto that power. Many of them say that they are acting in the best interests of the country and their constituents but how true is that?

Let’s examine the case of the Super Committee and the entire debate surrounding the deficit and debt situation in this country. Republicans want to cut federal spending to reduce the deficit and Democrats want to increase taxes before any spending cuts take place.

For any concerned citizen, that should be the first red flag. Nobody is talking about eliminating the deficit; they are simply talking about reducing it. They are basically admitting that the national debt will continue to grow regardless of what the long-term effects of that might be.

In a perfect world, the two parties would come to some sort of agreement where they meet in the middle and everyone has to give a little of something. That is compromise and children learn that at a very young age. It is the only way our country can function with such large philosophical divides between the two dominant parties. Federal spending should be less and taxes should be increased to help cover the costs of Congress’ mistakes. In the long run, I can talk for hours and hours about the benefits or detriments of government influence in the economy but this conversation is not occurring in a vacuum. It is happening in a country with a $14 trillion debt, a $1.6 trillion budget deficit, and absolutely no plan to change either problem.

Clearly, we do not live in a perfect world and compromise has not happened and is not likely to happen. Why not? Put yourself in the shoes of a Representative or a Senator. If you are a Democrat, you can point to all the good that is being done by federal programs and you can point to how many people’s lives are better because of aid from everyone’s friendly Uncle Sam. If you are a Republican, you can point to the fact that taxes are quite low right now. You can say that lower taxes lead to a freer marketplace and the market can direct the economy instead of the government. Let us set aside for one moment that that is exactly how we get such a massive budget deficit. If you are that Republican, you won your election by promising to never raise taxes. If you are that Democrat, you won your election by saying that government benefits would never be cut.

What you have is a system in which nobody is willing to budge. Despite what they say, it is not in the best interest of the voters, it’s in their own best interests. A Republican who is willing to raise taxes and a Democrat who is willing to cut benefits are the same thing; unemployed. In the system we currently have, Democrats and Republicans can hold their party line and not move a single inch towards center and two things happen; they keep their jobs and the government spends far more money than they have to spend.

I’m not here to debate the merits of their respective positions. There are many federal programs that Americans would not be able to function well without in the short term. It is entirely possible that lower taxes could potentially spark economic growth and that would in turn create more tax revenue and get our government back on its feet. All of those theories look great on the drawing board but the fact of the matter is that nobody has ever seen an economic climate like we have now. Much like John Maynard Keynes after the Great Depression, economists will be breaking new ground and creating new theories in the wake of this global economic cycle.

Given all of this and given the budgetary process of the United States government, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is one of the most reasonable steps that Congress could take at this point in time. I’ve read the text of the proposed amendment that was put to a vote just over a week ago and the language is not inflammatory at all (you can read the full text at this site http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.J.RES.2:). To paraphrase, it simply says that except for in a time of war, the budget must be balanced. There are other provisions but that’s the guts of it. There were no amendments and nothing that had anything to do with hot button issues such as religion or abortion. The amendment was defeated well short of the required number of votes for passage for two main reasons; Congress likes to spend money and they have no incentive not to and our deficit crisis is much like the common flu – it must get worse before it gets better.

Drastic spending cuts and drastic tax increases, both of which I view as necessary for the long-term viability of our nation’s economy, will hurt in the short run. Reduced spending will cause certain services to be reduced and that will make some people’s quality of life less. Increased taxes will perhaps mean that some small businesses will be irreparably harmed to the point that they have to close their business. This will spiral downward until we reach a bottom of sorts and then, things will start to get better. How long it will last and how bad it will get are questions that nobody can answer but I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. It will last through the next election cycle and that is the single biggest reason why nothing is getting done with regards to these problems. The elections.

It is far easier to go into a conference room and face many of your constituents (some of whom are down on their luck and unemployed) and tell them that the big bad party is responsible for this mess and if people had just listened to you, things would have gotten done.

It is nearly impossible to go into that same conference room and say, yes, I sacrificed some of your livelihood. I’m sorry. At this point in time, Congress has spent us into a corner and if we don’t act now, it will get far worse very quickly. I acted in what I believe are the best interests of the country as a whole. When was the last time you heard an elected official say that? Hmm, interesting, you have heard it before from the White House. So what’s the difference between the White House and Congress?

TERM LIMITS

The President is limited to two terms. The vice-president can spend far longer in the White House but always playing second fiddle. If he ever wants that chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, the clock starts on his two terms.

Congress has no such limits. 7% of currently serving members of Congress (37 out of 534, the 1st Congressional District of Oregon is currently vacant) have been in their seats longer than I have been alive (27 years and change). Roughly 44% of both houses (44 of 100 in the Senate and 192 of 434) have been in their current positions for longer than 10 years.

If you examine the tenure of all of the current members of Congress, a disturbing trend emerges. The overwhelming majority of Congress (64.4%) has either been in place for more than 10 years or has been on the job less than 1 year. To me, this says that the American public is not taking the time to do their duty as voters. When faced with the choice of somebody new or someone who was elected last time and didn’t make things happen immediately, they are choosing someone new. When asked to choose between someone new and someone who has served their district for 20 years, they are going with the one they know. In a foundering economy, it should be the ones who have been there the longest that have the most to fear, not the least. Why are John McCain (25 years in the Senate) or John Kerry (27 years) so much better equipped to handle this problem than a 30 year old Ivy League graduate with a BA, MA, and PhD in economics? When we are examining the credentials of these Representatives and Senators, the fact that they were serving when there was last a budget surplus should not be a point in their favor, it should be a point against them.

You say that you were in the Senate from 1998-2001 when there was a surplus every year and our net budget surplus was $559 billion. That’s great, where were you the last ten years when there was a net budget deficit of $6.48 trillion? Were you just taking those years off?

This strikes at the heart of my underlying opinion. People should not go to Congress thinking that it will be a career. They should be willing to sacrifice their heart, mind, body, and soul for a period of a few years to make the country as good a place as they can and after that, they can go on the lecture circuit. I believe that I can speak for many Americans when I say that I don’t want Representatives and Senators making decisions based upon keeping their jobs. I can’t say they do categorically in their first terms, but in their second terms, presidents have relatively little pressure upon them and they can step back and see the bigger picture. This is what we need desperately out of Congress.

THE ONLY PROBLEM THAT MATTERS

There are many problems with my utopia but as the above heading might indicate, there is only one that matters; the system we live in.

235 years ago, we set out on a grand experiment in republican democracy. We have had our rough moments but overall, the experiment has gone very well. When the framework of our nation was first put down on paper, there was an overwhelming fear of a single monarchy-like figure. Thus, the executive branch was made the weakest, constitutionally speaking, and the legislative branch was made the strongest. Overall, again, I would say this has served us well but in this case, it has helped cause the illness that afflicts our great nation.

A balanced budget amendment would be wonderful. The only problem is that by far the most commonly used method to amend the constitution is for both houses to vote on it. Now we’re asking them to curtail the money that they get to play with on a daily basis… it’s not likely that that will ever happen.

In order to put term limits in place, the Constitution would have to be amended. As unlikely as it might be that Congress would pass a law putting limits on how much money they can spend, it is infinitely more likely than Congress willingly putting in place a law that limits how long they can wield the enormous amount of power they have.

The onus to keep a rein on Congress falls to you and me, citizens of the United States of America. If Congress is to blame for the current economic crisis that we are in, we are responsible because we enabled this activity. At the end of the day, we have the true power in this government. No matter how much money a special interest group gives to a particular candidate, if everyone pulls the lever for the other guy, the other guy wins.

We have a sacred duty. If we don’t like what is happening in Congress, we have to tell them. If they don’t listen, we have to tell them in a language they understand; do this or you’ll lose my vote. Don’t just vote for a candidate or a party because that’s what you’ve always done. Demand answers from the candidates or your Representative or your Senator and when they give you an answer, verify it, don’t just accept it.

Above all else, when you are choosing a Representative, or a Senator, or a President, try to think beyond yourself. The best interests of the country are not always in line with your own best interests. Put your ego aside and I beg you “…my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

I Am Thankful

2011-11-23T15:01:00.000-08:00

Holidays always mean different things to different people. For some families, Christmas is the time of year that the entire family comes together and celebrates the season. For others, holidays aren’t as important as those family get-togethers in the middle of April or August that have nothing to do with anything.

For me, the best holiday of the year is Thanksgiving. Every year, the family would get up early (or the kids would get up early) and then my mom and my sister would spend hours preparing the hors d’oeuvres for the meal later that day. We would then go over to the house of our best family friends sometime early in the afternoon. What would follow was always a little different but so similar it’s not even worth discussing the differences. The kitchen would be alive with activity, the living room alive with football. For what felt like an eternity, food would go into the oven and then come out, filling the house with smells so good that you are reminded why you only have this holiday once a year. The smells would be so good that if you had to endure that for more than an hour or so without eating, rioting would have broken out and the non-cooking half of the family would have gone on strike. In their infinite wisdom, the cooks prepared the hors d’oeuvres first so we would have something that was delicious to stuff in our faces while the rest of the food was cooking.

Late in the afternoon or early in the evening (or as Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory would say, the “prevening”) word would filter through the house that the turkey was nearly ready. Everyone would start to converge on the kitchen and would look out over the sea of side dishes and wonder how we could possibly eat this much food. Usually there was a football game still on and for as big a fan as I am, I don’t think I’ve ever watched the end of the game in that time slot.

At long last the turkey would come out and what would follow is quite possibly the most excruciating period of time of the entire day. All the cooking is done and all that remains is the most important part; the carving. By now everyone is hungry and all the food is cooked; it’s a miracle that we actually make it to the dinner table every year.

When the feast is finally ready to be consumed, it is time for one of the traditions that (for me at least) has never gotten old; the serving order. We have done:

Youngest to oldest
Oldest to youngest
Shortest to tallest
Tallest to shortest (my personal favorite)
First birthdays to last (within the calendar year) and vice versa
Alphabetical by first name and the opposite

Those are just a few of the more common themes that we’ve used over the years. In the last few years in the quest for something original, they have gotten very interesting (take your birth month, add one month, then line up in alphabetical order by month… ties are broken by birth date in ascending order) but sure enough, no person has ever gotten to serve themselves first or last two years in a row.

The food has always been great but I can honestly say that it could have been Spam and I still would have enjoyed it just as much. Spending time with that splendid group of people has provided me with some of the fondest memories that I have and some that I’m sure will be some of the best I’ll ever have. I look forward to starting new traditions of my own when I have a family of my own but they will always be trying to live up to a nearly impossible standard.

To all of you out there that made those memories what they are for me (you know who you are), thank you.

WHAT AM I THANKFUL FOR?

I am grateful for many things in my life and I just wanted to take this opportunity to mention a few of them. It is a truly impossible task for me to say each and every thing that I am thankful for and if I happen to leave you out, I am truly sorry.

I am thankful for my girlfriend. She has been an enormous part of the last four (and a little bit) years of my life and has never asked me to change who I was and has loved me for who I am.

I am thankful for Captain. This painfully cute little mutt has taught me many things about responsibility and has given me an ever so shallow look into what it’s like to be a parent. I still maintain that he is the cutest dog in the world and I beam whenever other people tell me how cute he is or how nice he is.

I am thankful for my friends. Over the years, you have been there for anything I’ve needed to get through issues that run the gamut from serious to all between my ears. You’ve provided the shoulder to cry on and the smack upside the head, right when they were needed the most.

I am thankful to have a roof over my head and food on my plate. Far too many people have to struggle for these basic needs.

I am thankful to have a job. I work hard every day afraid that it might be my last. I am thankful for all the people who have taken a chance on me and I’d like to think that if they had to do it over again, they would make the same decision.

I am thankful to live in a country where I can have a blog that is akin to an online extension of my brain. I can put every little thought I have on here and I do not have to worry about government censorship or oversight.

I am thankful that I live in a country where I am free. I’m not going to quibble about the definition of free and I’m not going to go into the limits of those freedoms (as relatively few of them are truly unlimited); I’m going to simply say that I am free and I’m glad.

I am thankful for my failures. I know that it sounds strange but I would not be the person I am today if it were not for my failures. I have fallen and I have learned to get back up again. This has led to a feeling of absolute empowerment; I believe that the world is mine for the taking in a way that I haven’t believed since I was a small child and knew everything. This feeling has helped me leave my comfort zone and has expanded my horizons in ways I’ve never dreamed of. It has helped me embody a couplet which came to me from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe via my dad:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it
boldness has genius, power, and magic in it”

Above all else, I am thankful for my family. To my mom, my dad, and my sister; I can’t possibly thank you adequately for everything you have done for me in my life. Instead, I will say a small phrase that sounds and feels grossly inadequate but I will say it and mean it with every shred of my heart and soul:

Thank you for being you.

All of my best wishes to you and yours this Thanksgiving.

Football 2011

2011-11-20T09:01:00.000-08:00

Before I delve into the bulk of this post, which will be about the NFL, I feel compelled to say a few words about the now annual chaos that is the BCS. From a fan’s perspective, I love the chaos. #2 Oklahoma State, #4 Oregon, and #5 Oklahoma all lost this weekend with only one of them (OSU) losing to a ranked team. Now, it very much looks like when everyone wakes up Monday morning, SEC teams will be ranked #1 (LSU), #2 (Alabama), and #3 (Arkansas). Still on the far outside looking in is undefeated Houston, now 11-0 and ranked #11 before this weekend’s action. Note to Cougars fans – you cannot play for the BCS championship when your signature win is over UCLA.

Chaos is good and bad for the BCS. It makes it far more difficult to determine who the two best teams in the country are. However, when it comes to the actual BCS bowl games, you have far more quality teams and therefore the potential for better match-ups and more viewership. The nightmare scenario right now for the BCS would be if Arkansas can beat LSU next weekend. Then the only undefeated team would be one that hasn’t played anyone significant and while it might be easy to eliminate them from the national title conversation, how do you eliminate… umm, anyone else?

The BCS is overdue for a restructuring and the rumor is that it’s coming in the next couple of years. The most interesting scenario which I’d personally love to see is the BCS would be responsible for the national championship game only. Their formula would determine the top two teams in the country and they could then receive bids for stadiums to host that game (Jerry Jones and a (almost) record BCS crowd at Cowboys Stadium anyone?). The advantage to this idea is that gone would be some of the most unpopular aspects of the BCS. There would be no automatic qualifying conferences so Connecticut would not be forced to get hammered by a top ten Oklahoma team. There would no longer be a two team limit, which is going to completely screw the SEC this year (under current rules, if Georgia were to beat LSU in the SEC Championship Game, the SEC would potentially have teams at 12-1, 11-1, 11-2, and 10-2 and they could all be ranked in the top ten and deserving of a trip to a BCS bowl… and only two of them can go.

Lastly (for the NCAA section), do I think there will be a playoff someday in big-time college football? Absolutely not. Do I think there should be one? No, I don’t and the reason is simple. Under the current format, you have to play perfectly to make it to the title game and win it all. Last March was one of the more exciting NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships that I’ve ever seen but does anyone out there (outside of Indianapolis and Storrs, Connecticut) think that Butler and Connecticut were the two best basketball teams in the country? Of course they weren’t. They played the best over that month-long tournament; they got to the final not because they were the best team but because they were the hottest team. If you change the FBS system to a playoff, the same thing will start to happen. When I look at the list of NCAA Division-I FBS champions, I know that they were one of the best teams in the country. You can rarely say that anymore with March Madness.

NFL

The seasons is just past the halfway mark and while some playoff races have shaped up and are all but determined (I’m talking to you Seahawks, Cardinals, and Rams) others remain intriguing and most likely will until Week 17. This season has had it all but as far as this blogger is concerned, some stories stood out amongst the rest.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

Today, the one who dubbed the Eagles the “Dream Team” will actually get to start for the first time. Due to Michael Vick’s broken ribs, Vince Young will get the start today for an Eagles team that is all but out at 3-6.

What went wrong? So many people thought they were going to win the NFC if not the Super Bowl. How did things go off the rails so quickly? Well, as is usually the case with teams not living up to expectations, it has been a combination of things but to me, one stands out above the rest; quarterback play.

Last year, everyone thought Vick had turned the corner and had finally learned how to be a pocket quarterback in the NFL. If he did, he somehow forgot nearly everything he learned. This year he is the quarterback that he was in Atlanta. He is still a supreme physical talent and a dynamic playmaker but anymore, that is not the most important part of being an NFL quarterback. If you look at four of the best quarterbacks in the NFL (in no particular order; Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers) they are at their best when they are surrounded by the playmakers. Their job is more one of distribution and leadership than leading by example. Michael Vick was very good in Atlanta when they had a great running attack and they just needed him to make a couple big plays every game. In Philadelphia, they need him to make numerous big plays every week and he isn’t the type of player who can do that consistently.

Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. The defense has needed some time to gel and not having a training camp hurt them greatly but their offense is a far greater concern. DeSean Jackson’s antics have been a distraction and he might not be back next season and this strikes a deeper chord than Vick’s passing. On a different team, Jackson would be kept in line by his fellow players. The teams I can think of off the top of my head are the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Baltimore Ravens, and the New England Patriots. In those places, veterans who have dominant personalities control those locker rooms and nothing goes on without them allowing it to happen. Where is that type of presence in Philadelphia? The short answer is that is doesn’t exist.

PLEASANT SURPRISES (LIONS AND 49ER’S)

One year ago, the Lions and 49ers were 6-10. The main difference is that there was no expectation for the Lions to compete with the likes of the Bears (11-5) or the Packers (10-6). The 49ers were picked to win the NFC West and nearly did, finishing just a game behind the Rams and Seahawks (7-9). The Lions were on the upswing at the end of the year, winning their last four games while the 49ers were just bad with a rookie holdout and then a head coach getting fired.

This year, they are both in line to make the playoffs. The Lions are 6-3 and while they have taken a couple of rough beatings in the last few weeks, they still control their own playoff fate and should make it to the playoffs. They are a case of having numerous high draft picks and actually getting a couple of them right. Matthew Stafford, Ndomukong Suh, and Calvin Johnson have all been playing at a very high level this year. However, I think one of their more important players has been Jahvid Best, the diminutive running back that has been out with an injury since their first loss to San Francisco. They started 5-1 with him and have lost two out of three since he went out. His home run ability out of the backfield as either a runner or a receiver has been sorely missed.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Lions being a dirty team and I wanted to address that briefly. First of all, I have no problem with guys playing hard and playing rough. Of everything I saw (which I’ll freely admit is far from everything) in the first several weeks of the season, I didn’t see anything outside of the unwritten code of conduct on a football field. I saw a bunch of guys with a hard edge looking to make their opponents pay – that’s not dirty, that’s football. Despite the lack of visual evidence, the rumors persist. Last Sunday against the Bears, it was out in the open for everyone to see. Suh ripping the helmet off of Jay Cutler should have gotten him thrown out of the game. If you aren’t allowed to grab a guy’s facemask and you’re not allowed to grab his back collar and pull him backwards, why are you allowed to tackle a guy BY THE HELMET?

Unfortunately, this wasn’t even the worst transgression of the evening for the Bears – that dishonor belongs to Matthew Stafford. I understand that throwing interceptions is frustrating but nothing, I repeat nothing, gives Stafford the right to drag down a defensive player by the head, similar to what Suh did to Cutler. If it had been the ball carrier, I might have been able to give him a pass but it wasn’t, it was a blocker. Every quarterback should know that if you throw an interception and become a defensive player, you are not protected in any special way; if you go for the ball carrier, you are fair game to be blocked. What makes it even worse is the ball carrier had just passed Stafford and he still threw DJ Moore to the ground.

DJ Moore should have been ejected for his reaction; Stafford should have been ejected for starting the whole thing.

NOW THE 49ERS…

The 49ers, so bad a year ago (far worse than their 6-10 record) are now 8-1 and are sitting atop the league’s worst division (hotly contested by the AFC West). If they win today and the Seahawks also lose, they will clinch at worst a tie for the NFC West’s best record… with almost 40% of the season to go. This would be akin to a baseball team clinching their division in early August – it just doesn’t happen. So how has this turnaround happened?

A lot of people point to the influence that Jim Harbaugh has had on that team and it certainly can’t be overlooked. He has brought an edge to that team that it was missing and I think he will have success in the NFL. I think the most important thing he’s done this year is express his confidence in Alex Smith. The oft-maligned seventh year pro from Utah has never had a completion percentage better than 60.5% or a passer rating higher than 82.1 until this year. Right now those two marks stand at 64.0% and 95.8, respectively. Just to prove that he isn’t the game manager that everyone says he is, last week against the 6-2 Giants with Frank Gore proving less than effective, Smith threw the ball 30 times for 242 yards and led the 49ers to victory.

It’s beginning to show now that perhaps all he really needed was someone to believe in him. Now it looks like he’ll be quarterbacking either the #1 or the #2 seed in the NFC and with Frank Gore behind him, it’ll be very hard to bet against them come January.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

Everyone knew that this team was in decline. Last year they started 6-6 and had to win their last four just to win the AFC Colts division and Peyton Manning posted his lowest passer rating since 2002 (91.9 – which still ranked 10th in the league). Then the lockout happened and Manning couldn’t consult with one of the therapists he trusts the most who happened to be on the Colts’ training staff.

Then he missed the first game of the season and once his consecutive games streak was over, the team and Manning decided that he shouldn’t rush back and should come back when he is 100%. Without Manning, everyone knew this team would miss the playoffs and would struggle to finish 8-8.

With 6 games remaining, the Colts have a solid grip on the #1 overall pick in next year’s draft and have a decent chance to become the third team ever to not win a game in a season and the second to go 0-16. This is yet another illustration of just how much Manning means to the Colts. Not only is he the offensive coordinator in everything but name, the entire roster is built around him, even on the defensive side. One of the reasons they have been so bad against the run the past several years (including during their Super Bowl run) is if you have a big lead, the other team can’t afford to run as much. Those were the types of leads that Manning would give them and virtually no other quarterback in the league could. This team is a house of cards and Manning is the glue that holds them solidly together; without him, they couldn’t win the Big Ten and would struggle to win the Big East.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories with regards to the NFL draft. I don’t believe that it’s more than coincidence that Manning misses most of the season when there is a guy in the draft pool (potentially) who might be able to replace him. This team was built around #18 and without him, they are just downright terrible.

GREEN BAY PACKERS – AARON RODGERS

On the other end of the winning spectrum are the Packers, who enter today’s game with the Buccaneers 9-0 and playing some of the best offensive football that has ever been played and so far their success starts with Aaron Rodgers. His worst game of the season (by passer rating) was in their 27-17 win over the Bears when Rodgers was 28-38 for 297 yards with 3 touchdowns and one of his three interceptions for a rating of 111.4. Just four times this year has Rodgers rating been under 120 while the last three weeks, he’s posted a rating over 140 each time.

Since 1970, there have been 1,252 instances of a quarterback throwing at least 196 passes (to qualify for the rate statistics, you have to average at least 14 pass attempts per team game and the season used to be 14 games long so 14 x 14 = 196). Amongst those, in the four main components that form the NFL’s passer rating formula, Aaron Rodgers ranks:

1st in completion percentage
2nd in touchdown percentage
6th in interception percentage
2nd in yards per attempt

This is where things get a little skewed in my opinion. Coming into this year, the greatest single season performance by a quarterback did not come from Dan Marino or John Elway or Roger Staubach or Drew Brees or Tom Brady. It came from Peyton Manning.

People remember the high flying Patriots offense led by Brady’s 50 touchdown, 8 interception season but many forget that just three years before that, Peyton Manning had an even better season. The difference? Manning’s Colts never went 16-0.

Yes, Tom Brady threw one more touchdown pass and threw for 249 more yards than Manning. Brady also had 81 more attempts than Manning. This is the best way to normalize things; this is what the seasons for Manning and Brady would look like if each threw the ball 500 times.

Name – Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT
Manning – 338-500-4,585-49-10
Brady – 344-500-4,157-43-7

Manning’s season was better as evidenced by the fact that his passer rating was better. Aaron Rodger’s isn’t trying to best Brady’s 2007 but Manning’s 2004. So what would Rodgers numbers look like if normalized to 500 pass attempts? In a word, ridiculous.

Rodgers – 364-500-4,863-47-5

IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! NO, IT’S…

(Paraphrasing Kung Fu Panda)

LEGEND TELLS OF A LEGENDARY QUARTERBACK, WHOSE QUARTERBACKING SKILLS WERE THE STUFF OF LEGEND!

The most polarizing player in the league right now and perhaps ever is Tim Tebow. His delivery is slow, his reads are slower, but he has boatloads of “intangibles”. Currently, the Broncos are 5-5, just a half game behind the Raiders in the AFC West, a division which could have four 5-5 teams at the end of play today. When Tebow took over as the starting quarterback, the team was a lifeless 1-4 with Kyle Orton at QB. Since then, Tebow has looked good at times (last five minutes of games) and horrid at others (entire 60 minutes against the Lions). However, in a division with a team that just lost is starting QB (Kansas City), a team who last win was against Denver in Week 5 (San Diego Chargers), and a team that just picked up a new quarterback after a strange sort of hold out (Oakland Raiders), they are far from out of it and in some way could be considered the favorites.

Before we go further into the Tebow-mania, let’s take a quick look at the schedules upcoming for the Raiders and Broncos…

The Raiders have four games left that they should win; today against the Vikings, Week 13 in Miami, Week 16 in Kansas City, and Week 17 against San Diego. At this point I’m writing off San Diego because they made a huge mistake when they let Darren Sproles go and now New Orleans has one of the most dynamic offenses in the league. On top of that, they finally started quickly and didn’t dig themselves a hole and since their 4-1 start, they’ve lost 4 straight and now have to play the Bears to right the ship. Anyways, those four wins would make the Raiders 9-4 with games left against Chicago, Green Bay, and Detroit. I don’t see them winning any of those three and finishing 9-7.

The Broncos make or break game is next week against the Chargers. It will likely pit 5-5 Denver against 4-6 San Diego trailing 6-4 Oakland. If Denver wins, they can keep pace with the Raiders and keep pressure on them. If San Diego wins, they are back in the hunt since 9 or 10 wins will likely take this division. Let’s just say the Broncos win to get to 6-5 (and Tebow-mania finds a new high); after that they have Minnesota and Chicago followed by New England and Buffalo before finishing with Kansas City. Unless Tebow finds some more magic, I would see 8-8 as a realistic record for them.

The problem with that is this Broncos team has won three straight to get back to 5-5 in a manner that completely defies logic. Can they beat New England? Of course not. Can they beat a team that has been to the AFC title game each of the last two years? Absolutely not… oh wait, they just did.

You have to throw everything out the window when it comes to this team and they will go as far as their defense (led by remarkable rookie Von Miller) and Tim Tebow’s legs can carry them. Can they make it to the playoffs? Yes, I believe they can. In the glance ahead at their upcoming schedules, the only stretch I saw was Denver beating San Diego and if the Chargers lose today, that might not be that much of a stretch. What if Denver beats Buffalo and Oakland loses to Miami or San Diego?

I am a fan of Tim Tebow and it has nothing to do with his religion, his politics, or his ability as a quarterback. I think that he is a nice and humble young man and in this era of professional sports, I cannot possibly ask for anything more.

Kickoffs are just under an hour away so I’m sure some of what I’ve said here will be rendered moot by the end of the day but that’s just one of the many great things about sports; no matter how long you follow a sport or how much you know about it, on any given day, something can happen that completely defies logic.

Packers; 16-0? No
Colts; 0-16? Yes
Broncos; playoffs? No (just barely)
Manning; MVP votes? Absolutely
Rodgers; MVP? I’m not even going to answer that one…
Packers; back-to-back Super Bowl wins? Yes

The $1.6 Trillion Monkey on our Backs and the $14 Trillion Gorilla in the Room

2011-11-18T18:36:00.000-08:00

Status quo (noun) – the existing state or condition

The status quo is comfortable. It’s peaceful, predictable, and overall not-too-bad… it’s also leading us straight to a disaster of potentially epic proportions.

THE PROBLEM

Three months ago, members of Congress came startlingly close to allowing the United States government to default on our national debt of over $14 trillion. Congressmen and women stood up in front of the assembled legislators and railed against the system that we have and said that something needed to be done. In their wisdom, they formed a small committee, dubbed the “Super Committee” (I now suspect by themselves). This small group of people, half Democrat and half Republican, was given the task of reducing the government’s budget deficit. They were also given a deadline; November 23rd. If they failed to come up with a certain amount of deficit reducing stuff (spending cuts, revenue enhancements, or a combination thereof) then budget cuts of $1.2 trillion would automatically kick in starting in 2013. Apparently these budget cuts are so drastic that we absolutely can’t allow that to happen. Unfortunately, if you believe the reports and the rumors coming from Washington these days, that’s exactly what is going to happen. If the so-called “Super” Committee cannot come up with some sort of compromise in the three and a half months that they had for this job, I personally view this as an epic failure to do the job that they were sent to Washington to do.

Don’t talk to me about the economic repercussions of raising taxes. I know what they are.

Don’t talk to me about the sob stories of all the people that will be worse off if the government has to roll back its benefits. I’ve heard many of those sob stories.

The fact of the matter is that We, the People of the United State of America, sent those 537 people to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House to make the decisions that us mere mortals can’t even conceive of making. Someone has to make the hard decisions about what is more important in the country today, tomorrow, and ten years from now. Unfortunately, both sides of the aisle seem far more interested in holding the party line at best and moving the party line farther from center at worst than they do in compromising.

In my sometimes-not-so-humble opinion, it is despicable that the federal government has accumulated a debt in excess of $14 trillion. Say what you want about how our economy is still strong (it is) or how much better our prospects look in the short run compared to Europe (much better), I don’t care. In May of 2010, the average American who worked year round full time earned an average of $44,416.18. At that rate, it would take one person 315,200,452 years to pay off the nation’s debt. Put differently, it would require 315,200,452 people to dedicate an entire year’s wages to this effort and they wouldn’t be able to spend any money on such luxuries as food and shelter. That is more than double the workforce of the United States. What’s even more amazing is how the steps taken by Congress to curtail the truly incredible level of federal spending are laughable.

“Wait a minute!” you exclaim. “$1.2 trillion is no laughing matter!”

This would be true if those budget cuts were going to be focused in one year. However, they are going to be spread out over the next decade. If I am not mistaken, the way these cuts are laid out is such that they are far deeper in year eight of the plan than year two. However, it does not change the fact that it isn’t enough.

It is estimated by the US Census Bureau that in the fiscal year 2011 (10/1/10 through 9/30/11), the US government took in $2.1737 trillion and spent $3.8188 trillion for a budget deficit in one year of $1.6451 trillion.

The average annual budget cuts proposed by Congress would be $120 billion.

Cuts - $120 billion
Deficit (FY ’11) – $1,645.1 billion

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The government, Democrat and Republican alike, have spent us into a corner and there are very few things that will get us out of it. As much as it will pain everyone in Congress and everyone in the nation, it will require drastic spending cuts AND increases in taxes.

THE SOLUTION

Do I have a solution? Yes.

Is it overly simplistic? Absolutely.

Is there any other way? I’d love to hear something better.

In 2011, as I mentioned above, the federal government took in $2.17 trillion in revenue and spent $3.82 trillion for a deficit of $1.65 trillion. Please forgive discrepancies due to rounding - two decimal places are much better to deal with than four or five. This gap is just too big to bridge with one side or the other doing all the compromising which leads me to my solution.

The federal deficit is $1.65 trillion. Republicans are responsible for half and Democrats are responsible for half. If we assume that Republicans will look to cut spending and Democrats will look to enhance revenues in the form of new taxes, then we can very easily see what the scope of the federal government will look like.

The government spent $3.82 trillion last year. If they were tasked with trimming $825 billion worth of fat from that budget, that would be a 21.6% decrease in spending. Several candidates for the GOP nomination have even floated sound-bites with regards to specific spending cuts that they would make happen if they were voted into the White House. Rick Perry very famously wanted to cut the departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy and he was hoping that people out there in the real world wouldn’t look it up to see what that would mean. Forget for a moment the implications of actually eliminating those departments and focus just on the money. Last year those three departments spent a combined $135.9 billion. So my question for Governor Perry and the rest of the GOP candidates is quite simple; after you get rid of the “luxuries” that were brought about by Democrats that we can no longer afford, what are you going to cut next?

Those three departments represent a paltry 3.6% federal spending in a year where our expenses outpaced our income by 75.7%. This problem is far more serious than legislators in Washington are acting like it is.

The simple answer on the spending cuts side also has the advantage of being the most fair; cut 20% off the top of each department. Yes, vital services will be cut. Yes, these are beyond drastic measures but let me ask you this; what happens if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised the next time around?

Now, to the Democratic side of the house…

Federal income last year was $2.17 trillion and they need to find a way to add that same figure; $825 billion. Income taxes comprised $956 billion, corporate taxes provided $198 billion, and “Social Insurance and Retirement Receipts” provided $807 billion. Clearly these three don’t add up to that full number but they did provide just over 90% of the government’s income so that is where the action needs to happen. A little bit more math says that in order to meet their needs, they would have to increase those three areas by 42%.

To sum up, the budget for the federal government has been reduced by 21% and the tax revenue brought in by the government increases by 42% and that could balance the budget. If that doesn’t give you an idea of how far our government has gotten out of whack, my guess is that nothing will.

WHY?

So why am I ranting and raving about this all of a sudden? Because of a proposed constitutional amendment that (according to a CNN poll) slightly less than 75% of Americans want enacted; a balanced budget amendment.

Why do we need it? The answer to that is simple; Congress needs to change their ways and never come back to the way things are being done right now. The only thing I see that can stop them from relapsing is a constitutional amendment.

The automatic cuts as a fallback in case the “Super” Committee couldn’t agree was a good idea… until several prominent lawmakers (principally among them Senator John McCain) said that the cuts are too drastic and, paraphrasing now, since Congress came up with this plan, Congress can amend it or eliminate it. On top of that, we have a candidate for the Republican nomination (Governor Perry again) say that if the automatic cuts hit his desk as president, he would not allow them to go into effect.

Essentially, the situation we have is that one of the more important pieces of economic legislation was passed in August and now, three and a half months later, we have very powerful people saying that we can and should ignore large portions of those laws they helped shape.

We’re all in this together. Republican, Democrat, Independent, Left, Right, Up, Down, Charm, and Strange. We need a group of people to serve in Congress that don’t care about a second term. We need people to make the tough decisions and think of ALL Americans in times like these. We need our lawmakers to stop assigning blame to those who they think are responsible for our circumstances (which comes across as “everyone but me and my friends”) and start working together to find solutions for our problems. We need 537 people pulling on the same end of the same rope because there’s a $14 trillion gorilla on the other end. Instead we have some people on each end of the rope and the gorilla has the middle; dangling it in the air like a puppet master or an amused child.

I believe in America and I believe in her economy. I believe that American workers are the best and smartest in the world.

I don’t believe in our elected officials. If I could speak directly to Congress, my message would be simple;

Restore my faith.

On the Long Road to Acceptance...

2011-11-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you are a fly on the wall somewhere in the vast NBC complex and you overhear this conversation.

Producer: Alright, who has an idea for next week’s show?

Writer: I think I have something. We have a true living legend of a football coach – the guy’s been coaching for more than half a century. The suspect is one of his assistant coaches and he’s also a former player. He uses his position to set up a foundation for kids and he runs youth football camps and that’s where he selects his victims.

Producer: Not bad, not bad. Do we open with a murder? Is he killing these kids too?

Writer: No, I had a better idea. A graduate student who is an assistant to the team walks in on the coach having sex with a young boy in the locker room shower.

Next week on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit…

It’s not a bad episode is it? The coach comes out and tries to deny and eventually tries to defend himself and all the while, Detective Elliot Stabler (played magnificently by Christopher Meloni) does his very best to not beat the snot out of the suspect with his bare hands. Do me a favor and keep this scenario in mind for a few minutes.

There’s only one problem…

GRIEF

Everyone in the country knows that one of the bigger jokes is the NCAA. On one hand they trumpet the virtues of the student-athlete who cares about getting his degree and is learning valuable lessons on his way through college by playing sports. On the other hand, there is Division I (Bowl Subdivision) football and Division I Men’s Basketball. When I look at water polo or field hockey or rugby or underwater basket-weaving (a very competitive sport, so they say) I can think about the student-athlete without gagging.

When I look at Division I Football (Bowl Subdivision) and Men’s Basketball, I can’t help but think that I can add up the GPA’s of the entire teams on both hands. There are always exceptions – for instance, if I remember my facts correctly, the presumptive top pick in next year’s NFL draft has a GPA over 3.5… from Stanford. So what exactly am I getting at with all of this?

When it comes to big-time college football and basketball, the players are not there to get a degree or to spend four years in college. They are there to enhance their draft stock and hopefully play professionally in their sport. The sad truth of the matter is that everyone exploits these kids for their freakish ability to jump high or to throw a football fifty yards downfield while four three hundred pound behemoths try to rip his head off. Yes, I said EVERYONE.

Fans exploit the players to the extent that they want to watch the event.

Universities exploit them by selling tickets to said events.

The NCAA exploits them by negotiating ridiculously lucrative television contracts to air the biggest events.

The coaches exploit them (perhaps worst of all) because they are the coach’s meal ticket. If a coach recruits good players, the team does well. If the team does well, the coach either gets a raise or gets offered a job at another university with greater pay and responsibility.

So again, I’ll ask, where is this heading? It’s heading towards recruiting violations and the illusion of the amateur athlete and how the former is making a complete mockery out of the latter. I can think of four huge programs that are either under investigation or were recently for awful recruiting violations in the last ten years and all of them have either played for or won a BCS National Championship… and I thought about it for about thirty seconds.

I don’t think that college athletes should be paid. A number of them get some form of scholarship and if you went down to the college students on Wall Street, I’ll bet that they would value that a bit higher than the players who receive them do. I don’t like recruiting rules but they are the rules and if you break them, you should be punished. When it comes to texting a player too much, I can live with that. You lose a scholarship this year, don’t do it again. When it comes to supposedly offering a guy’s family $180,000 to convince him to come and play for your university, that’s way too far. I don’t think college titles should be bought (at least not in that fashion). They should be earned by the coach taking the time to go out around the country and meet the guys and convince them to come to State University. Alas, it goes on despite the efforts of the NCAA’s enforcement staff.

Years ago, when I was young and naïve, I denied that anything like this could possibly happen.

As I got older and watched the news of it happening on Sportscenter, I got angry at the coaches that so flagrantly broke the rules.

As I saw the unfathomable proliferation of these practices throughout college athletics, I softened my stance on paying players (maybe it would reduce a lot of these problems after all).

When I heard people actually articulate the details of paying players, I got depressed when I realized that it could and would never happen.

And finally, at some point last season, when the presumptive (and eventual) Heisman Trophy winner was leading a team towards the BCS National Championship Game (which he won) I gave up and accepted that this was the way big time college sports was always going to be. There were always going to be rule breakers and people would always put up with them. After all, if it actually happened, why should Auburn University care about the $180,000 they supposedly paid the Newton family when they went 14-0 and won the national title? How much extra money did they make during that season?

As you can see, when it comes to the awful corruption that is rampant in college sports, I went through the five stages of grief. I firmly believe that I went through all the stages and came out the other side and accepted it so easily because after all, these players are making million upon millions of dollars for the universities and the NCAA so why should they not get a little on the side for themselves? After all, it’s not like they’re hurting anyone…

JERRY SANDUSKY

As much as it pains me to write this, the idea for an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU about a serial child molester is not fiction. At this point I must point out that nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt yet so there is not yet a perpetrator, just a defendant.

Jerry Sandusky played football at Penn State under coach Joe Paterno and later returned to the team and was an assistant coach there for just over three decades. During that time he founded an organization that that reached underprivileged children through different programs and camps and it is here, prosecutors allege, that he selected his victims.

In paperwork filed with the Centre County District Magistrate Judge’s office at the end of last week, Jerry Sandusky is accused of 40 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of someone under 16, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault of someone under 16, indecent assault of someone under 13, and corruption of minors. These crimes were allegedly committed against eight different boys from 1996 to 2005. The details are still coming in but if you’re wondering what some of the details of the alleged offenses are, you can find the Grand Jury Report here – http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2011/1107/espn_e_Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf

In this report you will find that a graduate assistant testifies that he walked into the locker room and witnessed Sandusky having sex with a boy he described as being about ten years old in the showers. According to testimony, he called his father and asked what he should do. The next day he went to head coach Joe Paterno and told him what he witnessed. Paterno then contacted his boss, athletic director Tim Curley, and told him of what the graduate assistant had told him.

This is where the waters get a bit muddied. If you read the testimony presented by Mike McQueary (the graduate assistant), Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz (Vice President for Finance and Business at Penn State), and Graham Spanier (President of Penn State University), it appears at best that the three men in the middle of this chain of communication (Paterno, Curley, and Schultz) were guilty of simple misrepresentation or misunderstand of the story being presented to them. At worst, it was an attempt to sweep the whole incident under the rug and cover the whole thing up to protect a man that had given 36 years of his life to the football team.

President Spanier testified that he was told a story of “Jerry Sandusky… and a younger child and that they were horsing around in the shower”. How we got there from McQueary saying he thought anal sex was involved is more than a mystery; it’s potentially criminal. I should note at this point that both Curley and Schultz are now facing perjury charges because of what they said to the Grand Jury.

So what is the point of my telling you this sordid tale and what is the tie to recruiting violations? It’s the culture of “we can do whatever we want”. This particular event involving McQueary allegedly took place nine years ago. NINE YEARS! Sandusky was more or less given an emeritus position with the football team since his retirement in 1999 and has had virtually unfettered access to Penn State athletic facilities since then. Can anyone explain why?

So now, my feelings on the entire corrupt system have gone into reverse big time – all the way from acceptance to blinding rage. Even if we put aside the Pennsylvania state law that requires all instances of possible child abuse to be reported to certain state agencies, how were the police never contacted? How and why did “anal sex” become “horsing around” when the matter came before the university president?

One potentially devastating answer to those questions swings back to what I was talking about earlier: college football is a huge business and when you look at these events through the lens of what the PR hit will do to your bottom line, all of a sudden there is a tremendous motive to make sure this never sees the light of day. Every time the Nittany Lions play at home, they fill their stadium (which seats an estimated 107,000) to capacity and those people all buy their fill of concessions and beer. Now imagine that number goes down 5% because of this news. Now imagine they are eligible for a BCS at-large bid but no BCS bowl wants to select them because they don’t want the bad publicity. Now they are playing in the Gator Bowl instead of the Orange Bowl with its $15 million payout. I hope that this isn’t the reason why this issue was never given the due attention is required but it is simply too big of a motive to just dismiss.

FALLOUT

The last thing to be determined in this case is what is the fallout going to look like for all parties involved? Given the charges levied against Sandusky, if he is found guilty on half of them, it’s entirely possible that he won’t ever be a free man again and if he did indeed violate the trust of these children, he deserves far worse than he will get.

According to the Grand Jury Report, McQueary was found credible and Curley and Schultz were not. If they are found guilty, they should go to prison. I don’t know what the penalties are for perjury in the state of Pennsylvania but I know that they should be severe.

McQueary is a wildcard and he has already inspired some conspiracy theories of his own. For instance, why did he go from a graduate assistant to a position coach within the Penn State football community? Did it have anything to do with the fact that he called his father and then Joe Paterno instead of the far more natural instinct to dial 9-1-1? I know that that is a serious accusation and I have no evidence whatsoever of his any wrongdoing on McQueary’s part. I simply find it strange that a grown man (he was 28 at the time) would call his father and then the head coach instead of the police when he sees a 58 year old molesting a 10 year old. Whether it was happening or not is beside the point; according to his testimony, that’s what he thought was happening.

Lastly, we come to Joe Paterno. He coached his first game for Penn State in 1966 and if I had my way, he coached his last game for them three days ago. The district attorney has already said that Paterno has not been indicted and everyone attached to Paterno has been quick to say that he fulfilled his legal requirement by notifying his superior, the athletic director. Morally, I find his behavior in this matter to be reprehensible. What he should have done is call the athletic director and notify him of the report that Paterno had just received and that he was calling the police to report the alleged offense. The fact that he took no steps that have come to light as of yet other than to notify his boss and he also allowed Sandusky to keep his access to Penn State’s athletic facilities (he was reportedly in the football facilities as recently as last week) is nothing short of absurd and for his whole role in this, Joe Paterno should be ashamed.

So what do I think should happen? I think the university should clean house and make an example of the man that has won more than 400 games, three Big Ten titles, and two national championships. The university needs to come out with the message that this behavior was unacceptable and the fact that it took nine years for this issue to be properly dealt with is worse. It’s despicable how one of the “good guys” could let this go on right underneath his nose.

COACHES AND POWER

The last issue I’d like to address is an issue that has reared its ugly head twice in the last year. When it came to light that Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had indeed known about the violations long before the NCAA found out about them and had lied about his knowledge, the obvious question posed to university president E Gordon Gee was if he would be firing Jim Tressel. His response?

“No, are you kidding me? Let me be very clear. I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

When this scandal at Penn State started to take off, the same implication was made by journalists and analysts alike; Joe Paterno wouldn’t be fired because he’s Joe Paterno and he’s bigger than anyone else at Penn State.

I understand that I just compared a situation where players got tattoos in exchange for memorabilia and one where an assistant coach molested young boys on university property but the problem I’m bringing up is the same in both cases. The coach has so much power that it is explicitly stated that he can do the firing if he wants to. Universities are so desperate for a good football team that they are more willing to appease a coach with questionable morals rather than upset the fan base that pays the bills.

At least when Woody Hayes assaulted a player on the field of play, he was fired within 24 hours. Joe Paterno was supposedly privy to knowledge about something far, far worse.

Nine years later, he’s still employed.

INCENTIVE

2011-11-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

The current state of affairs and the current state of a movement (Occupy Wall Street) and a countermovement (We Are the 53%) are nothing short of fascinating. There are some specific and some general grievances on both sides but fundamentally, I think the issue is simply a difference of opinion and when it comes to opinions, there are no right answers; there is only belief.

OCCUPY WALL STREET

Occupy Wall Street began September 17th (according to the about page on their website) and since then the movement has spread to cities across the United States and around the world. It seems that the essence of their movement is they want to eliminate the greed and corruption amongst the top 1% of wage earners (leading to the catchy populist slogan “We Are the 99%”). Furthermore, OWS “is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

In theory this is a noble goal but in practice eliminating it is extremely problematic. I spent some time a while ago surfing through some of their discussion forums and the one theme that I found is there are some seriously pissed off people including one fanatic who advocated replacing our system of money with a system of hugs and kisses (“would you rather be rich is money or rich in hugs and kisses?” is a question he posed) and then would not debate his points openly with any commenters and instead used extremely profane language to put them down. Alas, this is to be expected on public internet forums. What I did notice were some radical themes that kept coming up; eliminating the monetary system (and going to a more communal economic and social structure) and bringing down capitalism (and redistributing the ill-gotten gains of the wealthy few) to name just two.

What I find most fascinating about the OWS movement is their lack of specific goals and I’ve heard theories from both sides of the issue as to why that is. From the people who are not yet convinced that this is a viable movement, they say that one of the biggest advantages to not stating any specific goals is they can declare victory at any point and nobody can refute them. When someone points out that nothing tangible was accomplished, they can simply reply that their goal was to raise awareness. The flipside of the coin is some people believe that in the life of this movement, it’s too early to state specific goals. Rather, you need to let the movement progress by itself and you have to see where it will go without trying to steer it in any particular direction. As far as I am concerned, I have an extremely difficult time getting revved up about this movement because I don’t know where it is going and anyone who says they do know where it’s going and the endgame is flat-out lying. If you ask ten different people what their purpose for being out on the streets of the Big Apple is, you are liable to get ten different answers but they all seem to center around two things; the banks and the government.

It has bothered me to an extreme degree that by saying “We Are the 99%”, they are attempting to demonize 1% of Americans. According to the Census Bureau, right now there are an estimated 312,571,660 people in the United States. That would mean that 3,125,717 people are responsible for the economic state of affairs in this country and they need to have their wealth repossessed and redistributed to the masses…

Something doesn’t add up here. How much did Alex Rodriguez and his $25-30 million salary contribute to the mortgage crisis? Did the doctors and lawyers that make more than $500,000 a year cause bankers to give mortgages to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back if the market should take a downturn? My point is simply to say that if we’re going to go after greed and corruption, we need to make sure that we are going after the greedy and the corrupted, and not those that are taking advantage of their education and skill set to earn a wage that is on par with what they would earn on the open market for their services. It is my personal belief that the number of people truly responsible for the mortgage and banking crises is far smaller than 3.1 million. However, “We Are the 99%” is a far catchier slogan than “We Are the 9,999 out of 10,000”

So what it comes down to, as far as I’m concerned, is who do you want to blame and what do you want done? Before I can lend a shred of personal support to this movement, I need that question answered in a satisfactory manner and blaming a group of people because of how much money they make is blatant discrimination and I refuse to be a part of it.

There are some legitimate issues that people have raised in conjunction with this movement and they have nothing to do with eliminating our monetary system or redistributing wealth. Money should not equal influence when it comes to our political system. Personally I believe that eliminating it entirely is impossible but a reduction in that level of influence would be very welcome to me. Most importantly, some protestors are saying that the bankers who broke laws (which helped bring about the mortgage crisis) need to be brought to justice. I could not possibly agree more. However, it seems to me that those viewpoints are somewhat marginalized and the vast majority of people are decrying their personal situation and many of them are asking where the government is to catch them when they fall.

They talk about student loans, they talk about the lack of affordable healthcare, and mostly they talk about unemployment and underemployment and they ask where the government is to help them. In a nutshell, I believe that this viewpoint is terrible. It sounds tremendously good in theory that when the average American is knocked down for one reason or another, their kindly Uncle Sam is there to help them back on their feet but this is where that fantasy needs a reality check. We live in a country where the federal government has run a budget deficit of more than $1 trillion each of the last three fiscal years (with 2011’s figure of $-1.65 trillion an estimate). Why, why in the wide world of why should that entity spend MORE money?

“They shouldn’t spend more, they should spend the money they have better.”

I completely agree. The size of the federal government has ballooned in the past twenty years under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Measured by the difference in expenditures from the last year of their predecessor to their last year in office, federal expenditures rose by 29% under President Clinton, 64% under President Bush, and so far 28% under President Obama. From 1992-2011, federal expenditures have increased by 176% ($2.43 trillion) while federal income (most of which comes from taxes) has increased by only 99% ($1.08 trillion). There are two exceedingly simple ways to make up this enormous (and growing) disparity; cut spending or increase revenue in the form of taxes.

WE ARE THE 53%

Relatively soon after the OWS movement started, another anti-movement started as well; We Are the 53%. The number is a reference to a study done by a non-partisan government organization that estimated that only 53% of Americans actually pay federal income tax due to the deductions and tax thresholds below which all federal tax monies collected are refunded. The 53%ers message to the 99%ers is simple; stop waiting for your handout and go get a job.

I believe that this is an overly simplistic interpretation of the OWS movement and I expressed my disbelief that anyone would ask the government to spend more money in our current budgetary and economic climate. However, I do believe that their point is valid. Life is hard but if you grab hold of your bootstraps and pull hard enough (through honest hard work) you will find yourself living the American dream. My sense is that that is the gist of the of the 53%ers message. If I’m wrong, please feel free to set me straight.

INCENTIVE

I’ll bet you were wondering where that word would come into this whole foray into a very contentious situation. Hopefully your incentive for reading this far has been to find out what incentive has to do with all of this.

As I was surfing around the forum page on OWS’s website (found here - http://occupywallst.org/forum/ - warning, some language not appropriate for all audiences) a few thoughts started to gel in my mind. The next morning, I read a paper first published in February of 1848 and was nothing short of shocked to find some of the same rhetoric as I was seeing on that forum page. The paper? None other than the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx.

I am not saying this to demonize the OWS movement. I do not think that communism and socialism are dirty words; I didn’t live through the tense times of the Cold War. My shock was due to surprise, not outrage. Since some of the people involved in the OWS movement were advocating that we move further from capitalism (if not just do away with it completely) I thought it prudent to know the other side of the spectrum and thus, was inspired to read this document. It is a well written, well thought out, and extremely incendiary piece. I can also see how any person of modest means that feels oppressed would find the theories put forth extremely appealing.

It is necessary to keep some perspective about us though. As wide as income and wealth inequality are in this country, they are not nearly as far apart as the separation between the serfs and the tsars in Russia in 1917. Anyone who says our economic climate is as bad as that is just wrong.

This leads us to two great questions that are very difficult to answer:

First, where on the economic spectrum between pure capitalism and pure communism should we fall?

Once there, what role should our government play in the economy?

The second question cannot be answered without first answering the first so let’s tackle that one first. The economic term for a marketplace where all wealth is seized by the government and is distributed evenly is an Egalitarian market. The problem with this system is there is no incentive.

The price that you get for a good or service is most likely set by the State; there is no incentive to make a better product.

The wage that you earn is the same no matter what your individual skills or education or experience are; there is no incentive for you to chase down opportunity.

The wage that you earn is the same no matter how much work you put it; there is no incentive to put in the extra time and effort to make more money because you won’t.

These are the pitfalls of the communist model. The system is Utopian but the problem is that Utopia does not exist in the real world and it is in the real world that communism fails. This is the part of me that agrees with the 53%. Why should I have to go to work for 40 hours a week and work hard and then pay taxes that I don’t get back every spring so other people can sit back and collect unemployment without ever having to work a single day? This is a part of our government and our welfare state that simply enrages me. I am sure that many of the unemployed that are currently occupying Wall Street would rather be working; I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the ones who see government handouts as an alternative to working; not as means to get by while finding another job. That is a large reason why we have an enormous deficit and an enormous debt but that is an issue for the second question I posed and I’m not done answering the first one.

So what happens when you introduce incentive into the markets? Some people work the same as always (be it little or lots) while others work harder. They work 50, 60, even 80 hours a week, staying away from their families except for a few minutes before and after dinner (after work and before bed), in order to be rewarded for their hard work… and they are. Some people go to college, sometimes even working terrible hours at a bad job to pay for their schooling because they know that when they finish and achieve a degree, whether it’s a bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree, the market will reward their work with a higher wage… and it does.

Incentive is the fuel that drives this country more than anything else. It’s not that we necessarily want to be the best, it’s that we know that if we put in more work, we will be better. Capitalists strive to be better while communists do not. If that doesn’t show you exactly where I fall on this particular issue, let me make it just a little more plain. Capitalism brought about peace in a way that arms and peace talks could not. There is free enterprise in Russia and China where thirty years ago there was not. China is going to overtake the United States in terms of overall economic size (in terms of Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) within the next few years and it’s all due to that free enterprise and the desire of their people to get better economically and more importantly the incentive that is now in front of them. They see what they can achieve if they work for it… and so they are.

In short, the government should not dictate who gets what job or who gets how much money. The market is extremely efficient at doing just that and an economy driven by free markets is called capitalism.

From this point forward, I’m going to assume that we’ve chosen a capitalist model instead of the communist model and the reason is simple; the second question I posed was about the government’s role in the economy and in a communist model it’s simple… collect all money and then distribute evenly. In a capitalist society, it’s far more complicated. According to famous economist Adam Smith, there is an “invisible hand” that will move the market to an equilibrium point where a certain number of a good is produced and the market as a whole want to buy that same number of that good at a certain price. If the price is too high, producers want to sell far more than people want to buy and this creates a surplus. Gradually, the producers will realize that if they want to sell more and thus make more money, they can’t charge that high price. As they lower the price, people buy more of that good and the producer makes more money. The opposite is true if the price gets too low. This is one of the simplest and most powerful theories in all of economics; the theory of supply and demand.

There are many things that can upset this delicate balance but in our society, one dominates over all the others; the government. The vast majority of the time that the government interferes in the market, the overall efficiency of the market is decreased. For most markets, this is a bad thing but for a select few, government influence is a good thing. For instance, a side effect that does not factor into the price of a good is called an externality and they can be good or bad. The textbook example of a negative externality is pollution. Before environmental legislation (such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act) was passed, there was no incentive for certain industries to reduce the level of pollution that they produced while making a good. Thus, harmful chemicals were put into the environment and the people at large were harmed.

For a more specific example, let’s look at gasoline. Benzene was used as an “octane enhancer” for many years due to its octane number of 120. The only problem is that benzene is extremely carcinogenic. The federal government mandated that gasoline can no longer have benzene in it and because of that, the public is better off.

The other example of government influence benefiting the people at large is the steps that the government has taken to ensure competition in the marketplace. In short, monopolies are bad for the economy as a whole and they can easily exploit the people who buy their products. Starting with the Sherman Act in 1890, the government has levied fines in the billions and has taken the drastic measures of breaking up companies that seek to reduce competition in the marketplace. Unless you bought gasoline that originated from BP, the odds are fairly good that they last time you filled up your car, you bought gasoline from a former part of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Empire.

Other than those rare cases, the government is a hindrance to economic efficiency, plain and simple. Where capitalism gets sticky is the difference between efficiency and equity. Just because a market runs efficiently and the quantity of a good supplied equals the quantity of that good demanded does not mean that the allocation of resources is fair. This is yet another role of the government and this is an issue that I believe is central to the points of both OWS and the 53% movements. Both sides think the redistribution of wealth is unfair; social conservatives believe that too much is taken in the form of taxes and handed back to the people who are less economically fortunate. The social liberals believe that more money should be reclaimed from the wealthiest Americans and given back to those who can’t afford as many luxuries.

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to tax policy and social aid programs. Social and fiscal conservatives have a model that is more economically efficient and is also more heartless. Their liberal counterparts have a model that is far less economically efficient but people don’t need to worry about starving to death if they lose their jobs. I personally believe that there is unbelievable room for compromise. Government agencies have had their budgets increase to the point that there is an incredible and distressing level of wasteful spending. If you want those agencies to operate more efficiently, all you have to do is reduce their budgets. Tell them that they need to do the same job with 10% less funding and after the shock of having their budget cut wears off, they will find a way to make it work. The flip side of the coin is our economy is balanced on a razor’s edge and something needs to be done about it. I would support a moderate increase in taxes under one condition; every penny of those new taxes goes towards paying off our $14 trillion debt.

Fanaticism is the enemy in this case. Winston Churchill once said that a fanatic is one who “can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”. If we are going to rebuild this economy and make it bigger and better than ever, we need to work together. We need to find the central ground, socially and economically, where most of this country’s citizens reside. The Democratic and Republican parties are straying further and further from the center of the political spectrum in a dangerous game of one-upsmanship that very nearly caused us to default on our debt and plunge us into a depression that would have lasted for years if not decades… all to make a point. That cannot be allowed to happen. All of this leads me to the last point that I’ll make in this ode to our society and economy – there are 537 people who owe their jobs to us. They work for us. We need to remember that…

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, a Vice-President, and a President that wield enormous power because we, the people, of the United States of America, handed it to them. If we want something bad enough and we perceive an injustice, we need to stand up and let them know in a unified voice that this is what we want and we’re willing to elect different people until we get it.

Some of the few issues that I’ve heard from the OWS movement that I think are legitimate points are the corruption in our political process and the fraud perpetrated by some bankers that helped bring about the mortgage crisis three years ago. One of my single biggest issues with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the “We Are the 99%” people is nothing can be resolved on either of these issues by picketing bankers on Wall Street. As long as the focal point of this movement is Wall Street, nothing substantial will be accomplished. So what should these people be doing and where should they be picketing (or demonstrating perhaps would be a better word)?

They should be demonstrating at the corner of East Capitol Street, NE and 1st Street, NE…

At the US Capitol building!

If you want money to not buy influence in politics then say that you won’t vote for someone who accepts money from certain lobbies and if they don’t tell you who their campaign contributions are coming from, don’t vote for them.

If you want bankers to be indicted for fraud because they had appraisers artificially inflate the price of homes so they could make more money, tell your Congressman, Congresswoman, or Senator that if they don’t go after these people, you won’t re-elect them. Tell the President that if he doesn’t direct the Department of Justice to look into this, you won’t send him back to the White House.

The federal government works for us at our pleasure. We reshape our government every two years and yet many people do not realize the awesome power we as citizens have. The problem is that power is only useful if it is applied well.

The Occupy Wall Street movement might just be doomed to fail because they are yelling and screaming at a group of people (bankers) who have no incentive to listen. Just a few miles to the south (227 miles by car) is a group of people who do have the incentive to listen to us, the citizens of this country. And that group of 537 people can command the attention of the bankers that helped cause this recession.

Until that happens, OWS is just tilting at windmills.

The Economics of Baseball

2011-08-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

We all know that baseball is a sport, a game even. However, for a large number of Americans and a smaller number of people around the world, it is also a business. Home-grown players are drafted, developed, and sometimes traded or just let go, drawing the ire of the local fans. Some players become known as the sentimental “good guy” types while others get labeled as mercenaries. Some of it is fair and some of it isn’t but it is the way it is. Through all of this labeling and wheeling and dealing, there is one universal constant; money.

Money is a constant throughout our American lives as we pursue the American dream but in professional sports, the numbers get blown to a rarified air that only a very small fraction of one percent of all people in this country get to experience. Amongst professional sports, baseball is unique in the way the money is dispersed. In the NFL, for example, the difference in costs and revenues between a large market team like the New York Giants and a small market team like the Jacksonville Jaguars is relatively small. In baseball, the difference between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays is extremely large.

In the coming lines and paragraphs, I’d like to examine the financial structure of Major League Baseball through a lens adorned with good old dollar signs and see what comes up. This is not going to be a normative piece; I am not going to postulate the way that MLB should run their business. Rather, I am going to simply look at their model and draw a few conclusions and hopefully leave you (my loyal reader) more thoroughly educated than you were when you clicked on this link.

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We all know that baseball salaries are ridiculously higher today than they ever have been in baseball history. In 1990, one of the first years with reliable salary data on baseball-reference.com, the 26 teams in MLB spent a combined $346,626,190 on player salaries. To show you just how ridiculous contracts can get, if he hits all of the milestone incentives, Alex Rodriguez’s current contract will end up being worth $305,000,000.

To start into the economics lingo, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is one of the tools used to measure inflation and in doing so, it also helps give us an idea of how much a dollar is worth at one point in time versus another point in time (to attempt to restore some sanity to the number, Alex Rodriguez’s salary last year would be $2.63 million in the season that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs).

The US economy has gone through periods of high inflation and even a few periods of deflation since 1913 (when the CPI was first tracked). The average inflation rate over that 97 year period is a very modest 3.24% and that figure is even more impressive when you consider that national economies that lack the discipline of the US have experienced hyperinflation rates of 24,000% (as Zimbabwe did in February of 2008).

So why am I talking about inflation rates? Because salaries in MLB have gone up and it’s irresponsible to look at those numbers without taking inflation into account. For instance, in the 15 year period from 1995-2010, total player salaries in MLB increased an average of 8.45% every year. Over that same time period, the CPI increased by an average of 2.42% per year so we can clearly say that there is more going on here than just inflation. But before we go too far into evaluating why salaries are increasing at rates higher than inflation, we have to make sure we’re comparing Fujis to Fujis instead of Fujis to Galas. A dollar in 1995 had more buying power than a dollar today. Using the CPI figures, we are able to evaluate salaries with a common frame of reference.

As economists would say, this is the difference between “nominal” salaries and “real” salaries. In short, nominal salaries are the actual numbers printed on the checks while real salaries normalize those values with a common frame of reference in mind. When you throw all this in the hopper, what you get is that the average salary per team increased from $25.8 million in 1995 to $87.1 million in 2010 (or increasing by 8.45% per year, as mentioned above) in nominal terms. In real terms, and 2000 dollars, average team salary has increased from $29.2 million to $68.8 million, or 5.89% per year.

The end result is that the average inflation rate has been 2.42% and the average inflation of MLB salaries has been 5.89% from 1995-2010. Now we can go back and ask the question; what is causing this? There are many different things that can affect the cost of labor for a company and at its simplest, that is what players are to the MLB. However, there is one that has a greater effect that any other; revenue.

If a company isn’t making a lot of money, they won’t pay high salaries (even though the NBA is doing its very best to do just that). According to MLB, in 1995 their collective revenue was $1.4 billion and in 2010 it was a record $7 billion. If we put the numbers through the same analysis as the salaries, we find that while player salaries have increased 5.89% per year from 1995-2010, league revenue has increased an average of 8.70% per year over the same time period.

Before you yell and scream too much about the ridiculous amounts of money that players are being paid, remember that they get that much money because the market will bear those salaries. If the owners start making less money, they will start to hand out smaller and smaller contracts.

INDIVIDUAL VALUE

At this point, I’d like to narrow my focus a bit and explore the meaning of value when it comes to players. Sabermatricians have worked tirelessly over the past few years to come up with new ways to evaluate players and near the forefront of this revolution is one of my favorite metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR). This extremely complex metric takes into account as much as is possible in order to boil down a player’s contributions into a single number adjusted for the era they play in, the individual ballparks they played in, and even the teams they played against.

But the question that nagged at the back of my mind for countless hours is how much bang do owners receive for their buck? How often does a big contract pay off and how often do owners reap the rewards of a team friendly contract for a player that exceeds everyone’s wildest expectations?

And so those questions provided the backdrop for my research. I examined the salary figures and WAR values from 2000-2010 in an attempt to draw some conclusions about trends when it came to the contracts that owners gave certain types of players and certain patterns started to emerge. A question that I’d like to pose to you at this point is what type of player do you think is the most valuable to an MLB franchise? Please allow me to be a bit more specific with my definition of value in this context. What group of players has maximized on field production while minimizing their salary? Yeah, I apologize, that’s still a bit vague.

Young players.

In the height of the Steroid Era, which I will say happened roughly from 1996-2003 (ish) older players were far more valuable and indeed put forth some of the best seasons in MLB history. Barry Bonds had a five year run from 2000-2004 that is one of the best collections of seasons ever. In 2000, his WAR was a very good 8.7 but that was just his jumping off point. His next four seasons produced WAR values of 12.5, 12.2, 10.3, and 12.4. So what’s the big deal? For those five seasons, he was 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39 years old, an age where the vast majority of professional athletes begin to break down and become a shell of what they were at a younger age.

In the years since the Mitchell Report, congressional hearings, and perjury and obstruction of justice cases, players have gone back to aging the way they always used to; poorly. There has been an incredible youth movement in the past five years that has not only restored some sanity and equilibrium to the way talent evaluators look at players of a certain age, but has also reinvigorated America’s interest in baseball. After all, when the details of the Steroid Era started to come out, fans became very cynical about players and how they went about achieving their accomplishments. People also became cynical about the motives of the players who were bulking up and becoming huge and putting forth huge number while filling their bank accounts with a king’s ransom.

Today, it is the young players that rule baseball. There are still greedy men throughout baseball but there is a sense that the playing field is far more even and players are succeeding based on talent and hard work rather than what pharmacist they know. In my opinion, this has instilled once again a sense of the purity that once made baseball America’s pastime so long ago.

All you have to do to know that I’m right is look at the roster and salary breakdown (by age) of nearly any team that plays their home games outside of the Bronx or Boston. In 2000, 29% of salary money went to player under the age of 30. The 30-34 age brackets earned 50.3% while players over 35 earned 20.66% of salary money. From 2001-2004, the breakdown of salaries skewed towards older players with the three demographics earning 32.7%, 45.3%, and 22.0%, respectively. Before you dismiss this relatively small increase as trivial, realize that over those 4 years, roughly $7 billion was paid in salary so that represents an increase in salaries for players over 35 of $23.9 million per year.

Last year, those demographic breakdowns were 32.8%, 49.6%, and 17.6%. Money is no longer being given out to older players and it is instead being used on younger who provide much more performance per dollar spent. But what about those seasons from Bonds that I just mentioned and the excellent seasons that Roger Clemens had even after turning 40? That certainly proves that older players can still have some value, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. The problem isn’t the Bonds’ and Clemens’ of the world. It’s Carlos Lee, who last year (at the age of 34) put forth a season in which he was worth 2.5 wins LESS than your average replacement player… while earning $19 million. When you look at the worst seasons of the last ten years given a combination of poor performance and high salary, the average age of the 50 worst player seasons is 33.8 years old. The average of the top 50 is 25.4 years old.

The following is a graph of average salary and average WAR by age. Given how much noise there is in the data below the age of 24 and above the age of 40, I simply eliminated those. Given how few players fall into those two categories, the sample size isn’t large enough to draw significant conclusions.

This graph says it all; once players turn 30, general managers across baseball are taking their chances with many players. Before they turn 30 there is a large disparity between their performance and their salary but why does this happen? LeBron James had a contract worth more than $20 million before he took the court for the Cavaliers and Sam Bradford had a contract guaranteeing him more than $50 million before he took a snap for the Rams.

The NBA and NFL pay much more on potential at first and then only later is actual performance taken into account. In baseball, draft busts are costly because of the actual pick and not as much because of the money that was invested in the picks. If Stephen Strasburgh doesn’t pan out for the Washington Nationals, they are out $15 million, which is a lot of money but imagine if he had become a Cy Young candidate in his first few years.

One of the most famous examples of this is Albert Pujols. In his first three years with the Cardinals, he was valued at 6.9, 5.8, and 10.9 WAR; in short, he had three incredible seasons given that he was 21-23 years old for those seasons. Here’s the ridiculous part; he was paid a grand total of $1.7 million for those three seasons.

Baseball is alone in that you have to make it to the highest level of the sport and perform before you get your big payday. Granted, there are always stories of unheralded players coming out of college in the NBA or the NFL who hit it big once they make it to the pros but those are few and far between. No matter how much fanfare a player receives after being drafted, few baseball players have the paychecks to match their skill sets until they do well in the majors. For every example like Evan Longoria (who signed a 6 year, $17 million contract very shortly after reaching the majors) there are countless examples of players who played for less than $1 million and were All-Stars before being paid like them.

I’ve been talking about the value of players given both their salary and WAR and I want to explain briefly how I arrived at the figures. Essentially, I gave each player season a percentile rank given the best and worth performance and then gave them a percentile rank given their salary. The twist is that instead of the highest salary having a percentile rank of 100, I gave the lowest salary that rank. I don’t want us to confuse value with worth. In 2003, Albert Pujols was worth more than his $900,000 salary and given that he produced 10.9 WAR that season, he was extremely valuable to the Cardinals because of his combination of high production and low cost. I’m not making a value judgment about the salary structure in baseball; I’m just trying to find patterns. Once I got these two values, I simply averaged them, giving me a scale of value from 0-100.

This is a graph of the results of this analysis, plotting salary on the x-axis against total value on the y-axis. I understand that there are a ton of dots on the graph (8,840 to be exact) but don’t miss the forest for the trees. What this essentially shows is that significantly higher total value is found in the players earning less than $5 million in a season.

Also notice that amongst the 7,153 players who earned less than $5 million in a season, there is less variance than among the 1,687 players who had seasons earning more than $5 million. The highest total value by a player earning over that threshold was 85.3 while the lowest was 21.6. For the players below that threshold, the limits were 94.0 and 46.6. All that this basically says is that younger players are surer bets and if they don’t work out, it’s not like you were paying them much to begin with.

So what does all this mean in the grand scheme of Major League Baseball? Is it only a matter of time until draft picks are given contracts of $50 million over a number of years? Doubtful. However, there will always be owners and general managers that will thumb their nose at the conventional wisdom and give a 31 year old player a 10 year, $275 million contract when there are no other bidders in the auction.

I believe that cooler heads will exert more influence in the coming years and the number of players that are grossly overpaid will decrease. You already have an organization that is famous for not ever wanting to give a contract longer than three years to a starting pitcher in the Philadelphia Phillies. Despite the fact that they’ve violated that rule twice recently, they still gave two of the best pitchers in the game contracts of four years (Roy Halladay) and five years (Cliff Lee). If Halladay had reached the open market and Lee had taken the best offer, they both would have signed for much longer for many more dollars.

Teams are beginning to realize the benefits of taking a chance on young transcendent players because in the long run, that allows them to sign these players to less than their market value if they were to hit the open market. As out of whack as the recent extensions given to Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Carlos Gonzales seem, if they became free agents in three years after 3-5 years of extremely good production, they all could have commanded $20 million per year. None of their deals have an average annual value close to that.

There will always be teams willing to pay a premium for the best talent but I believe what you will find is small market teams that are building around young players will have their day in the sun and will compete with the big boys and that is just one small part of what makes baseball grand.

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Thank you for sticking it out this long with me; I know I was more than a bit long-winded this time around. Hopefully you enjoyed what you read and found it somewhat informative. If you are interested in the raw data that I used to draw these conclusions, just let me know and I can provide it. All salary and WAR figures were found on baseball-reference.com.

Until next time, enjoy the baseball!

Rugby World Cup Tune-Up (Canada vs. USA)

2011-08-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

The United States National Rugby Team played their final tune-up before heading overseas for the 2011 Rugby World Cup and despite playing in front of a capacity crowd on their home field in Glendale, Colorado, there was much left to be desired, losing to Canada 27-7.

This was as close as the Eagles ever got to competing... the opening kickoff.

If there was a theme for the Eagles Saturday night, it was missed opportunities. Several times the Eagles were able to slash through the Canadian defense and rip off huge chunks of yardage but almost invariably, they would proceed to cough up the ball due to sloppy passing or poor support of the ball carrier. Late in the second half when the game was all but over, the Eagles had a nice sustained drive deep into Canada territory and it looked as if they might be able to thrust the ball over the goal line for a final defiant salvo. Alas, that series went much the same as several others as the Eagles rucked poorly and Canada stole yet another defensive ruck.

Despite their poor play in the first half, the Americans punched through for a late try to make the score 10-7 at halftime but it should have been much different. They missed two very makeable penalty attempts and then squandered not one but two Canadian sin bin stints (which also overlapped for 5 minutes, giving the Eagle a 15-on-13). With a little better passing and kicking, it could have easily been 20-10 Eagles at the half.

However, I need to give credit where credit is due. No matter what the Eagles did, the Canadians were flying to the ball. When the Eagles had sustained attacks and were able to move the ball all the way out to the wings, they would look up and find themselves in a 3-on-5 against the Canadian defense or worse.

The Canadian offense was nothing spectacular but it was solid. They didn’t give the ball away much and they didn’t lose many offensive rucks. Most importantly, they didn’t force the ball and they waited for their opportunities and when they got them, they took advantage of them. Of their four tries, all of them came off of transition attacks started by a breakaway of 30 yards or more. The Canadian defense was very good in the bend-but-don’t-break sense, allowing several large chunks of yardage but only allowing one try and stopping the Eagles within ten yards of the goal line several times.

From here, the Eagles have one more tune-up in Japan before the World Cup. Both Canada and the US are probably aiming for a third place finish in their respective pools but that will be a tall task for both. Canada is playing with New Zealand, France, Japan, and Tonga while the Eagles are grouped with Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. If they play like they did last night, Canada might be able to sneak into third place while the Eagles will be hoping to win a match.

This is the first of quite a few posts about rugby that will be coming in the next two months. I will be in New Zealand for the matches played in Wellington this September (and early October) and will be posting my thoughts about the matches as well as some pictures from them. These are the five matches that I’ll be attending:

September 11th – South Africa vs. Wales (Pool D)
September 17th – South Africa vs. Fiji (Pool D)
September 23rd – Australia vs. USA (Pool C)
October 1st – France vs. Tonga (Pool A)
October 2nd – New Zealand vs. Canada (Pool A)

Stay tuned for more updates as well as some pictures from camping and backpacking in New Zealand!

Cy Young Award Race Update

2011-08-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

When last we checked, Jered Weaver wasn’t just leading the race for the 2011 American League Cy Young Award; he was running away with it. Despite Justin Verlander’s brilliance, Weaver had just been flat out better and his margin in my prediction formula was sizeable. In the senior circuit, Roy Halladay (surprise, surprise) was putting up the best numbers but in a shocker, Jair Jurrjens was giving him a good run for his money.

So where do we stand now that we’re about halfway through August with an average of 119 games in the books for each team?

Roy Halladay is still the best pitcher in the National League. His score of 148.4 is nearly ten points ahead of the second best starter in the NL (teammate Cole Hamels at 139.3). He is 15-4 with a 2.51 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP, an average GS of 62.6 (2nd best in the NL), and a strikeout to walk ratio of 7.76:1. However, there is one guy who can say that he’s actually pitched better than Halladay this year.

Johnny Cueto of the Reds is just 8-5 but his 1.94 ERA leads the Major Leagues and his ERA+ (adjusted for opponent’s and park factors) is a full 31 points ahead of Jered Weaver’s second best mark (205-174). So why is Cueto just over 16 points behind Halladay in third place in the NL Cy Young standings? Simple; innings pitched.

Cueto has thrown 120.1 innings and the last time I crunched these numbers, he wasn’t even among the qualifiers because he hadn’t thrown enough innings. By contract, Cole Hamels has thrown 172.0 innings and Halladay is tied for the NL lead in innings with Clayton Kershaw at 175.2. You can argue the merits of including something like innings pitched in a formula like this but in my view, it’s simple. The difference between Halladay and Cueto is 55.1 innings and 23 earned runs, which would come out to an ERA of 3.74. Considering that the league-wide ERA this year is 3.90, to match Halladay’s production the Reds need a reliever that can pitch roughly 5% above league average. That may not sound like much but when you consider that that is a decent workload for your average reliever, the Reds need an extra pitcher on their roster while the Phillies can use that roster spot for another position player.

That, in my opinion, is where the value of innings pitched comes in. Granted, if Halladay wasn’t pitching as well as he is, those innings wouldn’t be nearly as valuable but the fact remains; every inning he pitches is an inning that the Phillies bullpen doesn’t have to pitch. Come October when every inning and every pitch is so terribly important, the Phillies could very well have the freshest bullpen in the league. What is that worth in the time of year that every pitch is thrown at 110% and pitchers get tired faster?

Now that you’ve had a chance to think about the importance of innings pitched (especially when they are quality innings) think about this. So far this year, 13 pitchers have thrown more than 170 innings and the lowest average of innings per start in that group is Ian Kennedy at 6.8 innings per start. With the exception of Chris Carpenter (who ranks 38th) all of these pitchers also rank in the top 20 in my Cy Young Formula (out of 111 qualifying pitchers). There are only two teams that have more than one pitcher on this list and both teams have THREE pitchers with this many innings. It’s not too surprising that the Angels have hung around with the Rangers despite not having a great year; the trio of Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, and Ervin Santana have thrown that team on their back and carried them to where they are now, ten games above .500 and just three games behind the Rangers. Then there is the trio in Philadelphia who have predictably pitched very well but when you compare them to each other, it’s closer than you might think.

The Angels trio has combined to go 35-19 with a 2.88 ERA and a WHIP of 1.04. Those numbers for the trio of Halladay, Hamels, and Lee are 40-18, 2.65, and 1.04. The won-loss record difference is easily explained by the fact that the Phillies are on pace to be a historic team in terms of wins and losses while the Angels will be lucky to win 90 games. When you compare the per-game averages of the two trios, they are nearly indistinguishable.

Team-IP-H-R-ER-BB-K
GS

LAA-7.0-5.8-2.4-2.3-1.5-6.3
61.1

PHI-7.1-6.2-2.2-2.1-1.2-6.8
62.3

My entire point here is to say that even though the Phillies have been very good in the starting pitching department. The Angels have been nearly as good due to the emergence of Ervin Santana as a #3 pitcher. But is Jered Weaver the best pitcher in the AL?

At this point, not anymore.

A month and a half ago, Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the league in my Cy Young Formula. Today, they are still 1-2, just not in the same order. In some small ways, Jered Weaver has come back to the pack and Justin Verlander has pitched about the same. At the beginning of July, their core numbers looked like this:

Name: W-L, ERA, WHIP, IP, CYF
Weaver: 10-4, 1.92, 0.92, 131.1, 147.5
Verlander: 11-3, 2.32, 0.86, 135.2, 130.2

This is what those same numbers look like today.

Weaver: 14-6, 2.13, 0.97, 181.1, 179.9
Verlander: 17-5, 2.35, 0.87, 195.0, 189.8

Now this is really starting to split hairs between two starters having great years but soon enough the voters will have to do it as well. The only real differences are the margin in ERA and innings pitched. In July, Weaver’s lead in ERA was four tenths of a run and now that is down to 0.22 runs, just over half what it was. Six weeks ago, the innings pitched was practically a wash with Verlander having pitched 4.1 more. Today, that margin has increased to 13.2. When you add those up, along with Verlander’s overall brilliance and higher strikeout totals, that has led to more than a 27 point swing in the Cy Young Formula.

I know that it seems simplistic to break down the AL Cy Young race to two pitchers but before you start spouting the case of any other pitcher, consider this; the next highest ranked AL pitcher is CC Sabathia but the formula gives him only 144.3 points, drastically behind both Weaver and Verlander. This is the definition of a two horse race.

IS 2011 THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER?

2011-07-17T17:58:00.001-07:00

Last year many writers lauded the Major League Baseball season as the second coming of the “Year of the Pitcher” with 1968 being the first incarnation. This season some of those same writers are saying that this is actually the next “Year of the Pitcher” and it even prompted one writer to say that we are entering the “Era of the Pitcher”. My goal is simply to examine those claims and put some statistical analysis in place to determine which year in the Cy Young era should truly be called the “Year of the Pitcher”.

METHODS

Anyone who has read (almost) any of my posts about pitching know my love of the Bill James metric, Game Score. It is specifically designed to reward good results (strikeouts, longer outings) while penalizing bad results (hits, walks, runs, earned runs) and it boils down an entire pitching performance into one simple number. The “typical” scale is 0-100 but there are examples (albeit rare ones) of starting pitchers going into the negative or above 100.

Here’s the wrinkle; for this analysis, I didn’t use just starting pitching. I used all the pitching numbers so essentially, I’m giving pretty much all teams credit for the innings bonuses in the Game Score (GS) metric. Thus, when I present the GS values, they are presenting the ability of that team or league to maximize strikeouts while minimizing walks, hits, and runs of all kinds. While I understand there is more to pitching than striking batters out, I also acknowledge that it terms of minimizing the chances for something to go wrong as the team in the field, nothing does it better than a strikeout. The batter does not hit the ball in fair territory and fielders are not given the chance to make an error. The astute baseball fan would point out that a batter can reach base on a third strike that comes in the form of a passed ball or wild pitch. However, so far in 2011, there have been 197 passed balls and 874 wild pitches… out of 407,666 total pitches thrown (0.26%). There have also been 1,749 errors committed out of 106,022 total chances (1.65%). Therefore, so far this season, the likelihood of a ball in play turning into an error is five times higher than the likelihood of a pitched ball ending up with a wild pitch or a passed ball.

The next step that I took is I compared the ERA of each individual season to the overall ERA of the Cy Young era (1956-present). I fully understand the pitfalls of ERA but over a large enough sample size, the aberrations will even out and give a decent snapshot of what is actually going on. Lastly, to obtain the single metric with which I compared individual seasons, I took the GS and divided it by 114 (the “perfect” Game Score) and multiplied it by the percentage deviation from the overall average ERA. For example, the league average ERA since 1956 has been 4.00. If the ERA in a particular year was 3.60, then the value I’d plug into this formula is 110.

(4.00-3.60) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1 + 1 = 1.1 x 100 = 110

An ERA of 4.40 would yield a value of 90

(4.40-4.00) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1… 1 – 0.1 = 0.9 x 100 = 90

Thus,

(GS/114)*(ERAadj) = Pitching Factor (PF)

The results were quite almost exactly what you might expect. The following is a list of the top 10 individual seasons during the Cy Young Era and their PF’s (with the last two seasons thrown in for reference).

Rank (out of 56) – Year – PF
1 – 1968 – 0.676
2 – 1972 – 0.614
3 – 1967 – 0.614
4 – 1963 – 0.581
5 – 1965 – 0.575
6 – 1971 – 0.572
7 – 1966 – 0.570
8 – 1964 – 0.558
9 – 1976 – 0.554
10 – 1969 – 0.549
16 – 2011 – 0.523
34 – 2010 – 0.482
42 – 2009 – 0.438
56 – 2000 – 0.361 (last)

As you can see, progress has been made over the past few years but we are still a long ways from saying that the pitching today is on par with that of the late 60’s. Even if you want to throw out 1968 as an aberration (which is valid since it was the last year that the height of the mound wasn’t uniform and mandated) let’s compare this year to #2 overall, 1972. The league wide ERA in 1972 was 3.26 and the overall GS was 59.13. This year those numbers are 3.85 and 57.43, respectively. That 57.43 GS this year ranks 9th overall, up from 16th in 2010.

What we are truly seeing is a combination of factors. First of all, steroids are making their way out of baseball and while I’m sure some players still use, I’m sure that number is significantly down from 2000 when the league wide ERA was 4.77, the highest of the Cy Young era. Secondly, we are seeing a number of young pitchers that are threats to throw a shutout or even a no-hitter every time they go out to the mound. On top of that, teams are getting smarter with their young pitchers and we’re finding a crop of pitchers under 30 that are pitching longer innings than in the last decade and they are effective later in games and later in the season. Lastly, the cut fastball is becoming more and more popular around MLB and pitchers are finding that it is an extremely effective pitch. If you need any proof at all, just look at Mariano Rivera, who has thrown one pitch for virtually his entire career and even though his velocity has decreased through the years, he is on pace to put up an ERA+ over 200 (over 100% better than league average) for the eighth time in nine years… at the age of 41.

Before I move on to the individuals that are driving the increase in chatter about this being the “Year of the Pitcher”, I want to shed some light on another factor that is showing up in the raw data. If you look at a graph of the league wide ERA’s or the runs per game or even the hits or walks allowed per game, there isn’t a ton of deviance. Obviously you have some, given that in 1968 the ERA was 2.98 and it was 4.77 in 2000. There is one statistic that I didn’t mention that features very prominently in the GS calculation that has not stayed constant over the years and is one of the driving forces behind the impression that we are in a golden age of pitching; the strikeout.

In 1956, pitchers struck out an average of 4.69 batters per 9 innings pitched, which works out to 17.4% of outs recorded. In 1968, the average was 5.89 per 9 innings (21.8% of outs) which is a tick above the overall average for the past 56 years (5.86). So far this year, that number is 7.00 per 9 innings, actually down from the all-time high set last year (7.13). Here’s the real question then; are strikeouts the measure of a good pitcher?

My answer is that they contribute but they are not all there is to pitching and I think that your answer to that question greatly defines how much of a renaissance pitching is having in baseball right now. It is certainly better than the time from 1998-2003 but it is still a far cry from a time when a pitcher allowed just 38 earned runs in 304.2 innings.

INDIVIDUALS

The question is simple; what was the best single-season pitching performance in the Cy Young Era (1956-present)? The answer is slightly more complicated because again, it depends on what you value. I tried to encompass everything and personally, I think I did fairly well but I will readily admit that I am biased towards my own method. I’ve talked about the formula I use to judge starting pitchers before but I’ll briefly recap its components.

ERA+
This is the part of my formula that relates one era to another. This metric adjusts a pitcher’s ERA to account for things like the field they pitched on as well as the opponents they pitch against and the league average for that particular season.

Game Score
Simply put, this metric rewards a pitcher for good results (more innings pitched, strikeouts) and detracts for bad results (hits, runs, and walks allowed).

Innings Pitched.
I’ve posed this exact same question before but I’ll do it again. You have two pitchers with identical stat lines; an ERA of 2.50 and a WHIP of 1.00. One of them pitched 200 innings and another pitched 250 innings. Which would you rather have? Obviously, you want the latter because pitching more innings is more valuable to your team.

The actual formula I use is this:

(ERA+/100)x(GS.ave/114)x(IP)

Using this formula, these are the top ten seasons of the past 56 years

Bob Gibson (1968) – 524.70
Pedro Martinez (2000) – 406.27
Dwight Gooden (1985) – 390.67
Steve Carlton (1972) – 383.36
Sandy Koufax (1966) – 370.66
Wilbur Wood (1971) – 353.88
Vida Blue (1971) – 353.25
Roger Clemens (1997) – 349.89
Gaylord Perry (1972) – 347.77
Ron Guidry (1978) – 344.15

The biggest difference between Gibson and Martinez at the top is simple.

Bob Gibson’s ERA+ was 258 and Pedro’s was 291. Advantage: Pedro

Bob Gibson’s GS.ave was 76.10 and Pedro’s was 73.34. Advantage: Gibson

Pedro Martinez pitched just 217.0 innings in 2000, the fewest of any pitcher in the top ten by 44 innings. Bob Gibson pitched 304.2 innings in 1968.

To put it simply, Pedro might have been slightly better than Gibson but Gibson was at that level of excellence for 87.2 more innings.

…

Yes, pitchers are performing better than they have in the past twenty years and if they do better in the second half of this season, we might be able to rank this season up there with some of the best seasons of the past thirty years. However, to put this year up there with the best pitching seasons of all time is nothing short of laughable. No-hitters and the best ten pitchers in the game do not set a precedent for the entire sport. If this were truly the year of the pitcher, then we would be saying that the worst pitcher on any staff would be a good pitcher on the staffs of other seasons and we aren’t to that point yet.

I am enjoying this rebirth of pitching more than anyone else I know and I have always liked 1-0 games more than 11-10 slugfests. Home runs are fun in batting practice but in the game I want to see the best hitters in the world acting like it.

I want to see them hitting behind runners to move them over a base.

I want to see them taking a pitch on the outside corner to the opposite field, taking a single instead of trying to hit a home run and making an out instead.

I want to see a middle of the order hitter square around to bunt and actually look like he knows what he’s doing.

I want to see a batter NOT try to hit a home run with two strikes and realize that a weak single helps the team more than a strikeout.

I guess when it all comes down to it; I want to see more batters hit like Edgar Martinez did.

And that’s the overwhelming impression that I get from all of this number crunching I’ve done. Yes, pitching is better now than at any point in the past ten years and there are more good or great pitchers that I would pay money to see pitch than at any point for quite some time. Since we’re giving credit where credit is due, let’s give blame where it is due as well. Batters are not adjusting to this new era of baseball well and the result is bad approaches to the plate and easy outs. In the 2009 World Series, the one batter that didn’t scare me in the Phillies line-up was Ryan Howard. This was the same guy who in the four regular seasons leading up to that had hit well (.278/.379/.589) and had hit the ball far (198 home runs and 572 RBI). Why wasn’t I afraid? He’s not a good hitter and he’s even worse against left handed pitching. What was the result?

Game 1 – 2-5 with 2 doubles
Game 2 – 0-4 with 4 K’s
Game 3 – 0-4 with 3 K’s
Game 4 – 1-4
Game 5 – 0-2 with 2 BB’s… and 2 K’s
Game 6 – 1-4 with a 2-run homer that came with the Phillies down 7-1

Total that up and it’s just ugly. Batters want to hit home runs and drive in runs. They want gaudy video game numbers that lead to contract’s like Howard’s 5 year, $125 million extension that he recently signed.

It’s time for the country to fall out of love with the home run and appreciate the nasty 2-1 slider that induces an inning-ending double play.

It ain’t sexy but it wins ballgames.

First Half Review

2011-07-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

So, half the season has come and gone and sure enough, most of the standings look exactly as many people predicted them several months ago. The Rangers are in first place – despite a recent surge from the Angels – after their American League Championship season of a year ago and the Giants have opened up a sizable lead in the NL West after beating the Rangers last October. Neither is terribly unexpected mostly because the AL West is extremely weak and the NL West has more than its share of drama surrounding one of its better teams and the injury bug has bitten another of the favorites.

In the central, the Tigers have overcome a horrendous pitching staff to get to first place on the back of staff ace Justin Verlander. They have also taken advantage of the inevitable decline from the Indians who started the season very hot but haven’t maintained their level of play. Despite uneven, injured, or downright terrible play, both the White Sox (5) and the Twins (6.5) are within striking distance and are two good weeks from taking control of the division.

In the NL Central, a few teams made some improvements to their teams to try and make a run at the division this year but still they are all chasing the Cardinals which is apparently the team veterans join to resurrect their careers. The most heartwarming tale of the entire season comes from the NL Central where the Pittsburgh Pirates are 47-43 and just one game out in the division. They are searching for their first winning season since 1992 and for the sake of one of the sports older franchises, I’m pulling for them all the way. If Pujols comes back to his regular form, there is little chance that they could catch the Cardinals and there is an even smaller chance of them winning the wildcard but nevertheless, it’s a truly great story for the Pirates.

In the east are the two divisions that have truly given us little to talk about in terms of teams exceeding or falling short of preseason expectations. After one month of the season, I predicted the order of finish in the AL East would be Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles. At the All-Star break, the only difference is the Red Sox are leading and the Yankees are in second but seeing as how there is only a one game difference between them, I’ll give myself full credit for that one. In the National League, I was not fooled by Florida’s fast start but I still didn’t see their nose dive coming and I also didn’t see the Mets playing respectable ball either.

Predicted Order: Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals, Mets
Current Order: Phillies, Braves, Mets, Nationals, Marlins

What has replaced surprise teams in my opinion are individuals who are exceeding expectations or are quietly having outstanding seasons at the halfway point (or, frankly, those who are doing the opposite of that).

THE GREAT AND THE UGLY

Adrian Gonzalez (.354/.414/.591, 17 HR, 77 RBI)
Jose Bautista (.334/.468/.702, 31 HR, 63 RBI)

First of all, I knew Gonzalez was good but I never fully appreciated how much his lineup and Petco Park were holding him back. Now freed from his San Diego purgatory, he is on pace to set career highs in all three slash categories (.304, .407, .551 are his previous career highs) as well as smash his career highs in hits and RBI (he’s on pace for 230 and 139 with career highs of 182 and 119). If the Red Sox keep winning with their shaky rotation and he keeps hitting the way he is, it’ll be hard for writers to not punch his name as AL MVP.

As for Bautista, I guess you could say he’s answering a lot of the critics who were saying that he was a one-hit wonder last year (and while I may not have said it, I was definitely thinking it… Jose, I apologize for doubting you). As for those of you out there who are jumping to the PED conclusion with his sudden power stroke, an article was written a while ago on espn.com talking about how the Pirates were trying to make him a slap hitter. If you watch a few of his home runs you can tell he’s not a slap hitter.

However, the other reason I doubt he’s using PED’s (based on very little) is he is a dead pull hitter. Nearly all of his 54 homers last year and 31 this year have gone out to left field. If you look at the list of guys that were suspected of using PED’s or tested positive (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez) these guys all hit a ton of home runs to the opposite field which requires either far better discipline or far more strength (or some combination thereof). What I see is a guy who is comfortable at the plate and he’s only swinging at the pitches that he knows he can drive to left. I don’t see a guy who is juicing.

Adam Dunn (.160/.292/.305, 9 HR, 34 RBI)
Dan Uggla (.185/.257/.365, 15 HR, 34 RBI)

I never saw either of these coming. Dunn is still walking (47 thus far) and Uggla is still hitting the long ball but not much of anything else is happening for these two guys who were paid big money to supplement their respective lineups. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said so I’ll leave it at this; if these guys get hot, watch out for the White Sox and the Braves.

PITCHERS

With relatively few noteworthy performances (to the point of being transcendent) that has left the baseball world to the pitchers and they are taking the sport over. Many have referred to 2010 as the Year of the Pitcher, Part II and some are saying that this year pitchers are even more dominant. I’m not going to go that far and I’m in the process of putting together some numbers which said what I’ve suspected all along; pitching had a bigger advantage over hitting than they do today… but that’s for another day.

Since it is the All-Star break I’ve thrown the numbers into my magic formula which predicted Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez for the Cy Young Awards a year ago. To give you an idea of scale, Felix Hernandez had a score of 242.58 while Halladay was second in baseball at 228.93. The next highest American Leaguer was Clay Buchholz at 164.14.

So far, your American League Cy Young winner of the first half should be…

Jered Weaver, with a score of 164.60 followed by…
Justin Verlander (158.41)
James Shields (125.40)
CC Sabathia (115.13)
Josh Beckett (109.49)

…and in the NL it should be…

Roy Halladay, with a score of 125.91.
Cole Hamels (122.78)
Jair Jurrjens (122.31)
Cliff Lee (102.15)
Tommy Hanson (87.62)

Before you ask why the scores are so low, it is because one of the components in my formula is innings pitched. Last year Halladay pitched 250.2 innings and thus far this year he’s only thrown 143.1 (which leads the NL); hence, the difference. Also of note, all of the top five pitchers in the National League are from the two teams with the best records in the NL… coincidence? Not at all.

PREDICTION TIME

AL/NL Cy Young Awards:
See above

AL MVP: Adrian Gonzalez
Depending on your definition of what the “most valuable player” is, you could put any one of several names in here. Where would the Blue Jays offense be without Jose Bautista? Where would the Tigers be (with their incredibly bad pitching staff) without Justin Verlander? However, I believe that there is a bit of a tradition of taking the best player from the best team when there are several candidates and the player that fits that description is Gonzalez.

NL MVP: Prince Fielder
Not too long ago, it looked like this was going to be Jose Reyes and he still might come back from his hamstring tweak and put up video game style offensive numbers while playing a good defensive shortstop. I wouldn’t bet on it though since his game is heavily reliant on speed. If he comes back too soon or isn’t at 100%, his numbers will be good but not otherworldly. In the east, no non-pitcher is really taking the reins as an MVP favorite and the voters have gotten over their love affair with Ryan Howard (finally). In the west, one of the best overall players (and certainly the best player on the defending champion Giants) destroyed his ankle and where are they now without him? Oh yeah, first place. That leaves the central and no player has stood out above his peers more than the Prince.

Playoff Teams (AL):
Red Sox
Tigers
Rangers
Yankees (WC)

Playoff Teams (NL):
Phillies
Brewers
Giants
Braves (WC)

Here are the differences between now and early May when I first predicted the order of finish:

- The Rockies have not played well and the Giants have.
- I originally predicted the Cardinals or Reds coming out of the central but I have a better feeling about the Brewers.
- I originally picked the Yankees to win the east instead of the wildcard. Either the Red Sox or Yankees will win the east and the other will take the wildcard.

PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS

AL:
Yankees over Tigers
Red Sox over Rangers

Red Sox over Yankees

NL:
Phillies over Brewers
Braves over Giants

Phillies over Braves

And finally, good pitching will always beat good hitting (except when it doesn’t, as Yogi would say)…

WORLD SERIES

Phillies over Red Sox

Enjoy baseball after the extended break and soon I’ll be back to examine the claim that this is the year of the pitcher once again (or heaven forbid, the ERA of the pitcher!)…

Final Thoughts on the Finals ('10-'11)

2011-06-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

NBA FINALS

Before I delve too deeply into the issues that everyone has been obsessing over since the end of the NBA finals last Sunday, I must give credit where credit is due.

I offer my sincere congratulations to owner Mark Cuban, head coach Rick Carlisle, and team and finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki. I counted the Mavericks out several times and believed what I read when some analysts picked Portland as the team most likely to beat a higher seeded team in the first round. Even after that, I wasn’t sure that they’d be able to beat the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. After that, I wasn’t sure how they’d be able to handle a team with two budding stars that could jump out of the gym and over the geriatric crows wearing Mavs uniforms. After that, I was sure that they would not be able to hang with a group of three young stars (I’m not going to distinguish between “stars” and “superstars”) who seemed to be playing their best basketball and were peaking at the right time.

What happened? 4-2, 4-0, 4-1, 4-2.

Don’t I look stupid?

So how did they do it? The easy answer is that they scored more points than the Heat in 4 of their 6 games but that’s not really anything new. As long as Dirk has been playing for the Mavericks, they have been one of the most efficient offensive teams in the league. The problem was always at the defensive end and this year they changed all of that. The additions of Brendan Haywood and Tyson Chandler are probably the reason that they hoisted the trophy over the weekend because now, Dirk doesn’t have to play the five. He can play the four where he is taller and longer than just about anyone he’ll match up with. At the five, he had to match up against Shaquille O’Neal. At times in the Finals, he was matched up against Dwayne Wade.

No offense intended but if you’re Nowitzki and it’s the fourth quarter of an important game of the NBA finals, which match-up would you rather have? D-Wade is a great player and if he was guarding Dirk, it was because of a switch but it still illustrates my point. Dirk has never been the bang down low, grab 15 rebounds and control the paint kind of guy. He’s much better roaming the perimeter and sometimes going into the post to take advantage of a mismatch and the additions of Haywood and Chandler allowed him to do that.

So the Mavericks were better offensively and they were better defensively. Another aspect which is ever more important than either of those is that the Mavericks were better mentally. Why should a 15 point deficit late in game 2 (already trailing one game to none) faze them when they faced similar circumstances against the Thunder? Why should that bother them when everyone… and I mean everyone… wrote them off after coughing up a 24 point lead late to Portland in a win for the Trailblazers that tied the series.

Interestingly, I would normally say that there are two ways to handle adversity; wilt under the added pressure or stare it down and resolve not to go down without a fight. However, I’m adding a third category that is a subset of the second and this is where the Mavericks incredible run falls; they didn’t change a thing.

I’m sure there were minor tweaks here and there by Rick Carlisle (who might finally get his appreciation amongst fans) and some guys shot better or made better decisions but they were the same team that made it this far. They never tried to reinvent the wheel. They knew that Portland overcoming a 24 point lead was an aberration and if they played their game they would prevail (they did). They knew that the Thunder having a big lead late didn’t matter because Dirk was already in the zone of a lifetime and all they had to do was feed him the ball and they’d prevail (they did). They knew that Miami’s cockiness was on display after D-Wade’s potential series changing three pointer gave the Heat a 15 point lead late in game 2 and they knew that the Heat would expect the Mavs to clench up the rest of the way. They knew they just had to do the same thing they always had and the shots would start to fall and they would prevail (they did).

What I’m really going for here is the difference between confidence and cockiness. The Heat were cocky; the Mavericks were confident. If you need any more evidence, look at Nowitzki’s game 6. He finished the game 9-27 from the field but if you just saw that, you would miss a lot of key information. He was 1-13 in the first half from the field (1-13!!!) and in the second half he shot a much more Dirk-like 8-14. What changed at halftime (or the end of the third quarter when he was still just 4-20) that made him superhuman once again in the fourth quarter? In my opinion, nothing changed. Many of his shots were in-and-out type misses and he knew eventually those would start falling and sure enough, they did and the Mavericks prevailed once again.

The difference is that when athletes are put under pressure, some believe that it will require a superhuman effort to get passed the obstacle in front of them and that is the clenching that I saw from the Miami Heat (with the exception of LeBron who I will get to later). What the Mavericks taught us this postseason is they knew they were capable of getting past anything; all they had to do was keep going, keep grinding and they would eventually prevail…

…and they did.

LEBRON

So much has been said about LeBron James in the few days since the season ended that to repeat them here would be nothing short of ludicrous. Basically, what all the talk has boiled down to is this:

LeBron James is not better than Michael Jordan.

All that I wonder about that statement is what took us so long to figure it out? For the past 13 seasons the media has obsessing combed over college basketball as well as the NBA looking at tomorrow’s bright young players and whenever they’ve found one sufficiently dazzling, they have asked the question…

Is the next Michael Jordan?

First it was Allen Iverson, or “The Answer” (presumably to the question I just posed) and then when we realized that he was going to struggle to shoot even 45% from the floor (which he did twice in 14 seasons while Jordan shot better than 45% all 12 of his full time seasons in Chicago) we moved on to Kobe Bryant. Here we might have found a decent player to compare to Michael Jordan. In a lot of ways, their career arcs are very similar from enormously physically gifted 2 guard to more of a jump shooter as their career took a toll on their legs.

Now, we’re onto LeBron James.

Yes, I’m sure there have been others that have borne the mantle of the “Next Michael Jordan” but frankly, I don’t care because I’m here to say this. Nobody has ever put the entire package of physical skill, basketball skill, and a downright ridiculous will to win in the same body the way Jordan has. Nobody. To claim that anyone has achieved a truly Jordan-esque level is unfair to that player as well as to Jordan himself. Many people have had the first one or the second one or even both of the first two and James belongs in that category. But nobody has ever matched that skill with the will to win the way Jordan did and the only others that might be able to say they had that will to win were not as basketball blessed as Jordan was. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that Jordan didn’t have to do one day of work and was just that good to begin with. I feel very comfortable saying that nobody worked harder on those Chicago teams than Jordan did and everyone else worked that hard because they saw their superstar working that hard.

So if LeBron James is not the next Michael Jordan, where does he fit in the pantheon of greatness? For the answer to this, I’m going to defer to Charles Barkley, a guy I always loved to watch play and never liked to watch comment on a basketball game. I don’t know why, he’s always grated on me. Anyways, Barkley said that a better comparison for James would be Magic Johnson and he hit the nail so precisely on the head, it’s scary.

When Magic was drafted number one overall following the 1978-1979 season, he went to a team that had gone 47-35 the year before and had a young(er) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who still had 787 games and 16,246 points left on his tires. The onus was not on Magic to save that franchise. On top of that, two years later the Lakers would draft James Worthy (#1 overall after a 57-25 season and their second title in three years) and the three of them would form the core of that run which included 9 Finals appearances in 12 years.

When Larry Bird was drafted, the Celtics were not nearly so well off. However, two years after the Celtics drafted Bird, they drafted another future Hall of Famer in Kevin McHale and then acquired a 26 year old Robert Parish from Golden State and a 29 year old Dennis Johnson from Phoenix. There you have the core of a team that played in the Finals five times and won three.

The seven players drafted since LeBron James have COMBINED for 7,045 points and 2,560 rebounds in 940 games. For comparison’s sake, James has played in 627 games and has 17,362 points and 4,451 rebounds.

I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for James; not one bit. All I’m saying is this; if James had been drafted to a good team with several good players and there had been other scoring options, I think he would have preferred to play the role of more of a point forward as opposed to the primary scoring option. When he kept deferring to Wade and Bosh in the Finals, I don’t think his only fault was being overwhelmed by the moment. I think part of it is he doesn’t want to carry the scoring burden and I think that might have been part of the reason he went to Miami; he would be playing alongside two legitimate scorers who could carry the load while he did what he always wanted to do; distribute.

Do I think this is a character flaw? Not at all. On the court, James is a very unselfish player and asserted himself in the playoffs more out of necessity (due to Wade’s struggles and Bosh’s inconsistency) than out of a will to take over. The problem is that people saw the scoring he was doing in Cleveland and immediately put him up in the realm of Jordan and they never really thought about whether or not he wants to be remembered as a scorer or a passer.

Do I consider the Heat’s season a failure? No, I don’t. It’s not a success either but this group of guys hadn’t experienced adversity together yet (now they have) and didn’t know how to react. I foresee a far more relaxed and comfortable group next year and I don’t see anyone stopping them.

That’s all for now but soon I’ll be writing something that has been stewing since November… open arrogance amongst the best athletes of today and how my respect for them would grow if their open arrogance did too…

Do You Have to Win a Ring to be Considered the Best Ever?

2011-06-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

The recent playoff performance put forth by Dirk Nowitzki has reignited this topic amongst sports enthusiasts everywhere and I have decided to put in my two cents.

The main problem with this question is that it is asked universally across sports and in some contexts it is a valid question while in others, it doesn’t hold water. In the NBA, this question has some merit and in the NFL, it has merit as long as we’re only talking about one position (more on both of those later). However, one place where this question doesn’t belong at all is baseball.

Quick! How many World Series titles did Babe Ruth win?

Barry Bonds?

Ty Cobb?

Willie Mays?

Hank Aaron?

There is little debate that four of those five players (with the obvious exception being Bonds) are among the best position players in the history of baseball. Anyone who doesn’t at least include them in the conversation is out of their minds and you should tell them so. My goal here is not to say who the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) is, I’m simply saying that if you were having that discussion, these names would be a part of it.

So, back to the question, how many World Series titles do each of those guys have? The easiest is Bonds since he has played recently and the answer for him is 0.

Willie Mays – 1 (1954)
Hank Aaron – 1 (1957)
Ty Cobb – 0
Babe Ruth – 7 (1915, 1916, 1918, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1932)

Here’s the thing though; when you think of the G.O.A.T. in baseball, you don’t think of the number of World Series titles won or the number of World Series MVP’s they won, you think of numbers like 4,189 hits, 714 (or 755) home runs, 511 wins, 5,714 strikeouts, and so on and so forth. The regular season in baseball is such a huge sample size compared to the postseason that players are defined to a much greater extent by their regular season numbers than whether or not they performed well in the postseason.

Ty Cobb is one of the best hitters that has ever picked up a bat. His career .366 batting average is the best all time and his record of 4,189 hits stood for 62 years (from 1923 when he broke Cap Anson’s record to 1985 when Pete Rose broke his). However, for all those of you who say that championships are the measure of a player, it might interest you to know that the Georgia Peach became downright pedestrian in his three World Series appearances (all losses) with an OPS of .668 compared to the league average of .611 for those three years. While he was above average, when you compare that mark of .668 to his career OPS of .945, it looks significantly worse.

The biggest reason that this question doesn’t apply to baseball is just the nature of the sport. While a starting pitcher has the ball in his hands at the beginning of every play, on average, 15-20 outs are recorded without the pitcher being involved. As for a position player, they are cursed to somewhere between 8.6% and 14.3% of the total plate appearance for their team. In the field, they might be in on half of the defensive outs recorded but that still leaves 8-10 outs that the rest of the team must account for.

To use one of my favorite metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR), consider this; the best season (since 1900) by a position player is 14.7, by Babe Ruth in 1923. His line that year was nothing short of preposterous as he hit .393/.545/.764 with 41 home runs and 131 RBI (and 13 triples). Arguably more amazing is that his 1.309 OPS was only the third best of his career… but I divulge. That year he was worth (essentially) 15 more wins than a replacement player. If your team was made up of replacement players and one 1923 vintage Babe Ruth, you would still be a terrible team. If memory serves, most WAR calculations use a 40-win level when they talk about replacement players. If your entire team was made up of replacement players, your record would be 40-122 (NOTE: I can’t remember the exact numbers so please don’t hammer me on that one).

So even with the best season by a position player in the past 112 seasons, your team’s record would be 55-107. That is why baseball players are judged by individual statistics far more than team results.

But the next question that needs to be asked is whether or not it is fair for players in other sports to be judged by the performance of their teams? When it comes to football, the only position that gets this kind of pressure is the quarterback position and let’s consider this example.

Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT
Players A/B/C
4491-8252-55664-313-312

Player D
4967-8358-61361-420-252

We’ll call Players A, B, and C Group A… they played 291 NFL games and had a completion percentage of 54.4% and a combined quarterback rating of 72.4. Group B (which is made up of only Player D) completed 59.4% of his passes over the course of his career and put forth a quarterback rating of 86.4. If you have any knowledge of the career record book for quarterbacks, you know the guy that I’m talking about in Group B but let’s play along.

When you look at these numbers, it is obvious that the three quarterbacks in Group A are nowhere near the caliber of Player D. So why am I making such a big deal about this? Because Trent Dilfer, Jim McMahon, and Doug Williams (Players A, B, and C) all have a Super Bowl ring and Dan Marino (Player D) does not. Of those three, only Dilfer managed to pass for as many as 20,000 yards (20,518) and he finished his career with more interceptions than touchdowns (113 TD vs. 129 INT). To say that a player is better than another because they have won a championship is ludicrous. Throughout professional sports, it is said that the playoffs are an entirely different animal than the regular season and given that, how can we judge players on their postseason performance without at least acknowledging that their regular season performance means something?

Here is another example from the NBA. I firmly believe that this question is more legitimate in the NBA than any other sport because I believe that a single player has the ability to affect more change in the NBA by themselves than in any other sport. A quarterback has the ball every play but does not play defense or special teams. A pitcher is involved in the beginning of every play but when the ball is put in play, there is roughly a 5% chance that the pitcher will be involved in the play (based on 2010 numbers across baseball). A single player in the NBA can touch the ball on every offensive possession and can guard the man with the ball on every single defensive possession. In that sense, they can affect a game more than any other single player in another sport.

I would consider these four guys some of the best power forwards in NBA history but the obvious question that I’m teeing up is which one is the best?

First of all, a look at the numbers:

FG% = Field Goal Percentage
3PT% = 3 Point Field Goal Percentage
FT% = Free Throw Percentage
PPG = Points Per Game
RPG = Rebounds Per Game
APG = Assists Per Game
BPG = Blocks Per Game
SPG = Steals Per Game

FG%/3PT%/FT%/PPG/RPG/APG/BPG/SPG

Player A – 50.8/18.2/68.8/20.6/11.4/3.1/2.3/0.7
Player B – 49.8/28.2/78.8/19.5/10.7/4.1/1.5/1.3
Player C – 54.1/26.6/73.5/22.1/11.7/3.9/0.8/1.5
Player D – 51.6/27.4/74.2/25.0/10.1/3.6/0.8/1.4

As you can see, their numbers are remarkably similar. Their shooting percentages are all high (disregarding the 3 point shooting since they are power forwards) with a little variance in the free throw shooting. Still, 68.8% free throw shooting from a 6-10 guy who gives you 20 and 11 every night is good.

Their scoring is similar with one exception and their rebounding and assist numbers are very comparable. It does look like the first two might be slightly more defensively inclined (at least when it comes to the counting stats) but it’s not by a lot when you factor in steals as well as blocks. So to separate these guys, let’s take a look at how they performed when the most was on the line; in the playoffs.

Player A – 50.2/16.7/67.8/22.7/12.4/3.4/2.6/0.7
Player B – 47.2/29.8/78.2/19.6/11.1/3.8/1.4/1.3
Player C – 51.3/25.5/71.7/23.0/12.9/3.9/0.9/1.6
Player D – 46.3/16.2/73.6/24.7/10.7/3.2/0.7/1.3

If you put all this together, it paints a picture of four players that have very similar numbers, both in the regular season and in the playoffs. Would it help the discussion at all if I told you that Player A has four championship rings, Player B has one, and neither Player C nor Player D have one?

For me, it wouldn’t really change the way I rank these four players.

Karl Malone (Player D)
Tim Duncan (Player A)
Kevin Garnett (Player B)
Charles Barkley (Player C)

Bill Wennington and Kurt Rambis combined to play 1,600 games in the NBA and scored 7,904 total points (4.9 points per game). Patrick Ewing scored 24,815 points in 1,183 games over his illustrious career. Which of those three was the best center? Ewing never won a championship while Wennington won two with the Bulls and Rambis won four with the Lakers.

I know that I am cherry-picking the most extreme examples but I’m trying to make a point. I want the people who write about and follow the NBA and the NFL to take a lesson from Major League Baseball; championships define teams, and they should not (completely) define players. Would Bill Russell have been a different player if he had won two rings instead of 11? Would Wilt Chamberlain be considered the best center ever if he had never won a championship?

All of this circles around to the comments that Scottie Pippen made about LeBron James having the potential to be considered the best player in NBA history… yes, even better than Michael Jordan. There has never been a better scorer than Jordan in the league’s history and despite the fact that it’s not the best measure of a scorer, all you have to look at is the fact that he is one of only two players to average better than 30 points per game for an entire career and he managed to stay ahead of Chamberlain (30.12-30.07). However, LeBron James does things that Jordan does not. He is much more of a pass first type of player than Jordan and this is a huge reason why the Miami Heat have done so well. He is perfectly happy being a facilitator and while some of Jordan’s most famous plays were assists in tough spots where he did not take the final shot, he is much better known for the shots he took and made than any passes he made. LeBron’s legacy might be closer to that of Magic Johnson, taking big shots when he had to but also making numerous highlight reel assists.

Will LeBron end up being better than Mike? I have no idea. Is it possible? Absolutely.

If you look at the counting stats and project LeBron having five productive seasons from this point on, that would put him at 28,161 points (against Jordan’s 32,292), 7,220 rebounds (6,672 for Jordan), and 7,078 assists (vs. 5,633 for Jordan). Again, Jordan was the better scorer but James does other things that Jordan doesn’t.

All in all, it is way too soon to even be having this discussion but it is one that we won’t be able to escape from until LeBron wins a title and then again until he starts approaching counting stats that nobody in the history of the league has gotten close to. After all, only three players in NBA history have accumulated 20,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 6,000 assists over their careers. Magic isn’t one of them and neither is Larry Bird or Michael Jordan. Those three are John Havilchek (26,395-8,007-6,114), Clyde Drexler (22,195-6,677-6,125), and the guy who doesn’t quite get enough credit for all the things he did, Oscar Robertson (26,710-7,804-9,887).

Depending on how long he plays and how healthy he stays, LeBron James has the chance to surpass them all…

Who knows, he might even win 7 rings…

Unbreakable Records - Single Season Edition

2011-05-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

The title of this one says it all. In honor of Andre Ethier hitting in 30 straight games, I wanted to look at the most unbreakable single season records and just how close anybody has gotten recently. As always, there are a few ground rules. First of all, I’m only going to be taking into account the bests of the Live Ball Era and my reasoning for that is quite simple. I have a very hard time comparing a league with 9 teams (where the best record was 52-14 and the worst 9-56) where the league wide ERA was 2.31 due to the fact that a whopping 60.4% of the runs scored that year were unearned…

Now that that rant is out of the way, I can get on to point number two. When I said that I wanted to see how close people had gotten to these records recently, I set that time frame as the past five full seasons (2006-2010). Again, the reasoning for this is simple. If I had expanded that time frame just a little to include the past ten seasons instead of five, it would have included the tail end of what some have dubbed the “Steroid Era”. Personally I hate the moniker but it’s there nonetheless so onward we plunge!

In a nutshell, what I’m going to do is introduce the (Live Ball) record and how close someone has come to that mark in the past five years. After that I’m going to include a random number between 0 and 100 that represents the percentage chance that I see this mark ever being bested.

BATTING

Hits
Record – 262 – Ichiro (2004)
Recent – 238 – Ichiro (2007)

Is this mark beatable? Yes, but it does require a very specific skill set. It should also be mentioned that Ichiro has the top three hits seasons in the last five years (coming in with 225 and 224 hits in two other seasons) so the best mark by someone not named Ichiro was Michael Young’s 217 hits in 2006.

So why do I think this mark is beatable? Mostly because of Ichiro. He is left-handed and fast, which is always a good start when it comes to racking up hits. Secondly, he doesn’t walk much. To put this in perspective, Ted Williams is widely considered one of the best hitters to have ever picked up a bat and in 9,791 career plate appearances, he walked an astonishing 2,021 times, or 20.6% of all of his trips to the batter’s box. This helped him to a career .482 on-base percentage, the best mark of all time. It also helped him “only” get to 2,654 career hits.

Closer to the other end of this spectrum is Pete Rose. He strolled to the batter’s box 15,861 times and walked 1,566 times (9.9%, less than half that of Williams). Because he was a relative free-swinger, he managed to knock out 4,256 hits, the most of any player ever.

All of that brings us back to Ichiro. In his ten (and a little bit) years in the US, he has come to the plate 7,504 times and has taken Ball 4 a grand total of 469 times, or just 6.3%. What he brings to any lineup he’s in is a relative impatience and free swinging attitude with the uncanny ability to hit the ball in such a way that with his speed, it’s nearly impossible to get him out.

Likelihood – 5/100. Just because it can happen doesn’t mean it will. George Sisler’s single season hits record stood for 84 years before Ichiro came along.

Runs

Record – 177 – Babe Ruth (1921)
Recent – 143 – Alex Rodriguez (2007)

Ruth was a transcendent talent way ahead of his time and he may not have even been the best hitter on his own team (the guy right behind him in the lineup was pretty good too). The odds of this ever happening again outside the Steroid Era are precisely nil. If it was going to happen, it would have ten years ago.

Likelihood – 0/100

Doubles

Record – 67 – Earl Webb (1931)
Recent – 56 – Brian Roberts (2009)

This is one I could actually see happening. There was some talk back in the 90’s of double man extraordinaire Edgar Martinez approaching this record. However, the closest he ever got was 52 in both 1995 and 1996.

I know that another 11 doubles is quite a lot when you’re already hitting over 50 but since the inglorious end of the Steroid Era, it is possible that we’ll see a new breed of hitter, one who aims for gaps instead of the bleachers…

I can dream, can’t I?

Likelihood – 15/100

Triples

Record – 26 – Kiki Cuyler (1925)
Recent – 23 – Curtis Granderson (2007)

This will happen someday. Granderson also hit 38 doubles and 23 home runs that season for a total of 84 extra base hits. There have always been guys who have that much speed but they have been suppressed for quite some time because you never wanted to make outs before the big slow guys who hit the ball so far that they don’t have to run fast. In the future, there may be a swing back towards the small ball days of the 70’s and 80’s when a good leadoff hitter was more critical to the lineup’s success than a big thumper in the middle of the order. The speed has always been there; it’s the will that’s been missing.

Likelihood – 30/100

Home Runs

Record – 73 – Barry Bonds (2001)
Recent – 58 – Ryan Howard (2006)

Does anybody know how this elephant got into the room? It’s not that big of a room…

This record will not fall and will forever be tainted because I don’t think it has been set by someone who played the game in a “clean” manner since Roger Maris in 1961. However, that does not mean that I subscribe to the nonsense that Maris is the real single season home run record holder. Bonds hit 73 home runs. I watched many of them live and highlights of nearly all of them. It was truly amazing to behold and in over twenty years of loving this sport (basically since I tried it out and found out it was pretty cool) I have never seen anything like it.

Likelihood – 0/100

Runs Batted In

Record – 191 – Hack Wilson (1930)
Recent – 156 – Alex Rodriguez (2007)

Since Wilson’s amazingly clutch season in 1930 (did he even make an out with a runner on base that year?) only three people have come within 20 RBI of his mark:

Lou Gehrig (1931) – 184
Hank Greenberg (1937) – 183
Jimmie Foxx (1938) – 175

Do you see something in common with those years? The closest anyone has gotten in the past six decades was when Manny Ramirez had 165 RBI in 1999; and he was still a solid month of games away from Hack Wilson.

Likelihood – 0/100

Batting Average

Record – 0.424 – Rogers Hornsby (1924)
Recent – 0.365 – Joe Mauer (2009)

This note should really emphasize just how good of a hitter Joe Mauer is. He’s a catcher and nobody has had a single season batting average higher than his in the past five years. it should also help emphasize how untouchable this mark is.

The number that many people associate with batting average is .406 and for very good reason. Ted Williams was the last player to hit .400 in 1941 and seventy years later, it looks like nobody will ever hit for that high an average ever again. In the past 70 years, only four players have even hit as high as .380. As long as teams carry this many pitchers on their rosters and as long as the pitchers are this good, hitting .400 will be impossible.

Likelihood – 0/100

For the next three metrics, I’m just going to lump them all together because the same guy holds all three records and he set them all with a severely engorged melon at the end of his neck… I’m just saying.

On-Base Percentage
Slugging Percentage
OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging)

On-Base
Record – 0.609 – Barry Bonds (2004)
Recent – 0.470 – Chipper Jones (2008)

Slugging
Record – 0.863 – Barry Bonds (2001)
Recent – 0.671 – Albert Pujols (2006)

OPS
Record – 1.422 – Barry Bonds (2004)
Recent – 1.114 – Albert Pujols (2008)

I honestly wish that I could see what Barry Bonds’ career could have been like had he never taken steroids. While he was very careful to say he never “knowingly” took steroids, it seems dead obvious that he was using steroids during his incredible four year run from 2001-04. I have never seen anyone look at 20 pitches in the course of a game, see 19 balls and hit the one strike 450 feet. It was a truly amazing run and it is unfortunate that it had to become tainted by his use of steroids and by his recent court conviction. Nevertheless, on the field, you won’t ever see it again.

Likelihood – 0/100

PITCHING

Wins

Record – 31 – Denny McLain (1968), Lefty Grove (1931), and Jim Bagby (1920)
Recent – 22 – Brandon Wood (2006) and Cliff Lee (2008)

I know that wins are a largely superficial statistic and considering my wholehearted (and statistically sound) defense of Felix Hernandez’s 2010 Cy Young case, this should not come as a surprise to anyone. However, given the requirements for a starting pitcher to get a win, it’s not a bad barometer to gauge a pitcher’s performance. Before you lay into me for that last comment, allow me to expound. Using wins as a barometer for a pitcher’s performance is kinda like gauging the temperature of water…. by looking at it.

In the last five years, only four pitchers have even stayed in games long enough to get 31 decisions. Their respective records were 21-10 (Roy Halladay, 2010), 20-11 (Adam Wainwright, 2010), 20-11 (Roy Halladay again, this time in 2008), and 18-13 (Carlos Zambrano, 2007). If you notice, nobody got more than 31 decisions so given these little tidbits and taking this huge leap in logic, a pitcher would have to go 31-0 to match this mark.

Likelihood – 0/100

Losses

Record – 26 – Paul Derringer (1926)
Recent – 18 – Daniel Cabrera (2007) and Rodrigo Lopez (2006)

This one won’t fall because teams aren’t that bad and a pitcher pitching that terribly won’t get 27 starts. Mike Maroth was the worst starting pitcher on the worst team in recent memory, the 2003 Tigers that only managed to win 43 games all year long. Maroth still pitched well enough to get 33 starts and he pitched well enough to win 9 games for a final record of 9-21.

Likelihood – 5/100 (maybe as a publicity stunt… and I’m tired of saying these records will never fall)

ERA

Record – 1.12 – Bob Gibson (1968)
Recent – 2.19 – Zach Greinke (2009)

This is the beauty of the advanced statistical metrics that have come along in the past few years. On the surface, it would appear that the difference between the two seasons mentioned above is so large that they don’t even belong in the same discussion. However, when you take into account things like the league average ERA, park factors, and the opposition, the gap is narrowed significantly. Gibson’s ERA+ in 1968 was 258 while Greinke’s in 2009 was 205. Was Gibson’s season better? Absolutely. Was Greinke’s season still very good? According to ERA+, it was the 33rd best season… ever.

However, to match Gibson’s ERA, Greinke would have had to allow 28 earned runs instead of the 55 he actually allowed. As long as offense is popular, this one will never go down.

Likelihood – 0/100

Innings Pitched

Record – 376.2 – Wilbur Wood (1972)
Recent – 253.0 – CC Sabathia (2008)

I’m not even going to say anything here.

Likelihood – 0/100 (I seriously flirted with the idea of negative likelihoods… still a possibility)

Walks

Record – 208 – Bob Feller (1938)
Recent – 115 – Carlos Zambrano (2006)

In a lot of ways, this record goes hand in hand with the losses record and the innings pitched record. Pitchers don’t throw 277.2 innings (as Feller did in 1938) and they don’t get anywhere near that number if they are walking 6.7 batters per 9 innings pitched (again, as Feller did in 1938).

Teams don’t allow pitchers that bad to pitch for that long.

Likelihood – 0/100

Strikeouts

Record – 383 – Nolan Ryan (1973)
Recent – 269 – Justin Verlander (2009)

This is yet another case of how pitchers aren’t allowed to throw that many innings and no pitcher in the past few years has been good enough to even get close. In fact, in baseball history, there have only been 33 seasons in which a pitcher struck out 300 batters, 14 before Nolan Ryan and 18 since. The only real threat to his seat atop this particular throne was during Randy Johnson’s great run from 1999-2001 with Arizona. He struck out 364, 347, and then 372 batters in those three seasons and averaged 12.7 strikeouts per 9 innings. During his record setting season, Nolan Ryan averaged only 10.6 strikeouts per 9 innings.

Granted, nobody has gotten within 30 strikeouts of 300 or within 100 of the record in the past five years but in the ten years before that, there were ten different seasons where a pitcher struck out 300 batters. This is a record that is somewhat vulnerable but it will take a once in a generation talent with a manager that is willing to let them pitch through jams to allow him to rack up the strike outs.

Likelihood – 20/100

STREAKS

There are two main streaks that I want to touch on here; hitting and consecutive scoreless innings pitched. In 1941, Joe Dimaggio had a hit in 56 consecutive games and in 1988, Orel Hershiser pitched 59 consecutive scoreless innings. In my opinion, both of these streaks are untouchable simply because of the logistics of breaking these records. In the case of Hershiser’s record, you’d have to throw six straight shutouts (which has only been done once in major league history) and then throw another six scoreless innings in your next start.

As for the hitting streak, given how frequently games are played in this day and age, you would have to get a hit in every game you play in for seven weeks. When Andre Ethier hit in thirty straight games, he was still 26 games away from tying Dimaggio’s streak. To put that in perspective, in Major League History only two players have had multiple hitting streaks of 28 games or more. Joe Dimaggio is the only who has managed to follow a 28 game hit streak with another 28 game hit streak without a hitless game in between.

Likelihood of either of these streaks being broken – 0/100

Likelihood that you have read every word of this post… let’s not go there.

Thanks for reading my ramblings… until next time!

Random Notes From the World of Sports (and the World Beyond)

2011-05-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

There are a handful of stories floating around the world of sports (and the world in general) and while I have a lot to say about a lot, I don’t necessarily have a lot to say about these particular topics. Therefore, I’m just going to lump them in here together.

Today, my topics will be:

Jim Tressel
Osama Bin Laden
Rashard Mendenhall

JIM TRESSEL

This situation has been stewing for me for quite a while. Anyone who has talked to me over the course of the past five years knows the kind of respect that I had for Jim Tressel. I thought that he was an outstanding coach and a wonderful example to the dozens of young men that he influenced during his tenure at one of the biggest, most prestigious football programs in the country.

The way that he has handled that stature is nothing short of awful and I am sure that I am not alone in feeling betrayed by the Vest. I even praised him for his handling of the situation, saying that the five players could play in the Sugar Bowl if they promised to come back next year and serve their five game suspensions. Then I found out that he knew about it all along and told nobody. The reaction from Tressel and the university (specifically the athletic director and the president of the university) was very telling. It took Tressel days to apologize and even then it didn’t seem genuine and when the AD and the president came out and more or less scoffed at the notion of Tressel being fired, it sent the message loud and clear that at Ohio State, Jim Tressel is the be all and end all and winning is more important than integrity.

NCAA, you need to come down on Ohio State and Tressel and you need to come down hard. Tressel needs to be suspended for longer than just his self-imposed (image salvaging) five games and Ohio State needs to be punished for allowing this to happen, even if it is a relatively minor infraction. Here’s a suggestion; each time a coach is found to have done something like this, take away a few scholarships. It’s easy to see over time that the loss of scholarships can cripple a football program and while that shouldn’t be the goal, it would send a clear message that you won’t stand for this anymore.

What will happen? Tressel will get slapped on the wrist and will be forced to write “I won’t lie to my bosses anymore” 1,000 times… a task which he will give to an assistant.

OSAMA BIN LADEN

It has now been since the president said that Osama Bin Laden has been killed during a Navy SEAL raid. I found myself extremely interested in the news but not emotionally invested in it. The overwhelming sentiment that was permeating my mind was “so what?” and please, before you judge me or call me “un-American” allow me to explain. Strategically, his death truly meant something as he has eluded capture for more than two decades and has planned and ordered numerous attacks upon American installations and personnel (both military and civilian). In that sense, this was a very important day in the “War on Terror”.

However, the window for this event eliciting an emotional response from me has long since closed. If they wanted me to be dancing in the streets over the capture or assassination of Bin Laden, they would have had to do that years ago. I completely understand that was completely unreasonable especially considering that we’ve been attempting to find him and bring him to justice since well before September 11th, 2001. I do not fault the American military or intelligence services for taking this long to kill him. Personally, I think the fact that they found him at all is a testament to the quality and perseverance of all those involved.

Do I think that President Obama wrapped up the 2012 election? No.

Do I think that Al Queda is done for? Perhaps, but that has more to do with the next year than anything else.

Do I think the world is a better place without Osama Bin Laden in it? Absolutely.

RASHARD MENDENHALL

Shortly after the aforementioned assassination of Bin Laden, Rashard Mendenhall took to Twitter to express his feelings and perhaps he thought them through and perhaps he didn’t.

Personally, I have no problem with him questioning whether or not people should be celebrating the death of anyone. That is definitely a discussion that should occur somewhere at some time. Perhaps as soon after the death of Bin Laden wasn’t tactful. Whatever, my single biggest reaction to that part of his tweeting was “who cares?”

My much bigger problem was that he more or less suggested that he subscribes to the conspiracy theory that it was more than just two jetliners that managed to take down the two towers of the World Trade Center. He talks about combating ignorance with regards to the celebration of people’s deaths and yet he ignores enormous amounts of evidence that say it was nothing more than two planes. I don’t know if Rashard Mendenhall studied any structural engineering during his three years at Illinois or if he talked to anyone who has studied structural engineering before making his Tweets but if he didn’t, he is the one who is being ignorant.

Frankly, I don’t care what people think or believe and everyone is entitled to their opinions. If Mendenhall spoke to an architect, a structural engineer, or a civil engineer (or if he has studied any of those disciplines) and he has evidence that supports his theory that something other than burning jet fuel and that heartless wench gravity took down those towers, I will listen and if his evidence is at very least sketchy, I’ll admit he may have a point.

However, if he has his own hunch or his own suspicions about the events of that horrific day nearly ten years ago and they aren’t backed up by anything remotely scientific, then he is being the ignorant person that he was railing against and all he’s doing is pouring gasoline on the fire, not raising the level of debate about whether or not we should be celebrating the death of public enemy number 1.

This is something that he never addressed in the blog post he wrote. He talked about people celebrating and focused on that. In that respect, he has a legitimate point and I honestly believe that that is a discussion that should happen and I have a great amount of respect for him to bring that up, knowing how unpopular it would be. With regards to what he said about 9/11, he has since said nothing and that comment was even deleted from his Twitter page, which might be saying something in and of itself.

A sponsor has bailed on him and his team more or less came out and emphatically said that he was not speaking for us, i.e. you’re on your own. Here, he has a very unique opportunity. He can remain quiet and attempt to gradually rehabilitate his image or he can feed the beast. If he takes the former path, he might be remembered as the guy who said that one controversial thing once. If he decides to feed the beast and stand by what he said and follow up on it, get involved with discussions about that day (when, it should be pointed out, he was just 14 years old) and the 1st of May this year when the news broke, then he can be remembered as something more. Someone who had an unpopular opinion, a minority opinion, but someone who was brave enough to stand up and say this is what I think, now what do you think? If he was able to do that and if he was able to somehow remove emotion from the debate (calling him un-American for his comments was nothing short of asinine) then his legacy could be that he stood up for peace and for life.

Instead of sitting there, wherever he is, and saying nothing.

Check back periodically for more of these "Random Notes" type columns...

Until next time, enjoy the baseball!

Starting Rotations

2011-05-08T19:32:00.001-07:00

Much has been made of the pitching rotation that General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. has assembled in Philadelphia. Between Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels, they came into this season with a career record of 481-275 with an ERA of 3.42, a WHIP of 1.20, and 141.7 combined Wins Above Replacement (WAR). They have won 3 Cy Young awards (Lee in ’08 and Halladay in ’03 and ’10) and have been named to a combined 13 All-Star games.

Perhaps more importantly than all of that, these four have combined for a record of 20-8 with a 2.98 ERA in the playoffs. They have pitched a total of 240.0 innings and have allowed just 196 hits with a K/BB ratio of 220:52.

In other words, these guys are good. Where will they rank among the all-time greatest pitching rotations? Obviously this is a question that cannot be answered until October or November but there’s no reason we can’t look ahead at the task that they have in front of them.

Currently, these four have combined for 5.0 WAR with Halladay leading the way with 2.1. Given the accuracy of the WAR values (only accurate to the tenth of a win) and the fact that these numbers don’t necessarily project to over a full season, these figures need to be taken with a grain of salt.

If they did project well, this is where they would end up.

Roy Halladay – 10.6
Cole Hamels – 7.1
Cliff Lee – 4.6
Roy Oswalt – 3.0

Roy Oswalt has only pitched 27.0 innings thus far, compared with at least 40.2 for any of the other three pitchers. Due to the tornados ravaging the area that he grew up in, he has been away from the team and hasn’t pitched as often as he would have. However, once he sets his affairs in order and rejoins the team, it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for all four of these pitchers to end up with a WAR value greater than 4.0. As a rule of thumb, according to baseball-reference.com (where I get these WAR values) this is a good way to judge how good WAR values are.

0-2 – Bench Player
2-5 – Starter
5-8 – All-Star
8+ - MVP

According to that metric, their rotation is made up of an MVP caliber player (or a Cy Young caliber pitcher), an All-Star, a borderline All-Star, and a decent starting pitcher.

We’ve been hearing about this rotation ever since Cliff Lee shocked everyone and signed with them instead of the Rangers or Yankees but what does this mean historically? How many other teams have ever had a combination of starters this good? To answer this question, first I need to set a few criteria. First of all, I only looked at pitchers who started at least 60% of their games and qualified for the ERA title. Given that this means they would have pitched at least as many innings as team games played (162 for most years) and that at least 3/5 of their appearances would have had to be starts, this effectively eliminates relievers from this conversation. Secondly, I only looked at pitchers who put forth better than 4.0 WAR. When I got the results from this search for the all-time best rotations, I didn’t want (for instance) the 2001 Diamondbacks cluttering my data. They did have one of the best 1-2 punches ever in Randy Johnson (8.4 WAR) and Curt Schilling (7.3). However, after that, they dropped down to Brian Anderson (-0.8 WAR), the only other pitcher who qualified under these criteria.

So, to ask the question again, how many rotations had this many good pitchers?

Not too many. Since 1901, 81 teams have had three pitchers with better than 4.0 WAR. Of those, only 5 had four pitchers who crossed that threshold. Of the 76 teams with three pitchers matching these criteria, the 1909 Chicago Cubs were the best, when Mordecai Brown (8.7), Orval Overall (7.1), and Ed Reulbach (5.5) combined for 21.3 WAR. Only four other rotations in the past 110 years have crossed the 20.0 WAR barrier:

1956 Cleveland Indians (21.2)
Early Wynn (8.2)
Herb Score (7.6)
Bob Lemon (5.4)

1969 Chicago Cubs (21.1)
Bill Hands (8.8)
Fergie Jenkins (7.6)
Ken Holtzman (4.7)

1904 New York Giants (20.8)
Joe Mcginnity (10.2)
Christy Mathewson (6.1)
Dummy Taylor (4.5)

1915 St. Louis Terriers (20.3)
Dave Davenport (9.0)
Eddie Plank (6.7)
Doc Crandall (4.6)

These are the five rotations that have featured four different starters with better than 4.0 WAR.

1912 Boston Red Sox (24.1)
Smoky Joe Wood (9.6)
Buck O’Brien (5.3)
Ray Collins (5.1)
Hugh Bedient (4.1)

1991 Atlanta Braves (20.9)
Tom Glavine (7.4)
John Smoltz (4.7)
Steve Avery (4.5)
Charlie Liebrandt (4.3)

1997 Atlanta Braves (20.9)
Greg Maddux (7.3)
Tom Glavine (5.0)
John Smoltz (4.5)
Denny Neagle (4.1)

1913 New York Giants (20.9)
Christy Mathewson (6.8)
Rube Marquard (5.1)
Jeff Tesreau (5.0)
Al Demaree (4.0)

1967 Cincinnati Reds (20.7)
Gary Nolan (6.8)
Mel Queen (4.9)
Jim Maloney (4.7)
Milt Pappas (4.3)

Clearly, if Oswalt were to increase his performance and everyone else were to maintain their current paces, this rotation can easily go down as one of the best in baseball history.

To go a little bit further, let’s raise the WAR threshold a bit. The cutoff that b-r.com uses between a starter and an All-Star is 5.0 WAR so let’s go ahead and throw that number in. How many rotations have had three starters who have all produced more than 5.0 WAR?

Only 11 but these must come with a caveat. 6 of these 11 occurred between 1907 and 1913. Since 1920 (the widely accepted beginning of the live ball era) only 5 rotations have had three All-Star caliber starting pitchers. The best of those five live ball rotations was the 1956 Cleveland Indians (see above). However, there is another metric that I have to bring in here. ERA+ takes into account many things, including the opponents and the ballpark and how easy or difficult it is to pitch in that particular park in that particular year. Again, taking these ERA+ values and simply averaging them is problematic but it gives a snapshot of how good these rotations were when their numbers are normalized for the era in which they played. Of these 11 rotations, the best in terms of average ERA+ was the 2005 Houston Astros, featuring Roy Oswalt (2.94 ERA, 5.3 WAR, and 144 ERA+), Andy Pettitte (2.39, 5.8, and 177), and best of all, Roger Clemens (1.87, 7.2, and 226). This again illustrates the point that while the raw pitching numbers looked better way back when, it’s sometimes more impressive what the best pitchers are able to go in an era that heavily favors the hitters.

To wrap this all up, does the Phillies rotation have a chance to join these groups? Frankly, yes they do. All of them have had seasons of better than 4.0 WAR (Halladay 7, Oswalt 5, Hamels 3, and Lee 2) and their career highs, respectively, are 7.5, 6.2, 4.8, and 7.3.

It will be interesting to see where they end up after another five months of pitching…

MLB Pre/ReView 2011

2011-05-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

Good day, loyal readers. As I’m sure you’ve noticed (or you could easily see by looking at the archive to the right) I haven’t written in quite a while. I wanted to write a preview for the 2011 Major League Baseball season but was unable to do it before the first pitch of the season was thrown out. With my deadline removed, this undertaking was put off time and time again until I finally had the inspiration, the time, and the motivation to write it.

Without further adieu or excuse-making…

SO FAR
(Note: all standing are entering the Sunday Night game between Atlanta and Philadelphia)

After the first month (and a little bit) of the season, there are a few surprises and a few things that everyone saw coming. What I’m going to do is go division by division, saying where the teams are right now and where I predict they’ll end up at season’s end. On top of that, I’ll try to throw in a few tidbits about what’s going on and who you should watch over the next few months.

AL EAST

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
New York (19-13, -)
Tampa Bay (20-14, -)
Boston (16-18, 4)
Toronto (15-19, 5)
Baltimore (14-19, 5.5)

Predicted Order of Finish:
New York
Boston
Tampa Bay
Toronto
Baltimore

New York just has too much talent and they are getting solid contributions from people that they really didn’t expect to. Russell Martin’s batting average has swooned lately but if he can maintain a slash line of .264/.368/.516, they will be in excellent shape. On top of that, it will make the transition away from Jorge Posada being an everyday player (.146/.248/.354) that much easier. Plus, they’ve gotten solid additions from Ivan Nova and Bartolo Colon from the rotation and Curtis Granderson is leading the team in home runs. In short, the sky is the limit for this team.

You just knew that sooner or later, Boston would rebound from their horrific 0-6 start and thus far they have, going 16-12 since. Adrian Gonzalez is doing what he normally does and when he starts hitting a few more home runs, his numbers will be right at (or better) where they were last year. Carl Crawford is hitting better but is still well away from where he wants to be. Their pitching has been decent, definitely good enough with the above average offense that everyone was expecting. When they start hitting this team will start stringing wins together and I think they’ll finish with 90-95 wins, right where everyone expected them to be.

As for the rest of the division, Tampa Bay has played very well since a terrible start and the Orioles have done just the opposite. I don’t see any of those teams having any staying power in this division with the Yankees and Red Sox so I look for them to try to play the role of spoiler in the wildcard chase. Oh, and also to see how many home runs Jose Bautista will hit…

AL CENTRAL

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
Cleveland (22-11, -)
Kansas City (18-16, 4.5)
Detroit (17-18, 6)
Minnesota (12-20, 9.5)
Chicago (13-22, 10)

Predicted Order of Finish:
Cleveland/Detroit
?
?
?
?

Before the season, I would have predicted that the Twins would win it in a tight three way race with Detroit and Chicago. A quick glance at the standings will show that they are a combined 18 games under .500 (42-60). So what has happened? As far as the Twins are concerned, Joe Mauer has not been hitting and Justin Morneau hasn’t looked the same since coming back from the concussion he sustained last July. Chicago is just in complete disarray and Detroit is just one game under .500 and 6 games behind a team off to a torrent start so they aren’t in that bad of a spot.

The real question is; are the Indians for real? It’s easy to forget that in 2007, they had the best record in baseball (96-66) and were one out from a trip to the World Series. That team featured Cy Young winner CC Sabathia but more importantly that team featured a healthy Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore. The last three years those two guys have been bouncing between the field and the DL. This year, they have both played significant time and Hafner is putting up the kind of line (.347/.406/.526) that reminds people of just how good he once was.

Cleveland will go as far as their pitching can take them. Right now they have a 3.24 team ERA and if that continues, they will win the division. If not, look for Detroit to wait out the other teams and steal the division with a less than stellar win total.

AL WEST

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
Los Angeles (20-15, -)
Oakland (18-17, 2)
Texas (18-17, 2)
Seattle (16-19, 4)

Predicted Order of Finish:
Texas
Oakland
Los Angeles
Seattle

This is one of the few divisions where they aren’t really any surprises. The Angels have been a good team under Mike Scioscia for years and seeing them in first place isn’t surprising. Texas has cooled off after a very hot start but they have players to win this division if they can stay healthy. Also look for Oakland’s young quartet of starters to lead this team to a strong second place finish.

The Mariners… well, they’re playing better than last year… that’s all I can really say right now. They are several years from contending again (and some of us just can’t wait for that).

NL EAST

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
Philadelphia (22-10, -)
Florida (20-13, 2.5)
Atlanta (19-16, 4.5)
Washington (16-18, 7)
New York (15-19, 8)

Predicted Order of Finish:
Philadelphia
Atlanta
Florida
Washington
New York

For the Phillies, the quartet of aces (and let’s be honest, really good former aces) has been just about as good as advertised. They have combined to go 14-6 with a 2.90 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP. Most importantly, they have managed to start the season 22-10 without Chase Utley. If he comes back close to 100%, this team becomes scary good.

Atlanta also has started off very well, specifically with their pitching rotation (which sports the best rotation ERA in the NL). If they can find the offense, they will easily win the wildcard in the National League. As far as the other three teams go, it looks like the Nationals will be a showcase for really good players until they can get enough role players to make a serious run at the division. Once Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg get to the majors, this team will be fun to watch, even if they don’t win a ton of games just yet. Frankly, it’s a miracle that the Nats are even 16-18 given that as a team, their slash line is .227/.298/.348 and their leading qualifying hitter is hitting .227.

As far as the Mets go, they aren’t going to contend for the division title or the wildcard. The most interesting thing to watch with New York’s other team is if and when they start slashing payroll and dumping veterans who haven’t earned their contract in years and are making a ton of money.

NL CENTRAL

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
St. Louis (20-15, -)
Cincinnati (18-16, 1.5)
Pittsburgh (17-17, 2.5)
Chicago (15-18, 4)
Milwaukee (14-20, 5.5)
Houston (13-21, 6.5)

Predicted Order of Finish:

St. Louis/Cincinnati
St. Louis/Cincinnati
?
?
?
?

I firmly believe that this race will come down to the Reds and Cardinals yet again and this while I never would have imagined saying this a month ago, I think the Cardinals have the inside track. This is simply because even though Albert Pujols is nowhere near on track (.248/.322/.421), Matt Holiday (.398/.484/.611) and Lance Berkman (.374/.452/.738) are hitting like they want to rearrange the record books. Even though they will inevitably cool off, Pujols will inevitably heat up.

The most unfortunate story out of this division has to be the Milwaukee Brewers. They put pretty much everything into winning this year and so far it that plan has been completely derailed. There is still plenty of time to rebound but they are chasing two solid teams and they only have so much time for Zach Greinke to prove that trading for him wasn’t a monumental mistake. When you add this to the fact that with their long term commitment to Ryan Braun and the accompanying signals that they don’t believe they can resign Prince Fielder, it looks like this might be the beginning of a rebuilding phase.

NL WEST

Current Standings:
Team (W-L, GB)
Colorado (18-14, -)
San Francisco (18-16, 1)
Los Angeles (16-19, 3.5)
Arizona (15-18, 3.5)
San Diego (14-20, 5)

Projected Order of Finish:
Colorado
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Arizona
San Diego

This is the only division that I see the current standings holding up throughout the season. This is due to the fact that the standings in other divisions are influenced by teams getting off to hot or cold starts that nobody foresaw.

With regards to the defending World Series Champions, I question their ability to avoid a letdown. They have many great players and if Pablo Sandoval keeps his weight down, they will be a very good team. Will they be good enough to get to the low-mid 90’s in wins? I’m not sure if they are and I think that might be what they need to do to win either the division or the wildcard.

Colorado has played well and their bullpen has bitten them a bit recently but keep in mind that they got off to a great start and are now still over .500 and in first place despite:

- Carlos Gonzalez off to a bad start with the bat (.241/.305/.336 compared with .336/.376/.598 from a year ago)
- A team batting line that is nothing short of atrocious (.237/.322/.379)
- Ubaldo Jimenez is 0-2 with a 5.88 ERA and a WHIP of 1.46 (compared with 19-8, 2.88, and 1.15 from a year ago)

The Dodger have a good team and several quality players but the ownership situation they are in is awful and unlike the Rangers last year, their situation is being played out in a huge media market and they play in a much tougher division than the Rangers had to contend with a year ago.

PLAYOFFS

The National League will be represented by Philadelphia, St. Louis, Colorado, and Atlanta while the American League will be represented by New York, Detroit, Texas, and Boston.

NLDS
Philadelphia over St. Louis
Atlanta over Colorado

ALDS
Detroit over New York
Boston over Texas

LCS
Philadelphia over Atlanta
Boston over Detroit

World Series
Philadelphia over Boston

Cy Young
Roy Halladay, PHI
Jered Weaver, LAA

MVP
Matt Holiday, STL
Curtis Granderson, NYY

IF SOME IS GOOD, MORE IS BETTER... RIGHT?

2011-04-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

Clearly, VCU belonged in the 2011 edition of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Selection Committee did the right thing by choosing VCU over the likes of Colorado, Virginia Tech, and Harvard. However, the Committee doubly disrespected VCU by giving them an 11 seed and then making them play an additional game just to get into the field of 64 teams.

Right?

Nope.

Based on their resume, they were a shaky 11 seed at best and they were a hair’s breadth from not even being in the tournament, First Four or not. But then how else can you explain the meteoric rise from a 23-11 regular season record to steamrolling a team from every major conference except the SEC and with the exception of their Florida State game, doing so by at least 10 points? Clearly they were underrated coming into the NCAA tournament.

Right?

Again, nope.

Every year, the NCAA tournament, accurately nicknamed “March Madness”, claims to crown the best team in all of college basketball. However, if you look at the winners closely and then look at the performance of teams during the regular season, that statement isn’t always true. In the past 29 NCAA tournaments, only 4 times has a team entered the tournament ranked #1 in the country and then gone on to win the national title. Let’s compare that, for just a moment, to everyone’s favorite punching bag; the BCS.

Since the inception of the BCS in 1998, how many times has the 10th best team in the country won the national title? That’s right, never. How many times has a team ranked as low at 40th had a shot at a national title this late in a season? Same as before, never. If you look strictly at seeds (and assume that each of these four teams was the best on their seed line), this Final Four is matching up the 9th, 13th, 29th, and 41st best teams in the country.

In this day and age of rampant parity, the NCAA Tournament does not necessarily crown the best team; it crowns the hottest team. The story has become downright famous by now but 24 days ago, Connecticut was 21-9 and facing a tremendous challenge. At some point in their preparation for the Big East tournament they caught fire and haven’t lost since and currently they are the highest seed left in the Big Dance.

No matter what format you choose to determine a national champion, as long as the results are determined on the field of play, there is always a chance that a lesser team will win and the true best team will be left behind. However, there is a way to minimize the chances of this happening but they are thoroughly impractical at the college level; playoff series.

Can a lesser team beat a better team in one game with everything on the line? Of course they can. VCU proved that last weekend by outplaying a better Kansas team. Could VCU beat Kansas 4 times in a 7 game series? Yes, they can, but if you want to put money on VCU, I’ll take that bet every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Playoff series expose lesser teams for all the faults that make them lesser teams; not as much depth, inferior coaching, and inferior talent among them. Therefore, the better team is far more likely to win a playoff series than a one game, winner-take-all slugfest.

As I said, series are impractical at the college level and they are also impractical for the sport of football. So we circle back to the original point which was the best team does not necessarily win the NCAA Tournament. Usually it is the hottest team and when the better team is not the hotter team, a significant gap in talent can make up for that difference. With star college players staying in college for less and less time at the NBA stepping stone schools, the overall talent level at those schools has decreased while the talent level at smaller schools has increased.

What all of this boils down to is smaller schools are led by talented veteran players while many big-time programs are led by veteran role players and green stars. Because of the shrinking talent disparity between the big and small programs, Kansas can’t afford to shoot 35% against VCU and win. Louisville can’t go scoreless for their first 7 minutes against Morehead State and win. Is all of this a bad thing? Not at all. In my personal pantheon of sporting events, the World Series ranks first and just behind it is the NCAA Tournament. I don’t care that I do poorly in my family pool and I don’t care if the best teams are left on the sidelines, watching the Final Four on CBS (if they wanted to be on the court and not on the couch, they should have played better). It is a wonderful event and this year should prove once again that by getting in with a seed other than 16, anything can happen.

MOTIVATION

Another reason for so many of these upsets is the end goal that the teams have in mind. The NCAA Tournament is set-up with several stepping stones before you even reach the national title game. For instance, let’s look at a 2 seed is playing a 7 seed in the second round. The 2 seed is seen by many as a national title contender and they are expected to give the 1 seed in their region all they can handle in the Elite 8. The 7 seed, on the other hand, had a breakthrough year and made the tournament for the first time in the program’s history. The 2 seed has dreams of winning a national title while the 7 seed has dreams of making the Sweet 16.

So what happens? The 2 seed falls flat because they were looking at their potential match-ups in the next two or three rounds while the 7 seed played like their entire season was on the line. Invariably, the 7 seed will fall flat in the next round because they already achieved their goal of playing in the Sweet 16.

To cross to a different sport for a moment, in 2007, the Colorado Rockies had a truly unimaginable run to make it to the World Series, winning 21 of 22 games down the stretch and through the NLDS and NLCS. They achieved something beyond their wildest dreams and they won the National League. When the World Series started, they were happy to be there while their opponents, the Red Sox, were not happy to just be there. Predictably, the Rockies never really got into the series and lost 4-0.

Was Kansas looking ahead to the Final Four when VCU blitzed them? Possibly. Will VCU maintain their focus and not settle for just making it to the Final Four? History would suggest no but anything can happen.

EXPANSION

So if VCU was the last team into this tournament and they made this unbelievable run to the Final Four, then clearly the tournament would be better served by having more teams… right? Yes and no. Financially speaking, they would be better served. There would be more games (for instance, depending on format a 96 team field would yield 79 games versus 65 this year) which would mean that there are more opportunities for advertising revenue and ticket revenue and so on and so forth. For all the hot air spewing forth about how people will stop watching when the NCAA’s greed becomes so obvious that everyone can see it, people will still watch the NCAA tournament and companies will still pay big money for advertising. At this point in time, there is little to no incentive for the NCAA to NOT expand the tournament.

At what point would expansion harm the integrity of the tournament though? At what point would first round games be so pointless that the tournament has become more about the advertisers and less about the players? I felt very conflicted about having play-in games at the 11 and 12 seed level this year but in retrospect, having play-in games at those levels matters. Everyone knew that no matter who won between the University of North Carolina-Asheville and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, they were going to get blown out by Pittsburgh (which UNCA did, 74-51). So I’ll admit that this little quirk in the selection process worked this year. However, that is no guarantee that it will work next year or any other year in the future.

In short, expanding the tournament any further is not a good idea. There is a beauty and a symmetry of having 16 teams in 4 different regions and have one representative from each play-off for the national title and I think if you do a little searching around the internet, you’ll find a ton of people who agree with me. The problem is that those same people (myself included) won’t stop watching if the powers that be keep expanding it… which means there’s no reason not to.

MARCH MADNESS IN FULL SWING

2011-03-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

First of all, I have to ask… how is your bracket looking? That bad, huh? Well don’t feel too bad about it because the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is turning into an exercise in roulette. On paper, I can tell you what should have happened in each of the four play-in games, each of the 32 second round games, and each of the 16 third round games but as they say so many times that I’m sick of hearing it, games are not played on paper.

Similarly to last year, I attempted to look at the field of 68 from a statistical perspective and determine who should be the best team in the country and just like last year, I was able to predict some very interesting upsets and I also fell drastically short on others.

Before I go any further, for the sake of this post, the word “upset” will be used to describe a game in which a lower seed beats a higher seed… that’s all. Secondly, even though I referred to them correctly in the first paragraph, I will break with the new convention set this year. There were four play-in games, 32 games in the first round, and 16 games in the second round. I do not consider it a round when 8 teams are playing and 60 teams are sitting at home. I will arbitrarily say that half the teams in the field should be playing to qualify as the first round. Maybe if the number increases to 16 or 32 teams then I can call it the preliminary round or maybe the wildcard round but the first round is still when the majority of teams are playing for the first time.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, why do I call this tournament a complete gamble? Entirely due to one thing that professional leagues strive for and college leagues have – parity. The interesting part is that with regards to the NCAA tournament, parity does not mean that any team can break through and win a national championship. It simply means that any team can play for forty solid minutes with any other team in the field. When I looked at this field, I see 6-8 legitimate title contenders (Kansas, Ohio State, Duke, Pittsburgh, Florida, North Carolina, and Connecticut). I also see 6-8 teams that have little to no business being in this tournament but they won their conference tournaments so they get in automatically as a 15 or 16 seed and I’m fine with that. What we’re left with is anywhere from 52 to 56 teams that are on relatively similar ground and this theory is proven out by the fact that there are relatively few blowouts (outside of the group of title contenders I mentioned earlier) and there are 3 teams with seeds higher than 10 in the sweet 16.

There are such things as flukes but was Butler a fluke? Several of the analysts said that Richmond was a very tough draw as a number 12 seed and while they did not play Louisville, they were easily the best team on the floor against Morehead State (#13) and Vanderbilt (#5). Washington was a #7 seed and yet gave #2 North Carolina every bit that they could handle and nearly came away with a victory despite doing their best to lose the game.

My point in all of this is the seeds are blurring together. The difference between a #3 and a #12 might be nothing more than who they played during the season, the luck they had with injuries, the conference they played in, and individual match-ups they have. What makes this tournament so wonderful and so terribly difficult to predict is the fact that if Jimmer Fredette shoots the ball well and his teammates also shoot the ball well, BYU looks like a national title contender. Against Gonzaga, they were 14-28 from 3-point range and shot 52.5% overall en route to scoring 89 points and routing the Bulldogs. In their last game before the NCAA tourney on March 12, they were 19-59 from the floor (32.2%) and 6-24 from 3 point range (25%) and they were destroyed by San Diego State.

Much was made during the selection show and the three days leading up to the start of the first round about how many losses there were for these teams and many people took that to be an indictment of the overall quality of the field, saying that it was very low. However, I take a differing view. Simply put, parity rules. On March 15th, the final AP poll was released and in the top 25, five teams had 10 or more losses and another two had 9 losses. Four of those seven teams were from one conference that is widely considered the deepest and best basketball conference in the country, the Big East.

Is #9 Connecticut (26-9) a better team than #10 BYU (30-4)? According to record, no they aren’t. However, when you take into account that of Connecticut’s 9 losses, six came to teams ranked at the time, two came to teams ranked in the final AP poll, and the last (Marquette) received votes in the final AP Poll, it sounds like they were all quality losses. Would a stronger team have won some of those games? Of course, but when one team plays just three games against ranked opponents and the other plays 15 game against ranked opponents, 26-9 starts to look a lot better than 30-4.

On top of all of this, when filling out a bracket you have no idea who is going to show up. Louisville was 7 minutes into their game against Morehead State when they scored their first point. I was sure that the dry spell would end after three or so minutes when Louisville was fouled while shooting and had two free throws (which were both missed). On the flipside of the Louisville/Pittsburgh coin, Ohio State came in as a bit of a wildcard for me considering they have had some underachieving tournament teams in the past. Right now, they are playing like the number one overall seed and after spotting George Mason an 11-2 lead, they ran them out of the state of Ohio, cruising to a final score of 98-66.

SWEET 16 PREDICTIONS

Out of the final 16 teams, I correctly predicted 7 of them (Kansas from the Southwest, Ohio State and Kentucky from the East, Duke and San Diego State from the West, and BYU and Florida from the Southeast). Given that wonderful record and that I’ve correctly predicted just 31 of 48 games correctly, take this all with a grain of salt (or a salt mine worth of salt).

EAST

North Carolina likes to give up points (170 in two tournament games thus far) but they are good enough offensively. They will get past Marquette.

Kentucky is good. Ohio State could be the only great team in this field and they are clicking on all 10 (12, I don’t know, 16?) cylinders.

Regional Final – Ohio State over North Carolina

WEST

Duke struggled mightily against Michigan and Arizona has played well enough to put together last minute victories against Memphis and Texas.

Connecticut is somehow continuing their streak from the Big East tournament but they face a very solid San Diego State squad.

Regional Final – sticking to my guns, San Diego State will advance to Houston by beating Duke.

SOUTHWEST

Kansas isn’t playing like the Buckeyes but they are playing well and winning solidly.

The other three teams in the region are seeded 10th, 11th, and 12th.

Regional Final – Kansas over the three dwarves, becoming just the second team ever to advance to the Final Four by never having to play a team seeded higher than 9.

SOUTHEAST

Butler is scrapping by and they are an exceedingly dangerous team due to their veteran presence. Despite Wisconsin’s success thus far this is a team that scored 33 points in losing to Penn State in the Big Ten tournament. That performance would fly in 1950 but not 2011.

Is Florida going to be able to stop the Jimmer Show? The answer is it doesn’t matter. They have to stop the other eleven guys on the roster. Against Gonzaga, BYU players not named Fredette were 20-36 from the floor and 7-16 from 3 point range for 55 points. Against San Diego State, those numbers were 9-34, 4-17, and 24 points.

Regional Final – Butler makes a return trip to the Final Four by beating whoever survives the seven overtime slugfest between Florida and BYU.

FINAL FOUR

Butler continues their magic by beating Kansas (and thus ruining any chance my bracket had at respectability) and Ohio State steamrolls San Diego State who is just overjoyed to be in the Final Four.

On Monday, Ohio State takes a 20 point lead into halftime. Once everyone changes the channel to see how well Rob Lowe will do as Charlie Sheen’s replacement on “Two and a Half Men”, Butler starts chipping away, tying the game with ten seconds left. True to this tournament’s form, Butler is called for a reach-in foul 60 feet from the hoop and the fouled Buckeye steps to the line and calmly sinks two free throws with four seconds remaining.

Then Matt Howard does what Gordon Hayward couldn’t do last year; hit a halfcourt runner at the buzzer to win the game 73-72.

Wow, I got my heart pumping just thinking about that. Enjoy the basketball people, this is the best ball that you’re likely to ever see.

(having said all that, it’d be nice but far more likely is Ohio State and Kansas playing a three overtime epic and the Buckeyes prevailing to take the trophy)

The Rime of the Ancient Sports Leagues

2011-03-05T07:35:00.001-08:00

Money money everywhere and all the leagues did shrink
Money money everywhere and not a drop to drink

Ah, few things take me back quite like the poem based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”… anyway, enough nostalgia. At some point, the NFL Players Association and the NFL owners will sign a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. It might be sooner and it might be later (my better half is hoping for later… she tolerates me watching American Football of any kind). Between “The Decision” of LeBron James and “The Manipulation” of Carmelo Anthony, the hard line taken by the NFL owners, and the sounding of Hank Steinbrenner, I think that there is a larger issue that is troubling all of the major professional leagues in North America. In the interest of full disclosure, I did feel the need to say North America instead of the United States because of the 8 teams (out of 122) that reside north of the border.

So what is the larger issue? That millionaires and billionaires can’t agree over who gets the money? I hate to be so blunt about it but if you are under the impression that this problem is a new one to the economic model of this country, you’ve obviously been living under a rock for the past few decades. What is the solution? Nationalize the whole industry? While that might be the answer for some problems, it is not the answer for this one (although it would probably help reduce the deficit significantly).

What I’d like to do is examine each sport and see where they stand with regards to the specific issues which are plaguing them publicly. I don’t delve into the inner workings of professional sporting leagues and it’s entirely possible that the biggest problem facing each league isn’t the one I mention. However, these are the issues that are getting the most play in the press and it’s there that I will focus this post.

Before we get into it, I have to apologize to all of you hockey fans out there. I don’t understand hockey and the only time in my life that I’ve ever watched a hockey game from start to finish was the 2010 gold medal game. Having said that, I don’t know what is plaguing the league other than the fact that it’s getting closer and closer to being replaced as a member of the “Big 4” club by NASCAR. I don’t follow hockey and I still say that would be a sad day.

NBA

Last summer we were bombarded by “The Decision”. Starting last year and going almost all the way up to the trade deadline this year we were treated to “The Manipulation”. The big picture issue is whether or not superstars should team up and form these trios in an attempt to win with three stars and ten role players. Many say that it started with Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett being traded to the Celtics to team up with Paul Pierce and has continued today with the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks (and you could probably throw the Lakers in there… especially if the rumors are true and Dwight Howard ends up there soon). The question is, is this good for the league?

I’ve heard and read about many former players that are condemning these actions, saying that they would rather beat the best than play with the best and I completely understand this mentality. However, how many titles did LeBron James win in Cleveland as the lone superstar? How about Dwayne Wade in Miami? How about Kobe Bryant in LA?

In this day and age, the titles follow the superstars and while that last example may not quite hold water (Kobe) that would depend entirely on your definition of superstar. While I personally would not put Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom into that category, I also don’t think they’re that far off.

Going back further, how many titles did David Robinson win as the dominant inside force he was before Tim Duncan came along? How many did Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett combine for before they teamed up?

As I’m sure you can guess the answer to all those questions is zero. One player can’t take a team all the way in the NBA today and I would argue that the same has been true throughout the history of the NBA. In 1997, a panel consisting of members of the media, former players and coaches, and former and current front office members selected the greatest 50 players from the first fifty years of NBA history. By the logic exhibited by several former players, you would never want to team up with those guys; you would want to beat those guys. Of those 50, only 4 never played with another member of the exclusive club.

George Mikan
Bob Petit
Isaiah Thomas
Patrick Ewing

Another noteworthy factoid from that list; only once has a team has had five players that ended up being named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players ever playing on the same team. They were:

1973-74 New York Knicks
Willis Reed
Walt Frazier
Dave DeBusschere
Jerry Lucas
Earl Monroe

Considering that Mikan and Petit played in an era where there were so few good players, much less stars, I think we can safely exclude their combined 6 championships from this discussion. Thomas and Ewing combined to play 30 seasons in the NBA and won two titles (both by Thomas). At that time the Lakers and Celtics dynasties of the ‘80’s were winding down and the Bulls weren’t quite ready for the spotlight yet, leaving a perfect void for a very good and tough team led by one great player.

I fully understand that very few of the players on that list manipulated their way from one team to another or staged an hour long primetime special to say nine words but the fact remains that championship teams have always formed around the combination of great players with role players filling in the gaps.

So what is the harm with great young players wanting to team up in an attempt to win a championship? If they don’t care about winning and only want to set records and make money, they can easily go to a team like Cleveland or the Clippers, make $20 million a season and get the lion’s share of the ball. Instead, you have three young superstars in James, Wade, and Bosh who are all willing to take a slightly diminished role in order to play with one another. That, in this day and age of prima donnas, isn’t such a bad trait.

The problem I have is not that they wanted to team up, it’s how they did it; through the media. Carmelo Anthony very publicly wanted out and that drastically reduced Denver’s leverage in the trade negotiations as teams knew they were desperate to get something back for him. On the other hand, LeBron James wrangled a three ring circus and then left the Cavaliers with nothing.

Now you have the formation of an aristocratic class of teams in the NBA, the Heat, Celtics, Knicks, Lakers, and Spurs with the Bulls and Mavericks close behind, while the rest of the league is left high and dry.

Is there a solution? Yes.
Will the owners like it? No.
Why? The almighty dollar.

THE NFL

Whenever it comes to labor renegotiations in professional sports, you have to maintain some semblance of perspective. According to figures researched by Plunkett Research, LTD (a firm that looks into industry trends, statistics, and analysis of top companies) the NFL produced $7.8 billion in total revenue last year. The numbers vary slightly from year to year but the exact numbers aren’t really necessary; ballpark figures will suffice. Under the current collective bargaining agreement (hereafter abbreviated CBA) the owners take $1 billion off the top of that number to distribute amongst themselves. After that, it goes into a pool that is shared by the owners and players. Under the current agreement (if my memory serves me this today) the players cut of that is 60%. If we assume that revenue figure is accurate, that comes out to $4.08 billion that goes to the players, both past and present.

However, the owners are shrewd businessmen and like more zeroes in their bank accounts. They want to take another billion off the top before the revenue sharing kicks in. With these figures, the owners’ share of the pie would go from $3.72 billion to $4.32 billion. If we were to simply spread the remainder of the pie amongst the roughly 1,600 NFL players and we were to ignore things like pension plans, then the average salary in the NFL would drop 14.7% from $2.55 million to $2.18 million.

Again, we have a situation where millionaires are arguing with billionaires over a very large, lucrative pie. I’ll admit that there are certain issues that the owners have (such as a rookie salary wage) that make a lot of sense. However, trimming another 13% of their leagues revenues out for themselves is nothing short of ridiculous. The problem is it’s entirely possible that they’ll get it.

MLB

Is the league’s business model straying towards socialism? Perhaps, a little but I don’t have any problem with that. What I do have a problem with is teams like the Yankees and Red Sox paying vast amounts of money that eventually ends up in the hands of teams that simply deposit it in their bank accounts. The entire point of the revenue sharing agreement was for teams who didn’t play in a market that could justify a $100 million payroll (Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Tampa Bay) to have a $100 million payroll and compete directly with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox.

First of all, I’m not suggesting that every team should be spending $100 million on its 25 man roster. However, it’s difficult to call the Yankees and Red Sox the problem when the Pirates have spent less money in the last five years (while posting a 321-488 record) than the Yankees did to go 95-67 this past year.

What is the solution? A salary cap? The problem with a cap of any kind is the players don’t want anything to do with it and the player’s union is the strongest of any of the Big 4 sports (in my opinion). What’s another solution?

What are the solutions to these problems?

ARE THERE SOLUTIONS?

All of them center on the almighty dollar. Everyone wants more money and they want to sacrifice less and less to the guys on the other side of the bargaining table. On top of that, none of the parties that are actually doing the bargaining (the player’s rep and the commissioner) want to appear weak by giving too much or else they’ll be out of a job very quickly and you must remember that these are not minimum wage jobs.

All of these problems are easy to solve one of two ways (though really it just ends up as one big problem) as long as you don’t include the players in the decision making process… or the owners for that matter.

In the NBA, eliminate the salary structure that is now in place. How much help will that provide with regards to keeping players in smaller markets? Quite a bit. The difference right now between a max contract in Miami and a max contract in Cleveland is one additional year. The Average Annual Salary (AAS from now on) remains roughly the same. Now imagine that the Cavaliers were able to offer a contract worth an additional $10 million per season… or $20 million. Would that be enough to offset the desire to go to more tourist friendly cities? Absolutely, but here comes the problem… payrolls explode and now, the Cavaliers can’t afford that kind of payroll and neither can the Clippers or the Kings or the Nets. Finally, after much consternation and realizing that all the great players end up in big markets anyway, the NBA eliminates four teams.

In the NFL, the player’s union records some landmark deals in order to secure more of the revenue pie for active players but also much more for retired players and the NFL owners are exposed as the 19th century businessmen that many of them are, putting profits ahead of the well-being of the workers. Salaries continue to escalate to the point that some teams can keep the high priced players and some can’t. In a stunning move by what has been for years the most popular sport in America, Commissioner Roger Goodell announces that he will be contracting four teams.

In Major League Baseball, Hank Steinbrenner wins his argument and in an amazing turn of events, the owners are no longer forced to pay a luxury tax on their high payrolls or share revenues with the less fortunate teams. After a Cinderella run to the ALCS, the Kansas City Royals (who have a nice trim $15 million payroll) lose to the monstrosity that is the Yankees (with their $400 million payroll) and the Yankees go on to win yet another World Series. Admitting that eliminating the luxury tax was a terrible idea, the commissioner of baseball decides to contract four teams in an attempt to level the playing field.

There is one other solution other than contraction and that would be moving the teams to markets that will actually support a professional franchise. However, in this day and age of being able to choose any one of dozens of leisure activities, how many franchises can these major markets support? New York currently has seven teams and they all seem to prosper. Los Angeles has five with a glaring lack of an NFL team and again, they all seem to be well supported. Can other cities support that many teams?

Like I said, the solutions are all tied together but the roots of them all lead back to the same place.

The almighty dollar.

Salary Structure in Major League Baseball

2011-02-21T15:17:00.001-08:00

In light of the fact that we might be within a year of having the upper end of the salary scale in Major League Baseball redefined, I wanted to throw out two statements. The point of these statements is to get you in the right frame of mind for the numbers that I’m going to be throwing at you.

The salary structure in Major League Baseball is absurdly out of hand.

A salary cap would go a long ways to helping fix MLB’s salary problem.

THE NUMBERS

In 2001, Major League Baseball teams spent $1.66 billion on payroll and in 2009 the teams spent $2.23 billion, an increase of 34.2%. Considering that this represents an increase in average team payroll from $55.4 million up to $74.4 million, it doesn’t really sound like an extraordinary increase. However, when its compared with the Consumer Price Index, one of the most commonly used tools to measure inflation, that rate of payroll increase is well over the increase in the CPI (20.6%).

Does this mean that MLB salaries are getting too high? Not necessarily. Over the same time period, NFL payrolls have increased by 55.7% while NBA payrolls have gone up 69.8%. The difference between Major League Baseball and those other two leagues is that they have a salary cap while baseball does not. So why then are their payrolls numbers rising faster than the league that has no salary cap?

Is it because revenue streams are better in the NFL and the NBA? Not really. Major League Baseball has had record setting revenues the past few years. Is it because of labor uncertainty that has caused baseball owners to be more reluctant to hand out dollars to players? Nope. In fact, Major League Baseball is the only of these three leagues that is not heading into uncertain waters with regards to labor negotiations between the players and the owners. It is entirely possible that the dramatic rise in payrolls figures in the NBA and NFL are contributing to their current labor situations.

Basically what all of that says is that if the Major League Baseball salaries are rising at alarming rates, then salaries in the NFL and NBA are rising at an even more alarming rate. So then the question becomes whether or not there is any truth to the first statement above and most of that answer depends on what your definition of “absurdly out of hand” is.

In that case, why have salaries been in the news so much in the past few years? Well, a lot of it has to do with the Yankees and other than that, it mostly has to do with the high profile signings of the past few years. Joe Mauer, Ryan Howard, Matt Holliday, Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, and Troy Tulowitzki are just a few of the players who have signed contracts or contract extensions worth an amount in excess of $100 million. On top of that, three high profile players are going to sign very large contracts within the next year; Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, and the man who will be resetting the curve when it comes to large contracts, Albert Pujols.

Maybe this is the question we should be asking. Overall payrolls in Major League Baseball have been climbing at a much steadier rate through the past ten years than those of the NBA or the NFL. However, the higher end of MLB contracts has skyrocketed to the point where the highest paid player now makes roughly ten times the league average. Is the payroll situation in baseball getting its reputation because of the aristocratic class of players that are getting paid much more than the league average?

FORMATION OF AN ARISTOCRACY?

In 1997, Albert Belle became the first player to earn $10 million in a single season and he earned exactly that amount. In 2010, 79 different players were paid at least $10 million and Alex Rodriguez was paid more than triple that amount ($33 million). Over that time period, the overall salary figure in MLB has jumped from $969 million to $2.61 billion, an increase of 169.5%.

That’s great and all but the active roster of a Major League Baseball team is 25 players and if we assume that as many as 8 or 9 players get included into the payroll numbers, that still gives us a pool of roughly 1,000 players. If only 8% of players are earning that amount of money, can it really skew the payroll numbers that much? The answer is absolutely.

If we assume that there is a pool of 1,000 players that go into baseball-reference.com’s payroll numbers that means that 999 players earned less than $10 million in 1997 and that number shrunk to 921 by last year. In the past 14 years, the amount of money paid to those players has gone up from $959 million up to $1.46 billion. This represents an increase of just 52.7%, far below the overall increase.

Here’s the amazing part. Last year, the 79 players who earned over $10 million were paid a grand total of $1.15 billion, or 43.9% of the total money paid out in salaries. In 1997, that was just 1.03%.

An aristocracy is a system of government where the power is consolidated amongst a few of the citizens. If the question is whether or not a sort of aristocratic class has developed in Major League Baseball, the answer is an emphatic yes. If there is a problem with the salary structure in baseball, it lies in the fact that the top 8% of wage earners are earning 44% of the money being paid to players.

Is a salary cap a solution to this “problem”? The problem with imposing a salary cap on Major League Baseball is that it provides no disincentive to teams wanting to sign a player to a contract worth $20 million per season. Teams will simply start paying one player that much money and the rest of the roster will be filled with players somewhere on the lower end of the payroll spectrum. If they want to reduce the salaries of the top tier of players, they would need to institute rules in the collective bargaining agreement limiting the maximum size of a contract a player can sign, much like the NBA. Being the highest paid player in the NBA isn’t that big of a deal anymore because the amount of money the top tier of players are getting paid is all the result of an equation based on how long they’ve been in the league.

CONCLUSION

Does the salary structure in baseball need fixing? In my opinion, it does not. Teams that have enormous revenue streams from ticket sales, merchandise sales, advertising, and broadcasting contracts can spend whatever they want on a team. However, if they spend too much too often, they have to pay the luxury tax which goes to teams that do not have the type of revenue streams that the Yankees and Red Sox have.

This system works for baseball and would not work as well for the NBA or the NFL. In the NBA if you have the best player at every position, you’re probably going to win 75 games and win the NBA title. If you have the best player at every position in the NFL, you’ll win 14-15 games every year and play in the Super Bowl more years than not. If you have the best player at every position in baseball, it will give you an excellent shot at the playoffs every year but not necessarily the World Series. From 1996-2001, it can be argued that the Yankees didn’t have one player on their roster that could be considered the best at his position and they won four World Series title in those six years and played in another. Baseball is all about having good players at every position with as few holes as possible. In other words, no matter how much money you spend on putting together the best roster in the history of baseball, it still doesn’t guarantee you a World Series title.

For all of you out there who think the system is broken and a salary cap is necessary, don’t forget that in the last ten years, only one team with the highest payroll in baseball has won the World Series (the 2009 Yankees).

The system isn’t broken, it just might need a tweak or two…

The Albert Pujols Saga

2011-02-18T22:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've written in this space and the reason is quite simple. Between the Super Bowl and the beginning of the NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the dullest times of the year when it comes to my sporting interests. I've had many ideas for posts rolling around my head but nothing seemed to stick... until this situation came about and then came to a head in the past week.

As any of you who have been paying attention already know, the deadline has passed. Unless the Albert Pujols camp changes their minds over the course of the next eight and a half months, he will become one of the most coveted free agents in the history of sports. Not just baseball, but all sports. It is very rare for a player of his talent and stature to become a free agent and for the most recent example in all sports; we only have to go back to the Decision. As far as baseball is concerned, Pujols will easily be the most coveted free agent since the winter of 2000 when Alex Rodriguez hit the free agent market with a career slash line of .309/.374/.561 and 189 home runs… at the age of 24.

So the questions on everybody’s mind are obvious.

First, what team will he sign with?

Second, how many zeroes will be on his new contract?

Lastly, will he be worth it to whoever makes history?

THE MONEY

In my opinion the second question is the easiest to answer. The most common numbers being kicked around are 10 years at an AAS (average annual salary) of $30 million, besting Alex Rodriguez’s record deal when he resigned with the Yankees a few winters ago. The thing that nobody knows outside of Pujols, his agent, and perhaps the Cardinals negotiating team, is how much higher Pujols wants to set the bar. Does he want $35 million per season? $40 million? Does he want a contract that will eventually make him a partial owner in a team, potentially worth much more than just the dollar value?

The one thing Pujols can’t do is overplay his hand. Granted, he’s going to have several suitors with extremely deep pockets but if he demands something truly ridiculous, I have a feeling that teams will tell him to take a hike. However, if the Yankees and Red Sox get into a true bidding war, it might be the final straw for the owners to start demanding that Major League Baseball take steps to help get player contracts back under control.

THE TEAM

This is where things get really tricky. He’s played 10 years for the St. Louis Cardinals and has become a hero to the city. In those years, he hasn’t said anything that could be construed as a complaint about the organization. Having said that, if he was willing to give the Cardinals any sort of home-town discount, I think he already would have signed an extension.

What other teams have a chance?

The Yankees and Red Sox certainly do because they both have the resources to offer Pujols anything he wants. Because of the money involved, I believe that those will be the three major players in these negotiations and if anyone else makes a play for Pujols, it’ll be someone unexpected.

So who has the best chance?

Right now my gut tells me that the Cardinals still have the inside track and after them, my money is on the Red Sox. They have a very modest sum of money invested in Adrian Gonzalez this year and then he becomes a free agent next winter. If they want to make a play for Albert Pujols, it would make perfect sense for them to either trade Gonzalez or simply let him play for a year and then let him leave in free agency. Either of those scenarios opens up first base and money for Pujols.

On the other hand, Mark Teixeira is two years into a 8 year, $180 million contract that includes a full no-trade clause. Pujols joining the Yankees would involve a position switch or trading Teixeira with the Yankees picking up a serious amount of the remaining $140 million left on his contract. Will they be willing to do that? If the Red Sox start gearing themselves for a serious run at Pujols and the Yankees fall short of the playoffs for the second time in three years, absolutely anything is possible.

In addition to the usual suspects, there are always teams like the Dodgers, Angels, Mets, and Cubs that could all throw more money at Pujols than anyone else offers. If nothing else, it’ll be entertaining.

THE VALUE

Before we delve too deep into the dollars and cents, I need to say a few words about the difference between Major League Baseball and the NBA and NFL. In those two leagues, players are paid largely based on their potential for the future and in baseball, they are paid for what they’ve done in the past with the high hopes that the players will replicate that success.

For instance, on July 30, 2010, Sam Bradford signed the richest contract for a rookie in NFL history. The contract is worth at least $50 million over 6 years with a maximum value of $86 million. All of this was before he had thrown a single pass in the NFL.

In his first three years with the St. Louis Cardinals, Albert Pujols had a slash line of .334/.412/.613, he hit 114 home runs and drove in 381 runs. He won a batting title and finished in the top four of MVP voting all three seasons. Lastly, Pujols was good for 23.6 WAR. In his first three seasons in a Cardinals’ uniform (2001-2003) 88 different players recorded at least 500 plate appearances in each of those three seasons. Only two bested Pujols’ mark of 23.6 WAR.

In those seasons, Barry Bonds earned $40.8 million.
Alex Rodriguez earned $66 million.
Albert Pujols earned $1.7 million.

So the point of that tangent is that in baseball, big contracts are handed out both for what a player has done as well as what a team hopes he will do.

THE NUMBERS

For the sake of argument, for this section we’re going to assume that Pujols signs for 10 years at $300 million. Will he be worth it? First of all, let’s talk about money that comes in from selling tickets. In 2009, teams drew an average of 2,447,686 people to their 81 home games and according to the Team Marketing Report, the average ticket price was $26.74. That means that in 2009 teams brought home an average of $65.5 million in ticket revenues.

If Albert Pujols were to sign and that was to increase ticket revenue by 10% (hardly an outrageous figure) that means that just with selling tickets, he’ll bring an extra $6.55 million to the average team. That doesn’t take into account the sales of concessions or the sales of merchandise which will spike as well.

There’s one flaw in that logic though; we’re not talking about the average franchise when we talk about the potential suitors for Pujols’ services. Now let’s examine the impact that he could have on the Yankees and Red Sox. Instead of average attendances of 2,447,686 and average prices of $26.74, the Red Sox had values of 3,062,699 and $50.24 while the Yankees had values of 3,719,358 and $72.97. instead of modest ticket revenues of $65.5 million, the Red Sox took in $153.8 million while the Yankees took in a ridiculous $271.4 million. Now imagine Pujols adding a potential 10% to those figures…

As far as the Red Sox and Yankees are concerned, the only real problems I see are a lack of flexibility with regards to their rosters and payroll and that the Yankees already have a high priced first baseman under contract for six more years.

Lastly, there is a very justified worry about giving a 31 year old player a 10 year contract worth this much money, especially given the long line of albatross type contracts that have hung around the necks of Major League franchises in the past… but have they?

There have been a grand total of 27 seasons in which a player earned more than $20 million. On average, they have produced 4.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement player), a very good mark, but not quite worth that much money. However, there is one interesting trend amongst those players. As a rule, they kept very similar value to what they had before earning such large paydays.

Those 27 seasons were recorded by 9 different players and 6 of them put forth increased production (according to their WAR value) compared to when they were making less than $20 million per season. One of those can very easily be thrown out because in his only season earning more than $20 million, Barry Bonds was injured and limited to only 52 plate appearance. Therefore, 75% of the players in this sample (which Pujols is about to join) increased their Wins Above Replacement after signing their huge paydays.

Considering that Pujols has averaged 8.38 WAR per season in the majors, the thought of him increasing that average is just downright scary.

PREDICTION

He’ll get his 10 year contract; I have no doubts. For money, my guess is $250-300 million in guaranteed money with incentives and potential ownership options worth anywhere from $25 million to $100 million more. I know, way to narrow it down, right?

The tricky question is where he’ll end up. Based on what happened this past offseason, I’m not sure that the Cardinals are looking to give him a record breaking contract and if that’s the case, he won’t be playing in St. Louis next year. If he leaves St. Louis, my best guess is that the Cubs will come up with the money to sign him but only after seriously outbidding the Yankees and Red Sox…

Either that or he takes a serious paycut to join the Mariners…

I can dream, can’t I?

BCS Recap 2011

2011-01-15T06:26:00.001-08:00

The college football season has been over for several days now and if you’re anything like me, you’re going through some serious FBS withdrawals. So in order to help you (and me) cope, I’m going to go through the winners and losers from this year’s BCS season (while flitting briefly back into the rest of the bowl season).

I was very surprised when I was making these lists how many teams and conferences ended up on both sides. This year I’m going to lump them together into the “Bittersweet” category. Without any further delay, let’s jump right in with the losers of this year’s BCS season.

LOSERS

E. GORDON GEE

The president of The Ohio State University put his foot in his mouth a while ago by saying that, all else being equal, non-AQ schools don’t deserve BCS berths and most of his reasoning was based on relative strength of schedule. As he infamously quipped, “we do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

Ohio State finished the season 12-1 after a Sugar Bowl win against Arkansas. That one loss came to Wisconsin by a score of 31-18. TCU, who clearly made it to the BCS on the backs of weakling opponents, was blown out by Wiscon-…

Wait, they won? They held the Badgers juggernaut offense to 19 points when Ohio State couldn’t hold them under 30?

The same trend that has made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament so much fun is starting to creep into college football as well. The fact of the matter is that there are too many good coaches and too many good players at the FBS level and because of that, it’s no longer inconceivable that the best team in the country comes from the Mountain West or the WAC. Do they play weaker opponents? Yes. Does that necessarily mean that they are not better teams?

Just check the final BCS and AP polls of the season. Nevada was ranked 11th, Boise State 9th, and only one team ended up ranked higher than TCU.

To all of you traditional power people spewing garbage about how the little guys don’t belong on the same field as you, I offer this challenge. Get on the field and prove it. If you want to make them go away, go into their house and dominate. Until then, just shut up.

THE BIG TEN CONFERENCE

Not only did Wisconsin lose in the Rose Bowl to TCU, but Ohio State followed up their brilliant first half with a shoddy at best second half in the Sugar Bowl to eke out a win. The Buckeyes desperately needed an interception after allowing the Razorbacks to block a punt and recover the ball deep in OSU territory with a minute left.

Before the BCS kicked off, Iowa beat Missouri, Illinois beat Baylor, and Kansas State lost a close one to Syracuse on a controversial penalty.

Then Penn State lost to Florida 37-24. That’s not too bad, it was Urban Meyer’s last game so they were obviously jacked up for the game. But then Michigan and BCS contender Michigan State combined to lose by a score of 101-21.

All in all, the Big Ten finished 3-5 in their bowl games but just 1-3 against the mighty SEC and it very well could have been 0-4 were it not for the Buckeyes stout defense. They have a long way to go before being considered one of the best conferences in the country.

WINNERS

PAC-10

Despite losing the BCS National Championship Game, the Pac-10 turned a lot of heads this postseason. People were harping on the conference when they only had 4 teams that were bowl eligible at the end of the season (although USC being ineligible isn’t exactly the conference’s fault; the Trojans did finish 8-5) and it didn’t start well when Oklahoma State put a hurting on Arizona 36-10.

At that point there was a sentiment that the Pac-10 might go 0-4 in those bowls. After all, Oregon was matched up against Auburn of the mighty SEC for the title, Stanford was going up against a tough Virginia Tech team that had won 11 in a row and Washington was playing the same Nebraska team that went up to Seattle and crushed the Huskies 56-21 just a few short weeks ago.

Washington 19, #18 Nebraska 7
#4 Stanford 40, #13 Virginia Tech 12

At this point, I thought that the Pac-10 had done enough to be considered a “winner” in the bowl season. Then Oregon went out and allowed Auburn the second fewest points of their championship season and they never trailed by more than 8 points. Considering that the margins of victory in the SEC’s previous four BCS title games were 27, 14, 10, and 16 (and truth be told, only Florida’s 24-14 win over Oklahoma was as close as the final score would indicate) staying within a touchdown of the best the SEC had to offer was a good accomplishment for the Ducks.

SEC

Five consecutive BCS titles that have gone to four different schools. I may be a big fan of the Pac-10 and not a huge fan of the SEC but I am not deluded enough to say that any conference is anywhere close to as good as the SEC right now. Despite the fact that the conference went 5-5 in their bowl games and couldn’t even sweep their two BCS appearances, they did nothing to dispel the sentiment that they are the best conference.

To everyone else out there, if you want SEC fans, players, coaches, university personnel, and analysts to stop talking about the SEC’s dominance, beat them. Until then, live with it.

BITTERSWEET

I decided to create this category this season because it seemed that there were a large group of people that had ups this bowl season that weren’t without the downs and for our first entrant, we look no farther than our newly anointed national champions.

AUBURN

Enjoy it while it lasts Tiger fans.

Cam Newton has declared for the NFL draft and perhaps more importantly, game-changing defensive tackle Nick Fairley has also decided to go pro. On the strength of those two players and what they did this season, I am almost willing to say right now that next year is looking like an 8 or 9 win season for Auburn. Congratulations on a national championship but I’ll put good money on them not repeating.

NON-AQ

TCU got to the Rose Bowl, played a big time AQ opponent and beat them without resorting to “trick” plays. They played a very straightforward game and they beat the Badgers straight up. With this signature win being exactly what the non-AQ teams have wanted forever, what could possibly land them in this category?

The non-AQ conferences ended the season with 6 teams ranked in the BCS Top 25. They were:

#3 TCU
#10 Boise State
#15 Nevada
#19 Utah
#24 Hawaii
#25 UCF

Unfortunately, Boise State was never considered for an at-large selection to a BCS bowl. Of course, say the detractors, they lost to a conference opponent in the WAC! They lost by a field goal on the road at a ranked team. How many other teams in the country would have dropped from 4th to 11th in one week when losing to a ranked team on the road?

The search for respect continues…

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

They ended their famous drought where they had never beaten an SEC team in a bowl game and played one of the best halves of football in any BCS game (topped, if at all, only by Stanford’s second half against Virginia Tech). In the second half, they almost looked disinterested on offense, scoring just 3 points and allowing the Razorbacks to chip away at their lead slowly but surely.

On top of that, the only reason that the players who sold memorabilia were allowed to play is if they committed to Coach Jim Tressel that they would come back to school next year and serve their suspensions. I personally don’t think they should have been allowed to play in this game but they were nonetheless and as a further ramification, the Buckeyes will need some extraordinary play from the guys replacing these players to compete for another BCS berth next year.

The last thing I want to mention about the 2010-2011 bowl season is the controversy that threatened to derail the magical season of Auburn this year and if Cam Newton knew anything about it, that magical season deserved to be derailed. I’m not going to say that I wish he had been declared ineligible (and more importantly, not reinstated) or that the Oregon Ducks got cheated out of a national championship.

As I have said before in this space specifically in reference to the Reggie Bush situation with USC, history happened, we can’t change it. Did Cam Newton deserve the Heisman this year? Absolutely. Did Auburn deserve to win the national title? Without a doubt; while I still think that Oregon was the slightly better team and would win maybe 53 out of 100 games, on this day, Auburn was hands down the better team… just by a little bit.

All that I don’t want to see is evidence that Cam Newton knew about the “pay-for-play” scheme during his time at Auburn. It cheapens everything Auburn did this year and if that is the case, then yes, Oregon got screwed a bit just like Oklahoma (and one could argue, Auburn) a few years ago by Reggie Bush.

I hope nothing comes out and I hope that he is telling the truth even though I was pulling for the Ducks. I like to see my teams win but above that, I like to see good clean football and this year’s national championship game was exactly that… assuming Newton was eligible.

I hope you enjoyed the FBS season this year as much as I did and I can’t wait to write more about it next year. However, it is that time once again to shift my focus to the NFL, then the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and eventually Major League Baseball.

Until next time…

Gone Streaking (Team Edition)

2010-12-31T09:09:00.000-08:00

Don’t worry, there is no nudity in the course of this blog post.

Last Tuesday, the 20th ranked Seminoles of Florida State went on the road to battle the top ranked Huskies of Connecticut. Instead of a good game, the crowd was treated to a laugher as the Huskies won going away, 93-62. However, the crowd of 16,294 did see history that night as the UConn women set the record for the longest winning streak in Division 1 basketball history (men’s or women’s), surpassing the 88 game winning streak reeled off by the men of UCLA from 1971-1974.

It seemed like it took mere minutes after the Huskies won their 89th straight game for the comparisons to start coming in. Was UCLA’s streak more impressive than UConn’s? As was noted, in their 90 games, UConn played 16 teams ranked in the top 25 (UCLA played 12) and five times, they played and defeated the #2 team in the country.

At this point I could go deep into the numbers, examining the star players of both teams and how well their offenses and defenses performed and try (somehow) to create a formula to accurately depict the difference between men’s and women’s college basketball. However, I didn’t. Just to be clear, it wasn’t because I looked into it and determined it was too hard. It was because in all my years of following basketball, I have come to the conclusion that while they are playing by basically the same rules, men and women at the same age level (high school, college, or pros) are very nearly playing two different sports.

How many seven footers either played for UCLA or against UCLA during that streak? Now, same question but this time for UConn instead of UCLA?

No, I didn’t just come to the conclusion that men are, on average, taller than women. However, it changes the way that the game is played. Over the last 36 years, several rule changes have come about which again changed the way the game is played. For instance, when UCLA was on their run of dominance, the lane was much narrower than it is today, favoring the first few seven footers the sport saw. Along with making it much wider (due mostly to the contributions of Wilt Chamberlain and UCLA alum Lew Alcindor), in 1986 the NCAA universally incorporated the three point field goal. These differences, along with the most basic difference of gender, make this question a classic case of comparing apples to oranges.

In my opinion, UCLA’s streak of 88 straight wins is incredibly impressive and so is UConn’s streak of 90 straight wins. However, one does not diminish the other and I don’t think that they can be directly compared with one another.

The purpose of this post is not to compare or contrast, but rather to celebrate various streaks performed by both teams and individuals and near the end, if you’re lucky, I might just take a stand and say what I think is the most impressive sporting streak amongst these select few.

It should be noted that I limited myself mostly to sports that I have a knowledge base about. I apologize to all of you hockey fans out there but I have a very difficult time speaking intelligently about hockey. When I list these streaks within their respective headings, please bear in mind that my listing is random and has nothing to do with what I think might be more impressive.

Without further adieu…

BASKETBALL

Connecticut
90 games
11/18/08 to 12/30/10

UCLA
88 games
1/30/71 to 1/19/74

Honestly the only reason that I can possibly say that the Bruins streak is more impressive is that it lasted longer. In the 70’s, the Bruins played 30 games pretty much every year and that included the NCAA tournament. In each of the last two years, UConn has played 33 games in the regular season and then another 6 in the tournament. All this means is that UCLA’s streak lasted a total of 1,085 days over 4 different seasons (against 768 and 3 for UConn). What this means is that in the world of college sports, John Wooden had to turn over a quarter of his roster one more time that Auriemma did in Connecticut.

I know, it’s flimsy. Honestly, at this point that is all that separates these streaks in my mind. Both are outstanding accomplishments although if push came to shove and they were ever able to play each other, I doubt Auriemma’s Huskies would have an answer for the all-time leading scorer in NBA history.

Los Angeles Lakers
33 games
11/5/71 to 1/7/72

What makes this one amazing is where it stands compared to other winning streaks in NBA history. The season before this one, the Milwaukee Bucks had tied the longest ever winning streak by winning 20 in a row. The Lakers won 33 and since then, only the 07-08 Rockets have come close and they still fell 11 short.

To put that in perspective, the Lakers record for wins in a season, set that season (with a 69-13 record) was broken by the 95-96 Chicago Bulls. Those Bulls started the season 41-3, they went 33-8 on the road and 39-2 at home. They also finished a streak of 44 consecutive wins at home and won their first 37 home games of the year.

The Bulls longest winning streak that season? 18 games.

FOOTBALL

New England Patriots
21 games
10/5/03 to 10/31/04

Starting in Week 5 of the 2003 season, the Patriots won each of their final 12 games, then all three games in the playoffs (capturing their second Super Bowl title along the way), and their first 6 games of the 2004 season.

University of Oklahoma
47 games
10/10/53 to 11/16/57

In this day and age of the BCS, this number seems truly ludicrous and that’s mostly because it is. The remarkable part of this streak is guys who played as freshmen when the streak started in 1953 would have graduated by the time the streak ended in 1957. This becomes more impressive when you take into account that most freshmen didn’t play either football or basketball and were thus only three year players. Therefore, if you assume no freshmen played for Bud Wilkinson’s teams, he would have had to turn over his roster entirely. Even if freshmen played for him, they could not possibly have played through the entire streak because it spanned across five seasons.

In the past ten years, we’ve seen two teams with identical 34 game winning streaks, Miami (FL) and USC. Both had a late season run in year number one, an undefeated national title team in year two, and a team that lost in the national championship game in year three. And yet, both of them would have had to go undefeated their next season just to match Oklahoma.

BASEBALL

New York Giants
26 games
9/7/16 to 9/30/16

The thing that is impressive about the Giants streak and indeed about baseball streaks in general that no other sport can match is in Major League Baseball, there are virtually no practice days. Every day is a game day. I understand that physically you have to be much tougher to play in the NFL than to play Major League Baseball but riddle me this: If an NFL quarterback has a really bad day on a Tuesday, what happens? Well, he struggles through practice and goes to bed early instead of going out on the town and by the time he plays his next game, that bad day is a memory. If a big league pitcher has a bad Tuesday, what happens? He gives up seven runs in the first inning and gets sent to the minor leagues and with diminished confidence, never makes it back to the majors. You have to be very physically tough to play professional football but you have to be very mentally tough to play professional baseball.

People probably should have seen the handwriting on the wall with this team because from May 9th to May 29th, the Giants played the first 17 games of a 21 game road trip… and won 17 straight. In the interest of full disclosure it should be mentioned that their winning streak in September was played entirely on their home field but that’s the way things were done in 1916.

The Giants streak encompassed 24 days, only five of which were off days. More remarkable, the Giants swept 8 doubleheaders (including three in a four day stretch) on their way to 26 straight wins.

OTHER

Byron Nelson
11 PGA Tour events
1945

This is one of those streaks that will probably never be broken because there is too much competition on the PGA Tour. Tiger Woods is the best golfer of his generation by a long shot and he couldn’t even come within a month of tying Nelson’s streak.

Cael Sanderson
159 straight matches
1998-2002

I don’t know too much about wrestling but I do know that a record of 159-0 and four national championships speaks for itself.

Edwin Moses
122 straight races won
9/2/77 to 6/4/87

What makes this streak so remarkable is the fact that it spanned nearly 10 years. How many individual athletes can stay at the top of their field for ten years? Also, it wasn’t just that he was the best, he didn’t lose.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Every winning streak is impressive in its own way. College streaks are impressive (for team sports) because the personnel and sometimes the coaching staff are changing on an annual basis. Professional streaks are impressive because they are done against the best that sport has to offer, usually worldwide. However, the most impressive winning streak in my humble opinion lasted 132 years.

No, you didn’t misread that; 132 years. Any of you who are familiar with this streak already know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, I give you; The America’s Cup.

It was actually a common misconception that the sailing race was named after the country that seemed unable to lose this trophy but actually, it was named after the America, the first yacht to win the Cup. Over the subsequent 132 years and 24 defenses, the United States always brought home the Cup until Australia ended the run of dominance in 1983.

Since losing it, the Cup has come back to the US only once before legal wrangling allowed the Golden Gate Yacht Club to challenge for the cup earlier this year, winning it back 2-0.

To give you an idea about how lengthy this run has been, the first skipper ever to lose the Cup for the US (Dennis Connor) was born 91 years after the America first won the Cup.

Am I right? Maybe, maybe not. Part of the fun in sports is the debate and that is one of my favorite parts. Check back later (maybe this weekend) for another edition of Gone Streaking (Player Edition).

Brett Favre, Donovan McNabb, and (sigh, again) Michael Vick

2010-12-30T16:53:00.001-08:00

Once again, I’m directed back to my soapbox by the writing talents of Jemelle Hill, a periodic contributor to espn.com since she joined ESPN in 2006 and once again, Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick featured prominently in her writing and this time she threw in Brett Favre as the (very old) cherry on top.

Before I go any further, I want to throw out a small disclaimer. First of all, I never read a particular writer’s work simply to disagree with them. I’ve listened to Hill on various sports talk shows on ESPN and found her to be a person fully capable of speaking intelligently about sports. I am singling out her articles because they hit very definite nerves with me and for all I know, that might be the point. Lastly (for the disclaimer part, that is) I do believe that sexism and racism exist in the world today and they do exist in the world of sports. I also believe that legitimate claims of both racism and sexism are lost in the uproar of false claims which is nothing short of sad. I have been required to take sexual harassment classes at every job that I have worked, including especially intense classes when I became a supervisor as well as in my current job where I am a government contractor. Nothing I’m about to say should give you the impression that I am “ok” with sexual harassment. I’m not; end of story.

DONOVAN MCNABB

My first issue that I’d like to discuss is related to Hill’s article of December 28th (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=5963154) in which she talks about the situation that Donovan McNabb finds himself in with the Washington Redskins and my issue is very simple. Hill explains very eloquently the pickle that McNabb put himself in by signing a huge (fluffy) contract extension with the Redskins. However, when she talks about why McNabb has been supplanted as the starting quarterback of the Redskins, she never mentions race. She cites what head coach Mike Shanahan and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan said about McNabb, saying he lacked the “cardiovascular endurance” and “familiarity” to run their two-minute offense.

I only bring this up because Hill dedicated an entire article to talking about black quarterbacks in the NFL and mostly spoke about Donovan McNabb. Granted, Vince Young was mentioned as was Jason Campbell but neither of them have the track record of McNabb and he was the one that Hill focused on.

So, in a nutshell, which is it? Is Donovan McNabb struggling this year because he is playing for a new coach in a new system for a team that isn’t very good? Probably. Did he get benched, not once but twice, because he was black? I will readily admit that it is possible because I don’t know if Mike Shanahan is racist or not; I’ve never met him. However, I find it far more likely that he was benched the first time for his struggles and not his skin color.

Hill very explicitly said that she was not calling anyone out as being racist when she wrote about black quarterbacks a while ago but when it comes to the situation that McNabb is in now, she didn’t even mention that factor. I sincerely hope and believe that his situation has nothing to do with race. He’s been one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL for a decade and he’s having one of his worst seasons as a professional. Is it a coincidence that he went from a team that had a combined winning percentage of .616 (108-67-1) during his time in the NFL to one that has had a winning percentage of .455 (80-96) over that same time span?

BRETT FAVRE

Ah yes, the guy that Roger Goodell wants to see play forever… and at the same time, wants him out the door as soon as possible. There is little question in my mind that Brett Favre is a diva. He is also one of the best quarterbacks ever to pick up a football. The last few years have exemplified his “me-first” mentality and along the way, he has had three different head coaches fired in his last three seasons with three different franchises. Coincidence? Umm, if you think it is, I can get you a really good deal on a brand new…

Never mind.

Last year Favre was fantastic for the NFL at large and specifically the Minnesota Vikings who haven’t had a decent quarterback since Daunte Culpepper’s last season in 2004. Every team stacked the box against Adrian Peterson and before he knew it, Favre was facing man coverage in the secondary with linebackers and linemen intent on hitting Peterson. In short, it was the best possible situation for him to be in and he exploited it like the first ballot Hall-of-Famer he is. He had the best season of his illustrious career.

And then he had to be convinced to come back for this season (this was warning flag number one for me). Secondly, everything went right for the Vikings last year until they ran into the Saints. The odds of replicating that success were slim (warning flag number 2). Lastly, Favre was a year older and it was no secret that he and head coach Brad Childress didn’t really see eye to eye (number 3).

This season has been a train wreck for the Vikings but there is hope for the future. Rookie QB Joe Webb started against the Eagles and played a fantastic game and Brett Favre is retiring. Put those together with a solid defense and running game, and they’ll be competitive again next year (although with a healthy Packers team, the Bears, and the Lions return to respectability, it will be very hard for the Vikings to come out of this division).

Then, to add an ocean full of salt to Brett Favre’s numerous wounds, back in October the NFL began its investigation into the “sexting” allegations leveled against Favre by former Jets employee Jenn Sterger. This investigation came to a head yesterday when the NFL fined Favre $50,000 (or how much he earns for 3 minutes of game time this year) for failing to cooperate with the commissioner’s office in this investigation. This brings me back to Hill and the article she wrote for espn.com today. In a word, Hill was outraged at the insufficient punishment handed down by Commissioner Goodell and said that his credibility in matters of “player conduct” was less than before this ruling.

Here’s the problem; “The league said it couldn't determine whether the inappropriate images originated from Favre during his tenure as Jets quarterback.” That is right from Hill’s article. They couldn’t determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Favre was indeed the one harassing Sterger. Should he be punished if we’re not even sure whether or not he was the one who did it? That doesn’t seem quite right…

I have a cell phone and have had one for several years. In the state of Colorado (where I live) it is illegal to text while driving so there have been numerous occasions where I will receive a text and then hand my phone to my passenger so they can read me the text and then reply. Is it my phone? Yes. Do I pay bills for its monthly usage? Yes. When my passenger has my phone am I in control of what gets sent out? Absolutely not.

According to the NFL (and common sense) we have no way of knowing exactly who it was that sent the picture messages to Sterger unless we have a witness who is willing to come forth. Even then, would that testimony stand up in a court of law? That is dicey…

I am deadest against sexual harassment but I am even more against miscarriages of justice and to punish someone without that evidence is exactly that; a miscarriage of justice. To contrast this case with the highly publicized case of Adam “Pacman” Jones, Jones had several chances to shape up his act and failed to do so, resulting in a huge suspension without ever having been charged with a crime. As far as we know, up until this point, Favre has only been guilty of being a diva and has not been implicated in any other crimes… which brings us to yet another point. Sterger’s case shouldn’t be against Favre, it should be against her employers, the New York Jets and by extension, the NFL.

When sexual harassment cases come about in the business world, the most the harasser can face is termination of employment. If the employer fails to act appropriately, they can be held liable in civil court. In my opinion, Brett Favre was fined for two reasons; one, he wasn’t as forthcoming as Goodell thought he should have been and two, the NFL needed a scapegoat to try and avoid a lawsuit from Sterger.

I have two more points before I sign off and one of them, I will admit, is semantics. The NFL released a statement saying that Favre was being fined for "a failure to cooperate with the investigation in a forthcoming manner" and that Favre was "not candid in several respects during the investigation resulting in a longer review and additional negative public attention for Favre, Sterger and the NFL." Immediately after putting forth that quote, Hill says that this is a “very fancy way of saying that Favre lied”. Really? Where did the NFL say that he lied?

“Not being forthcoming” and “not candid” are not necessarily synonyms of “lying”. I’m not trying to get into a war of words with Hill (which she will certainly win), I’m simply trying to state that acting as if a person is innocent until proven guilty is a good thing and since the NFL has no absolute proof that Favre is guilty of these allegations, what more can they do? Make an example of him when this would be his first run-in with the league? No.

Lastly, Hill compares this duplicity to Michael Vick’s duplicity at the NFL draft several years ago when Goodell asked him if there was any truth to the rumors of his involvement in dogfighting rings. When asked, Vick said no. Goodell then tacked a short suspension onto the tail end of Vick’s prison sentence for that lie. The big difference here is simply that Goodell has no proof that Favre lied. Shortly after Vick said no to the Commissioner, he was indicted, tried, convicted, and incarcerated for the crimes he lied about. NONE of that has happened yet to Favre.

You may or may not believe it but I gave Vick the benefit of the doubt when he said that he had nothing to do with it. Maybe it really was happening on one of his properties without his knowledge. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to give Favre that same benefit of the doubt.

Did Favre simply lie and then get away with it because it’s impossible to verify whether he did or not? Maybe, but until it can be proven, the word “alleged” still belongs in any sentence relating Favre to this harassment. There is nothing “alleged” about what Michael Vick did.

It would be going too far to call Brett Favre a hero of mine but I have enjoyed following his career over the past 15 years or so that I’ve been truly cognizant of the NFL. If there’s one way I can sum up those years, between players getting shot and killed in nightclubs or Vick helping to torture and murder dogs or Favre sending pictures of his endowment to female co-workers without their consent, it’s this:

The NFL’s off-the-field shenanigans are threatening the on-the-field product. I sincerely believe that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is trying and I have one message and challenge for him:

Try harder…

BCS Preview 2011 - Moral Victories

2010-12-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

There comes a point in the sporting career of certain people when their primary desire is to win and not to have fun. A good number of those people either play sports at a very high level or quit because they can’t make it to that high level and don’t win enough. For the rest of us mere mortals, we search for the moral victories within sporting events, the silver lining that makes the contest worth participating in despite the gut-wrenching loss.

If you ask the vast majority of quarterbacks in the NFL, would you rather throw for 400 yards and 5 touchdowns in a losing effort or throw for 100 yards and 5 interceptions, I’m willing to bet that they would say they’d rather have the latter. It is that desire to win above all else that makes them as good as they are.

So what is the silver lining for each of the five BCS bowl games? That is the question that I’m going to try to answer with one small addition. I’m going to describe a moral victory for each of the teams playing and then I’m also going to describe what a moral victory would be for college football fans at large. The one thing to remember though is when I’m talking about college football fans, I’m not talking about fans of the individual teams because it’s fairly obvious what a moral victory would be for those people; an actual victory.

For the most part, a moral victory for each individual team also includes actually outscoring their opponents come game day. However, there are some off the field factors at play in several of these match-ups that can lead to increased good feelings whether the outcome is a win or a loss.

ROSE BOWL

WISCONSIN
In a conference that has been dominated by Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, the Badgers have a chance to take a big step forward on the national stage. Their #5 ranking is the highest ranking they’ve had in the BCS era and their next game is against the #3 team in the country. If they win the Rose Bowl, their postseason ranking will be in the top four, if not third or even second, depending on the outcomes of the other BCS bowls.

Despite an overall record of 90-39 over the last ten years, the Badgers have won ten games only three times before this year and this is their first appearance in the Rose Bowl since January of 2001. Wisconsin has the chance to step to the forefront of the Big Ten by taking the conference title and winning what is arguably the most prestigious bowl game in college football.

TCU
The only match-up that could have been better for the Horned Frogs is either if they were playing in the national championship game or if they had drawn Ohio State in a BCS bowl. They happened to draw the only team this year to beat the Buckeyes and not only did Wisconsin beat the Buckeyes, they did it right after Ohio State had risen to #1 in the polls and they did it in a more humiliating manner than #1 teams are used to (31-18).

This is one of the few teams that doesn’t have to win to claim a moral victory. Wisconsin is playing some of the best football of the season, having outscored their last four opponents 235-84. All TCU has to do is play close to Wisconsin and they can make a logical inference that they played the Badgers just about as tough as the Buckeyes did back in the middle of October. If TCU can beat Wisconsin, it will be one last bit of egg on the face of E. Gorgon Gee, president of The Ohio State University. While the transitive law of sports doesn’t apply (just because A beats B and B beats C doesn’t mean that A is better than C), everyone will have to admit (no matter how begrudgingly) that TCU can play with any team in the country.

THE FANS
The silver lining is evenly divided for the fans. Some people want to see the imposter that is TCU lose and lose badly to prove that the five smaller conferences do not belong on the same stage as the six “automatic qualifier” conferences. Others want to see TCU lay a beat-down on Wisconsin to prove once and for all that teams from the smaller conference can compete with the best from the bigger conferences.

TCU has been one of the best teams from the non-AQ conferences for the last several years so some might say that if they don’t win and finish this season off undefeated, this year would be looked at as a disappointment. I completely disagree. They used this year, on top of the last few years, to get an invitation to join the Big East starting in 2012. Granted, I would have much rather seen them join the Big Used-To-Be-8-Then-12-Now-Is-10 or the Pac Used-To-Be-8-Then-10-Then-Almost-16-But-12-Instead, but now they never have to worry about being on the outside looking in simply because they play in the wrong conference.

This does bring up an interesting question though; is the best way to change a system from the outside looking in bringing the spotlight out onto the unfairness of the situation or is it to join the system and attempt to change it from the inside? Of the four teams that have made it to a BCS bowl from outside the 6 AQ conferences, two of them (TCU and Utah) have jumped ship and are joining the Big East and Pac-12, respectively. Interesting food for thought and perhaps another post in the future…

FIESTA BOWL

CONNECTICUT
The Huskies ranked behind 95 of the 120 FBS teams in total offense and behind 61 of them in scoring offense. A moral victory for them is not getting blown out. I hate to say it that way but considering that they went 8-4 this year and didn’t even have the best record in their own conference (West Virginia went 9-3) and that they are playing a team like Oklahoma, they are going to be huge underdogs and the fact of the matter is if they can keep the game close into the fourth quarter, they will have achieved a moral victory.

OKLAHOMA
There is virtually no way that Oklahoma can achieve a moral victory in this game. They are expected to win and they are expected to win big. The Sooners have nothing to win and everything to lose in this game. Unlike several years ago when they were facing off against Boise State, Connecticut is not going to be mistaken for one of the top ten teams in the country. Boise State was 12-0 going into that game and UConn’s 8-4 record is a far cry from the talent on that Broncos team.

ORANGE BOWL

VIRGINIA TECH
The Hokies came into this season with legitimate aspirations to run the table in the ACC and challenge for the top two spots in the BCS standings. Those hopes weren’t even derailed with their opening night loss to #3 Boise State down the road from their Blacksburg, Virginia, campus. If everything went according to plan, after that game they would have finished the regular season 12-1 and would have been considered one of the best one-loss teams in the country. What really killed their lofty goals was their terrible loss to James Madison the week after losing to Boise State.

To rebound from those two losses and win 11 straight, becoming the first team to go 8-0 in ACC play, is a testament to the character of this team. To finish off this season with a win over a very good Stanford team would certainly help people forget how high their hopes were at the beginning of the season.

STANFORD
This season has already been a resounding success for the Cardinal and they currently have the hottest prospect for future NFL quarterbacks and future head coaches. Their only loss is to #2 Oregon that only lost their #1 ranking to Auburn because they played more ranked teams down the stretch. They will also be playing in just their second BCS bowl along with the 2000 Rose Bowl which they lost after an 8-3, Pac-10 champion season. They have already exceeded their expectations for this season and no matter how they do, this season will be a success.

SUGAR BOWL

OHIO STATE
The Buckeyes will be making their 6th consecutive BCS bowl appearance and their 9th in 13 years which, in and of itself, is a moral victory. They have been there and done that enough that they can’t really gain all that many points by not winning in a stylish manner. Their struggles against the SEC have been very well publicized and they are fresh out of excuses.

ARKANSAS
The fact that they are here is a moral victory. They survived their brutal SEC schedule to go 10-2 and get an at-large bid, their first BCS bowl appearance. This Ohio State team is a very good one so even if they don’t win and play well, it will still be considered a successful season. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by beating Ohio State.

BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

AUBURN
Unfortunately, the biggest moral victory that Auburn can get is for the NCAA to close the investigation into Cam Newton’s pay-for-play controversy. They are ranked #1 in the country, they have the Heisman Trophy winner playing quarterback for them, and they seem to have everything in their favor right now. If we are assuming that they are going to lose the national title game, I would say the biggest thing they can do to achieve a moral victory would be to not get blown out. If their terribly porous pass defense and their stout run defense can put a stop to the Blur, it will be disappoint. If they can stop Oregon, they should win.

OREGON
The biggest consolation for the Ducks right now is with how poorly Auburn has been playing in the first halves and how well Cam Newton has been playing in the second halves, they are actually flying a little under the radar which intrigues me because Oregon is the better all around team and the better all around offense. Auburn goes as Newton goes but Oregon has multiple playmakers on offense to go to if any one of them aren’t having a great game. A month ago, I would have said that the oddsmakers would be favoring Oregon but after the Alabama game and then the SEC title game, I can definitely see them giving the nod to Auburn.

The Ducks have played outstanding offense and underrated defense while running the table in an underrated conference. Arguably the biggest moral victory that they could get would be the respect that the Pac-10 would gain if they and Stanford were able to win their bowl games. Take into account that some of their most prominent playmakers are underclassmen and you have to like where the Ducks are right now.

BCS Preview 2011 - National Championship Game

2010-12-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

The last game of the 2010-2011 bowl season has the potential to be one of the best national championship games ever. Unfortunately, this has been said before and the last “Greatest Game of All Time” turned into a laugher when Oklahoma got pounded by USC 55-19.

There have been several years over the history of the BCS where the participants in the title game were up for debate and few times have the two teams been the most obvious choices to square off for the hardware. With all due respect to TCU, this is one of those years. I do believe that TCU deserves a shot at the national title but given how they have played this year, I don’t think that TCU should be ranked ahead of either Auburn or Oregon. This game promises to provide plenty of fireworks as neither defense ended up as one of the top in the country while both offenses put up yards and points like few other teams in the country.

The backdrop to this match-up is the entire Cam Newton “Pay-For-Play” fiasco that embroiled the Tigers football program this year. I would love to believe the results of the investigation and say that Cam Newton had no knowledge of what his father was doing but it just seems a little fishy to me that he didn’t know anything at all. Having said that, no evidence of Newton’s wrongdoing has been presented so until proven guilty, he is innocent in my mind and should be eligible to play in this game. I am just worried that five years from now, it will be declared that he had knowledge of the plan all along and his Heisman Trophy will be vacated and the Tigers magical national championship season will be vacated from the record books. Maybe that would be enough for the NCAA to reexamine their policies when it comes to amateur athletes.

Yeah, right…

BY THE NUMBERS

Offensively, the numbers are very similar.

- Oregon ranked 4th in rushing yards per game, Auburn was 6th.
- Oregon was 48th in passing yards, Auburn was 69th.
- Oregon was 2nd in total yards per game, Auburn was 7th.
- Oregon led the nation in points per game, Auburn was 6th.

Defensively, there are some similarities and some differences. Both of these teams were outstanding against the rush, but the numbers are good for different reasons. Auburn ranked 11th against the rush and that ranking is a little more legitimate than Oregon’s ranking of 16th because of the way these two teams took their leads. Likewise, Oregon’s ranking against the pass (56th) is much more inflated than Auburn’s ranking (105th) for the same reason. Auburn was a notoriously slow starting team this year, falling behind numerous times and using a flurry of Cam Newton’s Heismanesque talents to come back in the second half. This means that throughout the game, Auburn’s opponents were most likely trying to utilize a balanced offensive attack and they found that they could chew up yardage through the air but not on the ground.

On the other side, Oregon started somewhat slowly but in the middle of the season when the Blur Offense was at its high octane best, they would start to outpace their opponents late in the second quarter and early in the third. This means that for anywhere from one entire quarter to three entire quarters, Ducks’ opponents had few opportunities for a balanced offense. When you’re trying to make a comeback, you have to air the ball out to get points quickly. Therefore, the passing numbers will be abnormally high and the rushing numbers abnormally low.

What that all means is that Auburn’s run defense is for real and their pass defense is dreadful. On the other side, it just means that Oregon’s defense probably should have been ranked somewhere between 20-40 against both the rush and the pass instead of 16th and 56th. The other important thing to take away from that little bit of conjecture is that there is little doubt around college football circles that Oregon’s defense is in a class above Auburn’s defense and this could be a game where the first team to punt might just lose.

THE TIGERS WILL WIN BECAUSE…

They have Cam Newton. He was one 11 yard completion away from averaging over 200 yards passing and over 100 yards rushing per game. He led the nation in passing efficiency (sidenote: at the time that I wrote about the Heisman Trophy race a few weeks ago, he was second in efficiency to Kellen Moore but passed him with his performance in the SEC title game) with outstanding metrics: 67% completion percentage, 10.52 yards per attempt, and a 28-6 touchdown to interception ratio. On top of all that, he led the SEC in rushing yards.

Let me say that again: HE LED THE SEC IN RUSHING YARDS. The SEC has a history of producing some great running backs and yet this year, nobody in the conference rushed for more yards than a quarterback. The biggest difference that I see between Newton and Michael Vick (the last quarterback to cause this kind of hubbub over his running skills) is defenses were afraid of Vick throwing the ball but considering that he completed only 56.3% of his college passes, they were more afraid of his running ability. Vick was able to run for so many yards with his sheer athleticism and speed.

By contrast, Cam Newton has shown that while he may not be the most polished passer in the FBS ranks right now, he’s still very good and if you put that extra man or two in the box to stop him, he can exploit man coverage in the secondary. Then, if you drop those extra rushers back into coverage and you give him space and time, he will hurt you on the ground. Then you have a big strong, six foot six, two hundred fifty pound guy with long arms running rampant through your secondary. Just try and tackle him.

KEY STAT: Auburn ranked 105th in passing yards allowed, 75th in passer efficiency allowed, and 54th in points per game allowed.

THE DUCKS WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Auburn won’t be able to keep up with the Blur. Chip Kelly has toned back his game planning recently, wanting to get victories to ensure his team’s spot in the top two of the final BCS standings but I would expect that to change completely against Auburn. I would expect the Blur to be at its holy-crap-they-already-snapped-the-ball-again finest.

Auburn is extremely good against the rush but will they be able to maintain that intensity and focus for 60 minutes against the Blur, especially when you consider that they probably won’t get too much help from their secondary. Oregon’s offense was at its scary best when Darron Thomas was hitting receivers downfield and the reason for this is simple. As a defensive lineman, if you stop a rushing attempt for a gain of one yard and you know that from the time the ball is spotted you have seven seconds to get set, you’ll only have to move a few yards to get in position. But what happens when Thomas hits a receiver over the middle for a 20 yard gain? You have to sprint 20 yards to get into position and then line up against an offensive line that has been running those types of sprints all year long. Now you just had to sprint 20 yards and you’re going against a 300 pound guard who isn’t as winded as you and he’s about to square you up and drive you off the line.

It doesn’t sound like it would be a big advantage when you consider that these are the best college football teams in the country but over the course of a 60 minute game, it will wear down Auburn’s defensive line. It wouldn’t surprise me at all for the Tigers to take a lead into halftime and then lose it all in the third quarter, which would set up a fantastic race to the finish in the fourth quarter.

Despite missing their first game due to a team imposed suspension, sophomore LaMichael James still led the nation in rushing yards with 1,682. Even though his stature is small (5’9’’, 185 pounds), he has been very durable this year, surpassing 25 carries on 8 different occasions. We also cannot forget that Thomas is also a competent ball carrier, rushing for nearly 500 yards this year while averaging 5.8 yards per carry.

KEY STAT: Oregon’s defense was very opportunistic, ranking seventh this season in turnover margin at +1.08.

THE VERDICT

Both of these teams have gotten a reputation as being slow starters but it’s for different reasons. In the games that I have watched of theirs’ this year, Auburn struggled offensively in the first half of games. Oregon, however, seemed to be feeling their opponents out and wearing them down, knowing that with the conditioning of their entire team, nobody can stay with them for 60 minutes.

In the second half, the Tigers’ defense would then step up and start coming through with key stops while Cam Newton would do his Heisman thing. Oregon would play roughly the same way that they did in the first half but the difference is that the opposing defense is now exhausted so instead of rushes up the middle for 3 or 4 yards, those carries start going for 10 or 12 yards… or sometimes 75.

The way I see this game panning out is Auburn will take the lead into halftime and everyone will start saying that this is going to be unusual because Newton has brought this team back from 4 second half deficits, in three of which they were still trailing in the fourth quarter. Therefore, a lot of people will jump on the Auburn bandwagon.

In the third quarter, Oregon will simply blow the doors off the place and they will remind people why the Blur Offense is as devastating as it is. Cam Newton will try for one more comeback to cap off his amazing season in the fourth quarter but it will be too little, too late.

Oregon 49, Auburn 45

BCS Preview 2011 - Sugar Bowl

2010-12-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

Yet another intriguing match-up from our friends at the BCS headquarters… with the possible exception of the Fiesta Bowl, this BCS season seems to be full of what could turn out to be epic games. Unfortunately, not very many BCS match-ups have lived up to the hype going into the games. Last year was the first season since the implementation of the BCS that all of the highest ranked teams played in BCS bowls (top ten starting in January 2007 and top eight before that) and all we got out of those five top 10 match-ups was two yawners, a mostly one-sided affair, an enjoyable defensive struggle that was turned on a fake punt, and a thoroughly anti-climactic championship game that only turned out to be so because Colt McCoy injured his shoulder early in the game.

Another thing that happened last year is Jim Tressel opened up his playbook and confounded a lot of people, including myself. The question now is can he do it again? Pundits have repeated time and time again that Ohio State hasn’t beaten an SEC team in a bowl game since… can you remember the last time they beat an SEC team? Was Woody Hayes still coaching the Buckeyes back then?

On the flipside of this match-up are the Razorbacks of Arkansas that haven’t been a factor in college football in years. They are led by their own NFL prospect of a quarterback in Ryan Mallett who ended up ranked 3rd nationally in passing efficiency.

BY THE NUMBERS

Ryan Mallett helps make up for a lot of deficiencies that the Razorbacks have. Their running game is average (65th nationally), their rush defense is a little below average (69th), their scoring defense is slightly better than average (43rd), and their special teams take turns between great and terrible. They ranked 4th nationally in punt return average, just 56th in net punting, and 102nd in kick return average.

It should be noted that the Razorbacks did play a very difficult schedule in the SEC but many of the rankings listed above usually don’t add up to a top ten BCS caliber team unless they do something very very well and what the Razorbacks can do is throw the ball.

The defense that Mallett is going to be throwing against may be one of the stingiest units in the country… again. I know, Ohio State has a great defense… what else is new? The Buckeyes ranked 4th against the rush, 4th against the pass, 2nd overall in yardage allowed per game, and 3rd in points allowed per game. They allowed opposing quarterbacks a rating of just 96.88 (4th best in the country), more than 70 points lower Mallett’s rating.

Given that Arkansas’ offense and Ohio State’s defense are clearly their strengths, this game will most likely hinge on the other match-up, Arkansas’ defense against Ohio State’s offense, which brings us back to Jim Tressel’s play calling again.

If Tressel calls the game like he did last year in the Rose Bowl against Oregon, the Razorbacks will most likely not be too competitive in this game.

THE RAZORBACKS WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Jim Tressel will clam up and go back to his old conservative play-calling days. To be brutally honest, for as good as Mallett has been this year, that is the only way that I can see Arkansas having a realistic shot at winning this game. This is not the Florida team or the LSU team that blew the Buckeyes out of the national title games in the past few years.

Having said that, this team did play tough against Alabama before losing 24-20 and took a lead against Auburn in the fourth quarter before giving up four straight touchdowns and losing by 22. They did put forth 43 points against the #1 team in the country but it needs to be pointed out that that same #1 team is ranked 105th in pass defense. Ohio State is ranked 4th.

KEY STAT: Ryan Mallett averaged 9.87 yards per attempt, 3rd best in the country behind Kellen Moore (10.16) and Cam Newton (10.52).

THE BUCKEYES WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Jim Tressel will continue to trust Terrelle Pryor. The junior completed 66% of his passes for a QB rating of 158.0 and rushed for 639 yards along the way. If he is making plays and doing his best Cam Newton imitation, there is little that any team in the country can do to keep up with the Buckeyes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, with Terrelle Pryor at quarterback, the only thing that can hold back the Buckeyes is Jim Tressel. He is the perfect ambassador for a football program and he is an outstanding defensive coach, but sometimes he holds his team back offensively.

While the Buckeyes were fantastic on defense, they were underrated on offense. They ranked 18th in total offense and 11th in scoring offense, outgaining their opponents by an astounding 198 yards per game and outscoring their opponents by 26 points per game.

On the offchance that their offense stalls and the game turns into a field position battle, the game will favor the Buckeyes even more, since it sometimes seems like Jim Tressel loves nothing more than to get a lead and play defensive, field position football (Ohio State ranked in the top quarter in both punt and kickoff returns this year).

KEY STAT: The Buckeyes ranked 3rd in kickoff return average, 3rd in turnover margin, and 14th in rushing offense, all keys to a ball control, field position victory.

THE VERDICT

Arkansas will be playing much closer to home than Ohio State when they meet in the Superdome in New Orleans but Ohio State has never had trouble filling seats, no matter where in the country they are playing.

Arkansas’ defense hasn’t played particularly well against the better offenses that they have faced this year, culminating with their disastrous fourth quarter against Auburn. Terrelle Pryor isn’t Cam Newton, but he’s also a lot better than most of the other quarterbacks that the Razorbacks have faced this year.

Ohio State has shown some vulnerability to the run this year but not too much to the pass and that is the greatest challenge that they will face from Arkansas.

Stingy turnover forcing defense + ball control offense = Buckeye victory

Ohio State 24, Arkansas 17

BCS Preview 2011 - Orange Bowl

2010-12-17T22:32:00.000-08:00

One of the more intriguing match-ups that the BCS has provided us with this year is #13 Virginia Tech against #4 Stanford. The Hokies are one of the hottest teams in the country, having won 11 straight games since starting the season with a tough loss to Boise State and a terrible loss to James Madison. On the other hand, the Cardinal are the best “boring” team in college football. What I mean by that is they run a pro style offense that doesn’t feature a quarterback that ran for 1,500 yards or an offense that takes only seven seconds between snaps of the ball. They have a former professional quarterback for a head coach and a future professional quarterback actually playing quarterback. Their only loss this year is to #1 Oregon and if it wasn’t for the Ducks, it’s entirely possible that Stanford would be ramping up to play Auburn for the National Championship.

BY THE NUMBERS

While Virginia Tech had solid rankings on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball, Stanford was slightly better in most every area. The Cardinal ranked in the top 32 (or roughly the top quarter of the country) in yards per game (14th), rushing yards per game (17th), passing yards per game (30th), passing efficiency (7th), yards allowed (24th), rushing yards allowed (24th), passing yards allowed (32nd), pass efficiency defense (21st), points scored, and points allowed (11th).

While Stanford outgained their opponents this year by 141 yards per game (467-326), Virginia Tech outgained their opponents by only 63 yards per game (411-348). The point is simply that while the Hokies had a good statistical year, the Cardinal did just about everything just a little bit better.

THE HOKIES WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Tyrod Taylor is one heck of a playmaker and one of the only other times the Cardinal faced a player of his caliber, they were run out of Eugene, Oregon by the Ducks and quarterback Darron Thomas. Taylor had an impressive season this year, completing 60% of his passes at 8.9 yards per attempt with a touchdown to interception ratio of 23-4. On top of that, he rushed for 637 yards and 5 touchdowns.

The Hokies have a host of good players that will be tough for Stanford to deal with if Taylor is distributing the ball well. Other than Taylor, two other players rushed for at least 600 yards with a per carry average of better than 5.5 yards.

This has all the makings of a close game where the team that makes fewer mistakes will win. In games like that, I always have a hard time betting against a Frank Beamer led defense and special teams.

KEY STAT: The Hokies led the nation in turnover margin at +1.38 per game.

THE CARDINAL WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Andrew Luck. The junior completed over 70% of his passes with a yards per attempt rate nearly as good as Taylor’s with his own impressive TD-INT ratio (28-7). While he is a pocket passer primarily, he can tuck the ball and gain chunks of yardage on the ground, evidenced by his 438 yards rushing and his 8.6 yard per carry average. Behind him, sophomore Stephan Taylor rushed for over 1,000 yards and 15 touchdowns. This team is very efficient and doesn’t make all that many mistakes due to savvy players and good coaching.

KEY STAT: While the Cardinal didn’t have the best pass rushing (27 sacks) or ball hawking secondary (17 INT) in the country, they were extremely adept and avoiding those pitfalls; as a team, they threw only 7 interceptions and allowed just 5 sacks all year.

THE VERDICT

Stanford isn’t flashy. They don’t have a Heisman winning quarterback and they don’t rush for 300 yards a game while passing for another 200 per game. They aren’t the type of team that scares you with raw athleticism or sheer talent; they are the type that scares you with their deadly efficiency.

After watching Virginia Tech lose to Boise State, I don’t have a great deal of faith in them against a top tier team. After the Broncos took a 17-0 lead, the Hokies shut down Kellen Moore for a good portion of the game but once the game was on the line, Moore took his offense down the field and scored the winning touchdown rather easily against Beamer’s defense. While Kellen Moore and the Broncos were worthy of their high ranking and were a good team, they are not as good as the Cardinal and Moore isn’t as good as Andrew Luck.

Virginia Tech’s winning streak will end in the Orange Bowl.

Stanford 27, Virginia Tech 17

Quarterback Rating Revisited

2010-12-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, several writers on espn.com starting looking at the difference between white and black quarterbacks and while they never specifically called anyone out for being racist, they came extremely close. In one of these pieces, it was brought up that one of the most common stats used to evaluate a quarterback (QB Rating, a formula that spits out a number between 0 and 158.3 to measure a quarterback’s performance) does not take into account the running ability of a quarterback.

At first, I thought this task was a little on the tall side but eventually I decided to tackle it and while my formula is simplistic, it takes into account total times touching the ball, yardage accumulated, touchdowns scored, and times turning the ball over. Different people will disagree on what they value most from a quarterback but I think that in general we can agree that yards are good (and more yards are better than fewer yards), touchdowns are good, and turnovers are bad. That is the template that I used.

THE SAMPLE

In order to qualify for the rate titles, the Stat-Geeks-That-Be have determined that quarterbacks need to have at least 14 pass attempts per team game or 224 over the course of a full season. For this analysis, only those individual seasons were looked at from 1990-2010. Granted, the 2010 season isn’t over yet but already 30 quarterbacks have thrown the ball more than 224 times and it is this season that has brought up the debate over whether or not the mystical QB Rating is the best way to measure a quarterback. Overall there were 659 such seasons from 1990-2010 with Brett Favre providing 19 of them all by himself.

While this leaves out a good number of quarterbacks that have thrown many passes over the last 21 years, this method compares apples to apples in my opinion. For the most part, backup quarterbacks do not get to throw 224 passes in a season unless the starter suffers a pretty bad injury. Therefore, this sample (for the most part) includes starting quarterbacks only; theoretically the best of the best.

THE METHOD

For this analysis, I wanted to look at as much that shows up in the box score for a quarterback as I could. The main categories that I totaled up were touches, yards, touchdowns, and turnovers.

- Touches included pass attempts, sacks, and rush attempts.
- Yards includes passing yards, rushing yards, and yardage lost on sacks
- Touchdowns included passing and rushing touchdowns
- Turnovers included interceptions and fumbles

I then took these raw numbers and calculated the following rate stats; yards per touch, yards per game, touchdown percentage, and turnover percentage. Once I had those, I compared them to the average of all the quarterbacks that qualified for that season. In other words, Tom Brady’s 2007 season wasn’t compared against Peyton Manning’s 2004 season. For instance, let’s say the average for yards per touch (YPT from now on) was 5.92 (which it was) and a certain player were to have a YPT value of 6.911 (like Tom Brady does this year).

6.911/5.92 = 1.1689
1.1689*100 = 116.89

Therefore, like OPS+ and ERA+ in baseball, I get a number where above 100 is above average and below 100 is below average. Much like quarterback rating, I capped the possible number at 200 (twice as good as league average) and then divided each of the metrics by 4. I know 4 seems like a random number but if you were twice as good as league average in all four metrics, then your MR (Murphy Rating, as I’ve decided to call it) would be an even 200 and I like nice round even numbers. Accordingly, league average is 100, just as it was before.

THE RESULTS

This year, Michael Vick has turned the corner as a quarterback. His QB Rating is 104.3, easily a career high, and his 483 rushing yards already rank 15th for quarterbacks since 1990 and with three games to go if he were to maintain his average, he would go up to 7th. Surely with this dual threat combination, he is having just as good a season as his counterparts that stand like a statue in the pocket and distribute the magic bean.

Nope, this year, Michael Vick ranks just 4th in MR, behind Aaron Rodgers (who is mobile), and two guys that will never be mistaken for track champions, Matt Cassell and Tom Brady. So why is Vick only fourth in by far his best season since being drafted with the number one overall selection? Why do running quarterbacks still not measure up? Well, there are two explanations and one of them is apparently that I am racist.

If any of you reading this know me, you’ll know that’s ridiculous. There is another explanation and it might be a possibly reason why black quarterbacks get paid a little less or why they are continually underrated.

Michael Vick has a better YPT, TD% (touchdown percentage), and yards per game (YPG from now on) than both Aaron Rodgers and Matt Cassell and a better YPT and YPG mark than Tom Brady. Why is he ranked behind them? It’s that fourth metric, the turnover percentage (TO% from now on). Vick has thrown 4 interceptions, the same number as Cassell and Brady and 6 fewer than Rodgers. However, here are their pass attempts this year:

Brady – 425
Rodgers – 410
Cassell – 354
Vick – 294

Now here’s the other part that perhaps wasn’t fully thought through by those who said that the Quarterback Rating needed to be rethought. When Michael Vick tucks the ball and heads upfield, he doesn’t always tuck the ball. I’ve seen many replays where he’s holding the ball at arm’s length as if he’s about to throw the ball well beyond the line of scrimmage. So what, am I saying he can’t hold onto the ball? Not at all, on the contrary, I’m saying it’s much easier for a defender to knock the ball loose. Despite carrying the ball 82 times for 483 yards and 7 touchdowns this year, Vick has fumbled the ball 9 times. When you take that into account, his running ability seems to be mitigated by his turnovers. Why is Aaron Rodgers ranked ahead of Vick? Mostly because Vick has turned the ball over 13 times in a total of 401 touches (rushes, sacks, and pass attempts). Aaron Rodgers has 492 such touches and only 12 turnovers. Matt Cassell is surprisingly high because he is at 395 and 6, respectively, and Brady is number one this year because he has only turned the ball over 6 times and has a total of 474 touches.

In 2006 Michael Vick set the record for rushing yards by a quarterback with 1,039 and in this sample, that season ranks only 256th (or in the 61st percentile) because he turned the ball over 22 times while providing 22 touchdowns. On top of that, his total yards per touch were very low that year, mostly because his yards per pass attempt was significantly lower (6.4) than his yards per rush attempt (8.4).

THE BEST

If you look at the quarterbacks that did well in this analysis, they do have one thing in common; they can throw the football. If you look at the top of the MR rankings, there are several quarterbacks who could run the ball but they could still throw it. In Steve Young’s best 5 seasons, he ranked 3rd, 7th, 10th, 13th, and 16th in MR and combined to rush for 2,106 yards. His lowest passer rating in those five years was 101.1.

Of the top ten seasons, the average number of passing yards was 3,781 and passing touchdowns was 32.9. By contrast, those ten averaged just 187 rushing yards, a decent total from a quarterback but hardly at the level of a “running” quarterback. Most notable when you’re looking at that top ten list is the fact that those quarterbacks combined for 356 touchdowns and just 130 turnovers.

These are the top ten seasons of the past 20 years:

Name (year)
MR (out of 200)
Touches-Yards-TD-Turnovers

Tom Brady (2007)
163.9
636-4,776-52-14

Peyton Manning (2006)
155.8
594-4,347-35-11

Steve Young (1994)
154.9
550-4,099-42-14

Peyton Manning (2004)
153.8
535-4,494-49-15

Randall Cunningham (1998)
152.8
477-3,704-35-12

Donovan McNabb (2006)
148.9
369-2,719-21-9

Steve Young (1991)
147.3
358-2,853-21-11

Kurt Warner (1999)
144.6
551-4,244-42-22

Tom Brady (2010)
143.5
474-3,276-30-6

Steve Young (1992)
141.1
507-3,850-29-16

SUMMATION

Is it coincidence that black quarterbacks have only two of those ten seasons? Yes, it is. Every action in football has a tradeoff. When you throw a pass, it’s possible that it can get intercepted. When you tuck the ball and run, it’s possible that the ball can get stripped from your hands. Considering that many quarterbacks are taught for their entire careers to avoid interceptions and perhaps aren’t taught at all to properly cradle the ball to protect it from defenders, it shouldn’t be that surprising that quarterbacks have high fumble rates and running quarterbacks have even higher fumble rates.

Of the top 12 rushing seasons by QB’s since 1990, seven of them have fumbled more than 10 times. While Daunte Culpepper rushed for 609 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2002, he also fumbled the ball 23 times.

So the real question is, who would you rather have on your team, a guy who may not make spectacular plays with his feet but turns the ball over about once a game or the guy who will make the highlight reel every Sunday night but will give the ball to the defense 25-30 times in a season?

Am I racist when I say that Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb aren’t as good as Tom Brady and Peyton Manning? Some of you may think so but I don’t think I am. Many people say that success as a quarterback is measured by how many rings you have and while Manning has one and Brady three, McNabb and Vick have combined for zero. Peyton Manning will probably break nearly ever career passing record in the books and will hold them for a very long time. Brady has an excellent shot at a fourth ring this year despite a porous defense. Donovan McNabb is finally finding out what it’s like to play on a team that isn’t studded with Pro Bowlers and Michael Vick has a good shot at a deep run in the playoffs because he is now on a balanced team.

I’m all for using more tools to evaluate quarterbacks, but to put guys like McNabb and Vick in the conversation with Manning and Brady (when considering their careers) is nothing short of ludicrous and that has nothing to do with the color of their skin.

BCS Preview 2011 - Fiesta Bowl

2010-12-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

Shortly after TCU or Wisconsin takes a knee to seal a victory in the “Granddaddy of Them All”, Connecticut and Oklahoma will kick off in this year’s version of the Fiesta Bowl.

Oklahoma got to this point by finishing 10-2, winning the Big XII South, and then defeating Nebraska 23-20 to get the conference’s automatic BCS bid.

Connecticut got here by winning five straight games after starting the season 3-4. They got here because of a contractual obligation to include the winner of the Big East every year but it’s somewhat difficult to debate (in a perfect world) that they belong here. In the regular season, 20 teams won 10 or more games and another 6, including one in their own conference (9-3 West Virginia) won 9 games. Of those 26 teams, 17 of them are not going to play in a BCS bowl.

My goal here is not to slight the achievement of the Huskies football team this year. My goal is much more to put a shot across the bow of the BCS and ask, yet again, why a sub-par team from what is currently a sub-par conference allowed to play in one of the most prestigious bowl games in the country? The answer, of course, is money. While that is true, it doesn’t make the pill any easier to swallow.

BY THE NUMBERS

Oklahoma has huge advantages offensively and only concedes a little defensively to UConn’s ranks. While the Sooners ranked 4th in passing offense and 13th in total offense, Connecticut ranked 112th and 96th, respectively, in those categories. How did the Huskies win 8 games? With their ground game, which ranked 31st in the country, and their defense, which ranked only 48th in yards allowed but 23rd in points allowed per game.

UConn will need to take the air out of the ball and keep Oklahoma’s offense off the field or this game could get ugly.

CONNECTICUT WILL WIN BECAUSE…

Jordan Todman will put the entire team on his back and carry them to victory. He rushed for 1,574 yards this season (with a per game average of 143.1 yards per game which ranked second in the country to Oregon’s LaMichael James) and 14 touchdowns. He carried the ball more than 25 times for more than 100 yards in each of the Huskies’ last five games, all UConn wins. Their only hope against the Sooners is to keep the score low and hope that they are able to force turnovers.

KEY STAT: Connecticut is ranked 91st in net punting this year at 34.75 yards per punt.

OKLAHOMA WILL WIN BECAUSE…

They have a dynamic offense led by sophomore Landry Jones. Their defense is passable (63rd against the run, 51st against the pass, 58th overall) but they were in the top ten in net punting and turnover margin, showing a bend-but-don’t-break trend on defense.

In his second full season as a starter, Landry Jones made great strides, increasing his passer rating from 130.8 to 145.2 while throwing for 4,289 yards with a completion percentage of 65.3%. Behind him, DeMarco Murray rushed for 1,121 yards and 14 touchdowns which included four 100 yard performances.

THE VERDICT

This one is pretty easy. Oklahoma should be a big favorite and much like their fellow Big East champion of several years ago (Pittsburgh), they are going to find themselves outmatched.

Oklahoma 31, Connecticut 14

BCS Preview 2011 - Rose Bowl

2010-12-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year again! The final BCS standings have come out and unlike several years past, there are relatively few arguments to be made about the selections for the BCS. Granted, there is one glaring team that doesn’t seem to belong (we’re looking at you, Huskies) but that’s just the annual problem with giving six conferences automatic bids when there are bound to be down years for each and every conference in the country.

This is my third year writing previews for the BCS games and so far my record is dead even at 5-5. Two years ago I managed to get four of the five games right, missing out on a perfect BCS season because Alabama decided to only play three quarters instead of four against Utah. Last year was the exact opposite as Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, TCU, and Oregon all disappointed me. The one constant is that I have correctly picked both national champions so if you feel like placing a wager…

So we start off our BCS conversation in Pasadena, California, with the Rose Bowl.

In my opinion this game this year could be called the Put-Up-Or-Shut-Up Bowl. In the 2011 Rose Bowl Game provided by Vizio, played January 1st at 5:00 Eastern Standard Time on ESPN, the Texas Christian Horned Frogs will square off against the Wisconsin Badgers. While the Badgers haven’t had anything to do with the recent controversy surround Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee’s comments, they couldn’t help but be dragged into the mix and the reason is simple; they beat Ohio State. On October 16th, Ohio State came into Camp Randall as the #1 team in the country and left with their first loss. If TCU managed to beat Wisconsin, it will prolong the embarrassment for Gee even though he has already retracted his absurd comments.

What is at stake for TCU? Everything. This is, in my opinion, the very rare instance where they have everything to win and everything to lose at the same time. If they lose, people will say that they can’t compete at this level and it will set back the cause of the TCU’s and Utah’s and Boise State’s by several years. If they can pull this game out, then they can say they beat a very good team from a BCS conference (not Pittsburgh or UConn or whoever gets the nod from the Big East) in a neutral site where the BCS conference member has very few excuses to use about why they lost. The fates of 55 teams spread across five conferences are all going to watch this game eagerly and no matter how much they hate TCU, on January 1st they should all be fans of the Horned Frogs.

BY THE NUMBERS

This game matches two of the more impressive statistical resumes that exist in the BCS games this year and there isn’t a large advantage on either side but where you see the biggest difference is in their respective defensive rankings.

TCU was ranked 3rd against the rush (89.17 yards per game), 1st against the pass (126.25), 1st in pass efficiency defense (93.12 opponent’s quarterback rating), 1st in overall defense (215.42), and first in scoring defense (11.42 points per game).

Wisconsin’s offensive ranks in those five categories are 12th, 74th, 17th, 3rd, and 4th, respectively. This is definitely going to be a strength vs. strength match-up when the Badgers have the ball and that could very well determine who wins this game.

TCU WILL WIN BECAUSE…

They have a chip on their shoulder the size of Texas. They have played in one BCS bowl and because of a fake punt by Boise State, they were not able to pull the game out (granted, the game was tied at the time but that was the play that sent the Broncos on their way to victory). On top of that, the president of a university with one of the more prestigious football programs in the country came out and slammed several football programs by name, including TCU’s. If you think that Gary Patterson isn’t using that to motivate his team against the only team to beat Ohio State this year, you are flat out wrong.

The Horned Frogs are a senior laden bunch and that, as much as anything else, works greatly in their favor in this game. They also played in a BCS bowl just a year ago while the Badgers haven’t been to the Rose Bowl since they beat UCLA and Stanford in back to back years in 1999 and 2000.

TCU was outstanding on offense (8th in rushing, 9th in total offense, 4th in scoring offense) and was even better on defense (see defensive rankings above). They allowed 10 or fewer points in 8 of their 12 games this year and allowed more than 24 just once.

Their special teams are also quite good as they ranked 5th in both punt return average and kick return average. If this game turns into a shootout, it could very much go either way. If it turns into a field position defensive struggle, I think that the advantage is definitely in TCU’s favor.

KEY STAT: You want more evidence of how their experience has shown this season? As a team they have allowed only 9 sacks and have thrown just 6 interceptions all season.

WISCONSIN WILL WIN BECAUSE…

They cannot be stopped on offense. 6 times this year they have scored more than 40 points and in three of those games, they topped 70. They did have a close call against a 6-6 Arizona State team (at home, no less) two weeks before suffering their only defeat against Michigan State but since then, only Iowa has played within 13 points of the Badgers.

Offensively, they are led by the three headed monster of James White, John Clay, and Montee Ball who have combined to rush for 2,829 yards (with a 6.1 yard per carry average) and 44 touchdowns. That sort of ridiculous production has led to Scott Tolzien having a fantastic year, despite only throwing the ball about 20 times per game. His passer rating of 169.8 ranks 4th nationally and he has been consistent this year, not prone to too many up and down performances.

Defensively, the Badgers haven’t been nearly as good and that unit is most critical to their success against Andy Dalton and TCU. They ranked just 49th in pass efficiency defense and part of that can be explained by the fact that given their enormous leads in several games, their opponents will have been throwing the ball all over the field in an attempt to keep up with Wisconsin. It still means, however, that their pass defense is suspect. They also ranked 29th in scoring defense and did surrender 20 or more points 7 times, including 30 to Iowa and 34 to Michigan State in their one loss.

KEY STAT: Wisconsin ranked 3rd this year in turnover margin at +1.17 per game.

THE VERDICT

I went with TCU a year ago and they let me down. They won’t do it to me again.

In short, their defense is too good. I know that their numbers have been inflated slightly by playing against the Mountain West Conference but even if you could adjust for the competition that they are playing, they still have an elite, senior heavy defense. Their defensive unit has 10 seniors and 6 of them played in every game this year.

On the other side of the ball, four of their five offensive lineman are seniors and the fifth is a junior and most importantly, Andy Dalton is a senior wanting put an exclamation point on a career that so far has a 41-8 record.

Most of all though, this is one of the few real shots that a team from a non-BCS conference will have to go toe to toe with a top five team from a BCS conference on a neutral field and the Horned Frogs will be ready.

I think that TCU will come out of the gate and hit Wisconsin in the mouth in the first quarter before settling down to a defensive, field position battle similar to the way Utah beat Alabama two years ago.

TCU 28, WISCONSIN 21

State of Football Address - FBS Edition

2010-12-02T05:10:00.001-08:00

The calendar says December now which means that attention has turned from the regular season grind to studying for finals and winter vacation on college campuses all over the country… yeah, right.

Once again we have started our annual dance to try to figure out the permutations that will allow certain teams to leapfrog certain other teams in the annual beauty pageant that the NCAA refers to as the BCS. This year though, thanks to a plucky Wolfpack, it’s a lot more straightforward and the cries of BCS opponents have become somewhat muted. Instead of arguing over who gets to play for the top prize, the arguments this year surround the much less contentious topic of who gets to play in the BCS bowls.

For instance, in the Big Ten, three teams have identical 11-1 (7-1) records, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Michigan State and as of this past Sunday, they are ranked 5th, 6th, and 8th, respectively, in the BCS. Under past Big Ten tiebreaking rules, they would have sent the team that was suffering the longest current Rose Bowl drought to Pasadena, which would have sent the Spartans to the parade of roses. However, currently, they simply use whoever is the highest ranked team in the BCS, which will more or less inevitably send the Badgers to the Rose Bowl. While I feel bad for Michigan State, who had a great season, I have a hard time arguing that Wisconsin doesn’t deserve to go given that for several weeks now, they have been the absolute best team in the Big Ten (though I believe that the football gods may be putting them up on a pedestal only to knock them down because of their three victories by scores of 70-23, 70-3, and 83-20).

As much as I am a fan of the underdogs, this simply wasn’t their season. For almost all of last year, I believed that TCU was a more worthy candidate than Boise State and that belief got thrown back in my face in the Fiesta Bowl in the form of a head to head loss to the Smurf Turf Broncos. After that game, I became a believer in Chris Peterson and Kellen Moore along with the other 19 starters they had returning but nobody who mattered seemed to jump on the bandwagon. They started the season 5th in the polls and seemed to be fighting an immense uphill battle, getting leapfrogged in the rankings four times by Oklahoma, Auburn, Oregon, and TCU. Despite winning a de facto road game against #10 Virginia Tech to start the season, they only gained ground but never moved up the rankings. After starting the season at #3, they moved up in the standings just twice and both occurrences were after a leapfrogging team that had pushed them down to #4 lost.

I’m not asking you to feel sorry for Boise State. They knew coming into this season that in order to play for the ultimate prize, they had to be perfect and in the end, they couldn’t do it, losing a heartbreaker to Nevada 34-31, missing two short field goals and getting dominated in the second half. Now all the focus shifts to TCU and unless the Gamecocks can beat Auburn, TCU will have to settle for the Rose Bowl and while that pales in comparison to the BCS National Championship Game, that’s one hell of a consolation prize. Trust me, I’m a fan of the Washington Huskies; I’d love to have my team playing in the Rose Bowl this year.

THE BOWLS

Right now the Bowl picture seems pretty clear but there is still plenty of room for chaos and that all starts Saturday in the SEC Championship game in Atlanta. #1 Auburn will play #19 South Carolina in a rematch of one of the few games that Auburn struggled in this year. If the Tigers manage to lose, then TCU will undoubtedly move up to #2 and play Oregon for the national title. However, I do have to mention that Oregon plays Oregon State in the Civil War game and even though the Beavers are 5-6, you always have to take rivalry games seriously because anything can happen.

Barring disaster, Oregon and Auburn will play for all the marbles. TCU and Stanford will get into the BCS party via the “3-4 rule” saying that the 3rd and 4th ranked teams in the BCS are guaranteed BCS Bowl berths. Wisconsin looks all but certain to win the BCS tiebreakers in the Big Ten, which will leave Ohio State and Michigan State hoping for an at-large bid.

The Big XII Championship Game will be one of the more interesting games, pitting #9 Oklahoma against #13 Nebraska. Likewise, the ACC title game between #15 Virginia Tech and #21 Florida State will also be an interesting game as Virginia Tech attempts to finish their undefeated ACC season.

Which leaves the Big East. I never would have expected to write these words in all my life when talking about football… Connecticut controls their own destiny in the Big East. In that respect, it is one heck of a weird season. It is also easy to see why TCU will join the Big East which is quite simply the weakest conference with an automatic BCS bid. I’m very near willing to pencil in TCU for that berth for the next year or two but I digress.

That gives us a total of eight teams in the BCS; who will the last two be? According to BCS rules, the following teams are eligible for at-large bids (excluding those already mentioned above), placed in order of BCS rankings:

#6 Ohio State (11-1)
#7 Arkansas (10-2)
#8 Michigan State (11-1)
#9 Oklahoma (10-2)
#10 LSU (10-2)
#11 Boise State (10-1)
#12 Missouri (10-2)

Ironically, the result of the ACC and Big XII Championship Games will not affect these selections one little bit because of these teams, the choices are fairly obvious. If you run a BCS Bowl Game and you’re looking at that list of seven teams, which ones would be most likely to sell every ticket that you give to them? My guess would be Ohio State, Oklahoma, and LSU. However, since Auburn is most likely going to the title game, the Sugar Bowl would love to select an SEC team as an at-large bid and considering that it’s just a 10 hour drive from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to New Orleans I think we can safely assume that Arkansas will pack the house.

So, Missouri is out. Boise State is out (much to the old guard’s delight). LSU is out due to a head to head loss to Arkansas. Oklahoma is either going to get in via the automatic Big XII bid or they will not make it with a 10-3 record. Michigan State was a fantastic story this year but fell short of Ohio State if for no other reason, then the quality of their loss. The Spartans one loss came to an Iowa team that is now 7-5 while Ohio State’s only loss is to #5 Wisconsin. Also, it isn’t as likely that the Michigan State faithful will travel to the Fiesta Bowl or the Orange Bowl as well as the two teams above them.

That only leaves two more teams and those will be your last two at-large teams. To recap, barring some sort of terrible disaster this weekend at the hands of Oregon State and/or South Carolina, the BCS participants should be the following teams.

#1 Auburn (12-0)
#2 Oregon (11-0)
#3 TCU (12-0)
#4 Stanford (11-1)
#5 Wisconsin (11-1)
#6 Ohio State (11-1)
#7 Arkansas (10-2)
#9 Oklahoma (10-2) or #13 Nebraska (10-2)
#15 Virginia Tech (10-2) or #21 Florida State (9-3)
Connecticut (7-4)

THE HEISMAN TROPHY

With any luck the elephant in the room just turned out to be some strange show on TV. While I wish that TCU was gearing up to play for the national title against Oregon, I would never wish for Cam Newton’s amazing season to be derailed by recruiting violations. If the story that was posted on espn.com yesterday is true and he had nothing to do with the pay-for-play deal, then I think he should be able to play and I think his father should be ashamed of himself. If it’s not true and Newton did know about it, then he just dodged a bullet and yet another instance of corruption slips through the NCAA cracks.

I’m not saying that NCAA football players should get paid millions of dollar but when this much money and pride is at stake, it’s easy to see the temptation for many of these players. They don’t always come from wealthy families and it’s easy to justify taking a few thousand dollars when your family is on welfare. The NCAA needs to do several things and at the top of that list is get rid of the illusion of the amateur athlete. In principle it’s a very nice concept but what do you say to the Universities getting rich off of the labor of amateur athletes? According to a study done, the University of Florida spent about $80 million on its football program in the four years that Tim Tebow was playing for them. According to that same report, the revenue of the football program over that same time was $280 million. While I understand that Tebow himself was not responsible for that $200 million profit (two SEC championships and two BCS National Championships had quite a bit to do with that), he certainly helped.

Is it fair that the NCAA makes obscene amounts of money and doesn’t even have to pay their workers that are most responsible for it? Not really. I know that the NCAA and university presidents will say that these young men are getting a world class education for free. While that may be true, is $10,000-30,000 a year enough to prevent 18-22 year old kids from being seduced by boosters and agents when very little (if any) of that money is disposable income? You would hope it is but history shows us that it isn’t.

What’s the solution? Adding stipends to scholarships. Maybe $5,000 per semester or per year or something along those lines. I’m not sure but something has to be done and at the top of that list is getting the NCAA to pull its head out of the sand.

UMM, BACK TO THE HEISMAN…

Ah yes, the trophy that I was originally going to talk about in that section. This is one of those years where the decision is easy. I almost wonder if the NCAA expedited their investigation to make things easier on the Heisman Trust (probably not) or the BCS (most definitely). Once they declared Cam Newton eligible and not in violation of NCAA rules, you could have started engraving his name on the trophy right then and there.

I may not be a huge Cam Newton fan, especially since plenty of Heisman winners managed to make it through their college careers without even being accused of something as bad as pay-for-play, but there is no question in my mind that he deserves the Heisman. If there were such a verbose award, he would also get the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision MVP Award. His season is littered with Heisman moments, culminating with his superb second half on the road against #11 Alabama (detractors of Newton will quickly point out that in the first half of that game, Newton was nearly invisible but then again, so was the entire Auburn team).

He ranked second in the nation in passer efficiency at 185.6 (Kellen Moore led at 188.0), throwing 24 touchdowns and just 6 interceptions while completing 67.9% of his passes. He also ranked 10th nationally with 1,336 yards rushing (leading the SEC) and 3rd nationally with 18 rushing touchdowns.

In my mind the only other viable candidate was Kellen Moore. His final numbers (188.0 rating, 3,269 yards on just 311 attempts, 71.1% completing percentage, 30 touchdowns and 5 interceptions) are gaudy but what really stood out to me was the fact that in his last three games, his overall rating dropped each time and his rating in each of those games was 180.9, 174.1, and 180.1, respectively. He had four games with a rating over 200 and his lowest of the season was 134.1 when he threw three touchdowns without an interception (basically on the road) against #10 Virginia Tech to start the season.

I don’t disagree with Cam Newton getting the Heisman and to be honest, if I had a vote, he’d be my winner. All I’m saying is that I’m hoping Kellen Moore doesn’t get overlooked the way that Boise State did this year.

Well, that’s about all for now. Later I’ll be weighing in after the BCS match-ups to provide predictions and analysis. Until then, get ready for a Saturday full of good football!

State of Football Address - NFL Edition

2010-11-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

Essentially, my goal for this post is to simply weigh in on a few issues that I think are important that are going on in the NFL right now. It’s week 12 and with five weeks remaining in the regular season, there are currently 21 teams within two games of first place in their division and that doesn’t even include the 6-5 Dolphins who are three games behind the Jets and Patriots. Parity is ruling supreme as seven teams are either 9-2 or 8-3 and another four teams are 7-4. I am willing to bet that home field advantage is going to play a much bigger role this postseason than it has in the past few years. Currently, four teams are undefeated at home (the Chiefs, Ravens, and Patriots are 5-0 while the Falcons are 6-0) while only the New York Jets have yet to lose on the road (5-0), although the Steelers aren’t far behind at 5-1.

So what is troubling me this season? Who the MVP will be? Nope, Phillip Rivers has a fantastic inside track at that award given that the Chargers have begun their late season push and he’s putting up phenomenal numbers. Whether or not someone will pass for 5,085 yards? Not really. Rivers and Orton are both on pace to come close but as Rivers has shown in recent weeks, winning and huge passing numbers don’t necessarily go hand in hand. History has shown time and time again that the easiest way to have success in the NFL is with a balanced offense and a strong defense. Balanced usually does not equal record breaking.

VICK

One of the two issues I want to address is Michael Vick. He has been a feel good story for some this year and for others, he is still public enemy number one. Personally, I don’t care about the things that he has done personally to rehabilitate his image and get back in the good graces of the NFL, the numerous sponsors, and most importantly, the American criminal justice system. As the owner of one of the cutest, happiest 30 pound dogs that exists on the face of this earth, I will never forgive Vick for the things that he did and the things that he stood by and watched happen. The details of his case were sickening to me and thinking about those details while my puppy stared into my eyes happily, I was nearly brought to tears.

However, I do not believe that he should be kicked out of the NFL forever. In the eyes of the law, he is back to square one (at least I think he is, I’m not sure if he’s still on probation or anything like that). He has paid his debt to society and he is doing everything he can to become a functioning part of society once again so he can regain the fortune that he lost. My biggest issue anymore is that for the disgusting animal cruelty that he allowed to happen and participated in, I believe his sentence was far too light. This is not Michael Vick’s fault. It is the fault of the lawmakers and as I read somewhere, apparently 30 different laws have been passed making the penalties for dogfighting much more severe and because of the high profile nature of this case, apparently more reports of dogfighting are being received by police. If that’s the case, then maybe there is a silver lining that isn’t stained with the blood of defenseless dogs.

There is a flip side of the coin to all of this and that is Michael Vick the player. At some point in the last several years, something clicked. In his first 6 years in the National Football League, Vick completed just 53.7% of his passes with a quarterback rating of 75.9 and a win-loss record of 38-28-1, a good record by any mark but when you take out his 2004 season that record drops to 27-24-1. Maybe he is more mature now and realizes that in the long run his legs won’t be able to sustain him in this league as long as his arm will. Whatever clicked inside his head, it has made him into the player that defensive coordinators have always feared he would become; he is now a threat to throw as well as run.

Thus far this season, he has completed 63.4% of his passes and while that doesn’t rank amongst the league’s best (12th best in the NFL), it’s a huge step for a guy who has 419 rushing yards and is averaging 6.5 yards per carry. His QB rating of 106.0 is not among the league’s best; it is the league’s best. An even better indication of his maturity as a passer this year is the fact that he has thrown 13 touchdowns and has been intercepted just 1 time.

While I have very little respect for Michael Vick the person, I have gained an immense amount of respect for Michael Vick the player.

BLACK QB’S

On November 23rd, Jemele Hill wrote a nice piece (here is the link, definitely worth a read: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=hill/101123) about the role that race plays when it comes to quarterbacks in the NFL and it was a very well written, thought provoking piece. So much so that I feel the need to weigh in.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am Caucasian, or as Chuck Lorre once wrote on a vanity card, beige. I have tried very hard over the course of my life to be sensitive to issues of race while trying very hard to ignore them. It sounds like an interesting dichotomy but in the immortal words of Dr. King, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

At no point during this article does Hill imply that race had anything to do with fishy decisions to bench black quarterbacks that have all had varying degrees of success in their respective careers. I’m not saying that these benching were or were not racially motivated but I have a hard time believing they are so what I’m going to do is I’m going to put forth my opinions on them and take them with a grain of salt for the only information that I have is what is printed by the media.

#1 – Donovan McNabb

Benching McNabb in the fourth quarter of a game where the Redskins were trailing by less than a touchdown was very odd. Mike Shanahan’s explanations of the benching were even more mystifying. First he said he felt he had a better chance with Rex Grossman because of the better handle on the ‘Skin’s two minute offense (and if he had such a good handle on the two minute offense, wouldn’t he still be a starter in this league?) and then Shanahan called out McNabb’s fitness level. Yes, McNabb has to learn a new system after spending eleven years under Andy Reid and yes, it’s not the first time that his fitness has been called into question (though be careful believing whatever Terrell Owens says). It still seems odd to bench a guy that has a history of leading game-winning drives in the fourth quarter (as Hill points out).

My personal theory is that this league has become the ultimate example of “what have you done for me lately?” and Mike Shanahan took this way too far. In his career before this year, McNabb has a QB rating of 86.5 and he was coming off of a 2009 season where his rating was 92.9, the third highest of his career. So far this season with the Redskins, his rating has been 76.0, which would be the lowest of his career excluding his 216 attempt rookie season. He has posted a rating higher than 80.0 just twice this season while having four games below 70.0 and one below 60.0.

Is it possible that Shanahan is feeling a little frustrated that they brought in a guy they were hoping to be a franchise quarterback and so far, his passer rating is below the league average (83.8)? Is it possible that he is feeling so pressured to win games with “Chainsaw” Dan Snyder signing his paychecks that he’ll do anything to jumpstart his team to a victory? Absolutely. Is it possible that this decision was racially motivated? Of course it is, but while this is the one of these three benchings where that seems to be the most plausible explanation, I just don’t see it.

#2 – Jason Campbell

At first glance, this one makes very little sense. They gave up a draft pick to get Campbell and then they’ve turned to Bruce Gradkowski at a moment’s notice multiple times this year. However, this is the one that seems to me to be the least racially motivated.

Jason Campbell has been a solid starting quarterback in the NFL thus far but this year, he has been a complete Jekyll and Hyde. He’s had three games with a rating over 100.0 and he’s had two games where if he had let every pass fall incomplete, his rating would have been higher than what he actually did. His overall rating (75.8) isn’t too far off of his career mark (82.3) or at least it’s close enough to give him the benefit of the doubt.

However, I think that consistency is an extremely valuable asset in professional life, not just in professional sports. So which would you rather have, a quarterback that has a passer rating of 85.0 every single game or a quarterback who has a passer rating of 65.0 one game and 105.0 the next? Personally, I will always choose the former because that way, you can gameplan around him knowing that his performance will be on a fairly even keel. These have been Campbell’s passer ratings this year in games he’s played in (sorted by rating).

127.9
120.9
117.6
76.5
69.7
42.9
26.2
10.7

Three fantastic games, two below average games, one bad game, and two abysmal games. Is that what the Raiders were hoping for when they traded for him?

Which brings us to the other factor at work with Campbell; the Raiders. Last year, while JaMarcus Russell was having his worst professional season, Tom Cable started inserting Bruce Gradkowski in at quarterback and not only did he play well for a back-up (80.6 QB rating), the offense responded to him and they starting moving the ball down the field. So when Jason Campbell played horrifically against the Steelers (7-19 for 70 yards and two interceptions for a rating of 26.2) and the offense stagnated, was it completely unreasonable for Cable to think that perhaps Gradkowski could jumpstart the offense? Of course not because it had worked before.

While we’re on the subject of the Raiders, it’s also possible that Cable is open to just about anything because he’s not too worried about long term job security with Al Davis as the owner… I’m just saying. Hill also mentions that JaMarcus Russell was a black quarterback and received similar treatment from Cable and she only goes as far as saying that Russell was a “draft bust”.

His quarterback rating in his two full seasons was 66.2 and he went from 77.1 in his first full season to 50.0, a truly atrocious rating for any quarterback, and he wasn’t just any quarterback, he was a former #1 overall pick making millions of dollars. The league average for QB rating in those two years? 81.4.

#3 – Vince Young

This is by far the most intriguing because Young was not struggling as a quarterback this year. On his way to a QB rating of 98.6, he had shown flashes of brilliance with moderate struggles along the way. In other words, he was progressing as a passer, minimizing his mistakes while figuring out how to make plays. How you feel about this particular benching depends on what you think of Vince Young and what you think of Jeff Fisher. Was Vince Young playing well enough to remain the starting quarterback? Presumably, excluding the thumb injury that he suffered that eventually sidelined him for the rest of the season. Was Young mature enough to handle the starting job? That is the real question.

Hill brings up that Fisher has had contentious relationships with quarterbacks in the past and that he perhaps hasn’t shown the faith in Young for him to thrive at this level. Given the type of gameplan that Fisher puts forth, my guess is that he didn’t want a QB in Young’s mold and I don’t think race had anything to do with it. He wanted a game manager and his owner fell in love with the one of a kind playmaker and I think that is where a lot of friction originated. I really hate to say it quite this bluntly, but if that is the case I have only one message for Vince Young; grow up.

How many times has Peyton Manning’s shoulder pads ended up in the stands after being pulled from a game? I don’t think I need to answer that one. How many times has Tom Brady said, in front of teammates, that he was walking out on Bill Belichick, even though it’s no secret that one of Belichick’s trademarks is watching game film and serving out healthy portions of “humble pie” after a game, win or lose?

My point is that it seems to me that Young entered the NFL and expected to be a starting quarterback from the word go and hasn’t been able to adjust to actually having to work for the job. Maybe there is something going on behind the scenes that I don’t know about but maybe there isn’t. Jeff Fisher may be partially to blame but for Vince Young to accept no responsibility for his behavior would be astounding for a guy who has been in the NFL for five years.

It’s not the head coach’s job to stroke the ego of his young star. It’s his job to win games.

COMPARISONS

In her article, Hill compares these quarterbacks to one of the best QB’s of all time in Peyton Manning and I don’t find this to be a fair comparison to either Manning or any of the aforementioned quarterbacks.

Coming into this season, Donovan McNabb, Vince Young, and Jason Campbell had combined for a 138-94-1 record, 50,576 yards, 303 touchdowns, and 177 interceptions as starting quarterbacks in the NFL.

Peyton Manning, by himself, had a 131-61 record, 50,128 yards, 366 touchdowns, and 181 interceptions.

At the point of their benching (or in Manning’s case, right after his last drive and comeback killing interception against the Patriots), this is how these four quarterbacks had done.

Name
Rating
Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT

Vince Young
107.6
12-16-165-0-0

Donovan McNabb
75.7
17-30-210-1-1

Jason Campbell
26.2
7-19-70-0-1

Peyton Manning
96.3
38-52-396-4-3

In other words, one quarterback wasn’t performing too well, one was performing terribly, one was potentially injured and then threw a tantrum, and the last had thrown for nearly 400 yards and four touchdowns and had brought his team to the brink of a victory after trailing 31-14. I just don’t see that comparison. Peyton Manning doesn’t get criticized as much by the media because he isn’t a controversial figure. He doesn’t take his shoulderpads off and throw them in the stands and if anything, he is more critical of the way he plays than anyone else is.

Is the NFL prejudiced against black quarterbacks? Possibly, but before you answer that, answer this. Who are the ten most polished quarterbacks in FBS football right now and how many of them are black? Not all that many, but that still isn’t where it starts. If you are a high school football coach and you have a world class black athlete who can play quarterback, is that necessarily the best use of his talent? Maybe, but if the average high school receivers can’t catch the balls he throws to them, you’re not getting the most of his physical ability. Instead, you have an average kid play quarterback and have your outstanding athlete play running back or wide receiver where he can make plays to compensate for the lack of physical ability in his teammates.

So at the age of 14 or 15, an outstanding athlete gets moved from quarterback to running back to help the team win games and it’s possible he never switches back to QB. Is that the NFL’s fault? Nope, it’s the same thing that keeps cropping up; our obsessive need to win.

It Was a Bad Day to be a Democrat

2010-11-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

The votes are in and counted (for the most part). The question now is; what happened?

If you look at the results of the day and compare them to where we stood as a nation yesterday, an easy conclusion to draw would be that a law was passed banning Democrats from the US House of Representatives. Another (more legal) conclusion to draw would be that the American public got tired of its Democratic leadership.

When the morning broke on this month of November, there were 257 Democratic Representatives and 178 Republicans. As of right now, the numbers in January for the 113th Congress will be 186 Democrats and 239 Republicans.

So what’s the big deal? Americans got fed up with the Democratic Party and after a six year run as a majority, they are back in the minority. Well, the problem lies in how it happened.

INSTANT MEDIA

In the past ten years, it seems that the American public has become in ever increasing need of instant gratification. This applies to their need for almost anything, be it food, entertainment, or most notably in this decade, information and results. Information is available now more than it ever has been quite literally in the history of the planet and all someone has to do is log on to the internet and all the information they could ever desire is just a click away. Unfortunately, this has only enflamed our insatiable need for instant gratification.

Applied to politics, people want what they want and they want it now. Political analysts always talk about FDR in the days leading up to a presidential election. They talk about how in his first 100 days in office, he set the pieces in motion that would help lead us out of the darkest economic times of this country’s history. Now, presidents are measured by what they are able to achieve in those first three months and change in office with absolutely no regard for a few simple facts.

- FDR was one of the best president’s this country has ever had according to any number of rankings.
- Starting in January 1933 (when he took office) he was supported by an overwhelming congressional majority (313-117) in the House of Representatives.

Add those together and you get a formula for getting a lot of things done. In fact, during his first six years in the White House, the Democrat’s margin in the House only grew (from 196 seats in 1932 to 244 seats in 1936).

When a president doesn’t do well in those first three months, citizens already start looking ahead to next time and to be honest, that’s pathetic.

2000-2010

In the year 2000 when George W. Bush was elected, the Republicans had a 9 vote margin in the House, a slim lead they had maintained throughout the Clinton administration. This lead held through Bush’s first term, but in his second term, public opinion started to sway violently. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, Republicans held a 29 vote margin in the House, the largest majority they had had since 1946 when Truman was in the White House.

Two years later, the Democrats retook the majority with a 37 vote margin.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the White House and extended their margin in the House to 79 votes.
This year, Republicans retook the majority and now have a 53 vote margin.

In six short years, Republicans have gone from 29 votes up to 79 votes down back to 53 votes up. This year alone, the Democrats lost 71 seats. To give you a better idea of what that means, since the House expanded to 435 members, the Democratic party has lost 71 seats just one other time, in 1938, but that year they started with such an enormous majority that they still held a 93 vote margin.

Since the rough beginning of Republican/Democratic politics in Congress, the Democratic party has lost this large a chunk of the House seats only three other times and two of those were in the Civil War when there was a very successful and popular Republican president.

THE SPIN

So now that I’ve thrown a whole bunch of numbers at you, what does all that mean and why am I so riled up about all of this? For that, I have a relatively simple answer. There’s an old saying in baseball for the 162 regular season schedule. No matter what, you’re going to win 54 games and lose 54 games; it’s what you do with those last 54 games that really matters.

If you apply that to politics you can get a rough outline of our country. 33% of the people are hardcore Republicans and 33% are hardcore Democrats. The last third of the country might identify with one party more than another but they can be swayed by cunning campaigning. Indeed, every election is a dogfight for those 33% in the middle of the political spectrum and politicians are so advanced in their practice of persuasion that often it comes down to the middle 5-10% rather than 33%.

Here’s the part that irks me. In the second half of George W. Bush’s presidency, that middle third was flocking towards the left and for a minute, it almost looked like this country was going to undergo honest-to-god social change, perhaps shifting more to the left and away from the right. Now, just a scant few years later, America is shifting wildly back to the right.

In 2008, 62 Congressmen and women were elected for the first time; 24 Republicans and 38 Democrats. Of those 62 elected representatives, 27 of them, or 43.5%, will be looking for a new job come January. For the record, the party breakdown is indicative of what is going on around the country; 22 of 24 Republicans finishing their first term were re-elected while just 13 of 38 Democrats were similarly re-elected. How do we know that it was those 27 first time Representatives and not the 25 Representatives that have served for more than 30 years who are to blame for our current predicament?

In short, we don’t.

SOLUTION?

We, the people, of the United States of America, sent these men and women to Congress to do a job and instead of letting them complete that job, they were there for 6 months working and then 18 months campaigning and now we’re telling them we’re going to try someone else.

Is there a solution? Happier and more prosperous times, perhaps. The American people weren’t reshaping the face of the government every two years in the 90’s when the economy was booming and everyone had too much money to spend. So, true to form, the economy will stabilize once again and the sitting president and Congress will get all the credit despite having relatively little to do with the ultimate results.

Yes, this is a cynical way to view politics but don’t worry, I’ll be less cynical after the face changes itself once again…

730 days and counting…

Leon Kodak: You see, the country has mood swings.

Lewis Rothschild: Mood swings? Nineteen post-graduate degrees in mathematics, and your best explanation for going from a 63 to a 46 percent approval rating in five weeks is mood swings?

Leon Kodak: Well, I could explain it better, but I'd need charts, and graphs, and an easel.

American President (1995)

Giants Pitching Not Quite Historic... But Close

2010-11-02T20:21:00.001-07:00

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, the San Francisco Giants pitched their way through the playoffs, defeating the Atlanta Braves three games to one, the Philadelphia Phillies four games to two, and finally the Texas Rangers four games to one. They won their first World Series since 1954 and their first since moving to the state of California 52 years ago. They won the World Series despite a relatively unimpressive 92-70 regular season record and a lineup that hardly struck fear into opposing pitchers.

Aubrey Huff led the team with 26 home runs and 86 RBI and only one other hitter even managed 20 home runs and 80 RBI (Juan Uribe with 24 and 85). Buster Posey was the only batter who qualified for the batting title to hit better than .300 and even if you included everyone, only two guys hit better than Posey and they combined for 6 at-bats this year.

- As a team, they scored 4.3 runs per game, good for 17th in baseball.
- Their .729 OPS also ranked 17th in the league.
- They hit 162 home runs, tied for 10th in the league.
- They stole 55 bases all season, tied with the Cubs for dead last.
- They grounded into 158 double plays, one behind the Twins for the most in baseball.

All of this adds up to the fact that they were not an offensive juggernaut and from the title of this post, you should have guessed that we weren’t here to talk about hitting.

- Their 3.36 ERA led the league (San Diego was second at 3.41).
- Their 121 ERA+ was five points better than Oakland for the best in the league.
- They allowed the fewest hits in the league (1279) and the fifth fewest home runs (134).
- They did walk the 4th most batters (578) but struck out the most (1331) and posted the 9th best K/BB ratio.

As dominant as they were throughout the regular season, their pitching staff hit an entirely new level in September. Their 19-10 record wasn’t even the best record of any month this season (they went 20-8 in July) but their 1.91 ERA was by far the lowest of any month they had. Their WHIP (0.945) and K/BB ratio (3.70) were also the best of any month the pitching staff had and opponents managed a pathetic .189/.251/.292 batting line against them.

Believe it or not, they weren’t done yet. The quartet of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathon Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner combined for a 49-36 record in the regular season but won 8 of the 11 games won by the Giants in the postseason (and Sanchez was 0-2 in the postseason).

The Giants’ pitching staff combined on an ERA of 2.47 while allowing a ridiculous 94 hits in 134.0 innings. They also walked 43 and struck out 133, including 12 by Lincecum and Brian Wilson in the World Series clinching Game 5.

At one point during the World Series broadcast, Tim McCarver commented that the postseason run by the Giants’ pitching staff might just be one of the best in history and it got me wondering where it would rank and so, I decided to check it out. Before I go into the results, however, I have to lay out some ground rules.

THE RULES

First, I only considered the playoff teams of the past 16 years, or the wild card era. The biggest reason for that cutoff is that starting with 1995, all teams had to win 11 games to win the World Series and therefore, their starting pitchers had to undergo more work (also, the smaller sample size made number crunching less time consuming).

Secondly, to judge the pitching of these teams, I turned to my old standby, Game Score. Now, I understand this is used for starting pitchers and not entire teams but it still provides a good indication of how well a team pitched. Teams still got penalized for allowing runs and were credited for recording strikeouts.

That’s about it for the rules…

THE RESULTS

Since 1995 there have been 112 postseason series and 97 of them (86.6%) have been won by the team with the higher GS. This isn’t terribly surprising since this version of the Game Score statistic takes into account all pitchers, not just the starters. To me, it is actually more interesting that 13.4% of teams had better overall pitching and yet failed to win the series.

Three such instances took place in the World Series. They are as follows:

1996
Atlanta Braves – 64.8
New York Yankees – 56.0 (4-2)

1997
Cleveland Indians – 49.6
Florida Marlins – 49.6 (4-2)

2003
New York Yankees – 67.5
Florida Marlins – 60.8 (4-2)

This is easily explained by the fact that they play up to seven games. In the 1996 World Series, Atlanta won their two games by a combined score of 16-1. New York, on the other hand, won their four games by a combined score of 17-10. Hence, the Braves actually pitched significantly better but New York, dragged down largely by a 12-1 Game 1 loss, still won the series.

So where does the 2010 San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff rank? Amongst teams that actually played in the World Series, their 2.47 ERA ranks 6th. The best mark of 1.89 belongs to the 1996 Braves who would have easily won back to back World Series titles if their offense had played better.

In average GS, however, the Giants jump up to second, behind only the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks team. The Giants staff pitched their way to a mark of 70.1, while the D’Backs stand at 71.0. Those are the only two teams to go through an entire postseason, including the World Series, with an average GS over 70. Was the Giants’ run historic? Not quite… but very close.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

This past postseason, the Phillies actually came just as close to making postseason pitching history as the Giants did, posting the second best GS of any team in any individual series. What follow are the best three series (according to GS) this postseason.

Team – GS
(opponent)
IP-H-R-ER-BB-K

Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0

San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5

Atlanta Braves – 71.8
(San Francisco Giants)
9.3-7.0-2.8-2.0-3.3-10.8

And now, the five best series pitching performances of the wildcard era:

1998 ALDS
New York Yankees – 84.7
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.3-0.3-0.3-1.3-9.0

2010 NLDS
Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0

1996 NLDS
Atlanta Braves – 80.7
(Los Angeles Dodgers)
9.3-4.7-1.7-1.0-2.3-9.7

1999 ALDS
New York Yankees – 79.0
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.7-0.3-0.3-3.0-5.7

2010 NLDS
San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5

The highest ranked LCS performance ranks 9th overall when the 1995 Braves swept the Reds while posting a GS of 75.0. The highest ranked World Series performance ranks 11th overall. The 2001 Diamondbacks had an average GS of 74.6 when they defeated the Yankees in 7 games.

TRIVIALITY

I’ll finish up here with some interesting tidbits regarding team GS marks and the past 16 seasons worth of playoffs.

Worst performance in a World Series?
31.3 by the 2007 Colorado Rockies

Worst performance while winning the World Series?
44.4 by the 2002 Anaheim Angels

Best performance in a World Series?
74.6 by the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks

Best performance while losing a World Series?
67.5 by the 2003 New York Yankees

Worst performance in any series?
27.3 by the 2002 Yankees (ALDS vs. Anaheim Angels)

Worst performance while winning a series?
43.0 by the Anaheim Angels (ALDS vs. New York Yankees)

Best performance in any series?
84.7 by the New York Yankees (1998 ALDS vs. Texas Rangers)

Best performance while losing a series?
71.8 by the Atlanta Braves (2010 NLDS vs. San Francisco Giants)

Highest Combined GS (any series)?
150.0 by San Francisco Giants (78.25) and Atlanta Braves (71.75) in the 2010 NLDS

Lowest Combined GS (any series)?
70.3 by the Anaheim Angels (43.0) and New York Yankees (27.3) in the 2002 ALDS

Largest GS Disparity (any series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in the 2007 World Series

Lowest GS Disparity (any series)?
0.8 by the Oakland Athletics (64.8) and the Boston Red Sox (64.0) in the 2003 ALDS

Highest Combined GS (World Series)?
131.6 by the Arizona Diamondbacks (74.6) and New York Yankees (57.0) in 2001

Lowest Combined GS (World Series)?
86.3 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002

Largest GS Disparity (World Series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in 2007

Lowest GS Disparity (World Series)?
2.6 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002

If that isn’t too much information about MLB playoff history and pitching performances, I’m not sure what is!

It’s going to be a long cold winter with no baseball but as sure as the sun retreats to the south every fall, it will come back. The snow and ice will melt and in four short months, pitchers and catchers will report to spring training.

Until next time…

Is the Major League Baseball Playoff System Broken?

2010-10-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, please forgive me; brevity has never been my strong suit...

Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.

Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.

Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?

All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.

Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.

For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.

THE NUMBERS

In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.

Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.

The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.

The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?

I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.

In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.

What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.

Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.

THE SOLUTION

I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.

My suggestion is far bolder.

While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.

Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.

The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.

Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.

What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:

1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies

Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.

Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?

1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)

Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:

1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)

In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.

Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.

My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.

MONEY

After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.

CONCLUSION

The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).

Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.

All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?

Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.

What other franchises need saving?