Relievers and the Cy Young Award

2012 CY YOUNG RACE

(Note: all statistics are as of August 21st)

Earlier this month, Jayson Stark of espn.com wrote a column advocating that Aroldis Chapman, despite being a reliever, deserves the National League Cy Young award. In principle, I am opposed to the idea of relievers getting the nod for the Cy Young and my reasoning is simple; overall contribution.

Once upon a time I wrote, when comparing two candidates for pitching’s highest honor, would you rather have 250 innings from a pitcher with an ERA of 2.50 or 200 innings? If you had to give one of them an award, which would you give it too? All else being equal, the decision is easy, you give it to the guy who threw more innings. He matched the ERA of the other pitcher across a larger sample size and in my book that always equals a better performance.

However, in the case of Chapman, all else is not equal. His numbers this year have been quite otherworldly:

1.33 ERA
0.72 WHIP
4.3 Hits allowed per 9 Innings
16.5 Strikeouts per 9 Innings

Should he be considered? Absolutely. Should he win the award? That’s what I need to find out.

A while ago I developed a metric to attempt to quantify the best pitching performance in a season. It was based upon three components; Bill James’ Game Score, ERA+, and innings pitched. The first problem I had to overcome was the Game Score; it’s designed for starting pitchers and doesn’t work for relievers. My first iteration of my new and improved metric just plugged in relievers numbers as if they were starters. The results, predictably, were not good.

So I started fiddling (very technical term) with the Game Score metric and came to a method that I like quite a bit. Essentially, I removed all of the rewards for innings pitched and I took out the constant of 50 points that a pitcher starts with. Basically, all that was left was this:

Hit = -2 points
Unearned Run = -2 points
Earned Run = -4 points
Walk = -1 point
Strikeout = 1 point

At the point the next problem is that if we look at all of these statistics on a gross basis or on a per game basis, starters will fare far better than relievers. I solved this problem by calculating how many of each of those stats that a pitcher accumulates per 9 innings pitched and then I did the above calculations with those numbers.

If you crunch a few of those numbers, you’ll realize that for the vast majority of pitchers, that resulting number will come out to be negative. I then took this resulting number and compared it to the best and worst figures league-wide; this gives me a percentile rank of each pitcher. At this point, I calculated my metric by multiplying the percentile rank, the ERA+ value (divided by 100), and innings pitched. The results, to say the very least, were fascinating.

If the Cy Young voting went according to this metric, a reliever would win the National League Cy Young award… and the American League Cy Young award. These are the top five scores from the NL:

195.20 – Aroldis Chapman
183.88 – Johnny Cueto
158.51 – Clayton Kershaw
158.07 – R.A. Dickey
148.32 – Cole Hamels

And in the American League:

236.36 – Fernando Rodney
204.48 – Justin Verlander
193.82 – David Price
187.98 – Felix Hernandez
150.60 – Chris Sale

At this point, I feel the need to widen my gaze by quite a bit. Does this new method unfairly favor relievers over starters? The only way to look at that is to look at many, many more seasons and see how some of the best seasons of all time stack up against each other using this new method.

THE CY YOUNG ERA

The first Cy Young Award was handed out to Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers and since then, 101 awards have been handed out for pitching excellence and thus far, only 9 of them have gone to relievers. To see how well my formula does over the course of Cy Young voting, I applied the above method to all seasons where a pitcher threw 50 or more innings from 1956 to 2011 and while some results were surprising, others were exactly what I expected them to be.

To give you an idea of what kind of numbers this formula produces, the overall average for all of the 15,125 pitchers in the Cy Young era was 81.24. The following are where a pitcher would have to perform in order to make it into various percentiles.

Top half (50th percentile) – 81.24
Top quarter (75th percentile) – 107.57
Top 10% (90th percentile) – 159.50
Top 5% (95th percentile) – 194.41
Top 1% (99th percentile) – 280.46

Below is a graphic representation of where this formula (cleverly named the “Murphy Score”) calculates all pitchers to be. My reason for this is simple; when I say that a reliever posted a score of 250.0, quickly referring to this chart will show you that that season was in about the top 500 of the Cy Young era. While that doesn’t sound great, remember that this sample has 15,125 data points which means a score of 250.0 would be better than 98.2% of pitchers in the past 56 years.

You will also notice while perusing this chart that there are a few data points on the extreme high end. Only 23 pitchers had a season that produced a Murphy Score of over 400 and of those, only 3 broke 500. The overwhelmingly vast majority of pitchers fell into the lower end of the scale while a few had truly transcendent performances and frankly, that’s about what you should expect.

But the question that I want to examine is how do relievers stack up against starters? To separate the relievers from the starters, I simply looked at the percentage of a pitcher’s appearances that were starts. If that was over 50%, I considered him a starting pitcher and if it was under 50%, he was a reliever. It’s a bit on the simplistic side but I had to draw the line somewhere.

As you can imagine by simply looking at my formula, the numbers will be heavily skewed towards starters. Of the 684 pitchers who produced a Murphy Score in excess of 200, 93.1% of them were starting pitchers. Say whatever you want, I believe that equal performance over more innings should be considered a better performance. Therefore, if two pitchers rank in the 80th percentile on the rate stats and both have an ERA+ of 150, the one that throws 200 innings should have a better Murphy Score (240.0) than the one that throws 50 innings (60.0).

BEST SEASONS EVER

Now that I’m finished on my high horse, let’s take a look at the best seasons in the Cy Young era. This table shows the top 20 seasons according to Murphy Score (MS) in the past 56 seasons with some of the more traditional stats that people are accustomed to.

As you can see, there is only one season from a reliever in the top 20 and it’s not even the one you might expect. Dennis Eckersley won the AL Cy Young award in 1992 but he led the league in Murphy Score two years earlier with one of the most dominant pitching performances of all-time. In fact, in 1990 Eckersley was one of just four relievers to ever lead the league in Murphy Score but none of those four won the Cy Young. However, of the nine relievers to win the Cy Young, only three finished in the top ten in Murphy Score and Steve Bedrosian in 1987 finished 96th that year.

One can easily poke fun at my methods and say that they are flawed but many analysts have looked at the Cy Young voters and found flawed (or outright missing) logic, at least as far as statistics are concerned. Recently there has been a bit of a shift in thinking amongst the voters and this analysis agrees; in the past three years, the Cy Young winners have finished first and second in Murphy Score.

THE VERDICT

Do relievers deserve to be considered for the Cy Young award? Yes, I believe they do. However, I personally will always give a nod to a starter for the sheer sample size. As far as I’m concerned, a reliever has to be great (or beyond great) in a season where no starting pitchers are dominating. The problem for both Fernando Rodney and Aroldis Chapman is the fact that there are starting pitchers (Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, David Price, and Johnny Cueto) who are pitching extremely well.

When handicapping the Cy Young races down the stretch, you need to also remember that the margin of error for a starter is much larger. If Rodney goes out and gives up three runs in an inning (hardly a stretch for a closer), his ERA would jump from 0.78 to 1.23, an increase of 57%. If his ERA+ were to go down 150 points (about where Aroldis Chapman is right now), his Murphy Score would go from 236.36 to 157.89. Justin Verlander would have to have a bad month for his rate to go down 79 points.

Relievers deserve to be considered but that doesn’t mean that they should be winning every other year. I just can’t support a guy who throws less than one out of every 18 innings his team plays.

Sadness

Early in the morning of Friday, July 20th, I received a text message from a friend who lives in Seattle stating:

“Hey I just heard about the shooting out there last night. Are you guys ok?”

Fresh off of a morning workout, I was far more worried about when I’d stop sweating than anything else. My assumption was that there had been a random act of violence in the town where I live, Arvada, Colorado. I thought nothing of it, replied that my girlfriend and I were fine and knew nothing about a shooting of any kind.

It was only on my drive to work that I first heard the details of the horrific event that took place at an Aurora movie theater early that morning, just 20 miles from my house.

Friday was a difficult day for me and thankfully, I was not personally touched by the tragedy; I didn’t know anyone who was in the theater that night and of the few people that I know who live in Aurora (both friends and family) all were accounted for. Still, this event resonated with me more than any other shooting ever had and I believe it was simply a matter of proximity.

Thirteen years ago when there was a shooting at Columbine High School, I was living in Washington, 1,500 miles away. When Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, I was living in Colorado but I was still half a continent away.

Friday morning when I went onto the websites of CNN and the Wall Street Journal, there on the front page was a small suburb twenty miles from my home. It resonated like nothing ever has simply because of its frightening proximity and its terrifying randomness.

I went about my work day on Friday and tried to focus on my work but found it quite difficult. Upon reflection in the afternoon, I realized that at one point or another throughout the day, I had gone through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Now, several days after this occurrence, I am left with nothing but sadness.

GUN CONTROL

Ever since I learned of this happening, I have been searching for an answer; some new piece of legislation or some new program to help identify people who are at risk of doing something along these lines. I’ve come up with many answers but whenever I put them up to any sort of scrutiny, they just don’t stand up and that has helped me arrive at a truly depressing conclusion; there is very little that can be done.

No, this is not me being a pessimist; this is me being a realist. There are roughly 310,000,000 people in the United States and there are an estimated 270,000,000 firearms. Because of that, the crime rates in the United States involving a firearm are truly frightening when compared with other countries. The obvious question at that point is what are those other countries doing that the US should be doing?

Ironically, the answer is our government has never restricted (within reason) the freedoms of the people. Firearms were a necessary part of American life once upon a time and although that time has long since past – the United States government accounts for roughly 40% of the world’s expenditure on their respective militaries – firearms have never been illegal. Yes, gun control laws have been passed but relatively speaking, the proliferation of firearms has been going on unchecked in this country for more than 200 years.

If the second amendment was repealed tomorrow and the decision was made to make it illegal for citizens to own firearms, think for just a moment of what a Herculean effort that would require. The budget of the ATF would have to increase by a factor of 10… or maybe 100… or maybe 1,000. Even then, there would be a significant number of people that would not willingly relinquish their firearms. How many firearms would have to be removed from circulation for them to no longer be a significant threat? 75%? 90%? I would argue that until they are all removed and firearms are only in the hands of trained law enforcement or military personnel, they are a threat.

To sum up all of that, eliminating firearms is a logistical impossibility.

ARM EVERYONE

The idea of everyone carrying a gun came up shortly after the Aurora shooting and it’s one of the more asinine and dangerous ideas that anyone has ever come up with.

First and foremost, let me address the Aurora incident before getting a bit more abstract. The shooter was wearing full tactical body armor and most importantly (from a combat standpoint) he was prepared for everything that was about to happen. The members of the audience were not prepared for tear gas canisters to be released in the middle of a dark and noisy movie theater.

Secondly, if everyone had been carrying a concealed firearm, how many of them would have been able to do any good? Handguns are relatively useless against body armor. In the infamous North Hollywood Shootout, police officers fired approximately 660 rounds at the two gunmen over the course of 44 minutes while the robbers were able to fire well over 1,000 due to their body armor. In that case, only one of the robbers was actually killed by fire from the police and this was only after being hit in the legs by roughly 20 rounds (the other assailant was hit in the neck right after shooting himself in the head).

If we apply this situation to what happened in Aurora, it is possible that the instinct to fight back could have cost more lives as people stayed to enter the fray instead of fleeing the scene.

Is it possible that spree killers could be stopped if more people had firearms? Yes, but the key word is possible. Would overall firearm violence go down? Absolutely not. Imagine the following scenario; you are out at a restaurant with a few friends and you have a few rounds of drinks. You get up to go to the bathroom and, tripping over something or other, you bump into a patron at the bar, spilling his drink. He is understandably upset.

Normally, this situation could be defused quite simply. You apologize and maybe offer to buy him another drink. What happens if he doesn’t like the way you apologize (don’t ask me why, these things happen)? Again, not too difficult to defuse but what if he’s carrying a firearm? Now, all of a sudden, you have gone from a simple alcohol-fueled altercation to a potential life-and-death situation. Having been drinking and perhaps not in the most sound mind, you perceive his advances as a threat and you pull your gun and seeing this, he perceives a threat to him and he pulls his gun. Nobody wins.


That is a relatively simple scenario but completely plausible. There are a million other everyday scenarios that if you simply add the presence of a firearm (or two) it makes the situation much more difficult to manage.

Arming everyone is not the answer. Murder rates might go down but the number of people injured and killed by firearms would skyrocket.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

A debate is needed on the issue of gun control and as always, both sides need to give a little. Proponents of gun control need to realize that logistics are not on their side and they need to pick their battles. Proponents of personal freedom need to realize that the Supreme Court has determined that the states are able to restrict the sales of firearms while not being in violation of the second amendment. Most importantly, both sides need to realize that this is not a black and white issue; there is not a right answer and there is not a wrong answer.

There are plenty of concessions that conservatives can make without giving in on the principle of gun ownership. To name just one example, I wonder why the shooter was able to legally acquire an AK-47 which he then used in this massacre. Assault rifles are weapons of war and shouldn’t be in the hands of a civilian under any circumstances. If you can’t agree on that point, then you should not be debating gun control.

The same can be said on the liberal side of the argument. Does gun control really stop gun related crimes? I cannot answer that with certainty but I do know that if 8,000 people die from gun related homicides in a year, gun control is not working as well as it should. Who knows what the death toll would be without gun control laws; I cannot answer that. All I know is that laws for the sake of having laws are an exercise in futility.

I am sure that the answer is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes but it will never be found when both sides stick to their respective ends of the spectrum and treat the middle as a no-man’s land where one goes when they abandon their principles.

If I can broaden for one moment, I’d like to say that this is a mentality that is rampant throughout American society and it is abhorrent. Compromise is not a dirty word. Any idiot can say “I’m right and you’re wrong”. It takes one hell of a person to be able to say “I believe I’m right but you might be right as well”.

I do not believe that violence is an inherent part of human nature. I do believe that survival is. How many deadly altercations could have been avoided if more people adopted the second mindset than the first? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. How much better off would American society be if we could put our egos aside and work on solving problems? The word “utopia” comes to mind…

SADNESS

All I have left nearly a week after this horrific event transpired is sadness. I am sad that something like this happened and my heart truly goes out to the victims and their friends and families; nobody should ever have to endure something like this happening to someone close to them or to themselves.


On top of that, I am sad because I am deathly afraid that nothing good will come of this incident. It’s an election year and inevitably, this issue will find its way into the debates. Frankly, I’ve had enough. Until our elected officials come out and say that compromise is the only way forward on this issue, I won’t listen to either side.

Mostly, I’m sad because our society is obsessed with firearms and using them for their intended purpose; to end life. I am not a hunter but I have no problem with it but nobody can deny that the intended result is for something that was living to end up dead. Why do we feel the need to kill each other? There are a select few motivations that I believe are legitimate reasons to end someone’s life but if we applied those reasons to the nation as a whole, the death toll would be in the hundreds instead of in the thousands.

At the end of the day, our society has a terrible illness. Our elected officials are supposed to be the wise elders of our community of 300,000,000 people who guide us through difficult times. Instead, half of them are proposing unrealistic measures while the other half is saying there is simply nothing that can be done about the problem, a stance that has never been so eloquently put as in the popular saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.

In the past week I’ve experienced the five stages of grief and I’ve finally found acceptance in the depressing truth that there is very little that can be done that will affect real change. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to find a solution. I have ideas and I will share them with whoever will listen. I will also listen to what they have to say; they might have the brilliant idea that I’ve been searching for but it just needed to be viewed from the proper perspective.

I will not bury my head in the sand. I will say that I’m right and someone else is wrong. There are very few issues where there is a “right” position and a “wrong” position and this is not one of them.

The time for blindly clinging to one’s beliefs and refusing to hear alternative points of view is past.

The time for intelligent debate is now.

Any takers?

Alcohol, Tobacco, and... Sugar?

As loyal readers of this blog know, I don’t often enter the political arena. I find that once people go into the particular arena, one of the requirements is that they must check their common sense and ability to stay level-headed at the door. Thus, what often ends up happening is you have two people at different places on the political spectrum who end up yelling at each so much that they miss the fact that their views aren’t really that different after all.

As most people in the country know, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City recently proposed a law which would prohibit convenience stores and restaurants from selling soda in quantities larger than 16 ounces. Immediately, people came out from every angle against the law. Some people said it was an unforgivable infringement upon personal choice. Others said the law didn’t go nearly far enough. Some dieticians and nutritionists came out and said that in the war against obesity, soda and other sugary drinks wasn’t even the place where attention should be directed.

So who is right and who is wrong? Strangely enough, that isn’t the question I want to address. It is entirely possible that better things can be done to combat obesity than banning sugary beverages. The issue I’d like to address is whether or not this sort of law should even be permitted. My short answer; of course it is.

Is banning large sodas the best way to combat obesity? No. While Mayor Bloomberg’s law prohibits 32 ounce sodas, there is nothing (that I’ve seen or heard of) to prevent one person from purchasing 2 beverages of 16 ounces each. There are also those that I mentioned above who believe that sugary beverages have a relatively small effect on obesity rates. However, at least Mayor Bloomberg is trying to do something while the rest of the nation sits down to their supersized extra-value meal*.

(*at this point I feel the need to point out that by the rudimentary calculations taking into account only height and weight, I have a BMI over 30 which is considered “obese”. I am not part of the solution. The purpose of this post is not to solve the obesity epidemic in American; it is simply to examine the attempts of someone in a position of power to help combat the epidemic.)

LIMITS TO PERSONAL FREEDOMS

Now, I arrive at the counter-argument that has gotten the most traction; personal freedom. Many people believe that their personal freedoms are theirs and cannot be limited or infringed upon and I cannot possibly express how wrong that sentiment is. One of the most basic right guaranteed by the Constitution is the right to freedom of speech. However, there are limits to free speech and everyone knows it. You can’t walk into a crowded movie theater and yell “fire”. You could be found liable (criminally, civilly, or both) for any injuries or property damage that happens in the ensuing panic.

There are many cities where smoking in certain public places is illegal. In Colorado, where I live, you can’t smoke in a bar. Now, it just so happens that I am not a smoker so this limit to personal freedom does not affect me in any way. However, once upon a time a large portion the friends that I hung out with on a regular basic were smokers and their personal freedoms were infringed upon.

Drinking and driving, seatbelt laws, and motorcycle helmet laws all limit personal freedom and yet they still exist. How can they possibly exist when they blatantly infringe upon the personal freedom s and the pursuit of an individual’s happiness?

To answer that question, one simply needs to widen their gaze. To quote Spock’s dying words from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

Everything that I mentioned above (obesity, smoking, drinking and driving, driving without a seatbelt, riding a motorcycle without a helmet) has the potential to adversely affect other Americans. For two of them, the effects are obvious; second-hand smoke and traffic collisions caused by drunk drivers but what about the other three; how do they affect anyone else? The answer is health care costs.

According to a column published in Reuters at the end of April (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/obesity-costs-dollars-cents_n_1463763.html), there are $190 billion in medical costs every year due to obesity. The average overweight person (amongst employees surveyed who work for the Mayo clinic) spends $1,850 more per year in medical costs than a person who is a healthy weight. For people in that sample with a BMI between 35 and 40, that number jumps to $3,086 per year. For employees with a BMI over 40, they spent $5,530 more per year than the healthy weight person. For comparison’s sake, smoker’s medical costs were, on average, $1,274 higher than non-smokers.

Here are a few tidbits that you’ve probably never thought of; airlines spend approximately $5 billion more on jet fuel flying around heavier Americans (compared to average weights of Americans in 1960). Also, Americans purchase roughly $4 billion more gasoline for their cars on an annual basis because of the heavier passenger load.

So what? People pay for their own gasoline, they pay their own medical bills, and they pay increased airfare because of the additional jet fuel required…

What if they can’t?

This is the crux of the issue and this is where the government has the right to infringe on personal freedoms; when their actions are for the public good. People who cannot pay for their medical care or who have no health insurance or insufficient health insurance are still treated to some degree. Many of them are fully treated. Who pays for that treatment? The hospital would most likely be paid by an insurance company or the government. Who pays insurance companies or the government?

You and me; everyone who has health insurance or pays taxes. Therefore, a person’s individual choices made under the guise of personal freedom and “it’s my life, I can do what I want” have a profound effect on others who make completely different decisions with their own lives.

The question that arises out of this is why should I have to pay for decisions that others make with their own lives? The answer is that I shouldn’t have to but the problem is that that is exactly what is happening. Laws have been put in place restricting the use of alcohol and tobacco because of their potential to affect people other than the user.

The elephant in the room is that obesity is now one of the top causes of preventable death in the United States and it’s on the rise. Currently, the CDC estimates that 35.7% of American adults are obese and all of the predictions say that number will only increase in the coming years and decades.

Those statistics are great but what exactly do they mean? I don’t claim to be a legal scholar but I feel extremely confident in saying when the behavior of one person exacts a toll (be it physical or monetary) from another person who is not partaking in that behavior, the government is well within their rights to pass a law that restricts that behavior. Like it or not, the government has a responsibility to protect the greater good. If individual freedoms were more important than the public good, drinking and driving would be legal and you’d be able to light up a cigarette anywhere.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND THE FUTURE

I am not saying I support a law so easy to circumvent that all you have to do is add the number “2” to an order. In fact, I don’t. All I am saying is I support a public servant’s attempt to try and reverse the trend and fight an epidemic that is the number one public health issue of the 21st century. Perhaps a tax on fast food will both reduce our consumption of it and also help alleviate the cost to the public to treat health problems stemming from obesity. I know that it will not be an easy fix and at very least I applaud Mayor Bloomberg for trying to do something.

The fact of the matter remains as it always has that laws are infringements upon personal freedoms. Laws are in place to serve the greater good and when an individual puts their own personal freedoms ahead of the greater public good, the government has the ability and the responsibility to step in and regulate that behavior. It doesn’t matter if the action is eating unhealthily when you are uninsured or if it’s drinking and driving or stealing a car or physically harming someone. Obesity is an epidemic of epic proportions and it’s only getting worse and it’s only a matter of time until obesity becomes the number one cause of preventable death in the United States (it may have already, I saw conflicting reports). On top of death and disease, obesity has racked up a huge healthcare bill that is being borne by everyone and there is nothing fair about that. The only protection for the people who pay their health insurance premiums and their taxes comes from the government.

While enacting laws in the name of the “public good” is a slippery slope, there is no logical reason for people to have to pay for the decisions of others.

Models for Business and Competition

Let’s face it; everyone wants to be the NFL. The league has never been more profitable than it is right now and it has taken steps seemingly on an annual basis to make sure that its stranglehold on the American psyche does not weaken. Owning an NFL franchise is one of the safer bets in the economic climate today and while the profit margins are never gaudy, they are consistent. What is the secret of the NFL that everyone wants to duplicate? I believe it can be broken down into three main factors; popularity, socialism, and strength.

POPULARITY

Once upon a time, baseball ruled the American landscape and while it might still qualify as “America’s Pastime”, it is nowhere near as popular as it once was. The NBA has had its moments in the sun but it has never captured the imagination the way baseball or football has. Football is by far the most popular sport in American right now and it’s only getting more popular. I heard a statistic on Colin Cowherd’s radio show on ESPN Radio and I almost drove my car off the road; apparently 60% of women polled (I’m assuming this is adults; I don’t remember exactly) watch the NFL regularly. Forget about the particulars that I can’t remember and just think about that for a minute. Three out of every five women, who basically never have the opportunity to play this sport, watch the NFL on a regular basis. Granted, I’m sure that some of those only do because their boyfriends or husbands watch the games but that also shows how universally popular football has become. When you throw all of that together, it basically means that the NFL can do just about whatever they want and charge just about whatever they want for anything and people will pay it.

SOCIALISM

I know that this is a bit of a sticky word in the United States and frankly, it’s about time that we got over it. Socialism and Communism have become dirty words because of their association with our enemy in a cold war that lasted for nearly a half century. I get it, I really do. The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union is no more. Its economy was not sustainable; capitalism outlasted socialism. On a national scale, socialism has not fared particularly well when compared to capitalism but for the sake of this discussion, we are talking about a far smaller scale. Socialism is an economic theory; it is not a dirty word. There, I got my rant out of the way.

The fact of the matter is that the NFL is run with a socialist model. Revenues are shared amongst the 32 owners and at the end of each season when the money is all doled out, teams make shockingly similar profits. The difference in profit margin between a really well run franchise (like the New England Patriots or the Pittsburgh Steelers) and a poorly run franchise (like the Cleveland Browns or the Cincinnati Bengals for most of the past 20 years) is very small. In many ways, it can be more profitable to field a bad team than a championship contender in the NFL.

Why does this matter when it comes to a discussion of business models? It all comes down to risk. By engaging in socialist practices, the risk to any one individual owner is greatly reduced. As I said before, the profit margins aren’t necessarily gaudy but they are consistent and when this many millions of dollars are on the line, which would you rather have; a 5-10% profit margin every year or a 50/50 chance of making 20% or losing 20%? Not everyone is the same and some people are more risk averse than others but if I was presented with those options, I would take the guaranteed profit every day of the week.

STRENGTH

This aspect of a business can manifest itself in many ways but I am focusing on just one; the relationship with the players’ union. In the constant give and take between the players and the owners, in the NFL, the owners have far more power. There is a hard salary cap which every player’s union opposes. There in an apparatus in place to restrict player movement in the franchise tag which is unheard of in other sports. Most importantly, contracts are not guaranteed.

Not long ago, the Washington Redskins signed Donovan McNabb to a 5 year extension worth $78 million. In any other sport, if McNabb failed to meet expectations as spectacularly as he did in Washington, that contract would become the albatross hanging around the necks of that team’s payroll for the length of the deal. Why was it not a big deal for the Redskins? The only part that was guaranteed was an extra $3.5 million that was added to his salary the year he signed the extension. After that, if the Redskins cut McNabb before the next year started, they owed him a grand total of zero out of the remaining $75 million.

To give you a good idea of just how much power the owners have, compare the NFL to Major League Baseball. In MLB, all contracts are guaranteed. Mike Hampton was paid millions of dollars by the Colorado Rockies years after he threw his last pitch for the franchise. When the Yankees resigned Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $275 million contract several years ago, they were on the hook for every penny of that money. If A-Rod got hurt tomorrow and couldn’t play out the second half of that contract, the Yankees would still owe him half that money. Unlike the NFL, there is no apparatus to restrict player movement in MLB. There is no franchise tag and there is no such thing as “restricted” free agency. Most importantly, there is no salary cap. There is a luxury tax threshold but that has to do with revenue sharing, not player salaries. When it comes to salaries, you can spend as much or as little as you want in baseball and indeed, teams do.

RESULT

When you put those three factors together, you get a league with unparalleled potential to make money and it is the envy of every other league. Other sports want the business model of the NFL and indeed, the NBA seems to be trying to incorporate aspects of the NFL’s model into their own but it’s not working and it likely never will.

The problem is that the unions are relatively set in their ways and they are used to certain things being in their respective Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA). The fact of the matter is that the NFLPA accepts a hard salary cap because they have always known one. The MLBPA has never and will never accept a salary cap because they have never known one. You could easily argue that at the very beginning when the players challenged the owners in court, the MLBPA was able to get more concessions from their league than the NFLPA.

However, all of this discussion makes for interesting fodder but it is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is simply control. The NFL has enormous control over the careers of individual players and with the latest CBA that went into effect before the 2011 season, that level of control (in some aspects) has increased. Nowadays, when a player is drafted there is a small range of salaries in which the player’s first contract will be. After several years, the player becomes a restricted free agent, meaning the drafting team can match any contract offer that the player receives. Then, at long last, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent… and then this is put on hold by the franchise tag.

Put it all together and we’ve arrived at the one issue that separates these three leagues and makes the NFL the envy of all others; control over player movement and the competitive model.

COMPETITIVE MODEL

What do I mean by “competitive model”? In essence, the competitive model for the purposes of this discussion is the answer to the question “how do I build a winning team/franchise”?

Owners like parity. The 32 NFL owners love the fact that for each of the last several years, a team that was in last place one year makes the playoffs the next year. What they don’t mention is that while there is parity amongst playoff participants, there is not parity when it comes to championship teams. There have been 46 Super Bowls and of all those titles, 33 of them (or 71.7%) have been won by eight franchises (the Steelers with 6, the 49ers and Cowboys with 5, the Giants and Packers with 4, and the Patriots, Redskins, and Raiders with 3). In fact, there are 10 franchises that have never won a Super Bowl and another 4 that have never even been to a Super Bowl. As you can see from the following graphs, parity at the highest level of all of these three leagues is a myth. Just so you have an idea of what you’re looking at, the red line that runs diagonally at a 45 degree angle is what the graph would look like if there was perfect parity. The farther from that line the graph is, the less parity that exists.


Figure 1 – Parity when it comes to Championship appearances (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)

Figure 2 – Parity when it comes to Championship Wins (NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl)

So we’ve established that parity doesn’t really exist when it comes to winning championships and this doesn’t come as a huge shock. Some franchises are run better than others and inevitably, this leads to performing at a higher level with more consistency.

Still, there is more parity in the NFL than the NBA or MLB and all you need to look at are the rates of worst-to-first transitions and first-to-worst transitions. In both MLB and the NBA, they are quite rare. In 1990, both the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves were in last place and in 1991, the played each other in the World Series. In the 1996-97 season, the San Antonio Spurs went 20-62. In 1997-98, they went 56-26 and finished second in their division. In 1998-99, they went 37-13 in the lockout shortened season and won the NBA title.

You don’t hear about stories such as this when it comes to the NFL because they are commonplace. Teams go from worst to first and make the playoffs by having their young core players put it all together or they go from first to worst due to an injury (most notably Peyton Manning in recent years) or due to an aging team that just isn’t as good.

What that essentially means is that the margin between the best team and the worst team is razor thin in the NFL. Oftentimes experience and coaching can be the trump card to put you over the top because the talent on any two teams is so similar. In MLB, the talent margin is greater and so you can get teams like the Yankees and Red Sox that always have superior talent to teams like the Royals and the Pirates. Granted, they pay more for that talent but it is there nonetheless. That is one small reason why the talent margin is larger in baseball than it is in the NFL; the salary cap. If an NFL team had a player who was in the top five at his position at every position, that team’s payroll would be five times the salary cap. In the NBA, the talent gap is enormous and the owners are doing everything they can to compensate for it and so far, nothing is working.

If you team up two guys who have a chance to go down as “all-time greats” it can mean very different things for your team. In the NFL, it might mean a good offense or defense (if they play on the same side of the ball) and maybe a few playoff runs. In MLB, it means… well, more or less nothing until you take into account the other 23 guys on the roster. In the NBA, it means you win championships. One player can affect the direction of a franchise more in the NBA than in either of the other leagues and this is the central problem.

LEBRON JAMES

Yes, LeBron is the focal point of a discussion about competitive balance yet again. The fact of the matter is that he was a free agent and he could go wherever he wanted to go. I’m not going to discuss his decision making process or critique his choice (I’ve already critiqued the way he made his choice), I’m simply going to examine the results.

In Cleveland, he never played with an All-Star and yet they were winning 50-65 games and made it to the NBA Finals. The year after he left, they went 19-63 and got the number one overall draft pick. After winning the NBA Finals with Dwayne Wade and Shaq, the Miami Heat went 44-38, 15-67, 43-39, and 47-35 in the last four years. Not terrible records but not indicative of a dominant team. In year one after “The Decision”, the Heat went 58-24 and went to the Finals and this year they went 46-20 and are in line to go to the Finals again.

Players have enormous power and therefore enormous control in the NBA and the owners are terrified of that. You might have heard a lot of talk going around lately about owners trying to put in some sort of franchise tag or skew the numbers so that teams can offer their own players even more money all in an attempt to keep them in one place. The problem is that players don’t want to stay put. I don’t know why teams are able to keep players at a higher rate in small market in the NFL and MLB but they do. In the NBA it seems like the biggest stars only want to play in New York, Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles.

IS THERE A SOLUTION?

Is there an answer to this conundrum? Unfortunately, there is one and NBA owners aren’t going to like it. The answer is, there’s nothing you can do about it. NBA players are similar to moths, attracted to the bright lights of the biggest cities and frankly, who can blame them? If you have a chance to play for a storied franchise like the Lakers or Celtics or you get a chance to play your home games at one of the most famous arenas ever in Madison Square Garden, why would you ever want to play in Cleveland?

If things continue as they have, the stars will continue to align and a huge divide will form in the NBA between the good teams and the ones that would have trouble getting out of the first weekend at the NCAA tournament. When this happens, attendance will plummet in those cities and those franchises will face serious economic hardships. When that happens, the NBA will have two options. First, you can set up a series of “minor league” teams that aren’t in the same league (literally) as the NBA teams or you could set up a system like the Premier League does for soccer in Europe.

Secondly, you can make the NBA as a league far more sustainable and just contract six teams. There simply aren’t enough stars to go around and they are exercising the freedoms allowed to them in their CBA. The players are making decisions with their own best interests in mind and at the end of the day, can you really fault them for that?

CONCLUSION

The NFL has a sustainable business model and so does Major League Baseball. The NBA does not. The difference is the amount of impact a single player can have and therefore, the balance of power between the players and the owners.

During the lockout last summer, the NFL owners were floating the idea of an 18 game season and the players were completely against it. At the end of the negotiations, the owners kept the same schedule but Commissioner Goodell’s enormous amount of power (which was a big issue for the players at the beginning of the lockout) was never seriously addressed. Is it possible that the owners floated the idea of the 18 game schedule because either they all get another home game and more TV revenues (from the added games) or the NFLPA would be so adamant in fighting it that they would overlook other issues that they had in the first place?

The other aspect of these issues is the relationship between the league and the teams. It seems to me that the NFL is bigger than every one of the 32 teams and all the owners know this; they are committed to the long-term viability of the league. It also seems that the NBA owners aren’t quite on board with the concept that they need to build this league to survive for decades to come and so you get owners like Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers writing scathing letters to the transcendent star of the league trashing his decision. Can you imagine the late George Steinbrenner doing something like that?

Ok, bad example…

Except it isn’t because he would be the ONE baseball owner to do something like that. I also can’t think of an NFL owner that would do that as well. The fact of the matter is that the NBA is a league ruled by players and the NFL is a league ruled by owners. Major League Baseball accepted long ago that the players had much more power than the owners liked and as soon as the NBA accepts that, they can get on with life.

What these 3,000 or so words essentially boil down to is this: love it or hate it, there’s only one NFL and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Bounties

I have never played professional sports. I only briefly played sports at the collegiate varsity (baseball) and club (rugby) level. While I played sports all through high school, I never played football. I played basketball, baseball, and soccer. I say this in the interest of full disclosure when it comes to my views and opinions in this post.

I have played sports at a relatively high level. I have had opposing players take what I thought were cheap shots at me and even though I don’t remember specific instances, I’m sure my former opponents would recall instances where they thought I took a cheap shot at them.

The bounty program that Gregg Williams oversaw while defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints (and supposedly as coordinator of the Redskins and Bills) was despicable. Furthermore, he should never be allowed to coach in the NFL again and his indefinite suspension was a large step in the right direction from the NFL.

So what makes it so wrong? These guys know the nature of the sport that they played and even if it was never in writing, one could argue that the players had a pretty good idea of what might happen when they strapped on a helmet. Throughout the history of the NFL, this was probably not always the case. Originally, nobody knew much about some of the injuries that are specific to contact sports. Then, allegedly, the NFL knew more than it was telling players, specifically with regards to concussions. This issue is at the heart of many of the hundreds of lawsuits that formers players have filed against the NFL in recent years.

Nowadays, ignorance or a vast cover-up can no longer be blamed for not having this information. Repeated blows to the head of ANY KIND have the potential for serious long-term health issues. The kind of repeated head injuries that Gregg Williams wanted his players to inflict don’t just shorten careers, they shorten lives.

On the offchance that those reasons aren’t good enough for you, what makes this so wrong? Imagine your workplace and now imagine that you want to get ahead in your company or organization. That’s fine, at the end of the day who doesn’t want to get ahead? So how would you go about “getting ahead”? Most people would answer that question by saying they would work hard, show up early, stay late, make sure they do their job better than anyone else could possibly do it. That is what you’re supposed to say. Now, let’s say that your job has a manual labor aspect to it. Let’s say that you and a coworker have been told to move a series of boxes of variable size and weight from one place to another.

Would you overload one of the boxes and ask your coworker to move that one, hoping they injure their back, thus removing themselves from your way on the corporate ladder? This is what Gregg Williams was advocating. He wasn’t talking about winning a game and he wasn’t talking about “lighting somebody up”. That kind of rhetoric has been around all kinds of sports for decades and the vast majority of athletes probably took it the same way I did; hyperbole. Gregg Williams wanted his guys to go out and attempt to injure opposing players. He was the employee overloading that box hoping to make a coworker throw out his back.

THE CODE

Sports have always been a culture that has fascinated me. On one hand you have to be the biggest, strongest, meanest son-of-a-gun on the field or court but at the same time, there is a code. It is a list of rules that changes from year to year or even from game to game and the penalties for breaking a rule can be very severe and in many cases, the punishments are more severe than the original infractions. This creates a system where there are no proportional responses and escalation is inevitable.

In theory, the code it very simple. If you do something that violates a rule or strays into the realm of a “cheap shot”, you can expect one coming back at you. The problem is that’s not how it works in practice. You aren’t always the target of the retaliation and instead of coming after you, the other team goes after one of your teammates.

Let’s take last year’s NFC playoff game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers. Before the game, Gregg Williams made it abundantly clear what he wanted his players to do and if you haven’t heard the audio yet, go listen to it. Let’s say that a prominent Saints defensive player, Jonathon Vilma perhaps, was successful and laid a shot on 49ers tight end Vernon Davis, blowing out his knee. How will the 49ers react? Will they come after Vilma and do their best to have a 3rd string fullback take out his knees? I would say that you could bet on that happening but what would stop the 49ers from going after Drew Brees? Everyone in the world of the NFL knows that Drew Brees’ right shoulder needed extensive and groundbreaking surgery several years ago. In an impromptu meeting on the 49ers sideline after Davis is taken off with a knee injury, the 49ers defensive coordinator says that if you wrap up Brees, do everything you can to have his right shoulder hit the ground, preferably with you on top of him.

You can argue all day that those reactions would not be justified but I can argue back all day that they are. By singling out a player on the other team and carrying out his plans, a player opens up not only himself but his teammates to retaliation. I can’t speak for the likes of Jonathon Vilma, but there was never anything that I would have done on the field to put a teammate of mine at risk.

CHANGING THE CULTURE

The NFL did not have a choice when it came to Gregg Williams and the New Orleans Saints; they had to make them feel the pain. In a day when the NFL is named in several hundred lawsuits from former players alleging that the NFL knew about health risks and did not inform the players, they had to do something. There is nothing the NFL brass could do about the past but they can change the direction the league is going in. If the NFL ends up on the losing side of some of these lawsuits, I’d imagine they can get a more lenient judgment or a more favorable settlement because they can point to the steps taken with Roger Goodell as commissioner and say that the NFL is indeed taking steps to increase player safety.

For anyone out there who thinks the commissioner drastically overstepped his bounds, you need to remember a few things. First and foremost, any program amongst players and/or coaches that pays for any on-field outcome is a direct violation of the collective bargaining agreement. It was wrong and Williams knew it. Secondly, when the NFL began its investigation, from the reports I’ve read, they told the Saints to cease and desist these bounty programs. Head coach Sean Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis were specifically told by Saints’ owner Tom Benson to stop. Did they? Of course not. Thirdly, during the course of the investigation, Saints officials lied about the existence of this program. Most importantly, we have a league today that is becoming more and more sensitive to the physical toll that playing this sport takes on the human body decades after you stop playing.

To sum up, they broke rules, they lied about it, and then they were insubordinate about ending it all in a climate when it seems this is all the league cares about right now. When you add to that a commissioner who has enormous power and has not been afraid to wield it to protect his league, there’s only one question left to answer; what did you think was going to happen?

The NFL sent a clear message with the punishments handed down to the Saints in the past few weeks. They said that they don’t care if bounty programs have gone on in the past, what’s done is done. They’ve also said that if they catch any team doing it in the future, they will bring the hammer crashing down on the people who did it, the people who allowed it to happen, AND the people who should have known it was going on and should have put a stop to it.

I disagree with the bounty program run by Gregg Williams for moral reasons and I agree with the punishments handed down because of the rules broken and the attempts to get away with it. Having said that, I like to think of myself as open-minded so I’d like to put forth a challenge to anyone reading this out there.

I challenge you to defend Gregg Williams and bounty programs.


No, I won’t be holding my breath.

The Wide World of Sports

It’s been a long time since I’ve written in this space and for those of you who have opened my blog and come away disappointed in the past few months, I sincerely apologize. However, there are aspects of my life that take precedence over a blog that, while I love writing in it, I don’t get paid to write in it.

My goal here is simply to touch base on the events of the past few months and give my perspective, a task that looks almost Herculean. In the past three months, we have had the highest profile free agent in the history of the NFL, we’ve had a team with a subpar record win four games against teams with better records to claim the Super Bowl, we’ve had a relatively unexpected team claim that aforementioned free agent, we’ve had a commissioner flex his incredible muscle in ways never seen before, and we’ve seen Tim Tebow lead his team to a playoff win. The most exciting part? That was only the headlines from the last three months in the NFL.

Because I am going to be writing about a lot of different things, I thought I’d give you a little list of the topics I’m going to touch on so you know what you’re getting into:

- Bounties
- Peyton Manning
- The Denver Broncos
- The New York Giants and Tournaments
- Tim Tebow
- March Madness
- Opening Day is Almost Here!

BOUNTIES

Unfortunately, I have to start with quite possibly the ugliest story of the winter. In what I gather is an incredibly extensive report compiled by the NFL, the New Orleans Saints defensive players (at least 22-27 of them) under the direction of defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, ran a bounty system where cash bonuses were given out for big hits and additional payouts were made for “knock-out” hits or “cart-off” hits where the player that was hit had to be carted off the field. He has been suspended indefinitely and he will not have the possibility of getting his job back for a year.

Head Coach Sean Payton either knew about it and did nothing or should have known about it. General Manager Mickey Loomis also falls into that category. Payton was suspended for a year (effective April 1st) and Loomis was suspended for 8 games (starting after the conclusion of the last preseason game). The severity of their suspensions is unprecedented but before you wonder why it was so harsh, you have to remember a few key factors. First, as I said before, they either knew or they should have known. Second, they were specifically told by the NFL to cease and desist this bounty program several years ago and all evidence points to the fact that they both did nothing about it. That level of arrogance is something that leagues always despise and leagues (either professional or amateur) feel the need to remind coaches, players, and teams that nobody is above the sport. Lastly, this commissioner is serious about making the sport safer for its players. When you add all of that together, you get fines and suspensions the like of which the NFL (or any other professional league, for that matter) has never seen.

In my opinion, this is what Roger Goodell had to do. According to ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson, the NFL has been named in more than 650 lawsuits by former players who are claiming (essentially) that the league did not do enough to protect them from the dangers of playing football. Truthfully, if you look at the incidence of severe brain damage amongst former players, you realize that some of these lawsuits might have a point. One of the largest issues with regards to the lawsuits that are specifically talking about head injuries is until recently we as a society haven’t known that much about concussions. How much did the NFL really know about head injuries back in the 60’s and 70’s? That is a question that these lawsuits will have to try to answer.

In the meantime, there is nothing that the NFL and Commissioner Goodell can do about what the NFL said or did forty years ago. All they can do is control the present and the future of the league and with these penalties, Goodell has sent a powerful message. The days of the NFL being a gladiatorial league are nearing an end and the more finesse type players are succeeding more than ever.

The last step that remains to be seen in this saga is what happens to the two dozen players that were involved in this program. They will be punished but Goodell is very wisely seeking counsel from the union with regards to their punishments. If the union balks at penalties, Goodell can use that to say that he is more serious about player safety than the union is. If the union thinks the penalties are too light, then Goodell has free reign to enact even harsher punishments. His job is to protect this league and he is wielding that power and wielding it well.

PEYTON MANNING

Never in the history of the NFL has a player with as sparkling a resume as Manning’s become a free agent. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement is set up to restrict player movement and help keep players like Manning in cities like Indianapolis (the 21st largest TV market in the country). The entire concept of the franchise tag was to give teams an extra year to negotiate a long-term contract with a star player. That’s not exactly how it’s been used and now many players view it as an insult to be tagged in the first place and yet, when a new collective bargaining agreement was being negotiated, never did the player’s union try to do away with the franchise tag. The problem is that the franchise tag isn’t a bad idea; the player gets a one year contract that is guaranteed to be the average of the top five contracts at that position and the team gets another year to work out a long term deal.

Nonetheless, the five year contract that the Colts signed with Peyton Manning a year ago caused this situation to come to a head far sooner than it usually does. Rather than pay Manning a roster bonus of $28 million, the Colts decided to cut him. As cold and ruthless and heartless as it sounds, it was the best decision for both sides. Now the Colts can move on and rebuild their franchise from the ground up starting with a new general manager, coach, and quarterback. Meanwhile, Manning is free to chase down a second Super Bowl ring with another team. After a lengthy process in which he spoke to representatives from several teams, Manning signed a five year contract with the Denver Broncos potentially worth $96 million and the obvious question that follows is whether or not he is worth that much coming off of four neck surgeries.

First and foremost, with regards to the actual surgery, his neck is not in any more jeopardy than anyone else who plays professional football. The issue is that a nerve that controls his right triceps muscles needs to regenerate so he can regain strength in that muscle group. Without that strength, he won’t be able to throw a football consistently. All I have to say is this: if he wasn’t on the right track to be able to start and play effectively in September, the Broncos would not have tied the next five years of their franchise to Manning’s wagon.

So what can he bring to the Broncos? He brings a level of football genius that few have ever brought to the field. The Broncos have a talented young core of receivers and a terrific offensive line and both will instantly become much better with Manning under center. If you remember, the Broncos are coming off of a year where they went 8-8 with a defense that was solid and at times brilliant; their offense was the problem last year and even if you figure that Manning won’t add more than 7 points a game versus Tim Tebow (and I believe he’s worth much more than that) their record last year would have been 12-4.

Peyton Manning is the greatest player ever to play the position of quarterback. I know that I wrote otherwise in this space some time ago but nobody has ever brought more to the position. Other quarterbacks have thrown for more yards, others have won more games, and others have won more Super Bowls but none have combined the physical skills with the ridiculous level of intellect that Manning has brought to the position. I am simply glad that his career didn’t end on an injury and now he has the opportunity to go out on whatever terms he wants. I’d also be lying if I said that I’m also glad that he has the chance to supplant Brett Favre in the record books.

THE DENVER BRONCOS

The Broncos? You mean that team with the college quarterback? Yep, that was the team that Manning chose and I believe that it comes down to one thing; John Elway. I gather that the two of them are friends and that they play golf occasionally but that’s not why he was a big factor. John Elway was a great quarterback, won two Super Bowls and was a lock for the Hall of Fame when he became eligible back in 2004. Most importantly, he followed that brilliant playing career with a so far successful career in the front office of an NFL franchise and I think that’s what Manning wants to do after he’s done playing. I think he wants to learn from a guy who has had success at that level because it’s far from a given. If you want an example of how former players don’t necessarily do well in the front office, look no further than Matt Millen. In the seven full seasons that he was the CEO and general manager of the Detroit Lions, they went 31-81 and made many of the worst draft picks of the decade.

The last thing that you have to remember about Elway is that he was not only an amazing athlete who probably could have gone to the Hall of Fame as a baseball player had he not chosen football (he hit .361 with 9 home runs and 50 RBI as a senior at Stanford). He is also a very smart person and he received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford. Likewise, Peyton Manning is a very smart person who finished his degree in three years at Tennessee but decided to come back for his senior season.

For anyone out there who thought he might have gone somewhere else, played for a few years and then moved straight up to the front office, I don’t think that was in Manning’s mind. Besides, who says that he has to move to the front office of whatever team he signed with? I have no doubt that he will not be a part of the Broncos front office largely because of John Elway. He’ll play in Denver for a few years and then he’ll get a job running someone else’s team after (or more likely before) he gets enshrined in Canton.

THE NEW YORK GIANTS AND TOURNAMENTS

For the second time in four years, the New York Giants came into the Super Bowl with a record significantly worse than the Patriots (four games this year versus six games worse in 2008). I could go on and on talking about the similarities between Super Bowl XLII and XLVI but there is a different point I would like to talk about. In the last five years, the Super Bowl has featured two 9 wins teams and two 10 win teams and the last two years the NFL’s biggest game has been won by a 10-6 team (Packers) and a 9-7 team (Giants). It is time to stop saying that the best team wins the Super Bowl. The best teams make the playoffs and that’s it.

The same thing can be said about the NCAA tournament; the best teams make the tournament but the best teams rarely win it anymore. I know that series are impractical when it comes to college basketball and the NFL but the fact of the matter is that if two teams play once, anything can happen but if two teams played a seven game series, it is extremely difficult for the lesser team to win.

This is one of the beauties of the BCS. In the short history of the BCS, many arguments can be made about which teams belong in the national championship game but you will never be able to say that 29% of teams had a better won-loss record than the BCS champion (9 of the other 31 teams had more wins than the Giants’ 9).

TIM TEBOW

This is one of the issues I have with the average sports fan and let me know if you’ve ever heard anything like this before: “I am a huge Tim Tebow fan so there’s nothing the Broncos can do at QB that will be better than that.”

That statement is ludicrous. There is no circumstance in which the Broncos are better off with Tebow at quarterback instead of Peyton Manning. If you watched the last few games of the season last year (as I did) you would see that defenses were starting to figure out how to play against Tim Tebow. Smother the receivers and make Tebow throw into small windows. In the last four regular season games (in which they went 1-3) the Broncos scored 13, 23, 14, and 3 points and that 23 point outburst against the Patriots would have been less had it been a closer game.

“But what about the playoff game against the Steelers?! He was 10-21 for 316 yards and two touchdowns!”

Yes, he was. And half the starting quarterbacks in the league would have been able to put up better numbers against that defense. On the final play of the game, an 80 yard strike to Demaryius Thomas, the deepest Steelers defender was less than ten yards off the line of scrimmage. Tebow simply had to lay the ball out in front of Thomas and then let him sprint the final 60 yards into history. He did play well against the Steelers but it was because the Steelers defense dared him to beat them and then NEVER ADJUSTED. Tebow burned them in the second quarter and in the second half, the Steelers didn’t change their defensive attack, a true failure on the part of the Steelers coaches.

Here’s the interesting thing; I like Tim Tebow. I’ve liked him since he was jumping in the air and throwing horrible passes as an 18 year old freshman on Florida’s national title winning team. I liked him even more the next year when he played with a reckless abandon and an enthusiasm that was very refreshing (and still is). The fact of the matter is that he is a great football player and a bad quarterback. He never should have been drafted in the first round. He should have been a third round pick who would get into the game for 5-10 snaps a game and when he’s in the game, nobody knows what is going to happen. Putting him alongside a Tom Brady (Bill Belichick was interested in Tebow) would be very interesting; much the way he was the change-of-pace QB as a freshman behind Chris Leak at Florida.

I hope that he does well with the New York Jets but I also think that the Jets’ brass underestimates the phenomenon that is Tebow-mania. While I don’t claim to be an expert, I live in the Denver metro area and experienced it first-hand last year. The fact of the matter is that John Elway and John Fox were hired after Tim Tebow was drafted and he wasn’t the type of QB that the Johns wanted. It’s unfortunate but it’s the fact of the matter and Elway and Fox have been around the NFL for a long time and have seen what wins and what doesn’t. Traditionally, quarterbacks like Tebow don’t win in the NFL.

MARCH MADNESS

There are things going on in the world of sports that have nothing to do with the NFL. 9 days ago, something happened that has never happened since the tournament expanded to 64 teams; two teams seeded 15th beat two teams seeded 2nd. Despite a scare near the end of the game, number one seed Syracuse survived the first round and did not become the first #1 to lose to a #16 seed but at this point I believe it is becoming more a psychological problem. Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams, #1 seeds have a record of 112-0 in the first round and for a team coming off of a small conference tournament championship, that is a huge hill to climb before you ever step on the floor.

Someday a #16 will beat a #1 and at that point the spell will be broken. I’m not saying that a #1 seed will lose every year but right now there is a mystique about the 1-16 game and it has so far been impossible for the lower seeds to break. In the 3-14 games, the lower seeds do not have a very good chance of winning and rarely do but every coach of every #14 seeded team can point to the 16 teams seeded #14 that have won a first round game for inspiration.

This year, the basketball has been great and, as always, extremely hard (for me) to predict. I tried something new this year and went with the Blindfolded Bracket feature on the website of the Wall Street Journal. While my picks this year have not been terrible, I would have been much better off simply picking the higher seeded teams.

Heading into the first games of the Elite Eight (later today) Kentucky is looking like the team to beat. Nobody else has been able to match their level of domination in their first three games and the single biggest threat to them just lost one of their biggest playmakers (North Carolina and point guard Kendall Marshall).

My Saturday picks: Florida over Louisville and Ohio State over Syracuse.
My Sunday Picks: Kentucky over Baylor and Kansas over North Carolina.

Final Four: Kentucky over Florida and Kansas over Ohio State.

For the title game, I picked Kansas in my bracket to go all the way but right now if I had to do it all over again, I’d pick Kentucky. Wildcats over Jayhawks.

OPENING DAY IS ALMOST HERE!

To me the theme of the free agency period for Major League Baseball was, if you have a player at position who can’t play another position, go get another player who plays the same position!

The three biggest free agent acquisitions (amongst position players) were Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols, and Jose Reyes (in alphabetical order). The issue is the teams that got them already had Miguel Cabrera, Kendrys Morales, and Hanley Ramirez. Now, if all six of those players were outfielders, this really wouldn’t be all that big an issue and for two of the three teams, there is a built-in apparatus to have these pairings work (the DH). The problem is that four of them are first basemen and the other two are shortstops.

The incumbents (Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera) are doing the right thing and are moving to third base but the problem is that third base is not where you put a guy to hide his glove. Third base is a very important defensive position and a substandard defender can be a serious problem if the guy playing there isn’t completely committee to his glove.

The Tigers and Angels have a serious leg up on the Marlins in these scenarios because of the designated hitter. The Tigers can play an octopus with seven gloves and a wicked throwing arm at third base and it won’t hurt them offensively because Cabrera and Fielder can split time and first base and DH.

I see the biggest problem in Miami with the Marlins (man, saying Miami Marlins sounds weird). Hanley Ramirez is a supreme talent who is two years removed from a slash line of .342/.410/.543. He did miss time with injuries last year but his slash line was a horrendous .243/.333/.379 and on top of that he has shown a serious lack in maturity in the past few years. He has said that he is willing to move to third base to accommodate Jose Reyes but how long will that last if Reyes struggles or if Ramirez struggles at third base?

So what does this mean for the upcoming season? The Angels have thrust themselves into the World Series discussion with the signing of both Pujols and CJ Wilson. Not only did they make their good rotation deeper, but they also hurt a key rival in Texas (Wilson’s team from a year ago). The Yankees and Red Sox will be there again but no team in the AL combines the lineup depth with the rotation depth that the Angels have. Having said that, I still have to say that the Rangers are the favorites to go back to the World Series since they have won the last two AL championships.

In the NL, the race is wide open. I don’t think the Marlins added enough to win the NL East this year. The Phillies are still going to be a favorite because of their rotation and the Nationals could be a dark horse contender if they stay healthy. In the central, the Cardinals lost a lot in Pujols but they get Adam Wainwright back from Tommy John surgery so they will again be favored to win the weak NL Central.

My way-too-early prediction: Albert Pujols will haunt the Cardinals as the Angels beat St. Louis in the World Series.

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If you’ve managed to make it to the end of this, I applaud and I thank you. It’s been a busy few months for me and I haven’t been able to write in this space nearly as much as I would like and I’m going to try to write much more in the coming weeks and months. I plan to write more about the Broncos and Peyton Manning (since they plan their home games less than 10 miles from my house), I plan to write more about the Saints and why I as a former athlete hate the thought of the bounty program that they ran. I also plan to write more about the differing business models between the major sports, why they are different, and what the owners want their business models to be.

Until next time, enjoy the March Madness while it lasts!

The BCS

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.