Braves & Birds

Will the Heat Care Tonight?

2012-01-31T08:56:00.001-05:00

On my way to lunch on Saturday, I was listening to ESPN Radio and the hosts were interviewing some media professional associated with the Miami Heat. (Either that or they were talking to an NBA writer and just happened to only ask him questions about the Heat. Given that we are talking about ESPN, that is just as plausible.) The topic was the Heat coasting at times during the season, specifically during a barely-explicable home loss to the Bucks that dropped the Heat to 11-5. The Heat have since won five in a row to get to 16-5, a record more befitting their talent, but the fact remains that even in a shortened NBA season, we can't rely on teams to be focused from game to game. The stakes are simply too low. What is the advantage gained by the Heat busting their tails to get to 50 wins? The right to play those rare game sevens at home. That's a small payoff for a major effort. If you want an illustration of how low the stakes are in regular season NBA games, the Heat and Bulls - the two best teams in the East - played on Sunday and the discussion on Monday morning was not about the result, but rather about the fact that Carlos Boozer's son was caught going along with the "Let's go Heat" chant.

If you want to know why I've gravitated to European soccer as my second favorite sport after college football, the lack of importance of the vast majority of American pro sports games would be one of the major reason. In contrast to the "will the Heat care today?" question that we have to ask ourselves before each game, on Sunday afternoon, I watched Barca labor to a 0-0 draw at Villarreal. Unlike the Heat, Barca have earned the right to coast every now and again by winning 13 trophies in the past three years and change. The theme of Barca's season in La Liga this year has been their struggles on the road, dropping points regularly in 0-0 and 2-2 draws. Maybe Barca's players are having a hard time getting up for these games, but the key point is that they are punished for doing so. The Blaugrana are now seven points behind Real Madrid and will require significant help from their arch-rivals to get back into the title race. If the La Liga season were simply about seeding for a short post-season tournament, then Barca could go through the motions on the road and no one would bat an eyelash. Instead, the stakes are high for each match and the penalty for not scoring at El Madrigal is significant.

I thought about this issue when reading Bill Simmons' column last night. Simmons spends 1,261 words describing an elaborate plan to push the NBA regular season back with a later start date and conclusion, but he never grapples with the fundamental problem with the sport: the regular season is four-times as long as the playoffs, but isn't even one-quarter as important. What about doing away with the playoffs to reward the teams that are the best over the long-haul? Or at least limit the playoffs to one series like baseball did before 1969? To quote Simmons:

"Because that's the way we've always done it."

(News flash: Those are the eight worst words in sports.)

For the record, I don't buy Simmons' notion that leagues should make radical changes and that there is no value in traditions. A sport should follow a certain rhythm and the NBA is no different. Get rid of that rhythm and you are disconnecting your fans from their patterns, which might lead them to no longer buy your product. However, if the NBA is interested in a major change, then surely doing something to increase the stakes of the regular season is more important than the start date.

Matt Ryan, Greg Schiano, and the Value of Coming from the College Football Proletariat

2012-01-30T09:29:00.003-05:00

My column on Greg Schiano is up at SB Nation. The thesis is that he might be better prepared for NFL success than most college coaches because he is used to coaching without a talent advantage:

Schiano might garner a series of "meh" reactions from college football fans based on Rutgers output after their explosion onto the scene in 2007, but his experience might be the right one to prepare him for the NFL. Starting in 2011 and moving backwards, here are Rutgers' recruiting rankings in the Big East according to Rivals: second, sixth, third, third, third, sixth, fourth, and third. The conclusion is simple: in an eight-team conference, Rutgers had decent talent, but nothing overwhelming. As a result, Schiano had to focus on getting more out of his three-star guys than his coaching rivals were getting out of theirs. That experience prepares him for the NFL, where talent is distributed far more evenly than it is in college.

In fact, if Rutgers' merely decent recruiting rankings reflect that Schiano is an underwhelming recruiter, then this fact might actually be a good sign for Schiano in the NFL. When Saban and Pete Carroll moved to the NFL, they were both leaving behind a primary asset: top recruiting ability. That recruiting ability undoubtedly led to their success at LSU and USC, thus leading the Dolphins and Seahawks to pay for a skill that would not translate to the NFL. Schiano might not have experienced success on the level of Saban or Carroll, but if his success was the result of good player development and acumen with strategy and tactics in lieu of bringing in great players, then he is well-prepared for the NFL.

In retrospect, it was a bit of an oversight that I didn't mention Jim Harbaugh coming to the NFL from college and immediately turning the 49ers from a perennial laughingstock to a Super Bowl contender. Harbaugh, like Schiano, came from a non-elite program where he had to do more with less (although Harbaugh was a better recruiter than Schiano and had the benefit of five-star Andrew Luck under center). I also wanted to reference Bill Simmons' since-abandoned theory that college coaches are vastly inferior to NFL coaches, but I didn't feel the need for added snark.

Scott Loeffler and Creeping Sabanization

2012-01-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

I posted a long-ish article yesterday morning about Scott Loeffler's hire at Auburn and what that shows in terms of the direction of the SEC. Because I goofed in terms of categorizing the post, it only showed up on the sidebar of the page, so you would have to do some hunting to find it ... or you could just click on this link. Here is the conclusion:

Auburn's transition from the run-based spread to a pro-style attack* brings up a somewhat disturbing trend in the SEC: Creeping Sabanization. When Saban joined the conference, the mix of offenses was fairly diverse. Florida was running the spread. LSU was running something with spread elements. Arkansas was relying healvily on the Wildcat. Within two years, Auburn and Mississippi state were also running the spread. Two national titles for Saban later, everyone is trying to copy him, but not necessarily in good ways. Florida is running a pro-style offense under a Saban disciple. Ditto for Tennessee. LSU is attempting a modern-day imitation of the Bo Schembechler offense. Now, Auburn is eschewing the offense that was a significant factor in the Tigers winning their first national title in 53 years.** Mississippi State is left as the only run-based spread team in the league (and no one is running the Air Raid that played a role in Clemson, West Virginia, and Oklahoma State all making BCS bowls). Chris Brown asks whether the age of the spread is in decline. The answer is clearly "yes" in the SEC.

One point that I meant to make in the column is that the trend away from the spread is not a good development for Georgia in one respect. When Florida was at its full pomp under Urban Meyer, one argument that Georgia fans made was that the Dawgs would have a recruiting advantage in a spread-crazy conference because Georgia would be somewhat unique and could tout its superior preparation for the NFL. Matt Stafford going at the top of the Draft provided evidence for this point. That advantage goes away now that Florida, Auburn, and (to a lesser extent because they were never really a spread team) LSU are all running pro-style offenses. Style-wise, Georgia is just another team in the SEC. Yes, they can tout where Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, and AJ Green were drafted, but Auburn can cite to Scot Loeffler's record sending quarterbacks to the NFL.

On the other hand, if you view the run-based spread as a slightly better way to skin a cat, then Georgia benefits from conference rivals adopting a sub-optimal offensive approach. After the 2008 and 2009 Florida games and the 2010 Auburn game, Dawg fans will not be sad to see the return of stationary quarterbacks on the offenses of their two biggest conference rivals.

We Expected Midway and Got Antietam

2012-01-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

Barca and Real Madrid drew 2-2 on Wednesday. It's helpful to think about the meeting both in terms of tactics and strategy. Tactically speaking, the match was a win for Barca because they progress in the Copa Del Rey and will now be favored to win at least one of the three major trophies on offer (albeit the least important of the three). Barca kept Jose Mourinho stuck on one win against the Blaugrana in ten tries since he took over at the Bernabeu. Mourinho has still never won at the Camp Nou, which is a nice stat to bandy about in relation to the club's bete noire.

Strategically, the match was a win for Mourinho and Real Madrid because they preserved their dignity. Here is Sid Lowe's description:

They got knocked out but they got up again. For José Mourinho's Real Madrid, the latest clásico was always likely to be less about the result and more about recovery after a week of intrigue and insult. As Pep Guardiola insisted on the eve of the game, Barcelona had a problem: the assumption was that the Catalans were already in the semi-final. A place in the next round was not really at stake; instead the prize was something less tangible. This morning, it is Barcelona who are through but Madrid emerged from a wonderful 2-2 draw as winners too.

Suddenly, unexpected, deservedly, a semi-final slot had been within Madrid's reach. In the end they could not grab it but they did grab a lifeline. Madrid never expected to progress in the cup but the progression was evident. Mourinho's side have now faced Barcelona 10 times and won just once. The run was extended but it felt like it had been ended. Mourinho underlined the comment going round the away dressing room: "it's impossible to win here." Yet the lasting impression was the exact opposite: it no longer looks impossible to win here. Barely 24 hours earlier, it did.

In this respect, Wednesday night was a missed opportunity for Barca, a chance to end the war gone. If you like military analogies (and you know I do), this was McClellan allowing the Army of Northern Virginia to escape in the aftermath of Antietam. At halftime, Barca had a 2-0 lead in the match and a 4-1 lead on aggregate. Real's players had to have been dispirited at halftime because they had played well in the first half, but had failed to score because of a combination of poor finishing and excellent shot-stopping by Barca's rapping reserve keeper, Jose Pinto. Barca had the chance to stick the knife in by delivering a humiliation that would have caused a serious crisis for Mourinho, a malaise that might have affected Real's form in La Liga and allowed Barca to winnow down the current five-point deficit. Instead, Real came off the deck in the second half, scoring twice in rapid succession and forcing a very nervy final 20 minutes for the Catalans.

All that said, there are two caveats to the conclusion that Wednesday was an affirming match for Mourinho and Real. First, Real came out of the Spanish Supercup in August with a similar feeling. In that instance, they had gone at Barca hard for 180 minutes, choosing to employ an aggressive, attacking approach instead of parking the bus. Barca won the tie 5-4 on aggregate, but Real had seemingly showed that they were now on par with Barca, such that they would no longer need to employ the tactics of inferior teams. That affirmation didn't last, as Real lost the next two matches against Barca, both at the Bernabeu. Second, Real's players have cause to wonder about Mourinho's tactics. If Real can truly play with Barca, as they showed in the second leg, then why did Mourinho take such a defensive approach - marked by Pepe in midfield - in the first leg? Couldn't Real have come to the Nou Camp without having to win on the road if their style would have been better in the first leg? Also, Real played much better with Karim Benzema up front as opposed to Gonzalo Higuain. Benzema is establishing quite a record for scoring against Barca, so why was he not on the pitch from the start? Again, would Real have been in a better position than down 4-1 if Benzema had been a starter?

The two clubs will now take a break from one another for at least two months (the earliest that they can play would be the Champions League quarterfinals, which kick off two months from today). Real have been the better side this season against everyone else, so we'll see if that continues.

Mourinho's Fleet Arrives at Midway

2012-01-25T11:41:00.001-05:00

Barcelona and Real Madrid meet this evening for the ninth time in the last ten months. Real Madrid have won only one of the previous nine meetings, that in extra time at the Mestalla in the Copa del Rey Final last spring. Los Merengues are five points clear of their hated enemy in La Liga, which one would think would be cause for celebration among their fans. Instead, discontent is building because of Real's failure to beat Barca head-to-head. Real got two shots at the Blaugrana in recent weeks, both at home. In both matches, Real went ahead early and then lost as Barca's midfield asserted control over the matches. Most gallingly for Jose Mourinho and Real fans, they can't even throw up their hands and say "Barca have the best player in the world and he beat us." Leo Messi hasn't scored in either match, although he assisted on the equalizer in December and the winner last week.

Mourinho's failure to beat Barca is now starting to become an issue. Real Madrid is a massive institution, even by the standards of European mega-clubs. It has a complicated political structure involving various executives and sometimes players (read: Raul) that often illustrates the saying "too many chefs spoil the broth." For years, the manager was set up as a fall guy. He didn't decide the style, he didn't have control over signings, and if anything went wrong, he would be the scapegoat for the failings of others. The experience of Vicente Del Bosque at the Bernabeu is Exhibit A:

In his four seasons in charge Del Bosque ushered the club through its most successful spell in modern history, having steered the club to two UEFA Champions League titles in 2000 and 2002, two domestic La Liga titles in 2001 and 2003, a Spanish Supercup in 2001, a UEFA Super Cup in 2002, the Intercontinental Cup in 2002 as well as finishing in the last four of the UEFA Champions League every year he was in charge. Not since the great Madrid side of the 1950s and 1960s that had Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás did the club succeed so consistently. Del Bosque was famed for his humble, patient and unassuming style which saw him manage the club as it underwent a policy during Florentino Pérez's tenure as club President that was known as 'Los Galacticos'- where the world's best and most marketable stars were signed for the club beginning with Luís Figo, and including Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo. Del Bosque's management was successful in uniting the many different modern player egos in his star studded team: in the Del Bosque era Real managed 104 wins out of a possible 186 in his time as coach of Madrid. Despite the level of success, many players – in particular the so-called 'Galacticos' – were bought without the input of Del Bosque amid often made allegations that the Real Madrid hierarchy (in particular Pérez and general manager Jorge Valdano) had more control over transfer policy, team selection and other aspects of club that minimalised the level of control Del Bosque had during his time as manager.

Shockingly, Real Madrid decided not to renew Del Bosque's contract in 2003, just a day after he won the club its 29th League title and a week after the club signed David Beckham. Del Bosque was offered the post of technical director but turned it down, leading to many suggestions in the Spanish media that there was indeed a much rumoured political split at the club involving Del Bosque and several players, especially captain Fernando Hierro (who was asked to leave the club in the summer of 2003), on one side, while Jorge Valdano and Florentino Pérez wielded the axe of control to in their words, 'shake up the team', on the other. Pérez said in an interview with BBC Sport: "Del Bosque was showing signs of exhaustion. I want to be sincere about this – our belief that he was not the right coach for the future."

Del Bosque then added the World Cup to his personal trophy room in 2010. Depending on Barca's trophy haul this year, his list of accomplishments is not that far removed from that of Pep Guardiola's four years in charge in Barcelona. Guardiola is untouchable; Del Bosque got the boot because winning La Liga and losing in the last four of the Champions League (in a close, enthralling tie with Juventus) was just not enough. Moreover, the guy who made the decision to axe Del Bosque - Florentino Perez - also happens to be the current president of the club.

One of the issues that makes Real a snakepit for a manager is the local media. Madrid has two sports dailies - Marca and AS - that provide exhaustive coverage of the club. Marca has especially close ties to Real, such that its campaign against Manuel Pellegrini during the first year of the new Galactico era in 2009-10 was thought to be encouraged (or at least tacitly permitted) by upper management at the Bernabeu. So, when Marca prints an exchange between Mourinho and Sergio Ramos verbatim, this is not a good sign for Mourinho. Here is Sid Lowe's description of the Marca story:

Marca's cover showed Mourinho and Sergio Ramos face to face. Word for word, they reproduced a conversation between the two men, and Iker Casillas, at Real Madrid's Valdebebas training ground on Friday morning – two days after Madrid, playing ultra-defensively, had again been beaten by Barcelona; two days after Ramos had noted: "We follow the coach's tactics. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't." According to Marca, the conversation started with Mourinho turning towards Ramos and saying: "You [plural] killed me in the mixed zone." To which Ramos replied: "No, mister [the Spanish term for a coach], you only read what it says in the papers not everything we said."

Mourinho replied: "Sure, because you Spaniards have been world champions and your friends in the media protect you … and because the goalkeeper …" At that point there is a shout from Casillas, training 30 metres away: "Eh, mister, round here you say things to our faces, eh!"

Another part of the conversation starts with Mourinho saying: "Where were you on the first goal [against Barcelona], Sergio?"

"Marking Piqué"

"Well, you should have been marking Puyol."

"Yes, but they were blocking us off [using basketball style screens] with Piqué and we decided to change the marking."

"What? So now you're playing at being coach?"

"No," replies Ramos, "but depending on the situation in the game, sometimes you have to change the marking. Because you've never been a player, you don't know that that sometimes happens."

This story represents all sorts of issues for Mourinho. First, it illustrates a less-than-content locker room, which cuts against one of Mourinho's noted strengths: his ability to get wealthy, egotistical stars to all pull in the same direction, even if they might not like being on the bench or playing in a defensive style. Second, it hints at cliques based on nationality, hence the "you Spaniards" remark. (The current rumor is that there is a division between the Spanish and Portuguese players in the side.) Third, it hits Mourinho where it hurts, which is that unlike Guardiola, he was not a successful player. (Think Tracy Flick here.) Fourth, the fact that Marca has a source within the team and ran a cover story pulling up Mourinho's kimono implies that Mourinho's political situation is not entirely secure. For someone with a well developed sense of paranoia (Simon Kuper attributes this tendency to Mourinho growing up in a dictatorship), Marca's story is ominous.

Jose's teams generally don't play attractive football, with the match against Barca last week generally and Pepe's behavior specifically being a nadir. If his teams win, then everyone is happy. If they don't win, then there is really nothing to commend Jose at all. Real Madrid are winning, but they are not accomplishing what Mourinho was brought to the Bernabeu to do: conquer Guardiola's Barca. (Mourinho's wins over Barca at Chelsea and Inter were a major credential in hiring him.) Thus, today's match is critical because it comes at an important juncture. If Real can overturn the 2-1 deficit and win at the Nou Camp (a feat that Mourinho has never accomplished, despite three chances at Chelsea, two at Inter, and three so far at Real; he has four losses and four draws), then his reputation as a Barca-killer returns. He will re-establish his credibility with his players and accumulate political capital to deal with management and the media in Madrid. If Real lose, then Jose faces a genuine crisis because the impression will be further cemented that he cannot do what he was brought to Madrid to do. It's one thing to lose to a historically great team; it's another to do it while deploying eight defensive players, including your compatriot - a center back playing midfield - stomping on Messi's hand. It's strange for me as a Cule to say this, but today's match is more about the enemy.

Dirk Koetter and the Coaching Bell Curve

2012-01-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

My column about Dirk Koetter ran on Friday. The point is simply that we really don't know much about most coaches because they are highly dependent on context:

Take Dirk Koetter as an example. What do we really know about him based on his resume? When he was at Boise State, he was instrumental in that program's emergence from I-AA to becoming a non-BCS conference power. He went 20-5 in his last two years there, which landed him the head coaching job at Arizona State. With the Sun Devils, he went 40-34. His offenses were all over the map, averaging 34, 32, 25, 30, 37, and 27 points per game from 2001 to 2006. He also had the misfortune of coaching when Pete Carroll's USC was at its absolute apex: 2001-06. What coach was going to succeed against Carroll in the first half of the Aughts, especially when that coach not only had to go up against Carroll on the field, but also had to vie for talent in Southern California against a recruiting dynamo? Taking his college record as a whole, did he forget how to coach when he moved from Idaho to Arizona? Or is there something about Boise State that allows its coaches to win and then those coaches cannot replicate that success elsewhere? (Dan Hawkins is currently nodding furiously.) A regression analysis of the Broncos' rise to prominence would not identify head coaches as a driving factor, but I digress.

Koetter then proceeded to Jacksonville, where his first offense was excellent - sixth in scoring and seventh in yards - and then his next three were mediocre before the bottom fell out this year with a rookie quarterback and receivers so bad that Dunta Robinson was moved to mock them. Was Koetter a good coach in 2007 and then had a lobotomy before the 2008 season? Or was he a lifeboat on the heavy seas that were David Garrard playing the season of his life in 2007 before a six-year, $60M contract destroyed his motivation?

When my editor at SB Nation asked me to write about Koetter and/or MIke Nolan, my initial thought was "I really don't have an opinion on either of them." I then got up from my desk, filled up my water cup, and by the time I came back, I had a theme based on the fungibility of coaches. I had just read the Soccer Men chapter on Capello, so it was in the front of my brain.

I'll also admit that the three Michigan coaching hires since I enrolled there in 1993 affect my thinking. When Lloyd Carr was hired in 1995, he was one year removed from presiding over one of the worst defenses in Michigan history. By the close of his third year, he had won the national title that eluded Bo Schembechler. By the close of his fifth year, he had a pair of major bowl wins, or one fewer than Bo had in 21 season. Carr was then replaced by Rich Rodriguez, who came in with a sterling resume and left three years later on a rail, having won six conference games total in three seasons. By contrast, Carr failed to win six Big Ten games in only three of his 13 seasons as head coach - 1995, 1996, and 2005 - and in those years, he won five. Rodriguez was then replaced by Brady Hoke, a hire that made me positively apoplectic. Hoke went 11-2 in his first season and won the Sugar Bowl. If anything, this experience should make me respond to every coaching hire by shrugging my shoulders and quoting Zhou Enlai: it is too soon to say.

Guys, The Roadblocks on 316 Are Not Necessary

2012-01-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

I took a quick run this morning at the rumor that the Falcons are interested in Todd Grantham. I guess if you are replacing one former Georgia defensive coordinator, you might as well do so by making another one, right? Aside from the facts that Grantham's scheme is a bad fit for the Falcons' personnel and the team has neither the draft picks nor the cap space to re-tool in the offseason, I opined that there is no way in hell that Arthur Blank is going to piss off the significant portion of his fan base that spends their Saturdays barking:

A significant portion of the Falcons' fan base is comprised of Georgia fans. How exactly do we think that Georgia fans would react to losing their now-beloved defensive coordinator to the local pro football collective right before a season in which Georgia will be preseason top ten and expected to win the East and challenge for the SEC title? Arthur Blank didn't get to where he is by angering his customers. It would make a lot more sense for him to back the Brinks truck up to Steve Spagnuolo's house so the Falcons can sell their fans on the fact that they hired a Super Bowl-winning defensive coordinator.

So no, I don't think that this is happening. In fact, I seriously doubt that the Falcons even considered it beyond "yeah, that would be a terrible idea."

If the Falcons wanted to do a change of scheme, how about the Air Raid? It's almost certainly too radical for a winning team, but if some teams are going to move towards the spread 'n' shred, then why wouldn't someone try the other offense that is ripping up college football? It's not like the run 'n' shoot was a resounding failure in the NFL.

Phil Jackson & Bela Guttmann

2012-01-12T07:44:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Wilson’s latest article, which asks whether Barcelona will be a victim of Bela Guttmann’s famous three-year rule, is worth a look. Here is the gist:

"The third year," the great Hungarian coach Bela Guttmann always said, "is fatal." If a manager stays at a club more than that, he said, his players tend to become bored and/or complacent and opponents start to work out counter-strategies. There are occasional exceptions, especially in weaker leagues, but at the highest level it seems to hold true that great teams last a maximum of three years – which is why Barcelona's draw against Espanyol on Saturday may be more significant than just two dropped points. This, after all, is Pep Guardiola's fourth season as a manager at the Camp Nou.

Now right off the bat, there is a problem with Wilson’s analogy. Guttmann said that the third year is fatal, but in year three under Guardiola, Barca won the two biggest prizes available to it: the Spanish Primera and the Champions League. It’s only if you modify Guttmann’s concept to “every year after the first three is fatal” that is has applicability here. Additionally, Guardiola is a disciple of Johan Cruyff and Cruyff’s version of the theory is that a great team has a four-year shelf life. This makes sense from Cruyff’s personal experience because his Barca Dream Team won four straight La Liga titles in the early 90s, as well as the club’s first European Cup, and then declined.* Guttmann could make a side function at a top level for two years, so he thinks that that is the statute of limitations. Cruyff’s team lasted for four, so he thinks that that is the limit. There is a danger here of assuming that one’s personal experience is universal.

* – Cruyff suggested that Barca should have broken its 2006 Champions League-winning side apart because it was coming to the end of its cycle, although that team had really only been together for three years. The bottom really fell out in year five when the Blaugrana finished third in La Liga and suffered the ultimate humiliation of forming a Pasillo for Real Madrid after Los Merengues clinched the league. Samuel Eto’o and Deco both got cards intentionally in the preceding match so they would not have to participate, which is a major reason that both were ultimately drummed out of the club.

Wilson’s article got me thinking about American sports and whether a three- or four-year rule applies there. One could make a good argument that it applies in the NBA. Because basketball requires more natural teamwork than baseball or football,* it would seem to be a proper candidate. Look at recent NBA history. The Bulls won three titles, then Michael Jordan went away. They won three more, then Jerry Krause broke the team apart. The Lakers won three in a row, then Shaq and Kobe could no longer co-exist. Once a team gets to the top, it seems that it has a three-year statute of limitations before the combination of egos and pressure create an untenable situation. Phil Jackson, did you ever know that your intellectual forefather was a Hungarian nomad?

* – Football obviously involves players working together, but to do so, they are often following instructions in the form of a play. Basketball, because it is less controlled by the coaches, requires organic cooperation from its players.

In addressing whether Barca can be an exception to the three-year rule, Wilson points out a distinction that would not apply to NBA teams:

Yet in many ways, Barcelona are a side set up to endure. Like Ferguson, who reflected last week on how those who have been brought up at a club have more instinctive loyalty, Guardiola has a stock of homegrown talent. The impression is that most players play for Barcelona because they want to rather than because it's a convenient way of paying for the cars and clothes and rounds of Jaegerbombs.

The Lakers and Bulls didn't build their teams by signing players when they were twelve and then teaching those players over the course of years how to play in a certain style. With the exception of Dani Alves, Barca's current core comes from the La Masia cocoon. These players grew up together, were taught how to play together, matured together, and have now won a room full of trophies together. That experience is simply different than what the NBA's dynastic teams experience.

I'm currently reading Soccer Men, which is Simon Kuper's attempt to explain what modern soccer* stars are really like. One of the themes of the book is that players don't feel the same way that we do about teams and matches because for them, it's a job. For instance, Bernd Holzenbein, one of the starters on the team that won the 1974 World Cup in a famous final against the Netherlands, recalls West Germany's win in 1954 with greater fondness. As he describes his feelings, he was a fan in 1954 and a professional in 1974. The chapter on Fernando Torres is also interesting, as it explains that Torres was an Atletico Madrid fan almost from birth, but had no problem moving to Liverpool because it was a better opportunity for him. We want to think that the players we love feel the same way about the clubs that we love, but that usually isn't true. On one end of the spectrum, we expect that LeBron, Wade, and Bosh don't feel any strong connection to the Miami Heat as an institution. On the other end, it will be interesting to learn how strong the connection is between Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi and Futbol Club Barcelona.

* - Kuper explains in the book that soccer is actually a British term and the sport was referred to by that title instead of football until the 70s. I am going to be more comfortable using the term and not worrying that I come off as too American.

Quick Thoughts on the National Title Game

2012-01-10T08:29:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 16

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	2
2	LSU Tigers	-1
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	-1
4	Oregon Ducks	1
5	USC Trojans	-1
6	Stanford Cardinal	--
7	Boise St. Broncos	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	1
9	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
10	Michigan Wolverines	--
11	Wisconsin Badgers	-3
12	TCU Horned Frogs	2
13	West Virginia Mountaineers	9
14	Virginia Tech Hokies	5
15	Michigan St. Spartans	1
16	Baylor Bears	-3
17	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	3
18	Oklahoma Sooners	-3
19	Houston Cougars	4
20	Georgia Bulldogs	-2
21	Clemson Tigers	-9
22	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-1
23	Kansas St. Wildcats	-6
24	Auburn Tigers	--
25	Florida St. Seminoles	--
Dropouts: Notre Dame Fighting Irish

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I said before the game that Bama would need to fin decisively for me to give them my #1 vote. I’d say they achieved that aim, wouldn’t you?

If anyone else has any idea what LSU was trying to accomplish on offense, then please let me know. They kept running screens against a team that was pressing them. They kept running option with a quarterback who was indecisive in running that play. (Kudos to Kirk Herbstreit for taking a break from discussing the emotions of college football to explain what a lousy job Jordan Jefferson was doing with that play.) They waited until the fourth quarter to run the toss play that has been a staple of their offense, and then they didn’t go back to it after it produced one of their only good runs of the game. Likewise, they started the second half by running a pair of plays seeking to get Odell Backham between the corner and the safety in Bama’s cover two, the first of which almost worked and the second of which did, but then they never went back to that pattern. They never went to Jarrett Lee despite the fact that Jordan Jefferson was atrocious. They punted on fourth and short down two scores in the fourth quarter. In sum, LSU’s coaches seemingly approached this game with the midnset that they were going to minimize a losing margin.

In contrast, Bama’s offensive plan made sense. They gave AJ McCarron simple reads (“more Dick and Jane than War and Peace”), especially using flag routes to the sidelines that he consistently dropped in the bucket. They were focused on great execution of simple passing plays. It helped that the Bama receivers, which I viewed as a weakness going into the game, played their best game of the season. Brent Musberger seemed confused that the Tide were able to have success throwing on Tyrann Mathieu, but Mathieu’s fame this year comes from everything but coverage. It’s not that he’s a bad cover corner, but he isn’t elite in that department.

I wrote after the Sugar Bowl that Michigan's ability to avoid Virginia Tech's repeated mistakes was a skill, in and of itself. Bama showed that same skill last night. No turnovers, one penalty, and no hare-brained tactical decisions by Saban. In the realm of stating the obvious, it's preferable for a team to be mistake-free AND outgain the opponent by almost 300 yards. The score might not reflect it, but Bama turned in one of the all-time dominant title game performances in college football history because they were so superior in terms of yardage and yet were able to do so without sacrificing their ability to avoid mistakes.

My prevailing feeling at the end of the game was feeling wistful that college football doesn’t have a 4-8 team playoff. I’m not the biggest playoff fan in the world because there is a tradeoff between the side of a tournament and the value of a regular season. That said, I’m also a guy who is fascinated by history. This Bama defense was one of the best defenses in modern college football history. In an offense-heavy era in college football, they didn’t get to test themselves against a really good offense. It’s not Bama’s fault. Normally, you would think that a schedule that included Penn State, Florida, Tennessee, and Auburn would give several good tests for an offense. This year, all of those programs were down, especially on the offensive side of the ball. We’ll never get to see how the Tide would have done against Andrew Luck or Oklahoma State’s version of the Air Raid or Oregon’s version of the spread ‘n’ shred. Imagine Andrew Luck trying to decipher one of Nick Saban’s shifting coverage schemes. Imagine Dre Kirkpatrick covering Justin Blackmon. Imagine DeAnthony Thomas in space against Donta Hightower. One of the benefits of expanding college football’s postseason is that we would get more matchups like that, but we are denied that opportunity. I hate ending the college football season on a note of frustration, but that’s how I feel this morning after having seen a truly great defense test itself against a mediocre offense.

Mularkey Fuera!

2012-01-09T10:59:00.001-05:00

You know that when I am channeling the ever-disgruntled fans at Atletico Madrid,* then thinks are not going well. Here's the column. As usual, I am complaining about the focus on Michael Turner:

Leaving the playoff struggles aside, the most basic criticism of Mularkey is that he doesn't understand the strengths of his own attack. The Falcons are at their best when Matt Ryan is throwing the ball around to the toys that Thomas Dimitroff has bought for him.

The Falcons' running game is overrated by people who only look at raw numbers. Michael Turner was 39th in the NFL in DVOA this year. Put another way, he was below average in terms of his success rate on a per-play basis. Collectively, the Falcons' running game ranked 25th in the NFL by Football Outsiders' numbers. If you look at the more conventional yards per carry number, the Falcons jump all the way up to 22nd. An objective observer would look at this team and conclude that their approach in January should have been to throw the ball and then use the run on occasion to keep the defense honest. Mularkey, whether because of ideological rigidity or a misguided notion of avoiding the Giants' pass rush, stubbornly gave Turner nine carries in the first half. Those carries produced a whopping 27 yards. Did Mularkey react to this evidence by refraining from wasting downs in the second half? No, he started the half by giving Turner three more carries that produced ten yards. The Falcons blew their chances when the defense was playing really well.

I heard a good call this morning on 790 by a fan arguing that the problem is that the running game is so uni-directional. The Giants' runners can all change direction and cut back, but Turner just plods between the tackles whether or not the blocking is there. Interestingly, the Falcons are above-average in their percentage of runs going outside, so I'm not sure that this criticism is valid, but it sure feels right after yesterday.

* - The full chant there is "[Insert name of inept manager or club owner], cabron, fuera del Calderon." Catchy, no?

Customary Invective About New York

2012-01-06T10:28:00.001-05:00

You didn't really think that I would let a week like this go by without a paragraph on my love for New York sports culture, did you?

Adrift on a sea of potential ennui, there is one subject that in my experience unites Atlanta sports fans: we hate New York teams. I've yet to encounter a non-Big Apple transplant Atlantan who views the teams from New York with anything but contempt. When their teams come to our venues, we get overrun with loutish, gold chain-festooned former New Yorkers who have John Franco mustaches with no shred of irony and who cheer lustily for teams from a city that they fled because they didn't want to pay $3,000 per month for 500 square feet. When we turn on the TV, we get inundated with news about their teams as if they are our teams. Their shills in the media have completely appropriated baseball history as being the story about New York teams and their games against one another or the Red Sox. Nothing will quite bring out passion quite like being dismissed as a bystander.

Unfortunately, the post then deals with reality, which is that Atlanta teams have a terrible history against New York teams in the postseason. I missed an opportunity to make a joke about Rutgers football not being in a position to play the Dawgs in a bowl game. Sorry about that.

No Really, You Go Ahead And Blow Your Own Foot Off. I’ll Be Here In The Corner, Doing A Lot Of Nothing

2012-01-04T08:56:00.001-05:00

On May 6, 2009, I sat in this room, in front of this computer, and wondered about the meaning of my team winning a big game when it had been both outplayed and the beneficiary of at least one notable close call. In that instance, Andres Iniesta hit a 93rd minute winner past Petr Cech to send Barcelona to Rome. Iniesta’s shot was Barca’s first on target in the match. The Blaugrana trailed for most of the encounter and had to stave off numerous close encounters, including a pair of one-on-ones between Didier Drogba and Victor Valdes and four penalty appeals of varying quality. In the end, Barca were the inferior team, but went through anyway.

In the aftermath, I came to grips with the fact that there are more ways to succeed in a football match than by dominating possession and creating chances. For one thing, a goalie making big saves is not exactly luck. You would think that I would grasp this fact given that I have played goalie since age ten, but after the game, I had to remind myself that Valdes performing to keep Barca in the match counted just as much as Messi or Eto’o creating and finishing chances at the other end. For another, a team keeping its concentration in adverse circumstances is important. Barca could have gotten frustrated with Chelsea’s defensive approach, with the penalty that they were denied in the first leg, and with the general unfairness that their perfect season was about to end without the most coveted prize available. Instead, they kept plugging away and then Iniesta foreshadowed his World Cup-winning strike with the goal that made the treble possible.

Tonight, I’m in the same position. Michigan just won the Sugar Bowl, capping an 11-2 season that, with one notable exception, is as good as any I’ve experienced since enrolling in Ann Arbor in September 1993. By conventional metrics, Michigan had no business winning the game. The Wolverines were outgained 375 to 184. The Hokies ran 24 more plays and were 1.4 yards better on a per play basis. Michigan’s two touchdowns were both Jeff Bowden specials, with Junior Hemingway playing the role of Greg Carr. Michigan’s first field goal in regulation came from an insanely lucky deflected pass to a previously-ineligible receiver. The Michigan defense was stout in a number of respects, especially in the red zone, but they gave up a season’s worth of third and longs to a team without an especially good passing game. In the end, Michigan benefited from a close reversal of a Hokie touchdown in overtime (the right call, I think, but very close) and then an ignored false start on the winning field goal (although it’s not as if Virginia Tech can claim that Michigan gained any sort of advantage from Brendan Gibbons starting, stopping, and then having to start again). Notre Dame in the late 80s, Tennessee ‘98, and Ohio State ‘02 all came to mind; this was lucky.

All that said, the ability to avoid blowing off one’s own foot is a skill in college football. If we have learned anything over the last few days after seeing kickers repeatedly spit the bit, coaches turtle up in end-game situations, and players of all shapes and sizes make mistakes, it’s that avoiding big errors is important. Michigan had one turnover and 24 yards of penalties. They didn’t miss a field goal. They didn’t call a stupid fake punt on fourth and one when their running game was cooking. Fitzgerald Toussaint didn’t take a 220-yard loss on first and goal. They neither roughed a punter to prolong a drive, nor watched the drive end by not knocking down a pass on 3rd and 17. Feel free to shoot me in the face for sounding like a Tressel acolyte, but playing mistake-free football can atone for a lot of sins.

Likewise, just as Barca’s persistence at Stamford Bridge was a skill, so was Michigan’s performance tonight. They came in with their star left tackle limping around. They then added an injury to their Rimington-winning senior center who makes all of the calls for the line and who relies on mobility to make up for a lack of size. A group of players who remember total collapses like Illinois 2009 and Ohio State 2010 showed that they don’t roll over anymore. Virginia Tech dominated most of the first half, but the defense made stands in the red zone and then the offense had a brief flurry to turn a 6-0 deficit into a 17-6 lead. When the Hokies pegged them back to 17-17 and then 20-20, Michigan stood up in overtime and won the game. Add persistence to “didn’t blow our own feet off” to the list of skills that this team used to make up for the fact that they couldn’t block or make a stop on third and long.

In a way, this is how the 2011 season had to end for Michigan. At the end of the Rich Rodriguez era, Michigan was a great offfense and then a smoking heap of wreckage. The defense was unconscionably bad. The special teams were barely above that level, most notably because the Wolverines could not kick a field goal. Michigan did dumb things like not knowing that a blocked field goal is a live ball. The turnover rate was terrible. This year was a palate cleanser in every way. In the end, Michigan won a game despite the offense being completely stymied. The Wolverines won by being good on defense, very good on special teams, and smart enough to avoid the mistakes that killed their otherwise superior opponent. In 2010, I looked at box scores and said “we have to be better than what the scoreboard says.” At the end of 2011, I say “according to that gleaming Sugar Bowl trophy headed to Schembechler Hall, we are better than what the box score says.”

Mark Richt and the Cult of the Field Goal

2012-01-03T09:17:00.002-05:00

My column about the import of Richt's colossal mistake against Michigan State is up at SB Nation. The criticism of the decision not to attack in the first overtime is obvious; here is the attempt to contextualize:

Richt's shockingly conservative disposition during the end-game of the Outback Bowl was and remains indefensible, but the passage of time reminds me of one truism: we all overrate the importance of late game decisions when evaluating a coach. When it comes to determining whether a program wins or loses, late game strategery is the easiest factor for fans to judge. We can put percentages on various courses of action, such as the odds of a turnover versus missing a 42-yard field goal. Additionally, because late game play-calling is the last impression that we have of a team for a week (or, in this case, for eight months), it sticks out in the memory and the recency effect takes over. However, this factor isn't nearly as important as the other things that a head coach does.

Recruiting is much more important and Richt has done a very good job in that department such that we can have the sense that Georgia had too much talent to go down the way it did yesterday. Managing a staff is more important and Georgia fans are pretty much united in their affection for Todd Grantham (and well they should be in light of the defense's performance this year). As the demises of Jim Tressel and Joe Paterno have shown this year, the CEO functions performed by a head coach are also critical. Dawg fans should have no concerns about Richt making the right decision if he were confronted with a potentially incriminating e-mail or a (alleged) pedophile assistant coach. Making timid decisions at the end of a close game is annoying, but in the grand scheme of things, it is only a small portion of the pie chart when evaluating a head coach.*

* - Take it from a Michigan fan. We all complained about Lloyd Carr making conservative decisions at the end of games that overvalued kickers, the clock and timeouts while undervaluing the possibility of winning a game with his consistently good quarterbacks. We didn't appreciate the fact that Carr was putting good teams on the field that were in position to blow close games in the first place. Three years of Rich Rodriguez were enough to bring Carr's positive attributes into full focus. For instance, the Big Ten Network had a timely showing of the 2000 Orange Bowl yesterday afternoon. In that game, Carr laid up for a field goal at the end of regulation. He could have put the game in the hands of future Hall of Famer Tom Brady, throwing to future top ten pick David Terrell and protected by four future NFL starters on the offensive line. Instead, he put the game in the hands of the immortal Hayden Epstein and was only bailed out by Alabama kicker Ryan Pflugner one-upping Epstein by missing an extra point. Carr deserves lots of credit for assembling a great team and a smaller amount of criticism for relying on the wrong aspects of that team. College coaches should not rely on their kickers unless all other resources have been exhausted.

If you want a more substantive criticism of Richt, it is this: eleven years at the helm in Athens has shown that he is dependent on Florida having a bad coach in order to be successful. When Richt came to Athens, Steve Spurrier was putting one of his best Gator teams on the field in 2001, a team that should have played Miami for the national title in Pasadena if not for a pair of injuries to Ernest Graham. Spurrier then flew the coop for Dan Snyder's filthy lucre. He was replaced by Ron Zook and Richt enjoyed his heyday: three division and two conference titles. Urban Meyer then came onto the scene*, and Richt did not take another trip to the SEC Championship Game until Meyer had fled the stage. Now, the elite programs in the conference are in Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge, a point that was drilled home in the second half of the title game against LSU. Is Richt going to require regression from one or both of those programs in order to win a third conference title? Quite possibly? More generally, can we accept that Richt is a good, but not great coach? I certainly can, but it will be easier if days like yesterday become more frequent.

* - It does bear mentioning that Richt's second title came in Meyer's first year in Gainesville when Urban was going through the growing pains of De-Zookification.

The point that I do not address is what part(s) of the pie chart do we use to reach the conclusion that Richt is good, but not great. In other words, is his quality recruiting what makes him good and his staffing decisions prevent him from being great? That question will require a lot more consideration.

The Scott-Delany Pact

2011-12-29T11:59:00.001-05:00

An agreement between two powers that are separated by flat plains? I'm in!

My main reaction is that college football needs more agreements like this. At present, there is a race to the bottom in terms of non-conference schedules. With: (a) poll voters somewhat unwilling to reward teams for play tough non-conference schedules; (b) a plentiful supply of outmatched opponents as a result of the NCAA allowing wins over FCS teams to count towards bowl eligibility; and (c) major conference athletic programs funded mostly by their football programs, there are a host of incentives for teams to maximize home games and minimize contests against quality opponents. The way to beat programs out of this mindset is to create formal structures.* Some teams are constrained by tradition. I'm sure that Jeremy Foley would play four non-conference games at the Swamp against tomato cans if he could, but the tradition of the game against Florida State prevents him from scratching his worst itch. Teams that are not constrained by tradition need other rules in place to force them to play watchable games. Wisconsin won't leave Camp Randall to play a competent opponent? Jim Delany will just have to force them to behave.

* - The other factor that would force major programs to play quality non-conference opponents would be a softening of ticket demand. Programs get away with scheduling directional schools right now because they know that they can sell season tickets regardless of the presence of multiple weaklings on the slate. If athletic departments sense that they are having a hard time selling season tickets because of soft opponents, then they will schedule better. The Pac Ten is already in this boat because the intensity of their fan support is not equal to that of other conferences. I can see a future where Stubhub has the same effect on season ticket packages as it is currently having on bowl tickets. Right now, schools struggle to sell their bowl ticket allotments because fans know that they can get the tickets at much lower prices on Internet ticket sites. What happens when fans also realize en masse that they don't have to pay to see New Mexico State and they can instead by tickets to the best games on the Internet, thus spending less and still seeing the games that really generate interest? New Mexico State comes off the schedule.

Aside from the obvious benefit of giving fans better games to watch, the ancillary benefit of the Big Ten-Pac Ten alliance is that it will make it easier to judge teams at the end of the season. Part of the problem with college football's current structure is that the BCS has an already difficult task of picking the two best teams from a field of 120 and then its task is made harder by the relatively small sample size of games between BCS conference teams. It's hard to compare Alabama and Oklahoma State because there are so few connections between teams in the Big XII and SEC. While an alliance between the Big Ten and Pac Ten doesn't solve that specific problem, it does increase the number of meaningful games and therefore gives us a better sense as to teams' relative strengths. If the pact is successful, then other conferences will copy it. The natural dance partner for the SEC would be the ACC, although an alliance with the Big XII (plus four) would also be doable. Who knows, in ten years, we might be able to use real evidence to back up our claims of SEC superiority before the bowl games.

My New Digs

2011-12-29T10:59:00.004-05:00

In case you missed it, I am going to be writing on a weekly basis for SB Nation's Atlanta site. The plan is to put up my Atlanta-centric posts - the local pro sports collectives, along with SEC football - up on that site and the unrelated content - Michigan football, Barca, the occasional complaint about Peter King ignoring the Red Army - will stay here. I will try to link everything that I write for SB Nation here so you don't have to go hunting.

Anyway, here is the first column. It starts as an analogy between the Falcons' and Georgia's seasons before devolving into complaining about Sean Payton and Drew Brees:

Leaving aside the fairness question, I like the idea of a rematch on a purely emotional level. Sean Payton and Drew Brees rubbed the Falcons' collective nose in the mud on Monday night. For those of you who were smart enough to abandon ship before I did, the Saints took the ball over on the Falcons 33 with 5:08 to go and with a 38-16 lead. Most coaches would do one of two things at this stage: (1) leave the starters in and run the ball to kill the clock; or (2) put in the back-ups and run the regular offense to take a look at the lower parts of the depth chart in game conditions.* Instead, Payton chose option (3): leave Brees in the game to throw five more passes so he could break Marino's record on a meaningless drive against a beaten opponent. Though the Hindus speak of karma, Brees remained upright to the end and was even able to deliver a nauseating show of false modesty after the game, claiming in his usual aw shucks manner that he didn't know how many yards he needed to get for the record. Uh, Drew, maybe the fact that you were throwing on just about every down on a drive that started on the 33 should have clued you in that you needed fewer than 33 yards.

* - This latter approach would have made the most sense for the Saints because they are one Brees injury from having to play Chase Daniel. Daniel has thrown all of five passes in his NFL career, two this year and three last year. In contrast, Brees has thrown 622 pass attempts this season, 120 more than Aaron Rodgers and 58 more than Dan Marino threw during his fabled 1984 season. Not that you would know this from the Breesapalooza that Tirico, Jaworski, and Gruden unleashed on Monday night, but Brees broke the single season passing record in no small part because he has a ridiculous number of attempts. One reason why he has a ridiculous number of attempts is that Payton apparently leaves him in the game to keep chucking the ball at the end of blowouts. One counter: no Patriot other than Tom Brady has thrown a pass all year and Matt Flynn has thrown all of five passes for the Packers, so maybe the standard in the NFL is for the back-up either to stay on the bench or to refrain from throwing when he comes in.

And speaking of the coverage of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed Mike Pereira's comprehensive takedown of Jon Gruden's criticism of the defenseless receiver call on Monday night. During the game, I was annoyed that the Falcons were called for a hit on a defenseless receiver, but the Saints were not on at least two occasions. In retrospect, my annoyance resulted from Gruden not knowing the rule. As it turns out, the defenseless receiver call is limited to very specific instances. The name implies a broader penalty, but having a "hitting the head of or spearing a defenseless receiver" is a bit of a mouthful. You would think that knowing the rules would be a requirement for an announcer, but apparently not for Gruden.

Also, I am wondering why ESPN never thought to have someone like Pereira provide analysis of close calls. This is very common in other countries. For instance, in Brazil, coverage of futebol matches usually comes with input from former refs on contentious decisions. Former refs are also a prominent part of the coverage of footie in England. Given how much attention is paid to ostensibly bad calls, you would think that the Worldwide Leader would provide an authoritative voice. Instead, we got Craig James.

Brazil Goes to the Map Room

2011-12-22T15:33:00.003-05:00

My favorite movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark. My parents dragged me to it when I was six years old. I say "dragged" because I wanted to see Clash of the Titans instead. Based on the picture of Indiana Jones in the newspaper wearing a Middle Eastern headdress,* I feared that the movie was going to be an extension of Sunday School, which I was already mature enough to find boring. Two hours after being forced against my will to go into one of the theaters on 29 in Charlottesville, I came dancing out, convinced that I had seen the best movie in the history of the world. Three decades later, I will admit that there might be other movies of superior technical quality, but no movie has surpassed Raiders as my favorite.

* - Showing a similar mentality, my five-year old described our neighbors' nativity scene as "Jews, a camel, and a donkey."

One of Raiders' best aspects is that it is stuffed to the gills with iconic scenes. Indy running away from the boulder. Indy's travels being tracked by a red line on a map. Indy shooting the swordsman in the Cairo market.* The Ark melting the faces of Toht and Dietrich. The Ark being buried in a government warehouse along with who knows what.**

* - If there is a better 30-second metaphor for colonialism, I'd like to see it. OK, maybe the fact that the locals cheer the Westerner who uses technology to defeat the skilled, but outdated native cuts against my conclusion, but leave me my attempt to find meaning in a pulp classic. Also, it's interesting to me that two of the best scenes in George Lucas-affiliated movies - the swordsman scene in Raiders and the "I love you." "I know." scene in Empire Strikes Back - were both improvised by Harrison Ford.

** - The perfect metaphor for government waste.

For me, the best scene in the entire movie is the Map Room. Indy takes his right-sized staff into the Map Room at the right time, waits for the sun to hit the right spot, and then looks on with amazement as a brilliant beam of light strikes the location of the Well of the Souls.

Two qualities make the scene. The first is John Williams' score, as the Ark's theme rises to an inspiring crescendo. The second is Harrison Ford's expression of wonder at the show of light. The cynicism of a world-weary archaeologist with the weathered leather jacket and fedora - the guy who said earlier in the movie " I don't believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus. I'm going after a find of incredible historical significance, you're talking about the boogie man" - melts away now that he realizes that he is in the presence of the ethereal. Steven Spielberg's movies are often noted for the moment of realization that his protagonists have. (Think about Roy Scheider's face in Jaws when he realizes the size of the shark he's hunting, or Liam Neeson's face when he finally realizes the extent of the Final Solution and its effect on children in Schindler's List.) The definitive moment of realization is Indy in the Map Room as his face changes to a wide-eyed gape.

I had Indy's expression in mind when I read Tim Vickery's pieces about the lesson that Brazilians should take from the hiding that Santos took from Barcelona in Japan. With the world title on the line, Santos brought in a team that had been strengthened after winning the Copa Libertadores and was led by two burgeoning stars: Neymar and Ganso. With the Brazilian domestic league in good financial form after signing a lucrative TV deal and the currency doing well against the failing Euro, this seemed like the time for a Brazilian club side to show its strength against a European champion. Instead, Barca won in embarrassingly comfortable fashion, breaking out to a 3-0 lead at the half and then coasting home.

Vickery, who has been preaching about the failings of modern Brazilian futebol for as long as I have been reading and listening to him, could have viewed the match as a confirmation of his hypothesis that Brazil has given up the ability to produce passing midfielders. Here is what Vickery wrote for the BBC:

Like watching Muhammad Ali against some outgunned challenger, Barcelona's destruction of Santos was as joyful as it was clinical. Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi ran rings round Santos as if the Brazilians were traffic cones in a training exercise.

According to the dominant current of thought in Brazil in recent years, this sort of thing is not supposed to happen. The physical evolution of the game, it was thought, had made it impossible. In this modern football of reduced space, the central midfielders need to be six-footers, big and strong enough to win the 50-50 balls and protect the defence.

And there was no point in possession football - a move with more than seven passes had a reduced chance of ending up in a goal. The way to win was to block the middle and look for quick counter attacks and set-pieces.

And the quality of the play? "If you want to see a spectacle," says Santos coach Muricy Ramalho, "then go to the theatre." Or maybe go to watch his side taken apart in such style by Barcelona.

In football the idea comes first. And the line of thinking helps explain the type of players produced. In Neymar Santos could count on a Messi equivalent. But where is the Xavi or the Iniesta? Brazilian football no longer has them because it is not looking to produce them. They do not fit the mould.

And here is his similar description for ESPN:

Sunday's match was not decided by a financial imbalance. It was the imposition of one footballing philosophy over another, a victory for the skilful little guys with the low centre of gravity, a triumph for the spectacle and self-expression of pass and move - a win like many that South American football has enjoyed in its glorious history.

The value of defeat is always in the lessons that it can teach. Perhaps the big lesson that Barcelona have taught in Yokohama is this: if Brazilian football wants to keep on winning not only titles but also hearts then it would be well advised to get back in touch with elements of its own tradition. There is an argument against the view that possession football is outdated and that the central midfielders should be unimaginative giants. Its case was made loud and clear in Japan this Sunday.

If Spain's triumph and Brazil's failure in South Africa was not evidence enough, Sunday's result in Yokohama should be Brazil's trip to the Map Room. It should be enough to convince the cynics who have led Brazil astray ever since the beautiful 1982 iteration to the Selecao - led by Zico, Falcao, and the late Socrates - was upset by Italy (ironically enough, in Barcelona at Espanyol's old ground) that technical ability in the central midfield is more important than brawn.*

* - As Jack Lang of Snap Kaka Pop was marveling at Thiago - Barca's latest midfield prodigy and the son of a former Brazil international - and expressing regret that Thiago has declared for Spain instead of Brazil, I was tempted to respond with "maybe he didn't want to become a fullback."

To come back to this blog's favorite topic, the Map Room analogy has me thinking about similar episodes in college football, instances where one striking result caused an epiphany from a team or a conference. These are the examples that came to mind, but I am all ears for more:

1. After getting his tail kicked in by Florida State and Miami in a series of Orange and Fiesta Bowls, Tom Osborne decides that he needs defensive players who can run. He recruits Texas and California more heavily, thus producing the dominant team that won national titles in 1994, 1995, and 1997.

2. After a favored Ohio State team gets obliterated by Florida in the 2006 national championship game, the Big Ten moves towards the spread offense. Ohio State shows a run-based spread with Terrelle Pryor, Penn State deploys the "Spread HD," and Michigan hires Rich Rodriguez.

3. After Danny Wuerrfel is beaten to a pulp by Florida State at Doak Campbell Stadium in November 1996, Steve Spurrier relents on his long-standing opposition to the shotgun. The Gators bury the Noles in the rematch and the 'gun is a feature of Spurrier's offense from that point forward.

4. After the SEC was dominated in the 1980s by conservative, run-the-ball-and-play-defense coaches like Vince Dooley and Pat Dye, Spurrier arrives in 1990, destroys a highly-rated Auburn team in 1990 48-7, wins the Gators' first SEC title in 1991, and then sets himself on a path of destruction through the conference. The rest of the SEC enters the Map Room and emerges with the David Cutcliffe offense at Tennessee, the Air Raid at Kentucky, and the quasi-spread run by Terry Bowden and featuring Dameyune Craig at Auburn.

Others?

Leo Messi, Meet Larry Templeton

2011-12-20T09:32:00.000-05:00

Presented without comment for your review:

Chris Farley - Japanese Game Show- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.

The back story on the Messi interview.

The Dwight Howard Pipedream

2011-12-15T09:49:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago, I started a post agreeing with Jeff Schultz that the Hawks should make a play for Dwight Howard and then, in the process of writing it, realized that Howard would never come here because he would end up in a situation that is worse than the one he was leaving in Orlando. Here was my conclusion:

Additionally, Howard has to be thinking that the biggest obstacle to gaining a higher Q-rating is that he hasn't won a championship and has only made the Finals once. He needs to go somewhere where he will win. His issue in Orlando is the supporting cast. Will it make sense for him to come here to play with Jeff Teague (a player whose promise is based on a six-game series against the Bulls last year), Joe Johnson (holder of one of the worst contracts in the NBA), Marvin Williams (average small forward who escapes being non-descript only because of his Draft position and the careers of the players taken after him), and a power forward to be named later? And then you add in the fact that Atlanta Spirit has expressed an aversion to paying the luxury tax and in light of the team's revenues, they can't really be blamed, can they? The end game could well be that Thorpe wants to send Howard to Atlanta, but can't make the trade happen because Howard refuses to agree to a potential extension with the Hawks.

Yesterday, Bill Simmons framed Howard's decision in the same way:

Put it this way: If I'm Dwight Howard, I'm thinking about titles and titles only. I don't care about money — that's coming, regardless. I don't care about weather — I have to live in whatever city for only eight months a year, and I'm traveling during that entire time, anyway. I don't care about "building my brand" and all that crap — if I don't start winning titles soon, my brand is going to be "the center who's much better than every other center but can't win a title." I care only about playing in a big city, finding a team that doesn't have to demolish itself to acquire me, finding one All-Star teammate who can make my life a little easier (the Duncan to my Robinson), and winning titles. Not title … titles. I want to come out of this decade with more rings than anyone else. I want to be remembered alongside Shaq, Moses and Hakeem, not Robinson and Ewing.

Tellingly, Simmons listed five destinations for Howard and Black Hollywood was nowhere in sight, except for a brief mention of the fact that the Hawks were able to beat the Magic last year with a "let Dwight get his; we need to make sure that the Magic shooters don't get theirs" strategy. For instance, he pooh-poohs the prospect of Howard ending up on the Lakers because he would be playing with Kobe Bryant and a gutted roster. Would Howard be any more likely to have a desire to play with Joe Johnson, Jeff Teague, Marvin Williams, and then a similarly gutted roster, only in this instance, you have Atlanta Spirit instead of Jerry Buss filling in the remainder?

Simmons' interest in stars going to play for the Bulls is interesting to me. As he mentions, he wanted LeBron to go there and now he wants Howard to make the same decision. This preference is to Simmons' credit, as a superpower in Chicago would be detrimental to the prospect of the Celtics winning a title in the next decade. Simmons is often derided as a Boston homer and he does plenty of things to earn the label, but he is able to put that aside when he pines for Derrick Rose to have a superstar wing man like LeBron or Howard. I think that there are two things going on here. First, Simmons is more of a basketball fan than a Celtics fan and he would like to see a memorable team come together instead of the NBA's stars being isolated and surrounded by poor supporting casts. Second, he wants that memorable team to play in uniforms that mean something and in an environment that makes for good TV. The Bulls uniform evokes memories of the Jordan dynasty and the United Center has a great atmosphere when the team is good.

I have to admit that I feel the same way. It's hard for me to reconcile my feelings about Major League Baseball with my current feelings about the NBA. In baseball, I get very annoyed by the constant focus on the Red Sox and Yankees. This annoyance extends to those two teams sucking up free agents left and right to cover for the failings of their own farm systems. In basketball, I liked the idea of Chris Paul and Dwight Howard going to the Lakers because that team would be highly entertaining. Again, I am going to point to two factors that drive my thinking. First, basketball is a team game. Like soccer, it's more interesting to watch great players play with one another because they bring one another to a higher level. Baseball, on the other hand, is a game with a minimal amount of teamwork. This makes baseball more conducive to reaching stat-based conclusions with confidence, but it also means that there is no great joy in watching superstars play with one another. Mark Teixeira driving in A-Rod isn't the same thing as Messi finding Cesc with a defense-splitting pass or Paul hitting Howard with an alley-oop. Second, I have a lifelong disdain for New York teams. If the Knicks were the ones assembling a cache of talent, then I would be annoyed because Mike Lupica would be happy. I don't feel the same "oh G-d, this is going to be intolerable" pangs with Chicago or Los Angeles.

Five-Star Temptresses

2011-12-12T07:19:00.001-05:00

I like to imagine that Saturday night was a little instance of karma biting the University of Texas in the rear end for playing every card in their hand (to use T. Boone Pickens’ apt phrase) and chasing off one-third of the Big XII. A week after losing to Baylor by 24 – a loss that was the Horns’ second in a row to the Bears after having beaten Baylor every year since 1997 – Texas fans had to watch Robert Griffin III win the Heisman Trophy. Griffin, a four-star recruit from Copperas Cove, Texas, was not recruited by Texas as a quarterback. (Darron Thomas, also from Texas, was in the same class.) Instead, the Horns put all of their eggs in the basket of Garrett Gilbert, a five-star prospect from Austin who would be in the next class.

If you follow college football at all, you know how this decision panned out. Griffin led Baylor to its most successful period since the days of Grant Teaff and Mike Singletary, culminating in a 9-3 season this year. Meanwhile, after a promising performance in the national championship game against Alabama, Gilbert was a disaster in Austin, performing poorly as Texas went 5-7 in 2010, losing his job to a pair of underclassmen in 2011, and then transferring to SMU.

Texas’s decision to commit to Gilbert is interesting because the Horns’ greatest success was when they were running the run-based spread. The apex of Mack Brown’s tenure in Austin was 2004-05, when the Horns went 24-1 and won two major bowls and a national championship with Vince Young running the show. To a lesser extent, Texas then experienced more success in 2008-09 with Colt McCoy at quarterback. The offense under McCoy wasn’t as run-heavy as it was under Young, but it did feature a quarterback running game (McCoy was the team’s leading rusher in 2008 and second-leading rusher in 2009) and relied on spread formations, albeit with more of a focus on short passing as opposed to the zone read play.

Given that Texas usually finishes its recruiting classes early, we can’t hold the McCoy experience against Mack Brown when looking at his decision not to recruit RGIII as a quarterback. The Horns had not had their 2008-09 run when they made that decision. However, we can criticize them for not learning the lesson of the Vince Young era. Apparently, the lesson that Brown took was “recruit five-star quarterbacks from Texas,” when he should have concluded “recruit quarterbacks who can run.” In short, Texas was seduced by the prospect of a local five-star pocket passer and shifted their offense away from what worked for them when they were upsetting USC in the game of the decade.*

* – One defense of Mack Brown: it’s easy to say in retrospect that he should have recruited Griffin, knowing what we know now about the way that Griffin matured as a passer in Waco. However, Texas produces all sorts of dual-threat quarterbacks who do not turn into players who are on RGIII’s level. In the recruiting class that produced Gilbert, the State of Texas produced five of the top ten dual threat quarterback prospects in the country. Only the lowest-rated of the five – Casey Pachall – has been a success as a quarterback on the college level.

One can look at Florida and see the same mistake. Urban Meyer has always won with mobile quarterbacks. Josh Harris, Alex Smith, and Tim Tebow can all run the plays that form the basis of Meyer’s offense. Nevertheless, Meyer was seduced by the same siren that causes Mack Brown to jump off the deck of his ship and swim to his doom. He had a five-star pocket passer – John Brantley – living one hour from campus, so Meyer committed his post-Tebow Gators to Brantley. Meanwhile, Meyer did not offer Denard Robinson a chance to play quarterback in Gainesville. As with Gilbert, RGIII, and Texas, Brantley has been major disappointment at Florida while Robinson has flourished at Michigan, finishing in the top six of the Heisman voting in 2010 and then leading Michigan to its best season in five in 2011. In retrospect, one wonders what Meyer was thinking when he went with the five-star player who did not fit his style when he had a number of four-star options who would have been a perfect fit in his version of the spread-n-shred.

This parable of mistakes made by Mack Brown and Urban Meyer might offer a cautionary tale for Brady Hoke. Hoke’s most successful team prior to Michigan was the 2008 Ball State team, led by the mobile Nate Davis. This year, Michigan has exceeded expectations and earned a Sugar Bowl berth with Robinson. Like Brown and Meyer before his, Hoke has the siren call of a local five-star pocket passer: Shane Morris, a prospect who might be the top quarterback in the class of 2013. Is Hoke about to make the same mistake? It seems unlikely because Hoke’s offensive coordinator is Al Borges, a play-caller whose preferred system works better with pocket passers. The mistake that Meyer (and Brown, albeit to a lesser degree because he had had pocket passers before Young) made was to get away from his style.* Morris will be a step towards Hoke’s previous orientation. Still, as a defensive coach, Hoke will want to think long and hard about the pressure that a player like Denard Robinson puts on a defense by his ability to run and throw before he surrenders that asset.

* – One corollary from this: maybe Gilbert and Brantley would have been successes in college if they would have gone somewhere other than Texas and Florida. In the same way that coaches who experience success with mobile quarterbacks should resist the urge to sign the local five-star, the local five-star should resist the urge to play for coaches who aren’t at home with pro-style attacks. There will always be the Stanfords of the world.

(Senator, did I hit all of your questions?)

We Meet Again

2011-12-09T11:32:00.001-05:00

After taking a four-month break to cut swaths through Europe and, in Barca's case, drop points on the road with alarming frequency, Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid and Pep Guardiola's Barcelona will have a little get-together on Saturday at 4 p.m. Light refreshments and occasional eye-gouges will be served. The proceedings will be broadcast on GolTV, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3, and any one of a number of streaming Internet feeds of dubious legality. As I do every year, I will make an appeal for any college football fans who have been thinking about checking out a European footie match to spend some time on Saturday watching this match. SEC fans, just watch the reactions of the fans in the stands as the game progresses. The looks of sheer anger and exhilaration will be quite familiar to you. Plus, you will be watching the two best players and the two best teams in the world,* bar none and without any dispute. Come on, this is our first Saturday without college football and you have the perfect dose of methadone staring you in the face. Plus, there is a good chance that there will be more scoring than there was in Bama-LSU.

* - Real and Barca are now almost prohibitive favorites to win the Champions League. The two best contenders from England are out, Bayern Munich have slowed down after a fast start, and Barca recently won on the road against the best side from Serie A. The only question seems to be whether Barca and Real will avoid each other until the final.

For those of you who are already familiar with the game and the players, here are my thoughts of what to watch for in the match:

1. How does Pep line up his forward line? I assume that he is not going to play three at the back, given that Real play one striker (three at the back really makes more sense against two) and Puyol and Pique are both available. I further assume that the midfield will be Busquets, Xavi, and Iniesta. (Busquets gets the nod over Mascherano because the latter has become more of a defender than a midfielder.) So who goes with Messi up top? Alexis Sanchez, who is coming back to health and has played really well over the past week? Pedro, who just came back from an injury spell on Tuesday, but who gives the team more width and has a great record of scoring against Real? Isaac Cuenca, the latest product of La Masia and a player who Guardiola already trusts to be in the right place at the right time? David Villa, the big star who has been struggling and whose confidence might be shattered by starting the match on the bench? My guess is that Pep will go with Villa and Sanchez alongside Messi. The other possibility is Cesc, playing an advanced role along with Messi and then one of the aforementioned forwards switching wings to provide width. Cesc and Messi have developed a great understanding with one another and Cesc brings dimensions that the rest of the team lacks, namely the abilities to: (1) crash the box from the midfield to provide a target for Messi's passes; and (2) shoot from outside of the box with accuracy. If Real play defensively, then Cesc is the countermeasure. Also, with his experience as a midfielder, he can be the one to harass Xabi Alonso - Real's fulcrum - when Los Merengues have the ball.

2. Does Mourinho play a third defensive midfielder? Xabi Alonso and Sami Khedira seem like automatics. Does he then add Lass Diarra to the mix in place of Meszut Ozil, who is slumping like Villa? Is he going to play a pure counter-attacking game or is he going to press? If it's the former, then he plays Diarra. If it's the latter, then he plays Ozil. As is always the case when Mourinho teams play Barca, it will be most interesting to see how aggressive Real are and whether they let Barca have the ball in non-dangerous areas. Real were far more offensive in the Supercup matches in August and they have been scoring goals by the bushel in La Liga, so I am not going to assume that Jose parks the bus.

3. Does Mourinho go with Benzema or Higuain up front? Benzema is the more technically gifted player, but Higuain is the superior counter-attacking weapon. Again, Real's orientation will determine the selection.

4. Who plays right back for Real? Is Alvaro Arbeloa healthy enough? If not, does Diarra go there? Does Sergio Ramos go there, knowing that Real are then shakier in the middle? Does Fabio Coentrao play the spot?

5. Which Brazilian fullback is the bigger defensive liability: Marcelo or Dani Alves? Mourinho usually puts Angel Di Maria opposite Alves because Di Maria is better at tracking back than Ronaldo. In the past, this has meant that Real have been weaker offensively against a potential Barca defensive weakness, but Di Maria is in great form, so they don't have to make a sacrifice this time around.* Barca have given up goals this year when opponents have gotten down the wings and then pulled the ball back to late-arriving attackers. Real will almost certainly look to do this: Ronaldo and Di Maria getting into advanced positions, the striker making a run to occupy the central defenders, and then a midfielder - Alonso or Khedira - arriving late to occupy the space vacated by the central defenders. Conversely, Pep's decision on his front line will be interesting. His right-sided attacker is going to get chances against Marcelo. (The biggest goal of the five Barca-Real matches last season was Messi's opener in the Champions League first leg. That came from Affellay skinning Marcelo and getting in a low cross that Messi knocked home.) Who is that attacker going to be and can that attacker help out defensively when Marcelo gets forward.

* - Invalidating everything I just said, Mourinho had Ronaldo on the left in the Supercup matches and Dani Alves did a great job defending him. The title of this paragraph is a little unfair, as Alves can be underrated as a defensive player.

6. How does the ref call the game? The referee will be under enormous pressure. Barca will want the game called tight, with frequent cards for hard fouls. Real will want license to put in physical tackles. Any decision to send a player off will be analyzed a million times over. Does the ref want to be harangued by the Barca players on the pitch or Mourinho off of it? And will Barca's players and Mourinho behave better after they all did themselves and their teams a disservice by their embarrassing conduct in the first leg of the Champions League tie last year?

Overall, I'll take a 2-2.

Forced Evolution: Pep Guardiola, Mack Brown, and Urban Meyer

2011-12-07T09:07:00.001-05:00

If you're interested in the other football, Barcelona, evolution, or just an interesting discussion about how tactical changes occur over time, then I highly recommend Kevin Alexander's new piece at Slide Rule Pass. His basic thrust is to put Barcelona's style into context, tracing back the major innovations in football from Herbert Chapman's W-M at Arsenal through the Magnificent Magyars, the Brazilian Back Four, and Total Football,* and then to Guardiola's Barcelona.

* - One common thread occurred to me while reading the piece. Both the Hungary side of '54 and the Dutch side of '74 lost World Cup Finals to West Germany. The Germans have never been credited with a major tactical innovation like the sides that they conquered. Is that a compliment to German teams for overcoming innovators or a criticism that they win without giving anything to the world game, other than stereotypes about efficiency and determination?

Alexander then gets to his point, which is that Barca have been trying a new 3-4-3 formation this year and that their attempts to take another step in evolving might be the reason why Real Madrid are three points ahead with a game in hand:

Though crowned Champions League winners in 2009 and 2011 Barcelona managed Pep Guardiola has sought to vary Barcelona’s approach this season. On one hand it is understandable that he wants to prevent other sides from figuring out a way to stop his side playing (as Inter Milan famously did in the 2010 Champions League), yet on the other hand one has to wonder whether trying to enforce a change on a fluid and evolving game is ever going to be truly successful.

The move away from the 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 that had served them so well to an, at times, 3-4-3 (often with no recognised centre-backs) has met with decidedly mixed success. Though there have been victories, it’s difficult to ascertain whether Barcelona won those matches thanks to their new system, or thanks to the extraordinary individual talents they possess...

Given time, perhaps Guardiola’s new way will take root, and set in motion the next stage in the evolution of Barcelona and, by extension, modern football. However, by trying to force change where no natural pressure exists, Pep may have found himself on a dead branch of the evolutionary tree.

The question of whether there is truly natural pressure is an interesting one. As Alexander notes, Barca lost its European title to Mourinho's Inter in 2010, so Guardiola might have been thinking one step ahead: "if Mourinho is spending all summer trying to figure out how to deal with out style, then maybe I need to change the style?" Additionally, trying a new formation is a good way to keep players sharp and interested, which is no small matter when one is trying to motivate a group that has won everything there is to win, both for club and country. Finally, Guardiola was faced with a dilemma this fall in that both of his starting central defenders - Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique - were injured and he was faced with cobbling together a backline using a left back (Eric Abidal), two defensive midfielders (Sergio Busquets and Javier Mascherano), and a collection of Brazilian attacking fullbacks (Dani Alves, Adriano, and Maxwell). Change or die, right? Well, Barca have dropped nine points away from the Camp Nou in La Liga, they have scored only eight goals in their six road matches, and now they head to the Bernabeu in a must-win position, so maybe change wasn't such a good idea.

Alexander's line about forcing change where no natural pressure exists had me thinking about college football. I remember having a conversation with a friend three years ago about how USC, Texas, and Florida were poised to dominate college football in the coming years. They had the coaches, the systems, the fertile recruiting bases, and the rivals in turmoil to ensure a series of meetings with crystal balls on the line. Leaving USC and their NCAA issues aside, as recently as two years ago, Texas and Florida were both coming off of years where they lost only one game: to national champion Alabama. In the summer of 2010, we read numerous writers opine that both the Horns and Gators were moving away from the spread styles (pass-based for Texas and run-based for Florida) that they had favored in favor of more conventional, power-based attacks. (I remember Tony Barnhart being especially pronounced in making this point, but I cannot for the life of me find a link to verify my memory.)

The results of this forced evolution (maybe devolution is a better term) have been disastrous. Here is Florida's national rank in yards per play from 2008 forward: 3, 2, 78, 67. And here is Texas's: 13, 57, 78, 67. Both Florida and Texas had a style that worked for them and then have gone away from that style, whether by recruiting decisions or scheme. They had evolved into approaches that moved the ball and then chose to eschew those approaches for something new. Two years later, they are both picking up the pieces from those decisions to force change.

The Best Team Wins the Championship? What Kind of Communist Notion is That?

2011-12-06T07:32:00.001-05:00

It’s too bad that this article resides behind ESPN’s paywall and is full of untrustworthy notions like “computer rankings,” because Brian Fremeau makes a very good, basic point about college football’s structure: it is more likely to crown the most deserving team. Fremeau notes that according to the Massey Rating composite, the BCS has consistently crowned the team that the computer consensus has placed as the best team in the country (or at least the team with the best resume, if those two concepts are distinct). In fact, the Massey composite goes back to 1996 and reflects that the BCS (and the Bowl Alliance before it) is a perfect 15 for 15 in awarding the national title to the most deserving team. The BCS is not as good at matching the best team against the second-best, but as Fremeau notes, playoff systems don’t really achieve that aim, either:

According to the Football Outsiders' DVOA ratings, the Green Bay Packers were only the third-best team in the NFL last year and didn't face the best team, the New England Patriots, in the playoffs. (Note: They did lose head-to-head to the Patriots in the regular season). In college basketball, the Connecticut Huskies played the best in the month of March and claimed the championship, but they finished only 10th in Ken Pomeroy's opponent-adjusted ratings. The Huskies didn't face any of the tournament's No. 1 seeds and faced only two teams in March Madness ranked in Pomeroy's end-of-year top 10.

Fremeau then notes the drawback of a playoff system: as the playoff increases in size, the odds that the best team will win goes down:

What is accommodated in a playoff system is the opportunity for weaker teams to have a shot at winning the championship. Opening up the field certainly has its rewards, potentially assuring every possible championship-caliber team a chance. But it changes the nature of what the championship means, as well. The Packers and Huskies were terrific teams down the stretch in those seasons, but advanced metrics and many fans would agree that the tournament title didn't suddenly mean they were the best team over the course of the whole year. A smaller playoff field, even as small as two teams, allows the best overall season to be rewarded with a championship.

Our college football FEI ratings project the Tigers with a 68 percent chance of beating the Crimson Tide in the BCS title game rematch. Certainly not a guarantee, but it presents a better than 50 percent likelihood that the clear No. 1 team in the nation will claim the crown. If we had a four-team playoff and LSU was required to beat both Stanford and Alabama on a neutral field, that likelihood drops below 50 percent. With an eight-team playoff built from the final BCS standings, LSU's likelihood of defeating Kansas State, Stanford and Alabama drops to 41 percent.

This is a great way of framing the playoff discussion and it helps me tighten my own beliefs. There is a happy medium between the playoff structures of American professional sports,* which strike me as too big and not slanted enough in favor of the most deserving teams, and college football’s current structure, which is too small to accommodate teams like 2004 Auburn. Brian Cook does a nice job of finding that medium with his annual description of a six-team playoff system that incorporates byes and homefield advantage to reward the best teams and is also small enough that any team that wins the tournament will end up with the best resume. That said, Fremeau’s point about the advantage of the current two-team playoff cuts against Cook’s (and my) complaints about the BCS. We all love to complain about the impossible task of picking the right #2, but the advantage of the BCS is that it is more likely to pick the right #1.

* – The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is just a complete abomination to me. If you need additional evidence that the Big Dance has killed college basketball, look at Saturday’s sports coverage. Were you aware that North Carolina and Kentucky played? Two top five teams, loaded with NBA prospects wearing the jerseys of the two winningest programs in college basketball history, played a one-point game that was decided in the final seconds and the game was a total afterthought on the day of the college football conference championship games. That’s what happens when a sport becomes a four-month lead-in for a three-week tournament.

The Original Title Comparing Gary Danielson to a Famous Propagandist Violated Godwin’s Law and was Deleted

2011-12-04T23:15:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 15

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	--
2	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	1
3	Alabama Crimson Tide	-1
4	USC Trojans	--
5	Oregon Ducks	--
6	Stanford Cardinal	1
7	Boise St. Broncos	4
8	Wisconsin Badgers	2
9	Arkansas Razorbacks	6
10	Michigan Wolverines	4
11	South Carolina Gamecocks	5
12	Clemson Tigers	11
13	Baylor Bears	7
14	TCU Horned Frogs	3
15	Oklahoma Sooners	-7
16	Michigan St. Spartans	-3
17	Kansas St. Wildcats	1
18	Georgia Bulldogs	-6
19	Virginia Tech Hokies	-13
20	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	--
21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-2
22	West Virginia Mountaineers	2
23	Houston Cougars	-14
24	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	-3
25	Florida St. Seminoles	--
Dropouts: Texas Longhorns

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

OK, let’s talk about the latest illustration of the futile task that college football’s movers and shakers demand: picking two teams out of 120 to play for the national title. I voted for Oklahoma State on resume grounds. They have played a tougher slate than Alabama. The Tide are getting by on the reputation of the SEC, despite the fact that it pretty clearly takes a back seat to the Big XII this year. The SEC was a top-heavy league with five quality teams, two of which Bama missed. Moreover, Oklahoma State looked good against their tough schedule, as only two of their wins were by single digits.

In addition, I have philosophical issues with Alabama having a chance to win the national title against LSU. One of the unique and positive aspects of college football is that it is the only American sport that doesn’t hit the reset button at the end of the regular season. It is possible for a team other than the BCS Championship Game to be the national champion, at least as declared by the AP. We had that result in 2003 when USC won a share of the national title despite the fact that they didn’t play in the title game.* When declaring a national champion, we should be looking at the whole body of work, rather than arbitrarily anointing the winner of the last game as the champion.** It’s with that framework in mind that I agree 100% with Clay Travis that LSU should win the AP poll as long as they aren't blown out by the Tide. What does Alabama prove with close win at the Superdome, other than that they split a home game and a neutral site game with LSU and otherwise played a significantly easier schedule? This isn’t just a matter of what I want to see as a viewer; it’s a matter that I don’t want an inconclusive national title game, which is exactly what the Bama-LSU rematch is going to be.

* – Yes, the coaches have agreed to give the crystal ball to the winner of the national title game automatically. I view that decision as an abdication of responsibility, a desire to tie everything in a neat little bow when life doesn’t work like that.

** – I will argue to the death that for all the complaints about the notion of a two-team playoff voted on by a mismatch of distracted coaches and minimally-qualified Harris Poll voters, I’ll take that over a system that can declare the 83-78 Cardinals World Champions or can decide that the 14-6 Giants are more deserving of eternal glory than the 18-1 Patriots who ended their regular season beating the Giants on the road.

All that said, I also agree with Matt Hinton that there is no way to be confident that Bama or Oklahoma State has a better resume than the other. This is a great summary:

You like Alabama? Sorry. Oklahoma State has twice as many wins against teams ranked in the current BCS standings. It has seven wins against teams that finished with winning records; Alabama has three. OSU is second nationally in scoring, first in defensive takeaways and usually spent the fourth quarter throttling down in garbage time. Two of its three wins against top-20 opponents came by five touchdowns. Robert Griffin III, soon to be awarded as the best quarterback in the nation? Oklahoma State picked him off twice and led Baylor 49-3 after three quarters. Need I mention what happened Saturday night against the Sooners?

The Cowboys are outright conference champions against a round-robin conference schedule. The Crimson Tide missed two ranked teams in their conference and didn't even win their own division.

Oh, so you like Oklahoma State now, huh? Wrong again. Alabama bludgeoned its opponents by the widest margin of victory in the nation. Its seven SEC wins came by an average of 30 points apiece. Its closest win all season was 16 points, at Penn State, and it wasn't that close. 'Bama leads the nation in total defense, scoring defense, rushing defense, passing defense, pass efficiency defense and third down defense. At 8.8 points per game, the Tide are the least scored-upon team in Division I in more than a decade.

The only thing standing between Alabama and a perfect season is a three-point overtime loss to the undisputed No. 1 team that came down to field goals. Oklahoma State blew a 17-point lead to Iowa State. In late November.

You say Oklahoma State succeeded against a tougher schedule, I say Alabama has been more dominant on a more consistent basis. Let's call the whole thing off.

As someone who touts yards per play as a good baseline statistic with which to measure teams, the only argument that I would add is that the Tide are better on a per-play basis than Oklahoma State. The Pokes are good, outgaining their opponents by 1.86 yards per play, but the Tide are off the charts with a 3.14 YPP margin. That is a number reflecting the fact that Bama has been utterly dominant in its wins this year. Too bad so few of those wins were over teams with winning records.

Hinton ends with this perfect description of the fundamental problem with college football’s postseason:

The only thing more ridiculous than using the BCS to determine a champion is pretending that it isn't ridiculous. After 14 years and a dozen legitimate, unresolved controversies, we are all fully aware that the emperor has no clothes. It never has. As the evolutionary link between the old, pell mell bowl system and a full-fledged playoff that actually determines a football champion by playing football, it's run its course. Stop the madness. Bring on a bracket. Or just point to LSU a mile ahead of the rest of the pack and declare the Tigers the champions right now. But stop splitting hairs.

I started and ended a post on the Florida-Michigan debate five years ago making the same points:

The first and most important is that it requires a serious splitting of hairs to pick between the teams. Both teams have one loss against fairly tough schedules. Florida has more quality wins, as they went 5-1 against Sagarin's top 30, whereas Michigan was 3-1, so it's fair to say that Florida played a slightly tougher schedule, although for a national title contender, there are tough games and then there's playing the #1 team on the road, which Michigan did and Florida didn't. On the other hand, Florida didn't blow anyone out all season. Compare the team's performances in their biggest games. Michigan beat Notre Dame by 26 on the road and Wisconsin by 17 at home before losing on the road to the wire-to-wire #1 by three points, the one result that can legitimately justify a rematch. Florida lost to an Auburn team that twice got blown out at home, benefitted from LSU's "shoot yourself in the foot, the Les Miles Way!" exhibition, and they eked past Tennessee, Georgia, Florida State, Vandy, and South Carolina. In fact, they were outgained by both South Carolina and Vandy. In contrast, Michigan beat Vandy by 20 and outgained them by 210 yards. It's Michigan's dominance in its wins that's the basis of Vegas having the Wolverines as a six-point favorite on a neutral field, per Chris Fowler. In any event, it's legitimate to say that Florida is #2 because of a better resume and it's equally legitimate to say that Michigan is #2 because they have looked like a better team this year…

Of course, all of this would be irrelevant if we had a plus-one system. The whole unseemly process of announcers and coaches blathering on like Carville and Novak would be less important if we didn't have a system that required impossible tasks such as differentiating between two one-loss teams with very similar credentials. With a plus-one system, we would have Ohio State vs. LSU, Michigan vs. Florida, and the debate would be a far less important one over who is #4, rather than who is #2. In the end, Florida is going to get the nod over Michigan because of the short memory of simple-minded voters, which seems a wee bit inferior to the two teams meeting in Pasadena or New Orleans to settle the matter like men.

I made these points as a Michigan socio who desperately wanted to see the Wolverines get a second shot at Ohio State in Glendale. (As it turns out, Buckeye fans should have been hoping for the same so they would be spared Jim Tressel turning into Unfrozen Caveman Coach: “your spread formations and running plays frighten and confuse me.”)

I mention this concept of trying to present rational arguments in a consistent way because the villains of the weekend - more than the BCS, Roy Kramer, Bill Hancock, Jim Delany, Nick Saban, or the person who convinced Herman Cain to expose himself to the scrutiny of a Presidential bid - is Gary Danielson and the people behind CBS’s production of the SEC Championship Game. At this point, Craig James is credible when compared to Danielson. Gary is quite good when he is discussing x’s and o’s, but when he steps away from the game that he is covering into bigger picture discussions, he embarrasses himself.

In 2006, Danielson and the SEC on CBS team spent the fourth quarter of Florida’s win over Arkansas lobbying for the Gators to play for the national title over Michigan. Their argument was based on the fact that Florida had played a tougher schedule, which they demonstrated with a graphic comparing the teams that the Gators and Wolverines had beaten. Guess what metric CBS did not use yesterday? You guessed it, the one that favored the SEC team in 2006, but cut against the SEC team in 2011. Moreover, consider the fact that CBS was ready to go with graphics to begin with. I have plenty of criticisms of the way that ESPN/ABC do games (I was bitching in this space last week about discussing Urban Meyer potentially taking the Ohio State job during the fourth quarter of a very close Michigan-Ohio State game), but I never get the sense that they are presenting a legal case for the teams that they cover over the teams that they don’t. At times during the fourth quarter yesterday, I felt like I was at a mediation, watching one side make a PowerPoint presentation as to their strengths of their case and the weaknesses of mine.

And leaving aside the fact that CBS apparently has the sports equivalent of Roger Ailes doing its SEC games and they think that no one remembers their convention speech in 2006, the remainder of the argument was shoddy in two more ways. First, Danielson never bothered to acknowledge that he said before and during the LSU-Alabama game that he was against the idea of a rematch. When it was in the network’s interest to bill the November game as an end-all, be-all, Danielson said that there shouldn’t be a second edition. When it was in the network’s interest to go to bat for one of its teams in December, they did so without acknowledging the massive inconsistency. Second, Danielson cited the fact that Oklahoma State is 106th in total defense and that disqualified them from consideration as a potential national champion. One of the main reasons why the Pokes give up a lot of yards is that they have a no-huddle offense that scores quickly, so their defense is on the field for a lot of plays. If you look at their defense on a per-play basis, they allow 5.31 yards per play, good for 52nd in the country. In case you’re wondering, Auburn allowed 5.4 yards per play in 2010, good for 55th nationally. Can someone refresh my recollection as to whether Danielson had an issue with the Tigers playing for the national title?

I could be tilting at windmills here, but it is not good for the SEC that Danielson and CBS are filling the role of Baghdad Bob for the league. There is already something of a backlash against the SEC, partially as a result of jealousy regarding the conference’s success, and partially for more legitimate reasons, such as oversigning (a topic that will surely get some attention in the lead-up to an Alabama-LSU title game). The facts that the league is getting both spots in the BCS Championship Game and that its network broadcast partner is openly shilling for its teams will be another reason for people outside the South to look for chances to get even. SEC football can succeed on its own merits. It doesn’t need the unsubtle assistance of a former Purdue quarterback to prosper.

Once Every Eight Years...

2011-12-01T09:31:00.001-05:00

Michigan beats Ohio State and I agree with a "trade for this superstar" column from Jeff Schultz. In this case, he wants the Hawks to acquire Dwight Howard. His reasoning is that Howard is not going to re-sign with the Magic, so the Hawks should offer that the Magic pick any two players for Howard. Schultz suggests scenarios that would involve Joe Johnson, which made me laugh out loud. Otis Smith may not be the GM in the NBA, but having signed one of the worst deals in the league to acquire Rashard Lewis and then having to trade that stinker of a deal for the disaster that is the Gilbert Arenas contract, I seriously doubt that he is going to give a second thought to acquiring a similarly terrible deal. The Joe Johnson contract was a terrible idea when it was signed and only looked worse last year as Johnson's scoring regressed (although John Hollinger points out that Johnson's reduced numbers were the result of fewer minutes and a slump shooting threes that does not seem repeatable($)).

Thorpe would be committing GM malpractice if he touched Johnson's deal, so the trade would almost have to be Howard for Al Horford and Josh Smith. Rick Sund could only make the deal if he had the assurance that Howard is going to sign a long-term contract, but if Howard expresses interest in coming home and staying, then the trade makes sense. It solves the eternal issue for the Hawks, which is that their two best front-court players are both natural power forwards. (Hopefully, Thorpe won't notice that he's trading for that problem, or at a minimum, Smith and Horford - overlapping skills and all - are the best he can do in terms of a return for Howard. Wouldn't he prefer that deal to one centered around Andrew Bynum and his various ailments?) It also reboots the team, which is a major need right now. Atlanta Spirit is in desperate need of something to change the narrative. They are selling a team that has reached its absolute apex: the second round of the playoffs. They are also the group that killed hockey in Atlanta. Faced with the prospect of trotting out the same product to lukewarm response, they would love an energizing, marketable star. There's one in Orlando.

The big question is whether Howard wants to come and stay. To make his case, Schultz cites a New York Times piece on Atlanta's increasing prominence as a center of Black culture as a reason why Howard might come here as opposed to New York or Los Angeles. I hope that Schultz is right about this, but Atlanta has had the Black Hollywood nickname for a long time without becoming a preferred destination for NBA players. We have neither a winning tradition, nor a respected ownership group. Additionally, Howard has played against the Hawks in the playoffs in front of less-than-full houses. If fan intensity matters to him, then he isn't coming.

Additionally, Howard has to be thinking that the biggest obstacle to gaining a higher Q-rating is that he hasn't won a championship and has only made the Finals once. He needs to go somewhere where he will win. His issue in Orlando is the supporting cast. Will it make sense for him to come here to play with Jeff Teague (a player whose promise is based on a six-game series against the Bulls last year), Joe Johnson (holder of one of the worst contracts in the NBA), Marvin Williams (average small forward who escapes being non-descript only because of his Draft position and the careers of the players taken after him), and a power forward to be named later? And then you add in the fact that Atlanta Spirit has expressed an aversion to paying the luxury tax and in light of the team's revenues, they can't really be blamed, can they? The end game could well be that Thorpe wants to send Howard to Atlanta, but can't make the trade happen because Howard refuses to agree to a potential extension with the Hawks.

In sum, I agree with Schultz's position, but the more I think about it, the more unrealistic it looks.

Money Doesn't Talk, It Builds Luxury Boxes

2011-11-30T09:20:00.001-05:00

Jon Chait has an interesting piece up regarding the question of paying revenue-generating college athletes. In response to Taylor Branch and the chorus of writers who have used the Sandusky scandal to attack college sports in general, Chait makes the point that football and basketball players from high-revenue programs are subsidizing non-revenue athletes:

Branch's article, like most arguments for paying college athletes, focuses in great detail on the profits of television networks and apparel companies. But paying players wouldn't affect that revenue – the networks' cut is the networks' cut. The question is how to allocate the money that the university receives in ticket sales and television dollars. The sums are non-trivial: A big-time program like the University of Texas football team can generate more than $90 million a year in revenues, and still have nearly $70 million left after expenses. But even a glance at where the money goes shows the absurdity of this notion. The big-time sports programs that bring in more than they cost (usually football and men’s basketball) use the surplus money to fund sports that don’t (swimming, track, etc.) To the extent that there is “profit” in this arrangement, the man in the top hat and monocle who’s siphoning it off is … the gymnastics squad.

This is an excellent point and one that Branch does not address in his lengthy piece in The Atlantic. The counter would be that a progressive like Chait should have some misgivings about football and basketball players subsidizing country club sports. At major schools, the football and basketball players are more likely to be minority students from lower socio-economic strata. They are also more likely to come from weaker high schools and are therefore less able to take full advantage of the free college educations that they receive in return for their labor. In constrast, players from non-revenue sports tend to be more like regular college students in terms of their SES. Thus, college sports resemble state-run lotteries, i.e. a system where poorer individuals subsidize middle class and upper middle class families, albeit through voluntary means. One doesn't have to be Ron Paul to have an issue with this reality.

Additionally, Chait's explanation as to where the money goes is a little incomplete. The millions of dollars that players in revenue sports generate do not just go to fund non-revenue sports. There are at least two other outlets for that revenue other than the pockets of the individuals who generate the money. The first outlet is coaching salaries. If you can't pay the players who make the difference between winning and losing, then you pay the coaches who do. Chait addresses this later in the article and advocates a cap on paying players, a position that Blutarsky notes would present antitrust issues. (Question: if a cap on coaching salaries violates antitrust law, then why doesn't the prohibition on paying players, as well?) To me, this seems like piling a second artificial cap on a market that is already distorted by the prohibition on paying players. We already have a situation where the money generated by revenue sports teams cannot go to the players who are the biggest reason for the revenue. Thus, the money flows to ancillary locations. Chait suggestion is that we should divert the money away from one of the most natural ancillary destinations for the revenue. "Let's stick out finger in a second hole in the dyke" is usually just a good way to cause a third and fourth crack.

The second outlet is construction of palatial sports facilities. Major college sports programs are engaged in a facilities arms race and they are using the revenue that would otherwise go directly to the players. Now, one can view this as a form of compensation to the players. Branch complains about players not getting paid, but he doesn't mention the fact that they play in beautiful stadia, they dress in locker rooms that rival anything they'll see in the NFL, they study in buildings specially built for them, they work out in million dollar weight rooms, and they eat at deluxe training tables. I suspect that the players would rather take the money in their pockets, but it's hard to take the position that players are being exploited when the revenue they generate is used to treat them like royalty. In the end, I come out pretty close to Chait's position, which is that Branch overstates the plight of revenue athletes, but there are potential reforms that would address the fact that college football and basketball players should see more of the money that they generate.

Revisiting Georgia's Winning Streak

2011-11-29T14:14:00.001-05:00

Another week, another criticism of one of my favorite blogger's optimism about what Georgia has proved this year. Here is Blutarsky on Georgia's mindset for the SEC Championship Game:

What I mean is that this is a game in which Georgia shouldn’t be burdened by timidity and uncertainty. There’s no reason to wave Logan Gray out there to fair catch punts. Richt doesn’t have to send a message to his team that they have to be tougher on third-and-short if they don’t want him calling for a field goal early against a CUSA squad in a meaningless bowl game. No, they’ve proved themselves by regrouping and clawing their way into the title game. They’ve accomplished their primary preseason goal. In a sense, they’re playing with house money now. They can afford to be a little loose.

Given the weak opposition that has provided the list of victims for the ten-game winning streak, I don't think that there is a strong case to be made that Georgia is playing with house money, unless one simply expected improvement this year. Georgia has clearly shown that, but they have not yet shown the ability to beat top teams. They don't need to beat LSU on Saturday, but they do need to show that they can play on the same field. (Alternatively, beating the Big Ten Championship Game loser, Michigan, or Nebraska in the bowl game would do the trick, although Nebraska not quite as much as the other two and with bowl games, there is the inevitable "how much do these teams really care?" question.)

I don't think that it's unreasonable for Blutarsky and other Georgia fans to overvalue the ten-game winning streak. Normally, you would think that a streak like that in the SEC would inevitably involve taking multiple quality scalps. This is just a bizarre year, one in which the SEC is Morganna-style top heavy and Georgia missed the busty part of the conference. Try this stat on for size: Georgia has not played a team ranked in the top 20 for ten straight games this year. The last time this happened was 1981. Moreover, none of the teams that Georgia beat in its ten-game winning streak are likely to finish in the top twenty of either the AP poll or the good computer polls. (The highest-rated team of the ten right now is, surprisingly enough, Vandy, which is #27 in SRS and #33 in the Sagarin Predictor. That close win in Nashville looks better and better.) This is an unprecedented run for the Dawgs, and not necessarily in a good way.

Now, the counter would be that Georgia has put up excellent numbers, above and beyond 10-2. One way to show this is my favorite measure: yards per play margin. Georgia is +1.53, which is very good. (For comparison, LSU is 1.96, although against a much tougher schedule. Bama is an off-the-charts +3.34.) Another way is this excellent chart, which accounts for strength-of-schedule by showing that Georgia has held its opponents well below their average production on offense. These numbers are encouraging, but coming back to the original point, the Dawgs need a good performance on Saturday to validate the season. If they get blown out, then the "what does it mean to beat a bunch of average opponents?" question will resurface.

The Ship Comes In

2011-11-28T08:18:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 14

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	--
2	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
4	USC Trojans	2
5	Oregon Ducks	2
6	Virginia Tech Hokies	5
7	Stanford Cardinal	3
8	Oklahoma Sooners	-3
9	Houston Cougars	--
10	Wisconsin Badgers	-2
11	Boise St. Broncos	3
12	Georgia Bulldogs	4
13	Michigan St. Spartans	-1
14	Michigan Wolverines	1
15	Arkansas Razorbacks	-11
16	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
17	TCU Horned Frogs	-4
18	Kansas St. Wildcats	-1
19	Nebraska Cornhuskers	2
20	Baylor Bears	4
21	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	-1
22	Texas Longhorns	--
23	Clemson Tigers	-1
24	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
25	Florida St. Seminoles	--
Dropouts: Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Penn St. Nittany Lions, Virginia Cavaliers

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My apologies if I betray my orientation as a Southern college football fan a little with this post, but I was zoned in on the Michigan game at noon, then the 3:30 games were all blowouts and Mrs. B&B and I went out during the evening timeslot. I have a meta-SEC premise that I'll get out later in the week, but for this morning, please forgive me if my attention heads north...

Please lord no - If Michigan would have lost that game, then I would have been asking the following question: my five-year old has not seen a Michigan won over Ohio State in his lifetime; now, I'm seriously wondering if the event will happen before his bar mitzvah. There was a sense in the later stages as Michigan continued to struggle to contain a heretofore terrible offense that the Bucks' dominance over the Wolverines was not just a matter of having better teams. When they are better (2005, 2007-10), they win. When the teams are even (2006), they win. When they are worse (2004), they win. There was a major potential for "if not now, when?" as a legitimate question if Michigan would have lost a home game when favored by eight points against a 6-5 Ohio State team that had lost two straight and had a freshman quarterback, a green defense, and a lame duck coaching staff. Thus, the feeling after the game was exhilaration tempered by a major feeling of relief. It was not quite the unfettered joy that Dawg fans felt after beating Florida in 1997 or that Vol fans felt after beating the Gators in '98.

Oh, wide open - Also causing the major feelings of relief: Braxton Miller missed open receivers down the field on a number of occasions, most notably on the Bucks' last possession when DeVier Posey had a good two steps on J.T. Floyd for what would have been a truly soul-crushing touchdown.* Michigan has seen good receivers this year - Michael Floyd, B.J. Cunningham, A.J. Jenkins, and Marvin McNutt all come to mind - without major damage. Posey was a different proposition, which raises a few possibilities. One is that Posey is a step above those other receivers. (The corollary to this theory would be that Ohio State could have been an 8-9 win team with Posey on the field this year.)** A second is that Michigan was not fully prepared to deal with Ohio State because they had so little film on the Bucks' offense with Posey in the mix. A third is that Michigan could handle mobile quarterbacks and they could handle top receivers, but they couldn't handle both at the same time. (Illinois technically has both, but they were in offensive freefall by the time they played Michigan.) If the third is indeed the case, then maybe Brady Hoke and Al Borges need to think through the offensive transition that they envision for Michigan over the next several years. They just finished the season second in the Big Ten and 19th in the nation in yards per play running an offense that is not their preferred mode of attack. How much more conventional should they need to be?

* - The last time Ohio State played in the Big House, the Bucks won 21-10 and the margin would have been larger if not for Terrelle Pryor missing an open Posey behind Floyd. That game convinced me that Floyd did not have the speed to play corner at a high level. Floyd has played much better this year, most notably in a superlative performance against Illinois's A.J. Jenkins, but Posey abused Floyd on Saturday, just as he did two years ago.

** - Another pet theory: bad wide receivers don't get criticized as much because their failures happen off the screen. With just about every other position on the field, it is obvious when a player fails to perform his role.  This is not the case when a wide receiver doesn't get open. Thus, we might not have fully appreciated the struggles of teams like Ohio State and Florida this year.  We put the blame on the coaches, the quarterbacks, the offensive lines, and just about every other factor other than "the receivers can't get open and thus, the passing game grinds to a halt."

Feeling conflicted? - As I watched Ohio State suddenly unearth a functional offense, I wondered how Ohio State fans feel about Jim Bollman. For most of the year, one of my little pleasures in life has been following the Twitter feeds of Buckeye bloggers as they deal with what seemed like one of the worst-schemed offenses in modern history. All of a sudden, with his job gone with the wind, Bollman unleashes a diverse, dare-I-say threatening attack that takes advantage of the entire field. The Buckeye reaction had to be similar to that of Michigan fans who watched the 2007 Capital One Bowl against Florida.  In that instance, Michigan deployed the spread passing attack that should have been the team's approach since, oh, I don't know, 1998 and marched up and down the field on Florida.* The feeling had to be a combination of happiness with "where the f*** was this for most of the past decade?"** If I had a nickel for every time Chris Spielman said something to the effect of "Ohio State hasn't shown this all year," then I would be as rich as Urban Meyer.***

* - The common thread in both games: Greg Mattison was the opposing defensive coordinator.

** - Bollman and Mike Debord can both defend themselves to a certain degree by pointing to the personnel available to them in their swan songs. Debord finally had a healthy Chad Henne and Mike Hart in the bowl game, while Bollman finally had Posey and he also had Braxton Miller with a year's worth of experience.

*** - Despite the complaints of some Michigan fans, I still like Spielman as a color guy. For example, on Michigan's last touchdown, he noticed immediately that Michigan was using a formation that they had not used all year. The fact that Spielman clearly watches lots of film to prepare for calling a game should not stand out, but it does. Unfortunately, the rest of ESPN's broadcast was not up to Spielman's standards...

Talk about the game, please? - For those of you who didn't watch the game, let me set the stage for you. Michigan and Ohio State are playing in a game that ESPN hypes as one of the great rivalries in all of sports. Future star Braxton Miller has just led the Bucks to a touchdown to draw his team to within three at 37-34. Michigan, wearing the albatross of a seven-game losing streak to its arch rival, has the ball with about seven minutes to go. It's at this point that the guys in the production truck decide that it's time to put up a graphic on Urban Meyer's resume and Dave Pasch dutifully starts talking about the possibility of Meyer going to Columbus. He's doing this in the fourth quarter of a very close rivalry game! If ever there were a time to not go with your filler, this is it! ESPN had clearly prepared to discuss Meyer and they were going to use their graphic, come hell or high water. The producer was like the captain of a ship who decides "well, we're coming into port and we haven't had a chance to fire our harpoon gun at a whale, so let's fire at this family of four eating ice cream on the dock as we pull in." And the stupidity of ESPN's decision is amplified by the fact that Pasch and Spielman called a game with Meyer last week and didn't ask him anything more than "are you going to Ohio State?" So ESPN doesn't ask anything more than softballs to its own color guy and then they decide to explore his potential decision in the closing stages of an exciting, competitive game. Bravo!

If 9-6 is the “Lame of the Century,” then what is 38-35?

2011-11-20T20:29:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 13

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	--
2	Alabama Crimson Tide	1
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	-1
4	Arkansas Razorbacks	2
5	Oklahoma Sooners	-1
6	USC Trojans	3
7	Oregon Ducks	-2
8	Wisconsin Badgers	5
9	Houston Cougars	1
10	Stanford Cardinal	-3
11	Virginia Tech Hokies	--
12	Michigan St. Spartans	5
13	TCU Horned Frogs	9
14	Boise St. Broncos	1
15	Michigan Wolverines	5
16	Georgia Bulldogs	-4
17	Kansas St. Wildcats	-1
18	South Carolina Gamecocks	3
19	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	--
20	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	-6
21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-3
22	Clemson Tigers	-14
23	Penn St. Nittany Lions	2
24	Baylor Bears	--
25	Virginia Cavaliers	--
Dropouts: Texas Longhorns, Southern Miss. Golden Eagles

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Random thoughts in the aftermath of “do any of you people want to go to New Orleans?” weekend:

Are you not entertained by corners who can stay within two steps of opposing receivers?: All of you from outside the South who mocked LSU and Alabama for the “Lame of the Century” (and I’m thinking first and foremost of the Solid Verbal guys, who coined the phrase), please note the common thread running through the demises of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Oregon. Oklahoma allowed 616 yards on 8.4 yards per play; their in-state rivals gave up 568 yards on 5.6 yards per play to Iowa State; and Oregon surrendered 462 yards on 6.2 yards per play. These three teams all ended up in close games because they have suspect defenses. It might be more fun to watch fights between combatants who only have swords as opposed to fights where the contestants have both swords and shields, but the fun amounts to empty calories. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.) There is room to criticize LSU and Alabama on offense, but their offenses are way better than the defenses of their nearest challengers.

SEC national title contenders, step forward. Not so fast, Bobby Petrino: I realize that pollsters have some unwritten rule that a team has to drop a certain number of spots after a loss, but someone give me a serious rationale for Oklahoma State being behind Arkansas, other than “Arkansas’s loss was to a better team.” Oklahoma State has the same record against a significantly tougher schedule. Arkansas had to rally from behind to beat Ole Miss and Vandy. The Hogs’ only marquee win outside of the SEC came against Texas A&M, a team that the Pokes beat on the road. Arkansas missed Georgia and played the post-Lattimore and Garcia version of South Carolina. Oklahoma State’s yardage numbers are better and according to Sagarin, the Pokes would be a nine-point favorite on a neutral field.

My obligatory gripe about the team from Blacksburg: And while we’re on the subject of overrated teams, congrats to Virginia Tech on their typical rise up the polls as they play tomato cans, aka ACC opponents, and the teams above them in better conferences pick one another off. The notion that the Hokies are even being mentioned as being considered for one of the top two spots in the polls is an affront to any of us who value offensive competence. Quick, guess how many Sagarin top 30 opponents the Hokies have played. Those of you who said “one,” give yourselves a drumstick on Thursday.* (Yes, I know that they beat Georgia Tech and I have the Jackets ranked. To honor the Founding Fathers’ concept of competing interests in the political sphere, I’m giving a local team the benefit of the doubt.) According to our favorite nerd named Jeff, the Hokies would be a 17-point underdog against LSU in the title game. Admittedly, that would be an improvement over the last time the Hokies ventured to Louisiana to play the Tigers. It would also match Tech’s performance when they made the title game in 1999. So, by all means voters, reward Virginia Tech for abysmal scheduling and send them to New Orleans to play a team that played Oregon and West Virginia before going through the SEC.

* – I’ve never understood why the drumsticks are always available at Thanksgiving. They have just the right amount of meat for one’s plate, they don’t suffer from dryness issues like the breast meat, and why pass on a chance to eat like Henry VIII?

Cue Divinyls: I need two sacks from Jadaveon Clowney and a Texas win in College Station to finish above .500 on Five Crazy Predictions, but #5 is damn good, if I do say so myself:

5. Virginia finishes second in the ACC Coastal. 18 returning starters, a promising new coach, massive instability at Miami and UNC, and a home game against Georgia Tech in a series in which homefield matters a great deal. A homer pick, but why the hell not?

Almost every preview had the Hoos tagged for fifth in the division. Now, please ignore the Bama versus Nebraska pick for the title game. It seems like this isn’t the best time to remember that I was high on the Huskers before the season.

In retrospect, the end of the game in Tallahassee was massively satisfying. Virginia took the lead with 1:16 remaining. In classic George Welsh fashion, they kept their opponent alive with a fourth down facemask. Not content with their good fortune, Florida State then literally tried to give the game away by completing a pass inbounds when they didn’t have any timeouts and 12 seconds remained. After Virginia apparently simulated signals to give the Noles five more yards, FSU missed the kick. The ending was quintessential Florida State because they were dumb and can’t kick; it was quintessential Virginia by trying to lose a game that they had won on two different occasions.

By the way, the Hoos are #59 in the country according to Sagarin, so maybe I’m getting a little carried away by ranking them in the top 25. That said, I might disappear in a flash of lightning Quantum Leap style* if Michigan breaks its duck against Ohio State at noon and then Virginia wins the division against Virginia Tech at 3:30. Last year, my two alma maters each lost to the barbarian hordes 37-7. Two wins would be quite the reversal.

* – Yeah, I just spent 15 minutes looking at old TV themes on YouTube. I couldn’t eat just one. Five facts that I had forgotten:

Blue Thunder featured not only Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus, but also a young Dana Carvey.
Stringfellow Hawke plays the Cello in the opening of Airwolf.
There is no meaningful distinction between Rick in Magnum PI and Face in The A-Team.
The full theme for The Fall Guy is over two-and-a-half minutes (over 5% of the show) and is about the main character’s sexual frustration. Speaking of which…
Heather Thomas > Heather Locklear.

We’re moving Braxton Miller to linebacker, so plenty of playing time is available: Toward the end of the Michigan-Nebraska game, I started imagining Urban Meyer’s frustration that he was not seeing any useful material to use to get Michigan’s verbals to decommit, other than maybe “they have a good team and are returning 14 starters for next year, so you won’t see much playing time.” There’s fun and then there’s the experience of watching your favorite team put together its best performance of the season in front of two color guys: the arch-rival’s coach-in-waiting and the arch-rival’s legendary linebacker. And the crowning glory is that one of the prevailing criticisms of the teams is “Denard can’t throw” and then his last completion of the game was an inch-perfect deep ball to Martavious Odom to seal the win.

The three best teams in Texas are, uh, uh, oops: Congrats to the administrations at Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech. Despite being endowed with the advantage of being the three pre-eminent programs in the Lone Star State (OK, maybe there’s a case that Tech isn’t third), they are all unranked, while Baylor, Houston, and TCU are all ranked. One theme of this season is the revenge of the lower half of the SWC. How much do Mack Brown and Mike Sherman have to be screwing up that their game this week will be for fourth place in the state?

The Bollman hypo: Question for Ohio State fans in light of the unleashed vitriol directed at Jim Bollman and the Walrusfense: assuming for the sake of argument that Urban Meyer chooses to stay retired and there are no NCAA implications for the return of the king, would you take Jim Tressel back if it meant keeping Bollman?

This week in ennui: I can’t remember the last Big East game I watched. I had to look at that conference’s standings to have any idea as to who is going to win the league. It turns out that everyone in the league has two losses. In a related note, congrats to Boise State on accepting a bid to the January 2013 Orange Bowl.

Cue the Wolf

2011-11-18T09:24:00.001-05:00

Before the Alabama-LSU game, I kept finding myself reading previews and saying "yeah, but..." This was especially true regarding the Alabama defense. Inevitably, a writer would trot out a stat about the dominance of the Alabama defense and my mental response would be "yeah, but look at the offenses that they have played." At least with LSU, one could say that they shut down Oregon and they did a good enough job against West Virginia, surrendering a ton of yards, but not that many points and they forced turnovers in the game.

I am getting the same sense about Georgia after the Auburn game. The Dawgs dominated Auburn and now we're hearing variants of "playing the best football in America right now" and "man, if there were a playoff..." People, the team that Georgia played Between the Hedges on Saturday may be wearing the same uniforms as the team that won the national championship ten months ago, but they aren't in the same league in terms of actual quality. Auburn is currently fielding the worst defending national championship team that I can remember since I started watching college football in 1980. (Maybe Penn State 1987 would give them a run for their money in that department?) Beating up on the Tigers might feel satisfying, but it does not magically turn Georgia into an elite team.

So when I read Blutarsky citing Georgia's success with turnover and big play margin or writing another post about turnover margin, my first response is "yeah, but..." Blutarsky refers to Georgia's "surge" this year and is hunting all over for statistical support for the surge, but is it any more simple than this statistic: Georgia played a pair of top 30 teams in its first two games and has not played one since. If Georgia started 8-0 and then played Boise State and South Carolina (the USC team with Garcia and Lattimore) and lost both games to drop to 8-2, then what would the narrative be now? The discussion about the Dawgs just screams recency to me.

And then this reasoning is really weak:

Matt Hinton crunches the numbers to find that if Georgia wins on Saturday it will have faced a conference slate that amassed the lowest winning percentage of any group that played a SECCG participant. In fact, if Alabama beats Auburn, “Georgia will be the first team ever to reach the SEC Championship Game without beating a single opponent ranked in the final regular season polls to get there.”

Matt’s right to go and say so what, but it’s worth adding that it’s not like Georgia squeaked by this season. A win on Saturday means the Dawgs went 7-1 in conference play. That’s nothing to sneer at. The schedule may be weak, but there’s not much more you can do about it than to win as many of the games as you can.

"It's not like Georgia squeaked by this season." Maybe I dreamed the Vandy game, where Georgia had to survive two throws into the end zone at the end to avoid a massive upset, that after a blocked punt that would have been the end of the season, practically speaking. Or maybe I was having visions during the Florida game, when Georgia's special teams contrived to give the lead to Florida and then Georgia barely won in the fourth quarter against a badly weakened opponent, all while the Dawgs could barely complete a forward pass. 7-1 in the SEC is indeed something to sneer at when the league this year is a four-team league - LSU, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas - and Georgia didn't play any one of the other three. When the schedule is weak, there is indeed something you can do above and beyond just winning the games: win the games impressively. Beat lesser foes in the manner that we would expect from an excellent team. That's how one makes sense of a team with a weak schedule. For instance, the manner of victory is the difference between the 2007 Hawaii team, which was a total fraud because they had a number of close calls in the WAC, and the Kellen Moore Boise State teams, which dominated inferior opponents. At times, Georgia has looked great (see: Auburn and the first half against Mississippi State) and at time they have not (see: Vandy and the first half against Florida).*

* - I will acknowledge the possibility that Georgia deployed Evil Richt Magic Beans following the Florida game. After the hard-to-explain 2007 season, in which Georgia was an average team for the first six games and then abruptly became the best team in the country for the last seven, I can't rule out a transformation.

Overall, this season has been a success for Georgia. They have at least established themselves as being above the SEC's middle class, which was not the case for the past two years. The defense has taken a major step forward, which indicates that Mark Richt made the right move when he replaced Willie Martinez with Todd Grantham. The team has played well with only six senior starters, so the future looks even better. However, the Dawgs' prospective nine-game winning streak has been nothing more than a good team holding serve. It's important that they didn't get upset by any of the opponents on the slate, but they didn't prove a whole helluva lot, either, especially with the way they played against Vandy and Florida. The real test will be the final three games. If the Dawgs play well against Georgia Tech (a team roughly on the level of Florida), LSU (Georgia doesn't need to win, but they need to be competitive), and then in the bowl game, then we can start talking about a surge. If they don't, then we're going to have another offseason of Mark Richt hot seat debate. The recency effect is in Georgia's favor when they get to 9-2; it would not be if they end at 9-5.

I Come Not To Bury Virginia Tech, But To Praise Them

2011-11-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

I constantly mock Virginia Tech for their inept offenses. Admittedly, with my pro-Virginia rooting interests in the ACC, this comes off like complaining that Sofia Vergara doesn't have the best muscle tone, but I persist. Generally speaking, the Hokies have dominated the ACC since it split into two divisions, helped in no small part by Florida State and Miami abdicating their presumed thrones in the Atlantic and Coastal almost immediately. However, Virginia Tech has not made a splash on the national stage because their offenses have been hopelessly behind their defenses and special teams. When watching the Hokies survive a 14-10 game at Duke (Duke!), I wondered whether Bud Foster was finally going to snap and strangle some combination of Bryan Stinespring and Mike O'Cain. Foster should have spent the fourth quarter of that game getting a look at younger players and enjoying the sunshine of an October day in a half-empty stadium. Instead, he had to be on edge to ensure that the Hokies didn't blow their embarrassingly small lead.

So you can probably imagine my surprise when I experienced the sensation of being impressed by an aspect of the Hokies' offense last night. That aspect? Logan Thomas is huge and hard to tackle. It's possible that this aspect of the Virginia Tech attack is underrated. What made Tim Tebow such a great college player? One factor was almost certainly the fact that he was money at converting third and short. Ditto for Cam Newton. We all remember Cam's big plays, but his best attribute may have been that it was impossible to get the Auburn offense off the field in anything other than third and long because Newton could consistently fall forward for four yards. How did a slightly-inferior Michigan team upset Notre Dame in September? Their ability to stop the Irish on a trio of third and shorts in the later stages of the game. How did Michigan have a chance to tie Iowa on Saturday? Again, because Greg Mattison is a ninja at coming up with ways to stop conventional running plays in short yardage situations.

Maybe last night was a bit of an outlier because Georgia Tech has a smallish defense, but I came away thinking that Thomas is a major asset. He isn't close to Newton or Tebow in the passing department, but in the ACC, he doesn't need to be. He is unstoppable when the Hokies need a few yards, which means that Virginia Tech's drives are more likely to end in touchdowns as opposed to field goals or punts. In other words, he is so useful that he can weak offensive coaches look smart.

An Attempt to Explain Paterno and Curley Imitiating Colonel Klink

2011-11-09T09:54:00.001-05:00

In consuming the same news stories and opinion pieces about Penn State's remarkably limp response to the football program's former defensive coordinator's unique way of expressing his commitment to children, I've been trying to make sense of the reaction of Tim Curley and Joe Paterno, among other. Short of murder, child molestation is about as bad a crime as there is. Jerry Sandusky committed repeated acts of molestation, such that he was observed at Penn State's football facilities on at least two occasions performing sex acts with boys. This is not a case where authorities would have to rely upon the testimony of a child to determine whether a crime has been committed. Sandusky was so brazen in his conduct that he committed these crimes in a place where he could be observed by adults, first a janitor and then Mike McQueary, who was a graduate assistant at the time. Confronted with eyewitness testimony from adults on at least two separate occasions, Penn State's authority figures did nothing.

This sin is especially grave because it is fairly common knowledge that individuals who commit acts of pedophilia are highly likely to perform the same crimes again. The offense has a very high rate of recidivism because of the psychological pathologies involved. Sandusky's crimes cannot be written off as a crime of passion that is unlikely to repeat itself. Thus, the failure on the part of Penn State authority figures to act appropriately made future crimes by Sandusky a likelihood. Every child who was assaulted by Sandusky after the 2002 incident can legitimately point a finger at Curley, Paterno, McQueary, and others at Penn State. Almost certainly, those individuals (or, more precisely, their parents) will be hiring highly-capable lawyers (the victims will have their pick of the best plaintiffs' lawyers in the country) to point those fingers for them and Penn State will ultimately have to respond by writing some very large checks.

So how does this happen? I would posit that athletic departments at major universities are places where the default response to any wrongdoing is to try to handle it in-house and to avoid reporting it to the appropriate authorities. Major college football and basketball, the games about which so many of us choose to obsess, live a lie in at least two major respects. First, those sports involve massive amounts of revenue paired with antiquated British rules enshrining amateurism as a defining value. The natural place for the money to flow is to the players who generate it, but the NCAA seeks to prevent that water from flowing to its natural destination: the players who create the revenue. Second, colleges and universities have to lower their academic standards in order to admit the players who can make the difference between winning and losing. They have to operate under the fiction that an individual with a 2.3 GPA and an 850 SAT score from a below-average urban or rural high school can compete academically with students whose credentials far out-strip those of the athlete and come from an environment that makes them much better prepared to process what the professor is saying, understand the assigned reading materials, and create coherent answers to difficult questions based on what they have learned over the course of a semester.

Thus, the mission of athletic departments, unofficially, has to be to ignore reality. They have to look the other way when a star player is driving a car that is well beyond his present means. They have to ignore the extent to which tutors assigned to the players are doing the players' assigned course work. Athletic departments have to put in place compliance regimes that look good and act to stop the most obvious violations of NCAA rules, but at the end of the day, they cannot be cultures based on reporting all rules violations. To use an analogy from another black market economy, la cosa nostra has to be the default rule.

If you want two illustrations of that culture at work, look at Ohio State and Penn State. Jim Tressel - a man with a sterling reputation prior to last December - received information from a former Ohio State player about NCAA violations made by his players. He did not forward this information as he was required to do by NCAA rules. Various media outlets then found story after story of potential additional violations, each time leading Ohio State's Athletic Director, Gene Smith, to cut and paste a version of "this is all news to us" into the school's response. When confronted with media reports that Tressel had sat on evidence of violations, Smith and University President Gordon Gee believed that a two-game suspension would suffice for Tressel. It was only after a media firestorm that became hotter as a result of Smith and Gee's comical response that Tressel was fired, a fact that Ohio State later touted to the NCAA as evidence that it took the scandal seriously.

Penn State's scandal involves conduct that is worse by several orders of magnitude than that committed by the Tat Five, but it follows the same pattern. University officials receive evidence of wrong-doing, they try to keep the evidence in-house, and then their efforts to keep everything quiet are foiled when the criminal justice system gets involved. And just as Gee embarrassingly claimed "I only hope that he doesn't fire me" when asked if he would terminate Tressel (a move that Ohio State was ultimately forced to take), Penn State President Graham Spanier issued a press release defending his recently-indicted administrators, another colossal miscalculation of how the media would treat the scandal. Again, the default response to violations of NCAA rules or, in Penn State's case, the criminal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was not to report the violations to the proper authorities. Instead, it was sit on the evidence in the hopes that the problem would just go away and then for the university president to defend those who did the sitting. Given the environment in which athletic departments operate, we should be upset, but we should not be surprised.

How Will the SEC Survive Inviting a New Member With Little Football Tradition?

2011-11-08T07:52:00.001-05:00

Stewart Mandel lets the mask drop for a moment:

In its mad quest for television sets, the SEC, presumably intent on starting its own network, has irreparably diluted what had become the nation's premier conference. At its core, the charm of the SEC was that it really was one of the last conferences in which all 12 schools were geographically and culturally similar. The same scene we saw Saturday night in Tuscaloosa takes place in similar variations every week in Auburn, Baton Rouge, Oxford and Athens. Visiting fans make road trips in droves, because they can. Missouri, on the other hand, is an average 600-plus miles from the rest of the conference. Walk around an SEC tailgate lot or tune in to the Paul Finebaum Show and you'll quickly learn just how poorly this move is playing with the constituents.

New members Missouri and Texas A&M won't threaten the continued dominance of Alabama and LSU. They are likely the league's next South Carolina and Arkansas, the former of which took 20 years to reach its first conference title game, the latter of which made its first BCS bowl last year. But paired with the NCAA's recently approved stricter admissions standards and the SEC's own move last spring to cut down on oversigning, the league's golden era is likely drawing to a close.

Yes, Stewart, the SEC has irreparably diluted its brand because one of its fourteen members doesn’t have the same football culture as the others. Apparently, the conference could survive with two football-light members (Vandy and Kentucky) out of twelve, but three out of fourteen is just a bridge too far. If you pair Missouri with the SEC’s other new member, Texas A&M, a school that indisputably has a football culture that will mesh with the conference, then the case for dilution is really weak. It’s almost like adding bourbon and water to … bourbon and water.

Mandel’s other arguments aren’t any better. He cites the fact that SEC fans can drive to most of the other schools in the conference, but Missouri shares a border with three SEC states. If you believe that this sort of thing matters, it was a border state in the Civil War (just like Kentucky) and its flag flies at Stone Mountain. (That’s the best test of whether a state is in the South, right?) Yes, Columbia will be a hike for the teams in the East, but is it that much farther than Fayetteville, which is buried in the northwest corner of Arkansas?

And speaking of the last two additions to the SEC, we all agree that the additions of South Carolina and Arkansas were a positive for the conference, right? Neither of the new entrants have won a conference title in football. They have combined for four trips to the SEC Championship Game and have lost by double digits all four times, with three of the games being total blowouts. Moreover, while Arkansas brought a football tradition, South Carolina did not. As of 1992, South Carolina had never won a bowl game. They were 79th in all-time winning percentage, a tick over .500 and one spot behind Kansas. Missouri comes with better (although not overly impressive) credentials and they are four years removed from playing in the Big XII Championship Game for a spot in the national title game. Exposed to the competitive pressures of and revenues generated by the SEC, South Carolina has responded by hiring two brand name coaches – Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier – and enjoying the best extended period in the program’s history. The goal for Missouri doesn’t have to be competing with LSU and Alabama for national titles. Rather, there’s no reason why they can’t join Arkansas and South Carolina in the league’s middle class, with regular bowl trips and the occasional foray to the Georgia Dome when the stars align. Adding a program that slots into the middle of the SEC doesn’t dliute the brand.

As for Mandel’s last point, there’s no reason why adding Missouri would damage the SEC’s “Golden Age.” If Mandel is right that the Tigers won’t pose a major competitive threat to the elite of the conference, then how will they threaten the conference’s ability to produce national champions? How will they stop Alabama and LSU from taking advantage of the rich recruiting regions in the South? Mandel also cites the new NCAA admissions standards and the SEC’s oversigning regulations, both of which might have some impact, but they won’t change three basic realities: (1) SEC programs are rivaled only by the Big Ten in terms of generation of revenue, only the SEC programs plough the money back into their football programs whereas Big Ten programs use the money to ensure that their women’s field hockey teams have top-notch facilities; (2) SEC programs face more intense competitive pressures and therefore have a greater incentive to make moves that lead to on-field success; and (3) SEC programs sit in the most talent-rich region in the country. Thus, the SEC won’t win every national championship like it has for the past half-decade, but it will still remain above the other BCS leagues, on average.

Mandel has often opined that conference strength is cyclical. On this claim, he is totally wrong. There are structural factors at play that make some conferences more likely than other to succeed. Over the past five years or so, a definite hierarchy has emerged. The SEC is on top for the reasons described about. The Big XII and Pac Ten are in the next tier, most likely because they draw talent from the two major recruiting bases outside of the SEC states: California and Texas. This year will likely be the fourth straight year in which those two leagues supply the opposition for the SEC in the national title game. The third tier is comprised of the ACC and Big Ten, which are the underachievers of the BCS. The ACC has fertile recruiting areas and the Big Ten has revenue fan/media interest, but neither league can convert those blessings into on-field success. The Big East is the last tier, representing the leftovers of the other leagues. None of this is indicative of a cyclical situation, which requires that conferences are roughly equal. The SEC’s recent dominance refutes Mandel’s concept of a cyclical world, so he has to predict doom around every corner. That’s why he’s taking the implausible position that adding Missouri will cause Nick Saban to forget how to coach and Louisiana recruits to lose interest in going to Baton Rouge.

Paterno and Urkin

2011-11-07T07:22:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 11

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	1
2	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	1
3	Stanford Cardinal	1
4	Alabama Crimson Tide	-3
5	Oregon Ducks	1
6	Boise St. Broncos	-1
7	Oklahoma Sooners	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
9	Clemson Tigers	1
10	USC Trojans	1
11	Kansas St. Wildcats	11
12	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	5
13	Texas Longhorns	2
14	Georgia Bulldogs	--
15	Michigan St. Spartans	1
16	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	7
17	Ohio St. Buckeyes	2
18	Houston Cougars	--
19	Wisconsin Badgers	-7
20	Virginia Tech Hokies	1
21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-12
22	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	--
23	South Carolina Gamecocks	-3
24	Michigan Wolverines	-11
25	Penn St. Nittany Lions	-1
Dropouts: Texas A&M Aggies

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Random Thoughts from the Weekend:

The Penn State indictments unleashed a torrent of ill-considered opinions on Twitter, the likes of which I haven’t seen for a long time. At least two otherwise respectable commentators were calling for the Penn State football program to receive the death penalty, as if: (1) there are provisions in the NCAA’s rulebook that cover reporting of child molestation; and (2) Penn State is a repeat offender in the department. Short answer: the NCAA doesn’t concern itself with criminal law. There are authorities in central Pennsylvania who are tasked with enforcing the state’s laws that seek to protect children from predators like Jerry Sandusky and require that certain authority figures report allegations of abuse; the NCAA’s province is to enforce its own laws, which generally have to do with enforcing the concept of amateurism and preventing programs from gaining an unfair competitive advantage. I seriously doubt that anyone can make a passable case that Penn State received an advantage by virtue of Sandusky’s reprehensible conduct.
In a strict football sense, the indictments should get Penn State out of a sticky situation. They have a legendary head coach who is grimly clinging to his position, regardless of his inability to perform the basic functions of the role, because he is afraid of dying shortly after retirement like Bear Bryant. Now, Paterno’s limp response to a graduate assistant telling him that his former defensive coordinator – a man who still ran a football camp at Penn State – was raping a child in the program’s showers gives Penn State a solution. And this doesn’t even require Penn State to deal with the fantasy that Paterno, the most powerful individual in the athletic department (or possibly the entire university), was unaware of the prior allegations. In every other sense, this is a disaster for Penn State. The program’s image is inextricably linked with that of Paterno. JoePa always projected the impression of a man of unimpeachable ethics, which his defenders often used to distinguish him from Bear Bryant. Now, that is all gone. The program and its godfather have been embarrassed and the taint from this scandal will stick with all of them for a long time. More tangibly, the fact that various decision makers at the school did so little to deal with an incredibly serious issue and as a result apparently allowed multiple assaults to take place on university property is going to expose the school to major civil liability. These are expensive mistakes that Penn State’s brass made.
In the realm of “it’s pointless to ever make predictions,” how many people would have guessed that: (1) Nebraska, which has had an excellent recent defensive record coming into the Big Ten, would be able to stop Michigan State, but no one else in the Big Ten; or (2) Michigan, which was averaging seven yards per play coming into the weekend, would put up less yardage that just about every other team that Iowa has played? Count those two results as reminders that we are dealing with teenagers whose performances will vary from week to week. Except for LSU and Alabama, I guess.
I felt conflicted in making my ballot. In my heart of hearts, I think that Alabama is the second-best team in the country. With Stanford having played a weak schedule so far and Oklahoma State confirming my suspicions that they are a good offense-average defense team, I would take the Tide over either of those teams on a neutral field, probably by a touchdown in both cases. On the other hand, if you go based on resume, then the Tide have to be behind the Cowboys and Cardinal. The SEC just isn’t strong enough this year for the Tide to develop a national championship resume without a win over LSU, especially since they did not play the two best teams in the East. Moreover, if LSU has one of the spots in the title game, then the Tide cannot make a good case that they should get a second chance at the Tigers when they blew the first chance at home.
I will admit that I have little interest in seeing Oklahoma State in the title game. I have nothing emotional against the Pokes, but they just seem like Oregon Junior to me and we already played that game last year. Team with a powerful offense and questionable defense, thousands of ludicrous uniform combinations that involve shades other than the school’s official colors, success as the result of a very wealthy benefactor… Not again, please.
Ralph Friedgen has to be laughing his ass off right now.
Did Saturday night mark the most depressing home game in Tennessee history? The Vols came in at 3-5, having gone 0-for-October. Meanwhile, their most hated rival and another conference foe were playing in a one versus two matchup that Vols fans probably would have preferred to watch than their own wheezing offense. And nothing says “this game doesn’t matter” quite like Bob Rathbun on the call. But hey, at least they set up a true state title game with Vandy by beating Middle Tennessee State.

Separate thoughts on LSU-Bama to follow…

My Chart is Growing

2011-11-02T06:10:00.001-05:00

Showing the understandable effects of obsessively covering Michigan during a four-year period of barely mitigated suck, Brian Cook frets that my comparison of Florida and Penn State yields an unfortunate conclusion for Michigan:

This is my concern, dude. Everyone regards PSU as a fraud, and we're kind of the same team except our loss was more competitive and our conference wins against even weaker competition.

Kind of the same team? Not so much:

	Penn State	Florida	Michigan	Texas A&M
Sagarin Predictor	80.40	78.24	88.10	87.19
Sagarin SOS	68.38	75.20	68.64	79.10
SRS	9.9	6.12	17.35	15.44
SRS SOS	2.75	5.86	3.34	7.93
Pts Per Game	21.4	26.0	34.8	27.0
Pts Allowed Per Game	12.4	19.5	14.6	15.4
Scoring Margin	+9.0	+6.5	+20.2	+11.6
Yards Per Play Gained	5.1	5.6	7.0	6.4
Yards Per Play Allowed	4.2	4.5	5.4	5.4
Yards Per Play Margin	+0.9	+1.1	+1.6	+1.0
Turnover Margin	+6	-8	+6	-7

Michigan would be a touchdown favorite over Penn State on a neutral field. The difference between the Wolverines and Nittany Lions is that Michigan has taken care of business against every weaker opponent. Whereas Penn State has struggled repeatedly as I listed in my original post, Michigan hasn’t had to win a single close game all year, with the exception of the Notre Dame game. Michigan has played in games that were close at halftime, but in just about every case, the contests were over by the fourth quarter. Another chart of Michigan’s wins for illustrative purposes:

Opponent	Halftime	Fulltime
Western Michigan	20-10	34-10
Notre Dame	7-17	35-31
Eastern Michigan	14-3	31-3
San Diego State	21-0	28-7
Minnesota	38-0	58-0
Northwestern	14-24	42-24
Purdue	22-7	36-14

Michigan has dominated weaker opponents this year, especially in the second half. Whether that is a reflection of depth, conditioning, or tactically adroit coaches is a separate question. If you play the comparative score game, Michigan has played three common opponents with Penn State and beaten all three by bigger margins. More importantly, Michigan does not have anything on its resume like a come-from-behind win over Temple. Michigan’s equivalent opponent was San Diego State, a team that the Wolverines beat comfortably.

I stuck Texas A&M into the chart to indulge Brian’s skepticism, as the Aggies are a good comparison to Michigan this year. Despite Michigan being ranked significantly higher in the human polls, the two teams’ numbers are very similar. A&M has played a much tougher schedule and have a weaker record. They have blown out most of the weaker teams on their slate and their losses have been close, so their ratings according to SRS and Sagarin are very close to those of Michigan.

There are two points to be made here. First, Michigan’s turnover margin is much better. Whether you believe that turnover margin is the result of luck, skill, or a combination thereof dictates whether you think that Michigan deserves its higher ranking. The Wolverines have recovered an obscene percentage of fumbles, so there’s little way to conclude that Michigan has not been lucky in this department. Conversely, A&M has been incredibly unlucky in this department. Given the conclusion from Football Outsiders that recovery of fumbles is completely random, it is quite plausible to say that the difference between Michigan’s 7-1 and A&M’s 5-3 has just been the random bounces of an oblong spheroid.

Second, A&M has played a tougher schedule and had therefore been in a number of close games. They have lost three of the four one-score games in which they have played. Michigan has played an easier schedule that has involved only two tight games,* which the Wolverines have split. Again, how do you view close games? If you view them as random, then luck explains why A&M’s record is two games worse. If you think that there is an endemic reason why Michigan has been so strong in the second halves of games while the Aggies have wilted repeatedly, then the teams have earned their records.

* – I am scoring the Michigan State game as a tight one even though the Spartans won by 14. Michigan had fourth and inches inside the Michigan State ten in the fourth quarter with the game at 21-14. If you include penalty yardage, the total yardage for the game was about even.

An Exercise in the Importance of Playing Nobodies

2011-11-01T07:10:00.001-05:00

Team A and Team B are fairly similar this year. They both have good defenses and weak offenses. They both play in major conferences. Behold, the majesty of a chart showing their similarities:

	Team A	Team B
Sagarin Predictor	80.40	78.24
Sagarin SOS	68.38	75.20
SRS	9.9	6.12
SRS SOS	2.75	5.86
Pts Per Game	21.4	26.0
Pts Allowed Per Game	12.4	19.5
Scoring Margin	+9.0	+6.5
Yards Per Play Gained	5.1	5.6
Yards Per Play Allowed	4.2	4.5
Yards Per Play Margin	+0.9	+1.1
Turnover Margin	+6	-8

Overall, the picture you would draw from this table is that these teams are pretty close to one another. Team A would be a 2-3 point favorite on a neutral field according to Sagarin and SRS. Team A’s scoring margin is a little better, but their yards per play margin is a little worse. Team A is definitely better in the turnover department, which reflects good luck, weaker opponents, some sort of skill at protecting the ball and preventing opponents from doing the same, or some combination thereof.

Am I going to give it away by saying that both teams have been suspect at the quarterback position this year, with Team A relying on a walk-on and Team B relying on true freshmen during the meat of their schedule? How about if I said that Team A lost a home game to Alabama by 16 after scoring a garbage touchdown and two-pointer in the final minutes, while Team B lost to the Tide by 28 after losing their quarterback midway through the proceedings? And for a final connection, the offensive coordinator of Team A’s meager attack used to be the head coach for Team B.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Team A is Penn State and Team B is Florida. Penn State is 8-1 and ranked 16th in the BCS rankings. They lead their division by two games. They are three up in the loss column. If they can simply avoid a three-game losing streak to end the year, they will play in the first Big Ten Championship Game. The narrative for their season is “Joe Paterno, still getting it done” (at least by reporters who are relying on the fact that their readers haven’t actually watched Penn State play this year). Florida is 4-4 and unranked. In fact, I doubt that may voters even gave them a second thought when filling out their ballots. Their most famous fan in the blogosphere is writing this obituary:

But don't say this is all necessary. It's not. Meyer's struggles in his first year got him to nine wins. [NAME REDACTED] learned and unlearned basic arithmetic on the job and still won seven games. This team will lose to Vanderbilt. This team will lose to South Carolina. This team will lose to Florida State, and they will miss a bowl game for the first time since the pre-Spurrier era. That is not good coaching. That's failure, and boring, depressing failure at that. At least fight James Franklin at the fifty when you're done losing to Vandy, Will, and thus give us something to cheer about. Gut a reporter mid-question, or sleep in a tree stand on campus and when someone asks you what you're doing, whisper "hunting, son. Hunting."

Go mildly insane just to keep us all awake. Don't go pointing to a crack in the model and tell us it's a goddamn feature. That's bullshit, and there's enough of it on the field to feed us all for the next year or so with ease.

Isn’t the major difference between these teams their schedules? If Florida played three creampuffs plus Alabama in the non-conference slate and then feasted on a pu-pu platter of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, and Northwestern for league opponents (with the two most “challenging” opponents at home), wouldn’t it stand to reason that the Gators would also be 8-1 (5-0)? And if Penn State had an October of Alabama at home, LSU and Auburn on the road, and then Georgia at a neutral site, isn’t there a very good chance that they would have gone 0-4, especially if they would have played at Auburn without their starting quarterback? I’m as guilty of this as anyone, since I ranked Penn State (albeit 8/9 spots below the human polls) and not Florida, but is there really a major difference between the teams? If they met in a bowl game, wouldn’t we just expect a 16-13 type game that would swing on one or two big plays? Yes, there is a good chance that the big play would be a Florida turnover, but it is just as likely that it would be RaiDemps getting loose. After all, I doubt that Penn State encountered players like that when they were running rampant through the lower half of the Big Ten.

Now, an obvious counter to what I’m saying is “there are a lot of teams that would be 8-1 against Penn State’s schedule or 4-4 against Florida’s, especially when you factor in Florida’s quarterback situation over the course of October.” That’s a variant of the “what would our record be if we played Boise State’s schedule” argument. It has a certain degree of merit, but it points to the importance of looking at how a team won or lost its games. Boise State was a legitimate national title contender last year because they dominated weaker opponents in a manner that one would expect from a top five team. To a slightly lesser extent, the same is true this year. If Penn State were 8-1 with a loss to Alabama and comfortable wins over a stretch of bad-to-mediocre opponents, then the comparison to Florida would be invalid. That’s not the case at all. PSU needed a late touchdown to come from behind against Temple. They led Indiana 6-3 until the end of the third quarter. They led Iowa 6-3 until the fourth quarter. They beat Purdue by five and Illinois by three, both at home. Conversely, Florida won their four games in September comfortably, they were blown out by Alabama and LSU (as would just any any team in the country), and then they lost close games to Auburn and Georgia. The way that Florida and Penn State have played this year lends to the conclusion that they are very similar teams with very different records.

One final thought: if you think that this is just another attempt by me to show my disdain for Penn State football as currently constituted (namely as an homage to the dotage of a once-great, but now irrelevant coach) and the Big Ten as a place where serious competitive pressures are a thing of the past, you are absolutely right.

This One Goes To Seven

2011-10-31T06:22:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 10

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	LSU Tigers	--
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
4	Stanford Cardinal	--
5	Boise St. Broncos	2
6	Oregon Ducks	--
7	Oklahoma Sooners	2
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
9	Nebraska Cornhuskers	5
10	Clemson Tigers	-5
11	USC Trojans	10
12	Wisconsin Badgers	-2
13	Michigan Wolverines	5
14	Georgia Bulldogs	2
15	Texas Longhorns	7
16	Michigan St. Spartans	-5
17	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	--
18	Houston Cougars	--
19	Ohio St. Buckeyes	--
20	South Carolina Gamecocks	-1
21	Virginia Tech Hokies	-8
22	Kansas St. Wildcats	-10
23	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	1
24	Penn St. Nittany Lions	--
25	Texas A&M Aggies	-10
Dropouts: Miami Hurricanes, Arizona St. Sun Devils, West Virginia Mountaineers, Texas Tech Red Raiders

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Thoughts on the weekend:

This was a very easy ballot to put together for the first seven spots. After that, it was total anarchy. That ought to tell you how many legitimate national title contenders we have this year.
One of the big winners of the weekend has to be Boise State. Right now, they are sitting right behind Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma State, and Stanford on most ballots. Clemson and Kansas State have been knocked out of the picture. Stanford passed their first big challenge this weekend, but only barely. The odds of the Cardinal beating Oregon, Notre Dame, and an opponent in the Pac Ten Championship Game don’t seem great. Oklahoma State looked very good, but then again, so did Oklahoma. The odds seem fairly decent that both teams will lose, at which point the Broncos will just need to fight off the one-loss contenders to book a spot in the title game. There seems to be a fair amount of political sentiment for Boise State to play in New Orleans, as that would establish that a program outside of the major conferences can indeed win a national championship. Interestingly enough, Georgia’s performance the rest of the way will be critical for BSU’s campaign. If the Dawgs win the East and put up a good fight in the Dome, then voters will think back to the Broncos’ comfortable week one win over the Dawgs and decide “yeah, this team can play with the big boys.” And the irony of the whole discussion is that this isn’t an especially good Boise State team, at least by their recent standards.
My prevailing sense from the Cocktail Party (other than yes, I was right): inconclusive, just like Georgia’s season. Yes, the Dawgs won a big game that puts them in a great position to win the East. No, they did not look good in winning the game. Aaron Murray was especially disappointing. Murray’s yards per attempt is down by a full yard this year, his passer rating is lower, and his TD/INT ratio has regressed. On Saturday, Georgia survived despite Murray disappearing late. (His overthrow when he had Orson Charles wide open late in the third quarter was especially galling.) His two touchdown passes were both of the “throw it up to my receiver and have him make a play” variety, which doesn’t scream “great play!” by the quarterback. So without much of an offense, Georgia prevailed. They are giving off a major whiff of a team that is going to win the East without looking especially good, a division winner who can thank one of the easiest SEC schedules in recent memory.
Follow-on thought #1 from the Georgia bullet: is Mark Richt’s seat warm in the offseason if the Dawgs win nine in a row and then lose to Tech, get handled easily in the SEC Championship Game, and then lose the bowl game? In that scenario, Georgia would likely finish the season 9-0 against unranked opponents and 0-5 against ranked teams.
Follow-on thought #2 from the Georgia bullet: the SEC is really shallow this year. It’s giving off a whiff of 2006 Big Ten, although Alabama and LSU both have non-conference scalps to put us at ease. Also, they haven’t had anything resembling a close call, nothing like Michigan surviving an upset scare from Ball State or Ohio State winning by seven at 2-10 Illinois. Below Alabama and LSU, you have a South Carolina team that no longer has an offense without Stephen Garcia and Marcus Lattimore, an Arkansas team that just barely escaped games against Ole Miss and Vandy, a Georgia team that wins without much of an offense, and a Florida that can no longer block. Keep all this in mind when the Alabama-LSU loser is in the running for the second spot in New Orleans. Yes, the SEC has won five national titles in a row. No, this is not a vintage SEC.
Follow-on thought #3 from the Georgia bullet: I didn’t realize that Florida’s offensive line was as big an issue as their quarterbacks. The Gators moved the ball early in the game, but those yards were empty calories. As soon as Georgia figured out that the Gators couldn’t run the ball and John Brantley was a sitting duck, the pass rush teed off and the Florida offense ground to a halt. Florida has bigger issues than Brantley’s ankle or Charlie Weis’s scheme.
All hail, yards per play margin. I told you that Clemson and Kansas State didn’t belong and lo and behold, they don’t. I had a good chuckle listening to 790’s morning show yesterday and one of the hosts was relating a story about how he and some friends at a house party had expressed surprise that Clemson was such a slight favorite against the Jackets. One of the friends sagely opined that that reason was that Paul Johnson’s offense has never been shut down three weeks in a row. Yes, that must be it. That’s the sort of reasoning that would motivate a sharp to put $50,000 on Georgia Tech. It can’t be that on a yardage basis, the Jackets are better than Clemson.
The line that jumps out at me: Michigan –4.5 at Iowa. According to the Sagarin Predictor, Michigan would be a 17-point favorite on a neutral field. According to SRS, Michigan would be a 14-point favorite on a neutral field. Michigan is .8 better in terms of yards per play margin. Unless Kinnick Stadium is worth more than any homefield in college football history, there is something amiss there. Residual concern on the part of bettors about Michigan’s collapses in 2009 and 2010? Residual concern that Michigan has been insanely lucky in recovering fumbles? Residual concern that Iowa has a good performance deep in their loins? I’ll be interested to see where this line goes during the week.
Bryan Stinespring versus Jim Bollman in…? This was what I was pondering as the Hokie defense gutted out a 14-10 win against Duke with the usual minimal contributions from the offense. I especially enjoyed the idea of the two playing Axis & Allies, building up forces on a constant basis while refusing to attack. They would play for three days before declaring a stalemate and heading out for milkshakes.

Tim Tebow Makes Football History!

2011-10-26T08:45:00.001-05:00

After previously butchering his description of the Chip Kelly spread in every way imaginable, Gregg Easterbrook has another gem describing Tim Tebow's two-point conversion against the Dolphins on Sunday:

On the all-important deuce try with 25 seconds showing in regulation, the Broncos came out five-wide and Miami took the field in a dime. Tebow noticed nobody behind the defensive linemen on the offensive right and audibled to a quarterback sneak right, a move reflecting football IQ.

(Emphasis added.) Yes, Gregg, Tebow became the first quarterback in football history to run the sneak from the shotgun. No, the play couldn't have been the basic power play that is a staple of the spread offense. It couldn't have been the play that Tebow ran a million times at Florida, or the play around which Michigan designed its 2010 offense to make Denard Robinson into a single-wing tailback.

Easterbrook may know about space exploration, military spending inefficiencies, the dangers of SUVs, the Progress Paradox, and dozens of other important subjects, but the spread offense is clearly a bridge too far.

Jeff Schultz’s Solution for Georgia: Martin Seligman*

2011-10-26T07:14:00.001-05:00

If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you know that I hate explanations grounded in pop psychology. They are the refuge of the lazy. They are a substitute for thinking and analyzing data. Did Team A break a losing streak to Team B? If yes, then it’s because they wanted it more and they spent all offseason thinking about it. If no, then it’s because Team B is in their heads.

It’s Georgia-Florida week, so it’s time to trot out an array of unprovable assertions. Step on down, Jeff Schultz:

The numbers are dizzying: three consecutive losses, 11 of 13, 18 of 21.

Vince Dooley went 17-7-1. His 25-game winning percentage: .700. Since then, Ray Goff (1-6), Donnan (1-4) and Richt (2-8) have gone 4-18. Their 22-game percentage: .182.

How can players and coaches not think of that history, even if they weren’t here for most of it?Some players weren’t even born yet. Murray? He actually was born Nov. 10, 1990 — the day Steve Spurrier’s Gators tortured Goff’s Dogs, 38-7. That’s when this 21-game stretch started. So it’s all Murray’s fault.

When one signature program loses 18 of 21 games to another, it’s not just about talent. At some point, it’s between the ears.

Georgia’s starting quarterbacks in the past three meetings have thrown nine interceptions. Florida’s, one. The Dogs have committed 12 turnovers. Florida, one.

That not about athleticism. That’s one team being calm and the other having a meltdown.

Schultz presents a binary proposition: Georgia’s lack of success in Jacksonville can either be the result of talent or mental strength. It can’t be a combination of the two. More importantly, it can’t be primarily the result of a totally obvious, more likely explanation: for the most part, Florida have had better teams! Maybe Georgia players, instead of getting PTSD the moment they cross the border into Florida, are up against superior opponets? Whether that is the result of Florida having better players, better coaches, or a combination thereof, is a matter for debate. Again, it’s probably a mix.

So, Jeff, let’s test my little hypothesis since I'm operating in the world of facts and you are in the ether. Let’s look at CollegeFootballReference.com to see every year since 1990 in which Georgia has either finished with a better SEC record than Florida (excluding the Cocktail Party) or had a better SRS rating. Here is the complete list:

1992
2002
2003
2004
2005

In contrast, Georgia had an inferior record and SRS rating in 1997 and had the same record (excluding the Cocktail Party) and an inferior SRS rating in 2007. So really, Georgia fans can point to all of three games over a 21-year period where they had a better team and should have beaten Florida, but didn’t: 1992 (although in retrospect, Spurrier versus Goff was a huge equalizer), and the two Zook disasters in 2002 and 2003. Georgia was better overall in 2005, but not without DJ Shockley. Florida fans can point to 1997 and 2007 as years in which their teams were at least comparable, if not marginally better than Georgia and they lost both games. (A simple question for Georgia fans: how much of your fond memories of the strengths of the ‘97 and ‘07 teams are bound up in the wins in Jacksonville? After the Florida game, the ‘97 team was solidly beaten at home by Auburn and then required a last-second touchdown to beat Georgia Tech. The ‘07 team came on like gangbusters at the end of the season, but was mediocre for the first six games.) So Georgia should be, what, 5-16 against Florida since 1990? 6-15, maybe? Would we all feel better about the game is that was the tally instead of 3-18?

Since 1990, Florida has finished first in the SEC nine times. They have won the East ten times, or slightly more than 50% of all available titles. They have played in 11 major bowl games. They have three national titles. In the same time period, Georgia has won two SEC titles, three divisional titles, and no national titles. Georgia has played in three major bowl games. Schultz’s mistake is starting from the premise that Florida and Georgia are both “signature programs,” implying some sort of equality. Georgia has the potential to be equal to Florida, especially if Florida State and Miami pose credible recruiting threats to the Gators in-state, but that potential has not been realized over the past 21 years. That, more than some imaginary mental block, is the reason why Georgia has struggled in Jacksonville.

The good news, then, is that Georgia is a better team than Florida in 2011 (Georgia is almost five points better in SRS and about 5.5 points better according to the Sagarin Predictor) and the margin isn’t close if Jeff Brantley is either out or limited. If Georgia loses this year, then we may have to examine what’s going on upstairs with this team, as probability is pointing in the Dawgs' favor.**

* – Here’s the title reference for those of you who aren’t married to psychologists who interned at Penn.

** - Come to think of it, the most precise way to determine what Georgia's record should have been against Florida over the past 21 years would be to come up with retroactive point spreads using SRS (and Sagarin for the years for which it is available) and then assign percentages to the games.

Time To Cower, BCS; Rick Reilly Is On Your Case!

2011-10-25T08:44:00.000-05:00

I implore you to read Rick Reilly's complaint about the BCS. If you are wondering how it is that Rick Neuheisel got a head coaching gig at UCLA after bombing out at Colorado and Washington (with NCAA sanctions, to boot) or Greg Robinson got the defensive coordinator job at Michigan after disastrous spells with the Kansas City Chiefs and Syracuse, just look at their magnificent coifs. Imagine a middle-aged decision-maker who drives a Lexus, listens to Jimmy Buffett to unwind, spends way too much time futzing with his investments, and views golf as a sport. That guy is just going to look at Neuheisel or Robinson and say "that guy looks like a coach," in the same way that the Oakland A's scouts said "that guy looks like a player" in Moneyball. That guy is also going to click on the front page of ESPN.com and say to himself "awesome, a new column by Rick Reilly! He just looks so friendly and unthreatening! I'm in the mood for a bunch of dumb one-liners that would be beneath Jay Leno! And I don't like data or cogent, orderly arguments in my sportswriting. Explain the world of sports to me, Rick!"

How else can one explain ESPN giving prominent space to a column that contains the following gems:

Reilly complains about the fact that there could be six unbeaten teams by the end of the college football season, as if all six were likely to run their respective tables. As if to show how ludicrously short-sighted his argument was, Oklahoma and Wisconsin lost on Saturday night, cutting Reilly's nightmare scenario down before the column had been up for 48 hours.

Reilly argues against an imaginary strawman, namely that an unbeaten Oklahoma or Oklahoma State would be jumped by the one-loss loser of the Alabama-LSU game. Rick, now that you are writing on the Internet, you might be expected to learn about the concept of a hyperlink. If you are going to argue against a proposition, then you might want to link to someone making that argument. Or at least give us a name? Is that too much to ask? It seems relevant when you are arguing against an all-SEC BCS Championship Game, an event that has never occurred and in fact has never come close to occurring.

How about this gem:

True, trying to win a national championship by beating Big Ten teams is like trying to get drunk drinking non-alcoholic beer, but what do you want them to do? They can only play their schedule and they've fricaseed every team they've played, 301-58. It's enough to make a Wisconsin fan hurl his lunch, which would be known as Bielemia.

What do we want Wisconsin to do? Oh, I don't know, maybe play a non-conference road game against a team more threatening than UNLV, Fresno State, or Hawaii? Rick, if you knew anything about college football other than the fact that it provides you with fodder for an annual complaint about the BCS, then you would know that programs get to pick their non-conference schedules. A program like Wisconsin that has a large home stadium and supportive fan base has near-total latitude in making scheduling decisions. Wisconsin doesn't just play their schedule; they make 33% of their schedule. So yes, I want Wisconsin to start acting like the college football power that they pretend to be.

Reilly complains about the computers not showing any love to Stanford. You want to know why the computer rankings are so bad, Rick? Because the BCS kow-towed to bitchy columnists after Nebraska pipped Colorado and Oregon for the right to get slaughtered by Miami in the 2001 national title game on the basis of margin-of-victory. You want to take a wild guess what position Reilly, a Colorado alum who hates Nebraska, would have taken at that time? I am going out on a limb and say that Reilly wasn't motivated by a rigorous commitment to empiricism and math. Also, Reilly complains about Stanford's low computer ranking and then cites their schedule going forward. You know, the part of the schedule for which the computers are not yet accounting.

I can't believe that Reilly gets paid to write sentences like this gem about Boise State: "And yet every time they play a big-conference school they tend to win, including Georgia this year and TCU coming up." He's unintentionally paraphrasing Brian Fantana: 60% of the time, they win every time. And that's before we get to the fact that TCU isn't yet a big conference school.

Reilly also got paid to write this: "If the [Clemson] Tigers go undefeated, they'll have beaten everybody but the Chinese army -- Auburn, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Florida State and South Carolina." Boston College? Are you too f***ing busy to click on the ACC standings and notice that Boston College is 1-6? Would you prefer to cite the Packers' accomplishment in going unbeaten against a schedule that has included the winless Rams? Or, since you seem to like shallow geopolitical analogies, maybe you should tout our armed forces' triumph over Grenada?

Rick, if you feel like college football is crucifying you, then might I suggest you find another religion? The CIMB Asia Pacific Classic is ready when you are.

Alabama-Stanford? The Trash-talking Before That Game Would Be Delicious

2011-10-24T06:12:00.001-05:00

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 9

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	LSU Tigers	--
3	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
4	Stanford Cardinal	--
5	Clemson Tigers	--
6	Oregon Ducks	--
7	Boise St. Broncos	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
9	Oklahoma Sooners	--
10	Wisconsin Badgers	--
11	Michigan St. Spartans	--
12	Kansas St. Wildcats	--
13	Virginia Tech Hokies	--
14	Nebraska Cornhuskers	--
15	Texas A&M Aggies	--
16	Georgia Bulldogs	--
17	Miami Hurricanes	--
18	Michigan Wolverines	--
19	South Carolina Gamecocks	--
20	Arizona St. Sun Devils	--
21	USC Trojans	--
22	Texas Longhorns	--
23	West Virginia Mountaineers	--
24	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	--
25	Texas Tech Red Raiders	--

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Random thoughts from the weekend:

What would the spread be for a national title game between the Alabama/LSU winner and Clemson? At least ten points, right? The assumption would be that the SEC Champion would slow down the Clemson offense and would be able to do whatever they choose to do on the other side of the ball. If North Carolina can manage 6.6 yards per play in a game at Clemson (albeit with six turnovers), then what would Alabama and LSU manage? An Alabama/LSU game against Stanford would be more interesting because Stanford is a balanced team. Plus, with the media’s obsession about quarterbacks to the detriment of paying attention to anything else (Exhibit A), there will be some distorted sense that Stanford is favored because they have Andrew Luck. With the runaway popularity of the NFL and the ability to sell a storyline based around and individual, ESPN would be thrilled to pair a traditional power against Stanford in the title game, certainly as compared to Clemson or Oklahoma State taking the second spot.
So who thought that Ole Miss would be competitive with Arkansas? The sad thing for Ole Miss is that they played their best game of the year, they led for the majority of the game, they rallied back when Arkansas took the lead, and then when they recovered an onside kick and had a chance to win the game, they left their fans with a rotten taste in their mouths. Ole Miss ran two plays after recovering the onside kick at 29-24. The first play was a sack. Then, after an interminable delay getting lined up, Randall Mackey threw an interception into double coverage. The prevailing sense I got from the conclusion was that Ole Miss has never thought to practice a two-minute drill because they assumed that they would never have the chance to use it.
Bo Pelini, the vintage Nebraska teams would not have allowed a 34-0 halftime lead over an overmatched opponent turn into a 41-14 final. Tom Osborne would have beaten Minnesota by at least 65-3.
Georgia Tech was leading the nation in yards per play through their first six games. In the last two weeks, they have gained 507 yards total on 4.1 yards per play. Apparently, it’s not just teams with byes that can stop the Jacket offense because Miami had their way with Tech. Now, a game that previously looked like a chance for the ACC to take the national spotlight has instead turned into a match-up between one team contending for the national title and a second trying to play spoiler.
In case you are wondering, I took great enjoyment from watching Gene Chizik on the sideline on Saturday.
And speaking of Instant Karma, Wisconsin got a taste of it on Saturday, as well. You wait until October 22 to play a road game? How about losing on a final-play hail mary, all while your coach makes a series of inexplicable tactical decisions?
How bad does Northwestern’s defense have to be to allow 34 points to Penn State in three quarters? And why exactly was Pat Fitzgerald seen as such a great coaching candidate for Michigan (among other jobs) during the offseason?
Brian Kelly, how does it feel to get outcoached by Lane Kiffin? Lane Kiffin! Notre Dame built everything towards this game against USC – night game, huge recruiting weekend, four-game winning streak etc. – and then got totally dominated. USC outgained the Irish by 176 yards and won the turnover battle 3-0. 31-17 flattered Notre Dame.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

2011-10-21T06:20:00.001-05:00

The national title contenders, broken down by yards per play:

Team	OPP*	DPP	Margin
Alabama	6.8	3.2	+3.6
LSU	5.5	4.0	+1.5
Oklahoma	6.7	4.6	+2.1
Wisconsin	7.8	4.4	+3.4
Oklahoma State	6.6	5.4	+1.2
Stanford	7.2	4.6	+2.6
Clemson	6.3	5.6	+0.7
Boise State	6.5	4.8	+1.7
Kansas State	4.8	5.3	-0.5
Oregon	7.5	5.1	+2.4
Arkansas	6.5	5.5	+1.0

* – Yeah you know me.

Thoughts

Alabama’s number is just silly. The defense is as strong as always, although I am going to reserve judgment on their place historically until they have played the more challenging half of the schedule. Through seven games, the only above-average offense they have seen has been Arkansas. They are terrific at stopping opponents, but they don’t force too many turnovers or sacks. They can be thrown on,* which is going to put an awfully big onus on Jarrett Lee when LSU comes to town. However, the Alabama offense has really evolved during the Saban era, getting better each and every year. (Bama’s yards per play progression from Saban’s first year forward: 5.1, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, and now 6.8 with an offense that is replacing a two-year starter at quarterback and three first-round picks.) Maybe it’s more the residue of great recruiting as opposed to clever scheming, but Bama is statistically right up there with teams that are more known for their offenses. Moreover, because they are run-based, they are achieving a great yards per play number with relatively low variance, which is the crown jewel of offensive production.

* – It’s interesting that the defensive strategy that should work against Alabama – committing extra defenders to squash the run – is exactly what the Alabama defense does. In other words, mimic what the Tide does on defense to stop their offense. Then again, their offense should be prepared for this approach since they see it in practice every week.

You see what I meant earlier in the week about Clemson? They just aren’t in the same category as the other contenders on defense. The conventional wisdom is that they can win a game on defense as evidenced by the win in Blacksburg, but in retrospect, that game looks like either an outlier or a truly epic screw-up by Bryan Stinespring.

If I could sell shares of Kansas State, I would. They make Clemson look like Alabama by comparison. They are a nice story and all with Bill Snyder bringing the program back after the Ron Prince debacle, but in no way do they belong in the national title discussion. I wouldn’t be shocked if both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State take them to the woodshed. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if Oklahoma blowing K-State out next week isn’t the third instance of the Sooner bubble getting inflated, after wins over Florida State and Texas that both turned out to be conquests of overrated opponents.

Boise State’s number just aren’t where they would need to be to justify inclusion in the national title discussion. Plus, Wisconsin has already taken the mantle of the dominant team that plays no one. Stanford too, I suppose.

Man, LSU’s offensive numbers do not look good in this company. I would take their special teams units over anyone else on the list and they have played a very tough schedule, but that pedestrian offense could be their undoing.

Stanford-Oregon looks like a terrific match-up of evenly-matched teams. Thankfully, they are in the same division of the Pac 12 or else their game would just be an appetizer.

Arkansas looks just like you would expect a mature Bobby Petrino Arkansas team to look like: a good team with a very good offense and a decent, but not great defense. One would expect this because of Petrino’s prowess as an offensive coach, combined with the facts that Arkansas does not sit in a good recruiting area and defense is more about talent than anything else. (Cue Spurrier’s maxim about scheming on offense and recruiting on defense.) Now, if you put Petrino somewhere like Texas A&M where he would have more access to fertile recruiting areas…