Shorties from Last Week

Two shorter offerings from the past two weeks…

One was an analogy between Atlanta and Paris as sports cities, based on the fact that both are full of transplants:

Like Paris, Atlanta can be described as a city where a good portion of the populace comes from elsewhere, seeking better social and economic opportunities. Also like Paris, Atlanta sports fans are more attracted to the spectacle that the local teams can sometimes provide than we are creatures of habit, going to games because that's what they have always done. When the Braves came out of nowhere to contend in 1991, Fulton County Stadium was home to the spectacle, especially with the Tomahawk Chop being new and exciting. When Mike Vick hit the scene, the Georgia Dome was home to the spectacle, as Vick was the most exciting player that most of us had ever seen. To a lesser extent, the Hawks had the same attraction when Dominique was in his prime. For a hot minute, the Thrashers provided a spectacle when Heatley and Kovalchuk were electric. In short, we need a reason to go.

Naturally, it ended with a shot at Bill Simmons for making excuses on behalf of Pats fans that he would never make for Atlanta or other sports markets in the Sunbelt.  Speaking of Simmons, I strongly recommend the piece from the Classical about PSG.  It cites Simmons’ podcast with the CEO of Ticketmaster regarding the steps that American sports teams are taking to attract casual fans by making the gameday experience as personal as possible.  Of course, it also attacks Simmons for taking a very 1% view of the sports experience, but in this respect, I think that the author underestimates the ubiquity of flat-screen TVs.  Generally speaking, if you can get past the Nader-ite tangents (I especially love the fact that the whole piece is built around a defense of fan culture at PSG, when one of the two galaxies of fan associations – the Virage Boulogne – is a right-wing, all-white, sometimes ractis entity), it’s a fascinating look at the changes at PSG, ostensibly to deal with fan disputes.  There are some very interesting political parallels along the lines of “what do we sacrifice when we place security uber alles?”  I almost linked the piece again when I was writing about SEC scheduling, as there is a parallel to be made in terms of the management of sports teams viewing consumers as nothing more than walking wallets who will always support their teams, regardless of how poorly the fans are treated.

The second piece was a complaint about sports talk radio that will sound very familiar to those of you who have been reading this blog for a while.  The gripe, as usual, was reducing sports discussion to etiquette:

The discussion on 680 was mostly about the Super Bowl, but there was some attempt to discuss recruiting, namely the fact that the same teams are on top of the recruiting rankings every year. The discussion wasn't especially interesting, but at least the effort was there. The discussion on 790 was whether it is appropriate for high school stars to announce their college decisions in press conferences.

This is exactly what drives me crazy about sports talk radio in general and Mayhem in the AM specifically: the devolution of sports discussion to simplistic moral judgments. This discussion yesterday was about athletes being jerks when they (or their entourages) don't tip appropriately. The discussion this morning was another foray into the world of deciding what behavior is acceptable for athletes. My commute is generally about 20 minutes; I don't need to spend it listening to three middle-aged guys doing a bad imitation of Judith Martin. Any idiot can judge someone else's behavior. Before my commute was half done, I had started listening to The Solid Verbal podcast after muttering to myself "what the hell took me so long?" Oddly enough, the discussion was about actual topics relating to recruiting.

My tolerance for sports talk radio waxes and wanes.  During football season, I listen because there is some coverage of the games that interest me.  Later in the season, it was enjoyable listening to Steak Shapiro overrate the Falcons yet again.  (Listening to him discuss the Falcons is like surveying the emotions of a small boy during movie previews.)  With football done, I am less likely to listen because the local shows are going to put even more emphasis of schtick.

Vickkampf: He's Back

Well, this has been a fun week to be a Falcons fan. After much excitement in the offseason and a prediction from Peter King that the team will make the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history, the team laid an egg in Chicago on Sunday, getting buried by a Bears team that no one respects. After being promised a more explosive offense, we saw a damp squib of an attack produce exactly six points. The concerns from last year - Mike Mularkey's bland play-calling, Matt Ryan playing like crap on the road, etc. - appear unresolved. So why has it been a fun week? Because Mike Vick is coming to town with the NFC favorites, which has forced a critical analysis of where this team is four years after Vick's departure. This isn't just any week in an NFL city where the home team got off to a bad start in week one. With a significant portion of the Falcons' fan base still sore over the fact that Vick is no longer under center for the Falcons (how the Vickstapo think that the team could have waited patiently for him while he served a stint in a federal penitentiary, I'll never know), the question of "how much better off are we?" is a pertinent one.

The funny thing for me is that I've been listening to 790 the Zone, which can come off like Pravda Flowery Branch, and the defense of the Falcons is remarkably similar to the same defense that we heard in 2005 and 2006 when the team was obviously heading off the rails. (OK, my criticism here is mainly of Steak Shapiro, a living embodiment of the maxim that one does not have to be good at one's job in order to be successful.) Back then, when it was becoming apparent that the Falcons were not a contender in the NFC, the defense of Vick and the Falcons was "he's a winner." In Vick's first three years as a starter, the Falcons made the playoffs twice and the third season, Vick was out for 12 games with a broken leg. Moreover, the Falcons won playoff games in each of Vick's two trips to the postseason before losing in Philadelphia both times. So yeah, the Falcons didn't look good in 2005-06 and there were worrying signs that Vick was regressing (his accuracy was spotty, his footwork was bad, he wasn't dropping back in the pocket properly, etc.), but Vick is a winner! Look at his record as a starter!

How did that turn out? If any fan base should be wary of "look at the quarterback's record as a starter," it's the Falcons' one. As it turns out, building a team properly and coaching it well matters. The Eagles built excellent rosters, they are well-coached, and they have won consistently. The Falcons had a pair of flash-in-the-pan seasons, we thought that we were the Eagles, but our two trips to Philly in January should have told us that we were not. Now, Vick is playing in Philly, he's twice the quarterback that he was in his final two seasons in Atlanta, and we ought to be reminded that judging a quarterback based on wins and losses is a fool's errand.

The second defense of the current iteration of the Falcons' offense that Shapiro repeats ad nauseam is that they were fifth in the NFL in points scored last year. I can't tell if Steak is being willfully blind here, if he isn't smart enough to understand his poor use of statistics, or if the format of sports radio simply eschews intelligent use of numbers. Shapiro is a former gambler, so maybe he ought to consider the fact that most Vegas sharps - the guys who pay their hefty mortgages by making better predictions than the general gambling public - base their statistical models on yards per play. By that measure, the Falcons were 25th in the NFL offensively in 2010. The Ryan-led passing game was 25th in yards per pass attempt. Account for touchdowns and interceptions and the Falcons jump all the way to 13th in adjusted yards per attempt. (The numbers are all here.) Or, let's look at Football Outsiders' numbers. They pegged the Falcons has having the tenth-best offense in the league, which is good but is a far cry from fifth. Using their weighted DVOA, which gives extra weight to performances later in the year (and remember that Shapiro is a guy who bitches about the lack of a playoff in college football because the point of sports to him is to get a team playing well at the end of the season), and the Falcons drop to 13th.

There is all manner of noise in the points scored stat. If a team has good field position, then it will score more points. If a team has a defense that forces turnovers, then it will score more points. If it has a defense and special teams that score touchdowns, then it will score more points. If it is playing against a weak schedule, then it will score more points. All of these factors were in play for the Falcons last year. Their special teams ranked second in the NFL. They scored five non-offensive touchdowns. They were seventh in turnovers forced. Moreover, fully half of their schedule was composed of the worst team in football (the Panthers), the worst division in football (and possibly in NFL history - the NFC West), and the Bengals and Browns (combined record: 9-23). That's how you end up scoring the fifth-most points in the NFL despite an underwhelming offensive coordinator and a young quarterback who is giving off a worrying aroma, just like the last young quarterback who excited Falcons fans.

Steak Shapiro Knows How You Should Feel

One of the virtues of writing for a major newspaper as opposed to an eclectic (read: marginal) blog in the hinterlands of the Internet is that a writer can gauge how a fan base is feeling at a given time.  Because of his position, Mark Bradley gets to interact with tens of thousands of Atlanta sports fans by e-mail, Twitter, and the comments sections of his articles.  So, when Bradley writes that his sense is that Falcons fans aren't especially excited for the upcoming season, he is making an interesting observation.  I can watch the same games that Bradley does and come to my own conclusions as to what I just saw.  I can’t, however, claim to have my finger on the pulse of how Atlanta fans are feeling about a given issue. Bradley can, so when he says that Falcons fans don’t seem as excited about the upcoming season as one would expect for a team that just went 13-3, he is performing a useful function.

Based on the emotionally incontinent* reaction of Steak Shapiro, we should feel differently.  It was hard to tell from his rant whether Shapiro is mad with Bradley for reaching an incorrect conclusion (although, this being sports talk radio, Shapiro didn’t offer any evidence for his assertion) or whether he is mad at Falcons fans for feeling this way.  The claim appeared to be something along the lines of “the franchise is in much better shape than it was before, so how can you people not be fired up!?!  Have I mentioned that we are the new home of the Falcons?”  (I’m not pretending to be quoting him directly.)  Well, yeah, but saying that the franchise is exceeding its historical norm is damning with faint praise. 

* – I stole that term from Graham Hunter, who used it to describe Jose Mourinho.

I found the rant to be remarkably lacking in self-awareness for a couple reasons.  First, Shapiro was mockingly citing the names of the fans that Bradley cited in the article.  Hello, you’re a sports talk radio host!  Your whole format is based on giving a voice to average fans.**  The implication of your criticism that Bradley put quotes from Average Joes on the front cover of the paper is that a newspaper is a more legitimate format than sports talk radio and should not reduce itself to quoting the ticket-buying proletariat.  Second, your whole view of the sports world is buzz-based.*  Is buzz only legitimate when you agree with it?  When the buzz isn’t against your commercial interests?

* – Man, it’s odd to read what I wrote six years ago and say to myself that I was once an unapologetic fan of the format.  I guess that was the age before podcasts.  

** – And for f***’s sake, please stop referring to commenters on AJC articles as “bloggers.”  The people who call your station are not hosts or analysts, so why would you make the equivalent mistake about people using the Internet?

Personally, I’m not overly excited about the Falcons season for two main reasons.  First, my two loves are college football and European soccer and both are starting their seasons at the same time as the Falcons.  With a finite amount of intellectual and emotional energy, thinking about the Falcons’ pass rush comes in behind Al Borges designing an offense for Denard Robinson, the prospect of Isaiah Crowell tearing through holes, and Cesc and Alexis Sanchez fitting into the best XI in the world.  I’m unusual in liking soccer so much, but I am hardly unusual in this market in thinking that the NFL is dessert after the main course is served on Saturday.  That’s how this market operates.  Second, my view is that the Falcons were a mirage last year, a nine- or ten-win team masquerading as a 13-win team.  I doubt that there is wide-spread belief that the Falcons were not a great team last year because of their yards-per-play margin, but I do suspect that there is a general sense that the team wasn’t as good as its record.  Fans in this market watch enough NFL to know that there are often teams that have great records in a given year and then regress to the mean.  I would guess that the Falcons fan base is taking a wait-and-see approach because they remember that at this time last year, the Vikings and Cowboys were coming off of seasons where they were the second- and third-best teams in the NFC.  Those teams both finished 6-10 in 2010.  But why should historical memory get in the way of a good buzz?

And one last, related point: it’s hilarious to me to listen to a sports talk radio host try to use the “don’t overrate the importance of a small sample size playoff over the large sample size regular season” argument when it suits his purposes.  Shapiro constantly rants about the fact that there is no playoff in college football.  He killed the Braves for their postseason failures in the first part of the Aughts.  Now, his personal affection for the Falcons and the people who run the franchise has caused him to see the light that putting all importance on playoff results might not be the most rational way to evaluate a team or a season. 

I Invented a Tag Just For This Sort of Occasion

Perry Laurentino this morning (and I'm paraphrasing): Jarvis Jones being eligible is very important for Georgia because the pressure in a 3-4 defense comes from the outside linebackers and Georgia didn't have that last year. Really, Perry?

That's OK. Georgia football isn't big in this market. I'm sure that no one else noticed.

My New Game

It's very simple. I listen to sports radio on the way to work in the morning (most of my podcasts are either taking the summer off or are operating a little below normal levels) and wait for a discussion of an event that actually took place on a field or a court. I'll admit that starting this game the week before the All-Star Break was a little unfair, but I had a solid, one-week streak going. During that week, I was enlightened on the following topics:

• Steak Shapiro going to New Orleans for the wedding of Tulane's play-by-play guy;


• How excited the 680 morning crew were to see Zookeeper;


• Floyd Mayweather being a "punk" by burning hundred-dollar bills at a club;


• Nick Cellini deciding not to go to a friend's 40th birthday party in Vegas because the group going was going to waste hundreds of dollars on table service (no s***, they discussed this without a hint of irony one day after venting about Mayweather wasting money); and


• Wall-to-wall James Harrison discussion (nothing lights the fire of sports radio hosts like negative comments about teammates).

Truly, this is sports radio in name only.

So this morning, Sandra Golden finally snapped the streak by discussing her experience watching the Women's World Cup Final, so I only made it a little more than a week without hearing a discussion about an actual sporting event. The discussion on 790 was on the changes at 680, which Shapiro naturally credited to 790 winning in the afternoon slot.

In reality, the change in the lineup could be a good harbinger for sports radio in this town. I've never been a big fan of Buck & Kincaid, mainly because Buck isn't especially interesting to me and Kincaid fills out the caricature of a sports radio host to a "T": opinionated Northeasterner who spends as much time trying to rile up his audience as he does thinking of something intelligent to say. In other words, emotion over intellect.* I much prefer Matt Chernoff and Chuck Oliver because they seem less emotionally manipulative. In fact, I reached the decision that the sports radio medium had left me** when I realized that the two local shows that I like the most - Chernoff & Oliver on 680 and Tony Barnhart & Wes Durham on 790 - are both in the wasteland of late morning and that it's probably not an accident that the shows with the best sports content are in the worst slots, while the "how can I titillate or annoy the most people?" shows get drive time. Putting a likeable, sports-heavy show in PM drive time is a good step.***

* - Shapiro made the point that the comments to Rodney Ho's AJC articles on sports talk radio reflect the strength of the medium because of the passion displayed by the commenters. By the same reasoning, I suppose that the race wars that break out in the comments sections of news articles show the strength of American democracy. If your sole goal is to rile people up to the point that they express how much you annoy them, then yes, you are a success. If your goal is that people get out of their cars when they get to their homes or offices and say to themselves "that was a quality product and a good use of my time; I'm happy with how I just spent my commute," then hundreds of negative comments on an AJC article are not an indicator of success. It's like the difference between reading intelligent sports commentary on the Internet (and Alex Massie is right; the college football blogosphere is rife with smart analysis) and "look, boobs!" posts on Deadspin. The latter gets a ton of clicks, but at the expense of credibility. As some guy from Hibbing once sang, all the money you made will never buy back your soul.

** - No lineup change is going to address the fundamental issue that sports talk radio has, which is that it's inferior to a good podcast. If my choice is to listen to a 30-minute interview with Tim Vickery or a seven-minute interview with Darren Rovell, followed by a lengthy commercial break and then recitation of scores that I can get on my phone at a moment's notice, I am going to choose the former every time. Even when the local stations get good guests and assuming for the sake of argument that the hosts asked good questions, the chopped up format of sports talk radio prevents the guests from ever getting into detail with their answers. The format has not evolved with technology, specifically the facts that: (1) listeners now have commercial-free options; and (2) there is no point in wasting time on scores that listeners can get with ease if they are so inclined.

*** - Though Cellini has scratched his schtick itch a bit too much in the morning slot, my favorite drive time show on either channel was the Cellini-Dimino afternoon program. Oliver & Chernoff seem like a good replacement for that.

Why Commentary is so Dumb

Here's a great column from an anonymous player across the pond making the point that players are not interested in what is said by pundits:

With top-level football being so complex, it is very difficult to deconstruct a live game within a couple of minutes of it being over, and because of this the "analysis" is usually reduced to goals and individual performance. But the fact that many pundits don't even try to scratch beneath the surface, despite knowing what it takes to win a match at this level, annoys me. It's the trivialisation of what we do by people that we used to call our own and, more importantly, deprives the viewer of some very interesting tit-bits that would, I feel, add to the entertainment.

This point is both intuitive and fascinating. On the one hand, it would stand to reason that former coaches and players would be able to provide insights that go above and beyond those of people like me who did not play games on a high level. On the other hand, as is drilled into our heads every time we listen to Lou Holtz and Mark May try to explain what we just saw, the level of commentary from former coaches and players is, to use the English term, dross.

So why is that? It can't be that former coaches and players are unable to understand what they see. As the anonymous player writing for The Guardian points out, modern footballers are subject to an incredibly complex set of instructions. The same would be true for American football players, who have to understand incredibly complicated offensive and defensive systems. (A related point that has been percolating in my head: with modern college and pro football schemes getting more ornate, an underrated, but critical skill for modern coaches is the ability to explain difficult concepts to players who sometimes might not be the sharpest tools in the shed.)

If we're not talking about an inability to explain what has actually happened on the field, then there have to be other factors at work. I can think of two. First, studio pundits have to talk in 30-60 second bursts and they have to say something that the viewer will remember. The same factor that drags down our political discourse also drags down the quality of commentary. In the same way that it's hard to explain the various options for addressing the U.S.'s long-term debt dilemma in 60 seconds, it's also hard to explain what Alabama was doing with their inside linebackers to negate Florida's zone read plays. The format lowers the quality.

The second factor is that inane commentary is a feature, not a bug. For whatever reason (mostly to ensure that the product can be understood by the dumbest person watching), commentary in cliches seems to be valued by editors and producers everywhere. I have little doubt that if Mark May gave a good, detailed explanation for why Ohio State is getting consistent pressure on the quarterback and why Penn State is failing to deal with their pressure schemes, he would have a producer in his ear telling him that what he just said is unlikely to produce the desired emotional reaction.

The inane reaction to Jay Cutler's injury against Green Bay is a perfect example. This was the dominant factor in the post-game coverage. Both of the local sports talk morning shows were prattling on about it for at least two days thereafter. Why? Because it drives an immediate emotional reaction. It's easy to make unprovable statements about a guy's character and it's certain that a whole bunch of people with IQs of 95 can understand and call in to vent about that p**** quarterback. It's not as easy to explain why Green Bay was able to move the ball at will on its first two possessions and then failed to score an offensive point for the rest of the game. Thus, we end up with coverage that the very players being discussed view as not worth a second thought.

Not Bad for a Terrible Baseball Town

I don't want to talk about the Braves' performance last night against a last-minute fill-in for the Nats, so let's talk about local TV and radio ratings. Through Sports Media Watch, I found this article, which lists how teams have been followed in their local markets. The Braves' ratings are up this year, although they're still only in the middle of the pack in baseball. I did find it interesting that the Braves, who play in the sometimes-proclaimed worst sports city in the Milky Way, are one place in the local ratings away from the Yankees, who play in a city that some in the media (usually based in New York, a shocking coincidence) proclaim as the best baseball city in the country. As a national proposition, the Yankees are a more popular team because of their legions of bandwagonistas. If we are just judging sports towns, in 2010, they aren't penetrating their local market any better than the Braves are and they are behind 11 other teams in that regard.

(Two counters. First, the Yankees have to share their market with another team. Second, this might be a particularly good year for the Braves because they are in first place and they have unleashed Jason Heyward on the world. Then again, the Yankees are the defending champions, which one would think would cause a bounce in the local ratings. I'm not sure how a team wins the World Series and then sees its local ratings go down the next year. Maybe New Yorkers have figured out that only October matters? Viva college football!)

The Braves are also doing very well in the local radio market. They are fifth in baseball (behind four Midwestern markets) in local radio ratings among men 25-54. 680 the Fan has to be thrilled with that development. 680 has done a great job of developing Braves programming before and after the games such that they have a pretty seamless product. Their Braves coverage is probably a large reason why 680 is killing 790 the Zone in the ratings. 790's fundamental problem is that they don't appear especially local (the hiring of David Pollack for the afternoon spot - a great defensive end and a great guy, but not an especially interesting radio personality - was an overcompensation for this problem), whereas 680 figured out quicker that this market is about SEC football first, the Braves second, the Falcons third, and then everything else coming behind. Landing the Braves, especially in a banner season for the team, has turned out to be a coup.

Instathoughts on USA 2 Slovenia 2

Overall, a good result that feels strangely empty. The US shouldn't have many problems with an Algeria team that will almost certainly have one foot on the plane. (Note: I'm sure I was saying the same thing about our final match with Poland eight years ago.) It is very unlikely that a win over Algeria will not send the US into the knock-out stage. And with Germany losing and looking vulnerable, the premium for winning the group has gone out the window. I ought to be thrilled with the guts that the US team showed by fighting back from 2-0 down in the second half. (What was it that everyone says about this team being inconsistent?) Still, there's such a feeling of frustration because the winning goal was waved off because Michael Bradley managed to find himself in an "offside" position as a result of being tackled in the box. Swirl that one around in your mouth for a moment.

Lotsa thoughts:

1. The US looked really good on free kicks. Landon Donovan's deliveries were consistently excellent and we had guys crashing to the right spots time and again. It seemed like it was a matter of time before we scored on one. Also, I was a little surprised that Slovenia - a team with a reputation as an organized, defensive side - was so slack in marking our attackers. England will have a field day on set pieces if they get the opportunities.

2. I'll repeat my gripe from eight years ago: FIFA damages the World Cup by making nice with its broad constituency by having refs from tiny countries calling big matches. In 2002, South Korea advanced to the semifinals because refs from Ecuador and Egypt were intimidated by the Koreans' fantastic crowds. Today, the US was undone because of a crew from Mali. Honestly, does anyone think that a ref from one of the poorest countries in the world is better able to handle the speed of a world class game and the pressure of making calls in front of 80,000 fans with hundreds of millions watching all over the globe? I can't claim to be an expert on the domestic league in Mali, but I'm guessing that your average ref from any one of the major European leagues, not to mention the leagues in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the US, and Japan, would be better positioned to make a close call in a critical game.

2a. And FIFA's referee selection policies are made worse by its refusal to do anything to make sure that the right call is made. FIFA hasn't gone to two refs, it hasn't put refs behind the goals (yet), and it is totally against video replay. Any one of those fixes would have increased the chances that the right call would have been made on Edu's goal. It is very difficult to be a ref or a linesman. I can think of few calls in sports that are harder to make than offside because the linesman has to see two different places within a split second. Because of the low-scoring nature of the game, refereeing decisions take on out-sized importance in futbol. These are all reasons why FIFA should be doing more to get calls right, as opposed to its current policy of sticking its collective fingers in its ears and singing "Mary had a Little Lamb."

2b. The US has had a dreadful decision go against it in the last three World Cups: the handball on the line by Frings in '02, the penalty that ended our hopes against Ghana in '06, and now the travesty of a call on Edu's winner in '10. Can we think of any notable bad calls that have gone our way? The only one that comes to mind is the penalty that Mexico should have had when they were down 1-0 in the '02 Round of 16.

2c. All that said, in futbol, you just have to accept that calls are going to be missed.

3. Maybe my view is distorted because the US played with more urgency in the second half and Slovenia was sitting on their lead, but I liked the 4-3-3. Bob Bradley moved Maurice Edu into a proper holding role, which we don't have in the 4-4-2, put Michael Bradley into a more offensive midfield spot alongside Benny Feilhaber, and then pushed Donovan and Dempsey into forward positions. That formation makes sense for a couple reasons. First, the strength of this team is clearly in the offensive positions, so why not go with an offensive formation? Play to your strengths instead of compensating for your weaknesses. Second, the 4-3-3 gives more defined roles. Right now, we have two central midfielders, but their roles are mixed between offense and defense. In the 4-3-3, we would have Edu tasked with shielding the back four (which they desperately need) and Bradley in a more advanced position to take advantage of his Gerrard-esque ability to crash the box. The US has given up three goals in this tournament, all right down the middle and all in the space that would be covered by someone playing the classic Makelele role. The downside to a 4-3-3 would be that Dempsey and Donovan would have to run their tails off to provide help for the left and right backs. That said, maybe encouraging opponents to play down the wings and cross would play to the strength of our centerbacks. That certainly worked against Spain last summer, although Spain is a unique case.

4. Demerit and Gooch have played together for ages, but they are not doing a good job of communicating. Also, with Gooch slowed by his knee injury, we have two slow centerbacks and we can only get away with one.

5. Did anyone else notice on Landon's goal that he didn't have a passing option because Feilhaber ran into Dempsey? They both went to the same spot.

6. Boy, this tournament has gotten a lot better after the first set of games. The goals are suddenly coming in a flood. I'm happy to have been wrong.

7. Assuming that England beats Algeria by more than one goal, Slovenia is going to have to play to win against England. Let's see how a naturally defensive team does in that situation. They were in the same spot in their second leg match against Russia and they pulled it off, but it's easier to go for the win at home as opposed to at a neutral site.

Like Picking a Rooting Interest on the Eastern Front

Call me crazy, but as a practicing Jew, I am normally inclined to take the side of the recipient of an anti-Semitic slur as opposed to the deliverer. In this case, I'm not so sure. I mean, just look at this picture:



If a picture says a thousand words, then this shot of a preening, pretentious mug is an essay on why I haven't listened to sports talk radio in this town in weeks. I don't doubt that Rocker went apeshit on Shapiro. As Chris Rock said about the Siberian tiger than mauled Roy Horn, that tiger didn't go crazy; that tiger went tiger. I also don't doubt that Shapiro did nothing to de-escalate the situation and is likely reveling in the attention that the incident has created. I can only imagine what Mayhem was like on Monday morning.

(Two notes: first, I wasn't there, so this is all speculation on my part; and second, Rocker doesn't think he referenced Shapiro being Jewish. He doesn't deny using the term "faggot," I guess because it's more socially acceptable to be bigoted against gays than it is against Jews. Just ask Ann Coulter.)

It Must Be Idiot Day

So I was driving to lunch and in the space of five minutes, Colin Cowherd directed an interview with Peter Gammons about Joba Chamberlain starting to a discussion about how Boston teams are run so much better than New York teams because the culture in Boston (not the sports culture, mind you, but the culture of the entire metropolis) is based on being smart, while the culture of New York is based on "Trump-style flash without substance." (I'm paraphrasing a little there, but not much.) ESPN is apparently so powerful that they can take a mediocrity like Cowherd from the West Coast and turn him into a Boston homer. Well done.

In case you can't figure this out on your own, here's why Cowherd's position is idiotic:

1. The Red Sox didn't win a World Series title for 86 years. The Patriots didn't win a Super Bowl (or an AFL equivalent) for the first 41 years of their existence. The Bruins haven't won a Stanley Cup since Bobby Orr was on the ice. The Celtics haven't made the NBA Finals for 21 years. I'll grant you that Boston teams have been incredibly successful this decade, but for Cowherd to be right, Boston must have collectively gone from dumb to smart this decade. In other words, if the culture of Boston truly infects its sports teams, then why were its teams (save for the Celtics) such notable failures for decades prior.

2. Maybe I missed the result of the last Super Bowl, but I seem to recall a New York team beating a Boston team. Am I mistaken here?

3. The Celtics are in the NBA Finals because former Celtic Kevin McHale gift-wrapped one of the top ten players in basketball to the Celtics. In so doing, he got significantly less in return than he could have gotten from other teams, most notably Phoenix. In so doing, McHale made the trade to his former team while negotiating with a former teammate. The lesson from McHale's actions? Apparently, the Boston culture that makes its citizens smarter apparently skipped him. Also, it helps to be lucky...but why acknowledge that when we can make grandiose claims that a city's teams are winning because the residents of the city are smarter than the residents of other cities?

Incidentally, Gammons was agreeing happily. What the hell happened to him? Also, Gammons was complaining about how much he has to pay for season tickets at Fenway. Aren't journalists supposed to watch games for free from the press box? Aren't season tickets supposed to be for, you know, fans?

Three Final Thoughts on Matt Ryan

1. By drafting Ryan, the Falcons are falling back into the exact same trap they faced with Mike Vick. With Vick, the Falcons faced the problem that they had committed a huge amount of money, including an enormous signing bonus, to a player who produced decent, but not outstanding results. The team was paying Vick to be Brady or Manning, but he was far short of that level. The Falcons could only win with Vick if they surrounded him with great talent, but Vick's cap number, combined with less than stellar drafting from Rich McKay, prevented that possibility.

With Ryan, the Falcons are going to pay an arm and a leg for a quarterback who will almost certainly not produce initially (rookie quarterbacks so rarely do) and whose upside is almost certainly not Brady/Peyton Manning and very likely isn't Roethlisberger/Eli Manning. Even if Ryan turns into a pretty good quarterback, he's going to be paid like a star, which means the Falcons are right back at square one. And that analysis ignores the opportunity cost involved with passing on an excellent defensive tackle to take a decent quarterback.

2. Ryan is not coming into a good situation with the Falcons. Leaving aside the mediocre receiving corps and substandard offensive line, Falcons fans are not happy with the drafting of Ryan. Speaking in broad stereotypes (always a recipe for disaster), the Falcons' fan base is primarily composed of two groups. The first group are African-Americans, some of whom still like Mike Vick and most of whom are well aware of the racial coding that goes on when the media slobbers all over Ryan for being a "leader" and "polished." They aren't going to be overly excited for a great white hope, given the circumstances. The second group are college football fanatics who view Falcons games as dessert after the main course on Saturday. (I would put myself in this group. I would also assert that there isn't tremendous overlap between group one and group two because college football unfortunately tends to be a white sport, especially in the South. I digress.) Southern college football fans, almost universally, view Ryan as an average college quarterback who has been hyped beyond his merits because he played in the Northeast. This group is also not happy with the Ryan selection.

Whereas most top five picks are greeted with unabashed, oft-irrational enthusiasm by the fans of the teams that draft them, Ryan is not going to get the same love in Atlanta. Atlanta fans tend to be a lot more positive and forgiving than, say, Philly fans, but the particulars of Ryan's drafting mean that he is going face an especially empathetic fan base. This is why the purported rationale of the Falcons to take Ryan for marketing purposes is so weak. I am promising myself that I am going to root for Ryan, even if his success will mean that I will be spectacularly wrong about the decision to pick him, but my leash will be short. OK, that's a bad choice of words when discussing a Falcons QB.

3. Steak Shapiro was, as one could expect, insufferable this morning when discussing the Ryan pick. He was totally dismissive of the idea that Arthur Blank had anything to do with the selection, even while admitting that Blank wanted the Falcons to take Ryan. Gee, if the managing partner of my firm didn't order me to take a particular course in a case, but expressed an opinion that I should do something, do you think I might do it? Steak then naturally started his defense of the Ryan selection with the subjective analysis that most support of Ryan takes. He cited his "leadership," as if players are going to follow a young quarterback if that quarterback doesn't produce on the field. For the cherry on top of the sundae, Steak was mortified when a caller compared the pick to David Carr and pointed out that Ryan just wasn't that good in college. His two defenses:

a. Ryan's 67% completion percentage. For the record, Steak, Ryan completed 59.3% of his passes last year, not that it's your job to know about sports or anything. Maybe you picked the wrong name for the bar your station partnered.

b. Ryan played well against Georgia Tech. So did Sean Glennon (22/32, 296 yards, 9.3yards per attempt, 2 TDs, no picks) and I'm not going out on a limb by saying that Glennon isn't going to be a top five pick in the Draft any time soon. Ryan was poor for 115 of the 120 minutes he played against Virginia Tech and just about the entire game against Florida State. I would say that he ran up his numbers against bad teams, but he was mediocre against N.C. State and UMass. I guess BC's receivers must have been so bad that they couldn't get open against the Minutemen.

Peter King has a Feeling!

You'll never guess who Peter King thinks he thinks the Falcons are taking on Sunday:

3. Atlanta. QB Matt Ryan, Boston College. Did everyone get the hint nine days ago when Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff borrowed owner Arthur Blank's G-4 jet for the day and took coach Mike Smith over to Baton Rouge for a love-in with Dorsey ... and then Dorsey visited the Falcons' facility last week to see everyone else in the organization?

How's this for a surprise: I say Atlanta will take Ryan even if Dorsey's on the board. Then everyone will say it was the owner's pick. Not so. With Dimitroff's background in football, I'm convinced he'd never have taken this job if he felt Blank's heavy hand on his shoulder for the first pick. It's logical to think Blank wants Ryan for the billboard-on-I-85 factor. But if this pick is Ryan, it will be because Dimitroff and Smith think it's best for the franchise.

Now for Ryan. My buddy Don "Donnie Brasco'' Banks is always telling me how gullible I am. Brasco likes baseball, and I called him a couple of years ago after seeing Juan Acevedo pitch in a spring-training game and told him, "Juan Acevedo's gonna win 15 games this year.'' He didn't come close. I admit to getting sucked in a bit by players I like. So write this down, you who keep records of how badly I screw up predictions: Matt Ryan is going to be a star in the NFL. You can feel it being around him -- he's got that I-won't-be-denied demeanor Peyton Manning had 10 years ago. He's got a plus arm, he knows how to get players around him to play better, and he loves having the ball in his hands with the game on the line.

A couple thoughts:

1. Consistent with his pattern of relying upon entirely subjective, fuzzy reasoning when it comes to all matters Matt Ryan, Peter King thinks that Matt Ryan is going to be a star because "you can feel it being around him" and he apparently has Peyton Manning's demeanor. You know what else Peyton Manning had, Peter? Good stats. A productive college offense. He did not provoke universal reactions of "meh" from everyone who watched him play in college.

2. Here's my concern about the Arthur Blank dynamic here. If we are all assuming that Blank wants to take Ryan because he is smitten with the young man (and Blank's affections for his franchise quarterbacks have always led to such good results; why can't he be the jilted lover who gets burned by a cheating spouse and vows to never date again?) or because he wants to do so for marketing purposes (because what more would an African-American-heavy fan base like more than a quarterback with the nickname "Matty Ice"?), then that presents problems for Thomas Dimitroff. If Dimitroff takes Ryan and Ryan is a bust, then Blank can always excuse the mistake by saying "I was wrong about Ryan as well." If Dimitroff takes Glenn Dorsey and Dorsey is a bust, then Blank will raise an eyebrow and say "I told you so." It's always safer to follow the boss's lead, even if the Boss is not explicit in his interference. If I were Dimitroff, I'd play off of Blank's love for Keith Brooking and sell the Dorsey pick as a pre-requisite to making Brooking a passable option at middle linebacker.

3. As if you needed any more confirmation that taking Ryan would be a bad move for the Falcons, Beau Bock heartily endorsed the move on the radio this morning because the "Falcons need a quarterback." Beau, the Falcons need a lot of things. The mere fact that you have a need does not lead to the conclusion that you should take a player about 40 picks too early because he plays a position of need.

Late Game Execution Strikes Back

I was just about ready to lose my shit on Friday night. The Hawks were muddling around in a tight game with the wretched New York Knicks, despite the fact that the game was critical for the Hawks. The team had, as usual, gone into offensive hibernation in the fourth quarter, alternating bad perimeter shots and turnovers. The Hawks had the ball down one with about 90 seconds to go, so I was waiting for the Joe Johnson iso, followed by something rash. Kudos to Mike Woodson, because the team ran clever plays on the next two possessions to take a three-point lead that they then nursed home.

On the first possession, Josh Smith came to the top of the key as if to set a high screen for Mike Bibby, but just before setting the screen, he rolled hard to the basket. Zach Randolph, true to form, did not follow and Bibby hit Smith for an alley-oop dunk. The Hawks properly spread the floor so there was no help for Randolph. After a stop, the Hawks then ran a play in which Bibby screened for Joe Johnson on the right side and then flared away. Johnson dribbled towards the corner, taking two defenders with him, and then swung the ball back to Bibby for an open jumper to put the Hawks up by three. Both possessions represented simple basketball, but it was effective and it was just nice to see the Hawks create good shots at the end of a close game. We'll ignore the fact that the shots came against the defensively and motivationally challenged Knickerbockers. Both possessions were also aided in no small part by the team finally having a point guard who can handle, pass, and shoot.

After the win over the Knicks, the Hawks put up a credible effort last night in Boston before losing by ten. The Celtics are an excellent defensive team and they mostly squashed the Hawks' offense at crunch time. Boston simply created better shots. Whether that's because they have better players or because they're better coached is a separate question. The Hawks might have equivalent offensive personnel if Marvin Williams and Joe Johnson were playing close to their potential, but both of them have been anchors around the team's collective neck for the last month. It's awfully hard to win in the NBA with a shooting guard shooting 41.4% and a small forward shooting 35.5%, but that's where the Hawks were in February.

And while we're on the subject of the yuck, I ought to offer a few words on Sekou Smith's scoop that Billy Knight was blocked from firing Woodson by ownership three times this season. As an initial matter, it was hilarious to listen the discussion about the article on the same radio show that pronounced Smith to be "syncophantic" towards the Hawks with nary a mention of the change in course. Kudos to the AJC, whose sports page is typically reticent to print anything like Smith's article on the disagreement between Knight and ownership.

As for the news itself, I have no reason to doubt the article, since this isn't the sort of story that sources within the organization would invent. The fact that the Hawks didn't really deny the story lends further credence. So what does the leak itself mean? Is the article intended to motivate Mike Woodson to save his job? Is it meant to undermine Woodson in advance of the Hawks firing him? Those two scenarios seem equally plausible to me. What is the import of the story? Another indictment of a fractured ownership group with excessively diffuse power? Almost certainly. A vote of no confidence in Billy Knight? I suppose that's possible, although Knight ought to have as much credibility as he'll ever have right now after completing his roster with the Bibby heist. Evidence of ownership having confidence in Mike Woodson? They do watch the games, right?

SAT Analogy Time

Steak Shapiro, a radio host who defends Arthur Blank at absolutely every turn and refused to countenance the idea that the Blank-McKay axis running the Falcons weren't football geniuses, ripped on Sekou Smith yesterday for being "syncophantic" towards the Hawks. If Steak was making the charge correctly, he would note that every bombshell comes out about the Hawks - Josh Smith allegedly fighting with teammates or Mike Woodson, the Atlanta Spirit team disagreeing vehemently over the Joe Johnson trade, etc. - comes from a source outside of Atlanta (Sports Illustrated, Peter Vescey, Detroit beat writers, etc.). Of course, that criticism wouldn't be just of Sekou, but would instead extend to the entire sports media in Atlanta, which includes, inconveniently, both sports talk stations. Instead, Steak turned it into yet another unmodified "Billy Knight (who won't come on my show) is an idiot and Mike Woodson is a terrible coach" rant that comes out every time the Hawks play poorly.

So, with that prelude out of the way, Steak Shapiro criticizing someone else for being syncophantic is the equivalent of:

a. Dick Vitale criticizing other announcers for loving Mike Krzyzewski too much;

b. John Daly calling another person a drunk;

c. Republicans in Congress criticizing other politicians for excessive spending; or

d. Oedipus getting mad and calling an enemy a motherf***er.

Not Faster, Just Better

I just can't wait for the meme to take hold that Ohio State was too slow to play with LSU. People see what they want to see when they watch games and because the stereotype is that Big Ten teams are physical and SEC teams are fast, the fact that an SEC team beat a Big Ten team will lead to that conclusion. In reality, LSU won last night for three primary reasons. First, a Jim Tressel team played bizarro Tresselball. Tresselball, as established in the 2002-3 time frame, is supposed be about great special teams play, dominating defense, and a mistake-free offensive approach that capitalizes on the weaknesses of its opponents. Ohio State lost by two touchdowns last night despite outgaining LSU 353-326 because the Bucks had three turnovers, five personal foul penalties, and two major special teams screw-ups ( a blocked field goal and a roughing the kicker penalty that prolonged an LSU touchdown drive). Ohio State looked like a talented, but sloppy team. To engage in a little Herbstreit-esque amateur psychology, they looked too geeked for the game and that emotion caused them to do all sorts of dumb, uncharacteristic things that I would associate with a Bobby Bowden team. Based on a sample size of one, I'd say that any game in which Jim Tressel is pumping his fist and carrying on like a cheerleader will be a bad one for Ohio State.

Second, LSU out-schemed Ohio State. The Bucks started the game using their one good idea: the fly pattern to Brandon Saine off of a fake pass to Beanie Wells. After that, all of the innovation came from the Tigers' sideline. The touchdown pass to Richard Dickson was a thing of beauty, as Ohio State left the tight end totally uncovered because of the unbalanced formation that LSU threw at them. Generally speaking, LSU's offense was way more diverse than Ohio State's and they kept the Bucks' defense off balance all game. On the defensive side, the blitzes dialed up by Bo Pelini consistently generated pressure and they were coming from all sorts of different angles. LSU simply did more creative things than Ohio State, which isn't bad for a team that was supposedly going to lose because of its inferior coaching staff.

(To me, the explanation for SEC teams deploying better schemes than Ohio State comes down to competitive pressure. LSU won't succeed in the SEC solely on the basis of its athletes because there are a number of teams in the conference with great talent. [This is why most of the criticism of Les Miles misses the mark. If he was just rolling Nick Saban's players out onto the field, he wouldn't be 34-6 in the SEC with a national title, a conference title, and two major bowl wins.] Thus, they have a sideline full of excellent coaches who do creative things to put their players in positions to succeed. Ohio State, on the other hand, faces only two teams in the Big Ten with comparable talent, one of which is coached by a checked-out octogenarian and the other was coached by a pretty good coach who has been gradually retiring for the past four years. Ohio State doesn't face the same pressure to maximize its talent, so they're a little like Saudi Arabia right now.)

Third, by the end of the game, LSU was whipping Ohio State up front. Ohio State did a reasonable job of handling LSU's defensive front in the first quarter, but as the game progressed, LSU's defensive front got better and better. They negated Beanie Wells and they were getting after Todd Boeckman on just about every passing down. Conversely, LSU's offensive line played better and better after the first quarter. Bill Walsh said that the most important thing in football is a fourth quarter pass rush and last night's game illustrated the point.

See, it's possible to analyze a game without once relying on the speed crutch. And the great thing is that I don't have to try to explain why LSU's speed was decisive when Ohio State's 240-pound tailback ran away from the LSU secondary on the fourth play from scrimmage.

Random stuff:

1. Could someone explain to me why Mayhem in the AM spent roughly half of their time this morning regurgitating the Roger Clemens "news" from yesterday? If you're "Atlanta's sports leader" and the Atlanta market is dominated by college football, then why are you spending so much time on the morning following the college football national championship game discussing an issue that is much more of a Bob Ryan-Mike Lupica story (read: something about which the Northeastern media obsesses and then assumes that the rest of the country cares)? For the love of G-d, you people were at the game! Tell me about the game! Tell me something I might have missed not being in the Superdome! Don't babble on about a story that you acknowledge is a farce! My thoughts on the steroid jihad are nicely summarized in this passage from Gary Huckabay at the Baseball Prospectus's blog:

[Henry] Waxman and his committee are displaying the basest kind of vile pandering, willing to do anything for a few minutes in front of a live camera with an opportunity to wag their atherosclerotically clubbed fingers in righteous anger. We’re talking about small widgets in a small business, that’s already done a hell of a job cleaning up their act, if you actually look at the numbers.

And before anyone gets the idea of writing me with yet another ironically juvenile “What about the children?!?!?!?” diatribe…piss off. The children are at far greater risk from the advertisement barrages that bracket innings within the game. No six year old should know who the hell Spuds MacKenzie or the Budweiser frogs are. Let’s tally up the damage to children from steroids compared to alcohol, shall we? Selective protection of the young teaches hypocrisy.

This whole issue is bulls–t, and everyone, in their heart of hearts, knows it. The collective societal masturbation on this issue is something out of Ionesco, and the number of whorish sell-outs who should resign in disgrace is climbing faster and more brazenly than Barry Bonds‘ HR totals ever did.

2. This will be a one-time admission from a Michigan grad, but when Ohio State is beaten in the national title game by a head coach from Elyria and a defensive coordinator from Youngstown, that's an indication that there's something special about football in the state of Ohio. Now, returning to our regular programming...

3. Der Wife could not believe how Hitler Youthy the Ohio State band looks in their berets and quasi-military uniforms. There, that felt much better.

4. In their heart of hearts, LSU fans need to acknowledge that they've won all three of their national titles in New Orleans and that playing at home might be a wee bit of an advantage. (Miami and USC fans need to make the same admission.) Home crowds are good for a lot of things, one of which is prolonging momentum. That seems like a relevant point to make on the morning after a game decided by a 31-0 run.

5. In the realm of things I'm excited for next year, Ryan Perrilloux in Gary Crowton's offense ranks right up there. When I put my objective hat on, I'll admit that I'm also excited to see what Beanie Wells looks like as a junior because he was pretty phenomenal as a sophomore.

6. In a reflective moment, proclaiming Georgia to be the most overrated team in the country was my worst pick of the summer and tabbing LSU as the best team in the country when everyone else was stuck on USC was the best. The weird thing is that I was totally right about Georgia for the first seven games of the year and then they had one of the most complete transformation I've ever seen from a sports team after the dance off in the end zone in Jacksonville.

Is LSU Really Lucky?

Before Mayhem dashed to commercial at 7:33 this morning after their opening to Tony Barnhart's segment (brought to you by BMW of South Atlanta, just north of your expectations!), Mike Bell and Barnhart were joking that they need to go to Las Vegas with Les Miles because Miles is really lucky right now. Since I'm already in the position of defending everything the guy does on the chance that he ends up as the next head man in Ann Arbor, I'm going to dispute the notion that Miles and LSU have been lucky. I am also doing so because I enjoy taking positions that can be supported by facts and logic.

On the evidence, there's not much of a case to be made that LSU has been lucky this year. The Tigers have been in four close games and won three of them, which isn't especially reflective of luck. They most certainly aren't Virginia (winners of five of six games decided by one score), Ohio State '02 (winners of all seven games they played decided by one score), or Georgia '02 (winners of five of six games they played decided by one score). Moreover, if you look at LSU's four close games, you can't point to any of them as being instances in which the lesser team won. Here are the yardage and first down totals from the four games:

LSU - 391 yards, 25 first downs
Florida - 314 yards, 19 first downs

LSU - 403 yards, 22 first downs
Kentucky - 375 yards, 26 first downs

LSU - 488 yards, 23 first downs
Auburn - 296 yards, 16 first downs

LSU - 475 yards, 21 first downs
Alabama - 254 yards, 20 first downs

If anything, LSU's opponents, especially Auburn and Alabama, were lucky to be in their games against the Tigers. LSU has won the yardage battle in all four games and has had more first downs in three of the four games (with the one exception being the game that LSU lost). The better argument is that LSU was unlucky to be in close games because the fluky factors (turnovers, special teams returns, their kicker having the worst night of his career, etc.). There is an argument to be made that special teams and turnovers are not necessarily random. I'll buy that special teams aren't random, but LSU's special teams aren't bad at all. The case is weaker that turnovers are not random. Phil Steele says that they are random and he's never wrong about anything. Yardage and first downs are better indica of a team's merit and LSU kicks ass in those departments.

Finally, take a gander at LSU's statistical rankings. They're in the top ten in every defensive category and in the top 25 in scoring offense and total offense. Bearing in mind that LSU has played a very difficult schedule, do they really look like a lucky team? I didn't think so.

Finally, let's compare LSU's yards per play gained and allowed against the other contenders for the national title:

LSU - 5.93 gained, 3.67 allowed, 2.26 margin
Oregon - 6.61 gained, 5.4 allowed, 1.21 margin
Oklahoma - 6.56 gained, 4.43 allowed, 2.13 margin
Missouri - 6.42 gained, 5.02 allowed, 1.4 margin
Kansas - 6.35 gained, 4.19 allowed, 2.16 margin
West Virginia - 6.7 gained, 4.17 allowed, 2.53 margin
Ohio State - 5.96 gained, 3.56 allowed, 2.4 margin

Since LSU has played a demonstrably tougher schedule than any of these teams, save Oregon, it can't be said that LSU is lucky to be where they are. Only West Virginia and Ohio State are ahead of LSU in yards per play margin and they haven't come close to LSU in terms of quality of opponents. The best conclusion from this comparison, by the way, is that Oregon and (to a slightly lesser extent) Missouri are poseurs as national title contenders because of their defenses.

(PS - I did this dance last year and reached the startling conclusion that Notre Dame was a fraud. Actually, in retrospect, the analysis was fairly useful, as it flagged Florida as being in the class of the top contenders and it spied USC's weakness.)

And one other thought: how does Tony Barnhart confidently state out of one corner of his mouth that "if [LSU] play[s] Ohio State, the Tigers will win" (call me crazy, but Barnhart is never this assertive except when he's playing to his audience and mocking the Big Ten) and out of the other corner of his mouth deride LSU as lucky? If LSU is lucky and therefore not as good as their record, then how can it be such a certainty that they would beat Ohio State?

Random [Insert Vulgar Word for Feces Here]

BC-Virginia Tech

If you want a classic case of sports talk radio overreaction, take Steak Shapiro's take this morning that Matt Ryan solidified his place in the top five of the Draft, as well as his Heisman candidacy, with last night's rally. I'll freely admit that I didn't watch the end of the game. I turned it off after another Ryan interception in the fourth quarter. I was muttering to myself about Virginia Tech winning unwatchable games in which they are remarkably unpenalized for never having had an offense other than the "Vick run around!" set. Being the unreconstructed Wahoo, I was also whining in my head about the Hokies scoring a touchdown that wasn't a touchdown and a field goal on a drive kept alive by an appallingly weak pass interference call.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up and found that the Eagles had rallied for a 14-10 win. Imagine my total lack of surprise that Shapiro glossed over Ryan's weak performance for the first 55 minutes of the game and solely focused on the last five, ignoring the fact that Ryan's inability to hit his receivers was the reason why his heroics were needed in the first place. (and add in the fact that Tech's putrid offense is the only reason why the score wasn't 24-0 at the time). I'll grant you that Virginia Tech whipped BC's offensive line for the first 55 minutes and the rain also made it hard to throw the ball. I'll also grant you that his first touchdown throw was a thing of beauty. That said, Matt Ryan has never impressed me as anything more than a guy who can throw underneath accurately and move around in the pocket well. He's a second-tier Brian Brohm. He should be a second- or third-round pick. Instead, because he plays in Boston, he's a Heisman front-runner. Let's just say that there would be something very wrong in the universe if Boston College picks up its second Heisman Trophy this year and Alabama and Tennessee are still sitting on nil in that category. Let's also say that if Dennis Dixon plays well against USC this weekend, there are no reasons other race and geography why he shouldn't be miles ahead of Ryan in the Heisman race. Speaking of which...

USC-Oregon

This is the weekend that USC finally puts together a performance that leaves the rest of the country saying "yup, that's the team that we all voted #1 before the season." USC showed the pattern last year of going through the motions against unranked opponents and then kicking ass when the spotlight was on. Well, the spotlight is on this weekend and Oregon's crowd will almost certainly get the Trojans' attention. USC is still the best team in the country when they're focused. I am not at all a John David Booty fan, but Oregon's defense isn't good enough to punish USC for their weakness under center. Additionally, USC's front seven are going to present major, major challenges for Oregon.

Georgia-Florida

I have a pretty good feeling about Georgia this weekend. This season is full of examples of teams playing well coming out of bye weeks. Remember Tennessee's performance against Georgia? Or Florida's performance against Kentucky? (Note: Alabama has the week off before hosting LSU.) Georgia has their backs against the wall and will be putting everything they have into this game. Theoretically, Georgia has the personnel to exploit Florida's weak secondary: a rifle-armed quarterback and a bevy of receiving threats. The problem is that said quarterback and receivers are very inconsistent. Additionally, Georgia has been very conservative offensively this year, in part legitimately out of concern for the offensive line and in part mistakenly "protecting" the offense by being limited and predictable. This is the game in which Georgia has to open up the playbook and put some faith in its quarterback of the future. It's an interesting sink-or-swim scenario.

Defensively, Georgia has done well against Florida's offense in the past, but I think we all understand now that Meyer's offense is much better with a running threat under center. Tennessee did a fine defensive job on Florida when Chris Leak was under center (37 points in two games) and then promptly shipped 59 points to the Gators in September. Florida's offense was also more effective against LSU this year than it was when Leak was the quarterback. In other words, don't expect the defensive effort we've been accustomed to against Florida. Overall, I see a fairly high-scoring game (28-25?) and Florida winning in the end, but I certainly wouldn't take the Gators -9.5. JMHO.

Penn State-Ohio State

I like Penn State in this game for a few reasons:

1. Ohio State has a terrible history at State College. They're 2-5 at Penn State, with one of the wins coming in a very tight game against a 3-9 Penn State team. Of course, that was during the era in which Ohio State won every game by one point on field goals that hit both goalposts and the crossbar before going through. OSU won in this fashion regardless of whether they were playing Michigan or Tattnall Square Academy. G-d I hated those teams. (I didn't really dislike the '05-'06 OSU teams. I could respect them for being really good and entertaining to watch.)

2. Penn State's defense is excellent and this Ohio State offense can be shut down. At a minimum, this means that Saturday night is going to be a tight, defensive game. In said circumstances, do you trust a quarterback making his first difficult road start? A quarterback who let an inferior opponent back into the game last week with turnovers? Me neither.

3. Ohio State is unbeaten, but it bears mentioning that this fact is not important in light of the weakness of their opponents. OSU has not played a single team ranked in Sagarin's top 30. (LSU, by contrast, has played five.) They're ranked #1, but they're not really a #1 caliber team. And who the hell am I kidding? I don't like the idea of an Ohio State-Boston College snoozefest in the title game, I'm rooting against that possibility, and I don't trust my alma mater to prevent it from happening.

Charles Rogers Tried to Warn You

My review of the Weekend Smorgasbord commences...now.

Georgia-Tennessee

Georgia operated under the same misconception that Tony Barnhart was propagating last week: Tennessee is weak against the run, so Georgia should run the ball a lot. What Georgia ended up doing was that they made themselves predictable by running between the tackles on obvious running downs until the game was out of hand. What Mark Richt and Mike Bobo did is they allowed Tennessee to defend them easier. They overrated the value of Tennessee not being able to stop Florida's spread option, which is irrelevant to how the Vols would defend the Dawgs, and Cal's attack, which is also different. Cal and Florida also started by passing the Vols silly and then went to the ground game once they had a lead. Georgia got things backwards and were thus shut out in the first half. Georgia ran on their first six first and tens. By the time they determined that maybe they should throw the ball outside of obvious passing downs, they were down 28-0. I kept scribbling notes to myself like "Mike Debord would LOVE this gameplan" and "Barnhart is muttering to himself yet again that this worked in 1982."

That said, Georgia was going to lose this game regardless of whether they deployed a better offensive gameplan. Georgia is weak on the offensive and defensive lines and Tennessee exploited that ruthlessly. This Georgia team simply isn't especially good. With the upset win over Alabama being devalued in the past two weeks, Georgia looks like a team that is going to have to play well to get to 8-4. And because I'm not very high on Georgia, I'm also not buying the "Phil Fulmer saved his job" line, either. Throughout Tennessee's decline, Fulmer's saving grace has always been his ability to beat Alabama, Tennessee's arch-rival. If the Vols lose in two weeks to the Tide, then Tennessee's decision-makers will be confronted with the fact that the Vols' major rival now has a better coach and in order to compete, Tennessee is going to have to upgrade in that department. If Spurrier then beats Tennessee again, the writing will be on the wall that Tennessee has been surpassed by a program with significantly less talent. That's the nightmare scenario for Fulmer.

LSU-Florida

I don't know why I let sports radio nitwits get me worked up (especially since they are trained for that exact purpose), but I could not believe Doug Conkle (sp?) proclaiming on Sunday morning that Les Miles' decision to go for 4th and 1 from the six was the "most stupid call that ended up working." Brian from MGoBlog gets this exactly right

The final call is the least debatable. Kicking a field goal is not automatic (LSU's kicker had already missed a 36-yarder) and gives Florida the ball back with about 2:30 on the clock to drive for the win. Going, on the other hand, either leads to Florida with the ball on their own six, needing a first down to kill the game, or what actually happened: first and goal, eventual touchdown, harried Florida drive that needs to go the length of the field to win the game. Anyone with a passing familiarity of the probabilities involved here should understand that going for it is the far superior choice, but how many coaches would pass up the temptation of a chip-shot field goal there? Certainly not our current set, and probably very few across the country.

To chime in my two cents, if LSU kicks the field goal, then their chances are significantly less than 50%. First of all, they would be underdogs in overtime because Florida had a better kicker. Second, just getting to overtime would be an accomplishment because Florida would have had 2:30 to drive roughly 40-50 yards to get a field goal attempt. Given that Florida had driven into LSU territory on five of its eight possessions up to that point, UF would have had a better than 50-50 chance of getting into field goal range. Conversely, with Jacob Hester and two quarterbacks who can run, LSU's chances of converting a 4th and 1 were probably 80%, at which point they would either score a touchdown (80-90% chance of winning, depending on how long it took them to hit paydirt) or kick a field goal with very little time remaining.

What I'm really liking about this LSU team is that it looks like the first instance in which Les Miles has brought his reputation as a great coach of the running game to bear. (The fact that he had to bring in a pass-first offensive coordinator like Gary Crowton to do so is interesting.) Bo Schembechler would have been proud of the execution of that last drive. Miles has also taken to heart a lesson from Schembechler that the current Michigan coaching staff has completely forgotten, which is the importance of being multiple in the running game. Bo's offenses ran the ball so well despite the fact that their opponents knew that the run was coming because they didn't know the direction or type of run. Bo's offenses typically featured a mobile quarterback who could threaten the defense with the option, a fullback who could do damage between the tackles, and multiple tailbacks who could run all over the place. Miles' offense has all of these ingredients. (LSU's undoing might be the same as the undoing of all of those Michigan teams under Bo: a spotty passing game.) Michigan's current offense has one tailback. Michigan doesn't utilize their depth at the position, they have no running threat from the quarterback (despite the fact that Chad Henne was reasonably mobile coming out of high school), and they haven't handed to the fullback since the opening drive of the January 1, 2002 Citrus Bowl against Tennessee.

Duel of the Jews

No week would be complete without a little fact-checking of our old friend MANDEL!!! Here's where Stewart plays Soviet historian with USC:

In one unthinkable evening, the very tenets that fostered the aura of invincibility that's surrounded Carroll's program these past five years -- that no individual is irreplaceable, that no problem that comes up can't be fixed, that the Trojans' recruiting machine just keeps humming and that freshmen can step in and shine right away -- were shattered.

Apparently, Mandel missed USC losing to a good, but not outstanding Oregon State team and an exceedingly mediocre UCLA team last year. He must have also missed the Trojans doing their best to lose to Washington (at home) and Washington State. In reality, USC's loss on Saturday night was certainly surprising because the Trojans hadn't lost a home game in over six years and they lost to the worst team in the conference. However, it was not unforeseeable because they had problems with inferior opponents throughout 2006 and because their quarterback simply isn't very good. This is why the media was so foolish in anointing the Trojans as the unanimous #1 team in the land before the season.

Here is where Mandel forgets that Ohio State was leading the nation in scoring defense going into the Michigan game last year:

A year ago, the season-long No. 1 Buckeyes tried to win a national title -- and came within one game of doing it -- while contradicting the accepted adage that defense wins championships.

Yes, Ohio State's defense turned out to be something of a mirage when they faced quality offenses later in the year, but they were excellent for the first 11 games. Additionally, why would we assume that this year is different? Because the Bucks shut down Purdue, the same Purdue team that rolled up huge numbers on bad opponents in 2006 and couldn't move the ball on teams with defenses?

Here's the part where I agree with Mandel, although he doesn't get the reasoning right:

Because the Big Ten lacks a true litmus test, it's hard to say what would happen if OSU actually reached its second straight title game, but generally a great defense (the Bucks are currently No. 1 nationally in scoring defense, No. 2 in total defense) gives a team a chance against just about anybody. There's only one team in the country right now that would be a prohibitive favorite against them on a neutral field.

Leaving aside the fact that stopping Purdue doesn't give any indication that Ohio State could stop Cal, Mandel is right that LSU would be a prohibitive favorite over Ohio State. In so concluding, he might choose to mention the fact that the Bucks have never beaten an SEC opponent in a bowl game (0-1 vs. Georgia, 0-1 vs. Florida, 0-2 vs. Alabama, 0-1 vs. Auburn, 0-2 vs. South Carolina, 0-1 vs. Tennessee) and that LSU would have homefield advantage over Ohio State in the Louisiana Superdome if they met for the national title.

Here's where Mandel thinks that LSU is copying Florida's use of Tim Tebow and ignores the fact that Gary Crowton used a similar quarterback rotation last year at Oregon with Brady Leaf and Dennis Dixon:

Football coaches are notorious copy-cats, so it was almost inevitable that Florida's unique use of Tim Tebow off the bench last season en route to the national title would spawn its share of imitators. What's remarkable, however, is not only how quickly it spread to this year's new national title favorite, but just how much LSU has advanced the concept with the way it uses Matt Flynn and Ryan Perriloux.

Note the misspelling of Ryan Perrilloux's name, as well.

Here is where Mandel forgets that LSU might have to rematch Florida at a neutral site:

But the fact is, LSU just played the one team on its schedule that matches up with it athletically. Florida had a near-perfect game plan, played about as well as humanly possible, and might have won if not for the second-half turnovers. If the Tigers do lose sometime in their next six games, it will almost certainly require a "letdown" performance on their part (the type which they proved capable of against Tulane), because no other SEC team has both enough weapons on offense to score points against Glenn Dorsey and Co., and a defense that can handle all the various elements of LSU's offense.

After all, the result may be quite different in the Georgia Dome because more of those classy Florida fans will be in attendance.

I H8 the Mouse

It is bad enough that ABC/ESPN demonstrates tremendous commitment to showing every Big Ten game in their grubby little hands to the entire country while games like Cal-Oregon and Texas-Oklahoma are regionalized. It's worse that ABC blue-balled its audience in the Southeast by cutting to the Red River [Insert term connoting a battle that will pass muster with anti-violence 527s] when the Florida State-N.C. State borefest was stopped by lightning and then promptly switched back with two minutes to go and Texas about to embark on a potentially game-tying drive. I would think that ABC should cut away to a dramatic conclusion of a rivalry game even absent a weather delay. The fact that they chose to pull viewers out of that exciting game right as it was reaching its denouement is borderline criminal.

Here's What I Learned on Sports Talk Radio this Morning

Lebron James should be traded from the Cavaliers because he rooted for the Yankees last night. He clearly wants to be in New York because he is friends with Jay-Z, which explains the three-year extension that he signed with the Cavs that keeps him in Cleveland through the 2010 season. Nick Celini loses the right to ever complain about Cleveland teams losing if he's in favor of trading the best Cleveland athlete since Jim Brown because he didn't want to put Chief Wahoo on his noggin.

Marion Jones is a CHEATER!!! A "bold-faced liar!!!" LOUD NOISES!!!

Tony Joiner is a felon and should be banned from ever playing football again. Seriously, John Kincaide was pontificating about how terrible it is that Joiner sprung his girlfriend's car from a tow lot when I was driving home yesterday and, lo and behold, he was forming an angry middle-aged conservative white guy chorus with Perry Laurentino this morning on the exact same subject. And here I was thinking that sports talk radio should be about sports as opposed to Judge Judy lectures about propriety. It's like there's a void after Vickkampf that has to be filled with moral pronouncements and any athlete in trouble will do.

My Head Hurts

My commute to work takes about 15 minutes. During that period of time, I got to hear the following shining examples of Socratic reasoning:

1. On 680, Perry Laurentino is launching into a tirade about African-Americans supporting Barry Bonds and Michael Vick. When Laurentino attacks African-Americans for supposedly defending dog-fighting, Christopher Rude makes the obvious point that while dog-fighting is a bad thing, the question is whether there is a link between Vick and dog-fighting. Laurentino responds that it is "legalistic" to demand such a link. Sure.

This comes on the heels of Laurentino dismissing soccer as a "Communist" sport earlier in the morning. Let's see. The NFL has complete revenue sharing, a hard salary cap, and it derives a significant portion of its profits from state subsidies in the form of publicly-funded stadia. European football leagues have minimal revenue sharing so the best-run and/or most popular clubs can retain the money that they generate, relegation that punishes ineptly run clubs (you think that Bill Bidwell would continue to rake in profits in the Bundesliga? His team would be in a regional league right now, battling Kickers Offenbach or KFC Uerdingen 05, which is what is supposed to happen in a meriocracy.), and no salary caps so the best players can get their true market value. Which sport is "Communist" again?

2. I switch over to 790, where they are discussing Alex Rodriguez. After Chris Dimino volunteers a very interesting stat that A-Rod is hitting .520-something in the 9th inning this year and has seven game-winning hits, Mike Bell (admittedly after putting on the self-parody "Sparky the Sportscaster" moniker) attempts to argue that A-Rod winning games for the Yankees in a year in which they aren't playing well is meaningless. That makes perfect sense. The Yankees are threatened by not making the post-season for the first time in over a decade. A-Rod is the one guy keeping the team afloat and in striking distance of a playoff berth. So naturally, that means that A-Rod can't come through when the chips are down. The argument might be the Platonic ideal of the fallacy of "clutch hitting." Any game that A-Rod wins is by definition not a big game, so the sample size keeps changing and shrinking to fit the hypothesis that he's a choker. Cue Bobby Bowden's observation that "the big one" is always the one that you don't win.