Fisking Buzz Bissinger

I'm not going to lie; this was a lot of fun. 

It occurred to me while I was writing that Bissinger and John Feinstein occupy the same place in my head.  Both wrote indisputably great sports books in the late 80s.  Both are now grumpy old men, writing screeds against college football from the Acela Corridor.  In both instances, I read their writing and remember the day when my childhood ended: the day that I read the obituary of Roald Dahl (my favorite author as a boy) obituary and learned that he said the following:

There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity ... I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.

Bissinger also reminds me of Don Draper at the end of last week's Mad Men, left behind in a world where he didn't understand The Beatles in their "Hard Day's Night" stage, let alone their new "Tomorrow Never Knows" style, and having a drink while his actual wife is meditating and his office wife is smoking a joint while writing copy.  Buzz sees a world where college football has become a national sport, outpacing baseball in a number of ways.  The barbarians are at his gates.  For a guy already prone to angry outbursts, his WSJ column was entirely predictable. 

Customary Invective About New York

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.

The Dwight Howard Pipedream

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.

Why I Hate New York Teams, Vol. XXIV

My morning sports consumption, in three acts:

1. Wake up just before six and do a quick check of the headlines on ESPN.com. I learn that the Braves played a 19-inning game against the Pirates that ended with one of the worst calls in recent memory.* Is this game, a match-up between the NL Wild Card leaders and the team that is improbably in first place in the NL Central after almost two decades of consistent failure, the lead story on ESPN.com? Does it get top billing in light of the fact that it was the longest game of the season and ended in a bizarre fashion? Nope. The top story was CC Sabathia shutting down the Mariners. Yes, the captivating story of the highest-paid pitcher in baseball dominating a historically bad offense was the big story in American sports yesterday.

* - I went to sleep in the tenth inning when Scott Linebrink came in and gave up a one-out single. That seemed like a sufficient indication that the Braves were going to lose their fourth in a row. Imagine my surprise this morning when I realized that I had missed a complete game shutout from Scott Proctor and the Lisp.

2. Watch SportsCenter while getting ready. What's the big story in the middle of the show? An interview with Jerry Jones in his car, followed by a lengthy feature on Rex Ryan and the Jets.

3. Listen to sports radio on the way to work. Surely, after my education on all things New York from ESPN, I'll get some local content, right? After all, the Falcons are about to wade into free agency and the Braves just played an epic game last night. Instead, for the majority of my commute, the Mayhem crew were peppering former 790 the Zone employee Chris Cotter (whom I always liked when he was on the air here) with questions about what it was like to cover Willie Randolph when Randolph was the manager of the Mets and what New York City is like in terms of interest in college football and the NFL.

So, if you ever want to know why I have a per se rule against rooting for New York teams, this is the evidence for the rule. Regardless of merit, their teams get showered with attention.*

* - This reminds me that I have a rant percolating in my head about the lionization of the New York Cosmos. Don't let me forget to write that in August.

Stealing the Past

There are few sports topics that are more likely to provoke a reaction in me than the selective telling of baseball history in order to make the game all about a few teams in the Northeast.  I wrote about this topic in January when I noted the difference between the professional way that the NFL mythologizes its past and the way that baseball allows “an especially narcissistic generation of New York writers” (Scott Lemieux’s description) to reduce the sport to being all about the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants.  I had two experiences this weekend that fall into this same category.

The first was reading a passage in Dixie about the importance of the St. Louis Cardinals as background noise at the tail end of Mississippi’s Freedom Summer.  Curt Wilkie describes how most sports fans in Mississippi (and indeed throughout the South) were Cardinals fans who listened to the games, either on local radio affiliates or on KMOX.  In 1964, the Cards staged an epic rally to overtake the Cubs and win the National League.  Wilkie, who was working for a newspaper in the Delta town of Clarksdale that was (not surprisingly) riven by racial problems as the establishment fought tooth and nail against integration, writes about the fact that the Cardinals were a unifying element:

Stan Musial had retired a year earlier, and the stars of the Cardinals were now black men": Bob Gibson, the intimidating pitcher; Lou Brock, the fleet outfielder; Curt Flood, an agile centerfielder; and Bill White, the powerful first baseman.  Race did not factor into their herioics.  When Brock stole second base, it was not a black man’s exploit, but a triumph by a member of the Cardinal team.  Even as we bickered over school integration in Clarksdale, whites and blacks were united in the Cardinals’ pursuit of the championship.

The Cardinals won the pennant on the last day of the season, a showdown game that was not available on TV.  We depended on Harry Caray for the news.  His play-by-play broadcast over the radio triggered my imagination, the same way that Amos ‘n’ Andy had delighted me a decade earlier.  When the Cardinals’ catcher, Tim McCarver, squeezed the pop fly that ended the game, I could see it in my mind, and there were celebrations across the battle lines in Clarksdale.

This makes for a great story.  At the same time that Mississippi was having the most backwards, violent reaction to efforts to end Jim Crow (or at least they were 1a in that department with Alabama), the residents of the state were all rooting for an integrated baseball team from a border state.  Why is this never a part of the story of baseball’s integration.  When the topic of baseball’s color line comes up, the discussion inevitably focuses on Jackie Robinson, in no small part because of the tendency to make baseball history all about New York City.  In the time between Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947 and the Red Sox becoming the last major league team to integrate in 1959 (and why does that little fact not come up, I wonder), the Cardinals had 17 black major leaguers, which was tied for the most in baseball and was one more than the Dodgers.  The role of the Cardinals of Gibson and Brock as the favorite team of the segregated South is a great story.  Why did a sports fan like me only stumble upon it when reading the memoirs of a Mississippi journalist?

Speaking of the 1964 Cards, Nate Silver wrote a great article for the Baseball Prospectus in 2007 after the Colorado Rockies mounted an amazing comeback in September to pip the Padres for the wild card.  Silver approached the question of the greatest comebacks of all time by looking at playoff odds over the course of a season and concluded that the '64 Cards made the most improbable comeback in baseball history. 

I was reminded of this article during the interminable rain delay at the Ted on Saturday afternoon.  As my four-year old and I sat under the overhang in the upper deck, watching rain pelt the field from a truly awesome, almost Biblical textured gray cloud directly overhead,* the Braves were playing an MLB documentary on the best comebacks in baseball history.  These sorts of lists are a dime a dozen, designed to provoke dumb arguments that are usually based on subjective reasoning.  Sure enough, this list caused exactly that sort of reaction in me.  According to MLB, the five best comebacks are:

5.  The New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the ‘51 pennant race;
4.  The Red Sox over the Angels in the ‘86 ALCS;
3.  The Mets over the Red Sox in the ‘86 World Series;
2.  The Yankees over the Red Sox in the ‘78 pennant race; and
1.  The Red Sox over the Yankees in the ‘04 ALCS.

Yup, the four most dramatic episodes in baseball history involved the Red Sox, with the top three involving opponents from New York.  Four of the top five involve New York teams, with the sole non-Northeastern interloper being a team from the tiny hamlet of Los Angeles.  We are all so lucky that we get to watch these stories franchises from the hinterlands of … the rest of the country outside of Peter King’s beloved Acela corridor. 

* – The whole time, I had “Chimes of Freedom” playing in my head.     

There’s no objective basis for this I-95 love-in.  Yes, the Yankees’ comeback in ‘78 was a great comeback, but it just sits in the middle of a list of improbable pennants won by teams that overcame massive odds to make the playoffs.  Yes, the Red Sox coming back from being down to their last strike in 1986 was a great moment, but is it any more improbable than a team coming back from two runs down in the ninth inning in Game Seven of the NLCS?  This crap matters in the characterization of baseball history.  I was sitting with a young, impressionable fellow.  If he is subjected the obscene concept of the Red Sox and various New York teams owning the best jewels of baseball history, then he might become a fan of one of those teams.  Smoking, early fatherhood, and drug use can be the only end result.  So please, MLB, for the good of all of your young, innocent fans, please acknowledge a world outside of a corner of the country. 

Atlanta is the Worst Sports Town Ever, Heat-Mavs Edition

In an article that is becoming an annual occurrence, Tim Tucker notes that Atlanta had the 11th highest TV ratings for the NBA Finals out of 56 metered markets.  The ten markets that finished ahead of Atlanta, you ask?

Miami-Fort Lauderdale (33.7), Dallas-Fort Worth (30.7), West Palm Beach (17.7), San Antonio (15.9), Cleveland (15.8), New Orleans (15.1), Memphis (14.5), Houston (14.5), Oklahoma City (14.4) and Chicago (13.7).

You have the markets that had finalists, followed by the home of the West’s #1 seed, the market rooting for LeBron to humiliate himself (and who says that Cleveland never wins anything?), the beaten conference finalists, a beaten conference semifinalist, and then Houston and New Orleans.  Interestingly enough, Boston, the greatest sports city in the universe (is the sarcasm coming across here?), and Los Angeles are not on the list, but the other beaten conference semifinalists – Atlanta and Memphis – are. 

This raises a point that is often missed in the discussion about “best sports towns,” which is that the discussions almost always focuses on support for specific teams instead of sports or leagues in general.  Atlanta is not super-supportive of the Hawks.  Maybe we have a right to be lukewarm on the local professional basketball collective because the team has delivered so little over the years, but the team was certainly good enough that they should not have finished 22nd in attendance this year.  That said, this is a very strong NBA market, as Atlanta consistently out-performs other NBA markets when it comes to ratings for the later rounds of the playoffs.  In short, we’re not great at supporting our own team, but we are interested in other teams.  Boston, for example, is the opposite.  Personally, I’d attribute this difference to the fact that Boston is a provincial city and Atlanta is not, but I’m a little biased in saying that.

Atlanta as a college football market is somewhat similar.  The one major program in the city limits – Georgia Tech – gets good, but not overwhelming fan support.  However, there is tremendous interest here for teams all over the Southeast, as well as a number of Big Ten programs with a large number of transplants.  (Cough.)  Thus, this is a great college football market (the TV ratings consistently back this conclusion up) without being hogwild over the Jackets.  If people outside of the market could differentiate between support for home teams and support for sports in general, then this city would have a better reputation as a sports town.

Tales of Yankee Power

You want to know what I hate about the "national" media's coverage of Major League Baseball in one tidy article? This article by John Heyman about unresolved spring training position battles is the Platonic ideal of obsession with the teams in the Northeast. Ostensibly, the article is supposed to be about the "more interesting debates" going on as we come closer to the point at which teams will break camp. To Heyman (whose name makes me chuckle every time I say it because it's phonetically the same as the villain in the Book of Esther), "interesting" seems to cling tightly to I-95. Here are the stories on which he spends almost two thousand words in a major sports publication:

Second base for the Mets
Second base for the Phillies
Catcher for the Red Sox
Fourth and fifth starters for the Yankees
Back-up catcher for the Yankees
Fourth and fifth starters for the Rangers
First base for the Giants

There are two aspects that I love about these selections. First, the idea that Heyman would spend time discussing the back-up catcher spot for the Yankees when there are so many teams deciding actual starters is hilarious. This is one step removed from a detailed analysis of what color ink Joe Girardi uses to fill in his lineup card. Second, Heyman throws in the defending league champions at the end as an afterthought, after he has spent 1,387 words dissecting issues of great importance to people on the Acela this morning. "Oh by the way, just to prove that I'm not really Michael Kay in disguise, here are two key positions battles for the two teams that actually played in the World Series in 2010." ESPN has to get Heyman on The Sports Reporters as soon as possible. I'd bet that he would see eye to eye with Lupica and Ryan.

Am I crazy in saying that this sort of obsession with teams from one region is unqiue to baseball (or at least it is especially pronounced in baseball)? If you assume for the sake of argument that people in the Northeast have a special love for their baseball teams in the same way that people in the Deep South have a special love for our college football teams, then I suppose you can make the argument that SI is simply serving the taste of the market. That said, I seriously doubt that we are going to see major publications run articles about position battles in spring practice that are 70% SEC. And that's true even though the SEC has achieved what people like Heyman only dream about for Northeastern baseball franchises: five championships in a row. There is something of a rational basis to slather the SEC with the sort of attention that the national media obsessively bestows on the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies,* and Mets. In short, I don't think that this is simply a function of the media giving attention to the most popular or relevant teams. Rather, it's at least in part an artifact of where major publications are based and the writers and editors of those publications being affected by where they work.

* - I can live with a lot of attention being given to the Phillies because the pitching staff they have assembled is a genuinely interesting story. That rotation is playing for history, so I don't begrudge them some affection. The Mets, on the other hand, would only be interesting if they were being covered by Michael Lewis wearing his financial writer hat.

It’s All Bob Costas’s Fault

According to betting odds, we are headed for a Green Bay-Pittsburgh Super Bowl.  The NFL would have to be pleased by such a match-up, as it would pit two of the largest, most passionate fan bases in the league.  The optics of thousands of Cheeseheads and Terrible Towels descending on Dallas, filling local hotels and driving up the secondary market for tickets, would make for a great event.  Moreover, these two teams are consistent draws on television, so the NFL’s broadcast partners would be happy covering a Super Bowl with extra eyeballs. 

Now think about this: Pittsburgh and Green Bay are two of the smallest media markets in the NFL.  Pittsburgh is the 22nd largest MSA in the country, while Milwaukee is 39th.  It’s a testament to the NFL’s structure that two of its most popular teams come from smaller MSAs.  (One can make the same point regarding the Saints, who have been the “it” team over the past two years and hail from the 46th largest MSA.  The Saints’ crowing achievement was winning a Super Bowl over the team from the 34th largest MSA.)  This would never happen in baseball.

The immediate explanations for why teams from small markets are so successful are the salary cap and revenue sharing.  Teams from the larger markets cannot leverage their natural advantages into success on the field because: (1) they can’t spend much more on players than their smaller rivals can; and (2) they can’t sign lucrative local TV deals based on being in bigger MSAs, as the NFL has national, evenly distributed TV contracts.  Thus, when a team like the Jets makes it to the NFL’s final four, they are doing so on the basis of good player acquisitions and a smart head coach, as opposed to when one of the baseball teams from the nation’s largest MSA succeeds by virtue of the innovative “let’s identify the two best free agents and pay the most money for them.”

That said, there is another factor at play here that further distinguishes the NFL from MLB: the NFL does a much better job of mythologizing its past.  The Steelers were one of my first two rooting interests.  (In case you’re scoring at home, Virginia hoops with Ralph Sampson was the other.)  I became a Steelers fan at age five in 1980 because my Mom would take me to the Charlottesville public library and I would read about Super Bowls.  Because the Steelers had won twice as many Super Bowls as any other team at that time and they had cool helmets, a fan was born.  My rooting interest was cemented by watching NFL Films videos of the Super Bowls.  Super Bowl Sunday was nirvana for me because ESPN would run all of its half-hour Super Bowl programs in order, leaving me with the dilemma of when to watch and when to play outside.  (The good Super Bowls to skip: V, VIII, and XI.)  I suspect that I’m not especially unusual in this respect.  NFL Films does a terrific job of selling the story of past champions.  The Packers – the team that won the first two Super Bowls under Vince Lombardi – and the Steelers – the team that won four of six in the 70s – are the major beneficiaries of the gauzy treatment of the past.

Despite its reputation as a traditional, stuck-in-the-past sport, Major League Baseball doesn’t have any equivalent to NFL Films.  MLB doesn’t create fans of the Big Red Machine or the Earl Weaver Orioles with string music and John Facenda.  (If you want a modern example, compare the America’s Game series on NFL Network with the one-hour documentaries that MLB Network runs on specific baseball seasons.  The former are outstanding; the latter are forgettable.)  In the void left by MLB not producing features on its past that come close to the product of NFL Films, we end up with “blurry-eyed nostalgia about the Only Great Era In Baseball History, i.e. the time in which an especially narcissistic generation of New York writers were growing up.”  Take it away, Scott Lemieux:

But what really gives away the show, I think, is the complaint about too many teams. In large measure, this complaint is about New York sportswriters craving a return to to what Ken Burns called “the Capital of Baseball” era — the 2/3rds of the 50s in which baseball was completely dominated by New York teams and large parts of the nation were deprived of major league baseball. This New York domination was terrible for baseball, of course, creating stagnating or declining attendance during a boom economy, but this is something we’re never supposed to notice. And to draw a line under it, he devotes another long paragraph to the elevently-billionth assertion that the Brooklyn Dodgers mattered more than any team has ever mattered to anyone ever, although this has nothing to do with either Willie Mays or the book under review.

In the end, the NFL ends up as the most popular league in the country because of its ability to create Steelers fans in Charlottesville, Virginia, whereas MLB experiences declining popularity because all it can offer is fetishization of when New York City had three teams instead of two.  The NFL has a democratic structure in which teams from any market can win, whereas MLB has an oligarchy in which the only factor that prevents the rich teams from winning every year is the lottery nature of the playoffs.

Pearls before Swine

Carl Crawford is the most coveted free agent position player in no small part because of his defensive ability.  He’s terrific at covering wide open spaces in left field because he’s lightning fast and gets great jumps on balls.  So which team signs him in the free agent market?  The team with the smallest left field in baseball, naturally.  This makes as much sense as taking a five-star pocket passer and putting him in the Spread ‘n’ Shred. 

Jim Delany as Paul Wolfowitz

In light of the recent Marist poll reflecting that the Northeast is a college football wasteland, doesn't the Big Ten's rumored interest in Rutgers or UConn look like a colossal risk? The Big Ten expanding into the Northeast would be like the US's adventure in Iraq: an attempt to bring a concept - representative democracy and the political culture that accompanies it in the case of Iraq; football that doesn't require manufactured excitement in the case of the Northeast - to a culture that has no recent experience with the concept.

Incidentally, the poll reflects that a higher percentage of people in the Midwest follow college football a great deal. I'd like to see a breakdown of the states that comprise the Midwest and the South. I'd bet that the Deep South's score would be high and then it would be diluted by the responses from the Border States. This leads me to a uncomfortable conclusion: you can probably track intense feelings about college football to the states that first seceded from the Union in 1861, possibly in order.

Whither the Big Ten

My crack research staff is hard at work.

Matt Hinton makes an interesting point when he describes the Big Ten’s resurgence in public opinion over the course of the summer. The league written off by many as overhyped and outdated produced a fine bowl season in which its top four teams all won bowl games, including two BCS bowls. The league then set off a seismic charge with its public expansion process, settling on Nebraska, a cultural fit and a historical top ten program. However, Hinton points out that the Big Ten has struggled to produce championship teams over the past 40 years, so the test will be whether Ohio State can bring home the crystal ball, thus ending the perception that Big Ten teams are not truly elite.

Hinton’s point illustrated something that I was considering when I was reading Football Outsiders’ ranking of the 100 best college football teams of all-time according to their Estimated S&P+ metric. There isn’t a Big Ten team in the last 50 years that cracked the top 40 of the rankings. Despite having attended a Big Ten school, I still cling to the basic maxim of a Southern upbringing that Big Ten teams get a lot of attention because of the number of eyeballs they bring to a broadcast (although those eyeballs are gradually taking I-75 south), but they are usually overrated. (Counterpoint: easy for me to say now that Michigan is irrelevant. Where was this modesty four years ago?)

I need to resolve this issue before the end of the month because my initial inclination is to rank Ohio State as my preseason #1. Neither Florida, nor Alabama look like world-beaters in 2010 because of their losses on defense, which leaves the field somewhat open. Ohio State returns a lot of experienced talent (I’m not of the school that thinks that the Bucks cannot produce top players; the composition of NFL rosters rebuts that notion) and their offense might come out of the Paleolithic Era with an experienced quarterback. (Let’s be clear: Ohio State isn’t winning the national title with the offense that it deployed after the Purdue loss. Successful though it may have been, at a certain point, vanilla will only go so far.) The schedule is reasonably favorable. If the Bucks do go 12-0 and I’m right about the SEC not having an elite team this year, then they might find themselves with a manageable matchup against someone like Boise State, Virginia Tech, or Oklahoma in Glendale. And what could go wrong for the Bucks in Glendale?

On the other hand, reading Hinton’s post reminded me that the Big Ten bounce at the end of the bowl games was something of a mirage. For one thing, it’s a fool’s errand to put too much importance on non-championship bowl games because it’s always possible that one or both teams have checked out mentally at the end of a long season. (This is generally less true as you move up the bowl pecking order. I think that teams usually take BCS games seriously.) Second, and more importantly, the top four Big Ten teams all got favorable match-ups in the bowl games. Ohio State drew an offense-heavy Oregon team whose weakish defense couldn’t get the Bucks off the field. Iowa drew Georgia Tech, a team that was: (1) pretty darn lucky over the course of the season; (2) reliant on an off-beat offense that loses much of its mojo when the opponent has a month to prepare; and (3) a little overvalued because, like Oregon, they weren’t very good defensively. For talent reasons, you'd rather play Oregon than USC; you'd rather play Georgia Tech than a well-coached Florida State or Miami. Penn State drew an LSU team that was outgained in SEC play. (In other words, an LSU team in name more than merit.) Wisconsin drew Miami, a team that finished the year better than it started it. The Big Ten has been unfairly criticized in the past for poor bowl performances when its champions have played USC in Pasadena and its remaining teams have been bumped up in the pecking order as a result of the fact that they bring crowds to games. Last year, the Big Ten got good match-ups for its top teams and it’s a little overvalued going into 2010 as a result.

So that leaves me in a position of uncertainty as to what to make of the Big Ten generally and Ohio State specifically. Picking against a Big Ten team in August is like picking against England in the run-up to a World Cup: it’s never a bad idea. The twin seductions of an open field and an alluring Big Ten contender that seems to check all the boxes for a national title winner just mean that I should be lashing myself to the mast right about now. But if not the Bucks, then who?

I Could Get Used to this Never Losing Thing

The Braves are nine outs away from extending their winning streak to nine out in Los Angeles and I'm sure I am going to jinx their hit streak by writing about it, but holy hell? May just got better and better to the point that I thought I was watching the vintage, dynasty Braves. Those teams would usually let a division rival get its hopes up for a month or two in the season before crushing them in June and July. This year, the hot streak came a little early, but it has arrived in force. Moreover, after four straight years of mostly average baseball and then a forgettable April in which the team struggled to generate anything offensively, the hot streak is unexpected and therefore doubly sweet.

When bats were afraid in April, it struck me sorta funny that the team was so good at drawing walks, but couldn't do anything else offensively. It raised two possibilities. One was that opposing pitchers would figure out that the Braves hitters had no pop and would therefore stop walking them. The other possibility was that the Braves were just unlucky and would start hitting as a reward for being able to tell the difference between a ball and a strike. As it turns out, the latter has occurred. The offense has exploded in May.

Troy Glaus has been the bell cow (HT: Keith Jackson), knocking just about everything out of the park. He had a Hack Wilson May with 32 RBI after he looked for all the world like the white Mondesi in April. Now, if the team is healthy and Glaus hits fifth, he's preceded by hitters with the following OBPs: .336, .412, .392, and .383. Does that sound like a recipe for a power hitter to rack up a big RBI total?

As for the pitching, the most encouraging sign in May was the turnaround of Derek Lowe. After a month of baseball, Lowe looked like his career was in an irreversible decline, which is something of a concern with a player for whom the Braves are on the hook for two more years and $30M. Instead, here are his numbers for his last five starts: 33 IP, 9 ER, 19 Ks, 11 BBs, 0 HRs. OK, so those five starts were against the Brewers, Mets, Pirates (twice), and slumping Phillies. It's just nice to see that Lowe is not done. If he keeps the ball in the park, then he can get away with his low strikeout rate and be a decent pitcher. You would hope to have more than decent for $15M per year, but decent beats decrepit.

Other random notes on the Braves:

• I went to the game on Monday afternoon. It was a perfect afternoon. The weather was beautiful after a morning drizzle. The Ted was mostly full. The Braves jumped on the Phillies early and propelled themselves into first place. Chipper broke a long homerless streak. The only negative was that the crowd applauded after a montage of American soldiers who lost their lives in military conflicts. Seemed weird to me, but I guess that's what you get for a heavy moment at a baseball game.

• The Braves have a strangely unbalanced lineup. When Eric Hinske is starting, they have six regulars who have OPS+ numbers over 100, then a dropoff to Nate McLouth at 61 and Yunel at 55. Yunel is heating up and will poke that number up as he gets healthy, which just leaves our centerfielder as the weak spot on the team.

• Despite their great month, the Braves are still a game below their Pythagorean record. Moreover, the hitters and pitchers have combined to be 12.5 wins over replacement level, but the team is nine games over .500.

• Will ESPN even acknowledge the NL playoffs if the participants are the Padres, Reds, Braves, and Rockies?

• The Braves have drawn 241 walks. The next closest team in the NL is the Cardinals with 204. Moreover, the Braves have struck out fewer times than any NL team other than the Astros. This team collectively has a great sense of the plate. I credit Jason Heyward. Let's send him to the Gulf.

Fool on the Hill

Mocking unhinged rants from John Feinstein is like shooting fish in a barrel, but Blutarsky has unearthed another gem. To pile on, I'm amused by Feinstein's claim that the NCAA has the leverage to force a college football playoff over the wishes of its most powerful members, specifically to carry on a tournament with Butler and Cornell, but not Kentucky or Duke.

Let's imagine you are a lawyer for CBS negotiating and drafting the agreement with NCAA to pay billions for the right to show the NCAA Tournament. CBS is paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars to draft an agreement that will protect its interests. The agreement has to cover contingencies so CBS isn't paying billions for a significantly devalued tournament. Do you think that maybe, possibly you'd include language setting forth that CBS doesn't have to pay for the Tournament if all of the teams with significant cache and TV followings (you know, the ones who might interest advertisers?) have seceded and formed their own, competing tournament? Put another way, do you prefer not to commit malpractice?

John, I'm going to make this very simple for you: people watch games because of teams and players, not organizations. The NFL couldn't put semipro players in uniforms and still get ratings. Thus, the BCS conferences hold the valuable chips. The NCAA works for them, not the other way around. There is a name for the NCAA without its most powerful members: the League of Nations.

Unintentional Irony, Mike Lupica-style

So I was watching the Sports Reporters on the elliptical this morning and the opening segment was about the plans to expand the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. Bob Ryan and Mike Lupica lit into the idea, complaining that it would ruin the "perfect sporting event" and that it would devalue the regular season. Ironically, these are the same two people who cannot discuss college football at any point in the season without moaning about the fact that there is no playoff. I found a few things about their wildly inconsistent worldviews to be amusing:

1. They complained that expansion of the Big Dance is driven by coaches (because of the pressure to get bids) and the combination of the NCAA and the networks (which want more product to sell). Unwittingly, they illustrated the best case against a college football playoff. (For the record, I'm in favor of a 4-8 team playoff, but I'd like a constitutional amendment capping the field at eight. I'd rather have the current system than a 16-team playoff.)

2. Which arguments that Ryan and Lupica made against expanding the tournament from 65 to 96 could not be made to contract the tournament to 32? Or to 16? (I would be a much bigger college basketball fan if the tournament were 16 teams.)

3. It was not an accident that the panel spent the whole first segment discussing the potential expansion of the Tournament, but there was no discussion of actual college basketball teams and games in 2010. That wouldn't be because the "perfect sporting event" has killed the regular season, would it? Lupica's contribution was to mispronounce "Louisville" (the "s" is silent, Mike) and to refer to a non-existent school named "Missouri Valley State" as the typical Cinderella. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the NCAA Tournament is loved by people like Lupica and Ryan who spend the most of their time catering to the pro-sports obsessions of their readers because it allows them to distill an entire season down to three weeks. It's a sports writer's path of least resistance.

Pac Ten Teams Raus!

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Florida	2
3	Texas	1
4	Boise State	2
5	Ohio State	3
6	TCU	3
7	Iowa	8
8	Cincinnati	3
9	Nebraska	3
10	Penn State	7
11	Virginia Tech	2
12	Oregon	5
13	Pittsburgh	7
14	Mississippi
15	Georgia Tech	4
16	Brigham Young
17	Wisconsin
18	Clemson	1
19	LSU	3
20	Texas Tech	1
21	Miami (Florida)	7
22	Utah
23	Oklahoma
24	Stanford	11
25	Georgia
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Oregon State (#10), Arizona (#18), California (#22), Oklahoma State (#23), West Virginia (#24), Arkansas (#25).

• This ballot was a little easier than most prior versions because we finally had some teams - Iowa, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Nebraska, and BYU - playing like good teams. I have a hard time justifying the Hokies dropping after an excellent Peach Bowl performance. The only explanation is that Iowa and Penn State both looked very good against better opponents and jumped the Hokies. Plus, the ACC took its customary hit in the bowl games.

• The last spot on my ballot came down to a mish-mash of teams. I thought about Oregon State, but they laid such an egg against BYU that I couldn't rank them in good conscience. (Also, Sagarin doesn't like the Beavers.) I wanted to leave Arkansas in the poll, but they were very fortunate to win their bowl game. I gave Auburn some thought, but they lost to Arkansas and Georgia, their win over West Virginia lost a little luster when the Mountaineers were no longer on the ballot, and they did have that whole "losing record in conference" thing. In the end, I went with Georgia over Oklahoma State for the spot, even though the Dawgs lost to the Cowboys, because Okie State got worse as the season progressed and Georgia did leave us with a good pair of performances at the end. Sagarin agrees, as he would make the Dawgs a three-point favorite on a neutral field against the Pokes.

• I went back and forth on Florida and Texas for #2. Texas did play Alabama tougher, even without their quarterback. On the other hand, Florida played a tougher schedule and their win over Cincinnati was better than anything on the Texas resume. I didn't give serious consideration to putting Boise State higher than #4 because their overall resume isn't as good, but that will not be the case next August.

• In the realm of "why do I do this to myself," here was the college football discussion on The Sports Reporters yesterday: (1) Alabama wasn't that impressive in light of the fact that Colt McCoy got hurt; (2) Alabama has eight national titles, not 13; and (3) the preseason polls in college football are very important (note to Bob Ryan: Alabama opened the season behind Florida and Texas and passed them both by mid-October, despite the fact that Florida and Texas were unbeaten at the time) and Boise State should be near the top next year.

• Alabama finished 14-0 against Sagarin's #2 ranked schedule. No team played more games against top ten or top 30 opponents. I don't think that I'm going out on a limb by saying that the two best SEC teams of the decade came in the final two years: '08 Florida and '09 Alabama. In fact, you'd have a hard time coming up with a team in the 90s that could match them. Florida '96 would be a possibility, followed by '92 Alabama. I smell a topic for the offseason.

Branding

So I click on ESPN.com this morning to take a look at the headlines and who was staring back at me but Derek Jeter. The headline story on ESPN was about the Yankees going to the top of the network's power rankings after a big week. To tease the story, ESPN ran a quintessential picture of Jeter giving a fist bump to a teammate, steely eyes of determination fully deployed. Leader Leader Leader!!! The picture struck me a little funny because I saw the highlights of each of the Yankees-Red Sox games over the course of the weekend (they were hard to avoid) and I don't remember Jeter doing much in those highlights. So I took a quick gander at the OPS of the Yankees starting position players over the past week:

Teixeira - 1.241
Posada - 1.196
Damon - 1.160
Swisher - 1.098
Cano - 1.097
Rodriguez - .833
Matsui - .833
Jeter - .433
Cabrera - .425

It must be nice when the Worldwide Leader in Sports brands you as the reason that your team ascended to the top of its baseball rankings following a week in which you went five for thirty with no walks, one extra-base hit, and six strikeouts. Gillette will be so pleased.

You Know We Are / Bring It Down / We're F***in' Crazy!

I heartily co-sign on Andy Staples' paean to SEC fans. Any writer who writes two paragraphs like the following for a major sports web site is truly a man after my heart:

College football is just more important to people in the South than it is to people in the rest of the country. There is a good reason for this. Pro sports ignored the South for a long time. For southerners in my parents' generation, college football dominated the news because it usually was the only game in town. Those people passed their sports consumption habits down to the next generation, and my generation will pass it along to the one that follows ours. For that reason, many SEC fans pay no mind to the NFL, unless it's a Tennessee fan checking on Peyton Manning or an LSU fan following LaRon Landry...

Unlike much of the national media -- which regularly underestimates the passion and buying power of rabid college football fans -- CBS and ESPN know that in a nine-state footprint lives a dedicated base of fans who will follow their teams to the ends of the earth. Baseball can't match that dedication. The next time you meet someone who claims to be a die-hard Red Sox fan, ask him how many magnets he can fit on his RV. That's why the two networks will pay a combined $3 billion over the next 15 years to televise SEC sports.

Staples makes a good point that ESPN has figured out that there are a lot of eyeballs in the SEC states and those eyeballs are glued tight to SEC football. That said, his point regarding intensity of fan support can be taken one step farther. I doubt that ESPN and CBS forked over hundreds of millions of dollars to the SEC just to get ratings in this region. They realize that genuine fan support creates unparalleled atmospheres at SEC games and that makes for great TV. I'm reminded of what Bill Simmons wrote when he decided that he was going to become an EPL fan:

You know how Red makes the comment that, after a life spent in Shawshank, he can't even squeeze a drop of pee without asking for permission first? I feel like that's happening to us. American sports have been ravaged by TV timeouts, ticket price hikes and Jumbotrons that pretty much order fans how to act. Just look at what happened in the NBA playoffs. Miami fans were urged to wear all white like a bunch of outpatients from a psych ward; the Detroit announcer screamed, "Let's give it up!" and "Lemme HEAR YOU!" as the crowd responded like a bunch of trained seals; Clippers fans weren't able to stand and cheer after an outrageous Shaun Livingston dunk in the Denver series because disco music was blaring at deafening levels. And it's not just basketball. During Angels games in baseball, the crowd waits to make noise until a monkey appears on the scoreboard. You can't attend an NHL game without hearing the opening to "Welcome to the Jungle" 90 times. Even our NFL games have slipped -- you cheer when the players run out, cheer on third downs, cheer on scores and sit the rest of the time. It's a crying shame.

Not to pull a Madonna on you, but European soccer stands out because of the superhuman energy of its fans -- the chants and songs, the nonstop cheering, the utter jubilation whenever anything good happens, how the games seem to double as life-or-death experiences -- and I can't help but wonder if that same trait has been sucked out of our own sports for reasons beyond our control. And no, that same energy hasn't completely disappeared; you can see a similar energy on display at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Lambeau, MSG (if the Knicks and/or Rangers are good, a big "if" these days) and any other city with enough history and passion to override the evils of the Jumbotron Era. Still, these are aberrations. By pricing out most of the common fans and overwhelming the ones who remained, professional sports leagues in this country made a conscious decision: We'd rather hear artificially created noise than genuine noise. That's the biggest problem with sports in America right now. And there's no real way to solve it.

Simmons's current opinion (and it's a perceptive one) is that European soccer is the next big thing in American sports because we've become a TV-oriented sports culture and European footie translates better on TV. The games are played in front of singing, crazed fans without any of the manipulative prompting so common with American pro sports. If he's right, then SEC football is an attractive TV property outside of the South because it brings something to the table that most American sports do not: genuine, unadulterated passion. A fan in Seattle or Philadelphia who is disillusioned by what the pro sports experience has become could be sucked in by an SEC game because it reminds him of the way games used to be before t-shirt bazookas and "Cheer! Now! Do It!" reminders on the scoreboard.

The one limiting factor to neutrals being swayed by a better TV experience is their feelings about the locales of the game. European footie will have a hard time becoming mainstream because it's foreign. It's not necessarily that the most popular foreign league is English. Most Americans like England and remember that they were our allies in WWII. (We forget that the Russians were as well, but that's a different rant.) However, because English footballers are generally rubbish, the league is mostly dominated by foreign stars: Drogba, Essien, Fabregas, Torres, etc. Unless NBC is wrong about the sentiment of the average American when it ignores the rest of the world in its Olympic coverage, the EPL may always remain a fringe sport because of all the funny names.

To a lesser extent, this could be an issue with SEC football. The South is still viewed by many in the North as being defined by the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Florida seems nonthreatening because it is heavily populated by retirees from the Northeast and Midwest, but can we imagine people in the Northeast getting very excited about Alabama and Ole Miss, given where they get their ideas about the Deep South? (Better they think about Bull Connor than the Boston busing riots, right?) I'd be fascinated to know what ESPN and CBS think about the potential for the SEC as a TV property outside of the Sunbelt.

A Thought from the Elliptical this Morning

Do you think that when the Red Sox retire Pedro Martinez's jersey in a few years, SportsCenter will show the highlights of the game earlier than midway through the show?

Bobby Knight Should Have Decked You When He Had the Chance

Let's all feel sorry for John Feinstein. He went to Duke and writes for a major newspaper in Peter King's beloved I-95 corridor, so he doesn't know or care about college football. That's fine with me. I prefer to remember Feinstein for Season on the Brink, which is one of my all-time favorite sports books. I have four of his books on the wall, although none more recent than March into Madness, after which Feinstein ceased being relevant or interesting. Combine a guy who understands college football about as well as I understand Uzbek folklore and a writer whose skills have eroded and you get this gem. The Senator linked it and Orson inspired me, so let's dust off the ol' fisking gloves and get busy:

BCS: Where Money Talks and Hypocrisy Walks

By John Feinstein
Monday, June 29, 2009 1:19 PM

The latest example of the hypocrisy of the Bowl Championship Series came last week, when the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee met to consider a proposal made by the Mountain West Conference for an eight-team playoff, the kind of championship tournament the NCAA stages for every other sport (including football, at every level except division I-A).

Let's keep in mind that the theme of this article is "name-calling." Count the number of times that Feinstein doesn't make an argument, but instead shouts like the worst sort of purple-faced sports radio caller. Let's also keep in mind that I-A football is unlike all other NCAA sports in two important respects: it doesn't have a massive playoff and it is worth more economically than all the other NCAA sports put together.

After summarily rejecting the proposal, the oversight committee sent forth Oregon President David Frohnmayer to dispense with the usual lies.

So we have hypocrites who tell lies...

First, Frohnmayer claimed the proposal had been given serious consideration. And surely the Yankees have given serious consideration to cutting their payroll in half in the interest of bringing parity to baseball.

Let's see, the idea of the Yankees agreeing not to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that they generate from being the most popular baseball team in the Milky Way is ludicrous because we would not expect a major entity to act in a manner totally at odds with its own self-interest. So what is it that you are asking the 66 teams the compose the major BCS schools to do? Oh yeah, give away a massive economic advantage that they created so they can share their wealth with teams whose fan bases are comparatively tiny.

Then he went into the BCS presidents' spiel about there being nothing wrong with the BCS -- sort of like when your stockbroker tells you your portfolio is doing just fine even if it's down 70 percent -- and then becoming self-righteous about their position.

You know, a quote would be good here. I smell a whiff of overstatement. And if you're keeping track, we have self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies.

Guys such as Frohnmayer -- who is really no different than the rest of his BCS cronies -- really believe they can throw out any statement they want and they will go unchallenged because they have a bunch of degrees on their office walls. That's why, even though complaints about the BCS are getting nearly as weary as the entity itself, the topic must continually be revisited.

Please do. I need the material in the summer.

After a pompous, arrogant and obnoxious pummeling of the "pundits and broadcasters" who have had the nerve to criticize the BCS -- does President Obama fall under the category of pundit or broadcaster? -- Frohnmayer claimed there were two "fatal" flaws in the arguments for a playoff. In doing so, he referred to those proposing an "NFL-style" playoff system in a blatant attempt to link a playoff with professionalizing college football. Excuse me, but what would be wrong with the "style" of the division I-AA, II or III playoff systems? They all work just fine.

We are now up to self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies and administer pompous, arrogant, and obnoxious pummelings.

Uh, Frohmayer probably referred to an "NFL-style" playoff because that's what a college football playoff would look like if people like Feinstein had their way. John, you know that 12-team playoff that you're pining for with the top four seeds getting byes? Where else can we see such a playoff? I wonder?

The first of Frohnmayer's "fatal" flaws was the claim that the pundits and broadcasters (and presidents of the United States) were completely ignoring the academic calendar. Seriously? Let's walk through this one more time: A college football tournament, whether it was the proposed eight teams or 12 or even 16 would require far less missed class time than the NCAA basketball tournament does in March. Most, if not all, of the games could be played in January, virtually all of them between semesters. Teams would miss less class time during the tournament than they miss during the regular season. Final words to Frohnmayer and the other 66 BCS presidents on this issue: Shut up.

The self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies and administer pompous, arrogant, and obnoxious pummelings need to shut up.

A I-A college football team has 85 players on scholarship. A Division I college basketball team has 13 players on scholarship. I wonder why college presidents would be more concerned about extending the college football season? Also, John, this may surprise you, but some schools start their semesters very early in January, so those teams would not be playing their games in between semesters.

To bring up academics as a reason for not having a tournament is patently dishonest on every level. Let's forget the fact that the significant percentage of football players at national championship contenders will never graduate. Let's pretend that it matters -- and, to be fair, it does matter to some players. Having a playoff will not for one second affect their chances of graduating if that is one of their goals.

The self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies, administer pompous, arrogant, and obnoxious pummelings, and are also patently dishonest need to shut up.

Really, there is no possible academic implication for a marginal student playing football throughout the month of January after having already practices and played from August through December? For the record, I'm not a huge fan of the academic concerns professed by college presidents as a reason not to have a playoff, but Feinstein is acting as if these presidents are arguing that Dred Scott and Plessy had overlooked merit. Frohmayer is not making a particularly outlandish claim here.

The second of Frohnmayer's fatal flaws was the "complete lack of a business plan." Please. A business plan would take about 15 minutes to concoct, and it could be put together by my daughter's fifth-grade class. The TV networks would fall all over themselves to get the contract, or contracts. The potential burden of fans having to travel for three weeks -- if you went with 12 or 16 teams, it would make sense to play first-round games at home sites -- doesn't seem to be a problem for fans whose teams make the Final Four. If a real national championship game was played next year in the Rose Bowl, does anyone think there would be an unsold ticket?

Again, Feinstein fails to grasp that there are differences between college basketball and football. The early rounds of the NCAA Tournament are played in smaller venues, which means that huge traveling hordes don't need to follow their teams. For a three-round playoff, Feinstein wants to make 40,000 Ohio State fans travel to Orlando one week, then New Orleans the next, then Pasadena the week after that. Now Ohio State fans will do it because they're batshit crazy, but there are differences in the number of people who are having to traipse all over the country. Has Feinstein perhaps missed the gaping maws of empty seats NCAA Tournament regional semis and finals that are played in domes?

One more nugget from Frohnmayer: In an attempt to be funny, he commented that, as successful as the BCS has been, he hadn't heard from fans at Auburn and his own school about being left out of past national championship games.

OK, even I'm calling bullshit on this one, Frohmayer. You really think that Auburn fans aren't a little sore about 2004?

How about Utah, David?

Remember Utah, the team that went undefeated last season and thoroughly thrashed BCS power Alabama in the Sugar Bowl? How about Boise State going undefeated this past season and not even playing in a BCS bowl? How about Boise State's 2006 team, which won one of the great games in history against Oklahoma (they're in the BCS, right?) in the Fiesta Bowl, that also wasn't allowed to compete for a national championship?

Right, the Utah team whose own coach voted fifth going into a Sugar Bowl in which they played Alabama without their best player. The Boise State team that lost that lost the Poinsettia Bowl. Another Boise State team that won an overtime classic against a good, but hardly overwhelming Oklahoma team after playing an absurdly easy schedule during the regular season. All of these teams were eligible to play for the national title, but no one - not the computers, not the media, not the coaches, and not the Harris Poll voters - saw them as being serious contenders to be one of the top two teams in the country before the bowls. And bonus points to Feinstein for not using the best example of a non-BCS conference power that could have legitimately played for a national title: 2004 Utah.

Finally, there's the now well-worn claim that college football has the "most meaningful" regular season in sports. Again, this is complete hyperbolic trash. First, how can you call a regular season meaningful when the decisions on who will play where in the postseason are made by computers and frequently biased voters.

The self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies and administer pompous, arrogant, and obnoxious pummelings need to shut up before they spew more hyperbolic trash.

What exactly does the voting method for the post-season have to do with whether the regular season is meaningful? And what's wrong with computers. Last I checked, you like college basketball and the Tournament selection committee tends to rely on the RPI pretty heavily.

The American Football Coaches Association's recent decision to keep secret coaches' ballots in the final poll screams deceit. All polls in all sports -- including Hall of Fame ballots -- should be made public.

I can't disagree here, but again, the NCAA Tournament is populated and seeded based on the workings of a committee that convenes in private and does not even publish the methodologies that it used to create brackets. I'll look forward to your column calling the NCAA Tournament fraudulent because of the lack of transparency in putting teams in various spots.

Are the BCS apologists trying to say that the college basketball regular season has no meaning? Every game played the last three weeks of the season is analyzed, re-analyzed and broken down to determine how it will affect seeding, the bubble and who is in and who is out.

Earth to John: the college basketball regular season goes on for over four months. If only the last three weeks are relevant, then you have made my point for me. You're supposed to be arguing against the BCS, remember?

You want meaning in a regular season? Give the first four teams in a 12-team playoff a bye. Give the next four a first-round home game. Let the last four scramble to avoid playing in the New Mexico Bowl.

And now you've hit on the problem with college basketball. Duke and North Carolina wage their epic battles every spring so the victor can play in Greensboro while the loser has to travel all the way to Philadelphia. Oh, the mighty stakes when the regular season is about seeding!

Of course, Frohnmayer and his partners don't care about or want to hear any of these arguments. That's because they don't believe any of what they're saying either. They just know they have a system they're comfortable with, one that ensures that Utah or Boise State won't ever compete for a national championship. They care about power, and they care about money.

The self-righteous hypocrites who tell lies and administer pompous, arrogant, and obnoxious pummelings need to shut up before they spew more hyperbolic trash that they don't believe as they're saying it.

John, do you remember when you were in college? Do you recall following Duke basketball way back when? You may recall that the ACC was eight teams at that time. If you care to take a gander, it now has 12 members. When you were in college, Miami, Florida State, Boston College, and Virginia Tech were blips on the college football map. Through good coaching and management, those programs built themselves into powerhouses (well, at least three of them did and the fourth tagged along because it is in a big TV market) that were attractive to the ACC. What is stopping Utah from turning itself into a shiny apple that the Pac Ten will want to pluck?

They don't care about the truth. They certainly don't care about their student-athletes. And they certainly don't care about any opinions other than their own.

Uh, right. They're rational actors seeking to create good results for their own schools. What a f***ing disgrace! Hurry, comb through your thesaurus to find more names that you can hurl! That's surely the way to show that you have the best arguments!

I Swear, this was not Going to be a Rant about ESPN when I Started Writing

In this morning's edition of the AJC, Christian Boone tackles the oft-discussed question of why so many Atlantans root for non-local teams. This subject has been tackled repeatedly in a number of outlets, including this one. Because the story is coming from a local source as opposed to Michael Wilbon or Bill Simmons, I'm not going to be defensive, but let's take a look at the evidence anyway:

1. LeBron and Kobe jerseys are bigger sellers than any Hawks jerseys. This would have the be a function of: (1) the NBA marketing players as opposed to teams; and (2) the fact that the Hawks don't have an especially good track record of producing teams that have even come close to winning a championship (hence the stat that until last Sunday, the Hawks had not won a seven-game series since the 70s). I'd imagine that LeBron and Kobe jerseys sell well in other NBA cities, but point taken.

2. There are a lot of Cowboys, Steelers, Yankees, and Red Sox fans in the stands when those teams come to town. Boone tries to address the argument that the city is full of transplants, but does so a little weakly:

The “everyone who lives here is from somewhere else” rationale has been used to explain Atlanta’s divided sports loyalties for years, and while there’s some truth to it, the numbers don’t add up.

According to the 2000 Census, of those living in Georgia at the time, 46,975 were born in Massachusetts. Roughly 25,000 more hailed from the New England states, where the Red Sox fervor runs just as deep.

So are we to believe one-third of those natives flock to Turner Field whenever Boston invades, or has Atlanta become over-run with front-runners?

It's too simplistic to say that there are 72K people born in New England in the area and therefore that that is the only population that would come to Turner Field for a visit by the Red Sox. Those 72K people are probably not all sterile, raising the possibility that they have offspring. It has been known to happen that offspring will cheer for their parents' favorite teams. Also, looking solely at the metro area is short-sighted because the Braves draw fans from a multi-state region, especially for weekend games as the tilts with the Red Sox always are. Do you think a Nashua, N.H. native living in Birmingham or Greenville isn't going to drive two hours to see the Sox play at the Ted?

That said, I'd be lying if I said that Boone doesn't have a point that there are plenty of people who have no connection to New York or Boston who become fans of the Yankees or Red Sox. We're going to see more and more of this as sports fans turn with increasing frequency to national news sources as opposed to local ones. A city like Atlanta with relatively young teams is going to be especially vulnerable to this phenomenon because the ties between its teams and fans won't be as tight as the bonds in other places. This is what's annoying about ESPN devoting excessive coverage to certain favored teams. If ESPN is going to play a bigger role in shaping rooting preferences, then they have a responsibility not to push those rooting interests to two or three teams in every sport. ESPN would no doubt claim that they are simply giving the viewing/reading/surfing public what they want, but that underrates the WWLIS's impact in shaping those preferences to begin with.

One other problem with Boone's article: any piece about sports preferences in the Atlanta market that doesn't discuss college football is, by nature, incomplete. I recognize that newspaper pieces are subject to strict word count requirements, but an article like this that argues that Atlantans aren't very committed to the home teams ought to address the fact that this market is full of college football fans who support their teams with religious fervor. The major problem that I have with outsiders who criticize Atlanta as a sports town is that they have only one conception for what a good sports town is: a city that is fanatically devoted to its pro sports teams. They don't recognize that there is merit in a market that follows college football more intensely and is full of large fan bases for about ten different programs. Boone's article feeds into that flawed mindset by treating the sale of Hawks jerseys as the measure of this city as a sports mecca.