Is Hank Schrader Working at Butts-Mehre?

Though I generally view the focus on the off-field exploits of Georgia football players as a tired pursuit of sports radio hosts and Jeff Schultz, the suspensions for Bacarri Rambo and Alec Ogletree have caught my attention.  Georgia is now going to be missing at least four defensive starters for the SEC opener at Missouri, at least three because of apparent marijuana use.  The crusade by Georgia's football program against any drug use is going to have significant effects on the field.  The development has put me into rhetorical question mode:

Georgia's football program is in an interesting place right now. The Dawgs' head coach is a well-liked coach who is pretty clearly a B+ head man competing for titles against an A+ coach in the state to the west. The fan base is fiercely loyal and turns out for every game, but one has to wonder whether they will continue to make significant donations for the privilege to buy tickets to increasingly soft home schedules. How much do Georgia fans really want Mark Richt to play the role of Joe Friday when the conference is hyper-competitive? Do they really want to pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to see back-ups because the starters smoked pot on spring break?

The question that remained after I wrote that column was whether the current stance taken by the Georgia athletic department is the result of media attention paid to off-field issues.  Is Georgia overreacting to criticism from members of the media?  Or has this policy been in effect throughout the Richt era?  Is it just a function of the coach's personality and worldview?  I'm interested to hear from people who know more about the program than I do.

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.

Once Every Eight Years...

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

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

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

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

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

Jeff Schultz’s Solution for Georgia: Martin Seligman*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1992
2002
2003
2004
2005

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

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

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

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

Drew Sharp: The Most Ironically Named Man Outside of Rush Limbaugh

Newspaper columnists tend to be respectful to one another.  Whereas bloggers are prone to pissing matches of all shapes and sizes, our mainstream media counterparts will rarely call one another onto the carpet.  They represent the civility of a bygone age … or they just don’t get the fun of calling another writer a mouth-breathing troglodyte.  Either way, a columnist has to have written something really dumb in order to get another columnist to spend an entire piece railing on a bad argument.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Drew Sharp.  I read Sharp for my four years in Ann Arbor and his sole value was to raise my blood pressure.  Sharp is a Michigan graduate who quickly figured out that his place in the world is to make bomb-throwing statements to anger the local fan bases, most prominently that of his alma mater.  In his mind, Sharp probably thinks of himself as a noble scribe telling truth to power, regardless of the reaction.  In reality, the next well-constructed argument he makes will be the first.  Remarkably, both approaches can lead to a negative reaction, only Sharp (and apparently his bosses at the Detroit Free Press, who have employed Sharp for years) doesn’t understand the difference between the two.

I haven’t clicked on the Free Press’s web site since that newspaper committed journalistic malpractice by giving Mike Rosenberg license to publish a wildly slanted and misleading piece about the practice habits of Michigan football players.*  Mark Bradley does not operate under the same constraints, so he found Sharp’s piece about how Jair Jurrjens would be a .500 pitcher in the mighty American League and tore it to pieces.  Again, when you have caused a veteran columnist to go Fire Joe Morgan on you, then you have really screwed the pooch.

* – Here’s a thought experiment: if Michigan took Ohio State’s approach to NCAA violations, what would it’s response to the NCAA’s notice of inquiry have been?  Maybe a letter suggesting that Michigan get more practice time than the rules permit for the trouble of having to respond to such trivial allegations?  Seriously, look at the disparity between one school referring to “a day of great shame” when it concluded that it had misclassified stretching time and another school stating that it would be “shocked and disappointed and on the offensive” if the NCAA went beyond the ludicrously light sanctions suggested by the school in response to its head coach burying evidence of violations and thereby riding five ineligible players to a Big Ten title.  With that hyper-partisan aside behind me, we can get back to mocking Drew Sharp.

Because he is polite and I am not, I was expecting to have to pick up where Bradley left off, but Mark hit all of the high notes: the minor statistical difference between the AL and NL (Sharp has apparently missed the fact that offense is down in both leagues this year), the fact that Jurrjens has done well against the AL in 2011 (in two starts, Jurrjens has allowed one earned run in 14.1 innings, striking out 12 and walking three), and the fact that velocity isn’t the be-all, end-all for pitching (a point to which Braves fans are especially keen after years of watching Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux mow through opposing lineups without cracking 90 on the radar gun). 

The one point that I would add to Bradley’s fine work is that Jurrjens has gotten better this year despite dropping his average fastball velocity from 91 to 89.  Dave Allen at Fan Graphs noted this change at the start of June, positing that Jurrjens controls his slower fastball better, thus leading to fewer walks and more bad contact as Jurrjens gets opposing hitters to swing at pitches just outside of the strike zone.  Christina Kahrl has noticed that Jurrjens has dropped both his walk rate and his opponents' ISO rates.  We are dealing with a sample size of 110 innings, so there is a good chance that there is noise in the numbers.  It’s eminently reasonable to assume that Jurrjens will not be able to keep his ERA at Maddux levels for an entire season.  However, there’s no way to deny that Jurrjens has been outstanding in 2011, possibly because of a reduction in velocity that has yielded better control.  In that sense, Drew Sharp is backwards when he criticizes Jurrjens for noth throwing hard enough.  After a sample size of thousands of columns, we can safely say that Sharp’s performance is representative of his true quality.

The History Books Tell it / They Tell it So Well

This is not Mark Bradley’s strongest effort. Bradley is, by nature, an optimist and wants to think that a major move by the Falcons is going to pan out. Thus, in his column yesterday, he started grasping at straws, like this one:

Before we leave the NFL draft, we need ask a simple question: Were you the Falcons, would you rather have had the second-best-at-worst receiver in this class or the eighth-best defensive end? Because the rationale for trading up to take Julio Jones lies therein.

Gee, if only it were so simple. The Falcons were not choosing simply between taking Julio Jones or one of the defensive ends who would have been available with the #27 pick. No, they were choosing between those two options, only with four additional picks, including a first-rounder and a second-rounder behind door number two. One can just as easily make a simplistic argument in the other direction by saying that the Falcons made the wrong decision in a choice between one player or five. Bradley also assumes without evidence that the Falcons are going to have a late first-round pick in next year’s Draft. He is overrating a team that was outgained on a per-play basis and then lost by 863 points in its first playoff game.

And then this argument by Bradley ignores all recent evidence:

Julio Jones will start as a rookie. That’s a given. It’s all but a given he won’t be a bust. He’s too gifted and too focused. Jones was a high school star and played college football at the highest level, so he’s accustomed to the pursuit of excellence.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to be condescending to a columnist whose work I’ve enjoyed since I was in middle school, but I can’t help myself. Mark, in case you haven’t been watching the NFL for the past decade, wide receivers have a disturbingly high bust rate. Here is the list of wide receivers who have gone in the top ten spots in the Draft since 2000:

Darius Heyward-Bey
Michael Crabtree
Calvin Johnson
Ted Ginn
Braylon Edwards
Troy Williamson
Mike Williams
Larry Fitzgerald
Roy Williams
Reggie Williams
Charles Rogers
Andre Johnson
David Terrell
Koren Robinson
Peter Warrick
Plaxico Burress
Travis Taylor

By my informal count, the number of busts (Ginn, Williamson, Mike Williams, Reggie Williams, Charles Rogers, David Terrell, Koren Robinson, Peter Warrick, and Travis Taylor) outnumber the stars (Calvin Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Andre Johnson) who have been taken in similar positions. (Neither Crabtree, nor Heyward-Bey are off to starts in their careers that indicate that they will be anything other than busts, but for the sake of argument, I’ll give them grades of incomplete.) If the recent past is a guide, then it is three times more likely that Jones will be a bust than it is that he will be the player that Bradley describes.

If Bradley is thinking clearly, then he will counter with some variation of the following: “Michael, none of the busts on your list had a quarterback throwing to them with anything close to Matt Ryan’s ability. Most of your busts are the victim of circumstance.” That may be true, but there are two problems with this argument. First of all, if their lack of success was a function of teammates, then one would expect one or more of those receivers to have flourished when they moved to different teams. The only guy who could possibly be described in that manner is Mike Williams. Second, if wide receivers are simply a function of their quarterbacks, then it makes no sense to invest five good picks into one receiver. Rather, you would simply bide your time and wait for the chance to take your version of Desean Jackson, Mike Wallace, or Wes Welker later in the Draft. You know, like the good teams do.

Answering Mark Bradley

Mark Bradley is surprised that the Packers opened as a slight favorite over the Steelers:

The AFC champ has won nine of the past 13 Super Bowls. Pittsburgh was the No. 2 seed in the AFC, going 12-4. Pittsburgh has won two of the past five Super Bowls, and now, facing a wild-card qualifier that won two fewer games this season, Pittsburgh is …

A 2 1/2-point underdog.

Mark, you’re just looking at the wrong numbers.  Someone with serious skin in the game, i.e. the sharps who would kill the sports books if they based their lines on the wrong numbers, won’t look at who won the last 13 Super Bowls.  Maybe that issue was relevant in the 80s and 90s when the NFC won every year, but if the AFC had moved ahead of the NFC, that era has ended, as the NFC has won two of the last three.  The NFC was a whopping four games under .500 against the AFC this year, despite being dragged down by the NFC West. 

Sharps also won’t pay too much attention to the record of the two teams.  When we’re looking at a season of 16 games, there is the potential for a lot of noise in the records.  One or two bounces of the ball can cause one team to go 12-4 and another team to go 10-6.  Sure enough, the Packers went 4-6 in one-score games while the Steelers went 6-2.  Did that stat show that the Packers lacked a magical ability to win close games?  Probably not, since Green Bay has won a pair of one-score games en route to the Super Bowl.  In short, no one putting a $50,000 wager on a game is going to base his bet on the teams’ records.

So what it a sharp going to consider?  Yards per play.  Here is a reprint of a Chad Millman column making this point regarding the 2009 Michigan-Michigan State game:

Michigan State should have been the favorite when it opened. In fact, wise guys played some money on Michigan at first just to move the line a bit, so they could go back and play the other side for a better price. They knew most sharps would be on Michigan State. There were guys doing this with Cal and Oregon last week. Cal got bet up to 7.5 by wise guys looking for a better price because they were so sure of Oregon. Now, most college sharps build their math models around average yards per play. If you look at Michigan, it has gained 6.1 yards per play and allowed 5.5. Michigan State has gained 6.6 and allowed 5.1. Plus, I think MSU has played a tougher schedule, so that's why this game changed favorites.

Michigan came into the game at 4-0, having won a pair of nail-biters.  Michigan State was 1-3, having lost three tight games.  The yards per play numbers indicated that Michigan State was the better team.  Sure enough, the Spartans dominated the game and only won in overtime because Mark Dantonio did his best to make the game close.  Here is a podcast in which Millman explains in great detail why yards per play matters. 

So what does yards per play tell us about the Super Bowl?  Over the course of the season, it tells us that Pittsburgh was the best team in the AFC (+1.1 YPP) and that the Packers were one of the three best teams in the NFC (+.6).  However, YPP also shows that Green Bay has been dominant in the playoffs, as they were +1.0 against Chicago and +2.4 against the Falcons after a –.8 against the Eagles.  Pittsburgh was –.6 against the Jets after a +1.4 against the Ravens.  Green Bay has been great for the past two weeks, whereas the Steelers were a little lucky to survive against the Jets after being dominated in the second half.  So, yards per play reflects that the Steelers might be a slight favorite, but the Packers are the hotter team.

So what if we look at points-based models?  This is where we get the answer.  Sagarin would make the Packers a two-point favorite.  SRS would make the Packers a favorite of a half a point to a point.  When Green Bay has won, they have won comfortably.  The Steelers have won a number of close games.  We would expect these results from points-based rankings.

The overall point is that Bradley isn’t looking at the right numbers.  He is looking at the small sample – overall record – instead of the big sample – points and plays – that will give us a better sense of how good the two teams are.  I have to admit that I was a little surprised to read Bradley’s column.  He’s surely smart enough to realize that there are better ways to set a spread than “Pittsburgh was a higher seed and the AFC has been better over the past 13 years.”  His own sidebar reflects that he reads a lot of numbers-based sites (KenPom, Peachtree Hoops, Beyond the Boxscore, etc.), so he’s clearly aware of the blogosphere’s trend to being a reality-based community.  I’m inclined to reject the “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” conclusion, so are we left to believe that his editors don’t want him using meaningful numbers in his columns?   

It’s the Losing, not the Lying

In a development that is entirely unsurprising, Atlanta Spirit is suing King & Spalding for malpractice, alleging that K&S made massive mistakes in drafting the agreement by which the entity would buy out Steve Belkin’s shares and then compounded the error in its representation of Atlanta Spirit in the litigation in Maryland against Belkin.  The suit is unsurprising because the source of the litigation was an ambiguously drafted provision in the sale agreement that allowed Belkin to try to control both of the appraisals for the value of his interest.  Atlanta Spirit ultimately prevailed on appeal in Maryland by convincing the Court of Appeals there that the appraisal provision was unenforceable.  The moment that happened, a malpractice claim was likely.  (Note: K&S will have plenty of defenses to the claim, one of which will be that, as the Maryland opinion notes, they had 30 hours to prepare a complex commercial document.  Another caveat: I’ve only followed this dispute through the media, so take my thoughts with a pound of salt.)

Atlanta Spirit’s Complaint makes for fascinating reading as a history of the legal wrangling regarding the ownership of the Hawks, Thrashers, and Philips Arena (albeit from the perspective of ownership).  One of the big issues that Atlanta Spirit faces is establishing damages.  OK, so K&S drafted a document with an imperfect provision regarding the determination of fair market value for the teams; what did that mean for you in terms of actual dollars and cents?  Atlanta Spirit’s claim is that they wanted to sell the Thrashers after the resolution of the 2004-05 lockout, at which point the competitive landscape would be better for a team like the Thrashers and the franchise’s value will be greater, but they were unable to do so because of the uncertainty as to who actually owned the teams: Belkin or the rest of Atlanta Spirit.  This is a somewhat embarrassing argument for the owners of a major pro franchise to make, but this is what happens when you air your grievances in the public litigation process.  Atlanta Spirit faced the same issue when it was litigating against Belkin in Maryland and had to put forward evidence regarding the vast sums that the teams were allegedly losing.  (Unrelated issue: this dispute illustrates the value of an arbitration clause in certain commercials contracts.  Atlanta Spirit would have been much better off if it could have fought with Belkin behind a wall of confidentiality.)

Naturally, Jeff Schultz has latched onto this argument to complain that we’ve been swindled by Atlanta Spirit.  Here’s his opening flourish:

They told you they cared. They lied.

They told you their biggest concern was putting out the best product for you, the fans. They lied.

They told you not to pay attention to any of those rumors of the Thrashers being for sale, although they eventually admitted begrudgingly that, yes, they were looking for “investors.” They lied.

The Atlanta Spirit is not looking for investors. They’re looking to sell the Thrashers. They’ve been looking to sell them for — ready for this? –six years.

Six . . . years.

Those are the caretakers of your franchise. Those are the ones who’ve pleaded with you since 2005 to support a mostly inferior product — and now they can’t figure out how they’ve burned so many bridges in this town why fans still feel too angry or worn down to show up for a pretty decent team. Reality never has been their strong suit.

This is hopelessly naive.  A decision to buy or sell a franchise is one of those topics about which we can fully expect owners to lie and with good reason.  If a team’s owners admit that they are looking to sell, then they immediately start to look desperate and their price goes down.  This is negotiation 101.  If I’m going to scalp tickets outside of a game, I want to create the impression that I’m not committed to getting into the stadium.  If I show up in team gear reeking of desperation, then a scalper is going to fleece me.  The apparent decision by Atlanta Spirit to lie about its intentions to sell the team is no different than a college coach denying that he’s considering leaving his program, a presidential candidate denying that he’s considering ending his campaign, or a president lying about surveillance flights over the Soviet Union.  If Schultz wants to be mad, then he ought to be mad at himself for assigning weight to the self-interested answers of Atlanta Spirit to questions that they could not answer honestly for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Schultz is absolutely correct in the conclusion of his column: “If Atlanta loses its second NHL franchise, it won’t be because the sport failed here. It will be because ownership and management failed.”  The reason why he’s correct has nothing to do with Atlanta Spirit claiming that it was trying to sell the team when it was, in fact, trying to do exactly that.  Rather, if hockey fails again in Atlanta, it will be because the team didn’t win nearly enough games to generate interest.  Atlanta fans will respond to a winner.  We turned out for the Hawks in the 80s, we turned out in droves for the Braves in the 90s, and now we’re selling out the Georgia Dome for every Falcons game.  Atlanta fans, unlike some fans elsewhere, will not pay for a bad product.  (This does not extend to our affection for our college football teams, whom we’ll pay to see even when they are 0-11.)  The Thrashers have made the playoffs once in eleven seasons and were promptly swept.  Let’s go out on a limb and say that that qualifies as a bad product.  Indeed, one of the first defenses that K&S will make regarding Atlanta Spirit’s damages is that its alleged malpractice didn’t cause a diminution in the value of the franchise; Don Waddell’s fumbling of the on-ice product is the proximate cause of the loss.  (K&S would also point to larger systemic factors, like the economic downturn and the NHL’s descent into irrelevance.  That said, they’ll try to resolve the case on legal grounds if at all possible.  They won’t want 12 jurors trying to make these complex analyses of market value.)  At this point, we would all be happy if Atlanta Spirit sold the team, but it’s not because they had the temerity to claim that they had no interest in doing so.    

Where are the Trees in this Great Big Forest?

The problem with the computer rankings used by the BCS is that they are mathematically indefensible. The primary reason why this is so is that the computer rankings are forbidden from accounting for scoring margin. Thus, a 12-0 team that wins every game by 30 points looks exactly the same to them as a 12-0 team that won its games by seven points. If a bettor placed wagers looking only at record and strength of schedule without accounting for scoring margin, he'd end up at a bar being berated by Nicky Santoro. ("You call yourself a man?") And yet we have these ridiculous computer rankings that the programmers themselves view as inferior playing a major role in who plays for the national title.

So what's the problem with the computer rankings according to Tony Barnhart? The fact that Wes Colley made a data entry error. Yes, Tony, it would be nice if the computer rankings made their formulae publicly available. You know what would be even better than that? If Massey and Sagarin could actually use the formulae that they believe are far superior than than the drivel that they have to report to the BCS. Coming back to our inept bettor, let's imagine that Nicky's victim is wasting his family's money by playing craps instead of paying the power bill. Barnhart's complaint is the equivalent of Nicky ripping on the gambler for one decision that he made during an eight-hour binge at the tables instead of tearing him a new one for playing craps in the first place.

Barnhart's False Dichotomy

Professor Tom Collier, one of my favorite teachers in college, addressed Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan by saying that the answer all depends on the question that you ask. If the question is "was dropping the bombs better than invading Japan?," then the answer is obviously yes. If the question is "was dropping the bombs (and especially the second bomb over Nagasaki after we had already made the point that we had an unprecedented weapon) better than letting the diplomatic process play out?," then the answer is a lot less clear because there is a lot of evidence that the Japanese were about to surrender anyway.

I was reminded of that lesson when I read Tony Barnhart's "what if Auburn loses to Alabama and beats South Carolina?" piece yesterday because Barnhart frames the debate in such a way that it inherently favors Auburn:

If the choice is among 12-1 Auburn, 12-0 Boise State and 12-0 TCU for a No. 2 vote, who do the pollsters choose? Do they take a one-loss team from the conference that has won four straight national championships? Or do they use the controversy surrounding Newton as an excuse to give one of the little guys a chance?

In other words, do the voters make their decision based on precedent (the SEC's performance in BCS Championship Games) or conjecture (the swirling rumors about Cam Newton's recruitment)? If you pose the question that way, then the answer is obvious. However, Barnhart ignores the possibility that if Auburn loses to Alabama, then Boise State will have a better resume and would therefore be the more deserving team to go to Glendale. By ignoring the "which team is better if Auburn loses to Alabama?" question, Barnhart controls the answer.

If we ask the right question, then the Broncos come out ahead. Boise has dominated their schedule to a sick degree. They are #2 in the nation in yards per play gained and #1 in yards per play allowed. Their yards per play margin of +3.85 is unlike anything that I've ever seen. (By comparison, 2004 Utah, which is the other recent mid-major team that was deserving of national title consideration, was +1.8.) The major computer polls that account for scoring margin - Sagarin, Massey, and SRS - all place Boise State at #2 behind Oregon. In short, Boise State has a case to play for the national title even if Auburn doesn't lose. Personally, I'd still have Oregon versus Auburn if both finish unbeaten, but it's not a foregone conclusion if you look at the numbers. If Auburn does lose one of its last two games, then the Broncos have to hurdle the Tigers, not because of Cecil Newton, but because Boise State is a great football team with a compelling resume.

Barnhart's precedent point has a number of flaws. First, Boise State can equally point to precedent since they are 2-0 in BCS bowls (and I think that they were underdogs both times). Second, none of the four SEC teams that have won the last four national titles were anything like Auburn on defense. (And let's remember that this is Tony Barnhart we're talking about, the guy for whom the '80 Georgia/'09 Alabama model of tough defense, great running, and a game manager quarterback is positively arousing.) Third, this edition of the SEC isn't quite as good as the last four, mainly because the SEC East has been a disaster zone (as evidenced by the fact that South Carolina won it).

I'm as much of an SEC homer as the next resident of the Peach State, but columns like Barnhart's rein in that tendency. To be worthy of the title, Mr. College Football ought to acknowledge what Boise State has put together this season. I'm no fan of the Broncos, but it's hard to argue with their results.

Barnhart: Mike Slive Should Take a Page from Carmelo Anthony's Book

I heartily co-sign on the Senator's post suggesting that Mike Slive needs to get SEC coaches together and deliver a Stop Snitchin' rant. What a classic good ol' boy response from Barnhart. Let's not worry about the fact that #2 ranked Auburn may have paid $200K for its star quarterback. (If I were Mississippi State's coaches, I'd be livid. There's a very good chance that Mississippi State would be unbeaten if not for the alleged payments by Auburn.) Let's not worry about the fact that the SEC is extremely successful on the field, but that success can be tarnished if the media narrative changes to "they're cheating again!" Let's instead worry about the fact that coaches are running their mouths to the press. (And it's interesting that Barnhart assumes that a coach is the the source for the allegation that Newton was accused of cheating at Florida. There are any one of a number of potential Deep Throats in Gainesville who could have leaked the information, most of whom would not be in the room when Slive reads the riot act that Barnhart recommends.)

Here's a better idea: Mike Slive convenes a meeting of SEC program decision-makers and tells them that paying players is a bad idea.

Hollinger v. Bradley

John Hollinger has the Clubber Lang prediction for the Hawks against the Magic:

I'm trying to come up with a statistical indicator to favor Atlanta, and I'm drawing a blank. Orlando has home-court advantage, led the NBA in point differential and crushed Charlotte in four games in the first round despite having "Foul On You" nailed to the bench for all but 26.5 minutes a game. Meanwhile, the Hawks did little to encourage supporters by struggling past an injury-depleted Milwaukee squad in Round 1.

Moreover, the head-to-head history over the past two years is pretty one-sided. Atlanta won at Orlando on opening day of the 2008-09 season by 14 points, but since then it has been all Orlando. The Magic have won six of the past seven games, including wins by 17, 18, 32 and 34. Atlanta's only win in that span was by two points at the buzzer.

As a result, all 10 of our experts have the Magic winning, and only Chad Ford has the series going the distance. The glass-barely-wet view for Atlantans is that at least they aren't down 1-0 yet, unlike the Jazz and Celtics. I would strongly suggest the Hawks win the opener Tuesday, especially since that's probably their best shot to steal one given the rust Orlando should have from an eight-day layoff.

And Hollinger makes this point in the context of an article in which he describes the fact that teams with the homecourt advantage have a terrific record in the second round of the playoffs. So, with pretty much every factor pointing to a Magic victory, Mark Bradley is predicting glory:

My first inclination was to take Magic in six, but something about this matchup leads me to think it’ll go the distance. And where would the weight of expectation in such a Game 7 fall? Not on the Hawks.

The Milwaukee series was strange: The Hawks went from too loose to too tight to almost gone. But they made it through, and they see real opportunity in Round 2. So do I. Hawks in seven.

Bradley, who normally has a good sense for basketball match-ups, does not make a compelling case. His argument is that the Hawks can defend Dwight Howard without doubling him because Al Horford is an above-average big man. However, Bradley completely misses why Howard is a great player. Howard has a negligible offensive game. The Magic didn't have the second-best record in the NBA because of Howard's 18.3 points per game; they had it because they are the best defensive team in basketball and Howard's shot-blocking and rebounding are the largest reason why. Horford's skill is not going to prevent Howard from owning the glass or stopping the Hawks from scoring in the lane. Moreover, Orlando's success at shooting the three doesn't come only from opponents doubling Howard in the post, as evidenced by Howard's meager 1.8 assists per game and his reputation as a poor passer. Orlando gets open threes because they run a good offense, they have multiple threats, and they have a point guard who can find shooters. Who thinks that Mike Bibby can keep Jameer Nelson out of the lane? Right.

If Horford's presence gave the Hawks a match-up advantage against the Magic, then why have our friends in Orlando owned us for the past two seasons? Methinks Bradley is succumbing to his tendency to be too positive about the local teams. The Hawks' appearance in the Eastern Finals is going to go right next to the Braves' 2008 division title and Georgia's 2008 national title on the mantelpiece.

Two other thoughts on the local professional basketball collective:

1. With LeBron looking gimpy and the Lakers looking old, the stakes for the Hawks have gone up if they can somehow win this series. An upset over the Magic and "why not us?" will be a legitimate sentiment.

2. I still feel conflicted on the Hawks' rally against the Bucks. I'll freely admit that I gave them little chance to stave off elimination last Friday night. Instead, the team responded with two comfortable wins. The Hawks showed some serious backbone in coming back from what looked like a season-crushing loss in Game Five. Full marks to the team for doing so. On the other hand, if they were capable of beating the Bucks with such ease, then how the hell did they allow themselves to be pushed to the brink in the first place? Did Milwaukee come back to earth and give the Hawks the space to rise from the grave? Is this team capable of being great when they focus, thus making their wandering eye the reason why they aren't a true title contender?

That was Awesome (After 26 Outs)

So what was the best aspect of the Braves' improbable 4-3 win over the Phillies last night? The Baseball Messiah homering to tie the game in the ninth? Much-maligned Troy Glaus hitting a two-run homer to keep hope alive? Much-maligned Nate McLouth hitting a bomb in the tenth for the win? The Braves' novel idea of dashing into the clubhouse after a walk-off home run as an upgraded version of the silent treatment? The mental image of the Barfing Bandit having to watch his Phils blow a game to a division rival?

Mark Bradley, who is often one to get carried away, gets carried away:

Before the game, Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel was asked if a transcendent young player — like the Phillies’ Howard was back in 2005, or like Heyward is today — can energize an entire franchise. “A guy like that can bring excitement and bring energy,” Manuel said. “He can bring a whole lot to a team and to a clubhouse.”

We Atlantans are seeing it on a daily basis. Barely two weeks on the job, Jason Heyward hasn’t just stamped himself as the Next Big Thing. He’s making a big thing out of the team around him. He’s making us think it’s 1991 all over again. And maybe it is.

I'll put my irrational exuberance about the mystical powers of Mssr. Heyward up against anyone, but having this burgeoning superstar in the Braves' dugout hasn't made McLouth, Glaus, or Melky hit. Maybe last night is the start of something and the weak spots in the order will get better, but years of watching Bobby Cox succeed based on a mantra that a team should never read too much into any one game make me skeptical.

Blast from the Past

Remember when Jeff Schultz claimed that recruiting is overrated because college teams miss on players even more than NFL teams do? I thought about that last night when the news broke that the Eagles had traded Donovan McNabb for a second round pick in 2010 and a third or a fourth in 2011. The Draft is a crapshoot and yet the Eagles just sent a cornerstone player to a division rival for two picks, neither of which are in the first round. Either Schultz is right or everyone in the NFL, save for the Raiders and Redskins, is right.

One Quick Thought on Dunta Robinson

If Dunta Robinson is truly s shut-down, #1 corner, then this is a terrific move by the Falcons. The team has glaring needs at corner and defensive end. With corner taken care of, they can draft the best available defensive end next month (hint: Brandon Graham!) and then spend the rest of the Draft focusing on bringing in quality depth for the roster. I'm not ready to predict a Lombardi Trophy in the next three years (and Bradley is the guy who quite rightly pointed out last fall that we might have Eli Manning instead of Peyton under center), but signing the best available player at a position of need is never a bad thing. Normally, I would worry about the salary cap effects, but lo and behold, there are none!

And now for the empty part of the glass: I started the last paragraph with an "if" because I'm not sure that Robinson really is a shutdown corner. Using Football Outsiders' DVOA metric, here are the Texans' rankings over the past three years against #1 receivers:

2009 - 19th
2008 - 22nd
2007 - 30th
2006 - 23rd
2005 - 31st
2004 - 5th

(Note: Robinson was hurt for a chunk of the '07 and '08 seasons.)

I can't say that I've ever watched a Texans game from start to finish, so I can't say that my eyes can confirm or deny the numbers. Maybe the Texans have no pass rush and that failing hung Robinson out to dry. Maybe the Texans don't line him up against their opponents' #1 receivers on every play. Thomas Dimitroff does have a good reputation for scouting defensive backs and I doubt that he made this move without watching a ludicrous amount of film. Dimitroff doesn't seem like the sort of GM who would make a move based on reputation. All that said, the numbers are what they are and they show that the Texans were below average against opponents' #1 receivers every year after Robinson's rookie season. Does that sound like a team that had a shut-down corner on the roster?

Stats with Jeff

Jeff Schultz on the prospect of LaDainian Tomlinson becoming a Saint:

Now, personally, I think this would be a great move by the Saints. Tomlinson isn’t an every down back any more but he’s still one of the top running backs in the NFL. Putting him in that offense would be, like, sick, especially given his motivation level will be at an all-time high next season.

And if I’m Falcons coach Mike Smith, my first thought would be: “Oy.”

I had Tomlinson on my fantasy team this year. He killed me. Thus, I can speak to the fact that Schultz is about three years late in making this point. Tomlinson was 29th in the NFL in yards rushing. He was 49th out of 50 qualifiers in yards per carry, leading only the artist formerly known as Larry Johnson. Tomlinson achieved these numbers despite playing with one of the best quarterbacks in football. His total yards, yards per game, and yards per carry have declined in each of the past four seasons. His sole value last year was that Norv Turner, out of a sense of loyalty to a stumbling old war horse that has served its owner well, let LT score a number of short touchdowns.

If I'm Mike Smith, my first thought upon the Saints signing Tomlinson would be "when did Mickey Loomis get a lobotomy?"

Saints Envy

I would like to buy Mark Bradley's argument that the Falcons can do what the Saints just did, but I see a couple, um, shall we say meaningful differences:

1. Sean Payton calls plays for the Saints. Mike Mularkey calls plays for the Falcons. For a guy who rates coaching as being a critical factor on the college and NFL levels, this should mean something to Bradley. I'm not sure how to characterize the Saints' offense, but it's really cool to watch. New Orleans does a million different things and they spread the ball around, but everything is keyed off of the passing game. Mularkey is completely different. His offense is keyed off of giving the ball to Michael Turner over and over again. Whereas the Saints spread the ball to a number of different receivers, the Falcons funnel the ball to Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez. The only similarity between Payton and Mularkey is that they both like trick plays.

2. After the season that Matt Ryan just turned in, one that caused Bradley to write that we may have Eli Manning instead of Peyton, I'm not quite sure how he concludes that the Falcons aren't behind the Saints at the quarterback position. Yes, Matt Ryan is "further along than Drew Brees was after two seasons," but he's not comparable to where Brees is right now. Long-term, Ryan is obviously a better bet, but Bradley is writing about 2010. In a similar vein, Curtis Lofton might turn into a Jonathan Vilma, but he's not there yet (and based on my sense that Vilma was a great player in college and Lofton wasn't, I don't think that Lofton will ever get there. Lofton looks like a pretty good NFL linebacker, but I see him as a cut below Vilma.)

3. The sea change for New Orleans was hiring Gregg Williams, who changed New Orleans' defensive approach into a hyper-aggressive, blitzing style that compensated for the fact that the Saints' defensive personnel isn't superior. (By the way, I stopped reading him years ago, but is Gregg Easterbrook still on the tangent that blitzing is a terrible idea? I thought of Easterbrook as Tracy Porter was weaving his way downfield after picking off a pass that Peyton Manning threw under duress in the face of a six-man blitz.) Have the Falcons taken a step to hire an ace defensive coordinator?

Jeff Schultz Doesn't Bother to Divide

Out-of-touch liberal eggheads like your truly like spending our time reading books like Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason so we can gripe in our heads about the lack of rationality and evidence-based argumentation in the modern media. (What Jacoby would think about me spending my free time writing about sports is a different matter entirely.) One of Jacoby's numerous complaints about the modern media is the prevalence of innumeracy, i.e. the inability to understand basic statistics and mathematical concepts. For instance, Brian Cook did a nice job recently in debunking Bruce Feldman's argument regarding the prevalence of lower-rated recruits among the Super Bowl starters. Because Feldman is a good writer and a rational guy, Cook was polite in his criticism.

I am under no such constraints when writing about Jeff Schultz's predictable blathering about Georgia Tech's haul on Signing Day. Schultz has filled Terence Moore's shoes as the AJC columnist whose arguments I read mainly because I want to mock them. With arguments like this, you can see why:

The NFL, generally recognized as the most successful sports league in the world, employs hundreds of scouts, spends millions of dollars, crosses the country several times over, breaks down every conceivable potential pro player from Big Campus U to Couldn’t Find Us Without GPS A&M and feeds it all into computers that spit out professional looking, color-coded spreadsheets, suitable for framing.

Know what? They still get it wrong more than half the time.

So what are we to think about national letter of intent day? College scouting is even less sophisticated than pro scouting. They’re dealing with athletes four years younger. Teenagers. More variables means more guessing, which means more darts are likely to hit the wall, three feet from the target.

NFL teams are almost uniform in the high value that they place on Draft picks. The major exception are the Washington Redskins, who regularly trade picks for established players. Ask a Redskins fan how that's working out for them. The Falcons acquired a Hall of Fame tight end last spring for a second round Draft pick and no one batted an eye. Bill Belichick, who has a reasonably solid reputation, traded Richard Seymour, his best defensive lineman and one of the pillars of the Patriots dynasty, for a first round pick and most people assumed that Al Davis was getting fleeced again.

So here's the question Jeff: are NFL teams misguided when they place such high value on the lottery tickets that they get to play each April? Have you intrepidly identified a market inefficiency? Or is it possible that you just don't understand the concept of probability at all? Assuming that you are right that NFL teams miss on over half of their picks, draft picks are still valuable because the more picks a team has and the higher those picks are in the draft order, the greater the likelihood that the team will find a good player.

And that brings us to recruiting. Schultz acts in a dismissive manner towards recruiting gurus, putting up sarcastic quotation marks around rankings, stars, and experts. Here is the meat of his argument:

Let me take this opportunity to give a value to these rankings on my own personal scale: one raspberry.

“The No. 64 guard in the country, you can’t tell me who that is,” Johnson cracked Wednesday. “I don’t even know who the No. 2 guard in the state is.”

The old expression of a team “looking good getting off the bus” applies here. They are recruits, nothing more, nothing less. Georgia Tech will be fine because the success of a football program is defined by coaching and direction, not by which recruits emerged from those inane hat-switching acts at press conferences.

The recruiting rankings tend to track the offers that a player receives. If Texas, Florida, and USC are all after the same player, then that player will get four or five stars. If the schools of the MAC are fighting for a player's signature, then he won't. If Schultz is right that the stars and rankings are meaningless, then he is adopting the position that the staffs at the elite programs do not know how to evaluate players. Care to defend the position that Urban Meyer doesn't know the difference between a player and a poseur, Jeff?

And then Schultz's crowing insult comes at the end, where he lists four players that Paul Johnson will have to replace this year: Derrick Morgan, Demaryius Thomas, Jonathan Dwyer and Morgan Burnett. Guess how many stars went next to Morgan's, Dwyer's, and Burnett's names when they were recruits? Cue Moses Malone: fo, fo, fo. Guess how many stars went next to Josh Nesbitt's name? The 2009 Georgia Tech team succeeded for a number of reasons. Good offensive coaching and good fortune come to mind immediately, as does Chan Gailey's recruiting. The assumption that Paul Johnson can continue to win at the same level without recruiting at the same level is just dumb.

The funny thing is that Tech's class is quite good if Schultz were able to understand how numbers actually work. He cites Tech's middling overall rankings, but doesn't account for the fact that the Jackets signed a small class of 18 players. By average star ranking, they do quite well: #26 by Rivals and #34 by Scout. Johnson brought in five four-star players, which is not far off the eight four-star players that Gailey signed in the 2007 class that formed the backbone of the 2009 ACC Champions. The class is defense-heavy, which is good for Johnson because he can cobble together an offense out of spare parts, but defense requires athletes and it isn't his field of expertise.

Yes, Jeff, there is no guarantee that these players will become stars on the field. The debris field of wasted talent at Florida State that paved the way for the Jackets to win the conference is a testament to the fact that talent alone does not win games. However, rather than reveling in the anti-expert, "no one knows anything about anything!" mindset that you encourage, Tech fans should be either reasonably happy because Johnson brought in a collection of good lottery tickets yesterday or mildly concerned because he didn't bring in more on the heels of two successful seasons.

What Do you Mean by "Substance," Tony?

I like Tony Barnhart, but he annoys me at times when the unreconstructed traditionalist in him gets loose. Such is the case with his claim that Tennessee hiring Derek Dooley is a "triumph of substance over style." Barnhart's evidence for Dooley's substance:

1. Dooley gave up on a legal career to coach. Something tells me that if I quit legal practice and announced my candidacy for head coaching positions in the SEC, I wouldn't get very far. But then again, my last name isn't Dooley, and that's the point.

2. "But in the final analysis, the younger Dooley is not only the right kind of coach, he is the right kind of MAN that Tennessee needs to lead its football program at this point in history." And your evidence for this is...what?

Look, I'd be fine if Barnhart ran a piece that said that he has a good relationship with Vince Dooley and he's happy that Dooley's son got a major head coaching gig in the SEC. I have no problem with a personal, "I'm feeling good" piece. I do have a problem when Barnhart takes his subjective feelings and turns them into a ham-handed attempt at an objective argument. There is no objective way to justify Tennessee hiring a guy whose head coaching experience consists of going 17-20 in the WAC. Tennessee just got burned by hiring a coach who was most noted for being the son of a great football mind; what in G-d's name are they doing repeating the same mistake? Maybe Dooley will do well and illustrate the maxim that we never can be sure which coaches will succeed and which will fail, but there is no good reason to think he will right now. Sorry, but I'm not persuaded by Tony vouching for Derek's character. Gerry Faust was also a great guy.

Radiohead, Arrested Development, Woody Allen Movies...

This blog. (HT: Ryno.)