I wrote last month about the apparent gaping void where proper statistical analysis should exist for major college football programs and I'm reminded of that post by Bill Barnwell's excellent piece on small market baseball teams applying Moneyball principles years after the rise and fall of Billy Beane's Oakland A's. Barnwell makes the point that MLB teams have the money and incentive to attack the difficult problem of grading fielding:

It was clear even at the time Moneyball was written that fielding would become a battleground for teams looking for an edge, but the sort of data that would be required to do robust analysis on a player's fielding ability really didn't exist. Traditional fielding statistics, such as errors, didn't do the actual act of fielding justice. Fielders with great range rack up errors on plays that mediocre fielders would never have a prayer of getting to. That makes no sense.

In 2011, that's no longer the case. Systems like Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR)3 and plus/minus4 usually disagree on the exact level of a player's glove upon team performance, but they represent a dramatic increase in the level of knowledge and accuracy in fielding analysis that's available to the public. Both UZR and plus/minus attempt to determine how many plays a fielder should have made versus a league-average player at the same position.

The "public" part of that statement is particularly relevant because so much of the work that's been done on fielding since Moneyball has been conducted inside the inscrutable walls of major league organizations, which have both the funding and motivation to sink significant sums of money into the sort of video analysis and quantitative research required to produce advanced fielding statistics.

That last sentence has two important implications for college football. First, college football programs should have even more motivation to apply advanced statistical analysis to obtain a competitive advantage. In professional baseball, teams can pay their players, so there is a natural outlet for revenue. If a team wants to win and it has money coming in from tickets and TV deals, then the blindingly obvious solution is to pay for better talent. Statistical analysis enters the picture only in determining how the team should spend its lucre. In contrast, college football teams cannot (legally) pay for talent. Thus, programs have to re-direct their revenue into other channels, like building palatial facilities to attract recruits or hiring top coaches who can then recruit and develop talent. With all of that revenue and a dam preventing it from its most natural outlet, college programs would do well to spend money on armies of nerds to help their coaches in recruiting players and then developing optimal schemes and tactics.

The second implication is that football results can be quantified. Generally speaking, baseball lends itself to statistical analysis more than football because it's a quasi-individual sport. A batter faces a pitcher and there is an outcome. Football doesn't work like that. It's very hard to isolate one-on-one match-ups because the result of a play is the product of two eleven-man units deployed against one another. That said, as Barnwell notes, defensive outcomes are harder to quantify in baseball. That mystery is what has made defense such a cutting edge topic for analysis. Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry can figure out hitting/pitching success, but not fielding success, there is an advantage to be gained by the team that figures out the best way to analyze the latter. The same is true in football. The teams that figure out the best way to grade individuals in a team sport will have a leg up.

Barnwell also touches on statistical analysis as being critical for have-nots in their efforts to compete with the haves. Doesn't this same reasoning apply to college football programs? I'm thinking of the Big Ten in particular. While the members of the conferences are haves in terms of revenue, they are have-nots in terms of access to talent, especially as compared to the SEC or the elite programs in the Pac Ten (USC) and Big XII (Texas and Oklahoma). Without a bevy of four- and five-star players close to campus, Big Ten programs need to think like the Padres, Indians, and Rays instead of the Red Sox, Yankees, and Dodgers. I have a pet theory that staid Midwestern cultural norms prevent Big Ten programs from leveraging their dollars on top coaches, but wouldn't it be a natural fit for those programs to spend money on the best available statisticians so their coaches are armed with a better way to approach recruiting and play-calling? (This assumes that the grad students and professors on campus wouldn't perform the work for free.) If the Big Ten wants to "win the right way" (i.e. remain the whore who won't do that), then what better way than by imitating Billy Beane?

Ross Barnett and Sepp Blatter

I started reading Curtis Wilkie’s Dixie on Friday morning at the gym. I bought the book years ago for $5 at a discount bookstore and then I had it sitting on the shelf until I started into it because I needed a paperback to read on the Elliptical machine. I’m now halfway into the book and I’m wondering why it took me this long to open it. Wilkie has a terrific writing style. I often find myself saying “man, I wish I could structure a sentence like that.” In terms of content, Wilkie does a terrific job of blending the personal and the political, weaving his life story in with the story of the South trying to destroy itself in resistance to the end of Jim Crow.

I always liked Howell Raines’s line about the joys of being an Alabama fan when the Bear was the coach:

And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.

Wilkie has a similar paragraph, one that I was immediately repeating to my wife with a look that said “see, I’m not all that crazy”:

Several passions are important to Southern men. The love of a good woman ranks slightly ahead of the exhilaration that comes from a sip of sour-mash whiskey. Other pleasures include greeting the chill dawn in a deer stand, debating the merits of barbecue from North Carolina, Tennessee, or Texas, expanding on stories that improve with age, and enjoying the bonhomie of friends. Then there is football.

Replace “sour-mash whiskey” with “bourbon” and “in a deer stand” with “on a run, trying to think of something interesting to say about the SEC” and I could put that paragraph on the back of a personalized t-shirt. Wilkie follows that paragraph by describing the highs and lows of SEC football: the famous 1959 Ole Miss-LSU game, a.k.a. the Billy Cannon punt return, and the infamous 1962 Kentucky-Ole Miss game that Ross Barnett turned into a massive rally against integration and that preceded by one day the riot/insurrection in Oxford.

Coming on the heels of Ole Miss replacing Colonel Reb, Wilkie’s book is a great reminder of William Faulkner’s line that the past is never dead, it's not even past. Part of what makes SEC football so compelling are the ghosts that are occasionally nipping at the heels of events. I was reminded of this truism not just by plowing through Dixie, but also by Tim Vickery’s recent article explaining why much of the developing world retains some otherwise inexplicable loyalty to Sepp Blatter. Here is Vickery on the 1966 World Cup:

A few months ago in Rio I saw Uruguay coach Oscar Washington Tabarez give a lecture to Brazilian coaches. The theme was on his team's recent rise and their progress to the semifinals of last year's World Cup. Tabarez, though, in addition to being a man of soccer is an academic, a teacher by trade (nicknamed "El Maestro" for this very reason), and he could not resist some historical context.

He stopped off briefly at the 1966 World Cup, held in England while FIFA was presided by an Englishman, Stanley Rous. That tournament, he said, had been a conspiracy against the South American teams.

The great Pele was brutally kicked out of the tournament by European teams while European referees did nothing. Strikingly, all but seven of the 32 matches had European referees, and the Portugal-North Korea quarterfinal was the only knockout game with an official from outside the continent. Famously, the Germany-Uruguay quarterfinal had an English referee, while the England-Argentina match had a German -- both were controversial, and South American involvement in the competition ended before the semifinals.

Tabarez is certainly no demagogue, no flaming-eyed nationalist. But he believes that the tournament was set up to exclude the South Americans.

He may well have extended his complaint, and noted that the competition was a conspiracy against the world outside Europe. There was just one place reserved for Asia and Africa combined. The bulk of the African nations pulled out in protest, their complaints given extra fuel by the support Rous offered to apartheid South Africa. The wind of change was blowing in Africa, but it could not dislodge the cobwebs in the mind of Rous, who was floundering badly in post-colonial politics he seemed unable to understand.

Vickery then explains that when Joao Havelange replaced Sir Stanley Rous as the head of FIFA, he created opportunities for countries outside of Europe by expanding the World Cup, creating youth tournaments that members of the Developing World could host, and commercializing the game to pay for the process of bringing the game to previously ignored places. Thus, the current criticism of Blatter (Havelange’s hand-picked replacement) has to be understood in context:

There was no pre-Havelange and Blatter garden of Eden -- just a different FIFA with different defects. With its lack of historical context it is unclear whether the current hysteria in the English press is motivated by a genuine desire to carry the game forward on a global basis -- or by nostalgia for when English rule was unchallenged.

The lack of accountability of the current FIFA is surely unsustainable, the quasi-feudal personal fiefdoms that develop inside the organization are disturbing and the fat-cat lifestyle of some of those at the top makes the stomach turn. But for all its flaws and problems, it is not hard to understand why much of the developing world prefers the post-Havelange FIFA to what came before.

It never occurred to me until reading the Vickery article and the first half of Dixie on the same weekend, but there is a real parallel to be made between SEC football teams and European national footie sides. Both are the representations of states/countries with significant identities. Those states/countries have a history of subjugating racial minorities that comes up from time to time in the present,* especially as their teams deploy players from groups whom they previously tried to oppress. You can't understand the politics surrounding FIFA and Sepp Blatter without knowledge of the post-colonial struggle to democratize international football; you can't understand Ole Miss's place in the SEC without knowledge of Ross Barnett and James Meredith.

* - If you want to go one step further, both colonialism and Jim Crow were ended by World War II. Colonialism ended because the European colonial powers were devastated in one way or another and replaced by two countries - the US and USSR - that had anti-colonial ideologies and therefore had to exercise power in subtler ways. (The USSR's subjugation of Eastern Europe is the obvious exception.) Jim Crow ended for a variety of reasons, but one major one was the Great Migration that kicked into high gear as a result of war mobilization. African-Americans were much harder to oppress as rural sharecroppers; not so much when they could organize politically in great urban centers in the North. Also, the experience of fighting against the Germans and Japanese illustrated where racist ideologies could take a country.

Oversigning and Competitive Advantage

Generally speaking, I think that Big Ten fans make too much out of oversigning because they have a psychological need to dismiss the SEC’s recent dominance.  It can’t be that SEC programs sit in more talent-rich states, a disparity that will only get worse as current population shifts continue, and place a greater emphasis on hiring coaches with top resumes.  No, let’s dismiss all of that and instead infer that an unethical practice employed by SEC coaches must explain the difference.  I can imagine Nick Saban bellowing “you need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, ‘That's the bad guy.’ So ... what that make you? Good?”

That said, John Pennington’s attempt to show that oversigning does not produce a competitive advantage (HT: Blutarsky) seems weak to me.  The teams that have the greatest incentive to oversign are the middle class or lower class programs that struggle to recruit top players and therefore have to make up with quantity what they cannot acquire in quality.  Thus, we would expect that the most successful teams in the conference would not oversign because they don’t have to do so.  Therefore, looking at results and recruiting quantities is a fool’s errand because Pennington is not normalizing for program status.  In other words, if Florida signs 85 players over a four-year period and Ole Miss signs 105, we wouldn’t expect Ole Miss to have a better record because the extra players will not trump all of the other advantages that Florida has over Ole Miss.  

The Big Ten illustrates this perfectly.  Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State have sufficient prestige that they do not need to engage in oversigning because they generally have dibs on the best players in the Midwest.  Having to compete with these more popular programs, the proletariat of the Big Ten then needs to sign more players, but signing additional players doesn’t trump all the other advantages that the Big Ten elite have.  This doesn’t mean that oversigning isn’t an advantage; it just means that it is one of a number of potential advantages and it can get trumped.

Where Big Ten fans have a point is here: as between elite programs, oversigning is an advantage.  It’s one thing for Ohio State to play Arkansas, a team with a limited recruiting base and a medium recruiting profile.  Ohio State has numerous advantages over Arkansas, so all things being equal, Ohio State should expect to bring more talent to the table.  It’s another thing for Ohio State to play LSU or Alabama – teams with similar profiles and recruiting bases – and then to have to deal with the Tide and Tigers having the extra advantage of their coaches having signed more players and cut guys who did not pan out.  This has always been my point about oversigning: LSU and Alabama have no business engaging in the practice and they deserve the media criticism they get on the subject.

One by One, our Old Friends are Gone. Death, Natural or not, Prison, Deported.

In a week in which USC was stripped of their one BCS title and Ohio State continued on its merry road to NCAA hell, I’m thinking about the parallels between the two programs.  Both hired new coaches for the 2001 season.  Both had growing pains in 2001 before dominating their conferences in the rest of the decade.  Now, it turns out that both were looking the other way while their players received improper benefits. 

So here’s my hypothesis: Ohio State and USC are similar programs in that they sit in the best recruiting areas in their respective conferences.  There are more players from Ohio on Big Ten rosters than there are from other states.  Ditto for players from Southern California on Pac Ten rosters.  USC and Ohio State dominated the Pac Ten and the Big Ten in the Aughts by controlling local talent.  (If I had a nickel for every reference to Jim Tressel’s proverbial wall around Ohio.)  With fans following recruiting to an increased degree on Rivals and the like, keeping top talent at home became more of a priority for these programs.  Nothing will anger Ohio State fans more than Ohio players going to Michigan and coming back to haunt the Buckeyes.  (Ask an Ohio State fan about what state produced Michigan’s two Heisman winners in the 90s.)  Thus, both USC and Ohio State had an incentive to look the other way on rule-breaking in order to create an environment that would be attractive for recruits.  Because instate recruits are more likely to visit campus frequently and their coaches will be plugged into what’s going on at the major school in the area, a reputation that players get extra benefits will be especially valuable in keeping local talent. 

If this hypothesis is right, then members of the Big Ten and Pac Ten ought to be royally pissed at Ohio State and USC for creating an uneven playing field.  Big Ten programs rely on Ohio and Pac Ten programs rely on SoCal.  USC and Ohio State dominating in-state recruiting was a zero sum game.  Not only were they locking up top talent, but they were doing so at the expense of their conference rivals.  USC cheating to keep the best players in Southern California is different than Washington or Arizona hypothetically cheating to keep their in-state players at home because there are a lot more top players in former area.  It’s the difference between taking money from the petty cash box and robbing a bank.  Also, dominating in-state recruiting by using a reputation for extra benefits is different than cheating to to get out-of-state talent because the former is zero-sum.  Ohio State beating Florida to a top player in the Sunshine State only impacts Big Ten teams in that they have to play that player; Ohio State beating Michigan and Penn State for a top player in Ohio is worse because Ohio State gains a player and their biggest rivals lose one.  Breaking rules to keep players in the conference’s most fertile recruiting ground is a zero sum game.

If this hypothesis is right, then we ought to give extra credit to Texas, as it is the third school that fits the description of USC and Ohio State.  Assuming that this description is correct and trumps Rachel McCoy's inadvertent admission, then Mack Brown and Texas deserve compliments for avoiding the temptation to employ every means – legal and otherwise – to lock up the talent in Texas upon which the rest of the conference depends.  Texas hasn't dominated the Big XII in the same way that Ohio State and USC dominated the Big Ten and Pac Ten and Texas's apparent ethical behavior might be the reason why.  Then again, it might be a simple matter that Oklahoma has Bob Stoops, a superior coach to the guys in charge at Ohio State and USC’s traditional rivals in the Aughts.

As far as our favorite conference is concerned, the SEC has its own cheating issues, but talent is too diffuse for a similar situation to spring up.  Because there are plenty of blue chip players throughout the region, there is no one school sitting in a recruiting area upon which they and the rest of the conference relies.  Thus, no school has such a strong incentive to improve its own place and screw its rivals at the same time by ignoring rules violations that aid in recruiting.  I never thought I’d write a post concluding that, in at least one respect, there are lesser incentives to cheat in the SEC than there are elsewhere, but there you go.

From Each According to his Ability, to Each According to his Service Time in the Majors

Tommy Hanson's outstanding performance against the Marlins last night drove home a point for me: the Braves' salaries are inversely related to their performance. Jair Jurrjens sports a league-leading 1.75 ERA and is being paid $3.25M.* Tommy Hanson's 2.59 ERA gets him $456,500. Conversely, Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe are being paid $9M and $15M and they both have ERAs a tick over four. If baseball players were paid in a truly free market, then Jurrjens and Hanson would be significantly more valuable than Hudson and Lowe, especially in light of the fact that they are younger. This would have been true even before the season (moreso for Hanson than for Jurrjens, as Jair had an injury-riddled 2010).

* - Jurrjens' ERA is unsustainable at its current microscopic level, but he is doing such a good job of preventing homers and refraining from walks that it's reasonable to think that he'll keep pitching at a high level for the Braves this year, even with a pedestrian 5.5 K/9 ratio.

A true free market does not exist because of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players' union, which forces players to play for six years before they achieve free agency and three years before they are even arbitration eligible. This system makes sense in that it encourages teams to invest in their farm systems, knowing that the players they produce will be captive assets for more than a half a decade, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that baseball players are paid their true worth on an open market.

I bring up the imbalance between pay and performance because it's relevant in the discussion about paying college football players. The argument against the current system (and I have made this argument) is that players generate trmendous revenue for their schools, but they are not rewarded with a cut of the revenue, except in scrip from the company store. A free education may be valuable to some players, but for others, life in a lecture hall is just not their highest and best use. However, college sports are not unique in that they have rules preventing players from capturing the value that they create. American pro sports have similar rules, although there is a difference in scale. It's one thing to be paid six- or seven-figure salaries when you deserve eight; it's another to be paid in a barter system when you deserve thousands or millions of dollars.

There is an additional analogy to be made between college and pro sports compenation: both rely on a deferred compensation element. In baseball, young players perform for lower salaries, knowing that good performances will lead to a payday down the road. Tommy Hanson knows that he's playing for a relative pittance now, but he is positioning himself for a massive deal in 2-3 years, a deal that will be especially big because he won't have to compete against pitchers who come after him because those guys will be restricted from entering the market in the same way that Hanson is now. Likewise, college football players play for classes and room & board in the hopes that their performances will lead to NFL riches. The college system seems less equitable because Ohio State and Alabama don't end up having to pay out the deferred compensation, whereas the Braves will have to do so for Hanson and Jurrjens (or their replacements if Jair and/or Tommy leave). That said, the point remains that the NCAA's amateurism rules seem antiquated, but they are not without parallels in American pro sports. This is not a situation like English footie in days of yore when clubs could not pay their players and the players had no expectation of ever cashing in. The payout may be delayed, but it's not denied.

It’s Not Either/Or

It’s rare for me to disagree with the Senator (blogosphere edition, not the recently disgraced coaching version), but this is not a productive question for Georgia fans to ask themselves:

Which leads me to ask Georgia fans the perennial water cooler question – would you trade places?  It’s a pretty good comparison.  Both schools were faced with a similar problem, although Ohio State’s was certainly larger in scope.  And at this point, both star players have elected to leave their schools for professional careers.

Georgia and A.J. Green stepped up, told the truth from the beginning and were rewarded for their efforts with a season to forget.  Knowing what you know now about Ohio State’s likely fate, would you be happier if the Dawgs had followed Tressel’s path, hidden the truth and taken the short-term rewards (12-1 season and a BCS game victory)?  Or would you need even better results to live with the aftermath of decisions by a head coach and star player to ignore the rules?

Last year, Ohio State was fourth nationally in total defense and yards per play allowed.  Georgia was 23rd and 38th in those two stats, respectively.  Put A.J. Green on the field for all 12 games and Georgia isn’t going 12-1.  The different manner in which Ohio State treated Pryor (or even the entire Tatgate Five, four of whom were on the offensive side of the ball and the fifth was a reserve defensive end) and Georgia treated Green doesn’t explain a six-game disparity in the standings.  That analysis doesn’t work in a game with 22 starters.

That said, Blutarsky does raise an interesting angle that the NCAA will face when it considers sanctions for Ohio State.  We are coming off of a season in which several teams lost key players because of suspensions for improper benefits.  Ohio State’s head coach (and arguably their compliance department, which seems unable to find evidence of wrongdoing despite media outlets finding stories like candies tumbling out of a piñata) ignored evidence of similar violations on the part of his players.  Doesn’t the NCAA have to reward schools like Georgia and North Carolina for being proactive in dealing with improper benefits by showing that the alternative is significantly worse?  The NCAA needs to hammer Ohio State and not for punitive reasons or because the Bucks derived a major competitive advantage from its players trading memorabilia (that point is debatable), but rather to send a message to its members that self-reporting is a big deal.  The whole system, which most closely resembles a rickety dam trying to hold back a flood of money headed towards the athletes who create it, depends on honest self-reporting.  Interestingly, it’s a member of Jim Delany’s conference and not the ostensibly corrupt SEC that will need to be the punching bag.

If Michigan's Offense Struggles this Year...

Then this chart (HT: Blutarsky) will be quite a cross to bear for Brady Hoke and Al Borges.

This season will be very interesting as a test case for how much latitude Hoke gives his coordinators. Borges is a West Coast Offense guy, but his attack has taken various different forms over the years, including an increasing reliance on the shotgun. It's plausible that he would come up with an offensive scheme that utilizes Denard Robinson's specific skill-set, although it's still going to seem a little like a scorpion pretending to be an anaconda by asphyxiating its victim. (My operative theory on offensive coordinators: if you're a spread guy, then run the spread. If you're a West Coast guy, then run that offense. If you're a scorpion, then sting. If you're an anaconda, then squeeze.) Hoke has stated that he doesn't like the spread as an offensive scheme. Thus, you have a head coach whose philosophy is at odds with the available talent and whose offensive coordinator might be able to concoct a scheme that can work for the talent. How does the situation play out?

By the way, here is the SEC:

Mississippi State - 5th - 95.68%
Florida - 14th - 90.25%
South Carolina - 19th - 87.84%
Vandy - 47th - 75.40%
Tennessee - 53rd - 73.34%
LSU - 63rd - 69.4%
Georgia - 70th - 66.40%
Arkansas - 83rd - 57.88%
Ole Miss - 92nd - 46.31%
Alabama - 103rd - 37.68%
Auburn - 110th - 31.19%
Kentucky - 118th - 24.68%

You can see a potential resurgence by the East over the horizon. You have Florida returning most of the team and getting a post-Addazio bounce. You have South Carolina returning a ton of players from a team that finally got over the hump and adding a potential difference maker at defensive end. You have Tennessee in Derek Dooley's year two, which is often the best year for a new coach. And you have Georgia returning a lot, adding a great recruiting class with key members at positions in need of a boost, not to mention the fact that the Dawgs are in year two of the experiment with the 3-4. It's quite plausible to see a shift of power between West and East, or at least a reversion closer to equilibrium.

One last point: Alabama is replacing an awful lot on offense to be preseason #1. Yeah, the defense may be so good that 20 points will be enough every week, but every national champion has a game or two where it needs a late drive to win. How confident are Tide fans that all of those new faces will come through?

America F*** No

Five Thoughts on the auto-da-fé in Foxboro:

1. I have mixed feelings regarding Bob Bradley. On the one hand, he doesn't have a lot to work with, especially at the back. If we loom at the resumes of his defensive candidates, then it's hard to escape the conclusion that he is being asked to make chicken salad out of you-know-what. Even farther forward, he is supposed to rely on a teenager who just broke into MLS and a striker who has been a total failure in Europe. The best central midfielder on the team spent the season on the bench at Aston Villa. Outside of Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard, and possibly Maurice Edu, it's hard to find a lot of current success stories for Yanks abroad. (Stuart Holden would be an additional success story if not for his injuries.) If Bradley wins the Gold Cup and beats a Mexico side full of players with better resumes, then we ought to laud a significant accomplishment.

On the other hand, what the hell is Bradley doing when he picks his team? Spain win matches by dominating the central midfield area. They play a 4-2-3-1, which means that they have three players in that zone. In this match, those three players were Sergio Busquets, Xabi Alonso, and Santi Cazorla. The US is always going to have issues with players of that quality because we don't have anyone close, but Bradley made a bad situation worse by playing a 4-4-2 that had only two central midfielders. Thus, not only are Edu and Jermaine Jones inferior to the players in their zone, but they were also outnumbered. What is the point of playing two strikers if they are never going to see the ball? Jones and Edu were shockingly listless in the game, but part of their malaise has to be attributed to being given mission impossible by their manager. At best, Bradley was deploying the formation that he is going to use against easier marks in the Gold Cup, but if that's the case, then why even play this game if you are going to serve your players up to the lions?

1a. Two execution metaphors so far. That ought to tell you how well the match went.

2. Was it me or did it seem as if either the ball was underinflated or the grass was too long at Gillette Stadium? The ball kept dying in the grass. Maybe this was by design to prevent Spain from playing their normal passing game. If so, then gee, imagine what the result would have been with balls that actually rolled properly?

3. Santi Cazorla's two goals raise an interesting point for Spain: is he a better fit in the central attacking midfield role than Xavi? The middle man in the band of three in a 4-2-3-1 should generally be able to provide the killer final ball and also crash the box to score. Xavi can obviously do the former, but he's not noted for the latter. Last summer, Vicente del Bosque often started matches with Xavi in the forward role and then he pulled him back into the defensive band of two with a player like Cesc Fabregas moving into Xavi's old spot. This usually worked better for Spain. It's hard to argue with a World Cup-winning manager, but shouldn't he just start matches with Xavi farther back and a goal-scoring threat like Cesc or Cazorla farther forward.

4. Kudos to ESPN for showing the national anthems before the match. ESPN's commitment to proper coverage of Pepidemiology, International Edition stands in stark contrast to both Fox Soccer Channel and Univision. Univision is usually good in this department, but they skipped the anthems before Mexico-El Salvador last night, causing tears of rage on the part of my anthem-obsessed four-year old son. (Thank goodness for YouTube.) Maybe Univision can be excused because the Mexico match was the second half of a double-header and they needed to squeeze in ads between the games. Fox Soccer Channel has no such excuse for skipping the anthems before England-Switzerland. In keeping with their inability to show anything interesting before and after matches, Fox Soccer had a narrator providing useless commentary before the match, but did not show the anthems. If you are going to be blind Anglophiles, then the least you could do is show "G-d Save the Queen," which is typically the high point for an England match.

4a. Has there been a bigger upgrade in a media position than ESPN going from Mark Shapiro to John Skipper? ESPN Hollywood to Ian Darke? It's the broadcasting version of Greg Robinson to Greg Mattison.

5. It's true that Spain was missing a number of first-choice players, but in a way, it's more dangerous to play the second-team guys because Spain are very deep and those second-teamers are going to be highly motivated to prove themselves. Don't you think that Raul Albiol, Santi Cazorla, and Alvaro Negredo were trying to leave an impression with del Bosque? It might have been better to go up against Xavi and Iniesta, neither of whom could have been super-motivated.

Stuff your Golden Boot

This passage from Jonathan Wilson on the increasingly resolved Messi versus Ronaldo debate is pure catnip to me:

Both Messi and Ronaldo have supreme technical ability. Both can turn games single-handed. Ronaldo is taller and more powerful, much better in the air. But he is also an egotist, wrapped up in his own personal glory to a deleterious extent. His pursuit of the pichichi and Golden Boot (the awards for top goal scorer in Spain and in Europe respectively) this season have been pitiful. Away against Atletico Madrid, after Real Madrid had gone 2-0 up in the first half-hour, Ronaldo spent the rest of the game pinging in shots from unlikely distances and angles. Sergio Aguero pulled one back with five minutes to go, and Real Madrid almost drew a game they should have won by a vast margin.

Perhaps Ronaldo would have acted like that anyway, but it's hard to believe his selfishness was not accentuated by his desire to win the individual goal scoring awards, something that was turned into a consolation prize by the Madrid press once it became apparent that Barcelona was walking away with the league title, and even more so after Barcelona had beaten Real Madrid in the Champions League semifinal. But, frankly, who cares?

But then, the column devolves into a surprisingly naive attack on individual awards as creating an incentive at cross-purposes from winning:

Before Manchester United's final game of the Premier League season against Blackpool, Patrice Evra breezily admitted that he was desperate to help Dimitar Berbatov win the Golden Boot ahead of Carlos Tevez. "Whenever I get the ball I'll be passing to Berba because I want him to score," he said. Which sounds like a generous gesture, but imagine the following scenario. United and Blackpool are locked at 1-1 in the final minute, a score line that, if it becomes the result, will keep Blackpool up. Evra finds himself with a shooting chance. If he scores Blackpool are relegated, while United, having already wrapped up the title, doesn't really care, so he pauses to try to allow Berbatov to catch him up so he can lay the ball to him. As a result the chance is wasted. Blackpool stays up and -- say -- Wolves is relegated instead. In that instance the individual award actually distorts the competition.

Um, welcome to modern professional sports, Jonathan.  Even if we didn’t have individual awards, we would still have contracts between teams and players that have bonuses for individual accomplishments.  This is true in both European soccer and American sports.  Additionally, players know that they are judged in the market by their individual accomplishment.  Every goal a striker scores increases his value on the transfer market and his wages per week in his next contract.  Every additional game that Cal Ripken played on his march to Lou Gehrig’s record meant more advertising dollars. 

Hell, this isn’t even limited to pro sports.  There is a current story line in Friday Night Lights where Coach Taylor is having difficulty reining in his star quarterback Vince Howard, whose father is pushing him to make spectacular individual plays to get scholarship offers.*  If you accept FNL as an accurate portrayal of high school football (and that’s one of the show’s many strengths), then the dilemma that Wilson poses is simply endemic to team sports.  There will always be conflict between individual and team incentives (how about the basic scenario of when an injured player will return to the lineup?) and we just have to accept that fact.  It’s part of the job description of a coach or manager to successfully sublimate the individual goals of his players to the overall objective of winning.  That tussle is part of what makes sports interesting.

* – Here’s what I didn’t like about the end of last week’s episode.  Howard shows off his arm by throwing a 65-yard touchdown pass on the final play of a 31-7 blowout.  Is he supposed to be impressing recruiters by violating a major football norm by scoring at the end of a blowout?  And more importantly, it would have been obvious to a recruiter from Coach Taylor’s reaction that Howard had ignored his coach’s playcall by throwing the pass.  Are colleges going to line up to take a quarterback who ignores instructions?  FNL is usually great in getting the little details of small town Southern high school football, but that wasn’t the show’s best moment.

Au Revoir

The sad thing about the Thrashers moving is that I don’t really feel anything. While I can’t say I am or was ever part of the core group of fans for the team, I have to fit the profile of someone the Thrashers would have targeted as a potential fan. I loved hockey ever since living in Pittsburgh for two years in the early 80s, following the rancid Penguins teams that earned the right to draft Mario Lemieux. In college, I had season tickets for the Michigan hockey team and traveled to two Final Fours, one that Michigan won and then another in which Michigan was upset as a big favorite in the semifinals by BU. In short, I am a sports fan with a hockey background, disposable income, and (at least prior to having kids in 2006) free time to go to games. As my boys grow up, I would have been in a position to take them to games regularly.

When someone with my profile is fairly non-plussed about the local hockey collective moving to Winnipeg, you know that ownership has done a wretched job of selling the team. The Thrashers had so thoroughly removed themselves from the local sports consciousness that their decision to leave doesn’t inspire anything approaching the raw emotion of the Baltimore Colts or Cleveland Browns leaving their cities. The team just didn’t put down any roots. The sports business is a results-based industry and when a team doesn’t produce results, fans will not and should not pay for the product. Without winning, the tree will never take root. Additionally, as Scott Burnside explains, one of the many failures of ownership was the absence of local hockey programs:

Apparently ignorant of how to build a fan base, ownership made no inroads in selling the game. It had no commitment to build a minor hockey program in Atlanta the way Dallas did when the Stars first moved there. There was nothing in Atlanta to compare to the grassroots initiatives in Anaheim, San Jose and Nashville.

In those markets, kids play the game, connect with the team, drag their parents and friends to games, buy merchandise and build a bond. Homegrown players' names from Texas and California and yes, Tennessee are called at NHL entry drafts every year. Ownership made sure of that in those markets, and if those teams left, there would be a scar on the community, a sense of loss.

In Atlanta, the Thrashers leave without creating a ripple on the surface of the community.

Burnside also argues that Gary Bettman did, in fact, do his best to try to find local figures who would buy the team and keep it in Atlanta:

There is a common misconception that the NHL chose not to fight for the Thrashers. That theory is born out of ignorance. For months and months, Bettman and team president Don Waddell beat the bushes for an owner or ownership group to buy the team and keep it in Atlanta.

Bettman has shown himself to be resourceful in these matters, covering up ownership messes in Tampa with Jeff Vinik and Buffalo with Terry Pegula. He may even end up covering the sinkhole in Phoenix with Matthew Hulsizer.

No one stepped forward in Atlanta because it was a mess beyond saving, and the only alternative was to sweep that mess into a corner and give the people of Winnipeg the team they have been craving.

I buy this reasoning. Bettman may have an array of negative qualities, but he’s not an idiot. Atlanta is one of the largest MSAs in the country and it is full of transplants who would buy tickets and watch on TV if they were given a reason to do so. It simply makes no sense that Bettman would fight to keep teams in Nashville, Phoenix, and Buffalo – all of which are inferior markets – and then do nothing to try to keep a team in Atlanta. Maybe Bettman did nothing to help Atlanta Spirit, but can anyone blame him on that front? In the words of Sir Alex Ferguson, I wouldn’t sell them a virus.

In the end, the Thrashers’ move is sad because of the wasted potential that it represents, but it’s the right move in a free market. The only emotion I feel about the move is regret that the team was never able to turn itself into something that I cared about. I would have liked to have taken my boys to games to see a young, improving team. Given the eleven-year history of this franchise, I have no confidence that this potential contender would have emerged. In European soccer, badly-managed teams are punished by relegation. In American sports, inept franchises are usually able to keep on trucking because they are insulated from their own bad decisions by franchise protection and revenue sharing. (See: the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Clippers.) With little national revenue to share, NHL teams are more subject to normal market outcomes, so it’s natural that the Thrashers would move. Between the team moving to Winnipeg or local government subsidizing them to the tune of $25M a la Glendale, I’ll take the former. This is how a free, competitive market works. Sports teams are a little different than restaurants or department stores in that they are public goods in addition to being private businesses, but the moral of the story is that the Thrashers never gave Atlanta a reason to make them a public good.

An American Culé in London

So I'm back, with my ears still ringing.

Why I Went



I've been a member of FC Barcelona since 2007, but in that time, I haven't been to a game. (Insert standard reference to wife, kids, and job.) The only Barca match I had attended before Saturday was on September 9, 2001, the home opener against Rayo Vallecano. I had proposed to my wife in the city two days before, so my political capital was high. This was not a good period for the club, as they had finished fourth the previous year only by virtue of one of the all-time great clutch goals:



and they would finish fourth again. The match was a harbinger of a pedestrian season, as the team drew 1-1. The result flattered Barca, as their goal was an own-goal by Rayo and Rayo also managed to hit both posts with one shot late in the game. Before Saturday, that was the sum total of Barca matches that I had attended in person.

As a member of the club, I get e-mails on a fairly regular basis regarding the process for applying for home and road Champions League tickets. Typically, when I get the e-mails, I forward them to my Delta employee brother to ask about flights, he responds, and then I invent a reason not to go, usually because it would involve missing 2-3 days of work. When I got the e-mail about applying for tickets to the Wembley Final, I finally grew a pair. The fact that the game was on a Saturday instead of a Tuesday or Wednesday helped. I was aided by asking three different friends “how much would you pay to see your favorite team in a championship game?” and received a uniform response of “$1,000.” I was also aided by my saint of a wife telling me that she supported the decision because, as she put it, “you work hard and it’s not like you spend a lot of money on clothes.”

I was also motivated by the historical implications of the match. For Barca, this was the chance to make their definitive case as one of the greatest club sides of all-time. Three Champions League titles in six years is no small feat, especially when no team as repeated since the creation of the Champions League from the European Cup in 1992. Winning the third of those titles against Manchester United – the kings of England – at Wembley would be a colossal exclamation mark at the end of a season that was preceded by the nucleus of this Barca side winning the World Cup and included the famous 5-0 win over Real Madrid that kicked the “greatest team ever?” discussion into high gear. Additionally, the number of players and coaches involved made this a target rich match in terms of telling my grandkids “I saw this guy live”: Sir Alex Ferguson, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Edwin van der Sar in their final games,* Wayne Rooney, and the Ferdinand-Vidic pairing on one side; Pep Guardiola, Gerard Pique, Carles Puyol, the Xavi-Iniesta fulcrum, David Villa, and Leo Messi on the other. As a history major who still has regrets over my decisions not to go to the Braves game that turned out to be Randy Johnson's perfect game, as well as the 1996 Michigan-Ohio State game in Columbus (I sold my ticket thinking that Michigan was going to get slaughtered and that anyone wearing maize and blue would be drawn and quartered), this was too much to pass up.

* – The first Champions League Final I ever watched was Ajax 1 Milan 0 in the 1995 Vienna Final. Van der Sar was the goalie for Ajax in that match and the announcer (JP Dellacamera, I think) made a point of noting that he was young and would be nervous playing against a Milan side that was in fully dynastic mode. Van der Sar had a nervous moment or two in the first half, but settled down and ended up with a clean sheet against the defending Champions League winners. There was a nice closing of a circle that van der Sar played in the first Final that I watched and then his final match was the first Final I attended.

The Lead-up



Being a risk-averse person who had spent $120 on a ticket that I described as once in a lifetime and who was also lucky to have gotten the right to buy a ticket (96,000 of Barca’s 175,000 members applied for the 16,000 tickets available to members, which means that I won a one-in-six bet),* I was on the train to Wembley three hours before the match.

* - One nice thing about Barcelona: every member has an equal chance to get tickets to big events like Champions League Finals. Most clubs would reserve their allotments for season ticket holders. Barca has a democratic structure, so all members can apply. I suppose that a guy who went to 15 games at the Nou Camp this year could be annoyed that someone like me didn't go to a game all year and then got to go to the Champions League Final, but I watch the games, I buy the jerseys (or at least I did before the new sponsor), and I click on the links. Surely I count for something. Barca's structure does have its downsides - the public tapping up of players during elections is one obvious examples - but there are a lot of upsides to a club owned by the members.

The experience was great. Barca and United fans were bantering in a friendly manner the entire time. For the entire day, I didn’t see one verbal altercation, let alone a physical one. Maybe the language barrier between the fans helped, or maybe there is a level of respect between the fans that was accentuated by the verbal bouquets being tossed back and forth between the players and managers during the week. The United fans were singing their song about going to Wembley:



And the Barca fans were just grinning at our good luck to be playing at Wembley again.*

* – Being a Barca fan is a little like being in the Eagles. We have about six songs and we sing them in concert in a rotation. It’s not hard for a non-Spanish/Catalan speaker to pick the songs up quickly, especially thanks to a helpful video from BarcaLoco:



After my wife, my brother, Johan Cruyff, and Lady Luck, I have to give thanks to BarcaLoco because without this tutoiral, I would have looked like even more of an idiot than I already did as a non-Spanish speaking Barca fan. In contrast Being a United fan is more like being in Dylan’s band. There are dozens of songs and you never know which one is going to be sung. “Hey, it’s Mascherano, let’s sing the song about shitting in your Liverpool slums! No, not the one about Scousers not having job, the one about shitting.”

I noticed more Barca fans in the street headed toward the game and surmised that the United fans would be in the pubs until shortly before kickoff. This played out in the stadium, as the Barca end was full and singing well before the United end. Similarly, I saw more Barca fans on Friday when I was tooling around London, but I chalked that up to the fact that Barca fans would be more likely to see the tourist sites (Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and the British Museum, in my case) than United fans who have probably been to London on dozens of prior occasions.

The Match



Needless to say, the match lived up to billing. Barca put on a signature performance, better than their performance against United in Rome two years ago. (Interestingly, Guardiola said after the match that when he rewatched the Rome Final in the preparation for this match, he wasn’t overly impressed by his team’s performance.) Brian Phillips did a great job of describing the effort:

Barcelona’s performance in the second half is going to be talked about in hushed tones for a while, and deservedly so. The most impressive thing, to me, was that they won by doing exactly what they wanted. Matches at this level tend to be decided, if not by penalties, then by lucky bounces (Xabi Alsono getting his penalty rebound in ’05, Inzaghi deflecting Pirlo’s free kick in ’07), sudden breakthroughs (Iniesta in the World Cup final), goals squeezed in after a scramble in the box. Yesterday, though, each of Barcelona’s forwards scored from open play, with each of their midfielders contributing an assist. They had 63% of the possession and 12 shots on target (to one for Man Utd—Rooney’s goal). Messi scored in England, even if it was in London on a Saturday night. Valdes didn’t have to make a save. They played exactly their game, and their game worked exactly the way it’s supposed to, and the second-or-third-best team in the world was basically powerless to frustrate them. If soccer is about realizing a collective intention against the limitations imposed by the game and the resistance imposed by the opponent, then Barcelona epitomized soccer yesterday. Forget the backlash, your anti-mass-media skepticism, conspiracy theories, blog rage, and Heineken. If you love sports you were lucky to watch that.

Alex Ferguson said that his team was beaten by "the best team we have ever played." Just like in Rome, Barca had a nervy first ten minutes when United were on them like a pack of wolves. Also like in Rome, Barca grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck after that, dominating possession and restricting United into a smaller and smaller defensive area. Unable to keep the ball, United started hoofing long balls to Rooney and Chicharito, which was an odd strategy in light of the fact that neither of their forwards are big guys. Route one to the Little Pea is never a good idea. Barca struck on 27 minutes and for six minutes, I was thinking that this was going to be Athens ‘94 (Milan 4 Barca 0; the beginning of the end of the Barca Dream team) in reverse. Then, Rooney scored out of nothing - a terrific goal that showed that he would not be out of place in this Barca side with his ability to pass and move - and the United fans let out an unholy roar from the other end of Wembley. Game on. For the next several minutes, it felt like I had to force myself to sing and cheer. You recognize why there are so many chants taunting a losing team for being quiet; it’s hard to muster the energy to chant when the game is going against you.*

* – I was struck by two aspects of the game that were especially pleasant after years of going to games in the US. First, because the game is non-stop, you don’t lose the emotional high from scoring. Nick Hornby is right; there is a quasi-sexual feeling to the release after your team puts one in the back of the net. It’s not quite like your team scoring a touchdown because the moment is more explosive. More importantly, the goal is followed by a celebration and then the opponent kicks off. There is no cold shower of commercial break-kickoff-commercial break. Second, there is nothing in the stadium to distract fans from the game. Wembley is as expensive and modern a stadium as there is in footie, but it has two video boards that would make a Texan guffaw. Those boards play a live feed of the game and occasional highlights. That’s it. No wrap-around boards with stats. No Kiss-cam or Tesco Price Check. The PA announcer does nothing save for announcing goals, cards, and subs. And keep in mind that the Champions League Final is the European Super Bowl, so if there were ever a chance, in the words of Mortimer Duke, to “get back in there and sell, sell,” this would be it.

If the 5-0 thumping of Real in November was the opening opening argument for Barca’s “best of a generation” case, then the second half of the Final was the closing argument. Barca quickly pinned United back and within 11 minutes, Leo Messi had put the Blaugrana ahead. 13 minutes later, David Villa scored with a wedge shot that would have made Seve Ballesteros proud and Barca spend the last 20 minutes passing the ball around, content that three goals would be enough. United didn’t muster a single shot on target in the second half. In the end, the Barca players were on another podium, receiving another Champions League trophy with the club’s name on it. Puyol’s decision to let Eric Abidal lift the Cup as captain was a nice touch, reminiscent of Andres Iniesta’s tribute to Dani Jarque after scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final. As best as one can tell about celebrities with managed images, these Barca players seem like good guys.

In the end, it has to be said that United are a good match-up for Barcelona. For one thing, the Red Devils were so successful over the course of the year because of their depth, but in a one-off final, that depth doesn’t matter so much, especially when the teams have had weeks to prepare and and rested and healthy coming in. (The American sports analogy would be to a team with five great pitchers in the starting rotation, a strength that is somewhat pearls before swine in October.) For another, United are incapable of playing the negative, destructive style that gives this Barca team trouble. Jose Mourinho concluded that the way to handle Barca was to pack the midfield with defensive players, starting with an aggressive central defender (Pepe), and then to hope that a counter could produce a 1-0 win.* United do not have that personnel, especially with Darren Fletcher not entirely fit, and Alex Ferguson probably sees that style as incompatible with his team’s image (although United’s approach in the first leg of the 2008 semifinal against Barca came close). United brought a sterling defensive record to Wembley, but without a proper defensive screen, even a terrific central defensive pairing like Vidic and Ferdinand (a pairing that was a major factor in United not allowing a goal in the Champions League away from Old Trafford all season) bled three goals in 69 minutes before Barca made the “you’ve had enough” decision. All three goals came from the area in front of the back four that a screen of defensive midfielders would seek to control. The opener was eerily like the opener in Rome: Xavi/Iniesta breaks free from the center of the pitch, has time to pick out the final ball, and hits one to the right to a forward to finish at the near post. It’s to Ferguson’s credit that he tried to play his game and went down trying, but then again, it’s not his job to earn the plaudits of an opposing fan.

* – In going to the game, I was interested to see the differences between my outlook - formed by watching every week on GolTV and reading Sid Lowe, Phil Ball, and Graham Hunter – and that of Barca fans who go to the Nou Camp every week and get their news from the Catalan sports dailies: El Mundo Deportivo and Sport. I was happy to learn that a white-hot hatred for Jose Mourinho united Barca fans around the world. The first chant on the escalator headed to the upper deck was “Ese Portugues, hijo puta es.” The guy in front of me kept singing “Jose Mourinho, hijo de puta,” regardless of whether the rest of the fans were singing with him. He also took great pleasure in calling his friends to sing that little ditty. The new chant that Barca fans sing is simply “por que, por que, por que, por que,” a dig at Mourinho’s rant after the first leg of the semifinal. (I wonder how Vikto Kassai’s “stop, or I’ll say stop again” homage to London bobbies, specifically as to Antonio Valencia’s repeated attempts at tackling, fits with the UEFA-Unicef conspiracy in Jose’s mind.) This guy liked the chant so much that he had it emblazoned on the custom t-shirt he made to honor the 2011 champs:



As the gate agent told me when I was boarding the flight home (subtly dressed in a Xavi jersey and a game scarf; why didn’t I paint my face and have “Cant del Barca” playing on a loop from my phone?), “football won.” This was a needed tonic for a game struggling through the obvious corruption of its global governing body. It was also important for a team that had disgraced itself to a degree with the play-acting in the first half of the first leg against Real. I’ll defend the histrionics to a degree as a rational response to a noxious strategy employed by the worst person in the world, but in the end, when your players repeatedly go to ground holding their faces after not being touched in that area, then something’s amiss. This game had none of that. Not much fouling, no surrounding the ref, no play-acting, no diving, no playing for penalties, and no surrounding the ref. Hell, Busquets only went down twice. If I were trying to get a friend on the fence into footie, I would not have shown him or her the matches against Real (although the fourth match [not coincidentally the one without Jose] was a pretty good one), but the Champions League Final would be a persuasive advertisement.

Three Thoughts

1. It briefly appears as if Xavi can dance, but then he thinks better of shaking his hips Shakira-style on a stage in front of thousands of people.

2. Bojan is a Gator fan.

3. For the moment, I'm not concerned about Shakira being Yoko to this Barca side's Beatles.

Sorry for the lack of recent content

I have had a lot of work to get done before my trip to the Feisty Goat. Full review of Wembley '11 coming next week.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Gaping Hole

In reading a typically strong effort from Joe Posnanski about the payroll sinkhole in which the Yankees will find themselves in two years, I was struck by the passage on Mark Teixeira:

Mark Teixeira (33 years old, $22.5 million). Tex has five years left on his contract after this year. I think this contract could actually work out fine. Tex plays hard, he’s a switch-hitter, he’s good defensively, he will take a walk — I think his skills could stretch out.

The problem with Tex has little to do with Tex — it’s that we live in an era in which hard-hitting first basemen are everywhere. I’ve been over this list before, but again, I would ask you to choose from these first basemen:

• Mark Teixeira
• Albert Pujols
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Miguel Cabrera
• Joey Votto
• Prince Fielder
• Ryan Howard
• Eric Hosmer

Where would you draft Tex from that list? Third? Fifth? Last? And you can throw in Ike Davis, Justin Smoak, Matt LaPorta, the surprisingly hot Gaby Sanchez, the now-third-baseman Kevin Youkilis, the surprisingly sturdy Paul Konerko, the former MVP Justin Morneau and a bunch of other young guys. Tex’s all-around play and the hope that he will age well might move him near the top. But we seem to be moving to a time where just about every team in baseball will have a first baseman who hits roughly like Mark Teixeira.

Except the Braves.

Two Views on Leo Messi

With Barca having clinched La Liga last week and the Champions League Final still nine days away, there isn’t much meaningful football to discuss in Catalunya.  Thus, the big story has been to analyze the sullen demeanor of Leo Messi when Barca celebrated their title at the Nou Camp on Sunday.  Taking the negative view that Messi is grumpy about Cristiano Ronaldo passing him on the scoring lists is Ben Hayward:

So distraught at being left out of the team was the 23-year-old that he couldn’t muster the energy to celebrate a title in which he has been the main protagonist. Without Messi, there would be no league title at Barca this season, but the No.10 was in his own world, sitting on the sidelines. And sulking.

By that time, news had filtered through of Cristiano Ronaldo’s two goals at Villarreal. Those strikes saw the Portuguese move a full seven clear of Messi in the race for the Pichichi (eight according to Marca), as well as emulating the Argentine in reaching a half-century of goals for the season. Messi could even be overtaken by the Portuguese now in all competitions – and he did not look amused.

Taking the positive view is Graham Hunter:

After the game, when the team was being presented with the league trophy in a colorful celebration, I was banging away at my computer. My friend and colleague from BackPage Press, Martin Greig, tapped me on the shoulder. "What's up with Messi?" he asked.

There he was among the Barca squad, the only one who kept on his tracksuit top and trousers rather than joining his teammates in their playing kits to throw red peppers all over the place. He drifted away from Pep Guardiola's lads, who were singing, dancing and generally shaking off the tension of a long, hard football campaign.

If you had taken a snapshot, it looked like each and every player was holding a winning lottery ticket but Messi had lost his and was shuffling about looking for it -- downcast and preoccupied.

Now, I am not trying to overdramatize this. Messi isn't ticked off with his team, his manager or life in general. It is just that he literally cannot stand missing out on a game, even one that has no bearing. So on Sunday, with the league won the week before, Messi was left on the bench, having to watch an understrength Barca trundle along to a goalless draw with Deportivo.

The next day, I asked Josep Maria Minguella, the football scout and player agent who discovered Messi for Barcelona, to confirm my suspicions. He did.

"Leo lives to play, every second, every minute, every match -- it's what he thrives on. He hates not taking part in any game. That's one of the best things about him."

Shockingly enough, I’m going to side with Hunter.  Messi knows that the media love winners.  If Barca win at Wembley, and especially if Messi scores in the victory as he did two years ago, then Ronaldo beating him for the Pichichi and the European Golden Boot will not matter.  In fact, Ronaldo’s achievement will almost become part of the negative narrative regarding Cristiano, namely that he is a selfish player who looks to set himself up, whereas Messi is a team player who makes goals for those around him as well as himself.  Also, the fact that Ronaldo has gone on a scoring spree after Barca effectively clinched La Liga will add to the narrative that Ronaldo isn’t a big game scorer.  This second narrative shouldn’t have much weight after Ronaldo scored the winner in extra time in the Copa del Rey Final, but old stereotypes die hard.  Some people in England still levy that criticism at Messi after he has scored in a Champions League Final, hit a hat trick in a Clasico, assisted the winner in the Olympic Gold Medal Game, and now scored the two key goals against Real Madrid to send Barca to London.  To come back to the original point, if Messi has any degree of self-awareness (and he certainly seems like a perceptive guy), then he knows that sitting out the last two games of the La Liga season will not matter if he delivers the good against Manchester United.

Jim Tressel = Vladimir Putin

What is it with powerful people and their conceit that they can look someone in the eye and divine judgments conta to established facts?  First, Dave Brandon claimed that he could tell more from an interview with Brady Hoke than he could from pesky statistics, such as a 47-52 career record.  Now, Gene Marsh has opined that the NCAA Committee on Infractions will do the same with Jim Tressel:

"'What were you thinking? What motivated you to do this?'" Marsh said. "If that didn't matter, you wouldn't have a hearing. ... The body language, and how sincere the individual is, it matters a great deal. It is the show."

Or, put another way, the NCAA Committee on Infractions can use Tressel’s personal demeanor to make a judgment: (1) against the weight of the evidence; and/or (2) consistent with their personal prejudices.  

Coaches on Stats

Tom Dienhart has an interesting article up in which he asks various college coaches to describe which stats they view as important. (HT: Blutarsky.) Generally speaking, I was taken aback by the lack of sophistication in the stats cited by the coaches, including coordinators with reputations as advanced thinkers. For instance, not one coach listed yards per play as a relevant measure, despite the fact that most sophisticated gamblers use it as the basis of the systems that they set up to analyze teams. Tim DeRuyter comes close to explaining why a pace-neutral stat like yards per play makes sense...

Total defense also is important. A lot of it is a function of how many plays you give up. In our league, you have Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Baylor -- all these guys are no-huddle, up-tempo teams, so you are going to play more snaps and total defense gets thrown out. Instead, I am more concerned about pass-efficiency defense and third-down defense.

but then he cites third-down defense (as do a number of other coaches), a stat that Football Outsiders has shown (at least on an NFL level) to be a heavy luck element. Teams that do disproportionately well on third down tend to regress the next year and vice versa. Conceptually speaking, it makes no sense to focus on third down efficiency because there's no reason why third down is any more important than second or first. Can anyone conceive of a good reason why a defense would be bad on first and second downs and then magically get better on third? Maybe a defensive coordinator saves up his best stuff for third down after playing vanilla on downs one and two? Put another way, why do we pay special attention to third down conversion defense, but not to fourth quarter defense?

The general sense that I got from the article is that college football is a barren wasteland for statistical analysis among coaches. It's possible that some of these coaches have advanced stats for measuring their teams' performances and they just aren't sharing those stats because they want to retain an edge, but there is no hint of that sort of collusion. I doubt that dozens of baseball managers would say that they use batting average and RBIs to measure players and if they do, most GMs almost certainly don't. Since college football programs don't have general managers, it falls on the coaches to seek out and use better stats, but it appears that they don't, although at least some of them are curious enough to have read studies on the importance of turnover margin.

And here's the funny thing about innumeracy on the part of coaches: they have a ready-made solution at their universities. Do you really think that there aren't a dozen students (or professors) in the stats department at Alabama who would be thrilled to apply their regression analysis tools to help Nick Saban understand what stats have the strongest correlation with winning? Or what traits are most important for recruits at given positions? I'm not saying that coaches should use these sorts of analyses to make all of their decisions. As in baseball, stats are best used in conjunction with traditional scouting and coaching, and that's in a sport that lends itself to statistical analysis more than football. Likewise, I'm not saying that coordinators need to start spouting off about adjusted yards per play or S&P. Their jobs are still primarily to develop schemes and then to coach players to perform their roles in those schemes. However, there can be no doubt that they would be more effective at their jobs if they had better guidance as to what numbers matter.

I Bet the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man had a Small Five-Hole

While I was rooting around hockey-reference.com looking for attendance numbers, I came across this chart that nicely illustrates my problem with modern hockey, or at least one of my problems. Look at the change in save percentages over the years. In 1983-84, the first year for which save percentage is tracked, goalies saved 87.3% of the shots that they faced. The save percentage grows gradually over time, first getting above 90% after the 1993-94 season, which happens to be the year in which the NHL's popularity was at its modern apex, at least in the United States. Now, there were a lot of factors that led to hockey reaching that zenith: the Rangers ending their Stanley Cup drought and the attendant overreaction by the Northeast media; a dramatic set of post-season series; Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux both being active, established stars (although Gretzky was coming towards the end of his career); etc. I would add to that list the fact that offense and defense were in balance.

In this past season, goalies saved 91.3% of the shots they faced, which is the highest save percentage since the NHL started recording the stat. The Eastern Finals are being contested between goalies with save percentages of .941 and .932. These explosions in save percentage are galling to me because they are not the result of increased skill on the part of goalies. (I'm sure that goalies now are in better shape than they used to be, but the same would be true of the guys taking shots at them.) Rather, it seems inescapable to conclude that save percentages are way up because goalies get to wear a ridiculous volume of equipment, such that they take up the vast majority of the goal simply by basic positioning. I don't pretend to be enough of a hockey fan to make this argument based on extensive research and game watching, but from what little of the playoffs that I've watched, I've noticed on numerous occasions that goalies are credited with making great saves when all they did was position themselves and then let the puck hit them.*

I find the reduction of scoring based on bigger goalie equipment to be a turn-off because there is no skill involved in picking the right accessories and then getting dressed. Scoring is down and fielding percentages are up in baseball, but I have no problem with that. If teams are giving up fewer runs because they are deploying centerfielders and shortstops who get to everything, then I'm going to enjoy watching baseball more to see those athletes in full flight. (I'll acknowledge that the emphasis on better defense has come with the price of more at-bats for punch-and-judy hitters, so there is a trade-off.) In contrast, it's not exciting to watch a grotesquely-clothed goalie stop 19 of 20 shots without having to show quick reflexes. I'm not denying that goalies have to have great reflexes to play the position, but the same would be true for baseball players if they suddenly started hitting .400 with regularity because they got to use aluminum bats.

Bringing the discussion back to the soon-to-be-departed local professional hockey collective, I have to credit something that Steak Shapiro said. (There is a Jewish prayer called the Sheheheyanu that is recited whenever something good happens that has not happened for a while. That prayer seems appropriate at this stage.) When discussing the potential sale of the Thrashers several weeks ago, Steak hypothesized that the team has had trouble finding a local buyer in no small part because that buyer would not just be buying a franchise with a dwindling fan base and no profile in the local sports market, but they would also be buying into the NHL. In light of the fact that the league has allowed its product to be devalued by a basic equipment issue, that reasoning is persuasive.


* - Note that shots per game have remained relatively constant over time. It's not as if scoring is down because coaches are playing too conservatively. If that were the case, then shots would be down. Instead. the decline in scoring has to be primarily caused by goalies' equipment.

The Silver Lining

I look forward to John Hollinger articles about the Hawks because Hollinger has a statistically-oriented approach and he’s that rarest of national writers who shows more than a passing interest in the local professional basketball collective.  Hollinger is typically pessimistic realistic about the Hawks and he has written some of the best criticism of Atlanta Spirit, so it was something of a surprise to see this title to his article the morning after the Hawks took their umpteenth whuppin’ of the season, thus ending an unexpectedly interesting playoff run. 

The main focus of Hollinger’s optimism is the fact that Jeff Teague emerged in the series against the Bulls.  The prospect of playing Derrick Rose brought the best out of Teague.  Whether Teague genuinely improved this spring or this ability has always been present and the Hawks haven’t mined that talent, we’ll never know.  Hollinger describes the possibilities that Teague now provides:

In doing so, this also opens up new options for the Hawks that we hardly saw all season. Atlanta can play Teague at the point, Kirk Hinrich at shooting guard and Joe Johnson at small forward -- a look that puts a top-notch scorer, a defensive ace and a penetrating, ball-pushing point guard on the court at once. Or the Hawks can roll with a Teague-Jamal Crawford-Johnson triumvirate (if Crawford returns) on the perimeter that even the defensive-minded Bulls struggled to match up against at times.

Every since Billy Knight first assembled this team, the vision was for a young, athletic team that could get up and down the floor and score in transition.  In part, the Hawks have never been good enough defensively to make that happen, but they have also lacked the right point guard to run.  Is Teague finally that guy?

Hollinger also points out that the possible move of the Thrashers to Winnipeg could have benefits for the Hawks in two respects:

Heck, even the hockey news might be good news for the Hawks. Sure, it’s not exactly positive for a city’s sports reputation when its history entails losing franchises to both Alberta and Manitoba, but the financial constraints that have limited some of the Hawks’ dealings in recent years could perhaps ease a bit if they can (A) unload the money pit called the Thrashers and (B) eliminate some of the competition for Hawks seats. (For the record, an owner I spoke with had nothing to add beyond “we’re looking for solutions” when asked about the rumored move of the NHL’s Thrashers to Winnipeg.)

I had always thought about the potential loss of the Thrashers as a negative for Atlanta Spirit because it lowers the value of their operating rights of Philips Arena to have one major tenant instead of two, but I can see the counter.  First, Atlanta Spirit will get an infusion of cash from the sale, which gives them the ability to spend on the Hawks this off-season.*  Second, they can focus all of their energies on one team.  (Whether that’s a good thing is another matter entirely.)  Third, Philips Arena is a cashcow for concerts, so maybe having more available dates will be a net positive.  Fourth, the owners will stop bleeding money on the hockey team.  They’re bleeding money because of their own mismanagement of the Thrashers, but to paraphrase William Munny, deserve’s got nothing to do with it.  This market is big and diverse enough to support both an NBA and NHL team, but if it has to choose between the two, I’ll take the NBA.  The city has an established African-American elite and middle class rivaled only by New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and DC.  It ought to have an NBA franchise for which making it to the sixth game of the conference semifinals isn’t a massive accomplishment.

* – The difference between the Hawks and Bulls wasn’t so much in the starting fives.  Chicago had the best player on the court, but the Hawks have a more balanced lineup.  The differences came in all of the accoutrements that a spendthrift owner will buy, namely a coveted head coach and quality pieces on the bench.  If the Hawks would have signed Tom Thibodeau last summer and the Bulls would have gone for the cheap, internal option, how would this series have played out?  As a practical matter, Thibodeau wouldn’t have been a stylistic change from Mike Woodson (although he’s obviously better at coaching defense) and therefore would have been an unlikely option (not to mention the fact that the Hawks wouldn’t have had the “come coach Derrick Rose” selling point), but the point remains that the Hawks went cheap on the coach.

Michigan-Ohio State and Neo-Nazis

I read Duane Long’s post about the perfect storm hitting Ohio State football with some interest.  I don't share Long’s positive view of Hoke’s ability to reinvigorate Michigan football, but this paragraph struck me as interesting:

Back in January I did a blog about the rivalry being back. That the hiring of a true Michigan man, and a fine coach, in Brady Hoke would reignite the greatest rivalry in American sport. As usual, Buckeye fans dismissed it. That happens a lot when fans don't want to hear something.

Reignite, eh?  That verb implies that the fire has gone out of the rivalry as Michigan has circled the drain since the 2006 #1 versus #2 game.  And that’s when it occurred to me: Alabama-Auburn has surpassed Michigan-Ohio State.  I don’t see how anyone can claim with a straight face that Michigan-Ohio State is the best rivalry in college football right now, let alone in all of American sports. 

Michigan-Ohio State and Alabama-Auburn are similar in lots of ways.  There is great history for the games.  Anytime something major happens in the game, fans from both sides can usually recall a similar situation in a game in the past.  Both rivalries have a fixed spot on the calendar: the last regular season game.  Both rivalries feature a good amount of antipathy between the fan bases, with rampant stereotyping to make things saucy (although Alabama-Auburn truly goes the extra mile into Celtic-Rangers territory). 

The one factor that always gave Michigan-Ohio State an edge was that the stakes were usually higher.  Throughout the years, conference titles were more often at issue for one or both teams in the Michigan-Ohio State game.  To use another footie analogy, Michigan-Ohio State was Barca-Real because the two teams dominated their league, whereas Alabama-Auburn was Liverpool-Manchester United, a top rivalry that suffered a little bit because it took place in a deeper league.  With Michigan’s decline and Auburn’s rise, this is no longer the case.  Alabama and Auburn have won the last two national titles.  Their last two games have been classics.  Meanwhile, Michigan hasn’t been in the national title picture since 2006 or the Big Ten title picture since 2007.  Moreover, with a dark cloud hanging over the Ohio State program, it’s possible that the Bucks will be joining Michigan on the sidewalk as the parade goes by.

The other comment by Long that bears scrutiny is the concept that Michigan will be back because Dave Brandon hired a “Michigan Man.”  Again, this concept annoys me.  Why is Alabama-Auburn so hot right now?  Because Alabama hired Nick Saban, who had no connection to the school before he took the head coaching position, and Auburn hired Gus Malzahn, who not only had no connection to Auburn, but also represented a repudiation of Auburn’s traditional offensive approach. 

The South has a reputation for being provincial, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the hiring decisions made by Alabama and Auburn, as opposed to Michigan.  Michigan overreacted to a good decision that had bad consequences (hiring Rich Rodriguez) by elevating program ties over all other criteria in its coaching search.  That’s not how Alabama and Auburn won national titles, not to mention LSU and Florida, both of which hired head coaches who had no prior ties to those schools.  There’s no doubt that the Rodriguez disaster took the sheen off of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry and denied advocates of the rivalry their best argument in distinguishing it from Auburn Alabama.  That said, if the lesson that Michigan and Ohio State take is Ausländer Raus!, then the rivalry will remain second fiddle to Alabama-Auburn.

Play it Again, Sam

And no worries about having to give this one back because we paid Leo Messi's father $180,000.

Newsflash: if he is Uncovered, Julio Jones Can Score Touchdowns!

Doug Farrar, you aren’t making me feel any better about the Julio Jones ransom with this article.  Farrar’s theme is that the Falcons were terrible at hitting big plays in the passing game and Jones will address that weakness.  As evidence for his claim, Farrar diagrams Jones’s touchdown against Auburn, a play on which he was totally uncovered.  I remember watching the play and thinking “holy crap, Auburn’s pass defense is even worse than I thought.  They just left Alabama’s best receiver alone in a deep zone.”  I did not think “wow, that Julio Jones really is something” and I doubt that anyone else had the same thought.  Jones may turn out to be worth the stiff price that the Falcons paid, but it won’t be based on his ability to score when opposing safeties ignore him.

Our Pitching is Better Than your Pitching!

We are roughly one-fifth of the way through the baseball season and the Braves’ pitching has been phenomenal. One way to look at this strong run is to try to think of the last time that a Braves starter made a truly bad start. I came up with April 20, when Derek Lowe lasted only three innings against the Dodgers. Another way is to look at the Braves’ numbers in comparison to those of the Phillies, who were supposed to rival the Braves of the 90s in terms of having an all-time pitching staff. Viva the (lack of) difference:

	Braves	NL Rank	Phillies	NL Rank
Runs Allowed	2.97	1	3.27	2
ERA	2.85	1	3.06	3
Fair Run Average	3.58	1	3.78	5
Team Shutouts	6	1	6	1
HR/9	.5	1	.6	3
BB/9	2.5	1	2.6	2
K/9	7.6	6	8.4	1
K/BB	3.00	2	3.29	1
Hits/9	7.4	2	7.8	4
WHIP	1.102	1	1.145	2
VORP	56.5	2	48.3	4
BABIP	.272	13	.287	9
Ground Ball %	52.0%	1	49.7%	5
Line Drive %	14.9%	1	17.5%	6

Other than the facts that: (1) the Phillies’ pitchers are better at striking out opponents; and (2) the Braves’ pitchers have been a little lucky in the BABIP department (or the Braves’ defense has been surprisingly good; the team is third in the NL in defensive efficiency, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a weakness coming into the season), the Braves’ hurlers have turned in the better performance so far in the season. Drilling down into the numbers, we see a few particular strengths:

1. As one would expect from a pitching staff with Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe, and Jair Jurrjens comprising 60% of the starting rotation, the Braves do a great job of forcing opponents to hit ground balls and they allow very few homers or walks. It stands to reason that this staff would excel at two of the three true outcomes (walks and homers) and be less dominant in the third (strikeouts). That said, the Braves’ strikeout numbers are quite good, in no small part because Brandon Beachy has been a revelation. Beachy is seventh in the NL in K/9, a hair behind Roy Halladay in sixth place. Small sample size, I know, but wow!

2. The Braves have allowed four unearned runs all season. By way of comparison, the average NL team has allowed 13 and the Phillies have allowed nine.

3. As evidenced by that league-leading line drive percentage (not to mention the league-leading number in fewest homers allowed), the Braves are not permitting opposing batters to make solid contact.

Put all of this together and you see why the team was willing to let Roger McDowell escape with a two-week suspension for his vaudeville act in San Francisco. You also see that when Dan Uggla and Martin Prado start hitting and if the pitchers can sustain this level of performance, then the Braves will have a legitimate shot at being the best team in the National League.

Contra Everything I’ve Written Since the Draft…

This ($) is how you make an argument in favor of the Julio Jones pick.  KC Joyner notes that the Falcons were terrible in the short passing game last year, most likely because none of their receivers could break a tackle or make a defender miss.  Jones was excellent in the short passing game at Alabama.  In fact, he was better than AJ Green in this department, so he answers a major need for the Falcons.  If Jones lives up to his college numbers, then he’ll be able to take some of the load off of Roddy White and he’ll also open up the deep passing game.

Speaking of which, Joyner’s article raises an interesting issue with the oft-criticized Mike Mularkey offense.  Joyner notes that the Falcons were both bad in the short passing game and they barely ever threw deep.  This raises two possibilities.  The defense of Mularkey would be that the Falcons were bad at the deep passing game, so he had to call a number of short and intermediate routes.  The less charitable explanation would be that Mularkey’s conservative tendencies – either through play-calling or through drilling a “don’t make a mistake under any circumstances – allowed opponents to sit on the short passing game.  Again, I find myself asking the question “how did this team win 13 games without being very good at anything?”

Best of Three

Last night's performance by Josh Smith both encapsulates everything that I love about Smith and this Hawks team and also everything about him that drives me crazy about them. Smith was great in the fourth quarter. Look at his shot chart for the fourth quarter. He didn't take a shot outside of three feet from the hoop. It's probably unreasonable to expect that he will always been able to get so many shots from so close, but it's a worthwhile goal. When it's this obvious where Smith excels and where he struggles, how is it that a guy who just played his 573rd game in the NBA has to be reminded? Why can't he play like this all the time? I accept that the performance of athletes varies. Even the best players will have good games and bad games. That said, the gap between good and bad is SO pronounced for the Hawks generally and Smith specifically. How does Smith go from Mark Bradley writing with some justification:

As it is, Josh Smith at 25 is on his way to being one of the league’s least respected good players, and I hate that. He’s a nice guy, and he’s capable of so much more. If he would play to his strengths — and he has many — he would get his numbers without damaging his team.

With Smith at his best, the Hawks can take the Bulls. “We’ve got to be confident,” he said after Game 2, “and that team over there knows we know we can beat them.”

Then he laughed. “The media might not know. But that’s OK.”

Being a member of the media, I’m privy to press room conversations. I hear what famous writers say about the Hawks. And the first thing many of them say is, I’m sorry to report, “What is Josh Smith doing?” For that I have no answer.

to dominating the fourth quarter of a do-or-die playoff game against the team with the best record in the NBA, the MVP, and the Coach of the Year? Going forward, anything is possible for this team. They could get blown out in the last two games (I'm hardly the only one who watched the game on Friday night and said to myself "same old Hawks") or they could knock the Bulls out and then pose a threat in the NBA's final four.

Other random thoughts:

• Welcome to the series, Al Horford! Horford is my favorite Hawk, but he was killing the team in the first three games. The team has no chance to win if he doesn't win the matchup with his college teammate Joakim Noah. Through three games, the team's best player had scored 25 points total on 12 of 31 shooting and had shot a grand total of two free throws. Last night, he scored 20 on nine of 11 shooting and was a major part in the run that won the game in the fourth quarter.


• Far be it from me to criticize the reigning MVP, but Derrick Rose didn't make good decisions in the fourth quarter last night. He went from being a point guard to attempting an imitation of Allen Iverson, circa 2001. Rose ended up taking more shots than the rest of the Bulls' starting lineup combined. Carlos Boozer showed signs of life in the third quarter, but Rose barely looked his way in the fourth. Luol Deng also faded into the background. When the prospect of the Hawks in the Eastern Finals was a ludicrous proposition, I was prepared to root for the Bulls as an acceptable alternative to the Celtics and Heat, but if they are going to imitate the '01 Sixers, then I'll just root for a meteor.


• The crowd was great last night. That said, if the Hawks do somehow win Game Five, every Hawk fan who lived through the 80s with be thinking about one game when the teams come home: Game Six against the Celtics in 1987. Let's keep Cliff Levingston as far away from Philips as possible.