Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.
From The Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times
“Loren Matthews, executive vice president of programming for ABC Sports, on all the controversy surrounding the BCS standings: “When you’re in the television business, controversy is not necessarily a bad thing. Just spell ABC right.”
Against Michigan State last night Bucknell went 1 for 17 at the free throw line. State won 64-52.
Iffy’s not a computer person. Few people his age are unless they’re hooked up to one. Yet there’s no escaping the long arm of IBM.
Each Monday, Iffy eagerly awaits the posting of the Bowl Championship Series poll, the computerized rankings that measure the nation’s top college football teams. It’s not that Iffy’s a disciple of the system, but he finds the BCS poll an interesting amalgam of all the components that go into rating college teams.
Now that’s saying a mouthful, so it should also be said, quickly, that the BCS poll is a hard one to swallow, despite its appeal to Iffy. F’rinstance, if Ohio State is the second-best team in the country, as the BCS’ers maintain, why are the Buckeyes a touchdown underdog to No. 9 Michigan in today’s tussle at Ann Arbor?
Iffy is laugh out loud funny. Read the whole column.
was born on this date in 1967.
Jeff Sagarin has the following ranking for Strength of Schedule (through last Saturday):
1. Notre Dame
2. Colorado
3. Iowa State
4. Alabama
5. Texas A&M
6. Arizona
7. BYU
8. Northwestern
9. Illinois
10. Tennessee
NewMexiKen posted this comment at 3:08 PM MST Wednesday, November 19: “I predict TCU will lose one of its last two games anyway.”
Thursday night, Southern Mississippi 40 TCU 28.
Nice comeback effort by the Horned Frogs nonetheless. Down 31-6 in the fourth quarter, they scored 22 points in four-and-a-half minutes to get within three before Southern Miss pulled away for good.
TCU is now 10-1 with Southern Methodist remaining and is not only out of the BCS picture but Southern Miss will likely win the Conference USA title. The last time TCU had gone 10-0, they beat Carnegie Mellon 15-7 in the Sugar Bowl and were the 1938 national champions.
Thomas Boswell, in a column that mostly praises LeBron James, has a reality check, too.
Against the brilliance James showed last night, let’s look at the hard statistical evidence of his first 11 NBA games so we can get some balance. Basketball has an excellent stat for measuring a player’s total contribution to his team. Red Auerbach may have cooked it up first. It’s not a tool for making subtle distinctions between players but rather for identifying the general level of a player’s whole game.
You add up all the good things a player does, subtract all the bad things, then divide by the minutes he played. The good: points, rebounds, assists, blocked shots and steals. The bad: missed shots and free throws and turnovers. Then divide by minutes played to measure actual effectiveness, not just court time.
All the great players jump right to the top. And those who do not belong do not come anywhere close. For example, the career averages of Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley are .798, .798, .793, .775 and .768. The average NBA regular ranks far lower — usually in the .450 to .550 range. The Wizards have three players over .500. Through Sunday’s games, Tim Duncan led the league this year at .796. Finally, for reference, the career bests of Garnett, McGrady and Bryant are .792, .731 and .676 — all set last year.
After last night, James’s production average was .450.
From 1946 through 2002 there have been 57 Division I-A Football “National Championships.” According to the NCAA Record Book (pages 79-81), 74 teams from 30 schools have won or shared in the 57 championships (13 times there have been co-champions, twice there have been three teams named).
Thirteen schools have won or shared the title more than once:
Oklahoma (6 outright, 1 tie)
Notre Dame (5 outright, 3 ties)
Miami (4 outright, 1 tie)
Alabama (2 outright, 5 ties)
USC (3 outright, 2 ties)
Nebraska (3 outright, 2 ties)
Ohio State (2 outright, 4 ties)
Texas (2 outright, 1 tie)
Penn State, Florida State, Tennessee (2 outright each)
Michigan State (1 outright, 2 ties)
Michigan (1 outright, 1 tie)
These 13 schools account for 57 out of 74 championship teams (77%). Eight of them are among the BCS top 12 today.
I would argue that to win a national championship you have to schedule (and beat) at least one of the 13.
Seven schools have won the championship once. They are Maryland (1953), Syracuse (1959), Pittsburgh (1976), Georgia (1980), Clemson (1981), BYU (1984) and Florida (1996).
Ten schools have been co-champion once, but have never won the title outright. They are UCLA (1954), Auburn (1957), LSU (1958), Iowa (1958), Minnesota (1960), Mississippi (1960), Arkansas (1964), Colorado (1990), Georgia Tech (1990) and Washington (1991).
Army was the “National Champion” in college football in 1945. Since then only one school not currently among the 63 BCS schools (six conferences and Notre Dame) has won the “National Championship.” Can you name the school? The year?
From the Los Angeles Times Morning Briefing
Brian Bosworth on TBS on Saturday had this to say about unbeaten Texas Christian: “I look at the top 20 and TCU wouldn’t be favored over anyone. The best team they beat is Arizona. Let’s be honest.”
In other NFL news, at 4:11 Eastern on Sunday, as the Kansas City Chiefs left the field in Cincinnati mumbling “#@&!?*!!” under their breaths, corks popped. In one of the sweetest traditions in sports lore, on opening day of every NFL season, each surviving member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, sole perfect team in pro football history, sets aside a bottle of Champagne to cool. And it’s genuine Champagne from Champagne, not the boysenberry-infused sparkling-Gewurztraminer wine-like substance that passes for bubbly these days. At the moment the stadium clock hits double-zeros for the defeat of the season’s last undefeated team, the 1972 Dolphins pull the corks, secure in the knowledge they will reign as sole perfect team for at least one additional year. Gentlemen of 1972, enjoy your annual draught. TMQ feels confident you will continue to sip Champagne each autumn until you are called to meet the football gods, and greeted by song and feasting.
Six Division I-A conferences and Notre Dame are in the BCS (63 teams).
Five Division I-A conferences and three independents are not (54 teams).
Can you name the conferences in each group?
The answer is in Comment(s). No cheating!
Chart from SI.com.
The New York Times: “It is unclear what form it will take in determining college football’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams and matching them in a championship game, but presidents representing the six B.C.S. conferences and Notre Dame and the five non-B.C.S. conferences agreed it would not be a 16-team, single-elimination playoff. A four-team playoff, perhaps incorporating existing bowl games, has not been not ruled out.”
As John notes in his comments to the earlier item, Arizona indeed has had a formidable 2003 schedule, but…
Arizona lost to LSU 59-13 currently ranked #3
Arizona lost to TCU 13-10 currently ranked #9
Arizona lost to Purdue 59-7 currently ranked #16
Arizona lost to Washington State 30-7 currently ranked #8
Arizona lost to USC 45-0 currently ranked #2
So, except for TCU of Conference USA, Arizona lost to four ranked opponents 193-27.
NewMexiKen wants the ‘Cats to do well. The old days of not quite good enough (10-2, 12-1) look pretty good now. But the hole is deep and they aren’t going to climb out of it soon.
And the tradition isn’t great. Arizona has not won a conference championship outright (Border, WAC, or Pac-10) in this alum’s lifetime. (They tied for first twice in the WAC and once in the PAC-10.)
The score is misleading. It wasn’t that close.
Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times:
Forget, for a minute, those 45 points and 587 total yards and three interceptions against what may be the worst team from a major conference.
Consider, instead, these equally important numbers:
All 60 Trojans who traveled here, played here.
Three threw passes, eight caught passes, six ran the ball and 18 made tackles.
Greg Hansen, Arizona Daily Star:
Saturday’s game was the most accurate measure of what Arizona’s new coach will face. The Wildcats are woefully inadequate in all of the significant categories: speed, athleticism, skill, toughness, confidence.
The opinion here is that not a single Wildcat – not safety Lamon Means, not tight end Steve Fleming – could start for the Trojans. None. Zero for 22.
The ‘Cats hadn’t been shut out at home since a scoreless tie with Iowa State during NewMexiKen’s junior year.
NewMexiKen had the wonderful pleasure this afternoon of reading David Halberstam’s The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship. In the book Halberstam details the careers and shared friendship of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky. Red Sox teammates in the 1940s, they remained close friends through the time of Williams’s death in 2002. I recommend this superb work to anyone interested in baseball, particularly baseball as played 50-60 years ago. I also recommend it to anyone interested in friendship and human warmth.
As always in good baseball books the anecdotes stand out.
After the ’46 All Star game, Ty Cobb wrote Ted a letter telling him how to beat the shift by going to left field, and Bobby Doerr was with Ted when he opened the letter and read it. Hell, Ted had said, that’s not what I’m paid to do. Then he had torn up the letter. “Can you imagine what that letter would be worth today in the memorabilia business? Ty Cobb writing to Ted Williams on how to beat the shift? One million? Two million?” Doerr laughs, telling the story. [Opposing teams shifted markedly to the right side of the field against the left-handed pull hitting Williams.]
Once in the mid-1950s, Pedro Ramos, then a young pitcher with Washington, struck Ted out, which was a very big moment for Ramos. He rolled the ball into the dugout to save, and later, after the game, the Cuban right-hander ventured into the Boston dugout with the ball and asked Ted to sign it. [Boston pitcher] Mel Parnell was watching and had expected an immediate explosion, Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on, and he was not disappointed. Soon there was a rising bellow of blasphemy from Williams, and then he had looked over and seen Ramos, a kid of 20 or 21, terribly close to tears now. Suddenly Ted had softened and said, “Oh, all right, give me the goddam ball,” and had signed it. Then about two weeks later he had come up against Ramos again and hit a tremendous home run, and as he rounded first he had slowed down just a bit and yelled to Ramos, “I’ll sign that son of a bitch too if you can ever find it.”
“Reds outfielder Dernell Stenson was found dead Wednesday on a residential street after he was shot and apparently run over in a Phoenix suburb, police said. Chandler police said the death was being treated as a homicide.” — Associated Press, Nov. 6
FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: “Somehow, somewhere, Tuesday Morning Quarterback will return to the Web on November 11th. Keep checking Football Outsiders for more details.”
TMQ also has some things to say about Dobby the Elf (Steve Spurrier).
Thomas Boswell on the owner of the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons:
The ringleader of this circus is Snyder, 38, who wants to own the Redskins for many years. He wants to learn. He’ll pick any brain. That’s admirable. But he’s learning on our time. Even more scary, there’s plenty of precedent that, despite his brains, energy and good intentions, he’ll never be a “football man.”
To see the problem more clearly, use that old principle from high school algebra: invert. Imagine a great football executive who wakes up one day and inherits a controlling interest in Intel. So, he quits football and makes himself CEO of Intel. Why? “Because I’ve always loved computers. And I’m a quick learner.” What would you do with your Intel shares?
“Not counting its biennial home game against Arizona State, the Wildcats have sold out (attendance of 56,000 or more) a mere 15 home games since it joined the Pac-10 in 1978. That is 15 games out of 152, barely 10 percent.”
Actually it’s less than 10 percent.
The Yavapai College RoughRiders, defending and four-time national champions, defeated the Chandler-Gilbert Community College Coyotes 1-0 in overtime Saturday evening to win the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference title game. It was Yavapai’s 15th consecutive Arizona championship.
The game’s only goal came at 3:51 of overtime. Until then spirited play by second-seeded Chandler-Gilbert stunned a Prescott crowd accustomed to easy victory.
Chandler-Gilbert finished the year 16-5, its first winning record ever in six seasons of play.
Football Outsiders: Easterbrook writes, “Numerous readers contributed items written in my style, which Football Outsiders assembled into a Tuesday Morning Quarterback column that was almost too good — spooky-good, actually. Please don’t tell me Tuesday Morning Quarterback could be outsourced offshore to a couple of guys watching NFL tapes in Bangalore, India!”