A handful of sports items of interest to me:
1) My Giants defied expectations, and pulled out a 21-16 win over the Bears on two late touchdown drives, after sucking for most of the game. Well, OK, the defense was good throughout, though they were aided by the Bears not having a quarterback better than Rex Grossman, but the offense was dreadful.
Eli Manning gets most of the blame for that, somewhat unfairly. Some of the blame has to go on injuries-- the second INT he threw wasn't a terrible throw, if Plaxico Burress was healthy-- and some on the coaching staff, who as usual reacted to Manning's early struggles by going into ultra-conservative mode, leading to lots of sputtering drives. The wild swings in the Giants play-calling (Manning completes three passes in a row, suddenly they stop running the ball; he throws an interception, they stop passing the ball) drive me nuts.
2) The college football season limped to its preposterous conclusion, with Ohio State and LSU backing their way into the title game thanks to losses by West Virginia and Missouri. This is lame even in comparison to other lame-ass BCS "championships." Meanwhile, the one undefeated team in the nation, 12-0 Hawaii, barely squeaks into the Top 10 of the BCS standings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they didn't play anybody all that good. Neither did Ohio State. College football: where every game matters, as long as you're a top team in a power conference.
2) The Dolphins are looking like a credible threat to go 0-16, after making the Jets look good. Now the Patriots need to hold up their end of the bargain, and beat the Ravens tonight so we can have a chance for both 16-0 and 0-16 teams in the same season.
3) Historical note: Prior to the Green Bay at Dallas game on Thursday, much was made of the fact that this was the first meeting of 10-1 teams since the Giants and 49ers in 1990. Green Bay made a good showing, but lost by ten after Brett Favre left with an injured arm.
Not noted in the aftermath was that there's still a 1990 parallel-- the Giants lost that game to the Niners, but came back to beat the Niners in the NFC championship game, en route to beating the heavily favored Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl. Phil Simms got hurt (I can't remember whether it was in that Niners game, or one of the later games), and backup Jeff Hostetler took over and ran the team through the playoffs.
I'm not making a solid prediction of anything, here, but if it gets to be Green Bay versus New England in the Super Bowl, with Aaron Rogers taking snaps for the Packers, well, history says that New England better be nervous...
5) Ummm.... I'm sure something else interesting happened. What was it?
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You know what's going to be interesting:
What if LSU beats OSU, and Hawaii beats Georgia? By some accounts, Georgia should be in the championship game, too. Should a 2-loss team be handed the championship while an undefeated team has just triumphed in one of the Big Four bowl games?
yeah, except according to ESPN, some conferences are awesome because even the good teams in them lose to some of the other teams, while other conferences suck because even the good teams in them lose to some of the other teams
What if LSU beats OSU, and Hawaii beats Georgia? By some accounts, Georgia should be in the championship game, too. Should a 2-loss team be handed the championship while an undefeated team has just triumphed in one of the Big Four bowl games?
As I understand it, they have to be. The voters in the BCS polls are obligated to vote the winner of the "championship" game #1.
It's a bullshit result, but it's a bullshit system.
Yeah, there is some other (sports) news. The US won the Davis Cup - for the first time in 12 years.
The problem with the BCS is a logic problem. If you start with a false hypothesis, then you cannot trust any conclusion drawn from it. Example 1: war in Iraq. Example 2: BCS chanpionship - the false hypothesis - we have to have a #1 in college football. The only reason for this absurdity is for HYPE for the MEDIA. It sells papers and gives the ESPN commentators something to argue about in order to boost their ratings. The NCAA should BAN any discussion or publication or voting for rankings in college football.
As a college football non-fan, I'm sympathetic to Karl's comment that we don't really *need* a number one college football team. But it's not as though the silly BCS system is the only way to name one. For example, Division II football seems to have a straightforward way to solve the problem...
Yeah, and Lou Holtz was all over ESPN claiming Oklahoma is the best team in college football and should be in the championship game. God knows, their schedule was a lot tougher than Ohio State's. But then I *would* think that.
MKK--Oklahoma grad
Not sure about the gratuitous Rexy bashing (sure, BCS bashing is fun and easy, but let's focus on the important stuff). It was a battle between two draft day busts, for sure, but when the QB throws a 70 yard strike that bounces off the shoulder pads, and repeatedly throws it through or off the receiver's hands, it's hard to justify blaming him for the loss. No doubt, Chicago's O should have done more, but Rex and Eli both played pretty well, I'd say. Has to happen once in a while!
Just wanted to toss in an agreement with Karl's point. Why bother naming a #1 team? Things were a lot more fun with the old bowl system.
I think the whole obsession with #1 is commercially driven. The marketing opportunity of a "National Championship Game" is too juicy to pass up. Add to that the needs of ESPN, who prefer to just talk about 'who's #1' rather than the nuances of each team. That combination has convinced everyone that the national champion is more important than it really is.
We already have a national championship, it's called the Super Bowl. And unlike basketball, the two leagues are playing basically the same game, weird overtime rules aside.
Hm, I seem to be pretty cranky this morning. Sorry about that! Now if I can just get those damn kids off my lawn...
The WAC was 1-15 against BCS conference teams, with the lone win Hawaii's close one at home over Washington. The Big 10 was 5-4 against other BCS conferences (and 4-0 against Notre Dame, which admittedly didn't mean much this year), one of which was Ohio State's solid win over Washington at Washington. The WAC was 17-20 in non-conference play; the Big Ten was 35-9. The Big Ten non-conference schedule may have been weak, but it wasn't any weaker than the WAC's. Hawaii's opponents went 49-92; Ohio State's went 73-71.
In the NFL, any 12-0 or 11-1 team is one of the top teams, regardless of which division they are in. But college football is not the NFL; there is no parity. Ohio State may not have beaten anybody outstanding, but they at least beat many decent teams. Most of Hawaii's wins came over awful teams. I do not think Hawaii would have come close to 11-1 if they had played Ohio State's schedule. Strength of schedule really has to come into play in college football.
BCS teams can get away with playing cupcake non-conference schedules because the conference schedule is not soft. If non-BCS teams want a chance to play for the title, they have to play several BCS teams (including some decent ones) in their non-conference schedule because cleaning up in a cupcake conference is not an indication that you are an elite team.
BCS teams can get away with playing cupcake non-conference schedules because the conference schedule is not soft. If non-BCS teams want a chance to play for the title, they have to play several BCS teams (including some decent ones) in their non-conference schedule because cleaning up in a cupcake conference is not an indication that you are an elite team.
That's the standard defense, and it always sounds really good, until you think about it for four seconds, and realize that this also requires the BCS teams to be willing to play decent teams from non-BCS leagues. Which they're not, unless Ohio State just couldn't manage to agree on a date to play Hawaii, and had to settle for Youngstown State, which isn't even a Div. I team...
College basketball has slowly been able to push the pwoer conference teams to play some decent out-of-conference games, using the tournament as leverage. The college football system provides absolutely no incentive for teams from the BCS conferences to play anybody good from a non-BCS conference. A team that's going to start the season in the top ten has every reason to load up its schedule with Div I-AA teams and bottom-feeders from weak leagues, and avoid playing anybody good for as long as possible-- as long as you're a power team from a power conference, all you have to do is not lose, and you're all but guaranteed a big payoff come bowl time.
The same holds true for a lot of college basketball teams, too, but they can't duck the smaller conference teams forever, because they have a real championship playoff. That's not true in college football.
There are incentives for good BCS teams to play each other. Look at the Texas-Ohio State matchups the past few years. The winner of that game was basically vaulted to number one in the rankings and the strength of those wins put them above other teams with similar records. I think this year was the exception rather than the rule for Ohio State. They are scheduled to play USC the next two years and Miami the following two. Elite schools (the ones with chances to make the championship) have some incentive to play at least one solid non-conference matchup and often do (some may be by tradition: Michigan-Notre Dame, Florida-Florida State, etc.). It is mostly the rest of the pack who simply want to guarantee bowl eligibility that benefit from avoiding tough non-conference games.
There might be difficulties in Hawaii getting some BCS teams on their schedule, but their current schedule gives no indication that they are doing anything other than what some of those other BCS teams are doing: padding some of their non-conference schedule with cupcake games. I do not for once believe that Hawaii could not have gotten someone better than Charleston Southern, a mediocre IAA team, or Northern Colorado, an attrocious IAA team. Even if the BCS teams are playing hard to get, try to schedule some of the better non-BCS teams like Air Force. Hawaii and other non-BCS teams need to prove themselves to be taken seriously. Scheduling Washington was a start, but Hawaii could be doing a lot better with the other non-conference games before bringing out "but BCS teams won't play them."
I agree with you that there is a problem if teams like Hawaii are not even considered for the championship game based solely upon a weak schedule, but _only_ if they make an honest attempt at strengthening that schedule. I just don't see that to be the case here. Seriously, two IAA teams? At least Michigan knowingly scheduled a _good_ IAA team (and paid the price).