Football

College Football Kickoff Prelude: My thoughts on Rodriguez-gate

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If Ohio State is defending Michigan, as Jim Tressel did with regards to the allegations that Rich Rodriguez was violating NCAA limits on practice time, you know something’s gone bananas. That’s like cats and dogs deciding to work in harmony.

Tressel’s point seems to be that the NCAA limits are too low, and the players themselves want to get in more workout time because they need more workout time and they want to be the best they can be. Strictly from the perspective of the teams, at least the big-name teams like Ohio State and Michigan, a lifting of the limits would seem to be a no-brainer.

From the NCAA’s perspective, the limits, like all their regulations, serve two purposes. First, they protect academics. Time spent on the practice field or in the weight room is time not spent on schoolwork. If players want more time on the practice field than they’re allowed, their priorities are mixed up, because they’re supposed to be a student first and an athlete second, not a pro athlete in all but name and salary. Of course, we don’t need to get into how college football and basketball barely even pays lip service to that whole “student-athlete” thing anymore, and even from that perspective you could still make a case for lifting limits on practice time. Maybe they’ve already done all their schoolwork, or even if they haven’t it’s quaint and old-fashioned to insist they do. (The argument that these are “just kids” reaches this  same conclusion.)

The second purpose of practice time limits is to protect, and level the playing field for, the small schools that do care about academics and maybe can’t/don’t want to work out as long and hard as the big football schools. But this is tied in with the need to defend academics and results in a similar defense: “don’t punish us because those other schools don’t care about football”.

I don’t know whether the NCAA should or shouldn’t raise its practice time limits, but now you know where the NCAA is coming from, to at least a limited extent.

Probably the last word on Roethlisberger-gate, as in, I’m chiming in so late I doubt anyone else will chime in after me. Or even listen.

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If ESPN wanted to cover up the Roethlisberger scandal, their initial decision not to report on it may have inadvertently helped that goal more than they intended, by moving the focus of the story off the suit itself and onto ESPN… (I swear I won’t spend every one of my posts talking about stories everyone has already left behind!)

Ultimately, the outrage directed at ESPN seems to have two sources. First, ESPN wouldn’t report on it, at all, not even on its web site, when other organizations – including the same company in the ABC News division – did. In his interview with ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer, Vince Loria declares that “[i]t was never our intent to be out front on this story.” Newsflash, Vince: ESPN is expected to be out front on every story. At the very least, ESPN is expected to acknowledge the existence of every story, since so many people turn to it for their sports news. As more people turn to the Internet for their sports news, that may start to change, but ESPN is still the definer of the news cycle, and for the moment the Internet only increases ESPN’s responsibilities, by not restricting it to filling only an hour and thus not giving it any excuse for ignoring a story. (Ohlmeyer seemingly acknowledges as much towards the end, though he also seems to recommend that ESPN itself should make the story about its refusal to report, and no one goes to ESPN for that sort of meta-discussion… this was an issue with Ohlmeyer’s predecessors as well…)

Second is the question of whether ESPN’s decision was fair, balanced, or consistent, given the fact that ESPN has not shied away from reporting on unconfirmed civil suits in the past… then other times it has. ESPN’s inconsistent stance on this issue has seemed wildly inconsistent and left people in the dark as to what criteria ESPN is using to determine whether to report and when. (And how; some have accused ESPN of slanting the story when they did report it.) With people left to come to their own conclusions, some have determined it has less to do with ESPN’s claimed criteria and more with irrelevant aspects of the athletes themselves, such as popularity, race, and relationship to the network. Ohlmeyer arguably did a disservice by asking Loria only about Marvin Harrison. ESPN has a lot more than that to answer for. Ohlmeyer also did a disservice by asking only about ESPN’s perceived protection of the NFL, and not Roethlisberger or the Steelers (especially given some writers’ dredging up ESPN’s Spygate coverage for evidence that the Patriots are/were not one of ESPN’s “protected” teams and the Steelers are).

(In fact, Doria himself notes that “prior history” goes into coverage decisions – a commendable position on its face, but Mike Tyson getting in trouble with the ladies is kind of old news, and a pillar of the community doing so is big news.)

I think most of us would prefer that the media not get so wrapped up in accusations against athletes that damage reputations and then not restore those reputations if the accusations turned out to be false – a natural result of the fact that once the case is settled, there’s no reason to report on it anymore, so the “no accusation” doesn’t get as much coverage as the “accusation”. But that’s not the way the media (or this country) works, and ESPN shouldn’t pretend it is.

On another note, I’m debating whether to include Ohlmeyer’s line – “I think the Internet is the most transformative technological advancement since the printing press” – in my book on the impact of the Internet… then again, Ohlmeyer’s hardly the first to say it.

Did I just fall into the Twilight Zone?

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One minute I’m thinking Jay Glazer’s report/opinion piece predicting a Favre comeback merely reflected disgruntled Vikings who didn’t like their quarterback situation and maybe didn’t quite understand the circumstances and reasons why Favre wasn’t already there, didn’t quite understand that Favre wasn’t any ordinary free agent. I wondered if ESPN’s obsessing over the story was related to its willingness to give Glazer credit for it instead of saying “ESPN’s Michael Smith reports…” and whether ESPN was setting up Glazer to get maximum egg on his face when the report proved spurious.

The next, Favre not only signs a contract with the Vikings, he shows up at training camp and is going to start the next preseason game like he was always there?

I mean, within 24 hours, we went from Favre being retired and in Hattiesburg, to being at training camp and the No. 1 QB on the depth chart without even throwing a practice pass.

Did history somehow retroactively change on everybody?

Say hello to the NBO!

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Since the bowl contracts are coming up for renewal, here are my thoughts on a potential new bowl order. I haven’t associated any of these with bowls, just idle thoughts. Mostly based on my college football rankings and bowl-eligible teams last two years.

  • SEC v. Big 10
  • Pac-10 v. Big 12
  • ACC v. Big East /Notre Dame
  • SEC /4 v. Big 12
  • SEC /4 v. Big 10
  • Big 12 or Big 10 v. Big East /Notre Dame
  • SEC v. ACC
  • Pac-10 v. MWC
  • Big 10 or Big 12 v. ACC
  • Big 10 v. Big 12
  • MWC v. WAC
  • C-USA v. ACC
  • Big 10 v. MAC
  • ACC v. Big East
  • Big 12 v. ACC
  • SEC v. Pac-10
  • SEC v. ACC
  • ACC v. C-USA
  • Pac-10 v. WAC
  • C-USA v. Navy
  • MWC v. WAC
  • WAC v. MAC
  • MWC v. C-USA
  • C-USA v. Sun Belt
  • MWC v. MAC
  • MAC v. Sun Belt
  • C-USA v. Sun Belt or Army

Let’s play "What is Tom Hansen talking about?"

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From his interview with the LA Times:

It [a college football playoff] would be so negative for college football in my opinion that it just doesn’t make good sense. Including the fact it would be 16 teams, not the four that many people advocate, because politically you couldn’t stop at four, you couldn’t stop at eight, you couldn’t stop at 12. And even at 16 you’d have problems.

What political pressures and “problems” is he talking about?

If he thinks a playoff would have to pick the best 16 teams, yes, that would be a problem and devalue the regular season. But the political pressures I’m imagining would create an 11/5 playoff, which would mostly maintain the sanctity of the regular season and create an exciting postseason. And wouldn’t be terribly different, when you think about it, from an 8-team playoff with the best 8 teams.

Or is it just the logistical issues involved with scheduling 15 playoff games?

Expand the Pac-10? Uh… no.

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Really? You think Utah is too good for the Mountain West? That’s your real problem, isn’t it?

Sorry, the reason the Pac-10 is NOT expanding anytime soon, no matter what you may want to happen, isn’t just to maintain the truthfulness of the “10” part, unlike the Big Eleven. Right now, the Pac is divided into five nice and neat geographic rivalries. Adding Utah and Boise State (the next logical football addition) wouldn’t maintain that pattern.

And frankly, as much as I respect the mid-majors, I really think Utah, Boise State, or any other addition from the Mountain West or WAC would be Cal-Oregon-Oregon State-Arizona-State-on-a-good-day level in the Pac-10, not USC level. USC and the good SEC/Big 12 teams are perennially just that good. (Keep in mind, USC beat Utah 16-0 on the road in the Golden Bowl Octofinals.)
Quit worrying about the Pac-10’s lack of respect and start worrying about your real problem – the Mountain West’s lack of respect and its need to expand with Boise State and maybe Hawaii, Fresno State, or Nevada. Who knows, maybe someday the Pac-10 will be wowed with the prospect of conference championship money and bring on Utah and BYU (both fairly good teams in both football and basketball). But as some of the commenters on this opinion piece suggest, getting more appropriate bowl tie-ins and less reliance on FSN is probably going to have to come first.

(This would not be a full-fledged blog post if I wasn’t on Twitter. I might not have even heard of it if it weren’t for Twitter, but that’s not the point.)

No more calling out the mainstream media for Favremania, mmmkay?

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The Jets released Brett Favre from their “reserve/retired” list yesterday, an auspicious move considering so far as I can tell players on the R/R list don’t count against roster or salary caps, but ordinarily a fairly routine move, at least for any player not named Brett Favre.

So naturally you’d expect plenty of “does this mean he’s thinking of coming back?” speculation from ESPN and the like, and you’d expect the blogosphere to do plenty of “there they go again, obsessing over Brett Favre” and thumbing their nose because they’re so above that…

…hold on, it appears the number 1 topic on SportsCenter’s “Blog Buzz” segment this morning was Favre’s release. Seems not even the blogosphere is immune to Favremania when a plane traveling between Minneapolis and Hattiesburg and back again sends them going “OMG OMG OMG IT ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH BRETT FAVRE BECAUSE HE IS THE ONLY PERSON IN ALL OF HATTIESBURG THAT EVER HAS TO TRAVEL OMG!!!!!11!!1!!!eleven!”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr… another retype. I thought I made myself immune to this bullshit.

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If the Super Bowl were covered the same way the NFL Draft is:

  • It would last two days.
  • It would be covered by TWO networks.
  • It would be preceded by a five-hour pregame show. Same (or less) than now, right? Well, there would be pregame shows on both networks.
  • One of the two networks would have analysis throughout the entire game on a sister channel.
  • There would be cameras inside each team’s locker room which each broadcast could switch to whenever they needed to, AND cameras inside the houses of players who could be called in at any moment to fly to the game and pitch in for either team.
  • There would be in-game interviews with coaches and team executives, and an interview with one player after every play either early or late in the game.
  • Each network’s broadcast team would include an expert who has analyzed every single play each team could possibly use during the game and has drawn up a “mock game” scripting every move of the entire game (or at least the first quarter).

On another note, Al Davis is now officially certifiably insane.

Something I’ve been meaning to say since the news broke.

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There’s been a lot that’s been said about John Madden’s retirement, and I could repeat everything that’s been said about how beloved he was (not so much in my household, but that may be because he made all the obvious things he said obvious) or his alleged man-crush on Brett Favre or his impact on football and the broadcasting profession or his retirement’s impact on NBC, the NFL and its network, and the careers of Cris Collinsworth, Al Michaels, and Frank Caliendo.

But let me just say this about replacement Collinsworth.

NBC was caught off guard by Madden’s retirement, but they were not caught unprepared.

That said, I have to agree with what Curt Smith had to say about Harry Kalas: “[Collinsworth] will succeed [Madden]. None will replace him.”

A simple game of connect-the-dots.

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How was it possible that despite a far less compelling matchup than last year, including the until-recently laughable Arizona Cardinals, the Super Bowl still drew a bigger audience than last year?

Amidst people crowing “when it’s the Super Bowl the teams are irrelevant”, I was wondering why more attention wasn’t paid to the surprisingly large female audience – which seemed to explain the large audience but gave me more questions than answers. Where did all these women come from all of a sudden?

I may have a partial answer, at least. (Courtesy Fang’s Bites.)