Please don’t tell me the only point of Roy remembering everything about his trip to the Oracle was to fill a plot hole in Panel 2 of 698.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized coordination.)

Back in September, I stopped following OOTS and instead started on an archive binge from beginning to end.

Last month, I finished it.

Now, part of the reason for the binge taking so long was because of a side project I was working on at the same time, related to the binge but in retrospect distracting from its intended main goal. Once that side project caused the binge to slow to a crawl, I elected to postpone it until I had more time to work on it. Which, thanks to various other miscellaneous distractions, turned out to be this February, and in retrospect I should have postponed it even longer, because the related effects may turn out to be far more far-reaching (more on that later). But there’s a part of me that wonders if the length of the binge may have been a subconscious response on my part to the sub-par quality of the strip as of late.

In retrospect, I may have just barely missed one of the greatest single stretches in the history of webcomics, the stretch collected in the War and XPs book collection. If, as people have suggested, OOTS’s Cerebus Syndrome can be dated to the trial sequence at the end of the previous book (an increasingly dodgy proposition, as I’ll get to in a moment), and OOTS’s Cerebus Syndrome is a defining feature of what makes the comic great (as opposed to a series of D&D in-jokes), then the Golden Age of OOTS can be fairly exactly pinned down to that one book. A case could be made that you could pin it down to that stretch anyway – everything from about comic #380 to the end of the Battle of Azure City is pretty much one long Wham Episode. It’s almost stating the obvious that the greatest comic in the history of OOTS so far came from that stretch, whatever that comic may be. But in any case, book 4 seemed to be a significant disappointment. As awesome as V’s final descent into madness was, it seemed the exception and not the rule.

Now, OOTS being off its game is a little like The Simpsons being off its game, at least from the perspective of those who kept voting “Never Jumped” for that show on the old Jump the Shark site. OOTS’ worst is still better than the best of a lot of comics (the likes of Dresden Codak, 8-Bit Theater, and Scary Go Round come to mind – those of you who just shouted Ctrl+Alt+Del may remove yourselves now). Still, book 4 was marred by clunky dialogue, questionable characterization, a disturbing density of strips that are painful to read, and a general lack of the heart that characterized previous books. (Book 4 is perhaps more OOTS-dominated than any book since book 1, and is the first book in which the Linear Guild doesn’t directly appear. The unwillingness to go to anyone other than the OOTS for more than ten strips, if you don’t count Super-V’s attempt to engage Xykon and various IFCC shenanigans, may have come off as laziness.)

Of course, the poster child for iffy characterization in Book 4 is Celia, who seemingly stepped right into Miko’s role as the most hated character in the strip. Celia had so many problems that sorting between them proved to be a challenge. Seemingly out of the blue, Celia became a holier-than-thou pacifist idiot, going against her prior characterization in the process, in a seemingly pointless manner, if the existence of a thread asking what the point of her presence was during my absence is any indication. (Tellingly, I know of no similar thread for Roy on the material plane outside the visit to the Oracle.) Celia was not even particularly consistent about being a pacifist – not only did it go against her willingness to zap Nale and Thog, it also went against her willingness to defend the OOTS (“professional murderers”) to Shojo’s court, and she eventually found herself blatantly cheerleading Haley’s slaying of her own former friends like nobody’s business. I’m still partial to my theory that she was just too ashamed of her limited capability in battle, and when Haley asked if it was a conscientious objection, Celia ran with it rather than admit the truth – the only other consistent interpretation is that Celia is perfectly fine with other people killing for her, and if that was the case I don’t think she would have had a problem with Belkar killing a hobgoblin, since it seems fairly obvious that her ploy to escape them is motivated more by a desire to avoid killing, whatever the base of that desire, than the concern for the Resistance she espouses (if that were the case she’d have brought it up right off the bat), not to mention she wouldn’t have stopped the very killing she’d cheered on earlier. (At least my theory doesn’t make her an incomprehensible raging hypocrite.) Rich’s attempts to explain or play off the most blatant self-contradiction, her pacifism, were interpreted as attempts to redeem her, which led to accusations that Rich didn’t understand the real reasons Celia was so hated, her idiocy (itself contradictory – how is someone studying to be a lawyer that naive? I’m amazed she didn’t figure Roy could fly on his own power). Frankly, judging by the fact that Haley gets the last word on Celia with similar words to what the forum was feeling, without even Roy objecting on-screen, I suspect that Celia was intended to be hated.

(Do not even get me started on Elan. I could write a whole post on how he’s been handled.)

Part of the reason for the intensity of the hatred towards Celia may have been the fact that, during Book 4, the main plot of OOTS ground to a complete halt, as everyone was more preoccupied with getting the gang back together and their own plot than actually getting to the next gate, and the entire book seemed pointless compared to the rest of the megaplot. I’ve said before that, with only a few changes, the end of Book 3 could conceivably have marked the end of the entire strip, and the general aimlessness of Book 4 seems to back me up on that, suggesting that it really was intended as “halftime” between two very different comics. OOTS Gamer Theory Syndrome was one result, but another was that, once the OOTS got back together, V’s Soul Splice ended (and he and O-Chul reunited with the OOTS in such fashion I half-expected this strip or this one to be titled “Deus Ex Monstro” or “Monstrum Ex Machina”), and Roy was resurrected, the clunky dialogue revved into overdrive, and continued even into the strips I skipped. Rich seemed to have trouble making a seamless transition back to the main plot, resorting to much expospeak during the meeting of the “War Council”, and the whole thing almost felt like starting from scratch, with the whole “lich-and-gate thing” more of an abstract obligation than anything else. (The fact the OOTS was finally in one piece and unencumbered again may have contributed to this feeling.)

And as much as I was excited at the revelation of the “planet-within-the-planet”, I couldn’t help but dread the directions this could possibly go. It had all the hallmarks of a shock-value “everything-you-know-is-wrong” twist, and whether it led to mucho exposition, a Planet of the Apes ending, “Adventures on the Snarl World” (a very distressingly common theory for Book 6), or something else equally trippy, it could not help but lead to something stupid.

And then the next book started… rather jarringly, to say the least. The 1-2 and 2-3 transitions had transition strips that helped ease things, and comic 485 flowed directly out of comic 484. The transition from book 4 to book 5 could have used a transition strip, because it was hard for me to get oriented, especially after a lengthy break, after getting simply plopped in Sandsedge (especially with even more expospeak instead of just letting it be an establishing shot). This is one of the more obvious book transitions Rich has ever done, and along with how suddenly the subsequent random encounter starts, really underlines the clunkiness of Rich’s writing of late – occasionally reading more like an OOTS fanfic. (But that strip is the biggest problem among the strips I skipped.)

And then came the strip that may have singlehandedly subconsciously convinced me to quit OOTS for the time being.

I refer, of course, to the rest of the OOTS’ complete inability to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence. That was a cruel trick to play on V, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with her plight. Now, my extreme negative reaction to this comic probably has something to do with the way I personally process information, but I was far from the only one who had a problem with it – probably most of the forums didn’t even understand what was going on, and those that did were understandably frustrated. (It did not help that, despite mounds of evidence that people can, in fact, SEE Blackwing, people still think they can’t. In retrospect, Rich should not have included the bit where Belkar can’t see the bird.)

But as much as I hated this twist, at least it imposed interesting questions that needed answering. Why wasn’t the OOTS able to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence? What, exactly, happened back at the rift? To what extent was the OOTS memory-wiped – could someone be forced to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence by, say, being asked to remember events where there would be a gaping hole without Blackwing? Surely Vaarsuvius, doubted by his own teammates, would seek, with such an inquisitive mind as his, to get to the bottom of this question?

But no. V makes ZERO on-screen effort to prove Blackwing’s existence or investigate his seeming lack thereof. Instead it seems that the point of one of the most maddening twists in the history of the strip, one that insulted our intelligence and made the OOTS seem like either jerks or idiots, was to turn Blackwing into the “good angel”, to literally strip him of his reality and turn him into V’s imaginary friend, his conscience and guiding spirit in his ongoing character development. Never mind that this could have just as easily been done with a literal good angel, or that the process of setting Blackwing up for this role involved setting up a huge plot twist and then forgetting about it.

Comic, meet wall.

I am not in the camp of those on the forums who claim that #674 was “just a joke”. I certainly hope it wasn’t (and references to the comic since then suggest it isn’t), although reading without an eye to speculation leads to the disturbing conclusion that the sole point of it was solely to illustrate V’s anger management problems, regardless of what about the characters had to be contradicted to get there. First, it’s not funny. Second, the joke relies on the contradiction of previous comics. Third, if the joke is in-universe played on V by the OOTS, it requires unconvincingly derailing all their characters, especially Haley, who’s V’s friend and has, in the past, been more connected to Blackwing (she named the bird, for crying out loud) than V herself has. Fourth, if the joke is external to the universe, it still requires bending the characters unconvincingly, and OOTS is too much of a plot-oriented strip at this point to make a continuity-free joke.

Frankly, I don’t find V’s attempt at redemption terribly convincing either. It seems odd that V would go from being mad with power to engaging in a twelve-step program and trying to distance herself from anything that reminds her of the old V in a couple of days. V’s experience with the Soul Splice was a teachable moment, but what she learned in Xykon’s throne room was that power could take the form of everything at her disposal, not merely brute-force arcane power, and that among the powers at her disposal was people other than herself. V herself later articulates the value of planning, while Durkon lectures her about the value of small victories. All that points to ways she can better use her magic, not anger management issues or other requirements to totally change her personality. V later characterizes the incident in 677-678 as “evoking first and making inquiries afterward” (in typical Vaarsuvian fashion), but it still feels like Rich took a few logical leaps along the way. (And there’s a big difference between “use your allies to your advantage” and “don’t get involved at all if your teammates can handle it even if things would be over a lot sooner”.) I could sympathise very much with Vaarsuvius’ plight and compare it to my own situation (again, more on that later) if I found it suitably convincing. (And it’s likely V’s divorce won’t be as simple as “I will not contest it”, especially being on the same continent as the elves.)

So, what else has happened while I was away? Well, we also got one heck of an unexpected plot twist concerning the much-anticipated liberation of Ian Starshine: the country that originally captured him almost certainly no longer exists. As Rich has been wont to do recently, this tears asunder mounds of forum theories on how said liberation might go down, while opening up whole new frontiers for speculation. It does not necessarily invalidate the once-commonly-held “Tyrinar is Elan and Nale’s father” theory, especially since Nale’s father seems to have been a general, not necessarily the leader of a nation, when Nale was young. I could easily see a story being told of a once-mighty conqueror ultimately undone and left to destitution, possibly by his own favored son. (On the other hand, the idea that Tyrinar’s real name is Ian Starshine, or worse Girard Draketooth, is just stupid – along the lines of the planet-within-the-planet. And equating Ian with Girard just because they both have red hair is stupidest of all.)

Belkar is really bad at pretending to be good. Earlier, he at least gave off the impression that he was reforming, holding off Bozzok and Crystal as though out of a genuine concern for Haley, taking an option that would result in less killing, and even sparing Crystal’s life instead of stealing a kill from Haley. But he becomes substantially more obnoxious about it here, and once the OOTS leaves Sandsedge he basically becomes the same old Belkar as always, only with a few words here and there about being a team player, offset by the numerous times he lets the facade slip. (Sorry, this is not a team player.) This seems to further back up my interpretation of Shojo’s advice as Belkar needing only to know the OOTS’ moral framework, not necessarily follow it. (And if that’s not Belkar’s interpretation of the matter, it may soon be.) The other half of that interpretation – it doesn’t matter even if the OOTS doesn’t buy it – seems also to be happening.

And then there’s the absolute blockbuster – and second speculation-shattering development – that completely overturns the complacency that seemed to come over the OOTS early in the book (come on, reaching Girard’s Gate twenty strips in?) and could be fodder for an entire post in itself: the coordinates Roy picked up from Shojo were in fact the result of a deliberate attempt by Girard to mislead Soon, sending the OOTS right back to square one. More to the point, the rift between the members of the Order of the Scribble may have been deeper than anticipated. Its plot relevancy may have seemed to have faded when Hinjo declared Soon’s Oath expired, but my post on Serini’s non-interference clause now seems more relevant than ever. (Similarly, incidentially, the revelation of the Linear Guild being pawns of the IFCC makes my “Linear Guild is really helping the OOTS” theory surprisingly plausible in a twisted way.)

That previous post pointed out that comic #277, which introduced the rift and non-interference clause, depicted something that could be seen to be deeper than it made it sound – a team on the verge of becoming mutual enemies – and in that light, this revelation isn’t as much of a stretch. Still, what would lead Girard to basically assume a paladin, of all people, would break his oath? Did Girard just underestimate the power of a paladin’s word? Was Girard just that paranoid? Given the reference to “the power of the Snarl” (not the power of the Gate, and readers of the Start of Darkness prequel will know the difference), was said power such that nothing else could overcome the lust for it, such that it was the real motivation behind the breakup of the Order of the Scribble, not defense? Was Soon, in fact, just the sort of person to make Girard think would break his oath? Perhaps Soon’s classic exegesis of redemption to Miko came from more personal experience than we thought – perhaps Soon wasn’t very much unlike her. At the very least, it’s always bugged me that a (by all appearances) ordinary paladin, who predated the order of paladins he founded, somehow became the lord of Azure City (also predating the Sapphire Guard), for what we thought were reasons that weren’t to be put in the official histories. Between this and the “planet-within-the-planet”, it’s starting to look like the Crayons of Time series may have gotten just about every single thing wrong; its sole purpose was notifying the OOTS about what they “need to know”. We may be in for a lot of exposition if and when the OOTS meets Serini (I still doubt Girard would still be alive after all this time, life-extending spells aside, and scratch my head at the OOTS seemingly assuming he is, while NOT assuming the same about Serini).

Or was it Girard that wasn’t very much unlike Miko?

So Miko is assigned to pick up these people who have done something that threatens the fabric of the entire universe. Along the way, she hears much more about their dastardly deeds. Exactly what these people are planning she doesn’t know, but they can’t be good, and they certainly don’t go down quietly once cornered – and the party leader even scans as strongly evil. Oh, but that was the lich’s crown interfering, everyone in the party really isn’t evil, with the possible exception of the halfling with the lead sheet – and all those dastardly deeds were actually done by their evil twins, and once they know what the charges are they go along willingly, if not quietly, and if with mounds of gold. (Okay, in retrospect given later revelations Miko could have introduced herself in a less threatening fashion, but at the point she engages them she’s got mounds of evidence they’re up to no good.)

And while Miko probably shouldn’t have dismissed their calls for rest and asked them to sleep in a muddy ditch, they do bilk her for everything she has when they do find an inn. Then they ask her to evacuate the inn because “professional killers” are after the leader, then the inn explodes with her inside, then she catches a member of the party gloating at her demise, and the leader turned female, and reacting insincerely to the hotel bill being paid. And then the leader, who’s been hitting on you for this entire time, tells you off and you have to drag them back to Azure City in chains.

Then you catch them trying to escape once there, and the halfling (who, reportedly, she’s confirmed to be evil at this point) actually has, while baiting you in the process. Then, after a long and arduous chase, the rest of the party actually defends the vile creep and saves him from death, apparently off the hook for their known crime. But wait – here comes the clincher…

So it’s sometime later, and you just happen to be at a watchtower when an evil party shows up, and in this evil party is the same lich the party claimed to have destroyed. So, to sum up, the Order of the Stick, who’s been involved in a number of suspicious circumstances besides, destroyed a gate, something that holds together the fabric of the universe, but claimed it was an accident and they were keeping the lich’s plans from coming to fruition anyway, a lich they killed, except the lich isn’t dead (well, dead-dead). They don’t detect as evil, but the party leader initially did before they were prepared for you to do so, for a frankly ridiculous reason. Xykon actually asking them to destroy the gate is only “probable”, but anything else that would seem likely still doesn’t speak well of the Order of the Stick. Being dead can be something tough to ascertain, but generally you should know when something has been completely destroyed. The Order of the Stick, according to #371, claimed to have “destroy”ed Xykon, and they didn’t. Why would they unless they wanted to give the impression that Xykon wasn’t a threat? Sure, the argument is riddled with holes, but from the big picture it’s amazingly plausible from Miko’s perspective. The main questions would be why the Order would have acknowledged Xykon’s existence (couldn’t know Miko hadn’t heard of him, perhaps?) and why they still came along willingly…

…until you find out the man you’ve accepted as your lord has not only been “fak[ing his] senility just to avoid being assassinated” but breaking the laws willy-nilly, to the extent of rigging the trial to acquit the Order of the Stick, who he’s conspiring with to send to Girard’s Gate in violation of Soon’s Oath, which he expresses contempt for. At this point, would you expect Miko to get more confused, or for things to make a lot more sense for her? Not even Hinjo buys Shojo’s argument that he was “doing what was best for the entire city” and working for its “safety”. At this point, Occam’s Razor might actually suggest Shojo was trying to get all the gates destroyed so he and Xykon could use the Snarl to take over the world – indeed, that Shojo exactly fit the profile Girard was afraid of.

While Miko did have her own quirks that made things worse, just as Girard probably did, every conclusion she came to (at least before her fall, when every aspect of her worldview falls apart, so you might expect her to go batshit insane) was at least partially reasonable given the available evidence. This, then, makes her fall and death all the more tragic, because she had no way of knowing better. Perhaps, then, Soon was prone to getting into circumstances that didn’t speak well for his character (and certainly his lawfulness) if you were working from incomplete information, and Girard extrapolated that out into thinking he was bound to break his oath eventually. At the very least, Girard may well be, character-wise, the chaotic equivalent of Miko, utterly blind to the worth of others (in this case, considering “Lawful Good” an oxymoron), utterly uncompromising (by not seeing any need to compromise, especially if Chaotic Neutral), quick-triggered, and absolutely full of himself.

But probably the best strips in the book so far have probably come from the Team Evil interlude, and they haven’t been lacking in plot twists. Rich completely ignored a multiple of 100 for the first time in strip #700, which nonetheless stoked more speculation on the identity of the MitD… unless you’ve read Start of Darkness and realize just how important Tsukiko really is becoming to Xykon, and how much trouble Redcloak doesn’t realize he’s in. Meanwhile, Redcloak – his goblin-state-consolidation plans cut short by V’s attack and Xykon’s response thereof – has elected to cut to the chase and proclaim that Azure City is Azure City no longer. Even once Redcloak leaves, it’ll be tough to oust the goblins – but on the other side, Redcloak seems to be setting in motion a backup plan for if and when his Plan A fails (evidently too cowed by Xykon to abandon Plan A entirely), suggesting two supposed allies are rather deep in a high-stakes game of chess… (And on the list of semi-major characters introduced as no-names, Jirix – who was dead when we last saw him – joins Kazumi, Daigo, Tsukiko, O-Chul, Hinjo… let’s just say Rich is fond of that trick. Also, the relevance of SoD to the main plot of OOTS has increased considerably in the past 200 comics.)

Finally, regarding this strip, the anachronisms on the poster tell us this has nothing to do with anything Nale may be doing now. Meanwhile, it sounds unlikely these two will actually get to the point of turning Elan and V in now, unless V’s plan doesn’t work, though that doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of other people getting in their way. But it would be pointless to spend what’s about to be four strips on these two only for them to immediately disappear with no real impact… I’ll stop now.

Blogging the Lesser Tournaments V: The Championships Before the Championship

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Richmond, VA, Monday: Saint Louis had a 13-12 lead with about eight minutes left in the first half, but then Virginia Commonwealth hit three straight three-pointers and didn’t look back. The Rams had the lead 36-25 at the half, but the Billikens managed to cut the deficit to three in the first five minutes of the second. Then Virginia Commonwealth basically iced the game with a 14-4 run spearheaded by Joey Rodriguez, taking the first game of the CBI Championship Series. Saint Louis 56, Virginia Commonwealth 68.

New York, NY, Tuesday: What could be the last NIT semifinals had two games worthy of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Dayton led 34-30 at the half and pushed it to 64-58 with three minutes left on technical free throws before Ole Miss started to come back, cutting the deficit to 64-62 with 64 seconds left. With 35.8 seconds left, Murphy Holloway went to the line with a chance to tie, but bricked the second free throw; London Warren hit one of two with 23.7 seconds left to put the lead back at two; Trevor Gaskins missed a layup, and Chris Johnson hit two free throws to make it a two-possession game with 11 seconds left; Warren knocked the ball out of bounds on the ensuing Rebel possession, and Johnson stole the inbounds pass, knocking down one of two free throws to send Dayton to the championship game, hoping to send a message after a disappointing season. Dayton 68, Mississippi 63.

Meanwhile, North Carolina is the NIT’s Butler, and might not have been that far off from Butler’s seed. But it certainly took them everything they had to knock off Rhode Island. The score was knotted 30-30 at halftime, and after Rhode Island took a 59-54 lead with 1:47 to play, UNC scored the next five points to knot it at 59-59. URI’s Delroy James whiffed on two free throws with 28.6 seconds left in regulation, and Larry Drew let the clock run down to six seconds before taking an ill-advised shot. Late in the extra session with UNC leading 68-67, Drew forced up a shot with five seconds left, beating the shot clock buzzer. Lamonte Ulmer picked up the rebound but lost control before getting off a shot before the buzzer sounded, leading Rhode Island coach Jim Baron to suggest a foul should have been called. North Carolina 68, Rhode Island 67 (OT).

Springfield, MO, Tuesday: Pacific led 35-29 after one and 50-44 with 11 minutes left, but Missouri State went on an 11-0 run in the next two minutes, taking a 55-50 lead. From there it was simply protecting it. Pacific went on a 5-2 run in the two minutes after that, but Missouri State locked down the game for good with a 12-4 run over the next five minutes, leading 69-59 with 2:19 to play. Pacific’s second half play was plagued by turnovers and fouls as five Bears scored in double figures, including 16 points from Caleb Patterson, who had played a total of 27 minutes the rest of the tournament. Pacific 65, Missouri State 78.

St. Louis, MO, Wednesday: Saint Louis scored the first nine points and overcame a 20-16 deficit to lead 33-24 at the break, but a high-scoring second half saw the game tied at 61 with 3:04 to play. From there, the Billikens’ youth caught up to them, as Virginia Commonwealth went on a 10-4 run to become the first team to sweep the CBI Championship Series. Virginia Commonwealth 71, Saint Louis 65.

New York, NY, Thursday: Could the NIT final – possibly the last game in NIT history – provide as much excitement as the semis? Dayton led 45-32 at the break, but North Carolina played them tight in the second half, starting on a 12-1 run in the first three and a half minutes before Dayton recovered. Marcus Ginyard missed a potential game-tying layup, leading to a Paul Williams 3 that put Dayton up 62-57 with 7:46 to play. UNC managed to cut the deficit to 67-63 with 3:37 left, but Chris Johnson hit a 3 and a dunk that put the Flyers up 72-63 with 2:50 left. North Carolina cut the deficit to 68-73 with 1:14 to play, but wouldn’t score the rest of the way. North Carolina 68, Dayton 79.

Congratulations to Missouri State, Virginia Commonwealth, and Dayton. Had North Carolina won, the season might end with UNC and Duke each holding postseason titles. Instead, mid-majors could hold all four postseason titles. That’s the norm for three of the four, but Butler’s trying to do something that hasn’t been done since UNLV two decades ago.

The 2010 Mid-Major Conference

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Refer to this post if you don’t know what this is about or to catch up on the rules.

This year, five conferences produced multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament: the MWC, West Coast, A-10, WAC, and C-USA. These conferences are guaranteed one spot each in the Mid-Major Conference.

Three teams reached the Sweet 16, all from different conferences. Of these, Northern Iowa, Cornell, and Butler did not come from a multi-bid conference, while Xavier and St. Mary’s did. From the Mountain West Conference, two teams won their first round game while the other two did not; from the WAC and C-USA, neither team from neither conference won their first round game. New Mexico and BYU both lost in the semifinals of the conference tournament, but New Mexico swept the season series; Utah State split the series with New Mexico State before losing to them in the WAC tournament; ditto for UTEP and Houston before Houston beat them in the conference tournament.

This leaves no spots in the MMC to be determined by my discretion. However, an honorable mention should be given to Washington. The Pac-10 played like a mid-major this year, and Washington would be the conference’s qualifying member if it was considered one, since it made the Sweet 16.

Without further ado, the eight members of the 2010 Mid-Major Conference:

Butler (Horizon League)
St. Mary’s (West Coast Conference)
Xavier (Atlantic 10)
Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley Conference)
Cornell (Ivy League)
New Mexico (Mountain West Conference)
New Mexico State (Western Athletic Conference)
Houston (Conference USA)

Of note: This is the first time in the history of the MMC that Gonzaga and Memphis have not been members. The Mid-Major Conference committee (=me) will meet later this year to determine if modifications to the mid-major conference criteria need to be made if the NCAA tournament expands to 96 teams.

More problems with expanding the NCAA Tournament

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Did I hear Dan LeBatard correctly yesterday on PTI? Apparently most coaches don’t like creating a playoff for college football, but they do like expanding the NCAA Tournament to grotesque levels.

Why? In college football, you can go .500, go to a bowl game, and save your job. In college basketball, it’s NCAA Tournament or bust – you have to be in the top 18% of teams in the country to save your job.

Here’s the thing: you may be able to go .500 and save your job, but that doesn’t mean anyone gives a bleep about your team. Most people only care about the undefeated and one-loss teams in the thick of the national championship hunt, and if they’re really diehard, the races at the top of the BCS conferences. Any smart playoff proposal will keep the bowls in some way, and it’s not like people care that much about the teams that wouldn’t be in the playoff anyway, so how exactly would it change the status quo?

And why shouldn’t college basketball be any different from college football, the NBA, or the NHL? Why shouldn’t the NIT, CBI, or CIT be enough for a coach to keep their job, and why shouldn’t merely making the NCAA Tournament be good enough for a coach to get a hefty extension?

You know what I think the problem is? I think the problem is that, unlike in college football, the mid-majors really are the majority. The BCS conferences really do select a third to a half of their teams to the NCAA Tournament as is, so in that sense, it makes sense for them to say “NCAA Tournament or bust”. In that sense, it’s heartening to see the number of at-large spots given to mid-majors double this year, even if it was only because the Pac-10 sucked. Improving parity will make the NCAA Tournament feel more special and give more respect to the NIT. Expanding the tournament, on the other hand, will only worsen and entrench the “NCAA Tournament or bust” dictum given to BCS-conference coaches, while making the tournament feel less special.

(It’ll also render schedule irrelevant. Am I really supposed to believe that the 32 teams just outside the NCAAs are dominated by major conference teams, but magically, there’s only one major-conference team in the next 32 and it’s from the Pac-10? Do we really want every Tom, Dick, and Harry that goes .500 to almost automatically get to the Big Dance?

Blogging the Lesser Tournaments IV: The Slipper Still Fits the Tar Heels

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As it turned out, the game of the NIT quarterfinals was the game that was already over by the time I posted my last look at the lesser tournaments. Texas Tech missed game-winning shots at the end of regulation and the first overtime, and Ole Miss…didn’t, driving the length of the floor in five seconds en route to a Murphy Holloway layup and-one. That’s the most trouble the Rebels have had for the tournament, against something of a Cinderella run by the 5 seed. All the other quarterfinals were in single digits but didn’t provide the same kind of last-second drama. No A-10 teams may remain in the NCAA Tournament, but two tourney snubs are going to Madison Square Garden. Rhode Island held off a late run for a 5-point victory over Virginia Tech, while Dayton knocked off another 1 seed, Illinois, by seven. No 1 seeds will make the NIT final four.

But the George Mason story of the NIT has to be North Carolina. Look at how disappointing the Tar Heels’ season has been! Forget the NCAA Tournament, they’re on the NIT bubble! The only reason they’re a 4 seed in the NIT is because people want them to host a game and get the biggest fan base to fill the seats! And yet the Tar Heels have been playing like the team everyone thought they would be, the defending national champions who have now taken out three teams with better NCAA bubble credentials than them. First it was William and Mary, then Mississippi State, and now UAB has found out that the Bulldogs were not the only team they should fear in their bracket. Now UNC gets the NCAA Tournament experience and one more team that missed out on the NCAAs in Rhode Island. For the Rams, Dayton, and Ole Miss, proving the NCAA committee wrong is the motivation in MSG. For North Carolina, it’s proving everyone in March wrong, and everyone in November right.

What may have been a dream matchup will happen in the CBI’s best-of-three Championship Series: Virginia Commonwealth vs. Saint Louis. Both teams won their semifinal games by double digits, although VCU didn’t shake Boston University until late. VCU was the 5 seed in the CAA tournament, but only two of their losses came outside of conference, and they beat a George Mason team that had a very short trip to the CIT, and forced overtime against eventual tourney champion Old Dominion. Saint Louis became a spoiler for A-10 at-large contenders late in the season, briefly becoming a borderline at-large contender themselves. Both teams now get a chance at the spotlight, however small, and bragging rights heading into next season.

In the CollegeInsider tournament, the semis were split over two days, with Missouri State and Creighton playing an all-Valley matchup on Wednesday. Missouri State won after going on a 10-0 run once Creighton tied the game with over six minutes to play. The following day, Pacific knocked off an Appalachian State team that had made it all the way to the SoCon finals in hostile territory, and will now play their fourth straight road game. The perennial Big West powers were the 2 seed in the conference tournament but were upended by Long Beach State, and in some sense are the North Carolina of the CIT, winning despite constant disrespect.

So if you’re not interested in the Women’s Elite Eight and you’ll miss March Madness over the course of the next week, fret not. If you know where to look, there’s basketball every day of the next week.

Lesser Tournament Championship Week:
CBI Game 1: Saint Louis @ VCU, Monday 7 ET, HDNet
NIT Semifinal: Dayton v. Mississippi, Tuesday 7 ET, ESPN2
CIT Final: Pacific @ Missouri State, Tuesday 8 ET, FCS
NIT Semifinal: Rhode Island v. North Carolina, Tuesday 9 ET (after Dayton-Mississippi), ESPN2
CBI Game 2: VCU @ Saint Louis, Wednesday 8 ET, HDNet
NIT Final: DAY/MISS winner v. URI/UNC winner, Thursday 7 ET, ESPN
CBI Game 3 (if necessary): VCU @ Saint Louis, Friday 8 ET, HDNet

Blogging the Lesser Tournaments III: The CBI’s Revenge

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The NIT quarterfinals are already underway, kicking off with Texas Tech playing Ole Miss. Tech would probably be the story of the NIT if they made the Final Four. In some ways they’re a little like Northern Iowa, but different. Tech already proved they were good by beating a fringe at-large contender, Seton Hall, in the first round, and becoming the beneficiaries of Arizona State falling to Jacksonville. Still, Jacksonville was determined to prove they weren’t a fluke, leading by 11 in the first half and not relinquishing the lead until a quarter of the way through the second. Now Texas Tech faces another at-large contender in Ole Miss, who proved their supremacy over Memphis. (Yes, I know that game is already over.)

Here’s something that can’t be explained by popularity alone: North Carolina is still alive. I questioned their 4 seed as a result of a desire to have them host a game, but they upended a legit at-large contender in Mississippi State. (Not a good round if you wanted vindication for the state of Mississippi.) The finish was rather exciting, with Larry Drew II hitting a buzzer-beating layup over one of the country’s leading shot-blockers in Jarvis Varnado. The Tar Heels will face UAB, who had no problems taking care of North Carolina’s in-state rivals NC State.

North Carolina is still alive; Connecticut is not. They made a game of it – leading before Dorenzo Hudson made a 17-footer with 14 seconds remaining, then seeing Kemba Walker blocked, a made free throw, and unable to hit the buzzer-beater – but Virginia Tech is still playing with a chip on their shoulder from missing the NCAAs. Rhode Island had more trouble than they anticipated against 6-seed Nevada, who had already beaten fringe at-large candidate Wichita State. The Rams led by 10, but Nevada came roaring back to cut the lead to one with five seconds left, only to throw the ball away for their 16th turnover. Illinois breezed by Kent State, while Dayton shockingly had little trouble with Cincinnati, admittedly teams with similar at-large profiles. Now Illinois and Dayton – and V-Tech and Rhode Island – play tomorrow for a spot in New York and to prove the committee had them wrong and the other team right.

Also playing tomorrow will be all four semifinals of the CBI and CIT. After a slow start in the first round, the CBI nearly became as exciting as the NCAAs, as all but one quarterfinal went to overtime. Virginia Commonwealth handled Charleston, beating both teams I expected to make its quarterfinal, and may now be the favorite with how everyone else struggled. But Saint Louis is still alive, despite needing two overtimes to knock off Green Bay. Down two late in regulation, the Billikens had a potential game-winning layup waved off because the player that put it up grabbed the net with the ball still going through, but Kwamain Mitchell stole the ensuing inbounds and tossed it to Willie Reed (no relation… I think) for the game-tying layup, with Green Bay unable to hit a buzzer-beater. The teams scored only three points apiece in the first extra session and nothing at all in the final minute, and Green Bay kept it close late in the second overtime, but not close enough. Who wants to see a VCU-Saint Louis final?

Boston University led by as many as 11 over Morehead State, but the Eagles were able to come back and tie it with 28 seconds left, and the Terriers were unable to convert on three opportunities to break the tie in the final 10, but led for all of OT, though prevailed in the final tally by only two. They play Virginia Commonwealth. Princeton will play Saint Louis as part of a run as impressive as their Ivy-mates Cornell but not as easy. IUPUI actually led by two with 29 seconds left in regulation but John Ashworth missed two free throws that could have all but iced the game, and Ian Hummer grabbed the rebound and sprinted down the court for the game-tying layup. The first overtime went similarly to that in the other game in that half of the bracket, while the second was all Princeton, as IUPUI could only manage two free throws and no field goals.

It was the CIT’s turn to lack excitement. Only Pacific had any trouble at all in the “western bracket” final against Northern Colorado. The Bears got within three with six seconds left but Demetrece Young made one of two to ice the victory. Pacific will play Appalachian State, winner of the only other game in single digits. The Missouri Valley representatives had no trouble at all with Fairfield and Louisiana Tech. (Apparently the CIT doesn’t have a problem with matching teams in the same conference in the semifinals, even when the other two teams are on opposite sides of that conference.)

My pick for CIT final: Appalachian State def. Missouri State. But it’s gonna be close.

Blogging the Lesser Tournaments II: The Madness Before the Madness

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March Madness started well before Thursday. While the NCAA Tournament took its leisurely time with a play-in game before the real fun started yesterday, the NIT, CBI, and CIT have been blitzing through their first rounds; the last game of the CIT’s first round was yesterday, between Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech, while the NIT and CBI crammed their respective first rounds into two days. And over the past few days, all three tournaments have been proving they can be just as full of excitement as the Big Dance.

In the NIT, UConn barely survived Jim Calhoun’s old team, Northeastern, thanks in part to lock-down defense in the final few seconds. NC State had to wait to see if Richard Howell’s layup with 8 seconds left beat the shot clock buzzer. North Carolina had to come back and play lock-down defense to beat William and Mary, and Jacksonville pulled off a 24-foot buzzer beater to perform the equivalent of a 16 seed knocking off a 1. In the CBI, Virginia Commonwealth had to hold off a furious comeback by George Washington, and in the CIT, Fairfield had to come back from 27 down – possibly the largest deficit come back from in Division I postseason history – to force overtime and eventually beat George Mason, overshadowing a not-so-successful comeback by Western Carolina as they fell to Marshall.

And that was just Tuesday.

I mentioned on that day that the CIT was more an opportunity to play more games than a serious tournament, but it has started to develop a reputation for housing as much March Madness as the Big Dance, only taken to record-breaking extremes. Last year, Bradley hit what may have been the longest buzzer-beater in Division I postseason history to knock off Oakland in the second round. Worth noting that Oakland and last year’s champion, Old Dominion, are both in the Big Dance this year. Sadly, Day 2 of the CIT did not produce as much excitement, with no game being closer than eight points, and Louisiana Tech similarly put away Southern Miss by nine.

The other two tournaments, however, did not disappoint. Following up on the Jacksonville upset, the Pac-10 went down to 0-2 in postseason play entering the NCAAs, before Washington squeaked by Marquette, as Boston University upended Oregon State by 18 points. Duquesne was unceremoniously dumped from the tournament by Princeton, but Green Bay took a while to pull away from Akron, while the NIT produced more buzzer-beaters. Nevada squeaked out a four-point win over Wichita State, Wesley Witherspoon hit a buzzer-beating layup to put Memphis over St. John’s, and Kent State came from behind to knock off Tulsa. The NIT seriously produces just as much excitement as the Big Dance, because its teams are still good teams. In a way, the CBI may have fallen the furthest behind in the excitement department – though remember how I identified only six teams from conferences with RPI rank of #17 or below? All four of the teams that faced teams from top-16 conferences won.

The NIT actually slows down to a more leisurely pace from this point on, spreading the second round over several days, and taking Sunday off, perhaps to make room on ESPN’s schedule and avoid overly competing with the NCAA Tournament – indeed, half the games aren’t played until Monday. That’s when Virginia Tech squares off against UConn, in a game that must look right scary to the Huskies after the way they escaped Northeastern, while Rhode Island takes on Nevada. Mississippi State’s argument is still alive heading into a Saturday showdown with North Carolina, as is Illinois heading into a contest with Kent State. Jacksonville will attempt to make lightning strike twice against Texas Tech, and Cincinnati-Dayton, Memphis-Mississippi, and NC State-UAB round out the NIT slate.

Monday is also when both the CBI and CIT will cram in all their quarterfinals. Saint Louis is the only A-10 team left in the CBI quarters and they face the Green Bay team that squeaked out that tight buzzer-beater, in what may be the most interesting game of the third-tier slate. The next-most interesting game might be Charleston vs. Virginia Commonwealth, two schools not really that far apart. Elsewhere, Princeton takes on IUPUI, and Morehead State takes on Boston University. In the CIT, Appalachian State travels to Marshall in a battle of two 23-win teams that also aren’t that far apart, while Fairfield takes on Creighton, Louisiana Tech faces Missouri State, and the “western bracket” ends when Pacific takes on Northern Colorado.

My picks for CIT quarters: Appalachian State def. Marshall, Fairfield def. Creighton, Missouri State def. Louisiana Tech, Northern Colorado def. Pacific.

Oh, right, that other tournament…

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My fourth annual NCAA Tournament bracket can be seen here. A Kansas-Ohio State Elite Eight could be an effective national championship game, but I’m picking the third time being the charm for Kansas State and West Virginia winning the national championship after one of the wildest tournaments in recent memory. West Virginia will be more lucky than good.

Blogging the Lesser Tournaments I: Pick Your Tourney

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We don’t need to expand the NCAA Tournament, and we sure as hell shouldn’t. The college basketball regular season is plenty meaningful, and even at the end of the bubble, the NCAA Tournament only selects the elite teams. (Okay, maybe not so much this year. But don’t believe the hype about the NCAA being forced to select bad teams.)

What we need is a change in perception. We need to realize that the 128 teams selected to go to any one of four postseason tournaments are ALL at least above average, even good when you consider that double 128 would be 256 and Division I has almost a hundred more than that. Connecticut and North Carolina are below their usual high standard this year, but they are still good if not great teams, just not fantastic enough to make the NCAAs. Relative to the rest of Division I, even the third-tier tournaments select better teams than the mediocre squads that populate the NBA and NHL postseasons. We need to realize that if it’s a “reward for a great season” Villanova coach Jay Wright wants, the NIT, CBI, and CIT more than fit the bill just as much as the NCAAs do.

In college football, we know this. We recognize the importance of the bowls as a reward for a good season, even if they’re as overloaded with teams as the NBA and NHL postseasons, and even when the teams involved are FAR removed from the national title picture. You got selected to the Texas Bowl? Congratulations, you had a good season and now you get a nice vacation in a warm climate and a game on national television against a good opponent with a chance to end your season on a high note and win a trophy. You got selected to the Holiday Bowl? Ditto for you, plus you’re better than the vast majority of teams in college football; quit griping about not making the BCS. You got selected to the Capitol One Bowl? Ditto for you AND as many people will watch your game as a weak BCS game.

Any playoff proposal worth its salt will keep the bowls as consolation prizes for teams that don’t make the playoff. So will the bowls be treated like the afterthought the NIT is now – as a jeering way to refer to teams that don’t make the playoff, even if they happen to be #17 in a 16-team system? Or will they continue to be seen as rewards for good seasons?

Over the next few weeks I will treat the lesser tournaments as what they are: the non-BCS bowls of college basketball. As a celebration for 64 good seasons that didn’t put their teams within the elite. As a way to have four winners at the end of the season, not one. As a national spotlight (well, it should be) for teams that don’t get a lot of attention during the season because of all the focus on the NCAAs, allowing the NCAAs not to be the end-all and be-all of national attention. And as a trip to basketball arenas across America to see more basketball being played than the NCAAs allow. The titles don’t actually mean anything, but then, neither do the bowls. It’s a shot at bragging rights, and when it gets right down to it, which would a bubble team rather have: a double-digit seed in the NCAAs and only once in a blue moon advancing beyond the Sweet 16 (and rarely making it that far), or being favored to win the entire NIT while hosting home games in the process?

I will follow each tournament round-by-round as they approach their respective conclusions, keeping an eye on all the developing storylines and shining light on the tournaments behind the Tournament. I won’t be able to watch any tournaments other than the NIT, because I don’t have HDNet to watch the CBI or FCS to watch the CIT, but I will still attempt to follow them from afar. Follow the Blogging the Lesser Tournaments category to join my journey to show why a trip to the lesser tournaments is nothing to be ashamed of.

One good thing that resulted from the starting of the CBI and CIT was that it gave each of the three tournaments its own identity, instead of the NIT just being the consolation tournament for NCAA losers. The NIT is dominated by the teams on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble, serving as their attempt to prove they deserved to make the Big Dance. In fact, it really is the “little dance”. Not only does it have all the tradition – a longer tradition than the NCAAs, in fact – and the best non-NCAA teams, but ever since regular season champions that didn’t make the NCAAs started getting auto bids to the NIT, it’s actually gotten its own internal structure in the first round, much like the NCAAs.

In the NCAAs, the 1, 2, and 3 seeds – protected seeds that include the national championship favorites – take on teams that are only there because they have to be. They generally win those games going away; once in a blue moon a 15 or 14 will upset a 2 or 3. The 4 and 5 seeds take on the teams that probably deserved a little more respect – strong champions of weak conferences, borderline at-large teams – and it’s those 4-13 and 5-12 matchups that produce the most exciting upsets. The 6/11, 7/10, and 8/9 games pit at-large against at-large, and while it’s very rare that any of these teams make the Final Four, especially with the 1, 2, or 3 seed waiting in the second round, they certainly make for as appealing a game as you’re likely to find in the first round.

Bubble teams dominate the NIT field. I recognize every one of the top three seeds from the bubble conversation, plus the 4 seed Seton Hall and the 5 seed William and Mary (who I have to imagine is only being forced to go on the road to North Carolina so the big-name Tar Heels get a home game). Similarly, with the exception of Northwestern, the 7 and 8 seeds consist mostly of the teams that got the auto bids. So the 1 seeds get pretty easy trips to the second round, complete with home field advantage (except for Illinois, who apparently will have to go on the road to Stony Brook), while the 2 seeds should have a fairly easy ride if they aren’t caught wallowing in their own inability to make the Big Dance. The 3/6 and 4/5 games, though, should be a LOT of fun. The 3 and 4 seeds will have home court advantage, but they will be playing other good teams that could very easily get feisty on a good day.

The NIT is especially bowl-like because it is the only one of the lesser tournaments to play on a neutral site. In the NCAAs, teams play to win and move on to another semi-randomly chosen site, where the stakes slowly get bigger and bigger, but the Final Four and a number of the regional sites are generally football stadiums. But in the NIT, if you can make it to the semifinals, suddenly you’re playing in the World’s Most Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden. You’re arguably playing on more hallowed ground than most of the NCAA tournament sites. Once you reach this point, you’re practically getting the true-to-life NCAA tournament experience.

For bubble teams, this is their chance to shine and prove the NCAA committee wrong, and while the cases of teams left out this year are weaker than normal, there are still some teams with plenty of motivation. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the upper right section of the draw, where Virginia Tech and Rhode Island are the top two seeds. V-Tech coach Seth Greenberg ripped into the selection committee on ESPN’s Bracketology show, and they have a desire to prove they are better than their non-conference schedule, just as Illinois was better than their RPI and Arizona State was better than their conference. Rhode Island wants to prove not only that they deserved to make the NCAAs, but to make the top line of the NIT – but they may have gotten the toughest draw of the two seeds in Northwestern. And then there’s Mississippi State, who has everyone else arguing on their behalf after almost knocking off Kentucky in the SEC final.

My picks for second round: Illinois def. Tulsa, Illinois State def. Cincinnati, Arizona State def. Texas Tech, Mississippi def. Memphis, Virginia Tech def. Connecticut, Rhode Island def. Wichita State, Mississippi State def. William and Mary, South Florida def. UAB. My picks for MSG: Arizona State def. Illinois, Rhode Island def. Mississippi State, Rhode Island def. Arizona State.

The College Basketball Invitational doesn’t think of itself as third-tier. In its own mind, it sees itself as a competitor with the NIT. The group that started it was partly reacting to the NCAA taking over the NIT and gaining something of a monopoly over the college basketball postseason. But the NIT still has the history and tradition on its side, and the CBI rarely gets more than a couple of defectors to party with them. (It doesn’t help, according to what I’ve read, that the CBI and CIT are pay-to-play and teams would rather play for free in the NIT.)

At this point, you start running out of big-conference teams (although is the dropoff in the BCS conferences really that big after the NIT?), so while the NIT, despite a more balanced composition than the NCAAs (thanks to the auto-bid rule), is mostly dominated by teams from BCS conferences, the third-tier tournaments are filled up with teams from underrepresented conferences – namely, mid-majors. Defending champion Oregon State is the only team from a BCS conference in the CBI field – and in case you hadn’t noticed, the Pac-10 wasn’t exactly BCS quality this season. Saint Louis, who became a borderline NCAA candidate by becoming an A-10 spoiler late in the season, is probably the most interesting team in the field, joining fellow late-season A-10 spoiler Duquesne, who may have only played their way into the CBI field with their late-season heroics. Colorado State is the representative of the highest-RPI conference – even though no Mountain West teams made the NIT field.

On the other hand, while BCS conferences are not well represented, the true mid-majors crowd out the small majors. Saint Louis and Duquesne are joined by George Washington as A-10 represntatives. Indiana State represents the Missouri Valley. Akron holds down the MAC; Virginia Commonwealth the CAA; Green Bay the Horizon. The Eastern Kentucky-Charleston game will feature the only two teams on the left side of the draw from conferences ranked worse than 16th in the RPI, and Charleston comes from the #17 SoCon. The right side is more forgiving to low-majors with Boston U, Morehead State, IUPUI, and Princeton.

The CBI is the least bowl-like of the bunch, but it makes up for its lack of a neutral site final with a final format that neither the NCAA or NIT can boast. The CBI final is a best-of-three series between the two teams remaining, instead of a winner-take-all single game. So while the NIT makes making the semifinal the biggest achievement of the tournament, the CBI places more of its emphasis on the final as the singular, defining event of the tournament. The goal is to reach the final, and then prove you’re better than the other team you face. It makes more sense to talk about halves of the CBI draw than quarters, especially since the CBI doesn’t expressly seed the field like the NIT.

My picks for second round: Saint Louis def. Akron, George Washington def. Charleston, Colorado State def. Boston University, Duquesne def. Hofstra. Saint Louis def. Colorado State 2-0.

The addition of the CBI wasn’t good enough for the people at CollegeInsider.com. For them, all it showed was that the NCAAs and NIT didn’t have to be the only two tournaments out there. So last year, they started their own tournament to give more love to the mid-majors out there, and give teams that once were one-and-done in the NCAAs or NIT a chance to win some postseason games, even if in a down year against inferior competition. (Because the newly-formed Great West conference isn’t NCAA-eligible, its conference champion, South Dakota, receives an auto bid to the CIT.) Unlike the CBI, they recognize that they stand behind the NIT in the pecking order, but they do compete with the CBI for teams, and successfully.

In a sense, winning the CIT is like winning the mid-major NIT. I seem to recall them saying they would emphasize teams from conferences that hadn’t put half their teams in the postseason by the time the CIT got their hands on them, but that wasn’t enough for them to pick the Pac-10’s fifth team. Instead, Creighton and Missouri State are the representatives of the highest-RPI conference in the field. But there’s only one fewer team from a conference ranked #16 or higher in the RPI than the CBI, with Western Carolina, South Dakota, Harvard, Appalachian State, Middle Tennessee State, Northern Colorado, and Pacific the only representatives from lesser conferences. Unlike the CBI, the CIT wasn’t willing to pick a team as far down the pecking order as the America East.

The CIT clearly doesn’t take itself as seriously as the NIT or CBI. Not only do they emphasize mid-majors, they expressly forbid teams with losing records, while the NIT or CBI would take them if they had a good enough profile otherwise. Perhaps recognizing the fact they’re more a bowl-like “reward for a good season” than a tournament with any meaning, the CIT doesn’t have a real “bracket” per se, but instead determines new matchups after each round, making each game an event in its own right. Thus the western teams play each other (Portland-Northern Colorado, Pacific-Loyola Marymount) instead of playing for any real “seeding”. In a sense, it’s more a way of adding more games to its teams’ schedules than a real tournament. But emphasizing mid-majors does cost the CIT in the attention department. While the CBI can at least point to teams people paying attention only to the NCAAs might at least have vaguely heard of during the year, like Saint Louis (though really, Oregon State? The team my Seattle Redhawks blew out in Corvallis? South Dakota may be the only lower RPI team selected to any postseason tournament), the CIT has to promote its tournament based on what their teams have done in the past, like George Mason and Creighton. Personally, Appalachian State may be the team that interests me most in this field.

My picks: George Mason def. Fairfield, Marshall def. Western Carolina, South Dakota def. Creighton, Appalachian State def. Harvard, Missouri State def. Middle Tenn. St., Northern Colorado def. Portland, Pacific def. Loyola Marymount, Louisiana Tech def. Southern Miss.

A LONG-overdue sports graphics roundup.

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When was the last time we had a sports graphics roundup, July? We’re very overdue for one, especially considering some major developments in the world of sports graphics in the interim…

I had to go outside this country, but I did eventually find a video that had Versus’ IndyCar graphics:I have to say, while I didn’t know how Versus would do racing, I’m rather impressed with the graphic they did come up with. The placement of elements is a little haphazard, and the lap count and current flag sort of stick out like a sore thumb, but everything looks rather natural and nothing seems forced. It also flows well with Versus’ other graphics.

Versus also introduced a new score box for college football, which lost the element of putting the two teams on opposite ends “VS.” one another. Switching from a rectangle to a parallelogram theme makes it look a little more professional, but I didn’t like the score to the left of the teams’ abbreviations on the old CBS box (more on that later) and it looks even worse here.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, because it looks like Versus is in the middle of a graphics package change that will FINALLY unify its graphics packages – and it looks good enough maybe they don’t need NBC’s help. It started with coverage of Mountain West basketball, and although it looked a LOT spiffier than any previous Versus graphics package, they were off to a bad start by putting the teams and scores at the extreme opposite ends of the strip, which I’ve criticized before.The graphic Versus broke out for the NHL after the Olympics, however, works VERY well with the team logos flanking their abbreviations atop the team colors. At the very least, it’s a big improvement over Versus’ old graphics. Now if only they could change the rest of their graphics to match…If Comcast is planning on bringing Comcast SportsNet closer to its other sports properties, perhaps they should adopt a variant of the Versus graphic for it. Have you seen the abortion that is Comcast SportsNet’s new basketball score bug? Just look at this bulky number! TNT’s NBA graphic looks like a work of genius!

As promised, we finally get a look at TBS’ baseball graphics, and I get the impression they were designed more for the playoffs than the regular season. See the top line, with the triangle indicating the side of the inning, the inning itself, and the game number? During the regular season, “TOP” or “BOTTOM” is spelled out across that entire space. TBS knows people only watch their coverage for the playoffs. Then again, Fox also gives the inning more space than it needs, and I suspect this graphic was designed to maximize solidarity with Fox…

Kuo 2009 NLCS Game1 from Erised on Vimeo.

…except BOTH of the pioneers of the two-line box seem to be abandoning it. FSN went back to a banner for basketball this year, and that’s not the only change, which tells me similar changes are coming to other sports. While the basic elements of the player info are the same, same font and basic design, it looks undeniably different, and seems to take a cue from the philosophy of ESPN’s MNF two-line box, because all of it comes out of the banner itself. It also looks not unlike what I thought ESPN’s graphics for non-NFL sports were going to look like, complete with area on the right side telling you exactly what kind of basketball broadcast you’re watching.

ESPN also introduced a new graphic for MNF this year, keeping the basic philosophy of last year’s banner – stats appear in at most two lines with the name of the person displayed crammed into one side – but going back to a single line for the banner itself, with a small area above it for displaying stats. When I first saw it, I almost didn’t recognize it as an ESPN graphic or even an ESPN broadcast – there was no BottomLine, the fonts didn’t look right, and the colors certainly didn’t look right. ESPN’s color is red, not gold!

But there was evidence that this was, in fact, THE new graphic for all sports – one of the fonts is the same as that being used on SportsCenter, and the on-field down-and-distance graphic was basically lifted whole-cloth with less color when college football season started. It was confirmed when the same banner showed up for college football, first in the South Florida-Connecticut game, and then in all bowls. I’m guessing after seeing how bad last year’s MNF banner translated to the NBA, ESPN hastily decided to change course. For college football, ESPN basically removed the “MNF” wordmark (which incidentially, changed to an “NFL” wordmark without surrounding logo for the Pro Bowl) and stretched the space for the team names to fill the space. To further create space for the team names, ESPN shrunk the font size for them, making the whole graphic look bulky, which is probably my biggest quibble. ESPN also replaced the colored line on the side with a little arrow indicating possession.

Might this be why the score graphic for the SEC Network – one of the most widely distributed syndication packages in recent memory – has a rather sloppily slapped-on SEC logo on a black parallelogram on top of the ESPN logo? Might it just be a stopgap for the introduction of this new graphic and its more professional application? Regardless, I can’t wait to see how less standard ESPN logos (ESPNU, ESPN RT) look on this new banner – the ESPN logo is a little crammed as is.

You know what all this means: yet ANOTHER year of a different graphic for the NBA Finals! But ESPN surprised me when I first saw the NBA version of this graphic earlier today. I had anticipated ESPN would stick an “NBA” logo on there, similar to the “MNF” wordmark (and the final ABC Sports NBA graphic), which it could then remove to create a college basketball graphic. Not only did they not do that, they tried to have it both ways: moving to the new graphic but keeping its two-line character with a permanent statline below, not above, the main line. (I prefer the football approach.) I have a feeling the college basketball graphic is going to be very different, and I wouldn’t rule out yet ANOTHER change before next year’s Finals.

That changes a lot of my speculation as to what this graphic will look like for other sports, since they could have quite a bit of leeway. I still imagine the baseball graphic will look a lot like the football graphic, given how much stuff needs to be crammed in there. But how this will work for racing is anyone’s guess, and they may take more after basketball – especially since my old mock-up of a two-line NASCAR banner may be out of date for another reason. I don’t know if this is new, but TNT is now showing the current leader constantly on its graphic. (I can’t show you because NASCAR seems very protective about videos showing their broadcast partner’s full graphic and it doesn’t appear on the genericed-out version. Incidentally, ESPN moving most of the Chase races from ABC to ESPN makes “ESPN is killing sports on ABC” rumors a lot more plausible. Same goes for making the SEC Tournament the only college basketball on ABC, which is weird because the SEC is the only conference ABC doesn’t show football for, and in fact this may be the only part of “the SEC on ESPN” that’s on ABC.)

On a related note, ESPN’s move to add timeout indicators to its college sports graphics seems to be catching on. ESPN, CBS, and NBC all added them to their NFL graphics a few weeks into the season, though at first, it was hard to tell between taken and not-taken timeouts on ESPN’s graphic. (Incidentially, I don’t think timeout indicators are coming to the NBA.) One thing remained constant: just as with ESPN’s college football banner, all the networks couldn’t find a way to make it fit with the rest of the graphic – not even CBS. After clinging to an alternating-sides box for the NFL even after its own SEC telecasts moved to a banner, CBS suddenly took a great leap forward with a banner so tricked-out it might presage more changes to all the other sports, probably because it had the Super bowl this year. Only the score display as it comes in to and out of commercial changed to fit the new banner; all other graphics remained unchanged, which is sad, because the inconsistency between having just the name come out of the logo and the entire graphic has always bugged me. But as much as the design of the timeout indicators (showing up not only on CBS’ SEC coverage, but its college basketball games as well) meshed with the design of the rest of the banner and as much as they tried to make it fit, they still stuck out like a sore thumb.

NFL Network had an easier time of it, but that big tab it stuck the timeout indicators on still looks awkward, even with the tab filling in the remaining space.

NBC came out the best of the bunch purely by chance. Imagine my surprise when NBC used its Super Bowl XLIII graphics at the lowly Hall of Fame Game after sticking with the old graphics at the Pro Bowl. I have no idea why NBC had those little things hanging underneath each team’s spot on the banner, as it was only used for things like penalties and who took the last timeout that didn’t require them to be on the screen all the time, but it gave them the perfect spot to stash timeout indicators when it came to that.

Fox is the only NFL TV partner that hasn’t added timeout indicators to its graphics yet, and as much as I hated them aesthetically when ESPN introduced them on college football I actually missed them practically watching the NFC playoffs. But presumably, with Fox having Super Bowl XLV, they’ll take a CBS-style great leap forward with both Fox and FSN moving to a new strip complete with timeout indicators.

There. Unless CBS introduces an NFL-style graphic during the NCAA tournament we’re set ’til baseball season, and hopefully my next round-up won’t be so massive.