The Sports Curmudgeon

After Notre Dame mounted a furious rally to win its regional semi-final game against Wisconsin on Friday night, head coach Mike Brey said that it was destined for Notre Dame to win because it was Good Friday. He added that the regional final was to take place on Easter and that Notre Dame “could not lose” on Easter. It was a clever sound bite; it turned out to be inaccurate. Notre Dame and UNC played an exciting and entertaining game but UNC simply had more good players to deploy than did the Irish. UNC is the only #1 seed to make the Final Four.

Back in early November, Sports Illustrated projected their Top 20 college basketball teams for the season that is about to conclude. With regard to the Final Four teams, here is what they had:

UNC: Preseason, SI had them ranked #1 in the country and said they had “the nation’s best frontcourt”. That pretty much sums things up…

Villanova: Preseason, SI had them ranked #8 in the country and based almost all of their optimism on the play of Ryan Arcidiacono. They got that one right too…

Oklahoma: Preseason, SI had them ranked #12 in the country and pointed to improved play from Ryan Spangler as a key to Sooner success given that they already had “a pair of high-level outside scorers”. Spangler has indeed played very well this year and in this year’s tournament…

Syracuse: Preseason, SI had nothing to say about the Orange. Hey, three out of four ain’t bad…

UNC will take on Syracuse next weekend. There will be a test you can administer to the folks at TBS who will put together the pre-game show(s). Are the programs on the air for pure entertainment or is there a mixture of journalism and entertainment present? The test will be how seriously and how significantly the folks at TBS address the fact that both UNC and Syracuse are institutions where significant academic fraud has happened. The schools certainly bear plenty of responsibility here but there is more than a truckload of opprobrium to be offered up to the NCAA itself which is still “dealing with” scandals that go all the way back to 2005 in the case of UNC and the potential that fake classes accounted for athletic grades all the way back to 1993. The NCAA and UNC are “still investigating” …

Here is a rather simple fact that the mavens at the NCAA seem not to understand – or if they do understand it they do not acknowledge the gravity of the situation:

If the penalties that the NCAA hands out for violating any or all of its myriad rules are insignificant when compared to the potential benefits a school can harvest by breaking the rules, then – wait for it – the rules are going to be broken over and over and over again.

What were the penalties imposed on Syracuse? They vacated a bunch of wins in previous years and they had to play 9 early season games without Jim Boeheim on the bench. The “cost” to the university and/or the basketball program imposed here is about as burdensome as a snot drop. So, if a coach or someone on the staff at Disco Tech takes a look at this and does a simple cost/benefit analysis, his logical conclusion should be that breaking the rules is clearly worth it even if it all comes unraveled somewhere down the line.

Enough of that… After the Cleveland Browns signed RG3 to a contract last week, it did not take long for a couple of sports commentators to make clear just what import they assigned to that event.

“The Cleveland Browns just got their next future ex-quarterback, Robert Griffin III.” [Brad Dickson, Omaha World-Herald]

And …

“Robert Griffin III signs as on as the Browns’ latest QB-bust-in-waiting.” [Greg Cote, Miami Herald]

In his column last week in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot, Bob Molinaro had this item:

“Maturity issues: Even a fan of LeBron James has to think that his passive/aggressive quotes and tweets are getting out of control. Now he seriously asserts that one day he wants to make the NBA equivalent of a buddy movie with Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade, discounting the fact that an off-hand remark like that is tantamount to dissing his current teammates. Off the court, LeBron appears to be shrinking in stature.”

I would certainly agree that LeBron’s commentary there was less than appropriate but I am not sure I would ascribe it to “maturity issues”. I would, however, choose to note that what LeBron did there would be considered “tampering” if done by a coach or a GM or an owner since all of those other players are currently under contract with other NBA teams. The conclusion I draw here is that the NBA rules regarding tampering apply only to people holding the title of coach or GM or owner and not someone who is the de facto coach and Gm of a team.

Finally, Dwight Perry took note of another interesting NFL signing in the Seattle Times last week:

“The Kansas City Chiefs signed Mississippi State track star Tautvydas Kieras, who’s never played organized football in his life.

“Hey, it was either that or sign an ex-Cleveland Brown.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

A week ago, the mantra was that college basketball was a jumble this year; there were no dominant teams; it was the year for upsets; parity had come to men’s college basketball. Ommmmm…

Well last night two of the regional finals were set. In both the South bracket and the West bracket, the #1 Seed will play the #2 Seed. Oh, and by the way, none of the games last night setting up those “chalky pairings” was very close.

The other two brackets cannot be nearly as “chalky” since the #2 seed has been eliminated in both of those brackets and the winner of Gonzaga/Syracuse (seeded #11 and #10 originally in their bracket) will have to be in the regional final game. Nonetheless, look at the teams that populated the Sweet 16 in this “year of parity” in college basketball. Point to a school that does not have a rather long “basketball tradition” and/or a significant “basketball pedigree”. I’ll give you Oregon and maybe Texas A&M. Iowa State? Well they have been in the tournament more than half the time over the last 25 years so I would not call them an “outsider” in the mold of George Mason or an Ivy League team or Florida Gulf Coast or Loyola Marymount.

Speaking obliquely of “outsiders” in the Tournament, consider this observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times from last weekend:

“Butler Blue III, Butler’s live bulldog mascot, had to stay back at the team hotel when NCAA tournament officials said no dogs would be allowed in the building.

“So please explain, then, how the Hampton and Stony Brook basketball teams got in?”

Report say that Alex Rodriguez will retire after the 2017 season. Let me just note that the end of the 2017 season will also coincide with the final moments of the monstrously large contract that he signed with the Yankees back when George Steinbrenner was still alive and signing the checks for the team. At the end of the 2017 season, A-Rod will be 42 years old. If his ego – and we have ample evidence to suggest that he has a significant ego – will not allow him to take a pay cut of 75% or more, then it probably will not matter if he chooses to retire because he is not likely to get an offer from any other team that will be to his liking. Even so, I would prefer to put off any plans he or the Yankees may have for yet another Year of Farewell for A-Rod because his ego may be torn at the end of the 2017 season. Consider:

A-Rod has hit 687 home runs in his career. That puts him fourth on the all-time list. Last year he hit 33 home runs. If he matches that total, he will wind up at the end of the 2016 season with 720 home runs and will have passed Babe Ruth for third place on the all-time list.

Assume for a moment that A-Rod enters the 2017 season with 720 home runs. He would be 35 home runs short of tying Henry Aaron’s mark and 42 home runs from equaling Barry Bonds for the all-time record. Now take one more imaginary step with me and assume that A-Rod’s production falls off just a bit in 2017 such that he hits another 25 home runs. He would end the 2017 season in this situation:

He is only 17 home runs away from the all-time lead – but –

He has no contract and no team in their right mind is going to pay him anything near $30M per year to give him a shot at the all-time record.

There are enough variants on possibilities here to keep psychologists – or amateur psychologists – busy for the next two years. My guess – and I stress the word guess here – is that if A-Rod is within shouting distance of the all-time record at the end of the 2017 season, he would accept just about any contract that came his way from any team that would allow him to DH for a season to catch the record. I have no deep insight or professional expertise to back that up; it is simply my guess as to which tug on the ego would be stronger.

In Miami, there is another aging baseball star chasing a milestone. Ichiro has a 1-year deal with the Marlins for $2M – and there is a club option for 2017 for another $2M. Ichiro was making more than twice that amount annually back in 2001 when he came to MLB from Japan. He is playing at age 43 at a significant pay cut to chase the possibility of getting 3000 hits in MLB despite the fact that he did not start playing in MLB until he was 28 years old. Ichiro will start the 2016 season with 2,935 base hits; he needs 65 hits to make it to 3000; last year in 153 games, he got 91 hits.

Longtime readers of these rants know that I enjoyed watching Ichiro play on my annual visits to Seattle in the summertime. Father Time has taken a significant toll on his skills but he is still someone who demands attention when he is on the field. He is as instinctive an outfielder as I can recall since the time of Roberto Clemente; when the ball comes off the bat, Ichiro is – seemingly – already at full stride heading to where the ball is going. He may not have the batting stroke he had 5 years ago and he may have lost a step while stealing a base, but baserunners will “take the extra base” off him at their own peril.

Dwight Perry had this comment about the Marlins and one of their scheduled games for the 2016 season in the Seattle Times recently:

“The Florida Marlins and Atlanta Braves will play their July 3 game at Fort Bragg, N.C.”

The pitchers, understandably, are worried about getting shelled.”

Finally, since I have stolen material from Dwight Perry twice already today, let me hit the trifecta here:

“The Baltimore Orioles, citing safety reasons, have banned the budding tradition of smashing pies in teammates’ faces to celebrate big wins.
“
In a related story, Soupy Sales Bobblehead Night is hereby canceled.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports……..

Joe Garagiola died yesterday at the age of 90. I recall having his baseball card as a kid. What I remember a lot more than that are the times he provided entertainment as the color commentator on MLB’s Game of the Week back when all you got to see on TV was your local team and one national game each week. Many folks today think of Vin Scully as a single operator in a broadcast booth; that was not always the case. Joe Garagiola was his partner on those national telecasts.

RIP, Joe Garagiola.

At their annual spring meeting, the NFL owners approved 9 rule changes for 2016. Many of them are approved on a 1-year trial basis and will need to be revisited next year. Here is a brief summary:

1. Moving the snap-point to the 15-yardline on extra point tries was a “1-year rule” last year. This year, the owners voted to make that permanent. I cannot imagine that any of the NFL kickers were thrilled by that decision.

2. Offensive and defensive play-callers can use the direct communication links to players on the field from up in the coaching box at the top of the stadium. Previously, only coaches on the sidelines had access to those links. On ESPN, Herm Edwards effused about what a big deal this is; I am not sure I understand his enthusiasm, but if he says it’s a big deal, I am happy to go along.

3. All chop blocks are illegal. That sounds like a rule change that is a plus for the defense and for player safety/longevity.

4. Two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in a game is an automatic ejection for a player. I will have to wait and see how this affects the officials’ calling of the game before I decide if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

5. Kickoffs into the end zone – or out the back of the end zone – will now come out to the 25 yardline. I am not sure if this discourages kickoff returns or encourages kicking teams to keep the ball in play…

6. The “horse-collar rule” has been expanded to include pulling the jersey from the neck to make the tackle. The basis of the original rule is that the play is dangerous. Therefore, it never really made sense to split hairs the way the old rule did. Consider this a good change.

7. If a team tries to call a timeout “when not permitted to do so”, this will be a delay of game violation. Other than being out of timeouts, what are any other circumstances involved here? I have to say that I do not recognize the problem this rule change tries to resolve.

8. Starting this year, if an eligible receiver goes out of bounds and then illegally touches a forward pass once back in-bounds, the penalty now will be loss of down and not a 5-yard penalty. This is another rule change that seems to favor the defense.

9. The rule for this year “eliminates the multiple spots of enforcement for a double foul after a change of possession.” I have to admit that this one is way too far down in the weeds for me…

So, now you know how much hard work those NFL owners put in when they make their way to an owners’ meeting in Boca Raton…

Let me stick with NFL items for today. Steelers’ WR, Martavious Bryant is facing a 1-year suspension; Ian Rappaport of NFLN says that the basis for the suspension is “substance abuse violations”; Bryant sat out 4 games in 2015. Later reports said that Bryant was “depressed” and others said that he was checking into rehab. There are enough uncertainties surrounding this matter to warrant postponement of judgment regarding the validity of the suspension. What is pretty certain at this moment is that the Steelers’ offense will need to replace a better than average WR for the 2016 season. In 11 games last year, Bryant caught 50 passes for 765 yards and 6 TDs.

The free agent QB market remains on hold at the moment. It appears that the Cleveland Browns’ decision is the fulcrum for this matter. The Browns have released Johnny Manziel and their roster now has Austin Davis, Josh McCown and Connor Shaw listed as QBs. McCown is 36 years old; he would almost certainly be the starter in this group of three, but no one can possibly consider him the Browns’ “QB of the Future”. Not even his mother …

The Browns continue to show interest in and talk with RG3. Griffin struggled in Washington behind a porous offensive line and could not stay healthy. Let me be polite here and say that with the losses the Browns have had along the OL in this offseason, the OL in Cleveland may not be as effective as the Maginot Line. But talks continue…

The Browns reportedly offered the Niners a 3rd round draft pick for Colin Kaepernick who let it be known he would “like to play for the Browns”. The Niners have held fast that they want a 2nd round pick for Kaepernick and that gulf between the bid price and the asked price has stood in the way of a deal for about a month now. Here is what I find much more interesting than the stalemate over what sort of a draft pick it might take to effect this transaction:

If Colin Kaepernick truly would “like to play for the Browns”, how much must he hate the Niners’ organization that he would want to leave it to join the Browns? It is either that or…

Colin Kaepernick has taken sufficient leave of his senses that he now qualifies as an intelligent turnip. Seriously, he would “like to play for the Browns” if there were other options?

It appears that once the Browns decide what they are going to do, the other teams looking for QBs this year [Broncos, Jets, Rams (?), Cowboys (?)] will be able to facilitate negotiations with one fewer buyer out there for agents to use as leverage.

Speaking of leverage, there are reports that the Jets were using contacts with RG3 as leverage in their negotiations with Ryan Fitzpatrick. Forget the factual basis for those reports for just a moment and imagine that the Jets sign RG3 and go to camp with a “QB battle” between Geno Smith and RG3. The NYC tabloids could not wish for a better situation….

Finally, amidst reports that NBA free agent, Nate Robinson, is considering trying to switch to the NFL, here are two comments from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald:

“NBA free agent Nate Robinson wants to try out for the NFL. Evidently, he’s never seen video of Michael Jordan swinging a baseball bat.”

And …

“The NBA’s Nate Robinson is toying with trying out for the NFL. You know the major difference between the NBA and NFL? You’re more likely to be called for traveling in the NFL.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Jerry Jones is a hugely successful businessman and marketer; he has made the Dallas Cowboys into a money generator. Anyone who doubts his business acumen is either jealous or stupid. Jerry Jones has previously demonstrated that all of that business acumen does not necessarily translate into the sort of smarts that it takes to be a successful GM in the NFL. In the last 20 years with Jones being the Cowboys roster builder, the team has been in the playoffs 6 times and has won 2 Wild Card games. That’s it…

Jerry Jones recently took a position that – taken literally – would put him in the company of those folks who continue to believe that Copernicus and Galileo were wrong and that the Earth is at the center of the universe. Basically, what he said is that there is no established link between playing football and incurring CTE. Had he not said it with such certainty and bombast, I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that his remarks were “nuanced” in the sense that there is no widely agreed upon mechanism with regard to how a single blow to the head results in CTE or how individual blows to the head have an additive effect on the brain such that CTE is the result. Indeed, more research needs to be done to get to that state of understanding. Nonetheless, to say there is no link between CTE and football is more than a bit “retro”. Here is a part of Jones’ commentary;

“We don’t have that knowledge and background and scientifically, so there’s no way in the world to say you have a relationship relative to anything here. There’s no research. There’s no data . . . there’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge [of such a relationship]. There’s no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion. In most things, you have to back it up by studies. And in this particular case, we all know how medicine is. Medicine is evolving. I grew up being told that aspirin was not good. I’m told that one a day is good for you.”

Speaking of Jerry Jones as GM of the Cowboys, I do think that the team made a good move signing free agent RB, Alfred Morris, earlier this week. Morris has been in the NFL 4 seasons and went over 1000 yards in the first 3. Last year, the Skins decided to split the RB duties between Morris and rookie, Matt Jones; playing a little more than half the time, Morris managed to gain 750 yards. The Cowboys need depth at the RB position; Darren McFadden is not likely to carry the ball 20 – 25 times a game for 16 games.

And speaking of free agent signings, the Eagles signed QB, Chase Daniel, to a 3-year deal worth $21M with $12M guaranteed. Nominally, his job is to be the backup QB to Sam Bradford and the biggest credential he brings to the table is that he “knows the system” since he had been with Coach Doug Pederson in KC for the last 3 years. Familiarity with the system is definitely a plus but so is on-field performance. So, let me summarize Chase Daniel’s on-field performance here relative to a 3-year contract with $12M guaranteed…

Daniel came into the NFL in 2010; he spent 3 years in New Orleans and then 3 years in KC. He has started 2 games in six seasons; his record as a starter is 1-1.

In six seasons he has thrown 77 passes and completed 50 of them – almost a 65% completion mark which is not bad at all. He has thrown 1 TD and 1 INT in six years. Ho-hum…

In 2015, Daniel had an interesting stat line. He threw 2 passes and completed both of them. The total yardage gained was 4 yards. By itself, that is not very impressive but it is even stranger when you notice that his longest completion was for 6 yards. One need not be an expert in advanced mathematics to figure out what happened on the completion that was not the “long gain for the season”.

Let me insert here one other “intangible” that Chase Daniel brings to the Eagles’ roster. His name is a complete sentence. Not too many other backup QBs can make that claim…

If reports about his contract with the Chiefs for the last 3 years are accurate, Chase Daniel made approximately $9M in those 3 seasons. Now he is guaranteed to make $12M more and possibly $21M more. Chase Daniel is an example of how one can succeed in a career by doing two things:

1. Be in the right place at the right time: NFL coaches now recognize the need for competent backup QBs on their rosters so this is the time to be a free agent career backup QB.

2. Do not be a pain-in-the-ass: Doug Pederson worked with chase Daniel for 3 seasons; if Daniel was a high-maintenance jerk, there is no way Pederson would bring him to Philly with him.

Now to bring the discussion full-circle, consider please that Cowboys’ GM, Jerry Jones, should also be concerned with the backup QB slot on his Cowboys team. Tony Romo will be 36 years old next month; he broke his collarbone twice last season; he has had spinal injuries in the past; he played in only 4 games last season. On the roster at the moment, the Cowboys show Romo as the starting QB – as he should be – with Kellen Moore and Jameill Showers as the backups. Lest I leave you with the impression that Chase Daniel’s on-field accomplishments are a bit thin, consider Moore and Showers:

Kellen Moore has been in the NFL 4 seasons. He appeared in 3 games and started 2 of them – losing both. For his career, he is 61 for 104 passing with 4 TDs and 6 INTs.

Jameill Showers has yet to see the field in an NFL game.

I am not suggesting that Jerry Jones go out and spend big time money on a backup QB, but it sure appears as if the Cowboys are thin at that position. Remember what happened to the Cowboys last year with Brandon Weeden and Matt Cassell as their starters…

Finally, since I mentioned the Cowboys’ signing a running back above, here is a comment from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald regarding a former Cowboys’ RB:

“Former Dallas Cowboys running back Joseph Randle has been arrested for the sixth time in 17 months. That ties the record held by Otis on ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

I do not expect to win any votes in the “2016 Parent of the Year Contest” with this remark:

I have heard more than I want to hear about Drake LaRoche. The next thing I want to hear about him is that he graduated from high school as the class valedictorian and is weighing his options with regard to college or the MLB draft. Until then, can everyone please stop.

My tipping point came this morning when I read a column in the Washington Post by someone who can turn any report of any incident into a “women’s issue”. She spent about 800 words today saying that a woman could not get away with taking her daughter to her job every day the way Adam LaRoche evidently did and wanted to continue to do. Puh-leeez..!

I will not be the least bit surprised to hear this subject brought up in a future “debate” among Presidential candidates. Do not tell me it cannot happen; in the past, one of the “interrogators” asked about fantasy football.

This entire kerfuffle has nothing to do with “rights” nor does it have anything to do with the typical workplace except in the following sense:

Each employer sets rules with regard to what will and what will not be allowed in the workplace the employer establishes. The limits on those rules are set to assure than no one’s fundamental rights are violated.

If there is a “right” to have one’s child present in the workplace whenever the parent wishes to have said child there, I missed that phraseology in Article Whatever of the US Constitution.

Enough already… Adam LaRoche had a choice. He could play for the Chicago White Sox and earn a reported $13M this year but he would not be allowed to have his son, Drake, in the clubhouse whenever it was convenient for the LaRoche family. He chose not to play for the team because of the limitations placed on his son’s access to the clubhouse. He made his choice which is what adults do in situations such as this. So, leave it alone.

I have said more than a few times that coverage of Spring Training is generally a wasteland where there are not enough news events to justify six weeks of coverage of 30 MLB teams. In my opinion, the “Drake LaRoche Saga” is one more piece of evidence to support my assertions.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Drew Rosenhaus was the new agent for Johnny Manziel. Well, in typical agent fashion, Rosenhaus let it be known that there are teams (in the plural) who are interested in signing Manziel but he will not be elaborating on that just yet because the rest of Manziel’s life is so public that Rosenhaus wants to handle these negotiations in private. Sounds good – – except if you want to keep it all private, why did you drop that little tidbit in the first place?

I suspect that Manziel will indeed get another chance with an NFL team other than the Browns. He showed ability in college and talent trumps just about anything else in the NFL world. I also suspect that teams will be very reticent to sign him absent some actions on Manziel’s part to demonstrate that he has a degree of commitment to sobriety and to learning the craft of being an NFL QB. And therein lies an interesting contradiction:

Anyone’s commitment to sobriety is a personal and private matter; that is why they call it “Alcoholics Anonymous”. If Johnny Manziel has made/is making/ever makes a commitment to sobriety, that should not be something that makes headlines nor should it be something posted online at one of the “Gotcha Websites”.

Unfortunately for him, Johnny Manziel’s behaviors in the past related to a seeming lack of commitment to sobriety have been so public and so self-destructive that any change in that behavior will raise questions that go directly to any real or imagined commitment to sobriety.

I will not pretend to bring any expertise to the party here with regard to what sort of help Manziel may need to change the perception that fans and NFL coaches/execs have of him. I do believe that to change those perceptions, he will need to change at least some of his behaviors meaning that if he has a future as an NFL QB, he will have to find a way to alter his lifestyle. And that could bring us to the famous chicken/egg conundrum:

Might a team sign Manziel with contract incentives tied to behavior changes prior to his participating in some kind of commitment to sobriety?

Might a team demand that he makes such a commitment, seek help in finding ways to implement that commitment and then sign him to an incentive laden contract?

I believe that NFL agents get a 3% fee from their clients for the contracts negotiated and various services associated with that representation. If that is the case, I think that Drew Rosenhaus will earn every last penny of his fee in this matter.

Finally, this comment from Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot explains clearly the difference between “following the letter of the law” and “following the spirit of the law”. It really needs no further explanation:

“Officiousness: Wednesday night’s game between the Celtics and Grizzlies was held up for about a minute as officials went to the scorer’s table with 1.5 seconds left to look at a replay before adding 1/10th of a second to the clock. Why mention this? Because the Celts were leading by 20 points.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Well, I survived the orgy of 48 Tournament games in 4 days. Now, all I have to do is to re-introduce myself to my long-suffering wife who may or may not have been here for most of the past 4 days. I have a spotting to report. I was almost certain this “species” had gone extinct but on Friday it showed up and proved that it does indeed live in the dark shadows of the basketball world:

In the VCU/Oregon St. game, I saw the officials call a 3-second violation. Seriously. My jaw dropped when I saw the official give the “lane-violation signal”.

Later on the same day in the Texas/Northern Iowa game, there were two 3-second violations called on back to back possessions.

I felt the way Dr. Frankenstein may have felt; I wanted to scream out, “It is alive! The 3-second violation is alive!”

Who knows? If indeed the 3-second violation percolated to the front of the minds of the game officials, perhaps we might have a sighting of a palming the ball violation sometime before this Tournament is over.

There were plenty of exciting moments over the weekend, but from here in Curmudgeon Central I feel obligated to mention the unquestionably ugliest game of the Tournament so far. The final score was Wisconsin 47 and Pitt 43. Would that I could say this was a battle between defensive titans. Actually, it was a combination of good-but-not-great defense and impossibly inept offense. Nigel Hayes is a good player for Wisconsin; he shot 3-17 from the floor. James Robinson is a good player for Pitt; he shot 3-15 from the floor. Truly an UGLY game…

After Yale beat Baylor to give the Elis their first Tournament win ever, Brad Dickson had this observation in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Yale outrebounded Baylor. So the flubber worked.”

The folks who run the PAC-12 schools have taken a step in a positive direction for collegiate athletics. They just passed a PAC-12 rule that will ban from any athletic team a transfer student who is ineligible to be re-admitted to the college from which he transferred for reasons of “misconduct”. What this means is that athletes who are dismissed from one school for reasons of anti-social behaviors will not be going to PAC-12 schools to continue their athletic careers. One of the enforcement mechanisms for that rule will be that such students are ineligible for athletic scholarships from PAC-12 schools. Here are more details on this new rule.

This is not a panacea for all that ails college (revenue) sports but it sure is a step in the right direction. So, that leads me to ask:

How come the overlords at the NCAA in Indianapolis did not think of this?

Just what is it that those folks do for a living?

Based on reports from last week, we have the potential for some juicy news tidbits over the next several months. You may recall that when Johnny Manziel was detained on charges related to domestic violence about 6 weeks ago, his agent dumped him. Now the Browns have also dumped him meaning that Manziel needs an agent to get him a contract with another team – particularly if he hopes to maintain his free-wheeling lifestyle. In what would seem to be a marriage made in Heaven for commentators, “Johnny Highball” – his new identity now that “Johnny Football” is off the table for the moment – has signed on with Drew Rosenhaus.

To be sure, not each of the 100 or so Rosenhaus clients is a “problem-child” but consider that Manziel will be joining these other players who may or may not have “issues”:

Dez Bryant (current)
Plaxico Burress (previous)
Josh Gordon (current)
Greg Hard (current)
Chad Ochocinco (previous)
Terrell Owens (previous)
Warren Sapp (previous)
Donte Stallworth (previous)

Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald over the weekend. I think it brings you up to date on a news story regarding the NFL from last week:

“Boca Raton hosts league meetings: A league executive, Jeff Miller, became first NFL official to acknowledge a direct link between football-related head trauma and brain disease. Meanwhile the NFL owners’ meetings are today through Wednesday in Boca.

Haven’t seen the complete agenda but I understand the main order of business is a resolution to make Jeff Miller shut up.”

Recently, Scott Ostler had a column in the SF Chronicle about the upcoming Rio Olympics and the lack of outrage over what has gone on there with regard to lack of preparation for the Games and with regard to the use of rather scarce public funds to make the Games look good on TV while averting eyes from the lack of infrastructure in Rio and in much of Brazil. As is almost always the case with Scott Ostler’s columns, this is something I suggest that you read in its entirety. You can find it here.

Finally, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times saw a nexus between a political issue here in the DC area and the NFL:

“Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have proposed a plan to pay people not to commit crimes.

“’Good luck with that,’ said 32 NFL owners in unison.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Here are some impressions/comments jotted down as I watched yesterday’s tournament games:

UNC-Wilmington C, CJ Gettys went to same high school as Ben Roethlisberger. After seeing Ben for all these years, it is hard to imagine that he is not nearly the biggest guy to come out of that high school but Gettys is 6 inches taller and probably 30 pounds heavier.

Duke’s defense was lethargic in the first half. They started the second half with animated defense and turned a 3-point deficit at halftime into a 10-point lead in about 6 minutes.

Colorado/UConn was a sloppy game on offense and defense. Colorado C, Josh Scott is a big man with decent mobility and a very good interior passer.

Butler/Texas Tech were not the best teams to play in the early time slot by a wide margin, but it was the best game to watch among those first four games.

Iowa State is unimpressive but dominated Iona. Draw your own conclusions from that. Iona plays “AAU basketball” which is fine until you have to play someone who has a modicum of “team basketball skills”.

Virginia simply outclassed Hampton. Same goes for Kansas and Austin Peay. Indiana looked like it was a scrimmage against Tennessee-Chattanooga. Once Kentucky decided to break a sweat, it was all over for Stony Brook.

Yale/Baylor was a great game because it was a close game. Questions:

Does Yale coach, James Jones ever smile? Does he ever get upset? Do you think his blood pressure ever goes above 105/60?

When Arkansas-Little Rock finally beat Purdue in double-OT, that was the second #12-seed to win yesterday.

Buffalo kept it close, but Miami was the better team.

Wichita St. just kept grinding out plays to beat Arizona. The Shockers are tenacious on defense.

Had only seen Utah once before yesterday and I was impressed. They toyed with Fresno State.

Providence/USC was a great game. What more do you want than a game that goes down to the final 2 seconds before it is decided by one point with a layup?

Gonzaga looked awfully good for an #11-seed. Domantas Sabonis – the son of Arvydas Sabonis proving that genetics works – was Dominant Sabonis here.

I have a few other notes from yesterday that do not speak directly to the games themselves. Yes, I did find a few “Bad Ads” that will receive mention in the annual “Bad Ads” compendium come December. In addition, here is one other observation from yesterday:

We saw shots of players arriving at the arena wearing headphones. We saw shots of teams that were scheduled to play in the second game of a double header sitting in the stands watching part of the first game wearing headphones.

Then it dawned on me… These student-athletes were listening to recorded lectures in Advanced Physical Chemistry or Macroeconomics in preparation for their mid-term exams back at school next Tuesday.

In women’s college basketball, there is a sordid mess ongoing in Florida. I will present here a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald that will likely give you more than you want to know about this:

“FIU: Panthers fire women’s basketball coach Marlin Chin. Let’s see here. An NCAA violation. Allegation of sexual misconduct with a player. And a 5-26 record. That would pretty much be the trifecta of how to get fired.”

Moving on to another topic, team sponsorships and promotional linkages do not always make sense to me. I plead ignorance when it comes to any sort of expertise or gut-feeling when it comes to marketing/promotional “stuff”. Having said that, this next one is unusual even for the world of marketing.

There is a German soccer club playing in the second level of the Bundesliga called Sportverein Sandhausen 1916 e.V. That is a mouthful even in Germany, so the team is simply referred to as Sandhausen and they have just entered into a sponsorship agreement with an enterprise in the nearby town of Heidelberg. The enterprise is Bienenstock Eros Center; you guessed it, it is a bordello.

Oh, but it is not just any run-of-the-mill cathouse… According to the Sandhausen folks, Bienenstock Eros Center is an “eco-brothel”. The building is a passive energy-conserving structure; smoking is forbidden in the brothel. A team representative stated definitively that players for Sandhausen would not receive discounts as a result of this sponsorship arrangement. He did not mention if that same discount ban applied to referees for Sandhausen home games…

Finally, here is another item from Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:

“More than 24,000 runners were registered for Sunday’s Miami Marathon and Half Marathon won by Moroccan Benazzouz Slimani and New York’s Allison Kieffer. One entrant Larry Macon, 71, of San Antonio, competed in his 1,606th marathon. That’s 42,077 miles in a lifetime of running. Big deal. My car already has more than 7,000 miles and I’ve only had it six months.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all – particularly the family contingent currently residing in Dublin, Ireland.

Second, congratulations to Michigan and Holy Cross as they won their “play-in” games to join the round of 64. If you are drawn to Cinderella stories, consider Holy Cross who is in the tournament with a sub-.500 record and who will need to make it to the Final Four to get their record up to .500. The first obstacle in the Crusaders’ way is #1 seed Oregon tomorrow…

Now, there was a disheartening report yesterday regarding Arnold Palmer. It seems that he will indeed be attending the Masters next month meaning he has been at Augusta National for the tournament every year since 1954. Palmer cited a shoulder injury that will prevent him from joining Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player in the opening tee shot ceremony. I know there have been a bunch of golf tournaments already in 2016 but the fact is that the Golf Season really begins with The Masters. Palmer is 86 years old; there is a sort of majesty associated with the three great golfers walking to the first tee and hitting drives down the fairway to start the tournament and the season. This year, it will only be two-thirds as majestic as it was last year. Here’s hoping Palmer’s shoulder injury will heal sufficiently to let him join his colleagues on the first tee in 2017.

Back in the days of the NFL Combine, there was a report that one of the members of the coaching staff of the Atlanta Falcons asked one of the players there in an interview if the player was gay – or some question to that effect. The team disavowed the question and the player did not get himself into high dudgeon and the story went away. Personally, I filed it in the corner of my brain where I keep examples of people saying stupid things.

[Aside: In the past, I had opportunities to give presentations to people with regard to my professional endeavors. At the end, I would invite questions by saying, “There are no stupid questions; there are only stupid answers. Ask what you want…”

Based on the report of this interview, I may have to amend the premise of my invitation. There may, in fact, be stupid questions…]

In any event, the story went away … until yesterday. It seems that the Attorney General of New York – remember, the coach works for the Atlanta Falcons and the question was asked in Indianapolis – announced that he was “deeply troubled” by the incident and that he was going to ask some questions of his own. Please note, that the NFL Combine closed its doors on 29 February; it is more than two weeks since the stupid question was asked, answered, announced and forgotten. Personally, I think that is a significant measure of the “depth” of the troublesome feelings that the Attorney General may or may not have on this subject.

Look, I understand the impropriety and the illegality of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. If you read the two previous paragraphs, it should be clear that I do not think the assistant coach was in the right by asking what he did. Nonetheless, this smacks of a grandstand play of the highest order by the Attorney General.

As a result of his ”deeply troubled” state, he has asked the NFL to examine its hiring practices and cites as the basis for his intervention in the matter the fact that the NFL Headquarters is at 345 Park Ave in Manhattan. I will leave it to the lawyers who read these rants to explain the reasoning that is asserted there because I think it is a stretch worthy of Reed Richards of Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four.

Imagine for a moment that the Jacksonville Jaguars fired a game-day parking lot attendant and that the attendant claimed that the basis for his termination was his sexual orientation. Would that be something sufficiently “deeply troubling” to the Attorney General of New York to get involved in some sort of dialog with the suits on NFL’s Mahogany Row about the league’s hiring practices? If so, the Attorney General of New York must simultaneously be able to assert that serious criminal wrongdoings have been rendered extinct in the State of New York and that is why he is inserting himself into such a matter.

Roger Goodell has shot himself in the foot – and perhaps in even more sensitive portions of his anatomy – with his handling of investigations into alleged misdeeds by players and coaches and equipment managers and etc. Despite his singular ineptitude in that arena over the past several years, he is not responsible nor should he be accountable for the stupidity of each and every person who is employed by the NFL. Similarly, the Attorney General of New York should not be held accountable for every mistake or blunder committed by someone working in that orbit of the State Government. If a mass murderer goes free because someone mishandled the critical evidence that would have put the mass murderer in jail forever-and-a-day, that is not the fault of the Attorney General and he should not be responsible for that result.

What the assistant coach did was inexcusable; it may in fact be illegal. But it did not happen in New York; the coach’s immediate employer is not in New York; the player who received the question is not a resident of New York. If the Attorney General is genuinely “deeply troubled”, I can see him contacting his counterparts in Indiana or Georgia or possibly a US Attorney in one of those areas since there may be Federal laws that apply here. Those contacts and expressions of his “deeply troubled” state of mind can easily and effectively be done quietly and privately. As opposed to…

Since I mentioned the Combine and the concept of being “deeply troubled” above, I want to make an observation about some of the hyperventilating coverage that event draws. Every year, there is a report – or multiple reports – where the writer cites a conversation with an unnamed “NFL scout” or “NFL personnel people” who the writer says were “deeply troubled” by the 40-yard dash time registered by some offensive or defensive lineman. Every time I read such a report, I wonder what the problem might be. Perhaps, the “NFL scout” in question here harbored some idea that his team might draft this lineman and use him also as a kick returner – but the slow time in the 40 would mean the special teams coach would not go along with that.

The NFL Combine is an unending source of irrelevant stories; it ranks second in NFL events in that category right behind Super Bowl Media Day. Sadly, this year’s Combine provided a story that lingers two weeks after the event – as if we did not have enough while it was ongoing.

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald regarding another sports story of minimal lasting importance:

“Nebraska hosted its first beach volleyball game. The World-Herald assigned its beach volleyball expert. It’s a guy who’s seen the movie ‘Blue Lagoon’ nine times.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

Before launching into today’s rant, let me offer a welcome to Wichita St and Florida Gulf Coast as they make it into the Field of 64 for March Madness. The bar for success for these teams has been set rather high. VCU was a play-in winner and made it to the Final Four. Good luck to both schools…

Reports yesterday said that the NFL and the NFLPA were talking about changing the role of Roger Goodell when it comes to discipline. Goodell has said that he would welcome changes there and according to reports yesterday there may be some movement toward that end. Obviously, that has engendered discussion and I think this is an opportunity to stand back and look at this issue broadly.

Tony Kornheiser – with whom I agree more often than I disagree – said on Pardon the Interruption yesterday that “disciplinary functions” were part and parcel of being “Commissioner”. I think that was the case in the past but that it is no longer the case. The whole concept of a “Commissioner” came out of the Black Sox Scandal in 1919 and gave MLB Judge Landis as the “Overlord of the Sport”. In the early 1920s, that was probably a good idea because it was a necessary idea. Baseball was in a situation where the viability of the enterprise itself was in jeopardy; the sport – which was a business then just as much as it is a business today – needed a no-nonsense figure in charge of its rectitude. Judge Landis was then in a very different situation than Roger Goodell is today – or Rob Manfred or Adam Silver, or Gary Bettman is.

I believe the disciplinary function today needs to be seen as a two-part problem. Back in September 2014, I wrote that Roger Goodell was in a very difficult situation as the NFL’s de facto disciplinarian. Now that there is potentially serious consideration being given to making a change there, let me offer some broader perspective on the subject.

I will use Roger Goodell as my example here but I think that everything I suggest with regard to the NFL and the NFLPA would translate for the most part to the other sports. First, I would separate “Disciplinary Situations” into three categories:

Discipline Category #1 – Existential Threats to the Sport: For this category, the Commissioner has to be the one to make the call. If a player or coach is found to be gambling on games that he participates in, that person has to be banned from the sport permanently; that has to be the Commissioner’s call. If an owner is found to be tampering with players on other teams, that owner needs to be disciplined; that has to be the Commissioner’s call – even though it means he will have to discipline one of his employers.
Shades of Grey: What about a situation where someone does something that could well damage the sport – say reduce revenues by 30% – but would not “kill the sport”? I recognize there is a lot of wiggle-room here but I would tend to put this sort of necessary disciplinary judgment in the hands of the Commissioner also.

Discipline Category #2 – On-field/In-game Discipline: For this category, I think the current system works satisfactorily because there have been a priori negotiations to frame the scope of the punishments handed down. However, if the idea is to look at the problem from afar to design a better mousetrap, “satisfactorily” is not good enough. Moreover, the current system which allows and justifies the situation whereby Roger Goodell hands down the disciplinary decision and then he is the unilateral arbiter of any appeal filed on behalf of the offending party is beyond tolerable. As I suggested back in September 2014, these decisions should be handed down by a small entity set up and funded jointly by the NFL and the NFLPA. That entity would not be “beholden” to either side; the people in charge would have to be acceptable to both sides; with nothing else to do, that entity can gather information and hand down decisions efficiently – and hopefully effectively too.

Discipline Category #3 – Violations of Law/Anti-social behaviors: This is where it gets sticky… Let me use the infamous “Ray Rice Incident” as an example here. What Ray Rice did was inexcusably wrong under any circumstance short of self-defense where he was in fear for his life. I have no interest in “re-litigating” that event. However, what he did was not an “existential threat” to the NFL nor was it any sort of action that had any effect on the field of play. The judicial system of the United States is the place for punishment/exoneration to be determined and not the NFL or the NFLPA. The problem here is that such behavior does generate a negative image for the league and that does – potentially – affect the bottom line. Ergo… I would put this category in the basket of responsibilities of my suggested neutral entity – although I am sure that any people who might work there in the future would probably wish it were somewhere else.

So, how might disciplinary matters be handled in the future? Consider the sorts of common “infractions” and where they fall in my categories:

Failing a PED test: That is Category #2. Players who use drugs previously determined to be PEDs are affecting on-field games. That means the Commissioner does not make the call here.

Failing a “recreational drug” test: That is Category #3. Unless the failed drug test was administered – and analyzed – five minutes before kickoff of a game, this is a matter for law enforcement and not the league or the union. It does not affect the game on the field.

After-the-fact “personal fouls”: That is Category #2. When the Commissioner fines a player $25,000 for a blow to the head – or in the case of Vontaze Burfict also adds a suspension on top of that – that should be handled by the neutral entity.

DUI/Domestic violence/etc.: These are clearly Category #3. The challenge here is for the neutral entity to find ways to bring these matters to closure in a time-frame that is shorter than the one typically found in the judicial process. Whether or not one agrees with the lengthy suspension for Adrian Peterson, it would not have been a “good look” for the league to have him on the field for an entire season while the legal process made its way through the legal system. As I said above, this category can get very sticky and it will require serious negotiation by both the NFL and the NFLPA to come up with boundary conditions within which the neutral entity can operate in situations such as these.

The Framers of the US Constitution as a whole constituted a body of men with a degree of wisdom and foresight that would certainly be the equal of any group assembled to negotiate these changes. I mention that because even the Framers of the US Constitution recognized the need to be able to adapt to change in the future and included the mechanism to amend the Constitution. Likewise, if the NFL and the NFLPA come up with some version of what I call the “neutral entity” here, they also need to create ways to amend what it does and how it does the job. Since CBAs tend to be 5 years or more in duration, it is insufficient to say that the changes will come as part of those periodic negotiations. My suggestion would be for the three parties – the NFL, the NFLPA and the “neutral entity” to meet annually to consider changes in the processes and that any of the three parties should be free to offer suggested changes at such convocations.

Before I wrap up today, let me mention some significant discipline problems that are ongoing in another sport – tennis. It was not all that long ago when police in Europe charged gamblers with fixing tennis matches; one of the pros said proximal to the Australian Open that he had once been offered a hundred thousand dollars to tank a match; more recently, Maria Sharapova failed a drug test – for a PED – and said that what she was taking was under a doctor’s prescription and that she had been taking it for about the last 10 years.

[Aside: If she had been taking it for 10 years before she failed a drug test, may I suggest that the tennis mavens change either the “randomness” of their sampling or the testing lab they employ…]

These incidents are “existential threats” to the sport. If tennis were anything more than a niche sport in the US, this would be a big deal as sponsors reacted to the barrage of bad news. This is not such a big deal in the news cycle simply because most people do not care enough about tennis at this time to do more than shrug their shoulders and turn the page to something more interesting to them.

The message for leagues, players and unions that represent players is that the bigger the sport gets economically, the more stringent the disciplinary boundaries need be drawn and the more severe the penalties for going over the boundary lines. The reason is simple; there is more at stake. If the NFL and the NFLPA find a way to break the logjam here and come up with some significantly different ways to investigate infractions and hand down discipline, it could be the model for every other major sport.

Finally, since I have been talking about the NFL and “disciplinary matters” today, here is an item from Gregg Drinnan recently in his blog, Keeping Score:

“The Cleveland Browns released quarterback Johnny Manziel last week, after just two seasons. Still, Bud Shaw of the Cleveland Plain Dealer won’t refer to Manziel as the Edsel of NFL draft picks. As Shaw points out: ‘Let’s be fair. The Edsel lasted three years.’”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

The 68-team field for the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is fixed. All that remains is to play the games – well, and for me to have my annual fun with the names of players participating in the tournament and the team mascots too. So, before we get started on that, let me get a few other peripheral notes out of the way:

No team was snubbed by the Committee. Selection here is an art and not a science; therefore, there is no way to show that Team A (the one that got in) was unassailably less qualified for the Tournament than Team B (the nominal “snubee”)

Seeding really does not matter all that much. If a team is going to win it all, it needs to win 6 straight games against whomever shows up as the opponent at tip-off time.

Location does matter. The Committee needs to try to assure that teams do not play de facto home games in the Tournament and therefore have to ship some teams out to distant venues. Hey, if that is such a huge burden, all the team that has been “exiled” has to do is turn town the invitation. No one is forcing them to participate…

The NCAA likes to beat fans over the head with the message that NCAA student-athletes do so with no real hope of becoming professionals in their sport. The ads they run show lots of perky youngsters saying that they are “going pro” except they mean “in life” and not “in sports”. For the gymnastic teams and the badminton teams, I can buy that; for the “revenue sports”, not so much… Nevertheless, here are some players in this year’s Tournament whose name might indicate their focus in life and hence their major as the move toward graduation:

Ron Baker, Sr. Wichita State – – Food Science
Jabari Bird, Jr. Cal – – Ornithology of course
Jalen Bond, Sr. Temple – – Finance
Bennie Boatwright, Fr. USC – – Mechanical Engineering
Alex Caruso, Sr. Texas A&M – – Music
Lawrence Cooks Jr. Hampton – – he can open a restaurant with Ron Baker
A.J. English, Sr. Iona – – nah, too easy
Eric Green, Sr. Holy Cross – – Sports Management – golf
Makai Mason So. Yale – – Structural Engineering
Deondre Parks, Sr. South Dakota St. – – Agronomy
Craig Ponder Sr. UNC-Wilmington – – Philosophy
Ikenna Smart Fr. Buffalo – – he can major in anything he wants and be successful
Diamond Stone, Fr. Maryland – – Geology
Thomas Walkup Sr. Stephen F. Austin – – Real Estate Management
Roger Woods, Sr. Arkansas-Little Rock – – Forestry

The Selection Committee gave us a Maryland/South Dakota St. game in the Round of 64. The mascots here are pretty close to matching the tortoise and the hare. The Selection Committee probably would have found a way to pair South Dakota University – if they were Tournament qualified – with Cal St. Bakersfield. That game would have been the Roadrunners versus the Coyotes…

We have several players with numbers following their names:

Joel Berry II, So, UNC
Gary Payton II, S. Oregon St.
Frank Mason III, Jr. Kansas
Wade Baldwin IV, So. Vandy

Surely many of the players with no numerical description after their names could rightly be considered “Joe Flabeetz I”. So all we needed was a “Sam Glotz V” to get a numerical lineup for the All-Tournament Numerical Suffix Starting Five…

Oh, and the All-Tournament Numerical Suffix Team should also include Edward Joyner, Jr. (Hampton) as its honorary coach.

Allow me to pause here to insert a comment on college basketball from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald:

“North Carolina coach Roy Williams is fine after fainting during a game. Apparently, he passed out after hearing a Kentucky player planned to return for his sophomore season.”

The Tournament could name an All-Presidential Team:

Jalen Adams, Fr. UConn
Brice Johnson, Sr. UNC
Shaquille Harrison, Sr. Tulsa
Nigel Hayes, Jr. Wisconsin
Justin Jackson, So. UNC

Oh, and do not forget that Austin Peay – the 16-seed in the South Bracket – is called The Governors. Governors like to try to become Presidents so maybe the All Presidential Team should get their awards on the campus of Austin Peay. Just a thought…

The Selection Committee gave us one game between Cats and Dogs in the first round. Villanova (Wildcats) take on UNC-Asheville (Bulldog)s in the South bracket.

It will not be easy for Seton Hall to play Hampton in the Midwest bracket. However, if they do meet, it will be the Pirates versus the Pirates – – Blackbeard versus Captain Kidd.

In the Midwest bracket, we could also see Texas Tech play Middle Tennessee. That would pit the Red Raiders against the Blue Raiders.

Stephen F. Austin starts both Trey Pinkney and Demetrious Floyd. Pinkney and Floyd. Hmmm.. Wonder if they ever thought of using Comfortably Numb as the background music for their practices?

Perhaps if Middle Tennessee does well, their coach might be hired on at a bigger school such as TCU. If that were to happen Kermit Davis would be coaching the Horned Frogs. How appropriate is that?

Iowa meets Temple in the first round in the South. Iowa’s coach is Fran McCaffrey; Temple’s coach is Fran Dunphy. Too bad the game is in Brooklyn and not in San Francisco.

Since the winner of too many office bracket pools is someone who would not know a basketball from quart of pus, here is a suggestion from Brad Dickson (Omaha World-Herald if you had forgotten) as a way to identify such people from the outset:

“Companies should keep Louisville in their NCAA tournament office brackets to weed out people who couldn’t identify a photo of a basketball but usually still win.”

Players who do very well in the tournament need to recognize that they might be putting themselves at risk by doing so. Think about it; the Philadelphia 76ers will have a high draft pick in this year’s NBA draft. Someone just might “play his way into Philly” with some outstanding play over the next few weeks. I shall consider the players properly and thoroughly briefed on this matter…

Look at the Midwest bracket that the Committee put together. It is just a tad overloaded with Bulldogs; Fresno State, Gonzaga and Butler are all among the low-seeds on that side of the bracket. Do you think that the NCAA is trying to get some sort of sponsor relationship started with the Westminster Dog Show?

Look at the West bracket that the Committee put together. This is the “Natural Rivalry” bracket with:

Oregon and Oregon State
Texas and Texas A&M and Baylor
Texas and VCU (The Shaka Smart Confrontation)
Duke and UNC-Wilmington
Texas and Oklahoma
Virginia and Hampton.

If the Committee had chosen Harvard as a second Ivy League school, I am pretty sure they would have been in the West bracket along with Yale.

In the South bracket, a game between Temple and South Dakota State would be a predator/prey game between Owls and Jackrabbits. In the same bracket, a game between Wichita St and Buffalo might be dubbed the Grain Bowl; Wichita St are the Shockers; Buffalo is coached by Nate Oats.

In the East bracket it is interesting to note that Stephen F. Austin (the Lumberjacks) is coached by Brad Underwood. Seems appropriate… Stony Brook is in the tournament for the first time. They are the Seawolves which is a bit confusing because wolves are not sea creatures. Once familiar with the tournament, perhaps Stony Brook will be back some day with a less confusing mascot.

The Selection Committee will swear that they make their decisions purely on the merits of the teams involved and are not influenced by outside factors – – such as TV ratings. Maybe so … However, consider the potential 2nd round matchups they put together:

Kentucky could play Indiana – no rivalry history there
Villanova could play Temple – two Big 5 teams from Philly
Texas could play Texas A&M – no rivalry there.

In the East, the early round game to watch is West Virginia versus Stephen F. Austin. The Mountaineers might just go on to play in the East Regional final game; the Mountaineers might just lose this first round game to the #14 seed in the East.

In the South, the early round game to watch is Cal versus Hawaii. The Rainbow Warriors have no household names in their starting lineup but they do have experience. They start 3 juniors and 2 seniors – not a commonplace lineup these days. That experience might propel Hawaii as the #13 seed in the South into the second round.

[Aside: Riddle me this… Hawaii is ineligible for next year’s Tournament based on a ruling by the NCAA as reported here. All of the violations occurred in the past so some Hawaii players will pay a price for actions that none of them had anything to do with. Not cool under any circumstances, but why impose the sanctions next year and allow this year’s team to play?]

In the Midwest, the game I want to see will be down the road a bit. In each of the last two seasons, Michigan State eliminated Virginia from the tournament. This year they are the #1 and the #2 seeds in this bracket. That would be an interesting re-rematch.

In the West, there are two low-seeded teams that could be problematic opponents in the early rounds. VCU (#10 seed) and Northern Iowa (#11 seed) could both advance and both have plenty of upperclassmen in their lineups.

It would take both teams making it to the Final Four to see Xavier play Virginia. If that happens Myles Davis would be playing for Xavier and Tony Bennett would be coaching Virginia. That would be easy listening…

Of course, if you have a nostalgic streak you can root for Yale (#12 seed) here. The last time they were in the NCAA Tournament, John Kennedy was President, the Beatles had not yet come to the US and Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game against the Knicks. Or, you could root for Holy Cross (#16 seed if they win the “play-in” game) as the school that gave basketball Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn and Togo Palazzi.

Did someone ask for a Final Four prediction? Really, you expect me to do something that serious in a rant filled with basic nonsense? Well, if you insist:

Kentucky/Kansas/Michigan State/Oklahoma

If you prefer something more akin to longshots:

West Virginia/Miami/Dayton/Baylor

If you love the ACC:

UNC/Miami/Virginia/Duke (and it would be an added “touch” if Miami were the team to eliminate Maryland)

If you are a fan of Catholic colleges:

Notre Dame (or Providence)/Villanova/Gonzaga/St. Joe’s

Enough silliness for today – and for the year to be sure. The games start tonight and although none of the four “play-in” games are particularly compelling, they serve an important function. Think about the last time you dined at a fine and upscale French restaurant. After you sat down and got the menus and placed your cocktail order, the chef sent out an amuse-bouche. That is the name of that small complementary appetizer that is provided just to get wake up your taste buds and get your gastric juices flowing as you begin to peruse the main menu. The 4 “play-in” games are the amuse-bouche for the Tournament to come.

Finally, I want to thank CBS for their 2-hour program on the Bracket Selections. That’s right; I want to thank them. They provided a needed public service and they have not gotten credit for it. We had lost an hour’s sleep on Saturday night due to Daylight Saving Time and CBS gave me back that hour right away with their programming. Here is tip of the hat to CBS…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………