User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
For wholesale prices on baseball gifts and equipment, check these stores out! |
Page rendered in 0.6469 seconds
51 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
I also consider the Big East little more than a glorified mid-major and I think you have to be very weary of projecting future success based on success over the past several years. If teams like that have a rough few years they can return to irrelevancy quickly.
And GT are only in the championship game because UNC is on probation this year (there was a 3-way tie in the division, and UNC would've won the tiebreaker had they been eligible). In a sane world they're sitting around twiddling their thumbs. A GT vs. Rutgers Orange Bowl would probably be the most pointless BCS game in the history of BCS games.
To be clear, I am 1) rooting for GT to win the ACC championship by some fluke, just to #### up the Orange Bowl as much as possible, and 2) recognize that they have no real right to be in a bowl game at all. They were horrible this year, and the only reason they're getting any sort of bowl press at all is because UNC and Miami both probated out of bowl scenarios.
If GT beats FSU, they deserve to go play in the most pointless BCS bowl ever held. If they lose to FSU they deserve to go study for the chem finals.
As the late Beano Cook once said, they can stop playing football, they (Nebraska at OU) have played the perfect football game.
The two teams had 15/20 of the first team all Big 8 starters.
some interesting notes: Nebraska allowed 19 first half points that season, excluding OU.
OU averaged, I said AVERAGED, 472 yards rushing a game, 7.07 ypc. Some perspective, nobody has averaged over 350 ypg, since Nebraska in 1995 @ 399.8 ypg.
The Big East is so bad that Sun Belt teams look good to them.
And keep the Eagles out of it. BTW I was just on the field at the Georgia Dome.
Return to the urban university, basketball-only league it was intended to be: Georgetown, Nova, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette, DePaul, then poach a teams from elsewhere (the A-10 has some attractive targets).
Whenever I've seen that proposed (would be awesome), it's said that basketball doesn't bring in TV $ and that the basketball schools would still do better $-wise hitching their wagons to the crappy football schools.
Three 16 team super conferences + 16 other power house schools for the Baddass Super Hard Core Really Semi-Professional FBS, the rest go into the "we also play FBS football" sub-subdivision, with a promotion/relegation process to make it all interesting.
Their business being there is for other top teams to beat.
God knows, if the top tier didn't have Navy and Wake to beat up on they'd have to play better teams like Georgia Southern or Appalachian State.
They play basketball at DePaul?
I don't disagree. Currently I see it as 5 Power Conferences with 16 teams. That is 80 teams which is the majority of college football. Then the rest are in the bottom tier (right now that is about 45-50 teams).
Of course in my crazy dream world. The 5 Power conferences (SEC, Big 12, PAC-12, Big Ten, ACC) will have 9 conference games and conference championship game. Then play 2 non-conference games against another power conference team. Then they pick a non-Power conference BCS team for the 12th game. There are definitely some flaws in the dream and I still don't know how to get a playoff that is "fair" (5 conference winners and 1 "wild card")...but it is time for something different it appears...
I was going to say, how will you pare off the last few to get 80 exactly, but after all the moves that have been made are finally in place, there will be exactly 80 teams in the top 6 conferences. This might actually work.
While it certainly was an attempt to get an extension/raise out of LSU, I have little doubt that Arkansas would have topped his current deal if LSU told him to pound sand. It was a no-win situation for them.
The win would have potentially upgrading from Les Miles.
This is very close to what I would like to see: the 5 major conferences with 9 conference games, 3 non-conference games, and a conference championship game, followed by an 8-team playoff. The playoff would consist of the 5 conference winners, the highest rated non-AQ team provided it's among the top 8, and at-large teams strictly by rating.
Since winning your conference guarantees a chance at the title and every at-large team by definition has at least one loss in-conference, the incentives for scheduling non-conference games change for the better. It's suddenly in your interests to schedule better teams to be better prepared for the conference season and to improve your SOS so that you can be the highest rated team that doesn't win its conference. The current BCS bowls would host the first round of the playoff and could retain their selection preferences with minor caveats, such as that #1 can't play #2.
I would have called his bluff. And if he left you suddenly have the most attractive job available.
DePaul won the greatest afterthought game of all time, the consolation game in the 1979 NCAA Tournament that was played right before Larry Bird and Magic Johnson went at it in the final.
One of the ACC or Big "12" will fold first first and the "useful" teams will get snarfed up - along with Notre Dame (and possibly BYU).
Not sure if the top teams from the "bottom 60" would, should, or could replace the bottom teams from the current 60.
What I really want to see is "league" (or whatever replaces the NCAA) mandate inter-conference scheduling. No more cupcakes!
and the cupcakes need them even more--sometimes, the payout they get from those games funds virtually their entire athletic department. I live in Charleston, the The Citadel is willing to get their teeth kicked in by FSU or Arky or the Gamecocks once a year just for the $$$
I think they clipped the Cocks in 1990 or so too.
Everyone can use a couple of homegames, and wins. And if the Kentucky's and KU's don't get at least a couple of wins every year it would really hurt their programs.
What if the wins against I-AA teams couldn't help or hurt you as far as any type of seeding formula or computer ranking, but the losses do count?
Really does it matter if you beat VMI or Missouri State or Blinn JC? Not really.
But if you lose to say North Dakota State, like KU did in 2010, that should penalize you.
If you play a second division school, then if you schedule a real bottom feeder like Buffalo then it hurts you. If you take a risk and schedule Troy, more power to you or more power to your computer ranking.
But if you didn't want to schedule those teams, well, that should help you in seeding and computer rankings and so forth.
It would be best if all leagues committed to 9 league games.
Pipe dream - add Notre Dame to the 63, split into 8 team divisions. Division winners qualify for an 8 team post-season tourney.
The Citadel was very different in that (Charlie Taffe) era--they were a legitimate 1-AA power. No longer true. But they still play one game a year against the big boys.
And then were a #1 seed the next 2 years and lost the first game both times.
edit: next 3 years, and lost all 3.
The WHOLE PROBLEM* with College football is that the conferences don't play each other enough, so there it's really impossible to acertain the relative strength of conferences. So, they want to play a 1-AA match - fine but they still have to play 12 real games against top 64 (or maybe 80) opponents.
They can use the back end of their 100-man roster (and the game wouldn't count). If KU and Kentucky can't win a game, relegate them.
* I mean other than the rampant corruption programs and exploitation of players
Seriously. The solution to this problem is relegation/promotion. If Northern Illinois wants to build a program, let 'em come. No reason for Wake to stick around in the big boy pants league.
Except the point of athletics is (or at least has become) to make money, and conferences are a safety net so that you can reduce travel costs and possibly draw in some fans from the next state over. And what do you do about other sports? Kansas and Kentucky aren't going anywhere in basketball. After a few years of promotion/relegation, each sport will have completely unique conferences.
Tracy Ham!
As a Big East basketball fan my dearest wish when the whole ridiculousness started with TCU supposedly joining the conference was for the entirely TV-based machinations of football conferences to become completely disconnected from other sports. Sadly Pitt left the Big East in not just football but other sports. Maybe it'll be good for the baseball team.
As for promotion/relegation that really depends on there being a balanced schedule which has never been possible in college football, let alone in the great new future of 16-team conferences where each team plays its major rivals every year and most other teams in its conference every 5 or 6 years.
I know everyone here likes to rag on the Big East, and that's all well and good, but I'm sure you can appreciate facing a day of work knowing that tonight you'll be watching your team play one of the biggest games in its history in a packed house. My kid is due to be born right around New Years, so no Sugar Bowl or Orange Bowl (or, gulp, Russell Athletic Bowl) trip for me. In fact, this could be my last Rutgers game for a long time. GO SCARLET KNIGHTS!
One day Paul Johnson will find a new Tracy Ham who can cut the grades at Georgia Tech...
What is the functional difference between 4 16 team super conferences and 8 8 team divisions? The SEC East is an 8 team division. The SEC West is an 8 team division. They have a regional final before advancing to the round of 4 (by seeding.)
I'd go with 3 16 team supers; the SEC (add Clemson and FSU), the PAC (cherry pick the top of the WAC and Moutain West) and the BIG (combination of the B1G and the Big 12.) Then have an open conference for everyone else. Winners of the conferences go to the playoffs. Seeds 5-8 can be determined by voting and ranking.
EDIT: apparently Strong is denying it.
I was going to let this go..
The functional difference is it eliminates the bullship we put up with now.
Which division the toughest? Who gives a ####, you either won your way in or you didn't!
If you slide into the tourney because Penn State and OSU are on probation, then we will rank you and seed you, and you get thrown into Alabama testicle removing machine first.
No league is favored, you don't have to sort out the 10 teams with two losses (eyeballing it, I count 10 from the major conferences plus Boise) get the last couple of seeds. A division winner like Georgia can't lose a championship game to the best team in the country and see the team that finished second in their division slide into the tournament instead.
It might be difficult to sell to the traditional powers, because the current system gives them all the benefit of the doubt. I don't see why Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer being great coaches should keep Rutgers or Baylor out of a national tournament. That is what would happen with basically any other system.
I'm a KU fan, so please indulge this one question: If?
Except that Georgia won their division because they played Ole Miss and Auburn instead of Texas A&M and LSU. I don't know why people keep saying that a playoff will eliminate any and all doubts. Playoffs work well in, say, the NFL because you have 12 of 16 games in common with your divisional opponents, and play them twice, and then see 41% (13 of 32) of the entire league. We can say with almost absolute certainty which teams were the most deserving of a playoff spot just by looking at record. In college football, you miss over 90% of the teams you are competing against, and have cases where your primary competitor has a schedule that is half filled with teams you don't see. There is just no way to eliminate the doubt, and especially so if you are just looking at record.
Tim Tebow did a bunch of this overseas, so I'm told...
I didn't explain the Georgia thing well enough, In my eyes, they could go undefeated in their division, 7-0, and the other five games wouldn't matter. If they go 0-5 in their non-division, because they played the Seahawks, 49ers, Cardinals, Rams and Georgia Tech, while Florida played Neosho CC, Dodge City CC, Ft. Scott CC, Cowley CC and Miami of FL going 5-0, Georgia would still win the division.
I wouldn't argue that point in anyway.
What I'm proposing isn't "fair." OU and UT are in the same division, one of those teams is watching every year, even at 11-1. Not Fair.
The two best teams in your division never play each other at home, instead they play at neutral site in Jacksonville or Dallas. Not Fair.
PSU is really good, but the game this year is at the Horseshoe. Not Fair.
A&M beats Bama in Bama, and most people still think Bama is the best team in the country. Nothing could eliminate all doubt.
BUT.. at least this way you earn your way in on the field. It is much better than computer systems with limits on margin of victory, coaches voting on teams they couldn't identify if they were watching them on TV and on and on.
You just can't simply defer to W-L record in a league where teams never see the vast majority of their competitors for years upon years. You have to get subjective, which means you're always going to have to make guesses based upon who looked better, or who won by more, etc.
I'm watching replays of this game right now in heaven.
This shows the anti playoff crowd was right, this thing will blow up into something that will damage the intensity of the regular season. The Game of the Century dies in an 8 team playoff, frankly it would be dead in a 4 team playoff.
This weekend's SEC title game.....meaningless in a 8 team playoff. Frankly, why would UGA want to be there when they could be FLORIDA!!! Just siting around waiting.
The original idea was to have a system that could allow for that occasional 3rd undefeated team a shot. Or when we had no undefeated teams, a 3rd or 4th 1 loss team. There will be no perfect system. The NFL system is deeply flawed, but we accept its flaws. We need to accept the flaws of this system.
As a society we need to be more accepting of the imperfect. Not everything has to conform, we should be more comfortable with differences.
how about, if instead of 2 8 team divisions, the SEC (and big ten and pac-16) split themselves into 4 4-team divisions? each team would play 1 game against each of their divisional opponents (3 total), and then 4 more games each against 1 other division (bringing the number of games to 7), and then for an 8th game, each team plays their counterpart according to the standings (1 v. 1, 2 v. 2, etc.). this would give each team 3 H2H games against their direct competition, 4 games each against common opponents, and then a de facto playoff, where the 4 division winners get cut down to 2 in week 8, and those 2 then meet in the SEC championship game.
that also leaves 4 OOC slots where you could match up against the other super-conferences.
if i were to pick one thing about this year's ohio state game that wasn't fair, the location where the game was played would probably be quite a ways down that list.
Manziel
Lee
Klein
Manziel is one of the easier choices of the past 25 or so years.
That's a heartbreaker of a loss WJ. I was sure you guys had it after you got to 14. Bridgewater was incredible tonight, legendary even considering, his injuries. If Strong stays, Louisville is going to be a monster program in the ACC.
I guess I don't understand how Rutgers, with it's offensive players, continues to be so inconsistent on that side of the ball. Louisville's defense isn't amazing and Rutgers really needed to come up with more than 3 points outside of those two huge pass plays.
And from the Article
This is why I'd like to see it decided on the field. Even when K-State wins the one of the top 3 conferences in the country, they get passed over in an 8 team bracket BY 3 TWO LOSS TEAMS because the Washington State AD doesn't know Baylor is an above .500 team, and the bIg representative "thinks" some other teams would beat them.
Making one tactical error is ot that big of a deal. Putting "F.A.M.I.L.Y." on the jerseys is a fireable offence.
Brett Bielema at home against tOSU two weeks ago, punted from the tOSU 30.. Kirk Ferentz last week at home vs Nebraska (it was the 31 yard line, but there was a 30+ mph wind in his face).
Clearly just getting ready for Big Ten play (see 1470).
Even when K-State wins the one of the top 3 conferences in the country, they get passed over in an 8 team bracket BY 3 TWO LOSS TEAMS because the Washington State AD doesn't know Baylor is an above .500 team, and the bIg representative "thinks" some other teams would beat them.
How is losing to Baylor (Sagarin 23) worse than losing to Washington (Sagarin 34)?
It's not that it's imperfect - it's that it's capricious and rewards teams for weak schedules and lucky wins. Take ND / Stanford / Oregon.
Stanford played 3 OT games, winning 2 of them (beat Oregon, Arizona, lost to ND)
ND played 2 OT games, winning both (Pitt)
Oregon played one (losing to Stanford).
I don't see how their record distinguishes them, they should be in an 8 game playoff.
I suppose this favors Stanford's beef, but increased variance increases the chance of an Upset.
I find muddy sloppy football hilarious, so yay.
All systems do.
You want to see capricious, try distinguishing between the 8th and 9th best teams. I can assure you, the gap between those two spots is, on average, far narrower than between 2 and 3.
Who's in this ideal 8-team playoff. ND, SEC winner, Ore., KSU (provided they beat Texas), Fla. would be obvious choices. Then where do you go? How do you determine between the two-loss teams? SEC loser, USCe, A&M, LSU, Stanford, Oklahoma? And, of course, this possibly shuts out two (3 if you want to count the Big East in that category, which I wouldn't at this point) major conference champions (which, frankly, doesn't strike me as something the conferences would ever agree to). Or rewards teams for not having to play the conference title game.
I've said it before, but the only playoff I could ever support has no chance of happening - the floating one. At the end of the regular season, a system determines which teams belong in a playoff and fix the size of the playoff to meet it. If it's 2005, it's a two-teamer. If it's the madcap 2007 campaign, it's an 8 or 12. In the absence of this kind of solution, I'm preferring the status quo, which at least preserves the best regular season going.
Well, I think he knows they are above .500, it's just that they got drubbed. If K State was in that game at all, they probably stay ahead of two loss teams. And you're still on the one-track 'first organization is by fewest losses'. I agree K State gets screwed in that setup, but that's because people don't understand the strength of the middle of the Big 12 (because they are just looking at number of losses, like you).
I think Oregon beats K State, and Texas A&M could too. That's the whole problem, the uncertainty. We just can't truly know if the #1 team from one conference is actually better than the #2 from another. That's why you can't just start off by eliminating all the #2 teams from consideration.
Exactly. This is why we can't just go "your record is better, so you HAVE to be the better team".
UT fanboys are crying.
It will always be unfair/random at the boundaries. This means that the bigger the "play in pool" the more likely you are to pick the most deserving teams. That is, the penalty for being "wrong" is lower. For example, in an 8 team playoff you would be very unlikely to exclude one of the (real) top 4-6 teams.
As to conferences - as intimated above I think there need to be fewer conferences and fewer teams "eligble". I like 4 and 64 because hey, powers of 2 work well in elimination tournaments/pairings.
I might agree that picking the "top 8" teams in a manner that shuts out 1 (or more!) top 4 conferences probably is a bad idea, since (currently) the conferences don't really play enough OOC games to get a good statistical read on relative strength.
It all depends on how you look at it. You think it's a penalty to exclude the possibly deserving. I think it's equally penal to include the undeniably undeserving.
There is no perfect number. Some years, like 2005, a playoff could only cloud what was already clear (that Texas and USC were the two best teams). In others, like 2007, a playoff can clear up what was murky.
What's undeniable is that each round of playoff you add weakens the import of the regular season, neutering so many of the high-stakes regular season games that no other NA sport provides.
And as a college-football fan first - not an NFL fan who slums on Saturdays - I find the idea of diluting the best regular season distasteful.
Orlando after Christmas could be a fun trip. Not everyone can play in a BCS Bowl. Wasn't that long ago that Rutgers wasn't used in the same sentence as "Bowl".
The bigger the pool, the more random the outcome as well. Alabame might be a 80% favorite against any team in the nation, but make them play three rounds and they have only a 50/50 shot of winning it all.
I hate the spike. Unless you're doing it because you only have time for one play anyway, you're trying to get the field goal unit on the field or the team really needs to huddle, the down is almost always more important than the few extra seconds saved.
The spike... Meh... I mean you got to get plays called. Hundley cant call plays.
Pretty dang good game though. Once stanford figured out the wide reciever screen nonsense the gig was up. Nice season for Mora.
Sure looks like he is comparing Baylor to Pitt.
Sure, it was a whooping, but it's still only one loss. Bumping two loss teams ahead of them is pretty inexcusable IMO, regardless of the eyeball test.
KSU problem is that they don't have enough TV's in their state, and they were lousy for 90 years.
And on the broadcast they are mentioning a backyard brawl rematch in the Pin Stripe Bowl.
Hurricane Isaac.
Yeah, they are horrible. It is fun to watch them roll on an overmatched opponent, finally. I'm just enjoying the last regular season game with Austin. He's been appropriately nasty again today.
Keep in mind Harris Poll voters, this Kansas team almost beat Northern Illinois.
I think the pinstripe people would love that matchup. Pitt still needs one win though.
That would be an awful pull for WV, hopefully the Holiday Bowl picks em up before they fall to the Pinstripe. Playing one of the Pac-12 also rans would be a far more meaningful game than a nothing to win game against a down rival who broke up the Big East.
So I guess I'm a USF fan today.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main