fawlty towers

Bring the Payne. MI CB LEVITICUS PAYNE has just achieved more than most of us will over the course of our lives: he's made the Name of the Year bracket.

[click for big.]

He's a 12 seed in the Bulltron regional against a "Silverberry Mouhon," which is mellifluous but is no LEVITICUS PAYNE. The Mercedes Bunz/Col. Many-Bears Grinder winner in the second round might be tough.

College football is also represented by South Carolina uber-recruit Jadeveon Clowney and former Michigan recruit Quinta Funderburke, who ended up signing with Arkansas. 2013 Purdue basketball commit Basil Smotherman Jr. also makes it. I'm pulling for Smotherman because for the duration of his career I'm going to pretend everything he says on the court is a Fawlty Towers quote.

Also everything Matt Painter says is going to be "BASIL!" I might watch every Purdue game during this era.

Schedule bits. The Big Ten released conference schedules for 2013 and 2014. Illinois and Purdue rotate off; Penn State and Indiana rotate on. Michigan won't see Wisconsin until 2015. That's why the Big Ten will add a ninth conference game sometime in the near future—four years off is a bit much.

At least that's good in terms of schedule strength… unless that thing where any team that doesn't play Michigan is guaranteed to collapse keeps happening. If Illinois and Purdue are insanely good next year our curse continues. Illinois could actually… naw, nevermind.

Monocle follow-up. Women's basketball is out of control:

Some schools paid their coaching staffs many times what their teams earned, the data show. The Texas A&M staff received $1.36 million, or 114 percent of operating revenue of $1.19 million, and Michigan State paid out $833,931, or 87 percent of operating revenue of $954,779.

At Auburn University, salaries and benefits cost $1.14 million, or 1,783 percent of the Tigers’ operating revenue of $64,225, and the program posted a $3.16 million operating loss.

Auburn continues to live by the motto "go big or go home." The 53 BCS schools vulnerable to FOIAs collectively lost over two million dollars each.

Those numbers are insane. Money is being transferred directly from football and basketball players to women's basketball coaches. At least with revenue sports there's some justification for paying the head of your program a lot of money—he's in charge of something that makes money and might stop doing so if you suck. There's no reason any women's basketball coach not at UConn or Tennessee should be making more than 100k. What's going to happen? Are the empty seats going to stop coming?

There's a lot of blather in that article from administrators talking about "the market,"  but that market is shaped by all the extra cash sloshing around because revenue athletes get the same scholarship as everyone else. Even UConn lost nearly a million dollars last year because it paid its head coach nearly two. There's an easy way to close that gap.

Do it or I'll burn you with my eye lasers. Outstanding find from MVictors, as he runs across a wire photo showing what Yost used to look like in the days of Cazzie Russell:

Greg advocates putting the old man back up—"Extend the Yost brand," he exhorts—and this is obviously the most fantastic idea ever.

BONUS: it reminded me of the Martin Van Buren alert system, wherein Old Man Murray put up a picture of MVB on their page and would change it to a "dramatic approximation of Martin Van Buren as he would appear if he were alive today" in the event some random person important to misanthropic gaming nerds* in 1999 updated her "page":

MVB, devil MVB

Michigan could do the same whenever Michigan State came to town or something. Best idea ever? Best idea ever.

*[so, so guilty as charged.]

Exit Fiesta. The NCAA's going to meet about the Fiesta Bowl whatnot soon and could pull the licenses from both the Fiesta (which would be a big deal) and the Insight (which would be a big deal to Minnesota). The shocking, shocking abuses uncovered have caused at least a few guys within the ivory tower to grumble about a playoff:

“The bowls ought to be put under the control of the N.C.A.A.,” said William E. Kirwan, the chancellor of Maryland’s university system and co-chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which discusses and sometimes makes recommendations on the major issues of college sports.

“One way to accomplish that is to go to a playoff and let it be an N.C.A.A. championship. That would be one way of breaking the back of the B.C.S. I’ve never been in favor of a playoff, but given what I see going on, I think it’s time to press that issue.”

He's got a point. Money currently being spent on strippers and golf by bowl executives could instead be used on strippers and golf by women's basketball coaches.

Nervous yet? In an article heavily laden with moody pictures of confetti, Luke Winn drops the bomb you've been bracing for in a way-too-early top 32(?):

13. Michigan John Beilein is on the verge of a breakthrough in Ann Arbor — that is, if point guard Darius Morris returns for his junior season. Tim Hardaway Jr. was perhaps the nation’s most underrated freshman in ’10-11, and the Wolverines showed flashes of their potential by nearly knocking off Duke in the “third” round. They could make an outside run at the Big Ten title.

Deliciously, Michigan State does not feature. Draymond Green's reaction to this:

As for the Wolverines, that 13 is uncomfortably close to the #15 ranking they got in the preseason AP poll before they imploded two years ago. It's also ridiculous to make these lists before the NBA draft deadline, not that it stops CBS (16) or ESPN (also 16).

Etc.: Corn Nation covers Bo's final season as part of their countdown to joining the Big Ten. Via On The Banks, here's an academic economist who actually seems to have a clue about college athletics. Polynomial efficiency margins from Maize Colored Glasses.