neutral site games

As per tradition…okay, maybe not tradition. As per recent trend, I’m updating my annual NCAA Hockey Tournament Proposal/Discussion to fit this season’s tournament announcement. If you’ve missed the last couple of years, you can read them here and also here. The second one sparked quite a debate in the comments about a number of different options. It’s worth a quick parsing. Also, this is my first real foray into the Pairwise Rankings and matchups since I didn’t write any Rooting Guides this season. Honestly, Michigan didn’t win enough games to get into the Top 20, so it seemed a bit secondary.

Notes: Individual Scoring, Absent Teams, #1 Seed Punishment

• Scoring: Heading into this tournament, only two players have 50 points, and one of those players got eliminated on Saturday and the other is in the NHL right now. Granted, there are still 15 games to be played for players in the mid-to-high 40s, but I think anyone getting to 55 is a stretch. That seems low. I looked back at the previous five seasons or so (lol the CCM line year) and the number of players to reach 50 points were: 6, 13, 10, and 9. Maybe it's just me, but scoring seems more spread out this season. There also might be a lack of high end scorers? Anyway, it caught my attention.
• Absent Teams: Six schools have at least five National Championships. Five of those six missed the tournament (Denver is the exception). Those teams are: Michigan (boo), North Dakota, Wisconsin, Boston College, Boston University, and Minnesota. All three schools with three National Championships missed the tournament. The three with three aren’t quite as prominent or have not been as good recently: Lake State, Michigan State, and Michigan Tech. Either college hockey is reaching some extreme parity or this was a weird year.
• Minnesota State is the #3 overall seed and they are playing a road game at #14 Providence. Literally a road game. Come on. Also, Minn-Duluth is the #2 overall seed and are going to Allentown, PA (why? why is this even an NCAA Tournament location?) to “host” the Arizona State Ice Devils. If this doesn’t reinforce my coming points, I can’t help you.

[After THE JUMP: replicating the first couple days of the basketball tournament, this year's home-site matchups, Frozen Four locations, and the ways to make it all work]

Sea of red. Georgia played Notre Dame last weekend and this is what it looked like:

Old friend of the blog Braves and Birds has an article about this remarkable screenshot, pointing out that this was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity for Georgia fans and they reacted accordingly. Somewhat similar scenes might play out if other fanbases were afforded an opportunity to go see a college football cathedral instead of a sterile NFL stadium that still smelled of Phil Simms:

...the reaction of Dawg fans to the chance to travel to South Bend is a reminder that there is huge, untapped demand among big college football fan bases to see their teams play other elite programs on the road and not at NFL stadiums.

One way to illustrate this point is to look at how the most popular programs have never visited one another. Here are the top 10 in attendance from 2016: Michigan, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, Penn State, Texas, Georgia, and Nebraska. There are 90 potential home-and-home combinations among those teams. In over a century of football, 33 of these matchups have never happened. That’s a bevy of road trips that big fan bases have never gotten to take.

I say "somewhat" because Notre Dame is especially vulnerable to this kind of takeover because of the nature of their fanbase and ticketing. Large chunks of the fanbase merely put their names in a lottery for certain games annually. The proportion of season ticket holders is (probably) much lower than other schools due to the national nature of ND's fanbase. Also these fans have a lot to pay attention to, what with the Yankees, Duke, and Manchester United all existing. With Notre Dame at a low ebb it might make sense for a frontrunner in NYC to sell his tickets in a way that it doesn't for someone who shows up to every game every year.

Unfortunately irrelevant. Oklahoma took OSU to the woodshed in their own building on Saturday. This was fun, but as I was watching it I was struck by how irrelevant it was for Michigan's chances down the road. Oklahoma's offense is built to neutralize defensive line advantages by using a metric ton of misdirection and the threat of the QB's legs. Ian Boyd has a breakdown of what happened, nearly all of which is unreplicable by Michigan—at least as they stand now.

Boyd accidentally twists the knife a bit at the end:

It pays to have a senior QB going on four years of starting, with a knack for playmaking off the cuff, when you are trying to get after a top-five opponent on the road.

Michigan can't get their QB to the OSU game healthy about half the time and never when he's a senior.

If it doesn't make sense it's probably not true. Basic advice for basic columnists, but apparently necessary:

SB Nation did a fine job reporting the contents of Lewis' testimony to the NCAA a couple of weeks ago, but it may have buried the lead.

Within the piece, Lewis' mother Tina Henderson told a former Ole Miss assistant that LSU had offered $650,000 for the services of her son.

If even close to the truth, that amount of money changes everything we know about cheating in college athletics. If even close to the truth, this case isn't so much about Ole Miss cheating but the lengths any wrongdoer would be willing to go.

And there is reason to believe $650,000 is close to the truth. I checked with the story's author, Steven Godfrey, and he said confirmed the figure wasn't a typo on his part or the person transcribing the testimony.

Instead we are supposed to believe that Leo Lewis took barely more than 10% of that to play for Mississippi State. The inclusion of the LSU number throws that whole article into doubt, because it makes it look like Godfrey is just repeating what people tell him without sanity checking anything. IE, Godfrey is being Steven Godfrey.

If LSU genuinely offered over a half-million dollars for Leo Lewis, 1) he'd be at LSU and 2) LSU's hypothetical budget for their #5 2015 class is... what, ten million dollars? Of private money? Cumong man.

Some Speight numbers. Tom VanHaaren has some bins to put Speight throws in: 

Facing blitzes, Speight completed just over 33 percent of his throws, as opposed to completing 61.1 percent with no pressure. On the season, he's completing just over 51.9 percent of his passes, with three touchdowns and two interceptions. ...

Through two games when Speight is passing in the middle of the field between the numbers, he has completed 76.4 percent of his passes for 396 yards. Outside the numbers on the left and right side of the field, when out of the pocket, Speight only has completed 10 percent of his passes for 6 yards.

The first paragraph above does help paint a picture of a guy who gets sped up and loses his mechanics; that latter bin is almost all last resort scramble drill stuff, I'd imagine. Also I see "10 percent" in a paragraph with "76.4 percent" and assume that's exactly ten throws. Still very limited data there.

Out. Donovan Jeter will miss the season with an injury. Jeter had bulked up to 290 and was pushing for time at three tech—3-3-5 nose 50% of the time now, I guess. That was the one spot on the front that could sustain a hit with Dwumfour and Marshall providing additional, non-true-freshman depth.

I guess it was the gunners after all. Harbaugh on the DPJ punt follies:

"We got some things fixed there," Harbaugh said. "It wasn't Donovan Peoples -- when we watched the film, these gunners got out too fast. And then they're making their block next to Donovan."

He didn't have an opportunity to field a couple of those punts because of his own teammates. The last one he had an opportunity on was very very bad and on him since there was no teammate in the area; in the stands we speculated that he'd lost it in the sun.

Harbaugh says DPJ will be back out there because he is not a "mistake repeater."

Another pronunciation note. I am bad at pronouncing things, but I can't be held responsible for "McCune" when it's not spelled like that. I am coping. Thank you for your cards and letters. Similarly, Tyree Kinnel:

"It's Kinn-ill," Kinnel said Monday night on the "Inside Michigan Football" radio show. "A lot of people say Ka-nell. It's been like that all of my life, so I'm used to it."

Life is a struggle, and never more so than when you're saying something out loud that you've mostly—or only—read before. Or trying to say Rod Gilmore's name more than once.

Etc.: The Power Rank on randomness. Harbaugh, decorous. Study Hall stat profiles up. Exit 2019 hockey commit Alec Regula to the OHL. He was a midround pick maybe, so not a disaster. Indiana's OL, on the other hand, is a disaster. Mason Cole on his decision to return. If you want some more fun OU-OSU numbers. Booing: for jerks. This isn't an NFL game, jerks!

Jim Delany is absolutely shameless and obviously published this during football season because I'm too busy to eviscerate this jackalope.

[Ed-S: NastyIsland=David Nasternak=our hockey beat guy and general doer of things.]

(Patrick Barron) It might look decently filled in, but the entire upper ring is tarped off

Did you watch any of the NCAA Hockey Tournament last weekend?  Maybe.  Probably not.  Did you attend one of the Regionals?  Hahaha.  Did anyone? [see above picture] This seems…less than ideal. College hockey is fun!  Local arenas and atmospheres are intense and intimidating.  Couldn’t this sport tap into this energy and utilize one of the main positives that differentiates collegiate athletics from professional sports?  I think so.

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WHO GOES? 16 NCAA hockey teams.

The number of teams should stay the same.  Does more than 25% of all of college hockey making the NCAA Tournament seem a little high?  Sure, but the numbers work well and one of the repeatedly mentioned goals is to increase the growth and visibility of the sport, in general. So, 16 it is.  Continue using the same selection method: Pairwise Rankings and Conference Tournament winners.  Avoid conference matchups in the First Round, obviously.

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WHY CHANGE? There are a few well-known issues with the current set-up:

Poor Attendance: A couple Regionals have better attendance than others.  Generally, those in the northeast tend to do better because the distance between schools and sites is not as far.  Sites with a participating host team also do a little better because there is a rooting interest.  However, the random Midwest Regional in an AHL/NHL arena is usually…sparse.  I have been to a few of these and it is not entertaining.

No Reward for Dominance: If a team has had a good season and managed to secure a #1 seed, there is no guarantee that their matchup or playoff site is to their advantage.  The committee will try to place higher seeds closer to home, but…sometimes, teams are sent to Minneapolis and get paired with Minnesota in the first/second round.  Or one of the schools from Boston.  That seems like punishment.  There have been countless debates about whether it’s better to be in a certain location or be a certain seed.  This should never happen!  Being a higher seed should always mean receiving a reward!

[Hit THE JUMP for David's elegant solution to the worst postseason in sports]