sea harpies from the fifth dimension

It's so crazy it might work

And now for something completely different: I'm on record that the idea of a 14-team Big Ten is basically insane. But if, hypothetically, this occurs, this is a completely insane way of tackling the insane topic of a 14-team college football conference that's so crazy it might work.

The Big Ten implements a limited promotion/relegation structure that sees full-round robins within each group and significant interaction between groups. They add a ninth conference game.

Bo/Woody Group

Top five teams.

Play: each other (4), three in group two (3), two in group three (2).

Tiller/Mason Group

Middle four teams.

Play: each other (3), three in group one (3), three in group three(3).

Williams/Dinardo Group

Bottom five teams.

Play: each other (4), three in group two (3), two in group one(2).

At year's end, the following things happen:

1) the bottom team in group one and the top team in group two swap groups.
2) ditto for groups two and three.
3) the second-to-last team and second-place team in each group plays a playoff game to see whether they stay in their group or switch.
4) The top two teams play a championship game. One team is always the winner of group one. The other team could be the second place team in group one or a really good group two or three winner: any undefeated (in conference) group two/three winner gets an auto-bid to the championship game. If there are two, group two gets priority. If the second-place Group 1 team has the same record as a group two or three team and the lower team has a H2H win, they get the bid. There would probably be some complicated formula that would allow lower division teams into the game if they outperformed the group one teams sufficiently.

Why do this?

It would be pretty intense, right? Every team in the middle group would be clawing to advance or descend. Everyone in the top group would be clawing for the conference title or to avoid getting relegated. The teams at the bottom would be playing to advance and would have a better shot at bowl eligibility. Almost every game in the Big Ten would be critical. No one would be fighting for the Alamo Bowl, they'd be fighting for the right to compete for the conference championship.

Also, it creates a lot more quality matchups between top teams and minimizes face-beatings. All the good teams you want to see play will play. You can even protect a rivalry or two by guaranteeing that if rivals are in different groups they will play each other.

Bonus: It sidesteps the debate about whether to make Big X divisions geographically coherent or wildly unbalanced.

Why not do this?

College football teams can vary so wildly from year to year that the best team in the conference might not make the championship. Earlier this decade, Penn State went from two consecutive losing seasons that would have found them in the bottom group to an 11-1 Orange Bowl winning team.

It's really complicated.

The NCAA would have to sign off on not only a crazy championship game but two other championship-ish games, and they probably wouldn't. And it would blow everyone's minds.

The offer howitzer redux. A few weeks ago FL CB Travis Williams got offered, visited, committed, and was told "hey let's talk later, okay." This caused some consternation here about whether this was, you know, cool. Conclusion: eh… it makes me feel blucky and isn't that different from Matta flat yanking a scholarship from an already-committed kid.

Tim of Varsity Blue has taken up the issue again, providing a comprehensive explanation of the situation. Jim Stefani is interviewed and provides the crux of the matter:

“In a sense, many Michigan ‘offers’ are not really firm offers but more or less strong indications of interest by Michigan.  Take that for what you will, but it is how many schools are now approaching recruiting.  Look at the DB who wanted to verbal to U-M last week [Travis Williams] but was told to wait.” Florida, a school that uses a similar technique in throwing around a lot of offers, had a similar situation, and they had to tell a defensive back outright that the offer he had been given was not “committable.” It appears as though the main point of contention here, then, is what an offer really means.

Shouldn’t an offer, by definition, be “committable?” Isn’t that, after all, what an offer is?

(Tim's right about Florida: a couple years ago I started getting irritated at their recruiting because they had their own offer cannon. This turned a Florida offer from a indicator of talent to an indicator of limbs. It has not hurt Florida's recruiting.)

Yes, as commonly understood an "offer" is something you can "commit" against. An offer that is not committable is more like the suggestion you'll be offered in the future if 1) your grades are good, 2) commits X and Z go elsewhere, and 3) you don't run from cops. Or get caught by them. "Are chased by" cops. You get the idea. No making cops run.

So this may be semantics. Where Ohio State—notoriously stingy, at least in football—says "you do not have an offer, come to camp" Michigan and Florida and probably a bunch of offers say "you have a conditional offer. The conditions are come to camp and be better than anyone else we have a shot to get at any particular point in time"

The problem comes when either the recruit doesn't hear "conditional" or the condition is in a tiny elven font next to the big bold OFFER. Then you get guys who sign up and then must be gently dissuaded. I'm still not a fan because the whole thing seems like it goes beyond salesmanship into the realm of misunderstandings upon which romantic comedies and bad sitcoms are based. All this is discussed further in the post, which comes highly recommended.

One further tangent from me: Rich Rodriguez's itchy offer finger has suddenly burst into prominence after a full recruiting cycle in which it wasn't nearly as apparent. The obvious conclusion to leap to is that it's hard to recruit after going 3-9 and Rodriguez is making do as best he can in an effort to prevent the recruiting dropoff that usually happens a year after you faceplant. Hopefully, this is a one-year phenomenon, then.

Reshape the hammer, then drop it. It seemed like nothing was ever going to happen in ongoing Reggie Bush investigation. Then it got combined with the OJ Mayo investigation and Robert Guillory is telling the feds about direct cash payments from Tim Floyd and people actually think there's a hammer that's going to fall:

The attorney for Louis Johnson, main source for the latest charges against Mayo, said Wednesday he thinks the NCAA "wants to do something before football season," and that "something" will include sanctions. Meanwhile, Charles Robinson, one of the two Yahoo! reporters (with Jason Cole) driving the vast majority of actual reporting in both cases from the beginning, said in an interview with the Orange County Register Tuesday that the NCAA has been extremely active -- and meticulously silent -- in gathering information, and guesses the hammer may fall before the end of the year.

…and I kind of do, too. So let' make a proactive complaint about the penalties: they're not stiff enough, and they're definitely not long-term enough. Given the widespread allegations, smoking gun photos of agents on the sideline, and federal involvement there has to be enough evidence for a lack of institutional control allegation. If that comes down, what's the penalty? Some probation? A year, even two of postseason bans? A couple scholarships gone for a few years? What's the long term here?

The NCAA should ratchet up its scholarship sanctions so they represent a long-term impact on the program. If USC gets hammered for all this, they should still be digging out in ten years. That's how long the scholarship sanctions should go: heavy at first and gradually dwindling. Viciously funny idea that wont happen: both programs lose a scholarship permanently and have to list Mayo and Bush on the roster in perpetuity.

More kickering. Add another walk-on to the fall kicker derby:

Pike High School senior kicker/punter Kristopher Pauloski has committed to Michigan as a preferred walk-on for next season, Pike coach Derek Moyers said.

Pauloski was named to The Indianapolis Star Super Team last fall as a punter with a 37.9-yard average. He also had 31 touchbacks on kickoffs.

Though the article focuses on his punting, Pauloski is being looked at primarily as a kicker. Stats from a message board post that appears to be from his coach:

Kristopher Pauloski 6-3, 185 Sr Pike HS
PATs: 39/40
FGs: 5/7 long of 39
KOs: 31/46 for Touchbacks (63 yard KO avg.)
I didn't count the times we had him squib kick or onside kicks.
He is being recruited by MAC schools as well as Northwestern.

This concludes available information.

2X. Congratulations to the club lacrosse team, which stormed back from an 8-3 deficit to claim its second consecutive national title:

Softball won its regional and should host a super-regional this weekend; sorry to anyone who took my weather predictions seriously and ended up swimming home on Friday night; I blame Accuweather.

Blue people are like this, green people are like this. So Black Shoe Diaries posted this video. It's the MSU-UNC national championship game; State is in the process of getting its face crushed and a North Carolina fan asks a State fan in front of her to sit to he can see. She starts off crazy but really gets in a groove around 1:40:

Good lord. She's never been to Michigan Stadium. I can tell because she is not dead or in jail, which—given the fondness of blue-haired Michigan fans for "down in front"—she definitely would be if she'd been to Ann Arbor.