chally

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6 days 20 hours ago Old away jerseys

I'm pretty sure the "ram's horn" jersey referenced above is the 2010 away jerseys that were worn by some players because the 2011 fitted jerseys were too stretchy and tore too easily.  The "ram's horn" is the ugly yellow side-panels/piping.
1 week 2 days ago Math?

If I'm doing the math correctly, the Under bet would require a 65% or greater chance of Michigan winning fewer than 10 games.  Although I would take the Under straight up, I'm not sure that a 9-or-fewer win season is twice as likely as a 10-win season.
3 weeks 1 day ago Because many people, myself

Because many people, myself included, believe that the eighth best team at the end of the regular season does not deserve a chance to be crowned the champion. 
6 weeks 1 day ago Yeah

Yeah, he's probably thinking of Canadian cyclist Clara Hughes rather than US figure skater and Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes.
14 weeks 18 hours ago I agree.

Keep in mind, however, that when kids talk about academics, its not always a matter of higher-ranked institutions being strictly better.  For a lot of kids looking at colleges, "academics" includes adademic support pograms, choice of major, and degree requirements, and career counseling. 

For example, Harvard providesa great education.  But if it is unrealistic for the average football player to complete the degree he wants in the major he wants within the four years that he intends to be there, it may be a worse academic choice than a school like Wisconsin or Washington. 

(Sorry for the lengthy tangent, but I see too many comments along the lines of "If he really cared about academics, he wouldn't be looking at school X.")
17 weeks 5 days ago I'm sure we'd all take a B1G

I'm sure we'd all take a B1G championship over not getting one. That's an easy choice.

Perhaps the question should be posed as: Would you rather have a Sweet 16 team that won the B1G championship or a Final Four team that didn't?

Although it's tough, I would probably rather Michigan makes the Final Four. That means that, to me, B1G titles don't really matter. (Note that I would take a B1G championship team that lost in the second round of the tourney over a non-championship team that only made the Sweet 16.)
17 weeks 6 days ago Justin Fargas?

Justin Fargas?
18 weeks 5 days ago I can appreciate the difference in viewpoint,

and I get where you are coming from, though it still seems odd to me to say "We are choosing a champion based on which team is able to beat a set of elite teams, but we are going to potentially exclude the team(s) with the best odds of beating that a set of elite teams by imposing an arbitrary requirement."

I guess part of it comes down to what you see as the purpose of a playoff.  If you think that a playoff is the most accurate way of determining the "best" team (by forcing them to play the other legitimate contenders), it seems that you should want all the teams that could reasonably prove to be the best (I disagree that Michigan would fall into that category this year, btw).  If, however, you don't think that a playoff is about determining a "best" team, but rather about finding a method of choosing among teams with the best resumes, I'm not sure why we would bother with a playoff at all (as opposed to, say, reverting to just voting for a national champion).
18 weeks 5 days ago Really interesting post

"So in 1998 we're looking to see if we can argue that anyone else can claim they should have finished #2 instead of FSU."

I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment, though.  Shouldn't the standard be, "We are looking to see if there are any other teams who have a legitimate chance to win every playoff game?"

If the point of a playoff is to crown the one team that beats all the other teams they face, then the field should consist of all teams that have a realistic shot of winning the championship.  By this metric, Kansas State needed to be in the playoff in 1998.  They had one loss -- to a Top 15 team in triple overtime.  Short of Tennessee, they had the best case for thinking that they were capable of beating any team on any field any day.

Your question seems to be, "How many teams have a fair complaint that they got screwed by the BCS?" not "How many teams should have been in a playoff?"
19 weeks 15 hours ago "When was the last time the

"When was the last time the #5 team in the country, had a real arguement, that they should be in the  National Championship game? "

We haven't had that argument because we've always had a two-team playoff.  But look just at this year.  A four-team playoff would have been LSU, Alabama, OKlahoma State and . . . who?

You say Stanford, but what makes them more "deserving" than Oregon?  I would think that Oregon has a better chance to win a four-team playoff that Stanford.  Why not Boise State?  They've proven that they can hang with anyone in big games.

Even if we expanded to an 8-team tourney, the first year that a 3-loss 8-seed wins it all, the 9th and 10th best teams will have an argument that they could have done the same.  And I doubt it will take long for that to happen.

In 6 of the last 15 years, the college basketball champion has not been one of the four best teams at the end of the season.  And in 4 of those 6 years, the champion has not even been one of the eight best teams at the end of the season.  More that 26% of the time, the champion has come from teams ranked 9th or worse.
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