I Blue Myself

History

Member for

4 years 50 weeks

Blog

View recent blog entries

Karma

Current value

2

Recent Comments

Date	Title	Body
2 weeks 2 days ago	Thanks.  So, here's how the	Thanks.  So, here's how the numbers work out from Rivals: Ohio OSU: 11 Michigan: 1 Other Big Ten: 4 SEC: 0 Elsewhere: 9 Illinois Michigan: 2 OSU: 0 Other Big Ten: 16 Elsewhere: 7 This looks like a difference in the Ohio ratings compared with Scout, less so for Illinois.  Still, small sample sizes.   Someone should do a diary tracking the patterns over time, to see if there's really a trend. *touches finger to nose*
2 weeks 2 days ago	Context	This post would be more informative if it had historical context.  So here are some quick comparisons with the 2004 class in Scout's database (I used Scout because I couldn't figure out how to find the top players within a state that long ago for Rivals.) Ohio OSU: 10 (including 7 of the top 8) Michigan: 1 Other Big 10: 8 (mostly MSU, PSU) SEC: 1 (Kentucky) Other: 5 Illinois Michigan: 2 OSU: 0 Other Big 10: 17 SEC: 0 Other: 6 In both cases, about half the defections to non B1G schools were at the bottom of the rankings, and those players may not have been heavily recruited by the Big Ten.  This is still a small sample size, but it looks like a pretty sizable shift in 10 years.
15 weeks 2 days ago	credit for the photo	I saw the photo in a tweet from Melanie Maxwell.  On her Instagram account, she says she took the picture. http://instagram.com/p/WazWdahHij/ This one, from a half second before, is also pretty epic: http://instagram.com/p/WaxtUMBHgW/
23 weeks 6 hours ago	That might also explain that	That might also explain that tornado in Tuscaloosa a couple of years ago.
30 weeks 1 day ago	I sent the link	It just proves I understand Brian's taste in emo music.  I thought it was appropriate on a day when New York, or at least Rutgers, which is practically in New York, is in fact bringing him down.  (I'm probably trying too hard on that last point.) Or Brian just didn't feel like finding a second song for the podcast.
50 weeks 5 days ago	Sure	That's true, but my point was not so much that it definitely would have happened that way last year, but rather that it could have.  Given the strength of the SEC in recent years, it seems totally possible that the committee would consider the relevant factors and choose 3 or 4 SEC teams and only one Big Ten team. The ACC and Pac 12 have relatively little to lose by this, since they would very rarely get a team ranked outside the top 12 to qualify anyway.  The Big Ten and maybe to a lesser extent the Big 12 are the big losers if they no longer have parity with the SEC in major bowls.  I also have to wonder how this will impact the way the cash will be divided up.
50 weeks 5 days ago	Selection Committee	"The top twelve get in, no exceptions" Is this really true? Last year, if the selection committee had ended up with the same rankings as the BCS, there would have been four SEC teams in the major bowls, but only one Big Ten team (Wisconsin). See the pre-bowl rankings here: http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs Would Delany really agree to that? The only support in the article is a link to a couple of tweets saying it's theoretically possible to have the top 12 teams make it. Without more solid confirmation, you have to consider the possibility of some limits on number of teams per conference.
51 weeks 6 days ago	Would the Maryland coach be interested?	Do we have a realistic shot at the Maryland coach?  The Big Ten is at a severe disadvantage in baseball due to weather, while the ACC is a power conference.  If I were a young coach with ambitions to win at a national level, I think I'd prefer to stay at Maryland. Is Brandon just going to throw a pile of money at him and hope he wants to be a big fish in a small pond, or is there more to it than that?
1 year 1 week ago	OSU Should Be Able to Get More	Ohio State should be able to make more money from ticket sales.  Ohio is a larger state than Michigan, and OSU has no major football program in-state to compete with (sorry Cincinnati).  Imagine if MSU had never existed.  Michigan would have a lot more fans (and a fan base more similar to OSU's), and tickets would be a lot harder to come by. Not surprisingly, then, it's much more expensive to get OSU season tickets than Michigan.  Unless you're a varsity letter winner or have been buying tickets since the 1980s, the only way you get OSU season tickets is with a minimum $1,500 annual donation.  Every single year.  I'm not a Michigan season ticket holder, but it looks like the equivalent minimum donation for Michigan is $50 per year. Of course there are a lot of other variables to take into account: number of season tickets vs. individual game tickets sold, revenue from suites, etc., and I don't know how all the numbers add up.  But if Brian's numbers are correct and Michigan is anywhere close to OSU on ticket sales, I'd be very impressed.  I also think Michigan will reach its maximum possible ticket revenue a lot sooner than OSU would, and Dave Brandon should not expect he can massively raise prices and still sell out.
1 year 3 weeks ago	SEC Following Tradition	The SEC's new scheduling plan is actually about restoring a proud Southern tradition of not playing conference opponents for decades at a time: For example, Auburn played LSU eight times in 50 years between 1942 and 1992, including not playing at all between 1943 and 1968.  http://football.stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/opp-opp.pl?start=1869&end=2011&team1=Louisiana+State&team2=Auburn Similarly, Alabama played Kentucky six times between 1947 and 1995, including not playing at all for 25 years between 1947 and 1972.  http://football.stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/opp-opp.pl?start=1869&end=2011&team1=Kentucky&team2=Alabama (By comparison, Michigan played UCLA nine times during that same time period.  http://football.stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/opp-opp.pl?start=1869&end=2011&team1=Michigan&team2=UCLA)
1 year 7 weeks ago	One point I don't get	Brian says, "bowls are institutionalized stealing from unpaid student athletes." I don't get this.  Players in bowl games get $500 Best Buy spending sprees, free tickets for their families, trips to Disneyland, etc.  They don't get those kinds of benefits from regular season games, and if the semifinal rounds were played at home sites, they might not get the same kinds of benefits. Of course, all those benefits for players have to come from somewhere, and for bowls, a lot of the money comes from gouging athletic departments.  But if you shut down the bowl system and put the money back in the athletic departments' pockets, I don't see how the players would benefit.  They're already getting the maximum scholarship packages allowable, fabulous practice facilities, etc.  It seems to me the bowl system works to the benefit of the bowls and players at the expense of the athletic departments. Unless by "institutionalized stealing" you mean players aren't being paid, in which case that's what makes me a little bit queasy about being a college football fan in general.  The bowl system isn't any worse in that regard than any fall Saturday in Ann Arbor.
1 year 22 weeks ago	Second Half is Better	I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't read the whole thing.  Yes, the first part of the article is somewhat off-base, but that's the kind of thing that happens when an outside writer who doesn't have in-depth knowledge of Michigan writes something like this. The write-up of the game itself is really well-done and goes in much more depth than a typical post-game write up.  There's a whole discussion of the scout team's preparation for Northwestern that I don't think I'd read about anywhere else.  And it somehow makes Zack Novak look even better than I thought he was.
1 year 27 weeks ago	Heiko's Questions	When the questions were preceded by "MGoSomething," (e.g. MGoCueTheTrumpet, MGoLowerTheFlag) does that mean Heiko was asking them?  I hadn't noticed that or seen it explained before.  If so, it's a very good idea.  It's interesting to see where and how Heiko's pumping them for information.
1 year 34 weeks ago	I think we agree on the main question:	The question for the Big East is whether they significantly improve their chances of keeping a BCS autobid by becoming part of a 28-32 team monster.  The difference is that you think the answer to that question is yes. I'm not so sure.  I think Boise would be willing to fly its football team to Brazil every week if it meant being in an AQ conference.  In a 12-team Big East that included Air Force and a couple of Texas schools, they wouldn't have to fly all that far every week anyway.  Remember, this would be just for football.  They could put the non-revenue teams in the Big Sky conference if they wanted.  Beyond that, if you cherry-pick the best 5 or 6 remaining teams in MWC and C-USA, you get most of the (fairly limited) quality that remains. Or, another way to think about it: what's the practical difference between being in a 32-team superconference and being in a non-AQ conference?  The money would be split so many ways that you wouldn't get much of a bump.  Right now, the best non-AQ team gets to a BCS bowl basically every year.  In the 32-team superconference, which would encompass basically all the decent mid-major teams, the best team would still get to a BCS bowl game.  If I'm the Big East, I don't merge unless I think there's virtually no chance of keeping my autobid.
1 year 34 weeks ago	I agree, but	I agree that this would be a good outcome from a competitive standpoint, but why would the Big East agree to it?  They could just as easily steal the five or six best remaining teams from C-USA and MWC and keep their automatic BCS bid.  If they add Navy, Air Force, Boise, Houston, and SMU, as they're already planning, I think they get most of the benefits available from the remaining mid-major teams, but they get to split the pie a lot fewer ways.  Also, they'd need to get approval from the NCAA to have a four-team playoff at the end.  The only way I can see this happening is if the other conferences make it very clear to the Big East that this is the only way of keeping their auto-bid.  It would be like the credits to Gilligan's Island: they would be the ". . . and the rest" conference.  There are some advantages for the major conferences and bowls to arrange things this way, because they could claim everyone is now in an AQ conference, and stave off antitrust concerns.  But I don't really think the major conferences care enough to interfere this way.
1 year 35 weeks ago	It felt like I was listening	It felt like I was listening to a secret bonus track or something.  I thought you guys added some interesting points in that section, and I think there could be some really entertaining whining coming out of Madison if they get passed over in favor of a one-loss LSU team.  It did feel like you were about to launch into some kind of embarrassing discussion.  Try to work that in next time: maybe one of you can start up a subplot about a mysterious rash that you can't get rid of.  It doesn't have to be true, just try to make it exciting and develop the story throughout the season. Also, I'd like to chime in on the difficulty of getting these on my phone.  Does anyone know of a way to subscribe to the podcasts on an Android phone?  I use the Google Listen app, and while I can subscribe to the feed, none of the podcasts ever get synced there.  It's not the worst thing because I can just download the podcasts manually, but it would be nice if they just automatically showed up on my phone.
1 year 36 weeks ago	Copied from the Original	It looks to me like the numbers on the helmets now are the same (or very similar) font as they used in the 1950s and 60s on the helmets, and they didn't match the numbers then either. I think you're right that the colors don't match, but remember, it was meant to be a one-time thing, and they might not have had the time to get it perfect.  If they bring it back next year, I would bet it will be better. http://bentley.umich.edu/athdept/football/uniform/uniforms3.htm
1 year 37 weeks ago	How would this work politically?	The SEC would clearly be in favor.  Probably the Big Ten also, because they'd be more likely to gain an extra team than to lose one.  But even the Big Ten might be skeptical because they'd get a third team in less often than the SEC would, and the perceived gap between the two conferences would grow. But every other conference should be opposed, because their chances of getting a second team in would drop.  The non-AQ conferences would scream about it, because there'd be almost no chance they get a second team into the BCS, as happened recently with Boise and TCU.  Of course, the bowls themselves would be in favor, because they'd have more chances to pick schools like LSU or Penn State instead of Stanford or TCU as an at-large team.  ESPN would also like it because of better TV ratings.  Is that enough momentum to overcome strong opposition from the other conferences?
1 year 38 weeks ago	More thoughts	I'd say Florida vs. Florida State is a better example of battle of equals than Florida State-Miami.  Probably also Clemson vs. South Carolina. For a pure big brother-little brother rivalry, you need three characteristics you mention: (1.) little brother to be inferior academically, (2.) athletically, and (3.) have the big brother not view the little brother as their primary rival.  So they're insulted on every level.  So Michigan vs. MSU, Oklahoma vs. OSU, and Texas vs. A&M are the best examples.  (You listed Texas vs. Texas Tech, but I think Tech is too minor of a rival to qualify.  It's like Illinois viewing Michigan as a rival.)  You could also throw in WVU vs. Marshall, possibly Colorado vs. Colorado State. If you lose even one of those characteristics, it loses some of the big brother-little brother flavor.  So Oregon State may not be as good as Oregon in most ways, but there's no question they're each other's biggest rival.  It's the same dynamic as Alabama vs. Auburn, where Auburn definitely has an inferiority complex, but it's not nearly as degrading for Auburn as Michigan State's rivalry is with Michigan. When there's roughly a competitive balance, as in the Mississippi or Arizona schools, I think that also ruins any big-little relationship.  Even more when the academically inferior school is historically better athletically, as with Clemson vs. South Carolina, where I think Clemson is technically the "little brother" land grant school.  Also, sadly, with Michigan and MSU in basketball over the past 15 years. A couple of rivalries that don't quite fit your model: UCLA vs. USC: You list this as public vs. private, but it has a very different feel than Northwestern vs. Illinois or Vandy vs. Tennessee.  This is partly because UCLA, the public school, is historically superior to USC (the "University of Second Choice"), though they've closed that gap recently.  If anything, I'd put this as a battle of equals. Georgia vs. Georgia Tech: Even though Tech is a public school, this feels more like a public vs. private contest, where each school has its own strengths and they're not really competing with each other in most ways.  Georgia Tech doesn't care nearly as much about football, and Georgia really cares more about beating Florida, and just wants to avoid embarrassing themselves by losing to Tech.
1 year 49 weeks ago	Apparently, the	Apparently, the superconference teams disagree with you, and feel threatened enough to try to band together to form a superconference that will drive up their own travel expenses and do away with conference rivalries that have existed for decades.  The threat the Big Ten presents is not about how good those teams are right now, but rather the resources and potential they have.  Minnesota and MSU are traditional powerhouses, just like Michigan in football.  They'll be back.  More importantly, the Big Ten will have all brand-name schools and will have a very large percentage of its games nationally televised on BTN.  It will be perceived instantly as a major power, whereas the remnants of the CCHA will look a lot like the MAC.  Penn State may be no better than Bowling Green at actually playing hockey, but it's much more attractive to play in a league with Penn State. In that situation, I can completely understand why Miami and Notre Dame would feel threatened and want to jump to a league made of mostly WCHA powers.  They still won't be on even footing with the Big Ten in a lot of ways, but the excellence of that conference on the ice will make up a lot of the difference. Yes, it's bad for college hockey as a whole for these teams to move, but I can understand why from a competitive standpoint they would want to, and might feel compelled to.
1 year 49 weeks ago	That's true, but I think	That's true, but I think you're kidding yourself if you don't see a connection between the two.  Schools like Miami and Notre Dame are feeling pressure to form a superconference because they see the Big Ten coming into existence, and they don't want to be left behind.  Without the Big Ten schools, the CCHA starts to look like a mid-major, and I don't blame the two power programs left for wanting to improve their status.  Part of the desire to move up may be because of ego, but those schools are likely to face a recruiting disadvantage against Big Ten schools if they stay where they are.
1 year 49 weeks ago	If I were Bowling Green's AD . . .	. . . and I was already seriously concerned about the long-term viability of my hockey program, I think I might shut it down rather than join that conference.   Of all those teams, only Ferris is within reasonable driving distance.  Maybe LSSU.  You'd have to fly to every other road game.  And none of those schools are big draws for home games.  You'd be taking a big hit just to keep competing in a sport that most people in Ohio don't care about and that hurts you for Title IX compliance.
1 year 51 weeks ago	This will always be a problem . . .	As long as there's a limit to the number of scholarship players you can have on a team, this will always be a problem.  Maybe Tressel was being honest that the kid would never play at OSU, but because of the 85-player limit, he had an incentive to encourage him to leave. The solution is to give every team a fixed number of scholarships per year -- probably somewhere in the range of 20-24 -- but not have a maximum number of scholarship players you could have on the team at any given time.  If that system were in place, coaches wouldn't have a conflict of interest.  If they thought a player wasn't going to play, they could be honest about it without having a reason to try to kick underperforming players off the team.
1 year 51 weeks ago	This Saturday, 9:00 p.m.	This Saturday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern, at the Rose Bowl.
2 years 5 days ago	Agreed.	I have a bad feeling about that one.  Fortunately, they play Penn State the week before, which may attract some fans who would otherwise go to the Michigan game.  But I'm afraid a lot of Husker fans will be circling Michigan as the big road game to go to in their first season in the Big Ten.  And I don't think we'll be able to keep them out, just like Notre Dame couldn't when they played Nebraska a few years ago. Hopefully OSU fans will be down this year because of the meteor currently landing on their program, and they won't show up in as large numbers as they have been lately.  The only thing worse than a sea of red is two in a row.
2 years 3 weeks ago	Not that it's going to happen, . . .	I don't believe the NCAA will actually impose the death penalty on OSU, but just one more point of comparison, other than SMU:   Morehouse College soccer In 2000, Morehouse's part-time soccer coach, Augustine Konneh, signed two Nigerian-born players to play for the Maroon Tigers even though they'd played professionally for the Atlanta Ruckus of the A-League two years earlier. Konneh had lobbied to get soccer elevated from intramural to varsity status in 1998. They also played a few games before they actually enrolled at the school. Even though the school's then-athletic director got word that the two players might have been ineligible, they were allowed to play in 2001 as well. Although Konneh was replaced as coach in 2001, numerous other violations—including a player being allowed to compete without proper paperwork—led Morehouse to cancel the 2003 season. In November 2003, the NCAA barred Morehouse from fielding a soccer team again until 2006. It also slapped Morehouse with five years' probation—tied for the longest probation ever. USA Today called it the harshest penalty ever handed down to a collegiate program. The NCAA came down particularly hard on Morehouse due to a lack of institutional control; for a time the athletic department didn't know the soccer program even existed. While this was Morehouse's first major infractions case ever, the NCAA felt compelled to impose the death penalty due to what it called "a complete failure" to keep the program in compliance.[11] Soccer at Morehouse has since reverted to intramural status; school officials had planned to shutter varsity soccer for an indefinite period even before the NCAA acted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty_(NCAA) It's not really that far off of some of the rumors about what's been happening at OSU.  The biggest difference is that I don't think I've heard anyone claim that the OSU athletic director knew what was going on.  But who knows what will come out next?
2 years 3 weeks ago	Great write up, thanks	This was very helpful for someone like me who occasionally watches some lacrosse but really has no idea how things work. Doesn't the NCAA try to restrict the number of teams that make the tournament to about 25% of the overall number of teams in that sport?  I couldn't find documentation for that online, but I remember some talk about that with respect to the size of the hockey tournament.  If so, that could be an impediment to expanding the lacrosse field to 20.
2 years 7 weeks ago	Non-BCS conferences	"I'm guessing that non-BCS number suggest that Rivals' drilldown rankings (e.g., three stars being rated 5.5, 5.6, or 5.7) have some merit." I don't understand the point you're trying to make here.  It seems to me that the poor performance of non-BCS conferences shows the weaknesses of the star system.  You have a certain number of players that Rivals ranks reasonably highly, but they end up in non-BCS conferences.  There will be some players who go to a smaller school because of genuine preference, but I bet most of them end up there because better schools didn't want them.  According to this table, these players end up going to the draft much less than similar players who go to BCS schools. I see three potential causes of this: 1. The non-BCS players don't get as good coaching or experience against better players, so they don't develop as well. 2. The non-BCS players don't get exposure and end up underrated by pro scouts. 3. The non-BCS players just weren't as good. There's probably some combination of factors at work, and there's no way to know for sure, but I would guess that factor #3 accounts for a lot of it.   I'm not trying to deny that star ratings matter, but coaches are probably in general better evaluators of talent than Scout or Rivals.  A three-star that gets recruited by Iowa or Arizona St. is probably better than a similar three-star that ends up playing at Northern Illinois or New Mexico St.
2 years 11 weeks ago	There's always room for one more
2 years 13 weeks ago	The actual statistics . . .	By my count, in the last 20 tournaments (beginning with 1991), the Big Ten has had 7 teams in the final four, with 15 total appearances and one national championship (marked with asterisk): Michigan: 1992, 1993 Indiana, 1992, 2002 Minnesota: 1997 (I had completely forgotten they got there, if I ever knew it) MSU: 1999, 2000*, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010 (credit where credit is due) OSU: 1999, 2007 Wisconsin: 2000 Illinois: 2005 Purdue and Iowa both made their most recent Final Four appearance in 1980.  Penn State 1954, Northwestern never, of course. Also, to be fair, both Michigan and Minnesota later had their appearances vacated. The Big East has had 6 of its current members join the conference, but only four while they were members of the Big East, with 9 total appearances and 3 national championships. Syracuse: 1996, 2003* UConn: 1999*, 2004*, 2009 Marquette: 2003 (prior to joining conference) Louisville: 2005 (prior to joining conference) Georgetown: 2007 Villanova: 2009 I think I'd give the Big East credit for all six, because the comparison is about the current depth of the conference, measured by the current members' recent success.  If you want to say they only have four, you could also say the Big Ten only has five because Minnesota and Michigan had to vacate appearances. Even if you give the Big East full credit, they still have only 6 out of 16 teams, and 9 appearances, while the Big Ten has 7 of 11 teams, and 15 appearances.  Of course, the Big East gets the nod with 3 championships by two different teams. Apparently, I need to get out more.

more