This is absolutely excellent. I do think the point about how the NCAA is just a useful shield is accurate. The problem is the people in charge, and they're mostly our ADs.
I also think that fans are impossible to please for athletic administrators in general. Are any of the professional commissioners popular? Who is the last AD Michigan fans liked? Pretty much all of us dont think highly of the last 3 Big Ten commissioners. I mean...they cant ALL be bad, right? Maybe the problem is us?
It's crazy that I dont even out the PSU wins up there but youre right - theyve become underrated in hind sight. The Erick All TD was destined to be the biggest okay of the season until the boys shocked us all and beat Ohio. The '22 PBJ game was hyped, and then we snuffed them out and announced our arrival into the top 5. The '23 game had the signs drama, and ended with Moore declaring his love for his coach and this university.
Before 2021, we were peers with PSU, except theyd managed to get to Indy and win it once. From '21 onwards, they were firmly in 3rd place in the league, and yet that series is an aftethought because we'd soared to heights they cant really remember, and even OSU has only distant memories of now.
The Rose Bowl may actually be the biggest M win of all time.
'21 Game changed the narrative around the program, '22 solidified it, and '23 was probably the biggest version of The Game ever - altho it's hype going in was different than its imoortance jn hindsight, where its importance was elevated by M winning the natty. So '21 and '23 are great candidates
But beating Nick Saban's Alabama in the Rose Bowl, our first out-of-conference top 5 win since 1950, and paving the way for our second ever undisputed natty? Thats it
Long but good. Thinking and googling about it, 240 is the second highly composite number that is divisible by 16, 2^4, so it has an advantage over other highly composite numbers (the first is 48, which is way too small). Id have preferred 144 but 240 is an excellent choice
If we played 17 games to determine the Big Ten champ, then I'd agree with them. And be worried about player safety, but seriously not the way ADs and Conference Commissioners claim to be.
I hope you don't mind me responding to your responses, but I think all 3 of these are worth talking about
1) The death of the Big East was a big deal and thought of as such at the time. The little brothers of the conference were left in a limbo for 10 years until the final denouement. It ended up that all the schools from the '90s found P5 landing spots, except for Temple who'd been kicked out. The '00s Big East added 4 schools, with L'Ville ending up in the ACC and the other 3 left outside the power structure for FB for the next 10 years. It ended up mostly ok for everyone from the '90s, except that nascent rivalries were shoved aside or ignored (most notably the Backyard Brawl). It's hard to say how much NE CFB is ignored because the Big East is gone and it's schools scattered to other regional conferences and how much it's ignored because they've all been poor on the field. But I don't want to underrate this.
But the Pac12 was a bigger deal. True, Miami leaving the Big East was as big a deal as USC leaving the Pac12. But the remaining schools - ASU, CU, UW, and even Stanford and Cal all had proud football histories. UW and CU had won national titles in the early '90s, ASU came minutes away from doing it in 1996, Stanford had recently been a regular feature in the top 5. And Oregon is a touchstone of the sport, one of the most consistent top10 programs over the last 20 years. The Big East basically formed in 1990 from a bunch of independents wanting to make a TV deal together. The Pac12 had its roots with the 6 northwestern schools forming a league before the end of WW!, and the SoCal schools banding with them before the Great Depression. You are right to feel this one was different
2) For me, personally, the Big Ten conference died in 2014. The B1G era saw the East and West as nearly different leagues with different identities and prestige. At first I was sad that we weren't in regular competition with the western schools. Then I got used to it. Then the conference raided the Pac12 and shortly after tried to sabotage our season, so i really stopped caring for and rooting for the conference as a whole. The Big Ten is behind the trends I find most distasteful in college sports, so I bear it some ill will. It's identity is no longer Midwestern colleges that banded together for culture and geography. It's Tony Pettiti.
Maybe that will change, time heals wounds, the institutions do have a lot of commonalities despite geographic distances - but 1/3 of the conference is now definitively not Midwestern . Our standings will involved teams we haven't played and have few common opponents with. And I still bear some enmity for the way the league handled sign-stealing. But in my mind we didn't just kill the Pac12, the Big Ten also has lost its way.
3) it does suck, a lot. Not just for them, but for all of us that love this sport. I don't mind the big guys getting more money for bringing more eyeballs. But college sports without the smaller cinderella programs is less fun. Small college towns in out of the way places make this game more fun.
This was a great post of the feelings swirling around this. A couple thoughts
1) the pac12's demise hits different than the big east, because the big east was an amalgamation from the start, held together by Miami. Also, weirdly, most of the big east ended up in the ACC. Poor damn WVU. Lucky damn Rutgers. Temple had already been kicked out.
2a) Also, the Pac12's end is the end of regionalism in CFB, as you mention
2b) but it's also the end of the big ten as a Midwestern league. Maybe that already happened with Rutgers and Maryland. But it is complete now
3) I hate the super 2 era, I hate the idea of college sports being NFL lite. But nationalized conferences for a nationalized game doesn't have to be bad. As you touch on, the special thing about college basketball and football is that there are true Cinderellas who shock us. The nationalized conferences are scary and different, but the true killer here is shutting out the Wazzus and continuing to shut out Boise State and trying to prevent the next Miami or even Gonzaga on the CBB side. The problem isn't national conferences, it's the SEC and Big Ten closing the door to everyone else.
They made some poor business decisions, but it's crazy that basically one unfortunate ten year run basically doomed the conference. In 2013, most of us figured there would be 3-4 conferences, and the Pac12 would be the Pac16. Even in 2023, the Pac12-2 had the bigger brands than the latest Big12, the bigger markets, and programs with more historic success.
Yes it was mismanagement that led the west coast to become an outpost for Eastern conferences. But it wasn't decades of mismanagement - it was a ten year period, and then dramatically at the end a few key programs decided it was better to be part of the Eastern conferences than mainstays in a western one.
I guess the one NFL decision I wish they'd changed was to keep the Dolphins in the AFC East instead of the Colts. I think the AFC South feels very hodge-podge, with the two closest teams being the Colts and the Titans. I know the Dolphins had "historic" rivalries with the Jets, but I think Fins-Jags could've been a great North Florida-South Florida rivalry, and the Colts wouldn't have felt out of place in the AFC East - whereas everyone feels out of place in the AFC South.
Maybe also flip the Bucs to the AFC with the Titans - making the NFC South very Atlanta-specific. Then Houston absolutely looks like the odd-man out of the AFC South tho, sorta like WVU in the Big 12 the last decade. So i'm less into that one. And the NOLA-Atlanta rivalry is real. Maybe flip the Panthers and Texans? So the Panthers-Titans become a "new south" rivalry? I dunno. NFC South is great, AFC south is so hodgepodge. Feels wrong to take anybody out of the NFC South and somehow everyone in the AFC South feels like the castoffs thrown into a stew. Dolphins for Colts could've given the AFC South more of an identity, maybe?
that's interesting - I actually think they have the most utility in the NFL, because of the way the schedule, even at 18, disallows you from playing everyone.
you make a good point - that familiarity breeds contempt, and playoff chases/pennant races make rivalries happen. But to counter, most soccer leagues have an everyone-plays-everyone setup, but still have fierce rivalries, right? (i'm not a real big soccer fan so I may have the details misunderstood)
to flesh this out slightly - the NBA season is currently ~25 weeks long, with its teams playing slightly less than a game every other day. NHL is ~27 weeks long, and they play a game about every 2.3 days - so in a week you'd still expect 3-4 games for both. Slightly more often, 4 games in bball, 3 in hockey.
If you did home-and-home in basketball with everyone, that's 58 games. the remaining 24 games, you could do either simply do 6 games against the rest of your division (3 home 3 away against each), or cut that number to 2 or 4 and fill the rest up with the in-season tourney. Maybe on Thursday-to-Sunday, you'd play the "league" games, and Monday-to-Wednesday you'd play the division/tourney games. Or you focus the division games before Christmas and it could be tied to the in-season tourney, or delay the in-season tourney's championship to the All-Star break and still tie it to the division. A similar setup would work for the NHL.
In baseball, you could do a similar thing but I don't think fans crave more single elimination baseball in the dog days of summer. I think instead you could split the season in two - one focused on the division, and then one take all the pennant winners to play for another pennant, where everyone else plays to get into the postseason. The 30 teams would have to be split into divisions of 6, or expansion would have to happen, so that's a more fundamental change. But I kinda hate watching a 100+ game winner lose in October and be called choke artists while a team barely over .500 gets to play in the WS because somehow baseball in cold October nights matters "more" than the 162 games played in nice weather. Playoff baseball is exciting, but it doesn't matter more.
My gripe is a little different but generally the same conclusion - I think in basketball, baseball and hockey, we've had 30-ish teams for 30-ish years now, and there's more than enough games to play a home-and-home series/game with every other team. I think divisions can be useful in having parallel competitions - like how in soccer, there's like 3 different trophies every year - but I think the fairest way to crown a champ is have everyone play everyone. Make up the difference in games with divisional trophies or with other "in-season tournament" type gimmicks. Finish the seasons with your grinding playoffs. But yea, embrace the league as a singular entity.
The NFL is a little different - there aren't enough games to play everyone. College sports, FWIW, should absolutely embrace the "play everyone" concept, and that should limit the size of the league. Saying that unveils my true ulterior motive, and now you see this whole post has been a ploy to return college football back to the ideal times. Except Michigan just won the natty so...I'm good with how it is. Carry on. The world is perfect.
The article touched on this at the end - games into play, play into games. I guess baseball is now more of a game than just play, and that's ok I guess.
I love watching sports, but I think the best games are ones that can be easily played in a disorganized manner. Soccer and basketball and even touch football have that. Baseball's roots are that way, but it's increasingly becoming too organized - restrictions on where you play, all star youth leagues preventing good pitchers from throwing to all the neighborhood kids, and long ago club teams being replaced by minor leagues.
I love stories about sports history and baseball was very much a club and community game that got popular from the ground up. But the club teams became minor leagues became owned by the MLB and then slowly suffocated. It's a beautiful game and I'm excited to read this article, and maybe I'm just old, but it kinda makes me sad that nowadays when you see kids playing baseball they're always wearing little league uniforms instead of just jeans and t shirts. At least beer league softball still exists. May it last forever.
Thanks for the recap, I'd seen the scores. It looks like the squad is improved over last year's, but not quite yet at the level of Big Ten contenders. The stat at the end is eye opening. 51st seems like the wrong side of the bubble unfortunately, but there remains time to get in there, right?
I'm sorta surprised that there hasn't been mention here or on the board of College Sports Tomorrow...but seeing as it's as unlikely to happen as any other message board idea (albeit slightly better funded and connected), maybe I shouldn't be
speaking of which - and obviously, it's been a busy off-season - but did we do a fall sports recap this year? i did love the fall and winter sports roundups last year.
sorry to request ore work from you Alex, but just consider it a compliment to your content and i'll go by the book.
Dang thanks for the update. This is great news. I'd remained hopeful after the non-con, but got distracted from the diamond the last few weeks with march madness and wrestling and hockey. So it's great to hear the team has at least looked much better than last year in big ten play.
I think the real solution is smaller conferences and that way we keep traditional matchups and rivalries but have room for variety - and all in the OOC scheduling.
Now if only Fox and ESPN consulted me before realigning CFB
Most teams are playing 10 P5 schools. Bama plays 9. Props on UGA for always having one big opponent and GT. PSU and OSU both have one season as lame as our last 2. I'm glad to see our last 2 look like an anomaly.
Anyhow my main takeaway is, Bama's schedule is easier over the 2 year period.
I don't get why they are averse to 4th and very long - punts are safer, you can go for it, you can fake it, send like a solid way to make the play after a PA relevant and safe
Man, 27 years! I know I'm old but wow this is a reminder. I didn't grow up in Michigan - but Red Wings-Avs was known as one of the premier hockey rivalries for kids my age. Sorta like Niners-Cowboys. Both those faded when I was in college in the '00s. Now, I wonder if college kids today looks at those pro rivalries the way I looked at Celtics-Lakers - I used to think, "how much of a rivalry can this really be anymore? Maybe it once was but now..."
I recently made an old man comment on a post about realignment. I still hate realignment. But damn, this post just made me realize how old I am. There are 26 year olds right now who think Wings-Avs is as relevant as ND-Miami or the St Louis Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf.
GT has exactly what UGA has in terms of location and resources, and 30 years ago had more fans too. Nebraska was considered unassailable at that time, and 20-35 years ago your narratives of Miami and USC were flipped. 15 years ago tho, USC was considered unassailable.
Everything we think about these schools is not immutable and timeless. Even Alabama and Ohio State have had down periods. Preventing the next Miami, Georgia or Clemson from rising because of a formula that doesn't even match the past is short sighted.
20 years ago, Nebraska, Miami and Tennessee would've been the top of these lists. 10 years ago, Clemson and Michigan would've been very mid looking. Georgia may have been attractive but not the slam dunk they are now - almost certainly they'd be behind Florida. 30 years ago, not sure how strong USC and Texas would rate but Colorado and Georgia Tech would've been among the most attractive schools in the country. 42 years ago, soon-to-be irrelevant SMU and Pitt would've been more attractive than soon-to-be dynasty Miami.
I think this is a good post, but I really see so much realignment as shortsighted, and the heel turn by the B10 and SEC is unfair. I'm sure the source of this post was well thought out but the future is not predictable, and trying to monopolize the resources from sports in a smaller group of national schools is both less fun but also hopefully doomed to fail.
Austin Gomez takes on VT's Caleb Henson tomorrow night
Lucas Davison matches up against PSU's Greg Kerkvliet.
Griffith and Ragusin will wrestle for 3rd-7th in the consolation semis.
Penn St locked up the team title, with 6 finalists and 2 more alive for 3rd. Michigan sits in 2nd right now but the race is tight with ASU and both Iowa schools within 5 points - ASU has 4 wrestlers alive (2 finalists) and the Iowa's have 3 alive, with everyone's next match worth 3.5-4 team pts at least.
Penn St still has all 10 weights represented - 4 in the blood round, 6 in the semis - any dream of an upset in the team finals is realistically gone. But there's a good battle for 2nd between us and the teams listed - the Iowas have 6 still alive, 2 in the semis, and ASU has 4 in the semis as well (none in the bloodround).
excited to see how our 5 finish. Should be a fun evening and Saturday. GO BLUE!
yea that's my thought too - PI, holding, spotting the ball, block/charge, "traveling," balls and strikes - all "judgment calls." Very impactful on the game. We generally agree that they're not the only thing that matters - and my understanding of gym and other judged sports is that likewise, everyone knows what moves and stunts are harder and when someone pulls it off.
just checked the PSWC page and looks like 6 made it thru the first round, with Bullock and Davison still left. So DeAugustino the only M wrestler dropping to the consolations
watching gymnasts is just so viscerally awe inspiring on what the human body can be pushed to do. Like, there's no sport where it's more obvious how incredibly athletic the participants are.
Also, for someone who doesn't understand the finer points of the rules, when I have a rooting interest (USA or Michigan) it's incredibly stressful. I feel like I'm watching a football game, never know when my team gets a first down or a touchdown, but can only tell when we throw a pick (our gymnast falls).
Lemley just won a close one 10-8, had a late takedown to take a slim lead and then rode out, got the riding point. Had there been an escape he'd be in SV.
Back to work for me now so no more updates, hope someone else can.
yea basically, penn state has 10 wrestlers qualified, 4 #1s, 2 #2s, and Carter Starocci, the 3x NCAA champ, is ranked #9 because he's been dealing with injuries. So...yea it'd be a massive upset if they didn't win the team race. But still, 10 champs to be crowned, plus all americans! plenty for Michigan to wrestle for
sorry to come back so late. You make a good point on UM being the white knight with no reward - I feel like we currently are doing that to some extent in the Big Ten, but it's lower risk so that's fair. As for the rivalries - Iowa feels like a rivalry because of 2016 and because we've seen them the last 3 years, twice in Indy. Wisconsin felt like a rivalry when they were our annual opponent. But the last two years, they haven't. Most of the Big Ten West hasn't felt like they're in the same conference as us anymore. And in the 18+ team era, I don't know that anybody but OSU and MSU will.
It's fair to say that M trying to set up the little guys as an independent isn't the best future. I don't think the super sized Super 2 is really such a great setup either. I know there's no going back, and I don't mind a path forward that prioritizes top schools playing each other - but still leaves windows open for the little guys. What we have now, and what Izzo seems to be advocating, does feel like it kills the golden goose and turns college sports into a more anodyne experience, to me.
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This is absolutely excellent. I do think the point about how the NCAA is just a useful shield is accurate. The problem is the people in charge, and they're mostly our ADs.
I also think that fans are impossible to please for athletic administrators in general. Are any of the professional commissioners popular? Who is the last AD Michigan fans liked? Pretty much all of us dont think highly of the last 3 Big Ten commissioners. I mean...they cant ALL be bad, right? Maybe the problem is us?
It's crazy that I dont even out the PSU wins up there but youre right - theyve become underrated in hind sight. The Erick All TD was destined to be the biggest okay of the season until the boys shocked us all and beat Ohio. The '22 PBJ game was hyped, and then we snuffed them out and announced our arrival into the top 5. The '23 game had the signs drama, and ended with Moore declaring his love for his coach and this university.
Before 2021, we were peers with PSU, except theyd managed to get to Indy and win it once. From '21 onwards, they were firmly in 3rd place in the league, and yet that series is an aftethought because we'd soared to heights they cant really remember, and even OSU has only distant memories of now.
The Rose Bowl may actually be the biggest M win of all time.
'21 Game changed the narrative around the program, '22 solidified it, and '23 was probably the biggest version of The Game ever - altho it's hype going in was different than its imoortance jn hindsight, where its importance was elevated by M winning the natty. So '21 and '23 are great candidates
But beating Nick Saban's Alabama in the Rose Bowl, our first out-of-conference top 5 win since 1950, and paving the way for our second ever undisputed natty? Thats it
Long but good. Thinking and googling about it, 240 is the second highly composite number that is divisible by 16, 2^4, so it has an advantage over other highly composite numbers (the first is 48, which is way too small). Id have preferred 144 but 240 is an excellent choice
a dozen pence to a shilling was a great system. combining that with 20 shillings to a pound is where the nonsense was
If we played 17 games to determine the Big Ten champ, then I'd agree with them. And be worried about player safety, but seriously not the way ADs and Conference Commissioners claim to be.
I hope you don't mind me responding to your responses, but I think all 3 of these are worth talking about
1) The death of the Big East was a big deal and thought of as such at the time. The little brothers of the conference were left in a limbo for 10 years until the final denouement. It ended up that all the schools from the '90s found P5 landing spots, except for Temple who'd been kicked out. The '00s Big East added 4 schools, with L'Ville ending up in the ACC and the other 3 left outside the power structure for FB for the next 10 years. It ended up mostly ok for everyone from the '90s, except that nascent rivalries were shoved aside or ignored (most notably the Backyard Brawl). It's hard to say how much NE CFB is ignored because the Big East is gone and it's schools scattered to other regional conferences and how much it's ignored because they've all been poor on the field. But I don't want to underrate this.
But the Pac12 was a bigger deal. True, Miami leaving the Big East was as big a deal as USC leaving the Pac12. But the remaining schools - ASU, CU, UW, and even Stanford and Cal all had proud football histories. UW and CU had won national titles in the early '90s, ASU came minutes away from doing it in 1996, Stanford had recently been a regular feature in the top 5. And Oregon is a touchstone of the sport, one of the most consistent top10 programs over the last 20 years. The Big East basically formed in 1990 from a bunch of independents wanting to make a TV deal together. The Pac12 had its roots with the 6 northwestern schools forming a league before the end of WW!, and the SoCal schools banding with them before the Great Depression. You are right to feel this one was different
2) For me, personally, the Big Ten conference died in 2014. The B1G era saw the East and West as nearly different leagues with different identities and prestige. At first I was sad that we weren't in regular competition with the western schools. Then I got used to it. Then the conference raided the Pac12 and shortly after tried to sabotage our season, so i really stopped caring for and rooting for the conference as a whole. The Big Ten is behind the trends I find most distasteful in college sports, so I bear it some ill will. It's identity is no longer Midwestern colleges that banded together for culture and geography. It's Tony Pettiti.
Maybe that will change, time heals wounds, the institutions do have a lot of commonalities despite geographic distances - but 1/3 of the conference is now definitively not Midwestern . Our standings will involved teams we haven't played and have few common opponents with. And I still bear some enmity for the way the league handled sign-stealing. But in my mind we didn't just kill the Pac12, the Big Ten also has lost its way.
3) it does suck, a lot. Not just for them, but for all of us that love this sport. I don't mind the big guys getting more money for bringing more eyeballs. But college sports without the smaller cinderella programs is less fun. Small college towns in out of the way places make this game more fun.
This was a great post of the feelings swirling around this. A couple thoughts
1) the pac12's demise hits different than the big east, because the big east was an amalgamation from the start, held together by Miami. Also, weirdly, most of the big east ended up in the ACC. Poor damn WVU. Lucky damn Rutgers. Temple had already been kicked out.
2a) Also, the Pac12's end is the end of regionalism in CFB, as you mention
2b) but it's also the end of the big ten as a Midwestern league. Maybe that already happened with Rutgers and Maryland. But it is complete now
3) I hate the super 2 era, I hate the idea of college sports being NFL lite. But nationalized conferences for a nationalized game doesn't have to be bad. As you touch on, the special thing about college basketball and football is that there are true Cinderellas who shock us. The nationalized conferences are scary and different, but the true killer here is shutting out the Wazzus and continuing to shut out Boise State and trying to prevent the next Miami or even Gonzaga on the CBB side. The problem isn't national conferences, it's the SEC and Big Ten closing the door to everyone else.
They made some poor business decisions, but it's crazy that basically one unfortunate ten year run basically doomed the conference. In 2013, most of us figured there would be 3-4 conferences, and the Pac12 would be the Pac16. Even in 2023, the Pac12-2 had the bigger brands than the latest Big12, the bigger markets, and programs with more historic success.
Yes it was mismanagement that led the west coast to become an outpost for Eastern conferences. But it wasn't decades of mismanagement - it was a ten year period, and then dramatically at the end a few key programs decided it was better to be part of the Eastern conferences than mainstays in a western one.
I guess the one NFL decision I wish they'd changed was to keep the Dolphins in the AFC East instead of the Colts. I think the AFC South feels very hodge-podge, with the two closest teams being the Colts and the Titans. I know the Dolphins had "historic" rivalries with the Jets, but I think Fins-Jags could've been a great North Florida-South Florida rivalry, and the Colts wouldn't have felt out of place in the AFC East - whereas everyone feels out of place in the AFC South.
Maybe also flip the Bucs to the AFC with the Titans - making the NFC South very Atlanta-specific. Then Houston absolutely looks like the odd-man out of the AFC South tho, sorta like WVU in the Big 12 the last decade. So i'm less into that one. And the NOLA-Atlanta rivalry is real. Maybe flip the Panthers and Texans? So the Panthers-Titans become a "new south" rivalry? I dunno. NFC South is great, AFC south is so hodgepodge. Feels wrong to take anybody out of the NFC South and somehow everyone in the AFC South feels like the castoffs thrown into a stew. Dolphins for Colts could've given the AFC South more of an identity, maybe?
that's interesting - I actually think they have the most utility in the NFL, because of the way the schedule, even at 18, disallows you from playing everyone.
you make a good point - that familiarity breeds contempt, and playoff chases/pennant races make rivalries happen. But to counter, most soccer leagues have an everyone-plays-everyone setup, but still have fierce rivalries, right? (i'm not a real big soccer fan so I may have the details misunderstood)
to flesh this out slightly - the NBA season is currently ~25 weeks long, with its teams playing slightly less than a game every other day. NHL is ~27 weeks long, and they play a game about every 2.3 days - so in a week you'd still expect 3-4 games for both. Slightly more often, 4 games in bball, 3 in hockey.
If you did home-and-home in basketball with everyone, that's 58 games. the remaining 24 games, you could do either simply do 6 games against the rest of your division (3 home 3 away against each), or cut that number to 2 or 4 and fill the rest up with the in-season tourney. Maybe on Thursday-to-Sunday, you'd play the "league" games, and Monday-to-Wednesday you'd play the division/tourney games. Or you focus the division games before Christmas and it could be tied to the in-season tourney, or delay the in-season tourney's championship to the All-Star break and still tie it to the division. A similar setup would work for the NHL.
In baseball, you could do a similar thing but I don't think fans crave more single elimination baseball in the dog days of summer. I think instead you could split the season in two - one focused on the division, and then one take all the pennant winners to play for another pennant, where everyone else plays to get into the postseason. The 30 teams would have to be split into divisions of 6, or expansion would have to happen, so that's a more fundamental change. But I kinda hate watching a 100+ game winner lose in October and be called choke artists while a team barely over .500 gets to play in the WS because somehow baseball in cold October nights matters "more" than the 162 games played in nice weather. Playoff baseball is exciting, but it doesn't matter more.
My gripe is a little different but generally the same conclusion - I think in basketball, baseball and hockey, we've had 30-ish teams for 30-ish years now, and there's more than enough games to play a home-and-home series/game with every other team. I think divisions can be useful in having parallel competitions - like how in soccer, there's like 3 different trophies every year - but I think the fairest way to crown a champ is have everyone play everyone. Make up the difference in games with divisional trophies or with other "in-season tournament" type gimmicks. Finish the seasons with your grinding playoffs. But yea, embrace the league as a singular entity.
The NFL is a little different - there aren't enough games to play everyone. College sports, FWIW, should absolutely embrace the "play everyone" concept, and that should limit the size of the league. Saying that unveils my true ulterior motive, and now you see this whole post has been a ploy to return college football back to the ideal times. Except Michigan just won the natty so...I'm good with how it is. Carry on. The world is perfect.
The article touched on this at the end - games into play, play into games. I guess baseball is now more of a game than just play, and that's ok I guess.
I love watching sports, but I think the best games are ones that can be easily played in a disorganized manner. Soccer and basketball and even touch football have that. Baseball's roots are that way, but it's increasingly becoming too organized - restrictions on where you play, all star youth leagues preventing good pitchers from throwing to all the neighborhood kids, and long ago club teams being replaced by minor leagues.
I love stories about sports history and baseball was very much a club and community game that got popular from the ground up. But the club teams became minor leagues became owned by the MLB and then slowly suffocated. It's a beautiful game and I'm excited to read this article, and maybe I'm just old, but it kinda makes me sad that nowadays when you see kids playing baseball they're always wearing little league uniforms instead of just jeans and t shirts. At least beer league softball still exists. May it last forever.
Thanks for the recap, I'd seen the scores. It looks like the squad is improved over last year's, but not quite yet at the level of Big Ten contenders. The stat at the end is eye opening. 51st seems like the wrong side of the bubble unfortunately, but there remains time to get in there, right?
:(
Love the depth chart emojis, can we get it for O soon or do we have to wait?
I'm sorta surprised that there hasn't been mention here or on the board of College Sports Tomorrow...but seeing as it's as unlikely to happen as any other message board idea (albeit slightly better funded and connected), maybe I shouldn't be
i'll prolly watch as long as my wife doesn't go into labor and doesn't want to watch reruns of jane the virgin
i don't root for the big ten anymore, i think i'm rooting for a UConn-NC St double final
SCAR and Purdue
speaking of which - and obviously, it's been a busy off-season - but did we do a fall sports recap this year? i did love the fall and winter sports roundups last year.
sorry to request ore work from you Alex, but just consider it a compliment to your content and i'll go by the book.
Strapping in, buddy. GO BLUE!
Sparty picking a fight as their season ran down is, whether they like it or not, very on brand for them.
GO BLUE!
Dang thanks for the update. This is great news. I'd remained hopeful after the non-con, but got distracted from the diamond the last few weeks with march madness and wrestling and hockey. So it's great to hear the team has at least looked much better than last year in big ten play.
Go blue!
Not rooting for it, but it would be sorta funny if as soon as Saban leaves bama becomes a basketball school for the next decade
I think the real solution is smaller conferences and that way we keep traditional matchups and rivalries but have room for variety - and all in the OOC scheduling.
Now if only Fox and ESPN consulted me before realigning CFB
Most teams are playing 10 P5 schools. Bama plays 9. Props on UGA for always having one big opponent and GT. PSU and OSU both have one season as lame as our last 2. I'm glad to see our last 2 look like an anomaly.
Anyhow my main takeaway is, Bama's schedule is easier over the 2 year period.
I don't get why they are averse to 4th and very long - punts are safer, you can go for it, you can fake it, send like a solid way to make the play after a PA relevant and safe
Man, 27 years! I know I'm old but wow this is a reminder. I didn't grow up in Michigan - but Red Wings-Avs was known as one of the premier hockey rivalries for kids my age. Sorta like Niners-Cowboys. Both those faded when I was in college in the '00s. Now, I wonder if college kids today looks at those pro rivalries the way I looked at Celtics-Lakers - I used to think, "how much of a rivalry can this really be anymore? Maybe it once was but now..."
I recently made an old man comment on a post about realignment. I still hate realignment. But damn, this post just made me realize how old I am. There are 26 year olds right now who think Wings-Avs is as relevant as ND-Miami or the St Louis Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf.
GT has exactly what UGA has in terms of location and resources, and 30 years ago had more fans too. Nebraska was considered unassailable at that time, and 20-35 years ago your narratives of Miami and USC were flipped. 15 years ago tho, USC was considered unassailable.
Everything we think about these schools is not immutable and timeless. Even Alabama and Ohio State have had down periods. Preventing the next Miami, Georgia or Clemson from rising because of a formula that doesn't even match the past is short sighted.
20 years ago, Nebraska, Miami and Tennessee would've been the top of these lists. 10 years ago, Clemson and Michigan would've been very mid looking. Georgia may have been attractive but not the slam dunk they are now - almost certainly they'd be behind Florida. 30 years ago, not sure how strong USC and Texas would rate but Colorado and Georgia Tech would've been among the most attractive schools in the country. 42 years ago, soon-to-be irrelevant SMU and Pitt would've been more attractive than soon-to-be dynasty Miami.
I think this is a good post, but I really see so much realignment as shortsighted, and the heel turn by the B10 and SEC is unfair. I'm sure the source of this post was well thought out but the future is not predictable, and trying to monopolize the resources from sports in a smaller group of national schools is both less fun but also hopefully doomed to fail.
Tough ending, both Gomez and Davison lost in Major Decisions and Michigan got passed by Cornell in the team race.
Nevertheless, excellent weekend for Michigan wrestlers
March Madness gets crazier when you care about MOAR sports haha
Austin Gomez takes on VT's Caleb Henson tomorrow night
Lucas Davison matches up against PSU's Greg Kerkvliet.
Griffith and Ragusin will wrestle for 3rd-7th in the consolation semis.
Penn St locked up the team title, with 6 finalists and 2 more alive for 3rd. Michigan sits in 2nd right now but the race is tight with ASU and both Iowa schools within 5 points - ASU has 4 wrestlers alive (2 finalists) and the Iowa's have 3 alive, with everyone's next match worth 3.5-4 team pts at least.
Penn St still has all 10 weights represented - 4 in the blood round, 6 in the semis - any dream of an upset in the team finals is realistically gone. But there's a good battle for 2nd between us and the teams listed - the Iowas have 6 still alive, 2 in the semis, and ASU has 4 in the semis as well (none in the bloodround).
excited to see how our 5 finish. Should be a fun evening and Saturday. GO BLUE!
Foca wins by MD, just Amine in the blood round for M.
Let's go blue!
Should be working but couldn't help myself and checked twitter...
DeAugustino lost 4-2, his weekend is done
But the big news at 125# is Penn State's Braeden Davis lost and will drop to the bloodround
Ragusin won his match 9-3 and will head to the semis, he's guaranteed a placement
I really should get back to work so...I will try not to post more. If you see me on here, it's because I lack discipline.
I think national champs deserve belt buckles
I always get confused on wrestlebacks, but DeAugustino has an extra consolation match before everyone else's, right?
yea that's my thought too - PI, holding, spotting the ball, block/charge, "traveling," balls and strikes - all "judgment calls." Very impactful on the game. We generally agree that they're not the only thing that matters - and my understanding of gym and other judged sports is that likewise, everyone knows what moves and stunts are harder and when someone pulls it off.
Bullock is 0-3 against Pinto, last loss in SV at the B10 Championsjips
Lewan is 2-2 against Robb, but lost the last 2 this season
Lemley and Hardy split their matches this year
just checked the PSWC page and looks like 6 made it thru the first round, with Bullock and Davison still left. So DeAugustino the only M wrestler dropping to the consolations
watching gymnasts is just so viscerally awe inspiring on what the human body can be pushed to do. Like, there's no sport where it's more obvious how incredibly athletic the participants are.
Also, for someone who doesn't understand the finer points of the rules, when I have a rooting interest (USA or Michigan) it's incredibly stressful. I feel like I'm watching a football game, never know when my team gets a first down or a touchdown, but can only tell when we throw a pick (our gymnast falls).
Corum was also a HS wrestler, who credited it with helping his FB. it's a great sport.
Lemley just won a close one 10-8, had a late takedown to take a slim lead and then rode out, got the riding point. Had there been an escape he'd be in SV.
Back to work for me now so no more updates, hope someone else can.
yea basically, penn state has 10 wrestlers qualified, 4 #1s, 2 #2s, and Carter Starocci, the 3x NCAA champ, is ranked #9 because he's been dealing with injuries. So...yea it'd be a massive upset if they didn't win the team race. But still, 10 champs to be crowned, plus all americans! plenty for Michigan to wrestle for
Ragusin wins his opener (9-7 D), DeAgustino loses his (4-1 SV)
sorry to come back so late. You make a good point on UM being the white knight with no reward - I feel like we currently are doing that to some extent in the Big Ten, but it's lower risk so that's fair. As for the rivalries - Iowa feels like a rivalry because of 2016 and because we've seen them the last 3 years, twice in Indy. Wisconsin felt like a rivalry when they were our annual opponent. But the last two years, they haven't. Most of the Big Ten West hasn't felt like they're in the same conference as us anymore. And in the 18+ team era, I don't know that anybody but OSU and MSU will.
It's fair to say that M trying to set up the little guys as an independent isn't the best future. I don't think the super sized Super 2 is really such a great setup either. I know there's no going back, and I don't mind a path forward that prioritizes top schools playing each other - but still leaves windows open for the little guys. What we have now, and what Izzo seems to be advocating, does feel like it kills the golden goose and turns college sports into a more anodyne experience, to me.
Wow I screwed up the Twitter link. Here do this one instead