If you check the date stamps here and on the previous post, it’s pretty obvious that things have gone dormant around here. I haven’t stopped blogging, but have simply been using my spare time to contribute over at Unprofessional Foul.

To say I enjoy it is an understatement.

But it’s a peculiar phenomenon. I’ve never even met anyone I “work” with over there face to face. We all got to know each other as part of the Deadspin commenterati, looked at each other, and realized we share a love a sport that doesn’t get much mainstream coverage in the US. Ergo, a blog was born.

We’ve been building a decent readership and couldn’t be more tickled that we’ve found each other, and that we’re amusing enough for people to want to read. So bully for blogging.

But, if you want to consume sports in any form besides the written word in the US, you still have primarily one place to do so, ESPN.

But here’s the thing about ESPN, they are awful. And I’m not talking about the fact that half of their anchors are now buffoonish caricatures and self-parodies. It goes beyond that as, once you get outside of the three major North American sports, they are a joke (even within the major sports, God help you if you want to watch a single baseball highlight as currently you have to sit through the nightly half-hour informercial for the NBA Finals).

I understand that those sports comprise 90% of their audience and 90% of their programming, but they also carry things like the Champions League, yet they’ve got people who can’t even pronounce Steven Gerrard’s name properly (it’s a soft ‘G’ kids, and it’s not like he’s not one of the most famous players on the planet). Lucky for the 4-letter, England failed to qualify for this year’s Euro (although I suddenly feel a small loss form not getting to hear Stu Scott try to stumble through “Agbonlahor”).

Anyway, for an outlet calling themselves “The World Wide Leader” you think they’d have a little better knowledge of sports outside of North America. You know, the “World” part of “The World Wide Leader.”

So what’s this got to do with Colin Cowherd? On Thursday (June 5, 2008) Cowherd wanted to make a point about the difference in intensity between the east coast and the west coast—specifically that there is none of it in the latter. To do this, he pointed out how, the day after Seattle Mariners manager John McLaren blew up, it wasn’t even lead story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Instead there was a story with a pic of the U-Dub crew. Yep, rowing. The Huskies were looking to repeat as collegiate national champs.

There are a couple of things noteworthy about this. First, how did Cowherd see the front page of the PI? Did he have a hard copy in Bristol (his show is done out of Bristol, right)? Because I went to the paper’s Webpage to see the lead—and this was within about 15 minutes of Cowherd’s whinging—sure enough, it was McLaren, complete with an accompanying photo (that one, there). There was a link to the rowing story, but it was buried among some other links.

Maybe the Washington crew story was the lead earlier. Maybe the PI rotates its stories to make it seem like it updates it content more often and increase page views.

Second, who cares? As far as rants go, McLaren’s was totally lame. Guy says he sick of losing and throws out a few expletives. Has he seen how badly the Mariners suck? He should be muttering more profanities in his sleep nightly. Hey, Mike Gundy set the bar kind of high. So, save for the fact that he used the f-word, it was barely news.

But third, and most importantly, rowing? You really want to pick on rowing as evidence that the left coast is soft? Because here’s the thing about rowing: it’s fucking hard.

If fact if you wanted to single out a sport to indicate “soft” or “laid back” you probably couldn’t pick a worse sport to mock, save maybe that game the Aztecs played where the losers had their hearts ripped out of their chests then shoved into their faces to show them it was still beating.

There is almost nothing you can do in sport that is as physically taxing as racing 2000 meters, the standard distance for rowing “sprints.” It will exhaust you both aerobically and anaerobically and it will do it with about 300 meters to spare in the race, right about the time you realize your forearms are on fire and you still need to somehow summon more energy to up your stroke rate.

But Cowherd poked fun at it. “Hey Skippy, let’s get our canoe and hit the water.” Okay, that’s probably not verbatim, but he did use the words “Skippy” and “canoe” as well as “kayak” and “paddle” and he copped some nerdy nasal voice to do it. All of which points out how ignorant he is (rowers use oars not paddles, and rowing has nothing to do with canoeing or kayaking).

But, typical of an attitude that seems pervasive throughout the WWL, it’s not Celtics-Lakers so nobody is watching. Who cares?

I do, sort of. Really the contempt and ignorance ESPN generally shows for sports leagues that can’t be identified by three letters (NFL, NBA, MLB) is beyond embarrassing. Well, not to them obviously, but it should be.

I’m not asking them to change their programming. That would be stupid. Hardly anybody would watch rowing (or rugby, or cricket, or track and field), and even as a former competitor I acknowledge that rowing is a terrible spectator sport.

But the blatant idiocy of the comments either offended me or irritated me (probably some combination of the two) and my initial reaction was to rail mercilessly on Cowherd and the entire operation that is ESPN. But that would be mean.

And in the spirit of Buzz Bissinger, the new patron saint of blogging, instead of being dedicated to cruelty—I won’t pillory Cowherd for being misguided—and instead of being dedicated to journalistic dishonesty—I’m actually trying to help someone with a much louder national voice see the error of his ways—I’ll put down the gauntlet to him.

If Cowherd thinks the “Skippies” of the world in their “canoes” are nerdish flakes with no intensity, then I can’t but think that a transplanted and intense east coaster like himself could totally put them to shame. So, here’s the challenge, and I’ll give him a choice.

Cowherd can either: A) Take the average of the 2000 meter erg time of the rowers in the University of Washington Men’s 8 and, if he can pull a 2000 meter time within 30 seconds of that number, I’ll donate $1000 to the charity of his choice.

Count 30 seconds. Right now. Do it…. That’s a long time. Thirty seconds within the average of a bunch of soft, west coast college kids, that should be a piece of cake.

Or B) he can take my personal best for a 2K piece from back in the day (obviously I used to row, although I was a lightweight rower of no distinction) and if he can beat it, I’ll donate the same $1000.

On a rowing ergometer you don’t need any special skills so this isn’t an unfair fight. It doesn’t require any blade work and doesn’t even require good technique. If you are a hammer, you can go at it and not worry about drowning because, well, you’re on land. The only thing for Cowherd to worry about is whether my PR is within about 30 seconds of the UW average.

If he fails? He can make the same donation to the charity of my choosing.

Clearly he has nothing to gain by this, outside of my vowing never to criticize him again. In fact, if he gets wind of this, it’s probably best for him to ignore it. Actually, I think he’ll quietly go to wherever he works out, sit on an erg, take about 20 strokes, start to pant like a mouth breather, get up, and never speak of it to anyone. (And if he does acknowledge it, even money says the first thing he does is make fun of the blog name… my bad, I probably should have used a little more forethought).

But Cowherd also has nothing to lose. If he fails, he fails at something no intelligent person with any knowledge of sports outside of Yankees v. Sox expects him to do. And when he fails, people who are far worse off than he is will benefit. Hell, he can get his employer to pony up. The Mouse can make a PR stunt out of it.

Now, to tilt things to make sure he does get wind of it, I want some help. I’m not stupid enough to believe that a 4-figure incentive on a wordpress blog of modest traffic is enough to make this happen. And I want this to happen.

So if you run a blog or maybe you’re just frustrated with the quality of personality that tWWL is putting behind the mic or in front of the camera, then join me.

You can email me (there’s contact information on the homepage) or simply comment and add a pledge to the total. I’ll accept any reasonable pledge (really, I know you don’t have $10 million). You can link and get the word out and forward to whomever you like.

The money will go here.

[On a personal note, my father, about whom I received a tremendous response from what I wrote about him here last Father's Day, was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Put it this way, if you had to choose a cancer to get, you'd pick pancreatic cancer last. It is terminal in 100% of all cases. So, this is a chance for some good to come out of something that doesn't have a whole lot of good going for it].

Cowherd or his employer can put the money wherever they like. They’re big on the Jimmy V Foundation, right? Isn’t that also cancer? That’d also be great because I’ve got a sister who is a breast cancer survivor and another of my compatriots over at Unprofessional Foul is also a cancer survivor. So the Jimmy V fund is fine.

Oops, sorry to make their choice for them.

Not really.

Anyway, if you’d like to play along, this might turn out to be kind of fun.

So in the aftermath of the Bissinger v. Leitch showdown on Costas Now there was, somewhat predictably, an uproar across the Internet. A little more surprising was that the discussion spilled over to “traditional” media (radio, TV, print), but, hey, when a respected writer starts to look like he’s going Cruise, who doesn’t feel the need to either attack or apologize?

Clearly, me neither.

Anyway, most of the reactions were telegraphed with blogs defending blogging, basically claiming that many old guard writers, like Bissinger, were scared or threatened.

Really?

Bissinger is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Friday Night Lights—widely regarded as one of the better sports books ever written—was made into a movie, as was his Vanity Fair account of Stephen Glass’ downfall. Universal Pictures recently optioned the rights to another Vanity Fair piece he did, “Gone With the Wind” about—God help us—Barbaro (appropriate because Bissinger is also a horse fucker). And if his wikipedia page is to be believed, he’s pocketed enough dough to lead a bi-coastal life.

So, what exactly would Bissinger, or any of his ilk, be afraid of? That blogs are going to render him irrelevant and he’ll have no place to ply his trade? Uh, the printing press has been around since the 1400s, blogs for about a decade or so. And I haven’t seen Michael Wilbon pulled from PTI and replaced with “Big Daddy Balls.”

In fact, I agree with many of the old men shaking their typewriter ribbons and shouting, “Hey kids, get off of my media” that many blogs are awful, unreadably so. But I also think that the market solves this problem. Amazingly, people are smart enough to discern bad (and untrustworthy) writing from good (as well as bad TV from good).

And because I can do the same, why the fuck would I want to read Jay Mariotti when there are thousands of more thoughtful and thought-provoking people available with the click of a mouse? I wouldn’t.

I’m not here to defend Bissinger. Instead I’d like to suggest a different interpretation to all this. Maybe Buzz Bissinger is just a dick.

Seriously? Who gets that worked up about writing—and I’m going to guess writing he doesn’t even consume much of (blogs) as he thinks they are “dedicated to cruelty”—to take it out on someone with such vitriol, especially another writer, on TV as Bissinger did on Costas? What? Did he think he was going to extinguish the entire Internet with one stomp of his self-important rhetorical shoe?

But it wasn’t just the TV appearance. Bissinger has been a complete dick in other media. Unfortunately, Exhibit 2 is going to be hard to share with you because, well, it’s been taken down.

There was an audio clip of Bissinger appearing on the Boog Sciambi show on 790 the Ticket in Miami.

I swear, this isn’t shoddy journalism, but the clip that was there on May 1, 2008 is now gone (after having been there for quite some time as the interview was apparently conducted in June of 2007). Anyway, proof that other people saw (or heard it) can be found here, here, here, and here at Fire Joe Morgan where I fist came across it.

[Ed Note: See, I wasn't lying. Either the clip is back or my browser was just being retarded for a while (probably the latter). If the original isn't available above, I archived it here (mp3 link).]

Basically, in the interview Bissinger is talking about an article he wrote for the New York Times Play magazine detailing how pitchers are no longer getting enough innings in the minors before being called up and it’s killing their careers.

Sciambi said, more or less, what’s great about stats is that you can look these things up and tell whether they are valid or not (and if you click on the Fire Joe Morgan link, you’ll see they aren’t and that Bissinger was either being lazy or stupid enough to take Tony LaRussa at this word).

Bissinger first responded by saying something like (paraphrasing) “Well for every study that says one thing there are 14 others that say something else…”

Then when pressed more by Sciambi—because how many innings a pitcher logged in the minors isn’t a “study” so much as a fact—Bissinger went insta-prick, changed the subject and started to badmouth another host who has a show on that station, like he hadn’t progressed beyond a 3rd grade level of debate. Sciambi, somewhat justifiably, hung up on Bissinger at that point.

It’s too bad the clip is gone, because it’s really quality stuff. And it does support the thesis here, namely that Bissinger isn’t scared of blogs so much as he’s just a dick. Now, I’ve never met Bissinger, maybe he’s Mother Theresa and Lady Di all rolled into one (only without two vaginas). But in the only two appearances of him I’ve come across, he’s swung and missed on both, and I think he knows enough about baseball, even without having to look anything up, to figure out that you don’t get too many more strikes than that.

As for Costas’ inability to distinguish posts from comments, that’s another post.

Every notice how every now and then your fantasy baseball team is complete pants? Fortunately you don’t lose much ground because the other teams was equally as craptastic.

At one point last night my “team”—yes, I realize it’s a fake team playing fake games, but one thing I like about fantasy baseball is that it lets me see some things statistically that I might not otherwise notice—was a fierce 3-24. I think Kotchman got a hit in his last a bat to raise the batting average to .160 (with 8 K’s to boot).

And these aren’t bottom of the order guys. Kotchman is hitting .340 on the season. Rafael Furcal, Josh Hamilton, Matt Holliday, Aramis Ramirez, Connor Jackson, these are all guys hitting about .300 or better. Shit Furcal is hitting .370!

How do so many good hitters uniformly suck so badly on one day, the same day? Well yesterday was getaway day, the last day of the series before the team hops a plane to get to the next city for its next series (although teams on home stands aren’t traveling).

It’s not just that there is travel looming, but getaway day games are often day games after night games. So there is the looming prospect of hitting the road compounded with probably less rest than a player would ideally like. Is that enough to drop batting averages?

It was just one day, and it’s entirely possible that it only seems like it’s happening every week where there is at least one day where hitters don’t hit, but the numbers suggest something might be amiss: Are batters really worse on getaway days?

I’m certain this is something that sabermetricians have already established (or debunked) elsewhere; and I might go look it up after I get done writing this, but I’ve already done the math and don’t want to find I totally wasted my time. Anyway, the total BA for the players in my 10-team league was .252 (or 51-202).

Okay, that doesn’t seem too bad, right. That’s basically 1-4.

Well, it was worse (.237) at one point until the late slugfest in Anaheim (20 hits for Oakland, 30 hits for the 2 teams combined) skewed things upward, but you can’t arbitrarily throw that game out. Although it is worth nothing that it wasn’t a day game after a night game and it featured a pitcher for Anaheim making his first ever start (curiously though he only gave up 3 hits even though he only lasted 2 innings… it was the pen that really got pounded).

Anyway, all of the players on the ten fantasy teams combined hit about .250, that’s not awful. But those same guys on the season are collectively hitting .276 (or 1589-5763). That’s about a 25 point difference.

And it might be a couple of points higher if Dustin Pedroia weren’t 2 for his last 30 (Dick, you’re killing me this week). Again, 25 points doesn’t seem that large does it?

Well consider this: in order for those guys to drop their collective averages 25 points from today, they would have to go 0 for their next 534. That’s just a little over 20 straight hitless games.

Again, I’m sure someone has done a more thorough analysis of this elsewhere, and this is just one day’s worth of data (combined with some vague notion that it seems to be a weekly occurrence).

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just a one-day statistical quirk. It’s not like there was a dearth of offense yesterday. Of the 10 games yesterday, in all but 2 the teams combined for at least 12 hits, and three of the games had more than 20 hits.

Still, 20 hitless games is, technically speaking, a fuckload.

These two things I know:

1) Nobody cares about your fantasy team. While in this case “your” means “my,” it’s true for everybody. The only person who cares about your team, who you drafted, and what trades you made, is you. Even the people you might be playing in your head-to-head league don’t care, or they only care inasmuch as you suck that week.

2) I realize there has only been one week played in the MLB season.

But that’s not going to stop from proclaiming that my team might be the worst ever. At least offensively.

Of nine position players, I have only 2 hitting over .300, while 5 of my players are hitting at .200 or worse. That’s right, over half my line-up is below the Mendoza line.

That doesn’t sound that bad for week one, but remember this is fantasy. I’m in a 10-team league, so it’s not like we’re having to load roasters up with Adam Everetts and Chris Burkes.

Here’s what the worst fantasy line-up in the world actually looks like (Name, current BA, (2007 BA), difference):

Travis Hafner .261 (.266) -.005
Aramis Ramirez .211 (.310) -.099
Ivan Rodriguez .200 (.281) -.081
Carl Crawford .167 (.315) -.148
Matt Holliday .143 (.340) -.197
Eric Byrnes .125 (.286) -.161
Placido Polanco .087 (.341) -.254

The lot is collectively batting .135 points below their 2007 averages. That is awful.

Okay, it’s only a partial list as the Dodgers have been downright competent. In fact if my two Dodgers—James Loney .386 (.331) and Rafael Frucal .429 (.270)—continue at anything near those paces, I’ll turn cartwheels naked in October. But for now, they have simply saved me from being embarrassingly bad in the opening week (Actually because of my pitching I still had a chance to pull one of my two match-ups out, but the points I didn’t get because Erik Bedard was scratched from his second start Sunday pretty much killed me).

The best of that bunch (and ‘best’ here meaning ‘worst’) might look like Polanco. But he’s actually put good wood on the stick in most of his at bats. He just can’t hit ‘em where they ain’t. No, Matt Holliday has been the biggest Week 1 bed shitter given his 2007 season. So far Holliday has 7 K’s in 21 AB’s, including a golden sombrero in midweek. That’s Adam Dunn-esque. Actually it’s even a slightly higher clip than Sr. K who averaged just under a 1-in-3 clip in 2007.

Here’s a partial list of people whose better is better than Matt Holiday’s better after week one of the MLB season (nice commercial, moron).

Randy Winn
Carlos Quentin
Adam Jones
Jeff Salazar
Paul McAnulty
Brian Barton
Alfredo Amezaga
Skip Schumaker
Chris Burke
Brett Carroll
Jayson Werth
Gabe Gross
Nyjer Morgan
Mike Morse
Nathan Haynes
Emil Brown

Provided that Adam Jones isn’t the same guy known as Pac Man and who plays in the NFL, that’s 9 guys I’ve never even heard of, and that makes for one shitastic week, Matt.

[Ed. Note: This list is now wrong as I started this post as the Rockies were entering the late innings in their Sunday afternoon tilt against the Diamondbacks. Holliday hit a bottom of the 9th HR to tie the game and make his first week look far less awful. But A) I'm feeling too lazy to change the numbers and B) it doesn't help much as it's too little too late and I still opened 0-2 (and the Rockies still lost.]

Maybe you shouldn’t have been working in the meth lab during the game. You know, take a break. Somebody must have not, otherwise I’m at a loss to explain the following.

Let me be clear that I didn’t actually check the exact time that the Orange Bowl ended, but I’d bet this morning’s yet-to-be eaten breakfast that this comment found my inbox within 15 minutes of the final gun of KU’s 24 - 21 highly unlikely victory over Virginia Tech.

Really, that’s your first impulse? Post a comment on that relatively small blog that claimed Kansas had an easy schedule? You sure you don’t want to find an over-excited and over-served coed? This might be your best chance all year. Nope.

Instead…

I get the following pia.

A new comment on the post #62 “Mark Mangino’s Shape Is Not Funny… Not Unless You Think Round Is Funny” is waiting for your approval
http://kermittheblog.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/mark-manginos-shape-is-not-funny-not-unless-you-think-round-is-funny/Author : GingerTPLC (IP: 24.116.23.18 , 24-116-23-18.cpe.cableone.net)
E-mail : gingerl@essdack.org
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=24.116.23.18
Comment:
Yah, so I’m guessing that this blog is kinda just hot air after KU just won the Orange Bowl tonite and um, ran a 12-1 game?

yah.

Be cautious of your predictions…

Rock Chalk Jayhawk, KAAAAA UUUUUU!

Okay, does all of Kansas score incredibly low in reading comprehension? This is like the 4th time I’ve had to make this clarification. Hopefully I’ve tagged them all so that someone less lazy than I can find them all easily. The fact that Kansas went 12-1 doesn’t mean they didn’t play a cake as fuck schedule. They did.

Even after winning the Orange Bowl, 10 or 11 of their opponents were still weak. Beating Virginia Tech didn’t suddenly make Toledo and FIU daunting opponents. And in conference, they still missed OU, Texas, and, Tech (Okay, so I was horribly wrrong about Nebraska being good, but who wasn’t?). Kansas played 2 quality teams and went 1-1 in those games.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for Kansas to understand.

And I’m not even anti-Kansas. I’m possibly pro-Mangino. Sure I’ve made as much fun as anybody of his ability to warp time with the gravitational pull of his mass, but I’ve also made the argument that UCLA, A&M, Michigan, etc. were fucking nuts for not picking up the phone and calling when they had a head coach opening.

The man took Kansas to a BCS game. What more evidence do you need he can coach? None, for me. So, calm down. And celebrate. Don’t post comments saying I’m a moron. I already know that.

See that? That’s Niklas Bendtner. And he’s white. And the Tottenham defense—cough*oxymoron*cough—has managed to make him look like the Michael Jordan of Denmark (Yes, it’s Engligh football, but Arsenal’s Bendtner is Danish).

Really, has anyone of Danish origin ever gotten that much air?

Answer: Probably not.

Checking the high jump results of every Olympics since the War, not a single Danish person, male or female, has ever sniffed the podium. There have been a couple of Swedes and a Norwegian (and even an American whose name was actually John Rambo) but no Danes. So this is not a country of jumpers we’re talking about. Ski jumpers, maybe, but the shoes on Bendtner’s feet are about 2 meters too short to qualify. And the grass at the Emirates is, well, grass and not snow.

Still there he is. If Spurs midfielder Jamie O’Hara wants to shove his head up Bendtner’s ass, all he has to do is take about half a step forward and wait for gravity to do the rest.

Even better, this is Bendtner’s first touch of the match. Oh, and what you can’t tell from this picture is that the ball ends up in the back of the net. It’s the deciding goal in Gunners’ 2-1 win. So Bendtner spent the previous 75 minutes collecting splinters on his ass—nice Recaro splinters, sure—then needed all of about 20 seconds to make Arsene Wenger look like a genius and make Tottenham look like, well, Tottenham.

Because what you also can’t tell from this picture is that Robbie Keane missed a PK for Spurs just a couple of minutes before Bendtner’s Darrel Griffith impersonation. So Tottenham again snatched zero points from the jaws of three.

Well played, gents. It’s like Martin Jol never left.

Doesn’t one of the sides have to win every now and then for something to be considered a rivalry? Tottenham is working on an 0-fer-20 overall and an 0-fer-14 streak between Highbury and the Emirates.

A friend with a graduate degree in philology assures me that the word “Tottenham” comes from the Middle English as translates roughly as “will never see the Champions League.” I don’t even know what philology is, so I’m more inclined to think that “Tottenham” is English for “Buffalo” and “Bendtner” is Danish for “Watch me get my genitals up to Berbatov’s eye level.”

Twenty million apparentlly doesn’t buy what it used to, does it? Seriously, Bud, you don’t want to ask for a refund?

For all the ephemeral one-day bluster it caused—Timmy Kurkjian is still voting for Bonds and Clemens for the Hall after all—the report itself is amazingly thin.

Well, not in a literal sense. It tips the scales at over 400 pages and it probably wiped out a small section of the rainforest when it set off an armada of company printers upon its afternoon release.

But having actually read the whole thing (What? I’m stuck in Houston) it kind of has that feel of your junior year term paper that you set in courier font just so that the text would make it to a fourth page.

If you haven’t read it, here’s the recap: Clemens, Pettitte, Tejada, Gagne.

And Mitchell, in all of his investigative brilliance, was hand-delivered those names by a couple of guys—former Mets clubhouse employee Kirk Radomski and former Yankee and Blue Jays strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee—who were being compelled to talk because the feds had gotten to them first.

Yep, $20 million and the only things of interest were dropped into their laps by people with, you know, skills. And it’s not like anyone with any reasonable cognative abilitied wasn’t a little suspicious of most of these guys anyway. Really, a power pitcher gets stronger as he gets older? Oh, totally.

Everything else pretty much came from ‘Game of Shadows’ and Jose Conseco’s ‘Juiced’ book. Just typing ‘Canseco’ into the ‘Find’ field of my PDF yields 105 matches. If I’m Mark Fainaru-Wada, I’m fucking pissed if a Fed Ex full of cash from DLA Piper isn’t sitting on my porch within the next week.

Really, I could have found a few bloggers to put this thing together for a couple cases of beer* and maybe some new curtains to replace the American flag draped over the basement window. And they could have delivered in significantly less time. Throw in a couple of strippers as part of the payment and the press conference for its release wouldn’t have been so epically dull either.

Having actually talked to a couple of the guys working under Mitchell, the quality and depth of the report has a surprise quotient of zero. I think I agreed not to mention the contents of the conversation, but I don’t think I ever agreed to saying that a conversation never took place.

It wasn’t that I had dirt on anyone. I don’t. But it was clear from the five minutes we spent on the phone that these people had no idea how to proceed. The mere fact that they were talking to me was enough to iterate that point. The actual conversation itself, was just a reiteration.

So, hizzah, Bud. You get to put Clemens’ name out there with almost no finger-pointing culpability on your hands.

But I doubt I’ll be buying the MLB Extra Innings Package next year. And I’ll probably pass on tickets to games as well. I’m not put off by the report. Personally, I think all cheats should be thrown out of the game and their records expunged. But that’s a different post.

But if I buy a ticket, I’m sure a few pennies of that has to go back to MLB, and if this is how MLB spends its money, then I am condoning this type of stupidity, if only tacitly.

(*Provided the feds gave the bloggers access to the same guys singing)

First let’s take a moment and acknowledge the awesomeness that was Bizarro College Football Season.

It was awesome.

Okay, now you can revert to your Edvard Munch face.

Yes, the BCS has left us with Cheaty McSweatervest vs. Talky McLoudcoach. God what a dream.

That is if your dreams include getting sucker punched in the nuts. But hey, somebody’s gotta live in Columbus.

Really, the BCS has sucked the lifeforce out of me. I can barely make a dick joke when talking about it. Still, I feel compelled to take a couple of jabs at the cocksure kids in Columbus and Red Stick.

Yes, you won the sweepstakes. Do you deserve it? Not really. Not that anybody else did. Save for Hawaii everyone’s got one big strike against them. Some have two.

Here’s the basic argument pro-tOSU: They won their conference and they had only one loss.

And here’s the ridiculously long rebuttal.

First, they played a weak schedule. And that’s putting it generously. The Buckeye’s non-conference schedule was a pansy tour of Ohio as they played Youngstown State (99), Akron (118), and Kent State (132). Those are the Sagarin ratings in parenthesis by the way.

Their marquee non-conference match-up? That would be 4-9 Washington. The Huskies were actually leading that game at half 7-3 and were poised to up the lead on the first possession of the second half when the Buckeyes blocked a 46 yard field goal attempt. Two plays later tOSU hit a 68 yard TD pass, seized all momentum, killed the crowd and cruised to victory. So while it was a relatively easy win on the score sheet, the Buckeyes got all they wanted from a 4-9 team for two and a half quarters.

Yes, the Buckeyes won the Big Ten.

Yeah? And? So?

The Big Ten is the sixth strongest conference by the Sagarin ratings this season, above the Mountain West and below the ACC.

That’s on paper.

On grass, the conference doesn’t have a single signature non-conference win. Maybe the closest to such a thing the conference can point to is a Wisconsin victory over 5-7 Washington State.

Yes, 10 of the 11 teams in the Big Ten are bowl eligible, but those win totals are inflated by those suspect non-conference schedules. Most teams came out of their non-conference schedules either 3-1 or 4-0 meaning they just needed to pick up a couple of conference wins to make it to bowl eligibility. Even Northwestern, which lost to lowly Duke and at home no less, made it to six wins. That’s how weak the Big Ten was this year.

If you need it spelled out more explicitly, here’s are the Big Ten’s non-conference games (wins in bold)

Northwestern: Northeastern, Nevada, Duke, Eastern Michigan
Minnesota: Bowling Green, Miami (OH), Florida Atlantic, North Dakota State
Purdue: Eastern Illinois, Toledo, Central Michigan, Notre Dame
Michigan State: UAB, Bowling Green, Pitt, Notre Dame
Penn State: Temple, Florida International, Buffalo, Notre Dame
Wisconsin: Washington State, UNLV, Citadel, Northern Illinois
Illinois: Missouri, Western Illinois, Syracuse, Ball State
Michigan: Appalachian State, Oregon, Notre Dame, Eastern Michigan
Indiana: Indiana State, Western Michigan, Akron, Ball State
Iowa: Northern Illinois, Syracuse, Iowa State, Western Michigan

That’s more cream puffs than in Charlie Weis’ pantry.

Minnesota at 1-3, and Michigan and Iowa at 2-2 were the only Big Ten schools to not go at least 3-1 non-conference. Michigan suffered the fate of being the first D-1 school to lose to a D-1AA when they got nicked at home by App State. And the entire conference suffered by Notre Dame sucking. But the Irish sucked. That was a 3-9 team that lost back-to-back games to two academies, so beating them wasn’t much of an accomplishment this year.

In fact by the Sagarin ratings the biggest win wasn’t even the Wisco-WSU (62) tilt, but was Michigan State beating Pittsburgh (59). So, it’s actually trading one 5-7 team for another. But just eyeballing it, the average Sagarin rating of all those Big Ten non-conference opponents is easily over 100. Easily.

That is your 2007 Big Ten. And that is what tOSU were the champions of, kind of like Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles. Hey, somebody’s gotta be king of the dipshits.

If you’re a Buckeye homer and you are going to discount the cake schedule and you are going to say that 1 loss necessarily means you are better or more deserving that any 2-loss team (not true), then you should argue that Hawaii belongs in the national championship game.

Follow? You can’t bag on them for the easy schedule; and if 1 is better than 2, then 0 is better than 1.

Finally, you lost your last home game. This should be called the Precious Roy Bitterness Criteria and should auto-disqualify you. Basically the PRBC says you cannot lose your last home game and win a national championship.

Why? Well, it’s a long explanation but basically in 1993 ND finished #2 in the nation behind Florida State. But the two teams had played in the regular season and the #2 Irish had beaten the #1 ‘Noles. How can you possibly rank 1-loss ND behind 1-loss FSU when they played head to head and the Irish won? Basically any pundit with a pen had written, “Well, you can’t lose your last home game and be #1.” There’s a little more to this, but not much. It was crap. But I’m petty and spiteful and can’t let go.

So with their short memories and arbitrary criteria, voters are definitely hypocrites, possibly douchebags, and certainly dicks. And I’m keeping the PRBC as gospel.

So Ohio State, yeah, not as obviously ‘deserving’ as it might seem.

As for LSU, here’s their argument. They won the SEC and, well, that’s about it. They’ve also got a used car salescoach that people seem smitten by. Why I have no idea.

I’m not sure how you beat a 3-loss team by 7 after only scoring one offensive touchdown in the process then suddenly jump from 7 to 2 in one of the polls but this is America where strange voting is becoming a way of life.

Fortunate to beat Alabama. Fortunate to beat Auburn. If the Gators had stopped the Tigers on any one of three or four fourth down conversions that’s a loss. So Les Miles might trot out this “We were undefeated in regulation” mumbo and/or jumbo, but they were also three plays away from being a 5-loss team.

Yeah, yeah. “If, if, if… ” They didn’t lose those games, they won them. And they won their conference. But I would argue that LSU got worse as the season went along.

In its first five games the Tigers average margin of victory was 33.4 points. In its last five? 15.2.

“Well, the beginning of the season is when you play all of those crappy non-conference teams.” Not true in LSU’s case. They opened with a conference game against Mississippi State. And that five game stretch also included run-ins with ranked opponents Virginia Tech and South Carolina.

The stretch of the last five games would be deflated by stronger conference games then, right? Not really, the end of season stretch included non-conference Louisiana Tech and SEC West conference doormat Mississippi.

So yeah, like tOSU, LSU did when their conference and unlike tOSU they won probably the best conference in football, but they were fortunate to play a weak Tennessee team instead of Georgia in the championship game and they looked anything but impressive in doing so.

But if you think LSU is playing the best football of any of the two-loss teams at season’s end: 1) Remember they also lost their last home game, and lost it to a team whose best quarterback was actually a running back. So they should also be auto-DQ’ed by the PRBC. 2) Consider…

USC: Won its last four, all against teams at .500 or better and by a combined score of 116-51.

Georgia: Won its last six, including three to ranked opponents (and the destruction of the defending national champion, Florida) and their rival Georgia Tech.

OU: 7-1 in its last eight and its only loss was a road game when their QB got concussed and had to sit out. They beat their two biggest rivals by a combined 77-41 and handed the #1 team in the nation a three TD defeat in its last game.

LSU finished out by, again, losing its last home game then beating a team that was lucky to beat Vandy. And for all the talk of the mighty SEC, that other team in the championship game, Tennessee, they got handled easily by a 6-6 middling Pac 10 team in Cal.

So yeah USC lost to Stanford and yeah Georgia didn’t win its conference (which by the way is an arbitrary criterion and doesn’t exist as part of the BCS formula for determining the top two teams) and some other team had a bad loss to a weaker team, and some team has a fat coach whose mom is mean, etc.

This post isn’t really about those teams. This is about tOSU and LSU and how if you think they are clearly the two most deserving teams, you are wrong.

Really, just plain ol’ wrong.

Sorry to break it to you, but it’s probably not the first time.

Sorry to break that to you, too. But not as much.

I’m scrambling to get these up before the Horns and the Aggies face off. So there is minimal snark to kick off this week’s picks. Plus I think I’m still in a tryptafan coma. But it’s rivalry week. Yep, nothing like the traditional West Fuckin’ Virginia v. Connecticut tilt to fire up a sports weekend. At least Kansas v. Missouri means something really significant for the first time ever. I’m going to stop bashing the Fat Man. I am in awe of what he’s done in Lawrence this year. Plus, I’m fearful he might sit on me.

Useless information is after the jump.

Alabama +7 over Auburn

I believe in the South, they call this playing “possum.” Seriously, even their quaintness sounds trashy. Yeah, the Crimson Tide’s loss to one of the Louisianas last week was just a deke. Saban knew the season was done in that they weren’t even going to compete for much beyond a shot at the Seattle Bowl or some shit like that. So he tanks a game. Now Auburn is overconfiden and primed for the upset. Saban beats the rival and he goes from goat back to savior in seven days’ time.

Missouri pick ‘em over Kansas

Did you see Holtz’s pep talk for Kansas? Holy shit that thing was awesome. I was ready to go pick up a gun and start offing people from Missouri (those bastards) and I’m a pacifist. Still, I would have gone broke betting against the Fat Man, but Holtz is 0-2 in Big 12 pep talks, his only two losses. The trend is my friend.

Texas -6 over Texas A&M

This one opened at nine. Yeah, if you get more than seven for the home team in a rivalry game, take it. But I can’t get nine anymore. So six? No. Why? Because Fran is an idiot. Yes, he’’s the same idiot that came into Austin last year and won. And he’s got the same main skill guys (Bennett, Lane, Goodson) from that game, but he’s still an idiot. Mack and the Horns just need to burn the crappy A&M secondary a couple of times deep and the Farmers lose playing from behind. But if we’re lucky the Ags keep it close enough so that there are copious sideline shots of Mack doing his “This game is so tight I need to take a shit” pose that he defaults to in a tight spot.

Boise State +3.5 over Hawaii

Sorry, Hawaii. In a cruel twist of fairy tale fate, last year’s Cinderella jams a bunch of glass shards into your unshod foot. What happens to a dream deferred indeed. Yeah, Langston Hughes, bitches.

Wow, Gabe, that was actually well-reasoned. Well, except for the part about buying breakfast. In fact, I’m pretty sure you don’t want me going into any personal history on this. Your wife thinks highly of you, I hate to ruin that in a blog post.

So instead I will ruin one of your theories. If the line is “off” for ND, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, etc., then savvy gamblers will recognize that there is free money out there to be had. Once that money has poured in to arbitrage it away, there would be too much on one side and Vegas, which isn’t really in the prognosticating industry so much as the risk-mitigation business, would have to move the line accordingly.

Efficient markets. Look into the concept.

Anyway, I went 1-3 last week to cement my place among the world’s worst clairvoyants (7-21 on the season). I think you are doing better only because you stopped counting.

So you stick to your rules, I’m going to use some of my own to pick your games.

Rule #1 Lloyd Carr cannot beat Cheaty McSweatervest.

This is true. But this is Bizarro College Football season (I think I stole this term from Being Sven over on Deadspin) so I’m taking the Wolverines at home. And tOSU is not a better team than the one that got Zooked last weekend. They played a shit weak sked.

Rule #2 bet against hypocrites.

I have no justification for this rule other than wanting Leach to shut the fuck up. Weren’t the Red Raiders gifted a call for a TD that they didn’t really score to beat OU last time the game was in Lubbock (fuck has it already been two years)? Games in Lubbock always make me nervous as a bettor, but I think Stoops wants to bitchslap The Dread Pirate Leach more than anyone else this year.

Rule #3: Never give more than 10 on the road.

I just made that one up. Ducks win. Cats cover. I agree on Dixon, but I have this fear that the Easties are starting to build hypegasm behind Tebow.

My Picks:

Cal -7 over Washington

Remember when Cal was going to play for the National Championship like back in week 2? And remember when people were laughing that the Irish probably wanted Willingham back, also back around week 2? Well, both have done a fair amount of sucking since then, but the Golden Bears have done less of it. Isn’t Locker not playing? Can I not unuse a confusing double negative? This seems like a sucker bet. And I’m a sucker.

Air Force -11 over San Diego State

I’ll eat a shoe if the Falcons don’t beat the Aztecs by more than they beat the Irish. Plus they are at home.

Georgia -7.5 over Kentucky

Uh, have you seen Georgia’s offense in the past few weeks? I have. It’s really good. And the Cats’s defense has given up 38, 37, 45, 31, and 20 in its last 5 games. Dawgs easy.

Navy -17 over Northen Illinois

I haven’t seen a single snap of Huskies football this season. But Navy is unstoppable. Just ask North Texas and Notre Dame. But don’t ask Delaware. Even in losing to the Blue Hens the Middies put up 52 points. Of course they gave up 59. So Navy’s defense is atrocious. I could really go around like this all day. But I won’t. I’m taking Navy and giving points. And that’s why they call it gambling.