Halftime (II)

Don't forget to read Part 1 of Halftime and check the new video from KeySpan Park.

Cue the classic Nas track.

Early July is a pretty intriguing time in sports. There’s the free agency frenzy in both the NBA and NHL, with the backdrop of a devastating recession. The sight of the word July is a boon to Major League Baseball as it prepares for the All-Star Game, the trading deadline and its only month as the lone major team sport in town. Wimbledon is going to give us championship battles during the holiday weekend, with storylines for both the men and women’s finals.

Yet, as Wednesday’s post discusses, we have entered the second half of 2009, a year that has sped by us with great games, historical events and utterly bizarre news. After reading about a few of the general issues headed into the next six months, here are some sport-specific thoughts you should pay attention to.

MLB: It looks as if the big boys are wielding heavy lumber into the postseason chase as all of the usually-despised big market teams (save the Cubs, at the moment) are in contention for the playoffs. Specifically, the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Mets and Phillies are in the running, while fans in Cleveland, San Diego, Washington D.C. and Oakland await NFL training camps to distract themselves from the misery.

For a sport that almost openly roots for the major market teams to go long in the postseason, it will be interesting to see not only how their players perform, but their stadiums. The demand is high in those cities, for sure, but if we are seeing empty seats immediately behind home plate in Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium, what will we find in a few months?

You can’t even dream of getting Red Sox tickets during the season, let alone the playoffs. The Phillies might be fine considering that they would be defending their championship. Manny Ramirez’s presence in the Dodgers lineup creates absurd revenues for the front office. Yet in New York City, neither team can fill their ballpark, even as they play winning baseball. Ticket prices are such a turnoff at a time where fans would love to attend games that it would be hard to imagine that anyone would fork over entire paychecks/unemployment benefits for a Divisional Series game, let alone the World Series.

NFL: Donte’ Stallworth’s guilty plea to DUI manslaughter – in which he was given 30 days in jail, two years of house arrest, eight years of probation, 1,000 hours of community service and a lifetime suspension of his driver’s license – had set off a firestorm among fans and media. The immediate and most common reaction has been a comparison of his crime compared to that of Michael Vick’s prison sentence after his dog-fighting ring was discovered. However, the Humane Society and PETA gave the NFL enough grief (that’s being kind on PETA) about Vick that it could be credited with placing the pressure on law enforcement and the league to act swiftly on the former Atlanta Falcon.

As pondered in part one last night, will there be any word from any anti-drunk driving organization such as MADD in regards to Stallworth? Sadly, if there hasn’t been already, there may not be any time soon. Since this country and this particular league have a kinship to the alcohol industry, drunk driving does not illicit the same anger and conversations as performance-enhancing use, dog fighting or throwing three interceptions in the first half.

NBA: So the LeBron in 2010 campaign started this past season, but it will be in the final year of his contract that the real chaos begins. I say chaos because while LeBron-to-New York (or Brooklyn, if the Nets are still dreaming of the Barclays Center) has been assumed for some time, if you think that the Knicks and Nets are the only teams that will make a play for him, you must not follow the NBA outside of what the mainstream media says.

Unlike the Draft, where leading to the event, it’s insinuated that teams will intentionally lose games to have a better chance to secure the top pick for a potential star, free agency is about maneuvering salaries in order to attract the best available and newly unattached players.

We should keep an eye out on which other teams not only enter the fray for the current Cleveland Cavaliers star, but which teams have a legitimate shot in landing him. Many believe that James would inherit just about the same scenario of the lack of a strong supporting cast wherever he may go. When you also add to the fact that he didn’t need to be in a ‘major’ market to become a superstar, teams that are not in the New York, Los Angeles or Chicago areas have greater incentive to make a play so long as they have the foundation to win, or at least contend for championships during the span of his new contract.

Then again, this offseason will provide plenty of intrigue on its own without thinking so much about 2010.

NHL: This league has found remarkable success since emerging from the lockout in 2005. Much of this has to do with its young stars to go along with are arguably the most exciting playoffs in all of sports year after year.

What we have discovered in the last two years in particular is that whether people love or hate them, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin have people watching and debating their skills, value and presence in sports. What is somewhat overlooked is that both players, along with some strong supporting casts have matched, if not trumped, attention paid in larger markets. Sure, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C. are not home of the Original Six teams, but both are fairly strong sports towns. The Steel City is already home to the current Super Bowl champion Steelers, but also a pretty profound hockey history. Meanwhile, outside of Cleveland, there’s probably not another American city as starved for a champion than D.C.; proved by their willingness to get behind the Capitals in recent seasons.

Early free agent movement points towards some of the bigger market teams as they try to supplant the Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Yet, with the NHL’s momentum being built without some of those squads, there’s a legitimate question headed into the fall: can the league continue its ascension without a contender in New York City or a relevant team in Toronto?

Finally, a few quick thoughts:

College football: Will the anti-BCS movement gain greater traction now that there has been some governmental wrangling in recent months?

College basketball: Who will be the most talked about rent-a-stars/one-and-done players with even fewer brand names next season?

Tennis: Will the US Open give birth to a new star beyond the usual names of Venus, Serena, Roger, Rafael, Andy Roddick, Maria Sharapova and Novak Djokovic?

Golf: Can the PGA learn how to live without a dominant Tiger Woods? Can the LPGA withstand some of the economic hits to some of their tournaments?

NASCAR: Next week, there will be a lengthier discussion on the country’s most popular motorsports organization. For now, if (a HUGE if) Danica Patrick joins NASCAR after the season ends, how much of an impact would she make on a sport once considered America’s fastest growing sport just a few years ago?

Politicking

So much has been made about President-elect Obama’s wishes about a college football playoff, the lobbying by coaches (and don’t be surprised if university presidents are involved) to play in the upcoming BCS championship game and the continued battle of the proverbial best conference title. It seems as if with the continued clamor for change, the ten-year old system will eventually be overhauled as each season has brought about some new wrinkle to address controversies and debates.

However, many college football fans that are against the current system – Obama included – are overlooking three barriers of creating a playoff to determine an undisputed national champion.

For starters, there are way too many teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (or Division I as it’s still known by). One of the ongoing criticisms of the professional leagues – the American Idol of sports, the NFL, withstanding – is that there are too many teams. However, it takes a couple hundred of million dollars, a stable stadium situation and a viable market for owners to even consider adding a franchise to their leagues. In the current landscape of college sports, it seems that all a school has to do to find a field, spend a few million to rehabilitate it and apply for a spot in Division I. That might sound too simple, but it essentially describes the increase of Division I programs in the last decade or so. While there is currently a moratorium on colleges moving up in classification, there are far too many schools in D-1 as is.

Yet, no one seems to have an issue with this for some reason.

The roll call in college football is nearly one-third of that in the just as absurd land of college basketball (119 compared to a staggering 347). However, a couple of dozen programs are even considered a part of the national title conversation every year. The allure and prestige of playing in a postseason bowl game may be a great selling point for admissions. In the context of a full season, it’s all about the cupful of schools that the media that votes on who will play in January.

While we all enjoy the concept of the BCS busting teams – Utah seemingly taking that role once again – the media at large has the same dozen of programs on the brain year after year. What purpose in college football do the other 100-plus programs serve exactly? If it’s to create entertaining upsets and continue the debates well after the national champion is decided, then they are playing their parts well. Yet, with the resources that these school higher-ups dedicate to building a program, they are climbing a mountain that they are not allowed to climb very high at all.

The second barrier to a postseason tournament is a tradition that neither the media, coaches and athletic directors nor the BCS and school officials want to let go of; polls. Preseason polls are mind-numbing and phenomenally short-sighted as they are based on how a team recruits throughout the year and how it looks during the spring games.

Many programs do a great job in recruiting as they are able to lure prospects by promoting their histories, successful players who have gone on to the NFL and promises of playing time as upperclassmen (or sooner in some positions). Yet, every state has a fair share of elite recruits and otherworldly talents that can make significant impacts for most schools. Any player that steps into a program will run into fellow ‘All-State’ performers.

As for the spring scrimmages, wouldn’t you look good if the emphasis of recruiting is more based on historical strengths and matching up with the conference rival than building a complete team, regardless of opponent? If pro scribes can’t get a proper feel of a team until the regular season actually begins, how can anyone say that these are the best teams in the nation without realizing the same?

Polls essentially tell the world ‘this is who we like to play in January, even though we have no clue if they’ll be any good by then’. Though the bottom 5 -7 teams will change from week to week, the top 20 or so don’t actually fall out of the media’s favor unless they lose more than three games, especially to teams that aren’t considered in the upper echelon of college football. Toss the polls and not only other programs have a greater chance to be in the postseason picture, but the prejudices against some conferences and programs can be eliminated.

The third and final hurdle towards a playoff is deciding who will be able to play in this new postseason. At the moment, five conferences (the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-10) and Notre Dame (an independent whose strength is their TV contract with NBC) comprise of the BCS. An eight-team playoff tree will rightfully guarantee a spot for the five conference champions. Yet for those final three spots, no one has determined a manner to select the remaining three seeds.

If polls remain, it’s as simple as taking the top eight teams, right? The problem here is that instead of lobbying to be in the title game, now you’ll have coaches lobbying for those final three spots.

If you take out the polls, then what would you depend on? The other conference champions would be a novel idea. This could actually be the best solution as it would incorporate the other teams that have been traditionally left out in the cold. However, there are eleven conferences as opposed to a clean eight. While cutting down the number of D-1 teams could certainly whittle the number of conferences to eight, it’s highly unlikely that will happen as any surviving teams will be reluctantly shuffled into the remaining groups.

Including the other conference champions in this playoff would also create further tension as the second-best teams in the Big Five will throw hissy-fits about the level of competition in the others. Imagine Ohio State or Louisiana State – the thorns on the side of many pro-playoff pundits over the past few years – finishing in second place in the conference and watching Ball State or Utah take what they feel is rightfully theirs. Yet, if OSU or LSU did their jobs, maybe they wouldn’t raise a stink.

Someone else would, though.

The true allure of college athletics isn’t in the game play, no matter how great, good, bad or putrid it can be. It’s in politics of it all; determining who’s more worthy and who needs to do a little more next time. Until that goes, the idea of a legitimate and exiting playoff will be just that; an idea. Obama, more than any other college football fan in the country, should know this.

Say What?!?!: Sticking with football, I have been very impressed with Michael Strahan as a member of the FOX pregame show. Three years in a row, several top-flight players have retired and joined the media. Yet, Strahan has done remarkably well in providing an even-handed analysis on teams while not throwing himself too much into the fray with his opinions. You thought that he could have been one of the many former players who have thrown more hot air and controversies than insight, but he seems to understand his role and not make his own name bigger than the job at hand. Those who had covered him as a member of the New York Giants knew that he was destined to be on the other side immediately after he hung up the cleats, but few may have expected that he would made the transition so smoothly.

Forward (III)

Now that quote from Roger Clemens’s interview with Mike Wallace on CBS’ 60 Minutes has made the rounds, baseball, as usual, will make the front pages and flood the switchboards of sports radio until the middle of next week… in New York. Because of that, college football will jump the line in front of the national pastime.

College football: Did we kill momentum? In yesterday’s post, you read about how the NHL grabbed a larger slice of the American viewing pie than normal, despite being broadcasted simultaneously with two bowl games on New Year’s Day. When plans of the game in Buffalo were revealed over the summer, hockey haters, puckheads and the loudmouths (or typers) debated the merits of having this event going up against the opening bell of the sports calendar in the traditional bowl games. Among some fans, there was reservation about trying to showcase the game against college football, a sport that has enjoyed a tremendous rise in popularity over the past decade. If you ask most of those fans for their thoughts days after the game, they would have probably changed their minds. For starters, it was a good game that featured the game’s youngest stars on the big stage. Adding on to that…

This bowl season hasn’t been very good.

This past season presented some of the wildest moments in history. Appalachian State’s upset of Michigan was the tip of the iceberg. Illinois over Ohio State, Stanford over USC, Kentucky over LSU in three overtimes, even Navy over Notre Dame… well, that last one may have been more embarrassment than upset. 59 teams of lower or no ranking defeated higher-ranked programs, including twelve unranked teams defeating Top 5 squads. Number 2 was a revolving door like no other time in recent memory as the second-fiddle lost SEVEN times! In addition to all of that chaos was the state of disbelief in Nebraska, Miami, Alabama and Florida State as those programs continued to fade from former glory. Meanwhile, South Florida (a school without a football team until eleven years ago) found itself No. 2 and two basketball schools were ever-so-close to national title game hopes (Missouri and Kansas). USC proved to have been able to handle an improved Pac-10 while the Big Ten may have been passed by. Hawaii flirted with perfection and Georgia finally gained the look of a champion.

So what’s with the sub-par bowl games?

Outside of the Capital One Bowl between Michigan and Florida, the games have been anti-climatic, one-sided and/or uneventful. There are plenty of reasons that can be thrown into the mix. Traditionalists will blame the influx of former whipping boys such as Cincinnati, Rutgers and Kentucky into the national conscious, but you know that’s nonsense. You can say that there are too many bowl games with little to no meaning, most being created by television networks just for the ratings war. You can look to the multitude of players held out of bowl season not for injuries, but for being academically ineligible or a team/school violation that called for suspension (though these didn’t just happen in December, did they?). Any way you slice it, there is another issue that has played a hand.

The month-plus break between the regular season and bowl season.

The matchups are decided well in advance after three months of politicking, conference championships and teams choosing to be inactive at the right times. There was such an exciting season and suddenly the fun comes to a halt so that these student-athletes can focus on classes.

Stop laughing.

The greatest ongoing joke in sports deals with the sudden one-month focus on final exams and papers. Not to completely demean these kids at all because they do have a strong work ethic. Typically, after the roll call of players deemed ineligible for bowl play, you discover that overall, the demands on the field continue to trump the demands in the classroom. You can debate the issue of the student-athlete all you want, but even professionals can find the balance between practice, walkthroughs, travelling and tutoring a bit difficult. There’s no doubt that the recent scandal at Florida State speaks to kids learning how to cut corners, yet it speaks to a somewhat absurd notion that they are students first. Big time college athletics serve as advertising for the school at-large, but fair or not, in the time they are selling the school, they may not have the complete focus and time to take advantage of their education. So why they are suddenly penalized for these miscellaneous violations between game selection and the actual game will never be fully understood.

What does this have to do with the games themselves?

That month off to ‘focus’ on academics may have more to do with television buildup than having a stellar graduation rate (but that’s Scribe’s mere speculation, of course). If anything, as the adage goes, you might as well finish what you start. Yet, how can that be accomplished when the NCAA is so steeped in tradition for tradition’s sake? Adding games would be a blessing to not only fans, but teams eager to prove something to the media that decides who plays where in January. Yet, realistically, conferences were reluctant to add the extra bowl games, let alone an extra regular season game in December. Adding a playoff has been long debated, leaving no need to do so here. It may take Duke and Air Force playing in the BCS title game for any progress there. Moving bowl season into mid-December? When pigs fly.

Moving forward, the powers-that-be are going to find more ways to maximize revenue without interrupting the break. Yet, all of the practices for 30-something bowl games aren’t enough to keep the excitement going from the regular season. If you think the pointless Media Week before the Super Bowl makes for a rusty start on Super Sunday, this is thousand times worse. If anything they can do to remedy this without compromising the break, they can ensure that NYU gets a shot against Wisconsin in October.

Wait, does NYU have a football team?