Something You'll Never See Again

A little more fun with the Major College Major Sports in 2007-8: I found 239 teams which played both Division I Men's Basketball and either Division I (Bowl Subdivision) or Division I-A (Championship Division) football. The table below presents the wins, losses, and winning “percentage” for Football and Basketball. I then averaged the two percentages, to compute a “Combined Percentage,” and ranked the schools in order according to that. Fans of Kansas football (remember the slogan: “A Tradition Since September”) will note that this year was, indeed, special.

This table just shows the top 25. I've put the complete list elsewhere. Let me know which teams I've missed, there are probably several.

Rk	School	Football			Basketball			Comb.
		W	L	Pct.	W	L	Pct.	Pct.
1	Kansas	12	1	0.9231	30	3	0.9091	0.9161
2	Brigham Young	11	2	0.8462	27	7	0.7941	0.8201
3	Dayton	11	1	0.9167	21	10	0.6774	0.7970
4	Tennessee	10	4	0.7143	28	4	0.8750	0.7946
5	Texas	10	3	0.7692	27	6	0.8182	0.7937
6	Wisconsin	9	4	0.6923	29	4	0.8788	0.7855
7	West Virginia	11	2	0.8462	23	10	0.6970	0.7716
8	Boise State	10	3	0.7692	24	8	0.7500	0.7596
9	Memphis	7	6	0.5385	33	1	0.9706	0.7545
10	Southern California	11	2	0.8462	21	11	0.6562	0.7512
11	Northern Iowa	12	1	0.9231	17	14	0.5484	0.7357
12	Oklahoma	11	3	0.7857	22	11	0.6667	0.7262
13	Massachusetts	10	3	0.7692	21	10	0.6774	0.7233
14	New Mexico	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
15	Connecticut	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
16	Ohio State	11	2	0.8462	19	13	0.5938	0.7200
17	Appalachian State	13	2	0.8667	17	13	0.5667	0.7167
18	North Dakota State	10	1	0.9091	14	13	0.5185	0.7138
19	San Diego	9	2	0.8182	20	13	0.6061	0.7121
20	Drake	6	5	0.5455	26	4	0.8667	0.7061
21	Clemson	9	4	0.6923	23	9	0.7188	0.7055
22	Davidson	6	4	0.6000	25	6	0.8065	0.7032
23	Southern Illinois	12	2	0.8571	17	14	0.5484	0.7028
24	Western Kentucky	7	5	0.5833	25	6	0.8065	0.6949
25	Arizona State	10	3	0.7692	19	12	0.6129	0.6911

Drat

And other, stronger, words I said during the game.

KU got beat by a better team. Hopefully MU will beat Oklahoma this time, which should get KU into one of the BCS bowls.

Go Tigers!

Just for next week, mind.

Who'll Travel to New Orleans

Yeah, this is another college football post. Deal with it. We've waited over a century for this, we're going to make the most of it.

As previously noted, I'm not a huge fan of the BCS. I'd rather have an eight or sixteen team playoff. We've got from Dec. 1 to January 8, so it's not like there isn't enough time. However, since my team has a reasonable chance of getting into the final game, let's have some fun with it:

In addition to its noticing KU, the Washington Post examines possible match-ups in the BCS title game. Part of the story isn't in the online edition, a list of possible scenarios, e.g.,

• LSU and KU win out. No question who plays in New Orleans.
• LSU and Misery win out. Almost no question. MU should get to go.
• LSU wins out, Oklahoma wins Big 12 title game: Probably West Virginia plays LSU.

I've got another one, wilder than the last:

LSU loses to Tennessee in the SEC title game. Arizona gets beat by USC. West Virginia loses one of its remaining games. Meanwhile the Kansas-Missouri game is close, both teams play well, and the game is decided in the last two minutes or in overtime. The winner blows out Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. Ordinarily you'd think Ohio state would back into the title game to play the Big 12 champion, but it's possible the voters would go for:

A KU-MU rematch.

Border War

As you probably know, on August 21, 1863, a band of Bushwackers led by William Clark Quantrill sacked and burned the town of Lawrence, Kansas. What you probably don't know was that shortly thereafter a group of Jayhawkers traveled to Columbia, Missouri. They left the town standing, a horrific act of revenge that has since been condemned by international tribunals.

Things have been somewhat calmer over the last twelve dozen years, but there is still considerable animosity between the citizens of Lawrence and Columbia, particularly during football and basketball games between the University of Kansas and the University of Misery. These days they call it the “Border War” (now politically correctly called the “Border Showdown”). Actually, when I went to KU it didn't really have a name. We just knew that the only reason to go to Missouri was to see the Royals, and to visit bars that served something other than 3.2% beer. Otherwise, these two schools plain don't like each other.

It's also either the oldest continuous college rivalry west of the Mississippi, or the oldest Division I rivalry west of the Mississippi, I'm not sure which. We've been doing this for 116 years. If your schools have been doing it longer, leave a note below.

And come Saturday is the biggest game in the history of the KU-MU rivalry. Ever. With KU at 11-0 and ranked number 2 in the BCS, and Missouri 10-1 and ranked number 4, the winner of this game gets to play either Oklahoma or Texas for the Big 12 championship on December 1. If they win that, they will almost certainly (KU for sure, MU probably) play for the National Championship on January 7 in New Orleans. (Probably against LSU. What's this about a neutral site?)

Anyway, though KU has had quite a bit of success in basketball, the KU-MU game has never had National Title implications. This game does.

I don't want to get too emotionally involved in all this. I've had a few sports disappointments in my life, not counting the time we lost to Natoma in the Regional Basketball quarter-final. This KU team is a surprise and a pleasure, and a loss will not diminish what they've done.

But a win Saturday, and next Saturday, and then the long wait until January ... Hmm. I'm supposed to go to New Orleans in March, maybe I can show up a few months early. Got a spare room, cousin Ted?

The Bemused Kansas Jayhawk Football FAQ

I haven't posted for a while, possibly because I'm in a state of shock. In case you haven't heard, the Jayhawks are 9-0. In Football, no less. (In basketball, a team that doesn't start 9-0 is considered suspect. Anything worse that 7-2 is considered a failed season.)

Since this is a rather unusual situation for us all, I thought I'd put together a small FAQ:

1. Is our RPI good enough to get us into the tournament? Uh, well, ... You see, there isn't a tournament.
2. Huh? No, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, does not hold football playoffs for NCAA Division I schools. All other divisions, including Division I-AA (don't ask), have a championship tournament, but D-I does not.
3. Then how does the NCAA determine a Division I champion? It doesn't.
4. This is going to sound repetitive, but ... Huh? No, there is no NCAA D-I football champion. There is, however, a Bowl Championship Series, and the winner of the BCS is usually considered the D-I champion.
5. So is KU in the BCS tournament? Uh, there's no tournament. It's only one game.
6. ???? I agree.
7. So who picks the teams in the game? Some writers and some computers.
8. Sigh All right, how are we doing with them? This week, we're fourth, behind Ohio State, LSU, and Oregon.
9. But LSU and Oregon have a loss! Yup, but the writers and the computers think KU is a weaker team.
10. Why's that? Two words: Southeastern Louisiana
11. Oh. OK, what has to happen for us to get into the game? KU has to win out, beating Oklahoma State, Iowa State, and Missouri, and the win the Big XII Championship Game. And the opponent there better be Oklahoma. LSU & Oregon have to lose another game, and it wouldn't hurt if Ohio State loses to Michigan. If all that happens, we'll get into the BCS game.
12. Otherwise the season's over after the Big XII Championship? No, we'll get to go to a bowl game, if we win out. Probably in the Orange Bowl game, if we win out.
13. And that's, oh, a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving? No, it's on January 1.
14. After the BCS Championship game? No, that's not until January 7.
15. What? You mean that the supposed two best teams in the nation have to wait for a month to play each other? Yup.
16. Why? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
17. Oh.
18. So basketball will be in full swing before this BCS game? Yes.
19. Won't people forget about the BCS by then? Strange as it may seem, in many parts of the country football is more popular than basketball. I don't know why, either, but for some reason people care about football.
20. But they still don't have a true National Champion? No.
21. So apparently they don't care all that much. Well ... they do, but it's mostly about professional football.
22. What's that? I wouldn't know. I root for the Washington Redskins.

Super Bowl XLI

Just a few random thoughts on the game:

• Chicago did a pretty good job with its "If Rex Grossman is off the field he can't hurt us offense," but they lost sight of it in the fourth quarter, leading to defeat.
• While I'm happy Tony Dungy and Payton Manning won, phrases like "second Super Bowl win in Colts' franchise history" stick in my craw. It's the first win for Indianapolis, OK? The phrase "in the middle of the night" still only means one thing in Maryland.
• So much for playing the game in nice-weather venues. New York (well, Jersey) or DC (I mean Landover) would have been a lot better this week. It was football weather — cold.
• I was going to give best commercial award to K-Fed, because nothing else caught my attention — I don't remember what he was advertising, either. But the two minute warning NFL in-house with Brett Favre was better, and the only memorable one in the lot.
  
• Next Super Bowl? Ravens and Redskins. (If you believe that, boy, have I got some penny stocks to sell you.)

Best Football News Since 1992

As Redskins fan since the beginning of Gibbs I, here's an article from USA Today that makes my day:

Turner latest, possibly greatest, candidate for Cowboys job

A representative quote:

Although Turner went 59-83-1 over nine years as a coach with Washington and Oakland, he's considered the front-runner to replace Bill Parcells because of his long relationship with Jones and the success they had together.

Thank you, Jerry.

NFL Rule One

Terry Pratchett's Rule One is Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man.

If you didn't realize it before, in the NFL, Rule One is:

Do not bet incautiously against sixth round draft picks during playoff games.

Rule Two, of course, is

Always bet against Marty.

---

Real Linux stuff later this week, people. Promise.

Big Cash System

So many things to blog about, so little time. Well, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has the distinct advantage that all the players are settled, but we have almost a month before the actual event. So let's talk about what went wrong and why.

The BCS is supposed to give us the two best Division I college football teams fighting for the National Championship. Instead, it gives us pretty good teams fighting for the Championship, and leaves everyone else outside looking in. Sometimes this works. But not often (numbers in parenthesis indicate pre-championship game record):

Season	Bowl	Winner	Loser	Controversy
1998	Fiesta	Tennessee (12-0) 23	Florida State (11-1) 16
1999	Sugar	Florida State (11-0) 46	Virginia Tech (11-0) 29
2000	Orange	Oklahoma (12-0) 13	Florida State (11-1) 2	FSU beaten by Miami (10-1) during season
2001	Rose	Miami (11-0) 37	Nebraska (11-1) 14	Nebraska lost to Colorado (10-2) in final game of regular season. Colorado was Big 12 champion.
2002	Fiesta	Ohio State (13-0) 31	Miami (12-0) 24 (2 OT)	Actually, this was the best BCS championship game
2003	Sugar	LSU (12-1) 21	Oklahoma (12-1) 14	Oklahoma lost Big 12 Championship Game to Kansas State. USC (11-1) left out in cold, though ranked above OSU in the polls.

(Thanks to bcsfootball.org and thelantern.com for the preceding data.)

This year, it's worse. There are not one, not two, not three, but five, count'em, five teams with perfect records: USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah, and Boise State. Six if you count Harvard, who graciously declined to play in a bowl game. So many undefeated teams that Boise State doesn't even get to play in a "BCS" auxillary bowl -- heaven forbid, it's bad enough that Utah is in one.

In the past, the BCS has used the excuse "we'll get it right next year." They tweak the system. Conference champions get screwed? We'll give them a point. Oh, but then strenght of schedule isn't taken into account. No, wait, we're depending on the computers too much. No matter, the next fix would work.

And then the nightmare happened -- not only did a non-BCS interloper (Utah) make it into the sacred bowls, but one of the "real" BCS teams was denied entry into the Championship game even though it had a perfect record -- because there were three perfect teams.

I believe the next fix is going to be addition of an extra bowl game, one held between the "best" two winners of the traditional BCS bowls. That won't work, either, for the simple reason that the Utahs and the Boise States are getting good. They get nearly as much TV exposure as the BCS teams (quick: who plays on a blue field?), and they're getting the players. One day, soon, a non-BCS school will have a plausible argument to being the best team in the country, and it's going to get shut out of the championship game.

The solution, of course, is a playoff, as every other NCAA division has for football. An 8 team playoff (which quite probably would have included California over Texas) would have been OK, but a 16 team playoff is better. This year we could have had the games start last week, the Elite Eight tomorrow, the Final Four next week, skip Christmas, and have the Championship on New Year's Day.

It won't happen of course. One reason is the difference between money in hand and money which can be made. The money in hand comes from the 28 bowl games. This year, unless it is too disfunctional (e.g. Clemson and South Carolina), just about any team with a winning season got into a bowl. That's a lot of money. (If you think it's not about money, note this just in: the NCAA is "considering" making 12 games a year the standard, every year.)

Of course, a real championship would make even more money, just as the basketball tournament makes a ton more than a set of Big 12/Big 10(11) -- Pac 12/SEC -- ACC/Big East tournaments would make. But that money is in the future, so it's hard to see.

And, of course, there is an issue with (gasp) finals. Many commentators like to make fun of this. It's true that every other Division has football championships and finals, and it's also true that many Div-IA players aren't at school to make grades. But last year the last championship was on Dec. 19, a week before Christmas. There's only one (1) game on the whole Div.IAA schedule during the two weeks before Christmas: prime finals time.

Anyone think the Big Guys want to wrap up the season on Dec. 18? Of course not. First, the big bowl games have always been on Christmas, and with a 12 game schedule the season can't end before Thanksgiving. So any playoff will have to span the finals, or not start until around Christmas. Or, the colleges will have to admit that we're really looking at the NFL minor league and give the players a free pass through the finals. As long as we're supposedly in it for the education the NCAA is going to have a problem with finals and Division IA football. While the hypocrisy goes on there will be no IA playoff.

But waiting in the wings: one of these years, Utah and Boise State, or their counterparts in the non-BCS Div.IA, will be the only undefeated teams in the nation. And not only will they not play for the championship, one of them will be left out of the best bowls.

And then the fur will fly.

The Hazard of Being Right

OK, in the last post I said "don't get too excited." And then the Redskins go out an lose twice, in the process making Warner and Testaverde look like decent quarterbacks again.

I saw the Dallas game from high up in FedEx field. What can I say? We were so high that we were, literally, in the clouds. OK, the remnants of hurricane Jeanne were in the area, but still. If it had been light, we could have seen the pilots in the planes that were coming in for a landing at Andrews

We were high enough to be able to see coverage and receivers better than Mark Brunnell, but not as well as Vinny. We could see pass interference calls better then certain referees.

This week Washington plays a truly bad team, Cleveland. Of course, I thought the Giants were a truly bad team. Who knew?

It's not quite time to panic. I sort of thought that the Skins would go 8-8 this year, and next year, when Joe's gotten his feet wet again, would be the year for a long playoff drive. Now, I just hope that Gibbs doesn't get too exhausted from all of these losses and Spurier-like mistakes.

Why we shouldn't get too excited

OK, it was fun to see Joe Gibbs and the Redskins (which would be a pretty fair name for a rock band) win yesterday. Let's not fire up the bandwagon quite yet, though:

• Subtracting off the Portis outlier, he averaged exactly 3 yard per carry: (28 for 84). Adequate if you've got a decent passing game, but not great.
• Subtract that run, we get beat 10-9.
• In addition to the two fumbles (one lost for a TD), Brunell threw three balls in the first half that could have easily been intercepted.
• His QB rating is 68.9

OK, there were some good things:

• Clinton Portis saw everyone to his left, realized the right side was open, and did run 64 yards, unmolested. That was a great run, and I don't want to deny that. If he can do this regularly, he can average 1 yard per carry the rest of the time for all I care.
• The offensive line actually looked as though they knew what they were doing, and there weren't a lot of penalties. There was a delay of game call, but that looked to be Brunell's doing, not the O-line's. Jones was a little shaky at RT, but he didn't get his quarterback killed, and Brunell didn't have to run around a lot.
• The defense looked solid. Of course, this is Tampa Bay, but last year Brad Johnson lit up the defense. (Champ Bailey looked good in Denver, though.)
• The Giants are pitiful.

Why Steve Spurrier Was a Good Thing

Well, not totally good, mind you. But, as Thomas Boswell notes, by "helping" the Redskins to the 5^th worst record in the NFL, Washington got to draft Sean Taylor (S/Miami).

Maybe there is a silver lining to every cloud?

(Heh, Blogger's spell check wanted to replace "Spurrier" with "Sprayer".)

Phase Transistion

Apparently, when he wants to, Dan Snyder can ask really, really nicely.

On Thursday, the front, Style and Sports section of the Washington Post all lead with stories on the return of Joe Gibbs to the Redskins. There were columns by Tom Boswell, Tony Kornheiser, and Michael Wilbon. Today, the sports section five out of twelve pages devoted to Gibbs, including a full page of pictures, a timeline of the Snyder-Gibbs negotiations, and columns by Boswell, Wilbon, and George Solomon. Boswell hasn't worked two days in a row since -- well, I don't remember when he did.

So this is a Really Big Deal. Joe Gibbs will return the Washington Redskins to the Glory that Was in the -- well, in the Joe Gibbs era, because when you come right down to it, though George Allen was a good coach, he only took the team to one SuperBowl, where they would have been shut out except for an errant pass thrown by an Armenian tie-maker.

Joe Gibbs and I moved to Washington in the same year. That first year, the Redskins started the season 0-5 and were as bad as you think the Detriot Lions are now. Worse, in fact. But Gibbs quickly turned it around, finished 8-8, and the next year was in the SuperBowl. Having just come from the New York area, which featured the pre-Tuna Giants, I was ready for a team to love, and this was it.

And then Gibbs left, and everything about the team fell apart. So we've now been through three owners and five coaches, and what do you know, Joe is back again. He'll turn it all around again, won't he? Sure he will.

In my cynical heart of hearts, I'm afraid he won't. Dan Snyder ran a good coach, Marty Schottenhiemer, out of town because it looked like he was going to start winning (he went 0-5, then 8-8, remember), but not in the way Snyder wanted. We got Spurrier, who turned out to be a college coach who ran the third best program in his state. So what can possibly go wrong?

Well, the team is saddled with enough long term, cap-busting contracts that an implosion is almost inevitable in the next few years. And Joe is 63 and hasn't coached in years. He's rounding up his old staff, like in Children of the Lens when Kinnison rounds up all his old buddies to save the Universe one more time. And one of his sons is going to help with the offense. As his sons worked with him in NASCAR, I assume that means that all the plays will go to the left. I see bad things happening.

But this is Joe Gibbs, who won in strike shortened seasons, won with replacement players, won with Jay Schoeder and Mark Ripen as his quarterbacks. Joe Gibbs who built a NASCAR team from scratch, and won two Winston Cup titles. Joe Gibbs who was smart enough to walk away from the Redskins before everything fell apart. Surely he knows what to do?

I hope so. I might not be ready to drink the kool-aid, but I think he's got a good shot at it. So pull out the old Redskins sweatshirts, the ones that say "Superbowl Champions", and lets do this one more time.

Go for it Joe. And thanks, Daniel.

Our next question

Is from a Mr. S. Spurrier, "currently of Washington, D.C.", who writes: shucks, I hear that Wannstedt is probably going to stay in Miami. Is that Nebraska job still open?

I was thankful, grateful, happy, and ecstatic when Dan Snyder purchased the Redskins five years ago. He even managed to encourage Norv Turner to get his team into the playoffs. But now Norv, Terry (we hardly knew ye), Marty, and, I suspect, the Ball Coach are all history, and the Redskins have been in one playoff game since Joe Gibbs left in 1992.

There is a certain class of professional sports club owner, one who knows how things should be done, and, more often than not, screws up everything. In that class we can put, just off the top of my head

• George Steinbrenner
• Ted Turner
• Peter Angelos
• Dan Snyder

Another possible addition to this list is Jerry Jones, but he hired Jimmy Johnson right out of the box and kept him till the 'boys got good. After that things got a little crazy for awhile in Big D.

Anyway the funny thing about Steinbrenner and Turner was that they learned on the job. Eventually they realized the big bucks alone weren't going to win anything, and found real baseball men to run their teams. OK, George is showing signs of wobbling. He and Jones seem to be a lot alike -- they want to win badly enough that they'll hire good talent, but then they want credit for the good job, so they force out the talent and try to do things themselves. Dallas is coming back up in this cycle (boo), and the Yankees are going down, down, down into the black bit of perdition ah ha ha ha!!!!

OK, back to reality. The really interesting person on this list is Ted Turner, who was so involved that he once tried to manage his own baseball team on the field. After that start, he found real baseball talent, and Atlanta has what is certainly the most consistent team of the last decade and a half. I'd say the best team, but they only won one World Series during that stretch.

Baltimore, on the other hand, shows no sign of getting better. Yes, we've got a new set of free agents. But I don't see that talent coming together, at least not this year. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm not planning on attending any playoff games in Camden Yards next year.

So where does that put Dan Snyder and the Redskins? I don't know. Snyder is younger than me, and a good businessman, so he's got time to learn. I suspect that eventually he'll find a good football coach who will win some games for him, maybe even a Superbowl. If he keeps cycling through coaches, it's bound to happen sooner or later. But then what happens? Will Snyder, like Turner, be able to bury his ego and enjoy the ride (with or without Jane Fonda)? Or will he be line Steinbrenner and Jones, and just have to get back into the think of things. It will be an interesting next 20 years for Redskins fans.

How bad are the Redskins?

Pretty bad ... well, let's see. Today they lose to the Bears when the Bears kicker, who'd missed from 30 and 33 yards, kicks a 45 yard field goal into the Chicago wind with five seconds left.

If we asked really, really, nicely do you think Joe Gibbs would come back?