Goodbye BCS - Part one

Goodbye BCS - Part one
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-6-14)



TODD:
Monday night's game between the Florida State Seminoles and the Auburn Tigers is for the college football BCS National Championship. It also marks the end of the entire Bowl Championship Series system.

I suppose let's first get the logistics out of the way. Who do you think is going to win..how do you feel about Jameis Winston..what about this spectacular Auburn story of them going from unranked to number two in the nation?..et cetera et cetera.

We can address those arbitrary concerns, but the more pressing matter is of course the abolishment of the BCS.

I am interested in your feelings on the system in general. I feel as though I was routinely in the minority in defending it. I thought the BCS was great. It removed the need for a playoff system technically. But what it actually did was turn the entire regular season into playoffs. Every game mattered.

This will still be the case, for the most part, with the new four-team playoff that is being instituted in 2014. It seems like a second loss during a season will forever bar a team from reaching the playoffs, although multiple one-loss teams will probably be battling for more than just the final spot each season. It is rare to have two or three-plus teams finish undefeated the same year.

So really where we're going in college football is from having a computer formula determine the top two teams to having a panel of random people determine the top four teams. Now I'm no big city lawyer, but it seems to me that using mathematics is a better form of determination. Am I crazy?

With the SABRmetric revolutions going on in basketball and hockey, and baseball being firmly entrenched in complex statistical measures, why is college football going the other way? Wasn't it simply ahead of the curve with the BCS?

If everyone wants to expand the final from two teams to four, by all means. But why replace math with bias and opinion?


DAN:
I want to like Florida State in the championship game, I really do. I think Winston has put up some gaudy numbers, a bit over hyped for my liking. The Seminoles had a great season, but its not the second coming of their greatness and Winston needs to show me a lot more before I can see him in the NFL. But the Seminoles were dominant this year... in the ACC.

The ACC is better known for basketball, but does play some damn good football. However, its not the SEC in terms of caliber of team. Just like how in baseball the American League Central teams as a whole don't stack up to those in the American League East, ACC vs SEC is not a competition. Auburn wins this game on the back of their defense. I hope its not a blowout.

And thus the BCS ends... but are we doing away with the BCS rankings as well? I realize that the rankings have been used to determine the top two teams to play in the championship game, but are they actually going to do away with the mathematical ranking system entirely?

I'm no fan of the BCS system for the National Championship, however, I LOVE the BCS rankings. I think they are infinitely better than the USA today poll or the Coach's poll...

[Part two - Hello college football Playoffs]

Where has all the Madness Gone? - March Madness Part 2

Where has all the Madness Gone? - March Madness Part 2
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (3-8-13)

[Part One]

DAN:

Let's see how your Final Four stacks up against my own from January. I will say, I may have jumped the gun a bit on my picks, but there's no going back now! Here they are:

Todd's Final Four - Missouri, Michigan, Ohio State, Syracuse
Dan's Final Four - Duke, Texas, NC State, Syracuse

I have a feeling we both may have missed on Indiana. I also enjoyed listening to Colin Cowherd talk about how overrated the Big 10 is this year. They so are! He made a strong case for St. Louis and Gonzaga as dark horse picks as well, which I love. I'm sticking by my predictions though. Never bet against Duke.

I can't help but feel much of the drama is sucked out of the tournament this season though. Where is the hype? What happened to the anxiety surrounding bubble teams? This years tournament crop is being shunned by ESPN and the like. What gives?

I want so badly to love March Madness, but its getting harder and harder each year as hardly any of the best players from last year are still around to watch. I'm not knocking them for hitting up the NBA, but damn has it hurt the casual fan here. My Boston University Terriers (Go BU! BC Sucks!) barely sniff the tournament, let alone win anything and your Virginia Tech Hokies get their bubble burst annually it seems. Where do we go from here? I want to get excited about it again!

TODD:

I hate listening to Colin Cowherd because everything he says is simply for the sound bite. There's no logic or sense in his words. Really, the Big 10 is overrated? Michigan is undefeated against teams out of their conference this year. Indiana only has one loss to non-Big 10 schools. Illinois and Minnesota were flying high before their Big 10 schedule kicked in; they each have only one out-of-conference loss and are now getting beaten up by their Big 10 peers. This conference probably has seven of the top 30 schools in the country.

And he likes St. Louis and Gonzaga as dark horse teams?? St. Louis garnered 675 votes in the AP poll this week (reported by Sports Illustrated), meaning they are ranked as the 16th best team in the country, AKA a 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament. If they lost in the first round of the Big Dance, it would be an UPSET! And Gonzaga? Is he serious?? Gonzaga is number one in the nation right now! They are going to get a one seed if everything stays like it is. A ONE SEED!

For the uninitiated, i.e. people who listen to Colin Cowherd, a one seed is favored to make the Final Four. If they do not, someone upset them!

A dark horse team? Really, Colin? Nice picks. My sleeper is Florida; they're way down at 11th this week in the national rankings.

As for your concern about the drama being gone, it really has a lot to do with four-year players being non-existent but also that everyone on top keeps losing this season. The perennial powers are still playing very well (Indiana, Michigan State, the aforementioned Duke) but the elite school (singular) doesn't exist. There is no one for other teams to target on their schedule. No one is running away with the season. No school is separating themselves from the rest of the country to make a huge storyline. Everyone at the top is just kind of playing reasonably well, ho hum. The good thing is that this should make for a wide open and exciting March Madness.

Really the only way to get back to what you once had, where you can be excited about seeing certain players and knowing rosters around the country is to play a simple game: Get to know your Freshmen.

There are a ton of amazing freshmen this season: Marcus Smart, Ben McLemore, Shabazz Muhammad are just a couple that pop into my mind. The game has swung young, kind of like the NBA, since one is a cause of the other. Huge college basketball fans these days follow high school recruiting and Rivals rankings of incoming freshmen. Rather than perusing last year's All-Conference teams to find out who will be good for an upcoming season, it is time to thumb through lists of the best recruiting classes. That is where the game has gone.

DAN:

Colin Cowherd is tremendous and a great prognosticator. Perhaps his excellence at predicting games and outcomes is due in part to his sleepers actually being top teams to begin with, just ones we're talking about a bit less than the others. But his record stands and he is pretty awesome at making picks. Hold your tongue when St. Louis faces the Zags in the Sweet Sixteen. And what makes him great IS that he's polarizing, says what no one wants to hear, and yells at idiots for over played opinions. I could go all day.

Back to the game at hand. What you're saying is that college basketball is becoming more and more like college football. This is definitely a good thing for its overall success and popularity. Getting people interested in recruiting classes and high school standouts is a positive if it works. I'm calling BS. Football is leaps and bounds ahead of basketball in popularity and interest. The NFL draft is amazing to follow even if the show is lackluster. And this all trickles down into college and National Signing Day being a huge deal. I don't know any of those guys, but I now know which teams are on the up and up in the sport. The problem for college basketball starts with the NBA. The NBA draft stinks. It is god awful! Before it even starts you know basically who the top five picks are, and beyond that who cares. Its just a bunch of complimentary players or bench guys. Teams are smaller and its a star driven league. All the stars are in the top five, top ten max in the draft. If I don't care about the draft, then why do I care about college basketball or its equivalent to National Signing Day? I don't, and its hard to imagine a situation where I do care.

The NBA is putting on a great product right now and I think March Madness will be interesting. But as an outsider to the college game, I see no way I garner any interest in a tournament team outside of my Alma-mater. Yes, yes, I can play the simple game of getting to know my freshmen. But that's what the NCAA tournament use to be for. Now they want me to watch regular season college basketball. Not happening. Sorry.

TODD:

The last thing I'll say on Cowherd, because he deserves even less time than we're giving him right now, is that if St. Louis and Gonzaga do meet in the Sweet Sixteen, it won't even be that surprising! They are both top 20 teams! Maybe he just doesn't understand what "sleeper" means.

You're right about the NBA draft. But it seems to me that should help aid your frustrations, not exacerbate them. Only the top five or so guys matter because it is a star driven league, sure. But 80% of those top five guys might be freshmen this season. It is even more paramount that you follow signing day and recruiting classes in basketball because one guy can shift an entire team's fortunes. That usually is not the case in football. So by seeing who nabs the top recruits, you'll have a pretty good idea of what teams might make a leap into contention during the season, and also have an eye on who will go near the top of the NBA draft. The turnaround on that information in football takes two or three years wherein basketball it all happens in one season! This should make it all easier and more exciting to follow. You just have a mental block against college basketball. That's on you. Don't blame the game!

As for the Big Dance, its always exciting just because of the built-in drama. Whether you know any players involved or not, the games are heart-pounding and you learn about stars (both freshmen and small-school seniors) during the tournament games. I guess your real problem is around this time, early March, where the tournament hasn't begun yet but you know nothing about the national teams and cannot dutifully fill out your bracket with any semblance of first hand knowledge. Sucker! This, I am sorry to say, is again, on you. Good luck with your bracket though.  That was sarcasm, just to be clear.

[Part One if you missed it]

The Madness of March is Here! Or is it? - Part One

The Madness of March is Here! Or is it? - Part One
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (3-4-13)

TODD:

This has been one of the most wild college basketball seasons in my adult life. Top five teams are getting bounced week after week; the rankings have almost become irrelevant or added encouragement for the underdog, depending on how you look at it.

No team is safe with multiple schools having already lost as the number one team in the nation. This would ordinarily spell trouble for fans trying to predict playoff advancement. If even the best teams are constantly falling, who can you rely on?

However, when it comes to March Madness, where upsets are routine and unpredictability is always predictable, this may be to our advantage. When is a better time to ride the top teams than when the public (i.e. stupid squares who lose lots of money all the time in anything they bet) is going to be going hard against them?

With all that being said, which type of Big Dance do you prefer: the upsets straight through, leaving everyone's bracket in shambles or seeing the "best" teams advance through to the Final Four?

DAN:

My favorite type of Big Dance is the one where my picks are right and I chose the champion correctly. That's only happened three times. I picked UConn, North Carolina and Duke correctly over the last decade. Go me! I know, all heavy favorites or top two seeds in the years they won. And if I'm being totally honest, I've chosen the champion correctly three times but definitely have NEVER gotten the majority of my picks correct. I've picked tons of upsets and I've picked next to none. No matter which way I go, I'm rarely over 50% and its because of exactly what you noted. Putting anything over fifty bucks on the tourney is nuts because you'll probably lose that money. Go play video poker instead. Vegas!

As for your question, I'd much rather see the top seeds advance. I like two number one's in the Final Four, a two or three and then one surprise team ranked six to eight. Balance. Then we get exciting games in the later rounds as well as some "Cinderella" drama and the reality that the rankings are not great and we're left with what we expected. Even three number one's in the Final Four is good, but anything less than two and you lost me a round or so ago. I know little to nothing about the Texas A&M's or Louisiana Lafayette's of the world and have no desire to actually watch them play basketball.

My entire March Madness experience hinges on the picks I've made. The upsets should stay in the first weekend and after that I'm all for chalk. It's hard for me, because the tournament has really lost its luster over the last five plus years. All the best college players are one and done to the NBA, so consequently I know no one. I use to know guys from the year before, watching them play in March Madness, but now anyone worth caring about leaves. It makes it tough to care, unless you enjoy following the sport during the regular season. I know you do, so I'm sure you have an opposing view. If not then just give me some picks! I made my Final Four selections back during the first week of January. What do you think now?

TODD:

Even though no one wants to admit it, I think most of America agrees with you. People care about their brackets and upsets in the first or second round. After that, they want the top seeds advancing. The television ratings back this up. The years when George Mason and VCU went way farther than anyone anticipated, the viewership was down for those games. Buzzer beaters are nice in the round of 32. But in the Elite Eight, Americans want the best competing.

As for my tournament outlook, I'm really high on the SEC this year and really low on the ACC. The SEC is pretty awful after their top three teams but I think both Florida and Missouri are awesome and Kentucky can still make waves. I could see either Florida or Mizzou making the Final Four, Missouri's current struggles not withstanding.

The ACC, on the other hand, has a number of top teams but I have little confidence in them. NC State and North Carolina have already shown their true colors; they simply are not as good as we anticipated coming into the year. The opposite can be said about Miami but I would not feel good about backing them for a long tournament run; nor Duke for that matter. Duke always scares me since they can lose to anyone if their shots are not falling.

Outside of those two conferences, the stories are all in the Big 10. As many as five different Big 10 schools are good enough to make the Final Four (Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Minnesota) and I wouldn't be surprised if two of the final four came from that conference.

But enough explaining myself. I know people only care about picks and when picks are wrong so here goes:

The Final Four will consist of Missouri, Michigan, Ohio State and Syracuse.

[Part 2 - Picks, Colin Cowherd and more Madness]