And now for a meaningful topic

I suppose it could be fun to continue arguing about what a bunch of whiny bitches Pats fans are, but I said everything that needed to be said in my first and only post on the subject.

However, there's no limit to what I can say about the wave of unabated rage that washed over me while reading this feature on the life and times of Jerramy Stevens, perhaps the single worst person in the history of sports, non-murderer division (we think).

Stevens is pure scum, to be sure, and it's a shame that he's not the kind of person we're torturing in GITMO right now. But he was far from the only criminal to play a role in his sub-human behavior, a point that might be missed by many who read that completely dispiriting (but very well researched and written) story. And, as far as I'm concerned, Rick Neuheisel is as complicit in Stevens' crimes as the man himself. Yes, I realize Slick Rick wasn't the only coach to enable Stevens, but the decision to actually discipline Stevens for a procession of rape, DUI, hit-and-runs and assaults rested on his and former AD Barbara Hedges' shoulders. Hedges was a stupid, opportunistic bitch, for sure, but it is Neuheisel that personifies the college head coach who is pure evil.

And it's only a matter of time before the next horror story presents itself at UCLA, now that they've hired Neuheisel.

I can almost understand a middling program, both athletically and academically, like Arizona State taking a chance on Dennis Erickson. I realize that some people involved in the administration of college athletics think the wages of winning is dealing with despotic coaches who don't believe in discipline for players unless they drop passes. But at least ASU's "reputation" is already that of a sketchy, outlaw program that hasn't leveraged its willingness to trash the school's image into actual success on the field. Erickson only represents a small uptick in trashiness over the dreck that program has run through its halls, and it's clear that the administration will allow him to run everything as he sees fit now that he's already delivered them a top-25 finish and some serious face time on College Gameday.

But UCLA is not Arizona State; they're not even on the same planet. UCLA is supposed to be a beacon of hope for cynics, a superior academic institution that also happens to house the most successful athletic program in the history of college sports. It wasn't that long ago that pathological rules violator Bob Toledo was run out of Westwood, and while his firing was ostensibly the result of poor on-field performance, the athletic department didn't exactly deny that the coach's reputation as a snake was a factor as well. The Bruins have long gravy-trained the good name of legend John Wooden, who managed to dominate the college hoops landscape without soiling the institution's good name. In fact, there's good reason to believe that UCLA's vaunted status as an academic institution has been bolstered by the successes of the basketball program and the rest of the academic department.

But USC's success under Pete Carroll — who, thanks to Reggie Bush, is no longer unscathed by scandal himself — has obviously convinced the higher-ups at UCLA that valuing character in the upper-reaches of its football program comes with too high a cost; it only took one truly disappointing season on the part of erstwhile coach Karl Dorrell (who seemed like a swell guy) for him to get shit-canned, a decision made with such apparent haste in large part because Neuhesiel was available.

As an Arizona partisan who watched UCLA's football program destroy the Wildcats' best chance at a Rose Bowl in 1998, I will revel in schadenfreude when Neuheisel inevitably begins to destroy the Bruins' reputation (who will give me 100-1 odds on UCLA getting the NCAA death penalty in the next 10 years?). But as a fan of college sports, I'm disheartened to see that it's easier to break out of Alcatraz than it is to convince university presidents and athletic directors to concern themselves with character.

Addendum: The Times followed up the Stevens piece with another piece on Curtis Williams, another horrible former Husky who actually received the death he so richly deserved after (ironically) a dirty hit on the field. And then, to top it all off, b found some fucking UW blogger says he's still on the fence about UW erecting a statue in that fucking wife-beater's honor! Man, it's days like this that make me wish we had colonized Mars already.

Blog-to-Blog Resuscitation

Today, it’s Three Guys Who Never Agree, as Pepe and Diesel have so graciously allowed me to enter their space for a college football discussion. A But what about the kids?? Part II, if you will…

Much discussion, amongst the media and amongst me and my friends and family, the last few days has centered on the latest round of the college football carousel, which has lost all kind of control ever since Tommy Bowden left his undefeated Tulane squad between the final regular season and bowl game. Ironically, Rich Rodriguez was his offensive coordinator then, and he has recently done the same, this time leaving West Virginia, his alma mater, for Michigan. Another non-stop discussion on the radio dial has been Atlanta’s Bobby Petrino “quitting” on his team “in the middle of the season,” which implies there was more than the actual three games remaining of a wash-out season. Because we apparently have nothing else to listen to, and it’s football, blowhards nationwide have overreacted to both of these instances, calling these men “quitters,” “traitors” and, perhaps most comically, “guys I wouldn’t want my son to play for.”

In my best Chris Rock voice, Can we please cut the fucking shit already?

An annoyance I have is our continual holding of athletes to a higher standard than everyone else, even though, time and time again, we are reminded of how idiotic this is. It’s now crept into us holding coaches to higher standards, as if these “leaders of men” are any different. We’re avoiding the idea that coaches, just like us simpletons, want to max out their potential and have the best possible life, just like we hope to. The only difference is their window to do that is exponentially smaller than ours, based on simple time frames, pressure and short attention spans.

Plenty has been said about Bobby Petrino, so it would be redundant for me to bring them all up here – these mainly center on the outside influences that destroyed the season before it began for Atlanta, an average to slightly above average team at best heading into the season if none of those things happened in the first place. Is it wrong for Bobby Petrino to leave Atlanta during the season to head for Arkansas? Perhaps, but it’s not necessarily his fault – if he wants to move to Arkansas, he has to get started right away. By staying for those three final NFL games to see out the season, he would have lost at least one season in Fayetteville, all because of the NCAA’s reluctance to push National Signing Day, which is the root of all the December coaching changes, back a little bit.

The gap between the end of the regular season and the bowl games is too precious to lose when going after those final pieces to the recruiting class, so schools like Michigan and Arkansas have their hands forced into “stealing” other teams’ coaches while the season is still going on. It’s the same reason why Arizona had to go and get Mike Stoops, even though he was the defensive coordinator in a national championship race at the time. But that’s the business timeline the NCAA has set up. The NBA doesn’t open the free agent market on May 1st for a reason, yet college football wants everything signed and sealed by February 6th with battles taking place well before that. Teams don’t have any time to lose.

Football, college and pro (and, who are we kidding, high school), is business - a fact that everyone acknowledges but fails to understand. Everybody thinks they can contend for a national championship, even though it’s proven every year that it is arguably the hardest goal to accomplish in team sports. There are far too many obstacles to overcome and, unlike the NFL, there are no equal playing fields when it comes to competitive advantages and disadvantages.

Which brings me to Rodriguez, who’s become the latest “traitor” on the paving the path to a successful career in coaching football. Nobody bats an eye when an assistant coach, who has a far closer relationship to players than the head coach and is often the one making promises, leaves to take another job, yet we all get up in arms when the head coach moves to greener pastures.

Whether you think Rodriguez’s career move is great or deplorable, you have to understand that the timing of his decision was neither his nor Michigan’s fault. College football has the longest offseason in sports, yet there’s little breathing room between the end of this season and the beginning of next. In fact, they overlap, and the loser in most cases is the end of this season, because next year, of course, is the year we win it all!

But what about the kids? they always say. Seems like one set of them is going to be neglected either way. They should be expecting it by now - it’s the nature of the beast for college football hires to be handled like this. But it doesn’t have to be, does it?

My afletes is mo numerously than yo's

Reader Brett left an interesting comment on the last post — which has, since the start of me writing this post, been buttressed by even more commentary — in which he posits that, perhaps, Appalachian State's upset of Michigan wasn't such a monumental upset after all. It brings up the question as to how, exactly, I-AA football teams — at least the best ones, like the Mountaineers, Montana, Maine and North Dakota State — stack up against I-A opponents, in terms of win probability.

I don't know how one can take an analytical approach to this question, because we simply don't have the tools available to do the work. Football Outsiders are attempting to bring a sabermetric-like approach to the NFL, but the analysis suffers from the inherent issues brought about by small sample sizes and the fluid nature of the sport itself. College football is an even less forgiving terrain, thanks to the sheer number of teams; it's difficult to establish controls when teams that are vying for the National Championship rarely play each other, or even common opponents.

Turning to anecdotal evidence, it's tempting to think that Brett's close to being right. In the last four seasons, there have been three victories by I-AA teams in guarantee games: Appalachian State's win over Michigan, Montana State's win over Colorado in 2006 and Maine's victory over Mississippi State in 2004. However, one has to remember that there are upward of 40 of these matchups per year (46, by my count, this season), so the approximate odds of a I-AA "upset" are 53-to-1. But I don't think there's very far to go with this number; no one's arguing that the majority of I-AA teams stand a chance against I-A opposition, just that the very best I-AA teams can hang with the big boys.

We have some proof that they can, obviously, with the three "upsets" mentioned above. I use quotation marks because I think part of the snag here is the definition of an "upset" itself: I think it's best to say that a win by any double-digit dog is an upset. And, make no mistake about it, virtually any I-AA team is going to be a double-digit dog to virtually any I-A team, or at least any major-conference I-A team (it's too difficult to get into the particulars of teams in the Sun Belt, for instance, since many of them were I-AA programs not too long ago and are barely hanging onto I-A status). The reason for the bookmaker's view is simple: I-AA doesn't have the soldiers, and I don't mean that in the Windslowian sense.

A I-AA football team gets 65 scholarships, compared to 85 for a I-A school. More than any other factor, this is what would make it impossible for an Appalachian State to compete with any kind of consistency against I-A opponents. Those 20 scholarships are what would usually go to third-string linemen, an extra kicker/punter, perhaps a dedicated long snapper, or a sixth wide receiver. People don't often consider these players, but that's because most people don't really understand what all goes into creating a football team. Injuries cause massive attrition over the long haul, and fatigue does so within a game, particularly on the lines. Your average I-AA team is lucky to have one backup for each spot, not to mention two or three. And while many of the starters on a I-AA are "good enough to play with the big boys," the backups often aren't anywhere close. Thusly, in a guarantee game, you'll have fourth-quarter situations where a defensive tackle who has played every down of the game is going up against a center or guard who might have played 2/3 of the offensive team's snaps. That's a massive difference, and the main reason why most I-AA teams that are able to put some points on the board early tend to "fade" as the game goes on. It's not that the bigger/better team got any more wise to what the smaller team is doing ("halftime adjustments" are the most overrated things in football); it's just that the smaller/overmatched team gets too tired to actually do it.

I used to have a picture that could illustrate this point perfectly, taken on my cellphone from the press box of the ISU-SDSU game a couple of years back. The ISU sideline looked about half as populous as SDSU's, and I'm pretty sure the numbers themselves weren't that far off.

The fact that Appalachian State's starting lineup, particularly on offense, is probably I-A quality doesn't mean it's a I-A-quality team, despite the fact the Mountaineers played like one for a day. If we're talking about determining where a I-AA team fits in the national picture, regardless of classification, than we've got to consider what would happen if that I-AA team played a 12-game schedule against 11 or 12 I-A teams. If that happened, the I-AA team would be lucky to win one game, not to mention two. It's virtually impossible. If Arizona, a team I'm convinced is either the 9th- or 10th-best team in the Pac-10, played Appalachian State 10 times, the Wildcats would win 9.5 times, and Willie Tuitama would look like Brian Brohm. This may sound like hyperbole, but it's the nature of football. Speed may kill, but depth is what determines the battle.

Situations like the Appalachian State are what hooks bad gamblers into betting boxcars at the craps table: When you see it hit once, you tend to forget that 30:1 odds means that it's supposed happen at least once if you roll the dice 31 times (actually, the true odds of rolling boxcars are 35:1, but we'll not enter into a discussion of vigorish right now). Instead of simply viewing it for what it was — an occurrence that isn't all that surprising if you see guarantee games not as isolated events, but as part of a larger, continuing series of games — it's tempting to ascribe more to this win, such as a skill level on Appalachian State's part that justifies the victory. But while it may not be intellectually satisfying to attribute events to luck, or the probability that a super-outside shot comes through every so often, it's nonetheless the case.

Putting an upset into context

Lost amid the schadenfreude most of the country is experiencing on the heels of Appalachian State's historic upset of Michigan, Saturday, is the impact of this game years down the road on college football scheduling. And, for the I-AA folks out there, the result is unlikely to be well-received.

Any sports fan worth a damn knows the double-meaning of a "guarantee game," so there's little point in getting into how poorly the Mountaineers played up to their end of the bargain. I haven't been able to find out exactly how much the guarantee was in this game, but based on the figures I've seen, it's likely that the visitor made somewhere between $750,000 to a million for the pleasure of making Lloyd Carr's final season with the Wolverines even better for the Sack Carr folks.

While there's little doubt that a lot of high-fives were exchanged in the offices of I-AA football programs Sunday, one has to wonder if there wasn't a little apprehension mixed in with the celebration. Even if Appalachian State goes on to win the I-AA title, it won't provide any salve for the humiliation felt by Michigan. Couple Saturday's upset with last season's 19-10 upset of Colorado by the Big Sky's Montana State — in new head coach Dan Hawkins' debut, no less — and that's two season's worth of proof for I-A programs that the only guarantee these games provide is a no-win situation.

College football program are notoriously risk-averse, unless a five-star recruit with a rap sheet is involved. Most programs have realized that the K-State model to program building — schedule horseshit opponents in the early season while voters aren't paying attention — is both effective and the correct percentage play. That's why guarantee games have exploded in popularity in the last 10 years, with most teams playing a I-AA opponent at least once every two seasons, if not annually.

But what sounds like exploitation is actually a fair shake. The idea of financial viability for collegiate athletic programs is mostly a mirage — Arizona's can count itself as one of a half-dozen or so that actually pays for itself — and is a complete fantasy for programs relegated to I-AA in football, which aren't allowed to feed from the BCS television contract trough. The growth of guarantee games presented an annual opportunity for smaller programs to get a piece of the pie, converting the "pocket change" of I-A programs into financial windfalls. Idaho State's $200,000 or so guarantee for a 2005 matchup against San Diego State — a smaller sum because of the Aztecs' mid-major status — represented a little less than 1/10th of that year's athletic department revenue, if my memory serves.

While Idaho State, a mid-level program that rarely glimpses the playoffs, is unlikely to pull off an upset when it plays Oregon State in two weeks, one has to wonder if the Beavers are a little worried. The talent gap is much smaller than perceived by many fans, especially at the skill positions, between the Idaho States and the Oregon States of the world. The real rub comes at the lines — the Bengals once played an entire season with a 235-pound right tackle — and in depth. While those differences would be extremely apparent over the course of an entire season against I-A competition, it's less important in a one-game trial. Even if the odds of an upset are less than 5 percent, there's still a 5 percent chance that an entire season could be destroyed. While a loss to a I-A bottom-feeder like Louisiana-Monroe would be humiliating, at least it's a I-A school.

There's already some indication that guarantee games might start to peter out. Odds are good that any program that doesn't already have a scheduled game against Appalachian State won't be in a rush to book them, and it's been years since perennial power Montana has been able to attract any I-A program in its region to take the challenge (though the Griz athletic department, which is a financial titan within the Big Sky and the rest of the I-AA landscape, spins the situation by claiming it's not in the market for guarantees).

Most of the 2008 scheduling has already been arranged, and any cancellations would cause a shitstorm. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a noticeable downturn in the total number of I-AA programs playing with the big boys in 2009, who are probably figuring out right now that there are better uses for those hundreds of thousands burning a hole in their pockets.