(I'll be back in a regular posting groove in no time. Though, tomorrow is a lottery day)
So, we saw the four best college basketball teams in the country play a couple weekends ago.
Right? Isn't that right, college football playoff boosters who yap that football could draw the same attention as the NCAA tournament?
Man, how wrong people can be when logic escapes them. And logic escaped most years ago.
“If college football had a playoff, it would be this fun.”
People must quit playing football minus helmets.
For one, there’d be no VCU or Butler in a college football playoff. There is absolutely no underdog in a big-boy college football playoff.
If you're in the top eight in football, you're not an underdog. Period. It's that simple. And obvious.
In our final BCS standings, Arkansas was No. 8, Oklahoma No. 7. Not Central Florida (No. 25) or Utah (No. 18) or Nevada (No. 15).
There were 120 Division I-A football teams last season. An eight-team playoff includes 6.7 percent.
There were 345 Division I men's basketball teams in 2010-11, and 68 made the tournament. That's 19.7 percent.
We'd have eight fan bases paying serious attention to a playoff, and it drops after the first week, because the losers have no games left, and not much to watch because football fans tend to be more narrow in their fanaticism. If their team is done, they’re somewhat done.
They'll immediately lose any "well, we lost to the eventual national champion" outlook, the few that would have it in the first place, and start pouting about where they were seeded and the whole bleepin' process. And they'll grumble about the fact that their season is done, but the teams in the Independence and Outback and Liberty bowls still get talked about.
There'll be a high-intensity bitching about matchups, like there would have been this fall about a 1 vs. 8 of Auburn vs. Arkansas. And the cry if your team gets a traditional contender and your rival gets TCU, Boise, Stanford, etc. will be almost deafening.
Hell, people don't know the basic rules of football and go ballistic at a simple whistle. The level of paranoia is already high about the BCS process, which really just ain’t that difficult to comprehend. Start putting people involved in picking the field, and there's whining.
There won't be college football playoff pools galore. There won't be brackets. There will be no bracket busters during the season, nor when that eight-team field is decided.
It's just not the same, in any form or fashion.
Some arguments against a playoff are pretty silly. OK, the missed class time is the only one.
But the NCAA will have to get involved. The same NCAA that allowed a 9:23 p.m. tipoff for the NCAA men's title game.
And there's already bellyaching about the NCAA.
"OK, we'll break away from the NCAA and come up with a SuperLeague of just the big boys, so we can be as corrupt and misguiding as we wanna be."
Which then kills any and all comparisons to the other playoffs and tournaments. After all, VCU and Butler would be nowhere near a basketball SuperLeague.
The dog can chase and chase cars, can't do anything when he catches one.
LOUGHDMOUTHINGS
Finally, after literally three-plus months of promotion, the Masters and its collection of Hemingways - Fred and Ronald, not Ernie - in the press theatre has come and gone.
You know that we started getting the promos in January, during football season, right? As if those who cared didn't know that the Masters was the weekend after the Final Four. It isn't like the date nor location were going to change. ...
Knuckle-draggers will complain, and I certainly wanted a better game on Monday than we got, but it's a good thing that Texas A&M-Notre Dame was better than Butler-UConn.
Granted, the crossover audience probably wasn't much, but people will see the women scored nearly 150 points and the men couldn't break 100.
The men's game wasn't a collection of Gary Payton defenders, guys just missed shots. It happens. Happens in the first game, happens in the last game. ...
Congrats to Baltimore, Cincinnati and Texas.
The Orioles, Reds and Rangers were undefeated after a week of baseball. Hope they started printing those playoff tick - oops, the Orioles and Reds have tight leads in their divisions.
And sorry, Boston, you have only two wins, so forget about the playoffs and all.
Sure feels that way if you pay attention to baseball "media" and challenged fans.
As your correspondent has said for years, there's no trophy for April (baseball), September (football) or December (basketball).
All of about eight percent of the season is in the books. Remotely substantial analysis is idiotic. ...
Man, Jim Calhoun's dentures were giving me the creeps the other night in the postgame lovefest with Jim Nantz, whose mind was already in Augusta. Could build a dam with those choppers. ...
A fist bump to Texas A&M women's head coach Gary Blair for his first national title.
Ran into Blair a few times when he was at Stephen F. Austin of the Southland Conference and I covered Northwestern State in Louisiana. He and NSU head coach James Smith were quite the smack-talking characters.
Blair has been successful everywhere he's been, and is one of those coaches other coaches pull for.
Local connection: Mercer head coach Susie Gardner replaced Blair at Arkansas when he left - not completely on his own accord - for Texas A&M.
Ah, (mis)management strikes again. ...
Butler loses five seniors from this year's team, three who played.
That's one reason the gap between majors and mid-majors continues to narrow: more veterans on the mid-majors.
VCU loses all three who played, and the Rams return the rest of the team. ...
For next year's tournament, the NCAA drinking game, courtesy of Fox Sports.com. The observations on Nantz are money. He'd have kissed Calhoun if not worried the dentures would clamp his tongue.
Dammit, lost the bet.
Couple of us had differing viewpoints on how the Miami Brons would do, and yours truly said this:
Heat go 55-27, lose in second round of playoffs.
Said Roc: 52-30, lose in first round.
Said Carlos: 60-22 - after originally saying 65-17, and to the finals.
And since Toronto sucks, Miami finished 58-24. We didn’t state ahead of time if Price is Right rules – can’t go over on the record – were in effect, so I barely lose.
But the playoffs will even things out. Yeah, I see that second-round loss to Orlando comin' round the bend. ...
So maybe the Big East wasn't so overrated?
The number of teams from a conference doesn't indicate that they're all national title contenders, it means they're among the top 64/68. Simple as that.
The Big East had 10 teams in the NCAA and CollegeRPI.com s top 40 RPI entering the tournament, Sagarin had 11 in the final top 40 of the season.
The conference went 11-10 in the tournament, and, uh, won the national championship. In the regular season, it was 29-16 against non-conference BCS teams, compared to 24-27 for the ACC, 25-20 for the Big 12, 17-20 for the Big Ten, 12-19 for the Pac-10. and 19-24 for the SEC.
Twice, two Big East teams played each other in the tournament: UConn-Cincy and Marquette-Syracuse. Marquette, the last Big East team in, beat two higher seeds, and all four Final Four teams had to beat a Big East team.
And it's hard to shove any of the Big East teams from the tournament, unless you were No. 69, 70, 71, etc.
People love to grumble and change their logic a week later. Pull against No. 1s, and then rip 'em when they lose.
The lines continue to blur between majors and the mids. More folks realizing as much would be nice, but logic apparently decreases the fun for most people. ...
Congratulations, Brett Favre, for still being retired and not forcing yourself on us the past month or so. ...
Is John Calipari waiting for Jim Calhoun's latest national title to be vacated? Lotsa people cringed when Calhoun, the Bruce Pearl of the Big East, stood on that platform. ...
At this point, I don't think I'd walk near UGA offensive lineman Trinton Sturdivant. Three ACLs? Man, the kid has some bad karma flowing. ...
For all the talk of the immense basketball talent in Georgia, there were three Peach Staters on a Final Four men's roster.
VCU had two - well-rested reserve freshman Heath Houston of Hillgrove in Powder Springs and regular Toby Veal of Johnson in Savannah - and UConn one, regular Jeremy Lamb of Norcross.
Germany was close with two players, both for UConn.
There were 17 states represented on the men's rosters, led by Indiana with nine, followed by Florida with six and four from Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky.
There were 11 from Big Ten/Twelve states (Indiana, Ohio, Illinois), and nine from SEC states (Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia) and from ACC states (N.C., Va., and Maryland).
Florida is a combo state. Massachusetts is technically an ACC state with Boston College, but in reality is a Big East state, with UConn, St. John's, Providence and Syracuse all in the region.
Yes, calling Kentucky an SEC state despite Louisville.
No, Kentucky won't make next year's Final Four. Tis a hunch. ...
It was nice to see some new meat compete in and win the Masters. Whoever had Charl Whartzel in the pool probably had VCU, too. ...
Dwight Perry of The Seattle Times brings us a blast from the past and a chuckle:
"A celebrity-boxing promoter in Hollywood, Calif., is furious after Jose Canseco tried to slip in his twin brother Ozzie for a match last Saturday.
"Baseball purists were stunned — that a slugger would lift himself for a pinch-hitter."
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