Our friend Mike doesn't watch any sort of basketball, but he loves to use stupid systems to pick his NCAA bracket every season. This year, he went with a team's best names. This is simply too good not to post. In the first round, a team's entire roster will be considered. Beyond that, only a team's superstar name (not the same as the name of the team's superstar) will be considered. His analysis follows. (Also, apologies on formatting -- I will try to fix it later.)
Our friend Mike doesn't watch any sort of basketball, but he loves to use stupid systems to pick his NCAA bracket every season. This year, he went with a team's best names. This is simply too good not to post. In the first round, a team's entire roster will be considered. Beyond that, only a team's superstar name (not the same as the name of the team's superstar) will be considered. His analysis follows. (Also, apologies on formatting -- I will try to fix it later.)
Our friend Mike doesn't watch any sort of basketball, but he loves to use stupid systems to pick his NCAA bracket every season. This year, he went with a team's best names. This is simply too good not to post. In the first round, a team's entire roster will be considered. Beyond that, only a team's superstar name (not the same as the name of the team's superstar) will be considered. His analysis follows. (Also, apologies on formatting -- I will try to fix it later.)
While Texas has a lot going for it (huge points for the unnecessary and most likely ungrammatical apostrophe in Mr. Guignard’s name), I have to give it to Memphis for Chance McGrady.
Two first names always make for a strong name. Also, after much deliberation, it was decided that the quality of the school’s name should not affect this bracket
Our friend Mike doesn't watch any sort of basketball, but he loves to use stupid systems to pick his NCAA bracket every season. This year, he went with a team's best names. This is simply too good not to post. In the first round, a team's entire roster will be considered. Beyond that, only a team's superstar name (not the same as the name of the team's superstar) will be considered. His analysis follows. Enjoy. (Also, apologies on formatting -- I will try to fix it later.)
Our friend Mike doesn't watch any sort of basketball, but he loves to use stupid systems to pick his NCAA bracket every season. This year, he went with a team's best names. This is simply too good not to post. In the first round, a team's entire roster will be considered. Beyond that, only a team's superstar name (not the same as the name of the team's superstar) will be considered. His analysis follows. (Also, apologies on formatting -- I will try to fix it later.)
Tough decision here. A strong showing from Notre Dame, but I feel that Cam Long has what it takes to go the distance. It’s short, it’s strong, and it rolls off the tongue.
Yeah, sorry about that. Things remain hectic in Plisskenville; it should be telling that we've made more posts on other sites than on this one recently. We are still alive, though, and the doctors tell us we have a good chance of surviving so long as we maintain the will to live.
That should be easier because of one of our newest Blogburgh extracurriculars: involvement in the utterly fantastic NCAA Basketball Blogpoll. Much thanks to everyone involved with that one for allowing us to be involved.
In our minds, one of the responsibilities of getting to vote is having to explain your picks and, as such, we will be writing weekly responses to our poll. Starting now, that is, because we couldn't last week (oops). If you want to check out the final poll for this week, please go here. Previous ranking (our ranking, not the official one) is in parentheses. Let the games begin:
1 (1). Memphis. Like I said way back in July, the Tigers are my favorite team (not my rooting interest, though) in the country. Watching them last Friday against UConn was quite frankly a revelation. Outside of the first ten minutes, they didn't even seem to play that well, but they were able to win convincingly anyway. To make a comparison to the NBA, they remind me a lot of the Warriors in that they're capable of being extremely physical without banging -- everyone is so athletic that high-impact contact occurs just because they play hard. Individually, Derrick Rose is as advertised and Chris Douglas-Roberts might be the most underrated player in the country. I'm not sure this team is the best team in the country -- they do play very sloppily at times -- but I like them too much to put them lower.
2 (2). Kansas. I must confess that I haven't seen them play yet and thus have no idea if they're actually better than UCLA, but they're too stacked to go anywhere else right now. The talent on that roster is just obscene; it's a damn shame that I have no faith in Bill Self to get them to where they should go by the end of the year.
3 (5). UCLA. I don't know why we ever had them 5th. Even without Darren Collison, the ball pressure is just filthy. Howland has to be the best coach in the country. As for Kevin Love, he's clearly a superior college player, but I'm very anxious to see what he can do against an NBA big man. I haven't seen much explosiveness around the rim from Love, and his regular pump fakes will be harder to pull off against superior defenders.
4 (3). Georgetown. There's still no one in the country who can guard Roy Hibbert, and those guards remain underrated. For now, that's enough to keep them this high.
5 (4). UNC. Like Kansas, I'm not convinced they have enough to win the whole thing. Instead of the coach being the problem, though, it remains their lack of a clear go-to guy in crunch time. Wayne Ellington's going to have to step things up if they want to justify the hype.
6 (6). Tennessee. I know they (or maybe just Chris Lofton) haven't been at their best so far this season, but I'm a sucker for any running team that presses. I just love the makeup of this roster.
7 (9). Washington State. Haven't seen them yet this year, so the ranking is mostly an assumption in praise of their performance last year.
8 (8). Indiana. One of the pollsters doesn't even have them ranked, and one of his reasons for said snub was that he doesn't like teams that rely heavily on freshmen. Uh, Eric Gordon is no ordinary freshman.
9 (7). Lousville. The loss of David Padgett has to hurt, but Pitino has enough horses inside to keep them solid in his absence.
10 (11). Oregon. This ranking will change after their loss to St. Mary's (w/out Bryce Taylor, though). I still think they're going to have a lot of trouble in crunch time this year with the absence of Brooks. And the defense will definitely be worse, as they showed in Moraga.
11 (12). Kansas State. Here's where the rankings become really, really hard to figure out. This one is basically a vote for Michael Beasley. We're convinced that he's the 11th best team in the country. I'm also a fan of anything related to Bill Walker and his insatiable hunger for victory.
12 (13). Duke. Shock of all shocks: I fully expect to like watching Duke this year. May they never make a basket on a true post-up.
13 (14). Texas A&M. This is probably too high for them. Big fan of DeAndre Jordan, though.
14 (NR). Michigan State. Seems like they've worked out the kinks after that horrific exhibition loss. Lost in the praise for UCLA's victory without Collison is that Drew Neitzel was sick in that game and didn't perform to his capabilities.
15 (15). Pittsburgh. Haven't seen them, but they've never proven themselves to be a bad team. For the last few years, it's been safe to assume that they'll end up in the Top 3 of the Big East. That earns them #15.
16 (17). Gonzaga. Heytvelt's out, yeah. But they still have Jeremy Pargo, and there are few players in the country that are as exciting as him off the dribble.
17 (24). Texas. I really don't like this team at all, but they had to go somewhere. I think Augustin is wildly overrated and will continue to think so until he joins the Sonics and starts passing to Durant like a sane person.
18 (19). Syracuse. This will change after the loss to Ohio State. Love Johnny Flynn, though. (Can you tell that a lot of these picks were based on players we like?)
19 (18). Marquette. Complete lack of an inside presence will hurt them. Plus, if there guards are as good as everyone says, then I would have liked to have seen them beat smallball Duke on Wednesday.
20 (10). Stanford. The #10 ranking was probably on account of homerism. But I refuse to believe that the Siena loss was as bad as everyone says. First, playing against a likely conference champion on the other side of the country at an early start time. Second, no practice that Friday because the airline lost the equipment. Third, Anthony Goods had as bad a game as I've ever seen. Fourth, Lawrence Hill was hurt. Fifth, no Brook Lopez, of course. Definitely not a good performance by any means, and Goods should theoretically play well if he's worthy of his reputation, but there were so many other factors in play that I refuse to believe it was a travesty. I also called it a few months ago, so you can't say no one saw it coming.
21 (25). Virginia. We are both in love with Sean Singletary. Seriously.
22 (NR). Davidson. This ranking is based on their excellent performance against UNC last week, but today's loss to Western Michigan will have us questioning it. Curry's injury doesn't seem to be holding him back at all, so they remain a viable choice for "Best Mid-Major."
23 (16). Southern Illinois. I have no idea why we put them 16th. Reputation, I suppose.
24 (NR). UConn. They played Memphis extremely well last Friday. AJ Price is a new man and the wings are astoundingly good athletes. Hasheem Thabeet, on the other hand, needs about fifteen more years of seasoning before I'd consider using a lottery pick on him.
25 (22). Arizona. Dropped after the Virginia loss, but we're also not sure they're that good to begin with. Budinger is super-talented but didn't assert himself nearly enough last year, Jordan Hill gets a lot of publicity but hasn't done much to earn it, Bayless isn't a natural point, and Radenovic was a matchup nightmare for lots of teams. I can't say I'm crying about any of this stuff.
First off, apologies for the shitty posting record over the last few weeks. Transitional time, blah blah blah, yada yada yada, excuse excuse excuse. We’ll do our best to be better. At any rate, the two big announcements I talked about should go into effect within the next week.
This news story is fairly old by now, but you may have heard that Brook Lopez, Stanford forward and one half of the Lopez Twins, was declared academically ineligible and then received an indefinite suspension for allegedly missing classes and a practice. Having some inside knowledge of the situation, I know that this particular incident doesn’t need much analysis: Brook simply didn’t try hard enough to do what he needed to do to stay eligible. There’s no lack of institutional control – it’s all about effort.
Frankly, the most interesting part of his ineligibility is that it happened at Stanford. At the risk of sounding like an arrogant alumnus, admissions standards are so high for athletes that all players are supposed to be self-motivated and ready to navigate a school that doesn’t coddle its players as much as other schools tend to. (Wow, that definitely made me sound arrogant.) Brook stopped efforting, and his work suffered for it.
One way of looking at his laziness is to say that Brook Lopez is headed to the NBA at the end of the year and therefore didn’t need to try – if he wanted to get drafted – and that would be exactly right. But it’s also easy to use that piece of information to argue that NCAA players should be paid, and that’s where things get more complicated.
The argument goes something like this: Brook’s situation shows that NCAA players are primarily using college for sports and couldn’t care less about school. At the same time, the schools exploit these players for money, so why not let these young men get paid for their exploits.
Well, for starters, they do get paid, and it’s in the form of a scholarship. Granted, some players don’t use that academics, but I think it’s a mistake to say that the majority use college for nothing more than sports, girls, and drugs. The fact of the matter is that not that many athletes end up playing professionally. Even if they don’t get much out of their education, college still provides them with the connections that could very well guarantee jobs and respect for years.
However, that explanation doesn’t kill the argument that these athletes aren’t using college for the education. Some do, certainly, but no more than a handful of scholarship players could be said to play college athletics for something other than the athletics; on the face of it, they want to play. But if they’re using college for sports, why do we choose to think of athletic programs as schools instead of glorified versions of the IMG Academy? Granted, the schools make a ton of money off of these players, but I’m not sure the players don’t earn back their per capita contribution to that income when they move on.
Whether college athletes use their schools for athletic development or simply for future connections, it would be a gross mistake to say they’re not getting something out of school roughly commensurate to what they give to that school. Paying players may seem like a simple solution to the issue of academically-lazy athletes, but that’s only the case if we insist on pretending that they’re all at school for the education. Many of Brook Lopez’s teammates want to learn, yes, yet there’s also Brook Lopez. And the system already accounts for him in full.
Last week, ESPN.com's Andy Katz wrote an article on the nonconference schedules of many top NCAA teams and how they could influence the proceedings on Selection Sunday. The Memphis Tigers occupied his top spot (in terms of both schedule quality and his pre-preseason Top 25), and for good reason. In a word, their schedule is just about perfect. Katz gave them a well-deserved A and detailed many of the reasons for that grade, but I'd like to go into more depth to show exactly why this slate of games fits their team so well.
The amount of big-name teams on the schedule is striking. The Tigers open the year with the 2K College Hoops Classic, a regional/NYC tournament that features Kentucky, UConn, and Oklahoma as the other preliminary hosts and logical opponents at Madison Square Garden. While those names all carry some weight, none of those teams is a potential worldbeater, meaning that Coach Cal will have time to bring Derrick Rose along against quality competition without fear of having in over his head right off the bat.
The game against USC in MSG a few weeks later is an absolute master stroke. While it won't be as big a challenge as it might have looked when Calipari scheduled the game (i.e. before the Trojans lost Nick Young and Gabe Pruitt to the NBA), a win over a solid Pac-10 team will carry a lot of weight this year. Perhaps most importantly, though, the Rose/Mayo matchup will undoubtedly bring a lot of attention to both programs, ensuring that Memphis's recruiting pipeline of freak athletes will not dry up any time soon.
As Katz mentions in his article, Memphis has some unbelievable home games on the schedule, including Arizona, Tennessee, Georgetown, and Gonzaga. I have no idea how the Tigers managed to work that slate out, but it ensures that they'll have at least two high-profile wins -- honestly, I'd be shocked if they don't get three or four from that group -- at hand when it comes time to assign #1 seeds.
Now, in looking at Memphis's schedule, it's important to realize that they must play a large number of quality nonconference opponents because of the general putridity of Conference USA. What looks like an incredibly tough schedule now will likely look as difficult as that of every major conference leader by the end of the season. Yet that's exactly what makes the location of the home and neutral games so important to the Tigers' chances of getting a #1 seed; it's as if Calipari knew exactly how many big wins they needed and acted accordingly.
If there's one hole in the nonconference schedule, it's that there's only one true road game, a likely win at Cincinnati in mid-December. However, even that criticism seems unimportant given Memphis's situation in C-USA. Essentially, preconference road games are only important insofar as they prepare a team for their toughest conference games away from home. Memphis, though, will be such an overwhelming favorite in every C-USA game that home and road designations won't even make much of a difference. Memphis's nonconference schedule is in place to win them a high seed and to prepare them for the grind of the tournament. The neutral games in New York do exactly that. The road game is just there for posterity.
Random site news: Things might be a bit spotty over the next week; I just started grad school today and don't want to screw anything up in the first week. However, I'm in the middle of writing a giant post (in terms of both length and importance to this blog) on the systems of college programs, so expect that some time soon.
Filling in for Henry Abbott at TrueHoop, Jeff Clark of CelticsBlog wrote a blogging primer this Friday titled “NBA Blogging 101.” Essentially, Jeff laid out his list of suggestions for creating a quality basketball blog, although his comments could really apply to any blog of any sport or topic. For the most part, he hits the blogative nails on their heads, including a few that the Plissken braintrust hadn’t used: make an email address readily available (hey, when did that show up on the sidebar?!), write every day (uh, not so much this last week), and create some guidelines (our only rule is that there are no rules). The man has been around long enough and writes a good enough site to make him an expert on this topic; I imagine someone fairly ignorant of sports blogs could read his post and start a decent sports blog within days, or even hours. Additionally, his point about being an innovator and looking to new media for analysis is golden advice for someone more creative and tech-savvy than ourselves (see our layout). However, in the midst of all these great suggestions, I take issue with one of Jeff’s key insights: the idea that an upstart blogger must find a niche in order to be successful.
Jeff’s argument rests on a few basic points: 1) Broader topics like “the NBA” and “Boston sports” are already covered by bigwigs like Henry Abbott and Bill Simmons, respectively, so there’s no way you’ll stand out given that they dominate the market; 2) A niche—a classification that includes topics as broad as a specific team—addresses an uncovered topic and will therefore draw a readership. 3) You’ll become the expert on that topic, thus ensuring that people will turn to you when a story intersects with your focus. (I assume that Jeff is working under the assumption that the writers of his hypothetical niche sites are talented, so I will treat them as such in my analysis below.)
The first point is true; TrueHoop is the top NBA blog around and no one will be topping it any time soon. In fact, we’re probably at a point in Blogburgh’s history at which there are a fixed number (or close to it) of truly large sports sites. I still think a TrueHoop-type site written by a terrific writer/aggregator (for instance, a Kelly Dwyer clone without the name recognition—let’s call him Delly Kwyer) would be worthwhile, but it would definitely be tough to get it started. If a writer of that quality would have trouble developing a readership, then any young whippersnapper faces a stiff challenge if he wants his blog to become a must-read. I don’t think anyone would argue against that, so, as I stated a few paragraphs ago, the issue becomes whether or not the niche gets you more attention than the big-tent.
In his post, Jeff mentions a sports commercial site, a point guard site, and an NBDL site as potential niche blog ideas. Although I’m a bit skeptical about how much content you could create for a commercials site, a well-written one would certainly be worth a read every week or so. (Honestly, who wouldn’t read fifteen entertaining posts on the Jeremy Piven commercials?)
He deserves to be mentioned among the greatest philosophers of all-time.
The other two examples are tougher to consider. A point guard site would certainly be interesting, but I’m not sure it would feature any content that couldn’t be found on a larger analytical basketball site. I suppose the writer would focus his energies on watching point guards and thus have more to say, but it seems unlikely that a point guard fan would not like the other parts of a basketball game. I’m all for in-depth analyses of Chris Paul and Baron Davis, but those exist on other sites. Does the point guard niche fill a need? A larger niche site like a team-specific blog works because a built-in fan base exists prior to its creation. Once you get into smaller niches, those preexisting readerships dwindle in size.
The same issue comes up in the case of the NBDL site. I don’t deny that such a blog could be very interesting, but would it generate many readers? I’m sure there are six hardcore NBDL fans in Bakersfield who would go there every day, but high-traffic days would only really occur when players get called up to their NBA teams. Given that most smaller blogs (like this one, at the moment) get large numbers of hits only on days when they get linked on the big sites, I don’t see how the niche blog leads to a wildly different traffic situation than does the broader blog. Perhaps the niche would lead to a larger initial hit count. If anything, I imagine the niche would eventually cap traffic whereas the big tent would lead to incremental growth over a long period of time.
Jeff’s advice is still useful, though; I just think it needs some tweaking. If you read a good number of blogs, then you’ve probably seen that the vast majority of the best ones—including the ones that don't live in the high-rent districts of Blogburgh—have clear identities or specialties: The Painted Area provides extremely detailed, no-nonsense analysis; Basketbawful takes a humorous look at a wide range of basketball topics; and the Blowtorch’s Goathair is the male version of Miss Gossip. These sites/bloggers have their clear strengths, but they cover a number of topics and don’t suffer for it. The important thing is that, with all the blogs on the market now, they set themselves apart.
While those bloggers create clear identities out of their content, I don’t think that’s the only way to do it. There’s no reason that bloggers can’t perform the same function as the mainstream press in terms of the services they provide their readers. After a big game or transaction, I never read just one writer or site’s take on the issue; I almost always look at a handful of them. As long as the writer develops a clear writing style and shows a knack for creating unique and legitimate opinions, a blogger can easily enter into that rotation of regularly-read columnists. In fact, I turn to these kinds of bloggers just as often as I turn to mainstream writers, if not more often. Niches can work, but they’re not necessary if a writer’s opinions and approach demand attention.
Now, watch us announce a new direction for Plissken next week when we write a post on the JJ Redick Better Basketball ads.
It’s time to return to the wonderful world of the NCAA, a land we haven’t visited since I wrote this post on the methods used to create recruiting rankings. It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean our zeal for college ball has waned at all.
The Pac-10’s shaping up to be the deepest conference in the country by far for this upcoming season, which should create a messy picture in the conference standings. As such, non-conference wins will be of supreme importance to the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee—impressive Pac-10 wins are nice, but you need something extra if you’re hanging around .500 in-conference. With that in mind, here’s a look at the non-conference schedules of Pac-10 teams and what they could mean to each program’s postseason chances. (Full schedules are linked in the team name.)
UCLA Bruins Total Games: 13 Toughest Games: CBE Classic (neutral) (11/19-20), field includes Michigan State, Maryland, and Missouri; vs. Texas (12/01); vs. Davidson (12/08) Potential Trap Game: at Michigan (12/22). The Wolverines will take some time to get used to John Beilein’s unusual system, but if they have a hot-shooting game they could always beat UCLA at home. It’s important to note that Beilein’s West Virginia teams had a good deal of success against the Bruins, beating them the last two years (although UCLA was without Darren Collison in last season’s game). This game happens right before the Bruins’ week-long break for Christmas, too. Verdict: Not as tough as it could be, but good enough given the strength of the Pac-10 this year. UCLA will win a good deal of games with any schedule, so they should be able to get the few quality non-conference wins that they’ll need to be in the running for a #1 seed.
USC Trojans Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: vs. Oklahoma (11/29); vs. Kansas (12/02); vs. Memphis (neutral in NYC) (12/04) Potential Trap Game: at South Carolina (11/17). USC is young, it’s early in the season, it’s on the road at an SEC school, and the Gamecocks could be upset that no one outside of the South calls them USC. Verdict: Floyd probably made this schedule when he thought Pruitt and Young would still be around, but it’s a great one nonetheless. The home game against Kansas is a potential goldmine, and the Memphis contest (aka the Rose/Mayo Battle) will help recruiting, at the very least. They lucked out in getting Oklahoma in the Pac-10/Big 12 event—that one will look better than its actual quality by the end of the year.
Cal Golden Bears Total Games: 11 Toughest Games: at Nevada (11/28); at Kansas State (12/09) Potential Trap Game: vs. Missouri (12/01). Mike Anderson’s team plays an unusual, fast-paced style that could get to stellar big men Ryan Anderson and DeVon Hardin. Verdict: Winning one of those big road games would do wonders for a team that should finish around the NCAA bubble. Home schedule has no big names, but wins over Utah and San Diego State can’t hurt. This schedule can’t hurt them, although you’d like to see a big-time home or neutral game. Stanford Cardinal Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: at Northwestern (11/15); at Colorado (12/02); vs. Texas Tech (12/22); vs. Fresno State (12/29) Potential Trap Game: Almost all of them, but at Siena (11/17) is the biggest of them all. Cross-country trip happening early in the season is a recipe for disappointment. Verdict: Don’t even get me started. No big-time games in a year when the Cardinal should be pretty good. None of these wins will look particularly impressive at the end of the year, meaning that even an undefeated non-conference season wouldn’t help seeding. Stanford will need to win at least ten games in the Pac-10 to be a lock for the tournament, and ten wins won’t be a sure-thing this year. Thank Yahweh the Pac-10 plays a home/away schedule.
Oregon Ducks Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: at Kansas State (11/29) Potential Trap Game: at St. Mary’s (11/20). Comes at the end of a short WCC road trip and two games before the big K-State clash. Verdict: Kansas State win would be huge, because I don’t think Oregon’s going to be as good as advertised this season. No other big ones on here, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given Ernie Kent’s scheduling habits—this is basically par for the course.
Oregon State Beavers Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: at LSU (12/22) Potential Trap Game: All the others. OSU should be better this year, but they’re still not good enough to call any game a gimmie. Verdict: It makes sense for the Beavers to play an easy schedule, but they don’t have a prayer of making the NCAAs or NIT.
Arizona Wildcats Total Games: 13 Toughest Games: vs. Virginia (11/17); at Kansas (11/25); vs. Texas A&M (12/2); vs. Illinois (in Chicago, so not really neutral) (12/8); at UNLV (12/19); at Memphis (12/29) Potential Trap Game: at Houston (1/12). In the middle of the conference season, against a decent opponent, and on the road. Never underestimate having to travel halfway across the country at an inconvenient time. Verdict: Hellish. I don’t expect Arizona to be a tremendous team this season, so it’s entirely possible they’ll enter conference play with five or six big losses. The good news is that they’re playing legitimate teams, so a big win or two could be the difference come Selection Sunday.
Arizona State Sun Devils Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: Maui Invitational (neutral) (11/19-21), field includes Duke, Illinois, Marquette, Oklahoma St., and LSU; vs. Xavier (12/15) Potential Trap Game: Many, but at Nebraska (12/02) should be tough, if not exactly a trap. ASU’s only game away from Tempe outside of the Maui Invitational. Verdict: Perfect schedule for this team. They’re still finding their way around Herb Sendek’s system, but the Maui should be a great learning experience and the easy home games can bring some confidence-building victories. This is probably my favorite mediocre team in the country.
Washington Huskies Total Games: 13 Toughest Games: NIT Season Tip-Off (neutral) (11/13-23), field includes Syracuse, Ohio St., and Texas A&M; at Oklahoma St. (12/01); vs. Pitt (12/08); at LSU (12/29) Potential Trap Game: vs. Long Beach St. (11/26) Sandwiched between the NIT and the Oklahoma St. road game, meaning that the Huskies could overlook a team that made the NCAA Tournament last year. Verdict: Lorenzo Romar finally schedules real teams on the road, but he does so during a likely off-year. Huskies have talent, though, so they could pick up some big wins, with Pitt and one of the talented NIT teams with a leadership vacuum as possibilities.
Washington St. Cougars Total Games: 12 Toughest Games: vs. Air Force (11/23); at Baylor (11/30); at Gonzaga (12/05) Potential Trap Game: Not many, but at Boise St. qualifies. On the road and early in the season. Verdict: It’s a shame the Coug braintrust created the bulk of this schedule when they thought they’d be bad. All the games outside of the Baylor contest occur in the PNW or very close to Pullman—the Idaho games are basically short bus trips. This schedule could come back to bite them if they have a middling year in the Pac-10.
Sorry I haven't been as prolific of late as I want to be; fighting the man by day has been sapping some of the creative juices. Thankfully Ty's done a solid job keeping shit humming in my absence, but hopefully you'll be hearing much more from me in the coming weeks. One thing my daytime duties as a class warrior have helped me realize, however, is that there is a gigantic disconnect between my ethics when sports are involved and my personal beliefs in non-sports-related daily life. While I don't think I can fully come to terms with this dilemma in the course of one late-night post, I at least want to get the conversation rolling on the topic with some of initial thoughts.
At the risk of sounding excessively douchey, when we first started this blog I had (and continue to have) aspirations of using sports as a prism for addressing some of society's more significant issues. What sports can tell us about life's controversies interests me greatly, yet the controversies of sports generally do nothing for me. To put it another way, in a perfect world, I'd want the interaction between sports and society to be almost purely metaphor. When the literal creeps up, I tend to shut off. I've had conspicuously little to say about the Donaghy situation, and never bothered touching the Marbury/Vick dust-up. For someone fascinated by corruption and greed in America, you'd think that when these issues directly intersect with what we cover here I'd be anxious to weigh in, but, when it comes to sports, my moral compass rarely get too agitated.
A couple different recent conversations helped bring my indifference to sports-related wrongdoings into focus. The first was an introductory conversation with a co-worker who happened to be a University of Oregon alum. Searching for topics of conversation, I was curious if she had any interest in their basketball or football teams. She was, she responded, to the extent that she had spent her four years ardently protesting the school's Nike ties. During my time in college I saw similar efforts to make Stanford athletics sweat-free, efforts that I never backed out of the fear that losing our Nike affiliation would affect the profitability and competitiveness of our basketball program. Now, normally I would fully support any effort to encourage economic justice in the developing world -- my co-worker and I probably see eye-to-eye on 90% of political issues -- but when my team becomes involved, my politics stop considerably short of my standard ideals.
A couple weeks later, the topic of Michael Vick came up during a conversation among friends. One person expressed that, in the entire debate, his predominant concern was losing the ability to watch Vick play. As someone with very little interest in the NFL, I needed to translate this sentiment into something I could relate to. The closest I could come was that, if Kobe had gone to trial, and I was on the jury and became totally convinced of his guilt, would I be more concerned with enforcing justice or ruining my home team's season? In the end, I have to believe I'd do the right thing, but I have to imagine I'd be at least a little conflicted. The fact that there would be any inner debate at all makes me worried about the amorality with which I treat sports.
Clearly, things are not as black-and-white for me as I might seem to be implying. My moral and political judgments do cross into the world of athletics fairly often. For example, I think LeBron unquestionably should have signed Newble's Sudan letter. Generally, I wish MJ had had a political conscience (at least vocally). I still think Tim Hardaway is a jackass. But I nonetheless have a willingness to look the other way, especially in the cases where the success of the team I root for is at stake, a tendency I have to find somewhat troubling. Perhaps I'm scrambling too many dissimilar things here. The moral question might be entirely distinct from the political one. Furthermore, not letting someone's off-court actions color your on-court view of them is one thing, while legitimately not caring about a person's transgressions simply because of their athletic ability is something else entirely. I think what I'm actually feeling is the former, but what I'm afraid I'm expressing at times here is the latter. I have no ambitions of completely resolving this personal conflict tonight, so I am legitimately interested in hearing whether this is a common struggle shared by other progressively-minded (or conservative-minded) sports enthusiasts. Can you hope to use sports as a tool to inform your world-view without letting your world-view influence how you watch sports?
