Ghost of LL

I kinda like that idea. But at the same time, that mistakenly assumes that the No. 5 ranked team should never beat the No. 4 ranked team. And we both know that's false. No matter how perfect the ranking system is, there are always going to be instances in which the lower-ranked team wins. That's not to say that the poll was wrong. It is to say that the lower-ranked team maybe only had a 30% chance of winning. But that means 30% of the time, it wins every time. And really, 30% isn't that low of a likelihood, even though we'd all rather have a 70% chance of winning. But even with the writers obviously herding, it is a lot better poll than the coaches, who never watch any of the games. The coaches poll made sense 50 years ago, when only a handful of games were on television, and hence the coaches were likely the most informed people about the state of college football nationally. But today, the coaches are probably the least informed people about college football outside their own teams and their upcoming opponents.

Do you think your post is maybe a touch more hostile than is merited under the circumstances? And what's up with you and the "regarded," "mongoloid," "extra chromosome" epithets? You don't think that's a little . . . I don't know . . . assholish?

Or maybe . . . and stay with me here for a minute . . . we should say "fuck the NCAA" for selectively enforcing its rules--rules that we now know constitute a per-se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

My counterpoint on that is that the amount of groupthink reflected by that chart is staggering. Is "1) Georgia, 2) Michigan" so clear cut that it should be on a majority of ballots? Perhaps you're giving Georgia the benefit of the doubt as the two-time defending champion, even though they haven't played anyone and have sleepwalked through their first two games. Perhaps. But what was Michigan done to deserve that kind of deference? And you go down the list and see Duke in a very narrow band between 18 and 21 on nearly everyone's ballot. Why does that make any sense? One could easily make he case that Duke should be anywhere from 10 to 25. If these writers were honest, you should see a lot more divergence in their ballots. You should have some with Texas at No. 1; you should also have some with Texas at No. 11. There's a lot of subjectivity to this, particularly this early in the season. The fact that you don't see more diversity of opinion reflects the fact that they're all just lazily cheating off one another's papers. And that makes the poll inherently invalid.

I happened once on a lark on a Wednesday and managed to get a table. It was really good, but I haven't been back because I don't plan two months in advance.

And this type of analysis, insight, and prose is why I subscribe to The Washington Post:

I love this thing that combines college football and maps. Beating Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma over the next four weeks is going to give us a nice little empire.

I think the direction on that is pretty clear. We're not plastering "SEC" all over everything we have like aggy did. We'll have it on the field and on the basketball court because I suppose we have to. But it's not going to be bigger than our own logo on every goddamned t-shirt we sell. Frankly, I don't think it'll be on any t-shirt we sell. To the extent you hear anything from our fans or the school about "SEC," it's as a middle finger to the Big 12, which richly deserves it. And on the part of the SEC, you saw their "a new era . . ." commercial, which prominently features Texas, three times during the Saturday night broadcast. The SEC is plainly pretty damned excited to have Texas in a way that it wasn't with aggy.

Yeah--I went to Columbus in 2005 and Lubbock in 2008. After that, I've pretty much sworn off big road games. I went to Wyoming because, I mean, fuck it--how angry are people in Laramie going to get at someone who's not gay? And I may go to Baylor this year, because that effectively is going to be a Texas home game. But SEC road games? No thanks. I just don't need that shit in my life. You know--that's a really good point. It wasn't always that way. Commerce Street in the 80s was pretty fucking hostile (and ended up being really dangerous). Part of it is that so many kids from Texas (particularly North Texas) now go to OU. So there's kind of a reunion aspect to the game. But beyond that, I don't think you can overlook the heavy police presence at the State Fair. You know I'm not a big fan of the police. But DPD does a really good job down there every year in preventing any trouble while still staying out of the way and allowing people to have fun and blow off a reasonable amount of steam.

Hey, SEC—

Mustangs just flying to the ball. Good first defensive hold for them.

Yes. YES—this guy gets it!

That was my favorite ending of a game this year.

Illinois is really bad, but damned if Kansas doesn’t look good.

And I think that is all consistent with my assessment. Clemson = Washington or Oregon. And Washington and Oregon, as we know, were not at all sure things to join the B1G. So I think people are wildly overstating the likelihood of Clemson and UNC being able to bolt the ACC in ten years to join the SEC or B1G. It could happen, but it's not a certainty.

And I would say that those are pretty unique circumstances. With UW and Oregon, you had a dying league that made the schools so desperate that they are willing to take reduced conference distributions. The ACC is not a dying league. And would UNC and Clemson be willing to take reduced shares? The far closer analogy is to USC and UCLA. Had they not left, the Pac-12 would be a perfectly viable league (much as the ACC is today with Clemson and UNC in it). And you bet that the B1G took them because they could demonstrate that they would be net contributors to the conference.

But things change over the course of 20 years. Shit--ten years ago, the Big XII wouldn't touch BYU. But look at where BYU is today. Yes, but . . . the payout from March Madness is pretty trivial compared to television revenue. As I said, to be an expansion candidate for either the SEC or the B1G, UNC would have to show that it will bring in more revenue to the conference than it would take out through conference distribution. For the SEC, the television distribution alone was $50M/school. In the basketball tournament, participants get a "unit." Each unit was worth about $350K last year (it goes up 3% every year). The champion gets five units--$1.75M. So yeah--UNC's performance in March Madness is not going to turn it into a net contributor to the SEC or B1G when it doesn't draw any attention for football.

So is your point that UNC and Clemson are slam dunks to be admitted to the SEC or the B1G in 2034 (or whenever)?

Yeah, I'm sorry, but I think that's dead wrong. I think all the media deals we've seen, and just the word that has leaked out over time, is that basketball really has little value. In negotiating media deals, it has about a tenth the value of football. If basketball were valuable, you'd have seen Kansas getting a lot more attention from the SEC and the B1G. But there's a reason the SEC was eager to take Oklahoma and didn't give Kansas a first, much less a second, look. Basketball just has no value. And I stand by my initial take. A lot of UNC's basketball value is wrapped up in its rivalry with Duke (and to a lesser extent with NC State and Virginia). Take those away, and UNC basketball is similar to Kentucky or Louisville or Kansas. Which is to say, "not very valuable at all." As to Clemson, I'm not arguing that it's a "pretty good historical program." But there are a lot of "pretty good historical programs." Washington is a pretty good historical program. Washington got into the B1G with a lot of hesitation on the conference's part and, ultimately, with a reduced share. Are we all so sure the SEC is going to do the same with Clemson in ten years? For the record, I'm not saying the answer is "no." I'm just saying that I'm not nearly as sure the answer is "yes" as everyone else seems to be.

I guess I disagree with that a bit. There are a handful of programs that are of national interest irrespective of on-the-field performance. Texas falls into that group. So does Notre Dame. Michigan, Ohio State, USC, . . . I don't know--maybe Alabama. But those programs are pretty limited in number. And then there are a lot of programs that are of national interest when they're good enough to be challenging for a national championship. I think Clemson is the archetype for this category. Clemson is obviously of national interest right now. Pretty much all of us watched them get their clocks cleaned by Duke Monday night. But pretty much all of us remember pre-Dabo Clemson, when that program wasn't particularly good. And when it's not challenging for a national championship, Clemson is of little interest outside the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson megalopolis. . . . and actually that point is why I'm a bit skeptical when people act like its just a done deal that Florida State, Clemson, and UNC are all leaving the ACC in 7 or 12 or 14 years (depending on the GOR situation, which seems really murky). I mean, Florida State--ok. They may be in that top group of programs that are of national interest regardless. But Clemson and UNC? The SEC and B1G have enough members right now that they don't need expansion. They can expand, but they don't need to. So if they're going to expand, those new teams need to bring in more in additional revenue than their cut would be. They need to expand the pie bigger than the slice they're taking. And I really don't understand the argument for how UNC does that. UNC football is of no real interest to anybody, even in North Carolina. UNC is all about basketball. But a lot of UNC's appeal in basketball is about its rivalries (particularly with Duke). Take away those ACC rivalries, and does anybody care about UNC regular-season basketball? Which brings us back to Clemson. Yeah, Clemson is a property now. But Clemson wasn't a property 15 years ago, when they went 7-6 and lost to Nebraska in the Gator Bowl--a result that was pretty par-for-the-course for Clemson pre-Dabo. And one wonders whether Clemson will be a property 15 years from now, with every other program in college football paying players and Clemson's on-the-field results consequently flagging. At least, that's what the SEC and the B1G will be wondering.

I was there, but I don't really remember who won that game. I honestly have never been that drunk at a game. And I've been really drunk at a lot of games. Some genius on this board had the foresight to call over to a bar near campus to get them to open at 8:00 AM, which is when I showed up and started pounding the 9.1% ABV double IPAs they had on tap (I think they were brewed on site). That was a huge mistake a 7,200 feet above MSL. We went back to that place after the game. I have some vague recollection of standing on a table singing The Eyes of Texas. That's all I have to say about that.

I'm going to hope OU is our opponent in the Big 12 CG for one reason: it's the only chance we have to win the game. Yeomark has made pretty damned clear over the past few months--and Big 12 officials have made very clear over the last few years--that the conference doesn't want Texas winning anything on its way out the door. The only hope we have of getting something resembling a fairly officiated game is to have OU as our adversary.

That may have been the most entertaining game of the weekend.

I guess that counts.