Sampson is finally sentenced

I can’t say I’m disappointed by this news swirling around disgraced ex-Indiana/Oklahoma basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. Five years of banishment from the league is a nice bit of justice for a guy who had been poison long before the Hoosiers were rash enough to hire him. Sampson says he is “deeply disappointed” by the NCAA’s findings (well, no shit), and went on to make a bit of a plea: “For the sake of everyone involved, including my family,” he said, ”it is time to move on.”

The thing is, ”moving on” is a favor Sampson doesn’t have the right to ask for right now. The fact is, he broke the rules–multiple times, and with multiple schools–and not only that, he lied blatanty and repeatedly to school officials when contronted with just accusations. What happens when you do this kind of thing is that people more powerful than you make sure you can’t move on (at least not within the NCAA). Which is fine by me.

As if there weren’t already enough reasons to kill the BCS…

…Here’s another one. Besting my Iowa Hawkeyes, Cal, and LSU, among others, I give you: the no. 24 Division I-AA James Madison Dukes!

The Big 12 South is getting a little crazier…

Following last night’s 65-21 Oklahoma thrashing of Texas Tech, what has been a very curious situation in the Big 12 South is suddenly on the verge of becoming a political nightmare. As things currently stand, Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma are all tied for the division lead, with records of 10-1 and 6-1 in conference. Normally, this kind of thing would be resolved by way of head-to-head matchups, but here’s the catch: each of the Big Three’s three losses have come against one of the other two teams. Oklahoma’s only loss was to Texas, Texas’ loss came against Texas Tech, and Texas Tech, of course, was defeated by Oklahoma. This means, assuming all three teams win next week(as they are favored to do), that the intrepid BCS voting system alone will determine who gets to play Missouri in the Big 12 championship game, despite there being no logical way to determine superiority. What’s more, since the BCS bowls can only accept two teams per conference, if Missouri upsets one of the Big Three in the Big 12 championship, we could be looking at two teams, both presumably ranked in the top 8 of the BCS, both with 11-1 records, on the outside of the BCS looking in, while somebody like Georgia Tech, with three or possibly four losses, gets an Orange Bowl berth.

Needless to say, it’s hard to blame the BCS for such a wacky conference situation, and even in the best of circumstances it would probably be impossible to resolve the problem without at least one of the teams getting the stick’s short end. However, it does seem valid to once again harp against the automatic bid system of inclusion into glamorous bowl games for conferences that simply do not measure up. It strikes me as being, on a very basic level, completely absurd for a team with three conference losses to play in an Orange Bowl in January, while Texas Tech (who, having lost most recently, is probably most likely to get the BCS shaft) is relegated to someplace like the Sun Bowl. This kind of thing flies in the face of everything that’s intuitive about being rewarded by a great regular season.

JoePa, still immovable as ever

While emphatically brandishing his cane at a student rally in State College, the venerable Joe Paterno has promised to stay at Penn State as head coach of the Nittany Lions. This news comes much to the chagrin of the folks at Deadspin, who contend that he’s “clearly past his expiration date.”

I must say, I don’t quite understand this desire everybody seems to have to see Paterno resign. Granted, the man is in his eighties, and gives every indication that he might be slipping into senility, however let’s be serious for a moment about his team. To be frank, they’re damn good. This year, his 10-1 team needs only to defeat Michigan State this afternoon to earn a trip to the Rose Bowl, and if not for an upset in Iowa City (!) would be contending for the national championship. And this success is not a new development — Penn State enjoys both a storied tradition and contemporary dominance, and almost all of it can be attributed to Paterno.

So I have to ask: do all these Paterno nay-sayers actually have legitimate reasons for their desire to see him ousted? Is there actual proof that his refusal to leave is hurting the program?

Update: Final score: Penn State 49, Michigan State 18. PSU moves to 11-1, and earns a trip to the Rose Bowl. But Paterno still needs to go…?

And, Bob Knight disapproves…

Ever since I saw the score scrolling across ESPN’s ‘bottom line’ on Thursday, I’ve been struggling to make sense of the Texas Tech basketball team’s 167-115 victory over Division II East Central. Did East Central simply decide against the whole defense thing, preferring instead to pad their own offensive stats (because after all, 115 points ain’t too shabby). Or perhaps it was just an attention-seeking scheme, and EC decided they’d lose so resoundingly in order to appear on Sportscenter. Any way you look at it though, the numbers are baffling. 167 points equates to Texas Tech scoring roughly 4.2 points per minute, and added to EC’s 2.9 ppm, the combined offenses scored over 7 points per minute in total. Which is just sick, if you think about how frenetic that pace is (according to Mike Miller, we’re talking about an average of only 10 seconds per possession). It’s hard to imagine, even putting aside the scoring, that there’d be time enough in a game to throw up all these shots.

Kyle Fogg, Jamelle Horne — Why…?

After watching the Arizona Wildcat’s characteristically bizarre performance last night in a 72-71 loss against the UAB Blazers, I’m left with the reality that no matter how weird things are in Tucson, they can still manage to get weirder.

The game, up until the last half-minute, was a fairly ordinary early season affair, with the Cats unable to defend against good 3-point shooters, and Chase Budinger and Jordan Hill in turn having their way with the Blazer defense (Budinger scored 27, and Hill added 13 and 22 rebounds). At one point down by 14 in the second half, Arizona stormed back in the last six minutes, eventually tying the game at 71 with 29 seconds to go. It was then that things quickly took a turn for the surreal. Freshman Kyle Fogg, put into the game to foul (the tie occured after an unlikely rebound of a Garland Judkins free throw miss), unthinkingly wrapped up the UAB point guard, sending him to the line. Of course, this strategy would make sense had the Cats been trailing; however, interim coach Russ Pennell evidently declined to emphasize the fact that when a game is tied, it is generally not a good idea to foul the opposing player, giving him two free shots at the lead.

Luckily for Arizona, UAB promptly squandered the gift, missing the front end of the one-and-one. So…foul, but no harm, right? A stupid play by Fogg, sure, but we dodged the bullet. Arizona retrieved the rebound off UAB’s miss and held for the last possession, which culminated in a missed jumper by Nic Wise with two seconds left. So the game was destined for overtime, or so it seemed…But wait! With .8 seconds left, Jamelle Horne, a sophomore, inexplicably lunged at a UAB guard, roughly 65 feet from the basket, and, with a desperation that can only be born by lack of brain cells, grabbed his jersey. The result: intentional foul, and victory handed over to UAB.

There are so many things that can be said about this game. For a fan, the stupidity is beyond reckoning. To foul once when the game is tied perhaps can be excused by early season, freshman jitters. To foul twice, not 30 seconds after the first incident, when the game is still tied, when the act is committed by a sophomore, so far from UAB’s basket…well, it defies any rational explanation.

My hope is that the team, having been stupid enough to make these mistakes in the first place, will be stupid enough to forget the humiliation of last night as quickly as possible. Nothing good can come of lingering on the memory, and instead, the valiant comeback and the star power of Budinger and Hill (who, it seems, might finally be poised to provide valuable leadership) should be Pennell’s focus in the locker room. The season is young, and there will be plenty of chances for redemption, even redemption for something as crazy as this. Even so, it’s a loss that still burns uncomfortably in my throat, hours after the fact.

Hitting .250, I’m getting sent down…

So I’ll be the bigger man here and admit my mistakes, this time with regard to the MLB award predictions I made back in September. In short, I correctly guessed only one of the four, the no-brainer AL Cy Young choice Cliff Lee, and didn’t even predict AL MVP winner Dustin Pedroia as the runner-up. Pretty embarassing, but hey, so it goes. Here are the results:

NL Cy Young: Tim Lincecum; AL Cy Young: Cliff Lee; NL MVP: Albert Pujols; AL MVP: Dustin Pedroia.

Sabathia – say no! part II

To briefly follow up on the New York Yankee’s courting of free agent pitcher C.C. Sabathia, a fascinating and very unsettling rumor is circulating, courtesy of SI.com. The suggestion now seems to be that the players union, always a bastion of humility and moderation, might put pressure on Sabathia to accept the $140+ million Yankee contract offer, simply for the purpose of driving the market price of free agent pitching up. The rationale, of course, bears the assumption that were Sabathia to refuse the offer and remain in, say, Milwaukee for less money, team owners across the league could fix a lower market price for free agent pitchers, thereby exponentially lowering the number of Aston Martins purchases by guys like Barry Zito…right? 

Ok. If I really try to be fair, I think I can understand the player union’s motive here. It goes something like: “We’re just doing what’s best for players as a whole! The owners have gouged us for years, and now we’re earning that back. Guys like C.C. have to take one for the team.” But having said that, I’ll cut to the chase: putting actual pressure on Sabathia to accept the Yankee offer for that reason is a despicable, greedy, and almost unfogivable thing to do. Let the man make whatever choice he wants, be that taking the Yankee contract, relocating to the West Coast, or staying in Milwaukee. If his actions mean the market high is set at a paltry $120 million, so be it. No matter what Sabathia does, I’ll wager that the payscale for professional athletes will remain absurdly high.

Just a bunch of rectangular prisms falling over…

This will blow your mind:

Who knows if it’s sports-related, but it sure is damn cool to watch.

Yes We Can (eliminate the BCS)!

As we all know, one of the most contentious issues of the past few years in the world of college football has been the BCS ranking system. Since its inception in 1998, barely a week goes by without condemnation of the system from commentators and fans at large. USC’s recent drop of two spots in the BCS rankings, despite their 56-0 blowout of Washington that very Saturday, was the most recent source of controversy, though by no means the first or the last.

All that said, change might be in the making. With the recent election of Barack Obama, an ardent foe of the BCS system, it’s possible that an executive order will result in Obama’s preferred 8-team playoff system in lieu of computer rankings and guaranteed BCS bowl slots. Ok, maybe not. However, in a ’60 Minutes’ interview, set to air this Sunday, Obama does express his preference for such a playoff system. Here’s a brief Obama breakdown of his proposed solution:

Eight teams. That would be three rounds to determine a national champion. It would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. 

We’ll see what happens. I particularly like the notion of shortening the regular season, though I doubt money-grubbing athletic departments would ever acquiesce to it. There’s something wrong about a 12 game regular season followed by a conference championship game, followed by a bowl game. Too long…