Daily Archives: March 13, 2007

More envy and jealousy: from the “I wish I’d written that” department

College Football Resource gets off a great line in his “Pundit Roundup” post from yesterday.

He notes this observation from ESPN’s Bruce Feldman

… There’s also this gem from his Random Thoughts on the Combine entry:

I played host to FSU defensive back Myron Rolle, his older brother and their friend Georgia wideout Mohammad Massaquoi Saturday while they were in town for the Watkins Award festivities.

We ended up watching a lot of the combine. It was D-line day and the announcers were talking about Louisville’s Amobi Okoye, the 19-year-old phenom who has everyone raving. They guys were amazed that someone their age could be doing all this. And then something else dawned on me: Okoye is only three months older than Notre Dame commit Jimmy Clausen.

and then fires this shot of his own:

I know Clausen’s taken plenty of heat already, but he’s everything us bloggers love to write about. This is just going to end up badly for him and be great business for us.

Love it!

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Filed under Envy and Jealousy, The Blogosphere

Nobody’s perfect.

As I’ve noted, we’re in the period between Selection Sunday and the start of the basketball tourney, so there are lots of posts and articles comparing the selection process between March Madness and the BCS.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes a look at how much the selection committee uses RPI to determine who gets in the field of 65.  It concludes not enough, at least depending on perspective:

… The committee simply has no “magic formula,” Walters said, not even the omnipresent RPI, which essentially is composed of a team’s winning percentage (25 percent), its opponents’ winning percentage (50 percent) and it’s opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage (25 percent).

“If you torture the numbers long enough,” Walters likes to say, “you can get them to confess to anything.”

Instead, the committee does its tortuous work by way of an imperfect but largely successful system that incorporates not only numerical considerations such as RPI, strength of schedule, road record and record in last 10 games but also substantial, nuanced discussions about the capabilities and flaws of teams themselves.

“Understand that we’re looking at a series of different issues,” Walters said. “And they’re not just quantitative, they are also qualitative.” [Emphasis added.]

To what degree they’re quality, of course, often depends on who’s affected…

Meanwhile, The Washington Post‘s Michael Wilbon vents about the unfairness of the selection committee, but then reserves a little of his ire for the college presidents blocking a football playoff.

And then there’s this piece, by the Los Angeles Times’ Chris Dufresne, which looks at a world in which the conference commissioners run college basketball the way they run college football.  It’s a damn funny read.  My favorite part:

… The BCS replaced the AP with the ill-fated and short-lived Nike Poll, comprised of a panel of sneaker executives.

Who couldn’t have guessed that would end with a lawsuit filed by Sonny Vaccaro?

(h/t The Wizard of Odds)

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Filed under BCS/Playoffs

Where are they now? Goldberg edition

In case anyone’s been wondering what former Georgia defensive lineman/wrestling star Bill Goldberg has been up to lately, The Miami Herald has a few answers.

Nice lighting…

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Filed under Georgia Football