Envy and jealousy redux: from the “I wish I’d written that” department

From Dawg Sports, this one’s self-explanatory:

I guess there’s a reason why they don’t call it March Rationality . . . and why at-large teams aren’t referred to as stabilizing cards.

Nothing but net, Kyle… nothing but net.

More playoff math

By “math”, I mean money, of course:

The NCAA tournament is undoubtedly one of the most unique events in sports, but it is also unique in the percentage of advertising it brings in compared with college basketball’s regular season. Despite more than 300 regular season men’s basketball games broadcast nationally, about three-fourths of the advertising revenue tied to sport comes during this last month of the season. [Emphasis added.] Last year, the regular season pulled in $165 million in ad revenue, compared with $497 million from the tournament.

Other sports report an opposite split. College football’s postseason bowl games, for instance, represent about 22 percent of total ad revenue for the sport each year. And the NFL, despite massive ratings for its playoff games and the Super Bowl, earns about 80 percent of advertising dollars during the regular season.

Let’s be honest here, OK? These advertisers are throwing their money in the pot in this manner for one essential reason – and it ain’t because they think March Madness is really cool. Money flows where the attention goes…

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A sprinkling of spring football notes

• It sounds like Auburn’s got offensive line issues similar to Georgia’s.
• Arkansas’ new offensive coordinator is greeted with a degree of skepticism in certain quarters.
• Meanwhile, on the Flats, the issue for Georgia Tech’s offense would seem to be whether the loss of Calvin Johnson hurts more than the loss of Reggie Ball helps:

… Bennett may not be Leinart, but the hope around Atlanta is that he’s not Reggie Ball, either.

Ball was a four-year starter for the Yellow Jackets whose turbulent tenure ended two weeks before last season’s Gator Bowl when he was declared academically ineligible…

• Southern Cal looks to incorporate a shotgun formation into its offense – I guess they felt like they never needed that before.
• This just in – Urban Meyer thinks his team sucks:

”We’re not a good team,” Meyer said. “We’re in a little bit of a train wreck right now. We have, I think, seven seniors. And then I believe there’s eight juniors. That’s awful.”

To add depth, the Gators are reviewing position changes, especially at cornerback.

Running back Markus Manson and incoming freshman receiver Joe Haden (Friendly High, Fort Washington, Md.) could switch to cornerback, although no decision has been made.

Because of his team’s youth, Meyer said Florida is a long shot to repeat as national champion.

”I wish I could stand up here and say that we can make another run at this title,” Meyer said. “I don’t know. I have no idea but it’s so farfetched.”

The problem with playoffs, in a nutshell.

A couple of March Madness/BCS thoughts from CFN‘s Pete Fiutak:

I love March Madness, you love March Madness, everyone loves March Madness. However, am I nuts, or do I still think, for all of college football’s goofiness, that it figures out a national champion better? After all, it seems like EVERYONE gets in the basketball tournament. Is that really fair, if you really think about it? – BP

A: I don’t get it either. Talk show hosts and media types cry and whine for months about the BCS system, yet no one seems to think boo about the idea that a team can finish sixth in its conference and can still play for the national championship. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is a wonderfully glorious gimmick. If the idea is to find out which college basketball team is the best, then you forget the regular season, create a big tournament with everyone in it, and play it off. College football’s system still needs a ton of tweaking, but I’ve always argued that it comes closer to crowning a true national champion than college basketball does. You have to reward the regular season more than college basketball currently does. [Emphasis added.]

Everyone talks about a college football tournament, but what about the basketball tournament … more teams, fewer teams, or does it have it right? How should it be changed? – OF

A: It’ll never happen, but the hoops tournament needs to cut the number of teams to 16. If it were up to me, there would be 12 automatic bids for the regular season conference champions for the Atlantic 10, ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Conference USA, MAC, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, Pac 10, SEC, and WAC. If there’s a regular season tie, it either gets broken by a conference tournament (which would otherwise just be a nice exhibition), or be decided on by the tournament committee. Then, the four at-large spots would go to other regular season conference champions and would be determined by the committee. That way, the regular season would actually matter, the little guy would still get its shot, and you’d take the fluke factor out. [Emphasis added.]

The problem, of course, is that it’s very hard to argue with the math (i.e., the dollars) behind a 64 school tourney…