Pac-12 Gets It Wrong

I somehow missed this back in November—or I was paying too much attention to current games to care—but I’ve been looking at the divisional alignments and schedules, and I disagree with putting Colorado and Utah in the South.

There is a wrinkle to this that makes it more digestible to the California teams, since with Colorado in Utah in the South, Cal and Stanford were placed in the North. That wrinkle is that both USC and UCLA will continue to play Cal and Stanford annually.

By the way, the scheduling format chosen continues the 9-game Pac-10 schedule, so of course every team in a division plays one another (5 divisional games per team), and every team also plays 4 non-divisional opponents. So for the California teams, it will be the divisional opponents, two non-divisional California opponents, and two other non-divisional opponents. I’ll call this the California rule.

To get some grumbling out of the way, I really don’t think this approach is fair because not only does 9 games mean some teams will get an extra home game, but there is greater potential disparity between non-divisional schedules this way. Consider this scenario. Team A and Team B are in the North, which is relatively weak. Team A beats every team in the North, including Team B. But Team A loses twice against the South, possibly against the two best teams in the conference and possibly against teams that Team B does not have to face. Despite the loss to Team A, Team B would still win the division by being undefeated outside of the division. Of course, a similar scenario can take place with an 8-game schedule, but it’s less likely that one team in this scenario would be 1-2 and the other 3-0 against the other division. That’s 33% versus 100% in the 8-game schedule rather than 50% versus 100% in the 9-game schedule.

But apparently the teams want a 9-game schedule. It has served the Pac-10 well with schedule ratings (not always easy to schedule an opponent of a quality conference when they’re all so far away…and now there are two fewer non-conference options in the West), so I can’t say it’s a bad thing for the conference, although the unfairness will continue to bother me. Anyway, my proposal assumes that there will be a 9-game schedule. I don’t think there is much point in talking about what would or should happen under an 8-game schedule.

You might say, “Why bother arguing about it at all? This is the way it is.” The SEC saw after a few years that its initial approach (which was two permanent rivals, meaning 7/8 of the schedule was the same teams every year) didn’t work very well, so it changed the scheduling rules. It did not change the divisional alignment, but in this case, the divisional change if done within a few years would not be that traumatic, since the California teams will all play each other, so that wouldn’t be a problem, and the Mountain teams are new to the conference anyway. There isn’t an alignment that just jumps out as inherently logical here, as there is in the SEC and as there was in the Big XII. The ACC, whose alignment I can’t remember, could still realign, and I don’t think it would upset many people.

I understand the respect for tradition underlying the California rule, but it will cause some problems. This would mean that there would be more games between the Arizona teams (shorthand for Arizona and Arizona St.) and the Northwest teams (shorthand for Oregon, Oregon St., Washington, and Washington St.). One of the benefits of expansion is that there will be fewer such games. Either way there will be fewer Arizona—Northwest games than there were before, but enough travel has necessarily been included due to the selection of Utah and Colorado (I’ll call them the Mountain teams) that the Arizona—Northwest trips should be minimized. I don’t think the Northwest teams even need to play an Arizona team every year, but that was the only way I could see how to get my overall scheme to work, and you have to fill out nine games somehow.

Of course, my suggestion is not that we leave the divisional alignment alone and eliminate the California rule. That would probably expose further weaknesses in the chosen alignment. It’s a choice between having the four California teams play one another as an exception to the rule (causing the adverse consequences mentioned) or as part of the rule.

USC will only play two Northwest teams to go with the two Northern California teams (Cal and Stanford). UCLA will also play two. Since there are four Northwest teams, that means there will be an average of one game per year played by the Northwest teams against an L.A. team (being USC or UCLA). So the Northwest teams will each have to play a combined three games against the Mountain and Arizona teams every year. I can’t see how that could be desirable.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So this is the current format:

Divisions—
North
Washington
Washington St.
Oregon
Oregon St.
Cal
Stanford

South
Colorado
Utah
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona St.

Inter-divisional Scheduling—

L.A. teams: Both Northern California teams annually, two rotating Northwest teams
Northern California teams: Both L.A. teams annually, one rotating game against Mountain teams, one rotating game against Arizona teams.
Mountain/Arizona teams: three rotating games against Northwest teams, one rotating game against Northern California teams
Northwest teams: three rotating games against Mountain/Arizona teams, one rotating game against L.A. teams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is my proposed format:

Divisions—
North
Washington
Washington St.
Oregon
Oregon St.
Colorado
Utah

South
Cal
Stanford
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona St.

Inter-divisional Scheduling—

All California teams: One rotating Mountain team, three rotating Northwest teams
Mountain teams: Both Arizona teams annually, two rotating California teams
Arizona teams: Both Mountain teams annually, two rotating Northwest teams
Northwest teams: three rotating games against California teams, one rotating game against Arizona teams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Admittedly, moving the Mountain teams to the North would mean that each Northwest team would play both Mountain teams every year, but under my proposal, they would only EVER play one Arizona team per year. That seems more logical than sometimes playing two Arizona teams and one Mountain team. The two Mountain teams aren’t ideal, but someone has to play them.

By the way, Salt Lake City and Boulder are to North of Stanford/Palo Alto and Berkeley. People don’t always realize this, but there is geographically a lot of California between the Bay Area and the Oregon border, and then it’s a decent trip to get to Eugene or Corvallis from there.

Granted, a little bit would be lost from the Northern California—Northwest rivalries, but there would still be three games a year between Northwest teams and California teams. I don’t think it’s a catastrophe if the Northwest teams play the Northern California teams three years out of four (there were also such breaks in series with the L.A. teams before the 9-game schedule began), plus it’s an added bonus that they will also play the Southern California teams three years out of four. I think playing all California teams most of the time (which was same basic frequency before the implementation of the 9-game schedule) is more acceptable than playing the Northern California teams all the time and the L.A. teams rarely. If someone with an understanding of the Northwest disagrees, let me know, but watching the coverage and talking to people around here, it’s certainly the impression I get from this end that there is strong feeling by L.A. teams and their fans about playing the Northwest teams.

The Mountain teams would only play one L.A. team per year instead of two, but my proposal would still ensure they play two Arizona teams per year. I think it makes more sense for the Northwest teams to each L.A. team more routinely than the Mountain teams would.

Also, from the perspective of the Arizona teams, I think they’d rather play two Northwest teams per year than three.

I also prefer the idea of playing a home and home and then taking a break in the series, to playing (for instance) Cal one year, Stanford the next year, and having a return trip against Cal the third year.

Those are my abstract arguments. My more concrete arguments relate to how far the various teams are from one another geographically.

I’ve spent a lot of time crunching the numbers to determine what the average road trip is for a visiting team. Under the current format, it is 740 miles, and under my proposal, it would be 731 miles. But the average isn’t really that important anyway. I think it’s more important to consider what a reasonable trip might be.

Ideally, you would want the trip to be under 400 miles. That’s the kind of game that you can get excited about generally anyway, because if you’re a local fan, you may know someone who has something to do with that team, or it wouldn’t be unusual to live closer to the other team that you live to your team. Teams of that closeness tend to have better rivalries than those significantly farther apart. Also, I personally would generally choose to drive that distance, even if there weren’t a difference in price. That way, I would be comfortable leaving when I wanted, stopping to eat, etc. Same thing with going back.

I also looked at trips of 600 miles and below. That’s too much for one day for sure, but if you want to take a long weekend or something of that nature, even that might be something you would consider driving, and if you did fly, it would be around an hour. Even if you missed your flight, you could probably still get there without great expense or inconvenience on another flight. That’s not too far for a bit of a rivalry to develop either. Of course, Notre Dame and USC is a rivalry, but regional rivalries are more common and seem to develop quickly if they’re not already there. I anticipate that very soon, assuming a couple of competitive games at least, Utah and Colorado will have a rivalry despite being over 500 miles apart.

In divisional series, there would be 4 more trips a year of under 400 miles than there will be under the current format. There would be 1 more trip of under 600 miles.

There aren’t many relevant inter-divisional games, but of course under the current format, there will be the in-state California games (all of under 400 miles). Under my proposal, there will be the games between the Oregon teams and the Northern California teams (the farthest of those trips is Stanford—Oregon St., which is almost exactly 600 miles) but no inter-divisional games of under 400 miles.

Obviously, the way it’s set up, the California teams get the best deal of all because of the “California rule” I mentioned, but that wouldn’t even be the case every year. For instance, USC plays Oregon, Stanford, Cal, and Washington this year. Some years they might play Oregon, Oregon St., Washington, and Utah, and that would actually be less travel in the overall conference schedule. Regardless, I think my proposal is a good arrangement for the California teams and even if it’s USC making an extra trip to Seattle instead of to Salt Lake City, I think a lot of fans would rather have the former series.

Also, I don’t think the Arizona teams really want to play three Northwest teams per year instead of the two that I propose.

Any way I look at it, my proposal seems to make more sense overall.

My only guess as to why it came out this way was they said Washington and Oregon teams had to be in the North, L.A. and Arizona teams had to be in the South (a logical first step of course). Northern California teams are closer to Oregon, and Mountain teams are closer to Arizona. And then they said, “Wait a minute, what about the in-state California rivalries? Let’s fix that.” They should have started with, “Let’s try to keep the California teams together and make the divisions from there.” There may also have been other political considerations to which I am not privy.

This press release (http://www.pac-10.org/portals/7/images/Football/WklyRel/2011Pac-12FootballScheduleRelease3.pdf) details how the Pac-12 will work and includes a chart in case my explanation was too hard to visualize.

I’ve made a chart for my proposal, but I don’t know how to make the fancy Adobe link, so I’ll just post it the best I can here. I’m just doing the inter-divisional games. I included a total of 8 years for USC and showed which ones would be away games, assuming two inter-division road games and two inter-division home games every year (which seems like the fairest approach). The only reason I chose USC was because that was the first real schedule I came across, and I had looked at relative differences in distance, as mentioned above. The rest are by alphabetical order in the respective divisions. The abbreviations shouldn’t be too hard to understand.

South

USC
@OR OSU WA @CO
OR @OSU @WS CO
@OR @WA WS UT
OSU WA @WS @UT
@OSU @WA OR CO
OSU WS @OR @CO
WA @WS OR @UT
@WA WS @OSU UT
(They could also make it “@Colorado, Utah, Colorado, @Utah”; but I’d rather play the same team two years in a row.)

Arizona
CO UT WA OR
CO UT WA OR
CO UT WS OSU
CO UT WS OSU

Arizona St.
CO UT WS OSU
CO UT WS OSU
CO UT WA OR
CO UT WA OR

Cal-Berkeley
WA WS OR CO
WA WS OSU CO
WA OR OSU UT
WS OR OSU UT

Stanford
OSU WA WS UT
OSU WA OR UT
OSU WS OR CO
WA WS OR CO

UCLA
WS OR OSU UT
WS OR WA UT
WS OSU WA CO
OR OSU WA CO

North

Colorado
AZ AS CB USC
AZ AS CB USC
AZ AS SN UCLA
AZ AS SN UCLA

Oregon
USC UCLA CB AZ
USC UCLA SN AZ
USC CB SN AS
UCLA CB SN AS

Oregon St.
SN USC UCLA AS
SN USC CB AS
SN UCLA CB AZ
USC UCLA CB AZ

Utah
AZ AS SN UCLA
AZ AS SN UCLA
AZ AS CB USC
AZ AS CB USC

Washington
CB SN USC AZ
CB SN UCLA AZ
CB USC UCLA AS
SN USC UCLA AS

Washington St.
UCLA CB SN AS
UCLA CB USC AS
UCLA SN USC AZ
CB SN USC AZ

Les Miles: “It must have been the shoes”; SEC teams in the CWS

I’ll get to the shoes, but before that even came up again, I was planning to write about Les’ coverage by the Oklahoma St. media. After last season, I wrote this blog about Les Miles’ tenure at LSU so far as compared to previous coaches. I didn’t write anything about that other school where he was the head coach. (By the way, let me know if my links are not to your liking. I know some people like to know where they’re going before clicking on a link.)

I found this tribute by “News OK”/The Oklahoman interesting. Check out the video and the article.

Miles “only” went 2-2 against “Bedlam” rivals Oklahoma, including a 52-9 loss, but a few notes about that series that the Oklahoma St. media didn’t care to remind people about (and I don’t blame them). The Cowboys have only beaten the Sooners 16 times in 97 games. Only 7 of those Oklahoma teams had winning records (1917, 1930, 1944, 1966, 1976, 2001, and 2002), so the only two of those instances in the last 34 years were under Miles. 1976 was the only other time Oklahoma had what I would call an impressive record (9-2-1). The best Oklahoma record in the other seasons was 6-3-1. The Oklahoma teams that the Cowboys beat under Miles were 11-2 and 12-2, respectively. You would never hear Les call this a success, I’m sure, but the Cowboys only lost to the Sooners by three points in 2004, a year Oklahoma would finish 12-1 (the only loss being in the national championship game). The Sooners have won every game against the Cowboys since, and 4 of the 6 games were by 20 points or more.

I don’t understand what he did in leaving to upset the Oklahoma St. fans, but maybe some of the resentment is because they miss him a little, at least during one game a year. Despite the one blowout, there had to be a better feeling going into Bedlam then than there is now or than there has been any time in memory. He told people goodbye? That seems like a nice thing to me. Maybe someone could explain to me what he did. It’s not like he pulled a Saban and started coaching another Big XII South team (the only ones comparable to Alabama would be Oklahoma or maybe Texas) a couple of years later.

Mike Gundy had his tirade (“I’m a man, I’m 40”), but I prefer a guy being funny because he doesn’t take himself too seriously rather than because he’s prone to drama. It might have even been somewhat calculated too. He had to show he was just as committed-to-the-point-of-insanity (or at least a high level of eccentricity) to his program and his players to replace Miles in people’s eyes.

The three consecutive winning seasons in Les’s last three years were the first such string since Barry Sanders and the 1988 campaign.

But I’m not sure a coach has to have a pulse to win a majority of his games with a running back who averages 7.6 yards per carry and over 200 yards per game. There was only one winning record (1997) between Sanders’ time as running back ended and Miles’ tenure as head coach began.

Something else that’s interesting is I didn’t know who Les was back then, but I knew his team, and I knew they were going to fight hard no matter the opponent. I don’t know if he really aspired to be in the spotlight to the extent he is right now, but he seems to be embracing it as a way to promote his team and the school as a whole.

Les Miles had a bit of a media blitz yesterday at ESPN. But there has been some interesting banter between Les and Scott Van Pelt as a background to this, so I’ll show it all in order.

This radio spot began the whole thing during the week after the Florida game last year:
?id=5674526&autoplay=1&callsign=WNXXFM

Then came a later addition to the Scott Van Pelt Show, this one with video (I couldn’t find it on YouTube, so I can’t embed it) after Van Pelt received a special delivery from Les:
http://www.collegesportsdirect.com/Video.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=5950&vid=728389

This is another interview with Van Pelt after the Cotton Bowl and the Michigan speculation where Les bargains for a return gift (which where this is headed):

And that led to this amusing video that Les shot with two of his children:

Les’ style and grace just speak for themselves.

Then, these are just highlights of his meanderings around ESPN. Jordan Jefferson (via recording) got into the shoe discussion with Les as well:
http://www.lsusports.net/mediaPortal/player.dbml?id=777260&db_oem_id=5200 (linked to immediately above)

I also liked how Les talked about how he tries to keep players out of trouble with boosters and the like. He can be a loose cannon at times, but given that, it’s incredible how he avoids singling out people for criticism. That was also mentioned in the “News OK”/The Oklahoman link.

College Baseball

They also talked about how insane the SEC is in football. A little bit of a change in topic (Les Miles is apparently a baseball fan though), but the SEC is not so bad in baseball either. The only losses by any SEC team in the Super Regionals or College World Series (CWS) going into today were to other SEC teams (Florida to Mississippi St. once, Mississippi St. to Florida twice, and Vanderbilt to Florida). Vanderbilt leads North Carolina, 5-1, going into the 9th inning (UPDATE: now final). Only two other conferences had two CWS teams (Texas and Texas A&M of the Big XII, and Virginia and North Carolina of the ACC), and the SEC has three. The Aggies and Longhorns were were both swept out of the CWS, with one loss each to an SEC team. The ‘Hoos (loss to South Carolina) and the Heels (loss to Vanderbilt…twice now) were both 1-1 going into today. The Pac-10, like the SEC, had four teams in the Super Regionals, but only one (the Cal Bears) made the CWS. Cal is 1-1, with a loss to Virginia and a win over Texas A&M.

Admittedly, the SEC did suffer some losses to other conferences in the regionals, but the three SEC teams who were seeded first in their regionals (the same who are in the CWS) all made it through without a loss, as did Mississippi St., who was actually seeded third in its regional.

Unlike in the BCS, an SEC team has only won the last two College World Series (LSU in 2009 and South Carolina last year), but if things keep going as they are, a third seems in reach. It’s very possible that the potentially three-game championship round will be played between two SEC teams.

Early look at LSU football scheduling, and why the NBA Finals is boring to me

Just wrapped up work for the day, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on a couple of things before relaxing too vigorously.

I thought this analysis of LSU’s schedule was interesting: http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/2011/lsu-football-schedule-analysis-2011/. I’ll follow the same format.

No Doubt Out of Conference:

Hopefully there will be two no-doubt games with Western Kentucky and Northwestern St. This isn’t basketball, although I can’t recall the LSU basketball team losing to either.

Toughest Out of Conference:

I’m not entirely sure Oregon will be tougher than West Virginia. Just because Oregon was the national runners-up doesn’t even mean they’ll be the best team in the Pac-10 this year, and WVU didn’t play so badly in Tiger Stadium last year. Morgantown isn’t a particularly friendly place to play. As usual, the preseason prognosticators may be paying too much attention to offense (the big names on offense) with their anticipation of another top-5 finish for Oregon. That’s not to say LSU doesn’t have a challenge on its hands, but having even a moderately strong opponent early on is a challenge for any team.

Will Be a Battle:

I’m inclined to agree with the mentions of Arkansas and Alabama. I can’t imagine either one being over in the third quarter.

Most Hyped Game Prime For A Blowout:

As you can tell above, I don’t think WVU is the answer here. Maybe Auburn or Florida. We typically expect close games in those series, but I think they’re both in serious transition, and LSU could end up running away with it.

Trap Game:

Tennessee is a good observation. Dooley also gave LSU all kinds of trouble at Louisiana Tech. This will be the first time he’ll have the Tigers at his place. I don’t know if following Western Kentucky falls under “trap”, but I would be wary of them looking past the Ole Miss game (also on the road).

Fans Likely To Take A Monday Sick Day:

Not sure what that means. Will they be hung over from celebrating or just sort of have a sick feeling in general (and possibly still hung over)? Any loss in November (Alabama, Ole Miss, Arkansas) could be devastating. People always get pumped up about winning those games too, regardless of how good the teams actually are. Arkansas is Thanksgiving weekend though, so I think people would get over that one (or they would be missing work on Monday anyway). It’s also a home game. I can see a lot of people making a long weekend out of Alabama. It’s a pretty far trip from Louisiana. Tennessee is a bit of a journey too (and I can more see actually wanting to be in the Knoxville area, but maybe that’s just me).

Overall Impression:

I don’t think it’s quite as Herculean a task as “Jon” describes. I may be right about Oregon not being top 5, he may be right about WVU being a relatively easy game. That takes care of non-conference.

I don’t know if there are going to be the same number of really good SEC teams as there were last season. Maybe one of the better teams will be Georgia or South Carolina, neither of whom plays LSU. There are some potential “traps” and rivalry games as mentioned, but I wouldn’t be shocked if LSU went into November undefeated. I don’t think Alabama, Ole Miss, and Arkansas will all be good teams. LSU is going to have to play at least three games at a very high level to get to the SEC Championship game without a loss, but of course one loss wouldn’t be fatal.

If there is a late loss or two, I hope LSU doesn’t become known for fading after 7 or 8 games just because the better opponents (or at least the more difficult match-ups) have been toward the end of the year.

LSU being the national champions this year would be less strange than it was in 2003, when it followed a 5-loss season and was the program’s first major national championship since 1958. But I also don’t think we have quite the same pieces to the puzzle that we had going into 2007.

NBA Finals

I have a friend of sorts (we’re not extremely close, but I’ve known him a while) who is a really big NBA fan, and he said I must not be human because I haven’t gotten much out of watching (I should say trying to watch, because I haven’t succeeded for more than a half an hour) the NBA Finals.

I had to look at the stats for a while in order to enunciate my exact feelings. I think the key is assists and turnovers.

This is what I said:
“I feel like everyone in this series is making it up as they go along. The roles are very unfocused, and that’s part of the reason the Heat are losing. They’re even less capable of playing like a coherent team (much different from the Heat team that beat Dallas in the Finals in ’06). If you have a guy who’s really good at assists (Chris Paul, Steve Nash, for instance), that’s fun to watch for me. The high in assists for the Mavs was 6, and that’s with 112 points scored. LeBron and Wade were the only two players in the game with more than 6.

Lakers-Hornets Game 4 was an example of a game I liked watching. The Hornets had two more assists than the Mavs did in this game, and that was with 19 fewer points scored. The Heat had the same number of assists as the Hornets did (only 10 more points). But the Heat shot themselves in the foot with 16 turnovers. The total turnovers in the Hornets-Lakers game I mentioned was 19.”

It also doesn’t help that while I’m for the Mavs, I wouldn’t be heartbroken if the Heat won.

But the good side of it is I’ve had more time to do things like write blogs and watch other sports.

Three months until football + note on the Sweater Vest

The start of the college baseball NCAA tournament is a reminder that the spring sports are winding down and we’re only 3 months away from the start of college football.

The big news of late is that Jim Tressel will not be at Ohio St., so while I’m writing, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about that. He did win an especially mythical national championship in the 2002 season, but I think there was something missing between getting good athletes and having them put forth the best effort at getting another. Maybe the compliance problems were related, maybe not, but hopefully Tressel’s departure is a step toward Ohio St., who I expect to continue to be a major program in college football, being a better representative of the sport.

Of course, most of my attention (to the extent I’ve been paying attention to football at all) has been directed toward the Fighting Tigers of Louisiana State University. More of this attention was available than usual in the spring due to the disappointing basketball and baseball seasons at LSU.

This will be QB Jordan Jefferson’s senior season, and he will be guided by new offensive coordinator Steve Kragthorpe, known for his offenses at Tulsa and his ill-fated head-coaching tenure at Louisville. The Tigers have two other quarterbacks who could capably step in if needed. There will be some options missing in the running game, but in recent years, LSU has so many good options that it was hard for the coaches to allow them to establish a rhythm without denying playing time to deserving athletes. Spencer Ware (the star of the spring game despite focusing on baseball in the spring), Michael Ford, and Alfred Blue should have it under control.

I’m expecting a more balanced team. The defense (which held opponents to 18 points per game last season) and special teams shouldn’t have to carry as much of the load, and that should make up for the new kickers and the absence of Nevis, Peterson, and the like. Russell Sheppard (who can line up almost anywhere on the field), and Rueben Randle are the main receivers returning on offense. The Tigers will have a few experienced tight-end options as well. The only other spot that needs to be filled on offense is one of the tackles, so the passing game and the offense in general should improve significantly one way or the other.

The Tigers have 15 returning starters, which places them in the middle of the SEC, but neither kicker returns. Taking out the kickers, 15 is a tie for second behind only Vanderbilt. Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, and Mississippi St. (with 15 total as well) would be the other teams in that tie.

This gives a nice run-down of new players who could be difference-makers this season: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/635185-lsu-tigers-2011-football-recruiting-which-recruits-could-start-in-2011.

The three months I mentioned before are the only time the new players will have to adjust before LSU returns to the House that Jerry Built (the same place they ended last season) to face Oregon, the national runners-up last year. I don’t think the promoters of that event could have planned it much better if they chose the teams after last season. I’m certainly looking forward to it.

I’m sure I’ll come up with something else to say before the season starts. I usually manage to do at least some type of preseason rankings, and I might do a recap of last year. It’s funny how much you forget in a few months, particularly if you’re like me and watch a wide variety of sports.