The Buckerine Files: Day 4- Caught Looking Ahead

According to many college football analysts the most difficult part of coaching a college football team is keeping a bunch of passionate, emotional young men stable and focused week in and week out. In many ways the losses Ohio State and Michigan suffered the week before The Game are a reflection of that. Each team knew that win or lose on November 10th, they could secure a Big Ten Championship and at least a ticket to the Rose Bowl by winning on November 17th. No matter what motivational ploys you use, its hard to keep people who think they've already won from finding a way to lose. And find a way to lose they did.

Now I have already rehashed the previous games enough, so don't worry I won't be looking back today. Instead I will talk about the cardinal sin of sports, looking ahead. Former coaches, athletes, and sports experts of all stripes will describe for you the dangers of looking ahead in such painful detail that you would think no opponent's strategy has ever done as much damage to a team as thinking about next week. This may be part of the reason why Buckeye and Wolverine fans alike are so totally focused on winning just The Game and not letting thoughts of future games distract them from their hated rivals. So any wise football fan will avoid thoughts of what might come after The Game. There is no after The Game. The Game is its own miniature football apocalypse. Don't even think about the conse. . .

Y'know what screw it. At the risk of being hoisted by my own Picard, I will use this post to look ahead a little. I realize for fans there is generally bad karma involved with thinking past the next opponent, but I think I can counteract that. First I am a graduate of both schools so the forces of nature probably wouldn't know which side to punish for my hubris (we Buckerines are a rare breed, so they won't have much experience dealing with us). Second I will look at the possible ramifications for both teams for both a win and a loss. Finally I will freely acknowledge that my pathetic ramblings and missives don't count a serious analysis and can therefore need not be rebuked merely ignored.

That having been said let's look at store for . . .

Michigan if they win- Since my coin flip came up Michigan this year, this is the situation I have been hoping for ever since their embarrassing two game losing streak to open the season. With a victory Michigan goes from joke to conference champion in just ten weeks. Suddenly they have the chance to earn respect from the rest of the nation after months of doubting and dismissal.

This would also give Lloyd Carr the perfect platform on which to announce his retirement. Beating Ohio State one more time would give him a winning record against the Buckeyes. A final bowl victory would end his terrific, if recently troubled, career on a high note.

One unfortunate scenario involves the traditional Rose Bowl opponent, the Pac-10 champion, makes it into the BCS championship game (very likely since as I write this Oregon currently leads the Pac-10 and is No. 2 in the BCS standings) and Michigan can only triumph over an at-large opponent of less prominence, therefore reducing the redemption factor Michigan would earn beating both OSU and their bowl opponent to end the year for the first time since 2000. Of course that might lead some to speculate that Michigan could easily suffer another bowl game humiliation resulting in Coach Carr's exit looking more like a retreat than a ride into the sunset. Again I am premising this on the idea that the Wolverines are focused and driven enough to put it all together once. They would then have a month and a half to perfect their games for that last victory. Another bowl loss is much more likely for the Maize and Blue in the next scenario.

Michigan if they lose- First of all it makes it a little bit more uncertain if Carr retires. After failing to beat Ohio State for the fourth straight time, one would imagine some small amount of ego or personal pride inside that curmudgeonly old soul of his would demand to get a last chance to end his career with a win against the Bucks. Though as Brian of MGoBlog points out all indications are that his retirement is imminent. That means the team will be left trying to get one last victory for the sake of vanity in a lower tier bowl.

It is even pretty dicey as to what bowl they might land in. Bowl projections are a tricky game and opinions can easily differ about what exact bowl a particular team will find itself in. Still Michigan having already suffered through a tough season might not be seen as a hot commodity with two straight losses to end the year. Though they travel well, a bowl like the Capitol One Bowl might prefer Illinois to draw in their fired up fan base and match them up with Florida Ron Zook's former team (very former for some fans). This could mean the Wolverines slide down the bowl ladder ending up anywhere from the Outback Bowl, to the Alamo Bowl, to the Champs Sports Bowl. If Michigan begins and ends its regular season with symmetrically heart breaking losing streaks, it may be hard to get the team fired up for one last hurrah. After all if the desire not to go 0'fer against OSU doesn't fire up seniors Henne (QB), Hart (RB) and Long (OL), then the thought of going 0'fer in bowls may not do much either.

Ohio State if they lose- While Ohio State would have certainly fallen a long way from their projected status as BCS title contenders just last week if they lose to Michigan, not many Ohio State fans could really express that much honest disappointment in a 10-2 regular season. Plus, given Ohio State's high position in the current BCS rankings, they could still remain eligible for a BCS bowl berth. The same problem about taking a team on a losing skid does apply to OSU, however it isn't as bad when you consider that two game streak represents all their losses of the season. The Buckeye faithful have shown time and again that they will support their team wherever they go. If other traditionally attractive teams like Texas, USC, Notre Dame, Tennessee, and Florida aren't eligible to go, then we may have a great many BCS bowls looking for a team with a fan base the size of the Buckeyes. (Just so you know, Michigan can't make it to the BCS bowls without beating OSU because otherwise the wouldn't have the requisite nine wins.) So right now it seems like the absolute worst case scenario for the Buckeyes is the Capital One Bowl and an early New Years Day game.

Ohio State if they win- Here a Rose Bowl berth is actually the lower option available. With only one loss Ohio State is very practically still in contention to make the BCS championship game. It would only make sense since history shows us that at least one of the teams ranked 1 or 2 in the initial BCS rankings make the title game. Ohio State started as the top team and remains in contention, while original number two South Florida has completely fallen off the radar. Before you assert that the history books will be rewritten with this season consider the following: all that stands between Ohio State and playing for a championship for the second straight year are three games and the Buckeyes only need to win one of them. Remember first of all that sitting above OSU right now in the BCS standings are three teams from the Big XII that still have to play each other in a round robin of death. With at least one loss coming up for two of those three teams, that means Ohio State, currently No. 7, will be at least in the top five. It gets interesting when you consider that OSU actually has the advantage over two teams ranked above it in the computer polls. So if Oklahoma struggles down the stretch or the voters can't choose between Ohio State and West Virginia OSU will move up by virtue of Hal 9000 and all his cold, heartless machine buddies. That means OSU is really only looking for one of the current top two teams (LSU and Oregon) to be upset in this the season of upsets and for one other lousy game to strike Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kansas, or Missouri. If two of those teams go down, and all of them still have multiple challenging games ahead, then Ohio State could easily slip right back into the championship game much to the outrage of Big Ten bashers everywhere. Failing that a chance for Jim Tressel to win his first Rose Bowl isn't a bad consolation prize.

So that's what I imagine each team will have to deal with following The Game. If the crazy forces of college football fate and chance somehow manage to ruin the season for both these teams, then just blame the Buckerine I couldn't stay focused on next week alone.

Buckerine Files: Day 3- The same way Batman is scarier than Clark Kent

For observers from outside the Big Ten, The Game might as well be between children.

The fact that Michigan and Ohio State were both such dominant football programs for so long led to their conference, the Big Ten, being referred to jokingly as the Little Eight and Big Two. These were the days when college football was ruled by a select handful of team who were perennially elite. When the national championship was almost certain to wind up in the hands of one of a dozen teams that stood on a level above the rest. While once such dominance was simply assumed to be the sign of a strong program, now it has become a indictment of that the conference true strength and depth, of the team's scheduling chutzpah, and of the team's basic credentials to play for a national championship. The fact that Ohio State and Michigan seem to be the only teams to consistently excel in the Big Ten has come to reflect poorly on the conference and even worse on the significance of The Game itself.

Why is the Big Ten consistently ranked toward the bottom of the conferences that established the Bowl Championship system? How can it be that sports talk radio personalities are openly stating that no one cares who wins the Big Ten? What has happened that the Big Ten's start up cable channel, the Big Ten Network, can't get programmed by a major cable company? Is the Big Ten really a terrible football conference -therefore making Ohio State and Michigan paper tigers? Or has it simply fallen victim to a rather pernicious misconception in the last few months?

Can anybody hear me? Is anybody there?

Let's start with the major cause for all the recent Big Ten bashing. In the two highest profile games played by Big Ten teams against teams from other conferences, the Big Ten's representatives -Ohio State and Michigan who usually define the strength of the conference in the average fan's mind- both lost big. One, Michigan, was embarrassed in the Grand Daddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl in front of millions on New Year's Day. Then a week later, in front of even more millions of people, the Big Ten Champion, Ohio State, was humiliated in the National Championship game. By all reasonable accounts, that was when the backlash started. Never mind that Michigan had trounced a highly ranked Notre Dame earlier in the season, and Ohio State easily dispatched of defending national champion Texas which would go on to win 10 games. Forget the fact that just the year before the Big Ten had two teams in the BCS bowls and went 2-0. In college football it's all about what have you done for me lately, and what the Big Ten had done lately was suck.


Then this season began and it all went downhill from there. Michigan found itself on the wrong end of the biggest upset in college football history. The Big Ten teams gave up victories to Duke, Iowa State, and Florida Atlantic. The one out of conference game several Big Ten team's were relying on to give their schedules some credibility, Notre Dame, turned out to be a total joke this season. Then once conference games began, remaining contenders who were still looking respectable nationally, like Wisconsin and Penn State lost to teams who weren't even ranked in the national polls. It reached a point where Colin Cowherd (the only national sports radio host to pimp college football and destroy innocent blogs) called out the Big Ten for having no legitimate teams outside of Ohio State and, recovering nicely by this point, Michigan. Clearly the Big Two couldn't carry this league by themselves and be seen as legitimate; they would need some help from the Little Eight (or actually Nine, curse you Penn State for making the conference's name an embarrassing misnomer!). In fact last weekend's losses by Ohio State and Michigan probably did more to boost the Big Ten's legitimacy than if we were left with another year where the only thing keeping Ohio State out of the title game was Michigan.

Now it can easily be argued that all this stuff is just bunk. That ranking the conferences is really just splitting hairs. Determining what conferences are best and what are worst are all just a matter of perception. That would be nice if it weren't also true that in college football perception is reality. This is a sport that determines its champion principally on the basis of opinion polls. The plain facts are that the Big Ten has presented such an appearance of suck, that it now has a hard time convincing others they don't actually suck.

Being the complete geek I am, I thought of an apt analogy from the world of comic books. See there are conferences out there like the SEC who are like Batman. In their true nature they aren't super-human just very impressive specimens, just like Bruce Wayne. Yet when they endlessly talk about how tough their conference is at every opportunity and secure exclusive deals with CBS so Gary Danielson can gush over the superiority of SEC football on national TV, they convince everybody they are a lot scarier than the actually are, just like Batman. In fact there's one famous Batman comic where a bunch of crooks are swapping Batman stories and they keep talking about him like he has fangs and claws and magic powers. We as readers know that isn't true, but we understand that Batman is such a badass that the crooks probably really do believe he's some kind of demon or something.

On the flipside the Big Ten is like Clark Kent. Note, I am not talking about Superman here, but rather his mild mannered, and unimpressive alter ego, Clark Kent. Lurking beneath the surface there is some true power, but nobody will ever notice because the Big Ten keeps projecting an image that screams pathetic. Clark Kent has his rumpled suit and coke-bottle glasses. The Big Ten has their embarrassing commissioner and refusal to schedule quality opponents. In a terrific Superman story, Superman does reveal his identity to Lois Lane, but since Lois has spent so much time looking down on Clark Kent, she just can't accept that he was really Superman. In the same way, lots of commentators refused to treat Ohio State like a legitimate number one team, because they had spent so much time reflecting on that 41-14 disaster in the desert. Perception was defining reality for Lois and for the Buckeyes

The Big Ten is known as a throwback conference still playing and acting like its the 1970's. In truth, Big Ten teams like Purdue and Northwestern were pushing spread offense on the major level before Urban Meyer made it sexy and the ESPN talking heads went "Woot! Spread Offense pwns n00bs!". They are pushing the edges with the Big Ten Network. The reason cable companies are fighting so fiercely against it is because they can't afford for other conferences to try it. Yet instead of proving that the audience for their programming exists, the Big Ten insists on getting in fights about Iowa's women's volleyball.

If the Big Ten wants respect, this has to stop. Teams have to be pushed to schedule someone other than Notre Dame. They have to get savvy about modern media relations. They need to hire a real professional as commissioner. They need to get their channel in people's homes. The Big Ten has power within it just refuses to act like it. The reason why the SEC is getting more respect than the Big Ten this season definitely has something to do with the last championship game, but it has as much to do with the larger image each conference projects. Because Superman may be way stronger than Bruce Wayne, but everybody knows Batman is scarier than Clark Kent.

The Buckerine Files: Day 2- No, it won't be the game of the week

Well, I gave a rah-rah speech about the Ohio State-Michigan game in my last post. Now I have to accept that the 2007 game may not measure up to lasts year's all-timer. The set up for 2006 was like something out of Hollywood. A heated rivalry, the top two teams by consensus, weeks of build-up for a high scoring spectacular. Even the usually cynical Sunday Morning Quarterback had to agree that it had all the makings of a true Game of the Century. Then things went into a bit of a decline. No matter what happened in the bowl games last year, The Game of 2006 stands out as one of the most anticipated and exciting games I ever saw. The thrill of watching both schools go through a dream season and cap it off with a terrific game was almost enough to last me through December. So I can say with all confidence that no matter what happened after The Game it was still the highlight of the season for me.

This season fans of Michigan and Ohio State are faced with a similar problem. It is possible to consider The Game of 2007 diminished by the fact that both the Buckeyes and the Wolverines lost in the preceding week for the first time since 1959. This Saturday will mark the first time in over 20 years these two teams have played for the Big Ten championship with no implications for the national championship. Many who have a low opinion of the Big Ten conference already are dismissing it out of hand. With Ohio State no longer playing for a guaranteed slot in the BCS National Championship game, it seems like The Game has become just a game. Less of a "game of the week" and more of a "game of the weak". Well, I assure you that this game still has plenty of relevance. It's no mistake that the infamous ESPN College GameDay crew will be broadcasting live from Ann Arbor next Saturday. Just as what came after The Game last year did not tarnish what it meant, so too, this year, does The Game still stand out as one of the most important games of the season.

Let's start with the redemption factor for both teams. Each of these teams and their fans should feel a little embarrassed by what happened last week. Michigan let Wisconsin utterly control the game. Their offensive star essentially sat out the game even though earlier reports were that they would both play. The defensive did their best impersonation of fluffy clouds barely tickling the Wisconsin offense as they marched toward the end zone over and over again. This is all in front of a fanbase known for using cheese wedges as hats in a stadium so bereft of diversity they have to doctor photos of home games for their promotional materials. Just minutes after that game ended Ohio State put on their own gridiron calamity. It's not even watching Illinois backfield slowly and steadily push the ball upfield against the Buckeye's over-aggressive and egregiously held defense that's upseting. Even if you consider the game very poorly officiated, that still shouldn't get you down. After all it's not new. No what really irks the Buckeye fans is that Jim Tressel, the new patron saint of Ohio football, winner of multiple Coach of the Year trophies, who lead his teams to national title games 8 times was beaten by this man.


Ron Zook, the college football equivalent of Reese Bobby. A coach so underwhelming fans from his last job at Florida still refuse to use his name. Coach Tressel practically handed the game over to the Zooker when he called an ill advised time out that gave Illinois an opportunity to convert on 4th and inches rather than punt. That time out will definitely earn a place in Time-Life's Bad Calls by Great Coaches: The Complete Collection. After their respective games each team finds themselves in a hole they are desperate to dig themselves out of.

It extends beyond this season though as Ohio State and Michigan both want to prove their bowl losses at last season weren't representative. The fan bases of both teams have had to put up with a lot of flack (some of it deserved) from opponents fans and media pundits since their embarrassments in January. They would love nothing more than to end this season with a solid victory over a respected opponent in the Rose Bowl. For many this game is going to help them put away some demons that having been hounding them the entire calendar year.

You can easily put this game in a larger framework and still see it as important. For Michigan they have to put a stop to Ohio State's three year long win streak. For seniors like Ohio State's Kirk Barton (openly upset about the Illinois loss) it is the opportunity to end their last regular season with a win. For the Michigan trio of Mike Hart, Chad Henne, and Jake Long it has been noted many times in many places that beating Ohio State was why they came back for a fourth year. For Lloyd Carr he is 6-6 against Ohio State in his career at Michigan and if he can retire with a winning record in the rivalry if he wins today. For fans from both schools it is about feeding a life time passion that at times looks like an obsession that largely hinges on this one game each year. For the fans who remember the Ten Year War (like my father) or even stuck it out in the Snow Bowl (like my grandfather) it is about history and a win-loss ledger that has marked each year of there life.

In the end fans from both sides should be grateful that we'll be visited by Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit it is a nice gesture for ESPN to give The Game that coveted "game of the week". Match-ups like Boston College at Clemson, Kentucky at Georgia, and even West Virginia at Cincinnati may be sexier or have more national importance. Still this is neither a "game of the weak" nor a "game of the week". For fans it will always be the game of the year. For players it may be the game of their career. For the Michigan seniors who have never won against OSU it may be the game of their lives. Above all it is and always will be The Game.

The Buckerine Files: Day 1- It's Not Beginning; It's Never Ending

Since we are now within the seven days of the 2007 edition of The Game the annual football match-up between the Michigan Wolverines and the Ohio State Buckeyes. Since it has stood the test of history and become a rivalry respected by all, I thought I should finally do something to honor this amazing tradition that served as my introduction to sports fandom and remains the single most important sporting event of the year for me and my family. So in an absolutely unprecedented event for this blog I will be posting once a day to share my thoughts and observations as this momentous occasion approaches. (If a daily countdown isn't enough you can countdown the hours or even the seconds.)

As some of my readers may already know, I hold a rare perspective of this game, as I am both a proud alumnus of The Ohio State University, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. For some people in Ohio that makes me a traitor -as they call any Ohio born player who goes on to play for That School Up North. In my case though, I am only upholding two threads of family tradition.

My grandfather (mother's father) was a student at Michigan back in the days of Tom Harmon and Forest Evashevski. He regaled all of his grandchildren with stories of the Wolverines with such zest and passion that I think we all were a little bedazzled into following the maize and blue. To understand how he managed to subtly steer a bunch of kids growing up in Ohio to wear Michigan gear, you have to understand that my grandpa has always been a sly and charming fellow. Imagine Regis Philbin only replace New York with Detroit in his biography and Notre Dame with Michigan for his alma mater.

My father on the other hand was a native Ohioan, and after his family moved to Columbus, it was just a matter of time before he became ensnared by the Buckeyes. He attended Ohio State in the days of the infamous Ten Year War between legendary coaches Woody Hayes (Ohio State) and Bo Schembechler (Michigan). My dad was a life long football enthusiast -he still coaches little league- and the character and attitude Woody Hayes professed in his football program clearly left an impression. For him "three yards and a cloud of dust" was real football, and the NFL was the home of boring football and showboating prima donnas. The football season took place on Saturdays in the fall in our house, and the biggest game of the year was always Ohio State vs. Michigan.

Now the closest I ever came to playing football was being in my high school marching band. Growing up I was much more of a nerd than a sports fan, but even through the comic book induced haze in my brain, I still understood how important The Game was. Since Ohio State and Michigan had always been part of my life I was drawn to them when the time came for me to start looking at colleges. They both jumped to the top of my list when I considering where I would earn by Bachelor's. Ohio State won out because they offered me better scholarships and I went on to meet my wife there and enjoy every minute of my college experience (well, not every minute, but that all gets washed out with the benefit of nostalgia). Then when I had the chance to go to Michigan for my master's I knew I had to take it, even if that would make me a traitor in the eyes of some. While Ohio State had been my home for four years, I squeezed in almost as much living in my time in Ann Arbor. Michigan was where I proposed to my girlfriend from OSU and where I started my career in education. So now I am equally a member of both communities.

My grandfather gave me the nickname "The Buckerine" for my unlikely status. I decide who to root for each year by flipping a coin before the season starts (this year it came up Michigan and Appalachian State promptly ripped my heart out). I love both schools, both teams, and everything this rivalry has meant to me personally. There is so much history to talk about when it comes to football at both Ohio State and Michigan, but I'm not the one to do it. This week will be about how I personally have been affected by The Game, and my observations for the upcoming renewal of college football's greatest grudge match.

So get ready for seven days of college football coverage from the Cap'n. Some observers who don't understand this rivalry will call this the beginning of Michigan-Ohio State weak. It is not. This is Week 52 of another Beat Michigan year for the Buckeye faithful. This is the end of an arduous 12 month quest for revenge for Michigan after being denied a chance at the national championship last year, especially for the seniors on the team who have never beaten Ohio State. This blog may be focusing on these next seven days, but it's just another week in the Greatest Rivalry in All of Sports.

College Football Mid-Season Update: "What was I thinking?" Edition

At the beginning of this season I conducted a little experiment to determine whether using an objective analytical process to select your wagers had any more value than my arbitrary prediction methods. I also wrote an extensive blog post about all of this which probably robbed potentially productive waking hours from anyone who tried to read it. I just thought since the college football season is about two-thirds complete, this would be a good time to check in on how my predictions were fairing. The main gist of this exercise was to pick 20 teams that I thought had favorable odds of winning the next BCS National Championship (taking a big of a shotgun approach I know, but there were 100 other teams I didn't select). The were:

1) Wisconsin Badgers
2) Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
3) Rutgers Scarlet Knights
4) Texas A&M Aggies
5) UCLA Bruins
6) Michigan Wolverines
7) Virginia Tech Hokies
8) Louisville Cardinals
9) Oregon State Beavers
10) Arkansas Razorbacks
11) West Virginia Mountaineers
12) Auburn Tigers
13) Nebraska Corn Huskers
14) Iowa Hawkeyes
15) Oregon Ducks
16) Boston College Eagles
17) Georgia Bulldogs
18) California Golden Bears
19) Penn State Nittany Lions
20) Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Now with any sample that covers so many teams i was bound to get a few clunkers in there somewhere. Plus given that this college football season is already going to go down as one of the wackiest and craziest in terms of unpredictability and upsets, I think I can be forgiven if my predictions turned out a little poorly. After all its not like many people had many accurate forecasts going into this season. With all that said, my objective predictions aren't going well. by which I mean, they stink. The team I had the most confidence in still needs to win out and a lot of luck just to win its conference championship. No team in my top ten has fewer than two losses. Like I said, to good.

Comparing the objective predictions performance to some theoretical ideal doesn't do much good though. How well are they doing compared to the season as it has actually transpired. Afterall with so many twists and turns, it's perfectly possible I stumbled onto a diamond in the rough somehow. There are eight or nine teams with any legitimate hope left to win the BCS title this season. They are Ohio State, Boston College, Arizona State, Kansas, LSU, Oklahoma, Oregon, West Virginia, and possibly Missouri. I ruled out three of them (Ohio State, LSU, and Oklahoma) because they already won a BCS championship (but they are among my arbitrarily selected picks, Sheet 3). I will stick with that judgment for now. Though when discussing my experiment with my brother he wisely pointed out that if teams who had won in the past had good odds of making it to the championship game, then there must be good odds that some year two of them will make it and my theory will be blown out of the water. I do have three of the contenders in my list of twenty (BC, WVU, and Oregon), though admittedly they are all ranked low according to my "analytic" standards. Missouri has an outside shot if it wins out, though other teams will probably get the nod over it. For similar reasons I am not including Hawai'i which may well go undefeated but which will definitely not get a chance to play for the title. The last two teams are in neither of my pools of picks and since Vegas did offer odds on them not even my cover-all pick on "the field" would save my bacon. This season is promising to have a dynamite finish. So it only makes sense that I would have a 25% chance of both sets of picks being completely blown up by a dark horse champion.

None the less, I am never discouraged. I have already begun a new "objective" analysis tool, and may be able to show that off come season's end. I also will try to come up with another arbitrary bowl prediction method to entertain you in December.There is a lot more study and review to happen after the season wraps up. Until that time enjoy the college football games we have left.

Scratching a Movie Lover's Itch

As a self-declared film buff, I am occasionally embarrassed by all of the movie viewing experiences I have never attempted. I’ve never made it out to a midnight movie. I’ve never gone theater hopping to watch multiple movies at multiple cinemas in a single day. I’ve never gone to a convention to watch cult classics with their obscure filmmakers and stars in attendance. Recently I have been able to scratch a few items of my “movie lover’s must do” list, and I would like to share my insights with you.

First I have to give some public thanks to my two brothers for teaming up to give me a gift subscription to Netflix. I never was fiend for renting movies. Part of that is I tend to forget when I’ve rented a movie or get distracted so I either don’t watch them or fail to return them on time. Partly, I am just a cinema snob and I sometimes resent having to watch classic movies shrunk down to fit on my TV screen. Mostly though, I just find it difficult to give up the time and hand the money over to my logo video store conglomerate. The problem with avoiding video rentals is that there are many, many fabulous movies that any true cineaste is obliged to see that were released before I was born and the revival house is dead in America. So, if I want to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of film history I have to make the occasional effort.

Now I realize the next paragraph is going to sound like a sales pitch, but you have to trust that I am sincere in everything I am about to say. Anyone who reads this blog must know its too far under anyone’s radar for anyone to bribe me to plug their product or service. I just want to present the reasons why I believe Netflix is a must for the modern movie lover.

First being able to make unlimited rentals and not have to worry about what’s in stock is just a huge advantage over any video store. The “no due dates” selling point doesn’t do much for me, because the longer you take to watch movies the fewer rentals you can squeeze into a given time frame. So I try to make the trade-off for quantity rather than flexibility. The immense catalogue is perfect for anyone who, like me, has a bunch of cinema history to catch up on, and let’s be honest we all do. Plus, it is great for catching up on recent releases you couldn’t watch in theaters. This is a growing phenomenon that I am resenting with increasing intensity as the Hollywood studies insist on doing one of two stupid things with almost every movie worth seeing. 1) The release them during a “season” such as “summer blockbuster season” or “Oscar contender season” which means there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to watch all the quality, entertaining films at the cineplex. If the studio doesn’t get a movie lost in the crowd it strands it in limited release in art house theaters in select cities only, so just a lucky few ever get to see them. So I find great utility in using Netflix as a resource for catching up on film history. Also, I have a great time coming up with my own revival series, where I pick a bunch of related films and watch them in a row. At the moment I am in the middle of watching all of the forgotten Disney animated features from the 1980’s. There are several solid family films in that group, like The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company, that are often overlooked between the revered classics, such as Snow White and Pinnochio, and there string of blockbuster at the turn of the millennium, including Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Other movie clusters I’ve looked at include the Monty Python movies, Martin Scorsese’s non-gangster movies, classic Japanese samurai movies, going back and matching Oscar contenders head to head, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. I definitely believe Netflix is one of the best entertainment values for any true lover of film.

Perhaps surpassing my enthrallment with Netflix was my recent thrill at finally attending a film festival. While the recent Escapism Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina is far from the spectacle of Cannes, it is still a convergence of multiple movies, deeply passionate fans, and filmmakers who are thrilled to finally get a chance to interact with their audience. This festival focused mostly on small time or revival pictures almost exclusively of the horror or science fiction genres. In the middle of a busy weekend I could only sacrifice a few hours to this delightful cinematic experience, but is was absolutely satisfying none the less. Some friends and I had a great time watching a little under-the-radar horror/comedy movie called Black Sheep. So rarely do I go into a movie theater with no expectations for a film that it was liberating to watch a movie without knowing the best scenes in advance because of the omnipresent trailer and marketing blitz (*ahem* NBeeC TV Juniors *ahem*) or to have all the plot twists spoiled by the internet buzz. Then my wife and I indulged in a little nostalgia with a revival screening of TRON a film a know mostly from foggy childhood memories. While the special effects today seem hopelessly dated, I was still awed by having the chance to see it on the full scale screen and not boxed into my TV by video. When you see a movie like that one that mostly exists as fragments that your failing memory and imagination have warped in the years, in a full blown theater showing it feels like someone has made a movie out of your dreams. I know that film festivals are generally thought of as snooty, artsy affairs, and that most film fans will never get a chance to go to the big name fests, like Telluride or Sundance, but if you get the chance to go to even a one theater, three-day, local talent showcase, type of event. I urge you if you really do love the movies you owe it to yourself and the gods of good cinema to patronize these film festivals. They are well worth it.

So that’s it from me. Two recommendations. I may come back to give some bite sized movie reviews or to give a rundown of what trailers are intriguing me. For now though I’ll just let my movie blogging stop with two items on your “movie lovers must do” list that everyone should scratch-off.

The Captain's Crazy College Football Formula: Or Why I Never Actually Bet Money on Sports

As my anticipation and glee for the coming college football season mounts, I find myself contemplating what the future might hold. I'd like to think that after following the sport for a few years I have some understanding of which teams have a chance to win the national championship and which do not. After all you can impress a lot of people (and possibly make some money) if you can state in August who will come out on top in January. Surely all college football fans try their best to predict what will unfold when the games are actually played, but I have to question whether rational and objective measures are actually worth any more than random guessing. To that end I am going to gather up my best college football predictions and test to see whether they are any more successful than an arbitrary set of guesses. Let me start by putting together my selection of teams I believe are most likely to win the national championship.

1.
For starters, I know the following ten things, in no particular order, to be true:
1). The Tennessee Volunteers will not will the BCS Championship game.
2). The Florida State Seminoles will not will the BCS Championship game.
3). The Oklahoma Sooners will not will the BCS Championship game.
4). The Miami Hurricanes will not will the BCS Championship game.
5). The Ohio State Buckeyes will not will the BCS Championship game.
6). The Louisiana State Tigers will not will the BCS Championship game.
7). The Souther California Trojans will not will the BCS Championship game.
8). The Texas Longhorns will not will the BCS Championship game.
9). The Florida Gators will not will the BCS Championship game.
10). No team from a conference other than the six so-called BCS conferences will win the championship game.

I hold that these statements have the weight of evidence behind them and are not an arbitrary effort to slim down my pool of potential candidates or, worse still, a reflection of any sort of bias on my part. What you want to see that evidence? Well, I probably am setting a bad precedent by giving into you like this, but what the heck I like showing off anyway.

My claim that teams from the "mid-major" football conferences won't be winning the title is probably without controversy. After all, the BCS system is heavily tilted in favor of the traditional powers in the tradition conferences. We saw this laid out quite blatantly last year when after all the bowls where player only one undefeated team was left standing, sudden national darling Boise State from the WAC, and as far as I can tell they didn't receive so much as a first place vote let alone a national title. So I'm pretty sure we can all agree it will have to be a team from the Big East, ACC, Big 12, Pac-10, Big 10, SEC, or be a high profile independent school. (But we all know we're really just talking about Notre Dame here, right?) Personally I don't like the set up, so don't complain to me fans from other conferences. I just have to include it in my calculations.

Now a college football fan who is truly savvy (read: has paid attention to college football for the last decade) will notice that the nine specific teams I listed above have all won national championships recently. In fact these are the nine teams to have the first nine Bowl Conference Series Championships since the system reached its current format that includes all the major conferences (plus a disproportionate amount of Notre Dame of course). I am firmly convinced that once a team wins the BCS title game something happens that permanently spoils there chances of winning it again. There have been nine BCS championship games which means eight years in which a previous winner could have won a second BCS title. In those eight seasons a previous winner has played in the BCS championship game six times, so we've had enough occasions to determine whether or not there is some kind of trend. Now think real hard, how many times has a team that won the championship game since the founding of the BCS gone on to win it a second time?

The correct answer is zero. Once I realized the 0 for 6 trend (you could even expand it to 7 missed chances at multiple championships since Florida State appeared in the first BCS title game and lost but went on to win it the next year then lose it the following year) was my first indicator that something was up. Some of you may have thought of the University of Southern California who were awarded a national championship by the AP reporters poll and then went on to win the BCS title game the next year. I think this actually demonstrates how this is uniquely tied to the BCS game itself. The year after USC won a championship through the official sanctioned process of the BCS they joined the ranks of previous winners to lose with a chance to repeat. So let's be clear, I allow for the fact that the AP voters may award a title to any of the nine teams I listed above in collective fit of pique, as they did with USC. The polls are mercurial creatures anyway, and there's no certainty that the same strange cosmic forces that seem to control the BCS system have any effect on them.

I can even present additional proof that this is a uniquely BCS thing and not just some general cyclical condition of college football teams only get the stars-lined up for a championships once in a very great while. The University of Florida won the BCS championship last year having won a national championship just two years before the BCS system began. So it's not recent champions who are at a disadvantage; this is a condition unique to those who have won the BCS title game.

I cannot identify what is at work here, possibly the copy-catting by other teams of the techniques used by each successive championship, some kind of laxness in a program once it "arrives", or maybe just a bizarre and previously undetected kink in the BCS system that manages to call up just the right team to crush all of these potential dynasties. Whatever the reason, when those nine teams have already gone 0 'fer in all their chances so far, I see no reason to imagine this will be the year that's breaks the trend. I can easily imagine any one of the nine previous winners making the title game this season, but I am sure that if they do they will lose to a team that has not won the BCS championship yet.

So to begin my search for teams that by objective and quantifiable standards seem well suited to win the championship, I have to throw out all past BCS winners. Many have already picked one or more of these teams as their favorite to win, but I look at the evidence and have to say I'm more comfortable looking past the usual suspects. These means that I'm also looking past several teams that have some impressive evidence to suggest they are perfectly suited to win a championship.

2.
So what traits am I looking for in my pick to win it all? As I said I am looking for characteristics of a team that I can measure and analyze and that are ideally perfectly objective or less ideally a subjective measure that has been grounded and counterbalanced somehow. I also think we can focus on some factors that have been identified as crucial elements of a championship team that might get overlooked for some other snazzier looking characteristics of a team.

For starters, it has been demonstrated over and over that teams with notable players at skill positions and a tendency to perform impressively on offense are often overrated. They tend to be bested by teams that control the ball well, mostly with a strong running game, and play outstanding defense. We've seen this happen at least three times in the BCS era alone. The Miami Hurricanes lost to the Ohio State Buckeyes in 2003. The USC Trojans lost to the Texas Longhorns in 2006. The Ohio State Buckeyes lost to the Florida Gators in 2007. (These three teams may also have been given too much credit going in because they all had previously won a BCS championship).

Further we can say that having a highly ranked recruiting class in your immediate past isn't going to improve your odds of winning the title. So I will not be worrying about how many blue chippers or Rivals.com five-star high-schoolers a team has brought in. I will put much more credence to the strength of returning starters than hot shot recruits.

A few more factors warrant attention as I hunt out prospective champions. Several experts have also pointed out that teams without strong veteran offensive and defensive lines tend to fall short of the hype. I also believe a team has to play a schedule that's perceived to be worthy of a champion to get a shot. Again Boise State had the best record in the country last season, but the championship went to a team that played the toughest schedule and managed to only lose once. Also I think you have to weigh a team's value against their relative strength compared to their conference. All nine BCS winners also won their conference. Plus what good does it do you to be the third best team in the country if that means you're only the second best team in your conference, par example Michigan 0f 2006.

To sum all that up, I am looking for measurements of a teams rushing offense, defense, offensive and defensive lines, and schedule relative both to the national setting and each team's respective conference while incorporating the presence of returning starters and, if possible, for them all to fall into the same general metric so I can easily compare and combine the various values that I manage to concoct. It is a tall order, but I think I can do it. After all I'm the one who set this task out for my self so I would look quite the fool if I couldn't complete it.

3.
I started by basing all my measurements on percentiles, as in what percent of a given population is a given team better than in a given element of football. This works well because I can easily use it at both the conference and national levels. It maintains a level of absolute value in that all high performing teams will have a recognizably large number and all low performing teams will have a noticeably small number (unlike with some ordinals where you can guess an 7 is good and a 2 is bad in one measurement but how does that compare to a 12 and an 81 in another). Plus they bring in a relative factor a straight up metric wouldn't by showing us everything set to an easily comprehensible 0 to 100 scale.

As for the metrics themselves I have split them up into six categories, rushing on a national scale, rushing relative to conference, aggregate strength of the lines on both sides of the ball, defense on a national scale, defense relative to conference, and strength of schedule. I will admit that to make this work I did have to include subjective figures in with objective stats but I tried to balance that out. Let's take them one at a time.

For rushing on a national scale, called National Rushing in my charts, I decided to credit a team for how much of rushing success they were returning from last year. This meant I took their rushing rank from last year (converted into a percentile of course) and multiplied it by the percentage of starters they were returning. This seems to be a fair measure to me because it doesn’t penalize a team for losing a proven running back to the NFL draft nor does it give a team a bonus for bringing in some hotshot left tackle recruit. It rewards the system of rushing a team has in place because a system will outlast losses of players or even coaches and will make even mediocre recruits look like Heisman hopefuls. Thus a team that finished in the 92^nd percentile in rushing yards but only returned 6 starters on offense will get as much credit as a team ended up in the 55^th percentile and returned 10 starters. Think of it as a line of credit, the more success a team stored up last year the more credit they get and the more assets a team returns the more credit it gets. So the best way for a team to get a high rating was to have run the ball well last year and to have brought back a most of their offense, such as Texas A&M did.

For rushing on the conference scale, Conference Rushing on the charts, I had to include some subjective projected rankings. I took the projected rankings of the running back units for all the teams from both Athlon Sports and Scout.com and averaged them together and created a percentile ranking within for each teams within their respective conference. Combining these rankings is meant to limit the flaws to which subjective rankings and projections are prone. So teams that are generally regarded to have the best running attack in a large conference, like Arkansas, are going to receive high scores.

Measuring the strength of teams in the trenches is difficult because there aren’t many accurate stats kept in college football for how well offensive and defensive lines play their roles. So this metric, Average Lines on the charts, is again dependent on the subjective projections from Scouts.com and Athlon. I merely averaged together the projected unit rankings within the conference from both sources for both the offensive and defensive lines. This meant to get a high score a team had to be perceived as being among the best on both sides of the trenches within their conference, as Rutgers is.

I measured defense on the national scale, National Defense on the charts, much as I did national rushing. In this case I combined the teams’ percentile scores in both yards and points allowed. Then I multiplied every team’s score by the percentage of defensive starters they returned. Again this is based on my belief that football programs retain a certain base level of defense that survives changes in personnel, coaches, or scheme and can only be elevated as players gain experience. This is why teams with a strong reputation for defense will usually get good scores, and will get great scores when they bring back a lot of their experienced players, such as Virginia Tech this year.

Defense compared to the conference, in the charts as Conference Defense, was evaluated pretty much like rushing compared to the conference. This time I included the subjective projections from Athlon and Scout.com for defensive lines, defensive backs, linebackers, and overall defense for each team within their respective conference. Here a team must be generally judged to have one of the best all around defenses within their conference, as Wisconsin is this season.

Finally, I had to create a metric for the strength of a team’s schedule. This was a little tricky because most schedule ratings depend on a certain number of games having been played to evaluate the relative strength of each team on a team’s schedule. I didn’t want to rely entirely on last years results either since the strength of each team is obviously variable from year to year. So once again I had to rely on some subjective measures, namely all the preseason polls and rankings. Thankfully there are websites that already gather up all these preseason predictions for me. Hooray for the Internet! Is there anything it doesn’t know?

Since these are all just speculation I didn’t want to put too much emphasis on the rankings of individual teams, instead I divided all the world of Division I college football into a rough hierarchy of five groups. By playing teams from each of these groups a team can earn points that count toward giving it a better schedule ranking. Of course the points are different for each of the five groups and different if a team is playing them in or out of conference.

At the bottom you have all the teams from the lower football subdivision (generally called D-IAA but now officially titled the Football Championship Subdivision for the usual no good reason). These teams have their own play-offs and aren’t eligible for the national championship in Division IA (or the Football Bowl Subdivision, again no good reason) and are generally on a BCS conference team’s schedule as a way to guarantee a victory. I figure any team that tries to schedule an easy victory will be looked down upon by poll voters, so I attached a value of -1 point to all games against lower subdivision teams (which are by definition out of conference).

Then come the bottom feeders of the upper subdivision those teams which are generally agreed to be in the bottom half of the 120 teams playing for a shot at the BCS championship. Again teams may schedule them out of conference trying to get an easy win, so no points are awarded for playing teams ranked by Athlon and Scout.com in the bottom 60 out of conference. In conference things can be different because every team within a conference has more familiarity with a regular opponents style and system and the grind of a conference schedule can lead to upsets more easily, which is why I give one point for playing these teams in conference.

Next are teams that make the top 60 but not the top 30 these are the teams likely to go to a bowl game but not likely to appear in the Top 25 polls. They pose some threat of upset to any team and so are worth two points in conference but are worth more out of conference, three points, since it will impress voters to take on a solid but not great team by choice. Similarly teams that are by consensus in the top 30 going into the season are likely to be ranked for substantial parts of the season and therefore will be very impressive pelts for a team to collect, so I award four points for in conference games against them and five points for out of conference games against these potential Top 25 teams.

Then I have teams considered to be in the top ten by the preseason consensus. Since these are the teams considered most likely to make a BCS bowl and likely contenders for the championship they are valued most of all at six points within conference schedules at seven points outside of them. After all playing one of these teams by choice would really make an impression on the voters, probably more than any other victory could. I think these points would provide ratings that make intuitive sense and would fairly reward scheduling a tough out of conference slate even with a weak conference schedule and would sufficiently handicap teams that schedule cupcakes out of conference even if they play in a tough league. Overall this means teams from strong conferences that schedule games against big time opponents, as Oregon does this year, are going to get high scores.

After all of those convoluted computations I created a list of twenty teams who showed some potential to win the national championship this season. What's more I can now present them to you in the order in which my system ranks them. I cannot promise that the teams listed in the top have the best chances to play in the BCS title games -I cannot say for certain how well they each match up with the teams on their respective schedules- but the teams on the top are definitely the ones in which I have the most confidence.

They are:

1) Wisconsin Badgers
2) Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
3) Rutgers Scarlet Knights
4) Texas A&M Aggies
5) UCLA Bruins
6) Michigan Wolverines
7) Virginia Tech Hokies
8) Louisville Cardinals
9) Oregon State Beavers
10) Arkansas Razorbacks
11) West Virginia Mountaineers
12) Auburn Tigers
13) Nebraska Corn Huskers
14) Iowa Hawkeyes
15) Oregon Ducks
16) Boston College Eagles
17) Georgia Bulldogs
18) California Golden Bears
19) Penn State Nittany Lions
20) Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Since Blogger hates tables, it’s hard for me to share all of my data. However I spent so much time putting it all together and computing all the figures, that I would hate to let it go to waste. That’s why I've posted all my spreadsheets here, if anyone cares to review my math the numbers of the teams I’m analyzing are on Sheet 1 (not that I actually included any of it, but I’ve tried to make my research methods as clear as possible, which is why I prattled on so much above).

4.

After all of these vaguely objective looking computations, the question remains can you get an sort of insight into who’s going to win the college football national championship based on analysis and logic or is it all a crapshoot. I really wanted to determine whether reasoned picks are any better than arbitrary one to test with all of this unscholarly research, so maybe I should propose an experiment.

If all of that number crunching from above has any real value and the pool of the teams I selected and measured should be more likely to produce the national champion than a pool of teams arbitrarily selected. In a gambling scenario, we could imagine two hypothetical bettors each interested in placing a futures bet (i.e. wagering on the outcome of some far off event with set pay-out odds line 30-1 or 5-2, much like someone betting on a horse race except this horse race doesn’t happen for four months and no one really know how good any of the horses are yet or exactly which of 119 different horses are likely to actually be in a race of 6 to 12 horses in the end). Both of these hypothetical gamblers want to use a big chunk of money they got (how they acquired this money isn’t really relevant to my experiment so just hypothesize whatever gets you tingly inside) to bet on who will win the national championship in the college FBS (do you even remember what this stands for anymore, *sigh* go ahead scroll back up the page I’ll wait). We’ll give them some credit for being rational gamblers and say they will put the same amount of money on every team in their pool rather than chasing bets –a pointless effort to try to cover losses by betting big either when your especially confident in your or when you can get a potentially high payoff. However they each have there own way of deciding on whom to bet. One uses the same analytical method I described above (clever bloke he is) to pick the 20 teams I’ve studied. While the other bases his picks on whims and passing fancies to get a hodgepodge of 17 teams and a “cover his bases” bet on the Field, as in all the long shot teams Vegas didn’t offer individual odds. I actually selected the arbitrary teams from a hodgepodge of past BCS champions and teams with comparable odds to the ones chosen objectively. You can see the teams lined up together on Sheet 2 to of my Excel charts, where they are paired up based on having comparable odds to win the championship according to Vegas.

So having staked out 37 of the 60 or so teams with any real hope of playing for the championship and throwing on a pick for the rest of the field outside of the major conferences and independents, it seems likely that one of our two pools will include the eventual national champion. For our hypothetical gamblers that could mean a big payday, something to cover their losses or just a whole lot of money flushed down the toilet. No matter what we’ll have some evidence that using careful analysis when placing bets either does or does not increase your odds of winning. I’ve included a chart breaking down the expected payoffs for the different teams. Remember not all of these teams get a big enough payoff to cover all the bets our gamblers are making. That’s just part of the risk when you make multiple attempts at a futures bets. Before you ask, there would be no point loading up on teams with bigger payoffs or betting more heavily on teams the analysis scored higher both of those may seem like good way to protect against losses but remember its far more likely that money would just be lost too.

There are a lot of ways this could play out and so many ways to break down the betting strategies employed that I’ll have to write an in-depth follow up at the end of the season. So now on top of all of my preexisting excitement for the college football season, I now have the added anticipation of how this crazy experiment will work out and a chance to study the results. That may seem a little geeky (okay it definitely seems very geeky), but all you can expect sports wagering to bring you is some added excitement to the experience of following the games. That is of course unless I’m the one extremely fortunate person to crack the code of college football. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The Inside Job: The Hidden Danger of the NBA Betting Scandal

1.
Ever since the O.J. Simpson murder trial the spectacle of scandal has permeated every corner of our 24-hour news, blogosphere, supermarket tabloid world as millions of Americans thirst for the latest infotainment about the personal problems of public figures. Even your honorable Cap'n finds it hard to avoid the distasteful stuff, since sensationalist pseudo-reporting has permeated the noosphere to the point of nigh-ubiquity. (Normally though, I limit myself to making sure that Lindsay Lohan is still possesed by the devil and that Robert Downey Jr. hasn't resorted to taking hostages and staging a standoff with police in a sleazy hotel in Bed-Stuy.) All of this constant scandal has made damage control into a cottage industry, a cottage industry that has seen a healthy amount of business coming from the world of professional sports of late. What with suspected steroid users breaking cherished records, star quarterbacks drawing the wrath of P.E.T.A., and celebrity soccer imports failing to meet expectations by y'know playing soccer it seems like lots of people are paying lots of money to publicists, spin-doctors, and worst of all lawyers, to keep all the nasty secrets tightly under wraps. Yes, if you are a cunning, ambitious and deceitful enough person you can turn a healthy profit by ingratiating yourself with the right people at the worst moments of their lives, and charging them handsomely for the kind of advice good friends would give them free of charge. Since I only meet two of the three criteria listed above, I will offer up some advice gratis to the professional sport possibly facing the worst crisis right now, my beloved National Basketball Association.

2.
If anyone hasn't heard, I'll try to simply summarize the truly disturbing scandal that currently threatens to do permanent harm to the NBA. It was recently reported that the FBI had been investigating veteran NBA referee Tim Donaghy of both gambling on games he was officiating and using his position as a referee to manipulate the games. The NBA then made an announcement that they are doing everything they can to assist federal investigators and assured the public that this was an isolated event. More information came out indicating that Donaghy had a gambling problem, leading to substatial debt with bookies connected to organized crime. Reports indicated that Donaghy may have been manipulating games for the mob for almost two whole seasons. People began to make lists of controversial games that Donaghy had reffed over his career including the Pistons-Pacers game that devolved into a brawl between players and fans at the Palace of Auburn Hills, a game where the New York Knicks where given 39 free throw attempts to the Miami Heat's 8, and perhaps most damagingly Game 3 of the Suns-Spurs Playoff series this spring that many felt had been decided largely because of the officials. It was all topped off by a press conference from NBA commissioner David Stern calling the situation the worst he had ever experienced. Commissioner Stern, you don't realize the half of it.

While no one from the FBI or NBA has actually accused Donaghy of altering games to the degree that he determined who won and who lost, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that he used his whistle to affect the outcome in other more subtle ways. If you aren't very familiar with gambling you may not know that betting on sporting events generally involves more than just determining who will win. Most gamblers wager on individual games by betting on whether or not a favored team will win by a certain amount of points, called the spread. Thus in a basketball game where the Chicago Bulls are favored to beat the Los Angeles Lakers by 5 points and the final score is Chicago 107, L.A. 103, you could have won money betting on the Lakers. Even though L.A. lost they "beat the spread" and kept Chicago from winning by the predicted number of points. These situations are much easier to meddle with for an official than trying to outright rig the game so one team wins and the other loses. If Donaghy was officiating a game where the spread was 12 points he could easily call a few extra fouls late in the game to keep the underdog within 10 points of the favored team. This way the game isn't altered in a blatant way, the outcome looks to most eyes exactly as they would have excepted, except Donaghy's mob connection in the know can make off with a ton of money.

Actually Donaghy and his associates were probably even more subtle than that. Most of the reputable journalism I've read on the topic seems pretty certain that Donaghy's usual target was the over/under. Like betting on the number of points by which a team will win a game, casinos and bookies will give their patrons a number estimating how may points total will be scored by both teams in the game giving people the chance to bet whether the actual total will be over or under the one the bookmaker has put out. Here a basketball referee can cause some real damage. Not only can he easily push the game in favor of the over by giving free throws (and thus likely points) away like candy during the game, but he can also establish the increase in scoring early on when people won't be watching, as the would be for more obvious rigging or point-shaving during the fourth quarter. Plus his whistle blows don't even have to favor one team or the other so the final outcome of the game is even closer to what everyone was expecting.

Gambling analysts have already scoured Las Vegas records and found a trend for Donaghy's games going over the designated number at a rate that's 99.9% likely to be because of manipulation. Statistical studies, like those done by Dean Oliver, have shown that refs can have a tremendous influence on the outcome of a game with only the slightest leaning for or against a given team. Additionally, there was a string of ten games this year where Vegas casinos saw a lot of money bet on Donaghy's games to go over and the big money won every time. Streaks like that are nearly impossible in modern Las Vegas without the bettors having inside information on the game. There may have been even more games Donaghy influenced for profit, but we would never tell since so much gambling in America happens illegally either through back alley bookies, online or through oversees casinos. After complaints about officiating in the NBA Finals of 2006, many media members began pointing to all of the games, involving far more officials than just Donaghy had some hint of suspect behavior about them. All of this evidence has been put together by many to reach the conclusion that Donaghy was definitely in it deep and that possibly there might have been other referees involved as well.

3.
On those suspicions many media pundits have begun advising Commissioner Stern to make major overhauls to the system by which NBA referees are hired and monitored. They seem to think that the problem is at worst one of officiating. They don't truly understand how deep the problem goes. The fact of the matter is David Stern is going to have to look much higher up the later to find who's truly to blame for the crisis he now faces and he's going to have to take much more drastic action to resolve it. The NBA Commissioner has to realize he has caused this problem and for the good of the Association he will have to resign and let someone else take over if he truly wishes to see the situation resolved.

I don't mean to imply that Stern permitted Donaghy's illegal activities in any way or that he runs a corrupt commissioner's office. I am simply stating the plain fact that an accumulation of Stern's actions over the years to try and control and market the NBA lead directly to the Donaghy situation. It starts almost with the beginning of Stern's tenure, when he took an aggressive position against any association between gambling and the NBA. This may be counterintuitive, but I believe the connection is clear. Stern has penalized NBA coaches and players for mentioning the point spread on games when talking to the media. He's fined players who make casual bets on things like free throws. He has insisted that states and Canadian province with teams should not permit casinos to allow gambling on the NBA (possibly the main reason why the NBA will never put a team in Las Vegas though many think it would work well). All of this has made it harder for the average fan to gamble on the NBA legitimately. This meant an increase on illegal bookies, like the kind who preyed on Donaghy. It also caused a shift in betting from legitimate casinos (where law enforcement officials and bookmakers alike keep a careful eye out for illegal activity) to online gambling sites and other illegal forums which probably made the money trail feeding off Donaghy's crooked calls harder to detect.

The other major cause goes back to at least 1997 when it became public knowledge that an NBA ref was traded in his first class airline tickets the Association buys for coach tickets and cash in order to supplement his income. This drew attention to two crucial facts. First that NBA refs were badly underpaid. This is truly stunning information when you consider their work is extremely difficult and stressful, often not very rewarding, but absolutely vital to the continued existence of professional basketball. Second that even though NBA refs are likely some of the brightest people who have their ethics and backgrounds carefully scrutinized before landing the gig, they like any other human, will break the rules if they incentives are right. I took two classes in economics and I figured that out. The fact that it seems to have escaped the commissioner and his underlings is stupefying.

After giving Donaghy the oppurtunity and motivation to commit fraud on the consumers of pro-basketball, Stern then went ahead and handed him the means. Stern has been criticized with increasing frequency for being a control freak. His desire to shape the NBA and brand it as something respectable for Middle America, led him to give officials expanded powers. Referees were given increased leverage to call technicals in an attempt to adjust the behavior of players and coaches. This meant a ref looking to put more points on the scoreboard had the chance to hand out free throws like candy with the Association's blessing. Even if someone noticed, as analysts have been able to after the fact, that Donaghy handed out technical fouls at the highest rate of any NBA official over the two years under investigation, it wouldn't necissarily strike them as odd. After all the NBA was encouraging quick whistles, and someone has to had out the most. It may not be the same as putting a gun in the hands of a sociopath, but maybe its like letting the sociopath know where he can find gun shows, what their hours are, and then giving him a rousing speech about his second amendment rights.

The final straw though was revealed just this spring when it became clear that David Stern had not been altogether open about how the NBA monitors and handles officials. After mounting complaints about the quality of officiating the commissioner had long ago established a standard response that all refs were carefully watched, all games were thoroughly reviewed and that the NBA was happy with the level of consistency they were achieving. All right some of that was PR boilerplate but it sounded like their was some kind of apparatus in place that we could understand. After games some association official back in East Rutherford, New Jersey goes over the video and makes sure that the referees in that game are generally calling fouls like all the other referees generally call fouls. Basically he was saying that the NBA stood behind their referees. This is a great sentiment, until you realize he was probably motivated by the desire to brand the NBA as an orderly and respectable league where the proper authorities are in control.

Earlier this year though, a group of academics released a paper claiming that the race of NBA players affects how many fouls will be called on them. Stern immediately rebukes the findings by stating that the NBA keeps careful track of the calls made by individuals and looks out for any sign of bias. This floored me when I realized the implications. First of all how could the NBA hide the existence of such and important body of data from the public for so long. Sure they could claim it's proprietary information, but wouldn't this be the ideal time to make at least a little of it available to the public. Later on it struck me that if they were actually doing as thorough a job as they claimed they should have caught on to Donaghy without needing a federal criminal investigation to point it out to them. But you can't get to mad at them. As I said earlier manipulating things like the point spread and the over/under can be done through simple and subtle acts. However that only goes to reinforce how important it is to keep sports gambling a legitimate above the table affair. If the general public, or research inclined academics, or legal bookmakers could see these data the NBA claims to have, they would apply more eyes and quite possibly more rigorous tests to it to catch trends like the one Donaghy left. Commissioner Stern adamantly defended his refs against any accuations of wrong doing but then refused to offer the evidence, possibly for reasons of pride, when sharing that information would have greatly benefited the NBA in the long run. By refusing to be as open with the public about the performance of referees as he could have been Stern essentially covered up Donaghy's tracks for him.

4.
So there you have my case against NBA Commissioner David Stern. I am clearly deeply upset that the integrity of one of my favorite sports has been called into question. However I believe that objective study and the plain and simple facts show that the commissioner pushed circumstance in the NBA to a point where some officials somewhere was bound to abuse his power somehow. I feel that Stern's policies made him an accessory to Donaghy's wrong doing. So I lay this scandal at his feet. I know most damage control is about saving face and trying to hold on to what you have, but I feel this is a time when Stern should think of the greater good. I hope he realizes that his work as the NBA commissioner has earned him a spot in sports history already, and that if he resigns soon and allows a new commissioner to clean up this mess it will ultimately reflect well on him. He can fight it if he wants but eventually some one with a bigger audience and more influence than me will put together this same evidence and it won't just be the NBA with a reputation on the line. If Stern steps aside for the good of professional basketball then he will leave a legacy of sacrifice, wisdom, and leadership instead of corruption, incompetence and scandal.

DCI Classic Countdown 2007- Running Diary

* NOTE: As a special feature I am doing a little cross blogging, bringing you something I wrote up for my drum corps blog, because I decided I hadn't done enough to promote drum corps love on this particular piece of Internet real estate. Hopefully you can enjoy it even if you aren't familiar with drum corps.

As I so rarely get a chance to actually take part in a drum corps related activity, I like to make a big deal of it when it happens. So when I managed to finagle my schedule enough so I could make it to this year’s Classic Countdown from Drum Corps International –where fans of drum and bugle corps get to relive classic performances through archive footage shown for one night only in movie theaters across the county- I had to do something related to it to add into the blogosphere. After explaining to my wife that I would be abandoning her for the evening to do about the dorkiest thing she’s ever seen me do (though she seemed neither surprised nor upset that I would rather spend my evening chest deep no dorkdom than with here), I purchased my tickets and rushed to get a good seat. The event itself went down on April 26, 2007 at 7:30pm Eastern Time. Sorry if you missed it. What follows is my running log of my observations and impressions as they occurred.

7:15- I have made a conscious effort to arrive at the theater early to ensure I could get my choice of seats. In 2004 I went to DCI’s first “cine-cast” of their World Championship Quarterfinals and that theater was pretty packed. So if I want to find a place where I can comfortably stretch out and get enough ambient light to take notes, I figure I should be sure to beat the crowd.

7:18- Okay the crowds were not actually a problem. You probably could have guessed that. I’d thank you to stop you snickering.

7:20- I’m watching this show from the luxurious facilities of the Regal Cinemas at Brier Creek in Raleigh, NC (just in case anyone wanted to offer me some sponsorship dollars). Representatives from the local corps, Carolina Crown, sent some representatives to pass out post card sized advertisements for discounts on Crown tickets if we order early. Heck, if I knew there would be deals this sweet, I would have started coming to these Classic Countdowns sooner.

7:29- Instead of the traditional preshow entertainment you get at the cinema like movie trailers or even commercials, we are stuck watching a little animation loop with a grating light jazz ditty playing in the background. It may have already driven me insane.

7:30- Thank God the show started just before I tore off my own ears. We first get a pre-mini-countdown-rundown-thingy of those corps considered for this countdown. I don’t know if this pre-mini-countdown-rundown-thingy was assembled in any real order because it doesn’t seem to be chronological or alphabetical. Maybe it was done by how the shows did in the online poll that determined what I’ll be watching tonight. I’m starting to think I maybe should have voted in that.

7:33- As the pre-mini-countdown-rundown-thingy continues I wonder if the new DCI slogan “marching music’s major league” is going to do anyone any good. No outsider knows what they mean by “marching music”, and the comparison to baseball’s major league is completely off the mark. I’m sure Bands of America would love to be considered some second-rate puppet organization to Drum Corps International.

7:35- Seeing a clip of this show reminds me, does it bother anyone else that the Cavalier’s 2003 World Championship show is best known for a moment that includes no real marching and almost no music?

7:39- Through the miracle of prerecording, Steve Rondinaro is welcoming us to the show from Pasadena and pimping the DCI Championships that coincidently will be held at the Rose Bowl this August.

7:40- We get our first full show of the night which means this is the show that placed eighth in the online poll

The Garfield Cadets, 1987- Selections from Appalachian Spring

7:40- Could we make Michael Cesario the drum corps version of John Madden complete with the rotund physique, the jovial attitude, and the tendency to ramble about obvious points. I think with the write marketing package we could make it happen.

7:41- The Cadets have “boisterous”, ballet-style male dancer which you just don’t see much for some bizarre reason.

7:45- I may not know all the history of every drum corps, but I have the unshakeable impression that we could put every Cadets show of the last 25 years into a figurative bag pull one out at random and have no idea which year it came from. I know there is something to be said for consistency and tradition, but come on.

7:48- This was the performance where the Cadets famously earned a perfect percussion score. The really interesting thing is that they seem to have done it not so much through flair or brilliance from the battery drums out on the field, but through precision and grace from the pit percussion sitting on the sidelines.

7:49- These may well be the worst color guard uniforms ever. They have big baggy dresses in garish colors and just a bit of a resemblance to bloody facial tissue.

7:50- What?! Did that company front just disappear than reappear? OMG!!1! It’s like magic! I am so glad Cesario told us to watch out for that moment.

The Bridgemen, 1980

7:51- Wait if the Bridgemen are the “clown princes” of drum corps, what does that make the Velvet Knights?

7:52- Not only could you not get away with a Bridgemem style show with all the zany stunts and gags, no way could you get away with their bright yellow rain slicker uniforms. Those things are hard on the eyes.

7:56- Never have I seen any man handle a costumed chicken with as much care as I saw that Bridgeman set down their mascot.

7:58- I catch myself tapping actually tapping my toes to “In the Stone”. I would never do that in real life. Curse you Bridgemen!

8:00- I am not nearly as shocked with the guy in the bright red clown wig as I am that all the featured horn players look like rejects from the Electric Light Orchestra.(At this point you’re probably starting to wonder if we were passing around psychotropic substances in the theater. No, I assure you this is just what the Bridgemen are always like.)

8:02- In my day job I’m teaching middle schoolers about the Civil War. I think I might be able to use the last section of this show, titled “War Between the States” as a teaching tool if I can get it past the school board.

Star of Indiana, 1993- The Music of Barber and Bartok

8:06- When Cesario mentioned that this show was controversial in its time, it made me proud that drum corps in some small way shared in the proud artistic tradition of stirring public debate and discomfort, like Elvis Presley, Catcher in the Rye, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

8:07- Of course they talk about how odd it was that this show went from being polemic when it first appeard to becoming a cult favorite of drum corps fans today. Ummm, didn’t they want to note that Blast! incorporated huge chunks of this show into their drum corps based Broadway show. So now drum corps fans pretty much have to accept it into the mainstream since it has been offered up for mass consumption.

8:09- The plain and simple black tights the color guard are wearing prove that this show was designed by either a true minimalist or a true cheapskate.

8:12- The guard whips out the brightest most festive flags of the whole show during a passage of extremely subtle and muted music. Yeah, okay, now I’m starting to get why this was a controversial show. Plus the guard’s props and equipment have been weird all show. They’ve already used dowel rods and what looked like partial frames to IKEA furniture.

8:15- You can clearly hear someone from the audience scream “Go finish it!” as the show approaches its closing moments. Now that he mentions it with a nebulous show like this I can’t help but wonder how they end it with anything that looks or sounds like a grand finale.

Blue Devils, 1994- My Spanish Heart

8:19- I could listen to Michael Cesario describe things as “sensual” and “animalistic” all day. Really, just listen to that voice and tell me you wouldn’t love to hear a heavy set guy from New York describe the way you eat donuts as “sensual” and “animalistic”.

8:20- Just from watching the mist filled footage of this show I got the actual physical sensation of being in Foxboro stadium on that cool summer night. That’s what makes these Classic Countdowns such a great experience.

8:22- As the Blue Devils perform I could feel all the people in the theatre pick’em apart. As soon as they came on screen I could see everyone shift in their sheet to take a more aggressive posture. I keep hearing them make little comments and take digs about the show. I just can sense how much drum corps fans love to hate the Blue Devils. No doubt about it they are the Yankees of DCI, which just leaves the question of whether the Santa Clara Vanguard are the Red Sox or the Mets.

8:25- Not much to say about this show. It’s a classic show and a typical Blue Devils performance. What do you want from me? The Blue Devils are what we thought they were. They're what we thought they were. We watched them in prelims. I mean, who the hell takes the three rounds of the prelims like it's b.s.? We watched them the whole season, everybody played their show... the Blue Devils are who we thought they were! That’s why we let them take the damn field! Now, if you want to crown them, then crown their ass! But, they are who we thought they were, and we let them off the hook!

8:30- Okay we get it BD the show’s title is “My Spanish Heart”. You’ve got like three different heart formations in your marching patterns and you have that constant heart beat in the background. It’s clearly a very heart themed show. We get it.

8:32- Now we have the mandatory pimping of Pasadena to appease the shows sponsors from the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, because apparently its very difficult to get people to visit Southern California in the summer.

8:33- Hmmm, all the tourist attractions featured would fall under the Trivial Pursuit category of “Arts & Leisure” (Trivial Pursuit being the definitive guide for all questions of knowledge categorization). Apparently the sponsors from the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce don’t think drum corps fans would be interested in their vibrant lucha libre community.

The Cavalier, 2006- Machine

8:35- I’m pretty sure I heard people groan when this show was announced. Listen when you can get sick of watching recent shows after just a few viewing, I say that’s a good sign you need to retire to some old school mix tapes from Drum Corps World.

8:38- I complained that the Blue Devils 1994 show beat their motif into the ground, but they’ve got nothing on the 2006 Cavies. They incorporate machine like elements into every facet of the show including driving the symbolism into our skulls like a ruthlessly efficient industrial device.

8:40- Someone please tell me that I wasn’t the only one who saw those guard uniforms and thought of Captain Power. Come on, help me out Children of the Eighties.

8:44- I guess one advantage of an all male corps is that you can have all the members of your color guard do some pretty athletic stuff, like lifting each other off the field. I can’t help but wonder if the creator of Blades of Glory got their idea from DCI.

8:47- That show was like Return of the King it had about nine different places it could have stopped before its actual ending and been just as good.

The Phantom Regiment 2006- Faust

8:49- Well the fans voted the 2006 runner-up over the 2006 champion. Maybe this is why it is so hard to persuade fans of traditional sports that subjectively scored events like this, synchronized swimming, and ice dancing uphold the same pure competitive ideals of other sports with their Super Bowls and winner take all tournaments. Hear that college football. Subjectivity is bad.

8:53- With all the satanic imagery I’m surprised the people who protest the Harry Potter books weren’t all up in arms about a corps named after ghosts doing a show about a deal with the devil.

8:55- I don’t know if any corps has given us many pure brilliant brass moments through the years as Phantom.

8:56- One of those ultimate questions if you’re a drum corps fan is whether you prefer your Regiment in white or black uniforms. I’m for the all black look myself, though I don’t mind if you prefer the white. If you genuinely like their short lived khaki look though, don’t ever talk to me.

9:00- I guess that big guard outfit at the end was supposed to be an angel of some kind, but I thought it look more like a drag queen getup from Brazilian Carnival.

Madison Scouts, 1995- A Drum Corps Fan's Dream: A Day in the Life of a Bull Fighter

9:01- I remember this show as the definition of everything that’s great and flawed about the Madison Scouts. First they pick a show that’s meant to be raw masculinity and power, terrific choice for one of the few all male corps. However they played their biggest and best song “Bolero” by Ravel as their on-field warm-up before they can earn any points for their performance. Just to show how big, loud and manly they are they spend most of that year performing their show half-spent from the preshow. The ultimate example of blowing your wad to soon.

9:05- The sheer amount of testosterone dripping out of the Scouts as they blaze away on the field makes me think that for every upside of an all male corps the Cavs have shown us, we’ve seen a downside from the Scouts.

9:11- Watching the guard in their glittery matador outfits, I’m surprised they didn’t try to reenact a bloody bullfight somehow. I’m absolutely sure they tried.

Santa Clara Vanguard, 1989- Phantom of The Opera

9:15- Y’know I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy our top corps’ performance as much now that Cesario has told us that its pretty much an edited repeat of their previous show. Didn’t anyone call shenanigans on this? How can you do okay one year then come back the next year with a director’s cut of the same show and be allowed to win the championship?

9:17- Boy if there has ever been a corps in need of a classic and definitive uniform it’s the Santa Clara Vanguard. Frankly, I’ve never liked any of their costumes, and I can’t help but think that that affected their general effect scores.

9:18- O.K. The eye patches to mimic the famous Phantom half-mask I get, but making the kids with glasses wear one is pretty bloody funny whether they wanted it to be or not.

9:20- DCI’s experiments in frame-in-frame set ups that show both the whole ensemble and the soloists were on display in his footage as the total train wrecks that they were.

9:24- “Music of the Night” has to put chills down your spine. I don’t care who you are. It is the only Andrew Lloyd Webber song I can stand, because it’s just that damn brilliant.

Overall Impressions- Not a bad evening out. I thought they were eight good performances, but not the all time greats they would have gone through at the earlier Classic Countdowns (which meant they couldn’t be used this year). I think getting another look at recent greats like the 2006 Phantom and Cavs were good, plus I think 1994 BD and 1989 SCV belong among the all-time Top 12 even if the vox populi disagrees.