Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session.
I don't know what it is with us and the last couple of weeks in May, but at some point Ohio State needs to figure out a way to make the beginning of summer somehow less ridiculous and headache-inducing. Granted, having to sift through a giant pile of secondary violations (most of which barely even qualify as that) is vastly preferable to dealing with the dismissal of a head coach, but either way this is the time of year where I really don't need any added stress.
Not that the rest of the college football world is helping out that much either. The drama surrounding the (kind of) death of the BCS is probably going to be much more painful than it really needs to be, but I guess the lesson to be learned here is that rich old people hold on to corrupt and outdated systems with tons of money tied into it like grim death. Good news for the golfing buddies of the Rose Bowl's "talent evaluators," bad news for pretty much everyone else.
Maybe the heat is just getting to me and I'm being too negative. On the other hand, maybe the links below will confirm everything that I just said, and you too shall feel the sting of sports stupidity. That's not to say that I want you to start your day off grumpy, but I do want you to start your day ready to loudly complain about dumb stuff. And don't worry, there's Mario Kart at the end. See? Everybody wins.
PLAYOFF, SCHMAYLOFF It was always kind of silly of us to think that a four team playoff would ever be anything but a plus one in terms of how it would actually be executed; unless games were to be played on campus, a four team playoff at BCS bowls with another game being played after is pretty much just a plus one with a different name. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Most of the reasoning behind this is the Big Ten and the Pac-12 steadfastly refusing to admit that the Rose Bowl is an antiquated idea that few still hold paramount to a national championship, but even better, it seems that the Big 12 and the SEC have decided to have their own little "champions bowl" between the winners of those two conferences.
So that's pretty much that! Those in charge have more or less figured out a way to not only preserve the BCS bowl system in the new four team playoff/plus one format, but also actually increase the number of bowls that tie into that system! It's actually kind of genius, provided you only care about preserving an illogical and inherently unfair way to determine winners and losers.
THE BOOK As I intimated earlier this week, the NCAA rulebook is a labyrinthine and complex tome with often ridiculous standards. This would be okay and maybe even kind of funny if it were the instructions for a boardgame or a waffle iron and not the commandments that college athletic programs are expected to adhere to. But since it is, it becomes silly in a bad way, and near incomprehensible for people who are supposed to abide by it or lose their jobs.
SI's Andy Staples breaks down some of the quirks of this latter day Robert's Rules of Order by taking a compliance test along with some current coaches. He actually ends up doing pretty well, and along the way points out some of the more extreme foibles listen therein:
Three of my questions involved the composition and delivery method of recruiting materials. I missed a question about whether schools can provide a media guide to a prospect on a flash drive instead of in printed form. I answered that schools are allowed, because this seemed like the sort of tree-saving activity encouraged on most campuses these days. I was wrong. Apparently, some schools got so upset that other schools produced fancier flash drives that they made a rule forbidding anyone from recruiting via USB port.
Hahahahmmmm this is actually very stupid.
Okay, now imagine a stack of those 100 feet highWHO SAYS PUBLIC SERVICE DOESN'T PAY OFF? Maybe this isn't that much of a shock, considering that the dude worked at the same institution for over 60 years and got paid a considerable sum of money to do so, but it was revealed that Joe Paterno's pension was 13.1 million dollars, probably to be paid through a giant novelty Publisher's Clearinghouse check. The article notes that given Paterno's stature in the CFB ranks, his annual salary of just over a million dollars was quite low (and yes, granted, he hadn't exactly been earning that money in the four or five years prior to his final season), but ol JoePa was apparently playing the long con for his family.
I will say this; it's impossible to say that his legacy isn't tainted in a major way by the Jerry Sandusky scandal. But some of the numbers listed in this article show just how devoted that man was to his university, and the sheer breadth of his service to Penn State is kind of staggering.
2012-13 BASKETBALL WHY NOT A very, very, VERY early look at your frontrunners for next season's college basketball, not especially relevant (Indiana is on top, OSU is high up by virtue of the defense and Thomas), but it is notable for the concluding installment of the Aaron Craft Turnometer, which was a season long analysis of just how valuable the Crafty One was on the defensive end. I eagerly await its return next fall, along with the Deshaun Thomas Refusaltopassoutofadoubleteamspectrogram.
AND YOU GET A LINK! AND YOU GET A LINK! Wu Tang+Budos Band = Wudos Band... Spurs and the NHL are boring, awesome... Those blue shells are killer... Behold, a sporting organization even more corrupt than college football... This dog feels no joy. Only hate... Yaaaayyy first place!
