Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session.
The NHL season is all but over, and soon so will the NBA playoffs, leaving only baseball to rule over the landscape that is American professional sports. This is technically a Good Thing; mostly as far as I'm concerned because I'm a Reds fan (and they're decent this year), but also because I'm a fan of baseball in general.
I've had this conversation with Jason a couple of times. Jason isn't a big fan of baseball and says it's "boring." And he is 100% correct, most of the time it is super boring unless a bird is getting hit by a fastball or Nick Swisher is being adorable. Still, there are two big reasons why I love the sport: 1) It's Dungeons and Dragons for sports nerds. WAR, BAbip, SecA, and OPS+ are all legitimate, actual statistics that are tracked obsessively by huge nerds who are trying to beat other huge nerds in fantasy baseball. Laugh all you want, but replace "CC Sabathia" with "Proctor and Gamble" and WHIP with dollar signs, you essentially have got what people do on Wall Street everyday. Baseball is uniquely suited to this kind of analysis, because since it has such large sample sizes, goofy stats can actually mean something.
2) I love the fact that baseball takes longer than almost any other sport to master. In football, or basketball, or even hockey, players can come into the league and make an almost immediate impact through sheer athleticism. Not so in baseball: there are so many facets of the game to master, and all of the skills used to do so are so fickle, that it can take years and years for a player to come into their own. Case in point is Joey Votto, who didn't become a dominant overall player until he was in his late 20s.
Basically, I think baseball is pretty rad because it's so anachronistic. It's a weird, goofy sport that values patience and consistency over flash and dash. In 2012, that's pretty unique. Urban Meyer thinks so too.
A WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY More details have emerged about the night that finally brought down Don Stoneburner and his capo Jack Mewhort, as brought to light by Tim May over at the Dispatch. Not a whole lot that we didn't already know: They (and another friend) peed on the side of a day care building, the police saw them, they ran into the woods, the police threatened to bring in the dogs, they eventually come out, claiming that they thought the police were "their girlfriends." Okay.
Anyway, a reminder that Stoney and Mewhort are still suspended from the team as long as this is up in the air, but hey, at least after the fact one of them had his head on straight. Also, let this be a lesson to all who might be reading this, okay? Peeing your pants really is cool. Love, Miles Davis.
GUNS AT DAWN Spencer Hall over at EDSBS wants to set the record straight re: the SEC versus the B1G. Some of these 22 points of light you likely will dismiss out of hand as some kind of subterfuge designed to get our guard down so that they can oversign our precious tailback recruits, but one point that Hall makes that rings undeniably true is this:
We're also not convinced either Slive or Delany is a genius. Both are soldering their conference's finances to a cable television system whose revenues will likely decrease over the next few decades. Neither has been willing to completely divorce college football from the insanity of the bowl system. They're both functionaries with few original ideas and less power to change things than one might think, bound by their own conference's interests and the demands of university presidents.
I'm right there with him on this. Honestly, I don't really see visionaries looking to reshape the college football landscape for the better. I just see two dudes trying to get theirs by working to maintain the same old antiquated system that they've been protecting for years, for as far as popular opinion will let them. The truth of the matter is that there isn't a regional rivalry here; the real rivalry is between the people in charge and the fans in general.
The most likeable b-ball player everDOWN AT THE OL COMBINE Sully and Buford are in Chicago for the NBA combine, which is probably exactly like the NFL combine in that decisions concerning millions of dollars are based on half-inches and performances in completely arbitrary tests of skill and intelligence. As far as the former goes, Jared measured in at just a hair under 6 foot 8 in his stocking feet, which is about what most people would've figured. What's most interesting to me about him and the NBA is that this is a guy who would've been a top 5 pick after his freshman year, but now is being projected as low as 15th on some boards despite having a sophomore season that was almost exactly the same statistically as the year before.
Arr, the draft. She be a fickle mistress.
DABO! DABO! DABO! Clemson has it's man in Dabo Swinney, who led Clemson to a new start and an ACC championship last year before getting absolutely buttstomped by West Virginia in the Orange Bowl. It was a poor ending to a great year, but that shouldn't set the tone for 2012 as QB Tajh Boyd is the real deal and will likely continue to be a force. The three year, 1.9 million contract extension will make sure everyone knows Dabo's name. And if you don't know already, well, I figure it's some guy. Some guy named Dabo.
YOU REMAIN MY LINKS, MY PLEASURE, MY PAIN This is the proper way to install Final Fantasy XIII-2 on your Xbox360... The Hobbit production update (spoiler: there's a new Legolas)... Jimmy B's maaaadddd... Doug Worthington's Twitter name owns... This is the proper way to sing karaoke... Fifty Shades of Euuuggghhhhh...
