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2015: Rose Bowl plot and characters

In 2015 Dear Sports Fan will be previewing the biggest sporting event of the year in each of the 50 states in the United States plus the district of Columbia. Follow along with us on our interactive 2015 map.

California — The Rose Bowl

College Football — January 1, 2015 — Oregon Ducks vs. Florida State Seminoles, 5 p.m. ET on ESPN.

The Rose Bowl is a college football game with a long history and an exciting present. It has traditionally been played on New Year’s Day and this year is no different. What is different this year is that it will be one of two games playing the role of semifinal games in the new college football playoff system. The winner of the Rose Bowl will go on to play in a National Championship game later in January. This is the first time in recent history that a team could play more than once during “bowl season” and it’s widely seen as either a great innovation, an obvious solution that college football should have adopted years ago, or just another symptom of college football’s never ending slide into hypocrisy and greed. However you see it in the big picture, in the small picture, it’s a prospectively exciting football game. Let’s talk about the plot and learn the characters.

What’s the plot?

This game is likely to be cast as everything that’s bad about college football vs. everything that’s good. The Florida State Seminoles are playing the role of the bad guys here. Why? Well, let’s see. You start out with a racially questionable nickname (although the relationship with the existing Seminole tribe is one area where the college seems to have excelled) add a quarterback who has been arrested but not indicted on sexual assault charges and whose less serious behavior seems evidently dumb from other incidents (he was arrested for shoplifting crab-legs and suspended for shouting a purportedly amusing, sexually charged vulgar phrase) then mix in an New York Times expose on how the football program has warped the justice system over many years and you’ve got exactly the recipe for a team that most people would be happy rooting against. As a bonus, Florida State has won their last 27 games and last year’s national championship. Everyone likes a winner, just not this one. The Oregon Ducks are not necessarily an ideal candidate to play the good guys, but they will be viewed that way just because they are opposing Florida State. The Ducks came to prominence over the last fifteen years thanks to an extremely close relationship with Nike, whose headquarters are near the school. Before they were a good team, they were just the team that seemed to have an infinite number of infinitely bright uniforms. Then, as they got good, they became known for being coach Chip Kelly’s masterpiece of revolutionary, faced paced football. Even though Kelly has moved on to the NFL, the team’s image remains the same — an exciting offensive team that doesn’t quite have enough power to win the biggest games.

Who are the characters?

Jameis Winston — Winston is the quarterback of the Florida State Seminoles. He is the one who has been arrested for sexual assault. I know people are innocent until proven guilty in this country (although that’s a legal rule, not a blogging rule) but I’m more likely to think O.J. Simpson was truly innocent (he’s covering for his son!) than feel good about rooting for Winston. I think this is a pretty wide-spread belief (not the O.J. part) and that says moderately good things about our country. Winston has also never lost a college football game, and if he wins his last two this season before turning pro, he should probably be considered one of the best five players in college football history. Ouch. Marcus Mariota — As long as Mariota can get through the month without shredding his knees, he will be the first pick of next year’s NFL draft. He’s the prototypical modern quarterback. He’s tall (6’4″), fast (sub 4.5 seconds for the 40 yard dash, which is faster than you can imagine), and a good decision maker. If were were better than terrible at identifying good NFL quarterbacks, Mariota would be a sure thing. He’s also a senior, playing his third year for the Oregon Ducks (he sat out his freshman year.) When he won the Heisman trophy this year, he became the first Hawaiian born player to ever get that honor given to the best college football player each year. Mark Helfrich — Who? Right, that’s the point. Even sports fans don’t know who Mark Helfrich is. He’s the head coach of the Oregon Ducks. Reading this excellent article about him by Michael Weinreb in Grantland makes me feel like maybe the whole good vs. bad plot is actually legitimate. Here’s a few tidbits about Helfrich. He grew up in Oregon and loved the Ducks as a kid, even when they were terrible. He played college quarterback for Southern Oregon and later as a pro in Austria during the NFL’s flirtation with developing a minor league in Europe. Instead of screaming and yelling, like many coaches do during the game, he is “thorough and utterly prepared and calm on the sideline, an intellectual at heart who happens to be a football coach.”

Who’s going to win?

Oregon is actually favored by nine points. I take this to mean two things. First, that Vegas thinks Oregon is a little better than Florida State. And second, that Vegas thinks way more people want to bet on the good guys than the bad guys. I think Oregon will win but I fear Florida State might.

Making the playoffs with a losing record: worth it? fair? Part 2

Now that we’re almost at the end of the NFL regular season, there are a few things we know for sure. One of those things is that the winner of the NFC South division, a team guaranteed to make the playoffs, is going to have a losing record. That they will make the playoffs having won only half their games or fewer can be seen in a trillion different ways, from luck to fair to an abomination. I reached out to my old friend and sometimes collaborator, Dean Russell Bell, to find out what he thought about this. What follows is our unadulterated but safe for work (at least it’s safe if your job doesn’t mind you reading about the NFL in the office) email exchange. This is part two of a two-part journey. If you didn’t read part one, you can find it here.

Ezra,

Let me first say how happy I am that a site like Muthead exists SOLELY to provide information on Madden player ratings. Is this a great sports country or what?

That’s a lot of numbers. And a somewhat limited sample size and one that’s reliant on…you know…video game ratings (which are based on stats, yeah yeah yeah. Still. Really?) It also doesn’t include relative salary cap impact of picks in those slots (which, I’ll admit, I’m not entirely clear on) which would be the other thing to take into consideration. And I won’t point out that four of the six teams with a great pick in the 10-14 slot are likely to miss the playoffs this year. Or maybe I will.

But to me, that all misses the point. If I’m a fan – maybe not the die-hardiest of die-hard fans who actually analyze their teams’ salary caps – I’ll still take the playoff game. Again – are you more likely to get a better player with a higher draft pick? Yes. But this is not the top five, where you get the “can’t miss” franchise quarterback (even though they frequently miss). So as a fan…I’m not as moved by it. I’m more about the short term excitement.

And if I’m a franchise, you have to take that into consideration. No coach wants to miss the playoffs. Tanking does not seem to be a thing in football like it is in basketball. Why is that? I don’t really know…but I suspect it has something to do with how big a crapshoot it all is.

BUT. I will not let all these numbers and colors distract from the fundamental question: is it fair for a team with a worse record to make the playoffs because they won a division?

Dean

— — —

Dean,

Fairness in sports is something I have a lot of trouble thinking about. Yes, it’s fair because in the constructed universe of the NFL, the rules dictate that the 32 teams are broken up into two conferences of 16 teams each and the conferences are broken up into four divisions of four teams each and the team with the best record in each division is guaranteed a playoff spot. Whichever team wins the NFC South, the Saints, Panthers, or Falcons, did not do anything untoward (at least not that we know of) or outside of the rules as they are today. The question is, is the rule fair? That’s when things start to get very scrambly in my head but let me try to make some kind of sense out of them… or at least an omelet.

If fair means optimized to reward the best teams, then it’s safe to say this is not a “fair” rule. You could easily design a fairer system by this definition of the word fair by eliminating divisions or even conferences entirely. Why not just have the top 12 of the 32 teams make the playoffs? Divisions, and even conferences, exist for reasons other than rewarding the best teams. Divisions exist mostly for fans. Having three teams that your team plays twice a year (as they do within divisions) helps create the type of contentious long-term rivalries that fans love like the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Seattle Seahawks, and virtually every combination of the teams in the NFC East, the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and Washington Redskins. Divisions are definitely not fair if fair means optimizing to reward the best teams, but they might be fair if fair means creating the most enjoyable product for fans of all 32 teams.

If fairness in sports is about serving the fans, then I would argue that this does serve the fans. Oh, sure, fans of the team that misses out on the playoffs despite having ten wins will be pissed, but overall, I think it’s a good thing. If playoff spots were given out simply to the best 12 teams in the league, the playoff race would basically only include the teams in ninth through fifteenth place overall — say around seven teams. By rewarding division winners and thus limiting the playoff spots given to non-division winning good teams, the NFL increases the number of teams in contention for the playoffs (and at risk for falling out). In a world without divisions, the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Seattle Seahawks wouldn’t care so much about their final two games of the season as they do today. They would be in fourth, fifth, and eighth place respectively and comfortably in the playoffs. But because divisions matter, each of these teams could miss out on a playoff spot if they don’t win. Similarly, in a world without divisions, we wouldn’t care so much about games involving the three teams fighting for the NFC South title — the Falcons, Saints, and Panthers would be in 21st, 23rd, and 24th place and well out of the playoff hunt.

The NFL’s division based playoff system is fair if you consider the NFL to be first and foremost entertainment for fans. That’s good enough for me. What about you?

Ezra

— — —

Ezra,

Good enough for me too, even though I’m going to watch some under-.500 NFC South take a playoff spot that could’ve belonged to my swan-diving Eagles. Because the NFL should, first and foremost, satisfy the fans. We’re the ones who pay for the whole thing.

Now, it would be unfair if winning a division was the only way to make it into the playoffs – but every team has an equal opportunity to win one of the wild cards and, in the case of my Eagles, that was very much within their grasp. The didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs. And they’re not. So that’s fair. And as you note, the current arrangement made this week of football far more entertaining than it would otherwise have been.

The other question is whether it’s fair that a division winner automatically gets homefield advantage in the first playoff game despite having a worse record than their opponent. And again – I think it is. The NFL has decided – for the reasons you cited – to give preferential to teams that win their division. While some divisions may be more talented overall in a given year, I’d argue that it the balance of power shifts often enough that it roughly evens out. After all, it was only a few years ago – before Jim Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, and Chuck Arians – that we were talking about how anemic the NFC West was, especially compared to the powerhouse NFC South.

Dean

— — —

We decided to leave it here. What comes around, goes around. Everything has happened before and will happen again. And more cliches. Until the next time, have a happy and safe holiday season!

NFL Week 16 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps

The NFL season has started but how do you know which games to watch and which to skip? Ask our favorite police duo with their good cop, bad cop precaps of all the matchups in the National Football League this weekend. To see which games will be televised in your area, check out 506sports.com’s essential NFL maps.

Week 16

Saturday, December 20, at 4:30 p.m. ET

Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins

Good cop: NFL football on Saturday! How could it get any better than that!??

Bad cop: How? If it was up to me, I’d start by banishing the terrible, no-fun to watch Redskins.

Saturday, December 20, at 8:30 p.m. ET

San Diego Chargers at San Francisco 49ers

Good cop: The Chargers have to win this game to stay in the playoff hunt! Phillip Rivers is going to come out firing!

Bad cop: When is Phillip Rivers not firing? He’s a quarterback, he throws the ball a lot. These teams have combined to win one out of their last six games. Not exactly what I want to do with my Saturday night.

Sunday, December 21, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans

Good cop: I know I sound like a broken record, but this game is basically a playoff game! Both teams need to win to give themselves a chance at the playoffs!

Bad cop: No… it may be as single elimination as a playoff game but part of what makes playoff games fun is that they involve playoff teams. You know, like good teams… unlike this game.

Cleveland Browns at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: Will Cam Newton return two weeks after a serious car accident to help his Panthers drive to the playoffs?

Bad cop: I’m assuming that pun was unintended. Yes, Newton will play, no, even winning won’t give his team more than a fig-ment of a chance. Hahahaha.

Detroit Lions at Chicago Bears

Good cop: This game always makes me want to say, “oh my!” Never more than this week with the Lions in a tight race for the division lead with the Green Bay Packers!

Bad cop: Have you heard that the Bears are benching their quarterback, Jay Cutler, for this game? That’s the worst last ditch attempt I’ve ever seen of a coach to keep his job. Not going to work.

Green Bay Packers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: I! Uh! This! Um! Well, the Packers need to win this game! It’s important to them!

Bad cop: Oh, they’ll win the game. We just shouldn’t be forced to watch it.

Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: This is another one of those games that’s basically a playoff game! And this one, even you can’t argue against this, has two really exciting, competitive football teams!

Bad cop: They can be exciting and competitive or they can just fold like a tent. These teams are in the position they’re in because they’ve lost to Buccaneers, Browns, Jets, Titans, and Raiders. They don’t deserve to make the playoffs.

Minnesota Vikings at Miami Dolphins

Good cop: This game is all about the future! Both teams are led by young quarterbacks and are using this season as a launch pad for serious playoff runs next year!

Bad cop: It’s about the future? In that case, where is my jet pack?

New England Patriots at New York Jets

Good cop: Smart move by the NFL schedulers to put a fierce divisional rivalry like this at the end of the season! Even though the game doesn’t mean anything for making the playoffs, the Jets vs. Patriots games are always good!

Bad cop: In this case though, the Jets have an incentive to lose to get back into the hunt for the first overall draft pick next year. They should lose anyway but this consideration makes it so they really should lose.

Atlanta Falcons at New Orleans Saints

Good cop: Matt Ryan leads his high-flying Falcons into New Orleans still controlling their own playoff destiny with games against the two other teams contending for the NFC South title in the final two weeks of the season!

Bad cop: THEY ARE ALL BELOW .500. HOW CAN YOU GET EXCITED FOR THAT?

SUNDAY, December 14, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

New York Giants at St. Louis Rams

Good cop: With recent wins, these two teams have pulled themselves up out of the NFL cellar by their own bootstraps! They’re playing hard for their coaches and their jobs and that’s always worth watching!

Bad cop: Oh, I guess it’s worth watching. I prefer teams that are either great or pathetic. Mediocre doesn’t really do it for me.

Buffalo Bills at Oakland Raiders

Good cop: The Bills get rewarded for their season saving victory over the Packers last week with a sweet trip to Oakland! Take care of business there and they’ll put themselves in a better position to make the playoffs.

Bad cop: Not a good one though. They have the worst tie-breakers of the nine teams in their conference with eight or more wins.

Indianapolis Colts at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: Bright lights and big stars in this game with Andrew Luck sauntering into Dallas to play against Tony Romo, Dez Bryant, and DeMarco Murray!

Bad cop: For the last time, offenses don’t play against each other. Gah. These are the two most overblown and overrated teams in the league. Have fun with them before they go out in the first round of the playoffs.

SUNDAY, December 21, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals

Good cop: The Cardinals clinched a playoff spot last weekend but they’re very much a team in the process of adjusting and evolving! For the third time this year, they have to integrate a new starting quarterback!

Bad cop: Ryan Lindley against the Seattle Defense? Ouch.

MONDAY, December 22, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals

Good cop: A primetime meeting of two playoff teams! It’s got talent and intrigue! Is Peyton Manning injured?

Bad cop: Is Andy Dalton still a starting quarterback in the NFL? Why?

Making the playoffs with a losing record: worth it? fair?

Now that we’re almost at the end of the NFL regular season, there are a few things we know for sure. One of those things is that the winner of the NFC South division, a team guaranteed to make the playoffs, is going to be no better than 8-8. That they will make the playoffs having won only half their games or fewer can be seen in a trillion different ways, from luck to fair to an abomination. I reached out to my old friend and sometimes collaborator, Dean Russell Bell, to find out what he thought about this. What follows is our unadulterated but safe for work (at least it’s safe if your job doesn’t mind you reading about the NFL in the office) email exchange. This is part one of what I think will be a two-part journey. You can find part two here.

Dean,

A lot of people are talking about how unfair the NFL rule that calls for every division champion to get a top four spot in the playoffs is, particularly now that it’s a lock that the winner of the NFC South division can be no better than 8-8. In some ways, this is obviously not fair. Some ten win team is going to miss out on the playoffs despite being better than the winner of the NFC South. As a division winner (but obviously not one in the top two teams) the winner of the NFC South will host a playoff game against a wild-card team with at least two more wins than them. That feels unfair both from a competitive standpoint and a financial one, since home playoff games are like gold mines.

All that said, I think I found one way that the NFL rules got it right and where it actually will hurt the team that stumbles into the NFC South title: the draft. NFL draft order rules call for the first 20 picks in the draft to be assigned to all non-playoff teams in reverse order of their record with ties broken by opponent’s strength of schedule and then division and conference tiebreakers. As a 8-8 or more likely a 7-9 team, the NFC South winner would, if they didn’t get a playoff spot, be somewhere around pick 10-14 by my estimate. Assuming they lose in the first round of the playoffs, they would get the 21 pick of the draft.

My question for you is, is that worth it? And what criteria would you use to think about that question? And how do you think fans of the teams in question, the New Orleans Saints, Carolina Panthers, and Atlanta Falcons feel about it?

Ezra

— — —

Ezra

It’s an interesting question – one that, to me, comes down to three crapshoots: the NFL draft, the NFL regular season, and the NFL playoffs.

A team may be punished for making the playoffs by falling in the draft – and there is clearly a marginal benefit in choosing somewhere from 7-11 spots higher in the draft. But I don’t believe that is a significant punishment given how big a crapshoot the NFL draft is. There are so few sure things and so few teams that draft successfully on a regular basis that I just don’t think that kind of drop matters.

The second crapshoot is the NFL regular season. Because of the nature of football – only sixteen games and a high likelihood of injuries – there are very, very few teams guaranteed to make the playoffs every year. Which means, to me, you embrace every opportunity you can.

Especially because of the NFL playoffs, where literally anything can happen. There’s a 95% chance that the NFC South champ will lose in the first round, even though they play at home. But…what if a team struggles all season and really heats up at the end? What if a team has a rash of injuries early on, then recovers late? What if the favorites in the conference sustain major injuries in the playoffs – or what if that goofy, oblong ball takes an insane bounce, as it does so often?

In baseball, hockey, basketball, the playoffs are usually composed of seven game series’, where the opportunity for that kind of flukiness cancels out. With the NFL playoffs, it’s one and done. Anything can happen.

I’d say it is always, always, always worth it to make the playoffs, even at the expense of falling a few slots in the draft. If I put my Eagles in that scenario, I would definitely want them to make it. Worry about the draft later.

So – to the question you asked me – are these teams paying an adequate price for making the playoffs with a horrible record – the answer is no.

Dean

— — —

Dean,

I’m not so sure I agree with you that the price being exacted from whichever team sneaks into the playoffs with a losing is small. Here’s something I just hacked together in a little internet dork-fest I had with myself to try to quantify the penalty. Here’s a chart that shows how good the players picked between 10-14 and 19-23 over the past five years are as defined by their Madden 15 rankings.

How significant is the drop in the NFL draft from picks 10-14 to 19-23?

Source data is from Wikipedia for draft record and Muthead for Madden 15 player ratings.

Like you said, there’s a lot of uncertainty involved in the NFL draft. Whether it’s luck, skill, or something supernatural, it is totally possible to end up drafting a bust in slots 10-14, like poor Blaine Gabbert, or a find a great player in spots 19-23. That said, there is a real difference between those two general areas in the draft, no matter how you look at it. If you judge by average rating, there is a big difference in two years, a significant one in another year, and it was a wash in two. If you want to just look at the most significant players drafted — the enormous booms or busts, it seems like you’re roughly twice as likely to get a great player at 10-14 than 19-23 and three times more likely to get a bust in the bottom bracket. The difference between a 24% chance of getting a J.J. Watt or Odell Beckham and a 12% chance of landing one of those guys is a big deal for any team but especially one that is struggling to accumulate talent, like the Saints, Panthers, and Falcons.

If the goal is to win the Super Bowl, then I think I might prefer doubling my chances of getting a franchise-changing talent in the draft over this year’s slim chance of winning a championship. How slim is it? Vegas Insider lists the Saints, Panthers, and Falcons, as 65-1, 70-1, and 150-1 long-shots respectively. Even if you combine those, that’s only a 3.6% chance.

Still think it’s worth taking a shot at?

Ezra

To be continued soon (here!). Thanks for reading and please feel free to chime in on Facebook, Fancred, Twitter or in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

How do the NASCAR championships work?

Dear Sports Fan,

I read your Cue Cards series every morning faithfully. This morning you admitted that you didn’t really understand how the NASCAR championships work. Isn’t that your job? Figure it out!

Get on it,
Arturo

Dear Arturo,

You’re right, it’s unforgivable. I should know how the NASCAR championships work! So, I did some research and figured it out. It’s an interesting model. Here’s how it works:

There are 36 races in a NASCAR season. Of these, the final ten are part of the NASCAR championship series, called the Chase for the Sprint Cup. In some ways, these final ten races are just like the first 26 races in the season. Each is its own event with its own results and prize money. For example, the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500, run on Sunday, October 26, 2014 had a total purse of $5,036,108 that went out to the forty-three drivers who competed in the race. During the final ten races though, there is another set of standings and results super-imposed on top of the normal race results. This extra structure is the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

The Chase for the Sprint Cup begins with 16 competitors and slowly reduces the field to four before crowning a champion in one final race. The first round consists of three races and is called the Challenger Round. After those three races, four drivers are eliminated and the next round begins. The next round is called the Contender Round, also consists of three races, and has twelve competitors. Once the three races are done, another four drivers fall out and only eight remain. The eight compete in the Eliminator Round, also over the course of three races. The final cut happens and the field is reduced to four drivers for the Championship round which is a single race.

The sixteen driver field is initially chosen based on the results of the first 26 races in the season. Drivers in these “regular season” races are assigned points at the end of the race based on what place they finished the race and whether or not they led during the race. The racers with the most wins in the first 26 races will be given spots in the sixteen driver Chase field. If there are more than 16 winners (which almost never happens,) the winners with the most points will qualify. If there are fewer than 16 winners (because some drivers won a lot of the first 26 races) then the field will be filled in order of the points standings among non-winners. It’s a little convoluted, but basically the best 16 drivers from the first 26 races qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Before the Chase starts, the 16 qualifiers are assigned points based again on regular season wins. Every driver is given 2,000 points plus three points for every regular season win. This year, the standings at the beginning of the Chase looked like this with Brad Keselowski in first place with 2012 points and a three-way tie between drivers 14-16 who all qualified without having won a single race that season.

At the end of each round until the Championship round, the winners of the three races in the round (note that because each race has the normal complement of 43 drivers, there may not be three eligible winners) automatically advance to the next round and the rest of the available slots are filled in order of how many points they accumulated during the round. At the beginning of each round, the points are reset, so each driver that survives the cut has an equal shot to win the next round. There are no cumulative standings. The final Championship round takes place during a single race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 16, 2014. Of the four remaining drivers, whoever places higher in that race wins the overall Chase for the Sprint Cup.

There are so many things about this format that are interesting. First of all, the idea of having a race within a race — a set of drivers within a field of 43 who care more about beating each other than winning the race is curious. How does that impact the tactics of the race itself? It’s tempting to want to see just the sixteen, twelve, eight, or four drivers still alive for the championships race alone on a track but racing with so few cars on the track probably alters the sport enough to make it unfitting for a playoffs. Still, it’s strange to think of a driver other than one in the final four winning at Homestead-Miami. Then you’ll have two separate victory celebrations happening simultaneously at the end of the race. The Chase for the Sprint Cup is an evolutionary approach by NASCAR to trying to maintain the one-day excitement of their sport while creating the week-to-week suspended drama of a playoffs.

I learned a lot — I hope you did too,
Ezra Fischer

Monday, October 13

Cardinals walk off with a homer and a win — The St. Louis Cardinals won the second game of their best-four-out-of-seven series 5-4 against the San Francisco Giants on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The game was close throughout but Cardinals fans had to be fearing the worst when the Giants tied the game in the top of the ninth inning. Their fear of losing a second straight game to the Giants was ameliorated when Kolten Wong blasted the ball 370 feet and out of the ballpark.
Line: The line between being down two games to zero and being tied one to one is so thin.
What’s Next: Game three is on Fox Sports 1 at 4:00 Tuesday, October 14.
Fascinating day, boring night in the NFL — There were gobs of excellent football games yesterday. The Panthers and Bengals played to an unusual 37-37 tie. The Packers eeked by the Dolphins on a late touchdown drive. The Titans hit a last second field goal to keep the Jaguars winless for the season. The Chargers sneaked by the unexpectedly feisty Raiders. The day’s titanic game between the Cowboys and Seahawks lived up to expectations. But the prime-time game between the Giants and Eagles was b-o-r-i-n-g! Brush up on all the games with our Week Six NFL One Liners.
Line: The NFL was exciting all day but then it turned into a pumpkin at night.

Cue Cards 10-3-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

Yesterday — Thursday, October 2

The Royals magic continues — The Kansas City Royals won game one of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Angels 3-2. Like their first game of the playoffs, this game went into extra innings. Mike Moustakas hit a home run in the eleventh inning to push the Royals ahead of the Angels.
Line: The Royals sure are exciting!
What’s Next: Game two is Friday night at 9:37 p.m. ET on TBS.
Beat down in Baltimore — The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers 12 – 3 in game one of their playoff series. Baltimore isn’t quite the feel-good story that the Royals are but they have only made the playoffs one other time since 1997, so they’re a good underdog to root for also.
Line: Detroit has such great pitchers, you don’t expect to see them lose in such a lopsided, high-scoring game.
What’s next: Game two is Friday at noon ET on TBS.
You wanna buy a duck? — The Oregon Ducks’ college football team went into last night’s game ranked number two in the country. They lost 31-24 to Arizona. This is the second straight year that Arizona has upset them. The Ducks are famous for their dynamic spread-offense and their flamboyant uniforms. The coach of Arizona’s team, Rich Rodriguez, spent many years coaching at West Virginia about ten years ago where he was one of the early adopters of the spread-offense. Perhaps he knows how to defend it better than most.
Line: Sad to see the Ducks lose so early in the season. That said, they’re the most exciting when they are looking to upset the top teams, not the other way around.
Thursday Night NFL games continue to stink — There’s so many reasons to dislike having NFL games on Thursdays. It breaks the rhythm of the weekend, it sullies fantasy games, it’s terrible for the health of the players, and it’s a unabashed money grab by the NFL, but perhaps the best argument against them is that they stink! So far this year, of the five Thursday games, the scores have been 36-16, 26-6, 56-14, 45-14, and now, 42-10 with last night’s Green Bay Packers win over the Minnesota Vikings. No fun!
Line: It’s barely even worth watching these Thursday night games. They’re over before they even get started.

Get ready for the baseball playoffs

It’s amazing how fast a 162 game season can fly by! The Major League Baseball playoffs start this week with two single elimination games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Tuesday’s game is between the Oakland Athletics and the Kansas City Royals at 8 p.m. ET on TBS. Wednesday’s is between the San Francisco Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. Whether you’re a diehard fan or someone, like me, who tunes in just for the playoffs, here are some resources for watching and enjoying playoff baseball.

Why do people like baseball?

Written by early contributor to Dear Sports Fan, the pseudonymous Dean Russell Bell:

There’s real beauty in a ball game – there’s nothing like the sound of a ball hit solidly by a wooden bat; or watching the mechanics of a smoothly turned double play, and the way incredibly skilled players make it look so effortless; or the one on one duel between pitcher and batter, or the sheer improbability of a human hitting a tiny orb moving at 95 miles an hour – let alone hitting it hundreds of feet.

Plus, choosing to watch a baseball game isn’t that much of a commitment:

You could do anything while watching a baseball game – knit, iron, write the great American novel. It’s the most easily-casually watched sport there is.

How do the Major League baseball playoffs work?

This is a quick walkthrough the format of the baseball playoffs. It’s a confusing playoff system because it has, “the most variety of format of all of the major sports’ playoffs. The MLB playoffs consist of four rounds and three different formats.” If this sounds like it doesn’t make sense, that’s because it really doesn’t. Towards the end of this post, I write a little bit about how these playoffs are unfair to players, teams, and fans.

What’s the difference between the two leagues in baseball?

Tuesday night’s game is played under a different set of rules from Wednesday’s game. This post explores what the differences are and how they got that way. It’s a handy companion for making sense out of the two sets of rules and their implication on tactics:

Mostly what it does is make it less likely for American League teams to win 2-0. So, they tend to build their entire line-ups based on this fact. They concentrate on finding bigger, stronger, slower guys who can hit home-runs. The fact that they can play these guys in a game without needing them to run around and try to catch the ball helps too! The National League teams, on the other hand, feel like they might be able to win with fewer runs, so they tend towards smaller, faster players who can steal bases, bunt, and play excellent defense.

Keep an eye out for more about baseball in the next week.

Time for Other Television

tv watching — Now is your time for other television. Hit it!

This is a public service announcement on behalf of all of you who share a television with a sports fan. Now is your time for other television! It’s a brief lull in the sports calendar. The excitement of baseball’s opening games has worn out and the realization that there are 155 more games to go has descended. March Madness is over. Football is a distant mirage. The NBA and NHL regular seasons are wrapping up but the playoffs are coming soon. The NHL playoffs begin in five days, the NBA playoffs in less than a month. Now is your chance to dominate! Binge-watch True Detective, Downton Abbey, or Orange is the New Black. Watch new episodes of Mad Men or Game of Thrones live. Put your feet up and lackadaisically jock the remote while you go through episodes of some pleasurable show like the Real Housewives of North Dakota or Say Yes to the Dress, Paisley Edition.

The television is yours, enjoy it!

[Editor’s note: if you live with a golf fan, your results may vary. The biggest golf tournament of the year, The Masters, just started today. But really, if you live with a golf fan, you already know this.]

How do the Major League Baseball Playoffs Work?

I went to a Mets game this year and took this photo. They did not make the playoffs.

The Major League Baseball playoffs are among the most confusing playoffs for me because they have the most variety of format of all of the major sports’ playoffs. The MLB playoffs consist of four rounds and three different formats. It’s also confusing to me because it’s the sport I follow the least but since it started yesterday I’ve done some reading, some watching, and some listening and I am ready to report back to you what I’ve learned and then comment on what makes sense about it and what doesn’t. Let’s travel backwards through the playoffs starting with the most famous and familiar element, the World Series.

The World Series

The World Series determines the championship of the MLB. It is a best of seven series where the first team to win four games wins the series. This format is the one the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League use throughout their playoffs. Instead of dividing the league into East and West as the NBA and NHL have done for years, baseball (like football) uses history to divide their league in two. The National League was formed in 1876 and the American League in 1901. Teams from the two leagues have been facing each other in the World Series since 1903.^[1] The first two games are played at one team’s home stadium, the next three at the other’s, and the last two, if necessary, at the first team’s stadium. Instead of using regular season record to decide who gets four potential games at home and who three, since 2003, this advantage was granted to the team representing whichever league won in the mid-season all-star game, an otherwise meaningless exhibition.

The Championship Series

To make it to the World Series, a team has to make it through the semi-final round, confusingly called either the American or National League Championship Series, again for historic reasons. This series follows the same seven game format as the World Series. Another oddity of baseball that stems from its history as two separate leagues is that each league plays under slightly different rules. The biggest difference is that in the National League, pitchers are required to bat whereas in the American League teams have the option^[2] to replace the pitcher in the batting order with a player who only has to hit, never field. That “position” is called the designated hitter. These rules have all sorts of tactical consequences which deserve their own post but which become even more interesting in the World Series when both teams must play by the home team’s rules.

The Divisional Series

The four teams that make it to the ALCS or the NLCS have won the previous round, the Divisional Series. The divisional series’ are the quarterfinals and consist of eight teams. The format is a five game series where the first team to win three games wins the series. Each League is made up of three five-team divisions. The team in each division with the best regular season record is a division winner and automatically gets a place in the divisional series. The other two teams that make it to this round are called wild-cards and until 2012 were the two teams, one from each league, with the highest win total among non-division winning teams.

The Wild Card Playoff

Since 2012 the two extra teams to make it into the Divisional series have been the winners of the Wild Card Playoff. The Wild Card Playoff (surprise, surprise) follows a third format. It is a single elimination game. One game, the winner of which advances to the next round of the playoffs. The four teams that make it to to the Wild Card Playoff, two from each league, are the teams with the highest and second highest win total in the regular season among non-division winning teams. In 2013, the Wild Card Playoff games were between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in the National League and Tampa Bay and Cleveland in the American League.

What Makes Sense and What Doesn’t

There are elements of this complicated setup that make sense and some that don’t. Increasing the number of games in a series as the playoffs go on makes sense because the longer a series is, the more likely it is that the better^[3] team will win, and it feels more important to get the championship right than it does the quarterfinals. Varying the length of the series’ also makes sense because it maximizes the number of teams involved while answering critics who say that the playoffs are too long to sustain interest. Maximizing the number of teams involved is great for fans who may wait years for their team to even make the playoffs and great for owners who might earn more money from one playoff game than a dozen regular season games.

What doesn’t make sense to me is the Wild Card Playoff. Reducing a series from seven games to five as a trade-off between getting it right and making it worth watching seems reasonable to me but going all the way down to one game sacrifices too much. Any one game between professional teams, especially ones that are good enough to make it to the playoffs, approaches a coin-toss. The coin may be weighted in one direction or another but at most it’s probably a 40-60 proposition. One game is simply not statistically significant enough to be a reliable indication of who is better. This is particularly unsatisfying in a sport that takes statistical significance so seriously that it plays 162 games in its regular season as opposed to 82 in professional hockey and basketball and 16 in football. On an emotional level, I can’t imagine following a team for 162 games over six months only to have it end with one bad game.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Believe it or not, the two leagues only merged as corporate entities in 2000!!↵
Which they basically always take.↵
It’s easy to twist yourself into knots about this one. If the worse team wins then aren’t they the better team? It can be an endless argument or an unspoken agreement.↵