About FGCU (and some bad analysis)

Deadspin has a fairly interesting article up today about Florida Gulf Coast University, this year's surprise entrant into the NCAA Tournament's Sweet Sixteen. Touching on some topics that I've previously discussed in posts here and here, author Jonathan Mahler puts a different spin on this Cinderella story.

Don’t waste your time wooing Nobel laureates to your faculty or trying to recruit National Merit Scholars to a college they’ve never heard of. Do what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do: Devote your resources to building a first-class Division I basketball program.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but FGCU pulled it off pretty quickly... The Eagles basketball program started in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and had to apply more than once before being accepted into the National Collegiate Athletic Association—at the Division II level. Even after being granted permission to move up to Division I, the team had to wait three years before becoming eligible for postseason play.

Florida Gulf Coast University won its first NCAA tournament game in the school’s second year of eligibility, a mere 16 years after graduating its first student. Harvard won its first tournament game this year, too—371 years after its first commencement...

Just how valuable is a strong showing in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament? As it happens, Butler, whose improbable run to the 2010 Final Four is still the stuff of legend, has studied this very question. Its near-championship run—it lost in the finals to Duke—generated precisely $639,273,881.82 in publicity for the university. That’s to say nothing of the increases in merchandise sales and charitable giving, or the 41 percent surge in applications.

Interesting stuff, although as I've pointed out in my previous posts, not all schools are as successful at this game as FGCU has been—many more have thrown untold millions at their athletic departments and had hardly any success at all on the field or as an institution. On balance, it's pretty much a zero-sum game—some win big, but many others lose just as much.

Of course, where the author really lost me wasn't in this conclusion, but in his odd insistence that this Cinderella run somehow should have been foreseen by all of us, or that it was somehow inevitable. Mahler writes:

[Head coach Andy] Enfield hasn’t exactly had to scrounge for talent at FGCU. His team’s point guard, Brett Comer, grew up playing youth basketball with Austin Rivers, a current starter for the New Orleans Hornets and the son of former NBA star Doc Rivers. The father of one of Enfield’s bench players, Filip Cvjeticanin, played alongside Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic on the Yugoslavian national team that won a silver medal in the 1988 Olympics.

These are some pretty tenuous links here, my man. I, for example, grew up playing baseball against this guy, in games umpired by this guy, and I coached this guy at a baseball camp when I was in high school. My father, meanwhile, shared a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1983, when I was two years old.

Do these connections alone make me a top-tier athletic talent, or a budding superstar journalist? Of course not. All they do is illustrate what we already know about the world, which is that it can be a pretty small place sometimes. If you play sports for long enough, you're pretty much guaranteed to line up with or against somebody who's pretty talented—and if not, you've probably got a relative who did (hey, come to think of it, my uncle did play hoops against Patrick Ewing in the Boston city championship way back when... maybe I've got more of a future in basketball than I'd realized).

As for FGCU, if they had really figured out a way to somehow magically attract top athletes to their school, they wouldn't have been recruiting kids who "grew up playing youth basketball with Austin Rivers", they'd have been recruiting Austin Rivers himself. This isn't to say that these FGCU kids aren't talented—in fact, they are. I've been amazed by what these guys have done, and it's no fluke. I can't wait to watch them continue their run tomorrow night against Florida (late game, eh, CBS? I see what you did there...), and I hope they take this thing all the way to Atlanta for the Final Four.

But to pretend as though FGCU was some sleeping giant—with tons of top talent that nobody bothered to talk about—obscures the real lessons that we could be learning here. Namely, that a coach and a team playing incredibly well as a unit while having fun and playing with reckless abandon can do some pretty special things on a basketball court (and that the NCAA probably screwed up a bit with this year's seeding of the tournament). Not to mention, this isn't exactly a unique story in recent years—George Mason, VCU, and Butler all preceded (and exceeded) FGCU in this regard. Sure, FGCU reaching the Final Four would be unbelievable, and I'm certainly rooting for it, but we're not there yet.

When a big sports story like this one comes along, a lot of bad journalism is bound to be written, so this particular article is hardly a surprise. I just wish that, for once, we could all just enjoy an awesome story on its own merits, without having to draw some bigger (nonsensical) lesson about it all. Unfortunately, that's just not what we in the internet age like to do.

[Deadspin]

Remembering the Dream Team

With the Summer Olympics coming up next month, seemingly everyone is looking back to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and the original Dream Team. I honestly can't believe it's already been 20 years--I still remember my Larry Bird #7 Dream Team jersey--but given how much the NBA has changed since then (both for better and for worse), it's somewhat unsurprising. Today's stars grew up watching these guys play, and their influence--especially on the international game--simply can't be overstated.

One of the more interesting retrospectives that I've come across is this GQ "oral history" of the Dream Team, as told by the people who lived it. There's some crazy stuff in there (like the fact that Isiah Thomas wasn't even the first alternate for the Dream Team--Joe Dumars was), and it's always entertaining to hear the input of all of the guys.

[NBA Commissioner David] Stern: The opposing teams were more interested in taking photos with our players than playing against them. 

Nathaniel Butler (official NBA photographer): We were sitting on the baseline. Magic is backing a guy down, and the guy on defense is yelling at his bench, "Now! Now!" And on the bench, one guy's pulling a camera out of his sock and taking a photo of his teammate. 

[Newsday columnist Jan] Hubbard: One time they were playing against Venezuela, and the guy who was guarding Magic kept on saying, "I need your shoes! I need your shoes!" During the game. And Magic goes, "Look, I need my shoes!" 

Lenny Wilkens (Team USA assistant coach): We thought it was funny. But it changed over the years. We always said, "Next time, they won't bring cameras. They'll just bring their basketball."

The whole thing is pretty entertaining, particularly the anecdotes surrounding the team of college all-stars (which, incidentally, was loaded--Chris Webber, Penny Hardaway, Allan Houston, Bobby Hurley, among others) that scrimmaged the Dream Team, with explicit instructions to jack threes like the international teams always did in those days.

I don't think we'll ever see another phenomenon quite like the Dream Team, and I'm glad I got to witness it back then. There are a lot of guys in today's league that definitely would've fit in nicely on that team, but I have to think that a team of today's stars would still have a pretty tough time beating that squad--the competitive drive of those guys was simply off the charts.

[GQ]

10 years ago today...

No, I can't believe this was 10 years ago. I'm getting old. I also can't believe that fat Derrick Coleman was the second-leading scorer on that Sixers team, or that Matt Harpring started 81 games for them. If I was Iverson, I would've lost my mind months before this rant. Either way, enjoy.

 

Dedication (Pic of the Year)

Courtesy of Deadspin, this might be my favorite picture of the year so far.

In other news, Instagram has no revenues but sold for a billion dollars. I am in the wrong business.

Welcome March Madness (from The Simpsons)

It's March (already?), and that of course means that March Madness officially kicks off this week with Championship Week--plenty of teams have already clinched their NCAA berths, the Big East tournament has been underway for about a week now, and the ACC just started theirs today. I couldn't be more excited.

In honor of the ACC tournament and my Cavaliers (who earned a first round bye and start tourney play tomorrow), I thought I'd share my personal take on the ACC, as viewed through the all-knowing lens of The Simpsons. Enjoy. (Click on the pic to blow it up full size, for the full effect).

Song of the Week(end)

Okay, let's finish off this three-post Friday (let's call it a hat trick) with a little weekend music. I was planning to honor the recently-deceased Davy Jones--former lead singer of the Monkees--in this post, but I've heard "Daydream Believer" so much this week that it's nearly driven me insane (much like "I Will Always Love You" a couple of weeks ago... I had no idea the Monkees were ever this popular... I don't think they were).

So instead, I'm going to go in a completely different direction and throw a little sports theme onto this weekend's tune (no, this isn't the first time I've done that). You see, 50 years ago today, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game. Along with Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, it's in the Pantheon of sports' most unbreakable records, a record made even more impressive by the absence of the 3-point shot in Chamberlain's era.

In the last 20 years, only Kobe Bryant and David Robinson have come anywhere close to Wilt's mark, even with the 3-pointer at their disposal. So today, we honor The Stilt by playing the chart-topping song from 50 years ago, Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl". Yes, I'm thrilled that the chart-topper was actually a song that I'd heard of and liked, never a guarantee when you're talking about the '60s--it made this post much easier on me. Happy weekend, people.

Clip of the Week

Man, I am just a day late on everything recently... story of my life. So today, you'll be getting a Clip of the Week, a Song of the Week(end), and maybe even a bonus blog rant if I get around to it (hint: it involves communism).

So first, your Clip of the Week. I really wanted to go the animal route with this one, by posting this video of a dolphin doing bad things. I also could've gone the sports route with this impressive goal from Cristiano Ronaldo (whom I really dislike).

But Linsanity is one of the most amazing and unexpected things to ever happen to Harvard athletics, and as a lifelong Harvard sports fan (and former Crimson athlete myself), I have to cash in on this frenzy before it pisses everyone off like Tebowmania. (Ah, crap, too late, Sarah Palin ruined it for everyone already. Thanks, Sarah. You're the best.) 

Whatever. Here's Jeremy Lin, in the days before Linsanity, teaching all you folks at home how to get into Harvard. Take notes, people, this is invaluable information.

Clip of the Week

We've got some good stuff this week, and we'll start it off with this cool clip of "people flying in NYC"--it's people-shaped cutouts attached to toy planes, but whatever, it's still cool to watch.

But this was a huge week for sports, so that's where we'll be finding our Clip of the Week. So with apologies to Shaun White's perfect run at the X-Games and the amazing Nadal-Djokovic match at the Australian Open (where both players nearly collapsed during an absurdly long awards ceremony speech), there's just no way to overlook Blake Griffin, who owned the week and year with this dunk that will go down in the record books as one of the best (and angriest) dunks ever.



I mean... wow. Sorry, Kendrick. Get 'em next time, buddy.

Quote of the Week

I haven't written one word here on the NBA lockout, and that's mostly because nobody really cares about it. Oh, you hadn't heard... yeah, the NBA season should have started by now, but hasn't. It's kind of like that NFL lockout that everyone was talking about this summer, except that it's way dumber and nobody's paying any attention.

But that doesn't mean we all can't have a little fun with it, right? Without further ado, we'll turn it over to the greatest basketball player of all time (sorry, Larry)... and one of the worst owners of all time (sorry, Donald). Tragically, they're the same guy.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"If you can't make it work economically, you should sell the team."
                           - Michael Jordan, during the 1998 NBA lockout

Now, a decade and a half older and seated on the other side of the aisle as an NBA owner, Jordan is leading a group of hard-line executives who refuse to compromise further... because they don't feel that they can make it work economically. Whoops.

It's funny to me how a tiger is sometimes able to change his stripes when his circumstances have changed. I think this is a particularly notable and ironic example of the dynamic that I first mentioned in this blog post--that is to say, it's easy for us to criticize management until we're in their shoes. Putting ourselves in somebody else's position isn't always easy, but it's essential if we're going to understand how they are likely to act or respond to something that we do.

For what it's worth, in this situation I can see both points of view--that of Jordan the player and of Jordan the owner. With the revenues that NBA teams enjoy, it should be literally impossible to lose money as a franchise owner. That the owners continue to lose money because they insist on signing mediocre players to awful contracts is, ultimately, their own problem.

But for the players to continue overplaying their hand here--professional athletes are a decaying asset, no matter how you slice things, and there's a new supply of them coming out of college every year who'd be willing to play for half of what current players make--is lunacy. Ultimately, the owners can hold out much longer than the players can, and they know it.

So while I sympathize with the bitter rantings of Jordan the player, current players would do well to remember and recognize that they are not Michael Jordan, and that they are replaceable. And if they could do a slightly better job of putting themselves in the owners' shoes (unlike 1998 MJ), they'd be back on the courts tomorrow. Not that anyone would care...

[SB Nation]

Quote of the Week

Oh, come on, you didn't think I was going to let LeBron off the hook without criticizing him for his amazing disappearing act on the game's biggest stage, did you?

Actually, you know, I might have, perhaps if he had (appropriately) been humbled by the whole situation, driven to recommit himself to his craft rather than focusing so damn hard on "building his brand" and crafting his image. But no, the self-appointed King is, as we've been so clearly shown before, the most narcissistic athlete of our generation, and no amount of postseason frustration will ever cut him down to size.

His latest trick? Ever-so-subtly hinting that he couldn't care less what any of the fans think about him, because he's rich and they're all presumably poor, alcoholic slobs with failing marriages.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"At the end of the day, all the people that was rooting on me to fail... they've gotta wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They've got the same personal problems that they had today... they've gotta get back to the real world at some point."
                                 - LeBron James, Miami Heat forward



Wow. This guy really is a first-class asshole, isn't he? Hey LeBron, guess what buddy? You are rich solely because these apparently-flawed people like to leave the real world behind every once in a while and come watch a bunch of overgrown children play a game for a few hours.

Because of that fact, you can't minimize the importance of people's opinion of you (admitting that your profession is, at its core, a little bit silly) without also minimizing your own importance to the world. But then, I guess that sort of thinking is a little bit beyond your grasp, isn't it? If you really understood the very odd nature of the fan-player relationship, you wouldn't have done something so completely tone-deaf and foolish as "The Decision" in the first place, would you have? Why am I even bothering to ask? You suck.

God's Gift heads to New York

I can only assume that Steve Lavin committed some sort of recruiting violation here...

St. John's coach Steve Lavin has to hope his newest recruit is as impressive on the basketball court as his name.

God's Gift Achiuwa -- a 6-foot-8 power forward and first-team juco All-American from Erie (N.Y.) Community College -- is the ninth player to commit to the Red Storm for next season. St. John's has the No. 3-ranked recruiting class, according to ESPN Insider's top 25.

The Nigerian native, whose father is a minister, chose St. John's over Washington and Cincinnati.

Amazing. Lavin himself refers to the man only as "Gift", and I can't wait to see Dick Vitale screeching about this kid during a meaningless early-season game. And given that God's Gift will be playing in a league (the Big East) that boasts a whopping total of eight Catholic schools (DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Notre Dame, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Villanova), the possibilities for creative headlines are really endless. I can't wait.

[ESPN]

On loyalty in business

Roughly a month ago, the University of Virginia athletic department announced the resignation of Hall of Fame women's basketball coach Debbie Ryan, who had held her position for 34 years. Ryan was one of the pillars of UVA athletics and of the sport of women's basketball alike, having played a vital role in the growth of the game to the point of visibility it enjoys today.

To fully understand her impact and longevity, consider that UConn women's coach Geno Auriemma--probably the most prominent figure in the sport today--got his start as an assistant under Ryan from 1981-1985, by which point she had already been the UVA head coach for nearly a decade. Her legend rivals that of Joe Paterno in football and Mike Krzyzewski in men's basketball, which makes her resignation no small matter.

Almost immediately, though, speculation was rampant that Debbie's resignation was far from her choice alone. As Juanita Giles wrote for The Hook,

There's something rotten in the UVA athletic department. Circumstantial evidence it may be, but shrouded in the emotional farewells and hidden among the well-deserved testimonials and laurels are undeniable signs that Ryan was forced out of her job. It may be ugly, but is it necessary? 

Ryan’s Cavaliers haven’t made it past the second round of the NCAA tournament in more than 10 years, and in that time there have been five seasons the Cavs didn’t win 20 games, something that happened only once in the previous 17 years... 

It’s been an inconsistent and disappointing decade for UVA women’s basketball. So apparently, sometime during this past season, it was decided Debbie Ryan was going to get the boot... 

Debbie Ryan’s resignation seems unfair and cruel, but what should happen to legendary coaches when they start slipping? What will Virginia Tech do to Frank Beamer when he stops winning 10 games a season? What will Tennessee do with Pat Summitt when championships dry up? Penn State is chomping at the bit to get rid of Joe Paterno, and everyone knows Florida State fired Bobby Bowden. 

What should UVA have done with this amazing woman who built a well-respected program? Sentiment, respect, and loyalty may not trump winning, but as we wave “bye bye” to Debbie Ryan, it sure feels like they should.

I hear these types of arguments made frequently, often by people who haven't been in positions of management and don't fully appreciate the decision-making dynamics at play. Fair or not, rest assured that Athletic Director Craig Littlepage didn't WANT to see Debbie Ryan go; rather, his hand was forced as attendance lagged amid several consecutive losing seasons.

A failure to advance past the second round of the NCAA tournament a single time in the past decade is a record of futility that cannot be understated, given the well-documented lack of depth in women's basketball. Whatever magic Ryan used to possess had clearly passed, and attendance at the team's games showed that the fans were noticing.

It's easy for those fans, in retrospect, to bemoan the lack of loyalty shown by the athletic department in Ryan's departure. But they should do so knowing that they were complicit in the decision. Littlepage's decision was a response to the fact that fans had been voting with their wallets for nearly a decade.

As managers, there is never any reward for loyalty unless your customers explicitly value it--nobody ever says "sure, he lost money, but he was a really great and loyal guy"... it just doesn't happen. In this case, the fans' loyalty to Debbie and the women's basketball program lapsed long before the loyalty of department administrators--the empty seats told the tale. Littlepage's ultimate decision merely reflected what his fans had already been saying loud and clear for years.

Any manager who ignores what his customers are telling him (with their wallets or otherwise) isn't long for the game. We can blame those managers when undesirable outcomes arise, but we should and must do so with the realization that they are merely echoing what we as customers have told them. We may claim to want quality television, but we watch reality TV in droves, so that's just what we get. We may say that we value fresh, organic produce, but when we check out at the grocery store, more often than not we're buying Corn Pops and Mountain Dew. Managers won't produce it if you're not buying it.

But beyond that dynamic, the mistake that many people make is assuming that managers face an infinite world of choices (and alternatives) in both the short-term and long-term. If athletic department administrators had remained loyal to the end, waiting for Debbie to resign when she thought she should, in filling her vacant spot they would have found themselves at the mercy of whoever happened to be available on that day. In the meantime, many capable coaches would likely have found employment elsewhere, and there is a very tangible cost to those missed opportunities.

Littlepage knew that Ryan would be resigning sooner or later, and that he would be judged as much (if not more so) on the quality of her replacement as he would on the "loyalty" he displayed in her dismissal. So he pulled the trigger when he felt it was necessary, and hired a replacement that has by all accounts been considered a great hire.

His apparent decision to nudge Ryan out the door a couple years before she would have liked should be viewed much like the New York Yankees' dismissal of manager Joe Torre in 2007. The Yankees knew that Torre was reaching the end of his rope, knew they'd soon be in the market for a new manager, and saw that an incredibly capable replacement (Joe Girardi) was available. So rather than wait for Torre to step down and watch Girardi take a coaching job elsewhere, the Yankees took the leap and made the change. Two years later, they were World Series champions with Girardi as manager (much to my dismay).

Few fans, if any, will blame the Yankees today for making the Torre decision when they did, even if it was somewhat unpopular at the time. I have little doubt that Littlepage and the UVA athletic department will be vindicated when the Ryan decision is reviewed in several years. It's not always popular to make the right decision.

[The Hook]

Anyone here know how to shoot?

After suffering through last night's almost-unwatchable NCAA basketball championship game (an unworthy closing argument to what had been a fantastic tournament), I'm willing to add fuel to the fire of an old debate--should we really be playing our most important games in different circumstances than all the rest? In this case, the question is whether playing the Final Four in giant football stadiums is harming the product on the court during the sport's biggest showcase.

Walking into a football stadium and seeing 75,000 people in one place for a basketball game is an impressive sight. With such a large mass of humanity in one place, a collective energy pervades the building and immediately signals to all who are in attendance that an important event is about to take place. From an aesthetic standpoint, it makes the Final Four a tremendous experience.

However as Monday night showed us once again, the football stadium Final Four all too often also produces horrific basketball. The numbers from UConn’s 53-41 victory over Butler suggest it was the worst offensive game in Final Four history. Butler shot 18.8 percent from the field, the lowest percentage of any team in any championship game in tournament history. It was also the lowest shooting percentage of any team in this year’s tournament, obliterating the futility record set by St. Peter’s in shooting 29 percent versus Purdue. UConn may have won the game, but it too contributed to the string of horrendous bricks, going 1-11 from the three point line and becoming the first team to win an NCAA title shooting less than 10 percent from behind the arc.

But the awful shooting didn’t start on Monday. In the Kentucky-UConn game on Saturday night, the Huskies went 1-12 from three point land and won, leading to a preposterous 2-23 total for the weekend. Kentucky shot only 33 percent from the field for the game and went 2-12 from three point land in the first half, even though virtually every one of the looks was completely wide open. In fact, the entire Final Four was one consistent parade of missed open three pointers, leading to a brand of eye-bleeding basketball that does little to sell the college game while played on its biggest stage.

Our author continues,

Believe me, I understand the reason these games are played in such massive structures. With 75,000 fans on Saturday and another 70,000 on Monday, the NCAA set a new attendance record for the Final Four and produced not only a large stream of revenue, but also an atmosphere to compete with the biggest sporting events in the United States. So arguing that the NCAA should go back to something resembling a regular arena for the Final Four is unrealistic and akin to arguing that “student-athletes” should miss less class during March.

However we should acknowledge that what we see at the Final Four is not the same game that is played throughout the regular season or in the early rounds of the NCAA tournament. A game in a football stadium leads to a shooting environment that is unlike anything a player will otherwise see. Behind the basket is simply open space, often filled with temporary stands that dont raise immediately as in virtually every arena in America. With no real backdrop to create a context, the basketball goal seems to almost be floating in space. This will often cause even a great shooter to have issues with depth perception that in many cases, he has never previously seen.

To understand exactly what is occurring, imagine standing in a desert, with no trees, mountains or buildings to help your eyes and brain conceptualize how far a particular object is from you at a given point. Absent the context around you, one is generally guessing to determine distances from a given point, an effect that is exaggerated to an even greater degree in a split-second situation. This occurs on a much smaller level in these football environments, often interfering with the regular routine of a shooter who is used to a regular context in the average basketball arena. Add the additional oddity of a raised court that hovers over the fans in the first couple of rows, and the difference from the players’ norm is real.

I don't normally excerpt other articles this heavily, but this piece does a particularly fantastic job of laying out the argument in the same way I would. To be fair, the empirical evidence to support the "anti-football stadium" argument is spotty at best, in large part because there are so few games played in such settings, making any fair comparison almost impossible.

But from a fan standpoint, it's always distasteful when the business side of the game starts to impact the product on the field (or the court, as the case may be). I first wrote about this dynamic with respect to TV's ever-growing influence on the baseball playoffs (which, to me, are sacred), and there is no shortage of examples these days.

As fans, we expect and accept that the franchises, leagues, and players we love do not operate in a business vacuum, and sometimes must make revenue-maximizing choices that seem unpalatable to us on the outside. We know by now that we are "rooting for laundry" as they say, and that loyalty, etc. is in short supply. But there is a certain point at which supposedly "revenue-maximizing" decisions begin to impact and compromise the integrity of the product--at this point, what might look like revenue maximization in the short run can turn into a huge long-term mistake.

Eventually, if the product sucks, (and last night's game sucked in a BIG way), you can't sell it to anyone for any price. In the short run, before people notice that the product is starting to fall apart, you can get away with quite a bit and look like a business genius. This isn't a dynamic that's unique to sports, or any business; rather, it's universal. Cut corners on safety inspections, save money, make more profit, look like a genius... until the whole thing blows up and you end up wondering what went wrong.

Maybe it's a bit overblown to compare the NCAA to BP, but it's quite possible that last night's debacle was no accident. The apathy with which the world regarded last October's World Series was entirely of MLB's doing, all the result of supposedly revenue-maximizing decisions. A couple more title games like last night's disaster, and people will start to tune out the Final Four, too. If the only thing keeping people interested in your product is widespread semi-legal nationwide gambling on teenagers... then you might want to reconsider a couple of things.

I don't think the roof is caving in on the NCAA just yet, but it was hard to stay up and watch last night's game (oh yeah, I forgot to mention the post-9pm EST start time thanks to TV, making it hard for young kids to stay up and watch, and you know what just nevermind...) and think that it was worthwhile. Sooner or later, I'll tune out, and that's bad news for the NCAA.

[CBS Sports]

Math be damned, bring it on Final Four

Last week I linked to a post over at the FiveThirtyEight blog talking about the strange mathematics of the NCAA tournament, and why it's bad to be an 8 seed (and ironically better to be an 11 seed).

Butler seemed not to care about any of that, as last year's runner-up plowed right through their bracket's 1 seed (Pittsburgh) and 2 seed (Florida) to return to the Final Four, becoming the first 8 seed to make it to the promised land since 2000 (when two 8s managed the feat).

Of course, 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth seemed to back up the study's thesis with its advance to the Final Four, but the study didn't exactly account for VCU's play-in game, which made VCU the first team to ever require 5 tournament wins in order to reach the national semis--the math on that, clearly, is worse than drawing an 8 seed or a 9 seed.

So take your pick--neither of these teams is mathematically supposed to be here, but now one of them is guaranteed to play for the title. For Butler, that would be familiar territory, for VCU--not so much. This year's Final Four should be historically fun to watch, and it's already etched its name in the record books. Since the tournament's expansion beyond its old 32-team format, this year's quartet marks the first time that no 1 seeds or 2 seeds were present, and the combined seeds of the four participants (3+4+8+11=26) are the highest in history, blowing out the previous high from 2000 (1+5+8+8=22).

In summary, I've never been more excited to have been made to look foolish; this is why I love sports. None of this was supposed to be possible, and yet here we are. (Also, in a year where I successfully picked only 3 of the Elite 8 and 1 of the Final Four, I somehow still have a chance to finish in the money in both of my bracket pools--go figure.)

As one final note before we put college basketball to bed for a few days, note that if this was football, the National Championship would be played in late April between Ohio State and Kansas, and VCU-Butler would be played on a blue field in Idaho with nobody watching. Yeah, basketball wins. Take a hike, BCS.

An update on the tail wagging the dog

Two recent developments in the world of collegiate athletics have cast a new light on the "front porch" theory of big-time sports, which I first wrote about several months ago, and I felt compelled to write this post as an update. As a reminder,

At the University of Florida, one of the largest and most successful programs, spending on athletics increased 6% last year even while the university was forced to slash budgets elsewhere--a total of 139 faculty and staff members have been laid off since 2007.

The reason, university officials say, is that the emphasis on sports pays off: athletics serve as the “front porch” of a university, a powerful marketing tool that generates free advertising on ESPN and the sports pages.

But economists have found it difficult to quantify a link between investing in a high-profile athletic program and reaping presumed benefits, like alumni donations or higher application rates. “If there’s any effect, it’s a blip: it doesn’t persist,” said Jonathan Orszag, an economist who has evaluated such issues for the NCAA.

I'd be interested to see more research on this effect, since I've seen anecdotal evidence on both sides. Schools like Boston College, Virginia Tech, and Southern Cal saw their national profile--and USNews rankings--skyrocket after their football teams became successful. But other schools--Oregon State and Oklahoma State immediately come to mind--have invested massively in athletics but not seen the commensurate bump in rankings.

Regardless of Mr. Orszag's skepticism, schools like the University of Florida have continued to invest massively in their bigger sports, and recent reports have indicated that they've been willing to make other compromises as well in order to ensure athletic prowess. USA Today (and HBO Sports) noted that Florida football players had been arrested more than 30 times during head coach Urban Meyer's tenure, an eye-popping statistic that cast doubt on whether Florida was looking the other way on the caliber of person it was admitting to its program. For many, it was an indication of a win-at-all-costs mentality that was endorsed and condoned at the highest levels of university management.

That dynamic was further investigated by a Sports Illustrated/CBS News report last week, which indicated that the problem was incredibly widespread.

The number of players with criminal histories turned up by the SI/CBS News investigation reinforces a pervasive assumption that college coaches are willing to recruit players with questionable pasts to win. More surprising, however, is just how little digging college coaches do into players' backgrounds before offering them a scholarship.

Among the 25 schools in the investigation, only two -- TCU and Oklahoma -- perform any type of regular criminal background searches on recruits. But even TCU and Oklahoma don't look at juvenile records. No school does, even though football and basketball players are among the most high-profile representatives of a university. (Of the 25 schools, only Virginia Tech did any type of background checks on admitted students, and admissions questionnaires at more than half the other universities ask applicants if they have ever been arrested.)

No sooner had this report been published than a strikingly different story hit the news wires--BYU's basketball team, newly rewarded with a top 5 ranking, made headlines by kicking starting forward Brandon Davies off the team for an honor code violation. His violation? Nothing criminal or arrestable--he violated the university's strict religion-based code by engaging in premarital sex with his girlfriend.

At first glance, this seemed like a dramatic and troubling double standard--students at other schools were getting away with criminal behavior, but Davies was booted for doing something that is considered standard behavior on most college campuses. BYU drew the ire of many in the collegiate sports community, including Amare Stoudemire and none other than former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

But the more I thought about the situation, the more I determined that the differing decisions made by schools like Florida (to look the other way) and BYU (to be firm and harsh) were in fact quite compatible when viewed through the lens of the "front porch" theory.

For both schools, athletics are an incredibly visible marketing tool for the underlying institution. There's no easier way to send a message to prospective applicants than via the much-hyped, much-analyzed, heavily-covered world of sports. Florida uses this platform to display its unwavering commitment to excellence; BYU, on the other hand, chose in this instance to use it to display its commitment to moral righteousness and chastity.

Ultimately, the decision on how best to use the platform of sports presents a difficult line for any institution to toe. Some level of winning and competitiveness is seemingly necessary in order to maintain credibility among a sometimes fickle group of applicants (and donors), but going too far down that line can compromise the overall goals and mission of the broader institution to the point that it in fact loses that same credibility. What is undeniable is that the sports platform is an extremely powerful medium via which to communicate with the public--it's up to the individual institution to decide what message it wishes to convey.

Unfortunately, in many situations, the student-athlete can easily end up becoming little more than an advertising tool. In this case, Brandon Davies got caught on the wrong side of the message, whereas many Florida Gators have luckily found themselves on the right side of the message. It's somewhat sad for the athletes to be continually caught in the middle like this, but it would behoove all athletes and fans to recognize collegiate athletics for what they are, and realize the implications on athletes everywhere. It's just not about them.

[SI.com]

Basketball meets the Bacon Game

By now I'm sure you're all aware of the Kevin Bacon Game (also known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), which challenges players to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon via his film roles, using no more than six steps. Thanks in large part to Bacon's roles in several movies with loaded casts (including Animal House, JFK, and A Few Good Men), the game is remarkably easy to play, which helped lead to its cult status as a game.

Despite the fact that other film actors--most notably Donald Sutherland and Dennis Hopper--in fact come closer to being the center of the Hollywood universe, the legend of the Bacon Game lives on. Now, thanks to a friendly group of nerds known as the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective (an organization that I'd love to pretend I wouldn't have been a part of had it existed when I'd been there, but let's be serious, I'm almost surprised I didn't start it), the Bacon Game has now been brought into the world of sports, most specifically the NBA. Yes, as a baseball guy, I wish they'd set their sights on MLB, but let's not be picky. This thing is awesome to play around with.

According to the nerds, the NBA equivalent of Kevin Bacon is 7-footer James "Buddha" Edwards, with fellow big man Moses Malone right behind him. I'm not sure what it says about the NBA that Buddha and Moses are at the center of NBA history, but there you have it. Enjoy.

[Deadspin]

Clip of the Week

For the first time in Clip of the Week history, we've got co-champions. Both of them come from the world of sports, and both of them are so mesmerizing that I literally can't stop watching them.

First, from Maria Sharapova's Australian Open match earlier in the week, where there was a "dead spot" on the court. Apparently "dead spot" means "gigantic patch of velcro" or "place where laws of physics cease to exist".



Up next, and equally mesmerizing, is this shot from last night's NBA game between the Hawks and the Bucks. Earl Boykins sees your tennis dead spot, and raises you a perpetually spinning basketball.

Perfect timing, ESPN

It's turning into another sports-heavy day here, but so be it. Just after I hit "publish" on the Cam Newton story, I happened to flip my TV over to ESPN, serendipitously just as The Worldwide Leader was running a promotional ad pimping its "College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon", which will take place tomorrow. Perfect. If there's a centerpiece for the utter whoring of our student-athletes for corporate/institutional benefit, it's the ESPN Tip-Off Marathon.

The madness that is the Tip-Off Marathon began in earnest last year, with St. Peter's and Monmouth (titans of collegiate athletics that they are) tipping off at 6:00am in what was billed as the first-ever "breakfast basketball" game. Apparently Monmouth couldn't get enough of the whoring (excuse me, "national attention"), since they're back at it again this year in the same 6:00am time slot. This time it's Stony Brook, rather than St. Peter's, who has volunteered to be Monmouth's opponent (and to completely drop any pretense that their athletes are, in fact, actually getting an education in return for their athletic services rendered).

Notice how many of these games have corporate sponsors, then ask yourself again who really benefits from this marathon:

Of the 21 games on the primary schedule, at least 7 of them fall within what would normally be considered "classroom hours" (why couldn't this joke of a "marathon" take place on a weekend... oh right, football). Of course, if Stony Brook-Monmouth (or Robert Morris-Kent State, or Northeastern-Southern Illinois) doesn't quite suit your breakfast fancy, you can always tune in today to ESPN Classic, which is warming up for tomorrow's festivities by showing a marathon of re-aired games from the past 5 years. And it's a good thing, lest the shameless whoring of our student-athletes end at graduation (anyone want to watch that Gerard Phelan catch again?).

Whatever. Good work, ESPN (and every school who's involved in this sham). You've clearly displayed here that the best interests of the athlete run a distant fourth in the decision-making process behind money, money, and money. And with an event like this making it clear that the schools have little regard for the academic well-being of the athletes, arguing that a "free education" makes this all okay is completely fraudulent. These kids aren't learning a thing by playing a basketball game in the pre-dawn hours on a Tuesday. Unless, of course, they didn't already know that money rules all.

Pathetic.

(P.S.-- "Get Up, Get Loud, Get to Class"?? What the hell? That doesn't even make sense! What kind of trained monkeys do they have working in the Kent State marketing department? Nobody's going to class if they're going to a basketball g--you know what, never mind. Just never mind.)