Sports

Thoughts on Mizzou’s coaching hire and baseball

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The Tigers hired a new coach and after a week of thinking about it, I’m still not too happy with the hire.  It is not necessarily a bad hire, Haith had Miami competitive if not consistent and Miami is not really a basketball school, but the flirtation with Painter and Tubby Smith made me think they were going to get a big-name, proven coach.  But they apparently could not lure any big name to Columbia.  Which is okay.  I’m surprised that the talk with Painter got as far as they did, considering the situation Painter was in.  He has is alma mater is great shape, why would he leave that for a school that is at best equal in standing.  Other than money, which Purdue matched when they heard Mizzou had Painter’s ear.  It was a worth chase, but I’m not sure Mizzou ever had a chance at success.

Frank Haith coached Miami for 7 mediocre seasons, with only one trip to the NCAA tournament.  He apparently (i.e. according to wikipedia) ran a clean program off the court, with success in getting his players to graduate, which is definitely good thing.  However, that will not help him keep his job if the Tigers do not win on the court.  The big problem is that it is a small-splash hire when the fans were expecting a big one.  I hope he is able to overcome everyone’s doubt, but I’m not confident.

I am glad Mizzou did not go for, or get, VCU’s Shaka Smart.  I know he is the hot name, along with Brad Stevens, after the Rams great Final Four run.  He got VCU deeper in the tourney than Mizzou has ever been.  But his record at VCU has not been exactly stellar.  They have been good, and I hope that they continue to do well, but I do not think it would be a good idea to pay him the money they were offering when he has only 2 years of head coaching experience and his team hasn’t finished higher than 4th in the Colonial Athletic Association.  Maybe the potential of Shaka Smart would have been better than the known talents of Haith, but I a little glad Mizzou played it safe.  I’m at least confident the program will not fall apart under Haith, I’m not so sure about Smart.  At worst, MU looks like they did this year for the next 3 or 4 before trading up for a good coach and maybe hitting a home run with that hire.  At best, Haith works out and the Tigers maintain what Anderson has built over the last 5 years.

 

It is also the start of the MLB season.  I don’t watch much baseball, usually only opening day and the playoffs.  This is because, as a Royals fan, I kind of hate baseball.  I am unfortunately just old enough to remember the days when the Royals were not only relevant, but also actually good.  They won their only World Series about 2 weeks after I was born.  The first baseball I watched was the waning days of the George Brett era.  The amount of attention I pay to baseball correlates directly with how good the Royals do, which means I usually pay little to not attention to baseball.  I don’t think I was ever going to be a big baseball fan, but the complete collapse of the Royals organization didn’t help.  But hey, through the first 2 weeks of the season, the Royals have at least been entertaining, though I do not expect their success to continue.

So I hope all the baseball fans enjoy the season.  I’ll keep watching as long as the Royals are in the picture and check out when they inevitably trail off into irrelevance.  But I’ll be back in October for the World Series.

NCAA Tourney Thoughts

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What an NCAA tournament it’s been so far, huh?  With the Final 4 set, my bracket in complete shambles and Mizzou’s season ending as badly as it possibly could, I guess I have some college basketball to talk about.

First Mizzou.  After a very promising start to the season, the Tigers went into a tailspin, going from 17-4 to 23-11.  Their season ended by being bounced easily from both the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.  Then Coach Mike Anderson bolted for his old stomping grounds at Arkansas.  While Anderson leaving is no big surprise, he has entertained offers each of the last 2 years and Arkansas is his home, the way it happened was one.  Anderson said he was staying; then a few weeks later, he was gone.  I, naïvely to be sure, thought that Anderson was a stand-up enough guy to at least make his intentions known.  But no, he went from expected to sign an extension to new coach at Arkansas basically overnight.  His departure clouds his whole tenure at Mizzou, leaving nothing but hurt feelings.

Also, people are now incredibly pessimistic about Missouri’s chances next year.  This year ended with disappointment, but MU is losing one player to graduation (and possible a few to transfers).  Plus, the core team is not bad.  Kim English, Marcus Denmon and Lawrence Bowers are all very good players.  Mike Dixon is pretty good and Ricardo Ratliff and Steve Moore can give quality minutes.  Sure, they need a few good recruits, and to play much better than they did down the stretch, but this team is definitely good enough to make a tourney run.  Mizzou just needs to find a good coach who actually wants to be there.

The Final 4 includes both an 8 and an 11 seed.  That is great.  While I am very grateful to VCU for knocking off Kansas, (I cannot think of a more disgusting end to the season than the Morris thugs cutting the nets) I think I’m rooting for Butler.  I want to see them finish what they started last year. Either way, I’m going to be rooting for the winner of the Butler/VCU game in the final.  I don’t really have anything against Kentucky or UConn, but I don’t like either one enough to root for them over the underdog.

Do you want to guess how many Final 4 teams I got in my bracket?  None.  How many eventual Final 4 teams did I have in the Sweet 16?  None.  How many of my Final 4 picks made the Sweet 16? 2.  This year’s tournament was particularly wild, but I still picked the worst bracket I’ve ever filled out.  It was embarrassingly bad.  I think the two biggest problems are that there really were not any great teams this year and that the committee did an absolute terrible job seeding.  Like K-State as a 5 seed and Texas A&M as a 7.  They played in the same conference and Texas A&M actually had a better record, but they got a lower seed.  It made no sense.  I attempted to address these mistakes with my picks, but they did not pan out.  And picking between most of those mediocre teams, which was every seed 4 and down, was a complete guessing game.  Honestly though, I’m okay with my bracket being in ruins since the tournament has been so damn entertaining.  I just wish TruTV got fewer games, because I did not get to watch any of them.

NFL Labor Talks

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So that NFL Lockout seems to be a sure thing now, huh?  As football fans we can only hope that it doesn’t last long enough to derail the season, but I wouldn’t bet on that.  Maybe the change to the status quo with the NFLPA decertifying and the CBA expiring will shake things up enough that a deal will be done.  I do not have that much faith in sense of the NFL owners.  The owners’ greed doesn’t seem to have limits and the players seem to be rightfully refusing to budge.  What the owners want is not good for the game, it is good for their pocketbooks.

A friend of mine recently told me he sided with the owners.  I was confused.  How could any outside party side with the people who are screwing things up?  While the Owners do have some points, this conflict is motivated purely by greed.  This isn’t the hockey lockout of 2004-05.  Those owners had legitimate complaint, because the NHL was losing money paying the players much more than they could afford.  Changes had to be made and while I’m not sure how long it will take them to recover from losing a season, the league is better off now.  But the NFL is making money, its making money hand over fist.  The contracts of NFL players are not outrageous; they are fair based on the income of the league.  The exception to this is rookies.  A rookie wage scale is a good idea.  There is no reason Sam Bradford should be making as much money as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.  I know Bradford has already shown he is the real deal, but I do not think it is good for the game to tie so much money into unproven players.  Ideally, the lost rookie pay would then go to veterans, proven contributors.  NFL salaries look like, and are, a lot of money, but most players last less than 5 years.  They do not have many years of raking in that dough.  The owners make money every year, and not a single NFL owner is hurting for cash.

From what I understand, the NFL makes about 9 billion dollars a year.  The owners get 1 billion off the top.  The remaining 8 billion dollars is split 60/40 between the players and owners.  Which means that the players get 4.8 billion dollars and the owners get 3.2, plus the 1 for 4.2.  It works out to roughly 53% to the players and 47% to the owners.  What the owners want it to take 2 billion off the top, and then split the rest 60/40.  That would flip the money each side is making, giving the player 4.2 billion and the owners 4.8.  The players counter proposal I heard, and this may not actually be true, was a straight 50/50 split, which the owners, of course, rejected.  The players have shown willingness to compromise, to give up some of what they have, just not the amount the greedy owners want.  The owners seem to be banking on the league losing popularity.  If revenue goes up, eventually the players will be making more again with that 60/40 split.  But if revenue falls, then the owners automatic 2 billion swings the split in their favor.

To go along with reducing the players pay, the owners also want to add 2 more games to the regular season.  So the players get to destroy their bodies more and make less money.  The thought of more football sounds good, but think of the injuries the players would face.  Teams already end the years with upwards of 15 players on injured reserve, how many more would be added by two more games.  I know the owners want to do away with extraneous pre-season games, but a longer regular season should mean the players get more money, not less.

It’s hard to care about the financial troubles of people making as much as both the players and owners in the NFL do.  To me it comes down to who is driving this lockout.  It is the owners.  They want more.  Always more, and the players are right to do their best to deny them.  Fans who are with the owners, please answer these questions for me: What the hell?  Really?  Why?    I just hope everyone involved comes to their senses before games are lost.

Why I game

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Note: This was intended to be more lighthearted, but it became more introspective and whiny as I wrote it.  I plan for this blog to be more humorous with some hints of scholarly value, this is merely a blip.

I’ve been thinking lately about why I play video games.  The simple answer is I play them because I love them.  I love them enough that I started a blog so I could share my poorly written thoughts about them, among other things.  I love video games because, along with sports, when I recall my happiest memories almost all of them involve video games or sports.  These aren’t lonely memories of me in my basement beating my favorite game.  Like sports are a social activity, so are video games for me.  To play a team sport, like basketball or football, you have to have other people around.  For a video game to be truly memorable to me, I have to share the experience with someone.  I do not know why exactly.  Maybe it’s because the only way I can relate to other people is through those shared experiences.  All my friends I made with sports or video games.  Each time I play a game, whether of the video or sporting variety, I am hoping to capture those moments from my youth when I was able to overcome my innate awkwardness and connect with another person. Continue reading →

Unfortunate Situation

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I was watching the NFL Draft earlier tonight and I was disappointed to see Tim Tebow drafted by the Denver Broncos.  Not because I think it was a bad pick, though I do think it was a little early, but because I really wanted to root for Tebow.  And I hate the Broncos.  Not as much as I did now that Elway and Shannahan are gone, but I still don’t like them.  They are one of those sports teams that I will never root for, like the Cowboys and Patriots or the Lakers in the NBA or the Cardinals in baseball.  Due to this animosity, gained during my formative years as a Chiefs fan, I can never bring myself to root for Denver.  I just flat do not like the Broncos.  I also am not a fan of Florida.  There is no reason behind it, its not like I am a fan of one of their rivals, but I generally do not root for Florida.   But Tim Tebow I like.  I did not want to like him.  I watched him play wanting to hate him.  i wanted him to be the villain.  Yes, I consider some athletes villains, not usually because anything they have done, but because they play for teams I do not like.  But everything I’ve ever heard about Tebow makes him seem like such a great guy that I can’t help but want to root for him.   But he had to go and get drafted by the Broncos, a team I can never root for.  I guess my only hope is that things do not work out for him there and he is traded to a team i do like, or a least have no feelings about.

Note:  Tomorrow, or later today I guess, I should have another Futurama review up and my entry into what should become a regular feature here:  Top 5 Friday.