Ok, I'm Back
Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 09:53AM Time for a quick round-up:
---BCS standings will be reportedly released on Sundays this year. In prior seasons standings were made public on Monday. Of course, this means the AP Coaches and Harris polls will also have to be released on Sunday as well as they are crucial ingredients in the BCS formula.
I don't like the change. This will only encourage rushed decisions by poll voters who otherwise might be able to study up on the results a bit longer and let the full week's slate of games marinate in their minds.
Update: Gunslingers, as is often the case, has a fine take on the misguided Speedy Gonzalez styled polls release by the BCS. Like any good bottle of wine, each weekend of D-I football action requires a little time to open up before the action reveals itself. Give the voters a chance.
See, if the BCS cared about getting polls right - and having their voters actually informed, they'd delay the rankings' release, not bring it out earlier. Well, first, they'd remove any voters who can't watch the games. But if they even wanted to maintain the illusion that voters might actually spend some time watching games, they'd hold off for a few days. Maybe let the voters watch tapes of the games, or read an article about them. Or even see extended highlights. Or let them even go to sleep and wake up and watch SportsCenter on Sunday. As is now, the polls are due early Sunday morning, released by mid-afternoon. No time whatsoever to watch even a couple of games if you have something else to do on Saturday.
Where's the outrage? This is exactly the kind of demand to force voters to further fall back on old prejudices and the goofy slotting by losses practice. It's one more step away from caution and towards reckless. It demands less thought and reflection and more immediate gratification---oooh, Ted Ginn shiny, John L. Smith angry ew---synapses fused and decision made.
Badddddd.
---Is further expansion of D-I in the works? North Dakota State, which has a football program, intends to be a D-I member in the near future. I'm not a fan of this move. North Dakota is likely never to become a football power or top-25 team, inviting themselves to be scheduling fodder.
What's a fair number of teams to cap D-I football membership at? 100, perhaps? There are simply too many permanently bad teams in the division right now. I don't want college football to go the way of college basketball where several hundred teams share a single division and accurate evaluations of postseason worthy teams goes from difficult to impossible.
---Heisman Pundit takes a look at "Programs That Should Be Better".
How about the Washington Huskies? Until the Rick Neuheisel era, Washington was on a two-to-three decade long run towards being a traditional power. They were the last team until Ohio State to beat Miami during its 34-game win streak. They had won several Pac-10 crowns, won a national championship in 1991 and had become a frequent visitor to the top 10 rankings. They've had a strong tradition of quarterbacks from Warren Moon to Mark Brunell to Marques Tuiasosopo. The fans are great, the facilities are great and the stadium is among the nation's noisiest when the team is winning.
---As hinted on here last week, LSU receiver Xavier Carter is ditching his football career for a shot at professional track greatness. He is one of the world's great 400 meter runners and we should see him again winning some medals in future Olympic games.
---Finally, what a disappointing finish for the U.S. World Cup soccer team. The team was given a tough draw and then met up with two boneheaded officials in three games. The opportunities were there but the offense struggled to get goals and mistakes cost the team dearly.
This is one of those situations where it's tough to draw a conclusion one way or another about a team. The group featured arguably the best teams from each of three continents and it was going to be rough sailing no matter what the U.S. team did. However, two games were irreparably changed by terrible officiating and that's fairly unprecedented.
That said, the American team could have done much better. They were beat up by the Czech outfit, but outclassed Italy despite playing with nine men much of the match and we'll never know the true score of that game. I felt the U.S. team was a little better than Ghana, so that's 2/3 games where America had the better team and played like it and have but a draw to show for it.
Reader Comments (8)
I typed North Dakota State instead of North Dakota.
From my quick read it sounds like North Dakota will be D-I in football.
North Dakota State is already a D1-AA member. North Dakota is the team making the next move to D1-AA.
North Dakota State is playing Minnesota, but that isn't exactly noteworthy.
Just a small correction on the polls -- the AP is not a part of the BCS formula any longer. So I suspect they may not change the traditional release on Mondays.
The Coaches Poll is still a component of the BCS and I think they have had to have their votes in Saturday night for the last few years, even though it wasn't released to the public until Monday. Just seems that any teams playing night games on the West Coast or in Hawaii may still be playing when some voters have already submitted their rankings for the week.
Not sure. There are probably lesser names who have ditched football for track, and vice versa, just not off the top of my head.
There's always going to be borderline track/football guys. Capel at Florida a few years ago, there's a decent 400M guy who signed with Baylor named Gettis who may end up doing track, Sultan McCullough probably should have run track (10.04 guy) before football wear-and-tear caught up with him.
LED,
Once again nice catch.
It sounds like we're going to have a few more Sunday games this year, so it's another worry.
sucks about polls being released on Sundays.. now what am i supposed to look forward to on mondays in the fall!?