How to fix the NCAA football postseason

Since the Flyers still have a few days before their next series starts, the NBA regular season is still winding down and my Phillies are too depressing to watch at the moment, I’ve been in dire need for something to occupy my attention for the last few days.

Lucky for all of us, the fact that football season doesn’t begin for over four months can’t stop everyone from debating it. Today, I’ll take on one of the most heated topics in all of football – the college postseason.

For decades, a few big name schools battled it out on the gridiron with dozens of different magazines and press associations naming their own arbitrary national champion at the end of the year. This seemed to work just fine until televised games brought college football onto a national platform. Not only could teams half a country away be seen and judged, but televised games led to more revenue, more revenue led to more competition, and more competition brought about the need to create a better way of deciding who was best.

The first solution was to take the few existing bowl games that were largely used as exhibitions to get fans of great teams in cold weather cities to come to warmer climates in January and turn them into showdowns between the biggest powers. That worked for a while, but the increased notoriety for whatever bowl featured the two highest ranked teams – thus unofficially becoming the national championship game – only led to the problem discussed above spiraling even deeper.

Then in 1998, an allegedly perfect system was finally put in place to decide a champ. The BCS promised that its secretive computers were best fit for judging every team out there and would put the two best schools on the same field each January. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the system on paper, it has become effectively obsolete in just over a decade.

As the payouts for playing in the biggest bowl games continued to soar and the NFL became the most popular sport in America by a wide margin, more and more kids flocked to the football field in hopes of becoming one of those stars being broadcast all over the country on Saturdays and Sundays.

In a few short years, the effect of this started to show. For the first century or of the game’s history, most of the football hot spots were in small regions of the Midwest, Northeast and throughout the South. Even as the sport evolved, the main source of talent continued to be largely concentrated to a few areas. Without an entire country consumed by the sport, there were fewer great players coming out of high school and only a small number of established football powerhouses at the collegiate level. The combination of these two factors led to the record books and rankings being filled with the same schools (Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, etc.) for years.

But since the sport took off, all of that has gone out the window. There are simply too many talented high-schoolers emerging every year for the same few teams – and now, conferences – to hoard. The result is that many blue-chip recruits have ended up at previously unheralded schools and have even turned some of those schools into perennial powers.

The BCS was designed with the notion that only a handful of teams could be expected to compete for a championship on a year to year basis and that – for the most part – these schools would be coming from the same three or four conferences. That is precisely where the current system can no longer be effective. Football powers now sit in places that weren’t even on the BCS’s map in the 90’s. Some conferences have shot up while others have regressed and no matter your thoughts on strength of schedule playing into merit for a title, it is inarguable that the current setup is inherently unfair in terms of rating teams that aren’t in a few select conferences.

This is where the playoff talk starts. There is no better way to decide which teams are best than by letting them keep playing until one emerges. Detractors of a playoff have used excuse after excuse to keep the bowl system intact, but I have a vision of a college football landscape that can find that elusive best team via playoff while appeasing all of the biggest arguments against leaving the old way of doing things.

I originally came up with this idea in 2008, thanks in large part to the help of Josh Primm – who is an engineer, so you know that whatever he helped build should work. A few teams have moved around since then, so here is my new creation…

First, let’s take a look at the FBS conferences as they existed for the 2011 season

ACC

Atlantic

Clemson
Wake Forest 

Florida State
N.C. State
Boston College
Maryland

Coastal
Virginia Tech
Georgia Tech
Duke
North Carolina
Virginia
Miami (FL)

Big 12

Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Kansas State
Baylor

Texas

Texas Tech

Iowa State

Kansas

Texas A&M

Missouri

Big East

West Virginia

Pittsburgh

Syracuse

Cincinnati

Rutgers

South Florida

Louisville

Connecticut

Big Ten

Legends
Nebraska
Michigan
Michigan State

Iowa

Northwestern

Minnesota

Leaders
Wisconsin
Penn State
Ohio State
Indiana
Illinois
Purdue

Conference USA

East

Southern Miss

Marshall

East Carolina

UAB

UCF

Memphis

West
Tulsa
Houston
SMU
Rice
UTEP
Tulane

Independents

Notre Dame

BYU

Navy

Army

Mid-American Conference

East

Ohio

Temple

Kent State

Bowling Green

Miami (OH)

Buffalo
Akron

West
Northern Illinois
Toledo
Eastern Michigan
Western Michigan
Central Michigan
Ball State

Mountain West

TCU

Boise State

Wyoming

San Diego State

Air Force

Colorado State

UNLV

New Mexico

Pac-12

North

Oregon

Stanford

Washington
Washington State

Cal
Oregon State

South
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona State
Colorado
Utah

SEC

East

Georgia

Florida

Kentucky
South Carolina

Tennessee
Vanderbilt

West
Auburn
Alabama
LSU
Mississippi State
Mississippi
Arkansas

Sun Belt

Arkansas State

Western Kentucky

Louisiana-Lafayette

Florida International

North Texas

Louisiana-Monroe

Troy

Middle Tennessee

Florida Atlantic

WAC

Louisiana Tech

Utah State

Nevada

San Jose State

Fresno State

Hawaii

New Mexico State

Idaho

That’s 120 teams competing in leagues of varying size and prestige, yet the same formula is used to rank them all. I think it would be much easier to get a handle on who is really best by setting up a playoff, but how do you start to do it with this jumble of conferences?

You don’t.

Uniformity will make things easier, so we make things as equal as possible. To do this, we need to add some teams until there is an FBS with 12 conferences sporting 12 teams each.

To get to our goal of 144 teams, an additional 24 schools would have to move up. This upcoming fall, four schools – Massachusetts, South Alabama, Texas State and the University of Texas at San Antonio – will be joining. Aside from those four, over a dozen other schools currently competing in FCS have conducted a feasibility study on moving up or have spoken publically about plans to move up in the future.

With all of that in mind, I took into account program stability, number of sports, athletic department funding, media market size and potential desirability to FBS conferences and devised this list of 20 schools to accompany the four that are already moving up:

Appalachian State

Charlotte

Coastal Carolina

Delaware

Eastern Washington

Georgia Southern

Georgia State

Liberty

Montana

Montana State

New Hampshire

North Dakota State

Northern Arizona

Northern Iowa

Old Dominion

Sam Houston State

South Dakota State

Towson

Villanova

Youngstown State

Now the tricky part begins as all of those new teams need to fit into a conference somewhere.

I did my best to fit everyone in while keeping travel to a minimum, preserving historic rivalries and retaining the integrity of the conferences that have produced the best teams over the last few decades.

The end result is five power conferences that are almost untouched to go along with seven other conferences that are much more geographically compact – even with the 24 extra teams – than any conference alignments that we’ve seen recently.

Here is my envisioned conference lineup:

Great Lakes Conference

East                 

Penn State
Ohio State

Illinois

Indiana

Purdue

Northwestern

West
Michigan
Michigan State
Iowa
Notre Dame
Minnesota
Wisconsin

Southeastern Conference

East

Georgia

Florida

Vanderbilt

Kentucky

Tennessee
South Carolina

 

West

Auburn

Alabama

Arkansas

LSU

Mississippi

Mississippi State

Pacific Coast Conference

North

Oregon

Oregon State

Washington
Washington State

Cal

Stanford

South
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona State
Utah
Hawaii

Heartland Conference

North

Boise State

Nebraska

Iowa State

Kansas

Kansas State

Missouri

South
Texas
Texas A&M
TCU
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Baylor

Atlantic Coast Conference

Atlantic

Clemson

Wake Forest

Florida State

N.C. State
South Florida

Maryland

Coastal
Virginia Tech
Virginia
Duke
North Carolina
Georgia Tech
Miami (FL)

Eastern Athletic Conference

North

Syracuse

Connecticut

Massachusetts

Villanova

Temple

Boston College

South
Rutgers
Louisville
West Virginia
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Old Dominion

Mid-American Conference

East

Ohio

Akron

Kent State

Bowling Green

Miami (OH)

Buffalo

West
Northern Illinois
Toledo
Eastern Michigan
Central Michigan
Western Michigan
Ball State

Gulf Coast Conference

East

Southern Miss

Western Kentucky

Arkansas State
UAB

UCF

Memphis

West
Tulsa
Houston
Rice
SMU
UTEP
North Texas

Mountain West Conference

.

North

Montana

Montana State

North Dakota State
South Dakota State

Idaho
Eastern Washington

South
Colorado
Air Force
Colorado Stat
New Mexico
New Mexico State
Texas Tech

 

Western Athletic Conference

East

Utah

Utah State

BYU

UTSA

Sam Houston State

Texas State

West
UNLV
Northern Arizona
San Diego State
San Jose State
Fresno State
Nevada

Sun Belt Conference

East

Georgia Southern

Appalachian St.

Florida International

Coastal Carolina

East Carolina

Florida Atlantic

West
Troy
Louisiana-Lafayette
Tulane
Louisiana-Monroe
Louisiana Tech
South Alabama

Colonial Conference

North

Army

Navy

Delaware

Northern Iowa

New Hampshire

Youngstown State

South
Middle Tennessee
Marshall
Georgia State
Liberty
Towson
Charlotte

Now that things look a little more uniform, we can get down to the business of developing a playoff. Along the way, I’ll point out how it can be done despite the common arguments against such an endgame, the first and usually loudest being…

It would put too many games on the schedule – This isn’t true if you simply cut one game off of the schedule. Right now, teams play twelve games in the regular season before some move on to an additional conference championship and then a bowl game. By playing one less regular season game, a team could go through a conference championship and the whole way through a 16-team playoff while playing just two more games than a national champion in the current system would have to go through.

And those extra games only apply to – at most – four teams. Every other team in this new system would play no more than the current 14 game stretch that many schools already play each season.

Once the naysayers come around on that point, the only hurdle remaining is deciding on which teams to include in the playoff.

A common complaint about the current postseason is that…

Teams from lesser conferences don’t get a chance – I personally believe that to be true and it’s the main reason that I reworked all of those conferences to be equal in size.

In the new, utopian system, each team will play its 11 regular season games (five intra-division games, three inter-division games and three non-conference games). At the end of the regular season, the two division champions will square off in the conference championship with the winner receiving a spot in the 16-team, national championship playoff. In this fashion, even the teams and conferences with bad track records can rest assured that a good season will allow them a chance to keep advancing until they are put out with a loss rather than a bad ranking.

For those who are fans of the bigger conferences, you’re probably thinking…

Better conferences deserve more credit than weaker ones in the postseason and the BCS is doing a good job by giving teams from the better conferences more consideration – I also agree with that statement. That’s why there are 16 spots in the playoff, but only 12 guaranteed bids.

In our new setup, successful teams in the most competitive conferences will still have a shot even if they don’t win their conference. After the 12 conference champs are decided, the BCS lovers will be welcome to haul out their computer and fire it up. That’s because the final four playoff spots will be decided by the formula that is currently in place.

As I pointed out before, the BCS formula isn’t inherently bad, it’s just not nearly as good at ranking a large number of teams with similar outputs as it does when the pool of teams is smaller. By ignoring the rankings of the 12 auto qualifiers, the formula will likely have an easier job as most of the best teams remaining will be high ranking teams that were upset in their conference championship or an unquestioned great team that happened to have another great team in its conference that season.

The four highest ranking teams not already in the field will round things out.

Now is the part where some will wonder…

I don’t want highly ranked Team X to have a bad draw just because crappy Team Y won its crappy conference – This is where the human element can be a constructive element to the equation instead of contributing to the yearly shitstorm of arguing what teams deserve BCS bowl bids.

Once the computer decides the final four teams and the field is complete, the seeding process will be turned over to a split panel of coaches and media pollsters. It’s in this step where the merits of a 12-0 champ from a weak conference can be openly downplayed without fear of eliminating the school from championship contention. The same goes for teams that didn’t win their conference, but are viewed as superior to many of the teams in the field.

Everyone on the panel will rank the 16 teams, with scores mirroring current polling (16 points for a first place vote, 15 for a second place vote, etc.). No matter the conference affiliation or overall record, the playoff bracket will be seeded according to the results of this poll. In this fashion, a scenario like this season’s SEC season could play out with LSU and Alabama both making the field and both getting high seeds. But it would also include teams like

Boise St.

and Houston, which wouldn’t be punished simply for not playing good enough teams on their mandatory conference schedule.

So there you have it. Follow this model, and you’ll get a college football season in which all 144 teams truly have a chance. The regular season will be just as vital as it always is while conference championships will count for something even if your school’s conference doesn’t happen to be the SEC or Big Ten. Similarly, the schools that have to endure tougher schedules and still do well have the chance to receive some favoritism when it comes to getting a wild card playoff bid and getting a high playoff seed.

I don’t see where there’s a whole lot of room for anyone to hate this idea.

The only real gripe I can foresee is companies complaining about losing their sponsored bowl games. I’m no business major, but to that problem, I suggest that the NCAA auction off sponsorship rights for each of the 15 playoff games. Schedule it for the middle of November and invite any company that is interested. With companies openly bidding against each other in a social setting and without months-long negotiations, I think they’d probably end up paying more to the NCAA than they already do.

Well, that was the effort of my entire Tuesday. I’m sure some will disagree with this setup, but it’s no worse than the annual debacle the final weeks of each season have become.

The dumbest thing I've ever heard (this week) - The lack of foresight from UK basketball players

Every few days, a headline from the sports world jumps up and catches my attention. Not for a great accomplishment or a rare achievement, but because of the staggering stupidity of those involved in the story.

Since the dawn of social media, these events have been brought to light at a much faster pace, so I feel comfortable announcing that I will now have a weekly post about the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week to go along with whatever else I feel like rambling on about.

For our first installment, I’ve foregone the obligatory categories of athlete stupidity (infidelity, overtly embarrassing greed, strip club related violence, etc.) and instead focus on a few kids who are making an elite-level mistake despite not actually being professional athletes yet.

Earlier this week, five different players from Kentucky’s national championship team announced that they’ll leave college early for the NBA draft. Now, the fact that guys are leaving school before their four years are up is nothing new, but the fact that all of these players – from the same team – all came to the conclusion that they’re NBA-level talent is a mistake that a few of them are likely to regret.

This isn’t so much an indictment on Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. You know, the two guys who were actually talked about before the season started and led the way in every single Kentucky win. The decision of three other underclassmen - Marquis Teague, Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb - to enter the upcoming draft will likely turn out to be a much worse career path than their two teammates. Davis was a unanimous pick for Player of the Year and a first team All-American. Kidd-Gilchrist was named to the third team of the All-America list. Out of the rest of this new fab five, only Jones and Teague were able to garner as high a standing as second team in a painfully ordinary SEC.

There’s no doubt that Jones, Teague and Lamb are good players. They started all season for a team that lost just twice and rolled through the NCAA tournament with little trouble. But that’s where their problem starts. This isn’t the NCAA basketball of the 70’s, 80s and early 90’s. The original Fab Five at Michigan featured Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard. All of them went on to have a productive NBA career over a decade in length, but the group couldn’t manage a single title while playing on the same college team. Ironically, it’s the trend of college freshman and sophomores leaving early like this Kentucky trio is doing that has watered down college basketball and allowed teams with only one or two real stars to win championships.

Jones, Teague and Lamb should have taken a step back and really looked hard at the facts before announcing their departure. Hell, they don’t even have to look outside of their own program to get an idea of what they’re in for.

In 2010, Kentucky went through a similar run. They were the odds on favorite to win the national championship and, while they fell short, were still believed to have the most talented roster in the country. In fact, there was so much talent on that team that five of them were taken in the first round of the NBA draft that summer.

Just like two years ago, Kentucky had two big stars – John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins – that led the way and three others who were also allowed to run around in the UK uniform. While those three were drafted and made a few million dollars on their first contract, they had better invest it wisely since it looks like they might not get another.

Out of the other three 2010 draftees (Patrick Patterson, Eric Bledsoe, Daniel Orton), none is averaging more than 7.5 points per game while Orton and Bledsoe average less than 11 minutes of playing time on any given night.

It’s a combination of simple math and history that one talented underclassman after another simply refuses to accept. Professional basketball isn’t like baseball, where a draftee can live (mostly) comfortably for a decade while toiling around the minor leagues. The D-League is little more than a stopgap between the millions of dollars of the NBA and being out of basketball all together and even European leagues – with their rising level of homegrown talent - are becoming less of an option for guys that can’t cut it at basketball’s highest level.

Just look at the numbers. There are 12 spots on each NBA roster, making 360 spots available each season. Every draft sees 60 players get selected. For each draftee to make a roster – much less get to play or have success – there would need to be a 17 percent rollover in the player pool of the entire league. The fact that three players from the same school – none of whom were even the second best player on their team last season – are giving up two or three years of free collegiate education and the chance to become a bigger name is just insane. Do Jones, Teague and Lamb think that they’re actually the better player and will outshine Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist in the NBA? That’s the only good reason I can see for ditching a few more years at one of the best basketball schools in the country for the shaky-at-best prospect of making it in the NBA as a mid to low first round pick.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the stupid choice these three guys just made came at the press conference this week where all five announced their intention to leave school early.

Wearing matching polos instead of their uniforms, the five were dressed the same – just like every game this season. Also similar to every game this season, it was clear that there were two stars and three guys mostly along for the ride.

Terrence Jones, Marquis Teague and Doron Lamb, the three of you aren’t going to have Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist to help you once you’re in a different uniform. In fact, by leaving early despite being the third (or fourth… or fifth) banana in college, there’s a chance you won’t even get to see yourself in that new uniform since you’ll be wasting away in your warm-ups at the end of a bench.

And that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard (this week).

The NHL playoffs are the most underrated thing ever... Now GPA approved!!!

Maybe those Mayans really were onto something.

Today, I was informed that the Georgia Press Association - having obviously gone to the bar before their voting session - named one of my columns the best of 2011. I know... I'm scared, too. But on to more pressing issues.

I know that hockey isn't exactly at the top of the sports watching list for many people, but you should all do yourselves a favor and tune in. The early rounds of NBA and MLB playoff series are often boring and - in the NFL - even some conference championships and Super Bowls can be underwhelming. That is almost never true of playoff hockey.

This year couldn't be a better example. The first round has been underway for all of two days and there have already been multiple upsets and three overtime games. And that brings me to the best part of the NHL playoffs - sudden death overtime. There is no way to accurately describe the optimism, nervousness and anxiety that exists in every second of a playoff hockey game that has gone to overtime. Sure, there are walk-off home runs and basketball buzzer-beaters that can bring an end to a game, but they require a certain amount of setup that people can see coming.

In hockey, the game, the balance of a series, maybe even a team's entire season, can be made or broken with a play that begins and ends in the blink of an eye. In this season's first round, both St. Louis and Pittsburgh took their home ice advantage in Game 1 to overtime, only to have their raucous crowds silenced - and their advantage disappear - in an instant with an OT defeat.

I have a lot of great memories of cheering for the Phillies and Steelers, but few of those moments can match the drama of every Flyers playoff overtime game I've watched. Sitting through a pair of overtime wins - including a Game 7 series clincher - against Washington in 2008 had me losing what was left of my hair and I can still vividly recall the three-hour long nervous breakdown I endured during the Flyers-Penguins 5OT game in 2000.

Every game in every sport has its ups and downs throughout regulation, and most of those trends continue in overtime or extra innings. Basketball teams will use their same rotations, football teams will use the same offensive strategy depending on where they are on the field, and baseball teams will continue to go after most hitters while being wary of big bats in the middle of the lineup. Even though the game is in its most important moments, there is still a relative calm and normalcy about most of the game action.

Not in hockey.

From the moment the game goes into overtime, everything is ramped up to '11' on the intensity meter. A mistake in any other sport can usually be made up. In hockey, a game can be all over before the rest of your team realizes a mistake has even been made.

Even in the non-overtime games, it's hard to match the intensity of postseason hockey. It has all of the hard-hitting, grueling nature of the NFL, but the drawn out length of other sports' playoff series that really allows the hatred to build.

I think that even the sports networks are starting to realize this. Not a year goes by that SportsCenter doesn't have a talking head complain that the NBA playoffs drag on forever and actually take away some of the excitement of the postseason. In fact, the sports media showed almost no enthusiasm when the NBA changed its first round playoff series from best-of-five to best-of-seven, making the postseason even longer.

Now, granted, the NHL only gets about 30 percent of the coverage as the NBA, but they also have their talking heads, and none of them ever complain that the hockey postseason also drags on for over two months.

I think this is due to the more physical nature of hockey. In a couple of weeks, some very boring NBA playoff matchups will take place. Potential pairings like Miami-Philadelphia and Boston-Atlanta don't bring any inherent history and will likely just breeze by without much notice. The same can be said about the beginning of some hockey series, but that can all change once the hard hits start flying.

The Red Wings and Predators have never faced each other in the playoffs before and have never had any huge fights. There was every reason to think that only the actual hockey being played would be of interest in there first round series. That all changed once Nashville's Shea Webber used Henrik Zetterberg's face to test out the structural integrity of the plexiglass at the end of their first game. Numerous unassuming playoff series go by without much to talk about every season with other sports, but hockey? Boom. One game, and there's instant drama for the remainder of the series.

That's what makes playoff hockey a must watch. There's never a dull moment and - if a game can't be settled in regulation - there's no telling how many bone-chilling moments of hope, fear and dread can be had on any given night.

Now that I've done the easy job of selling you on the excitement of watching the NHL playoffs, I'll leave all of you to the much more difficult task of finding one of the games on television...

Opening Day Snap Judgments

OK. We’ve had two full days of baseball – I don’t count games played outside of the U.S., especially when they involve the A’s and Mariners. I feel like this is enough time for me to make some all-encompassing conclusions about where the season is heading…

Cubs fans should just kill themselves.

Since he's one of the few actual subscribers to this blog, I feel obliged to urge my good friend Luke to not take this personally.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike the Cubbies. At times, I’ve even pulled for them. However, unlike their fan base, the few times that I’ve rooted for them have been quickly followed by a moment of clarity in which I realize that it’s a lost cause. It took the Cubs all of one game to surrender a ninth inning run that ended up beating them. It only adds to the sting that perennial disappointment(s) Ian Desmond and the Nationals were the ones that doled out the loss.

As someone who will never live and die with the Cubs, I kind of hope that they keep being lovable losers. I remember rooting for the Red Sox to win it all in '04. I figured that Boston loved its team to death and deserved a break. I felt good when they won it all, but it took about .0000001 seconds for my joy to be overtaken by every Baaaaahhhston Red Sawwx fan who had ever followed the team - even if it was only for the last week - to regale me with their lifelong sob story of how tortured they were and how nothing in sports could ever top their victory.

I used to like Boston. Now, I root against every godforsaken team that inhabits that hellhole. I wouldn't want to have to turn on Chicago as well.

For Cubs fans, at least Friday's game was tight – a 2-1 affair which brings me to my next point.

Aces are good.

I’ll defend to the death the assertion that the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a baseball. It’s even harder when it’s Opening Day and all 30 teams have their best arm on the mound.

Thursday and Friday were packed with aces dealing their nasty stuff late into games. Jared Weaver, Johan Santana and Roy Halladay all got through their first starts without surrendering so much as a run. Then there were guys like Tommy Hanson and Erik Beddard who pitched incredibly well, but had the gall to give up a single run and get hung out to dry for a loss.

A lot of people don’t appreciate a good pitcher’s duel. I get that. I’m not going to be like a billion soccer fans and try to paint a beautiful word picture of why you should enjoy the artistry of what is going on. However, those of you who can appreciate a great pitcher bringing his best stuff to the mound were no doubt just as impressed – and entertained – as I was with many of the opening games.

One hitter that had a tough opening day is my next point of focus...

Ryan Braun is going to have a long season

There’s just no avoiding it.

I have my own thoughts about how his PED test should or shouldn’t have been handled, but that’s beside the point. While Braun certainly caught a break in getting his 50-game suspension overturned, that only leaves 50 more games for him to either raise more suspicions from doubters.

Braun went 0-for-5 in his first game. By all accounts, that’s nothing noteworthy. There are far better hitters that have started off seasons far worse (Hell, Albert Pujols hit into three double plays in last season’s opener). But that doesn’t matter when it comes to Braun and it won’t all season.

The only way that Braun can vindicate himself is to put up the same MVP numbers as last season – a tall order to ask of any player – and provide a handful of clean urine samples along the way.

It’s a lose-lose. Anything short of a repeat MVP performance, and the naysayers will doubt Braun’s 2011 numbers. On top of that, every tape-measure shot will have his detractors wanting another cup of urine before he touches home plate.

After the fallout of the Mitchell Report, anyone even thinking about putting up MVP numbers needs to stay a Ryan Braun moonshot away from anything that could even be considered to be an illegal substance for the next decade or two.

And speaking of long-lasting consequences of stuff that happened in the 80s and 90s...

Retro stuff is awesome

For too many years, I’ve suffered through teams ushering in new lines of sartorial disasters.

I don’t know whether someone actually thought things like the Blue Jays’ charcoal home uniforms or the Pirates and Braves’ red nightmares were good ideas, or that they’d just bring in a few thousand dollars in sales for misguided fans that just have to have every jersey possible.

Even if the latter is the case, it’s good to see that teams are at least making good changes to their look. I credit the Royals and Blue Jays for getting the trend started by bringing back the baby blue unis over the last couple of years, and now more teams are getting into the mix.

The Blue Jays have taken another step forward by stepping back to their uniforms of the early 90’s. Not only do the new/old duds look better, but they also have a track record of success.

The Indians also look better with their old-timey block-lettered home uniforms. The illegible over-italicized “Indians” script of years past never looked good and the only reason that no one criticized it was that the team was so bad, it never made it on TV for people to see.

Finally, with a ray of sunshine in a year that is certain to be cloudy and depressing (yet again) the Orioles have brought back their goofy, but cool, cartoon logo. I was happy enough to see the cartoon Oriole back on the helmets, but the retro black and white hats put a delicious cherry on top of the shit sundae that O’s fans valuing actual on-field production will have to eat this season.

But, to get back into the 2012 season...

The new Wild Card playoff round will be great

I’ve got to hand it to Major League Baseball on this one. It usually takes them a decade to find a good idea and get around to implementing it, but this is a pleasant change of pace.

At first, I cringed at the thought of two more playoff teams. One of the things that has always made the baseball playoffs more special to me is the fact that not many teams get to participate. Two years ago, the Seattle Seahawks won their division in the NFL with a 7-9 record and it’s no surprise to see a team or two from both conferences of the NBA and NHL make the playoffs despite a losing record every year.

More teams in the postseason can lead to watered down competition, but in MLB’s case, there are still just 10 out of 30 total teams that will be moving on.

The final day of the 2011 regular season was, without a doubt, the best day of regular season baseball ever. Two epic collapses highlighted the drama, but all four games that determined which teams stayed at home or moved on turned into classics. Combine that with the one-game playoff for the AL Central title in both 2009 and 2010 and we’ve had three straight years of drama at the end of September. With the new – winner take all – round for a pair of wild card teams from both leagues, Major League Baseball has basically guaranteed a night of do-or-die excitement at the end of every regular season from now on.

Kudos, Selig.

Well. That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll be back in a few days with an NHL postseason post where I’ll probably openly root for Sidney Crosby to get his consciousness knocked back into third grade.

One Shining Moment

A few years ago, the Scott Van Pelt show had an interesting premise for callers to respond to… Assuming that you have the average amount of athleticism for a grown man, what sport could you compete the longest in before being exposed as a complete fraud?

While a few jokes were made on the air about it, the pressing issues of the day prevented this topic from getting as much attention as it deserved. There are a million armchair quarterbacks out here and they need to know that – given the opportunity – there are at least a couple of professional sports in which you could lie your way into competing for a while.

So, here’s my analysis of how a normal, decently coordinated and in shape person would fare in a few sports worth noting.

FOOTBALL

This one is barely even worth discussing. Most NFL players only qualify as actual human beings in the most basic definition.

My car has a slower 40 time than half of the guys in the league. And that’s not just the receivers and defensive backs. There are 350 pounders out there that are much faster than the average guy could ever hope to be.

Then, there’s the strength of players. If they can’t outrun your car, chances are that they can bench press it. The odds of a regular guy stopping a hard charging running back (even a small, shifty type back) are only good if you view tripping the RB up by strategically positioning your spleen so that it snags one of his cleats strikes you as a viable option.

There is simply no place on an NFL field for anyone of average speed or strength. All of the perfectly run routes in the world couldn’t get your slow ass open for a pass and no amount of fundamental positioning and leveraging would keep a blitzing linebacker from picking you up and using you as a piñata stick against your own quarterback.

VERDICT: If you find yourself on an NFL field, pray that you’re being asked to throw footballs through a hole in a giant Dr. Pepper can. You can’t handle anything else.

BASKETBALL

This is the one sport that really needs a caveat before it can be discussed. The average height of American men is just a shade under six feet. I don’t have Bill Simmons’ 374,500 page basketball bible on hand at the moment, so I’m winging it when I guess that the average height of an NBA player is at least 6’4”. For that reason, we’ll retain the physical abilities of our average Joe, but bump up his size by about half a foot for the basketball comparison.

The biggest thing that a normal guy would have going for him is hustle. The masculinity-run-amok that is readily visible at every street court in America already shows more pride than most NBA players demonstrate in a season. While his jump shot won’t do him any good in the NBA, the ability to run down a few loose balls per game would give his team a few more possessions to actually help his team.

Where normal people would find trouble is in their quickness – or lack thereof. Even if you’re the same height as Kobe Bryant and giving him plenty of room, he’ll blow past you on his way to the rim. If a decent NBA player backs you up into the post, all of your years rejecting the shots of 5’8” doctors and lawyers at your YMCA won’t help when fluid footwork leaves you swatting at air and giving up an easy layup.

Maybe a regular guy could still contribute from the foul line. Most people can shoot better from the free throw stripe than Dwight Howard or Blake Griffen, but actually drawing the foul is a big challenge and chances are that you’re 70 percent clip will go down once 20,000 people start generalizing loudly about your mother’s various sexual conquests.

VERDICT: If you pass the ball quickly, and every time, you might last a few minutes. Sooner or later, the other team will start attacking you on every possession. You don’t have the quickness to stop – or drive past – anyone and Youtube has shown us that there is no shortage of special ed towel managers with a better 3-point shot than you.

HOCKEY

Can the average person even skate well? Do we need to throw in bonus athleticism to even consider hockey? Let’s just pretend that our normal guy is from Minnesota.

Unlike basketball, there are plenty of very good NHL players that aren’t physical freaks of nature. The problem with this is that the smaller you are in hockey, the more your team expects you to weave through defenses and get the puck into the net. That’s not something that the average person has a prayer of doing.

Assuming that you have good teammates, you could benefit from the fact that – like basketball – your team could posses the puck for awhile and be productive without you having to do much more than move around a little and occasionally streak towards the net.

Also working in the average Joe’s favor is the fact that making individual plays in hockey is tougher than in any other sport. With slushy ice late in periods, a frozen puck that doesn’t bounce predictably, rare easy scoring opportunities and the tedious nature of skating on ice in general, the inability of even superstars to make good plays consistently can hide your total helplessness with the puck on your stick.

Finally, there are the short shifts. A lot of forwards are only out there for a minute or so at a time. If the puck mercifully avoids you, you could complete a couple of shifts before you’re forced to handle the puck and a defenseman puts you through the glass and into the second row.

BASEBALL

This is a tough one. On one hand, there’s no guarantee that the ball will be hit to you. You also only have to bat once every 2-3 innings, and even then you might be given a walk that keeps you from ever having to swing. Even if they do throw you strikes, even the best players only get hits about 30 percent of the time and are prone to not reaching base at all in a given game.

It’s entirely conceivable that a normal guy could stand out in right field for an entire game and not have to make a play, then walk twice, strike out looking once, and have a very professional looking contribution to the box score.

Of course, the second a non-baseball player is required to do something, he’s royally screwed. Ground balls are tough for even good players to handle sometimes and fly balls have a tendency to go high enough to make you dizzy and uncoordinated if you aren’t used to tracking them down.

An athletic person could probably make the most routine of plays in the field, but that luck would run out as soon as he stepped into the batter’s box.

You can look professional while failing to avoid an NFL linebacker. You can look professional in putting up a jumper just moments before an NBA player swats it back into your face. There is no way that a regular guy would look anything close to professional in the batter’s box against an MLB pitcher.

The minimum you’re up against is 88 miles per hour with a nasty curve or changeup. The worst that most people have ever stepped in against is a 70 mph pitching machine that never tries to sneak an off-speed pitch past you and isn’t as prone to accidentally sending a pitch straight at your head.

A normal guy – perhaps out of foolishness – might stand in there strong for one pitch. After that, the remainder of his strikeout would be embarrassing enough to make everyone in the stadium uncomfortable just watching it.

VERDICT: The good news is that you don’t have to look like any sort of athlete to put on oversized pajamas and stand around on a baseball field. The bad news is that – after you’ve mastered blowing bubbles, spitting seeds and scratching yourself – all other baseball skills are nearly impossible to even try to fake.

GOLF

Just looking at the stats on paper, golf seems like a promising candidate for a sport that can be faked. After all, more people play golf recreationally than any other sport in America. Surely, all of those times that you’ve snuck off to the range on your lunch break or played 18 holes in lieu of church will pay off if you ever find yourself in the middle of a professional tournament.

Hell. A lot of normal people are even pretty good at the game, despite never playing in college or entering tournaments where they can win money. Go to any large scramble and you’re bound to find a handful of guys with a handicap of 5 or better.

The problem with all of this logic is that golf on the PGA tour isn’t just tougher. It borders on being a completely different game.

The courses are 20 percent longer and twice as undulating. The rough isn’t wispy, 1 ½ inch grass, but a thick, overwatered nightmare that can make your ball disappear. The greens that most of us have played are nothing compared to those at the majors, where pros often practice their putting on gym floors to prepare for the speed.

Now, given the proper equipment, there are plenty of regular guys that can hit it just as far as the pros. An $800 driver and PGA quality fairways can help a lot of people hit the ball 320 yards.

But there’s still the added pressure. Unlike most other sports, a normal guy thrown into a golf tournament can’t try to hide and hope that his teammates pick up the slack. In golf, it’s just you, the course, and a couple thousand eyes (and television cameras) that aren’t usually there during your Sunday morning round at your local club.

VERDICT: If a normal guy were to be put on the 18^th tee at Augusta with a 4-stroke lead in the final round of the Masters, he would never be able to finish it off. No way. Not ever. It’s hard enough to make decent, consistent swings when there isn’t anyone watching. Put a regular person in that situation and the first swing would be so embarrassingly awful that he’d just quit right then, suddenly all too aware of why dad never came to his little league games.

SOCCER

What golf is to the average American Joe, soccer is to the Joses, Jaques and James’ of the world. Even American youths are joining in as the “beautiful game” is the most popular in the country for kids in the 5-12 age range.

As such, it’s pretty tough to find anyone in the world without a basic understanding and skill set for soccer.

But when those basic skills are put up against English Premiere League competition, how do they stand the test?

Well, much like baseball, soccer can be viewed as a lot of standing around and there is no guarantee that the ball will ever come right to you and force you to act like a professional. Sure, there is some running, but most normal guys could put up a couple miles worth of running over the course of two hours.

On the ball, soccer is similar to hockey in that even the best players routinely lose possession and there are very few instances where a player will burst through multiple defenders to create a scoring opportunity.

The real wild card in terms of getting away with suiting up for a pro team is the goalkeeper position. Hockey also has a goalie, but they have to deal with 25-40 shots per game while keeping their balance on skates. In soccer, it’s not unusual for only three or four shots to go on net in a game – with some of those being easy saves for anyone.

VERDICT: If you can run a lot, you could blend in as a midfielder for awhile. If the ball never finds you, no one would know if you are a good forward or not. If you were a defender, you would routinely be made a fool of by guys who know what they’re doing. If you’re a goalkeeper and have a good team, you could take a nap and look like a World Cup talent.

And so, there you have it.

When it comes down to it, there’s a very good reason for why all of our favorite athletes are in the pros while we’re watching them on television and cramming Doritos and our fifth Bud Light down our faces.

No matter the sport, there are ample opportunities for the real pros to embarrass the hell out of you and put you on SportCenter for all of the wrong reasons.

The NBA is just too freakishly talented for you. MLB pitchers will make you wet your pants. The pressure of the PGA is unbearable for anyone not already on tour. The NHL requires too much specific skill. The EPL will expose you as soon as the ball comes close and every NFL player – kickers and punters included – will murder you and everything you love.

A few of those sports might allow you a glorious minute or two of action before you get found out, but once that happens, all of them would immediately make you wish you had never tried to play the sport in the first place.

It’s probably best to just stay off the field altogether and grab another beer.