Here We Go Again

"Throughout history, humans have invented sporting and gaming activities as a means to socialize, to display skills and prowess, and to entertain or offer excitement." So say those wacky pundits at the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Here's what they say about music: "an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. It is used for such varied social purposes as ritual, worship, coordination of movement, communication, and entertainment."

And dance: "One of the oldest art forms, dance is found in every culture and is performed for purposes ranging from the ceremonial, liturgical, and magical to the theatrical, social, and simply aesthetic."

According to most researchers, competitions of athletic prowess - what we call "sports" - are at least as old as community life. In other words, as soon as we stood erect and starting huddling by the river, we started playing games together. In the 6th century B.C., Pythagoras wrote of a mystical sound produced by the movement of the stars and planets, one of the earliest recorded references to music. Prehistoric cave paintings that date back 20,000 years depict human figures that appear to be dancing; we know for a fact that the Greeks and the Romans knew how to shake their groove things.

Sport, music, and dance are bound by a common thread, easily identified by the cursory definitions above: socialization and entertainment. We do these things together, because we enjoy them.

In the modern age, sport has become an enormous global business. Professional athletes, on average, earn exponentially more money than most musicians or dancers could ever dream of. Even college athletes generate massive amounts of revenue for their schools and the venues that compete to host their contests. For this reason - and this reason alone, in my opinion - "sports" are viewed as somehow less noble, less culturally stimulating, and less relevant than other forms of entertainment. Practitioners and supporters of sport are often ridiculed (read: resented) by those who believe it to be an embarassing waste of time and money.

I'm repeating myself, having covered this in detail on the blog. It comes up again because Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas still doesn't buy it.

On Tuesday, officials from Florida Citrus Sports made their pitch to the Orange County Commission for a piece of the tourism pie - a chunk of the revenue expected to be generated from a proposed increase in the county's hotel tax, which has been earmarked for a performing arts center, a new arena for the Magic, and a refurbishment of the Citrus Bowl. Last week, the arts community made a similar presentation in favor of the first of these three venues, one that Thomas called "a professional presentation by serious folks, a who's-who list of the area's top business people."

One can only wonder how newly named FCS executive director Steve Hogan reacted to that characterization. Is he not serious? What about Chuck Rohe? Not serious enough? Not a top businessperson?

Thomas also points out that last week, the performing arts center supporters "presented detailed studies on construction costs, operating costs, revenue sources, attendance, usage, design and so on." Again, and FCS didn't? Do you think for a nanosecond that the Magic, who get their shot before the commission next week, won't have that information handy? After the public beating they took over this same topic a few years ago? Does Mike Thomas believe that anyone who works in sports is a bonafide yahoo?

We'll have to keep wondering, because Thomas didn't bother to listen to the Florida Citrus Sports presentation before writing his column. His piece ran Tuesday morning, several hours before FCS went on stage. I'm sure he'll save his cleverest venom for the Magic's presentation, which he will also skip.

Oh, wait, there it is, at the bottom - "We have embarked on this bold venture to become a cutting-edge 21st-century city but still can't break our hayseed 1960s mentality."

Got it. Sports people ARE yahoos. That settles it. After all, "...we get the [Orlando Mayor] Buddy Dyer talking points about quality of life and a world-class community when the Citrus Bowl has nothing to do with either. The performing-arts center does."

Says who?

One more time: it's all entertainment, folks. None of these venues are "necessary." None of them. What they are, is desired. You may not care for sports - you may find it all tawdry, or juvenile, or overblown - but sports venues are no less desirable to a community than performing arts centers. And furthermore, they have just as much potential as economic engines, if not more so. That's supply and demand. People watch sports. They buy tickets. We do these things, together, because we enjoy them. Sorry if that offends you, Mike.

As part of its mission to completely miss the point, the Sentinel's news story on the FCS presentation quoted Timothy Chapin, associate professor of urban and regional planning at Florida State, thusly:

"People know Orlando is there...It isn't like they are hurting for tourists."

And then: "Chapin and others point out that the total attendance of the three bowl games - about 150,000 - is considerably less than 1 percent of the 51 million tourists who annually visit Central Florida."

This may come as an utter shock to Professor Chapin, but most Central Floridians - those of us who live here, work here, send our kids to school here, pay taxes here, commute here, and vacation elsewhere - do not base our lives on tourists. Let the carpetbagging hoteliers build monuments to tourists. I have no problem with that. Go nuts. I don't want a performing arts center, a new gym, or a stadium that's been structurally updated at least once since 1937 (go look it up) for tourists. I want those things for me. Because I live here, and they don't.

In fact, Thomas himself has argued against leaning too heavily on the tourism dollar; diversification of the economy, he has written, is necessary to build a truly "world-class community."

His answer is biotech - NOW we're talking "excitement" - and performing arts centers. One of my answers is improved sports venues. We're both right.

Difference is, Mike doesn't like sports. So I must be a yahoo. Thankfully, neither one of us is in charge.

He Can Really Bring It

Every so often, my boy Brady Ackerman tries to sneak a fastball past me during our regular Friday radio chat session. This morning, he thought he finally had me. Foolish mortal.

Having finished our conversation about the upcoming debut of Tailgate Overtime on Sun Sports (Mondays, 7pm, in the old Sports Talk Live time slot), Ack tossed in a question about the upcoming FIBA World Basketball Championships. He was looking for a scouting report on one of the Slovenian players - I think it was Uros Slokar, or maybe Saso Ozbolt.

(Yes, I had to look those up on the FIBA website. For a few minutes of comedy, check out the Slovenian roster. Those aren't names, they're villains in the next Star Wars movie. I digress.)

Without missing a beat, I said, "deceptive first step, great explosiveness to the basket." You must understand - this was a setup. Ack loves the fact that as a TV guy with over fifteen years in the broadcasting business, I have a stable of utterly meaningless cliches at the ready, just in case I get stuck. Cracked him up, as it always does.

Then, he tested me: "Give me one on Brady Ackerman, tailback."

Aside: Ack lettered as a running back at Florida from 1988 through 1991. I think he scored one touchdown in three years. At least, he keeps talking about one touchdown. Joke all we want: he played major college football, and you didn't.

Anyway, I was ready: "sees the line well, smart player, never tries to do more than he can do."

Don't try this at home. I am a professional.

With the 2006 college football season quickly approaching, I spent a few minutes today compiling a list of common terms you'll be hearing ad infinitum this fall, along with translations. Clip and save, and feel free to add to the list:

"Deceptive speed" = He's slow, but he can catch. See also "possession receiver." Patron saint: Joe Jurevicius.

"Great feel for the game" = Also slow, but he knows where he's supposed to be. With luck, he won't completely screw up your offense. Patron saint: Wayne Chrebet.

"Raw athletic ability" = He runs a 4.3 and can jump out of the stadium, but he hasn't learned the playbook yet. Patron saint: too many to list.

"Great instincts" = He frequently ignores or forgets the play-call, but his "raw athletic ability" allows him to make up for it, so the coaches can't bench him. Patron saint: Deion Sanders.

"Manages the game well" = He's accurate as long as he doesn't have to throw it more than 20 yards. Patron saint: Trent Dilfer.

"Great motor" = Every opponent hates his guts. Players with "great motors" are most likely to get arrested after a bar fight, and like to psych themselves up for games by inflicting pain on themselves. Patron saint: Warren Sapp.

"High football IQ" = He might suck, but his dad was a coach and/or player. Patron saints: Anthony Dorsett, Brian Griese.

"North and South runner" = He's slow, too, but he can take a hit without fumbling. Patron saint: Gator fans, do I really have to tell you?

"Shifty" = He's really quick, but hates contact. Patron saint: Barry Sanders. Yeah, I said it.

"Lotta heart" = He's not big enough, fast enough, or good enough to be out here, but the coaches love him because he guilts the starters into practicing harder. Patron saint: Dat Nguyen.

"Scrappy" - He's not big enough, fast enough, or good enough to be out here, but the coaches love him because he's liable to pick a fight with a starter at practice. Patron saint: Scott Skiles. (Sorry, I don't have a football player for this one. Skiles once picked a fight with Shaq at a Magic practice back when the Diesel was a leggy, mean, still-pissed-off youngster. The category has just been retired.)

"Unconventional coach" = He quotes dead philosophers at practice, plays the sitar to relax, and is generally a whack job, but inexplicably wins nine games a year. Patron saint: Mike Leach.

A few more:

"Missed assignment" = The offensive lineman forgot to hold.

"Second effort" = The defensive lineman blew the tackle.

"Boisterous crowd" = They've been drinking since Wednesday.

"Glorious tradition" = They haven't won a meaningful game in twenty years, but our daddies love them.

Like I said, feel free to add more. The full list will appear on a future blog. In the meantime, don't try to do anything that you can't do.

Best Of Both Worlds?

Ed Goren, the president and executive producer of Fox Sports, recently granted an interview to John Henderson of the Denver Post in which Mr. Goren discussed the new Bowl Championship Series television contract, which moves to Fox this season. Fox's new deal coincides with the advent of the "double-hosting" format, wherein the four BCS money bowls - the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Rose - will take turns hosting a 1-versus-2 BCS National Championship Game one week after the bowl game itself. The first of these championship games will take place at the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on January 8, 2007, one week after the Fiesta Bowl at the same site.

Football watchers, including Henderson, might wonder if Fox, the network that brought you music under highlights, glowing pucks, and "American Idol," plans to lobby the BCS and/or conference administrators for another BCS 'tweak,' one that could better ensure a return on Fox's investment by guaranteeing a true 1-versus-2 title game every year. Something resembling, say, a playoff system.

"First off, I do not believe we have a lot of influence," Mr. Goren said in response. "When we negotiated this deal we were very specific: It's your event. It's your sport. If you want suggestions along the way, we certainly have opinions. But we don't run it. And we're happy with the way it is right now."

'Right now,' in this case, is the honeymoon period of a new contract, just a few months after the BCS produced perhaps the greatest national championship game of our lifetimes. It would be much tougher, as Henderson pointed out, for Fox to "stand on the sidelines" had this deal been signed after the 2001 season, when Nebraska played for the BCS title despite getting creamed by Colorado just weeks earlier. Or, for that matter, after the '03 season, when Oklahoma reached the BCS title game after being hammered by Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship game.

Not even the staunchest BCS critics could argue that Texas-USC was the wrong game in '05. If I were Mr. Goren, I'd be pretty happy right now, too.

(Seeing as how Mr. Goren is the head sports honcho at Fox, the parent company of Sun Sports, may I add that he's a handsome man, a snappy dresser, and an excellent dancer.)

The NCAA conducts national championships in a playoff format in more than 30 sports at the Division I level, including rifle, skiing, field hockey, and little shindigs they call March Madness and the College World Series. In Division I-AA, Division II, and Division III, football joins the list as a playoff sport. Under the NCAA's broad playoff scope, D-I football stands alone.

Reasons for avoiding a D-I football playoff have been well-documented. The D-I conference commissioners and school presidents fall back on this one: a playoff system would extend the season through December and potentially into January, placing undue pressure on student-athletes during exams.

Funny, you rarely hear such concern from the presidents of schools in I-AA, D-II, or D-III, all of whom have student-athletes competing for spots in a football playoff that extends through late December. I guess the curriculum at schools like Furman, Hobart, and Johns Hopkins - all playoff teams last year - is far less rigorous than that of the AP Top 25.

Riiiight.

Questions of scheduling aside, the most powerful deterrent for a D-I playoff system was clearly expressed in the Denver Post article by Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, who laid it out in a refreshing - and perhaps inadvertent - display of honesty:

"We much prefer the bowl system. It's my feeling, and shared by many, that if you had a playoff, say eight teams, most of the bowls would go away because they'd be pretty much inconsequential."

And there you have it. First rule of investigative journalism: follow the money.

Bowl games make money. They make money for local organizers, for the communities that host them, and for the teams that play them. If that weren't true, there wouldn't be thirty of 'em scheduled this fall. Further, bowl organizers know that the way to maximize impact (and profit) is to position the game as the ultimate goal; the last stop for the two teams involved. They fear that a subsequent playoff would render their bowl game irrelevant. Fair enough.

But what if we could have it both ways?

Let me introduce you, via blog, to MSgt Charles T. ("Tom") Rados of the United States Air Force. MSgt Rados lives in Fort Walton Beach, and is a "dedicated fan of college football," as he told me in an e-mail last December. In that e-mail, and in follow-up documents that displayed an impressive level of research, Tom has attempted to create a Division I football playoff system that keeps the current bowls intact, but still crowns a national champion via playoff. He used last year's schedule as his example, and created a bracket that resulted in, yep, Texas versus USC. I've combed it several times, and will lay it out here, with a couple of personal tweaks. MSgt Rados's comments are noted in italics.

A few qualifiers:

-D-I teams must be limited to 11 regular-season games. Right off the top, that's a serious hurdle. The 12th game is potentially one more home game for a power program like Florida, Florida State, or Miami; one more chance to sell 70,000+ tickets, three and a half hours' worth of TV/radio/in-stadium advertising, and tons of food, drink, and souvenirs. Home games make money, too. But in the spirit of competition: how about 11 meaningful regular-season games?

-Under this format, teams must win their conference to qualify for the playoffs. Independent teams will be at the mercy of the BCS rankings. That produces 11 conference champs, and 11 playoff berths.

-Five at-large bids will be filled using the current BCS ranking system, giving us a 16-team field for our Division I playoff.

-Among those 16 teams, the BCS standings will determine seeding. Teams that made the field of 16 but were not ranked in the BCS will be placed on the ladder according to overall record, with ties broken by conference record. Using that criteria, here's how the first round would have looked in 2005, based on actual performance of the teams involved (the number before each team is their mythical playoff seed):

1 USC vs. 16 Arkansas State
8 Miami vs. 9 Auburn
5 Oregon vs. 12 Florida State
4 Ohio State vs. 13 Boise State
6 Notre Dame vs. 11 TCU
3 Penn State vs. 14 Tulsa
7 Georgia vs. 10 West Virginia
2 Texas vs. 15 Akron

Two notes on the mythical 2005 bracket: one, a Miami-Auburn first-round matchup is an excellent example of why I'm warming to this idea. And two, kinda eerie that Georgia and West Virginia, who met for real in the '05 Sugar Bowl, meet in the first round here.

What next, MSgt Rados?

The first round of the playoffs would be home games for the higher seeds. I'm not sure about that one. One reason why the 5-12 matchup at March Madness is considered even money is precisely because of the neutral site. On last year's schedule, opening round games would be played on December 10th, one week after most conference championship games.

For simplicity, I picked all the higher seeds to win...teams that lost in the opening round still qualify to play in a bowl game.

Interesting. We have 8 first-round winners, so we'll need four bowl-playoff games for the second round. The 8 first-round losers may now accept bids for bowl games that do not factor into the playoff system that year. In a sense, the first-round losers could have as many as three postseason games: their conference championship game (if they have one), their first-round loss, and a subsequent bowl game.

After the first-round games, the bowls not included in the playoff bracket start extending their bids, and the non-playoff-bowl season goes off as usual. Meanwhile, the winners in the first round move on, playing each other according to seeding. Here's MSgt Rados's scenario from 2005, with games played on December 17th:

1 USC vs. 8 Miami - Poinsettia Bowl
5 Oregon vs. 4 Ohio State - Music City Bowl
6 Notre Dame vs. 3 Penn State - Motor City Bowl
7 Georgia vs. 2 Texas - Cotton Bowl

His note: I picked the [second-round] playoff bowl games at random, trying to provide a close home game for the higher-seeded team. This does not have to be the system at all. Over the years, bowls could bid for selection as a playoff bowl.

Tom also notes that last year, the Motor City Bowl featured Memphis against Akron. Under his format, they would have had Notre Dame and Penn State. I wonder which game would have sold more tickets.

Let's assume the higher seeds win again. National semifinals, December 24th, 2005:

1 USC vs. 4 Ohio State - Fiesta Bowl
3 Penn State vs. 2 Texas - Sugar Bowl

Remember, the four BCS bowls still rotate hosting the true national title game each year. Two of them get those national semifinal games, one gets a "consolation" game (a weak link, in my view - tough to convince the Rose/Sugar/Fiesta/Orange people to take that matchup once every four years), and one gets the title game.

Here it is, with higher seeds winning again:

January 3rd: West Virginia vs. Alabama - Orange Bowl (his note: Bowl selection Sunday would be on December 11th, after the first round. On that day, the "consolation" bowl - in this case, the Orange - gets first pick of the two best teams not playing in the second round, or otherwise not in the mix. In this case, the Orange picks 10-2 West Virginia against 9-2 Alabama.

January 4th: 1 USC vs. 2 Texas - Rose Bowl

His postscripts: With 11-game seasons, no team would play more than 16 total games. That is only three more than USC and Texas played in 2005...the season does not go any longer than the current bowl schedule...coaches get continuity week to week instead of the four-week layoff period before a major bowl game.

Logistically, this is pretty close to workable. Philosophically - and I explained this to MSgt Rados in several e-mails - it's a challenge.

The Rados System places an enormous premium on winning your conference, which, to a football purist like me, is fine. However, this system removes much of the flexibility currently enjoyed by bowl committees in selecting teams. Examples: the Poinsettia Bowl will always have one eye on Navy, given the enormous military presence in San Diego. The Citrus Bowl in Orlando loves Midwestern teams like Wisconsin, because they always travel well. The reverse is true for Miami, which historically does not travel many fans and must be viewed cautiously by any bowl game that's not on the highest tier. It would take spectacular diplomatic effort to convince all thirty bowls to buy into this system and voluntarily cede their right to invite teams that generate interest at the gate.

In short, a playoff CAN be achieved using the current bowl system. An Air Force master sergeant just laid it out for you with 16 teams - I would think that a commission of athletic directors, school presidents, and conference commissioners could easily knock out a playoff script for, say, eight teams. But given the number of cooks in the kitchen, the odds are stacked. Still, it's an intriguing concept, one that, in some form, could finally produce an honest national champion in Division I college football.

By the way, I sent MSgt Rados an e-mail with a link to this blog, and received a response that confirmed its faithfulness to his model - "There were about 10 Air Force folks reading it over my shoulder and all completely agreed with your comments as well as mine," he wrote.

Tom also mentioned that he has asked his wife to tape all the Monday night episodes of our new "Tailgate Overtime" program that he may miss, starting in November - when he deploys to Iraq.

Note to Mr. Goren, conference commissioners, and organizers of the BCS: I've saved Tom's Air Force e-mail address. He'll be a little busy this winter, but you might want to drop him a line someday.

America Will Never Know

Tonight, August 4th, at 8pm, Sun Sports will debut its newest installment of "Under The Lights," our behind-the-scenes series on sports figures and traditions in Florida. The subject is UCF head coach George O'Leary. I've ruminated on this UTL show and coach O'Leary many times in this space; now, a chance to apologize for coming thisclose to potentially submarining his career. Again.

This otherwise unremarkable Friday began with the morning routine: awake to the sounds of my three-year-old yelping for release from her crib. Release Dexter, the mentally challenged Chocolate Lab, into the backyard so that he may begin his strenuous daily schedule of eating, sleeping, and evacuating waste. Hand the Comics over to my six-year-old, who reads them as a hedge fund manager would read the Wall Street Journal. Normal day.

This morning's Orlando Sentinel sports section had a media column from Dave Darling, who devoted his space to a preview of our UTL show tonight. Cool. Skimmed it for errors, of which there were none. Then I noticed this line:

"...according to the show, the team's fall GPA of 2.8 was the highest in the history of Division I-A football." Darling transcribed that, accurately, from the script for "Under the Lights: George O'Leary," which I wrote. I, in turn, found that information on O'Leary's bio page at the UCF Athletics website.

It was his use of the phrase "according to the show" that made me drop my peanut-butter sandwich. Darling clearly found that GPA stat to be quirky, but didn't have the time or resources to explore it. At that moment, after reading Darling's column, a truly awful thought occurred to me: I blew it.

Sprinting to my home office, I re-checked the O'Leary bio page, and sure enough, there it was: "The Golden Knights set a new school [my emphasis] Division I-A history record with a 2.78 team GPA in 2004, only to break that mark with a 2.808 team GPA in the fall of 2005."

SCHOOL record. As in, the football team's GPA of 2.8 in the fall of '05 was the highest it's ever been since UCF went Division I around 1996. Not an NCAA record; not an all-Division I record. A school record.

One thing you have to understand about me, and you can ask anyone I work with here at the Sun Sports studios, anybody I ever worked with at ESPN, Mike Bianchi, Todd Wright, my parents, my wife, and my sixth-grade English teacher: I am flat-out ferocious about research. I may not have Chris Fowler's luxurious head of hair, or Vin Scully's pipes, or Mike Tirico's stunning versatility, but I will...not...be...outworked. That's how it is.

So you can imagine the weight and girth of the stone that lodged in my gut on Friday morning when I realized that despite a half-dozen re-readings of O'Leary's bio page, I had somehow misinterpreted the GPA stat in writing the script for the UTL show, which was, at that moment, on a tape at the Sun Sports master control center in Houston, ready to air statewide to 6.5 million cable homes in Florida at 8pm tonight.

Crap.

Piloted the Accord at Warp 7 to the Sun Sports studios, where I cornered Mike Wargo, our senior editor, the guy who had assembled the O'Leary show. I asked him to show me the final "standup" from the show, wherein I appeared on-camera at the construction site for UCF's new stadium in Orlando and rattled off those stats on academics. Mike, who's been doing this long enough to recognize the panicked tones of a man who screwed up, stifled the urge to strangle me and called up the footage.

The line, as I spoke it, went something like this: "...that's an NCAA Division I record."

Crap again.

In the context of the entire standup, the line could have been interpreted either way - school record as a D-I program, or D-I record. But in the context of a show on George O'Leary, there was no room for interpretation - not when it comes to anything having to do with academic records and/or bio pages. The show could not air as-is.

We had to fix it. And the clock was ticking. 8pm debut, people. Houston.

Mike had several different takes of that final standup from the raw field tapes stored in his server, so we started combing the footage to see if we could apply a digital band-aid. Luckily, there it was - another line, not used in the rough-cut media preview copy of the show that Darling watched, that dealt with scholarship contributions to UCF during O'Leary's tenure. With a little editing magic, the line would perfectly replace the hole left when we cut out the line about team GPA. Before he made the edit, of course, I logged back on to the UCF website and quadruple-checked the dollar figures. Satisfied, I gave him the okay to make the fix.

Start to finish, from tackling Mike in the hallway until the final edit: thirty minutes. I still had a good hour left before my scheduled ritual suicide. After a couple of phone calls and e-mails, we arranged to feed the newly-corrected show via satellite to Master Control in Houston at 1pm, with instructions to take the old copy and throw it into the Gulf of Mexico. Seven hours to spare, an eternity in television. The show you see tonight, and dozens more times throughout August, is accurate.

Just to clarify: this is on me, not on UCF. While I'm stunned that I could blow this after burying myself in O'Leary research for the last few months, the bottom line is the bottom line. It was my script, and my responsibility. The mere thought of my mistake getting on the air, and the potential for media blather if somebody caught it and made the connection between "academic records" and O'Leary - even though the bio page was clearly not his writing - makes me sick to my stomach. Major credit to Dave Darling of the Sentinel, whose journalistic instincts were dead-on. Had that line not caught his ear, and had he not included "according to the show" in his Friday column, I never would have made the catch. And God bless digital editing systems and satellite technology.

As we like to say in television when someone catches an error shortly before air: "America will never know." Well, now you do, even though you'll never see it on TV. Never happened. And you thought TV guys just sat around whitening their teeth all day.

Enjoy the show. The accurate, meticulously researched, gorgeously produced and edited, correct show.