Let's Keep The Tourney The Same - What's Your Verb 3/9

In this installment of What's Your Verb lets discuss why the tourney shouldn't change.

I know this is usually sweet sixteen day here at Jumping Offsides but today I feel like I have something that trumps that. I know that selection Sunday is only 6 days away and well this is the perfect week for my final sweet sixteen but I will be giving that to you later on today or tomorrow. I may even do it Saturday to see how close I can get to what the committee thinks the top 16 seeds are. Trust me, I won't quit on the sweet sixteen now, I just have bigger fish to fry today.

Last Saturday I was driving home from work around 10:30 and I turned on ESPN Radio. I enjoy listening to it when I drive to and from work because I have about a half hour commute so it gives me a chance to catch up on anything I may have missed. Well, I had never listened to this show before and to be honest I don't know who was hosting it because he never said his name but it was kind of like an open forum about whatever was bugging people. I think that's a cool idea so I decided to listen.

As I was listening the host of the show gave what his topic was. Fans, he argued that the NCAA tournament is flawed because its not the top 65 teams in the country. He wants to do away with the mid and low major conference tournament champions and just have the top 65 teams get in. He used Providence vs. Radford as his example. He thinks that because we let the conference champions in, we leave out some better teams "that could actually win the tournament." He thinks because Radford doesn't have a legitimate shot at winning the thing we shouldn't put them in.

I think he is crazy for like 2 or 3 reasons. First of all, the most basic and easiest argument to make to him is that does he realistically think Providence can win it all. I will give him the idea that Radford doesn't but I really don't think Providence does either. So if we were to do it his way, I think that realistically this year we would have maybe a twelve team tournament to decide. I don't think that sounds as fun as what we are going to have this year. The other thing is that if he really thinks Providence could win the whole thing, I would love to call him right now and ask him to join my office pool because I would love to have those 5 bucks in the pot.

Secondly, if you don't let these mid and low major conference champions in, what do they have to play for? Some of these conference tournament championships are the best games to watch of the season because those kids will leave EVERYTHING out on the court for a shot to play in the big dance. Even if they make it in a 16 seed and lose by 40, those guys can tell their kids that one day they played in the biggest tournament on the planet. It's all they play for throughout their 4 years in school and if we took that away from them it would be a crime. It's not like Providence doesn't know the system and hasn't had plenty of opportunities to play their way in.

Thirdly, sometimes the most exciting games of the whole tournament are when one of the mid to low major teams push one of the big boys to the brink or even beat them. If we took the top 65 teams overall, I suspect that even when there was an upset it just wouldn't be as exciting. It's part of what makes the first two days of the tournament so great. It gives those programs a chance to show what they can do on a national stage and when they do pull an upset or four like George Mason did a few years ago, people don't ever forget it. Those two or three teams that pull the huge upset are the only thing we talk about for a week. If you just took the top 65 only about 7 or 8 of them would be mid to low major at best. That doesn't help those programs.

I think the cat was way off line and I really wish he would've said his name because I would have loved to call him out personally on here.

I love the way the tournament is set up and if we adopted that idiots idea it would take a lot of it away for me!

What's Your Verb? - 2/11

It just won't die.

The steroids in baseball issue will go on and on and on. Two weeks ago it was Clemens. Last week it was Bonds and now its A-Rod. I have said since last year that I wish everyone in the media and all the fans should just realize that steroids were everywhere in baseball for an entire decade or so, and we should just deal with it, understand that it was what it was and move on.

Now I hear sports reporters on the TV saying, "I wish this story would just end and we can move on."

It's guys like them that are keeping it going. Its very obvious to me that at least 75% of players were taking them at the time. If that's the case, then here is my opinion: 75% of players were taking steroids and thus in everyone's opinion had an unfair advantage. If that many players were doing it, did anyone really have an unfair advantage? No.

Now, if all of these clowns that are voting for the hall of fame want to keep everyone that has ever been suspected of using steroids out of the hall, be my guess. Get on your soap box and make your usually unimportant opinion important for 5 minutes and make your point. I promise you however, that there will be a several year period where either no one will get into your precious hall or several guys who probably don't deserve or shouldn't get into your precious hall. At that point you have tainted the hall of fame by putting guys who don't deserve it in anyway. You pick your poison.

I personally would take the guys with the stats who used the juice. If everyone else was doing it then there was really no unfair advantage going either way. Yea, McGwire and Sosa and A-Rod have all put up huge numbers but didn't Clemens do the same thing? I think all the stats and records are inflated, even the pitching numbers!

As for A-Rod doing the unthinkable and actually admitting to taking them. Good for you Alex! Owning up to it is very admirable. You should call your boys Clemens, Bonds and Tejada and just tell them to do the same thing. McGwire you can leave out, only because I think he could care less if he gets into the hall or not.

I have a couple of problems though about how A-Rod was exposed. First of all, the test was in 2003 when steroids had not been deemed illegal yet. If there is no rule against, why is it so wrong? The other thing is that back then those tests were confidential and were to never been released to the public. So why now is it ok for them to let them out? Just because there is a lot of controversy surrounding the whole idea. That's bologna. If A-Rod has tested positive since then, its ok with me.

The other thing that really has me fired up is who are the other 103 guys on the list. I know its nice and easy to throw A-Rod under the bus because he is the best player in the game and maybe the best player ever but I want to know who all the other guys are. That's ridiculous and incredibly unfair to the guy. He has handled it well but I would like to see how the other guys do if their names are given out.

The more and more we give these names out, the more and more guys are going to include themselves so its no surprise. I am willing to bet at least 75% of guys were doing and the more names we give out now, the more we will realize it was everywhere and we can stop punishing just the big name guys and we can move on. I know all of the us fans would love to move on and let baseball and more importantly, congress move on so we can all focus on more important things.

A-Rod, I'm impressed with the way you handled it, but can we just move on already?

What's Your Verb - 12/29

The GM and I put together 4 groups of bowl games for the confidence pool. If you don't know what the JO Confidence Pool is, you should and you should be participating. Either the first set of games ended the Central Michigan/Florida Atlantic game.

Being the casual fan that I am of college football I figured out two things from the first set of games.

1. If you are a casual fan you might as well not worry about the first set of games because you know nothing about the teams and will probably get most of the games wrong. In my case, I actually only got 1 right. South Florida. Yea, that was really bad! I am going to bounce back in a big way here coming up.

2. I think there are some serious problems in South Bend.

Here is why I say there may be some serious problems up there.

I know they won the game 49-21 over a team that was playing at home. I know it wasn't your usual home game being that it was in Hawaii and it could have been taken as a vacation. You know what, they did treat it as a vacation and still won by that much. Really? Why is everyone getting so excited about this win?

Hawaii was horrible this year. They only made a bowl game because they played a bunch of horrible teams at home and won because no one could be focused enough to win there. Ok, so Notre Dame was able to focus enough when a lot of other teams couldn't. That's great! THEY SHOULD HAVE! If you think you a legitimate team in college that shouldn't have been a surprise.

I hear a lot of people saying, "this could be a program changing game" or "this is a turning point for Clausen" or "this should really get Charlie Weis on the right track".

If any of these things are true, then all I know is this, Notre Dame was in much worse shape then most of thought they were.

And, I promise all of you Irish fans this, this is not a turning point for anything. This was Hawaii. It wasn't New Year's Day, it wasn't the BCS.

It proved nothing to me except that Weis and the Irish still have plenty of work to do to get anywhere close to back in the National Spotlight and in the conversation with Florida, Oklahoma, Texas and USC.

What's Your Verb? - 12/22

I got Beef!

I know its the offseason and trust me, I think football is way more important right now, but someone has me ticked off!

The Steinbrenner's and Brian Cashman are out of control. I know I should have seen this coming because it happens every year but doesn't a line have to be drawn at some point?

I mean really, they got arguably the two top starting pitchers and now they are talking about getting Manny. That's right, Manny, as in Ramirez, as in the guy who played for Boston for how many years. The guy who quit on his team in Boston. Yea, that Manny.

To see Manny Ramirez play in Pinstripes would make me sick.

It would make me sick for two reason! One, the Yankees obviously have no boundaries. They would obviously go after Varitek if they could. Two, obviously some players don't care about anything but money. That is a subject for another day and maybe I'm expecting too much from Manny but wouldn't you think he would despise the Yankees enough to never want to play there. I don't know.

To me, that would be like Coach K going and coaching Carolina. It just shouldn't happen.

Getting back to the Yankees and their lack of restraint when spending money. I know they didn't make the playoffs last year for the first time in 14 years. So what? That's one year.

Do they really think going and adding this much more to their payroll will help them win.

I don't!

I think they need to start adding pieces and role players. Not the top 5 free agents every year. That's what they do. They look and see who the top 4 or 5 guys are and they offer them outrageous contracts and they get whoever is out there. It's stupid!

They don't have any team chemistry.

Adding Manny Ramirez sure won't help that. I loved the Sabathia signing only because I think he is great. He may struggle in New York only because he doesn't want to really be there but it was worth it to me for them to do that.

I am glad Big Tex hasn't made his decision yet. He is leaving all these teams waiting. I hope he goes to the Nats and is the face of that franchise and helps that team win.

I'm interested to see how long its going to take the Yankees front office to realize spending lots of money doesn't equal championships. Getting the right players does it.

I know Tampa didn't win it all last year, but ask Joe Maddon what its like to have the right players not the highest paid.

It's going to take a long time, I expect, maybe never, but until then I will continue to enjoy the Yankees spending lots of money and getting nothing in return.