By far, the best reaction to the news that Alex Rodriguez did steroid is from Joe Sheehan:

Knowing Alex Rodriguez used PEDs, in the context of those names, isn’t information that changes anything. A great baseball player did bad things with the implicit approval—hell, arguably explicit approval—of his peers and his employers. It’s cheating, yes, which would be a problem if we hadn’t been celebrating cheating in baseball since the days when guys would go first to third over the pitcher’s mound. You can argue that it’s different in degree, though the widely accepted use of PEDs by peers and superiors, and the use of amphetamines before them, is a strong point against that case. What is clear is that it’s not different enough, in degree, to warrant the kind of histrionics we’re reading and hearing over this. It’s not different enough to turn Alex Rodriguez into a piñata.

Of course, the screaming is about the screamers. The loudest voices on the evils of steroids in baseball are in the media, and there’s probably a dissertation in that notion, because for all that we have to hear about how greedy, evil players have ruined baseball by taking these substances (and then playing well, according to this selective interpretation; no one’s ripping Chris Donnels these days), the reason we’re talking about this in 2009 is that so many “reporters”—scare quotes earned—went ostrich in 1999. We hear every year around awards time that the people closest to the game know the game better than anyone, because they’re in the clubhouse every day, and they talk to everyone, and they have a perspective that outsiders can’t possibly understand. For those same people to do a collective Captain Renault, which they’ve been doing since beating up players for this transgression became acceptable, is shameful. Take your pick: they missed the story, or they were too chicken-shit to report it. In either case, the piling-on now is disgusting.

I have little to add. As far as the media is concerned, A-Rod has been a certified jerk since he signed that evil 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers that he forced them to write out with his jedi mind tricks. This just give them a chance to combine their A-Rod hatred with their steroid grandstanding. I refuse to participate.

Read the whole thing.

I’ve liked the Steelers since I was a kid. The local team (Falcons) sucked, my NFC team was the Packers and I hated the Cowboys slightly less than I hated the Communists. The first piece of sports-team related junk I remember having was a Steelers garbage can. So they became my AFC team just in time to enter a decade of stagnation.

Moreover, I’m living in “Stillers” country now. If I pulled for the Cardinals, my neighbors would throw snowballs at me and mock the way I shovel the driveway.

In principle, I don’t mind the idea of the Cardinals winning since they are the ultimate NFL Cinderella and Kurt Warner is an amazing story. In practice, the Bidwells are evil skinflints and I can not possibly countenance a Cardinal championship until they return their prior title to its rightful owners — The Pottsville Maroons. Incidentally, if you like football books, Breaker Boys, which goes into the 1925 travesty, is a good one.

I hear Obama is pulling for the Steelers because they are most similar to his Bears. I’d like to think that’s in earnest. But I have to note that Pennsylvania is a key swing state.

Just sayin’.

Earlier this year, I dinged ESPN’s experts for making lame and unimaginative picks for the NFL season. I pointed out that they basically picked the same teams to make the playoffs this year that made it last year whereas only half of playoffs teams repeat from year to year. If you’re going to be wrong, at least be wrong with some style. As stupid as picking Cleveland to win the AFC would have been, at least it would have been entertaining. Picking Dallas to win the NFC — as most did — was both wrong and boring.

Let’s see how they did with their ultra-safe conservative picks.

They unanimously picked New England to win the AFC East. Had Brady not gotten injured, they probably would have been right. The Pats just missed.

Twelve picked Pittsburgh to win the AFC north. Right again. Four picked Cleveland which was … um … really wrong.

Ten picked Indy to take the AFC south with six taking Jacksonville. Indy was a wild card, so I’ll give them points for that. Jacksonville was a dreadful disappointment.

Everyone picked San Diego to repeat as AFC West champ. They were right but barely.

Only 5 out of 16 analysts picked Tennessee to even make the playoffs. Not one picked Baltimore or Miami. Excluding the Ravens and Dolphins seemed quite reasonable four months ago. But the reason analysts are paid money, supposedly, is to see the things that we ordinary clods don’t. Not one analyst looked at Parcell’s record or Baltimore’s defense and said, “Hey! Here’s a crazy tought…!

But so far, so good. The analysts correctly picked SD, Indy and Pitt to make the playoffs and some of them had Tennessee. I’ll cut some slack for not getting the division and wild car winners just right. Let’s give the analysts 3.5 out of 6 picks correct.

Now we get to the NFC, where it gets really fun.

Fourteen analysts picked Dallas to win the NFC East. In fact, Dallas was touted at the beginning of the season as the probable Super Bowl winner. Dallas melted down in a game Greg Easterbrook called the worst he’d ever seen. Injuries played their part but egos played a bigger and foreseeable one. Their collapse should have been especially obvious to those with insider information like, um, paid analysts.

The analysts split the NFC North between Green Bay and Minnesota. Half-right.

The NFC South was given to New Orleans on 15 ballots. Eeesh.

The NFC West was given to Seattle on 14 ballots. Oops. I chided two analysts for picking Arizona to win that division. So that’s me being dumb.

Of the six NFC playoff teams, Philadelphia and New York got a lot of picks as wild cards, Arizona and Carolina got three picks, Atlanta got none. We’ll count Philly and New York as correct picks by the analysts. With half-credit for tapping Minnesota to take the NFC North, that’s 2.5 out of 6 picks right for the analysts.

In other words, they got 6/12 picks right. The breakdown, just counting correctly called playoff teams — without any distinction between wild card and division winners — reveals the tremendous groupthink that dominated ESPN’s preseason picks:

Chadiha: 6/12
Clayton: 6/12
Graham: 4/12
Green: 4/12
Joyner: 6/12
Kuharsky: 6/12
Mosley: 6/12
Paolantonio: 5/12
Pasquarelli: 6/12 (bet he boasts about picking Arizona!)
Sando: 7/12
Seifert: 6/12
Walker: 5/12
Wickersham: 3/12 (that’s what you get for being bold, I guess)
Williamson: 6/12
Williamson II: 4/12
Yasinskas: 6/12

I praised Wickersham for making his picks interesting. But I wouldn’t be too embarrassed if I were him. The guys who went conventional didn’t do much better.

I’ll spare the analysts the embarrassment of reviewing their Super Bowl picks. Wait a minute, no I won’t:

NFC Champ: Dallas (12), New Orleans (2), Philly (1), Seattle (1)
AFC Champ: San Diego (8), New England (5), Indy (2), Jacksonville (1)

Not one analyst got even one conference champ right. Mike Sando, who got 7/12 picks right, was the only one to even pick a team that made the conference title game. In fact, he was the only analyst to pick, as NFC champ, a team that even made the playoffs.

Now, my picks weren’t much better. I got 3/12 right, taking dives on Jacksonville, Cleveland, Green Bay, Seattle, Dallas and New Orleans. That’s what I get for reading everybody else’s picks before I make mine.

But I’m not paid to do this. I don’t have exclusive insider information. I don’t live and breath football. These guys do.

I don’t mean to pick on ESPN’s analysts, really. I just think the whole exercise of predicting the season is silly. And, given the perfunctory way the analysts seem to approach this exercise, I think they know how dumb it is.

Previewing the season is another thing entirely. If someone writes an article that talks about what team they think will win the NFC, what teams could play spoiler, what teams could be dark horses — and explains their reasoning — that’s fun and interesting. That’s why I buy Football Prospectus ever year. So I know what to look for.

But these long tables of picks that ESPN loves to run — in all sports — are just boring. No analysis. No insight. Just conservative picks that are about as good as throwing darts at a board. When Dallas was tapped by 12 of 16 experts to make the Super Bowl, that made them no more or less likely to actually do it. So what’s the point?

So, as with last year, I’ll give the results of my Bowl Championship points system. I created this a couple of years ago as a response to (then) Cooper Tire’s Bowl Championship Cup. The Cup was given out to the conference that did the best in the bowl season. But it was given out for the best winning percentage with three or more games. So one year, the Mountain West went 2-1 and won the cup. Wahoo.

The system I created works like so: Each conference gets two points for a bowl win, an extra point for a BCS bowl win and loses a point for a bowl loss. So it rewards conferences that are both in a lot of bowls and do well in them. Yes, it favors the major conferences. But it should favor them as they usually have far more depth than the mid-majors (look carefully at the bottom of the Mountain West before you claim they’re as good as, say, the Big 10). The system is fair, I think, because it mostly favors the top conferences but a mid-major can win if they have a really great season.

I’ve now run the series back to the first year of the BCS (1998). Here are the results:

1998-1999: Both systems favor the Big 10, which went 5-0 with two BCS wins.

1999-2000: Both systems favor the Big 10, which went 5-2 with two BCS wins.

2000-1: The Mountain West had the best record at 3-0, but my system favors the Big East’s 4-1 record with a BCS win.

2001-2: The Big East took the BC Cup based on a 4-1 record. My system would have given it to the SEC since they were 5-3 but won two BCS games.

2002-3: Both systems give the cup to the Big 10, which went 5-2 with a BCS win and national title for Ohio State.

2003-4: The ACC wins the BC cup based on a 5-1 record. My system puts the SEC in a tie because they went 5-2 with a BCS win. This is a perfect example of how the systems differ because the Cup favors the conference that had fewer bowl games while my system favors the conference that had more bowl games.

I don’t weigh national titles in the system because of my belief that such title are arbitrary (see previous rantings). But if I used it as a tie-breaker, the SEC would win since LSU took a share of the national title.

2004-5: The Cup went to the Mountain West based on a 2-1 record. I gave it to the Big 12, which 4-3 with a BCS win. That was the lowest winning score (6 points) of any winner.

2005-6: The Cup splits between ACC and Big-12 as both had 5-3 records. My system gives it to the Big 12, which also won a BCS game and a title.

2006-7: The Cup went to the Big East based on a 5-0 record. My system puts the SEC in a tie. Although they went 6-3, two of those wins were BCS wins and one was for the national title.

2007-8: Again, the Mountain West wins the cup with a 4-1 performance. My system gives it to the SEC, which went 7-2 with 2 BCS wins. Their 14 point performance is the highest out of any year in the system.

2008-9: Another year where one conference — the Pac-10 — goes 5-0. But with a 6-2 record, a BCS win and a title, the SEC is favored in the point system.

It’s interesting to watch conferences wax and wane. When the system started, the Big 10 was the king while the Pac 10 was weak. Then the Big-12 took over. Now the SEC rules while the Big 10 is on the outs (6-16 over the last three years). The Big East has been consistently strong. Even the mid-majors have cycles. Conference USA was terrible for a while.

(It’s also fascinating to watch the number of bowls swell from 22 to 34. So much for the BCS killing off the bowls. Why don’t we want a playoff again?)

It may seem like my system is biased in favor of the SEC. But I designed it when the SEC was in a down cycle and it was favoring the Big-12. The SEC does better in my system simply because they get into more bowls and win more bowls. Over the BCS years that I have now entered into the system, here are the records of each conference:

SEC: 50-35 (12 BCS wins) = 77 points
Big East: 32-21 (6 BCS wins) = 49 points
Big 12: 41-42 (7 BCS wins) = 47 points
Pac 10: 31-28 (9 BCS wins) = 43 points
ACC: 36-38 (2 BCS wins) = 36 points
Big 10: 34-40 (9 BCS wins) = 36 points
Mountain West: 21-15 (2 BCS wins) = 29 points
WAC: 17-22 (1 BCS win) = 13 points
Conference USA: 21-31 (0 BCS wins) = 11 points
MAC: 12-16 (0 BCS wins) = 8 points
Big West: 3-0 (0 BCS wins) = 6 points
Sun Belt: 4-7 (0 BCS wins) = 1 point
Independents: 3-10 (0 BCS wins) = -4 points

Now we see the larger picture and it’s one that will cause my friend Chris to explode. The SEC has far-and-away the best Bowl record, followed by the Big East. The other conferences cluster near .500. This is true if you use W-L, national titles, BCS bowl wins o or my system as he marker. The system actually favors the Big 10, which would slip under the Mountain West on pure win percentage. One wonders where that conference would be if it weren’t for Paterno and Penn State (5-2, 1 BCS, 9 points all on their own).

Matthew Stafford will be a huge disappointment at the NFL level. I don’t blame him for taking the money. A shoulder injury next year and he’s out tens of millions. But he’s not polished enough to succeed at the pro level. He may never be.

I hope I’m wrong.

If there is any system of college football championship more stupid than the one we have now, it’s the so-called “+1” system several people are currently flogging. The idea would be that after the bowls, we play one extra game using our new information to better pick out the two best teams in the nation.

Uh-huh. So who are the two teams? One will be the winner of the Florida-Oklahoma game. Who’s the other? Undefeated Utah, who just whomped ‘Bama? Texas? USC? All this will do is mean that our championship game matches up three over-hyped teams as opposed to two.

Here’s how you do a playoff properly. You take eight conference champs — six from the major conference and then two from the other conference (or Notre Dame, if they are rated high enough). You play them off in the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls on January 1 maintaing traditional slots rather than seeding (i.e, Rose Bowl is Pac-10 vs. Big 10 no matter what the rankings). You have two more games on January 8, one more on January 15. Net result — one week and two games more than we have now. No controversy but a legitimate champion.

The critical factor in this is taking only conference champs. That way you avoid controversy. Imagine if we used the current system. We would take six BCS champs and two at-large teams. Who are the at-large teams? Texas? Ohio State? ‘Bama? Utah? Boise State? It will be determined by the same ignorant writers who insisted last year that South Florida was a great team. You can expect mid-majors to be shut out.

But the mid-majors are too weak? Prove it on the field, not with your mouth. Oh, I’m sorry. Attempts to prove the weakness of the mid-major champs have ended in victory of the mid-major champs. Oops.

If you take only conference champs, then everything is settled on the field. You want to win a national title? Win your damned conference. The motto of the playoff could be: “No Second Chances”.

Of course, this will mean the writers’ votes are a sideshow and have no relevance to determining the national champ. We can’t have that, can we?

Watching the Fiesta Bowl right now. The announcer claims that the Texas defense has “no answer” to Ohio state RB Wells. Um, guys? Texas hasn’t had an answer on defense all year long. Had you not been so busy hyping teams that run up huge scores on pathetic defenses (i.e., the entire Big 12), you might have noticed that.

Presented for your consideration:

Team A: 12-1, lost one game on the road to a ranked team. Allowed less than 8 points a game during the regular season, racking up a 450-93 score over the regular season. They didn’t do this against patsies either. They dominated a conference that went 5-0 in the bowls, went on the road to crush a 5-7 ACC team, smashed an independent team that went on to run wild in a bowl, and convincingly beat the top two teams in the Big Ten.

Hypothetical Team B: 13-1. Lost one game on a neutral site to a top-five team. Played all other ranked teams at home. Scored an incredible 702 points during the regular season but gave up 319 (25 per game). Their conference is 3-1 in bowls so far. Their non-conference schedule included a horrible AA team, an 11-2 Big East team, a Pac 10 team that didn’t win a single game and an 11-2 Mountain West team. The good teams in that list were played at home.

Can you make the case that Team B is clearly better than Team A? Because the Sports Media Twerps certainly think so. If Oklahoma wins the BCS Bowl, they will become a national champion while Team A (USC) will probably not be ranked any higher than they are now.

The SMTs also rank Texas two slots about USC and claim that the Longhorns deserved a shot at the title. If Texas wins, they will be ranked higher than USC in the final poll. This is a Texas team that lost its only road game to a ranked team, had a laughable non-conference schedule and outscored opponents 527-223, an unimpressive ratio given their pathetic schedule.

I don’t know if USC is better than Oklahoma. I would love to find out. I am pretty convinced that they are better than Texas. I would love to see them prove it. They should clearly, at the very least, be ranked #2 or #3 at season’s end. They won’t be unless Alabama and Texas both lose because the SMTs don’t think about their votes. Their ranking considers three factors: 1) number of losses; 2) amount of hype; 3) how they ranked last week. Texas was more hyped as a title contender than USC. Therefore Texas must be better. Ignore those facts behind the curtain. You are getting sleepy. Very very sleepy.

Yeah, a playoff would be so much worse than this.

So what is the BCS going to do this year? Here are the top 14 teams at this moment: Alabama, Oklahoma,Texas, Florida, USC, Utah, Texas Tech, PSU, Boise State, Ohio State, TCU, Ball State, Cincinnati, Okie State. Of those:

Oklahoma and Texas are guaranteed in unless Mizzou pulls an upset. In that case, Mizzou and Texas go in. (I’m assuming UT gets an at-large bid).

Penn State is in.

Cincinnati is in.

The winner of Virginia Tech/Boston College is in.

Both Alabama and Florida are in (I’m assuming the SEC title game loser gets an at-large bid).

USC is in, unless they choke against UCLA. In that case, they may get in anyway with Oregon State rematching against PSU in the Rose Bowl.

Utah is in as they are the highest-ranked non-BCS champion.

That leaves only one lonesome at-large bid left, which may reduce to zero if UCLA pulls the upset.

Now apart from the very real possibility that Florida wins the SEC, gets ranked in the top two but fails to make the BCS game (the computers forcing a Texas-Oklahoma rematch — does it pay to be in a top-heavy conference or what?), this last bid is a problem.

It should go to Boise State. They are an undefeated conference champion whose ranking below Utah is arbitrary. I expect, however, that it will go to Ohio State. OSU is from a BCS conference and has a large fanbase that will bitch if they don’t get in.

Moreover, I think that the BCS bowl committee still doesn’t consider non-BCS conferences to be “real teams” and their undefeated champions to be an illusion. Granted, Hawaii was awful last year (although they were facing the second-best team in the nation). But Boise State and Utah have shown, in past years, that they can run with the big boys quite well, thank you. They at least deserve a shot.

And what about Ball State? Yeah, they’re Ball State. But they still played well this year. They still won their conference in undefeated fashion (modulo this weekend’s game).

Anyway, barring an upset by Mizzou or UCLA, here is how I see it playing out:

Rose Bowl – PSU vs. USC
Fiesta Bowl – Texas vs. Utah
Orange Bowl – Virginia Tech vs. Cincinnati
Sugar Bowl – Alabama vs. Ohio State
National Championship – Florida vs. Oklahoma

I’ll save my playoff rant — the one about how USC, Penn State, the SEC loser, the Big 12 #2, Boise State and Utah all deserve a shot at the title — for another post.

Four minutes, 9 seconds left in the game.

You are down by three points.

You have one time out.

Your defense has been completely unable to stop the run.

Why do you not onside kick, Mark Richt?

Richt is a good coach at Georgia, but his late-game clock management is horrid. He’s lost several games by letting the opposition run out the clock and kick game-winning field goals in the closing seconds while he still had time outs on the board. And today, he didn’t even give his team a chance with an onside kick. All Tech needed was a couple of first downs to ice the game. They could have gotten those anywhere on the field. The only way to try to win was to onside kick.

(Note: I typed this in as the kick was made.)