25.11.03
Relegation & Promotion: Am a big Powerline fan. Since I'm a big fan of sport, as well, I was drawn in by Deacon's post about relegation and promotion in the English (and European) soccer leagues. He asks why we don't do the same over here. Although I am not certain why our professional system developed the way it did, the fact is that relegation would probably be unworkable in the professional leagues, because most minor leagues (such as the single-A Carolina League, home of the Potomac Cannons, the team I've rooted for for about 15 years) have contracts with major league teams (in the Cannons' case, with the Cincinnati Reds); so you would have, potentially, organizations with two or more teams in the majors, leaving it very little leeway with regard to injuries and player callups, other than the waiver wire. Since all four major sports (football, baseball, basketball, hockey) have a system like this in place (perhaps football less so) and otherwise a monopoly (ignoring Canadian football), a system like this seems infeasible. Being completely ignorant of the legal issues involved, I am not certain of any collusion/restraint of trade/antitrust implications that would be involved in such a situation, and while they occurred to me, they also seem negligible, in that minor leagues have such arrangements (for the players rather than the franchises) in place.
Perhaps a better example or level on which to try such an idea would be collegiate sports; the NCAA has four football divisions (IA, IAA, II, III) and at least eleven conferences in each division (the lower the division, the greater the number of teams and conferences; IA and IAA both have around 120 teams, spread from 11 to 15 conferences in each; II has about 180 teams if memory serves, and III has about 300 or so). One could choose to demote, say, Louisiana-Monroe and/or Southern Methodist (proud football tradition or not) to I-AA for the I-AA national champion and/or runner up.
Of course, the NCAA is little more than an umbrella organization for its members, namely the colleges. The conferences are the ones with the real power, because the colleges choose to associate with one another in the much more intimate setting of conference. Moreover, conferences can easily order their members in a given sport (football, in this case), whereas any ordering by record is meaningless, because where conference members play similar schedules (at least in conference, by which teams are normally ordered), NCAA members, even within divisions, have broadly disparate schedules. Notre Dame, at 4-6, for example, has played a brutal schedule, and has played (I'm doing this off the top of my head) exactly one team with a record below .500 (BYU), and is scheduled to play another this weekend (Stanford). Navy, at 7-4, on the other hand, has a much better record (one which, one should note, includes a loss to Notre Dame), but has played against exactly two division IA teams with records at or better than .500: TCU and Air Force (it also played against I-AA Delaware which has just one loss, and to which Navy lost, for the record).
My point is that it's much easier to say that North Carolina is the worst football team in the ACC this year than it is to say that Louisiana-Monroe or SMU or Army or whoever is the worst team in division I-A this year. So perhaps the conference route ought to be looked into. Conferences could make contracts or alliances with one another. The SEC could, for example, align itself with the Sun Belt, where one SEC team is demoted and one Sun Belt team is promoted (this year it would be Vanderbilt, I think, and North Texas). The Sun Belt could also align itself with a IAA conference, like the Southern Conference, or the Mississippi Valley Conference, or the ACC could make an agreement with the Southern, which could itself make an agreement with the Big South.
Conferences are, however, composed of athletic programs, not just football programs. Athletic departments could be judged on how well they do in the Sears Cup competition (a short explanation is that the Sears Cup awards points for achievements in all sports; Stanford has, for the last several years, dominated nationally), if conferences are loath to create a mishmash of different sports with different members.
Of course, this isn't without its problems. The last time I heard, a few years ago when Idaho was renovating its stadium, IA football programs must play in a stadium which holds 30,000 fans. Were the promotion/demotion pipe dream (for that's what it is; would members of any big conference agree to the chance that they would be cast out?) ever to occur, there would be little the NCAA could do to resolve this rule, other than to remove it from the books.
Moreover, and much more problematically, any demotion of a program to / promotion of a program from division III involves the problem of scholarships; DIII doesn't award any athletic scholarships. There are programs above DIII which don't (the only ones which come to mind are the Ivy League schools, some Patriot League schools, and the service academies). I am unaware how one might resolve that; eliminate athletic scholarships altogether? That would lead to a mass exodus from the collegiate ranks, as many athletes' only chance to go to school involves such scholarships, and would force many need-based programs and grants to expand vastly to pick up slack. Allow DIII schools to grant scholarships? This would violate the pure amateurism inherent in the DIII programs. And it may well lead down the road to the mockery of amateurism that major programs - such as at Virginia Tech - have become. Washington & Lee and Chicago were early members of major conferences (the Southern, in W&L's case, from which came the SEC and ACC; and the Big Ten in the case of Chicago). Both have maintained academic ties with the institutions with which they aligned themselves almost a century ago, but both severed athletic ties with those institutions long ago, because they viewed the collegiate mission as one of education and academics, rather than athletics and entertainment.
Other thoughts rattling through my brain at this hour:
The Sun Belt Conference is a I-AA conference, even if it (and the NCAA) proclaims itself a I-A conference (conferences are differentiated, I believe, by the teams against which its members play the majority of non-conference games; if I-AA teams comprise a majority of non-conference opponents, the conference is designated I-AA, and the same is true of I-A opponents). The Sun Belt has exactly three non-conference wins against I-A teams (North Texas beat Baylor, North Texas beat Troy State and Middle Tennessee beat Troy State). If one includes Troy State in the Sun Belt (which will be the case formally next year), the Sun Belt still has exactly three non-conference wins against I-A competition (Troy State beat Marshall and UAB to cover its two losses to SB teams). Otherwise they are patsies, against teams like Oklahoma, Arkansas and Virginia (all of which, I think, scheduled SB teams for homecoming).
Temple ought to be an honourary Sun Belt member. For the last 10-20 years, Temple has been little more than a patsy in I-A football. Considering that they're losing their membership in the Big East for football, they really ought to go to the Atlantic 10, in which they have membership for their other sports, get out of the Linc and go back to Franklin Field (or wherever they played football before the minimum seating requirement; Franklin Field is Penn's home, I know) and play A-10 football.
On that same note, the Big East loses three of its better football members to the ACC, and still it doesn't ask Temple to stay. I was surprised to say the least. Not sure what that says about the Big East's faith (or lack thereof) in Temple's football program and its drawing power. If nothing else, removing Temple does mitigate the schedule strength blow that the conference took with Temple (Temple has won exactly one game, against Middle Tennessee, and lost to a I-AA opponent - and potential conference opponent - Villanova).
Penn State and the Big East would make a great fit (I know, it's another pipe dream). PSU is not a midwestern school, but might balk at leaving the Big Ten due to the academic ties they have established with the rest of the conference. And the Big Ten schools are, on average, academically superior (and with only one exception public, like Penn State) to the Big East (which is a hodgepodge of good private schools and mediocre public ones, especially with recent additions).
As psycho and nuts as their fans are, West Virginia still would have made the best addition to the ACC. It boasts natural rivalries with Maryland, Virginia Tech and, to a lesser extent, Virginia. And the quality of a conference isn't measured by the number of major markets it has (the Big East, for example, had Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Miami; the SEC, for example, has Jacksonville, Atlanta and New Orleans), but by its rivalries and overall level of play. The SEC has been so successful because of the rivalries and level of play. Every school in the SEC has at least one natural conference rival, unlike Miami or BC in the Big East (Miami's rivalries, I would argue, run toward UF and FSU, and BC's rivals are UConn - minor, but regional - and Notre Dame). In any case, I digress. West Virginia would have been an excellent twelfth team in the ACC, but were overlooked for their lack of a major market. Damn shame if you ask me. Reuniting South Carolina with the ACC would also be a good fit, if another pipe dream.
The size of the perfect conference would run from about 7 to 9 teams. This would allow for a full round robin (and, if the number is odd, allows for an equal number of home and away games in conference), and allows for opportunities to play teams from out of conference (such as rivalry games). It also allows, in basketball, for a double (in the case of 9) or, potentially, triple (in the case of 7) round robin.
Was thinking about basketball tournaments, and wondered why the bottom seed in each Big East division were left home. It is no harder to schedule 14 teams than it is to schedule 12. The only satisfactory answer I could find is logistics (which is, of course, by no means trivial). It would mean playing 6 first round games - presumably on the same day, so as not to give any team a pronounced advantage. Four games on the same day is hectic, so six would be completely nuts more than likely.
Which is the better way to seed a conference tournament when said conference consists of two divisions (such as the Big 12 or SEC)? By conference standings (Big 12), or by standings within the division (SEC)?
Zuletzt: Deacon has had to change his icon, to something which is much less identifiable, especially to a fan of college football who lives only a couple of hours and one state line away from Winston-Salem. Personally, I think Wake's stance stupid, because, whatever his political stance (with which I happen to regularly agree, for the record), Wake should be honoured to be associated with someone whose scholarship is expressed in the clear manner in which Deacon blogs. Having said that, I would be remiss if I didn't say (and, yes, I'm aware that it didn't come to a lawsuit):
It's Wake's mascot /
and they'll sue if they want to /
sue if they want to /
sue-e-e if they want to.
Which leads me to ask:
Would you sue too /
if it happened to-o-o you-u-u?
More at some later date (have no idea when) - R.
Happy Thanksgiving if I don't blog between now and then.\
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