The SoapBoxers

After one day of the NCAA tournament, I stand at 13-3.  That’s not great, since “chalk” picks would have gone 14-2.

My best pick was #12 VCU over #5 Wichita State.  (Note: numbers used in this article are seeds, and not rankings).  Personally, I didn’t even consider this to be an upset.  This is a team that made a Final Four run last year.  Regardless of player turnover, coach Shaka Smart  remains with the team.  I’m not yet anointing VCU as this decade’s Gonzaga, but I’d like to point out the fact that Smart is 10-1 all-time in post-season tournaments.  In addition to the success last year, he led the 2010 team to the CBI tournament championship.  Sure, the CBI is a far less prestigious tournament, but it would seem that Smart does well with the one-and-done philosophy of tournament play.  Whether Smart can continue to turn down opportunities to earn more money at other schools remains to be seen – but it would be nice to see him stick around VCU and turn them into a perennial power.

My worst pick was Davidson over Louisville.  Even worse, I picked Davidson to advance to the Sweet 16.  One of these years, I’m going to do a chalk bracket, I swear.

UConn became the first defending champ to get bounced in the first round since UCLA in 1996.  My Iowa State Cyclones roared out to a 22 point lead early in the game and fended off some late charges by the Huskies.  Iowa State now faces #1 overall seed Kentucky.  However, if the team can manage to play as well as they did early in last night’s game, I think they have a chance to win the game an advance.  I do have the concerns that Royce White may have punched his ticket to the NBA and will leave after this year.  I’d really prefer that he return for at least another year.  The 6’8″ power forward led the Cyclones in five statistical categories and is quick to exploit mismatches.

The biggest story of the day was #1 seed Syracuse needing a second half rally to beat 16 seed UNC Asheville.  Although coach Jim Boeheim didn’t thing that the Orange were the beneficiaries of any luck in the game, I would disagree.  This is a game that was hotly contested in the final minute, and could easily have gone either way – especially if a controversial call had gone UNC Asheville’s way.  I initially had Syracuse as a Final Four team in my bracket, but pulled them back to be just a Sweet 16 team upon the news that Fab Melo would not be allowed to play in any tournament games.  I think this was a wise decision.

Personally, I thought the biggest surprise in the Thursday session was the Pac 12 getting a win from Colorado.  The Pac 12 was a very mediocre (bad) conference this year, and was fortunate to get two teams into the 68 team field (Cal was bounced in the opening round).

Personally, I don’t find it that surprising that some of the teams from smaller schools play well in the tournaments.  The standard mantra from the analysts is that it’s all about having a team peak at tournament time.  For teams that come from one-bid conference, they are in the tournament because they won their conference tournament.  That’s the definition of peaking. 

OK, day 2 is about to begin.  Enjoy!

It might be turning around for Eldrick Tont Woods.

He got blasted 7 & 6 in his first round match while being partnered with Steve Stricker.

He clinched the President’s Cup for the American side, giving Fred Couples the opportunity to do his best Muhammad Ali impersonation of shadow boxing in the beginning of the victory celebration.

Tiger Woods appears to have turned the corner. In difficult conditions at Royal Melbourne Golf Club he rarely missed fairways, showed improved bunker play, and found his putting stroke in the singles matches. This all on the heels of a 3rd place finish in another tournament down under just a week before.

Fred Couples called him the best player ever and stated there was no way you could leave that type of guy off of a team assembling the finest golfers on the PGA tour. No matter that Tiger had slipped to 50th in the World Rankings.

Tiger make Fred look wise enough with the selection. Having Tiger involved in the President’s Cup matches obviously made the television audience greater than it otherwise would have been. More importantly I saw a more balanced swing out of Eldrick, he looked in control of his shots in horrible wind condition. I think it could be a decent bounce back year for him in 2012. He seems to have his focus and now more importantly his swing appears to be back as well.

Wow what a week in college football!

Oklahoma State loses on the road in Ames to a lowly Iowa State team. Those pesky Cyclones always seem to beat someone. RG III puts one hand on the Heisman with a big upset of Oklahoma. It appears that Texas Tech loss was no fluke. The Sooners cannot defend the pass whatsoever. Speaking of not defending, the Huskers get housed at the Big House losing by an “N” barrasing 28 points to Michigan.

Meanwhile back in the SEC, the teams have claimed the top 3 spots in the BCS rankings. The real question is does anyone north of the Mason Dixon line or west of the Mississippi river even care about the SEC?

J-E-T-S – Lose! Lose! Lose! Lose!

See what happens when you rag about how a guy can’t throw the football at all, talk about how bored you are going to be watching the other team run the football.

Well…that bum from the Florida Gators moved his team 95 yards and scored the go ahead touchdown to beat your sorry green butts.

Tebow Time in Denver! Amazingly all sports fans are correct about Tim Tebow. He is a lousy NFL passing quarterback, he can’t throw a lick. He is a winner, all he does is wins games. I can’t remember such a divided sports figure as Tebow in my lifetime where the pro’s and con’s are technically both correct in their arguments, but yet still stand firmly behind their side and won’t agree with the other side of the argument.

Discount Double Check!

Overheard by me at the Detroit airport when a sports bar was showing highlights of the Packers Game on Sunday. As soon as they show Aaron Rodgers the table of Viking fans behind me dropped the “discount double check” belt move from State Farm Commercials….Classic!

Until Next time….

Stay classy Gas City, Indiana

Iowa State wrapped up their football season with a disappointing loss against Missouri on November 20 and ended the season at 5-7.  At the beginning of the season, I figured that five wins would be a best case scenario, given the difficulty of the schedule (non-conference games against Iowa and Utah and road tilts against Texas and Oklahoma).  As it stands, we ended up with five wins, and I’m disappointed that we didn’t catch a couple of breaks that could have gotten us a couple more wins.  Mark my word, we’re going back to a bowl game next year.

Former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney, currently the defensive line coach for Urban Meyer at Florida, will be the new head coach at North Texas.  McCarney had a 56-85 record with the Cyclones, but the overall wins and losses don’t do justice to the work Mac did to build the program.  Iowa State was fresh off an 0-10-1 season when McCarney took the reigns from Jim Walden.  In Walden’s seven seasons and head coach, the Cyclones mustered a winning record just once (6-5 in 1989).  After just ten total wins in the first four seasons under McCarney, Iowa State burst onto the national scene in 2000 with a nine win season – and the first bowl appearance since 1978.  In a six year span between 2000 and 2005, the Cyclones played in five bowl games.  After a 4-8 season in 2006, McCarney was fired.  That night, I sent a short email thanking him for everything he had done for the program.  McCarney, in the process of cleaning out his office and figuring out what his next career move was, took a moment to reply.

My wife’s favorite NFL team, the St. Louis Rams, find themselves in contention for a playoff berth.  At 5-6, they are tied for first place in a mediocre NFC West.  Rookie quarterback Sam Bradford is leading the way with a successful debut season – 17 touchdown passes against 9 interceptions.  No 7-9 team has ever made the playoffs – but it  could happen this year.  In any case, the season has been a big step forward for a team that had just one win last year.  At the beginning of the season, I wondered if the Rams wouldn’t have been better off to trade star running back Steven Jackson in an effort to plug multiple holes … but it seems that the Rams have found a way to get to the next level without sacrificing their best player.

The Yankees and shortstop Derek Jeter are reportedly far apart in negotiations.  It’s an odd case.  On paper, the Yankees would seem to hold all the cards.  Jeter is coming off a very poor season, and at at 36, is at an age when a decline in abilities is expected.  Barry Bonds aside, players generally do not improve their statistics in the waning years of their careers.  Additionally, Jeter is a type A free agent, meaning that teams would have to sacrifice a first round pick to sign him.  At this point, I think many teams see the folly in signing an aging type A player.  The Braves signed Tom Glavine as a type A player after the 2007 season.  It ended up being a bad signing, with Glavine giving limited value to the Braves, while at the same time, the Braves handed the division rival Mets Ike Davis on a silver platter (the Mets drafted Davis with a pick they were awarded as compensation for the Glavine signing).  On the flip side, Jeter is a Yankee icon, and there is fear on backlash from the fans if they front office fails to ensure that he finishes his career in pinstripes.  What am I hoping for?  I hope the Yankees massively overpay Jeter.  More money for Jeter means less money for players who could actually contribute to the team in the future.

On Monday night, my Colorado Rockies extended the contract of Troy Tulowitzki, adding six years and $119 million to his existing deal.  He had been signed through 2013, with a club option for the 2014 season.  Tulo is now signed through the 2020 season.  While I’m glad to know that the Yankees or Red Sox won’t be snapping up Tulo as a free agent any time soon, lengthy contracts can be worrisome in baseball, where the money is guaranteed.  The deal should serve to put a ceiling on Jeter’s contract.  It would be difficult to argue that a Jeter approaching 40 is worth more than Tulo in his prime.

In a recent edition of Sports Illustrated, I saw some ads for the publication’s annual swimsuit edition, which is now a multimedia experience – not just the magazine, but a calendar, video, and more.  It made me wonder how much of SI’s revenue comes from swimsuit model and how much comes from the coverage of sports?  My favorite sports publication, Sports Weekly, doesn’t have a swimsuit edition, or anything even close to it.  That’s probably a good thing – I really have no interest in seeing Paul White in a Speedo.

As you may have notice, we have a new theme on the site today.  I got about 18 months of life out of Drew Stauffer’s Elements of SEO theme.  I doubt Drew would have recognized the theme when I was finished tweaking it – the finished product looked nothing at all like the original.  It was a great learning experience, and I thank Drew for assisting in my development.

Recently, I kicked off a site to save Dinger, the Rockies mascot, from possible extinction.  While setting up that site, I became aware of the Notepad theme by N. Design.  True to my nature, I have also tweaked this theme a bit – adding author photos bio information, adding the logo at the top, and making a handful of other changes under the hood.  If you notice anything that looks really strange, send me an email at kosmo@ObservingCasually.com (include information about your OS and browser, if possible).  It’s a mostly complete solution (until I get restless again), although I do want to tweak things so that less information will print when you print an article.

Today is election day in the United States.  I will be making a trip to the poll with my 3 year old daughter and 10 month old son.  I’ll make a concerted effort to prevent my daughter from pulling many levers.  I urge you also to vote.  Although pundits are expecting a record turnout for a mid-term election, that turnout is still expected to be just 40% of eligible voters.  Surely there’s at least one race that’s important to you?  Bear in mind that congressional redistricting in many state legislatures – these races could shape how your state is represented in the US House of Representatives for the next 10 years.

The San Francisco Giants defeated the Texas Rangers to win the World Series.  I hate the Giants, since they are in my division, but I have to take off my hat and applaud their performance this year.  They weren’t the most talented team offensively, but they managed to get the job done when it counted (including a completely unexpected offensive explosion early in the World Series).

It was a good weekend for football in Iowa.  The Iowa Hawkeyes (located in the city where I live, and my wife’s favorite team) demolished previously undefeated Michigan State.  More importantly, my Iowa State Cyclones rode a dominant 3rd quarter to a win over The Angry Squirrel’s Kansas Jayhawks and now stand just one win away from bowl eligibility.

The Vikings waived wide receiver Randy Moss just 4 games after giving up a third round draft pick to acquire him.  I’ve been on a team boycott since they picked up Brett Favre, but recent personnel moves have made me wondering if my boycott will continue beyond the Favre era.  While I hate to say most of this is the fault of Brad Childress, most of this is the fault of Brad Childress (I hated to say it, but I still said it).

Nationals Nation (village?) suffered a huge setback when it was announced that top prospect Stephen Strasburg would need to undergo Tommy John surgery.  The surgery, named for the former pitcher whose career it saved, involves having an elbow ligament replaced with a tendon harvested from elsewhere in the body.  There’s a roughly 90% chance of success, and rehabilitation generally takes a year.  This means that Strasburg will likely be aiming for a return on the opening day of the 2012 season.

Interestingly, some players actually throw a bit harder after the surgery (for a few years) than they did previously – so Strasburg’s fastball might have a bit more kick when he returns.  (Some nut job parents have approached doctors requesting that the surgery be performed on their healthy sons, simply to get this benefit).  While this is obviously a setback for Strasburg, I’m confident that he’ll return as strong as ever in time for the 2012 season.  MLBDepthChart.com has put together a Tommy John Tracker that will track the progress of those slated for the operation.

If you’re in a “keeper” fantasy league and Strasburg’s owner drops him, I’d suggest snapping him up for the long haul.  Similarly, if you can make a trade for pennies on the dollar, go for it.

My Rockies have been alternating hot and cold streaks.  They faced off against the Phillies on Thursday.  A win would have allowed them to climb within 4 ½ games of Philadelphia in the wild card race.  The Rockies got out to an early 7-3 lead, but ended up losing the game 12-11, slipping to 6 ½ games out of the wild card race.

At this point, there seems to be little hope of catching the Phillies in the wild card – but I’m not convinced that the Rockies are out of the division race.  We’re 7 ½ games behind the front-running Padres – but the Padres have been in a free-fall recently, losing seven straight games.  The Rockies began a 3 games series against the Padres on Friday night (after this article was written) – and a sweep would pull the Rockies to within 4 ½ games on the division lead.  A Padres sweep would likely close the curtain on the Rockies’ playoff chances.

If you haven’t been paying attention to Carlos Gonzalez, this would be a good time to start.  CarGo launched his 31^st homer (“car bomb”) on Thursday night.  He leads the National League in batting average (.332) and slugging percentage (.610) and is 5^th in homers.  It’s possible that a hot September could push CarGo to the lead in homers and RBI and allow him to be the first NL triple crown winner since Ducky Medwick.

CarGo has dramatic home/road split (.391 with 24 homers at home vs. .275 with 7 homers on the road) but you can’t just point to Coors Field as the source of his numbers.  Overall, Coors has tended to add about 120 OPS points to a player’s numbers – CarGo’s 2010 differential is nearly 500 points.  I hypothesize that a large mental factor comes into player that allow some players to amplify the effects of their home park and other players to consistently underperform expectations (such as Ryan Howard of the Phillies, who has roughly even career home/road splits despite playing in a hitter’s paradise).  Whatever the reason, a player who can be absolutely dominant in half the games provides considerable value to a team.

Gonzalez’s teammate Troy Tulowitzki sports a .319 batting average, but you won’t see him listed among the league leaders.  That’s because an earlier  injury cost him playing time and is causing Tulo to fall just short of the threshold to qualify for the batting title (3.1 plate appearances for each game his team has played).  Tulo is currently 8 plate appearances short, so expect him to pop up on the list soon.

You might wonder what would happen if a player had a much higher batting average than anyone else in the league, but fell just short of the threshold – would he be denied the batting title?  Nope.  In these cases, “empty” at bats are added to a player’s totals to determine if he is the champion.  For example, Tulowitzki has 114 hits in 357 at bats, for a .319 batting average.  If the season ended at this point, we’d add 8 at bats (and no hits) and recalculate – 114 hits in 365 at bats, for a .312 batting average.  If this was the highest batting average in the league, Tulo would be the batting champion.  If someone else had a .313 batting average, he wouldn’t be the champion.  In either case, he would still be credited with his actual .319 batting average.

The Iowa State Cyclones kicked off the football season on Thursday night against Northern Illinois.  The Cyclones looked good at some point and bad in others.  It was a definite must-win game for a team facing the schedule from hell.  We face road games at Iowa, Texas, and Oklahoma – and face Utah in one of our pre-seasons games.  It’s possible that the team would be better than last year’s 7-6 squad, but emerge with a worse record.

And in my own backyard, the University of Iowa (in-state rivals to my alma mater) locked up head football coach Kirk Ferentz through the year 2020.  His base salary starts at $3,675,000 and he get a longevity bonus that starts at $325,000 and increases each year.  I think Ferentz is a great coach, but this makes no sense to me.  These sorts of deals just give a false sense of security to the fans of the team.  The coach can still bolt for a better job at any time.  The only thing that it really does is make it impossible to fire a coach if things head south – because the school is on the hook for the entire value of the contract.  Hopefully Ferentz will still be around in 2020 and this will be an academic issue.

This is my first live article in about a week. The newest member of the Observer family was welcomed into the world last Tuesday. It was a bit earlier than planned, but we’re happy he decided to join us. We’ll be even happier once he figures out the difference between day and night.

With a new baby in the house, I have understandably been a bit behind on sports news. That’s a bit of a shame, since it has been a pretty newsworthy week.

There are reports that Matt Holliday is closed to signing a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. I’d love to see this happen. If the Rockies can’t have Holliday (and it appears that they can’t) then the Cardinals would probably be my second favorite landing spot, since they are currently my second favorite baseball team.  One of the rumors sets the terms of the contract at $112 million over 7 years – an average of $16 million per year.  This would be comparable to the deal that Jason Bay signed with the Mets (worth up to $80 million over 5 years if his option vests).  A key point is the length of the contract – a 7 year deal would be a nice coup for agent Scott Boras.  Holliday and Bay are often regarded as being comparably productive offensively, with Holliday deemed the better defender.

Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who led the Red Raiders to the brink of an undefeated seasons in 2008, was summarily dismissed by the team.  The school says that Leach mistreated a player by forcing him to stay in a dark shed near the practice field when the player had suffered a concussion in a previous practice.  The school then fired Leach for refusing to apologize to the player.  I’ll admit that I haven’t been getting all of the sports news lately, but this seems to be just a fraction of the story.  I find it difficult to believe that a school would fire a winning coach over an incident with one player.  On the other hand, there is a renewed focus on concussions recently, as well as a few firings of coaches who were deemed to be abusive.

Iowa State hung on in the Insight Bowl to pick up a 14-13 victory over their northern neighbors, the Minnesota Golden Gophers.  The Cyclones finished the season with 7 wins, up from just two wins in 2008.  At the end of 2008, I was cautiously optimistic for this year, as I felt that the team had been more competitive than in 2007.  However, I did not expected new head coach Paul Rhoads to take the team to a bowl game quite yet.  The team was just a couple of bad breaks away from having 8 or 9 wins.  The best win of the year?  The 9-7 victory over Nebraska – courtesy of 8 turnovers by the eventual Big XII North champion Cornhuskers.

And in the “what were they thinking” segment, Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton of the NBA’s Washington Wizards reportedly pulled guns on each other in a dispute over debts arising from card games.  It seems that we have a couple of issues here.  First, if you need to use a gun to settle a gambling debt, your elevator probably doesn’t go all the way to the top.  Second, if you’re incurring large enough gambling debts that would cause a teammate to pull a gun on you, you just might have a gambling problem.  Seriously, guys, you’re living the dream of millions of kids – making some serious coin for playing basketball.  Don’t mess it up with something stupid.

Football in Iowa

This past weekend was a great weekend for the two largest state universities in Iowa.  My alma mater, Iowa State University, traveling to Lincoln, Nebraska to face Johnny Goodman’s Huskers.  ISU’s program has fallen on hard times recently – or, more accurately, regressed back to the mean after several strong seasons under former coach Dan McCarney.  We hadn’t won in Lincoln since 1977.  Starting quarterback Austen Arnaud and running back Alexander Robinson (the conference’s leading rusher going into the weekend) were sidelined by injuries.  Several Cyclone payers were vomiting on the sideline as the result of flu-like symptoms.  

Not surprisingly, the offense sputtered and managed just nine points.  The much-maligned defense made those nine points stand up, holding the Huskers to just a single touchdown.  Nebraska made many journeys in to Iowa State territory, but were repeatedly stopped by an opportunistic defense that force seven fumbles (recovering five) and making three interceptions.

In East Lansing, Michigan, the University of Iowa (my wife’s favorite school) was caught in a defensive struggle with the Michigan State Spartans.  As the game wound down, there was a distinct possibility that the Hawks would also win a game by scoring just nine points.  I wondered if two 1-A school from the same state had ever won games on the same day with some few combined points?  (As a sidenote, Iowa won a game against Penn State by the score of 6-4 a couple of years ago).  

Michigan State executed a beautiful hook and ladder play during its final drive and score a TD to go ahead 13-9 with ninety seconds to go.  Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi lead the team down the field for one last chance at victory.  A Michigan State interception seemed to seal the deal – except that the defender had committed a defensive holding penalty on the receiver.  The drive was still alive.  With fifteen seconds left on the clock, Iowa had a first and goal on the seven yard line.  Three plays later, the Hawks were still on the seven yard line.  Amazing, the three plays had taken just thirteen seconds, leaving two precious seconds remaining.  Stanzi hit QB-turned-receiver Marvin McNutt for a TD to put Iowa up 15-13 with no time left.  By rule, the offensive team must attempt the PAT (because blocked PATs can be returned by the defense for two points).  Iowa “attempted” a two point conversion by having Stanzi take a knee on the attempt.

Mall Kiosks

I was at the mall with my family on Monday night.  As I approach the lotion kiosk that houses the incredibly aggressive sales people, I hear one of them whisper “that’s him” to the female employee, pulling her back toward the kiosk (where they belonged in the first place).  Male employee and I had a bit of a discussion a while back in which I suggested that he not harass people.  I responded to his whisper by saying “Yeah, it’s me – the guy who will file a criminal complaint against you if you harass us again.”  I really don’t like being rude to people (and am very polite 98% of the time, but I have very little tolerance for rudely aggressive sales people.  I have a right to walk through a mall without being pestered.  Hopefully the male employee is telling ALL of their employees to stay away from me.  That’s all I ever asked for in the first place.