Home of the World Series Champions

My first trip out of the state of New York in 19 months started in Louisville, but the main event was Los Angeles.  I went to my first games at Dodger Stadium ten years ago.  Since then, I’ve gotten to at least one game at Dodger Stadium most years.  I didn’t get there in 2012 or 2016.  Of course, I didn’t get there last year in a year when the Dodgers had a .719 winning percentage in 32 games at home (sadly they only got to play two of their 18 playoff games at home).  I was supposed to go in April 2020 for two games.  I would have been there for Dollar Dodger Dog Night and Friday Night Fireworks.  This year I got to two games.  There was no Dollar Dodger Dog Night (I’ll cover the Dodger Dogs later in this post), but there was Friday Night Fireworks.  The other game I went to was Clayton Kershaw World Series Champion T-shirt Night.  It was originally supposed to be Trevor Bauer Bobblehead Night.  So it went from being something I wouldn’t have wanted even before the stories about him this summer (I never liked him) to being about as good of a giveaway as you could have.

Hopefully there will be an updated version of this with Trea Turner included next year.

The Dodger rotation was set up so that Walker Buehler and Max Scherzer were in line to pitch the two games I was going to.  They decided to give them an extra day of rest so it ended up being Corey Knebel starting a bullpen game and Walker Buehler the next night.  That was a little disappointing, but I definitely would have picked Buehler over Scherzer if I was only going to see one of them.  I had seen Scherzer the Sunday before at Citi Field and Buehler is the latest in the long line of great Dodger pitchers (Scherzer is great too, but there’s a good chance that he’s only going to be with them until the end of this season whereas Buehler will hopefully spend many years of a great career with the Dodgers).

I was staying with Sean and Catherine and Sean and I were joined by Pete for the Thursday night game against the Mets (Sean and Pete are both Mets fans).  We were sitting in section 2 of the reserve level.  Dodger Stadium has a very logical numbering system.  Section 1 is directly behind home plate on each level (for some reason it’s 101 on the loge level) and the even numbered sections are on the first base side and the odd numbered sections are on the third base side.  So the lower numbers are closer to home plate.  The reserve level is right above the press box.  My ideal seat at Dodger Stadium would be low in section 1 of the reserve level. You’re right behind home plate and right above where Vin Scully spent decades calling Dodger games.  You’re not too high and it’s a great view of the whole field and background.  But I wasn’t finding any group of three seats in section 1 on the reserve level for a reasonable price so I settled for one section over.

This was our view on Thursday night.

The game went well for me.  The Dodgers scored two runs on RBI ground outs in the second inning by former Notre Dame baseball player A.J. Pollock and Chris Taylor.  The Mets scored a run in the fourth on an RBI double by J.D. Davis.  The Dodgers scored two in the fifth with an RBI double by Billy McKinney and an RBI single by Trea Turner.  That was all the scoring for the game.  The Dodgers used seven different pitchers while the Mets only used two.  Evan Phillips pitched two and a third and gave up the run for the Dodgers, but he got the win.  He had been claimed off waivers from the Rays three days earlier.  The next day he was placed on the injured list and if I wasn’t writing this blog post, I would have already forgotten that he ever pitched for the Dodgers.  Blake Treinen got the save (he’s been outstanding this year).  The game lasted two hours and 43 minutes.  It was 73° (it can be really nice in Los Angeles or it can be really hot in August, we got really nice) and attendance was 42,133.

Sean and I were back for the second game against the Mets on Friday night.  We were joined by Pete and Lorenzo for this one.  Tickets were more expensive for the Friday night game.   I tried waiting to get some cheap tickets on the reserve level.  If I had waited longer, I might have been able to, but I didn’t want to leave Pete and Lorenzo waiting for their tickets for too long.  So I settled for section 2 of the top deck.  So we were right above where we were the night before.  It’s higher up than I would prefer to be, but it’s not a bad view at all.

This is directly behind home plate on the top deck.  Dodger Stadium is beautiful.

This was our view on Friday night.

This game was Walker Buehler against Carlos Carrasco.  The Dodgers pounded Carrasco in the game I went to at Citi Field the week before.  This time he pitched better, but not good enough for the Mets.  The Dodgers took the lead in the first with an RBI groundout by Justin Turner.  I enjoyed watching some baseball with productive outs.  I hate this popular idea that strikeouts don’t matter for hitters (which also contradicts the popular idea that strikeouts are so important for pitchers, you can’t have both of those things be true).  Max Muncy drove in a run with an RBI double in the third and then Corey Seager drove him in with a single.  Pete Alonso hit a home run in the fourth and then drove in a run with an infield single in the eighth to make it 3-2, but the Dodgers were able to shut it down from there.  Buehler pitched seven and two-thirds and gave up two runs on six hits and no walks with eight strikeouts.  But he was taken out with two runners on base after Alonso’s RBI single.  He was ejected after being taken out of the game.  He was upset because Alonso hit the ball off of himself and it should have been a foul ball (of course, if it had been a foul ball, there’s a chance he hits a home run to give the Mets the lead on the next pitch).  Alex Vesia came in and walked the next batter to load the bases, but then he struck out J.D. Davis looking to end the inning.  Kenley Jansen easily retired all three batters he faced in the bottom of the ninth on seven pitches to get the save.  This game was only two hours and 39 minutes.  It was 72° and attendance was 48,117.

I got to three Dodger games this year.  They won all three (and have now won eight in a row with me in attendance dating back to April 2019), but there were some disappointments.  I didn’t get to see Clayton Kershaw or Mookie Betts.  Both were on the injured list.  Betts has since come back and hopefully Kershaw is coming back soon and hopefully they’ll help the Dodgers repeat as World Series Champions.  I did, however, get to see new acquisitions Max Scherzer and Trea Turner.  I already covered Scherzer in my post about the game at Citi Field.  In the three games I went to, Trea Turner was 7 for 12 with two doubles, six runs, two RBIs, and two stolen bases.  He’s a really good player.  When you watch a guy every day, you notice things that you probably wouldn’t notice otherwise. Trea Turner is the best slider I’ve seen (Yasiel Puig was the worst slider I’ve seen). I hope they end up re-signing World Series MVP Corey Seager and keeping both Seager and Turner, but I suspect that they’ll let Seager leave as a free agent after this year.  Sadly, neither game in Los Angeles had any pitchers do anything at the plate.  So if this was my goodbye to real National League Baseball, the last pitcher I saw drive in a run was Max Scherzer on a sacrifice fly (Scherzer is currently 0 for 45 with no walks this season, but he was a solid hitter for a pitcher before this season) and the last pitcher I saw get a hit was Edwin Uceta (who has 5 at bats in his career).

The National League game is so much more interesting.  Managers actually have to do some thinking during the game.  Last week the Dodgers played a game that managed to overcome the stupidity of the runner on second base in extra innings and be interesting.  It went 16 innings, but Jayce Tingler messed it up in the 10th inning for the Padres.  The bottom of the 10th started with catcher Austin Nola due to be the magical runner at second base (which would have been the winning run).  Nola was the fifth hitter in the lineup.  Tingler used utility infielder Ha-Seong Kim as a pinch runner.  With two outs and two on, the pitcher’s spot was up so Tingler used his last available hitter, Victor Caratini as a pinch hitter.  Caratini struck out to end the inning.  Every move so far was fine.  You have to pinch hit for the pitcher with two outs and a chance to win the game.  But now where do you put the pitcher?  You’d like to have him replace the guy that just ended the inning, but Caratini had to stay in to catch since they used a pinch runner for Nola.  Tingler had the pitcher replace pinch runner Ha-Seong Kim, meaning the pitcher’s spot was due up fifth in the next inning and he was out of pinch hitters.  He easily could have left Ha-Seong Kim in the game at second base (he’s played 18 games there this year) and have the pitcher take Adam Frazier’s spot in the order so that he’d be the eighth batter due up.  What happened?  The two guys now batting before the pitcher’s spot (Manny Machado and Jake Cronenworth) combined for five intentional walks in six plate appearances for the rest of the game to get to the pitcher’s spot.  So bad managing pretty much took the Padres’ second and third best hitters out of the game and the Dodgers got to pitch to pitchers with the game on the line instead.  With the DH, there’s no thinking involved and that doesn’t happen.  We don’t need to make managers’ jobs easier.  The Dodgers ended up winning the game in 16.  They probably would have lost if Jayce Tingler didn’t mess up handling the pitcher’s spot in the order.

Anyway, back to my trip to Los Angeles.  When one of my flights along the way landed, I took my phone off of airplane mode to see texts from Pete with the unveiling of the Dodgers’ City Connect uniforms for Nike.  I knew these were coming in August, but I was hoping it would be after my trip.  The good news is that I got to go to the game on Thursday night with the Dodgers wearing their real uniforms.  But then they wore these silly uniforms on Friday night.  They were all blue and they said “Los Dodgers” on the jerseys and hats.  There was also like a spray painty effect in black on the edge of the sleeves (which was barely noticeable on a blue jersey).  They were supposed to be inspired by the 40th anniversary of Fernandomania and Los Angeles street murals.  The hats and the blue pants looked really silly.  I can live with a blue jersey and fortunately they kept the Dodgers’ traditional fonts and colors, but the two things they did were kind of silly.  As I said, you pretty much wouldn’t notice the spray painty thing on the sleeves unless somebody pointed it out.  And honoring Fernandomania is cool, but all they did was put the word “Los” on the jersey and hat.  Do teams in Spanish speaking countries put “Los” on their uniforms?  We definitely don’t put “The” on the uniforms here.  It would make more sense if the Dodgers had a name that could be translated into Spanish (like the Giants have worn uniforms that said “Gigantes”).  I saw some people on Twitter saying that the uniforms should have said “Doyers” since that’s what a lot of Spanish-speaking people call the Dodgers.  That would have made more sense.  I also would have greatly preferred the Dodgers wearing those uniforms on the road because their home uniforms are perfect.  But in general, I hate the influence Nike has on sports.  This is absolutely Nike, not the teams, deciding how teams are going to dress.  If you want to dress up the Rockies or the Mariners or the Clippers in some silly uniforms, go right ahead.  Who cares?  But you’re just not going to do better than what the Dodgers, Cardinals, Yankees, Celtics, or Lakers already have.  Why can’t we just leave those teams’ uniforms alone?  Sell whatever jerseys and hats you want, but let them wear their beautiful classic uniforms in their games.

On a more positive note, it was a great time being back at Dodger Stadium.  The Dodgers are now 8-4 in the games I’ve been to at Dodger Stadium. Since I was there in 2019, they built a center field plaza and put a gate out there which is meant to be the front door to Dodger Stadium.  Dodger Stadium never really had a front door.  Citi Field has the Jackie Robinson Rotunda as the front door.  But with the way Dodger Stadium was built into a hill, you had gates on every level of the stadium and you just kind of used the one that was most convenient.  It seemed like the center field gate might not be the one that’s most commonly used (for both games we parked out in left field and it seemed like the line at the center field gate was much shorter than the line at the left field gate), but the whole center field plaza area was hopping before the game.  There are some food and drink options out there and there are new spots where you can stand and look at the field.  And there are new elevators and escalators that make getting around Dodger Stadium easier.  They did a really nice job with the renovation. Before these improvements, I compared Dodger Stadium and Fenway Park and said it was too close to call between them. Now Dodger Stadium has improved, but I’ll still say it’s too close to call. There are still improvements that could be made to Dodger Stadium that I’m about to cover that could be made so easily.

The food and beverage program was good, but they can be improved.  This year they changed from Farmer John to Papa Cantella’s. As the provider of the Dodger Dog.  So I had to check that out.  In my two games, I sampled the regular Dodger Dog, the Super Dodger Dog, and carne asada tacos.  If we compare Papa Cantella’s to Farmer John, I think they did taste a little different, but if I didn’t know that there was a difference, I probably wouldn’t have realized it.  I’ve heard mixed reviews comparing the two, but I definitely wouldn’t say that one was clearly better than the other.  I was satisfied with Papa Cantella’s as the new Dodger Dog provider.  The Super Dodger Dog is bigger than the regular one and it’s all beef.  It costs a dollar more, but you’re getting a more substantial hot dog and a little different taste.  I would say that I actually liked the taste of the regular one better than the Super Dodger Dog.  If we’re comparing a Nathan’s hot dog to a Dodger Dog, a Nathan’s hot dog done right is probably better (I had one bad one and one good one at Citi Field this year).  But a Dodger Dog is a nice change of pace and if you’re only getting to Dodger Stadium once or twice a year, you have to have a Dodger Dog.  Dodger Dogs can vary in quality (Sean said he had one where the bun was warmer than the dog), but the ones I had were very good. My only complaint is that they only had yellow mustard.  Dodger Stadium has definitely had real mustard in the past.  They were giving out packets, but then it seemed like there were fixings stations with dispensers on every level except for the top deck.  So I’m hoping that’s just a pandemic thing and they’ll get back to normal and have real mustard again in the future.  Pete and I both had the carne asada tacos.  I wanted to try something besides the Dodger Dog and the tacos were good.  They were fairly spicy and any more spicy probably would have been too spicy, but I enjoyed them.

Begrudgingly, I did put yellow mustard on my Dodger Dog after taking this picture.  Yellow mustard is only marginally better than putting nothing on a hot dog.  Of course, I did not put ketchup on it because that would have made it worse.

What Dodger Stadium could improve would be to have some local food options.  Like there should be a Philippe’s French Dip sandwich stand in the stadium.  They have Shake Shack now and that’s cool, but I would prefer In-N-Out for Dodger Stadium (even though I like Shake Shack better than In-N-Out).  Apparently In-N-Out doesn’t do stadiums, but something like that is what they should have.  Another option would be Tommy’s.  Catherine’s brothers had mentioned Tommy’s to me and then I saw it on Burgers, Brew, & ‘Que.  It’s a fast food burger place, but they put chili on their burgers.  Sean and I checked it out on my last day out there.  It was something different.  The fries were better than In-N-Out, but I would go back to In-N-Out the next time I’m out there.  But yeah, the Dodger Stadium food could use more of a local personality.

There was a pretty good craft beer selection, but there are a few ways they could improve.  First, it was $17.50 for a craft beer.  They were big.  I’m not sure how many ounces we’re talking about, but it was much bigger than a pint.  Give me a small option.  Make a pint like $12 and then the big option could be $17.50.  If I went to ten games a year at Dodger Stadium (which I definitely would if I lived out there), I would not get a beer at every game for $17.50.  But if there was a smaller option for $12, I probably would get that at each game.  Craft beer should also be more widely available.  We walked around the stadium a decent amount and there were a few stands that had craft beer in cans, but there was only one I saw with craft beer on tap.  If I didn’t remember it from a previous trip to Dodger Stadium, I probably wouldn’t have found it.  It was way down the left field line on the loge level.  There might have been other spots that I didn’t find, but it should be more widely available throughout the stadium.  And the other thing I would do would be to have more local craft beer.  There was a lot of California craft beer, but it seemed like a lot of it came from Northern California or San Diego.  Get more stuff from the Los Angeles area.  I wasn’t paying too much attention to what they had in cans so maybe it was a more local selection with the cans, but I only saw one on tap that was from a place closer to Los Angeles than San Francisco or San Diego.

That might have seemed critical of the craft beer selection, but I was quite happy with the two beers I had.  There was one beer that I knew Dodger Stadium had that I needed to try.  Buzzrock Brewing from Torrence partnered with Clayton Kershaw on a beer called Kershaw’s Wicked Curve.  It’s a wheat ale with grapefruit.  I was a little skeptical of the grapefruit aspect of the beer, but I had to try it based on the name alone.  They had it in cans so I had it out of a can on Thursday night.  It was really good.  I would absolutely drink it again, but I wanted to try something on tap the next night.  I tried the Made West Pale Ale from Ventura.  It was also very good.  Of all the beers I had at baseball games this year, those were my two favorites.

The picture didn’t turn out great, but the beer quality matched its name.

They should have had a bigger World Series Champions thing on the cup, but this was an excellent beer.

And being at Dodger Stadium on a Friday is always fun.  They let fans on the outfield grass to watch the fireworks.  All four of us at the game on Friday night had been out of the grass for the fireworks before, but this time we stayed in our seats (I kind of wanted to see what it was like watching them from up high).  They put on a good show.

Good times were had by all … except the Mets.

Getting back home was looking a little questionable.  Hurricane Henri was threatening Long Island.  I was supposed to land on Sunday morning at 6:30 and bad weather already started Saturday night.  Ten years ago during my first trip to Los Angeles, Hurricane Irene forced me to spend a couple extra days in Los Angeles.  On my last trip to Los Angeles before this one, I spent an extra day in Los Angeles because I had a layover in Chicago and there was a snowstorm (this was in the middle of April).  As I was checking the forecast on Friday, it seemed to get worse each time I checked it.  Then when I was checking it on Saturday, it seemed to get better each time I checked it.  As it turned out, my flight made it in on time.  The storm was pretty much a dud for the western half of Long Island.  It rained a lot and there was some decent wind, but I doubt it ever was even at tropical storm strength where I was.  So fortunately the storm was pretty much a non-factor.

These were probably my last two baseball games of the season, but I’ve got plenty more baseball to watch on TV.  Hopefully the baseball season will end the way baseball with Jim in attendance ended, with the Dodgers winning the last few games.  And college football is back.  Hopefully Notre Dame won’t have any games cancelled and it will be a good year.  Go Irish!

Fixing College Football

College football is changing in ways that are mostly not good.  I’m worried that I’m going to care very little about college football ten years from now because it will be so unrecognizable.  I’m going to try to fix college football in this post.

Overtime

I’ll start with the easiest problem to fix.  College football overtime has been stupid since it was instituted in 1996.  Earning good field position is part of football … except in college football overtime. Kickoffs and punts are part of football … except in college football overtime. They’ve changed it a couple of times and made it even stupider.  Now it’s one regular session, one where teams have to go for two if they score a touchdown, and then it’s just alternating two point conversions after that.  So how do we fix it?  Do anything else.  Anything.  Use the current NFL system.  Use the old NFL system.  Go back to not having overtime.  I’d rather have ties in regular season games than use this stupid system, it’s the runner on second in extra innings of football rules (really the runner on second in extra innings is the college football overtime of baseball rules).  Usually I don’t want college football to be more like the NFL, but this is one area where the NFL is so much better than college football.

Conference Realignment

Texas and Oklahoma are going to the SEC.  We don’t know what the future holds for the Big 12.  There’s concern about the other Power 5 conference teams losing teams and that’s what led to this Alliance.  I think the Alliance of the ACC, Pac 12, and Big 10 has the potential to be good, but I think it’s more likely that we just end up with Jack Swarbrick taped in a box trying to spy on the SEC.  

The Pac 12 said that they’re not going to expand and that’s good.  Having Pac 16 (or whatever) teams in Texas doesn’t make any sense.  But will the SEC stop expanding?  I don’t know how you have a conference with more than 16 teams, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they tried to get Ohio State and Clemson or teams like that.  I remember people talking about four superconferences with 16 teams each.  The SEC will be the first one with 16, but I could imagine them trying to create one superconference with like 24-40 teams.  And that would just be totally different from what college football has always been.  This would make it more like the NFL in ways that aren’t good.  It might be all conference games.  I love non-conference games.  This year we start with Clemson-Georgia.  Sure, that could become a conference game, but we’d lose games like Appalachian State beating Michigan in 2007.  We’d have one conference that matters and nothing else would matter.  Right now you have five conferences that matter (not every team in each conference matters, but many of them do) plus some other teams that matter (like Notre Dame, Boise State, UCF, or Cincinnati, depending on the year).  That’s a better setup than what the SEC is dreaming of.

I have some ideas for this that I like, but unfortunately they’re just never going to happen, but I’ll go through what I have.  The ideal number of teams in a conference is either nine or twelve.  Why nine or twelve?  Because the ideal number of conference games is eight.  Some conferences are playing nine games, but then you have an uneven number of home and road conference games.  With eight conference games, you get four at home, four on the road, and four non-conference games.  If you have nine teams in a conference, you play everybody once.  If you have twelve teams, you have two divisions of six teams.  You play every other team in your division once and half of the other division each year (so you play the teams in your division every year and the teams in the other division every other year).  But of the Power 5 conferences, nobody has nine teams and only the Pac 12 has twelve teams.  The Big 12 could get to twelve (I’ll get to that), but the others already have more than that.  Ideally, I would get rid of teams from the other conferences.  Nebraska doesn’t belong in the Big 10 and Rutgers has added nothing to the conference (you could also get rid of Maryland instead of Nebraska, at least Nebraska has good football history).  How has being in the ACC worked out for Boston College and Syracuse in football?  It probably has worked out financially for them, but they haven’t had any sustained success on the field.  I would go back to the SEC before they added Texas A&M, Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma.  But none of that is going to happen.

So what can we do?  The first thing is to make the Alliance work.  To do that, you need to play eight conference games and at least two non-conference games with other Alliance members.  Ideally, I would like Notre Dame to be an independent Alliance member (we can throw BYU in as well).  I would love for Notre Dame’s schedule to be this:

• Four ACC teams per year (we’re currently playing an average of five per year)

• USC

• Four other Pac 12/Big 10 teams per year (not Stanford every year)

• A wild card game against a power conference team (it could be another Alliance team, an SEC team, or a Big 12 team if they survive)

• Navy

• A buy game at Notre Dame Stadium with no return game (like another service academy, a Group of Five team, or even a lower tier Power Five team like Rutgers  or Vanderbilt)

So that would be Notre Dame’s schedule (but this is highly unlikely to happen since we have all of your ACC opponents scheduled through 2037).  For the conference teams in the Alliance, you get eight conference games, two non-conference Alliance games, and two wild card games.

What do we do about the Big 12?  I would take all the teams from Texas and Oklahoma other than Texas A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma and make that a conference (there are 10 other FBS teams in Texas plus Oklahoma State and Tulsa for a twelve-team conference).  That’s definitely not a Power 5 level conference (you’re throwing teams like UTEP and Texas State in there), but that would be a cool conference.  The Big 12 currently has four teams outside of Texas and Oklahoma (Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and West Virginia).  You take those four teams and add them to the American Athletic conference.  When you take out the Texas schools and Tulsa from the American Athletic conference and add in those teams, you end up with another twelve-team conference.  Again, it wouldn’t be a Power 5 level conference, but none of those teams I mention really need to be in a Power 5 conference (of the Big 12 teams left after Texas and Oklahoma leave, Oklahoma State is really the only one that I think definitely belongs in a Power 5 conference).

I like that idea, but that’s definitely not going to happen.  So for a more realistic idea, I think the Big 12 should add Cincinnati, Houston, UCF, and Memphis.  That would not be a conference equal to the other four Power 5 conferences, but it would definitely be better than any other conference.  I’ve seen Colorado State, BYU, and Boise State mentioned as Big 12 possibilities.  I think expanding east makes much more sense.  West Virginia is isolated in the Big 12.  Memphis and Cincinnati would kind of build a bridge to West Virginia.  Having a conference go from West Virginia to Utah or Idaho doesn’t make sense.  Houston is a huge city that would help with recruiting in Texas and UCF would get the Big 12 into Florida.

Kind of unrelated to my previous ideas, it would make sense to have football conferences that have no connection to conferences for other sports.  Texas being in the same conference as Kansas really doesn’t make sense for football, but it does make sense for basketball.  I wish Notre Dame had no connection to the ACC and was still in the Big East for our other sports.  I know the Big East isn’t really comparable to the ACC for any sports other than basketball, but I don’t care much about the other sports anyway.

As Notre Dame fans saw last year, conferences are stupid.  The best game of the regular season ended up just getting played again in the ACC Championship Game (and then there was a possibility of Round 3 in the playoff).  So rather than an Alliance of conferences, I would love a football alliance of independent teams (who would be in whatever conference for other sports).  In 1988, there were 25 independent teams and that included the teams that finished the season ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 13th.  You’re probably not getting back to 25 independent teams, but you could have a lot more than we have now.  Imagine if there was an independent alliance of Notre Dame, Texas, and USC.  If those three schools worked together, they could get a pretty awesome TV contract.  Like if those three schools agreed to a deal with NBC, then NBC could have at least one college football game per week and maybe once or twice per year have a triple header with all three teams having home games on the same day.  The service academies could work together as independents and have their own TV deal.

Actually, if we took the ACC/Pac 12/Big 10 Alliance and just made it an alliance of 42 teams (through Notre Dame and BYU in there) rather than three conferences, I think you would have something.  Each school could have a few schools that they would play every year and then you fill most of the rest of your schedule with other Alliance teams and then have two wild card games against other teams.  Like USC could play UCLA, Notre Dame, and maybe Stanford and Cal each year and then play six other Alliance teams.  Notre Dame could play USC, Michigan State, and maybe like Pittsburgh or Boston College every year.  The North Carolina schools could play each other each year (North Carolina and Wake Forest have played “non-conference” games against each other because there are some years when they don’t play against each other with the ACC schedule).  I think I stumbled into something that I really like with a 42-team alliance where those teams play 10 alliance games per year.  I would divide it into geographic regions (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest) and say that teams have to play at least one game against a team from three other regions besides their own so that you don’t end up with something like the former Pac 12 just playing 10 games against other former Pac 12 teams.  Like Oregon could play most of their alliance games against Northwest and Southwest teams, but they would have to play at least one game against alliance teams from two of the other three regions).  But yeah, this idea is never going to happen and it’s much more likely that the ACC/Pac 12/Big 10 Alliance will just end up being completely meaningless.  But I really really hope that we don’t end up with one NFL-like superconference and then everybody else playing a lower level of football.

Name, Image, and Likeness

I am all for college athletes being able to get paid to do advertisements or being able to monetize a YouTube channel or being able to play Major League Wiffle Ball and make money off your jersey sale (MLW sells their jersey t-shirts, but they couldn’t sell Jack Aigner’s until recently because he also plays college lacrosse) or being able to get paid to play music in a bar or EA Sports being able to make a college football video game where they pay the players to use their names.  But there are going to be negative consequences.  You’re going to have more kids that don’t care about getting an education because they’re going to be making money.  I don’t like the idea of recruiting being “come to Alabama to play quarterback because you’re going to get a million-dollar endorsement deal.”  I don’t really have a solution for this one.

I’m fine with kids being able to make money on their own, but schools should not be paying the players.  For the overwhelming majority of college athletes, getting a free college education provides them with way more value than they provide to their school.  Schools still have an obligation to provide an actual education to their athletes which so many schools ignore.  Duke and Kentucky basketball are the most glaring examples where schools are taking kids who have no interest in getting an education and are just there as hired mercenaries (yes, Duke is just as bad as Kentucky).  Of course, in basketball you only have to stay for one year.  In football, you have to stay for three years.  Sure, Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State are going to have players leave early for the NFL, but some schools have shameful graduation rates that are way too low for the explanation to just be that kids are leaving early for the NFL.  I remember Oklahoma having a graduation rate of 47% several years back.  Yes, Oklahoma has guys who will leave early for the NFL, but it’s not 53% of their players.  One change I would make is that athletic scholarships are four-year commitments for the schools (not the players) as long the players stay academically eligible.  If you want to leave early for the NFL, you should be able to do that, but a school should not be able to pull your scholarship because you didn’t turn out to be a good player.

Bowls/College Football Playoff

I absolutely hate the idea of a twelve-team playoff.  It would completely ruin college football’s regular season.  The plan seems to be on hold for now, but it was supposed to be 12 teams, with the six highest-ranked conference champions getting an automatic bid.  Automatic qualifiers for conference champions would render non-conference games meaningless.  And 12 teams is just way too many.  I was thinking of past Notre Dame teams and games.  In 2006, we would have made the playoff as the 11 seed.  We had no business competing for the National Championship that year.  In 1988, we played Miami in the greatest football game of my lifetime.  And it would have meant nothing with the 12-team playoff.  A game that gets overlooked from 1988 was our game against USC (probably because it was the same year as the Miami game).  It was the last game of the regular season.  Both teams were undefeated, ranked 1 and 2, and two wins away from a National Championship (USC ended up losing the Rose Bowl also, but if they had beaten us and won the Rose Bowl, they would have won the National Championship that year).  We dominated USC and then won the Fiesta Bowl and the National Championship.  With a twelve-team playoff, our win over USC would have meant … nothing.  Think about the USC game in 2005, the Stanford and Oklahoma games in 2012, the Clemson game in 2015, and the Michigan game in 2018.  Those games all determined whether or not Notre Dame and their opponent had a chance to play for the National Championship.  With a twelve-team playoff, both teams in each of those games would still make the playoff.  It would make the college football regular season much more like the NFL regular season. And that’s not a good thing.  Even the four-team playoff (plus conference championship games) diminish the regular season.  We beat Clemson in the regular season last year, but we had to play them again in the ACC Championship and we both made the playoff.  Clemson and Georgia open this season against each other.  The loser of that game has a very good chance of making the playoff if they win their conference.

The bowls have slowly lost their meaning ever since the BCS started.  In 1977, three bowls had a hand in determining the National Championship.  Number 5 Notre Dame beat number 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.  Number 2 Oklahoma lost in the Orange Bowl and number 4 Michigan lost in the Rose Bowl and Notre Dame ended up winning the National Championship.  Now if you’re not in the playoff, nobody cares about the other bowls.  Also, the College Football Playoff was supposed to reclaim New Year’s Day for college football.  That works when the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are the playoff games, but in the other years, the playoff games are before New Year’s Day and then it’s just weird having the other bowls after that.  Now with the twelve-team proposal, the bowls would be the round of 8 in the playoff.  So you could have the fifth-ranked team upset in the first round.  If that happens, either the fifth-ranked team is not playing in a bowl game or they’re playing in a bowl game that has absolutely no meaning (they probably just wouldn’t play in a bowl game).

So what should we do?  My ideal scenario would be to go back to more traditional bowl matchups and then have the top two teams play after that.  So if we use 1977 as an example, Notre Dame and Alabama would have been the top two teams after the bowls (Alabama was ranked third and they won the Sugar Bowl).  I could live with a four-team playoff after the bowls.  Here’s how I would do the matchups:

Rose Bowl:  Pac 12 vs. Big 10

Orange Bowl/Sugar Bowl (rotating):  ACC vs. SEC

Non ACC vs. SEC Orange/Sugar Bowl/Cotton Bowl/Fiesta Bowl/Peach Bowl:  Two highest ranked conference champions from the other conferences and six at large teams

The teams for the Championship Game (or a four-team playoff) would be selected from the winners of those games.  So let’s use the rankings from 2012 as an example (2020 was too weird and 2012 was my favorite regular season that I remember), but assume that Ohio State was eligible for a bowl game and that they won the Big 10.  I’m setting a limit of four teams from one conference.  Then we could avoid conference matchups in bowl games and if you’re the fifth best team in your conference, you don’t deserve to play for the National Championship.  This is what it might look like:

Rose Bowl:  6 Stanford vs. Ohio State (not ranked because they weren’t eligible for a bowl game, but they were undefeated and definitely wouldn’t have been ranked any worse than third)

Orange Bowl:  12 Florida State vs. 2 Alabama

Cotton Bowl:  5 Kansas State vs. 1 Notre Dame

Fiesta Bowl:  3 Florida vs. 4 Oregon

Peach Bowl: 7 Georgia vs. 15 Northern Illinois

Sugar Bowl:  8 LSU vs. 11 Oklahoma

I would have two of these games on New Year’s Eve at like 2:00 and 5:30 and the other four on New Year’s Day.  There are other ways you can set up the matchups for the games other than the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl, but the way I did it was to assign teams to logical bowls (Georgia in the Peach Bowl, LSU in the Sugar Bowl, Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl) and to have two games that probably don’t matter.  If you just picked the top two teams after these games, the Peach Bowl and Sugar Bowl winners have no chance.  If it was a four-team playoff, the only way they would have any chance would be to have Florida State beat Alabama, but if that happened it might be enough for Florida State to make it to the playoff.  If we adjusted the rankings to include Ohio State, the top seven teams clearly have a chance to make a four-team playoff and if you’re ranked outside of the top 6, I don’t feel bad if you don’t have a chance to make a four-team playoff.

So yeah, college football is changing.  Notre Dame joining a conference is something I never want to see.  Probably the only good thing about a twelve-team playoff would be that there would be absolutely no reason for Notre Dame to ever join a conference.  Why join a conference if there are six at large spots available?  And if we get to a point where a team can go 9-3 or even 8-4 and then have a chance to compete for a National Championship, that’s not a version of college football that I want to see.  This isn’t college basketball.  College football’s regular season is so much fun.  Please don’t mess it up.  But I fear that college football is like National League Baseball without the DH.  I’m just going to have to enjoy it the way it is while it lasts.

Pee Wee Reese’s Town

Louisville was the home of Dodger legend Pee Wee Reese. After the Yankees, you’re talking about the Dodgers, Cardinals, Giants, Red Sox, and A’s if you’re talking about the teams with the best history (actually success would be a better word, the Dodgers have a better history than all of those teams). And Pee Wee Reese is one of the greatest Dodgers of all time. He’s second to Clayton Kershaw in franchise history in WAR. I’m a much bigger fan of stats that count or measure things that actually happen in baseball games. So if we use those, Reese is second to Zack Wheat in hits (Reese probably would have ended up around 2,600 if not for missing three years because of World War II, but that would still put him around 200 behind Zack Wheat). He’s the Dodgers’ all time leader in runs scored and walks. The story about Pee Wee Reese putting his arm around Jackie Robinson in Cincinnati is partially legend (that might have happened at some point, but not in Cincinnati in 1947 the way the story is always told), but he is known for being a Southerner who accepted Jackie Robinson as his teammate. If we’re ranking all time Dodgers, Reese is probably third or fourth on the list of position players (behind Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson in some order and possibly Roy Campanella) and I’d also put him behind Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, and Don Drysdale. So I have him as the sixth or seventh best Dodger of all time. He’s also the only player to play in every World Series game between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers (44 games from 1941-1956). Anyway, I visited Pee Wee Reese’s home town last week.

Last April, I had my Easter vacation trip planned to get to baseball games in three different cities, Louisville, Wichita, and Los Angeles.  Why Louisville and Wichita?  I have spent very little time in Kentucky and Kansas.  My Kentucky experiences are driving through Kentucky on the way to and from the Notre Dame-Georgia Tech game in 2006 (Dennis liked the Kentucky accent when we stopped at Arby’s) and the Cincinnati airport.  I’ve spent even less time in Kansas.  I did some driving through Kansas in 2014 and made one stop pretty much just to actually set foot in Kansas.  Besides spending very little time in Kansas, Wichita had a brand new minor league stadium (I was supposed to go to what was supposed to be the second game there).  I used the credit I had from my canceled trip to do a trip to two of those cities.  I stopped in Louisville on my way out to Los Angeles.  Wichita will have to wait.  Maybe I’ll get there next year. Iowa and Oklahoma are two other states where I’d like to see some minor league baseball at some point. I visited the Field of Dreams and spent a night in Iowa, but I didn’t see any sports there. I visited Mickey Mantle’s house in Oklahoma, but I didn’t see any sports there either. And Oklahoma is home to the Dodgers’ triple-A and double-A teams. Oklahoma might be combined with a trip to Texas to see a Rangers game since that’s the only Major League stadium I haven’t been to and it’s where the Dodgers won 11 playoff games last year (I thought about doing Oklahoma and Texas on this trip instead of Louisville, but it didn’t quite work out with my schedule).

Anyway, I got to Louisville in the late afternoon and just hung out until the game.  It was triple-A baseball between the Gwinnett Stripers (Braves) and the Louisville Bats (Reds).  Triple-A is fun because there will be players that you know.  This game had Christian Pache, Eddie Rosario, Orlando Arcia, Johan Camargo, and Ender Inciarte.  It was a quick game with really good pitching except for the fifth inning.  Gwinnett got a grand slam from Eddie Rosario (who finished this game hitting .083 in the minors, but he’s spent most of the season in the majors, where he’s hitting .254).  Louisville got a run on a groundout in the bottom of the inning.  And that was all the scoring for the game.  The only other almost highlight for the rest of the game was a foul ball coming near me.  I was in the first row under an overhang.  If not for the overhang, the ball probably would have landed a row behind me and maybe three or four seats to my right.  The game was over in a quick two hours and 21 minutes.  The box score says the attendance was 3,532.  I would estimate that the actual attendance was less than a third of that.  There was nobody sitting near me (I was in the section behind the visitors’ dugout, but I was several rows back).

This was my view for the game.

As you can see, there were a lot of empty seats.

There was a pretty good food and beer selection.  If I had been able to go to more games this year, I might have gone for a turkey leg, but since I only got to seven games this year, I wanted to stick to hot dogs for the most part since it is the classic baseball food (and when done right, they are delicious).  There were different versions of hot dogs there.  Most of the concession stands had two versions of hot dogs, but then there were a couple of stands that had two versions of premium hot dogs.  The Grand Slam Dog was huge, so I opted for the Slugger Dog, which was the smaller premium hot dog.  It was very good, but unfortunately they only had yellow mustard.  The beer selection was good, but it seemed like all the craft beer was in cans.  All the beer on tap was the cheap stuff.  I had a Country Boy Cougar Bait, a blonde ale from a brewery in Lexington, Kentucky.  It was probably my favorite beer that I had enjoyed at a baseball game this season to that point.

Louisville Slugger Field was a very good minor league stadium.  I’m going to rank it fifth on my list of minor league stadiums.  It’s a nice looking stadium with good food and beer, but there was no atmosphere with a capacity of 13,131 and about 12,000 empty seats (in my estimation).  It was a Wednesday night during a pandemic and the weather wasn’t great (hot and cloudy with a little rain) so the small crowd was understandable (and it was nice being able to watch a baseball game without a lot of people around), but that contributes to Louisville Slugger Field being only number five on my list.  If you had 10,000 fans there, I might rank it as high as number 1, but I can only rank these stadiums based on the experience I had in each one.

This was my only minor league game of the season (I was supposed to get to one more, but as things sometimes go in 2021, that didn’t happen), but it was my second game in a minor league stadium as I saw the Blue Jays at Sahlen Field.  So I have to rank that one as well.  We’re putting that one in at number 13.  Here are the updated rankings:

24. Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton

23. Dehler Park in Billings

22. Arvest Ballpark in Springdale

21. Autozone Park in Memphis

20. TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey

19. Memorial Stadium in Boise

18. KeySpan Park in Brooklyn

17. Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo

16. Isotopes Park in Albuquerque

15. TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha

14. Daniel S. Frawley Stadium in Wilmington

13. Sahlen Field in Buffalo

12. Greater Nevada Field in Reno

11. NBT Bank Stadium in Syracuse

10. Richmond County Bank Ballpark on Staten Island

9. Dickey-Stephens Park in Little Rock

8. Joseph L. Bruno Stadium in Troy

7. Bethpage Ballpark in Central Islip

6. Four Winds Field in South Bend

5. Louisville Slugger Field

4. Frontier Field in Rochester

3. Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston

2. Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford

1. Regions Field in Birmingham