A Very Jim Christmas

I don’t think I’ve ever done a true Christmas blog post so I’m doing one now.  I’ve made some Christmas top five lists and a bottom five list.  I tried to make this short, but it turned out to be longer than I was planning. Anyway, let’s get to it.

I’ll start with half-hour TV shows/specials:

5.  South Park Season 4- There are good South Park Christmas episodes.  The season 4 episode has the kids making the animated film and Mr. Hankey’s family so I would rank that one ahead of the Christmas in Canada episode and the Woodland Critter Christmas episode.

4.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas- It’s a Christmas classic.  The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge always get remembered for what they’re like at the beginning of the story.  People should remember how they changed.

3.  The Office Season 2- If we’re looking at Christmas episodes of the Office, I think it has to be between season 2 and season 3, I would go with the season 2 episode, but season 3 is also excellent).  It’s a shame there was no season 4 Christmas episode (because of the writers strike) because it would have been awesome (the first half of season 4 is fantastic).  If I was ranking the Office Christmas episodes, it would go 2, 3, 6, 7, 5, 9, 8.  Season 8 and 9 are obviously the worst because there’s no Michael.  Season 8 is the worst because there’s no Michael, but there is Robert California.  Season 9 is Dwight Christmas, which is pretty good for a season 9 episode.

2.  Seinfeld Festivus- Seinfeld episodes are harder for me to differentiate from episodes of the Office because you get a lot more stand-alone stories rather than the long story arcs that the Office is built on.  I know there are other Seinfeld Christmas episodes that are good.  Mickey and Kramer working at a department store as an elf and a communist Santa is good.  But Festivus is an all time classic.  It has endured as much as anything from Seinfeld two and a half decades later.

1. Charlie Brown Christmas.  It gets the number 1 spot because it’s good and it actually deals with the true meaning of Christmas.  When Linus recites Luke’s Gospel and he gets to the part where the angel says, “Fear not,” he drops his blanket.  You might not have noticed this detail before, but if you know the character Linus, the significance of this is clear.

I’ll get to some bad stuff before going back to good stuff. There are a lot of good Christmas songs, but I’m going to do the five worst:

5.  Band Aid- Do They Know It’s Christmas?  This is definitely not a good song, but I can tolerate it because it’s unintentionally funny.  The line “Well tonight thank God it’s them in stead of you” is very strange.  What does that mean?  I should thank God that there are poor people in Africa?  What?

4.  Baby It’s Cold Outside- It doesn’t matter which version it is.  This is not a good song.

3.  Wham Last Christmas- As Fr. Mike Schmitz has pointed out, the only thing that makes this a Christmas song is that the first two words of the song are Last Christmas.

2.  John Lennon Happy Xmas- We’ve gotten to the songs that I absolutely refuse to listen to.  I don’t need to hear protest music for Christmas.

1. Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmas Time- I can’t stand this song. It’s horrendous.

Let’s get back to stuff that is good.  Here are my top five Saturday Night Live Christmas skits:

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

I’ll finish up with my top five Christmas movies:

5.  Scrooged- It’s Bill Murray in the most 1980s Christmas movie imaginable.  If Scrooged didn’t exist and you asked AI to write a script for a 1980s Christmas comedy, it would write Scrooged.

4.  Elf- Elf reminds me of Wedding Crashers.  It starts off so good, but the end leaves something to be desired.  Once they leave the island in Wedding Crashers, the rest of the movie stinks.  Elf is fantastic for most of the movie, but it’s not great after the fight with Myles Finch.  Santa has a feud with the Central Park Rangers?  Why?  They could have come up with something better for the end.

3.  The Muppet Christmas Carol- It’s Michael Caine and Muppets.  And it’s everything you want Michael Caine and Muppets to be.

2.  It’s a Wonderful Life- I remember watching it for the first time when I was a junior in high school because my US history teacher did It’s a Wonderful Life trivia on the last day before Christmas vacation.  I think that was the only time I watched it until a couple of years ago.  It really is a wonderful movie.

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- Unliked Scrooged, this is a timeless Christmas classic.  It came out only a year after Scrooged, but it feels like it could be from any year.  It’s the Festivus of the Vacation movies in that it has endured much more so than the other ones.  I’m not going to say it’s a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s the most fun Christmas movie.

The Celtics beat the Lakers today. It was appropriate for NBA good to prevail over NBA evil on Christmas Day. But congratulations to the Lakers on winning a tournament that means absolutely nothing. Happy Birthday Jesus!  Merry Christmas!

Tournament of Meaninglessness

Congratulations to the NBA on brainwashing people into caring about the in season tournament, or as I like to call it, the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  It was entirely predictable that the media would eat up this tournament and make a big deal about it.  But the truth remains that it means nothing.  I refuse to be brainwashed by the NBA.  I’ve been against this tournament from the start.  It was inspired by European soccer and American sports definitely don’t need to be more like European soccer.  There were other people who seemed to be against it also, but now everybody seems to care for some reason.  People compared it to the play-in tournament, but there’s a huge difference.  There is a purpose to the play-in tournament.  You can advance to the playoffs by winning in the play-in tournament.  But winning this tournament means absolutely nothing.

It makes me angry that the NBA has tried to make this tournament into a big deal when it means absolutely nothing.

Let us not forget that the only reason this tournament matters is that the games count as regular season games.  I’ve wanted the Celtics to win their games because they count in the standings.  But once the Celtics lost a Tournament of Meaninglessness game, they were going to need to advance on the tiebreaker.  So in their last game of group play, they ran up the score to advance.  I would have been 100% fine if they won without running up the score and didn’t advance.  What would have happened if they didn’t advance?  Instead of playing two games that count in the regular season standings, they would have played two games that count in the regular season standings.  Now their reward for advancing is playing a road game for a chance to advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.  So if they win tonight, they lose a regular season home game.  But tonight counts in the standings and the semifinal game counts in the standings.  So I hope they win their next two games.

If the Celtics win those next two games, they play in the Tournament of Meaninglessness championship game.  And that game would mean absolutely nothing.  It’s the only game of the tournament that doesn’t count in the standings.  They’re playing for rich basketball players to be slightly richer.  Why would any fan care?  If the Celtics make it, I will watch the game and the only thing I will be rooting for is for the Celtics to get through the game without any injuries.  If it was up to me, I would sit Tatum, Brown, Porzingas, Holiday, White, Horford, and Pritchard.  Let the players who haven’t gotten a good contract in their careers try to make some extra money and don’t take any chances of their best players getting hurt.  The only way I would care about whether or not the Celtics would win or lose would be if they were playing the Lakers.  And that would be entirely because I want the Lakers to lose every game they play and not because I care about the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  I would still sit all of the Celtics’ best players.  Kevin Durant is one of my least favorite athletes, but I would be totally fine with losing the last game to the Suns as long as no Celtics got hurt.  If the Celtics do win this tournament, I would be mad if they hang a banner for it.  They should just have a certificate in an office somewhere.

If the NBA wanted me to care about this tournament, it should have meant something.  I will preface this by saying that this is a stupid idea, but they could have made advancing in the tournament the first tiebreaker for the playoffs.  So the eight teams that advanced would have a tiebreaker over the other 22 teams.  The four teams that make it to the semifinals would have a tiebreaker over the other 26 teams and so on.  That would have been a stupid way to break ties, but it would have given me a reason to care about this tournament.  But as it is, the tournament is the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  So go Celtics.  Win the next two games that count in the regular season standings and then just don’t get hurt in the last game.

The best thing about this tournament ending is that nobody will care about it anymore and I won’t have to hear about it anymore.

Baseball’s Playoff Problem

Much like college football’s playoff format that starts next year, baseball’s playoff format for the last two years is really stupid.  This is in no way sour grapes because the Dodgers lost.  All year long I thought that the Dodgers weren’t that good.  Under a different playoff format, the Dodgers probably would have been quickly eliminated also.  But this playoff format makes no sense.

Why do people making decisions insist on trying to destroy my two favorite sports?

I do have some more thoughts about the Dodgers before I get back to the playoff format.  There are some really crazy fans out there.  Dave Roberts is not a perfect manager, but he did an outstanding job this season.  Winning 100 games with that team was special.  They had two superstars, some solid role players, a broken legendary pitcher, some promising young pitchers, and a solid bullpen.  They were not the Atlanta Braves (who are absolutely loaded with talent).  I thought they would probably make the playoffs and maybe win the division, but that was about all I expected out of this team.  By the time they got to the playoffs, they had one and a half starting pitchers (Clayton Kershaw was pretty much half of a starting pitcher after he returned from the injured list, he was pitching once a week and never went more than five and a third).  The Dodgers won their last five regular season games against the Diamondbacks (in August) by a combined score of 30-9 so I thought they would beat the Diamondbacks and lose the NLCS, but this outcome was not completely surprising.

I’ve heard criticisms of Roberts in the playoffs this year and most of them are insane.  One mistake that I think was made was going with Kershaw over Bobby Miller in Game 1.  But that was probably as much of an Andrew Friedman decision as it was a Dave Roberts decision.  And when you saw the way Bobby Miller pitched in Game 2, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.  I heard people criticizing him for leaving Lance Lynn in too long in Game 3.  And he probably did, but the series was over by then anyway.  Dave Roberts managed a masterful Game 2, but the Dodgers couldn’t score enough runs.  Their starting pitching was terrible and their two superstars were terrible.  It didn’t matter what Dave Roberts did, they weren’t winning that series.  From 1989-2015, the Dodgers got to the NLCS three times and didn’t make it to the World Series at all.  In eight years under Dave Roberts, they’ve been to the NLCS five times, they’ve made it to the World Series three times, won it once, and were cheated out of it another time.  In the last seven years, they’ve won 100 games five of the last seven years.  In the other two years, they made the World Series both times and definitely would have won 100 games if there had been a full season in 2020.  Obviously they’ve had more talent under Roberts than they did most of the time from 1989-2015, but they did have some good teams that didn’t come close to doing what the Dodgers have done under Roberts. So yeah, I will gladly take Dave Roberts back next year.

Anyway, yeah, the playoffs are stupid.  If you play 162 games, they should matter.  We’ve pretty much accepted that the regular season in the NBA is meaningless.  It’s going to be really stupid in college football when we start getting teams with three or four losses into the College Football Playoff.  And it’s really stupid that three teams with 90 wins and a team with 84 wins are the last four teams with a chance to win a championship while teams with 104, 101, 100, 99, and 92 wins had their seasons come to an end because of a bad stretch of two-four games (those five teams went a combined 1-13 in the playoffs).  Why did we play 162 games if they mean so little in determining the champion?

So what can be done about it?  I have some ideas, but no great answers that are also realistic.  The first thing I would do would be to expand to 32 teams and go to two divisions of eight teams in each league.  Expansion is probably coming.  I would be fine with two divisions per league or four divisions per league.  But I am also terrified of how they will realign.  I have no confidence in Rob Manfred.  We might end up with the Dodgers and Giants in different divisions or Eastern and Western conferences like the NBA and I’m not interested in something like that at all.  But anyway, I would go back to the pre-1994 playoff format with only the four division winners making the playoffs.  Let’s have the Rangers and Astros play Game 163 to break their tie and then the winner plays the Orioles, the Dodgers play the Braves, and teams that weren’t that good don’t get a chance to play for a championship.  That will never happen though.  I would be fine with going back to having four teams from each league make the playoffs like it was from 1995-2011.  But that’s not going to happen either.  I think it’s more likely that they would expand the playoffs to seven or eight teams per league making it (I think Manfred wanted seven teams per league during the lockout because Manfred is an idiot).  If it was eight teams per league this year, there would have been two teams with 82 wins and a team with 83 wins in the playoffs.  If you go 82-80, you do not deserve a chance to win the World Series.  And the problem is that it’s entirely possible that a team that won 82 games could win a short series against a team that won 100+ games.  In basketball, the 8 seed winning a series is so rare that you can live with it when it happens.  But it would happen way too frequently in baseball.

So I don’t want the playoffs to expand and they’re not going to contract, so let’s try to figure out what can be done if we leave it at six teams per league.  You could try to get rid of off days.  Baseball is a sport that’s played pretty much every day for six months (longer than that if you include spring training).  But then if you’re one of the two best teams in your league, you have to sit and wait for an extended period.  The Dodgers won 100 games and then had their season come to an end after playing three games in 10 days.  So you could get rid of the off day between the end of the regular season and the start of the Wild Card series.  I doubt they would do that though because they probably want to keep a day open in case you need to make up any rainouts at the end of the season if they could determine playoff spots.  You could also eliminate the day off between the possible third game of the Wild Card series and the next round.  But again, they probably want to keep that day open in case a game gets rained out in the Wild Card series.  So if you can’t get rid of those off days, I would go back just having a Wild Card Game instead of a three-game series.  When it was just one game, it was a bigger disadvantage for the teams that had to play the game.  You would probably use your best starter and then he wouldn’t be available to pitch in until Game 3 in the next round (and you might even use other starters if necessary to win that one game).  But with the three game series and off days, you have a chance to really line up your pitching for the next round (especially if you can win the Wild Card series in two games).  If Dodgers-Diamondbacks had gone five games, the Diamondbacks would have had their top two pitchers start four of the five games.  I know probability says that it’s an advantage to not have to play the Wild Card series (since you can’t get eliminated in that round), but I think it actually becomes an advantage for the team that manages to survive that series.  If they can line up their pitching and they haven’t had an abnormal number of off days, that’s an advantage.  But they’ll never go back to the one game Wild Card round instead of a three-game series because that would mean less TV money.

I do have a few ideas to give more advantages to the teams that get the byes (or at least limit the disadvantages).  The most obvious thing is to give a bigger advantage to the number 1 seed by reseeding.  I don’t know how they haven’t figured this out yet.  The Braves had the best record in the NL by four games.  When the Diamondbacks pull off the upset in the Wild Card series, the Braves should get to play them.  Why do the Braves have to deal with the Phillies while the Dodgers get the worse opponent?  That makes no sense.

You could make everything after the Wild Card round best of seven.  That would reduce randomness and give the better teams a better chance to win.  But you would still get weird results.  It’s fairly likely that none of the results would have been changed this year if they were best of seven instead of best of five.  So I’m not opposed to making it best of seven, but I’m okay with best of five.

I would make the winner of the Wild Card Series go on the road for every game in the next round.  The higher seed gets the whole Wild Card series at home.  Do the same thing for the next round.

Neither of those ideas do anything to help with all the days off.  But I came up with something that probably sounds unrealistic, but it would make money and these decisions are all driven by money so maybe it isn’t unrealistic.  You have four teams who get byes.  Have the 1 seed in each league host a two-game exhibition series against the 2 seed in the opposite league while the Wild Card round is going on.  So it would have been Dodgers at Orioles and Astros at Braves.  Teams would definitely be able to sell tickets for those games and you could throw them on MLB Network as possible World Series previews and everybody could make money.  If teams think it’s a disadvantage to have their hitters sitting around not facing pitching in a game for five days, here’s your opportunity to have them play actual baseball instead of batting practice or intrasquad games.  Maybe teams wouldn’t take those games seriously, but it would certainly take away an excuse.  If you want to choose to not play your best hitters in those games, then you couldn’t complain about being off all that time when you had a chance to play games before your playoff games.

So yeah, there are way too many teams in the playoffs.  I try to enjoy the regular season as much as I can.  If you’re going to play that many games, they should mean something.  So I enjoyed the Dodgers winning 100 games this season.  And between my low expectations and the stupidity of this playoff format, the Dodgers getting eliminated in the playoffs this year was their easiest elimination for me to deal with out of all the times they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs over the last 15 years.  The worst at the time was 2019 and the worst in hindsight was 2017 because they were cheated out of a World Series championship (and one that wouldn’t have been random baseball playoff flukiness because they were the best team in baseball that year).

Anyway, Rob Manfred is in charge so if anything is going to change, it will probably just be him making it worse.  As for the rest of the playoffs this year, I will absolutely be rooting for 2020 World Series hero Corey Seager to beat the Astros and win the World Series.  Speaking of the Astros, it’s time to bring back my Sports Villain Power Rankings. This is the fourth time I’ve done this (previously in April 2022, October 2022, and April 2023).

25.  Sidney Crosby

24.  Ime Udoka

23.  Damian Lillard

22.  Kevin Durant

21.  Anthony Davis

20.  James Harden

19.  Jimmy Butler

18.  Kyrie Irving

17.  LeBron James

Hockey has started and Sidney Crosby will always be a villain.  Basketball is about to start.  Ime Udoka is a good coach, but the Celtics couldn’t keep him because of his own stupidity.  Lillard was all about loyalty until he wasn’t anymore and he only wanted to go the the Heat (my least favorite NBA team other than the Lakers).  Durant, Davis, Irving, and James are obvious.  Harden is an obvious villain, but he has to rank behind Butler because he disappeared and lost to the Celtics in the playoffs while Butler transforms from good NBA player to superstar NBA player in the playoffs and he eliminated the Celtics last year.  If I went to a number 26 on this list, it might have been the Heat’s PA announcer because whenever Jimmy Butler scores, it’s not Jimmy Butler, it’s “JIH MEE BUTLER.”  It gets very annoying during a seven game series.  Many of these players will rank much higher when we get to the spring.

16.  Lane Kiffin

15.  Dabo Swinney

14.  Ryan Day

13.  Deion Sanders

12.  Pete Carroll

11.  Bill Belichick

10.  Jim Harbaugh

9.  Lincoln Riley

Lane Kiffin has pretty much been a villain for this whole century.  For some reason, people decided to start liking him over the last five years.  I don’t get it.  Dabo Swinney has been a villain since 2020.  He would rank higher, but Clemson has taken a step back.  Ryan Day is a new villain for two reasons.  First of all, he’s let Michigan turn the tide in that rivalry.  Second of all, he had a completely insane reaction to beating Notre Dame.  When you’re making me think of Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer to the ground, that’s a problem.  Everybody loves Deion Sanders, but not me.  He pretty much ran off Colorado’s entire team and brought in a whole team of mercenaries.  That is not what college athletics should be.  If you’re a new coach, you should do everything you can to help the players who were already there.  They should be able to graduate from the school they committed to and be coached to be the best players they can be (even if they’re not very good players).  But I will give Deion Sanders credit for one thing.  When Henry Blackburn was getting death threats after his late hit on a Colorado player, Deion Sanders handled that very well.  Carroll, Belichick, Harbaugh, and Riley are obvious.

8.  Jack Swarbrick

He probably should have been on my previous lists for allowing home games to be broadcast on Peacock only (forcing people to pay to watch one of our worst home games each season is stupid to begin with, but the streaming experience was absolutely terrible this year).  He also enabled Brian Kelly’s nonsense by allowing him to get rid of the pregame Mass (which Marcus Freeman fortunately brought back) and putting in fake grass in the football stadium.  He’s allowed Adidas and Under Armor to dress Notre Dame’s football team up in silly outfits for Shamrock Series games.  He deserved to be considered a villain for all of those reasons, but the reason that I finally put him on this list is because he completely bungled the hiring of Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator.  This is entirely his fault and not Marcus Freeman’s.  He put Freeman in a bad position.  Fortunately he won’t be our athletic director for much longer.

6.  (tie) Trevor Bauer and Julio Urias

The Dodgers were down to one and a half starting pitchers because these guys were terrible people who will never be allowed to pitch for the Dodgers again.

5.  Brian Kelly

4.  Rob Manfred

They’re always going to be near the top of the list, but probably not number 1 (although Kelly could be much closer to number 1 if he ever made a national championship run at LSU).

1. (Tie) Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, and Caleb Williams

It’s the cheating Astros who are still in the playoffs plus the most dislikeable college football player since Reggie Bush.

It’s a Big Game

If Notre Dame loses to Ohio State, they will never have another game this big at home ever again.

A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man and many factors can embiggen a college football game.  When I say that we might never have another home game as big as this one ever again, I’m not saying that a loss would do irreparable damage to the football program.  It’s just that the only game that Notre Dame will ever play at Notre Dame Stadium that could be as big as this one is the USC game in three weeks.  If we’re both undefeated, that game will be embiggened to a level even greater than this one.  And then we will never play another home game that big ever again.  I’ll get to why in a bit, but how big is this game?  Is it the biggest home game since Florida State in 1993?  There are surprisingly few contenders for that title.  There’s a pretty obvious answer and it’s also the wrong answer.  Let’s go through the contenders.

2005 USC- Pete Carroll’s team of highly paid mercenaries was coming off a half national championship and a forfeited national championship (for employing professional football player Reggie Bush to play college football) the previous two years.  They were ranked number 1 and we were ranked number 9.  Charlie Weis had us believing (it sounds crazy now, but he did make that offense into a powerful attack that seemed good enough to beat anybody).  They were our biggest rival and we had lost to them by 31 points every year under Tyrone Willingham.  They hadn’t lost in forever.  The bigness of this game was slightly diminished by the fact that we already had a loss.  But with a win over USC, we would have been in the top five at that point.  If we had won, it would have been either us or Penn State in the National Championship Game against Texas with the way the rest of the season played out.

2012 Stanford- It was the biggest home game of the magical 2012 season and it was a classic.  Stanford was pretty much at the height of its power.  If they didn’t have a loss already, this game would probably be the answer for the biggest home game since Florida State.  That Stanford team was good.  They finished the season ranked number 7, but they were 17 at the time.

2017 Georgia- This one was too early in the season.  Georgia was starting to become what they are today.  They finished the season ranked number 2, but they were only ranked 15 going into this game and we were ranked 24 (and coming off an inexplicably disastrous season under Brian Kelly).  If this one had happened later in the season, it might be the right answer.

2018 Michigan- We were ranked 12 and they were ranked 14.  Again, this was too early in the season (it was the first game).  There was hype for this one, but there would have been a lot more if we had already won some games that season.

2018 Stanford- This one was probably more hyped than Michigan because it was later in the season.  We were ranked 8 and Stanford was ranked 7.  But it’s definitely not the answer because Stanford was past its peak at this point.  It turned out that Stanford was nowhere close to being as good as that number 7 ranking.

2020 Clemson- This is the obvious answer.  And it’s not the right one.  Unlike the 2005 USC game, we were both undefeated.  We were ranked number 4 and they were ranked number 1.  They had won two national championships in the previous four seasons.  Some might discredit this one because there were only like 10,000 fans at the game and Trevor Lawrence didn’t play.  But for me, those factors did not debiggen this game (embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word so I figure debiggen must be the opposite of embiggen).  This game was debiggened by the stupidity of conferences.  At this point in the season, we pretty much knew that it was game 1 of at least 2.  Because of the pandemic, we were in the ACC and it didn’t really matter who won the game because we were just going to play them again in the ACC Championship Game and then possibly a third time in the College Football Playoff (we both ended up making it).  So yeah, conferences are stupid.

2021 Cincinnati- This might have been the most consequential game.  It determined a playoff spot.  But it was just a little too early in the season (October 2).  We were ranked 9 and they were ranked 7.  It wasn’t clear that it would determine a playoff spot.  If it had come later, maybe we would have known that with more certainty.  Also, Cincinnati as a program just isn’t on the same level as teams like USC, Georgia, peak Stanford, Michigan, or Clemson.

And then there’s this game.  We’ll see how it looks in retrospect.  Like if we win and then Ohio State turns out to just not be all that good, it would be hard to say that this was the biggest home game since Florida State in 1993.  But going into the game, the hype feels like it is at least as big as USC in 2005.  I have USC 2005 as the biggest home since Florida State before this one.  We were coming off of blowout losses in three straight seasons against USC.  Ohio State isn’t a rival like USC is.  We’ve only played them five times since World War II started.  But we’ve lost them all so the desire to finally beat them does embiggen this game.  I’m giving this one a slight edge since both teams are undefeated.

So why is USC in three weeks the only home game that could ever be even bigger than this one?  Much like the looming conference championship game in 2020 debiggened the Clemson game that year, the expanded playoff will debiggen every future regular season game.  If this game was next year, it would not be nearly as big as it is this year.  The loser would still have a very solid chance of making it to the College Football Playoff.  A loss would just be like, oh well, and definitely not a soul crushing defeat.

But wait, Notre Dame could have a home playoff game under the new format.  Couldn’t that be just as big or bigger than this game?  Unless the playoff format changes, the answer is no.  We could only have a home game in the first round and then the rest of the games would be at neutral sites.  So we would have a home game if we were seeded in the 5-8 range.  If we’re seeded 5th, that means that we’re actually somewhere between the first and fifth best team (because the format is stupid and we’re not eligible to get a bye).  If that’s the case, we would play the 12 seed, who is just not all that good.  And we would potentially have three more playoff games.  So that game just wouldn’t be as big as the Ohio State game this year.  If it was a more even matchup where we were hosting the 8-9 game, we still have potentially three more playoff games, but more likely it’s just a battle to be the sacrificial lamb for the number 1 team in the second round.

So yeah, college football is being ruined.  Conferences and the expanded playoff are stupid (even though it makes it easier for us to make the playoff).  We have to enjoy this season as much as possible before next year.  Hopefully we’ll have one more home game this big in three weeks.  Go Irish!

Two Fourth Place Teams and Other Thoughts

After seeing the Dodgers at Citi Field back in July, I was hoping to get to at least one more baseball game this summer.  Vin invited me to a Met game so we saw the Mets and Pirates at Citi Field.  It was two teams that were not going anywhere, but it was good to see Vin and I’m always up for going to a game in the summer.

I took the train to the game and met Vin at Citi Field.  The Citi Field Long Island Railroad station looks like it was built as a giant Eagle Scout project 45 years ago.  It is very dilapidated.  It’s not handicap accessible and it’s definitely in need of a fresh coat of paint.  You walk up the stairs from the platform and then you walk across a bridge that goes over the train tracks.  The bridge is made out of very uneven wooden boards.  So yeah, they could definitely rebuild that and make it nicer.

Anyway, we both arrived early for Edwin Diaz Bobblehead Night.  Can Timmy Trumpet play a sad trombone?  Before the game we went to the DeltaSky 360° Club and got spicy chicken sandwiches.  Then we got Sam Adams Summer Ale.  It was my first Summer Ale on tap of the year.  I usually have a local beer at a baseball game, but I don’t feel obligated to follow that rule in New York since I live here and I can get beer from around here whenever I want.  And since I hadn’t had a Summer Ale on tap all year and it might have been my last opportunity to get one, it was an easy choice.  Every Major League stadium should have Summer Ale on tap as it is the perfect outdoor beer when the weather is good.

The starting pitchers were David Peterson and Bailey Falter.  The Mets took a 1-0 lead on a lead off home run by Brandon Nimmo.  He just missed a lead off home run at the last game I went to (his lead off double ended up being the only hit for the Mets).  The Pirates tied it with a home run in the second.  That was all both starters allowed.  Peterson only lasted three and two-thirds because he walked six guys.  Falter lasted five and a third.  It was 1-1 until the 7th.  The top of the 7th did not go well for the Mets.  Jose Butto got one out and allowed a walk, a double, and another walk.  The Mets brought in Grant Hartwig with the bases loaded.  He walked the first batter he faced, hit the second one, had a run score on a passed ball, and gave up a two-run double before he got an out.  After getting an out, he gave up another run on a triple.  So the Pirates led 7-1.  The Mets had back to back home runs in the bottom of the 7th to make it 7-4.  And that was all the scoring in the game.  Attendance was 35,439 and it was 78°.  There was a threat of rain, but that held off until after the game.  The game ended up going three hours and 12 minutes (the Mets walking 10 batters had a lot to do with that) so that was probably the longest game I’ve been to this season.  We both left early.  Vin had to get back to Manhattan and then get a ferry to New Jersey.  I had seen enough after seven innings of two bad teams.

It's been a while since I sat this close at a Major League game.

After the game, both teams were 54-66 and in fourth place.  The Mets are paying $376 million (including luxury tax) and the Pirates are paying $93 million for the same season.  Pittsburgh is one of my favorite cities and they have a great stadium so I wish they would spend more money and put together a better team.  I have mixed feelings about the Mets.  I do hope that they win a World Series someday for all the Met fans that I know.  And baseball is more fun in New York when the Mets and Yankees are good.  But I also like when they’re bad so that I can get cheap tickets when the Dodgers are in town.  This Mets team is pretty much my worst case scenario.  They’re really bad, but tickets and everything else (parking, food, etc.) are really expensive because of how much money they’re spending.

Thanks to Vin for the great seats and the food and beverage.  The last time we had gotten together was before the pandemic.  It was the Big East Championship Game in 2019.  It had been far too long so it was great to see Vin.  We talked about the Jets and Vin was very optimistic about the season.  It has to be better than this Mets season has been, right?  Right?  I hope so.

Summer is coming to an end.  It’s been an excellent summer for the Dodgers (pretty much starting right after I saw them in Kansas City).  Hopefully they can continue that into the fall.  And now I’m starting to think about other sports.  The NBA released the schedule for the in-season tournament the day we went to this game.  The in-season tournament is the dumbest idea Adam Silver has ever had.  Winning the in-season tournament would be like the NBA version of winning the Pinstripe Bowl.  Am I supposed to be happy about that?  Why would fans care?  The only reason to care is that the games count in the standings.  But they count exactly the same as every other regular season game.  So yeah, I hope the Celtics win those games, but I don’t care about them because they’re part of a tournament.  Actually, the one game that doesn’t count in the standings is the championship game (because it’s the 83rd game for those two teams).  If the Celtics get to that game, I definitely won’t care.  The players might care about the money that they get for winning.  The money will matter for some players, but it definitely won’t matter for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.  If I was Brad Stevens and Joe Mazzulla, I would sit all the highly paid players if I got to the championship game.  The game doesn’t count and those guys don’t need the money.  Say to the other guys, “If you want the money, you go win it.”  And if the Celtics do win it, I would be angry if they hung a banner.  It means nothing.

College football starts on Saturday.  Hopefully it will be a year of growth for Marcus Freeman.  He had two really stupid losses last year.  He did some good things too.  I thought we might be headed for a 5-7 season or something and he was able to avoid that.  The Clemson win was fantastic.  We should get much better quarterback play this year so we can’t have any more of the stupid losses.  Hopefully we will win at least two of Ohio State, Southern Cal, and Clemson this year and not lose any stupid games.  It’s the last year of college football before some really stupid changes with realignment and it’s the last season before a really stupid 12-team playoff will greatly diminish the importance of the regular season.  So I’ll try to enjoy this season as much as possible.  I'm pretty excited about Notre Dame playing the first game of the season in Ireland (we were supposed to be the first game of the season three years ago, but that got cancelled).  I was there the last time we were in Ireland and that was fun.  This weekend is supposed to be the largest influx of Americans into Europe since World War II.  I won't be there this time, but hopefully we'll win by 40 and it will be our first win on our way to an undefeated regular season like it was in 2012 (but hopefully we'll get a better finish this time).  Go Irish!

Jim Yells at Cloud

When I was in college, my friends and I would talk about how to make college football better.  Nobody liked the BCS.  Well, college football is much different from when I was in college.  It’s not better.  It’s like somebody put Rob Manfred in charge of college football.  The people making decisions have taken something great and made it much worse.  I would absolutely go back to college football in the BCS era if I could.  This post is going to be rambling and probably unorganized because I’m pretty sad about the state of college football and college sports in general.

This is always how I feel about Rob Manfred, but now it’s how I feel about college sports also.

It’s not just college football that will be worse, it’s all college sports.  The Pac 12 will be dead a year from now and college sports might not have much longer to live than that.  They will continue to play college sports, but they won’t be what made college sports great.  They will be very different and much worse.  I can think of two blog posts about college sports where I was definitely wrong.  In December 2012, I lamented the death of the Big East.  The Big East is not the same as it was back then, but it’s definitely not dead either.  I wish Notre Dame was still in the Big East and a 16-team tournament over five days at Madison Square Garden was awesome.  Those days are gone.  But the Big East remains an excellent basketball conference.  The current Big East teams have a 7-1 lead in football/men’s basketball/women’s basketball national championships over the current Big 10 teams and their west coast additions in the past decade (and of course the Big East doesn’t have football anymore).  It’s still a 3-1 lead if you take out UConn’s national championships when they weren’t part of the Big East.  The other post that I was wrong about was lamenting the loss of college sports in July 2020.  As it turned out, Notre Dame saved that college football season by joining the ACC and playing that year.  It’s been interesting to see some people realize that Notre Dame’s independence is a good thing now.  Maybe we could save the ACC now, but I don’t really want to.  We probably can’t save all of college sports.

So yeah, I hope I’m wrong about the future of college sports, but I don’t think I will be.  I’ll focus mostly on football, but I’ll talk a little bit about basketball and the other sports also.  There’s so much about the present state and the future of college football that’s bad.  Rivalries have been killed by conference realignment.  Decisions are being made based only on TV and money and not what’s best for the students and fans.  The Big 10 is the biggest culprit in all of this.  Two years ago, I had a post dealing with many of my concerns about college football (I was more worried about the SEC, but the Big 10 turned out to be the biggest villain by far).  It was right after the ACC, Big 10, and Pac 12 agreed to the Alliance.  That alliance was as real as Jim and Dwight’s alliance in season 1 of the Office.  It lasted for less than a year before the Big 10 stabbed the Pac 12 in the back.  The Big 10 killed the Pac 12.  Let us never forget this.  It was not the Big 12, it was the Big 10.  The Big 12 was fighting for survival and they took Colorado (hardly a death blow).  Now they’re taking three more Pac 12 teams after the conference is already dead.  The Big 10 did not need to expand.  They took USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington entirely because of greed.  The Big 10’s greed and the incompetence of Pac 12 leadership is what killed the Pac 12.

So now the Big 10 will go from New Jersey to the west coast.  There will be too many teams and too much travel.  In football, the travel is not that big of a deal.  For teams to have to travel for six road games a year on Saturdays is not too bad for the players, but it is kind of bad for the fans.  Like if you’re a USC student, alumnus, or fan living in the Los Angeles area, the only easy road game to get to will be UCLA.  Are Michigan State fans going to like staying up for a night game at 10:30 in Washington?  It’s not terrible for the players, but it will be rough for the fans.  And for the other sports, the travel is going to be crazy for the players.

What even is an 18-team conference?  I’m sure they’re going to have protected rivalries in football.  Like Michigan and Ohio State will play every year.  But how often are you going to play the other teams in the conference?  It’s a little like Notre Dame’s ACC arrangement.  I would like Notre Dame’s ACC arrangement in football more if we didn’t have to cycle through every team.  Since we play an average of five ACC teams per year and we play each team, we pretty much cycle through the conference every three years.  Playing Duke and Syracuse as often as we play Florida State and Clemson is not interesting.  I would like it a lot more if we didn’t have to cycle through the whole conference.  Like if we could play Miami like six years in a row and revive that rivalry, that would be cool.  We’ve developed a little bit of a rivalry with Clemson with regular season games in 2015, 2020, 2022, and this year plus a playoff game in 2018 and an ACC Championship game in 2020, but after this year, we’re only scheduled to play them five more times in the next fourteen years (we’ll see if those games happen or not).  So unless we get some playoff games, that rivalry is probably going to fizzle out.  How are rivalries going to develop in the Big 10 with that many teams?

This whole wave of conference expansion started more than a decade ago with the Big East and Big 12 getting raided.  Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Miami, Rutgers, and Virginia Tech left the Big East.  Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and Texas A&M left the Big 12.  We can add in Maryland leaving the ACC.  Has that worked out for any of those teams?  Are any of them better off in their new conferences than they were before?  Yes, many of them are making more money.  But are they doing better in football?  Some of them maybe are the same, but some of them are much worse off.  Leaving the Big 12 worked out so well for Colorado that they went back to the Big 12.  Leaving the Big 12 has been a disaster for Nebraska on the football field.  If you look at the four West coast teams going to the Big 10, I could easily imagine at least two of them becoming like Nebraska in the Big 10.

Oklahoma dominated the Big 12, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them become the Nebraska of the SEC.  Most of the teams that left the Big East are worse off in basketball than they were in the Big East.

What should Notre Dame do?  If we have playoff access as an independent, we should absolutely stay independent.  If we can’t stay independent, then I would rather join any conference other than the Big 10.  I would join the ACC, SEC, Big 12, MAC, Pac 4, etc. before I would join the Big 10.  My ideal scenario has always been staying independent in football and going back to the Big East for all of our other sports.  I’ve pretty much wanted that ever since we left the Big East.

Conference expansion is bad, but could we see conference contraction in the future?  I mean, conferences should be smaller, but if it happens, they way they get rid of teams will not be a good thing.  Like are Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and USC going to decide that it makes no sense for them to be sharing money with teams like Rutgers, Purdue, Northwestern, and Iowa?  Are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee going to decide that it doesn’t make sense for them to be sharing money with Vanderbilt and Missouri?  I really wish we could just blow everything up and start over.  Maryland should be in the ACC.  Rutgers should not be in a power conference.  The Pac 12 should still exist.  I would be okay with having football conferences that are totally distinct from the other sports.  Like Texas and Kansas in the same conference in basketball makes sense, but it doesn’t really make sense for them to be in the same football conference.

I could imagine college sports dividing between two extremes.  One extreme is NFL Jr./NBA Jr./minor league baseball.  You could have two super conferences with professional players who aren’t as good as the best players in the world.  There will be no connection between the academic mission of the universities and their athletic teams.  You will have players quitting on their teams like they’re Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden.  You will have way too many teams in the playoff competing for a championship like in the NFL and that will destroy the value of the regular season.  As you can see, we’re already very much headed in that direction.

Allowing players to get paid for their name, image, and likeness was a good thing.  Like it was silly that EA Sports made a video game and couldn’t use the players’ names.  Make the game, use the players’ names, and pay them for it.  Nobody is against this.  But the results of players making money off of their name, image, and likeness have been really bad.  You already had college basketball teams built on hired mercenaries (Kentucky and Duke are the most obvious examples), but now you’re getting that in college football as well.  Many players are deciding where to go to college based entirely on money and not at all on the educational opportunities provided for them.  Dante Moore and Peyton Bowen would be at Notre Dame right now if that wasn’t the case.

The changes in transfer rules have been bad.  As somebody who transferred twice, I’m not against allowing players to transfer.  I am against NBA free agency coming to college sports.  It used to be that schools could prevent players from transferring to certain schools.  That is silly.  I’m glad that’s not allowed anymore.  But with no more requirement to sit out a year combined with money for name, image, and likeness, you have football teams built on hired mercenaries like basketball (USC) and players transferring all the time now and making decisions that probably aren’t best for themselves.  Like Tyler Buchner transferring from Notre Dame to Alabama could easily work out poorly for him.  He was close to graduating from Notre Dame and he might not even end up playing at Alabama.  If players had to sit out for a year, they would be much more hesitant to transfer.  I would make exceptions to that rule if a school changed conferences after a player signed with the school.  There are a lot of families who will have to travel really far to see their kids play for schools after they leave the Pac 12 so I would definitely let kids in that position transfer and play right away.  Before anybody could transfer and play right away, graduate transfers were allowed to transfer and play right away.  That kind of makes sense.  It’s a reward for players who have graduated and still have eligibility.  The problem is that these players are transferring and just becoming hired mercenaries.  They’re not real students.  I mean, Sam Hartman is not really a Notre Dame student.  He’s not working toward any degree at Notre Dame.  He’s like taking a class or something.  His academic workload is like Matt Leinart’s rigorous semester of ballroom dancing.  I liked college sports when the athletes were actually college students.  Many still are, but the best ones often aren’t.  I mean Stetson Bennett was in college for seven years and didn’t graduate.

The 12 team playoff in college football is so stupid.  I liked the four team playoff at first, but unless you have a 2004 situation with USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn all undefeated, the playoff isn’t necessary.  The BCS was better as long as you don’t have that situation.  The regular season was the playoff.  I want college football’s regular season to matter.  If we lose to Ohio State in September, I want it to ruin my week.  But because we play a good schedule, we would still have a pretty good chance to make the playoff with a loss to Ohio State if we can get through the rest of the season without another loss.  If we had the 12-team playoff this year, we could probably lose another game and still make the playoff.  You will definitely have teams with three losses make it and maybe even teams with four losses.  Losing a game will be like losing a regular season NFL game.  It just won’t be a big deal.

The other extreme is college athletics becoming like the Ivy League.  If you have two power conferences that break away from everybody else, that might be what happens to everybody else.  They’re not going to be making significant money off of athletics.  The players won’t be making much money off of their name, image, and likeness.  The sports might continue with actual college students participating in them, but is anybody going to care?  If we get to the point where the only other option is NFL Jr./NBA Jr./minor league baseball with professional athletes that aren’t really college students, I would rather see Notre Dame go the Ivy League route.  But I probably won’t care about Notre Dame’s teams very much at that point.  And my warning to the power conferences is that college sports might lose significant popularity if you keep moving in this direction.  Does anybody care about minor league baseball?  I like going to minor league games, but I have no emotional investment in minor league baseball.  The NCAA Tournament is the best part of college basketball.  If you kill that, are people going to care about what would essentially be the NBA G-League with more exposure?  I like college basketball, but I also know that college basketball today is not as good as it was in the 70s and 80s.  It’s never going to be as good as it was then.  And it might get worse if you kill the NCAA Tournament.

I fear that we’ve reached the point of no return where college football will follow college basketball in becoming worse and worse over the years.  College football is definitely affecting the other sports in a negative way.  Anyway, I am looking forward to this college football season.  I don’t know how many more I’m going to care about after this one.  Go Irish.