Month: March 2006

More Than a Bracket or a Bowl: Schoolhouse Rocks Over Pros

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1 Comment

When I was growing up as a kid in Chicago’s south suburbs, I didn’t think much about the Illinois Fighting Illini. Sure, I followed college sports as a general fan of football and basketball (and my gambling gene came to fruition by fifth grade, when I first started filling out NCAA Tournament brackets), but the teams I obsessed over when I was young were the Bulls, Bears, and White Sox.

This could have been the product of parents who attended the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois (as opposed to Urbana-Champaign), which has never been exactly a college sports hotbed. Plus, while Chicago has a great college sports presence with its proximity to Illinois, Northwestern, the other Big Ten schools, DePaul, and Notre Dame (that’s a wide and passionate fan base compared to New York or Boston), it’s still a pro sports town first and foremost. Certainly, Chicago isn’t a place like, say, Nebraska or even our neighboring state of Indiana, where the travails of the local colleges are the top sports stories not only during the season but in the offseason, as well.

Against all this, however, my sports priorities changed for the rest of my life ten years ago this fall. That was when I attended my first college football game as a University of Illinois student. Unfortunately, the Illini were pasted that day 550-0 by USC (that’s not a typo – I think they’re still scoring on us right now) in front of an ABC national television audience – an ominous foreshadowing of the performance of the Illinois football program until… well, until now. With nothing left to really be happy about (translation: we ran out of smuggled-in booze), we the members of the student section were at least able to taunt the Trojan bench with an “O.J. Simpson” cheer.

Despite having that damned Trojan fight song pounded into my head so badly that I now lash out everytime I hear it, from that point on I was an Illini forever. No other team – not the White Sox, not the Bears, not the Bulls – can evoke as much joy, frustration, and passion for me as the Fighting Illini, whether it’s basketball or football. The school bond transcends everything else.

That’s why March Madness is my favorite time of year. It’s the period where the most passionate sports bond you could possibly have – the one with your school – is on full display across the nation. Since a good number of my friends are people I went to college with, I sometimes forget that there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand or fully appreciate my outright fanatacism about the Illini. They might have gone to a school where sports weren’t on the radar of students or didn’t go to college at all. To them, the NCAA Tournament is the only time of the year where they pay any attention to college basketball, mostly to fill out brackets in an office pool.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that – whether a school is in a BCS conference shouldn’t be a factor in determining where the average person ought to go to college – but it’s just that those people will never get to experience the pure exhiliration of dying hard for their schools. Anyone can wake up one day and decide to cheer for the White Sox, Cubs, or any other pro sports team (i.e all of the sudden, decent seats at U.S. Cellular Field are really tough to come by). However, there is only a finite number of people in the world, including the athletes that we cheer for, that attended the University of Illinois and we all spent the most memorable times of our lives in the same place. That’s a powerful connection that transcends cheering for pro players that may or may not have any roots in your hometown.

I’m still as obsessive about the White Sox, Bears, and Bulls as anyone. It’s only that my obsessiveness with the Illini is at an even higher level, if my friends and family believe that’s even possible. Despite Chicago having a reputation of having long-suffering fans, I’ve got to admit that I’ve been pretty fortunate as a sports fan. I witnessed the Bears put together the most dominating team in NFL history in 1985. Michael Jordan and the Bulls provided me with the best sports memories of my childhood with their NBA dynasty. The White Sox ended 88 seasons of futility with their World Series championship last year. Considering that my pro baseball, football, and basketball teams have all won championships in my lifetime, I’m pretty blessed.

However, I’d honestly trade all of those trophies for Illinois to win the national championship in basketball and the Rose Bowl in football. My sports life won’t be complete unless I see both of those things happen. Starting tomorrow, the dream of seeing Illinois cut down the nets during “One Shining Moment” could become a reality with 6 more wins. Even though the odds are against that happening this season, that ultimate sports dream is why March Madness is more than just a bracket to me.

Big East Should Have Gone to Graceland

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, College Basketball, College Football, SportsLeave a comment

Most people following college basketball this season have come to the conclusion that the newly expanded Big East is the strongest and deepest conference in the nation – certainly, a record 8 bids in the NCAA Tournament makes the case for that argument. What hasn’t been talked about, however, is that the Big East could have been even better.

When the Big East decided to expand a couple of years ago in the wake of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College moving to the ACC, the East Coast conference for the most part found schools from Conference USA that were logical fits. DePaul and Marquette are large city Catholic basketball schools to go along with the likes of Georgetown, Villanova, and St. John’s. Meanwhile, Louisville and Cincinnati are basketball-focused schools that have decent football programs, similar to UConn and Syracuse. Those 4 additions have made a lot of sense even though the geographic reach of the conference is stretched farther west than the original Big East members could have ever imagined.

The 5th addition, however, was stunning: the University of South Florida.  The Conference USA school that was left holding the bag was Memphis, who desperately wanted a Big East invite. Needless to say, the Memphis Tigers grabbed a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament while USF failed to win a single Big East conference game. As ridiculously stacked as the Big East has been this season, the league could have taken it to a pantheon level if it had Memphis, as well, since UConn and Villanova also grabbed #1 seeds. A single conference with three out of the four #1 seeds would have been the greatest season any league anywhere would have ever had in history.

Of course, adding a conference member needs to be a decision taking into account the long term viability and benefits of a school as opposed to the performance of a team in a single season. But even on that front, USF never made sense. The rationale that the Big East commissioner gave for inviting USF was that the conference needed to have a place in the Florida market. I’m a corporate attorney by day, so I perfectly understand the importance of strong media markets. As I stated before, I believe that the Big Ten ought to invite Syracuse as a 12th team over Pitt, West Virginia, or Missouri (assuming that Notre Dame wouldn’t join) precisely because of the New York and East Coast presence that the Orange would bring. At the same time, I am one of the minority that believes that Boston College makes perfect sense for the ACC. It’s in the best interest of every conference to get the largest and highest quality geographic footprint possible.

The catch, however, is that a school needs to be more than just located in a desirable market; it must be able to deliver that market, as well. This is where USF fails. In a market that boasts Florida, Florida State, and Miami, the Sunshine State doesn’t have much room to pay attention to a fourth college sports team. Plus, USF is at best a mediocre football program while having a simply awful basketball team. The Big East is deluding itself if USF has much of a chance to make any dent on the Florida sports scene.

Instead, the Big East could have grabbed an elite basketball school with a solid football program in the Memphis Tigers. Not only that, Memphis is able to deliver its home market, which is large enough to be an NBA city.

Let’s hope that the Big East corrects its mistake soon. As nice as it is for the other conference schools to get a trip to Tampa during the winter every season, it’s a lot better to add a school that (1) actually has a true fan base in a major league market and (2) can cement the Big East’s status as the top basketball conference in the country.

Land-o-Links – 3/13/2006

On By Frank the TankIn Land-o-Links, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

Warning: I know it’s been like this already for the past week, but as long as the Illini are in the NCAA Tournament (and probably for the duration of March Madness regardless of whether they win or lose), Frank the Tank’s Slant will essentially be a college basketball blog. My numerous post ideas on the upcoming baseball season, the NFL free agency market, and wacky politicians will be on hold for awhile. However, I’ll still be tossing up some Land-o-Links to keep the non-basketball fans happy:

1) Upset ‘Brokeback’ Fans Advertise Their Feelings – Watts in 1965, Rodney King in 1992, “Brokeback Mountain” fans in 2006… watch out Los Angeles.

2) Lipinski and Other Abandon Parade Float as Smoke Erupts – Was anyone at the South Side Irish Parade sober enough to know this even happened?

3) The Origins of Uncle O’Grimacey (from Chicagoist) – March Madness + St. Patrick’s Day = Shamrock Shakes at McDonald’s! One sad thing, though: I never got to see Grimace’s Irish uncle.

And finally:

4) Flavor of Love: The Spit Hits the Fan – I can’t believe that I only started watching “Flavor of Love” on VH1 until midway through the season. The highly anticipated reunion special is going to be on next Sunday evening. This is quite possibly going to be the first TV series that I’m ever going to buy on DVD. I thought “Cheaters” was the pinnacle of reality television, but “Flavor of Love” has relegated that show to a pretender to the throne.

Frequent Flyer Miles Instead of a Bus Trip for the Illini This Year and Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

After receiving a bus trip for the ages last year with a Road to the Final Four that ran through Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis, Illinois faces the prospect of going from coast-to-coast in this season’s NCAA Tournament. The Illini loss to Michigan State on Friday night surely dropped us from a potential #2 seed all the way to a #4 seed by Selection Sunday. I would have preferred a #3 seed, but we can’t really argue against many of the teams that were put ahead of us.

The biggest problem with the drop to a #4 seed is that we get sent out to San Diego, which would be a great trip for spring breakers from Champaign, yet won’t give us the home-court feel that we would have received in Auburn Hills or Dayton. Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times argues that this might actually be a good thing to get away from the Midwest. If we survive the first weekend (Air Force shouldn’t be a problem, but the Sweet Sixteen is not a given with a possible matchup with Washington in the second round), we get shipped across the country to Washington, DC, where the UConn Huskies likely await. Pretty much every expert across the country has Connecticut locked into the Final Four spot out of the Washington Regional, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. UConn is the most talented team in the country and will win the National Championship if they play up to par.

Really, the best hope for the Illini to make the Final Four is that Dee Brown finds his shot again and UConn comes out as sluggish as they did against Syracuse in the Big East Tournament last week. At the beginning of this year, I said that the Sweet Sixteen is a reasonable goal for this Illini team. Considering that we drew UConn in our bracket, that’s still a very reasonable goal. I’d be ecstatic if we get farther than that.

Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits:

1) Balk at All Chalk – You’ll probably see the majority of brackets filled out across the country have a Duke – UConn matchup penciled in for the final. Notwithstanding last season’s Illinois – North Carolina tilt, however, the two best teams in the tournament pretty much never both make it to the championship game. Chances are that either Duke or UConn is going to stumble somewhere along the line. Duke’s bracket in the Atlanta Regional looks a lot tougher with an extremely talented Texas team looming as a #2 seed along with the Big Ten tourney champ Iowa, the Big East tourney champ Syracuse, and last but not least, potential second round opponent George Washington, who was ranked #6 in the country in the final AP poll yet dropped to a #8 seed because of the health of junior star Pops Mensah-Bonsu. UConn’s road isn’t exactly as easy as a lot of experts seem to believe, but the potholes Duke is going to encounter make the Blue Devils more susceptible to an earlier than expected exit.

2) Teams to Watch – My Big Ten bias is coming through here: look out for Michigan State and Indiana. Plenty of people are aware that the Spartans are extremely dangerous as a #6 seed based on Tom Izzo’s previous successes in the postseason (with the added bonus of getting virtual home games in Dayton for the first two rounds). However, a lot of others also believe that Indiana is primed for a first round upset against San Diego State. I personally can’t stand the Hoosiers, but the national media has forgotten that this is a pretty good team when all of their cylinders are running. I wouldn’t call Indiana a Final Four team, but I firmly believe that potential second round opponent Gonzaga is overrated by the media and the Oakland bracket is the most wide-open of the regions. That spells a possible deep tourney run by Indiana for Mike Davis’ last stand.

Speaking of Gonzaga, the Bulldogs can’t afford to look past their first round opponent in Xavier. I watched Xavier take Illinois down to the wire in front of a hostile United Center crowd back in December and they beat a pretty good Cincinnati team, so the Muskateers are certainly capable of an upset. Also, out in the Atlanta region, be careful of getting too caught up in #5 seed Syracuse’s performance last week in the Big East Tournament – Texas A&M is the best #12 seed out there (the Aggies beat Texas at the end of the regular season), and we all know that a #12 upsets a #5 every year. Georgetown is a scary #7 seed (previous wins against Duke, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse) lurking in the Minneapolis region for top 4 seeds Villanova, Ohio State, Florida, and Boston College.

3) Grouchy Nantz and Packer – My wife and I weren’t the only ones that noticed the pounding Jim Nantz and Billy Packer laid on NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Chairman Craig Littlepage during the Selection Show yesterday. Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune reported that the duo continued their rant during a subsequent conference call on how the smaller conferences grabbed more than their rightful share of bids from the BCS power conferences. Look, I’ve got as much of a bias toward the major conferences as anyone. However, the Selection Committee is supposed to examine and pick the best at-large teams without respect to conference affiliation. While we know that they can’t operate fully in this vaccum and are surely cognizant of how many bids are allocated to each conference, it’s not fair for individual teams with strong profiles from, say, the Missouri Valley Conference to lose out just because there’s a virtual quota of bids that needs to be met for the power conferences.

I’ll have much, much more on the NCAA Tournament all this week. Thursday can’t get here fast enough!

Illini – Spartan Clash III and More Big Ten Tournament Thoughts

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Well, 1 out of 3 on my predictions from yesterday would be a good baseball batting average.  Anyway, Illinois is playing Michigan State for the third time this season.  I don’t like the prospect of playing the Spartans again.  Regardless of what we’ve seen from Michigan State so far this season, I’ve always felt that Tom Izzo is able to flip a switch on his teams in the postseason better than anyone else in college basketball today.  Plenty of people penciled in the Spartans as a victim of the 12-seed over 5-seed upset last year, yet they ended up going to Izzo’s fourth Final Four.  This team still has a plethora of talent with the skills to make a deep tourney run.

That said, Bruce Weber has shown that he can get the most of his team, as well.  He mentioned yesterday that if anyone had told him at the beginning of the year that Illinois would be 25-5 at this point, he would have taken that in a heartbeat.  I think most rational Illini fans would have been pretty ecstatic with that, too.  The bottom line for us is that we’re going to go as far as our perimeter shooters are going to take us.  James Augustine and Shaun Pruitt have been doing a great job inside over the second half of the Big Ten season to give us a great base of points.  The difference between the Illini making deep runs or early exits in the Big Ten and NCAA Tourneys, however, will be whether Dee Brown, Rich McBride, and Jamar Smith are able to drain shots from the outside.  If they continue to shoot they way they have been over the last 3 games, we are as good as any team in the country.  Having all three of those guys going cold, though, would be cause for an early-round exit.

My belief is that not winning the Big Ten regular season title has left a bad taste in the mouths of the Illini and will be motivated to prove that they’re truly the best team in the conference.  This parallels the feeling in 2003 where Illinois ran the table in the Big Ten Tournament after losing out on the regular season championship to Wisconsin.  I truly believe we’re going to end up winning the necessary 3 games in a row this weekend.

The team to watch out for on the other side of the bracket is Indiana.  The Hoosiers have a virtual home court advantage in Indianapolis and are on a 4-game winning streak.  Look for them to beat Wisconsin tonight, upset Ohio State tomorrow, and roll into a final with Illinois on Sunday.  The Hoosier magic is going to end there against the Illini, though.  Illinois ultimately has the firepower and momentum to win its third Big Ten Tournament title.

Have a great weekend and GO ILLINI!

Frank the Tank’s 2006 Chicago Illini League NCAA Tournament Pool

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Selection Sunday is this weekend, which means the greatest gambling stretch of the year is upon us.  If you haven’t received an invite yet and are interested in participating, email me and I’ll send you the details.  Good luck and GO ILLINI!

2006 Big Ten Tournament First Round Predictions

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1 Comment

The 2006 Big Ten Tournament tips off today at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.  Even though I wish the event was back in Chicago for the weekend, the depth of the conference this season means it’s going to be unpredictable and exciting starting from the first game.  There’s no locks anywhere this year.  Here are my predictions for the first round:

Game 1: #8 Penn State vs. #9 Northwestern – The Wildcats, who lost to the Nittany Lions in their 2 previous meetings this year, are going to get over the hump this time around.  Vedran Vukusic is going to lead Northwestern’s Princeton-style offense to victory and slow down Penn State’s outside shooting.  Predicted Winner: Northwestern

Game 2: #7 Michigan vs. #10 Minnesota – Two of the most inconsistent teams in the conference.  Michigan had a great first half of the Big Ten season, while Minnesota had a great second half.  Daniel Horton and Wolverines, however, are going to be hungrier since they need notch the win so that they can rest easy on Selection Sunday.  Michigan ought to be in the NCAA Tournament at this point, but they can’t afford a first round loss here.  My guess is that they’ll be fired up just as they were in their game against the Illini a couple of weeks ago and roll over the Gophers.  Predicted Winner: Michigan

Game 3: #6 Michigan State vs. #11 Purdue – The consensus around the Big Ten is that the Spartans were a disappointment this year.  Certainly, with the nucleus of last year’s Final Four team back this season, Michigan State was predicted to be one of the top 5 teams in the nation.  Instead, they didn’t even crack the top 5 of the Big Ten.  However, Illini Wonk pointed out how the unbalanced schedule of the Big Ten stacked the deck against the Spartans this season.  He noted that Michigan State had to play all of the top 5 teams in the conference twice for a total of 10 games.  In contrast, Big Ten champion Ohio State only had to play 5 games against the top 5 (the only team of that group they played twice was Wisconsin).  What does this mean?  While the Spartans underachieved on a number of fronts this year, they’re still a whole lot better team than their record indicates.  Remember this when you’re filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket next week.  Anyway, Michigan State is going to kill Purdue in this game to set up a Friday nightcap with Illinois.  Trying to win a third game against the Spartans in the same season scares me a little bit, but I’ll approach that subject tomorrow if my prediction for today turns out to be correct.  Predicted Winner: Michigan State

Enjoy the games today!

A Modest Proposal for the Big East Tournament

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, College Basketball, DePaul Blue Demons, SportsLeave a comment

When the Big East Conference announced that it was adding DePaul to its roster of schools, two primary thoughts came to my mind. First, I was excited to see DePaul reaffirm its long-standing Catholic university rivalries with Notre Dame and Marquette while adding on top notch eastern opponents such as UConn, Syracuse, and Georgetown. My next immediate thought was how great it would be to watch DePaul play in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden in March every year no matter how the team’s season went.

Well, the second thought is going to be held off until at least next year. The Big East decided to have only the top 12 teams out of the 16-team conference make it to New York for the tournament, which began yesterday. DePaul fell on the short-end this season.

A number of Big East coaches (and not just the ones who aren’t in New York this week) have complained that this format is going to put immense pressure on the coaches that don’t make it to the conference tourney. Plus, every school wants the opportunity to wine and dine its alums and supporters in Manhattan once a year. Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, however, didn’t want to have a 16-team tourney because he wanted to avoid forcing the top seeds to play 4 games to win the championship.

Tranghese is correct in his concern. The top seeds in the tournaments for the five other BCS conferences only need to play 3 games to win their respective championships. The last thing the Big East wants is for its top teams (who are usually Final Four contenders) to be exhausted heading into the NCAA Tournament.  Yet, there’s a way for the Big East to preserve an advantage for its top seeds and still invite all 16 teams to the Mecca of Basketball: make the conference tournament into a 5-round extravaganza.

Here’s how it would work. The bottom 8 seeds would play in the first round. The 5th through 8th seeds would receive a first round-bye and play the winners from the first round in the second round. The top 4 seeds would get byes for the first 2 rounds and meet the second round victors in the quarterfinals.

This format allows the top seeds to only have to play 3 games to win the championship. At the same time, it gives the bottom teams a chance to participate but they need to run the gauntlet of 5 games to win the tournament. That means that the chances of a fluke team getting the Big East automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament are slim, which is how it should be. Finally, as a fan, think of what the first 3 rounds would be like – 3 straight days of quadruple-headers of college basketball at the highest level!

Under this proposal, the fans get more meaningful games, the bottom-feeders get the opportunity to go to the Garden, the top teams still have the same advantage in terms of the number of games they need to play as they do in the present structure, and the Big East and its members get one more day of television and ticket revenue. What’s not to love?

Margaret Cho Wasn’t Available, So the Bulls Sign…

On By Frank the TankIn Chicago Bulls, NBA Basketball, SportsLeave a comment

I was invited at the last second to go to last night’s Bulls game against the Nets, so I of course gladly accepted.  The Bulls looked like a playoff team last night in beating New Jersey, the first place team in the Atlantic Division, 95-87.  Playing the Pistons tonight, however, won’t help the Bulls in terms of stringing together a bona-fide winning streak for once.  A few random thoughts:

1) I didn’t realize that the Bulls signed Carrot Top to an NBA contract a couple of days ago.

2) Andres Nocioni is the Bulls’ reincarnation of former Illini player Lucas Johnson.  Nocioni is a tough and scrappy player that you love to have on your team and opponents love to hate.  He had a fantastic game last night with 24 points off the bench.

3) Vince Carter scored the quietest 25 points that I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, our group commented throughout the entire game on how Carter looked sluggish, hurt, sick, and disinterested.  Yet we were all shocked to see at the end how many points he had scored during the night.  Vinsanity has got to be high on the list for the NBA record for most garbage-time points.

4) I wouldn’t have been surprised if Carter, Jason Kidd, or Richard Jefferson went nuts on the Bulls.  However, I wasn’t expecting Nenad Krstic to look like the Serbian Shaq with 29 points.  The dude was on fire – Carrot Top had no chance.

5) What’s up with Ben Gordon’s relationship with Bulls coach Scott Skiles?  While Gordon is a liability on defense, he’s such a ridiculously good offensive player that the Bulls need him out on the floor a majority of the time.  Instead, he only received 24 minutes of playing time and was absent for most of the 4th quarter even when the score was close.  Skiles has done an admirable job with this franchise over the past couple of years, but his handling of the one player on the team that has the skills to become a true NBA star is puzzling.

Coming up – after tackling the Big Ten issues of the locale of its basketball tournament and the adding of a 12th team, I’ll be reviewing some changes I’d like to see to the Big East Tournament and the World Baseball Classic over the next few days.  Stay tuned!

Land-o-Links – 3/6/2006

On By Frank the TankIn Land-o-Links, Random Thoughts1 Comment

Happy Pulaski Day to all of my Polish brothers and sisters!  Here are the links for this special day in Chicago:

1) Pulaski Day Defenders Decide It’s Time to Party – Speaking of this special day for Poles across America, way too many people aren’t educated on the importance of our Polish-American hero.

2) Ringling Circus Accused of Spying on PETA – If the circus were running the CIA, we would have found Osama Bin Laden by now.

3) School Busts Teacher for Bush-Bashing – To all of my teacher readers out there: be really careful in the classroom, even if it doesn’t seem fair.

4) So, How Many Knicks Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? – Isiah Thomas and the Knicks have proved to be better comic fodder than even a Dick Cheney hunting trip.

And finally…

5) Three 6 Mafia Win First Oscar – The best moments of last night’s telecast of the Academy Awards stemmed from “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” winning Best Song.  By the way, Jon Stewart did a so-so job hosting the Oscars (it’s a tough gig – David Letterman bombed as host while the response to Chris Rock was tepid and I consider those guys comic geniuses).  There’s one person out there who would be the perfect Oscar host: Robin Williams.  He’s biting and adventurous enough that the TV audience will be thoroughly entertained while he also has the respect of the Academy as one of their own.  If Williams hasn’t been asked yet, it needs to happen.

Have a great Pulaski Day!