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!
Author: Frank the Tank
2006 Big Ten Tournament First Round Predictions
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
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…
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
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!
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Although Ohio State took care of its business yesterday against Purdue to win the Big Ten championship outright, I’m pretty happy with how the Illini have been playing. Dee Brown looked great against Michigan State on Saturday and we look like we’re peaking heading into the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments. Heck, even Frank the Tank nemesis Dick Vitale took some time during ESPN’s fifty-network coverage of the Duke-UNC game (I completely understand the need to televise this game, but was it really necessary to show it on every single ESPN outlet using different camera angles?) to say that Illinois was the team to watch out for in the NCAA Tournament. Plus, the Illini represented at the Academy Awards last night: University of Illinois graduate Ang Lee won the Oscar for Best Director for “Brokeback Mountain.” That’s got to be a good sign.
Anyway, my favorite stretch of the sports year starts this week. The Big Ten Tournament, the NCAA Tournament, Opening Day for baseball, and the Masters all come right after the other in rapid succession. Some Illini success on top of all of that would make it even sweeter.
Big Ten from Eleven to Twelve? If There’s No Luck of the Irish, Bring in More Orange
A Big Ten Wonk post from a couple of weeks ago explored some views from conference fans about adding a 12th team to the Big Ten. The primary advantage to this is that a conference with 12 teams can split into two divisions and hold a football championship game at the end of the season. That was the main impetus of the ACC grabbing Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech from the Big East a couple of years ago.
The obvious twelfth team for the Big Ten would of course be Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish have the one football program that consistently draws national attention every year regardless of whether they are good or bad and have long-standing rivalries with a number of Big Ten teams, including Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, and Penn State. The problem is that there's no program in the nation that has less of an incentive to join a conference than Notre Dame. The Irish recently renewed their TV contract with NBC and the new BCS rules essentially guarantee that the team will receive a major bowl berth if they can get through the regular season with only two losses.
I do believe that Notre Dame will eventually want to join a conference for football and when that time comes, there's no question that they would choose the Big Ten over the Big East. Paraphrasing Groucho Marx, Notre Dame doesn't want to be a member of any club that would have it as a member. That is, the Big Ten is already arguably the most powerful conference in the nation – it would be great if the Irish joined, but the conference is more than strong enough to stand on its own and doesn't need Notre Dame. The Big East, while having a monster basketball conference, is simply awful in football and is desperate to add any decent football program out there. Is Notre Dame, a school that is obsessed with its national profile, going to choose a conference where the best opposing programs are Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State or one with Pittsburgh and West Virginia as the dominant teams? When thinking along these lines, there's no way that Notre Dame is ever going to join the Big East for football. I wouldn't say the same for the Big Ten.
Still, if there was a 110% guarantee that Notre Dame will never, ever join any conference for football (the Irish rejected a formal invitation from the Big Ten in 1999), the Big Ten ought to move on and add a different 12th team. There's been banter about taking Missouri from the Big 12 or adding Pittsburgh or West Virginia. However, one of the emails printed in the aforementioned Big Ten Wonk post nailed exactly who I believe ought to be that 12th team if there's no shot at Notre Dame: the Syracuse Orange.
To me, Syracuse is the only school other than Notre Dame that would make sense for the Big Ten. The most predominant reason is that the ACC/Big East shakeup has essentially made the Northeastern portion of the United States up for grabs in college football. If the Big Ten has Syracuse paired with Penn State, the conference will have the two schools with the largest fan bases on the East Coast to go along with its dominance in the Midwest.
There are some Big Ten fans that have bemoaned the lack of geographic purity of the conference since we added Penn State. To put it nicely, I think those fans are inward looking people who have no concept whatsoever of the big picture. In this ESPN World where it's critical for college sports leagues to present matchups that have implications at a national level rather than a regional level, it's incredulous to me that we would want to limit the reach of the greatest conference in the country to the Midwestern states.
Let's look at the other candidates mentioned most often. Pittsburgh would be a natural rival for Penn State, but the problem with Pitt is that Penn State already covers the Pittsburgh media market itself better than the Panthers. West Virginia is an even worse choice: the Mountaineer fan base doesn't extend very far past Morgantown – and Morgantown or even the entire state of West Virginia is certainly not big enough in terms of population that the powers that be in the Big Ten would care to grab that market. Missouri is one of the biggest rivals for Illinois, but the Illini also already provide coverage for the Big Ten in St. Louis. The Tigers do open up Kansas City for the Big Ten, but even then, Mizzou has little reason to move when it's already in the financially and competitively strong Big 12 conference. Moving to the Big Ten would be a step up in academic prestige for them, yet that wouldn't be enough to pay for a messy and expensive divorce with the Big 12.
That leaves Syracuse. It's the team that the ACC originally wanted instead of Virginia Tech and for good reason. Syracuse, while down last year, has traditionally had a strong football program. At the same time, the Orange basketball program is consistently one of the best in the country. With Penn State already a member of the Big Ten, Syracuse would have a natural East Coast traveling partner and would not be physically isolated the way Boston College is with the other ACC teams. Since the Big East has been emaciated in football, Syracuse has a strong incentive to switch conferences. Last, and certainly not least, Syracuse has one of the biggest college fan bases in New York City and is considered one of the "home teams" there.
If the Big Ten is going to expand, it should expand its geographic footprint instead of looking within its present boundaries. It's pretty simple to me – New York City and the rest of New York State becoming Big Ten country is a whole lot more valuable than duplicating coverage in Pittsburgh and St. Louis or adding Morgantown. As I said before, Syracuse would make the Big Ten the top football conference on the East Coast as well as keeping its title as the predominant place for college sports in the Midwest. Other than the obvious choice of Notre Dame, I can't think of another school other than Syracuse that could add as much value to the Big Ten.
Chicago vs. Indy for the Home of the Big Ten Tournament
The Big Ten is looking for a permanent home for the conference’s men’s basketball tournament after having alternated between Chicago and Indianapolis since 2001. From my biased perspective, I’d like to see the United Center in Chicago become the home of the Big Ten Tournament since: (1) I’m a Chicagoan and (2) the Illini are the beneficiaries of a huge home court advantage here.
John Brumbaugh of of Illini Board wrote a more balanced point-by-point comparison of Chicago versus Indianapolis being the permanent home of the tournament a few months ago. In the end, he believes Chicago will be chosen because of its financial advantages (United Center has over 3,000 more seats than Conseco Fieldhouse and the Windy City has access to substantially more corporate sponsorships) and logistics (while most people I spoken with that have gone to the tourney in both cities believe Indy is more convenient as a fan once you get there since the venue, hotels, and bars are all in a centralized location, Chicago is still the transportation capital of the nation and has more than enough hotel space).
An interesting and, I believe, extremely important point that Brumbaugh notes is that the Big Ten could be looking at securing Chicago as “their city.” Particularly with both DePaul and Notre Dame in the Big East at this time, the Big Ten wants to make sure that it stays as the predominant conference in the nation’s third largest media market.
The Big East is firmly associated with Madison Square Garden in New York while the Pac-10 has made the Staples Center in Los Angeles its home. Chicago is certainly a better college sports town than New York (St. John’s? Rugters???) and arguably better than L.A. (even with the presence of USC and UCLA, people on the West Coast just don’t have the same passion about sports as those in other parts of the country). There’s a lot more value in terms of national perception if the Big Ten is automatically associated with the major market of Chicago as opposed to being the sterotyped product of small Midwestern towns. The Big Ten can either continue to complain about being the victim of major media market bias or it can become the beneficiary of major media market bias. I’d rather have the latter, which means choosing Chicago as the permanent home for the Big Ten Tournament is a good place to start.
Land-o-Links – 3/2/2006
Links for your Thursday:
1) The Jumpman in Us All – The new Air Jordan XXI commercial from Nike seriously freezes me in my tracks everytime I see it on TV. When I was younger, I was just like every one of those kids imitating Michael Jordan’s signature moves on the playground. Here’s how Nike filmed the ad.
2) Brokeback Spoofs: Tough Guys Unmasked – It looks like that “The Empire Brokeback” send-up I linked to the other day was just one of a multitude of Brokeback Mountain parodies.
3) Chappelle Said Unhappy With Network Plans – Dave Chappelle and Comedy Central are having a spat over what the network wants to do with the material he recorded for the never-aired thrid season of Chappelle’s Show. By the way, be sure to catch his 2-hour appearance on Inside the Actor’s Studio if you haven’t already – it’s good stuff.
4) Honor This: Allen Yes, Balbo No – The latest political controversy in Chicago: an alderman wants to eliminate the city’s practice of granting honorary street signs (i.e. Jack Brickhouse Way and Hugh Hefner Way) in the wake of the proposed honoring of former Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Eric Zorn takes this one step further with pointing out that the city has a real street named after a fascist who was once suspected of murder. Hooray Chicago!
And finally in one of the greatest developments ever…
5) Snoop Dogg Unveils New Video Gaming League for Hip Hop Stars – If ESPN can make “Madden Nation” into a show, there is absolutely no reason why this league should not have its own entire network. For the official league site, click here.
The Madness Has Started Early
Great sports and TV day yesterday – spring training baseball games began, new episodes of American Idol and Lost were on, and most importantly, there were three great college basketball games with important implications that all came down to the final seconds with wacky and bizarre endings. A quick recap of the early start of March Madness:
1) Ohio State 56, Northwestern 53 – This was the game that all of Illini Nation was watching last night. The Wildcats blew the game in the last minute, which in turn eradicated their chances for an NIT bid along with all but shutting the door on Illinois grabbing its third straight Big Ten title. That last sequence by Northwestern at the conclusion where they took about ten minutes worth of timeouts to set up a play with 1.3 seconds left, only to throw the ball out of bounds on the inbounding pass, was maddening. Illinois can just forget about the Big Ten regular season championship and set its sights on the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament since there’s no way that Ohio State is going to lose to Purdue on Sunday. Lesson learned: never trust your rival to ever help you in any shape or form.
2) Florida State 79, Duke 74 – There’s no team I hate in all of sports more than Duke. I absolutely love seeing them lose. However, last night’s game in Tallahassee was one of the most bizarre endings to a game I’ve seen in a while. The “Free Shoe U” students rushed the floor prematurely with 1.7 seconds left in the game. The officials had to clear all of the people off the floor and awarded two technical foul shots to Duke. Luckily for the Seminoles, those technical foul shots didn’t change the outcome of the game. After the game officially ended, the FSU students of course rushed the floor again. This wasn’t just a game against the #1 team in America for FSU; the Seminoles were also playing for their NCAA Tournament lives. They were fortunate that they weren’t screwed because of their idiot fans.
3) Texas A&M 46, Texas 43 – P.J. Tucker of Texas dribbled around at the end of regulation intending to allow the tied game to go into overtime. The problem was that there was a 5.9 second difference between the game clock and the shot clock and he didn’t realize it for some reason. As a result of the Longhorns’ shot-clock violation, the Aggies got the ball and subsequently nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer to win a game over its arch-rivals and possibly clinch an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament. Acie Law, the A&M player that hit the game-winner, is going to remember that shot for the rest of his life.
What’s even better is that this was just an appetizer for college hoops fans. I seriously cannot wait for Selection Sunday to get here.
FRANK THE TANK'S SLANT 