The SoapBoxers

The Ides of March are upon us

If you know your Shakespeare, this will mean something to you. In the world of Johnny Goodman, this means taking off the opening Thursday of the NCCA Basketball tournament from work, setting up shop at a local establishment that has numerous televisions, and enjoying an adult beverage or three.

For many the bubble burst, for many many more the bubble never existed, and now that the talking heads and spurned coaches have had three or four days to hash out who got jobbed and why, we can move on to the real important topic. Bracket Pools.

Depending on what online source you read, billions of dollars are figured as lost in space in terms of productivity this time of year as thousands of workers clamor at break time, at lunch, on the phone to their buddies, even on email, as to if this twelve seed is gonna knock of this five seed. Millions of office pools are in place in the United States. Heck some areas will even have Women’s tourney pools, (I am guessing Connecticut has a higher than average participation rate for these) as well as NIT Pools (although I have not seen any floating around Lincoln yet, but maybe in Boulder)

On line there are thousands of pools you can enter, some are small local television pools with a chance to win maybe a big screen television. Others are major national monster insurance company advertising pools that offer great prizes such as all expense paid vacations or substantial cash rewards.

The fact is that March Madness (shouldn’t they start calling it April Madness as it ends in April?) is big time business. The only real losers are CBS, who has taken a bath with revenues compared to what they shell out to show the games on the tube. So what is the answer? The NCCA adds a couple of more “who really cares” play in games and then CBS goes out and adds in a couple of more networks to assure “ALL” games are on television, and they pay even MORE money than they were previously.

So let’s review. Big losing contract to NCAA + adding four more games now equals even more money that CBS is paying to the NCAA to cover games this year…..sounds like a genius deal to me.

So remember as you fill out your pools this year, just channel your inner Charlie Sheen…..

“DUH….WINNING!”

Stay Classy Morehead State!

You often hear people hold the virtue of “consistency” aloft as the gold standard in sports.  It’s great to know that Joe Star is going to go out and put up the same stellar numbers in every game, right?

Not necessarily.  At some point, we get into diminishing marginal returns of sucky performances.  Let’s say Joe Bad goes out and throws four interceptions and loses two fumbles in a game.  Joe Worse throws seven interceptions and loses four fumbles.  Joe Worse hurt his team a lot more, right?  No, not really.  Joe Bad’s team was almost certain to lose the game with him turning the ball over seven times.  Throwing a couple more interceptions and fumbling two more times might look worse in the stat sheet, but it only affects the chance of winning a small bit.

The same principle comes into play in my favorite sport.  If you haven’t noticed, that sport happens to be baseball.  It makes little difference if a pitcher gives up seven runs or 27.  Unless the game is in Coors Field, it’s an almost certain loss for his team.  The 27 run outing is going to absolutely kill the guy’s ERA, but his team still lost just one game that day. 

Sometimes, you will hear announcers talk about pitchers with similar numbers, but point out (negatively) that one pitcher has a tendency to get his brain bashed every once in a while.  In actuality, this guy is probably the more valuable pitcher.  He might be getting absolutely rocked in 10-20% of his outings, but he’s outperforming the other guy in the other 80-90% of the games in order to have similar season numbers.  It’s important not to miss the forest for the trees.  The single game in which the pitcher took a beating accounts for just 1/162 of the season.  It should not overshadow the rest of his performances.

The takeaway on this?  Don’t dwell on the outliers; look at the entire body of work.

THE RESIN BAG

Giants (and ESPN) announcer Jon Miller made a fool of himself by accusing the Colorado Rockies of cheating via ball swapping trickery.  The Rockies have an MLB-approved humidor to keep baseballs at a constant humidity level.  Without the humidor, the balls quickly dry out at the high altitude, resulting in lighter balls that travel further.  The humidor is an attempt to keep a bit of a lid on offense.  (Why don’t all parks have humidors?  I don’t know.  I personally think they should.)  Anyway, Miller suggested that the recent hot streak by the Rockies might be a result of them sneaking non-humidored balls in to the umpire when they needed some offensive help late in games.

There are a few reasons why this isn’t particularly feasible.  First, the umpire rubs down all the balls with mud before the game (to reduce glare from the white surface).  How would the “cheater” balls get re-separated after the rubbing?  Second, what happens if the ball boy gives the ump several “cheater” balls and then the inning ends on the next pitch – the opposition would have the advantage of hitting the “cheater” balls.

But the most damning factor is that many pitchers have said that there is a discernible difference in the way the humidor balls feels as opposed to how a dry ball feels.  Not only is there a difference in the way it feels, but also the weight of the ball.  It might not be enough of a difference for the casual fan to notice, but pitchers are going to notice.

LeBron James decided to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch on the Miami Heat.  I wasn’t shocked by the move, but was saddened a bit.  For the last few years, the only reason I have followed the NBA was to see if LeBron could bring a title to his hometown.  I’m not a fan of the style of play, and have been a marginal follower for the past decade. 

The NCAA basketball tournament is going to expand to 68 teams.  Instead of having four play-in games where the winner will play the #1 seed, the last eight at large teams (likely 11 or 12 seeds) will face off against each other for the right to stay alive in the tournament.  I hate this idea, because I think that 64 is the perfect number.  This change is likely to mess up a lot of bracket pools around the country.  Do you start counting games on Tuesday or on Thursday?

18 year old Mike Trout, an Angels farmhand, had a nice weekend.  In the Futures Game over the weekend, he had a single and double and reached twice on errors caused by the defense trying to hurry to beat his speed.  Later, he was promoted from low-A Cedar Rapids to high-A Rancho Cucamonga.  Trout has blazing speed and could have good power by the time he fully develops.  If he can stay in centerfield, he could be an extremely valuable player for years to come.

And speaking of reaching on an error … a batter is credited with an out when he reached on an error.  That’s why Trout was listed as 2 for 4 in the game.  In the same way, a fielder is credited with an assist even if the player he throws the ball to makes an error.  This is a bit weird, as players are being penalized (or rewarded) for things that should have happened.  In the case of the fielder, I don’t have a big problem with it.  But for the batter, I don’t like it, especially when the player forced an error with his speed.  Shouldn’t the batter get some credit, or at worst, simply not get charged with an at bat (as is the case with sacrifices)?

George Steinbrenner passed away at the age of 80 following a heart attack.  The much maligned owner had been in poor health for the past few years.

I am able to get moderate reception in the radio at my desk and am able to tune into the NCAA basketball tournament.  I managed to listen to some chunks of the tournament during the day and caught some footage on CBS last night.

Early thoughts from the tournament:

Georgetown must be the most hated team in the tournament this year.  The Hoyas put some stress on the majority of brackets across the country.  There are a few happy people, though – those who picked Tennessee (or, um, Ohio) to push into the sweet 16.

Villanova nearly became the villain ‘o the brackets.  The Wildcats had their hands full with Robert Morris on Thursday.  Some analysts feel that there were several questionable fouls against Robert Morris in the game – and these calls were critical, as the game ended up being decided in overtime.

The tournament started out with a bang.  The initial three games were incredibly tight.  The first game to go final was #11 seed Old Dominion beating 6 seeded NotreDame 51-50.  This ended up being the blowout of the trio, with the next two games forcing overtime.  BYU escaped Billy Donovan’s 10 seeded Florida team in two overtimes, and 15 seed Robert Morris came up just short in overtime against #2 seed Villanova.

Upsets were the order of the day, including #10 Saint Marys, #11 Old Dominion, #13 Murray State, and #14 Ohio.  Only one #12 seed was in action (UTEP losing to Butler), so there’s still a good chance that a #12 will pick up a win (they usually do).

Only 5 of the 16 games were decided by 10 or more points.  Two of these were #1 vs. #16 mismatches, and one was actually #14 seed Ohio’s win against Georgetown.  Hopefully the rest of the weekend’s games will be just as good.

My favorite game of the day was #9 Northern Iowa’s 69-66 win over #8 seeded UNLV.  I grew up about 50 miles from the UNI campus, and I cheer for them any time they aren’t playing my Iowa State team.  UNI won the game on a long, long bomb by Ali Farokhmanesh.  Ali Farokhmanesh is the son of an Iranian immigrant, Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh.   Ali’s mother (Cindy Fredrick) is the head volleyball coach at Luther College after stints at Washington State University and the University of Iowa. Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh continues to serve as assistant coach to his wife, as he has throughout their coaching careers.

The conference that laid the biggest egg on day 1 was the Big East.  The conference, which at a hulking 16 teams, is indeed big, placed 8 teams into the conference, including 5 teams amongst the top 4 seeds (#1 Syracuse, #2s Villanova and West Virginia, #3s Pitt and Georgetown).   Big East teams were 1-3 on the day.  Georgetown, Notre Dame, Marquette were all upset.  Villanova’s escape against Robert Morris was the BEST showing for the conference.  Ack.

What are my upset specials for day 2?  #13 Siena over #4 Purdue (playing without star Robbie Hummel), #12 Cornell over #5 Temple (this game may be over by the time you read this), #12 Utah State over #5 Texas A&M, #11 Minnesota over #6 Pitt.  And my sweet surprises?  Siena and Murray State (yep, I had Racers in the Sweet 16 on my official bracket).

What are your favorite moments about the tournament so far?

Editor’s note: make sure to enter The Soap Boxers’s pool. Details can be found here.
 

It is that time of year again. March Madness! Although they should change this title to something with “April” in the title as this thing is starting to drag out farther than the NBA playoffs!.

The Men’s bracket should be interesting this year. There has been a lot of debate about how evenly balanced this field is, how really it is the shortest list of deserving teams that did not get in…i.e. this is one of the weaker tournaments in recent memory. The talking heads on television and radio love the week leading up to the tourney as sports talk is spirited and millions of people hang on every word making deep analytical decisions when filling out one of their fourteen office pool brackets.

Most of us delve through the websites, watch the seemingly round the clock ESPN Bracketology specials to pick our upsets. One of the #3 seeds always seems to get beaten. The #12 seed wins 34% of the first round games recently. The TV guys love all this talk. Bob Ryan on ESPN’s Around the Horn commented yesterday that eleven teams could take down the Jayhawks in their side of the bracket.

C’mon Bob … really … eleven? You had me until you mentioned Northern Iowa as a team that could spoil it for the boys from Lawrence. Talk about a bold prediction!

Now I of all people love the underdog. It gives you something to brag about to your co-workers and friends when you look smarter than the world when you have Cornell making it to the elite 8 … and they actually do. You do have to pick a few upsets don’t you?

Nope.

This year Johnny is going straight with the chalk. Well mainly. I won’t divulge my entire bracket here, but I am taking the Jayhawks to win it all.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Kansas State … They have a complete team and great guard play. A factor that is always important in the tourney.

On the Women’s side, well gimmie the chalk again, at least until the Sweet 16. I think the Huskers will be the first #1 seed eliminated. While the team went 30-1 this year it greatly over-achieved, even in an extremely difficult conference with seven teams ranked in the top 25 most of the year. You have to pick UCONN, if someone beats them it will be considered a major upset, after all they have won 72 straight games.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Texas A&M. The Lady Aggies are playing fabulous right now, are very athletic and are very well coached.

I am sure I will be called a Big XII Homer by someone reading this but I don’t care. Good luck to all of you in your office pools!

The state of basketball in Iowa

The state of Iowa will be represented by just one team in the men’s NCAA tournament – Northern Iowa.  My Iowa State Cyclones faltered down the stretch after three point bomber Lucca Staiger left the program to return to play pro ball in his native Germany (yes, in mid-season).  My team to watch during the tournament will be Syracuse, featuring former Cyclone Wesley Johnson.

The University of Iowa fired their basketball coach on Monday.  Todd Lickliter, who was the NABC National Coach of the Year in his 2007 during his final year at Butler, was just 38-58 at Iowa, including 10-22 this season.  A rash of defections from the program and flagging attendance spelled the end for Lickliter.  The university exercised the$2.4 million buyout to sever the relationship with Lickliter.

Who will the new coach be?  Suggestions I have heard include Tennesee coach Bruce Pearl and Baylor coach Scott Drew (see my article about Drew from last year).  This makes no sense to me.  Why take a step down from a top program to take over rebuilding a program at Iowa?  While Iowa has a good basketball history (including one Final Four appearances), it’s hardly an elite history.  Add to that the fact that Steve Alford and now Lickliter are coaches who had significant success before Iowa and failed to win consistently with the Hawkeyes.  Alford left Iowa for New Mexico and promptly reeled off three straight winning seasons – his Lobo team is  3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

Who, then, to coach the program?  If you don’t mind a coach with some baggage, how about Tim Floyd?  He’s a coach who has lived in the state before (he coached at Iowa State in the 90s) and he might be had for a bargain price as he seeks to creep out of the shadow of the O.J. Mayo scandal.

The University of Northern Iowa Panthers were the one team from the state to make the tournament.  If UNI can get past UNLV in the first round, they’d likely face the hated Kansas Jayhawks in the second round.  Although my team is Iowa State, not UNI, I’d cheer wildly for the Panthers to take down Kansas.

In the women’s tourney, Iowa State, Iowa, and UNI all made the tournament.  Iowa State is a 4 seed and will face Lehigh in the first round.  8 seed Iowa will face Rutgers, led by former Iowa coach (and Hall of Famer) C. Vivian Stringer.  The UNI team surged to an unexpected win in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Their reward – to be fed to the 30-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers.

NCAA Tournament

I’ll spend just a bit of time on the NCAA tournament.  My tournament bracket features Syracuse over Wisconsin in the title game, with Kansas and Duke also making it into the Final Four.  The odds of me nailing these picks is about as good as me getting struck by lightning.  I enjoy watching college basketball, but I’m hardly an expert.

Baylor is a 3 seed – this is a great testament to coach Scott Drew.  As I mentioned in last year’s article about Drew, this is a guy who had a complete uphill climb when he took over the Baylor program after former coach Dave Bliss left in disgrace.

I have Minnesota picked to get to the Sweet 16 largely because of their romp against Purdue in the semifinals of the Big 10 tournament.  Yes, they got killed by Ohio State in the tournament championship,  Yes, Purdue was playing without star Robbie Hummel.  Still, a Purdue team without Hummel is still a solid team, and such a decisive win cannot be completely ignore.

As is my custom, I picked three 12 seeds to advance (Cornell, Utah State, UTEP).  The lowest seed I have picked to win are the 13 seed Murray State Racers.  I have Murray State picked to upend 4 seed Vanderbilt in the first round and the aforementioned 12 seed UTEP in the second round to advance into the sweet 16.

My heart goes out to fans of Mississippi State.  They had the SEC title game – and the accompanying automatic bid to the NCAA tournament – seemingly locked up.  Then Kentucky’s DeMarcus Cousins hit a last second shot to send the game into overtime, and Kentucky escaped with the overtime win – and Mississippi State was left out of the tournament.

I’ll start the rallying cry – reduce the tournament back down to 64 games.  While having 65 teams in the tournament allows an mediocre team from a power conference to slide into an 11 or 12 seed, it looks just plain stupid on the sheet.  64 is enough.  If a bubble team gets left off, too bad.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

The Soap Boxers pool

Make sure to enter our pool.  Details can be found here.

Join The Soap Boxers Observer’s NCAA tourney pool.

The following prizes will be awarded:

First prize: An annual Kosmo pass at the Hyrax Publications store.  This will allow you to download all of my digital, including content not available on The Soap Boxers.  The pass has an MSRP of $18, although it’s selling for $9 right now, to reflect the fact that we have just begun to populate the audio book section.

Three random people will receive a copy of Selling Yourself Short: A Guide to Short Story writing.  Shh – this 2500 word eBooklet won’t be officially released until later in the week 🙂

The sky is falling!

My projected national champion Memphis and runner-up Duke lost within minutes of each other. My bracket is ruins … once again, I’ve have to wait until next year.

I’m glad that baseball season is almost here.

Josef Fritzl of Austria was sentenced to life in a psychiatric prison. Fritzl is the man who kept his daughter imprisoned in a secret basement in his house for 24 years. He repeatedly raped her and fathered seven of her children. One child died after Fritzl refused to allow medical attention. He later threw the baby’s body into a furnace. Fritzl faced charges that included murder (murder by neglect for refusing to allow medical care for the infant), incest, rape, and enslavement.

Fritzl would be eligible for parole in 15 years. However, he is 73 years old, making it quite likely that he will die in prison.

I hope Fritzl’s daughter can see this is as final chapter of this story and somehow put the past behind her and have a happy and productive life. Of course, this is easier said than done.

Weird tangent: I saw the story of Fritzl pleading guilty to the murder charge when I was at a restaurant. I could see the TV screen and read the closed captioning, but couldn’t hear anything. The closed captioning and video were a bit out of sync. I saw an image of Don Imus getting out of a car, and saw closed captioning talking about incest and murder. Say what you will about Don Imus, but he has never (to my knowledge) been accused of incest or murder, so I wasn’t sure what the actual story was. Eventually, the closed captioning got to the Imus story – he has prostate cancer. Why, exactly, can’t the news shows just dump the teleprompter feed into the closed captioning system? You have a script for the show – use it!

On Thursday, the US House of Representative passed a bill that would tax recipients of the AIG bonuses at a rate of 90% The method of using language that was clearly intended to isolate one specific group of individuals, combined with the angry statements from some legislators, makes this bill walk the fine line between proper legislative activity and a bill of attainder (in essence, convicting someone of a crime and penalizing them without benefit of a trial.

Personally, I would like to see these bonuses looked at on a case-by-case basis. I’m really not sure why congress is in such a rush. They could spend a bit more time taking a deeper look at the issue, and if they still felt that this was an appropriate course of action, they could pass this legislation.

Game 5 of pool 2
Japan’s Hisashi Iwakuma and Toshiya Sugiuchi combined on a five hit shutout of Cuba. This knocks Cuba out of the WBC. The semifinalists are now set – US, Venezuela, Korea, and Japan. Evan Longoria will replace Kevin Youkilis on the US team because of an injury.

The biggest story of the day was almost an upset of #2 seed Memphis. Memphis was down to Cal State Northridge late in the second half, but Memphis was able to rally and win. A Memphis loss would have been tragic to my bracket, since I have them as my champion.

In the end, the lowest seed to win in day one of the tournament was #12 seed Western Kentucky, which knocked off #5 seed Illinois. The Hilltoppers led by 10+ points for much of the game, before allowing a rally that let the Illini pull to within two points. Western Kentucky was able to seal the deal, though, and will advance to a second round game against Gonzaga.

An interesting image of the day is Oklahoma star Blake Griffin getting flipped by Morgan State’s Ameer Ali. Ali was immediately ejected from the game. Griffin missed time earlier this year because of a concussion. Griffin scored 28 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in the game.

My alma mater, Iowa State, is tied for the lead with archrival Iowa after day one of the NCAA wresting tournament. Unfortunately, Iowa has more wrestlers still alive in the winner’s bracket (6 for Iowa, 5 for ISU) and they are generally higher seeded. Still, we do have some opportunities. David Zabriskie is the top seeded heavyweight, and Jake Varner is seeded #2 at 197. Nick Gallick, #6 seeded at 141, is the second highest seed still remaining at that weight, as four of the top five have lost.

Hopefully Iowa will suffer some losses, the Cyclones will nab some wins, and the ISU guys who lose are able to claw their way back in the consolation bracket. Let’s get a title for coach Cael Sanderson!

It’s finally here – the day you have all been waiting for. The NCAA tournament begins today. While fans rejoice, corporate America groans under the weight of millions of hours of lost productivity. I don’t think any other single sporting event during the year generates as much buzz.

This weekend, we will experience wall-to-wall tournament coverage. CBS will whisk us from game to game, ensuring that we never get bored. We’ll even see multiple games via split screen. If we’re not sure about the availability of pizza, Pizza Hut will let us know that they, indeed, are open during the tournament and will be happy to deliver. If we forget, Pizza Hut will remind us, again and again again, all throughout the tournament.

Basketball fans love the tournament, of course, but non-fans also come out of the woodwork for the tournament. The casual fan can be exposed to a wide variety of offensive and defensive styles, and CBS makes sure that they are never subjected to a blowout. When one game gets out of reach, they just switch to a better matchup. Basically, we get to eat dessert, but don’t have to eat our veggies. That’s always OK in my book.

An ancient tradition in the history of the NCAA tournament is the filling out of brackets. I run a small office pool (for entertainment purposes, of course). This in my seventh year running the pool, and I get a lot of enjoyment from watching people participate. Every year, the people who know a lot about basketball attempt to compete against the people who spend thirty seconds filling out their bracket – and the non-fans do pretty well most years.

I have a great memory of the 2003 tournament. One of the managers in the office was ridiculing another person’s choice for national champion. I stayed neutral, with my standard comment of “you never know what will happen”. The manager’s prediction of gloom and doom looked on target when 14 seeded Manhattan cut a Syracuse lead to just five points with less than seven minutes to go. Syracuse prevailed in the game, however, and would go on to win the national title.

There are other stories of predictions gone terribly wrong. My wife’s friend used an interesting method to choose the winners one year. She picked them alphabetically. Yep – whichever team came first in the alphabet was picked as the winner. Unfortunately, Appalachian State was unable to reward her optimism, and she ended up with a pretty poor showing.

I’ve had the opportunity to attend several post-season basketball tournaments in person. I’ve never been to a men’s NCAA tournament due to geographical and financial considerations. However, I have been to at least four women’s NCAA tournaments, including one regional final. I have also been to a men’s NIT game (Iowa State vs. Iowa in 2003). The energy at the tournaments is awesome.

My advice to you is this. Watch a lot of basketball this weekend. Pull for some upsets. Become elated when you predict an upset and despondent when a Final Four team goes down to defeat. At least it will take your mind off the economy!

Bonus tournament: you might not realize it, but the NCAA wrestling tournament kicks off this weekend. It doesn’t have the fanfare of the basketball tournament (or even the fanfare of the women’s NCAA tournament, or the NIT tournament, etc) but I’ll be following the action closely all weekend, with the help of the internet. If I wasn’t from Iowa, I probably wouldn’t follow wrestling, but with two dominant teams in the state – my alma mater Iowa State, as well as that “other” school – it’s a sport that I have to follow.