Month: December 2007

Wintering in Wisco

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I guess technically winter is half way over. The days are getting longer now. In reality, we still have to get through the month of January, which is normally cold and snowy.

Lately, we’ve been dealing with a full dose of winter. Lots of snow, then some more snow, and then after that, some additional snow.

Then this week we’ve had lots of fog. Thick fog. For example driving home the other night, looking at the dashed lines on the highway… I could only see one dash at a time. Which means I couldn’t see very far at all. Other than the fog, the weather wasn’t bad… upper 30s were nice.

Then this weekend it changed… dramatically. We were suppose to get 3 to 6 inches of snow, but that didn’t happen. First it rained for about 24 hours. Then it got cold and very windy. Then we got some snow, but not much… mainly lots of wind blowing the snow over the sheets of ice that are roads were becoming. Rain… then cold… then snow over the now frozen rain makes for very bad road conditions.

The boat’s been put away for a little more than a month now and hopefully I’ll be putting it back on the water in a couple months. Until then, I’ll need to my mind off water skiing and try to keep myself distracted until the deep freeze ends.

Anyways, Merry Christmas everybody. Enjoy the holidays…. I’ll be snow blowing in the morning then heading to the rents for the first of many Christmas dinners.

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BCS – The Most Unrewarding Championship That I Know Of

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Here is my rant on the Bowl Championship Series…

To me, it is just unrealistic to think that we (humans) are capable of watching 120+ teams play an entire season of football and then compare their results to narrow down the field to 2 teams for the championship game. Simple put, no one person can watch every game and make comparisons. Even if someone could watch every game, very few people, if any, would be able keep track of what they’ve seen to make the comparisons.

Every level of organized football from high school up has a playoff system… except for one. That one level is the premier level of college football. They allow people to vote to determine who gets to go play for the championship. The people voting, sports reporters and coaches. The reporters jobs are to write about local or regional teams typically. They aren’t watching the entire college football world. They might be paying attention to it, but can’t dedicate the time to it because their job is to report. Coaches, have a different problem. They are focused on coaching their teams to a victory each week. They aren’t watching everybody else. They might know their conference, but can’t track all the teams.

My proposed playoffs are this…

  • 16 teams
  • Automatic bids for all conference champions with 3 or fewer losses. The rational for this criteria is a playoff team should be championship caliber team and that typically means 3 or less losses. Teams eliminated because of this criteria would be eligible for an at large berth if deemed worthy. This would typically only eliminate 1, maybe 2 champions a year.
  • Remaining spots filled by at large berths to be decided upon in a fashion similar to what completes the NCAA Basketball bracket. AD’s and conference commissioners meet to select the remaining teams and seed all of the teams from 1 to 16.
  • No limits for number of teams from a particular conference.
  • No special rules for any independent schools. They have to hope for an at large berth based on their record and performance.
  • 1st, 2nd and semifinal rounds played at the higher seeds home stadium.
  • Championship game played on neutral site.
  • Similar to the basket ball tourney, no reseeding of brackets after each round.
  • First round immediately following the season conclusion
  • 2nd round weekend after Christmas
  • Sem-Final round weekend after New Years
  • Championship game the following week
  • Teams not in the playoffs would be eligible for “traditional” bowl games.

I think this would have the potential to rival, if not exceed, March Madness.

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