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My 2015 Wishlist for Pitt and College Sports

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Jan 022015

I consider myself as a lucky sports fan. At least I’m not a Cleveland sports fan. I can find hope without looking too hard. BUT! C’mon, everyone wants some of their teams to do better. So here’s my wishlist for college sports in 2015. Click here for last year’s wishlist. Seeing as how we are dealing with the passions and whims of 18-23 year olds, as you can see, I was totally on the mark. Er sumfink.

Pitt Football

UPDATE, post-Armed Forces Bowl: For Gawd’s sake, my biggest wish it to stop the Pitt-ing! But… but… perhaps in order for Pat Narduzzi to change the culture, to remake Pitt into a contender, first they needed to get all the crazy out of their system. To pull an all-time soul-punching moment… ie, giving up a 21 point lead with 3 minutes left via two successive on-sides kick recovery failures and giving up a 2-point conversion. I’ve been a Pitt fan for over 2 decades and this is definitely the most PITT of PITT-ings.

Also, eff you Matt House. Please, don’t even bother coming back to clean out your things. And whoever coaches special teams for Pitt. I think that was Chryst, wasn’t it? It’s cliche to say that the seniors deserved better because Houston also has gone through a coaching change but seriously, these seniors deserved better!

Narduzzi should have come down on to the field in the final quarter, c*nt punched House and taken over the defense himself.

Better recruiting and 8-4
- I’m truly excited about Pat Narduzzi getting the Pitt job. I don’t think Paul Chryst was a bad choice but his tenure was pretty underwhelming. The guy knows how to build an offense but his not-insignificant disinterest in recruiting on the defensive side handicapped the development of the program.
- Narduzzi is, of course, known for his fast, aggressive defenses but just as important is that he embraces recruiting. Pitt’s defense won’t be fixed in one recruiting cycle and there’s only so much one can do with better coaching.
- Next season’s team should be able to win a minimum of 8 games, even with a little in growing pains. Should. This is still Pitt, after all.

Pitt basketball

Further Maturation and the NCAA tournament
- Coupled with the Maui Invitational and the ACC-B1G challenge and Pitt is “only” 10-3 coming out of their non-conference schedule. This is one of the youngest teams that Jamie Dixon has ever fielded. He’s playing way more freshmen and sophomore than he’d like. But there’s so much to like and hope for in this team.
- Sophomore Mike Young is probably the most consistent of the youngsters; he’s a great finisher and is really coming on strong. Jamel Artis & Josh Newkirk have been inconsistent but give glimpses of becoming really solid players. Ryan Luther is only a freshman but he plays hard and once the light comes on (albeit probably next year), he’s going to be a really strong force. James Robinson has been more aggressive this year and Cameron Wright is rounding into form coming off injury. Pitt’s achilles heel is not having a proper Center though. Joseph Uchebo plays hard and has shown glimpses of the player he could have been but that’s it -“could have been”. Derrick Randall is just, well, no.
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Requiem for Pitt AD Steve Pederson

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Dec 182014

Well then, I think my hypothesis that Pitt football can become a Wisconsin got a huge shot in the arm last night. Pitt ~~BAMF~~ Chancellor Patrick Gallagher saw fit to relieve Steve Pederson of his duties as Athletic Director, a position he’s held for 13 years, resulting in no conference championships for the most important team in any major collegiate athletics department, football.

“Before beginning a robust national coaching search, Steve Pederson and I spoke this morning and we mutually agreed that this would be the appropriate time to make a change in athletic department leadership.

“With major decisions to be made about the future of football, I thought it was in the best interest of the University of Pittsburgh for Chancellor Gallagher to assemble his own team,” Pederson said. “I am a Pitt and City of Pittsburgh fan, and want what is best for everyone moving into the future. I will miss the daily interaction with our great staff, coaches and student-athletes, but will enjoy watching them accomplish great things. To our friends and supporters, thank you for making this a great home for our family.”

There were positives to Pederson’s tenure:

“Since arriving at the University in August, I have greatly appreciated my collaborations with Steve. Our athletic department has advanced in many significant ways under his leadership. Steve was an instrumental figure in Pitt’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference and thanks to his efforts our athletic facilities, especially the Petersen Events Center, rival any in the country. I want to thank him for his many important contributions to Pitt and his unwavering commitment to our student-athletes.”

It can’t be underscored how important it is that Pitt made it into the ACC ahead of Cincinnati and especially UConn. Pederson also had two successful hires. He brought Ben Howland from Northern Arizona, though I’ve heard that Sonny Vaccaro had a lot to do with that hire, just as he had a lot to do with Howland leaving to go to UCLA. Pederson also hired Walt Harris to resurrect the football program. That we now bemoan a 6-6 record is testament to the yeoman’s work that Harris did. Continue reading »

Taking the NFL to the Grey Havens

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Sep 182014

Although we would all agree that the vast, vast major of NFL players are decent people, I’m finding it harder and harder to get excited for professional football these days.

The NFL is over-exposed. There’s no off-season anymore. There’s always a new story and I find that to be draining. I want to take time away from the game, follow some other sports and actually miss the NFL. That’s almost impossible with ESPN and the other networks’ 24/7 coverage of any little, bitty, tiny story. Player misconduct is a worthy news item no matter when it happens but other than that, the NFL needs a real off-season.

These days, I honestly find the NFL product to be a bit boring. It’s roughly the same types of offenses and defenses, with little variation. Whereas there was once a slight variety of offenses – smash mouth, west coast, run & shoot, long-ball – nowadays, everyone seems to be running roughly a variation of the west coast with some spread principles. The real innovation in offenses continues to be on the college side. I have no problem turning on a random college football game but I often fall asleep watching any NFL game.

Coupled with the tone-deaf response to player misconduct (to put it lightly), it’s just not as fun as it used to be. Humans are a Fallen species and so no sports league, no institution is ever perfect. But all this shit, it wears on a fan. I can’t block it out anymore. Not sure if I should either.

Penn State are still Penn State

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Sep 102014

In an article for SI regarding the NCAA’s decision to lift Penn State’s bowl ban and scholarship restrictions, Zac Ellis writes:

The problem was that the bowl ban and scholarship reductions didn’t affect anyone responsible for Sandusky’s actions. Those sanctions didn’t punish the likes of former Penn State president Graham Spanier, late football coach Joe Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz, whose actions — or lack thereof — were at the heart of the scandal. What the NCAA’s decision did was take opportunities away from prospective scholarship athletes at Penn State. These are players who had nothing to do with Sandusky or the school’s administration. The NCAA forced the next Penn State regime — in this case, Bill O’Brien and his new coaching staff — into an extremely difficult situation of recruiting fewer kids into a program that couldn’t go bowling for four seasons.

Ellis is correct that the penalties levied against Penn State didn’t punish Spanier, Paterno, Curley or Schultz and did punish Penn State’s football program and future players. But punishing rule breakers (in this case the institution of Penn State football) often does have collateral and deleterious downstream effects.

Those who would point out that the NCAA had no juris-my-dicktion in this case have a point. But they’re also, in effect, saying that the football program should not have been punished at all. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the football culture at Penn State became so big and so important that it led to the actions which caused the scandal, which led otherwise good men to look the other way while heinous acts were committed. Penn State is a fine academic institution but football should never be as big as it is there; that’s called lack of institutional control. It had to be taken down a peg.

And the folks who have bought into the myth of “Success with Honor”, who worship(ped) at the altar of Joe Paterno and all he wrought have stood screaming into the wind while the rest of us watched, disappointed and horrified. They still think of Penn State as Shangri-La. This level of fidelity, emulated at other prominent football-centric schools around the country, is sad but not unique. If the folks at Michigan or Texas or Alabama think that it couldn’t happen at their institutions, they’re wrong, so wrong. Not because they’re inferior people (we’re all Fallen) but because they are simply people.

Perhaps I’m just screaming into the wind. While it’s possible (hopeful) that the core workings of the Penn State administration have changed, I have seen nothing in the intervening years to dissuade me from believing that Penn State football isn’t still the biggest, baddest cat in town. Folks who were once just a bit chastened are now dancing in the streets, believing that their institution is fully redeemed or that the NCAA’s jealous vendetta against poor, innocent State has ended. I guess a few more years of sanctions wouldn’t have changed the culture at Penn State, any more so than sanctions have changed Ohio State, Alabama or USC in preceding years. So let the kids go bowling. #Dominate.

A Case for Sports Pain

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Feb 132014

Or… Justifying Wednesday Night RAW

It’s probably an understatement how raw I feel at the moment. Here’s the reason. Don’t make me talk about it. In fact, I think this tweet perfectly encapsulates how most people should deal with me after a close loss:

Not accepting anything from anyone who magically comes outta the woodwork to diss Pitt or claims some long held loyalty to Syracuse. #raw

— Malcolm Fitzgerald (@ajollybengali) February 13, 2014

This next tweet doesn’t describe how I feel after every loss but it most certainly applies tonight. Yes it does, yes it does, yes it does.

THEY GOT FUCKING LUCKY!

— Malcolm Fitzgerald (@ajollybengali) February 13, 2014

Anyway, I know I take sports pretty seriously. It opens me up to feeling really horrible at times. It also affords me ridiculous feelings of elation and euphoria. I’ve said that I do consider myself a pretty lucky fan overall so I’m not lamenting my current position. Too much.

Those who understand will, even if they’re on the opposite side, at least have some sympathy. However, some folks won’t/don’t/can’t understand how or why sports can bring a person so low. The best they can do is give a jagoff like me a wide berth when I’m pissed off. But they do so shaking their heads. I don’t think it’s lack of empathy. Perhaps, lack of imagination. In a way, I pity them.

Marcus Smart Shouldn’t Have Been Suspended

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Feb 112014

By now, the college basketball world has started to move on from the Marcus Smart incident. Except, you know, Marcus Smart. Because he’s been suspended for three games. He had to apologize to his team and the Oklahoma State fan-base for shoving a jerk, named Jeff Orr, who called him a “piece of crap”. He had to apologize to that very same jerk.

I’m still not sure that Smart should have been suspended. It’s a common trope to say that because fans pay money, they have the right to say what they want, however boorish or vulgar. Some folks have even said that Smart should’ve/would’ve been suspended for his response even if a racial slur had been used. I find this to be an abominable standard.

I guess it all depends on where you draw the line. I think it’s one thing to call into question a player’s play. His decision making, strategy, maybe even his hustle. I don’t mind when opposing students taunt players. As long as it revolves around the game. Chants of ‘airball’, boos even. But to hurl invective at a player, to impugn his character, to call into question his very integrity, especially a 19-year old KID – this is repulsive. This is not how we as college sports fans should conduct ourselves.

The Olympics as the Emperor’s New Clothes

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Feb 092014

I love the Olympics, both summer and winter. Swimming, beach volleyball, athletics, skiing, snowboarding, curling. Curling! I mean, what a fraking awesomely absurd sport. It’s shuffleboard on ice! With brooms! I can’t stop watching when it comes on.

But that’s what works about the Olympics. Sports. Competition. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. (Unless you’re talking Pitt sports in which case, you’re Comfortably Numb). The rest sucks. All those fluffy human interest pieces, tales of overcoming adversity, yada yada yada. I can do without it all.

But more importantly, the whole ‘business’ of the Olympics is rotten to the core. From the IOC to the way the host countries prostitute themselves to the way that they railroad their citizens in preparation for the games even to the treatment of Sochi’s stray dogs – it’s disgusting.

The Olympic rings are trademarked so I can’t show them. This is not the Olympic rings.

There is no denying the spectacular opening ceremonies at the Beijing Games in 2008. And I can still remember the arrow being shot over the huge Olympic torch to light it up at the 1992 Barcelona games. But do we need it? Do we need the glittering Olympic villages and all the amenities. Did costs for the Sochi games really have to eclipse $50,000,000,000 (that’s $50+ BILLION!).

Venues and housing need to be built and security and transportation must be upgraded in order to host an Olympic games. Those real and necessary capital improvements are nothing to sneeze at but it should be a simple matter to host the games. It should certainly not devolve into a brazen display of nationalistic one-upmanship and trying to look purrty and pounding your country’s chest. Let the athletes do that trash talking.

I honestly don’t think I’m tilting at windmills here. I’m not even particularly excised about the costs of the Olympics. Overruns happen on capital projects. It’s the decadence and sleaziness that now seem to be associated with the event. Not the athletes or the contests themselves. The administrative and nationalist aspects. The show-biz, the glitz, the glamour. That’s not the true spirit of the Olympics. It shouldn’t be big business.

Coke and Chrysler not Coke vs Chrysler

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Feb 032014

When I was going to Pitt, I would occasionally walk by a group of older gentlemen who would gather in the bowels of Posvar Hall near the old Forbes Field home plate on weekends. They would chatter away in some foreign language, maybe Italian or Czech. I thought it was a quaint tradition, these old salts gathering to wile away the hours together. Doubtless they knew Englige but were probably more comfortable in their mother tongue.

Last night, during the Superbowl, Coke aired an advertisement of America the Beautiful being sung in different languages. It was a cute, sugary attempt to celebrate America’s diversity – the melting pot that has contributed to this country’s rise. No big deal, right?

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Coke Superbowl Ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iM73E6JP8

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Predictably, the Ignoranti of Twitter went ballistic! Here are a couple of my favorites of the ones as compiled by Deadspin:

America the beautiful shouldn’t be sung in any language other than English. #fuckcoke #gtfo #pos

— Josh Scarborough (@Jscarborough96) February 3, 2014

It’s God Bless America not Mexico so sing in English. #FuckCoke

— Allison Cruts (@allison_cruts31) February 3, 2014

Considering out constitution is in English I would appreciate out patriotic songs be the same. #fuckcoke

— Train (@col_train48) February 3, 2014

(Please excuse the expletives not deleted).

We don’t have an official national language. Never have. Maybe never will. This country has never been a bastion of English fluency. Consider places like Germantown, Little Italy and Polish Hill (an enclave in Pgh). European immigrants, for generations, clustered in these groups so as to make the transition from their homelands all the easier. Sounds of people chattering in their native language rang forth in these neighborhoods.

It’s unlikely that any immigrant would deny that learning/mastering English is key to getting ahead in this country. But mastering English is tough! It wasn’t uncommon for the parents’ generation to be much less fluent than their children who grew up in the USA. Watch the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding – some version of that is being repeated within every ethnicity that comes to this country.

Today we have added in places like Chinatown, Koreatown or Little Havana, Little India or Little Bangladesh. And it’s easy to see the same story being repeated.

By the way, the CEO of PepsiCo, the alternative to Coca-Cola whom these nitwits will now turn, is an Indian woman.

Later in the evening, Chrysler aired a commercial featuring Bob Dylan. It was definitively, almost defiantly American – “So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia assemble your phone. WE will build your car.”

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Bob Dylan – Chrysler Ad

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I think it’s likely that the same self-styled ENGLISH patriots who hated the multi-culti Coke ad probably loved the Chrysler ad. Because ‘murrica. Let’s just gloss over the fact that Chrysler is owned by Fiat, an Italian company. And before that it was owned by Daimler, a German company.

I liked both commercials and there is, in my opinion, no contradiction between the two ads. We can celebrate the contributions of immigrants in one breath.because this is a nation of immigrants (except for that part about massacring our aborigines with Guns, Germs, and Steel). And also recognize that some of the things we do here become uniquely ours… ours as Americans, encompassing our immigrants and ‘natives’. It’s a pretty big country. There’s room for a whole lotta people.

The Fates of College Basketball’s Blue Bloods

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Jan 252014

Former Pitt guard and current Arizona basketball coach, Sean Miller

… And Those Who Aspire to Join Them

I’ve been thinking about the Blue Bloods of college basketball. The programs that are the elite of the elite. That you automatically expect to be ranked in any given week. That you automatically expect will make the NCAA tournament. Whose fan bases and administrations are so irrational that they will contemplate firing a coach for not winning a National Title or getting to a Final Four once every couple years.

Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky, UNC, Indiana, Georgetown, Michigan State. The historical titans of the game.

Yes, I left off Duke and Syracuse. I haven’t included Florida. I think Duke and Syracuse are better programs than Georgetown or Indiana at the moment.

To be truly mentioned among the titans of the game, a program has to survive the loss of its legendary coach. UCLA basketball will always be associated with John Wooden but what makes this program the elite of the elite is that it has survived and thrived after Wooden. Choppy waters along the way but UCLA can still capture the national imagination and does own a National Title, post-Wooden.

Duke and Syracuse are undoubtedly among the modern giants of the game. But the legends of these schools coach them right now. Duke was a very good program prior to Krysysskwsswwskksi in the same way that Penn State football was a very good program prior to Joe Paterno. Syracuse had a little bit of history but was not held in the same regard before Jim Boeheim’s tenure. In fact, Boeheim was hired only after the previous head coach was hired away by Tulane.

The Folly of Playoffs

Baseball, Basketball, College Basketball, College Football, Football, Futbol/Soccer, Hockey, Pro-Basketball, Pro-Football, The Bigger Picture Comments Off

Jan 242014

I’m not a huge fan of playoffs (unless my team does well in them). They’re a vastly imperfect method of determining a champion. They usually only determine the team that is playing the best, that is the hottest at that end point of the season. A balanced, season-long race should be the only way that a Champion is determined.

This is the way it’s done in world Soccer (ie, Association Football). Each team plays every other team twice throughout the season. Winner gets 3 points. Loser gets 0 points. Tie gets 1 point for each team. Add up each team’s points and you have a winner. Home-and-home. No such thing as Strength of Schedule. A true league champion.

There are separate Cup Championships (elimination tournaments or playoffs, if you will) that run concurrently through the season. When an FC Barcelona fan talks about the club’s 22 titles, that number doesn’t include Cup Championships.

This is my definition of a true champion. I realize it will always be impossible to determine a true champion in the NFL, College Football and College Basketball. (As well as the other college sports). There are too many teams within each league to play a round robin schedule or even one-to-one.

But the NBA, NHL and MLB could have true champions. Eliminate conferences and divisions, which are remnants of the days when travel costs weighed more heavily on teams. Have each team play the same number of games against their brethren. Everyone’s travel costs will be the same if you play each other the same number of times. 3 points for an win (or shootout win in the NHL), 0 points for a loss.

The NHL, NBA and MLB each have 30 teams. Hockey and Basketball would play a home-and-home (2 games/opponent), which gets them to 58 games. MLB would play double home-and-home (4 games/opponent), which gets them to 116 games. That’s a not-insignificant decrease in inventory so add in simultaneous elimination tournaments (Cup Championships) and you should be able to replenish the inventory sufficiently.

I know, I know. I’m tilting at windmills. Americans can’t stomach regular season champions. We crave the supposed-certainty of a playoff. We would rather be provided with certainty, with absolute rules rather than any teeny-weeny sign of ambiguity. Bollocks to that.

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