Smoking the Seeds: 2023

I've spent years debunking the Rube Goldberg machinations of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Season after season, the members of said committee have been screwing non-brand-name teams by imposing bad seedings and manipulating bracket design in service of writing checks to the major conferences. Teams' Q-Ratings and potential overall television ratings seem to have been the committee's guiding lights.

Once upon a time, back in the era when RPI was the committee's dominant tool (and Missouri State, with a low-30's RPI, got royally hosed), the committee at least tried to be semi-subtle about it. As the years have passed, however, the committee has become about as subtle as a Trump rally -- white, loud, and indifferent to history or reason. They've massaged every major conference wannabe winner into the tournament while designing gauntlets to squeeze the pesky low-Q teams out ASAP.

The Toughest Region

As most seasons unfold, I usually invest between 4K and 5K on assorted long shots, half of which are generally of the non-brand-name variety. This year I invested just dinner money on a couple of teams. When I saw the East bracket, I was glad I had just dinner money on the line. Literally half the teams I considered were in the East region. My initial reaction to the East was that it was arguably the toughest region of all time. 

The East had two hugely underrated sleepers in Florida Atlantic and Oral Roberts. I thought there were three or four teams in the East better than Purdue. Charles Barkley predicted that Memphis would handle Purdue in the second round. So did I. The problem was Memphis first had to face the nine-seeded, 30-win FAU Owls, whose three losses had all been on the road. Why FAU was a nine, I couldn't tell you. Why Memphis was an eight, I couldn't tell you, either. Memphis had hammered Houston in the AAC final and had almost beaten them a second time. Houston was a one seed; why was Memphis given no respect?

The East also had Kentucky, Tennessee, and Duke, all potential Final Four teams. Plus a tourney-scary Michigan State. And I'm not even mentioning the one through three seeds (Purdue, Marquette, and Kansas State). 

What sins did these teams commit to all be jammed into this bracket from hell?

Shoehorns and Exclusions

The usual collection of Big 10 teams was shoehorned into the tournament. Teams that were frozen out included Liberty, a couple of AAC squads in Tulane and Cincinnati, and two teams from Conference USA, North Texas and UAB. 

My arguments for these teams go something like this:  Kennesaw State had three-seed Xavier on the ropes in their tournament game until a late no-call turned the tide. Liberty was comparable to Kennesaw. If Houston was all that, then the AAC should have been assigned more teams. Tulane and Cincinnati had similar records to those shoehorned Big 10 squads. Given the Big 10's questionable showing in the tournament, it's not a reach to suggest that Tulane and Cincinnati deserved serious consideration. And finally, given FAU's run, it's also not a stretch to conclude that 29-7 North Texas and 28-9 UAB should have been invited. 

The shoehorning of Big 10 teams is, as I said, an annual abuse.

Clearing the Smoke

The conference tournaments prove nothing and extend an already too-lengthy college season. Key injuries occurred in a handful of conference tournaments; Kentucky, UCLA, and Houston were all the worse for it. Players either aggravated existing injuries by trying to play or suffered injuries during the conference tournaments themselves. These conference tourneys cost the blue bloods this year. 

The tourneys exist primarily to pad brand-name conference coffers, so it's fitting that blue blood greed led, in the long haul, to fewer NCAA tourney checks for those blue bloods.

Basketball teams are organisms, not collections of individuals. The brand names suffered mightily as injuries mounted and fragile chemistries affected by those injuries melted down in the cauldron of one-and-done. What surprised me most was that some experienced off brand teams that figured to be good but not overwhelming, such as Creighton and San Diego State, handled squads with more firepower. 

Conclusion 

Going forward, all we can hope is that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will make note of their errors, admit their malfeasance, and swear off their unfair seedings. Yes, perhaps the next time three Conference USA teams win 28 games or more, the committee will consider taking more than one of them. And maybe consider giving one of them a seed higher than nine.

But -- LOL -- let's not hold our breath waiting.

Bob Dietz

March 28, 2023

Back in the Saddle

It's been a while, folks. 

Now that my favorite presidential candidate has re-declared on this very evening, I figured that the least I could do was saddle up the blog once again and hold forth as a poor (very, very poor in both the figurative and literal sense) version of Hunter S. Thompson during the campaign chaos to come.

I've usually cut back on writing during each year's "100 Days' War," as I call the college football betting season. This year, I stopped altogether as the wagering waters were murky and deep. Meanwhile, I traveled and socialized enough to put myself at consistent Covid risk, but to the best of the knowledge of my unvaccinated self, I have remained virus free. Rumor has it that the plasma of vaccine and Covid free individuals fetches a hefty fee on the black market, but I'll delve into this and other adventures in the months ahead.

In the meantime, let's all settle in for another Trumpian run at absolute power. In keeping with an overarching conspiratorial theme, my suspicion is that the GOP has hired various Wickian enthusiasts to truncate the Trumpster. I can only hope that some of the $90 million war chest that Mr. Trump wisely withheld from all of those lame MAGA senatorial candidates has been invested in Kevlar. I'm thinking if Wilson Fisk could deck himself out in stylish bulletproof-ness as the fictional King of New York, certainly Donald J. can do the same in the land of non-fiction.

Buckle up, people. This should be fun.

Bob Dietz

November 15, 2022

The Saudi Golf Tour (Part Two)

One of the reasons I'm enjoying the PGA versus LIV brouhaha is because it's rare to actually witness this much irony and absurdity packed into a sports argument. The PGA, which for the entirety of its existence has relied on one-percenters to fill its competitive ranks and also to buy its sponsors' products, is shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that a top one percent of its one-percenters has decided to give the PGA a good spanking.

Watching an attempted monopoly twist in the wind because it lacks the funding to compete on equal terms with what amounts to a proprietorship is...quite funny. All that American wealth overmatched by non-American wealth. It doesn't happen that often. We should appreciate the show. 

The Transience of Sponsors and Morality

Some LIV golfers have already lost sponsorships. The Saudis, if they choose, have the ability to compensate folks for any sponsorship losses. One interesting question is whether Nike, they of the civil rights abuses and sweatshops made famous by Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury series, will decide to announce some moral high ground. Nike's worst abuses appear to have been 20 years ago, which brings up the whole morality-as-current-fashion dilemma. The Saudis are considerably behind the Western world curve when it comes to human rights in general and women's rights in particular. The argument being made is that they are so behind the times that no one should partner with them. The problem with this perspective is that it frames morality as some kind of seasonal fashion. Everyone is doing this now; so too should the Saudis. But most nations' mores and morality of a hundred or even fifty years ago don't get drawn into the discussion because, well, such things should evolve, you know? And keeping up with the Westerners should be every bit as important as keeping up with the Joneses.

It's a debatable high-handed argument -- morality evolves and becomes unceasingly better, in some sense. Legality evolves. What was acceptable then needs to be superceded by what's acceptable now, and the now should supercede national or cultural barriers. I'm not trying to fit the Saudis with halos. Khashoggi's murder was hideous. But I'm pretty damned sure, as a point of comparison, that the number of people murdered by the CIA the last decade is not zero, so perhaps no one should hire on with the Americans. As to the manner of Khashoggi's murder, I'm not impressed by style points. Murder is murder, whether by strangling, CIA bullets, or Russian radioactivity. How bodies are treated after death is not a huge moral qualifier for me, either. 

It was just a year ago that Americans wiped out an extended family in Kabul with a drone strike based on lousy intel. Many children died in that drone strike, and the sheer lack of respect for the non-American lives is hard to process. The strike was a blase act of muscle flexing. To me, that was way more horrendous than a strangling followed by a chainsaw. Using consistent logic, no one should allow the United States to sportswash away its disrespect for human life.

Conclusion

The PGA Tour has spent many years as the Great White of the golf world. Now it's whining because Megalodon, ridden by Greg Norman, showed up. Today, Bryson DeChambeau revealed that he got a four-year $125 million deal with LIV, and much of the money was up front. 

Well, PGA, it's going to be fun watching you twist in the sporting wind because you can't show them the money. If I were Jerry Maguire, I'd have a pretty good idea with whom my guys would be signing.

Bob Dietz

July 5, 2022

The Comedic Writings of Eamon Lynch

I had no real idea who Eamon Lynch was before the LIV versus PGA flap. Now I know. He's a grown-up teacher's pet on an insult rampage. An insult rampage that should lead to all kinds of anti-Eamon litigation. He's been so over-the-top with his LIV-is-evil pitch that his writing comes across as comedy, kind of like Chevy Chase's "Jane, you ignorant slut" on old Weekend Updates.

Chunks of titles from some of Lynch's recent tour-de-forces:

"...players are ripping off the Saudis."

"The Saudis put a horse's head in Brooks Koepka's bed."

"Graeme McDowell's reputation the latest victim of the Saudi rent-a-stooge scheme."

"Dustin Johnson was presented a test of character by the Saudis. Unsurprisingly, he failed it."

Lynch is obviously an institutional hack, a hired hand fronting for the PGA in such a crude manner that he makes Jim Carrey with a megaphone seem elegant and demure. 

I don't know a damned thing about golf (from a professional gambling standpoint), but this kind of blathering is right in the wheelhouse of my "Propaganda Files" series. Lynch is simply saying those things for which the PGA doesn't have the PR fortitude. It's also economically more efficient to obliquely reimburse an informal front man for defamation/libel charges than for an organization to shoulder the risk directly.

If I were Koepka, or McDowell, or Mickelson, I'd hire somebody to break this guy's right hand. Let him type lefty for awhile, as a double entendre reminder. If I were the Saudis, and I know a few people who have operated like the Saudis in my life, and I were a serious dead pool gambler, well, Lynch would make my roster. 

I'd like to review some lovely comments Lynch made regarding Brooks Koepka. One of my developing skills is on-the-fly analysis of propaganda. That skill is largely wasted on the following, from a June 21 Lynch spiel at Golfweek, but I'll do my best:

"Beyond now having to labor at the beck and call of people he dislikes (with good reason, to be fair), the decision to join LIV golf represents a humiliation for Koepka, though he will be loathe to admit it. He has always fancied himself more an athlete than a golfer, but this is an admission that he's neither, that he's just an entertainer doomed to play exhibitions against the washed-up veterans and no-name youngsters that he's long considered unfit to sniff his jockstrap."

And:

"There is a trend apparent among the players going to LIV Golf, beyond the obvious thirst for money. In almost every case, their long-term ability to consistently compete against the world's best on the PGA Tour is questionable, be it on the basis of physical longevity (Koepka, DeChambeau), decrepitude (Mickelson, Westwood, Poulter), diminishing skill (McDowell, Kaymer), or apathy (Johnson, who'd rather be fishing). They are stars emeritus, their best rendered roadkill some miles back by younger, healthier, and more powerful competition. Any suggestion that he belongs among their ranks will wound a prideful man like Koepka, but it's true."

Lynch is so full of himself, and so full of spin, that he's missing the obvious. Every time Tiger Woods tees up these days, the PGA and broadcast networks covering Woods are guilty of pandering to someone whose physical longevity is shot, who's suffering decrepitude, who has diminishing skills, and while I'm not going to try tagging Tiger Woods with apathy per se, if someone is dosing themselves with sleep aids and painkillers, that's actually a form of self-sabotage as bad as any apathy. Committing monstrous and disproportionate air time to Tiger Woods makes the PGA and the broadcast networks guilty of every sin Lynch aims at the LIVers, including selling out.

Lynch evidently has had some intimate conversations with Brooks Koepka about jockstrap sniffing. Or Lynch is just making stuff up, which is litigable. More to the point, is any writer not on hallucinogenics going to say that Koepka and DeChambeau are up against "more powerful" competition? Really? Somebody had best get out his Merriam-Webster to look up "powerful." Every word choice Lynch makes is with the intent of insulting the golfers involved. Decrepitude for Mickelson? Lynch is flailing away. If any of the golfers mentioned had not joined LIV, would Lynch have assigned any of these word choices to them ever? Because if not, and I think not, we're looking at pure, PGA-approved propaganda. 

Brooks Koepka, if I were you, I'd sue this guy into oblivion. Or one-up Lynch's teacher's pet act by reporting Lynch to the Saudi PR department. Let them deal with him. Now that I think about it, I lean to the latter.

Bob Dietz

July 4, 2022

The Saudi Golf Tour (Part One)

This is one of those entries that should contribute mightily to my stated goal of offending as many as possible in the time I have left. The Saudi tour visited Portland this week, and the LIV lineup was more star-studded than the PGA's lineup for the John Deere Classic in Illinois.

The LIV tour has drawn slings and arrows from many of the usual woke-oriented sources. Golfers who committed to LIV have endured Rory McIlroy's public scolding. They've experienced a bombardment of media disapprobation, with sources ranging from Zach Johnson (he of Ryder Cup captaincy) to Jack Nicklaus. The PGA is banning LIV participants from PGA events. Sounds very much as if the PGA has decided it's a bulletproof monopoly. We will, however, see how its Kevlar holds up against the best bullets money can buy.

Call Me Cynical

Yes, the Saudis have a long and current history of civil rights abuses, a long and current history of oppression of women, and state agents were recently caught murdering and dismembering a journalist critical of them. Those condemning the LIV golfers say that the Saudis are "sportswashing" the Saudi public image. 

Some PGA folks have no sense of history. Considering that the very-American PGA golfers are more than 90% diehard Republicans, one would think that they'd bond with the Saudis regarding civil rights issues and oppressing women. But that was in the fog-bound distant GOP past and the Saudis are now, so instead of being praised for emulating the PGA circa 1940, the Saudis are being lambasted for not trying to emulate the PGA circa 2020. 

And while getting caught hacking an adversarial journalist to death carries its own inconvenient and visceral Q rating, does the PGA really want to argue that the American CIA hasn't murdered a soul recently? If the CIA has done such a thing, after all, it would render PGA golf a kind of sportswashing and would disqualify any U.S.-based agencies from running sporting events. On moral grounds, of course.

All of this moral superiority is a clumsy fit for PGA administrators, but they don't seem to realize it.

Nuts and Bolts

I'm not sure why people seemed surprised by Brooks Koepka defecting to LIV. I fully expected it. His brother signed up weeks ago. What were people thinking, Brooks wouldn't enjoy playing with his brother while making a helluva lot more money? 

The LIVers will basically earn a multiple of their previous under-the-PGA income. Some will make double, some will make five times as much, some will make much more. Their number of events will be significantly reduced. At worst, they'll double their money while putting in a fraction of the time. What capitalist in the uber-capitalist U.S.A. wouldn't be on board with this?

McIlroy says the LIVers are retreating from the best competition. Who cares? Can you imagine McIlroy giving Joe Namath a harsh lecture on getting 400K for signing with the AFL Jets when Namath could have signed with the "better competition" NFL? Why would anyone concern themselves with what McIlroy spouts?

If the professional brand-name golfers all made about 50K a year for 25 weekends, and they had an opportunity to make 100K a year for eight weekends, could any American really criticize them? But because the income numbers are higher, righteous certitude rears its media head. The LIV golfers are "selfish," "over the hill," "evading competition," and so on. 

American comedians take well-paying gigs to perform in Saudi Arabia. American thoroughbreds enter Saudi races. Why single out golfers as the morally bankrupt wicked?

Bob Dietz

July 3, 2022

Celtics/Warriors Comments

Well, Golden State wrapped up the title by closing out Boston in Boston. I have just a few brief notes on the series.

-- I thought that the initial series odds of Golden State roughly -160 were a little steep, but I wasn't going to argue much with them, given that the Celtics were coming off back-to-back seven-game series.

-- Celtics coach Ime Udoka summed up Boston's problems really well when, after dropping the fourth game to fall into a series tie, he said that if the Celtics had played proper offense, they would have been up 3-1 at the least.

-- I think two things happened. For four games, Boston was suckered into playing a style of offense like Golden State. Sometimes when the other team does things in what appears to be an easy fashion, you tend to fall into an emulation of them, almost a matching of style and priorities. This, of course, is almost never a good idea. I think that for four games, Boston was seduced and cajoled into a mirror type of game flow and judgement. Then, when the coach bluntly pointed out the mirror issue, I think the Celtics went too far stylistically in the other direction. They did more Hoosier-passing, they passed up quick open shots and quick drives, they looked to attack in the paint off the dribble too much. In other words, they made too much of an emphasis on being the non-Warriors in style and priorities. Frankly, they wasted too much time, they went to post attack with a ball occupier too much, they skewed their priorities too far in a non-Warriors direction.

The irony of losing in Boston due to flow and priority decisions wasn't lost on me. You see, back when Bill Russell led Boston, those Celtic teams were noted (and Russell has emphasized this in biographies) for being able to win games with any style. They could win fast; they could win slow. They could win finesse shoot-'em-ups. They could win physical wars in a slog. They had a huge range of optimal ways to play.

The 2022 Celtics, in contrast, never operated in their optimal style for any significant stretches versus Golden State. Horford's career game won one for them, but they never settled into their best pace or best style. Almost all of their game-flow adjustments were reactions (and over-reactions) to Golden State's dictation.

Bob Dietz

June 21, 2022

Flag Day

Today is Flag Day. As reported by Fox News' Bradford Betz, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser added a 51st star to U.S. flags displayed on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I've reviewed institutional American racism many times before in numerous contexts. Rather than bore you with a list of previous entries emphasizing American racism themes, I'll just mention that I predict that House votes and Senate representation for D.C. won't happen in my lifetime. Why? The District of Columbia has an almost 50% black population. The District of Columbia also has more than 700,000 residents, putting it ahead of Wyoming and Vermont. With a 50% black population, however, D.C. remains in statehood purgatory.

Can you imagine if D.C. were, say, 95% white, like New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, or West Virginia? Do you think those white folks would sit chilly without Senate representation or Electoral College clout?

Welcome to Flag Day. All 50 stars on the flag are white. It's not going to change anytime soon.

Bob Dietz

June 14, 2022