BCS Championship: LSU wins, covers spread

When tonight’s BCS National Championship game is history and when LSU is walks off the field victorious, for me to pick up one last win in my entry in a college post-season bowl pool and a self-fashioned contest with Sports Illustrated, the Tigers must have scored at least a safety more than the Crimson Tide, the two-point version of the safety not the one-pointer.

A one-point safety, you may ask? Yes, but more on that later.

Tonight, the college football season is reduced to one game. It’s the second-coming this year of LSU and Alabama on the gridiron. I cannot win my bet with Sports Illustrated but finishing only one game back would be good for me. There’s not really a bet with SI, no monetary exchange on the line, no pride for one to gain on the other. It’s my own simple contest in the guessing game of choosing bowl winners this year. After 34 preliminary post-season games, the chooser—Andy Staples—at SI has 24 wins and 10 losses, and I’m at 22-12. The difference in our selections: the Sports Illustrated tally is based on picking a winner; mine is from picking a winner using a point spread.

My guessing started when I received the annual email from a friend of my brother-in-law. The guy is an acquaintance to me but we’ve known each other for several years, through my wife’s brother. I’m not sure how long he has organized this contest or how many entries he receives but he donates 50 percent of the $5.00 entry fee to a charity. The remainder is paid to the top four finishers, and he returns the admission charge to the person who places last. I presume with a 22-12 record at this point, last place is out of the question.

Over the years I’ve done rather well in the annual college basketball tournament bracket guessing games, but I’ve never scratched picking bowl winners. Usually, after a handful of games, I’ve lost interest in the bowl pool and just watched the games for my love of college football. This year, I made it a contest within a contest, competing against Sports Illustrated’s selections of the bowl winners as announced in its December 19, 2011 edition. (My brother-in-law is not as interested. “I tossed both of my entries into the trash a long time ago,” he said recently.)

So, here’s how it worked: In the mid-December print edition (also on line), Staples previewed the first 34 bowl games with a short paragraph which ended with his score prediction. For instance, in the first game, the 2:00 p.m. December 17 New Mexico Bowl, Staples picked Temple 28, Wyoming 17. The spread on my brother-in-law’s friend’s contest was Wyoming plus 6.5 points. So, when I added the points in the pool to the points in SI, I came up with a final score of Temple 28, Wyoming 23.5. I picked Temple. Final score: Temple 35, Wyoming 15. Victory for me in game one. Victory for Staples and SI as well. Both 1-0 out of the gate.

Competing in a pool with point spreads is tough. You find yourself cheering for a team to win but not by many. In the Music City Bowl, I had Wake Forest plus 6.5 points. But the desire for the Deacons to win outright was not in me, for some reason. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Baptist Church and always think of Wake Forest as Hell-Fire-and-Damnation, or maybe it’s because the Deacons beat my NC State this year. When Mississippi State missed an extra point, I was thrilled. Final score: Mississippi State 23, Wake Forest 17. I won by half a point. SI won by picking MSU outright. And so it went.

SI picked Clemson; I had West Virginia plus 3.5 points. Final: WVA 70, Tigers 36. I also had Oklahoma State giving 3.5 points to Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl. Oklahoma State won 41-38. SI picked OSU. For what it’s worth, without the point spread, just picking winners, I’m 23-11, but with the point spread, my record is 22-12.

The only game SI didn’t pick in mid-December was the LSU-Alabama BCS National Championship game. I had to place my bets before the first of the 35 bowl games was played. At that time, the line was Alabama plus 1.5 points. My pick is LSU. That was December  16th. Sports Illustrated just recently used eight pages of its publication to tell us why Alabama will win 13-10. Of course, just to pull within one game of Staples and maybe to place in the money in my brother’s-in-law friend’s bowl pool, LSU wins tonight by at least a safety.

Oh yeah, the one-point safety explanation: If you’re familiar with football in the simplest of ways, you know there’s a two-point safety scored for the defense when a player with the ball on offense is tackled in its own end zone. Example: Quarterback fades back to pass and is tackled in the end zone, two points for the defense.

However, there are two ways—one way for the offense and one way for the defense—to score one-point safeties. It can happen when a team is trying to score an extra point, either a one- or two-point attempt. The offense’s kick is blocked and a member of the defense picks up the ball and voluntarily back-tracks into the end zone and is tackled. The team trying the PAT kick gets one point. Same if the offense is trying to run or pass for two and the ball is fumbled or intercepted outside the end zone and the player on defense, recovering or intercepting, back tracks into the end zone and is tackled. Offense gets one point. According to Wikipedia, this actually happened in 2004 in a game between Texas A&M and Texas. That’s one point for the offense.

The other way for a one-point safety is for the defense. The PAT—kick or run or pass—is blocked, fumbled, or intercepted, and the defense advances the ball the entire length of the field to get the PAT score itself, but the player fumbles near the goal line. A member of the offense (which tried the PAT) recovers the ball outside the end zone and runs into that end zone and is tackled. The defense is awarded a point. In other words, the offense scores a touchdown; the defense gets a safety; the score is 6-1. This has never happened. (By the way, if I’ve wrongly interpreted the one-point safety, please correct me in the comments section below.)

We’ve seen a lot of good games, high scoring and low scoring, in college football this year so seeing a one-point safety by the offense or defense is not out of the question, but hopefully it will not happen tonight, especially if it helps Alabama cover the 1.5 points. Go LSU! Win and cover that spread!

Pitch Count Not Good For Good Baseball

Listening to the radio last Saturday morning, listening to the live broadcast of one of NC State’s games in the Atlantic Coast Conference baseball tournament, I heard the announcer, Tony Haynes, mention pitch count, telling and anyone else listening that the pitcher on the mound for the Wolfpack was soon to be done for the day. “He’s nearing 100 pitches and that’s just about his limit,” Haynes said, or something close to that.

He was right. After the next batter bounced out or walked or struck out or hit a fly ball to center, after the batter was retired, or after the batter reached base with a hit or by being hit by the limit in pitch count or by a base on balls, a change was made and the pitcher, doing a pretty good job at the time, was lifted for a relief pitcher. I was so focused on the term "pitch count." I couldn't tell you about the pitcher's last pitch.

Actually, the pitcher on the mound was a relief pitcher as well, taking the place Saturday morning for a pitcher who tossed through two outs the night before prior to the game being delayed because of rain, lightning, sleet, snow, hail and gloom of night, all impending reasons that the game Friday should never have been started in the first place. Are you following me?

Anyway, while cutting my grass Saturday morning (it may have been just after high noon), as I listened to the game being broadcast on WKNC-FM, 88.1, NC State’s student radio station that, many years ago, broadcasted the Wolfpack baseball games with actual student announcers but for some reason, maybe monetary, has given the airtime to Wolfpack Sports Marketing, a division of Capitol Broadcasting (can you say WRAL-TV and WRAL-FM and other television and radio stations, when "pitch count" was mentioned, I thought of an article in the May 24, 2010 edition of Sports Illustrated.

The article—Nolan Ryan’s Crusade—was about his transformation of the Texas Rangers’ pitching staff from a bunch of prima donna baseball pitchers being baby-sat to a group of tough guys who can actually approach, if not get to, pitching a complete game instead of being taken out when the pitch count became a road block and said to the manager and coaches it was time to stop throwing for the day.

In that article, speaking about pitchers, Ryan, maybe, just maybe the greatest, if not just one of the greatest, fast-ballers ever, was quoted in the article: “For one thing, they (pitchers) don’t learn to think for themselves anymore. Coaches started calling all the pitches in high schools and colleges. How do they know, sitting on the bench, what the guy on the mound has confidence in? That’s like going out there and telling the pitcher, ‘Don’t hang this curve ball.’ I call it robot baseball, and it drives me crazy.”

Ryan, president of the Rangers and probably soon to be an owner of the team, continued in the article of which there is no prior permission to reprint here but it fits today’s need: “Pitchers have been pampered. I’d go to spring training, and all they’d do is throw on the side. Now how in the world do you learn how a hitter’s going to react to your pitchers without a hitter in there? I always thought that was crazy. Our expectations of them have been lowered. There’s no reason why kids today can’t pitch as many innings as people did in my era. Today a quality start is six innings. What’s quality about that?”

He pointed out that, in 1987, he was the victim of the idea that pitchers can only throw a limited time, a determined number of tosses toward home plate when a batter is standing in the batter’s box. “I was put on a pitch count with the Astros when I had an arm problem…and hated it. I’d get to that pitch count, and they’d take me out with guys on base, but in my mind I knew I could get this out.”

As president of the organization, Ryan has made sure the coaching staff is of like mind, and one of those is pitching coach Mike Maddux. Here’s some of what he had to say for the article written by Albert Chen: “This generation of players has become a creature of the pitch count. Their ceiling has been lowered. It’s up to us to jack it back up." When hired by Ryan, Maddux told his pitchers: "Pitch counts are limits. You have no limits." And he says in general: "What we’re trying to get rid of is that thing in pitchers’ heads of how many pitches they have. I’d be out there asking how they feel, and they’d say, ‘Well, how many pitches do I have?’ And, I’d say, ‘Doesn’t matter. How do you feel?’ ”

In all of this, if you are a baseball fan, you understand from whence Ryan comes. He’s both a throw back to when pitchers wanted to throw complete games, all nine innings and a victim of the current protect-the-arm procedure. Arms were tough in his former life; bodies took a beating; rest came after the World Series. But, there’s a point in baseball, just as with anything other sport, it seems, where that changed. Again, listen to Ryan:

“Baseball got into allowing these kids to not do the work. Money is the reason and the excuse you get from organizations: that we’re protecting our investments. Well, protect the investment [too much], and you may not get the return.” My guess is that many of the pitchers also want to protect their arm from early dismissal (retirement) from the game, protecting their potential income for years to come.

I like Ryan’s approach to baseball. I’m not advocating Wolfpack baseball coach Elliott Avent or his pitching coach or any coach of any college team at this point in the season—the NCAA Tournament starts later this week—go from pitch counts to complete games. My guess is college staffs are not in shape to handle the extra tosses. What I’d like to see, though, is a conditioning program—also outlined in that Sports Illustrated article, if anyone is listening—that pushes starting college pitchers to go more innings which means fewer relief pitchers, probably just closers instead of long, middle and short relievers.

At this point, with young, out-of-shape-tender-arms, pitch counts might be necessary evils, but then while pulling a hurler at a pre-determined pitch count in a game might work in a team’s favor, it might also backfire. For instance, if a pitcher is good for 100 pitches, I wonder how many coaches leave a pitcher in the game, prior to 100, even if the opponent is getting hits or reaching base on four balls. Remember, over on the bench, the science goes deeper. Starter gets 100 pitches; reliever gets 30; next reliever 25; and so on and so forth. Taking a pitcher out before the limit could cause problems with who relieves when.

It’s all about trying to win games and less about the game. I hope for baseball’s sake that Ryan’s movement at Texas spreads to the rest of Major League Baseball, into the minors, at the college level and into the high schools. It’ll make for a better game. And a better radio broadcast. Please, please, please, Tony Haynes, give us a better reason to pull the pitcher than the pitch count.