Wednesday, August 31, 2011

No Minor Adjustments Needed!

Not a lot of people may think about something like this, but once it's in the brain you may tend to go, "hmph, that is an interesting question."

Does anybody notice how certain major sports leagues have minor league affiliates and others don't? Major League Baseball has the MiLB with an extensive farm system of A, AA, AAA, and so on; the NHL has the AHL, along with numerous lesser leagues around the U.S. and Canada; the NBA has their own developmental system known as the D-Leagues or NBA-D; finally, Major League Soccer even has affiliates (although not direct) below them on the soccer pyramid in the form of the United Soccer League.

What about the NFL?

The National Football League is one of the biggest sports leagues in the world, so how is it that they don't have a developmental system? Sure, I bet a lot of people considered the USFL (United States Football League) the "minor leagues" in the 80's until the USFL decided they wanted to be bigger than the NFL and then proceed to implode on itself. But in all honesty, there's no gray lines between college football and pro football. If a college player who is drafted is cut in preseason, where else can they go? To the gym so they can train and wait another year? Sadly, that's the case. Unfortunately for these guys that don't make it to the main rosters of their team, an idea of having a minor league system implemented into the NFL would never work.

Why do you think that is?

The first argument that would probably come up is the length of the season; each NFL team plays a minimum of 16 games. There wouldn't be enough of a legitimate time period that would make up a healthy season of minor league football. Also, roster sizing is a big issue, as there are the ideas of second-stringers and third-stringers in football. Most big league systems have over 80 games (with the except of MLS, which has 34) and they have the capacity to make moves and transactions. For example, Major League Baseball has 162 games, and since their rosters are smaller than football rosters and the minor league season is shorter, you have the capability of "bringing guys up" when there is injury. It's the same thing with hockey; they have 82 games and a smaller roster as well. Oopsie daisy, NFL.

Here's another thing to chew on: football is one of the more intense contact sports out there; you would have the "minor league" players going out there and getting pummeled and maybe losing their chance to remain healthy to try out again for the pro team the next year. Sometimes fresher guys that don't play for a season and then train on their own are usually the best guys to go after if adjustments are needed for the next season. With that being said, you're probably thinking right now that having a minor league would actually benefit the guys that were cut in preseason so that they're still playing. But think of this next part of my argument:

I'll be playing devil's advocate with this one--wouldn't that somewhat eliminate the concept of owning a "practice squad" since a lot of those guys would be playing for that lesser team? Another problem that would stem from this would be that more money would have to be incorporated into hiring other guys to work with each major squad that exists in the farm system or in the pro system. Basically, a lot of money would have to be involved to make a farm system happen. In this day and age where money is big, that's never going to happen to any football franchise. Period.

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In looking at the Arena Football League and what they went through with an attempt to create their own developmental system (known as AF2...how creative...), you can tell why making a developmental system in football would never work. One of the big reasons was money, as well as the particular areas the teams were marketed in. They would literally put teams in awkward areas that already had a huge section that was more faithful to an NFL team as well as an area already housing an AFL team and try to expand more from there. It was too much football--and I know some people out there might say, "aww, c'mon, you can never have too much football! Heh heh heh!" Yes, I said it. Now go take another swig of your beer and go back to watching Monday Night Football.

However, it is safe to say that there were a lot of guys that somewhat "developed" in other football-related leagues such as the Arena Football League, the Canadian Football League (which I highly respect since the NFL practically rules the world and the CFL are still around despite that) and in NFL Europe when that existed. Although I wouldn't call these three leagues "minor," they moved to the bigger and better things in the strongest football league in the world. That's all that matters, right? It's just a shame that there isn't a second chance, per se, in having a minor league system to fall back on. You either make it or you get cut. That's all for now and for the future.



--AZ

Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Curious Case of Tim Tebow

(Written by guest blogger Andrew)

Slowly but surely our world is forming more and more “battle lines:” Republican vs. Democrat, Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, Coke vs. Pepsi and now we can add one more--“Orton vs. Tebow.” It has been the most interesting story of the post-lockout NFL offseason with more ups and downs than your normal daytime soap opera.

And now on Sports Nut Theater... As The World Turns (in Denver)


This week in the “Mile High City,” a tale of two quarterbacks: one who has all of the personality of let’s say, a loaf of bread; the other the most damning “Love Him or Hate Him” athlete in perhaps sports history, of course I’m talking about Kyle Orton and Tim Tebow. Now in order to give this plot the rightful respect its due, well hold on, Sally! Allow me to fill in the blanks. 
Kyle Orton played his college ball at Purdue University where he had relative success, a Heisman hopeful, tying fellow Boilermaker Drew Brees’s record for most passing yards in a game, and other “so-so” accolades. Orton was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the 4th round of the 2005 NFL Draft. Now although Orton achieved relative success (his best season as a Bear was 9-6; the Bears missed the playoffs that year) and is “a nice little quarterback,” he was traded to the Denver Broncos and was believed to be Jay Cutler’s replacement. While playing two years in Denver, their record went from 8-7 to 3-10. 

(Now down south in Florida, another Quarterback was making a name for himself...)

Enter Tim Tebow! A highly recruited quarterback out of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Tebow was awarded an Athletic Scholarship to play for the University of Florida under coach Urban Meyer. He played for the Gators from 2006-2009, in which he had what many believe to be the most storied career in college football history. Now allow me to read you some of Tebow’s resume while as a member of the Florida Gators (want the full list? Go to Wikipedia):

*  Heisman Trophy winner - 2007
*  First-team Academic All-American - 2007
*  Associated Press SEC Offensive Player of the Year - 2007
*  BCS Championship - 2008

Now you would think with all of this that Tebow’s possible success wouldn’t be questioned, well you would be wrong. During the offseason leading up to the 2010 NFL Draft I believe I heard the words “bad throwing motion” in the thousands. Tebow became the most scrutinized draftee in the draft’s history; professionals had a field day with him predicting he would go anywhere from the 1st overall pick to not going to be drafted at all. 
Tebow was selected to the chagrin of many in the first round of the 2010 draft to the Denver Broncos where he has been the subject of a “tidal wave of hate.” Everything in his life has been picked at with the rusted metal fork of the media, from his “horrible” throwing motion to the fact that he is a Christian. 


I am in the growing minority of people who is actually a Tim Tebow supporter. And for full disclosure I am a God-fearing man, and I appreciate the fact that Tebow is as well, but I want to make it clear that is not the only reason why I support Tim Tebow. Call me old-fashioned but I actually like the way he plays ON THE FIELD! The thing that a lot of people aren’t realizing is that he hasn’t gotten the chance to prove himself; he has started a grand total of three games. Now do I believe that Tim Tebow is the next Tom Brady? No. But do I believe that in the right place he has the chance to win Super Bowl rings? Yes I do! What people have to realize is that he is not going to give you the “sexiest” numbers, but the one thing he does is he wins. You think he is not accurate? Go look at the tape from the National Championship Game where he tore apart my Oklahoma Sooners. The key is you have to actually have to let him PLAY! And now reports out of Denver say that Tebow could be THIRD STRING! BEHIND BRADY QUINN!  This is coming from the same organization that was willing to trade Kyle Orton three weeks ago so that Tebow could be the unquestioned starter. EARTH TO DENVER! Let Tebow play! Who knows? He might actually be good!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Death Penalty: How We Learned to Fear the Bomb

I'd like to put a side-note in this while I still have the chance. Yahoo! Sports broke this story that I'm about to write about and they are currently investigating this scandal. Do I honestly trust Yahoo! Sports? Not really. The media can do anything to make or break something. However, sports news holders such as ESPN are picking up the ball and running with it. Basically, I can't be liable for making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm only a college student. Geez. Anyway...
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Have you ever gotten that thrill from doing something completely illegal? That illegal thing becomes so much fun that you just keep doing it until you get caught. Until then, you know that everything in life may just go hunky-dory until someone you know ends up getting caught doing something you weren't expecting. Then...

...enter the atomic bomb.
Possibly first casualty in NCAA Division I since 1987.
This "atomic bomb" could destroy a team, a school, a conference, and even a league. Something of this magnitude has not occurred in NCAA Division I in almost 25 years. The last time it happened, it wrecked more than just the team; this "atomic bomb" destroyed a Division I conference. You could call this the vicious cycle that we have been dealing with as of late in the case of college students, scholarships, agents, and salaries.
This casualty is known as the death penalty. It wasn't exactly known as the death penalty until the 1980's, but this term only describes so much about the punishments that are delivered with this sanction.

How did the bomb start?

Well, it sort of "started" way back in the 50's. The University of Kentucky's basketball team was in the midst of a gambling scandal, where players would take the money from bookies placing bets. Because of this, their season was canceled--and even worse--the players directly involved in the controversy were barred from playing in the NBA. Brutal, right? We're just getting started. In the 1970's, the University of Southwestern Louisiana was accused of many violations including forgery and academic fraud (that one is a big deal), resulting in their being barred during the 1973–74 and 1974–75 seasons. Yes, two seasons. Recently, Morehouse College's varsity collegiate soccer program was under fire for signing ineligible players that had played professionally for a brief time before enrolling. If you're wondering what happened to their team, they've been on probation for the past five years and only have an intramural team. A men's college tennis team at MacMurray College in the mid-2000's also conducted major infractions by obtaining scholarships from men from different countries. This resulted in a death penalty, shutting the tennis program down for two years.

Perhaps one of the biggest death penalty cases comes from Southern Methodist University in the mid-1980's. Now this is a heavy bag of worms. If you thought corruption was bad before, you'll see that it's absolute hell instead. Now, because SMU was a relatively small Division I school in the now defunct Southwest Conference (more on that later), the administration tried everything in their power to try to keep their athletics program healthy. Since their sneaky ways of "keeping healthy" was along the lines of breaking the rules, many violations were slapped on them between the mid-70's and mid-80's. After the NCAA found out about several issues including student payroll, the team was barred from bowl games and television appearances in 1985 and 1986.
But wait! It gets way juicier than this.
Ya rly.
So basically this is when the "you know what" hits the fan. A player was kicked off the team for substance abuse. This guy claimed that SMU paid him $25,000 to play with the team in 1983, and was paid monthly after that. After saying that, many officials denied the fact that it ever happened.
Let's start digging the hole, kids.
Lo and behold, after athletic scholarships were banned at SMU via petition in 1986, things got nastier. NCAA later found out that players were paid about $61,000 from a slush fund from a booster. But apparently, the slush fund went on for a while, as there were NFL players at that current time who were paid from that slush fund, and the school president (dead serious) paid those guys nearly $1 million to shut up about it.
Oh no no no, it gets even better.
The NCAA Infractions Committee began wondering what exactly they were going to do as far as penalizing SMU. At first, they were thinking about extending their already occurring probation for an additional four years for each infraction. However, they decided to go the path less traveled, leading to the unanimous vote of the cancellation of SMU's entire 1987 season and 1988 home games. This could have been much worse; since the penalties could have intensified immensely hadn't SMU been cooperative. I mean much worse as in a complete cancellation of the '88 season.

Because SMU was so deep in their own mess, they granted release to all of the SMU football players, allowing them to transfer to other teams (the SEC loved this) and formally canceled their 1988 season. Why did they do that? Easy--since the death penalty prevented all ways for SMU to recruit, award scholarships, have efficient coaching, practice, and do any more damage through boosters was completely eliminated.
In layman's terms, the SMU athletic program was basically in quarantine from NCAA Division I.

Since that time, there were bad reputations and violations that continued in that conference (not just from SMU), and the Southwest Conference was discontinued in 1996.
The end. Yaaaaaaaay.....not.
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Now here's our situation today.

There's this guy named Nevin Shapiro. He was a booster for the University of Miami for several years and was convicted of fraud and laundering from a Ponzi scheme from last year. He claimed that he has proof of financing donations to The U's football program between 2002-2010 totaling nearly $2 million among at least 70 players. Because the baseball program at the University of Miami has also been under fire for numerous violations, The U as a whole can be considered a repeat offender, making them capable of receiving the death penalty. Apparently after much talk by the NCAA, there's a chance that The U may go down with the ship.

However, due to the total damage it could do to a school financially, the NCAA is far from trigger-happy on this. If it destroyed a school and started a fire on a former Division I conference, it's a big deal.


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While The U is spiralling down into this vast amount of controversy, a lot of people are looking at the fact that they're not the only schools who have been under fire when it comes to the illegal practices of things such as "boosters" and agency among college student-athletes. Teams such as Ohio State and UNC have been under fire for various violations, leading to a lot of coaches/administrators stepping down. In a recession like this, everyone has a price. Students are looking for money for their talents earlier on, especially when it comes to the daily expenses of every day life.

As of reports on Friday, the concept of the "death penalty" is now being considered an option by the NCAA. And here's the thing: why shouldn't they at this point? They have evidence spanning over eight years, and with the additional elements against The U, the team, as well as the ACC, is in total jeopardy right now. What will this mean for the guys in Miami? No playing, no practices, no recruitment, no scholarships, and a loss of profit in games at their respective stadium as well as stadiums in rival schools. This is pretty much the same stuff that happened at Southern Methodist. However, this time will be more dangerous as money is about as important to life and growth as food and water at this point, and more schools will be at a loss this year. A death penalty could also destroy the student-athletes' chances of getting some sort of a "salary" or "stipend" for playing college sports.

Are the rules outdated? Some might say that now, especially with the painful loophole that NCAA schools are suffering through right now. The concept of paying players would be rather difficult, because it is illegal for the fact that college sports isn't a legitimate "career," and that the NCAA would have to find a way to pay every college player either on a sports scholarship or on a Division I, II, or III team. I don't think the NCAA, let alone the country, has the financial capacity to back that up. Because being paid is not exactly possible, the usage of boosters and underground agency is heating up and then there is the fear of continuing on without getting caught. The U went eight years without getting caught in some way, and now...there's a chance they're about ready to ruin the season and the additional perks of recruitment and practices.

Since there's this huge exposé on Miami, the stories about teams wanting to jump from the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) to the SEC (Southeast Conference) are running wild. Because a lot of team organizations saw what SMU's death penalty did to the SWC (Southwest Conference), they're ready to run at any second.
C'mon guys, it's not like we're preparing for a beached whale explosion here. (sorry animal lovers)
Why are we all moving so fast and jumping to conclusions? I'm about 75% sure that the NCAA will not impose the death penalty and just lay down heavier probation on the University's athletics program. Now if it were just the football team itself doing this for as long as SMU did and kept doing it time after time after probation after violation, then it would be absolutely necessary. For right now, let the negotiations continue.

Do you now see how afraid everyone is about that bomb? It's worse than The Blob, Galactus, and December 21, 2012 put together. Sorry, I trailed off there.

As for that bomb.... is it the red wire? Or is it the blue wire?
Only the head honchos of the NCAA can handle this.

--AZ