Separated at Birth

Familiar to Millions

Nick (Cincinnati): Ken--What are your thoughts on Cedric Benson more than likely eclipsing the 100 yard mark against Jacksonville today? Any longetivity with the Bengals?

SCOUTS INC.'S KEN MOLL: Nick,Benson has talent and the change of scenery (Chicago to Cincy) may really do him some good- I believe they (Bengals front office) really like him.

Rob (UK): Would the Cowboys be better off starting Bollinger instead of Johnson?

SCOUTS INC.'S KEN MOLL: Rob, Tough call but I would think Johnson as he has tons of experiemce and a solid running game to support his efforts. If the Defense can play well the BOYS have an outside chance in this match up-

Neill (Ann Arbor): Ken, did you see any of Benson's appearances for the Bears?

SCOUTS INC.'S KEN MOLL: Neil, Yes and I know what your saying but He does have talent and may have grown up some over the past few years. Yes he looked very average often but the Bears front offcie would have never let Thomas Jones leave if they didn't (at the time) believe Benson was the answer-

Da Zveidanya, Baby!

The link itself means that there's no explanation necessary.

http://www.returnofterrytate.com

The Wonder of Progress

Working from home with a cold beer in one hand, my laptop in another and the Cubbies in glorious high definition on TV.

Of course, judging from the stands, I could just walk down to Wrigley and watch the game in person. I imagine that would stress my claims to "working from home" beyond credulity.

Plus, Dempster just gave up a double to Tony Gwynn Jr. and now the Brewers have men on 2nd and 3rd, no outs, and Fielder up.

What the Hell is Wrong With Kelvin Sampson?

Seriously. I hate the NCAA as much as the next guy, but it's not like their recruiting guidelines are that complicated.

Also, screw Eric Gordon.

Another Open Letter

To all of the half-wit sportswriters who are clamoring for a 4 team, "Plus One" playoff system in college football:

Who would your four teams have been in 2007? Pick four from the group of

A) Georgia
B) LSU
C) USC
D) Missouri
E) Ohio State
F) West Virginia
G) Kansas

and base your argument solely on regular season results, since that's what you would have had to do were the system in place this year. You are not allowed to count Ohio State's idle week against them, since it's not their fault that the Big Ten doesn't have the 12 teams required for a conference championship game.

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Answer Key: The only problem with the BCS is that the fucking voters don't ever think about fucking strengths-of-schedule until after the season. If they would vote better, or stop revising the BCS formula every year to weigh the polls more and more heavily, this wouldn't be a problem.

Point Break

The NFL can do many things -- not provide an adequate health care or assistance program for ex-players, blackmail their fans into publicly-funded stadiums, found a boondoggle of a private cable network to undermine their own business -- but they cannot, they will not, make me care about the Pro Bowl.

Horse Racing

It's finally happened -- Rick Ankiel has passed J.D. Drew in HR:

Player G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BA OBP SLG
Ankiel 23 81 22 29 6 0 9 29 0 .358 .409 .765
Drew 122 405 70 102 24 3 7 49 2 .252 .353 .378

Of course, it also turns out he's probably on steroids.

Things I Don't Care About

In a very particular order:

1. the Kentucky Derby / horse racing in general
1A. Mayweather / de la Hoya
1B. Roger Clemens

Lies, Damn Lies and... ?

I assume that Jackie Robinson Day in major league baseball was meant to commemorate an important and too often forgotten event in our nation's history.

Predictably, it hasn't worked; it's just given more grist to the melodramatic ESPN Morality Brigade, who have taken the obvious way out ("Why don't more black people play baseball?") rather than grapple with something that would require thoughtful consideration ("Why has the integration of Hispanic and Asian players been so much easier? And what does it mean that there are an increasing number of Hispanic managers and GMs, but at the same time Ozzie Guillen keeps calling people fags and gets away with it essentially because he's a Latino and pretends to not understand English?").

Gene Wojiechowski is not the man to ask those questions, both because he spends most of his free time bitching about how basketball players don't practice enough and because he's a jackass. So here are some interesting numbers:

Sport / Black Representation, by %
Life (ie, US population) ~12
Baseball ~8
Basketball ~80
Football ~65

And a question: why is it a worse sign for US race relations that African Americans are down 4% in baseball than it is that they're up over 60% in the other two major sports?

Arrest That Man; He Speaks in Maths

One of the numerous axes that stats-minded sports fans (like the guys at FJM, who I can't recommend enough) like to grind is that coaching almost certainly matters a lot less than you think. "Coaching," as a variable, is of course nearly impossible to measure in the first place. You might know it when you see it, with broad strokes; we can probably agree that football coaches who don't know when to use timeouts (Herm Edwards, Art Shell) or baseball managers who don't understand the relationship between fatigue and injury (Dusty Baker) suck, but beyond that it's really hard to say anything meaningful about whether one coach is "better" than another.

The effect of coaching is similarly murky. Gregg Easterbrook's TMQ column this week argues that the perceived impact from preparation and planning is overstated because of an observer bias that likes to think that someboldy's at the controls. I tend to agree with that, but would also add that there's quite a bit of rent-seeking among commentators and pundits in the sports media. Many of them are former players whose endorsement deals depend on the perception that there's more going on than a child's game in which the better players are usually going to win; many of them are former coaches who want to get back into the game, and their career prospects depend on a wealthy owner believing that they have an Answer that no one else posesses.

Or more simply, the whole brutal charade of the post-game show, pre-game show and highlights show can only exist so long as enough viewers think that there's something that Howie Long knows about NFL football that they don't (even when it's abundantly, painfully clear that it's not true).

Which brings me to my original motivation for writing this post. The only franchise that seems to have any grasp of this is the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers have had exactly two (2) coaches in the last 37 years. Bill Cowher, who resigned the other day, has had some very good seasons (2 Super Bowl appearances; one win) and a couple of poor seasons. In particular, he's done well with good rosters and had losing records with shitty ones. He won a Super Bowl the year before last with a 2nd year QB playing out of his gourd and an aging star RB that the rest of the team rallied around; this season he went 8-8 after that QB almost killed himself in a motorcycle accident and the RB retired to a career of laughing at awkward jokes from Sterling Sharpe.

And since those are the things that determine how many games you win, there's precious little point in throwing good money after bad to hire, say, Nick Saban.