Some Blog Site

The Big Ten announced the names of the new divisions today, and they also unveiled the new logo. I would have been very surprised if they had used the logo I designed for them, since I don’t even know that I did that.

Reaction to the new division names and the logo has been fairly consistent – no one likes them. Well, no one other than Commissioner Delaney.

I agree with all the fans out there. The Big Ten would have been better off keeping the temporary names of X and O. The new names, Legends and Leaders, are way too cheesy. They are meaningless and therefore worthless.

They are meaningless in that the teams were arbitrarily assigned to one side or the other. There’s no reason why one team is a Legend as opposed to a Leader. The names can have meaning, but they were not used that way.

For instance, Michigan State is a Legend although they are the third most recent addition to the Big Ten.

And Michigan uses the word “Leaders” to describe itself in its fight song, but it is not in the Leaders division.
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A couple weeks ago, Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ, AKA Gregg Easterbrook) announced a new football prediction algorithm – the Davis Postulate.

The Davis Postulate states that existing trends will likely continue, so a team that won last week will win again this week. And vice-versa.

I have added it to the list of NFL prediction methods over on Some Fun Site.

I have both the Davis Postulate (which checks only the previous week and so includes the bye) and the Davis Postulate, Extended (which checks who has the longer current streak and skips byes).

Enjoy!

(p.s. More Yards Wins is still the leader, both in 2009 and 2010.)

The older two kids went with me to a baseball game this past weekend. They appreciated the game in two different ways.

Beta watched as much as he could and enjoyed it, asking when we could come back. This was his first baseball game.

Alpha read as much as he could and enjoyed it. This was his third baseball game.

And they both ate as much as they could, despite the fact that we had a regular dinner just before leaving for the game.

All the home-team players get introduction songs. Whenever a player comes up to bat, the stadium operation plays, at full volume, a particular song for that player.

I noticed that they are all hard songs. Not difficult hard, but edgy hard. Hard country, hard rock, hard rap, etc.

I decided on what song I would want, should I ever become a professional baseball player – Christmas Eve in Sarajevo.

Next on the list: football. We’ll probably start with a local high school game, since college and pro tickets are a bit expensive.

College football is about to start, but people are already looking ahead to next year.

Because next year is when things change.

Significantly.

And maybe I’ll resume using complete sentences and paragraphs.

As you should all know by now, the Big Ten becomes the Big Twelve in 2011. And the Big Twelve is reduced to the Big Ten at that time.

And the Big Ten has assigned its members to one of two divisions, and there will be a conference championship played between the winners of each division.

The big story is that Michigan and Ohio State are in separate divisions. The Big Ten Conference floated some ideas out there and got a bunch of criticism from alumni.

So the conference’s decision was to still have Michigan and Ohio State play each other on the last game of the regular season just like they do now. But since the division winners will have been determined at that point, the game won’t count for much.

As a Michigan fan and blogger, I am compelled, nay bound, by the laws of blogging, to add my opinion to the internet.

I don’t like it.

No, not the internet. Or my opinion. I like those. What I don’t like is the Big Ten Conference’s decision. But, since I am not an alumnus of either school, I guess the Big Ten doesn’t give my opinion much weight.

I think that the Big Ten couldn’t win at this one, no matter what they did. But they could have done better.

If I were in charge, I would have put them both in the same division. The game would still be at the end of the regular season, but it would matter. So what if you don’t have a solid anchor team on the other division? It’s not like Michigan has been pulling its weight anyway and will be the automatic winner of its division every year. I think some of the other teams would be fine anchor teams for a division, and a division could be healthy and competitive without UM or OSU in it.

But since they didn’t do that, they could at least move the game. I don’t mind rematches; I do mind back-to-back rematches. In the case that Michigan gets its act together and wins its division, it could play Ohio State twice in a row. Sure, there might be an extra week or two in between the games, but it would still dilute them. A matchup early in the season (and that counted for the conference results) would make for a better game and season.

The Big Ten chose the second-worst possible scheduling format for Michigan and Ohio State. The only worse one would have been not playing each other.

I heard this morning that Michigan State is going to raise its tuition 5% next school year.

Normally I would have dismissed such an announcement, but I thought the timing was interesting.

Very interesting…

For those of you not near Lansing or Cleveland: Tom Izzo has been the coach of the MSU basketball team for a while, and he has attained success. He was considering jumping from college to NBA to take the job as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he finally decided to stay at MSU.

His announcement was earlier this week.

See the connection?

Izzo stays at MSU -> MSU has to raise tuition

Don’t tell me you don’t believe conspiracy theories…

It seems a little too coincidental to me. Do we know what MSU offered Izzo to stay at MSU? Do they maybe need a little extra cash for a “retention bonus”?

No, we don’t know.

But it is fun to speculate.

My take on the whole choice is this: going pro is for college students, not for college coaches.

Izzo’s probably better off staying at MSU.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know that MSU’s budget, set a year ago, had already proposed this increase. Consider this post tongue-in-cheek.

I have seen a number of ceremonial first pitches this last week. Between the Biggest Loser homecoming show and the American Idol homecoming show, there were a few clips of the contestants throwing the ceremonial first pitches at the closest big-league stadia.

I have a couple of things I wonder about the ceremonial first pitch, in general.

The first is this: why is this ceremony limited to baseball? If I were to be some temporary ceremonial celebrity, I would want to perform the ceremonial first kick-off at a football game. Or even the ceremonial first puck-drop at a hockey game. But baseball?

Some of you may have noticed that I forgot to say that I would want to perform the ceremonial first basketball toss-up thingy. I didn’t forget – I don’t care much for basketball or baseball. I think I would rather be invited to a baseball game than a basketball game because at least baseball is outside and there are things to do other than watch the game.

The second is this: why does no one ever try to throw out the runner at first? If I were invited to throw the ceremonial first pitch, I would pull aside the first baseman and warn him to be ready. And I would have him tell the ump to prepare to call an out. Then, instead of throwing the first pitch to the catcher, I would instead throw it to first base.

In case you’re wondering why I would try to throw out a runner when there’s no one on first base: why throw out a first pitch when there’s no batter?

So now the rumor is that the Big Ten will increase to 16 teams. They skipped right over the 12-team format, which means they didn’t use my new Big Ten logo that was custom-made for 12 teams. Now I have to make another Big Ten logo update.

Here it is:

Betcha didn’t see that one coming, did you? It’s not at all like my previous logo. I know, I know, it’s a unique take on the traditional Big Ten logo – bold, yet subtle; progressive, yet retro.

Although I do like the history of the Big Ten and the tradition of the conference, perhaps it is time to change. That’s it – we need change! Let’s pass a College Football Reform bill!

Sorry, I got carried away.

Let me start over.

Maybe the Big Ten should change the name of the conference – take out the number. It works well for other conferences: SEC, ACC, MWC, MAC, WAC. You don’t need a number in your conference name. It’s either wrong or you have to keep changing it.

• If PAC-10 adds some teams, they could become the PCC (Pacific Coast Conference)
• If the Big 12 loses some teams, they could become the FSC (Flat States Conference)
• If the Big Ten really does add 5 more teams, they could be called something else:
  • If they absorb Notre Dame and NBC wants the rights to the games, they could become NBC (National Big Conference). Think of it – “The NBC on NBC”
  • If they want to keep their current deal with ABC, they could become ABC (America’s Best Conference). That could be sold as “The ABC on ABC, presented by TCBY.”