We have a problem with American College Football.  The root of that problem is money and power, and the result of that problem is a season that always culminates with a question: is <team x> really the best team in the land?

We don’t have the same issue in College Basketball for 1 reason and 1 reason only: there’s a tournament at the end of the season to determine who the best team is.  While it might be said that the “best” team doesn’t always win that tournament, I counter that good or great teams that can manage to rattle off 6 consecutive wins over a month can certainly be called “best”, especially when the last 2 or 3 wins come against the competition that is just as good, or just as hot, as the eventual tournament winner.

So, how do we make football like basketball?  Simply put: have a tournament!

Who gets in?

Currently, there are 6 “BCS” conferences that divide up all the births in the BCS bowl games.  The ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, Pac-12, and SEC all are guaranteed spots in BCS games.  The only exception to this rule would be if someone from another conference, or an independent ranks in the top 12 of the final BCS standings.  Every year, the polls come out, and every year there is controversy.  Most of the time, said controversy centers around someone feeling they were snubbed by the BCS, while waltzing through a cupcake schedule to gaudy statistics and impressive records.

So, how do we proceed with a playoff?  First, we add the Mountain West Conference and Western Athletic Conference to the list of NCAA Football Playoff automatic bids. This ups the number of automatic bids to 8 (ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac-12, Big East, MWC, WAC).  Using last season as an example, the 8 automatic bids would have gone to: Virginia Tech, Auburn, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Oregon, Connecticut, TCU, and Nevada.  After that, a committee selects 8 at-large teams to fill out the bracket.  Some examples of at-large teams: Stanford, LSU, Ohio State, Alabama, Boise State, Northern Illinois, and Arkansas.  The teams and their seeding (1-16) are announced at a “Selection Show” before the start of the first NFL game, or at halftime of the Sunday Night game, for the first week in December.  This year, that would be Sunday, December 4^th.  Games start the following weekend, and run every week for 4 weeks.  This would result in a National Championship game on or about January 1^st, which is the traditional powerhouse bowl game day.

When are the games played?

Obviously, these games would not be played on Sunday, as the NFL is in the late stages of its regular season and gearing up for its own playoffs.  The games could continue to be hosted on Saturday, or, since the first 2 weeks of the football tournament have the most games (12 over 2 weeks), we take a page from basketball, and stagger the games for the first 2 weeks between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon.  NFL games on Saturday could start at 4:30 pm and 8:00 pm Eastern Time.  The college games could start at 7pm Eastern and 7pm Pacific times Thursday and Friday night, and 10 am and 1 pm Eastern time on Saturday.  After the first 2 weeks, games can be moved to Saturday before the start of the NFL games that week.

Where are the games played?

For the first week, the higher seeded team gets a home game.  This may sound like an insurmountable advantage, and indeed, one cannot deny that going into Madison, Wisconsin on a cold day in December and winning would be a daunting task; however, I counter that any team that could do such a thing would gain a great deal of momentum into the next game.  Following the first round, games would be played at neutral sites, specifically the sites where the current BCS bowl games are held with considerations for geography to keep travel costs low.

What’s the upside?

You mean beyond 4 weeks of great teams facing each other?  Beyond a team getting hot at the right time and making a run like the Packers did through the NFL Playoffs last year?  That’s legitimately compelling television for any sports fan.  Las Vegas gets an extra 4 weeks of playoff style sports betting, where the best sports books in town would be the place to be for those December weekends.  The NCAA and associated conferences get to showcase their campuses, players, coaches, facilities, and students for as long as teams can stay alive in the tournament.  This scenario is win-win all the way around.  Absolutely everyone would benefit, the fans not the least of which.

But what do we do with the money?

This is the toughest of all questions.  Each of the teams that qualifies for the tournament should get a flat “tournament incentive” just for being selected.  Then, what I would do is provide a second, smaller incentive to make the “final four”.  The rest of the proceeds should be used to continue the rest of the bowl system (which would be left alone to give more teams a chance for post-season play).  This way, many teams get rewarded for successful seasons that aren’t able to compete on the same level as the eight NCAA Football Tournament conferences.

Why do you care so much?

I’ll be honest; I’m bitter.  Bitter over a missed field goal caused by a 5 week layoff between early December and early January.  Bitter that it wasn’t Stanford playing Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl last year.  Bitter that TCU had a 12-0 record and really didn’t play anyone beyond Utah all season.  Bitter at ESPN’s obvious anti-Wisconsin bias, and less obvious anti-Big Ten bias.  Bitter that even after getting accused of running up the score on inferior opponents, Wisconsin couldn’t get any higher than fifth in the final BCS poll.  Bitter that Wisconsin always plays terribly at Michigan State.  Bitter that I have to take away time every day of the 2 weeks I have with my family over the holidays and do nothing but watch sports.

Having said all that, in reality, an NCAA football playoff is better television for longer than the BCS is currently.  Under the current system, your favorite team is only relevant until they lose.  Under this system, your favorite team could lose early in the season, and still be relevant late into December.  Isn’t that just better?

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with such a thing.  I know HoN is far and away the better designed game.  I know certain UI design elements of LoL would make HoN even better.  However, in the face of “you suck at LoL, so you hate it” ignorance on the forums.  I decided over the weekend—Friday night to be exact—to do the Pepsi Challenge with HoN and LoL.  I played one game of each.  In the HoN game, I played in an all PuG game and randomed my hero, as I would have in DotA.  In LoL, I played it as the LoL fans in the VTW Productions community have suggested, and played on a team of all VTW Productions members and picked my hero.  Here are the results.

Heroes of Newerth

Hero: Torturer (http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/heroview.php?hid=90)

k/d/a: 6/4/19

Time of Game: 41:40

Recap (with aid of replay):  First death occurred at 4:00 mark.  I love this about HoN.  The game is dynamic from the opening bell.  There’s no “dead zone” of 10 mins where players get to dance around each other, but are largely ineffective in creating legitimate pushing opportunities.  By the 9 minute mark, the greatest design advantage of HoN over LoL, and the biggest issue with MOBAs in general is brought to the forefront.  One player on the opposing team thought HoN was LoL, where in the first 10 minutes you can get yourself out of position as much as you like, and the only way you are at risk of getting killed is if you are outnumbered, or your lane partner sucks.  In this case, one opponent character gets out of position at 8 minutes, and we kill him.  At nine minutes, he gets out of position trying to chase, and we kill him again.  Then…rage quit!  At 10 minutes I get ganked by a relatively well set up action by 2 players.  Partially it was my own fault for not backing off more at the initial engagement. First tower kill was at 12:00.  At this point, there has been not one “team fight” (e.g. n vs. n clusterfuck in the mid that LoL fans apparently love).  I’m ganked again at 16:30 by 2 players.  This time, the unlucky timing of a creep wave, and my opponent’s bouncing stun ability, do me in.  Well played by them—1/2/2 at this point.  At 18:45 the first “team fight” sort of breaks out, but it is a skirmish really vice the all-in sort of LoL team fights.  Another team fight occurs at 28:30, and our opponents get the best of us.  I missed a stun that could have saved one of my teammates.  At 35:45, our enemies respawn and my teammates bolt.  Left alone, I die horribly.  We’re in the base at 38 mins, and the gg comes at 40 mins.  The overall experience wasn’t bad as my first game in the FTP HoN era.  The rage quitting sucks, so hopefully that gets sorted out soon.

League of Legends

Hero: Amumu (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/champions/32/amumu_the_sad_mummy)

k/d/a: 0/11/16

Time of game: 40 mins

Recap (without benefit of reply): No event in the known universe is as boring as the first 10 minutes of a LoL game.  This is now a verified fact, and no amount of fanboi/fangurl argument will reverse this truth.  The game is dominated by harassing and team fights in the mid.  Honestly, I spent most of my time dead, and any time I did get any lane momentum going at all, I was called away from it to be the sacrificial lamb to the other team in the inevitable mid team fight.  Apparently, being dead a lot is my role, which I suppose fits in with the RP of the character, a mummy.  I stun sometimes, but most of the time, I’m dead.  The last 20 mins are a giant 5 v. 5 boring clusterfuck in the mid that my team is on the losing side of. [Aside: every game of LoL I have played has devolved into this.  Every one.  All of them, except that bit about the losing side. 6 times I’ve been on the winning side.]  Finally they kill all of us; we surrender, and I want my 40 minutes back.  The only thing that made this game remotely bearable was the fact that I was on vent with friends.  This game sucks, and I could make some conjectures about why people like it so much (they sucked at DotA and LoL is free); however, the usual suspects will only come back with “you suck at LoL, which is why you don’t like it”.  On the contrary, I don’t like LoL because of its glaring design flaws: lack of choice in character selection (not just heroes that are available, but characters having roles is limiting.  Items ought to make the character a tank or DPS.), the “team focused” aspects that devolve into gaudy spell effect displays, and an opening 10 minutes that always makes me wish I could skip to fun part.

So that’s that.  I gave League of Legends every advantage: played with friends, picked my hero and used VoiP to communicate.  HoN is still far and away, night and day, factors of 10 ahead of LoL in every aspect of design sans the shop UI.  Hell, HoN now includes guides for characters with item builds and leveling orders, which you can toggle to have the game auto-level for you.  Pepsi challenge is complete; direct your sniveling to that wall over there.

http://tinyurl.com/69tnxpd

Rare is it that ESPN turns out mind vomit, but Ashley Fox (who?) decides to dump a heaping helping of it in response to a photo spread of Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison in the August issue of Men’s Health (http://tinyurl.com/5s8oyjk).  For those that don’t know, James Harrison is one of, if not THE, hardest hitting defensive player in the National Football League over the past 3 or so seasons.  He has also played the bitch in the NFL’s desperate bid to prevent the league’s poster boys (Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, among others) from getting their bells rung in a contact sport.

Yep, football is a contact sport, but you wouldn’t know it from the way certain players are protected by the league.

Harrison was fined $100k last season for “concussive hits”; these hits are, by definition, impossible to objectively classify, seeing as we all don’t have the same resilience to trauma to the upper body, or, put another way, some crybabies are more glass-jawed than others.  Imagine your job, full time, is to take that guy over there, and make sure he doesn’t cross this line here.  What would you do?  Would you hit that guy as hard as you possibly could, to make him fight for every inch of grass toward that line, to make that guy think twice about coming within 10 miles of you again for the rest of the game?  I would; it is that intensity that separates the best defensive players from the rest.

Back to the mind vomit from Ashley Fox, there are a couple of points I’d like to dispute from the article:

Playing football under a six-year, $51.175 million contract does not mean Harrison isn't still an employee. He is. There are rules, and there are consequences for breaking those rules.

I’m not sure if Ashley noticed, but James Harrison’s boss told him not to bother coming to work until further notice a couple months ago.  The political details of the NFL lockout are not important, but the fact that there is a lockout is the key point.  James Harrison doesn’t have a boss right now, so he can say whatever he wants to in whatever arena he wants to about his former, and most likely soon-to-be-again, boss.  In this case, any action taken by the league would be a reprisal action, and would also be conclusive proof of what most of us already know, and James Harrison said, about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The photo accompanying the article shows Harrison shirtless with his arms crossed holding two of his guns, reportedly an FN Five-Seven pistol and a Smith & Wesson 460V revolver. It is a ridiculous image for kids to see. Harrison is a professional football player and therefore, unfortunately, a role model for some children. In the picture he is promoting guns, as if he has never been to inner city Chicago or Detroit or Philadelphia and seen the devastation gun use causes.

James Harrison is a role model?  I don’t think so.  The NFL would certainly agree, considering they’ve slanderously labeled him as “dirty” in their crusade to take real defense out of the NFL.  By labeling him as a dirty player, the message to children, specifically, is to NOT be like him.  Further, if Harrison is a role model, ESPN and other media outlets have made him a role model by showing his hits on highlight reels, and debating or discussing him and the fines leveled against him for hour after hour.  Besides, no kid grows up and wants to become a linebacker; kids dream of being the star quarterback—the Golden Boy with the golden arm.  It’s only later when kids mature and discover a desire to hit and an aptitude for the position that they decide to become linebackers. Only in the same vein that the predatory media made Charles Barkley a “role model” is James Harrison a role model, and I suspect that James Harrison would believe something Charles Barkley said a generation ago, “The meek shall inherit the Earth, but they won’t get the ball.” Harrison would also elbow an Angolan in the throat, which is why both he and Charles Barkley are awesome.

No one has ever questioned Harrison's toughness. But it is now fair to question whether he has a clue.

James Harrison does not look tough. He does not look like the meanest player in the NFL, the hardest hitter or the most feared defender.

The first sentence above is the last line of the article in question; the second sentence is the first line and hook for the article in question.  So, the first thing is to question a man’s toughness as a hook for an opinion piece, and then try and save face by saying no one questions his toughness?  So you need a hook to get people to read your stuff, fine.  I understand it as a device for writing.  Questioning the toughness of a legitimately tough guy who grabbed a rattlesnake barehanded to remove it from his place in Arizona when his son was visiting is just foolish. 

So, thanks ESPN for posting this nonsense.  I can see why Simmons got the hell out of Dodge and started his own brand.  I wouldn’t want to be associated with this kind of shoddy commentary, either.

Now That the Door Has Been Opened…

I was going to leave this alone, based on the blind emotional response from Twitter over this article: http://tinyurl.com/3mykha8. However, our own Natural 20 opened the door for me not yesterday with a blog post discussing the above Kotaku article and what is a “regular” gamer: http://tinyurl.com/5s2fxzd. The issue of what is a “regular” gamer and gaming going mainstream is one that I have touched on before in various shows.  What I want to focus on is one particular comment about why fake sports hasn’t made it on TV:

Every TV show I've seen so far has been way too cheesy and not indicative of what pro gaming is about. Trying to squeeze an event into a 60 minute broadcast doesn't really work for gaming as it doesn't really work for tennis. But the latter is shown everywhere on TV.

Only recently, thanks to MLG, can we see what gaming events should look like: Great shoutcasting, well presented, and without the need to cheese it up for regular people to understand.

What we learn from this is two-fold: First, Dave Treacy doesn’t know anything about television production, marketing, ratings, or gathering and holding an audience.  Second, if this sentiment is indicative of that of pro-gaming in general, then pro gaming as gone as far as it ever will.

As ever, the “what” of these situations isn’t nearly as interesting as the “why”, but before I do that, let’s toss some numbers around to give a sense of scale to the issue at hand.  Over 18 million American and Canadian fans watched the deciding Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011, according to Puck the Media (http://tinyurl.com/4xj5hs8), and over 15 million Americans watched Game 6 of the NBA finals between Miami and Dallas.  For some more perspective, the 2008 World Series of Poker final table garnered 1.9 million viewers on cable network ESPN.  The WSOP viewership is the intriguing statistic, because it is professional gaming.  So, the notion that professional gaming can’t make it due to cheesy TV is utter nonsense.  Why can’t professional video gaming be the same as the WSOP?  Well, I’ll tell you.

There are no compelling stories in professional video gaming:

We need only go back to the final table at the 2003 WSOP to find the story and the TV coverage that induced the Poker explosion worldwide.  WSOP Main Event internet qualifier Chris Moneymaker makes the final table, and holds the chip lead for much of the final table, though long time poker pro Sam Farha takes the chip lead mid-way through the final table.  At the finish, Moneymaker makes an incredible bluff to cut the legs out of Farha’s chip stack before finishing him on the next hand.  David had slain Goliath on ESPN to win the biggest poker tournament ever at the time.

I watched this when it aired on ESPN.  To be fair, I was already casually interested in poker to begin with, but the legitimate drama of the event, and the story of a relative nobody in the poker world going head-to-head with, and getting the best of, a well-known, high-stakes, professional poker player made me want to play poker.  The next month, I found a class at Colorado Free University on playing poker, signed up for the class, bought books, and setup a bankroll to play poker semi-regularly. 

That, my friends, is the very definition of compelling television.  Now, to be fair, I don’t watch much professional video gaming at all, or watch that much casting of Starcraft 2, etc.  What I have watched doesn’t make me want to play the games that are played, as there are no stories associated with 2 random, anonymous people playing games, and the action on the screen isn’t compelling enough to sell me on the games in spite of their shortcomings.  If compelling stories are there, then the broadcasters associated with gaming have been negligent in their responsibility to find those stories to attract viewers to make pro gaming bigger.

The participants aren’t marketable or telegenic:

Take a look at the picture to the right.  Who do you market that package to, and how do you market that package to the audience at large?  You can’t.  Period.  End.  Sure, you can market that package to other gamers, especially the ones who know who’s in the picture.  But isn’t that the point?  Perception in the marketing world is reality, and this guy looks like a punk who is just as likely to steal your stereo as he is to be one of the best gamers in the world.

Now, let’s look at Shaun White.  Just do a Google search and look at the pictures.  Show me one picture where Shaun White looks anything like the picture at right.  You can’t.  Why? Well, clearly someone in Shaun White’s camp gives a damn about marketing Shaun White; further, that same someone probably understands that making the X-games more marketable overall means more money, exposure, and fame for everyone, so it is good business sense to make sure that the poster boy for the summer and winter X-games is marketable.

For more evidence, do a Google search on Daniel Negranu.  For those that don’t know, Daniel is a professional poker player, and has had much face time on the WSOP, World Poker Tour, and High Stakes Poker telecasts.  Look at those photos and show me where he looks anywhere near as bad as the picture at right.  Again, you can’t.

What I will say is, at the very least, it seems Dave Treacy has a signature look.  It’s a look that can’t sell anything, but the look in the Alienware interview is the same as on his team-dignitas profile page.  That’s something, but at the end of the day, professional video gaming won’t grow beyond the niche without someone to take the reins as poster boy/girl to be put on peripheral ads in trade mags and on TV.

The casters shoot themselves in the foot when they aren’t casting:

Maybe this is because they feel they have to be “in character” all the time?  Here’s what I know: Kevin Harlan doesn’t care about how many twitter followers he has; It doesn’t appear that Hubie Brown has a Youtube channel, so he can’t mouth off about his subscriber numbers; When Colin Cowherd does an interview outside his show, he conducts himself in a professional manner; Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten have played enough poker to provide informative and entertaining insight into the action on the felt.

If you can find a video gaming caster that isn’t a galactic douche during his/her casts, then you can bet the farm on him/her making an idiot out of themselves in a forum or on social media, and setting back professional video gaming back years.  Sell me on putting these people on any major cable network.  Even G4, which would be the obvious place for tons of video game casting, has decided syndicating Cops is better for their bottom line than trying to put casters on the air, and spending the money on damage control when the casters inevitably tarnish the image of G4 by thumping their chest about their subscriber numbers or twitter followers.

So, if we really want to move professional video gaming away from the stigma, do the following: find the compelling stories, and cover the hell out of them; find someone marketable enough to put on the ads for peripherals and for your league/tournament; and find casters that care more for their “sport” then they do for themselves.  Oh, and while we’re at it, can we find someone with the courage to tell aspiring professional video gamers the same thing my Freshman Football coach told me, “Son, there’s a 99% chance you’re not going pro.”?

You can blame guys like Skip Bayless for “The Decision”.

For those who don’t keep track of pundits, Skip is a regular panelist on ESPN’s First Take, where he debates important sports issues of the day with a myriad of other hosts.  His job on the show is quite obviously that of the antagonist.

I understand the role of the antagonist very well; I played one on internet radio for over 4 years.  However, when it comes to the NBA, Skip provides an all too common variety of mind vomit among NBA historians, fans, and pundits.  It goes something like this:

Herp de derp derp not as good as Jordan.  Herp he derp derp killer instinct.  Jordan derp de herpaderp greatest of all time!

The “Jordan” in this line of thinking is, of course, Michael Jordan or “His Airness” or “Air Jordan” or whatever you’d like to call him.  He is one of the greatest basketball players of all time, without question.  That said, many fans, historians, and media will state without reservation that Jordan was the man—the Greatest of all Time.  The reality is somewhat hazier than that.

I love a good conspiracy theory, and the nice thing about being an NBA pundit is that, as much as commissioner David Stern wants you to think otherwise, the NBA is fixed, and has been since at least the mid to late 1980s.  Realistically, especially during the Jordan era, it made great business sense.  NBC paid 600 million dollars for the NBA TV contract in 1990, which was the first of Jordan’s 3-peats with the Chicago Bulls.  This was also 6 years after Jordan signed with Nike shoes, setting up a fantastic golden triangle for Nike, NBC, and the NBA. So long as the Bulls were around to maximize the number of Bulls games shown on TV every year, ratings for the NBA programs on NBC would be high, and kids would flock to Foot Locker to get that year’s Air Jordan shoes.

We all know the results: Six NBA Titles for the Chicago Jordans, fueled as much by the golden triangle of NBC, Nike, and the NBA as they were the triangle offense.  One moment shines above all the others as strong circumstantial evidence that the fix was in.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyL0FxS-F6E

Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals is a game that will live in infamy.  There’s Jordan shoving Bryon Russell to get open to make the game winning shot.   Further, most casual, and some not casual fans list Jordan as the absolute GoaT, as LL Cool J would say.  Come with any player and the means to back your argument up, and you’ll find your discussion partner with their arms folded, or with their fingers in their ears humming as loud as they can.  Michael Jordan is to the NBA what Nintendo is to gaming, except Jordan actually brought something to the table past 1995.

Now let’s fast forward to 2010.  You’re at the end of your contract and on a bad team with a worse coach and the worst owner this side of the LA Clippers.  You could stay put and attempt to become a hero, but you know that you can never stand alone as the GoaT in basketball; conversely, you could accept an offer a friend of yours came to you with in 2008 to play in a warmer climate with a better supporting cast and Pat Rieley calling the shots in the front office.  Which do you do?  It’s a no-brainer, and televising that no-brainer made millions of dollars for Boys and Girls Club of America.

So, while some are super quick to crucify LeBron James for the decision he made and the way he made it, I think we should look at the inflexibility of fans who’s basketball knowledge begins and ends with Michael Jordan and the media members who support that closed minded view.

Now I think I’ll take my talents to South Beach.

P.S. I love ya, Dirk Nowitzki, but I cannot in good conscience cheer for a team from Dallas to win it all. Blame their fans, who are generally terrible human beings who cheer when opposing players get hurt.  It's nothing personal.