News Nuggets, 10.21.04
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Compiled from staff reports
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Holland successor to head NCAA selection committee
PREVIOUS NUGGETS |
10.20.04: Cards
shake off loss to Miami, target USF for payback ... McCants
clarifies Chapel Hill 'jail' remarks
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10.19.04: Utah
earns lofty spot in BCS poll; Louisville, UAB on list ...
Bad back hounds Marquette basketball coach ... ACC rolls out
new seal, future division names
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10.18.04: New
look BCS to debut: Let the bickering begin ... C-USA
standings, scoreboard, schedule & TV ... AP college football
poll
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10.17.04: Army
streaking; C- USA, Carolinas scoreboard ... College football
weekend: stars & storylines
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10.16.04: Blazers
scorch Frogs to stay unbeaten in league ... Another Florida
school graduating to Division I
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10.15.04: 'Bama
matchup evokes perils of 2000 ECU game for USM ... Miami
comeback brings cocky Cardinals down to Earth
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10.14.04: Thompson:
Pinkney's redshirt year safe and secure ... Schnellenberger
ringside for U of L vs. Miami
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10.13.04: JV
Pirates live up to varsity's example
Toronto approves bid to host bowl game
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10.12.04: Herrion
anoints Badiane, Cook as team's leaders ... No. 1 Southern
Miss QB to miss 'Bama game ... Tar Heel trio sacked by pot
charges
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10.11.04: College
football weekend: stars & storylines ... C-USA standings,
scoreboard, schedule & TV ... Associated Press football poll
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10.10.04: Army
sheds losing ways at Bearcats' expense ... Conference USA &
Carolinas football scoreboard
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10.09.04: Future
looks lonely for Temple Owls football ... Coug legend
Drexler enshrined in hoops Hall ...
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10.08.04: Golden
Eagles claw out overtime win over Houston
ESPN2 HD to debut with C-USA doubleheader
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10.07.04: Southern
Miss road warriors back home for primetime ... Louisville
building $10 million baseball stadium
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10.06.04: Reported
dispute with coach nets suspension for ECU's Fox ... Holtz
sanctions receiver over academic issues
...
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INDIANAPOLIS Virginia athletic
director Craig Littlepage will become chairman of the NCAA basketball
selection committee in 2005-06.
He will succeed Iowa athletic director
Bob Bowlsby, the committee chairman last year and this year, the NCAA said
Tuesday.
Littlepage succeeded Terry Holland as
Virginia's AD in 2001. He previously served as basketball coach at Penn and
Rutgers, and as an assistant at Villanova, Yale and Virginia.
Holland, who stepped down in July from
a position as special assistant to the UVa president, took over this month
as athletics director at East Carolina.
New BCS model already begging
to be recalled
Don't be too dazzled by the
new-and-improved model of the Bowl Championship Series destined to show up
weekly in a newspaper or TV outlet near you. It will have to go back to the
dealer soon enough.
If not in the coming months, then in
the not-too-distant future. And it will be going back over and over until
there is a playoff.
The BCS model unveiled this week is the
fifth version from the guys who hijacked college football's postseason in
1998. Even though they took over the business promising to reduce the human
element, this latest version does just the opposite.
In the past, the votes from The
Associated Press media and the coaches poll were averaged, then combined
with such redundant factors as losses, strength of schedule and quality
victories. Now the formula is much simpler: The AP poll counts for one-third
of a team's BCS points, the coaches poll counts for a third and an average
of six computer rankings makes up the final third.
Yet, no sooner did the BCS
take the wraps off its new
incarnation than the first disagreement between man and machines popped up.
Oklahoma, a clear No. 2 behind Southern Cal in both human polls so far this
season, failed to impress the computers and slipped to No. 3 behind Miami.
All that proves is that, like the
"Windows" program on most computers, the BCS has become a work forever in
progress. The system is still flawed, and always will be. And the latest
somebody to say so has already done the math.
His name is Bradley P. Carlin, and he
is a professor of biostatistics and Mayo professor in public health at the
University of Minnesota. Suffice it to say that Carlin can crunch numbers,
and this is what he concludes in an op-ed piece Sunday in The New York
Times:
``No matter how you arrange the
formula, the BCS remains nothing more than an elaborate seeding system for a
two-team tournament. Its sole benefit is to create one game that precludes
all but two powerful contenders from a legitimate title shot. More to the
point, it will always run a high risk of crowning the wrong champion.''
Kind of restores your faith in things,
doesn't it?
What Carlin did was take the top 16
teams from last season, based on the ranking of one of the BCS-approved
computers, and seeded them like an NCAA basketball tournament regional
bracket. Then, anticipating the argument of college presidents that the
season is already too long, he cut the field to eight, finding that it
reduced the probability of anybody in the field winning the national
championship by only 18 percent.
Finally, he proposed using seven
existing bowl games to play out an eight-team tournament, even allowing for
the current BCS practice of rotating among the title game among them. While
this last part isn't substantially different from a number of plans that
have been floated in the past, what Carlin has done is provide the
justification for doing it as soon as possible.
Which is why there's almost no chance
of it happening until the end of the decade. The guys in charge of the BCS
already have ABC, the major bowl games and the commissioners of the six
power conferences in their back pockets, and a contract extending through
the end of the 2005 season.
One sure sign that they expect to renew
the deal for a few more years: Beginning in 2006, a planned fifth game will
be added to the BCS series, with the championship game played a week later
at the site of one of the BCS bowls. The only thing encouraging about that,
Carlin notes, is it ``sounds a lot like a four-team tournament, which would
be a modest yet clear improvement on the current two-team approach.''
Of course that's not the plan for now,
as the BCS stubbornly insists on trying anything but a playoff.
Other than having split national
champions dumped in their lap, very little happens at the BCS by accident.
When Southern California guaranteed just such an ending to last season, the
BCS tried to pretend the flaws in the system were actually strengths.
``We live in an age when everybody
wants a clean, simple NFL-style playoff,'' then-BCS chief Mike Tranghese
said on the eve of the Sugar Bowl. ``Well, we're not the NFL. But it's
interesting that the NFL playoffs are going on even as we're talking and
everybody is still talking about college football.''
We were, to be fair, and the same
discussion likely will take place again this season. You could also argue it
would be louder and go on longer if a playoff was guaranteed at the end.
The BCS bosses' worst nightmare has
always been reaching that juncture with three or more deserving teams. And
so, they will keep their fingers crossed that only two of the seven unbeaten
teams making their debut in the first poll are still perfect on Jan. 4 so
long as those two aren't pesky mid-majors Utah and Boise State. More than
once in the past six years, late-season upsets saved their bacon by papering
over that fundamental flaw.
And if they're not that lucky this time
around, well, at least they can blame the writers and coaches.
JIM LITKE, Associated Press
Sports Columnist
News Nuggets are
compiled periodically from staff, ECU, Conference USA and its member
schools, and from Associated Press and
other reports. Copyright 2004
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