Mitch Albom’s commentary on a potential Michigan/Ohio State rematch in January concluded with these disheartening words:

The truth is, rematches don’t ruin anything except an argument. So is college football in the national championship business or the argument business?

Sometimes I can’t tell.

Mr. Albom, et al.: college football should be in the football business.  Championships and arguments are ancillary.  The point of the sport should be the games, not just the results.  I love football; leave me the sport, and take your championships elsewhere.

This is hard to believe.

In Texas, the football coach at Willis High School removed six players from the team after they were late for practice. Their reason for being late? They were donating blood at a school blood drive.

Coach Mack Malone has refused comment, perhaps under the advice of the district or its legal counsel. But according to the players, when they arrived at practice, Malone told them they were done playing at Willis.

“The first thing (the coach) said was, ‘You’re off the team. Your career at Willis High School is over,'” football player Phillip McKenna said.

“We were all ready for practice,” player Jeff Chachem said. “We were going out to practice and all of our stuff was taken out of our lockers and we were told to go home, that we were done playing football.”

The subsequent uproar forced the school to reinstate the players, though they lost their starting positions, and they were suspended for one game as punishment for their tardiness.

“We did lose our starting positions,” Chachem said. “We do have to work and run to get them back, so it’s still showing that we’re being punished.”

The players will also not be allowed to participate in the team’s next game on Friday.

Taken at face value, this incident reflects very poorly on Malone. Six players were late to practice for a reason most would consider noble and selfless. His response — immediate dismissal — seems best suited for the latest in a pattern of misbehavior, or for a truly egregious violation of rules. Even the school superintendent said Malone “overreacted.”

That is where uncertainty begins to arise. Malone’s reaction to a seemingly minor incident seems very much over the top; that perception prompts one important question: was his response truly out of the blue, or had these players shown a pattern of misbehavior?

While that information would be helpful, the reports give no indication of persistent malfeasance on the part of the athletes; thus, any judgments based on that potential justification would be pure speculation.

Discarding such speculation, we are left simply with the reported incident: a coach summarily dismissed six players for being late to practice due to a school blood drive. In that light, we are left with the image of a coach who seems to have reacted excessively and impulsively to what should have been a minor incident.

This is not to say there was no justification for punishment. While these players were not late for purely irresponsible or illegal reasons, they were still late, and there is no indication of their having given Malone advance warning of their late arrival. In that case, it would be his responsibility as a coach to enforce consequences for their late arrival.

That being said, immediate dismissal for an instance of tardiness seems excessive, to say the least. Even his modified punishment, levied after he was compelled to apologize and reinstate the players, seems larger than the crime.

In the end, this incident substantially alters Malone’s position in eyes of his athletes and their parents, and it may irrevocably damage his leadership credibility among those whose success depends on it. If that occurs, his departure would be best action, both for Malone and for the school.

The players said they are happy to be back on the team but wish things could return to normal.

“I’m not going to be able to look at him the same way,” player Garrett Scott said.

In the comments on a previous post, there was a brief conversation on the merits of longer playoff series, centered around the idea that a longer playoff series is more likely to see the better team emerge with a victory.

Recently, on ESPN.com’s Page 2, Tim Keown criticized the length of the MLB playoffs, saying that the wild card makes the playoffs too long:

But the bigger issue is one nobody in baseball wants to acknowledge: The World Series has declined in suspense and aesthetic value since the beginning of the wild card format. Three rounds of playoffs has cheapened the World Series, to the point where it is now the end of an endurance race, the prize at the end of a grueling trail, rather than the climax of a long season.

The wild-card format isn’t going anywhere. For baseball’s purposes, it works, keeping more teams interested and more fans in the stands. The extra round of playoffs means big bucks.

But six of the last nine World Series have ended in four or five games, and the extra round has to get some of the blame for that. The emphasis seems to have changed from winning the Series to simply getting there, kind of like the Super Bowl.

That’s a theory, but some things are inarguable: Guys wearing ski caps in the batter’s box are not good for the game. Teams with nothing left by the time they get to the World Series are not good for the game. The decreased television audience isn’t good, either.

You know what they’re talking about, though, right? Expanding the first round to seven games.

While he is specifically addressing the wild card’s effect on the playoffs, he seems not to echo Glavine’s sentiment that a longer playoff series benefits purportedly better teams.  At the very least, the two topics do not seem entirely disconnected.

But, if nothing else, the 2006 World Series seems to have notched one major accomplishment: thanks to the baseball-unfriendly weather and weary players, it has more people wondering if perhaps the MLB season is too long.  There is little hope of a shortened baseball season, but at least it’s a topic of conversation now.

Here’s one more indication of the excessive length of the modern MLB season:

• The Tigers played their first game of the 2006 season on 02 April.
• The Chelsea (MI) High School varsity baseball team played its first game of the 2005-2006 season on 13 April.
• The Chelsea High School varsity football team played its last game of the 2006-2007 regular season on 20 October; its first-round playoff game was on 27 October.
• The Tigers played game 5 — which turned out to be the final game — of the World Series on 27 October.

To summarize, the 2006 Tigers started their season before the 2005-2006 Chelsea high school season and finished their World Series appearance after the 2006-2007 Chelsea varsity football regular season.

In reference to five-game series in the first round of the MLB playoffs, pitcher Tom Glavine had an odd comment:

“A seven-game series creates an atmosphere where, most of the time, the better team is going to win,” Glavine says.

“In the best-of-five, there is way too much of a chance the better team will not win.”

Isn’t the purpose of the series to determine the better team?  The team that wins the required number of games is the better team.

The problem is that Glavine’s definition of “better” is not readily apparent in his comment.  Perhaps Glavine has formulated a superior method of choosing the better team, thus rendering playoff games antiquated.  If so, it shouldn’t be too long before Bud Selig changes the playoffs to the Glavine System.

In the meantime, despite Glavine’s mindset, let’s continue to enjoy the wonderful uncertainty of the playoffs.  After all, Glavine should know as well as anyone that apparent superiority on paper doesn’t actually prove the better team; in the playoffs, only wins prove the better team.  Anything else is simply an opinion.

Just ask the Yankees and the Mets.

The University of Michigan has released drawings of the proposed renovations to Michigan Stadium. Take a look before you continue reading.

My first reaction was one of surprise. The proposed structures are huge. I did not expect small additions, but the drawings are larger than I had imagined.

As structures, they are attractive. They are modeled after other classic structures on campus, like Yost Ice Arena, and as such they are good-looking.

But if I may be repetitive for a moment, they’re big. They’re extraordinarily prominent. In a relative sense, they are nearly as subtle as Oregon’s highlighter-yellow uniforms.

One of the great charms of Michigan Stadium is its simple understated design. From the street, the stadium is actually underwhelming; from the inside, the stadium is just a mass of humanity and the sky. The addition of those two major structures to the east and west sides would be not just an evolutionary renovation, but a major shift in the stadium’s character.

I am not opposed to any addition of structures, but this proposed addition would essentially introduce a new stadium. That sort of change should not be taken lightly, and it should not occur without thorough input from those who fill the seats on a regular basis. If the general fan base accepts this sort of proposal, then I will not quarrel with it; I would be wasting my breath. But if the regents forge ahead with their plan despite substantial opposition, then I will have a quarrel with the regents.  This renovation should be approved by the fans who want to fill benches, not by the few who could afford the proposed suites.
—

The university says:
“In fact, since its construction by Fielding Yost in 1927, the Stadium has undergone many major changes and renovations. In 1949 it was expanded from 85,000 to 95,000 seats, and in 1956 it was renovated again to a capacity of more than 100,000. In 1957 the current press box was added. Each of these projects meant major changes to the appearance of the Stadium.”

Comparing simple capacity expansions to this renovation doesn’t work. The expansions changed the stadium by making it larger; from the inside, it was still a big bowl.

If you have fifteen minutes, listen to this segment of The Sports Inferno, a sports radio talk show on Detroit’s 1270 WXYT. It’s worth your time. It features Mike Valenti addressing the problems of the Michigan State University football program after MSU’s dismal fourth-quarter collapse against Notre Dame.

No, that description was too sterile. He did not address the program’s problems; he tore the program to shreds. It was not the dispassionate analysis of a media observer; it was the overflowing emotion of a passionate fan who happens to host a radio talk show. He had been getting more and more disgusted by the wasted potential and bad losses accumulated by the Spartans, and the devastating loss to Notre Dame finally brought him to a boil. A tangible, powerful, irrepressible boil.

So Valenti boiled. He ranted for fifteen minutes straight. His co-host tried to interrupt him when his voice began to fail, and he refused to stop. His co-host tried again a few minutes later when his voice became even more hoarse, and he very pointedly told his co-host to let him finish. He left no doubt that he would let no one stop him from saying what he needed to say.

Clearly, it was just that: a need. The depth of emotion in his voice and in his words demonstrated beyond any doubt that he did not simply want to express his opinions; he needed to speak his piece. He needed not just to speak his mind; he needed to speak his heart.

And it was his heart that spoke for fifteen minutes. That was unmistakable. He expressed his deepest outrage at the failings of the MSU football program, but he could not have done it out of anger. Anger will make a man do remarkable things, but ultimately, he did not speak in an effort to destroy the program; he shouted himself hoarse in an exhausting effort to expose every crevice of every destructive element within Michigan State football.

What brings a man to that point? Love. Valenti loves Michigan State football.

Some may hesitate to assign that emotion and action to football, either because it doesn’t seem to fit the violently competitive nature of the sport or because they believe sports aren’t important enough to love; neither is true. A shallow fondness does not cause a man in Valenti’s position to break character, shut down his co-host, expose raw emotions and hit every last nerve he could hit; mere pleasant associations do not evoke a passionate point-by-point denunciation of a program’s failings, from the head coach down to the last walk-on player. It’s not the love one person can feel for another — such love should be on an entirely different level — but as Valenti demonstrated, it is love, and in some ways it can be nearly as deep.

That love was deep enough for Valenti to stand by the Spartans through disappointment after disappointment, and it was deep enough that he could no longer bear to watch that football program — his football program — self-destruct. He had to speak, he had to do what he thought would help salvage the program, and he did so with a level of passion not often witnessed in any venue for any reason. He did not observe the program’s failings as a bystander; he experienced them as offenses against a close personal friend. That has to be love. Any lesser word would be inadequate in the face of the emotion in his vehement words and in his failing voice.

And that is what makes college football such a beautiful sport.

On Saturday, Miami and Florida International decided to dedicate their game to Don King.  In the middle of the third quarter, a huge brawl erupted; to end the melee, a number of police officers were forced to intervene.  The immediate result was the ejection of thirteen players; the end result was the suspension of thirty-one players.

Most interesting in this incident was not the fight — after the Pistons/Pacers fight, these things are fairly pedestrian — but the attitudes of the Miami players.  The general consensus seems to be that FIU players both did their part to provoke Miami and started the fight itself, and they should be held responsible for their actions.  But to listen to the Hurricanes, you’d think they were innocent bystanders, not full participants.

“It’s something they started, and our guys finished it,” Kyle Wright proclaimed.  “It’s not our fault,” Kenny Phillips insisted; “Whatever it was, it wasn’t us.”

Even forgetting Miami’s sordid thug history, consider recent history.  While FIU delivered the first blows in the Florida fracas, Miami’s behavior continues to contradict its public image improvements.  Even as the university seeks to clean its football reputation, the Hurricanes have been involved in two fights in the last seven games, and three in the last year.  They even had a near-fight in another game this season; prior to their game at Louisville, Miami players made a grand show of stomping on the logo at midfield.

Further, their behavior in the FIU game hardly demonstrated maturity.  After a short touchdown pass, James Bryant pointed at the FIU bench and took a theatrical bow toward the stands.  His behavior drew a well-deserved flag, and it also likely inflamed the apparently volatile FIU players even more.

If this had been an anomaly, Miami would have room to plead innocent.  But three fights and one near-fight in one year do not allow the football program to claim higher moral ground.  The character of the program and its players is shown on the field; on Saturday, the Hurricanes showed something.

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t character.

—

On that theme, here’s the startling statement of the day, from a USA Today article:

“Why is it bad? I really don’t understand. I think it’s good. It gets people to watch football more,” said Sara Cass, 19, a Miami student from New York City. “I mean, maybe it wasn’t the best way of approaching it, but a spark has been created and maybe this will help the team.”

1)It’s a pattern, like argyle, except it’s bad
One more thought on the expansion of MLB’s already long season: on Saturday, 14 October 2006, the Tigers won game 4 of the ALCS to complete their sweep of the A’s; on that same day in 1984, they won the World Series. The 2006 World Series will not even start until 21 October.

Also, it seems three extra rest days will be introduced into the 2007 MLB season. It has not yet been determined whether they will be added to the regular season or the postseason.  In either case, next season will be even longer.

2)Wait, don’t you know you’re supposed to lose?
In another baseball note, there is talk of making the postseason more difficult for wild card teams. One idea being floated is to give wild card teams only one home game in the first round, rather than two.

I fail to understand this line of thought. Having wild cards win division, conference and even World series is not a problem — not unless wild cards themselves are problems. The last few years have featured a wild card team in the World Series, and somehow this is a problem for baseball?

Bud Selig: either keep the wild cards and consider them full participants in the postseason, or drop the wild cards altogether. Do not make the wild cards second-class postseason citizens. If they meet your wild card criteria, then they deserve to be in the playoffs.  The only fair choice is between wild cards and no wild cards.

The 2006 Tigers have won playoff games fair and square, and previous wild card teams have done the same. If these Tigers and the previous successful wild card teams don’t belong in the playoffs, then the playoff critera — not the wild card teams — are the problem.  Don’t punish wild card teams for meeting the current playoff standards.