April 19, 2012
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
We were in Cleveland last week attending the NCAA Bowling Championship. We returned with a lot of memories and an annoying reminder that all-tournament teams are often not worth the paper used to print them. The common practice at major tournaments in any sport is that the champion team will land the MVP and maybe one other representative, the runner-up gets a spot or two and the third and fourth place teams have a minor representation. (At last June’s College World Series, for example, the three SEC teams that placed 1-2-3 had 100% of the all-tournament team.) To be fair, usually there are a few absolute no-brainer choices and a couple that are debatable – it is opinion and not fact.
That said, NCAA bowling needs to figure out a way to get the most deserving student-athletes on its all-tourney team. Our Sarah O’Brien had a Hall of Fame-like tournament with 85% strikes (13 in a row!!) and a Baker frame average that would equate to a 235 during the critical Friday elimination day for our No. 1 seeded team that eventually placed third. Obvious choice, you say? Wrong. She was not even considered – another result of an imperfect selection system.
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If you live in the 13-state Comcast Sports region and haven’t watched our Black and Gold Game replay, you can set your TiVo for 2:00 p.m. (CT) on either April 19 and April 27.
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Boo Mitchell, Jeff Brothers, Corey Harris and Anthony Carter were some of the football alumni returning to campus for the Black and Gold Game.
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There continues to be news and rumors concerning tinkering with football’s BCS Championship format. We’ve written before that while it isn’t perfect, it’s light years better than it once was when the media just voted on a champion. And since the current system isn’t “perfect,” there is room to tinker but here’s a news bulletin: the ink will not be dry on a new system before the media is once again outraged that some deserving team will be omitted. I just don’t get that part of the debate.
College basketball’s regular season attendance and television ratings have been on a decline for some time, in part because the regular season games don’t mean much in the big picture. The hoops world awaits March Madness when “it really counts.” College football already has a playoff – it’s called the regular season. Lose a game and usually you are eliminated from title consideration; lose two and it’s adios. And as soon as we have four or five teams into a playoff mix, the yahoos will be howling that there aren’t eight – or 16. Does anyone not think Alabama and LSU were the nation’s two best teams last year? Don’t get us started.