Marlin Wears a Different Ring These Days

I've often wondered why college basketball statheads haven't adopted KRACH. It seems ideal for the sport: Lots of data points, and it's harder to manipulate than RPI by beating up on weak competition. There's a site out there that performs the analysis, but their latest edition is a month old.

The Ann Arbor News also has a few interesting items up today:

First, Marlin Jackson was in court to testify in the dueling lawsuits surrounding a 2003 fight.

[Shahin] Farokhrany, 33, sued Jackson for $10 million, alleging the injuries he suffered in the June 1, 2003, altercation required long-term medical care and limited his ability to work.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, but he claims that was just an expedient so he could keep playing; if he had a possible felony hanging over his head he would've been suspended. Now the money quote:

Behan also said when Jackson punched Farokhrany with his Outback Bowl championship ring, it exacerbated a degenerative condition in Farokhrany's right eye that required a cornea transplant in 1994.

Designated hockey guy Kevin Ryan has some fluffy fluff on David Wohlberg's season and how he's far outpaced expectations for a guy who was demoted to the U-17 team last year.

Ryan also has a piece up on the impending OSU series that's OK, but shows the limitations of the newspaper format, only giving the broadest description of what's at stake. It could really use those two or three paragraphs that were probably cut to get it down to size.

Daring Columnist Believes Tradition More Important To Winning Than Scoring More Points Than The Other Team

I really shouldn't read anything on MLive before I go to work, because it throws me off all day when I inevitably read something stupid. However, yesterday morning I ended up taking a look at their section on Wolverines Sports, and under the basic articles on the basketball team's loss to MSU was an article by one Howie Beardsley of the Grand Rapids Press. Per our policy of not rewarding anything this stupid with extra page-views, I won't be providing a link.

ANN ARBOR –

Promising beginning...

It made no difference Tuesday night which team had the most All-Big Ten performers...

And now you've lost me. This might be some sort of record. While something like "number of All-Big Ten performers" isn't a perfect measure of team quality, it does give you some indication of how good a team is, and being good at basketball almost assuredly helps you win basketball games. It is exceptionally unhelpful to your thesis when the team with more (likely) All-Big Ten performers won the damn game.

The difference in ninth-ranked Michigan State's 54-42 win against a desperate (in terms of a possible NCAA tournament bid) Michigan team came down to tradition, past success and a little bit of basketball mystique.

Congratulations, that is remarkably dumb. You don't get extra points because of the Final Fours you've been to in past years, and "basketball mystique" won't earn you another trip to the foul line. Michigan State won because they have two viable big men and we're playing with a 6'4" power forward. They out-rebounded the Wolverines, played stifling defense, and when Michigan got an open look at a 3 they couldn't knock them down consistently. Not one item on that list has anything to do with program history. But maybe I'm wrong; maybe Tom Izzo agrees with Howie's thesis.

"We did a good job out of our timeouts. We ran good stuff,'' MSU coach Tom Izzo said.

Clearly the man feels that the reason they had success out of timeouts has nothing to do with him being a fantastic basketball coach. The plays came out of thin air, brought into being by the spirits of Mateen Cleaves and Shawn Respert.

Michigan's poor play wasn't so much going against the ninth-rated team in the country as much as it was playing against the tradition of MSU.

This argument is so astonishingly stupid that I question any editor who let it in the paper. This is why your medium is dying, choked off because people have outlets that believe that the players on the floor and the coaches on the sidelines have far more to do with winning than mythical ghosts or "tradition". Do you think that Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims were in any way intimidated by the number of NCAA appearances the MSU program has racked up? Did Delvon Roe grow another inch when he put on that Spartan jersey?

The closest Beardsley could possibly come to a coherent argument would be to argue that past success and tradition helped them get the recruits who actually played the basketball game, but he goes nowhere near that argument. He includes this quote from Delvon Roe because it mentions the T word:

"I'm going to keep working toward it to keep helping this program be a tradition-rich one."

Swish! thinks Beardsley, while I roll my eyes. So the guy mentioned "tradition." Who cares? Winning the game is a method of furthering that tradition, not a result of it. It's not even post hoc, it's pre hoc.

Any argument that tradition or past success or "mystique" has anything to do with winning in college athletics is inherently flawed. Just ask 2007 Notre Dame or 2008 Michigan football, and Kentucky isn't exactly rolling through the SEC these days. Recruiting and coaching are the lifeblood of collegiate sports. Michigan State won because they have a loaded roster of better players, a coach who could use them effectively in a well-designed system, and were a little luckier. End of story.

Finally, Beardsley's headline writer isn't even trying. "Spartans' Tradition Trumps Michigan's Inexperience". Really? This is what you're going to go with? Shouldn't both sides of that headline be something equally valuable, with the latter specific to Michigan? Choose one: Home Court Advantage. System. Grit. FREEEE PIZZZAAAA!!!!

PS: DeShawn Sims was a beast in that losing effort. Too bad the supporting cast couldn't get Michigan the victory.

The Brady Inexperience Lie

There seems to be a running recurrent in the post-Brady injury apocalypse to call Tom Brady "inexperienced" when he came in to the NFL, which was why he was taken in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft.

While I would normally chalk this up to the MSM developing and holding to a story line, this one drives me mad, because I watched two seasons of Tom Brady as Michigan's starting quarterback. I have fond memories of Tom's years at Michigan and I need to define "inexperience", because the statistics back up the facts, which should hopefully put this argument to bed.

Tom Brady came to Michigan in 1995 and redshirted that season, allegedly landing at seventh on the depth chart at quarterback.

During the 1996 season, Lloyd Carr's second as Michigan's head coach, Tom Brady saw action two games, UCLA and at Minnesota where he attempted a grand total of five passes in mop up duty during a pair of blowout victories.

During the 1997 season (sighs longingly for a better time), Tom Brady was Brian Griese's backup. Brady saw action in four more blowouts and attempted 15 passes in three games (Brady's appearance in the Penn State game consisted of negative yardage runs, which would lead me to think victory formation kneel downs. I do not have the time to download the torrent to be sure.)

During the 1998 season, Brady, now a redshirt junior, was named the starting quarterback, but that was not without controversy, as wunderfrosh Drew Henson was also turning heads and leading many fans and in the media to see him quickly supplanting Brady in the starters role. Brady, however, started every game for Michigan in 1998. The only game in which Brady did not see a majority of the time was the Syracuse debacle (or the Donovan McNabb DAMN! show, however you want to look at it.) and Henson was largely ineffective as a passer (though with Anthony Thomas, you really don't need an exceptionally effective quarterback). Henson was 19 for 45 for the entire season in limited time.

This brings us to the 1999 season. Brady is a senior, and Henson is pushing him, leading to a platoon between the two. The stats (http://tinyurl.com/6atpcf) bear us out here. Brady started every game. The reason people tend to remember Henson as the "starter" is that Brady was concussed during the Syracuse game at the Carrier Dome, which had him knocked out after attempting just ten passes, and the Michigan State debacle, where Henson was leaned on for far too long in the game when he was ineffective and Brady rallied the team to a near miraculous comeback, but fell short. That game, as it sticks in the craw of many Michigan fans, leads to false memories. Henson was not the starter and did not start a game for Michigan until the 2000 season. Save the Northwestern blowout and one pass in the Orange Bowl, Henson did not see the field again during Brady's tenure at Michigan.

All in all, Tom Brady started for two full seasons at Michigan, a total of 25 games. He threw for over 5,000 yards in his career (then a Michigan record, believe it or not), and completed roughly five out of every eight of his pass attempts and threw a touchdown pass one in every 20 passes. All this for a team that had Anthony Thomas, who ran for 2,000 plus yards and 32 touchdowns during Brady's junior and senior years. I don't know what people want out of Brady in his college experience. He, admittedly, finished behind Joe Germaine and Drew Brees for all-Big Ten quarterback honors in 1998, and was all-Big Ten second team in 1999 (again behind Brees.) But Tom Brady was not an unknown when he was drafted with the #199 pick in the 2000 draft. He was experienced.