Been a while

So it's been a week since my last post, and as my brother Josh told me, "Post something already."

Thing is, I was going to post about the upcoming BYU game, but we were in Utah all week running around buying stuff and playing football in the backyard and watching The Dark Knight on IMAX (which was awesome) and I didn't get around to posting at all.

So here are my thoughts on BYU vs. Northern Iowa.

1. I don't consider the game to be the start of BYU's season. It was nice to see the team and all, and Northern Iowa is a great FCS team, but let's be honest: this was an extended scrimmage for the Cougars. The season starts Saturday vs. Washington.

2. Max passed for a lot of yards, but I'm still not sold that he's a complete quarterback. His long ball is very suspect, though his midrange and short throws were generally lasers, which was nice. But it seems he over- or underthrows anything farther than 25 yards out.

3. Unga was okay. I'll be honest, I've never been super impressed with the kid. He's strong, yes, and relatively fast, but he doesn't have great moves or great speed. He's a servicable back, but I don't see him ever rushing for 2000 yards in a season or anything.

4. Pitta is the man. His size and speed are outstanding. I'm not sure many linebackers can stay with him.

5. Our corners are pathetic, again. Lining up 10 yards off FCS receivers is just sad. Are they going to line up 20 yards off Washington this week?

6. I like the look of O'Neill Chambers. The kid has serious potential. He made a few boneheaded mistakes, but he's fast and smooth and has good hands. I'd like to see him line up at wideout this season.

7. Michael Reed looked really good before Max hung him out to dry with that overthrown ball in the second quarter. I look forward watching him.

8. Collie's communication and/or timing with Max was off. Not to mention the fact that Northern Iowa's corners were staying with him most of the game. Maybe he wasn't going 100% due to the stress fracture. I hope that's what it was.

9. If BYU's offensive line can't open holes for the running backs against Northern Iowa, I fear we're in for long games against Washington and UCLA.

10. I wish Max had been born with the ability to sense blindside hits, but he wasn't. We've just got to get used to it.

In all, I'm glad all the warts came out in this game, because the game was a win before the season started. Hopefully BYU makes a better showing in the next two weeks. Wins and Washington and home against UCLA means an undefeated BYU meets up with a likely undefeated Utah this season.

Graph Jam

A couple weeks ago I noticed a poster on cougarboard.com was putting some interesting graphs into his signature line. Most were highly entertaining, such as the following:


After following a link, I discovered graphjam.com The site is essentially a showcase for humorous user-submitted graphs of all kinds: pie charts, line graphs, bar charts, etc. So after perusing about 40 pages of awesomeness, I decided to create my own submission. Here it is:


Graph Jam asks you to explain your inspiration for your submissions, as most are based on popular songs or movies. Mine is inspired by personal experience.

Fun site. It's like a smarter icanhazcheezeburger.com.

John Stockton tribute

For this week's Saturday NBA highlight, we've got John Stockton dishing 24 assists in a single game, May 5th, 1988. Enjoy.



Note that this is against the Lakers. Beautiful.

How amazing is it that just a couple years after losing the best pure point guard of all time, the Jazz manage to draft Deron Williams? As much as I loved Stockton, I haven't lamented his retirement since early in Deron's second season.

Oh, and the Redeem Team (sick of that name) is one win away from winning the gold at these Olympics. Despite my pessimism, Team USA hasn't been seriously threatened by anyone since that game against Australia.

I was partly correct in my doom-and-gloom attitude; these guys can't shoot from deep worth beans. Outside of LeBron (44%, 11-25)and Prince (something of a surprise at 55%, 6-11), the 3-point percentages are just sad.

Kobe the Chucker leads the way, shooting 14-45 from deep, or an embarrassing 31% for a "shooter" working with a 3-point line over three feet closer to the rim that it is in the NBA.

Even Redd's been terrible, going 5-18, or 27% from 3.

Basically, Team USA is playing terrific defense and creating turnovers, which means their poor outside shooting isn't hurting them. Also they lucked out in facing an Argentina team without Ginobili.

On a related note, did you see Luis Scola torch the U.S. for 26 and 11? Made me feel a little better that he was so effective against the Jazz in the first round last spring.

So the Redeem Team should destroy Spain in the gold medal game tonight at 12:30 a.m. and everyone will be happy. I'm glad Deron will get a gold medal, but other than that, I don't care much about the game.

BYU love of the week

BYU's status as the most likely BCS-buster of 2008 continues to draw media attention. An article published today at si.com is fairly glowing in its discussion of the Cougars.

BYU's offense will be among the most experienced -- and explosive -- in the nation. It returns eight starters led by junior quarterback Max Hall, who passed for 3,848 yards and 26 touchdowns in his first year as the starter after transferring from Arizona State. BYU also brings back its leading rusher (Harvey Unga, 1,227 yards and 13 scores as a freshman) its top receiver (tight end Dennis Pitta, who had a team-high 59 catches), a legitimate deep threat (WR Austin Collie) and four starting linemen.

Every word of it true. I don't worry much about beating Northern Iowa or anyone in the Mountain West outside of Utah, but those games against Washington and UCLA concern me. BYU has historically struggled to run against teams from BCS conferences, even middle-of-the-pack ones like the Bruins, and any team a team can make you largely one-dimensional, they've got a big advantage.

Less than 10 days to go!

BYU football highlight of the week, Wednesday edition

The year is 1996. The date, August 24. It's early for college football, but Texas A&M is visiting Provo to play in the Pigskin Classic, the first of 15 games BYU would play over the next three months.

A&M was a good team, going 10-0-1 in 1994 and 9-3 in 1995. And this was the first meeting between the teams since the 1990 Holiday Bowl, where A&M destroyed Heisman winner Ty Detmer's Cougars 65-14.

Returning quarterback Steve Sarkisian passed for 3,437 yards, 20 touchdowns and 14 interceptions in 1995. Not world-beating numbers, and not enough that fans expected him to torch the Aggies like he did in this game.

Sark threw for 536 yards, six touchdowns and only one pick in the 41-37 win, finding Chad Lewis, Kaipo McGuire, Itula Mili, James Dye and K.O. Kealaluhi for strikes through the air. As you watch the highlight, note the precision on Sark's throws. Many, many times Aggie secondary players are playing the Cougar receivers well, but the ball is placed perfectly.

It'd be nice to see the same kind of offseason jump by Max Hall this season. If he can be lights out against Washington and UCLA, 2008 and 2009 are going to be big, big years for BYU.

No posts for a few days

I'm up in northern Idaho visiting some in-law family for a few days, and I'm sharing a dial-up connection for now. No new posts until probably Monday.

NCAA football preseason rankings

Preseason rankings in any sport are pointless. They exist to give the sports media something to talk about during the offseason, but can anyone really say for sure how well Brett Favre will do with the Jets or if Derrick Rose will be able to succeed at the professional level?

Nope. And even when there aren't major trades or draft picks involved, teams change way too much from season to season for anyone to accurately predict anything about them for the upcoming year.

But in general, preseason polls are harmless. It doesn't matter if San Francisco is picked as the best team in the NFL in August, because their performance on the field in September and October dictates where they finish in the end and what opportunities for glory they get.

But in college football, preseason polls matter, and they matter a lot. A team that starts the season ranked 56th in the nation has a zero percent chance of making it to a BCS bowl that year. Zero. They can go undefeated and clobber their opponents by 20 points per game, but in the end, they'll probably be ranked in the top 20 somewhere and go to the same type of bowl game a 6-6 team gets invited to.

Meanwhile, a team that starts the season ranked #1 can lose as many as two games and still make it to a BCS bowl. It's ridiculous.

A team like BYU or Utah has to have at least two consecutive dominant years to earn an outside shot at going to the Orange or Sugar Bowl. In a world where non-BCS teams have a tough time recruiting high-caliber athletes, that's tough to do.

I'd like to see preseason polling begin after week four. By that point we at least know who's looking good and who's looking terrible. We'll have seen Michigan get beat by Appalachian State. We'll notice that California is 4-0. We'll have tons of game film on running backs, quarterbacks, offensive lines, linebackers... the better to judge who should be #10 and who should be #11.

Of course, I've heard that coaches don't bother putting any time into their rankings, anyway, and journalists aren't much better, so maybe there wouldn't even be a difference.

The BCS poll doesn't come out until the fourth week, but is mostly influenced by human polling, so again, not much of a difference.

If there was a playoff in college football, the preseason poll would become meaningless as it is in the other major U.S. sports. An undefeated Troy could win the Sun Belt Conference championship and be given a shot at a national title. Would they beat an Ohio State or USC? Probably not. But at least we'd have it proven on the field instead of in the minds of voters.

Take each of the 11 conference champions at the end of the regular season, throw in a wild car slot, and make a 12-team playoff. It'll bring in gazillions of dollars to TV stations, the NCAA, each of the schools involved, etc. etc. It wouldn't affect the student athlete's studies any more than March Madness does. It would be awesome.

But of course, the current BCS members are obsessed with retaining as much money for themselves as they can, never mind the chance that they could make even more in a playoff. Until they suddenly get a clue, we're stuck with the imperfect system of all-powerful voting that rules the beautiful game of college football with an iron fist.