bukie

OK, here we go... C - Miguel Montero - exempt 1B - Garrett Jones - exempt 2B - Brian Roberts - 527 3B - Pablo Sandoval - exempt SS OF - Jason Bay - 570.5 OF OF U SP - Dan Haren - 657 SP - Shawn Marcum - 0 (coming off TJ year) SP - Justin Masterson - exempt SP - Jeff Niemann - exempt SP - Ross Detwiler - exempt RP RP Total - 1754.5 Minors SS Alcides Escobar MIL (<200 AB makes this ok, right?) 2B Sean Rodriguez TB (<200 AB) OF Austin Jackson DET 1B Beau Mills CLE SP Wade LeBlanc SD (<10 starts) SP Danny Cortes KC

Well, I hope you're right, because I don't want to be the only one dropping quality talent! I know most people haven't gotten to legal rosters yet, but the draft pool is mainly my guys at this point. :( I have to figure out which 7 guys to drop yet...

Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to be taking on points at this stage. Now I have to decide which OF to keep and which #1 SP to keep (or gamble on a lot of young pitchers + one coming off injury and just keep all the OFs).

Apparently you get your name in the thread first.

Have you ever been to NYC? No, and I don't ever plan too. How ignorant then. Ignorant? No. Misguided? Maybe. People severely overrate New York and it'a atmosphere. Besides, I didn't based NY, that would be ignorant, all I said was I didn't see the appeal. Ignorant was the proper term there. Uninformed, lacking in knowledge or training.

I'd ask how you made it there based on what is being discussed, but that way leads to madness.

Don't sweat it, just focus on what's important...avoiding any and all conflict with the future wife. :P

A 30 game season in a division with as many teams as D-1(or even BCS) isn't quite enough for there to be a sure-fire best team. Especially considering the teams they needed to beat to win the title, when's the last time a team that won it all wasn't considered one of the best teams in the country? Probably Villanova in '85, the first year the tournament expanded to 64.

Explain this one to me. Do you think there's a tipping point where adding teams becomes a negative to the tournament? 64 creates a rapid fire atmospher dropping it from 64 to 16. There's going to be burnout with this number of games, especially with so many crappy games to start things off. You can duplicate that atmosphere though. Have the play in games on Saturday/Sunday then have the tournament proceed on the schedule it is now. Bit of a layoff for the teams with byes, but I don't think it's that huge a deal. I think that layoff is also a problem. Right now, the tournament starts on the Thursday after Selection Sunday, right? (that's how I remember it.) And Selection Sunday is at the end of the conference tournament week. So when do you hold this initial play-in round? The weekend after selection sunday (when we'd normally be into round two of the tournament)? If you do that, teams with a first round bye wouldn't start until the Thursday after that. That's almost two weeks off. So not only do these teams have to find a way to stay sharp during an 11 or 12 day layoff, but it's all so I can watch the 9th place team in the ACC face off with the second place team in the Big Sky? Sorry, that would suck. One way to do it would be to have the opening weekend start Tuesday instead of Thursday (as the play-in game is now), and teams without byes would have to play 3 games the first weekend to advance. It'd give teams with byes more of an advantage, and would make the opening week a little crazier. The ridiculous "dilutes the field" argument happens every single time a playoff expands. I'm curious if the "purists" were up in arms when the field expanded from 32 to 40 to 48 to 52 to 53 to 64 teams from 1978 to 1985. With the sheer number of D-1 teams now, the tournament was due for an expansion.

Here are a few reasons why I'd be in favor of the expansion: 1. Increases the playoff representation of the league to a little over 27%, in line with MLB (8 of 30, 27%) and lower than NFL (12 of 32, 38%), NBA and NHL (16 of 30, 53%) 2. Allows more minor/mid-major conference teams in (hey, there's even a decent chance they make a provision for regular season champs, like the NIT does currently), even if not at the same rate as the Big 6. 3. Honestly, the best part of the NCAA tournament is the craziness of the first two rounds. Adding 32 teams and an extra round at the beginning only amplifies that craziness an extra round, IMO. More people are interested for an extra night or two of game time. 4. Minor conference teams have a better chance of winning a first round game (pitted against a 9 seed instead of a 1 seed, it basically gives every team a fighting chance in at least one game). 5. 1 and 2 seeds will likely have a more challenging first round game, leading to more high seed upsets. Reasons to be hesitant: 1. This basically puts every .500+ major conference team in the tournament, barring special provisions. I'd like to see the NCAA require taking every regular season conference champ + tournament champ before taking a .500 big 6 team. 2. Increased chance of high seed upsets mean the better teams will be even less likely to win it all.

Seconded. I really, really hate this. College basketball's postseason is basically perfect and you're going to change it? Meanwhile, college football's postseason is mostly a farce and we can't change that? Also, while this isn't my own independent thought, I think this could decrease viewership and interest. Filling out brackets has become a national pastime, and it becomes way more involved and complicated with 96 teams. The NCAA may not want to admit that, but a lot of people that aren't big basketball/sports fans enjoy the tournament for that very reason. Picking the winners of 79 games based on the names of the schools and their mascots will be much harder for the average fan than picking only 64 games based on the names of the schools and their mascots. Warning...math of the top of my head may be wrong or completely made up. A 96 team tournament would feature 95 games total, since only one team is eliminated per game. I figured a 64 team tournament is 63 games. And then you add another 32 teams...which I figured would be playing "play-in" games...which means 16 more games. In a 96-team tournament, 32 of the teams would get byes, and the remaining 64 would play in 32 first round games to pare the overall field to 64. So, by round (number of games): 32 + 32 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 95

Seconded. I really, really hate this. College basketball's postseason is basically perfect and you're going to change it? Meanwhile, college football's postseason is mostly a farce and we can't change that? Also, while this isn't my own independent thought, I think this could decrease viewership and interest. Filling out brackets has become a national pastime, and it becomes way more involved and complicated with 96 teams. The NCAA may not want to admit that, but a lot of people that aren't big basketball/sports fans enjoy the tournament for that very reason. Picking the winners of 79 games based on the names of the schools and their mascots will be much harder for the average fan than picking only 64 games based on the names of the schools and their mascots. Warning...math of the top of my head may be wrong or completely made up. A 96 team tournament would feature 95 games total, since only one team is eliminated per game.

It basically adds the NIT field to the NCAA tournament. If anything, it greatly increases the possibility of a minor conference school winning a first round game, and also increases the chance of a 1 seed being upset in the first game they play.

Well, they had to do something to address the 34th conference (Great West). Adding a sub-round makes as much sense as anything, especially since there are now upwards of 350 D-1 teams.

I think the biggest difference between the all star games in the sports is that they all inevitably break down into one-on-one matchups. Fortunately for baseball, the normal sport is like that. For NBA, NHL and NFL, the game is more team oriented (well, should be), and the difference is most pronounced in the NFL game.

They beat Edmonton on Tuesday.

The other good thing about tonight is that it pretty much marks the end of Bulls road games against the West. All that's left now is Dallas and Memphis.

Madden scored on this road trip. I've seen the pictures. I wouldn't consider those scores worth any points, though.

Yeah, I expect Detroit to make a run and get back into the playoff picture, but everybody besides the Hawks are struggling the past month.

How do you figure you have the first picks? The draft order seems to have been erased but it looks to me like Fighting Manginos get the first pick? http://www.northsidebaseball.com/bridge/index.php?f=24&t=55266&rb_v=viewtopic

All in all, I'd say the only real snub was Josh Smith, at the expense of either Rose or one of his own teammates.

http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=880

you didn't post ONCE in the college baseball thread last year. I'd guarantee you that if this thread were in this forum, it would have more than 9 pages over a six month period like the last baseball thread had. What would I have had to post about? Illinois' stellar college baseball teams? Just because I don't have a horse in the discussion doesn't mean I can't read it. Or that it doesn't belong in a forum devoted to that discussion.

yes, visited by the same six people. and you'd be wrong on this one. Yeah, it's so weird that baseball forum traffic is down during baseball offseason. Stop being so obtuse and hyperbolic on this issue. You're pulling the same crap you tried last year on the issue.

The Amateur Baseball forum has 170 topics devoted specifically to amateur baseball. The Other Sports forum has 400 topics devoted to every other sport. I think a forum category for a topic is more high traffic than a single thread in another forum category.