by Paul West
Happy holidays! Apologies to those who’ve checked in and found my posts to be less than frequent; but a new year is almost upon us, and it’s a good time to get back on the horse. The annual confluence of bowl season, MLB’s winter meetings, and the NFL playoff hunt are among many things going on in the always-florid world of sports; and so, to borrow from the great Rod Serling, I submit my analytical musings for your approval.
Fantasy vs reality
The annual MLB winter meetings are a time where countless fans and executives exhibit a failure of perspective: a difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality when it comes to team-building. More specifically, they emphasize stacking big names, chasing big fish, and assembling daunting on-paper rosters with too little regard for the less headline-catching aspects of building a viable title threat. The history of baseball, and sports in general, is littered with examples of the ‘how are they not better?’ team, star-laden and scary squads who have underwhelming and even woeful seasons. Sports history is also full of role players playing essential roles in championship runs: David Freese, Andre Igoudala, Stephane Matteau, Ron Harper, Mario Manningham…the list goes on and on. Non-stars, or former stars embracing new roles, have not just come up big in championship-winning moments, they’ve been essential ingredients of championships won. When the Mets went on their magical, back-from-the-dead 2015 pennant run, is wasn’t just Yoenis Cespedes who fueled it–it was Kelly Johnson, Juan Uribe, and Wilmer Flores. MLB owners would do well to keep this in mind when throwing (admittedly, well earned from a market standpoint) money at big names like Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani. Depth, balance, resilience, versatility, and intangibles are things to keep in mind when stacking chips during the offseason.
Bowl mania
As parity continues to grow in college football, the four-team playoff scenario seems more absurd every year, and who makes the final four seems driven as much by ratings as in-season outcomes. This has, in fact, driven a ratings spike; but much of the discussion has been critical of an obviously flawed process. Some have countered that any postseason selection process comes with controversy, and they’re right: there will always be multiple teams on the edge of the selection boundary with cases for and against their selection; but expanding the playoff field to a size more representative of the pool of eligible teams has virtually no downside in the long run. A four-team field presumes something nearly impossible: that of all the teams in FBS–with highly variable schedules that are often engineered by the power conference teams themselves–exactly four teams will indisputably separate themselves from the rest of the field after a season of less than ten games. It only remains to be seen what will be the pivotal moment that forces the NCAA’s hand…most likely, it will take an unexpected blowout of an SEC team. Once that happens, hopefully the national championship playoff will be expanded to six or eight teams.
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