SPORTS
PAGE 4B v INDEPENDENT APPEAL
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013
County Schools begin to wrap up summer baseball By Brian Azevedo Sports Editor
Staff Photo by Brian Azevedo
Michael Harpole sends a pitch to the plate against the Bobcats in Chester County.
The McNairy Central and Adamsille High School baseball teams met again in Chester County. In one of the final tournaments of the summer the Cardinals and the Bobcats squared off again, and this time is was some of the upperclassmen on the mound for both teams. Chase Smith, who is a crafty lefty for the Bobcats, took the mound and went to work. Smith was able to pitch well and kept the Cardinal hitters off balance for the majority of the game. On the Adamsville side, it was upcoming senior Michael Harpole who took the mound for the Cardinals. Harpole, like Smith, was able to pitch well as these two pitchers battled against each other. In the middle innings it was the Bobcats who were finally able to break the game open and take a lead over the Cardinals. Both teams fought and battled, but it was the Bobcats who were able to come out on top as Smith was able to stay on the mound and keep the Cardinals off the board. “We played well,” said Cardinal head coach Rennard Woodmore. “We got to see our young guys play well and we got to see some of our upperclassmen come into form. We have a lot to work on before next season, and we will never stop trying to get better.” The Cardinals will have a young team on the field next season, but it will be up to Seniors like Harpole to lead the way and work towards a winning season in 2015. The Bobcats, like the Cardinals, will have a young team on the field next season, but will also have their share of leadership from the older players. “We have a great group of guys,” said Bobcat head coach Brian Franks. “We have some young guys that have a lot of talent and we have a lot of experience in our upperclassmen. I expect them to lead and I expect them to set an example for the younger players so that we can be successful and continue to win on and off the field.”
Staff Photo by Brian Azevedo
Chase Smith throws a pitch against the Cardinals during one of the final summer tournaments in Chester County.
Common sense sports edition, Reforming college football Part 2: playoffs By Jeff Whitten Head News Writer
Starting this college football season, all arguments and controversy about who is the best major college football team or who belongs in the championship game will end. Just kidding. The new two-game playoff system that will begin this fall will not end arguments over these matters, but the arguments will take a different form than they have in the past. The College Football Playoff is designed to eliminate the controversy over who plays in the national championship game that occurred periodically during the Bowl Championship Series system. This will now be settled on the field and not by polls and computer algorithms. However, this will create controversy as to who should go to the two playoff games and there is sure to be controversy over how they will be chosen. The four teams will be chosen by a 13-member committee that include past and present coaches, players, athletic directors, administrators and media. Some non-controversial committee members are Archie Manning, Tom Osborn and Pat Haden. Others, such as Condoleeza Rice leave some fans scratching their heads, wondering why she was included. Committee members presently affiliated with a university will not be allowed to vote for their own team, but no such ban is in place for members formerly affiliated with a university. This arrangement will be in place for the next 10 years. During this period, it is virtually certain that some will argue
that the playoffs should be expanded to eight teams. It is likely that this will happen at some point. If the playoff is expanded, that will still not end the arguments, but will only expand the arguments to who the eight teams are. The way that will likely be addressed is to expand the playoffs to sixteen teams, and so on, and so forth. At some point, college football could become like the NFL in which it is possible for .500 teams and below to get into the playoffs and wild-card teams being much more likely to win the championship game than the number one seed. (I’ll have more to say about NFL playoff expansion in a later column). The committee is supposed to pick the four teams based upon strength of schedule, record, head-to-head results, conference championships, weather, injuries and other factors. These are all valid factors, especially strength of schedule, which I believe has been underweighted over the past 10 years or so, allowing teams which have played soft schedules and blown those opponents out, to get to the BCS Championship Game, only to be embarrassed. It is not obvious why a 13-member committee will make a better decision than the combination of computer power rankings plus polls of former players, coaches and sports media. Although a computer algorithm is only as smart as the person writing it, it will not be biased as a small committee could be. The smaller the committee, the greater impact of bias among a small number of members. There is broad agreement on how to measure team strength quantitatively, with the caveat that there is substantial variability in the performances of
teams on any given day and unpredictability about how the strategies the two teams adopt will interact. Typically, the winning percentage, weighted by strength of schedule is used, though the point differential does a better job of predicting outcomes. The quants are not very transparent about precisely how they weight these factors, but looking at the results, I think they underweight strength of schedule for the reason I said before. The BCS averages six of these algorithms. The polls are based on the wisdomof-crowds theory. If two heads are better than one, then 2.000 are even better. This is the theory behind the pre-BCS system. The major polls in determining the champions in this era were the AP, UPI and CNN/USA Today. This system produced such champi-
ons as Woody Hayes’ Ohio State Buckeyes, Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide, Tom Osborn’s Nebraska Cornhuskers, Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma Sooners, Ara Parseghian’s, Dan Devine’s and Lou Holtz’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Joe Paterno’s Penn St. Nittany Lions, John McKay’s and John Robinson’s USC Trojans, and Howard Schnellenberger’s, Jimmy Johnson’s and Dennis Erickson’s Miami Hurricanes. This system seemed to produce great champions, though whether with more or less controversy than the BCS is hard to tell. It did on occasion produce split championships. So did the BCS if you count the separate AP poll as well. The fatal flaw in this system was that it did not settle the championship on the field.
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