Don’t call us Bleacher ReportSB NationFansided, but we’ve decided to pick up a little #content buzz around here by completely outsourcing our content for this exciting preview of the 2019 college football conference championship weekend to unpaid labor/digital aggregators. Finally(!), our reader(s) have a chance to find out what the people themselves have to say about these games and no longer must wade through the filtered editorial morass of our (also unpaid) writers’ unavoidable human biases.
A game(s) preview is, at its essence, a telling of whether a game should be good. Here then are the tellings of whether this weekend’s college football games should be good told by the people–free and rational economic actors all–according to the comparative differences between bottom-level ticket prices available on the secondary market as of this morning.
News broke last night that Justin Fields, Georgia’s number-two quarterback behind Jake Fromm, is considering a transfer. Initial reports indicated that he had decided to transfer, but follow-ups this morning have softened that somewhat. Still, from Fields’ perspective, a transfer makes some sense for the second overall recruit from the 2018 class who, thus far, has not overtaken Fromm and probably wants– and would receive– a starting opportunity at another top-tier program.
If Fields does leave after this season, he will be the second highly regarded QB to depart Athens under the Kirby Smart regime. Former starter Jacob Eason left after he lost the job to Fromm in the 2017 season, transferring to Washington (in his home state). He had to sit out the 2018 season, though he was allowed to practice with the Huskies and play on the scout team. Although Washington coach Chris Peterson told Eason during his high-school recruitment that, if Eason “ever needed to or had the opportunity to come home, he would have a place for” Eason, there obviously is no guarantee of a starting job for him in Seattle. In fact, a report yesterday shows that Eason will face a challenge from a former high-school rival, Dylan Morris, who will enroll early to begin the competition with Eason this spring. While the Seattle Times regards Eason as the presumptive starter– “of course”– for 2019, the report also notes that Eason will be one of five scholarship quarterbacks on campus this spring.
Even if Fields doesn’t have to sit out a year, something he obviously hopes to avoid even if it isn’t clear how he would do so under current NCAA rules, Eason’s situation should serve as a reminder that there are no certainties in college football.
UPDATE: Fields has taken the necessary step to commence the transfer process. Coaches at other schools now are free to recruit him to join their programs without having to receive permission from UGA. It apparently is possible that the SEC still could restrict Fields’ ability to transfer within the conference, however.
UPDATE: Fields is transferring to Ohio State. The immediate reports do not indicate whether he’ll have to sit out a year, but I think that’s the reasonable expectation absent extraordinary circumstances.
I used to write the sports technology roundup at TechGraphs, an internet website that died, and now I am writing the sports law roundup at ALDLAND, an internet website.
Here are the top sports-related legal stories from the past week:
Dominican politics: A court in the Dominican Republic has convicted former MLB player Raul Mondesi on charges of political corruption in connection with his activities as mayor of San Cristobal, his hometown. The court sentenced Mondesi to eight years in prison, fined him the equivalent of $1.27 million, and barred him from holding public office for the next ten years. Mondesi, the 1994 National League rookie of the year, earned over $66 million in his thirteen-year career mostly spent as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Reports indicate Mondesi embezzled funds while serving as mayor of San Cristobal.
Penn State child abuse: A court dismissed a defamation lawsuit former Penn State University Graham Spanier filed against Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who investigated the the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal inside PSU’s football program and produced a report of his investigation that named Spanier and served as part of the basis for subsequent criminal charges against Spanier. In June, a court sentenced Spanier to two months in jail and eight months on house arrest following his conviction on a misdemeanor count of child endangerment. That conviction, the judge in Spanier’s defamation case explained, barred the defamation claims, although he observed that Spanier could revive the case if an appellate court reversed his criminal conviction.
Three on three on three on three: Ice Cube’s (real name: O’Shea Jackson) Big3 Basketball, a popular three-on-three basketball league for former NBA players with an FS1 television deal, responded to a lawsuit from new rival Champions League by filing a lawsuit of its own alleging that Champions League defamed Big3 by falsely telling investors that the reason Champions League had not yet launched was because Big3 has blocked its players from joining Champions League. Champions League’s previous suit against Big3 alleged that Big3 violated agreements to allow players to play in both leagues.
NFL head injuries: A Boston University study on the brain of Aaron Hernandez concluded that Hernandez had “stage 3 CTE.” Initial reports indicated that Hernandez’s family intends to file suit against the NFL and the New England Patriots and, on Thursday, Hernandez’s now four-year-old daughter, Avielle, filed an action against those entities. Her complaint alleges that negligence by the league and team resulted in a loss of parental consortium. Related filings state that she is seeking $20 million. The complaint further states that Hernandez had “the most severe case of [CTE] medically seen in a person of his young age” by the Boston University researchers. According to the complaint, there are four stages of CTE, with stage 3 typically being associated with players with a median age of death of sixty-seven. Hernandez was twenty-seven when he committed suicide.
OSU trademark: Oklahoma State University and Ohio State University have settled their conflict over the use of the “OSU” trademark, with both universities agreeing that they may use the mark nationwide. The dispute initially arose after Ohio State sought a trademark for “OSU” and Oklahoma State submitted an objection to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claiming that it held rights to that mark. Under their agreement, each school will not use “OSU” in connection with the colors or mascot of the other and will use “Ohio State” and “Oklahoma State” in promotional materials to help avoid confusion. The agreement also includes a non-disparagement provision precluding the schools from using phrases like “wannabe OSU” or “copycat OSU.”
Beverly Hills Ninja Bikes: Make Him Smile Inc., a company that owns the intellectual property rights associated with late comedian Chris Farley, sued the Trek bicycle company over its marketing of a “Farley” bicycle designed with fat tires and a fat frame. Trek, the plaintiff alleged, paid nothing for trading on Farley’s name and likeness. The complaint seeks $10 million in damages.
ESPN conducted a survey of all 128 Division I college football coaches, asking them to name their favorite musical artist. The full list of responses is here. My cursory analysis is here: Continue reading →
Last night, for the first time in the 2015 season, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee released its rankings. The Committee ranks twenty-five teams, and their top ten teams are shown in the images below.
These initial rankings offer plenty to critique about the Committee’s decisions this week and its process in general. Continue reading →
Depending on who you are, and, really, who your grandfather is or was, the top of this week’s college football AP poll could look reasonably unsurprising to him: Continue reading →
I have to agree, because the man said what I’ve been saying for a week now: Michigan State looks like the best team in the country at this moment. Both teams in the Oregon-MSU game looked better than anything the SEC had to offer through the first two weeks of the season.
Week three saw the Spartans struggle against Air Force’s triple-option offense, but, one has reason to expect, that data point will have little meaning going forward. Meanwhile, Georgia dominated South Carolina in what easily was the Dawgs’ best game of the year, and Ole Miss made it two straight over Alabama.
The Black Bears’Rebels’ win certainly was exciting, and it’s led some to argue that they deserve the top AP spot. Their sixty-four points per game and undefeated record that includes a win in Tuscaloosa merit a top-tier ranking, but home wins over UT-Martin and Fresno State aren’t terribly revealing.
Terribly revealing? Missouri’s ugly win over UCONN is a strong indication that the two-time SEC East champions are unlikely to defend their consecutive division titles in Atlanta this December. Ohio State had a similarly weak victory over Northern Illinois, but those Huskies are better than the ones from New England, and the Buckeyes’ recent track record suggests they’ll be fine going forward.
Beyond the usual discussion of champions and coaching legacies (quickly: Urban Meyer– three national championships at two different schools, evil; Nick Saban– four national championships at two different schools, merely soulless), one of the central season-in-review topics of conversation, at least in these parts, is whether the SEC is over. Surprisingly but also not surprisingly, Paul Finebaum, voice of the SEC, answers the question implied in the previous sentence in the affirmative. (UPDATE: PFT Commenter emphatically concurs.) Although he’s been developing his position over the course of his daily radio show since roughly the first of the year, he summed up the general point in his appearance on Keith Olbermann’s show just before the national championship game:
The SEC’s bowl record was 7-5. (They were 7-3 last year.) The Pacific Twelve was 6-2 (exclusive of Oregon’s national championship loss), the Big Ten was 5-5 (exclusive of Ohio State’s national championship win), the Big XII was 2-5, and the ACC was 4-7. In other words, among the power five conferences, the SEC had the most teams playing in bowl games and notched the second-best winning percentage.
What seems to concern Finebaum, though, is a sudden lack of championships. That people think the SEC is done for because one of its members hasn’t played for a national championship in a whole year and hasn’t won one in a whole two years is a testament to the never-before-seen degree of dominance the conference produced during the BCS era. Prior to Ohio State’s inaugural CFP championship on Monday, the Big Ten had 1.5 national championships since 1970. The SEC had nine in the BCS era (i.e., since 1998) alone. The ACC had two BCS championships, the ACC had two, the (now-defunct for football purposes) Big East had one, and the then-Pac Ten had one, since vacated.
After the hunt for Mississippi October turned up empty and OSU knocked Alabama out in the semis, the SEC may need to do a little more to earn its seeds next year, but I’m not sure we can say the conference is measurably weaker simply because it failed to produce a national champion this year. If anything, the above suggests the conference is as deep as ever.
Transitioning toward the offseason and the 2015 season, I’ll use this space to remind everyone that Michigan State’s only losses in 2014 were to Ohio State and Oregon. The Spartans face both teams again in 2015, albeit without the aid of their departed defensive coordinator, Pat Narduzzi. Continue reading →
Following a hot-knife-through-butter opening touchdown drive for the Oregon Ducks in last night’s national championship game, the Ohio State Buckeyes took over the game and never relinquished control. OSU running back Ezekiel Elliott averaged 6.8 yards per carry, and it felt like more than that in the second half, when Ohio State called the same counter run play seemingly on every down and repeatedly executed it successfully. Elliott was so hungry for more yards that he tried to eat confetti after the game.
After that initial Oregon drive, the Buckeye defense, lead by coordinator and former OSU head coach Luke Fickell, found the answer, though, and Oregon’s bucket of tricks soon ran dry. Even in the second half, when Oregon’s defense produced a couple of turnovers, Marcus Mariota and the offense couldn’t make any progress.
Oregon accumulated its twenty points with two touchdowns, that opening-drive score and a one-play, seventy-yard TD pass early in the third quarter, and two field goals. Those two field goals, along with a white-flag punt with eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter, felt uncharacteristic of a school that, in recent years, lead the charge of pedal-to-the-metal offense.
In the end, Ohio State ended up knocking off Oregon by nearly as wide a margin– 42-20– as the one by which Oregon defeated Florida State in the semifinal round. Continue reading →
Oregon meets Ohio State tonight in the inaugural College Football Playoff finale, and I’m most excited about the ESPN Megacast, which, in addition to the above, includes an ESPN Radio play-by-play broadcast as well. ESPN gets knocked around plenty for doing things like bowing to the will of “partners” like the NFL at the expense of its own journalistic integrity or hosting a platform for grey-matter destroyers like Skip Bayless, Stephen A. Smith, and Colin Cowherd, but there are times when they leverage their resources to make significant improvements to the fan experience. ESPN introduced the Megacast concept for the final BCS championship game one year ago, and it was such a success that it’s back again this year, bigger and better than ever. In the interim period, other networks have experimented with the concept, loosely defined, in other sports, and I believe this is the way we will enjoy all major sporting events in the near future.
As Sports Illustrated graphically illustrated in this week’s issue, Ohio State and Oregon actually were quite close to each other this year in statistical terms. Initially, there are two reasons to question that apparent parity, however: 1) Oregon plays in the stronger Pacific Twelve conference, while OSU spent much of the season feasting on relatively weaker conference opponents, and 2) Ohio State earned much of its production with quarterbacks not named and thought to be superior to Cardale Jones, the man who will be under center for the Buckeyes tonight. It is right to regard Oregon as the better team in this matchup.
There are a number of factors that cut against Oregon’s edge, however: Continue reading →
$€¢ indeed.
ALDLAND 