Tag Archives: ole miss

ALDLAND Delivers the Official 2025 College Football Playoff Rankings

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Unlike the College Football Playoff Committee with respect to the selection of the College Football Playoff field and rankings, I am willing to declare both that I am biased and the precise nature of my bias. In that regard, I am biased, and my bias is that I am opposed to the College Football Playoff Committee itself. To be sure, that bias is not one recently or hastily adopted but, instead, long-held and deep-seated. My public writings dating back to 2013 confirm the fortitude of my bias.

With that noble acknowledgement decreed, I present ALDLAND’s final 2025 College Football Playoff rankings for purposes of playoff seeding:

  1. Indiana
  2. Georgia
  3. Ohio State
  4. Texas Tech
  5. Vanderbilt
  6. Texas A&M
  7. Ole Miss
  8. Oregon
  9. Oklahoma
  10. Miami
  11. Notre Dame
  12. Texas

The reasoning behind these rankings ought to be fairly obvious, but I will add a note regarding the Group of Five’s total exclusion: I acknowledge that the prior exclusion of arguably worthy representatives of the Group of Five from the formal contesting of the national championship under previous regimes was a significant driver of the change to the expanded-playoff format, that did not and does not now mean that there is at least one such worthy representative every year, and there is no such worthy representative this year.

Vanderbilt Basketball’s Abyss Stepback

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A week ago, we were here wondering whether the Vanderbilt men’s basketball team had, at least in its current construction, terminally cratered. We “hope,” I wrote, this “will be its nadir.” The offending event, the school’s third-worst loss ever and worst in twenty years, felt fundamental, essential, and irredeemable. The big-time coach with the small-time record sounded like he was firing himself.

Since then, things for the Commodores hardly could have gone better, at least relatively speaking. Two home conference games in magic Memorial Gym. Two wins.

To call the first a get-right game against middling Ole Miss obscures the depths from which the team necessarily climbed to claim that victory and falsely implies a level of predicate rightness that simply did not exist. Still, it’s like when you’re standing on the South Pole: any step you take in any direction is a step north.

The second was satisfying, affirming, and, for Stackhouse, likely job-saving:

It speaks for itself, as does Tennessee’s record as a top-ten ranked team in Nashville, where the Volunteers are winless in regulation.

There’s no firm basis to believe that these two wins constitute building blocks toward an imminent future of sustained success. It sure is better than losing, though.

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Previously
The #StackhouseEra on Life Support in Tuscaloosa

Sports Law Roundup – 7/21/2017

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aslr

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:

  • Tennis match fixing: The Tennis Integrity Unit, an organization dedicated to investigating cheating in tennis, is investigating cheating in tennis. More specifically, the TIU is investigating four matches– three at Wimbledon and one at the French Open– for potential match fixing. Suspicious betting patterns triggered the investigation into these matches, for which additional information is not yet available to the public. While allegations of match fixing in major tournament matches are rare, tennis is particularly susceptible, given that it is an individual sport, and that most matches involve low-earning players and are not tracked by the general public. Three years ago, FiveThirtyEight’s Carl Bialik wrote an illuminating feature on the data-driven rise in tennis gambling, later cautioning that betting patterns alone were not conclusive evidence of match fixing.
  • Hou-Hugh Feud: One week after Houston Nutt sued his former employer, Ole Miss, for breach of his severance agreement for disparaging statements by school officials, including head football coach Hugh Freeze, Freeze has resigned. Athletic Director Ross Bjork, whose statements also appear in Nutt’s complaint, referred to Freeze’s unacceptable “pattern of personal misconduct” in connection with Freeze’s resignation and said that the school would have fired Freeze, who will receive no buyout on his $5 million annual contract, had Freeze not resigned. While the litany of alleged NCAA violations have been public for some time, the catalyst for Freeze’s sudden departure just a week after he represented Ole Miss at SEC Media Days appears to be new evidence that, on one occasion, Freeze used his university-issued cellphone to contact a Detroit-based escort. Freeze’s call records are under scrutiny as a result of the Nutt complaint, which cites those records in detail but contained no mention of the escort call. (And a note to those who see an opening for Lane Kiffin to return to the SEC in a head-coaching role, Paul doesn’t see it happening for Kiffin in Oxford, so you can bet it won’t.)
  • Simpson paroled: After serving nine years in prison for his role in a Las Vegas robbery, O.J. Simpson received a unanimous grant of parole from the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners and could be out of prison as early as October. This week’s parole decision hardly could have come at a more perfect time: Norm Macdonald Live returns to the digital airwaves for a new season on Tuesday.

Sports court is in recess.

Sports Law Roundup – 7/14/2017

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aslr

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:

  • Hou-Hugh Feud: Houston Nutt, which is a real human man’s name, is the former head football coach at Ole Miss. He has sued that school and its athletic department because, he alleges, school representatives’ public statements linking an ongoing NCAA investigation of the university’s football program to Nutt violated a term of the 2011 severance agreement between Nutt and Ole Miss precluding the university from, in the complaint’s words, “making any statement whatsoever relative to Coach Nutt’s tenure as an employee of Ole Miss that might damage or harm his reputation as a football coach. Ole Miss was contractually prohibited from making any statement whatsoever, truthful or not, that may damage or harm Coach Nutt’s reputation.” The complaint highlights, in substantial detail, statements to reporters by Ole Miss Athletic Director Ross Bjork, Sports Information Director Kyle Campbell, and current head football coach Hugh Freeze, whose scheduled appearance at SEC Media Days was twenty-four hours after Nutt filed his lawsuit. Freeze did not directly address the allegations that day, saying only that he was not happy with the “ironic” timing of the filing of the suit and that he hadn’t seen Nutt in years. Freeze also read a prepared no-comment statement during his turn at the podium, thereafter referring to the NCAA investigation– and, indirectly, the lawsuit– as “the lot that we’ve inherited or caused in some cases,” a statement Nutt likely will cite as Freeze’s unrepentant casting of blame on Nutt.
  • Cheerleader wages: In May, the Milwaukee Bucks and Lauren Herington, a former cheerleader for the team who alleged that the team violated federal and state labor laws by underpaying her and her fellow cheerleaders, reached a $250,000 settlement of Herington’s proposed class action lawsuit that provided for the settlement funds to be divided as follows: $10,000 for Herington; $115,000 for Herington’s attorneys; and unspecified shares of the remaining $125,000 to Herington and other would-be class members who opt into the settlement based on their hours worked during the three-year period (2012-15) at issue. Now, the judge overseeing the case conditionally certified it as a collective action for settlement purposes but refused to approve the settlement agreement itself, explaining that he currently lacks sufficient information to determine “whether the settlement ‘is a fair and reasonable resolution’ of” the dispute. Prior reports indicated that the $250,000 settlement amount was significantly less than what some other teams paid to resolve similar lawsuits.
  • Daily Fantasy Sports: Last month, the inevitable merger between DraftKings and FanDuel announced last November hit a probably inevitable regulatory hurdle when the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the merger, and a judge granted the FTC a temporary restraining order that halted the merger. In an email to users sent yesterday, DraftKings announced that it has “formally terminated our merger with FanDuel and will withdraw litigation from [sic?]” the FTC.
  • Baseball DUI: This spring, a South Korean court sentenced Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Jung Ho Kang to eight months in prison after the player admitted guilt on a DUI charge. The prison sentence was Kang’s first, but it arose out of his third DUI arrest in his native country. As a result, Kang had trouble securing a visa to reenter the U.S., which caused him to miss all of spring training, and, now, the entire first half of the current MLB season. This week, Pirates GM Neal Huntington said that one could “pretty much eliminate the thought” that Kang would play for Pittsburgh in 2017, and that the team has turned its “optimistic” eyes toward a 2018 return.
  • Umpire discrimination: Last week, Angel Hernandez, a longtime MLB umpire who is of Cuban descent, sued the league on claims arising out of general allegations of racial discrimination against minority umpires in promotions to crew chief status and in World Series assignments, among other claims. This week, FanGraphs identified Hernandez as the umpire responsible for the worst called strike of the first half of the 2017 season.

Sports court is in recess.

Even a broken clock is right sometimes: Michigan State to #2 in the AP Poll

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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.

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Related
The selfishness of Colin Cowherd’s critique of Dan Patrick
Online sports media critics: When Colin Cowherd starts to make sense, it’s time to reevaluate your approach

College Football Playoff Selection Committee takes credibility hit with Manning departure

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With news that Archie Manning is leaving his role as a Selection Committee member, the College Football Playoff © has taken another credibility hit. Despite his personal and familial ties to Ole Miss and the SEC, Manning actually was one of the less-concerning members of the Selection Committee from a conflict-of-interest standpoint. From that perspective, his departure will serve to magnify the already significant conflicts existing with the remaining committee members.

Read more about the potential problems with the new College Football Playoff, including conflicts of interest, here.

The committee will issue its first rankings after this week’s games.

The Sports Illustrated cover curse has relocated to page 34

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rachel nichols si

If it feels like the force of the Sports Illustrated cover curse has waned, that’s only because the jinx has relocated to page thirty four. There, in this week’s issue, appeared SI media critic Richard Deitsch’s article, “The Case for…Rachel Nichols,” in which Deitsch praised Nichols’ recent “interrogat[ions]” of Roger Goodell and Floyd Mayweather Jr. “on her eponymous CNN show, Unguarded with Rachel Nichols. As a result,” Deitsch proclaimed in a laudatory proclamation highlighted in the featured pull quotation, “Nichols is at the moment the country’s most impactful and prominent female sports journalist.”

That may have been true “at the moment” Deitsch wrote it, but by the time many SI readers saw it, Nichols’ show had been cancelled. That’s pretty devastating all the way around, and if you’re a fan of either Mississippi State or Ole Miss football, both of which share this week’s SI cover, you may be in for a long day today.

College Football Week 2: Two Questions

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College football’s second week didn’t go so well for some of the teams on which we keep a closer eye here at ALDLAND. No controversy or arguments, really. Just poor performances and bad outcomes. Two days later, I’m left with two main questions:

1. Can Michigan State fix its leaky secondary?

Saturday night’s Michigan State-Oregon game lived up to the hype, through the end of the first half, anyway. During the intermission, the Ducks figured out that the one, very real weakness of the Spartan defense was its secondary. Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota was having no luck creating much of anything on his own, but if he could get the ball out of his hands, his receivers often were very open and had an easy time tacking on extra yards. Everything else seemed pretty good for Michigan State, and I’m not worried about how they’ll handle their conference schedule. At least against Oregon, though, the secondary looked like a real and easily exploitable problem. My question is whether this is a quick fix or a season-long problem.

2. How soon is too soon to fire Derek Mason?

I have an extremely selective (read: poor) memory, but I don’t think Vanderbilt has had two games as bad as the two they’ve played this season in three or four years. A 37-7 loss to Temple and a 41-3 loss to Ole Miss pretty much says it all. USA Today called the latter “just total destruction.” Yes, the team lost its starting quarterback and a pretty good receiver named Jordan Matthews, but these guys look like they caught World Cup fever in the offseason and thought they were out for the soccer team. I don’t think David Williams should take the kneejerk reaction of firing head coach Derek Mason in Mason’s first year on the job, but Commodawg raised the question while we were watching the game, and the regression VU fans are seeing really is shocking. I think it’s okay to ask: If Vanderbilt continues to follow its current trajectory, would you consider firing Coach Mason in the 2014 calendar year?

ALDLAND Podcast

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After an extended break the ALDLAND podcast is back and better than ever. College basketball is finally on the menu, as is discussion of a big trade in the MLB. And as always, listen for ALDLAND’s college football picks of the week.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here: