Expanded Playoffs Reward Mediocrity

Major League Baseball has decided to dramatically change its October look, and not for the better.

The playoffs will be expanded by two teams as early as next year. That means one-third of baseball's 30 teams will make the postseason, in what feels like another Yankees-Red Sox exception.

The first Yankee-Sox playoff exception states if the team with the best overall record and the wild-card team are from the same division, the wild card team will face the team with the second-best record.

Since Boston has been absent from the last two postseasons, and New York was left out four years ago, a fifth playoff team appears they are getting a backdoor playoff admittance. If a fifth playoff spot existed, the Red Sox, and their rabid fans, would have watched at least one game in October.

Ensuring more big market teams make the playoffs isn't the whole story.

Commissioner Bud Selig and Co. are trying to fix the September problem that many division pennant races, particularly in the AL East, lack drama because both teams are resting up for October.

In order to put the premium on winning a division title, MLB is only further watering down its laborious 162-game season.

This past year, the additional wild-card teams would have meant the most exciting night of baseball in years wouldn't have mattered. All teams would have lived another day.

"You don't do things for one year. You do things for a long period of time," Selig said.

Rewarding mediocrity is not going to help over the years.

Under the expanded playoffs, it will happen that a 97-win wild card team is going to lose to a team that finishes seven to eight games behind them.

Playoffs ought to reward the best teams, and expanding the postseason will do just the opposite.

MLB is breaking something that isn't broke.

The Bird is Back!

Everything old is new again, and that's especially true in Baltimore.

The Orioles announced a much needed uniform upgrade this week, bringing back its retro cartoon bird to grace hats for nearly all of the 2012 baseball season.

The new-old logo replaces the ornithologically-correct Oriole, which was given it's own makeover in 2009 and from far away was little more than a blob of color.

The cartoon Oriole Bird should evoke the glory days of the franchise. Cartoon birds were employed on caps from 1966 to 1988, a span that included six pennants, three World Series titles and 18 consecutive winning seasons.

The logo overhaul is one of the first positive things this franchise has done since erecting Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Despite showing some age at 20-years-old, Camden is one of the best places to watch a major league baseball granted it's not 95 degrees with 90 percent humidity.

A new logo doesn't change the fact the Orioles have experience 14 straight years of losing. Every year they start with the disadvantage of having to chase the Yankees and Red Sox who have unlimited resources.

But it's a promising sign, ownership may finally be figuring things out.

Two-Point Conversion Magic

TCU's Josh Boyce pulls away from a Bronco defender to score a two point conversion.

As much as I malign Boise State's Smurf Turf, because it's deserving, there's a mystical power over the field when it comes to two-point conversions.

The latest evidence happened Saturday, when the TCU Horned Frogs walked out of Bronco Stadium with a rare, dramatic come-from-behind win.

TCU converted a successful two-point play late in the third quarter to draw even with Boise 28-28.

Then with Boise State seemingly in firm control 35-28 late in the fourth quarter, Broncos backup running back Drew Wright fumbled.

Horned Frogs quarterback Casey Pachall torched the Broncos secondary, marching his team down the field, before firing a 25-yard touchdown pass with 1:05 left in the game.

Again TCU coach Gary Patterson made a gusty call and it worked. Pachall tossed a short pass to Josh Boyce, who fought his way into the end zone for two-points putting TCU up 36-35.
Any victory by a road team on the blue turf is basically unprecedented. And there's a reason: the refs.

Boise State got bailed out by the officials on a phantom pass interference call after a fourth down incompletion on its final drive. But, redshirt freshman kicker Dan Goodale badly missed a 39-yard field goal attempt a few plays later.

The Horned Frogs win ended Boise State's 65-game regular season home winning streak and 47-game home conference streak.

The Vandals celebrate after Joel Thomas scored
on a two-point conversion to win in overtime (1998).

The last conference loss Boise suffered in Bronco Stadium was to the arch-rival Idaho Vandals in 1998. Then members of the Big West conference, the Vandals choose to go for two-points in overtime and won 36-35. Just a little poetic.

The Vandals also won the 2009 Humanitarian Bowl on the blue field, by making a successful two-point conversion with just four seconds left in the game.

And while it wasn't in Boise, who can forget the Broncos signature Fiesta Bowl win using the Statue of Liberty to beat an average Oklahoma squad in 2006?

The magic of two-point conversions has been woven into that ugly blue field.

Penn State Misses the Mark

Penn State University missed the mark not once, but twice, in the child-sex scandal that's turned State College, Pa. into "not so" Happy Valley.

First, there were massive failures at several levels to report an alleged rape of a child by former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky in 2002.

Those failures start with the former graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, who witnessed the alleged assault but did not call police. McQueary first told his father, then met with Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, according to a grand jury report.

Exactly what was said during McQueary's meeting with Paterno is unclear from the record, which states Paterno called athletic director Tim Curley the next day to tell him a graduate assistant had seen Sandusky "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy."

Curley involved Gary Schultz, the school's senior vice president, and met with the graduate assistant about a week and a half after the attack was reported. Both Curley and/or Schultz should have filed a report with Child Protective Services, but didn't.

No police agency was notified and the none of the men sought out the identity of the boy to protect him  from Sandusky. That's a tragedy.

But Penn State missed the mark again in the way it fired Joe Paterno Wednesday night.

John Surma, the vice chair of the board of trustees, said Paterno was told by telephone he was out.

By phoning Paterno, instead of delivering the news in person, the university showed its greatest cheerleader no dignity. That could cause a fissure between State U and its alumni for years.

Paterno was the epitome of Penn State.

He helped transform the rural college town in central Pennsylvania into a nationally respected university, not just on the football field, but as the star fundraiser. Paterno led the efforts to build a new college library, which now bares his name.

In a statement after his firing, Paterno said: "I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief."

He went on: "I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today."

Paterno did 46 years of good as head football coach, and it would be sad to see all of the lives he positively touched get erased because a terrible mistake.

Now that the media's got it pound of flesh, and JoePa's out, I hope the real outrage falls back to the accused child molester. Jerry Sandusky has been largely forgotten in this national firestorm.

Winning Isn't Key, Timing Is

The Cardinals were only the best team when it mattered (AP Photo)

Fresh off their second World Championship parade in six years, the St. Louis Cardinals are going to go into the history books as one of the baseball's more improbable champions.

The Redbirds were 10 games out of playoff contention on Aug. 1, a strike away from defeat before staging a legendary comeback in Game 6, and erasing an early deficit in Game 7 to claim its 11th World Series title, second-most all-time.

They'll no doubt go down as the "Comeback Cards" or "Cardiac Cards."

But it shouldn't come as a surprise that St. Louis, who eked into the postseason, rolled to another World Series title.

With the advent of the Wild Card, baseball's playoffs are not about the best team winning anymore, it's now about who's the hottest team come October.

Over the past five years, World Series winners share one common factor, they all carried winning baseball from September in to October.

Just one World Series Champ in the past five years can truly claim to be the best team. The 2009 New York Yankees had the best record in the regular season (103 wins), but the Bronx Bombers played great in September that continued into the postseason.

Only the 2007 Boston Red Sox had a final month regular season winning percentage that was less than 63 percent. The Sox went 16-11 down the stretch, which translates to a 0.592 winning percent.

In the '07 World Series, Boston cooled off the then red-hot Colorado Rockies, who grabbed the Wild Card by winning three out every four games in September.

The Rockies were a perfect 7-0 in October and might have won the World Series if they didn't have to wait nine days between the NLCS and the start of the Fall Classic.

This year, St. Louis won nearly 70 percent of their games down the stretch, going 18-8 catching Atlanta for the NL Wild Card.

The Cards had to win to clinch a playoff spot, and did so on the final day of the regular season.  That's nearly identical to last year's World Champs.

Like the Cards, the San Francisco Giants barely made the postseason winning the division on the final day of the regular season. But playing desperate and winning in September, San Fran was 19-10, was key for the Giants ending a 56 year pennant drought.

It doesn't pay to be the best team in the regular season anymore. It only pays to win in September.