Bobcats Winning at Losing

It's been that kind of season
for Bobcats coach Paul Silas (AP Photo).

The Charlotte Bobcats are working on a historic season, but for all the wrong reasons.

Owner Michael Jordan might want to consider renaming the franchise the Bob-Kitties, because Charlotte's failures are reaching epic proportions.

With a 15-point loss on Leap Day, the Bobcats now only trail the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers for worst win-loss percentage in a single season. The Sixers historic 9-73 season (.110 winning percentage) is in jeopardy of falling.

That only tells a part of how bad Charlotte has been. This team has not been competitive at all.

The Bobcats have lost 10 game by at least 20 points, and just one team, 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks, had a worse margin of victory.

Charlotte has the second to worst defense in the league, and its offense is worse, averaging just 86 points per game. Its three leading point scorers have a total two full NBA seasons under their belts. That offers a glimmer of hope for the future, but not the present.

In the meantime, this team does not have to try hard to go for the gold and become the worst team ever. At least that would be something.

Once you hit rock bottom, there is certainly no place to go but up.

Caps, Ovechkin Need to Soul Search

During the past three seasons at the NHL trade deadline, the Washington Capitals were looking to add depth for a Stanley Cup playoff  push.

But this year, the Caps were in the strange position looking to make a move just to secure a playoff spot.

Inside of pulling the trigger on a big move, Caps GM George McPhee pulled a surprise by making no notable trades at all.

The four-time Southeast Division champs, expected to contend for Lord Stanley's Cup, would not make the hockey's postseason if it started today. Washington sits in ninth place. 

There is not just one reason for the Capitals fall, they've been hit hard by injuries. But captain Alex Ovechkin has a big role in their fall from top.

Ovie is having a career-worst season and his poor attitude on ice is affecting the team's chemistry. Ovechkin's struggles started early and was benched at the end of a game by former coach Bruce Boudreau.

The captain's 'C' generally goes to a team's best player, who also happens to be a leader in the locker room. Face it, Ovechkin has not lived up to leadership role and should probably lose his captaincy.

Unfortunately, the man most likely to take that 'C,' Nicklas Backstrom is out long-term with a concussion.

There's a good chance Washington will sneak into the playoffs, but the team has serious discrepancies that won't easily get fixed without a serious roster shakeup.

For the SEC, the BCS is a Media Birthright

The Southeastern Conference just cannot help itself.

The SEC released a new T-shirt this week highlighting its superiority on the football field and six consecutive BCS championships its teams have won.

It's just a blue shirt with the SEC logo and the words, "Home of  5  6 consecutive national champions."

The conference is so arrogant it does not name its championship teams, because they are the magnificent SEC and you should just know. Just to recap: Florida won in 2006 and 2008, LSU grabbed the title in 2007, Alabama won in 2009 and 2011, with Auburn winning in between in 2010.

While the SEC continues to rub in its dominant run, it should be noted they never would have achieved six straight titles without exploiting one of the BCS' biggest flaws. They fooled the voters who are often fools themselves.

In the 2010 book “Death To The BCS,” sports writers Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan lay out an incriminating indictment of the Bowl Championship Series. While they dedicate an entire chapter to the fuzzy math used by the computers in the BCS formula, the authors also focus on the flaws of the human voters.

Starting in 2006 when the SEC's title run began, the conference fully committed to winning the public relations fight. As Wetzel and Co. point out in their book, at halftime of '06 SEC championship game commissioner Mike Slive held at halftime press conference claiming if Florida won, they deserved a BCS-title bid. Again that was at halftime!

A year later the BCS completely changed into a political contest. The reason, LSU coach Les Miles used a line his wife told him, and a full on media blitz convinced the pollsters his two-loss Tigers deserved a spot in the BCS title. That line, “we're undefeated in regulation.”

Now, fans have to put up with unabashed, political campaigns for schools to play for a title.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy made a mistake this past season, saying that Alabama deserved a spot in the title game. Clearly, he should have said the Cowboys were the only team undefeated in regulation and overtime.

Obviously in "Death To The BCS" book, Wetzel's gang come to the conclusion college football needs a playoff. And why that may not have saved most of us from sitting through four SEC schools raising the last six crystal balls, a playoff would give fans a more satisfactory end to the season.

However, the writers make a mistake pushing for a 16 team playoff, with all 11 conference winners getting a seat at the table.

If Division I football were to ever go to a true playoff, not the four team plus-one that is being discussed, the minimum number of teams would have to start at 20.

That would give the 11 conference champions a guaranteed spot with another nine at-large spots up for grabs among the major conferences.

Doing a quick look at last year, we would have been arguing whether the ninth at-large spot should go to South Carolina, Virginia Tech or Houston. There would be no reason to get excited if any of those teams were excluded from a playoff pipe dream.

It is tough to fathom that the SEC will relinquish its spot atop the BCS, especially with the Worldwide Leader in its corner. But we can dream of a day where an SEC team's title game berth was earned and was not a media birthright.

Signing Day Cap Can Even Playing Field

Another National Signing Day has passed and once again the SEC is on top.

For the fourth time in the past five years, Rivals.com gave Alabama and coach Nick Saban a national recruiting title, inking three five-star prospects. SEC schools also made up five of the top 15 recruiting classes according to ESPN's experts.

It's no doubt that the SEC's success on signing day has helped translate to six consecutive national titles on field. But there's a seldom talked about factor helping those southern schools.

SEC members are notorious for oversigning, where a school signs more recruits than available scholarships. That allows SEC coaches to take more gambles and erase mistakes by revoking scholarships.

During the SEC's title dominance, four of its six champions signed at least 14 more players than their opponent in the four years leading up to the game.

Auburn signed 19 more than Oregon, Alabama signed 18 more than Texas, LSU signed 14 more than Ohio State while Florida signed 16 more than the Buckeyes. The only exception was Oklahoma, who signed three more recruits than Florida.

But the playing field is starting to level, and that's great for college football as a whole.

The SEC passed a soft cap limiting the number of signees between Dec. 1 and May 31 to 25 to comply with the NCAA. What that does is limit a coach's ability to manage their roster and possibly replace athletes who may not qualify to play in the Fall.

"You used to always have that buffer to cover yourself for guys who won't make it (academically) if you oversigned by two or three. Now, not only would you lose the guy who may not make it, but you also lose the guy who may fill that place," ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill explained to AL.com.

Another move that could level the recruiting field and make college football better is offering multi-year scholarships.

Several blue-chip programs including Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan in the Big 10 reportedly offered those scholarships this year. In the SEC, only Auburn and Florida said they gave extended scholarships.

Again, this will limit a head coach's ability to replace players who may not live up the hype with new "top" recruits.

It remains to be seen if that could become a recruiting advantage, but the rule gives student-athletes some protection from losing their scholarships due to how they play or if they get hurt.

The SEC still has the upper hand with huge fan bases, bigger budgets and a football-crazed culture in the South. But for fans who wish the conference would stop dominating BCS title games, these signing day changes could be a small chink in the armor.