Weekly Sporties

-Last weekend's race was the last chance for drivers to qualify for NASCAR's Chase for the Championship. The rules to get in appear to be fairly simple - you get points for leading laps and where you finish in the regular season races with 10 drivers getting in on points and then two get in as wildcards based on who has the most victories. The idea sounds fairly straightforward, but if there is one thing we have learned through the years it is that racecar drivers and math don't mix. With about 7 laps to go in the race Martin Truex Jr was in 13th place in the standings and needed a better finish. One of his teammates at Michael Waltrip Racing, Clint Bowyer suddenly spun out and after the field came to the pits Truex was in the position he needed to make the Chase. As if that wasn't enough, another one of his teammates, Brian Vickers, suddenly came back down the pits even though his car was running fine, allowing Truex to move up even more and pass Ryan Newman in the standings. It seemed shady enough but it got even worse when NASCAR listened to the car's communications and heard Vicker's crew chief tell him to come in for no good reason. It looked like two drivers had intentionally tanked the race to benefit their teammate which sounds nice in theory but doesn't exactly give off the image NASCAR wants to project. (The NASCAR teammate/not teammate dynamic is complicated enough as it is.) So, after listening to the tapes and interviewing everyone involved NASCAR docked Truex enough points to knock him out of the Chase and put Ryan Newman in. That would have been strange enough but there were also allegations that two different race teams conspired to get Joey Logano into the Chase as well. But without any proof NASCAR couldn't dock Logano so they just expanded the field for this one year and put Jeff Gordon, who was in 14th place into the field as well. I get that NASCAR is trying to right every wrong here but suddenly this is taking on the feel of "everyone gets a trophy". What they need to do is go back to the old system in which points are simply totaled up throughout the entire year and a champion is decided that way. I know NASCAR is trying to guard against one driver locking up a Championship with two or three races to go but if the result of their tinkering is people thinking your playoff system is a joke I am not sure having one driver go on an extended victory lap is all that bad of an alternative.

-Going into the year a lot of people were expecting a good season from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one in which they may not win a lot of games but would definitely challenge the better teams on their schedule and build a foundation for the future. Many experts came to this conclusion by point out they had good leadership in coach Greg Schiano and a solid young quarterback in Josh Freeman and if you have those two things you are on the right path in the NFL. The problem is none of those 'experts' ever asked the Buccaneers if they actually liked working together, which is also key and right now it doesn't sound like Freeman and Schiano are getting along too well. First it was Schiano opening up training camp by saying he wouldn't be upset if the rookie quarterback the team drafted won the starting job. That's not bad in and of itself, because coaches always say they want competition in camp, but this story jumped to another level this week when Schiano was accused of rigging the vote for team captain so he could strip Josh Freeman of his 'C'. Apparently the votes were counted secretly and resulted in Vincent Jackson, who has only been with the team a year, being voted captain over Freeman and now some Buccaneers don't think the math adds up. I have to say I can understand their confusion because football players usually vote for team captain like the rest of us for local politics - they just vote for the guy who won it last time as long as he is on the ballot. Thus, guys are only stripped of their 'C' once they are off the team. The idea of a head coach subverting his quarterback like this would be something out of "Friday Night Lights." Schiano, as you would expect, has denied this story completely but that was just the first bullet he had to dodge this week because just a couple days later a story came out that Schiano has a reputation as a micro-manager and it is starting to wear on the veterans. I have to say, this has all the makings of a lost season in Tampa because while none of these stories are unique to the Bucs, it is very rare that they come out one game into the season. Usually it takes a four or five game losing streak before a team begins to collapse in on itself. I think all those people picking Tampa as the sexy team to come out of nowhere had better rethink that strategy. If nothing else I think we have learned that the state of Florida should never be involved in vote-counting, no matter the stakes.

-One of the more confusing aspects about baseball is how people deal with all its 'unwritten rules'. Baseball wants to pride itself on self-policing but since the most-broken rules are not written down anywhere it is impossible to tell if someone has actually broken them or if the other party is just being too sensitive. We had one of those situations this week when the Baltimore Orioles played the New York Yankees. Now, the two teams are fighting for a Wild Card spot and are division rivals, which meant tension in the series was already going to be high, but it jumped up to an expected level after managers Joe Girardi and Buck Showalter nearly came to blows during a game when Girardi came out and accused the Orioles' thirdbase coach of stealing signs and tipping pitch locations to the batter. But, here is what is so strange: Showalter wasn't mad because his team was being accused of stealing, he was mad that Girardi went to the thirdbase coach with his complaints instead of coming to him. Apparently there is some kind of code among managers that you can try and steal signs, you just can't be so damn obvious about it and if you catch the other guy doing it you shouldn't be so public with your outrage. That's the other thing about this - the Orioles were the ones stealing signs and yet somehow Girardi became the bad guy because he broke some kind of rule regarding etiquette. Now, my anti-Yankee bias would lead me to side with Showalter in this instance because stealing signs does seem to be a normal part of the game which has been around since the beginning (hence why teams came up with signs to begin with) and anything short of bringing in a camera to film the action does appear to just be the cost of doing business. Also, the easier course of action would just be for Girardi to change up his signs or use the fact that the Orioles were stealing signs to his advantage by throwing out some fake information. But if I look at the situation with no bias at all of course Girardi is within his right to complain because the other team is stealing signs and if 'SpyGate' taught us anything it is that the rest of the sports world takes that very seriously. I guess this incident is further proof that no matter how many advances in replay the sport makes, Major League Baseball is always going to be slightly stuck in the past.

-Even though I am a huge NBA fan I continue to think one of the more annoying aspects of the sport is how no one seems to care about the actual games and instead puts all their energy into figuring out what personnel moves a team could make next. It is always about the future, never about the present. No story sums that up more than the potential free agency of LeBron James following this season. James can opt-out of his contract with the Miami Heat in 2014 and while he claims to have no idea if he will do that (which is a lie, he's opting out) teams are already clearing cap space to make a run at the once-in-a-generation player. One of the teams which was expect to make a serious run at James is the Los Angeles Lakers who will have a ton of cap space to go along with all the off-court opportunities which have always made them a free agent destination. However, this week there was a report that the team is already pessimistic about their chances to sign James given the he is more concerned about their on-court opportunities than the chance to be in commercials and since the franchise is loyal to Kobe Bryant (regardless of how he looks coming back from an Achilles injury), they don't think the two will be able to coexist on the court. Now, it is entirely possible that this is just the Lakers playing possum in an attempt to get James' people more involved but I also wonder if, given how the team has been performing under new owner Jimmy Buss, if the organization isn't really trying to lower fan expectations going into next offseason. Laker fans are not stupid - they know next season will probably not have them contending for a Championship but they will put up with a bad season as long as there is a light at the end of the tunnel. With Dwight Howard's departure the new reality appears to be that the Lakers don't automatically get every player they want, so this report could be the Lakers subtly trying to get Laker fans to make peace with the fact that for once that light doesn't involve the Lakers getting the biggest star in the free agency pond. Still, that fact that we are even talking about the 2014 offseason when we still have a few months to go in the 2013 offseason shows the NBA has a bit of a problem. It's nice to know fans are interested in the things their team is doing off the court but you'd still rather they pay more attention to on the court, otherwise why bother having a season at all?

-This week Sports Illustrated began unveiling a massive five-part series regarding NCAA violations on the Oklahoma State football program between 2001-2007. It was an extensive story involving every cliched aspect of a crooked program you would expect - booster bribes, coaches changing grades, players getting paid for good plays, rampant drug use and even team 'hostesses' who were there to entice recruits with sex. Basically, if you were writing a movie script about an out-of-control football team you have hit all the major notes. This would be a massive story which would rock the program to its knees... if this were still 2003. Unfortunately it's 2013, which is why this story was barely worth the time it took to read it all. Now, don't get me wrong - I don't think this stuff should be allowed to happen in college athletics but at the same time I can't get very riled up about all this when I know almost everyone involved has already moved on (half the players are already retired from the NFL). Also, I can't help but feel like this exact thing goes on at almost every major college program so a small part of me just wonders if the writer had some personal bias against Oklahoma State and that is why they were the subject of the investigation. As near as I can tell there are only two interesting aspects to this story and that is while all this was going on the head coach at OK State was Les Miles, who is now the head coach at LSU and his assistant coach was Mike Gundy, who took over for Miles at OK State. It just makes you wonder if they were doing this back then and got away with it for so long, has it stopped or did Miles take this reckless behavior with him? I know the NCAA has cracked down on this sort of thing in recent years but it is just as possible the program got better at hiding it. However, since I am not the kind of person who gets riled up about hypothetical situations I would assume Sports Illustrated looked into that very same thing and couldn't come up with any evidence. Who knows, maybe there is another chapter to this story which has yet to be written, I just hope that if that's the case we don't have to wait until 2023 to read about it.

-After the last couple of years which saw massive college realignment and teams switching conference allegiances every third Sunday, we have finally entered an age of relative calm where no team has changed a conference for a couple of months (admittedly that is most likely because seasons were about to start and we should expect to see more changes starting next April). With this downtime comes the chance to step back and see if these schools can right a few wrongs, specifically when it comes to some old-school rivalries. That was always what people pointed to as the greatest tragedy when all this shifting was going on - the loss of some great long-standing grudge matches between school which shared conferences or geography. And it seemed like the longer the rivalry the more hurt the feelings were. Well, this week we took a step towards mending a few fences when it was revealed that Syracuse and Georgetown are working contract to keep playing basketball with a home-and-home series which will last for the next 10 years. I'm glad this is happening because when they were playing each other for the last time during the season you got the feeling neither side wanted the rivalry to end and I shared that sentiment because Hoyas/Orange was always one of the best-played games every year. If anything the fact that they are only playing once a year will make the game even more special and once Syracuse gets adjusted to its new conference it should provide a great measuring stick for how the ACC measures up against the new Big East. But the main thing I am hoping for is that other teams recognize that just because a team left its conference it is not like they fell off the face of the Earth. The limited number of games in college football will make reviving rivalries certain rivalries harder, but when you are playing so many non-conference basketball games there is no reason a great match-up like Duke/Maryland has to be forever wiped away. (I bring that one up because upon hearing the news of Georgetown and Syracuse's contract, Duke's Coach K reiterated he would never put Maryland back on the schedule.) The good news for fans of traditional rivalries is that they can always take comfort in keeping one thing in the back of their minds - a renewed rivalry always makes both sides a lot of money and when it comes to college athletics that matters a whole hell of a lot more than hurt feelings.

-The newest trend in college sports is to have as many alternate jerseys for a team as possible. It makes a lot of sense - jerseys are an easy thing to sell to fans and the more options you have the more likely people will buy a couple for their closet. Thanks to being Nike founder Phil Knight's alma mater I'm pretty sure Oregon has about 14 uniform combinations to play with this year. With that in mind I am stunned the following story doesn't happen more often. Last weekend in their game against Auburn, the football team at Arkansas State was hit with two unsportsmanlike penalties for bringing dark jerseys to their game because Auburn was also wearing dark jerseys. The colors weren't exact - Auburn was wearing navy and Arkansas State was wearing a dark grey but it was close enough to get them in trouble. You see, the NCAA doesn't want teams tricking their opponents by wearing jerseys which are similar in color I guess they think when things are going that fast it can be hard to tell the difference from dark blue and dark grey. Given how many times you see a quarterback throw directly to the other team because he didn't see the opposing player they may have a point. Still, they never seemed to have a problem with Boise State wearing blue jerseys while playing on blue turf, so this is another situation in which I think the spirit of the rule is right but I am not sure the execution is correct. My biggest problem is that they hit Arkansas State with two penalties (15 yards at the start of each half) when I think one would have been more than enough. I mean, what did they really expect them to do because it is not like any program brings two different color jerseys with them on the road, regardless of how many options they have at their fingertips. The second penalty just seemed excessive and Arkansas State was going to have a hard enough time sticking with Auburn to begin with. Plus, I have seen plenty of games in which both teams are wearing jerseys which are close to the same color, so I can't help but feel like this is another case of the NCAA picking on a team that can't defend itself. Considering Arkansas State probably only has three jerseys to choose from maybe Auburn should have been the one to change. They were the ones at home and I have to say it would have been a great show of that Southern Hospitality we hear so much about.