Well this isn’t going to end well...

[jsneb83]

9 minutes ago, knapplc said:

I don't know why Lee was chosen for this. If it was the OWH offering him, Reddit/CFB asking him, or how this happened, but here's the thing. 

 

I blame @Landlord

[Scarlet Overkill]

18 minutes ago, knapplc said:

So let's examine how colossally dumb it was to have Lee "YOU'RE BLOCKED ON THE TWITTER!!!!" Barfknecht do that AMA.  The OWH has nothing but resources, and access to some of the best sports people covering Husker sports.

 

They could have used:

 

Sam McKewon - 10x a better writer, and while sometimes full of himself, really a personable dude

Dirk Chatelain - a pot-stirrer, let's not mix words. But a 12x better writer than Lee, and a person who genuinely listens to and understands the fans. For all the times I give DC crap, the man is aces and we're lucky to have him.

Jon Nyatawa - yeah, he mostly focuses on Creighton sports now, but he's 1,000x better at the social media aspect of all of this than Lee. Even if he hasn't read an Em of news about the Huskers in five years, he'd still have been a 1,000x better ambassador for the OWH than Lee.

Jeff Sheldon - Jeff focuses mostly on Husker volleyball, but he's knowledgeable, personable, engaging, a great writer, and genuinely seems to care about the people he's writing for. Football isn't even his milieu and he could have answered every single one of those questions so much better than this s-show of an AMA.

Give me a Rich Kaipust, give me an Evan Bland.  Those guys would have run circles around Lee in this. 

 

I don't know why Lee was chosen for this. If it was the OWH offering him, Reddit/CFB asking him, or how this happened, but here's the thing.  We're uniquely blessed, I think - spoiled, even - over the sports coverage we have of our favorite team.  From the World Herald to the JournalStar to amazing publications like Hail Varsity and the various websites like HuskerBoard and HuskerMax and all the bloggers and radio stations like 93.7 The Ticket & 1620 The Zone, we have a massive amount of talent covering the Huskers here.

 

And they got the least capable of all the bunch to do that AMA. 

 

 

Just bizarre.

 

I think he just lost a drunken bet and had to pay up.

[dvdcrr]

So everybody was mad because a bunch of stupid writers voted the second best team into first place in 1997.  

Thing is the system we have now is no better.  Alabama was "given" a national title because they were "given" a chance to play for it that they did not earn.  No other team in the nation would have gotten that chance with that resume.  But they are Alabama.  Same reason that dude you hated took your homecoming crown.  Popularity, monkey see monkey do.  Bama been good, bama da best!  Proving that Conference championships dont matter, heck CONFERENCES dont matter to the committee.  Here is what matters to the committee:  How have you done in the last two years, and is your coach Nick Saban?  

So if they had put the deserving four teams in we would have a different result.  Heck why play a season?  Lets just all agree that Nick Saban has more Blue chip athletes on his BENCH than your team even had on their recruiting board, let Bama lose up to four games out of pure laziness, then give them a #1 seed (because admit it, they are better than you). That is tantamount to the committee's homework last year.

 

We  need at least an 8 team playoff.  YOU HAVE to win a conference to get in.  

[teachercd]

3 hours ago, Flood said:

This is hilarious on a very personal level. 

 

I worked for Journal Broadcast Group (Z-92, etc) during the entirety of the 90's. And free tickets to Husker football (and other sports) flowed through those studios like a never ending river. Any given Saturday, we must have had 25-30 pairs of tickets for anyone on staff, for free, and in the best sections of the stadium. And skybox space through various sources, including the university. I highly doubt he was buying his own ticket.

 

I watched nearly all the home games in 94 and 95 for free. All I had to do was get my ass outta bed and drive down to Lincoln. We even got free parking.

 

There were some weeks when the tickets were so numerous that our bosses would leave them on the break room table so any employee could give them to friends or family. Those were the best days. And I had no idea what a dynasty we were in or I would have used them even more than I did.

 

I have a feeling that Lee thinks more of himself than is at all merited.

Yeah, I thought the same thing.  Did he mean "other" teams games?  Like...sure he can get into Memorial for free...but say...could he just go to a random FSU game for free?  

It seems like dudes in certain fields of work always have free tickets for "their" team. 

[broganreynik]

1 hour ago, teachercd said:

Yeah, I thought the same thing.  Did he mean "other" teams games?  Like...sure he can get into Memorial for free...but say...could he just go to a random FSU game for free?  

It seems like dudes in certain fields of work always have free tickets for "their" team. 

 

As long as he submits for credentials, he should be able to go to any college football game.

 

I have to think he phrased it poorly; the two thoughts were one and the same.

 

“Hey! I can’t get you into the game, so piss off!”

[Moiraine]

1 hour ago, dvdcrr said:

Thing is the system we have now is no better.

 

I don't disagree with the rest of what you said but this is wrong.

[Landlord]

5 hours ago, knapplc said:

We're uniquely blessed, I think - spoiled, even - over the sports coverage we have of our favorite team. 

 

This is definitely true. I've covered B1G Media Days for three years now, and Nebraska always has the biggest presence there as far as media representatives. It's honestly insane when you think about who we share a conference with. Even the year that Foltz passed away and we didn't go, we still had probably the same amount of writers/radio people/local news stations there as Ohio State/Michigan/so on did.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, jsneb83 said:

 

I blame @Landlord

 

Someone in the AMA mentioned that the reddit B1G Media Days person (me) would come say hi. I.... wasn't pleased

[brophog]

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

 

I don't disagree with the rest of what you said but this is wrong.

 

It's more legitimate in a way, but not much more accurate. Any tournament structure is only as good as the data being fed into it, and that goes well beyond there only being 4 teams. Even if one only includes P5 teams, unfair as that may be to deny over half the teams even a chance, there is insufficient networking amongst even those five conferences to generate a good dataset. Case in point, the SEC virtually never plays the PAC. It's scheduled to get better, but the SEC for the most part rarely leaves their little pocket of the country. They have enough potential local opponents that it isn't necessary.

 

Conferences themselves are too big to generate adequate automatic qualifiers, and in any given year too top heavy to consider it even if they weren't. Put in a rule that requires only one team from each conference and there is a non-trivial chance you've left out a team good enough to win it all. That's the problem faced; a single elimination tournament must include anyone that could possibly win to be eligible. Despite the fascination with them in this country, "playoffs" are not great determiners. They're used mostly because they are exciting and adequate enough for the job, but make no mistake, they're the bottom of the rung in terms of accuracy in terms of potential tournament structures.

 

If someone really wanted to fix this, it would take massive restructuring at the conference level, such as making 8 groups of 8 and using the regular season like a group stage before generating a single or double elimination tournament. No one wants to do anything like that, though. Championship determiners in this sport have historically been about finding a format that generates money and then convincing everyone it's worth at being deterministic. Not the other way around.

[Cdog923]

They actually locked the thread, too. 

 

Dirk probably would have been the best choice for this; I still can't fathom Lee doing that for any reason other than he either lost a bet or was forced to by upper brass. 

[Danimal]

18 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

When given an opportunity to explain his decision, he resorts to a logical fallacy.  And this is a guy who was once (or still is?) the president of the Football Writers Association.

 

Nothing about Lee has ever made me think he's anything other than a stuffed shirt.  And when given any opportunity to dispel that view, he reaffirms it.  Every time.

 

It's always seemed to me he went out of his way to prove that he's the conference writer not a Nebraska writer,  to the point that he seeks to be the contrarian when it comes to the huskers. Why the Herald has stuck with a guy so damn many find annoying is beyond me. 

[Cdog923]

1 hour ago, Danimal said:

 

It's always seemed to me he went out of his way to prove that he's the conference writer not a Nebraska writer,  to the point that he seeks to be the contrarian when it comes to the huskers. Why the Herald has stuck with a guy so damn many find annoying is beyond me. 

 

It seems to be a hiring standard at the OWH: go out of your way to be as contrarian as possible. 

[Moiraine]

9 hours ago, brophog said:

 

It's more legitimate in a way, but not much more accurate. Any tournament structure is only as good as the data being fed into it, and that goes well beyond there only being 4 teams. Even if one only includes P5 teams, unfair as that may be to deny over half the teams even a chance, there is insufficient networking amongst even those five conferences to generate a good dataset. Case in point, the SEC virtually never plays the PAC. It's scheduled to get better, but the SEC for the most part rarely leaves their little pocket of the country. They have enough potential local opponents that it isn't necessary.

 

Conferences themselves are too big to generate adequate automatic qualifiers, and in any given year too top heavy to consider it even if they weren't. Put in a rule that requires only one team from each conference and there is a non-trivial chance you've left out a team good enough to win it all. That's the problem faced; a single elimination tournament must include anyone that could possibly win to be eligible. Despite the fascination with them in this country, "playoffs" are not great determiners. They're used mostly because they are exciting and adequate enough for the job, but make no mistake, they're the bottom of the rung in terms of accuracy in terms of potential tournament structures.

 

If someone really wanted to fix this, it would take massive restructuring at the conference level, such as making 8 groups of 8 and using the regular season like a group stage before generating a single or double elimination tournament. No one wants to do anything like that, though. Championship determiners in this sport have historically been about finding a format that generates money and then convincing everyone it's worth at being deterministic. Not the other way around.

 

 

I'm not arguing this system is perfect but it is in no way equal to what we had before. What we had before would have put 2 of the following into the BCS championship game:

 

Clemson

Oklahoma

Georgia

Alabama

 

 

Instead they had to go a step further and play for a spot. It is much better now but still has major flaws.

[Cdog923]

1 minute ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

I'm not arguing this system is perfect but it is in no way equal to what we had before. What we had before would have put 2 of the following into the BCS championship game:

 

Clemson

Oklahoma

Georgia

Alabama

 

 

Instead they had to go a step further and play for a spot. It is much better now but still has major flaws.

 

If it were up to me, I would expand the playoff to 8 team: the five Power 5 conference winners plus 3 at large. If a Group of 5 team is in the top 10 at the end of the year, they get an automatic berth. 

[brophog]

8 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

Instead they had to go a step further and play for a spot. It is much better now but still has major flaws.

 

The link embedded in my previous post goes into this point quite well. Worth a read.

[Moiraine]

20 minutes ago, Cdog923 said:

 

If it were up to me, I would expand the playoff to 8 team: the five Power 5 conference winners plus 3 at large. If a Group of 5 team is in the top 10 at the end of the year, they get an automatic berth. 

 

 

Ditto