Don't call it a choke job...

It would be easy to say that Clemson choked last night in Chapel Hill. Up as many as 15 points in the second half, and up by nine points with exactly three minutes remaining, the Tigers lost 103-93 in double overtime. As a result, infamy was achieved - Clemson has now lost 53 straight times in Chapel Hill, an NCAA record for consecutive losses on an opponent's home court.

Yes, it would be easy to say that Clemson choked. Unfortunately, it just wouldn't be correct. Clemson lost this game because the ACC officiating crew of Ted Valentine, Bernard Clinton, and Tony Greene handed the game to the Tarheels on a silver platter.

Lest you think that this argument is merely "sour grapes," you won't hear me complain about Clemson's 90-88 overtime home loss to UNC back in January - a game where both teams played valiantly and the Tarheels simply made one more great play than the Tigers did. And while I can admit to a Tigers' choke, it happened down in Miami about three weeks ago, not last night in Chapel Hill.

Of course, many fans in all sorts of college and professional sports often feel as though the refs have a vendetta against their favorite team. This argument is very acute in ACC basketball, where UNC and Duke seem to always have the refs' favor on their respective home courts. For me, part of the joy in watching the NCAA tournament every year is in watching the look of disbelief on the faces of Tarheel and Blue Devil players as they get whistled for legitimate fouls that had gone uncalled all season long in conference play. In fact, I wish I had the time and resources to take a long-term review of foul-call statistics in conference play and tournament play for these two teams to see if the disparity is indeed real or only perceived.

Last night, though, there was no perception. Only reality.

Clemson was whistled for 31 fouls last night; Chapel Hill, only 14. As a result, the Tarheels went to the free throw line 36 times, compared to only 7 for the Tigers. Clemson continued its horrendous inability to convert from the line, making only one of seven shots (compared to 31-36 for UNC). Given the team's inability to convert, some fans have suggested that Clemson may have been better off with the imbalance in foul calls, as it kept the Tigers off the line and stopped them from missing free throws and handing the ball back to the Tarheels.

But this argument misses the main point: because of the fouls called against Clemson, three Tiger starters were on the bench for significant minutes while UNC made their late-regulation comeback. The differential in foul calls allowed Tyler Hansbrough and the rest of the Tarheels' starters to claw back against the Tigers' bench. And this, thanks to an inept officiating crew, is what cost the Tigers the game.

It would be easy for someone who hasn't watched this particular Clemson team to recall other bruising squads of the last fifteen years who sometimes played as much of a contact sport on the basketball court as they did basketball itself. But Oliver Purnell has built a fundamentally sound, NCAA tournament-bound team. A poster named "MEZRAW" on Tigernet.com, Clemson's largest fan site, best illustrated the point with some nifty research.

This year, in 23 games, Clemson has been whistled for more fouls that their opponent 11 times, less fouls 11 times, and the same amount of fouls once. That certainly seems well-dispersed.

But in the games Clemson was called for more fouls, the discrepancy in free throws attempted was as follows:

ECU +5 additional free throws,
Ole Miss +3,
Alabama +4,
UNC +3 (Clemson home game in January),
UNCC +3,
FSU +3,
Duke +9,
Miami +9,
BC +6,
UVA +9, and
UNC +29 (last night).

Certainly seems like a statistically significant deviation from the norm, no?

But wait - it gets better. UNC "star" Tyler Hansbrough finished the night with 39 points, 14 rebounds, and, of course, only three fouls. He must've played quite the delicate game in the paint to only get three calls against him in 47 minutes of play - and only two in regulation.

Clemson center Trevor Booker, an emerging star in his own right, played opposite Hansbrough most of the night. I say "most" because Booker got into foul trouble defending the great Hansbrough and only played 27 minutes. Booker spent large portions of the second half on the bench and fouled out with 2:06 left in overtime, effectively ending Clemson's chances at holding on.

The fact is that the calls were incredibly one-sided last night in favor of the Tarheels. Trevor Booker picked up his fourth foul with about 12 minutes left; guard K.C. Rivers picked up his fourth with about six minutes left. Demontez Stitt and James Mays were also in foul trouble throughout the second half. Booker and Stitt fouled out; Mays, Rivers, and Sam Perry each finished with four fouls.

So five Tigers committed four or more fouls, and two fouled out of the game. Meanwhile, no Tarheel fouled out. In a double-overtime battle, no Tarheel picked up more than three personal fouls. And it's no coincidence that the Tarheels' run at the end of regulation largely started with Booker and Rivers on the bench in foul trouble, and Clemson reserves attempting to guard Hansbrough and Danny Green. Yes, the Tigers did commit a couple of costly turnovers at the end of regulation - but they did so with their starters on the bench.

I could go on to cite specific examples, like the nonexistent touch foul on Terrence Oglesby that put UNC on the line to tie the game at 90 in the second overtime, or the undercut on Hansbrough after a James Mays dunk that went uncalled, or the blatant foul on Mays with one second left in the first overtime. And we haven't even addressed the fact that the refs literally gave UNC a timeout with jut over a minute left in the game, despite the fact that one had not been called and the Tigers had already advanced the ball to half-court.

But doing so will not right the injustice that happened last night. All it does is make my blood pressure rise even more.

Clemson didn't choke. Clemson was robbed.

The Greatest Ever....

None of us have written in a long time. A very, very long time. But now that I'm involved in a fantasy baseball league here on the Interwebs, it's time to kick the tires and get this thing going again.

I'm pretty sure this fantasy league is going to be the Best Fantasy Baseball League Ever. And that made me think of something I wrote on the old website back on January 19, 2006. So I'm going to recycle it here and now. Some of the references are dated (like the Texas/USC Rose Bowl) but still ring true in light of the Patriots dynasty crashing and burning on Sunday night.

(Sorry, Burke.)

Original posts will be coming shortly…

Instant Gratification
I haven't even finished with the first sentence yet, but I already know that this column will be my best column ever.

It has to be. I mean, if it isn't, then why am I even bothering to write it? And why would you bother to read it?

It's kind of like this year's Rose Bowl, which was dubbed the Best National Championship Game Ever before a down had even been played. I don't know why that surprises me; ESPN.com had apparently already determined the game to be a classic and went so far as to anoint Southern Cal as the eventual victors. They even followed up their implied prediction with an online poll to determine whether this year's Trojan team was the best college football team of the last fifty years. I'm sure Vince Young and Texas gained no small amount of motivation from that contest!

Of course, ESPN.com escaped its gaffe unscathed because the only sports/media outlet powerful enough to comment negatively on the poll would be ESPN itself, which obviously didn't. And we might have been better off if the Trojans had indeed won; if they did, maybe we wouldn't have been forced to endure a week of talking heads proclaiming Vince Young to be the Best Quarterback Ever.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Tommie Frazier was sitting somewhere in Nebraska kicking the leg of his coffee table and remembering how dominant he and his team were in the mid-90's. Lest anyone forget, those Cornhuskers (1993 through 1995) won two national championships and lost a third by a field goal.

The 1995 team may have been the most dominant and well-rounded football team ever. On offense, the Huskers scored 638 points during the season for an average of 53 points per game. But Nebraska only gave up 14.5 points per game on defense, meaning that they won each game by an average of almost 40 points. Only two teams managed to come within 14 points. And in
the National Championship game against a highly-touted, Danny Wuerrfel-led Florida squad, Nebraska won by an embarrassing score of 62-24. Frazier ran for 199 yards and two touchdowns, and won his second consecutive Most Valuable Player Award in the National Championship Game.

With all respect to Lawrence Phillips, who frightens the bejeesus out of me, Frazier was the key cog in that Nebraska offense. He was a prototypical old-school Nebraska option threat, and never rang up huge passing numbers, but he was mighty efficient. In his senior year, he threw for almost 1,400 yards and 17 touchdowns with only four interceptions to go along with all those yards he picked up on the ground. Frazier finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting that year, losing out to Ohio State running back Eddie George; Wuerrfel came in third but won the award the following year.

(Yes, I looked up those statistics on the Internet. God bless Google. I also found out that Frazier coached running backs at Baylor for four years after graduation, then worked in Nebraska's athletic department, and is now the head coach at NAIA school Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. And it's actually a little-known fact that Frazier was committed to Clemson before
making a last-minute decision to go to Nebraska instead, and that many Clemson fans wonder what the last ten years would have been like if we had landed Touchdown Tommie.)

Why did I just bore you with two paragraphs of statistics about a guy that dominated college football exactly ten years ago? It's not because I'm a closet Cornhusker fan, or even a Tommie Frazier fan. It's also not because I dislike Vince Young or the attention he received after an absolutely phenomenal season. It's because I'm tired of every sporting event or performance being judged as either: a) the best ever or b) unworthy of my attention.

Wasn't Vince Young the same quarterback last Thursday morning as he was on Wednesday night? Sure, he added a national championship trophy and a performance for the ages, but he still throws the football like Warren would in "Something About Mary." Maybe he'll make a great (or even, heaven forbid, a "good") NFL quarterback, but nothing he did against Southern Cal changed my opinion of him. He did exactly the same thing he had been doing all season, just on a bigger scale.

Meanwhile, the Reggie Bush bandwagon (or, as I like to call it, The Bushwagon) derailed and thousands of talk radio hosts and blog pundits were sent hurtling to their doom, as "experts" decried the fact that Bush didn't break a hundred yards rushing in the Big Game. Some went so far to suggest that Young, and not Bush, should now project to be the first overall pick in the NFL draft. Leave it to the Houston Texans, though, to inject a dose of sanity by reminding us all that Bush notched over 200 total yards in the game and was, by far, the most electrifying player in the nation this year, even if his team wasn't the Best Team Ever.

Of course, sometimes it is even necessary to lie to be the Best Team Ever. The entire build-up to this year's Rose Bowl was based on USC's quest to win an unprecedented third-straight national title. And they would apparently try to accomplish this feat in the Rose Bowl, the BCS Championship Game, on ABC.

But doesn't anyone but me remember that the Trojans didn't actually win the BCS Championship after the 2003 season? Doesn't anyone remember that the Trojans finished first in both polls but that LSU finished first in the BCS rankings and therefore "earned" the right to play Oklahoma in the BCS Championship Game? I'll give the Trojans all the credit in the world for their three-year stretch of dominance but for ABC to promote the game as potentially delivering a third straight national championship while the sponsoring Bowl organization only recognizes one of the two previous wins seems a little bit disingenuous to me.

Of course, I'm also an idiot for even mentioning it. Facts don't matter when you're trying to promote the Best Game Ever!

When did we become so obsessed with trying to over-quantify events? It applies beyond sports, too. Movies, music, and even current events must all be placed immediately in historical context without giving any considering to events of the past. Anything older than two or three years ago seems to quickly become ancient history. I'm sure VH1 contributed to this trend with their obscene "I Love the 90's" TV show. Hell, it's easy to be misty-eyed about a decade that closed six whole years ago! (Or, in the words of Ben Folds, "They get nostalgic for the last ten years before the last ten years have passed.")

The similar over-analysis of music is just as disturbing. I like to call it the "Coldplay Phenomenon." See, Coldplay released their first album Parachutes in the summer of 2000 after some moderate indie success overseas. "Yellow" became a radio anthem, the album sold pretty well, and Coldplay became a Moderately Cool Band.

In the summer of 2002, the band released the highly anticipated A Rush of Blood to the Head. There were several radio hits, "Clocks" became one of the most ubiquitous songs ever, tours sold out, singers married movie stars, and a really good band actually delivered a sophomore album worth talking about. So, naturally, as the band was busy recording X&Y for a summer, 2005
release, the common Coldplay conversation centered around whether Coldplay was as good of a band as U2, who is generally considered the best band of the last 25 years.

WHAT?!?!

Not over whether Coldplay could produce an album better than Rush of Blood. Not over how marriage and fatherhood and celebrity would affect the band's writings. Not even over the band had grown and reacted to each other. Nope; all anyone wanted to know was "Coldplay" or "U2."

I wasn't surprised when Coldplay begin to feel the backlash - from some members of the media, from some of their fans, even from some people barely acquainted with their music. On the heels of their 11th studio album, U2 seemed to win the popular vote in a landslide. And the sad truth is that it wasn't even a fair comparison.

Let's actually look at facts and put things in perspective, which I know is about as fun as a sitz bath, but which I actually find useful in trying to find historical context. As Coldplay released X&Y, it had been five years, three studio albums, and one live concert album/DVD since their debut. The band had enjoyed critical and commercial success and stood as one of the biggest
rock bands in the world.

Sure, Coldplay couldn't compare to the entire U2 catalog at that point in time. Very few bands in history could. But how about comparing Coldplay to U2 at similar points in their careers? In October, 1983, U2 released the live EP Under a Blood Red Sky, with an incendiary version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" that received seemingly constant airplay on MTV. "This is Red Rocks…This is The Edge!" They had been together four years, and released three studio recordings. Basically, they were at a similar point in their careers as Coldplay was this past summer.

But in 1983, U2 was still largely a cult band that was more successful in the U.K. than here in America. Their first two albums, Boy and October, yielded only the moderately successful "I Will Follow." Their third album, War, honed their political edge and gave us such anthems as "New Year's Day," "Two Hearts Beat as One," and of course "Sunday Bloody Sunday." If we draw the line right there, I can't believe that there's many of us that would, at that stage in their
careers, choose U2 over Coldplay.

Of course, in the next five years, U2 grew to become the biggest band in the world. And who knows where Coldplay will be when this decade closes - whether they will reach such similar lofty status or not. But to compare the two bands, don't you have to at least afford some perspective? Is it fair to say that U2 is the better band because their eleven albums squash the three released by Chris Martin and the boys?

Doesn't matter; we need to rank these two bands among the Best Bands Ever. And so it is in our Fast Food World. This week, Bruce Sutter got elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and was anointed the Best Reliever Ever. Apparently the voters thought so, since they brought in Sutter and his moustache while leaving Goose Gossage and Lee Smith clawing at the doors.

And the NFL announced its Hall of Fame finalists, sparking renewed discussion as to whether Troy Aikman was the Best Quarterback Ever. Even though the answer is obviously Joe Montana, with Tom Brady a close second.

Meanwhile, I just plod along in my personal mediocrity, which is apparently the only thing you can be if you aren't absolutely, positively The Best. What can I say - I like what I like, and I dislike what I dislike. And I, for one, recognize that arguments over labels like "Best" are only fun if you actually take the time to sit down and evaluate them on their merits.