The Madness Edition

The first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA basketball tournament are two of the greatest days of sports anywhere. The first Saturday and Sunday are the next best two. The second round games are generally better played games but there is nothing quite the same as seeing a 1 or 2 seed on the ropes against a tenacious underdog in their first round game. The First Thursday was the most exciting day of basketball from what we hear. We were hard at work but apparently there were buzzer beaters and several one point victories. Iowa State has already departed the tournament for many of our pools and no one had Georgia State over Baylor. The great state of Texas was eliminated in the opening round. The University of California at Irvine Anteaters took the storied Louisville Cardinals to the last possession with their first invitation. We were sorry to see them lose but were glad they covered the nine points. UCLA beat another Cinderella on their way to the second weekend. The underdog scraps away and the higher seed starts to sweat being upset in the first round and being on sports center for eternity. The underdog might be on television for the first and only time in their career. Duke has several titles but there early round exits have been more noteworthy as well. Kansas won the title in 2009 but there second round upset by Stanford last year is in every discussion about the brackets this year. There is nothing like these first two days anywhere. The Yard does take exception to how the rounds are now credited for NCAA tournament history. With the recent addition of the play in games, the first round has now become the second round. So any team that makes the 64 team draw is already in the second round. It is always sounds better on the resume for a coach to declare he coached a team into the second round of the tournament. It sounds better than saying you made the tournament. It sounds like you won a tournament game. If you win your first game that is a second round game, you are into the third round. The poor coaches who get to the play in game and lose are in tournament historical limbo for performance. Technically, they made the dance but not the first round. Because there is not a first round but they did not make it anyways. The victor of the First Four bypasses the first round that isn’t and goes straight into the second round. Got that? So technically, the first round is now just a memory and everyone gets a pass to the second round as long as you win your first four game. It is 25 years since Bo Kimble lead the Hank Gather-less LMU Lions into the NCAA tournament. The Lions played at a frenetic pace that has never been seen since that record setting season in 1990. Paul Westhead was the mad scientist mixing a brew he could never repeat. It was even more mythical in light of the grinding play of college basketball today. After Gather’s tragic passing, the Lions rallied with the city and in front of an underdog nation. LMU scorched the defending National Champion Michigan Wolverines 149-115. It is still an NCAA record for points scored in a game. Jeff Fryer was 11 of 15 from 3-point range setting another lasting record. It is rare to score 115 and lose by 34. Loyola would race through the tournament before they ran into another team of destiny-the UNLV Running Rebels. The Reb’s cruised to a 131-101 in the regional final over LMU on their way to the only national title Las Vegas has ever claimed. It was the last time LMU would participate in March Madness. The 1990 Rebel team that dispatched LMU is still revered in this town. They are more revered for dispatching Duke for the title but they beat them both by thirty. Jerry Tarkanian was their iconic coach and fearless leader. Those Running Rebels are the only national champion Nevada has ever had in a major sport. They beat down the hated Duke Blue Devils by 103-73 score in the championship game. It was a brilliant game pitting a rebel against a legend. The Rebel owned that night. Coach K had never been beaten by that wide a margin in any game let alone the national final. The 1990 UNLV team was the last team to win the title that was not from a traditional power conference. After winning the title, UNLV would enter the 1991 season undefeated before eventually losing to Duke in the national semifinal. Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony were all seniors on the 1991 team and NBA first round picks. Larry Johnson won the Wooden award. He is the only former junior college player to win the award. Tarkanian has a well-deserved statue in front of the Thomas and Mack Center and streets named in his honor here in the desert. Tark would take on UCLA, the NCAA and all comers with his successful teams through the years. He started at Pasadena City College for his first college job. He quickly progressed to CSULB that was known as Long Beach State at that time. Long Beach would be the first college basketball games a Yardling could attend. Our allegiance was to UCLA but who could get seats to see the legendary Bruins in 1970-75. 49er tickets were available to almost all of the games and Tarkanian fielded exciting teams that were fun to watch. Compared to the stoic Wooden teams, Tark had creative teams with personality. In 1971, Long Beach took the eventual national champion Bruins to the final buzzer in a 57-55 after leading by 12 at halftime. UCLA had Wickes, Rowe, Patterson and Bibby. Long Beach had Ratleff and Trapp. Tark would get into Wooden’s head with his aggressive, unpredictable coaching style. Wooden never scheduled a regular season game with this university that was thirty miles away. With his hang dog eyes, short sleeve shirts and a damp towel hanging from his mouth, Tarkanian was Goofus to Wooden’s Gallant. Wooden had the titles and the pedigree. UCLA had skeletons in those alumni closets in those heady days but it was Tarkanian that the NCAA investigated. Tarkanian realized he would never have success coaching in the Legend’s shadow in Southern California and the alleged pedigree of NCAA basketball before the current era of “one and dones”. Everyone was in for four years unless they flunked out, were injured or could show financial hardship. Hardship was not an easy argument even for the most impoverished athletes. Tark would find hardship ballers who wanted a chance and would invest in their future through his vision. He would shepherd, mentor and father his unwashed and un-recruited players. Everyone was a baller but they all might not have been students or choir boys. Many made it to the NBA and were successful but people only seemed to remember the problem children. There was only one photo that surfaced with his players in the Jacuzzi with a known big time gambler and there was Lloyd Daniels. Of course, this was before the telephone let alone the camera phone. Tark might not have lasted in this time, space, and megapixels. Tark regularly recruited in the JuCo ranks. He gave kids a chance and built teams out of these castoffs from the Division One elite. It is amazing to think in these years of one and dones that Tarkanian was ostracized for bringing in Junior College players who stayed for two years. The NCAA constant harassment eventually ended with Tarkanian winning a judgment against the dastardly non-profit. It was wonderful to see the basketball HOF elect Tark to the hall this past year. He barely made it before his recent passing. We can only hope baseball can act with compassion with Pete Rose. Basketball is dominating the Yard house and Mrs. Yard is certainly not as invested. We expect Kentucky to win as do most pools. Calipari has shown an amazing ability to coach freshman to victory. This Kentucky team is exceptional and very well could be one of the best college teams ever. Kentucky is a great team in an average conference. The SEC is a formidable football conference. The fourteen team SEC had four qualifiers for the tournament. Kentucky is the consensus number one seed for the entire dance. The fourteen team SEC had four basketball teams in the tournament. It was remarkable for the Wildcats to finish the regular season undefeated. But the SEC is not a remarkable basketball conference. Kentucky is the only team from the SEC still in the tournament. The other ten teams in the conference are getting ready for spring football. Kentucky is very good but they went into OT to beat Ole Miss at home. They needed two OT’s to beat a Texas A&M team that did not make the tournament. The Wildcats gave up 21 offensive rebounds to an undersized Cincinnati team Saturday afternoon. Arizona and Wisconsin are not undersized. There are more stalwart challenges ahead for the Wildcats than anything they have played in months. The Wildcats are large and talented but also young and untested. They are not going to go down early or without a fight but they may not make to Indy let alone cut down nets. It is not always easy to predict how confident youth might respond when everything you have worked for over a year is challenged. Calipari is a maverick, a villain and a genius. He has cashed a few karma cards and he has never had a program go unpunished by the NCAA under his leadership. OT: It is hard to close the edition without a comment on the Bruins stunning victory over former Bruin Coach Larry Brown and the SMU Mustangs. SMU was the lower seed and a four point favorite. Many contended UCLA did not belong in the tournament. The Yard went to several Bruin games this season and it was a team in transition. They graduated five freshmen and sophomores to the NBA from last year’s squad. The Bruins were steady at the start of the game and took a four point halftime lead. They surged out to a ten point second half lead and looked like the team that went 15-1 at home this year. From that inflection point, the Mustangs went on a 19-0 making the Bruins look like the little cubs who once trailed Kentucky 31-7 at the half this season. And then, a season of tough moments, distilled into 1:10 of dogged determination lead by the coach’s son Bryce Alford. It was a controversial call but he was 8 out of 10 from trey at the time. The Ref did him and the Bruins a solid.

The Yard-Cloud Edition

In the early missives of the Yard, we were distributing our rants via our home computer, the cloud was something that obscured the sun. Our expectations were meager and we lowered the bar as needed during those halcyon early days at the Yard. Our subscriber base over the years has grown dramatically from the original three loyal family members to the hoard of nearly sixty-two today. The technology demands of sustaining this type of subscriber growth could bring more substantial enterprises to their knees. There are few enterprises less substantial than the Yard but it still has been a daunting task. The output of blogs has been stifled by our archaic IT infrastructure or so I was lead to believe at our last budget meeting. After much passionate discussion by our brightest minds and tightest wallets, the Yard is apparently moving to the cloud. It has been promised that it will be transparent. We hope it is or heads will roll. Tony at the Yard is now in a cloud near you. The Yard is trying to plan our annual pilgrimage to the desert for spring training baseball. The weather is always nice, the games are meaningless in an entertaining way. Nice weather and meaningless entertainment always brings out the trim. Back in the day there were $15 ballgame tickets, $6 dollar beers and priceless views. We were having such fun attending this annual event until the Giants won their first World Series Title in 2010. Spring Training was a journey only the most ardent Giant fan made during those years in their desert by the sea. Most fans came to see any games anywhere in the valley. Giant fan only wants to go to Scottsdale and see the Giants and the rest is peripheral damage. Their fervor and the subsequent titles have seen nearly all costs associated with spring training double over the past five years. These Giant fans are coming in droves and paying the freight no matter what it costs. Long time baseball fan is having to move some freight on the side to pay for a seat. It is a robust Bay area bandwagon that will be invading the desert with their shirts, hats and entourages this year. The season of sports blight is upon us. In Los Angeles, the circumstance is more pronounced. The Laker’s season was over on the first night of the season when Julius Randle broke his leg in his first NBA game. The Laker’s season had already ended a few seasons earlier but one can hope. The NBA is on the verge of relevance for 4-6 franchises and none are in Los Angeles. Baseball is trotting out players with jersey numbers above 70 for the next several weeks. The NFL is on their brief sabbatical from the public eye before the draft and March Madness our greatest event is not coming soon enough. So for the next several week’s sports talk will be dominated by two men-Joe Lunardi and Mel Kiper Jr. These are two men who will be referenced and questioned often during the coming weeks. Joe is the preeminent bracketologist for the NCAA basketball tournament. Kiper Jr. is the face of the NFL drafts and mock drafts. Both men are rarely seen any other time of the year except now. They both have mops of hair that Yardlets have found difficult not to get sucked into the vortex of follicles while listening to their diatribes. Lunardi routinely and correctly picks the seedings and brackets for the NCAA tournament before the official results are announced. He is absolutely amazing with his analysis and predictions. He has a thick mop of hair that seems to undulate with his diction. He is accurate and interesting while articulating who is in, who is out all while a beaver rests on his pate. Apparently, Joe’s people got wind of this blog and he is sporting a new look for the 2015 campaign. All the better because he is certainly more entertaining and accurate than Mel Kiper or his hair. Mel Kiper Jr. gets more air time and hair time than Lunardi. He has a fluffed up pompadour that is as alternatively ridiculous as is the stern scowl he maintains across his bespectacled face throughout all interviews. It is a viewing dichotomy. Kiper will conduct his daily mock draft in the months leading up the April 30 draft in NY. His endless promotion of the draft to event status has been a boon for the cash strapped NFL. The NFL draft became a Red Carpet affair in Prime Time. The NFL owes Kiper Junior a tremendous debt for turning the boring player draft into a must see event. Never mind that or that the many mock drafts Kiper conducts he gets few if any of the picks correct. It is great theater just not great prognostication. Overtime: Peyton Manning is a first round NFL Hall of Famer. He has set every record that will be surpassed in the future. Eli Manning may never make the HOF and will never set any records except possibly most career interceptions by a quarterback who has won two Super Bowls. It does not matter because at the end of every Mississippi BBQ at the Manning’s, Eli is the guy who won two Super Bowls. Peyton is the guy who yelled “Omaha” and sang about Nationwide while creating an amazing amount of statistics that produced just a single championship. Peyton will win the endorsement title as well but Eli owns bragging rights. Peyton finally relented and allowed the Broncos to pay him $15 million for one more chance to right this wrong in Oxford. People might say he already has enough money. No one does NOT want $15 million more except Barry Sanders, so far. Peyton, Eli might win another. From the heart: The celebrity social media comments regarding Chris Kyle and American Sniper are deplorable. Kyle did what he was asked to do by the US Military. He completed his task with bone shattering precision. He protected his brethren against extreme odds and saved American lives in a war not of his choosing. Al Qaeda had a bounty on his head. The movie is riveting and by all accounts an accurate depiction of Kyle’s efforts over four tours of duty in Iraq. The impact it had on him and his family as he tries to assimilate back into family life is the story. His exploits were legendary but the impact war has had on all our veterans is unconscionable. Seth Rogen gets to make comedies about assassinating North Korea’s dictator because of the freedoms people like Chris Kyle have fought for since 1776. Michael Moore gets to make movies regaling institutions and governments while accumulating $50 million in wealth from these same liberties afforded by our constitution. Depicting American Sniper as a propaganda film denigrates all of the heroic efforts and the troubling despair our US Veterans have encountered. Film makers, actors and their liberal brethren can castigate the US government for their role in Kyle’s mission but not him. Chris Kyle is an American hero.

Happy New Year from the Yard

Yard resolutions are in heated deliberations with procrastination emerging once again as a major theme element for 2015. We have decided to delay that implementation at this time. Yard blog production has dipped this past year. Our feral resources have been allocated towards creating sustainable income outside of the Yard and the blogging part suffered. We fully intend to shift that paradigm when greed is no longer achievable. Yard postings are forecasted to be a monthly experience in 2015 if you are trying to firm up your own calendar. We cannot commit to that number until late Q1. For now, a monthly posting is the number we are socializing with the investment community. Since our first posting in 2007, to this our 126th posting, the Yard has strived to cheer, taunt, revile and enlighten our teams and their enemies perceived or otherwise. The enlightenment part is always on the, If we find $10,000 in the sofa cushion kind of goal. It did not make it past the 2015 Yard appropriations committee but we have forecasted that potential in our brochure. There was a ton of excitement early this holiday season as the Bruins dismantled the Trojans for the third straight year. It is a rare elixir when Yard allegiance blends with Yard pride on the rocks with a twist. It was sweet that Saturday afternoon in Pasadena. The Bruins raced into the national discussion with their fifth straight victory for 2014. There was the Trojan laden PAC holiday dinner to look forward to in the coming weeks. Enthusiastic banter was already nuanced into a Yard piece that was follicles away from being posted. But with Stanford still coming to the Rose Bowl that last Friday of November, like handguns, the Yard maintained a “cooling” period between finished and posted. Yard staff has engineered complex algorithms comparing blog levels of vitriol, humility, and pathos against acceptable purgatory posting guidelines. They also attempt to forecast unforeseen contrition which can be time consuming when heart felt. The post was sullied when the Bruins got bullied at home by a 7-5 Stanford Cardinal. The Bruins lost 31-10 in a game that was not that close. Stanford played big boy football with basic blocking, tackling and execution. It was painfully, remarkable to watch and to the archives went 1252 words that will never be seen at the Yard. Our research team has been poring over the data and we are about break an important post, probably Q2, about the rash of domestic violence cases that are racking the NFL. Apparently, many of these massive, aggressive athletes who throttle each other on the field of play display similar tendencies in their family lives whatever that might be. These athletes are the exception not the norm in the NFL but the stories are shocking and frightening. The haymaker that Ray Rice rained down on his beautiful wife Janay, is not an “I made a mistake moment”. Adrian Peterson taking a switch to his four year old son is not a lapse in judgment. These are not mistakes, they are crimes. These are crimes that define who you are until you prove you are not. There is no apology infused hall pass when you display that you are a person that will beat a woman or a child. Adrian Peterson is trying to get back to the NFL and every fantasy football geek has an AP story for this year’s league. Peterson should be required by the league to get a vasectomy before he is further allowed to play in the NFL Peterson is the Poster Boy for birth control. He received a huge public outpouring of support when he raced to be near his two year son who was murdered last year. The two year old was killed by his mother’s boyfriend. Peterson saw the boy for the first time in a coma at the hospital right before he died. He barely knew the mother. The switch incident that has made recent headlines was with a different adolescent son from a different mother. He still might have been confused. See Adrian has another four year old son from an entirely different mother as well. Apparently in 2010, while racking up 242 points for Fantasy Football owners, Peterson’s zygotes were doing well scoring with the female egg population. It is alleged that Peterson has as many as seven total children. It is not a great combination to have a person who should not be around children creating them at an alarming pace. At 29 years old, the NFL is a tough place to make a living. Everyone in this food chain is eager to keep their primary source of revenue back on the field. With so many counting on you, AP, good luck with that but get fixed. It was magical this year watching the Derek Jeter’s farewell tour. It was too bad that the Yankees did not have a very competitive team for this alpha competitor’s final season. Jeter got his moment in the sun at each Yard and handled it all with the genuine humility that is so scarce in all of our celebrity. Jeter actually did things and other stuff and he should be revered. He never shamed the game or had a public moment of impropriety. Yard staff contends that Jeter had many improprieties with loads of starlets but could not find a single TMZ entry. The Yankees and MLB went the extra mile by getting A-Rod suspended for the entire season. Jeter hated that disingenuous tool of a one tool player that was A-Rod. Rodriguez disrespected the game and the pinstripes with his deceit and outrageous denials. The media did not have to speak with Rodriguez about Jeter’s remarkable career and pretend to care each night. Baseball and the Yankees just had him removed for the season. Good luck next year, Alex when all of the Yankee fans who were cheering Jeter will be booing you. It was a championship season for the Pac-12 Conference. It has been well reported that SEC finished 7-5 in bowl games but the SEC ranked teams were 2-5. The unranked SEC squads went 5-0. So in the SEC this year, the crap was the cream. The Pac-12 finished at 6-2 but 5-1 for the conference teams that were nationally ranked. The best Pac-12 teams performed and the much discussed SEC legends tanked against lesser opponents. Stanford had five losses, UCLA had three and USC four. Ten of those twelve losses were in conference. That hurt their national ranking but not their game experiences. The conference rolled into the bowl season and rolled most opponents. The average score of any bowl game with a Pac 12 team was 40-24 Pac-12. That tally includes two losses and it would have been really nice if USC could have held on to a 20 point lead and covered the darn seven! The Pac-12 got to show their wares outside of the evening time slots when the east coast has already gone hipster and the south has gone front lawn. Hopefully, it helps for some national respect. Oregon is going to roll Ohio State. Plus One: It was strange to watch all of the important bowl games over the New Year on ESPN. It was weirder when Fox tried to take over in previous years. Fox was terrible. ESPN knows how to televise a college football game and has great announcers. College Game Day is the greatest sporting telecast ever conceived and executed to perfection. Back in our day, every major network showed the Rose Parade and then at least one New Year’s Day bowl games. The Cotton Bowl was on CBS in a tragically cold Dallas morning. NBC displayed the Rose Bowl on a sunny, gorgeous move to California kind of day. ABC and the Miami Orange Bowl were always begging us to stay late and defy wives, mothers, girlfriends and children to watch more football. It was tradition not some sick football obsession. On New Year’s Day it was disappointing to see those NFL networks were carrying the Doctor’s, Ellen, and Movie Classics while ESPN handled the heavy lifting. Happy New Year from the Yard