Day 1 in the books
Just like last year, day 1 of the NCAA tournament this year provided little excitement. Memphis was down late against CS Northridge, but there is always a 1 or 2 seed that gets behind or lets a teams stay in the game late before waking up and pulling away.
To me, the biggest surprise was Texas A&M playing as well as they did. I thought it might be a competitive game, but being a revenge game for BYU and their overall improvement this year, I thought that one would come down to the wire. The biggest upsets were that VCU didn’t beat UCLA like everyone thought they would and that an underrated and underseeded Western Kentucky team beat an overrated and underachieving Illinois team, which in my mind wasn’t really an upset, I have Western KY in my Sweet 16.
Since Day 1 was so similar, hopefully day 2 will be too and be full of surprises and upsets.
I did learn one thing yesterday though, that as bad as this sounds and believe me, I want my alma mater to do well and to be respected, but the tournament is a lot less stressful and more fun for me when my alma mater is not in it. I like not having a strong emotional attachment to any of the teams in it so I can enjoy the tournament for what it is, and it’s certainly easier to cross out incorrect picks when they are not a team you care about.
Clemson
A tradition of MEDIOCRITY continues…
(Cross-posted from the Roundtable)
Can fantasy hockey save the NHL?
Those of you who know me may be shocked to learn that I have a fantasy hockey team. Because I’m not really a hockey fan, at all. I know next to nothing about hockey actually. However, 3 years ago I played and won a Yahoo! public league. So, I’m playing in a Yahoo! public league again, I just like to feel like a winner every once in a while and I enjoy beating up on Canadians and yankees. So, fantasy football has not only helped out the NFL, it’s changed NFL broadcasting to be more fantasy focused. It gave people a reason to start caring about baseball again after the steroids scandal. It’s given basketball new life after no one could relate to any of the players in the 90s and given people a reason to follow the NBA again.
So, can fantasy hockey 1) bring fans back to hockey after the horrible season long strike and subsequent difficulty in getting TV deals to broadcast games by adding fantasy broadcastability, 2) add new fans that are following teams and players because of their fantasy team and therefore may buy the occasional ticket to a game or watch a game on TV, and 3) create an Internet following in order to generate revenue from online ad sales.
The answer, I think, is no. There are two main reasons and one minor reason. The first main one is that no one’s name is pronounceable. I have a team and I can pronounce maybe 3 players out of 18 on the team. Because of that, it’s difficult to feel attached to any of your players. In fact, I know Roberto Lungo is on my team and Chris Mason is on my team. I have the number one player in the league and I don’t even know his name. Evan? Anyway. Thats an issue and it’s probably not fixable unless you give everyone nicknames or make all star players change their name (which would be for their own good anyway, might help them earn a few extra promotional dollars). Another major issue that also may be unsolvable is the lack of stats. Out of the 20-25 players who get significant playing time each game, only half of those or less are going to put up a decent amount of goals, assists, or shots on goal. So, the other categories are Power Play Points and Penalty Minutes. Not much, so they have this contrived +/- category. If you are on the ice when your team scores, you get +1, if you are on the ice with the oppostion scores its -1 point for you. Ok, that’s fine, that way defenders can earn stats of some kind other than penalty minutes, I get that. But we are stat hungry fans lately and unless they can contrive a couple more things, I don’t see it taking off.
The other minor thing is something that the GMs recently met about and that’s fighting. I know it sells tickets and that its an integral part of the game. But I also think that it takes away from the integrity of the sport as well. What if after a hard pass interference play in the NFL, the players could just fight it out and the penalty is that both players have to stand on the sidelines for 5 minutes and the teams play down a man during that time? You wouldn’t take football as seriously, would you? I just think that it takes away from the sport aspect of it and adds a street and barbaric aspect and keeps it from gaining mass spectator appeal. We simply can’t relate as fans to being able to fight as part of your job or sport. In the long run, I don’t think you can rely on only a portion of your sport to be popular and maintain growth and fandom, i.e wrecks in racing, fighting in hockey, etc. You need for people to be intrigued by the sport itself. So, maybe you need to tweak some rules to make the sport as a whole entertaining and leave the fighting to boxers.
So, there, I provided no answers, but concluded that fantasy hockey alone can’t save the NHL and the obstacles that stand in the way of hockey becoming a major sport may be unsolvable.