We were going to redshirt this guy?

It's halftime of the Maryland-Illinois game, and I have one question: We were going to redshirt Brian Carlwell?

BC (yes, I've already nicknamed him) looked really raw against Georgia Southern, but a mere two weeks later against Maryland he looks like he belongs. He showed good awareness and control under the basket on both ends. My only complaint is that he dunks just like my high school classmate Carl Claxton: jump straight up, pause in air for split second, dunk by placing full body weight on rim. Better is this: jump at rim, dunk immediately without hanging on rim.

Give me three inconsequential wishes

If I were given three wishes, but I could only wish for changes of negligible consequence...

1. Michigan State center Goran Suton would do nothing on offense but set baseline screens.
2. No NHL team other than the Detroit Red Wings would be allowed to wear red pants with red jerseys. Carolina, stop fighting it; embrace the blue-green Whale. Phoenix...you're freaking Phoenix. No hockey team in Arizona has a claim to anything.
3. The Boston Red Sox would sign Sammy Sosa.
   

Is the 1 seed a better team?

SI.com's Don Banks wrote this piece pointing out that earning the top seed in a conference is no guarantee of a Super Bowl birth. He's right, although he fails to state that the top seed still has a heck of a better chance to make the Super Bowl than any other team. But have 1 seeds actually played to a level that says they're better than other playoff teams? Is the regular season champ really the best team?

1 seeds have a first-round bye, and second-round games significantly favor the teams with a bye week, but there is no bye-week effect on third-round games. For the 1 seed, third-round games are always at home, but does the 1 seeds' winning percentage exceed that which we would predict from home field advantage alone?

Since the playoffs first admitted 12 teams in 1990, 1 seeds have won 62% of their third-round games (16 of 26). During the 2002-2005 regular seasons, home teams won 59% of their games. Based on this alone -- and this is the level of complexity I would like to see in a weekly lead item for a major sports website -- I would suggest that, on average, 1 seeds have played third-round playoff games as though they were slightly better than their opponents.

Look how simple that was! I didn't even have to take a jab at Peyton Manning's laser-rocket arm.

Other stuff:

• Big Ten Wonk Word Of The Day: risible -- it's pronounced RIZZ, but it means capable of getting a RISE out of people through humor. I get the feeling that risible refers to actual humor, as opposed to laughable's derisive connotation. My attempt: "Futurama occasionally and unexpectedly paperclips a moment of poignancy to the denouement of a thoroughly risible episode."
• I was going to compile with a "Were you really paying attention?" quiz on 2006 sports trivia, but all I could come up with was this: "What was the St. Louis Cardinals' regular season record?"
• Mike Tanier's last Too Deep Zone article was so awesome that I now want to see a distribution graph for each running back. Eventually we'd get to the point where we'd say, "Ahman Green? Yeah, he's a :: whoosh :: runner." [Making the appropriate hand motion.]
  

First thoughts on the Freshman Album Theory

Actual (yet fleeting) sports content alert! I wonder how Tom Izzo's conditioning program compares to Bruce Weber's. I also wonder why Bruce Weber doesn't take advantage of his team's potentially superior conditioning by running teams out of the gym in the second half when playing with a lead. Last year's Penn State game was the college basketball equivalent of Martyball.

Brief follow-up on last week's note -- I accidentally clicked a link that took me to Big Ten Wonk's March 2, 2006, entry, in which Wonk used Hegelian to describe the existence, or perhaps the perpetuation, of extreme home field advantage in the Big Ten. Unfortunately, I now have even less of a clue about the word means. At least as Wonk uses it.

This week Wonk broke out quite the arsenal of big words, although I attribute this in large part to my Freshman Album Theory. The sophomore album of many bands fails to match the quality of the first (i.e., freshman) album. I believe this is because most bands spend at least five years writing and performing their music before they get to release an album with a major record label. Over these years a band has ample opportunity to write for quantity and choose for quality -- the band learns what songs are objectively good and has enough to choose from to put together a solid album. After the album's release, the band goes on tour to support the album, and then may take time off to celebrate newfound popularity. Suddenly the band realizes the label wants to release another album in six months, giving the band just four to six weeks to write new material for the album. The band faces an uphill battle to capture in such a short time the same creativity and quality that went into the first album.

Wonk undoubtedly spent much of September and October putting together his alphabetically-sensitive preseason walk-arounds, meaning he had ample time to include references to all sorts of philosophers unknown to those of us with conservative arts degrees. [Grammar doesn't accommodate that type of NOT statement. Besides, it's election week. Anyway, you understand me.] I doubt that similar references will be as frequent when Wonk has to generate a new post daily over the next five months. Although perhaps that entry from
March should make me think again.

Of course, I expect the references to indefatigable columnists and oracular bloggers to remain consistent throughout.

The two winners for this week, along with what I think they Wonk is using them to say:

• epistemological = challenging the accepted explanation for what something means (used mockingly)
• Manichaeism = a philosophy that explicitly divides the world into good and evil (used to emphasize the extremes-with-no-middle-ground nature of the beliefs concerning prospects for Michigan's season)

Wonk's inspired use of the word adverbial deserves special mention: "describing stylistic inclinations, not level of performance."

John Clayton hearts the Raiders

Each Thursday ESPN.com publishes John Clayton's "First...and 10" column, which previews 11 of the weekend's NFL games. In any given week there are at least 13 games with 26 teams playing, meaning that each week not every team that is playing is included in the column. Last year I found it funny that Clayton continued to leave the Bears out of his column, even though they were on their way to a first-round bye. So this year I've kept track.

As weeks 3-9 of the NFL season include byes, only four or six teams per week were excluded from the column for those weeks. In the second half of the season, five games and ten teams per week will be excluded from Clayton's column, but at least things can't get much worse for the Texans than they already are. From the column's standpoint, at least.

Through the first nine weeks (eight games) of the season, here is how often each team was included in the column, and how often each team was chosen for the first/headlining game:

Team		Included		First
DAL		8		2
SEA		8		1
CIN		8		0
OAK		8		0
PIT		8		0
TB		8		0
NYG		7		2
PHI		7		2
ATL		7		1
BAL		7		1
CAR		7		1
DEN		7		1
JAX		7		1
NE		7		1
DET		7		0
MIN		7		0
NYJ		7		0
IND		6		3
SD		6		1
STL		6		1
ARI		6		0
BUF		6		0
CHI		6		0
KC		6		0
NO		6		0
WAS		6		0
CLE		5		0
GB		4		0
MIA		4		0
SF		3		0
TEN		2		0
HOU		1		0

Some of this has to do with a team's opponent as well as the team itself; the Bears made the column for their first six games but were left off for their last two, home dates against the 49ers and the Dolphins.

The usual suspects appear toward the bottom: Texans, Titans, 49ers, Dolphins, Packers, Browns. The Colts lead in headliners, followed by the Terrell Owens Experience in the NFC East. Perfect teams include the Steelers and Seahawks (last year's Super Bowl participants), the Cowboys (all T.O., all the time), the Bengals and Buccaneers (last year's two division winners for which, in PFP 2006, Football Outsiders predicted a significant drop), and...

The Oakland Raiders?!? This can't be entirely opponent-based, because here were the Raiders' first four games:

• vs. SD (no byes this week)
  
• at BAL (no byes)
  
• vs. CLE
• at SF

It's gotta be the Shell. Art Shell has some kind of power over long-serving NFL columnists, and I think I know what it is. Judge for yourself.

As for the second half of the season, I predict the Bears will finally make the headliner game at least once in November, and probably twice: at the Giants in week 10 and at the Patriots in week 12.

Also, this would be quite possibly the lamest excuse for a suicide pool, but next week I very well may start picking a game I think will be excluded from the column that week.

Conflicting opinions are to be embraced

That's right, the Big Ten Wonk Word Of The Day is back. Although this time without hyperlinks, because (1) I'm lazy, and (2) if you can't find Wonk's blog or a dictionary site, I'm amazed you found this one.

The past two seasons of Illinois basketball provide a handy illustration of how continuity can coexist happily alongside change. (How Hegelian!)

For those unfamiliar with this theme of mine...Big Ten Wonk has a penchant for using roughly one word per day with which I am unfamiliar (for whatever that's worth); and whether intentionally or not, he uses the word in a manner outside its traditional meaning.

Hegel was a scientist of philosophy, and I get the feeling I'd need about two semesters to understand his theories. I think basically what he was saying was that contradictions and implications on reality should be explored to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the original concept. So while Illinois lost Deron Williams, Luther Head, Roger Powell, and Jack Ingram, which everyone would expect would make the team worse, their defense was just as good the following year.

Or something like that.

Let's just say I'll never use the word Hegelian on my own.