Even if your kid is good at sports in high school, gets a scholarship, and excels in college, there’s almost no way they are going to go pro.

Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg tweeted a link today to the NCAA’s official estimated probabilities that athletes in six major sports become professionals.

Only one sport (baseball) had more than 2% of NCAA players go pro.

Here are some of the numbers

• 11.6% of college baseball players play professionally, 0.6% of high school baseball players do
• 1.7% of college football players play professionally, 0.08% of high school football players do
• 1.3% of college ice hockey players play professional, 0.1% of high school ice hockey players do
• 1.2% of men’s college basketball players play professionally, 0.03% of high school men’s basketball players do
• 1.0% of men’s soccer players play professionally, 0.03% of high school soccer players do
• 0.9% of women’s college basketball players play professionally, 0.03% of high school women’s basketball players do

The higher numbers for baseball can be explained largely by the fact that, in addition to Major League Baseball, there are also a large number of minor professional leagues in all parts of the United States. Though the numbers aren’t broken down, I would imagine that the percentage of college baseball players playing for the Major Leagues is about as low as it is for professional football and basketball. Baseball is also unusual in that it was drafting players out of high school, usually into a team’s farm system, long before most other major sports were doing so.

The lesson? Don’t assume little Johnny is going to be set for life just because he’s doing really, really well in Little League.

For the third year in a row, the Super Bowl was the most-watched television program in history:

NEW YORK—For the third consecutive year, the Super Bowl set a record as the most-watched television show in U.S. history.

The Nielsen Co. said Monday that an estimated 111.3 million people watched the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots on Sunday night. That narrowly beat the 111 million who watched Green Bay’s win over Pittsburgh last year.

NBC was blessed by a competitive game between two teams that played in one of the Super Bowl’s most memorable contests four years ago, with one of them representing the largest media market in the country.

The game wasn’t over until Tom Brady’s last-second heave into the end zone dropped onto the turf. That play itself had the biggest audience of any play in the game, according to the digital video recorder maker Tivo. Nielsen said 117.7 million people were watching during the last half hour of the game.

The last two Super Bowls, along with the 2010 game between New Orleans and Indianapolis and the finale of “M-A-S-H” in 1983, are the only programs to exceed 100 million viewers in U.S. television history.

Madonna has some bragging rights, too. Her halftime show was seen by an estimated 114 million people — a higher average than the game itself — and was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime entertainment show on record, Nielsen said.

Given the plethora of television and other entertainment offerings, it’s likely that only other Super Bowls will break this record in the future.  Interestingly, four of the five most-watched television broadcasts, and five of the top six, are Super Bowls that have taken place between 2008 and 2012.

The NFL and NBC probably thought that hiring a headliner for the halftime show who was born before the Super Bowl even existed would keep the controversy to a minimum, but they were wrong:

The NFL and a major television network are apologizing for another Super Bowl halftime show.

There was no wardrobe malfunction, nothing like that glimpse of Janet Jackson’s nipple eight years ago that caused an uproar and a government scrutiny. Instead, it was an extended middle finger from British singer M.I.A. during Sunday night’s performance of Madonna’s new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin.”

In front of some 110 million viewers on NBC and uncounted others online, she flipped the bird and appeared to sing, “I don’t give a (expletive)” at one point, though it was hard to hear her clearly.

The NFL and NBC wasted little time in responding.

“The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans,” said Brian McCarthy, spokesman for the NFL, which produced Madonna’s halftime show.

The risque moment came during the biggest TV event of the year. The screen briefly went blurred after M.I.A.’s gesture in what was a late attempt — by less than a second — to cut out the camera shot.

“The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show,” NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey said. “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.”

I was half watching the halftime show last night — although quite honestly I kind of tuned out in the beginning when Madonna came out dressed as an Egyptian Queen on a massive chariot being pulled by what appeared to be Roman soldiers — and I can’t say I even noticed this. Of course, I have no idea who M.I.A. is and wouldn’t recognize her if she was standing next to me. In any event, I have to wonder what the NFL is going to do when the Super Bowl is in New Jersey in 2014, that gesture is our official state greeting after all.

In any event, one more controversy like this and we’re likely to return to something like “Up With People.”

Here’s the video, if you care to watch:

Photo via CNN

As long as I can remember, George Will’s response to any question about the Super Bowl on ABC’s This Week has been some variation on pointing out that baseball season is just around the corner. Given that Will has written several books on the game, and has been a regular presence at Nationals games since they came to Washington, this isn’t really a surprise. This year was no exception:

On Super Bowl Sunday, ABC’s George Will called football a “mistake” on the “This Week” roundtable.

“This is the second-highest calorie day in American life, second only to Thanksgiving, and people are betting and eating,” Will said. “Football, as I say, combines violence punctuated by committee meetings called huddles. It just replicates the worst aspect of American life.”

“That said, when it’s over, pitchers and catchers report in two weeks, and we can go back to reading the newspapers,” Will added.

After some prodding, Will guessed that the New York Giants would win the big game.

“I usually root for the team whose victory would make the most liberals unhappy,” he said, noting New England’s liberal population.

It’s nice to know some things never change, and that baseball season is just around the corner.

Here’s the video:

I was driving all day long yesterday and heard an interesting statistic on the radio. The last 14 coin flips in the Super Bowl have been won by the NFC. The odds of this happening are 16,000:1. Beyond a statistical anomaly. Anyhow, the commentator, a Vegas bookie, was discussing a bet they had going in which they wager on the coin flip every year. He was talking about how silly the bet is because, obviously, the odds are 50% heads or tails. But Vegas is playing it NFC vs AFC and guess what? 75% of the public is betting on the NFC to win the coin flip!

Roche chalks this up to the “recency effect” and implies that it’s a delusion. It strikes me as simple Bayesian logic. Theoretically, the odds of a coin landing on heads are 1 in 2 and that, since either the NFC or AFC will be represented by heads, the odds of either conference winning the coin flip are equal. Forced to bet on which conference will win and given even odds, then, it’s 50-50 that you’ll win.

Yet, in this case, bettors have additional information: The NFC has won the last 14 flips in a row! A 16,000:1 happenstance! That’s probably just a bizarre coincidence. But there’s at least some tiny chance that it’s something else. So, given even odds, why wouldn’t you bet on the NFC’s winning again?

Some people are wondering if it isn’t time for the NFL to ditch Roman numerals, especially considering that the 50th Anniversary of the one of the world’s biggest sporting events will be symbolized by the letter L if they don’t:

The NFL is four years away from its 50th Super Bowl, which means it is already trying to plan around a peculiar self-inflicted marketing nuisance: How can the world’s most powerful sports league get around putting a big, fat “L” on hundreds of thousands of souvenir T-shirts?

The first thing the winning players will do when Sunday’s game ends is drape themselves in celebratory gear emblazoned with the Super Bowl logo. This year, that logo consists of the Lombardi Trophy above the silver Roman numerals XLVI.

But come 2016, the Roman numeral for Super Bowl L happens to be the lone letter that most connotes losing.

“Wouldn’t that be a nice time to switch over to Arabic numerals?” said Bob Dorfman, the executive creative director for Baker Street Advertising.

The NFL has been using Roman numerals to identify each Super Bowl game since Super Bowl V in 1971 when then-Commissioner Pete Rozzelle made the move in the apparently belief that it would help add to the hype of a game that, at that point, still had not reached the level of hype and anticipation that surrounds it today. On some level, the Roman numerals probably have added a level of mystique and importance to the game that something like “Super Bowl 22″ probably wouldn’t do. Without the Roman numerals, in fact, it’s quite probable that the nomenclature would evolved into something similar to what other sports do and that, this year, we’d be getting ready for the “2012 Super Bowl” or something similar.

One could also argue that, at some point, there’s not really any need to number the games at all. Baseball certainly doesn’t do it. Otherwise the Texas Rangers would have been meeting the St. Louis Cardinals in World Series CVII. Of course, it’s different for the NFL. They’ve used Roman numerals to name each Super Bowl for 42 years now. Changing it is going to seem odd and may actually harm the brand a little bit.

What to do about the L in 2016, then? Well, there are a couple ideas:

In the next four years, the NFL may unearth new means of interpretation for the L. McCarthy dryly noted it could stand for “learning” or “love.” Just as Super Bowl XL in 2006 was tailor-made for apparel, Dorfman suggested the NFL could spin Super Bowl L as the largest Super Bowl ever.

Then there is the option of awarding Super Bowl L to a city that might integrate the Roman numeral into a logo. Colts owner Jim Irsay said this week that London remained a possibility for Super Bowl L. The site of the first Super Bowl, Los Angeles, currently lacks an NFL franchise but is considered a contender for the 2016 game. “We’re well aware of where the first Super Bowl was held,” McCarthy said.

The Los Angeles option would seem the most sensible, both because it would bring the game back to the place that it started half a century before and because I’m not sure that playing the game outside the United States makes all that much sense to begin with. When it comes down to the question of whether to keep the Roman numerals or dump them, though, I’ve got to say that I come down on the side of tradition. Besides, who doesn’t want to be around for Super Bowl XCVIII?

H/T: Ann Althouse, who has a poll up about this issue.

Photo via IBD Times

After an erroneous report that he had died spread across the Internet last night, Joe Paterno’s family reported that the legendary College Football Coach had passed away this morning:

Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 after experiencing serious complications from lung-cancer treatment.

The health of Paterno, who had fought the disease for two months, had grown progressively worse after he recently broke his pelvis in a fall at his home in State College, Pa.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Paterno passed away earlier today,” said a statement from Paterno’s family, released Sunday, shortly after 10 a.m. ET. “His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled.

“He died as he lived. He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been.

“His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community.”

Paterno died at State College’s Mount Nittany Medical Center, where he had been undergoing treatment.

Paterno remained connected to a ventilator into Sunday, individuals close to Paterno’s family told The Washington Post.

The newspaper reported the family had communicated to the hospital his wishes not to be kept alive through extreme artificial means.

Paterno’s cancer diagnosis was revealed Nov. 18, nine days after he lost his Penn State head coaching job in the fallout of sexual abuse charges against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

Jay Paterno, one of Paterno’s sons, thanked fans for their support Saturday.

“I appreciate the support & prayers. Joe is continuing to fight,” Jay Paterno wrote on his own Twitter account.

Paterno won two national championships and a Division I-record 409 games over 46 seasons at Penn State and the family has donated millions of dollars to the school.

But his legacy was clouded in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that has resulted in 52 counts of child molestation against Sandusky. Paterno had announced his retirement early on Nov. 9, but the Penn State board of trustees fired him and university president Graham Spanier about 12 hours later. That day, Paterno called the scandal “one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

In his first public statements since the scandal broke, Paterno recently told The Washington Post that he did not know how to deal with the situation when he received a report from a graduate assistant that his former defensive coordinator was accused of abusing a boy in the showers.

“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he told The Post in an extensive two-day interview at his home. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”

When Paterno was first diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after losing his job as Penn State’s Head Coach, the reports indicated that it was a “treatable” form of cancer. Obviously, though, no cancer is easily treatable, least of all lung cancer. In retrospect, given the news this morning it’s understandable why the family was initially reported as being pretty upset at the manner in which the erroneous reports were spread last night. The end was near in any case and hearing a false report obviously takes an emotion toll.

From The Washington Post’s obituary:

Until news of Sandusky’s transgressions rocked the university, Mr. Paterno had a virtually impeccable reputation. He was a sought-after speaker who also had been recruited, to no avail, to run for political office. President Gerald R. Ford made overtures to Mr. Paterno in the 1970s, trying to persuade him to run for Congress.

“He transcends football,” Ford, a onetime University of Michigan gridiron standout, told the Pitttsburgh Post-Gazette in 2004. “I tried very strongly to get him to run for Congress, but he was so dedicated to Penn State and young people, he turned me down. Joe could have done anything he wanted to do in life because he’s so dedicated. . . . He’s not only a great motivator of young people, but he always has the best interest of his community at heart.”

Mr. Paterno called Penn State football his “Grand Experiment,” an attempt to marry athletics and academics to achieve another of his mantras: “success with honor.” He was particularly proud that his players went to class and earned their diplomas and that the football program was never implicated in seamy recruiting or academic scandals that plagued so many of the nation’s major athletic powers.

He was an old-school coach who would not allow his players to have their names sewed on the backs of their uniform jerseys and enforced a strict coat-and-tie dress code when his teams went on the road. He roamed the sideline usually wearing rolled up khaki pants, a white shirt and tie, white socks and athletic shoes.

His specialty was offense and he believed in having a strong running game. Several running backs he coached earned all-American honors and moved on to successful careers in the NFL.

(….)

Joseph Vincent Paterno was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 21, 1926. His father was an appellate court clerk who graduated from law school in his 40s. Mr. Paterno always credited his father with instilling in him the importance of education.

Mr. Paterno graduated from prestigious Brooklyn Prep, a public high school with a strong academic and athletic tradition. He played baseball, basketball and football, graduated second in his class and was student council president.

After serving in the Army, he went to Brown University in Providence, R.I. Playing alongside his older brother George, Mr. Paterno started at quarterback for Brown and led the team to a 7-2 record in 1948 and 8-1 in 1949.

An English major at Brown, Mr. Paterno was planning to attend Boston University’s law school after graduation. But in his senior year, he helped coach Brown’s quarterbacks, and the team’s head coach, Charles “Rip” Engle, persuaded Mr. Paterno to follow him to Penn State in 1950.

Mr. Paterno still had a notion to go to law school, but he decided to accompany Engle to State College and was named offensive backfield coach. He never left and coaching a number of outstanding players, including future NFL Hall of Fame running back Lenny Moore.

Engle stayed at Penn State for 16 years and never had a losing season. Mr. Paterno was aware that his mentor was planning to retire after the 1965 season and reportedly turned down six different offers to coach at other schools. In his first season as head coach, the Nittany Lions finished 5-5, but in the second year they improved to 8-2 and earned a bid to the Gator Bowl, the first of his 37 bowl appearances, with 24 bowl victories.

Of course, that legacy was forever tarnished in November when the news about decade-long  sexual abuse by former Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky became public, especially when it became known that Paterno had learned of one incident from a witness and done nothing to follow up after passing it up the administrative chain of command. Even then, though, Penn State’s students still stayed loyal to a man old enough to be their Grandfather, if not their Great-Grandfather. In that interview with the Post mentioned above, Paterno comes across as a bit naive about the whole scandal, not quite understanding what else he could have done, or should have done.

On some level, it’s sad to see Paterno’s life end this way. He was without question one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. At the same time, the hagiography that developed ar0und him was symptomatic of the problems with collegiate athletics in general, and college football particularly, that still need to be dealt with. The Jerry Sandusky scandal is horrendous, and Paterno’s actions in response to it will now be judged by history. Nonetheless, I can’t help but remember the good times and his obvious ability to inspire his players. His actions later in life will always be a black mark that everyone can judge for himself, and of course history will make its own assessment. Outside of Bear Bryant, though, I can’t think of another NCAA Football Coach who has left a bigger mark on the game.

The Nation‘s Dave Zirin is outraged by seemingly conflicting trend lines in university spending: money for academics is tight but money for football coaches is at an all-time high.

Given the grey, budgetary realities that surround a typical state university, these numbers will boggle the mind. According to USA Today, salaries of new head football coaches at the 120 bowl-eligible schools increased by 35 percent in 2011. The average pay has now ballooned to $1.5 million annually. That’s an increase from  $1.1 million. Over the last six seasons, football coach salaries have risen by an astonishing 55 percent. Think about that. In an era of stagnating and falling wages nationally, compensation for coaching a college football team traces a trend line that rises like a booster’s adrenaline during bowl season. It doesn’t matter how bad the tuition hikes, the furloughs or the layoffs might be: the dynamic of paying football coaches more continues unabated.

Presumably, the answer is that college football coaches and college professors are paid from different pots of money and operate in completely separate markets. Whereas professors and administrators at state schools are paid out of tax coffers and whatever money the university can generate from endowments, capital campaigns, and all the rest football coaches are paid out of athletic budgets raised by boosters and corporate sponsors. Whereas we PhDs are a dime a dozen, there are a relative handful of proven winners at head coach.

A little over five years ago, I explained Why Nick Saban Makes More Than Your Kid’s Teacher. Two national championships later, I rest my case. But Zirin notes something I’ve noted many times in this space, too: Alabama is not representative of college football programs, even many of the major ones.

An NCAA report showed that just fourteen of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics in the 2009 fiscal year, down from just twenty-five the year before. Public universities, particularly in an era of austerity, preach, with a catch in their throat, that the revenue just isn’t there.

Then again, college football tends to make money at the elite level. But, along with men’s basketball, it’s asked to pay for all the rest of the university’s sports programs, almost all of which are revenue drains.  A handful of schools make money from women’s basketball and sports which have a huge tradition on that particular campus. Most, though, have a fan base comparable to a pee wee football league but with much higher overhead.

College presidents still treat football like a prize pig to be protected at all costs despite the fact that more than three-fourths of them don’t “believe that big-time intercollegiate athletics are sustainable in their current form.”

The proof, however, is in their actions. Ohio State University, one of the schools so touched by scandal, landed the biggest free-agent fish, hiring former Florida head coach Urban Meyer for $24 million over six years. At Penn State, after the hiring of New England Patriots assistant Bill O’Brien to replace Joe Paterno, O’Brien fired more than a half-dozen assistants and now the public state college will be paying $4.4 million in severance. This number doesn’t include what will be paid to Paterno or to quarterbacks coach Mike McQueary, who is currently on “administrative leave” as a prosecutorial witness against former assistant/accused child predator Jerry Sandusky. But Ohio State and Penn State, for all the slathered scandal across their campuses, have football programs that propel athletic departments toward positive total revenue. For most schools, this isn’t close to the case. Instead, you get the University of Maryland paying former Coach Ralph Friedgen $2 million to go home and not coach, while cutting numerous teams from the athletic department. But whether a school is generating revenue or taking an awful bath, the coaching arms race continues. Penn State emeritus professor John Nichols, chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a faculty group advocating for athletics reform, said of the head coaching wage hikes, “This just shows…the difficulty of bringing (football) into the right proportion, the right balance with the academic mission.”

I was on the faculty at Troy (then Troy State) when it was contemplating and ultimately making the move from highly competitive I-AA (now FCS) program to I-A (now FBS) patsy. Most of us objected but our chancellor, Jack Hawkins, argued, correctly it turns out, that anything between Division III and Division I-A was a no man’s land. That is, once you start offering scholarships and traveling a long way to play games, college sports is simply a money drain unless you’re at the big time level and benefiting from network television deals and all the rest.

The obvious retort is that most schools should either cancel competitive athletics altogether, or relegate themselves to intramurals or very low level regional sports to keep costs down. Essentially, the high school model. And, indeed, many schools do just that.

Many elite universities–the Ivies, NYU, and the University of Chicago, perhaps most notably–have managed to have national and international reputations without big time sports. Then again, those schools had the advantage of being among the first universities in the country. For that matter, they all had big time sports programs in the early days of college athletics before eventually deciding the arms race wasn’t worth it. Even so, most of the great academic schools in the country–Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Duke, North Carolina, etc.–coexist with big time sports.

The problem is that most college presidents want to maintain or increase the profiles of their schools. That’s what drove Hawkins to move Troy to the big leagues: a hope that it would put his school on the map. In Troy’s case, it likely worked: the school has a much higher national profile–which is to say, people outside Alabama are now aware that it exists–than it did as a I-AA football power. Similarly, who had heard of Boise State before its recent run of football success? Or Texas Christian?

Probably a better example is the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which grabs the nation’s attention for two weeks every year. How many schools that nobody ever heard of suddenly gain national recognition each year by winning a game or two during March Madness? Even established schools with strong academic programs report huge boosts in applications after a successful tourney run.

The bottom line is that college presidents see sports, and football in particular, as the easiest way to market their schools. Asking why they’re spending more to lure successful coaches while they’re cutting core programs is like asking why corporations are spending more on advertising while they’re laying off workers.

Hat tip: Margaret Soltan

As I noted in my earlier post, Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow has become, in a very short period of time, some kind of weird symbol of the cultural wars. On the one side you’ve got secularists like Bill Maher who openly cheer when Tebow performs badly as if that by itself confirms their atheism. On the other side we have religious conservatives who seem to view every Tebow victory, or even the mere coincidence that his number of passing yards is similar to a particular Bible verse, to be proof of their own beliefs. Observing all of this from mostly the sidelines, I’ve found the entire thing to be more than a little ridiculous. The idea that God, if such a thing actually existed, would care one way or the other about the outcome of a sporting event has always struck me as profoundly silly and on a level with the ancient animistic religions that saw divine intervention every time there was thunder and lightening.

It is perhaps because he’s gotten caught up in this weird cultural/political war that Tebow has become such a focus of media attention, although the fact that he’s telegenic and winning football games in dramatic fashion probably has something to do with it too. In any case, whatever side you take in the culture wars, it’s worth noting that Tebow himself is far more sanguine about his success than either side in this weird debate that has swept across the country:

As he prepares for Saturday night’s NFL playoff game between Denver and New England, Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow told “The NFL Today” host James Brown that his parents taught him the perspective he brings to the sport:

“I think number one is, what my mom and dad preached to me when I was a little kid: Just because you may have athletic ability and you may be able to play a sport doesn’t make you any more special than anybody else,” Tebow said. “Doesn’t mean God loves you more than anybody else.

“We play a sport. It’s a game. At the end of the day, that’s all it is, is a game. It doesn’t make you any better or any worse than anybody else. So by winning a game, you’re no better. By losing a game, you’re no worse. I think by keeping that mentality, it really keeps things in perspective for me to treat everybody the same.”

“The guy is a wonderful young man,” Brown told Charlie Rose. “There is no phoniness in him at all. What you see is what you get. He’s been the same way, Charlie, from Pop Warner football. If you can win over a testosterone-laden locker room where there’s some crusty hard-nosed guys in there, bottom line is, he’s a winner.

“He does come to the NFL level, the highest form of football, without a polished skill set that’s associated with an elite level quarterback. But he’s overcome challenges each and every step of the way. And hey, if he’s learning at the NFL level and he’s got his team in the post-season, that’s a pretty good athlete in my book.”

“The NFL Today” host described the quarterback as self-effacing, who does not want to discuss his charity, such as helping young people with serious health problems. “The big thing with Tebow, he says, ‘I’m using football as a platform for bigger and better things,’ and who can argue with that?” said Brown.

By all accounts, Tebow is genuine in his beliefs and the same in person as he comes across in public, which is itself a rarity in professional sports. On some level, though, I think it’s unfair to him that he’s has been turned so quickly, by others, into something more than what he actually is, which is a football player. It doesn’t appear to me that it’s a role he ever asked for. Yes., he’s been public about his faith but that’s his right. The fact that his pre-game sideline prayer ritual has become an internet meme actually strikes me as a bit insulting to him given that it takes something that is important to him and trivializes it so that people can post pictures of themselves on the Internet doing something other than planking. It even became the subject of a bet between the Mayors of Denver and Pittsburgh before last weeks AFC Wild Card Game. The prayer ritual doesn’t mean that much to me, but mocking it in that manner strikes me as pretty dumb.

In other words, Tebow is being more mature and more level-headed about this than any of the people who have adopted him as either a cultural hero or enemy. Perhaps they could all take a clue from him and just enjoy the game. The Broncos are currently 13.5 point underdogs heading in to Foxboro, which isn’t surprising considering that Denver lost the last game against the Patriots by nearly 20 points. It’s going to take another stellar performance to pull off a win this weekend,  and personally I doubt Tebow will be able to do it. Whichever way it turns out, though, lets not pretend that it means anything. Other than deciding which team goes on to the AFC Championship Game, that is.

With the Tim Tebow hype hitting a fever pitch in advance of Saturday night’s Bronc0s-Patrioits game, it appears that America’s favorite athlete (for the moment) is being courted by politicians:

Tim Tebow is already the hottest property in professional sports, and now Republican presidential candidates are lining up for the blessing of the Denver Broncos quarterback.

The “Mile High Messiah” told The Associated Press on Sunday that more than one of the GOP hopefuls has asked for his public support.

He declined their offers, and also wouldn’t tell the AP which candidates had reached out to him for an endorsement.

“I think you have to have so much trust in who you support, just from product endorsements to endorsing a candidate,” Tebow said, “because if that person or company does something [bad], it reflects on you.”

Tebow isn’t saying who he’s heard from among the Republican candidates, but his name has been dropped by nearly every candidate ever since the “Tebow phenomenon” became a thing earlier this season:

During a Dec. 15 debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that many experts ”said Tim Tebow wasn’t going to be a very good NFL Quarterback. … And he won two national championships, and that looked pretty good. We were the national champions in job creation back in Texas. And so, am I ready for the next level? Let me tell you, I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses

Perry may have lifted the idea of invoking Tebow’s name from a video tribute, produced by an unnamed supporter of former candidate Michele Bachmann, which appeared online just four days earlier.

Tebow, the video’s narrator said, “doesn’t drink, smoke, cuss, or even kick his opponents when they’re on the ground. He has no baggage, and — oh, yeah — he’s a born-again Christian. Well, the same can be said of Michele Bachmann. … Like Tebow, she keeps fighting and she just keeps winning votes.”

(…)

Reacting to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s decisive victory in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary election, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told reporters during a conference call on Wednesday that “it was Tebow time last Sunday and Romney time last night.” Schuette chairs Romney’s Michigan campaign.

In a Jan. 3 essay, a member of the faculty at Georgia’s LaGrange College drew a similar comparison between former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and the NFL star. “Santorum’s chances for winning the nomination are lean, to put it kindly,” wrote political science professor John Tures. “But so were Tebow’s chances of leading the hapless Broncos to the playoffs, right?”

Reporters drew connections between Tebow and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Dec. 31 after Gingrich told Iowans, “I pray before virtually every speech and virtually every major decision.”

And on Monday the Daily Paul website, which is operated by supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, published the musings of a Paul supporter who wrote, “Imagine if Tim Tebow endorsed Ron Paul … I don’t think it will happen, but I can daydream cant I?!”

On some level, it’s kind of silly for politicians to be courting a rookie Quarterback for an endorsement, but Tebow has become something of a cultural phenomenon, embraced by the conservative community for his religious faith. In fact, it seems that anyone who questions Tebow at this point is accused of doing so because of his faith, not because he’s just a rookie who has been, at best inconsistent this year. After all, what can you really say about a player who pulled off an impressive victory over Pittsburgh one week after being held to a single field goal by the Kansas City Chiefs? Greatest Quarterback ever? Certainly not. More importantly, given how politicized and saturated in the rhetoric of the culture wars our nation has become, can’t we at least leave it out of sports?

In any event, much like the culture war that some of chosen to erect around him, it strikes me as kind of unfair to Tebow to turn him into a political symbol. After all, does anyone really believe that Rick Perry’s flailing campaign would suddenly be revived by a Tebow endorsement, or that Newt Gingirch would suddenly not be a total jerk just because he got the Tim Tebow stamp of approval? I’m doubtful of the value of the endorsements to begin with, an endorsement from a sports figure seems worth even less.

On a final note, since we’re talking about Tebow, it seems appropriate to share this piece from Jimmy Fallon’s show last night, which may be one of the best song parodies I’ve seen in a long time:

Judging by the running commentary on Twitter last night, Alabama’s 21-0 defensive beatdown of a Louisiana State team that was being touted as The Greatest College Football Team of All Time was not enjoyable television to those of us who aren’t Crimson Tide fans. Indeed, judging by my own reaction, it wasn’t all that enjoyable to those of us who are.

Alabama played a truly great game on defense. But this was marred substantially by LSU never seeming to shake off the rust of the absurd five week layoff that the silly college bowl season imposes. Their quarterback, Jordan Jefferson, played at times like George Jefferson (which I swear Kirk Herbstreit called him about every third time). Indeed, toward the end of the game, I tweeted that they should try putting in Weezie. Simply put, as good as Alabama’s defense was–and it was the best in the nation all year long–LSU didn’t bring the offense that put up ridiculous point totals against quality opponents like Oregon, West Virginia, and Arkansas earlier in the season.

The fact that Alabama didn’t score a touchdown until the closing minutes of the game, treating the television viewing audience to yet another field goal kicking exhibition, didn’t help matters. Not after the November 5 Game of the Century between these same two teams which featured Alabama attempting six field goals and making only two and LSU needing overtime to kick its third and decisive field goal.

There was, of course, the perennial debate about whether a team left out of the one-game playoff known as the BCS National Championship Game shouldn’t have been invited instead. Scott Lemieux joins thousands in arguing that, given that only two teams can be invited, it should have been Oklahoma State and not Alabama.

The experts mostly agreed that Alabama was the second best team in the country but, it was argued, having already lost to LSU–and thus not winning its own division, much less its own conference–someone else should have gotten a chance. The snoozefest two months earlier added to that sentiment.

Still, OSU’s loss to lowly Iowa State overshadowed an arguably more impressive victory list.  Plus there was the fact that Alabama statistically dominated the first game, losing by 3 points in overtime because of an inability to kick even short field goals and a brilliant defensive play that took away what would otherwise have been Alabama’s winning touchdown.

Had the roles been reversed–with Alabama beating LSU in the regular season and then having to win the SEC Championship Game only to have to face LSU again as equals–I’d have been pissed. But the current BCS system aims to match the two best teams in the country in a championship game and most of us think that’s what happened.

This year, I’m not sure LSU should have had to play again after the SEC championship given their strength of schedule and the lack of other serious no-loss teams. No one really deserved a right to face LSU as equals in a single-elimination tournament.

Then again, there’s simply no perfect system for choosing a champion.

The closest is that employed by the NBA and NHL, which involve a string of best-of-7 series. That pretty much eliminates a fluke play or hot night from deciding the championship and almost always results in the best team holding the trophy at the end of the tournament. But it also renders the regular season meaningless.

The most exciting championship in American sports, hands down, is the NCAA basketball tournament. But it’s really a ridiculous way to pick a champion. One can argue, for example, that last year’s winner, UConn, shouldn’t have even been in the tourney.

That said, we regularly live with that sort of outcome. Many a time, a team that I root for has dominated the regular season, won its division, and gone on to lose to a wild card team from that division in the playoffs. The Atlanta Braves did it several times, in fact, including both of the Florida Marlins championship years. The Dallas Cowboys went 13-3 in the 2007 season, including two victories over the New York Giants. The 9-7 Giants then edged the Cowboys on a freak play in the second round of the playoffs and then proceeded to beat a series of other teams that had beaten them in the regular season, culminating in beating the 18-0 New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on another freak play.

That’s sports.

There have been enough years where an undefeated or highly deserving one-loss team has gotten hosed in college football that I favor a playoff. The so-called “Plus One” system–essentially, a four team, single elimination tournament–strikes me as being the right balance between including the worthy teams and maintaining the importance of the regular season.  But the likely outcome of that would have been an Alabama-LSU rematch and a defensive struggle that made for bad television.

Photo credit: Reuters

Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a statistical comparison that makes a compelling starting point for an argument that Cam Newton is having the best rookie year any NFL quarterback has ever had. With one game remaining on the schedule, he’s already broken Peyton Manning’s record for passing yards by a rookie, tied Dan Marino’s record for touchdown passes by a rookie, and has a higher completion percentage than either. And he’s by far a bigger running threat than either ever was.

As Coates himself notes, the debate is complicated by era effects. It’s simply easier to pass the ball in the NFL of 2011 than it was in 1983, when Marino started, or even 1999, when Manning debuted, because of rules changes. Most of the league’s passing records have been set in the last few years and this season has been especially explosive, perhaps as a function of the cancellation of most of the offseason training activities because of the lockout.

Regardless, it’s an interesting debate. But not as interesting as a related one raised in the post: How much of a factor was the fact that Newton is African-American in the low expectations many scouts and prognosticators had before the season started?

Warren Moon, who had to win five straight Canadian Football League championships before being given a shot to play quarterback in the NFL and a Hall of Fame career, thinks it’s a big factor. Newton tactfully dismisses the charge, noting that the recent flameouts of high profile black quarterbacks JaMarcus Russell and Vince Young justified the fears. But Coates thinks this, too, amounts to racism.

[I]t must be said that accepting Newton’s formulation, he’s actually proving Warren Moon’s point. JaMarcus may well be the greatest bust ever (and like any greatest, that’s debatable) but the list of white quarterback busts is fairly legion ranging from Ryan Leaf to Tim Couch to Todd Marinovich to Art Schlichter. But Newton is Newton worried about walking in the shadow of  say, Joey Harrington or David Carr. He’s worried about the black guys. That is telling.

Our American struggle is not about the freedom to be exceptional–we’ve had that since the days of Frederick Douglass. It’s about the freedom to be mediocre, the freedom to fail, and have that failure, or mediocrity speak only to the  merit of an individual, not to the “group.” I assure you that Andy Dalton does not fear Matt Leinart, in the same way that Cam Newton fears Vince Young.

That’s fair enough. We’re only a quarter century or so into the era where black quarterbacks (most notably Moon, Doug Williams, Donovan McNabb, and Michael Vick) have had success in the League. Only one, Williams, has ever won a Super Bowl. Only three–Williams, Steve McNair, and McNabb–have ever started one. So it wouldn’t be shocking if a lot of analysts, who tend to be middle aged white guys, still harbor subtle doubts about the ability of blacks to quarterback on Sundays.

Additionally, there was much thinly veiled talk that Newton was a thug and not particularly bright, criticisms often made–mostly indirectly these days–about black athletes. But Newton gave the critics plenty of ammunition. First, there was the months-long drama over the fact that his father, Cecil Newton, hamhandedly attempted to shop him to the highest bidder as he was leaving a highly successful junior college career and moving up to Division I. Which, incidentally, he’d left after being thrown off the team at Florida under suspicion of larceny and charges of cheating in the classroom. Nor did he help himself in a truly painful interview with ESPN’s Jon Gruden in which he seemed to have no clue about how to call a simple football play.

But there is quite a bit of mitigating evidence in the case of Newton. Most importantly, he was ultimately chosen by the Carolina Panthers with the first overall pick in the draft. So, whatever doubts there were didn’t keep him from going ahead of every other player, regardless of race, in his draft class.

The doubts about Newton were mostly predicated on two facts. One, he had only started one year in college. To be sure, it was a spectacular year (undefeated season, Heisman Trophy, and BCS national championship) but scouts are leery of QBs that didn’t start at least three years. Two, he played in a high school offense. Literally. Gus Malzahn, his offensive coordinator at Auburn, has spent most of his career as a high school coach perfecting a spread offense.

Observers of the NFL hate, hate, hate quarterbacks who played something other than a pro style system in college. Because it’s damned near impossible to predict how they’ll make the transition. So many of the great college quarterbacks are pro busts because it’s the position that least resembles its NFL counterpart. In college, quarterbacks can win by running the ball constantly; so far, that hasn’t worked on a sustained basis in the NFL. In college, gadget offenses (double and triple option, spread, Wildcat) can overwhelm teams that haven’t faced that style. (Alabama, which held LSU to 6 points in regulation this year, gave up 21 points to lowly Georgia Southern, its worst performance of the year, for this reason.) That just doesn’t work over the long haul in the NFL.

Indeed, another highly controversial quarterback is a classic example of this phenomenon: Tim Tebow. He led Florida to two national titles, won a Heisman Trophy, and was a contender for two more. There’s a strong case to be made that he’s the best college quarterback ever. Yet, he was the 25th pick in the 2010 draft and most analysts thought Denver took him too high, especially with Jimmy Clausen still on the board. Why? Because he won in a spread style offense and relied extensively on his ability to run the ball. Despite considerable success in the NFL, most of us still don’t think he’ll make it over the long haul because he’s not a good passer.

For those who don’t follow the sport, Tebow’s white.

Photo: ESPN/US Presswire

ESPN’s Georgia Bulldogs Football blog (“Report: Georgia hit with minor violations“):

Believing members of his football staff weren’t being compensated satisfactorily, Georgia coach Mark Richt unknowingly violated NCAA rules by paying them out of his own pocket.

Richt’s payments to several staffers were among a series of secondary NCAA violations uncovered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a standard open records report released Tuesday.

According to the AJC report, Richt’s actions broke NCAA rules on supplemental pay. But discipline was limited to letters of admonishment from the school to Richt and those he made payments to, as well as additional rules education, the report said.

[...]

Georgia’s investigation into the matter determined that Richt made several impermissible payments:

• To former recruiting assistant Charlie Cantor, $10,842 over an 11-month period through March 2011.

• To former linebackers coach John Jancek, $10,000 in 2009 after the previous university administration declined to give Jancek a raise when he turned down a coaching opportunity elsewhere.

• To director of player development John Eason, $6,150 in 2010 when his new administrative position called for a salary reduction after he stepped down from an assistant coaching position on Richt’s staff.

Richt also paid a total of $15,227 when the school — citing “difficult economic conditions being experienced by the University” — refused bowl bonuses to 10 non-coach staff members: director of sports medicine Ron Courson, video coordinator Joe Tereshinski, strength coaches Keith Gray and Clay Walker, football operations manager Josh Brooks, high school liaison Ray Lamb and four administrative assistants.

He also paid a five-year longevity bonus of $15,337.50 due to tight ends coach Dave Johnson when he took a job at West Virginia in 2008 just short of his fifth anniversary coaching at UGA and $6,000 to fired defensive ends coach Jon Fabris in 2010 when Fabris was unable to find a job after his UGA severance package expired.

According to the AJC report, Georgia did not consider any of the payments to violate NCAA rules at the time because they were made with knowledge of the athletics administration.

I’m gratified that the NCAA has displayed the good judgment to treat these as technical violations rather than some nefarious scheme to gain a competitive advantage. But it’s a shame that a little human kindness on the part of a highly compensated head coach, rectifying obvious inequities, is against the rules. Then again, since the whole college football system relies on the services of unpaid “student athletes,” it’s not surprising.

For the first time, the NFL is making the Super Bowl available online:

NEW YORK (AP) – The biggest draw in television is going mobile.

The Super Bowl will be streamed online and to phones for the first time, the NFL said Tuesday. NBC’s broadcasts of wild card Saturday, the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl will be available on the league’s and network’s websites and through Verizon’s NFL Mobile app.

The service will include additional camera angles, in-game highlights and live stats — and replays of those always popular Super Bowl ads.

NBC has been streaming its “Sunday Night Football” telecasts for four seasons, and what the network has found is it’s not just being used by fans who can’t get in front of a set. Many of the page views come from people using the service as a complement to watching the game on TV.

That certainly would seem likely for the Super Bowl on Feb. 5 from Indianapolis. The game is annually by far the biggest attraction on television, with last season’s Packers-Steelers matchup drawing a record U.S. audience for any show with 111 million viewers.

“Whether it’s just for a quarter if somebody has to run out to the store to get something they forgot, now they can stay connected to the game,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s senior vice president of media strategy and development, told The Associated Press. “With such a big television audience, it will be interesting to see the expanded reach.”

NBC’s streams on Sunday nights typically average 200,000-300,000 viewers, compared with 21 million for the telecasts. The network has seen no evidence it hurts the traditional broadcasts’ healthy TV ratings. If anything, the extra options online may help keep fans glued to the games on their sets.

“We don’t want to limit ourselves to people not in front of the TV,” said Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager for NBC Sports Digital Media.

“The playoffs are appointment viewing,” he added. “People schedule their day around it.”

Indeed, it seems unlikely that many people are going to pass up the opportunity to watch the Super Bowl on television and choose to watch it exclusively on a laptop, iPad, or mobile phone. Nonetheless, it will be another venue for the true fan to access to keep up with the game, check replays, watch stats, and all the rest. Not to mention the fact that it will be another opportunity for the NFL and NBC to sell ads to sponsors. At the very least, it should be interesting to check out.

And, in the least-surprising NFL news of the season, Tony Sparano also got canned. The Dolphins had clawed their way to 4-8 after dropping their first seven games, but losing to the hapless Eagles sealed his fate. The fact that he lasted two weeks longer than Jack Del Rio is pretty much the only unexpected twist in this story.