FIVE MO' THINGS, 1/2/13
1) Your college football hit of the year....

Doing something a little different with the blog this year.  The changes will be small.  I'm sure you'll be able to follow along.

2) Marvin Lewis.  When we say things like "Simply making the playoffs is no longer enough," what we mean is "Marvin Lewis better finally win a damn playoff game."

Yes, we're getting to a point where the Bengals will be judged more by how they plan in January and less by whether they're playing in January, but it's not like another playoff loss will mean anything different.  Marvin will stay.  This nucleus will remain intact.  And if you didn't bail on the Bengals after 2010's unlikable team, are you really jumping ship after this season?

No.

Saturday's game is about Marvin.  A win, and he gets a monkey of sorts of his back.  A loss, and the belief that he's simply not the guy to get the Bengals to the next level will only be discussed more, and the calls for his job, which were pretty loud after last year's loss to the Texans, will only be amplified.

3)  Andy Dalton and JJ Watt.  This sucked....

20.5 sacks, 16 passes knocked down, and a likelihood that we see one, and probably both, on Saturday.  The Bengals are not great at pass protection and Watt is a nightmare to block.  More pressing than a sack and/or a ball batted down are the skittishness from Andy that could result from them.

Andy hasn't been sharp recently, and he has had issues with pocket awareness and throwing the ball well before AK and the others get out of their breaks.  Saturday's biggest question might be about how much Andy is affected by Watt's pressure even when Watt isn't applying pressure.

4)  My Bearcats.  Gritty team.  Offensively limited, but man do they defend.  And you won't find but a handful of teams in college basketball that play harder.  The win at Pitt was a testament to those things.

5) The UK Wildcats.  Turnovers aside, I'd be encouraged by what I saw against Louisville.  They weren't winning that game, not at this stage in the season anyway, but a game that looked on the verge of getting away from Kentucky never did, and repeats of Saturday's performance will yield plenty of wins the rest of the way.

But wait, there's more....

-Like Will Leitch, who echoes what those of us tiring of the Baseball Hall of Fame voting process have been thinking for a while....

Hall of Fame voting, and the subsequent discussion, is becoming something that’s grueling to witness. It’s becoming not fun anymore. Everybody loves a good sports debate -- and by “debate,” I mean “ a meaningful exchange of considered, reasoned ideas,” and it’s sort of sad that “First Take” has required me to remind people what “debate” means -- but what’s happening with the Hall of Fame voters isn’t a debate: It’s people making intractable stands and then yelling about how the other side is not only wrong, but peppering them with personal invective. This is happening on both sides. Those who think sabermetrics should be the center (if not only) tenet in evaluating players believe the BBWAA voters who don’t use advanced stats are unworthy of a vote, and the BBWAA voters who insist on the value of their own eyes claim their detractors are just haters who wish they got to vote. No matter which side you agree with -- or, you know, if you’re a normal human being who sees values in both sides, a.k.a., “probably not a person who writes about sports for a living” -- you find yourself leaving all “discussions” wishing for a pox on both houses. People are screaming past each other, and not paying the least bit attention to the readers, the fans … the people they ostensibly write columns for.

It’s becoming impossible to deal with. It’s turning something as fun and meaningless -- and talk all you want about the sacred nature of the Hall of Fame, let us not forget that it’s just a building in upstate New York with weird-looking bronzes of people who used to run around and swing pieces of wood for a living but now do awkward local commercials and put their name on car dealerships -- as deciding who’s a legendary ballplayer and who isn’t, and it’s turning into an endless political debate between two parties who have no interest in taking the slightest step forward toward the other. I no longer believe any side in the debate anymore. They’re either trying to advance an agenda (the BBWAA still matters! Old sportswriters are terrible!) or they’re holding some time-worn grudge against someone who was mean to them in the clubhouse, or they’re just blindly throwing in the top 10 guys in WAR to prove a point, or whatever. It’s not fun to read about, it’s not fun to write about it and it’s not fun to talk about.

He's right.  Hall of Fame debates are supposed to be fun.  I could go on for hours about why Bernard King should be in the basketball Hall, and an afternoon in the Moon Deck talking baseball Hall qualifications is the perfect way to pass a summer day at the ball-yard, but Hall of Fame voting is turning into something far deeper, and far less fun, than  the simple "this is is/isn't a Hall of Famer and here's why"

John Fay of The Enquirer bailed on voting this year and I understand why.  This is supposed to be about which baseball players were the most legendary and which ones should be celebrated  for generations, not a referendum on the morals of the people voting in a flawed system for something that we're starting to take a wee bit too seriously.

-And Mark Kriedler, who writes this about the NFL's coaching bloodbath....
Owners are, by and large, insane.

This is closer to the truth than one might imagine. I've been fortunate enough to know dozens of sports franchise owners in my time as a writer, and I can tell you without fear of being contradicted that almost none of them were in their right minds for more than a couple of hours per day when it came to their teams.

Make no mistake: Some owners are simply terrible at this particular trade. But most of them are wild successes in other phases of their lives and are slowly being driven mad by their inability to replicate that success in the arena.

What makes owners crazy? That's easy: franchises that refuse to behave like the rest of their moneymaking businesses. Sports' cost/production models are screwed up beyond all belief. They require long-term investment with absolutely no assurance of long-term success (at least not on the field). They are top-heavy. They can be undermined by a single injury, or a contract dispute, or a great athlete who derails his own career by being an off-the-field fool. They are subject to the domino effect when things begin to go wrong.

In short, sports franchises are exceptionally human enterprises, and that drives many, many owners batty. Solution? Well, "fire the coach" has a certain ring to it, which is one reason you see it happen again and again. It doesn't often work as a franchise-altering strategy, but that's unfocused frustration for you.

-And the Knicks, who are looking a lot like a team that hasn't figured out how to adjust to how teams have adjusted to them.  They're asking Jason Kidd to do too much.

-The Third Team on MLB Network. It goes behind the scenes with the umpires who worked this year's World Series.  It might be MLB Network's best work yet, which is saying something.  The next time it re-airs, you owe it to yourself to watch.

-Brady Hoke.  There's something Dave Shula-esque about a coach who doesn't wear headset on the sideline.  Was nice of Northwestern to carry the flag for the Big Ten yesterday, BTW.

-The referees in the UConn/Marquette game.  As was pointed out on Twitter, the work done in the Big East opener for both schools is somehow appropriate given what's happening to the league.

-The announcer in the Bucknell/Dartmouth game.  Bad. Bad. Bad. B-A-D. That spells "bad."

-Top Ten Lists.  The end of the year is always full of them. On Monday's show, our final of 2012, I gave my top ten Cincinnati sports moments of the past year.  This would've made for a nice blog entry at some point before the year ended, but I'm lazy so you're getting them today.  Keep in mind this is my top ten, and is shaped by the teams and sports I prefer...

10.  UC hires Tommy Tuberville.  Bearcat football needed buzz.  Bearcat football needed the script flipped.  Bearcat football needed something for fans to get excited about.  The Tuberville hire did exactly that, even if he's been oddly reluctant to do local radio interviews.

9. UK wins the national title. (This is where "they're not in Cincinnati" guy starts firing off his email.  Don't bother.  They have a presence here and it's my list.)  I'm not a UK fan, but I was a fan of watching last year's Wildcats.  The Kentucky program is often accused of being everything that's wrong with college basketball, but last year's Wildcats were everything that's supposed to be right about college basketball: a selfless, cohesive, fun-to-watch team that stood out during a season where the overall watchability of the sport took a major dive.  I've become a fan of Calipari, a guy doesn't seem to give a riff what his critics say.  My kind of guy. Last year, he coached my kind of team.

8. Reds win Game One of the NLDS.  Yes, they ended up blowing the series, but they way they won that Saturday night in San Francisco had you so wired you barely slept that night, right? 

7. Munchie Legaux to Damon Julian to beat Virginia Tech.  High point of the year for Bearcat fans, and the moment that made you think that maybe, just maybe this team could run the table.  They didn't, and five weeks later, Munchie was no longer the starter, but the moment at the time was pretty special.

6. Homer Bailey's no-hitter.  24 years without a no-no for the Reds, right before what we hoped would be the end of another drought.  This was the year where Homer finally put it together, stayed healthy, and helped one of baseball's best rotations.  That night in Pittsburgh was redemptive for him, and electrifying for us.

5.  UC beats Syracuse in the semis of the Big East Tournament.  It felt like the finishing moment for Mick Cronin's rebuild, arguably his signature win on one of college basketball's biggest stages.  It was the win that made the country take notice and made Bearcat fans believe that a run deep into March was possible.

4.  Joey Votto's grand slam to beat the Nationals.  The best individual performance by a Cincinnati athlete in any one game this season was seen by about 21 people in person after the world's longest rain delay.  He hit three homers that day, more or less saving the Reds from being swept by himself.

3. Marty's head-shaving.  The feel-good moment of the year, a celebratory night with the Reds playing well, and genuine lump-in-your-throat moments as he addressed the crowd and spoke of the work being done by the Dragon Fly foundation on behalf of kids with cancer.

2. Josh Brown's kick to beat the Steelers.  Know how there's certain games where you know who you were watching with and where you were?  Most Bengals games like that have ended in defeat.  Not this one.  It was part demon-exorcising, part-cleansing, and extraordinarily meaningful for a franchise that never wins games like that one at Heinz Field.

1. UC and XU advance to the Sweet 16 on the same night. 99 days after the fight, two seasons that at different points seemed destined for disaster ended with NCAA Tournament success, the Muskies assuming their usual role with two wins, and UC advancing that far for just the second time in 16 years.  The final chapter of the Cincinnati basketball story in 2011-'12 was a happy one.

-Radio show today.  And a short one, with the UK pregame show taking over at 4:33.  Connor Barwin joins us at 3:42 today.  Joe Reedy at 4:04.  We start at 3:04 on ESPN1530. Here's some film I pirated from Texans practice.