Mark Cuban Doesn't Understand College Football

Cubes. You won a championship. That was cool. I like that you are all about your organization and your players, but this last blog post... man you're way off.

Let's see what he has to say.

Here is some unsolicited advice to the Big 12.

Your job is to own an NBA team. ALL of your advice is unsolicited if it is not directed at 29 other people in the world.

With Texas A&M trying to leave the Big 12 (It doesn’t happen until the SEC accepts them) every remaining school is trying to decide in the immortal lyrics of The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The quick answer? They should stay.

I'm hip! I'm cool! I'm down with it!

*Does Macarena*

1. More schools will NOT mean more TV money.

Considering how Cuban is only rich because he sold his free television internet service to Yahoo! for $6 billion, I'm just going to go ahead and assume his understanding of "TV money" is different than those of us here in reality.

The big college TV networks, Fox, ESPN, CBS pay for quality, not quantity. They need marquee matchups

This whole conference shuffle began because ESPN signed a $300 million contract for a team that finished 5-7 last season. Furthermore, every SEC fan watches EVERY SEC GAME. Mississippi State v. Kentucky? FUCK YES. Because outside of college football, Southeastern Americans have nothing to live for.

Adding Texas A&M to the SEC is not going to add a single dollar’s worth of value to the owner of the SEC TV contract, regardless of sport.

Yes it will, in potential dollars, because now the SEC has access to a major city. Something they have heretofore lacked, outside of Atlanta.

Maybe the SEC has an escalator in their contract that increases the total value of the TV contract

They do. If the SEC increases past 12 teams, they renegotiate. And now they have Houston's TV market and the past five national championships to drive up the price.

2. Fans will hate the scheduling impact

Possibly. Explain yourself.

You know how there is midnight madness in college basketball?

Yes, stupid NCAA rules prohibit them from practicing until the stroke of midnight, October 15th.

And late night and games scheduled at weird times for basketball?

All professional games are scheduled at 7:00 pm, local time. ZOMG! WHY IS THIS GAME STARTING AT 9?! Time zones, buddy. Those of us that don't fly on private jets to attend every game of our favorite team have learned to deal with them.

I’m guessing that the only way to get all those games through a single TV network partner is to start very, very early or to go very very late.

Or have regional broadcasts, like they already do. Cubes probably has no idea that when the Mavs are on Fox Sports, the Rockets are on Fox Sports in Houston and the Spurs are on Fox Sports in Central Texas.

3. Say Goodbye to Cupcake Football Games

THANK GOD!

Sure Utah State can take Auburn to the wire every now and then, but the reality is most BCS title aspiration (not all) schools have 3 or 4 cupcake games on their schedule.

Gotcha, so really good teams will have to play really well to go undefeated. Again, THANK GOD.

4. Goodbye Geographic Rivalry Games

Because Notre Dame/USC made sense.

All those natural rivalries of Texas A&M in and around the state of Texas will be impacted.

Possibly. Although A&M only has two actual rivals in the state. One is The University of Texas, and there's no way they stop playing each other. The other, by sheer technicality, would be TCU ("Gig 'Em" became a rally cry because "Frog gigging" is something hillbillies do for fun/when they are hungry. Hence, "Gig 'Em" essentially means "Kill the TCU Horned Frogs"). Oh, and before you say Texas Tech, they have no rival, because we all forgot about them.

And as far as new rivalries, it’s a long drive for fans from College Station to Alabama, Florida, South Carolina

*Looks at map*

College Station to Baton Rouge is 340 miles. Gainesville to Athens is 340 miles (yes I know they play in a neutral location, shut up).

I don’t care how good a game OU vs Oregon could hypothetically be...

Possible championship quality.

fans from both sides are going to second guess the economics of going to the games.

Cubes has clearly never met a Sooner. Their whole thing is road trips, straight down to their mascot.

IN CONCLUSION:
Things Cuban is good at:
-Cashing in on the dotcom boom
-Investing in tequila companies (note: fiction only)
-Getting role players from shitty teams in exchange for overrated players who don't fit into the Mavs

Things Cuban is bad at:
-Class
-Tact
-Haircuts
-Wearing cool clothes
-Understanding College Football

Sports Writing at its Finest

This is T.J Simmers. T.J Simers is a dick. Always has been and Always will be. On the surface it's not a huge problem, lot's of people are dicks. However, Simers is a dick who gets paid (handsomely) to write about sports.

Simers has this schtick where he acts like an asshole to players/coaches/fans in order to get a rise out of them, THEN he goes all "holy shit (insert individual/group/team) is an asshole"

He did it when he was on ATH and he's become quite good at it.

An example of this is his latest column ripping Marcus Thames.

Here's Simers gripes with Thames

-He's a power hitter (who mauls lefties) with below average fielding skills on balls in front of him. (Essentially Man Ram in the field)

-Thames wants his last name pronounced correctly.

-Thames walked away after Simers walked up to him and said:

"Are you that horrible on defense that teams don't think it's worth playing such a home run threat?'' I asked by way of introduction....When I came back on Tims/Tems, he sat silent. I can see one problem he might have on defense if everyone is relying on him to yell "I got it."

He said he wasn't going to talk to me because I hadn't introduced myself. That would have allowed him to pull out the little card the Dodgers' PR department provides players advising them how to get a running start on Page 2.

So basically his first interaction with a new guy on the team and his introduction is "Hey why do you suck so much on defense?" and he's upset that the guy wouldn't talk to him?

Nevermind the fact that the Dodgers got Thames for a 1 yr $1 mil contract. Nevermind that if he thinks Thames is that bad he should rip the Dodgers front office. Nevermind Thames' only job his entire career has been to pulverize lefties and hit homeruns.

No, here's the main problem is that Thames' mother was in a car accident when he was 5 causing her to be bed ridden for the rest of her life. Thames grew up on Welfare, and while still a junior in high school, joined the National Guard to make more money for his family. He is not an asshole or a stiff.

But enough about T.J Simers. The problem I have is that Simers does a hatchet job on a guy and he's considered a "professional journalist."

Spencer Hall of EDSBS fame was recently on a panel at SXSW dealing with the future of blogging. One of the topics dealt with the respect, and opportunities teams and leagues will grant bloggers.

The issue I've always had with sports journalism is the fact that nothing really grants you "authority" to be a good sports writer. It's not like being a doctor or lawyer where you have to know certain shit, and pass certain tests in order to practice your profession.

What's that you say? J-School? T.J Simers, Shaughnessy, Jay Mariotti, Mike Lupica, Bill Plashke, and my personal favorite Mitch Albom all went to J-School.

Your argument is invalid.

But honestly, those guys get to go to the biggest sporting events in the world, and write absolute pure shit.

Meanwhile, Free Darko, Matt Hinton, and others are left to be lowly bloggers.

Just food for thought.