8 comments It Appears The Mike Celizic Tag Is No Longer In Use

As many of you may have heard, Mike Celizic, or "Hat Guy" as he is more commonly referred to by many, passed away today from cancer. I have gone after him a few times in the past on this blog for his New York and Boston-centric takes on everything. He tended to view every event in baseball through the eyes of how it affected the Red Sox and the Yankees and also tended to write journalism I disagree with him upon. Obviously, I am sad to hear that he has passed away and I never harbored him any ill will. The purpose of this site isn't to ensure those who write bad journalism pass away, but to mock them endlessly for writing bad journalism and hoping they live a long healthy life to eventually see the error of their ways.

Not to get overly sentimental, but it is odd to have a occasional target of mine like Celizic pass away. I never wrote about him too much, but when you read what someone has written on a weekly basis like I tried to do with his work (and I read it not to find things I liked) then you feel like you know the person just a little bit. I have never met him, but I knew enough about him from his writing to have an idea of what he was like. He was writing a cancer journal for Today.com and his last entry is a good read. It's painfully more honest and well-written (for obvious reasons) than many of his columns I covered here were and I enjoyed reading it. He had to make some tough decisions towards the end and it is clear he was at peace with his decision. I just hope they bury him with his hat. It would only be right.

-(Now for a sudden change in tone)

(No more sentimentality ahead)

(Last chance to change the tone in your mind with which you read what I am writing)

I was watching the Braves-Phillies game (more like it was a massacre if considered in the context of the entire series) on Monday evening and Joe Simpson, who analyzes games for SportSouth, made the following comment:

(Disclaimer: I like Joe Simpson on the whole and not just because he broadcasts Braves games)

He said, and I am paraphrasing since I couldn't find the comment anywhere on the Interwebs...

"Privately, and I think Phillies players and management will deny telling you this...but the Phillies do not want to come to Atlanta in October with the NL East still undecided. I think they want to wrap it up as soon as possible to avoid having to play the Braves in Atlanta with the division title still up for grabs...that's the sense I have gotten."

You think? You mean the Phillies will tell you privately, not publicly of course, that they would like to win the NL East division as soon as possible so they can rest players and set their postseason rotation? Does this differ from the feelings any team has at the end of the year? Every team wants to wrap up their division quickly so they can set their postseason rotation and not have pressure during the last days of the season.

I think, and I am sure the Phillies would tell me this privately as well, the Phillies players would like to clinch the NL East in mid-July or perhaps before the season actually starts. I think the Phillies' feelings about winning the division early has more to do with clinching the division as soon as possible than it has to do with their fear of playing the Braves in Atlanta. No team wants to play anywhere on the road the last week of the season having to win games to clinch their division.

-We all know Murray Chass hates technology, so naturally it makes sense that he wouldn't like the Wild Card system either. I personally don't hate the Wild Card because I feel like only letting four teams in the playoffs before 1994 was the wrong thing to do. It tended to leave out competitive teams that may have deserved an opportunity to appear in the playoffs. I like the Wild Card, and in fact, I think the fact that four teams have won the World Series as the Wild Card shows it has a place in baseball and was the correct move to add two more teams to the playoffs (actually four teams since three divisions instead of two divisions were implemented at the same time as the Wild Card was introduced).

I don't think it dilutes anything to have a team that didn't get first place in their division make the playoffs. The Rays absolutely deserve to make the playoffs this year since they have proven they are the third-best team in the American League this year. Why should they not make the playoffs simply because they are cursed to be in the same division as the Yankees? So I like the Wild Card and Murray Chass doesn't.

When the subject is the wild card, two thoughts come to mind: how Bud Selig gets/takes credit for its creation and how the president was the only owner who objected to it.

I don't recall Barack Obama objecting to the Wild Card in the mid-90's.

George Bush, of course, wasn’t the president yet; otherwise he wouldn’t have been the owner of the Texas Rangers and in position to object to the creation of the wild card.

George Bush, of course, isn't the President anymore. The correct term is ex-President.

He didn’t necessarily object to the wild card itself, but he opposed the change to three divisions in each league, which was tantamount to opposing the wild card.

Eh...kind of. George Bush never objected to the actual Wild Card so it is hard to say he was the only owner who objected to the Wild Card. He objected to the entire re-alignment that put his team in the AL West. So he seems to have opposed the Wild Card only through the proposed re-alignment of the divisions.

If someone kidnaps my child and takes him/her to Montana, I am not objecting to my child going to Montana, I am objecting to him/her being kidnapped. If my favorite restaurant announces it is only going to serve turkey burgers with mustard covered leeches as a side and I object to this because I don't like mustard covered leeches, it doesn't mean I am objecting to turkey burgers as well.

I'm not sure if we can deduce that George Bush objected to the Wild Card simply because it was a part of the divisional realignment plan, which was what he really didn't like.

Under the proposed three-division format, the Rangers would have been placed in the American League West and would have been two time zones from the division’s other teams. Bush believed that difference would have had too severe an economic impact on the Rangers’ television and radio advertising revenue.

Nowhere in there does it seem that George Bush didn't like the Wild Card system. He did not like how the divisions were re-aligned and he sort of had a point. Texas is sort of central in the United States, not on the West Coast. Of course one team had to go to the AL West and I guess the Rangers were the obvious choice.

I have never been a fan of the wild card because I have always believed a team should have to win something, a division or league title, to compete in the post-season for the ultimate championship.

How about out of the 15 years the Wild Card has been in place, four times a Wild Card team has won the World Series? Isn't that proof enough on its face these Wild Card teams deserve to compete for the ultimate championship? The Atlanta Braves and Tampa Bay Rays (the projected Wild Card winners in each league) going to be pushovers in the playoffs? Well, the Braves may be, but the Rays won't.

The Boston Red Sox have an 83-68 record in the AL East and will not make the playoffs because two other teams in their division have the division and Wild Card lead. The Texas Rangers have an 83-67 record, which is pretty much the same as the Red Sox. The Rangers would miss the playoffs if they played in the AL East, but because they will "win something" Murray thinks they deserve to make the playoffs and the 89 win Rays should sit at home. This doesn't make sense.

In the National League, the Braves are tied for the second-best record. Should they miss the playoffs because they happen to be in the same division as the Phillies when they would either be tied for the division lead or winning the division if they played in either the NL Central or NL West? To say a team has to "win something," that means getting rid of the Wild Card is to base a team's "winning something" on the division they were placed in and ignoring the claim a team with a better record may have to be in the playoffs. I don't see how the possibility that each year the three best teams in each league may not all be in separate divisions can be ignored.

Furthermore, the existence of the wild card undermines what otherwise would be a scintillating division race. A perfect example exists right now.

It must be opposite day. Because a perfect example of this statement being bullshit exists right now. There are 3 teams fighting for 1-2 spots in the playoffs in the NL West. Three teams and there are 1-2 spots for those teams in the playoffs and the three teams are separated by 2.5 games. Last year the Tigers and the Twins had a one-game playoff to see which team deserved to win the AL Central because they had identical records when the season ended. The winner of this one-game playoff went home and the loser went to the playoffs. So fuck the idea there is a lack of drama. It still exists.

The Yankees and the Rays have the best records in the majors. Both are in the same division and should be involved in a terrific race for the A.L. East title. But the race is meaningless. Both teams are virtually certain to make the playoffs, one as division champion, the other as the wild card.

Great cherry-picked example. How about the two examples I just gave where three teams are competing for potentially one spot in the playoffs? How about the NL East where the Braves are slowly losing the division and possibly a Wild Card spot at the same time? How about the AL East where the Yankees beat the Rays head-to-head, which gave them a large lead and decided which team got home field advantage (at the time) throughout the playoffs.

In 1993 the San Francisco Giants won 103 games but didn’t gain a playoff spot because the Atlanta Braves, then in the National League West, won 104 games and the N. L. West title. The Giants took their 103 wins and went home.

Naturally, because the Giants didn't "win something" they had to go home and miss the playoffs. That Giants team had the second-best record in MLB that year...by six games. But they didn't "win something" so they went home and that makes sense to Murray. Without the Wild Card, the second-best team in all of baseball missed the playoffs in 2003. Shit happens, but it doesn't have to happen. It's not like MLB expanded the playoffs to include almost half the teams in the majors when the Wild Card was introduced. Only eight teams still make the playoffs, which is less than any of the other major sports.

The strength and value of the wild card, its proponents argue, is that it keeps more teams in post-season contention later into the season, and it’s hard to argue with that.

Really, why would we want baseball to be more exciting? It's better to have teams out of contention late in the season to curb fan interest and all.

I also enjoy how Murray basically says he can't argue with the advantages of the Wild Card...but naturally he still doesn't like the Wild Card.

There are years like this, where the wild card is decided early.

Murray does realize there is this thing called "the National League," right? The Wild Card in the National League is not even close to being decided. So if you believe there is only one league, and that is the American League, then the Wild Card is decided, but otherwise the Wild Card has not been decided early in both the American and National League.

the N.L. wild card race is wide open. Recent developments have altered that landscape as well as the division competition.

And now Murray contradicts himself when he said the Wild Card was decided early. Murray probably thinks it is a terrible thing to have a Wild Card race. What's this "competition" thing that is going on? Isn't that bad for baseball to have more teams be in contention for the majority of the year? That's not how things were done back in his day!

Until Tuesday night, the Braves had been in first place in the N.L. East since May 31, basically 60 percent of the season that had been played. The Phillies had been the wild-card leaders. Suddenly they switched places.

The Giants were 6 ½ games behind the Padres in the N.L. West Aug. 25, but 10 games later – 10 games that the Padres lost – they were only a game behind San Diego.

Murray is doing a really shitty job of convincing me the Wild Card needs to go away forever. If anything, this is proof the Wild Card works as a way to let competitive and deserving teams into the playoffs.

Not to be overlooked are the Colorado Rockies, the comeback kings of recent seasons. They are threatening to do it again. The Rockies were 11 games out as recently as Aug. 22, cut their deficit to 7 games by the start of this month and were 4 ½ out when the Padres ended their losing streak at 10.

How boring to have three teams making a run at the division and the Wild Card like this. Get rid of the Wild Card permanently!

The wild cards have attracted enough positive attention to prompt some people to suggest that baseball should add more wild cards to the playoffs.

I don't think more Wild Cards should be added. The MLB playoffs are fine like they currently are.

Fortunately, though, the commissioner has said that won’t happen.

It's ever so fortunate, because we wouldn't want to risk the current disaster that the Wild Card system represents. How terrible that a team with a better record than a division winner would actually have a chance to play that division winner head-to-head in the playoffs to determine which team is actually better.

5 comments Mike Celizic Has Written Another Ridiculous Column

Mike Celizic thinks that because Duke is in the Final Four, this makes the Final Four more interesting. He could not be more wrong and this is the very reason that nobody likes Duke University's college basketball team. I realize Duke is a polarizing topic and many people will tune in to watch them either win or lose, but I don't think if the games were Michigan State-Butler and West Virginia-Baylor the Final Four would be boring. That would mean there are three teams in there who haven't won a National Championship in the modern era and I think that is interesting.

The problem lies in that the media LOVES Duke to a fault. It annoys me to hear that Duke is NEEDED in the Final Four this year to make it interesting. I just don't think it is true. The other teams are good teams and would have made for a competitive and exciting Final Four regardless.

I believe Celizic thinks Duke saves EVERYTHING, as evidenced by this column from 2007.

This Final Four has a #5 seed in Michigan State that was in the National Championship game last year. Tom Izzo has made 8 Elite Eight appearances since 1999. EIGHT! His Michigan State teams have made 6 Final Four appearances since that date as well. SIX! (I will quit writing in caps now). If there is an elite team in the Final Four the college basketball world should be happy is there, it is Michigan State.

This Final Four also has #5 Butler led by a team that I had losing in the 1st round. They aren't Cinderellas, but instead are well-coached players. It is nice to see a non-Cinderella mid-major make the Final Four.

West Virginia is a #1 seed disguised as a #2 seed. They are the best team left in the tournament in my mind. They are led by seniors and they are a tall athletic team that runs an interesting 1-3-1 zone defense. Maybe the name "West Virginia" isn't sexy, but who cares? Their presence in the Final Four doesn't make it a boring Final Four.

To me, a "boring" Final Four is where there is no real mystery as to who will win the championship or the games don't seem like they will be exciting (or in retrospect were not exciting). I think a "lowly rated" Final Four is where viewers don't really care about the games for whatever reason, whether it be the teams aren't very exciting or some other reason. I think these are two separate things. A highly rated Final Four is something CBS wants, but it doesn't mean the games aren't boring, while a "boring" Final Four doesn't mean the games aren't going to be highly rated. I am rambling, but what I am saying is that television ratings don't make a Final Four exciting, at least in my mind. Duke didn't save the NCAA Tournament by making the Final Four either.

There are good teams still in the Tournament and I honestly find the fact any of these four teams could win the National Championship as exciting. Did we really think last year any team but UNC-CH was going to win? They blew out nearly every team they played, including Michigan State in the championship game. THAT was a boring Final Four. I personally differentiate between a "boring" Final Four and a "lowly rated" Final Four.

From this poll NBCSports did, in response to this column, it seems like I am in the minority, which is fine. Like I said, I think Mike Celizic is getting a lowly rated Final Four confused with a boring Final Four. I know ratings are king, but they are not king in my mind when it comes to actual excitement of the games.

Enough introduction, on to Celizic's column.

Duke's players and fans weren't the only ones celebrating the Blue Devils' win against Baylor Sunday night.

You can bet CBS executives were doing the same thing.

Meanwhile, intelligent Duke fans were throwing up into a trash can at the fact these first 2 sentences have completely perpetuated the idea that Duke is a team which has the favor of the media and the officials. Thanks Mike Celizic, now please go swimming in shark infested waters.

When the day started, the TV folks faced the very real possibility of trying to sell a Final Four composed entirely of Cinderellas.

This is absolutely not true. How in the hell is Michigan State a "Cinderella" team? How the hell is West Virginia, who deserved a #1 seed, a "Cinderella" team? If they had won the Big East regular season title, they would have been a #1 seed. Don't even get me started on Butler, which is a team that has been ranked for a good portion of this season and is a #5 seed. I had them losing in the 1st round, but they are NOT a "Cinderella" team. The media is so quick to claim a team that isn't a #1 seed is a "Cinderella" and everyone can see through that angle because it is not true.

That's not as appealing as it sounds. If everybody’s a Cinderella, than nobody is.

I like how the media goes out of its way to celebrate Cinderella teams, but in the end Celizic admits they aren't very exciting. Way to undermine the excitement of a Cinderella team. In this case, nobody is a Cinderella team. Find me a team that wasn't ranked this year that is in the Final Four. You can't. It's not like this a Final Four of nobodies.

That’s why CBS had to be hoping Baylor didn't beat Duke, the team nearly every college fan loves to root against.

Who gives a shit what CBS wants? The world shouldn't base its own excitement about the Final Four on what the hell CBS wants the Final Four to look like. They actually wanted Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky and Duke, but they didn't get it. This absence of "name" teams doesn't mean the Final Four is boring or would be boring without a name team.

A Bears win would have made for a marvelous Sweet 16 and Elite Eight weekend, one of the best ever. It would have given us three 5-seeds — Butler, Baylor and Michigan State —

Holy crap, are you kidding me? There are 65 teams in the NCAA Tournament and Mike Celizic can't get the rankings of these teams correct? Baylor was a #3 seed in the South bracket. This column has been up for going on 5 days now and no one has fixed this mistake?

There are a 1-seed, a 2-seed, and two 5-seeds in the Final Four. Please remember that a 5-seeded team is between the 17th and 20th strongest team in the country according to the tournament seeding committee. In what world is a Top 20 team a "Cinderella" or uninteresting?

Get your seedings correct at least though.

along with West Virginia, a team that last went to the Final Four in 1959, when Jerry West was their leading player.

But also a team that has been in the Top 10 all year. So they are a pretty elite team coached by an elite (if not a non-player graduating) coach in Bob Huggins.

Unfortunately, that's a group with great stories and no drama.

Fuck drama. I want interesting and competitive games.

The public usually wants superstars and celebrity.

No it doesn't. The media wants superstars and celebrities so it makes their stories about the games easier to write. The public wants good basketball games because most likely their teams aren't in the tourney anymore and they want to be entertained.

The media is infatuated with big names and being able to hype up games, while I would guess a good amount of the public doesn't care for this hype. For the past 2 weeks we have been celebrating times when teams we haven't followed as much have done well in the tourney, why would it no longer be exciting to see Butler try to beat Michigan State? Why would it have been boring to see Baylor rebound from a player killing his teammate just a few years ago and now the team is in the Final Four? Scott Drew has done a fantastic job with the program and it would have been great to see LaceDarius Dunn play in the Final Four against West Virginia.

When the biggest name is Michigan State, that doesn't cut it.

Yes, it does. There is an elite team in this Final Four and that is Michigan State. Duke has nowhere near the resume of Michigan State over the last 11 years when it comes to doing well in the NCAA Tournament. Tom Izzo is the best in-game coach in the nation. Simply because Michigan State is not located on the East Coast doesn't mean no one cares about how good they are or think they aren't an exciting team. Only having Michigan State in the Final Four would have cut it.

Would everyone like last year's Final Four again? The boring ass Villanova-UNC-CH game and the semi-exciting UConn-Michigan State game...followed by a terribly boring UNC-CH blow out of Michigan State in the championship game? Is it better to have elite teams and shit games? I don't think so.

True fans would be delighted to see Baylor instead of Duke playing for the championship, but true fans don’t drive the ratings, casual fans do.

Ok, I can't completely argue with this. I am not conceding the lack of a big name actually makes this a boring Final Four though. I will acknowledge casual fans' interest in the games, but I refuse to bow down to the perception the casual fan's interest in a matchup determines whether that games is actually exciting or not.

To get the casual fans involved, you need the biggest names.

CBS wants the casual fans involved, but I still don't think this means this casual fan's perception of the excitement of the Final Four determines whether the actual games are exciting or not.

Of course casual fans are going to only know and follow the bigger teams, but this doesn't mean the casual fan should be the judge of what is exciting or not. To say anything that doesn't satisfy the casual fan's standard of excitement is actually boring is like saying all the music on Top 40 radio should win Grammys because that is the music the casual music listener enjoys. It's like saying the top grossing movie of the year should be the Best Picture winner, because that is what the casual moviegoer liked the most. Listening to what the masses wants and following it, doesn't determine quality.

Duke is the best possible team to have in a Final Four. Like the Yankees, nobody’s neutral about the Blue Devils. You either hate them or love them.

That's true. They are a team that divides many. It's hard to find someone who doesn't either hate or love them. Even occasional college basketball fans like Bill Simmons, who only pay attention to write an article once a year on college basketball, tries to be cool and hate Duke.

Haters think the Devils' fans are arrogant snots, that the coach is a pinch-faced biddy and that few of the players are NBA-bound.

Which is sort of wrong. You can put together a pretty good team of Duke graduates in the NBA right now.

The other side thinks the fans are fabulous, that the coach is a combination of Knute Rockne and Mother Teresa and that the players are the embodiment of self-sacrifice and teamwork.

And flopping.

The statistics back that up. When George Mason went to the Final Four in 2006, nobody watched. The Patriots lost, and the title game between Florida and UCLA was watched by six million fewer viewers than the previous year and was the lowest-rated championship since 1975.

I think we can all agree that UCLA is a "name" program with a great history and they were an elite program in 2006. Why didn't this "elite" program draw viewers and make the games ever so exciting? Perhaps because the games in the Final Four weren't that exciting to watch regardless of who was playing.

On the other hand, in 1992, Duke-Michigan drew 34 million viewers, the most ever for a championship game.

Wow. What an absolutely misleading way to present the case for Duke. This was 1992 when the Fab Five of Michigan was not a team, but a cultural revolution, with their baggy pants and their very urban way of playing the game and acting on the court. This was the dawn of Tupac, Biggie and other "gangsta" rap when it came to the mainstream. This game wasn't really a game but a collision of the stuffy white culture of Duke (whether this is true or not) and the urban "playground" and baggy shorts culture of Michigan (whether this was true or not). This game wasn't even about Duke, I think it was about Michigan and the Fab Five as much as anything. I would not be shocked to hear the viewers tuned in to watch the Fab Five play as much as they tuned in to watch Duke.

Terrible, terrible example to prop up a "Duke makes everything less boring" argument. That game was about so much more than Duke drawing a crowd.

Then, in 2000, Michigan State-Florida drew 20.6 million, a big drop. The finals haven’t broken 24 million since. They’ve had a hard time, in fact, breaking 20 million.

Well, Duke played in the championship game in 2001...if they draw such a great crowd how come that game didn't increase ratings up to the 24 million the national championship drew from 1975-1999?

It would be the same this year without Duke.

Even though it was the exact same thing in 2001 with Duke.

That’s not to say there aren’t great stories in the Final Four. There are.

Great stories, huh? Are the games any good? That's all I want to know. Stories are for sportswriters to try give the game a storyline to sell copies of newspapers or get hits on their columns. The games are for the people. (Raises fist up in defiance)

Michigan State thrives in March. The Spartans have been to six Final Fours under Tom Izzo...But the team’s history of excellence doesn’t equal viewers when Magic isn’t on the team.

And of course viewers are really the only measurement of whether a Final Four is interesting or not. The games could all be extraordinarily close between tightly matched teams...but we have to appeal to the viewers who just started watching two weeks ago because they participated in an office pool and want to see how their teams are doing.

Then there’s Butler, the classic Cinderella, the kind of school that sends casual fans running to Google to find out which state it inhabits.

Mike Celizic is all about the casual fans. Let's get this straight, again, Butler is really not a Cinderella. They were 12th in the KenPom ratings and were also 12th in RPI. No matter whether we have heard of them or not, they are a good team. I regret underestimating them. I figured Matt Howard would get in foul trouble (like he does sometimes) and UTEP would be able to beat them in the 1st round. Obviously that didn't happen.

A classic Cinderella is a team like George Mason from 2006, not a team that was in the Top 25 all year and just happens to play in a "mid-major" conference. Realistically, Butler would not be considered a Cinderella if they had the exact same resume and came from the Big 12 or ACC.

They find out that Butler is not only an Indiana school, but its field house was the setting for the state tournament in “Hoosiers,” maybe the best basketball movie ever made.

This would also be incredibly irrelevant information in regard to whether Butler is a good basketball team or if they are going to make this a competitive and exciting Final Four. But hey, "Hoosiers" is a great movie.

But there can’t be more than a handful of people who have Butler in their Final Four, and people are more likely to watch a game in which they have a betting interest than one in which they don’t.

So from Mike Celizic's point of view, the entire point of a bracket is not to try to choose the winners and win some money, but it is a way that CBS has to increase ratings and viewership? Maybe in a round-about way, but I also would think the same people who have liked watching the tournament would like to watch Butler play Michigan State. I could be wrong.

For a lot of fans and non-fans alike, Duke is their last chance of rescuing something from the ruins of their devastated brackets.

I ran my work's tournament bracket this year and the people who chose Duke are in two categories:

1. People who love Duke and pick them every year.

2. People who hate Duke and want to jinx them.

Other than that, most of the brackets (and I am going by a sample size of 28 brackets here) chose Baylor or Villanova to come out of the South region. I was a little surprised at how many people didn't pick Duke to win the South region...please keep in my mind I live less than 70 miles from the Duke campus, so you would think they would be a more popular team to choose to win the South region.

So what I am saying is that I think the "bracket saving" angle may be a little overplayed by Mike Celizic.

If it means a shot at winning the office pool, you watch.

I chose UNC-CH last year and watched 2 minutes (literally, I quit watching at the 18:00 minute mark of the 1st half) of the game. I did not win the bracket, but I had a dog in the race and I didn't give a shit. So what I am saying is that even casual or diehard fans may not care about winning an office pool...at least not care enough to watch.

So, though Baylor would have been fun, we’re still left with a pretty good Final Four.

Right, we didn't need Duke to "save" the Final Four at all. It would not have been boring without them and it isn't going to be boring with them. Duke is a more "brand-name" team but if they weren't there the Final Four would not have been boring in the least. I would have greatly enjoyed watching a West Virginia-Baylor game, just like I would enjoy watching a Michigan State-Butler game.

We’ve got a true Cinderella in Butler,

They are not really a Cinderella, but carry on...

an upstart Big East team in West Virginia,

Upstart- A person of humble origin who attains sudden wealth, power, or importance, especially one made immodest or presumptuous by the change;

Let's look at West Virginia's finishes in the NCAA Tournament since 2003-2004 and see if they their emergence in the Final Four can be described as "sudden" in any fashion:

2003-2004: NIT 3rd Round
2004-2005: NCAA Elite Eight
2005-2006: NCAA Sweet Sixteen
2006-2007: NIT Champions
2007-2008: NCAA Sweet Sixteen
2008-2009: NCAA 1st Round
2009-2010: NCAA Final Four

So while they haven't made a Final Four in long while, they have made the NCAA Tournament 5 out of the last 7 seasons and have made the Elite Eight once, the Sweet Sixteen twice, and now are in the Final Four. I wouldn't call them upstart at all because they have had a good program for a while, they just haven't made the Final Four. So I reject the "upstart" tag Mike Celizic puts on them.

a faithful sidekick kind of team in Michigan State

Faithful sidekick? You mean the most successful program in terms of making the Elite Eight over the last 11 years? Or do you mean the team that is the best coached and made the NCAA Championship game last year?

and the big, bad Dukies.

A team that hasn't been too successful of late in the NCAA Tournament and definitely not the reason the Final Four won't be boring.

If you are a Duke hater, you’re not happy.

But I thought Mike Celizic said Duke haters would be happy because they want to watch them lose and that makes them watch the game? So I guess this unhappiness turns into incredibly intrigued viewers.

If you’re CBS, you're ecstatic.

We shouldn't care what CBS thinks about this. Duke's participation in itself doesn't make this an exciting Final Four. The three other teams stand alone in the success of their program, especially Michigan State, and if Baylor had made the Final Four it would still be exciting. This is the exact kind of article that makes people hate Duke and makes me hate writers who believe the entire world revolves around Duke.

15 comments 3 Articles For Friday or How I Learned To Hate Realignment

There is one of my uncreative titles for a post again. Maybe I should think of more creative titles to draw in readers, but I sometimes don't have the energy to think of something uber-creative so somebody Googling a couple random terms can accidentally come upon this blog. It would be nice if that happened and I always encourage people to just check it out, but creative titles sometimes end up with the blog being found by people Googling terms like "Hitler," which I am not a fan of. So today I have three articles I want to cover.

There is still a few spots left in the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league. Sign up if you would like to. The information to sign up is in yesterday's post.

Tom Verducci is covering the realignment plan that Bud Selig has. A good two years ago today I tackled my first Verducci column and going back and reading it is a mix of "that wasn't too bad" to "I am embarrassed to have this exist" so I am not sure why I just linked it again. Either way, two years later Verducci covers the realignment plan of MLB and I don't like this idea.

When baseball commissioner Bud Selig named a 14-person "special committee for on-field matters" four months ago, he promised that all topics would be in play and "there are no sacred cows."

Speaking of sacred cows, how about fixing the All-Star Game? I am tired of defending the All-Star Game for mattering because the winner gets home field advantage in the World Series. Isn't there another way to make the All-Star Game matter? I have defended the tying of the All-Star Game winner to World Series home field advantage before, and I would possibly do so again, but I am only one person. Fix this so I don't feel so alone.

The committee already has made good on Selig's promise by discussing a radical form of "floating" realignment in which teams would not be fixed to a division, but free to change divisions from year-to-year based on geography, payroll and their plans to contend or not.

I am not a traditionalist and I am adverse to change in my life so I may be predisposed to hate this idea, but doesn't this idea seem dumb? I like knowing the Braves are playing the Marlins, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies in their division from year-to-year. I like this. I don't want to find out before the season the Braves are now in a division with the Pirates, Cardinals and Padres now. I don't want to be in that division (well, competitively it would look better than playing the Phillies).

I feel like Bud Selig wants to not be seen as a conservative, traditionalist, behind-the-times commissioner so he floats out the idea of a radical change. "Floating realignment" sounds like something that would be done to my car by a mechanic in space or something out of a science fiction novel. Throw in the fact I think the idea is dumb and I am not in favor of this plan. Radical ideas are great, stupid radical ideas are not great.

The concept gained strong support among committee members, many of whom believe there are non-economic avenues that should be explored to improve competitive balance, similar to the NFL's former use of scheduling to help parity (in which weaker teams were awarded a weaker schedule the next season).

Fine. Let's compromise. Do that, but don't change the divisions every year. Let the Marlins play the Pirates every year and draw 4,500 per game or make the Yankees have a harder schedule, but leave the divisions alone. The NFL is able to use this scheduling parity and keep the same divisions, baseball should be able to do it as well. Great, its done. I am glad we decided this in a timely fashion.

As with most issues of competitive balance, floating realignment involves finding a work-around to the Boston-New York axis of power in the AL East.

As most things do in the world, this revolves around those two teams. Really, why shouldn't it? I am at the point I wish Boston-New York would just play each other all 162 games and the winner of that series can play the winner of the actual baseball season that happens during the year between the other teams in the American and National Leagues. The World Series wouldn't be the World Series because the winner would play the Yankees-Red Sox 162 game winner and THAT would be the World Series.

Why was no one concerned when the Braves won 14 straight division titles? Why wasn't there a call to end their reign in the NL East/NL West? Because it was just one team doing the winning and they would later choke in the playoffs?

In the 15 seasons during which the wild-card system has been in use, the Red Sox and Yankees have accounted for 38 percent of all AL postseason berths.

The Colts, Patriots, and various other NFL teams have made the playoffs on many occasions over the past couple of years and no one gives a shit about this. Why is it such a problem in baseball? Because they spend the most money? Yes, that's the real problem. It has nothing to do with competition or anything other than the fact the Yankees and Red Sox spend more money and make the playoffs frequently.

The Yankees didn't always have the highest payroll in the majors every year and they won World Series doing this, but this didn't bother anyone until they started spending more money...even though when they spent more money they didn't get a whole lot of postseason results for a few years. If I have learned anything about baseball, it's always all about the Yankees and Red Sox.

Will Tommy Hanson or Jason Heyward end up on the Yankees or another high spending team in the future? Possibly. Will this eternally piss me off? Hell yes, it will. Does this mean I think the solution is to float divisions every year? No. The Yankees and other high spending teams are still going to sign players from my favorite team when/if they become free agents. From a competitive point of view, I think floating realignment may work because it will spread the Yankees and Red Sox around so other teams play them more often. It doesn't mean I like this idea. If the idea is the Yankees or Red Sox draw more fans than other teams, then this will help draw fans in Pittsburgh when the Yankees play them 9 times in Pittsburgh, but it won't do much about the Yankees having too much power overall when it comes to signing free agents or do much about them winning their division every year.

For those that don't like the constant stream of Yankees and Red Sox love that seems to come from places like ESPN, changing the entire divisional format of MLB in response to how good these teams are won't do anything to change this. "Tiger-proofing" doesn't work as well in baseball I don't believe.

The league has never conducted playoffs without the Red Sox or Yankees since that format began -- and in eight of those 15 years both teams made the playoffs. Since 2003 the Sox and Yankees have won at least 95 games 11 times in 14 combined seasons.

They have been good teams. There is no doubt about that. How many times in that span have teams like the Dodgers or the Cardinals made the playoffs? I know it isn't quite as much as the Yankees or Red Sox, but other teams have made the playoffs frequently since the Wild Card was instituted. The Yankees and Red Sox are good, that doesn't mean we change the divisions around to prevent them from making the playoffs...at least in my mind.

One example of floating realignment, according to one insider, would work this way: Cleveland, which is rebuilding with a reduced payroll, could opt to leave the AL Central to play in the AL East.

Here's the thing about reduced payroll. It's not always permanent. The Twins for example...remember when they were a small market team with a low payroll? Next year, they are schedule to raise payroll to almost $95 million, which just happens to be the same payroll the Braves (who are not considered "small market") have been stuck on for the past 10 years. I am just saying that payroll and money matters aren't always permanent, so to base the movement of teams on payroll may not work as well as advertised...I don't hate the idea, but I really don't like it.

The Indians would benefit from an unbalanced schedule that would give them a total of 18 lucrative home dates against the Yankees and Red Sox instead of their current eight.

So every team gets a chance to have better attendance when the Yankees and Red Sox come to town? That's the basis for this it seems.

A small or mid-market contender, such as Tampa Bay or Baltimore, could move to the AL Central to get a better crack at postseason play instead of continually fighting against the mega-payrolls of New York and Boston.

I know Tampa Bay has only won the AL East once, but they did win the division in 2008. Nothing says they couldn't do it again. Baltimore could also build a team that competes. It's not like Baltimore is afraid to spend money, they just haven't done it wisely of late.

I don't hate the Yankees or Red Sox, but I think it is stupid to build an entire divisional plan around them.

Divisions still would loosely follow geographic lines; no team would join a division more than two time zones outside its own, largely to protect local television rights (i.e., start times of games) and travel costs.

I'm just glad MLB is paying some lip service to the actual names of the divisions. But, the West Coast teams get screwed because they don't get 18 home dates against the Red Sox or Yankees. So the plan to help teams in regard to attendance only goes for teams in the AL Central.

Floating realignment also could mean changing the number of teams in a division, teams changing leagues and interleague games throughout the season, according to several sources familiar with the committee's discussions.

Teams changing leagues???? So one season the Cubs may have to build a team around having a DH, but then the next season they won't need a DH? If that happens, MLB has to either permanently get rid of the DH or use it throughout baseball. It's unfair to a team to make them change leagues, even if it is 1-2 teams every 5 years. American League teams build their roster slightly different from National League teams. Making teams change conferences doesn't make sense to me. I don't like this idea.

Interleague games doesn't bother me as much. I know those who don't like interleague play think it ruins the World Series. The ALCS and NLCS aren't ruined by those teams having played each other during the season, so I don't think the World Series would be ruined either by more interleague games.

"But if there is something that comes up we feel should be addressed during the season, we can make a recommendation then," said committee co-chair and Braves president John Schuerholz, referring to less complicated issues such as pace-of-game directives.

Let's take care of those less complicated issues, like the fact baseball games go too long alienating viewers and reducing fans' interest in the sport and games, later. Who cares if Andy Pettitte takes a fucking lunch break between pitches as he hides behind his glove and decides whether to throw to first base or just stare at the catcher for another 15 seconds...WE NEED TO MAKE SURE PITTSBURGH, A TEAM THAT HAS SHOWN NO INTEREST IN PUTTING TOGETHER A COMPETITIVE TEAM, DRAWS A GOOD CROWD FOR AT LEAST 18 GAMES IN A SEASON!

If MLB wants to deal with competitive issues, figure out a way to make the Pirates and Royals competitive, and then figure out why they insist on taking a crap all over their fan bases with shitty signings and even worse trades. Personally, I think the pacing of the game is a bigger issue at this point. It's not just Andy Pettitte or one certain team, pitchers and hitters take too fucking long between pitches. I know there is strategy involved, but the game would probably increase in popularity if it didn't take 3 commercial breaks to get through a late inning because of pitching changes or the pitcher is throwing to first base 4 times in a row. I don't find these issues to be that much "lesser" and I find them to be competitive issues as well.

The floating realignment idea is nothing more than a concept at this point, part of the brainstorming sessions that have occurred in the committee's one in-person meeting and occasional conference calls.

Well, I don't like this concept.

But what is important is that the committee is making good on its mission to look at absolutely any on-field idea that could make the game better.

Before realigning divisions, I think the committee should look at pace-of-game problems (especially in the playoffs) and finding a way to help other teams compete the way the Yankees and Red Sox have. I don't think changing the divisional alignment is the answer to this. I really don't think having teams change leagues (unless the AL West got another team, which I would actually think is a good idea) is a solution either.

Blowing up fixed divisions as we know them -- and even leagues -- certainly qualifies as radical thinking.

Radical thinking doesn't always mean "good thinking." I just don't like this idea of floating realignment.

-Bill Conlin has an article up talking about how the current Phillies infield may be the best infield ever. I don't necessarily disagree with this, but he says some things I feel like I need to talk about.

Imagine if Tinker, Evers and Chance had put up the kind of numbers that Rollins, Utley and Howard routinely put up.

That would have been awesome. Imagine if Tinker, Evers and Chance played in an era when the baseball being hit didn't have the density of a wet diaper. Imagine if they played when the ball when it with the bat would go about as far as a wet diaper also. Again, I don't want to sound like I am saying this isn't the best infield in the modern era, but I think to compare them to a 1906 team is a bit of a poor comparison.

In fact, I think this Phillies fan broke down the argument into numbers pretty well. I will let you see his numbers, while I pick apart what Conlin is writing with my words.

Now, Placido Polanco is back. Polly brings less arm to the position but is a career .300 hitter and will do some wonderful things in the No. 2 hole.

Is Polanco the #2 hitter for the Phillies? I know Victorino has been in that spot for all of last year and seemed to do pretty well there. He has speed and a .370 OBP in that spot from last year. I didn't know for sure and tried to find some factual information on this issue, but I think Victorino is going to stay at the #2 spot. Phillies fans, please correct me if I am wrong. I have looked at box scores for spring training and in some Polanco is in the #2 spot and in others Victorino is in the #2 spot.

My point is this may not happen. Polanco may not be the #2 hitter.

Polanco hit just 10 homers for the Tigers last year, playing in one of baseball's toughest home-run parks.

Ok, so we have Polanco with 10 home runs last year.

He has a chance to hit 15-plus in the friendly alleys of the Bank,

So Bill Conlin thinks Citizens Bank Park can add 50% more home runs to a player's total? This is where I am having the major problem with this column. Polanco has gone from a pitcher friendly park to a hitter friendly park, shouldn't this factor go into the "the best infield ever" argument? If Citizens Bank isn't a hitter friendly venue then how does Bill Conlin think Polanco will increase his home run total by 50% from last year?

J-Roll hit 21 homers last year in a season when he was MIA most of the first half. The Gold Glove shortstop has hit as many as 30.

I am not dismissing what Rollins has done here. Citizens Bank opened in 2004. Rollins' home run career high was 14 home runs before that point. After that point he has had 14, 25, 30, 11, and 21. Granted, this can be explained by Rollins being in the prime of his career from 2004-2010 also. Rollins has also hit as many home runs on the road as at home during every year of this period except 2006 and 2007. So Rollins doesn't seem to have benefited from Citizens Bank Park too much in regard to home runs he hit there. He has hit more home runs at Citizens Bank, but not too many more home runs.

The same thing goes for Ryan Howard and Chase Utley. They have pretty equal splits as well, so that theory has been debunked. So we can't really say playing in Citizens Bank Ballpark is the reason for these player's prolific home run totals. So basically if Polanco has similar splits to the other three parts of "the greatest infield ever" his home run totals won't be assisted too much by the move to Citizens Bank Ballpark. 15 home runs for him may be an overestimate.

Ok, moving on.

And ponder this . . . Has any non-expansion team ever had the three best players in franchise history at the same time?

WOW! Really Bill Conlin? Didn't Mike Schmidt ever play for the Phillies? Only for 18 years and can't he easily be considered the best third baseman of all-time? Isn't he one of the franchise's best players? Apparently not in the opinion of Bill Conlin. This is idiocy.

How about Robin Roberts, Chuck Klein, or Steve Carlton? I think it is a bit insane to call Rollins, Utley, and Howard the three best players in franchise history. Let's not get carried away.

The closest I could come was Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider from Brooklyn's Boys of Summer.

Still wrong. Sandy Koufax or Don Drysdale maybe? Why do they have to be hitters to be considered the best player in a franchise's history?

And how often have you seen a major league infield line up 1-2-3-4 in the batting order?

It's debatable if this is actually going to happen. I would put Victorino 2nd in the order personally.

it is hard to find infields that can match the Phillies' output. The Dodgers had two great ones in Brooklyn's Cox, Reese, Robinson and Hodges, then LA's Cey, Russell, Lopes and Garvey. But both fall far short in overall power.

And of course home runs and RBI's are the only way to determine whether a baseball player and infield is any good or not. There is no other statistic that can determine how good a baseball player truly is/was.

Pat Gillick was the Baltimore Orioles' GM in 1996, when an infield of B.J. Surhoff, Cal Ripken, Robbie Alomar and Rafe Palmeiro put up some sick numbers. With Rafe "With God As My Witness" Palmeiro leading the way by producing 39 homers and 142 RBI, that infield pounded 108 homers and drove in an amazing 420 runs, an average of 105 for each infielder. But, sorry, Palmeiro hangs an asterisk on those numbers.

Even though it was debatable as to whether Palmeiro was using steroids at that point. I searched and searched and couldn't find any actual proof that Palmeiro was on PEDs at that point in his career. It's possible of course.

It doesn't matter, we can't have the three best players in Phillies franchise history overshadowed by this Orioles infield. Conlin will just assume Palmeiro was using steroids at that point in his career. He probably did, but this is still a bit of speculation.

Feel free to argue. And maybe somebody can come up with an eight-line poem that begins:

"These are the saddest of possible words:

"J-Roll to Chase to Ryno." *

I am not arguing with or against the idea Phillies current infield is the best infield in modern baseball. A normal writer would try to back this up with actual statistics, but Bill Conlin is old school, he doesn't need proof for his assertions. I actually like the statistics the Phillies fan that I linked had put together. I tell you what I know for sure, Rollins, Utley and Howard are not the three best players in Phillies history though.

Also, did Conlin put an asterisk in there to insinuate either Rollins, Utley or Howard had used steroids at one point in their career? What's up with that?

-Mike Celizic has just noticed there is college basketball being played this season. This is one of my least favorite March sportswriting devices. The whole "I have paid attention to other sports since October but now I am going to pretend I am alerting you to the fact college basketball is currently being played now that it is March...even though I am the one who is behind the times on this issue."

It also shows that Celizic is behind the times because it is clear he hasn't followed what has happened this season.

It’s the first Sunday of March. And that means college basketball. It means Northern Iowa vs. Wichita State, a game most sports fans wouldn’t think twice about.

Of course. Because Mike Celizic doesn't care, obviously no other sports fan does either. By the way, I respect Northern Iowa, but I don't think they are a very good team. I have seen them play twice and they aren't bad, but they also haven't played a ranked team all year and otherwise the strength of schedule isn't great either. I am going to be interested to see how far they can go in the NCAA tournament.

This is the beauty of March. Wichita State and Northern Iowa are important.

I don't completely like college basketball polls, but I would argue that any ranked team is pretty important in a discussion on college basketball just based on their record. Northern Iowa has been ranked for a good portion of this year. In fact, they are currently ranked at #25.

My point? My point is that Mike Celizic just started paying attention to college basketball and thinks because the school name "Northern Iowa" isn't sexy, the team isn't any good. He would be wrong. They even had an entire Sports Illustrated article done on them. They have been fairly prominent this year and have had their games featured on ESPN a few times.

I am being a college basketball snob. If you haven't paid attention all year, don't write an article about what a great and beautiful thing this time of year is. That makes you a college basketball fair weather fan.

All but one has a conference tournament. Northern Iowa won, so the Panthers are in. Wichita State took a seat on the bubble.

If Mike Celizic had actually read the article he just linked, he would see that Wichita State isn't mentioned in that article at all. They are mentioned in an article that is linked on that same page, but it's pretty clear Wichita State is not realistically on the bubble. Barring a miracle, they are out.

When the smoke clears on Sunday, the tournament committee announces the brackets.

Thanks for the update Mike. It's nice to know this is when the tournament committee announces the brackets. Without Mike Celizic, I would be lost.

In some ways this week is even better than the NCAA tournament.

In no way is conference tournament week better than the NCAA Tournament. I love conference tournaments but I don't find them to be better than the NCAA tournament in many fashions.

There are more teams playing more games, and there’s more at stake.

There is more at stake, but there are also more games between teams that aren't very good teams. Also, there is just as much at stake in the NCAA tournament since if a team loses at that point, there is no other tournament for them to play in. The season is over once a team loses in the NCAA tournament.

Most have to win to get in to the big dance.

A lot of the drama is taken out of this because most of the teams that have to win to get into the big dance are eliminated fairly early in the conference tournaments. I can accept this argument more easily for mid-major conferences, because many of these conferences only get one bid, so the team that wins the conference goes to the NCAA tournament and the rest go home.

This is not a time of year when any team leaves anything in the locker room. It all gets spilled on the court.

Hyperbole alert!

For all but the nation’s elite teams, every game is a Game 7. There is nothing like it in sports. Game after game and day after day, the team that loses goes home.

Why is the conference tournament better than the NCAA tournament again? Because even for the nation's elite teams, every game is a Game 7? The same goes for the NCAA Tournament except generally good teams are playing good teams.

The games are shorter, and the shot clock is 35 seconds as opposed to 24 in the pros, which further shortens the game. Every possession becomes more precious, which ratchets up the intensity.

This column is useless. Mike Celizic is basically just reviewing the rules of college basketball in order to fill space.

Some college teams could play four games in four days. Most winners will play three games, sometimes in as many days.

This is the definition of a useless column. He isn't saying anything of substance here and hasn't done so yet.

And after this week is done and the field of 65 is announced, we get three days to get our office pools together. Then it’s Thursday and Friday, the two best sports days of the year, when we get 32 games at eight sites in two days.

So to review: In some ways the conference tournaments are better than the NCAA tournament, but the first two days of the NCAA tournament are the two best sports days of the year. Apparently Mike Celizic thinks the other 2 days and 2 weeks of the 1st weekend of the NCAA tournament are really boring. He sees the conference tournaments are in some ways more exciting, yet also thinks the first 2 days of the NCAA tournament are the two best sports days of the year.

This is not a completely contradictory statement, but really I think the first 4 days of the tournament are the two best sports days of the year. I would love to know in what ways the conference tournaments are better than the NCAA tournament? In both cases, if a team loses they are potentially done playing for the year, so that really doesn't make the conference tournaments better than the NCAA tournament.

Like the conference championships, they’re all fought tooth-and-nail: 32 Game 7s over two days. Where does it get any better than that? Don’t bother answering. It doesn’t.

Apparently the other 16 games over the next couple of days aren't nail-biters nor are they played like Game 7s. I guess in the world of Mike Celizic the other two weeks of games can't be described like this either even though they are all single elimination and in most cases involve teams with higher skill levels playing each other, as compared to the first 2 days of the NCAA tournament. Personally, I think the entire tournament is played in this Game 7 manner, I don't know why Mike Celizic only spotlights the first 2 days.

The selection committee is right. The tournament doesn’t need more teams. It’s not as if the added teams would be threats to win the tournament. Most would be threats to win one game. A few would win two.

I agree with Mike Celizic on this. Yes, the world may be ending. I did a previous post on this issue, but I think the tournament should in no way expand.

So if you’re not capable of winning it and didn’t win a conference, shut up and be happy there’s the NIT.

Of course how would a team really know if they are capable of winning the NCAA tournament until they actually play in the NCAA tournament? That would be the argument those who want to expand to the 96 team tournament would say. This was such a rambling article. It starts off with how good the conference tournaments are, delves into how good the NCAA tournament's first 2 days are, and finally ends with a fairly unpersuasive argument against tournament expansion.

The NCAAs and conference championship week is already the best month of any in sports. You can’t improve it. Don’t even try.

As I sometimes say in regards to many sports columnists, I can't believe he gets paid to write articles like this. It was rambling, pointless, useless, and provided us all with no new important information or a different point of view. It's just a typical Mike Celizic article.

I will have four more MLB previews up tomorrow.

9 comments National Columnists Argue Over What Urban Meyer Should Do With His Life

As I am sure everyone has heard by now, Urban Meyer retired, unretired, and then took a leave of absence from the University of Florida football program all within the past three days. I have no idea why Urban Meyer did what he did. Apparently he thought his medical condition required extended time away from the Florida Gator football program, then decided he would miss the team too much and he didn't need to quit completely. Needless to say national columnists have had a field day with this. Ranging from Jay Mariotti doing his typical "Mariotti criticizing someone for a personal decision" column to Mike Celizic saying if Meyer was selfish by continuing to coach the team and even questioning why the University of Florida granted the leave of absence. It's a bizarre situation, no doubt.

The thing that has annoyed me the most is people have said he "pulled a Favre," and putting this situation in the same category as my least favorite waffler. It's not like Favre's situation at all. It would be like Favre's situation if Meyer retired from coaching and after the University of Florida had hired Dan Mullen to coach the team announced he wanted to come back and coach Florida. If he couldn't then he wanted to be released from his contract. Then Meyer went to the University of Wisconsin, retired after that year and then signed with the University of Alabama to be their head coach. Then, and only then, would the situations be comparable. You can't tell this to Mariotti and Celizic though.

Mariotti is first.

I am trying to understand the fluctuations of the human mind, the magnetic pull of pride and ego,

It sounds like Jay is trying to understand himself a little bit.

Mind explaining, Urban Meyer, what those very bizarre 24 hours were just about?

If there is a worse sportswriter who should be giving recommendations on how to lead their life than Jay Mariotti, I would love to know his/her name. Jay Mariotti gets paid to scream into a camera. He gets paid a lot of money for this. Here's all that is required to have this talent:

1. Find a camera
2. Pick a position on an issue
3. Scream into the camera

Mariotti has also alienated pretty much everyone in the entire world with his terrible sportswriting, and frankly, I think the only people who like him are paid to like him or at least paid to deal with him. Throw in the fact Mariotti's job is to just give his opinion on sports in emphatic fashion while being surrounded by food and drinks at all times and I just find it hard for Mariotti to understand what kind of advice is appropriate for Urban Meyer and his family.

So this is a man who should not be giving advice to Urban Meyer on life decisions in my mind.

All your anguish about slipping in and out of consciousness in the back of an ambulance, your heart heaving in pain and feeling heavier than a barge, your mortality teetering much too early at age 45? All your tears when telling your team Saturday that you were leaving the Florida football program for health reasons, sounding like you'd never return?

All a product of an overly emotional decision based on probably being very scared about his future health and coaching with this medical condition. It all sounds irrational, and it probably is. Meyer probably didn't want to be a "figurehead" coach like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden and was afraid if he wasn't 100% healthy he couldn't coach like he wanted to. Once he calmed down, he realized he could still coach the Gators and make life changes that will allow him to coach the Gators for 20 more years.

For the record, I don't like Urban Meyer and I hate the Florida Gators. I can be nice and fair to those that deserve it, but overall I wish Urban Meyer would never win another football game at Florida.

for all his decreeing and anger at everyone, I would think that Mariotti would be nicer since God has already put him on warning once before.

when your oldest daughter proclaimed, "I get my daddy back!'' and you suggested the scene with her was a message from God?

She is 18 years old and going to Georgia Tech next year, so it's not like she hanging around the house for the foreseeable future. She is 18 and calls her father "daddy." That's all I have to say about this.

What happened to the breakthrough perspective, the perfectly-in-place priorities that had you propped up like a clear-minded American hero during the holiday season?

It sounds like he changed his mind. He decided he could balance football and his health. It's his life, if he wants to die on the football field and leave his family without a father, this is a personal matter. That's probably not going to happen, but many of the same jerks who thought Meyer quit Florida to pursue other jobs (of which I was one and let's be honest, a lot of people initially thought that), can't now pretend they thought Meyer was really retiring for his family and criticize him for this decision.

Well, Meyer's grand stance for health and family lasted all of one night, until he awakened Sunday morning in the town he and Tim Tebow made famous. That's when he went to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for the Gators' final pre-Sugar Bowl practice in Gainesville, where he gazed at the national championship signs in the Swamp and noticed how lively and energetic the players were.

That reasoning is stupid, I can easily admit that. Still, this is a personal decision for Urban Meyer and I have to be honest a little bit, with his health problems not being life threatening I was wondering why he completely stepped down as head coach of Florida. I thought he should take a leave of absence and get his health under control and make lifestyle changes before he comes back...which is what he ended up doing. I thought retiring from coaching completely was a bit severe.

Coaching football is his life. It's easy to criticize him for this decision and completely not think about this. Meyer has worked for 20 years to get where he currently resides in the college football hierarchy. I am sure he loves his family, but he didn't work hard just to give it up when a health problem becomes a temporary road block. It sounds stupid, but it is true.

I wanted to believe Meyer when he said Saturday night that he was quitting in fear of dropping dead, that years of chest pains and an arachnoid cyst on his brain had forced him to value life as a husband and father over his continued journey atop college football's most accomplished program.

This is a lie. Jay Mariotti wanted Meyer to go coach another team or unretire so he could roast him really good in a column. Jay Mariotti himself had a heart attack. I am sure he made lifestyle changes and got back into sportswriting. Assuming Mariotti has family of some type don't you think at least one family member wondered if he would start taking it easier? Well he didn't and I don't think that makes him selfish, so I feel the same about Urban Meyer. Sure being a sportswriter and a head coach are two completely different things, they each have their own health challenges though. Meyer has to commit himself to lifestyle changes if he wants to improve his health. It was a temporary roadblock. I am a little surprised everyone is overreacting to Meyer's initial overreacting by retiring.

So much for Nicki Meyer, the freshman volleyball player at Georgia Tech, getting her daddy back.

Holy crap, she is going to college. She is not a 7 year old child anymore.

If it's too strong to describe his change of mind as disingenuous -- he is dealing with serious health issues -- I'm confused as to why Meyer didn't think things out before coming out so definitively the previous night, particularly in a piece in the New York Times.

He stupidly made an emotional decision and then regretted it. Something may be in the water down at the University of Florida because Billy Donovan did something similar when he backed out of the Orlando Magic head coaching job a few years ago.

If Meyer had made the decision non-definitively in the beginning the media would have firmly jumped on the "he is blaming his health but is completely trying to jump to a different football program or perhaps the NFL." So Meyer wanted to sound definitive, not knowing he would change his mind.

So how does the fear subside in a matter of hours? How does a life-and-death, self-destructive frame of reference disappear upon watching the Gators practice for 90 minutes? "I think it's very simple: the love that I have for these players,'' Meyer said Sunday. "When I saw them come out there today after our meeting we had last night ... when I sat back and watched them go at it and our coaching staff and the program we built, to not try would not be the right thing to do.

He sees his players as family. In bizarro sports world a coach who sticks around for his players because he gave them his word that he would coach them would be celebrated. I don't understand Meyer thinking of his players as family, but simply because I don't understand doesn't mean Meyer is making the incorrect long term decision for himself.

Upon hearing that, I looked over at Meyer's wife, Shelley, and the couple's three children.

Jay was probably just checking out Urban Meyer's daughter. He can't fool me.

Can the man change, take care of himself? "That's what we're about to find out,'' Shelley Meyer said calmly before she and her daughters, also speaking to the media, were interrupted by Foley and Florida sports-information personnel and whisked from the media center into waiting black SUVs.

I can't imagine Shelley Meyer is very happy with her husband's decision. Guess whose problem that is? Urban Meyer's. We don't need to give our two cents on everything, but that's how sports are nowadays everyone gives their opinion on everything and judges whether the decision was right or not.

And yeah, I do it too.

To Meyer's credit, he understands he'll have to change his style as the ultimate hands-on, do-everything coach. The chest pains tell him that much, along with the story of Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser, who died suddenly after a heart attack. "It's something that started about four years ago. It was chest pains that became rather significant two years ago,'' said Meyer, who never let on publicly about the problems until recently.

To be fair, Skip Prosser was 11 years older than Urban Meyer when he died and his heart attack was considered sudden, which means I am assuming Prosser hadn't gotten a lot of advance warning that his heart could give out. It's not like Prosser had warning and ignored the warning signs. Meyer has warning ahead of time and can make the necessary changes to his lifestyle. It's a little bit different situation.

So, how does a Type A maniac cut back? "That's something I've got to figure out,'' Meyer said. "There's obviously other coaches who have great careers and have done great things for a long time. I'm going to get that fixed ... I've had a 30-year career in nine years. You just can't do that.''

It's important to note that while Urban Meyer has an incredibly stressful job, there are thousands of people in the world who have incredibly stressful jobs and also have heart defects or other medical conditions that don't respond well to stress. My guess is that most of the people who have this problem in the world learn to navigate and manage the risk while not up and quitting their day job. It's a different situation, but few people accuse these everyday people of being selfish for not quitting their stressful jobs.

But I'm disappointed that Urban Meyer, blessed with wealth and success, didn't go out on his own terms in his mid-40s and make a statement for humankind.

That he is going to let a heart condition completely dictate how he lives his life? Has Jay Mariotti thought that perhaps there is a guy in Iowa who five years from now will be diagnosed with a heart condition similar to Urban Meyer's and that person will gain strength in knowing if a guy like Urban Meyer, who has a ton of stress in his life, can live with the heart problem so can he? This person will know it's not the death sentence or the health problem that will ruin his life and everything he does. Isn't that a bold statement in itself as well, even though it's not an immediately obvious or public statement? Isn't learning to manage stress and not let a health condition change what you enjoy in life sending a message as well?

Mike Celizic also has a take, other than "who is Urban Meyer?" and "if he doesn't coach for a team in Boston or New York I don't know who he is."

Celizic's take.

It’s about the team, not the individual, and you know that’s what Urban Meyer preaches because that’s what coaches do.

I think Celizic is a little confused. Urban Meyer decided to do what was best for the Florida team in the long run. So in a bizarre way, he lived up to this standard coaches set. In regards to his family, they will just have to understand this decision I guess. If they know him like most people know their parents/spouse, they will eventually understand.

But now he’s asking everyone — team, school, family — to sacrifice for him because he just realized that he’s more important than all of them.

Nearly everyone is perfectly willing to sacrifice for him because neither the Florida football program or his recruits are sacrificing anything in the long run. This sacrifice really only goes for Meyer's family, which makes this a personal decision he will have to live with making.

At least it doesn’t work both ways for most of us. If we’ve got a personal problem, nobody’s going to tell us to take a month or six months or even a year off while we sort it out and not to worry about money because the company’s going to keep paying us.

I think Mike Celizic is the only person in this situation who has a problem with the "leave of absence" part of Meyer's decision. Doesn't he realize how stupid it would be for the University of Florida to NOT grant Meyer a leave of absence while he deals with a personal medical condition? It's stupid even from a non-football perspective. Of all the times to compare what coaches and players do in sports to real life, this is probably one of the most irrelevant times to do this, when it comes to a coach's physical health.

I can't even fathom how NOT giving Meyer a leave of absence was the right decision in this situation.

It only works both ways if you’re as extraordinarily successful and charismatic as Urban Meyer.

Or work in sports. When an NFL player gets cut, his contract says he still gets paid a certain amount of money. In "the real world" many people when they are fired don't get severance packages. Urban Meyer is greatly valued at the University of Florida and I think everyone understands he has to take a few months off to benefit the school in the long run. This would be like not giving a professor with cancer a leave of absence to go through chemo-therapy. I am not sure a school would decline that leave of absence request either.

Win a couple of national championships, give inspirational talks about values and family and faith, attract the top recruits, inspire the alumni to write big checks to the general fund, and you can do anything you want.

Like take a few months off during the part of the season where the team doesn't play games to take care of a non-life threatening heart condition? That Urban Meyer sure is running all over the University of Florida administration isn't he? If we changed the name "Urban Meyer" to "Mack Brown" why don't I feel like we would get the same reaction from Mike Celizic? I think Celizic is being harsh on the University of Florida for granting the leave of absence because Meyer is a younger coach. At least that's my guess.

If Meyer were my football coach I’d bend so far over backwards for him a platoon of chiropractors couldn’t straighten me out again. I wouldn’t care about what’s right.

It's good Mike Celizic says he would do the same thing and give Meyer time off, but what's not "right" about this? So it would be "right" for the University of Florida to tell Urban Meyer, "either coach full-time with your health condition or retire from coaching football completely to get this heart problem taken care of?" This would be the right thing to do? How is granting Meyer a leave of absence not the right thing to do?

On Saturday, when Meyer quit his job because he feared for his heart and his health, he told The New York Times that when he told his family that he had coached his last, his 18-year-old daughter, Nicki, hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.”

Here we go again...

That hug, he told the newspaper, he took “as a sign from God that this was the right thing to do.”

Well, then Urban Meyer went to go talk to God's right hand man (Tim Tebow) and changed his mind. It's pretty clear from the immediacy of his decision to take a leave of absence instead of retiring was something he regretted very quickly.

If he changes his mind again, then I will jump all over Meyer.

Just a day later, when he went on the practice field and saw how spirited and upbeat his team was, he realized he couldn’t just quit.

Again, this is stupid reasoning. I can accept this criticism of Meyer as being valid.

But believing what you say and actually following up on it are different things. When your daughter says, “I get my daddy back,” that should be like a slap in the face telling you that you’ve been spending too much time in the office.

SHE IS 18 YEARS OLD AND GOING TO COLLEGE IN A DIFFERENT STATE NEXT YEAR! SHE IS NOT EVEN GOING TO BE HOME WITH THE REST OF HER FAMILY FULL-TIME FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS!

And when you find yourself texting recruits on your cell phone during church services, as Meyer has confessed to doing, then your faith does not come before your job. If it did, you’d leave the phone in the car.

Because Mike Celizic is the Joel Osteen of sportswriters. He is the final judge of whether a person's faith is the primary focus of that person's life. Once a person dies, he/she has to stand judge in front of Mike Celizic who will tally up all the times that person was doing something else when they should have been focused on their own personal faith. We all stand in judgment in front of Mike Celizic at some point.

Yes, all the other things he talks about are important, but nothing is more important than being what he is: a coach.

He's coached for the majority of his life. It essentially does define him at this point. I don't think this is such a bad thing as long as it doesn't negatively affect the rest of his life (which remains to be seen).

He’s got plenty of money to retire now if he wants, and there’s plenty more doing football analysis on TV. So there’s no reason to keep coaching and keep putting his health at risk. If it really were about family, he’d be an ex-coach now and not a coach-in-limbo.

It's his opinion, if he wants to put his health at risk then it's not Mike Celizic who dies or gets severely hurt, it's Urban Meyer and his family. It's his heart and he thinks he can manage the risks. I don't think this is something that should be put to a group vote outside of the Meyer family.

They don’t delegate. They’re consumed by the job in a way that few people can understand or appreciate. They try to control everything.

Urban Meyer said he is definitely going to try and succeed in making lifestyle changes, he said he was taking a leave of absence until he feels like he can come back health-wise. Then we will know for sure if he can make the necessary changes.

Meyer didn’t become perhaps the greatest coach in college football by not sweating the small stuff. He didn’t do it by putting his feet up and putting problems off for another day. He didn’t do it by cutting back on the time he spends with his team. He didn’t do it by accepting defeat.

And he especially didn’t do it by putting his family or anything else ahead of his job and his obsessive need to win and be the best and do right by his players and his employers and his fans.

So it was perfectly fine for Urban Meyer to get where he currently is by ignoring his family and making football first for the past 20 years? Regardless of some of the scares he has had on the sidelines? But now that everyone else in the world is aware of his heart problem and he is taking measures to take care of himself and his health it's not all right to put football first? What has changed except for Meyer's knowledge of his heart problem and the fact he needs to take time off to make lifestyle changes?

He’s a great coach and an awfully good man. But this one is still about him and not the team. And that’s not right.

Apparently it's fine to make a selfish decision that is all about him when he is retiring and not trying to coach the team and recruits he had made commitments to, but it's not fine to make a selfish decision when he decides to not retire and uphold all the job-related obligations he currently has? I just want to make sure I have this straight.

As far as Urban Meyer's family goes, if his family really thought he was going to just be able to stay away from coaching then they didn't know him that well. I am sure after years of he and his family knowing that there was some health problems he had and him still not taking a step back from coaching, the mere acknowledgment that he needs to learn to delegate and take time off to deal with his health is a relief to his family. We have to remember they have been aware of Meyer's health problem for a while now. I don't think he is being selfish right now, he is being selfish if he doesn't make the necessary lifestyle changes when he comes back though.

I have no idea why Mike Celizic is against the idea of a leave of absence for Meyer. I still don't get that. I think Urban Meyer has earned the chance to deal with his health problems and have the head coaching job still there for him if/when he wants to come back.

9 comments Mike Celizic Thinks Peyton Manning Should Play Better Defense

Mike Celizic, who just a few days ago mentioned that Eli Manning should be an outside MVP candidate, seems to believe that Peyton Manning is at fault for the Colts not winning 3 or 4 Super Bowls while he is the quarterback of the team. I mention the "Eli Manning for MVP argument" because in the article Celizic wrote that Eli Manning has the same amount of Super Bowl wins and appearances as his more-famous older brother, Peyton. This is a true statement, but while indicating that it is primarily the quarterback's responsibility to make and win a Super Bowl, Celizic forgets to remember that football is a team sport and there are other aspects of a team that are required for that team to be successful. Namely, defense and special teams.

While Eli Manning has developed into a nice quarterback for the Giants, it wasn't completely his doing that the Giants made the Super Bowl. He took care of the ball and played well, but the defense of the Giants was the unit responsible for shutting down the Patriots and the other teams the Giants played in those playoffs. Look at Eli Manning's playoff statistics. They are not bad, but they are also not overwhelmingly impressive. It's clear Eli helped the Giants make the Super Bowl, it wasn't completely his doing the Giants won 4 games on the road to the Super Bowl.

All of this is relevant today because Mike Celizic thinks that Peyton Manning is responsible for the Colts not winning more Super Bowls. He thinks Peyton deserves more heat for the Colt's playoff failures. I personally believe that while Peyton Manning hasn't exactly lit it up in his playoff appearances, the Colts lack of success is more of a team failure than a individual failure. I also believe any sportswriter who doesn't understand football is a team sport and does some research into other famous QB's playoff stats will see why Manning doesn't get the heat he "deserves" for the Colts playoff defeats.

In seven years, Peyton Manning will be 40 years old, and you can make book right now that you won’t find him playing for any team other than the Colts.

This is exactly the same thing everyone thought about Joe Montana, Brett Favre (not counting his time as a Falcon), Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, and a long list of other athletes not only in football but other sports as well. Who would have thought Michael Jordan would ever not be a Chicago Bull? Dan Marino almost came back to play for the Minnesota Vikings (what is so alluring about the Vikings to older quarterbacks?).

So basically, it is very premature to say Manning is going to play for the Colts his entire NFL career. If it all goes to hell for the Colts over the next couple of years, who is to say Manning wouldn't accept an offer from a team to come play for them or wouldn't be traded to another team?

And he will never fight with his coach over anything, whether it’s playing time or a pizza order.

I don't think we can say "never," but since Peyton Manning currently basically runs the Colts offense, this is a fairly safe bet to come true. If Manning ever loses some power to make play calls, audibles, or decisions on the field then he very well may start fighting with his head coach.

Who would have ever thought that Brad Childress would try and challenge the authority of Brett Favre? The same thing could happen a few years from now to Peyton Manning. I try not to say "never" anytime it comes to what athletes and teams will choose to do in the future.

I hope we think about that and appreciate it when the time comes, although it’s more likely we won’t.

Yes, if only there was some way we could appreciate Peyton Manning a little bit more. Here is a list of his major endorsement contracts from 2006. I would assume he has gained another one or two of them since that time. Peyton Manning and his Colts team are shown several times on national television playing their football games. Manning is also widely considered to be one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the NFL.

At some point, I am sure we will all start appreciating him a little bit more. Maybe we should build a statue in front of the White House or make his birthday as a national holiday? Outside of being given those two things, Manning is pretty well appreciated among the media and fans alike.

Good behavior tends to slip past our radar.

This is a one page article and Mike Celizic is killing space. That can't bode well for the rest of the column.

That’s why this year has been all about Brett Favre in the NFL. He spent the summer dancing the retirement tango, then won a bunch of games for the Vikings, and now he’s getting into sideline battles with his coach and forcing his teammates to choose between his ego and the coach’s authority.

I wouldn't exactly call what Favre has done as "bad behavior," but more like it was diva behavior that reflected poorly upon him. Since the beginning of the NFL season very few people have focused on Favre's retirement dance the past couple of summers and have begun focusing on his great performance as a quarterback at the age of 40 for the Vikings. Only this past Monday has anyone even thought about criticizing or focusing on Favre usurping his coach's authority...partially because no one knew this was happening.

This year, he’s the quarterback of the last undefeated team in the NFL.

I haven't heard anything about this. Why hasn't the media focused on the success of Manning and the Colts at all this season? I would think at some point there would be a story about Manning and the Colts coming close to having a perfect season. Where is Peter King to talk about this when you need him? WHY HASN'T ANYONE MENTIONED THE COLTS ARE PERFECT???? WHERE ARE YOU NATIONAL MEDIA WHEN I NEED YOU TO TELL ME THESE THINGS????

If he stays healthy, by the time he retires he’ll hold every passing record there is.

Not the record for most interceptions all-time. Brett Favre seems to have a stranglehold on that record.

Yet always, it seems, the story is about someone else who’s more interesting or more flamboyant or more charismatic or in more trouble with the law.

I have no idea what Mike Celizic is talking about here. Maybe because he only pays attention to teams from Boston and New York he doesn't realize Sports Illustrated did an entire mega-feature on Manning this year. I don't know how Celizic can miss this, but Manning is considered the best quarterback in the NFL right now by many people. I don't know how Celizic can say the story is always about another quarterback, because that is in no way accurate.

Let's just say, Peyton Manning is kind of a big deal...people know him.

This is a shame, because Peyton Manning is the face of excellence in the NFL or any sport.

The NFL knows this, which is why they have made him the face of the NFL and he is featured in pretty much any national advertisement for the NFL, has hosted Saturday Night Live, and you can't watch an NFL game on a Sunday without seeing an advertisement featuring his face.

He plays the most difficult position in sports with a level of skill not seen since, well, since forever. And nobody seems to notice.

I don't know if Manning is the best quarterback of all-time, which is what Celizic is indicating here, but he is definitely up there in the rankings. Also, everyone notices how great Manning is at being a quarterback. I am not sure there has ever been a football season that has gone by in which thousands of people haven't noticed that Peyton Manning is a good football player and a good citizen.

How about something regarding his failure to get to the Super Bowl other than in 2006, the year he won it?

Yes, Peyton Manning is a bum because he didn't play defense and special teams well during his career when the AFC has won 8 of the 11 Super Bowls since Manning entered the NFL in 1998. It's all his fault he plays in a tough conference and he can't singlehandedly score 40 points every playoff game to get his team into the Super Bowl. Every. Single. Year.

Manning and the Colts won four playoff games that year. Since then, they’ve won zero playoff games despite 25 regular-season wins in the past two seasons. Shouldn’t the greatest quarterback in the game do a bit better than that?

Yes, the greatest quarterback in the game should do a little bit better than that. Unfortunately, Peyton Manning is not the only player on his team, so he can't singlehandedly defeat other playoff teams. We also have to remember that Manning has played his entire career in a strong AFC Conference. The Patriots and the Steelers both have had strong teams nearly the entire decade. It's not like the Colts were the best team year after year.

Another fact to remember is the Colts do have 25 regular season wins over the past couple of seasons, but the NFL playoffs are a win-or-go-home one game deal...and most of the time the Colts are playing another strong AFC team, so it's not like they can just run over whichever team they play in the playoffs.

I don't mean to sound like Peter King, but the only reason the Colts didn't win a ROAD playoff game last year is because of a coin flip in overtime. I make fun of Peter King for talking about this a lot, but this fact has to be acknowledged here.

The talk in Indianapolis is about whether the Colts should charge to the finish line bound and determined to finish the season undefeated or follow the franchise tradition of throwing away meaningless late-season games in the interests of keeping Manning and other key players healthy.

The real question has nothing to do with the next two games and everything to do with the ones to follow.

Will the Colts be able to run the ball well enough to win a playoff game? Can the slightly beat-up Colts defense handle a tough playoff game against a good team, even if they are playing at home? I don't know of too many other questions I can think of right now.

Is Manning going to win them? And if not this year, then when?

I am pretty tired of Mike Celizic blaming Peyton Manning solely for the Colts playoff struggles. Let's look at Peyton Manning's playoff statistics (using completion percentage, TD/INT ratio, yards passing, and QB rating) and team record versus other Hall of Fame caliber quarterbacks of his era to see where Manning ranks in regards to playoff performance:

Peyton Manning: 61.7%, 22 TD/17 INT, 4208 yards (280.5 y/g), 85.0 rating. (Team record: 7-8)

Tom Brady: 62.5%, 26 TD/12 INT, 3954 yards (232.6 y/g), 88.0 rating (Team record: 14-3)

Joe Montana: 62.7%, 45 TD/ 21 INT, 5772 yards (251.0 y/g), 95.6 rating (Team record: 16-7)

Steve Young: 62.0%, 20 TD/ 13 INT, 3326 yards (166.3 /g), 85.8 rating (Team record: 12-8)

Dan Marino: 56.0%, 32 TD/ 24 TD, 4510 yards (250.6 y/g), 77.1 rating (Team record: 8-10)

Troy Aikman: 63.7%, 23 TD/ 17 TD, 3849 yards (240.6 y/g), 88.3 rating (Team record: 11-5)

Brett Favre: 60.7%, 39 TD/ 28 INT, 5311 yards (241.4 y/g), 85.2 rating (Team record: 12-10)

John Elway: 54.5%, 27 TD/ 21 INT, 4964 yards (225.6 y/g), 79.7 rating (Team record: 14-8)

This information tells me several things:

1. The Colts may have been behind in many of the playoff games they played in because Peyton Manning has thrown for more yards than any of the other quarterbacks I compared here. Or the Colts may just throw the ball a lot in the playoffs.

2. As far as team record goes, there has to be other variables to a team's success other than how the quarterback performs. What else explains the fact John Elway's team has a 14-8 record in the playoffs despite the fact he has performed significantly worse than Peyton Manning has in the playoffs? John Elway has two Super Bowl rings and it's not solely because of him that his team won the Super Bowl.

3. Even when compared to his counterpart and arch-rival Tom Brady, Manning still doesn't have significantly worse playoff statistics. So why does Brady's team have a 14-3 record while the Colts have a 7-8 record? Is it because Brady is more clutch than Manning or are there are other variables present that affected the outcome of the game? It could also have to do with the fact the Patriots were a better team than the Colts when they faced each other in the playoffs. (The answer is "there are other variables present that affected the outcome of the game.")

4. Has Peyton Manning been lights out in the playoffs? No, but his statistics have been nearly as good as quarterbacks who won multiple Super Bowls.

5. Mike Celizic is wrong to blame the Colts playoff woes on Peyton Manning not stepping up when he needs to.

If his skills are at a peak, so is his career. It’s time to separate himself from all the one-ring quarterbacks in league history and get that second title under his belt.

I am sure that Peyton Manning would love to have another Super Bowl ring but it's not completely up to him. The Colts defense has to play well and certain breaks have to go the team's way as well.

For example, Nick Harper can't get tripped up by Ben Roethlisberger desperately grabbing him as he is racing to get a touchdown off a fumble by Jerome Bettis. Another example of luck coming into play is the Colts also can't lose a coin toss in overtime that gives the opponent the ball first. There are other situations that are too "what-if" for me, like how the Patriots had a mini-dynasty in the 2000's when Belichick had Manning's number, what if that hadn't happened? Would the Colts have more Super Bowl appearances and victories?

Overall should the Colts defense have stopped the Chargers last year in overtime and in the matchups they had with the Patriots the playoffs? Yes, they should have potentially won 1 or more of these games, but that's exactly my point. The Colts record in the playoffs is not dependent solely on Peyton Manning's performance.

And then, if he wants people 40 years from now to say he was as good as Tom Brady, he’d better start working on Nos. three and four.

This is the same thing people were saying about Alex Rodriguez before he won the World Series with the Yankees this past year. The playoffs are a small sample size, in fact the NFL playoffs are an even smaller sample size than in the NBA, NHL, and MLB. Peyton Manning is as good as Tom Brady. We have regular season statistics with larger sample sizes that prove this to be true.

I don't know how Mike Celizic can't get there is more that goes into a successful team than a successful quarterback. It's very unfair to blame all the Colt's problems in the playoffs on Peyton Manning. He can only do so much.

We saw it in the NFL a generation ago when Dan Marino was the state-of-the-art in passing. He set all the records that Favre is breaking now and Manning will break in due course. When he retired, critics agreed he was the greatest quarterback ever, even if he never did win a title.

I never agreed to this. Dan Marino is not the greatest quarterback ever.

It wasn’t his fault, they decided, if the Dolphins were never quite good enough on defense when he was in his prime.

This may be partially true, but I also can't help but notice in the sample size of quarterbacks I chose to check out above, Dan Marino arguably has the worst playoff statistics. His team's record is also one of the worst. It would be hypocritical for me to say there is a correlation between Marino's bad statistics and the Dolphins not winning a Super Bowl, while making excuses for Peyton Manning in the same way, I realize this. So I will say Dan Marino didn't help his team make the Super Bowl as much as Peyton Manning helped his team, but both teams had other problems (like defense/special teams/etc.) on the roster neither Marino nor Manning could control.

John Elway's playoff numbers aren't that great either and he won 2 Super Bowls. Was that because he had a good defense and Terrell Davis? If you say "yes" to this then my point has been proven that a team's playoff record is not completely dependent on it's quarterback's performance, so you can't blame a quarterback solely for his team not winning playoff games.

Favre has gotten the same break. He’s won just one title and thrown away shots at a few others. But he’s so darned good slinging the ball that nobody notices.

Yeah, he has proven his entire career he is great at slinging the ball to both teams. And he plays the game like a child so we try to forget all of the negatives about him...or we used to.

Manning is the best passer anyone’s ever seen...But that shouldn’t get him off the hook in the trophy department.

That doesn't get him off the hook for not winning more Super Bowls, but Mike Celizic has to acknowledge there is more that goes into winning a Super Bowl than good quarterback play. Sometimes a quarterback who plays well doesn't win multiple Super Bowls and sometimes a quarterback who plays above average doesn't win a Super Bowl at all. There is no way we can pin the fact the Colts have only won one Super Bowl solely on Peyton Manning.

We can’t say that’s how we judge people and then choose certain players to judge by a different standard.

Teams should be judged by Super Bowl championships. Players can be measured by Super Bowl championships as well, but it needs to be said because football is a TEAM sport it seems slightly unfair to judge one player for his team's performance in the playoffs when his numbers are on par or close to par with his Hall of Fame peers for the era.

I hate to say this, but we also have to remember Manning was coached by a guy, Tony Dungy, who is a great coach, but his teams have a suspicious amount of success the year after he has left the team. Tampa Bay won a Super Bowl after he left the team and the Colts are 14-0 this year after Dungy retired. Dungy is still a great coach, but it's interesting another coach with the players Dungy coached the year before has been more successful. Should we factor this in as well?

Peyton Manning’s gotten them that far. Isn’t it about time he got them to another Super Bowl?

Yes it is. The defense and the special teams also have to play well for Manning to make another Super Bowl as well. You are an idiot if you don't factor this into why the Colts have only made one Super Bowl in Peyton Manning's career. Is Peyton Manning partially responsible for the Colts not making more Super Bowls? Probably, yes. That doesn't mean it is all his fault though or his legacy should be tarnished because of this.