Sunday, December 19, 2010

Orlando Magic trades shake up NBA

The Orlando Magic made major splashes as they opened up the market with two blockbuster deals in which they swapped stars with the Phoenix Suns and the Washington Wizards. The Magic shipped twelve year vet Vince Carter, along with Marcin Gortat, Mickael Pietrus, and a future first round pick to the deserts of Arizona for Swingman Jason Richardson, Earl Clark, and brings the return of Hedo Turkoglu to Orlando. Turkoglu, who played for the Magic from 2004- 2009 enjoyed the best years of his ten year career comes back to the warm south after spending the past season in Canada playing for the Toronto Raptors.

The other major trade that the Magic made was a straight swap of players with the Wizards sending troubled guard Gilbert Arenas to Florida in return for forward Rashard Lewis, the NBA's 2nd highest payed player. This move helps both the Wizards and the Magic giving Washington much need height inside and adding a talented two guard to Orlando's squad. the Magic really made a splash in the market and may see bright things ahead because of it.

-A

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Why a playoff system should replace the BCS in College Football

One of the biggest controversies in all of sports the last few years has been the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the way of determining the matchups in the bowls, including the national championship game. What college football really needs to do is to replace the current structure with a playoff system that would give a certain number of teams a chance to play at the national championship game. Under the BCS losing one game, especially for a team that is in a non- BCS conference (BCS conferences automatically send at least one team to a BCS bowl game), could be detrimental to your whole season, and losing two is out of the question. A playoff system is the right way to go for college football because it will add fairness and help decide the real, undisputed, national champion.

“The [BCS] is a five-game showcase of college football. It is designed to ensure that the two top-rated teams in the country meet in the national championship game, and to create exciting and competitive matchups among eight other highly regarded teams in four other bowl games.” (BCS Football)

This is what the BCS’ official site thinks of it but I along with many others think it’s totally wrong. Sometimes teams that go undefeated the whole season, like Utah in the 2008-09 season won’t even get a chance to play for the title game while teams that have a loss do just because they are from a BCS conference. This is not fair to those teams and it might also deprive the sport of actually having the best team win it all. The BCS also isn’t perfect. Just recently a mistake was discovered when the computer didn’t consider a Division II playoff game that had huge implications on the rankings. After they had to recall the rankings and redo them four of the top 25 teams were swapped around. What’s even more troubling is the same type of glitch might have occurred before and put the wrong team to play for the title affecting football history. This wouldn’t happen if a playoff was in place.

Playoffs would also let teams battle it out themselves and provide a huge cash flow for the participating universities. College basketball has a playoff fans and coaches alike love, that is very profitable, and fairly decides who the national champion is. I’m sure it would work in college football too, and I guess there is only one way to find out.

-A