Category: Sports

The Big Ten and other major Division I conferences are holding their men’s basketball tournaments this weekend. (If you flip through your channels and you see something other than college basketball, something is wrong with your TV.)

If you watch the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis (quarterfinals today, including Wisconsin vs. Indiana at 1:25 p.m.) on the Big Ten Network, and semifinals Saturday and the final Sunday on CBS), you’ll discover what the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen discovered:

Of the 32 conferences that play Division I basketball, the Big Ten has either been the slowest or second-slowest in seven of the last eight years (in conference games) according to kenpom.com, a statistics website. For the entire regular season, the Big Ten is even slower than the Ivy League, which plays as if peach baskets were still in use. …
Somewhere along the line, everything changed. The famed “Hurrying” Hoosiers of the 1940s and those outrageous scoring machines of the ’60s melted into the same kind of three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust mentality that has long defined the conference’s less-than-flashy football teams. “I wish I had some answer,” said Dan Dakich, a former Indiana player and interim coach who is now an ESPN analyst. “I don’t.”

Cohen suggests it’s because of — or, depending on your perspective, the fault of — Dakich’s college coach, Bobby Knight, who focused on defense first. Cohen interviewed former Purdue coach Gene Keady, who said of his former archrival, “When certain coaching styles are winning, we emulate them. He changed the formula.”

It’s probably better to blame Knight than Clintonville’s and Ripon College’s own Dick Bennett, who didn’t start coaching in the Big Ten until the mid-1990s. Before Bennett came to Madison, he coached at UW–Stevens Point and UW–Green Bay. Lacking access to great athletic talent, he recruited locally and focused on defense. (How much did Bennett focus on defense? He would tell his players on the floor that if they were gassed to rest on offense.) Bennett brought that style of basketball from Green Bay to Madison, which culminated in the Badgers’ 2000 Final Four team.

Another example is Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan, whose first UW paychecks were for serving as an assistant coach for Bill Cofield in the late ’70s and Steve Yoder in the early ’80s. Ryan’s first UW–Platteville teams were known, believe it or not, for playing up-tempo basketball — his first UWP teams would bring in five players at a time. The term “up-tempo” describes nothing about UW basketball today.

(Here’s a thought to make you wonder: UW fired Cofield after the 1981–82 season. Ridgeway native Tom Davis, who played at UW–Platteville and got his master’s degree at UW–Madison, was the basketball coach at Boston College. In five seasons, the Eagles won 100 games and earned two NCAA tournament berths and one National Invitational Tournament berth. He was known for pressure defense and necessarily playing a lot of players. But instead of hiring Davis, UW hired UW–Eau Claire coach Ken Anderson, then after Anderson quit three days after taking the job, hired Yoder, then the Ball State coach. Davis went to Stanford, then to Iowa, where his teams played in nine NCAA tournaments and two NITs in 13 seasons, usually beating UW like a drum in the process.)

The problem is that other coaches in Wisconsin and farther turned Bennett’s necessity into a virtue, as if teams giving up fewer points showed them to be better coaches than teams scoring more points — as if losing 40–36 was preferable to losing 60–54, or 80–72. (The halftime score of Wisconsin’s last 2000 game, the Final Four semifinal against Michigan State: MSU 19, Wisconsin 17.)

Why is this a problem? It’s not merely because I prefer watching a style of play closer to Grinnell’s Flying Circus than plod-and-pound. For the non-participants in the games, sports is entertainment. That means your favorite basketball team competes with every other potential entertainment or recreational activity for the disposable income dollar.

Intercollegiate athletics at the Division I level has become an increasingly expensive operation. Since most college sports don’t make money for their colleges, the revenues generated by football and men’s basketball (along with women’s basketball in some schools and men’s hockey in others, including Wisconsin) have to fund all the colleges’ other sports. That’s why tickets cost as much as they cost (to which can be added the mandatory–voluntary contribution to keep said prime tickets), and sports stadiums have become two- or three-hour marketing opportunities as much as venues for the games. Fans who don’t go to games don’t spend money at the games.

Fans prefer winning first and foremost, of course. Since two  teams play, each game features a winner and a loser. There are relatively speaking fewer sports purist who appreciate moving without the basketball, boxing out for rebounds, and free throw shooting as there are fans who want to be entertained, preferably with winning basketball. (The way to guarantee high attendance, I suppose, is for basketball officials to do everything they can to assure that the home team wins.) Teams that neither win nor play an entertaining style draw what Madison TV sports anchor Jay Wilson used to call the “Faithful 5,000” — the four-digit attendance numbers for UW basketball games in the 1980s.

The National Football League figured this out when it changed rules to promote passing in 1978, and then several times thereafter. The Packers’ 2011 regular season was a microcosm of what the NFL wants to see, and apparently what fans want to see given NFL TV ratings. The more-points-are-better approach has filtered down into college football as well, as demonstrated by the past two UW seasons.

As recently as the late 1970s, the three-point shot was a goofy idea from the late American Basketball Association. As recently as the early 1980s, shot clocks were something found only in the National Basketball Association. (For one season in the 1980s, the National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed conferences to set their own shot-clock and three-point-shot rules, which was bizarre to watch to say the least.)

The 45-second shot clock and the 20-foot three-point-shot were instituted to promote more scoring, or so the NCAA thought. The irony is that the season with the highest per-game scoring average, 77.2 points per game per team, was in 1972, when college basketball had neither three-point shots nor shot clocks. In contrast, teams have not exceeded even 70 points per game in the past eight seasons. That shows that teams eventually adjust to the new set of rules.

It also makes those who watch more than a few games a year wonder what has happened to basic basketball skills. The theory of the three is that a team that hits a third of its three-point shots will have the same offensive output as a team that hits half of its shots inside the arc. A team that did nothing but shoot threes and went for fast-break layups would theoretically combine the shot with the biggest bang for the buck with the highest-percentage shot. (Teams that drive to the basket go to the free throw line more often.) The irony of the three-point shot is that it has led to fewer mid-range shots — 10 to 15 feet or so. The bigger irony is that the three-point shot and the shot clock has not led to more offense.

Cohen reports that the NCAA basketball rules committee is considering further tinkering with the rules: “Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, the committee’s chairman until this year, said there’s been discussion of experimenting with a wider lane and shorter shot clock.”

One way to increase scoring would be for referees to actually call the game as its creators intended. All you need do is look at a tape from the 1980s or earlier to see the difference in what contact is now allowed. Michigan State is famous for using football pads to beat on its players during practice. Basketball isn’t supposed to be a contact sport, but watch what happens under the basket, and you’ll see that Big Ten games are more like football — or, in the case of the Spartans, muggings — than basketball.

Calling the game as its creators intended would lead to sharply higher foul counts and much longer games, at least at first. It wouldn’t necessarily lead to much more scoring given the continuing free throw shooting slide. But eventually coaches and players would adjust, and the game would be played as it was intended to be played.

The Big Ten’s slowness of pace  may help explain why the Big Ten hasn’t been successful in the NCAA tournament for several years. The Atlantic Coast Conference actually plays basketball. No one would consider Duke or North Carolina to be run-at-all-costs no-defense teams, and yet games involving the Blue Devils and Tar Heels actually approximate the way basketball is supposed to be played. Speed usually overcomes brute force.

The prospect of the WIAA state basketball tournaments moving from Madison to Green Bay, perhaps as early as next season, is going over as well as Minnesota’s beating Wisconsin in any sport.

The best analysis comes from the Wisconsin State Journal’s Tom Oates:

… This is the dumbest move in Wisconsin sports since somebody decided Don Morton could coach football in the Big Ten Conference. UW and the WIAA have taken one of the greatest and most enduring sports traditions in the state and put its future in serious jeopardy because neither side was willing to be reasonable and compromise on the matter. Throughout the, um, negotiations, both sides have been arrogant, bull-headed, shortsighted, greedy and completely out of touch with what the people of Wisconsin want.

And that, folks, is as positive as I can be about this unless the principals on both sides come to their senses in the next few weeks. …

UW will lose one of its best marketing tools for prospective students and their tuition-paying parents. The athletic department, thanks to this decision and the recent format change in the Big Ten hockey playoffs, will see its 17,000-seat arena sit empty for two weeks during March Madness almost every year. UW’s basketball programs will lose a powerful recruiting tool because the Kohl Center will no longer be the place every high school player aspires to get to.

Local merchants will lose millions in revenue and Madison will lose some of its charm without letter jacket-wearing teens roaming State Street and the UW campus throughout March. Prep athletes and their school’s fans will lose a treasured destination, one that combines atmosphere and mystique like no other city in the state. Casual basketball fans will lose a great tradition and, one suspects, their interest in the tournament if it leaves the city to which they’ve made pilgrimages for decades. …

[WIAA executive director Dave] Anderson opted for short-term cash incentives offered by Green Bay as opposed to the long-term effects of moving the tournaments to a city where there is no State Street, no appealing college campus and no hope of re-creating the atmosphere of a tournament weekend in Madison. Truth is, the WIAA has done a good job of running its tournaments into the ground for years. And if adding a fifth division and reducing the Division 1 field to four teams put the first few nails in the tournaments’ coffin, moving them to Green Bay should finish the job. …

Sorry, I’d like to be more positive than that, but UW’s arrogance and the WIAA’s stubbornness are making that impossible.

It’s usually a copout for a commentator to blame everybody, but not in this case. The only people to escape blame should be the Green Bay organizers who came up with a bid with which the WIAA felt enough comfort to trash more  than 90 years of tradition.

The Wisconsin Sports Network performed a flagrant act of journalism by reprinting the UW memo suggesting ways the WIAA could reschedule to fit into UW’s schedule:

February 2013

– If Penn State men’s hockey series cannot be moved, WIAA could move individual wrestling tournament to Thursday-Friday-Saturday (Feb 28-March 1-2) at the Kohl Center and combine with team wrestling tournament currently scheduled in the Field House Friday-Saturday (March 1-2). …

March 2013

– WIAA has moved the dates of their girls basketball tournament to Thursday-Friday-Saturday (March 7-8-9).  The Kohl Center is not available on these dates due to a UW men’s hockey series.  The UW Field House has been offered as an option for this tournament to be played in.  If WIAA is not interested in this facility, girls basketball tournament could be played in the Kohl Center Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday (March 5-6-7). …

– Boys basketball tournament could be played in the Kohl Center Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday (March 12-13-14) or Thursday-Friday-Saturday (March 21-22-23).

– We have also suggested to the WIAA that they combine the boys and girls basketball tournaments into one weekend at the Kohl Center and only play the 10 championship games in order to fit the games into 3 days.

The state individual wrestling tournament and the state team wrestling tournaments — the latter a series of dual meets between teams — are separate for a reason. If you’re trying to have the team tournament at the same time as the individual tournament, you might as well not even bother with the team tournament. And as one comment put it, “I was searching for a scenario that would make GB favorable to me- a mid week tournament at the Kohl as an alternate just did it.”

Let’s remember that UW will be giving up tournaments that bring in $9 million every year for tournaments that will have fewer people attending every few years or so. UW will get more national attention from a Big Ten or NCAA tournament than from a state tournament, but thanks to being in the Big Ten with its national TV contracts, national notoriety doesn’t seem to be UW’s problem.

The dumbest comment comes from a man who doesn’t usually write dumb things, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Michael Hunt:

There is no need for the event to remain rooted in one location like it has in Madison for just about forever.

And if it does prove to be movable, the tournament needs to be in the state’s major city at some point.

The tournament belongs in Milwaukee. …

The tournament has been in Madison since glaciers cut the isthmus. Not knocking Green Bay, but when the Packers aren’t in season, which would include the entire month of March, the place can take on the feel of the dark side of the moon.

Among its qualities as a destination point for the small towns that follow the WIAA tournament, Milwaukee has an undeniable basketball heritage. If you don’t believe it by the current state of its NBA franchise, look at the buildings it has in tribute.

Despite its status as the NBA’s oldest non-renovated arena, the Bradley Center is clean, has all the amenities the tournament would require and, most important, would be a dream destination for high school kids. Who wouldn’t want to launch jumpers in the same building where Ray Allen and Dwyane Wade played?

Hunt evidently needs to sit somewhere in the Bradley Center other than press row or the lower-section seats behind the sidelines. The Bradley Center was designed not for basketball, but for hockey; the Bradley family once included the owners of the Milwaukee Admirals. (Wisconsin’s last hockey Frozen Four win was at the Bradley Center in 2006.) Having sat in the Bradley Center for a Bucks game, I can tell you if you’re not sitting in the 94 feet of the lower level behind the sidelines, you might as well be watching the game from Waukesha. And as far as Milwaukee’s “undeniable basketball heritage,” the Bucks won the NBA title a month before my sixth birthday, and won nothing while Allen played for them. Wade, a native of Chicago, not Milwaukee, plays for the NBA’s answer to the Dallas Cowboys. I can name more native-Milwaukee basketball players than anyone playing at the state tournament next month.

But wait! There’s more!

The knock against the 18,777-seat Bradley Center is it is too large for the state tournament. But that’s a minor thing next to the building’s schedule and parking. Parking, scarce and expensive, would be a negotiation point with the WIAA, especially compared to the cheap expanses of Green Bay.

But please, do not raise the tired myth of downtown Milwaukee safety, especially after a big event lets out into the streets. Seriously, it is not an issue, no matter how many people who have never been to the city try to push it.

I wrote last week that the protests du jour had nothing to do with state basketball’s possibly leaving Madison. It is more plausible that concerns over student safety in downtown Madison, with its State Street-area riffraff, may have been a factor, though I’m skeptical.

Concerns over student safety based upon Milwaukee’s role as the capital of most of Wisconsin’s social pathologies and crime (such as the mugging of the mayor) make state’s moving to Milwaukee as likely as my being elected president in November. (As one comment on Hunt’s piece put it, “The city public schools of Milwaukee should have to raise their combined high school graduation rate to even be considered for any WIAA tournaments.”) Who out there is OK with letting your 16-year-old run around in downtown Milwaukee? (And by the way, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel readers, calling Wisconsinites who have concerns about their safety in Milwaukee ignorant racists is not likely to encourage them to come to Milwaukee for any reason.)

The State Journal’s Andy Baggot thinks the heat is now on UW athletic director Barry Alvarez for reasons that go beyond where the WIAA goes:

Between the looming Adidas fiasco, the John Chadima investigation and the WIAA controversy, Alvarez has some sizeable, hard-to-digest entrees on his administrative plate at the moment. …

The WIAA matter is a major image concern for Alvarez. If scheduling conflicts can’t be resolved and the boys and girls state basketball tournaments are purposely yanked out of Madison for the first time since 1920, he will be high on a list of people targeted for blame.

When we define Alvarez’s legacy as UW athletic director years from now, this moment will definitely catch our eye.

Alvarez’s success as UW’s football coach speaks for itself. And UW is better off financially because of Alvarez’s work. Alvarez also has made many Wisconsinites believe that his last name is Spanish for “arrogant,” something Wisconsinites really do not like in people. Similar to UW coaches, Alvarez will be judged on whether the teams he supervises continue to put butts with wallets in seats. And Alvarez is in danger of having 70,000 or so fewer of them sitting in the Kohl Center in March.

Thirty-two years ago shortly after 4 p.m., the U.S. Olympic hockey team faced off against the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey medal round.

For those who argue that sports has an outsized influence on our culture, one hockey game might prove your point. For those who argue that sports has too much influence on our culture, this hockey game proves otherwise.

Things were not good in 1980. (Similar to today.) Americans enjoyed both double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation. Gas prices were going upward in the second energy crisis of the 1970s. The Soviet cancer seemed to be  growing unchallenged worldwide, the Soviets having invaded Afghanistan and having promoted friendly governments in Africa and eastern Europe. Three months earlier 52 Americans had been taken hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. President Jimmy Carter appeared to have been elected to preside over the decline of the U.S., even in sports, where he decided to keep the U.S. out of that summer’s Olympics in Moscow.

The Olympic world was different from today. The Soviet Union was considered the best hockey team in the world, given their collection of world championships and Olympic titles. Their American counterparts were college hockey players, two from Madison — forward Mark Johnson and defenseman Bobby Suter — coached by one of the best college coaches of all time, Herb Brooks, who met no one’s definition of Mr. Personality. (In sharp contrast to Johnson’s and Suter’s coach, “Badger Bob” Johnson, who had coached the Olympic team to a fourth-place finish four years earlier.)

The TV world was also different from today. Unless you were an employee of ABC-TV or an ABC affiliate station, or lived close enough to the Canadian border to get Canada’s live coverage, you didn’t see the game live. ABC didn’t broadcast the game until its Friday evening Olympic coverage started at 7 p.m., when those watching the 6 p.m. news probably already knew the results.

Brooks, the last cut from the 1960 Olympic hockey team, put his team through a gauntlet of pre-Olympic games that included the Soviets’ flattening of the Americans just before the start of the Olympics. (The same Soviet team also beat a National Hockey League all-star team.) So even though the U.S. had overachieved to get to the medal round, one would have had to have been excessively optimistic to think the U.S. could actually beat the Soviets and then win the gold medal two days later.

But a funny thing happened on the way to yet another Soviet gold medal.

The world’s greatest goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak, was unusually sieve-like, giving up his second goal just before the end of the first period. And then Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov either panicked or let his anger get the best of him and replaced Tretiak after one period. Even though the Soviets dominated the second period, they led just 3–2 going into the third period of a game that ABC’s Al Michaels called “the rarest of sporting events — an event that needs no buildup, no superfluous adjectives.”

Johnson scored his second goal of the night on a power play near the midway point of the third period. And then …

Because of its context, the game turned out to be not only the biggest American hockey moment of all time (biggest? The term “sacred” wouldn’t be an overstatement), but arguably the biggest American sports moment of all time.

Having covered a lot of sports over the years, I’ve seen that blank look of the loser at the end of the big game. But I’m still struck 32 years later at the look of mixed emotions on the parts of the Soviets at the end of the game, as if they realized that the right team won that game, even though it wasn’t them. Years later, Tretiak said something like “We lost to a bunch of students!”, as if channeling Michaels’ last line about “the most improbable circumstance you could ever have imagined before these Olympics started.”

That win did not win the gold medal,  of course. The next game did:

The cover of the following week’s Sports Illustrated is the only cover in the nearly 60-year history of the magazine to have neither headline nor caption. It didn’t need one.

In 10 days, the 400 or so high school basketball teams in the state will start on a journey that they hope ends in Madison.

Only 20 boys and 20 girls basketball teams get to go to Madison for the WIAA state basketball tournaments. But possibly as soon as next season, the road to state looks like it won’t go to Madison, but Green Bay.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

The WIAA will move the state high school basketball tournaments to the Green Bay area unless the the University of Wisconsin athletic department can make the Kohl Center available in 2013 and 2014.

The decision, confirmed by WIAA executive director Dave Anderson on Thursday, inspired a top UW athletic official to accuse Anderson of waging a personal campaign to relocate the event, which brings tens of thousands of players, coaches and fans and generate about $9 million for Madison’s economy annually.

Well, that’s a great start to the last Madison state basketball tournament in who knows how long, isn’t it?

Anderson said it’s unclear if the WIAA’s contract with the UW, set to expire after the 2013 tournaments, would change if the Kohl Center is not available next year. If it is, he said the move to Green Bay would take place then.

He indicated the university had not altered its initial offer for 2013 and ’14 to play the WIAA tournaments Tuesday through Thursday. He also reiterated the WIAA is not interested in moving the basketball tournaments to the Dane County Coliseum or the UW Field House.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s version:

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association moved a step closer toward moving its state boys and girls basketball tournaments to the Green Bay area, but at the same time dangled Madison and the University of Wisconsin one last carrot.

The Board of Control supported an executive staff recommendation to enter into a five-year deal with the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon if UW is unable to accommodate the tournaments according to the terms of the existing agreement.

The WIAA’s news release, posted Thursday night, is similarly opaque:

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Board of Control supported an Executive Staff recommendation to enter into a five-year agreement with PMI and the Resch Center in Green Bay, as soon as 2013 and extending through 2017, if the University of Wisconsin is unable to accommodate the State Boys and Girls Basketball Tournaments in accordance with the terms of the existing agreement.

Seeking a change in venue became necessary because of conflicts with the University of Wisconsin  athletics schedule for 2013 and beyond. The traditional weekends of the State basketball tournaments in the Kohl Center have been reserved for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs in 2013, and initially, the Big Ten Conference Hockey playoffs beginning in 2014.

Now, a time out for some history: The first state invitational basketball tournament was held at Lawrence College (now University) in Appleton in 1905. The state normal schools (think of them as the UW four year schools not called Madison) started a state tournament in 1916, which the WIAA recognizes as the first state tournament. Except for a one-year visit to Wisconsin Rapids in 1936, UW–Madison has hosted every state tournament since 1920 — first at the UW Fieldhouse, and since 1998 at the Kohl Center (except for a few state girls tournaments at the Fieldhouse and the Dane County Coliseum).

The biggest state tournaments — football, basketball, hockey, wrestling, softball and golf — are held in Madison. Track was moved from Madison to La Crosse in 1990, and soccer moved from Madison to Milwaukee in 2003. Girls volleyball is held at the Resch Center, which is where state basketball apparently is headed.

The possibility of moving state basketball out of Madison first came up because of a set of potential conflicts with the Kohl Center with Big Ten hockey, which will begin as a conference-sanctioned sport in 2013–14. The Big Ten’s original plan was to have the conference’s regular season champion host the conference tournament. That would have required Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State to reserve their hockey facilities (the Kohl Center in UW’s case) for tournaments they may or may not host. That obviously would crowd out any other potential use, particularly, in UW’s case, basketball.

Ultimately, UW prevailed on the Big Ten to do what UW’s current hockey conference started doing in 1988 and the Big Ten should have done in the first place — hold the tournament at a neutral site. Within the Big Ten geographic footprint, there are, by my count, at least eight facilities that host either National Hockey League or American Hockey League (the top hockey minor league) facilities large enough for a proper college hockey tournament.

The problem with having your regular-season champion host your conference tournament is what happens if the host fails to make the tournament final — your favorite cable sports channel broadcasts a conference championship game, with an NCAA tournament berth at stake, in an arena with thousands of fans dressed as empty seats. As fun as it would be to have the Kohl Center host a title game, NCAA tournaments moved out of on-campus hockey arenas years ago, and Division I conference tournaments don’t belong on campus.

Beyond a few additional conflict issues, there is one big issue that the Wisconsin State Journal’s Rob Hernandez pointed out:

WIAA executive director Dave Anderson has dropped hints since this facility conflict emerged that playing the state basketball tournaments in Madison — while rich in tradition — has come, in recent years, at a steep price.

Anderson is not the only one who sees the financial elephant in the room on this debate. Witness this email I received from a Madison man who worked a Camp Randall Stadium concession stand during the WIAA state football finals:

“I was embarrassed at the $8 cost of a Coke and hot dog,” the worker wrote. “Popcorn? $3.50! This courtesy of the UW “W” Club.

“I also heard stories of cars being towed for street parking violations. I would love to see a comparison of the proposed facility expense to be charged to the WIAA by Green Bay compared to that charged by the UW Athletic Department.” …

Indeed, the cost of attending these events is not cheap.

An Internet check this week of eight downtown hotels during the upcoming state boys basketball tournament showed the cheapest rates ranging from $107 to $206 per night.

Parking costs continue to be a major issue for WIAA events.

Anderson said the cost to park in lots run by UW Transportation Services has doubled in less than five years, from $6 in 2009 to $12 this winter. The WIAA had been told last year’s hike would convert the fee from a per-session rate to an all-day pass, according to Anderson, but it was not sold that way to those of us who parked next to Goodman Diamond for the state softball tournament and might not be practical given the limited parking near the Kohl Center.

Contrast that to what reportedly has been offered by PMI Entertainment Group, which runs the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon. According to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, PMI has offered to cap parking rates at $6 (at nearby Lambeau Field) and, with the Packers, split the revenue with the WIAA while Green Bay-area hotels have guaranteed affordable rates and no required two-night stays.

Madison’s past and present mayor, Paul Soglin, begs to differ about several points of contention:

MYTH

#2. Madison hotels require a two night minimum.

REALITY 

Madison hotels are abundant and affordable.  The vast majority of hotels have not, and do not require a minimum stay. There are 25 hotels that are participating in a Fan Package that begins in 2012, offering great rates and no minimum stays. The Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau has offered to assist in developing fan hotel packages in the past and is delighted that WIAA agreed to pursue that option.

 MYTH

#3 Parking costs in Madison are high.

REALITY      

Event parking rates at City of Madison and UW-Madison campus parking ramps will be in effect.  Parking in city ramps near the Kohl Center will be only $4. The University is guaranteeing their rates until 2020.  There will be free shuttles from other locations to help offset parking costs. …

MYTH

#5 Madison doesn’t care about the WIAA.

REALITY

Financial assistance and support from the University, City of Madison, Dane County, Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau as well as the hotel and restaurant community are included in current proposal.  There has been an incredible collaborative effort to put together the proposal.  Madison has a long history, and continues to host many other WIAA state tournaments throughout the year.  We welcome our high school athletes and their families and fans from around the state year-round.

Madison’s parking rates are not high if you’re comparing them to Milwaukee. Madison’s parking rates are high if you’re comparing them to anywhere else in Wisconsin. (If you think east-side-campus parking is bad now, you should have been in Madison in the 1980s.) Soglin, a native of Chicago, also appears to have an interesting definition of “affordable” if that means $107 to $206 per night. And where was all this fan-affordability collaboration before now? At those prices, you might hope your team loses its first state game.

Whether the tournament is in Madison or Green Bay, the WIAA may need to rethink how it does state basketball anyway, based on people voting with their feet:

Attendance at the state boys basketball tournament has dipped greatly in the past two years and, overall, in four of the past five.

In 2011, the first year of the five-division state tournament, total attendance fell to 73,094. That was 12,359 fewer than 2010, the last year of four-division play with one extra session, and the first time attendance fell below 80,000 since 1990 — the last year of a three-division format.

It’s been the same with the state wrestling tournament, which has seen a decline in the past four years, dropping from 66,206 — an all-time high — in 2007 to 60,902 last year.

The switch from four to five divisions took away the Thursday morning session, so an attendance drop isn’t surprising. But if you’re concerned about dipping attendance, playing two fewer games won’t improve attendance. Moving state from Madison to Green Bay won’t improve one, shall we say, delicate issue that has been the case ever since I’ve been paying attention to state: Milwaukee teams don’t draw well at state. (For related but converse reasons, the chance of state basketball in Milwaukee is approximately zero.)

One improvement with moving state from Madison to Green Bay might be in atmosphere. The UW Fieldhouse can best be improved with a wrecking ball, but the atmosphere of a full Fieldhouse was great once you maneuvered around the buckets picking up melting snow from the leaking roof. The Kohl Center has all the amenities fans could ask for, but at 17,000 capacity it is not remotely close to full for state games, particularly state girls games. (Back in the 1990s, UW briefly considered putting in grass at Camp Randall Stadium, which would have forced the state football championship games to go elsewhere, or at least most of them. The flip side to that is that having your football stadium one-eighth full for a state title game doesn’t really make for great atmosphere either.)

The WIAA’s share of blame for dipping attendance goes back to the regular season and the WIAA’s current apparent policy of arranging conferences by their schools’ enrollment instead of by geography. Three of Ripon’s six Eastern Valley Conference opponents — Freedom, Waupaca and Clintonville — are one hour or more away from Ripon by car or bus. The WIAA always swings between geography and enrollment in deciding conference lineups, but enrollment affects football much more than other sports. And with the economy what it is today and gas prices what they will be later this year, fans are increasingly deciding the time off of work and/or the cost of driving to Madison isn’t worth the trip.

Madison isn’t letting state go without a fight:

It’s odd that the video doesn’t show why the first person on the video is famous, so I will:

There is also one big potential unintended consequences of the state basketball tournament’s leaving Madison. Wisconsin is the only state in the U.S. in which the entire state boys and girls basketball tournaments are on free TV. It’s helpful for the originating station for the state tournament to be in Madison; that will not be the case when the tournament moves to Green Bay. There is no guarantee moving state out of Madison will mean games before Saturday, and perhaps even the entire tournament, won’t move to Fox Sports Wisconsin, which will take state away from those without cable or satellite TV.

Readers might think from my anti-Madison rants that I would like to see state basketball leave Madison. Readers would be making the wrong assumption. Having state on the UW campus gives high school students statewide a taste of the UW, something that won’t happen with a Green Bay state tournament. (The Resch Center is on the opposite side of Green Bay from the UW–Green Bay campus, even though UWGB’s men play at the Resch Center.) Neither Madison nor Green Bay is remotely close to the geographic center of the state, but Madison is slightly closer to the population center of the state (which as of 2000 was, believe it or don’t, Markesan) than Green Bay.

As one Madison.com poster put it:

So sad that money has got in the way of giving our children a great experience.

When I was in school. Going to state, meant Madison. Why? Madison is our Capitol. (Regardless of current politics) Madison is home to The University of Wisconsin and our Badgers.

Going to State meant playing on the same floor, grass, ice, etc. as our heroes from the Badgers. Have our team and players name on the same scoreboard, sitting on the very benches.

Too bad our WIAA has become so greedy. Our UW has lost its sense of civic duty to the youth of our state. And once again The City dropped the ball. (To busy building bike boxes to even know the ball was in the air)

On the other hand, other comments make you understand why Anderson wants state basketball to leave Madison (if that really is the case):

Good, two weeks of less traffic in Madison each spring.

UW should have priority over their own facilities. If the WIAA couldn’t run it on Tuesday – Thursday, then too bad. Green Bay is a ghost town in March. Nice people, but hardly a destination that I’d want to go to be in the state tournament.

Madison put itself in this position and deserves what it gets. Hopefully the mayor will wake earlier from his nap next time. The UW just made it clear what it thinks of a tradition going back to 1920 and its loyalty to the community it lives in.

It became open for discussion and competitive bidding. But Madison doesn’t know how to compete with other cities, or considers itself beneath such things. And the UW didn’t see that it was weighing a tradition that engaged the entire state community vs 300 yahoos from St. Cloud State. We are paying for our entitled sensibility. If you look at Epic, the Edgewater, Spectrum, Madison Prep,and now the tournament, you see a city that has lost its way. We don’t like competition. Our chief product is acrimony. Other cities are more than willing to exploit it. This trend will continue unless we become honest about ourselves and change things. Madison may be livable, but we aren’t as great as we think we are. Losing the tournament isn’t about lost revenue. It’s about lost leadership.

As a native of Green Bay who now lives in Madison, I say good for Green Bay. I get so sick of the arrogance around here that the sun rises and sets around this town. … People in this part of the state seem to think that Green Bay is a one-horse town and some backwater. If Green Bay can accommodate 70,000 plus fans every weekend for a Packer game, I think they can handle entertaining 10,000 people for a basketball tournament.

And then there are comments that are completely irrelevant, yet understandable:

Perhaps the liberal retards in Madison can organize an anti-Walker rally for that weekend instead and invite their government union thug buddies from out of state for a big group hug. And don’t forget to bring the tractors. This way all the restaurants, bars and hotels can still get the revenue.

The GB/Fox Valley area has everything and more that Madison has when it comes to entertainment, shopping and lodging minus the protesters and socialists. Some of the comments here just prove what a pretentious entitlement attitude some Madison residents have. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to come here either.

Of course, Recallarama had nothing to do with the WIAA’s decision to move its biggest state tournament out of Madison. (For one thing, most high school coaches are teachers, and most WIAA management are former teachers.) But Madison is about to let leave an event that has more economic impact than any winter/spring sports event other than an NCAA basketball first- and second-round That’s something UW should have thought about

My prediction is that if state goes to Green Bay, a Madison-area state legislator will introduce a proposal to have the Department of Public Instruction run high school sports instead of the WIAA. The rationale, which I first brought up in the WIAA’s fight to preserve for itself broadcast rights, will be that high school sports are funded by tax dollars, and the WIAA uses tax dollars with no public accountability. At least it would make Superintendent of Public Instruction elections more interesting.

Years before we moved to Ripon, Ripon College used to host a day it called “Basketball Mania.”

Ripon College’s Storzer Center was the site for four basketball games — Ripon Tiger girls’ and boys’ games, followed by Ripon College women’s and men’s games — on one Saturday.

(That’s as opposed to what I did last weekend — two college basketball games Friday followed by two college games Saturday. That was four games — and by the way 627 points — in about 25 hours, but we’re talking about something more concentrated here.)

Though I never went to one, the Riponites who did remember the quadrupleheader fondly. The local radio station broadcast all four games, and it apparently was well-attended not just by fans of the Tigers or Redmen, but by those looking for something to get them out of the house on a typically wretched Wisconsin winter day.

Basketball Mania is not only an event Ripon College and Ripon High School should bring back — it’s an event that colleges throughout the state could and should host.

The high school teams benefit by having an opportunity to play on a college-size (94-foot) floor. This is helpful not just because the state tournament is played at UW–Madison’s Kohl Center, but because pre-state games are also played on college floors. Last season, for instance, UW–Oshkosh, UW–Stevens Point, UW–Whitewater, Marquette University and Wisconsin Lutheran College hosted sectional games. The ancient Brown County Arena in Ashwaubenon hosted games for years.

The host benefits from the opportunity to show itself off to an audience that may not have seen the college before then — not just the locals, but the visiting high school teams. That would particularly benefit the state’s 20 private colleges,  which have to work harder than the UW schools to attract students. The costs to the host would not be significantly greater since the college would be hosting a basketball doubleheader that day anyway.

There are some obvious local tie-in opportunities. UW–Oshkosh could host North and/or West games (including a North vs. West game), and UW–Platteville could host two Hillmen games, for instance. St. Norbert College in De Pere could also host two Green Bay Notre Dame games. (What now is Notre Dame includes the former De Pere Pennings Catholic high school.) Wisconsin Lutheran College could host two Wisconsin Lutheran High School games. Edgewood College in Madison could host two Edgewood High School games. When Marian University in Fond du Lac gets a modern athletic facility, Marian could also host the two basketball teams from St. Mary’s Springs Academy.

The additional benefit besides postseason preparation is giving the players a different experience to look forward to. Basketball seasons start in November and run into March — the longest seasons according to the calendar and the schedule. Teams can use an on-campus game, scheduled around Feb. 1, as the start of their preparation for the postseason, where your next loss is your last.

Every year when I figure out my winter sports announcing schedule, I highlight one specific date.

That date is today, when Ripon College hosts Grinnell College in men’s basketball. (Which you can watch at 7 Central time online.) The Grinnell–Ripon game is the most exciting, yet most difficult-to-announce, game I do every year, which is why I look forward to it.

If you like basketball on fire, this is what you want to see. The safest bet every season is that Grinnell will finish first in points scored per game, and worst in points allowed per game. This year’s Pioneers are scoring 114.2 points per game and giving up 96.3 points per game. The next closest offense is Ripon, which is scoring 79.4 points per game. The next closest defense is Lawrence, which is giving up 80 points per game. (Grinnell is number one in the Midwest Conference in scoring margin, which is the best indicator other than win–loss record of how good a team is.)

The flood of points and shots isn’t what makes announcing the Pioneers difficult. The pace is frenetic, to say the least — Grinnell shoots as fast as they can, usually either a three-point shot or a layup, and after they score or lose the ball they press and trap their opponent to try to get the ball back. The other adventure for sportscasters and public address announcers is that Grinnell brings in between three and five players every time they substitute, which is once every scoreboard minute or so,  in order to keep up the defensive pressure. (Ripon College’s PA announcer always suggests fans consult their souvenir programs. It’s easier to announce who’s in on TV than trying to do that and keep up with the action on the radio.)

Grinnell is Division III college basketball’s answer to UNLV and Loyola Marymount, two teams that let ‘er rip in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and before that the National Basketball Association of the 1960s and 1970s, when the scoreboard displayed three digits per side every game night. Grinnell has led college basketball — not just Division III, but all of college basketball — in scoring 16 of the past 18 seasons and three-point shooting in 14 of the past 18 seasons. The 2003–04 Pioneers set a record by scoring 126.2 points per game, breaking their own 2001–02 season record of 124.9 points per game. The first seven names in the Midwest Conference single-game scoring record list, the first nine names in the conference single-season scoring list, and the first four names in the career scoring list are Pioneers.

The architect of this chaos is David Arsenault, who has been causing his Midwest Conference coaching brethren fits since 1989. (The first time Ripon played an Arsenault-coached Grinnell team in Iowa, Ripon won 134–131.) For once, the Grinnell College Web page that says that Arsenault “has become nationally and internationally renowned for his innovative coaching techniques and offensive-minded basketball” is not hype:

A by-product of his high-flying, fast-paced basketball has been increased player participation, enthusiastic home crowds and a virtual assault on the offensive records section compiled by the NCAA Statistics Office.

Not to mention on-floor success. Grinnell’s 1996 Midwest Conference title was its first since 1962. (The Pioneers beat Ripon in the conference championship game, with Grinnell’s Ed Brands scoring 60.) Under Arsenault, who was hired to coach a team that had had 25 consecutive losing seasons, Grinnell has won four Midwest Conference regular-season titles and two conference tournament titles. When Grinnell opened its new gymnasium, ESPN televised the game, and Sports Illustrated previewed the game. Grinnell is the only Midwest Conference team that gets national publicity beyond scoreboard sections of newspapers or websites, including USA Today, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Arsenault described his system thusly to SI: “We’re trying to perfect chaos. Most basketball today, especially at the professional level, has a lot of dead time. We send a new group of five out there every 35 seconds to run around and create as much disturbance as they can.” Another way to look at it is to watch how a team down eight points with 90 seconds left plays, and think of playing like that all 40 minutes.

Arsenault must have the easiest time of any Division III basketball coach in recruiting, irrespective of Division III’s lack of athletic scholarships. If a basketball player goes to Grinnell, he’s going to play. There is no alternative. The Pioneers’ leading scorer, Griffin Lentsch, plays just 20.5 minutes per game (yet leads the Midwest Conference in scoring at 26.2 points per game). Twenty-one Pioneers have played this season, and 14 players have played in every game this season. If Division III basketball is about participation, then Grinnell men’s basketball certainly achieves that standard.

And if Division III basketball is about academics over athletics, Grinnell succeeds there too. Grinnell fits no one’s definition of an athletic factory. (The average SAT score of a Grinnell student is 1350.) Arsenault took a sabbatical one season to write The Running Game — A Formula for Success and a video, “Running to Extremes.” He has since produced another video, “Running to Win.” Someone else is selling “The Grinnell System” video package, which is a high compliment indeed.

There is not only a method to this madness, but a statistical method to this madness. Several years ago, Arsenault commissioned some Grinnell students to figure out the statistical measures that predicted Grinnell’s success. Since this formula was discovered, meeting all five criteria has failed to produce a win only once, when Grinnell shot 16 percent from the field that night:

1. Shoot at least 94 shots per game, which averages to one shot every 12 seconds. (This year, Grinnell is averaging only 85 shots per game.)
2. Shoot 25 more shots than Grinnell’s opponent. (This year, they’re shooting 22 more shots per game.)
3. Shoot three-point shots on at least half of their shots. (This season, 61.1 percent of their shots are beyond the three-point arc.)
4. Generate at least 32 turnovers per game. (Just 28.4 turnovers per game this season. Their turnover ratio is plus 14.)
5. Get offensive rebounds on at least one-third of Grinnell’s missed shots. (This year, they’re getting offensive rebounds on 40 percent of Grinnell’s missed shots, and the Pioneers lead the conference in offensive rebounds per game.)

The result of this style of play could best be described as feast or famine, over an entire game or season. I’ve seen both Grinnell and Ripon come back from deficits of 20 or more points, and I’ve seen Grinnell and Ripon blow leads of 20 or more points. No lead by Grinnell or its opponent is safe, because the Pioneers never (or at least from what I’ve seen) let up on their style of play. Grinnell has both big wins and big losses (one year I announced a 99–55 Ripon win, and the Pioneers hold the record for points scored in a loss, 157–149 to Illinois College in 1994), and it seems that Grinnell most often finishes near the top or near the bottom of the conference.

I’ve called several Grinnell–Ripon games. The first season I announced Ripon games, I watched the two teams’ game in Ripon (Ripon 143, Grinnell 118) a couple weeks before Ripon’s trip to Grinnell. But watching that kind of game is not the same thing as announcing it. Five minutes into the Ripon-at-Grinnell game, I was running out of gas. (Part of it may have been the fact that Grinnell’s old Darby Gymnasium, described as the Boston Garden of the Midwest Conference, was infernally hot.)

Ripon won 110–107. That night also was the first night of the 1999 NBA season following that year’s lockout. Only one NBA team reached 110 points that night, and none of the games reached 217 combined points.

Since then, Grinnell–Ripon games I’ve announced include 103–100 in 2001, 124–110 in 2006,  120–118 in 2007, 137–129 in 2009, 127–107 in 2010, and 125–113 last season. In one of those games, the halftime score was 74–67. I got the halftime stats from Ripon’s sports information director, looked them over, and started laughing, because the halftime stats had more numbers on them than some games’ final stats.

The reaction of Grinnell’s opponents to the Pioneers’ contrarian style is interesting. I once asked Bob Gillespie, Ripon’s long-time coach, about Grinnell’s style. Gillespie replied that he wouldn’t coach that way, but it worked for Grinnell because they had won conference championships with that approach.

When USA Today did a story about Grinnell basketball last decade, the coach of one of Grinnell’s regular-season opponents called Grinnell’s style a travesty of basketball. (The coach took that comment somewhat back when the New York Times came calling.) The irony of that comment is that that particular opponent played similarly, though not to Grinnell’s extremes — they ran a lot, shot a lot of threes, scored a lot of points and gave up a lot of points. Another former rival said he loved watching Grinnell, but he hated playing Grinnell.

I give Arsenault a lot of credit for being willing to do this. Most team sports appear to have a sort of coaching groupthink, where peer pressure prevents a coach from doing something out of the box, like, say, never punting. (In the NFL, Tuesday Morning Quarterback swears that coaches coach with the goal of reducing the margin of defeat.) Ask yourself how many coaches in any sport would actually say ”We have fun. It’s almost a lost art in sports.” At a bare minimum, it’s highly entertaining to watch, and everybody plays because everybody has to play. One would think the Grinnell system would be quite effective in a college or high school conference known for its half-court slow-tempo style of play. (It would be interesting to take over a moribund high school girls’ basketball program, like this one, and see if this approach would work.)

Most teams, even those that play a deliberate style against anyone else, apply the take-what-the-defense-gives-you (or, in the words of former Iowa football coach Hayden Fry, “scratch where it itches”) approach to Grinnell. If you can get the ball out of the backcourt and their press, you are likely to have a high-percentage shot available for you. And that’s by design — Grinnell is happy to trade your two-point basket for their three-point basket. Ripon once lost to Grinnell despite shooting 67 percent from the field. Most teams therefore don’t shoot many threes against Grinnell unless they’re behind. (It shouldn’t be surprising that in addition to leading the Midwest Conference in points per game, scoring margin, three-point field goals, assists, assist-to-turnover ratio, blocked shots and turnover margin and assist-to-turnover ratio, Grinnell also leads the conference in average game attendance and road game attendance.)

Grinnell started this season with a bang by beating Principia 145–97, a game in which Grinnell deviated from its usual substitution pattern to allow Lentsch to score a Division III record 89 points. (The previous record was set by, of course, a Grinnell alumnus.) The Pioneers won 126–98, 150–137, 117–107, and 115–103. Their only loss was to Carroll 109–106 Jan. 14.

Tonight’s game is a rematch of their Dec. 3 meeting in Grinnell, won by the Pioneers 125–103. It will not only be an entertaining game, but a big game, given that Grinnell is tied for first and Ripon is tied for third in the Midwest Conference. (The team with which Ripon is tied for third, St. Norbert, is Grinnell’s Saturday opponent.) Since only four teams make the Midwest Conference basketball tournaments, a team that wants to have a shot at March basketball needs to finish in the top four, and it’s quite helpful to host the tournament, which the regular-season champion gets to do.

In addition to the conference implications, this should be a good game because Ripon leads the conference in scoring among teams not named Grinnell, and in free throw shooting. Grinnell plays physical defense (to say the least), so shooting 78.1 percent from the line should help the Red Hawks tonight. (Ripon is one of the few basketball teams I’ve seen that succeeds in any tempo of game and doesn’t try to control the pace of the game.)

Arsenault won’t be at the game, though. He’s on sabbatical this semester. (And unless you knew what Arsenault looked like, you wouldn’t recognize him as a coach, given that he usually sits on the far end of the bench and almost never even stands up during play.) His son, also named David, owner of the Division III record for assists in a game (34), is the interim coach this semester. Given Grinnell’s scores in the second semester, the younger Arsenault appears to coach like his father.

So if you’re interested in the most entertaining basketball you’ll see this season, come to the Storzer Center on the (west end of the campus of) Ripon College this evening, or watch us online. (Or if you’re busy Friday night, watch Grinnell at St. Norbert Saturday.) I guarantee you won’t be bored.

Packer fans know from past experience that the first couple days after a playoff-free season are not always healthy for the employment of a playoff-free coach.

In 2000, while on the way to a New Year’s/Rose Bowl party, the radio broke the news that coach Ray Rhodes was going to be fired after just one season. The Badgers won, the Packers won their season finale the next day, and Rhodes was fired. Nine years earlier, coach Lindy Infante was also fired by the same general manager, Ron Wolf, despite winning the Packers’ season finale, probably because that improved the Packers’ record all the way to 4–12.

The Bears did not fire their coach, Lovie Smith, Tuesday. They fired Smith’s boss, general manager Jerry Angelo.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Rosenbloom makes you wonder why (or perhaps be happy that) the Bears didn’t fire Angelo before now:

Talent wins, and the Bears are sadly and obviously bereft of it.

If you could suffer through most of the weapons-grade stupidity offered by Lovie Smith at his 2011 post-mortem Monday, you get to the part where Smith indicated injuries were a killer of a 7-3 season.

It was one injury: Jay Cutler’s. It exposed how badly Angelo executed the draft, which is his first and most important job. …

Cutler deodorized a lot of bad things, but even Cutler was pounded by a pathetic offensive line cobbled together by Angelo as if he was dropping acid. I mean, get a load of this:

A guard is playing center, a center is playing guard, a guard is playing right tackle, a right tackle is playing left tackle, and the last guy is a backup for a left guard who’s paid like a left tackle and can’t last a full season anywhere because he’s always getting hurt because he came here hurt.

(I’ll pause here while you absorb that last sentence.)

The purpose of a general manager is to get players. Angelo got fired because, well …

Angelo foisted Devin Hester on everybody as a No. 1 receiver, but the truth is, neither Hester nor any member of the Bears wide receiving corps could make Green Bay’s top five. …

Years of ridiculous picks hurt the Bears when they could least afford it. Angelo brought in players who were either bad or pre-injured. He failed miserably in the most important part of his job: scouting the physical and mental talents of currency of the realm: players.

It took him 10 years to get one of his offensive draft choices to the Pro Bowl. He wasted draft picks along the offensive line. He never could figure out the quarterback position, finally trading first-round picks for Cutler, but when Angelo finally had to show what he knew about the most important position on the field, Caleb Hanie sabotaged the end of the last two seasons.

A comment contrasts the Bears’ approach, such as it is, with their rivals to the north on U.S. 41, calling out Bears president Ted Phillips:

Phillips is the key.  He must go and get someone who will make EVERY decision based on only one criterion:  what choice will most likely give the team the best chance of winning.  Phillips has not done that over the years. … The Packers make EVERY decision based on what will help their team win.  Over the years, that approach pays off.  They are going for their 5th Superball championship.  The Bears have a pathetic single championship in modern times, and are looking at a long climb to become competitive for another.  GET a real football man in to replace PHILLIPS the bean counter.

(Is the “Superball” an event during Super Bowl Week?)

The comment contrasted the Bears’ and Packers’ stadium situations. The Packers renovated Lambeau Field while still playing there during the 2001–03 seasons. The Bears moved to the University of Illinois for one season, instead of picking one of three Chicago-area stadiums (Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park or Northwestern University’s Ryan Field) that would have worked for a season, and then replaced Soldier Field with an architectural disaster.

There are two ways to look at Smith, who said before the season that the 2011 Bears were the best team he’d ever had. The first, as Rosenbloom argues, is that the Bears’ next general manager won’t have the ability to hire his own coach. (The accusation is that the Bears are too cheap to fire Smith and eat the $10 million remaining on his contract.) The other, the Wolf/Ted Thompson model, would be that the new GM decides after watching Smith for a season whether to keep him or not.

Martz’s departure as the Bears’ offensive coordinator is ironic. Smith touted the Bears’ rushing for 2,000 yards this season, even though Martz’s “Greatest Show on Turf” offense is not known for rushing. Moreover, nine teams hit the 2,000-rushing-yard mark, but only four (Denver, Houston, New Orleans and San Francisco) made the playoffs. Ten teams hit the 4,000-passing-yard mark, and only three (San Diego, Dallas and Philadelphia) did not make the playoffs. And in the most important statistic, scoring offense, four of the 2,000-yard rushing teams finished in the top 10 in scoring, but only New Orleans and Houston made the playoffs; the Texans were the only team to throw for less than 4,000 yards, finish in the top 10 in scoring and make the playoffs. This is the long way of saying that rushing is not nearly as important as passing in the 21st century NFL. (And the Bears’ run game was good enough to get them to 30th in offensive yardage.

The Bears have been known for years for running the football and their defense. The 2011 Bears were 17th in yardage and 19th in scoring on defense. The two worst defenses in terms of yardage, Green Bay and New England, are the number one seeds in their conferences. (According to Tuesday Morning Quarterback, the Packers are the first team to finish last in defense and first in their conference.) Despite their basement position in yardage, the Packers and the Patriots were 14th and 18th, respectively, in scoring defense.

This suggests that the Bears’ approach is faulty in more than one way. They made the correct move in finding a capable (if buttheaded) quarterback, Cutler, but failed to build an offense around him. Nor do they have an offense designed to compete in the 21st century NFL. Of the Bears’ receivers, only Hester would even get a Packer practice squad spot, and only on the roster as a kick returner. Anyone who has watched a couple seasons of football knows that the most important position group is the offensive line, and the Bears’ offensive line’s only contribution to the passing game is trying to get its quarterbacks killed. The aforementioned 2,000 rushing yards didn’t get the Bears into the playoffs, did it?

Cutler’s injury torpedoed the Bears’ season. That’s the fault of the Bears for not finding an adequate replacement. In contrast, Packer backup quarterback Matt Flynn has played well in his two career starts and his relief appearance in the Packers’  loss to Detroit last season. There is no question that if something happened to Aaron Rodgers, the Packers’ coaches would have Flynn ready to go. The NFL’s quarterback factory is in Green Bay given the number of quarterbacks who came through Green Bay who ended up playing elsewhere, including Kurt Warner, Doug Pedersen, Ty Detmer, Mark Brunell, Aaron Brooks and Matt Hasselbeck.