Hall of Fame madness

I’m a few days behind the curve on this, but oh well. The new inductees into the baseball Hall of Fame were recently announced, and there was only two of them: Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice. For Henderson, this was his first time on the ballot, and for Rice, it was his 15th and final time on the ballot. I am not going to discuss the merits of either because they both belong. But what I will touch on his how Rickey Henderson only got 94.8 percent of the votes and how no player in MLB history has ever been inducted to the hall of fame with a unanimous ballot.
Think about that. Nobody, not Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, anybody. How can that be? If anybody belongs in the HOF, it is Willie Mays. Many consider him the greatest player of all time. Yet he didn’t get a unanimous ballot. Now, some voters are under the impression that because Mays didn’t get a unanimous ballot that nobody should get one. If the greatest player, or players, didn’t go in uncontested, how can anybody? I guess I understand that thinking, but it is idiotic. If Rickey Henderson received a unanimous ballot, that doesn’t make him better than Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. It just means that Henderson is, without a doubt, a bonafide Hall of Famer.
Henderson is the all-time leader in numerous categories, including stolen bases and runs scored. In one amazing hear, he had more runs scored than games played. Sure, runs scored is a product of who is behind him, but he has to get on base and put himself in a position to score. And the batters behind him got better pitches to hit because the pitcher was concerned with Henderson stealing a base. He was the greatest lead-off hitter of all time. Anybody who is the greatest anything of all time deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Yet, he received less than 95% of the vote. Ridiculous.
This obsession with keeping a ballot from being perfect is insane. The sports writers who didn’t vote for Henderson, or who won’t vote for Greg Maddox in the future, are crazy. All they are doing is perpetuating an ill-conceived idea and continuously thinking that hundreds of wrongs make a right. It was wrong for Mays to not receive a perfect ballot, but that doesn’t mean Rickey Henderson should not have.
If enough writers buy into this twisted logic, it is possible that somebody like Henderson or Maddox, might not make the HOF. If enough voters are determined not to have a perfect ballot and feel safe not voting for a person because they assume that everybody else will vote for him, he could get left off the ballot. Think about that. With this current mindset, it is possible that Maddox, the greatest pitcher of the last 40 years, could conceivably not be voted in his first year.
The sports writers who elect the Hall of Fame members wasted an opportunity to begin to correct decades worth of mistakes and set the platform to allow future unanimous votes. Instead, they clung to their stubborn, ill-conceived ideas and kept one of the greatest of all-time, a sure fire hall of famer, from receiving his due, perpetuated an antiquated idea and made it more difficult for any player to receive a perfect ballot. Is it any wonder people don’t like the media?

A pro-BCS opinion

With the end of the college football season, I have had my fill of debate/griping about the current BCS bowl system. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a proponent of changing the BCS system for a playoff, or at least an and-1 game for the national title (where everybody plays in a bowl game and then you re-do the BCS system to take the then no. 1 and 2 teams). In fact, I am pretty sure I wrote a column as sports editor railing on the current system. Maybe I should go back and read the column to see if I can convince myself to not write this next sentence. Nah. College football is great the way it is and it should not change. We do not need, and should not have a playoff system for college football. There, I said it. I just went against almost every college football pundit and fan. Whew, I feel liberated.
College football is, without a doubt, the most exciting season of any sport. Period. Every other sport, including the heralded NFL, has a boring regular season compared to college football. In the current system, almost every week is a playoff game for the top teams. Lose and you might not play for the national title. That is a lot of playoff games, don’t you think?
Let’s examine the NFL for a minute. This season, the New York Giants lost to the Cleveland Browns. Yet, nobody is saying the Browns are a better team or should be in the playoffs instead of the Giants because lost to them. Nor are people clamoring for the Houston Texans to be in the playoffs over the Tennesee Titans, who they beat in week 15. The season is a body of work, not just one game. In any given college season, the top-flight teams probably have eight or nine gimme games, while only being truly tested in three or four, about the same number as a playoff.
What is it about a playoff system that automatically gives credit to a national champion? As a fan, I want to see the two best teams play against each other for the title. With the BCS, we get pretty darn close to that compared to other sports, like NCAA basketball for one.
Everybody loves the NCAA tournament and it is probably sacrilegious for me to say anything bad about it, but since I’ve gone this far, I might as well punch my express ticket to sports hell. Often times in the NCAA tournament, we don’t see the best teams make it to the championship. Often times, a number two or three seed, or the occasional eight seed makes the championship. Yet nobody cries out foul when we, as fans, are robbed of seeing the two best (or at least two of the best) teams play for the title.
Also, look at last year’s NFL season. I think almost anybody will tell you that the New England Patriots were clearly the best team. Yet, nobody seems upset that they weren’t the champions. Or go back a few years to the 1998 NFL season (as a Minnesota Vikings fan, this is especially painful). The Vikings were the best team in the NFC, better than the eventual NFC champion Atlanta Falcons, but because Gary Anderson missed a field goal, we the fans were robbed of seeing the two best teams play for the Super Bowl.
And finally, I am going to stand up on my soap box and preach. Why do you need a supposed, true, non-debatable national champion? What is it about our society, our culture, ourselves, that we must have supposed closure. Why can’t we have an ambiguous national champion, or no national champion at all? Colleges are first and foremost a place of academics. Athletics are meant to spur school spirit and pride, as well as provide for social settings and entertainment for the university. Universities are not sports teams, rather educational entities.
We view playoffs as a way of determining who the best team for the season is. But they don’t. All they do is determine who the best team on that given day is. The BCS for all its failures, tries to give us something that no other sports entity, college or professional due, the two best teams playing for the national championship, while providing for the most exciting regular season of anything else. So for me, I’ve come around and I love the BCS and think it should continue just the way it is.
Congratulations Florida on your National Championship.