First, what is the reason for putting a picture of Erin Andrews on this post? It has no relevance, especially since it is a picture of her working at a basketball game. I assume it's just using her as eye candy to draw readers to the rest of the post, which is a pretty cheap trick, even for blog. I'm glad to see that you can do google image searches for pictures from www.sidelinehotties.com, but I think your post would be better if focused on the actual content. At least your link to the nude Amanda Beard pictures ("Amanda, at Last", 6/10/2007) was about only Ms. Beard, thus did not pretend to have other value.

Second, your slew of disparaging jabs obviously shows a dislike for Notre Dame (which is a fine way to feel), but to claim that the Hawai'i Bowl bid was "otherwise unjustifiable" is inaccurate. It is a lower tier bowl game, so they are not displacing teams that are superior on the field (as may occur when ND gets a BCS bowl bid). At 6-6, ND was bowl eligible, just like the teams that were left home this bowl season (who were also 6-6). Two of the "snubbed" teams needed victories over FCS (formerly DI-AA) teams in order to reach bowl eligibility (San Jose St and Arkansas St) and the others have resumes that are far worse than the Irish (Notre Dame's Saragin rating is 58; Bowling Green's is 81; Louisiana-Lafayette's is 106). I do not claim that ND was good team this year, but in a [bowl] system that rewards mediocrity, they were slightly more mediocre than the 4 aforementioned teams.

I wouldn't have bothered commenting if I didn't normally enjoy your writing and respect your work. You're better than this Mark.
David | 12.30.08 - 9:16 am | #

I'll cop to the pix cnkharge - it was late, I was rushing and didn't look too closely at where she was. On second look, it's clearly a basketball game and not football - the relevance - well, it was a post nominally about ABC/ESPN ratings.

The Notre Dame charge is a little less on point. They have always held themselves to a higher standard and preached that they were somehow above the run of the mill NCAA team, so for them to accept the Hawai'i Bowl invitation is something that would not have happened in the past. Did they deserve it? Well, it did get ratings for the bowl so perhaps they did, but with their schedule (entirely of their own making since they refuse to play a Big East schedule despite enjoying the rest of the benefits of the Big East, including the bowls), it still seems to me a little harder to justify.

Thanks for keeping me honest.

T
sportsbiz | Homepage | 12.30.08 - 3:14 pm | #