A Cup, Please. No Ice

That's one of my most frequent lines on aircraft--I tend not to talk much except when spoken to. 

Unlike my partner, who always has the most interesting conversations.  

Certainly the quality of person on planes is good, in general. 

...as applied to the FIFA World Cup 

The draw for the World Cup was an exciting event, I hear.  Not so much the draw itself, but the ambience. This does bode well; our oppressive environment is not being extended to the international invasion--at least, not so far.  Trump is not threatening the FIFA head, who has made buddy-buddy with him. 

Seriously, we cannot have ICE raids on locales for World Cup soccer games.  There are going to be many foreigners, and many of them will not have the right papers. I think the immigration authorities will be smart enough to realize that, and the dangers of provocation in such public areas, and keep their distance.  

This is a very feel-good kind of draw this time around, as they expand the tournament to 48 nations instead of 32.  Instead of eight groups of four, there will now be 12 of them.  To make things really lax, though, 32 of the 48 will go through to the knockout rounds, of which there will now be one full round more, with 16 more games. So, the early rounds are easy, but if you want to win or reach the heights, say, of the semifinals, you have to win one more knockout round than before. 

 Each of the top  9 ranked countries have their own group where they may rule, the three other groups topped by the home teams, the USA, Mexico, and Canada.. Finishing first means a team would face a second or third-place team of its group, while finishing second means facing a team finishing first or second.  Don't think of the odds for a team finishing third, while one finishing fourth goes home.  

To illustrate, we could look at the US, ranked 14th in the world. round. A very successful outcome would be to reach the quarterfinals (round of 8); to do that, they need to get therough the first round and then win two matches in the knockout rounds. Their first game is against Paraguay, their second against Australia, and their third and final game will be against a team that wins a four-team play-in group, most likely Turkiye.   The US will be heavily favored in the first two games (though Paraguay may be tough to break down), then the third game would likely be to determine first and second place.  

If they win the group, the US would face a third-place team from another group, and if they win that, their round-of-16 match would likely be against Belgium (the team that knocked them out in 2014), whereas if the US finishes second, they would play a second-place team, then, if they win, likely run up against Argentina.  That's a big difference, as Argentina is the defending champion, dominated the highly-competitive South American qualification, and is one of the consensus favorites for the tournament (along with Spain, France, and England). At a minimum, then, the US should qualify; furthermore, it should finish first or second in its group. After that, it's a bit of a crap shoot, though deterministic. 

There won't be a lot of first-round games between two highly-rated teams with a lot to play for:  two I see are France vs. Norway (June 26), which features two of the top scorers in the world (Kylian Mbappe for France and Erling Haaland for Norway)  and a great opener for England against always-dangerous Croatia on June 17.  After that first round, though, the tension and quality of matches will rise. 

I'll be watching from abroad and will be interested to see if the US makes a mess of its hospitality with an excess of America First-type jingoism. The recent Ryder Cup (golf) did not show us on our best behavior. 

The NBA Cup

 The pro basketball league fashioned an ingenious in-season tournament last year to pump up some interest in the early season (this time of year), when football dominates.  The clever part is that all the games in this tournament, except the final one, are fitted into the regular season schedule and count in the standings for it. 

The qualification games are now completed and eight teams advanced to the single-elimination knockout rounds.  With qualification based on just a few games, some of the top teams did not advance.  The question for this year's cup is whether any team can stop the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league's defending champion, which comes into the tournament with a 23-1 record.  The Phoenix Suns had their chance yesterday and were defeated by 49 points; the San Antonio Spurs will be next (with Wemby, maybe?-- their star, Victor Wembanyama), and then there will be a team from the Eastern Conference (the Orlando Magic or the New York Knicks).  I'll be very surprised if the Thunder don't capture the Cup (the Milwaukee Bucks won last year but did not reach the next round this time).  The final does not count in the standings, but I think Oklahoma City's team will be motivated to continue their dominance on the terms offered.  

The big problem with the Cup is that it is only on Prime Video (Amazon's).   

The College Football Playoff Championship Trophy and the Vince Lombardi Trophy 

 I would humbly suggest to the directorates of the college and pro football leagues that they consider changing the name of their grand prize, or just get a cup (also, no ICE, please!) You would think the football jocks would get it.  The NFL one honors Lombardi, head coach of the Packers when they won the first two Super Bowls, but today the man represents a style of coaching--motivating by bullying and fear--which should be long gone.  The Super Bowl, of course, is a monumental event (not a great game, usually) which deserves a new, gorgeous cup named after a worthy, deceased predecessor. I'll let them figure it out. 

The NFL is going into the last weeks of this season with more spots not yet determined in the (now, 14-team) playoffs than usual.  In some divisions multiple teams are winning at better than 2-1, and in others no team is more than a game over .500.  So, there will be more meaningful games in the last weeks.  Top spot in each conference is the regular-season prize for the teams that have already assured their playoff spots, as it gets them a first-round bye.   

As for the college playoffs, every year since 2014, when the NCAA invented that poorly-named trophy an replaced the chaotic bowl game-based method of identifying a top team, there has been a new experiment in a football playoff, each year with new public relations disaster and new learnings. 

 In 2024, the playoff was expanded from four teams all the way to 12, using existing bowl locations and dates for some of the games--a major improvement. With 12 teams, four teams get a first-round bye, but last year two of the four were conference champions not worthy of the honor and promptly eliminated by at-large teams in the quarterfinals.  

This year, they improved that by simply giving the four top-seeded teams the first-round byes.  Two of them, Indiana and Ohio State, are from the same conference. The odious championship games for the various conferences did not seem to have extra weight, though of course in most cases they paired up the highest-performing teams in the conference.  

Not all, though.  The ACC (formerly known as the Atlantic Coast Conference, now thoroughly bastardized with national participation of universities seeking good basketball) ended up with a Virginia-Duke game, when the best two teams with ACC affiliation were Miami and Notre Dame.  More on the Irish later.  Duke, outrageously far from being ranked in the top 25, came up with an upset in overtime, which effectively killed Virginia's Cinderella-ish hopes.  Neither got a bid, but Miami did, without the championship invite.  

The last two at-large bids came down to Miami, Notre Dame, and Alabama. Miami defeated Notre Dame early in the season, but both finished 10-2 and played no conference championship, while Alabama's decisive loss to Georgia in the SEC championship game was their third. Miami and Alabama got the bids and Notre Dame was left out, screaming foul.  

There was bad blood between the Notre Dame athletic director and the ACC direction afterward, because it was claimed  Miami was improperly favored over Notre Dame in the final week's analysis.  Miami was moved past them, though neither team played.  I see the Irish--who are not in the ACC for football but are for other sports--making a move to the Big 10 (now with 18 teams, I think), now including many of those special historic rivals which kept Notre Dame independent for football. 

At least the controversy has moved from #4/5 to #9/10/11 of the seeded playoff picks, with a couple reserved for the winners in lesser conferences.  I back the proposal to move to 14 teams, with the only two first round byes going to the champions of the two most successful conferences (based on interconference play).  The extra two positions would help resolve some of these problems about promised slots and maybe move the controversy borderline out of the top 10. The one about going to 24 teams (eight to get guaranteed berths and byes through conferences?) I think could be made to work.  My strongest advice for the next year's controversies is that they get a cup, no ice. 

 Bottom line is that Notre Dame is acting too entitled (for refusing to play any bowl game, out of spite) and college football is its own athletic industrial complex, and the conference commissions are the bad guys. The outstanding Indiana-Ohio St. game was probably the highlight of the season, including the final of the playoffs, whenever it finally comes.  (My pick would be Georgia.)