Pain in the Astros

Baseball season is here, and IN PLAY LOSE is curious about the season opener tonight simply because it may be the only time all year the Houston Astros are not in last place. Then again, they could lose to the Texas Rangers at Orange Juice Park tonight, drop to last and stay there all season, which is a far more likely result.

Here is the 2012 Astros in a nutshell. (The best part of that video is when Nats' announcer F.P. Santangelo is literally rendered speechless at what he has just seen.) They finshed 2012 with a record of 55-107, a robust 42 GB the Cincinnati Reds. And the 2013 version may be even worse, if that is possible. The 2013 Astros have a team payroll lower than what the Yankees are paying Alex Rodriguez (which also speaks as to why the Yankees are a mess this year, but that is for another blog). The Astros have also switched leagues and been dropped into the AL West, which looks like it could be the toughest division in baseball this season, what with the über-loaded California Los Angeles Angeles of Garden Grove Anaheim, the talented-if-neurotic Rangers, the sneaky A's and what looks to be a resurgent Mariners team. (Yeah, I know. I'll believe it when I see it.) It's not outside the realm of possibility that the Astros could challenge the 1962 Mets' 40-120 for the worst record in modern day history. I don't have any ill will towards the Astros, and I applaud the return to their traditional colours, but this team is gonna be jawdroppingly bad this year. Patience, maalox, and strong drink had better be in large supply in Houston this year.

There will be plenty of good seats available.

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

I chronicled the misfortunes of the New Mexico Lobos in my previous post here on IN PLAY LOSE, and today the Good Guys from Albuquerque have a new problem on their hands: namely, replacing coach Steve Alford, who signed a new 10-year contract a matter of weeks ago and then promptly bolted to UCLA.

Such is the nature of the Cult of the College Basketball Coach, which is one of the most toxic, noxious curiosities in American sports.

Alford said that he was extremely happy in Albuquerque, of course, but that this opportunity fell in his lap and was just too good to pass up. Which is rubbish, of course, because it was common knowledge that now ex-UCLA coach Ben Howland was in trouble this season, and it was going to take some real positive NCAA results to salvage his job (and 20-pt. losses in the first round to Minnesota do not count as "positive results" in Westwood). If you think someone who has a job you want is gonna get fired, you definitely keep your eye on that job. When you sign a new deal like that and then bolt immediately for 'greener' pastures, you just look like the selfish, self-absorbed fraud that you really are.

But this is pretty common, unfortunately, in a strange sport which makes no sense – a sport where players make nothing and turn over every few years while the small men with Napoleonic complexes and control issues become icons, become larger than life and larger than the institutes of higher learning whose principles they supposedly are there to uphold. Don't demand loyalty and commitment from players and A.D.'s and then flaunt the fact that the rules don't seem to apply to you. That's just lame and disingenuous.

I'm skeptical of this whole series of moves, as I believe that hiring a coach interested in themselves more than anything else leads to generally negative results. For all of his good work in the 505, Alford has shown himself to be an opportunist just like seemingly everyone else in his chosen field. Sure, it's a business, but don't pretend you're something that you're not. Being treated like a rock star ultimately means not needing to be accountable for your actions a whole lot of the time ... unless you start losing, of course, and UCLA's definition of 'losing' is a lot different than at most other places.

Where it goes from there is anyone's guess, of course – it all comes down to recruiting and procuring talent, of which there is an abundance in Southern California. UCLA has been rife with turnover and incohesion of late – several guys who Howland ran out of Westwood ended up at New Mexico, interestingly enough, and there is hope Alford can keep those kids home.

And I should point out that I'm not about to go "boohoo, poor New Mexico" here, since they should've known what they were getting into when they hired Alford in the first place – he had a sub-stellar run at Iowa (another school with notoriously unrealistic expectations) and then went about slipping out of Iowa City about the time the natives started getting restless. This is how this game is played. You poach someone from another school and then try to figure out some way to keep them if they're any good. Loyalty is a no-way street. If you hire an opportunist who looks out for #1, you shouldn't be surprised when they look out for #1 at your expense.

And I put the word 'greener' in quotes before because it's debatable whether or not UCLA, at the moment, is really a better job than New Mexico. The Bruins just fired a coach who went to the Final Four three straight years. With 11 national championships comes unrealistic expectations – particularly at a school notorious for being stingy with the purse strings when it comes to the athletic budget. For all the history of the place, Pauley Pavilion is a pretty average facility, and for all the success over the years, the L.A. populace views UCLA hoops with a surprising amount of indifference. (I'd rather have 18,000 hoops junkies piled high in The Pit any day.) New Mexico may have bombed out in the NCAAs but they essentially have their entire roster back next year, so a new coach will have the opportunities to win in a hurry. I'll be curious to see who they hire.

In Play Lobo

It wouldn’t be the NCAA Tournament without a choke by the New Mexico Lobos, who are quite possibly the most successful college basketball program that’s never won anything. It was considered a massive upset for the #3 seed Lobos to fall 68-62 to the #14 seed Harvard Crimson in the 1st 2nd round of the NCAA tournament, but if you know anything about New Mexico, you know that the Lobos never win in the NCAAs. The first article I randomly opened about the game started with the line “New Mexico must be cursed.” No argument here.

New Mexico is a state full of basketball fanatics and their two D-1 universities both consistently make the NCAA tourney. (As opposed to football, where the two schools are often laughably bad.) New Mexico State has a pretty impressive tradition – 20 NCAA appearances, including making the Final Four in 1970, and the Aggies were always Jerry Tarkanian’s biggest nemesis during UNLV’s glory days of the late 1980s. New Mexico State is one of those places filled with JC’s, foreign players, and transfers from other schools, and so the teams are radically different from one year to the next and fluctuate wildly. (This year they had something like 5 Canadians, including a 7’5” center of Indian descent.) Nowadays, the Aggies play in the lower-level WAC and are perpetually seeded like 12th or 13th and make a quick exit from the tournament.

As for the Lobos from New Mexico, well, they’re a source of considerable angst in the Land of Enchantment. They’ve got a passionate fan base that borders on fanatical and play in one of the sports most iconic venues, The Pit, which is, in fact, a pit. It’s dug into the ground and you walk down the stairs from the entry to your seats. The place is loud, deep, and intimidating for opponents. Between the 18,000 maniacs in the stands and the 5,000 ft. elevation in Albuquerque, the Lobos have a considerable home court advantage. They’ve been verging on being a powerhouse at the sport for decades.

And they always blow it.

I heard quite a few commenters asking in the run-up to the tourney if this was New Mexico’s “year.” Well, no, because it’s never their year. If there was ever “their year” is was this team in 1978, which then promptly, inexpicably lost to Cal St. Fullerton in the first round of the NCAAs. Love the clothes in those pictures and the scores of those games. Holy crap, a team that could actually shoot, which is such a foreign concept in contemporary college basketball. But the Lobos weren’t particularly interested in playing defense, and it caught up to them.

That, right there, is one of the biggest single chokes in NCAA history. All they had to do was beat Cal St. Disneyland and they got to play in the Sweet 16 on their home court. Norm Ellenberger, the coach of that team, had his career came to a dubious end:  

The turning point in Ellenberger's career came with "Lobogate," a lurid episode involving forged academic transcripts, payments made for bogus junior-college credits to keep players eligible, and other devices permitting individuals entirely lacking academic credentials to be represented as college students while playing on Ellenberger's team. The episode began with an FBI wiretap on the phone of a prominent Lobo booster, recording a conversation in which Ellenberger arranged with assistant coach Manny Goldstein to transfer bogus credits from a California junior college to the office of the UNM registrar. Subsequent investigation turned up a manufactured college seal from Mercer County Community College in New Jersey, along with blank transcripts and an extensive record of previous forgery … Ellenberger managed to remain popular in Albuquerque even after the Lobogate scandal decimated the Lobo basketball program, forced him to resign as head coach, and left him with criminal liability. An NCAA investigation into Lobo recruiting practices found 57 rule violations, and Ellenberger himself was convicted on 21 counts of fraud two years later. His restaurant ventures continued to do well, but he was never able to return formally to a major head coaching position.

Both schools in the state have had their run-ins with the NCAA over the years. The state of New Mexico is definitely off the beaten path, and recruiting has definitely been done on the fringes. For as much as people love the game there, the state itself doesn’t produce a whole lot of Div. 1 talent. Still, the home court environment and the fact that the team is perpetually successful make it an easier sell to a kid than it could be.

I lived in New Mexico during a particularly galling era of the late 90s, when the Lobos had some of their most talented teams ever, led by future NBA first-round pick Kenny Thomas, and yet they’d get into the NCAA tournament and pretty much just forget how to play (while Utah, their fiercest rival in the new Mountain West, was going so far as actually reaching the NCAA final in 1998). The Lobos were coached by Dave Bliss back then, and using the word ‘coached’ seems like a stretch, because come crunch time in a close game, they always looked completely disorganized. Bliss was a strange guy whose career came to a terrible conclusion after he'd taken the job in Baylor, having left New Mexico, in part because his team's constant underachieving in the NCAA's had become such a source of frustration around the campus and the fan base. A hallmark of his coaching career, be it at New Mexico or at SMU before that, was churning out team after team that should’ve been better than they were, as his ability to recruit top talent was neutered by his inability to maximize it.

The Lobos are now coached by Steve Alford, who I pretty much hated when he was a player, but he’s done remarkably well in his tenure in ABQ so I have to give him some props. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to find the right spell to cast to undo the voodoo curse that is the NCAA tournament. It's bizarre, really, how this higher level of failure can continually perpetuate itself when the players turn over so quickly – what happens in 2013 has no real connection to 1978 of 1998 at all, of course. But once that culture of failure takes hold (and make no mistake about it, losing in the first days of the NCAA's yet again will be construed as a failed season in The Land of Enchantment), it can be absolutely impossible to shake and span generations.

My immediate response to watching the Lobos gag vs. the Crimson and make an early exit from the tournament was to look at the calendar and confirm that it was a day ending in Y, which is about as newsworthy. I do have a fondness for the Lobos, since I consider New Mexico a sort of home state of mine, and I was certainly interested back when I was working the sports desk at the Santa Fe New Mexican. I definitely want them to do well. But until they can win both games on the first weekend of the tournament, I cannot take them seriously.

March Badness

As a primer for both the NCAA tournament and a long blog to come in the coming days about a school dear to my heart that loses like none other – the Cougars of Washington State University – I offer up this gem from the first round of the 1994 NCAA Tournament:

Fast forward to about the 9:00 mark to see the Cougars dumbly gag this one away. It was a ridiculously talented team possessing 2 future NBAers (one of whom also went on to play Major League Baseball) and a third guy who eventually became the leading scorer in school history. This result therefore constituted a gross underachievement.

This story doesn't have a whole lot of happy endings. This was Kelvin Sampson's last game as coach of W.S.U. He then went onto Oklahoma, where his team reached the Final Four but he ran afoul of the NCAA, then moved onto Indiana, where he ran so far afoul of the NCAA that there is currently a show-cause order against him – which is essentially a way of blackballing him from taking another college coaching job. He seemed to leave a mess whenever he left, and the W.S.U. program disintegrated over the course of the next 7-8 years.

Meanwhile, Tony Harris, who was W.S.U.'s best player and leader and who missed the free throw and committed the needless foul 35 feet from the basket with :05 left in the game and then flung the ball wildly at the basket at the game, went onto play in the NBA but then this happened in Brazil. Such a circumstance has always made it hard to approach this particular W.S.U. choke job with the necessary amount of humour.

What the fax is going on?

Many thanks to IN PLAY LOSE follower Phonerz J. Magratheazaphod for passing along this little bit of incompetence from the world of the NFL. It's one of the more baffling contract snafus of recent memory, involving defensive lineman Elvis Dumervil of the Denver Broncos. Or, at least, he used to be with the Broncos. Read on from this link from Yahoo! football guru Michael Silver:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--what-the-fax--elvis-dumervil-contract-snafu-could-shift-balance-of-power-in-afc---002225119.html

Who the hell uses fax machines anymore? I've always HATED fax machines. They always struck me as proof positive of my assertion that the more humans perfect technology, the more technology acts like humans – for better and most certainly for worse, and fax machines always act like idiots. Fax machines just aren't the mood a lot of the time. They break for no apparent reason, just DON'T FEEL like working sometimes, and the number of important docs I've had come out sideways on wrinkled, crumpled paper are too many to count. One of the finer moments of my professional existence occurred at a Credit Union where I was a temp when my boss instructed me to help him gravity test the fax machine and we promptly threw it off the balcony of a 3-story building. It pleases me to report that gravity was working that day.

Jeez, couldn't Dumervil's agent just quickly snap a bunch of instagrams of the contract's pages and email them? There's no precedent for that, but its better than sitting around getting busy signals on one end and PC – LOAD LETTER error messages on the other.

The LOSE apologizes for hibernating longer than the Chicago Cubs here. We'll get it going at some point here soon. There always seems to plenty of time for losing, but maybe not enough time to write about it.