By now, I am sure that everyone has heard what Bus Cook had to say about the whole Jay Cutler – Denver Broncos mess.  As you would expect, in the opinion of Mr. Cook, nothing is Jay Cutler’s fault, and even less than nothing is Bus Cook’s fault.

According to Cook, the relationship started to go south when Mike Shanahan was fired.  Cutler met with the owner and expressed his disappointment.  Pat Bowlen, to his credit, not only took the meeting but did not yell and scream at Cutler and tell him that his job was to report to camp and do as he was told.  Bowlen assured Cutler that he would keep the offense intact, even though Shanahan was now gone.

Next, when Bowlen hired an offensive coach to be his new head coach, and offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates was let go, Cutler felt like this: “I was upset when they let Jeremy go…but I didn’t push for a trade then.”  What a trooper you are to stick it out through the tough times and not ask for a trade at the very first sign of adversity, Jay.

Then, Cutler met with McDaniels and told his agent that everything was going to be OK.  That is what Bus Cook said…Cutler, after meeting with McDaniels, told him that it was going to be OK.  Why, at that time, Bus Cook did not sit his extremely young, extremely self-important, extremely stupid client down and explain a few things to him we will never know…but we will hazard a guess or two regarding Cook’s behavior as we make out way through this post.  Suffice it to say that Bus Cook never said something like “you are damn right it is going to be OK, Jay…because you are in a very good situation for a young quarterback and you would be an absolute idiot to risk it, even for one second”.  I think that’s what Cook, if he gave a crap about Cutler’s long-term health and happiness, might have told him.

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I just watched Kentucky barely survive at home against UNLV in an N.I.T. game.  During the last 7 minutes of the game, I saw several things that told me everything I need to know about the prospects of Billy Gillispie as a big-time college basketball coach.

Wasting time berating his players during timeouts.  Does Billy think for one second that a Kentucky basketball player does not know he messed up when he made a 40-foot balloon pass in the offensive zone that turned into an easy transition bucket for the opposition?  How does Coach Gillispie not know that he should be coaching instead of acting like a jerk, making a point that absolutely did not need to be made?  Bear in mind that this occurred when the Kentucky lead, which had been 20 at one point, was 6 points…and it was a T.V. timeout (i.e., a free opportunity to provide some extra coaching for your team that just turned a 20-point lead into a 6-point lead). 

Kentucky players picked up their dribble and got trapped on 6 out of 7 possessions.  This happened with no fewer than 3 time outs taking place between the first instance and the sixth instance.  Do you think the players of a top flight college basketball coach would do that a second time, much less a sixth time, during the final 7 minutes of a tournament game in their own gym?

Billy Gillispie was standing up on the sidelines wringing his hands during play.  While I was watching this, I was at first reminded of Jerry Tarkanian’s towel.  Then, as I started to think about it more and more, it occurred to me that for some reason, it was endearing with Tark, whereas Gillispie looked like the geekiest 6th grader in school contemplating exactly what level of rejection is about to befall him as he works up his nerve to ask a girl to dance for the first time…or maybe an alcoholic just trying to get to the end of his workday and taste that sweet first drink of the night.  It was, without a doubt, the least confidence-inspiring thing I have ever seen a college basketball coach do at any time.

Players dunking with an insurmountable lead at the end of the game.  Ahead by 9 points, Patrick Patterson executed a dunk with 20 seconds left on the shot clock and under 30 seconds left on the game clock.  When your coach is a punk, I guess you can’t really expect your players to behave any other way.

Kentucky is better than their coach will ever be.  They need to cut their losses, pay Gillispie whatever it takes to make him go away for good, and call Bobby Knight.  If you want to still be considered a top 5 program, get yourself a top 5 coach.  Your current coach had a nice run down there in College Station where the expectations were easy to exceed…he does not have the intelligence, intestinal fortitude or coaching skills to achieve success at a top flight college basketball program.

By all means, if you want to have a future of partying in the streets every March and watching the games on T.V. every April, then you have your man.  If you would like to restore your program to its once-proud traditions, then you need a coach capable of matching the big boys (Calhoun, Calipari and Self) in the big games.  Gillispie has proven time and again that his big game coaching ability is somewhere between Division II and YMCA.

FOOTNOTE

You will note the absence of Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Billy Donovan, Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski from the list of “big boys” in this article.  That is because the only time I have seen any of these coaches win a big game is when they absolutely, without question, had the better team…but they usually lose several big games every year, and one in the tournament almost every year, to inferior competition…that does not make you one of the big boys in my book.  Sure, they are some of the big-time coaches, and any program would be lucky to have a guy that can recruit players and assistant coaches like those guys, but in the biggest games of all, they have never, ever been capable of making a team exceed their capabilities…only reach them.  Obviously, The General, if and when he returns to coaching, goes on the list of big boys.

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Am I the only one that wants to put any of the blame for the Cutler-Broncos situation on Bus Cook?  I mean, as far as I know, he’s the only one of the machismo douche-bags in this whole situation with an advanced degree, right?

And if he was in the room with McDaniels and Cutler over the weekend, how on earth was it not his primary function to make sure that the meeting ended with a handshake and a “Jay, you’re our guy”?  Hell, for the purposes of doing right by his client, anything would have been better than Jay whining to Chris Mortensen Sunday night, that’s for sure…even a “Jay, shut the hell up.  You are a player and I am your boss.  If I have the opportunity to make a move that I think is going to benefit the team, it is my decision to make, and my consequence to live with if it does not work.  Your only responsibility, if that ever happens, is to pack up your locker and vacate the complex.”

While we’re at it, let’s pass out a little blame to Pat Bowlen, the owner…who is, I am sure, a brilliant businessman…or more accurately, WAS a brilliant businessman before he got into sports.  So, Mr. Bowlen, if you just hired a top executive who is 32 years old, and the entire harmonic balance of your company was at stake in a meeting he was chairing right after he came on board, would you let him handle it by himself, or would you want to be in the room?  What if I told you that the guy’s chosen profession, based on his intellectual capacity, was “football coach”?  I am continually amazed that so many of these guys become so incompetent at running their professional sports organizations after having so much success in the business world…I am becoming more and more convinced that it is pure dumb luck and nothing more that allows these jokers to be successful at anything.

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Popularity: 31% [?]

Now that the selection committee has done their job and set the field of 65, it’s time to take an objective look at what they messed up.  All of this analysis is based on our bracket, which is based strictly on the data and our proprietary algorithm, and can be found at RPIBracket.com.  While we have always prided ourselves on the fact that our bracket was significantly different than the bracketologists, our algorithm got 61 out of 65 teams correct.  What that means to us is that our algorithm is good enough to serve as the basis for any arguments we are about to make in this post.

First of all, let’s look at the snubs and gifts, in terms of who got in and who did not get in.  The 4 teams that we have different than the selection committee:  Creighton, St. Mary’s, San Diego State, and Niagara.  The 4 teams that the selection committee put in the tournament instead:  Boston College, Maryland, Michigan, and Arizona.  Hmmmm – I think it’s time to start the “Money Grubbing” argument.  Do you notice anything about the 4 teams on those lists?  All 4 teams that we “missed on” are not from the BCS conferences, and all 4 teams the selection committee put in there are from the BCS conferences.  Don’t worry – the argument will get even stronger when we look at the seedings in our bracket (once again, based on the DATA and nothing else) vs. the bracket that the selection committee came up with.

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Well, all of the results are in, and we have our final bracket up at RPIBracket.com.  As for myself, I can’t wait to see how different the bracket is from the selection committee’s bracket…as any of you that have been following this throughout the whole process knows that matching the selection committee would be an admission that our algorithm is completely flawed.  Or, I guess you could look at it the other way and say that if we end up with 62 or 63 matches, this year’s committee put together a fair bracket.

I know there are going to be lots of seeding differences between the selection committee and our bracket, but that is because, as we have been saying over and over for the past several weeks, our bracket is based on the data nothing else – no major conference bias or revenue chasing like the selection committee. 

A couple of items of note:

• We are not, under any circumstances, believing the hype with Louisville.  They managed to make it through the entire Big East season without having to play a Top 4 conference team on the road, and they skated through the Big East tournament with the easiest road possible.  Their Big East tournament win vaulted them for a 3 seed to a 2 seed in our bracket.
• Memphis is not a 1 seed, and never has been in our bracket.  They just have not played enough elite teams to get a read on them through the data…and the data tells us that they are a 2 seed.
• Here are the 1 seeds in our bracket:  Pittsburgh, UConn, North Carolina, and Michigan State.  We are not only VERY confident that these are the correct 1 seeds, we maintain that anyone who puts Louisville or Memphis into a 1 seed is not paying attention to the facts.
• Mid-Majors with Multiple Bids.  You may see some of this from the selection committee later today, but probably not quite this much.  Here are the mid-major conferences that have multiple bids in our bracket:  Atlantic-10 (3 bids), Horizon League (2 bids), Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (2 bids), Missouri Valley Conference (2 bids), West Coast Conference (2 bids)…that’s right, we have St. Mary’s AND Creighton in our bracket.  The selection committee may follow suit there…but we also have Niagara in there as well.  Based strictly on the data, their resume was just too strong.

So, there are the main points for today.  The Mack household is on quarantine with the flu right now, so I will leave any additional analysis for you to do on your own.  I may have some time later to break down the differences between our bracket and the selection committee and, of course, use something silly like the facts to back up my argument.

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Has anyone ever seen Al Skinner and Paul Hewitt in the same place?  They coach in the same conference, so I would assume that it has happened, but I would need to talk to someone that attended such a game to verify that they are not the same dude.

By the way – nice bracelet, Coach Skinner.  If this coaching thing doesn’t work out, you may have a future in auto sales.

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