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From Our Editors

Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.

Best Of The SB Nation Network: February 8, 2010

Here is the best of the SB Nation network for Monday, February 8, 2010:

Hockey

- The Copper and Blue has an awesome interview with the authors of the book, Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925.

- Turning the tables on conventional wisdom, Defending Big D makes the case for not trading Marty Turco.

College Basketball

- Red Cup Rebellion laments its decision to eat cheap Mexican food while Ole Miss was erasing Alabama's 23-point second half lead on its way to a 74-67 win.

- Roll Bama Roll, by the way, quotes Forest Gump about the whole thing.

- Michigan State fell again in the Big Ten this weekend, this time 73-78 to Illinois. The Only Colors sifts through the very good to the very bad performances of the Spartans while Hail to the Orange hopes that the win signals a turning of the proverbial corner for the Illini.

Combat Sports

- Bloody Elbow has an epic recap of this weekend's epic UFC 109

- Headkick Legend, SBN's blog focused on Kickboxing, Japanese MMA, and Judo has a look at the history of K-1 Kickboxing

Basketball

-With the NBA facing a work stoppage (in 18+ months), Rufus On Fire portends the end of NBA exceptionalism.

- Lakers fans at Silver Screen and Roll are in panic mode? I will now share my schadenfreude with the rest of the NBA world.

- Golden State of Mind can't figure out why the Warriors waived a valuable expiring contract but don't worry, no one else can figure it out either.

- How awesome would it be to have King James on your team? Only Fear the Sword can answer that question.

Football

- The Jets playoff defeat might have disappointed Gang Green Nation but that didn't come close to the madness of losing cable DURING the Super Bowl.

- Dawgs By Nature explains how to find the pick of the litter in the coming NFL draft.

Baseball

- Carl Crawford with historical WAR charts supporting DRayBay's the case for a "great" player.

- The stats parade continues at The Good Phight as VORP demonstrates how the Philly's roster will improve in 2010.

College Football

- Tomahawk Nation examines just how thoroughly Florida State dominated the rest of the ACC in this year's recruiting rankings.

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by Seth Pollack • Feb 8, 2010 9:04 PM EST

Saints Do Their Part To Save Newspaper Industry

The Saints' historical win in Super Bowl XLIV is not only rebuilding the entire city of New Orleans, but it is also single handedly saving the local newspaper business, as fans everywhere are buying up Monday's edition at more than double the normal rate.

As of Monday afternoon, The Times-Picayune has sold nearly 600,000 copies of its Monday, Feb. 8 "Amen" edition, more than 350,000 extra.

Let's see you frame NOLA.com and put THAT on your wall, buddy!

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by Ryan Hudson • Feb 8, 2010 8:46 PM EST

Colts Welcomed Home, By All 11 Fans

So your team wins its first 14 games of the season, produces an MVP and takes a lead into the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. How do you honor them? Apparently, you don't.

The Colts flew back to Indianapolis Monday, only to be greeted by 11 fans at the airport. Eleven. This is a team that sold out its stadium every game this season. Not exactly an overwhelming 'thank you.'

Maybe the 11 fans kicked everyone else out of the airport in hopes of scrimmaging the team on the tarmac -- although that seems unlikely. The fans that did show up were more than thrilled to be there -- so much so that some forgot how to speak English.

"He is the most amazingest player and has such grace on the field," Robertson said.

That is the most bestest way of describing her favortist player ever.

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by Dan Bohm • Feb 8, 2010 8:00 PM EST

VIDEO: Tiny Tots Curling!

Here is a Wonderbread commercial made for the upcoming Olympics that we are posting for one reason: it contains toddlers attempting to curl with curling stones that probably outweigh them.

[Via.]

Have a great day.

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by Holly Anderson • Feb 8, 2010 7:40 PM EST

Seantrel Henderson Is The New Brown

The new hotness in recruiting, popularized by Terrelle Pryor in '08 and perfected by Bryce Brown in '09, is for prime blue-chippers to blow off Signing Day entirely in favor of staging a solo pledge at a later, more hyped date. Seantrel Henderson, a Rivals five-star OT out of St. Paul, put his own diabolical twist on the game this year, committing to USC in a primetime ceremony but making it oh-so-clear that he's only signing on the dotted line with the Trojans if they thread the NCAA sanctions gauntlet.

Now, of course, the plot thickens: Henderson's father is straight up admitting USC might not be Seantrel's final destination if things in Los Angeles aren't resolved not only favorably, but with a quickness:

I mean, at the end of the day it’s still a business and at the end of the day it’s still my son’s future. ... I’d rather be able to at least let him keep his options open, because if things aren’t looking good come the 20th or the 21st [of February] or whatever, then we might have to move in a different direction, but it’s only for the sake of his future.

I like Miami's odds to snatch him up. And it would be only fair, after the 'Canes lost out on Brown last year in a similar will-he-or-won't-he waiting game.

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by Holly Anderson • Feb 8, 2010 7:28 PM EST

Forget Stats To Judge A Pitcher: Now We Have Pretty Pictures

The crew at SB Nation's Beyond the Box Score is seemingly working on new things every day to wow the pants off of baseball fans across the world. Their latest addition is no exception.

Still, the natural human tendency is to look for the one combination of all things known into a single description that tells us everything we need to know about a particular subject. For the NFL, we have QB Rating (ugh), for Physics, string theory, and for social networkers, the still unnamed "# of unwanted comments from ancillary friends per post."

The same need exists for baseball fans. The conclusion I came to after some extended consideration (beer and videogames), is that perhaps the best way to describe some total package of talent is visually, rather than numerically.

Thus, the DiamondView was born.

The pitching DiamondView combines command, control, batted-ball and durability. Here's how the 2009 American League Cy Young Zack Greinke breaks down:

Yeah, he's pretty good. And so is DiamondView.

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by Randy Booth • Feb 8, 2010 7:09 PM EST

Rajon Rondo In H.O.R.S.E. Field?

NBA players competing in H.O.R.S.E. is one of those ideas that sounds too cool to mess up. What's not to love about NBA players one-upping each other on trick shots? Well, how about if Rajon Rondo is prominently involved.

According to reports, the field for the recently resurrected H.O.R.S.E. competition will pit Kevin Durant, Omri Casspi...and Rajon Rondo. Durant and Casspi are fine choices, but Rondo? He can't even make unguarded 15-footers. Just hitting the rim can be an adventure for him. Maybe he has a reservoir of trick shots Doc Rivers won't let him unleash during games, but unless they're playing under Lebron-Dwight rules, I just don't see it. Seriously, watch that video again. Dude airballed a free throw.

The real travesty, of course, is that the league overlooked some glaringly obvious choices, like Monta Ellis and Steve Nash. Throw in Lebron, who's certainly demonstrated some trick shot prowess, and you'd be set. You're telling me you wouldn't watch that? What's that? You'd prefer to watch Rajon Rondo brick 20-footers? Thanks David Stern.

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by Matt O'Brien • Feb 8, 2010 5:10 PM EST

Sean Payton Can Read Charts, And Jim Caldwell Can't

Football dorks unite: while you were busy last night confusing Sean Payton’s clear, mathematical reasoning with "guts," gridiron nerds of the world stood in appreciation of a man who clearly understood charts, probability, and the game theory you would presumably need to understand to run a professional organization of any kind, much less something with rules as fixed as those of American football.

In summary: Sean Payton is not ballsy, he’s smart. Jim Caldwell, in contrast, was mediocre at best, and clearly fumbling away dollars at the $100 Blackjack table all night. Caldwell’s game management was directly from something we’ll call the “Norv Turner/ Wade Phillips/ Marty Schottenheimer” school of “Coaches Who Are Terrified Of Losing Their Jobs,” an irony given how many jobs each has held in the NFL.

Caldwell passed up a possible 4th and 11 in the borderlands of FG/TD conversion for a field goal, opted for three runs before giving the ball back to the Saints at the end of the second half, and then failed to use timeouts in the final three minutes effectively. Worse still, Caldwell failed to realize what he was up against: an opponent determined to win and willing to hedge every bet to the optimal side. (Or as analysts mislabel it, “the aggressive side.”)

Caldwell’s relative conservatism cost the Colts, but he’s not alone. Consider every team who lost to the Patriots, one of the most stat-driven operations around. They share the fate of being a team that lost to a team with a better understanding of the raw numbers behind the game and possible outcomes on every play.

It’s geekery, and it’s hard to explain to the masses, and that’s why it gets lost in the translation to the Shannon Sharpe School of Broadcasting. (His version of “Love Reign O’er Me” during pregame was moving, however.) NFL coaches as a whole might not understand it well, either, but a grip of game theory and probability may have moved from the “desired” and into the “required” column on NFL coaches’ want ads this year. It’s a copycat league, after all, and that means there’s a booming job market with openings for stat majors wherever there are smart NFL teams looking to mimic what’s worked so far in the 21st century National Football Leeeeeeeague.*

*Copyright Merrill Hoge and Mark Schlereth

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by Spencer Hall • Feb 8, 2010 5:08 PM EST

NBA Rewards Mediocrity, Selects Chris Kaman To Replace Brandon Roy In All-Star Game

Let's play the "Guess which player is an All-Star" game.

Player one is currently averaging 19.2 points and 10.8 rebounds per game on one of the best teams in the West. His true shooting percentage, which takes free throws and threes into account and is therefore better than FG%, is 58.9%. His Player Efficiency Rating is 20.4.

Player two is currently averaging just 15.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game, but he's on the best team in the West. His true shooting percentage is a robust 60.6%. His PER is 20, and he's an elite defender on one of the league's best defensive teams.

Player three is averaging 20.2 points and 9 rebounds per game, but he's on one of the worst teams in the West. His true shooting percentage is just 53.4% and his PER is just 17.6. He's also a bad defensive player.

Naturally, the NBA selected player three -- Chris Kaman -- over player one (Carlos Boozer) and player two (Andrew Bynum) to replace the injured Brandon Roy in the All-Star game. Wait, nevermind, this makes no sense. No disrespect to Kaman and Clippers fans, but there's no way he's better than Boozer or Bynum.

I guess the NBA couldn't say no to this face.

UPDATE: As Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm and NBC's Pro Basketball Talk blog points out, Memphis' Marc Gasol has a pretty good case as well. Epic fail, NBA.

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by Mike Prada • Feb 8, 2010 3:00 PM EST

Winter Olympics: Russia, As Usual, Thinks Big

Russians, as a rule, think big. They built the An-225, the world’s largest plane, live in the world’s largest country by geographical size, and proudly breed the world’s largest pet, the Siberian Home Security Bear and Loving Family Companion.* Even their anthem is massive, and requires gigantic socialist imagery to accompany it:

Big is the operative word when thinking about Russians and planning, and Olympic ambitions follow suit. Russia’s goal for total medals at the games: 40, which sounds like a lot even before you get the news that the most any single country has ever racked up in the games is 36, Germany’s total in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. Exciting prizes are being offered, like the privilege of being allowed to live by Vladimir Putin, baby tiger cubs, and mega-yachts no longer needed by Russian oligarch billionaires who have shed these like dead snakeskins in favor of bigger yachts so huge they qualify as their own nation-states.**

*Guaranteed to be one or the other, but not necessarily both. This message brought to you by Pletchesky and Sons: Provider of Fine Bear and Bear Related Products Since 1991.

**Learned everything I know about Russia from the internet.

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by Spencer Hall • Feb 8, 2010 2:42 PM EST

Brewers Fans To Be Reminded Of Connection To Bud Selig Forever

MLB commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig, the former car salesman who presided over the first and only canceled World Series, the scourge of the steroids era and an embarrassing tie in the all-star game, will be commemorated with a statue at Miller Park.

Talk about rewarding mediocrity.

It's probably tough enough rooting for the Brewers, a team that hasn't won a World Series in more than 50 years. But now the poor fans in Milwaukee will have to look at a 7-foot bronze bust of Selig at Miller Park's Home Plate Plaza when they come to the ballpark.

"We are proud to honor Commissioner Selig for all of his efforts on behalf of the Milwaukee Brewers and Major League Baseball," Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said.

"The Brewers and Miller Park are in this city because of the commissioner’s vision and dedicated efforts. Just as importantly, he has remained a prominent and highly philanthropic member of our community while effectively leading Major League Baseball during his tenure as baseball’s top executive."

Clearly, some people have different interpretations of effective leadership.

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by Ian Begley • Feb 8, 2010 2:05 PM EST

Kansas Is Still No. 1, Until You Can Prove Otherwise

Sure they had to go into overtime in order to beat the Buffs in Colorado this week, and have had several other close calls lately but Bill Self and the Jayhawks didn't lose any of them, and in college basketball no matter how much better you are than your opponent it is always an uphill battle to get road conference wins. Just ask Villanova how difficult it is to go on the road, or Texas or Michigan State maybe. The three teams accounted for the biggest movement in the top ten as they dropped to 4, 10 and 14 respectively. Their losses were everyone else's gain as the only upward movement was replacing the losers. The overall lesson from this week, very little has changed.

Winning conference games on the road is so difficult in fact that it would not surprise me in the least if Kansas were to lose to Texas tonight.

The difference between No. 1 and No. 5 doesn't seem to be too great in terms of talent and I have no doubt we are going to see at least two more teams hold the top spot before the end of the month.

Check out the complete Top 25 here.

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by Joe Kutsunis • Feb 8, 2010 1:59 PM EST

Earlier posts

Full Archive

Villanova Bounces Back, Downs No. 5 West Virginia

No. 4 Villanova rebounded after losing their first Big East game of the season on Saturday with an 82-75 win against the Mountaineers Monday night in Morgantown.

+ 1 update since 5:40p