Good Monday Morning!

Opening Day in Cincinnati. Nothing like it anywhere, any place else. The Reds go 86-76 this season. You heard it here first.

It's also NCAA Championship night. Duke by 9, but that's just a guess. Maybe it's the last, great game in what until now has been America's greatest sports tournament

What would possess the NCAA to want to want to screw up the single best thing in sports. Why would it want to take its showcase, the field of 65 NCAA Tournament and turn it into a high school tournament?

I knew the answer to that before I even asked myself the question and you do too. It’s money. As we like to say on Sunday Morning Sports Talk, the answers to all of your questions in life is money. There are television dollars, from ESPN, Comcast, CBS, whomever that will pay the NCAA more money to televise more games and that’s why it’s going to happen.

You don’t think money drives the bus in sports? Why is the NFL going to play 17, maybe 18 regular season games? Money. The broadcast networks want more product so they’ll be able to charge more money to their clients so they can pay the exorbitant rights fees that they have to pay to televise the games.

Why are there no afternoon World Series games? Why do they start at 8:30 at night rather than two in the afternoon, or seven at night? Money. Prime time starts mean prime time advertising dollars.

Increase the teams that make the NCAA Tournament from 65 to 96, you get more product to televise and more money from advertisers, a large part of which can be flipped to the NCAA in rights fees.

The answer to everything in life is money, but even more so when you’re dealing with television.

Here’s what I’ve heard in the last week, maybe you have too. Coaches want more teams in because it’ll help them keep their jobs. Make the tournament, keep your job. Really? How ‘bout when the 96^th team in knocks off the 70^th team in. You think that’s going to help the coach with the 70^th team?

Coaches want this because it will give their players the great experience of playing in the NCAA Tournament. No it won’t. Because the experience won’t be the same. You wouldn’t be one of the select 65. You’d be one of close to a hundred. Bigger isn’t always better.

Tell that having a field of 95 wouldn’t render the regular season meaningless. Tell me how the regular season of Xavier basketball will be enhanced by an expansion to 95 NCAA Tournament teams? Do you honestly think any Xavier fan, let alone someone who just has a passing interest in that team, will be all engrossed in whether or not they can knock off Richmond twice in January? Not when an expanded field pretty much guarantees that six or seven Atlantic 10 teams would be locks to make the tournament.

I heard the bracketology guy, Joe Lunardi say this last week. If the field was 96 this year, 12 Big East teams would have made it. Wasn’t just a couple of years ago that only 12 made the Big East Tournament? The number 12 team in the Big East this season was Connecticut. It was 7-11 inside its conference. Teams that are four game below ‘500’ inside their own conference is going to make this a better tournament?

If you’re going to do that, why don’t you just become the Ohio High School Athletic Association and let every teams in?

I could point out that expanding the tournament would render post season conference tournaments meaningless….I’m not sure that such a bad thing actually. And all of the late February, early March talk of last four teams in, first four teams out, meaningless. My buddy Jerry Palm would have to fold his web site, collegerpi-dot-com. RPI numbers wouldn’t matter.

But here’s the real thing that tells you all you need to know about the hypocracy of expanding the tournament: more games means more time in the classroom missed, right? You play more games, you miss more classes. In fact, another good friend of this show, John Feinstein, did the math. A team could conceivably stay at one venue for a week, while it plays its way through the first and second round of a tournament. Is the NCAA OK with that, or does time away from class only matter when the discussion is about a playoff in Division One football?

Adam Dunn signed for two years, 20-million, Bobby Abreu took six million for a year. I’m wondering if the Reds have missed the boat. Pitchers and catchers are in camp, some of the positional players too. And I’m wondering if the Reds had made one more play in free agency this winter, if they’d be considered as a pre season contender for a playoff spot. Because right now, playoffs and your Cincinnati Reds don’t seem to have any chance of intersecting.

You know what you’re hearing a lot of this winter? “The Reds are going to be better this season”. You’re not hearing “The Reds have a shot to make the playoffs”. It’s “they’re going to be better this season’. I don’t know about you, that doesn’t make me want to go out and buy tickets. Decent rotation? Yes. Nice young players in Votto and Bruce? Yes. Bullpen better? Maybe. What else you got?

You can argue that the Cubs got weaker by trading Mark DeRosa. But did they get 23 and a half games weaker than last season? The answer is, no. And 23 and half is the number of games the Reds finished behind the Cubs last season.

Run production is going to be a major problem for this team this season. Votto and Bruce will have to put up numbers better than last season just for the Reds to approach what they did last year. Brandon Phillips is the real deal. But did Edwin Encarnacion change his approach to hitting in the off season? Did Willy Tavares figure out a way to get on base more than 30-percent of the time in the off season? Did Ramon Hernandez lose the attitude he copped last season in Baltimore?

Did the Reds miss the boat by not making a run at Abreu, who would have brought his .300 average and professionalism to Cincinnati. Maybe he would never consider coming here. Because at his age, at the point he’s at in his career, maybe Abreu only wants to play for a team with a legitimate chance at winning a pennant.

Can you still buy a championship in baseball? The Yankees were in that business back in the 90’s and made it work. They’ve been in that business for this decade too, and it hasn’t. Now, they’ve gone out and spent $430 million total dollars on three players: Mark Texeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett. But does the paradigm that worked in the 90’s still work today?

You know, one of the best presents I ever got as a kid was a subscription to The Sporting News. My parents gave that to me as a birthday present when I turned ten. I remember it was in newspaper form, came wrapped up like a cylinder. You had to unwrap it and roll it out so it would lay flat. It came on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday afternoon I knew it was waiting for me when I got home from school. I walked to school, but on Tuesdays, I ran home. The Sporting News was the best. It has box scores from the entire previous week. That’s not even a quaint notion now. It seems ancient. You want a box score, it’s on a dozen web sites five minutes after the game ends. But back then, you got box scores and game reports. You got great columns from writers like Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press and Bob Broeg from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I couldn’t find Detroit or St. Louis on a map back then. But Falls and Broeg made me feel like I was in Tiger or Busch Stadium. That was the Sporting News.

Old habits die hard. I still subscribe. It doesn’t come every week in newspaper form. It arrives twice a month in a glossy magazine. Daily you can get it on the web. And I was reminded this week of why I still subscribe.

There s a wonderful series of articles on whether or not buying a baseball team is the route, anymore, to a pennant. The articles contrast how it was before free agency to what it is now. Several writers contributed to the series. But the chief writer is a man by the name of Stan McNeal. Tuesday, I'll have a link on my blog to an interview I did with McNeal about this very subject.

College basketball from the weekend. Xavier wins, UC loses. There’s a lot of concern about the way Xavier has been playing lately. And their throttling of one of the worst teams in the country Saturday probably didn’t make a whole lot of their fans breath easier. The farther you defend them from the basket, the more you send the Muskies to the free throw line, the better chance you have to beat them. Blueprint for Duquesne and Dayton in wins last week. But honestly, you want those problems to pop up now, not in March. I think what I’ve always thought about Xavier: it’s a good team, not great, with a great chance to play on the second weekend of the tournament.

UC has other issues. I’m on record, said it here last week, that if the Bearcats win three of their final seven games and win a game in the Big East Tournament, they’re in the NCAA’s. Three wins in their final seven would put the ‘Cats are 19-12 entering the Big East Tournament. They would’ve finished 9-9 in conference games. They’re 1-1 in their final seven so far. They’re on track to win three. I think they beat West Virginia and Seton Hall here. They may even sneak in another win. Maybe at South Florida, maybe here this week against Louisville. But this is what we’re hearing a lot of lately about UC: they haven’t beaten any team this season that’s a lock to go to the NCAA Tournament. Not one. Don’t give me Georgetown. The Hoyas are on life support. Notre Dame? Not buying it at this point.

So it would be in UC’s best interest if, in the final five games before its conference tournament, if the Bearcats figured out a way to beat Louisville or Syracuse.

I said on channel 5 the other night that I knew the next loss for Xavier was out there, but I couldn’t see it on the horizon. There’s a comment that had shelf life of about ten minutes. I’m watching this game Saturday night, the sound was down I was at dinner, and I’m saying to myself…self, the Muskies don’t appear to be playing very good defense in this game. Little did I know that you and I could find three guys off the street and play better defense than the Muskies did. 81-percent is the number of shots Duquesne made in the first half of last night’s game. Do you know how bad you have to play to let the other guy make 81-percent of his shots. And almost as worse, the Muskies turned the ball over seven of their first 14 possessions. Don’t play defense, give the ball away and, and make only 53-percent of your free throws, it’s amazing the Muskies had a chance to win the game.

So was last night a bump in the road, or a warning shot? Well since it was only the third conference loss in the last two seasons for ‘X’, I’m going to say it was just a speed bump. And listening to Sean Miller after the game last night, he almost seemed relieved that his team lost a game this far out from the tournament. I know he wasn’t. But the last thing a coach wants is for his team to get complacent. Things to work on, as they say in the land of coach speak.

Here’s where I think UC is today: very much alive for an NCAA tournament. CBS Sports basketball guru, Seth Davis said Thursday on one of the ESPN shows that UC’s win over Notre Dame this week was devastating to the Irish because…quote…Cincinnati isn’t going to the NCAA tournament. Another opinion that had a shelf life of 15 seconds.

By beating Georgetown, a top 25 team for a long time this season, the Bearcats now have 16-wins. They’re 6-5 in the Big East with seven games to go. They’re 16-8 overall. If they go 3-4 in their final seven, they finish at 19-12, more important 9-9 in the conference. Last year, a ‘500’ Big East record was the threshold for making the NCAA tournament. I think they can go 3-4. They’ve got some games that just aren’t do-able, like at Pittsburgh in a week. But a home game with St. John’s is still in play, so too is a game with Seton Hall. They beat Hugs and West Virginia on the road last season. They got Hugs at Fifth-Third in a couple of weeks. Very do-able. Nancy Zimpher is about to load up the U-Haul, UC is winning again. This is the best week in years for UC fans.

TJ Houshmanzadeh is playing the role of Chad Johnson this winter. Last winter, Ocho Cinco was looking for any hot mic in broadcasting to yap about how much he hated being in Cincinnati and how much he wanted to get traded. To the Dolphins, Eagles, Redskins, you pick any of the other 31-teams in the league, that’s where Ocho Cinco wanted to be. ABC baby, anywhere but Cincinnati. We all know how well that turned out. Ocho Cinco was a runor for most of this season.

The only difference between what Chad did last winter and what’s going on with TJ now, is that TJ actually may have a chance to leave. He is a restricted free agent. And as late as last week, Marvin Lewis said he prefers not to slap a franchise tag on TJ. Perhaps he’s saving it just in case Stacy Andrews grows another leg between now and training camp.

What Marvin, and his boss, Silent Mike should be more interested in, rather than what they prefer to do, is figuring out why their best players want out of here. And if this is coming down to a preference, they may want to consult with Carson Palmer to see if he’d prefer to throw the football at Houshmandzeh or at Chris Henry who runs pass routes about as well as Mike Duncan ran the Republican National Committee this past fall. Oops, got Keith Olbermann there on you, didn’t I?

Maybe number 9 would prefer throwing to last year’s draft blank, second round pick Jerome Simpson.

Of course, Houshmandzadeh can always refuse to sign the franchise contract, but who’s turning down 10-million a year in this economic climate. And if he does refuse to sign, the Bengals could then simply dump him in June, when all of the big money has been spent on other players, leaving TJ to play for a pittance.

The best course of action would be to make a reasonable offer to Houshmandzadeh, who has been the most reasonable player around here in some of the most unreasonable circumstances. But we all know the chance of that happening…

Which brings us to the next big story of the week, the Reds bottom feeding as spring training begins. Darryle Ward, Jacque Jones, be still my thumping heart. What, Robin Jennings wasn’t available? This is beginning to smack of the strategy Jim Bowden had in his time around here: bring in a lot of aging veterans throw ‘em up against the wall and see who sticks.

I understand that you have to have a willing partner to do a deal. But wouldn’t the more prudent business move be to wait and see how desperate players like Bobby Abreu and Garrett Anderson become before clogging up your roster with the likes of Jones, Ward and Jonny Gomes?

Let me just says for the record, I see no value in a goal of finishing with just a winning record. 82-80 does nothing for me. And it shouldn’t do anything for you, unless it gets the Reds into the playoffs. That’s it. That’s the only goal you should demand from your team: making the playoffs. That’s winning. The rest is mediocrity, or worse.

Finally, I could care less about Michael Phelps blowing into a bong pipe. I know he’s an Olympic hero. But honestly, he comes off as a bit of a doof. This is the same guy who celebrated his performance in the 2004 Olympics with a DUI. Now, he’s blowing in to a bong pipe and it was caught on camera. I could spend a whole three hours talking about cell phone cameras and the people who think they’re journalists by clicking away at celebrities or even unsuspecting schleps like me and you. What those people do is far worse than what Phelps did.

Phelps apologized, was baneed from competitive swimming and training fees were suspended for three months. There’s a set back, the Olympics are what, three and a half years away? He’s getting seven, eight million in endorsements? This absolutely has to kill Phelps. So, whomever is running the USA swimming program is looking a little moronic today, too.

But it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to Phelps or the Olympic movment. You probably wouldn’t have given him five seconds of thought until 2012. But now, this. You might even say it’s good marketing. Bangin’ on the bong pipe like a big bass drum. It’s a golden moment.