Stories

Even 33 may not be enough.Last week I looked at the various teams in the Big 12 and tried to make sense out of who would be going to bowls. My most debatable opinion was probably that Kansas would not make a bowl if they lost to Texas and beat Missouri (if K-State also won over Nebraska and Texas A&M also won over Baylor). Well, KU lost to Texas as expected and A&M blew out Baylor. The fly in the ointment was K-State losing to Nebraska. That opens up another potential bowl bid for a Big 12 team and KU might get it if they beat MU. K-State, as everyone knows, has ended their season without qualifying for a bowl.

My cell phone buzzes and the two-time Cy Young winner's number lights up on caller ID.

"Hey," he says, "it's Bret with one 'T'."

There's a pause.

"But I'm Saberhagen, not that other guy."

He laughs, a minor mystery solved. A few months ago, a friend of mine passed along this link and it seemed like a great story.

One of the best pitchers in Royals history is now the technical director for a nationally syndicated radio show? Sweet!

So I called Saberhagen, and after asking him a few questions about Zack Greinke, I mentioned that I'd like to write something about his work on Dennis Miller's radio show.

Silence.

"I don't work on that show," he says, "but you're like the fifth person who's asked me that."

I considered the possibility that Sabes just didn't want to talk about it, which would be fine. But logically, the bio does seem a little strange, and doesn't have a picture, and besides, if he didn't want people to know then why he want his name on the website at all?

So I dropped an e-mail to the producer of the show, who explained that a guy who works there is named Bret, one 'T,' so they started calling him Sabes, it caught on, and they just ran with it.

"If you get the sense that the real Sabes was upset about it, just let me know," the producer wrote back.

He's not.

"I don't need them to take it down," the real Sabes says. "I guess it's flattering if people remember you, right?"

For sure.

Because if the technical director's name was "Jose," and they called him "Lima-Time," it wouldn't be a compliment.

66.4% Effective FG%After the Memphis game, I complained that KU didn’t shoot the trey often enough and that they didn’t press. Believe it or not, I actually saw a full court press against Central Arkansas. Ok, it was only once or twice, but that’s still infinitely more than normal. Maybe… just maybe… Self will employ it in the future. And, instead of only five three-pointers against Memphis, the Hawks shot 19 Thursday night, hitting 11. Obviously, my opinion had nothing to do with it, but it’s always good when I don’t have to complain.

KSU FootballSnyder: "I have never been involved in a ballgame in which bowl eligibility and a division championship were on the line at the same time. I'm gratified on how much progress we make from week to week, but this past week, we didn't make much progress. So that wasn't very gratifying at all.  We have to play better than they (Nebraska) do. That's the bottom line anywhere. It is going to a big challenge to play in a very large stadium with a bunch of red-clad fans cheering against you, but that's part of this game."

Mark Mangino and Kansas football was a flawed marriage from the beginning. Each side knew what it was getting into, but accepted the other's faults because the partnership was their best shot at happiness -- for better or worse.

The marriage is now ending because too many of those flaws remain. They enjoyed a nice enough honeymoon, and were the envy of the neighborhood two years ago, but only one side worked on its faults.

It takes two.

Eight years ago, Mangino and the program he joined each brought baggage. Mangino was extremely fat, with an ugly temper. Kansas football had outdated facilities, with weak financial and fan support.

Kansas football worked on its end, first under Al Bohl and then Lew Perkins.

Bohl had plenty of his own faults -- including poor analogies -- but he did help Kansas football work on its weaknesses. He hired Mangino, opened tailgating on the hill, and was an enthusiastic fundraiser who helped build attendance at Memorial Stadium.

Perkins has faults, too -- including a legal battle with a small Lawrence business that some thought turned vindictive -- but continued and improved upon Bohl's effort to better the football program.

Kansas recently completed more than $30 million of renovations and construction, centerpieced by an 80,000 square-foot football facility. There's been talk of a stadium expansion, work that would mean nearly $100 million spent on football facilities since 1999.

The fans aren't as passionate as they are for basketball, of course, but they are setting attendance records, and making the football team at least co-stars on campus.

Kansas football held up its end, and whenever this marriage with Mangino finally ends, Perkins will search for a new partner with the track record of identifying and improving his side's weaknesses.

That's a good position, and one that Mangino won't have.

He was a bully from the beginning, and as Whitlock has pointed out the last two days, an abusive one.

It's fine to be a jerk, but you better win.

Big 12 vs SEC, Ken Johnson of Hoopszone sent me an email and made this comment. “My general take is that all conferences wax and wane from year to year, and if you take a long enough period (say a decade or more), they probably all average out to be about the same.  There's a lot of parity in recent years.  For example, all the preseason mags this fall say that the SEC is way down and the Big 12 is way up.  It wasn't that long ago that the reverse was true, was it?” I’ll try to answer that question and more.

Missouri FootballPinkel: “The football team is preparing for Iowa State. They are playing very well, and are bowl eligible. Paul Rhoads has done an exceptional job with the football program. They have a dual threat quarterback, probably the best in the league, and one of the best in the country. They also have a great running back, a 1,000 yard rusher. It will be senior day for us, that’s a big deal around here.  We want to honor our seniors their last time playing at ‘The Zou.’ We are trying to play two good games in a row.  We haven’t done that yet this year. It’s going to require a lot of work, but we’re going to do it.”

Pardon this blog if the relief and euphoria and pride of seeing Zack Greinke win baseball's highest pitching honor hasn't yet faded, but there is a fast-approaching reality that the Royals will have to face.

They now have anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years to build a contender around the game's best pitcher, or risk losing the franchise's greatest asset since George Brett.

Dayton Moore's most important move as general manager of the Royals came last January, before Greinke's breakout season, when he signed the emerging ace to a contract extension through 2012.

Greinke agreed to the deal -- extending his potential free agency two years -- in large part because he liked the direction of the franchise.

This was Greinke in spring training: "I mean, we might not win the World Series, but we have the talent that we could make a run at it."

This was Greinke in July: "The way we've been playing, it's as bad as any team I've played for."

And this was Greinke on Tuesday, when asked if he felt as strongly about the Royals' future as he did after he signed the extension: "Maybe not as strong as that time, because at that time I really thought we had as good a chance as anyone to win our division. Obviously, we didn't even come close, so my thoughts aren't quite as strong as they were."

Winning is important to all athletes, of course, or at least most, but Greinke is different here.

This is the guy who said he'd rather pitch for a winner in Wichita than a loser in Kansas City, remember?

In Kansas City, Royals fans celebrated when he told the New York media he'd rather pitch for the Royals in the playoffs than the Yankees, and while it's true that Greinke would probably prefer not to pitch in New York, he could make most any other big league market work -- Anaheim, Arizona, Chicago, on and on.

Even during the press conference announcing his extension, he mentioned Tampa and Miami as places "I would like more than this," because he's from Florida.

Hell, what about St. Louis? That's a smaller market with a team that consistently competes and a fan base that would both love him and respect his space -- plus, he could hit.

The point is, as much ownership as Kansas City feels from having watched Greinke rise, fall, and rise again, baseball is a business and Greinke is already tired of the losing. If Greinke's contract comes up without him having experienced at least some team success in Kansas City, it will probably be impossible for the Royals to keep him.

And there will be 29 other teams tripping over themselves to sign or trade for Greinke, if and when he becomes available.

Greinke talked a little on Tuesday about the possibility of catcher Miguel Olivo signing somewhere else: "That's baseball. Back in the day, I used to get mad because every time I'd make a good friend, he would get sent down or traded or whatever. That's how baseball is nowadays. Your best friends are only with you one year, at most, a lot of times. So you just kind of get used to it."

Too Close for ComfortThere are two things in the world that I can’t comprehend. The first is how something the size of an atom can be converted into enough explosive power to destroy a city. The second is why Bill Self refuses to press. Actually, make that one thing I don’t understand. I just went on line and learned how to split an atom.

Kansas FootballMangino: “Texas is an outstanding team, an excellent football team. No weaknesses on the offensive side of the ball. They feature a great quarterback in Colt McCoy. He can beat you throwing and he can beat you with his feet. Their defense gives you looks, moves around, they have a really impressive defensive line, outstanding linebackers that run sideline to sideline and really an excellent secondary that plays the ball well and also tackles well. It’s a challenge to go down to Austin, but we’re looking forward to going down there and playing very well.” Brown: “The Kansas game is important for many reasons. It's an opportunity for us to tie up the Big 12 South. It is a chance for Colt to become the winningest quarterback in the history of college football. This is Senior Day. It'll be a tremendous atmosphere on Saturday night, and we need to send our seniors out the right way and give them a crazy crowd.”

Stats: The Universal LanguageZack Greinke won the ALCY today in somewhat of a landslide over second place Felix Hernandez. Although I predicted Greinke to win easily (see below), the winning margin was even greater than I expected. What makes it historical? Well, that’s easy.

Happy Greinke Day, last one of the year, and please, on behalf of the voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, trust our process.

Regular readers here know that I love Kansas City, with the people and the food and the convenience and everything else, but sometimes get frustrated at the inferiority complex that often permeates the area.

I've counted. In the last few days, 16 of you have e-mailed or Tweeted asking if I really think Zack Greinke will win the AL Cy Young Award -- to be announced early this afternoon.

My stock answer: I'd be shocked if he doesn't win, and surprised if it's not a blowout. Twenty-five or more of the 28 first-place votes is not out of the question.

This is no gutsy stance on my part, of course. A guy with 242 strikeouts and 51 walks in 229 1/3 innings, who leads the league by more than a third of a run with a 2.16 ERA, a mark that's the best in the league since Pedro Martinez in 2000, well, that guy should win.

This is not close, despite a spectacular season from Felix Hernandez that might've won most of the last eight Cy Youngs.

And everyone here would see it that way, if not for the stitching on the front of Greinke's jersey that says "Royals."

That's a Hard RainThis is the third reader contribution since we started the policy of including our best readers as part of UFR. If you didn’t have a chance to read the others, Greinke – Jonathan Tucker and Cassel – Jason Lisk… “Mark Mangino may be facing the biggest challenge in his coaching tenure at Kansas in the following months.  The former ambulance driver will have to hurry to resuscitate a program that surprisingly has greatly underachieved this season.”

Good to be back, and big ups to everyone who responded on Twitter about gyms downtown. Gotta love technology.

Surely there is a way to mathematically determine the exact level of boneheadedness/brilliance of Bill Belichick's fourth-down decision last night in front of millions.

The terrific website Advanced NFL Stats ran some numbers that might make sense after a little more coffee, and determines that it was actually a good decision, despite the swift and heavy and deep criticism from seemingly all angles.

Now, just like in baseball, the numbers Advanced NFL Stats runs should be a guide, not dictation, so reasonable* people can disagree on this.

* I'm Pozterisk-ing that word on purpose. One of the many terrific things about sports is that we can disagree and debate and analyze a common experience, without the division that comes when talking religion or politics. But too often, it seems, we lose sight of that underneath screams about stats or scouts or this-is-how-it-should-be-done-because-I-said-so's.

It gets very loud and annoying in baseball, especially, with the stats/scouts divide, to the point that sometimes neither side can see ANY value in the other's opinion. If you step back, it's not too different from how conservatives and liberals view each other.

We miss a lot this way, and it's a shame. It's also probably a thought to get into more another day.

This is going to be less about the nuts and bolts of the game and more about the decision made to go for it on 4th down instead of kicking a field goal. Because a similar mentality was at work with Belichick in New England, I’m going to combine the two events into one post.

First, let’s get the basics out of the way. The Chiefs won for the 4th time in the last 34 games. Yipee. Maybe they won’t be the worst team in the NFL this year. Maybe they aren’t even the worst team in their division. They have beaten Oakland seven consecutive times … at Oakland. Their winning margins have been 7, 7, 6, 11, 2, 7 and 6 – just enough.

“In my post a few days ago, I indicated that I would take KSU against the line. At that time the Cats were favored by 2.5 points. If I would give up the points and take K-State at 2.5, imagine how much more I would take them when MU is favored by 1. That’s 3.5 free points if you haven’t put your money down yet...”

Every day (or almost every day) I put the coolest factoids I can find (thanks mostly to ESPN) to the left of this page. Anytime I can find something that is related to Kansas City in some way, it will have a higher priority. Sometimes, they are just too long to fit into a single factoid, so I break them up into parts. Sometimes they are too long for that, so I can’t include them. This is one of those.

OvermatchedI assume everyone who reads my posts also watched the game. Because of that, I see no reason to replay it in English. However, if the word “Impressive” is in the dictionary, then that should cover the game analysis well enough. The 101-65 victory was KU’s 37th straight home opener win and their 42nd straight home victory – which leads the nation. There are a lot of good things to talk about, so let’s get going.

Self comes up emptyHighly recruited Harrison Barnes (#2 by Rivals and #1 by ESPN) decided to become a Tar Heel this afternoon. Friday the 13th didn’t turn out too good for KU fans. Barnes is considered a freak athlete in that he has a wingspan of a 7 footer and plays like a guard. He’s 6-8”. Being from Iowa, he will join the likes of Hinrich, Collison and LaFrentz who left the state to play for Roy Williams.