Colorado enjoyed a good turnout for Saturday’s spring football game:
This is great. It’s good for Colorado, it’s good for college football. Deion Sanders’s coaching career is an unambiguously good thing for anyone who lacks a quarrel with him personally or with the University of Colorado Boulder.
The question is: How good is Colorado gonna be?
In the short term, it’s near-impossible to know. The combination of Sanders’s entrance and the existence of the transfer portal has led to a situation in which Colorado’s roster turnover may set a modern-day record for a Power Five program, if it hasn’t already. We thought USC’s projection was difficult to pin down last year. Colorado’s reconstruction dwarfs that of the 2022 Trojans.
In the long term, the answer is still in question, but the question is simpler. Much like economics, at the highest level college football can be broken into a single, two-variable equation. One variable is how much talent exists within a program. The other is what that program can do with whatever talent it has.
For Sanders’s program, the talent variable is high. It is always high. It was high at Jackson State, it is high at Colorado, it will be high at LSU in a few years if the Colorado experiment goes well. Deion Sanders has proven one thing as a college football coach: He can recruit. He won’t out-recruit Georgia or Ohio State, but within the Pac-12 it’s hard to see anyone aside from Oregon, USC, and possibly UCLA consistently beating him. If you can get Travis Hunter to attend an HBCU, you can bring talent to Boulder, no matter how limited the resources are up there.
The question, then, is what Sanders is capable of doing with that talent, and the results at Jackson State, while positive, aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Jackson State may have been ranked as high as 8th this season in FCS polls, but they only finished 26th in the FCS in Movelor, our rating system, and Movelor may be imperfect but you’d be hard-pressed to find evidence the polls are better at grading FCS teams. At the end of the year, Sanders’s Tigers lost in the Celebration Bowl as a big favorite, and while the final score was closer this year than the one prior, the ability to win individual, high-profile games is more important in college football than it is in any other sport in the world.
Sanders has only been a head coach at the college level for two seasons. Those two seasons went well. But they didn’t go as well as the reports from the FCS world had them, and they were only two seasons. On the one side, it’s impressive that Sanders did as much as he did as quickly as he did it. On the other, he’s an unproven quantity when it comes to the actual coaching part of this whole thing. He can bring in talent. He can bring in fans. But can he win?
Let’s Rank the First Round Series
An NBA/NHL crossover.
First, I should acknowledge that the NBA and NHL are weak spots for me in terms of knowledge relative to the general public. If I get something horribly wrong here, please feel free to yell at me. Yelling is, in very specific circumstances, how we learn. Just know this: I might yell back. If you come at me for something I say in here, I retain every right to come at you in the event I look into what you’re talking about and find out you’re wrong.
16. Celtics vs. Hawks
Had yesterday’s game ever been in much doubt, this would have felt different, but instead it’s fairly standard fare. Trae Young has made baskets in Atlanta’s home games, the Hawks grabbed one win, otherwise it’s been all Celtics, and all Celtics it appears destined to remain.
15. 76ers vs. Nets
This one was at least interesting in terms of trying to parse what the postseason Sixers are. It was a sweep, and the Nets were never expected to themselves challenge, but they gave us a little bit of a read on just how weird this Philly team is.
14. Nuggets vs. Timberwolves
The fact it’s such a big deal to the Timberwolves that they didn’t get swept says a whole lot of what there is to say. Anthony Edwards had his moment, like the much-hyped star of a 9-seed in college basketball before a second-round stomping.
13. Hurricanes vs. Islanders
The lone NHL series that hasn’t offered its underdog much hope. The Islanders almost broke through in Game 2, but got a little screwed. The Islanders did break through in Game 3. The Islanders looked like they could break through in Game 4 on paper, but then they failed to score for the first 43 minutes against Antti Raanta, and that seems to have written the story.
12. Grizzlies vs. Lakers
This should have been better.
Maybe it still will be, maybe the Grizzlies will rally tonight just like they were so stunning in Game 2. But it feels over already, and it shouldn’t. What should have happened is that the Grizzlies should have seen everyone crowning the Lakers, said, “We had the better season,” and laid the hurt on Los Angeles from Game 1. Instead, the literal hurt came for Memphis, and then Dillon Brooks became the face of a team that should have Ja Morant as its face. What a disappointing season this is, and is looking like it will finish off as being.
11. Bruins vs. Panthers
This one is looking over, but that moment after the Panthers stole one in Boston was great. The reminder that this is hockey. The reminder that the Panthers can score a whole lot of goals. The sudden fear that perhaps the Bruins weren’t inevitable after all.
10. Avalanche vs. Kraken
This grades out well for the Seattle angle alone. With Vegas’s recent success, the local excitement was special, but it’s different when a city has tasted sports glory and lost it from when a city is new to sports altogether. Seattle has waited for moments like these, and like those of the Mariners last season. The Kraken will likely lose this series, but it’s great to have Seattle around. The Sonics can’t come back soon enough.
9. Stars vs. Wild
I keep wanting more out of this series, which is odd to say about a series that went to two overtimes in its opening game. It just feels like it should be bigger than it is, with Minnesota going against the franchise which left them. It always feels like it should be bigger when these teams play. The fact it isn’t says a lot about how that move was allowed to happen in the first place, and it’s an unfortunate reflection of where the NHL is at.
8. Cavaliers vs. Knicks
This is another that feels like it should be bigger, though with the Knicks taking the two-game lead yesterday, it’s now another where the outcome isn’t in much doubt. It’s just so hard to envision either team making the Finals, as fun as the Knicks beating the Heat would be, not least of all because we’d get to see Knicks fans talk themselves into this magically becoming the year.
7. Devils vs. Rangers
This has only just gotten good, with the Devils’ shocker on Saturday in overtime turning it from the least compelling NHL series to the most. It looked like the Rangers had it in the bag, and then they suddenly didn’t, and now the two teams—separated by no meaningful geographic distance—could conceivably be on their way to six or seven games. It doesn’t hurt that half the games are at Madison Square Garden.
6. Suns vs. Clippers
This is a foregone conclusion by now, but it’s taken a wild route to get there, and Saturday had it at its wildest. Is any NBA player of this generation more interesting than Russell Westbrook? Forget good or likable or impressive. Just consider the level of interest. Russell Westbrook is an original, and even after all these years, he surprises. He’ll never be seriously called one of the all-time greats, but if you were to make a movie or write a book chronicling any one player’s career in the last 25 years, I’d go with Westbrook before anybody else.
5. Kings vs. Warriors
This was, of course, up near the top after Game 2. But there was a reason it was up near the top, and that reason has come back around: We thought the Warriors were going to make a run, and now they have. With De’Aaron Fox now likely out with a broken finger, it looks like even more of a foregone conclusion. It’s a shame.
4. Golden Knights vs. Jets
There was a really fun moment Saturday when the Jets pulled within one late. It’s a specific type of energy in the crowd in those moments. There’s the expected roar when a team ties a game up or takes the lead, but there’s something more when they pull within striking distance, which in hockey and soccer is exactly one goal. The pivot is just so large from a dead crowd to one very much alive. The crowd was, in that moment, very much alive.
Almost every series has moments like that, but what’s drawing me to this pair is how under the radar it feels. Knicks/Cavs is also under the radar, of course, but this is under the radar in a different way. In that one, it feels like it should be under the radar. In this one, the winner has a very real shot at the Stanley Cup. Watching it feels like listening to an indie artist.
3. Maple Leafs vs. Lightning
It’s no coincidence that the three highest-ranked hockey series on here involve Canadian teams. There’s a collective level of desperation there. It’s different for the Jets than it is for the Oilers than it is for the Leafs, of course, but separately and together, they’re desperate. Times are good for no Canadian hockey teams.
For the Leafs, that Game 1 loss put them on their heels through all of Games 2 and 3, and you could even say they’re still on their heels heading into Game 4. The Lightning have just been so successful lately that it’s impossible to count them out, and when one game could turn the next into a must-win, that game becomes something of a must-win itself. The leverage is the same here as in every 2–1 series where the road team leads, but it feels a lot higher in this one. There are reasons for that.
2. Bucks vs. Heat
This is the best on the NBA side for two complimentary reasons: We don’t know what’s going to happen and it really, really matters. The individual games themselves haven’t been thrillers, but each has been jaw-dropping, and the thing about blowouts is that they make you sit with the result while the game is ongoing. Giannis is coming back tonight, but backs are fickle things. The Heat are battling a war of attrition of their own, with Jimmy Butler questionable tonight with a bruised butt and the Tyler Herro/Victor Oladipo slot down to its third string. Each team has looked horrible at times, and yet we know conceptually that the Bucks are the best team in the league. It’s a fascinating set of games.
1. Oilers vs. Kings
There was a moment Friday night—specifically, when Adrian Kempe tied things eighteen seconds after Connor McDavid gave Edmonton the lead—when things got good good between these two. Each has a “yeah right” element about them, but that’s landed more heavily on the Kings, and suspiciously so. The Oilers are definitely the better team, but the lack of credit given to the Kings’ performances over two seasons now is odd. Maybe Gelo’s in the wrong.
Anyway, yesterday was even better, with the Oilers’ comeback and the Kings answering and then Evander Kane answering the answer. It’s a gutting loss for Los Angeles, who was so close to a 3–1 series lead, but that’s part of the saga that is the playoffs, and it’s part of what makes the hockey playoffs—where margins are so small between teams—so compelling. Each series is its own story, and it feels like more than half of them are good ones.
For Two Days, the Cubs Were Good
I was ready to write about coming to believe in the Cubs. I was ready to turn the page on them. After Friday’s win, I was ready to talk about how people say good teams win the weird ones—the big comebacks and the ones with rain and the ones where their top four relievers are all unavailable and it’s still unfortunately a bullpen game—but how good teams really win the dominant ones, the ones where their fourth starter takes a perfect game into the eighth and the offense beats the shit out of one of the most successful pitchers in the league. That even felt like the angle after Saturday, when I started scratching out notes on which of the expected National League contenders are underachieving, and why, and why the why is important and advantageous for teams like the Cubs. Then, the Cubs lost yesterday, Marcus Stroman came back to Earth a little, and the rebuilding Dodgers reminded us where things stand. It’s easy to make too much of games in April, but that’s kind of our point: The Cubs are one game up on the final playoff spot. It’s 21 games into the year. Things aren’t meaningfully different from where they were a month ago, as fun as that would be and as much as I still hope to be wrong.
The Bets
We’re planning to have a lot more on baseball tomorrow, so apologies for neglecting our favorite sport in here, and we’ll have more on college basketball soon as well, so apologies for neglecting the sport we normally cover most closely. We will briefly touch on the bets, because I can speak more freely here than in the bets posts themselves.
The bets are going really, really well. I would like all of you to knock on wood as you read this, just as I just knocked on wood while writing this, but the bets have been straightforward and good so far this baseball season. Our MLB single-game picks are hitting at nearly a 70% clip, and they’re coming against odds around –110 on average. This is remarkable. They don’t have the marks of lucky plays, either. A lot of them have the air of, “Well yeah, that team’s gonna win.” Here’s what happened this weekend:
Friday: Zac Gallen out-duels Seth Lugo, striking out eleven in seven innings.
Saturday: Dustin May beats Hayden Wesneski, the Dodgers’ bats bust it open late.
Sunday: Logan Allen makes a strong debut, José Ramírez drives in four.
I’m a big believer in streakiness when it comes to betting, and while I’m also a believer in the propensity for the market to turn on a dime, it’s the kind of thing where it’s going well until it isn’t. The fact these are feeling like such clear picks is a great indicator of where we’re at as a betting entity. It’s the equivalent, I’d offer, of a hitter seeing the ball particularly well. Obviously, a lot can change, and it’s only April, and we have so much season to go. But we’re putting ourselves in a strong position, and with the NHL and NBA bets going fine so far, that goes for more than just the MLB side of things. Consider us nervous but engaged.
Whoa, Aaron Rodgers!
More on this tomorrow as well, but Aaron Rodgers reportedly got traded and the reported return leaves everyone saving face. He’s a Jet now, at long last. Again, more on this tomorrow. (We’ll still lead with baseball, though, because Stu is leading with Rodgers.)
The Jack Trice Uniforms
Closing it back out with college football, we got the Jack Trice uniforms this weekend:
It’s neither good nor bad that this overshadows any outcomes from the spring game, which was fairly standard fare. Really, the thing of note here is the reminder that the Jack Trice game is coming, and with it his story will be told anew, with greater attention than we’ve seen for at least a few years. It’s the 100th anniversary of his play and his death, which makes it the 100th anniversary of the integration of Iowa State athletics. Plenty more to come this fall.
