So this is bad.
Back in 2020, Major League Baseball got Nike to agree to make its uniforms. This was a good thing. Most things Nike does work out well. Then, Nike licensed the production to Fanatics. This, it turns out, is a bad thing.
I’m not sure what exactly happened here, but it seems this is the first year Fanatics is producing the jerseys, and it seems that the jerseys stink. Reaction today centered around Miles Mikolas—someone we love because he wears cool socks and has a cool mustache and helped the Cubs almost make the playoffs last year when he got himself tossed purely on principle, not because he should have seriously been angry (this is kind of like the Big 12 coach thing that’s currently going on where they learned they can get tossed if they walk around the floor long enough)—as Mikolas was one of the most notably upset, lamenting a backslide in pant customization and a poorness in the fit. But it goes beyond Mikolas. The jerseys look cheap, the jerseys look ugly, etc.
I would imagine that it’s too late to change this, and I know Rob Manfred has never recreationally worn anything other than the chain mail he puts on when he goes and hits stray animals with a club, so he doesn’t get it. But ideally, next year there will be better baseball jerseys, because of efforts like ours to bitch and moan about what this league has done to baseball after twelve months of generally making good things happen for the sport.
Can the NIT and NCAA T*urnament Coexist?
NCAA T*urnament expansion is getting attention again, not because anything necessarily happened but because some people reminded us the possibility continues to boil beneath the surface. Within the renewed discussion, many fans have suggested an altering to the play-in format in which the losing team goes to the NIT.
Honestly, I like it.
But you need teams to be on board.
An issue the NIT has faced is that Americans don’t like tiered competition. They want all or nothing stuff. They’re willing to put up with a lot in exchange for cohesive leagues, or at least in exchange for the appearance of cohesion. Take the backlash when undefeated Florida State was kept out of the College Football Playoff: “In no other sport,” the frustrated said, ignoring that no other sport could possibly have 130 teams competing for the same solitary championship. American sports fans allow baseball and basketball and football owners to make no attempt at winning, rather than embrace a more complicated system. Personally, while I strongly prefer America in every other way (it has Joe Kelly, the NIT, and Raising Cane’s—what more could I want), I kind of like how European sports have promotion and relegation, and how soccer has the tie-ins between the Champions League and the Europa League.
That’s what this combined format would look like: The NIT would become the Europa League. And you know what? Europeans don’t mind the Europa League. They even just created a third tournament in recent years—a sort of European CBI—because teams who aren’t good enough to compete for a Europa League title would like to play in international competition nonetheless, and fans want to watch.
This is the kind of philosophical shift we need for the NCAAT/NIT combination to occur. I don’t know if we’re going to get it. But. Maybe if we tried, people would get used to it. I’d like to ask Purdue how they’d have felt about playing Cincinnati in last year’s NIT second round.
I Fought Technology (and Technology Briefly Won)
As promised, we started our NIT deep dives last night, exploring what we like and don’t like about Iowa. Here it is on Instagram. Here it is on TikTok. We were going to release one of these on Minnesota today, but dealing with Gen Z media kicked my 29-year-old ass. I ran late yesterday, and I’m running late today, and you’re either going to hear about Minnesota or Mississippi or Nevada tomorrow but I don’t know which yet and you’re not going to hear about any of them today.
We will be fine. I will figure out New Media. This blog came around fifteen years too late for the blogging era. But we’ll adapt, and we’ll keep the written content going for those of you who like it, and I do think that now that I know how there’s a 90-second limit on Instagram Reels and you can’t save a TikTok edit without the TikTok logo and they still haven’t fixed—on either platform—the flaw where they won’t let you add multiple segments of music (even the same song) to different points of the clip…I think it’s going to be easier tomorrow than it was yesterday.
I hope so, anyway.
Owen Freeman hasn’t gotten his chipped tooth fixed.
I love him.
(By the way, we’re working on a podcast—not MilkTime, something new—that we’re tentatively aiming to launch on April 1st. If it doesn’t happen, consider this our April Fools’ Joke for the year.)
Golf Got Too Drunk
The Waste Management Open is reportedly going to change things next year, with Chance Cozby (what a name), the executive director of the civic organization that runs it (hilarious to have a civic organization run a golf tournament known for being uncivilized), saying that the situation where there were too many fans and there was too much rain and they had to cut the whole tournament off of booze was not one they want to repeat.
That’s a shame.
But.
One mark of a good party is never being able to have that same party again.
Etc.
The NIT, and 2019 NIT champion Shaka Smart:
- Tough one for Texas Tech last night. No way they’re making the NIT now.
- Our guy Shaka Smart’s Marquette team is playing at Butler, where the 2024 NIT Championship will be played. We’re thrilled. Probably his only visit there this year, but fun to just think about it.
- We’re giving Mississippi’s trip to Kentucky Game of the NITe status even if others (FSU/VT, mainly) have higher combined NIT likelihood. What’s going on here? Well, we want to watch Mississippi at Kentucky. There’s intrigue. We like intrigue. Sue us. (Please don’t actually do that, we told our lawyer we’d stop inviting chaos upon his desk.)
Chicago:
- Is Ayo Dosunmu going to turn out to be a good piece? Has that been established? I feel like I never notice him in a bad way, but I only notice him in a good way every few weeks.
- I don’t know exactly what the Steelers are doing regarding Kenny Pickett, but they did cut Mitch Trubisky yesterday. Consider the Fields vs. Williams debate expanded to include this third challenger for the job.
Joe Kelly and the Sens:
- It appears that the Japanese version of the Baseball Isn’t Boring t-shirt does, indeed, have the correct translation.
- The Sens host the Blue Jackets tonight. The Blue Jackets are very bad. They also beat the Sens in December. (Which was not, as we can all remember, De-Sens-ber.) Will Ridly Greig score more goals in ways the opponent finds unacceptable? Time will tell.
