Anyone else puzzled by this logic?

I know Myron Medcalf is an easy target on here and this may feel like piling on, but I don't understand this logic-the reason that the top teams have advanced is because more mid-major teams weren't invited into the tournament? Inserting St. Mary's or San Diego St. into the tournament would have brought wins against Memphis (#10 Maryland loss in 2nd round) or Xavier (#12 Wisconsin loss in 2nd round) or they would have done better than Arizona? I don't understand how leaving one of these teams (or the Gophers or Michigan or whoever else) would have advanced the likelihood that the Sweet 16 wouldn't be comprised of the finest teams left in college basketball?

I made this point already in another post, but the likes of Davidson and George Mason making noise beyond the first weekend is rare-once you get into the Sweet 16, it's pretty rarefied air and the teams still left have less flaws to exploit. It often leads to a huge deflation of Cinderella's coach and pretty boring games.

As for his claim that if you don't follow college basketball or do an office pool, you won't be drawn in by this weekend of games-doesn't the above sentence pretty much cover every NCAA tournament, regardless of Stephen Curry or Davidson?

Anyway, here's the article:
http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/41720467.html?page=1&c=y

Logic does not appear to be in Myron's "toolbox"

i'm glad I do not pay any money to the RedStarTrib to read the writings of a whiny 4th rate beat writer....

writers like medcalf and reusse are the reason the red star will be going under. people read them online, see how terrible they are, and refuse to buy their paper because they suck. way to protect your jobs, gentleman. i'll take a double cheeseburger with fries.

Upset that the mid-majors are left out but in the same paragraph bemoans the fact that the Pac 10 and SEC have one team left combined.

Anderson8284 said:

i'm glad I do not pay any money to the RedStarTrib to read the writings of a whiny 4th rate beat writer....

Click to expand...

So help me understand, if the newspaper wasn't (as you say the RedStarTrib) would you or wouldn't you read the whiny 4th rate beat writer?

I always thought the point of any tournament was to have the top teams playing in the end. I feel like this is one of the better tournaments in some time because the games have all been interesting very few blow outs and the better teams have been able to win. It should make for a terrific weekend and who says the cinderellas wont step up this weekend. Arizona is the biggest jaw dropped in this tournament for a good reason. To many people are crying about the Mid Major as Jay Bilas told Dickie V Mid Majors need to do what they have to to get in. If that means going on the road to play BCS Conference schools you do it. It might not be fair but that is the way it is. Mid Major's get the giant advantage of not having to play Major Conference schedules all year long the least they can do is play some tough non conference games against BCS schools and if that happens to be a road game so be it.

If Gonzaga can do it so can the rest of the Mid Majors.

RedStarTrib

Freshtrout, I really don't know.

My perspective, here, for what it's worth. {SOMEWHAT LONG}


I personally subscribed to the Strib paper every year I was in school at the -U- (e.g., 1978-1984) and for one year afterward when I had moved out of town for my first post-college job. I let it lapse then, for concerns over quality and also editorial politics. Without getting into politics overmuch, I found the paper's logic that the Reagen adminsitration was the focus of evil in the modern world to be fairly dubious, and got tired of it being beaten into me, or into the ground. I do try to read stuff from quite a few political spectrums, but I found the RedStarTrib to be doing the ultimate sin (quote stolen from the writer Larry Niven) "wasting the reader's time". I don't mean that to sound pompous. It was just that I had turned 26, was newly-engaged and getting more and more professional responsibilities, and time for a newspaper I had once really liked was gone.....

Also, my family in Rochester pretty much always had the Pioneer Press, the Rochester Post-Bulletin, and the Strib around since I could read. I *loved* the peach section of the Strib while growing up. But by 1985 that was long gone......

So there is a bit of a historical perspective in my mind, though maybe not a complete one!

ANYWAY - I started reading it more again w/ the advent of the Internet. Obviously the quality and quantity of the paper had deteriorated. However, to an out-of-state Gopher fan, it offered something very very impt. -> GOPHER NEWS! I especially found the writing of Mr. Jeff Shelman to be quite good, and tempered with a perspective he brought from having worked for awhile in Cincy. I was disappointed when he moved on and Myron replaced him, but these things happen. However, this year I have found Myron's blog especially, almost unreadable for the general writing and especially the logic errors.

As we all now, the world has changed quite a bit even since 1985, or even since 1996 when I started reading the Strib again (on-line) and Gopher news is much easier to come by (Gopher Hole, take a bow!), so the need to read the Strib once again decreases and the desire to ever pay them anything especially decreases. I don't mean to sound too much like a grouchy old cuss, but I'll echo CoolHand in another thread, and just say that I think my high school paper in 1978 in Rochester featured better writers than Myron.

As for the politics, YMMV of course. I have found scant improvement in the paper since 1985, but I'm probably quite a bit more apolitical than I was then, my present job requries a fair amount of itneraction with both parties' decision makers in the State I live in and work for, so I try to be more circumspect than I was in my 20's. Really, the RedStar tag is more me using a common tag line for the paper than any real animus toward them (other than the quality deterioration). My snark was aimed more at Myron than the Strib this time, though I do wonder who the heck his editor is or if he has one at all.....

Gee the Star Tribune runs such raging leftists as George Will.

Since it's more available across the state than is the Pioneer Press, it looks like people of the state prefer it over the Pioneer Press.