LionIndex's profile

LionIndex
486
Member since: June 10, 2002
Last visit: June 18, 2024

LionIndex has posted 2 links and 560 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 35 comments to the Locker Room.

Recent Links

Ken Pomeroy takes on Curling: Because everything is messed up, the last NCAA basketball tournament was cancelled, and who knows what's going to happen with the upcoming NCAA season, Ken Pomeroy has turned his statistical forecasting mind towards a niche market: Curling

posted by LionIndex to olympics at 02:09 PM on October 28, 2020 - 1 comment

Surprising almost no one, the Chargers decide to move to LA.: There's yet to be a final announcement, but the Chargers are pretty much set to return to Los Angeles (they played their first season there before moving to San Diego) for the 2017 season, where they will join the Rams in their new stadium as lease-paying tenants in Inglewood, expected to be completed for the 2019 season. In the meantime, the Chargers are expected to play at either the Coliseum or a 27,000 seat facility in Carson, somewhat limiting their immediate ability to cash in.

posted by LionIndex to football at 10:48 AM on January 12, 2017 - 7 comments

Recent Comments

SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle

Then there are teams on the other side of the front office coin...

I lived in Michigan for the late 20teens and early 2020s, and was driving home listening to the afternoon sports talk show discussing the upcoming Pistons-Bucks game, where one host just wanted to tank and not even try any more so that they wouldn't be stuck with something like the 15th pick. At the time, the Bucks were getting to the playoffs but hadn't won a title yet and their core three players were: Giannis, who was actually the 15th pick; Malcolm Brogdon, who was a 2nd round pick (and still got the ROY); and Khris Middleton, who was actually drafted BY THE PISTONS. It was just ... dude, draft position is not your problem here.

Also a year or two earlier, the Pistons had pick #12, and took Luke Fuckin' Kennard when Donovan Mitchell and Bam Adebayo were on the board.

posted by LionIndex at 11:24 PM on June 18, 2024

SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle

I lived in Michigan for 6 years until moving away a couple years ago, and still work remotely for a company based in Michigan. It's amazing any work is getting done today.

posted by LionIndex at 05:34 PM on January 22, 2024

Texas Rangers Win World Series

Since the Rangers brain trust is basically all former Padres (even if they were also involved with the Rangers at some point in their playing careers), I'm going to pretend the Padres had something to do with it.

Bonus for a UVa pitcher on the mound at the end of it.

posted by LionIndex at 05:55 PM on November 02, 2023

SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle

So. How 'bout that increasingly misnamed Big Ten.

I wonder what happens with the (also increasingly misnamed) Pac-12 schools that are left. Does the Big Ten want more of them? Do leftovers from raids by them and the (possibly yet to be correctly named) Big Twelve join the Mountain West? Does the SEC even want a part of it if the best they can get is Cal and Stanford? Would Cal and Stanford even join the SEC?

posted by LionIndex at 07:21 PM on August 04, 2023

Current round of ESPN layoffs includes Jeff Van Gundy.

Also Max Kellerman and Keyshawn Johnson. Jason Fitz seemed to be a radio-only guy, but I enjoyed the shows he was on. All I know Joon Lee for is super-homer coverage of the Mets/Padres playoff series last year - no matter what happened it was something Mets did or failed to do, not the Padres doing it to them.

posted by LionIndex at 04:46 PM on June 30, 2023

MLB Takes Over San Diego Padres Broadcasts

Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem to affect my ability to watch a game anyway. I either get cable (which I already made the decision not to do years ago), or I pay for the MLB app, which articles have told me is only good until Sunday (as far as watching in my home market without blackout restrictions).

posted by LionIndex at 06:13 PM on May 31, 2023

SportsFilter: The Tuesday Huddle

Duke lost the NCAA Lacrosse championship though. I'm not sad.

posted by LionIndex at 10:38 AM on May 30, 2023

Tempe Voters Reject New Arena for Arizona Coyotes

I mean, there's not really any viable candidates that are much closer to the border than Phoenix is already?

San Diego is a decent sized market and has had a minor league hockey team for a long time now, but our arena is still the building that housed the Clippers when they played here. There's a redevelopment project on the boards for the area, including a new arena, but getting it built is still a long way out.

posted by LionIndex at 07:46 PM on May 18, 2023

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle

Sweet!

posted by LionIndex at 07:16 PM on May 18, 2023

Phoenix Suns and Mercury Cut the Cable

Hopefully baseball follows suit after the Bally bankruptcy stuff earlier this year.

Watching Padre games is pretty much the only reason I'd get cable (aside from decent reception since a nearby mountain blocks communications with transmission antennas), but I'm not paying over $1000 a year to watch the Padres on TV.

posted by LionIndex at 07:45 PM on April 30, 2023

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle

In San Diego, we have two sports talk stations, one CBS, one Fox. Local and afternoon drive times are still local shows, even if we're down to one local pro sports team.

When I lived in Michigan up to around a year ago, the local ESPN station that I listened to had gone from local-ish talk to statewide talk. Afternoon show went from a couple local guys to Bill "Huge" Simonson, who's a huge idiotic homer and I'm guessing doesn't take callers because he can't handle people telling him how stupid he is.

posted by LionIndex at 01:07 PM on April 27, 2023

SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle

I'll agree that seeding has been a bit off and preference has been given to teams from conferences that don't deserve the benefit of the doubt that they're apparently being given, but major conference schools schedule a bunch of games against the little guys every year, mixed in with a few out of conference games against big conference schools either out of TV contract obligations or because they're participating in an early-season tournament (which mid-major schools also participate in). So Virginia, my alma mater, generally has a 30 game schedule. 20 of those games are in conference. One game for the last 23 years has been against a Big Ten school for the ACC - Big Ten Challenge, part of a contractual obligation to ESPN (this year we played Michigan). Lately we've been doing the early season tournaments (and winning them) so that ends up being a couple games (Illinois and Baylor this year). The other 5-7 games are smaller schools, generally in the geographic are of the school - this year on the schedule we had Monmouth, NC Central, Northern Iowa (frequently a tournament team), James Madison (who have beat us recently), Maryland-Eastern, and Albany (also gets to the tournament every once in a while). Also Houston, which has been a powerhouse lately but is still in a mid-major conference (that changes next year when they join the Big Twelve). A quarter of the schedule every year is hardly "rarely if ever".

There's some weird thing going on with whatever criteria the selection committee is using where the Big Ten gets a ton of bids and consistently fails to deliver commensurate results in the tournament, while the ACC is being penalized for some reason, and I could see that logic being extended to other smaller conferences that only get one bid, and that's probably why the 12 is such a common upset - it's usually a small conference team that crushed everybody against a middling power 5 team, and that situation seems to be spreading down to lower seeds in the bracket where 13-15 seeds are winning a lot more frequently and 15s are even making the sweet 16 with some regularity, which used to be unheard of.

Related: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/35945209/jim-phillips-acc-meet-changing-men-hoops-narrative

posted by LionIndex at 10:05 PM on March 26, 2023

SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle

The number I thought I remembered x being was actually right, and I didn't make it up. There have been three final fours without 1 seeds: 1980, 2006, 2011

posted by LionIndex at 01:29 AM on March 25, 2023

SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle

No, this is the first time ever with no 1 seeds in the eight. I don't know about the final four - the normal articles went around before the tournament started listing how to pick your bracket just based on the historical performance of different seeds, and I think I might remember there being advice to have at least one 1 seed in the final four because there have only been x final fours without them, but I don't remember what x was or if I'm imagining that.

Today was also the first 6 vs 15 seed game ever.

posted by LionIndex at 01:26 AM on March 25, 2023

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle

Whoa, slow down there - lost to a 13 seed in 2021 and missed the tournament entirely last year.

posted by LionIndex at 09:06 PM on March 16, 2023