Soft Pretzel Logic

You are looking live at a blog post being written on a bench at 30th Street Station, as I get ready to head out of town for a few days for the holiday.

Fred writes:

All of this college basketball talk about RPI, mid-majors, and these mind-numbing stats is starting to make my head spin. Especially at this stage of the season.

I would like to get back on track to the college football, which captures my attention and energy this time of year.

Q1: Is there any other reason besides what has been stated with LaSalle bagging the program? It never seemed to get much attention locally, both in the papers and on TV. I feel bad for the players and the staff.

Q2: Delaware plays DSU on Friday. Why is the game on Friday? Its the only Friday game of the first round of the I-AA playoff, with the other games being played on Saturday. And, what is the buzz on the game? For years, DSU has been chasing the game, and now they have it.. in a playoff!

Well first of all, don't worry. The basketball stats make my head spin too sometimes.

Part of the reason why La Salle football hasn't gotten much interest is that the MAAC football conference, despite nominally being I-AA, doesn't really play at the same level as the CAA, Patriot League or even the Ivy League.

If you look at the stadium sizes and the level of players (not to mention the conference Sagarin ratings), you'll see the difference. MAAC schools that wanted to have more serious football programs, such as Georgetown and Duquesne, have left or are leaving the conference. Schools that didn't want to make the investment also got rid of their programs.

So we ended up with only four teams in the conference, as Joe Juliano noted in his story about all this. I think that's a legit argument.

I'm not sure about the money involved, because La Salle gets A-10 basketball money and they haven't really traveled far to play. And I can easily name you a non-scholarship program in the region that La Salle isn't playing, as can we all. But I'm pretty sure Penn's schedules are set from now until either 2010 or 2011, and I doubt the Explorers would want to wait around.

Now, that shouldn't necessarily have prevented the two teams from playing in past years. Penn played Duquesne, another MAAC team, in 2003 and 2005. The games weren't close, but at least they existed.

I feel bad for the players and the staff too. But I have a couple colleagues at Philly.com who attended La Salle in recent years, and they tell me that there wasn't much interest in football on campus. I'm sure that didn't help things either.

As for that Delaware State-Delaware game, it's at 1:30 p.m. Friday because ESPN says it is. That's no surprise, but it's a nice move to pick that game for national exposure. It's a great storyline and it while the Blue Hens definitely have the better players, it would be cool if the Hornets pulled off the upset.

It's nice to know that Delaware coach K.C. Keeler wants to play the series regularly, but given the (not-so-subtly racist) history between the two schools, I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm sure it will be a great atmosphere in Newark -- it always is -- and I'd love to be there, but I'll be at the Philly Classic.

After the jump, let's crunch some numbers.