Mizzou Links, 7-6-10

Yep ... we just hit the dog days of summer, full force.  Welcome to a seven-link links post!!  Got a link to share?  Bring it on...

Big 12 Links

• Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Beebe should have let Tuberville slide

  Tuberville wasn't the first to think this, of course, but saying it out loud was enough to draw a response from Beebe. The commish issued a public reprimand on the Big 12 website Friday night, basically threatening Tuberville with a big fat fine should he say something mean again.

  I'm not sure why he did it.

  Tuberville stood up for himself, his players and the Texas Tech fans. No, it wasn't a very politically correct thing to say. But yes, it was warranted. Maybe reporters from Austin and Dallas kept calling the Big 12, wanting to know what Beebe thought of the coach's fighting words. If so, the better response would have been to affirm his own faith in the conference, issue a sincere-sounding message that he hoped Tuberville's opinion would change, and leave it at that. He should not have scolded the coach then barred him from issuing a response.

  Beebe basically camped out in DeLoss Dodds' breast pocket last month, doing whatever he could to save his rear end, even if it came at the expense of the rest of the conference. He had every right to do so. It was a shrewd, tactical business move that helped him save face and his job. But if he honestly thought Tech would smile and take it, he must not spend much time in West Texas.

• Dallas Morning News: Notre Dame AD: Conference realignment far from over

Mizzou (and Big 12) Football Links

• PowerMizzou: Countdown to Camp: 30 stories to watch (they should have unveiled these, one per day!)
• Oklahoma State
  Daily Oklahoman: Oklahoma State deserves more respect
• Oklahoma
  Daily Oklahoman: OU free safety Quinton Carter gives back by starting nonprofit charitable foundation
  

ESPN's Playing the What-If Game!!

• ESPN.com: What If ... Nebraska's 2-Point Conversion in the 1984 Orange Bowl Is Successful?
  

Other

• Ottawa Citizen: We're fortune's fools

  Unfortunately, this habit of dismissing luck as a factor is not limited to sports. It's human nature. We fabricate explanatory stories automatically and effortlessly, but luck is routinely excluded from those stories because we have no intuitive feel for randomness. We often struggle merely to see luck.

  ...

  [W]e routinely underestimate the extent to which streaks can be maintained by luck alone. Consider England's 40 years of disappointment at the World Cup. The very fact that it has lasted four decades is often the foundation of claims that it reflects national character or whatever, but in those 40 years there have only been 10 World Cups and England has only been a serious contender in -- I'll pick a fairly arbitrary number -- six or seven. And what disasters befell England in those six or seven events? One year it was Diego Maradona's "hand of God" goal. Several times, England was ousted by penalty kicks, which are only a little more dependent on skill than coin tosses: The keeper guesses left, the ball goes right, and another chapter in the history of English misery is written.

  I love, love, loved this column, and even though its main subject was soccer, I think it's pretty obvious how much it pertains to all sports.  Each fall, people overreact greatly to a sport (college football) that, in essence, deals with a sample size of 12.  Get unlucky (Blaine Gabbert's ankle bends just right against Nebraska in 2009, Pig Brown loses the ball in the sun in Norman in 2007, Brian Smith somehow breaks his hip in 2006, etc.), and it has far-reaching consequences.  Get lucky (Todd Reesing comes within an inch of getting out of the end zone in 2009, Jordan Lake drops a sure-fire pick six in 2008, Mizzou puts together their best team in a long time in a year where a lot of college football powers have their worst in 2007), and it's the same thing.  As Missouri fans, we do tend to spend quite a bit of time mourning over our lack of luck (and, hey, it's not like we don't have good reasons), but fans as a whole still take luck-based events and pretend like they are cold, 100% ability-based results, and they often make rather dumb conclusions because of them.