Wow, John Feinstein.

Q: Basically they’ll be out of school an entire week the second week?
Shaheen: Actually, if you were to look at the window for each individual team, you have to take each team and contemplate the fact right now you have half the field leaving campus on Tuesday, returning on Sunday or Monday.

Q: If they lose. I’m talking about the teams that win in advance. You’re going to advance 16 teams.
Shaheen: No, actually in the current model you have teams that depart on Tuesday, and even if they win, return on Sunday.

Q: We’re misunderstanding each other. Under the new model that you laid out, you play 64 teams Thursday/Friday. 32 advance to games Saturday/Sunday. Then you are down after those games to 32 teams.
Shaheen: Right.

Q: You’re saying you play games in the round of 32 Tuesday/Wednesday. They would then advance to regionals when?
Shaheen: They would continue into the regional as it’s normally scheduled now.

Q: So they would go Tuesday to Thursday, Wednesday to Friday?
Shaheen: Right.

Q: So they miss an entire week of school. That’s what I’m trying to get.
Shaheen: If you listened to my original answer, they leave now on Tuesday.

Q: I’m talking about the second week, not the first week. They play a game Saturday/Sunday, play a game Tuesday or Wednesday, then go directly to the regional. Tell me when in that second week they’re going to be in class.
Shaheen: The entire first week, the majority of the teams would be in class.

Q: You’re just not going to answer the question about the second week. You’re going to keep referring back to the first week, right? They’re going to miss the entire second week under this model.
Shaheen: So they’re going to go to school the first week, and then they’re –

Q: They’re going to be under the same schedule you said basically the first week, and then they’ll miss the entire second week.
Shaheen: I’m clearly missing the nuance of your point.

Q: You and I miss nuances a lot. Thank you.
BOB WILLIAMS: Next question, please.

Thank God someone finally wrote about this on the heels of the Holy Cross firing this week. Great stuff and a must read!

If Kearney was the wrong coach then, where is the culpability for Regan? Is he perhaps the wrong athletic director?

Regan said he went against his better judgment when he hired Kearney. He wanted a coach with head-coaching experience. So that’s the direction he’s going to go this time, he said. As an athletic director, Regan is allowed to make a mistake and correct it.

At Boston College, Gene DeFilippo has taken subtle jabs at former coach Al Skinner by saying how much he wants a coach who can work 24/7, whose players dive on the floor, and who interacts with students more so they attend games. The latter description doesn’t fit most coaches, except someone like BC alumnus Bruce Pearl, who isn’t going to leave Tennessee.

In an interesting move, Siena coach Fran McCaffery moved on Sunday from Albany to Iowa, taking the Iowa Hawkeyes job (ESPN).

Matt made the war top as bleak as the news for Siena fans.

I think we all had to figure this was going to happen. As much as I’ve heard Fran on every single phoner say that he is very happy in the capital region and with Siena, there were just so many opportunities that (apparently) loved him.

I think, Matt agrees that this is more a testament to how badly the Seton Hall and St. John’s jobs aren’t wanted. The upside there is being 8th in the Big East, maybe. While the upside in the Big Ten, presumably, is competing for a league title.

However it happened, I’m happy for him and wish him the best at Iowa. Now onto Siena’s search for a new head coach, oh an Iona’s too since Kevin Willard left for the Seton Hall job.

Apparently, the Phillies and Cardinals had “trade conversations” about Ryan Howard for Albert Pujols. How crazy can that be?

Not as crazy as you think. If the Cards already decided they can’t pay Pujols the Matt Holliday+1 salary they’ll have to pay him, then it would make sense for them to try and move him for a player of the same caliber. Let’s face it, if the Cardinals ever traded Pujols they would get an amazing amount of talent back. That’s why the price would be Ryan Howard.

The MLB.com Fantasy 411 will be on MLB Network! Check out the release here.

Not only the Draft Preview show on March 21 but also five days a week at 5pm on MLB Network!

MLB NETWORK & MLB.COM TO PARTNER ON FANTASY PROGRAMMING THROUGHOUT THE 2010 REGULAR SEASON

MLB.com Fantasy 411 Draft Preview to Air March 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET

MLB.com’s Fantasy 411 to Air Daily on MLB Network and MLB.com Starting April 6

March 15, 2010, New York & Secaucus – With 2010 fantasy baseball drafts underway, MLB Network today announced it will air the MLB.com Fantasy 411 Draft Preview on Sunday, March 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Hosted by MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger and Harold Reynolds along with MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz and Mike Siano, the two-hour show will provide detailed analysis and insight on the topics fantasy baseball enthusiasts will be focusing on as fantasy draft days continue before Opening Day, including:

· Position-by-position analysis and player rankings

· Discussion of strategy for draft day and in-season transactions

· “Breakout, bargain and bust” picks for the 2010 season

· Top picks for prospects expected to be called up during the 2010 season

Continuing with the fantasy programming, throughout the 2010 regular season MLB Network will simulcast MLB.com’s Fantasy 411, the site’s longest-running hosted program, on weekdays at 5:00 p.m. ET, beginning Tuesday, April 6. The program, hosted by MLB.com’s Jeremy Brisiel, will provide key insights from analysts Schwartz and Siano to help further fans’ enjoyment and knowledge in their respective fantasy leagues.

Schwartz, the Director of Stats for MLB.com and a regular contributor to MLB.com’s fantasy baseball section, has been competing in fantasy baseball since 1989, including expert competitions such as the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) and Tout Wars. Siano, the Director of Multimedia Production for MLB.com, has been competing in fantasy baseball for more than 10 years, including the highly-competitive Tout Wars league. The MLB.com Fantasy 411 can be found on its blog at http://fantasy411.mlblogs.com and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/fantasy411.

Thank God. From Friday’s Newsday:

A man was struck and killed by a Long Island Rail Road train Friday east of the Deer Park station, a railroad spokesman said.

Sam Zambuto, the spokesman, said a man in his 40s on the tracks near the Fifth Avenue crossing was struck by an eastbound train at 5:45 p.m.

“MTA police are still investigating the incident, but the preliminary investigation indicates that this appears to be accidental,” Zambuto said.

The train involved, the 4:35 p.m. from Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal, scheduled to arrive in Ronkonkoma at 5:57 p.m., was initially held at the scene, he said. Passengers reached their final destination up to 80 minutes late. The Ronkonkoma line east of Farmingdale experienced delays of from 30 minutes to an hour on subsequent trains, he said.

The MTA police were investigating incident to determine the identity of the individual killed and the circumstances surrounding his unauthorized presence on the tracks, Zambuto said.

I was on this ‘train’ Wednesday, inotherwords this train time, but not on this one. I made the train before at 4:24pm that gets in just before this one.

Earlier this week, there was a story about Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If you thought George W. Bush was stupid, well at least he never said things like this as reported in the New York Times:

Perhaps concerned that his repeated suggestions that the Holocaust might not have happened have become less shocking over time, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad upped the ante on Saturday, telling intelligence officials in Tehran that the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was staged.

In remarks reported by IRNA, an official Iranian news agency, and translated by Reuters, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” Mr. Ahmadinejad also reportedly described the attacks in New York as a “complicated intelligence scenario and act.” Conspiracy theorists in the Middle East have suggested that the attacks were not the work of Al Qaeda, but carried out by Israeli or American intelligence operatives.

Look I understand that there are people out there that believe the Holocaust didn’t happen. I don’t particularly agree with them at all, mostly because we the convincing documented records of it existing, but I’m not sure how you can say that 9/11 was a television enactment of it. There is a multitude of evidence, as well as video footage to show these attacks were from Al Qaeda.

MLB.com At Bat comes out today for 2010! My brother even said it’s one of the best apps he’s ever had on his (many after breaking) iPhones. I’m going to give it a shot this year and now that I have a new alarm/ipod clock, I can listen to baseball games to fall asleep. What’s better than that? Well, I can’t say here.

It’s almost baseball season! Finally!!

This went from a web grassroots campaign to the Washington Post:

JACKSON, Miss. — Some students at the University of Mississippi want Admiral Ackbar of “Star Wars” fame for their new mascot – but as Ackbar himself might say, “It’s a trap.”

Officials say there’s virtually no chance the fish-faced leader of the Rebel Alliance in the movie could become the on-field mascot for the Rebels of Ole Miss.

Cool right? Well for people who have watched Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, this is funny.

http://seatgeek.com its a site that apparently aggregates all the ticket buying websites and tells you what’s a good value and what’s not.

Info from another website where I found it, recommended on lifehacker and apparently has been recommended everywhere, says its got some cool features to consider. It aggregates the data of prior games and will tell you if you should buy now or wait based on the team/venue.

So my example here? Mets-Yankees in the summer this year.

This looks like a really cool tool to use. Especially for people like me who like to buy tickets to games 1-4 days before the game starts.