Crimsonelf
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RE: UConn has cemented that they are a Blue Blood...
(04-09-2014 10:07 AM)Melky Cabrera Wrote: (04-09-2014 08:34 AM)john01992 Wrote: (04-09-2014 04:48 AM)Melky Cabrera Wrote: (04-08-2014 10:27 PM)john01992 Wrote: (04-08-2014 10:16 PM)uldn Wrote: Trying to include total wins as criteria, while understandable to some degree, is not really a fair comparison. Many schools started 15-20 years before others -- so the newer schools, even though they have been active since the early 1900s, will NEVER catch up even if they are better every year now.
Also, some teams, like UK, have played in relatively easy conferences compared to others. There was not another winner in the SEC until the 1990s -- up till then UK was the ONLY team that put any effort into basketball. You had multiple winners in the BE, the old Metro/CUSA, and ACC. Getting to 20 wins a season used to be the magical number of wins -- now it's not really anything to brag about. Maybe a better reflection instead of total wins would be the number of wins over top 25 teams -- at least showing you beat some good teams -- not just teams. But even that would be hard to justify as some schools could be great but play in smaller conferences where they don't have the opportunity to play top ranked teams. It was much easier to get top 25 wins the years we were in the BE than any other conference -- even though it was tougher teams, you had a lot of ranked teams for a chance. If you are the only ranked team in your conference you have no chance other than early season OOC.
The tourney is also a good indicator but again it has it's problems. Teams coming out of weaker conferences in some cases got great seeds -- again like UK. They have had tons of 1-4 seeds -- getting an easier path to make a final four than teams that played tough conferences, therefore had more losses and never get a 1 or 2 or 3 seed. They start with tougher games, therefore less chances to make a final four.
for CFB & CBB i have always been a proponent of giving equal emphasis on both. all time wins is a factor of consistency & regular season strength. how many good teams have gone down because of a last second hail mary shot or an injury and don't have an NC to show for it? while sports are a game of talent they also are a game of luck as well. UCLA/alabama fans will always argue NCs and kentucky/michigan fans will always argue wins. I prefer to come towards the middle.
uconn clearly takes on the oregon role for CBB only better. while they are not exactly weak in all time wins (27th is respectable) if they had more FFs, tourny wins, tourny bids, and a better winning %, I would be more open to calling them a blue blood. while uconn is very strong in NCs it's the other area's that drag them down. uconn fans want to do nothing more than claim only the NCs matter. but the reality is that that is not exactly the case.
The point is that comparing accomplishments from different eras is comparing apples and oranges
Wisconsin has 4 national championships in college basketball. Minnesota has 5 in college football. But no one refers to them as blue bloods because their accomplishments are from so long ago and from such a different era that they no longer matter. As a result of the fact that they don't consistently field top programs in the current era, no one brings up their historic achievements.
The national championships won by Kentucky or Notre Dame in ancient times are no more relevant today than those won by Wisconsin or Minnesota. Indiana basketball is no more relevant today than Notre Dame is in football. Neither has won a national championship since 1987. The blue blood conversation is interesting for historians, but be prepared to talk about Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Chicago while you're at it.
UConn Basketball may or may not be blue blood depending on your definition, but there is no doubt that they are the slayers of blue bloods. They beat Duke in the Final Four to win their 1999 and 2004 championships and have now beaten Kentucky in the Final Four to win their 2011 and 2014 championships.
Bring on the Blue Bloods. Here at Connecticut, we eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We're #1.
are you seriously bringing wiskys helms into the conversation and counting them after bashing cuse for having only 1 NC???????
minn. in football is an apple to oranges comparison because they were a football power that did indeed collapse and never managed to recover. probably one of the rare examples in both sports of an elite getting kicked out of the elites club.
you keep talking about era's era's era's......
but what about the one & done era that we live in? how many basketball historians down the road are going to say that the quality of BB in this era was inferior to the 80s, early 90s, & 2020s-onward???
The point is that declaring a team a "blue blood" in the modern era for what they did in the 1940's (Kentucky) is about as relevant as bringing in Wiscy's run of championships, which culminated with an NCAA title in the 1940's. Neither is relevant. What makes Kentucky relevant is what they've done in the past 20 years.
Minnesota was kicked out of the elite club after their program collapsed, but so should Notre Dame Football and Indiana Basketball, given that neither has won a tournament since the 1980's. When do we get to the point when we say that the past is past with these programs? Minnesota won its last title in the 1960's. No one was still talking about them as a "blue blood" in the 1980's. Everyone had moved on and in basketball, we should too.
I'm not saying that those championships were inferior; I'm saying they were different. I'm not saying that they weren't worth as much; I'm saying that they don't mean the same thing. Those titles were great for their day. Those teams accomplished the most that a team could accomplish at that time, but we simply can't compare a championship of an 8 team tournament when half the best teams were playing in another equally good tournament to the championship of a 64 team tournament today.
You can laugh at Wiscy's Helms Foundation championships all you want. I'm doing the same thing with Indiana's NCAA championships in 1940 and 1953. Helms didn't even recognize the 1940 Indiana team as the national champion and NIT champ Seton Hall (31-2) was likely the better team than Indiana (23-3) in 1953. Yet, everyone talks about Indiana's 5 titles as though they actually won 5 national championships. They didn't in the sense that we mean the term today. They didn't compete in a tournament with the other best teams.
UConn has 4 undisputed national championships. Indiana has 3 with the other 2 being disputed. And Indiana hasn't won a title since 1987, yet we're still talking about them as a "Blue Blood" as though that is meaningful to what the program is today or has been at any point in the past 20 years.
Take it all the way back to 1979. That's 36 tournaments. That's the first year that they began seeding the tournament. Before that teams automatically went to a geographic region, some of which were easy and some of which were hard. Since then, only 3 teams have won 4 tournaments:
UConn
Duke
North Carolina
That's it. Those are your blue bloods. UConn has been a dominant program for 25 years with 9 championships in the toughest conference in the country, 10 Elite 8's, 5 Final Fours, and 4 national championships.
Talk about Indiana all you want. Talk about Kentucky. Talk about Kansas. Talk about UCLA. And you're doing the same thing that you're laughing about with those Helms titles. You're hardening back to a day when things were done differently. A time when teams played tournament games on their home courts. At one time Helms was state of the art. At another, 2 competing tournaments was. Later, relying on conferences to weed out the competitors and holding regional postseason competition before a national final four was state of the art. But that's not what we do today. And it hasn't been for a very long time.
There's a reason why no program has been able to win 10 titles in 12 years the way that UCLA did in the 1960's and '70's. Changes were put in place to even things out, to spread out the competition, to prevent teams from winning tournament games on their home court, to prevent deserving teams from being eliminated in conference tournaments.
Tell me all about your "blue bloods" and I say bring them on. At UConn we beat Duke in 1999 and 2004. We beat Kentucky in 20011 and 2014. They don't scare us. Their histories don't mean anything to us. We have a history of our own. After all, we won 17 conference titles before the Big East (26 conference titles combined) and went to an Elite 8 in 1964. We have a history of our own.
Melky, I don't wish to get in a fight, you've said some decent things about UofL & I appreciate that. But I Do believe you and maybe some others are totally misunderstanding the nature of 'Blue Blood' and what it means.
Go to the Queen of England and tell her that history means nothing, or any aristocrat...anywhere! That is the nature of Blue Blood. We can argue night and day about stats and who's Elite & who is not. But BLUE BLOOD is a different thing altogether. History absolutely does matter in that milieu.
I mean, UConn is trying to be 'Made', if you go into a confab w/ the acknowledged Blue Bloods and begin spouting off like this you're going to end up like Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas more likely than not! 
Seriously, though, I feel that UofL, Cuse, MSU and others have no real say in this as I think UConn has gone into the Blue Blood ceremony and the others have been left behind, for now. And I hope you can appreciate how difficult that is for me to admit. But I do admit it b/c I can appreciate the Huskies level of play over the past couple of decades...
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UConn has cemented that they are a Blue Blood...
