Interview with Seth Davis of SI.com and CBS Sports

Coke Zero is running a promotion this season called the Coke Zero Department of Fannovation. What you do is enter your idea for improving the fan experience - whether its cups that double as megaphones, a mascot cam, a shock collar on the referee, whatever - and before the NCAA Tournament, the good folks at Coke Zero will create a 64 team bracket with the best ideas and allow the fans to vote. If your idea makes the Sweet 16, you get a grand. Win the title, and you get ten grand and a trip to the Final Four.

And all you have to do is submit an idea right here. Seriously, how hard is that? I've already submitted two. (They rejected my first idea of free beer and all-nude cheerleaders. Something about "its not a strip club", I dunno.)

One of Coke Zero's spokesmen is Seth Davis, a college hoops writer for SI.com and an on-air personality in the CBS college basketball studio. Davis has also launched a new shot called "Courtside with Seth Davis" on the CBS College Sports Network, which airs at 9pm on Mondays.

Anyway, through the promotion of Fannovation, we were afforded the opportunity to bounce a few questions off of Davis. Hit the jump to see his take on Jim Calhoun's health issues, the player of the year race, and what its like working with the likes of Bill Raftery, Gus Johnson, and Clark Kellogg.


Q. Covering college hoops is a dream job for many, including myself. How did you get your start? Did you know you wanted to be a writer all along?

I grew up in Maryland, and I always liked writing, I liked reading. I loved sports, the Washington Redskins were my first love. I wrote for the school paper even in high school, so I always felt like I wanted to do it. I guess there's the old saying "writer's aren't made, they're born". Its always kind of who I was. I was fortunate enough to go to Duke, and for obvious reasons at Duke I caught the college basketball buzz. Duke did not have journalism or communications as a major, so a lot of people who went there, went there to be doctors or lawyers or engineers. They wanted to actually work for a living. So I kinda had the run of the place to myself, working the newspapers and the Duke TV station.

I got a job with the New Haven Register out of college covering high school sports (Ed. Note: if he was with the Register 10 years later, he would have covered my high school hoops career.). And then I got hired at Sports Illustrated as a fact checker in 1995 and latched on to the college hoops beat while I was there. I just kinda pried my way up the mast while at Sports Illustrated. I was doing TV and got a break with CBS and I've been off and running with them. You make your own luck, and luck is a residue of hard work. I don't take a back seat to anybody for how hard I work, but at some point you have to be lucky, and I got very, very lucky getting hired at Sports Illustrated and CBS which, in my view, are the two premier outlets for sports journalism in the country.


Q. The last few season, we've seen an increase in the use of advanced statistics in college basketball, tempo-free stats and the sort. Recently you tweeted about John Gasaway's statement regarding rebound margin as an unnecessary statistic. How much stock do you put into stats like the ones Kenpom generates? Is there a future for them in the mainstream?

Its funny. Bloggers ask me that question a lot, and its really interesting to me. On the one hand, I absolutely see the value. I go on to Kenpom's site and I read Gasaway's stuff and I'm very interested in what they're writing about. That said, I don't believe basketball translates to Sabermetrics the same way that baseball does. I think there is much more of a subtle dynamic at work in basketball that cannot be measured in numbers. One of the things I do every year is I select an all-glue team of players who make extremely valuable contributions to their team in ways that don't show up in a box score. I think there is more of that in basketball than there is in baseball. I definitely think there is room for tempo-free stats, but I also think that there is a limitation. I think you can over think it.

My only fault with Gasaway is that the whole point of playing basketball is to beat our opponent, and one of the most important parts of the game is to beat your opponents on the boards. Now, if you want to measure that in percentages, that's one thing. But I think that the margin of rebounds that you have over your opponent in a game is huge. And its one of the first things a coach will look at when he gets a box score. Is there value in looking at percentages? Yeah. But you can't tell me that rebounding margin is, as he says, a "unicorn stat". Now total rebounds I agree, because obviously the pace that you play at and the number of shots you take is going to effect the number of rebounds that happen in a game. So a teams total number of rebounds is not necessarily important, but rebound margin is a direct function of what you do to your opponents in the course of a basketball game. The last thing I want to do is take on Gasaway when it comes to these numbers, or Pomeroy for that matter, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. Rebounding margin is a very, very important statistic.


Q. You get a chance to work with cult icons like Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery during CBS's broadcasts. Do you enjoy them as much as the internet does?

I do these interviews with bloggers, and its just so funny to me, and obviously I'm not disagreeing at all, I love those guys. But its just funny to me that bloggers always mention those two guys. What I can tell you is that those are two of the greatest guys you would ever want to hang out with. Setting basketball aside, if you could just sit and talk to those guys and hang out, your sides will hurt from laughing.

I've worked with both of them, I've hung out with both of them. Gus and I are a little bit closer in age, he and I really relate on that level. He's extremely, extremely smart and sophisticated and cultured. He's just got a heart the size of Manhattan. I love being around him.

And Raft is Raft. Raft, on my very first segment in the studio on CBS was me, Bill Raftery, and Bonnie Bernstein. And Raft gave me a great piece of advice. I remember, we were sitting up there, and as we were coming on air, there was a lot of chaos in the studio, with people shouting things at you as highlights are being cut and changed. There's a lot going on, and he kind of looks at me and says "you gotta remember, everyone can shout and get excited, but you're the guy in front of the camera and you always gotta stay calm." And that was one of the first pieces of advice that I got on air.

Gus gave me another great piece of advice. This was my first go-round with CBS, we're in the studio and he's hosting. I'm preparing my notes and I'm getting everything ordered, I'm stressing out a little bit about making sure I have everything ready. He looks at me and he says "Yo...", and I look up at him and he goes "Just talk". (Laughs) He says "nobody knows this stuff better than you. Just talk. You'll be fine." And that was great advice too. I love them, and I'm right there with you on singing their praises.


Q. Let's talk a bit about some of the other college hoops writers and personalities out there. Eliminating yourself from the equation, do you have a favorite writer?

Yes, Alex Wolff is my favorite writer. Not only is he a brilliant writer, but he's one of the nicest people I've ever known. He's been a mentor to me for a long time. Nobody writes about basketball as well as Alex does and continues to do. He's my friend and he's my hero.

Along that same vein, I don't know that I've met a finer human being pound-for-pound than Clark Kellogg. Clark Kellogg, to me, is the epitome of what a man should be. As a father, as a husband, as a broadcaster. He's exceedingly bright. He's incredibly nice to his core. He's a lot of fun to be around. I came in to that studio, and it was just him and the host and I was thrown into the mix. A lesser person could have felt threatened by that, but he couldn't have been more encouraging and welcoming and helpful than Clark. I'm obviously thrilled for the opportunity that he has to call the Final Four, and I've gotten to be very fast friends Greg Anthony, but I definitely miss being around Clark more often in the studio during the tournament.


Q. Who's the guy that everyone should be reading that doesn't get enough credit?

Besides you? (Ed. Note: We already get way too much credit.) Obviously, I couldn't be more biased, but Luke Winn to me is a brilliant writer and a great reporter. He's much more at the vanguard of things like tempo-free statistics than I am. I'm definitely well behind him in that regard. He's a very talented guy.


Q. Switching gears a little bit, you wrote today that Jim Calhoun told you at a golf event that he would have retired last season had the Huskies won the national title. Given this most recent health issue, and some of the similar occurrences involving Urban Meyer and the late Skip Prosser, its pretty clear that coaching major college athletics requires much more than just standing on the sidelines. In your perspective, what is it about coaching that makes it so stressful? What does a day in the life of a coach at a program like UConn entail?

Jay Bilas has written this, and I definitely see where he's coming from, where he kind of scoffs at the notion that coaching as a profession is more stressful than any other profession. Look at firemen, and policemen, and emergency room workers, and brain surgeons, and school teachers in the inner city. There are a lot of very stressful professions out there that don't earn seven figure salaries. I'm definitely with Jay in arguing against the notion that coaching is such a difficult profession. As I wrote in my column today, coaching just attracts a certain species of man. And that species is hobo-hyper-competitiveness (sp?).

They're competitive freaks who drive themselves past the brink. They're part of a culture where you are supposed to push yourself to exhaustion. That's what they do to their players in practice, that's what they do to themselves. I heard a radio interview Frank Martin gave the other day where the interviewer said "hey, thanks for coming on, it must have been a really busy day for you." Martin said "Yeah, well we got back late and my day started at two in the morning when I watched a tape of the game, then I broke down tape of the next game." I'm thinking, the guy flew in, he's working from two in the morning and now he's doing a radio interview? Number one, when does he see him family? Number two, when does he sleep? You can't tell me that that's a healthy lifestyle.

When Jim said that to me, I think that he believed it. I'm not saying that he lied to me, but I didn't believe it. I don't think that he would ever tie in that kind of a decision to whether or not he won a championship. Its just how he's wired. Honestly, it should absolutely be his call, he doesn't need me telling him how to live his life. I think if he read what I wrote he would appreciate where I'm coming from. That is that I like the guy! I want to see him healthy, I want to see him happy, and I want to see him live a long time so I can keep being a pain is his behind. This is the fourth time in the last two years that he's had to step away for at least a brief period of time because of health issues. That's on top of two cancer scares. He's 67 years old, and its time to get out.


Q. At least from my perspective, it seems that part of the problem coaches have so much stress is from pressure put on them from the "what have you done for me lately" attitude that athletic departments and the fan bases have. Four coaches have already been fired this season. I know these guys get paid an unreal amount of money to coach a game, but if it really fair to put that much pressure on them?

A lot of the pressure's self inflicted. Its part of the job, kind of like the guy's line in the Godfather: "This is the business we've chosen." You coach until you get fired, its a part of it. Yes, there are a lot of external pressures, but I look at a guy like Bill Self. I know he feels stress, but I think he does a good job of tuning a lot of that stuff out. I'm telling you, these guys are competitive freaks. They are extremely driven, and a lot of that pressure is just manufactured - "I have to be watching tape at two in the morning because the guy I'm coaching against is watching tape at two in the morning." Somehow, that means if I'm not doing that, then I'm going to lose. You think Jim Calhoun feels pressure that he's going to get fired for losing? That's not happening. Its just how he's wired, its how a lot of these guys are wired, and its just not a healthy lifestyle.


Q. On a lighter note, what is the best game you've ever attended, either as a fan or as a journalist, in person?

With apologies to my good friend Greg Anthony, I was in the stands as a student at Duke in 1991 when Duke beat UNLV. That's probably the most historically significant game that I've been at. I've attended a lot of Final Fours. The 1998 championship game when Arizona beat Kentucky in overtime was maybe the best championship game I've ever been at. I was in the studio when George Mason beat UConn, and we went on the air and interviewed Jim Larranaga and the team, so in a way I covered that game. Those are the few that kind of stand out for me.


Q. Talking a little bit about this season, do you see a bounce back for the mid-majors? Are they going to get more than just the four at-large bids this year?

I think that this is going to be a pretty good year for the mid-majors. If we're defining mid-majors as any school not in one of the Big Six power conferences, I think there are going to be bids to be had, obviously with the Pac-10 being down so right there you'll probably get at least three bids out there to play with. I think the Mountain West is probably as strong as its been. The Atlantic 10 is certainly stronger than its been in quite some time. I'm one that really believes the committee needs to do everything it can to reach out and include these guys in the tournament. Its not charity, I think its good for business. I think its what people want to see. That's what makes the tournament so unique. The chance that somebody like Davidson might break through. One of the most memorable plays in all of sports was the Bryce Drew play for Valparaiso against Ole Miss, and that was a first round game.


Q. If there's one team outside of the top 25 right now that's going to make the Elite 8, who is it?

Elite 8, wow! Look at you! Golly, I'd have to see who's there. Maybe Vanderbilt. You know what, I'll surprise you and say UConn. I'm not expecting that to happen, but you're making me pick someone outside of the top 25 here. I think they have a chance to improve. Obviously it will help if Calhoun comes back relatively quickly. I think that their biggest problem is that Kemba Walker has not adjusted very well to being a full-time point guard. Last year he could come in for AJ Price and jack up the tempo and inject some offense off the bench. Now he's running things full-time and I think its been a challenge for him. I do think he's very talented, and I think that the big guys are getting better. I think the pieces are there for them to possibly make the run if they can get everyone going.


Q. It seems like the general consensus right now is that John Wall, barring a collapse or an injury, is going to be the national player of the year when its all said and done. Do you agree with that? Personally, I think that if Evan Turner was playing at a school like a UNC or a Duke and getting more coverage that people would probably feel a little bit differently.

I think the people that are going to vote don't need Evan Turner to be anywhere other than exactly where he is. I think if you look at it right now, you could make the case that John Wall is the most outstanding player in college basketball, but Evan Turner is the most valuable player. You can see that in the difference of Ohio State playing with and without him. I think Damion James is a factor in this, and there are a couple other names to throw out there: Wesley Johnson, Jon Scheyer, Luke Harangody, and how about Scottie Reynolds as a sleeper.

I think a few weeks ago, John Wall looked a little more like a prohibitive favorite. I think he's looking a little mortal the last couple of weeks. You know what I love about Wall? Even in games like the Louisville game, he didn't actually play that great and score a lot of points, but when the game got tight in the second half and Kentucky needed a play, he made several plays in a row that helped decide that game. To me, he's still the guy to beat. But I wouldn't say this thing is over by a long shot, there is still a lot of basketball to be played.

Q. One last question before I let you go, you got any Final Four picks?

What time is it, 6:38? I may have a different answer at 9:15. I'll give you the top three, which I still think the champion is going to come out of - Texas, Kentucky, or Kansas. They've kind of separated themselves. I could give you Syracuse or Villnova for the fourth, but just to get outside of the box a little bit how about Kansas State making a run at it so you have three teams from the Big XII going to Indianapolis.

I'm going to have every combination possible going to the Final Four, so that way no matter what happens, when they get there I can say that I called it.