Alexander: Baffling Big Ten basketball schedules, Hall of Fame ballots and more

The world according to Jim:

• Before you ask, no, I was not the Hall of Fame voter who didn’t vote for Ichiro Suzuki. (More on that later.) …

• USC and UCLA play in men’s basketball Monday night at Galen Center, and if something about that statement seems off – well, it is. …

• Maybe we just got too used to the old Pac-12 model, which seems now like scheduling sanity: Games on Thursdays and Saturdays (and a rare Wednesday) for the men, Fridays and Sundays for the women. Travel partners, for which the conference was perfectly positioned with the L.A. schools, the Bay Area schools, the Oregon, Washington and Arizona pairs and over the last few years the Colorado/Utah pairing. There was a routine and rhythm to that schedule, and opponents were generally on equal footing. …

• The Big Ten schedule? Madness. And yes, it is a thankless task to cobble together a schedule for an 18-team coast-to-coast conference, four of whom are on the West Coast, and to do so while (a) satisfying the needs of the conference’s TV partners and (b) paying lip service to academic considerations. You can gue$$ which of those i$ prioritized. …

• By the time the 20-game conference schedule is complete, UCLA’s men will have played a game every day of the week but Wednesday, including six Tuesdays, five Fridays – and four occasions when they’ve come off the road to face an opponent that has already been in town for a few days after playing USC. They lost the first, to Michigan, won the second and third over Iowa and Wisconsin, and have one more, Feb. 18 against Minnesota.

USC’s men will have two such home games. Feb. 11 against Penn State and Feb. 26 against Ohio State, and the Trojans will have played on every day of the week, primarily Saturdays (eight games) and Wednesdays (five). …

• One of the Big Ten’s priorities seems to have been to avoid the USC and UCLA men playing on the same nights. But why the concern? It was never a problem before. It’s not like UCLA and USC share a fan base. …

• Over one 10-day stretch earlier this month, UCLA traveled 7,700 air miles to play four games: At Nebraska, back home to play Michigan, then on an Eastern swing to Maryland and Rutgers. The Bruins lost all four. No wonder Mick Cronin has been especially grumpy this month. …

• “Student-athletes” or employees? You tell me. …

• One writer’s Hall of Fame ballot: Ichiro, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner, who made it. Félix Hernández, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, who didn’t – and in the case of the latter two, probably won’t. My view: They’re eligible and on the ballot. They had what I think – and, in ARod’s case, what the numbers overwhelmingly show –were Hall of Fame careers, even allowing that a percentage of those numbers were inflated. And I realize this is not a popular view, but it’s not our job as voters to enforce MLB’s drug policy.  …

• My standards as I fill out a ballot: Did the player in question change the game in some way? Was he among the best at his position in his prime? And was he the guy an opposing manager would single out in a pre-series meeting? “Do not let this guy beat us” would seem to be a powerful endorsement. …

• As I get older, I’ve turned into more of a “small hall” advocate – it should be incredibly hard to get in – as well as one who still puts the eyeball test on equal footing with the numbers and metrics.

(Or maybe I’m just grumpier.) …

• Regarding the furor over the one unidentified voter who did not put Ichiro on the ballot, the player had the best attitude about it. He said he wouldn’t mind meeting that voter, just to find out why. As for the rest of us, why should we care? The magic number is 75%, not 100%. …

• Things I wish I’d written, from ESPN’s Jeff Passan and his excellent deconstruction of the Dodgers’ winter: “Under (Frank) McCourt’s ownership, the Dodgers were directionless underachievers. They became a fury-inducing juggernaut when they sought to maximize themselves, and that is the ultimate endgame of the stress test: Have they mastered this system to the point that it must be overhauled?” …

• I was almost hoping Andrew Friedman would go to the podium at the Roki Sasaki news conference and announce that the Dodgers had signed every other free agent currently available, just to get a reaction. (And maybe that’s still coming. They sent a scout to Max Scherzer’s recent workout, and the reports were said to be positive.)

If you’re going to be Evil Empire II – a description we were using in November before other national columnists picked up on it – you may as well be all in. And I still think Dieter Ruehle should play the Imperial March (i.e., Darth Vader’s theme) before every home game. …

• The Dodgers are already immensely popular and profitable in Japan. They’re about to take that further, “working on some experimental things with adding fans and fan clubs,” president and CEO Stan Kasten said. “It’s something that Premier League and European soccer leagues already do, amassing international fans. We’re doing a pilot program to start that and see how it does. And whatever we learn is for baseball, for all the teams to take advantage of and maybe grow their own going forward.” …

• It is a high honor for LeBron James to earn another All-Star berth, the 21st of his career and one that makes him just the third 40-something to be picked. It’s just too bad they actually have to play an All-Star Game. Regardless of the format – this year in San Francisco it’s a mini-tournament – it’s unwatchable as long as nobody plays defense.

Here’s a suggestion, from former NBA general manager Bob Whitsitt in a survey by The Guardian: Scrub the game itself – I’d keep the All-Star Saturday Night festivities – and make the centerpiece of that weekend the final of the NBA Cup, raising the winner’s shares from $500,000 a man to $2 million. If the league has to have an in-season tournament, make the most of it.

jalexander@scng.com