MY CONFERENCE COULD WHIP YOUR CONFERENCE WITH ONE HAND TIED BEHIND ITS BACK

NCAA football from Wikimedia

When we sit down to watch a sporting event, unless we have a rooting interest in one team, we hope for a close, exciting game.

Of course the truth is, sometimes when one team plays another, one team is clearly better and opens a can of whoop ass on the other, beating it soundly. I know, I'm a New England Patriots fan. Zing! Bet you didn't see that coming.

That brings us to the college football playoffs. For years, Division 1 college football decided its championship in a quaint way. Teams played a regular season, then the best teams played  bowl games, then some media folks voted on who would be awarded the national championship, or in today's parlance, the "natty." I really, really hate today's parlance. Since rarely did the number one team play the number two team, this system allowed as many as three or four schools and their fans to proclaim each year that they were the rightful champions.

So the powers that be, seeing the inefficiency of this system, as well as its failure to milk every last dollar out of the fans, TV networks and anyone else involved, came up with a new, improved system. A four team playoff. One plays four, two plays three and the two winners square off. Finally, an undisputed national champion. Would that be an "undi natty?" The new system would use existing bowl games as playoff games. What could go wrong? Glad you asked. Three playoff games and approximately 97 bowl games no one gives a damn about any longer. Nine bowl games drew under 20,000 people last year.

Only four teams, you ask. How are we going to decide which four? Easy. Computerized sorcery, combined with TV network and conference politics. This is gonna be easy. We'll take the three undefeated major conference champions, and.....what? Sorry, we'll take two of the three undefeated major conference champions, plus Alabama and Texas. 13-0 Florida State, sorry, maybe next year. But why?

Because the SEC and its legion of obnoxious fans fancies themselves the home office of college football. Why, we're the conference of Alabama, Georgia, Home Depot, Sonic and Fansville, for God's sake. You can't leave us out! The ACC? A bunch of Dukes.

So the powers that be, seeing the problems with this system and blind to the problems of any system they could possibly dream up, came up with a new one. 12 teams! All the major champions get in. Look, Clemson is in from the ACC. Sorry, Florida State, can you forgive us? Arizona State is in. I think they were the Big East champ, hard to keep track. Boise State, in. Hey, Indiana, great season, come on down. SMU, the Southwest Conference champ (or not.) OK, is there anyone who could possibly have a gripe about this? Wait, who's that spraying Dr. Pepper all over the bracket? How dare you leave out fourth place Alabama from the SEC? We beat all kinds of good teams, plus Mercer and Western Kentucky. This is an outrage! Next year? The top 11, plus the entire SEC.

Then, they played the games. See second paragraph. Tennessee got waxed by Ohio State, but bragged about how many fans they had at the Shoe. (See, SEC and legion of fans above.) Indiana tripped on the glass slipper and fell into a snowbank.

Cue sports media, led by an impassioned Kirk Herbstreit rant about how the selection committee blew it by allowing the likes of Indiana and Tennessee in. I like Herbstreit. I think he made one of the greatest athlete to broadcaster transitions of all time. Problem is, he, like everyone in major TV sports, works for a network that is involved in business transactions with the teams and leagues they cover. When a commentator's opinions align with what's in the best business interests of his employer, one must wonder.

Here's my radical suggestion. Let me say in advance I know all the things that are wrong with it, but hear me out.

Since conference alignments mean less than they ever have, blow them up. Let whatever experts are up to the task come up with four 13-team leagues. The top 52 in the country. Try to balance those leagues so they would be of roughly equal strength. 

Each team plays each team in its league once. This takes strength of schedule off the table. Everyone plays a schedule of about equal strength. The top three in each league go into the tournament. A 12 team tournament. Twos play threes, ones get a bye. Determine a formula of which league faces which, so seeding is not an issue.

Include soccer-style relegation every year, two years, whatever. Mississippi State 2-10, you're out next year, Army is in.

Of course, none of this matters, because North Carolina is going all the way next year. Light blue hoodies will be all the rage.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON SUPER WILD CARD WEEKEND

Photo courtesy of piviso.com

 

I'm glad it was Super Wild Card weekend. If it were ordinary Wild Card weekend, I might not have watched.

There are 11 defensive players. There are a maximum of five eligible receivers. With 2.2 defensive players for every receiver, why is at least one receiver running wide open on every play?

Why is that receiver very often a guy who had 192 catches for 3,000 yards for the year?

Was there a pass play in any of the three games yesterday on which pass interference did not occur, more often than not on the part of both the defender and the receiver?

When you keep nobody in to help the offensive line on a pass play, it only takes one guy to miss his block for the play to blow up. 

If you're a defender looking into the backfield trying to guess where the QB is going to throw the ball, the answer is always "to the guy you just let run 20 yards behind you."

When I was 12 and playing in the backyard and a fast kid beat me for a TD, never once did I say I was expecting safety help over the top.

Also, never once did I hurtle out of bounds at the three, tap the point of the football on the pylon and declare "TOUCHDOWN!" Of course, the pylon was a tree. It might have been dangerous.

Call me crazy, but Cover Zero doesn't sound like a very good way to stop a team from passing. I would cover at least one.

End the "coach running off the field at halftime" interviews forever. "What are you going to tell the team at halftime, coach? "I'm going to tell them I would have been there 30 seconds earlier if I didn't have to stop and talk to you."

"What are you going to do to stop the turnovers, coach?" "Well, because we play 17 games, my $20 million starting QB is hurt. I'm playing my backup and his backup was a FedEx driver last week, so not much."

End the post-game sideline reporter interviews. You've had three hours to come up with a question or two and it's "how does it feel?" or "what does this mean to you guys?" "It feels great and it means we get to play next week."

Coming to NBC Thursday, Chicago Rock, Paper and Scissors.

I'm going to buy a pickup truck. The next time I go to Wegmans to get chips, dip and beer, if the Wegmans is on top of a mountain with unpaved roads covered in two feet of snow, I'll be good to go. I can even pull my house there if I want.

Admit it, you've always wanted to take your hands off the wheel and clap to "We Will Rock You" while your truck is passing another vehicle.

Think we might have seen the last of the "reach out with the ball and try to break the plane" play?

Give Trevor Lawrence some credit. His big playoff debut, he's absolutely sucking, he gets his thumb stepped on, they duct tape it back on and he just keeps on coming back for more. Then he went to Waffle House with his wife after the game. Seriously, he did.

Why all the Kirk Cousins hate? He completed 79% of his passes for two TDs and no turnovers, while a certain local "elite" QB turned it over three times and cost his team 18 points. Also, in the five years they've been in the league together, Cousins has had a better passer rating than Elite Hero three times.

Is anyone actually going on the "Jesus gets us" website?

Do I really need to set up a retirement plan to go kayaking?

Before you criticize your team's play caller, give it a try. The play ends. In 40 seconds, you have to identify down and distance, the other team's personnel, get your personnel into the game, noting anyone who just got banged up and can't go, pick a play and radio it into your QB with 70,000 people screaming. All while covering your mouth in case the other team hired Marlee Matlin as an assistant coach.

Coach Harbaugh, we desperately need to score, time is running out and we have two timeouts left. Shouldn't we take one? Nope, we're good. Oh, the clock stopped. Now we'll take one.

On the other hand, I forget which game it was, but a trailing coach took a timeout while on defense with about 3:30 left in the game. Good clock management.

Don't blame the refs on roughing the QB. They're only calling the rule the way the league tells them to.

Does Fox think its NFL viewers are all 11 years old?

The play clock is running down, can they get the play off? 3,2,1,0, -1, -2, -3. I guess they can.

Don't go for two before the fourth quarter. There's too much football left to be played and those points you don't get can make a big difference at crunch time.

Any player making the first down sign or a "where's the flag" sign should be penalized. However, choreographed TD celebrations are cool.

Is there a correlation between a DB doing the "not in my house" thing and that same DB giving up an 82 yard bomb a few minutes later?

Let the kickoff go into the end zone, get the ball at the 25. Try to run it out of the end zone, get tackled at the 12 and look really stupid. Just saying.

If you weighed 265 pounds and just ran 98 yards, you'd be looking for the oxygen mask, too.

I can't wait for that new movie, the one with the explosions and car crashes. Or maybe that was NCIS: Everywhere.

Is a flag football Pro Bowl dumb? No dumber than the way they've been doing it.

Young Rock?

If this is Super Wild Card Weekend, are we going to have Super Super Bowl Week?

Game on.

 

A CHANGE I'M 9/10 SURE IS NEEDED

Image from Rawpixel

 

Those of us of a certain age can remember when scoreboard clocks did not register tenths of a second.

They counted down in minutes and whole seconds. If I remember correctly those clocks "ticked" every half second, which meant when the clock showed two seconds left, it might be two full seconds or it might only be one and a half. Basketball teams had to take that into account when drawing up a final play. Today, most clocks are set to count down the final seconds of each period in tenths.

That takes us to last night's Southern Cayuga-Weedsport boys game in the first night of the Cayuga County Holiday Tournament at Spartan Hall at Cayuga Community College. While scoreboards register tenths of a second, human reflexes do not. 

Weedsport trailed 55-54 with 3.1 seconds left in the game. Southern Cayuga missed the front of a one-and-one and the rebound was tied up for a held ball with 0.1 second remaining. The arrow pointed to Weedsport, but with one tenth of a second remaining, the game was essentially over. Not quite. One of the officials instructed the clock operator to reset the clock to 0.9 second.

Weedsport would need to inbound from under their own basket and try to get a shot off or draw a Southern Cayuga foul to have a chance. The rules say the clock operator should start the clock when the ball is touched inbounds by an offensive or defensive player and should stop on an official's whistle. 

You can see the problem here. We have a clock counting off tenths, but it's manually started and stopped by one human being following the command of another. 

Weedsport's inbounds pass was deflected out of bounds near half court by a Southern Cayuga defender. The clock stopped at 0.1 second remaining. Not enough time for Weedsport to inbound again and get a shot off. Game over. Nope. One of the officials instructed the clock operator to reset to 0.8 second. 

The final inbounds pass was stolen by Southern Cayuga, and this time, the clock went to zero and the game was over. 

It turned out the clock machinations had no real effect on the result, other than to replace a fantastic finish with a series of conferences and delays. The first reset from 0.1 to 0.9 after the rebound scramble was pure guesswork on the part of the official. The second actually makes good sense. The ball tipped off one hand of the defender and went immediately out of bounds. The official ruled wisely that that play should take the minimum amount of time possible, one tenth of a second. 

We also learned that the minimum amount of time between "clock operator sees ball touched and starts clock" to "ref blows whistle" to "clock operator hears whistle and stops clock" is almost a full second.

The tenths of a second scoreboard clock is simply incompatible with the limitations of the humans who have to administer the system. Get rid of it.

THE BATTLE FOR TWITTER

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

A lot of people wondered why Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter.

There's no reason to wonder any more. Twitter has been an effective platform for liberals in a world in which they have few. Musk wants to stop that. The effort has been a massive failure so far, thanks to the beauty of free speech.

Musk gave "journalists" Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss access to internal documents detailing some of Twitter's moderation decisions. While online platforms are not required to do any moderation at all and can not be held liable for what users post, most platforms try to remove speech that is inherently dangerous. The "Twitter Files" alleged that under its previous management, the platform silenced conservative voices because they were conservative. The actual reporting showed nothing of the sort. It showed that Twitter followed its rules, blocking content that clearly violated its terms of service. When liberals on Twitter accurately described Taibbi and Weiss' reporting for what it was, what conservatives hoped would be a bombshell landed with a dull thud.

This is how the marketplace of ideas should work. The way to defeat bad speech is with good speech. The way to defeat falsehoods is with truth. Attempting to defeat bad speech by trying to silence it rarely works in a free society.

That brings us to Musk's banning from Twitter of several journalists who have written unflattering things, that is, told the truth about him. The claims he has made about why he banned the reporters don't stand up to any scrutiny. Unfortunately, a number of liberals and/or journalists have left, or are considering leaving Twitter. That would be a mistake. 

If liberals leave Twitter, it will become another large conservative-dominated platform, just as its new owner hopes.

Don't take the bait. We don't need more one-sided echo chambers. We need a robust marketplace of ideas. 

If you think I'm wrong, use your free speech right to say so. I'm @FlxTed on Twitter.

OMG, INFLATION IS...NOT A BIG DEAL? THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAW IN THE NEWS

Core inflation by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

 

I saw an Associated Press article on inflation this week that was picked up by outlets all over the country, from CNY Central here in upstate NY to ABC News. 

Anyone who read that article is going to believe things about the current state of inflation that are untrue.

"A measure of inflation that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve eased but remained at an elevated level in October, likely reinforcing the Fed's intent to keep raising interest rates to cool the economy and slow the acceleration of prices."

The reporter is telling us inflation is still high, and that the Federal Reserve might once again raise interest rates, making it harder for you to afford a car loan or to refinance your mortgage. What is this measure that the Fed closely follows?

"Thursday's report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 6% in October from a year earlier. That was the lowest level since last November and was down from a 6.3% year-over-year increase in September. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation over the previous 12 months was 5%, less than the 5.2% annual increase in September."

There's a lot to unpack here, beginning with murky writing. Prices did not "rise" 6% in October from last year or any other time. He means to say prices were 6% higher in October than they were in October, 2021. That's not the same thing. 

Does the Fed really make interest rate decisions based on where prices are compared to a year ago? If we have a bout of inflation, that year-over-year number is going to remain high until we have a full year with low or no inflation. I hope the Fed looks at where inflation is now and where it seems to be going in the future. I wonder what those numbers show?

"On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from September to October. For core prices, the increase was 0.2%."

Well, wait just a minute. Prices didn't rise by 6% in October, they rose by 0.3%. And core prices, the every day staples most of us buy, rose by 0.2%. That's an annual inflation rate of roughly 2.4%. In fact, inflation largely ended after the first half of this year. The monthly rates of increase for July through October were zero, 0.1, 0.4, and 0.4%. That means the annual inflation rate in the second half of this year has been roughly 2.7%. Why didn't he say so? 

On a side note, the story makes no mention of income gains, which have eased the effect of inflation. Workers on the lower end of the income scale, who are most affected by rising prices, have made the greatest gains. Prices were 6% higher in October than a year ago? Wages were 6.8% higher, making the effect of inflation on the average family......less than nothing!

His is far from the only article that confuses the math. I have seen a number of similar stories that make it appear that prices are "rising" frighteningly every month. Here's how the BP, the Baker Press, would report this story:

"Inflation, which reached its highest levels since the '80s in the first half of 2022, has eased significantly in the second half of the year. When solid wage growth is factored in, the average American family has felt little impact." 

Let's see whose math the Fed uses when they hold their next meeting.

A CHRISTMAS CLASSIC: WHICH HALLMARK CHRISTMAS MOVIE ARE YOU WATCHING?

Photo: Candace Cameron Bure by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia

I originally wrote this a couple of years ago for my previous site, but it’s just as relevant today. Which Hallmark Christmas movie are you watching?

1) The one where the grumpy “bah, humbug” guy learns the true meaning of Christmas at about 11:45 on Christmas Eve, then it starts snowing.

2) The one where the family home/business/town landmark is in danger from the evil, big city developer, but everyone bands together to save it at about 11:45 on Christmas Eve, then it starts snowing.

3) The one where the couple who should clearly, obviously be together spend 90 minutes denying it, then get together and it starts snowing.

4) The one where one member of the obviously should be together couple decides to leave for the shiny, new opportunity far, far away, then changes his or her mind and makes a surprise return, usually at the school/town Christmas concert.

5) The one where the obviously should be together couple doesn’t get together because of a missed message or other mixup. But then they do and it starts snowing.

6) The one where one member of the obviously should be together couple misinterprets a friendly kiss/hug viewed at a distance as evidence the other member wants to be with someone else, but it works out in the end and it starts snowing.

7) The one where the guy is engaged to the bossy, dominating woman and realizes at about 11:45 on Christmas Eve that he was meant to be with the nice, loving one…..then it starts snowing.

8) The one that stars Candace Cameron Bure and/or Lacey Chabert.

9) The one where the older, but still very attractive actress plays Candace Cameron Bure’s and/or Lacey Chabert’s mother and dispenses valuable words of wisdom.

10) The one set in the charming Rocky Mountain village.

11) The one starring the rugged looking guy with an old pickup truck and a dog. Could be a country artist. Often combined with number 10.

12) The one with the ads for Medicare supplement policies and reverse mortgages.

Merry Christmas!