Not That Dignified

unnamedplayer: FOOTBAUGH!!!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:41:59 -0800

unnamedplayer:

FOOTBAUGH!!!

hey friends, about those new years plans...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:11:07 -0800

you guys wanna go bowling?

just got my phone running again...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:15:18 -0800

excited about the stanford game!

let’s go ~~Toby~~ Kunta Kinte!

http://steakhouseorgaybar.com/

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:41:06 -0800

http://steakhouseorgaybar.com/:

…

bcs sample playoff, week 10

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:38:00 -0800

Right now there stand to be as many as 6 undefeated teams, from 4 major conferences, and 2 very legit mid-major contenders. The system as it stands will let the SEC and B12 fight for the title based solely on past conference accomplishments and preseason uninformed predictions, with no credit given to this season. Texas may be the best team out there, but they have played the weakest schedule of the contenders. Anyhoo.

Based on the 2 models Mark and I have discussed (strictly straight top 8, or 6 confs + 2 based on selection committee):

Just pre-emptively, both of these cases, especially the latter, make every game completely important, because I know Omar/Chirag/others make that argument against a playoff.

I mean, sure, if you’re up 2 games in your conference then you know you’re in on the last day of the season, but don’t 8-3 Pittsburgh type teams who already have their Fiesta Bowl birth locked up, with nothing more to play for? You’re still playing for seeding. If you ever don’t win your conference, you’re playing for just 2 (!) at larges available, and at the whim of a selection committee (which will be fairer than the voters, who mostly reward big name schools who started off highly ranked).

top 8: Fla-UT-Bama-Iowa-Cinci-TCU-Boise-Oregon

confs protected: Fla-UT-Iowa-Cinci-Ore-GT-Bama-TCU

playoffs shake out as follows:

Rd1: Christmas day, bottom seeds @ home team stadiums (which lets you have some cold weather games!)

Rd2: New Years day matchups at the Sugar and Orange bowls give you things like Fla-Iowa and Texas-Bama, or Fla-Oregon and Texas-Cinci, and the title games a week later @ the Rose Bowl. Tell me you wouldn’t be glued to this.

incidentally, I’m ok with no playoffs if we eliminate the BCS illusion and go back to the old ways. Viva chaos!

random football musings

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:23:09 -0800

so barring the playoff that i (and mark and others) champion all the time, this is how the bcs bowls shake out…

-6 confs get their qualifiers (call it fla, texas, lville, iowa, oregon, gtech)

-sec 2nd place team is guaranteed a spot (ala/fla loser, lsu has a shot of that group…but max 2 reps from any conf)

-tcu or boise gets a spot.

which leaves 2 spots (4 BCS bowls + championship game) for

-big 10: potentially 11-1 psu, or if ohio state wins out to take the conference (it can do this!), or 11-1 iowa. no 3-way tie possible, but a 1 loss big 10 second place team is possible.

-pac-10: 10-2 usc

-undefeated boise state (which will surely be passed by tcu by then)

-notre donk (if they go 10-2 they’re eligible)

-outside shot, a conf champ that loses in the conf title game…since i don’t think a 11-2 georgia tech makes it if they, sec has their spot locked up, b10/beast/p10 don’t do a conf title game, so this really just applies to the remote chance that texas loses to the big 12 north.

I think that sums it up, I can’t think of any other possibilities (am I missing something? if florida loses 2x + title game, lsu loses to bama + 1 other, alabama wins out, i guess only 1 sec team maybe?), other than stanford winning out to crash the party.

So basically this will likely come down to the undefeated mid-major, 11-1 big 10, 10-2 pac-10, and 10-2 notre dame. It may be a moo point if one of the mid-majors lose, and if the big 10 thins itself out. My gut tells me that USC and Notre Dame make it out of that mess, regardless, because their fan bases travel and they have national audiences. An 11-1 PSU and undefeated Boise are far more (subjectively) deserving based on their resumes, but that’s the way the BCS goes, especially in a rough economic climate.

it’s true.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:23:06 -0800

it’s true.

is this real? i hope not.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:42:59 -0800

is this real? i hope not.

happy birthday sesame street!

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:08:43 -0800

happy birthday sesame street!

caseydonahue: Ran into these guys on the train. They win...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:58:30 -0800

caseydonahue:

Ran into these guys on the train. They win Halloween.

this is effing awesome and scary

Harbaugh discusses our upcoming opponents...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:28:21 -0800

From the Chron

Harbaugh said Oregon’s domination of USC reminded of a video he saw recently on the Internet of a baby cape buffalo being attacked by lions.

“They drag it in the water, and it’s fighting for its life, and the lions have got their claws on its head and neck,” he said. What’s more, a crocodile enters the fray and “is biting at this baby water buffalo.”

With a smile, he said, “You think we’ve got it bad - that baby water buffalo is in a little bit more of a predicament.” Amazingly, he said, the infant survives when the buffalo herd comes to his rescue. “We’re drawing some inspiration from that,” he said.

umm…ok?

this seems like the dorky thing we would have discussed in those...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:00 -0800

this seems like the dorky thing we ~~would have~~ discussed in those Branner triples at Stanford.

if a goat got on my ferrari we would be having lamb goat (edit:...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:07:00 -0800

if a goat got on my ferrari we would be having ~~lamb~~ goat (edit: I’m an idiot and don’t know my animals) stew

*funny animal/car story - so in our neighborhood in MO, there are lots of gooses in the pond. (fortunately, they chose our neighbor’s house instead of ours for their regular pooping) anyway, when we first moved in 15 years ago it was mostly wilder/forest, so the geese were scared of the few humans and would hurry across the street when they saw a car. eventually they realized that these humans would do them no harm, so they take their time as they march single file across the wide suburban roads. i swear, one time i was running late for school and i honked as they were crossing, and a goose just smiled at me and took a dump in front of my tire, then slowly meandered away. my dad, on the other hand, almost ran one over in the early days (intentionally?), so they know to beware of mustachioed indians.

subcon: from ClusterFlock i think you can argue that Dracula...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:37:05 -0800

subcon:

from ClusterFlock

i think you can argue that Dracula fulfills all 3 as well.

i feel for the sacramento fans...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:33:00 -0700

An excerpt from Tim Donaghy’s book, which the NBA is trying to get banned (more good excerpts on deadspin):

Studying under Dick Bavetta for 13 years was like pursuing a graduate degree in advanced game manipulation. He knew how to marshal the tempo and tone of a game better than any referee in the league, by far. He also knew how to take subtle-and not so subtle-cues from the NBA front office and extend a playoff series or, worse yet, change the complexion of that series.

The 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings presents a stunning example of game and series manipulation at its ugliest. As the teams prepared for Game 6 at the Staples Center, Sacramento had a 3–2 lead in the series. The referees assigned to work Game 6 were Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt. As soon as the referees for the game were chosen, the rest of us knew immediately that there would be a Game 7. A prolonged series was good for the league, good for the networks, and good for the game. Oh, and one more thing: it was great for the big-market, star-studded Los Angeles Lakers.

In the pregame meeting prior to Game 6, the league office sent down word that certain calls-calls that would have benefitted the Lakers — were being missed by the referees. This was the type of not-so-subtle information that I and other referees were left to interpret. After receiving the dispatch, Bavetta openly talked about the fact that the league wanted a Game 7.

“If we give the benefit of the calls to the team that’s down in the series, nobody’s going to complain. The series will be even at three apiece, and then the better team can win Game 7,” Bavetta stated.

As history shows, Sacramento lost Game 6 in a wild come-from-behind thriller that saw the Lakers repeatedly sent to the foul line by the referees. For other NBA referees watching the game on television, it was a shameful performance by Bavetta’s crew, one of the most poorly officiated games of all time.

The Best Dinosaur

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:58:05 -0700

The Best Dinosaur:

bfizzle:

Glad we cleared that one up.

hahaha, i don’t agree, but clever.

on a lighter note, i almost peed my pants when i saw this…

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:05:47 -0700

on a lighter note, i almost peed my pants when i saw this…

does the washington post not understand people?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:57:00 -0700

interstate:

indian:

interstate:

indian:

Yeah, that 30 million people number is complete bullshit. I think that might be the sum total of people that watch NFL weekly.

From nbcsports.com, in 2007:

Welcome to the ever-growing world of fantasy football. More than 19 million people play fantasy sports in U.S. and Canada, according to numbers released in August by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Football comprises the majority, around 14 million. Major Web sites, such as the aforementioned CBSSports.com and giant ESPN.com, cater to players by offering leagues and fantasy columnists, as do hundreds of lesser-known sites. And it’s not just for men. Women comprise about 15 percent of fantasy players.

And these are numbers from the “Fantasy Sports Trade Association”. Want to take bets on how inflated that number is? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re counting leagues, and the number was closer to 5 million, given that many people are in 2+ leagues. Which at 2% of the country, I would argue, makes it very much a niche.

Look guys (I’m talking to us, the 16-32 ESPN crowd), our vision of the world is very skewed. We think we’re more “mainstream” than we really are.

I’m not excusing the Post - they’re idiots - but I do think it’s passable to review the show from the lens of someone who knows nothing about fantasy football, aka the silent majority. But if they were in tune, they’d know it’s a niche show on a guy-heavy network (as pointed out by bfizzle), and would explain and review it as such.

Srini, you may be right on skewed numbers (though I’m less convinced), and you’re certainly right that we think we’re more mainstream than we really are. But at least use a current source. From Time (not my favorite but it uses the same source for its data): “But even in this harshest of realities, fantasy is doing just fine. There are 30 million fantasy players in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, a 54% increase from two years ago.” I’ve heard the 28-30 million figure tossed around a few places, most recently Karabell on espn. Even if skewed it’s a significant number.

Sure, the review is passable, but it’s got the journalistic value of having me review an opera or Omar review bacon - largely useless if you don’t have any background whatsoever or even attempt to put it in context.

does the washington post not understand people?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:40:00 -0700

interstate:

indian:

I’m not disagreeing that the show may not be good. But really? You have issue that the show hasn’t provided compelling reason to play fantasy football? This isn’t 1985. My Lithuanian neighbor plays fantasy football, and I’m not sure he even knows that it’s not about soccer.

Fantasy football is still very much a niche hobby. Yeah, it’s not so niche amongst the 16-32 year old ESPN watching crowd, but that in itself is a lot more niche-y than you would think.

30 million people are playing fantasy football. That’s 50% higher than last week’s highest rated show (NCIS), more than any World Series since the 2001 Game 7, more than the number of people who watched American Idol last year. Is that 30 million skewed towards males age 12-50? Sure, but so are beer, porn, fast food, and the film industry. Give me a break.

does the washington post not understand people?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:24:39 -0700

Wow, now I understand why these out of touch institutions are going under. From the Washington Post review of this new show, The League:

“In the hubbub to get to the next wee-wee gag, the script forgets to mention a reason why any of these people have the slightest interest in football, much less the obsession required to participate in the numbers-crunching minutiae of a fantasy league. (This is, by the by, a competition in which you pick players in pro football, and their statistics in each game constitute your score, and the person with the highest score at the end of the season is the winner.)

Nobody mentions, say, even such hoary cliches as their dad taking them to a snowy game at Lambeau Field when they were a kid, or of having grown up Down South where the sport is a tribal passion, or having played the game as a kid. Nobody appears to be so much as a season-ticket holder.”

I’m not disagreeing that the show may not be good. But really? You have issue that the show hasn’t provided compelling reason to play fantasy football? This isn’t 1985. My Lithuanian neighbor plays fantasy football, and I’m not sure he even knows that it’s not about soccer.