Author: Jack

Mythical Picks – NFL And NCAA CFP – Weekend Of 1/8/17

 

Last week was a boring week of mythical picking.  For the semi-finals of the CFP, the two Mythical Picks were 1-1-0. Not very exciting to say the least.  That took the season record for NCAA Mythical Picks to 110-94-0 with one game left to play where I might make as many as two picks.  It is going to be a “mythically profitable year” for NCAA Mythical Picks.

In the NFL, the mythical picks were just a tad less wonderful.  I made 16 selections and the record for the week was 7-9-0.  Certainly, that is not laudable; but it takes the NFL Mythical picks into the playoffs with a season record standing at a most comfortable 134-89-5.

The Coin Flip Protocol continued to be hot, Hot, HOT last week.  I used the coin flip to make 3 selections and the coin went 2-1-0 for the week bringing the coin’s record for the year to a surprisingly positive 19-12-2.

The Best Picks from last week were:

  • Vikes -5 against Bears.  Vikes won by 18 points.
  • Clemson +3 against Ohio St.  Clemson won the game outright 31-0.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Texans – 3 against Titans.  Texans lost the game outright.
  • Skins – 7 against Giants.  Skins lost the game outright.
  • Rams +6.5 against Cards.  Rams lost by 38 points.

Notwithstanding the fact that both the NCAA and NFL Mythical Picks will end the season in “Mythically Profitable Territory”, one would need to be extraordinarily dumb to conclude that there is any great insight or expertise that went into these selections.  No one – and I mean NOBODY – should use anything here as the basis for making a real wager involving real money on a real football game this weekend.  Here is how extraordinarily dumb one would need to be to do that:

 

You probably think that a person without common sense (scents) is a woman who wears $2000 per ounce perfume.

 

General Comments:

 

Regarding NCAA football, I think that the Selection Committee for the CFP this year demonstrated that their votes/selections had as much to do with football pedigree as it had to do with selecting the teams that were playing the best football at the end of the season.  Let me try to explain what I mean without weasel-wording any of it:

  • Ohio St. was in the playoffs only because it was Ohio St. and Ohio St. has a long tradition of being an elite football team.  They did not win their division within their conference; they were not eligible to play for their conference championship; their “signature wins” included one that happened in September.  They were not the team in the Big 10 playing the best football in November/December.  That team would be Penn State.
  • Washington should not have been in the CFP based on the fact that USC dominated them late in the season.  Yes, USC lost 3 games last year but those were early in the year and by the end of the season the “eyeball test” would have told almost anyone that USC was the best team in the PAC-12.  But the Selection Committee did not apply the “eyeball test” and gave us Washington.

Do NOT infer here that I think Ohio St and/or Washington is a bad football team; they are not.  However, they are not as good in December/January of this season as are Penn St/USC and the CFP Selection Committee just plain blew it.  Washington lost to Alabama 24-7.  I took Washington +14 points in last week’s Mythical Picks; but at halftime with the Huskies trailing by only 10 points, I knew that Alabama would have to be shut out in the second half for me to “cash in” that mythical pick.  Washington was simply outclassed and it was painfully obvious for all of the second half.

Yes, I know that Alabama dominated USC back in September; the thing is that was in September and this is December/January.  USC is a significantly better team now that it was then.  If the Selection Committee had bothered to pay attention to games on the field, I would have expected them to see that clear and present status.  They simply did not.

Ohio St. was depantsed by Clemson.  Even a rabid Ohio St. fan or alum had to recognize somewhere in the second quarter that this was going to be an embarrassing time for the Buckeyes. They did not belong in that game on that big a stage.  If the Big 10 team with Ohio St’s résumé had been Indiana – only one loss but not the division winner in the conference – there is no way on Planet Earth that Indiana would have been in the CFP semi-finals.

One last thing…  I am NOT implying that either USC or Penn St. would have beaten Alabama or Clemson.  I am not implying – I am saying it directly – that USC and Penn St. would have put on a better show than Washington or Clemson put on.

On to NFL commentary …

I have grown tired of NFL coaches and commentators saying that a team underachieved because they suffered an injury to their starting QB.  Sure, that is a big deal; no team wants that to happen.  Nevertheless, such a happenstance is not a one-way ticket to the NFL boneyard.  It is not uncommon for a team to have to fill in for a starting QB for 4 games in a season and in that circumstance, let me point out how one team managed to muddle through such a situation this year:

  • The New England Patriots started 3 – not 2 but 3 – different QBs this year; two of those starters had never started an NFL game in the past.  The Pats managed to survive to the tune of a regular season record of 14-2.  They will not play this week as they sit at home and get ready to host the lowest-seeded team to survive the AFC wild card round this weekend.

Oh, let me give you another example…  There is a team that lost its starter in one of the meaningless exhibition games back in the summer and had to start a rookie QB who was taken in the 4th round of last year’s draft.  That team was surely doomed … except that the Dallas Cowboys finished the regular season with a 13-3 record and will have home-field advantage in every NFC playoff game that they play in this year.

Quarterbacks are extremely important; bad quarterbacking can – and usually does – relegate a team to second-rate or even third-rate status.  However, it is not a certainty and commentators should stop giving teams that “easy way out” to explain underachievement…

Oh, while I am at it, can we agree for at least a moment to stop calling it “underachievement” and call it – more accurately – “failure to perform”?

The last week of the regular season should have been designated as “Backup QB Matt Week”.  Consider these starting QBs who were backups for their teams:

  • Matt Barkley – Bears
  • Matt Cassel – Titans
  • Matt McGloin – Raiders
  • Matt Moore – Dolphins

The Bills started a backup QB (EJ Manuel) too last week – and then sat him down to let their third-string guy (Cardale Jones) get some time on the field.  The Bills lost handily to the Jets 30-10 and the play of that QB tandem must bear some of the responsibility for the loss.  Combined, that duo produced this stat line:

  • 15 for 31 for 182 yards with 1 TD and 2 INTs

No one would mistake that sort of production with the descriptor “a key ingredient for winning football”.  However, I want to describe one play in the game here simply to suggest that the rest of the Bills’ team may not have been ”fully engaged” in the game.

  • Leading 23-3, the Jets lined up to kick off to the Bills.  The kick bounced along into the end zone where the Bills just stood over it and watched it come to rest in their end zone.  They watched as Jets’ special teamer, Doug Middleton, fell on the ball for a Jets’ TD making the score 30-3.
  • You can file this event under “bad coaching” or under “lack of concentration” or even under “not giving a rat’s ass about the game”.  You cannot, however, pin this blunder on “bad quarterbacking”.

That meaningless Bills/Jets game also leads to the observation that Darrelle Revis can no longer play cornerback.  It is not that he is no longer a “shut-down corner” or that receivers on his side of the field are out on “Revis Island”; Darrelle Revis cannot play the position anymore; Father Time has caught up with him.  He is probably smart enough to make a transition to safety and play there if he wants to, but if he insists on being a cornerback and being paid like a top-flight cornerback, his career may be over.

When Niners’ owner/operator, Jed York, addressed the media to announce/explain/justify the firings of Trent Baalke and Chip Kelly, he said:

“I just think it’s time for us to re-establish a championship culture…”

Would that it were as simple to do that as it is to say that…  As the Niners proceed in their coaching/GM search, here is an interesting view from the outside.  The Niners won 2 games all last year – both against the Rams who are also sniffing around and looking for a new coach.  The inescapable conclusion here is that the Niners were 0-14 against the rest of the league and it is 100% certain that the Niners will have to play 14 games against the “rest of the league” next year and the year after that and …

The Raiders lost more than their final game of the season last week.  Their backup QB, Matt McGloin, had to leave the game with an injury to his left shoulder – his non-throwing shoulder – and did not fully participate in practice on Wednesday this week.  His availability for this week’s playoff game is up in the air.  The Raiders needed this game to keep alive the hope of getting the #1 seed in the AFC and they needed this game to assure that they would hold onto the #2 seed in the AFC.  They lost out on both of those positionings too.  And one way that they lost those seedings was because they lost any connection they may have had to “Pride and Poise”.  In a game they needed to win and playing with a backup QB, consider this:

  • Total offense in the first half = 50 yards
  • Penalty yards assessed in the first half = 90 yards

Granted, the Raiders’ QBs did not cover themselves in glory last week, but the Raiders lost as a team in Denver…

Amid the uncertainty regarding QB availability for the Raiders in their upcoming playoff game this week, the team went out and signed Garrett Gilbert.  He was a 6th round pick by the Rams in 2014 and has never thrown a pass in the NFL.  However, he does have a Super Bowl ring; he was on the Pats’ practice squad in 2014 when the Pats beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.  Gilbert was on the Raiders’ practice squad in 2015 so he, presumably, has some familiarity with the offense.  Other than that, I have no rays of sunshine to pump up the butts of Raiders’ fans for this weekend…

 

The Games:

 

NCAA:

 

(Mon Nite) Clemson vs. Alabama – 6.5 (51):  Last week, I said that this year’s Clemson team plays up to or down to the level of its opponent and that is why I took them with 3 points against Ohio State.  The Tigers won the game in a walk.  Once again, Clemson will face a very good opponent and I fully expect Clemson to play well and to play hard.  I just think, however, that Alabama is the better team on the field and I do not think that the absence of Lane Kiffin calling plays for Bama is such a big deal.  I’ll take Alabama to win and cover.

 

NFL:

 

(Sat Afternoon) Oakland at Houston – 3.5 (37):  The oddsmakers are looking at this game as if it will be a 3-yards-and-a-cloud -of-dust throwback to the old Woody Hayes/Bo Schembechler college games.  Indeed, no matter how you might do a mix-and-match of the possible QBs in this game, you come up with a faceoff between “Who’s He?” and “Who’s That?”  These teams met earlier this year in Mexico City and the Raiders won by a TD then.  That was before Derek Carr’s leg broke…  Let me be very clear here:

  1. I have no faith in either Brock Osweiler or Tom Savage as dominant players.
  2. I have no faith in any of the 3 available Raiders’ QBs as dominant players.
  3. I have no faith in the Raiders’ defense – other than the Texans’ offensive ineptitude.
  4. I have minimal faith in the Texans’ defense – given the likely Raiders’ offensive ineptitude.

With exactly no conviction, I will take the Texans and lay the points here simply because they are less likely to go through a team meltdown as the Raiders have done a couple of times this year.

 

(Sat Evening) Detroit at Seattle – 8 (44):  The spread here opened at 4 points and shot up to this level very quickly.  The Lions come roaring into this game on a 3-game losing streak.  Now, they have to play outdoors – something they do not do well – and they have to play in Seattle – where opponents tend to struggle.  The Seahawks are not exactly on a roll here either.  In their last 3 games, they have beaten the Rams (Whoop-di-damned-do!), lost to the Cards (ugh) and then beat the Niners by 2 points (ugh, again).  Everyone talks about the injury to Earl Thomas and its effect on the defense.  I think the injury to Tyler Lockett is also important because it affects the Seahawks’ return game and the passing offense.  I see a defense dominated game here so I’ll take the game to stay UNDER.

 

(Sun Early Afternoon) Miami at Pittsburgh – 10 (45.5):  I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games.  With that out of the way, these teams played each other earlier this year (in Miami) and the Dolphins won that game in a walk.  Ben Roethlisberger limped his way through about half the game and that had something to do with the outcome to be sure; last I saw, he is no longer limping.  The Steelers rested Roethlisberger, LeVeon Bell and Antonio Brown last week so they should be ready to welcome the warm-weather Dolphins to January-in-Pittsburgh-weather.  Saturday night the low is forecast to be 11 degrees and on Sunday it will warm up all the way to 18 degrees with 15 mph winds.  The Dolphins are a much improved team this year and had a 9-game win streak at one point in the season.  However, the Dolphins schedule was not exactly a killer.  I think the Steelers are much the better team here.  I like the Steelers to win and cover at home and I like the game to go OVER.

 

(Sun Late Afternoon) Giants at Green Bay – 4.5 (44.5):  This is the best NFL game of the weekend.  When the Packers were 4-6, Aaron Rodgers said that the team would “run the table” and make the playoffs – – and then the Packers did exactly that.  The Giants fielded a defense this year that kept them in games even when the offense – how to put this politely? – sputtered.  The last two times the Giants had a playoff date in Lambeau Field, the Giants not only won the game there, they went on to win the Super Bowl later in the playoffs.  The Packers’ secondary has so many injuries that the players on the field may be calling each other by number instead of by name.  Meanwhile, the Giants’ secondary – as a unit – is probably the best defensive backfield in the league this year.  This looks like a balanced game:

  • Red hot QB playing really well against a top-shelf defensive unit.
  • “Sputtering” offense against a significantly depleted defense.

Not surprisingly, it will be cold in the late afternoon in Green Bay with temps dropping into the single digits as the game proceeds.  I think this will be a low-scoring game so I’ll take the Giants plus the points.

 

Finally, here is how The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm defines Spam:

“Spam:  Pork shoulder meat, ham, and gelatinous ooze in a can.  Is America a great country or what?

“Spam:  Unsolicited e-mail.  Proof of the existence of something even more heinous than the product it is named after.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

A Group Of 5 Football Tournament? No Thanks…

 

According to recent reports, some folks have begun to think that there ought to be a playoff bracket in college football for the so-called “Group of 5” schools.  In case you don’t know who the Group of 5 schools are, they are the schools that make up the 5 Division 1-A conferences that play – for the most part – minor league college football.  Here are the Group of 5 conferences in alphabetical order:

  • American Athletic Conference
  • Conference USA
  • Mid-American Conference (The MAC)
  • Mountain West Conference
  • Sun Belt Conference.

And probably because it is ever so proper to be “inclusive” in one’s thinking these days, the idea of this minor-league college football playoff would also be open to independent teams which this year would include:

  • Army
  • Brigham Young
  • UMass

This is such a bad idea; let me count the ways.  First, outside the highly provincial micropolises of the schools in these conferences, let me break some news to these folks here:

  1. There is a huge wave of indifference regarding just about everything involving football in each and every one of conferences.
  2. Every once in a while, a school such as Boise St. or W. Michigan (this year) captures enough non-local interest such that people wonder if those guys at that one school in that year year might actually be able to play with the “big boys”.  Often, that lone school from those 5 conferences can do that – – but no one else in those conferences can.  These conferences are where “Homecoming Game Opponents” are found…

That first reason that this is a bad idea leads directly to the second reason this is a bad idea.  If no one really cares and there is only one team in that Group of 5 every once in a while that can “play with the big boys”, then no one will pay attention to a tournament.  Oh, there will be faux attention paid just so the schools at the “kiddies’ table” get enough of the faux attention to stay at the kiddies’ table and be happy that they are there.  This playoff idea is like planting the seeds of an environment wherein the Group of 5 teams become a permanent underclass in the football hierarchy but they cannot complain because they have their tournament to focus attention on themselves.

Division 1-AA has a tournament.  Other than times when a player like Randy Moss comes from that tournament or when Carson Wentz becomes the overall #2 pick in the NFL Draft, does the Division 1-AA tournament create any goosebumps for anyone outside the school communities of the teams involved?  I’ll pose the same question about the Division II and the Division III national playoffs:

 

If you are reading this rant here, you must have some basic level of interest in sports and so you are the perfect audience to respond to this question, “Do you care even a little bit who wins or who is “snubbed” by not being invited to the Division II and/or the Division III football tournament brackets?”

 

Some say that this tournament idea can bring money to the Group of 5 schools that will give them the chance to “graduate” and compete with the “big boys”.  That is nonsense.  The amount of money that the CFP brings into the conferences involved in the top tier of Division 1-A football will dwarf the pittances that the Group of 5 tournament might draw in one’s wildest imagination.  Second, this will soon become the “Miss Congeniality” Prize for the smaller programs and will almost immediately take any and all of them out of consideration for participation in one of the bigger New Year’s Day Bowl Games – where there is real money involved.  I am confident that if I were to say awake for 72 consecutive hours I could come up with a worse idea for the Group of 5 teams.  I am not about to do that; I am, however, going to say that they better not get what they seem to be wishing for.

About 35 years ago, I was the President of the PTA for my sons’ elementary school.  Yes, I did that for an entire year and did not commit sufficient mayhem or physical violence that I was arrested and/or charged with some sort of violation of the law.  One of the debates ongoing at that time in our county was the extent to which classes in the school system should be offered in various languages.  Foreign languages were never my favorite courses in school and I am only proficient in two languages:

  1. English – and –
  2. Profane.

As my year-in-the-box progressed, there was a suggestion by a group of parents that the school system offer algebra taught in their culturally native language.  That is where I got off the train.  I asked for – and was granted – a time slot where I could address the school board and whatever other local politicians may have been in attendance at this open meeting.  Here is a paraphrase of what I told the school board that evening:

 

I hope you realize what you might actually be doing if you were to consider the idea of teaching algebra to high school students in something other than English.  What you would be doing is to lay the foundation for those students to become a permanent underclass in the US.  Like it or not, the fact of the matter is that the language of the generic economy and society here in Virginia – and in almost all of the US – is English.  Being bilingual – or even multi-lingual – is an asset for students, but they also have to know English to succeed – or to have an equal shot at success.  You can teach them lots of courses in lots of languages, but if you try to pretend that mathematics is something they can only learn in their “culturally native language” you are consigning these students to second-class citizenship.

[Aside: The Chair of the School Board happened a black woman.  She reacted to my closing statement.]  If I were an evil person and my intention was to consign a subset of the population to the status of “permanent underclass”, the first thing I would do would be to give them as poor an education as I could and to fill their time in school with things that will not be useful to them in the economy and the society that they will have to try to succeed in.  For a while, this country did that with slaves in the South until most of us figured out that was not the way to go.  If you pay more attention to feelings than you do to reality and your responsibilities as overseers of education, you will start down that path again.  Don’t do it.

 

Change the issue from teaching algebra in something other than English to high school students in the US to the idea of a minor-league football playoff and the outcome is similar.  If the Group of 5 wants to be sure they are never taken seriously and have a permanent seat at the kiddies’ table of college football, then this idea for their playoff is a great way to head on down that road.  No one is going to travel a thousand miles to see that championship game in person and precious few are going to tune on TV.  Imagine the burning interest in the game leading up to that championship contest.  This is an idea whose time has not yet come and is not going to come…

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News regarding one of already existing minor bowl games that would compete with a “Group of 5 Tournament” for attention:

“The Foster Farms Bowl was sparsely attended. Utah doesn’t really move the meter in Northern California, while Indiana doesn’t even move the meter in Indiana.

“Hint to bowl officials: Next year, please offer free Foster Farms chicken nuggets to every fan in attendance. Proposed slogan: ‘Come for the nuggets, stay for the football.’”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Idealism, Pragmatism And Simplistic Reasoning

In a previous rant, I said that I agreed with the decisions made by Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey to sit out second-tier bowl games and focus on getting ready to be drafted into the NFL.  I characterized it as an economic decision made by the players in response to the economic decisions by the schools and networks and cities to have so many less-than-important college football bowl games.  I stand by those remarks.  Now I want to add to them…

Another way to look at decision making is to consider the dichotomy often presented by idealism and pragmatism.  Ideally, I can wish for the non-existence of world hunger; pragmatically, there are too many people living in areas where growing food is nigh on to impossible.  Taking the life-and-death element out of my example, McCaffrey and Fournette had a similar dichotomy to resolve.  Ideally, they would have been with their teammates – their comrades-in-arms so to speak – for one final attempt at winning for dear old alma mater.  Pragmatically, they risked serious injury which might cost them millions of dollars as a pro football player – or even the chance ever to become a pro football player.  They chose pragmatism.  Once again, I agree with their decision.  Moreover, Christian McCaffrey can look to one of his comrades-in-arms for affirmation.

Stanford QB, Keller Chryst tore up his knee in the Sun Bowl game.  Stop 10 people randomly on the street and ask them to answer the following questions without resorting to Google on their cell phones:

  1. Where is the Sun Bowl game played?  [El Paso, TX]
  2. Who won the Sun Bowl last year?  [Washington St. beat Miami (FL)]
  3. What team has been to the Sun Bowl the most times?  [Texas Tech]

Your random person will not know these answers indicating to you that the Sun Bowl – old as it may be – is not a critically important fixture on the landscape of college football.  Keller Chryst – like Christian McCaffrey – aspires to play in the NFL; he suffered a significant injury in a meaningless contest.  Give me pragmatism every time…

Reasoning one’s way through a set of circumstances to arrive at a conclusion or a decision is something adults do all the time.  Some decisions are easy; it is a bad idea to take your life savings plus your kids’ college funds and lay the total on the line for one spin of the roulette wheel.  One’s reasoning faculties need not be honed to a fine edge for that one.  Simplistic reasoning – the kind that often leads to baffling decisions – abounds in the human experience and there is probably no place where it exists and flourishes to a greater degree than in sports radio “discussions”.  What continues to amaze me is the degree of simplistic reasoning that seems to exist and flourish in the upper echelons of NFL franchises.

A team needs to pep up its offense so the idea is to fire the current coach despite whatever circumstances have led to the feeling of displeasure with team performance lately and go out and hire an “offensive guru”.  That sounds so simple – and indeed it is simplistic as evidenced by the fact that sometimes it works (Adam Gase in Miami) and sometimes it does not (Chip Kelly in SF).  The obverse is also true; hiring a “defensive guru” sometimes works (Dan Quinn in Atlanta) and sometimes does not (Rex Ryan in Buffalo).  I mentioned earlier this week that the Bills’ opening was the least desirable one for coaching candidates due to the QB situation there and the franchise location itself.  I would like to add to the reasons that the Bills’ job is not a job for hot prospects to salivate over.

According to reports this week, the firing of Rex Ryan and the search for a new coach in Buffalo will be more than a tad unusual.  In a press conference this week, the Bills’ GM – who is presumably staying on with the team – told his audience that he had not been part of the discussion between the owner and Ryan that led to Ryan’s firing with one week to play in the season.  Doug Whaley said he was “not privy to the details” from the Bills’ owner, Terry Pegula, regarding the reason that Ryan was fired.  When asked if he agreed with the decision or not, Whaley responded, “I haven’t even thought about it.”  Seriously?  Not once over the past couple of weeks?  Haven’t you spoken with the owner even once over that period of time?

Right after the firing was announced, owner, Pegula, said that GM, Whaley, would conduct the search for a new coach – – which is pretty much standard procedure when a GM stays on after a coach has been let go.  This week, Whaley left that up in the air saying that Pegula would make the final decision on the new coach.  Maybe that is only a nuance in the sense that the owner signs all the checks and therefore indeed makes all the final decisions.  However, there was another troubling comment from Whaley.  He also said that details such as who would have control over the makeup of the 53-man roster would be part of the search process and the final negotiations with the new coach.  Can that possibly mean that the coaching search will start out with no firm organizational concept for how the team will function outside the lines on Sundays?  If so, WOW!

Do not misinterpret; I am not surprised that Rex Ryan got fired in Buffalo nor do I think his firing was a bad idea.  Ryan took over a team that was 9-7 with a dominating defense that appeared poised to be in the playoffs on the strength of that defense.  In 2014, the Bills led the NFL in sacks and were 4th in the league in points allowed.  In two years under Ryan, the defense has sagged significantly to the point where it is 28th in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game.  I doubt that any coach on the planet could have won 10 or 11 games with this Bills’ team.  I wonder if the owner and/or the GM recognize the significance and/or the scope of the shortcomings there.

The only thing that can make simplistic reasoning worse than it is intrinsically would be to add three elements to it:

  1. Ignorance of the basics of the field in which reasoning and decisions must exist.
  2. Ignorance of one’s own fundamental ignorance therein.
  3. Impatience.

Purely reading reports on this matter and having exactly no direct insight here, I smell some of each of these elements in the air in Buffalo.  Or, maybe someone just passed gas…

Finally, Greg Cote had this comment in the Miami Herald several weeks ago:

“Tickets went on sale this week for sailing’s 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda. God I hope I’m not too late!!”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

A Nomadic Tuesday …

Let me lead off today by saying that I do not enjoy nor do I follow closely MMA as a sport.  I recognize and acknowledge that the participants in that sport are dedicated athletes and that other folks are avid consumers of the sport.  I am not.

Having said that, I wonder if the time has come for Ronda Rousey to back down as the “face of women’s MMA fighting”.  As I said, I do not follow MMA closely so I could easily have missed some happenings along the way here but here is the “timeline” I see:

  • Rousey uses her judo skills (Olympic medalist there) to dominate women’s MMA opponents.  She garners the image of the “baddest woman on the planet” except she is also interested in doing photo shoots and movies and other “girly things”.
  • She wins an MMA championship and is booked to defend it and she is KO’ed by a woman who then proceeds to lose her next fight.
  • After a period of time “incommunicado”, Rousey resurfaces and is booked to fight a current MMA champion.  She lasts less than a minute in that fight and “goes to Coventry” once again.

People are now debating/analyzing what is her future in the sport and what her legacy might be.  May I suggest the following:

  • Her legacy is that her early dominance in the sport raised the level of attention to women’s MMA bouts to the point where people cared as much about them as they did to men’s MMA bouts.
  • Her last two defeats – neither of which was a “squeaker” – indicates that she needs to retire from the sport before she gets hurt in some sort of permanent fashion.  I actually watched her recent loss on YouTube where she was totally dominated for 48 seconds before the fight was over.   She could not have caught any more punches had her face been magnet and her opponent were wearing iron gloves.
  • In the past, I have characterized MMA promotions as being the same as pro ‘rassling except the blood is real and the punches actually land.  It is the last part of that description that – I believe – makes it really good idea for Ronda Rousey to retire from the sport and go on to “future endeavors”.

MMA as a sport does not need to have one of its competitors killed on “live TV” in one of their pay-per-view events.  This happened to boxing on several occasions on TV and you may notice that there is precious little boxing on TV any more.  Ronda Rousey in the fight I just watched was like a javelin catcher; she was a significant injury waiting to happen.

Switching gears …  Last week, I happened to be grazing through the channels on my cable package and happened across the Sixers/Nuggets game in Denver.  I stopped to look for a while just because I wanted to see how bad the Sixers were this year – – as compared to how bad they have been for the past several years.  I have to admit that I was surprised to see that the Sixers played like an NBA team.

  • Joel Embiid is the real deal.  He can score inside; he can shoot from the outside; he can rebound and his defense – more than just his shot blocking – is good.
  • Nerlens Noel can play defense but is an offensive liability.
  • Jahlil Okafur did not play while I was watching.
  • Dario Saric will be a player in the NBA for a long time; he is only 22 now.
  • What the Sixers do not have is quality point guards – or even one quality point guard.  If they had a more balanced roster, this team might actually win 25 games in a season.  Trust the process…

If you had told me before the college football season started and the pairings were announced that any team in the country would score 49 points on the USC defense, I would have wondered:

  1. How did Texas Tech get paired against USC with Tech’s 5-7 regular season record?
  2. Did USC score 80 points on the Tech defense – –  or 90?

Well, last night in the Rose Bowl – the granddaddy of them all as Keith Jackson was wont to remind us all – Penn State’s offense did a number on the USC defense.  USC was a 7.5 point favorite in the game and the Total Line was 59.5.  Anyone betting the UNDER could have torn up their tickets in the third quarter; anyone betting the chalk knew this game was a goner.

I have been saying for much of the season in various Mythical Picks commentaries that Penn State RB, Saquon Barkely, is a special player.  I hope you got to see some of his runs against a very good USC defense last night; this kid can play!  I have also been very impressed with USC freshman QB, Sam Darnold, and he was the architect of the USC victory last night.  USC won the game on a last second field goal ending a game that was as entertaining and interesting as any bowl game so far this year.

Finally, the NCAA permits college athletes to accept “gift packages” from the organizers of bowl games as a thank you for their participation.  Here is a comment on that reality by Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Gift packages from bowls vary, though usually they include excellent swag for the participants. But this year’s national championship game might feature the most enigmatic.

“The description says players will be presented with an ‘iconic gift.’

“Won’t they be surprised when they open those Regis Philbin Christmas CDs?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Two Rays Of Sunshine On A Gloomy Day

The weather outside Curmudgeon Central today is dreary at best – low clouds, drizzle, temperature in the mid-30s.  I probably won’t see the sun for the next 48 hours.  This is curmudgeonly weather and perhaps it is an omen for what I will get to kvetch about in 2017.  However, before I get into my grumbling groove for the year, I have two bits of uplifting news to share.  It is as if there are two little rays of sunshine beaming through the cloud cover here …

  1. Gene Collier published the 33rd annual Trite Trophy column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  As always it is clever and entertaining.  I would have preferred that the “Third Runner-Up” for this year’s award as the winner but that is unimportant.  I commend this column to your reading; here is your link.
  2. Last week, I told you that the powers that be at the Seattle Times had canceled Dwight Perry’s column Sideline Chatter as part of a cost-cutting/reorganization out there.  The final column was supposed to run on Jan 1, 2017.  Then I got news that Sideline Chatter had gotten a reprieve from the editors there.  Instead of running several times a week, it will only run on Sunday and the commitment to keeping it alive and kicking is only for a couple of months to see how things shake out.

As you probably suspected, I wrote to several of the folks at the Seattle Times lamenting their decision to sacrifice Sideline Chatter at the altar of newsroom reorganization.  If I were prone to using the false logic of post hoc propter hoc – which I am not – I would be hinting very strongly here that I was somehow responsible for the “stay of execution” here.  That is abject nonsense of course; what happened is that the folks who are in charge of putting out the paper there recognized that Sideline Chatter attracts readers to the paper and/or to the paper’s website.  Nonetheless, I can start 2017 knowing that there will be Dwight Perry columns for me to read – at least for the next month or two.

Now back to the gloominess that today’s weather suggests ought to be the tone for the day.  It is Black Monday – not to be confused with Black Friday, Sgt. Joe Friday or former Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Joe Black – and that means a bunch of NFL coaches are no longer employed as they had been for the past season.  Three teams – the Rams, Jags and Bills – jumped the gun here and fired their incumbent coaches during the season.  Add to the list of teams that will be looking for new leadership next year the Broncos (Gary Kubiak is retiring for health reasons), the Niners and the Chargers.  Those are the known job openings as of this morning meaning almost 20% of the NFL teams will be “under new management” very soon.

Before getting to the rumors about who might get hired and where, let me suggest that there may be some other openings over the course of this week.

  • The Colts have now – and have had for several years – the key ingredient for a successful NFL team.  They have a solid franchise QB.  Moreover, they play in a division that is not fearsome by any means.  Nevertheless, they have not been able to put together a solid winning team because their OL and the DL and their DBs are sub-standard.  Is that bad coaching?  Is that incompetent roster-building?  Is that both…?
  • The Texans – in the same division with the Colts – spent a lot of money to sign a “franchise QB” last off-season and he stunk out the joint so badly that he was benched before the season began.  Might that coaching decision have polluted the waters there when it comes to the GM/Head Coach relationship?
  • The Jets were awful this year and the problem is the aging roster.  They have studs on defense who have gotten long in the tooth; they have not much more than journeymen on offense.  Will the coach take the fall for that situation?
  • The Bengals finished 6-9-1 after 6 straight years in the playoffs.  Marvin Lewis took over a franchise of futility and turned it into a respectable franchise.  But the NFL is a league dominated by “what have you done for me recently?”
  • The Bears finished the year at 3-13; anytime a team does that and the coach has been there for more than a cup of coffee, you have to wonder about that coach’s longevity.  I think the Bears would be nuts to fire John Fox, but who do you know that can read the minds of the folks who own the Bears?
  • The Panthers fell from 15-1 in 2015 to 6-10 in 2016.  That probably will not get Ron Rivera fired, but I’ll bet it puts him on a shorter leash than he enjoyed as of September, 2016.

In my opinion, the best jobs out there – purely from a football perspective – are the Chargers and the Broncos.  The Chargers have been hit by injuries for each of the last 2 seasons but they have a franchise QB and they have a solid RB and they have at least one very good WR.  The Broncos have an outstanding defense so the “restructuring work” only needs doing on one side of the ball.

In my opinion, the worst job out there is the Bills.  They have 3 QBs on the roster and none of them are any good; they have a very good RB who is getting very near the expiration date for most NFL RBs; they have a middling defense (19th in the NFL) that allows opponents to run the ball and control the clock (29th in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game).  Added to those “football issues”, the fact is that Buffalo NY is not a magnet for top-shelf free agents.  For example, I believe the top tax bracket for NY State Income Tax is 8.8% …

I will be interested to see how many of the new coaching hires – and the interviewees who get serious consideration for jobs this year – will be “retread coaches” as compared to “up-and-coming hot commodities”.  Please note that of the 5 coaches fired during the season and at the end of yesterday’s action, 3 were retreads (Chip Kelly, Rex Ryan and Jeff Fisher) and 2 were “up-and-coming hot commodities” (Gus Bradley and Mike McCoy).

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“DeVry University has agreed to pay $100 million over FTC claims that its ads misled prospective students.

“Especially the part about winning last year’s Rose Bowl.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Mythical Picks – CFP & NFL Combined – Weekend Of 1/1/17

 

This will be a joint entry of NCAA Mythical Picks (for the CFP games this weekend) and of NFL Mythical Picks for the games scheduled for Week 17 of this regular season.  Notwithstanding the fact that this will be a “joint entry” my calendar requires that this will be an abbreviated entry.  Let me set the stage for these selections with nominally relevant data.

NCAA Mythical Picks ended the season back at the start of December with a cumulative record of 109-93-0.  If I had wagered the same amount on each of the 202 picks here, I would have come away with a profit for the season.  If I had wagered on each of the 202 picks here, I should have been put in restraints and not allowed anywhere near the betting windows.

 

[Apropos of nothing, the favorites did not fare well in Ponderosa Games this year.  The final record for favorites covering in Ponderosa Games was 46-51-1.]

 

NFL Mythical Picks last week was about as inane as they could be.  I made 17 selections in the 16 NFL games and the week’s record was 8-8-1.  Meanwhile, the season record for NFL Mythical Picks now stands at 135-88-6.  While that record is comfortably in the “profitable zone”, it still would have been ridiculous for me to have considered for even a millisecond making those 229 wagers over the course of the season.

The Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol was 1-2-0 last week.  Nonetheless, the coin flipping has been “hot” this year with a cumulative record to date of 18-13-2.

The Best Picks from last week were:

  • Dolphins +4 against Bills.  Dolphins won outright.
  • Niners +4 against Rams.  Niners won outright.

The Worst Picks from last week were:

  • Titans – 4.5 against Jags.  Titans lost by 14 points.
  • Panthers +3 against Falcons.  Panthers lost by 17 points.

With all that data on hand, no one should take anything written here as sufficiently informative or insightful so as to use any information here as the basis for making a real wager on a real football game (NCAA or NFL) this weekend.  Anyone dumb enough to do that also thinks:

 

You can never become addicted to brake fluid because you can – obviously – stop anytime you want.

 

General Comments:

 

My only comment this week about NCAA football is short and simple; I should have included it in one of the earlier iterations of NCAA Mythical Picks.

  • The Arkansas State Red Wolves have a player on their roster named Dee Liner.
  • You guessed it; he plays defensive line…  How perfect is that?

Last week in the NFL was Underachievement Week.  Bad teams surprisingly won games; good or better-than-average teams lost games they should have won even though a loss would be devastating to their season.  One such underachievement got another coach fired with a game left to play.  Rex Ryan is out in Buffalo – and his brother Rob is out as defensive coordinator too.  So, let me start with that game from last week…

The Bills lost to the Dolphins 34-31 in OT.  That is not such an embarrassing loss that you would think that it would end a coaching tenure with one week left to play in a season where the Bills will be out of the playoffs for the 17th consecutive time.  What this says to me is that the Bills’ ownership had made up their mind to fire Ryan as soon as the season was over and this home loss was just a bit more than they needed to bear.

Basically, the Bills found ways to lose this game – and that has not been an unknown set of circumstances for the team over the past 2 seasons with Rex Ryan at the helm.  The Bills trailed 28-24 in this game and fought their way back to lead the game 31-28 with less than 2 minutes to go in the game.  Then the defense allowed the Dolphins to get into a position to kick a tying field goal with 6 seconds on the clock.  Then in OT, the defense allowed RB. Jay Ajayi to rumble for 57 yards to set up a chip shot field goal by the Dolphins to win the game.  The Bills missed 2 field goals in regulation time that would have won the game.  It was a sh*tshow of a game in front of the home fans and the Bills’ ownership decided that it had seen enough.

Cry no crocodile tears for Rex Ryan.  If my calculations are correct, the Bills owe him a tad over $16M over the next 3 years for him to stay home and not coach NFL football…

The Chargers lost a game last week; since the Chargers have only won 5 times this year, you might wonder why I put them in the conversation about teams that should not have lost last weekend.  The answer is simple:

 

The Chargers lost to the Browns 20-17.

 

That embarrassing loss ought to make it a bit easier for fans in San Diego to let go of their team as the Chargers opt to move to LA soon after the regular season ends this weekend.  Making this loss even more hard to swallow, the Chargers recorded a total of 9 sacks in the game – – and still found a way to lose.  That does not happen very often.

Chargers’ coach Mike McCoy was on a hot seat before this game.  Now I would suspect that he is sitting on a pool of lava…

The Titans lost to the Jags 38-17 eliminating the Titans from the playoffs.  Making matters worse, QB, Marcus Mariota, broke his fibula in the game and is expected to be out of action for about 4 months. That injury, however is NOT the reason the Titans took gas last week; they trailed 24-10 in the game when Mariota was injured.  Look, the Titans were 2-14 last year and they have already won 8 games this year.  That is a MAJOR improvement and it needs to be acknowledged and applauded.  Having said that, the Titans lost a hugely important game last week to a bad football team.

The Bucs lost to the Saints 31-24 in a game the Bucs had to have to stay “playoff relevant”.  The Saints led in time of possession and ran for 129 yards on a nominally maturing Bucs’ defense.  The only way to deal with this game is to label it as a game where the Bucs laid an egg.

In the context of these underachieving/shocking games, there were other surprises on the card for last week.  As noted above, the Brown and Jags won games outright last week.  Well, so did the Niners; they beat the Rams 22-21.  All three of those carrion-feeders won on the same weekend; my guess is that no one in Las Vegas had a parlay on the money line for Browns, Niners and Jags all to win last week.

The Niners had the worst run defense in the NFL going into last week’s game; the Rams have a very good running back; you might expect the Rams to pound the ball down the Niners’ collective throats.

Not so fast my friend … [/Lee Corso]

  • Todd Gurley gained 67 yards and averaged only 2.9 yards per carry.
  • Rams gained 99 yards rushing – which sounds good until you realize that the Niners have given up 200+ yards rushing in previous games this year.

The Rams have already fired their coach and have nominally begun their coaching search.  I suspect that this miserable showing will assure that interim coach John Fassel will get only a cursory call/interview once the season is over – – unless of course he and all the rest of the coaching staff is fired within 24 hours of the final whistle in the final Rams’ game this weekend.

The Texans beat the Bengals last week to secure the AFC South division title and a spot in the playoffs.  The score here was 12-10 and the offensive prowess on display by both teams was perfectly indicated by the score.  To say it was uninspired would be to say that Pavarotti could carry a tune.  The Bengals averaged a measly 6.5 yards per pass attempt in the game but even that meager accomplishment is distorted.  One short pass went to Brandon LaFell who turned it into an 86-yard TD catch-and-run.  Absent that one play, the Bengals averaged 3.95 yards per pass attempt.  Yowza!

I said this would be an abbreviated version of Mythical Picks due to Holiday festivities and social commitments.  Therefore, even though some of the other games from last weekend would normally have merited some comment, they will be anonymous here – with one exception.

The Raiders won last week beating the Colts 33-25 but they lost QB Derek Carr to a broken fibula.  Carr has had his surgery and instead of projecting a 4-month R&R schedule, some are holding out hope that he could be back in time for the Super Bowl just 5 weeks after the injury and the surgery.  I do not think the Raiders will make it that far without Derek Carr under center but if they do, I surely hope that any decision on his part or on the part of the Raiders’ braintrust to put him in that game does not do long-term detriment to Derek Carr’s career.  I think he has the potential to be a special player…

 

The NCAA CFP Semi-Final Games:

 

(Sat Afternoon) Washington vs. Alabama – 14 (54):  The Total Line opened at 58 for this game several weeks ago, but it has seemed to settle in at this number for more than a week now.  These teams have a common quality opponent in USC and the temptation is to look at those two games and to conclude that Washington is simply overmatched here.  However, from the games I saw this year, USC was a far better team late in the season when they beat Washington than they were in September when Alabama waxed them.  I do not think Washington will win this game; if I did, I would take the Huskies on the Money Line at +475.  However, I do think Washington is good enough to stay within 2 TDs of Alabama on the assumption that Jake Browning does not throw a bunch of INTs to give Bama short fields to work with.  I’ll take Washington plus the points.

 

(Sat Evening) Ohio St. – 3 vs. Clemson (59):  My observation about Clemson is very simple:

  • They play up to or down to the level of their competition.

Their opposition here plays at a high level and so I expect Clemson to do the same.  Ohio St coaches and players have certainly heard some of the commentary that they are only in this playoff due to their institutional reputation since they did not even win their division within their conference this year.  That should give them a small shot of adrenaline.  I agree this will be a close game but I think Clemson is the better team.  I’ll take Clemson here plus the points.

 

 

The NFL Games:

 

 

Houston at Tennessee – 3 (40):  This game would have been meaningful had the Titans not imploded last week.  In the current state of affairs, this game is as meaningless as a forest fire in the Gobi Desert.  Presumably, the Texans will use the game to get new QB, Tom Savage, some expanded familiarity with their playbook.  Perhaps the Titans will play to attain the team’s first winning season since 2011.  The game is not a big deal.  I do not want to imply that I think Tom Savage is a polished NFL QB because he is not but I do wish to imply that I do not want to pick a team with little reason to play hard with Matt Cassel as the QB.  I’ll take the Texans and lay the points.

 

Buffalo – 3.5 at Jets (42):  The spread here opened at 5 points and dropped immediately to this level and has stayed there all week.  In a week of meaningless games, this one is the worst of the lot in my opinion and so it gets the Final Dog-Breath Game of the Week designation for the 2016 season.  No matter the outcome here, this has been a season of misery for both teams.  The Jets have looked to me like quitters for the past several games; and if my conclusion is even half correct, I see no reason for them to get excited about this final game.  I like the Bills to win and cover here – even on the road.

 

Baltimore at Cincy – 2 (41.5):  Back in August/September, this looked like it might be a critical game in the AFC playoff picture.  In reality, it is as meaningless as dust.  The Ravens lost out on playoff contention on a late TD by Antonio Brown last week; Cincy lost out on playoff contention about month ago on boneheadedness on the field.  I will turn this game over to the Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol and the coin says to take the game to stay UNDER.

 

Giants at Washington – 7 (44):  The spread here opened the week at 5 points and has risen steadily to this level; in fact, you can find it at 8 points at one sportsbook this morning.  The Skins have something to play for; if they lose, they are out of the playoffs; if they win, they are in barring a tie in the Lions/Packers game.  The Giants are assured of a wild-card slot no matter what happens.  I like the Skins to win and cover here.

 

(Sun Nite) Green Bay – 3 at Detroit (49):  This is the Game of the Week not because these are the two best teams playing each other but because one of these teams is going to be the NFC North champion and the other will be at loose ends for the month of January.  NBC recognizes that this is the game of the week because they flexed it to the Sunday Nite time slot instead of putting the Cowboys in a national TV game yet again.  I like the Packers to win and cover here.

 

Jax at Indy – 4.5 (47):  The spread opened at 7 points and dropped to this level rather quickly.  I have no idea why anyone would be betting enough money on this game to move the line even a little bit.  This game is as meaningless as a political candidate’s promises.  Because I said I’d make a pick in all the games, I’ll take this game to go OVER.

 

Dallas at Philly – 3.5 (43):  The Cowboys are in the playoffs with the #1 seed in the NFC bracket; the Eagles are out.  The line favoring the Eagles by more than a field goal says that the oddsmakers – and the bettors to some extent – believe that the Cowboys will be resting some of their key players for at least part of this game.  I will make this a Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip game and the coin says to take the game to go OVER.

 

Chicago at Minnesota – 5 (41):  This is a game to ignore.  The Bears aren’t any good; the Vikes folded their cards for the season at least a month ago.  I prefer the talent level of the Vikes and I like the fact that this game is in Minnesota so I’ll take them to win and cover here.  However, do not infer from that comment that I will pay much attention to the game other than the score.

 

Carolina at Tampa – 5 (46):  The spread opened at 3.5 points and has expanded all week long; you can find it at 6 points at one sportsbook this morning.  Neither team can be in the playoffs making this game as meaningless as the face of a corpse [hat tip to Joseph Conrad].  Either or both of these teams could show up at kickoff merely to go through the motions.  Purely a venue call, I’ll take the Bucs and lay the points.

 

Cleveland at Pittsburgh – 7 (43):  This spread opened at 12.5 points and plummeted when the Steelers let it be known that Ben Roethlisberger would have the day off.  Say hello to a quarterback face-off between Landry Jones and Cody Kessler.  Whoo-Hoo!  The Total Line opened at 45.5 and also dropped with that same announcement.  The Steelers will be dealing with playoff opponents down the line and the Browns are not of that caliber.  However, the Browns are coming off their first win of the Hue Jackson Era in Cleveland and might just show up with a smidgen of enthusiasm.  Again, only because I said I would make a pick in every game, I’ll take the Browns plus the points.

 

New Orleans at Atlanta – 7 (56):  The Falcons are the AFC South champs and the Saints are out of the playoffs.  There is a small measure of meaning in this game because the Falcons might get a first round bye in the playoffs or not depending on what happens here and in SF this week.  Big deal…  The most interesting thing about this game is the Total Line; the oddsmaker obviously sees this as a final game offensive showdown between two potent offenses and two less than potent defenses.  For no good reason, whatsoever, I’ll take the Saints plus that generous helping of points.

 

New England – 10 at Miami (44.5):  I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games.  This spread opened at 6 points and expanded to this level quickly.  It is at 10.5 points at one sportsbook this morning.  The Pats have incentive in this game; a win assures them home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.  The dolphins are locked into a wild card slot no matter what.  I shall invoke the Curmudgeon Central Coin Flip Protocol for this inscrutable game and the coin says to take the Pats and lay the points.  The coin has spoken…

 

Arizona – 6.5 at LA (41):  I gave serious consideration to this game as the Dog-Breath Game of the Week but ceded that dubious honor elsewhere.  The Cards have been huge disappointments this year; the Rams have been just plain bad for most of the year.  This game is so meaningless that it nudges up to the boundary between meaninglessness and absurdity.  Venue call; I’ll take the Rams plus the points.

 

KC – 5.5 at San Diego (44.5):  The game means nothing to the Chargers; they could have packed their bags and taken a Caribbean cruise about a month ago.  For the Chiefs, this game has meaning.  Depending on the outcome here and the outcomes in Denver and in Miami, the Chiefs could be either the #2 seed (meaning a BYE week) or the #5 seed or the #6 seed in the AFC playoff bracket.  Trust me; it is not worth the keystrokes to go thru all the possibilities.  I like the Chiefs’ roster better than the Chargers’ roster and I prefer their motivation here.  I’ll take the Chiefs and lay the points – even on the road.

 

Seattle – 10 at SF (43):  I hate double-digit spreads in NFL games.  I’m sorry, but the Niners are a bad team at home as well as on the road.  I can’t even make this a venue call.  I know that the Seahawks’ offense in road games has tended to go dormant this year but the Niners’ defense is flat out awful – despite their win last week over the Rams.  I’ll take the Seahawks and lay the points.

 

Oakland at Denver – 1 (40):  The reason this is not the Game of the Week is that the Lions/Packers game can be fateful for both teams; in this game, only the Raiders can benefit or lose based on the outcome.  Nevertheless, this game should be “contentious”.  The Broncos’ defense ought to have sued the Broncos’ offense for non-support and/or nonfeasance about a month ago.  The Raiders’ offense needs to turn to the Raiders’ defense and say – ever so politely but firmly – that the offense has carried the load for the first 15 games this year and now it is time for the Raiders’ defense to double-clutch their collective asses into gear.  Remember, the Raiders can still be the #1 seed in the AFC playoff bracket if they win here and the Pats lose in Miami.  The Raiders can also lose the AFC West championship with a loss here and a Chiefs’ win in San Diego.  I think the tangible benefits for the Raiders are the better motivators here.  I like the Raiders plus the point. 

 

Happy New Year to everyone.  Next week’s writing schedule remains up in the air but Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, there will be Mythical Picks late next week.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

Bad Ads 2016

 

What follows here has become a predictable year-end event.  For those who have seen these sorts of things before, let me apologize while I take  a paragraph to let new readers know what lies ahead.

I watch a goodly amount of sports on TV.  That practice means that I get to – or have to – watch a lot of advertisements.  After all, those advertisements are the mechanism by which I get to watch all of my sports for next to nothing.  In and among the myriad ads, there are some that are genuinely stupid and/or insulting and/or confusing and/or disgusting.  I try to make a note of these sorts of ads and then put them together here as a way to end the current calendar year and to hope – against all hope – that the ads next year will not be so bad.  It never works out that way…

I have to admit that 2016 was a “different year” when it comes to finding “Bad Ads” related to sporting events.  I need to put everything that follows here into perspective:

  • In 2016, none of the ad campaigns featured on sporting events could come close to being as annoying/stupid as the “campaign ads” that polluted the public airwaves throughout the Presidential primaries and then in the general election campaign.  Those political ads were unctuous, slimy, misleading, weasel-worded assaults on the intelligence of the electorate.  The creators and promulgators of those ads – regardless of party affiliation – deserve severe punishment for the bullsh*t they inflicted on the populace.  Boiling in oil and/or drawing and quartering seem to be candidates for the appropriate punishments.

With that out of the way, let me go to my notes and see what sorts of things the ad mavens decided to inflict on viewers of sporting events.  A relatively recent trend in advertising seems to be ads for prescription drugs that one is supposed to ask their doctor about.  I don’t know about you, but I talk to my doctor about symptoms, aches and pains, changes in my well-being and the like.  None – as in not a single one – of those conversations has ever begun because I watched an ad on TV.  Anyway …

The year in advertising/promotion got off on a bad foot right away.  In January 2016 as the NFL playoffs were leading up to Super Bowl 50 which was to be telecast on CBS, that network ran promos touting Super Bowl 50 as:

“The most historic event in television history.”

Let me see here …  Super Bowl 50 as the most historic event in television history vis á vis:

  1. Lee Harvey Oswald shot to death on live TV by Jack Ruby
  2. Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
  3. The hostage taking and murders at the Munich Olympics
  4. President Nixon’s resignation speech
  5. The explosion of the Challenger spacecraft
  6. The tearing down of the Berlin Wall
  7. The end result of the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, TX
  8. September 11,2001

Those 8 television moments are ones that come to mind because I remember seeing them and recalling where I was and what the circumstances were when I saw them.  I am certain that many folks can add to this list.  And the upshot of this list – with or without any additions from others – is very simple:

 

Super Bowl 50 is not even close to any of these events in terms of being ”the most historic event in television history.”

 

Annually, the Super Bowl is an event filled with new ads and marks the start of new ad campaigns.  Last year, Colgate used an ad spot to tell me how much water I consumed if I left the water running while I brushed my teeth.  According to the ad, I would waste more water doing that than some people have available to them for a week.  Given my background in science/engineering, my first reaction was to wonder how long it took the guy in the ad to brush his teeth and what was the flow rate of the faucet.  However, that quickly passed and I realized that this argument was one I had heard before:

  • As a kid, my parents used to tell me to eat all of my veggies because there were children starving in China.  Maybe in your family, the children were starving elsewhere; it doesn’t really matter.  The point is that the veggies – or the water in this case – are here and the starving children – or the water-deprived folks – are there.  There is a huge flaw in that argument…

[For the record … I do not let the water run while I brush my teeth.  I do this out of habit and not in any misguided empathy for people who happen to live in arid places like the Gobi Desert or Sudan.]

I encountered an Internet ad on Feb 4 2016.  It told me that I should buy a gift card from some pizza purveyor and then use it as a stocking stuffer.  The visual for the ad shows a gift card in a hand poised over a Christmas stocking hung on a mantel.  Given that this was February when it appeared on my computer screen, I figured there were only 2 possible explanations:

  1. Some “Internet ad placement specialist” somewhere hit a wrong keystroke and put a leftover ad from the previous Christmas season in queue for viewing about 6 weeks late.
  2. Some company has decided to get a jump on the marketing for Christmas and has decided to get the Christmas ad campaign going 10 months early.  If so, that would be a crime against humanity.

There is an ad for a drug that counteracts “repeated or chronic constipation” that is not alleviated by laxatives, a massive intake of prunes or the normal things one might resort to when one suffers from a “blockage down-south” so to speak.  At one point, the actor on the ad looks directly into the camera and says plaintively,

“My chronic constipation kept coming back …”

My first reaction on hearing that was “No sh*t!” but I realized that would be a cruel response to anyone with constipation.  So let me simply say that this moron reading lines in this commercial whose chronic constipation keeps coming back does not understand the meaning of the word – CHRONIC.

Dominos Pizza is a regular in these annual compilations.  Earlier this year, they had a promotion where you would get a free pizza after you placed 6 online orders of $10 or more.  They then proceeded to suggest six circumstances wherein you might order from Dominos in order to get that free pizza.  One of their suggestions was “a hot date”.  Seriously?  If you have “a hot date” and you order Dominos Pizza, my guess is that there will be no follow-up hot dates.

Another “repeat offender” that shows up here every year is Taco Bell.  This year they introduced their “Dollar Breakfast Menu” with 8-10 items that – slow down here – all cost one dollar.  Looking at all of these choices displayed on my TV screen, this is the thought that ran through my mind:

  • So, what do they charge you for the Kaopectate milkshake you are going to desperately need after chowing down on those bad boys for breakfast?

Applebees introduced the “Burger Quesadilla” to its menu.  Before you get too excited, this is merely a burger where the bun is replaced by a quesadilla; on the creativity scale this ranks about where Whack-A-Mole ranks.  Naturally, Applebees shows us smiling customers eating this new culinary delight.  One woman is so agog with this new concept that she says,

“Mind blown!”

My dear.  If the concept of substituting a quesadilla for a bread roll is mind blowing, I fear for your existence.  If your brain were converted to TNT, you might not be able to clear your sinuses.

KFC spent much of the year trotting out a bunch of D-List celebrities pretending to be Colonel Sanders.  Then they concocted silly and irrelevant circumstances for each of these reincarnated colonels to make a fool of himself.  The only way this ad campaign might become even marginally interesting would be for KFC to try to pass off Kermit the Frog as “the real Colonel Sanders”.

There is an annoying ad for Subway where a couple marks important dates in their life by which Subway sandwich is on sale on that day of the week.  For example, they named their daughter Terry because she was born on the day that the chicken teriyaki sandwich was discounted.  These mouthbreathers are annoying on top of being stupid.

 

Memo to Subway:  Annoying and stupid is not the exacta you should seek for the “characters” in your ads.

 

JP Morgan Chase has a retirement planning service ad that shows a couple with a pig on a leash walking around town.  The theme of the ad is that you should be able to live your life the way you want to live your life and if that means having a pet pig on a leash, well, mazel tov!  At the end of the ad, the couple – still with the pig on its leash – go into a bank to speak to a banker.  Look, I will be happy to take this ad off the Bad Ads list and retract my statement that this is abjectly stupid as soon as I see a real banker dealing with real customers who have a real pig on a leash in an actual bank.

Car manufacturers seem to revel in producing and showing dumb ads.  Let me begin with the one for the Audi Q-7.  According the disembodied voice in the ad, the car demonstrates that “a higher form of intelligence has arrived.”  Immediately I begin to wonder what this sedan got on the SATs but those thoughts went away quickly because what I see on the screen is the car clipping along at a high rate of speed on a foggy road.  Perhaps what the meant to say is that the car is a higher form of intelligence as compared to a boulder.

Audi decided to double down on this theme and by the time Spring arrived, they were not only asserting that this car was highly intelligent, they were declaring that intelligence is the new rock and roll.  It is jarring when an ad touting intelligence says something so trivially inane.  If I told you that I think intelligence is the new kielbasa, would that be any dumber than what Audi was trying to tell me?

Matthew McConaughey was back again this year doing creepy ads for Lincolns.  The creepiest – and the dumbest – one involves him dressed in suit walking to the edge of a swimming pool and doing a backwards belly-flop into the water fully dressed.  Question:

  • How and/or why is that supposed to motivate anyone to think about buying a Lincoln?

Equally low on the intellectual scale you will find the “Chevy Focus Group Ads”.  This series of ads features “real people not actors” with the group led by a facilitator with a mellifluous voice who says nothing important.  Actually, that is a good thing because the evident IQ level of the focus group participants suggests that Chevy spent a lot of time searching for people who live under the left side of the bell curve.

In the category of abjectly annoying ads for automobiles, all I have to do is to put two things in juxtaposition:

  1. Toyota Corolla
  2. You Don’t Own Me.

Right about now, I suspect you have just finished shaking off a sensation similar to the one most folks feel when they hear fingernails scraping on a blackboard…

There is a local car dealer here in the DC area who brags that he only sells “certified pre-owned cars”.  Really?  You take the time to certify for me that the car has had a previous owner?  Why is that important?  What this guy sells are “Used Cars”; you can probably deduce that from the fact that most of them are models from 2 or 3 years ago.

There is a radio ad for one of the online universities that says they provide each student with access to a “success coach”.  Maybe this university should teach a course in “redundancy”.  Have you ever heard of a coach whose mission was to teach you how to fail?

Coors had a mercifully short ad campaign where they touted their beer as “tough but fair”.  I tried to understand what those adjectives meant with respect to beer.  Here is the best I could come up with:

  • Coors is tough to drink because it is a fair-to-middling beer.

I am sure that the good folks at Coors and their ad agency has something else in mind…

Even dumber than the Coors ad campaign was one for Shock Top Beer.  Some guy in a bar is lured into a staring contest with a Shock Top Beer tap.  Not surprisingly, the beer tap wins the contest.  Message for the consumer?

  • You have to be as dumb as toast to drink Shock Top Beer.

Southwest Airlines now touts their Transfarency.  This can mean “low fares with no added fees” and it can mean that you can use your reward miles “any way you want it/anytime you need it”.  Here is the problem.  The ads have fine print on the bottom of the images on the screen – really small fine print.  If you look quickly you can see that “Rules and Regulations apply” which means that these ads are not as “transfarent” as they would like you to believe.

e-Trade had an ad where they used a “Benedict Arnold character” as someone to hawk their online trading product because – after all – Benedict Arnold knows all about being a traitor – er trader.  Maybe this would be clever to a third-grade class; maybe not.  One thing is for sure, Benedict Arnold is not a warm and fuzzy figure of American history and culture.  People who think using a stylized Benedict Arnold as a spokesperson for their product might someday take the next step and try using a stylized Pontius Pilate.  That would be a breakthrough in lunacy…

I will close this year’s compendium of bad ads with one that is local to the DC area.  One of our local stations “guarantees their weather forecast will be accurate to within 3 degrees.”  This is multi-level stupid.  Let me count the ways:

What does “guarantee” mean here?  What would I as a viewer receive as a recompense if the forecast was off by 4 degrees?  The answer is simple; I would get nothing.

Now that I know this station offers meaningless guarantees, my trust in its product is on shaky ground.  So, why should I tune in to see its next big investigative report that it will be touting someday if I don’t trust what the station says?

Back to the weather … When I hear a forecast and it says tomorrow’s high temperature will be 96 degrees, I realize that tomorrow is going to be uncomfortably hot.  Do I care if it is only 92 degrees or if it is 100 degrees – thereby falling outside the “guaranteed range”?  Not really; I will still be uncomfortable.  Here is what I want from a weather forecast where accuracy is important – and none of it has to do with a temperature range:

  1. Rain or no rain
  2. Snow/sleet/wintry mix or no snow/sleet/wintry mix.
  3. If “Snow”, then how much?  There is a huge difference between 2 inches and 16 inches.

In closing, let me offer all of you a chance to purchase a product that I guarantee will be effective and will make your life easier and more pleasant.  For three easy payments of $29.95 I will send you a giant spray can of Unicorn Repellant.  Never again will you need to clean up those annoying unicorn droppings from your yard; never again will you have the paint scraped from your house due to unicorn horns; never again will you be awakened in the middle of the night with unicorn cries as they play leap-frog in your back yard.  If you ever see a unicorn in your yard after using my repellant spray, just send us back the unused portion and we’ll refund your money.  One dose of my unicorn spray will last for weeks.  If you hurry and order now, I’ll double the offer and send you two giant spray cans of Unicorn Repellant; just pay additional shipping and handling.  But wait; there’s more …

Actually, there isn’t any more.  Those are all the ads from last year that I found annoying or stupid or ineffective.  As is always the case, I wish that the folks in creative at the ad agencies and the folks who deal with those people from the product side would make a New Year’s resolution to make ads more entertaining and less silly for 2017.  As is always the case, I doubt that’s gonna happen – – meaning I will be back doing this sort of thing again next December.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

A Reader’s Question Answered …

About a week ago, I mentioned that Leicester City had won the English Premier League last year but was down in the table near the “relegation zone” at the halfway mark of this year’s season.  A reader wondered in a comment to that rant if a Premier League Champion had ever been relegated the next year.  I said that was something I would need time to check and would not get that sort of time until after the Holidays.  I was wrong.  At a Holiday Gathering last week, I met a man who was born and raised in England who has been in the US for more than 25 years and is now a US citizen; his upbringing has led him to be a devoted follower of English Football and not American Football.  So, I asked him the question about a champion being relegated the next year…

The answer to the very specific question is no; that has never happened in the Premier League which has only been in existence since 1992.  However, he said that before 1992, the top level of English Football was the First Division and there was a First Division champion that was relegated after the next season.  The team suffering that fate was Manchester City; my informant recalled that the year was in the “mid-1930s”; I have subsequently confirmed that Manchester City was the First Division champion for the 1936/37 season and then finished in the “bottom 3” and was sent down after the 1937/38 season.

So, now we know …

I took the occasion of this conversation with my newfound soccer maven to ask the obverse question.  I said that I suspected it was not nearly so rare for a team relegated in one year to finish atop the league below and be promoted after the following season.  He said that happens regularly “to the point where I pay it no mind”.

So, now we know the obverse too …

Back in the time when the Cubs and the Indians were playing in the World Series, lots of folks adopted the mantra that the fans of both teams were loyal and long-suffering fans due to the long time between championships for either team.  As I read those sorts of reports and heard that line of commentary, I formed an image in my mind that equated the fans in Chicago and the fans in Cleveland in terms of their ardor for their teams and their levels of frustration.

There are data, however, that suggest that is not the case.

  • In 2016, the Cubs drew 39,906 fans per game.  That is 96.7% of capacity.
  • In 2016, the Indians drew 19,650 fans per game.  That is 55.8% of capacity.

Moreover, the percent of capacity figure for the Indians is “inflated somewhat” by the fact that the field has been lowering seating capacity each year since 2008 when there were about 8300 more seats in the stadium than there are today.  In terms of average attendance per game for 2016, the Indians were 28th in MLB and this was a year when the team was in contention from the start of the season all the way to the 7th game of the World Series.  Only two teams in MLB had a lower average attendance:

  1. Oakland A’s drew about 900 fewer fans per game than the Indians.  The A’s were never in contention and the A’s play in a stadium about as appealing as a dumpster.
  2. Tampa Bay Rays drew about 3800 fewer fans per game than the Indians.  The Rays were never serious contenders in 2016 and the Rays almost always have the worst attendance in MLB.

If in any way “fan passion” and “fan loyalty” are reflected in ticket buying and game attendance, it would seem to me that the fans in Cleveland have gotten a lot of credit that they may not deserve…

I don’t know about you, but my cable TV provider gives me access to at least 100 – if not 200 – channels that I never watch and am never tempted to watch.  Generally, I do not stand up and cheer when I hear about the birth of a new channel or its delivery by my cable provider.  Then there is the case where I hear about a new channel that just makes me shake my head in wonderment…

The IOC, the USOC and NBC Universal have formed some sort of holy alliance to bring to life the “Olympic Channel; Home of Team USA”.  This entity will come to exist in 2017 and will provide “year-round Olympic-sport programming” from all over the world with the emphasis being on US athletes and teams.  This is an adjunct to something called the “Olympic Channel” which evidently exists out there in TV land – or perhaps in a galaxy far away.

Most of the folks I know do not follow many – if any – Olympic sports for the first three years after the closing ceremonies of an Olympic Games.  If you asked a random person on the street today about luge competitions or Greco-Roman wrestling or synchronized diving, my guess is that you would observe a lot of blank stares.  My guess is that with the launch of “Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA” that situation will change not at all.

If this channel is going to be on the air 168 hours a week every week for all the time between the times of marginal interest in most Olympic sports, one of two things has to happen:

  1. There will be a whole lot of repeat programming for various competitions…
  2. There will be created a whole lot of features getting “up close and personal” with athletes and coaches in obscure sports all of which will contain stories of the trials, struggles and challenges facing those athletes and coaches.  Then those feature stories will be repeated over and over and over too…

Finally, instead of trying to end this rant on a light note as I usually try to do, I need to end this one on a downer.  I have learned that Dwight Perry’s column, Sideline Chatter, will be canceled by the Seattle Times as of January 1, 2017.  Evidently, the impetus behind this decision is cost-cutting at the paper.  Since I often use items from Sideline Chatter here, I will miss the column because it was a fertile ground for material.  On a more general level, I will miss it because it is a genre that is not commonly found in sports sections around the country these days; there used to be a bunch of so-called “notes columns” but many have fallen by the wayside.

I want to say thank you and good fortune to Dwight Perry for all his columns – his last one will be the 3,704th Sideline Chatter.  I believe that Dwight Perry will continue to be the night editor who puts the sports section together for the Seattle Times.  If anyone here wants to say thank you to Dwight Perry, his e-mail address can be found at the bottom of each Sideline Chatter column.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Admin Note – Writing Plans – The Next 10-12 Days

Here is what I hope I will be able to do over the next 10-12 days:

  • I want to do a rant on Monday 26 December.
  • I want to do the annual “Bad Ads” compendium sometime next week.
  • I want to do an abbreviated version of Mythical Picks on Friday or Saturday next week

Note I did not say was certain that I would be able to do those things; those are my basic objectives.  If things break right in terms of family/social commitments, I might be able to sneak in some other writings.  If not, I plan to be back on the air in “regular mode” on 5 January 2017.

Stay well, everyone…

 

Two Things Today…

I am going to take the opportunity of an uncertain writing schedule for the next week or ten days to clean two items off my clipboard that have been gathering dust.  Normally springtime is the region of the calendar for such tidying up but these things will not survive until then.  So, here goes…

The NCAA has sent a “notice of allegations” to Rutgers University indicating that the NCAA believes the Rutgers football program committed 7 violations of the NCAA rules in the last five years.  One allegation is that an assistant coach committed an academic violation pointedly aimed at keeping a player eligible and that another coach had some improper recruiting contacts and that there may have been some hanky-panky going on between recruits and “football hostesses”.  It is all rather run-of-the-mill stuff and the allegations all focus on events under the previous head coach and coaching staff.  You can read the report about all this here.

I can imagine that many of you are wondering why this is even marginally interesting.  Think about it for a moment.  Rutgers football was – allegedly – skirting the rules in recruiting and in maintaining eligibility for players who went onto the football field this year and soiled themselves on a fairly regular basis.  Those guys could not even cheat effectively.  Last season, Rutgers was 2-10 and for the season, this was the composite score:

 

Opponents  450  Rutgers  178

 

Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald had this comment related to Rutgers football recently:

“At halftime of the Big Ten championship game, two students competed to see who could throw the most footballs through a giant Dr. Pepper can. This is also how Rutgers made it into the conference.”

The latest brouhaha regarding the NBA came about a week ago, when the Cavaliers went to play the Grizzlies in Memphis for the only time this season.  People in the area bought tickets to see the Cavs and specifically to see LeBron James; after all, fans of the Grizzlies do not get to see a player of that ability on a routine basis.  The problem is that the Cavs decided to give some players a day off on the occasion of that game in Memphis.  The Cavs did not even bring LeBron James or Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love to Memphis.  Fans who paid “premium game prices” for tix did not even get to see those guys sitting in street clothes in the bench area.  The fans sort of felt like they had been “baited and switched”.  Truth be told, they were…

However, the anger seemed to be directed at LeBron James for this fan unhappiness.  LeBron is 31 years old and since the Cavs’ objective for this year is to defend their NBA Championship, it is reasonable that he will get some time off during the season.  His real work does not even begin until late April 2017.  He is not the perpetrator of the “bait and switch” since he did not suggest to the Grizzlies that they put the premium price tag on the tix for that game nor does he have any obligation to the folks who own or run the Grizzlies.

More than a few commentators have said that the NBA “needs to do something about this”.  I heard exactly no suggested “somethings to be done” that were enforceable or even particularly practical.  Personally, I think the problem is rooted – as is generally the case – in money.  The NBA plays an 82-game regular season schedule and most players need time off during the season for some “mini-R&R time”.  If the regular season were shorter, most of those players would not need the time off and there would be less complaining about scheduling that involved back-to-back games.  However, this is the point where money enters the arena.  If the NBA were to cut the regular season to – let me pick a number and say 58 games, home-and-home with every other team in the league – there are 2 certainties:

  1. Revenue would go down.
  2. The owners would not do that willingly and the players would not like the reduced salary cap.

So, there you have it.  This is a “problem” that is not going to go away.  So, the next time it happens, can we please not revisit the same discussions we had this time?  This is a financial/economic issue and it will not be resolved based on a new rule from the NBA Front Office with or without the concurrence of the NBPA.

Since the Cavs also left Kevin Love at home for that game in Memphis, let me include this comment about Kevin Love from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Being nephew of the Beach Boys’ Mike Love has its advantages, but it doesn’t necessarily extend to musical skills.

“Cleveland forward Kevin Love says he went through a teen phase when he hounded his parents into buying him a guitar for Christmas.

“’It’s safe to say that didn’t last long … maybe two weeks,’ Love told SI.com.

“So sad when you realize all you’re ever going to be is a 6-foot-10 multimillionaire ballplayer.”

Finally, another definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Accountant:  One of a mysterious race of mole people who resurface once a quarter and charge you to use Quicken.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………