Butler 59, Evil Empire 61

First, the irrational stuff. Thanks to the refs for making this happen.

Section 4. Intentional Personal Fouling
Guidelines for calling the intentional personal foul are:
a. Any personal foul that is not a legitimate attempt to directly play the ball
or a player is an intentional personal foul.

Yes, that's what the rule book says, and no, this is not an intentional foul. Why not? Because.

Zoubek is a fouling machine, clearly commits his fifth foul, no call is made, and on the next possession, he scores a basket that turns out to be the final margin.

Okay, I feel better. Now for the real analysis.

For the fourth straight game, Butler clearly outplayed a team that was considered to be better than them. Once again, they did not play their bast basketball, and yet they still had chances to win. Despite the poor officiating (which I will grant was not totally one-sided: there was one sequence early in the second half where Butler was determined to commit fouls and the refs were equally determined not to call any).

With the exception of Zoubek's usual moving elbow picks and the thugging by Thomas, there weren't too many egregious calls or non-calls. Butler let this one get away by missing a number of open shots in the first half and by failing to drive well in the second. They had the right idea (to drive inside and keep picking up fouls on Duke's bigs), but the Devils played it very well and simply let them drive, waiting to block low shots or simply giving up uncontested layups, most of which were shot by off-balance players expecting contact.

Butler took more shots from the field, had more free throws, got more offensive rebounds, forced more turnovers, and shot better from outside the arc. I doubt Coach K will say it, but they got lucky tonight. Butler showed that they absolutely belonged here, that regardless of how they got here, they deserved it. This is no Hoosiers remake; Butler is more like, well, Duke.

Younger people may not realize that Duke was in a similar position in the early '90s, when they first made the transition from underdog to champion. The difference is that Duke is in the ACC and thus has access to much better resources (TV contracts, for example). Butler has no such leverage. They will have to work hard to retain what they have.

And retain it they should. Butler may be going to Houston next year ... now, a lot of good teams don't make it to the Final Four, if for no other reason than, well, only four teams can go, but the Bulldogs should have the talent on the court and the sidelines to get there.

It was a great season that nearly finished with a storybook ending. Weeks earlier, Evan Turner hit a similar shot just a few blocks away to pull out a last-second win in the Big Ten tournament, a game that ultimately meant nothing to the Buckeyes (who were still a 2 seed despite being regular season co-champs and tournament champions). How different things would have been if that shot had been the one that missed.

Finally, CBS did probably the worst job of covering the tournament in history, considering the advances in technology that should have made more things possible. Completely oblivious to said history, one of the talking heads made the statement that this final was better than others, even some of the overtime ones. (That's about as stupid as you can get. CBS? It's Rumeal Robinson on line 1. He'd like to speak to you about that. Oh, and Wilt Chamberlain is holding on line 2. I think Frank McGuire is with him.)

The new camera angles were, without exception, hideous. I can't think of a worse angle than one that shows the court top to bottom. Hello, CBS: we're watching on wide screens now. Jim Nantz doing the Final Four is kind of like Pam Ward calling it for ESPN. Nantz is a golf announcer. He can't do basketball. That's not his style. He has no idea how to get excitement into the game. I mean, this is the network that employs Gus Johnson, for goodness sake. You know, the guy who can inject excitement into, well, a golf tournament? He even did the regional final with Butler and Kansas State. Where was he? Not doing play-by-play. When ESPN gets the tournament, they have to take Johnson.

The talking heads stuck to the script that was given them, even when Butler was clearly dominating play in the first half. Seth Davis was the only one, I think, who even noticed what Butler was doing to Duke. Of course, afterward they were falling all over themselves to point out how Butler was right there the whole time. This is why we don't listen nearly as much to mass media.

Split-screen action in the first four rounds? None. Random switches between games? Check. Blacking out games that aren't shown locally? Check. Complete incompetence? Check. CBS proved beyond a doubt why over-the-air networks can't handle sports any more. The three major leagues plus the NCAA should chip in and start providing better, cheaper broadband to people so they can watch games online and then cut out the over-the-air networks entirely. (The NHL doesn't have the money or the intelligence to do so.) We'd all be better off with a network that doesn't insert blocks of dead time so they can show you the local "news". (There was severe weather in the Indianapolis area. I think we were all concerned that they would "helpfully" break in with the report of a tornado sighted 100 miles away or something like that.)

In a just world, ESPN would cover a 65-team tournament and not screw it up, talking heads would actually go out on a limb from time to time ... and Butler is the 2010 national champion. But I guess that's not how it's going to go down.

MLB 10: goal fail

Well, over three or four advancement periods, I didn't do very well. I had a nice post about this saved, but Blogger lost it. Thanks.

I was brought in as an emergency catcher once. Catching is interesting, but as in the field, MLB 10 doesn't want to burden you with what you should actually be doing. For example, on a ground ball to the left side, you aren't supposed to back up the throw to first, even though the sim catcher does. You should stand at home plate in case, well, I don't know.

Anyway, I got pushed back to a backup role, then started again almost immediately when a guy in front of me got hurt. And now I failed at another set of goals (although I am hitting better), but they don't care as much because I'm just a "backup".

Sometimes it's interesting to see the different areas in which you're expected to improve, but honestly they're all pretty much related. If you do well, you can improve just about any attribute; struggle, and you'll not get enough points to improve your attributes. Basically, the more goals you have, the greater success/failure you'll have.

It's fun so far, and I'm learning about how to do things, but I'm not making a lot of progress yet. Maybe next year.

MLB 10: current goals

So here's something they do: they give you a set of goals to achieve in a certain amount of time. Some of them are stat-related (get 6 hits in 8 series). Some are attribute-related (improve your contact vs. right-handed pitching by X). At the end of the period, you're evaluated. If you do well, your manager and general manager are happy, and you might earn a promotion. If not, well, let's find out ... the manager wasn't happy. Good thing it was the "first time".

I had 8 series to do six things. Two of them were failures: draw a walk (hey, it's hard, they have to throw balls) and strike out fewer than 15 times (18 ... good thing they increased it from 8 halfway through). The other four were reasonable. I increased my contact vs. LHP and RHP (they're tied together, so that wasn't hard), got the hits (11), but didn't improve my bunting enough (why bunt? bunting is for weak bats).

Next goals: in 7 series, improve contact vs. RHP (no problem), plate discipline (no problem), get 28 total bases (hmm) and have an OBP of .360 or higher (uh). Oh, and draw 5 walks. Right. That would be 5 more than my career total.

Virtual me, baseball style

I broke down and got MLB 10: The Show, partly because its create-your-own-player thing was really good and, well, partly because my friends enjoy the create-your-own-player thing.

So I made a me, a 21-year-old third baseman (about half my age, but who cares?), and put him in the Detroit organization at AA Erie.

Hitting is hard. I strike out a lot. But I finally figured out that I need to start looking for specific pitches (when you guess a pitch correctly, you know just before it leaves the pitcher's hand, so if you know the pitch and you see where it starts, you can tell where it should finish). I struck out twice in three PAs early in the game, but I ripped a 3-2 pitch down the line in right for a double in the seventh, and in the ninth, with none out and the tying run on base, I guessed first-pitch fastball and put it down about 350 feet away, just over the right field wall. 4-3 Erie victory. (Somehow I wasn't player of the game.)

You get training points for good things and lose them for bad things (like throwing to the wrong base – grr, not my fault ... well okay maybe it was). Of course I got no bonus for the game-winning hit because the manager didn't need me to get a hit there, but lost points for the two times I struck out instead of driving in a run. (It's a cool way to do things, because sometimes you'll get credit for a small thing in a big situation. It's just funny right now.)

More to come later. Hopefully I'll learn a little more and move up to AAA Toledo soon ...

Thoughts on the Duke game

Purdue had a good run, Kramer and Grant had fine careers, Wohlford did what was asked of him, which is a lot more than most people in that situation might do. Good job, guys, and thanks for all you've done. Let's get ready for next season.

• CBS' production is, quite possibly, the worst I have ever seen in the 25 years I can remember watching the tournament. ESPN might actually start televising the tournament starting tomorrow. The hanging-six-feet-in-the-air-at-midcourt angle is atrocious. They still haven't done any split-screen action, and I don't think they even bother to tell people when they cut in or out.
• I don't think the officials understand what a moving screen is. Zoubek not only slid but initiated contact with Kramer on the play that probably gave him a concussion, and not only didn't get a foul, the Duke player with the ball also initiated contact, and yet the foul was called on the defender. I guess that's why I don't really do organized sports. I would be the guy who, on the next Duke possession, would wait for Zoubek to set a screen and then kick his foot out from under him or kick his knee by "accident" or something.
• I have Baylor in the Fracas. I'm not worried about Friday's game at all.
• While the officiating was, for the most part, atrocious, it had very little to do with the result. Purdue lost in large part because they ran their offense very poorly. Duke would apply pressure and the non-Johnson players would look around for Robbie Hummel to get open. With a solid point guard and better spacing, Purdue could have beaten this team. Also, Kramer returned to human form, by which I mean the guy who refuses to take outside shots and only puts up little-guy layups. Purdue can't afford to be playing 4-on-5 when the offense is struggling.
• The BWW in Fishers is going downhill fast. They finally replaced their junky old-school TVs with HD screens, but that just makes their old, fading projectors look that much worse. We saw only one of the two early games because apparently it's too hard to get the manager to bother with setting channels on TVs. In the corner where we were, there was one big-screen and two smaller screens. The one on the right had to be on the same game as the big screen for reasons unknown to normal people (the screens on either side practically touch the big screen, it's not like you can only see one) and the one on the left was showing Colin Cowherd display his utter lack of intelligence. Naturally, I couldn't get any wireless access: Harborlink is by far the worst provider I've seen at a restaurant, and this time the proxy server was redirecting requests through some other site that also sucked. I have friends that pick BWW out of habit, but it may be time to cut our losses.
• Duke sucks.

Only ESPN ...

would be stupid enough to believe that expanding the NCAA tournament is a good idea. However, with CBS apparently incapable of maintaining the quality of their telecasts, to say nothing of actually bothering to improve their coverage from year to year, the odds are good that the NCAA will opt out of the contract after this season and put it up for bid, and you can count on one pointy little finger the number of networks who ought to be bidding for it.

Breaking for local news? Please. That was stupid 20 years ago. Staggering Saturday and Sunday games so that at times we have only one (incredibly boring) game and at others we have no game at all? Incompetent. Repeatedly showing promos for the same four shows that CBS can't get anyone else to watch either? Lame.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that with ESPN bidding on it, one of the carrots they will dangle is that they would be willing to show an extra 31 games, essentially having two "first rounds".

Obviously, this is stupid. Why? Let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Timing. Right now, schools have only days to prepare for a trip to one of eight cities for Thursday or Friday games; two schools actually have to make it to Dayton on Tuesday when the selection show is Sunday. This is not easy.

If the tournament is expanded, there will be two choices. One is to play all 32 games the same week as the first and second rounds; this is, of course, beyond stupid, because there's no way you'd get all those teams to sites by Tuesday and Wednesday, even if you simply played the opening round at first-round sites. Eventually it would screw up. The other option is to play the opening round the weekend before the first and second rounds, which means a dead week before the actual tournament, and that's also stupid.

Cost. Regionals, in general, will sell out (except for 2009, when 20% of seats were unsold). The Final Four obviously does. The early rounds do not. In general, two rules apply: somewhere between 10% and 20% of early-round tickets do not get sold, and if you don't have games in Indianapolis, you're going to have attendance issues. The five highest attendance marks for first-round sessions are all from the RCA Dome. Lest you think it's simply a size issue, the fifth-best attendance mark is 27,959. There are plenty of places with that many seats, but outside Indiana, you won't fill them. (And the third- through fifth-best sessions did not include either Indiana or Purdue, in case you were wondering.)

Dayton hosts the current opening-round game because it's the only place that draws attendance for it, and even at that, it's weak. They had 11,346 in 2009, a record high, but only 8,205 in 2010. If you have separate opening-round sites, you have to find seven more cities that can sell opening-round games, which seems pretty much a no-go because they couldn't find any others as it is. If you have them at first- and second-round sites, you have the same problem they have now (attendance outside of Indy isn't great), except it'll be multiplied.

Dilution. Have you seen the NIT bracket? It's a few regular-season conference champions and a bunch of so-so teams from power conferences, with a few mid-majors thrown in so it's not a complete waste. Does anyone really want to watch two .500 teams from North Carolina? Well, that's what the ACC regular season is for. Sit down.

Almost all of the previous expansion was to serve one of two purposes: to admit additional conferences (there are now 31 automatic qualifiers) or to include teams that could possibly contend for a title but didn't qualify because of the small number of at-large bids available. In 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, it was mostly to provide every team with the same number of possible games (as opposed to the previous steps that added spots only for new conferences).

With very, very few exceptions, the teams who could win are the teams that are in. For the most part, those additional teams are going to be the .500 teams that slogged their way through the regular season and conference tournaments without doing anything of note ... and now we're to include them in a tournament game?

That won't be the only effect on the field. It isn't like they're going to take the worst automatic qualifiers and leave them as 16 seeds. If one of those teams pulls off an upset as a 24 seed, they'll get an 8 seed in the next round. Yeah. Think about that for a minute. (Of course they could bump seeds up like they do in professional playoffs, but I doubt that's going to happen.)

And then what happens to the NIT? It barely has enough teams to run as it is. What do you think ESPN would do then? Remember, they have the broadcast rights for the NIT now. Good luck working that one out. (I don't care about the other tournaments: they're meaningless and everyone knows it.)

Look, it's not going to devalue the regular season. This isn't football: basketball has always had a regular season of significant length, and regular-season fun didn't disappear when the NCAA first handed out at-large bids. It's going to devalue conference tournaments even more than they've already been weakened. (Look at the Big Ten and Big East. Yeah, West Virginia and Ohio State won and are still around, but Purdue, Syracuse, and Michigan State played like feces, and they also managed to make the Sweet Sixteen.) You think coaches of good teams are going to try when they know they're in no matter what? Do you think Minnesota's going to play hard if they're a 12 seed out of 24 rather than a 12 seed out of possibly 11? (meaning that the last at-large spot at the time might have gone to an 11 seed)

I would love for ESPN to take back control of the tournament and show it properly, but let's be honest: the Worldwide Leader isn't exactly known for its overall broadcast acumen. After all, this is the company that continues to support Around the Horn. Can we count on them to make the right proposal?

Keep the tournament at 65. (Heck, make it 64. Cut out one of the at-large spots. We don't need those teams.) Don't ruin it for everyone.

Friday tournament recap

One day, four games, three bars ... it's more than a normal person can handle, but I've proven myself to be exceptionally good at maxing out on sports. Thus I give you ... Friday at the Big Ten Tournament.

10:30 AM: Parking for $5.50. Not bad. One block closer, it's the same kind of lot and $20. You figure it out. We walk toward Conseco, trying to find a decent place for breakfast, lunch, or some other meal that can be served a) now or b) shortly after now.

Buffalo Wings & Rings is the choice, the Northwestern bar. (This means it's empty; apparently Northwestern does not travel well.) It's open at 10:45, which is pretty cool considering that it really opens at 10. They couldn't take food orders yet, but who cares? Soft drinks and seats.

They have nine sauce types and five levels of heat. Based on a tip from one of the bartenders, I go with Extra Hot instead of Hot with the Cajun sauce. An excellent blend, still milder than a hot BWW sauce ... 5 boneless, curly fries and a drink for $8.

12:00 PM: In our seats for tipoff, Game 1: #1 Ohio State vs. #8 Michigan. This really ought to be a blowout, except a) Thad Matta can't coach his way out of a wet paper bag at Ohio State and b) Michigan actually played these guys pretty close last time out. It does, in fact, turn out to be a good game.

Wireless signals are available but never work, so I check gmail with my phone. Boo to Conseco.

Ohio State isn't playing that hard. Michigan isn't playing that well. I guess they're evenly matched.

2:00 PM: Jesus. What a terrible way to lose. The only thing worse than losing like that is losing to the team with the worst-behaved fans in the Big Ten; said fans will now be crowing like they knew they had it won the whole time.

2:30 PM: Game 2, #5 Illinois vs. #4 Wisconsin. yawn. It's like watching yoga. Or mimes. We head out early and try to get seats. (There is only two hours between sessions ... this may seem like a lot until you've waited for 30 minutes to be seated and for another 20 minutes to place your order.)

By the way, when you average something like 55 points a game, you really can't fall behind by 10 or so. You're just not built to come back that far.

4:15 PM: We're at Coaches Tavern, I guess. It's not really well marked. We look for a table ... doesn't appear to be one. We stand at the door for a bit. People line up behind us. Fortunately, they're all well-behaved (meaning they aren't going to jump a table before us). We find one nestled in the back, though. Good news: we have a table. Bad news: it's in the back. (Also, Illinois hangs on to win. The Illinois person in our group survives.)

This place has good wireless, plus we could even get a signal from neighboring O'Reilly's, the Michigan bar. I catch up on email and such.

Eventually, they get the right person waiting on us, and we eat. The Albuquerque Burger: guacamole, salsa, and pepper jack. Waffle fries on the side. Thumbs up for this meal ... we had one of those bigger coupons, something like $15 off if you spend $35 or more. Decent meal and a nice rest, then back to Conseco.

6:30 PM: Game 3, #2 Purdue vs. #7 Northwestern. Quite possibly the worst Purdue game I've ever seen in person, only because this used to be a good team. (When I had season tickets at Purdue, they didn't break .500.) I avoided killing anyone around me who rooted against Purdue, the Boilers held on to win, and I could breathe again.

Why is Northwestern not in the NCAA tournament? Because they lose games like this one. And the game at IU, and the ones they lost to Penn State and Iowa ... you know, the three teams that lost on Thursday.

9:00 PM: Game 4, #3 Michigan State vs. #6 Minnesota. Purdue will face either the team that just beat them in Mackey or a team that is fighting for an NCAA bid. woo.

Michigan State, not surprisingly, becomes the fourth higher-seeded team to play like crap. They fall behind by 10 and we leave.

10:45 PM: At BWW, our third and final stop for the night. It's the Wisconsin bar, so of course there aren't many Wisconsin people here. We watch MSU fight back and force overtime, then completely crap themselves and lose. Purdue vs. Minnesota Saturday. woo.

There are drunk people from various schools. All are pretty much decent folks. (In fact, even OSU people are generally decent ... it's just that the ones that aren't are loud enough to spoil it for everyone else.) The rest of the party drinks up, I play some trivia, and then we head home.

A good night was had by ... well ... sometimes it just works out this way, you know?

Random thoughts

HTML is nice, but it doesn't type easily. I suppose I should use something that builds content more easily ... because, after all, this is my career. I can do stuff like that, you know.

Yet another reason why the NHL is not a major league outside Canada.
Even the NFL, a Neanderthal among leagues, realizes that hey, people getting hit in the head is baaaad. In the NHL, it's perfectly acceptable.

Well, to be more precise, there are probably only two people in the league who think it's acceptable, but because they are a) the commissioner (the worst in NHL history) and b) the VP responsible for discipline (the second-worst in NHL history, behind only the jerk who's now a GM and has been consistently finding players who hit like this), nothing will change.

At some point, one of two things will happen: either the NHL will realize that they can't be protected from the real world much longer and they'll actually make changes to improve player safety, or something will happen on the ice and the legal ramifications will change things forever. It may be hyperbole to talk about what happens if someone dies on the ice, but hey, in recent history there has been a player whose career was ended by this same kind of thuggery, and absolutely nothing changed as a result of that.

It's also the same league that welcomed a guy who assaulted another player with his stick. Guess what? The guy is an "enforcer", which is a hockey term for "career thug", and apparently he fits the role well. This is the image that the NHL wants to promote. Well, there you go. Maybe it does belong on Vs, right before "When Wolves Attack".

Health care reform isn't dead yet.
The President is still trying to get the word out. Some kind of reform will pass, I think, and it will take effect eventually, but it'll be much less than what we need, and as a result there will be a lot of blame. Most of it, naturally, should be on the people who oppose any change whatsoever; some of it should fall on the shoulders of those who want total change or none at all. (This is Washington, folks: nothing that involves the Senate gets done quickly.)

All I want is for it to get fixed before I really need health insurance. I have no expectations any more. Our system is completely broken and assholes who are still covered (because they're rich and have connections) want to keep it broken.

The NCAA tournament is around the corner.
Three weeks ago, I'd have said I can't wait. Then Robbie Hummel tore his ACL, and now, well, I guess it'll be fun to watch. In the meantime, off to the Big Ten tournament I go ...

Other notes

I'm still working on losing weight; I sort of put it aside for a while to focus on other things. The weather's better now, I'm getting back into Wii Fit, and so I may have more to report later. For now, just know I basically maintained over the winter. Actually, I also unlocked the pushup challenge on Wii Fit. Apparently I need more upper-body strength. (I may end up getting Wii Fit Plus too.)

The work situation is about to change dramatically, but I have no way to know in what way this will happen. I have a number of promising leads that will either all hit at once or all disappear at once. Of course, this will probably all happen next Thursday and Friday.

I tossed a small burlap-ish bag of catnip onto the couch. Naturally, the cats ignored it because it's old and it was purchased. (Free things make the best toys.) Later, I looked over at the couch and saw what looked like a small, long little hairball or not-hairball. I stood up to get a better look, but you, the clever reader, already know what happened: it was simply the bag viewed at an angle. No cleanup required. (Thankfully. There has been enough of that recently. Someone ate something she shouldn't have eaten.)

captchas don't work

At least, most of them don't. Either they're simpler and spam gets past them, or they're difficult enough that the average person struggles to read them.

I was setting up a gmail account recently and had to try 4 times to get one I could read. (Interestingly, Google's setup was poor enough that you couldn't even ask for a new image; you had to guess what was there. And then when you guessed wrong, it cleared the password you had set up for it. stupid.)

I don't understand why people use the twisty-word type of captcha. It really doesn't help anything.

And Facebook's check is timed, for some stupid reason ... you can request more words, but in the time it took for me to type and click OK, I had to repeat the process. Also stupid.

Security does not work when it is harder on the user than on the criminal.

NHL 10: Late December '09

Hey, with the real-life NHL in full swing, I've picked up NHL 10 again ...

Three games this week: hosting San Jose, hosting some team I don't recognize, and at Colorado. Oh, Columbus is the middle one. Didn't recognize the logo at all.

December 21st: I made a nice play in the first, fishing a puck out of the crease (and nearly putting it in) and taking it to safety ... didn't mark Marleau well and gave up a goal, then got off the ice a second before we equalized. We got the third goal in the first minute of the second period (on the same shift where I knocked down Joe Thornton). Two more later and we cruised to an easy win.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, +1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: W 5-1 vs. San Jose
Grade: A- (A+/A-/B)

December 23rd: Tough game ... actually went to a shootout. Naturally, I missed my shot ... they won, 2-1 after 4 shots.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, -1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 0 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: L 2-3 SO vs. Columbus
Grade: B (A+/B+/C)

Four points out of 8th ... easily in the playoff hunt, but we need to keep winning, especially against Western Conference teams.

December 26th: gave up a silly goal in the slot when I didn't check my man, then we lost in OT when they scored a power-play goal. One of our D went down with a first-period injury, so I got a lot of ice time: 40:41, second-most on the team (my partner had 47 minutes).

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, even, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 0 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: L 1-2 OT at Colorado
Grade: A- (A+/B+/A-)

woot! Moved up to the second pair.

Three games this week: Chicago on Tuesday, Anaheim on Thursday, Vancouver on Saturday.

December 29th: we scored twice on one shift, then I got a third plus when the defense changed before the forwards did. Gave up a bad goal on a turnover, but it didn't matter.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, +2, 1 shot (I think, I looked in the wrong place for SOG), 0 PIM, 1 hit, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 4-1 vs. Chicago
Grade: A- (A+/B/A-)

December 31st: gave up a bad goal, took a crap penalty (interference, thought I was finishing my check), but played well other than that. Easy win: Selanne took a major plus game misconduct for slashing, and that was that.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, +2, 1 shot, 2 PIM, 3 hits
Result: W 6-2 vs. Anaheim
Grade: A (A+/B+/A+)

Random thoughts

The US rolls into the gold-medal game.
Anticlimactic. The Finns looked completely overmatched ... you'd never guess that these were the top two teams remaining in the draw. (Yes, in case you've not been paying attention, #2 Sweden and #3 Russia are out. It's #6 Canada and #7 Slovakia to decide who will face the Americans Sunday.)

And despite all that, Gary Bettman is still too stupid to realize how valuable this is for the sport. Maybe it's because he's afraid that people will actually like hockey if they watch it; that would explain the contract with Vs. (And with NBC, the least-competent sports network in history. Why Bettman thought it was a good idea to pay NBC to show NHL games, I'll never know.) Obviously the NHL needs to stop for the 2014 Olympics in Russia, which means Bettman will probably be "negotiating" this until 2013. I hope he retires before he completely destroys the NHL.

Jim Bunning is a stupid prick.
Sorry, there's no other way to put it. It will be a boost for the Republicans when this jackass is out of office. (It'll be a boost for America too; I would guess there is at least one rational Republican in Kentucky. Whether or not he or she runs for the Senate is anyone's guess.)

Purdue's dream is over.
There are a lot of ways to look at this (I recommend the link that shows what to look for when someone goes down with a knee injury), but it boils down to this: prior to the injury, Purdue's ceiling was a national championship, and their floor was probably an Elite Eight appearance. Now, the ceiling is probably a Final Four appearance, and the floor is a second-round NCAA loss. Even if Keaton Grant continues to play solid basketball, that leaves Purdue with three productive players and a lot of smaller parts, and if they face a team that can limit at least two of the productive players, it'll be very difficult for the Boilers to win.

Watch how Purdue handles their next two big games, at home against Michigan State and then their Saturday game in the Big Ten tournament ... those are the most favorable matchups against good teams Purdue is likely to have. If the Boilers look bad in either or both games, or if they lose any others (the conference wrapups against Indiana and Penn State or the Friday tournament game), sell your Final Four tickets.

The Free Press is full of lying liars and doesn't care if you know or not.
Michigan is not going to be crushed under the NCAA's thumb. Rich Rodriguez is not Satan. Mistakes were made, perhaps some bad decisions were made, but it is not what the Freep would have you believe, not that this bothers them in the slightest.

The Freep is out to get Rodriguez and Michigan, much as the Indianapolis Star likes to crap on Purdue at every opportunity, although in this particular instance the Freep has crossed into territory not even Bob Kravitz will occupy.

Follow the link above and read some other mgoblog posts about the situation. You'll see what I mean.

How can I be so confident? Even OSU blogs agree with mgoblog. Basically, sane people believe that a) Michigan is getting screwed by this coverage while b) USC is getting away with pretty much everything. An OSU blog (and coach, by the way) supporting UM? Dogs and cats, living together. Yep, it's the apocalypse.

Poor form design

Even Google gets things wrong sometimes. (I don't mean like Buzz. That's more like "Even Google completely nukes a section of the internets and then attempts to apologize later, as if words could somehow make up for the incredibly stupid decisions they made.")

Have you nominated your area to be a test market for Google's reported 1 Bbps fiber service? You should. I did, and when I submitted the form, Google politely told me that while they'd saved my information on the page (good), there was something I had to correct ...

One of the boxes could contain no more than 384 characters.

Why 384? Who knows. (Typically it's 255; you may get smaller numbers if they do something to the text going in or coming out, and I suppose this could be a natural-language field, but I digress.) The point is that they showed me a restriction after I submitted the form ... and not only that, they didn't even tell me how much I had to change.

This is very bad practice. First, you should do this checking prior to form submission so that you don't make the user waste a step. We don't like trying things that don't work. (Google is notorious for low-load pages ... but then they have AJAX to bring up search tips and such, so why would they not use JavaScript here?) Second, if there is a problem, tell the user exactly what it is, and if possible, make recommendations to fix it. Tell me how many characters I've typed. Don't make me copy the text into Word just to count it. Better yet, add code to the text box to show me exactly how much room I have.

Ah, Google. Just like the rest of us, aren't you?

Curling? Really?

Sure.

Pros:

Definitely a sport (scoring involved)
Lots of strategy
Casual people can actually play it
Slower pace allows explanation of strategy

Cons:

Unfamiliar to many Americans
Ruined by commercials

Wait, what? Ruined?

Yes. NBC is making the same mistake that networks made with soccer for 20-30 years in the US, repeatedly killing its televised popularity as participation in the sport soared. (This would be akin to buying a home above list price these days.) Just as ESPN tried to force soccer into their standard sporting template during the World Cup and got bashed repeatedly for ignoring live action, NBC cuts away from live play to show commercials in the middle of an end, usually not even bothering to show the shots you missed while they were away. The stranger part is that they'll come back from commercial after the 5th end (the halfway point), then cut to commercials again, then miss the first couple of rocks in the 6th.

If you want to increase the popularity of a sport on television, you have to show it in a manner that supports the sport. NBC, of course, is the network least capable of doing this on the planet, and thus we get the exact opposite.

Look, more people in the US are going to be watching the Olympics right now than would watch all of the individual sports combined during the years in between. Now is the chance to teach people about it ... show something like Canada vs. Great Britain, so you've got skilled teams with the crowd reacting to each shot, and show the whole thing. Talk about strategy, scoring, everything. Get people involved. And instead of burying your snout even deeper in the trough of advertising money, lift your piggy head, take a deep breath, and let the sport speak for itself. We've already seen the same commercials 20 times over anyway: the Olympics are just like all other televised sports in that you get the same commercials over and over again, except there are so many days that the commercial overkill happens after a day or two instead of weeks.

It makes me sad. There are people at NBC who are responsible for nothing other than sports coverage, and they're obviously so bad at their jobs that trained monkeys would be offended if asked to replicate the work. Yet they are still employed. Dear NBC, hire me at half what they're making, and I'll make your sports coverage ten times better.

Yes, this

NPR's Linda Holmes says it very well: NBC has no idea what it's doing.

If the IOC had any brains (and many would argue they've been missing said brains for a long time), they'd do whatever is necessary to yank the exclusive contract for US television rights and award it to a network that actually shows sports. In an era where people watch live sports on TVs, computers, phones, and who knows what else, NBC continues to show tape-delayed events. (Hey look, guys, isn't this cool? Who do you think will win ... how did you know? Was that on the World Wide Web somewhere? We've got to get that someday.)

I think we are rapidly approaching an era where broadcast networks are no longer equipped to show sports. (And a cheer goes up from the non-sports-fan contingent.) Don't laugh: I'm not the only one who thinks this. Notice what ABC and ESPN are doing? You've obviously seen that Monday Night Football is on "cable", and that didn't ruin the football universe. ABC is shifting more events to ESPN, including NASCAR events ... there are ABC affiliates in the South that are not happy with this, but I don't know that too many people care.

Unfortunately for the people who don't have cable and can't stream events, that's where things are heading. ESPN could cover the NCAA tournament 10 times better than CBS can, and CBS knows it: when they offered $1 billion for what I think was a seven-year contract to get the rights back after ESPN snagged the first-round games and did them superbly, they were doing it to protect valuable territory, just like NBC did with the Olympics, and just like the NCAAs have surpassed CBS' ability to cover them well, the Olympics have surpassed NBC's ability to cover them ... at all.

If some people are upset, you might be doing something right. If everybody's upset, you must be NBC.

NHL 10: Early December '09

AHL: ha ha, I got a crap interference penalty in a scrum along the boards, and sure enough, the announcers sided with me. Didn't matter though, we killed it off. Lost 2-1, I missed a hip check and the guy set up the winning goal. Had a nice shot in close, but I couldn't put it home. 3 hits, 3 blocked shots.

Four games this week, Sunday and Monday at the same team, then on the road again Friday and home on Saturday.

AHL: Third star, two assists in a 2-0 win. Almost had a shot at an empty net, but I passed by accident. (I didn't have a great shot, and it probably would have been icing if I'd missed.) A grade, 2 hits, drew 1 penalty, blocked 1 shot. +2.

AHL: Second game at Lake Erie. Miserable. 2 hits, -2. We still lead our division by 3 points with 3 games in hand, trail Hamilton by 6 with 1 game in hand for the conference lead.

AHL: One penalty for hitting a guy just a touch too late. A-, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot, 1 takeaway. 2 assists on one shift in the second period, +2 for the game.

AHL: 0 hits. 0 blocked shots. At least I had good shots. Of course, none went in. 1 assist, even. We climbed to within 2 points of Hamilton.

Woo hoo! Called up to Dallas! Third pair and included in special teams (which is kind of odd; I understand the game wants you to get more experience but it would be nice to make you earn one or both honors).

Three games this week: at Carolina, at Atlanta, and home against Detroit. That last one won't be awkward.

We made a trade with Florida, but fortunately it didn't affect pairings.

At Carolina: 21 seconds in, we score. That's a nice return to the NHL. Some rough shifts (including a minus where the goalie lunges out to stop a pass into the zone he doesn't have to play and turns it over), but I got a +1 and an assist late and we held on to win. Much more of a physical presence this time. Lots of good calls for passes (9). We're still way out of the playoff race, though, in 13th.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, -1, 4 shots, 0 PIM, 6 hits, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 7-4 at Carolina
Grade: A (A+/A/B+)

At Atlanta: A tough defensive struggle, scoreless through two periods ... I have the puck at the point, skating backward, no one is open, I fire a shot at Pavelec ... and the red light goes on. Goal! My first NHL goal, and it gives us a 1-0 lead as well. Later in the period, I fire another one at the net, it's tipped down and in, and we're up 2-0. Unfortunately, my dumbass defensive partner turns the puck over in our end and it's promptly put in the net. 2-1, and I no longer have the game-winning goal, but get the first star nonetheless. (I got an E for scoring my first goal in my 30th game. Hey, I'm a defensive defenseman! Back off.)

Stats: 1 G, 1 A, +1, 3 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 2-1 at Atlanta
Grade: A (A+/A-/A)

vs. Detroit: ha ha, this one was a bit tough, not just because it was Detroit, but because I was playing against the Datsyuk/Zetterberg line. Halfway through the first, I was a -2. Fortunately, we ended up getting a couple of goals to even the score, and then our pair helped set up the game-winner in the second. Plus I got a hit on Zetterberg ... not sure how he stayed in one place long enough for me to hit him.

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, even, 5 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 0 blocked shots
Result: W 3-2 vs. Detroit
Grade: A (A+/B+/A)

I'm getting much better at calling for passes well. I feel like I know what I'm supposed to do most of the time ... I just don't have the trailer role down. (When there's an odd-man rush and I should be attacking.)

We've pulled within 5 points of 8th-place Chicago.

More Madden 10 fail

I'm in an online franchise league in Madden 10 ... we just finished the Super Bowl (obviously I was not in it) and are ready to start the draft, and as a result, we've discovered how not ready for release online franchise mode is.

For one thing, you can look back to previous seasons and see ... the Super Bowl scores. That's it. No stats, no standings.

For another, when you roll to the next season, for every team with fewer than 7 open spots, it automatically cuts players to make room for drafted players, even though you have plenty of room on your training camp roster for these players (or should). And then when the draft is ready, you can't pick up the free agents it cut for you.

The draft is something else. Small time slots, no way to make them significantly big, and no way for the commissioner to undo a pick ... which is really inexcusable, because the default time slot is apparently 15 seconds. Yeah. And you can't set what they call a "draft profile" on the 360 because that would be helpful: you can actually see all the draftees' attributes there. You have to do it online, where you can't see more than one attribute at a time unless you click on the person, and you can't even sort accurately across groups. For example, if you sort by overall, but you're showing draftees by speed, all you get are the top overall scores for the draftees with highest speed. There's no way to remove that second filter.

I would say this was a half-assed effort by EA, but it would be an insult to actual half-assed efforts. Someone who had no idea of the work involved made the decision to rush this out with Madden 10 when in reality it should have been held back at least a year.

If you don't have a copy of Madden 10 yet, but you saw online mode and are swayed by it, don't be. Wait. It's not worth it yet. At all.

NHL 10: November '09

Still in the AHL.

AHL: another game against Chicago. 3-0 shutout, B+ grade, 2 hits, 2 blocked shots. +1.

The funny thing is that supposedly I get more experience doing defensive things than offensive things, but I've been pretty even overall (438 xp offense, 473 defense, 451 athletics) ... you get something like 20-40 per game in my role, depending on what you do. This is, of course, one of the things about being a good defender: what you do isn't in the scoresheet. That is, if you don't hit. (To reach the next level, Pro, I have to amass 300 hits, play 75 games, get a C or better in my last 5 games, and have a plus/minus of at least +5. Uh, 300? Two seasons, probably.)

AHL: gave up a goal on the opening shift. I even poked the puck loose and the guy just swept it back up. crap. Modano scored in the first minute of the second, though, and with another goal at the end of the shift, we evened it up. Two more goals in the second put it away, although we conceded a late goal after we scored an empty-netter. No hits. boo. 2 long shifts, 2 blocked shots.

Games on Wednesday and Friday this week.

AHL: 3 hits, 0 long shifts, 4 blocked shots. 1 assist, even for the game. A 2-1 win for the good guys. Playing a bit better, but I did make a mistake that led to their only goal.

AHL: same opponent as Wednesday's game. We scored two goals in the final minute to win 4-2: the first came as I took the puck up ice (for some reason they decided not to press me), created a 2-on-2, beat the guy on me, then set up the game-winner. (Not as good as the GWG myself, but I'll take an assist.) Empty-netter made it 4-2 and an extra plus for me. 2 hits, 5 long shifts, 1 blocked shot. 1 assist, +1 overall.

Games on Wednesday and Saturday this week. Texas is currently tied for 3rd in the Western Conference.

Finally made it up to C in hits (40 out of 245 needed), so it's obviously not a rate grade but rather an overall grade (a rate grade would be lower).

AHL: 2-1 win on a power-play goal with less than 2 seconds left. 4 hits, 5 long shifts, 0 blocked shots, 5 good shots. -1, though.

AHL: 4-3 OT win with me on the ice. Had a chance to score a goal with a delayed penalty, but couldn't gather up the puck; attacked in the OT on 4-on-4 play, but didn't get a good shot either. 2 hits, 11 long shifts (oops), 0 blocked shots, 1 penalty drawn, 9 good shots. 1 assist, +2.

Games on the 22nd, 23rd, 26th, 28th. (Thanksgiving, yeah.)

AHL: Milwaukee again. Jesus this was a bad game. 2 hits, 5 long shifts, 0 blocked shots. -5. Yeah. -5. On the ice for every goal against.

Somehow I get promoted to the top defensive pair after that game.

AHL: Promotion is totally justified. 3 assists, +4 for the game, second star as we crush Grand Rapids. A grade, 2 hits, 6 long shifts, 1 blocked shot, 9 good shots taken. Got my 50th hit (in 20 games, a D for that - I can't help if we keep the puck and I can't pop anyone). Got enough XP to move up to a 76 overall rating.

AHL: 6 hits, one minor penalty (totally my fault), 7 long shifts, 4 blocked shots, +2.

AHL: A grade, one silly retaliation penalty, 3 hits, 5 long shifts, 1 blocked shot, 8 good shots, 2 takeaways, 2 turnovers, 1 assist, +2.

One more game in November, Sunday at Manitoba again.

AHL: B+ grade, 1 hit, 3 long shifts, 2 blocked shots, 6 good shots.

Next game is December 5th ... hopefully by Christmas I will be back in Dallas with the big team.

NHL 10: weeks 3-4

AHL game: finally, a solid physical game. 7 hits, put one guy out of the game and out for a week or so, A+ grade, third star. 0 turnovers. Still in the minors, though.

AHL game: only 2 hits, 3 turnovers, 2 takeaways. 0 shots on goal. B+ grade.

Three weeks in, half the time in Austin, slight improvement but no sign of being called back up yet.

AHL game: same story, not much in the way of anything, but we win again. At least I'm on track for all of my goals except hits. One nice thing is that we are taking many fewer penalties and we're scoring more, so my +/- is going up.

AHL: second of a home-and-home with San Antonio. Another win, only 3 long shifts, +4, and one nice shot from the high slot. May have to change the curve of my stick to aim differently.

Woo hoo! Moved up to the second pair. More ice time (although in Be a Pro Mode, you're automatically on the first shift each period and on each specialty unit, as well as an extra attacker, which is funny when you consider I'm a defensive defenseman).

AHL: A grade, second star. 6 hits, finally at my average. 8 long shifts, oh well. Sometimes it's not my fault: I head to the bench but they aren't ready to change yet. One assist, +3 for the game.

AHL: ugh. 2 hits, -3, on the ice for all three goals against, including the game-loser with less than a minute to play. Poor defense by me. Got a couple of good power-play shots, though.

NHL 10: week 2

Third game in the road trip, at Vancouver. No offense. I did manage to pop one of the Sedins at the blue line to shake the puck loose, but that was about it. I got a minus from giving up an empty-net goal. whatever. 10 long shifts. 2 takeaways, 2 turnovers.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, -1, 2 shots, 0 PIM, 1 hit, 3 blocked shots
Result: L 0-2 at Vancouver
Grade: B (A+/B/C-)

So I didn't get enough hits and they sent me down to the Texas Stars (how original). Now I'm playing with Modano, Zubov, Robidas ... yeah, I don't understand what they're doing in the AHL either. I thought I would be a dominant player at that level. Instead, I'm still a third-line D-man. whatever.

First AHL game: OMG they take penalties. All the time. Bonus: the AHL stats do count toward my season totals. I don't care, I'm not giving details for these games.

Second game, this time we win. I'm hitting more and forcing turnovers, plus not having as many long shifts.

NHL 10: first week

Decent opener: my defense partner gives up a goal off his shoulder for my first minus, but I got a pair of assists and finished +1. Only 2 hits, though, and I still stay on the ice too long. We came back to win, 4-2, in part thanks to me drawing a minor on Shea Weber in the final minute. (We scored on that power play.) 2 blocked shots, but 4 long shifts. 3 turnovers. bad.

Stats: 0 G, 2 A, +1, 1 shot, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 4-2 vs Nashville
Grade: A- (A+/C+/A+)

Road opener: again we concede on the opening shift. Fell behind 2-0, but ended up scoring 2 third-period goals to pull out the win. I really wanted to shoot at the empty net, but not from my end. I hit Neal up the wing, but he didn't get a clean shot at it. 9 long shifts, uh oh (thus the C+ for team play). Both shots were well taken, 0 takeaways, 1 turnover.

Stats: 0 G, 0 A, even, 2 shots, 0 PIM, 1 hit, 2 blocked shots
Result: W 3-2 at Edmonton
Grade: B+ (A+/B+/C+)

Second game of the Alberta trip: no goals in the first period. I was on the ice for all three normal goals (we scored two empty-net goals). I got a couple of good chances in the slot, but couldn't put them home. I did bait Iginla into a cheap penalty in the third (not that it required much effort). 9 long shifts (again). 0 takeaways, 4 turnovers (whatever).

I achieved Rookie status with that game. (Got my 5th hit. Too bad they're expecting 5 per game.)

Stats: 0 G, 1 A, +1, 3 shots, 0 PIM, 2 hits, 1 blocked shot
Result: W 4-1 at Calgary
Grade: A (A+/B/A+)

NHL 10: prospect game

Another in the line of "virtual me" posts ... I broke open NHL 10 today and created a me. A little taller, a little heavier, much, much better at hockey.

Played in the prospects game ... A+/A-/A+ scorecard, 1 minor penalty, 2 assists, +3 in a 4-0 win. Got the third star.

Signed by the Stars. ugh. Three-year contract, standard, I guess. I think I was the number one pick, but EA doesn't let you see how the draft turns out.

Here are my goals:

• A plus/minus of +14 or better. That makes sense for a defensive D. (It's also low ... because Dallas sucks.)
• 245 hits. Ouch. (no pun intended) That's 3 per game plus 5 extra hits. I better hit some people.
• 140 shots would be nice ... not so bad. I typically only shoot from the point off a faceoff win.
• 24 points would be a bonus ... expect these to be assists, mostly. Hopefully I can manage that.

They're giving me four games to earn a spot on the roster, otherwise I go down to the AHL. Hmm. I suspect those games don't count toward my season goals. I suppose I better play well. I thought it was preseason, but apparently we don't play that.

Maybe I can do something well and earn a trade to a team I don't dislike. (It could have been worse: Calgary, Anaheim, Colorado ...)

The Romans would be proud

Roger Goodell wants to ban the three-point stance. Short version: doing so would possibly limit the number of powerful blows a lineman has to absorb, decreasing the possibility of debilitating brain damage later in life.

Spin: nice idea, but because Goodell isn't doing anything about other serious problems in football (serial cheap-shot players like Ryan Clark and Ray Lewis), it's possible this won't make much of a difference, and thus it's only a PR stunt.

I link to the Football Outsiders post to show the discussion ... sadly, there are several people who seem to believe that the players know what they're getting into, therefore, screw them, we want our violence. (You know, the NASCAR-wreck crowd.) This guy retires with 10 concussions and develops Alzheimer's at 40, but who cares? Look at this rookie? Wow, he's a really big hitter!

It is the internet, and thus e-pinions are likely to be stronger than you'd see in "real life", but still, it's discouraging to think that on a statistically-inclined football site, there are a number of people back in the Coliseum, still rooting for the lions. (Ha. Maybe that's Detroit's problem. There isn't a team of Christians.)

Advertiser fail

Did you know there aren't enough ads in sports games?

No, really.

Wow. I mean, I have done some contract work for an advertising agency, so I know a very little bit about the ideas that get tossed around on a smaller scale, but I still don't agree with most of it ... I think the advertising industry is stuck in the 20th-century paradigm of directing the user's experience, even when every single 21st-century gadget reinforces the idea of the user directing his or her own experience. Be part of that or begone.

Unfortunately, both EA and ESPN have shown that they do not understand this. I'm expecting ESPN to have annoying Snickers placement all over the place next year ... I'm sure it's much better to be working on that or on other unwanted "features" than on fixing bugs in the game (like playoff spots in online franchise mode being determined by alphabetical order).

WTF, Los Angeles edition

I have three thoughts about this.

1. Lane Kiffin is the absolute dumbest coach in the history of intercollegiate athletics.
2. Actually, that.
3. Yes.

Okay, so really, 2 is this:

Assistant: Yeah, so I'm not convinced that Barkley is good enough to be the guy next year. I mean, some of those passes, a 13-year-old could throw.
Kiffykins: Hold on, I'll get one. (darts out of room)
Assistant: Wait, it was a figure of speech ...
(Kiffykins returns.)
Kiffykins: I got one. Okay, next position.
(Assistant sighs.)

I guess 3 would be that if you actually find a parent stupid enough to believe that anything Kiffykins says will be true in five years – five times longer than his stay at Tennessee – you might as well put one over on him. I can't wait for this poor kid to try to enroll at USC in 2015, only to find out any number of things have happened (USC has no scholarships to give, there are three five-star prospects already at QB, the coach after the coach who replaced Kiffin has no intention of honoring the offer, his arm fell off in 2013) ...

iPad?

iGuess.

Read this and this, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I'm thinking. (Maybe it will be great for old people. You know, the ones that actually have a 401(k) left and will spend money from it on technology.)

Football Apocalypse

Al Davis was right. Lane Kiffin is a turd. (But hey, Tennessee fans, at least you got rid of him before he did any permanent damage!)

First, Pete Carroll leaves USC for the Seahawks. This wouldn't mean too much, except that Carroll already has a reputation as an average NFL coach. And the massive cheating scandal at USC is becoming too obvious for even the NCAA to ignore. The fact that the Seahawks don't have a president or GM (the guys to whom the coach typically report) doesn't matter. (Actually, the GM thing doesn't matter much if the franchise is run poorly. See Cleveland: bad owners hire backward. The GM should hire the coach.)

Second, Carroll went out of his way to deny that the move was related to the NCAA investigation. Right. As if he'd have admitted that was it exactly. Good cheaters don't wait to be punished, they move along and let the school take the blame.

Now, Lane Kiffin is leaving Tennessee for USC. After one season. A season in which he racked up quite a number of secondary violations.

Not the best candidate? Correct. Ill-suited for the position? What do you mean? It's not like he was the guy who made some of this happen in the first place. Oh wait, yes he was.

Brian Cook explains in more detail here. Basically, USC is raising a big armored middle finger to the NCAA. Yeah, we cheated our asses off. No, you're not going to do a damn thing about it, because everybody knows you only punish the little guys.

So one of two things should happen. Either USC gets the death penalty, or all hell breaks loose. Um, in a sense. (Because there's obviously a lot of cheating going on with respect to recruiting anyway.)

What will probably happen is that USC will have to forfeit some wins (yawn), they'll be on probation for X years, give up Y scholarships, and everyone involved will say they're very sorry, and they'll promptly start up again as soon as the probation is over.

What ought to happen is that both football and basketball should be suspended for a season; the head coaches and AD should be punished as well. That part's a little tricky, seeing as how they both ran for the door once they saw what was coming. Maybe a fine, one season's salary from each? Even if you banned them from coaching in the NCAA again for life, that might not be that effective. (Although the AD is still there. Suspending him would definitely have an impact ... but then again, if your AD got both your name programs killed for a year, you ought to be doing more than suspending him.)

NCAA, USC has called your bluff. It's time to turn over a full house.

Madden 10 blows

So I get a safety and force a free kick. I pause the game in the middle of the kick to check out what's on TV ... when I resume the game, the camera's locked on to the kicker. Never mind that I'm the receiving team. I'm lucky the game didn't make me fumble the kick so it could recover and return for a TD.

This kind of bug mystifies me. I cannot understand how a game that has been around for this long can be released with so many glaring errors in it. Somebody at EA needs to be fired for this.

NCAA 10: Season 3 summary

We started off at Kansas State and actually led 31-20 before the sim decided to take over, eventually winning by 10 (after we scored a meaningless TD). After beating WKU, Central Michigan raked the defense for 48. Not a good sign for non-conference play.

After a bye week, we rolled UAB 31-3 and FAU 28-10. Fell behind Arkansas State by 17, managed to rally to get back into it, but then had a problem on a punt, didn't get away from it in time and gave up a fumble return for a TD, losing by 3. Crushed MTSU and Troy, which put us in a three-way tie with Troy and North Texas heading into our game in Denton.

It started off poorly: on one two-play sequence, we fumbled the ball and it stood, they fumbled it and it was overturned. Crazy finish: they kick a 50-yard FG to go up 27-24, we return the kickoff 91 yards to lead 31-27. They score in 1:18 to lead 34-31. We score at 2:08 to lead 38-34. UNT drives the length of the field, converting three fourth downs, including one that gave them the ball at the 1, first down. We call time out to get a better defense. They throw an interception ... but as we try to kneel down, the sim strips the ball. Fortunately we recover and advance it, run the time off and win. North Texas, thanks in part to sacks, had -39 yards rushing. Yeah, it was the #1 classic, almost 2000 points.

We ran through the rest of the Sun Belt with just the one loss, clinching another New Orleans Bowl spot. Against Louisiana Tech in the finale, for the first time I can ever remember, I pulled a sim on a punt: nice, high punt, no one blocking, I hit the returner just after he caught it to force a fumble, then held him down while a teammate recovered. (Of course he magically stepped out of bounds right after recovering it, so it wasn't just like the sim: the sim always scores on those. We did force a fumble on a regular play later, and we returned that one for a TD. And we had a fumble that I successfully challenged ...)

My running back won the Doak Walker Award. Pretty impressive for a sophomore, but in the past, award winners who return never live up to their previous seasons. Even if you have a good season, you don't get votes. Last season's winner, my now-senior TE, caught 82 passes for 835 yards and was omitted from the top 12. A sophomore corner (Robinson) finished 7th in Thorpe balloting.

South Florida in the New Orleans Bowl. Wow. We score with 20 seconds left in the first half to lead 21-20. They return the kickoff with 9 seconds left to lead 27-21. We return the kickoff at the end of the half to lead 28-27. South Florida leads next, 37-28. Then 37-35. Then 44-35. Then 47-35. I thought we were done: we had four interceptions at that point.

Great drive to cut the lead to 5, 47-42. We force a punt. Drive to score with 26 seconds left, converting the 2 to lead 50-47. They drive to midfield, heave a Hail Mary ... and we intercept it in the end zone. Crazy game. We had 480 yards total offense, 9-14 on third downs, 3-4 on fourth downs (which means we converted 12 of 14 times we had a third down). If it hadn't been for the picks – one of which was returned for a TD – we'd probably have won easily. We actually broke into the top 25 after that win, #21 ... the only time we've been ranked to date.

In-season recruiting went very well. We signed 3 four-star players (the #4 and #6 athletes and the #26 CB) and 4 three-star players (#31 WR, #21 athlete, #38 OLB, and #18 DT), 23rd-best class overall.

My top TE is leaving, as are two of my three best QBs, but the WR and HB are returning. I lose a good LT, but other than that, the seniors are passable but not irreplaceable.

This time, Michigan and Texas are interested in hiring me. (RR didn't get it fixed in Ann Arbor, I guess.)

Unfortunately, the WR who transferred from FSU is ready for the NFL, so my 92-rated WR is gone. Now I really need to sign a good one. The nice thing is we're getting an 86-rated LE transferring in from Georgia. Of course he's not eligible for a season, but I can use that depth. Right now my single LE is a 65.

I signed four more four-star recruits (#5 athlete, #7 athlete, #7 WR, and #6 OLB) and five more three-star recruits (#26 DE, #40 TE, #13 QB, #53 G, and one I couldn't find) to finish 24th overall.

We're C+ on offense (B- at HB, C- at FB), B- on defense (B+ at DE thanks to the transfer, no C-), B- on special teams and B- overall. Up to 47th in the preseason polls and of course favored to win our third straight Sun Belt crown.

Non-conference schedule includes Miami-Florida at Miami, USC in Lafayette (how did we do that?), and Tulsa at Tulsa ... of course we're playing at Louisiana Tech for the fourth game. Strangely, replacing a I-AA team with the Bulldogs kept my SOS at C-.

Now they want me to finish in the top 25 (I think I can) and play in a January bowl game. Um ... we don't get invited to those. And I doubt I'll run the table with this schedule and this team. Oh well ... here we go ...

NCAA 10: Season 2 summary

(Warning: gamer post.)

2010 started off poorly with losses at rival Louisiana Tech (who wasn't automatically scheduled, I had to add them) and home to UAB. The next game was the conference opener against doormat Western Kentucky.

As is so often the case, WKU did everything perfectly, resulting in my first ragequit in I don't know how long. They were up 42-21 in the second quarter ... you'd think I was playing LSU instead of a team that had been in I-A just two seasons. Of course, the second time I played the game, I won easily, 45-17. (In case it bothers you, I would have won the conference anyway. Unless I ended up throwing the disc into the street.)

We ran off six wins in a row, counting that game, including a double-overtime win over Middle Tennessee State. Next was a triple-overtime loss to Florida Atlantic, 71-63. (Yeah, my defense is still terrible, even considering the boost that the sim gets on offense.) We beat Monroe to clinch the Sun Belt, upset Mississippi in Oxford, and then got destroyed at 2-10 Minnesota: no ragequit, but I did go to super sim with about half the fourth quarter left when it was clear there was no point in finishing the game; the next-to-last play was a 94-yard TD or something like that for them. Remember, the Big Ten is a tougher conference.

We lucked out (or would have, in real life) by drawing the New Orleans Bowl as Sun Belt champs, right next door in New Orleans. We led UTEP 17-0 before the sim figured out what was going on and ran off 24 unanswered points. Unfortunately for them, we scored the last 14 of the game, held them on fourth and two from the 3, and that was that.

Recruiting went better this time: 1 4-star recruit (#13 CB, a juco but badly needed anyway) and 3 3-star recruits (#24 MLB, #27 SS, #39 FS – see a pattern?) during the season. I've got soft commits from a 3-star OT (#37) and a 2-star K (#30, needed because my current kicker hit the crossbar on a 43-yard attempt in the Superdome). Leading on 4 more players, second on 2 more, including the #1 punter.

My TE won the Mackey Award, which was nice to see: he was a monster in the passing game. 111 receptions, 1273 yards, 8 TDs. I hope he doesn't go pro. (Bonus! He didn't.)

We met two of our three goals, beating ULM and getting a bowl bid. As expected, no 5- or 6-star teams on the schedule, so I didn't get a chance at that one. I got a 5-year extension offer and accepted it. BYU and Penn State came calling (JoePa got forced out, I guess), but no thanks, this is for SEC promotion.

Conference USA came calling again, and once again UAB would be shown the door. (Ha. Good thing it wasn't based on in-season results.) No thanks. I'm holding out.

No incoming transfers. (But hey, no one wanted out either.)

Ended up with 7 3-star recruits, but no punter. (Hope one of my kickers can punt.) Again, we did much better than the rest of the conference. Also, I lucked out and landed a 76 punter as a walk-on. ha ha.

This time, we do get Louisiana Tech (on the road? I think not). Non-conference games are at Kansas State, vs. Central Michigan, and vs. UAB. (What's up with that?) No strength of schedule, but whatever, I'm not ready to compete yet. Better to build my roster depth before I make a run for the SEC.

We're also picked to repeat as Sun Belt champs. C+ offense, C defense, C+ special teams, C overall. Individually, we're best at WR (B-) and worst at OLB (D+). I'll guess 2012 before we can make a run at the SEC.

Dumb and dumber

So now you can't touch your stuff for the last hour of your flight.

Why? Because once someone tried to do something bad on a plane in the last hour of its flight. (Now, I'll bet that's happened before and it's simply slipped the TSA's minds. Then again, a lot of things have slipped their minds.)

Now, is this going to stop a terrorist? No, because most terrorists can tell time, just like about one-tenth of airline employees responsible for working out scheduling. They'll simply start their stuff 90 minutes before their flights land.

What it's going to stop is people like you and you from flying. (Not you and me. I gave up on the airlines a W ago.)

You'd think that people like Secretary Napolitano would realize this. You'd think they'd realize that instead of consistently staying a step behind most terrorists (notice that the last couple of guys trying this stuff were stopped in the act anyway?), they'd see that they need to be a step ahead.

But no. You can't bring liquids on a plane because someone might have had liquid explosive once. You have to show your shoes because someone had explosive shoes once. Now you can't get up because a terrorist got up once. (I can't wait for the lawsuit that'll follow someone with medical concerns being unable to get to the bathroom in the last hour of a flight.)

All this security theater doesn't prevent people from bringing explosives on a plane. Would it really be that hard to make the security at airports more reasonable (by hiring more competent people to work the lines, for one thing)? Would it really be that hard to put security people on planes to stop this stuff, because we're already relying on passengers to do this?

Look. The security theater isn't working. This latest jackass brought explosives onto the plane. And the entire show depends on catching people before they get on the plane.

I hate to say this, but Obama is failing in this area as badly as W did. The TSA isn't the answer. "Tighter" security isn't the answer. Better, smarter security is.

Then again, in a couple of years, it probably won't need to be better or smarter. There will be few enough passengers that the TSA can probably question each one in detail.

Update: Great minds think alike.

XBLA review: Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (1/10)

I was going to rant about how stupid this is and link to my earlier review when I realized I didn't post one yet.

So, in short:

a) This is not the ultra-cool version for the PC. This is an incredibly retarded version.
b) It's done so badly that there are threads about how to get around the broken control system. You can't even tap your own lands for mana.

Don't bother. This is a waste of money. You're better off finding the PC version, digging around to get the patches for it, and playing that. The PC version is 100 times better than this.

Microsoft + Verizon: tons of money, massive stupidity

So this Bing, I suppose someone out there is using it. (I saw one of the commercials once. Apparently Bing is for people who don't want to find too much online.) And it's Microsoft, the company that has been fined millions and millions on multiple continents and still doesn't learn.

Anyway, Consumerist says that the Register and the New York Times reported that searching via an app (do people really do that?) can now be done with either Bing or ... Bing.

Verizon gets $500 million. You get the least useful application on the internet.

Merry Christmas, everyone, from Ivan Seidenberg to you.

Scrooge's links

Jump to conclusions.
Yes, that's right, before too long only Grandpa will be talking about old-school controllers. Project Natal will be the death of the control pad. In fact, I think it just happened.

Please. How many games on the Wii suck because they aren't suited to motion controllers? How many times do you catch yourself playing something on the 360 or the PS3 and thinking man, this would be so much easier if I could just wiggle or point?

Look, people still play PC games with keyboards, okay? Fifteen years ago, they were selling game peripherals for PCs like they were going to take over console gaming. Yes, you can still buy them. No, they aren't always necessary. They still make games that are playable entirely with the keyboard, and other games that work best with keyboard and mouse. Why? Because that's what the game requires. Want to play WoW with motion controllers? Hahahahahahaha.

Health care reform passes the Senate.
Despite the efforts of certain wealthy Republicans who already have excellent health insurance through Congress. Sure, let's let health care costs spiral out of control, watch normal people choose between bankruptcy and painful death, see people turn away from careers in health care because of the challenges they face fighting the current system, because we don't want to spend money to fix the problem. (How much did we spend trying to seize oil fields in Iraq? Oh, right, that wasn't part of the budget.)

Fortunately, the wealthy Democrats in Congress (plus a socialist and a grandstanding jerk) won a small victory, but I think it's fair to wait to celebrate. First, it's not even a bill yet, and second, even if it were and if Obama signed it today, those provisions wouldn't take effect overnight.

Still, it's a huge step.

Old media still doesn't get it.
They never have. Even new media outlets don't get it ... ever read ESPN The Magazine? (Even by its title, you should know it's dumb.) It's just print versions of online articles, sent to you whether you want it or not. Why? Who knows? Probably because some executive decided they needed to challenge SI.

Why bother with it? Look, news today is the same as 100 years ago: facts and opinions. The problem for old media is that now, everyone with an ... um ... opinion can share it in the same space they use, and plenty of places are sharing facts for free. If you aren't adding value, you're not going to make money, and if you're trying to make money, you're living on borrowed time.

You want me to pay for a magazine I can only read on the iPod/iPhone? What? It's a terrible reading device in the first place (small, small, and small), and now you want me to pay to read your crap? No way. I'm not even sure I want to pay to read books on a Kindle (although I do like the idea of owning a lot of books that don't take up space).

I get SI for the same reason I always have, because my grandmother extends my subscription for Christmas. It's all right, I guess, but most of its news is 3-7 days old, and most of the opinions are already available online; not only that, but some of the opinions are less informed than blogs I read. (ESPN? Don't get me started.)

Of course when old media thinks change, it thinks TALK RADIO change. (Case in point: the crusade by the Free Press to demonize Rich Rodriguez. Does it attract readers? I guess. Does it poison others against them? You bet it does, and there are all kinds of places to get Detroit sports news that have nothing to do with the Free Press.) That's not going to work. Hell, eventually ESPN will realize that Around the Horn is the worst show in sports history.

I'm rambling, but at least I'm having fun. Merry holiday season.

and get off my lawn!

Sports links

Missouri is definitely not uninterested in the Big 10.
Well, to be more precise, they're tired of being screwed in the Big Texas Conference. (Profit-sharing in the Big 12 is 50% to everyone and 50% based on TV appearances, which means Texas gets more money and likes it that way. The Big 10 splits everything evenly.) Texas, naturally, doesn't want anything to change, and with a supermajority required to make changes (9 of 12 schools), Missouri and similar schools must sit by and watch as the Big 10 and SEC steam ahead. (Nice interview with Missouri's AD in this link: he is asked several direct questions and does not flat-out deny anything.)

Mark Shapiro is one of the dumbest men in television sports history.
No, not the Cleveland Indians GM. The guy that ESPN hired in the early 2000s, the one who decided to turn the network into MTV Sports. He failed miserably, leaving in 2005 to pal around with Dan Snyder. (The jokes write themselves sometimes.) 10 of the 11 shows on this list are ESPN-family shows (11 because the two "reality" shows on ESPN are combined), and Shapiro was involved in all but one. This was the problem with Disney's involvement: more people who have no clue about sports. (See Ducks, Anaheim.)

Fortunately most of the damage has been repaired, although for some reason Around the Horn is still on the air. If you can explain to me how this survived and Stump the Schwab didn't ...

By the way, the one show that wasn't a Shapiro failure? McEnroe, on CNBC. One week, the only show it beat was "How to Boil Water". No, really. (At least that's what the link says.)

Even gamers know that playoffs are better.
And not just because we remember the version of Bill Walsh College Football that let you choose between bowls and playoffs. (As soon as the NCAA name appeared, the playoffs disappeared.) Anyway, Kotaku gives you its take on a playoff for the 2009 season. Hint: Alabama doesn't win.

5th isn't bad.
Purdue's holding steady at 4th in the polls and 5th in Sagarin's ratings after knocking off Ball State on Saturday. SIU-Edwardsville and Iowa are next; the Boilers should be 12-0 when they host undefeated West Virginia in the Game of the Year a week from Friday. (That's a joke, sort of: a week from Friday is New Year's Day, so at that point, yeah, it'll be the game of the year.)

When is a win not necessarily a win?
Wow. So I guess they can't even correct it properly ... sorry, there weren't actually 1.8 seconds left when you scored. You should be watching the clock at all times because the clock may be wrong.

Oops, sorry. Background: Butler ball, down by 1, shot clock off. Xavier knocks the ball free, goes into backcourt, Butler recovers as clock stops briefly and restarts. Bulldogs lose ball twice, recover, put up a shot, score with 1.2 seconds left. Officials review sequence interminably (15-20 minutes, never mind that 10-15 they claim in the article) and decide that because of the stoppage, there would actually be no time left, so game over, Xavier loses.

Of course, the fair things to do would be a) give Xavier the ball with 1.2 seconds left because that's what the clock said or b) give Butler the ball in the backcourt with 14.7 seconds left and play from there. Wiping out time because the clock was run improperly is crap; in fact, at least in the NBA, you can go back to a point in time and replay if the clock is not run properly, at least if it's the shot clock. (1988 NBA Finals, Game 6, I think. John Salley has a breakaway dunk called back because a Lakers shot was ruled not to have touched the rim; the shot clock should not have reset, so the steal did not count. Lakers get the ball with 3 seconds left on the shot clock, I think, score, win the game, win the series. But don't worry, the NBA isn't fixed.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm far from a Xavier fan, but this is just wrong, and given that the NCAA director of officials is quoted in the article as saying there's nothing else they can do, then it needs to be addressed in the offseason.

A collection of links and minor thoughts

xkcd: Dreaming about school.
no kidding. Except these are my most common semi-lucid dreams. It's much easier to realize you're dreaming when a) you haven't been in a classroom in nearly 20 years and b) class wasn't that big of a deal when you were there in the first place. (I also dream about working in the cafeteria.)

Coding Horror: Even serious developers forget to back up their important stuff.
When Jeff Atwood fails, people listen. (It's okay if none of you know who he is. Just back up your stuff. Now.)

law: The FTC is after Intel again.
Intel doesn't learn ... or doesn't care to. Probably the latter. For the record, this is how the "free market" tends to solve things.

Yes, it's been a slow week at work. Not my fault. I have only one project with this client. If I were full-time, I'd be doing more with them.

stuff: Why most of what you see in movies is crap.
Of course you knew that already. Yeah, I'm the guy who points out stuff during movies like "um, things don't explode in space".

more stuff: Rocket Science.
No, really. What things ought to do, rather than going boom. I spent a lot of time here. Warning: interest in accurate sci-fi and/or knowledge of physics required.

NCAA 10: Season 1 summary

Well, we started off giving up 22 points to a I-AA school (of course they're all generic in NCAA 10, so let's say it's Nicholls State, for no reason other than that I keep assuming they're in Texas and realizing they're in Louisiana) which wasn't a good omen. Next came thrashings by Kansas State and LSU ... at that point I was wondering whether or not we'd be able to compete in I-A at all, never mind the Sun Belt.

But we went into Lincoln and stunned Nebraska (apparently without their All-American DT - yes, the same guy in New York right now hopefully awaiting the Heisman), and suddenly things didn't look so bad.

Conference play next: lost our opener to North Texas, ran off five straight wins, and suddenly we're bowl-eligible. (Funny, I thought it was six wins because I-AA wins counted. I guess I know more than EA.) Sadly, that was the end of the line. Lost to Louisiana-Monroe, lost to Troy, finished fourth in the conference and were left out of the bowl picture. (One of the Florida schools won, FIU or Florida Atlantic. Naturally, we'd beaten both of them. ULM and Troy were 7th and 9th, respectively.)

Turned down an offer to join Conference USA (replacing UAB). No thanks, I'm in this for the achievement. (Not that I'll be able to win the SEC, but I guess you never know until you try.)

Signed a couple of three-star recruits during the season, then landed a four-star and a couple more three-star guys in the offseason. Added a pipeline state, too (but of course I can't figure out what it is because EA sucks). UPDATE: it's Georgia. You can't find out until the season starts. So now my pipeline includes Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. You might think it's odd that Mississippi and Alabama aren't included, but it's a numbers game: the most populous states around me. With Texas and Florida, I probably don't need to try to get California or New York.

It's hard to recruit when everything other than location is C+ or worse, but easy when you know basically anyone two-star or better can come right in and play. I did redshirt a lot of players, including three wide receivers: we're already six deep at the position and have an 85 transfer from Florida State who'll play his senior season next year.

Our recruiting class was much better than the rest of the conference, so that's a good sign. There are three teams picked to finish above us, but they're all pretty much the same. We're C- overall (up from D), C on offense, C- on defense, B- on special teams (was D+/D/C-, I think).

I added rival Louisiana Tech to our schedule, which is a C- in strength again. I got one of two goals last year (finish .500 and get a bowl bid). This year it's beat ULM, get a bowl, and beat a 5- or 6-star team. The last one won't happen unless we meet one in a bowl: 4-star Mississippi is the team with the biggest rep on our schedule.

The only tough games should be the ones at Mississippi and Minnesota; we should be able to play with anyone on the schedule, but then again that should have been true in-conference last year and we went 5-3. We'll see.

srsly?

If you were responsible for a U.S. post office branch, and if you wanted to run a daily maintenance process on the self-service postage machines, would you run it

a) on each machine separately, or
b) on both machines at the same time?

Would you run these processes

a) late, late at night, say between 1:30 and 3:30 AM, or
b) in late evening, say around 10:30 PM?

If you guessed b) for both questions, you'd better be guessing, because if you're the incompetent fool who actually made these decisions, you're an idiot.

Because what's less effective than a "24-hour" self-service kiosk that is down for "daily maintenance" at the same time as the other one in the branch?

Besides Congress, that is.

Weigh-in: Week 36 through Week 40, +0.6 pounds

So I fell behind a little bit, as I tend to do on long-term projects, and rather than making up five weeks of paragraphs, here we are:

Week 36: +1.2 pounds
Week 37: +2.2 pounds
Week 38: -1.4 pounds (actually this was on Thursday, I forgot to weigh myself Wednesday)
Week 39: +0.2 pounds
Week 40: -1.6 pounds

Basically, in early November I fell into a trap of eating potato chips and stuff like that with lunch. Caught that, turned it around, and then later in the month as work slowed down, my weight began to stabilize. It was neutral the first week in December and has been dropping since then; as you can see, yesterday's weight was almost where I was back in late October.

With the slowdown in contract work, I may not be ready to purchase my reward if I do earn it; then again, I'm also eating more carefully in part because I'm at home, so there are good parts and bad parts to it.

I feel like I'm focused again, so we'll see how the next couple of weeks go.

I don't think that word means what you think it means

NCAA 10. New dynasty with Louisiana-Lafayette, aiming to take them to the SEC and win in the first year (for an achievement). This year they're terrible.

Playing Kansas State, K-State is up 30-0 in the third quarter ... and throwing. A lot. Naturally if I had the lead like that, I'd be penalized "sportsmanship points" every pass, but of course it's different for the computer. (There are also points for kicking on 4th down, also a joke: the computer goes for it all the time, which I support in principle, but it makes the standards they hold you to ridiculous.)

I'm down 37-0 now and have a 4th and 17. We can't hit any long passes, so I kick a field goal ... and get 10 points for sportsmanship for kicking on 4th down.

EA meant well, but as usual, made a hash of it. Did they set up kick return formations or allow you to tell whether or not your opponent is trying an onside kick? Oh no, they don't fix problems, they just add "features".

Of course, that's going to change as they put out fewer games with more quality. I'll believe that two years after I've seen it.

Playoffs

No, not the NFL kind. There's time enough for that ... what I mean are nonexistent playoffs, the I-A kind that we would have if idiots weren't running the show.

How it wouldn't work

Any form of four-team system: plus-one, whatever. First, that's not a playoff. That's old boys disappearing into the back room and declaring a champion. Second, really? Interest in the non-champion BCS bowls has been steadily dropping because people realize what they are now: consolation prizes. Besides, there are six BCS conferences. Tell me how that's going to work. Uh-huh, that's what I thought.

An eight-team playoff. Case in point: 2009. Six BCS conference champions – that's a given, as mentioned above. So that leaves two spots, and which team are you going to exclude?

a) Unbeaten TCU;
b) Unbeaten Boise State;
c) One-loss Florida. (Bonus: they're the only one-loss team in I-A football. Look it up.)

Exactly. Two at-large berths aren't nearly enough. Yes, I know, not every season will see five unbeaten teams heading into the bowls, but every season's going to have a number of qualified candidates from outside the power six, and remember, the old BCS was expanded under threat of legal action. They can't very well shrink the field back down now.

How it would work

Sixteen teams. First-round games at campus sites, quarterfinals at three permanent sites, say Tampa, Jacksonville, and San Antonio, with the fourth spot to one of the existing BCS bowls in rotation, then semis and final at the other three bowls in rotation.

I picked Tampa (Outback), Jacksonville (Gator), and San Antonio (Alamo) for a combination of longevity and geography. Ideally, you'd have a western site, a southwest site, a southern site, and a southeast site, but I don't know that there are enough bowls for that.

Anyway, the teams: 11 conference champions and 5 at-large teams. Oh yes, all 11. It's an NCAA championship, so that's how it works, and anyway if you think you're excluding any of the other conferences, you would be wrong.

What it would look like

Version 1: how the computers might see it
(16) Troy at (1) Alabama
(15) East Carolina at (2) Florida*
(14) Central Michigan at (3) Texas
(13) Penn State* at (4) TCU
(12) USC* at (5) Cincinnati
(11) Pittsburgh* at (6) Oregon
(10) Georgia Tech at (7) Boise State
(9) Ohio State at (8) Virginia Tech*

At-large teams marked like so*. Assumptions: no more than one at-large bid from a conference, and teams from the same conference may not meet in the first round. To avoid this, teams may be moved a spot from their original seeds. (In fact, at first I had a Pitt-UC rematch, a USC-Oregon rematch, and a GT-VT rematch originally.)

Troy-Alabama? Coincidence, plus the Sun Belt sucks. Florida as #2? That's how the computers see it, and we're thinking an RPI-style system, not the crap that currently puts human guesses above carefully-research systems.

I just don't think you can justify three teams from one conference when there are five at-large bids for everyone. With a 24-team playoff like I-AA has, I think you could allow four; with a limit of three, you might drop pretty far down to pick up other teams. LSU is 10th in both Sagarin and Massey and Arkansas averages 14th. Miami is 11th in both and Clemson averages 19th. If you draw the line at 4, that shuts out Mississippi ... but I think you kind of have to, no one wants to see a second-division power-conference team in the playoff. (Hear that, NCAA men's selection committee?)

Version 2: how the BCS might see it
?? at (1) Alabama
?? at (2) Texas
?? at (3) Cincinnati
(13) West Virginia* at (4) TCU
(12) BYU* at (5) Florida*
(11) Virginia Tech* at (6) Boise State
(10) Iowa* at (7) Oregon
(9) Georgia Tech at (8) Ohio State

Same notes for at-large teams, multi-bid conferences, and first-round meetings. So the first problem is that the BCS stops listing teams at 25, so we have no idea where Central Michigan, East Carolina, and Troy would fall. (A cynic would list them in order by wins because he'd say the BCS would understand anything more.)

No teams needed to be shifted. Iowa gets the Big Ten's second spot instead of Penn State (margin of victory being important in a real ranking system, but in the neutered version, PSU gets virtually nothing for whipping bad northeastern teams). West Virginia sneaks in ahead of Pitt (which has to hurt considering the Big East "championship" – makes you wonder if people even watched that game, but I think we all know the voters don't actually watch games).

BYU slips in ahead of USC, and to be honest I'm fine with that. In fact, in an RPI system, I doubt USC would get in, because they were tied for what, fifth in the Pac-10? They finished their season terribly. Maybe the conference was tough as a whole, but cry me a river. If you're taking a team from the Pac-10, it's Oregon State, right?

Of course in an actual BCS-based playoff, BYU wouldn't have a chance in hell (pardon the phrase), because they're not in a BCS conference, and the power conferences would always get the at-large bids.

Anyway, you see where this is going. TCU-Boise State is a nice matchup, as is Alabama-Texas and Florida-Cincinnati, but that will still leave at least two unbeaten teams, and if you think that doesn't matter, well, you were probably happy with the poll-determined champions.

The BCS is a limited system put in place by greedy fools who had no clue and updated by fools who still have no clue. It will be replaced by greedy people who have a clue. (Make no mistake, a playoff will be introduced for money, not because it's a fair way to determine a champion or because every single sport at every level of NCAA competition has a tournament except I-A football.)

Looking forward to that Troy-Alabama matchup? Too bad. Waiting to see if Cincinnati could make it to the semis or if the TCU-Alabama winner would trip them up? Keep waiting.

In the meantime, we'll have the Orange Bowl. Iowa-Georgia Tech. Mmm-kay.

Totally not screwed

The World Cup draw was held today. Normally, in these things, the USA is screwed, mostly because FIFA is really only concerned with distributing competition in geographic terms. (This is probably because of the heavy concentration of talent in Europe. Think of it as soccer's equivalent of the BCS: the current system strongly benefits Europe, and Europe has significant influence in FIFA, so it's not likely to change any time soon.)

What happens is that if you aren't the host country or a top team, you're grouped essentially by region, so you can't play anyone else in your region. Unfortunately, we end up grouped with other CONCACAF countries and usually the weaker Asian teams, so instead of being able to draw them, we draw a couple of European teams. In theory, this wouldn't matter for a top side: obviously to win the World Cup you have to beat a number of quality teams. In practice, we're not that good yet, so we could use a balanced draw rather than a geographic draw.

Well, this is what we got:
Pot 1) England. Well, it wasn't Brazil or Spain. Of course, given how we played Brazil and Spain in the Confederations Cup, maybe those would have been better draws. South Africa would have been the dream draw here. Instead, we get a difficult opponent.
Pot 2) USA. This is just to show where we came into play.
Pot 3) Algeria. Jackpot. Arguably the weakest team in Pot 3. They've not played in the World Cup in 24 years and were not a particularly strong qualifier from Africa. They do have some home-continent advantage, but I don't think it will be enough to threaten.
Pot 4) Slovenia. Another great draw, considering that France and Portugal were in this pot. Slovakia would have been a better draw, but Slovenia and Algeria should be enough to guarantee advancement for the US.

Will the US be strong and healthy enough to advance beyond the round of 16? There's no way to tell right now, but it should certainly be a consideration. This is a team that was a match from early elimination in South Africa this year, yet found itself at halftime of the championship match ahead 2-0 against Brazil.

On the flip side, we're strong enough that the Confederations Cup should be a disappointment rather than an accomplishment. In past World Cups, struggling with a draw like this would be unfortunate. Now, it would be a disaster.

The minimum expectation should be six points and a second-place finish. A reasonable expectation would be seven points and a tiebreaker for group finish (drawing with England, goal differential deciding the group winner). Winning the group? That would be good ... but not incredible. Incredible would be advancing to the semifinals.

I think we'll make the quarterfinals. In six months, we'll find out.

Virtual me (NCAA 10)

If you don't like reading posts about playing video games, skip ahead to the next post.

In my junior year at Georgia Tech as a MLB, we started off the season 0-2, and to make matters worse, both games were conference games (UNC and Virginia Tech). So after starting the season #3, we were down to #21. Amazingly, we won our next 10 games, finished in a tie for the division with Miami (whom we'd beaten), and got a spot in the ACC title game again. We'd also managed to work our way back to #2/#4 in the polls and #3 in the BCS standings, in part because we played something like 8 top-25 teams. Clemson was actually ahead of us at #3 when we were #4 in the BCS, but they lost to South Carolina ... I figured even if they didn't, we'd pass them anyway by winning the ACC while they were idle. Texas was #1 and ND was #2, so it seemed like a safe bet for us.

Well, Alabama beat Florida, who was ranked higher than BC (our opponent in the ACC Championship), and they vaulted over us to #2, dropping Notre Dame to #3 and us to #4. Instead of playing for the title, we're playing #14 Boise State. woo. Not as fun as shutting out overrated Notre Dame last year (oh yes we did), but it'll do.

Just a reminder that the BCS is crap. Sure, we screwed ourselves by losing two games, but you can't tell me that it's a good feeling to win your last game prior to the bowls and end up moving down. In this season, it was really Texas and everyone else; there simply weren't two teams that were clearly better than the rest, and that was the only reason the BCS came into play.

Guess I'll return for my senior season.

Rock Band 2 song difficulties

I admit it, I've been slacking on this. Of course they don't make it easy on you, what with DLC coming out every week and all. Now that there are more than 1000 songs available, well, it's a bit of a challenge.

Anyway, I've created a new Google Doc with most of the songs and Rock Band 2 difficulty levels. (Remember, RB and RB 2 have different systems for difficulty. Also, IMHO the RB 2 difficulties are less accurate. Take that for what it's worth.)

There are a number of songs with no difficulties yet because I entered only the song info, knowing I'd have to come back to them. This is still a work in progress. I'm down to the Rs with just the new Nirvana and Night Ranger songs to go back and fill in.

Finally, there are some songs in the game itself that I haven't marked, and then there are the songs from the first game that you can import. (I deleted some of those, so I may not have ratings for everything.)

Enjoy!

Oh, one more thing: a few songs only use three instruments (one song with no drums, three songs with no vocals). For those songs, I removed the averages from any column with the part that is missing, so they'll be at the bottom of the list (because the full band can't play them).