Mega-kudos to my friend Special K at Tidefans.com, who started this hilarious thread with a photographic representation of what Auburn coach Gus Malzahn must have been going through as Saturday night’s Iron Bowl unfolded.
Here they are. Laugh and enjoy, and be sure to click through on the link above, because on the pages that follow, there’s stuff that will make you laugh so hard you’ll have tears in your eyes.
I’ll be honest—last night’s Iron Bowl made me more than a little nervous. In Alabama’s last two attempts to match the tempo of teams that are recruited and built to play basketball on grass, things didn’t go well. Alabama went 0-2 against Auburn and Oklahoma.
Enter Lane Kiffin.
I was puzzled when Nick Saban hired the former Tennessee and Southern Cal head coach as his Offensive Coordinator. I wondered to myself whether this was a smart hire. But as the 2014 season has unfolded, it’s clear that when Mr. Kiffin is given the tools and materials to build a vehicle, he can build a freight train.
What continues to concern me is Alabama’s willingness to enter the Dark Side. Ok. Kiffin can call plays. He can even know when a play is going for a touchdown before the ball even leaves his QB’s fingers. But deep down, ask yourself. Meditate on this question:
Is this Alabama Football?
I am uncomfortable with Alabama playing teams that are built to do what the Tide did last night. It was (kinda) fun to watch Saban and Kiffin beat Malzahn and Lashlee at their own game. But I was also downright uncomfortable.
I’ve always been a believer that the game of football is won and lost on the line of scrimmage. When your big uglies can knock the other guys’ big uglies off of the line, you usually win the game unless you make dumb mistakes.
Basketball on grass changes that calculus.
It’s like playing what I like to call “bingo poker.” Bingo poker describes those kinds of games where there are bunches of wild cards (“Aces, Deuces, One-eyed Jacks!”) . Who the hell knows what cards are being held and played? Chips fly into the pot, and even a knucklehead who lucks into a four-of-a-kind with three wild cards can drag the pot.
I would much prefer that Alabama get back to playing Alabama Football. Don’t get me wrong—Kiffin has been an outstanding playcaller since arriving in Tuscaloosa. He finally has the tools and weapons he needs to be successful; things he really didn’t have at Tennessee, and things that NCAA sanctions thwarted during his stint at Southern Cal, despite his best efforts at becoming the Sith Lord of Roster Management in SoCal. Like I said above—give a good coach the tools and materials he needs, and he’ll succeed.
But getting back to the original point of this post: if you’re a long-time follower of Alabama Crimson Tide football, this has to be a bit unnerving. Of course, watching Coach Bryant unveil the Wishbone was probably a bit unnerving to those who saw Bart Starr through Kenny Stabler run a pro-style offense—and win championships doing so.
Times are changing? I need to move into the 21st Century? Ok. Maybe so. That doesn’t mean that my “dinosaur” offensive strategy of three yards and a cloud of dust isn’t effective. It has been for decades and if it keeps the “basketball on grass” offenses on the sidelines; forced to watch while the opposing offense runs the ball down your throat, how is that bad?
Is 21-10 a less impressive victory than 55-44? Nope. They both go in the “W” column.
I know some people will disagree with me on this; that the kind of football Alabama used to play is boring and out of synch with the modern game. But wins don’t bore me. Nor do championships and Alabama has won more championships playing smash mouth football than not.
One of the easiest ways to tell if someone is not being honest about his/her involvement in a crime is whether they are consistent in recounting events. As indicated in this WaPo story, OFC Wilson has never changed his story. Not once.
Wilson gave his first and so far only interview Tuesday to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, saying that he didn’t think he could have handled the confrontation with Brown any differently.
“Everybody says that [his story] was so rehearsed and he was so prepped,” Thompson said. “But the way Darren tells the story has not changed from the minute the shooting occurred. He could probably tell it in his sleep if he had to.”
“If I could, I’d show you my notes from one hour after it happened,” Kloeppel said, referring to an interview Wilson did at Ferguson police headquarters Aug. 9. “Same story.”
As anyone not living on Mars since August knows, OFC Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown after a confrontation on a street in Ferguson, MO. Wlson, white, killed Brown, black, in an episode that took all of 90 seconds.
There are no video or audio recordings of the incident, and notoriously unreliable eyewitness accounts varied. However, some of those eyewitnesses changed their testimony as the saga unfolded between the fateful August afternoon and Monday night’s announcement that a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson.
Sifting through the evidence released by the prosecutor—all of which was presented to the grand jury—it becomes clear that even if DA Bob McColluch had gotten the proverbial “ham sandwich” indicted, a jury trial would never have resulted in a conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
The golden thread in that conclusion is that Wilson’s story never changed. You can see it in the interview with St. Louis County Police detectives. You can see it in his grand jury testimony, and you can see it in Wilson’s interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.
The fact that Mr. Wilson’s story has never wavered during the four month saga is not an indication that he is innocent of wrongdoing. But it is a powerful indication that he remembers every detail of the incident that led to the tragic death of an 18-year old.
If you’re lying, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll cross up some of the details over the passage of time. That’s why interrogators use multiple interviews—all recorded—to go over the minute details of what could be a crime. If you tell the same story, over and over and over again, police and prosecutors have little reason to believe that you are being untruthful. If even small details are changed during the course of these multiple interviews, it causes investigators to dig deeper, probe more thoroughly, and use inconsistencies to build a case for probable cause.
The forensic evidence associated with this incident supports Wilson’s account of events and discredits eyewitness accounts. The multiple autopsies show the same. Brown refused a lawful order from a sworn officer. He then initiated a violent confrontation with Wilson, in which he struggled for the officer’s sidearm. He was shot in the hand at close range and tried to flee. As Wilson exited his vehicle to give pursuit, Brown turned and tried to bull rush the policeman. Wilson fired multiple shots, nearly emptying his magazine, and fatally wounded Brown. It was tragic. It was unnecessary. But it was Brown’s fault, not Wilson’s, that he is now dead and buried and Wilson walks as a free man.
We have confidence in this conclusion based on the simple fact that from the hours after the incident until the interview on ABC, Wilson’s story has not changed. Not one bit.
Only Lee Corso(!) dissented with a voice of logic and reason. When you have Lee Corso on your side… well…
Look, enough already. The SEC schools that scheduled FCS opponents this late in the season did so for two simple reasons: Economics, and finance. Optics be damned—optics don’t pay the bills. Let’s face some cold hard facts, shall we?
No major school wants to give up a home game. Ever.
Home games are too important to the home team program, the community and the fans. To even play a home-away rotation with another major school means both teams lose a home game every other year. It's simply not in anyone's financial interest to do so, especially this late in the season.
It is however, in the financial interest of schools like WCU, who collected a hefty paycheck that they will use to further develop what appears to be a up-and-coming program. And so, we eschew a late season non-conference matchup. We maximize home game revenues, the opponent is better off financially, and everybody is set.
This is what some people in the media fail to wrap their heads around: It’s a voluntary exchange. When you look at things from a center-left point of view, voluntary exchanges are bad things. How can these dupes hope to do well by society by making their own damned decisions that work towards their own damned interests?
It’s not about doing well by society. It’s about the bottom line for the schools involved, the community involved and the fans. The University of Alabama is a good institutional citizen of Tuscaloosa and the entire state. It's just not in their interest to agree to play a major non-conference opponent if that opponent insists on a home-away rotation. It’s fine to schedule an early season game at a neutral location, like Alabama has endeavored to do since Mike Dubose clapped his way into oblivion. Also, any prospective major non-conference, late-in-the-season opponent faces the same financial calculus that UA does. Why should they not maximize home game revenues by scheduling cupcakes? Giving up millions (potentially) to assuage the politically correct talking heads is bad economics, bad finance and frankly, it steps close to a breach of fiduciary trust. The community where these games take place spend enormous resources in providing security, traffic control, first responder capability and God knows what else. They do so in the knowledge that the economic impact of such events is tremendous to the local economy and vastly exceeds the costs. That’s as true in Tuscaloosa as it is in Tallahassee, Columbus, Norman, Lincoln and Ann Arbor. And what happens if (when?) the SEC goes to a nine-game conference schedule? Well, every SEC team gives up at least one home game per year, and all the revenue and impact associated with it. That means even more patsies scheduled as non-con opponents. People, beware of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It always—always—comes back and bites you in the ass. A similar example exists here in Mobile. Every late winter/early spring, the City of Mobile expends tremendous resources to provide security and first responder services during the annual Mardi Gras celebration. That runs for weeks, and the total public attendance for the carnival season dwarfs the attendance at any home game played in any SEC venue. If the City of Mobile told the carnival crewes to go find their own security, first responder and other services, Mardi Gras in Mobile would cease to exist. That impact would be devastating. The impacts and economic devastation go up by an order of magnitude in New Orleans. No one wants to see any of that take place, especially if the only reason to do so is to keep people like Kirk, Desmond and Chris happy. And let’s be honest, here. That would be the only reason to penalize schools and/or force major conference schools to eschew these kinds of matchups. They don’t care about (or they’re ignorant of) the economic and financial realities of college football. All they care about are the politically correct optics of bitching about big boys playing little boys. There’s another angle to this, brought up by my friend TIDE-HSV over on the Tidefans.com forum. When lesser schools are on the field with bigger schools, the incentive to make up the gap in talent is dangerous. The targeting rules are also running into the Law of Unintended Consequences. If you can't lead with your head or target an opponent from the shoulders up, then a lesser opponent has little choice but to go low. How many people got helped off of the field in the Alabama – Western Carolina game? You need two hands to count them, and they were all starters.The rules in place now could actually cause more injuries rather than fewer, although those injuries are much less life-threatening than head/neck injuries. That's another thing that these politically correct talking heads completely miss. The argument for avoiding scheduling vastly inferior opponents because of increased injury risk is much more convincing than the one of optics made by the talking heads. That argument also plays right into their politically correct narrative that football is too violent and that it needs to be more thoroughly regulated. "Well," they could say, "if you want fewer injuries, then don't allow little boys to play on the same field with big boys because the little boys have to find some way to compensate for the lack of speed, size and talent. The only way to avoid that is to keep big boys playing big boys and little boys playing little boys." They don't make that argument because it makes too much sense. But, when was the last time an argument was made by the mainstream media that made sense? Western Carolina Head Coach Mark Speir made a lot of sense Saturday night. "Guys get an education and we battled our butts off, playing games like this.It sends people who wouldn't have an opportunity to go to college and have great memories. Then a guy like Troy sets a record. You tell me that ain't special. I'll get off my soapbox." You know what’s special about college football and scheduling during the regular season? I’ll yell it at ya: It’s about the voluntary exchange. That’s something that people in the media don’t understand or simply can’t stand.
Immediately after Nazi Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, Hitler began a submarine naval campaign to strangle Allied shipping and prevent the flow of oil, Aluminum and other key commodities from Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard ports to the theaters of conflict in Europe and the Pacific.
From early 1942 through 1943, German U-Boats terrified the East and Gulf Coasts.At least 56 ships were sunk along the Gulf Coast, while only one German U-Boat was sunk by the US Navy and US Coast Guard in the Gulf.
CNN had a report from a couple of weeks ago (that, sadly, this history buff missed):
Silent and shadowy, two hulks lie under the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters, unmoved since their deadly encounter 72 years ago during World War II.
Now, the future has come to take a closer look.
From July 6 to 14, the 211-foot research ship Exploration Vessel Nautilus conducted dives to the final resting places of the American steamer SS Robert E. Lee and the German U-boat U-166, about 45 miles south of the Mississippi River delta.
The Robert E. Lee was torpedoed by the U-166 while ferrying victims of other U-boat attacks from Trinidad to New Orleans. The sub succumbed to depth charges fired from an escort ship. These doomed ships are now separated by only two miles of seabed.
I touched on the terror campaign conducted by the Deutsche Kriegsmarine U-Boat campaign in this post, during coverage of the BP Macondo Oil Spill in 2010. A great many of the ships sunk were oil tankers, ill-equipped to deal with a torpedo amidships.
The point of that post was to explain that tar balls washing up on such pristine beaches as those found from Dauphin Island, Alabama to Apalachicola, Florida are not unusual, and this has been true for decades.
When my father was a boy during WWII, he and his father could see the glow of burning, sinking ships on the horizon at night, and columns of black smoke during daytime hours. In fact, the Gulf and Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway systems were built to prevent or blunt attacks on shipping between Gulf and Atlantic Coast ports, with no regard to their economic viability. Shipping between coastal ports in the US was deemed a matter of national security. For all intents and purposes, a relatively shallow draft vessel or barge shipment can travel from Brownsville, Texas to the Manasquan River in New Jersey, virtually unmolested by submarine-based attacks.
In July 1942, a passenger ship converted into a civilian transport vessel, the Robert E. Lee, was torpedoed and sunk by U-166 during the height of Operation Paukenschlag (Operation Drumbeat). At the time, there were at least a dozen German U-Boats prowling in the Gulf of Mexico, and potentially many dozens more prowling the East Coast from Maine to Miami.
When the US finally managed to organize a legitimate coastal shipping defense system in 1943, which included airplanes armed with torpedoes, PT-type boats armed with depth charges and coastal batteries, the carnage dropped off significantly and Germany moved its focus back to the central and northern Atlantic Ocean.
But not before the US got its pound of flesh by sinking U-166.
Today, both sites—located within two miles of each other—are designated as graveyards and are not subject to marine archaeological investigations or salvage.
Click the image to watch the haunting minute or so of imagery.
His signature shot—the Skyhook—was a deadly hook shot for which there was no defense. The 7’2” giant would put up an uncannily accurate, yet graceful shot while everyone else watched helplessly.
When a legend like this weighs in on a sports topic, his gravitas makes his opinion worth considering and in explaining why soccer hasn’t wildfired through America like it has in the rest of the world, he nails it:
Finally, soccer doesn’t fully express the American ethos as powerfully as our other popular sports. We are a country of pioneers, explorers, and contrarians who only need someone to say it can’t be done to fire us up to prove otherwise. As a result, we like to see extraordinary effort rewarded. The low scoring in soccer frustrates this American impulse. We also celebrate rugged individualism, the democratic ideal that anybody from any background can become a sports hero. We like to see heroes rise, buoyed by their teammates, but still expressing their own supreme individual skills. Certainly soccer has its celebrated stars, from Pele to Beckham, but those skills seem muted on TV where we’re often looking at small figures on a large field and therefore these feats appear less impressive than they really are. In football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, team effort is rewarded with points and individual greatness is as instant and immediate as a one-handed snagged football pass, a three-pointer from the corner, stealing home base, or a [slap]-shot of the puck into the goal.
Read the whole thing here. He’s absolutely right.
I am no “soccer hater.” All of my kids have played the sport, and two of them were on teams that won league championships. I am familiar with the rules of the game. And when any team wearing the red white and blue steps onto a field of competition, I’m right there chanting “USA! USA!”
But like a large percentage of Americans, I am altogether unimpressed with the game at the professional level. It’s therefore not hatred of soccer that explains its relative lack of popularity in this country. It’s antipathy. We just don’t care, and we don’t care for the reasons Kareem articulates so well in his op-ed at Time.
This line of thought tends to escape the talking heads on sports radio and television. They can’t seem to understand why so many Americans are uninterested in a sport that is loved elsewhere on the planet.
In her typically sarcastic, provocative manner, Anne Coulter explains the antipathy more harshly. But I think she nails a snarky skyhook with this:
You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!
Not only are you not able to use your hands, doing so results in a penalty. Do it inside “the box” and it results in a penalty kick, pitting a representative of the offended team against the goalkeeper in a one-on-one situation. Now that’s something Americans can take a modicum of interest in.
Many disinterested Americans don’t care about soccer because of this aspect of the game, and it’s probably sub-conscious. We built this country using our hands, and we’ve defended it using our hands. I’m typing this post with my hands. You get the idea.
While that’s probably part of the issue, I think the driving force in American antipathy towards soccer is best captured in the quote from Kareem’s essay, wherein he describes us as “pioneers, explorers, and contrarians who only need someone to say it can’t be done to fire us up to prove otherwise.”
In all of the other sports that we love so much in this country, it is the chance for individual achievement—combined with the risk of individual failure—that captivates us and makes us watch on television and sell-out stadiums. We like to see teamwork, but we like to see teams of exceptional individuals who are taking exceptional risks in displaying their exceptional talents. That’s excitement for Americans.
That’s missing in Soccer.
Being told otherwise by talking heads and those who hail from the left of the political spectrum isn’t going to change the fabric of America. We like what we like because of who we are. Pointy-headed elites telling us what we should like isn’t going to move the needle very much;, the rest of the world be damned.
Then came the puzzling and controversial hire of Lane Kiffen to replace Coach Nuss at the offensive coordinator slot. Kiffin, known for pro-style and West Coast type offenses is a heckuva coach and a good playcaller. He’s also a proficient recruiter and a salesman who could sell to other salesmen.
Which is why the recruitment and ultimate commitments of Jacob Coker and Blake Barnett are so curious. As CapstoneReport’s ITK points out, this signals that the Tide’s traditional offense is in for more than just a tweak or two here and there:
Think you have Alabama’s offense figured out? Think again.
Yesterday Alabama received a commitment from one of the top three dual threat quarterbacks in the country, Blake Barnett of Corona Santiago, California. Barnett, like the incoming transfer Jacob Coker, presents a different skill-set from other quarterbacks in Nick Saban’s arsenal while at Alabama.
…
While it’s doubtful Alabama’s new offense will stoop to bush-league tactics like the HUNH, football’s version of the cheap shot punch (then run away as fast as you can), it appears Bama is intent on standing in front of you, punching you in the mouth, then kicking you with very, very quick feet.
The emphasized statement is important. Like ITK (and probably most Bama fans), I pray that we don’t go to the trick offenses run by Auburn, Oklahoma and Oregon. We’re not geared for that, and it would take a disastrous few years to get geared for it. Just ask Rich Rodriguez how things work out when you take a team geared for downhill running and try to put in a spread-type offense.
It’s just not Alabama football. It’s not what the team is currently designed to do, and it’s not something most Bama fans would recognize as “our brand.”
More speed on the offense is never a bad thing. Nor is it a bad thing to have a QB who can turn a busted play into a first down or a TD. It is a bad thing to fundamentally rewrite the playbook and completely change strategies when you’ve been recruiting for years with the goal in mind of playing the game a certain way.
In the game of football, and especially in the SEC, the winners are usually the teams that control the ball, dominate the clock and own the line of scrimmage. Play trickster football against smashmouth football and nine times out of ten, the team with the smashmouth strategy wins.
You wanna get some additional speed to augment the physicality of your traditional brand of football, fine. But if you don’t dance with the one who brung ya, ya ain’t gonne get much time on the big dance floor.
The Mississippi primary runoff election is a mere five days away. Long-tooth long-term US Senator Thad Cochran is in the political fight of his life against challenger and TEA Party favorite Chris McDaniel.
Enter the US Chamber of Commerce with this ad, featuring hometown son Brett Favre, who wants Mississippians to return the old guy back for what will surely be his final tour.
Why should Favre’s endorsement mean squat in a primary race won by the challenger (but without the majority required to avoid a runoff)?
Well, because Brett Favre is from lovely Kiln, MS. It’s part of a three-county stretch between the state lines of Alabama and Louisiana. Thanks to the shipbuilding and casino industries in this stretch, the area is the second-most populous urban area in the state. It’s also solidly red, meaning that attention levels will be high in the area over the next several days.
To put it mildly, Favre is a homeboy. He enjoys tremendous popularity in the region and is treated like a rock star wherever he goes. The dude has clout.
The question is simple: Is Favre dain bramaged, or is this a shrewd and calculated move by the donor wing of the GOP to get their guy over the finish line by using a populous region’s most celebrated athlete to do a full-throated endorsement?
Granted, I believe that Cochran should have retired already. He’s uhh… getting on up there and McDaniel has shown political chops on the stump. Cochran refused to debate him and has a long record of establishmentarianism.
But y’know, getting such a beloved homeboy to speak up may turn out to be genius. The race is reportedly as tight as a drafting maneuver at Talladega. This one’s going to the finish line.
Forget about the jokes regarding Favre’s little sexting scandal. Forget about the irony of having a QB who didn’t know when to hang up the cleats endorsing a Senator who, frankly, doesn’t seem to know when to hang it up.
This little thing might produce enough votes in Jackson, Harrison and Hancock Counties to push Cochran over the goal line.
Or, it might be too little, too late and Cochran is forced into doing something Favre just couldn’t bring himself to do.
We’ll see Tuesday night.
USTPO sided with the plaintiffs, ordering that the trademark be squished like a bug, reasoning that the name and logo was disparaging to a significant enough degree that it violated the Trademark Act.
The Redskins organization will no doubt appeal the decision, just as it did in 1999 when the USTPO tried to void the trademark.
This is an irresistible topic for me, because it melds two things I am passionate about: Sports and politics.
Predictably, many on the politically correct left are hailing the decision as a decisive victory for civil rights. Also predictably, many on the right (and probably a vast majority of ‘Skins fans) are deriding it as an unnecessary intrusion into an NFL owner’s right to conduct business as he sees fit.
In my opinion, I think Hotair.com’s AllahPundit has the correct take on this issue. The money quote from his post yesterday:
The weird thing about “Redskins” is that it’s so closely associated with football and the team in the public’s mind, I think, that over time the sports meaning has completely overtaken the racially derogatory meaning. If someone walked up to you today and said “What do you think of the Redskins?”, you’d assume without a second thought that he was asking you about the NFC East, not casually slurring Native Americans. Hard to argue that the word’s “disparaging” in that context. On the other hand, if you let the mark stand for that reason, then theoretically “Washington Blackskins” would and should also stand as long as it’s been in use for a long enough time that the underlying racial meaning has basically melted away.
Essentially, the argument comes down to how one would answer this question: Was there an intent to disparage Native Americans in adopting this name, or is it the intent of certain segments of the population to feel disparaged and demand action? Put another way: Was the franchise determined to disparage, or are those who claim disparagement determined to be disparaged?
AllahPundit’s angle on the question is also valid and raises another important question: Has the sports context of the name overtaken the potentially derogatory meaning, or is the derogatory meaning so overarching that it trumps the long evolution of the sports context?
If the USTPO decision is upheld during the federal appeals process (the mark remains enforceable throughout the appeals process), then Snyder will have no good business choice than to change the name of the team. Otherwise, he stands to lose precious sums of money from the inability to protect the trademark. Plus, his well-known obstinance means that he’s probably taking this all the way. He ain’t gonna quit.
It will be years yet before this matter is finally settled but my exit question is simply this:If there is no intent to offend, why can’t we as a society simply choose not to be offended?
By now, everyone has learned of the National Labor Relations Board regional director’s opinion that Northwestern University athletes are employees of the institution and therefore eligible to unionize, if they so desire.
The ensuing uproar and bandwidth consumed by the media coverage is much ado about nothing. Here’s why.
First, this was a ruling by a lower level administrative law judge, whose jurisdiction stops at the borders of his region. It has no effect whatsoever on schools in the Pacific Northwest, East Coast or Southeast. When Northwestern appeals to the entire NLRB in Washington, DC, then that board’s decision will have national consequences.
Even then, Northwestern or the would-be player’s union has the right of appeal to a US Federal District Judge, whose decision is certainly to be appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision is then subject to review by the US Supreme Court.
We are looking at years of litigation, so don’t expect to see groundbreaking on union halls on college campuses anytime soon.
Second, the NLRB has jurisdiction over private organizations. Northwestern is a private school in Illinois. The ruling has absolutely no effect on public schools, regardless of their location. Northwestern and Notre Dame are in play. But Illinois is not. The Big 10 is not affected in any way, either.
Last and most importantly, the ruling has no effect on NCAA rules, either. If a player receives extra benefits not provided to the student body as a whole—consisting of anything of value—that player’s eligibility is revoked and the relationship between the institution and the player ends right there.
Summing it all up: We have a 20-page decision by a single administrative law judge that will be subject to years of litigation and appeals. It affects the small percentage of private schools in college athletics and regardless of the eventual outcome of this process, it will have no effect on the overarching governance of the NCAA rulebook.
I don’t see what all the ruckus is about, do you?
