Week 12

President Obama! Doesn't it sound weird? Obama isn't exactly an American name. President Obama! All I know of elections is profound disappointment; three weeks later, I still haven't quite processed this.

Basketball season! I took Portland Trailblazers over 44.5(-130). This team went 41-41 last year and added last year's #1 overall pick, Greg Oden, fresh off a year in which he did nothing but work out maniacally and get himself into ridiculous shape. Also joining the team is Rudy Fernandez, who was drafted 2 years ago and last year was MVP of the Spanish league. Every key member of the team is 23 or younger, meaning they can all be projected to improve rather than decline. They're 8-6 now, which is a 46.857142 win pace. Go Blazers!

I am having a lot of trouble staying interested in the NFL. Football would easily be my favorite sport to watch, but the TV broadcasts' camera work is universally exceedingly poor. They just follow the ball. So much of the game is away from the ball. They even do a poor job of following the ball-related action though! When a pass is in the air, they just show the ball in the air, not the unfolding match between the receiver and the defender. When combined with those airhead announcers, it's fucking unbearable.

I'm still not over Spygate. It may have blown over, but that is only a measure of people's attention spans. I want answers! Goodell, you fucking douchebag.

Still, I persevere. I love the game just that much. Mute the TV, put on some music, enjoy.

A key principle of free market economics is the flow of information to all parties. Republicans always talk about deregulation as a solution, but a central purpose of regulation is to preserve that flow of information. What Republicans really want is to allow private interests to control the information and use it to gain an unfair advantage that undermines the free market they claim to love so much.

So let's go over my preseason picks(all nets are after 5 commission):
Obama to win-won. President Obama!
+35
Pastriots over 12.5-lost. They're 7-4, so that bet is over. Brady went down, and I've mentioned the other areas of decline. Also, it's easy to lose 4 games in a season. Karma's a bitch, Belichick.
-51.8
Arizona under 7.5-about to be lost. They're 7-4, so they'd have to lose the rest of their games. They seem to be pretty good, and their division is absolutely horrible. It turns out that Anquan Boldin really might be worth a big contract.
-50.7
Jets under 7.5-lost, since they're also 8-3. This team isn't as fucked and injured as it was last year. It's really hard to get over the disgruntled skepticism all Jets fans feel, but I'm working on it...in time to be crushed in the playoffs. J E T S JETS JETS JETS
-47
San Diego under 10.5-won. They're 4-7. They've had some bad breaks, and I haven't seen so much. In any case, I blame Norv.
+54.5
My net position, in the hypothetical world where I bought each equally is -60.

I watched a college basketball game last Monday night(or whenever it was), 21 Davidson @ 14 Oklahoma. Blake Griffin! Holy crap, what a great player. He's huge, athletic as hell, and seems to always be in the right place. I'll write in more detail about him when I watch him a little more. Stephen Curry's really good too. His game is interesting. He is about 6'2'', 190, doesn't seem real quick or anything, and a good athletic defender should be able to body him up and make his life hell. But it never seems to happen that way. He works to get open, comes off screens and such, has a really quick release on his shot and is deceptively quick, and a pretty good passer. I know from experience that the game really opens up for you if you can shoot. If you have a quick as hell release too, this happens to the extreme. Defenders have to overplay his shot so much that the game is wide open for him. He's also a good passer. Curry kept Davidson in the game for most of the first half. I knew Oklahoma would pull away when Curry had to sit for an extended period with foul trouble. Let's talk about foul trouble.

First, a word from the sponsor-
President Obama!

Optimization. For a firm, in this case a basketball team, to optimize its performance means to optimize the contributions of the employees, the players. Second, let's define foul trouble and the standard response to it. The foul limit is 6 in the NBA and 5 in the NCAA(one per eight minutes of game clock). Foul trouble is when a player has committed a number of fouls that leave him on pace to be disqualified from playing in the game. The coach's-standard-response to foul trouble is to take the player out of the game. The idea is to protect the player from fouling out because once he is disqualified, he can't play anymore.

But taking him out of the game is also not playing him! Your foul allotment is a resource. Fouling out BY DEFINITION means that you exhausted the resource, left it all on the floor, if you will. Cliches aside, though that one is completely valid in this case, it is essential to maximize the use of your resources in order to optimize performance. A player allowed to play until he fouls out with no intervention by a coach will obviously play more than one whose coach makes him sit.

Let's address all of the rationalizations now.
1) The endgame is more important than the rest of the game.
No, it's not. Maybe a little, but that's mostly an illusion, since it stands out so much in the memory afterwards. Its importance to the outcome is more obvious than the rest of the game. But if you leave your star on the bench, it won't be, because you'll fall too far behind.
2) Take the player out because his excessive fouling indicates that he is playing on tilt.
Yes, this is a very good reason to take a player out. But you are taking him out because he is playing out of control and needs to calm down, not because of foul trouble. If his mistake were not fouls, but reckless shooting, it would still be correct to take him out, even though he is not in foul trouble.
3) Take the player out because his excessive fouling indicates ________
Note that the excessive fouling is a product of the reason to take him out, or a side point, not the reason itself.

Now, the absolute worst player to take out for a silly reason is a shooter who is in a good rhythm. Sitting on the bench disrupts your rhythm. Back to the Davidson example. Stephen Curry is your whole team. You're playing a very good Oklahoma team, one you will not beat without a substantial contribution from your star. What you need to do is leave Curry in the game, gamble that he plays well and does not foul out too early. Furthermore, he is a shooter. Taking Curry out due to fouls is like punting with 3 minutes left. It's a surrender move. Even if it made sense normally-you HAVE to take a chance here. But it doesn't.

President Obama!

Last week's SD @ Pit(-5)

11-10 Pitt, final seconds, SD runs a crazy lateral play that's broken up and returned for a touchdown by Troy Polamalu, Pit's excellent safety. This seemingly meaningless touchdown changes the outcome of all ATS(against the spread, Pit by 5) bets! The refs take time to discuss, rule that a forward lateral happened, I wonder why this matters since the penalty would be declined, then they announce that it's declined...then they announce that it was a pass and the ball was dead, doesn't matter that it could not have been a pass, no touchdown, 11-10 final. If that didn't make sense to you, you're right-the ruling MADE NO SENSE. I read in the Record the next day that of the $100 million wagered on the game in Las Vegas, 2/3 of it was on Pit, meaning Vegas did very well off of this non-sensical decision. The NFL acknowledged after the game that the touchdown should have stood, but said that the official final score will remain 11-10. I don't like to be a conspiracy theorist, but how fucking blatant can they make it?!?!

I think that we're indoctrinated by the Man to label things as 'conspiracy theories' and automatically dismiss them.

Stephen Colbert can really sing.

On to this week.

J E T S JETS JETS JETS @ Tennessee

-A lot of Elvii in the crowd.
-I really like Bryan Thomas, defensive end on the Jets. On one play, he was blocked in the backfield, yet chased down Chris Johnson, he of the 4.24 40-yard dash, 15 yards downfield. Wow! I bet Johnson was surprised to get chased down by big 99. There were other examples of him racing from behind a play to contribute-this guy does not give up on a play.
-I don't have anything brilliant to say here-the Jets just looked awesome and completely outplayed a great team. Yea, Ten's overrated, but they're still really good, and the Jets pwned them.

Giants @ Arizona

-Arizona has some unbelievable receivers. You can break Boldin's face, but not his spirit.
-Arizona had a brilliant onside kick play with 4 minutes left. They loaded up the left side with seven guys and had the legal min of 4 on the right. The kicker, Neil Rackers, ran up as if to kick it left, then directed it right. It COMPLETELY fooled the Giants-the ball went right at, and through, the hands of 20 in red(AZ). Still, nice try...On a less sweet note, they tried the EXACT SAME THING on their next onside kick three minutes later; this time the Giants were prepared with an extra player on that side to make the recovery. They were also wrong to kick that field goal to close to 8 points down-it was the same situation I wrote about a few posts ago where Mike Tomlin was correct to not kick it, but Ken Whisenhunt did. Look it up.

President Obama!

Indy @ SD
-Norv blew it! He called time-out before the tying field goal with 95 seconds left. He should have let the clock run-Indy would have called time-out! Indy took the ball with 2 time-outs left and all that time, using up absolutely all of both just to get a 51-yard field goal. Had Norv not helped them out, they would have run out of time. Norv sucks.
-Breaking news-Norv will return for the 2009 season(not be fired). AJ Smith clearly does not read my blog.

GB @ NO

-Both quarterbacks(Drew Brees of NO, Aaron Rodgers of GB) are really, really good. Aaron Rodgers is a better player than Brett Favre.
-Aaron Rodgers is a great runner. There were at least two 'did you see that?!' moments where he faked out 4+ Saints defenders, then cut hard into open space. He also made a great low shoulder tackle at the end of an interception return. But he led with his right(throwing) shoulder! So I think he's a little too fearless. Speakin of fearless, I fearlessly predict that Rodgers will be injury-prone throughout his career.
-Near the end of the first half, the Saints reached first and goal at the 8 with 44 seconds left and one time-out, and Tony Kornheiser started talking about how well coach Sean Payton manages these situations, and how they'll easily have time for three plays and a field goal attempt, if necessary. As he's blowing all this smoke, the Saints are taking their sweet time, finally snapping the ball with :21 left, and getting called for a false start, after which a frustrated Drew Brees calls time-out. TIME OUT SAINTS briefly flashes, but Tony doesn't stop talking about how great the Saints are at time management. He does not miss a beat, simply says "now remember, the Saints have no time-outs left..." and then they end up forced to kick a field goal on third down, AND not run out the clock, meaning they also had to kick off to GB. What horrible time management! Kornheiser also pushed the Brett Favre story way too hard, even as Ron Jaworski, the one person at ESPN whom I like, pointed out that Aaron Rodgers' game mindset has nothing to do with Brett Favre or Drew Brees, but rather with executing a gameplan.

President Obama!

Week 6

One of Tennessee's state senators is a member of the 'NASCAR party'. Would I make that up?

Listening to announcers talk about Brett Favre is positively nauseating.

"Running into the kicker" is a ridiculous penalty. Football is a full contact sport and players are aggressively trying to block punts in the same way they aggressively go after everything else. Why can't you run into the kicker?!?! Even if we accept that kickers and punters are total wusses and need to be coddled, why is the penalty called on the slightest contact, even when the contact is an attempt to block the kick? Roughing the passer, as imperfect a rule as it is, has a clear definition and purpose. The definition is a late or excessively dangerous(head shots) hit on the quarterback, and the purpose is to protect quarterbacks, since good quarterbacks are fairly rare and the quality of the game goes down substantially when they get injured. Punters and kickers, on the other hand, are treated as practically interchangeable-evidence in the draft and their pay. Running into/roughing the kicker, on the other hand, applies to any hit on the kicker, late or not. Yes, kicking the ball makes the kicker somewhat vulnerable, so some rule needs to protect him, but this is bullshit. And the kickers are diving now too! That is what happened in

Texas v Oklahoma

-Early 4th quarter, a horrible "running into the kicker" penalty gives Oklahoma a first down. Oklahoma's kicker clearly dove...does college or pro football have a "diving" penalty? They go on to score an undeserved touchdown.

-Down 38-35 with 7 minutes left, Oklahoma faced 4th and 2 somewhere near midfield. Coach Bob Stoops sends in the punter! You've dropped 35 on this defense and you don't think you can gain 2 yards?? You've given up 38-you think you're at all likely to get a defensive stop? No! The most likely scenario is you get the ball back down 10 with 3 minutes left and have basically no chance to win. You absolutely cannot afford to forego the opportunity the current drive presents. Boom goes the punt, V writes "game over" in his (imaginary) notebook. Result-Oklahoma gets the ball back down 10 with 3 minutes left, has no chance to win, doesn't.

Clemson @ *note to self: look up who Clemson played*

-Clemson went for it on 4th and 19 with 4 minutes left down by 4. In college, there is no 2-minute warning, so the game is even closer to over than it would be in a pro game-and I always argue that on defense, this is far less time than it appears to be. ESPN's talking heads spent the rest of the game arguing about this "gamble" and the balls it took to go for it. What should take balls is kicking away the game with 4 minutes left and then facing your team and telling them you don't think they're worthy of an opportunity to win. That is all. Result: First down! Coach is a genius!

Dallas @ Arizona

-Romo drops back to the end zone, is twisting and about to be sacked for a safety, loses the ball, touchdown Arizona. Romo stands up, tells his coach to challenge, his arm was going forward. Challenge, call overturned. incomplete pass. The replay shows that Romo's arm was indeed going forward. However, he was so twisted that HE RELEASED THE BALL BACKWARDS! It was a live ball and the touchdown should have stood. Nice job forgetting the rules, refs. Nice job not noticing this either, everyone else. That was a crime against football and I'm really glad Arizona won in the end, even though their coach is a douchebag who wastes our time trying to ice the kicker. But whose isn't?

-Really really clean punt block in overtime. Guy practically took the ball off the punter's foot. And the guy said in the postgame that they weren't even running a punt block play! That's some seriously bad protection...


Pastriots @ SD

-Matt Cassel is inaccurate with the deep ball. The secondary is weak, especially Deltha O'Neal. The linebackers are slow. The right side of the line is manned by bad backups(RG Steven Neal has been out, RT Nick Kaczur got carted off Sunday). A quick nod to how important and underrated a factor avoiding injuries is to a team's success. Still, I expected Belichick to be more prepared than this.

I just took a look at that Palin Newsweek cover. Wow, she looks TERRIBLE! Look at all the flaws in her face! I know I'm splitting hairs here, but she has flaws in her cheek, eyes, forehead, nose, etc. And speaking of split hairs...

IT'S HOCKEY SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!11111ONEONEONE

Gambling Presidents

Here is an article from TIME about the gambling habits of McCain and Obama. If you don't feel like reading it-McCain really really enjoys Craps and Obama is a successful amateur poker player.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1819898-2,00.html

Matt Taibbi questions the relevance of this and challenges the reader to explain why it might be. Here is the comment I wrote:

Poker vs. Craps
I just read the Time article, and your comments on it. The candidates' gambling preferences actually do reveal things about them, though I agree that the article explains them poorly.

Craps is a casino gambling game-purely an indulgence, and a losing proposition. It's a social game, but only superficially. People may be interacting, but none of that is more substantive than "Look at how we're doing!" and "Some of us are really attractive!" Poker is a competition between players. It is a social game. To be successful, as Obama reportedly has been, it is necessary to understand both math and human psychology, and to apply those things to interpret the actions of one's opponents.

Obviously, there is more to a person than some vague information about his gambling habits, but here is what those habits suggest. A good poker player is socially perceptive, thoughtful and calculated. A craps player is shallow, impulsive and bad at math. There is no such thing as a good craps player because it is not a winnable game. Put bluntly, one is a player, the other a sucker.

Life, the Universe and Everything

To be honest, I've barely watched football the last 2 weeks. Work has been crazy. I saw the Pit@Jacksonville game. Here are some quick, half-assed observations:
-Jack Del Rio goes for it on 4th down! I love Jacksonville!
-Ben Roethlisberger is really good. For some reason, I had the impression that he wasn't-I probably just assumed he was stupid because of the motorcycle thing. He has a great presence on the field, he moves very well, and has a strong and accurate arm.
-Ben's first half interception was horribly misinterpreted by Al Michaels and Madden. I was ready to throw a brick at the TV just to get them to shut up. It wasn't a bad throw. The timing appeared to be right. The decision appeared sound-receiver Santonio Holmes was open. What happened was Holmes slipped, so instead of being in front of Rashean Mathis and catching the ball, he was stumbling and the ball went straight to Mathis.
-I agreed with Jack's punt on 4th and 1 from his own 40 with 7 minutes left. Up 21-20, kicking the opponent out of field goal range is much more important than it usually is.
-Jack Del Rio fucked up the endgame! Jack, you may be up 21-20, but as soon as Pit has first down on your 14 with 2:47 left, you must treat the situation as if you are losing, because by all measures except the actual score, you are. Call time-out to preserve the clock for your comeback, jerk.
-Jack called time-out with 2:02 left. The reason Al and John disagreed with this is absolutely wrong. They said that you only save 2 seconds instead of 40. That is wrong because this time-out causes the clock to stop after next play also, with 2 minutes left, instead of having to use the time-out to stop the clock next play at ~1:50. This leads to the actual reason Jack was wrong to call the time-out. Standard endgame offense-while-ahead demands that you run the ball to kill the clock. It's much less likely than usual to gain yardage because everyone in the stadium knows that you will be running, but it's still mostly worth doing. I'd change it up more than they do, but I'm craaaazy. Anyways, by calling time-out 2 seconds before an official time-out, you create a situation where the clock stops next play regardless, so the offense is not bound to the usual predictability. On the ensuing play, Ben did play-action and attempted a pass to the end zone. I wish it had worked so Jack would be punished for his mistake. The tradeoff of a few seconds of game clock in exchange for knowing what the offense is going to do is a no-brainer.

I actually watched a presidential debate! Notes:
-John McCain is so bald!
-John McCain has a silly combover.
-John McCain's makeup accentuated the weirdness of his cheeks.
-Barack Obama is much taller than John McCain.
-John McCain wants our broke-ass government to somehow subsidize the lost value of real estate. It is wrong when people say that his coming up with an idea, any idea, particulary *this* idea, is "better than nothing".
-John McCain spoke of his idol Teddy Roosevelt and his line "Talk(speak) softly but carry a big stick." He's your idol-get the quote right, jerkface. McCain then proceeded to say that he, John McCain, has a big stick, and that Barack Obama is very loud and has a small stick. Challenge the black guy on the size of his stick-good job, John.
-John McCain's use of inflections seems forced.
-Barack Obama dodged the Medicare issue and John McCain said he'd have bipartisan talks about it, which is obviously the only way anything gets done. Point McCain.
-Somebody asked-is healthcare a right, a privilege or a responsibility? What the hell does the third thing mean? If I said "healthcare is a responsibility" what would that mean? The relevant and interesting question is between the first two. The third option just allows John McCain to bullshit his way out of answering the question. I expected Barack to do the same, but he answered forcefully-healthcare is a right. I disagree, but whatever.
-Quick plug for Colbert's guest that night, Nate Silver of www.fivethirtyeight.com. He's a baseball handicapper who's applying those skills to the election. Translation-a lot of stat analysis designed to sift through noise and identify which trends are relevant. The site's really good.
-As of today, 538 has Obama winning the election with 90.7% probability. The Intrade contract is trading at 76.
-Read Matt Taibbi at www.smirkingchimp.com. I'm adding him to my influences.

Week 3

Miami 38, New England 13. Miami 38, New England 13. Miami 38, New England 13. Swirl that around for a while. It doesn't sink in. If the scoreboard had read "game postponed due to alien ship landing on the 50 yard line" I would consider that less surprising than Miami 38, New England 13. This result thumbs its nose at my sense of the identities "Miami Dolphins" and "New England Pastriots". This is one I need to have seen for myself, and I didn't, because why would CBS show an expected lame blowout nationally? They were right, hehe. Here's an FO article on the game.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/cover-3/cover-3-oh-snap

Within 20 years, the majority of punters will be international. A major aspect of return defense will be location and movement on the kick. Punting will be more like pitching, basically. I watched Sav Rocca(AU) of the Eagles this week. He is good. His Wikipedia page says he is "known to kick accurately from great distances". Indeed he does.

It gets annoying for me to constantly point out the same thing about fourth down decisions. So I'll just say that Green Bay's head coach is horrible...okay you have to see this one-it was 4th and 2 around midfield with 11 minutes left, score was 9-24, and Dallas's offense looked really good. TMQ said "this HAS to be a fake" and then saw that it wasn't and wrote "game over" in his notebook. If I am Dallas, I prepare for that play as if GB is going for it(so a fake) because a punt makes no sense.

Can anybody think of an example of an aging superstar QB who changes teams being great for the new team? I will address each of Favre's interceptions now. The first one was not his fault-Laveranues Coles(of Dillard's discount scandal fame) made an exceedingly poor play on the ball. Some analyst thought it was interference, but I thought that Cromartie reached over him cleanly(if you let this happen to you, you got Pwned with a capital P) to make the play. Second one-Cromartie dropped it. He was already thinking about his easy walk to the end zone and got butterfingers. Third one-the announcers were speculating that it was Coles' fault for running the wrong route, but even if he had run the right route(mouthful), the safety was there, meaning he would not have been open. I put it on Favre. Fourth-Favre throws into end zone double coverage. It looks like the safety is about to catch it, but the corner, Cromartie, knocks it away. That's an instinctive play by Cromartie, and I don't blame him for playing it safe, especially in the end zone. Still, interception on Favre. By the way, the next play Favre threw for a first down and one of the analysts said "Favre is really getting in a rhythm out there!". Media have an unhealthy obsession with Brett Favre(and Farv loves attention, so it's a good marriage). Fifth-garbage time, receiver is running outside, Favre throws it inside, right to Cromartie. If I want to be consistent, I should not count actual interceptions that I blame on another player. So Farve threw 4 interceptions. I am mostly unimpressed so far. However, he is obviously a massive upgrade over Chad.

Antonio Cromartie is an unbelievable player. He is a very good kick returner and starting cornerback for San Diego. He has sick speed and great instincts. His instincts were on display on Favre's second interception(see above). The receiver is running up the field, Cromartie following him, and suddenly, the receiver keeps running, but Cromartie stops running with him and runs the opposite way towards a spot, which turns out to be exactly where Favre is throwing the ball. (This has me thinking that the play might have been the receiver's fault.) His instincts were likely based on film study and reading the play-I suspect that Mr. Cromartie might be very smart. He read the quarterback better than the receiver did! The receiver knows the play! I bet there was a condition in the play that would cause the receiver(Coles, I'm pretty sure, but not enough) to change his route, Favre saw it and receiver didn't. Cromartie's job on that play was probably to defend the short route and let the safety handle the deep route...football is so complicated!

People are wrong to criticize Mike Tomlin's endgame decision against Phila. They're just annoyed that his decision, which gave Pit a chance to win, resulted in them losing by more. Down 9 with less than a minute left, 4th and 10 on the 22, offense getting pwned all day, you have to go for it. You don't have time for a touchdown drive from your own 40(assuming successful onside-kick), which you'd need if you were down by 6. You are on the 22-your realistic hope is to score a touchdown right now, recover the onside kick, gain 30+ yards, make a field goal. Realistic is a stretch, but it's your best shot. You need both a touchdown and a field goal, and you have time for maybe 5 plays-4 after this 4th down. You have 6 points the whole game-you're not marching down the field with sideline routes(have to stop the clock to get these plays) and scoring a touchdown. However, if you take a shot and score a touchdown here, it definitely is possible to recover the kick, complete one long pass play, spike the ball, kick the winning field goal. Tomlin recognized this and made the correct decision, despite knowing that in the highly likely event of failure, he would be heavily criticized. I applaud you, Mike Tomlin, for having the balls to try to win. That sounds weird...such is the state of football conventional wisdom.

BET Buffalo(-8.5)@St. Louis. Buffalo is a decent and mostly healthy team. The Rams are a total disaster and I suspect that the home advantage is much smaller for hopelessly awful teams. Desperation is a smelly cologne, and the benching of Marc Bulger reeks. The team's star, RB Stephen Jackson, publicly criticized the move. The wheels are coming off! Bet Buffalo!

State of the Knicks, American democracy

At the basketball section of a Modell's in North Jersey, you have to sift through a lot of Nets and Lakers gear before anything Knicks is even visible.

Prediction-The success of the Palin pick will spawn a new breed of bimbo politician(PILFs). In the future, campaigns will increasingly resemble the Miss America pageant.

Week 2

Games I watched-Indianapolis@Min, Pastriots@Jets, the end of SD@Den, but I dozed off and apparently missed something really exciting and controversial, some of the second half of Pit@Cle

Some notes on Indy@Min

-I am always skeptical of skill position players, particularly running backs. This game was my first real look at Adrian Peterson, and WOW. The guy is absolutely sick. Aaron Schatz(www.footballoutsiders.com) calls him Purple Jesus. He makes everyone else on the field look slow and bad at tackling. If I had this guy on my offense, I would kick even less. Nice segue, huh?
-This game is the perfect example, the "one game every twenty" that your team would win instead of lose by being aggressive on fourth down. Min dominated the first half. They got consistent pressure on Peyton Manning, completely disrupting the Colts' offense. On offense, Min was moving the ball very well, mostly by running, with some pass plays mostly as a change of pace. In the middle of the second quarter, I asked myself-how could Min be so thoroughly dominant and only up 6-0?! The answer is that head coach Brad Childress kept kicking on 4th and short, throwing away drives in which his offense was playing very well. As someone who likes Indy, I was relieved every time I saw the Min offense trot off the field. And that is how you waste a dominant performance and leave points on the field that it turns out you really needed. I refer to them only as Min, because their in-game strategy minimizes their chance to win. A little math humor for ya.
-Tony Ugoh, the starting left tackle for the Colts, looked pretty bad, then went down with an injury in the first half. His replacement, #53 Steve Justice, is a small for an offensive lineman white guy who does not even wear an offensive lineman's number(50s is linebackers, 60s and 70s are OL). He was put in at left guard, and the left guard, 74(Henderson?), moved to tackle. The Colts' line struggled the whole game, though much less in the second half, probably due to some adjustment I didn't see, like adding blocking help to the left side.
-The Vikings' defensive front is really strong. Brad Childress clearly knew this when he challenged the ruling of touchdown, knowing the best case was that the Colts would have first and goal inside the 1. Usually, I say don't bother. But it took the Colts 3 plays to gain 2 feet, and it was so close that the Vikings challenged whether Addai had scored on third down, and it seems like his forward progress got the ball to the front of the goal line for a split second, touchdown, but statement made. So after the second touchdown, making it 15-13, the Colts are going for 2, and I thought, no way in hell are they going to run the ball. Peyton lines up in shotgun and I repeat this thought. He takes a half step fake dropback, hand to Addai, dive past the right side of the line, good. Sweet play.

Pastriots@J E T S JETS JETS JETS

-The line had moved to NE -1 by game time, in case you doubted that I was right.
-The Jets' big first quarter play, a 54 yard pass to Coles, should have been blown dead for delay of game. The play clock was clearly at 0, and it wasn't close. The defense might have been justifiably unprepared for the play.
-The Jets looked pretty decent. They're not that bad.
-Cassel is pretty good. He looked confident, and he throws a nice ball. The deep ball to Moss was noticeably absent from the game plan, but Jets CB Darrelle Revis could have had something to do with that. They traded up to 14th in last year's draft to pick him, and he seems to be very good.
-4th and 23 inside the 10, 4 minutes left, down 19-10, Jets have 2 time outs. Guess what Mangina does. This situation sucks, duh duh duh. Let's look at the options-
Punt-to win, you need to get the ball back and score...twice! You need to do this without your time-outs, which you will have to burn on defense now to preserve the clock. This just isn't happening. Punt=surrender.
Go for it-you miss, you lose. Same as a punt. If you convert, you have a chance to score. Then you onside-kick, recover, score again, win. So going for it offers you a chance to win, however slim. And you go down fighting, pride intact. But most likely, you miss and the other team scores again, running up your margin of defeat. You have to be okay with that. It's supposed to be about winning.
So Mangina punts, NE gets a couple of first downs, runs out the clock.
-Belichick did a few of those punts that I hate in the first half. I guess he's not perfect. Then he went for it on 4th and 3 with 2 minutes left just so he could get a first down and run out the clock. Weird thing to do with the outcome decided. It's as if he wanted to remind the world that even without a dominant team, he's still a douche.

Pittsburgh @ Cleveland

-Down 10-3 with 208 seconds left, 4th and 7 at Pit 20, Cleveland coach Romeo Crennel kicks the field goal, then goes for an onside kick. Pit recovers the onside kick, Cleveland is flagged on the play for an illegal formation-you have to have at least 4 guys lined up on each side for the kickoff. It's a newish rule that is mostly relevant to the onside kick, and it's inexcusable that Crennel didn't know it(I knew it!). So if Cleveland had recovered, they would have had to rekick from the 25 and recover again. Pit had a freeroll. So Romeo's plan to win involved kicking a field goal, then recovering two expected onside kicks in a row(P~14% squared), then driving down the field again and scoring a touchdown, something his team had failed to do all game. An intelligent person's plan to win would be to convert fourth down, score, tie the game. -Romeo kicked a field goal on 4th and 3 with <10 href="mailto:SD@Den">SD@Den

I didn't see this, so I don't have anything specific to say except that Mike Shanahan scored what would generally be considered the tying touchdown, 37-38 before PAT, and decided to go for 2 and decide the game right there! I love it! For once, somebody is thinking(or has a tee time to get to)! Overtime is a coin flip, especially in a game as dominated by the offenses as this one. Scoring on a play from the 2 on a day when your team has scored 37 points is not. I'm glad it worked, and I hope there's a lot of positive press so that other coaches will be encouraged to make ballsy decisions. I'm sure they'll just talk about how reckless it was. No need to complicate everything, right?

Week 1

I can't do much better than TMQ, so you should read him on ESPN Page 2. Here's a link to one of his columns in which he leads with a discussion of punts.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrookpreview/070904&sportCat=nfl

I think the Pastriots are only going to be somewhat worse off without Tom Brady. There's a reason Matt Cassel's held the backup job for 2+ seasons. Their system is good for a quarterback, and Belichick is good at developing quarterbacks. Belichick wouldn't leave himself exposed-he must think that Cassel is good enough(he has said so explicitly), and who are we to disagree?

Beating Miami has increased the Jets over 7.5 to 74/79. I'm not exactly sure what a non-dominant win over Miami proves, by which I mean I'm exactly sure that it proves nothing.

Merriman aborts his career suicide play-through-serious-knee-injury plan. I was hoping for a cautionary tale. He deserves it for being so stupid.

For some reason, Obama is down to 51.7/51.8. McCain appears to be leading in the polls for some reason. Maybe it's because I get all of my news from Jon Stewart, but I don't see how McCain looks like anything but an old, boring, bumbling idiot who is waaaaaaay too connected to Bush and Iraq. That connection is why he is not the slightest bit qualified to be president. Update-Obama at 48.5. I'm really good at this, huh? Update again-46. What the hell is going on? (I wrote this over the course of a few days.)

I just want to say that I supported Governor Corzine's proposal to increase tolls as a solution to New Jersey's budget crisis. Nobody likes tolls, especially not Jews like me. However, it should have been obvious to everyone that Corzine's main alternative was to turn the whole state into a speed trap.

According to distinguished political theorist Dave Barry, the key to success as a professional politician is great hair. John McCain is bald. Pundits say it's important to pick a VP that complements you philosophically and geographically. McCain's main concern was that his VP complement him follicly. Credit to Eric for coming up with the term VPILF.

THE JETS ARE FAVORED AGAINST THE PASTRIOTS. I went to nfl.com expecting the headline to be that Randy Moss is hurt. He's not. Any money you plan to bet on sports this year should be placed on PASTRIOTS +1. There will not be a better line.

Rutgers sucks.

Fixing Football

The following rules absolutely need to be changed right away:

Holding(offense)-Past the line of scrimmage, it is 10 yards from the spot of the foul; behind it, 10 yards. In both cases, it remains the down it was before the play. WHY? The play happened and the rule clearly accepts the result of the play-it merely alters the outcome to reflect the infraction. So why isn't it the next down?

Undermining the deterrent effect is particularly problematic with holding because it is one of the more difficult rules to enforce. Linemen hold on every play-it's just a question of degree and concealment. A stronger deterrent will incentivize following the rules and make the refs' job easier. The result is better officiating.

Pass Interference(offense)-This is another rule with high stakes that is difficult to enforce. The worst is when the receiver interferes and the call goes against the defensive back. Again, the problem is incentives. Offensive pass interference is an infraction that really gives you great value for your committing penalties money(Bush would call it 'footballitical capital', the result of an imaginary mandate from the fans). Ten yards, replay the down! You don't even lose the down! Look at intentional grounding-10 yards, loss of down. The quarterback is about to get sacked, losing yardage and the down. So he throws the ball away to make it an incomplete pass-lost down, saved yardage. The rule book responds correctly by taking away the cheaply salvaged yards. Offensive interference mostly occurs when the pass is in the air and the likely outcome is an incompletion or interception. As before, the down is lost. The receiver pushes the defender trying to either prevent an interception or make a catch possible. Why does the offense get the down back? It makes no sense! This infraction is worth committing if there is ANY chance it will affect the outcome of the play or that the referee will miss the call(or possibly even call interference on the defender!). Defensive interference is a spot foul, meaning that substantial field position hinges on the referee's judgment call. The stakes are incredibly high. Why not make it reviewable? More on that in a bit.

Here is my proposal for a new Offensive Pass Interference rule. There shall be two classes of OPI-

1)Attempting to gain an advantage in an effort to catch the ball

2)Interfering with a defender who is attempting to catch the ball, regardless of whether the offender is himself attempting to catch it

Class 1 is 10 yards and loss of down. Class 2 awards possession to the defense at the spot of the foul.

A penalty that changes possession?!?! Am I insane? Maybe. The defensive PI rule establishes "make the result as if he caught it" so why shouldn't the offensive rule be the same? This fair rule would eliminate the current inefficiency, inevitably resulting in much less offensive interference. Just like with holding, the plays will be easier to call and the refs will make fewer mistakes.

Finally, current rules or my perfect ones, PI absolutely must be reviewable. If we can review a play to see whether a pass was caught or not, why can't we review a call whose consequences are exactly the same thing??

In general, for all sports, replay needs to be expanded. The "human element" argument is bullshit. Baseball could be officiated by robots who never make mistakes(put sensors on everything, so you can precisely know what touched what when), and that would be a wonderful thing. The argument that it slows down the game is wrong too. The NFL has shown that with the success of its current replay system, which everybody likes. The system should make reviewable all things that can reasonably be reviewed. And it should have a HQ in Toronto to call, so it can quickly receive final word on the review. It's possible that this would occasionally slow down games, but so what? For a close call of great importance, what matters is getting it right. Fans get so upset over bad calls that it's ridiculous to argue that we wouldn't appreciate a system that greatly minimized or eliminated those calls.

Some Predictions

Some of the over/under lines for season wins stuck out to me. These are from www.tradesports.com. These are the bid/ask prices for the over and some bets I'd make confidently if I were a betting man.

Arizona 7.5 54.7/59

SELL

Pastriots 12.5 42.8/46.8

BUY

Aging, but they have the easiest schedule in the NFL and are they really going to go from best team ever to less than 13-3 having lost only an overrated, selfish defensive back?

J E T S JETS JETS JETS 7.5 58/60

SELL(go Jets!)

Don't believe the hype.

San Diego 10.5 59.5/62

SELL SELL SELL

Last year's success was a carryover from Marty Schottenheimer. Now it's Norv's team. Merriman's an idiot. What the hell is he thinking? The team is taking advantage of his stupidity but hey, it's a business. That said, his effectiveness is key to SD's chances, and it isn't likely.

Obama to win presidency-59.9/60

Democrat to win presidency-61.1/61.2

Democrats to win 270+ electoral college points-57.1/64.9

Okay, Obama could get shot or caught in a hotel room smoking crack with a sheep who is not his wife(baaaaaah!) and be forced to resign from the ticket. Aren't the last two the same thing? Don't get excited like me thinking there's an arbitrage opportunity. The commission to buy or sell is 5. All this means is that you can pick between two unequal terms for the same bet. Weird. Anyways, even with the rake, I still like the above bets and Obama/Democrats. McCain doesn't have a chance in hell, unless I've miscalculated how much America hates black people.

I like Denver -3 @ Oakland.

SEC (Mental) Slowness

A while back, I wrote that NFL coaches(I'm talking to you, Herm) should have assistants whose sole job is logical game management. This is even more true in college, because the coach's primary skill must be recruiting, then motivating and preparing his team, then game management-one extra thing. Even so, it is both extremely important and reasonably simple to manage a game competently. It is inexcusable that some coaches do it so poorly, Herm. The two football games I have watched so far involved three SEC teams and three levels of bad strategery.

Tennessee @ UCLA-74 seconds left in the first half, Tenn facing 4th and long at the UCLA 36, clock running. Without weakening my point, I'll note that this can be a difficult decision. Philip Fulmer CALLS TIME-OUT to consider his options. No matter what you decide, you're about to give up the ball, quite possibly with bad field position. Let the clock run! The other team will call time-out! You idiot.

PS Michael Lewis, whose opinion I respect, thinks Phil Fulmer is a hick.

Football is a manly sport. You have to be a tough guy to play it at a high level. The nature of fanhood is that you get to stretch out on the couch drinking beer, eating fried food and farting(also manly activities, I suppose) and simultaneously feel like a participant in intense athletic competition. What has happened is that everybody associated with football has become too secure in his manliness. He is part of a football game, so no matter how egregiously wussy the strategery he recommends or employs, he is still a manly, manly, man. A key principle that applies to almost all competition is that an aggressive, opportunistic approach is essential to success. One must take calculated risks and not be afraid to fail. This concept has been dismissed by the coaching community in favor of CYA. And fans don't realize how bad it is because it's nearly universally(pretty much everyone but Belichick) practiced.

Result: Missed long field goal, UCLA takes over at its 44, ESPN announcer Jesse Palmer says "Kevin Craft(QB) is having a tough first half(3 INT). They should be very conservative and try to end the half tied(or whatever the score was)." I thought-that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. If you don't trust your QB and offense with 70 seconds and excellent field position(and a leftover time-out, thanks to PF), why show up? Craft throws an interception, returned for a touchdown. Fulmer celebrates. Palmer goes on a self-satisfied rant about how right he was. Millions nod in agreement, further convinced that wussy strategery wins football games. *Obligatory Bachelor reference*, Jesse Palmer.

South Carolina @ Vanderbilt- 2:16 left, Vanderbilt up 24-17, SC has 4th and 18 in Vanderbilt territory. SC has 2 time-outs, no 2-minute warning in college football. They punt! The idea is to gain field position, get a defensive stop while using the time-outs, get the ball back with some time left, score. This is HORRIBLE! When the leading team gets the ball in this situation, it is one first-down away from being able to run out the clock. First down-ten yards. WHAT THE FUCK DOES FIELD POSITION MATTER? Okay, it matters if you get the ball back. The leading team punts it back to you, so field position is a wash. But you're losing time and burning your time-outs, making you less likely to score even if you do get a chance. Some estimates I think are close enough-In a typical game, a team has 25 first-downs+touchdowns, 8 turnovers+FGattempts+punts, meaning a single successful sequence of downs is relatively likely. 3 and out is far less likely than commentators make it seem("all they have to do is get a stop!"). And you still have to score! The alternative is to go for it. Let's say you have a 10% chance of converting, another number I made up. If you succeed, you have first down on the 20(or closer) and momentum, whatever that means. You're in business! If you fail, at least you generate some excitement and go down fighting. Besides, the game isn't over. You can still get a stop and get the ball back. What you've lost is the field position you would have gained by punting, let's call it 35 yards. The back door draw is just gravy anyway. Your realistic chance to win is to convert 4th and 18 and score on that possession.

My issue with Vanderbilt is nitpicking by comparison, and the course of action I think is right is something I've never seen before, obviously because I'm the smartest person who's ever watched football and nobody else has thought of it. And this is already really long, so forget it.

Final(for now) notes about punts and commentators:

-Wussy punts state very clearly to all involved that you do not have confidence in your offense.

-Just because it's 4th and 3 and the TV guy says you are "forced to punt" does not make it so. You are the coach. It is your decision.

-When you are behind by 14 with 7 minutes left, a punt is almost never correct, but it is almost always chosen. And TMQ(

read TMQ!)

almost always writes "Game Over" in his notebook.

-The coach who frustrates me most is our very own Mangina.

-Actually Norvgina W. Turner(actual name) is worse, the tiebreaker being that he has a great offense and the best running back ever and still does this.

What I love about sports is the high level competition. Football, being the most complex and systemized sport, is to an intelligent fan a competition between coaches and GMs more so than players, who are for the most part the "pieces". Watching the coaches be so stupid makes the game much less enjoyable for me. This is why I am relieved that Belichick wasn't suspended/banned even though he deserves it. The future of intelligent football coaching depends on him. Fearless prediction-by 2025, 2/3 of NFL head coaches will be Belichick disciples or grand-disciples. So that's why he's worth protecting...

Short Takes

It turns out I am pretty busy, so I don't have time to actually blog. I'll just give the short version of everything, in no particular order. I might try to do this every month or so, but I might not.

The Jets gave up too much for Favre. Green Bay would have given him away for free just to be done with it and not have him in Minnesota.

Fearless prediction: The Jets will win 6-8 games this year. If they win 8, Mangina will get an extension.

It shouldn't be necessary for the NFL to install a first round contract pay scale. The market has every reason to be efficient. Teams get the top picks by being bad, and they are bad because they do things like overpay rookies.

The NFL paid for Matt Walsh's silence, most likely a lot. The Pastriots cheated, it goes deeper than we know, and for some reason, the NFL deems it necessary to protect them. Roger Goodell is a shady bastard.

The Pastriots are far from the only team to videotape opponents' signals. That's why other coaches always decline to criticize them.

Al Davis is batshit crazy. It's really funny that he gets to run an NFL team.

My fantasy baseball team, Team V, is awesome.

John McCain sucks. A lot.

Soccer is a cool concept, but it's presented in a way that minimizes the excitement. "This game ends in an exhiliarating 1-1 tie!" Lame.

Fuck that idiot Clemens. How dumb does he think we are? He deserves whatever happens to him, and I hope that is jail. When guys admit it, it blows over so fast. The public only remembers the liars and their unbelievable chutzpah.

Olympics in China was an incredibly stupid idea. Everyone will say it was a success because the games have been great, but why wouldn't they be? The issues with China had nothing to do with their ability to execute the games, except the air thing(also a human rights issue I think), which we'll probably find out in a few months caused a lot of problems. The success of the games themselves doesn't change the fact that the preliminary ceremonial stuff was ruined by protesters who are right, and that China does horrible things to people and doesn't deserve the economic boost, the PR boost, always important in a non-free society; the claim to legitimacy. Just watch-from here, it'll all be about how great the games were. I hope the protest groups have an encore planned, so the public doesn't forget the truth.

Steroids were not invented in 1996. There is no reason to assume that players from past generations in any sport were clean, especially not Willy Mays, by association to Bonds. The 1970s Steelers were on them-the perfect Dolphins were not? How did they beat the Steelers then? How was Babe Ruth so much better than everyone else? Et cetera.

Before even thinking about making the net bigger, hockey has to make the goalies wear normal-sized equipment. Oversized goalie equipment is cheating, or should be, and it cheapens the game. The NHL cracked down on cheap defensive play with great success, so I am confident they will get this right too. Even until they do, hockey is still awesome. You guys are missing out.

The given reasons for why nobody wants Barry Bonds are bullshit. Moral stance-don't be naive. Same about clubhouse chemistry. Media storm-who cares? Even(especially?) in NY-is it really better to listen to them bitch all the time about how much you suck? Would teams really be shipping top prospects at the deadline for short term star rentals when one of the best hitters of all time, coming off an injury-shortened but spectacular season(.480 OBP in 2007), could be added for almost nothing? He is 44 and off the juice because they test now. The only reason nobody has signed Bonds is that the baseball world has reached a consensus-he isn't good anymore. .

Hi

I've decided to try blogging one more time. I don't play much poker these days, so it'll mostly be about sports. Some things will be dated, since I thought them at the time but didn't write.