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.

Baseball in Philadelphia

I hate Philadelphia sports. Even in cases where I am not a fan of a rival team, I still root against Philadephia. I just think their fans are assholes. The car, which has a "Devils Hockey" bumper sticker, always gets messed with there(dents, parking tickets, etc.) Also, they booed and threw ice at Santa Claus. The point is, they're not nice people.

When I go to sporting events, I like to heckle the opposing team and its fans. I try to be more clever than mean, preferring to take shots at a team and city's foibles rather than at people's mothers. Last week, I had the chance to go to a game as a fan of the visiting team, in hostile Philadelphia for a Thursday afternoon Mets at Phillies game. I wore a brand new blue and orange Mets hat, clearly identifying myself as the enemy. From the start, this was a tough situation. The Phillies had won the first three games against the Mets and jumped out to an early 5-0 lead in this game. This made my job as a heckler difficult, but not impossible. When your team is losing, the basic idea is to change the subject. To tell the opposing fan that yes, his team is winning, but:
1) They still suck...a lot.
2) They have always sucked. In fact, they haven't made the playoffs since 1993.
3) All of the other teams in your city suck also. (Discuss each individually.)
4) Philadelphia Phillies is a really stupid name. Think New York New Yorkies. (New Jersey Jerseys?)
5) You guys are assholes.

There was a fun back and forth to this for the first few innings. Luckily, as I was starting to run out of material, the Mets started scoring. The Mets tied the game briefly, then immediately gave up three more runs. I smiled and nodded as I felt the disdain of most of the people around me(luckily, there were also some New Yorkers around to share my pain). Then the Mets took the lead with five runs in the 8th. I happily pointed out that the Phillies' pitchers who gave up those runs were quite fat, particularly during a pitching change in which one fat pitcher was replaced by another. A funny thing happened as the Mets pwned the fat pitchers. Philadelphia was silent. I called out to a group of guys who minutes earlier had been insulting me, "Hey, you guys got quiet. How's it goin'?" These formerly blustery people turned to each other, "You guys hear anything?" "No, do you?" "Nothing."

In the bottom of the inning, the Mets put in star pitcher Billy Wagner, an ex-Phillie reviled by a city notorious for booing. As Wagner, who is considered a traitor by Philadelphians for signing with the division rival Mets, walked onto the field, Philadelphia stayed silent. Only when Wagner struggled did the stands come to life. At this point, the park was so loud that it was impossible to talk to anyone, which is just as well. There was no need to say or hear anything else. Philadelphia had lost my respect. I knew they were assholes, but honestly, so are we. Unfortunately, they are not even worthy rivals. The difference between us is that I will talk shit all day regardless of the score. Philadelphians are pussies. They can talk shit, but only behind the security blanket of their team's success. I walked out of the stadium to the sweep taunts and catcalls with my head held high. My response could not be heard above the noise of the crowd, so I will repeat it now. You're dead to me, Philadelphia.