2010 College Football Championship Playoff was an event to remember! (v1.1)

Wow!  Who would have thought back in late November that we’d see such a dramatic and sudden change in college football! For so long fans of the game, especially Boise State fans like myself, have held the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in contempt for its ridiculous polls-and-computers method for crowning a college football champion.  It was so maddening when every other college sport, including 1-AA, Div II, and Div III football, holds playoffs to determine on the field or court or diamond who is the champion.  We all felt so helpless against a cabal of wealthy interests determined to keep the status quo of riches for the established football factories and crumbs for the “mid majors”.  We knew that almost everyone we knew wanted a playoff and everybody playing the game wanted a playoff, but felt like the BCS was a “Berlin Wall” separating fans and players from fairness, an evil edifice that would never come down in our lifetimes.

So we were all stunned when President Obama declared that he was going to have the Justice Department file an emergency injunction to halt the entire college football bowl season until an anti-trust investigation was completed, unless the university presidents and conferences in Division 1-A football agreed to his demands.  “We’re not going to go through another season where an undefeated 2008 Utah, 2007 Hawaii, or 2006 Boise State has no chance to play for a title,” Mr. Obama sneered angrily.  “Any system that tells us in 2008 that a Texas team that beat Oklahoma is ranked lower than them, or in 2009 has a 2-loss PAC-10 champ in a BCS bowl while the undefeated Boise team that humiliated them goes wanting is fundamentally unfair and unAmerican.  This is a corrupt system designed to maintain the superiority of six football conferences over the other five, and if there’s one thing we have learned in American history is that ’separate but equal’ is never equal.”  (Oh, how I have wished Mr. Obama could find similar backbone to stand up so forcefully for universal health care coverage, but even that’s not as popular as killing the BCS was!)

Mr. Obama’s plan was quite simple.  First, the existing contracts between all the bowls and all the conferences were declared null and void under anti-trust rules.  Second, a 16-team playoff was instituted with the winners from all 11 conferences gaining an automatic berth, plus five more “at-large” selections consisting of the next five highest-ranked teams in the BCS formula.  Third, to appease the bowls, only first and second round games were held on higher-seeded teams’ home field, while the semi-finals and championship were played in two of the current “BCS bowls” (Championship and Rose Bowl, plus the Cotton Bowl.) Continue Reading…

Boise State Broncos 37 – #17 Oregon Ducks 32

ESPN – Boise State Broncos vs. Oregon Ducks Photos, September 20 2008 – NCAA College Football

My alma mater gets its first road win ever against a PAC-10 team.  We’ve beaten Oregon State twice in Boise.  (Yes, I know, I live in Oregon now, I’m married to a Duck, and I call myself “the Red State Refugee”, but football has its own rules of loyalty.)  I attended BSU (where the BS comes before U) 1985-89 and during that time we were 1-AA and getting whipped for 13 years straight by the hated Idaho Vandals (where Sarah Palin had just recently graduated) in the season-ending instate rivalry game.  For the 1985 season, I was the alternate for the school mascot, Buster Bronco, which is a job kinda like vice president – you only work if the main guy gets sick or dies.  So these last few years of Bronco football, with top 25 rankings and WAC dominance and mentions on EPSN and undefeated seasons and winning the greatest college football bowl game ever, is a sweet sweet time for me, not unlike growing up a Packers fan in the 1980s and then enjoying Green Bay in the Super Bowl.

Some people mock those of us into football or other inferior sports.  And, honestly, it can be rather mockworthy.  We’re really rooting for colored laundry.  It’s not like I personally know any Broncos or Packers.  Yeah, the players in orange and blue go to the same school I went to, but that campus today doesn’t hardly resemble any Boise State that I ever attended.  And, whoo, the guys from my school won, which means that my school is… what, exactly?

However, sports is often the only place a person can really get emotional.  I bounced around like a six-year-old on Red Bull last week as the Packers rolled it up on the Lions.  Today I’m shouting “Yes!” as I get the latest update on the Broncos game on my BlackBerry.

Sports give you a cultural connection in this incredibly diverse country.  I flew around the country in the 90s and everywhere I landed I could find some group of fans enjoying the game I wanted to see.  A shared experience that can bring out strong opinions and emotions and release a few of our inhibitions and reveal our personalities, with complete strangers in a brand new city, with no risk of any serious disagreements.

And sports is one of those few things where we can believe in right and wrong, that the talented, hard-working, and deserving will win, where controversies will be reviewed by an impartial judge, and even in those cases where refs are biased and instant replays are blown, we at least get to see seven replays in slo-mo hi-def and the public knows the indisputable truth.

Sports give us – give me – three hours where George Bush doesn’t exist and people don’t just ignore subpoenas and trillions aren’t bled away in an orgy of greed and the planet isn’t melting away, and I can just feel the joy of cheering for young men in plastic armor carrying an oblate spheroid over a chalk line.

CBS off the hook for Janet’s Boob

Court Tosses FCC “Wardrobe Malfunction” Fine Against CBS
PHILADELPHIA — A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction.”

“The Commission’s determination that CBS’s broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy,” the court found. “Its orders constituted the announcement of a policy change _ that fleeting images would no longer be excluded from the scope of actionable indecency.”

But Tim Winter of the watchdog organization Parents Television Council said the court’s decision “borders on judicial stupidity.”

“If a striptease during the Super Bowl in front of 90 million people _ including millions of children _ doesn’t fit the parameters of broadcast indecency, then what does?” Winter said in a statement.

In throwing out this fine, these black-robed tyrants have thrown open the doors of Pandora’s Box and unleashed the demons of moral turpitude upon our society!

Now, with no threat of punishment, these filth-merchants will constantly push the envelope, exposing our children to increasing levels of debauchery.  Today it’s nine-sixteenths of one second of Janet Jackson’s right breast.  Tomorrow they’ll push it to nineteen-thirty-secondths of one second of Lisa Lisa’s left breast, and before you know it, our kids will be exposed to a full three-quarters of a second of The Fly Girls topless!

With such shocking and provocative halftime entertainment, our children will be too distracted to enjoy the wholesome beer, liquor, Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra ads.  Research shows that American children today are exposed to, on average, 1,648.6 naked breasts by the time they graduate high school.  When exposure to even six-tenths of a breast can lead to severe attention deficit in 90% of men, we can only imagine these thousands of unrestrained bosoms must be responsible for the severe declines in education  over the past three decades (see “Charlie’s Angels, Three’s Company, & The Rise in American Stupidity” by Dr. V. Boombatz, Dangerfield Institute of Pseudo-Scientific Heuristic Information Technologies, 2006).

I implore all the readers of this blog to protest the decision of this Third Circuit court.  If we don’t uphold the rule of law and severely punish those who would broadcast the naked flesh which God commands us to be ashamed of, then we cannot be surprised when this country descends into the kind of Sodom & Gommorah that would openly accept people of all shapes and sizes, clothed and unclothed, and feel no shame about nudity, sex, gender, or sexuality.

Yours in Jeebus,

Rev. Dr. Oral G. Moorehead
Parents Righteously United in Defiance of Excess

Another Assassination joke – and the proper response to it

Madden removed from air by ESPN
Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.

His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:

“Im very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.“

So ESPN has the sense to do what the goons at FOX News and the Clinton campaign won’t.  Assassination jokes have no place in public discourse.  As much as I loathe George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the lot, I would never wish, hope, or joke about their assassination.  Besides, that would rule out any trials for war crimes at The Hague.

One tape turned over by Walsh shows Patriots also stole offensive signals

ESPN – One tape turned over by Walsh shows Patriots also stole offensive signals – NFL
From Day 1 of the Spygate saga in September, the controversy over New England’s illicit videotaping practices has centered on the Patriots’ efforts to steal their opponents’ defensive signals. But the tapes delivered via FedEx to NFL headquarters in New York on Thursday morning also include evidence of an effort by New England to steal offensive signals, which would broaden the extent of the team’s surveillance operation.

Cheaters.  But probably the perfect dynastic metaphor for a football team in the era of George W. Bush, who cheated his way into the White House and has been flouting all the rules and regulations (a/k/a the Constitution) in pursuit of the big win.

I’m looking forward to the fan signs in the stands next season for Patriot road games.

James Carville on Hillary as Tiger Woods, Oct. 2007

A couple weeks back I had Former Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia as an entry in the Lunatic Fringe Awards who was introducing John W. McCain and said, of Barack Obama, that “You can have your Tiger Woods, we’ve got Senator McCain.”. I didn’t really understand how that was a slam. Isn’t Tiger Woods the best golfer of our era, perhaps all time? That’s an insult?  Both Obama and Woods are mixed-race African-Americans who have overcome traditional discrimination in their respective careers, they both flash megawatt smiles and appeal to broad swaths of white America, which, again, makes you ask “what’s the insult?”

Of course, I know the intent was coded racism, a dig at the notion that Obama supporters are starry-eyed dreamers, but in a time of war, we need a macho guy like McCain.   Besides, “they” all look alike to Republicans anyway.

With that in my mind I went to my doctor’s appointment  You know how it is in the waiting room, so I grabbed the newest male-est magazine I could find – a Sports Illustrated from October 15, 2007.

But there was a political slant to it.  James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist and Hillary Clinton supporter, was being interviewed about his love of LSU football.  The interview then turned briefly to politics.  The reporter asks, “Is there a good sports analogy for the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign?”

“In the PGA, there’s Tiger Woods and everybody else.  In 2008 presidential politics, there’s Hillary and then the rest of the duffers hacking away in some rough on a different course.” — James Carville, 10/15/2007, Sports Illustrated.

I think Carville got the right sport, but the wrong athlete.  Hillary Clinton is Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters.  The well-known “Shark”, the inevitable winner, with an unassailable 6-stroke lead going into the final holes, and then Norman’s epic collapse with a final score of 78 and the rise of the persistent Nick Faldo
to win the green jacket – yes, that fits a Clinton/Obama analogy much better.

Except for one thing.  Obama’s no Nick Faldo.  He’s Tiger Woods.  And the 2008 presidential election will be the 1997 Masters.

More thoughts on Steroids

My problem with the steroids has nothing to do with the cheating, it has to do with the illegality.  Why are they illegal?  Why can’t a pro athlete with millions of dollars and the best doctors and sports medicine in the world use steroids?  I want to see the 9.0 100m dash!  I want to see 400lb offensive linemen.

We easily accept all sorts of “unnatural” mechanical, medicinal, and surgical means to enhance our athletes.  How much better would the sluggers of the past have  performed if they were wearing Barry Bonds’ body armor?  Would Brett Favre be still trying to break someone else’s consecutive starts streak if QB’s of the past had modern painkillers?  How many track, basketball, and weightlifting athletes of the past could have benefited from “scoping” out their knees?  And certainly, modern training techniques — oxygen masks, hyperbaric chambers, Nautilus machines, braces and pads — aren’t exactly “natural”, are they?

Yes, it’s cheating if its illegal and you do it and others don’t.  But why should it be illegal?

Often I hear the “what about the children?” argument.  Yet we accept those ballplayers chewing tobacco, pitching beer ads, frequenting strip clubs, and dating Jessica Simpson.  What kind of role models are we expecting ballplayers to be?

And why are ballplayers the role models for kids?  When I was growing up, my role models were Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash, because that’s who my dad idolized.  (OK, maybe not great role models either…)  If our kids are idolizing ballplayers, its because their parents idolize them.  If their parents really thought steroids were a big deal, they’d lobby to get those guys out of TV ads and they wouldn’t support those industries by buying tickets and watching on TV.

It’s unhealthy?  So?  First of all, a steroids and HGH regimen need not be unhealthy.  Sylvester Stallone seems to be doing fine at 60+.  Many transitioning transgendered people take all sorts of steroids and hormones.  What makes it dangerous is the prohibition that drives its use underground and leads to the only doctors willing to take the risks are the quacks and the opportunists with nothing else (like a legit medical career) to lose.

Besides, isn’t there a right to live your life in an unhealthy manner?  I know dudes who climb sheer rock faces with no support gear whatsoever.  I think, statistically speaking, there are probably more deaths from recreational accidents than steroid abuse.  Yet we give people the freedom to risk their lives in the pursuit of happiness.  Why not Marion Jones?

Then some will argue that if we let the dopers dope up, then the clean players will be forced to dope up to compete.  So?  Let the clean players form a clean players league.  Nobody said there is a right to be a highly paid pro athlete.

But why shouldn’t the NFL, MLB, Olympics, etc., just be the clean players league?  Because it’s illegal for there to be a doped-up players league.  So those guys, whether you test, suspend, or subpoena them, are going to be in your clean players league, and you’ll be in the same situation that you thought allowing doping was going to cause.  Prohibition does not work.  What Prohibition will and is doing in sports is creating better steroids, better hormones, betters ways to beat the tests.

Soon there will be technology to genetically reprogram a fetus.  Does the eight-foot-tall re-gene-coded player get to play in the NBA?  Does the genetically-engineered sprinter with twice the fast-twitch muscle fibers get to race?  And how exactly could someone test for that?

Some things to think about… unless you’re more concerned with terrorism, the economy, torture, domestic surveillance, peak oil, global warming, drug-resistant infections, AIDS, genocide, hijacked democracy…