College Football is a difficult thing

I'm reading all of these articles about how somehow Virginia Tech is going to get screwed out of the Rose Bowl if both they and Texas win out, and I wonder, why was Virginia Tech forbidden from scheduling one decent non-conference opponent. I'm not sure told them that they had no choice but to play Ohio, West Virginia and Marshall, as their non-conference opponents. It's wrong and for that I feel bad for them. The same goes to poor, poor, Alabama, who was forced to play Middle Tennessee State, Southern Mississippi and Utah State. They wanted to play a tough schedule, but they just weren't allowed. In Virginia Tech's case, they have played a decent Georgia Tech team and a decent Boston College team in their conference schedule. There one tough game of the year comes in a week against Miami. Miami will win that game. If Va Tech doesn't win against Miami then they will miss out on the chance to lose to Florida State in the ACC championship game. Alabama finally gets to their somewhat decent competition of the year with an okay Auburn team and a good LSU coming up on their schedule. Again, I feel so very sorry for these programs that were forced to play a cupcake schedule. At least they weren't made to suffer the fate of Texas Tech and play the easiest non-conference schedule in the nation.

note: In 2007, Alabama will play a non-conference game against Florida State

Congratulations Madison

Only 375 people were arrested downtown this Halloween weekend. That's down a bit from last year while the crowd was bigger this year. Apparently the loud speaker system worked okay and there wasn't as much damage to State Street businesses as in past years. I haven't heard of any fires this year either. Also, it sounds as if out-of-town revelers were a significant portion of the problem. My guess is that locals were responsible for most of the citations and visitors were responsible for a disproportionate number of the arrests.

FYI: I grew a mustache and am being sleazy for halloween. Sometimes one must be a little over-the-top.

UPDATE: The funniest thing about the response to this post is that I was seriously commending the city for doing a better job, not a great job, but a vast improvement over last year. Commenters who don't like this post should check out the archive for some much better Madison bashing.

UPDATE II: The city of Madison has the official number of arrest at 447 which is different than the Capital Times' unofficial number of 375. 447 arrests out of 100,000 party-goers is certainly an improvement over last year's 450 arrests out of 80,000 participants.

Some strange thing that I stole from Erin

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.6
Mind:	7.3
Body:	7.6
Spirit:	7.2
Friends/Family:	6.3
Love:	9.1
Finance:	7.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Which night will is be, tonight or tomorrow?

That's my question right now. Will they riot tonight, or will they wait and just do it tommorow? I'm guessing that they do it both nights. That's Halloween weekend in Madison. Kids break the windows of businesses and volunteer firefighters from surrounding towns get caught throwing shit onto the bonfires that people start. How did he get caught? He wore his fucking uniform, complete with nametag, as his halloween costume and then managed to get videotaped throwing cardboard boxes on an impromptu fire. He was also taped not helping someone that fell into that particular fire. He says he wasn't drunk, well maybe a little bit. Idiot.

No title can capture the essence of this post...it's that mind blowingly intense

I'm totally fucking with you.

Next semester I am taking two classes, one of which is my required workshop and the other is a budgeting class. On top of that I think I'm going to do a 2 hour independent study and write a report on something that has to do with state tax policy. I'm also going to continue working for Don Nichols as well as adding in about 15 hours a week with the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission. It should be great fun if Ii don't wear myself out.

I'm writing a paper about easing regressive taxes without the benefit of a state income tax. Texas, I'm looking your way. It frustrates me to write papers about taxation and Texas and always conclude that my policy alternatives are not at all feasible. Now, I'll try to write something interesting that may be palatable for Texas policy makers.

Myspace just crashed Safari.

Meredith is currently at a Rhett Miller show.

I am currently not doing my homework that is due tomorrow. In fact, I'm not even working on the appropriate computer. The website for my class doesn't work on Safari and Meredith has Explorer on hers. I'm too lazy to add it.

Super big thanks to the Kevin Clarks for allowing me to sleep on their couch and much more excitingly to sleep in their bed. It was magical Kevin. I miss Austin and hope to be there sometime in the future. No idea on when that might be.

It's supposed to get up into the 60's this weekend. That's spectacular.

TMQ

I have to get this off of my chest. I occassionally read the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column by Gregg Easterbrook. I have come to the conclusion that this man knows almost nothing about football. He has this habit of throwing out random stats as proof that his ideas are correct. The most common example is his assertion that teams shouldn't punt on 4th and 1 from their own territory with 7 or so minutes remaining in the 4th quarter if they are losing because the average play is a four yard gain. Perhaps he doesn't understand that a more useful bit of information would be how many yards does a team average on 4th and short from inside their own territory. But he doesn't do that. He tosses out irrelevant stats that look pretty. Recently he cited an article in the Wall Street Journal which ranked colleges based on the average wonderlic test scores of former football players who had tried to get drafted. He made the false assertion that the Stanford football team has a higher average score on the wonderlic than does the New England Patriots. How can he assert this? Not a single player on the Stanford football team has taken the wonderlic. The test isn't available to them. I guess this is just a problem that I have with his writing in general. He is not as smart as he thinks he is so he is prone to misusing statistics and making incredibly assinine assertions. I hear that his brother writes interesting judgements.

On another note, I realize that this has turned into something of a football blog of late. Suck on that.

Football Announcers bother me

Last night I was watching the Virginia Tech-Maryland game on ESPN when the announcers told me that because he is playing well they know that Marcus Vick is maturing. What is the relationship between learning how to read a defense and avoid a blitz and learning how to be a good citizen who no longer contributes to the delinquency of minors or drives recklessly while high? I just don't see it. It seems to be the business of those who make their living off of college football to try and sell the sport as some grand personal development strategy. I don't buy it. While talking to my father about this, he's a former high school all-american and UT football player, he laughed and said he's never understood that connection that people try to make between football and life. Another thing that bothered me was the constant references to Frank Beamer as some sort of ultra-classy saint who never would dream of doing anything questionable. The fact that his players were getting called for unsportsmanlike conduct, dancing off to the side, and having an official stop play to admonish them to just play football and quit with the showboating, only made it that much more humorous. Beamer may be a really nice, personable guy, but he still should be held accountable for the fact that VaTech consistently has more players arrested and suspended than most other programs. It's the same story with people like Bobby Bowden. Sure he's a nice, charismatic guy, but he still built his success on some awfully shady characters. There are some coaches who seem to be genuinely good guys who care about preserving the reputation of their institutions, but they tend to get mocked in the media. Everybody loves Mack Brown but he gets treated luck this sort of bumbling idiot of coaches. He's clearly very good at his job. It's nice that his players don't leave school early for the pros, but I do find it troubling that the overwhelming majority don't seem to be graduating. They're not arrested quite as often as at other schools, which is nice.

More college football

In the latest AP poll, somehow Miami has slipped in ahead of Penn State at number 7. I'm not sure I understand that. Penn State is undefeated. They've beaten two top-25 teams in the past couple of weeks. Miami lost a close game against Florida State and then have gone on to four consecutive wins including a victory over 24th ranked Colorado. Actually, of the top ten, I think that there are three teams with no business being there. Miami is good, but not yet worthy of that ranking, Notre Dame shouldn't be ranked seven spots ahead of a Michigan State team that beat them. LSU simply isn't that good. I don't think that they'll ever be that good this year. Then there's Florida at 11. They barely beat a bad Tennessee team and got smacked around by a sanction weakened Alabama team. Florida will lose at least two more games this year. Georgia isn't all that impressive, but they keep winning. Alabama is all that impressive thus far. Florida State is looking pretty tough, but there's no telling how the ACC will shake out. My money is on an FSU-Virginia Tech championship game. The winner of that game will probably leap over Texas to play in the title game. That's assuming no losses for either team until that point. I wouldn't be surprised to see Miami beat Virginia Tech and then Virginia Tech beat up on Florida State and Texas left undefeated to play for it all. Of the top ten, I think USC has the toughest road left. Cal and UCLA both looked good. Notre Dame has been playing tough, much like they did in Tyrone Willingham's 10-1 debut. Why don't people remember that Willingham had them playing well. Texas still has Colorado, Baylor, Tech, Okie State, Kansas, and A&M, left on the schedule. Only OSU looks like a pure gimme. Kansas could be easy, but I remember last year in Lawrence. KU knows that they could beat Texas if they play well.

New Hampshire

Out of the 50 states, the kind folks of New Hampshire were most convinced that Texas would beat Oklahoma. According to an ESPN poll, 89% of voters in New Hampshire picked Texas followed by 88% in Minnesota and Montana. 88% of Wisconsin voters picked Texas. Only 66% of Ohio voters picked correctly. Did they not remember that game in early September when Texas, playing poorly on offense, went to Columbus and beat Ohio State? Stupid midwesterners.

I got to watch the game today. Meredith and I watched it with Emily and this guy named Chris. Chris is an OU guy who guys to Law School at UW. He's good people. It's a shame that Wisconsin had to lose to Northwestern while I was enjoying the Cotton Bowl blowout.

college football wears me out

Well, mostly thinking about college football wears me out. How is it that USC can look completely unfocused in the first half in two consecutive games and the response from the media is that they are clearly mentally tough and at the top of their game right now? Sure they play lights out in the second half, but something has to be going wrong for them to be forced to play come from behind. That's one of those things that worries me about Texas. Many times last year and the Ohio State game this year, Texas managed to get down to teams than whom they are clearly superior, Kansas, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Michigan, etc. Some take the fact that they managed to win these games as a sign that Texas is just incredibly tough. I view it more as they are incredibly talented and somehow manage to take entire halves off. I'd rather see them crush their opposition than toy with them, however exciting it was to watch that comeback against Oklahoma State last year. Speaking of that, perhaps that game was more of a Les Miles choke than a Texas awakening, I saw the LSU-Tennessee game this year.

On a somewhat related note, am I the only person who finds it troubling that a person committed suicide by means of explosion in a traffic circle outside a stadium where 84,000 people were gathered in Norman, OK? That seems like something of a big deal.