When we played Colorado College to start our season, Scott Owens, CC’s radio voice and a former member of the Michigan State organization, called our coach, Danton Cole, to talk about the Alabama-Huntsville team. Cole is an MSU alum, and so the conversation was free and easy.

And then Owens asked about recruiting. And then … then I got to remixing.

That was a fun ninety minutes last night … and now I have to mix it down to 30 and 60-second loops before tonight’s game.

Practice | Day #4

Originally uploaded by Geof F. Morris

So the greatest amusement of my day was UAH head coach Danton Cole coming up to me and Will while we were watching UAH’s first practice and saying, “Hey, do you guys think you can help me get information out over Facebook?”

This amused the two of us greatly, as Will started the UAH Hockey Facebook group, and I, well, do this kind of stuff all the time.

I mean, really … twist my fuckin’ arm, Coach.

[For the record, I'm buying season tickets this year, including a four-pack in good seats on the penalty-box side of the ice. Obviously, I am only one man and can only sit in one seat at a time, so if you would like to use my tickets for free, you just give me a call or drop me an email, eh? First come, first served.]

As a kid, I loved the Olympics. I think this has to do with the fact that I’m old enough to remember 1984 [and the navy blue XXIII Olympiad duffel bag Dad got me while on TDY to California; bet he doesn't remember getting that until I bring it up], and probably has something to do with the fact that we were nearly in Seoul for 1988. I guess it also has to do with the fact that I grew up in a time when the Olympics really were a big deal and sports on TV was pretty limited because overall television channel choice was limited.

Fast forward to now, 2008. After having a friend who worked for SLC and Athens and enjoying hearing his stories about them, I’ve … waned. I didn’t pay much attention to Torino, but then I never found myself caring that much about the Winter Olympics. And now, Beijing. I can’t get behind the 2008 Olympics at all. China’s human rights record, pollution record, and political differences make it impossible for me to stomach. No, I don’t think the US should boycott the Games—the folks who compete spend their lives getting ready for it, and they should have that stage. I’m caught up in the stories of Michael Phelps and Dara Torres as much as the next person, but man … the thought of supporting the Chinese government by watching the Games just turns my stomach.

So I’m not watching.

I don’t think China’s purely evil, nor do I think they’re not totally useful—they’re a powerful economy, and they promise to be the only true competitor to NASA going forward. [And honestly, it's the lack of competition that's stifled NASA for the last two decades.] But none of that means I’m going to sit there and watch the Chinese pat themselves on the back for being awesome—it disgusts me most of the time when we Americans do it, and I certainly won’t enjoy seeing the Chinese do the same.

I wish them a safe, competitive, successful Games. I also wish that the world’s media will focus on all the wrongs and ills going on in China as well.

I think my favorite bit is about 10 minutes into the interview, when Rachel Nichols asked about how the experts underestimated the Celtics coming into the series, and … the pause is punctuated by under-the-breath chuckling. I love it.

17.

It’s Final Four time, and as we see every year, the pundits are talking about which kids will go pro—many after one year. As such, the NBA’s one-and-done rule—you have to be a year removed from your high school graduation to be draft eligible, which pushes kids into college—is being rehashed again.

Here’s what gets me: why does no one ever talk about the main reason that you push kids into one year of college, which is that the TV coverage at the college level is far and above what is at the high school level? With the one-and-done rule in place, the NBA draft is now something where a casual fan can tune in and know two-thirds of the players. Before the rule, the NBA draft was beginning to come to be dominated by foreign players and high school kids, all drafted on potential. Sure, lots of those guys panned out, and lots flamed out—like any draft. But the big thing is, today we know who the players are.

Consider the upcoming draft. We know who Derrick Rose is. We know Michael Beasley. We’ve even endlessly debated whether Kevin Love is a legit NBA starter or a 7th man who works into your frontcourt rotation. None of this would have happened without the one-and-done rule.

It’s the best marketing thing the NBA has done in years. These kids get a smaller stage to shine on, another year of maturity, and a better quality of basketball than the level they just dominated. The kids get to wait a year, but … so? Name another profession other than “professional athlete” where the kid has six-figure skills, much less seven- or eight-figure skills, at 18. Go ahead. I’m waiting.

It’s the marketing, stupid.

MONTGOMERY, ALA. (IJSM): Alabama Governor Bob Riley convened an emergency session of the Alabama Legislature this morning to pass a resolution stating that bulldogs were no longer allowed as pets in the state of Alabama, for fear that the state’s football players might be harmed.

“After the mauling last week by Mississippi’s bulldogs down on the plains, and then last night’s mauling by Georgia’s dogs in Tuscaloosa, we just had to take a stand,” said Riley in a press conference held on the Capitol steps Sunday afternoon. “We’re here to say that, in Alabama, bulldogs are considered harmful.”

State Senate leader Lowell Barron (D-Fyffe) followed Riley to the microphone. “We support the governor in this cause,” remarked Barron. “Shoot, Senator Bishop called me crying last night, and I decided we could bury the hatchet in the bulldogs of this state rather than each other.” A teary-eyed Charles Bishop (R-Jasper) silently nodded his agreement from his position to Barron’s left rear on the dais, marking the first time the two had been within ten feet of each other without Alabama State Troopers between them since Bishop famously punched Barron out on the floor of the State Senate back in June. “We gotta do this for the people of Alabama! If mutual hatred of bulldogs can bring me and Bishop together, we can bring the whole state together,” Barron stated before being sobbing and falling into the arms of Parker Griffifth (D, Huntsville).

Auburn head coach Tommy “Ears” Tuberville received word of the bulldog ban with joy. “Just Thursday, Brandon Cox was walking down by Toomer’s Corner when this little old lady and her bulldog scared him so bad, he threw another interception.” Tuberville refused comment on whether this would affect Cox’s playing status.

News of the ban was not well-received on the hill at Alabama A&M University, whose mascot is also the Bulldogs. President Robert R. Jennings, under fire for perceived wrong-doings in his first year as president, seized upon the opportunity to distract the AAMU Trustees and students from investigating him. “This outrage will not stand! Once again, the folks in Montgomery have forgotten us up here in Normal,” Jennings said when reached via telephone. UAH President Dr. David Williams would not comment on the record, but did indicated off the record that he expressed concern over the broad brush applied by Montgomery. [Ed.: Williams also wanted to discuss the matter of UAHuntsville on the record, but our reporter hung up the phone on him.]

University of Tennessee football coach Phil Fulmer expressed concern of the state’s mistreatment of dogs. “What next?” he asked. “If we beat the Tide on October 20th, are blue tick hounds the next thing to go?”

Michael Vick’s attorneys had no comment on the matter.

[Thanks to Bulldawgs.com and Mississippi State for images of their respective mascots. Oh, and for beating both Alabama and Auburn and making my week. I love it when the Tide and the Aubies both lose. Warms my heart.]

Dear ESPN:

I know that it’s totally cliché to write open letters to you on Weblogs. I mean, I was probably doing it back when I ran TOTK. You know, before I had to shave. [Or before I grew the beard and quit shaving.] Anyway: my beloved Cincinnati Reds have won six straight and eight of ten. They’ve somehow dug out of last place and now are sniffing the division “chase”, which in the NL Central is best defined as “the team least averse to finishing over .500″. Sure, the Reds are 60-70 and maybe only have a 1% chance of winning the division title at this point, but … do you think that you could have found a minute or two to air highlights of their sweep of the Marlins in the one-hour Sunday night Baseball Tonight?

No? Okay. Screw you.

Love,
GFM

Why are we tempted to believe in conspiracy theories? New Scientist has a theory:

So what kind of thought processes contribute to belief in conspiracy theories? A study I carried out in 2002 explored a way of thinking sometimes called “major event - major cause” reasoning. Essentially, people often assume that an event with substantial, significant or wide-ranging consequences is likely to have been caused by something substantial, significant or wide-ranging.

I gave volunteers variations of a newspaper story describing an assassination attempt on a fictitious president. Those who were given the version where the president died were significantly more likely to attribute the event to a conspiracy than those who read the one where the president survived, even though all other aspects of the story were equivalent.

To appreciate why this form of reasoning is seductive, consider the alternative: major events having minor or mundane causes — for example, the assassination of a president by a single, possibly mentally unstable, gunman, or the death of a princess because of a drunk driver. This presents us with a rather chaotic and unpredictable relationship between cause and effect. Instability makes most of us uncomfortable; we prefer to imagine we live in a predictable, safe world, so in a strange way, some conspiracy theories offer us accounts of events that allow us to retain a sense of safety and predictability.

[Emphasis mine.]

Typically, I scoff at conspiracy theories. [For example, I usually want to go all Buzz Aldrin on moon landing fakers. Crap, I shouldn't have said that, because now I'm going to draw wacko comments.] But in preparing this post, I had to consider something: I’m one of the people that has bought into the argument made about baseball’s performance-enhancing drugs problem that there had to be an active ignorance on the part of the caretakers of the game to allow all that stuff to happen. I’m now second-guessing this stance.

[HT: Schneier on Security]

USCHO reports that NCAA Ice Hockey will move to a two-ref system in 2008-09, which is something that I actually support. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen no-calls that an assistant ref saw but wasn’t empowered to call by the rulebook. Having two sets of eyes really helps cut down on the no-calls, so I’m all for this. [Besides, it's two refs I can ride like broken down mules during the game.] To contain costs, the NCAA decided to simply swap a ref for an AR, and … that’s fine. NCAA ice hockey isn’t a big money-maker, so keeping the number of on-ice officials at three is fine. We’ll get a second AR in another decade or so, I figure.

In a bad case of burying the lead, though, USCHO glossed over what I thought was the bigger part of the new story: the desire to eliminate ties! Call me old-fashioned, but I think that ties are one of the things that makes hockey, well, hockey. I hate what the NHL has done with ties—both the overtime loss and shootouts suck!—and I hate to see college hockey go the same direction. Since USCHO buried the lead, I’ll quote the full section:

The issue of tie games was discussed at length at the meeting. The committee considered numerous ideas, including efforts to reduce ties and ways to completely eliminate ties from the game. After these discussions, it is the committee’s current intent to eliminate ties starting with the 2008-09 season.

The group developed the three most feasible options to eliminate ties:

1) Five minutes of 4-on-4 overtime, then decide the game by using a shootout. This option had the most support among committee members.
2) Five minutes of 4-on-4 overtime, then 3-on-3 for five minutes of overtime, then a shootout.
3) Each team would receive a 5-on-4 power play opportunity for two minutes. If Team A scores and then holds Team B from scoring, Team A wins. If Team B scores a shorthanded goal during Team A’s opportunity, the game is over and Team B wins. If a penalty is called on the shorthanded team during the overtime opportunity, the power play opportunity is extended for the additional time. The procedure is used until one team scores. This model is more in line philosophically with the tiebreaking procedures used successfully in NCAA football.

The group also developed the three most feasible options to reduce ties:

1) Five minute overtimes playing 4-on-4.
2) 10 minute overtimes playing 4-on-4.
3) Five minute overtimes playing 4-on-4 and then 3-on-3.

The committee discussed the effect on the Ratings Percentage Index in Division I and the selection criteria for Division III institutions, and will continue discussions with the appropriate championship committees throughout this process. These selection criteria are the purview of the selection committees, not the rules committees.

“At this point, the committee did not take any formal action on tie games, but is presenting several options for consideration throughout the year,” said [Col. Jim] Knowlton, [chair of the committee and an administrator at the United States Military Academy]. “We plan to have some resolution on this issue at our meeting next summer.”

It makes zero sense to me that you want to change the rules of the game when it’s tied after 60 minutes. I don’t get the antipathy towards ties. You get a point. If you tie both games of a weekend, you split … you get two points. No problem there.

Today, I was watching the Reds when I had this idle thought:

Thinking that Josh Hamilton : 2007 Reds :: Brandon Phillips : 2006 Reds, in terms of forcing himself into the lineup. Move EdE to 1B!!!

In terms of what I’m thinking here, it’s:

1. Install Josh Hamilton as the everyday CF.
2. Move Ryan Freel from CF to 3B.
3. Move Edwin Encarnacion from 3B to 1B.
4. Bench the Jeff Conine / Scott Hatteberg platoon.

Now, I’ve been mulling on that more as the afternoon has worn into the evening [and I finished watching the Reds shut out the Cubbies 1-0], and I think that would work, but:

1. It still has Ryan Freel being an everyday player, and I don’t really think that’s the way for him to be best utilized. I still think he’s best as a super-sub who gets four starts a week while the Reds regularly rest Junior, Dunn, Encarnacion, and Hamilton.
2. It puts Freel, whose game is hustling and being a pest, at what is a prime power position in MLB. Granted, individual lineup construction on a per-team basis can overlook things like this, especially when you have an outfield of mashers like Dunn, Hamilton, and Griffey. [They're everything that D-G-Kearns was supposed to be, without all of Austin's injuries.] But it’s still sub-optimal, even when there’s prior art in terms of Tony Phillips and [more recently] Chone Figgins.
3. It takes an infield liability at 3B [Encarnacion] and shifts him to 1B, where he’s not really guaranteed to be much better.

So then I had this thought:

1. Install Hamilton as the everyday LF.
2. Move Dunn to 1B.

I love the Big Donkey. I’ve had an Adam Dunn batting practice jersey since his first full season in the bigs. I gave him a break when he sulked after Kearnsie was traded last year. [Hey, I was sulking, too, because ... who trades two lineup regulars for two relievers and a couple of spare parts, even when those regulars are Kearns and Lopez, guys unlikely to make you really regret the trade in the future?] But as much as I’ve lamented his OF defense in the past, I think he’s improving now, and I wonder how badly he would react to an in-season move to 1B. I think it’s his eventual position—allowing him and Brook Jacoby to focus on his hitting—but I think that he’s the kind of player that can really use an offseason of learning how to move around the bag. I think that Dunn could be the kind of 1B that Derrek Lee is if he put the time and energy into it—he is certainly athletic enough, and working on footwork should be a natural for a former QB—but I think that he needs an offseason to do that.

Yes, yes, there’s Joey Votto to be concerned about down in AAA. Votto may be a stud, but … crap. Hamilton has essentially missed four years of baseball while dealing with his demons, never had played above AA until this season, and is mashing like he’s … well, the #1 pick he was coming out of HS. There’s small sample size to be concerned with—I’m judging his performance on spring training and two weeks in the bigs—but I have this nagging feeling that Hamilton is here to stay. I also think that he deserves the full-season trial to prove that, too. To really get a fair shake—as Phillips got last year—he needs to be in the lineup all the time. That’s going to mean rearranging the deck chairs, and that puts someone over at 1B to displace the platoon and relieve the crowding in the outfield.

Hey, who wants Hatteberg and Conine for a fourth OF who’s a fly-catcher? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Both Mike and Jamie sent this to me, and … well, it’s hilarious. Clark, the Canadian hockey goalie, playing shortstop in full gear. Oh my gracious, that’s awesome.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of Doug Ross’s coaching career at UAH … our boys went from the lowest seed at our conference tournament to the tourney champions. Unfrickingbelievable. All the teams I’ve followed, all the times we’d been to the CHA tourney final—this was our fifth appearance—and we win it with a team that went 10-19-3 in the regular season. Criminy.

Yes, folks … we’re 13-19-3 and in the NCAA’s. It gets better when you learn that UAH is 5-0-1 in their last six games. Yeah, we were 8-19-2 not that long ago. Just a horribly long start to the season, I guess.
Of course, I’m on my way to the regionals to broadcast the games. We start off with a game against Notre Dame tomorrow at 4:05 p.m. Central; that game will be streamed on the Internet at 730UMP.com, thanks to the fine folks at WUMP. They’ve really stepped up for us—all the postseason games we play will be broadcast by them or their sister station, WVNN. Thanks a ton, guys. Zack Bennett and Thom Abraham are our heroes of the week!

Oh, did I forget to mention that my boy Mike Anderson is broadcasting with me? I think I did. This is gonna be awesome.

I type this entry from a Panera in Nashville [on 21st, in case you're curious]. I was going to dine at the lovely Fido’s a bit further south on 21st, but damn if their parking lot wasn’t completely and utterly full. [Bry, I'm right next to Satco, man. I have a hankering for some terribly greasy Mexican food that I'll regret at 2:00 a.m. Wish you were here!]

Why am I stopped? Don’t I drive all night? Well, see … I have a fantasy baseball draft tonight, and unlike, oh, Ronzilla, I’m not so lame that I’ll skip the draft despite needing to be on the road. I’ll do our draft [which usually goes under two hours], finish that up, and then get back on the road. Tonight I’m staying in Elizabethtown, KY, and I’ll get up early in the morning and finish the drive. I might yet beat the Pep Band bus to Grand Rapids.

More later. Should be a fun time.

[And yes, I'm posting because, as Mom noted in a phone call yesterday, I've been posting nothing but links lately. Yes, I'm terribly busy at work. No, I can't talk about any of it. I don't really want to talk about it, anyway. ;)]

You’ll be missed, Coach.

I forgot to mention how excited I am for another home hockey season, which starts on Friday night.

Gettin’ kinda excited to see Wilco tomorrow night. I’ve already talked myself out of bootlegging the show—ironic, given how much I trade in Wilco boots—but I know that my equipment just isn’t up to the task. That, and I want to fully enjoy one Wilco show before I start taping all the ones I hit.

I only want to go where my wheels roll … and Tuesday they carry me to Nashville and then Wednesday on to Hotlanta to see the Bruins play the Thrashers—it’s the only time they come down there this year, and well … I’d go another time if they came, given that this week is busy. [Hey Dougal?! Are you going with me or am I calling in the relief goalie? ;)]

Now I know I made a mistake, lining up all this travel at once. Ah well. I’m still under 30.