Late Tuesday Football: Well, I had to post sometime

Bored.  Busy.  Or maybe just outrage fatigued.
Via reallycuteanimals.co.uk.

There isn't a really good reason why I haven't posted for a while.  Yes, family matters are keeping me busy, but even those should have allowed time for posting.  I just haven't felt like saying anything -- at least not anything that someone else hasn't expressed more eloquently.

So it's football to the rescue again.  Whichever form you watch, it's all going in full swing.  This week, gridiron gets the blog love.

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Signs point to Gig'em:  I don't plan on discussing much college football this year¹, but Texas A&M's² move to the SEC has generated lots of smack in my family.  In particular, my oldest sister and I have spent all summer chanting "S-E-C!" at our Longhorn-loving relations.  It feels great, actually.  Now I know why Republicans feel compelled to shout "9-11" whenever they start losing arguments.

Yep, it's been every bit as clean as Jackie Sherill.

Alas, a fellow Aggie has taken the mocking to another level -- and for once, a university other than Texas-Austin is the target.  I think this sign is very funny, but my alma mater itself doesn't agree.  Hopefully, the Florida offense will be as inept this weekend as it was last week against mighty, mighty Bowling Green.

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To be explained later this week:

• Another NFL season, another year of the standings the way they should be tabulated.  I've refreshed the Victory Weighting tab for the new season.
• Both my fantasy-football teams are back in action.  The Fluttering Horde is still in my family league, and still on Yahoo!, but the league is now a 16-team joint.  Despite their move to nfl.com, the Ghost-Grey Cats have stayed amazingly intact from last year.

1.  Don't blame Penn State.  I was losing patience with the college game long before that school's scandal broke out.
2.  You suck, Blogger.  Thanks for not letting me use "A&M" as a label.  Dolts.

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Back in business

To mix Firefly with a Christian proverb, the 'verse works in mysterious ways.

I'd be lying to claim that I had stopped posting just because Scooter passed five weeks ago.  Given that posting had already slowed to a crawl, that would have been a nice, self-pitying pretext.  Fortunately, the rest of May helped the mourning go more easily.

The actual reason for the pause was all the road travel (Nebraska for one weekend, Houston for the next and barbeque-famous Lockhart, Texas, for the following week), and lots of time with the siblings.  All four of my sisters and I spent the turn of the month together with my dad, for the first time in six years.  Good times, actually.

Anyway, I'm just saying 'hi,' here, hopefully to start posting more regularly.  After the sun comes up again:  an Euro 2012-related Friday Double.

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Tuesday Football: The buh-byes of Texas

Like most extended families in Texas, mine has divided its collegiate sporting loyalties between Texas and Texas A&M.  I grew up a Longhorn fan, but then became a student at A&M, so now I'm an Aggie.  I'm also what my fellow Ags like to call a "two-percenter," a liberal (or even a moderate) in a student body that's been historically conservative.  It probably won't be a surprise to learn that I've never had any real animus towards UT-Austin.

Then again, no one at UT had ever signed of on an idea as stupid and destructive as the Longhorn Network.  Many mid-tier cable and satellite packages include the wildly successful Big Ten Network, so it's not hard to see how Texas, or any other Big 12 school, might want to have its own network.  Other conferences have implemented their own solutions, but somehow, the Big 12 allowed UT to strike out on its own.

What an incredibly stupid, shortsighted idea.

If a member of a conference creates a network for its own sports teams, and keeps all the proceeds to itself, doesn't that defeat the entire point of belonging to a conference?  Answer:  apparently, the other members are now to be mere props to serve the Longhorns, the way the Washington Generals serve as props to the Harlem Globetrotters.  Small wonder that Nebraska, Colorado and now Texas A&M left.  They saw their Big 12 futures in their crystal balls, and they didn't like it any better than Missouri does.

Since A&M left for the SEC, we've seen the defection of two Big East universities to the ACC, talk of the same at a third, and an SEC run at Missouri.  Only the Pacific 12's refusal to take on new members is holding the Big 12 together.  As the price for staying, Oklahoma has extracted the dismissal of commissioner Dan Beebe, but the Big 12 is still UT's plaything.

Unless the State of Texas itself intends to annex Oklahoma, Kansas and parts of Missouri, it's hard to see how this new situation is any more stable than the one that Nebraska and Colorado escaped.  Maybe Kansas and Kansas State keep some independence as basketball powers, but which athletes are going to commit to schools like Iowa State and Texas Tech, whose dreams of nationwide status have just been reduced from slim to none?  The Big XII X IX may replace its departed members, but those replacements will probably be schools for which life as a vassal for UT Athletics would be an improvement.

Even that assumes that the Longhorn Network succeeds.  If it fails, well, it's going to really, really suck to be the University of Texas come 2020.

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Victory Weighting administrivia:  Once again, I'm keeping Victory Weighted standings for the NFL.  Also, I've given my little system a logo, which appears on both the Victory Weighting main page and the standings page.  Click on the buttons on the purple bar at the top.

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Let's get lolcatty:  Speaking of suck, life has turned nasty for the Ghost-Grey Cats, who have devolved into a fantasy veterinary ward.  Let's review the team's top picks.  [Thanks, Yahoo!]

1. Arian Foster:  Bad hammy.  Might lose his starting spot when he heals.
2. Michael Vick:  Bad hand.  Concussed two weeks ago.
3. Matt Forte:  Healthy, but now he's the whole of the Bears' offense.
4. Antonio Gates:  Bad foot.  Out for weeks now.
5. Nate Kaeding:  Bum knee.  Gave out on the first play of the season.
6. Receivers:  What receivers?

This team has turned into mush -- the kind of mush that turned in one of my worst fantasy performances ever this week.  They lost 79-57 to a team called Let's Smoke Crack.  It gets worse this week, as the Cats face the league-leading Gridiron Heroes.  Frequent, the begging and meowing for ball-carrying treats will be.

The Fluttering Horde, on the other hand, delivered lots of Africanized bee stings to the Purple Dragons, romping to a 117-56 win.  I just love, love, love me some Darren Sproles.  Next up:  one of my winless nephews, Svelte & Vexatious.

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Tuesday Football: Administrivia edition #1

Just going all over the place on football matters.

Playoffs, playoffs everywhere:  It sucks to be Schalke 04 tonight.  Die Knappen lost 2-0 at home in the first leg of its UEFA Champions League semifinal round.  Now they have to win by two goals at Old Trafford next week.  Manchester United can wrap this up with just one goal at home.  Ouch.

In the other semifinal, Real Madrid and Barcelona meet yet again.  Coaches Pep Guardiola (Barça) and Jose Mourinho (Real) have resorted to trash talking, probably because they're both getting bored with playing each other so many times in the same month.

As if I'll ever play Madden 12:  I voted for Cleveland RB Peyton Hillis over Philadelphia QB Michael Vick, all right, but I waited until the last day of voting to do it.  I stopped playing video games shortly after Marble Madness, so I'm unlikely to ever play Madden 2012.  Still, the choice, determined in a single-elimination tournament whose winners were decided by Internet polling, doesn't speak so well of the NFL fan base.  What we have here is a contest between a star player with a troubled past and a promising rusher who has yet to prove himself over a full season.  It's an odd choice.

Administrivia:  I've posted the 2011 NFL draft order, as Victory Weighting would have determined it.  It's the rightmost button on the the bar at the top of the blog.  Also, it's out with the yellow links and in with the softer blues and grays, plus some orange.  I finally got a chance to look at this blog on someone else's monitor, and the old scheme was just too harsh.

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Bloggers's block

I hate when this happens:  I spend hours working on a new blog post (this one about the Rebecca Black fiasco), make the edits, add the pictures and links, and proofread it one last time.  Upon that final review, I then realize that I've said either nothing or, even worse, overextended my logic the way Napoleon sent his armies too far.  The grammar is sound, the spelling is all correct, but the post is just an unreadable mess.

While I plot out a post that might actually work, I'll just decompress and bask in the fact that my alma mater just won the better played NCAA basketball championship game.  Whoop!

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Da Bears. Da cold. And: a new tag!

Last Friday, the thermometers here in Chicagoland dropped below zero degrees.  Farenheit.  The good news was that I had a heavy jacket ready to go.  It kept me nice and toasty, even though I had to fill a gas tank in the deep freeze.

Super.  Spiffy.  Genius.

The bad news was that it was a Cleveland Browns jacket.  I spent all day assuring the cashiers that, yes, I did have my orange Brian Urlacher jersey ready to go at 1400 Sunday afternoon.  Well, it was, but I ended up wearing my super-spiffy Bears polo shirt instead.

Gotta dress properly on Sunday afternoon, don't ya know.

Anyway, it occurred to me that several of my football posts have involved uniforms and shirts, so now the blog gets a new main category for fashion.  As before, these will concentrate on the sometimes awful things athletes wear on the field, and things fans wear to games, but it's still fashion.

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Like all right-thinking Chicago Bears fans*, I was sad to see them lose last night's NFC title game to that terrorist front NFL team from Wisconsin. Among the numerous failures from head coach Lovie Smith and quarterback Jay Cutler, the 21-14 loss was the most painful to endure.

These are from last season, but they would've fit right in yesterday.

First, there's Cutler's showing.  I'm not talking about what he did on the field.  That mess came as no surprise, given that the Packer defense had previously vexed his betters  and caused the firing of two head coaches.  It's Cutler's behavior after his injury-triggered benching that turned his performance into an epic FAIL.  Instead of standing by his teammates and providing encouragement, he spent most of the second half sitting on the bench, alone, with his head hung low.  Maybe the producers at FOX Sports were just messing with us Bears fans, but their images of Cutler on the bench are those of a quarterback who has lost his team.  It was backup QB Caleb Hanie who rallied the Bears and rocked the Packers on their feet.  He, not Jay Cutler, almost turned a blowout loss into a legendary game.

And Hanie would've done it, too, if it hadn't been for that meddling head coach of his.  On the final drive, Hanie had his players lined up for a classic power sweep against a confused and unprepared Packer defense.  Just as Matt Forte made the turn on a devastating third-down power sweep (oh, devastating irony!), the whistle blew, stopping the play.

Lovie Smith, Super Genius, had called a time out.

Instead of helping the Bears, that pause gave the Packer defense time to reorganize.  Even worse, Smith changed his team's call into a disastrous pitch play to Chester Taylor that lost three yards.  The next play was a desperate fourth-down pass that the Packers promptly intercepted, sealing the Bears' fate.

Aaarrrrrgh.  D'oh.  Crikey.  It was Cutler and Smith at their worst, at the worst possible time.

Oh, well.  I was expecting a 4-12 season from this group, so I'm happy the Bears got this far.

* Now there's a redundancy!

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AutoTune of the month

Up until now, I've despised AutoTune. It turns out that, until now, no one has made good use of it.  Enjoy this Quote of the Month nominee from Jacob Isom, Texan skateboarder and now national hero.

Administrivia

• The Victory Weighted standings for the new NFL season are up.  Expect three updates every Sunday and a fourth late Monday night.
• I learned of this video from Informed Comment, Juan Cole's most excellent daily notes on the Muslim world.  Not surprisingly, its emphasis these days are on the AfPak theater and Iraq.

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Administrivia alert #1

I've been playing around at the edges of the blog design, adding and dropping widgets, and enjoying the new Pages feature.  A purplish button bar now separates the title from the posts; and right now, it has a button marked, "Victory Weighting."  Press it, and you'll find a page explaining what Victory Weighting is (an alternative standings scheme for NFL games) and why I think the NFL should adopt it.  Last year, I put the Victory Weighted standings in a widget at the bottom of the page.  This year, they'll live on a semi-permanent page of their own, and you'll be able to get to it via the purple button bar.

I love, love, love this new feature, and the toolbar widget Google provided to go with it.  Thanks, Google!  (But no thanks for trying to cut a side deal with Verizon!  Bad business, there.)

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