March of the Penguins

Pirates of the Caribbean

In team sports, athletes who are losing by a lot complain when the other team tries to add to their victory. That doesn't seem to happen so much in individual sports.

When was the last time you heard a track athlete say something like "he didn't have to throw a world record in my face." It pains me to say something positive about golf, buy I don't recall any golfers complaining when Tiger Woods won the Masters by 12 strokes or the U.S. Open by 15 strokes. Boxers don't say "he disrespected me by knocking me out."

I suppose some of it is that in many individual sports there are objective standards apart from the other competitors, so that it's a fair argument that the athletes are competing against themselves as much as against the other athletes, but I think there's more to it than that.

Perhaps there's something about the psychology of team sports that causes people to feel insulted by losing by a large margin.

Overall, an excellent article, but there is one connection that generally isn't made.

It's often stated that the Reagan administration helped arm Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. It's also often stated that the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The connection that needs to be made is that this means that the Reagan administration sold arms to opposing sides in a war. I can think of few actions as morally reprehensible as this.

Next time a Republican claims to be "pro-life", ask them how they could have supported a President whose policies made a war vastly more deadly.

The discussion regarding the NBA's new ball has gone to some absurd lengths.

I don't know the details of the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and if the CBA says that the league must consult with the Players Association before changing the ball, then they have a legitimate grievance.

And even if it doesn't, clearly it's in the best interest of the league to consult with the players before making a change.

That said, most American workers have had the experience of employers forcing them to change tools, to the detriment of their ability to perform their jobs. I had to switch from Macs to PCs, and I didn't like it, but I adjusted.

In other sports, baseball seems to tinker with the ball (though clandestinely), but the players don't complain. Other rules are changed in sports without consulting the players, and there doesn't seem to be much complaint. Were the players consulted about adding the three-point shot? More recently, were they consulted about changing the hand-checking rule?

It's also not clear that the new ball is hurting the players' performance. I don't have the time right now to do the research, but is field goal percentage up or down over last year? How about turnovers? Scoring? My impression is that offensive statistics are actually up this year, so it seems like the new ball isn't hurting performance to a significant degree.

The BCS is an absolute joke, yet still an improvement over the previous system, where it was rare for anybody's definition of the top two teams to meet in a bowl game.

In the eight years of the BCS there has been one occurrence of more than one champion, a rate of 12.5%. In the previous 50 years there were 18 occurrences of more than one champion (including one year, 1953, with 3 champions), a 36% rate. In the ten years prior to formation of the BCS there were three years with co-champions.

The BCS missed an opportunity this year to improve the system. By making the championship game separate from the four BCS bowls, they could have had two of the bowls be a playoff for the championship game. The two bowls that are playoff games could alternate. Or, they could have brought two more bowls into the BCS system and created an eight-team playoff.

Would there still be arguments? Of course. But they would be much less heated--it's harder to argue that a team that's fifth or ninth in the polls was robbed by not being included in the playoffs.

Some have argued for a sixteen-team playoff, but I think that's too hard to work into the current bowl system. The bowls are so entrenched that any playoff has to include the bowls.

King wrote:

If the talking heads there have the green light to take potshots at college football for not having a tournament, that might increase the momentum for a tournament just a little bit.

Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything in the comments about the lack of a football tournament. Perhaps it's implied in their comments about small programs having a chance in basketball but not football, but nobody is talking about having a 64 team (or 65 with a play-in) tournament in football, which is probably what it would take to have small programs have a shot. Besides, Gonzaga doesn't even have a football team.

I'll be more impressed when they're saying things like "at least the NCAA actually crowns a basketball champion", or they actually use the word "tournament" in their comments.

Michael Irvin also apologized, for saying that Tony Romo must have a black ancestor somewhere, to be as good as he is.

As a life-long Michael, I'd like to apologize for having the same first name as these other Michaels.

As far as putting in rookie quarterbacks with bad teams, I'd say it's not always a good idea. If the reason you're a bad team is that your offensive line is terrible, it's not such a good idea. Look at Joey Harrington in Detroit.