War and Peace

I want to reiterate something that King mentioned in the article. If you live in the city of Boston, there will be zero (0) locally produced, free-airwave Red Sox games on television this year. Fox will nationally broadcast probably about 4 games as their Game of the Week. Otherwise, you must have standard cable, which starts at about $600 a year. Granted, about 93% of the city residents already have this, but the ones that don't are generally poor and frequently elderly, fixed-income fans. Previously, Channel 38 (UPN) broadcast every Friday night game, about 25-30 games per season.

The Boston Globe guestimates that the deal will reap about $4 million in aditional revinue for the Red Sox. It's hard to argue with that kind of bottom line. It would be nice to think, however, that the game would continue to be accessible to the guy that cleans the seats, as well as the guy that sits in them.

Obviously, moving an NFL game or two per team from free Sunday to cable Thursday is not a big deal. But it unfortunately does seem to be an indication of things to come.

In this article King continues his one man crusade to eliminate the field goal. With limited substitutions, the specialized place kicker will only come in on the last play of the game. In the meantime, the offensive guard / inside linebacker will be attempting all kicks and punts. Or perhaps Doug Flutie will be widely recruited for his drop kick / quarterback / (presumably strong safety) skills.

In comparing the percentage of men to women in college, I have to ask myself whether the percentage of men going to college is increasing, decreasing or remaining the same over time. It's not clear from this article. This is important because, if male enrollment percentages are actually up (just not up as much as female enrollment), there does not seem to be as serious a problem as if this number is decreasing.

Another thing to remember is that there are a large number of strong middle-class jobs that do not require education that are still held almost exclusively by men. These jobs are primarily construction and transportation (truck driving, warehouse work, etc.). Women, on the other hand, are now required to get education for the same jobs they've traditionally been doing for decades. Mid-level health care (lower than RN), pre-school child care and office administration all require higher degrees at this point, while they didn't just thirty years ago. Teaching, of course, is woman dominated and has always required education.

So an interesting question might be, have these numbers inverted becasue we are now requiring women to get educations for the same jobs that they've traditionally held without school?

Just some thoughts.

Many people in the thread have complained about the number of timeouts each team has at the end of the game. I'm not certain I see the problem. Currently for a televised game, each team gets four 30-second timeouts and one 60-second timeout per game. Only 3 of the 30-second time outs may be transfered to the second half. This means that at the maximum, there can be only five minutes of timeouts in the final four minutes of game time, but it's usually no more than half that.

The thing that really slows down the end of the game is foul shots created when the trailing team fouls to try to get the ball back. The simple solution? Give the team the option not to take the shots.

Once you're in the double-bonus, allow the fouled team to choose to either:

A) Shoot the two shots.

B) Reset the shot clock. Position an inbound passer on the sideline just behind half-court. Offensive players can be anywhere on the court. Defensive are required to be on the offensive side of half-court. Defensive players cannot cross half-court until an inbounds offensive player controls the ball.

Given option B, the offense may inbound pass to an undefended player in the backcourt and then waste a couple precious seconds as the defenders run to him, or (if they're trailing) they may pass the ball into a defended offensive zone for a chance at a quick three-pointer.

This eliminates the need to intentionally foul at the end of the game to get the ball back, because you won't get it back. You will continue to play agressively, however, because you will be required to cleanly steal the ball in order to get it back.

I've been playing fantasy sports for a few years now, and I've found that the most bizarre aspect of it is how it mixes your alliegeances between teams. You start rooting for utterly bizarre scenarios.

For example, I'm a big Red Sox fan. However, if the Red Sox are up over the Yankees 4-2, I'll find myself rooting for Gary Sheffield to hit the solo home run.

Similarly, even if the Sox are losing and David Ortiz is up with the bases loaded and one out, I'll be rooting for him to strike out so that Manny can drive in the runs.

Fantasy Baseball is a whacky sickness, that's for sure.

King says: What can make us abandon our values faster than devotion to the home team?

In a country where people overlook the torture of POWs, holding prisoners indefinitely without trial and the illegal wiretapping of the county's own citizens, perhaps this is a question we should all ask ourselves.