Alabama to win SEC title game

          If you read this blog a lot, as you should, you know I missed on my prediction about who would play in college football’s national championship game. I might still get part of it right.

          I called Kansas State falling out of the number one spot in the polls, but I had them losing to Texas, not Baylor.

I sort of thought Notre Dame might make it to the title game, but the more I really studied things, the more clear it became that Southern California would upset Notre Dame. Then USC lost its starting quarterback and that was that. Things became as clear as mud.

          That’s my excuse, anyway. Best I can do for now.

          This weekend, Alabama plays Georgia in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game, what is now a national semi-final elimination game.

          I believe, as I did in August, that Alabama will play for the national title in January. Thus, the prediction here is that Alabama will beat Georgia in what should be a terrific game. These teams have similar strengths and few weaknesses. Expect a slugfest, an old fashioned SEC heart pounder.

          I don’t believe Georgia has enough firepower to beat the Alabama defense, but the Crimson Tide can’t make mistakes on either offense or defense. A few turnovers by the ‘Bama offense, the kind of thing that happened in the loss to Texas A&M a few weeks ago, would be all Georgia needs. A big play or two by Georgia’s offense due to Alabama defensive miscues could do the same thing.

          This is will be like a fight between the two best bullies in the neighborhood, a real backyard slobber knocker. The winner will fight another bully in another backyard.

          The pick here is Alabama over Georgia, partially because it seems as though Alabama’s defensive front will be able to slow down Georgia’s excellent running game just enough to force the Bulldogs to pass in obvious situations. It says here that Alabama’s defensive front will be able to put enough pressure on the passing pocket to force Georgia mistakes.

          Georgia’s defensive front will have to both stop Alabama’s inside running game and contain the Tide’s edge rushing. The Bulldogs’ defensive middle might jam things between the guards, but the Crimson Tide will find the edges to be available for profit. This is a great match, Alabama’s offensive front and Georgia’s defensive front.

          We do not expect to see the same mistakes in the Alabama passing game that cost it the win against Texas A&M. It was ‘Bama’s passing that ultimately beat LSU in the 2011 national championship game and again when the teams met this year. We think Alabama’s passing game could be the deciding factor again in this game.

          Don’t ask me the score in this one. Just look for Alabama to win.

 

          Thanks for reading.

It's a major award!

                We traveled to one of Ohio’s great spots, the house in Cleveland where the exterior shots were filmed for the movie A Christmas Story.

My daughter and I pose in front of The Major
Award from the movie, "A Christmas
Story" in the house where some of the movie
was filmed.

          The film is my favorite holiday movie.

          My wife was disappointed in the place, but she does not like the movie. I love the movie and enjoyed visiting both the house and the museum. I was hoping to see the Bumpus dogs, but I guess they were making an appearance somewhere else that day.

When I watch the film in the future, I’ll be sure to say out loud, “Hey, we were there.” I hope I don’t upset anyone. I learned a few things that I’ll watch for the next time I see the film.

Amy, my wife, was also disappointed when she visited Plymouth Rock a few years ago. She feels it’s just a big rock on the edge of the surf. I, on the other hand, insist that the Rock is unquestionably the very rock the first Pilgrims first stepped upon when they arrived on the North American shore. It is the finest rock I’ve ever seen and I saw a lot of surf rocks during my years in California.

I guess your appreciation for a landmark depends on what you expect in the first place.

I hope you have not been disappointed by this blog.

 

Thanks for reading.

Heads up!

          I’m a football fan. Always have been, always will be. I have a lifetime of really great football memories and the next ones are just around the corner.

          So I am concerned about the future of the game. Right now, the future of the game must include a very serious look at head and neck injuries: Both prevention and treatment. After years of avoiding the issue, the National Football League is now dealing with this very serious problem.

          I believe collegiate and high school programs will benefit from what the NFL uncovers and how the league acts in the next few years in this regard and that is exceptionally good news for the vast percentage of players who never make it to the professional level.

          So, a few thoughts here on that topic from a non-medical professional.

          Concussions have always been a part of football. We’re hearing more about it now, but they are nothing new. Ask anyone who played the game. I had one and I never played beyond Pop Warner ball.

          I believe the newer helmets have changed, somewhat, the way some players approach the game. The current generation of the helmet is better and safer that what players have had in the past, but that improvement may be leading to riskier play. I do not blame the helmet manufacturer for many of the injuries we see now. Players and coaches must look at what they are doing as they are injured.

          I think every level of play needs rules about helmet-to-helmet contact. Players need to play with their heads up. This includes offensive players. If a ball carrier lowers his head as a tackler approaches, it isn’t proper to penalize the defensive player if there is helmet-to-helmet contact and the defensive player does not lower his helmet prior to impact.

          Now, a ball carrier can lower his shoulder pads without lowering his head. A tackler can lower his shoulder pads without lowering his head. Blockers can do it, too. But coaches must coach the techniques involved every day at every level. That is especially true for the coaches of younger players. My coaches told me to keep my head up. I didn’t listen and the result was a knockout.

          Years ago, when artificial turf was introduced (I think the Astrodome was the major first field to use it), the invention was hailed as the solution to knee injuries in football. It wasn’t. Football is a game where large bodies fly around at amazing speeds and crash into each other. Knee injuries, unfortunately, still happen.

          But I believe the use of artificial turf contributes to the severity of head, neck and other injuries because players are faster on fraud sod, making the collisions harder to avoid and causing them to have greater impact. So I hope some genius studies the correlation between injuries on the lawn and injuries on the fake stuff. There is something to be learned there.

          The NFL has a role to play in making improvements in this way to game and the league is working on it. The players, coaches, medical professionals and equipment makers have to buy in as well.

None of the needed work will be done until everyone finds a way to work together. Some of the universities that field big-time football teams also have excellent research medical programs. It would be in the best interests of everyone if the league worked with some of those researchers, who also have an interest in making football safer.

          It can be done, but first we need a healthy dose of Want To, the key ingredient to solving any issue. If every stakeholder gets some Want To, progress will be made.

          Wish I knew how to can that stuff. I’d make a fortune.

          Thanks for reading.

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving Day and I’m thankful.

          I’m thankful for my family’s good health. All of us seem to be in good spirits and good life situations and I am grateful for that happiness.

          I am very grateful that my wife hasn’t thrown me out yet.

          I am grateful that I am not a hockey fan.

          I am constantly grateful for the job I have, working for a terrific company. My wife and I recently moved to Ohio. Our living situation is comfortable and I am grateful to all the friends who helped us make that happen. This was an eight-year process.

          I am grateful for the third win captured early in the current football season by the St. Louis Rams. That’s an improvement over last year, so they can lose all the rest of their games and still talk about their season-to-season improvement. The suspense is over and I’m calmer. Everyone is grateful for that.

          I am grateful for living in the world’s best nation. Regardless of how I feel about the tremendous lack of leadership we have right now, this is still the best place to live. On that topic, I am grateful every day to the men and women in our armed forces for the work they do, the stresses they face daily. Our soldiers, sailors (both Navy and Coast Guard), marines, airmen (and airwomen), National Guardsmen (and Guardswomen) and reservists keep the wolves away. If you’re reading this and in the service, thanks.

          And I am grateful to you for reading. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Conference Hopscotch

                The University of Maryland, which is located in the state of Maryland, has joined the Big 10 conference, supposedly a Midwestern conference that had 12 members already. Rutgers University is expected to announce its intention to join the Big 10 as well. Rutgers is located in the Midwestern state of New Jersey.

          The Maryland president made a lot of excuses this week to defend his decision to have his school spend $50 million to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference to join the Big, uh, 13.

Well, sure, this all makes sense. After all, what’s $50 million? Maryland is a public institution with an endowment of $792 million in 2011, according to Wikipedia. Plus the school gets all that tuition money from its students. I guess the school can afford the paltry $50 million needed to make a change to its football schedule. Maybe the tuition will not go up.

The Rutgers president will soon make the same excuses for his school leaving the Big East Conference, but Rutgers can get out of the Big East for as little as $11 million. What a deal.

This is a silly time for collegiate sports. Schools have been changing conference affiliations like a one-legged kangaroo looking for a place to rest. San Diego State University, another publically-funded school, has announced its intention to join the Big East in a few years, if the Big East still exists by then.

Other schools have made similar moves.

Maryland’s announcement this week made the move to the Big, uh, Midwest Conference sound like a good financial move. It isn’t. Baseball, softball, track, cross country and other non-revenue sports teams will now have to travel consistently longer distances just to play conference contests than ever before.

And it is the travel that is the important consideration. The athletes on these college teams are supposed to be students. They will miss more class time than in previous years and even those that are good students will struggle to keep up with their class work due to more time on airplanes, in airports, on shuttle busses and differing time zones.

There needs to be a voice of reason somewhere in the world of the NCAA. There never has been such a voice in the past, but we need one now. College athletic teams should be members of regional conferences. Some will have bigger reputations and richer television deals than others. Welcome to the real world.

The students that play on these teams are increasingly under scrutiny for their academic performance and progress. That scrutiny is about half a century late, but it is increasing now and that is a good thing. Institutions of higher learning, such as Maryland or San Diego State, fail to take the academic futures of their students into account when they begin making long distance travel plans for conference play.

It is wrong, wrong, wrong to treat students this way.

 

Thanks for reading.

Remember, you read it here first...

The harsh reality of playing football in the Southeastern Conference is that a conference game against nearly any member school could involve a game against a top-20 team. They take their football seriously down there.

Doubt me? Look at the current BCS rankings: Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame fill the first three spots. Alabama is fourth, followed by SEC rivals in the next five slots.

          That’s what Alabama had to deal with last week. Having beaten the fifth-ranked LSU Tigers, Alabama got beat the next week by 15^th-ranked Texas A&M. The loss was the second in as many seasons for the Crimson Tide. Last year, ‘Bama came back from a loss to LSU to win the national title anyway and here is a way the Tide can roll back and win another glass trophy.

          Alabama: The Tide wins out its remaining regular season games and wins the SEC title game. ‘Bama struggles only with in-state rival Auburn. The Tigers have stumbled this year, but they’ll play Alabama tough every year.

          Notre Dame: The Fighting Irish lose to USC. Because the Irish refuse to become a full-time member of a conference, they cannot curry favor later with a conference championship game victory. Scratch this team from title consideration.

          Oregon: The Ducks win the Pac 12 championship game and remain undefeated.

          Kansas State: What? K-State falls to Texas in a strange contest which nobody seems to want to win. Each team commits five turnovers and the Longhorns win 21-17. K-State falls to fourth in the standings.

          Alabama’s victory in the SEC title game boosts the Tide back to second place in the BCS rankings. It goes into the national title tilt as the underdog. Oregon completes the year ranked first.

          Alabama coach Nick Saban has nearly a month to prepare for Oregon’s tremendous offense and defense. The Ducks have the best team speed in college football and enhance that speed with an up-tempo, no huddle offense. But Saban is among the most inventive and perceptive coaches in the college game.

          So it is old school versus new style, a matchup for the ages.

          On its first possession, Alabama breaks out the single wing, the attack which ruled the game in the 1930s and ‘40s. Momentarily confused, television announcer Brent Musberger calls the formation “The double-barreled shotgun.” The Tide marches down the field, eats up the clock and takes a 7-0 lead.

          Its defense playing with the tenacity of Hilliard’s Legion when the Legion stormed the heights of Horseshoe Ridge at Chickamauga, Alabama stops Oregon’s tremendous offense and ‘Bama gets the ball back. Reverting to its normal offense after Oregon’s offensive assistant coaches spent the time between possessions diagramming a defense to stop the single wing, Alabama again moves the ball and takes a 14-0 lead.

          Alabama does not use the single wing again, except once on a fourth down play (which it converts), but commentators later talk as if that’s the only offense Alabama used all night. Next year, 17 college teams will run exclusively out of the single wing. Saban never uses it again.

          The final score of what becomes a game for the ages: Alabama 24, Oregon 21.

          Remember, you read it here first.

 

          And thanks for reading.

Secession football

          I recently noted with amazement that citizens in every state have started petitions urging their state’s secession from the Union following the re-election of President Obama.

          We’ve seen this before. The South tried to leave the Union about 150 years ago and it didn’t work out too well. These lame-brained petitions will get no further than Fox News, but our Constitution guarantees the right to make stupid comments and even worse decisions.

          Please know that I understand the frustration these petitioners are expressing. Really, I do. I mean, heck, I emigrated from California to Ohio this year.

          Politics have their place in our lives, but the intention here is to dig into the really important question: How would the loss of the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas impact the college football landscape?

          Can’t you see it? The National Collegiate Athletic Association would lose a lot of important members. Those former NCAA members would form the Whatever Athletic Association and the WAA would award its own national championships in the various sports.

            We wouldn’t need a college football playoff system. The loss of the Southeastern Conference would leave the NCAA with two really strong football conferences, the Big Ten (which has a dozen members) and the Pacific 12 (which used to be the Pac 8 before it was the Pac 10). The Rose Bowl could return to tradition, matching the champion of the Midwest against the champion of the West, and would crown the national champion.

          The NCAA would finally have a title game without a Southeastern Conference school in it.

          The Big East, Big West and all those other conferences would continue to whine about better recognition, as they do now, and we’d have plenty of controversy.

          Notre Dame, as an independent, would probably insist on playing a schedule that would include schools from the seceded states. But Notre Dame would whine and insist that it none-the-less be included in the consideration for the Rose Bowl every three years. No change there.

          The Atlantic Coast Conference would take a hit, losing members. But the ACC is so football weak that few fans would even notice. Speaking of the ACC, can you imagine ACC basketball without Duke and North Carolina? There is a secession petition in the state of North Carolina, too.

          And what would the fictional WAA’s national football championship look like? Very little change from the recent NCAA title games, really. Two teams from the SEC, which would be better than anyone the NCAA could find, would play for the national title and the game would alternate every year between the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

          Most schools from the NCAA would refuse to schedule teams from the WAA, citing the cost of international travel and the excessive time away from class these games would mean to the student athletes.

San Diego State could still be a member of the Big East, you understand, but that is a fully different matter.

No, the real reason the NCAA schools would refuse to venture south would be the same reason northern schools refused to play southern schools fifty years ago and still don’t like to do it today: They wouldn’t want to get beat.

Last year, I checked the roster of the national football champion Alabama Crimson Tide and discovered the majority of players on the team were natives of the South. So student/athlete recruiting would stay about the same for the WAA schools. That means it would be about the same for the NCAA schools as well.

In the final analysis, how would college football change with a new round of secession? Not much really. But it is funny to note that the first three letters in the word secession are SEC.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Numbers, numbers, numbers

 

            It’s a trick question: How many people were killed during the American Civil War?

          This is a trick question because nobody knows.

          The approximate figure used most often until recently was the product of research done in the 1890s, an estimate of better than 620,000 soldiers and civilians, including men, women and children. It is a horrific figure.

          More recently, research by Dr. David Hacker of the University of Binghamton in New York pegs the total death toll at about 750,000. Well, actually, Hacker places the figure between 650,000 and 850,000. As I understand it, Hacker arrived at the 750,000 figure because it is between 850,000 and 650,000.

          In other words, Hacker’s figure is a guess. A well researched guess, sure. Well intentioned guess, without question. But it is still a guess.

          It seems disturbing that guesswork should get the instant acclaim and acceptance that Hacker’s has since it was published. Think about it this way: The estimate, somewhere between 650,000 and 850,000, has a variance of 200,000 deaths. That variance represents more than a quarter of the estimate at the low end (about 30 percent of 650,000) and nearly a quarter at the other end (about 23 percent of 850,000). What kind of guesswork is accepted that has better than a 25-percent chance of inaccuracy according to its own author?

          As I understand the work, and simplified the best I can, Hacker used the 1850 United States census and 1870 United States census to estimate death rates in the normal population, then compared the actual numbers and subtracted. In fairness, it should be noted that Hacker’s study also looked at birth rates and other contributing factors. He apparently considered the number of immigrants that served in both the Federal and Confederate armies and accepted the official number of African Americans said to have served in the United States Army during the war.

          None of the above is intended to criticize Hacker’s work. The criticism here is aimed at those who accepted the new death estimate immediately and have already started quoting it. The 750,000 figure is an average between two estimates. Historians citing Hacker’s research should cite both the low and high ends of the research, but I fear that will not happen in the future.

          Nobody knows how many men, women and children were killed during the American Civil War. It is a terribly complicated question. Silly as it sounds, a researcher must first define the term war dead.

          A Confederate officer from Alabama named Bolling Hall Jr. lost his right leg during the battle of Drewry’s Bluff in 1864. He died in 1866, having never recovered his health. Is Hall to be counted among the war dead?  If so, would the decision be the same if Hall had survived another year? Two more years?

           The reader is invited to make that decision, then spend the remainder of the 21^st century searching through records in order to make a determination of how many soldiers passed away soon enough after suffering a wound to be classified as war dead and how many lived long enough to be classified as non-war dead.

          It would be impossible to track every wounded soldier in both armies, plus the sailors in both navies and determine a date and cause of death but you’d need to have that information before you could make a reasonable estimate of the number of deaths caused by the Civil War.

          Then you’d have to research the number of civilians that died for war-related reasons within the same time frame accepted for soldiers and sailors.

          Your guess is as good as mine.

Thanks for reading.

Election Day

            Today is Election Day. This blog has not approached politics in the past because yours truly wants the blog to be one of the rare internet places where politics are not included. Your politics are your business and if you disagree with me, you are wrong. Still, your business is your business and mine is mine.

          A few notes then on voting and elections past.

          I held public office for eight months in California, as a member of the Ventura County Board of Education. I was appointed to fill an unexpired term. The representative for my area moved away for family reasons.

          As a Board member I studied each question scheduled to come before the Board so I’d be able to ask good questions during the public session. Then, after the discussion, I decided what my vote would be. This irritated the other four members because they couldn’t figure out how I might vote on an item.

          That’s what happens when you consider items individually instead of as a part of your personal political agenda.

          I enjoyed the work but I did not run to retain the seat when election time came. There were family matters that would likely take me out of the area for much of the time immediately before Election Day and I felt it would be wrong for me to be away at that time.

          Then there was the cost. I got an estimate that the Elder Campaign War Chest would need about $30,000 in order to campaign for a job that paid $3,300 a year. That’s bad math.

There was a great deal of legally-required paperwork mumbo-jumbo that candidates had to do and I’d have had to find people to volunteer to fill all the legally-required positions on this massive campaign staff candidates must have.

I didn’t run and I’ve been happy ever since.

So my hat is off to those who submit to the requirements of campaigning for public office. They must want it more than I did.

 

I have written my own name in on the ballot several times. The choices for governor in California have been very grim in recent cycles, so I enjoyed writing in a name I knew I could trust. This caused consternation the first time I entered a write-in because I asked how to do it. I was told the machine would not accept my ballot, which effectively meant I could not vote for the American of my choice.

I raised that issue and the guy running the polling location told me to submit the ballot and we’d find out together how the machine handled the matter. The submission went just fine and I received one (1) vote for governor that year.

I’ve done the same thing several times since.

 

          Everyone says that Ohio is a swing state this time around. Well, okay. I’m a little old for this, but I’ll go to the park and sit on a swing for a while before I vote. A citizen, after all, must do his or her duty on Election Day.

 

          I hope all of you vote or have already voted. The process itself is more important than the outcome, really. It is probably good for your health to vote. It must be or they wouldn’t encourage people in Chicago to vote so often.

 

          Thanks for reading.

 

College football

          Bear Bryant wrote, paraphrasing here, that college football is a coaches game and always well be. Hard to argue with the man. He was a winner.

          So accept that statement as a premise for the following:

          The University of Pittsburgh had fifth-ranked Notre Dame beaten. The game was in the second overtime and Notre Dame had just fumbled away a touchdown. The Panthers had the ball and all they needed was a score, any kind of score. They were in field goal range. It was second down and the ball sat on the right hash mark.

          All the Panthers really needed to do was run to their offensive left to set up a field goal on third down. Yes, they should have tried the field goal on third down. If the snap from center had been poor or if the holder was otherwise unable to secure the ball, he could have fallen on the ball and Pitt would have survived long enough to kick again on fourth down.

          But, in a rare display of poor decision making, the Pitt coaches called a play to their right on both second and third downs, leaving their right-footed kicker a tough kick from the right hash. Guess what? The snap was high, although the holder pulled it down, and the kick was wide to the right.

          Notre Dame won in the third overtime.

          Credit where it is due: The Pitt coaches and players did enough things right up until the second overtime to have a chance to win. But, with a stunning upset in their hands, the coaches let their players down with bad play calling.

          Now skip on down south to Louisiana, where LSU played top-ranked Alabama. This was a rematch of the 2011 national championship game and the third meeting in the last two seasons between two proud programs. The game lived up to the hype, a real ground-pounding thriller.

          LSU coach Les Miles is known for his aggressive play calling. Looking strictly at his record, it must work more often than not. Against Alabama this weekend, he took three chances and failed on all three.

          Alabama took fewer chances and won, 21-17.

          First, Miles called fake field goal as his team lined up for a 47-yard kick in the second half. Miles had good reason for the fake; his kicker’s longest successful attempt of the season was a 44-yarder. Assuming Miles felt the kicker was beyond his effective range, the fake made sense. But Alabama seemed to expect the fake and stuffed the play.

          Here is the key to the play: It was fourth down and long. The fake needed to work real well to get the needed yardage. The better percentage play would have been a punt, hoping pin Alabama back deep in its own territory. The fake field goal was a gutsy call, and I’d have liked it on fourth and short, but it was a mistake under the existing circumstances.

          Miles also called an onside kick in the second half and I really liked this call. Alabama’s offense had not been functioning well and, with the momentum swinging toward LSU after a touchdown moments before, the time was right to take a chance. Poor execution did the play in, but LSU’s defense stopped Alabama on the ensuing possession, so the call did no harm. It very nearly worked.

          On Alabama’s final drive of the game, the Tide had to pass as time was running out. LSU knew it and adopted a conservative effort to keep every play in front of the deepest defenders. LSU had stunted Alabama’s passing game through the entire second half but, in the final minutes the Tigers’ pass rush and tight coverage gave way to fewer rushers and looser coverage.

          The Tide moved right down the field. Finally, with Alabama on the LSU 28, the LSU defense blitzed a defensive back, hoping to sack the quarterback or hurry Alabama into a mistake. Alabama’s quarterback, A.J. McCarron, saw the blitz coming and audibled to a screen pass right through the area left open by blitz. The result was a touchdown that scored the game’s winning points.

          Contrast Miles’ decision making with Alabama coach Nick Saban. Saban sometimes gambles, but against LSU he stayed with the process and put the game in the hands of his players. In the end the process, and Alabama, won.

          Roll Tide.

 

          Thanks for reading.

A little (very little) humor

I noticed today that this blog has had 1,912 page views through its history. This gave me a sinking feeling because the Titanic sank in 1912.

For that reason, Speedyleeway offers the following hook, line and stinkers:

I parked my car in a tow away zone. Went back later and, sure enough, the car was there but the zone had been towed away.

I just discovered that electricians all live in the same town. They live in Electra City.

Amelia Earhart’s plane was a Lockheed Electra. I hope those electricians don’t get lost.

Lost was a bad television show. I never saw it. My carpenter did. He picked up his hammer and saw it all.

I saw a leopard in the zoo yesterday, right after feeding time. He said his meal hit all the right spots.

Okay, I admit it, they can’t all be winners. Game for more?

The baseball season is over now. The Dodgers’ offense was so bad; their batting practice pitcher threw a no-hitter. I went hiking and discovered a cave. Some bats, which were blind, flew out of the dark without hitting anything and that made sense. These were Dodger bats.

Since we moved to Ohio, I’ve started taking band aids everywhere I go. I worry about slipping on ice and getting cold cuts. My wife says I’m full of bologna.

A friend of mine bought a Dalmatian puppy. I asked if he named the dog Spot and he said no. I asked why and he said, “It’s a girl.”

I found out why cowboys ride everywhere they go: Horses are too heavy to carry.

My elephant sat on my fence the other day and I checked my watch. Yep, it was time to buy a new fence.

It turns out we’re all welcome in the ‘Show me’ state because Missouri lives company.

Horses can’t dance. They have two left feet.

The Invisible Man has no children. He’s not apparent. By the way, have you seen him lately?

I know a guy who went to parachute school, just so he could drop out.

What do you call the happy feeling when your homework is finished? The aftermath.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.