Starting Five

The Visiting Writers series, a.k.a. “People More Amusing Than I”, continues today with a post from Gene, Gene the Blogging Machine. But he’d prefer it if we refer to his post as “Okerland’s Opinions.” Done. I’ll return tomorrow. To whom I’ll return it, I don’t know. But I will return tomorrow. –J.W.

1. Shakedown/Surprise/Surreal Saturday

“Hi, Commissioner Goodell. Can’t talk now. We’re having fun here. KSeeYaBye.”

Beginning on Thursday night in Eugene, Top 10 teams began to fall at an alarming rate.  First, it was the Ducks versus the undefeated and now 10th-ranked Arizona Wildcats, then Saturday we saw MH’s #1 team , TAMU, fall to Mississippi State (Dan Mullen is back!!), then ‘bama lost to Katy Perry’s Rebels (plenty of boys that night yelled “I kissed a girl”), then Oklahoma to the Horned Frogs of TCU (#GaryPattersontoMichigan) and before the clock struck midnight the upsets came full circle as Utah beat UCLA in the Pac-12.  There was almost a 6th upset in a snowy south bend, but Ben Koyack strolled past the Stanford defenders like an unpromoted Facebook post and caught the go head score with one minute to go.

And now everyone’s scrambling to fill their top 4 with teams from the SEC West and what happens when they all beat each other over the next two months?  Will the committee ignore an undefeated team because Alabama lost to Ole Miss but beat MSU and TAMU, while Ole Miss will have beat TAMU and BAMA but lost to MSU in the last week of the season?

And of course the old school people, like the Editor-in-Chief (note: I prefer “Imperial Poobah” –JW) of this site, will say this is why we don’t need a playoff, these things tend to sort each other out.

 BTW,  The Smartest Team in the Land had a four-point lead with three minutes to go and here are the mistakes they made:
    – Kickoff out of bounds (yes it was close to a touch back, but you cost your team 15 yards)
    – Playing not to give up a TD rather than to win game. The safety was so deep on every play, Golson had wide open receivers on nearly every pass
    – Miscommunication on the Koyack TD that left him uncovered. 
    – Fighting for extra yards instead of getting down after a 1st down.
    – Intentional grounding with 11 seconds left. 

2. ORoyals Madness

Lorde, have mercy. The small-market teams are enjoying the postseason.

Crab cakes vs. BBQ for the right to host Game 1 of the World Series (Did the AL win? I forget but I’m sure the Mess impacted that in some way). Right now, Bud Selig is trying to figure out how to make sure it’s LA vs SF in the NLCS so someone watches the WS.

It’s quite the intriguing match-up, the team that barely hits home runs against the team that can’t stop hitting them. Baltimore’s Nelson Cruz had 40 HRs this year, while the Royals barely had a 100 as a team.

Ned “The bumbling idiot” Yost vs Buck “The genius” Showalter. Yost has looked like a genius thus far and he’s four wins from heading to the World Series.

As a baseball fan, I love when new teams make the playoffs because it shows the game is more about heart than money.  But the PTB care about making money and I fear the ratings won’t be that hot.

Has anyone mentioned that the winner of the WC game gets an advantage heading into the LCS?  Yes, you lose your ace for Game 1, but if you happen to take either Game 1 or 2 or both, your ace is going in Game 3 while the favorite is stuck with their #3 starter.

3. Hasta Luego, Harbaugh

Is Seth Wickersham on the other end of this pass?

I don’t need Jay Glazer to tell me that Jim Harbaugh won’t be back with the 49ers next year. But maybe it’s because I live in the Bay Area and have to hear about the 9ers daily.  Harbaugh wants to get paid like all Michigan Men. He’s the hottest coaching candidate in America.  Since 2010, he’s coached in essentially 4 major postseason games (Orange Bowl, NFC Champ, Super Bowl, NFC Champ) so he knows what he’s doing.

The problem with guys like Harbaugh is that eventually his personality becomes too much to take. Owners get mad because he’s not respecting them anymore and Jim feels disrespected because he wasn’t give an extension.

How else do I know Harbaugh is gone? His agent convinced someone at ESPN or SI to write a long-form about hanging out with Jim and what makes him tick.  This is a standard get-my-client-money move. Jim’s been known to dislike the media and publicity but he agreed to this?

And when guys such as Deion and Dilfer are quoting sources from inside 9er land, it’s either players or management who are tired of the Jim act.

My fear is now that the Cowboys are playing well, Jim’s only option will be Michigan but I can’t see them giving him a blank check to fix the program.  I wouldn’t be shocked if the Raiders made a move, though.

Harbaugh could join Art Howe, Jon Gruden, Don Nelson, Hue Jackson and Mark Jackson as Bay Area coaches run out of town because of conflicts with management despite posting positive seasons.

4. Fan Complaints

Apparently, you don’t know the way to San Jose (or Santa Clara).

The newest trend among ADs and team owners is complaining about the fans. “Why aren’t they coming to games?” “Why aren’t they loud?”

The answer to the first question is price.  Back when I was at Notre Dame, it cost maybe $200 to go to all the games.  For the entire season. You’d wake up, start drinking, go inside, sober up and celebrate a victory (not so much in 1999).  Now the price to attend games is much higher, plus schools decided to crack down on making the games fun (Thanks, Bin Laden) and as a result, kids decided they could use the money they could have spent on tickets for beer and post-game fun.

In addition, you can watch the game from your room and spend all game trying to win your school’s in-game Twitter contest while your friends suffer without WiFi.  Lower the prices and cut down on the excise crap and the students will return.

The answer to the second question is “Because you priced them out.” The biggest complaint about Levi’s Stadium thus far is that it isn’t as loud as Candlestick.  Not really a shock considering they moved the stadium an hour away from the loyal fan base and raised ticket prices and added PSLs. I know plenty of 9er fans who said this is the first time ever that they haven’t had season tickets because it was too rich for their blood.

Rich people are great, they fuel the economy and help charities, but many treat sporting events as a social outing to be seen but not to be heard. Your middle class and lower income fans are the ones who get loud and create that hostile environment.  Take them away and you might as well play games in a smaller stadium.

But the NFL doesn’t care because they make money whether you watch at home (higher ratings = higher rights fees) or at the stadium. As long as you are a dedicated fan of a team, the owner gets your money.  And once ticket prices go up they rarely go back down unless your team really sucks and then you aren’t going to the game anyways.

5.  Olympic-Sized Headache

Perhaps they should permanently host the Summer Games in Olympia, Wash.?

It’s taken awhile, but countries have finally realized that hosting the Olympics are more a pain in the ass (people still keep wallets in their back pockets?) than the increase in tourism.  Sure it’s great to show off your city for two weeks but then you have constant reminders about how much it cost. It’s like that Notre Dame BCS Championship Game t-shirt from 2013.

Basically no one wants the Winter Olympics in 2022, and poor NBC is on the hook to air the games. But there is a way to fix this…

Designate one place as the permanent host for the Winter and Summer games going forward. Countries can chip in to help fix up arenas and there is a set plan every four years.  It’s a win win for everyone.

Or make it a global event where a different country hosts a different event or events (think Wrestlemania 2).  

Use the resources that you already have and get rid of the negative press that comes due to worker wages, deaths and countries overlooking their poor areas to build a new stadium.

Think of what the bids would be for a permanent host….

Starting Five

1. College GameDay: Hong Kong?

“Police, Protesters Clash.” Why can’t rebellion be fashion forward?

These people are not assembling to see whether Lee Corso dons an elephant head or a Confederate mask, nor are they demanding the ouster of Dave Brandon. No, they just want democracy and for Beijing to not have veto power over who may be a chief executive candidate in the 2017 election (that was a recently passed edict in China).

Perry is actually going to see who Sara Bareilles picks, and then work off that blueprint

Meanwhile, GameDay will make its first pilgrimage to the quaint Southern town of Oxford, Miss., where the celebrity picker almost certainly will not be this guy. Word is that it will be Katy Perry, who did not attend Ole Miss, but who definitely has the look and will be in between tour stops in Memphis and Dallas. You have to think she’ll be pulling for the Tigers, which is going to make picking the LSU-Auburn game problematic.

2. Oregon Bows Out

When did black, pink and chrome become Oregon’s school colors? When Nike said so

Highly entertaining game in Eugene last night, in which the second-ranked Ducks allowed 28 second-half points to an unranked team, surrendered a 3rd-and-20 conversion in the game’s final five minutes (on a counter play), and committed a dumb excessive celebration penalty after stopping Arizona on the next series (thus giving the Wildcats an automatic first down, enabling them to score the go-ahead and game-winning touchdown).

It was the type of moment that gives the producers of First Ache and Around the Whorin’ a woody. Do we condemn the referees for not looking the other way when Duck defensive lineman Tony Washington celebrated his sack by running toward midfield and performing a bow toward his bench? Or do we remind people that rules exist to be enforced and that doing so at the most inconvenient of times reinforces the idea that structure trumps special interests? Rules and sentiment don’t mix.

I feel for Washington this morning (usually a Washington who dooms the Huskies is clad in purple…not pink), but it’s either his fault for knowing a rule and ignoring it or the Duck coaches’ fault for failing to properly discipline their players. Either way, there’s a line that gets crossed between exuberance and self-glorification and Washington kinda crossed it. And whether or not you or I have a problem with that isn’t the point; the point is that there’s a rule against behaving that way.

Do I sound like a hard-liner? Good.

And if I want to be an even bigger jerk, I might note that the finish of this other game last night also saw referees chiming in with enforcing a rule and completely altering the outcome of the game. Of course, you may say, that was an easy call. He fumbled the ball before he reached the goal line. Yeah, but we all knew he was going to score, if not there then on the following play. So, should some rules matter more than others? That’s up to you. But it’s not up to the referees.

Also, by the way, I think it’s okay to be against both breast cancer and football teams wearing pink on their uniforms. Heart disease kills more people each year than breast cancer, and lung cancer kills more men as well as more women than does breast cancer. Which does not mean that breast cancer isn’t an insidious and deadly disease with a high mortality rate. I’m just wondering if heart disease and lung cancer have their own colors (they probably do; I just don’t feel like Googling it).

By the way, the Wildcats are now 5-0 and have beaten the No. 2 team in the country on their lawn. Let’s see where the AP voters have them come Sunday.

3. Stiff-Arming the Worthy

Granted, Coleman had his best game (247 yards) versus FCS Indiana State. Love these helmets, by the way.

Listen, I like the Heisman Trophy. I like the Heisman Pundit. I just wonder how come they cannot have their act together as well as the good people who are in charge of the Grange Award.

For example, yesterday the Heisman folks unveiled, and long overdue, a splashy and renovated web site (Heisman.com). And as part of the site they identified, one month into the season, 14 “Aspirants.” 

Not five. Not ten. No, fourteen. That’s quite a few players, 14. I mean, you should have room for a few quarterbacks (Kenny Hill, Everett Golson, Marcus Mariota…check), a couple of running backs (Todd Gurley, Ameer Abdullah…check) perhaps a wide receiver (Amari Cooper…check) maybe even a defensive player (Let’s not go overboard).

Two players not on the list, after four to five games or at the bare minimum one-third of the season? Indiana’s Tevin Coleman, who happens to be the nation’s leading rusher at 172.8 yards per game, and Washington State’s Connor Halliday, who happens to be the nation’s leading passer at 463.6 yards per game.

Halliday averages one pass attempt per minute –not of his play, but of the game. So, like 2 per minute for when he is on field.

Maybe if they played in Power 5 conferences.

We wondered about the omission of Coleman and went to a knowledgeable source for an explanation.

“I’m pretty sure he could be on the list if Indiana contacted the Heisman people and insisted,” our friend The Heisman Pundit (a.k.a. Chris Huston) tells us in a Medium Happy exclusive (“Ooooooh! Who’s cool, now?”). “Note there is an Army RB on it.

“But he is relatively unknown and plays for a bad team. That could change if he’s still leading nation in rushing by game 8 or so. In general you have to be pretty special to be a candidate from a team like Indiana. Not sure he fits the bill, but it’s early.”

4. He’s DVR-ing Michigan-Rutgers?

Dear Ladies: Please retire my number. Thanks, Jeets.

“When are we getting married?” 

      “Soon as I retire, sweetheart.”

“How soon?”

Wondering if conversations between The Captain, 40, and the Direct TV Genie, 24, such as these occurred the past few months. And then when Clooney went ahead and got married last weekend, well…is Derek Jeter getting married to Hannah Davis tomorrow?

All we know is that No. 2 is headed to swanky Oheka Castle on Long Island’s North Shore for an affair on Saturday where he is to be honored, per TMZSports.com. Jeter played shortstop just eight days ago but only DH’ed over the weekend in Boston. When he stops playing the field, he –I’m already sorry–really stops playing the field.

5. Sorry Not Sorry?

Yesterday the Tallahassee Democrat accepted the resignation of staffer Natalie Pierre, who had a pretty significant beat: the Florida State football team. It seems Natalie plagiarized the work of a freelance writer — you be the judge — and then chose to resign.

On her website Pierre uses the hed “I Am Sincerely Sorry” but then writes:

“…I was informed that words that were not my own were published in the Democrat and on Tallahassee.com with my byline. While I did not intentionally plagiarize another journalist’s work, I take full responsibility.”

I was informed? As if she didn’t know she was plagiarizing the other writer, Tim Linafelt?

And how do you unintentionally plagiarize someone else’s work?

Was this just an error of the unconsciousness?

Granted, the “current climate of the newsroom” seems rather demoralizing, but welcome to 21st century print journalism. But if Pierre had not resigned, wouldn’t she have just been fired? And if she didn’t do anything wrong, why is she sincerely sorry? Is she asking us to believe that this was just an accident, like maybe, you know, walking out of a Publix with some unpurchased crab legs?

Reserves

Wonderful profile of Jim Harbaugh by ESPN’s Seth Wickersham...

Remote Patrol

Mulaney 

FOX Sunday 9 p.m.

You know how much I love John Mulaney, but I fear this Time review hits the nail squarely on the head. It’s what I thought when I had the chance to watch a taping of the show as part of the live studio audience (a dreadful experience, by the way, no matter the program; I took flight after four hours and felt like Andy Dufresne swimming through the pipe).

As noted when I profiled him for Newsweek last spring, Mulaney, 32, is an avowed student of classic sitcoms. He actually used to go to a Chicago museum of TV and radio as a junior high lad and devour old episodes of sitcoms made before he was born. He’s an inherently funny, insightful and charming guy. And so smart. In a recent bit he wonders why big-name actors are needed to voice the roles in high-budget animated kids’ movies, then mimics a five year-old: “Ooh, it has Mark Ruffalo. I loved him in You Can Count on Me.”

(That’s exactly why I love Mulaney.)

Anyway, I don’t know how Mulaney the sitcom will do. What I saw lacked an original voice –ironic, since Mulaney’s is. And, yes, you’re going to call it “watered-down Seinfeld.” The best part of the show is the relationship between Mulaney and Martin Short. They should focus on that. The rest of it is fairly disposable. Instead of being more like Seinfeld, maybe it should be more like The Odd Couple.

There’s a great moment in The Tender Bar, produced by another insanely talented man, JR Moehringer, in which JR is a high school senior trying to write his application essay for Yale. After a number of high-fallutin’ but uninspired iterations, his mom sits him down and reminds him, “You’re a very talented writer. Stop trying to write like someone else. Just write like yourself.”

Find your voice. Here’s hoping Mulaney does soon. He’s too talented not to succeed.

Starting Five

Goff is 6-4, grew up in Marin Co., and is now one of the better QBs in the country. Life could be worse.

1. Go Throw

A plethora, a cornucopia, more than a mere smattering of fantastic college football on the slate for Saturday. One contest that will garner little attention, since neither team is ranked and it will take place in the Palouse: Cal at Washington State.

Cougar QB Connor Halliday leads the nation in passing yardage (463.6 yards per game) and touchdown passes (20). Golden Bear QB Jared Goff, meanwhile, is the only player in the country who has both thrown more than 15 TDs (17) while averaging more than 10 yards per attempt.

Is Oregon’s Marcus Mariota (13 TDs, 0 INTs, 11.8 yards per attempt), the only one of the three who gets Heisman attention, superior to both? Probably. But this game will feature two very prolific quarterbacks. You can bet a few scouts will end up in Pullman.

2. Are There Rankings?

Hector Beltran Leyva: Will probably be working alongside me at the Cookoutateria next summer

The headline on CNN.com –my top source of humor on a daily basis– reads “Mexico Nabs Top Drug Lord Hector Beltran Leyva.” Honestly, I need to up my use of “nab” as a verb. “I just nabbed some Cool Ranch Doritos.”

Anyway, it got me to wondering, Are there rankings? And does Clay Travis argue that the drug lords are worth every penny? I asked the Twitterati, and got these replies:

@AuburnElvis: “Hector Beltran ain’t played nobody, PAAWWWWWWWWL!”

@fakegimel:  Yes, but typically the rankings are absurd because head coaches just have their assistants do it, favor in-conference drug lords.

3. Not a True Detective Sub Plot

Honestly, detective, we were just going over ‘The Scarlet Letter.’

A pair of female English teachers at Destrehan High School in Kenner, La., are arrested for partaking in a menage a trois with a student. Shelley Dufresne, 32, and Rachel Respess, 24, sure never taught me English were arrested on felony counts of unlawful carnal knowledge.

It gets better/worse for Dufresne, who not only is married with three young children but is the daughter of a local judge. If this were True Detective, at least one of these two teachers, but probably both, would already have been having an affair with Marty Hart.

4. Or Maybe You Just Screwed Up

“See, here’s what I was thinking when I sprinkled our season with gasoline and then tossed a match…”

A’s general manager BIlly Beane: “Simply put, if we don’t have Jon Lester, I don’t think we make the playoffs.”

Um, no. The A’s were 66-41, the best record in baseball, when they traded for Lester, who did a fine job for them on the mound (although he did allow six runs in the Wild Card loss to the Royals, so not a fine job there). They were 22-34 after the trade, or .392, which would be the worst record in baseball extrapolated over a season.

If a supposedly smart man can assess that data –best record in baseball pre-trade and worst record post-trade–and still say it was the right move, then maybe it’s more about him needing to always be correct than it is about him being honest. Maybe the scouts in Moneyball had a point.

Even if, EVEN IF, you stretch as far as you can to defend Beane’s parting with Yoenis Cespedes, the A’s should have at least finished well enough to have had home-field advantage on Tuesday night, which they did not. And which made a difference.

I love that Dallas Braden, a former A under Beane, calls the move “a total failure.” And that the other ESPN analyst —I should know who this is– talks about the loss of “presence” when trading Cespedes. Now Cespedes is gone, and Lester is gone, and the A’s must rebuild.

What a dope. As I chronicled last month...

5. A Little in Love?

I guess it would be creepier if she used a John Lennon mannequin

That’s Jill Stolworthy, 68, who never drives her Peugeot without a Cliff Richard mannequin riding shotgun. Who am I to judge? I have a Taylor Swift mannequin and I don’t even own a car. Perhaps I’ve said too much?

In story, you’ll learn that T-Swizzle spent $5 million on an adjacent apartment for her security team

By the way, Josh Eells’ cover-story profile of Taylor Swift in a recent Rolling Stone is a terrific read (she’s my neighbor now). Eels saves the best anecdote for last.

Starting Five

Not in a Fantasy League

1. We Suck*

According to a study by the London Zoological Society, world populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined an average of 52% in the past 40 years. That’s pretty much the most depressing news I’ll hear all year.

Ebola isn’t the world’s deadliest virus. Man is. Honestly, I’m rooting for Ebola. And for animals. They do a much better job of taking care of the planet than we do.

And if you want to see a vivid example of how our excesses are screwing over the better inhabitants of this world, look at what walruses are dealing with in Alaska. I’m sorry, but Rust Cohle was right.

More animals, less people. It’s a recipe for success.

*Honestly, I did not mean that as an Oakland A’s reference, but if the trunk fits…(Thanks, Okerland)

2. He’s Quite a Muslim

I’m not convinced that Reza Aslan is not actually Mo Rocca, who is not to be confused with Morocco, though why would you?

The misleading CNN.com headline reads “Maher Slammed for Comments,” but I’ve come to expect very little in the way of insight or intelligence from the one-time leader in cable news. To CNN’s credit, though, it provided professor Reza Aslan a forum to set the record straight on the difference between “Muslim countries” and “radical Muslims.”

Watch and learn, kids. Aslan does not dig in his heels, does not devolve into demagoguery. He level-headedly explains the facts and even concedes points to CNN’s two anchors when they are correct. What he does endeavor to do, oh so patiently, is to teach them to understand context.

I get that Aslan “took down” Maher’s comments. But even more so, he schooled Don Lemon and his female co-host. The woman, whose name I don’t know, consistently fails to get his point that there are a lot more mostly Muslim nations than just Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran and that to describe all of them as extremist is, as he says, “and I mean this very seriously, stupid.” Which is when, ha ha, CNN cuts off the interview.

3. Royal Succession

The game included Jarrod Dyson’s gutsy steal of 3rd base in the bottom of the 9th and a triple by Eric Hosmer in the 12th.

K.C. outlasts Oakland in a game that began in September and ended in October. Twelve innings, 17 runs, and unofficially, 34 bunts. The Royals rebounded from a four-run deficit in the 8th inning while Salvador Perez, who appeared to take his at-bats blind-folded in the 8th and 10th innings, wound up driving in the game-winning run.

The A’s wind up going 22-34 since the Yoenis Cespedes trade, a .392 win percentage. The Arizona Diamondbacks, who finished with baseball’s worst record over the entire season, had a .395 win percentage.

Meanwhile, someone at MLB.com wanted to go home early, apparently.

4.Bad Timing

Thar she blows

Bad timing in Japan, as Mount Ontake erupts for the first time in 35 years and kills at least 48 hikers. Paul Myerberg of USA Today will later note that Notre Dame had won a national championship more recently than Ontake had last erupted.

5. Presidential Protectors

Grizz and Dotcom should totally have Obama’s back going forward

A brazen plan. The element of surprise. Commitment to the task. If  you don’t believe a bunch of yahoos can assassinate a head of state in seemingly the most secure of places, allow me to introduce you to the death of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.

So, truly, you and I should be pissed about what occurred at the White House. I imagine POTUS opened a full can of whupass on the Secret Service and I wonder if a few of them have not been reassigned to guarding Jimmy Carter’s bunions. And I know ISIS has to be pissed: They’re thinking to themselves, We could have stormed the White House and beheaded the president of the United States and filmed it.

They honestly could have gotten away with it. The Secret Service actually owes Omar Gonzalez a huge debt of gratitude.

Meanwhile, I’m sure this clip replayed in President Obama’s mind a few times since the incident. It’s not as if he hasn’t noted it before.

Meanwhile, Michelle and the kids were spotted at Home Depot earlier today buying locks and an electronic alarm system. That should help. Also, isn’t Craig Robinson free these days? He’d make a good family member to have around.