by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Royals Flush With Fans

At Union Station yesterday, a throng of Royals fans appeared on a gorgeous afternoon to salute their World Series champions and, judging by the size of the crowd, await the white puffs of smoke heralding the election of a new pope.

Kansas City proper has about 467,000 humans and it is estimated that 800,000 showed up to laud the franchise’s first World Series champions in 30 years (imagine if the Cubs ever win).

Related: “Around The Horn” host Tony Reali noted on Monday’s program that his surname, in Italian, translates to “Royals.”

2. Daily Harrumph: Love Is All Around

Twitter replaced its “Favorite” tab with a “Heart” Like yesterday in a maneuver to be more Facebooky…now if only there were someplace on social media for humans to react to this instantly and viscerally, expressing to all of the world how they feel about it.

Me, I had fun renaming films: “I Favorite Huckabees” and “My Heart Year,” for beginners.

3. Tiger, Tiger (and Tiger), Burning Bright

It’s Death Valley Days in college football, as the initial College Football Playoff rankings have the Clemson Tigers and LSU Tigers 1 and 2. The Memphis Tigers, at 13, are the top Group of 5 school — and have a chance to improve their resume against an undefeated Houston team on November 14, followed by one-loss Temple the following week (not that Memphis and Paxton Lynch will advance to the Football Four — Who are we kidding? — but it could be an interesting run).

What I like about this year’s rankings? With the exceptions of Memphis and possibly Florida, every team in the Top 20 will play at least one other team in the Top 20, and mostly in the Top 10, going forward. This will mostly sort itself out.

Easiest path going forward: No, Clemson, I have not forgotten that you already took down No. 5 Notre Dame, but your only tough remaining game is at home this Saturday versus No. 16 Florida State.

Easiest picks to criticize: Ohio State at No. 3 and Alabama at No. 4, based on resumes. Based on eye test, I have no problem with it.

Biggest error by Selection Committee: Using maths to explain their rankings. As Dan Wolken tweeted yesterday, their stock response should simply be, “We think they’re better.” I mean, why do you put together 12 experts in a room, after all? Any Nate Silver wannabe could crunch numbers and give you a Top 25 the maths way.

How it breaks down per conference:

ACC: Best bet is for Stanford Clemson to win out.

Big Ten: No conference is in better shape, with three current unbeatens. The easiest way to muck this up is if the Fighting Harbaughs upset Ohio State on November 28.

Big 12: Four unbeatens, none of whom have played one another yet, all of whom will. If this turns into the melee from Anchorman, we’ve got trouble (Bob Bowlsby: “That escalated quickly”) . If anyone runs the gauntlet unbeaten, they’re in.

Pac-12: We’ve got trouble. One-loss teams Stanford or Utah need to run the table, and even then it’s not a sure thing.

SEC: Calamity awaits if Alabama beats LSU (and the Iron Bowl is never a gimme, especially since it’s at Jordan-Hare this year). Easiest in is if LSU wins out. If Alabama wins Saturday, it would appreciate LSU beating Ole Miss the following week.

Notre Dame: Win out and you’ve got an outstanding resume and it may come down to whether any Big 12 teams are undefeated. You’re in over a one-loss Big 12 team. As for a one-loss Clemson team, would SelCom place higher value on head-to-head or strength of schedule? We’ll see.

Finally, one guarantee: One of these top ten ranked teams will lose against someone they shouldn’t lose to in November. Wackiness awaits.

4. How Can We Miss You if You Never Go Away?

How long ago was that poignant Jon Stewart retirement party? Remember the one where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played him off? When was it, August?

(By the way, the Navesink River is officially THE place to be. You’ve got Bon Jovi and Stewart on one side of it, and Bruce on the other; “In my hometown, in myyyy  hoooome town…”)

Anyway, less than three full months later, Stewart has signed a four-year development deal with HBO (“It’s not TV, it’s where the smart, cool bros go”). Now that Stewart has taken the bait, how does HBO not inveigle him to dedicate himself to covering, at least in some form, the most fascinating presidential race of this millennium (if not our life times)? As bees in honey drown…

5. Good. Band. Meeting.

A leftover from the weekend, but New Zealand, a nation of approximately 4 million people, won its second consecutive Rugby World Cup by defeating arch-nemesis Australia, 34-17, in London. Makes sense. The All Blacks became the first nation to win the quadrennial event three times and the first to repeat.

Related: I miss Flight of the Conchords and particularly, the band meetings with Murray (“Brit?” “Here.” “Jermaine?” “Present.”)

Music 101 

Go Go Joseph

“Show Tunes Week” continues: In 1970 two fledgling playwrights by the names of Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics) coopted the Old Testament story of an abandoned brother and turned it into a Broadway musical smash titled Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (as a grade schooler in Red Bank, I watched the Red Bank Catholic H.S. drama department put on the show seven years later and I can’t imagine it was done any better on Broadway.) This here’s the show stopper, as Joseph (here, Donny Osmond), interpreter of dreams, gets his mojo back while in prison. The Narrator, played here by Maria Friedman from the 1999 straight-to-video movie, is pretty terrific.

Remote Patrol

49th Country Music Awards

ABC 8 p.m.

The only sure thing is that Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert will not be seated next to one another.

Clippers at Warriors

ESPN 10:30 p.m.

If I ran Oracle Arena, I’d play this clip before every tip off. The last two unbeaten teams in the Western Conference (both 4-0) meet in Oakland tonight.