hpslugga

The only thing critical I'd have to say to General Milley would be: "You mean you didn't understand it already? It's not exactly an evolving concept, and it's not particularly new, either."

It really is shocking to see the level of depravity at some of these institutions. What's especially shocking is that it's all in furtherance of a perceived future of success in fucking football. I remember the day Paterno got fired. They announced it at some press conference in the middle of the week and, IIRC, before the guy could even finish his fucking statement, some douchebag local reporter stood up and shouted off the first question: "BUT WHO'S COACHING THE NEBRASKA GAME ON SATURDAY?!!"

I remember the pre-BCS system. Again just because that was a terrible system does not mean that the BCS was a good system. it was a terrible system and it was not the only option at the time.

I already explained why it was a failure and it had nothing to do with what I wanted. That’s a canard.

Oh that's been a well known ruse for quite some time. Here's an incomplete list of the fallacious ruses that have been offered in that fantasy world: "BUT TOO MANY GAMES!" "BUT INJURIES!" and its cousin ruse... "BUT THE NFL DRAFT!" "BUT PLAYERS CAN'T SEE THEIR FAMILIES AT CHRISTMAS!" "BUT THE REGULAR SEASON WON'T MEAN ANYTHING!" "BUT THE BOWLS WON'T MEAN ANYTHING!" "BUT FINAL EXAMS!" There have been others, but those are the big ones and they all fall under one of four distinct categories: 1. True but not indicative of the position (this is mostly a reference to the final exams excuse) 2. Not evidently true 3. Evidently not true 4. Fractal wrongness

No, that suggests that the BCS was the only alternative to the Alliance, which is a false dichotomy. The BCS was concocted in the late 1990's. The other 3 NCAA football subdivisions already had a postseason tournament for fully a generation prior to that (and not at one point did they ever use a BCS-type system prior to that), so there's no excuse for this logical fallacy that you're trying to push. That model was absolutely available to the FBS, and the powers that be chose to eschew it. But that's what it was: a choice.

That's like "the nicest guy in prison." Beating the Alliance concept is about as easy as it gets. Not a very high bar to clear. I didn't argue for what was being done prior, so this statement has no real application.

It was a colossal failure because it failed at a colossal level. It promised to deliver an undeliverable promise, which was it was going to use human and computer polls to match the “top two teams” in a championship game. The very concept of that is absurd and for reasons already discussed here: it’s impossible to do such a thing using such tools for a league of that size. Hell, the BCS would be inadequate for the NFL, and you think it was appropriate for the FBS? Human polls are worthless. They are a consensus of arguments from imagined authority. Human polls are assumed improbable claims from credulous sources based on insufficient evidence, which by definition renders anyone who takes them seriously a fool. Computer polls have the same problem: the assign arbitrary weights to criterion that cannot possibly be measured accurately given the size of the league coupled with the limited schedule. It’d be like if you went to Port Aransas beach and someone asked you “which grain of sand do you think is the biggest?” I mean I suppose there’s a definite answer to the question but discovering it would be an exercise in futility on a practical level. So you’ve got two rankings systems with absolutely horrid flaws and defects, and we’re going to mix them together to come up with two fucking teams in a league of 130? That’s not a goal; that’s a fantasy. It’s a particularly stupid fantasy given that the template for a far more suitable alternative has been available now for literally 100 years. And by the way, they didn’t expand the BCS, either. As I said, the BCS is a compendium of polls derived by coaches who don’t pay attention to anything, bad comedy writers in sports media and computer nerds. The CFP is a selection committee of people associated with the P5. It’s also a stupid concept, but it’s also different.

The BCS was a colossal failure.

You didn’t even read it, had nothing to say in response, and all you had to contribute was that you’re butthurt that I negged you for being obviously dishonest. You didn’t make any “point,” much less did I “prove it” for you.

High school? Yeah, it would, but not for reasons you think. You say that as if totally unaware of the existence of postseason tournaments in the other classifications of college football. Almost as if you completely ignored everything I said other than the letters "HS" FCS: 127 teams, 10 games against 10 opponents, 24-team playoff (maximum of 15 games) DII: 169 teams, 10 games against 10 opponents, 28-team playoff (maximum of 15 games) DIII: 246 teams, 10 games against 10 opponents, 32-team playoff (maximum of 15 games) FBS? 130 teams, 12 games against 12 opponents, and we'll not mention the playoff size because we haven't even established to which one you're referring. Oh right, but you brought up HS. Ok. Well I didn't look at the precise numbers in other states, but I'll just tell you how it works in one division in Texas (since they're all essentially the same): 5A Division 1: 129 teams, 10 games against 10 opponents, 64-team playoff (maximum of 16 games) It is dishonest to assert baseless speculation as though it were a matter of fact. There are 3 different NCAA tournaments in the sport of football, 2 of which concern leagues of noticeably larger size with shorter schedules. Tell me about all this trouble they've been having with achieving with "orderly post-season tournaments." I can't even believe I'm entertaining this because the notion is so stupid, but yeah they have, and the answer is the same: it'd be a logistical nightmare. The easiest way to even conceive of doing it is to construct a 50-team bracket of all 50 of the state champions in the top classifications of each state. Here are the problems with that: 1. There's no central governing body for high school football in the US. 2. You're, therefore, going to have to deal with 50 different governing bodies, and their rules aren't all the same, either. So whose rules are we playing by? 3. A 50-team bracket means 32 teams would get a bye. How do you go about sorting that shit out? 4. In addition to the 16 games that a lot of states require of their state champions, you're going to have to dedicate 6 more weeks of that. So that means that to play in the National Final, you'd have to play 21-22 games. Not even the NFL requires 22, and to get to 21 means that you'd have to be a wildcard team. You're comparing a seemingly impossible concept like a national high school tournament to a league that is as large as, or smaller than, its most immediate counterparts at the same level. That's about as dishonest as it gets. Oh and just FYI, no one serious gives two shits about that stupid, mythical "national championship" at the HS level. It's an absurd concept that includes an indefinite number of teams (there are between 4 or 5 every year), there's no governing body or any entity that even rewards a fucking trophy. It's just mumbo jumbo that websites and sports networks vote on every year. Meanwhile, the players and coaches can hardly be bothered to even care. They care about the state title, yes, but national? Shit, I even knew a guy who played for the 2004 SLC team in college that won it from 4 different services that year, and he wasn't even aware of it for like a month after they "won" them. The fucking guy graduated in the spring of 2006, which meant that he was at the school for 3 state championships they won in those 4 years and I never heard him say anything like "yeah man those 3 titles were really special but the 2004 one meant the most because some websites said we were national champions!"

Lol. "Report"

Who’s playing smart boy? You didn’t present it as opinion. You asserted it as though it were a matter of fact. You shouldn’t have to do such things if your opinion was so unshakable as to not ever be susceptible to change.

The word "too" is a word that is used to compare. The alternatives to "too," in that context, are "not inclusive enough" or "sufficiently inclusive" It's basically a Goldilocks principle. So when you say that 16 is "too inclusive," by what comparison are you basing that? Well we can only assume that it's the FCS since that was the only thing to which you referred. That's a start. The FCS currently uses a 24-team model in its league of 127 teams. FBS is a league of 130, and we're talking about a playoff that would use 8 fewer teams than FCS. As a percentage, roughly 19% (18.897) of the FCS makes it to the playoff. With 16 in the FBS, that would constitute 12.3% of the league. So it'd be less inclusive by a factor of fully one third. On average, HS football includes 50% of its various leagues around the country In the NFL, it's 43.75% FCS is 18.9% Division II is 16.6% (28 out of 169) Division III is 12.8% (32 out of 250) So a 16-team playoff would make it the most exclusive playoff in the fucking sport, being surpassed by no league in that regard, and by that standard, you conclude it's...too inclusive?

Right, this isn't about debating/discussing the merits of CRT. This is just another, as Bill Maher would say it, "thing to hate."

Troubling for an average sitting Senator? Yes Troubling for Ted Cruz? No. He's been so wrong about every single issue of consequence that even Wolfgang Pauli would be impressed.

Yes, the Artenik Arabadjian playbook.

CRiTters

Let me be clear, he does not. For one, his political associations alone casts a tremendous amount of skepticism over this statement. More importantly, his conception of the two-state settlement runs in contravention to the international consensus. He has said that he wants to maintain all or some of the settlement blocs (the ones he definitely wants to maintain are the very largest of them, namely Ariel, Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim). So he won't adequately even define what the "Palestinian State" would be, he insists on settlement inclusion, he insists on said Palestinian state being demilitarized, he bitches about all the "threats" Israel faces while wholly ignoring the much bigger threats Palestinians face, etc. Furthermore, he's stated numerous times that he would only insist on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which is a completely illegitimate entity that does not speak for the Palestinian people, and they've been known not to for decades. They were created via a concession by Arafat in the Oslo negotiations, largely because it was the life preserver that Israel and the US were willing to throw to him after tacitly supporting Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. It has since been maintained despite the fact that they were defeated in the 2006 elections and continue to do so mostly through intimidation, coercion and violence. This would be akin to some Arab leader saying that they'd only negotiate with the US via the Tea Party. Bottom line, this has nothing to do with the two-state settlement as it's understood by the vast majority of the world. That consensus includes, among other things, to quote the Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question: The Palestinians will never recognize those settlement blocs, which means they will never recognize whatever "borders" Lapid proposes. Yeah, Lapid is absolutely opposed to this. That advisory opinion, which to repeat was unanimous when you consider what Buergenthal said in his separate declaration, deemed that all segments of the wall in the West Bank that were built in Palestinian territory as a means to protect Israeli settlements are, to quote Buergenthal, "ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law" and that those segments of the wall must therefore be dismantled. Again, that can't happen when Israel is proposing preservation of illegal settlements. Lapid insists on maintaining large swaths of that territory. Again, opposed. You get the idea. What he has said about it is akin to when David Bar-Illan said back in 1996, "If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough so that we feel safe, call it [the Palestinian State] fried chicken." It's that same dismissive, imperialist attitude that Bibi has about it. Again, they're changing the style. Not the substance. Just as a guide, if what Israel is proposing falls shorter of the international consensus than the Clinton Parameters did, it's a non-starter. Lapid knows that.

Gee why would he say that?

In furtherance of the wrestling analogy, we’re at a point in our history where Vince Russo writing for it would be an improvement.

Shouldn’t take a confession in a lawsuit to establish that. His bewildering inanities should speak for themselves. But hey, feelings and emotions.

He’s been a douchebag on several areas, to name just a few: -Israel/Palestine -Covert military operations -Obsessively equating right wing efforts to suppress freedom of expression with “left wing wokeness” -Not being able to connect dots on a host of issues (his gripes with K-12 education and college make it sound like they’re in completely separate vacuums, which is especially perplexing given his propensity to cite Scandinavia as a model of success) -Romanticism of Bill Clinton This latest New Rules segment is just more of the same.