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statsman

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Everything posted by statsman

  1. When Hamas puts its forces in civilian centers, they (Hamas) commit a war crime. When Israel bombs them, there, it is not committing a war crime. If Gaza has a NICU unit, and Sinwar puts his command post right next to it, it is not a war crime for Israel to bomb it. That’s an extreme example to illustrate a point. If you don’t like the formal rules of war, what is your proposal to change them to? Is it your contention that the U.S. committed a war crime when it bombed Dresden? I know that’s what Nazi leaders proposed in the Nuremberg trials. Golda Meir said, “We can forgive them for killing our children. We can’t forgive them for making us kill theirs”.
  2. Alabama needs to handle Wisconsin. I had never been much of a “root for the conference” guy before, but now it can matter.
  3. Big early inter-conference showdowns: LSU loses to USC- B1G over SEC TAMU loses to ND -(quasi-ACC/future B1G) ind over SEC UGA beats Clemson - SEC over ACC Fla loses to Miami - ACC over SEC Texas beats Michigan - SEC over B1G How much will these games matter in December, when the CFP is allocating at-large bids? At least Texas made a contribution
  4. Just a thought- maybe they could lift the curse by giving Leach’s widow the money they owe. (To be safe, if it was me, I’d adjust for inflation at the least)
  5. The B12 habit is to have that patsy in week 1. Even Texas did that, but Texas is enough of a draw that UT-Rice in week 1 is still broadcast worthy. It’s not like the B12 has more attractive slates in later weeks, because they all put their patsies in week 1. In subsequent weeks, the SEC and B1G will still have a greater number of interesting games. (I know that Iowa-ISU is more interesting to B12 fans that Texas-Michigan; the problem is that there just aren’t enough B12 fans, so it should be trying harder, not less).
  6. Sure. The ratings were dominated by P4 teams playing P4 teams. That’s what people want to watch and the networks want to broadcast. The old B12 IR8 schools are still working the Snyder strategy of using early non-conference games with patsies as a way to tune up your team while picking up wins. That was ok in a conference with headliners like NU, OU, Texas, TAMU; the media contract would still be good. Those teams are gone, now. Nobody is tuning into B12 games just because they’re B12 games. They need to either be against a real opponent, or on a time when there are no other viewing options. Otherwise, they’re on streaming.
  7. Previously, I called out Oregon as a cotton candy program- a lot of fluff and sugar, but little substance. Check out their week 1 ratings: https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/ Idaho at Oregon on BTN: the number three team in the nation drew 425K. Sure, it’s just the BTN, but…FAU at MSU almost doubled the ratings, Friday on the BTN. And Idaho St at Oregon St attracted more eyes on the CW! I get it. The number of Oregon fans only matters to the extent that Phil Knight is still one of them…
  8. It was late, this week, but here it is… https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/ The Thursday night NDSU-CU game was the big winner for B12 media partners, bringing ESPN almost 5 M viewers. Next was PSU @ WVU, almost 3M for Fox’ Big Noon. Next is UNM @ Arizona on Saturday, late, nearly 1M for ESPN. North Dakota @ ISU, 315K for FS1. Next, Wyoming at ASU late Saturday, 250K for FS1. UNLV @ UH, 170K for FS1. So, on a week where maybe 15 B12 teams were at home, six games were broadcast (not streamed)? Isn’t it interesting that all but ISU were teams that joined after 2012? All B12 supporters need to be Buffalo fans, in my opinion. (You can bet the league office has noticed)
  9. Stassen.com can run win % for all teams over any period of time. For the last 50 years, it’s: 26. Wisconsin 27. Iowa 30. Okie State 38. Mich State 58. TCU 59. KSU 68. Baylor I think you have recency bias and B12 myopia. Those B1G programs have had great years, big bowl games and high final rankings. There are reasons their fanbases are larger.
  10. ROTY is voted on by WNBA media. Will it surprise?
  11. I think a bigger problem is the small Palestinian children being told, “Here where we live? This isn’t our home. That place 50 miles away? That’s our home. It was taken from your great grandparents by those bad people and you need to grow up and take it back”.
  12. That is some crazy paranoid conspiracy talk. The PA was on a track to being a state? Do you know why the Pa doesn’t have elections in the WB? Because Hamas would win them.
  13. So, just a week after Hamas popped caps into the heads of defenseless hostages, because they would rather they be dead, than lost to them as barter to get murderers out of captivity, we’re going to criticize Israel for not managing the Hamas relationship better. Because, if Israel had used the period of relative inactivity by Hamas to turn the screws on Gaza, all of Israel’s critics would have understood. I guess no one else sees a disconnect between criticizing Israel/Likud/Netanyahu for trying to live with Hamas pre-Oct 7, and criticizing Israel for not agreeing to a cease fire that will require them to live with Hamas going forward? The cease fire is a myth. Israel won’t agree to one that allows Hamas to exist- that would be a surrender for Israel and a victory for Hamas. Hamas won’t agree to a cease fire that doesn’t guarantee their survival. Israel plays along to satisfy its (dwindling) western allies. Hamas plays along to satisfy Qatar and Egypt. Neither side will give. I suppose Israel could change governments, and the new one could make a deal and let the old one get tagged for the blame…of trading over a thousand murderers for a couple dozen surviving hostages, which seems like a really awful agreement. (Sinwar is free today because he was released in a similar deal before). I get that family members of hostages want any deal, no matter how bad, if it gets their loved ones back. It has to be agonizing, knowing that the hostages are being abused, tortured and killed, with no one in Hamas particularly invested in them living. They have to realize, at some level, that all these ceased negotiations are just a show.
  14. Yeah, a lot of the week 2 commentary about the B12 getting games on SEC in week 2 could be echoed by the AAC as UTSA gets a game on ESPN in week 3 (when they play at Texas)
  15. Interesting fact: without parsing for FCS vs FBS opponents, or P5 vs G5, Texas and Texas A&M are each 61-39 over their last 100 games. (If you do make distinctions for competition, Texas vaults ahead)
  16. Studdard is listed with six years in the NFL; he played in 25 games. Three of these guys played in2006, without VY (Scott gone, replaced by Hills). Do you remember that as a particularly dominant line?
  17. https://texastech.com/sports/football/stats/2024/abilene-christian/boxscore/20706 He shows up on the participation list
  18. I was about to post that the NCAA wasn’t even aware of OSU, but realized that was wrong. There is a small office at the NCAA, inhabited by an executive’s half wit son in law, that oversees wrestling. They know who OSU is.
  19. VY made the (admittedly good) OL look much better. Edited- jinx!
  20. On the drive home, this morning, I listened to a portion of their post game Scoop podcast. They are mildly worried about WRs, wondering which ones are going to come through now. They are very worried about the OL, still confident that Bedenbaugh will figure it out, but ready for him to start figuring it out with the backups. They think Arnold played great! No interceptions! Nevermind the 5.6 ypa; that will improve. They very much have a traditional top 10 Sooner team, as a whole, envisioned. They are just trying to work through it, in their heads, how that will be when key units are clearly sub-par. They just can’t (or won’t?) envision a less than competitive possibility. I eagerly await the discounter this week, when they talk themselves down from the ledge by pointing out that Texas won 52-0, and they won 51-3, so what’s the big hang up?
  21. Was Weigman throwing up due to illness, heat or concussion?
  22. There is a lot of bs in this post. Who are the blue bloods? Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, USC, for sure. That’s over 20% of the conference. The middle class is Nebraska, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan State. Any one of these would be the tent pole program in the B12. They have bigger stadiums, and a lot more alums and fans tuning into games. There are very good reasons the B1G makes twice the TV revenue as the B12. The B1G lower class looks like B12 teams, except for Rutgers, which looks like a Sunbelt program.
  23. Royal really was concerned about his players staying eligible and graduating, and put a lot of thought into it. He was not going to simply pressure professors to pass his players (although, when, any professor interested in Longhorn football could be a locker guest, and have good seats), or have cheaters do HW and take tests for them. Texas had the nation’s first academic counseling department for athletes. And, he came up with the T-ring as another incentive, with it taking on a life of its own. His teams were filled with a ridiculous number of very successful attorney, doctors, and businessmen.
  24. Yes, grocery stores run 2% return on sales. They make it work by leveraging debt to have a higher ROE, and being aggressively efficient on turning over inventory. Luckily, the administration is onto Big Grocery’s game of getting rich by colluding across the industry to raise the price of lettuce by 1$ per head. Those bastards!
  25. Here you go: OU had to fire Switzer, because that shithead, left to his own devices in building a program, recruited the biggest bunch of misanthropes outside San Quentin. Urban Meyer looked at that team and thought, “Barry, you have to take character into account when recruiting”. Switzer was fired (it would be years before OU forgot their shame and named their football ops building after him) and was replaced by Gary Gibbs. Gibbs was a very good coach, but at OU, forced by the NCAA to not cheat for a while, a very good coach got you a steady diet of 8-4. Gibbs was fired and replaced by Schnelly (a whole nuther story), and Schnelly was replaced by John Blake. Blake had no business riding higher than “assistant coach” (heh-heh-heh,…bag man), but Switzer needed him away from the Cowboys (in an attempt to fix Switzer’s growing unpopularity, Blake started telling people that Aikman was a gay racist. That didn’t go over well). Barry sent him to OU, telling both parties that Blake needed to install a pro set offense (a long time dream of Switzer’s) and parlay Blake’s ethnicity into elite recruiting. It didn’t work. Blake had a glorious three years of losing, incompetent football. For his first two years, he had a passing QB- Justin Fuente. For his third year, realizing that running any offense that required players to do something other than what they mastered in high school was a fool’s errand, he installed the wishbone and made Eric Moore the QB.
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