It’s not often I agree with that pissy little bitch (credit to Andy Sipowicz for that phrase) Fucker Carlson, but I find it hard to disagree with his assertion that Michael Vick should have been executed for his crimes against Caninity. Of course, the Tuckster’s motivation was no doubt that he wanted to diss Obama, but still. I’m not ordinarily one to embrace the death penalty, but in this case, well….
The week (and the year) are winding down, and the end is finally in sight. Today, of course, is the day that college football fans (nay, all real Americans) have been waiting for: the inaugural New Era Pinstripe Bowl – “New Era” (which turns out to be the maker of hats or something; I thought it was laundry detergent) being the sponsor, and pinstripes being for the Yankees, at whose stadium the game is taking place. A football game between two 7-5 teams on the final Thursday in December in the Bronx (outdoors) at 3:30PM Eastern time? It doesn’t get more prestigious than that. Of course, for Syracuse fans, this is actually a pretty good deal. Someplace warm might sound nice, but, being about a 4-5 hour ride away by car, this is a day trip for the folks up here, or they can take a long New Year’s weekend in New York.
And, unlike most of NYC, Yankee Stadium had actually been plowed out for the game.
I’ll be recording the game because I have to work today. The last time I had to work during an SU bowl game was way back on January 1, 1988, when undefeated Syracuse took on Auburn in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. I was running movies at the time, and brought a TV to work so I could watch in my office.
You no doubt recall that, with 4 seconds remaining and SU leading 16-13, Auburn – which had marched down the field and had the ball on the Syracuse 13 yard line – had time for one final play. And in perhaps the biggest wuss move in the history of college football, Pat Dye decided to kick a field goal and tie the game. A tie, in a bowl game, fer chrissakes. This was, I might add, back before there was such a thing as overtime in college football.
Pat Dye will forever be known as a coward and a schmuck up here in these parts, and his behavior explains why the South lost the Civil War. Apparently they were playing for a tie.
Anyhow, thanks to OT and the fact that neither Syracuse nor its opponent, Kansas State, are from south of the Mason-Dixon line (love that song, BTW), there will be no ties today. Actually, Syracuse is more likely to get killed, what with a vast number of its players missing from an already decimated lineup. We may have to go old school and have some of these kids play both ways today.
But, hey. We’re in a bowl game again, which is something that seemed would never happen again after the 5 year reign of the previous coach, whose name we do not speak up here.
First, though, there’s business to attend to today. It all starts with a trip to get the car inspected. As far as I know, there are no problems with it (new tires, new wiper blades, brakes should be good), but it’s just a hassle dealing with it. I’d blow it off until next month, but we’re at the end of the year here, so it’s a whole new color sticker, and hard to hide (especially now that I drive a million miles a week).
Oh well, off I go. Yesterday was almost unbearably slow – I hope today goes a bit quicker.
Marquee
why did “Marquee” show up? :doh:
Thanks for the
footballNew Era update. Not sure what it all means, but hey, I’m tryin’.you can delete it
Cute, but I can only make it go left no matter what I do.
Oh, not much to understand about the bowl games, really. Back in the olden days, there was no TV, and white college kids would play football for fun. By the 1930’s, old white people enjoyed watching those young rascals, so they had big games at the end of the year, where the best white kids could play against each other, and the old white people could watch and vicariously relive their youth through them.
Seeing as there was no TV, there were only a handful of these big games, and they all meant something special. First and foremost, there was the “granddaddy of them all” – the Rose Bowl – which started, I believe, as the East/West game or something, and for a number of years was the game where the two best teams in the land would face off against each other (then it became the ridiculous spectacle of the Pac-10 vs. Big-10 champs for a long time, before getting put in the BCS rotation, which is some cockamamie bullshit the NCAA came up with to pretend there’s an actual method for picking a national champ, and which nobody really understands – or needs to, except to know that it’s all about the money). But, I digress. Anyhow…
By the end of the 30’s there were 5 bowl games: Rose, Sugar, Cotton (the scene of our only National Championship, back on Jan 1, 1960), Orange, and Sun, and they played them all on New Year’s Day (and all in warm climates), so people would have a non-productive way to start the new year (interesting fact: the Bowl “Parades” were invented to give women something to do on New Year’s morning while the men slept in a bit before curing their hangovers with a bit of the hair of the dog).
Then came teevee, so the number of bowls expanded as everybody saw a chance to make money (and there weren’t enough hours in the day to hold all those games, so they started having them on other days. There came the Liberty, Bluebonnet, Tangerine, Independence, Holiday…. Oh, too many to name. Some survived, and others weren’t as fortunate.
Also, turned out that whites-only football (much like “whites-only” anything) was pretty boring. So, reluctantly, they finally allowed the black folks to play (as long as they promised to stay away from the white women).
As time went on, the era of cable TV was upon is, and, instead of three teevee networks, there were hundreds. Each one, of course, needing a bowl game. With the advent of domed stadiums, they were even able to start playing the games in colder climates (such as the now defunct Cherry Bowl in Detroit, which only lasted two years, including 1985, when SU lost to Maryland. I still have my ticket. Not ticket stub mind you, but the ticket, because, after missing my connection, I spend the day drinking in the Newark airport, trying to either get a flight back to Syracuse, or get drunk enough to pass out in the corner someplace).
Now, you’d think that they’d run out of names for these bowls, but crafty capitalists realized there was even more money to be made by selling the naming rights to these games.
Thus we have the Meineke Car Care Bowl (which was renamed after a prestigious run as the Continental Tire Bowl), Beef O’Brady’s Bowl, the Outback Bowl (formerly the Hall of Fame – SU won that one twice), Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, Capital One Bowl (formerly the Tangerine), Chick-fil-A Bowl (formerly the Peach; SU 1-0 there), GoDaddy.com Bowl, and, of course, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl (among others).
So, in summary, rather than a playoff system designed to crown a national champion, the NCAA has something like 500 bowl games, which are all, by and large, meaningless.
And we’re finally going back to one, baby! :nixon:
Fixed it for ya.
I’ve been spending the day watching herds of deer scavenging in the denuded woods for dry leaves. This weather is very hard on them.
Sadly, Lola of Palemale and Lola, has not been seen for weeks. Whether some terrible fate has befallen her or she ran off with another bird, no one seems to know. Palemale, however, seems to be fine and a few weeks ago was seen in the company of another redtail, though they did not hit it off. Palemale is a serial polygamist. Lola and he have been a pair since 2001. She was mate #4.
The right wing NY Post is claiming that the slow snow removal was a deliberate slowdown orchestrated by the sanitation union. Bloomberg says it will be investigated but he and the sanitation commissioner do not believe that was the case.
We can all be sure that no matter what the facts are the Post will blame the union.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sanit_filthy_snow_slow_mo_qH57MZwC53QKOJlekSSDJK?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=
From AP:
The stories of a slowdown, though, gained traction after a Republican city council member from Queens, Dan Halloran, said he met with three sanitation workers who had complained that supervisors upset about the pending demotions had “basically been giving them a green light not to do their job.”
While no one was explicitly ordered to leave streets unplowed, Halloran said, certain supervisors had made it clear that workers who shirked their duties wouldn’t be punished.
“If you miss streets, you’re not going to be written up,” he said. “You’re not going to get checked up on. Take your time. This administration doesn’t care. … The supervisors aren’t going to be there. So don’t worry about it when you’re making the rounds.”
Asked whether he thought those supervisors might simply have been demoralized and complaining out loud, rather than ordering a work slowdown, Halloran pointed to the sorry state of the streets for days after the storm.
Joseph Mannion, president of the Sanitation Officers Association, which represents about 1,000 supervisors and has been fighting the pending demotions, called that claim “ludicrous.”
“There would never be a coordination to do anything in the snow. It’s absolutely a taboo issue,” he said. “You never, ever play with people’s lives. And that’s what they are saying we did.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/mayor-michael-bloomberg-snowstorm-response-unacceptable_n_802713.html
Halloran should be forced to take a Lie Detector test and no one, ever, should buy the NY Post.
Thanks for the bedtimes story, blogdaddy, it was even interesting enough to keep me awake. 😛
But, were the black women allowed to play with the white women at the parade?
That is a great summary and if I were you I just publish it tomorrow with an update on the NEPB and maybe a salute to the winner.
I wait for this time every year to do this.
Andy, wherever you are…
:cake: :cake: :cake: :cake: :cake: