It was a nice weekend here (well, assuming you forget about sports), most of which I spent clearing out the garage. I think I might wind up with enough thermal mass in the basement to keep it warm down there. OK, not really. It’ll be cold. But full.
The big news around here, I guess, is that Syracuse is jumping to the ACC. This is definitely an odd development. I understand the need to jump off the sinking Big East ship, I guess. But I can’t say I’m crazy about it. ACC football kinda sucks (not that we’re exactly ready to be playing with the big boys – as USC proved, though I think it would have been a bit closer had the refs not been quite so horrible), and ACC basketball? Meh. It will be nice to see our old friend Boston College again (and they must be happy to see us and Pitt come aboard, since they’ve been the redheaded stepchild in the ACC), and there were some good times with Virginia Tech in football.
Basketball, though. We pretty much are Big East Basketball. We will miss hating Georgetown (I’m sure we’ll still play and hate them, but it won’t be the same) and Connecticut (assuming they don’t jump over as well at some point). It’s the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden that we’ll really miss. That’s a big recruiting advantage for getting those NYC kids, and who the hell wants to go to frickin’ Greensboro or Chapel Hill or some place like that? Plus they’ll never love us in the ACC.
Lacrosse will be about the only interesting thing. If you look at the “new” ACC, you’ll see 23 National Championships since they started having an NCAA Lacrosse postseason tournament in 1971 (11 for Syracuse, 5 for Virginia, 4 for North Carolina, a couple for Maryland, and one for Duke).
In some ways, a jump to the Big 10 would’ve been better. They’re cold weather teams, at least, and we could go back to playing Penn State. But we’d get kicked around in football for a while. And there are few things as boring as Big 10 basketball (I think they still use the two-handed set shot there, and, much as I like Gene Hackman, who wants to play Hickory twice a year?).
Sad as it is to leave the Big East, the BE isn’t what it used to be. I mean, TCU? Not that the combination of Texas and Christians isn’t thrilling, of course (and Horned Frogs are a pretty good nickname), but the only thing Texas is East of is California. And they were taking about adding teams like Baylor and shit.
Oh well, as with pretty much everything else in this world, it doesn’t really matter what I think Except I think I’ll have some more coffee.
When I was a kid it seemed like WVU’s big rivals were Pitt, Penn Staqte, and Syracuse with maybe VPI (Va Tech) in the mix. It is rumoured that they may be headed to the SEC.
:omg:
Yeah, I think you’ll see WV head to the SEC. Shame. Been playing them in football for a long, long time. Though I went through grad school with (a non-white) guy who played for SU, and he said the WV fans (not the students, but the townies) were incredibly horrible and scary toward the non-white opponents.
He told me that after the game, they asked the (non-white) WV players what it was like for them there. And they responded by saying “we don’t leave campus.”
It doesn’t surprise me as I finish a week in the south and given the changes in WVa since I left there in the 60’s. When was your friend there?
I am looking forward to returning to my sanctuary. About the only things I miss from down here are some family and a few friends and the food.
He played from 2002-2005.
I’d like to think things were better back in the 60s and 70s but maybe I was just young and naive. The state has changed a lot as the coal and energy powers have manipulated the ignorance and the poverty and economic security in the ensuing years.
Vern, I can’t imagine that things were better in the 60’s. But at least there was the hope then that they would be.
Yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a jacket decorated with peace signs. Apparently they are now a fashionable design. In the 60’s they were a sign of rebellion and drew lots of nastiness from the folks who thought patriotism was sending young people to die in a war that had no reason.
West Virginia used to have a vital miners’ union and mining industry. It was not a blue state but had 2 Dem Senators and so were most of the House members and often the Governor. The legislature was mostly under Dem control as was the court. Things definitely changed. Massey bought the Supreme Court, for example.
There’s a good reason why the special interests and repugs want to diminish and destroy unions and pit us all against each other.
Robert Byrd wrote a personal reply to a letter my mother sent him, so he’ll always be AOK in my book (despite his youthful flirtation with the KKK, which I think he adequately apologized for). And of course Ben Schwartzwalder was from WV, and he is much beloved here.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) isn’t a fan of President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act, but he does like the idea of allowing people who are receiving unemployment benefits to work for free.
The plan is based on a program called Georgia Works which matches job seekers with employers. Under the plan, employers agree to provide up to eight weeks of on-the-job training. Workers, who can only work for 24 hours a week, continue to receive unemployment benefits instead of getting paid.
“The Georgia plan sounds pretty interesting,†Ryan told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “I think that’s something we are looking at, which is unemployment reform.â€
Ryan’s remarks echo House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) support of the idea.
“We stand ready to work with [President Obama] if there is interest in implementing a similar program on the federal level,†Cantor said.
According to data the Georgia Department of Labor provided to The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney, the program isn’t very successful.
Between 2003 and 2010, only 16.4 percent of people that participated in the program found work, about the same rate as those who were not participating. As of late August, there were only 19 trainees enrolled in Georgia Works.
The top weekly unemployment benefit in Georgia is about $330.
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/paul-ryan-supports-plan-to-let-unemployed-work-for-free/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=2a349d30e5-9_19_119_19_2011&utm_medium=email