Test Your Knowledge: For Texas Football Fans

What is Colt McCoy's...... major?

Making the NFL draft more exciting

Continuing my interest in just about everything about football except actually watching games, I was paying attention to the NFL Draft today. It's a pretty exciting big event in its own right these days, but it suffers from one big flaw: number 1 comes first. Far more exciting would be a long build-up, with the top pick coming last. The mechanics of that would be tricky, but I'll take a stab at it. I'll admit that I only know the basics of the draft, but I'm never going to play armchair quarterback, so I'll play armchair whatever this is.

I figure two changes would get most of the way there. The big change is giving prospective players the right to refuse being picked. If Bobo the Back thinks he's second (to last) round material, but gets called in the fourth (to last) round, he can tell them to talk to the palm. The team that got refused doesn't lose their pick completely, but they go to the end of the queue (unless they have other picks in queue). The player is gambling on someone else wanting him more. Just like today, teams get allocated their position in the draft according to how they do, and they can deal and trade those picks in advance to their hearts' content.

What's to keep the system from reverting in practice to the status quo? The other change: putting a collar, especially a ceiling, on pay. Suppose someone picked in the eighth-to-last round has a contract of between $210,000/year and $240,000/year. Matthew Stafford (this year's #1) is going to laugh at that and walk away. But what if he gets called as the 10th-to-last pick in the final round? Does he take the $3.5 million/year - $4.5 million/year range guaranteed to the tenth-to-last pick? Or does he take the chance on someone wanting him more (the contract he actually got has a variable payout of between $6 million/year and $13 million/year)? That makes it more dramatic, and pushes the high value players to the end.

When would it stop? I've been saying second-to-last round and tenth-to-last pick, but there's no reason it actually has to be that way. Maybe it would be better to have no predetermined end. Instead, the teams would keep getting picks. BUT, the minimum salary would keep going up. If a team thought the price too high for the remaining pool of players, they could pass, and the next team in line gets their shot at the pool of players (who can refuse) at the same price. When every team passes at the same price, the draft ends, and everyone goes home. That sounds pretty exciting to me.

What about the individual?

I saw this article a few weeks back about US Major League Baseball teams violating a previous agreement and recruiting Japanese baseball amateurs. The whole article is about the dispute between Japanese baseball officials and MLB officials, and the viability of Japanese baseball. Somehow the article's 1300-odd words managed to avoid any mention of what was best for the players in question. If a Japanese player wants to play in the United States, who are Japan's baseball leagues to stop him? What business is it of theirs? They have a concern about their baseball leagues. Fine. Whatever. Do what you will to keep it alive. But to restrict the freedom of a Japanese citizen? To keep him from finding the best place for him to offer his services? You can't justify taking away the choices of a real person for some nebulous and not particularly important concept like "Japanese baseball." That's just not right.

A completely unoriginal thought re: Michael Phelps

Holy crap. How does he do that? These are the best swimmers from all over the world*, and he blows past them like they're standing still. And that 4x200m relay? That wasn't just Phelps; every swimmer on the US team was fantastic. It boggles the mind.

* Well, not really; swimming is dominated by the Western countries, Russia, and Japan, with an increasingly strong showing by China. There's no real representation from Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia. Pools are expensive.

Olympicism

Once again the Olympics rolls around with its vulgar displays of nationalism, chauvinism, tribalism, and a whole host of other -isms. People can't seem to appreciate the pursuit of excellence for its own sake; what matters is that your guy from your country wins, excellent or not. The Olympic phenomenon claims high ideals and principles, but it comes down to the same "we're better than you" attitude that characterizes so much of relations between societies.

That said, U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Goldwash

Goldwash, v: to use the dazzling spectacle of the modern Olympics to obscure and distract from a record of oppression and environmental destruction.

A classic example of my law of ranking

Remember my law of ranking? From a blog post about the relative value of professional sports franchies in the US:

The New York Yankees are the only non-NFL franchise in the top 27.

Emphasis mine.

Why 27? Simple: #28 is the New York Mets, another non-NFL franchise. What sounds more impressive, the above statement, "1 of the top 25," or "2 of the top 30?" 27 is slightly bigger than 25, so presumably has slightly more impact*, and 2 is much bigger than 1, so its impact is much less.

* Not worth it in my opinion, especially considering the Law of Ranking, but whatever.

Federer vs. Nadal at Wimbledon

I haven't watched much tennis over the last few years, but I'm sure glad I saw the Wimbledon men's* singles final today. Two of the sport's best players, not just today, but in history, going at it hard for high stakes. They played some fantastic tennis, somehow chasing down every ball, making winners and 128 mph serves even 4 hours into the match. I don't think anyone could have watched Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal today and not thought that those two men were among the best athletes in the world in any sport. It was awesome.

* Sorry, "gentleman's," a word which I assume still has some class Over There

Carl Lewis, Olympian

No, Tanya with an 'a'

There is a Tanya Harding on the Australian Olympic women's softball team. I wonder if she carries her bat around in case anyone makes a stupid joke. People always think they're the first ones to notice.

Arlen Specter is a waste of space

A United State Senator getting involved in a scandal in football about some coach breaking a rule that shouldn't exist in the first place*? Yeah, because it's not like we have any real problems to solve that he might be pertinent to. Maybe it's for the best considering how utterly useless he was as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where he blew a lot of hot air about illegal wiretapping. If he got involved in any real issues, what little progress we might expect the Senator to make would get reversed.

* You can use a video camera on the field, and you can look at signals, and you can write things down, but you can't record signals? The genius who thought of that is probably the same guy who thought up DRM.

One more for Eight Belles

One more thing from the article about horse-racing brutality. The article said of the trainer of Eight Belles:

He also refused to concede the point that horse racing is an extremely dangerous sport, saying that these types of injuries occur in any sport.

Except the most important thing of all: the participants in other sports are all human, and they all have a choice about whether they can play.