College football playoffs Jan 7, 2019
I'm surprised by the current system of playoffs in Division 1 (FBS) college football.  FCS, or Division 1AA or whatever you feel like calling it, has a playoff system similar to the NFL, but with the addition of numeric rankings.  At the end of the season, the top 8 or 16 (can't remember) teams compete against each other in a bracket playoff system with the winner moving on to compete against the winner from the other side of the bracket.  The NFL essentially does the same thing, but they don't specifically rank teams by number.  Also, the NFL could never have an NFC vs. NFC or AFC vs. AFC Super Bowl by definition, unlike college football which kind of routinely has an SEC vs. SEC national championship. 

Anyway, the FBS playoff system, which was really just adopted a few years ago, sets up a bracket of the top four teams, which is really just an impromptu semifinal followed by a national championship game.  It's definitely more abbreviated than it needs to be, and there's discussion every year that they should expand the playoff to the top six or eight teams at least.  But I would say the more glaring issue is the fact that the final ranking of the season, i.e. the criteria that determines playoff eligibility, is still decided by a group of dudes (and famously, Condoleezza Rice for whatever reason).  It's a weird and completely unnecessary oligarchy that I'm assuming only still exists because of money or power or something.  All other major sports organizations have figured out a way to let teams determine their own future.  I appreciate when sports announcers tell the audience the exact series of events that will determine a team's playoff chances.  All the cards are on the table.  But FBS still comes down to some dude's opinion. #sports
Notre Dame Jan 1, 2019
I don't have a favorite college football team, but one thing I always do is root against Notre Dame. 

I've never liked that they don't put players' names on their jerseys.  It feels unnecessarily old-fashioned, and even though I get that they're trying to emphasize the whole "team game" feel, it misses the mark.  Penn State does this too, and I think it's stupid.  Good teams, especially in systems with talent imbalances (i.e. some players are average while others are extremely talented), are built around good talent.  Masking that behind a tradition is facile. 

Then there's the whole "independent" thing.  College football rules and regulations are rife with exceptions for colleges that don't belong to a major conference.  This is code for Notre Dame, which has been a historically exceptional team.  So bowl game entrance criteria is often stipulated as "the winner of X conference, and Notre Dame if they were good this year."  This idea has passed its period of usefulness.  Notre Dame is no longer the powerhouse it once was.  This was yet again confirmed by their recent stomping by Clemson in a playoff game.  By not being in a major conference, they aren't facing the level of competition that Alabama or Ohio State are facing.  And sure, all teams have a few (or a bunch of) cupcake games on their schedules.  But by being independent, even Notre Dame's non-cupcake games are of questionable value.  Plus, they don't play a conference championship game, which affects their eligibility for the playoffs in an unfair way. 

Finally, there's the whole "private Catholic school" thing.  As a product of the public school system, I naturally developed a dislike for my local private Catholic school.  They came off as elitist, and they literally were elite because they charged tuition and enticed talented athletes to attend.  Notre Dame feels like the pinnacle of this ideal.  When the players introduce themselves at the beginning of some NFL games by saying which college they went to, the Notre Dame grads seem to have a sneer on their faces.  You'll hear "Michigan ... Georgia ... Notre Dame".  Like honestly dude, your team was good in the 1960s.  It's time to move on. #sports
Football field death Dec 28, 2018
This is macabre, but I think we'll eventually and unfortunately witness the death of a football player during a live game.  Players of all ages die on a fairly regular basis, usually after a hit to the head or crank of the neck, often related to a pre-existing condition like a blood clot or congenital issue.  And of course many players sustain gruesome and often life-altering injuries like broken legs and backs.  I think it's only a matter of time until we witness an actual death on the field.  Nearly every time a player's helmet comes off, I half expect to see their head still in it. #sports
Football facemasks Dec 11, 2018
I don't think I've ever seen an intentional facemask penalty in football, at any age, for any reason whatsoever.  Refs call the penalty and everyone acts like it's this big deal -- "Oh how could he do that?  He really cost his team."  Nobody grabs a facemask on purpose.  It's not a good way to make a tackle, and it's likely to break your fingers.  It's just completely nonsensical. 

I think we should simply move to either a solid plexiglass-type of facemask in place of the metal grill, or an entirely new helmet that covers the entire face with some sort of clear plastic.  For anyone who argues that the grill needs to be metal to withstand helmet-to-helmet contact -- what about the entire rest of the helmet that's already plastic?  Modern materials can take incredible punishment; the metal parts are essentially an anachronism at this point.  Plus with a full face covering, you could avoid eye pokes, and also players getting bits of turf in their eyes.  There's definitely an issue of fogging and whatnot, but I feel like that's a solvable problem. #sports
Gronk and Watt Dec 10, 2018
People like Rob Gronkowski and JJ Watt shouldn't exist, and I think that's why they're always injured and wear so many arm and leg braces.  Human beings shouldn't have that combination of size, strength, speed, and talent.  It's just not right. #sports
Athletic talent and loss Oct 29, 2018
Athletic talent tends to filter up.  The best athletes in middle school get invited to play for the best traveling teams.  The best athletes from those teams get selected to play at the best private high schools.  The best athletes from those schools get signed to play at the best colleges.  But then the system breaks down.  The best athletes in college get drafted by the worst professional teams because of the lottery system. 

Something I've been noticing for a while now is that good athletes don't know how to lose.  You'll have an athlete who's won state championships in high school and national championships in college, but then lose their first several or dozen games with their professional team.  They literally haven't lost since they were children.  As much as it's a good thing to select for talent and success, I feel like it sometimes hurts the process when a person never experiences losing. #sports
Good teams vs. great teams Oct 2, 2018
One thing I've noticed while watching hours upon hours of football is that great teams tend to do two things pretty consistently:  (1) continue to play the game or run the ball or juggle field position despite trailing the entire game, and (2) capitalize on the opposing team's mistakes while also minimizing their own.  These aren't easy things to do, which is why not all teams are great.  A lot of teams are good in the sense that they have good coaches and good players who make good plays, but they tend to break down over the course of a game or have a hit-or-miss feel.  Great teams are like boxers who wait out their opponent's initial flourish, then pounce in the final rounds.  A score on the opening drive doesn't guarantee a win, but a score on the final drive almost always does. #sports
NFL kneelers Nov 14, 2017
This is old news at this point, but the National Football League has a kneeling problem.  Or rather, people have a problem with football players who kneel in protest during the playing of the national anthem before games.  Or more accurately, Supreme Commander Donald Trump has a problem with NFL players kneeling, he presidentially Tweeted about it, and it caused an ongoing shitstorm including loss of viewership for NFL games, loss of revenue for sponsors, and yet another topic that divides people. 

The kneeling has been going on for over a year know, since back when Colin Kaepernick initially kneeled to protest racial inequality and police brutality.  He said about Trump at the time, "He always says, 'Make America great again.' Well, America has never been great for people of color and that's something that needs to be addressed. Let's make America great for the first time."  Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall said, "I'm not against the military. I'm not against the police or America. I'm against social injustice." 

I find these ideas to be pretty simple and reasonable.  They're not revolutionary, or anti-American, or even anti-Trump.  They're honestly pretty tame ideas.  "Things aren't so great for everybody; let's make them better."  How are we honestly arguing about this? 

But I find it odd how quickly people attacked the players as whiney, entitled millionaires.  It's the definition of an ad hominem argument -- attacking the person instead of the message.  It's the same thing people said about Al Gore and his message about climate change.  It's astounding to me that people can't see past their own prejudices and pre-conceived notions and actually look at an issue honestly. 

A worrying trend I've noticed is journalists and reporters keeping track of which individual players kneel in protest at each game.  ESPN publishes a story (like this one) literally every week.  I don't fully understand what's going on here, but it feels very Nazis-vs-Jews and I don't like it. 

Colin Kaepernick, to his credit, played in a Super Bowl and is a somewhat decent quarterback.  Yet he's routinely passed over by teams looking for a second- or third-string option on their roster, even late in the season when starters are often injured.  People say it's because he's not good, but teams sign and re-sign extremely subpar quarterbacks all the time.  Kaepernick thinks it's collusion at a high level.  I think it's simply that even if a team desperately needs his talent, they just don't want to deal with the added media attention and locker room drama of his notoriety at this point.  I can't entirely blame them, but it's sad that we can't have an honest discussion about something without people burning their season tickets and jerseys. #sports
Ski resort directions Mar 10, 2017
One issue that always comes up when skiing or snowboarding is how to get to another part of the mountain.  Ski resorts hand out pocket-sized maps, and big maps are available at the top of most ski lifts.  But planning a route down the mountain rarely goes as desired.  It's often hard to see which trails are linked to each other, and it's sometimes even hard to tell which direction certain trails travel.  A simple solution would be to have an app that could give you directions like Google Maps:  "Go on this trail, turn right at the intersection, take the second lift up to the summit," etc.  It could even have an option for avoiding flat areas, which are the bane of every snowboarder's existence.  Several ski resorts already have apps that tell you the wait time at different lift lines, and cell service at most mountains is now pretty standard.  I'll be waiting for this to appear in the coming years. #sports
Luck in competition Mar 7, 2017
The concept of luck comes up in competition sometimes, like "That was a lucky shot," or "He got knocked out by a lucky punch."  I think the general consensus is that there's no such thing as a lucky shot or a lucky punch.  You could say luck had almost nothing to do with it.  Plus, calling it lucky detracts from the hours and hours of practice and perfection and skill that went into that one event.  It's not just insulting to call it lucky.  It's ignorant. 

But I think there's a deeper level of luck involved in some cases.  Not luck in the sense that a random action was taken at a random time and happened to produce a positive result.  But rather that a series of well-executed actions took place in the exact right order and produced a positive result.  The shot itself wasn't lucky, but it was predicated on the precise timing and exact positioning of the previous event, which itself benefitted from similarly perfect preceding events.  The final result is like a series of probabilities multiplied together:  70% chance of the first event succeeding, 50% chance of the second event succeeding, 20% chance of the third event succeeding = 0.7*0.5*0.2 = 0.07 or 7% overall chance of all events succeeding.  A probability like 7% looks like luck, and it sort of is.  But it's much more than that. #sports