unexpected conclusion 21 January 2008
Posted by DSM in sports.comments closed
The football season didn’t quite finish the way I expected.
The Colts were supposed to meet the Patriots in the AFC championship game. It would have been a perfect matchup of good versus evil. If we defeated them — as we almost did during the regular season — balance would have been restored to the universe.
Instead, we lost to the Chargers.
I took some dark solace in the fact that the Colts fans shamefully booed the girl who won the Punt, Pass, and Kick contest for her age group– because she was wearing a Patriots jersey. I loathe the Patriots like little else, but that’s so classless I’m wincing as I write this. Anyone who did such a thing should turn in their jerseys and yield up their season tickets to a nobler fan.
The solace comes in the fact that I can now blame our loss to an inferior team on divine justice. If we seek to do God’s work and smite the forces of darkness, we owe it to Him to act with honour, so that men could see our good works and praise Him. We can’t presume that because the Patriots have clearly entered into a pact with Satan that we get a free pass because no matter what we do we’re better than they are. Virtue is absolute, not relative.
And then it looked like the final matchup would be between the Patriots and the Packers, and I think most of the world would have been rooting for Favre. We’d find out if the psychic energies of an entire planet (neighbourhood of Boston excepted) could will a team to victory or not.
But no: Eli Manning’s Giants win, and now they really are Eli Manning’s Giants, not merely the New York Giants whose quarterback is Eli Manning.
So it looks like I’ll have the chance to cheer for a Manning in the Super Bowl even if it’s not the one I figured on. The odds are on the Patriots winning, even though I was very impressed with how the Giants pushed the Patriots to the breaking point at the season-ending game.
It’s profoundly disturbing that the world’s most demonic team may complete the most perfect accomplishment in football history, but in a sense it’s a pure witness to the truth that worldly success and holiness are both very different things and strongly anticorrelated.
Here’s hoping, though. Go Giants!
the highest form of Patriotism 14 September 2007
Posted by DSM in sports.comments closed
I’ve been by turns angry and lost in a haze of schadenfreude as a result of one of the two NFL stories of interest, namely the spying antics of coach Bill Belichick. (The other story is about what we all hope to be Kevin Everett’s continuing recovery from his spinal injury.)
The drooling homerism of all too many Patriots fans, though disgusting, is pretty familiar. It’s practically indistinguishable from the excuses we’d get from students caught cheating:
(1) Everybody does it.
(2) The line between permissible and nonpermissible conduct is pretty arbitrary.
(3) Other people have done worse things.
(4) The teacher is mean.
(5) The student who reported me was just trying to get me in trouble because he’s jealous.
(6) It didn’t change the outcome anyway.
And so on and so forth. I find (6) the most common, and most stupid, response among the Belicheat apologists. True, I can’t know whether or not it decided any games, but I do know that universally-recognized (until now) football genius Bill Belichick thought it gave him enough of an advantage to risk doing it. Over the course of several years, it would seem.
And who am I to argue with talent such as his?
In a way, I have to thank him. As much as many of us hate the Patriots, we’ve always had to admit the fact that they did build an amazing dynasty. We couldn’t take their Super Bowl victories away. (Tuck rule or no tuck rule.)
Belichick, however, has managed to do what none of us could pull off: permanently taint their legacy by placing giant asterisks beside all their achievements. It’s enough to warm even my cold, cold heart.
Of course, if the Patriots go on to do well this season — when every opposing team’s fans will be keeping a close watch on the Pats staff for more dirty tricks — then their fans will doubtless say “See? That just proves that it didn’t matter in the first place.”
If you see the problem with that logic, then congratulations! You’re not a Patriots fan!
If you don’t, don’t worry. Patriots fandom is still accepting applications; and I understand there are some openings.
UPDATE: Best song of the whole affair to date, by Ryan Parker: hat-tip Mosley @ Hashmarks.
footnote nepotism 1 May 2007
Posted by DSM in law, sports.comments closed
From the case United States of America v. David E. Malone, decided 30 April 2007, in which the judges were explaining their reluctance to accept an ineffective assistance of counsel claim:
[1] Of course, “Monday morning quarterback” is now passe since the advent of “Tuesday Morning Quarterback,” the terrific column regularly posted by Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN.com. See NLRB v. Cook County, 283 F. 3d 888, 895 n. 5 (7th Cir. 2002). In light of the column and the marquee “Monday Night Football” NFL games from September through December each year, we think the term “Monday morning quarterback,” from now on, should go the way of the drop-kick, the “T” formation, the Statue of Liberty play, and offensive tackles who weigh less than 300 pounds. From now on, a second-guesser should be called a “Tuesday Morning Quarterback.”
(Incidentally, the NLRB v. Cook County reference is a citation to an earlier mention of G. Easterbrook’s football column..)
On the panel, of course, is Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Frank Easterbrook, Gregg Easterbrook’s brother. I’m a fan of his work. Judge Easterbrook’s, I mean, which is why I read the opinion in the first place. (Updated to clarify: Evans actually wrote the opinion.)
Yep, it’s true. I’m a planetary astrophysicist who reads American appellate law for the writing.
golfing for dollars 20 February 2007
Posted by DSM in politics, sports.comments closed
Work is continuing to expand to fill all available time. But it’s going very well — every crazy thing I try these days seems to work, even coming up with stranger and stranger transition functions for my integrations — so I shouldn’t complain, even if it interferes with my blogging! (And my email replies. Sorry again to everybody, but it’s partly your own fault for sending twenty-screen messages that take hours to respond to..)
I had to link this, though: Tom Sowell is a treasure. (I think that line’s due to Jay Nordlinger.)
San Francisco has six municipal golf courses — and they are losing money. Now there is all sorts of hand-wringing over what to do about it.
An economist might see this as a non-problem. If the golf courses are losing money, then get rid of them. Given San Francisco’s sky-high land prices, selling the land that the golf courses are on would bring in millions, if not billions, of dollars.
But such advice is why so few economists get elected to political office.
A politician has to be all things to all people — a friend of the golfers, a protector of the workers who maintain the golf courses, and of course a believer in mother and apple pie.
Even the suggestion that the golf courses might be turned over to some private operator of golf courses has caused opposition. One golfer declared: “Privatization would raise greens fees. Nobody could afford it.”
This is the kind of talk that has to be taken seriously by elected officials, even if an economist would dismiss it as sheer nonsense. Have you ever heard of any business raising its prices to the point where it no longer had any customers?
Read the whole thing and enjoy the clear-headed conclusion:
The great allure of government programs in general for many people is that these programs allow decisions to be made without having to worry about the constraints of prices, which confront people at every turn in a free market.
They see prices as just obstacles or nuisances, instead of seeing them as messages conveying underlying realities that are there, whether or not prices are allowed to function. What prices are telling San Francisco is that municipal golf courses cost more than they are worth — not in my opinion, but in the actions of people who are spending their own hard-earned money.
this year in Jerusalem 5 February 2007
Posted by DSM in faith, sports.comments closed
And the Colts win, largely because their season-awful D shook off giving up a return for touchdown on the first play of the game and forced a half-dozen turnovers.. and Manning adjusted to the rain game better than I thought he would.
This is the first time since the Jays won back-to-back in the early 90s that my team’s won the Big Game. I’d forgotten what it felt like..
I’m especially glad for Tony Dungy, one of the classiest men in professional sports. The Lombardi trophy is the better for him having held it once again. (Backup safety long ago, which I’d completely forgotten until it was mentioned in the pregame runup.)
There’s also the neat fact that both Dungy and his friend Bears coach Lovie Smith are serious Christians, so it was X-man vs. X-man in the arena, with no lions in sight. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has a bunch of links, including to an excellent ESPN article describing the challenges Dungy has faced including the recent death of his son.
every man has his flaws 3 February 2007
Posted by DSM in Canada, politics, sports.comments closed
The following puts me in a difficult position:
OTTAWA (CP) – Prime Minister Stephen Harper might be a big sports fan – but he’s no fan of the Super Bowl.
The prime minister offered a candid reply when asked for a prediction on Sunday’s National Football League championship game between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts. He also took a nationalist jab at the NFL. “I have to admit I’m not following it,” Harper said Friday.
“Being prime minister of Canada I can assure you I focus my exclusive football attention on the Grey Cup – which is always much more exciting.”
I can’t really see myself voting NDP, though I have many Dipper friends: reality isn’t optional, and I won’t pretend it is.
I also can’t vote Liberal, despite the fact that on many matters at least the Liberals and I live in the same universe. I’d spoil my ballot first. And then burn it.
The Bloc combine the unloveliest qualities of the Liberals and the NDP and throw in treason to boot, and I don’t live in Quebec anyhow, so they’re not an option.
Which leaves me with only one party, really: the Conservatives. And, generally speaking, the most I can accuse them of is being insufficiently conservative, and tending to inertial stupidity.
As John O’Sullivan once said in his First Law (paraphrasing): all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing become left-wing over time; and the Conservatives aren’t right-wing. They really are blandly centrist, more’s the pity. (Exercise for fellow physicist readers: deduce the First Law from basic statistical mechanics. Advanced version: generalize to include not merely right-wing politics but the Good, the Right, the True, and the Beautiful.)
So what am I to do if the Prime Minister himself proves unworthy of governing our great nation by virtue of idiotic opinions on sports? I have been heartened by his well-known hockey traditionalism and discomfort with shootouts, but this is deplorable.
Go Colts go!
unintentional grounding 15 January 2007
Posted by DSM in politics, sports.comments closed
The Law of Unintended Consequences — the rule which when grasped inevitably moves the grasper to the Right — strikes again.
In this case, it’s a collision between the never-ending quest for “equality” and the persistent tendency of people to do what they want regardless of what Received Wisdom says they should. Specifically, the much-applauded and much-jeered Title IX, which requires American scholastic sports programs to ensure balance between the men and the women.
Title IX has now found a new target: discriminatory cheerleading. Cheerleaders in one New York school district were only going to men’s games, and the mother of one of the female basketball players thought this sent the message that “girls are second-class athletes and don’t deserve the school spirit, that they’re just little girls playing silly games and the real athletes are the boys.” It was clear that Something Needed To Be Done, and a Title IX challenge was launched.
Can you predict What Was Done, and what then happened? Hint: consider the easiest way to obtain equality (is it by doing more, or by doing less?), and the reason lots of girls go into cheerleading in the first place, and then invoke the Law.
Read the article for the answer. Hat-tip Jonah Goldberg, whose wife wrote a book on Title IX.
Recommended viewing on the subject of excellence and equality: The Incredibles, which was good in so many ways it’s up there in my all-time favourites list with Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and The Princess Bride. From the movie:
Helen: Dash, this is the third time this year you’ve been sent to the office. We need to find a better outlet. A more.. constructive outlet.
Dash: Maybe I could, if you’d let me go out for sports.
Helen: Honey, you know why we can’t do that.
Dash: But I promise I’ll slow up! I’ll only be the best by a tiny bit!
Helen: Dashiell Robert Parr, you are an incredibly competitive boy. And a bit of a showoff. The last thing you need is temptation.
Dash: You always say, “Do your best.” But you don’t really mean it. Why can’t I do the best that I can do?
Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we just gotta be like everybody else.
Dash: Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of. Our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash.
Dash [sullenly]: Which is another way of saying no one is.
he can’t have ze duck 28 November 2006
Posted by DSM in sports.comments closed
When the decision on where to host the Olympics was being made, I was more concerned about China’s human rights record.
I hadn’t even considered the trouble that eating out might cause in Beijing..
what to feed a phoenix 23 November 2006
Posted by DSM in London, sports.comments closed
I don’t understand cricket. I never have, and my earliest associations with it come from (where else?) the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, in which it plays an important and dangerous role in Life, the Universe, and Everything.
My old friend Peter McFawn, all-around good guy and faculty member at his alma mater the University of Western Australia, tried several times to explain it to me, usually over beers at the Brew Pub.
Most recently, this summer at the Kingston-in-Kingston meeting several of the grad students in attendance gave it their best. In return, I tried to convey the joys of federalism and explain why it wasn’t a crime against humanity for the federal government not to use our tax dollars to support the Scottish-Ukrainian Friendship Society of Nowheresville’s Annual Haggis-Holubtsi Cookoff, however noble a cause that might be, and why not doing so didn’t make Prime Minister Harper Worse-than-Hitler(tm).
Unsurprisingly, both sides failed.
But now I’m in England, and the Ashes are being contested, and I find that I have to choose sides in a sport where the scoresheet seems to be a series of random numbers followed by a declaration of victory by one of the teams when some unpredictable threshold is reached several weeks after the game begins.
It’s a tough call.
On the one hand, I’m actually here in England, and the English people have been very kind to me, in their odd friendly-prickly manner. The beer that I’m drinking right now, they paid for, which counts for a lot in my book, and the Englishmen I met in Canada were all good people.
On the other hand, Australia’s mix of idealism and hard-headed realism in world affairs continues to impress me, as does Prime Minister Howard, and the Australians I know have to a man been admirable sorts. Plus, they have Tim Blair!
Decisions, decisions.
the wrong lesson 20 November 2006
Posted by DSM in sports.comments closed
I love football. Canadian/American-style football, I mean, and I have a special affection for American college ball which I took up watching one New Year’s Day in Kingston when everybody was sobering up.
Even if I didn’t, I hope that this story would still make me as sick as it does. If the kid’s as decent a guy as he sounds, he’s probably pretty sick about the whole thing too.
Hat-tip: the Derb.
