When we heard about Sunday’s events, our first thought was: Easterbrook is going to be insufferable this week.
In retrospect, “insufferable” may not have been the right word. Perhaps “long winded” is better.
In that vein, and before the jump, we’d like to point you at David French’s National Review piece, “I Understand Why They Knelt”, which is one of the best pieces we’ve read so far on the subject.
After the jump, about 5,600 words of this week’s TMQ…
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This is a developing story.
Earlier today, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York announced indictments against 10 people on assorted bribery, fraud, and corruption charges.
The twist? Four of those people are college basketball assistant coaches, and at least one is a high-ranking executive at a shoe company.
More:
One of the three indictments charges five people with wire fraud and money laundering in a scheme to pay high school athletes to attend particular universities…
The indictment says about $100,000 was to be paid to the family of “Player-10,” a heavily recruited high school all-American, to steer him to a particular college. It says contemporary news accounts described his college decision, announced this past June, as a surprise. Payments were arranged for other players’ families as well, the indictment says, including one who had not yet begun his junior year of high school.
I’m leaving out the names, even though they are in the linked NYT article, because innocent until proven guilty. Plus, this is the Southern District, which sometimes (in my opinion) pulls some questionable stunts.
But I kind of doubt they would have indicted this many people, especially assistant coaches, without some sort of evidence.
Edited to add: “What you need to know about the FBI’s NCAA basketball investigation” from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network’s website.
I love that little sting at the end.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
Cincinnati
Chargers
New York Football Giants
San Francisco
Apologies to friend of the blog Infidel de Manhatta. Honestly, I remember the predictions before the start of the season: people (well, ESPN) were saying the Jets had a good shot at going 0-16. Tossed that away, did they not?
But hey, Cleveland’s still on track. Not that I really want to see Cleveland lose, for family reasons, but I think I’ve mentioned my theory of compensatory suck before, right? The better the baseball team is, the worse the football team, and vice versa?
The Detroit Tigers did not fire general manager Brad Ausmus.
They just decided not to renew his contract.
Also out: Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst.
Nebraska’s football team is currently 1-2.
TMQ Watch has our tropes, too. One of those is referring to the team by their full legal name, “The New York Football Giants”.
What are some of our other tropes? The only other two we can think of are:
Are we forgetting any recurring tropes, all of you huddled wretched masses yearning to breathe free? Please let us know in comments.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Short shameful confession: I have never actually seen the movie. Need to fix that.
Robert Grays, a cornerback for Midwestern State (Division II) died yesterday from injuries he received in Saturday’s game against Texas A&M-Kingsville.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Jets
Cleveland
Cincinnati
Indianapolis
Chargers
New York Football Giants
Chicago
New Orleans
San Francisco
Two games into the season, the Cincinnati Bengals (currently 0-2) have fired Ken Zampese, their offensive coordinator.
Smells like desperation, doesn’t it?
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Miami (*)
New England
Jets
Cleveland
Cincinnati
Tennessee
Houston
Indianapolis
Chargers
New York Football Giants
Washington
Chicago
Tampa Bay (*)
New Orleans
Seattle
Arizona
San Francisco
(* Miami and Tampa Bay were originally scheduled to play last Sunday. However, due to the hurricane, that game has been postponed until week 11 (November 19th). Which means that Miami and Tampa Bay are going to play 16 straight games without a break. But that’s okay…)
Don Ohlmeyer, legendary “Monday Night Football” producer, and later NBC executive.
“The Last Tycoon”, Amazon’s series based on the unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Interestingly, a few days ago Amazon also cancelled “Z: The Beginning of Everything”, a series based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald. “Z” had actually already been renewed and was apparently in pre-production for the second season when Amazon pulled the plug.
Is there just not a great demand for Scott Fitzgerald any longer? Or were these just not very good series?
I had no idea Tillman Fertitta could command that kind of money. (Also: the Rockets are worth more than the Clippers? And $85 million to $2.2 billion over 24 years? That’s an APR of about 14.5%, if I ran the numbers right. Anyone want to check me? ETA: Actually, I think I left a “0” off when I was doing the calculation the first time: it looks more like a 26% APR. ETA again: No, I was right the first time. I haven’t had enough coffee this morning.)
Speaking of return on investment, here’s a stock tip from WCD: sell this one short.
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“Oh, man, you’re not writing about the APD crime lab again, are you?” Actually, I’m not: this time, it’s the New York City DNA lab.
I still really would like to read an “explain like I’m five” piece from someone who really knows DNA and DNA testing. On the one hand, nobody (myself included) wants innocent people to go to jail. On the other hand, it increasingly seems to me like a lot of these issues resolve around subtle and sometimes disputed interpretations of statistics and statistical data.
This also points up something that I keep thinking about, and deserves a longer essay: how do we, and how should we, validate scientific investigative techniques used in criminal prosecution? It isn’t just DNA: how did comparative bullet-lead analysis ever become accepted? Or bite-mark analysis?
And what do we currently think we know, that ain’t necessarily so? Is there statistical evidence that supports the use of drug dogs, or is it possible that this is a “Clever Hans” phenomena? Has anybody ever done a controlled study?
The great Cardinals scandal of 2015 was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to high-tech sports cheating. (I know there’s a lot of biology and chemistry involved, but for some reason I don’t think of doping as “high-tech”.)
I’ve got a vague idea for a book series about a white hat computer security expert who specializes in investigating technological sports cheating: hacking other teams databases, abusing smart watches, maybe drone surveillance of practices, tapping into sideline radio communications…sort of a Myron Bolitar meets hacker riff. If anybody wants to take this idea, feel free.
With all the dinging going on in this week’s column, you’d think this was the Christmas season and TMQ was the non-stop 24 hours a day “Carol of the Bells” channel.
Let’s get into it. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Week two. Gesundheit.
Our count is roughly 9,400 words. Will TMQ join the 10,000 Club this season? We would not be surprised.
(And this is why we’re running behind: we do plan to try to get these up on Tuesday, but if the Weekly Standard is going to let Easterbrook run on as long as he wants, without apparent editing or restrictions, we can’t promise that.)
After the jump, this week’s column…
The loser update will return again this year. The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network is saying that the Jets are going to be exceptionally awful this year. We’ll see.
Speaking of ESPN, I thought some of my readers might enjoy this: the worst NFL teams of the past 30 years.
Obviously, the 2008 Detroit Lions were the worst of the worst, right? Well, not so fast: ESPN’s ranking is based on their “DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) metric”. So the 2008 Lions aren’t the worst NFL team of the past 30 years: they’re not even the worst Lions team of the past 30 years.
Who was the worst? And are the Houston Texans represented? You’ll have to give ESPN a page view for the answer to the first question. For the second one, yes, indeed, the Texans do show up on both the worst teams and worst offenses list.
