They haven’t even started playing the World Series yet, and Ozzie Guillen is out as the Florida Marlins manager.
In his one season with the team, it went 69-93, finished last in the NL East, and Ozzie managed to tick off the local Cubans (and get himself suspended for five games).
How about a little musical tribute to Mr. Guillen on a Wednesday morning?
Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we want to note a story from today’s New York Times that bothers us. We think it is appropriate to talk about here, as it deals with things TMQ has been hammering on as well. After the jump, we’ll get started…
I wrote previously about the proposals to close large swaths of downtown streets, including Congress Avenue, so people could party when Formula 1 came to town.
We have a deal. The Congress Avenue proposal (from an independent promoter) has been dropped, and that festival is merging with the official F1 “Fan Fest”.
Unfortunately, Congress Avenue is still going to be closed, but it looks like the closures will be for a shorter period than under the original “Experience Austin” proposal.
This sounds like a fine idea to me, assuming there is an F1 race here in 2013. I wouldn’t recommend counting that chicken until it hatches, though.
I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.
From dinner Friday night:
I was going to buy you a book, but I figured you already had one.
–my mother
(This is somewhat more amusing if you’ve seen my library. What she meant was that she had considered buying this
I would post a runner-up quote of the weekend, but:
Now that we’ve had the better part of a day, here’s the Statesman‘s coverage of Lance Armstrong’s resignation, as well as his dumping by Nike, Trek, Radio Shack, and 24-Hour Fitness.
On the other hand, the Ride for the Roses (Livestrong’s major annual event) is coming up this weekend; did that cause a donation spike, or is the increase in donations over and above the normal run-up to the event?
The HouChron has been running articles on events at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. There’s a controversy over the organization’s grant approval process: the organization gave M.D. Anderson an $18 million grant to work on commercial production of cancer drugs, over the objections of various scientists who did scientific reviews and grant evaluations for the institute. Now, the agency’s two leading scientific officers (both of whom are Nobel laureates) and all of the other reviewers have resigned.
By the way, CPRIT is a state agency, established by a constitutional amendment in 2007, and funded with $3 billion in state issued bonds. And guess who was behind the campaign for CPRIT?
Newsweek has snuffed it. At least in print. The magazine is going all digital, which should be interesting; why would I pay for a subscription to a magazine that summarizes all the news I read online the week before?
This is just breaking, and I’ll probably have more to say about it later: Lance Armstrong is leaving his position as chairman of the Livestrong charity.
(I still haven’t had time to go through the USADA report. Sorry.)
Meanwhile, we have a couple of interesting things from the NYT:
There’s a longish piece about the “Rebecca” case, focusing on Ben Sprecher and how he claims he got taken.
More:
Somebody really wanted to believe. Either that, or there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Have you ever wondered where escargot come from? If you order them in many restaurants, they were probably imported from France in a can. But if you order them in a higher-end restaurant…
…the NYT has a profile of Mary Stewart, snail rancher.
J. Peterman, call your office, please.
($39.75 a pound.)
Another Tuesday has rolled around, and it is time to take a stab at this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Once again, we’re going to slash our way through the thickets of Easterbrook’s prose, hacking away at logical fallacies when we see them and using our sharp wit to puncture pretense.
After the jump…
Sorry for the late update, folks. I was away for computers most of the day yesterday.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
None.
Cleveland’s long nightmare is over. My relatives are happy. And thus endeth the loser update for 2012. (I need to go back through my records, but I don’t recall there being no teams without a win this early in the season.)
“Never again”, in this case, will the NCAA apply the “death penalty” to a college athletic program.
Not because they didn’t do it to Penn State. Because they didn’t do it to Texas Southern University.
I had not been following the saga of the TSU athletic program closely, until I ran across a nice summary post on the TM Daily Post site.
The phrase “unprecedented scope” is never a good one, especially when the NCAA is using it. In addition, the NCAA also invoked the dreaded “lack of institutional control”.
Plus, TSU has “been on probation or engaged in rules violations for 16 of the last 20 years”. The NCAA refers to them as a “double repeat violator”. In addition, the NCAA claims that “the university reported to the committee it was taking certain remedial actions when it actually was not”.
But what, exactly, have they done? I like the ESPN blogger who says they’ve “pretty much willfully broken every NCAA rule under the sun for the past two decades”; that seems like a good summary. Boosters. Recruiting violations. Players getting financial aid and travel expenses they weren’t eligible for. Lying to the NCAA. Ignoring limits on scholarships imposed by the NCAA previously.
And what did they get? Five years probation, apparently because the NCAA thinks the current TSU administration is committed to reform. (And the school is going to be subject to “stringent” outside supervision.)
And the former football and basketball coaches are under three year “show cause” orders, “making them effectively unemployable in college sports during that period, as they are banned from all recruiting, and any school attempting to hire them would be subject to NCAA scrutiny.”
Cheese louise, if they won’t pull the trigger on a school that is that far out of control, who will they pull the trigger on?
The city implemented the new rules on short-term rentals ten days ago. Odd how that hasn’t been a problem for the last couple of ACL festivals, but yet the city felt compelled to make a new set of rules anyway. (Yes, it may also have something to do with the F1 race as well, but again, there haven’t been reports of massive short-term rental problems with ACL, or SXSW, or UT football games, or (fill in the blank).)
Because, of course, people are too dumb to make that decision on their own.
More Alex Karras: NYT. A/V Club.
The answer was “no”.
Unfortunately, the Squirrel Report is off the air this week. Which is a darn shame, as not only could they talk about “Commander Squirrel”, but they could also cover this story:
(Story includes many cute photos of baby squirrels being fed, exactly the sort of thing that’s up Weer’d’s alley.)
Once again, I feel some obligation to comment on the Lance situation. It is looking like option #2 on my list may actually have turned out to be true. But I want to sit down and actually read the USADA report first, and I haven’t had time to do that. (I’m trying to finish the book I’m currently reading
Anyway, I’ll try to get to it, maybe over the weekend if I can manage to knock out the Stanford stuff.
The LAT is reporting the death of Alex Karras. More later.
There is a quote, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, (but probably apocryphal, at least in this form) “Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
There is another quote, commonly attributed to an anonymous actor in a commercial, “I’m not a doctor. But I play one on TV.”
What do those have to do with this week’s TMQ? After the jump…
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
I had the Cleveland game going on the background while I puttered around the kitchen and read FARK and Briarpatch
Speaking of playing smarter, I think I’m going to have to add the Chargers to my list of “most consistently overrated teams in the NFL”. Seriously, how do you lose to the Saints, even with the whole Brees record thing?