Whipped Cream Difficulties

Offensenitivity! In this week’s TMQ, after the jump…

Broadly across football, rule changes that favor offense — tighter pass-interference regulations especially — are having the intended impact of increasing scoring.

At least, that’s the nut we’d pull from TMQ’s lead. We’d ask: have the rules changed that much since last season? Because we don’t remember things being this crazy (in a good way) last season. Some additional highlights:

…the way you get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, practice. (Or to go on strike.)

Didn’t the folks who are on strike already get to Carnegie Hall?

Specifically in the case of the Denver Broncos, the scoreboard-spinning act starts with Manning, a master quarterback at the peak of his powers, standing behind a very good offensive line. Also important are Manning’s confident, quick release; constant small changes in the game plan; nearly error-free communication of rapid play calls (this factor is more than meets the eye); and defensive backs who play scared because they are worried about being torched.

TMQ’s starting to sound a little like Peter King there, isn’t he?

Ultimately, more snaps may account for the big offensive differentials in the NCAA versus the NFL.

…Tuesday Morning Quarterback long has wondered why television announcers say a team “has to” punt on fourth down.

Because, and with a very few exceptions, television announcers are not intellectual giants? The Brennaman and Billick dialog TMQ cites further down seems to be more evidence for this proposition.

Davis is a lawyer employed by Chainsaw Dan, and would issue a statement declaring the sky is chartreuse if paid by his client to do so.

The sky above RFK Stadium was the color of chartreuse, served in a dirty glass.

Sweet: Indianapolis, Denver. Sour: Chicago. Mixed: Tennessee – Kansas City, Dallas – Denver.

TMQ thinks zombies aren’t realistic. Rather than dwelling on TMQ”s complaints about “World War Z” (and to a lesser extent “The Walking Dead”), we’ll just point out that he spent 592 words on this item.

Okay, we will highlight a couple of things:

Of course no James Bond flick is anchored in reality either. To stick with Brad Pitt, the hit film “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” made no attempt to be possible. “The Artist” was not possible. Maybe “The Philadelphia Story” wasn’t possible. If a zombie movie entertains you, then you get your money’s worth.

This kind of reads like a sop to the people (like us) who complain about TMQ’s complaints about realism.

Zombie stories are sometime rationalized as social commentary — societies are rife with thoughtless people who shuffle along following the crowd, threatening anyone not like them, etc. TMQ feels the greater allegorical appeal is that in zombie movies, the heroes can kill, kill, kill without compunctions or consequences.

We’d suggest that the allegorical appeal of zombie movies is much the same as that of other post-apocolypse themes, like nuclear war: the breakdown of society removes our obligations and provides us with previously unexperienced freedom. “Woo-hoo! Honey, there’s a zombie alert today! Don’t have to go into work! Break out my Zombie Slayer and bring me another beer!”

In driving rain, the Patriots lost to the Bengals.

TMQ does not like gerrymandering. What’s his solution?

Since any redistricting based on political arm-twisting will be tainted, the solution is computer algorithms that generate districts. A panel of experts representing a mix of ideologies could check the algorithms for neutrality, then let a mathematical formula draw the lines.

Who appoints the experts? Who audits the code? Who watches the watchmen?

Yes, it does look like TMQ looking up ticket prices on StubHub, and then letting us know that tickets to see bad teams play are cheap, is going to be a regular item. At least he’s not stalking a boy’s prep school.

Why is Atlanta so bad? A poor running game, lack of talent due to trading away draft choices, and lack of free agent talent because Matt Ryan.

Most likely the Northern California Federation Youth League parents who are angry about the mercy rule have children on teams that were winning by huge margins. Anyone angry because his or her kid isn’t humiliating some other parent’s kid needs to take a look in the mirror.

We get TMQ’s point here. But we also read some back-and-forth outside of TMQ about the NCFYL rule, and we think TMQ is glossing over some of the counterarguments here. One is that it seems wrong to automatically penalize a coach who wins by more than 35 points. What if the coach is playing his second or third string, and they still score more that 35 points? What is the better team supposed to do; lie down? Deliberately fumble the ball? Take a knee on every snap? It’d be one thing if the coach was deliberately pounding the other team without letup. But if he makes an effort and wins by 42 points, should he automatically be punished?

Nobody need care about the feelings of NFL or big-college players; the emotions of 10-year-olds are another matter.

But isn’t there something to be said for the emotions of a 10-year-old who could score a touchdown…but gets told by his coach to throw the ball away so he doesn’t hurt the other team’s feelings?

Isn’t the real problem here the disparity of talent that leads to lopsided un-competetive games? Isn’t that the problem that should be addressed?

The football gods chortled. The football gods were angry. The football gods went out for some pizza and beer. Okay, we made that last one up, as you probably guessed, what with the football gods being too busy chortling to do much else.

Zadok Magruder High 4, Walter Johnson High 2. Doesn’t “Zadok Magruder” sound like the villain in a bad space opera? “Save us, Duck Dodgers, from the evil Zadok Magruder, before he puts us all to work in his helium mines!”

TMQ book mention.

Major League Baseball’s exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was granted in 1922 by the Supreme Court: Congress cannot overturn that exemption directly, though could amend the act.

We are not lawyers, but we think TMQ is, at the very least, overstating things here. Our understanding of the Supreme Court ruling, and of the applicable law, is that there is no Constitutional or regulatory bar that would prevent Congress from declaring the anti-trust exemption no longer applies. Here’s an article from Slate (before it got stupid) outlining this argument.

(Quaintly, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that antitrust law did not apply because each baseball game is played within the borders of a single state and thus there is no interstate commerce — hear that, broadcast networks?)

Oh, for the days of judges who understood what “interstate commerce” means.

Another TMQ book mention.

…Congress should auction football antitrust exemptions.

Who is going to bid against the NFL?

To ensure competitive bidding, don’t just allow the NFL in the auction. Allow hedge funds and venture capitalists to bid for the NFL’s antitrust exemption, which, if they won, they could lease to the league.

The hell? If I run a hedge fund, why am I going to bid that fund’s assets on winning the NFL’s antitrust exemption when, if I do win, I’m just going to lease it back to the NFL? I’m laying out a bunch of money up front against lease payments on the back end; even setting aside the whole “present value of money” calculation, there’s the chance that the NFL could default on those payments due to unexpected economic issues. Then what? We’re not hedge fund managers, either, but this scheme doesn’t make economic sense to us at all.

Chicken-(salad) kicking: Colorado. “Fortune favors the bold!”: Tennessee, which went for it three times on fourth down. But they lost anyway, so how exactly were they favored by fortune?

College sports is a business.

If Oliver Wendell Holmes were alive today, what might he think?

“Get me out of here!”

Another TMQ book mention. A nuanced view of fracking, and praise for Joe Nocera of the NYT.

“The Football Gods Promised an Investigation”. We’re sure that they’ll get around to that, as soon as they finish chortling.

The Lions are bad. The Giants are bad. The Texans are bad. Greg Schiano is bad. More on fair-catch kicks.

No Dallas player was within 15 yards of Peyton Manning as he jogged into the end zone on a naked bootleg on third-and-goal.

Yeah. We’re not Manning fans, and we feel like we should root for Dallas, but damn, that was a heck of a run. He fooled everyone, including the camera people.

The 500 Club. The 600 Club.

Several times in this young season, ejections have been overturned but the penalty still assessed — either both should happen or neither.

Yeah. This is something we’ve been wondering about ourselves.

Creep.

Many readers including Victoria Ames of Windsor, Ontario, noted that this year’s Halloween edition of “The Simpsons” aired on Oct. 6. Here is the tremendously amusing intro by director Guillermo del Toro. The air date was very creepy — but then, Halloween is supposed to be creepy.

Is Easterbrook also bothered by haunted houses existing before October 31st? And would he prefer “Treehouse of Horror” air after Halloween, which Fox did for many years?

San Diego. Ron Rivera. Martin Luther 68, Iowa Wesleyan 51. One guy beat an entire team?

“Single Worst Play of the Season — So Far“:

Now it’s 48-48, Denver has third-and-1 on the Boys’ 2 with 1:40 remaining, Dallas holding two timeouts. Let Denver score! Let Denver score! Instead Dallas played straight-up defense, holding the runner to 1 yard, which made it first-and-goal on the 1. Dallas could do nothing but watch Denver milk the clock until the winning field goal as time expired. Princeton-educated Jason Garret, how could you not let Denver score?

We’re not sure we follow TMQ’s football logic here. If Garret had let Denver score, they would have been up a touchdown with 1:40 left. Could Romo drive for a touchdown with under two minutes left? That’s Garret’s call to make – apparently, he didn’t think so, and trusted his defense to force the field goal on fourth down, with enough time remaining for Romo to drive into at least field goal range for a tie. That does not strike us as a bad decision; it didn’t work out, but the logic makes sense to us.

Tune in next week, when we can look forward to more TMQ book plugs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 at 6:52 am and is filed under Books, IANAL, Law, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.