Virginia Tech Professor Leads in Vote for 'Most Inspiring Person of the Year' - Chronicle.com

Virginia Tech Professor Leads in Vote for 'Most Inspiring Person of the Year' - Chronicle.com

I thought the comments about Angeline Jolie funny, although judging by the comments, apparently not everyone thought so!

Link

BCS Rant

I am sure every other blogger, sports fan and sports reporter across the country will get in their two cents, so I thought I might as well send out mine.

The BCS system is really, really messed up. Granted, college football has not given them a stable base on which to build their platform this year, but I think you might as well have flipped a coin as try to legitimately say Ohio State and LSU are the best two teams in the country.

I say if we are not going to go to a playoff, which will happen as soon as the powers-that-be figure out how to make even more money off of the deal, then they need to scrap the BCS AND the polls and then do the following.

At the beginning of the year, the entire nation gets to vote on three people they trust to know something about college football. We let Taco Bell or someone like that sponsor it and you send in the official entry form, along with two forms of valid ID, to the NCAA. The NCAA - or Price Waterhouse Cooper or whoever they are at the moment, tally the vote and then announces the winners at whatever game serves as the kick-off game for college football. (It's kind of like the Hall-of-Fame game for the NFL, I think. If there isn't one, they need to make it one. They can even play it in April -- that tends to be a boring sports month after March Madness.)

I figure Keith Jackson gets in and maybe some other announcer. Doesn't matter who it is, the point is that America has spoken and they must now quit whining -- however justified -- about the selection of the teams that play in the National Championship. These three are tasked with the responsibility of watching or keeping up with all of the games in college football. If we have to, pay them for their time or at least buy them DirecTV and all of the newspapers they can read. If you think your guy is a better guy than someone else, you can pull a Bob Stoops and start pulling for him or her via some sort of press conference or advertising campaign. If you don't like who it was last year, you do like we do presidents - vote them out. If the system worked OK, keep around until they have had a chance to screw it up. Then vote them out. This is America, democracy at its finest.

Now here is the cool part, they do not say anything about who is number one or number two for the entire season -- they just watch games. This prevents this assumption that if so-and-so loses, they can only fall in the rankings as far as the next team who has as many loses as they do.So, our gurus start watching football. They keep an eye on Hawaii, all the while thinking to themselves -- these guys would get creamed if they were playing in the SEC. They would think: Sure, WVU got beat by a team they were favored to beat by 4 touchdowns, but this is the Backyard Brawl. Throw the records out the window for this one. (Same for UT-ATM.) They would remark to one another that a loss, is a loss, is a loss. Doesn't matter how many overtimes it took to lose. You shouldn't even be in the overtime to begin with. And to say you were undefeated in "regulation" just goes to show you have no common sense and shouldn't be allowed to talk on a national stage. They would factor in things like the starting quarterback, who happens to be the most accurate passer in the NCAA, going down with an injury and the back up, who has taken maybe three snaps all year, coming a failed onside kick and 1:30 from coming back and beating a team. They would not mind chanting "Over-Rated" at the TV when a team like Kansas takes the field. They would not let teams who have been idle for four weeks play for the national championship. They would also not let teams who had not won their conference championship play for the national championship. At the same time, if a wildcard team pulled the upset and beat the favored team in the conference championship, this does not mean you are automatically qualified to take the heavily favored's place wherever that team may have gone in the bowl games.

So, after all of this watching, these three college football gurus get together and ask themselves the question: Who are the best two teams in football? It's a simple question, really. Sure, they may disagree. Bud Lite can sponsor the conversation and provide the refreshments, but there has to be a unanimous winner. You think your team is the best - prove it. You could do like the bishops do and blow smoke (no wait, that's what the BCS does now...) that is black when they need more queso and then a white puff when they finish. Then, Cadillac or some other sponsor hosts the announcement, which is not a long show -- just an announcement where the two teams are finally revealed.

For the rest of the bowls, just throw all of the names of teams with winning records in a hat and draw them out. Count the number of winning record teams, divide by two and then the first bowl game starts that many days prior to January 1st. For instance, if 62 teams have winning records, then you play a bowl game a night starting on December 1. I mean, let's be real here. No one besides alumni and deranged fans care about who plays where and when -- it is just noise to keep you occupied while you wrap presents. Then, you play the main game on January 1. None of this pushing the game further and further back. Pretty soon, we will be playing the national championship in April, which would mess up our voting for the three gurus who will decide next year's game.

What do you think?

Old Man Jeans

A couple of things have come together over the past several months which made me realize I needed to buy a new pair of jeans. The first is that I have put on a few pounds since the last time I went jeans shopping. Since I only go jeans shopping once every two or three years, we will assume this simply is the price of growing older, not a wholesale increase in weight. The second is that because of point number one, I only have one pair of jeans. And also because of the comment above regarding point number one, this three year-old pair had grown faded and somewhat tattered.

So, I head off to the local western wear store to find a pair of jeans. (Yes, Dad, that probably was my first mistake!) I wear boot-like shoes more than anything, so I am thinking perhaps boot-like jeans might work for me. I see Dale Jr. and Brett Favre in these Wrangler commercials, so I think I am going to try this out.

Way back when, I could have told you what jeans I wanted. I could have even told you the model number -- 13 MWZ. That was really what everyone wore who were wearing boot like jeans. In fact, that really was the only choice you had. Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there are a multitude of styles to choose from. The lady brought me at least 7 pair of jeans. Just plain ol' jeans. Not dress jeans, not dress pants, but blue jeans.

That was not nearly as bad as discovering that even though I did not want that particular model, 13 MWZ's are, according to the sales lady, "old man jeans."

Great. I am fat and have to choose either tattered or old man jeans. I now know why I wear a suit to work every day!