Smart Links – Concussions, BCS, Pizza, Ditka, Journey – 1/12/2012

Thursday, 12 January 2012 , by : Chris

– Blutarsky on the realities of a playoff.

- Russell Wilson gives up his baseball career to pursue football.

- Jonah Lehrer on concussions and high school football.

- We finally have an answer: There is no such thing as “South Detroit.”

- Brian Phillips on the BCS, the end of the season, and, as always, Justin Blackmon and Brandon Weeden.

- A reading list for Law and Literature. I prefer this book.

- A history of breast implants.

- Tracking the “Pizza Princple.” I sincerely hope history doesn’t hold in this case.

- Waiting for Ditka.

- And I thought marketing had gotten salacious here.

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  • Stan Brown

    Brian Philips needs to take a logic course.  Because the game wasn’t fun the selection process was flawed?!  Now he’s not the only person to jump down that rabbit hole, but the results are always curiouser and curiouser.

    Wouldn’t it be great to read an intelligent discussion about the BCS?

  • John Phamlore

    When LSU and Alabama are hyped and play in title games, the next season we get to see LSU vs Oregon and Alabama vs Michigan.  When Oklahoma St is hyped the next few seasons we get to see at best Oklahoma St vs Arizona, at worst Oklahoma St vs UTSA or Lamar.  The Oklahoma St advocates fail to realize the current story exists to sell future stories.

    By being unabashed advocates with an agenda, this site even contradicts what it is trying to say.  One article will claim that it is best to simplify an offense, yet absolutely not one word is said about the best example this season that illustrates the point:  Chip Kelly’s having his offense waste its time practicing taking snaps under center just for the one moment when he wants the ball centered for the field goal kicker.  Laughably Kelly chose to use this tactic in the game vs Southern Cal when he knowingly put his kicker in a situation where his kicker was just beyond his comfortable range, subsequently missing the kick and losing the game.

  • John Phamlore

    Here’s a list of Big 12 wins this regular season over out-of-conference members of automatic BCS conference qualifiers, plus Notre Dame:

    Arizona (Oklahoma St)
    Miami, Florida (Kansas State)
    Florida State (Oklahoma)
    UCLA (Texas)
    Iowa (Iowa St)
    Connecticut (Iowa St)

    That’s really objective evidence to declare the Big 12 conference the best.

    Here’s a hint about real science: real science has a concept of “not enough evidence,” such as the physicists who are patiently waiting to collect enough data to declare whether the Higgs boson has actually been detected or not.  Before their data is even collected these true scientists set a standard of conclusive evidence, five sigmas.

    See anything remotely resembling this in those who are hyping Oklahoma St?

  • Anonymous

    Why are you attacking “this site”? Because I put a link to some article? Who are the people with an “agenda”? I honestly simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

  • Iowafan2

    Huh?!

  • Iowafan2

    Huh?!

  • Clark

    That’s not what he said. He said that we often forget that sports are supposed to fun, not just fair. Monday night’s game was neither (unless you’re an Alabama fan.) He admits that it wouldn’t have been fair to Alabama had OSU played in the title game, but it would have been more fun.

  • Paul Meisel

    Thanks for the links, I needed the break from pure sports stuff.

    As a born Detroiter, I knew, as all of us did, that there is no “south Detroit”.. that’s Downriver!

    Long gone but not forgetting.

  • Coachk15

    None of the postseason will matter until subjectivity is removed from the rankings process. You get writers and coaches with agendas making their votes…case in point “Alabama  great” Paul Finebaum not even voting for RG3 in his heisman top 5 because he “didn’t play top level competition”….

    Until we use the Simple Rating System (SRS) that Chris posts here, or something similar. Our champions will always be based in large measure on opinion.

  • 4.0 Point Stance

    The Blutarsky article (in the short term) and the Lehrer article (in the long term) make me nervous about the future of college football. What happens if it just stops being fun?