Category Archives: ALDLAND

College Football Week 4: POLL

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pollingLots of college football fans say that the polls don’t really matter, can’t really matter, because they don’t accurately reflect what’s happening on the field. What were those voter-computer-robots watching, anyway? Were they even watching? These concerns don’t apply to ALDLAND’s College Football Poll, which will do you one better than reflecting reality, though it does that too: How about affecting reality? Check out what happened to Florida QB Jeff Driskel after he was the winner-loser of week two’s poll: out for the year. Cast a vote of consequence below.

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Socializing endurance athletics

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The Wall Street Journal has a sports section, something that came along with, or at least greatly expanded following, News Corp.’s takeover of the paper in 2007. It’s sort of what you might expect: a mixed-bag of quality in writing and presentation with more emphasis on tennis and sailing than other sports pages. It features writing from some really smart, talented people like Jason Gay and, formerly, David Roth (of Classical fame and now in an expanded role at SB Nation), and we try to feature those smart articles on this site. Because the paper doesn’t have to uphold a reputation as a source for sports– the move to expand sports coverage appears to be aimed at increasing website clicks– its “sports writers” might be more likely to come to their sports articles with varying backgrounds and varying levels of commitment to the sports world. Once in a while, it even feels like the WSJ’s editorial board drops in on the sports section, and that’s the feeling I had when I read last week’s article about running.

A “generational battle is raging in endurance athletics,” the article announces. “Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy [exists] among young amateur athletes,” which “helps explain why America hasn’t won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004,” among other things.

There are numbers that support the conclusion that “kids these days [are] just not very fast.” At this year’s Chicago Triathlon, for example, older runners, as a group, did better than younger runners. Younger American runners are not surpassing older ones in world competition.  Continue reading →

Upton Abbey: Episode 7 – Dessert Seized

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upton abbey banner

There will be extra baseball in Atlanta this year. The Braves clinched the NL East title over the weekend, ensuring themselves a postseason berth. With a few days left in the regular season, their potential playoff opponents include the Cardinals, Reds, Pirates(!), and Dodgers.

The good news: Jason Heyward is back in the lineup sooner than expected– thirty days after a New York Met fastball broke his jaw. In the last twenty-two games Heyward played before the injury, Atlanta was 18-4. They were 13-13 in the twenty-six games without him. Heyward may not be fully healed, but the team needs him back in the lineup, and bringing him back for these last few regular season games was the only way they could allow him to get back into playing mode before the playoffs begin.

Heyward_Braves_baseballThe odd news: As part of its remodeling effort, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution began offering a live, online feature for Braves games called Gametracker. It’s similar to ESPN’s online Gamecast product. Gametracker is a nice way to keep track of Braves games, but it seems odd that, as of last week, it would think relief pitcher Luis Ayala plays for the Orioles. First, Gametracker only tracks Braves games. Second, while Ayala did appear in two games for Baltimore this season, he’s appeared in thirty-five for the Braves, the team he joined in April of this year.

ajcbrav

Finally, third baseman Chris Johnson has been having a nice year at the plate. Way nicer than anyone expected or really can explain, in fact. One concern entering the playoffs is that, with the offense sputtering and his awareness of his potentially fluky success and the increased importance of that success to the team’s success, Johnson will start to overthink his plate appearances and squelch his offensive proficiency.

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Previously
Episode 6 – I Can See Clearly Now?
Episode 5 – Guess Who’s Not Coming To Dinner
Episode 4 – A Three-Course Meal
Episode 3 – Hosting Royalty
Episode 2 – Lords of the Mannor
Episode 1 – Beginning, as we must, with Chipper

Seeing Barry Bonds

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This is not a new idea, but after seeing a recent picture of Barry Bonds, it seemed worth reprising.

Here’s Bonds in 1992. Age 28.

Bonds in 2007. Age 43. Besides having ballooned physically, Bonds is doing a coupe of interesting things here. One, he is wearing a Rod Beck memorial patch, like the rest of his teammates did that year. That’s how I dated this photo. Two, he apparently was wearing Ryan Klesko’s batting helmet. Klesko and Bonds were teammates for one year.

Bonds in 2012. Age 48. From the hosting site:

Now comes word that Bonds over the weekend was hanging around in Aspen and spending time on his bike in the mountains. How much does he weigh now? The guy in the neon green shirt is 6-5, 185. Bonds was said to be 6-2, 228 in 2007.

Time to invest in Bonds again?

Tuesday Afternoon Inside Linebacker

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tail3ALDLAND’s weekly football review returns after an infamous fall wedding weekend. Bear with us as we attempt to piece together the happenings of the last few days.

College Football

Pregame:

  • After the Game of the Century of the Season of the Week last week in College Station, everybody predicted a scheduling letdown this week. Sports predictions have become (always were?) completely useless and devoid of meaning, but once in a while, the wisdom of the crowd gets it right. Throwing out expired food? No, actually. A soft slate of week-four matchups? For the most part, yes.

The games — That 70s Show:

  • Clemson opened the week of play by getting punchy on Thursday night in a closer-than-it-should-have-been win over North Carolina State. So far as I can tell, the Tigers have played only fellow Carolinians to this point in the season. A check of their schedule confirms this, and the trend will continue this weekend. (EDIT: Except for that little game against UGA in week one.) Clemson 26, North Carolina State 14.
  • A number of teams posted gaudy scores and spreads. Since they already had their fun, they’re all getting grouped in this one paragraph. Ohio State 76, FAMU 0. Louisville 72, FIU 0. Miami 77, Savannah State 7. Washington 56, Idaho State 0. Baylor 70, Louisiana-Monroe 7 (that one’s actually a little surprising). Florida State 54, Bethune-Cook 6. Wisconsin 41, Purdue 10. UCLA 59, New Mexico State 13. Texas A&M 42, SMU 13. And others.

ALDLAND Podcast

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Since I can’t play GTA V 100% of the time, I took some time off to record a podcast with my trusty cohost Marcus. (Token) diversity is the name of the game this time, as Marcus and I talk a little soccer before getting back into college football. So take some time out of your own playthrough of GTA V and give this podcast a listen.

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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:

College Football Week Three: POLL

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pollingCollege football is all about polling, but the polls, though much-discussed, are little-examined by the general fan populace, and they certainly aren’t participatory in nature. ALDLAND has its own college football poll (here’s week 1 and week 2) that inverts these conventions by being little-discussed and highly participatory. Things got a little serious in week 3. Cast your vote below.

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Mashed Music

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Bandwagoning on the wild success that our dear leader AD’s most recent music post created, I’m contributing a mashup I recently found between George Gershwin’s famous piano concerto “Rhapsody in Blue” and Freddie Mercury’s (for Queen) hit single “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

I hope that most readers are familiar with one or both of these works and I hope that readers will comment on the connection to each piece and the new composition by itself (for example: “I’m really only familiar with Rhapsody in Blue and think that he nailed it” or “I don’t know either but the piano sounds nice”).

I’m rather familiar with each and think that in most parts he blended the two songs beautifully. I had a hard time determining if it would stand alone, as I was too busy collecting reference after reference (or, often, reference on top of reference: the melody from one piece with a baseline or voicing from the other).

Cougar dating tips from Mike Leach

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leachForget what you read at Kim’s Hallmark. We all know that fall makes a great time to jump into the dating scene. But what if you’re a guy in need of a little help with planning a first date? If you’re a Washington State student looking to hit the ground running in Pullman, you’re in luck.

We already know that WSU head coach Mike Leach likes the cougars, but this is a generous helping of advice even by his standards. At Monday’s press conference, Leach opined on first-date strategy in Pullman:

Try to have somewhere where there’s not salad, because girls will try to show off and act like all they eat is salad, so try to put them somewhere where they’re in a position where they have to put real food in their mouth. They want to do that thing where they only pick at salads and stuff like that, so once you get past that, because that’s sort of a speed bump in the whole thing, you want to get past that immediately. I would go to Black Cypress if you really want to make a good impression. If you want just good, solid food and aren’t as into the atmosphere, I’d go to Mongolian Fire, which I really like. So one of those two. But if you go to the more  high-end Black Cypress I’d talk to Nick beforehand because he has the menu and it’s all really good and I’d just instruct him that the point of this is to make her eat. Because  if you can make her eat she’ll talk. Other than that it’s all this pretention and stuff like that. The key thing is make her eat, then she’ll relax, then there’ll be some dialogue and you can get to know her and see if you’re interested in dating her beyond dinner. He’s got some great appetizers and he’ll come by and keep hitting you up – here’s this, try that – and I think it should work out really well.

What did Leach do on his first date with his wife?

Went to A&W, had just finished a rugby game, went to A&W, had a coupon book, she said ‘what are you getting?’ She’s looking at the menu, ‘what looks good? what are you getting?’ I handed her the 2-for-1 coupon book, I said ‘I don’t know, but here’s the menu.’ Seems to me we got some kind of bacon hamburger thing. She got a rootbeer freeze. I do remember that.

Would he recommend the coupon book approach to others for a first date?

It worked for me. You’ll cut the weak out of the lineup right away if you do it that way. You’ll only be involved with committed people if they’re going to do the coupon book. It doesn’t hurt. If you’re just trying to dress your life up a little and pretend you have a relationship, then maybe you don’t want to use the coupon book if it’s some kind of a volume deal. But if you want to zero in on one or two, break out the coupon book, saw off the weak right off the top so you can get down the path to find the right one. It’s worked out pretty good, because I’ve been married … I can’t remember, a long time. 30 years or something.

Tough to argue with that.

(HT: Laura)

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Mike Leach Favors Cougars