Week #4 NFL Picks

Home team in caps
Colts over JETS – Something about this game makes me want to pick the Jets, and if they hadn’t won on the road last week, I might take them. As is, I’m going with the Colts in a close game. I don’t know how many points Indy is getting, but if it’s more than three and a half I’d be tempted to thow some money on New York to cover.
BILLS over Vikings – Going with the home team that’s a little hungrier. Vikings probably still think they’re good.
Chargers over RAVENS – Chargers are just that good.
Cowboys over TITANS – I want to pick Tennessee, but I think the only way they can beat a team as good as Dallas is it they end up +3 in turnovers. I don’t see Parcells letting that happen.
Niners over CHIEFS – I think Nolan has made the Niners into a very scrappy, professional team. I think K.C. underestimates them and that, combined with them being a not-so-good football team, leads to the loss.
PANTHERS over Saints – Better team, at home, against a Saints team which is due for an “L”.
FALCONS over Cardinals – Not losing two in a row where their second game is at home against an inferior team.
TEXANS over Dolphins – Texans want it more. Daunte’s already got everything he wants.
RAMS over Lions – I like the Rams. They’re playing very responsibly. I have a hard time seeing Detroit go enough little things to beat a team that’s not going to give them needless chances.
Patroits over BENGALS – I thinkt he bengals come down after a huge win last week. Patroits have to prove they deserve to be in the “top teams” discussion. Brady needs to redeem himself a bit.
REDSKINS over Jaguars – Jax doesn’t have the juice to beat a ‘Skins team that’ returning home with a renewed confidence. They’re beating in Big D might end up looking like a wake-up call.
Browns over RAIDERS – Because professional football teams tend to beat semi-pro teams.
BEARS over Seahawks – I think the Bears have been looking to this game fore two weeks. After surviving a Minnesota game they should have taken more seriously, I think they and their defense control this one.
EAGLES over Packers – Does this pick need explaining? The Eagles coughing up that game to the Giants might turn out to be a good thing. Else, they’d be in cruise-conrol already. Now, they’ll keep improving. Their return to elite-team status will make the N.F.C. look a lot better than it did at the season’s onset.

Aviators Open Season as Expected, But Who Cares?

Let the stream begin …

Two games into the RHL season, San Diego’s results were as would be predicted. The home opener on game three ended with two points for the the Aviators, a 4-3 win over the visiting South Calgarians. The next night, following a ridiculous day of travel which included plane, train, bus, and dog-sled rides, the Aviators lost 4-2 in Yellowknife.

The the team has acquitted itself well through its first 120 minutes of play, excitement is predictably low in San Diego. Augmenting the already apathetic tendencies of the coastal community is the public spectre of relocation to San Francisco. Would you devote a season of support to a team which is schedule to abandon you? We will have to wait and see what the results can do to give fans extra incentive to support the players.

Further contributing to Aviator duldrums has been Richard Farley, a normally energetic owner who has merely been going through the motions since the signing of free agents. His coaching has been creative – taking an increased interest in trying to get Chris Drury and Shane Doan into advantageous matchups – but otherwise without much dedication. When he’s not managing the matchups his coaching his been by-the-book and ringing of absentee-ism.

Likewise, Farley has been neglectful in other RHL endeavours. His role as owner of the Aviators has been ignored, and it is said that Assistant General Manager Andrew Bartalone now runs the day-to-day Aviator operations. The team’s web site, when Farley was particularly hands-on, has seen less-frequent updates over the last month. Pet side projects like the RHL Hall of Fame and the RMHL has stalled. Where has Farley been?

Ask his personal assistant and you get no new information. Claus Renneé tells you “Richie is still as active and fabulous as ever.” If Farley has put the Aviators down on his priority list, he hasn’t told his staff.

When you talk to the rest of the management team, the players, and the staff you hear notes of uncertainty underscoring their words. The team is moving for next season, this season looks to be another of largescale player transactions, and the figurehead of the team – the aspect that provided some, if misguided, continuity to it all – is rarely to be found. Are the Aviators adrift?

While this level of paranoia is not unfounded, it’s only Day5 of the season. The RHL has adopted a rather slow pace over the last three weeks, and that Farley has elected to address other aspects of Farley Enterprised, Incorporated should not surprise anybody. As he said in a statement distributed via email to his list-subscribed press pool:

Calm down. You’re fishing for stories. At least, that’s what it seems like. Am I doing other things? Yes. There’s nothing going on in the RHL, so maybe you should be doing other things, too! In the past, I’ve been willing to create other things for the RHL community to do, but I can’t wear that hat 365 days a year.

The RHL doesn’t pay the bills. It IS a bill. For a little while, I need to go pay the bills.

Other News: Shaonne Morrisonn, injured early in the South Calgary game, will return for Day 7’s home game against Kitchener … Geoff Sanderson, scratched versions the Spartans, scored one of the two Aviator goals in Yellowknife despite not getting regular shifts. No word as to whether he will play against the Mounties … The Aviators will waive both Chris Taylor and Turner Stevenson. Taylor had yet to play, while Stevenson has one assist and a +1 rating in two games. “Purely a financial move,” explained the Aviator front office.

First Day of Class

This pretty much sums up my new life:

I’m at a Pub on campus, about to clear a Newcastle. I just finished by first assignment: a three page read for Introduction to Playwriting. And for the next three months, this stands to be my modus operandi.

Not bad, eh?

It will end soon enough, though. December 14th, I believe, is that day of my last final. It’s also the day when I will have just enough money to move to San Francisco and live the bard’s life. I confess: I’m starting to get scared. The lack of income-thing is something I’m still getting used to.

That cash-flow issue wasn’t helped when I told my first potential consulting gig that I’m electing not to work with them. The job looked to be $1,200-$2,000 worth of income; or, almost exactly enough money to make the San Francisco move safe. As it was, though, the job was causing me stress within 48 hours of my first meeting with the project’s director. It’s easy to say “suck it up and take the money,” but I didn’t quit my previous employment to bring out such axioms. At some point in my future, that axiom may become dogma (writing the captions for Penthouse pictorials: “Audrey loves a shy man who knows when to stop playing hard-to-get”). It’s too early in this game to start compromising.

But such philosophies affect the bank account. I should start a running tally, keep it to the right, to let everybody see the countdown to destitution. Yesterday, I paid over $2,500 in school fees. I’m down to about $1,900. Rent through December will run around $1,650.

The only job prospect is the call I’m hoping to get today for Landmark Theaters. I’ll be an usher in a film house. You shouldn’t scoff, though. The job interview included enticing enducements like “we do pay a little over minimum wage” and “we do expect you to be available on holidays.”

And there’s a dress code.

But in the face of all this, I remember the words of Reverend Run and become reassured: “It’s tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time. It’s tricky.”

Does that quote make sense? Not really. I just wanted to seems a blogger, if only for a second.

Schedule: Are you serious?

Are people really so attached to a 66-game schedule? I get the feeling the comments on the list are just a wind-up. Maybe somebody can post either a comment or an article to their blog as an advocacy of the 66-game schedule. I’m having trouble seeing the arguments and feel like I”m missing something.

I seek enlightenment.

Arse Kicked: It Could Be Worse

Man. U. lost for the first time this season, a 1-0 defeat to the visiting Gunners, and from the reports it seems that Ryan Giggs’ presence was missed. Arsenal controlled the action and won a deserved 1-0 decision.

When you’re one of the elite teams of the league, as both Arsenal and Man. U. are, it’s always difficult losing these types of games. Logic dictates that the fan should be more accepting of loses to better opponents, but wheras upset defeats to foes who are clearly lesser in quality can be written off to back days or lack of preparation, loses to your peers bring a backer’s worse fears into focus: you team may not be good enough to beat the best.

Manchester United won their first four matches, but none of those contests carried the weigh of this Sunday’s Arsenal result. A victory on Saturday against Reading would be a great way to forget this loss, but it would be another win that wouldn’t quite carry the weigh of a victory over Arsenal.

Wasted Preseason for Aviators

For various reasons, the preseason was a waste for the Aviators. It just came at a bad time in my life, and I wasn’t about to use the games to refined anything but the idea that the team’s lineup needs refinement. As Day 1 of the RHL16 season approaches, all of the question marks engendered by a turbulant offseason remain unaddressed.

The depth issues Chris alluded to in his preseason write-up reared their ugly head with the inability to get a second line working. Line isses kept Martin Straka out of the line-up and underplayed, so the second line experiment of Straka-Walz-Sandeson didn’t get tested. The strategy of trying to utilitze Nylander’s 4 passing with Pierre Dagenais led to no goals, so I’ll probably end up moving Derek Armstrong form the fourth line to the second, bumping Drury to second line right wing, and trying this lineup for a while:

Smolinski-Walz-Doan
Dagenais-Armstrong-Drury
Pyatt-Straka-T.Stevenson
Isbister-C.Taylor-Sanderson

It’s a lineup I feel none-too-good about. We’ll have to wait and see how things shake out. I could see some serious line matching in the future.

I need to get back into the RHL mindset. Since the end of free agency, I’ve been in neutral, not able to think creatively about the team. Hopefully this will change soon.

Even Up: Henry to Miss Sunday’s Match

Giggs is out. So is Henry. This same article says Ljungberg’s probably in.

http://www.premierleague.com/fapl.rac?command=forwardOnly&nextPage=enCompFixtPrev&id=2692064

No idea …

… what to think about this, yet.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=379711&cc=5901

American Pastoral

American Pastoral by Philip Roth won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book chronicles the life of Seymour Levov, the American ideal personified, framed by a changing twentieth century United States. After two weeks of bus reading, I was able to devote two days to the read.

I don’t want to make this a review. I’m not sure anybody wants to read that, least of all me. Let me give you my general thoughts before moving on to the two thoughts I took from the book.

I really liked this book, would probably put it in my Top 25 Books Ever Read, if I had such a list. I’m not sure a wide array of people would enjoy this book, so I won’t necessarily recommend it unless a.) you have an interest in American sociology and are not blindly patriotic towards the U.S., or b.) enjoy ambitious writing. For me, the book was a great experience, and I hope to read it again.

Philip Roth has released a couple of other books recently, neither of which should be used as a reason to read Pastoral. Everyman is a novella where the narrative is driven by man’s clinical condition. I have no opinion, either way, on it. In contrast, I would recommend The Plot Against America to a wider swath of readers. Wider than Pastoral, which is a totally different kind of monster.

Two of the ideas from the book hold:

1. The Nature of American Idealism

I watched Before Sunset again last week. In a scene early in the movie, Celine tells Jesse the thing she misses most about her time in the U.S.:

CELINE: There’s a lot of things I miss about the US.
JESSE: Yeah, like what?
CELINE: Well… The overall good mood people have there. Like, you know, even if it can be bullshit sometimes. Like “How you doin’?” “Great!” “How you doin’?” “Great!” “Have a perfect day!”

It’s a quick and dirty way of describing an optimism that is often euphemistically referred to as the American spirit. One of the themes of Roth’s book is an examination of this spirit. Ultimately, the author characterizes these attitudes as excessively idealistic, protraying them as naive. This naivete, when dispelled, fuels the bitter, reactive backlash that leads Americans to characterize the world in black-and-white, good-and-evil, avoiding complex, ganular views of the world.

Of course, the author isn’t this blunt about the theme. These are my conclusions, what I tihnk he’s trying to tell us. But Roth does spend a lot of his narrative asking where Americans are left when their visions of paradise are shown hollow – when the idea of the American pastoral fades into the background of the postwar paradigms. Whether you think he provides answers is up to you.

2. The Cyclical Model of a Family’s Progression

At the heart of Pastoral is Seymour “Swede” Levov: fourth generation American Jew whose forefathers’ work has enabled him to live the American dream. Running a successful company founded by his father, the Swede has created an existence for his wife (former Miss New Jersey) and his only daughter that would be right out of his ancestor’s immigrant dreams: rural affluence, entreprenuerial success, religion and race and socio-economics bowing to the value of defining your own existence.

For Swede’s daughter Merry, who has been born into this museum of a life, the search for meaning is more complex. Whereas Seymour and his father and his father’s father defined meaning in terms of progress and the profit principle, Merry’s life has been provided for her: a parent’s dream for their child, though not a child’s dream for herself. Her father’s outward-looking way of defining himself can’t work in a world without conflict. Her defintion of self is turned around, inverting into a self-examination destined to find fault in those things closest to her. she can’t be the beauty queen that’s he mother of the American dream personified that is her father. What is she? Where are her conflicts, and how are they defined?

Combined with his views on American idealism, Roth seems to ask where Americans are left when forced to find conflicts internally, when the world they’ve constructed for themselves is based on the premise of an American dream which may be as much about appearances and aspirations as it is about the actual way in which the world exists. Does the world exist in black-and-white? Or is there more granularity? Is there a right way to live? To construct and raise a family?

With a background starting with the end of World War II, when America had reached an ideological apex, and ending with the social crisis of Vietnam and Watergate, Roth presents some interesting thoughts on the implications of an American lifestyle.

Man U. Wins, Loses versus Celtic

A 3-2 win over Celtic to open Champions League could have been worse, but with Giggs going down early and the corpse of Rio Ferdinand rearing its ugly head, this match seems to be a shift in momentum for Man. U.

Perhaps, in the coming days, I can convince myself that having Ronaldo back for Sunday’s match will lift the team, as Saha continues to play well and it seems that Rooney brought some energy. The Man U. website is reporting Giggs will be out for a couple of weeks with a hammy problem, so I hope both Rooney and Ronaldo can elevate their play to compensate for the loss.

If you sense some trepidation in my tone, you’re right. Whenever the Devils get off to a good start, there’s always a too-good-to-be-true sense about it. If only I had to ability to watch more games, see for myself if I should or should not be confident.

RMHL: Speeding it Up

Sat down to do some more work on the minor league rating set. Realized with leaving the job and having to turn in my Macbook, my hockey database is useless until I can get some real equipment. My Dell Inspirion with it’s P-III can’t handle viably without some work. I’m hoping to get a new machine within a month anyway. I don’t want to RMHL to wait that long. Im’ giong to blow through the rest of the ratings, take mor eof a “wht do you think of this” approach. I’m eager to get to playing games.

One Hundred Dollar Bets

I’m not saying that I’d be shocked if the Aviators finished fifth in the division, but I would feel comfortable making a $100 bet if wagering, bartering, and bargaining weren’t part of Andy’s contract with the team.

But I was very happy to read that fellow division members are excited about their prospects for RHL16.

Ryan Giggs!

Man U. improved to 4-0 and stayed atop the EPL table with a 1-0 win over Spurs this weekend. I’m very happy with the result, but not so much because of the win. I’m more exciting to see that Ryan Giggs again got the winner and is off to an amazing start for the Red Devils.

Tomorrow, Man U. host Celtic to in their first Champions League match, but I’m having a hard time keeping my mind off Sunday. Man U. Arsenal. Old Trafford. I won’t get to see it, so I’ll just have to home that me not seeing matches has been the good luck charm for this year’s team.

In a way, I feel bad for those who support the Gunners. They always could resort to Yank-esque criticisms of the Devils, and whlie they’ll continue with such rants, Man U. didn’t raid the Serie A castoffs and even sent Ruud Van Nistelroy away before the Premiership started. True, I would prefer Carrick just go away to make this argument easier, but this isn’t your older brother’s Man U. squad.

Arsenal’s supporters will just have to come up with some new material. Though I’m sure they’d prefer a win. Rooney will be back for that match, so whlie a Simmons reader might claim Ewing theory, I like Man U.’s chances.

Reloading: AVI and Vacation

I don’t know if you knew this or not: I’m on vacation right now. I’d share details, but there isn’t much to tell. I’m staying with my parents for a week in Banning, California. It’s pretty mucht he edge of California civilization, about twenty miles west of Palm Springs. The community highlights include a wide array or retirement options, several industrial centers for large-scale shipping needs, and a Walmart!

That I get to see my parents for the first time in a while is the main objective. The location is not important. As long as I get a chance to recharge, I could be taking my vacation anywhere. Even Iqaliut. Last week, in San Diego, I had finals, a couple of job interviews, the last days of my regular employment, and vacation preparations converging their energies on my frontal lobe. That all of those things were dealt with without a major mental malfunction is one of my life’s most proud accomplishments. If I had mixed in a health problem, some relationship issues and a kid, it would have been the better part of a stress decathalon. I was having so much trouble dealing with my tension quadratralon that I would not have even qualified a more challenging event.

But now I’m unemployed, living the next three months off of savings and cnosulting gigs while I complete the five classes remaining for my undergrad. After that, I’ll be relocating to San Francisco. This will be the last season of the San Diego Aviators. I’ve settled on San Francisco Aviators, making it the second time (in the third location) that northern California’s Bay Area will have an RHL team. Real life implications: I don’t know, yet. I’m going there to try and decide what’s next in life. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m trying to make as few decisions as possible.

For now, I’m hoping to have just as much time to enjoy my RHL team, and hopefully with the stress of work gone frmo my life I’ll be less likely to seek enjoyment through picking fights with Mark and provifing my feedback to every RHL mailing list post.

The Vlad stuff? I’ll still do that – too much fun.

I have two RHL projects that I’m hoping to pick up in the next two weeks: RMHL and RHL Hall of Fame. With the relatively reclined pace of the RHL (at the moment), I’ve been having difficultly motivating myself to do anything RHL-wise. But dno’t think I’m at rest. Remember, the last time I took a vacation, the RHL Hall of Fame was “born”.

What is “bus reading”?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s reading on a bus.

Twice a day I take a thirty-minute bus ride – too school, from my home. If I’m lucky there’ll be a seat on which I can sit and read a book, though the buses grow my crowded and more times than not I’m content to stand, let those who are older and those who are going to-and-from their various jobs take their load off.

I could read while I stand, though that would only add to the numerous distractions also present while sitting. The movements of the bus, even after your eye becomes acclimated to the turbulence, slow reading. The array of potential smells, none of which will ever be bottled for sale, combine with the motion to create nausea, limiting me to two-to-three minute burst of reading. Most distracting: people, cell phones, the unwillingness to control their voice’s volume; their trouble with the concept of modern technology bridging the physical distance between their shouting and their partner’s location.

If I get twenty pages done, it’s been a good day, making it difficult to establish a rhythm. As such, I use bus reading to answer these questions:

• Is this book worth finishing?
• Should I devote non-travel time to finishing it?

Financial Factors: City Size

I’m still undecided about implementing my financial-model-ideas into RMHL16. Financies in the minor league will never be very important, but I want to just the minor league as a test bed for potential RHL ideas, so I might make finances just important enough to affect your ability to sign free agents, potentially dictating a franchise relocation. These issues won’t affect your main reason for participating in the minor league: seeing you prospects rack-up stats.

For now, I want to concentrate on the methodology for creating ratings, a task that is getting more nuanced as the leagues move farther away from the NHL. As I’m doing the QMJHL now and looking at Russia, the task is getting both more interesting and more intricate. The sampkle sizes are becoming prehobitively small, and I’m having to think more about reasonable means by which to create the conversion metrics. In short: I shouldn’t get too carried away with other ideas while the ratings are unfinished.

But (by now) you know me: I can’t help it if ideas jump into my head. One of the ideas is a “city-size” model which would classify cities in a simplistic way which would like to realistic effects on revenue. This would be implemented into the financials of the league by taking a base (raw) revenue figure of a game played and multiplying it by a coefficient that corresponds to your city-size. For example, whereas a sell-out has a raw, unadjusted value of $125,000, that total would be multiplied by 1.25 for a super-city, multiplied by .75 for a cow-town (note: I grew up in cow-towns, so I resemble this remark).

The whole financial system I’m envisioning would not have city-size stand alone in determining a team’s ability to earn money. Various other factors I’ve thought of would influence the total: national economy strength, local enconomy strenth, fan loyalty, franchise stability, recent performance, etc. City-size would be a way of factoring in how many potential fans your area has. As we’ve seen in some NHL examples, converting potential fans to attending fans is up to the organization.

One thing the idea of city-size would affect is clustering of citys, like we have in the RHL with some Ontario and Alberta regions. My idea is that sharing a region would split your potential fans so that only super-cities like New York could support such measures. I suspect if the RHL ever went to a model like this, we’d have to grandfather in the current franchises and adjust the revenue.

But I’ve gotten this far in the explanation and not even told you the classifications for cities. I might as well reward you for your patience, right? Well, here are the six city classes I thought of and a brief definition of characteristics a city of that class would have:

note: I’m not sure all my examples are exactly right

Super-City – This city currently has teams in at least three of the four major sports leagues and has (within the last 25 years) been the simultaneous home for two teams from the same league. Examples: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.

Large-City – This city currently has teams in at least three of the four major sports leagues, with two of those teams being at least 25 years old. Examples: Toronto, Phildelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Washington, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Seattle.

Medium-City – This city a.) currently has teams in at least three of the four major sports or b.) has two teams, both of which have been in the city at least 25 years or c.) has one team which has been in the city for 25 years and two or more teams which have or had been in the city within the last twenty-five years (defunct teams count). Examples: San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Miami.

Established City – This city has one team which has been in one of the four major sports leagues for at least 25 years and has or had had one team in another of the four leagues within the last 25 years; or, this city has has two or more current teams. Examples: Vancouver, Montreal, Tampa Bay, Phoenix, Charlotte, New Orleans, Nashville.

Hockey City – This city has had a hockey team or has had a hockey team within the last 25 years which had remained in the city for at least 15 years. Examples: Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hartford, Columbus.

Possible City – This team has had a team in another of the four major sports leagues within the last 10 years, has had a hockey team within the last 25 years, or has a population-base as-large or larger-than 25% of the existing NHL teams. Examples: Las Vegas, Memphis, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Portland.

This is not intended to be a judgement on good city versus bad city, big city versus small city. It’s intended to be a description of what kind of sports town the place is. If you take this list and look at the minor league, you realize there needs to be a seventh category: “Minor League City”. So, seven city-types.

RMHL16 Ineligible Prospect List Updated

I went through all the prospect lists and found which players are likely to be ineligible for the inaugural RMHL16 season. Their names have been added to those previously on the Ineligible Prospect List, which can be found here as well as view the RMHL Home tab, above, which you can go to here. I will add to that page as need be.

Red Devils Blazing

For the first time in three seasons, I’m legitimately interested in my Premiership side: Man. U. It’s not just because of the World Cup, though that helps us Yanks who have little access to the world football leagues. This seasons’ Red Devil side is a lot more humble than the austentacious spenders of years past. It’s like the Yankees cutting their payroll from a stratospherical $200 million to the $120 million of the Red Sox domain. All of a sudden, you feel OK rooting for them because the joy in winning has returned.

And that Karma has translated into three wins to start the season, posting a +8 differential in the interim. The last two matches have been won without Wayne Rooney, who will sit out one more match while serving a suspension. Tomorrow the devils host Spurs, a team looking to write a shakey start that has them with only three points through three matches.

Though it was their least impressive match as a team, Satuday’s 2-1 victory over Watford was my season highlight thus far. Why? My favorite player since I was young, Ryan Giggs, got the winner int he 51st minute. Giggs has spent his entire career in United’s midfield, but because he is Welsh, he has not had the international exposure for a national team that most stars get. He turns 33 this year, so his best days are behind him, but he’s still part of the squad’s backbone, and it would be great to see the club have another run of dominance to close out his career.

Not that anybody else would want that.

RMHL16 Ineligible Prospects

The first season of the minor hockey league will have a number of prospects who will be not playing. There are various reasons for this, be it age, injury, or general unavailability.

You can checked the list here. As I move through the ratings, I will update this list.