Spotted!

Both spotted on Hamilton Ave on Sunday, May 4th.

1991 Eagle Premier

1979 VW Rabbit

One of these is cool, the other not so much. Can you tell which is which?

Smart car = iMac

Simply put, the Smart car is a lifestyle purchase, much like an iMac, when a much cheaper Windows machine could do the job, or for that matter a BMW, when a much cheaper KIA can do the job. Also like the iMac Apple-heads there is nothing you can say to sway those who believe in the Smart car. They believe it's the best thing since sliced bread and you just don't get it.

However, no matter how strong their faith, I don't feel that the Smart will be a great success. There are many reasons for my feeling that the car is doomed to failure. The reasons include, but are not limited to the fact that; it is an impractical 2 seater, it's underpowered, it doesn't really get all that great mileage compared with diesels, hybrids and cars like the Honda Fit, it has a 2year/24,000 mile warranty (which makes in the worst warranty in the NA market) and it's not all that safe.

Safety is the issue that really gets the Smart-heads twisted up in a tizzy. The mere suggestion that the Smart is less than a Volvo in safety will result in screams about the Smart's passenger compartment safety cage and pictures of the Smart's cage surviving impacts into barriers, which is what safety testing consists of. Unfortunately in the real world there are more than just immobile walls, there are other cars and they are moving.

Fact: The Smart can hit a wall at 65 mph and the doors will still open.

Fact: The Smart will spin like a pinball if it hits another moving car.

The smart is not a tin can that will collapse, this it true. But F still equals MA and when your Smart meets a sedan in an intersection you are a goner. Not because you get crushed, no, but rather because you receive massive internal trauma from deceleration and centrifugal forces. I could do the math for you but a YouTube video is worth 3,564 words.



There will be a short term rush for the Smart as people buy them because they are cool, different, cute, European, etc. But in the long term the car will not see success. After all, if it's lost money in Europe, the market it was designed for, ever year of its manufacturing, then there is no reason to see it achieving success in the NA market. None at all.

Now who's the boss?

India was once the Crown Jewels of the British Empire. Now an Indian car company has purchased the Crown Jewels of the once proud British automotive industry. I have to wonder what a small, developing world, car maker wants to do with a small volume, high cost, nameplate like Jag. Do they have the billions needed and the engineering experience required to develop new and competitive vehicles needed to go against Jag's competition? Or did the guys at Tata do this simply to give the British a big old raspberry. Time will tell.

Would you like curry with that?

They don't make them like they used to.

Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776...
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Pristina, February 17th, 2008...
" We declare Kosovo to be a democratic, secular and multiethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and equal protection under the law. We shall protect and promote the rights of all communities in Kosovo and create the conditions necessary for their effective participation in political and decision-making processes."

Remember this day little girl... remember.

The ARR® for 2008.

The Alternative Recruiting Rankings® provided to you by DublinSaab.

The way that recruiting classes are assessed is by giving each player that is recruited by a given team a certain point value and then adding up the total value of all payers ranked to give a total score. It is these scores that are used to rank a schools class.

While this is the industry standard I feel that it misses the point. Under the accepted system a school with a large number of mediocre players can have a class ranking higher than a school with a small number of great players. The problem with this is that a school like USC which only needs a few players to augment the tremendous talent they already have may have a lower class ranking than a school like Alabama, which at the moment needs as many players as they can get as they have little in the way of talent. This gives fans an unrealistic assessment of the future viability of their school.

This is where I come in with my ARR® where I rank the individual score of the average recruit and not the aggregate score. So, with no further a due…

Rank	School	Avg. Player Score	Traditional Ranking*
1	USC	121.68	7
2	Notre Dame	119.30	2
3	Florida	118.18	3
4	Ohio State	117.31	9
5	Oklahoma	115.33	5
6	Georgia	96.71	6
7	Texas	95.95	14
8	Michigan	92.29	10
9	Alabama	88.62	1
10	UCLA	83.65	13
11	LSU	82.08	11
12	Clemson	81.27	12
13	FL State	75.03	8
14	Miami (FL)	74.76	4
15	Colorado	71.90	15
16	Oregon	71.53	19
17	Pitt	62.05	29
18	Texas A&M	61.75	16
19	S. Carolina	60.09	22
20	N. Carolina	59.56	34
21	Maryland	58.95	32
22	Tennessee	57.06	36
23	Mizzou	52.78	26
24	Cal	50.95	35
25	Penn St.	50.00	42

The team that faired the worst under the ARR® was Miami (FL) which fell 10 spots due to having a large class, but not a lot of great players and the team that came out like roses was Pen State raising 17 spots thanks to a small class of decent players.

I believe that the ARR® is a better ranking system because it shows the quality of players a stable program like USC or Ohio State are bringing in without the large class bias of schools with troubles or under transitions like Miami (FL), Alabama or Minnesota which came up #17 in the traditional rankings but pulls up a more appropriate #31 in the ARR®.

Feel free to comment!

*These are the rankings as according to Rivals.com, other sources may have slightly different ranks and scores but you get the idea. Don’t you?

First BCS upset for the 2007 year

USC 49 - Illinois 17... yup.

Georgia 41 - Hawaii 10... that's about right

WVU 48 - Oklahoma 28... Whoa! That's not what people thought, and it wasn't that close.


White has this thing in his arm and you OU want it... but you aren't going to get it.

Oklahoma was riped to bits by a Mountaineer squad everyone expect to fold after the loss to Pitt and the defection of coach Rodriguez. Congrats to them. I was at the start of the game routing against WVU simply to be able to poke at AngryEeer over at LoserWithSocks but while watching the game I couldn't help but be caught up in the excitement as WVU just wanted it more and pushed OU all over the field.

Busted

The illustrious former Senate majority leader Goerge Mitchell has released his report upon his investigation of "performance enhancing" drug use in Major League Baseball. Whoopty Doo! It's not like every one hasn't known that players have been juicing for the last 10 years or so. They might as well have had a press conference to announce that the AL was going to continue to use the Designated Hitter. Nothing new here.

Unlike all other 45 year olds Clemens needed drugs to keep playing in the MBL, poor guy, must be a genetic defect or something.
As for the press's "surprise" at Roger Clemens being the #2 guy in the report behind Barry Bonds I have to wonder about their intelligence. Come on, the guy's a 1000 years old and built like a brick shit house. What's the big surprise?

As for the press's concern that this could ruin baseball... PLEASE! This will have all the impact on the future of the game as the Dead Ball era has today.

But I guess it makes for an easy story to get in for their deadline.

The Dublinsaab inaugural FBS playoffs

First let me lay out my vision for a FBS (formerly Div I-A) playoff.

The playoffs would consist of 16 teams, the 11 conference champions and 5 At-Large slots. The 5 At-Large slots would go to the top 5 teams in a BCS style ranking system, for this hypothetical I will go ahead and use the current BCS rankings. This puts the top 12 teams in the BCS in to the playoffs.

Then the teams are seeded, again using some sort of BCS style ranking. For this I will use the actual BCS for the 14 teams ranked in the BCS and the CBS Sportsline120 ranking for the other two teams. This gives us the following as the seeding.


This gives us a 1st round, quarter finals, semi finals and the TRUE Championship game. In this system the higher ranked team has home field advantage for the 1st round, quarter and semi finals with the Championship Game held at a neutral site.

In order to ensure the neutrality of the Championship Game the attending schools will be given the same number of tickets and the total number of tickets given to the school will not be below 90% of the seats in the host stadium. This won’t ensure that the stadium is evenly split on game day, after all Georgia is going to bring more fans than Hawaii – if that ended up being the championship game – but at least the schools start out on an even field.

Things like how many games should be in the regular season, when the playoff games should be held, etc. are nothing more than logistical concerns that can be worked out, they are not impediments. This is my vision.

There are however those who would disagree with my vision for a playoff, not in the particulars but rather they stand athwart the very idea of a playoff for FBS. Let’s review the main arguments;

Academics: This argument states that most players are not going to ever even get a sniff at the NFL let alone get a big payday so forcing the “student” athletes to play and extra 2 or 3 games in a playoff could cause irreparable damage to their education and harm them later in life. This is a high sounding argument that has some truth to it, the truths being a) most won’t ever play in the NFL and b) extra games could hurt a player’s grades. The big short coming of this argument is that it isn’t so much an argument against playoffs for the FBS as much as it is an argument against playoffs in all collegiate athletics. Further weakening this argument is that the primary pushers of it are the very same college presidents that willingly signoff on playoffs for all their other varsity programs. Do all basketball players in the field of 64 make it in the NBA? Are the students playing in all other sports including FPS (formerly Div I-AA), Div-II and Div-III football all Rhoads scholars and only the players in Div I-A football having trouble with studies? This twisted thinking leaves the proponents of this idea looking like either giant hypocrites, if they apply it only to one sport at one level or silly fools if they apply it to all sports. Argument defeated!

Regular Season: There is an argument that worries that a playoff system would lessen the value of the regular season. Now it may be that in some playoff proposals this could be true, but I have no interest in defending the plans of others. I do feel that in my system not only will the regular season not be lessened, but rather it will be made even more important as a conference championship gets an automatic bid to the playoffs. In the current system you lose a few early season non-conference games your season is over for the MNC, sure you could come back and win your conference but big whoop, especially if your conference doesn’t have a BCS tie-in, and remember 45% of conferences in the FBS do not have a BCS connection. In my system more teams stay in the hunt longer creating more excitement. The proponents of this argument would counter that for the elite programs like a Florida or Ohio State a few loses don’t mean anything because they can still make the playoffs. I would reply with, “Home Field”. Having a chance to win a spot in the playoffs keeps schools who currently are no the outside looking in excited. Having a chance to claim the Home Field keeps the big boys pushing for an undefeated season. In my system the regular season becomes even more important that it is now. Argument defeated!

Bowl Tradition: This line of thinking goes that the FBS has a rich and unique tradition in the bowl system and moving to a playoff would ruin all that makes big time college football great. This is however, nothing more than Buggy Whips and Vaporware. Buggy Whips in the sense that it attempts to protect something that has outlived it’s usefulness. After all the first bowl game was played 105 years ago when the US only had 45 states and was still fighting the Indian Wars, Germany, England and France were vying to be the top world empire, women weren’t allowed to vote and the Greeks were still fighting the Ottomans for territory. In the past 105 years much has changed and the game of college football has passed the bowl system by, demanding to hold on to it is like demanding that the government protect Buggy Whip makers from bankruptcy in a world were everyone is driving a car, not a buggy. Replacing the MNC with a playoff won’t ruin the FBS, it will enrich it. Then there’s the Vaporware aspect of the argument, the idea that we shouldn’t mess with the tradition of the bowls. What tradition? For the first few decades there was only one game, the Rose Bowl, then by 1940 there were 5, by 1950 there were 8, by 1970 there were 11, by 1980 there were 15, by 1990 there were 25. Today there are 32 games… THIRTY TWO. This means that 64 of 120 FBS teams will be playing in “richly traditional” bowl game, more than half of the teams. What is so special about the current system? Let’s get more into this tradition we don’t want to mess with. There are 32 games this year. There are 50 defunct, out a business bowl games. With the exception of a few biggies bowl games come and go with more frequency that a banana republic, where’s the tradition? Bowl games once all had great names like “Blue Bonnet” and “Boot Hill” but today all but the Rose either put a corporate name first like the “Tostitos Fiesta Bowl or have one outright like the “Capitol One”, “Outback” or “Chik-fil-A”. Again, where’s the tradition. Bowls used to be played in December with only the Rose in January, then there were a small hand full in January making a “January Bowl” a special thing, but today there are 11 games in January. There is no tradition, outside of the Rose Bowl, in a single bowl game. We shouldn’t protect that which should be part of the past and we should hold steadfast to that which doesn’t exist. The proponents would, seeing their world collapse around them reach out for the claim that a playoff would lead to the death of the bowl games. Really? First do we really need the PetroSun bowl between two 6-6 teams? Second, the NIT seams to be getting along fine in the face of the NCAA March madness tourney, so why couldn’t the 3 hour corporate infomercials, otherwise known as a bowl game, be able to continue. My system certainly wouldn’t outlaw bowl games, just render them meaningless to the national championship debate, which it should be stated they all ready are since the MNC is now taking place in a separate game and not part of any bowl rotation. Argument Defeated!

Now that I have defeated the 3 major arguments against having a playoff I will address the reason why we won’t. Money.

Under the current flawed silly system we have the school presidents control who gets the money from the TV contracts, bowl game and everything else around FBS football. This is in difference to all other college sports where the NCAA controls the purse strings. The college administrators will never agree to give up control of the money to the NCAA, even more so considering that football has more revenue than all other college sports combined, including basketball.

So, there you have my proposal, my refuting of the arguments against it and the reason it will never happen.

Enjoy the bowl season!

Color Theory

LSU reminds me of mustard and grape. OSU reminds me of blood and steel.