Morgan Wick

Long live social media, king of the Internet!

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All right. I’m making my deal with the social media devil.

In preparation for the new series starting later today, there will now be an insane collection of sharing buttons on every post on Da Blog, powered by ShareThis. We have Facebook, we have Twitter, we have MySpace, we have Digg, we have more ways of sharing all the brilliant thoughts on Da Blog than you can shake a stick at. We probably have more than can fit on one line on the screen. Don’t have your favorite obscure social networking site? Let me know and I’ll look to see if I can add it. I want all my bases covered. I want as much of the power of the social network on my side as possible.

Well, and I like the visual of all the social networking icons all in a row with different numbers of shares. Though it would be better if more than just Facebook and Twitter were rendered in their own styles. And if tooltips popped up in case you didn’t recognize a site. (Most sites’ buttons should now have clues to their identity.)

Oh, and I finally got rid of the repeating effect on the header image. It’s weird: on my old laptop, I didn’t see it and I don’t think I thought it was ever going to be an issue, but on my new laptop, which supposedly uses the same resolution, I do.

An important announcement on the future of Da Blog

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You may have noticed that posting on Da Blog has slowed to an absolute crawl this year, and I’m long overdue for an explanation. Simply put, I’ve failed at my intended plan for Da Blog.

Call me a wide-eyed idealist, but I believe everyone should be able to make a living doing what they enjoy doing. By which I don’t mean simply “having fun” but whatever their passion is, what they would do if there were no need to make money. If you enjoy making tables and chairs and get a release out of it then maybe you should consider taking up a career in carpentry. This is, in fact, the only reason the Internet has created so much content that’s not directly paid for: people doing what they enjoy doing, people doing what they want to do. There are probably a wide variety of fields that I would be good at, but they wouldn’t be me. I would be working solely to pick up a paycheck. I want to work on what I’m interested in.

I created Da Blog, and later the forerunner to MorganWick.com, in large part to serve as a repository for my work on topics I was fascinated by, out of a hope that enough people would be interested in what I had to say about them to make Da Blog popular and possibly allow me to make some money off it without having to work in some grunt job or something out of a Dilbert cartoon. Once Da Blog was popular, I could use it to push some of my more controversial but profound thinking and build my true greatness. I’ve made several attempts over the years to build Da Blog’s popularity, from the various sports projects to Sandsday to the webcomic reviews to 2008’s October of Politics fiasco.

The webcomic reviews have been the most successful, or should I say least unsuccessful, of the lot… so naturally there may be no part of the site that has suffered more over the past year. One of the top two most popular posts in the history of Da Blog was the 2009 State of Webcomics Address, a post I was reconsidering my thinking on even as I was posting it, only to watch in horror as I was called on to defend views I was no longer sure I held, and given rebuttals I wasn’t sure I didn’t already agree with. One of my biggest regrets is never having posted a clarification to the Address giving a more refined version of my thoughts.

That I haven’t had the work ethic to work on all the posts I’d like to, that I haven’t been as fast or as committed as I’d like to be, has always been a problem of mine hindering Da Blog, but my time has also been restricted by the need to work on schoolwork. I’ve always attempted to juggle schoolwork and Da Blog, with a sensitivity towards the time-sensitivity of much of what I work on on Da Blog, and a desire to build upon what little I have. Honestly, my work on Da Blog has wound up having the impact of limiting the amount of schoolwork that gets done, and I wind up prioritizing the assignments that seem to me to be really important.

Everything started spiralling downhill last summer of 2009, when I took a summer class. Under normal circumstances, at my school most people take three classes at a time; as it happened, through a series of events early in my college career I was led to the conclusion that I was best off taking two classes at a time. But summer classes are very condensed and designed to be taken one class at a time, meaning for about a month, my schedule was equivalent to taking three classes at a time. The resulting time crunch was such that I decided to abandon following my RSS feeds (except for Order of the Stick).

A month may not seem like much to catch up on, but even before all this, my RSS feeds took so long to catch up on that I had to spend a significant portion of every single (week)day catching up on them. Combine this with the fact I wasn’t quite done with the work the course required, and while I made a fairly sizeable dent in catching up on my RSS feeds by the time regular classes started up again, it was far from complete.

Due to procrastination on my part, I was signed up for only one class when classes started up again instead of two, but fall is typically one of the busiest periods of the year for Da Blog because of all the football stuff, and my progress on my RSS feeds, slowed by the launch of the new site, had been derailed by my decision to commense an OOTS archive binge that, because of a related associated project, turned out to take far, far longer than I ever anticipated. Then, right as I finally finished the work for the summer class, the screen of my laptop broke, and it took at least a month before I finally got a new one, which hamstrung the work on the football projects and halted the archive binge, since I was having a hard enough time working on the work for my one class without a laptop. I still haven’t caught up on more than one feed since then.

The Christmas break was utterly unproductive, so I was still behind on the OOTS archive binge. That project wound up dominating my time for a good chunk of February, and in the meantime an old enemy flared up again. Despite writing some occasionally angry posts over the course of 2009, I had, in fact, figured that I had mostly shaken my old tendency to flare up in angry outbursts that got me into trouble and kicked out of classes. But one result of that was that I stopped seeing my therapist, and didn’t start up again even as the stress of not being able to keep up on my RSS feeds and the OOTS archive binge started getting to me.

So the end result was, I wound up kicked out of a class. Then, right as the quarter was ending, I had another outburst that would have gotten me kicked out of the other class if the quarter wasn’t ending. And at that point I was given an ultimatum: If you want to stay at Seattle University, you better make damn sure this crap never happens again. Otherwise you can go off to some online school for all we care.

For over a week I thought about it. On the one hand, leaving Seattle University would mean going all-in on Da Blog and hoping it works out, when it hasn’t worked out yet. But on the other hand, the requirements for staying at school – the steps needed to take to reduce the chances for another incident to as close to zero as possible – would involve strictly keeping up with the assignments and not falling behind on them at all, lest the stress of having to catch up cause problems, and to maintain that pace would require me to virtually abandon Da Blog for the two-plus years it would take to complete my degree.

I did eventually decide not to take the quitter’s way out, and I’m still going to Seattle University for the foreseeable future. But that means I can’t really juggle Da Blog and my schoolwork the way I used to while trying to get ahead with Da Blog anymore. I intended to use the summer as a way to wrap up a few projects of mine (as well as more schoolwork I didn’t get done during the actual school year) while making a last-ditch effort to make Da Blog popular enough to support itself, but thanks to TV Tropes and some other distractions, I wound up doing virtually none of that. Honestly, I don’t think that, at least in my case, colleges do a good enough job of reflecting and supporting their students’ true passions, instead boxing them in to a certain mode of living and learning.

Over the next couple of weeks I do intend to get one of my projects out of the way, an attempted reprise of the October of Politics with lessons learned from the past, but after that – unless it catches on – expect posting frequency to drop precipitously, and for the paucity of posts seen over the past year to become the norm. I’ll still get out a new State of Webcomics Address containing the aforementioned clarification of my views, and even finally catch up on my RSS feeds. But I’m probably not going to test the Line of Sight rankings this year, and once my desktop gets fixed I’m probably going to adopt the 2007 solution of posting only the RTFs of the regular College Football Rankings, at least for this year. Beyond that webcomics posts are probably going to be restricted to the summer only if at all, and summer in general should see the greater portion of the posts for the year over the next two years.

I’m not shutting down posting on Da Blog entirely, but if this new project doesn’t work out I think it’s very possible I may be back to square one in terms of finding something to do with my future. I need to find something that won’t grind down my soul, something that will properly use my abilities and that I’ll be able to enjoy at least a little (I need to find a word between “enjoy” and “tolerate”). Da Blog seemed like the best approach for my affinities, and I may now be back to Plan B, and the road ahead seems downright murky.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 5

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:20 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:20 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 the first year of flexible scheduling, but are now protected after Week 5.
  • Three teams can appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. At this writing, no team is completely tapped out at any measure, although the Jets have five primetime appearances and can’t be flexed out of any of them, which is a problem since five other teams also have five primetime appearances and can be flexed out of them. (So naturally this turned into the Year of Parity!) NBC appearances for all teams: MIN 2, NO 2, DAL 3 (1 flexible), WSH 2, NYG 3 (1 flexible), IND 3 (1 flexible), NYJ 1, MIA 1, CHI 1, PHI 3 (2 flexible), SF 1, GB 3 (1 flexible), PIT 3 (1 flexible), NE 2 (1 flexible), SD 2 (both flexible), BAL 1 (flexible), CIN 1 (flexible). All primetime appearances for all teams: MIN 4, NO 4, DAL 5 (1 flexible), WSH 3, NYG 4 (1 flexible), IND 5 (1 flexible), NYJ 5, MIA 3, CHI 4, PHI 5 (2 flexible), SF 4, GB 4 (1 flexible), PIT 5 (1 flexible), NE 4 (1 flexible), SD 5 (2 flexible), BAL 4 (1 flexible), CIN 3 (1 flexible), ATL 2, HOU 3, TEN 2, CAR 1, ARI 2, KC 1, JAX 1, DEN 1.
  • A rule that may have come to light late 2008 but that, given its restrictiveness and lateness in coming to light, I’m having trouble accepting, is that the balance of primetime games taken from FOX and CBS can’t go beyond 22-20 one way or the other. The current tally is FOX 18, CBS 17; with tentative games, the tally is FOX 21, CBS 20. With this rule in place, Weeks 12, 13, and 16 cannot be flexed away from NFC road games without making up for it in Weeks 11, 14, 15, and 17.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 21):

  • Tentative game: NY Giants @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: Both teams at 3-2, so could go either way, but looking good for now.
  • Likely protections: Packers-Vikings (FOX) and Colts-Patriots (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Jets-Texans, Chiefs-Cardinals, Redskins-Titans, with Falcons-Rams, Saints-Seahawks, and Raiders-Steelers as dark horses, all very dependent on how everything shakes out. (Given how chaotic this year is shaking out to be, that goes for all of these weeks and goes double.) CBS would probably protect Jets-Texans based strictly on records, but there’s only one win of difference. Fox would likewise protect Redskins-Titans based strictly on records, and may be tempted to do so anyway, considering Brett Favre may end up retiring by Week 11 – but the temptation of him playing his former team will be too much, especially with an NFC East game as the tentative. (I’ve even seen quite a few people suggesting leaving this week unprotected.)

Week 12 (November 28):

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 2-3, but the Chargers always start slow. But there are some ominous signs in the Colts’ losses…
  • Likely protections: Reportedly, Eagles-Bears (FOX) and Titans-Texans, Jags-Giants, or nothing (CBS). Bucs-Ravens is slightly better than Eagles-Bears, but the latter contains more name teams and bigger markets.
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving Weekend, paucity of good games. Besides the potentially protected games, Packers-Falcons, Bucs-Ravens, and who knows, maybe even Vikings-Redskins or Chiefs-Seahawks.

Week 13 (December 5):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 3-1, potentially deciding the AFC North. Extremely good chance of keeping its spot.
  • Likely protections: Falcons-Bucs or Cowboys-Colts, more likely the latter (FOX) and Jags-Titans if anything (CBS). This week has only one good CBS game but a better tentative compared to the other CBS unprotected candidate.
  • Other possible games: Redskins-Giants or the potentially protected games, with Chiefs-Broncos, Rams-Cardinals, and Saints-Bengals as potential dark horses.

Week 14 (December 12):

  • Tentative game: Philadelphia @ Dallas
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 1-3, but an NFC East game always = ratings, so Fox would still be happy to take this game. This is probably still the most likely unprotected week for Fox.
  • Likely protections: Patriots-Bears (CBS) and probably nothing (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Giants-Vikings and Bucs-Redskins are the main Fox protection candidates if they did protect something. Broncos-Cardinals, Jags-Raiders, Bengals-Steelers, Rams-Saints, and Chiefs-Chargers are dark horses.

Week 15 (December 19):

  • Tentative game: Green Bay @ New England
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 3-1 means a pretty good chance of keeping its spot.
  • Likely protections: Jets-Patriots (CBS) and Saints-Ravens or Redskins-Cowboys, more likely the latter (FOX). CBS would be putting potential big AFC South games at risk (see below) with a Fox tentative game, but not only might Jets-Patriots decide the division, but the winner could get a first-round bye with the loser going on the road in the first round.
  • Other possible games: Texans-Titans, Jags-Colts, or Eagles-Giants, with Chiefs-Rams and Falcons-Seahawks as dark horses.

Week 16 (December 26)

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Cincinnati
  • Prospects: Both at 2-3, and the Bengals will have trouble catching up to the Ravens and Steelers.
  • Likely protections: Jets-Bears (CBS) and Giants-Packers (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Texans-Broncos, Chiefs-Titans, Colts-Raiders, Redskins-Jaguars, or Seahawks-Bucs. Vikings-Eagles has an outside shot, but not enough for Fox to protect it – Brett Favre might not even make it to that game.

Week 17 (January 3):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 4

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that this was written with the 2007 season in mind):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 11
  • In effect during Weeks 11-17
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:20 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:20 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 the first year of flexible scheduling, but are now protected after Week 5.
  • Three teams can appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. At this writing, no team is completely tapped out at any measure, although the Colts have five primetime appearances and can’t be flexed out of any of them, which is a problem since three other teams also have five primetime appearances and can be flexed out of them. NBC appearances for all teams: MIN 2, NO 2, DAL 3 (1 flexible), WSH 2, NYG 3 (1 flexible), IND 3 (1 flexible), NYJ 1, MIA 1, CHI 1, PHI 3 (2 flexible), SF 1, GB 3 (1 flexible), PIT 3 (1 flexible), NE 2 (1 flexible), SD 2 (both flexible), BAL 1 (flexible), CIN 1 (flexible). All primetime appearances for all teams: MIN 4, NO 4, DAL 5 (1 flexible), WSH 3, NYG 4 (1 flexible), IND 5 (1 flexible), NYJ 5, MIA 3, CHI 4, PHI 5 (2 flexible), SF 4, GB 4 (1 flexible), PIT 5 (1 flexible), NE 4 (1 flexible), SD 5 (2 flexible), BAL 4 (1 flexible), CIN 3 (1 flexible), ATL 2, HOU 3, TEN 2, CAR 1, ARI 2, KC 1, JAX 1, DEN 1.
  • A rule that may have come to light late 2008 but that, given its restrictiveness and lateness in coming to light, I’m having trouble accepting, is that the balance of primetime games taken from FOX and CBS can’t go beyond 22-20 one way or the other. The current tally is FOX 18, CBS 17; with tentative games, the tally is FOX 21, CBS 20. With this rule in place, Weeks 12, 13, and 16 cannot be flexed away from NFC road games without making up for it in Weeks 11, 14, 15, and 17.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 21):

  • Tentative game: NY Giants @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: Both teams at 2-2, so could go either way.
  • If protections came this week: Packers-Vikings (FOX) and Colts-Patriots (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Jets-Texans, Chiefs-Cardinals, and Falcons-Rams, all very dependent on how everything shakes out. (Given how chaotic this year is shaking out to be, that goes for all of these weeks and goes double.) CBS would probably protect Jets-Texans based strictly on records.

Week 12 (November 28):

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: Another battle of 2-2 teams, but the Chargers always start slow. But there are some ominous signs in the Colts’ losses…
  • If protections came this week: Packers-Falcons or Bucs-Ravens (FOX) and Titans-Texans if anything (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving Weekend, paucity of good games. Besides the potentially protected games, Chiefs-Seahawks, Eagles-Bears, and who knows, maybe even Vikings-Redskins or Jags-Giants.

Week 13 (December 5):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 3-1 v. 3-1, potentially deciding the AFC North. Extremely good chance of keeping its spot.
  • If protections came this week: Falcons-Bucs or Cowboys-Colts (FOX) and Chiefs-Broncos if anything (CBS).
  • Other possible games: Saints-Bengals, Jags-Titans, Redskins-Giants, Rams-Cardinals, or the potentially protected games. Because of the paucity of good games Week 12 I suspect CBS will still protect this week.

Week 14 (December 12):

  • Tentative game: Philadelphia @ Dallas
  • Prospects: 2-2 v. 1-2, but an NFC East game always = ratings, so Fox would still be happy to take this game; this is their likeliest spot for an unprotected week.
  • If protections came this week: Patriots-Bears (CBS) and Giants-Vikings if anything (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Chiefs-Chargers, Bengals-Steelers, Rams-Saints, or Bucs-Redskins.

Week 15 (December 19):

  • Tentative game: Green Bay @ New England
  • Prospects: 3-1 v. 3-1 means a good chance of keeping its spot.
  • If protections came this week: Jets-Patriots (CBS) and Saints-Ravens or Redskins-Cowboys (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Texans-Titans, Chiefs-Rams, or Jags-Colts.

Week 16 (December 26)

  • Tentative game: San Diego @ Cincinnati
  • Prospects: Both at 2-2, and the Bengals will have trouble catching up to the Ravens and Steelers.
  • If protections came this week: Jets-Bears (CBS) and Vikings-Eagles (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Texans-Broncos, Chiefs-Titans, Giants-Packers, or Seahawks-Bucs.

Week 17 (January 3):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

Whatever happened to Around the Horn?

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Despite making fun of it in my Around the Horn Drinking Game (which needs a serious update), I’ve always been a fan of ESPN’s Around the Horn, and haven’t agreed with the show’s haters, continuing a long trend of me not making such a big deal out of certain things certain groups love to hate. Despite what many say, I’ve always found it a substantially different show from Pardon the Interruption (though admittedly not necessarily for the better). The panelists bring entertaining personalities, the use of four panelists instead of two (plus a moderator) leads to a distinct dynamic and interplay of opinions, and the game-show-format gimmick keeps people interested all the way to the end (though this year’s backwards-show April Fool’s joke put the final nail in the coffin for anyone who thought the scoring wasn’t scripted).

And yet, the show’s transition into HD has me considering dropping it. I feel like the ATH I’ve been watching the past eight or so years is gone, even though the show itself hasn’t changed. Part of the problem is the bulky two-line rundown, which looks bulky in both HD AND SD; it uses too big a font for HD, and it’s THREE lines in SD, because of a constant Twitter advertisement where the BottomLine is in HD. The idea was good, but the execution could have used some work. (In fact, just by making some relatively minor changes to the rundown, ATH might have gotten away with not letterboxing the show in SD, which is one of the reasons the font is so big in the first place!)

But that’s a relatively minor, though persistent, problem. The way the arrow blocks the entire score when Reali uses the joystick is annoying but understandable as well. My biggest problem is with the rest of the graphics package. It’d be hard for me to put my finger on any one thing. After all, the opening title graphic is trying to ape the old one as much as possible, and even the background sound during each topic is the same. But everything’s just so… busy. Converting the old cartoony graphics into a more 3-D look (which is not the same as trying to adapt it for 3-D TVs – seriously, why the hell would you think that?) calls attention to how cartoony they are, and a lot of the little things are noisy, such as a little chime that plays as the graphic introducing each panelist appears (barely audible but annoying when there’s four of them in quick succession) and to pop up the face time clock. The way the new mute indicator zooms in, in particular, is not only noisy but doesn’t quite match how Reali uses the mute button, so when he mutes someone several times in succession, the indicator zooms in, disappears immediately, zooms in again…

Part of this is “look what we can do now that we’re HD”, and maybe I’m just whining because I don’t like change, but PTI managed to preserve as much about it as they could, and I feel like ESPN or their graphic design firm approached ATH with a certain philosophy, to go whole-hog with some of its cartoony elements. This seems especially evident with the faint arcade-like sound effects near the very beginning of the show and at the halftime recap, the chaotic backgrounds behind the panelists, the unnecessary graphic that appears when someone’s eliminated, and with the way the announcer says “the show of competitive banter” at the start of the show. It’s like they’re trying to make ATH seem like that piece of execrement known as SportsNation (now that’s a lame PTI knockoff), and while that may gel with the image of the show the haters have, it’s not what the show really is. It’s trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. As much as the show has fun and sometimes covers offbeat topics, it’s not an LCD kind of show like SportsNation, and it’s not really ADD TV. The cartoony graphics used to give the show a vaguely public-access, indie feel, but now they make it feel overproduced.

I’m not going to leave ATH until the end of the year, if only because I devised a points system for a year long “ATH Championship” that I want to play out, and hopefully by then they’ll have toned down some of the graphics (or at least the mute indicator)… but they could just as easily change the music to make it seem even MORE cartoony, and keep trying to shoehorn ATH into being a show that it’s not.

But that may already have been a lost cause. Reali mentioned on Wednesday’s show that the original idea of ATH was that each panelist would report stories specific to their region; this was reflected in the map in the old studio, and in the description that appears when I bring up the show in my on-screen program guide, which goes something like: “Columnists from three time zones report local stories and debate hot topics.” (Originally that was four time zones, but for a long time Mariotti never missed a show, meaning that pattern couldn’t hold whenever Cowlishaw or then-Morning-News-reporter Blackistone showed up.) This seems to have already gone by the wayside by the time I started watching less than a year into its existence, and I don’t know how it could have ever worked outside the face-time segment. (According to Wikipedia, originally there were no eliminations and three of the four panelists got face time in seconds equal to their scores, but that too had been left behind by the time I started watching.)

What might have been had ATH stuck to that idea? It could have been a decidedly different show, especially if it ditched the game show gimmick but kept the moderator to give it structure. That would have made it even more of a PTI ripoff, but perhaps many of the same haters could have praised ESPN for trying something different. Heck, a good chunk of the subsequent history of ESPN and the creation of several shows destined to be called PTI clones could have wound up very different. I’d like to see a show where people from different regions of the country talked about stories from their respective regions and gave distinct perspectives on more national matters (and something in team sports would have to be as big as “The Decision” or Roy Halladay’s no-hitter to truly be called national), but right now the people on ATH are bigger than where they come from, as the geographical moves of Woody Paige and Kevin Blackistone show. We could have a showdown that would be as much about Los Angeles versus Chicago as about Bill Plaschke versus Jay Mariotti. But the closest thing we’ve had to that is Versus’ ATH-meets-SportsNation show Fanarchy, and there’s a very good reason that show’s not on the air anymore… so we’re left with ESPN’s proliferation of local sports sites.

#newtwitter and the Future of the Web

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Twitter has opened things up for anyone to “build a better Twitter”. I’m not really sure what the point is – either Twitter’s admitting their site sucks or it works just fine and there’s no need to use something else…
-From the introduction to Da Tweeter.

I didn’t get any of my proposed book on the Internet written over the summer, and quite possibly never will. Already on the way out, the kairotic moment for the book may now have passed. This is partly because the Internet has substantially matured; for much of the time I was thinking of writing the book, it would have been trivially easy to state the Internet’s importance (and often stated), but now the book would be much more of a look back than taking place during the Internet revolution and how it changes our lives. I had planned for the book’s subtitle to be How the Internet Changes Everything; now it might be How the Internet Changed Everything.

But also, many of the points I would have made may now be shifting substantially. I had an entire chapter planned dedicated to showing how the free nature of the Internet could threaten the foundation of capitalism, at least for the transmission of information, including an analysis of Marxist theory as applied to the Internet. (I’m not a communist, but communism may do a better job than capitalism of describing what happens on the Internet.) But if the recent provocative cover story of Wired is correct (and it’s been skewered to hell and back by the blogosphere), the free Web may be in decline in favor of the non-free world of apps accessing the broader Internet, in which case capitalism is completely safe and the first decade of the new millenium will soon pass into history as the Decade of the Fad of Free.

Again, most of Chris Anderson’s points have been debunked by the (admittedly Web-based) blogosphere, but there is a salient point to be explored behind the rhetoric. In retrospect, the 2007 debut of the iPhone may mark the beginning of, if not Web 3.0, at least Web 2.5. The iPhone introduced an alternative model to the free exchange of information that grew out of the web and social media sites. Even netbooks had browser software separate from whatever operating system they ran that handled all your surfing; the iPhone effectively merged the browser and operating system to such an extent it was conceivably possible to be very active on the Internet without entering the actual Web browser. The iPhone made each site its own distinct identity, its own program, stored on the phone itself rather than repeatedly loaded from the server, to present its information and capabilities however it wished without conforming to the Web’s standards, permissive though they may be.

When I first joined Twitter, I expressed skepticism about the usefulness of programs such as TweetDeck for connecting to Twitter, thinking them redundant to the site itself. Virtually the instant problems with IE8 drove me to Firefox, I set about trying to use an add-on to post to and use Twitter. I don’t believe I have found the right FF add-on – TwitterBar, the most popular add-on, only allows you to post to Twitter from the address bar (not check Twitter messages), and the two Twitter add-ons I’ve actually installed, Friendbar and Lu.ly, have unnecessary animations and graphical complexity that bog the browser down. (Friendbar tells me of a new message by playing a chime and reversing the colors – reasonable – and then engages in a fade effect back to normal colors I can’t turn off.) I haven’t used FF in months because I’m waiting for it to get back to an acceptable speed for the level of Internet usage I engage in, and I refuse to install betas.

I didn’t run off to add-ons like Friendbar because of any problem with the Twitter site. The Twitter site works just fine, though “infinite scrolling” is a welcome innovation in new Twitter. But I don’t want to have to leave a tab on Twitter all the time, where it’s not visible all the time, or constantly press the Twitter button in my Favorites bar to load up Twitter off the Internet hogging up space on my tabs. I want to be able to keep up with people’s tweets in real time, whenever I want to, at the click of a button at most, and I want instant ability to post to Twitter any time, whenever it strikes the mood. I don’t want to have to pull up Google Reader on one of my tabs; I want to quickly pull up a sidebar and see all my RSS feeds’ current status, like Internet Explorer and Firefox’s Feed Sidebar add-on let me do, or even see all the RSS feed updates I want to see without even lifting a finger. (I still don’t understand why an SMS-equipped smartphone needs a separate app to access Twitter – I must be the last Twitter user to actually txt the site – and apparently, Twitter didn’t either.)

There are some Web sites and some elements of the Internet that are, quite simply, bigger than the browser. They may or may not appropriate the Web for their experience, and they may even be heavily connected to and be dedicated to bringing you the Web, but they are broader than the Web, they are not inherently part of the Web, they only connect to the broader network known as the Internet. So I think a lot of the bloggers who are saying “silly rabbit, Facebook and Twitter are web sites!” may be missing a point that Wired admittedly doesn’t really make. If they stopped being Web sites tomorrow, it might be a sea change, but it wouldn’t be a catastrophe. There’s now a war going on between the Web’s ideals of openness – epitomized by HTML5 – and the return of walled gardens.

So much as I might have once thought otherwise, I don’t think the rollout of “new Twitter” – introduced in a blogpost literally titled, “A Better Twitter” – will necessarily bring people back to the site from other apps. In fact, Twitter is jumping aboard a long bandwagon away from the paradigm of hypertext, and towards a paradigm of getting as much as possible out of every individual page, thus robbing the Web of its critical feature. Changing the URL on the address bar is more useful for direct links than once you’re already at the site; the less you need to use the back button, the better. (“Google Instant” is another sign of this paradigm shift, and that’s a site inextricably linked with the Web.)

Beyond that, the new Twitter is more of a cosmetic change than anything else (a cosmetic change my netbook might be a little slow to properly appreciate), though certainly not a bad one. Even a fairly basic change in functionality that might have accompanied it – tweets updating in close to real time instead of just an alert that they exist – isn’t there (in fact tweet lists seem slow or at least difficult to refresh in general). Twitter was out to add one feature: added functionality to the pages for individual tweets.

One aspect in particular – the ability to follow a conversation from a single page – could almost finish off the old retweet system. The major strike against the new Twitter-backed system was the inability to add your own commentary to tweets, and using this new forum-like aspect of replies, you could make your retweet a reply that people can click and see the tweet responded to… except a) you still have to make it an @reply to make it a reply to a tweet, despite the addition of an interface that could conceivably make that unnecessary and b) there is no way to make sure followers see your tweet if they don’t follow the person you’re responding to. In general, Twitter seems to have missed the broader implications of some of the changes they made; other media, like images and videos, are displayed directly on the tweet pane now, obviating the need for a link and indicating Twitter realizes such things are core to Twitter’s being now and bigger than the tweets themselves (and Twitter for iPad applies this to an even broader extent), but all links still count against the 140 characters (and aren’t very useful in text messages), keeping link shortening services like bit.ly in business.

New Twitter isn’t ultimately much of a big deal, though it certainly is welcome. But it doesn’t really enter into a lot of larger issues Twitter finds itself in the thick of. And even as Twitter shores up the front of the free Web, it does so by making the Web more app-like. Time will tell how this battle shakes out, or how Twitter continues to evolve the service.

I guarantee I wouldn’t be writing this post if it weren’t for Twitter.

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On Friday, after his last day guest-hosting PTI, ESPN’s Bill Simmons tweeted:

6pm SportsCenter never ran our PTI segment? Sad that America missed my extended Bautista/Lohan natural assets argument. #whoopsmaybethatswhy

I’m not sure this has ever happened, that SportsCenter has bumped out the Big Finish for reasons other than breaking news they need to give full-press coverage to. What’s more, the podcast conspicuously leaves out the bonus argument that’s part of the SportsCenter segment right before the Big Finish itself.

So I have to ask: will Simmons EVER be asked to do PTI or some other ESPN show ever again? Even if the Big Finish was bumped just for the discussion being off-topic as opposed to inappropriate…

Can the FedExCup be saved?

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Another FedExCup has come and gone. The PGA TOUR’s TV partners have been shoving it down golf fans’ collective throats for months, showing every golfer’s rank in the standings at every event as though anyone cared, trying to get people revved up for the “Playoffs”, and it still didn’t go over with golf fans.

The FedExCup was supposed to be golf’s answer to NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup. Finally, golf would have its own season-long points chase culminating in a “playoff” event to crown a champion. It hasn’t worked out that way. After the first two FedExCups ended anticlimactically, the PGA TOUR (as it pretentiously capitalizes itself) decided they didn’t want to risk even the slightest chance of the Cup being decided before the TOUR Championship was even played, and adopted a bizarre system where the values of the Playoff events ballooned to five times the normal levels, and the points weren’t reset until the TOUR Championship itself, at which point anyone in the top 5 could win the Cup. Was the TOUR Championship an event held at a course appropriate enough to crown the champion of the entire year in golf? Who the hell knows.

All I know is that NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup doesn’t seem to have been negatively affected by the possibility of someone all but locking up the title before the final race. I also know that guaranteeing that the FedExCup would come down to the last event hasn’t actually gotten anyone more excited for the FedExCup. It doesn’t help that Tiger Woods was out of the running this year, but no one cared last year either, when Tiger won the whole thing.

What’s the difference between the Chase and the FedExCup? What is NASCAR doing right that the PGA TOUR is doing wrong? Some of it is elements outside the TOUR’s control; NASCAR already had a tradition of a season-long points chase, and golf owes virtually all its popularity to one man right now. No one cares about the vast majority of people competing for the FedExCup, and the PGA TOUR has made it worse by inviting over a hundred people to partake in their “playoffs”, virtually ensuring no one any good is going to be on the bubble not to get in. Wow, way to make your non-majors matter! No wonder you moved the reset to the last event!

The points system doesn’t help – golf fans mocked it roundly when it first came out for its complexity (winners received 4500 points!). At the same time that it moved the point where the points reset, the TOUR also decided to make the points more user-friendly. It did this by reducing the points for a win… to 500. Wow, that’s nice and intuitive. Granted, the TOUR needs to make room in their points scale for the 70 players that make the cut. NASCAR only needs to make room for 43 or so, so they get away with awarding 190 points for a win. The TOUR would probably be awarding 300 points if it wanted to be proportional about it, but it can do even better.

How about this: 100 points for a win.

It’s a nice, round number – everyone and their mother is familiar with 100, and can conceptualize it in terms of percent. The World Golf Rankings use 100 for a win in a major, let alone a regular event; complex modifications aside, what’s wrong with the points system you already had? I’m not going to be using the World Golf Rankings points system, though, and I’ll explain later how I cram 70 players into 100 points.

2nd place receives 50 points, a bit less than the World Golf Rankings and a lot bigger drop-off than the 20 points from a higher number in NASCAR. If they lose in a playoff, they get 70 points, reflecting the fact that outside the US Open, most golf tournament playoffs involve choosing one hole that may or may not be representative of the entire course.

3rd place gets 35 points, 4th 30, 5th 25, 6th 21, 7th 18, 8th 15, 9th 12, and 10th place receives 10. Ties receive the highest possible number of points. Yes, I know money is awarded by taking the average of the tied positions, but the money list does that because it has a set purse; the amount of money it awards in total is predetermined. For points standings, do you really want to ask casual fans to do all that addition and division to decipher the points standings or determine how many points each golfer will get? And is there anything less user-friendly than fractions of a point?

Beyond 10th place, points are awarded based on strokes, not positioning; subtract one point for each stroke behind 10th to a minimum of 1 for anyone who makes the cut. This is one of the biggest sources of confusion in existing ranking schemes: in most golf tournaments, most of the players who make the cut tend to cluster around a few scores, resulting in massive ties. By awarding points for these positions based on position, the number of points awarded is almost based on chance, even using the money list’s system. This way, mid-table golfers know every stroke is worth one point – no more, no less. And setting a hard minimum of 1 also gets rid of those horrible fractional points.

What about majors? 150 points for winning a major, 100 for playoff losers, 75 for second, 50 for third, 40 for fourth, 30 for 5th, 25 for 6th, 20 for 7th, and the same as before for the rest. THE PLAYERS Championship awards 125 for winning, 80 for playoff losers, 60 for 2nd, 40 for 3rd, and the same as before for the rest. World Golf Championship events award 110 for winning, 75 for playoff losers, and the same as before for the rest. Events held the same weekend as bigger events give winners 25 points, 20 for second place (playoff or no), 15 for 3rd, 12 for 4th, 10 for 5th, and deductions for strokes behind 5th to a minimum of 1 – though beyond a certain point, you shouldn’t get benefit of the doubt for squeaking past the cutline and then crapping out at an event the best players were spending somewhere more important. Again, no fractional points.

How exactly the championship is awarded is a thornier issue, although the current approach surely isn’t it. The purest approach is to not do any reset or jacking up of the points, but then you need to be prepared for the championship being well in hand at the final event, and maybe even the winner not showing up there at all. You could just do successive cutlines without resetting the points standings, so each “playoff” event counts the same as any other, but that’s unlikely to affect the top players.

Do you have a four-event playoff, and reset the standings beforehand? Maybe, but you need to make sure the events are balanced – some courses have higher roughs, some wider fairways, some are longer than others. Make sure you have enough of a balance of challenges as you do the rest of the year, so everyone is challenged evenly and someone has to be a very good all-around golfer to take enough of a lead to skip an event.

This is something I’m not sure NASCAR has figured out – near as I can tell there isn’t a single road course in the Chase, and while I know correlation doesn’t imply causation, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not a coincidence that the advent of the Chase has coincided with Jimmie Johnson’s literally unprecedented run of dominance. Also, in accordance with the notion of providing a balance of challenges, have only one cutline and cut only the top 70 or 30. (Or maybe two, with a second cutline where you go from 70 to 30.

Do you bring only the top 15-30 players or so to the TOUR Championship, and have that event be winner-take-all? Maybe, but if so, you better make damn sure you push it as a fifth or sixth major, at least on par with the PLAYERS. Put it at storied courses like Pebble Beach (the course also needs to do a good job of teasing out the best all-around golfer rather than being an outlier), hand out major-level money or more, do everything you can to make sure golfers and fans see it as one of the top six most important events and prizes of the year. Only enjoin it with other events in a “playoff” if a) you do cuts without resets as above, or b) the cutline for the playoff events is determined entirely by the order of finish on the course that week. A low cutline also ensures it succeeds in its real goal, encouraging participation and success in the TOUR’s “other” tournaments.

In retrospect, it may have been a mistake for the TOUR to leave ESPN in favor of the Golf Channel as its sole cable partner; heaven knows ESPN wouldn’t just shove it down our throats but send it out the other side. The TOUR is left hoping the Comcast/NBC merger not only goes through but succeeds in creating a true competitor to ESPN. It’s also still an open question whether or not non-head-to-head sports like the PGA TOUR or NASCAR should even have “playoffs” given the need to balance fair competition with a dramatic finish. And in the end, will anyone care if Tiger doesn’t care? Will anyone care if there is no Tiger? Will anyone care about golf if there is no Tiger?

Adventures in crazy lineal titles

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Most of the time, the college football lineal titles don’t change hands the first few weeks as all the good teams play cupcakes. Someone forgot to tell the 2006 Boise State title.

It freakily ended the season in the hands of non-bowl-eligible Washington, so perhaps an early change is to be expected, but it has changed hands every single week this season. Hopefully now that it’s in the hands of big-boy Oklahoma it’ll stay in place the next several weeks, at least until the Red River Rivalry.

All lineal titles are now properly updated.

Belated remarks on BYU going independent in football

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The biggest loser in the Not-So-Great Conference Shakeup of 2010 may be the Mountain West, who got screwed through no real fault of their own whatsoever.

Yay, the Pac-10 may singlehandedly destroy the Big 12! We could wind up with the Kansas schools or even more, and then the BCS would HAVE to let us in to the party! Oh wait, they called off the dogs – well, at least we got Boise State out of the deal, although now that’s a wash because the Pac-10 is adding Utah to complement Colorado and become the Pac-12. Oh well, at least it’s a wash…

…except BYU has just lost its biggest link to the Mountain West and wants to go independent in football and join the WAC in other sports! But wait, we’re adding Nevada and Fresno State to effectively destroy the WAC! But wait, BYU is STILL leaving, only they’re joining the West Coast Conference in other sports instead of the WAC! Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

(Incidentially, the one underplayed angle in all this is the surely-salivating-to-ESPN-execs-tongues prospect of regular BYU-Gonzaga games in the West Coast Conference. Though BYU is rarely if ever the best team in the Mountain West, it is one of the Mountain West’s stronger teams in basketball, and Gonzaga has to like the prospect of having a legitimate playing partner other than St. Mary’s.)

The Mountain West is left with 10 teams, one more than before, but only two BCS-caliber programs instead of the present three: TCU and Boise State. Nevada and Fresno State are good teams in football, by non-Boise WAC standards, but at best they’re on the level of an Air Force: they’ll sneak into the Top 25 sometimes, but they’ll rarely make true national headlines. (Air Force knocking off BYU being an exception.) That won’t help the Mountain West’s case for becoming a BCS conference or dissolving the system. In fact, BYU’s move by itself could make the system stronger than ever, especially if they get a BCS auto bid (which could be a smarter move than you might think precisely for that reason).

But why would BYU make the move? Notre Dame is under heavy pressure to join a conference at some point, so BYU is bucking the trend by leaving one. Of course they weren’t getting much help getting into the BCS by staying in the Mountain West. But the big thing BYU is banking on is its status as the Mormon university. They are banking on becoming the new Notre Dame, Notre Dame West, with every game getting national coverage and a truly national following. They want to leverage their BYU network and turn it into a national powerhouse. (It’s unlikely any football games would air on BYU TV, but the mtn. deal prevents even non-football sports from airing on BYU TV.)

The success of BYU’s declaration of independence depends heavily on whether or not BYU can put together a schedule at least as good as what they had in the Mountain West, and the outlook is staggering. If you’re going to set yourselves up to be the new Notre Dame or Notre Dame West, it makes sense to set up a rivalry with the real Notre Dame. Throw in Texas, Oregon State, and Utah, and that’s four games against teams in BCS conferences, with an eye for more. Good luck getting that in the Mountain West. And BYU has signed a deal with ESPN, which means the full ESPN hype machine will be in full effect and BYU games will regularly be on a platform with wider availability than Versus. All that’s left is recruiting.

If BYU can continue to recruit and play at the same level that they have been in the Mountain West, and regularly play in BCS games, independence will suddenly look like a viable prospect and Notre Dame can start saying “I told you so”. This could be the move that ultimately sets up the next great conference shakeup and finishes off the Big 12. The Pac-10 and Big 10 are too tightly-knit to lose any teams to independence, but they and the SEC may be the only reasonably invulnerable conferences, and even then Nebraska and Penn State have to consider the possibility (though the Big Ten Network revenues may be too much to resist).

(USC will definitely be tempted if probation and Lane Kiffin don’t prevent the program from maintaining its Carroll-era heights, especially compared to the rest of the Pac-10 – and if a team that lost its upperclassmen and can’t go to a bowl is still ranked in the polls and that ranking is warranted, I guarantee USC will win a national championship the first year off probation.)

If Texas decides the outlook is right, they could jump to independence in a heartbeat (just look at how much more money it makes in all sports than the next non-Big 10, non-SEC, non-Notre Dame school), with Oklahoma following (though the Big 12 could stay together after all if enough other teams follow suit). Other teams that were once both independent and powerhouses before the 90s shakeup – Florida State, Miami (FL) – could bolt as well, which is bad news for the ACC. With ten members, the ACC could stay alive, if not taken very seriously and looking like the new Big East (though Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Boston College, and a few others are good teams), but the Big 12 would be down to eight pissed-off members, who might start looking at other conferences or at independence themselves.

But that’s trying to predict the unpredictable. Right now the future involves the impending destruction of the WAC, which is down to six teams and couldn’t even field a conference if Hawaii leaves. If the WAC can keep Hawaii in the fold they will try to replenish their numbers, probably with potential playing partners for Louisiana Tech from Conference USA and possibly the Sun Belt, but if it can’t a lot depends on what the Mountain West decides to do next, and whether they want to go straight to a football championship game or wait for better options than the WAC’s castoffs (like the Kansas schools should BYU’s defection eventually cause the Big 12 to implode).

If they do decide to go for a championship game, they will and should take Utah State and New Mexico State (the former is already rumored to be Mountain West-bound). Both, along with MWC-bound Nevada, are among the WAC’s best teams in basketball (when all is said and done the Mountain West’s new lineup would have had five teams in the NCAA Tournament last year), New Mexico State brings New Mexico’s in-state rival in-house, and while Utah State’s potential playing partners are both gone it does re-establish the Mountain West’s foothold in the sizable Utah market. That leaves Idaho, San Jose State, and Louisiana Tech. LA Tech likely joins Conference USA; Idaho and San Jose State, two of the worst college football programs in the nation, may have no choice but to go to FCS or shutter their football programs entirely. Perhaps the Big Sky or Summit League will take Idaho (although most of the Summit’s schools don’t play football so if Idaho keeps the football program the Big Sky may be the only option). The Big West may be the only geographic and cultural fit for San Jose State, and most if not all of their schools don’t play football, so their football program may be screwed unless they or Idaho want to go to the Great West.

Then begins the process of keeping a close eye on how BYU does financially and athletically over the next decade, as the future of college football may lie in their hands.