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We wish you a merry blog-day…

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On this day two years ago, I made the very first post in the history of Da Blog. I remember it clearly. The post was written inside a bus stop shelter in cold conditions, and I shivered as I typed those first words about myself. I had a few ideas of where I was going to take Da Blog, but few of them were very clear in my head. Some jerk, probably coveting my laptop, kept needling me while I tried to work. I told myself that one day, I would be writing posts in nigh-luxourious conditions and would look back on that first, bus-stop-penned post, with laughter and chuckles.

I’m writing this post… well, the main reasons I’m not writing this in a bus stop shelter again are 1) the Storm of the Century hitting Seattle making it even worse than last time and downright treacherous for a laptop, 2) I’m writing this Sunday night after burning up my laptop battery on my last Flex Scheduling Watch of the year, and 3) as I’ve mentioned a few times, the public wi-fi I used two years ago has almost been abandoned.

But hey, no one’s making me fearful for my safety, so that’s progress!

Now, at the time, the main reason for the weird conditions was that I was on winter break. I was still living in the university dorms at the time during the regular class year. So the instant that I moved back to campus I was already writing in a hundred times more luxourious conditions than I was before (and on my desktop). But that February, I was basically kicked out of the dorms and sent home. Since then I have used various means to improvise to get any internet connection at all. I’ve stolen two different connections from neighbors. I made mad dashes of half a block to squeeze out a little bit of Internet time and back. I went to the library for a while. I’ve even taken advantage of an offer from my dad to use the Internet at the place where he works.

Since this summer, I’ve made at least a token effort to get a real job, and even gotten some initial interviews. But nothing has panned out, and because I haven’t been able to get a real job I haven’t been able to move elsewhere or get an Internet connection I don’t need to steal. So it’s been Improvization City for the better part of two years. No doubt the tanking economy (we wish you a merry recession-day!) has played a part in my lack of a job – certainly it would seem fatal when combined with my general lack of experience.

But there’s also the fact that I’ve been treating Da Blog as more of a job… even though I still don’t have the readers to justify it. Or any revenue streams besides advertising – but that’s one more revenue stream than I had a year ago.

The past year has been one of finding my voice on Da Blog. Over the course of this year, I launched Sandsday, the Random Internet Discovery, started doing regular webcomic reviews, started forming my opinions on the state of politics today, started doing college football schedules and added pages on the web site for the college football rankings, and so, so much more. I think it’s been at least June since I’ve failed to post on a weekday. Given that volume of postings, you may think it way overdue if you’ve noticed that the Blog Archive on the sidebar has switched to breaking down posts by week. It’s easy to forget that a year ago, I was making twelve to twenty posts in an entire month. This is the 374th post I’ve posted in 2008, and already the 28th this month. I posted 155 times prior to 2008, which means I’ve well over doubled the output of my first year in my second.

(I was remiss in not marking my 500th post, in part because all my counts I get from Blogger include posts I’ve abandoned. Post #500, oddly, was this one announcing a move to CAPTCHA for all comments.)

With the move to a more regular posting schedule, and the addition of more quality content, people have started to notice. A year ago, I got excited at 25 visits in a single day. These days… well, there’s still quite a few times when I get fewer than 25, but generally, especially on weekdays, at least 25 is the norm, and less than ten is a disappointment. From March through November, readership on Da Blog has increased every single month. This month is already over 1.5 times last December, and while it only has 682 visits so far through around 6 PM PT Sunday, it can still easily top last month’s mark of 923 visits. The 1,000 frontier remains within reach. And last December, I was excited to get around 300 hits in a month, a mark I haven’t fallen below since May. And some surprisingly heavy hitters have showed up. Okay, so when you’re talking about webcomic names like David Morgan-Mar and Robert A. Howard commenting on (and linking to) Da Blog posts, you’re talking maybe T-list “celebrities”, but I’m a Z-lister at best, so anyone with their own site and any kind of following taking notice is going to leave me awestruck.

(My post with my predictions of SportsCenter’s “Top 10 Games” proved to be surprisingly popular on searches, so look for me to potentially repeat it next year and in future years.)

Even with football season over, I’ve got still more plans for Da Blog, and for the web site. I’m going to be running a “mail call” feature to mark the first anniversary of Sandsday in about a month’s time (I hope), so if you have any questions about the strip, leave a comment on this post, the open thread, or mwmailsea at yahoo dot com. Howard rightly pointed out that my webcomic posts have fallen into a rut of Ctrl+Alt+Del, Order of the Stick, and Irregular Webcomic! over and over again, and in something I had been planning on already, I’m going to aim to change that starting tomorrow. I still hope to complete at least my Democratic platform examination before the inauguration. As I vowed last year, I still plan to focus on my studies, but I’ll only be taking two classes – although I still hope to add a job on top of that. And I still have a boatload of new projects I hope to have coming down the pike in the new year.

What of my advertising revenue, as much of a trickle as it may still be? I started adding advertising in August and I already have four dollars. Woo-hoo! But what do I do with it? As much as it sounds frivolous, given all my other problems, I’m going to start thinking of registering “morganwick.com” as a place to stow my various projects (including, potentially, Da Blog). And before my latest term with Freehostia runs out in August, I need to start thinking about potentially getting a new hosting provider to go along with the new domain. If I can afford it, I need to look for a hosting provider that provides the most bang for the buck, especially where PHP support and MySQL support is concerned. Ideally, I need more MySQL databases for the College Football Rankings and some new webcomic ideas I have percolating in my head. I also need to think about upgrading my SiteMeter account, pending what happens when they launch the new service for real – I need to start looking back more than just 100 visitors to see where they’re coming from.

Year Two of Da Blog was a momentous one, for itself and for me. Let’s see if Year Three takes us on just as exhilirating a ride – and if I end it posting in slightly better conditions than now.

Some quick notes

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This post was originally planned for tomorrow, which is when the College Football Rankings will likely be delayed until. The main reason is because someone gave me another reason to post today.

Robert A. Howard somewhat belatedly commented on my post on Tangents, and mentioned that he “definitely [would] mention [Da B]log over at Tangents.” Once that comes down the pike it should result in some sort of traffic bump, although between the hiatus and then the move to the new site I suspect Tangents has bled some readers recently.

After reading that comment, I think John Solomon may have been on to something in his characterization of Howard as a suck-up. I hope he doesn’t make too many changes just because I say so, and I hope he doesn’t define his writing style entirely on what other people say it should be, but I hope he knows what’s the blog he wants to write. Not that he should entirely shut himself off from the criticism of others – then he’s basically Tim Buckley, and no one wants to be that – but I think most people want to read “Tangents by Robert A. Howard,” not “Tangents by Eric Burns(-White), John Solomon, Morgan Wick, and a gazillion others”.

I’m trying to take it easy with this post. I slated quite a few things to put on Da Blog during the break, not least of them being a resumption of my platform reviews and another political feature to run during the summer, which I would work on now so they wouldn’t become a repeat of the platform reviews later, and so that I could work on several posts at once. But with my limited Internet access time, most of my time has been dominated by what I’m doing for Da Blog now. I haven’t even been able to look for any jobs, even for just during the break.

It doesn’t help that I don’t have the services of the local public library available during the winter break (don’t ask why), unlike in summer, and Seattle just got hit with the Cold Snap of the Century right AFTER it wouldn’t have mattered so much to me, so sitting outside and using the Internet, either stealing it from someplace else or using the city of Seattle’s on-again-off-again public connection, is a good way to get frostbite. I also don’t have the services of running just outside the house briefly anyway; the only connection left that’s a block or so from my house is far more inconsistent than what I’ve used before. (A nearby business has repeatedly offered to allow me to sit inside, but for at least two reasons I doubt I would like its atmosphere.) I burned my one real shot at using the Internet at a place I would have to pay for in a context where it netted me about an hour and a half, most of it not used on anything productive. I’m using the Internet four nights a week at a place where the only reason I don’t pay for it is because my dad works here, and it’s still technically mooching off another place’s connection.

And Da Blog and Sandsday are the closest things I have to any sort of income… I had been hoping to use the winter break as a time to wind down and relax before redoubling my efforts to get schoolwork done in the new quarter, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Double dose of the Random Internet Discovery of the Week! Yay!

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If you’re interested in fancying yourself a Jackson Pollock and creating your own work of “art”, have at it. There’s something more profound I need to get to.

This post (link courtesy Awful Announcing) takes a look at how the blog market could be affected by the present recession. It’s mostly written from a sports blog perspective, especially paid sports blogs, but it has implications for everyone else who blogs, paid or not, employed by a third party or merely doing it themselves, whether for fun or profit.

It takes an interesting perspective: Although some, like the blog collective Gawker, think ad revenue is likely to decline in the current recession, the post itself talks to several bloggers and draws its own conclusion based on a study, and they seem to all agree that the recession could help blogs. Some people might decide that, needing to cut costs, the Internet might be one of the first things to go, but AA’s own proprietor suggests the Internet might be one of the last things to go, because it has become so important to job searches – and thus could increase in importance to many people. Some of the bloggers talked to suggested that the blog population could rise as newspapers cut traditional journalists, making room for cheaper bloggers, and as laid-off workers of all stripes look for new lines of work.

Regardless of whether it becomes Great Depression II, this could be one of, if not the, most important recession in our history.

If some of these reactions are true, this recession could greatly accelerate the rate at which the Internet becomes the chief way people get their news, information, and entertainment. At the moment, the Internet is big enough that “old media” – newspapers and TV – are concerned about the impact of losing their audience to it, but not big enough that they’re comfortable with making money off it. If it ever can get that big – and this recession could greatly hasten the day that it happens – newspapers and television as we know them could become as antiquated as the telegraph.

And as the Internet and blogging grows, it has the potential to change the very way we live. We may well look back on the first decade of the new millenium as a time of great flux and transition, when the Internet was still in its relative infancy, or at least childhood and was still taking shape, still taking the form that would shape the twenty-first century. One thing I neglected to mention when I listed a number of ideas I have and might like to work on was a book coming out of my continual wonder at how dramatically the Internet has already changed our lives, and how it holds the potential to change our lives even more, affecting everything from the  news to entertainment to politics to even the very underpinning of our economic system. I had been thinking about holding off on writing it until I had enough of a name that I would have any credibility whatsoever, but recent events – not least of which being the coming recession – have convinced me that right now is a unique moment in history in the evolution of the Internet, and “the fierce urgency of now” – to borrow a phrase from our president-elect – would seem to dictate that I get such a book written in the next couple of years, and preferably starting as soon as possible.

There’s supposed to be a second part coming out today, “focus[ing] on reactions from bloggers who blog as a hobby (i.e. for free) and from readers whose blog-reading habits may be affected by the economy,” and the post elicits reactions from anyone that would fall in either or both of those categories. I’ve sent this post to the blogger in question, but I want to hear from anyone that would have a voice in all of this, anyone who might use the Internet on a regular basis as an outlet, from YouTubers to webcomickers – not to mention, if possible, any advertisers who I imagine count for a significant amount of revenue. Send an e-mail to mwmailsea at yahoo dot com, or if you want to take it directly to him (and his second post encourages it), use the address on the sidebar of that page.

2008 Golden Bowl Tournament Octofinals

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Early afternoon games:

#16 Troy v. #1 Oklahoma
Maybe it was the gusty conditions throwing Sam Bradford off his game, but Oklahoma, considered by many a prohibitive favorite to make the Golden Bowl, got more than they bargained for from the #16 seed. Troy managed to get inside Sooner territory on the first drive and Oklahoma could only score one touchdown in the first quarter, but that probably looked like a fluke after Chris Brown ticked off a 76-yard touchdown run to start the second. Oklahoma followed that up on their next drive by marching from their own 20 all the way to the Troy 2, only for Sam Bradford to be sacked on third and goal, holding the Sooners to a field goal. When Troy got a touchdown of their own, the whispers of a potenial upset started up again, even after the Sooners ended the half with another field goal to go up 20-7 – and they seem justified when Oklahoma starts the second half with two three-and-outs and Troy manages to go from near midfield to a touchdown in five plays, cutting the lead to six.

Oklahoma picks up another field goal but ends the quarter with another three-and-out, and despite Troy never scoring again, no one thinks the game is over until Bradford gets the ball back with 4:24 on the clock and proceeds to burn almost three minutes of that time before DeMarco Murray pounds through the line for a 13-yard score. Levi Brown proceeds to get intercepted on Troy’s very next play from scrimmage and Oklahoma escapes to the second round with a game that was a lot scarier than the final score would indicate.
Final score: Troy 14, Oklahoma 30 (I’m not counting Whatifsports’ rub-it-in field goal at the end)

#15 Buffalo v. #2 Florida
The Gators had no problem with the Bulls of Buffalo. They took a while to get going, allowing the Bulls to drive 59 yards for a touchdown the first time they got the ball, but that would be the last time Buffalo scored, and the Gators responded the next drive when Percy Harvin ran off a quick 46-yard touchdown. Buffalo threatened again the next drive, driving to the Gator 21 before being nailed for delay-of-game and giving up an interception. Florida scored five minutes into the second off that turnover, then intercepted Drew Willy’s next pass attempt and scored another touchdown off that. Florida added a field goal to end the first half with a 24-7 lead, then started the second half by forcing Buffalo to go three-and-out and returning the ensuing punt for a touchdown. The crowd in The Swamp engages in dueling “Bring on the Buckeyes!” and “Bring on the Raiders!” chants for most of the fairly pedestrian fourth quarter.
Final score: Buffalo 7, Florida 38

#11 Georgia Tech v. #6 Cincinnati
Many criticized this matchup when it was made, questioning why Cincinnati was getting such a high seed ahead of Texas Tech and USC and why Georgia Tech was in the field at all. The Bearcats seemed to vindicate the second question and make people reconsider the first. The Yellowjackets started the game with a 62-yard drive to the Cincy 10 only to miss a short field goal, then promptly coughed up a fumble the next time they had the ball and watched the Bearcats capitalize with a made field goal of their own. Georgia Tech did make a field goal to start the second quarter, but then saw Cincinnati run off three straight touchdowns and spike the ball too late on first-and-goal on the 3 to try for a fourth before going into the half. Nonetheless, the Bearcats went into the half with a 24-3 lead, and while Jonathan Dwyer started some thoughts of a Yellowjacket comeback with an 80-yard touchdown run on Georgia Tech’s first play from scrimmage of the second half, Cincinnati snuffed it out with a field goal, a three-and-out, and a long punt return that just barely got shoved out-of-bounds at the 1. The Bearcats run up another 13 in the fourth to ice the game.
Final score: Georgia Tech 10, Cincinnati 47

Late afternoon games:

#14 East Carolina v. #3 Texas
This was the team that upset Virginia Tech and West Virginia to start the season? This was the team that had just stunned Tulsa in the Conference USA title game? They were nothing to a Longhorn team out to prove they should have been in the Big 12 title game, as Colt McCoy made his final argument for the Heisman by going 13-16 with his arm and scoring three touchdowns, two with his arm and one with his legs. For much of the game it didn’t look to go that way. Vondrell McGee fumbled the ball on the Longhorns’ first drive but the Pirates went for it on fourth and three and didn’t get it. Texas went three and out and the Pirates proceeded to drive 59 yards only to miss a 37 yard field goal attempt. Texas scored on their next two drives but the Pirates got a touchdown of their own, and the Longhorns went into the half up 14-7. The Longhorns could only get one more touchdown in the third quarter but ran three off in the fourth to put the game away.
Final score: East Carolina 7, Texas 42

#13 Virginia Tech v. #4 Alabama
No two ways about it: Alabama gave the Hokies a shellacking in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide scored on their only two drives of the first quarter and the Hokies only threatened once. The Tide let up on the gas in the second, just stopping the Hokies from fourth-and-goal on the one and not getting that lucky later on third-and-goal from the 2, but they methodically finish off the Hokies in the second half. It’s not pretty, but it’s still a big win, keyed by Glen Coffee picking up 158 yards on 23 carries, including a touchdown.
Final score: Virginia Tech 7, Alabama 34

#12 Boise State v. #5 Penn State
The Broncos were right at home in the biting, below-freezing temperatures, and gave the Nittany Lions a bit of a scare – at first. Penn State scored on their first two drives, the first being a blistering 60-yard touchdown drive, but the second hinging on Kevin Kelly making a 49-yard attempt. The momentum seems to shift after that, with Penn State going three-and-out three straight times and Boise State finally taking advantage with a 70-yard touchdown drive of their own, entering the half only down three and with their defense credited with an interception. The Nittany Lions find their offense in the third quarter, but can’t put the ball in the end zone and settle for three field goals while their vaunted defense keeps the Broncos at bay. The Lions offense finally reward them with a touchdown, and Joe Paterno’s squad ices the game with a drive that takes off 4:25 of the 4:51 that was on the clock to start the drive and ends with another field goal, one that leaves many wondering why Chris Petersen held on to his timeouts until his team was on offense with less than 30 seconds to make up three scores.
Final score: Boise State 7, Penn State 29

Primetime games:
#10 Ohio State v. #7 Texas Tech
Graham Harrell drove the Red Raiders 52 yards for the touchdown on Texas Tech’s first drive of the game, but after a Buckeye field goal, Ohio State forced a three-and-out and returned the ensuing punt 63 yards for the touchdown to take a 10-7 lead after the first quarter. But the first time they got the ball in the second, they went three-and-out and saw Texas Tech return the ball into Buckeye territory, then proceed to take advantage with a touchdown to retake the lead. Ohio State never scored again while the Red Raiders broke the game open in the second half. As the game became all-too-similar to a certain Los Angeles night to Buckeye fans, Texas Tech scored 30 points in the second half while Harrell made his own last pitch for the Heisman, going 32-48 for 320 yards and four touchdowns, and even running seven times for 14 yards. Ohio State’s first first down of the second half came over five minutes into the fourth quarter.
Final score: Ohio State 10, Texas Tech 44

#9 USC v. #8 Utah
Pete Carroll made his feelings clear during the post-game press conference. “I don’t see why they made us play the game in that (expletive),” the normally soft-spoken coach told reporters. “That game should not have been played. When you have a game this big, if you have an 8-9 matchup, and you’re not going to give home field to the team that’s proved themselves to be better over the course of the season, at least put it in the warmer-weather environment. There was no reason for that game to be played. We deserved better than that and everyone knows it.”

When he was interviewed by ESPN’s “College Football Live” the next day, Golden Bowl Selection Committee chairman Morgan Wick had only three words for Carroll: “Play better teams. Oh, and play better teams on the road. And don’t lose to a team that Utah beats next week, even if your loss is on the road, their win is at home, and both games are close.” Most sportswriters and TV commentators agreed with Carroll, while Utah fans indicated that it was their team that had “proved themselves to be better over the course of the season”.

You could be forgiven for briefly forgetting that USC actually won the game, the only road team to win an octofinal game – but the game was sloppy as heck, played with a couple inches of snow on the field in below-freezing conditions. It’s a wonder people weren’t falling down all over the place. USC drove 35 yards down to the 28 their first drive of the game, but David Buehler hooked a 45-yard attempt to the left. Buehler would later score from 36 yards and tack on two more (and miss another), but the game’s only touchdown would come on a 51-yard run by Joe McKnight in the second quarter.

The defense was the real key to USC’s eventual victory, holding the Utes scoreless, and leaving them without a first down in the second half until 5:46 was left in the fourth quarter, on a drive that ended when Brian Johnson lost a handle on the football and USC was able to recover to set up the last field goal – oddly, the only fumble of the game. Utah was still able to come back in two scores if they got two-point conversions on both, and managed to drive from their own 28 to midfield, but managed the clock badly in doing so: the drive started with 3:09 left on the clock, Johnson was sacked on first down with 1:33 left on the clock, took another sack on second, and by the time he was sacked again on fourth down only 48 seconds were left on the clock and Mark Sanchez could start taking knees.
Final score: USC 16, Utah 0

Quarterfinal matchups:

USC v. Oklahoma
Sam Bradford and Oklahoma’s high-powered offense, meet Rey Maualuga and USC’s best-in-FBS defense. With a pretty impressive set of personalities on offense as well, from Mark Sanchez to Joe McKnight, there’s a very real chance of an upset here as USC attempts to prove they deserved a higher spot in the national championship conversation. One potential source of Trojan concern: The game will be in Norman.

Texas Tech v. Florida
No fewer than three players with at least an argument for the Heisman take the field in The Swamp, as the same defense that held Terrelle Pryor and Beanie Wells to a combined 39 yards rushing now attempts to stop last year’s Heisman winner Tim Tebow. On the other hand, have Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree ever faced a defense like this?

Cincinnati v. Texas
Cincinnati proved it could put up points as well as they could prevent them, but that was against Georgia Tech. To many, the Bearcats still have yet to prove they deserve their absurdly high seeding. But the only way they’ll prove it is by proving that if anything, they were underrated – in Austin no less. In the Golden Bowl Universe, Colt McCoy may just have won himself the Heisman against East Carolina, and he’ll pose quite a challenge to the Bearcat defense.

Penn State v. Alabama
Now we’re talking! This will be a low-scoring affair, I can guarantee that, when two fantastic defenses – and two of college football’s greatest coaches – take the field in Tuscaloosa. Looks like the Rose Bowl half of the bracket could continue to produce some absolutely amazing games, when this is coupled with Oklahoma-USC.

Modified non-BCS bowls coming tomorrow; quarterfinal results next Sunday.

Predictions for SportsCenter’s "Top 10 Games" of 2008

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In case you haven’t heard, this was a particularly exciting year in sports. When ESPN’s “SportsCenter” does its annual “Top 10 Games” countdown, they could easily extend it to a Top 20. With so many great games, I’ve taken it upon myself to take my own stab at mimicking the ESPN list and what it might look like.

Between some college football playoff-related features and Da Blog’s regular features, I think it’s reasonable to schedule the College Football Rankings’ release, as well as the bowl schedule, for Thursday.

: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men’s basketball gold medal match, USA v. Spain. The “Redeem Team” lives up to their name in a game Bill Simmons called “one of the 10 most dramatic basketball games of my lifetime. And nobody gave a crap or even knew. The game started at 2:30 in the morning ET and vanished into thin air. Only West Coasters and super-diehards stayed up to see it.”

: NHL Hockey, Winter Classic, Pittsburgh Penguins @ Buffalo Sabres. Could the NHL have asked for anything less than a shootout from the first (true) Winter Classic?

: College football, SEC Championship Game, Florida v. Alabama. If the regular season is a playoff, this was its semifinal – and it certainly played like one.

: MLB Baseball, ALCS Game 5, Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox. For the moment, just forget about the fact the Sox couldn’t come all the way back to win the series.

: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay OR 100m butterfly OR 4x100m medley relay. The first two were dramatic finishes on Michael Phelps’ road to Mark Spitz’s record. The last was the one that broke it and had an exciting finish of its own. And I only have it at .

: College football, Texas @ Texas Tech. The Red Raiders came out to an early lead, only to see Texas come storming back to take a lead of its own. In the end, Texas Tech had the play of the year, and as it turned out, the one that kept Texas out of the National Championship Game.

: Wimbledon, men’s final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal. This and the next two I could have put in any order. A five-set, record-length classic that ended with Nadal finally getting the best of Federer away from clay.

: Men’s college basketball, NCAA Tournament Final, Kansas v. Memphis. Finally, a National Championship game that lives up to being the culmination of March Madness instead of being a complete anticlimax!

: US Open Golf, playoff, Tiger Woods v. Rocco Mediate. 19 holes of pure tension, as basically an unknown gives Tiger every inch of challenge he has, and brings out Tiger’s best to put him on top. And Tiger was injured to the extent it’s still the last event he’s played!

: NFL Football, Super Bowl XLII, New England Patriots v. New York Giants. Perhaps the greatest iteration ever of the biggest sporting event of every year? How can it not be ?

Honorable Mentions: IRL racing, Indy Japan 300 (Danica wins!); Euro 2008 quarterfinal, Croatia v. Turkey (or was it the semis, where Germany beat Turkey? Basically a sop to my soccer-crazed dad anyway); MLB Home Run Derby; ArenaBowl XXII, Soul v. SaberCats (about the only thing that could make it better is if it were the last one); some NBA game I’m forgetting; some obscure game I never heard of or just didn’t watch (possibly from MMA, boxing, the LLWS, Fresno State’s run, the WNBA, MLS, or the like)

Time set for Golden Bowl Selection Show, for real this time, plus Random Internet Discovery

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And it’s a doozy: 6 AM PT tomorrow morning. I was hoping I could get it in at 6 PM PT tonight, after one of my finals, but I got Distracted ™ and had no chance of getting set up before 6 anyway. I pretty much know two of the first-round matchups at this point, so I only need to finalize the remaining six games, and could work late into the night to do so. (The first stage of the selection process worked pretty much as I expected, with four at-larges being fairly obvious and the fifth being a head-scratcher of relative mediocrity. Ohio State fans may be somewhat disappointed with their seed though.) All eight games will be revealed, at once, at 6 AM PT.

UPDATE: Okay, forget that, it’s delayed again, an unexpected issue came up and I’m in no mood to write it anyway, no later than 2 PM PT.

Also, in place of having a webcomic post tonight, I’m giving you the Random Internet Discovery a day early, with more weird, wild, and wacky art than you can shake a stick at.

The timing of NBC’s Panthers-Giants-to-Sunday-Night announcement is curious. Was NBC and the NFL going to go with some other game if the Bucs had won on Monday night?

Who SHOULD be going to which bowls?

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Based on my College Football Rankings, which I will put up… fairly soon. I hope. The Golden Bowl Selection Show is being delayed to 6 PM PT, maybe even until tomorrow, because my computer abruptly aborted, Excel wasn’t autorecovering the file I was doing my planning on for some reason, and that means I need to go all the way home to transfer back the post-championship-weekend RPI. I’ve selected one at large, have some idea of at least two others, and pretty much know who my top two and bottom three teams will be, if not in what order.

Teams in parenthesis reflect the probability that Boise State won’t be selected by the BCS; asterisks indicate at-large selections. Because of the “winning records before .500” rule, incidentally, Notre Dame will have to settle for one of the –AL spots, probably the Motor City if Boise State doesn’t go to the BCS. All times Eastern.

BOWL  Teams  My Picks  DATE/TIME/CHANNEL 
EagleBank Bowl  ACC   Maryland Dec. 20, 11 a.m. 
Navy  Navy ESPN 
New Mexico  Mountain West   Colorado State Dec. 20, 2:30 p.m. 
WAC   Nevada (Fresno State) ESPN 
St. Petersburg  Big East (#6?)  South Florida Dec. 20, 4:30 p.m. 
Conference USA   Southern Miss ESPN2 
Pioneer Las Vegas  Mountain West TCU Dec. 20, 8 p.m. 
Pac-10 (/5)  California or Oregon State ESPN 
R+L Carriers New Orleans  C-USA (Southern Miss rates higher but is 6-6) Rice Dec. 21, 8:15 p.m. 
Sun Belt   Troy ESPN 
San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia  Mountain West   BYU Dec. 23, 8 p.m.
Pac-10 (WAC if none) Louisiana Tech (Nevada) ESPN 
Sheraton Hawaii  WAC (gen. Hawaii)  Hawaii Dec. 24, 8 p.m. 
Pac-10 (C-USA if none) Northern Illinois* ESPN 
Motor City  MAC /2  Ball State Dec. 26, 8 p.m. 
Big Ten   Minnesota (Louisiana Tech*) ESPN 
Meineke Car Care  ACC /6/7 (gen. 6)  Clemson Dec. 27, 1 p.m. 
Big East   West Virginia ESPN
Champs Sports  ACC   Georgia Tech Dec. 27, 4:30 p.m. 
Big Ten #(4/)5 Northwestern (Wisconsin) ESPN
Emerald  Pac-10 #(4/)5  Oregon State or California Dec. 27, 8 p.m. 
ACC /6/7 (gen. 7)  Miami (FL) ESPN
Independence  SEC (or Sun Belt; Fla. Atlantic technically rates higher) Louisiana-Lafayette Dec. 28, 8:15 p.m. 
Big 12   Central Michigan* ESPN
Papajohns.com  Big East (#5?)  Connecticut Dec. 29, 3 p.m. 
SEC (Sun Belt if none) Arkansas State ESPN
Valero Alamo  Big Ten (/5) Mich. State (Northwestern) Dec. 29, 8 p.m. 
Big 12 /5 Nebraska ESPN
Roady’s Humanitarian  WAC (gen. BSU)  Fresno State (Boise State) Dec. 30, 4:30 p.m. 
ACC   Wake Forest ESPN
Texas  Big 12   Bowling Green* Dec. 30, 8 p.m. 
Conference USA   Memphis NFL Network
Pacific Life Holiday  Big 12   Missouri Dec. 30, 8 p.m. 
Pac-10   Oregon ESPN 
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces  Conference USA ?  Houston Dec. 31, Noon 
Mountain West   Air Force ESPN 
Brut Sun  Pac-10   Arizona Dec. 31, 2 p.m. 
Big 12 /Big East Pittsburgh CBS 
Gaylord Hotels Music City  SEC /7 (Team’s Pref.)  Vanderbilt Dec. 31, 3:30 p.m. 
ACC /6/7 (gen. 5; must pick Chmp. Gm. Loser if >8 wins) Boston College ESPN 
Insight  Big 12   Kansas Dec. 31, 5:30 p.m. 
Big Ten   Wisconsin (Minnesota) NFL Network 
Chick-fil-A  SEC   LSU Dec. 31, 7:30 p.m. 
ACC   North Carolina ESPN 
Outback  SEC /4 (East)  South Carolina Jan. 1, 2009, 11 a.m. 
Big Ten   Iowa (Michigan State) ESPN 
Capital One  Big Ten   Ohio State (Iowa) Jan. 1, 2009, 1 p.m.
SEC   Georgia ABC 
Konica Minolta Gator  Big 12 /Big East   Oklahoma State Jan. 1, 2009, 1 p.m. 
ACC   Florida State CBS 
Rose Bowl Game Presented by Citi  BCS (Big Ten )  Penn State Jan. 1, 2009, 4:30 p.m.
BCS (Pac-10 )  USC ABC 
FedEx Orange  BCS  Cincinnati Jan. 1, 2009, 8:30 p.m. 
BCS (ACC )  Virginia Tech FOX 
AT&T Cotton  Big 12   Texas Tech Jan. 2, 2009, 2 p.m. 
SEC /4 (West)  Mississippi FOX 
AutoZone Liberty  SEC /7 (Team’s Pref.)  Kentucky Jan. 2, 2009, 5 p.m. 
Conference USA   East Carolina ESPN 
Allstate Sugar  BCS  Utah (Ohio State) Jan. 2, 2009, 8 p.m. 
BCS (SEC )  Boise State (Alabama) FOX 
International  Big East (#4?)  Rutgers Jan. 3, 2009, Noon 
MAC   Western Michigan ESPN2 
Tostitos Fiesta BCS  Alabama (Utah) Jan. 5, 2009, 8 p.m. 
BCS (Big 12 )  Texas FOX 
GMAC  Conference USA   Tulsa Jan. 6, 2009, 8 p.m. 
MAC /2  Buffalo ESPN 
FedEx BCS National Championship Game  BCS   Florida Jan. 8, 2009, 8 p.m. 
BCS   Oklahoma FOX 

I think I’m done with Sports Watcher for the foreseeable future…

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According to Wikipedia, MegaVideo wants to replace YouTube as THE place to get video online. However, it restricts how much video you can view before having to wait an hour if you’re not a paying member. And it does this based on people’s IP addresses, not by putting a cookie on your computer or even by tracking non-paying members separately.

If you’re creating a situation where people on a shared network using one IP address – say, at a school, or at a WiFi cafe – can be cut out through no fault of their own, and end up competing to get the most video out of the IP address’s 72 minutes, you’re going to have a hard time going after YouTube.

College Football Schedule: Week 15

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The much-delayed college football rankings are up. I’ve also corrected an error and listed the correct start time of the SEC Title Game. All times Eastern.

Top 25 Games
*Florida v. *Alabama 4 PM CBS
*Oklahoma @ Missouri 8 PM ABC
USC @ UCLA 4:30 ABC
Ball State v. Buffalo 8 PM FR ESPN2
East Carolina @ #23 Tulsa Noon ESPN2
Boston College v. Virginia Tech 1 PM ABC
This Week’s Other HD Games
Louisville @ Rutgers 7:30 TH ESPN
Navy v. Army Noon CBS
Pittsburgh @ Connecticut Noon ESPN
Washington @ California 3 PM FSN
Arizona State @ Arizona 8 PM ESPN
South Florida @ West Virginia 8 PM ESPN2
Cincinnati @ Hawaii 8:30PT ESPN2
Sun Belt
Middle Tenn. St. @ Louisiana-Lafayette 7 PM WE ESPN+
Arkansas State @ Troy 7 PM ESPN+
Western Kentucky @ Florida International 7 PM

As promised a significantly longer time ago than I would have hoped…

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Why should we put up with the reality presented to us by the BCS? A 16-team playoff with all conference champions can avoid most if not all of the pitfalls BCS backers claim would befall a playoff – especially if the media puts enough of an emphasis on seeding. I’ve heard people say we should top out a playoff at 8 teams and/or keep out the weaker conference champions (just the top 8 teams) in order to keep out teams that don’t deserve to play for a national championship. To which I reply: That’s kind of the point. By dangling the carrot of playing a scrub team that won a scrub conference in the first round, my system (and even an 8-team system with all BCS champions) motivates teams to keep playing even when they’re safely in the field. (It’s a more valid argument with the 8-team version, however, because lower-tier BCS conference champions are still good enough to surprise high seeds – especially overrated high seeds – and with only three rounds, can luck into a national championship, and with only two at-larges and no auto bid for good mid-major teams, they may be keeping out teams that deserve at least a shot.)

Last year, I in fact did conduct a 16-team Golden Bowl playoff, in much the way I imagine the NCAA would. Rather than blindly using the BCS rankings or even my own college football rankings, I used much the same criteria the NCAA uses for the basketball tournament: RPI, quality wins, road record, record entering the playoff, that sort of thing. The result was an odd field, to say the least (Virginia Tech the seed?), caused by most BCS programs’ tendency to schedule nothing but scrub teams in the nonconference schedule. (The ACC, which also produced Boston College as an at-large, was artificially inflated in this system simply by having a high number of high-RPI teams.) Nonetheless, I don’t think I excluded anyone that was considered a plausible candidate for the real-life national championship, with Boston College and maybe Florida the only dodgy candidate in the top 12 or 13 seeds. (This year also produced three viable at-large teams – Texas, Texas Tech, the SEC title game loser – for a five-at-large field, which has me wondering if shrinkage might be feasible.)

However, I made a mistake in having all rounds determined entirely by voting. As I had even fewer readers than I had now, I got basically no votes. Result: I ended up making a lot of painstaking read-throughs of possibly meaningless statistics at Yahoo Sports, which burned me out so bad I never actually did declare the winner of the Golden Bowl Championship. I have more readers now, but most come for the webcomic posts, and even with voting I still have to come up with some concept of how the game would go, which practically means I don’t come up with one. And that doesn’t give you a vivid concept of how a playoff would actually go. It doesn’t make you as excited as a real playoff. No simulated version can, but last year’s model wasn’t even trying.

Instead, I’m using Whatifsports.com to simulate each game – assuming they will have 2008 rosters up by next weekend (by which I mean the weekend of the 14th). Here’s how last year’s Golden Bowl might have gone down.

Also last year, I held first round games on campus sites and subsequent rounds at various other sites. The semifinals went to the Sugar and Rose Bowls, and I deliberately seeded the Big 10 and Pac-10 champions to meet in the semifinals to preserve at least a chance of the traditional matchup. (I may have underseeded USC a bit to make it work.) The quarterfinals went to the Cotton, Capital One, Orange, and Fiesta Bowls.

This year, to better preserve the role of the bowls and further increase the incentive to play for seeding, I’m moving the quarterfinals to campus sites as well, although I’m not convinced about that. The semifinals will still be at bowl sites, and for a while I was tempted to go with a system that would determine which bowls would be the semifinals by which teams made the semifinals. That would be a logistical nightmare and was only ever a sop to the Rose Bowl’s traditional Big Ten-Pac-10 matchup.

The bowls would run alongside the tournament and any teams eliminated in any round would move on to play one more game later on. First-round losers would be dumped into the general bowl pool with teams that did not make the tournament. I’m actually thinking any money they would receive would be the same as any regular season game, with only the stakes increasing its value, thus further encouraging playing for seeding and encouraging more competitive first round games. I’d also delete a week from the season, though I obviously can’t do that here – and I actually like the Pac-10’s switch to a true round-robin format since the 12th game was added – to make it work properly and prevent the Heisman ceremony from going ridiculously late.

Quarterfinal losers would go to one of the BCS bowls: the Sugar, Rose, Cotton, and Orange bowls would rotate between being semifinal games and bowls for BCS losers. I’m leaning towards not going with the Capital One Bowl, despite having a higher payout right now, higher ratings, and a higher SEC tie-in than the Cotton Bowl, because of the Cotton’s now-bastardized tradition and the Cap One’s corporate name, not to mention its proximity to the Orange Bowl. (In fact, because of the weird SEC tie-in structure for the 3 and 4 spots, which bowl I pick has major implications for the SEC tie-in structure at the top.) The Fiesta Bowl I’m reserving for a third-place game, for semifinal losers, but it still rotates with the semifinal bowls for hosting the Golden Bowl.

My work ethic and other projects and obligations permitting, the Second Annual Golden Bowl Selection Show will begin this Sunday at 7 PM ET (4 PM PT). Watch Da Countdown! Next weekend, around the 13th, I’ll post the first round results, along with a revised minor bowl schedule; quarterfinal results will be posted the weekend before Christmas. This timing hopefully avoids finals week for schools which hold finals around this time, which I know is a concern. The semifinals are held around New Year’s Day, along with perfunctory quarterfinal-loser-bowl results, and the Golden Bowl is a week or two later, maybe even as late as MLK weekend or the gap between the NFL conference championships and Super Bowl. (The idea of football being a “one-semester sport” is kind of diluted when the current National Championship Game is held on January 8th. The “gap” may be preferable to avoid conflicting with, say, the Senior Bowl, with two weeks after New Year’s even more preferable.) Fiesta Bowl results would be available anywhere from a week to a day before the Golden Bowl itself.

I’m still kind of tweaking the whole format and I’m getting a MUCH later start on actually figuring out who’s in or out than I’d otherwise like. Still, I hope you have an opinion and you’re ready for the ride…