The Big Ten, which has 11 teams and moves up to 12 in 2011, has come up with their new divisional structure for football.  Like most decisions in the big business of college sports, the greed and delusions of being bigger than over one hundred years of sports at these schools have blocked out logic.  Let’s look at the ten mistakes that were made, and maybe if we’re lucky an 11th or 12th will come to mind.

1.  Gerrymandering does not work.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, who graduated from my alma mater of UNC-Chapel Hill, is no dummy, but perhaps he’s not seen the problems that the ACC has had with their non-geographic divisions.  The ACC, which came up with the ever-so-clever divisional names of “Atlantic” and “Coastal” saw dollar signs in 2005 and got the idea of “One Florida State/Miami game is big money, but if we have two it’ll be even better!”  And thus the gerrymandering began and instead of dividing up the conference geographically in a North/South line, the decision was made to have the Coastal Division stretch from Boston to Tallahassee, and the Atlantic from Miami to Blacksburg.  It’s smart in theory if you want that epic matchup of Miami and FSU with the championshp game in Jacksonville or Tampa, yet since that decision was made there have been 5 ACC title games and in only the first ACC championship game in 2005 did either FSU or “The U” appear, as the Seminoles beat Virginia Tech.  Since then the ACC title game has had such gems as 2008 when Virginia Tech beat Boston College in front of 27,000 fans in Tampa and 2009 when almost 43,000 saw Georgia Tech beat Clemson in Tampa.  Wow.  Big matchups there and equally big crowds.

You see that Big Ten?  Gerrymandering doesn’t guarantee you Ohio State/Michigan.

2.  and 3.  Iowa/Wisconsin

Wisconsin got screwed the worst of any school in the divisional split and as “exhibit A” we see them losing one of the few good and competitive rivalries in the Big Ten:  Wisconsin vs. Iowa.   While the series was one-sided in the 30s thru early 70s toward Wisconsin before Iowa ripped off a 16-0-1 record from games played from 1977 to 1996, the series has evened out after Wisconsin’s resurgence in football the rivalry has been a competitive 7-6 lead for Wisconsin since 1997.

While technically a “trophy game” since 2004 (Heartland Trophy) it was a good game among the upper Midwest institutions in the conference.  Yes, Floyd of Rosedale (Minnesota vs. Iowa) is far older (1935) , but even if late to the Trophy Game part of things, this game should have been protected with a divisional game.

The crossover game protects Paul Bunyan’s Axe (Wisconsin/Minnesota) a trophy dating back to 1948, but last one by the Gophers in 2003 and won by the Badgers 13 times in the last 15 meetings.  Still a rivalry, but for it to be a real rivalry don’t both teams need to win more than 2 out of 15 times?

The Big Ten, prior to going to 12 had adopted protected rivals for every school in the conference, guaranteeing that they would play each season.  The 3 upper Midwestern schools of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were locked in to play each other every season.  So, I guess that was a bad decision?

4.  Times change

The Big Ten said they looked at the past 25 years of competition in the conference as the major factor in picking out the top 4, middle 4, and bottom 4 tiers of teams.  25 years is a long, long time.  25 years ago there was still a USSR and Cold War.  Ronald Reagan was President.  Keith Byars’ senior year was 1985 when he broke his foot and hobbled thru the tail end of the season before then having a 13 year career in the NFL, ending in 1998, which is 12 years ago.  What does the competitive balance have to do with things from 1985 when in the football world there was the USFL vs. NFL war going on?  In 25 years 8 different schools have won the Big Ten outright or tied and represented the conference at the Rose Bowl.  This includes Penn State that was 8 years removed from joining the conference in 1993.  We’re really looking back that far?  Players now weren’t even born then and most of the coaches and even administrators were either in high school or college, or even grade school.   Teams come out of nowhere to win Big Ten titles and can disappear as quickly as they pop up.  Until 1995 Northwestern had not won the conference since 1936.  While there are “big programs” who win more often over recent history, nothing is a given.  Short of a plan to “reevaluate the divisions” every decade (sort of like a census) the Big Ten missed the boat here.

5.  Trophy Games Protected

Jim Delany with a straight face on the Big Ten Network program used to announce the divisional structure couldn’t remember if 9 or 10 Trophy games were protected.  I see his point.  There are 12 games out there with some roots running as deep as 1935, yet others are flavors of the month that I’d bet even some die hard alumni of each school couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

Minnesota-Penn State (Governor’s Victory Bell) dates back to 1993.  Penn State leads 7-4.  This is not a protected series.

Penn State-Michigan State (Land Grant Trophy) dates back to 1993.  Penn State leads 13-4.  This is not a protected series.

The Iowa/Wisconsin game is the most recent trophy game and the other one not protected.  That’s a shame because at least those states border each other and have a history that goes back before than the Clinton Administration.

6.  Championship Game Sites

Chicago’s Soldier Field, Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, Detroit’s Ford Field, and Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis are sites expressing an interest in hosting the Big Ten Title game.  Heinz Field in Pittsburgh and Cleveland Browns Stadium also have stated they might bid.  You now run into a fun idea… outside football in the Midwest in December.

Let’s look to the Big 12, where after the rivalry and resentment over moving the conference headquarters to Dallas and most of the championship games there too helped lead to Nebraska leaving that conference, even by the end Nebraska’s President was voting against holding the championship game outside at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.  Why?  He said ‘I wasn’t prepared to sit out in the cold.”  Looks like Detroit and Indianapolis are the choices.  They’re not bad choices, but man, with the divisions not being geographic, aren’t the ACC issues going to creep into the Big Ten?  I can only imagine how many empty seats will appear for an Iowa/Wisconsin Big Ten title game at Heinz Field or a Purdue/Nebraska title game in Cleveland.

7.  Ohio State/Michigan

If you’ve watched ESPN, the worldwide leader in self-promotion of their programming (and that of sister network ABC) you know a few things:  1. Sports were invented by ESPN in 1979.  They did not exist before that date.  2.  Chris Berman is larger than life, and not just on his bathroom scale, and 3.  Ohio State/Meeesh-i-gan is the greatest rivalry since Cain and Abel.  Maybe even better than Yankees/Red Sox.

Now we get the Buckeyes and Wolverines on the last regular season week of the year AND hopefully again the next week at the gerrymadered Big Ten Title game.  Wow.  I can’t wait for the 1-1 series splits with the winner of the second game representing the Big Ten in the BCS.  I only can cheer for football Armageddon each year as both schools enter their regular season tilt undefeated or with 1 loss each and then come out after 2 weeks of play with eitehr 1 loss each, or 2 losses each, knocking teams out of the BCS title game as the SEC or Big 12 play each other or beat up on the flavor of the month underdog team out of the Big East or someone like Boise State.

If one school sweeps, then essentially the regular season matchup means nothing.  It’s all about the most recent win.  How long after that do we see if both schools are guaranteed spots in the title game that starters are rested, like at the end of the NFL regular season after the playoff bye or division is clinched?  Yep.  ESPN/ABC will tell you it’s still a great rivalry and a great game, but not even Brent Musberger can fire up a crowd with “You are looking live at the Horseshoe where the sophomores for Ohio State take on the Juniors and Walk-ons of Michigan in this classic tilt that means nothing because they’ll be playing in the Dr Pepper Big Ten Title game from Ford Field next weekend.”

8.  So close

I’ll admit I had the blow softened of knowing the divisions were going to be messed up thanks to leaks by Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin’s Athletic Director.   Barry played his college ball at Nebraska and got his coaching start there and is now almost as big of a loser in this divisional crap as his current school.  You knew that Wisconsin and Iowa would be split up, you knew that they wouldn’t have a protected game.  You just didn’t realize how close it could be to having a good lineup of the divisions when it was all said and done.

One tweak could’ve fixed most of this:  flipping Northwestern and Wisconsin.  Doing that would’ve given a true geographic tilt to things… a North/South breakdown, putting the (now) four teams of the upper Midwest:  Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota in with the two Michigan Schools to form the Northern division.  The Southern Division then would feature the two Illinois based schools (Northwestern and Illinois), the two Indiana schools (Indiana and Purdue) and Eastern, er, Southern Powers Penn State and Ohio State.  The Big Ten still gets the gerrymandered divisions to divide up Ohio State and Michigan.  The geography aspect (third in the criteria, according to Jim Delany) is preserved better, and you keep Iowa/Minnesota/Wisconsin together.

Yes, I realize Lincoln is further south than some other schools in what could have been the “South” but it’s so far west that I think it’d be close enough for the average fan to say, “eh, that makes sense to keep them out there with Iowa and Minnesota.”  Iowa City is further south than Evanston too, but again, close enough and although not a true “North/South” division, it’s not like having Dallas in the NFC East where you just scratch your head and say, “really?”

9.  Divisional Names

Jim Delany said in 90 days we’ll have names for these Frankenstein divisions, pieced together with dollar signs in mind over fan travel, history, and common sense.  He said on TV about “legends” of the conference.  We know what that means… there’s going to be a push to name division after people.  I’m hoping that people raise hell about that.  I’m sure that Minnesota will want to play in the “Schembechler Division” and that the “Hayes” division will also go over big in Champaign and with JoePa.  Why not?  Woody Hayes hit Clemson’s Charlie Bauman at the 1978 Gator Bowl after he intercepted an Ohio State pass.  That was before ESPN came into existence and invented sports, so did it really ever happen?

The only name that might work is Stagg, as in Amos Alonzo Stagg, long time head coach of the University of Chicago Maroons, the original Monsters of the Midway and former Big Ten athletic conference member school.  It’s up to you with the other names.  1 school will love it, 11 others will  not.

10.  The Logo.

How cool is the Big Ten’s logo with the hidden 11 in it?  It’s up there with the old Milwaukee Brewers logo with the “m” and “b” aligned to look like a baseball glove.  Gonna be tough to hide that 12 somewhere, but I’m sure they’ll think of something clever.  After all they’re so clever about the divisions and money and the Big Ten network that they can’t do any wrong… right?

Today, June 15, 2010 is my final day with “Car.”  He’s long in the tooth now, with over 178,000 miles traveled in total.  He’s been the conveyance of many trips over the years… whether up to Charlottesville for one of those UNC/UVa games that the Heels just never could win or something big like being sprawled with streamers and window chalk reading “Just Married” as Jenn and I drove down to Savannah on our honeymoon.  In that time there’s been thousands of little trips to work, to the store, to church, and occasionally to the shop, but not very often.

We just called you “Car.”  Nothing flashy or clever.  Just “Car.”  Dudley Do-Right called his horse “Horse” I would tell people, but at the time I just thought sticking to the basics was fine.  It was just a name to be silly.  I didn’t know it would be around and in my life so long or for such big events.  A marriage, a big move 800 miles away, a change in careers… you’ve seen it all.

Car has sat in the driveway in Apex, at all three apartments in Chapel Hill and Durham, Wheaton, Carol Stream, Westmont, and for the last month or so at our first house in Downers Grove.  He’s been there for the good times, like going up to Milwaukee to see Jenn’s crazy cousins and tailgate at Miller Park, but he also was there for sad times, like driving back to North Carolina for Steve’s funeral.  He’s gone from primary transportation to being relegated to just the short trips since we felt uneasy about going too far away from home since the fear of breaking down was always there, but he sucked it up and made the trips downtown during my last semester of law school for the night class, parking in that terrible little lot and getting a few dings and bumps from those parked and packed around him.

Now he’s off to spell another driver’s usual truck from the 5 day commute.  He’s more economical with mileage and can perhaps get another 18 months of use this way… but it’s sad all the same.  I’m glad to have my aunt and uncle’s old Mazda now… more reliable, nearly 90,000 fewer miles on it, to carry me thru the next few years.  That little green car (yes Jenn, it is green… I say so and so does Toyota) has been there for me all this time.

I do feel sad that he can’t get a final lap around North Carolina, namely going the backroads on 751 from Durham to Apex like he did hundreds of times.  I bet he could almost drive it himself.  No last trip to a basketball game and parking in the Skipper Bowles lot while the Heels played at the Dean Dome is in his future, but I hope he remembers those old times and is a little excited about his future.

In 1992 when my folks got me that old Plymouth Colt that took me thru high school and college we stood in the parking lot at the DMV location at South Hills Mall while I watched the owners of that car say goodbye.  The wife held up their toddler and said, “Say bye-bye to the little car.”  I found that funny at the time… didn’t know you could be attached to something like a car, especially something that was just basic transportation.  This isn’t the General Lee.  It’s not Formula One.  This isn’t a classic, it’s not a fine piece of engineering that’s sculpted in the hills of Germany or Italy to run like clockwork… but it’s a become part of my personality and my life for parts of thirteen years and 148,000 miles.

Thank you for being a good car.  Thank you for the safe trips.  Thank you for the commutes when you got me or Jenn home safe.  Sorry about the ice storms that dropped tree limbs on your roof, sorry about only using 87 octane gas all these years.  Sorry that my Dad can’t properly clean you up one last time.

I joked for years that if you got me thru law school that I’d have you bronzed.   I wish we had a three car garage or a big driveway to just keep you around, but I know Jenn and I need to be practical.  You know about practical… that’s what you are.  I know you understand as much as any set of gears can.

Bye-Bye, Car.

Peter Berg did a great job with “Kings Ransom” about the Gretzky trade, profiling how a natural resource, more valuable even than all the oil in Alberta, took a chunk out of Canadian pride when he headed to Hollywood.   Barry Levinson put together “The Band That Wouldn’t Die” about the Baltimore Colts Marching Band, who kept marching after the Mayflower Trucks drove out in the snow in those famous shots as the Colts headed to Indianapolis.

This past week we saw “Small Potatoes:  Who Killed the USFL” by Mike Tollin.  It’s an interesting look in a tiny one hour block at that question.  While Berg and Levinson seemed to have the time to go into the story, Tollin, limited only to the hour seemed to only square things off with it being Donald Trump vs. John Bassett.  Trump representing the over-spending, fall-moving, NFL hungry owners who wanted a merger at the cheapest costs possible and Bassett as the true model of the league’s original intent… to grow the product behind a spring schedule, a television deal with a 4 year old network called ESPN, and see what would happen before stepping up to challenge the NFL for the really great college players.

Tollin did a good job with this respect and paid some lip service to the other possible causes, seen in the short few moments discussing over-expansion to cities that couldn’t support the teams with the focus on the worst of those cities, San Antonio and the ill-fated Gunslingers, but we didn’t see the whole story.  While he blasted Trump (who deserves a chunk of the blame) nothing seemed to be spread around to those owners who followed Trump, be it blindly or with too many dollar signs in their eyes to see straight.

For a better look at this for anyone out there who’d like to know more about the USFL it’s a good read if you can get ahold of Jim Byrne’s “The $1 League” which is out of print, but might still be lurking on some library shelves.  Byrne’s book might be a bit self-serving at times and paints Trump as the bad guy, but makes points that we didn’t see in Tollin’s documentary about the times in the early/mid 1980s when College Football was exploding onto television and about to leap off being just a few games on ABC and bowl games to being something on ESPN, TBS, CBS, and leading to NBC’s deal with Notre Dame.   Another book to add, also in that unfortunate “out of print” category is “The League:  The Rise and Decline of the NFL” by David Harris that deals with the antitrust lawsuit of the USFL, as well as the NFL’s rivalry of that time, Al Davis vs. Pete Rozelle over the Raiders relocation to Los Angeles.

Yes, the USFL died from multiple wounds, some self-inflicted like the over-expansion and paying too much for players not originally part of the original model and business plan, but with a little more time perhaps Tollin could’ve shown us more than the Trump vs. Bassett feud.  Considering ESPN’s role with the USFL and the more than self-serving nature of ESPN basically always talking about sports in the era since they were formed in 1979, one could think this USFL documentary could’ve evolved into a series of documentaries by itself.  Shoot, while we had great interviews from Steve Young, Jim Kelly, and Doug Flutie playing prominently in the documentary we didn’t see Craig James until the credits as a mere aside.  Assuming James was still at the mothership, perhaps he’d have ended up more in the program.  James was a big deal back in 1983 when he signed with the Washington Federals, but I guess now that he’s left to CBS (but now back on ABC) maybe he’s small potatoes to ESPN.

My blog has been stalled on the information superhighway for some time, so it’s time to get out of the breakdown lane and get moving again.

Today’s random thoughts are about songs of my childhood–not the uber-pop songs of the early 1980s when I had the title cards memorized on MTV (seriously… I knew people’s record companies too) but those ones out of the hazy time when you’re too little to really remember much.

I was born in 1974, so in my really young days (pre-Reagan administration) my life included lots of music that was playing on the hi-fi in the living room.  My mother played lots of Barry Manilow… so much to the extent that even though I’ve not heard one of his songs since probably about 1982, if one shows up in an old movie or on some radio station the lyrics rush out of me like some repressed memory.  I’m not mad about it… Barry’s got some quality songs, just something that’s amazing to me that somewhere in deep recesses of my brain these songs of the late 70s exist and can pop out with intact stretches of lyrics.

In addition to Barry I’ve discovered the same phenomenon has popped up for the Bee Gees and Steely Dan… and so after a tour of YouTube to help refresh my recollection of those days when I was watching Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street each morning, I now have to list my top 10 songs of this era that have stuck with me 30+ years later like someone who’s undergone hypno-therapy.

10.  “Black Cow”

This was the first song on  side one of Steely Dan’s 1977 album “Aja.”  Don’t think it was ever released as a single, but man, those lyrics stuck.  Certainly not as catchy as that album’s hits “Deacon Blues” and “Peg” but it starts us off.

9.  “Thunder Island”

Two-hit wonder Jay Ferguson (well, at least his solo career) had the biggest on with this song from 1978.  Good lead guitar and any song that uses the line “Sha-la-la-la-la my lady” and a chorus of “Do-do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do!”  This song is just screams late 1970s music.  This song stuck with me as much or more than “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12″ on Sesame Street as the pinball rolled around on screen.

8.  “Magnet and Steel”

Ah, another 1978 song from the album “Not Shy” put forth by one-hit wonder Walter Egan.  Egan got back up singing and producing help from Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.  The chorus of this song might be the best of the 1970s… building with both almost clever wordplay and the budding “sensitive male” grove:  “With you I’m not shy to show the way I feel/ With you I might try my secrets to reveal/ For you are a magnet and I am steel.”

7. “Saturday Night”

Okay, this is one that gets played on the radio and by DJs at weddings still, but the Bay City Rollers #1 hit from 1976 actually cracks the list because of the reminder of the revival of Roller Derby on TV that I remember as a little kid.  I somehow thought that the Bay City Rollers were a team, like  the Los Angeles Thunderbirds and Bay Area Bombers which I saw on TV.  That sport slid  into my sports knowledge of that era along with the old North American Soccer League.  Who can believe roller derby and soccer on TV back then… and in an era when we only had maybe 6 or 7 channels on TV??

6.  “This One’s For You”

Ah, yes, Barry makes the list with the second “side one, track one” of my countdown.  If my folks put away a nickel for each time I heard this song on the turntable as a child back in the mid to late 70s they’d have had enough money to send me to college without saving another dime after 1980. The title track from Barry’s 1976′s album now is haunting my thoughts since my rediscovery of it in the database of my mind.  Now, like the song my brain has doing as the lyrics say:  “I sing it every night and I fight to keep it in.”  Amen.  I fight not humming this song all the time.

5.  “When the River Meets the Sea”

Perhaps no album in my life has influenced me more than what was perhaps the greatest birthday present I ever received… and that album is “John Denver and the Muppets:  A Christmas Together.”  Opened up a few days before my 5th birthday (I’m a December birthday) in 1979 my first full album that I ever received shockingly was not melted by all the play it got that year and all the subsequent Christmases to follow.  While this track wasn’t really a Christmas song it’s one that sticks with me.  “Patience my brothers and patience my son/ In that sweet and final hour truth and justice will be done.”

4. “Lucille”

Here’s another mega hit that makes the list.  Kenny Rogers’ 1977 #1 country hit (and #5 on the pop charts) about a woman who’s had enough of the hard life as a farmer’s wife and leaves him with “four lonely children and a crop in the field.”  Best lyrics of this song are at the start when she’s sitting at that bar in Toledo saying to a stranger “I’m hungry for laughter /And here ever after/I’m after whatever the other life brings.”  A good representation of all the cross-over hits between country and pop in that late 70s and early 80s era.

3.  “Waterloo”

I can’t do a list of songs from this era without an ABBA song, so here it is.  The title track from their 1974 album is the oldest song on the list (and also the third side one, track one song) but trust me, this one sunk in from radio and record play around the house.  A Swedish group singing about a how a relationship is like Napoleon’s defeat in 1815.  Hey, if you can make a comedy out of a German P.O.W. camp with “Hogan’s Heroes” then why not?   Yes, that history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.

2.  “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”

Okay, yes, another #1 song in the U.S. but this song is so 1970s that it has to make the list.  The groovy beat, the high pitched falsetto opening stanzas by Leo Sayer, the heavy sighs by the backup singers (think “The Hustle” only dial it up to eleven) before a word is even sung… ah yeah that’s it.  Sayer then breaks into his lower octave later in the song.  Another #1, yes, knocking out what has to be an honorable mention out of the top spot in January of 1977,  “You Don’t Have to be a Star (To Be in My Show).”  This song just about makes it to the top spot but not quite. It put a spell on me, it’s right where I want it to be on the countdown.

1.  “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree”

Ah, a song about a guy getting out of prison, but this song by Dawn (featuring Tony Orlando) came out in 1973, but it was the airplay from my childhood during the Iran Hostage Crisis that sticks with me.  One radio station in Cincinnati played this song at noon every day and we had a ribbon out on one of our trees in the front yard (not an oak, but it’s the thought that counts).  I still remember that ribbon coming down in ’81 and the 444 days number still sticks with me, as well as this song.  “I’ll stay on the bus/ Forget about us/ Put the blame on me/ If I don’t see a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree.”  Like everyone on that bus who’s cheering at end of song’s lyrics this one still gives me goosebumps when I hear it.

Site:  Suburbanite Bowl, Westmont

Scores:

Jenn’s scores:  104, 121 (4 strikes total)

Scott’s scores:  148, 145 (5 strikes total)

Not bad for a long layoff, but we hope to keep at it this spring and summer and get those averages up.

Last night’s season 2 finale of “Mad Men” proves why it won the “Best Drama” Emmy last year from the combination of excellent writing, acting, and cinematography.

There is never a wasted word on that show.  A simple throw away line from 7 episodes ago (that Don doesn’t have a contract at Sterling-Cooper) played out to perfection in the board room scene when Duck proved that he didn’t have all his ducks in a row in his plan to ascend to the presidency of the “new” Sterling-Cooper when he figured Don’s no-compete clause would put him in a pickle to be either part of the new firm or “go back to selling insurance.”

Okay, the show itself.

How great was Don’s entrance back to Sterling-Cooper?  Walking in from the rain, he’s cool and collected, doffing his hat and quickly getting things back in quick order.  He’s quickly met right away with smarmy Pete Campbell coming into his office to dish gossip and complain about being abandoned in Los Angeles.  Don, true to his “too cool for school” persona says how Pete had it all under control (as evidenced by Pete being “this close” to getting a big aerospace client) with the meetings out there, finally earning his keep and not being one to want something immediately and then be disappointed to not get it.

All last night we saw those scenes… about waiting for something and finally getting it.  Pete with his apparent promotion (and acceptance/notice from Don), Betty finally getting an apology (well, at least an acknowledgment) from Don about his affair, Betty also getting some revenge with her own affair, and Don getting his place back at work and home (we think).  We also see Duck not get what he wanted, apparently the shaft as Putnam’s folks seem to realize he’s not necessarily the best person for the job of President.  Pete loses out on he wants too, later in the show, in a classic scene with Peggy, but more on that later.

Best with this “getting what you want” and the whole idea about needing to wait for it in time was a little apparent throw away line at Don’s hotel room when Bobby wants a milk shake from room service, but, as Don advises to him, “You know that’ll take 45 minutes?”  Ah Don, how you taught young Pete to wait for things and get them in time, and now you do that with your own son. 

Also against the backdrop of uncertainty during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we see the echoed lines about “taking a stand” and “not backing down” with a foreign power.  The British are coming in with new ideas and the new firm, but we see Don not buying into the new Sterling-Cooper, and making his stand to results we’ll just have to wonder about until next season.  Pete Campbell makes his stand, putting it all out on the line with Peggy and being met by a stand of her own.  Peggy is stronger than Pete (great scene and cinematography with Peggy sitting on the edge of the couch, appearing much bigger an stronger than Pete, who slumped back into the other corner, looking weak and diminutive) and we see that for a fact last night.  “I could’ve shamed you,” she tells him, but she didn’t… she “wanted other things” and clearly, that wasn’t Pete Campbell, who appears as the big loser of the season.

Other “stands” we see are Betty not caving into Don (at the riding stable), scolding him for his selfish three weeks of “thinking” and not backing down on his desire to re-join the family, although we see peace in the end of the show, but an uncertain one, much like after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with strong tension still existing within that fragile peace.

A great way to end the season… can’t wait for next year!

Aside:  Jon Hamm hosted and excelled in one of the best “Saturday Night Live” episodes in recent history.  The “Mad Men” spoof, complete with walk-on parts from John Slattery and Elisabeth Moss, did a good job of capturing that show’s quirks (Moss, when asked what time it was said that as a woman she’s not allowed to own a watch) and combining it with the “Two A-holes” recurring characters played by Jason Sedakis and Kristin Wiig. 

Later, Hamm acts as a pitch-man for “Jon Hamm’s John Ham” a disgusting product of sliced ham on a toilet paper roll “for those who only have time to go to the bathroom or go to lunch.”  But, like a pro, Hamm plays it straight the whole time, never cracking a smile and keeping it believable.

The role of a drunken James Mason on a supposed 1959 “Vincent Price Halloween Special” as they’ve done in the past, also was brilliant, with a good impression and great timing he stole the sketch with most of the funny lines.

Hopefully Jon Hamm will be back next year on SNL… this year’s performance certainly should earn him an invite.

Now with Wake Forest tearing it up in football it is such a shame that the old “Tobacco Road” schools don’t play in football every year anymore.  The core of the conference, the real ACC (not counting those raided from the Big East with Florida State somewhere inbetween).  Even more of a shame is the single basketball game a year that pops up now between these schools.

The first bit of stupidity (after the Duke/UNC “no” votes on the individual schools after expansion was a foregone conclusion) was how once the division and scheduling questions popped up how the four North Carolina schools didn’t band together to insure that the natural rivalries (real ones, not like the mighty Boston College/Clemson game that you have in football) were preserved.  Actually to do all this would’ve required some foresight and using expansion overall as a bargaining chip would’ve ensured all this, but still, I think all of this could’ve been done years ago, but it could be done NOW so that we don’t have more years of the rivalries slipping away and the old ACC becoming something of a relic.

First and most important, the Tobacco Road Schools (or “Big 4″ whatever you want to call them) need to play each other twice in basketball each year.  The ACC at the time of expansion went for “permanent rivals” like Duke and Maryland because that was a hot and money-making rivalry at the time, but like other conferences have found in going the route of “set rivalry” games (or not doing those, see Oklahoma/Nebraska in football in the Big XII) the ACC went for the bucks, not the tradition (or much less travel for student athletes).  So, there are two ways to do this, one is more formal, the other is just a manipulation of the schedule.

You start out by grouping the 12 teams in the conference geographically.  Nutty as that sounds it works out naturally so that you have Boston College, Maryland, Virginia, and Virginia Tech in the northern group, the Tobacco Road schools in the middle, and then round out the southern-most schools with Clemson, Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Miami.  If you keep the ACC out if divisions in basketball, you call these groups “pods” or whatever and you play everyone in your pod twice (6 games) and then round out the rest of the 10 game schedule playing the other 8 schools once, and then you get to play someone out of the other pods twice.  Personally I’d go for a set rotation, spit out by a computer, but it can be done however you want… the important thing is schools closer to each other play each other more often making for travel times being shorter for student-athletes and preserving old rivalries. 

The variation, which I think works much better, is to not have this as “pods” within a 12 team mega-league, but divide it up into 3 divisions (call ‘em whatever you want, either geographically or name them after famous ACC coaches, I don’t care, but I doubt Duke would want to play in the Dean Smith Division) and use them as a mechanism for seeding for the ACC basketball tournament, such as the division winners are guaranteed one of the top 3 seeds, then the non-division winners fill in based on record for 4 thru 12.

While it’s not perfect, it’s no worse or undfair than any other college sports conference does it.  Going to divisions formalizes the separation of schools, but tying in the seeding allows for the schools to play each other with a reward at the end and plays less into the idea of having a team benefititng or hurt by being in a weak or strong division.  No other sport does massive realignment when the competitive balance is messed up (I bet the NBA wish they did that back in the day when the Eastern Conference was light years behind the Western) and neitehr should this one.

Second, we come to football.  Because of the Mega-Conference creation (which is founded on the money-grab idea because you get a conference championship game sponsored by Dr Pepper in early December and a mostly full stadium to add to the conference coffers, while the brass prays that the better team wins and goes to the BCS, and not the 8-4 team who went 6-2 in the conference) you can’t play everyone in football.  To “solve” this the argument can be made to just let everyone play in a random rotation, but the ACC opted to do the non-geographic divisions (to play up the chance of a second Miami/Florida State game every season at the championship game) you now have UNC playing NC State every season across divisional lines (which is fine, good rivalry preserved) but only playing Wake Forest 2 times every 5 years.  The same applies to Duke playing NC State, which isn’t a huge rivalry, but when you’re 20 miles from a school and played them every year since before World War II, you’d think it odd that you can’t continue to do that… but such is the brilliance that is the ACC.

On paper when the conference grew to 12 teams it probably seemed like a good idea to not split up geographically.  It would’ve split the Tobacco Road schools (2 going north, 2 going south) and probably would’ve broken like it did, with Wake and State going to one and Duke and UNC to the other.

The solution to this can come out in one of two ways, first, re-adopt the “pods” for football but play them within the current silly divisions, so UNC plays their normal 5 division games, State, Wake, and then 1 team from the Atlantic Division on a rotation.  Does this mean that the Heels will only play Clemson, Florida State, Boston College, and Maryland once every four years?  Yes.  That does stink, but while it takes away some premium games for higher ticket prices, it only decreases the percentage of them playing these teams slightly, going from 2 out of 5 years to 1 out of 4. 

The better solution is, with coorporation of the other schools, to go, over time, to a 9 game conference schedule.  This will make for an odd number of home games, but, with a little cooporation and some careful scheduling, schools will still be able to have their 7 (or 8 for FSU and Clemson) home games a season.  This allows for either a secondary “natural rival” or a rotation between the schools who don’t have a natural rival (or maybe two rotation spots for the schools like Boston College/Clemson). 

Let’s fix it in hoops, get football taken care of, and then we’ll deal with other problems like getting the divisions flipped at some point so they make more sense.

Why, people wonder, could you possibly be a Bengals fan?  My answer is simple, the geography of growing up just outside the ‘Nati.  However since leaving Cincinnati in 1988 (just one year before they’d win the AFC and make it to Super Bowl XXIII) I’ve had plenty of chances to come to my senses.  The NFL put an expansion team in Charlotte in 1995, the Carolina Panthers, and I even attended the first Panthers “home” game, a fun exhibition affair against the Broncos (and one series from John Elway) at Clemson, South Carolina one hot August night, but, I never embraced the Panthers.  In part, I saw them as a Charlotte team, not for the whole region, and second, I had my other felines of the gridiron to cheer for, those beloved Bengals who captured my attention at a very young age when they made it to Super Bowl XVI in the 1981 season while I was in first grade.

Since then and my move to North Carolina, I kept up with the Bengals.  I’d buy a season pass at the Original North Carolina Sports Bar on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill to watch the games on satellite TV… back then just about every Bengals game, save for ones against the Browns or Steelers, who brought a few dozen fans to the bar each week, the Bengals would be on a small 12 inch TV above the bar with type so small you couldn’t see the score, but there I was with my friend Steve Gates almost every week peering up at that tiny screen and drowning our sorrows with $1 cans of Sunkist Orange Soda (we were both underage) as the Bengals would usually bungle their way to a 5-11 record year after year.

I’ve expressed my disappointment with the franchise in the past.  After making the trip to Charlotte in September of 1999 to see the Bengals anemic offense lose 27-3 to the Panthers in a game that wasn’t even that close I sent my ticket stub to Mike Brown, the Bengals’ owner and team President.  I explained to him that I realized that NFL teams give 40% of the gate receipts to the visiting team, so, I reasoned that since about $8 of my ticket was going to the Bengals I would like $4 back because “your team has consistently only done a half-assed job” thus I felt I was entitled to half of that money back.

Shockingly, I never heard back from Mr. Brown or got my $4.

So, I still sadly sit around on Sundays, like the past two where I was lucky enough to see the Bengals on TV up here in Chicago, wearing my Akili Smith #8 jersey and telling myself that there will never be a worse time for the team than those days in the late 90s, so that jersey is a reminder of how bad it has been… but now at 0-5, I wonder, should I bother to keep up with this fool’s errand?

I can see the Colts on TV up here about 10 or 11 times a year… an exciting team that wins, scores points, and plays enough defense to win.  This week the Colts rallied late to steal a win from the Texans, while the Bengals played with some heart, but in the end were not enough against the Cowboys.  Granted, things might get turned around, but what’s the use of the late season rally to finish at 7-9, only to peak the curiosity and interst for the next season?

Oh, I’ll probably continue to be stupid and back the Bengals, but one day, maybe, one day they’ll not be a laughing stock anymore… and will capture the glory days of Ken Anderson, Anthony Munoz, Cris Collinsworth, Boomer Esiason, James Brooks, and Jim Breech.

There’s a really funny geographical instance I’ve seen for the past few years developing in another of my interests, minor league baseball.  Over the past few years the South Atlantic League (“Sally”) and the Midwest League have been growing by franchises and expanding further and further apart, so much that they overlap within the state of Ohio.  Now, with gas prices driving up transportation, apparently the powers that be in the minors have decided that there should be some sort of change.  To me this should’ve been fixed years ago because players can’t develop if you can’t practice.  How easy is it to practice if you’re driving from the outskirts of Cleveland to a game the next day in New Jersey?  It’s tough to master a sacrifice bunt or a curve ball while your bus roars down the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

First, the question begins with the idea of when did leagues have to have 12 teams or more?  When I was in high school, back in the days of the old 26 team major leagues (before the Marlins, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and (Devil) Rays had just 3 leagues at every level, so that meant a 10 team league and two leagues of 8.  Indeed, even today the Carolina League, a High-A league, has only 8 teams while it’s two counterpart leaguesThe Carolina League of my youth had just 8 teams.  Now, somewhere along the line that we’ve got 30 big league teams that math doesn’t carry over to have 3 leagues with 10 teams… well, not in Low-A baseball… it means a 14 team Midwest League and a 16 team South Atlantic.

Second, what’s the problem?  The Sally League has their two teams in Kannapolis and Hickory, both in Western North Carolina and basically 50 miles away as the crow flies.  Granted, with the interstates it might be longer in mileage, but shorter in time, but these teams are NOT in the same division.  How the heck can that make sense?  Sure, the line has to be drawn somewhere, but when you break up an opportunity for fans to travel to see their team a reasonable distance away (and see a new city, ballpark, etc;) in the mind of supporting a 16 team mega-league, it just seems more than a little silly.

Okay, so where to draw the line? 

I’m going to go way, way past the plans I’ve read about on ballparkwatch.com (great site) and going the route of dividing this thing up into three smaller leagues.  It’ll save on gas, put players on the field sooner for practice, and just go back to the old days of when leagues actually played within one region, not three or four.

Currently the Midwest League operates in Indiana (South Bend, Ft. Wayne), Michigan (Lansing, West Michigan, Great Lakes [Midland]), Ohio (Dayton), Iowa (Burlington, Clinton, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities), Wisconsin (Beloit, Wisconsin [Fox Cities]), and Illinois (Kane County, Peoria).

Challenges already exhist within this 14 team league to the point that the eastern 6 teams (those that are in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana) play in one division while the other 8 populate the Western Division.

The issue then is, why can’t the 8 teams in the West just make up their own league?  In my idea we’d do just that.  Granted that’ll mean dividing 22 teams into the other 2 leagues, meaning a 12 and a 10 team league, but if player development is the real key, you can’t be spending the bulk of every third or fourth day on a bus ride that’s longer than it needs to be.

The South Atlantic League’s Northern Division ranges from the sububs of Cleveland to New Jersey, and south to Hickory, North Carolina.   With the new Bowling Green, Kentucky franchise coming into the league next season (relocating from Columbus, Georgia) the easiest move to make to further divide would be to slide the 6 teams from the Midwest League’s Eastern Division into a league with the the new Bowling Green team, their Kentucky neighbors in Lexington, the Lake County (Ohio) team outside Cleveland, and the West Virginia franchise, playing out of Charleston, West Virginia for your 10 team league.

Now, all we’ve got left that’s geographically challenging are the teams that are a bit outside of the footprint of the traditional Sally League teams, and those are the Hagerstown (Maryland) Suns and the Lakewood (New Jersey) Blueclaws.

Aside from these two teams, the northernmost teams left are the Delmarva (Salisbury, Maryland) Shorebirds and then it’s all the way down to the Greensboro (North Carolina) Grasshoppers!

Still, short of realignment of having the Lakewood team shifted to High-A’s Carolina League and bringing in a team from Virginia to the Sally, you’re going to have to deal with the few long bus trips created by having a couple of 6 team divisions in this smaller Sally League.  The Northern teams would include Lakewood, Hagerstown, Delmarva, and then you would round it out with three North Carolina based teams in Greensboro, Kannapolis, and Hickory.

The line then would move so you’d have Asheville, North Carolina, placed in the Southern Division, along with Greenville and Charleston, South Carolina, and the three teams in Georgia:  Rome, Augusta, and Savannah.

Granted, yes, Asheville and Hickory are only about 80 miles apart, yet you still have Asheville playing in the same division with the closest league member to them, the Greenville Drive are only about 65 miles away.

This system isn’t perfect, but it harkens back to the older days of baseball with smaller leagues and more imporantly leagues within a common region, not one scattered throughout multiple timezones and over far reaching expanses of interstate highway.

It struck me how someone’s life can be boiled down to a sentence or two in some instances.  Born on this date.  Married this person.  Had these children (who had these grandchildren).  Died of this cause.  Attendance at the funeral included these people. 

Wow.

I knew only one of the people who’s obituary I copied (hazy memories of my great-grandmother that hardly register anymore and are supplemented so much by a few old photographs) but managed to feel a slight twinge of emotion on occasion.  Is embedded in my DNA somehow? 

I often bore my wife and friends with theories that we’re all pre-conditioned to like certain types of food.  I base this with merely the instances where I try something at a German Restaurant for the first time and it resonates with me so much that I swear somehow deep in my genetic code there’s some sort of switch that gets triggered when I taste a spicy mustard, knockwurst, or a tasty lager that’s there due to some sort of gastro-evolution that wove itself into my building blocks of life because Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Helmut, Wilhelm, or Karl really liked that stuff.

Anyway, it was a learning experience to read about people who’s name I’ve only heard a few times in my life or read their names off the maticulously-noted recipe cards that my grandmother gave to my mother with Great Aunt So-and-So’s name on it.  Now I know a little more about where I came from, or at least who the people were sitting across from my mother or grandfather at Thanksgiving dinners and church picnics decades ago.  I don’t know any of them, but they influenced the people who influenced me.  Huh.  Now we know who to blame .