2011: The Year that Happened

Part of the PATRIOT ACT's requirements is that anyone who has even thought about writing a blog during the year must provide a year-in-review post to point out the highs and lows of the previous 360 days or so. By rule, any actual news that happens the last few days of the year is criminally overlooked in year-end retrospectives.

Newspapers do this too, but mostly because it's a way to make it look like they're doing actual work when they're really selling you a paper filled with not only yesterday's news, but news from 11 months ago. They're freely admitting that no actual news happened that day, but they have pages to fill and your desire for instant nostalgia is such that you don't mind. It's the equivalent of a columnist packaging together the best of his old columns into a book and then having the audacity to charge you more money for the privilege of reading the same thing again.

So in no particular order (or guarantee of accuracy), here are my recollections of 2011: The Year that Happened.

Casey Anthony returned to fame when she killed Osama bin Laden. Anthony, of course, is best known for murdering people's ability to tolerate Nancy Grace.

Following a sex scandal that rocked the university, the school to the unusual step of no longer attending high school games to scout players for fear of garnering additional charges.

The dumbest people in America got together and decided to troll the Republican Party by being the only people running for the party's nomination.

Michael Jackson's doctor was found guilty of finding NBC's "Whitney" hilarious.

President Obama fueled speculation that the state of Hawaii is in on the conspiracy to cover up the fact he was born in Kenya by releasing his long-form birth certificate.

Kenya responded by saying Obama can't be from there as he's never finished first in a marathon.

The Miami Heat lost to the Humidity in the NBA finals.

Donald Trump was, at one point, a leading candidate to replace Meridith Vieria as co-host of the Today Show.

Steve Jobs finally created an app to take him to the afterlife.

Charlie Sheen redefined "winning" to mean anything but.

Harold Camping predicted the end of the world.

Twice.

And people believed him.

The world didn't end.

Amanda Knox extended her study abroad time in Italy, much to the disappointment of her parents.

Prince William and Kate Middleton were upstaged on their wedding day by Kate's sister Pippa.

The Occupy Wall Street movement reminded us how much we all hate camping.

 I promised to post blog entries more often, but did not.

I'm promising to post more blog entries in 2012.

I likely will not, though I do look forward to unveiling a new feature in the coming days.

Next year's news today

In an attempt to save you some time next year, here's your BCS outrage column from December, 2012.

  

After another wild and turbulent season, the BCS once again failed in its only mission of providing a matchup of the two best teams. Sure, #1 will face #2, but as usual, there’s no clear consensus as two who those teams are with four or even five teams staking a claim to a spot in the BCS title game.

The BCS ranking consists a combination of computer rankings and human polls. While the computer rankings were fairly consistent, the human polls, which count as two-thirds of the vote, were wildly divergent.  The coaches poll fell mostly along conference lines, which makes since when you consider they spend all week preparing their team. It’s almost like they don’t have time to actually analyze the other 118 teams they’re not playing that week and delegate the vote to some Sports Information Director or secretary who actually decide who plays in the title game. And then there’s the Harris Poll voters, who I’m fairly certain think they’re actually voting for American Idol.

Making matters worse for the beleaguered BCS are the selections for the remaining championship games. Once again, a deserving team from a non-qualifying conference was passed over for an at-large selection so they could take  a major conference team that “travels well,” which translated from Bowl Committee to English means “brings lots of revenue for us.”  Add in the fact the Big East still gets an automatic bid and the BCS can't be taken seriously as a way to crown a national title.

As expected, fans expressed their outrage over the broken BCS system and everyone from Sports Illustrated to bloggers in their parents’ basement clamoring for change that's not going to come anytime soon.

Meanwhile,  the playoffs for FCS, Division II and Division III continue with quarterfinal games scheduled for Friday and Saturday in games throughout the country.