I do other things

In one Seinfeld episode, Jerry wanted to get his parents an electronic organizer as a gift, but due to their cost, gets the knock-off Willard instead of the Wizard. Of course, Jerry’s parents don’t realize this for a while because they only want to use it as a tip calculator. That’s all they use it for, despite Jerry’s continued annoyance that it “does other things!”

This came to mind recently as I’ve been back in Georgia trying to find a job. When you’re unemployed, it seems like all anyone wants to talk to you about is why you don’t have a job and what they think you should be doing to find a job. It comes from a place of genuine concern and a desire to help and it’s certainly not fair to those people for wanting to try to help, but at some point I want to tell them that I do other things. I have other interests and every once in a while, I might even like to talk about those.

For example, just a few topics I wouldn’t mind talking about:

•      The NFL Playoffs (yes, even Tebow at this point)
•          Why it took me so long to start watching “The Wire”
•          Your kid
•          My kid
•          Someone else’s kid
•          The state of the Republican Party primary
•          My sudden disdain for Tostitos following their bizarre ‘talking bag’ commercials
•          Your favorite sports team, television show, flavor of ice cream
•          The fact that Community is on an indefinite hiatus while Whitney remains on the air

You may also have your own topics you’d like to discuss. I’m more than willing to talk about them as well. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the concern. I do, greatly. And I would love a job to talk about. But I do other things.

The Unstupiding

 This is the first of an irregular installment that hopes to clear up misconceptions about whatever topic strikes me at the moment.

I spent the better part of this past Friday through Monday watching football. Sure, Sunday was filled with the brand that openly pays players, but the majority of that time was spent watching college bowl games.  Sure, I may have neglected my dog, wife, kid, hygiene, diet and mental and physical health, but I did get to watch a lot of football, so it seems like a fair trade.

But as with most popular things (and despite vast sections of the stadium filled with fans dressed as empty seats, make no mistake, bowl games are popular), there are notions about them that are harder to break than an addiction to something highly addictive. 

Questions abound about the bowl system. Why aren’t there better matchups? Why are there so many games? Who really cares who would win a game between a 6-6 Illinois team and a 6-7 UCLA team? What did ESPN show before it got the rights to virtually every bowl game in existence? Why are you using the writing crutch of asking questions you intend to answer/ (Ok, so that’s not specific to bowl games, but you were wondering). I’ll answer these and many (i.e. maybe one) more below.

Why are there so many games?

The short answer is “Cash.” The longer answer is “Money.” For a slightly longer answer, we turn to noted sports commentator and part time head case Randy Moss who said “straight cash homie.” You get the idea. As with most things in sports, money is the driving motivation. But who gets that money? Well, it turns out the answer is “it depends.” In some cases, the games are part of a larger event for a *cough* non-profit *cough* that donates the revenues to charity. Of course, those events require large amounts of administration and those administrators aren’t independently wealthy, so they take a nice paycheck. The schools or their conferences get some of the money, most of which is spent paying to get the team and band to and from the game. In fact, a lot of schools actually lose money going to bowl games. 

The other reason for all the games is because we keep watching. Yes, I watched the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl and the Little Ceasers Bowl. ESPN is kind enough to put them on during the holidays so we can turn them on to avoid actually interacting with our families except to say “did you see that catch?” or “come here and watch this catch,” or “come here and watch this catch, but while you’re up can you get me a beer?” I know the games are glorified exhibitions, but it beats whatever rerun of CSI: Omaha that’s on the other channels.

Why aren’t there better matchups?

This one’s easy.  Outside of the BCS National Championship Game, the Bowls don’t care about the matchups. After the top two teams (I’ll leave the debate about how they’re selected to someone else), the Bowls have a pre-determined order in selecting teams, often from conferences they have pre-arranged agreements with. So the obvious follow up question is “why am I still reading?” After that, you’d ask yourself “what criteria do the bowls use to select their teams? We again return to the answer to the first question, “cash.”

Bowl games are nothing more than events to draw tourists to a locale. As such, the game’s primary importance is not television ratings or appeal to a national audience. The primary factor for picking teams is “do they travel well” as in “will they buy a lot of tickets and book a lot of hotel rooms and eat in our city’s fine restaurants?” That’s why a team like Boise State (ranked #7) gets sent to Las Vegas to play in a pre-Christmas Bowl while Virginia Tech (ranked #11) gets to go to New Orleans for one of the Big Four bowl games.      

How do they cram all that graham?

I don’t know.

Why does ESPN show virtually every bowl game?

They’re a 24-hour sports network trying to fill inventory in December to people are randomly off in the middle of the day, they don’t care about NBA or College Basketball until after the Super Bowl is over and the need a sports fix.  What, you’d rather they were on HGTV?

What do the games actually mean?

They’re both meaningless exhibitions (to any rational sports fan) and the determining factor of whether a team had a successful season or not (to everyone else.)  Of course, placing such emphasis on one game to define how successful a season was is ludicrous. Even teams who lose in a playoff format will tell you that while they were disappointed, perhaps devastated, to not win the title, they still had a successful season.

Check back next time when The Unstupiding tackles (obligatory unnecessary football phrase) another pressing issue that, in reality, has very little to do with anything. 

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.

Big News (and no, we're not pregnant)

The amazing thing about Seinfeld is that after more than a decade off the air, it is still somehow relevant today, aided by the ubiquitous reruns and failure by network television to develop a bona fide comedy hit. So much so that with the Cubs making major changes to their font office, I still wonder who they’re going to hire as the Assistant to the Traveling Secretary and secretly hope that George Costanza is going to get the gig. Costanza “worked” for the Yankees in the mid-90s.

One of my favorite episodes is when George comes to the conclusion that every decision he’s made in life has been the wrong one. Essentially, he realizes he’s the Earl Hickey of fictional characters. Like all great Seinfeldian moments, he came to this realization at the coffee shop just before ordering lunch. After ordering WHAT?!? he says he’s been ordering that his whole life and nothing good has resulted, so he orders what he considers the opposite. (Jerry acutely points out the opposite of tuna is actually salmon since tuna swim downstream while salmon swim against the current.)

Anyway, an attractive woman at the diner hears George’s order and looks his direction. George, being balding and unemployed at the time, hesitates going to introduce himself, but Jerry and Elaine convince him that if every instinct he’s had is wrong, than the right thing to do is to approach the woman. George, working up his courage, walks over and says he noticed her looking at him. She says he ordered the exact same meal she did, to which George replies “I’m George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” The woman responds flirtatiously with “I’m Victoria, hi.”

I mention all this because as of mid-December, I’ll be like George. Not in the sense that I’ll be changing my lunch habits in the hopes of meeting attractive women at coffee shops, but that I’ll be unemployed and living with my parents.

After two-and-a-half years of living and job hunting in Wilmington, NC, things just haven’t worked out. Well, the hunting has been fine, it’s the finding of a job that has been the issue. And with our living expenses increasing (who knew small children cost so much?), Yes Dear and I decided to hit the reset button and start over back home.

On one hand, it’s going to suck moving from Wilmington. It’s a great city and I can think of far, far worse places to be unemployed. We’ve met some truly amazing people and made some wonderful friends. As of yet, I’ve been unable to convince them to uproot their families and move to Statesboro, Georgia with us, but I’m hoping to entice them with such attractions as the National Tick Museum. If all else fails, I may have to spread false rumors about them to their bosses that would make them get fired but still be an enticing candidate for any jobs in Statesboro.

I’m going to miss random Tuesday trips to the beach with me and The Little Guy. I’ll miss the outdoor concerts every Friday night during the summer and the Shakespeare on the Green performances every spring. I’ll miss the summer league baseball games and the professional soccer team here, even if I didn’t ever make it out to a game.  I’ll miss meeting random actors when we’re out for drinks (ok, not so much on that last one.)

I’ll miss Flaming Amy’s Burrito Barn and pub fries from Front Street Brewery. And I’ll miss story time at the library and dropping The Little Guy off for preschool. I’ll miss baseball games at Brooks Field and basketball games at Trask Coliseum.  Most of all, I’ll miss the people we’ve met here. I’ll miss my church family at Pine Valley United Methodist Church who welcomed us there as though we’d been attending for years. I’ll miss The Little Guy’s preschool teachers and the parents of his classmates. I’ll miss our friends that we hang out with and have supper clubs with.

But on the other hand, it’s exciting to move back to a place with so many friends and family. It’ll be nice living in a college town with college football. It’ll be nice living in a town with Nikko Japanese Steakhouse and the home of the original Zaxby’s. It’ll be nice to be in a town where I can go to Wal-Mart at any time, day or night, and feel 98 percent certain I’ll run into somebody I know. And it’ll be nice to have The Little Guy be closer to his grandparents, even if that is just down the hall.

What does this move mean for you? Well, if you’re among my Wilmington friends and have been thinking “you know, it’d be fun to invite Luke, Yes Dear and The Little Guy out to do that really fun thing,” you may want to get on that. We like you and all, but I don’t see us making a five-and-a-half hour drive to do whatever event you’re thinking of.

If you’re one of our friends who doesn’t live here, it means that if you’ve been thinking about coming to see all that Wilmington has to offer and wanted to do that with us, you probably should figure out a way to turn back time to the spring or summer when most of the fun stuff is going on. However, you’re still more than welcome to come visit/help us pack.

And if you’re one of our Statesboro friends, it means that despite your best efforts to rid yourselves of us, we’re coming back. But on the plus side, you’ll have a little more than two year’s worth of inside jokes to make us feel like we’re moving to a new place.

So allow me to introduce myself. “My name is Luke. I’m unemployed and as of mid-December, I’ll be living with my parents.