Lombardi's_kid_brother

Thanks for the info. That was helpful.

I love the fact that only rebuild strategy anyone ever has is to copy the Cowboys under Jimmy Johnson even though that happened 30 years ago in an uncapped league. I think the problem with "tanking" in the NFL is that you turn over around 1/4 to 1/3 of the roster every year just in a matter of course. Suddenly filling the roster with guys who are there to be cut the next year, pushes you to 1/2 or even 3/4 roster turnover which really throws you into a cycle of chaos that will probably take 3 or 4 years to get out of - at which point all those #1s, #2s, and #3s you drafted in those heavily stockpiled drafts suddenly need their second contracts. The idea that you can grab, say, 30 guys in two years and keep them together for 5 or 6 years is simply not possible in the modern NFL. So, all you really are doing by stockpiling picks to one draft is condensing a three year plan to a one year plan and training your team to get the **** kicked out of it every week, because you are going to be horrifically bad in this plan.

I need one question answered: who is taking care of Ser Pounce?

I wanted to roll up Trevor Ariza in a carpet and throw him off a boat. But you live by the statistical certainty, and you die by the statistical anomaly. So, if I hadn't been cheering for them, I would have liked the universe conspiring there.

I love it. God help me, I do love it so.

The Rockets are simultaneously glorious and completely miserable to watch. I hope every starter but Harden is injured, they go 16-2 in the playoffs and drive ratings into the toilet. People will have to seriously re-think what basketball is when this experiment ends.

The bullpen cart. The stolen base. Barefoot punters. Kickers from countries I've never heard of. White power forwards with perms. Basketball players with bald spots. Coaches with serious and obvious drinking problems. The wishbone. Basically, I want it to be 1979 again.

Some friends invited me to the movies in November of 2002. They all wanted to see Chamber of Secrets so I went along, figuring I would see what the hubbub was about. I liked it well enough. I went home for Thanksgiving days later as I was single then. My dad was an elementary school principal and had the first Potter book on his desk at home. I read it in maybe three hours on that Friday. I told a friend that I had read it, and she bought me all four books for my birthday on December 12. I think I read them by Christmas. Over Christmas, I think I watched the first movie so I went from completely unaware of Potter to having consumed all of the available Potter material from early November 2002 to January 1, 2003. The fifth book came out later in 2003 so I was completely caught up in Potter nonsense going forward - though I don't think I ever saw one of the movies in the theater again, which is kind of weird.

In fairness, the first three books were really kids book with kid book length's. It was pretty easy to storyboard those into a 100 to 120 minute movie. Suddenly with Goblet of Fire, the book is twice as big with these massive set pieces. By Book 5, the books were completely out of control - sprawling and damn near impossible to follow. I actually give the film credit for turning the battle at the Ministry of Magic into something coherent, because in the book, that went on forever, and I never had any sense of where anyone was or what they were doing. I also remember the actual death of Sirius being confusing in the book - though the impact made sense because you really got a sense of that character. The problem with the films is that everything he does in the books from the end of 3 to the end of 5 is kind of an exposition dump. Having a lot of Harry/Sirius scenes would just kill the movies dead, I think. One of the problems with the books is that Rowling seemed to create fascinating new characters out of whole cloth on the regular.....and then had nothing for them to do. It always blows my mind that Mad Eye Moody is this incredibly important, really interesting character where we spent 90 percent of our time with his imposter. He basically hangs around after that, waiting for his chance to die. Harry Potter really screamed for an expanded universe. I would read the **** out of a three part Neville Longbottom as an adult book. I don't know if you were around book fans when 7 was released, but people lost their **** over the fact that Remus and Tonks died "off screen" and we learned about it by Harry seeing their bodies for five seconds. Meanwhile, he had his face in a bowl looking at memories for seemingly 100 pages. Those deaths would be as if GOT had a five second scene where Tyrion noticed Bronn in a pile of dead bodies and just kept walking.

I hated Book Five aside from what's her face. The new headmistress. She was such a perfectly created villain. That book was the point where everyone involved was like, "Editor Schmeditor am I right, people?" To Rowling's credit, book 6 was a lot tighter. Book 7 was a bit of a mess with 100 pages of them just camping for no apparent reason, but it finished with a bang.

I've been watching The Sopranos in order with my oldest daughter. I still think that's the gold standard for pilots, because that gives you a full view of practically every key relationship and character in 50 minutes. GOT couldn't really do that since nearly every person we thought was important would be dead by the end of season 1, but it did an incredible job of world building. I honestly think that's the key to the show since - again - you can't get too invested in any one character or storyline. What I find interesting is that I stumbled into each show basically the same way. I watched the final 20 or so minutes of the season finale for each and then had to go back and watch the whole thing from the beginning. But those final 20 minutes hooked me in totally different ways. Tony and his family in the dark in the restaurant toasting to the good times while "State Trooper" by Springsteen played on the soundtrack made me realize that this wasn't some sort of "Analyze This" comedy like I had suspected. And Dany naked with her dragons was, well, Dany naked with her dragons. I love people who share this as if it's a revelation. Anyway, I really enjoy the book version of The Godfather, but the movie is 10 times better simply because it cuts out the **** from the book that is not necessary - like 50 pages about that girl Sonny banged in the bathroom at the wedding and the size of her vagina. Seriously, the size of her vagina. There's also Al Neri's backstory where his silly wife left him because he got suspended from the police force for murdering a black guy who totally deserved it. Seriously, everyone should read The Godfather. It's nuts.

I give McQueen credit. He is the single best poster for coming up with absolutely bat**** crazy ideas that at least make you pause for a second and admire the logic. I'm fairly certain the primary issue with Georgia Tech is that - like Notre Dame post Holtz - it actually requires its athletes to take, like, math. It's already at war with itself over the difference between the SAT scores of the student body as a whole and the football team. And that's with the triple option as its offense. The compromises it would have to make to recruit someone like Cam Newton are hard to imagine....unless, I guess, you are a Virginia Tech fan and you are wondering why you apparently only compromised your standards once. Also, I think your home recruiting base is important, but if it the magic formula was simply recruiting base + generous alums, the University of Texas wouldn't be thanking a unicorn named Vince Young for saving it from being title-less since the Nixon administration. Oregon's burst of success was the fact they were seemingly first in two ideas that are now everywhere. One is the insanely rich alum who has a misguided desire for his college to be good at football. The other is the read option, which everyone runs now. Chip Kelly was literally two years ahead of everyone else in football. Which meant, they caught him in two years, and now he's just another coach. It's entirely possible that Dabo's success is just a minor blip, but he seems equipped to put together an 8 to 10 year run of excellence, which is not usually what someone like Chip Kelly produces. This feels like a Bobby Bowden-level total transformation.

Martin Luther Coon IS a pretty common slur for folks of a certain era. I heard it a ton growing up. I don't have a strong opinion either way on this one.

I'm not seeing a ton of "If Clemson can do it, why not us?" takes these days. Which is weird. Yes, Clemson was often good in the past, and it did have that one rando "national title" - just like Pitt, BYU, Washington, and Georgia Tech. But it's best case scenario for pretty much all of its history was a New Years Bowl every few years. This is first program to make this incredible leap forward since Schnellenberger and Miami. And it seems pretty sustainable since all the offensive stars are back from a 15-0 team and 5-star recruits are in the pipeline. So why is no one else trying to copy this? Everyone tried to copy Miami with the simple idea of "Florida is really good, and we need to go into some dangerous neighborhoods to find players who may actually be future felons." Bill McCartney looked at Miami and decided that bringing actual Crips to Boulder was a good idea. And it damn near worked. Good for him! But I'm not seeing any attempt to copy Clemson? Is it because it's so specific to one personality? Is the idea that Dabo is a weird combination of Joel Osteen, Bear Bryant, and Tony Robbins and any attempt to copy him is going to end in failure. What actually is the Clemson philosophy anyway? It can't just be "let's all have fun and love Jesus?" can it? The cynical answer is a rich alum somewhere of course, but - I dunno - the NCAA only exists at this point to sniff out cheating in upstart programs, and nothing has surfaced yet. Yes. And these type of people are always secretly killing hobos.

So no one watched The Boondocks?