I’m over at Jen’s at the moment. She just posted two new items to her blog (or, as she likes to say, “bee-log”). One is her favorite poem, and the other… well, see for yourself, but parental discretion is advised. :)

My other “blog-children” have been rather quiet recently, hint, hint…

Frank Deford’s latest column points out that one of the central arguments against a Division I NCAA football playoff is a crock:

Despite the fact that every other NCAA sport, as well as the lower football divisions, have playoffs to determine their national champion, Division I football maintains its elite Bowl Championship, wherein only two teams are consecrated to play for the title. The reason given is that the players…must not be taken away from the classroom. This is utter nonsense, of course. The maintenance of the anachronistic bowl system — which grew up decades ago, before airplane travel, so various Sunbelt cities would have a profitable annual holiday excursion package — means that college coaches can keep their teams practicing for weeks after the regular season ends in November. The bowl system is much more of a threat to academics than any fair playoff among the top four or eight teams could ever be.

This is, of course, exactly right. In fact, the only arguments against a big-time playoff (I’m talking 12 or 16 teams, so that all D-I conferences have a chance to compete for the title) that really have any merit whatsoever are the ones that deal with “tradition”: the potential reduction in the importance of college football’s traditionally thrilling regular season, the notion that eliminating bowls would give fewer teams something to be happy about at the end of the year, etc. (Andrew makes these points well here.)

But Deford’s column inspired me to think about this issue some more, and I have a playoff proposal that I think would satisfy many of the typical objections, as well as please a number of the key special interests who control the game. The schedule would go like this:

Thanksgiving (Nov. 22-28) and/or First Saturday after Thanksgiving (Nov. 24-30): Championship games for conferences with 12+ teams; final week of the regular season for other conferences.

Second Saturday after Thanksgiving (Dec. 1-7): All eight BCS bowls (yes, I said eight) are held. The Orange Bowl matches the ACC champ vs. the Big East champ; the Sugar Bowl matches the SEC champ vs. the Conference USA champ; the Fiesta Bowl matches the Big 12 champ vs. the Mountain West champ; the Rose Bowl matches the Big 10 champ vs. the Pac-10 champ; a new bowl, which I will call the Radio Shack Shaq Attack Bowl, matches the MAC champ vs. the WAC champ (get it? Radio Shack Shaq Attack, MAC vs. WAC? hehe); the Miscellaneous Corporate Sponsorship Bowl matches the Sun Belt champ vs. an at-large team; and two other miscellaneous bowls get four more at-large teams into the mix. The five at-large teams (or should we just say, the four at-large teams plus Notre Dame) will be determined by the BCS formula, which will give fans and commetators plenty to argue about. The regular season remains plenty important, because you have to either be a conference champion or be one of the five at-large teams to play on BCS Saturday, which, as you will see, is the gateway to the national championship. These actual bowl matchups on BCS Saturday can be mixed up as desired by the bowls, to make the most money possible, except that the Big 10 vs. Pac-10 Rose Bowl must remain sacred. Winning a prestigious bowl will still be an accomplishment unto itself, and will retain its glory; even if you win the Rose Bowl and then eventually lose in the forthcoming playoff, you’ll still be able to say “Rose Bowl Champs 2004.” You’ll get a ring and a banner and so forth. And on top of that, the bowls will actually gain in prestige because now they become the gateway to the national championship tournament. So they keep their old glory, and get to add new glory.

Between the Second Saturday and the Third Saturday: Various “minor” bowls are played, in order to appease the bowl promoters, give non-BCS schools face time, meet Andrew’s demand that lots of teams end their seasons on a high note, and whet the public’s appetite for the forthcoming playoff games. Meanwhile, offices all across America (not to mention BrendanLoy.com) become obsessed with college-football office pools, getting ready for the…

Third Saturday after Thanksgiving (Dec. 8-15): The playoff begins in earnest. The eight teams who survived BCS Saturday have been re-seeded, #1 through #8, based on the BCS standings, and are matched up in four national quarterfinals, which can be scheduled and distributed among various regional sites in whatever corrupt and lucrative manner the lords of college football wish.

Fourth Saturday after Thanksgiving (Dec. 16-23): The national semifinals are held. Again, these can be scheduled and located in such a way as to make the maximum possible money. Keep in mind, this tournament will undoubtedly be the single most lucrative event in the history of American sports. Why would the lords of college football possibly want to oppose it? It will make them RICH!!!

New Year’s Day: The national championship game, henceforth to be known as the College Super Bowl or the New Year’s Bowl or simply the Championship Bowl, is played… in Pasadena, California. It won’t be called the “Rose Bowl” (that was on Thanksgiving, between the Big 10 champion and the Pac-10 champion), but it will be played at the Rose Bowl, and thus, in essense, the greedy Rose Bowl folks will get two giant bowl games and obscene amounts of money. In addition, Andrew will get his Big 10-Pac 10 Rose Bowl and his New Year’s Day Rose Bowl. They won’t be the same game, but nevertheless this seems to be like a pretty damn good way to maintain tradition will advancing the common good of the sport.

NOTE: If five at-large teams are deemed to be too many to keep the regular season meaningful, the number can be reduced to three teams (cutting BCS Saturday down to seven bowls instead of eight, which would mean the #1 seed in the playoff would get a first-round bye, another reason to play hard throughout the regular season to earn that bye), or even one team (the #1 and #2 seeds would both get first-round byes). In the latter case, you basically have to win your conference to get in; only one other team would get in (ahem, Notre Dame, ahem)… so the regular-season conference schedule would be crucial.

ANOTHER NOTE: If the busy December schedule is deemed to force the student-athletes to play too many games, well, let me put it this way, I think we could all find a reason to keep on living even if a couple of those early regular-season games like USC-Hawaii were to be canned. :) And note, no one ever has to play on Christmas in my proposed schedule, which is nice.

This plan is not ideal for competitive balance, since a couple of the top teams in the country will undoubtedly be knocked off on BCS Saturday — before the playoff even begins — if the traditional bowl matchups are adhered to. But the central goal here is not necessarily to produce a playoff with the eight (or seven, or six) best teams in the country; that would be nice, but the central goal is to produce a tournament that allows us to determine the single best team in the country by playing it out on the field, instead of by polls and computer formulas. And this system would meet that goal.

In other words, my system isn’t perfect, but it’s vastly superior to the current system, which is, as some Congressman so eloquently put it, “un-American.” Very importantly, my system gives the TCUs and Northern Illinoises of the world a chance to compete for the title. Granted, they would rarely win. But are you honestly going to tell me you think a team from the MAC or the Mountain West (or, hell, from the Big East, which is about to be demoted into the non-BCS category) would never pull some upsets and advance to the semifinal or final? It could happen, in fact it would happen occasionally, and those teams deserve a chance to prove me right. And for that matter, the “Heavy 63″ deserve a chance to prove me wrong. What are they afraid of, anyway? Who’s afraid of the Big Bad MAC, the Big Bad MAC, the Big Bad MAC… :)

This column is old news, but it’s brilliant. It tells us what a Red Sox-Cub series might have looked like:

The Chicago-Boston matchup has been the ultimate feel-good story for America, the best since the trapped miners in Somerset, Pa., got out alive. Oh, to be sure, there were some bad feelings when the Cubs had Bucky Dent sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame last night during the seventh-inning stretch, but since Boston won the contest behind a brilliant pitching performance by Pedro Martinez, all was forgiven.

The victory was especially satisfying for Boston manager Grady Little, who had been second-guessed for pulling Martinez in Game 7 of the Yankees series and then watched as the Red Sox bullpen gave up two runs. But Boston held on to win, and now here was a rested Pedro back in ace form.

Hee hee hee.

Okay, I’m going to stop my random middle-of-the-morning blogging and go back to bed now. I woke up about an hour ago, feeling restless, but now I feel like getting three more hours of sleep before facing the day. Nighty night! :)

Eric at Classical Values notes: “It is undeniable that homosexuality is condemned elsewhere in the Bible, but only along with innumerable other sins — many of which are not considered sins at all by Christians.”

I’ve been saying this since I was in middle school. Why on earth is homosexuality such a big deal to right-wing Christianists, while other things that clearly fall higher on the Christian hierarchy of sin — like using the Lord’s name in vain, failing to honor thy mother and father, and other miscellaneous Commandments — are barely even mentioned?

Hell, if there’s one immoral behavior that’s running rampant in our society, it isn’t homosexuality, it’s the use of the Lord’s name in vain. And God dammit, it has to stop! :)

Gollum watches! Get your Gollum watches hee-ere!

It’s official: Monday’s massive solar flare was the biggest ever recorded:

Speculations ranged from simply well above X20, to X40 or even X50. Today word came from the SEC that their best estimate was X28. There is still a small chance this will be revised by a small amount, but it is now official: We have a new number 1 X-ray flare for the record books.

Here’s an image of the flare’s X-ray signature:

CAVEAT: I should point something out here. When we say “biggest solar flare ever recorded,” what that really means is, biggest solar flare in the last 25 years or so — or, more precisely, biggest solar flare in the last three solar cycles. (The sun goes through 11-year cycles of activity and inactivity.) If you look at the Top 27 list of biggest solar flares, you’ll notice that the earliest flare listed is from 1978. So, apparently, we have data from the solar-cycle peaks surrounding the years 1979, 1990, and 2001. Prior to that, there is no data because we didn’t have the instruments to measure it. So it’s not like this is the strongest flare in 100 or 200 years, let alone 4.6 billion years (the age of the sun). It’s just the strongest since the Carter Administration. :) Even so, it’s pretty damn cool (er, hot)!