The NFL and the Nature of Large Organizations

By now, everyone has seen the horrible video footage of Ray Rice knocking his then fiancee (now wife) out cold in an elevator during an argument. It's an absolutely horrible thing to watch.

The big story now is not the domestic violence itself, but rather, how the NFL handled the issue. Originally, the NFL suspended Rice for two games. Now, after the release of this video, the Ravens have cut (fired) Rice, and his football career is all but over - permanently.

Of course, there are now all sorts of stories with the point of The NFL Knew About Ray Rice....And Did Nothing!

This morning, I was watching knuckle-head Joe Scarborough and company talk about how large organizations (like the NFL) always cover up bad things, and how horrible that is. You're going to see these stories everywhere. People are going to pile on the NFL and condemn the NFL for essentially sweeping this all under the rug, circling the wagons, and trying to cover up a horrible event. You're going to see stories about how private entities are only self-interested! Eleventy! For the most part, all that's true, but you know what?

The NFL covering up a player beating his fiancee pales in comparison to all of the things that the Obama Administration has done over the past six years and covered up...and no one gives a damn about it. Yeah, this is kind of politicizing sports, but who cares? I'm pointing out all the hypocrisies in our country.

Everyone is upset about Ray Rice. You know what I'm still upset about? Susan Rice going on national television and blaming a terror attack on a YouTube video. Do any of these people shrieking about the NFL give a damn about that? Nope. It's just laughable that so many people get worked up about the NFL, but they can't seem to muster any outrage when a government official comes on television and just lies to us like we're stupid little children. But that's what happens in politics. People just overlook things like that nowadays, because they don't want "their team" to look bad.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not sticking up for the NFL or Ray Rice. They both deserve shame, but you know who else does? Your President who covers up everything. How can you care about one and not the other? It's wildly inconsistent.

The IRS was used to target conservative organizations in an effort to squash one side of a political point of view, and then all the e-mails from everyone are just magically gone? Yeah, nothing to see there folks. Zero outrage. No big deal. People who get subpoenaed in a Congressional investigation just happen to delete all the evidence of their conspiracy and....crickets. The VA puts veterans on secret waiting lists and then covers up their own cheating? Eh, just give them some more money.

Once again, leftists see large private organizations like the NFL as self-interested and willing to cover up problems that should see the light of day. And they're not totally wrong. They're right to be skeptical. However, their distrust of skepticism of people's motives completely disappears when applied to government organizations, because apparently, everyone just magically becomes an angel with completely altruistic motives when they work for the government.

Right.

So before you tell me how large organizations like the NFL circle the wagons to avoid bad publicity, and before you tell me how horrible that is, tell me how upset you are about your own government doing the same damn thing.

Otherwise, you're a hypocrite and hack.

Washington Redskins Team Owner Announces New Foundation

The Perpetual Outrage Industry has been wailing about the name of a football team for a long time. I haven't been following this fake outrage, mainly because I don't follow fake stories and I don't really care about the NFL.

However, it appears that team owner Dan Snyder has basically told everyone to go pound sand, and predictably, he's been vilified. But recently, he's made a move that might make it harder to cast him as a villain.

He's announced the foundation of the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.

"I believe the Washington Redskins community should commit to making a real, lasting, positive impact on Native American quality of life — one tribe and one person at a time," Snyder wrote. "I know we won't be able to fix every problem. But we need to make an impact. And so I will take action."

This is actually a pretty clever move.

The criticism (as far as I can tell) is that the team name is a bad symbol, it hurts people's feelings, and that the name is racist. Even assuming for the sake of argument that people are getting their feelings hurt, the damage is...let's call it indefinite.

However, it appears this new foundation will be doing actual, concrete work to make people's lives better. Will this stop the Perpetual Outrage Industry? No. They won't be happy until they've stamped the name out of existence, and my guess is that they'll get their way eventually. My guess is that the NFL will likely allow Snyder to keep the name as long as he owns the team, but the NFL will condition the sale or transfer of the team on the name changing.

This will keep Snyder from passing the problem to someone else, but  might also have the effect of depressing the value of the team by a few hundred million.

Goodell: NFL Might Get Rid of PATs

While I was busy working yesterday, the NFL Commissioner was busy coming up with weird ideas. Specifically, he floated the idea of eliminating the PAT.

“You want to add excitement with every play,” Goodell said. “So there have been some proposals. Some are still going through the process of creativity, but there’s one proposal in particular that I’ve heard about (where) it’s automatic that you get seven points when you score a touchdown, but you could potentially go for an eighth point, either by running or passing the ball. But if you fail, you’d go back to six.”

So we're talking about scoring a touchdown, getting seven points for that, and then having the ability to gain an extra point by going for the two point conversion, with the idea being that if you fail, you go back to six.

This is a silly idea. First, it's not going to motivate any coaches to go for two (or should we call it one?) with the conversion "bet", unless they otherwise would due to the score being odd. If you didn't know, there's actually a chart that you can use to determine when to go for the two-point conversion. I'm told there was math involved.

Anyway, my point is that eliminating the PAT kick won't really change the game at all, other than to have the effect of going directly from TD to kickoff most of the time. Does that really make the game "more exciting"? Not really.

It does move the game along a little, but the PAT only takes a few seconds. The big delay is really a feature of the TV timeouts they take between the TD, the PAT, the kickoff, and then the first offensive possession of the other team. In that span of time, you can get a TV timeout (a commercial) between all of those, resulting in about 4-5 minutes before more actual football occurs.

So, it's really the commercials. Also, do you know anyone who complains about PATs? Hey bro! You know, the thing I hate most about the NFL is those darn PATs. They're soooo boring! I wish they would get rid of them!

No, you don't know anyone who says that, because no one says that. You know what I would like to see? I would like to see the NFL tell advertisers that they can only show a certain commercial a limited number of times during each game.

Think about it. How many times have you watched a football game and seen the same commercial for three hours, over, and over, and over? Being overexposed to the same commercial makes you start to loathe the product. Case in point: Before he saw this commercial, my friend Will probably didn't have any strong feelings about the Nissan Rogue. Now I bet you a nickel he would never buy one, because he's had that stupid commercial force-fed to him about a billion times in the span of a few football games. If you bought one, he would probably make fun of you.

Keep the PAT, drop the repetitive commercials.

Midlands Schools to Have Delayed Opening Because of Cold Weather

No precipitation, but we're now having a delayed opening for the cold? I could understand if it was going to be icy due to snow, or sleet, but there isn't any actual precipitation being forecast. It's just going to be cold.

I don't really think that two hours is going to make much of a difference.

Bart Starr in the 1967 Ice Bowl

Put on a coat, y'all. Or don't. Bart Starr didn't need a coat in the Ice Bowl. Man up.

NFL Logos as European Soccer Badges

Kinda cool, if you're into that sorta thing. It's no Death Star cookie jar, though.

My Post Super Bowl Thoughts

So the SuperBowl was yesterday. I hear that it was a blowout at the beginning, Beyonce was awesome in the middle, energy efficient in the third quarter, and close at the end. I didn't actually watch one moment of the game. Yeah, I know, it's The Superbowl! You gotta watch it. I didn't. Wasn't interested. Not even a little.  Don't worry, I'm not one of those smug jerks who loves to show off how out of the mainstream they are. I wasn't reading Jack Kerouac.

I watched a marathon of Game of Thrones because I had never seen it. It's awesome, by the way.

The thing is, I only have so much sports in me, and I really follow the college football season and baseball closely. If I started watching NFL football, it would be like a late-night booty call. I just show up for the playoffs after not having watched a game? That feels kind of cheap and trashy to me.

Mrs. Permanent Press likes to say that the time from the end of the college football season until the beginning of baseball is "the romance time". Ever seen Fever Pitch? Conveniently, Valentine's Day falls at just the right time.

However, the Superbowl is one of those shared experiences that everyone has. Reading through my Twitter feed (from last night) during lunch today, I felt a twinge of remorse for not being "part of it" and enjoying the same thing the rest of my friends (and most of the world) was enjoying. That wouldn't have really been possible just a few years ago. Social media has brought us together for these shared experiences in a new way.

I did see most of the big commercials, courtesy of YouTube, and I have to say that I wasn't that impressed by most. The Budweiser Clydesdales was probably the best, because it's almost a traditional commercial now. Check out this link; it's got some great old Bud commercials.

Bob Costas Is A Moron

But if you're a big sports fan and you've had to sit through him during a baseball game, you probably already knew that.

By now, you probably heard the story of the NFL player who shot the mother of his child and then shot himself. It's really sad.

Bob Costas decided that he would talk about that during halftime of last night's Sunday Night Football game and give his editorial on the subject. Keeping it to something like "We pray for the families and the surviving child." would have been fine. However, that's not what he did. Ol' Bobby decided that he was going to assign blame for why this tragedy happened. Guess who he blamed?

You might think that naturally the person, you know, the sentient being who decided to actually kill the other person and then commit suicide. Sure, that would be one way to go. Pretty predictable and logical, though. Where's the fun in that?

But if you don't want to blame the killer, you could go Costas-Crazy and blame the inanimate object that happened to be the instrument of death. You know, the gun.

Here's the problem with Costas blaming the gun: it's weapons-grade stupid.

The gun didn't do anything wrong. It didn't do anything right. It's just a gun. It doesn't have a good or evil spirit, it doesn't make people do things, it doesn't do anything other than make a small piece of lead go really fast. It's a dangerous tool, but hey, there are lots of dangerous things out there. A gun is not a good thing, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. Inanimate objects don't get moral status.

Costas specifically went on to blame the "gun culture".

Ok, let's talk about that. With all due respect to Bob Costas, he has no freaking clue about the "gun culture". I bet you a silver dollar that Bob Costas has never done much shooting (if any), or even knows people who shoot. Accordingly, he is about as much of an authority on the "gun culture" as I am on the "Chinese Culture". (Side-note: Ever notice how people with no idea what they are talking about have the strongest opinions?) Just a thought.

Not to be deterred by something as insignificant as facts, knowledge and experience, ol' Bobby tells us what the gun culture promulgates and stands for:

"Our current gun culture, ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."

If you're going to shoot someone because you're in a domestic dispute or their music is too loud, you need to sit down and examine yourself. Also, I'd like to note that it's illegal for teenagers (boys or girls) to own handguns. Am I to understand that law is ineffective? Where is my fainting couch? Try removing the word gun and re-read the sentence. That's actually something worth discussing.

Costas goes on to further illuminate us with the light of his genius:

"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?"

Let's take this piece by piece. "Handguns do not enhance our safety." Do I really need to explain why this is a moronic statement? Next time you see a police officer, ask him if his sidearm enhances his safety.

The second sentence: "They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it." A gun is an inanimate object: like a rock, or a pencil, or a necklace. It doesn't enhance your flaws. A person's flaws are what they are. This is probably the most insidious line of the whole piece. Right here, Costas is shifting blame from the murderer to the murder weapon. The killer is not less guilty because he killed someone with a gun. The gun didn't make him kill someone. If inanimate objects can enhance our flaws, can any objects minimize them? Does carrying around a pocket Bible make you a less flawed person?

In his soaring crescendo of stupidity, Costas closes with:

"But here is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

Apparently, no guns = no murder in Costas-Land. Unfortunately, that's not true. It would be nice if that were true, but it's not. Maybe it makes Bob feel better to believe that. I wonder if he still believes in the Tooth Fairy.

Little Lebowski Urban Achievers

I think they became the replacement referees.

Not really being an NFL fan, I'm hoping for as much chaos as possible. This was a good start.

Dhani Jones Gets a Sporting Clays Lesson

Here's a video of former NFL linebacker Dhani Jones taking a sporting clays lesson at the Biltmore in North Carolina. It's a little heavy on the mindset, so I keep waiting for the instructor to say "It's 90% half mental".

Oh, and there's a nice car in there as well.

Melvin Ingram's High Five With Goodell

Because the NFL commissioner is that cool. Congrats to Melvin Ingram!

NFL Teams and Their NCAA Equivalent

Shamelessly stolen and cherry-picked from EDSBS:

1. Dallas Cowboys: We're really lucky they haven't won a title in decades, because their bandwagon fans are absolutely insufferable. Run by a fat guy in the late '00s, and it was really funny. Most like: University of Notre Dame.
2. Washington Redskins: Great recruiters of talent who struggle with the concept of "winning football games." Offensive mascot. Most like: Clemson University. 
3. Chicago Bears: They won one title in the '80s and never shut up about it. At least you can listen to some decent music when you visit their city. Former coach probably involved in a Ponzi scheme. Most like: University of Georgia.
4. Detroit Lions: Bro QB. Never going to win a title, a fact fans are slowly coming around to. Most like: University of South Carolina.
5. Minnesota Vikings: Has had an entertaining string of high-powered offenses, embarrassing coaches and conference title game losses. Most like: University of Arkansas. 
6. New Orleans Saints: Mentally unstable Cajun fans with a coach who plays by his own rules. Most like: Louisiana State University
7. New England Patriots: Locals were mostly unaware of the team's presence until the mid-'90s and often make questionable sartorial choices. Most like: University of Florida.
8. Pittsburgh Steelers: If you meet one of their fans, you will probably hear about an inflated number of titles. Nobody who roots for the team has ever actually lived in Pittsburgh. Most like: University of Alabama.
9. Baltimore Ravens: The little brother to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Fans have an odd affinity for Zubaz. Nobody would ever want to live in Baltimore. Most like: Auburn University.
10. Cleveland Browns: Decades of grim, depressing incompetence. So bad that Tim Couch was the highlight of the team's existence. Most like: University of Kentucky
11. Indianapolis Colts: Only relevant when a Manning is involved. The fanbase with the highest rate of adult-onset diabetes. Most like: Ole Miss
12. Denver Broncos: Worships Peyton Manning, even though he never won a title for them. Lovers of orange and mountains. Irrelevant since 1998. Players manage to get into trouble in an otherwise dull city. Most like: University of Tennessee.