As those of you who are college football fans probably heard, TCU just decided to join the Big East. Maybe you’re wondering what a school in Fort Worth is doing in a conference comprised mostly of East Coast schools (with a few Midwestern ones thrown in). Well, the answer is pretty simple: they want a better shot at a BCS bowl, especially the national championship game. Despite a 12-0 season, the Horned Frogs are on the outside looking in and will have to hope that either Auburn or Oregon lose this weekend. With a move to the Big East, by far the weakest of the AQ conferences, TCU pretty much guarantees itself a BCS berth any year it wins the conference, something that was not the case in the Mountain West. Oddly enough, though, had they decided to stick around the Mountain West may have been able to finagle an AQ spot—a conference with both Boise State and TCU may have had the clout to get a permanent berth. But strictly from a football perspective, you can’t blame TCU for jumping on a sure thing. And the Big East makes a smart move: they pick up a good team to quash any chance of getting demoted from AQ status. It’s a win-win football move.
But should football be the one thing that determines everything in intercollegiate athletics? This move is great in football, but a complete disaster by any other standard. For basketball and the non-revenue sports, you’re shipping TCU’s athletes on trips of 1,000 miles or more. Just in case you actually thought the NCAA and the schools were concerned about the “student-athletes,” moves like this would surely dissuade you from that notion. For football, the travel argument doesn’t matter all that much. Fly out on Friday, miss class that day (if you can’t set up your schedule otherwise), and do that five or six times a year. No big deal. Football is one of the few sports where the travel demands on athletes aren’t unreasonable (although conferences whoring themselves out to ESPN for Tuesday or Wednesday night games is kind of ridiculous). But why on earth should we be sending soccer or volleyball or softball teams halfway across the country? It makes a mockery of the theory that these athletes are supposed to be students first. As a college sports fan, I’ll admit I’m part of the problem. I’ve got a Tuesday night basketball game on the TV as I type this. Fans watch, ESPN pays, conferences do anything for a buck. Continue reading ‘tcu’s move to the big east’
I like Christmas music as much as anyone. When December comes around, I listen to a lot of Christmas music. Now, some of you may remember my post about my least favorite Christmas song. But today I’m not writing to bash any particular song, but instead the creep of Christmas music into earlier and earlier parts of the year.
Christmas, an ostensibly religious celebration, has morphed into a massive celebration of American commercial culture, with people being told to spend as much money as possible—after all, it’s good for the economy if we all take out second mortgages on our overvalued houses just so we can buy stupid gifts, right? But I’m not here to complain about the commercialization of the holiday, either, except to note the connection of capitalism with the expansion of the holiday season. Thanksgiving used to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. Wikipedia has this to say (emphasis mine): “In August 1939, Lew Hahn, general manager of the Retail Dry Goods Association, warned Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins that the late calendar date of Thanksgiving that year (November 30) could possibly have an adverse effect on retail sales. At the time, it was considered bad form for retailers to display Christmas decorations or have “Christmas” sales before the celebration of Thanksgiving.” Sure enough, FDR, who loved meddling with everything, decided to make Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday rather than the last Thursday, and an elegant portmanteau was coined: Franksgiving. After a few years of confusion and grumbling, the new date became widely accepted, and retail stores were saved from an extra-short shopping season every few years. But don’t people have the same presents to buy regardless of the span of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Shouldn’t an extra few days be insignificant? Probably. But back to the main point: the holiday season was extended, but it wasn’t long before retailers’ reluctance to put out Christmas displays before Thanksgiving. And I’m guessing that this trend went hand-in-hand with Christmas music being blared throughout November.
Now, why should I care whether Christmas music gets played before Thanksgiving? True, it’s a free country. If Christmas music in April is your thing, go right ahead. But we’ve gotta draw a line somewhere. And Thanksgiving is a nice line.
I was picking up some fast food for dinner a few nights ago. The total came out to $4.98 and I handed the cashier a $5. He gave me back three pennies. I was about to call his attention to his mistake, but I figured, “Why bother?” Who cares about one cent? Hell, I didn’t even care to have the three cents. Had there been a tip jar on the counter, I’d have dropped the three pennies in. Instead they went into my pocket. I think I left them in my car, but maybe I left them in my pants. Maybe they got washed. Maybe they’re on a windowsill in my house. I really don’t know. And I don’t care either. Why? Because pennies are so close to being worthless that for all practical purposes, that’s what they are. Worthless. The penny is a relic of a distant past; the sole reason for its continued existence is the zinc lobby.
The reasons to get rid of the penny are numerous. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious one is that it costs more than a cent to make a penny. 1.7 cents, in fact. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) In other worse, the government is just throwing away money. Furthermore, they then passed a law to make it illegal to melt down pennies for the cost of the zinc and copper. Sounds like a dumb law, right? There would be no need for it if the penny were made out of something else (steel, say) that costs less than one cent per penny. But Jarden Zinc Products, the company that makes the blanks the pennies are made out of, won’t have any of that. They hired lobbyists to fight a Congressman who tried to outlaw pennies. Continue reading ‘pennies’