142 thoughts on “February 6, 2012: Entitled”

  1. But lets look on the bright side, Simmons has something to be insufferable about in that questionable safety call.

    1. I didn't think it was questionable. I thought it was a pretty good call. But yes, Simmons is going to be crying about this game for ye-hears.

      1. I agree. I wasn't sure if the refs would call it in the Super Bowl, but it was the proper call.

        1. To be honest, I didn't really see the whole play, but it was a fairly uncommon way to have intentional grounding which is probably a better way to put it then questionable.

          1. also, neither Brady nor Belichick got animated after the call. It was pretty blatant intentional grounding

    1. It appears that the NFL has asserted a copyright claim on the Chrysler ad, forcing it off of youtube. What? I'm pretty sure that halftimes were around before the NFL. I might have mentioned this before, but copyright law is out of control.

      Read the script and tell me where you think the NFL has a copyright claim:

      It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.

      It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

      The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.

      I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

      But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.

      All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?

      Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us.

      This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.

      Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.

        1. You know what's really crazy? The ad rates for the SB were $3.5 million per 30 seconds. Assuming that they didn't get a discount for 2 whole minutes (which I doubt they did, in fact, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they paid a premium to get that time block), they spent almost $15 million for that ad. And now the NFL says that the ad is infringing their copyright? Of what?

            1. The church across the street from the SBG College of Law (with the strategery commons) was highlighting its Super Bowl party on the sign in front last week.

                1. Quick, someone call Zygi so that he can get the league to come down hard on these lawbreakers!

                  Also, this. Good lord, doesn't the league realize that if AP changed his number, they would make a zillion dollars off of his new jersey?

          2. Moss would say that copyright law is out of control too, except that phrase is now copyright SBG, so Moss can't say it.

                  1. "We certainly would not request a trademark on a SEAL team that doesn't exist, like SEAL Team 6," said a Navy official.

                    So, did he just say that SEAL Team 6 doesn't exist?

                    2. Yeah, but 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10 do!

                      Team 6 is like the Seattle Pilots: they used to exist, but then they got bought out by a used car salesman or something. I think Jesse Ventura was a member.

        2. Is this copyright or trademark? I'd think if it's about using a registered or protected term or phrase, then it's trademark infringement. Which leads me to further believe they used NFL content instead of a term the NFL thinks they shouldn't.
          Tho': I am not a lawyer. And you and Strat are.

          That said, trademark issues would seem to abound:
          "Detroit" is a trademark of Detroit Lions Football, LLC. As is "Motor City", although Ted Nugent's use has been grandfathered.
          "This Game" is clearly a reference to the "Big Game" which is the Superbowl and a registered trademark.
          "How Do We Win?" belongs to the Vikings ever since it was first uttered by Denny Green. It has been in regular use by their subsequent coaches.
          "Lost... Heart" also is exclusively to the NFL for purposes on mindless on-air announcing.

          (OK, I'm bored with this schtick. I'll present it [Redacted]*.)
          [*SBG removed this term as it belongs to him.]

          1. Dang, OK... the redacted term refers to the amount of time, about 50%, for which these bakery-style comments were cooked.
            Except with a humorous misspelling.

          2. "Trying to get nothing but net in The Big Game? Let's get ready to rumble! Buy Chrylser! It's the three-peat of trucks! The 19-0 Perfect Season of cars!"

    2. I'm not going to take this comment too far, as it gets mighty close to the Forbidden Zone as it is, but my eyes practically popped out of my head when I saw footage of the events here in Madison last winter. The sight of signs around the fog-shrouded Capitol was instantly recognizable if you were there.

  3. Well, technically, it's a championship for New Jersey. There's only one true New York team, right?

  5. I thought the funniest ad was the local ad for KARE News..John Randle painting the anchors faces had me in stitches

  6. need some time to time this Monday? 1500 ESPN Vikings writer Tom Pelissero graded every Vikings player and the management. (links for the offense and defense are at the top of the linked story)

    I've said it a few times, but I really enjoy Pelissero's work. his Tuesday film breakdown columns are always a must read for me because they are brutally honest and some great tidbits. Im going to miss his columns when the Vikings move to London or LA.

  7. Karl Malone is popular.

    I've bitten my tongue time and again when Karl has made derogatory comments. I've tried to keep in mind the words of one of my mentors close to the situation who said "Karl Malone is giant pain in the ass, but he's our pain in the ass."

    The fact is Karl is still as high-maintenance as he ever was, but now he has nothing to offer to offset the grief and aggravation that comes with him. Some would argue that he could coach our big men. I would love to have Karl inspire them and teach him how to be warriors like he was. That can't happen. Karl is too unreliable and too unstable.

  9. looks like Kevin Love is sitting for 2 games

    APkrawczynski Jon Krawczynski
    2-game suspension for Love

    thats seems right to me. I flip it around, if an opponent stepped on a Wolves player head, I would want him gone for at least 2 games.

      1. Maybe he will kill the Grizzlies and they'll have no choice but to offer us a king's ransom for him. #OJcomehome #Andbringafriend

    2. I love Love, but hopefully this is a corrective event for him, because the whining and uneccessarily extra shoves and stomps and such are a bit much and aren't going to help him in the long run.

    3. i can't find a single article that mentions any possible motivation from a certain event that happened a week prior to this. not that it should condone or excuse anything, but i would think that kind of background information might be relevant to this story.

      (also, going back and looking at the scola nut shot, i see very little chance that it wasn't completely intentional)

      1. i did find this "subtle" quote from love, but no comments on it:

        "It was just a heat-of-the-moment-type play," Love said. "He was right there. (Tonight) happened to be his face, just like in Houston where it happened to be my groin."

        1. Even when he's a jerk he's funny.

          I hope the suspension cools his jets a bit, too. The intensity is nice, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets less calls than other stars because of the team he plays for. But he needs to direct that fury better.

          1. fwiw, Love is third in the league in FTA/G, behind only Dwight Howard and LBJ. He also leads the league in FTM. So, he gets calls.

            1. whoops. The Boss mentioned Dwight Howard!

              would that be the Dwight Howard who has averaged 23/14/2 and 3.3 blocks in 40.3 min/g his last three games, all wins (including at Indy on Saturday)?

              #deadhorseflogging

              but seriously. How much of the kerfluffle has been writers with too much time and too little actual information on their hands? He may have been acting eye-eye-ish of late, but he's still producing. And wins tend to quiet the sky-is-falling critics.

  10. I assume there's interest in another year for the Half-Bakef league. I don't know how others feel about this, but I'd like to endorse ESPN's platform over Yahoo's for the consideration of the Half-Bakef Commish.

    1. is this for football, or baseball? i've never had any particular problems with yahoo, though i've never used the ESPN interface.

      1. Baseball; my calendar informs me it's time to start thinking about such things.

        The ESPN interface is significantly more intuitive and user-friendly in my experience.

        1. oh, right, baseball. i forgot about that. are we allowed to talk about baseball on this timberwolves blog?

    4. I would be fine with switching, even if it meant starting over. It would be nice if there were fewer than 19 teams again, but maybe we should switch to using MiLB players instead to allow even more teams.

    5. Here's the link to the eligible keepers from last year, assuming we want to keep that league going. I am open to ESPN if that's what the rest of the group wants. I'll open a league and send out the invites when we decide what provider to go with (and once they open...)

  11. Dr. Chop and I have been approached by another junior faculty couple in regards to renting our house when we leave for New Orleans. They've mentioned twice that they're interested in possibly purchasing our house (which has lost between 10 and 14K in value over the last three years despite our improvements...) for what we paid for it, but they need to get their financial house in order. We like these folks, they seem responsible, they have stable income (we know exactly how much money they earn...), they own and rent a house in Duluth so know what they're getting into, and we know where they work, but I'm a little hesitant to jump into being a landlord. Do any citizens here have experience being a landlord / owner in the rent to own situation?

        1. my general feeling on these deals is that cutting one's losses and getting out is a good thing. Managing a property from afar is, I would imagine, a pain in the @ss. Plus your capital and credit are tied up, making it harder for you to buy in your new location.

          But if you think the real estate market is getting ready to rebound, it might make financial sense to rent it out for a year or two.

          Maybe Stick, as a long-time slum lord in NoDak, has some more useful, "non-professional" advice.

          1. When I sold my property, I was very happy. I had to evict a renter and carry the second renter when he was having trouble making rent. Then, his brother swooped in and bought the place. Whew. Glad to be rid of it.

          2. I sent Meat a personal message, but we've been renting out the old place for 13 months now.
            I 100% recommend using a property management company.
            If anyone wants a rec for one such company in the NW metro, let me know.

    2. MBN here (finally signed up). Figured I should speak up here, since housing law is one of the things I do. K for Deeds can be kind of ugly. Why aren't they just buying it now? Could they really not get financing? Rates are low, etc. If they're not going to be able to get financing now, what's going to change in a few years that will make it work for them? I'd be leery of renting (I don't know Texas law, but if any problems come up, you'll definitely want an attorney to help you out with tenant problems, since you almost certainly will have to go to court to evict them), unless you're willing to make the commitment to it. If you've got some other specific questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail.

            1. Here's what my wife had to say about that game:

              "My husband cannot [expletive] throw the ball and catch the ball wolves at the same time."

    3. There's a lot to consider in being a landlord: liability & insurance, tax treatment of proceeds, depreciating the property, deducting expenses (including travel to the property), etc.

      Safest approach is to transfer the house into an LLC or somesuch, but then you have to check into whether the mortgage (if you have one) can stay or whether you need to take out a new loan under the LLC. Moss doesn't know the answer to that. You would have to re-jigger the insurance too, which you will need to do even if you don't put the property into an LLC or even if you hold it and it is vacant.

      You can depreciate the property and deduct expenses against the rental revenue, and you can typically deduct the cost of two trips per year (IIRC) to visit the property. But you need to check with a tax person on all that.

      Most important is whether you can trust your renters and whether they'll be there for the long haul. If it's only a short while, then you're left with a situation where you need to find new renters that you don't know.

      1. Most important is whether you can trust your renters and whether they'll be there for the long haul. If it's only a short while, then you're left with a situation where you need to find new renters that you don't know.

        Right. These are college professors with guaranteed contracts for next year, and we've told them that we'll be putting the house on the market regardless next year. I don't think that I have the intestinal fortitude to be a landlord for real.

        1. If you want to e-mail me off site I have some advice I can offer for you on a couple of items.

  12. Why is it that Sam Harris hates America and wants the terrorists to win??

    The case against burning wood is every bit as clear as the case against smoking cigarettes. Indeed, it is even clearer, because when you light a fire, you needlessly poison the air that everyone around you for miles must breathe. Even if you reject every intrusion of the “nanny state,” you should agree that the recreational burning of wood is unethical and should be illegal, especially in urban areas. By lighting a fire, you are creating pollution that you cannot dispose. It might be the clearest day of the year, but burn a sufficient quantity of wood and the air in the vicinity of your home will resemble a bad day in Beijing. Your neighbors should not have to pay the cost of this archaic behavior of yours. And there is no way they can transfer this cost to you in a way that would preserve their interests. Therefore, even libertarians should be willing to pass a law prohibiting the recreational burning of wood in favor of cleaner alternatives (like gas).

    At least he didn't go after charcoal grills (yet), the [redacted]!

    2. burn a sufficient quantity of wood and the air in the vicinity of your home will resemble a bad day in Beijing

      'Cause everyone knows that wood smoke is just as carcinogenic as internal combustion exhaust fumes. Plus, it's not like you're having a bonfire in your backyard regularly (although I'm okay with that, if you're willing to supply the wood and the beer). I love hyperbole.

  13. What kind of degenerate lays $1,000 that the first score of the Super Bowl was not only a safety, but a NY safety? Me thinks that 50 to 1 was not enough to get me to lay $2 on that, even if I was in some kind of alternate universe where I willingly gamble my money. I mean, how many games a year have a safety to start the scoring, and then having to pick the team? That seems like about 250 to 1, AT LEAST.

    1. Ok, this happened three times in the 2011 regular season. That's once in about every 85 games. But, to pick the right team? One in 170. So, maybe 250:1 was a little too long. But, 50:1, what a sucker's bet.

      Incidentally, I can think of one other time that the first (maybe more) that the first score in a Super Bowl was a safety. Anyone else remember that?

    2. Some quick math, though you've already contributed some yourself:

      Year Games TDs FGs Safeties
      2011 256 1259 838 21
      2010 256 1270 789 12
      2009 256 1247 756 14
      Total 768 3776 2383 47

      That's a total of 6206 scoring plays, of which safeties contributed 0.76%.

        1. You could maybe look at average starting field position off of kick-offs as compared to punts. It seems hard for me to believe that safeties are more common as a first score than at any other point. Even a pretty botched kick-off return usually makes it back to the 10, whereas punts seem to be pinned inside the 5 a lot more often. It seems like the most common route to an opening safety would be kick-off, recieving team's offense brings the ball far enough for the punting team to pin the ball near the goal line, and then a safety happens.

      2. So figuring safeties aren't more likely as the first score than they are as any other score, and that it's a coin flip between which team would get the safety, you'd have 263:1 odds, pretty close to SBG's 250:1. Even if those were the odds offered, the odds are so long that you'd have to have a mighty "portfolio" of bets to make it a worthwhile venture.

  14. By way of introduction, for those not in-the-know, I migrated over from Spooky's site. I've been well aware of WGOM for a while, but never signed up. I was the guy Spooky mentioned a while back as thinking the place was a bit intimidating. I've lurked long enough now that that assessment has faded.

    1. I'm pretty sure, after last night, that Tom Brady was neither hungry nor starving.

    1. Last year I was thinking, is that Terry Forster out there pitching for the Giants? So fat, you guys.

  17. According to Gardy, here is your 2012 Minnesota Twins opening day starting line-up

    1) Span, CF
    2) Carroll, SS
    3) Mauer, C
    4) Morneau, 1B
    5) Willingham, RF
    6) Doumit, DH
    7) Valencia, 3B
    8) Casilla, 2B
    9) Revere, LF

    SP: Pavano

      1. Wouldn't want any of the anybody to feel like they need to earn their spot. It worked so well last year handing rotation spots to the Dunce and Blackburn.

        1. It certainly did. On the bright side, this may help them anger a player who is getting less playtime than deserved, and that person can be this year's Slowey.

          The more I think about it, the more I'm concered with Willingham in right. He's barely played RF, and the ball is going to take some weird bounces in right at Target Field. Revere's crap arm only plays in left, but this alignment really isn't ideal. I'd love to see Joe Benson tear up AAA and take over RF early in the season, so Willingham can be put in left, and Revere can be a defensive replacement/pinch runner/spot starter.

          1. With Revere and Span out there, the third outfielder shouldn't have to worry about covering a whole lot of territory. Plouffe and Mauer didn't embarrass themselves in their small-sample-size sojourns in the outfield. Willingham should do fine.

            1. I am determined to will Joe Benson onto the roster and into the mix for outfield appearances.

              1. I'm all for Benson being out there on a regular basis, like in Zack's ideal situation above, but I'm not too worried that Willingham will have too much trouble playing right field. The combo of those four outfielders should still beat the crap out of outperform last year's outfield mix'n'mash.

                1. a healthy and effective D-Span is the key to that -- or else a breakout rookie campaign by Benson. Seriously, I am full of irrational exuberance for Benson.

  18. Reading this, I got to thinking that the GW TD in the Super Bowl last night should go down as "The Intentional Walk." On the surface, it seems like a pretty remarkable situation--and it was in some ways--but on the other hand, there are all sorts of strategic trade-offs that happen in sports, like bunts, intentional walks, prevent defense, etc.

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