This video is amazing on a number of levels. An interview between blogger Mike Rasor and Akron head coach J.D. Brookhart:
- What is Brookhart wearing? Some theories: Brookhart “was apparently thrown out of a local Bass Pro Shop for shoplifting five minutes before the interview.” – Black Shoe Diaries (also h/t BSD). “[I]t wouldn’t surprise me to find out Akron’s new head coach has tracked a raptor.” – Dr Saturday. Add your own.
- So let me get this straight. The offense will be installed and implemented in the following way: One guy will handle the pass install, another will handle the run install, each will be assisted by another guy, and then a separate, fifth coach, Shane Montgomery (tight-ends coach), will actually call the plays. That sounds like it will work beautifully.
– From mortally wounded police officer to football coach. Very good story.
– Boom. Roasted. Deadspin’s Dashiell Bennett went after Michigan Alum Jon Chait for going after the editors of the Detroit Free Press. Bennett wrote that “Jonathan Chait stepped down from his high horse at The New Republic to lambaste the Freep’s Michael Rosenberg for his anti-Rich Rod bias, stating that no place he worked would ever let an opinion writer do hard news about a subject he was so “passionate” about. Interesting, if true. I wonder if any of those fine, upstanding newspapers Chait’s talking about would let an alumnus (UM, Class of ’94) attack another writer because they published dirt about an organization he used to be associated with?”
Chait responded, via mgoblog: “Was I writing an investigative news article in a newspaper about a topic which I have strong opinions on? No, I was not. Nor should I. Having lambasted the Freep’s journalistic ethics, if I were to go to the Detroit News and propose they hire me to write an expose about how Freep sports editors are laundering money for the Cali drug cartel to fund their kitten-strangling hobby, the News should definitely not hire me.”
But then, the coup de grace: “It’s perfectly ethical for Rosenberg to wage his anti-Rodriguez jihad in his sports column. Dumb, unpersuasive, misleading, sometimes factually inaccurate, yes, but not unethical. It’s likewise perfectly ethical for me to opine about the University of Michigan, despite having graduated from it. But if Dashiell Bennett learned he was the subject of an investigative news story in the New York Times, authored by me, reporting on the scandal of people who are allowed to write sports blogs despite having IQs under 90, he would probably feel that something unethical had transpired.”
Wherever you are on this debate, I wouldn’t want to be Dashiell Bennett.
– This is legit. Hat tip to The Rivalry, Esq., who gives the background: “1987 was Indiana’s dream year, beating OSU and Michigan and Purdue, but a season ending loss to MSU sent the Spartans to the Rose Bowl to face USC. So [Indiana] coach Bill Mallory wanders into the Spartan locker room after the game and fires up the Green and White.”
– Good sentence, via marginalrevolution: “Probability is the oil of rationalisation.”
– Gender politics of Mad Men. I swear I’ll stop posting Mad Men links soon…just as soon as the show stops being awesome.
– Purdue will win four to five games this year. Mark it down. (The Rivalry, Esq. predicts one win, two wins, and four wins, respectively.)
– The NFL Twitter policy is dumb. As explained:
Now the NFL has come along and has regulated the use of Twitter as CNET describes:
[The NFL has] modified its social-media policy to limit Twitter and social-networking use by players, coaches, league officials, and even the media. The NFL said that it will let players, coaches, and other team personnel engage in social networking during the season. However, they will be prohibited from using Twitter and from updating profiles on Facebook and other social-networking sites during games. In addition, they will not be allowed to tweet or update social-networking profiles 90 minutes before a game and until post-game interviews are completed. The rules even extend to people “representing” a player or coach on their personal accounts. The NFL didn’t just stop with the league itself, though. The organization also said that media attending games will be prohibited from providing game updates through social networks.
I love [sarcasm!] the NFL’s reason and think that it is trying to assert that even fans ought not be able to share play-by-play:
“Longstanding policies prohibiting play-by-play descriptions of NFL games in progress apply fully to Twitter and other social media platforms,” the National Football League said in its statement. “Internet sites may not post detailed information that approximates play-by-play during a game. “While a game is in progress, any forms of accounts of the game must be sufficiently time-delayed and limited in amount (e.g., score updates with detail given only in quarterly game updates) so that the accredited organization’s game coverage cannot be used as a substitute for, or otherwise approximate, authorized play-by-play accounts.”
This position seems to suggest that one, players, etc. twittering has something to do with approximating play-by-play when most likely the NFL wants to regulate the way in which all those connected with a team communicate and represent themselves around a game. One might agree that being in the NFL requires following its odd ethics. How those goals havve anything to do with play-by-play recounting is beyond me. If fans start to share exuberant moments in almost real time, as I did via text in the glorious game to of the NBA finals this past season, but instead of using text, fans used Twitter, the NFL might assert that such sharing is not allowed. At least the quoted logic above seems to point to such nonsense. As CNET notes enforcement even at the team level will be quite difficult as the nFL won’t know who posted what. Of course the NFL could require some sort of disclosure of Twitter and other social networking aliases which raises a host of standard objections that readers here can easily figure out while the NFL may not. All of which makes me wonder, should the twits who came up with these positions love Twitter?