The Daily Dose/December 1, 2023
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
Hut, Hut, Hike: College football conference championship games begin tonight and end Saturday. At stake are the four berths in the College Football Playoff (CFP).
Dry, Technical Matter: The CFP is not run by the NCAA, it’s run by the conferences and ESPN and this is the final year of the four-team playoff as beginning next season the tournament expands to twelve teams. It is entirely possible that the teams favored to win this weekend do so, and the selection process is fairly cut-and-dry. It is also entirely possible there are some upsets, the selection process is an utter quagmire, and some deserving teams get left out.
Stop Us If You’ve Heard This Before: We have always favored an official NCAA Division I playoff. One could begin this weekend and end on New Year’s Day, the latest anyone really cares about college football. Had it begun on Thanksgiving weekend you could’ve had a 64-team playoff or thrown in a week off before the national title game.
Oh Yeah: We don’t want to hear any whining about how tough this would be on the players. The NCAA holds football playoffs in their other three divisions. These are tournaments where real students are taken away from real studies. They make do.
Welcome To Fantasy Island: There was little chance of this ever happening, of course, but there is no chance now; the NCAA is simply too weak. And it may not be around much longer because there is an antitrust lawsuit in California by former players against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that could cost them over $4 billion, which would be catastrophic. We can only hope.
The Bottom Line: The NCAA brought this all on themselves, creating an environment where everyone concerned with major division football and basketball – conferences, teams, coaches, networks, players – now have only one purpose: to get whomever they can to give them as much money as possible. This is not sustainable, of course – every organization needs a common good to work for – but no one has cared about that for a long time.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow pics up his new coat from the tailor. Today’s Diary.
…ol’ Sparrow is a snob now and pretty soon even my underwear will have to be shearling-lined.
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 2019 – What would become the COVID-19 pandemic begins in Wuhan, China, with the first patient with the coronavirus reported. The first hospitalizations began the following week and by the end of the year there were over 250 cases in Wuhan. To date, there have been over 6.9 million confirmed deaths from COVID, making it the fifth-deadliest epidemic/pandemic in human history, trailing AIDS, two bubonic plague outbreaks in the 6th and 14th centuries and the 20th century Spanish flu epidemic.
1924 – The first NHL game in the US is played when the Bostob Bruins defeat the Montreal Maroons 2-1 at Boston Arena The next US teams – the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Americans – would join the NHL the following season and the first US NHL team to win the Stanley would be the New York Rangers in 1928. Boston Arena is now Matthews Arena and is home to various Northeastern University athletic teams.
In 1973 – Charlie Rich is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart for the second of three consecutive weeks with The Most Beautiful Girl. The song also went #1 country and pop in Canada and would later spend two weeks at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. It was the third Top 40 country hit for Rich, his third of 16 Top 10s, his second of nine #1 country songs and remains his only #1 pop hit.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
What is your heaven but a carrot to make the donkey trot? What is your hell but a rubbish heap for all your failures?…Do you…achieve the small possible or go chasing after the great impossible?
Morris West
The Shoes of the Fisherman
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
Kenya, Japan, and Ethiopia have all won two Olympic gold medals in the women’s marathon.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Which was the first US team to win the Stanley Cup? – Answer next time!
