BERNIE MACHEN GUNS FOR THE BCS

what is the basis for the zip code popularity argument twixt college football and basketball?

based on tv ratings, attendance figures, “tradition”?
Not trying to be contrarian, just curous.

To put myself in the wee role of the two-handed economist without the answer (though I assume Orson does), I would venture that most sports revenue comes from basketball programs, not football, at many, many, many div 1 schools. BCS football keeps a large amount of money in a small set of pockets, but NCAA hoops tourney puts ridiculous sums in many more pockets. This includes marginal payouts to each and every wee conference in Div 1 basketball. If the “market” is to believed, wouldn’t the payday for ncaa hoops suggest its primacy?

This might also be a forced comparison, as the millions of people who enter bracket pools and slough off work to watch games hardly assures a continuous interest in the sport. Rather it demonstrates discrete interest over three weekends in March. The argument has been proffered by others that television made college basketball what it is in terms of media popularity rather than an already- frenzied fanbase made bigger by content opportunities.

In football’s favor, we have the evidence that tens of thousands of screaming philistines filled stadia in the early days of the Wilson administration. Even the most liberal small college of the Ohio region (Oberlin, Kenyon, Wittenburg, et al) have some tradition for the gridiron and probably still have homecoming weekends scheduled around a rivalry game against State U.

I realize that this is not necessarily the point of the above post, just a curious offshoot.

ps. Speaking of the “one the one hand/on the other hand” branch of economics, there is a nice novella by Gunter Grass from the 1970s entitled “Headbirths” that details how modern German never accomplish anything because they are too smart for their own good and over-rationalzie everything. Kind of like the first ten minutes of Idiocracy for the barren yuppie couple. OK, I just outed myself as a grad student.

Destin is the heart of the redneck riviera? Having been there several times myself, I would say it qualifies more on a snowbird refuge scale, rather than rednecks. Try Panama City or Tallahassee for your Florida Rednecks.

The major difference between College Football’s $120 million and Basketball’s $6 Billion is the sheer volume of time taken up by the basketball tourney. As we all know, advertising is the source of the vast majority of profit made by networks.

The BCS bowls, though they each have a huge advantage ratings-wise over an individual tourney game, still only take up a grand total of 16 hours or so combined. CBS matches that in tourney coverage sometime during the first friday of the tourney. The whole tourney makes up a huge block of programming ( and thus easy, profitable advertising dollars ) that no form of college football tournament could conceivably match at this time.

I agree that you’re missing something in the popularity comparison. There is no scaling factor comparing a rabid, will drive 5 hours to games, college football fan with a casual, only watches college basketball during the tourney fan.

College football should not change itself to “increase its marketability” or to “generate more cash”. If there is a tournament, I would want the first round to be at the higher seed’s home stadium. College football is best served live, either a humid September Saturday in Gainesville, or a frigid November day in Columbus. I would say that most people would rather watch the ncaa finals (if they’re real fans and will watch their team repeat) from home than the last row at the Georgia dome. That difference between 100k hard-core fans to 10-100mln semi-interested fans is in my mind a good thing.

1. I was following your dissertation and believing it’s theory right up to the point in the post script when you said a book was entitled. Books are titled. Winning football teams are entitled to overly large payouts for their performance.

#2, having lived in both Tallahassee and Panama City, my geographic redneck invasion analysis has produced the following results of the origin of the majority of the invading rednecks:

Panama City (and Beach) is largely made up of rednecks from Alabama with a smattering of the West Georgia variety, (the latter increasing or decreasing based on holiday schedules); there is a very large and wealthy crowd of Birming’bammers’ who often stay for extended periods. The natives refer to these invading rednecks as Tourons.

Tallahassee, though not considered a tourist destination, has a large indigenous redneck population all its own, with additional reinforcements provided from south Georgia. The indigenous rednecks are almost to a man, virulent reFSU supporters, which can have a chilling effect on rednecks allied to other schools. However, they at times can form a symbiotic, mutual-hate relationship for superior schools to the south and east.

Destin, I have on good authority (as I have not spent extended periods here) is largely owned by Mississippi lawyer rednecks… at least they say they own it, and they back that up with having almost every annual bar convention in Destin (and its upscale suburb Sandestin). Said Mississippi rednecks (despite their annual Destin pilgrimmage) do not seem to infest the more easterly locations of the Redneck Riviera with the intensity of the Alabama and Georgia rednecks, which I must postulate is due solely to geographical proximity.

The reason the NCAA tourney has a larger deal than the BCS couldn’t be more games due to the fact that each team is involved in a playoff.

No way that college football could actually make more money by playing say a 16 team playoff (15 games) or even an 8 team playoff (7 games). That makes no sense. Obviously, 4 or 5 games make much more money than 7 or 15 games would make. Because as we all know 5 is greater than 15.

I vote next year’s meetings take place in Tunica, MS. That’s the redneck Vegas.

1. #I was following your post and believing its theory right up to the point when you used an apostrophe incorrectly and attributed creation of the “dissertation” to the post itself (using the “it” pronoun) rather than the second person singular possessive pronoun (“you’re”).

It pays to be careful when critiquing others’ syntax and usage.

Touche TCOAN

This picture looks right out of Super Troopers, substituting cash for hashish

well, “other Jon,” i was about to post something about it was late at night, several beers already, etc when I posted the dissertation.

but then TCOAN pulled out her trusty peacemaker and shot your eye out.

She’s a dead-eye, ain’t she

Oh, and Bizarro Me, for the record, the first definition for “entitle” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary is "to give a title to: affix a name or designation to

Has no one picked up on the intentional error in my post?

“You’re” is supposed to be “your” I imagine. Proper grammar is for pussies and Lutherans.

Well, I’m not a Lutheran, but I do have a pussy, so I suppose you could be half-right. :^)

If you’re using “pussies” as an insult, well, I’ll just have to assume you haven’t had enough exposure to them to realize how very nice they are.

p.s. Heterosexual men and lesbians using the term “pussy” to insult someone is one of my pet peeves, it’s nothing personal.

if references to vaginas as an emasculating device are frowned upon, how about using the term “Timmies”?

as in: The Ohio State fan was making a loud specatcle of himself in the Evanston bar, but none of the Northwestern Timmies would demand that the buckeye shut the fuck up.

not a very diagrammable sentence, but I like the term.

TCOAN is pwning peeps today. Thank Jeebus you aren’t a Lutheran; they’re just lousy schismatics. We’ll teach them to preach Christianity in native languages.

tcoan, (with appropriately earnest facial expression) I have had enough exposure to them to know the benefits involved are greater than any minimal satisfaction received from using the term as a pejorative…

That said, when used between those who do not have them, it contains less anatomical significance and more a “lack of manliness” connotation, a distinction of which I am sure you are aware…somewhat along the lines of “You throw like a girl”, only moreso.

Oh, I know, I know. I don’t have to like it, though. Though I will admit to being a bit of a hypocrite, because I am a devoted fan of the big D and yet love to call people pricks, dicks, etc. It doesn’t have the same bite, though (har-har).

Orson and I have a running argument over this and the whole "Is it OK to use “gay” as a pejorative?" thing. We’ve just had to accept that I’m a humorless p.c. feminazi and he’s an insensitive patriarchal oppressor.

Alcohol has helped.

you mean, “you throw like a Timmy”

jon… what is a “timmie”? I can’t come up with any meaningful anatomical reference including “tim”, “timmie”, “timothy” that could be considered emasculating (I do know a hot lesbian named Timothy, but you can’t mean her) … unless it is an abbreviated “timid person”, which, when around the loud pOSU fans, any Northwestern fan (except Tucker Max) would be… somehow I don’t think that’s it.

I have a brother who is a Timothy, although he goes by his second middle name. He throws OK, well enough to play high school football.

Timmy just has the sound of a little weiner kid to it. Like someone who never got enough noogies from their older brother.

Not much other meaning to it than it sounds funny.

Of course there is Timmy pride, which most emo kids seem to demonstrate. Lots of bad poetry and so forth.

tcoan, the fact that your brother goes so far as to use his SECOND middle name to avoid being a Timmy kind of proves my point.

or just demonstrates that you southern lawyaz have lots of names.

50-50 really.

ZING! Hee!

Tcoan, pricks, dicks, dildos and the like are adequate descriptive terms for a class of individual. The term has transcended the anatomical organ. Can’t really see your enjoyment of the big D as hypocrisy.

However, denigration of vitamin P has a distinctive mysogynistic aspect that is never attractive in a male, and I haven’t heard it mentioned by lesbians, although it might have more significance to that group as they all have them.

Regarding “gay” as a pejorative, I have had to bite my tongue on several occasions due to adolescent, anti-gay conditioning. Regarding its acceptance as a pejorative, those I know who use it are gay and they’re using it as to degree of lack of masculinity, “swishiness” or “nellyhood”, (?) distinctions of which I am not aware.

sb, what about “friends of Dorothy”-ness?

calling someone “gay” is much faster.

remember, stereotypes are a real time saver

Oh, and not so much “gay” as a pejorative, but fun terms like “pillow biter”, “rump ranger”, and “butt pirate”, all of which were brought into the public domain by the movie “PCU”, have been not only more fun to talk about, but enjoyable to use when slinging verbal arrows of that nature.

I can’t speak for Port Charles University, but I remember the term “butt pirate” from elementary school in the early 80’s. The nuns at my Catholic school said it all the time.

jon, in what context were the nuns using “butt pirate”?

Have you seen the movie? Jeremy Piven and David Spade play opposing leaders of student segments while the hijinks of a visiting high school student bring the polarized student body to an imbroglio of epic proportion, illustrating the ultimate failure of a democratic society intent on non-offensive/wholly offensive diversity wherein noone will acheive satisfaction. Some strong lessons for our time extracted from this difinitive movie of its genre include “Beer, multiple, cold and domestic.”, “Funkadelic in the Age of Enlightenment” and “Afternoon Delight, Curse or Cure”.

Its Friday afternoon and I need a cocktail… of the gin variety, with some vermouth (very little) and an olive.

i think the usage of the full name of the fictional university suggests that i have seen the film far too many times to be appropriate of someone who makes their living teaching university film courses.

and while i did indeed hear the term in grade school, the part about the nuns was a wee attempt at sarcasm.

enjoy the martini, Mr (Ms?) Bond

1. and TCOAN: If South Park does it, it’s OK. Remember the episode (the one with the sled race) when the girls used basically every insult for gays against the boys? "Pillow biter", "rump ranger", and "butt pirate" were all in there.

Wow, jon, nothing critical in my comments about your academic qualifications, and nothing evident in your comments that would indicate sarcasm regarding the nuns at your school…how would I perceive your apparent sensitivity when you brought it up? Regardless, I have indeed enjoyed my martini, and that would be Mr. Bond to you.

yikes.

i thought it was humor for its own sake. no offense taken or intended.

you pillow biter, you (just kidding)

Sorry, jon…with the fresh review the morning brings my only defense is that gin must make me belligerent…and I do think ‘nuns using “butt pirate” all the time’ is hilarious. Frankly, I didn’t recall what PCU stood for besides the obvious “politically correct”.

Only on EDSBS is there an arguement of such complexity and the willy-nilly use of grandiose vocab.

Yes, I just used willy-nilly.

Better than Timmy is Geoffery.

my brother is a Geoffrey

he’s kind of a Timmy though

TCOAN, I feel the same way about the term “cocksucker”.

Why is that an insult?

On “Deadwood,” cocksucker is used like a comma. So maybe Strunk and White have something to offer as to its vulgarity