Pariah Posted December 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 Hall of Fame RB Franco Harris dies: Steelers legend of 'Immaculate Reception' fame was 72 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted December 21, 2022 Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 RIP Franco Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted December 21, 2022 Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 OTOH, sports execs are like Doritos. Crunch all you want, there'll be more. There's no shortage of big-talking dolts who want a big paycheck but can't think their way out of an upside-down box, and sports seem to end up with lots of those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted December 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 ...the ones who don't go into politics, anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 21, 2022 Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 Execs very rarely go into politics, they lack the visibility. The head coaches are the ones who tend to do that. 2 hours ago, Cancer said: OTOH, sports execs are like Doritos. Crunch all you want, there'll be more. There's no shortage of big-talking dolts who want a big paycheck but can't think their way out of an upside-down box, and sports seem to end up with lots of those. Sometimes. Others, tho...in many cases, people are hiring former stars. Matt Millen with Detroit. John Lynch with the Niners. Elway. It often fails, I think because these guys often fail as coaches...they don't have the analytical angle, to assess talent, or perhaps the communications skills to teach it. The full story is here: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35271981/sources-nfl-teams-spent-800m-fired-coaches-execs-last-5-years The thing is, fan capacity to absorb costs has yet to show a cap. Figure: $800M means $32M per team, on average. That's a good starting QB, or at least 2, maybe 3 front-line players. Top receivers, corners, and edge rushers are around $15M, I think; top backers and linemen (other than left tackle, which is premium) are closer to $10M. That shows how much it's costing. Or, look at it another way: that's about 15% of the salary cap, and it's just WHOOOSH!!! down the tubes. It's probably not that bad, as it's possible that $800M is total dead money...not annual. Matt Rhule's contract was 7 years, $60M total. 4 years left means roughly $35M in dead money...$8M a year. That's still the value of a *solid* contributing player. The problem, I think, is that coaches require FAT!!!!, long term (for coaching), guaranteed contracts...and extensions. There's the clear belief that without those, the good coaches won't sign on, or don't have the backing of the team. Some of this is also the inflation from the college coaching ranks, and the insane salaries most Power Five schools give. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted December 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2022 The problem with money in the NFL is the same problem my students frequently have in chemistry and astronomy: the numbers are so big, the average human mind can't make sense of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 22, 2022 Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 Earth sciences too. I remember, a LONG time ago, a discussion about 100,000 decanters of endless water and flooding the planet. Compute the amount of water it'd take to raise the sea level by one inch...it's HUGE. A DoEW on geyser puts out, IIRC, about 1.3 acre-feet, but on a global scale, that's irrelevant. The other thing...I remember a discussion with someone at work. We were talking baseball and salaries. He was going "yeah but turning down $5 MILLION DOLLARS...who can do that?" When the difference was between a $30M contract offer and a $35M offer. To me, as you note, the difference becomes negligible, because even the "low" offer is probably 5-8x more than my lifetime income, including retirement. There's an ENORMOUS difference between $0 and $1M; there's a much, much smaller difference between $1M and $2M. Back to football...is Matt Ryan done? Colts have benched him again. There's no reason to play him any more; the Colts aren't *technically* eliminated, but they need to win out, and have the Titans lose out, to win the division; as a WC, they need the Pats, and Jets to lose out. AND have the Raiders, Jags, Browns, and Steelers lose 2 of 3. Ties would tweak this a bit, but it's not worth considering. And Ryan was never more than a plausible transitional QB. Playoff clinching discussions... https://www.sbnation.com/2022/12/20/23515602/nfl-playoff-scenarios-week-16-eagles-cowboys-bills-chiefs The potential elimination scenarios at the bottom are even more amusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 22, 2022 Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 9 hours ago, unclevlad said: Earth sciences too. I remember, a LONG time ago, a discussion about 100,000 decanters of endless water and flooding the planet. Compute the amount of water it'd take to raise the sea level by one inch...it's HUGE. A DoEW on geyser puts out, IIRC, about 1.3 acre-feet, but on a global scale, that's irrelevant. There was an official setting some years ago (I wanna say Dark Sun) that had a sea, and it was rumored that at the very bottom was a DoEW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted December 22, 2022 Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 <geek-out save failed> There is also a thermal loss from the planet that is "negligible" at this time. If water vapor gets above the ozone layer, then it gets photodissociated by solar UV. The velocity of gas molecules is a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and what matters is temperature and the mass of the molecules. At the outer fringe of the atmosphere, for a light enough molecule, if it is at the upper end of the velocity distribution, its speed could be greater than escape velocity. If that molecule is going upward and this happens, then it escapes. With the temperature in the upper atmosphere and the planet's gravity, Earth's gravity is insufficient to hold hydrogen; it escapes "rapidly" to space, while the oxygen is retained. (The only other gas that escapes quickly from Earth is helium.) The troposphere is convective, so that it is well mixed: any gas released near the surface of Earth gets blended into the atmosphere "quickly", barring other removal processes which depend on the physical chemistry of the gas. Immediately above it, the stratosphere is *not* convective (temperature increases upward there, due in large part to solar UV being absorbed by ozone). The base of the stratosphere is so cold, though, that ordinarily water vapor freezes out at or below that altitude. As long as the water freezes out below the ozone layer, then the loss of water is small. It's not zero, but it's small. Raise the temperature of the planet, though, and that changes; the temperature at the base of the stratosphere may get above the freeze-out temperature, and then water vapor can get into and above the ozone layer. Then water loss happens "quickly". There's a school of thought that this happened to Venus about a billion years ago, and that early Venus was Earthlike with oceans, etc. The luminosity of the Sun is slowly increasing (which means the energy input to the planets is increasing with time) and the critical change happened to Venus turned that planet into the utterly dehydrated hellscape that it is now. In the absence of human efforts, that process will occur on Earth in about another billion years. We seem to be trying to bring it about quicker. Yes, there's some input of water to Earth via accretion of cometary and outer-asteroid matter, both of which contain water, but it seems to be smaller than the loss rate even now. Sorry, I teach this stuff. </geek-out> Pariah and Old Man 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 22, 2022 Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 We take threads in the strangest directions sometimes.... So tonight's game is Jags-Jets. Raise your hand if, at the start of the season, you expected this to be a game where the winner remains in contention for a playoff berth. Come on, raise em up high. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted December 22, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 Hillman was the leading rusher for the Broncos' Super Bowl 50 season. Former NFL RB Ronnie Hillman dies at 31 after battling cancer, pneumonia Thirty-one years old. Damn. I don't even really remember what I was doing when I was 31. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 22, 2022 Report Share Posted December 22, 2022 Tonight's game is Jets vs Jaguars Spoiler slikmar, Starlord and Cygnia 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 23, 2022 Report Share Posted December 23, 2022 Well, it's 19-3 inside 4 minutes. Jets haven't been able to move the ball at all, but hey, 3rd (or 4th?) string QB, what do you expect. So we can basically call this a Jags win now. What this win means is, if they don't lay an egg against the Texans...they may have the #1 pick mostly in the bag, but they're not giving up and have given some teams scares...then they play the Titans the last week of the season, with a playoff berth on the line...even if the Titans win their next 2. The Jags already beat the Titans in Tennessee, so even if they enter a game back, winning gives them the tiebreaker. Who'da thunk that.... The Jets, OTOH, are probably toast at this point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 23, 2022 Report Share Posted December 23, 2022 Go Jags! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted December 23, 2022 Report Share Posted December 23, 2022 It took half a season but Pederson seems to have molded the Jags into something approximating a real football team. Logan D. Hurricanes 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted December 23, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 23, 2022 Maybe the next head coach of the Denver Broncos can do the same thing. Eventually. Meanwhile, speaking of the Broncos.... Rams, Broncos Prank Players with Ugly Christmas Uniforms Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 23, 2022 Report Share Posted December 23, 2022 14 hours ago, Old Man said: It took half a season but Pederson seems to have molded the Jags into something approximating a real football team. Hey, undoing the damage of that tin-plated martinet who got axed last season takes time. And hey, ugly jerseys for ugly teams, man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Titans' Tannehill is out! This means the Jags actually have a chance to take the division! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted December 24, 2022 Author Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Cleveland: -21°F (with wind chill) South Pole: -15°F NFL Game Being Played Today In Temperatures That Are Even Colder Than The South Pole Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Whoa...there are beatdowns, there's taking behind the woodshed, there's raking over the coals... And then there's what the Bengals are doing to the Pats today. Pats: 4 possessions. 15 total plays. 4 punts. Bengals: 5 possessions. 4 scores; one red-zone turnover, but after a 13 play drive. Capped off with an 11 play TD drive in 2 minutes, scoring with 14 seconds left in the half. Yards: 303-70 First downs: 22-3. That's 22 first downs in the half, for the Bengals. Plays: 48-17. (Pats had a couple to run out the clock ending the half.) Again...48 plays in a half. There've been wider margins on the scoreboard, but looking at the overall stat sheets? I don't recall such a totally one-sided game in a long time. Bengals have *owned* each and every possession, offense and defense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Second half is a completely different game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Can say that again. Bengals have to force/recover a fumble when Pats have 1st and GOAL, down 4. Bengals pull it out in the end, but wow. And I"m sure everyone here is broken-hearted, but...that other Ohio team lost, and has been eliminated. Tragic................... Old Man and Cygnia 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starlord Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Whew! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 What an ending! Which game am I talking about? Incredible couple weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted December 24, 2022 Report Share Posted December 24, 2022 Exciting, to be sure, but also infuriating, if you're asking for teams to actually *execute*. And lo and behold, the Texans foil a last-ditch Hail Mary and BEAT the Titans. Jacksonville now leads the division. Pats move up to the 8 spot, but right now they're 2 back in the loss column to the Fins and Chargers. Fins play tomorrow, Chargers Monday. Jets are probably toast, the CBS talking heads are saying Mike White's almost certainly done for the year. Wilson's a total bust, Flacco's a fiasco. We've seen how that offense works on Thursday, and thinking they can improve enough to compete is a pipe dream. Asking for a present from Santa...well, sorry, too late for that now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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