This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
“Is the zone-read option the flavor of the month, or is it the new vanilla?” TMQ spends the first 625 words of his column noodling around without ever answering that question.
Had Arizona simply acquired Palmer two years ago for what it spent on Kolb, this would have been praised as a brilliant move. Instead, head coach Ken Whisenhunt and general manager Rod Graves paid with their jobs for the disastrous Kolb trade. Then, a few months later, new management acquired Palmer for next to nothing.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Atlanta forgets how to play football when they reach the playoffs. Cam Newton needs to win, and Ron Rivera needs to stop blaming his assistants. If the Bears lose, blame it on the draft picks (of the previous GM).
No police escorts for celebrities. Happy to see TMQ’s obsession with police escorts coming back ’round again.
Tony Romo’s new contract guarantees him $55 million. Aaron Rodgers is guaranteed $54 million, and Joe Flacco $52 million in their deals. Which of these quarterbacks have actually won Super Bowls, or even more than one playoff game? (Hint: not the highest paid one.)
Note that TMQ does not even consider the radical idea of…government spending less.
This is one place in the item where we agree with TMQ. Let students who are interested in athletics pay those fees, and let the rest of the students keep their $398 a year (about the cost of one textbook).
Stacked with high first-round draft picks and mega-contract players, no NFL team underperforms like the Lions.
We would suggest the Bills are a better candidate for “most under performing NFL team”, but that’s just our opinion, man.
This column is a longtime fan of Vince Young.
Why?
TMQ is coming out with a new book. A non-fiction book. About football. Actually, The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America
“There’s no sane reason to expect the Giants to be good this season…” Minnesota: king of chicken-(salad) punts.
TMQ kicks “Star Trek: Into Darkness”.
Easterbrook misses (or ignores) that this was a conscious callback to the original movies, probably put there as fan service.
“At the low point last summer, it was touch-and-go whether drone aircraft would circle Saints practices.” You know, the way technology is advancing, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear about some NFL coach sending drone aircraft to spy on his opponents. (Insert Patriots joke here.)
A real penalty would have said, “If Chip Kelly wants to work at an NCAA member institution again, he must first spend 18 months away from coaching of any kind, without pay.” That would be an actual penalty. Instead, what the NCAA did was signal other NCAA coaches that, so long as they win, there will never be any consequences. Hey kids, the NCAA says cheat to win!
Also, the Eagles have 24 coaches. Including the “sports science coordinator”. And by the way, what’s wrong with “combatives“? It is a perfectly cromulent word. Also, blur.
What was the song of the summer? Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”? Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”? (Isn’t Robin Thicke one of the characters on “How I Met Your Mother”?) “Clarity” by Zedd, which is TMQ’s pick?
The ultimate summer song surely is the Beach Boys’ “All Summer Long”, from 1964.
We know some people love the Beach Boys, and we will concede they had a few toe-tappers. But for the most part, we find the music of the Beach Boys and the other “surf” bands of the 1960s to be pretty mediocre. If we were going to pick an “ultimate summer song” off the tops of our pointy little heads, it would probably be Don Henley’s “The Boys Of Summer”, though we could also make a strong argument for the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City”. What’s your pick? Let us know in comments.
Coaches coming on the field will be an NFL officiating “point of emphasis” for the 2013 season.
More fines! More ejections! More suspensions! Hooray!
“For Pete Carroll, taking college tactics north from USC to Seattle worked.”
“Since the arrival of Jeff Fisher as Rams coach, the team has been active in draft-choice trades.” Hey, speaking of the Rams, whatever happened to the tastefully named Gregg Williams? Oh.
Five percent? Seven to eight percent? Meaningful? Try 25%, then we’ll talk.
The final link to the Buccaneers’ glory days is gone with Ronde Barber’s retirement. Or was that Tiki Barber?
Pretty easy to tell the difference, Gregg. Tiki Barber is the one who’s an a–hole. Ronde is the one we’ve never heard a bad thing about.
Lobbying groups that rely on taxpayer subsidies claim every year is a crisis. There’s always a farm crisis, always a science-funding crisis. As the debt-ceiling deadline draws closer, bear in mind, much of the special pleading you will hear is simply not true.
Speaking of DC, TMQ has returned to calling Washington’s team “the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons”. We hope he has that defined as a macro in Word, as we would hate to see TMQ develop CTS.
Persons or Potatoes will be the column’s shorthand, bouncing off Tony Kornheisers great line that “Redskins” would be a fine name so long as the logo was a side dish of potatoes.
Oh. We thought he was suggesting that Chainsaw Dan Snyder is dumber than a sack of…
I had just been laboriously pitting cherries using a paring knife — fresh cherries and vanilla yogurt is a nice summer breakfast — when I saw this Slate video recommending a pitting device.
TMQ mistake #1: paying attention to anything on Slate, which is rapidly approaching Salon levels of stupidity.
So I went to Amazon and searched “cherry pitter,” figuring there would be one manufacturer, maybe in Washington state. There were 19 models!
TMQ mistake #2: Washington state is not the only cherry producing state.
Bet you could find a cherry pitter in Traverse City. But we digress. TMQ mistake #3: well, actually, we’re not sure where TMQ was looking, but our search of Amazon.com for “cherry pitter” turns up 106 results
This is what Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College calls the paradox of choice: too many options. Schwartz would say the consumer would be better off with three options than with 19.
White folks problems. Seriously, we’ve heard this Barry Schwartz “paradox of choice” thing before, and as far as we’re concerned, Barry Schwartz can take a flying (flip) at a rolling doughnut. Perhaps TMQ and Schwartz would prefer the late unlamented Soviet Union, where you had to stand in an hours-long line for the one cherry pitter that the state allowed, manufactured in People’s Cherry Pitter Manufacturing Plant #1.
After spending way too much time comparing models, I ordered one that cost $8.33 delivered, which was so inexpensive it’s spooky.
Well, gee, Gregg. One of the nice things about Amazon is that it has customer reviews, so you can see exactly what people think. How long does it take to look at 18 reviews and single out the ones that are mostly four or five stars? Of course, Amazon reviews can be gamed, so you might want to check something like Cook’s Illustrated (the Consumer Reports of the kitchen) which reviewed cherry pitters in 2011. Or you could go with a trustworthy brand name. We’ve had good luck with OXO Good Grips kitchen utensils, though we haven’t used the OXO Good Grips Cherry Pitter
And maybe part of the reason that cherry pitter cost $8.33 delivered is that there is so much consumer choice in cherry pitters. If People’s Cherry Pitter Factory #1 was the only source of cherry pitters, how much do you think they’d charge? $8.33? $12.99? $25? Whatever the market would bear?
That wraps things up for this week. We apologize for the delay in posting, but we’re getting ready for the weekend and are a little bound up in preparation. Tune in next week, but we will warn you next week’s TMQ may be a little late, too.