This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
“… the Super Bowl rematch is surprisingly rare”. 825 words down.
TMQ’s deep thoughts on the events of the past week:
Since Rice was placed into a pretrial diversion program by a New Jersey judge, isn’t that a reason to think he should be treated leniently? John Barr and Don Van Natta Jr. find that only about 1 percent of New Jersey domestic violence cases similar to Rice’s result in pretrial diversion. This suggests Rice got special treatment because he is an NFL star, and that is disturbing on several levels.
This is good to know now, but we still maintain it would have been better to know last week, even if it meant TMQ would have to do some digging himself.
Neil Irwin of The New York Times, an economics writer and skilled numbers-cruncher, computes that the database of NFL arrests kept by USA Today works out to about 2.5 percent of NFL players being arrested in any given year. In 2010, the most recent Census, there were 234 million adults and 11.5 million arrests of adults. So about 4.9 percent of American adults are arrested per year. We’re left with NFL players being arrested at somewhat below the rate for adults generally.
This is also an interesting stat to know. One point we’ve seen made about it, however: this doesn’t adjust for income. Many people (ourselves included) think it would be interesting to see that comparison; are NFL players less likely to be arrested than non-NFL players in the same income range?
Multiply the NFL rate by two, and that’s 2.4 million cases. We can pull any numbers we want to out of a hat and speculate. But what’s the reality? Kids were playing football even before we were in high school (mumble mumble) years ago; if one-third of them were suffering later-life neurological decay, wouldn’t we see some evidence of it? If there is evidence of it, why doesn’t TMQ point us in that direction? Or does TMQ believe neurological damage from football is a recent development? If so, why doesn’t TMQ say so?
Look, we’re in favor of protecting kids from neurological damage. We’re also in favor of Mom, apple pie, and the bald eagle. We just don’t feel that TMQ is saying anything here about kids and football. This strikes us as being very much like the myth of the crack babies.
TMQ has been noting for five years: “There is no law of nature that says the NFL must remain popular
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Sweet: Chicago. Sour: The New York Football Giants. Mixed: San Diego – Seattle.
So Tinseltown is full of libertarians?
It isn’t that we disagree with TMQ, but we would have liked to see him discuss the reasons we went from “The F.B.I.” to “The X-Files”. We’d suggest that it has a lot to do with going from Camelot to Vietnam, Watergate, and (especially) Iran-Contra.
Wait, wait, “Unforgettable”? The series about a police detective that has a perfect memory? The one starring Poppy Montgomery, who kept us watching “Without a Trace” long past the point at which we should have pulled the eject handle? Wow. This is kind of a trippy plot line, based on what we know of the series.
(We haven’t been watching it. Perhaps we should be. Because Poppy Montgomery.
You’re welcome.)
Once again: the NFL is “tax-exempt” in the same categorization, and for the same reasons, as insurance assigned risk pools, chambers of commerce, and other legitimate organizations; it takes in money, pays expenses, and distributes what’s left over to the teams who do pay taxes on their income. Additionally, the “shame” in this item isn’t the NFL in general, but the Saints and specifically Tom Benson’s sweetheart deal with the state government for office space. One owner does not the NFL make.
The NCAA stinks, too. The mighty $41 million Quinn. What’s wrong with the Saints defense, continued.
Told you so.
Massive restraint on the part of the United States government is our guess.
“Manly Man Plays of the Week” include several kneel-downs. Something about the Chiefs and Broncos.
Except TMQ really doesn’t say anything about RGIII, but says a lot about Kirk Cousins, Darrel Young, Niles Paul, and backups in general.
News Finally Turns Happy in Happy Valley: Penn State’s bowl probation ended two years early. Just as important, reader Nicholas Miller of Warrington, Pennsylvania, reports last spring Penn State had 50 football players with a GPA of 3.0 or better.
Victims 1 – 26 were unavailable for comment.
Scottish independence might make single-malt scotch less expensive. There’s the silver lining.
What? Seriously. Can someone explain the connection between Scottish independence and the price of single-malt scotch? Because we’re frankly baffled.
Musk jobs. VW jobs. Solar jobs.
Their strutting showed that women can be fit and strong, yet still radiate sex appeal.
You know who is else is fit and strong, yet still radiates sex appeal? That Washington cheerleader a few paragraphs above TMQ’s Fashion Week item.
Blur. Bad blitzing: Atlanta, Jets.
We confess: we’re suckers for a good tulip bulb reference.
Adventures in officiating: Denver, Tampa Bay, Jets, Dallas, 49ers.
Steven Spielberg: ghost producer of nonsensical television. Chicken-(salad) kicking: Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville.
The 500 Club. The 700 Club. The football gods keep chortling, and, in related news, we had a bad case of hiccups in the middle of the night last night. Seriously, have you ever had hiccups at 4 AM?
Miami faced fourth-and-36, Chicago and Dallas faced fourth-and-29, Green Bay faced fourth-and-28.
That’s actually worth a chortle or three.
Merrimack 75, Pace 2. Lafayette 50, Robert Morris 3.
And that’s a wrap for this week. Tune in next week, when we figure we’ll be rich off of our investment in single malt scotch futures.
My guess on his supposition about the price of Scotch Whisky is that he was imagining that an independent Scotland would leave the UKP and either start its own currency or join the Euro…either of which would be weaker, relative to the USD, than the pound is. Hence, cheaper Scotch.
This is a dubiously-linked chain of assumptions most of which are themselves also individually dubious, and it’s all wrapped up in a big bow of mootness now anyway, since the Scots voted against independence, much to what I imagine is the secret chagrin of any Englishman who knows what’s what, vis a vis the government of Britain, seeing as how on a balance-of-payments basis Scotland is basically a leech, and the rest of Britain has far less say in how Scotland is governed than Scotland has in the government of Britain. They’re basically the stoner college buddy who’s been living on your couch and snarfing your leftovers from the fridge for the last few hundred years…it’d be rude to call the cops to throw them out, but when they start muttering about getting their shit together and being “independent”, you don’t exactly cry, ya know?
1. To the best of my knowledge, the FBi does not break down offender data by income level. Race, Sex, etc., yes, but if they do break down by income level, it isn’t in any of the tables I looked at.
2. Another reason theoretically independent Scottish whisky might be cheaper is that Scotland could drop the VAT tax. Of course, that would probably only apply to demoestic assumption, since VAT shouldn’t be charged on export items.