Whipped Cream Difficulties

Old man yells at cloud!

This week’s TMQ, after the jump…

Gregg Easterbrook devotes 1,052 words to arguing that there are too many high school football playoff games.

Back in the day, there weren’t hundreds of high school state champions; many states had no postseason. I graduated from Kenmore West High School near Buffalo; in 1969 the football team finished ranked first in New York state. That storied squad appeared in eight games, then put away its gear because there were no playoffs to attend. This year’s Kenmore West team suited up for 10 regular-season dates followed by two postseason contests. The Blue Devils’ 10-2 finish got them only to the subregionals of a now-sprawling postseason tournament producing 16 New York state football champions.

The population of New York state is approximately 20 million. That’s one champion per 1,250,00 people. Is that unreasonable?

Hundreds of Texas playoff games build up to the Lone Star State naming 26 state high school football champions.

Roughly one champion per million population.

The Golden State also does not finish naming its 50 or so state high school champions till Dec. 19.

Roughly one champion per 750,000 population.

Again, are these numbers unreasonable? And more to the point, why does TMQ care? How is he hurt if Texas has 26 champions? (And would he rather that smaller schools compete in playoff games against larger ones? Wikipedia has a decent explanation of how the UIL system is organized.)

A generation ago, high school teams appeared in eight to 12 games, depending on the state. Now it’s 10 to 16 games. That means more injuries and more distraction from classwork.

This may be the closest thing to an argument TMQ has, but we’d love to see a comparison of high school football injuries in 1969 versus high school football injuries in 2015.

The old shorter seasons allowed high school football team members to participate in the extracurricular activities that are essential for college acceptance. Admissions officers know that teenagers with weak grades and only “football team” on their application are not prepared for college.

At least in Texas, they have roughly January – August to participate in those extracurricular activities. (Not accounting for spring training, but didn’t they have that in TMQ’s day as well?).

The longer high school football seasons are, the greater the exposure to brain trauma risk.

We might be inclined to give TMQ that one (in the same way that, the more you fly, the greater your chances of dying in a plane crash), but:

My book “The Game’s Not Over,” out next month, will present disturbing material about the far larger concussion risk in high school football — some 150,000 high school football concussions annually, some linked to protracted seasons and bigger postseason brackets.

1. Book plug.
2. Again, we’d really like to see some sound statistical analysis that shows an increase over time in concussions, and that links said increase to longer seasons.

Turkey games. TMQ seems oddly obsessed with Chip Kelly quitting after this season. Chicken-(salad) kicking: Buffalo. Sweet two-point conversion: Green Bay. Sour two-point conversion: da Bears. Stats.

Unrealistic television is back! This week: “Supergirl”.

More chicken-(salad) kicking: Oklahoma State, U.S.C. Readers answer last week’s question: name “great athletes whose final moment was terrible”. Even more chicken-(salad) kicking: Tennessee.

At the start of the current season, there were 31 Buckeyes in the league. Since the first of these lettered in Columbus in 2000, roughly 375 young men have held Ohio State football scholarships. Only a small fraction of players at this top-tier program over the last 15 years went on to earn pro income. Did the others get educations?

This TMQ rant is prompted by an ESPN The Magazine article about Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller, who is taking two classes this semester.

1) We’re pretty sure Miller is going to get drafted and pick up some “pro income”.
2) “Miller, a fifth-year senior, has already earned his bachelor’s degree. [Emphasis added]” TMQ seems upset that Miller isn’t actively working on a master’s, instead of concentrating on football. Why?

Bad blitzing: Arizona. Bad celebrating: Dallas. TMQ does the championship per population math we did earlier. Nice to have a double-check on our numbers, but TMQ doesn’t answer our question: what’s a reasonable number?

Athletes at the University of North Dakota are now Fighting Hawks, not Fighting Sioux, a change made under pressure from the N.C.A.A. Yet around the corner at the University of Utah, the jocks are still Utes who wear Indian-feather logos. What’s the difference? North Dakota is a Division I-AA program that loses money on athletics; Utah is a sports powerhouse that cleared a $23 million profit on football last year. That just might be the difference.

You know what else might be the difference? As a couple of TMQ’s commenters point out, the University of Utah has an agreement with the Ute tribe.

“Adventures in Officiating”: the Bengals, San Diego, Washington, TCU.

More head-injury risk reduction reforms are needed: One is stricter enforcement of rules.

Interestingly, no mention of Case Keenum.

The 600 Club. Salve Regina 42, Husson 39.

And that’s all for this week, folks. Tune in next week, when TMQ discusses the finer points of belt onions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2015 at 7:28 pm and is filed under NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.