Whipped Cream Difficulties

This week, haiku. And for the second week in a row, no “TMQ Trailer”.

TMQ Watch is not going to re-type all of Easterbrook’s haiku, as that would be unfair to Easterbrook and ESPN. Nor are we going to write our own responses in haiku; one of WCD’s limitations (“A man’s got to know his limitations.“) is a total inability to write haiku.

Easing our toe into the waters…

• Ah, the revenge of the cupcakes, another recurring trope. Even better from TMQ’s point of view, the Jacksonville State turnaround began with an interception caused by Ole Miss trying to run up the score. “The football gods punish this sort of thing.” And thus the football gods make their first appearance this season in TMQ.
• Scantily clad Ukrainian cheer babes. Photo too small.
• Whenever TMQ says, “Tuesday Morning Quarterback long has maintained…”, yeah, that’s a trope. In this case, TMQ argues that year-to-year athletic scholarships hurt athletes, by leading to a focus on athletics over education, and may constitute “restraint of trade” according to the Justice Department.
• Creep.
• 335 pound linemen. Noted as another example of a recurring trope.
• Why does the media love a good oil spill? TMQ thinks it could have something to do with the $200 million BP has spent on “image advertising”.
• Haynesworth.
• TMQ bashes the NYT; in this case, the paper of record acts like David Romer’s “go for it on 4th down” paper is new, when it was covered by people like the Washington Monthly and TMQ in 2006.
  

  In the same package, the Times asks why, if going for it, kicking onside and deuce tries make sense, NFL coaches rarely attempt these stratagems. The answer the Times proposes — that coaches don’t want to be blamed for failed gambles — is a running theme of Tuesday Morning Quarterback. I’ve even been saying this for 10 years, since this column began on Slate.com, which was then a radical innovation on that new Interweb thing.

  Not just a trope, but a trope Easterbrook admits to!

• Easterbrook complains about the recent glut of hitman movies, and the glamorization of violence. Again.
• Technology has made the study of game films much easier, resulting in game film study trickling down to the high school level and below.
• Hurrah for one of my personal favorite TMQ tropes, the obscure college score of the week!
• Quoted without comment: “[Sports commentators] have a snug image of what’s “supposed” to happen, and don’t take kindly to original thinking.”
• Christmas creep.
• After last year’s minimum wage increase, Easterbrook suggested that this would be a test of the relationship between higher minimum wages and unemployment. If unemployment went up, that would be evidence for the proposition; if it went down, that would be evidence against. The end result so far? Unemployment remains constant at 9.5 percent. It would have been interesting to see Easterbrook break out the figures by age group; has unemployment among teens increased?
• Reader comments: objections to characterizing Dallas as a non-neutral site for the Texas-OU game, discussion of cupcake games pro and con, the 18-game season as bargaining chip, and getting shot hurts.

Next week, the start of the season, and Easterbrook steps up his game. We hope.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.