Whipped Cream Difficulties

Mystery! Suspense! Pathos! None of those are present in this week’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback“, but that doesn’t stop us from blogging it anyway. After the jump…

“…the pick-six is the most devastating play in football.” 387 words down.

Crystal certainly looks like she can dunk a basketball. As a matter of fact, it looks like she’s tried to dunk two basketballs, but missed the basket by THAT much…

Sweet and sour: the Jarrett Bush interception, chicken-<salad> kicking by Pittsburgh, Packers read TMQ and avoid the three-man rush.

“Friday Night Lights” update: thank Ghu this show is finally ending. (Though NBC will be running the last set of episodes for a few more months.)

Brooke. Is it just us, or are the Cowboys cheerleader uniforms sort of inherently sexy, no matter who is wearing them?

Super Bowl analysis: why didn’t the Steelers run more, “Pittsburgh turnovers versus Green Bay drops”, Rogers outplayed Roethlisberger, curious Steelers coaching.

“On NFL rosters and in NFL media guides, players should be listed only by the highest school they graduated from.” 826 words down.

Silly bill names. “(The split infinitive suggests more funding is needed in English rather than science.)” Good idea. Can we divert some of that funding TMQ’s way, and perhaps purchase a good grammar handbook for him? Maybe one published by the Oxford University Press?

“Should Football Be Played?” WCD answers, “Yes, but only in driving rain.” Seriously, WCD recommends you read this section of Easterbrook’s column for yourself. TMQ summarizes some of the studies he’s found, especially those dealing with concussion research. Briefly: there seems to be an earlier onset of Alzheimer’s in former players, former players have noticeably shorter lives (but that study is 20 years old, and deals with players from the 1950s – 1970s period), former players had “healthier body chemistry” than non-players (but wouldn’t you expect that from athletes?).

The study described here, based on the injury reports of NFL teams, found that 6 percent of NFL players suffered a concussion during the 2010 season. This study also finds a decade-long average of 3 percent per season concussion likelihood. That suggests that over four years of high school and four years of college football, a player runs a significant risk of a concussion.

TMQ’s conclusions? Concussion reducing helmets are a good idea, other sports are dangerous too, and football has positive benefits for those who play it.

Should your kid play football? TMQ’s answer: not tackle football before 8th grade and watch for “monster coaches”. With those warnings, TMQ says “Sure”.

(Before we leave the topic of “should football be played”, WCD wants to throw in this link by way of FARK:

Every day begins with William Perry needing help out of bed. Usually, it’s 10 a.m. before he even gives it a try, and to support his 400 pounds, he shuffles to the living room on two legs that barely work and his sturdy black cane.

This is one of the saddest things we’ve read in a long time.)

“TMQ’s Annual NFL Pinafore Count“: WCD applauds TMQ for throwing in a gratuitous Gilbert and Sullivan reference. As for the item itself (which is basically an argument that NFL teams are overstaffed) WCD wishes that TMQ had gone the extra mile and correlated over-staffing with team performance. The Cleveland Browns are TMQ’s “most top-heavy NFL bureaucracy” and finished 5-11. The Packers are called out for having a top-heavy structure as well, and…well… (Gregg, was this item simply a transparent excuse to get Ferdinand III’s full title into a column?)

“And the man in the back said ‘Everyone attack!’ and it turned into a ballroom blitz…” “What You Need to Know About Aaron Rodgers’ Helmet”: the helmet is a Schutt Air XP, Roethlisberger wore a Riddell Revo Speed, and TMQ is happy, but thinks the NFL should make everyone wear concussion reducing helmets. 1,214 words down.

The overall winner of the TMQ Challenge doesn’t work for us, but we like the “Boom!” song. Mostly, we like the “Boom!” song because it reminds us of the classic paper by Donald “Big Don” Knuth, “The Complexity of Songs“, in which Knuth establishes the existence of songs with complexity O(1).

Why don’t singers actually sing all of  “America the Beautiful”? The celebration rule is stupid. “[The Black Eyed Peas] music may be mindless and repetitious, but their glowing-people staging was the best Super Bowl halftime show in many moons.” TMQ is, from what we can tell, the only person in the world who has anything good to say about the halftime show. “There was a flyover though the dome was closed, so no one could see the jets.” Yeah, and Balko makes the point better (and his commenters make the counter-point better).

Police escorts again. WCD sees at least some minimal justification for escorting the team buses due to the unusual weather conditions. Speaking of which, “Texas doesn’t devote a lot of spending to road crews”. Actually, Gregg, Texas spends a lot of money on road crews. We don’t, however, spend a lot of money preparing to clear snow and ice because we don’t get it that often. At least, not where WCD lives. Dallas and points north seem to suffer from snow and ice much more frequently. Or perhaps this is selective memory. In any case, do not get WCD started on the subject of Oklahoma City.

Reader comments: football teams miss the least amount of time for athletics (compared to track, baseball, etc.), and defense trumps offense revisited.

Join us next week for the TMQ Bad Predictions Review. Advance prediction: one of the bad predictions will be from TMQ.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.