Let’s start off this week with a video:
The reasons why will become apparent. (Also, we have a couple of friends who are students of ti kwan leap.) After the jump, this week’s TMQ:
1,618 words can be summarized as “The gender that plays football is falling behind in college. The gender that does not play football is excelling.”
We need to think about this some more. Our first take is that there are a lot of holes in TMQ’s argument. For example, football “…may be causing brain trauma that makes boys as a group somewhat less likely to succeed as students”. If this was the case, wouldn’t that brain trauma be noticed later in life, whether or not boys go to college? “…the increasing amount of time high school boys devote to football may be preventing them from having the GPA and extracurriculars that will earn them regular admission to college when recruiters don’t come calling.” Do we have any comparisons of the GPAs of boys who play football to boys who don’t play football? It seems like those would be easy numbers to find and compare.
Further, while TMQ states “Participation in prep football has increased 21 percent in the past 20 years, by nearly 200,000 boys per year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations” he never states exactly what percentage of boys play football. We would love to find some reliable figures on that: a quick Google does not turn up any. Is the percentage of boys that play high school football sufficient to explain the college admission discrepancy?
Could there be other root causes? Could the growth of video and computer gaming explain this discrepancy? We think there’s probably at least as good a case for that as there is for Easterbrook’s football theory. But we welcome further discussion and debate in the comments.
We like women named “Natalie“.
Sweet fake kicks: Raiders, Pittsburgh. Sweet and sour: Giants, Jets, Buffalo – Philadelphia. Christmas creep.
When the first few Wild Cards
Why is there so much reliance on anonymous sources? You’ve heard this before. Repeatedly. But we did want to single out the Joel Osteen stories. We had some religious training, and feel like we can say with confidence:
God does not work like that!
The offensive lineman split. (Not to be confused with the 7-10 split.) How long is TMQ going to keep up the Oklahoma State-Texas A&M thing?
Rule of thumb: anytime you see an item that starts “From Next Year’s TMQ” or any future TMQ, you can go ahead and skip it.
Lions and tigers and Bears, oh my!
What’s wrong with the Eagles? WCD has four words: “the curse of Vick”.
Chris Christie. Disposable users. Carbon-free sugar. What’s wrong with the Falcons? WCD doesn’t have four words for that. TMQ is sure milking the whole Vlad “The Impaler” Putin thing for all that it is worth, isn’t he?
Blown coverages. Rachel Ray dog food: because animals that eat their own crap need “simple natural ingredients like real chicken and whole grains”. (Plus: TMQ crowd-sources his dog’s food!) Stupid blitzes.
We confess: we have not been to the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Yet. However, we are not constrained by the same “thong-based reasons” that TMQ is apparently…er….well, we wanted to say “bound by”, but that carries an unfortunate connotation. Anyway, here you go.
Creep. “Why haven’t the hapless Marine Mammals tried to salvage their season by acquiring Carson Palmer or Brady Quinn?” Because the financial difference between winning and losing is small enough that it makes more sense to l0se cheap, and both Palmer and Quinn would want large contracts? You know, the same argument you’ve been making much of this year, TMQ?
Concussion watch. WCD finds these facts interesting: “a 60 percent increase in emergency-room visits for concussions in the past decade” and “bicycling accidents, not football, were the leading cause of emergency room visits for concussions”. Has bicycling grown that much in popularity in the past decade? Have bicycling accidents be constantly the leading cause of concussions over the past decade?
We vaguely remembered something recent arguing against bicycle helmets, and a quick Google found Mikael Colville-Andersen’s TEDx Copenhagen talk. WCD’s personal opinion is that helmets are for people who have brains to protect, and we wear one when we ride. (Sadly, not often enough these days.) We rode much more when were we just a lad, never wore a helmet, took some falls, and those falls seem to have had no impact on our purple monkey dishwasher.
Where were we? The cardinal is indigenous to Arizona. Except it isn’t the cardinal that’s depicted on the Cardinal’s helmets, so TMQ avoids the “you maroon” hit on that one. “Although the expression literally translates as ‘hand to hand’ or ‘hand versus hand,’ the popular meaning here in Mexico is ‘man to man.’ Your usage was correct.” The popular usage of “decimated” has become “reduced by a very large number”, not “reduced by ten percent”. That still doesn’t make it right.
Reader comments: has TMQ ever heard of a non-compete clause, why does TMQ hate particle accelerators (and science!), and Jets Uncorked.
North Dakota State 9, Southern Illinois 3. Tennessee State 55, Southeast Missouri State 3.
That’s all for this week, folks. Keep circulating the tapes.