Nobody legitimately thought Presbyterian had a chance against Wake Forest on Thursday. Sure enough, by the second quarter, the Blue Hose found themselves down by four touchdowns. But they had their pride left, so they went to a trick play. You know, if a pass is thrown behind the line of scrimmage, behind the person throwing it, the ball is live even if it hits the ground. Some Wake players seemed to forget that fact.
It seemed like the world stopped for a few minutes when Nike did its college football fashion show on Wednesday morning, unveiling the 2010 edition of the Pro Combat uniforms. Each uni, from helmet to cleats and the underlying clothing, is connected to the traditions of the universities and local communities. For instance, Ohio State’s is a tribute to the 1942 team. For West Virginia, they’re showing solidarity for the state’s miners and the recent mine disaster that killed 29 people. Oregon State is sporting what are basically throwbacks to a late ’60s team that was one of the school’s best. Nike says these unis are 39 percent lighter than the uniforms they replace.
For what it is worth, those at the Swoosh didn’t fiddle much with the Crimson Tide outfit. There’s a muted gray-and-white houndstooth pattern on the numbers and down the middle of the helmet, along with an American flag on the right shoulder and a move from the script A on the front thigh to the side, along with the usual design changes for the gloves and cleats.
The materials and fabrication elements, which debuted in 2009, will be incorporated into the Crimson Tide’s traditional uniforms whose design will feature a Houndstooth pattern incorporated into the uniform’s numbers – a tribute to legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. Also, as a gesture to honor veterans of the armed services, the Alabama uniform will feature an American flag patch on the right sleeve. The flag is featured with the stars facing forward (to the right) per military protocol.
ALABAMA
BOISE STATE & FLORIDA
OHIO STATE & MIAMI
PITT & OREGON STATE
TCU & VIRGINIA TECH
WEST VIRGINIA
Congressional ethics committees are notorious for being toothless, only really acting when someone gloriously screws up, like former U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant. It’s a sort of mutually-assured destruction pact between the two parties. This is why self-policing doesn’t work. And for some strange reason, the House ethics committee has launched an investigation into six congressmen right as the general election goes into the homestretch — U.S. Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas), Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), former U.S. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and our very own U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson.
The questioning comes down to spending of per diems during overseas travel. The investigation of Wilson in particular seems very odd. Evidently, the thought is that he overspent on $2 tiny goblets in Afghanistan for families of American troops serving over there. He was receiving $13 a day. [lewisblackvoice] What-the-fuck is that about? [/lewisblackvoice] The House will spend more money in an hour or two just looking into this than the expenditures made on the trip. Below is a picture from the Wilson campaign of one of the goblets, placed next to a Coke can for perspective.
This is insanity.
Back during the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign, after one of the many debates someone asked us if we watched. Internal response was, “Why the fuck would we?” External response was, “No.” It might have had a little bit to do with the candidates, but a whole lot to do with the office and level of political polishing. For most debates for higher office, they’re totally stone-cold boring and contain no new information. Just a competition to see who could most artfully chop up their stump speeches into timed segments. So let’s kill the debates.
Most of the presidential debates, and they began in the summer of 2007 for chrissakes, were just exercises in waiting for the freak candidate to say something weird or drinking games for people who find it hard to get obliterated without rules and points. In races with a lot of people, many candidates say very little and even less of actual import. They would be better served with covering themselves with bumper stickers and turning about for the cameras.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vince Sheheen decided to a new twist on an exceptionally old trick — did the staff get high and approve this? — by challenging GOP nominee Nikki Haley to fucking Lincoln-Douglas debates. A whole mess of ‘em! And stories were written far and wide. This comprises the vast majority of all action regarding debates. Candidate A proposes something a little out of the ordinary. Candidate B says bah to that. Then so many news stories. It’s just a method to generate news coverage. As a result, most of the people who actually give a damn are those who are directly involved, and nobody else cares.
In that way, more than 90 percent of all political debates between candidates are little different than the presidential nominating conventions. No, they’re actually very much worse. Conventions have political memorabilia to buy, the occasional famous person sighting, entertainment by famous people (this applies mostly to Democrats, or to your definition of “famous”) and those wonderful hospitality parties thrown by big corporations and special interests that have the open bars and free food. Debates, even high-level debates, don’t come close. The best swag you’ll bring home is a press pass bought off some writer at the hotel bar. And about 90 minutes of sheer boredom.
Lower ballot race debates could be worthwhile, but if you’ve had to sit through multiple city council debates or watched State House candidates go at it in some back room in BFE with 11 people attending, you’d agree that the news value is negligible. Columbia would be better served by having the city candidates debate in front of the Metro desk reporters and save everyone else the trouble.
But here’s the connection between the debates and the conventions: as former DNC chairman Don Fowler taught us at Carolina, conventions never help a campaign and if they have effect, it’s bad. Fowler pointed to RNC ’92 in Houston and his own DNC ’88 in Atlanta as examples. The same goes for the debates. They’re only particularly newsworthy and have an effect on the campaign if somebody seriously fucks up, as in George H.W. Bush in ’92 in Richmond (looking at his watch) or Al Gore in 2000 (le sigh).
Discussions, like among the Pub Politics crew or the fabulous C-SPAN broadcast of William F. Buckley and George McGovern from several years ago are different matters altogether. People sitting down with different points of view and talking about them can elicit interesting commentary and analysis. And jokes that aren’t pre-scripted. Operatives, former pols, reporters who are allowed an opinion — Lee Bandy at the Dan Rather thing in ’08 was great — these are people close enough to the action to really know what’s going down, but removed enough to actually say something worth listening to.
But these candidate debates, they’re moribund, they’re out cold. It’s toe-tag time.
O God. Alabama fans on their lunch break today probably didn’t want to see the story come over the wire, the one that basically says, “Your star junior running back and Heisman Trophy winner basically lost a knee yesterday in practice and had arthroscopic surgery this morning.” OK, maybe it’s not quite that bad. The only guarantee is that Trent Richardson is the starter for the San Jose State game. But with Penn State coming to town in Week Two, having that two-headed monster in the backfield would be nice. The Tide beat writers say not likely.
Richard Scrushy‘s illegal acts to the contrary, having HealthSouth and Dr. James Andrews located 45 minutes up the road in Birmingham isn’t a bad asset to have, so it’s possible Ingram could be ready to go in a couple weeks.
“It was a situation where everyone involved thought it would be better to take care of now, so he would not have any issues with it later in the season,” Saban said.
Ingram, a junior, hurt his knee late in practice on Monday. Saban said this morning’s minor surgery was successful and performed by Dr. Lyle Cain and Dr. James Andrews.
The normal recovery for a knee scope is a few weeks.
Here’s a bit of trivia — Andrews also operates a sports medicine clinic in Gulf Breeze, Fla., across the bay from Richardson’s hometown of Pensacola. Anyway….
Third stringer Eddie Lacy is an unknown quantity for most people not allowed at Alabama’s practice fields, so we will have to see how he fits into Richardson’s old role. But maybe Ingram could sit out Week One and Week Three (Duke) but be ready when the meat of the season really starts. As it is, Richardson has received so much preseason love coming off his spectacular freshman year, on the Madden scale many people would put him as an overall 97 to Ingram’s 94. So maybe waiting for Ingram to return until Week Four may not be as big of a deal as a former Tide team losing Shaun Alexander or (and this did happen) Siran Stacy.
Spencer Hall, who like the rest of us witnessed Richardson breaking out last year, had jokes.
Maybe Gov. Mark Sanford is shutting it down early, but he’s decided not to oppose $127 million in federal spending that’s slated for state health care programs. Specifically, programs dealing with the poor and disabled. Mind you, this is a guy who camped out on cable television during the second stimulus debate and went to court against the General Assembly to stop federal stimulus money from reaching the Palmetto State.
Sanford’s spokesman said that he just didn’t want the fight, and that he didn’t (?) oppose the health care stimulus bucks. That’s all well and good, but when the Department of Health and Human Services spokesman says the agency is still $200 million in the red, that’s a problem. What it signals is that next year’s budgeting is going to be another round of 20-hour sessions and every group that gets state money tubthumping to keep their funding.
What’s likely, and won’t be fun for many, is there will be another ton of cuts and many people will be trying to do more with less. And a lot of people who depend on the state for services would be well-served to figure out another method to get done what’s needed.
Don’t call it a turf battle. Maybe. Reps. Jimmy Merrill and Chip Limehouse, both from the Charleston area, are being pretty vocal about opposing the new expansion by the USC School of Medicine. It’s no coincidence that MUSC, which has to compete for talent and resources, is in their backyard, right? But whatever the motivation, Carolina’s plans to get together with the Greenville Hospital System are getting some close scrutiny.
For instance, there’s the system’s finances. It dropped a peg on the credit rating and laid off 50 people during the spring. GHS responds that its credit is still good and it plans on hiring more than 200 people in the near future. Then there’s the involvement of former Carolina president Andrew Sorensen, who works in the School of Medicine, is a consultant for GHS and has been pushing deals with the system since before he resigned the presidency.
Sorensen’s involvement looks a little shady, but understandable. If there’s a guy at USC who would be at the nexus of medicine, institutional management and financing, it would be Sorensen. And this project has his fingerprints all over it. The deal is for GHS to spend between $35 million and $39 million over seven to 10 years. It’s a massive project, similar to Sorensen’s when he was president. The sciences got shit-tons of money and new buildings while other university divisions (coughcoughCollege of Mass Communicationscoughcough) seemingly appeared forgotten.
The fact that there’s all this investment and time when the university has so many needs and budget issues and rising tuition is probably the best reason why the plans should get a second look.
In separate articles, one appearing in The State on Monday and another in the Journal of the South Carolina Medical Association last month, doctors C. Warren Derrick and Charles S. Bryan questioned the timing of the expansion plan and doubted whether it would produce more primary care doctors.
Derrick is a professor emeritus at USC’s School of Medicine, and Bryan is a former chairman of its Department of Medicine.
Derrick said residency slots will need to be increased if the state hopes to increase the number of doctors here since medical students are more likely to stay and practice medicine in the state where they completed their residency. And Bryan wondered whether the current poor economic climate will allow GHS to uphold its commitments.
“Is commitment to indefinite funding of a four-year medical school, and notably of new, academically-credible basic science departments, good business strategy during this time of economic uncertainty for the nation and for health care financing?” Bryan wrote.
We had a lot of fun with climate change deniers this winter about snowmageddon, because we knew this was going to happen — the blazing heat of a Columbia summer. A four or five-block walk, and things might be getting a little swampy, not to mention sitting still in the shade.
Even people used to dealing with the summer heat have been talking about how this season has been different.
Distance runners often train at the crack of dawn in the summer to avoid the heat. That did no good this summer.
“Even when I did just a short run, two or three miles, I literally had sweat dripping off my fingertips,” said Jeanna Moffet, who has been running in Columbia for 25 years. “My running friends and I have talked about how when we run we feel so sluggish, like we’re out of shape.
“I went out the other day (in the morning) and it felt like I could drink the air.”
The dog days of summer have been worse than normal, even for the dogs. Jeff Brandenburg takes his Weimaraners running with him in the mornings. This summer, the usually rugged dogs have given out after about 30 minutes, prompting him to take them back home and finish his training runs on his own.
The funny thing is that it was the temperature when the sun goes down that made the difference in the averages. This year, low temperatures were closer to 80 than 70. So really, the great outdoors was just an oven fluctuating between 80 and 100. Beyond that, there have been some happenings that go beyond our rather rudimentary knowledge of meteorology.
The more complicated question is why the air didn’t cool at night. Mark Malsick at the State Climate Office joked that a doctoral student could write a dissertation on it.
Malsick and Greg Carbone at the USC geography department offered some likely meteorological explanations.
In general, the Bermuda high that so often impacts our summer weather set up this summer and stayed put, steering moist air our way off the Gulf of Mexico.
Moister air and greater nighttime cloud cover keeps warm air from rising at night. In a more typical summer, the warm air rises after dark and is replaced by slightly cooler air at the surface.
Of course, the sick joke is that the heat probably won’t let up until, say, November.
Got hooked on those illegal parlay cards in college? Bill Simmons‘ musings on gambling turned you into a prop-bet degenerate? Well, time’s winding down to the kickoff of the college football season, so it’s time to get those bets in. We’re taking ours from Betus.com, and there’s some interesting lines.
SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE, WEEK ONE
Southern Miss at South Carolina (-14)
Our pick: We’ve all seen these Carolina opening games, and they’re usually horrible. Add that to the fact Southern Miss has a long history of playing SEC teams tough, or outright upsetting them. The USC offense will probably be pretty bad out of the gate, so we’ll go with the Golden Eagles.
Miami (OH) at Florida (-35)
Our pick: It’s not Charleston Southern, and big spreads are tricky, but we think the Gators will cover.
Northwestern at Vanderbilt (+5.5)
Our pick: Vandy’s Vandy, and with the late coaching turnover, we’ve got Northwestern in this one.
Memphis at Mississippi State (-21)
Our pick: Holy smokes. A year after going 2-10 and 1-7 in conference play, and Memphis is eligible for the woodshed. We’ll go with MSU to cover.
Kentucky at Louisville (+3)
Our pick: Mediocre teams usually win or lose depending on turnovers and mistakes. There will probably be a lot of both in this game, but Randall Cobb makes the difference for Kentucky.
San Jose State at Alabama (-38.5)
Our pick: The Spartans are up there with Miami (OH) as being very bad teams from mid-major conferences. Alabama’s offense should be even better. Spotting SJSU 10, the Tide has to score almost 50 points. Screw it — we’re taking Bama to cover.
UL-Lafayette at Georgia (-28)
Our pick: UL-LAF is probably going to get more than 40 hung on it, so the Dawgs will likely cover.
Arkansas State at Auburn (-31)
Our pick: Auburn’s supposed to be significantly improved over last year, and ASU is a little too far removed from its upset of Texas A&M in 2008. The Tigers will score enough to make it happen.
If you’re scoring at home, that’s seven teams to cover, one to not. They don’t have LSU-North Carolina on the list, but the general idea is pick ‘em to the Tigers as a 3.5 point favorite. It really shouldn’t be that hard for LSU to win by at least seven. That would be eight to cover, which is definitely living dangerously in Week One.
While we broke our addiction to the EA Sports college football franchise a couple years ago, we go way back with EA. For example, the NBA game “Lakers vs. Celtics,” and the first edition of the Madden series. Naturally, we get ads for NCAA Football 11′s Facebook page every once in a while, and it’s clear that whoever is scripting these things doesn’t exactly have it together. As in, someone who may or may not know anything about college football.
We’re particularly proud of the ad pimping the game by saying Alabama travels to Auburn this season (the Tigers will go to Tuscaloosa) and that the game is in Montgomery, of all places. That’s like saying Clemson will play at Carolina in Charleston. Good job there, EA.
