A Large Regular

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

I think in the next few years professional sports leagues and teams will go to subscription services where subscribers get live feeds of the games without commercials - like being at the games. There will be discounted subscription packages that include commercials. Subscribers could also have the option of choosing their own announcing teams with the announcers and teams splitting the proceeds. This could be the future of sports on TV... Goats yelling like humans... The Canadian Odyssey could be a cool story of a hockey player who goes overseas to play for Canada in the Olympics but then gets in a series of adventures that complicates his return home...  If I could learn to play one "instrument" - it would be this one... Reminder on the show Silicon Valley the douchebag billionaire character Russ Hanneman was modeled after real-life billionaire douchebag Mark Cuban... If the NFL MVP voting took place after the Super Bowl instead of at the end of the regular season - is there any doubt that Tom Brady not Aaron Rodgers would be the winner?... 

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

It seems to me that the new PC culture infecting SNL means that current and future generations will never get the benefit of great comedy like John Belushi's Samurai Night Fever and other Samurai centric skits... Heh Heh... Going into the season Tom Brady was 20-1 to win the NFL MVP. After the trade for Antonio Brown and the Pats hot start Brady's odds are down to 5-1 (Pat Mahomes is still the favorite at 3-1)... This past week Hamza Bin Laden, son of Osama Bin Laden and high ranking al Qaeda leader was killed by the US military. You'd think this would be bigger story but the media has different priorities... The attacks on the Saudi oil plants did not really affect US oil prices (thank you fracking and energy independence) or impact our economy but I wonder what the impact the attacks had on China's economy. They are the largest importer of Saudi oil ($29.1 billion per year)...

2012 NFL MVP

The other week I mused about if Tom Brady broke Dan Marino's single season passing record but Aaron Rogers led the Green Bay Packers to an undefeated season - which QB would win the MVP? There was a flaw in the question in that Aaron Rogers could both lead the Packers to an unblemished season AND break Marino's record. So Rogers seems to be the pick at this point.

The more I thought about it the more I started thinking of a baseball parallel that could come into play. You might think I would bring to mind Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio the year Mister Coffee had a 56-game hitting streak and the Splendid Splinter hit .406. That 1941 season would be a good analogy since that was also a very contested MVP but the analogy I had in mind was actually from 2002.

That year Pedro Martinez was near unhittable but he ended up losing the AL Cy Young to Barry Zito largely because Zito had more starts than Pedro and that made a big difference to the voters. In 2002 Pedro went 20-4 with a 2.26 ERA in 30 starts while Zito went 23-5 with a 2.75 ERA in 35 starts. Pedro was much more dominating than Zito having 239 K's to Barry's 182 even though Zito pitched 30 more innings yet Zito won the award. The difference was Pedro took some starts off down the stretch because the Red Sox were out of it and that didn't sit well with some voters.

So what does that 2002 baseball season have to do with this year's NFL MVP? Well if Green Bay sews up the best record in the NFC there may be a strong push to rest him up for the playoffs. If his team loses a game, rests him, and Brady breaks Marino's record then those quarters on the bench may be the difference for Rogers between winning the MVP and losing it to Tom Brady.

This is in no way equating Tom Brady to Barry Zito. That would be like equating Barry Zito to Sandy Koufax. The situation from 2002 did strike me as relevant though.