Tag: sports

State

Political Football

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At a time when we have two senators and one senate candidate from our one party state all trying to insert politics into college football (and all three claim to be conservatives – go figure) it seems appropriate to use a football analogy to describe the dangers of having one-party domination within the state or the nation.[quote]

Think of the worst NCAA Division 1A (FBS) football team in the country. Now imagine that team playing the best team in the NFL. It should be a no-brainer to figure out which team will win the game (or every game if they were to play multiple times). Now imagine that we make one minor rule change – the NFL team can only play defense – the only way they can score is a safety or an interception returned for a touchdown. Anytime they get the ball and don’t score they would be required to let the NCAA team play offense and keep trying to score. In that scenario it would be very rare for the NFL team to win the game.

The point that this should illustrate is that with such a rule change the football games would never give any indication about which was the better team or even how good each team was. So long as those rules were applied between teams more fairly matched than a middle school team vs professional athletes the outcome would be almost completely determined by which team was allowed to play offense.

[quote1]Living in a one-party state has the same effect on our political system. So long as one party has no opportunity to play offense the outcome of every political scrimmage is practically predetermined. Sadly the Democratic party in Utah seems resigned to a permanent minority status where all they can do is play defense and hope for some spectacular interceptions. (I don’t mean to imply that there are no democrats trying to play offense, but the party as a whole seems to have accepted the idea that they can’t win.) The result is that the values espoused by the Republican party as well as the values espoused by the Democratic party are never really explored or tested in our political arena. People who would otherwise be Democrats participate in the Republican party in order to influence the politics of the state and moderate members of the Republican party can be ignored by party insiders as they pander to more vocal and extreme elements of the party which are not representative of the core values of the party as a whole.

This sounds like a recipie for political decay.

Tags football, parties, sports, thoughts, Utah

culture National

What Should We Do About It?

Post author By David
Post date April 3, 2009
16 Comments on What Should We Do About It?

Recently someone shared The Obama Deception with me (and others) asking for feedback. Normally I would not take two hours to watch such a video because these efforts rarely shed any real light on their subjects. Mostly, they just generate heat through friction. I decided that in the interest of giving an honest response and out of respect for the person who shared it I would take the time. I’m glad that I did so that I could know what I was responding to, and so that I could share the best 8 seconds of the video which come from nearly the end of the two hours.

My reaction to the whole video is to admit that there is an element of truth in it – as there usually is to reports of conspiracy theories. Also common among such reports is the fact that the reality is generally less sinister than the report would have you believe. It’s always helpful to refer back to Hanlon’s Razor:

Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence. (or similar variations)

I don’t mean to suggest that everyone in our government is incompetent – only that the assumption of malice in everything they do does nothing to help us act appropriately as we learn of poor or misguided actions.

My thought as I viewed the video was to ask myself, "what actions would they have people take?" Similarly, my thought whenever I am acquiring new information is to ask myself "what should I do about it?" The reason that I liked those 8 seconds of video is that they addressed that question. (After two hours I was surprised that they did address my question.)

My experience in asking that question has been that no matter how varied the problems in government, the answer to that question is generally some variation on the same theme. Study the Constitution and promote a culture of individual liberty in our own actions and within our government. In order to do that we have to understand what a culture of individual liberty is. For one thing, it means that we have to let go of the assumption that the government can or should solve many of our social problems. The role of government is not to make sure that the playing field is level – it is to ensure that nobody cheats.

Government cannot ensure a level playing field because each individual is different and not equal. No matter how much I might try to imagine otherwise the fact is that I can’t compete with Alex Rodriguez in baseball, LeBron James in basketball, or Tiger Woods in golf. The government is only there to enforce the rules of fairness. No matter how sophisticated a handicapping system they devise I will never be able to beat Tiger at a fair golf game. The rules are not to make sure that I score somewhere close to my competitor, they are to make sure that Tiger does not choose to take a mulligan or sign an inaccurate scorecard and that I don’t do those things either. On the other hand, the rules do not prevent Tiger from spotting me a shot or two (per hole) in the interest of keeping the game interesting.

In case anyone is wondering, individual liberty does not mean that the course owners can’t enforce a dress code despite the fact that my breaking the dress code does not give me any advantage in the game. In other words, the argument that "I’m not hurting anyone but myself" is not sufficient reason to strike down a law (contrary to what many libertarians might argue). It is acceptable for us to codify into law the values that we want to promote within our society.

Tags Constitution, liberty, questions, sports, values

National

Rethinking the Electoral College

Post author By David
Post date September 16, 2008
2 Comments on Rethinking the Electoral College

I have long been a staunch supporter of keeping the electoral college despite the weaknesses I see in having most states take a winner-take-all approach to their electoral college votes. The calls to abolish the current system in favor of a national popular vote have been growing for as long as I have been interested in politics. Today I started to wonder if we could honor the purpose of the Electoral college while using the support for a popular vote to institute reforms for the weaknesses that have grown in the current system.

The idea that I had in mind would be comparable to the way the BCS chooses a national champion for college football. (Stick with me here, I know the BCS is unpopular.) Consider our current system to be like the pre-BCS method of choosing a champion based on who the polls ranked as #1 at the end of the season. With the BCS, those polls become only part of a broader equation without resorting to a playoff (the equivalent of a national popular vote in my analogy).

My idea would be to implement a national popular vote where every vote counts equally and where the results weigh in as 82% of the final choice. Each state then has two representatives in the reduced electoral college with the electoral college votes accounting for the remaining 18% of the final tally. The reason for the 82% weight for the popular vote is because that represents 441members of the current 541 member electoral college which are supposed to be comparable to the representation in the House of Representatives. The states are represented as sovereign entities with the remaining 100 votes with the ability to apportion those votes as they see fit – winner-take-all or with a representative split (such as one vote for each candidate with more than 40% of the vote or both votes if one candidate exceeds 60% of the popular vote in the state).

The 18% weight from the reduced Electoral College would decide close elections, but it would do so in a way that would virtually eliminate any value in selective recounts for disputed elections. Recounts would not materially affect the 82% weight of the popular vote and would only be able to swing up to one vote of the remaining 18%.

I have not had time to consider all the nuances of this idea but I would love to hear what others thing of such a plan.

Tags elections, electoral college, ideas, questions, sports

culture

A Universal Dream

Is there anyone who could not support the dream shared by Jess:

it’s my dream that the citizens of our country renew their interest in politics half as much as they love the olympic games. . .

to preserve the posterity of politics in our country, the greatest country in the world, we need to start caring about the leadership of our country like we care about the olympics. that surge of patriotism we feel when a united states athlete wins a medal in the olympics – i wish we’d experience some of that same feeling when we are in the process of selecting our next mayor, governor or president.

in turn, the leadership of our country must train like athletes – they need to be inspirational. they need to be focused. they need to be uniting. they must never give up. they must aspire for greatness . . . if they could accomplish those things, we would offer our support . . . because they are AMERICAN, not because they are a democrat or a republican. we’d stand with them because we’re proud of their accomplishment . . .

(spelling and punctuation original)

If anyone can’t get behind that kind of a dream they probably should not be a citizen of this country. Unfortunately, even if Michael Phelps has political interest he can’t run for President until 2020 – we can’t afford to wait that long.

Tags 2008, citizenship, civic participation, Olympics, sports, swimming

National

Charting Government Fiscal Irresponsibility

Post author By David
Post date June 16, 2008
9 Comments on Charting Government Fiscal Irresponsibility

While trying to find out how Tiger Woods did in the playoff round of the U.S. Open today (he birdied the last hole to force sudden death and then won on the first sudden death playoff hole) I stumbled upon news of the launching of PerotCharts.com. This website is a project of Ross Perot which provides important information that every person in the U.S. needs to understand (and every member of Congress needs to accept). Helping Ross Perot is David Walker who was the Comptroller General of the United States until recently – he was the person responsible for creating government fiscal projections and he seems to be tired of having his numbers spun by politicians for their own gain at our national peril.

Using data from the government itself, Perot Charts shows the fiscal cliff that we are facing and on “chart” 34 of a 35 chart Fiscal Challenges presentation there are four suggestions for how to begin correcting our dire situation:

- Restructure existing entitlement programs
- Raise payroll taxes and/or income taxes
- Borrow more money each year to make up the shortfall
- Cut discretionary spending even further

Of those four suggestions, we should be implementing at least 2 if not 3 of them (restructuring entitlement programs, cutting discretionary spending, and finding ways to raise revenue as well). What we don’t need is to borrow more – that only exacerbates the problem.

Tags David Walker, economics, entitlements, fiscal restraint, government, sports

culture

Playoffs vs Bowl Games

Before the BCS pairings were even announced yesterday I heard people talking about how this year should be conclusive evidence that we need to have a playoff for the National Championship in NCAA Football. I disagree. I think that Mike Lopresti got it right (again):

So ends an entirely captivating, wildly absorbing, deliciously unpredictable college football regular season. And now at the finish, what do we see?

Controversy. Mayhem. Protests.

Ain’t it great?

Here comes the BCS bashing, clanging like cymbals in a band, guaranteeing peace in our time — if only there could be a playoff.

Yeah, right. Put eight teams in a playoff. One would have to be Georgia, of course. Hottest team at the end, and all that.

Now go tell that to Tennessee, who won the division that Georgia could not, and beat the Bulldogs head-to-head by three touchdowns. And what about Hawaii? You going to have eight teams in a playoff and leave out the only team in the land with a 12-0 record? Or 11-1 Kansas? Or Missouri, which somehow fell from No. 1 to the Cotton Bowl in 24 hours? Just a few of many dilemmas.

The howls can be heard, though, now that the bowl pairings are out.

THE SYSTEM DIDN’T GET IT RIGHT!

No it didn’t, because there is no right answer. Not for the BCS. Not for a playoff. Someone will always feel shafted. Someone will always have another case to make. There will always be politicking, because if you need two teams, you can’t pick three. And if you need eight, you can’t choose nine.

He missed one thing there – college athletes are not professionals. I know, they work as hard as the professionals (perhaps harder) but thankfully they are still expected to be students and do more than take the field for our entertainment. The fact that we have an imperfect BCS system means that we as fans get to participate in a much more animated discussion surrounding what is happening, right or wrong, in college football. The fact that we don’t have a fool-proof way to declare a champion every year might serve to remind us that there is more to life than sports – no matter how entertaining those sports may be.

Let’s not ruin that by throwing together an imperfect playoff system that would concentrate more money in the big name leagues than we already have and give us the false sense that we really were getting the right champion every time. We’ll never be able to get a football playoff large enough (like the 65-team March Madness) so that the schools at the bottom of the pool will prove each year that while they might surprise us they still never win it all. Each time the lowest seeded team wins we have to wonder why not number 9, or 17, or 66?

Let’s just admit that the system is imperfect but the goal is entertainment, not clarity.

Tags entertainment, football, sports

culture

Title Game Follow-up

I thought I would follow up to my Title Game post.

Basically, the talk of a Ohio State/Michigan rematch for the title game is an embarrassment for the Big Ten Conference. Both of them lost their BCS bowl games. I think that rust was an issue in both games. Michigan got outclassed by USC but they would have made that a close game if they had not been off for over 6 weeks. After 7 weeks off, Ohio State had no business on the field with a well-rested Florida team. This really does not reflect the quality of football team that Ohio State had this year. The moral of the story is, any team that has any hope of playing for the national title should make sure to have a game scheduled after Thanksgiving. This is no problem for the champions of the SEC, ACC, or Big 12 with their Championship games, but the Big Ten, Pac 10, and Big East teams have to think about this issue as they schedule games.

This should also serve as a warning against any title game that only represents one conference.

My personal favorite story line for this title game is the Urban Meyer coaching career. he turned Bowling Green around in two years then moved to Utah in a better conference. Two years at Utah saw him crashing the BCS party and moving on to Florida in a better conference. Two years at Florida and he was in the National Championship game – which the Gators won by 27. This puts him among an elite group of coaches who have won a National Championship within two years of taking over a program – a group that includes Jim Tressel at Ohio State in 2002.

My final take on the season is this – Florida will be #1, USC might get a vote as #1 from someone – they are likely to be the pre-season #1 next season, and I think someone ought to throw a #1 vote to Boise since they are the only undefeated team left even though they did not have a schedule that would make them #1 – they had only one non-conference game with a non-BCS opponent, and that was Utah(8-5) – even Florida played a Div 1-AA team.

UPDATE: Thanks to Greg Archuleta of the Albuquerque Journal I got my wish. Boise State got a vote as #1. It’s too bad the Coaches Poll had them as #6 because they are definitely a top 5 team.

Tags football, reactions, sports, thoughts