A few months ago, before spring ball, the summer, the arrival of highly touted freshmen, and the beginning of fall practices, I wrote a post titled "Who Will Reign Supreme in 2011" that started with Andy Staples's early preseason rankings and ended with my own predictions about what the final Top 10 rankings would look like heading into bowl season. A link to that post is here: http://highdraws.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-will-reign-supreme-in-2011.html
The reason, I thought, for giving my vision of the top 10 BEFORE the bowls are played was clear: the outcomes of the bowl games would change the rankings (ex. the loser of the national championship game would not stay at #2), thus distorting the layout of the bowl match-ups. I will do the same here. Therefore, the #1 and #2 teams should be understood as the participants in the national championship game. Good? Great!
Also aware of how lineups can change and stock can rise and fall in the months between spring and early fall, Staples has recently published his preseason rankings. As an AP voter and one of the college football writers whom I respect most, his rankings carry legitimacy. Here are his preseason top 25:
1. Oklahoma
2. Alabama
3. Oregon
4. LSU
5. Stanford
6. Texas A&M
7. Florida St.
8. South Carolina
9. Oklahoma St.
10. Boise St.
11. Wisconsin
12. Nebraska
13. Arkansas
14. Ohio St.
15. Michigan St.
16. TCU
17. Missouri
18. Auburn
19. Virginia Tech
20. West Virginia
21. Notre Dame
22. Mississippi St.
23. Arizona St.
24. Maryland
25. Utah
I won't get into much critiquing of Staples's rankings. It seems to me that for some he is trying to peer into the future (FSU, South Carolina, Auburn, Maryland) while others he is simply placing them somewhere close to where they finished last year (Stanford, Boise St, Notre Dame). I hope that is the explanation, because if his rankings are truly a snapshot of the best 25 teams in his mind, then his mind will soon be surprised.
In the interests of comparison, here are my previous top 10:
1. Oklahoma (Conference Champion)
2. LSU (Conference Champion)
3. FSU (Conference Champion)
4. Alabama
5. Ohio St. (Conference Champion)
6. Nebraska
7. Oregon (Conference Champion)
8. Texas A&M
9. Virginia Tech
10. Boise St. (Conference Champion)
I posted those rankings in early April. There have been developments for every college football team in the intervening months. Some have been as small as an injury to a starting lineman, and some have been as big as the resignation of a preeminent coach. It is suffice to say that things have changed since then.
My rankings will reflect these changes. Without further ado, the updated version of "Who Will Reign Supreme in 2011" ...
1. Alabama (Conference Champion)
2. Oklahoma (Conference Champion)
3. FSU (Conference Champion)
4. LSU
5. Nebraska (Conference Champion)
6. Oregon (Conference Champion)
7. Virginia Tech
8. Notre Dame
9. Boise St. (Conference Champion)
10. Texas A&M
Noticeably, I flipped Alabama and LSU. Three reasons:
1) I've warmed up to just how loaded Alabama is on defense. I'm very cold on their offense, but the defense could be better than the '09 version, and it was good enough to carry a less-than-great offense.
2) I thought LSU would give up on Jordan Jefferson by late summer, and hand over the reigns to Zack Mettenburger. They haven't, and it will cost them when they are forced to endure a season-long QB controversy as Jefferson continues to consternate.
3) I failed to adequately research LSU's schedule, and see how beastly it truly is. It will take an elite squad to emerge from that schedule unscathed. LSU will be very good, but not good enough to avoid dropping a game or two due simply to attrition.
Also, Ohio St. is OUT and Notre Dame is IN.
The reasons for the former are clear to anyone who has remotely followed college football over the past few months. The reasons for the latter are just as simple, though a bit more precarious: Notre Dame needs only to finish 10-2 or 11-1 and will always be guaranteed of a top 10 ranking. The Fighting Irish's resume could list victories against 6 high school teams, and the sports writers across the land would still lift them back to the top. Though Notre Dame doesn't play that weak of a schedule this year, it is still decidedly weak in comparison to the quality of athletes Notre Dame will run out onto the field each week, and a 10 win season is sure to follow.
And, many will notice that Arkansas still doesn't crack my Top 10. I was probably a little bold to leave them out of my original rankings, but the loss of Knile Davis to a season-ending injury will likely cost Arkansas a win somewhere. I just hesitate to place three SEC teams in the Top 10. This is not because I don't think there are three (if not four) SEC teams of that quality, but simply because most of them have to play each other and if Alabama and LSU are to finish in the top 5, that means that Arkansas will suffer two losses at a minimum. And the SEC has a knack for sticking good teams with at least one we-really-shouldn't-but-did losses each year.
Mark me down for predicting that if there is one other SEC team other than Bama and LSU that could finish near the Top 10, it is Georgia. The pieces are in place, and the schedule is ripe for a surprise run.
Continuing trends:
I'm bullish on FSU and Va Tech. The rest of the ACC is weak. When has Frank Beamer not finished with 10 wins, plus or minus a win? It's Year 2 for Jimbo Fisher. Year 2 was the breakout year for Meyer, Saban, and Chizik, and I look for Fisher to have similar results. Why? Because like Meyer and Saban (in their respective years of dominance), Fisher will send a team out onto the field that will be athletically superior to every squad it faces this year. That usually equals fantastic results if your coach isn't Ron Zook.
I'm bearish on Stanford and South Carolina. ATTN College football voters: Stanford a top 5 team? Really? South Carolina should be better than last year, but they have a tougher schedule and while I have great respect for Spurrier, the fact that Garcia is a ticking bomb and Lattimore showed a propensity for injury last year relegates me to viewing Carolina's prospects with skepticism. And even if South Carolina manages to go 10-2, they are almost assured to lose to either Alabama or LSU in the SEC championship.
So that is it, my prediction of what the top 10 will look like heading into bowl season.
And before I sign off, I'll answer the question I know you are screaming ...
Alabama beats Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Beyond Buyer Beware: 3 Reasons Why the Democratic Party is Better than the GOP, Including Being Better Conservatives
I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of Americans are beginning to regret the votes they cast last November. If you live in Florida, recent polls allow me to skip the suspicion, and jump right into full-fledged buyer's remorse (Public Advisory for Rick Scott: Don't look at your approval ratings, they'll give you high blood pressure).
Full disclosure: I am a Democrat. But before you stop reading, I'll make a concession. I understand, to some degree, the backlash and the reasons that many Americans voted for Republican candidates last year. I want to argue that the vitriol sparked by health care reform was largely a result of President Obama's complete and total failure to explain and sell not only the health care bill, but even the stimulus package a few months prior. However, despite the mistakes in effective messaging, Obama made a bigger mistake -- he opted to swing for the fences when a few base hits would have made everyone happier. I know why Obama went all-in for the health care bill instead of continuing to focus on reviving the economy and creating jobs. He emerged from the 2008 election with an enormous amount of political capital and then made the calculated, yet highly ambitious, decision to achieve once-and-for-all the great dream of the Democratic Party -- health care reform. I've read that Obama, early on in his presidency often said that he would rather be a one-term president who did "something" instead of a two-term president who did nothing. I commend him for that, and I think all Americans should as well. George W. Bush certainly choose the opposite path, but that is a story for another time.
Regardless, I must be said now that Obama should have swallowed his ambition and devoted his entire attention towards combatting the growing unemployment rate. Maybe he believed that the economy was turning around. Maybe he knew what the score was, and choose to get while the getting was good. We'll never know, but right now, it looks as if he put the horse before the cart.
With all of that said, and if you're still with me, I'll move on to the 3 reasons why the Democratic Party is better than the GOP ...
1) Democrats don't always choose the best fiscal policies, but Republicans don't understand fiscal policy at all.
The debt crisis was a grotesque abuse of representative power by the GOP, and especially the Teasies. The federal government has never been required to balance its budget, and hasn't done so in decades with the exclusion of the final years of Clinton's presidency. Likewise, the federal government has never been required to have no deficit, and has had one since Eisenhower's presidency.
Fiscal policy means that the federal government can borrow money, which means that its expenditures can exceed its revenues. While it may be true that our debt shouldn't grow exponentially, it is certainly true that we are not approaching insolvency because though the federal government is borrowing money, it is also loaning money at an equal or higher interest rate. In other words, the federal government is making more money off of the interest from its loans than it is paying on the interest for the money it is borrowing. In business school, that is called a profit. And in the real world, that is called China (and other foreign countries) buying Treasury bills hand over fist. You may ask, why would they do this if we are such a broken country? It's because we aren't. In fact, we're still the safest bet and the best investment on the planet.
Democrats understand that federal fiscal policy is entirely different from state fiscal policy and individual fiscal practices. Republicans think they're all the same.
Even if someone can't do a great job of describing a duck, I'd rather listen to that person instead of someone who thinks a duck is a goose.
2) If you elect people who hate government, you can't be surprised when they decide to run the government into the ground.
The current batch of Republicans must have skipped a lot of American history classes. They often call themselves the party of Lincoln and Reagan. Uncomfortably for them, and certainly unfortunate for those three great presidents, their historical allusions are off the mark.
Lincoln refused to let the Union fall apart. He presided over the bloodiest war in American history in the pursuit of the preservation of a government he knew and loved. He died because of his hope that the government he loved could become something better.
Reagan famously declared that government is not the solution to our problems, but instead government is the problem. The real problem with that statement is that Reagan clearly believed in government. During his eight years as president, he significantly grew the size of the federal government. Whether is was through increased taxes, a larger federal military defense, or a continuation - if not an enlargement - of the federal bureaucracy, Reagan clearly did not despise the government.
In clear opposition, current Republicans possess a healthy disgust for the government. If the notion of someone pursuing a position of power in something that he or she hates confuses you, don't scratch your head alone, because it confuses me too.
Even though I believe it is clear that Republicans hate the government (especially the Teasies), hate is too strong of a word for me, and so I won't venture a metaphor. Instead, I will simply ask you to imagine why anyone would ask people to do something that they hate, and then expect those people to do a good job.
3) Democrats are better conservatives than Republicans.
For that past twenty or so years, the so-called "welfare state" has been under perpetual attack from the Right. Republicans have fought tooth and nail to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and welfare. And make no mistake -- Republicans haven't attempted to improve those essential domestic programs. No, instead they have attacked them on an institutional level, arguing that those programs, programs which provide a social safety net for individuals in need, are an anathema and a blood-sucking leech on this country.
Hubert Humphrey once said, "The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
If you accept, at least at its most fundamental level, Humphrey's statement, then the scorecard couldn't be more clear. Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government. If government is to serve any function, if government is to measure up to any bar, surely it is the standard described by Humphrey. If we are truly the most advanced and the wealthiest nation on this Earth, surely if we do one thing, we will take care of those among us who are in the dawn, the twilight, and the shadows of life. The Republicans, however, have fought to eradicate such humanity in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for oil companies whose profit margins exceed that of many nations.
And instead, the Democratic Party has tolerated debates and succumbed to onslaughts against the most basic social systems. Through those debates and in response to those onslaughts, Democrats have shrunken welfare, have acquiesced to cuts in Medicare, and have offered honest changes to Social Security. Republicans are supposed to be the party of conservatism, but is has been the Democrats who have been willing to make concessions and find savings in places where savings are most sparse. In other words, one party has refused to be a part of any solution, and instead of returning a cold shoulder, the other party has decided to be the adult at the table chooses reason over bickering, compromise over bickering, and conservation over destruction.
American politics is often frustrating, unsatisfying, and ugly. I would argue that this is how our democracy was intended.
It is supposed to be hard to bring about large-scale change, and our constitution is constructed in such a way that resists the accumulation of power in a single group of people. The Bill of Rights has been the most copied framework among other democracies since the creation of our own, and those ten amendments function as an unabashed protector of the minority. The logic is pretty simple: the powerful have enough power, they don't need any more. It is the weak and the disenfranchised who must be watched over.
It was an ambitious and diverse group of individuals that gathered in those hot, small houses in Philadelphia some two hundred and odds years ago, and we are surely more so now. But I've learned to hesitate from offering a definite explanation of what was discussed and decided in those sweltering summer months in 1789. It is amazing what seems to get lost in translation.
I am sure of one thing, and it is that I have found a group of people who are both willing to govern and to compromise. But what we are unwilling to abide is the perpetuation of a lie, the con of a slick sell, the sleight of hand which allows apathy and naiveté to lull the watchman into a false sleep. Most of all I am sure of this -- a time will come when we will be asked what we have done for the least of our brothers.
If you've made it this far, I'll ask you to go a bit farther. I'll ask you to think beyond the past two years, beyond the 24 hour news cycles, the politics of division and pessimism, and the scare tactics of distraction and illusion that better belong in a magic show than the halls of Congress. As you can tell, I'm asking you to move ahead of the things I wrote of above.
I'm asking you to consider where you stack up in this country of ours, and whether your place fits the politicians or the party you vote for every other fall.
We are a nation of ambition and labor, confidence and resolve. Take a moment to listen to both parties, and hear what they really say. Of the two, which party imagines this country as it should be?
Which imagines it as you imagine it?
Full disclosure: I am a Democrat. But before you stop reading, I'll make a concession. I understand, to some degree, the backlash and the reasons that many Americans voted for Republican candidates last year. I want to argue that the vitriol sparked by health care reform was largely a result of President Obama's complete and total failure to explain and sell not only the health care bill, but even the stimulus package a few months prior. However, despite the mistakes in effective messaging, Obama made a bigger mistake -- he opted to swing for the fences when a few base hits would have made everyone happier. I know why Obama went all-in for the health care bill instead of continuing to focus on reviving the economy and creating jobs. He emerged from the 2008 election with an enormous amount of political capital and then made the calculated, yet highly ambitious, decision to achieve once-and-for-all the great dream of the Democratic Party -- health care reform. I've read that Obama, early on in his presidency often said that he would rather be a one-term president who did "something" instead of a two-term president who did nothing. I commend him for that, and I think all Americans should as well. George W. Bush certainly choose the opposite path, but that is a story for another time.
Regardless, I must be said now that Obama should have swallowed his ambition and devoted his entire attention towards combatting the growing unemployment rate. Maybe he believed that the economy was turning around. Maybe he knew what the score was, and choose to get while the getting was good. We'll never know, but right now, it looks as if he put the horse before the cart.
With all of that said, and if you're still with me, I'll move on to the 3 reasons why the Democratic Party is better than the GOP ...
1) Democrats don't always choose the best fiscal policies, but Republicans don't understand fiscal policy at all.
The debt crisis was a grotesque abuse of representative power by the GOP, and especially the Teasies. The federal government has never been required to balance its budget, and hasn't done so in decades with the exclusion of the final years of Clinton's presidency. Likewise, the federal government has never been required to have no deficit, and has had one since Eisenhower's presidency.
Fiscal policy means that the federal government can borrow money, which means that its expenditures can exceed its revenues. While it may be true that our debt shouldn't grow exponentially, it is certainly true that we are not approaching insolvency because though the federal government is borrowing money, it is also loaning money at an equal or higher interest rate. In other words, the federal government is making more money off of the interest from its loans than it is paying on the interest for the money it is borrowing. In business school, that is called a profit. And in the real world, that is called China (and other foreign countries) buying Treasury bills hand over fist. You may ask, why would they do this if we are such a broken country? It's because we aren't. In fact, we're still the safest bet and the best investment on the planet.
Democrats understand that federal fiscal policy is entirely different from state fiscal policy and individual fiscal practices. Republicans think they're all the same.
Even if someone can't do a great job of describing a duck, I'd rather listen to that person instead of someone who thinks a duck is a goose.
2) If you elect people who hate government, you can't be surprised when they decide to run the government into the ground.
The current batch of Republicans must have skipped a lot of American history classes. They often call themselves the party of Lincoln and Reagan. Uncomfortably for them, and certainly unfortunate for those three great presidents, their historical allusions are off the mark.
Lincoln refused to let the Union fall apart. He presided over the bloodiest war in American history in the pursuit of the preservation of a government he knew and loved. He died because of his hope that the government he loved could become something better.
Reagan famously declared that government is not the solution to our problems, but instead government is the problem. The real problem with that statement is that Reagan clearly believed in government. During his eight years as president, he significantly grew the size of the federal government. Whether is was through increased taxes, a larger federal military defense, or a continuation - if not an enlargement - of the federal bureaucracy, Reagan clearly did not despise the government.
In clear opposition, current Republicans possess a healthy disgust for the government. If the notion of someone pursuing a position of power in something that he or she hates confuses you, don't scratch your head alone, because it confuses me too.
Even though I believe it is clear that Republicans hate the government (especially the Teasies), hate is too strong of a word for me, and so I won't venture a metaphor. Instead, I will simply ask you to imagine why anyone would ask people to do something that they hate, and then expect those people to do a good job.
3) Democrats are better conservatives than Republicans.
For that past twenty or so years, the so-called "welfare state" has been under perpetual attack from the Right. Republicans have fought tooth and nail to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and welfare. And make no mistake -- Republicans haven't attempted to improve those essential domestic programs. No, instead they have attacked them on an institutional level, arguing that those programs, programs which provide a social safety net for individuals in need, are an anathema and a blood-sucking leech on this country.
Hubert Humphrey once said, "The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
If you accept, at least at its most fundamental level, Humphrey's statement, then the scorecard couldn't be more clear. Republicans are supposed to be the party of small government. If government is to serve any function, if government is to measure up to any bar, surely it is the standard described by Humphrey. If we are truly the most advanced and the wealthiest nation on this Earth, surely if we do one thing, we will take care of those among us who are in the dawn, the twilight, and the shadows of life. The Republicans, however, have fought to eradicate such humanity in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for oil companies whose profit margins exceed that of many nations.
And instead, the Democratic Party has tolerated debates and succumbed to onslaughts against the most basic social systems. Through those debates and in response to those onslaughts, Democrats have shrunken welfare, have acquiesced to cuts in Medicare, and have offered honest changes to Social Security. Republicans are supposed to be the party of conservatism, but is has been the Democrats who have been willing to make concessions and find savings in places where savings are most sparse. In other words, one party has refused to be a part of any solution, and instead of returning a cold shoulder, the other party has decided to be the adult at the table chooses reason over bickering, compromise over bickering, and conservation over destruction.
American politics is often frustrating, unsatisfying, and ugly. I would argue that this is how our democracy was intended.
It is supposed to be hard to bring about large-scale change, and our constitution is constructed in such a way that resists the accumulation of power in a single group of people. The Bill of Rights has been the most copied framework among other democracies since the creation of our own, and those ten amendments function as an unabashed protector of the minority. The logic is pretty simple: the powerful have enough power, they don't need any more. It is the weak and the disenfranchised who must be watched over.
It was an ambitious and diverse group of individuals that gathered in those hot, small houses in Philadelphia some two hundred and odds years ago, and we are surely more so now. But I've learned to hesitate from offering a definite explanation of what was discussed and decided in those sweltering summer months in 1789. It is amazing what seems to get lost in translation.
I am sure of one thing, and it is that I have found a group of people who are both willing to govern and to compromise. But what we are unwilling to abide is the perpetuation of a lie, the con of a slick sell, the sleight of hand which allows apathy and naiveté to lull the watchman into a false sleep. Most of all I am sure of this -- a time will come when we will be asked what we have done for the least of our brothers.
If you've made it this far, I'll ask you to go a bit farther. I'll ask you to think beyond the past two years, beyond the 24 hour news cycles, the politics of division and pessimism, and the scare tactics of distraction and illusion that better belong in a magic show than the halls of Congress. As you can tell, I'm asking you to move ahead of the things I wrote of above.
I'm asking you to consider where you stack up in this country of ours, and whether your place fits the politicians or the party you vote for every other fall.
We are a nation of ambition and labor, confidence and resolve. Take a moment to listen to both parties, and hear what they really say. Of the two, which party imagines this country as it should be?
Which imagines it as you imagine it?
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