Talking Football

by Jimmy Johnson


(Cartoonist’s note: I haven’t mentioned college football this fall, because I know not everyone here follows it. However, I have something I want to say about it today, so I’ve chosen two cartoons I think many can enjoy, whether football fans or not. The first should appeal to the cat people, and the second to, well… you know who you are.)
I read an article recently about how fast “artificial intelligence” is progressing, or, perhaps more precisely, how far it has progressed. The gist of the article was that within the lifetime of many living today, virtually all jobs now done by humans will be performed and performed better by some form of robotics. According to the author of the article, this cannot and should not be prevented; it only remains for society to decide how it’s going to adjust. Maybe, but what does this have to do with football? Nothing, but it got me thinking.

Currently, the college football “playoff” consists of four teams chosen solely by a committee of 13 old men, several of whom must recuse themselves at any given time (One hopes!), because they are affiliated with the schools they’re considering. This is the NCAA’s answer. This is the best they can do. Well, I have an idea!

If (major) college football absolutely refuses to institute a true playoff—and we are far from that—let a computer winnow the field. This actually has been half-heartedly done. For several years prior to the advent of the committee, a paltry two teams were chosen to play for the championship by a mash-up of human polls and computer-generated standings. Then, they threw out the baby and kept the bath water.

Forget Artificial Intelligence! Forget the future! The computing capability to choose the better of 100 teams based on statistics has been around for at least 60 years. Throw in the strength of schedule, the offensive stats, the defensive stats, etc. Choose a dozen or so contenders in this manner. Throw in a couple of byes if needed. The details don’t matter so much; it would be simple compared to the system now in place. If it sounds cold, computers already do countless tasks that are a lot more important than football. I say embrace the future! I say fire the committee and replace it with a computer.
Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"

41 responses to “Talking Football”

  1. TruckerRon Avatar

    I came back from 2 years in Japan in early 1978 and discovered that Birmingham AL had been overtaken by a craze:

    https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46194931&nid=1017&title=have-you-seen-this-kids-try-to-figure-out-what-disco-is

    Today’s kids get to analyze it now.

  2. billinbossier Avatar
    billinbossier

    Well, Louisiana Tech hasn’t even come close to making anyone’s list, so you guys figure it out. About today’s toon, I knew a couple that save hundreds, if not thousands of wine corks and ended up taking an antique (meaning an old) table and re-doing the top with the wine corks. It looked good, but I think they both quit drinking wine after the project was complete. They said enough is enough.

  3. JACKQULINE MONIES Avatar
    JACKQULINE MONIES

    Bill I was just talking about Tech today, as well as University of Louisiana at Monroe and Lafayette and other smaller colleges. In my day we went to all our schools football games, even if we didn’t m ow squat. We were there because it was our college. We went on dates and we were dressed up too.

    Has Louisiana changed that much?

  4. JACKQULINE MONIES Avatar
    JACKQULINE MONIES

    Even if we didn’t know squat about football.

    Has it become that only the big powerhouse schools have fans? It only matters if they go to a playoff or a bowl game or on television?

    What happened to school spirit and going to local sports games?

    Is it all about television and media, like so much else?

  5. Mark from TTown Avatar
    Mark from TTown

    College ball is a junior NFL now and high school is the outlying recruiting post. Everybody is trying to move up too fast to get into “the big time”. And it’s all about the money. Forget the old slogan about “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” For coaches and teams it IS all about whether they win or lose. Too many losses and the coach goes out the revolving door to replace somebody else who couldn’t make the school happy. Student doesn’t get enough playing time, he jumps to another school. If he does well on the field, forget graduation, he’s jumping to the NFL.

  6. JACKQULINE MONIES Avatar
    JACKQULINE MONIES

    That is sad. The man who exposed all the brain damage in football players (as young as grade school) was a featured speaker here in Tulsa as a Town Hall speaker.

    Read the article in my playbill rather fast but it seems the brain injuries have appeared in players autopsies following suicides and deaths. Will go home and read it again. Perhaps the program hadn’t happened yet?

  7. emb Avatar
    emb

    Bemidji once had a supt. of schools who said, “Winning isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing.” Ran for Lt. Gov. [Repub.], cannot remember whether they won, but do remember that he faded away. Doubt he died penniless.

    In USA college athletics, the tail wags the dog, except maybe for Reed, Ivy League, U. Chicago, some others.

    Peace,

  8. TruckerRon Avatar

    It may well be that the reason football is so hard on the players is they are relying too much on their protective gear, charging into situations certain to involve bone-crushing collisions. Some studies have shown, for instance, that drivers yield more space to bareheaded bicyclists than to those wearing helmets…

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/

  9. Melvin Batchelor Avatar
    Melvin Batchelor

    Ghost, not surprising that Kris sang “Me and Bobbie McGee” since it’s actually originally his song. He wrote it. Janis Joplin made it immortal, though. Happens a lot in the music industry, like with Mariah Carey’s cover of Badfinger’s “Without You” or Joe Cocker’s cover of Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On”.

  10. Mark from TTown Avatar
    Mark from TTown

    Hairy nosed wombat. Sounds like a good creative insult. The (fill in your choice)!. Why, that hairy-nosed wombat couldn’t find his butt with both hands and a compass!

  11. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Kris actually lived with Janis at one point during this period of their lives. Must have been interesting.

    Yes, Kris sang only songs he wrote, a brief history of hundreds of legendary songs made famous by others. There were ghosts of many legendary performers onstage with the living legends.

    Kris looked wonderful, still smiling and gorgeous, laughing at himself and impeccably dressed in jeans and simple jacket.

    He is thinner and looked frail. At one point he ablibbed “help me make it through tonight” as he laughed at himself.

    When ex-wife Rita Coolidge sang with him, it was two old friends and performers laughing together, charming.

  12. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Enjoyed the animal show sitting up in mezzanine protected from the thousands of possibly infectious small children.

    Jack Hanna was charming, we learned things and animals were adorable. Ghost got to see a cheetah, something he didn’t expect.

    The checking in to hotel with cheetah story was funny.

  13. Mark from TTown Avatar
    Mark from TTown

    If you can find Jack’s book “Monkeys on the Interstate”, it’s a very good read. Autobiography covering the period up till the 1980’s.

  14. Blinky the Wonder Wombat Avatar
    Blinky the Wonder Wombat

    Big time college football seems to be about nothing else but winning. First it was to appease generous alumni donors, now it seems to be about attracting more TV revenue. Football coaches used to members of the faculty, now they are rock stars. Most don’t even pretend to teach anything anymore.

    The highest paid public employee in 39 states are either the State University’s football or basketball coach. 🙁

    I went to a small college in eastern PA which was actually a football powerhouse in the early days of college football. They even started to build a football stadium to match those at Harvard and Yale, but abandoned it when the Depression hit. Even though by the time I matriculated the football program was small-time, the students still showed up each Saturday for tailgating, cocktail parties and rubbing elbows with alumni. THe season record mattered little as long as we beat our archrival at year’s end. Seemed like a flashback to what college football was supposed to be about.

    Jackie Monies: Im must not be a hairy-nosed variety wombat- no one’s called my cute since I graduated from diapers!