Resolutions

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I made my resolutions a couple of months ago and they’re going quite averagely.  If you’d like to read more about making resolutions, here you go:

Multi-year Resolutions – this is funny and will only take you 10 seconds to read, so just go read it.

Wins, not Goals – An interesting perspective.

Since New Year’s was coming, and I wanted to start the year with a fresh focus, I pushed my goals aside, and asked a simple question:

“What are three wins I want for the year?” …

No Goals – I have a hard time getting my head around this, but it’s very intriguing.  Short read.

Stop Blaming the Pancake – I saved the best for last.  When Merlin Mann writes, it’s usually worth reading and this definitely fits that bill.  It’s a little longer read, but worth it.

New Flatware

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Most days, I come home to one of two things: “I have to ask you a question” or “We really needed new x”.

The former, “I have to ask you a question” means that I’m about to do something I don’t want to. If I wanted to do it, Nancy would have simply asked me the question.

The latter, “We really needed x” means that Nancy already bought something that we “really” needed because it was on sale. Last week, we got new flatware.

Reed & Barton Radiance Flatware

Nancy got a deal from work. It really is a good deal, but flatware doesn’t do it for me. I just don’t really care what I’m using to shovel food into my mouth. But I’m glad Nancy is around to keep things civilized. Here’s our fancy new flatware in our $.50 drawer insert.

Bottle Lights

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Debbie got Nancy a wine bottle with lights in it for Christmas. Pretty cool, but there was a problem. It’s only cool if you want to put the bottle within three inches of a socket. So we bought this happy customer.

Battery Christmas Lights

Not the greatest image, but it’s the Gerson Everlasting Glow Micro Led Light String 30 Warm White Light. Click on the image for a better description. They’re battery operated Christmas lights. Here’s what it looks like in the dark

Here’s what it looks like with the flash on.

We’re pretty happy with how that turned out. I think we’ll buy some more of those lights. But where will we ever get more empty wine bottles? It’s a mystery.

Dinner

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dinneratlanticcod

Wild caught Atlantic cod:  rub with olive oil, light sea salt, heavy fresh ground pepper, Phillip’s Habanero Pepper to taste.  Wrap in aluminum foil.  Heat grill to 350 and cook until thick part is 140 degrees F (8-10 minutes).

Asparagus: put bag in microwave for 3.5 minutes.  I can’t remember the last time I ate a vegetable that wasn’t in a steamer bag.  Top with 1 oz of unsalted butter.

Cocktail: One part Tanqueray, two parts Fresca. Repeat until attractive or funny.

I only wanted to eat half of the cod, but it’s so flaky that there’s really no way to take it off the foil in a manner where you could store half.  So I ate the whole thing.  Nancy doesn’t eat fish and Andrew shrieks at the sight or smell of it, so sharing wasn’t an option.  Seven hundred fifty calories (sans alcohol) later and I’m stuffed.

The Car Story

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I wrote about 1,100 words last night regarding my terrible experience with Infiniti of Omaha. In the end, it was just too negative, so I deleted it. You won’t get the crazy-rant version, but here’s the story.

Since July, DK and I have been working a deal where Nancy would get her old FX and she would use Nancy’s G35 as a trade. At almost every step of the way, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. Then a day or two before Christmas, her car came in and it all went down as well as could be expected.

Debbie got a new FX, Nancy got a used FX, and Carmax got a good deal on a G35. Oh, and Carmax also got a sale; they’ll just have to wait until I’m ready to buy. I’ve had two dealings with them, getting the car appraised and selling the car to them, and in both instances they far exceeded my expectations. I’ll likely be buying my next car there.

Some Movies I’ve Seen

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Another batch of movies I’ve watched since the last time

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  • Hanna – bad ass chick kills people.
  • Seven Pounds – dying guy does nice things
  • Bad Teacher – Cameron Diaz is hot and funny
  • Bridesmaids – Your objections are noted, but I thought this film was funny.
  • Green Zone – Matt Damon is a good-guy soldier in Iraq

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  • Friends with Benefits – Full dorsal nudity and Justin Timberlake is a good comedic actor
  • Fright Night – Nancy really likes Colin Ferrell.  I don’t like horror flicks and I’ve seen enough vampire movies to last a lifetime.  And yet, this didn’t suck (npi).
  • Our Idiot Brother – Paul Rudd is the actor nobody loves and nobody hates.
  • Captain America – If I could give 2 1/2 stars, this would probably get it.
  • Gulliver’s Travels – Jack Black is less annoying that usual
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides – This series has run its course.
  • No Strings Attached – I really want to like Natalie Portman, but just can’t seem to get there.  Does that make me an anti-Semite?
  • Paul – It would have been better if Paul’s voice would have been done by Seth McFarlane impersonating Paul Lind.  Oh, just watch an episode of American Dad and you’ll know what I mean.
  • Arthur – People have a lot of contempt for this movie.  I thought is was OK.  It was at least as good as first one.
  • Thor – Half of the movies in this post were picked because Nancy has the hots for one of the actors.
  • Love and Other Drugs – Weird little true story.  Probably two stars if it’s not true.
  • Limitless – Probably 3.5 stars if that was an option.
  • The Kingdom – FBI agents busting some Saudi ass.

StarStar

  • Tron: Legacy – Oh, I’m a dope smoking hippie to so I must be the good guy.  Did the writers go on strike again?  It’s hard to tell sometimes.
  • In Bruges – Good actors, but what’s the point
  • The Manchurian Candidate – This one’s from 2004 but I didn’t remember seeing it.  Now I remember why I chose to forget.
  • Milk – True story of gay SF politician from the ‘70s

Star

  • Life as We Know It – Stupid premise, predictable story.  I think I might ban Katherine Heigl.  What the hell has she ever done that’s good?
  • I Am Number Four – This movie had such promise.  If I want to watch 109 minutes of teenage angst, I’ll hang out at the mall.

Christmas Part I

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Andrew gets a BB gun.  Can he shoot it in our backyard?  I’ll be asking the gun experts tonight.  Also, my iPhone camera sucks for some reason.

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New kicks.

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Andrew gets various clothes.  I believe he’s at the tipping point – he gets about 50-50 clothes vs. non-clothes.  Next year it will be all slacks and sweaters.

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More naughty X-Box games.

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A new bat.  Baseball season starts in a couple of weeks.  Based on the wheezing noises coming from yesterday’s frisbee flying sportdisc game, I’d say Andrew’s cardiovascular system is in for a rude awakening.

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An iPad 2 for the family.  I predict that my iPad time will be near zero

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Nancy got a coffee maker.  I think this is the first time since we got married that she has been genuinely surprised by a gift.  The key was to agree on a dollar amount and lie to her by telling her I didn’t exceed that amount (when I actually did by three times).

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Nancy got pink socks and I got socks that remind me left from right (as long as I’m not wearing shoes).  With all the socks flying around you’d think it was Hanukkah.

Also Nancy got a new car, but that one gets its own post.

A/B Dating

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Ideas are worthless.  Execution is valuable.  That’s why I’m going to give you this idea for nothing.

A/B Testing on a dating website.  On every dating site, you complete some sort of profile.  Other people read that profile and contact you if they’re interested.  Occasionally you change your profile.  The change may lead to more contacts, or it may not.  If it does, you can’t be sure if it’s because of the change or some other factor.  For instance, if you change your profile in November and get a surge of responses, you might attribute that to the new profile.  However, it may be that more people are looking for love during the holidays.

Neither DA nor my boss had heard of A/B testing so I’ll assume you haven’t either.  A/B testing refers to serving up two different versions of a web page and measuring some desired result.  For example, assume you have website and a newsletter.  The website exists to get people to sign up for your newsletter.  On the site, you have a big button that says “sign up for my newsletter”.  You make two versions of the button, one with a smiley face and one with a lightening bolt.  Of the next 3,000 people who visit your site, half see the smiley and half see the lightening.  The smiley people sign up 4.3% of the time and the lightening people sign up 12.6% of the time.  The lightening bolt leads to better results, so you use it.  Then you immediately start another A/B test, either on the sign up button, on the background color, on the font size, or on some other aspect of the webpage.  Each test leads to a better website, measured in terms of your goals.

Back to the dating site.  When you sign up at YouDateMeNow.com, you create a profile.  That profile has five sections; job, education, hobbies, what you’re looking for, and miscellaneous.  After a bit, the web site prompts you to change the job section of your profile.  You rewrite the little section about what you do.  Maybe you had a pretty encyclopedic entry and now you right something more playful.  The site takes your two “job” paragraphs and A/B tests that for while and reports back to you.  It says you get better response from this version versus that version.  Then it tells you to try a different profile picture, tests it, and tells you which is better.  “Better” means that more people contacted you after reading your profile and the difference is statistically significant.

Dating website patrons don’t give a shit about A/B testing.  Like you, dear reader, they think it’s pretty stupid.  But they’re wrong and they don’t know it.  I mean really, nobody loves them so what the hell do they know (just kidding).  I don’t think I would start a dating website just to have A/B testing, but if you were starting a dating website already (or already have one) you should implement A/B testing.  It will lead to better profiles, more dates, more marriages, and more money for you.

This isn’t my best idea, but if you execute, it could be valuable.

30 for 30

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I bought ESPNs 30 for 30 DVD collection. It was on sale one day. I figured I could watch it and sell it and it wouldn’t cost that much.

The below ratings are
1 – meh
2 – pretty good
3 – must watch

“King’s Ransom” (2)
I didn’t follow hockey in the ’80s. I didn’t realize the effect Wayne Gretzky leaving Canada had on Canadians. It’s like if Tom Osbourne left Nebraska to coach at Oklahoma in 1998. This isn’t a great one (no pun intended) but it’s worth watching just for the ’80s haircuts and clothes.

“The Band that Wouldn’t Die” (2)
The story of the Colts moving from Baltimore to Indy. From the perspective of the band? Strange. But it’s about football, so it’s an automatic 2.

“Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?” (3)
If, like me, you’ve always wondered why nobody can create a football league to compete with the NFL, you’ll like this one. I forgot how close they got.

“Muhammad and Larry” (2)
Boxing is a pure, although brutal, sport. That is, until you get to this level. Then it’s corrupt and brutal. Ali and Holmes are interesting figures, though.

“Without Bias” (2)
Len Bias signs with the Celts and dies of a drug overdose. I remember when this happened. They spend a little too much time on how great a guy Bias was. They don’t sugar-coat the fact that he died doing drugs, though. It’s an interesting story about an interesting guy.

“The Legend of Jimmy the Greek” (3)
Do you remember The NFL Today with Mussberger, the Greek, and that blonde chick? Network TV used to talk about point spreads. This is, by far, my favorite one so far.

“The U” (3)
The story of Miami football. This seems to be the universal favorite of everyone I know from Nebraska, but I didn’t like it as much as Jimmy the Greek. It’s a good film, but they’re a little too complementary of the Hurricane’s program, which we all know is the most despicable program except for Notre Dame.

“Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks” (1)
The Pacers and Knicks had a rivalry of sorts for a time, or so I’m told. I can’t relate to New Yorkers or NBA fans, so I had trouble getting into this one. I want to like Reggie Miller, but he’s just a douche.

“Guru of Go” (2)
Paul Westhead’s coaching tenure at Loyola Marymount University. More basketball, but this story was completely new to me and pretty interesting. I guess this guy was a visionary basketball coach.

“No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson” (2)
Three basketball films in a row? Iverson’s story is painted as a black vs. white thing, and I don’t have the historical perspective to know if that’s true. What I like about this film, and all the films so far, is that they aren’t posh pieces. They may have a slant or bias, but they aren’t sickeningly one-sided. Nor or they factless bullshit like you see during College Gameday.

“Silly Little Game” (1)
The story of fantasy baseball. If you like fantasy baseball, you might rate this a 2. For me, it was a waste.

“Run Ricky Run” (2)
Ricky Williams likes to smoke the gange and it cost him an NFL career. They portray him as a thoughtful, introspective guy who just likes to get high. I’m not sure that’s totally true. Worth a watch.

“The 16th Man” (1)
This is a great story about South African rugby. If you haven’t seen Invictus, put it on your queue. If you have seen Invictus, you probably don’t need to watch this. If Invictus had never been made, this would be a 3.

“Straight Outta L.A.” (1)
Didn’t I say that football stories automatically get a 2? Didn’t I say that these films aren’t factless bullshit? Welcome to the exception. This story of the Raiders moving to LA makes two points: Rappers like the Raiders, LA will never sustain a football team because they turn on you the minute you lose a game. If you watch this one, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Worst one yet.

“June 17, 1994″ (1)
Supposedly a bunch of sports related stuff happened on this day. Nope. If you want to get a feel for what counts as ‘sports related’, one of them was a parade. They should have told the OJ story (the white Bronco chase was this day), but chose to turn it into something pretty unwatchable.

“The Two Escobars” (3)
This is a fascinating story of Pablo Escobar’s brother and his soccer career. I know that doesn’t sound great, but trust me, it’s one of the best.

“The Birth of Big Air” (2)
I can think of little that is less interesting than a story of BMX. But the story of Matt Hoffman breaking a lot of his bones and other necessary internal organs is pretty good.

“Jordan Rides the Bus” (2)
MJ plays minor league baseball. I always thought that he really sucked at baseball, but his former teammates and coaches say differently.

“Little Big Men” (1)
The 1982 Little League World Series where the Americans win. To me, it’s a sad tale of people who peaked when they were pre-teens.

“One Night in Vegas” (1)
Tupak Shakur is murdered while attending a boxing match. How is this sports related?

“Unmatched” (2)
Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova talk about their rivalry. I enjoyed tennis back in the day and I was very familiar with the rivalry. It was interesting to hear it from the two people involved. The thing I didn’t like about this film was the format. It was staged, obviously, but staged in a way that they wanted it to look spontaneous. It was a little fakey, but still a good film.

“The House of Steinbrenner” (2)
Nobody can stand to listen to New Yorkers alternate between bragging about the Yankees and bitching about the new stadium for an hour. How can so many people who think they’re better than everyone else live in such proximity to each other? The highlight of this film was the interview with Hal Steinbrenner. He’s an introvert. He likes checklists (he’s a pilot). He likes budgets. He spoke about his gregarious sister with what seemed like a mixture of jealousy, disdain, and contempt. I like this guy – despite the fact that he’s a Yankee.

“Into the Wind” (3)
Listening to Canadians is easy compared to New Yorkers. This is a compelling, inspirational story. Very compelling. I don’t remember this when it happened so it was all new to me.

“Four Days In October” (1)
The Red Sox win the pennant over the Yankees in 2004. Oh, they won the World Series that year, but I guess that’s not a story. I don’t care about Boston. I don’t care about New York. How many films about New York do I have to watch?

“Once Brothers” (2)
Surprisingly interesting story of Dražen Petrović and Vlade Divac, two NBA players from Yugoslavia. One was Serbian and the other Croatian so they hated each other. But they didn’t hate each other until the Communists left Yugoslavia. In fact they liked each other. Is Communism the cause of brotherly love? I’m not sure if I’m Serbian or Croatian by heritage, but the Serbs come off like douchebags in this film.

“Tim Richmond: To the Limit” (2)
A NASCAR driver I never heard of before watching this. He was Jeff Gordon before Jeff Gordon. That is, he was a good driver but not a redneck, so nobody in the sport liked him. They make it sound like he was going to be the greatest driver of all time, but I can never tell how accurate that is.

“Fernando Nation” (2)
The story of Fernando Valenzuela’s rookie year, in which he won the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young. Not a gripping tale unless perhaps you lived in LA at the time.

“Marion Jones: Press Pause” (2)
I’m not a big track and field fan, so while I knew of the Marion Jones story, there was a lot I didn’t know. She won a National Championship in basketball at North Carolina. She’s fairly hot. She went to prison for six months. She now plays in the WNBA. All things I didn’t know. This show was about 20 minutes too long, but still a good show.

“The Best That Never Was” (3)
Marcus Dupree played for the Sooners and looked to be one of the greatest of all time. But like most 19 year olds, he makes bad decisions, particularly about who associates with. He ends up in the USFL. Now he drives a big rig for a heavy equipment rental place. What struck me in this film is how honest everyone is. Dupree freely admits his mistakes. Switzer admits that his handling of Dupree was regrettable. And Dupree’s entourage? You can tell who got rich and who didn’t. Oh yeah, and everyone got paid to play football. You know, unlike today.

“Pony Excess” (3)
How is Craig James rich and famous? One of life’s great injustices. Apparently he was the only player at SMU that wasn’t on the payroll. That either makes him uber-moral, uber-stupid, or a liar. Anyway, SMU paid athletes to play football, got caught, kept paying, and got caught again. It changed the face of college football. They got the “death penalty” from the NCAA and their football program is just now become relevant again. This film could have been better, but the story is just so good it’s worth it.

I finally got through them. If you’d like to borrow the set before I sell them, say so the next time you see me.

Phone Dump

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I take a lot of pictures with the intent on creating a blog post and then never do.  Here are some blog posts that I should have done.

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This was posted on the men’s room door at WO Wrights, a little hole of a bar in Beavercreek, OH.  If this were a real blog post, I would harp on about 15 things, but to keep it brief I’ll just point out that they said “dew rags”.  Do they think people where them so the can wipe the dew off their windshields in the morning?  According to the Online Etymology Dictionary it’s an abbreviation of hairdo and rag.

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If I just had one of these pieces of rubber, I wouldn’t feel so suicidal when I’m at my computer.  It keeps the left side of my keyboard tray from moving and is annoyingly absent from the right side.  Do you know how much these cost?  $120 and then you throw away the rest of the keyboard tray.

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We had Thanksgiving at our house, as is tradition.  Andrew had a beer. Actually it was apple juice, but it looked like a beer.  Nancy made him drink it out of a fancy glass.  Why do women go insane on Thanksgiving?  Good china, dinner at 2:30, drinking apple juice out of pilsner glasses, wearing pants all day.  C’mon, it’s just Thanksgiving.  We recently decided that Christmas dinner would be at 7pm.  You can’t host Rich and Debbie and start at 2:30 because everyone gets wrecked.

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The next day I got up bright and early (it was bright, I was decidedly not bright) and went to Iowa @ Nebraska.  Here’s a photo from Barry’s which is turning into a sushi bar after football season.  RIP Barry’s.

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Christmas at Kim’s on December 4th.  That’s probably sacrilege to some families, but I’m happy to have Christmas any time.  Nancy was working that day, so she only got a lump of coal.

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I took a picture of this picture on Kim’s wall.  I wonder if she still knows the OLL fight song.

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The day before Andrew’s birthday, Grandma Bonnie and Grandma Vera came over with pizza and cake.

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The next day, his actual birthday, Andrew got some inappropriate video games.  We’re really bad parents.  I wanted to get him something that was not on his list, so I got him a Nite Glow Ultrastar 175 gram Flying Disc (a Frisbee) and a hacky sack.  Everyone should know how to throw a frisbee and hack a sack before they get to college.  All I got was confused looks.

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Later that day Granny and Grandpa Rich treated us to The Cheesecake Factory.  I had the jambalaya pasta and it was marvelous.

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And finally this is a picture from the future.  I didn’t realize this, but the new iPhone can actually take pictures of things that haven’t happened yet. That Steve Jobs is one magic son of a bitch.  The only problem is, we don’t know when it will happen.

Windows Live Writer

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I downloaded Windows Live Writer to see if it was easier to make blog posts.  Here’s a picture of some really crappy wine:

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Inserting that pictures was harder than it needed to be, but it sized it and rotated it nicely.  I wonder how lists work.

  1. One
  2. Two
  3. Three
  • Four
  • Five
  • Six

Here is a quote from a great man:

My pee stinks.

When I do a quote in changes the font from Arial to Georgia.  So I had to change it back.  I don’t care for that, but I do like the fact that everything on the ribbon is keyboard accessible.

I just set the category to general using Control+Shift+C, a little gem I picked up from here.  Inserting hyperlinks isn’t too bad.  I can’t think of anything else to test, so I guess I’ll hit the publish button and see what’s what.

College Football Playoffs

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I advocate for a playoff in Division 1A college football (D1A CF). What I don’t understand is why there is a debate about this among fans. I can see if players, coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, or any other group of people have a problem with it, that they may be able to prevent it from happening, but I don’t understand why some fans prefer bowl games to playoffs. Playoffs benefit, if no one else, the fans.

First some background. Every sport, college and professional, has a playoff to determine the champion except for D1A CF. Not every playoff is identical. Professional baseball and basketball use five and seven game series rather than individual games to earn advancement. College baseball uses a Regional to Super Regional to College World Series system. There are some things that all of these post season systems have in common. Some number of competitors qualifies for the post season. To continue playing, you must win. If you lose, you’re done.

Major college football doesn’t have a playoff. Instead, the have an exhibition season where teams are paired up based mostly on agreements that conferences have made with businesses. The exhibition games, called “bowls”, are run by these businesses, not a sports association. The results of the games are meaningless and they serve mostly as a reward to the team for doing well during the season. They used to be a reward, anyway. Now fully half of all teams go to a bowl game. Some go to Orlando or Phoenix, but some go to Detroit or Boise. I’ve never been to Detroit or Boise, but I’m guessing a December trip to either of those places is hardly a reward.

When you play exhibition games, it makes it really difficult to crown a champion. Back in the old days, there were two polls that determined the champion. Usually they agreed, but not always. A decade and a half ago, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created with the sole purpose of pitting the two best teams against each other in one of the exhibition games. The best way I’ve heard the BCS described is “two beauty contests and a computer algorithm” as it is the amalgamation of two human-created polls and one computer-created poll.

There are two basic reasons that I’d like to see a playoff in college football. First, it’s a better system. I base this argument solely on the fact that every other sport does it and that no sport, in the history of carbon-based life on Earth, has every switched from a playoff to exhibition games. It’s ludicrous to think that would happen. Second, it’s better for me personally as a fan. Some of the exhibition games are interesting matchups. Some of them aren’t. A playoff provides more interesting matchups than the system we have now. That’s better for me as someone who enjoys watching college football.

Here’s what I don’t want to accomplish with a playoff:

  • Determine the Best Team: No system determines the “best” team. Both the BCS and playoffs in other sports determine the champion of the sport. The winner of the Super Bowl isn’t necessarily the best team in the NFL. Sometimes the best team has a bad game and loses in the second round. Since it’s impossible to choose the best team, let’s not try.
  • Stop the Bitching: Currently, people are complaining that Alabama is in the BCS National Championship game and Oklahoma State is not. Under a playoff system, the complaining doesn’t stop. It does move a little, however. Instead of arguing about who is #2, we would be arguing about who is #12. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. But that’s a side benefit. I don’t care if the complaining stops; that’s not my goal.
  • Be Fair to All Schools: I don’t need a system that makes sure Boise State or Houston get a fair shake. I think my system would benefit schools like that by increasing the field, but I’m perfectly fine with screwing over smaller schools if it furthers my goal.
  • Improve Television Ratings/Game Attendence: Many of the bowl games are not very well attended (or watched). I don’t care if that changes. I know that I would be glued to my TV during the playoffs and I think the TV networks would do well, but I don’t care if they do. As long as they show the games on TV, that’s all I care about.
  • Protect College-age People: Under my system, there are some teams that will be playing more games than normal. These teams are made of young people playing a brutal sport instead of studying. I hope this system doesn’t bring them any harm, but the fact is that I don’t really care.
  • Protect Bowls and the Businesses Who Own Them: I think private business is good for the bowls and could be good for playoffs. A new system will definitely upset the apple cart and some people won’t have the opportunity to make as much money. Some people will have the opportunity to make more. Either way, they’re on their own. I’m not designing a system to make sure they come out OK.
  • Protect the Interests of Conferences: I would be perfectly happy if the conferences all went away and we went to a national scheduling system. The conferences impede progress more than any other entity. I’m sure they will survive a switch to a playoff, but if they don’t I won’t lose any sleep.
  • Preserve Tradition: When the Big XII came into existence and Nebraska stopped playing Oklahoma, tradition flew out the window never to return. Don’t even talk to me about tradition.

Why do you care what I don’t want to accomplish? Whenever the playoffs are suggested, people have a million reasons why they won’t work. But they all come down to one of the above interests. I don’t care about those interests. Anyone who is serious about implementing a playoff will have to care about those interests to some extent because he will have to sell those people on the system.

Here’s what I am trying to accomplish:

  • Better football games for me to watch and more of them.
  • Better betting scenarios – who wouldn’t love office pools like college basketball has

I used to be in favor of a 16 team playoff. More is better and, while the 17th place team would complain, nobody would listen or care. I’ve recently switched my allegiance to a 12 team playoff. I really like the idea of giving the top four teams a bye. I also like avoiding the 1 seed vs. 16 seed matchup you’d get in a 16 team playoff. My goal is better games and more of them, and generally the top team against the sixteenth best team wouldn’t necessarily be that great. Interestingly enough, this year #1 LSU would be playing #16 Georgia, a rematch of the SEC Championship Game in which LSU stomped Georgia, but a game many college football fans watched in anticipation. Here’s what a 12 team playoff would look like:

Let’s see how this aligns with my goals. In the first round, every single game is a compelling matchup. Arkansas might manhandle VA Tech and KSU/USC might be a defensive sleeper, but I would watch every one of these games. In the second round, we’ve already seen Oregon/Stanford and I think LSU and Alabama win easily. Rematches will be inevitable and I don’t care how you structure it, LSU and Alabama will do well. The second round isn’t as compelling as the first, but I’d watch every game. In the third round we get Oregon/LSU and Bama/OSU. Do I need to say how awesome that Saturday would be.

In the end, we get LSU/Bama. You might be tempted to point out that we get that game under the current system and that my playoff scenario was all for naught. But if that’s true it’s only because you have different goals than me. My goal was to have a greater number of better games, which I no doubt achieved. If your goal was to determine who the best team in college football is, you don’t need this playoff or any other game for that matter. You already saw LSU beat Bama, so you already know the answer.

So why the debate among fans? If you’re a fan of college football, this would be a great four weeks of games. And during those times that these games aren’t on, you can still watch lesser teams play in exhibition games. All college football fans should be clamoring for a playoff, so start clamoring.