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I’ll have to discuss this Jets season briefly so that I can move on to something more productive to think about.

First, the current state of affairs:
- Jets missed the playoffs after going 8-3 in the first 12 weeks of the season.
- Jets fired the 3rd year coach, Eric Mangini this morning. Assume that the D & O coordinators are toast as well.
- Brett Favre is just starting into his will-he-or-won’t-he, hold-the-entire-franchise-hostage act that will last well into summer ‘09.

Fairly bad, yes, but it could be a lot worse. There are some bright sides, namely:
- Jets RB Thomas Jones is legitimately one of the top 4-5 backs in the league.
- Jets OL sports 4 first-round picks and was one of the few consistently good units this year.
- Jets have plenty of talent under contract already for ‘09

How it all went wrong:
Coaching was legitimately bad from the offensive and defensive coordinators this year. We had one of the best RB and OLs out there this year. We consistently went away from the run as soon as it started working. I mean we did this in almost every game. The reason for this is that the team was insistent that we would run to set up the pass with Brett Favre. In-game decisions were poor, I mean look at the decision making in our Seattle loss. Cost us that game, well along with a few gift-wrapped throws from Favre. Mangini is a good coach. He will likely be a head coach again, and I’ll guess he’ll succeed due to what he learned with the Jets. He called crappy games this year and didn’t inspire the team. Likeable coach, but I’m not too sad to see him go.
Brett Favre. Brett f*#%g Favre. Where to even start? I think I might truly hate this guy. The on-field play of the “legendary” Brett Favre was atrocious this season. Awful, miserable, pathetic, what else can you say? It was painful to watch. This guy may have been awesome in 1994, but he cannot play anymore. CAN NOT PLAY! All he does is turn the ball over. That’s literally all he ever does. Over the last 5 weeks of the season, “The Gunslinger” threw 10 ints and 2 tds. We went 1-4 in that stretch. With the best run game in the AFC. Did we pound the rock? Nope, we ran empty sets and let our offense practice tackling. So, yeah the coaches had to be fired for that, I can agree. That doesn’t change the fact that Favre sucked. I sat there this morning, watching ESPN2 aghast as the owner, Woody Johnson and out GM, Mike Tannenbaum publicly begged Favre to return for ‘09. I did not shed any tears, but I was crying on the inside. If Favre returns for ‘09, we will be awful again due to the same exact reason. You don’t pay a “legend” $13 million (which he is due next year) to watch the RB run it. You win or lose with his play. I hope that these people go back and watch the film. We lost with Favre this year and we’ll lose with him in ‘09 if he returns. Does the media call him out on his poor play? Nope. They love to kiss his ass. Do the fans? Nope, voted him into the Pro Bowl. The Pro Bowl, for gods sake. With 21 interceptions. 21 Interceptions!

Where do we go from here?
Well, we need a new coach. He needs to be a 3-4 defense guy because we spent 3 years turning the defensive roster in to a 3-4 roster. He needs to be a proven winner, because the talent was put on this team to win now. We have the talent to win now, a good coach will get it done. The popular names are Bill Cowher and Brian Billick. I even heard somehwere about Marty Schottenheimer. Cowher seems to like being ‘retired’ and said as much to the Browns yesterday. He’d be ideal, but I don’t think it happens. Billick, I could deal with. He’s smart and intense. Respects veterans but still gets everyone to play. Could happen. Marty, I can’t see, seeing as we fired his son from the OC job this morning. But, Marty still wants to coach, so it’s possible. I think there are some other good, young candidates out there we won’t have heard much about. Getting lesser known first-year coaches did not seem to hurt the Ravens, Dolphins, and Falcons this year, all three teams made the playoffs. So, we’ll hope for the best.
We need a QB. We currently have Favre, Kellen Clemens, Brett Ratliff and Erik Ainge. We have plenty of draft picks this spring as well, we’ll almost certainly draft a QB somewhere in there. Let’s assume (just for the sake of my sanity) that Favre doesn’t come back. Do we go with Clemens or Ratliff in ‘09 and hope a great running game and improved D get it done without a superstar QB? I would, but I don’t make those decisions. and unfortunately, I don’t really trust the fools that do make them anymore. From what I’ve seen, Ratliff has more natural talent, but we haven’t seen too much of his play. He is young and inexperienced. Clemens has a live arm, but doesn’t strike me a the smartest guy around. He played mediocre in 8 starts in ‘07, albeit behind a poor OL. So we don’t really know about him either. Ainge spent the year on IR, had throwing hand surgery and was suspended for steroid use. Not too promising, really, but U of Tennessee fans seem to think he’s awesome. I never saw him play in college, so I don’t know. We could bring in a vet like Anderson from the Browns, or maybe even Donavan McNabb, Sage Rosenfels?. I don’t think Philly, at the end of the day, would really let McNabb go. I’d love it if they did, McNabb is one of the best QB’s in the game, even if Philly fans can’t see that.

Anyway, ‘08 is in the books. A fairly disappointing year for the old Jets. Let’s hope Favre retires and we can get our act together in ‘09. The window is firmly open. We just have to make the right calls in this now critical offseason.

Looks like there’s lots of victims of this lameness.

http://www.timescall.com/news_story.asp?ID=12444

Ah, well. I got my funds back, and a new account # as well. That could have gone a whole lot worse.

The police seem like they’re somewhat on top of this situation. I filed a report, they said they were swamped with them. I dined at the restaurant named in the article in September. I’ll be interested to see what comes of it all.

Right at this moment, I would like five minutes alone with whomever stole my credit card number and tried to buy $2200 worth of merchandise at the Apple Store.

Fortunately, fraud detection kicked in after the first $1100, and I will recover all the funds. It is, however, incredibly inconvenient.

Just five minutes is all I’m asking…

It’s sad to me that this presidential election has, at least in the blogosphere, devolved into the left calling the right fascists and the right calling the left socialists. I mean is this really what these two parties think of each other? Both sides sound a little paranoid and xenophobic. We are on the verge of creating some social divisions that could cause real damage to this country.

It’s not like it’s never happened before. It hasn’t even been that long. During the 1850’s in this country the sectional differences became so heated that we almost became two different nations. Read up on the politics of the 1850’s. You might be shocked at some of the common attitudes of Southerns and Northerners of the day. But, if you go back and read the language and tenor of the sectionalists of that day in their political arguments, in the fear-mongering, ubiquitous racism and plain old hatefulness, it’s not all that different from what the most partisan amongst us are saying these days. Look where that got us… one of the bloodiest, most intense conflicts in history.

We’ve drawn different lines this time. Back then it was largely a question of slavery. These days it seems to have become the “urban and coastal educated elite” vs. “real Americans” or something to that effect. Sad and pathetic, but large numbers of people seem to have bought into this nonsense. Those lines are hardening right now during this election and I think these campaigns have both contributed to that. The rhetoric is getting a bit scary so close to the election and with so much on the line.

Tone it down, people. We aren’t supposed to hate each other irreconcilably. We’re headed down the wrong path with this stuff.

I’m just going to go ahead and say it.

If the taxpayers of America are forced to give 700 Billion dollars to failed Wall Street firms, in a hundred years historians will talk about it as the biggest heist ever pulled. It will make every other money grab in history look like child’s play.

I said it.

It’s kind of weird that Denver is the center of the known universe right now.

Barack is about to do his acceptance speech in a while, from Invesco Field. Al Gore is on now.
You can tell that Obama is trying hard to win Colorado this fall. He’s careful to always call the stadium “Mile High Stadium”. Almost certainly calculated and will endear him to the locals. Smart ground team work I guess.

Al looks presidential on the podium right now. It’s hard not to imagine what it would have been like had he won in 2000.

I am a nerd because this made me laugh out loud:

Anyone who is silly enough to read this blog regularly or who knows me personally knows that I hold some pretty liberal positions. But, I also hold some positions that would traditionally be considered to the right. Gun rights are one area where I am found on the far right side of the spectrum. I believe that it is the Constitutional right of an American citizen to own handguns, rifles and shotguns. While I believe that many people should not own guns, we have to respect their right to do so. It turns out that although anti-gun politics have enjoyed strong judicial and political support throughout the last few decades, the Constitution is very specific in protecting the rights of the American people to own firearms. Let’s review the exact language in the 2nd Amendment:

“Amendment Two

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, the anti-gun contingent has zeroed in on the “well regulated Militia” part of this amendment, as if that means that only Militiamen’s right to keep and bear arms is protected. They do this because it’s all they’ve got to work with; “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is a very explicit piece of language. To attempt to spin this amendment’s language in any other way is downright laughable. It does not say “the rights of the people who are in a Milita”, it says “the right of the people“. I’m sorry, but that’s what it says and that’s what it plainly means.

We always get into trouble when we think that we’re smarter than the framers of the Constitution, because we are not. Those guys knew what the hell they were doing. Whenever folks want to change around the Constitution or twist it’s language to suit their fancy, they always do it for self-serving reasons. They never do it for the betterment of the common good. That’s why the Founders made it so difficult to change the Constitution; they knew that some yahoos would always try to change the Constitution to push their views on everyone. A good example would be the recent right-wing attempts to pass a new Constitutional Amendment outlawing gay marriage. Do you think they were doing this to protect the rights of all American citizens? Of course not, they were doing this to try to legitimize and codify their narrow-minded political views. It failed, as it should have - that kind of stuff has no place in the Constitution.

Recently the Supreme Court has ruled on gun rights for the first time since the 1970’s and to no surprise, they found that the second amendment protects the rights of the people to keep and bear arms. This is not a surprise because that’s exactly what the Constitution says the amendment does. I know that anti-gun fervor runs strong, bordering on the hysterical (”…but guns <gasp!> kill people” they cry), but the legality of gun ownership should not really be in question. What we need to remember is that the United States is a nation of widely varied backgrounds and viewpoints. The Constitution protects all of us, even those whose viewpoints we disagree with. Forget this, and woe to you when you find yourself in the minority sometime, and those who disagree with you pass laws against you. Overall the Constitution is an extremely fair document, and by and large is what makes this country so great. Don’t screw with it. It says what it says, and I guarantee that we are probably not smart enough to re-write it to any improvement.

30 miles so far this month. The running thing has ramped up considerably. My standard runs are now 3.2 and 4.0 miles.

I am still quite slow, but can comfortably jog several 9 minute miles as often as I wish. This won’t sound like much to real runners, but it is an order of magnitude better than I could do even back in January. It’s the improvement that’s bringing the motivation these days.

I’ve been really enjoying the NewBalance love/hate commercials lately; they really seem to nail the running mentality. Here’s a link to one.

Let’s see if I can hit 40 miles this month and add some speed in June…

I was watching a recent piece on ESPN where NBA players were comparing their passing game to that of hockey players. Watching NBA’ers think about playing hockey made me think about the different styles of fighting in sports. It’s funny how different they all are.

In the NFL, for example, there’s not that much fighting because there’s not really much point. Those guys aren’t really going to be able to hurt one another anyway, what with all the armor they’ve got on. I mean, they basically get into a street fight every time the ball is snapped. There’s just not much point in adding more.

Now in Major League Baseball, fighting is always a team sport. Think Sharks and Jets style street brawl. If one player fights, his teammates all fight too. All of them. Even the bullpen runs in from the outfield to get involved. No one usually gets hurt too badly; there’s generally just a lot of shoving and trash talking. It kind of looks like two college fraternities having a fight, where most of them really don’t want to actually fight, but they feel honor-bound to represent.

The NHL takes fighting seriously, it’s built right into the product. There’s centuries of history here and the players, and most fans, know and understand the detailed unwritten laws of these gentlemen’s diagreements. Honor and toughness are taken seriously here and violations of the code are not tolerated very well amongst other players. It’s really a phenomenon to watch. Two guys will square off, and instead of breaking it up, the refs all back up, give them room, and basically referee the fight. It’s crazy, but somehow it just doesn’t seem out of place in hockey. It’s all part of the appeal.

In the NBA, you just don’t see a whole lot of fighting. There’s been some notable exceptions, like the Ron Artest incident and the famous Rudy Tomjanovich shot, but those may be magnified by the relative rarity of these kinds of incidents. Also, the NBA hands down super-harsh penalties for fighting. You’ll get a harsh suspension just for leaving the bench to get involved. Carmelo Anthony got a month suspension last year for throwing one sucker-punch. Also, it just seems like these guys just don’t get as worked up. Why should they? They’re young, rich, happy, and they’ve got 64 more games to play. They just don’t seem as interested in duking it out on the court. Some guys obviously don’t like each other out there, but they aren’t likely to come to blows. So it’s pretty funny to think about these guys playing hockey. They wouldn’t last 10 seconds out there.