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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a Taki’s Magazine column looking back on the bizarrely large historical influence of football player, actor, and murderer O.J. Simpson.
One point I want to reinforce is that O.J.’s college career of 1967-68 more or less marked the beginning of the modern era of offensive specialists in college football after the introduction of separate offensive and defensive platoons in 1965. In his college career, O.J. averaged 156 yards rushing per game, which is still awfully good. For example, last year’s Heisman winner, Derrick Henry of Alabama, averaged 148 yards per game in just his best season.
Before 1965, however, college football players were seldom known for consistent statistical performance the way O.J. could be counted on for a 100+ yards rushing in just about every game. Before the second half of the 1960s, college football offenses were seldom well-enough organized enough to be able to consistently move the ball.
So, old time college football players’ offensive statistics weren’t like basketball players where you can expect the star to reach double digits points in most games. Instead, star college football players were more like soccer players and celebrated by sportswriters for a small number of heroic plays over the course of a season.
This doesn’t mean old-time college football wasn’t a blast; but it was erratic.
For example, consider the storied college career of the Notre Dame All-American who finished third in the first Heisman Trophy vote in 1935, William Shakespeare. From Wikipedia:
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (American football)
This article is about the American football player. It is not to be confused with William Shakespeare, the poet and playwright from Elizabethan England.
Position Halfback / Punter
William Valentine “Bill” Shakespeare (September 27, 1912 – January 17, 1974) was an American football player. He played at the halfback position, and also handled punting, for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football teams from 1933 to 1935. He gained his greatest acclaim for throwing the winning touchdown pass as time ran off the clock in Notre Dame’s 1935 victory over Ohio State, a game that was voted the best game in the first 100 years of college football. Shakespeare was selected as a consensus first-team All-American in 1935 and was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983. Sharing the same name as “The Bard of Avon”, Shakespeare earned nicknames including “The Bard of Staten Island”, “The Bard of South Bend”, and “The Merchant of Menace.” …
On November 2, 1935, Notre Dame faced the undefeated 1935 Ohio State Buckeyes team in front of a crowd of 81,000 at Ohio Stadium. Ohio State was heavily favored in the game and led at half-time by a score of 13–0. … but the Irish rallied in the fourth quarter for two touchdowns to narrow Ohio State’s lead to 13–12. … With the clock running out, the ball was snapped to fullback Jim McKenna, who handed it to Shakespeare on what appeared to be a reverse. Shakespeare threw a pass into the endzone, which was caught by Wayne Millner on his knees for an 18–13 win.
Scoring three touchdowns in the fourth quarter was so rare in 1935 that even a third of a century later in 1969 it was still voted the best college football game of all time.
The 1935 Notre Dame-Ohio State match was regarded as one of the greatest comebacks in history of the sport. Red Barber, who broadcast the game on radio, later called it “the greatest college football game I ever called.” In The New York Times, Allison Danzig opened his report on the game by writing, “One of the greatest last-ditch rallies in football history toppled the dreaded Scarlet Scourge of Ohio State from its lofty pinnacle today as 81,000 dumbfounded spectators saw Notre Dame score three touchdowns in less than fifteen minutes to gain an almost miraculous 18–13 victory in jammed Buckeye Stadium.”[20] Radio announcer Tom Manning added, “I always said Shakespeare had a pair of rosary beads and a bottle of holy water in his back pocket.” The media picked up stories of the Catholic faithful praying for Notre Dame as they listened to the game on the radio. One nun told a reporter of overhearing a colleague in her convent “gamefully bargaining” and eventually “threatening” the Poor Souls and saints for another Notre Dame touchdown. The Chicago Tribune later noted the irony that it was a truly ecumenical group that combined for the famed “Hail Mary” pass: “Mazziotti, a Catholic, handed to Shakespeare, a Protestant on a fake reverse. Shakespeare passed to End Wayne Millner, a Jewish boy.”…
The week after the Ohio State game, Notre Dame faced Northwestern featuring All-American end Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Before the game, the Associated Press carried a story profiling the two players: “Shakespeare and Longfellow will meet tomorrow —- not to trade verses, but to play all the football they know.” Longfellow later recalled, “Shakespeare and I played against each other for three years. Each year, because of our names, we got a terrific buildup. It was a natural, I suppose. All through my college days I never heard the end of it. The writers went wilder each year.” Longfellow got the better of Shakespeare in 1935, as he caught a touchdown pass to help Northwestern win the game, 14-7. Shakespeare attempted to lead the Irish to another come-from-behind victory, as he ran 48 yard to the Northwestern ten-yard line late in the game, but the Northwestern defense held. On the last play of the game, Shakespeare threw a “long, desperate pass”, but it was intercepted as time ran out….
The Wikipedia article recounts numerous other games in which Shakespeare was involved in the winning touchdown or came up just short on the big play.
Shakespeare finished the 1935 college football season as Notre Dame’s leader in most offensive categories, including passing (19 completions on 66 attempts for 267 yards), rushing (374 yards and four touchdowns on 104 carries), punting (1,801 yards on 45 punts), kickoff returns (123 yards on five returns), and scoring (24 points). He was selected as a consensus first-team All-American and finished third in the voting, behind Jay Berwanger and Monk Moscrip, for the first Heisman Trophy award.
By modern standards, those are amazingly paltry statistics, other than averaging 40.0 yards per punt. But that’s not the point, the point is that the Merchant of Menace was involved in eight or ten famous plays. But that was enough. That’s about all anybody can remember.
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Nice inverted trope, Steve.
Arson, Murder and Jaywalking : “Football player, actor, murderer”
My Dad always said football was ruined when they got rid of the “60 Minute Men.” I wonder if football would be more diverse if all starters had to play offense, defense, and special teams.
For those wondering why the quarterback dropped so far back before throwing, back then you had to be 5 yards behind the line to throw a forward pass.
I think Clarke said in The Son Also Rises that modern Shakespeares in England are all relations to the Bard.
Anyway, it wasn't even spelled Shakespeare then. It was Shakspere or Shagspere (old Bill never seemed to be able to make up his mind).
BTW, I have it on good authority that the football-playing Shakespeare changed his name before matriculating at Notre Dame. He was brought up as "Edward De Vere," but wanted to keep his skill at sports a secret.Replies: @Je Suis Charlie Martel
The Juice was probably the greatest running back. He played for crap teams and smashed records. Shakespeare was pretty good but OJ was beloved.
OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson all went down in flames and blacks have had enough! It doesn’t matter if they were actually guilty. In black culture it never does matter. (See Loretta Lynch and Marilyn Mosby; two high-powered legals who don’t give a damn about the troof.)
Most people today have no idea how media huge these three guys were in, say, 1984. All with about 15 years of stardom under their belts.
With the recent Michael Jackson kiddie porn revelations the forcefield around Serena Williams just got stronger. She will never face the music like Lance Armstrong.
Football players would look more like soccer plays if they all had to play 60 minutes.
The game would be completely different – you couldn’t have five huge offensive linemen playing, for example, because at least one (typically the center back in the one-platoon era) would have to play linebacker and two would have to be fast enough to play defensive end. Not to mention that limiting the substitutions would also eliminate the radical changes in personnel and formations from down to down.
“Football players would look more like soccer plays if they all had to play 60 minutes.”
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to “touch down” the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby “tries”? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don’t appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don’t appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.
Damn! Even back 22 years before I was even born my beloved Buckeyes were losing games in the most excruciating manner possible. And they’re still the greatest program ever!
Sports were more fun when they were about having fun.
I loved OJ’s slapstick scenes in The Naked Gun movies as a kid.
Two links:
Paul Krugman: anti-Brexit MSJ reporting is dishonest, and Brexit will be no big deal. He says it is false in two ways: there is no economic model showing the supposed negative effects of Brexit, and the actual reporting has been wrong.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/more-on-the-short-run-macroeconomics-of-brexit/
“I am not pro-Brexit. But I am anti-anti-Brexit.”
Fred Reed laments the decline of Ashkenazi-American achievement in science:
https://www.unz.com/freed/jewish-decline-and-the-rise-of-china-in-the-us/
quoting Ron Unz:
The decline is heavily demographic. The number of full blooded Ashkenazi young people who are not ultra-Orthodox/anti-education in America has declined likely by two thirds, even as the US population as a whole increased.
Fred’s worried this decline, and general white decline compared with Asians, will lead to China passing the USA in high technology areas. That may be right. The rapid decline in a group with mean IQ of about 115 by low birth rates and dissipation into the background white population will likely decrease the number of world class scientists the USA produces. I can’t say this for certain, however, because the deviation of intelligence will increase with increasing assortative mating. The entry of Jews onto the US White reproductive market I would think have acted to increase assortative mating by increasing the number of high-IQ partners both groups had to select from.
The same thing happened to the world’s other large population of Ashkenazi, in Israel. They are less impressive than their North American co-ethnics, and have much higher birth rates. They also have high intermarriage rates, but with other Jewish groups, including already Slavic-mixed ex-Soviets.
When (as in Europe 100+ years ago) your tradition is to breed the daughters of wealthy businessmen to young Torah scholars you get a wonderful genetic synthesis of analytical thinking + business smarts + wealth.
When these unions have many children, some offspring are bound to go off the derech and apply their unique and continually reinforced mental talents to other fields, like goy law, medicine and mathematics.
This European breeding tradition and the values that motivate it have declined drastically among assimilated Jewry. Now, at least among liberal (Reform) Jews, sons and daughters pick for themselves.
The same phenomenon will inevitably occur among Westernized Hindus as fewer and fewer marriages are strategically arranged and negotiated.
The Jews, however have a signal advantage: the (ultra) Orthodox community is a pool of patriarchy that resists the pressure of global feminism and female license. It preserves communal values, commitment to scholarship, the subservience of women, and high fertility.
As long as the Orthodox community continues to exist, there is potential for Jewish rebirth, long after the Reform have evaporated and assimilated into the great grey goo of Western pop culture, universalism, materialism and mediocrity.
Arson, Murder and Jaywalking : "Football player, actor, murderer"Replies: @SFG
They have that one too, it’s ‘Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick’. ‘Squick’ meaning ‘gross’.
OT: Farage stands down as leader of UKIP. There must be more to this than meets the eye.
Specialization has increased in sports as the money in sports has increased. The more popularity, the more money, the more specialization.
Babe Ruth pitching and then playing outfield on his off days was pretty OK for everyone in the deadball era, because the team saved money and Ruth got some extra for pitching. Baseball was popular but not huge at the time. But when Ruth exploded hitting homeruns–and radio got into every household in America, making, goosing baseball with new advertising revenue—the ratings and attendance went up, the teams stopped wasting him on pitching and he specialized in hitting dingers.
So with kicking and punting in football.
The rise of the relief pitcher specialist in baseball is one example. Tony LaRussa pioneered it, but the post 1990s explosion in baseball salaries made it possible on a grand scale. Once, the idea of a reliever whose job was coming in to face only 1-3 batters would have been a huge waste of salary. Now, however, it pays to have an expert lefty reliever or fireballing closer.
I remember in 1991 Roger Clemens became the highest paid player in baseball —at his natural, unsteroided prime—-at a little more than $5.4 million a year. Flash forward to 2000, he again became the highest paid player in baseball—at a whopping $15.45 million a year. In just nine years, the salaries in baseball had tripled for the top guys, and Clemens (38 at the time) could demand top salary still. The 1990s had to have seen baseball’s revenue shoot up—probably through the homer-increase, same as happened in Ruth’s day.
He needs some time off. Plus he was getting flaky (punch drunk) what with his pre-referendum pronouncement that Brexit would lose. You don’t do that!
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to "touch down" the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby "tries"? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don't appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don't appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.Replies: @Gilbert Ratchet, @Josh, @I, Libertine, @Drakejax, @Anonymous
Yeah, I noticed that. I wondered how they could have scored two touchdowns in the final quarter, and only gotten twelve points. How could you miss two PATs?
I doubt there’s more to it than meets the eye. UKIP was always a battle for the Conservative party, rather than an attempt to replace it. Now that battle has been won, time to move on.
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to "touch down" the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby "tries"? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don't appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don't appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.Replies: @Gilbert Ratchet, @Josh, @I, Libertine, @Drakejax, @Anonymous
I few plays seem to start way over by the sideline, so it’s ok you may be right. They definitely appear to be grounding the ball.
But William had no surviving sons to continue the Shakespeare name. He didn’t even have paternal-side nephews to keep his branch of the Shakespeare family name extant. So you’d have to back at least two generations to have living distant cousins with the name.
Anyway, it wasn’t even spelled Shakespeare then. It was Shakspere or Shagspere (old Bill never seemed to be able to make up his mind).
BTW, I have it on good authority that the football-playing Shakespeare changed his name before matriculating at Notre Dame. He was brought up as “Edward De Vere,” but wanted to keep his skill at sports a secret.
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to "touch down" the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby "tries"? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don't appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don't appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.Replies: @Gilbert Ratchet, @Josh, @I, Libertine, @Drakejax, @Anonymous
You ask a lot of good questions. I’m not sure exactly when, bu they got rid of the fat ball in football in the thirties for the same reason baseball got rid of the dead ball in the twenties. Defense wins games, but offense sells tickets. You drive for show, and you putt for dough. And all that rot.
You need a separate blog for your sports trivia.
Please blog about this. The NYT editors unironically imply that Brexit is as morally indefensible as slavery… and no gay marriage.
“They would argue, in the populist tradition, that the British referendum demonstrated the will of the people and was therefore richly democratic. Referendums may have their occasional role in democracy, but if abolition, voting rights, or same-sex marriage”
I swear to God these people are trying to bait right wingers into apoplexy.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/opinion/freedom-fireworks-and-brexit.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https://m.facebook.com/
Look, if you view Left-wing thought as a religion, than everything falls into place. The NY Times is merely trying to rationalize away any bad action via apologetics--their religion is perfect, so all contrary actions/arguments are evil. All acts that conflict with their worldview are therefore tied together, so it's perfectly reasonable (in their minds) to link slavery, no gay "marriage", and Brexit.
It's really no different from a Salem witch trial prosecutor linking every negative in the community to the Devil and his witches. When you are the example of the only good, then anything bad that happens must be the Devil's doing, or his minions.
The problem is the Left's religion has, at its roots, a prophecy---that all history is improving to the great Equality. It's a very Whig view of history and religion. The Brexit, much like the fall of Communism, causes them mental pain and anguish because it contradicts their religious teachings that all their progress is forward instead of not.
So those articles aren't trying to hurt conservatives; they're trying to hold together the injured psyche of millions of True Believers who just cannot reconcile this with their religious world view.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to "touch down" the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby "tries"? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don't appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don't appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.Replies: @Gilbert Ratchet, @Josh, @I, Libertine, @Drakejax, @Anonymous
The gradual introduction of greater padding (especially helmets and shoulder pads) changed American football to the point where it is today such a vastly different sport than rugby. I like to use the comparison of the change in boxing from bare-knuckled to today’s gloved version in the late 19th/early 20th century. Rugby/football or bare knuckled/gloved boxing may appear broadly similar from afar, but the change in hitting allowed by the pads changed the game dramatically. Interestingly, the padded versions of the two sports resulted in worse and more numerous injuries.
Or they would look more like Aussie rules players.
“Scarlet Scourge” – that is a fantastic descriptor. The Michigan alums in the comments should love that one.
“The Merchant of Menace” – I love it!
If you called a guy that today, 95% of fans would have no idea what it referred to. I wonder how many YouTube users know what the Tube refers to.
Steve, you frequently comment on modern-day college football success being tied to a coach’s willingness to scrape lower in the behavior barrel than their rivals, how would you compare the impact of large-scale integration to that of position specialization? Happening in roughly the same timeframe (late-60s/early 70s) my guess would be they were at least equally important in changing the game.
Also, “The Merchant of Menace” is a great nickname.
I saw Notre Dame play another road game that year, which they were lucky to win after trailing 17-7 at the end of three quarters. They went on to win the mythical national championship, but they lost a game along the way. -- in Oxford. I can imagine the celebration that evening -- the band must have played Dixie 100 times in the Grove. It would have been like the scene in Gone with the Wind when they learned war had broken out, except it would have been much more enthusiastic and lasted all night.
–The Chicago Tribune later noted the irony that it was a truly ecumenical group that combined for the famed “Hail Mary” pass: “Mazziotti, a Catholic, handed to Shakespeare, a Protestant on a fake reverse. Shakespeare passed to End Wayne Millner, a Jewish boy.–
Those were the days…
Two links:
Paul Krugman: anti-Brexit MSJ reporting is dishonest, and Brexit will be no big deal. He says it is false in two ways: there is no economic model showing the supposed negative effects of Brexit, and the actual reporting has been wrong.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/more-on-the-short-run-macroeconomics-of-brexit/"I am not pro-Brexit. But I am anti-anti-Brexit."
Fred Reed laments the decline of Ashkenazi-American achievement in science:
https://www.unz.com/freed/jewish-decline-and-the-rise-of-china-in-the-us/
quoting Ron Unz:The decline is heavily demographic. The number of full blooded Ashkenazi young people who are not ultra-Orthodox/anti-education in America has declined likely by two thirds, even as the US population as a whole increased.
Fred's worried this decline, and general white decline compared with Asians, will lead to China passing the USA in high technology areas. That may be right. The rapid decline in a group with mean IQ of about 115 by low birth rates and dissipation into the background white population will likely decrease the number of world class scientists the USA produces. I can't say this for certain, however, because the deviation of intelligence will increase with increasing assortative mating. The entry of Jews onto the US White reproductive market I would think have acted to increase assortative mating by increasing the number of high-IQ partners both groups had to select from.
The same thing happened to the world's other large population of Ashkenazi, in Israel. They are less impressive than their North American co-ethnics, and have much higher birth rates. They also have high intermarriage rates, but with other Jewish groups, including already Slavic-mixed ex-Soviets.Replies: @Big Bill, @Anonymous
Too much assimilation and a decline in breeding standards.
When (as in Europe 100+ years ago) your tradition is to breed the daughters of wealthy businessmen to young Torah scholars you get a wonderful genetic synthesis of analytical thinking + business smarts + wealth.
When these unions have many children, some offspring are bound to go off the derech and apply their unique and continually reinforced mental talents to other fields, like goy law, medicine and mathematics.
This European breeding tradition and the values that motivate it have declined drastically among assimilated Jewry. Now, at least among liberal (Reform) Jews, sons and daughters pick for themselves.
The same phenomenon will inevitably occur among Westernized Hindus as fewer and fewer marriages are strategically arranged and negotiated.
The Jews, however have a signal advantage: the (ultra) Orthodox community is a pool of patriarchy that resists the pressure of global feminism and female license. It preserves communal values, commitment to scholarship, the subservience of women, and high fertility.
As long as the Orthodox community continues to exist, there is potential for Jewish rebirth, long after the Reform have evaporated and assimilated into the great grey goo of Western pop culture, universalism, materialism and mediocrity.
Two links:
Paul Krugman: anti-Brexit MSJ reporting is dishonest, and Brexit will be no big deal. He says it is false in two ways: there is no economic model showing the supposed negative effects of Brexit, and the actual reporting has been wrong.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/more-on-the-short-run-macroeconomics-of-brexit/"I am not pro-Brexit. But I am anti-anti-Brexit."
Fred Reed laments the decline of Ashkenazi-American achievement in science:
https://www.unz.com/freed/jewish-decline-and-the-rise-of-china-in-the-us/
quoting Ron Unz:The decline is heavily demographic. The number of full blooded Ashkenazi young people who are not ultra-Orthodox/anti-education in America has declined likely by two thirds, even as the US population as a whole increased.
Fred's worried this decline, and general white decline compared with Asians, will lead to China passing the USA in high technology areas. That may be right. The rapid decline in a group with mean IQ of about 115 by low birth rates and dissipation into the background white population will likely decrease the number of world class scientists the USA produces. I can't say this for certain, however, because the deviation of intelligence will increase with increasing assortative mating. The entry of Jews onto the US White reproductive market I would think have acted to increase assortative mating by increasing the number of high-IQ partners both groups had to select from.
The same thing happened to the world's other large population of Ashkenazi, in Israel. They are less impressive than their North American co-ethnics, and have much higher birth rates. They also have high intermarriage rates, but with other Jewish groups, including already Slavic-mixed ex-Soviets.Replies: @Big Bill, @Anonymous
I would expect that in Israel, Ashkenazi-Mizrahi and Ashkenazi-Sephardi marriages are at least as frequent as marriages between Ashkenazi Jews and Russian non-Jews.
But the battle has only begun. The final outcome could be anything from Parliament voting to stay in the EU (which would be legal) on the one hand, to total withdrawal and reversion to pre-1973 status on the other.
It’s more like their rationalization hamsters are in overdrive.
Look, if you view Left-wing thought as a religion, than everything falls into place. The NY Times is merely trying to rationalize away any bad action via apologetics–their religion is perfect, so all contrary actions/arguments are evil. All acts that conflict with their worldview are therefore tied together, so it’s perfectly reasonable (in their minds) to link slavery, no gay “marriage”, and Brexit.
It’s really no different from a Salem witch trial prosecutor linking every negative in the community to the Devil and his witches. When you are the example of the only good, then anything bad that happens must be the Devil’s doing, or his minions.
The problem is the Left’s religion has, at its roots, a prophecy—that all history is improving to the great Equality. It’s a very Whig view of history and religion. The Brexit, much like the fall of Communism, causes them mental pain and anguish because it contradicts their religious teachings that all their progress is forward instead of not.
So those articles aren’t trying to hurt conservatives; they’re trying to hold together the injured psyche of millions of True Believers who just cannot reconcile this with their religious world view.
While OJ was a fantastic running back and more of a cultural phenomenon, Jim Brown is the best back ever, hands down.
Also an actor. Not a murderer.
“OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson all went down in flames and blacks have had enough! It doesn’t matter if they were actually guilty. In black culture it never does matter.”
Unfortunately, nothing ever matters, in any culture. One’s ‘team,’ one’s ‘guy,’ one’s ‘party,’ one’s ‘state,’ one’s ‘state,’ whatever. We always forgive those who we want to forgive, and expect absolute incorruptibility (or flawlessness) from those on the other team/guy/party/state/nation.
I come from a school who’s most famous player performed armed robbery during the season, and was forgiven by the fans (and covered up by the school, the coach, the local police force, the local newspapers, and the local political infrastructure). The school considers itself one of the ‘clean’ ones, and he is a hero to this day.
This is why Muhammed Ali is considered a hero, in spite of the fact that he is a draft dodger and illiterate, and occasionally blatantly racist (towards Frazier, and search youtube for his talk on miscegenation) (i.e. qualities that would make most of his worshipers avoid him if he weren’t witty, rich, and famous).
That is why Hillary supporters don’t care about her sins, and Trump supporters don’t care about his.
This is why America can be perceived as the good guys for peace and freedom, in spite of the world map of American military bases (imagine Chinese military bases in all the overseas locations where Americans currently exist: would they be a peaceloving nation)?
This is how judges (ex: supreme court decisions) can come to diametrically opposed conclusions from the same set of inputs: they forgive flaws in their favored argument, and notice flaws in the other.
and so on and so on.
Scott Adams is right: we don’t think logically or rationally: we justify emotionally. But that justification is not restricted to presidential politics: it is universal, omnipresent, and unavoidable.
joeyjoejoe
Good catch. I do a ton of tvtroping under the same handle. I’m responsible for a significant percentage of the entries on the Duckman and Always Sunny pages.
I also created the entire Neon Joe Werewolf Hunter page.
It’s a fun hobby.
Or rugby players. USA won two Olympic rugby union (fifteen players, not the new rugby sevens they are introducing to the Olympics this year) gold medals in the 1920s, using many converted gridiron players as the two football codes were more similar to each other back then due to the lack of substitution in gridiron at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_at_the_Summer_Olympics#1920
Historians of the college gridiron football game please advise: in that video, are they still required to "touch down" the ball in the end zone to score a touch down, as is still done in rugby "tries"? It looks like someone is doing that. Was the extra point taken from behind where the ball was touched down as is still done in rugby? Was play restarted at the point a tackle was made, even close to the sidelines? There don't appear to be hash marks. Was the ball still the old fat ball? When did the pointed ball come into use? The passes don't appear to go very far so I am guessing they are still using the old fat ball. And I see that already, in the college game at least, the goal posts have been moved back ten yards behind the goal line.Replies: @Gilbert Ratchet, @Josh, @I, Libertine, @Drakejax, @Anonymous
Right, football would be a lot more like rugby. One of the things you immediately notice watching rugby after being used to watching football is how slow it is compared to football because of the more continuous play and the less specialized players.
I’m not sure I entirely buy this interpretation. Players like Tom Harmon were specializing at running back and reaching 100 yards per game by the early 40s. What made OJ unique was that he exploded into the game at the point where football had figured out how to pass the ball consistently and demonstrated that power running could be as exciting as passing. If anything it was Mike Garrett who was the first running back to put up eye popping numbers. It was Garrett and OJ that represented the only two non-QB heisman trophy winners over a ten year period.
As Steve pointed out in a earlier thread, McKay may have put Ricky Bell in the ground, especially when he had him in Tampa Bay.
Tom Harmon was a single-wing tailback.
What I meant was not that the drama as a whole was over, just UKIP’s part in it. The whole of the Conservative party has been committed, by a huge majority of Conservative voters, to carry out Brexit as the formally expressed will of the country at large. All its leaders, and almost all politicians from other parties, understand that. Any backsliding now would be a different, and more serious, matter than mere party politics, and UKIP could not be the appropriate vehicle to deal with it.
Sid Luckman was more impressive !!!!
Happy 4th of [[[ Jew – Lie ]]] !!!!!!
Anyway, it wasn't even spelled Shakespeare then. It was Shakspere or Shagspere (old Bill never seemed to be able to make up his mind).
BTW, I have it on good authority that the football-playing Shakespeare changed his name before matriculating at Notre Dame. He was brought up as "Edward De Vere," but wanted to keep his skill at sports a secret.Replies: @Je Suis Charlie Martel
Yes!
Can someone start a league where the guys DO play both sides of the ball. It’d be very interesting!
The SJWs sense that total victory is very close but that there’s one big, final battle underway. With Trump and Brexit, the lines are out in the open (even though the issues are actually quite different, and many of the Leave voters would probably not vote for Trump). Like the alt-right, the social justice left – as opposed to the economic left, which was an important part of the political spectrum but unfortunately disappeared ca. 1985 – knows that this is their moment. They will do anything to win. The next four months are going to be exciting but awful.
If Trump pulls this off(and I think he can), it would be one of the most amazing events in political history. This may sound like hyperbole, but has there ever been so many forces pitted against one man? It is unrelenting, and it is only the beginning.
If it is close near the end, I fear for his safety. You have to give it to him in the cojones department.
That’s all anyone remembers in part because, otherwise, Bill Shakespeare seems to have led a conventionally respectable and generally admirable life. The Wiki article says he went on to serve as a commissioned officer in the infantry in WWII, was married, had two children, and worked for the same Cincinnati company for his entire business career. (Those were the days!) He ended up as a vice president before dying at the sadly young age of 61 in 1974. Not the typical life of a typical 21st century college football star.
I think it would be fun if a few colleges started up truly amateur “Old Football” intramural clubs, playing by the same rules and with the same equipment as teams did before the war. I’ll bet they’d develop quite a cult following, perhaps approaching lacrosse in popularity, and it wouldn’t be all that expensive. The fields are already there; they just need the minimal equipment and uniforms.
Would it be too dangerous? Less padding … but also less tonnage on the players.
In one sense things are worse today, with lifetime tenure at an employer being so rare. On a MUCH better note, however, it's also far less common to see people die in middle age. I'll bet you anything that Bill Shakespeare would have put up with some job changes if it meant that he could have lived a normal lifespan.
Football and other sports’ platooning and position specialization are features of the present Age of Specialization, which began centuries earlier with the division of labor and with increasing application of science-empiricism-based technology.
Specialization is also (ir)responsible for today’s dumbing-down of everything, for today’s utter lack of what used to be a “well-rounded” liberal education, for the utter lack of what used to be a Renaissance Man: this is why our ruling elite consists today of venal myopics; this is why today there are no Churchills, no Eisenhowers, no Teddy Roosevelts, and an ever-shrinking body of genuinely educated, truth-seeking people and an ever-increasing mass of propaganda-deluded True Believer regurgitators of The Narrative.
Hashmarks? Football field design evolution: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-the-football-field-was-designed-from-hash-marks-to-goal-posts-48192086/?no-ist
Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football. — John Heisman, circa 1900.
Also an actor. Not a murderer.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @Buffalo Joe, @Frank Messmann
Pep, I think you can safely say Jim Brown was the best running back to play….when he played. Brown was larger than most defensive players and fast. Earl Campbell played when linebackers and defensive linemen were larger than RBs and fast. Today you have linebackers who are 6′-5″ and 265 and run 4.5/4.6 40s. Different time, different players. You can only compare players or rather athletes when they compete in time or distance. And even then, different track surfaces and footwear.
Such leagues do exist. They are usually called something like Class A or AA high school football depending upon how your state organizes its schools. If you live in an urban or large suburban area, try to drive a few miles away to the rural areas of your state some friday night in the fall. You can watch a small town high school game and get to see players play both ways.
Also an actor. Not a murderer.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @Buffalo Joe, @Frank Messmann
Pep, Forgot a thought….yes Brown was not a murderer, but he did throw his girlfriend off of a balcony. Lucky for him that she didn’t die, and luckier for her, of course.
iSteve, Yes, small town HS football with only 25 or fewer kids on the sideline. In NYS class “A” is the larger schools and class “D” the smallest. Classification is determined by the number of , I think, sophomore boys enrolled in the school. Randolph, NY is a class “D” HS. They won three state championships in a row. Boys started on defense, offense and special teams. A team so disciplined that when they “set” they did it with such military like precision that the other team was off sides three straight times. Small schools don’t mean small boys, rock solid farm boys. I still love HS sports, football and lacrosse, fun to watch .
Agree totally.
If Trump pulls this off(and I think he can), it would be one of the most amazing events in political history. This may sound like hyperbole, but has there ever been so many forces pitted against one man? It is unrelenting, and it is only the beginning.
If it is close near the end, I fear for his safety. You have to give it to him in the cojones department.
Anthony Davis was no slouch at USC either and, as it happened, his biggest games were against Notre Dame including a remarkable comeback in 1974 where USC trailing 24-6 at halftime ran off 49 straight points including a 100 yard kickoff return by Davis to start the onslaught. In another game against Notre Dame he scored 6 touchdowns. His pro career was botched though as he was the ‘big name’ in the aborted World Football League and, it would seem the NFL never forgave him for that as he played in Canada the next season.
In my life I would have to rate Franco Harris’ “immaculate reception’ that won the game for Pittsburgh over Oakland as the most horrible televised football play in history as I was a big Raider fan unless you were a Seattle fan and had to endure Russel Wilson’s one yard interception in the Super Bowl!
Then baseball had Tom Cheney. An obscure pitcher for the horrible Washington Senators who, in a remarkable night in 1962, pitched sixteen innings and struck out 21 batters!
John McKay, as USC coach, began the practice of one RB getting an enormous amount of carries as an I-formation tailback, starting with Mike Garrett, who won the Heisman in 1965 carrying 267 times in 10 games for 1440 yards. O.J. carried even more, 33 plus a game in 1968, averaging 4.7. Their yards per carry were not higher than many other RBs but their workload brought high yardage.
As Steve pointed out in a earlier thread, McKay may have put Ricky Bell in the ground, especially when he had him in Tampa Bay.
Tom Harmon was a single-wing tailback.
Just 15 years ago, Georgia Tech (three TDs) and Virginia (four) combined for seven touchdowns in the fourth quarter — and just one extra point. UVA scored with 13 minutes left, kicked the PAT, and took a 21-20 lead. The teams then traded TDs until UVA scored last with 22 seconds left to win 39-38.
Somewhat OT:
I have a microaggression to report.
Yesterday, I found myself in a bathroom stall at JCPenney.
I saw written upon the walls a number of words and crude drawings, many of which were too obscene for me to reproduce here.
One in particular caught my eye.
Someone had written in white marker:
BLACK
POWER
And then someone with different handwriting had appended, also in white marker:
S SUCK
to the end of BLACK.
(The first part was more faded than the second.)
So the edited phrase was:
BLACKS SUCK
POWER
The obvious implication of this message – “blacks suck power” – is that they use more than their fair share of electricity. This is shockingly offensive, to say the least.
George Washington Carver invented electricity* so that all of God’s children – black, white, yellow, red, and blue** – could benefit from it. How dare this racist white scribbler suggest that blacks should not enjoy the benefits of a technology that they themselves created?
How could the janitors at JCPenney not have removed this message as soon as they saw it? Clearly, they’re all part of a racist white conspiracy.
I say, let’s all form a flash mob and show those micromembered bastards at JCPenney that their malfeasance shall not stand.
*Thomas Edison didn’t do shit. White boys always be taking credit for the black man’s doings.
**The white boys at JCPenney gonna be blue by the time we get through with them.
Completely on topic: Happy 4th of July my fellow citizenists!
Here is a heartwarming story from Insty: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3671801/Army-veteran-rescues-bald-eagle-dangling-upside-rope-75-foot-tree.html
As a friend of mine said, “Proving yet again that a little out of the box thinking and some ammo can overcome all “impossible” situations!”
To paraphrase Cecil Rhodes “Remember that you are an American, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life”.
God bless America, land that I love.
I wonder if football would be a safer game if:
– all 11 players on each side were more or less the same size
– players regular rotated between positions as to even distribute the pounding they take
Good point about padding. Watching sandlot football today or college game film from the early days shows guys tackling more by steer wrestling the runner down. Todays defensive players launch themselves ballistically at the runner. Impact of collision is much greater with concomitant catastrophic injuries.
Also an actor. Not a murderer.Replies: @Buffalo Joe, @Buffalo Joe, @Frank Messmann
Jim Brown, if I recall correctly, tried to kill his wife with a butcher knife.
Google
Jim Brown Balcony
I think it would be fun if a few colleges started up truly amateur "Old Football" intramural clubs, playing by the same rules and with the same equipment as teams did before the war. I'll bet they'd develop quite a cult following, perhaps approaching lacrosse in popularity, and it wouldn't be all that expensive. The fields are already there; they just need the minimal equipment and uniforms.
Would it be too dangerous? Less padding ... but also less tonnage on the players.Replies: @prosa123
“Bill Shakespeare seems to have led a conventionally respectable and generally admirable life. The Wiki article says he went on to serve as a commissioned officer in the infantry in WWII, was married, had two children, and worked for the same Cincinnati company for his entire business career. (Those were the days!) He ended up as a vice president before dying at the sadly young age of 61 in 1974. ”
In one sense things are worse today, with lifetime tenure at an employer being so rare. On a MUCH better note, however, it’s also far less common to see people die in middle age. I’ll bet you anything that Bill Shakespeare would have put up with some job changes if it meant that he could have lived a normal lifespan.
OT:
Last year Kobe Paras, Filipino, committed to play basketball for UCLA. He was denied admission a few days ago and had to withdraw from summer school classes and is looking for another university. His father is Benjie Paras is a well-known former basketball player in the Philippines so the story is big news over there.
Apparently there is a problem with his SAT score, didn’t meet UCLA standards. Filipino media is incorrectly saying he got a 1750/2400 on the SAT.
Kobe attended most of high school in the US and is reportedly an honor student in chemistry, physics, and calculus and an inductee into a high school honor society called the California Scholarship Federation that was founded in 1916. The NCAA has a sliding scale for high school GPA and SAT scores needed for entering freshmen athletes. If an honor student has say a 3.5 GPA then they would only need a 420 SAT to be NCAA eligible. Yes, four hundred and twenty out of 1600, reading and math combined.
The average SAT score for UCLA male basketball players is 935 out of 1600. Since everyone is saying that Kobe is NCAA eligible, he must have scored between 420 and say 800 or so. It is impossible for an honor student in chemistry, physics, and calculus to score that low on the SAT, so his grades must be bogus. I’m confused why he didn’t pay someone to take the SATs for him like Derrick Rose did or did Kobe go to a school where the SATs are taken during the school day?
Derrick Rose’s bogus grades and SAT score caused the NCAA to vacate the one season he played with the University of Memphis. It will be interesting to see what college is brave enough to take Kobe Paras.
Also, "The Merchant of Menace" is a great nickname.Replies: @ben tillman
Of course, integration progressed faster in some places than in others. If I could go back in time to watch one game, it would be Notre Dame at Ole Miss in 1977. North versus South, and not many Black players on the field that day.
I saw Notre Dame play another road game that year, which they were lucky to win after trailing 17-7 at the end of three quarters. They went on to win the mythical national championship, but they lost a game along the way. — in Oxford. I can imagine the celebration that evening — the band must have played Dixie 100 times in the Grove. It would have been like the scene in Gone with the Wind when they learned war had broken out, except it would have been much more enthusiastic and lasted all night.
Look, if you view Left-wing thought as a religion, than everything falls into place. The NY Times is merely trying to rationalize away any bad action via apologetics--their religion is perfect, so all contrary actions/arguments are evil. All acts that conflict with their worldview are therefore tied together, so it's perfectly reasonable (in their minds) to link slavery, no gay "marriage", and Brexit.
It's really no different from a Salem witch trial prosecutor linking every negative in the community to the Devil and his witches. When you are the example of the only good, then anything bad that happens must be the Devil's doing, or his minions.
The problem is the Left's religion has, at its roots, a prophecy---that all history is improving to the great Equality. It's a very Whig view of history and religion. The Brexit, much like the fall of Communism, causes them mental pain and anguish because it contradicts their religious teachings that all their progress is forward instead of not.
So those articles aren't trying to hurt conservatives; they're trying to hold together the injured psyche of millions of True Believers who just cannot reconcile this with their religious world view.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
Superb analysis; you’ve nailed it. Brexit is a huge deal to the left because it shakes one of the very cornerstones of the liberal heretics’ dogma, i.e. the wholly-eschatological assumption that utopia can be humanly created.
Originally, the hash marks were only 10 yards from the sidelines. They’re 23 1/2 yards from the sidelines now.
Not in college (20 yards from sideline) or high school (53′ 4″ from the sideline, i.e., one third of the width of the field).
Bob Newhart, in one of his stand-up routines, has a bit about going to Confession in Chicago, where he could clearly hear radio broadcasts of the Notre Dame game coming from the other side. This could lead to some odd exchanges: “For your penance, I want you to say three Our Fathers and TACKLE THE SONOFAB**CH!”
Can we agree that the angle of a kick from a 10-yard hash is far more difficult than any modern location? Or that your play selection is limited when you’re so close to the sideline?
Yes.