Quiet Declarations

I’ll post about something other than sports soon… but I did have to give Vanderbilt it’s due publicity for breaking into the Top 25 this week!

Need a pair of tickets to the Super Bowl?  Call an Indiana lawmaker, because for them to get tickets neither the rules nor the market need apply:

The Indianapolis Colts have given state politicians, including legislators, congressmen and local officials around Indianapolis, the chance to cut in front of season-ticket holders who didn’t get a change (sic) to buy tickets to the Feb. 4 game in Miami.

An e-mail from the team late Thursday offered each lawmaker the chance to purchase a pair of tickets at the face value of $600 apiece.

It’s not like this isn’t expected practice, but still, I don’t know where to begin.  Wait, yes I do — I can begin by pointing out how the absurdity of not calling it bribery when the team sells tickets to lawmakers at the $600 face value when their constituents are paying the market rate of (last I heard) $3500.

It passes the legal test, of course, but certainly not the laugh test in anyone’s mind.  Another laugh test question: how many lawmakers do you think are going to pass up the chance to buy something at $600 they could resell at $3500, or at the very least resell at a scalper’s discount to friends or family?  Even giving lawmakers the opportunity to consider an offer strikes me as an unsavory idea.  And what of the double-standard question for lawmakers in general?

Unrelated cheap shot: I especially liked the part where some of the people getting tickets live on the Indiana-Illinois border and have actually said they’ll be rooting for the Bears.  As a Titans fan, I recall that Indiana fans have something of a history when it comes to selling out their team for a little cash.

This week Vanderbilt basketball defeated #21 LSU on the road, then Ole Miss at home.  Since giving them a hard time, they’ve won three straight including two road wins against ranked teams.  Their reward?  Wednesday night they’re back on the road, this time at #1 Florida.  Gotta love the SEC.

On to pro football, where when I give a team a hard time I actually need them to not do the opposite.  I still contend that the Bears are nowhere near as good as the Colts.  Nonetheless, I admit I’m getting a little nervous that the Bears are going to resent ESPN choosing to forget about the NFC entirely and only talk about Peyton Manning all week.  Fortunately, Dr. Z has provided me with the solution to my dilemma by answering a mailbag question with pretty much exactly how I feel about this matchup:

From John of St. Charles, Ill.: “If the Bears win, will you give them any credit then?” (No, I won’t). “Or will your reasoning be that they got lucky and the Colts just had a bad game.” (Something like that. I’m working on it right now).

Again, I’ve talked a lot of trash about the NFC this year.  I’m not the only one — SI’s Michael Silver thinks the NFC is so bad that we should blow up the conferences and have a tourney selection to get more AFC teams in.  And he’d have given the Titans the #3 seed in the NFC!  But still, I probably need the Colts to win by 30 points in order to justify my level of ridicule, or else I’m going to be forced into the “obviously it was a fluke” defense.

Or I can always point to the Bears fan who’s been nominated for the “Worst Person in the World” award.

One more random fact: Bill Wade, the quarterback for the Bears’ 1963 NFL championship team, played for Vanderbilt.

Let me know if you meet anyone, ever, who’s surprised by the title of this article: Stadium Cost Tops Cap, Council Members Say. And I particularly like this line: “The members said they feared that allowing the change would open the way for spiraling costs on a project whose spending cap has grown from $535 million in December 2004 to $611 million.”  Really?  They fear that?  I’m reminded of an article I read over a year ago entitled True Costs of Stadium Go Beyond Budget.

I could turn the saga of building a baseball stadium in DC into a nice long post about how disenfrancised DC residents should feel about paying for a stadium that will be mostly filled with fans from Virginia and Maryland, or the scandalous methods governments use to fund faux public goods (yes, as good as I think a sports team is for a city, I’m saying a stadium is not a public good), or some combination of general mismanagement and incompetence, or why you shouldn’t enter into a legally enforceable arrangement with Major League Baseball before you have any idea how much it’s going to cost you. But you probably get the point.

Vandy rolls LSU to drop third straight ranked opponent 

Maybe I should insult their road record more often.

The DC celebration is January 29 beginning at 8:30 p.m. — details here. The objective is to honor Milton Friedman and to watch his new documentary “The Power of Choice” being released nationally on PBS (NPT if you prefer) on the same day.

If you’re not in DC and just want to watch the documentary, go here and select “check local listings.”

This Metro Store deal is ridiculous.  I’m not sure what I actually consider ridiculous — the concept itself, the prices, Metro’s lack of business sense in general — but something here deserves that label.

I won’t say much about it — only that this assessment pretty much sums up my feelings as well.  This was the president’s best speech in terms of delivery, but probably it will prove the least consequential.  He didn’t propose anything that has a serious chance of actually being implemented, not counting the troop movements that we’ve already been talking about.  For my money, it was just a lame duck speech designed not to lose any more ground.

I liked the first half of the Sports Guy’s self-reflection: the part where he considers that the Patriots have come to resemble the Yankees, with all due implications on the attitude of their fans. I didn’t so much care for the second part, where he tried to justify it by saying that the Pats are still celebrating their rise from nothing to glory after 40 years in the wilderness. Hello? Remember Super Bowls XX and XXXI?

DJ Gallo’s tongue-in-cheek recap of two years of Pats “chokes” is much more my style, I’ve gotta admit. A teaser: “I’ve been on the NFL beat here at Page 2 for the past two years, and in that time I’ve seen a clear trend developing with you in the playoffs. A sad and pathetic trend of postseason failure.”

(Thanks to The Agitator for both links.)

Still, the Patriots are really, really good. As is the entire AFC. They’re faster, smarter, more battle-tested, and better prepared. That’s why my pick is for Colts to beat the spread no matter where it’s set — as long as it doesn’t rain. Granted, I thought the Saints were going to win by 30 points, but I doubt the NFL will allow such an offense-unfriendly field in Miami. Can’t wait for February 4.

So it’s snowing outside, and I haven’t really felt like walking down the street in part because of the conditions, so when I got hungry I thought I might order a pizza.  But then I felt a twinge of guilt, and decided to just make something at home.  The guilt?  That my decision to order a pizza might increase the poor driver’s risk of harm.

Do you think I’m being absurd?  That the pizza driver knew what he was getting into by accepting the job in the first place?  That I’m actually denying him a tip (and I’m an excellent pizza driver tipper) he’d willingly drive to my house to collect?  That it’s stupid of me to assume changing my behavior will really do more good than harm for the average pizza driver in the long run?

To be honest, it probably is stupid.  Most people would assume that if the pizza driver feels driving around so much is too risky, it’s up to him to decide to change.  And I seriously doubt there would be much support for me proposing anti-delivery legislation to the city council.  I doubt most people would even support legislation banning pizza delivery in inclimate conditions because of the excessive risks delivery boys, in their hurry to deliver warm pizzas and maximize tips, pose to other drivers.  So I guess it’s good that I’m not in a position to impose my behavior today — however well intentioned — on everyone else.  Instead, better that I just try to persuade everyone of my kooky behavior, or let them try to persuade me to abandon it.

The moral of this post?  If you didn’t agree with my reasoning for not ordering a pizza, or at least don’t think I should be forcing my reasoning on others legislatively, I sure hope you’re not in favor of a smoking ban in private establishments – or that if you are, that you’re not proving yourself hypocritical by using worker or customer health as your argument.

And just a few days after I said Vanderbilt men’s basketball is miserable on the road, they go and surprise me by beating Kentucky on the road in Rupp Arena for the second time in row — which happens to also be the second time ever. That makes the ‘Dores 4-1 against ranked teams this season.

Vanderbilt is now 13-6 with 11 games left — 6 home and 5 away. This includes away games at #19 LSU and #24 Tennessee, and two games against #1 Florida. I figure to have a shot at the tournament they need to (a) win all their home games except Florida, (b) beat at least one more team on the road and not suffer any particularly embarrassing losses, and (c) win at least their first game in the conference tournament.

The way the team is playing now, that looks plausible. But if there’s one thing any Vanderbilt fan knows, you support your team every game but check your expectations at the door. So we’ll just see.

Two concepts you need to study up on before watching the Colts-Patriots game on Sunday: the cover 2 defense and Peyton Manning.

That’s all on this subject (for now).

Grant McKracken, whose blog largely focuses on questions of culture and commerce, uses American Idol to illustrate a fascinating business challenge that occurs every day: deciding what’s going to be popular.  It blows my mind to think about how much fame and fortune exists — or doesn’t! — pretty much entirely because of someone’s educated guess.  Or better yet, because the person making the call just felt it that day!

The Post reports that 20 vehicles in Southeast DC were vandalized last night, one of which turned out to be part of the FBI’s response team. A couple of incidentals went missing:

The stolen items included two MP5 machine guns, an MP5 training weapon, two M4 rifles, a .45-caliber semiautomatic weapon, a Remington 870 shotgun, a police radio, bullet-resistant vests, body armor, and a camera and photo lens, according to the police report and the FBI.

Good News: If you find these guys and take them down, there’s a $25,000 reward in it for you. Your weapon of choice can be a rifle, but handguns are prohibited in DC. You could also opt for a knife or your bare hands. Or hey, if you stumble across them and just want to call the police, that could work too — provided that their response time is better than the FBI guy who let 20 cars get vandalized and the security cases inside his alarmed government SUV broken into.

Anybody need me to spell out the bad news?

Last night, Vanderbilt beat #10 Alabama by 21 points. The Tennessean, predictably, reports that we’ve got the magic once again.

What the Vanderbilt Commodores have is a personality disorder. They play ridiculously well at home — games against ranked teams are a sight to see. Their gym was originally designed for multipurpose use as a theater, resulting in a deafening noise when the crowd is pumped. But when they play against a nonranked team that doesn’t inspire a sellout, or when they go anywhere on the road, the magic seems to just go away.

Home record to date: 10-2 with wins against three then-ranked teams and a loss to #8 Georgetown.
Away record to date: 2-3 with wins against Rice and, seriously, the Puerto Rico Mayaguez Bulldogs.

You figure it out.