On Monday night it finally happened: a Harvard-to-Harvard NFL touchdown as Ryan Fitzpatrick threw to Cameron Brate for six with the entire football artificial universe watching. During the play, Ali Marpet of Division 3 Hobart was blocking. So on Monday Night Football the Buccaneers fielded a lineup including guys who, in college, played against Cornell, Dickinson, Lafayette, and Worcester Polytechnic.
At the end of the contest, Fitzpatrick was on pace to throw for 6,560 yards and 59 touchdowns, both of which would best the league’s single-season records. Set by Peyton Manning, they are 5,477 passing yards and 55 touchdowns.
In the NFL it is common for September to include gaudy passing statistics—Patrick Mahomes of Kansas City is on pace to throw for 69 touchdowns—because defensive backfields take a while to jell. There were several coverage breakdowns in the Pittsburgh at City of Tampa contest, capping a weekend of coverage breakdowns across the league. By Halloween the busted coverages will be, by and large, eliminated, and passing stats will tail off. Manning’s passing records are safe, while no one will ever come close to his all-time record for most commercial endorsements.
Will a record be set for most times roughing the passer is called?
This penalty was assessed four times in the Steelers-Bucs game. By the third quarter, the crowd was surprised if a quarterback was touched and roughing the passer was not called. Last season, the average was 6.7 roughing the passer calls per week of NFL play. So far this season the average is 11 per week. And confusion reigns. On Monday Night Football, when a Tampa defender brushed Ben Roethlisberger’s helmet, that was a personal foul. When a Pittsburgh receiver slammed his hand hard into a Tampa defender’s helmet, causing the latter’s head to snap backward, that was legal.
Last week TMQ proposed that “tackling the quarterback is now illegal.” Green Bay at Washington, Clay Matthews sacked Alex Smith with a perfectly clean hit—Smith hadn’t thrown, he was holding the ball. Yet Matthews was flagged for roughing the passer. Aware of how stupid the call looked, the league immediately defended it.
Down in Atlanta, twice in the fourth quarter Matt Ryan was hit in identical style—no penalties. In the same game that Matthews was penalized for contact that would have been considered clean in golf, a R*dsk*ns player lifted Aaron Rodgers up and body-slammed him. No flag.
It’s pretty obvious that even the new full-time NFL officials have no idea how to call contact with the passer consistently. So TMQ repeats his proposal from last week: Quarterbacks should wear flags, and it should only be legal to pull their flags. I am in earnest!
In college football news, Stanford at Oregon was one of the best games in many moons. Because the contest was played on the West Coast and continued to overtime, on the East Coast many right-thinking persons had gone to bed before the really fun stuff.
Oregon leading 31-28, the Ducks made a first down at midfield with about two minutes remaining in regulation. ABC announcer Kirk Herbstreit declared, “They should just kneel—they don’t need to run another play.” They did, and perhaps you can imagine the rest.
Should Oregon just have knelt? Stanford held one time out, and college since 2008 has used the same 40-/25-second game clock/play clock as the NFL. It’s impossible to do calculations about this in your head at game speed, so many coaches have on their clipboards, or nearby, a grid showing clock, down-and-distance, and time outs remaining that shows when it’s safe to kneel. Such a grid would have indicated that beginning to kneel on first down would have led to Oregon needing to snap on fourth down—the game would not have ended with the Ducks in victory formation.
There are two funky possibilities for the fourth down that Oregon never reached (see below). But Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal’s fatal error was not to call a time out himself and tell his ballhandlers to slide rather than struggle for an extra yard.
At 51 seconds showing in regulation, Oregon tailback C.J. Verdell swept wide, was surrounded by defenders, and rather than slide—every high school coach watching the game was yelling “get on the ground!” at the TV screen—struggled for an extra yard. The ball was punched out and, well, you know.
The Ducks did not need an extra yard: What they needed was for Verdell to get on the ground. But football players are mentally programmed to struggle for that extra yard. Cristobal had all three of his time outs. He should have waited till the play clock reached 1, called time out, and told his quarterback and running backs, Do not struggle for yards: As soon as you feel defenders nearby, cradle the ball and go limp.
Stats of the Week #1. Jon Gruden has not won a game since returning as the NFL’s highest-paid-ever coach.
Stats of the Week #2. Since TMQ predicted they would make the Super Bowl, the Texans are 4-15.
Stats of the Week #3. The Philadelphia Eagles defense has gone 22 consecutive games without allowing a score in the final two minutes.
Stats of the Week #4. Joe Flacco is 17-2 in Baltimore in September.
Stats of the Week #5. The Dolphins are on a 12-3 stretch when Ryan Tannehill starts.
Stats of the Week #6. Chargers at Rams was the NFL’s first Los Angeles versus Los Angeles contest in 24 years. The NFL has not seen a New York City versus New York City contest since the Giants moved to New Jersey in 1976.
Stats of the Week #7. The Broncos are on a 1-5 stretch in games that start at 1 p.m. ET; the Raiders are on a 5-20 stretch in games that start at 1 p.m. ET.
Stats of the Week #8. Tennessee is on a 6-2 stretch versus Jacksonville.
Stats of the Week #9. Since kickoff of the NFC championship, the Vikings are 1-2-1.
Stats of the Week #10. Since kickoff of the Super Bowl, the Patriots are 1-3.
Sweet Plays of the Week. Miami is quietly 3-0, and Sunday, versus Oakland, rolled out multiple sweet plays. Wide receiver Albert Wilson threw a 52-yard touchdown strike to Jakeem Grant off an end-around action; Wilson went 74 yards for a touchdown off the jet-sweet-flip (more on that action below); Grant caught a multiple-misdirection touchdown pass from Ryan Tannehill. Sweet, sweet, and sweet.
Sour Play of the Week. Detroit leading 13-0, New England reached 3rd-and-1 on the Lions 16 with a little less than a minute before intermission, the Patriots holding all their time outs. As soon as the ball was spotted, Tom Brady rushed the Flying Elvii up to the line to quick-snap for a tailback dive.
Every scout who breaks down NFL film knows Bill Belichick likes the quick-snap on short-yardage. But the Lions are coached by Matt Patricia, Belichick’s former defensive coordinator, who saw the tactic over and over again from the New England sideline. As New England hurried to the line, Detroit defenders were yelling to each other to expect a quick-snap dive. They’d been warned by Patricia that this would happen in this situation, and were ready, dropping the runner for a loss. In came the field goal unit. New England’s failure to score a touchdown just before halftime was the turning point in the contest.
TMQ has noted that Belichick’s decision-making is out of sync. At the Super Bowl, he made a huge error by sending in the placekicker on 4th-and-inches. Last week at Jax, he made a huge error by sending in the punter on 4th-and-inches with his team down two scores in the fourth quarter. Now he has the Patriots go quick-snap when they’ve got three time outs to spend and ends up losing yards. On the upside, the unused time outs can be donated to charity.
Sweet ‘n’ Sour Play of the Week. Mega-underdog Buffalo leading Minnesota 10-0, the Bills faced 2nd-and-11 on the Vikings’ 26. Josh Allen faked up the middle; then faked a flare pass right to the fullback; then looked downfield to tight end Jason Croom, who had run an “up” pattern. The 26-yard touchdown reception gave the Bills a 17-0 lead. Sweet.
Going into last season’s NFC title tilt, Minnesota had the number-one pass defense in the league. Then the Vikings allowed 352 yards passing to backup quarterback Nick Foles. Concerned, they spent their number-one draft choice on cornerback Mike Hughes. Now, the Vikes’ secondary has been carved up by a rookie quarterback making his first road start. And as the undrafted Croom shot down the field, everyone in the Minnesota secondary, including Hughes, ignored him. Sour.
Sweet bonus: Sports bars are full of patrons complaining about offensive play-calling—what about defensive playcalling?
In the first six quarters of the season, versus Baltimore and the Chargers, the Bills surrendered 75 points. At halftime of the Chargers contest, Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott, himself a former defensive coordinator, took over defensive playcalling from the Bills’ defensive coordinator. In the six quarters since—second half of LA/B, then at Minnesota—Buffalo has allowed 9 points.
McDermott didn’t change the defensive scheme and he didn’t send more blitzers. (About the dumbest thing anyone—from booth announcer to the patrons in sports bars—can say about football is, “They should blitz more.”) What McDermott’s done is a much better job of calling fronts: the looks a defense present to an offense. Calling the fronts is Hidden Aspect of Football #1. Some coaches are a lot better at it than others.
Sure You Just Missed the Super Bowl, But What Have You Done for Us Lately? The Vikings and Jaguars reached the most recent conference title tilts, just one game away from the Super Bowl; both played at home on Sunday; both were relentlessly booed by their home crowds.
Even Superhero Movies Have Gone Fashionably Gloomy. Avengers: Infinity War is closing in on Black Panther as the box-office champion of 2018; at the current pace three of the top five flicks of the year, by gross, will be superhero fare. Countless superheroes rule the Cineplex and networks. Marvel has the Avengers, the X-Men, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Fantastic Four on celluloid; Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and others on Netflix. DC has Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman on celluloid; the Flash, Supergirl, Green Arrow, and others on CW.
Superheroes from the B-list (“sorry sir, you are not on the A-list, you will have to park your own flying car”) such as Watchmen, the Teen Titans, the Suicide Squad, and the Social Security-eligible Justice Society (aging spandex wearers such as Jay Garrick and Doctor Fate) have had or soon will have their days. An entire superhero streaming channel just weighed in. The megabucks Captain Marvel flick is about to launch, featuring Brie Larson as Carol Danvers; DC’s preemptive strike is to already have a character named Kara Danvers. TMQ asks: With so much superpower, how can there even be a cat stuck up a tree?
Hollywood has come a long way since 1986, when the first big-budget Marvel feature, Howard the Duck, was a stinkbomb that nearly put an entire studio under. Superheroes caused sufficient anxiety for movie moguls that in 2000 there was concern the first brooding-mutant movie, X-Men, would crater, too. Now superhero movies are cranked out the way Westerns once were.
Studios have warmed to the superhero genre because computer animation decouples action scenes from annoying constraints like laws of physics. Marketing departments like the genre because explosions, bright colors, and perfect-10 bodies are self-explanatory, enhancing international sales. Actors like the genre because starring in a CGI flick does not require any acting. You look great, wear form-fitting outfits, and hurl energy bolts. Basically you pretend to be a god, which is how most Hollywood stars think they should be treated in the first place.
Audiences that have seen 4,755 superhero movies still form lines for #4,756. Howard the Duck was a satire. Contemporary superhero films are so ultra-serious, the fate of the universe always hangs in the balance. Audiences clearly prefer superhero movies that take themselves very seriously.
The worst thing about today’s superhero flick is the cataclysmic battle scene at the end, in which whole cities are smashed (though no one is killed!) as end-of-the-world music plays. Final-scene action often makes zero sense—don’t even bother thinking, Wait, how did she get over there? The scenes have become so formulaic, you can skip the final 15 minutes of any recent superhero flick and all you’ll miss is the post-credits teaser for whoever comes back to life in the sequel. Infinity War cut out the middleman and went directly to the formulaic cataclysmic battle scene, which took up the entire film.
Thanos, supervillain of Infinity War, is depicted as a sort of antihero. In the movie, he kills half of all intelligent life in the entire cosmos. Though killing half of all intelligent life does sound rather negative, Thanos is presented as engaged in a noble act. He declares that “because resources are finite,” unless there is a cosmic slaughter that decreases the number of people and other intelligent beings, the universe will become depleted, causing the cosmic ecology to collapse. Sure, it would be nice if Thanos wasn’t a mass murderer, but somebody’s got to protect the environment. After half the people in the universe have been wiped out, Thanos smiles upon a peaceful, richly green planet whose ecology was instantly restored by getting rid of those awful resource-users who eat steers and pump petroleum!
Jonathan Last argues that some actually consider Thanos a movie hero because he gets rid of unwanted population. Good thing Thomas Malthus wasn’t 30 feet tall, purple, immortal, and could teleport himself.
That there are too many people is a running Hollywood conceit. The Genesis Device that was the MacGuffin of two Star Trek movies was created, Dr. Carol Marcus says, “to solve the cosmic problem of population.” Fox’s 2011 sci-fi show Terra Nova, the most expensive television series ever made, began with the premise that in the year 2149, population growth had overwhelmed the carrying capacity of the Earth. The profitable Hunger Games franchise assumes that a future United States will have force fields and antigravity platforms but will be running out of radishes.
The notion that population is out of control appeals to Hollywood because this is a super-simplistic idea, which means stars and executives don’t have to think about it for more than 20 seconds. Also, it seems like a reason to ban the unwashed from beaches and freeways.
Various lefties and Hollywood trendies contend that we’re running out of resources because of the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent of cosmic matter that is consumed as food and hydrocarbon fuel. Yet they casually accept that stupendous amounts of dark matter are emanating from nowhere all the time.
Malthus’s big conceptual error was to assume population would always increase faster than food supply and resource discovery. Instead it’s almost always been the other way around. In the postwar era, global agricultural production has increased ahead of population in all but two years, while many resources, including fossil fuel and primary metals, have gone into oversupply.
Of course, these trends might change: Some horrible development may be in store. But runway-growth assumptions regarding population do not match actual experience. Jeff Bezos said in May 2018 that Earth “will have to stop growing” soon because room and resources are running out. The United Nations, whose demographic branch has an excellent track record, projects that global population will peak in about 2075 and begin a long, gradual decline. Odds are that room and resources will be ample through this transition. Once spaceflight becomes practical, above us in the galaxy are essentially infinite resources—sorry, Thanos—regardless of how many civilizations may be up there too.
Whether the peoples of the Earth can get along with each other is a much more powerful question than whether there will be enough food, fiber, fuel, and ore. Yet Hollywood keeps rolling out nonsense about too many people. Hollywood rolls out zombies, time travel, and other nonsense, too, but those are obvious silliness. Population growth sounds to audiences like it might be a genuine problem.
Spoiler alert: In an upcoming movie, Captain Marvel will reverse the deaths of half the intelligent beings in the universe, bringing all the Avengers money-makers back to life. Then she will face off with Thanos. Carol Danvers—when you heroically defeat Thanos, destroy his false intellectual analysis, too!
In Praise of Drew Brees. Three weeks ago TMQ noted, “Drew Brees isn’t just a short guy who exceeds expectations: He is among the best professional athletes of our moment.” Sunday, scoring the touchdown that forced overtime, Brees did a spin move that juked two Falcons defenders—two guys who make their livings as professional football defensive players!
And there was setting the all-time NFL completions mark while throwing for 396 yards and scoring the winning touchdown in overtime. Brees has thrown for at least 300 yards in seven of his last nine outings versus Atlanta.
Was Aesthetically Beautiful. Tuesday Morning Quarterback maintains that some football plays are aesthetically beautiful. In Raiders at Dolphins, Jordy Nelson of Oakland and Kenny Stills of Miami caught long passes over-the-shoulder while running full-speed. Why is an over-the-shoulder deep catch aesthetically beautiful? I can’t tell you, any more than I can say why one painter’s work is beautiful and another’s is not. But there it is.
Was Not Aesthetically Beautiful. Packers at Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons, there were half a dozen busted coverage downs—not ones on which the receiver beat the defender, but ones on which no defender even tried to cover the receiver. Both teams yielded long gainers off busted coverages. Yikes stripes!
Just to prove it was no fluke the Packers dropped four passes as “clean” drops—hit the receiver in the hands, dropped like a live ferret. Green Bay’s Lance Kendricks clean-dropped a fourth quarter third-down throw that preceded the Pack punt that put the contest under Washington’s control.
Captain Marvel Isn’t the Only One Who Can Reverse Outcomes. The grandees of Los Angeles recently reversed their decision to create a new Oscar for outstanding achievement in popular film. Some said the category was ridiculous, but when has that stopped Hollywood? Your columnist suspects the real reason for the reversal is that the Oscar for most popular had to go to Black Panther, relieving the moguls of granting that flick any serious award. Boosters want Black Panther to grab the brass ring, namely, Best Picture.
Though it’s now been a full generation that the lion’s share of Hollywood money flows from sci-fi and superheroes, Oscar voters continue to shun both genres. In 2013, when Oscar host Seth MacFarlane brought William Shatner onstage, he was slyly mocking the industry, which craves the cash that Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC generate, yet won’t honor them. Why? Top actors, producers, and directors of Hollywood want to exist in a pretense of being artists. No one believes superhero pabulum and space-opera fantasies are art. So they can’t be allowed to carry off any of the major Oscars.
The pretense of art is embedded even in the name of the Oscar organization—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Chosen in 1927, this moniker was modeled on the name of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which at the time was better known than it is today. That will change next month as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences—deeply significant to literature, academia, and research—welcomes a newly elected fellow named Barack Obama.
Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk. Trailing 46-0 in the third quarter at Michigan, Nebraska kicked a field goal. The Cornhuskers were so far behind that it didn’t matter whether they kicked, went for it, or started square dancing. But there was a solid reason for the field goal: to keep a goose egg off the coach’s resume. That way, when Scott Frost—bear in mind, a weasel who walked out on his promises at his previous school—faces his year-end performance review, one of the complaints will not be, “We got shut out at Michigan.”
Trailing the Longhorns 31-16, TCU punted with 2:44 remaining. This meant the Horned Frogs were certain to lose but held down the margin of defeat. Had TCU head coach Gary Patterson ordered his charges to try for a first down, probably TCU still would have lost, but the margin of defeat might have been worse. In the NFL, only the won-loss record matters. In Power Five college football, though, style points are huge. Patterson wanted his boosters to be able to say, “Well, it was close at the end.”
Trailing LA/A 35-20, or two scores, in its “away” game in the city where it’s based, LA/B reached 4th-and-goal on the Rams 8 in the fourth quarter. Anthony Lynn sent out the placekicker—which left the Chargers behind … still by two scores. How does it help to go from being behind by two scores to being behind by two scores? You’re just eight yards away, try for a touchdown! Fourth-and-goal from the 8 is a tough row to hoe, but the Bolts had to score a touchdown there or the contest was over, which is what happened.
Manly-Man Plays of the Week. Game scoreless, Kansas City faced 4th-and-1 on the Santa Clara 19. The Chiefs went for it with a sweet play—Patrick Mahomes ran a college-style option right with a pitch man trailing, as another Chief set up in the left-flat and waved for the ball as if the play was to him. Soon Kansas City had a first-possession touchdown for the third consecutive game.
Leading 17-0, Buffalo faced 4th-and-goal on the Minnesota 1 and went for it. A 20-0 lead would have been nice, but the touchdown the Bills scored on the play set in motion the week’s big upset.
Oakland leading 7-0, the Raiders faced 4th-and-goal on the Miami 1. Gruden the Elder had his charges go for it—but with a nothingburger play (no shift, no misdirection). Do a little dance if you want to gain that yard! (Technically the play was, as Jack Shafer of Politico would say, a nothingburger with cheese.) The Raiders are sixth in yards gained and 28th in points scored—goal line decisions like this are a reason why.
Bucs, Steelers Both Have Issues. Last season City of Tampa ranked last in defense. After an offseason of numerous trades for defensive players, and all top draft choices invested in defense, City of Tampa now ranks 31st in defense. The Buccaneers repeatedly missed tackles, often using poor form. Tampa should continue to have a terrific offense, regardless of what happens with the Ryan Fitzpatrick/Jameis Winston mess that is about to begin. But if the Bucs can’t make a simple open-field tackle, offensive stats may not matter.
Pittsburgh should continue to have a terrific offense—so far the Steelers are second overall for yards gained—regardless of what happens with the Le’Veon Bell mess. But the Steelers lead the league in penalties with 44, more than double the number of accepted penalties so far against the typical club. If Pittsburgh can’t run a play without drawing a flag, offensive stats may not matter.
Defense Starts Comebacks. TMQ’s Law of Comebacks Holds: Defense starts comebacks, offense stops them. From the third-quarter juncture at which Oregon led 24-7 and had 1st-and-goal at the Stanford 1-yard line, the Cardinal defense posted this result: defensive touchdown, three-and-out, three-and-out.
When Oregon reached goal-to-go in overtime, Stanford knocked down (“defensed”) passes in the end zone on consecutive snaps, then intercepted the Ducks’ fourth-down last gasp. It was solid defense, not flashy offense, that carried the day.
Rush Seven If You Want to Block That Punt! Last week TMQ noted that too many NFL coaches view the punt as a routine down and do not draw up fake punts. Few go after punts, as well. On most NFL punts there is only a token rush. LA/B punting from its own end zone, LA/A sent seven men—block, recovered for a touchdown. New Orleans rushed seven for a punt block at Atlanta, setting up a Saints touchdown.
Another Old Rocket’s Final Blastoff. Last week the final Delta II rocket shot skyward on a bright flame then vanished into the ocean of night, carrying a NASA Earth-observation satellite. The Delta II, which first flew in 1990, bowed out with 100 consecutive successful launches—none too shabby. The rocket’s forebear, the original Delta, began flying to space in 1960; the Delta II is now retired; the Delta III was a design failure; the Delta IV remains in occasional use for large payloads.
Of the original moon-race rockets, the Titan and Saturn are long since retired; the Delta series is down to its rare-use Delta IV variant; only the Atlas V, descendant of the Atlas that carried John Glenn into orbit, remains common. Though, practically everything about the Atlas V is different from the original Atlas.
Vikings, Bills to Meet in Super Bowl Sometime During Human History. Bills at Minnesota was Sunday’s big surprise. TMQ continues to hope a future Super Bowl will pair Minnesota versus Buffalo. Since these teams are a combined 0-8 in the ultimate contest, if they met in the Super Bowl, one of them would have to win!
Once More with Feeling—Georgetown Prep Is Not in Georgetown! Two weeks ago TMQ noted consecutive Supreme Court nominees—Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—are alums of Georgetown Prep, a private school that offers high-equality education but deceptively uses the Georgetown name for status. In fact, the school is 15 miles from Georgetown.
Deceptive marketing of Georgetown Prep is not exactly the most important thing going on in the Kavanaugh nomination. Still, it was disturbing last week to see, on the New York Times op-ed page, the assertion that Kavanaugh attended “a Georgetown prep school.” The article has since been repaired.
The factual error was small and did not diminish the writer’s larger point. But despite months of saturation coverage of the Kavanaugh nomination—and, following the sexual assault allegations, an entire week of saturation coverage of the Maryland prep school scene—no one on the New York Times editorial pages knew that Georgetown Prep is not in Georgetown. This may sound a bit William Allen White, but you’ve got to get the little things correct to convince readers you’ve got the big things correct.
Wealthy parents who send their boys to Georgetown Prep are buying status—one of the many inequality-generators in the United States. This is especially striking since Montgomery County, Maryland, where Georgetown Prep is located, has several of the best public high schools in the nation. Some parents must seek private academies to get their children away from awful public schools and the unions, corrupt school boards, and city-hall cronies intent on defining failure down. But this is not a factor in Bethesda, Maryland, where Kavanaugh grew up—the public high schools there are exceptionally good and were in his youth.
For those like Kavanaugh who live in areas with high-quality public education, attending an elitist prep institution is a way to purchase social status and insider connections. The same is true for Christine Blasey Ford, whose parents sent her to Bethesda’s expensive and exclusionary Holton-Arms School, rather than to the excellent nearby public high schools, and in doing so purchased status.
Gorsuch and, if confirmed, Kavanaugh, hail from a prep school that 99 percent of American families cannot afford. What does it say about the Supreme Court that even long past the Gilded Age this lifetime-tenure aristocracy still has members who attended expensive prep schools in order to buy their way into status?
Because society benefits from smart, well-educated federal judges and justices, one would hope those chosen for such positions had done well in the classroom. But snobby private education is hardly the sole way to learn.
The Supreme Court’s sense of aristocracy begins at the prep level. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are big-money prep. John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor went to private Catholic high schools that restrict admissions via exams; Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan attended public magnet high schools whose admission exams barred most of their peers. Public magnets may be an important way to assist smart children who are born into average families. But like expensive private academies, they take the chosen aside at a young age and tell them they are different from the average people they will now rise above.
There isn’t anybody on the Supreme Court who started at a regular public high school, and Kavanaugh would maintain that elitism.
Twilight of the Frat Boy. Kavanaugh belonged to Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale. Is the Kavanaugh imbroglio the beginning of the end for the college fraternity and for the entitled-frat-boy approach to life?
There have been numerous instances in which frat rituals led to deaths, yet in most cases, colleges did little or nothing. Here is Caitlin Flanagan on the recent Penn State frat hazing death; I also commend to readers the 2001 book Wrongs of Passage, by Hank Nuwer, which is mainly about harm caused by frats, but does not overlook harm done by sororities.
Of course college students who did not join frats or sororities are still exposed to risks including blotto drinking, and of course the primary risk of fraternities is boorishness (and of sororities, pettiness). Still, the unwillingness of college administrations to reform Greek life shows that most colleges care more about the alumni support that frats and sororities bring in than about the young lives lost.
College administrators can be indifferent because lots of boys still want to join fraternities and lots of girls still want to attend the parties. What if they stopped? Just as demand, not supply, drives markets—if people stop buying, it doesn’t matter what’s in stores—desire to join frats and sororities keeps them going. Perhaps now that will change.
In the emerging era of social media—with everything recorded and easily accessed by anyone anywhere—the fraternity/sorority combination of too much alcohol plus record-keeping is going to start ruining people’s careers long after they leave ivy-covered campuses. Once word of that gets around, incoming students won’t want to rush, and that will be that.
Your columnist first encountered this idea from the lawyer and legal activist Ted Frank, who 20 years ago began saying that eventually, frats and sororities would be viewed with the same disdain that men-only rich-only country clubs are viewed today. Social media now amplifies this process.
Could the Browns Beat Old Dominion? The Cleveland Browns won for the first time in nearly two years while Old Dominion defeated Power Five program Virginia Tech, outperforming the spread by 42 points. Here’s my favorite fact about the latter contest: The week before the 0-3 Monarchs beat the country’s #13 team, they lost to UNC-Charlotte, which last season was 1-11.
College upset bonus: as of Monday, Duke and Kentucky are ranked. Not the Duke and Kentucky basketball teams, the Duke and Kentucky football teams.
How to Lose to a Team That Had Four Victories in Its Previous 50 Games. Jersey/B possession results in the second half at Cleveland: punt, fumble, punt, field goal, interception, interception. In the NFL’s recondite passer rating system, if every throw a quarterback attempts clangs to the ground incomplete, his rating is 39.6. Sam Darnold’s rating was 38.2.
Never Tempt the Football Gods. Scoring to make the count Kansas City 35, Santa Clara 16, late in the game, a group of 49ers did an elaborate choreographed end zone dance. Don’t dance when you’re losing!
I’d Rather Be Blue. Celebrating their first primetime home game in many a moon, the Browns painted their end zones orange and brown—except the optical-illusion effect made the end zones appear orange and green. For their parts, Browns players dressed as walking Tootsie Rolls.
Titans at Jax involved the home team in blue pants nearly identical to the visiting team’s blue jerseys. Players were so hard to tell apart that the game seemed like a malfunctioning Windows XP screen saver. A couple of years ago Tennessee and Jacksonville played one of those infernal Thursday night alternative-uniform “color rush” games in which the Jaguars looked so much like walking mustard bottles that the box score should have said the murder was committed by Colonel Mustard, in the film room, with the game plan.
What Oregon Might Have Done. Had Oregon reached fourth down with around 10 seconds showing at the end of regulation, rather than risk a punt, the Ducks might have had their quarterback deliberately run backward toward his own end zone, ideally killing the clock and, as defenders approached, stepping into the end zone and “giving himself up” for a deliberate safety. Oregon was ahead by three, so would have won by one point. (There’s no free kick on a safety as time expires.) But no one ever practices the 50-yard deliberate safety. Trying to draw this play up in the sand, or on a Microsoft Surface, while on national television, would be risky.
Alternatively, the Oregon quarterback could have taken the snap, rolled out of the pocket and heave-hoed a pass through the back of the Stanford end zone. The clock shouldn’t stop until the pass contacts the ground—not when the pass goes out of bounds, when it contacts the ground. But what if the clock operator doesn’t know that obscure rule? What if the quarterback doesn’t first get out of the pocket and is called for intentional grounding? This is a funky alternative that sounds a lot better in a sports tavern than it might be on the field.
Adventures in Officiating. Twice in the Stanford at Oregon contest, officials signaled Ducks’ touchdown, then took the points off the board after review. In both cases, the player did not score, so the overturn was correct.
Buffalo leading Minnesota 17-0, the Bills ran the jet-sweep-flip, in which the snap barely touches the quarterback’s hands, then is flipped forward to the sweep guy. The sweep guy dropped the ball. A reason college coaches like this action is that when the ball is dropped, it’s just an incomplete pass. But at Minnesota the NFL zebras—who haven’t seen much of this play—called it a fumble. Bills coach Sean McDermott challenged, and the ruling stayed a fumble. Botched call, botched replay review at headquarters.
The NFL needs to clean this up because the jet-flip is catching on. Miami ran a jet-flip sweep for a touchdown versus Oakland, and the official scorer correctly called the play a forward pass. The Rams and Cowboys ran the jet-slip Sunday. The similar University of Florida play in which the quarterback shovels to a tight end running sideways—if it’s dropped, it should be an incompletion—has already been used in several NFL games this season, including by Oakland at Denver.
Next Week. Georgetown Prep opens a satellite campus in Dubai.
