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A large number of readers including Jeremy Burke of New Orleans protested that one of my stats – "the NFC South is on a combined 0-10 streak" – could not be correct because the Saints beat the Cowboys a week ago. A team's streak is what has happened consecutively, and right now the Saints' streak is "lost one." See the streak headings here. I further said of the Saints that they lost at home because their cheerleaders failed to appease the football gods by wearing naughty elf outfits. Many readers including Ava Jacobsen of Frankfort, Ky. pointed out the Indianapolis Colts' cheerleaders dressed as very naughty elves on "Monday Night Football," and the Colts cruised to victory.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback now has a Boss Button that eliminates the photos of cheer-babes in elf outfits and the 10,000-amp yellow background, allowing surreptitious TMQ reading at the office. John Bauer of State College, Penn. protests that when you switch to Boss Button view, the screen still displays a huge red Boss Button! Now John, do you really think America's management class is smart enough to figure out that clue?
In the bad sportsmanship category, Clint Scroggs of Canton, Ohio reports, "In the Ohio high school football Division 6 regional semifinals, Shadyside ran up the score to beat Beallsville 71-0. As big of a juggernaut as I knew Shadyside to be, I was confident that score would not be ignored by the football gods. In the state finals at Canton's Fawcett Stadium, the result was Maria Stein Marion 17, Shadyside 0." In the good sportsmanship category, Carl Grunewald of Platteville, Wis. notes, "Recently the Arizona State women's basketball team was set to play Rutgers in the championship of a tournament when a family member of an ASU player died unexpectedly. The game was canceled with neither team taking the loss, though Rutgers could have required ASU to forfeit. Rutgers deserves credit for showing such sportsmanship – they passed up a free W and did the right thing."
TMQ disputed gender-confused college nicknames such as Lady Statesmen or the South Carolina women's teams being Gamecocks. Jessica Collins of Myrtle Beach, S.C. writes, "College mascots do not represent athletes as much as they do schools, and in the case of the University of South Carolina, the Gamecock references a state hero from the Revolutionary War era, Thomas Sumter. His nickname was the Gamecock because of his toughness. Yes, Sumter was a man. But if this means the women's teams at SCAR (the "crawl" abbreviation ESPN gives us) are still gender confused, you should mention other prominent schools are also gender confused, or genderless. How about the Longhorns or the Buckeyes?" Longhorns are a breed of cattle, and cattle can be either male or female. So having the Texas women's teams be Longhorns seems fine – as long as you don't mind being named after a cow. The buckeye is a flowering tree that reproduces androgynously, which does raise all kinds of questions about Ohio State athletes of both genders. Mike Moser of Milwaukee writes, "I attended a Catholic high school in Wisconsin named Pius XI High. Our sports teams were the Popes. It was decidedly impossible to be a frightening Pope – unless we're talking Inquisition-era Popes, which Pius XI wasn't. Even more difficult was the case for the girls' basketball team, which had to be the Lady Popes."
Sunil Deshpande of Atlanta reports that when he traveled recently to Mumbai, India, leaving the United States made him eligible to purchase NFL Game Pass and watch any NFL game on the Internet. Tuesday Morning Quarterback continues to ask – why is viewing access to NFL games much better for those outside the United States than for the people inside the United States, whose taxes funded the stadiums that make NFL profits possible?
Will Greendyke of San Antonio wrote, "As an alum of Davidson College, I am flattered that you lauded my alma mater. However, I must contend that Davidson does not refer to itself as the Harvard of the South, rather as the Princeton of the South, because the two schools share historical ties both to Woodrow Wilson and to the Presbyterian church. Count me among those who refer to Princeton as the Davidson of the North."
TMQ's favorite obscure school, Indiana of Pennsylvania, has chosen Crimson Hawks as its new sports nickname. Alice Rudolph of Wilmette, Ill. writes that IUP may not be aware Crimson Hawk is also the name of an online comic book featuring a highly oversexed heroine. I can't link to the Crimson Hawk comic, but I'm betting it won't take you long to find it.
Readers including Amy Lisler of Golden, Colo. noted that one playoff hypothetical from Tuesday's column cannot happen – San Francisco cannot finish 8-8, win the NFC West and receive a home playoff game while Denver finishes 10-6 and opens the postseason on the road. This can't happen, she notes, because the Broncos and Niners face each other in the season finale. If Denver finishes 10-6, San Francisco's best finish is 7-9, and in that case Seattle is assured of winning the division. Amy also asked why I said Denver has already been mathematically eliminated from "opening" the playoffs at home – if the Broncos don't open at home, aren't they eliminated from any postseason date at home? Not necessarily. Denver's best potential seeding is fifth. The fifth seed must play on the road in the wild-card round, and if successful, in the divisional round. A fifth seed that wins its first two playoff contests could host a conference championship game if the opponent is the sixth seed. So though Denver cannot open the postseason at home, mathematically the Broncos remain alive for a home playoff game. It's unlikely, however – the fifth and sixth seeds have never met for a conference championship.
I asked for examples of television networks running ads for shows on competing networks, observing that you can't switch to the advertised show without first switching off the network you're watching. Many readers sent hilarious examples of networks accepting each other's ads. Sadly, in the Yahoo! e-mail beta breakdown of two weeks ago, much of the TMQ mailbox was wiped out, including the examples I'd been saving for an item on this, plus various other messages. If you've recently grumbled to yourself, "I sent Easterbrook a really clever Reader Animadversion and he never quoted it," this is why. Anyway here's an example I caught this week. NFL Network ran an ad for the Anderson Cooper show on CNN, and you can't switch to "360" without first switching off "Total Access." The amusing backstory is that CNN is owned by Time Warner – which is leading the cable carriers' fight to keep NFL Network off basic cable.
TMQ mentioned Cynar, the bitter liquor based on artichokes. Matt Heimer of Brooklyn, N.Y. reports, "In the mid-1990s, I dated a woman whose parents were medical doctors and Dutch expatriates. When entertaining, the good doctors served tumblers of Cynar before every meal, claiming artichokes contain an enzyme that cleans the tongue, thereby making your taste buds more sensitive and improving the experience of whatever you subsequently eat. Sure enough, the meals tasted pretty good. But I couldn't help thinking: Wouldn't anything taste better compared to a glass of artichoke-based bitters? Here's a link in which 'an expert on the psychology of taste' talks about the virtues of artichokes."
Alan Goldhammer of Bethesda, Md. writes, "You said the University of Michigan pioneered the Monster Man defense. You got the territory correct but the school wrong – it was Michigan State. The two Monster Men that I remember well were George Webster and Brad Van Pelt. As you know, both went on to NFL careers as linebackers."
Matt Saunders of Seattle objected to my saying that the Northwest storm of last week did not hit until after midnight on the night of the Niners-Seahawks game. I should have made clear I meant midnight Eastern, where I watched; the game ended at 8:29 local time. He writes, "As a resident of the Emerald City, I can confirm storm winds were blowing well before midnight on Thursday, December 14. Check the weather history for that night for Boeing Field, which is four miles south of Qwest Field. Wind was at a sustained 20 MPH by kickoff, and rose to almost 30 MPH while the game progressed. As Bryant Gumbel signed off, he said something to the effect of 'Goodnight from Seattle, where the storms never materialized.' As he said this I looked outside, and gusting winds were blowing the rain sideways!"
Regarding my item on the paradox of advertising fancy TVs on TV – if you've got an old television you can't appreciate the fancy image, and if you can appreciate the fancy new model, then you don't need a new television – Rabbi Daniel Plotkin of St. Louis writes, "I'll have to buy an HDTV just so that I can enjoy the commercials for HDTV." He adds, "It's bad enough to spend two months explaining that Christmas and Chanukah have nothing to do with each other, now next Monday all the places I like to go or eat will be closed, and following that, no TMQ next Tuesday! It is too much for one man to bear."
I said Christmas trees are not religious symbols – ornamented firs, Santa, chuckling elves and so on come from popular culture, not scripture. Nativity scenes are explicitly religious and don't belong at town halls or in city parks or at any government or public facility – but where's the harm, I wondered, in a lighted tree? Many readers countered that because Christmas trees denote in people's minds a Christian religious event, the Establishment Clause dictates they should not be on public property. Aaron Venar of Seattle wrote, "The Christmas tree is a religious symbol in the 'if it walks like a duck' sense. While those outside the fold recognize that Santa and the tree are not themselves religious, don't blame us for feeling they are intimately tied to Christmas and serve as billboards for Christianity." Aaron Kleinman of Charlottesville, Va. counters, "Perception is reality, and a Christmas tree is a symbol of a Christian religious holiday. Its lack of relationship to scripture is moot; when the tree is in a public place, it represents government endorsement of one religious view as opposed to another. That said, I'm all in favor of your Spendmas idea since I'd love to segregate fun things like Christmas trees, Santa Claus and Christmas cookies from anything that deals with public celebration of the birth of Christ."
Aaron, thanks for reminding me of Spendmas. A couple years ago, TMQ proposed that the December 25th event be split into two separate holidays: Christmas, a religious commemoration of the birth story of Jesus, and Spendmas, an entirely secular festival of gift-giving incorporating bright lights, Santa, elves and credit-card debt. Separating Christmas and Spendmas would resolve all the First Amendment issues. Merry Spendmas!
In addition to writing Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" and other books. He is also a contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Sound off to Page 2 here.
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