Bittersweet. Wonder if any TV contracts talk could had been better had a team in the Pac-12 won in the past few years.

Now i'm left wondering who to root for. Feel like we compete more against Michigan for players, so probably go with Washington and old Pac-12 pride.

Is it just me or is there an abundance of players (many who are starters) that aren’t playing in their team’s bowl game because they have entered the Transfer Portal? For example, Ohio States QB who lead the team to an 11-1 record went into the Transfer Portal and isn’t playing in the Cotton Bowl. As a fan, I would be really pissed that he wasn’t playing in the bowl game for my school. They aren’t precluded from playing, are they? It’s bad enough when a player decides not play because they don’t want to risk injury prior to the NFL combines/draft, but I can at least understand that when millions of dollars are on the line. Are they afraid their transfer opportunities will evaporate if they are injured in the bowl game? Just another new reality of college football that is ruining the game.

Stanford is back at the Southern Scuffle which began yesterday (Happy New Year!). They sent 14 wrestlers and were in first after rounds of 32 and 16.
They have 6 wrestlers in the Championship Bracket and 6 in the consolation rounds and are in first place over Indiana with a 34.5 point lead and 41 point lead over Oklahoma in 3rd. The leads are massive!

In the finals are Cardenas at 157, Miranda at 141, and Provo at 125. Ming at 285 and Stemmet at 197 are waiting for their semi-final match. We have 5 wrestlers that will be in the consolation semi-finals. Wojcikiewicz (184) will be wrestling for 7th and Norman (174) will be wrestling for 5th.

Their highest finish at this meet has been 4th and it seems alike a very weak field without any of the wrestling powerhouses there, but Stanford is running away with it.

Originals contest (Rose)
Michigan > Alabama

Add-Ons contest (Sugar)
Washington > Texas

QED

Thank you for supplying the second least guessed word in today’s NY Times Spelling Bee game — MAMMON

Would not have guessed it without your help. 🤣

Read that here.

Read that here.

Read that here.

We all can grieve about Stanford's failure to recruit Kiki Rice or Helena Hildago, but we all should acknowledge Telana Lepolo's talent. Yesterday Talana was great -- 20 PT, 6 3FG, 6 A. 2 RB. As the GoStanford write up said, "Lepolo is the first Stanford player to make six 3s and have six assists in the same game since Jeanette Pohlen in 2010." But Talana's game was not a revelation; it was a confirmation.

Last year, Talana had a high FG% (.424); Haley's was (.432). Talana had far fewer TO's than Haley (65 versus 99). Talana's 3FG percentage (25/67 .363) was second only to Hannah Jump. Talana's sinking multiple 3FG has been not too common but was not an "aberration." Last year, she hit five 3FG's against Creighton.

Talana did not cause us to lose to Mississippi State in March Madness. Haley Jones probably did. Talana in that game was not great -- 2/5 -- .400 FG%, but Haley, who was so great in so many games, was the unsuccessful gunner -- 7/19 .368 FG% with 5 TO.

On offense, this year, we can expect opponents to repeat Cal's strategy. Cal collapsed on Cam and Kiki. Cam and Kiki kicked the ball inside out to the open Talana who promptly sank 3's.

.On defense, this year, Talana and other outside guards have the luxury of guarding opponents close because Cam or Kiki are protecting the rim, They cannot guard too close because opposing guards who race pass them expose Cam and Kiki to committing fouls.

This year's team for me is more fun to watch than last year's. They actually play like a team without Jones and Betts and with Cam and Iriafen and Agara.

Talana is far superior to our alternatives.

Keep shooting Talana.

This was funny…

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Read that here. I'm heading back to Maples right now.

I expect this to be an interesting game.

Particularly if we get a decent lead who will be on the floor?

Surprised there wasn't a better turnout.

Haase in Death Valley
OTeam & Haase on Mountain High: Login to view embedded media
and On Mointain High: Calyle, Stojo & Haase
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Just 2 days separation

Bottom Lines: 'Do Your Job' & 'Even Keel, Steady as You Go'

STFU.

“A man/team has got to know his limitations.” —Dirty Harry

Read that here.

Read and watch that here.

Former US NIH Director has revised his thinking: County'sHealth Director Cody should reflect on Collins...
this week In 'National Review':

Francis Collins’s Covid Confession​

Francis Collins speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., May 2, 2022. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

By RICH LOWRY
December 29, 2023 6:30 AM
352 CommentsGiftListen
Scientists during the pandemic had to act fast on little information, but they shouldn’t have participated in moralistic bullying and propaganda.

​

BRITTANY BERNSTEIN
The public-health officials are getting around to admitting the fallibility of public-health officials.
The former head of the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic and current science adviser to President Biden, Francis Collins, has noted that he and his colleagues demonstrated an “unfortunate” narrow-mindedness.
This is a welcome, if belated, confession.
Not too long ago, anyone who said that epidemiologists might be overly focused on disease prevention to the exclusion of other concerns — you know, like jobs, mental health, and schooling — were dismissed as reckless nihilists who didn’t care if their fellow citizens died en masse.
Now, Francis Collins has weighed in to tell us that many of the people considered closed-minded and anti-science during Covid were advancing an appropriately balanced view of the trade-offs inherent in the pandemic response.
“If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is,” Collins said at an event earlier this year that garnered attention online the last couple of days.
This is not a new insight, or a surprising one. It’s a little like saying Bolsheviks will be focused on nationalizing the means of production over everything else, or a golf pro will be monomaniacal about the proper mechanics of a swing.
The problem comes, of course, when public health, or “public health,” becomes the only guide to public policy. Then, you are giving a group of obsessives, who have an important role to play within proper limits, too much power in a way that is bound to distort your society.
Francis Collins, again: “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”
True and well said, but that’s an awful lot of very important things to attach “zero value” to.
He also admitted to having an urban bias, driven by working out of Washington, D.C., and thinking almost exclusively about New York City and other major cities.
If Francis Collins and his cohort got it wrong, the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Georgia governor Brian Kemp — and the renegade scientists and doctors who supported their more modulated approach to the pandemic — got it right.
It’s always worth remembering that the pandemic was a once-in-a-hundred-years event and, initially, we had very little information and very few means to prevent and treat the disease. It is inevitable that decision-makers are going to make mistakes in such a crisis and adjust as they go.
That said, the scientists who were in positions of authority could have shown more modesty. They could have welcomed debate. They could have distanced themselves from — or, better yet, denounced — the campaign of moral bullying carried out in their name.
Many people wanted to outsource their thinking to the experts and then, with a great sense of righteousness, rely on arguments from authority to demonize their opponents and shut down every policy dispute.
Francis Collins, one of the most eminent scientists in the country and a subtle thinker who dissents from the orthodoxy that science and faith are incompatible, would have been an ideal voice to counter the propaganda campaigns that aimed to suppress unwelcome views and even unwelcome facts. Instead, he stuck with his tribe.
It’s progress, though, to realize that scientists, too, are susceptible to groupthink, recency bias, and parochialism; that the experts may know an incredible amount about a very narrow area while knowing little to nothing about broader matters of greater consequence; that points of view considered dangerous lunacy may, over time, prove out, so they shouldn’t be censored or otherwise quashed.
It’s not just that the scientists acted like blinkered scientists during the pandemic; they tolerated, or participated in, agitprop that was inimical to the scientific spirit and to good public policy.
© 2023 by King Features Syndicate



RICH LOWRY is the editor in chief of National Review. @richlowry

​

We are currently Sagarin #100. Others may or may not find this interesting, but my mind started wandering tonight to what Power Five teams have done after a season under a new coach had a season like Taylor's first year. I thought I'd take a look at the track record of Power Five coaches who were in the 90-110 range their first year. This century that describes (in rough order of success):

2020 Florida State: #102 in Norvell's first season....#63 in Year 2, #16 in Year 3, #10 (undefeated/obviously irked by the lack of respect but I'm talking algorithm here) in Year 4

2017 Baylor: #97 in Rhule's first season....#62 in Year 2, #16 in Year 3

2012 Washington State: #104 in Leach's first season.....#40 in Year 2, #81 in Year 3, #53 in Year 4, #34 in Year 5, #28, in Year 6, #20 in Year 7, #46 in Year 8

2013 Kentucky: #104 in Stoops' first season....#49 in Year 2, #91 in Year 3, #65 in Year 4, #67 in Year 5, #26 in Year 6, #33 in Year 7, #47 in Year 8, #20 in Year 9, #35 in Year 10, and #41 in Year 11

2006 Northwestern: #93 in Fitzgerald's first season......#86 in Year 2, #44 in Year 3, #61 in Year 4, #71 in Year 5, #58 in Year 6, #21 in Year 7, #65 in Year 8, #66 in Year 9, #49 in Year 10, #35 in Year 11, #20 in Year 12, #32 in Year 13, #71 in Year 14, #15 in Year 15, #101 in Year 16, and #103 in Year 17

2019 Maryland: #97 in Locksley's first season.....#61 in Year 2, #58 in Year 3, #37 in Year 4, #35 in Year 5

2022 Virginia Tech: #94 in Pry's first season....#54 in Year 2

2016 Virginia: #107 in Mendenhall's first season.....#81 in Year 2, #43 in Year 3, #34 in Year 4, #57 in Year 5, #64 in Year 6

2005 Illinois: #96 in Zook's first season....#108 in Year 2, #30 in Year 3, #68 in Year 4, #94 in Year 5, #39 in Year 6, #55 in Year 7

2002 Vanderbilt: #96 in Johnson's first season....#105 in Year 2, #112 in Year 3, #67 in Year 4, #63 in Year 5, #54 in Year 6, #39 in Year 7, and #104 in Year 8

2011 Maryland: #104 in Edsall's first season....#101 in Year 2, #73 in Year 3, #50 in Year 4, #85 in Year 5

2006 Colorado: #94 in Hawkins' first season.....#56 in Year 2, #72 in Year 3, #91 in Year 4, and #68 in Year 5

2008 Michigan: #95 in Rodriguez's first season....#81 in Year 2, #60 in Year 3

2005 Ole Miss: #102 in Orgeron's first season....#74 in Year 2 and #80 in Year 3

2019 Georgia Tech: #107 in Collins' first season....#101 in Year, #96 in Year 3, #84 in Year 4

2002 Indiana: #98 in DiNardo's first season....#121 in Year 2 and #98 in Year 3

2004 Duke: #90 in Roof's first season...#133 in Year 2, #153 in Year 3, and #109 in Year 4

2012 Kansas: #98 in Weis' first season....#119 in Year 2 and #115 in Year 3

2007 Iowa State: #92 in Chizik's first season....#114 in Year 2

2018 Arkansas: #98 in Morris' first season....#117 in Year 2

2011 Colorado: #107 in Embree's first season....#156 in Year 2

(Fisch at Arizona, Smith at Oregon State, and Doeren at NC State are success stories not included above as their first years were actually worse than my parameters, but of course there are failure stories outside of the parameters too, like Robinson at Syracuse, Smith at Illinois, and Andersen at Oregon State)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The median is Randy Edsall at Maryland and he's joined in the median group by Bobby Johnson at Vanderbilt and Dan Hawkins at Colorado. In other words, making it five years and having a few respectable seasons but never being particularly good. [I'd note that when I looked at historical track records of rebuilding coaches there was about a 50/50 chance of getting somebody who eventually could have a good (8+ wins) season, so as a strictly empirical matter Taylor's first season at Stanford puts him on a typical trajectory worse than when we hired him.]

Of course, we hope Troy Taylor isn't average and has the goods to be in the top half of this list. Good coaches - Mike Norvell, Matt Rhule, Mike Leach, Mark Stoops, Mike Locksley (it's early days but Year 2 indicates Brent Pry may be good) - are able to get major leaps from Year 1 to Year 2. Pat Fitzgerald took until Year 3, but generally Year 2 saw major leaps for the coaches who have been able to overcome a Year 1 like Taylor had. I'm talking really major leaps - 35+ spots. If Stanford is the #65 team in the nation next year that will feel like major progress. Here's to hoping Taylor is a good coach in that mold.

All rebuilding programs hope their coach is in the good category. Time will tell. Across the whole data set, most did better in their second season than the first - 62 percent - but it's certainly nowhere close to a high enough percent one would view it as a certainty.

My gut tells me Taylor is in the Locksley-Pry-Mendenhall neighborhood of this typology. I don't see him falling below the Orgeron-Collins echelon. But again, time will tell. This story is still to be written. Hopefully our guy gives us reason to think of him in the upper echelons.

Saw on another page that Bill McCollum passed yesterday at 93.

Great player and patriarch of great Stanford family.

Read that here.

Read that here.

Threw 6 tds vs ACC best Louisville in Holiday Bowl. Holiday Bowl record. Not too shabby for someone who didn’t get an offer despite wanting one and having a parent alum if memory serves me right. Not like we could have used a great starting qb.

Read and watch that here.

I am NOT a Wilner fan by any stretch, but his assessment on Haase being retained at season's end is spot on. Clearly Haase and Muir are made for each other. Both are clueless, inept, and comfortable with mediocrity (or worse).