Drink Wilkins Coffee

... or else a primitive, 1960's-era Kermit will have you shot in the fucking face.


Thanks to Another Damned Blogger, who found the clip here.



In other Muppet news: apparently there's a TV show called 30 Rockfeller Plaza, clearly a behind-the-scenes look at the NBC Television Network. Yeah, well, they stole their show idea from the Muppets. (Obviously, I found this at BHGP.)

I will use any excuse whatsoever to run this picture again.

Finally, in non-Muppet news: Does anyone else from Iowa read this here and NOT think of Johnny Gosch?

The Notre Dame 2009 Football Preview

Last year, to celebrate the day Phil Steele’s yearbook comes out (aka Steelemas), I wrote a long essay about Notre Dame’s 2008 schedule and how it boded well for an improved season. Today, Steelemas Eve 2009, I already have my Steele but in honor of the day, here is my look at the upcoming season.

It's that time of the year again.

The key themes of Notre Dame football 2009 are high expectations and a ‘the future is now’ mentality. I’m going to key in on three main factors for this: the schedule, the talent on the two-deep chart and the impatience of the fanbase, born of recent history.

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Schedule. The sked was the main focus of last year’s preview, and while it is not the key factor for me in 2009, it deserves mention. I start with a look at last year's schedule as a comparison point.

Notre Dame 2008 Opponents

LY	Bowl LY?	Team	W/L	Final Record	Bowl?	Better?
4-8	No	S. Diego St.	W	2-10	No	No
9-4	Yes	Mich.	W	3-9	No	No
7-6	Yes	@Mich. St	L	9-4	Yes	Yes
8-5	Yes	Purd.	W	4-8	No	No
4-8	No	Stanford	W	5-7	No	--
4-8	No	@No. Caro.	L	8-5	Yes	Yes
4-9	No	@Wash.	W	0-12	No	No
5-7	No	Pitt	L	9-4	Yes	Yes
11-3	Yes	@Bost. Coll.	L	9-5	Yes	No
8-5	Yes	Navy	W	8-5	Yes	--
2-10	No	Syracuse	L	3-9	No	--
11-2	Yes	@ So. Cal.	L	12-1	Yes	Yes
77-75	six			72-79	six	Nah.

Italics = new coach in 2008.

(Here "Last Year" means 2007.) We knew 2008 would be easier than 2007, and the numbers bear that out. I’m not going to give credit to Stanford for “improving” from 4-8 to 5-7, or Cuse going from 2-10 to 3-9, particularly when the coach got fired.

ND’s 2008 opponents, when it was all over, went seven games under .500, and if you exclude the USC juggernaut, the other 11 squads were 18 games under .500 (60-78). In other words, ND 2008 faced a slate that was coming off a cumulatively mediocre 2007 and managed to do even worse. The Irish should have cleaned up, and it’s clear that ND under-achieved against Navy, Pitt, Syracuse and had the UNC game in hand.

Now look at the 2009 lineup.

Notre Dame 2009 Opponents

LY Record	Bowl LY?	Team	Result
7-6	Yes	Nevada	??
3-9	No	at Michigan	??
9-4	Yes	Michigan State	??
4-8	No	at Purdue	??
0-12	No	Washington	??
12-1	Yes	USC	??
9-5	Yes	Boston College	??
2-11	No	Washington State	??
8-5	Yes	Navy	??
9-4	Yes	at Pittsburgh	??
8-5	Yes	Connecticut	??
5-7	No	at Stanford	??
76-77	seven		??

Italics = new coach in 2009.

One more bowl team, but two putrid Pac-10 teams (two of the worst in Div. I-A, in fact), two struggling Big Ten teams, a big pile of unimpressive to mediocre, and just three legitimate Top 25’ers in MSU, BC and Southern Cal. Overall score: Eminently beatable.

Or think about it this way: the nine repeating members of the sked from last year went 59-55. Those schools rotating out (SDSU, UNC, Cuse) finished 13-24. Those rotating in (Nevada, Wash St., UConn) were 17-22. Any way you cut it: this is not a murderer’s row.

I want to see more of this.

Talent. The bigger issue, then, should be the on-field performance by this assemblage of talent. Although it’s been written about all over the Internet, it was my friend Steve who helped me see the quality and depth of talent on the roster. I don’t think I’ve seen the top-two guys at basically every position be so talented and ready to contribute in my short tenure as a fan.

Acquiring Steele helped put it into focus. Look at the PS#s (“Phil Steele number” is his method of judging talent coming out of high school) on the two-deep roster at the skill positions:

QB: PS#5, PS#5
RB: PS#13, PS#9, PS#2
WR: PS#8, PS#31
WR: PS#2, PS#10
WR: PS#27, PS#9
TE: PS#2, PS#2

The offensive line isn’t as impressive, but still some great numbers:

C: PS#24, PS#39
RG: PS#14, PS#13
LG: PS#28, PS#58
RT: PS#1 (Sam Young), PS#19
LT: PS#53, PS#18

The defense has PS#1’s in Steve Filer and Manti Te’o and a PS#2 in Darrin Walls, returning from a year in exile. Bottom line: the talent is there.

Also want to see more of this.

Impatience. Which brings us to the third factor: the ability of the coaching staff to finally put it all together on the field in Year Five of the Weis era. A brief history:

• 2005: Brady Quinn, Darius Walker, Jeff Samardzija (I spelled that without looking it up), BCS game, 9-3.
• 2006: same crew, BCS game, 10-3.
• 2007: everyone leaves, Weis’ inexperience as a college coach is exposed, fundamentals are awful, historic loss to Navy, 3-7.
• 2008: talented recruits begin arriving/developing, still an awful loss (Syracuse), first bowl win in ages, 7-6.

The complaints about the hangover effect of Willingham’s awful recruiting, while I believe were valid in 2007 and '08 to an extent, are gone. The team is stacked with capable athletes. Weis has the players he wants and the coaching staff he wants. Most of the key players have been in the program for three years (Clausen, Tate, Young, Kyle McCarthy, Brian Smith). To quote the coach: “9-3 is not good enough.” Or another quote: No Excuses. (For a discussion of whether 9-3 really is good enough for this team, see here.)

Last year the question was: we'll be better, but how much? This year the question is: will the won-loss record (based on my three factors) be as good as it SHOULD be?

GOT MY STEELE

WOOOOOOOOOO!

Thanks to the lovely TM (who stopped by the Clark/Diversey Borders today) it is, to quote Orson Swindle, "in hand, motherfuckers," two days before the official onsale date.

I've always loved this photo. Spencer's caption is: "Phil Steele’s College Football 2006 Preview, shortly after floating into Orson’s hand from on high."

It's even the Midwest regional cover, with Clausen, Pryor and a Michigan running back.

Here's the quick overview: ND at #7, and #9 in the Power Poll. Iowa at #20, and #16 in the Power Poll. So Steele thinks ND will end the season slightly better than their talent would predict, based on an easy slate, and Iowa will be hurt by their four tough road games (PSU, OSU, Wisky, MSU). He's got Penn St. first in the conference, then OSU and Illinois (WTF?!?!) tied at second, then Iowa.

And, because I haven't used the "MAC Attack" tag in a while: Phil likes the Bobcats to win the MAC East, saying they were "much better than (their) final '08 record and this season will fly under the radar" as his No. 2 Most Improved Team.

Full report Tuesday.

Phil gives his own magazine a thumbs up.

You're Never Too Old to Learn New Words

Everybody thinks they are average or above-average in certain categories, but until you take Statistics, you really don't understand the concept of standard distribution in a specific population.

For example, I think I have a pretty large vocabulary, what with all the writin', and the crossword-puzzle solvin' and readin' books without pictures and all that. But in a few-day span recently, I came across the same new word twice. One was in this book, written by a British guy about a British guy in London. The other was in this article about a British guy in Paris. So I figured, maybe it's a British/European thing.

So I emailed the author of the Esquire piece, Tom Chiarella, asking if he was British, figuring he was an Esquire big shot and I'd never hear back. To my surprise, Tom wrote me a nice, long note, confirming he is not British, but did live in London for a while, and picked up the word from a European author.

Anyway, we're big fans of words and rambling essays about using big words here at TMMPF. So, the word is "tumescence" and if you don't know what it means, uh, I guess you can look it up.

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PS: Regarding the setup of the article, that Chiarella gave Clive Owen his own hard-earned cash to bet the ponies, Tom wrote to me: "it really was my own money. I've had a hard time getting anyone to believe me, including Clive."

PPS: I thought about creating a new tag for this post. But then I realized, we've already got 49 tags, and when am I ever going to use again the "British term for boner" tag??