UConn James

Again.... Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers. 6-10 last season with Singletary. Inside of a year. No communication with players. No mini-camps. Shortened training camp. Alex Smith at starting QB. Now it looks like they're going toe to toe with the Packers for the NFC. "Development takes time" whining? BULLSTEVESTOJAN!!!!

The article said that the staff at OBD was informed of the change this week (probably yesterday, the day after the last game of the season). It would be quite a scoop. It'll be either confirmed or denied by tomorrow morning, I guess. You know, some people talk about it like building a team that can be really competitive actually takes 3 years and UFA signings up the yin-yang, etc. And if that's the attitude that people --- (ahem) Ralph Wilson (ahem) --- accept, then that's what you'll get. Look at what Jim Harbaugh has done in SF inside of a year, without minicamps, without much prep time... with a QB that everybody else thought was a bust. Anyone who says it can't be done is a loser. All it takes is the proper motivation, resources and a little luck. +1. Anyone who thinks this organization's attitude does not stem directly from RW's depression-era miserly behavior and Old Man Syndrome is delusional. I hope that a shot of youth in the FO with Whaley might help bring the franchise into this decade. (I mean, Whaley actually uses email!) Whether his voice is going to be counted ahead of Littman and Overdorf in RW's estimation is the most important question.

Four. Hayden Christiansen, James Earl Jones, Prowse, and Anderson.

I took a big step back as a fan of the team several years ago. Maybe you could just try that for a season.

Unless the rest of the Green Bay Packers and Mike McCarthy come with him, what would be the use?

But you know, after a game like that, I wouldn't be especially saddened if the whole staff went. If the Red Sox fired Terry Francona after the epic slide in September, the 8/10 game slide for Gailey and the 49-points unanswered and the maddening 5-WR sets when CJ was getting 6-8 yards a clip on running plays is more than enough to can Chan. It's just... what could we get as a replacement that's any better, as any candidate knows he has to contend with Ralph's bag-men before he can get anybody worth getting. This team is so far away it's depressing.

Not quite the point. Scoring has increased markedly.

If Edwards is going, it'll probably be a week or two from now after when they've done a season review. If Buddy Nix is retiring, which is based on a rumor of a FO shake-up per a national writer (there was thread on this last week), I'd expect that within the next few weeks as they prepare to either interview for GMs or promote Whaley, which is speculated (and follows Ralph's MO of bringing in someone at a lesser title, letting them look around for a little while and then promoting them). What follows will probably tell us more about whether Ralph's bean-counters Littman and Overdorf run this show rather than the football people. I'm not going to be surprised because I know the answer. And I would say it has a lot to do with influencing Nix's decision; I wouldn't want to work with handcuffs on at age 70+.

And yet, our government is spending our money trying to figure out why marriage rates have dropped precipitously in the last 30-40 years. It's because only a man who is clinically insane would want to enter into a binding legal contract whereby the B word gets half of his earnings for the rest of her life. And if there's kids, he might as well have his company deliver his paycheck to his ex so he can save the 44 cents. (Because he's going to need that 44 cents to eat that week.)

This article argues that Boehner did the right thing for American businesses that have to live in the real world, rather than the politically-expedient thing, in passing the 2-month extension. Link Instead, the House passed an extension of the current system, which would purportedly provide time for software makers and users to prepare for a two-tier SS tax system. It would also be nice if there were some kind of understanding of whether this two-tier would be permanent-like or if this is just another case of the gov't !@#$ing with everyone and causing a lot of $ and effort to be expended on the part of American businesses and then a little down the road Obama & Reid say, "Oh, you know what? Nevermind that. We're just going to bump everyone up to __% for the full taxable income." But, you guys keep up with your Boehner-this, Republicans-that, and give no chiding to a Democrat Senate that tried to pass what they did. Weren't they supposed to be the "deliberative" branch of the legislature, what with their 6-year terms? All the deliberation I see is cramming this down our throats, seeing if businesses can swallow it, and hoping to collect on tax penalties because they were trying to force a change that few/none could be ready for.

Guys, the game doesn't need to become Calvinball. It just has to stop bending backwards so far in favor of offense. If people wanted to watch the Arena League and scores like 80-68, that league wouldn't have gone bankrupt. 'Cause I'll tell you one thing. The moment when the physicality of the NFL is gone and it essentially becomes flag football, so am I. And we're almost there.

I'm gonna go all Reggie Dunlop here and say, I got $2,000 for the guy who ends Tom Brady's career. But really, do you know when the Paytoilets* started to fold and when the Bills started to win last game? They were up 21-0. It wasn't the interceptions. It wasn't the drops. It was when George Wilson laid out Julien Edelman. It was when someone from the Bills stopped serving tea and crumpets and saying that winning is hard. It was when this team finally got physical and punched the prissy schoolyard bully right square in the mouth and exposed him for the dink -and-dunk pansy that he is. It was when KW's quote about not knowing whether we're going to win, but that at the end of the game, the Brady Bunch will know that Hell just descended on them. We don't have all those guys today but we still gotta play tough. We gotta knock 'em down. That whole Wilfork cheapshot at the end? That was nothing new, but they get stupid when they get knocked down, humiliated and angry. We gotta bring hell down on them once again. Only, we gotta bring more. Let's start this year off right, boys! Bring it!!

As I've written before, PI should be reviewable... both ways. We don't need to slow down games any more, and keep the same 3 (incorrect) challenges per half. But PI should be added. There's way too much personal judgment involved for the refs and for way too big o' chunks of yardage, as '64 wrote. PI has become such a huge part of the game as this has turned into a passing/Arena/neutered-defense league. There needs to be some recourse for the many obvious non-calls and obvious gimme-a-f'in-break calls.

It's amazing how kids will often enough listen to strangers or other kids' parents explaining manners and they may follow it grudgingly, but they'll follow it. Yet anyone in their own family saying these things... it's like they're brick walls. But to anyone trying this, be prepared to have those parents up in your face saying "These are my kids! I'll handle it!" --- even though to that point, they hadn't been handling it and there was no evidence they were going to --- roughly 85-90% of the time.

Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.

How does processing a paper check cost less? About 25% of that $2 is the postage they have to pay to send the bill by mail to the customer. Then add in paper and printing costs, staffing costs to process check payments, etc. It just boggles the mind.

And the soft bigotry inherent in the comments of these minority-group "leaders" is just as jaw-droppingly stupid as the fact that they think all of it was the shoes' fault, rather than it being only the most recent example of the failure of the entitlement society this nation has become. The bolded section is the most intelligent sentence in that article. But here's where they fundamentally get it all wrong with their pinko socialist bullstevestojan. It doesn't take collective responsibility. No one ever sees any direct consequences when "collective responsibility" is the norm because each person thinks it's everyone else's fault. It takes personal, individual responsibility. (You know, that thing those big, bad Republicans harp on incessantly and harsh so many mellows with.) It takes leaders telling the community that better is expected of them --- a truth that the community might not like to hear (see: Cosby, Bill) --- rather than blaming a shoe company for the community's problems.

Saw MI:4 last night. It had the similar disavowal theme to it, slight alterations in spy-tech, and not much for character development, but that's par for the course and not what MI is about. They do impossible missions in style and save the world with 3... 2... 1 second to spare. I'm not generally an action-flick viewer but it was really watchable and entertaining. I, too, don't care to hear about the private life or every unedited thought out of celebrities' mouths. To be fair, after that whole episode of jumping on couches and telling Matt Lauer that only Tom Cruise understands the history of psychology, he seemed to get that he needs to STFU and stick with making movies.

With how he's performed on the inside, I don't see who in the right mind wouldn't put him and KW at the DT spots and just officially shift back to the 4-3 full-time, pick up a good DE and see if/how this pair + some edge help can bust up through the middle/collapse the pocket and make QBs have to scramble (one hopes) into dumb mistakes. The 3-4 experiment failed. Soooooo much of this team's problem is the inability to generate any kind of a pass rush against teams that have anything for an OL. Against the Iggles, there were a couple of times we blitzed eight (count 'em --- 8!) and still did not get within 5 yards of a pocket-passing Vick.

This thread really doesn't have anywhere else to go, does it? Some people are upset that parameters allowing for smoking aren't in place. Some people are happy that there's no smoking. Some people are dismayed that even with the ban, in true theory-meets-reality, people are still smoking in the stadium. The rule is the rule and bitching about it isn't going to make a damn bit of difference, b/c no doubt they expected that there would be some backlash, but they still made the choice to ban it. If you don't like it, TFB. You can watch from a bar that allows smoking or at your own place. The owner and/or tenant of the stadium makes the rules.

Maybe it seems that way. But the simple thing is that with someone drinking alcohol, it doesn't necessarily mean that the drinker's actions are going to cause an annoyance or harm to someone. It is possible for people to drink and not be a bother to anyone. With smoking, that's much more difficult if not impossible; the act and physical reality that inherently goes with smoking is the harm. Also, there are rules regarding the behavior of drunks as well. It's not like they get off Scot-free because they bought the beer from the stadium vendors.

I forget who said it, but "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." If blowing smoke for everyone around you to inhale is a freedom, then I'm sure you won't mind granting me the freedom to piss on your head. Your definition of freedom is seriously skewed.

+1. The ridiculous liberal interpretation of pass interference is much more pertinent to the discussion. CBs have had to play it safer and marginally relax their coverage or the other team gets automatic yards even if the WR might not have made the catch. Defenses have been neutered. CBs can't breathe on WRs without getting flagged. I will reference the game this past Sunday where McKelvin got flagged --- at least from what I saw he played it cleanly with minimal incidental contact (which the WR actually initiated by having to stop short for a slightly underthrown pass) but because he didn't turn his head, he got the yellow. Everything else was clean, but "he didn't turn his head!" the announcers said. that stevestojan! Is a CB's penis supposed to contort to face the ball too? What does it matter what direction his head is turned if he played the WR cleanly? I don't get it. How far backwards is this league going to bend in favor of offenses? How close to Arena League are we going to get? And at the very least, instant replay needs to be extended to PI. You're telling me they can review whether a ball moved 2 inches beyond where they marked it, but they can't review a bullstevestojan judgment call that can result in a 20-, 30-, or 90-yard play? This is killing the game, IMO.

For insurance costs, I'm only basing that on a reason the U gave when they banned smoking and grills in the stadium and lots... they said insurance costs were a factor in creating the rule. I would imagine it's also a factor in the Bills' decision. If it were a case where there were no immediate second-hand health effects to people other than the user, I'd be saying the same. But it's not. It would be one thing if smoke could be controlled. In the physical world, smoke drifts. And in the Ralph, it drifts everywhere. Your right to slowly kill yourself with cigarettes ends when others have to inhale the fumes.

The morbidly obese and gingers. They are considering how they treat their customers. Hence the ban. It's also probably a bonus for stadium maintenance issues as well as insurance rates.