Ramius

good post, but i doubt he understands the word "intricacy." Lets keep the words to under 5 letters for our knuckle dragging friend, shall we?

The amount of compensation owed depends on the contract value offered by the team trying to poach your player. Only the high contracts will bring 4 1sts in return, like Vanek's 7 million per season. A mid range offer in the 1-2 millon per year will bring in a 2nd rounder.

Perhaps an OTW sub-forum for people to post book reviews, comments or suggestions? I say a forum as opposed to a thread because the thread would get long and unwieldy after a while.

Not quite yet, but perhaps the stuff we do in our lab will someday help Schobel's foot heal faster.

What does the Giants fining burress have anything to do with Goodell's personal conduct policy? Things that are different are not the same. Burress was claiming the Giants violated the CBA, hence the appeal. When Goodell hands down a suspension, the only person you can appeal to is him. Find me a link where someone was suspended by Goodell and appealed to somewhere else aside from Goodell himself. A Goodell suspension does NOT violate the CBA. So far, in response to the "Goodell has all the power to suspend players for off the field actions and you can only appeal to him, which is crap" argument, you've come up with: 1. Players suspended for violating the substance abuse policy are accusing the NFL of lying to them and not informing them properly of the risks of StarCaps. 2. Burress accusing the New York Giants of violating the CBA in regards to how a team can punish a player. Nowhere in the above 2 "points" you've made does it involve Goodell personally issuing a suspension and a player appealing to an outside source. That is because they CAN'T. Do you enjoy the view of your own rectum? Is that why you keep posting this nonsense?

He's not a passer. His mechanics and his passing ability are absolute garbage. His "throw to an area and let the WR outfight the DB for the ball" is a sure fire path to failure in the NFL. The guy's skill set does not translate to being a successful NFL QB.

No, you are still wrong. When it comes to suspensions from personal behavior, Goodell is a one man judge and jury, and you appeal directly to him, which is bogus. The starcaps issue is that the players are challenging the legality of the suspensions for failing a drug test. Read your own link. They are appealing because the NFL knew that star caps contained a banned substance, but DID NOT notify the players and include it on their of known "bad" substances. Theres a difference between the ESTABLISHED POLICY of being suspended for substance abuse, and the one man God-like whims of Goodell when it comes to personal conduct. Personal conduct != substance abuse

I say that thus far no, Goodell has not done a good job as commish. 1. His suspensions are somewhat arbitrary and there is no method to his madness. He suspends players on a whim and there really needs to be a set system in place. Players get treated differently without rhyme or reason. Not to mention there should be an outside arbitrator who handles appeals. one man having all the power is not a good way to go. 2. He completely botched the handling of spygate in an effort to sweep things under the rug. His "nothing to see here, move along" attitude was the exact wrong way to handle the situation. The upcoming labor battle will go a long way to making or breaking Goodell's legacy. If this screws up the NFL and we lose the cap, its not going to look good for him at all.

So that gives you the right to act like a moronic 8 year old?

Thanks. Were you serious in your PM about sending me the racy pics of yourself if i pass? If so, sweet!

If you give fignon your mom's/dad's TBD screen name, i'm sure he'll apologize to them.

Well said. Sadly, American society has degraded to the point where if jr can't succeed (no matter what race, creed, religion), people expect the standards to lowered to jr's level of incompetence instead of making jr work harder to rise up to the minimums.

Yeah, i know there is at least 1 guy on my committee who is going to be an ass just because he can. He enjoys giving students a hard time for no good reason. I may just let them fight, because 2 committee members are pissed at a 3rd, who tends to go AWOL quite a bit and not respond to emails, calls, etc. He's left my advisor hanging out to dry on a couple of grant applications, and was supposed to help me on the data analysis for a chunk of my research, but he disappeared. The other 2 on my committee couldn't care less and are there to sign the paperwork.

No, are you offering? My advisor told me after i passed my prospectus defense that it was harder than the actual thesis defense will be, for the reasons you stated. They also have incentive to pass everyone they tell to defend based on history, because FSU's Fisher lecture hall (the science lecture hall) was named after the late Dr Fisher. Dr. Fisher was shot and killed by one of his grad students days after failing him on his PhD defense. MY boss has been making me nervous a bit because he's been flaking out recently about some of my data. Its the most recent stuff i did, which was a start on the next phase of the project i was working on. I did a decent amount of work, but none of the data is publishable yet. So he was bitching that i drew conclusions from the little data i had for that part, and then went on about how i can't just include the data without a conclusion. I think he's freaking out because when i am gone, no one currently in the lab has a good biochem background. The other 4 students are all chem engineers whose bio knowledge comes from a semester of baby bio and 2 grad classes.

~6 years of grad school and research in the lab is finally down to this thursday, when i defend my PhD dissertation. It's in biomedical engineering for those interested. I'm not so much scared or nervous yet as i am just ready to be done and over with this. The thesis has been written and submitted and i am finishing up my presentation. With any luck, i'll be a doc by thursday afternoon.

Well duh. You should never simply judge a player by how he performs on the field. You should always base your analysis on where the player was drafted. I mean, who cares if the guy is a merely a good player if he was drafted in round 1? If your 1st round picks aren't pro-bowlers, they should be cut regardless of their performance,simply for not living up to their draft billing. If Matt Stafford develops into merely a decent QB who throws 22 TDs per year and stabilizes the position for the Lions, he should be cut since the #1 pick should be tossing 40+ TDs and playing in the pro bowl every season.

Happy B-day. you crotchety old SOB.

Worst beat in an individual hand was in a friendly game for a simple $20 buy-in, winner take all. Down to 3 of us and i had the chip lead, probably something like 50/30/20 split. I land a pocket queen/jack. Flop comes out, 2 more Jacks. i continue betting, 1 guy drops out, the other stays in. turn card was worthless, we keep betting, pot has gotten quite large. River card comes out, a Queen. I dump a ton in to force him to go all in. He calls: I show my hand, a J-J-J-Q-Q full house. He flops over pocket queens, getting a Q-Q-Q-J-J full house on the river.

yet flutie "just loses" when it comes to the playoffs.

Good win by the USA, but Landon Donovan is still a candy ass B word. I've got to ask, was this a real win or a, "everyone-let-the-handicapped-kid-shoot-the-ball-oh-crap-he-actually-made-it" kind of win?

Gordio's point was that if the kid was talented enough to play at the D-I level, then the schools are going to find a way to get him in. GPA is a nice way of saying that the talent level isn't there.

VT lost some serious talent last season, so i'm not sure how they'll be this season. I think they'll be up and down all year, but since no one has really taken a hold of the ACC, its anyone's conference. Georgia Tech will never truly content for the ACC title with a gimmicky triple-option offense. The defenses in the league now have a full year of game film to stop it. As for FSU, you nailed it. They'll be improved this season, but i doubt it will reflect in their record, due to the brutal OOC schedule (are you looking SEC fans?) BYU and USF are going to be tough fought games, the annual game against the gators has been no picnic recently, and we're got to go to UNC on a thursday night. (the thursday night football Gods tend to strike down FSU rather often, because we're always on the road. the stupid ass AD won't let FSU play thursday night at home.) Still, i think FSU is capable of making an appearance in the ACC title game. My darkhorse for the ACC title this season is UNC.

Thats it? ed kissed a hog and he's a horrible human being for that? 60 damn pages for absolute crap? what a waste.

Yeah, because i bet manny didn't start juicing until he joined the dodgers. Funny that bostonfan is whining about this, because the entire '04 sox team that won the pennant was on the juice. Of course, bostonfan is too much of a whining moron to figure this out. As for belichick*, he cheated for a long, long time. This is further reinforced by the fact that Goodell tried to sweep everything under the rug by issuing a quick penalty and quickly destroying any evidence. If the evidence "didn't show much," than why not show it to team officials so they could make correct steps to prevent cheating? Most likely, the evidence was highly incriminating against the pats*, showed the full extent of their cheating, and would cast a dark cloud over the NFL and that franchise. But Goodell isn't going to nail his buddy and one of his biggest markets, so we're all told, "nothing to see here, move along." Other teams didn't cheat, because they would have gotten caught. If all these other teams cheated, they why didn't belicheat* make any accusations at other teams when he was caught? Oh that's right, because other teams weren't cheating. Here you go, Sage. WEO caught in the act again.

I call him like i see 'em. And frankly, i'm not the only one who sees it that way. If you dont want to trash the pats*, that's one thing, you simply dont do it. But when you go out of your way to defend them, their players, their cheating ways, and everything else about their franchise from criticism, that raises red flags.