The New Rating System for Girls

Let's face it, the 1-10 rating system for the fairer sex is archaic. A college friend who I'm not that close with (Schreibeis) came up with a new one that was passed to me through a mutual closer friend, The Lube Tube. It's a three number system going from 0 0 0 to 10 1 10.

First Number

The first thing you see, in most cases: the young lady's face. It's on a traditional scale of 1-10 and some would say the most important number. Regardless of how dime-ish a girl's body is, you still have to look at her face.

Second Number

It's the binary code...0 or 1. 0 means you wouldn't. 1 means you would. This is the simplest of the three digits. According to The Ladder Theory, all girls are a 1, but I can't say I agree with it.

Third Number

In the words of R. Kelly, "Girl you know you got a body-ody-ody." Babygirl's figure is the final figure in the equation. A butterface could still rate highly based on this category, say a 319.

Why is this the Future?

It was extremely difficult to describe the attractiveness of a woman to your boys in the late 20th century. A girl with a Coke bottle figure and a rough grill presents a major challenge. Is she a 6 because of her face or a 8 because of the body? Neither, she's a 519. BOOM. Learn it. Use it. Love it.

-Jesse

Frozen Four Picks

Where I hope to be in three weeks

I clearly showed I don't know a ton about college basketball considering one of my Final Four teams lost in the FIRST GAME OF THE DANCE. I rallied though and ended up with three of four still alive (UK, 'Cuse, OSU). Let's play a game to see how much I know about college hockey. Here's a link to the bracket of the 2010 NCAA Men's Hockey D1 Tournament and here are my picks:

Regionals: Miami vs. Michigan; North Dakota vs. Boston College; Denver vs. Cornell; Northern Michigan vs. Wisconsin

Frozen Four: Miami vs. North Dakota; Denver vs. Wisconsin

Championship: Miami vs. Wisconsin

MIAMI REDHAWKS (obviously) win the 'Ship!!!

How many Sweet 16 teams do you have left? I've got eight.

Best Days in Sports

What a phenomenal day of upsets yesterday/last night! Lower seeds won six games, including 13/4 (Murray State over Vandy) and 14/3 (Ohio over Georgetown) upsets. They also took things to OT (Nova over Robert Morris) and 2OT (BYU over Florida) and kept them close in regulation (Tennessee by three over SDSU and New Mexico by five over Montana). With potential upsets on the docket today in Siena vs. Purdue, Utah State vs. Texas A&M, Georgia Tech vs. Oklahoma State and Cornell vs. Temple, this could be another epic day of Madness.

That got me thinking, what the best sports days of the year are. Here are my (and Lube Tube's) picks and reasons, in no order whatsoever:

March Madness Day 1

I made most of my point in the opening paragraph, but it may very well be the best day of the year for sports. If I were to tell you there'd be 16 games in 12 hours that most of which will probably be very interesting and down to the wire, is that something you'd be interested in? Of course you would be. It's a great day and I'm taking a half-day on Day 2 (Friday) of the Dance to soak it in.

March Madness Day 2

See above.

MLB Opening Day

Hope springing eternal here again, even for fans of the Royals, Orioles and Pirates (OK, maybe not the Pirates). A full slate of games, most of which are in the daytime. It's a perfect day to skip school/work and head down to the local ballpark. Your team's ace is on the mound and you get to see the new players for the very first time. It's a day when even the Nationals can be in first place.

NFL First Sunday

America's favorite sport kicks off every September and men and women from all over paint their chests and tailgate and watch other men continually run full speed into each other. We've waited all summer, sat through the Pro Bowl, the draft, mini-camps and pre-season all for this.

Sunday at The Masters

Augusta, the sun peeking through trees, Green Jacket on the line, the chance to see golf history, the no-women-allowed policy. What's not to love? Golf is normally the best sport for napping to, but Sunday at Augusta is magical, especially when it's close or there's a new guy involved.

New Year's Day

College football was running this day for decades until the NHL poked its head in and said "We're going to throw a rink in a ballpark and sell it out in an hour. How you doin'? Oh, and we're going to use Original Six teams or classic rivalries and it'll probably snow." This day went from an 8 to a 10 in short order. Good work, Gary Bettman (that sounds weird to say).

NFL Draft Day 1

Now that it's being done during primetime, my opinion might change since you won't get a full day of picks and the whole event is stretched out to a long weekend. Historically, it's been a great day, where hope springs eternal for most, if not all, of the teams and you get to find out more about a player than you ever cared to know, watch their family go wild when they get picked and see some awful suits.

Thanksgiving

Three football games you get to watch with friends and family when you're full of food. It's about as American as you can get. And I love me some 'Merica.

Kentucky Derby Saturday

Women in large hats and sundresses, mint juleps, whiskey, a crazy two minutes and the chance that this will happen. Spring really hits its stride on Derby weekend as far as MITM is concerned.

Awesome, but Don't Happen Every Year

Opening ceremonies for Summer and Winter Olympics, World Cup Final, last day of the Olympics (usually the hockey/basketball finals are then).

Honorable Mentions

NCAA Men's Basketball championship, NFL conference championship Sunday, Labor Day (baseball and college football), Opening Night (NBA and NHL), Christmas (two big NBA games and a bowl game), NBA Draft, the day of Game 1 of The Finals/World Series/Stanley Cup, Indy 500 day and July 1, 2010.

What are your thoughts/favorite days?

Meatballs March Madness Picks!

Midwest

1st Round: Kansas vs. Northern Iowa, Michigan State vs. Maryland, Tennessee vs. Georgetown, Georgia Tech vs. Ohio State

2nd Round: Kansas vs. Maryland, Georgetown vs. Ohio State

Sweet 16: Kansas vs. Ohio State

Elite 8: Ohio State

West

1st Round: Syracuse vs. Gonzaga, Butler vs. Vanderbilt, Xavier vs. Pittsburgh, BYU vs. Kansas State

2nd Round: Syracuse vs. Butler, Xavier vs. Kansas State

Sweet 16: Syracuse vs. Kansas State

Elite 8: Syracuse

East

1st Round: Kentucky vs. Wake Forest, Temple vs. Wisconsin, Marquette vs. New Mexico, Missouri vs. West Virginia

2nd Round: Kentucky vs. Wisconsin, New Mexico vs. West Virginia

Sweet 16: Kentucky vs. West Virginia

Elite 8: Kentucky

South

1st Round: Duke vs. Louisville, Utah State vs. Purdue, Notre Dame vs. Baylor, Richmond vs. Villanova

2nd Round: Duke vs. Utah State, Notre Dame vs. Richmond

Sweet 16: Duke vs. Notre Dame

Elite 8: Notre Dame

Championship Weekend

Final 4: Ohio State vs. Syracuse, Kentucky vs. Notre Dame

Championship: Syracuse vs. Kentucky

2010 NCAA National Champion: KENTUCKY

I know it's crazy to have ND make the F4, but I have beef with all the teams ahead of them in that region. Duke (1) just hasn't had it in the Dance since the middle of the last decade; Villanova (2) has played poorly for the last two weeks and are probably over-seeded; Baylor (3) doesn't have the big wins that I'd look for for a team to go deep; Purdue (4) is without its best player and I have Texas A&M (5) losing in the first round in the classic 12/5 upset. So it's not that I love ND, it's just I don't like anyone ahead of them very much.

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Enjoy:

JR Smith's Dunk isn't Sick, It has the Black Plague

More ridiculous than anything done at last month's Slam Dunk Contest.

St. Patty's Day is around the corner so this weekend should be fun. It's around this time that I get sick of the Irish-Americans and all their Mickery. Why can't Columbus Day be 5% of the celebration that St. Patrick's Day is? What have Irish done for this country that's more important than the Italian contribution? An Italian (with money from Spain) discovered this country (not really) and it's name is derived from an Italian Explorer. For Pete's sake, the city I live in was named after Cristobal Columbo and we didn't even have a parade here.

The Clocktower goes golfing with some of his boys, goes and out gets drunk, tries to hook up in a bathroom and it's national news because of a young lady seemingly (with the information released as of today) have a case of revisionist history. C'mon girl. Get off my boy's back. Who, among you, hasn't done one or all three of those things? Maybe not the stall, but behind the bar, in an alley. Either way, it's the second time his name has been brought up in this situation, so maybe he needs to bring a stack of those Dave Chappelle consensual sex contracts with him when he goes out.

Marion Jones is joining the WNBA. I mean, is there any chance that a 35-year-old former male college player who hasn't balled consistently in almost 15 years make the NBA. The league is a joke, women's pro sports make me giggle.

Baseball Preview part IV

AL West

Order of finish

         2009
Angels     97-65
Rangers   87-75
Mariners  85-77
A's          75-87
    
         2010
Rangers
Mariners
Angles
A’s

I can’t sit here and tell you that I am very confident in my predictions. I am probably the least confident in this division prediction among the previous 3 and probably the AL Central and East too when I release those. The A’s are without question the most depleted with talent, but the other 3 are pretty even since the Angles arguably lost their best player – John Lackey. They don’t really have a true number one starter on this roster (similar to the Yankees when Wang was their number one starter) Saunders is not a true number one. This levels the playing field with the Mariners and Rangers especially since the Mariners have improved their rotation by trading for Cliff Lee. The Rangers still have the most potent lineup in the division and can rival the lineups of the Yankees and Sox.

The Mariners are the sexy pick with a lot of so-called experts picking them. They have a dangerous 1-2 punch with Lee and Hernandez and it wouldn’t be shocking if one of them was the All-Star starter for the AL. Each team has a certain quality to win this division. The Angles are the veterans of the group and are the champs until someone knocks them off. The Mariners have the rotation and the Rangers the runs. Which will prevail? I think the Angels disappoint big time this year, just because their roster has depleted so much. They lost their run maker in Figgins, but who can doubt Mike Scocia? The Mariners will need production again from Russell Branyan and that is somewhat scary because they can’t just beat everyone 2-1 or 3-2. That is why I give the nod to the Rangers. Their staff is ok enough to keep them around 90 wins this season and their lineup is deadly and can put up 10 on a lot of teams. But, I think this division is going to be a very fun division race to watch this year.

Key player for each team

Rangers – Hamilton OF - Had a subpar season, if he can knock out 40+, this team wins the division.

Mariners – Figgins 3B – We know what Felix, Lee and Ichiro can do. Can the newcomer be a leader that this team has lacked?

Angels – Matsui  DH– The shy, humble Matsui goes to a new part of the country – will he feel at home? If not this lineup can sputter.

A’s - Eric Chavez  3B - Who? what happened to Eric Chavez?  He needs to answer that question.

Is 96 Better than 65?

The NCAA is thinking about extending the best tournament in America to 96 teams from it's current figure of 65. While MITM is in strong opposition to this, I'd like to provide reasons for both sides of the argument.

Let's begin by taking a look at the postseason play numbers of four major NCAA sports:

Men's Basketball

Currently, the NCAA allows 65, or 18.7%, of its 347 member teams to play in it's premier tournament, therefore giving them a *chance* to win the national championship. It already invites the most scrubs to the party, just barely edging baseball. When you include the NIT's 32 and the CBI's 16 (hahahaha) that figure balloons to 113, or 32.5%.

Football

Of the 120 D1A/FBS teams, a whopping 66 played in bowls last year. That's more than half, checking in at a robust 55%. The NCAA football postseason inclusion is more like the NHL and NBA where 16 out of 30 teams get invitations to prom. Clearly only two teams have a chance to win the 'ship in BCS era, but at least other teams can get shiny rings.

Baseball

Baseball comes in second behind men's basketball in giving the most teams a shot at the title. My favorite sport allows 64, or 30.3% of its 211 clubs to compete in the College World Series tournament. Note that this is very close to it's professional counterpart who takes eight out of 30 teams into the playoffs, good for 26.7%.

Hockey

The strangely aligned NCAA hockey program takes the smallest group of teams to the postseason as just 16, or 27.6% of the 58 clubs get a chance to make it to the Frozen Four. It's pro big brother takes the same amount of teams from almost half the selection pool!

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Pros

By adding teams, you should be adding talent. Every casual (and even many diehard) fan's favorite thing about the Big Dance is the first weekend with the madness, the buzzer beaters, the Cinderellas, the weird mascots, the schools-we've-never-heard-of, the bracket busters. Adding another 31 teams should make that four days even more unpredictable. The biggest reasoning behind this is without a doubt the cheddar that goes to the hosts, schools, conferences and NCAA. That's another plus in my book. Bringing in more revenue can never be a bad thing, at least in theory.

Cons

If I'm a coin collector and I have 65 coins, and I take 31 more from the group that my friend (not as good of a collector as me) normally gets his coins from, does that make my collection better, or just bigger? None of those 31 were good enough to be in my first 65. And what does it do to my friend's collection? He now has to take them from a guy who has an even worse selection of coins. The average value of my coins will decrease the more weaker ones I add. Ladies, would you rather go on a few good dates with Justin Timberlake, Patrick Dempsey and Channing Tatum or several 'ehh' dates with Dustin Diamond, Corey Haim and the weird kid from next door? Just because there is more of something, doesn't mean that it's better.

Verdict

More money is good, but 65 teams is enough. This would make the regular season less significant, sort of like the NBA before April. Is that what we want? I just don't get the point of messing with the greatest tournament in the world when it's as successful as it is.