jaws

15 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

Parity - how do we get it and sustain it?  I wonder if the parity was an issue in the 90s when Neb and FSU were let college football in wins?    I have the same sentiment.  Tired of seeing primarily the SEC and Clemson dominating and OSU dominating the Big 10 and playing 2nd fiddle to SEC or Clemson.  Include Okla in that as well as they have been very involved in the playoffs.  

Does it come down to recruiting restraints of some kind - limit gray shirts or limit the # of 5 stars on a team?   It would make college football  resemble the Chinese govt wt that kind of control.  Sabin signs a contract extension to 2029 - that means more Bama for the foreseeable future.  Just think if Tom coached until he was 79 instead of retiring at 62.  (may not be a good comparison - but Tom went out on top and could have kept the ball rolling for another 10 years I would think. )

College football has never had parity. However, I think there needs to be universal rules for NIL and maybe a monetary cap for programs? I don't want to get in a way of a guy trying to make money but at some point enough is enough. I am sure schools would figure out how to compensate in other ways. I don't think we want to limit the number of recruits based on rankings. You would basically hurt a school based on a hand full of 3rd party publications and it isn't an exact science. 

47 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

That makes sense but I hate allowing in teams that didn't win their conference.  I don't think any team should have an opportunity to play for a national championship if they couldn't first win their own conference.  

I take it you are not a fan of Notre Dame? That would almost force them to fully join a conference. I am not a big fan of only conference championships because most teams don't play everyone in their conference every year and conference divisions can be unbalanced. 

2 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

If you remove money, the right answer is 6 teams.  All power 5 champs and the top rated non-power 5.  Absolutely no reason to go beyond that number imo other than money.  

I agree but part of me likes a bracket without any byes. I would go with a 8 team setup. P5 conference championship get auto bids and highest ranked G5 gets a spot. Two at large bids and everyone must be in a conference with a balanced schedule. 

7 minutes ago, suh_fan93 said:

If any of you are suddenly missing any forks from your kitchen or if you misplaced your keys now you have your answer...

 

 

 

Bless my doctor and pharmacists friends on the front lines dealing with people like this every day. I don't know what is more funny, the lady talking or no one in the background laughing. 

10 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

TBH I don’t care what they do with CFB playoffs anymore. I may be an old grumpy get off my lawn guy but I didn’t really have a problem with no playoff. It was part of what made CFB different and special. Plenty of fodder for fan bickering, coulda-woulda-shoulda and what ifs.

 

4 teams isn’t enough if you want a true playoff and 12 seems a bit too much. Until Nebraska starts getting sniff of it I just don’t care. Might be a few games I would watch but personally Ive had enough of seeing Bama, Clemson and tOSU curb stomp other teams. Lack of parity would seem to be a larger concern than feeding more teams to the lions.

I like to think that a coach can stay at a mid major and actually build something. I would love to see what a team like Cincinnati could do in a 12 team playoff when they don't feel like they have to go undefeated to just barely make it into the top 10. Would that be bad for OSU because it would make it harder for them to lock down the state/region? Yes, but it would be fun to see. 

12 minutes ago, Mavric said:

 

I was curious about this as well.  I didn't see any mention of going back to 11 regular season games.  And I don't know if that would fly.  But "player safety" and all...

At some point extending the length of the season will provide diminishing returns. That would mostly be at the expense of the players while the schools would bring in extra revenue with the extra games. I am all for taking a regular season game away if there is an expanded playoff. By the way, with a 12 team model, shouldn't the NCAA run the thing like all the other divisions? 

This would probably reduce the amount of early P5 vs P5 OOC games early in the season. However, a great P5vP5 matchup in December sounds a lot better than a early season OOC game that is all hype and usually doesn't produce a great game or indicator on which team will be better later in the year. If you are going to 12 team just remove one early season game.

21 hours ago, Mavric said:

Hasn't participated in a high school practice yet...

 

 

Harbaugh sniffing around Ben Roethlisberger's old HS. At this point I highly doubt that Harbaugh will be in Ann Arbor by the time this kid is a senior in HS. 

6 minutes ago, DevoHusker said:

 

The arrival of Covid-19 vaccines promises a return to more normal life – and has created a global market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for some pharmaceutical companies.

Among the biggest winners will be Moderna and Pfizer – two very different US pharma firms which are both charging more than $30 per person for the protection of their two-dose vaccines. While Moderna was founded just 11 years ago, has never made a profit and employed just 830 staff pre-pandemic, Pfizer traces its roots back to 1849, made a net profit of $9.6bn last year and employs nearly 80,000 staff.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/06/from-pfizer-to-moderna-whos-making-billions-from-covid-vaccines

 

I find it interesting that Archy has said that Pfizer's vaccine is the best in a few posts even though there are vaccines that are just as good. A lot of this depends on availability and what region of the world you are in. Pfizer's vaccine would have major distribution problems in many places of the world. So for some a mRNA vaccine isn't the best for them. Saying that, I don't think I would take a new vaccine developed in China right now. 

29 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

These are the kind of results you get when you use a s#!tty vaccine developed without our rigorous standards.  It’s also why all these countries are now contracting or partnering with Biontech/Pfizer for their vaccine. 

 

Bloomberg wire:

 

Most Vaccinated Nation Sees Case Surge (10:45 a.m. NY)

Seychelles, which has vaccinated the largest proportion of its population of any country against Covid-19, said active cases of the disease more than doubled in the week to May 7. The health ministry of the archipelago off Africa’s east coast said in a statement on Monday that 2,486 people currently have Covid-19 and of those, 37% have received two doses of vaccine. The number of active cases rose from 1,068 a week earlier. Of those in the country who have taken two doses, 57% were inoculated with Sinopharm shots and the rest with Covishield, a vaccine made in India under license from AstraZeneca Plc.

Did you buy stock in Pfizer?

9 minutes ago, Jason Sitoke said:

I'm not a big fan of the FDA, but I think this is a little unfair.  EUA is basically just a more risk-tolerant process.  Things are done in parallel paths to mobilize quickly.  The risk in this approach obviously is that at some point in the testing they might find a problem, and will have wasted effort in manufacturing.  The EUA allows the FDA to use this development process in special circumstances...which I think is a different thing than 'forcing' the FDA to do something.  

 

 

Not only that, it isn't often to have something so prevalent in the population that you can figure out if it works or not at this speed. Also, there were a lot of people around the world willing to volunteer for the trials. Those two things combined with governments basically writing blank checks certainly speeds things up. 

Maybe companies will start instituting mandatory testing every couple days unless you get vaccinated. Ohio did this with long term care facilities. For a while now, if you worked at one of them, you were tested a few times a week. Ohio revised the rules to say only unvaccinated employees had to test that often. I am sure some employees changed their mind after those rules came out. 

15 hours ago, teachercd said:

While I 100% agree with you, from what I have seen the amount of drinking went way up, which probably means there was a lot of extra stanky getting on some hang-downs...

 

I mean, even people that are sick of each other (99% of all married/living together couples) will eventually drink enough to find their partner "sexy" again...for one night.

 

It will either be a big surge in babies, divorces or murder-suicides hahaha

At this point my money is on divorces and maybe murder-suicides. Wow, that sounds morbid. 

8 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

Did you have any experience with Iridium? They were a really well-funded launch about 25 years ago, with their own satellite network, able to promise cell phone connection to virtually any nook or cranny on Earth. It was pricy, but not unlike other first adopter technologies.  My brother bought some stock in it, and we found out that satellite systems and personnel are really expensive to maintain while waiting for paying customers to step up. Out of business in just a few years. 

I didn't have any experience with them.  I do however wonder what this will do with our space junk problem. 

As for the comment by @VectorVictor about copper networks, I ask why not use some of the infrastructure in place to deliver a better solution. I am all for fiber but there is a lot of copper in place already. https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/docsis-4-0-technology

Now we just need to get rid of data caps.

7 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

It is in good faith as we could just keep it tell it expires if we wanted and those countries could be on their own.    And it’s possible that once the pause is over we won’t need JJ because we have so much MRNA.  

Or we could lift any embargos on vaccine raw materials and let places like India make their own. We can argue about this all day but I don't want to. I am just saying it isn't as cut and dry as sending it to another country and feeling good about ourselves. 

8 minutes ago, Ulty said:

The J&J shot can be part of a gift pack that also includes Chiefs repeat Super Bowl champion t-shirts.

As long as you include some bowling balls for the poor orphans. 

1 hour ago, Archy1221 said:

JJ vaccine isn’t really a reject.  If we can get by without it, why not donate our supply to lesser developed countries?  Why is that bad?  Many developing countries will have problems with the cold storage requirements of Biontech

I wish the US didn't do a hard stop on the J&J vaccine, but as of right now it is not being used in the US so that is why I called it a reject. Other countries may very well take whatever we can give them and be very happy with it. However, lets not act like all of our "help" that we have given to the majority world has been in good faith since sometimes we do pass along our rejects and/or trash. I am just saying that it might be framed that way in other countries. 

18 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

We don’t even need the JJ vaccine in the US. MRNA vaccines are plentiful and the storage requirements are figured out with companies reducing the cold requirements if injected within a certain amount of time. I could see US even donating our stockpile of JJ at some point.  

I can see how this will go....so we give the rest of the world our rejects that we aren't willing to approve.

39 minutes ago, Frott Scost said:

Sucks compared to the other vaccines. 

That is a matter of perspective. A vaccine you can transport and provide just about anywhere in the world looks like it doesn't suck to me. It is nothing short of amazing given the time constraints. 

24 minutes ago, Jason Sitoke said:

J&J, Moderna, Pfizer all protect 100% against hospitalization and death

From COVID at least even though that number might come down a little bit over time. Still amazing. 

1 hour ago, Frott Scost said:

Do people not realize that when you see the drug commercials on tv, the drugs probably some of you take, the small wording on the bottom at the end most likely says this drug can cause death? Its because if one person dies in the clinical trial, whether from the drug or not, they need to add that to the side effects. Do people stop taking the drug because of a very small chance they could die? No, they dont because the benefits outweigh the risks. Different people have different reactions. Some people die from eating peanut butter. Should we ban peanut butter?
 

Same in this case. 6 in 6.8 million cases. Guess what else, I looked it up and this disease affects 1 in 1,000,000 people. Do the math above people. So is the vaccine causing this disease or can we conclude that this is the percent of the population that is affected by this disease in the first place? 
 

I mean the J&J vaccine sucks because its only 65% effective while others are 90+%. But there is no need to halt administration over a disease where the probability of getting it is the same as the probability of someone in the general public having it. 
 

https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/afibrinogenemia-congenital/

I don't think it sucks. It keeps people out of the hospital and can be administered without crazy storage requirements. A year ago this would have been better than we could have hoped for in such a short time frame. 

Again, politicians (both political parties) and some medical experts are terrible at messaging. 

1 minute ago, Archy1221 said:

Seems overly cautious decision by the FDA.  1 in just over 1 million cases.   Decision may be because there are so many MRNA vaccines available that the US can afford to be that cautious. 

We may have enough mrna vaccines but it is about the messaging. People will equate this with other vaccines, I have already seen this on social media, and it will cause more vaccine hesitation. Also, I can't wait until we try to send the J&J or AZ vaccine overseas and get beat up about sending an "unsafe" vaccine. We can't just send out the current mrna vaccines most places overseas because of the storage requirements.

The messaging around the vaccine rollout has been horrible and at some point we stopped caring about statistics.

3 minutes ago, nic said:

Leaving for the NBA was bad choice by him. He is a great dude, bummer it didn't work out. Juwan, is working out great at Michigan so far though. I think Beilein is back at Michigan in some teaching or advising capacity. He should teach ethics. 

I would take a class with Beilein teaching it. Same goes for Thad Matta. I bet they both have some great stories. 

Are you trying to reference a certain leadership class at OSU?

10 hours ago, nic said:

The fan base would have to be patient and he doesn’t go for the one and done types....maybe AZ?

He seemed like a perfect fit at Michigan. 

18 hours ago, nic said:

Those are pretty high profile jobs, although I am not sure Texas will ever be satisfied with any coach. Football or Basketball. I would avoid that one.

 

Edit: wonder if John Beilein will jump back into college hoops at one of these spots.

Beilein is a great college coach and doesn't seem to be crooked. I don't know if some of those places are ok with a guy like that.