Now that the college football season is over with Clemson thrashing Alabama in the National Championship Game the speculation about next year’s season can begin.  I am not a football expert by any means.  I played a couple years in my youth and have, like a lot of people, spent a large portion of my lifetime in front of a TV watching the game.  And yet somehow this qualifies me to be an expert on the game, which it really doesn’t.  At best, like most Americans, it gives me the right to an opinion.

What really intrigued me about this year’s college football season was not that Clemson and Alabama played in the title game.  I think that was a no brainier even for me to pick.  My interest was with two other undefeated teams.  One was fourth-ranked Notre Dame and the other was the University of Central Florida.

As far as I can tell a selection committee makes that determination.  Probably a group of intellectual types similar to the group that decided whether Plato is or is not a planet.  Is Pluto a Power 9 planet or a dwarf planet now relegated to sub status among our solar system’s celestial players. The question, I would assume, is UCF a Power 5 team–a dwarf planet or a fast radio burst from a distant galaxy?  Or is it a team that just toils in the distant corner of our own little football galaxy. They play in a non-elite conferences that is just not that good. I guess the they are a quick look shooting star.

The fate of UCF post season play is determined by a 13 member selection committee.  A committee  consisting of sharp-minded experts in the science of football.  Members include former football head coaches, athletic directors and even a sports journalist and a former Secretary of State.  They serve for three years determining which four college football teams get to play for the National Championship.

According to various websites, the selection committee forms its hypotheses based on observations and by gathering data through the 12 game regular season.  They also make their picks on team records, head-to-head results and strength of schedules.  Plus, they will compare how teams did against common opponents; and of course, the all powerful conference championships factor in.

The thing to remember is that not all schedules, records and conferences are created equal. But when are 12-0 records not equal?  The American egalitarian belief of equality does not fully play out on the gridiron. To make it easier, I would assume,  College Football has 10 major conferences but only five power elites, which almost automatically eliminates a large percentage of the more than 100 college football teams around the country.  And rightfully so, but this gives the power elites a foot up on teams, like UCF, who do not play in these elite conferences.

It is here, in my mind, where  Notre Dame and UCF pass some sort of orbital plane.  Both teams have an arrogance in pushing their claims to playing in the championship. Notre Dame has a storied and rich College Football history that must hold some sort of sway on current football minds.  UCF, however, not so much.  UCF did not come into existence until 1963.  By then Notre Dame had already won five National Championships.

But the college football world changed in 1990 when most  major independent schools like Penn State, Florida State and the University of Miami began joining conference as College Football moved towards a playoff system to determine what teams qualified to play in the championship. But not Notre Dame. They are special. They are loosely affiliated with the Atlantic Coast Conference, a Power 5 but not completely bound an ACC schedule.

But watching them play is like star gazing. Going out at night and looking at distant twinkling lights. We are use to light being instantaneous but the light from our nearest star, Alpha Centauri takes  more than four light years to get here. The Sun’s light takes about eight minutes. When we watch Notre Dame play  is like we are watching football from the past. It is the Four Horseman led by Knute Rockne running loose in the 1920’s. College Football has moved on yet Notre Dame is still playing to its past glory.

Then there is the University of Central of Florida.  A school founded in Orlando. The land of Mickey Mouse and Shamu the Whale.  A not so special football school, despite being the largest university in the state of Florida. It is bursting out of the shadow of Disney World.   UCF  is a team that has basically a protostar, a mass of swirling football nebulae. It has gone from a winless season to two undefeated regular seasons. This burst of light has created a Pluto type argument among football scholars. Is UCF a supernova team from  a non-power five conference, a real contender?

Unlike astronomers and astrophysicists, who deal with the cosmos and an infinite number of stars, football minds really have to observe a handful of teams throughout the  season. At some point this gridiron group will have to  translate their observations and data into a working theory that other football aficionados will believe. Much like the way Newton turned gravity from a theory to a law: what goes up must come down. 

All stars over time eventually implode and so do football teams.   Notre Dame’s recent 33-3  loss to Clemson in the Cotton Bowl is the most recent a example of it’s Bowl season’s implosion.  Then there  was their 42-14 implosion to Alabama in the title game in 2013. But they have not gone supernova.  Notre Dame is like a low-mass star with plenty of life left in it but maybe not enough to outshine newer teams like UCF.  Notre Dame has been around for a while and it knows it will shine brighter if it is the only star in the non-conference sky. It’s luminosity will be dimmer by several magnitudes if it has to toil as an upper-middle of the pack Power 5 conference team.

UCF, on the other hand, realizes that in order to get the selection committee to take them seriously they have to burn brighter and play with more intensity now. But like Notre Dame, if they were to join a Power 5 conference they might find themselves a 6-6 team struggling to be bowl eligible. Instead, they play in the back corner of the football universe, the American Athletic Conference, a non Power 5 conference where it might be easier to reel off 25 straight wins. Alabama reeled off 14 straight wins playing in the Southeastern Conference, arguably the best conference despite Clemson’s beat down.

The problem is that UCF had its moment much like Notre Dame. They both fizzled in their bowl losses.  Although UCF’ played in an exciting game with LSU, a Power 5 team, and despite the 40-32 score, it was not really that close.  But then neither was the National Championship game.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0831/Dynamic-duo-Twin-black-holes-fuel-quasar-closest-to-Earth

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20120718.html

Journalist Ellen Goodman wrote that “much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.”  Today, we tend to think of a personal attack as a round of Twitter tweets fired across cyber space.  But how about a time when personal attacks were “up close and personal” attacks.

Go into just about any Civics class in the United States and there is sure to be a mention of the Roman Republic, a sort of forefather of our Republic. But the Romans played politics for keeps. Arguments and disagreements, “fake news” and even claims of “fake news” could have dire consequences.  First off, though, let’s not confuse the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, which as the coachman in the Wizard of Oz says, is horse of a different color.

It took the Romans a couple of centuries to get their republic up and running and a couple of centuries to see it turn into an empire. Most historians would probably agree that the demise of the Republic started around 130 BC with Tribune of the Plebs Tiberius Gracchus and his brother Gaius Gracchus.  These two brothers, as tribunes, proposed various land reform acts and other laws that would benefit the poor at the expense of the powers that be.

Tiberius, not to be confused with the Emperor Tiberius, ran a foul with the Optimates, or “the best men” of the Roman Senate, with his agrarian reforms.  Not to weigh in too deeply into ancient Roman history and politics, let’s just say that the established Roman Senate took his reforms as anti-business and as a personal affront.  It may be hard at first glance to understand the workings of the Roman Republic, but the issues they were dealing with were not so much different than what we are dealing with today: land reform, taxes and citizenship. Our government just doled out a $12 billion bailout to farmers to offset losses from new tariffs.  When was there a time we were not dealing with immigration and now some want a new interpretation on the 14^thAmendment in relationship specifically to people born here in the United States. And of course, just like the Romans, we bicker on who should be appointed or not appointed or elected to governmental positions.

The more Tiberius pushed his progressive reforms the more resistance he got. The Optimates decided enough was enough and took things outside the law and into their own hands. A group of senators gathered up a mob of their supporters, henchman and slaves; invaded the assembly where Tiberius was; and beat him and some of his 300 supporters to death.  It is hard to determine if this was business or personal.

At the very least, it was murder.  In some ways, it could be called a crime of passion because the Optimates were without a doubt enraged to the point of insanity with Tiberius. If that is the case, then this is personal.  However, calling a mob together to kill someone takes planning and in that case, it is premeditated and then it has to be all business.

Brother Gracchus fared no better with the Optimates in his battle for reform several years after his brother’s beating death.  What may have done him in, was proposing citizenship for some of Rome’s non-citizens.  The politics of immigration and citizenship seem a messy affair in any age, but in Roman times it can get bloody. When one of Gracchus’ opponents was killed, the Senate took this as an opportunity to declare martial law. Soon, an armed group of Optimates was requesting Gracchus to appear before the Senate for a small question-and-answer get-together, no doubt as the guest of honor at another mob beat down. Gracchus refused. Seeing family history repeating itself, and being a good Roman, Gracchus fell on his slave’s sword. The killings, however, did not stop there. Several thousand of his supporters were rounded up and summarily put to the sword. I guess it could be said that this was strictly business.

At times, it becomes hard to tell if it is business or personal.  It is easy to assume that in most cases it is a combination.  Take Roman proscription.  The Roman constitution allowed for a dictator to be appointed in dire circumstances.  In 82 BC Lucius Cornelius Sulla became dictator. Sulla would head down to the Forum and post a list of individuals he deemed as enemies of the people.  Once listed, the individual’s property could be seized without due process and most often they were murdered in the bargain.  When the rule of law is supplanted by the needs of a few ruling elites, who find themselves in confusing times of crises, it becomes easy to get personal.

For instance, after Julius Caesar’s brutal assassination on the Senate floor,  his trusted lieutenant Mark Antony and Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, consolidated their power over what was left of the Republic, and began hunting down those who were responsible for Caesar’s killing. With the rule of law co-opted or  gone, it was not hard for Antony and Octavian to come to a mutual (list) understanding. They both had enemies and they both needed money.

They did not invent proscription, they simply made their enemies list known to an eager public willing to cash in on the crisis. Once a person was identified, for whatever reason, it could have been as simple as being on the losing side, hanging a yard sign out on your front portico or just saying the wrong thing to be considered as a treasonous act. Once listed or procscripted, anybody and everybody could become “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Those so proclaimed an enemy of the public, if lucky, got out of Rome in hurry taking what they could and losing the rest. Those not so lucky like Cicero not only lost everything but their life, too.

Cicero ran afoul of Mark Anthony. His sharp tongue and pen were aimed at Antony. He even quipped that they should have killed Antony with Caesar.  In a series of 14 speeches called the Philippics,  Cicero’s loathing of Anthony came out in full force. He attacked him as an enemy of the Republic. However, with the defeat of Caesar’s assassins, Antony and Octavian were able to completed their hold on what was left of the Republic. They now turned their attention to the less rebellious  but quarrelsome Senate.  For Antony, it was Cicero.

Antony’s soldiers beheaded Cicero and brought his head and hands to Antony.  The story goes that Antony’s wife, who was once married to one of Cicero’s longtime enemies, took Cicero’s head and opened the mouth piercing the tongue with her hair pin. His head and hands were later displayed on the Forum as a causal reminder to who was now in charge. I am not sure it can get any more personal than that.

All of this may seem absurd in the 21st Century Republic but President Richard Nixon’s staff compiled an enemies list that included shock jock Howard Stern, actor Paul Newman and several journalists.

It is safe to say that running a republic, like any form of government, can have its ups and downs. Our country has had its share of scandals and scoundrels  that have pushed our Republic to excesses. President Ulysses Grant’s administration was hit with the Whiskey Ring Scandal and Crédit Mobilier.  Warren Harding had Tea Pot Dome and of course the mother of all political abuses: Nixon’s Watergate Scandal.

Investigations have rooted out the evil doers and brought the rule of law into play. At best, investigations and follow up laws tried to set things back on course to avoid them in the future. But scandals are as assured to happen as Hailey’s Comet will surely swing back by. The difference is scandals are not so easily predicted.  They unfold overtime and the process to sort them out is done over time, too, through investigation and not through proscription.

Robert Mueller’s investigation, to some is a witch-hunt. To those being investigated it might seem personal, a form of Roman proscription.To others, it is all business. Is it business or personal?  Only time will tell.

Some websites to check out.

https://http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/072874-1.htm?noredirect=on

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/calendar/cicero.html

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865591820/This-week-in-history-Mark-Antony-has-Cicero-assassinated.html

https://http://www.ancient.eu/article/95/the-brothers-gracchi-the-tribunates-of-tiberius–g/

https://http://www.ancient.eu/Tribune/

It was in May of 1935 that Major League Baseball played its first night game in Cincinnati. Night baseball was a big deal at the time but after the preforming enhancement era of baseball, it is now one of those firsts that falls onto the “who cares” pile of baseball history.

It could be argued that night baseball opened the game up to many firsts.  But for the Reds, that night game was just one of 154 that they played that year and the tens of thousands that have been played since.

Once there were lights, it was not too long before there were cameras; and after cameras commercials. The first televised MLB baseball game played on August 26, just four years after the first night game.  W2XBS in Manhattan broadcast a double header between visiting Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The NBC station used just two cameras so it is safe to say there were no slow motion replays or umpire reviews   If a manager questioned a call he did it the old fashion way: getting into the umps face with a wad of chewing tobacco bulging in his cheek.

In 2008, as if the game was not  moving slow enough, MLB decided to allow umpires to review calls using instant replay.  At least when managers disputed calls it brought some excitement to the game.  Watching umps review calls is like watching your kid play a video game.

It will not be long before umpires, referees and other officials are replaced with robotic movable field cameras controlled by a band of nerds and geeks buried deep with in the bowels of the stadium. I am sure that drones will soon be introduced to the game in some form or capacity.

Do not get me wrong, I still love the game. Watching it on TV has faded away for me like a foul ball slowly drifting into the left field stands, bouncing off outstretched hands of fans, to be pursued by a bunch of kids like a pack of dogs chasing a fox; ending with the ball held high for all to see like Achilles dragging Hector’s body around Troy. This triumphant ritual will be repeated throughout game.

The major concern of late is the length of the game.  With modern technology: lights indoor stadiums; a game can go on from sun up to sun set. Unless it is the 2002 All-Star Game where both leagues ran out of players. I for one do not want to sit in front of TV the better part of the night watching beer and car commercials. And I will not go on about listening to the yammering of the talking heads behind the mike.

In an effort to cut down on the length of the game Major League Baseball is trying to rid itself of some of its long held traditions.  One ritual that MLB curbed is visits to the pitcher’s mound. I long lost interest in baseball before the new rule to limit how many trips emissaries can make a to the pitcher’s mound before a pitcher has to leave the game.

Most fans know when a pitcher is done. Shuttling out various players and coaches to talk to a hammered hurler is not going to change the situation before the manger with the hook yanks him off the mound.

Sure, those little junkets can eat up time.  And really, how much strategy was being discussed? Everybody knows it is a stall tactic to give the relief pitcher a chance to get warm. It seems ridiculous to drag out the inevitable.  After all, gone is the four-pitch intentional walk.

Ah, but some argue that this is where the real thinking of baseball is made. Those tough decisions managers had to make in the daylight before TV and the Designated Hitter era. Managers had to mull over when and how to pull his pitcher for the best pitcher-batter match-up, the double switch on where the new pitcher should bat in the lineup.

All of this cogitation requires counter cogitation in the other dugout, too.  Does the opposing manager pull his batter for a switch hitter to check the other manager’s moves?   It is a chess match played on a diamond—so they say.  Oh for the sake of these chess like-managerial decisions:  The King’s Pawn Opening, The Catalan Gambit or the Sicilian Defense.

Two things are taking place in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Baseball games are becoming low scoring events, and the American League is losing attendance, which means lost revenues.  Remember, this is a time before the plethora of sport channels and ESPN. Only a couple of MLB teams could wrangle a multi-million dollar TV deals.

Two quick fixes occurred.  One, MLB lowers the pitcher’s mound. This was followed by the American League taking the bat out of the pitcher’s hands and replace him with a real hitter, a Designated Hitter to boost offense and excitement. Charles Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics quest for the DH came true in the 1973 season.

I personally do not care one way or another about the DH. I do think it shows how out-of-touch baseball is with itself. I have come to accept the fact that just about every league in baseball (and softball) except the National League and the Nippon Central League are holdouts. The DH has been around for 45 years and I do not think it is going anywhere.   The game loses a certain symmetry when one team plays the game slightly different than they normally play. It would be like one chess player starting the game without it one of his knights.

What I found more maddening about the slow pace of MLB games, besides the endless amount of commercials,  is the batter stepping out between every pitch. I do not think sky divers check and adjust their equipment as much as a batter does between pitches.  The constant adjusting of every accouterments a batter has on; tightening re-tightening of batting gloves, elbow pads; adjusting the jock; and holding his hand up to the ump while he is digging back into the batter’s box. I do not think the Aztecs went through this much ceremony when they were sacrificing virgins to their gods.

The same goes for the pitcher who steps off the rubber, shakes off the catcher two and three times.  First of all, how many pitches does the pitcher have? And the catcher only has so many fingers and hand gestures to send out signals as to what pitch to throw. How many combinations and permutations of pitches can he throw to one batter? This is not British Intelligence at Bletchley Park trying to crack the German’s Enigma code during World War II. Throw the ball for god’s sake.

There were other events that killed my interest in MLB.  Free Agency changed the game.  I do not begrudge the players for making the big bucks.  The Reserve Clause was a modern throw back tying players to a plantation much like a serf to the Lord’s Feudal Manor. You play here and die here unless the owner trades you.

Then there was the 1994 strike when a season was canceled and no Fall Classic was played. And in an attempt, bring back interest inter-league play followed. The first inter-league game was played on June 12, 1997. The Texas Rangers lost 4-3 to the visiting San Francisco Giants.

Major League Baseball, being the statistical abnormality that it has grown to be, keeps track of such now meaningless stats as the American League a positive 1,714 run-differential and .529 winning percentage over the National League in inter-league play. Really?  Who cares about stats after the performance enhancement era of baseball? Maybe me, but not now.

I use to be a die hard American League fan.  I grew up outside Washington DC as a Senator fan.  At that time, Washington was in the American League. For Senator fans, any hope of getting out of the cellar and to the World Series was clinched by mid-May.  As Charles Dryden wrote in 1904 that: Washington was first in war, first in peace and last in the American League.

Being a Senator fan I hated the damn Yankees. This puzzled my Mother when it came to the World Series.  How could I hate the Yankees all year and then root for them in the World Series.  It did not matter what American League team played in October–which now seems like November. The team could have been the ship of fools piloted by the devil himself. I did not care so long as they could beat the National League. So maybe inter-league play had a lot to do with me losing interest in MLB.

During my youth, I suffered mightily. In 1963 both leagues had won 17 All-Star Games.  In the next 20 years the American League would only win two. It was not until last year did the American League finally evened the score with 43 wins a piece.

And who thought of  tying the All-Star to the World Series with the winning league getting home field advantage.  Baseball fans knew that the All-Star game was a stand alone game full of league pride prior to inter-league play. Inter-league play, free agency and commercial TV has turned it into some sort of Red Carpet Gala of stars in cleats.

Baseball, like so many things has to change with the time. But the real killer is TV.  It is TV the lets us watch so many games but it is lights that let us watch night baseball. Television dictates the game itself. Television and its corporate sponsors literally has changed everything in American culture. Television uses baseball as the vehicle to sell more insurance, cars and beer. The game becomes secondary. Once advertisers figured out how to market their product to MLB, the game was never the same.  MLB will tinker with the rules and rituals of the game to make Madison Avenue happy.  And it all became possible when lights came on way back in 1936 and night baseball became a reality.

Some websites to check out.

https://www.ge.com/reports/bringing-good-things-night-night-baseball-came-cincinnati-1935/

http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/cin/hof/hof/directory.jsp?hof_id=113285

https://www.mlb.com/news/20-years-of-interleague-play/c-212597146

https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/05/08/how-the-designated-hitter-became-part-of-major-league-baseball/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/08/11/1994-mlb-strike/13912279/

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112234266

www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2016/10/08/the-greatest-baseball-tv-ad-of-all-time/#165c3312576f