Before you people get jealous, you should know that flying in a rocket ship is completely overrated.

It’s always nice when a website is so backwards-compatible, time travelers from the 1980′s can be comfortable with it.

Bonus points for the seemingly random alphabetizing (it must be done by country code, which explains why Chad is in the T section)

Today, we discover Santa’s true motifs. Or motives.

Good news! Sort of. We are doing a Christmas story this year!

Let me know if the font is too hard to read. I will change it.

The BCS is better than the playoffs when it comes to determining a “true” national champion this year.

To put it in the simplest terms, a playoff would have meant that LSU would have had to play even more games to win the championship. People forget this when arguing for a playoff. Each additional game is a chance for LSU to lose what almost everyone agrees they deserve.

Let’s see what 4- and 8-team playoffs would have meant mathematically.

Hypothetical Numbers #1: Let’s be incredibly generous and say LSU is so good, they would beat any top 8 team 90% of the time.
Under the BCS, LSU would have a 90% chance to be crowned national champions.
In a 4-team playoff, it drops to 81%.
In an 8-team playoff, that drops again to 72%.

Hypothetical Numbers #2: Something a bit closer to reality, but still generous: LSU would beat Alabama 60% of the time, OK St 70% of the time, and the rest of the top 8 80% of the time.

Under the BCS, LSU has a 60% chance or 70% chance to be crowned national champions (depending on who ends up #2).

The math for the playoff systems is more difficult. In a 4-team system, LSU would be playing #4 then the winner of Alabama vs OK St. The chance of LSU winning the championship is somewhere between 48% and 56%. While the exact number depends on the odds of Alabama vs. OK St., it’s not much better than a coin flip.

In an 8-team system, obviously, it’s even worse. If LSU gets lucky and doesn’t have to play #2 or #3, they would have only a 51% chance to win all 3 games. The odds are somewhere between 38% and 51%, depending on the odds of #2 and #3 making it to the national title game.

I’m well aware playoff proponents will argue that the playoffs are better anyway because things are decided “on the field”. And that’s fine, as long as they are aware of what they are getting. There are simply too few games played during the football season to have a high degree of confidence that a “true” national champion was crowned, whatever the system.

I like how Frito-Lay treats potatoes being grown on a farm as a bonus. (Apparently other companies manufacture their potatoes in test tubes.)

And of course, the oil and salt being natural makes them…healthier somehow?

Lesson 2: A vital part of commentating on sports is to criticize the playcalling with the benefit of hindsight. You should ignore the fact that even good coaching decisions have a chance to fail.

This is especially effective when you point out that you agreed with the initial call, making you a hypocrite.

Let’s look at ESPN’s Pat Yasinskas’ blog to give us a perfect example:

When Mike Smith first decided to go for it on fourth-and-inches in overtime, I liked the call. I thought it was gutsy and ambitious. After watching Michael Turner get stuffed, I changed my mind. Smith should have punted and taken his chances with his defense.

Hey, no one said sports commentary had to make any sense.

So there’s this calendar with a whole bunch of Zen sayings. While many make some sort of sense, others sound like they were uttered by a dude on magical mushrooms who wanted to sound wise.

Some of these quotes are actual Zen statements (per the calendar), others are meaningless crap that I made up. Can you tell which are which?

1. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

2. To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

3. Wind, water, mind. One who masters the heart can no longer take harm.

4. Wanting nothing with all your heart stop the stream. When the world dissolves everything becomes clear.

5. An Autumn night…don’t think your life didn’t matter.

6. To one who waits, the tree gains existence.

7. Generally, faith is like spring mist at first. Be brave at the vanishing point.

8. Hollowness can only result from existence.

9. Neither stone, nor water, nor the sky raises the forest.

10. If the greatest cold does not penetrate into our bones, how will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe?

In Tuscaloosa, there’s this regional Mexican fast food joint called “Taco Casa”. It provides a relatively decent meal if you don’t mind spending a bit more than at Taco Bell.

We can overlook the poor Spanish grammar of the restaurant’s name, because they have a cool little pamphlet who sumptuous descriptions of their menu offerings. The food names generally had pronunciation guides. Just in case there was any uncertainty about how to pronounce “Taco”:

Of course, they didn’t need to tell us how to pronounce “Chimalupa”. Everyone knows what those are:

There is no longer any excuse to utter “Nachos” as a two-syllable word, as most all of us mistakenly do. It is actually three:

While Taco Casa does not offer sopapillas, they do offer something called the “sopapia”. They sound kind of similar: