🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@JayhawkerRedLegs

Replacing great players is always hard.

But Devonte plugs and plays for Frank at 1, likely with a little drop off just because two super human seasons in a row seem improbable. He'll be quite good though. Forecast: a slight fall off in production.

Vick plugs and plays for Devonte at 2, with maybe a wash being feasible, though can one reasonably expect Vick to have that dagger in the heart timing Devonte had so much of at the 2? Jury is out. Vick seems darned good. And Vick may have it in him to swing to 1 and spell Devonte the way Devonte spelled Frank about 40% of the time. Forecast: a wash.

Malik at 3 could be an increase. Could be.

Svi at 4 seems a drop off from Josh. Even Preston at the 4 seems a drop off from Josh, unless Preston owns one of the low blocks. Preston so far does not look like he has the ferocity Josh had and that is required of freshman to deal with Blue Meanies as a starter; that's probably why Preston is subbing in. Forecast: half the time, Svi is the 4 in a 4-1 and we have a fall off from last season, while half the time Preston is there in a 3-2, and we have better inside presence but likely not more scoring.

Azuibuke and Preston rotating at the 5 (when Preston is not at the 4) SEEMS an improvement, but then everyone had a tendency to underestimate Landen Lucas. The guy could get down and rebound with most bigs and grab 10-15 reebs in serious contests and he didn't need to be fine tuned and rotated out, as Buke and Preston will require. Forecast: a wash. Next season these guys would be a murderers row far surpassing Landen, but this is not next season.

1st rotation on the perimeter is Garrett. Everyone loves a frosh that can guard and muscle a little, until its a pinch and we need some buckets.Last year Self had Vick who could glue, or score. This season Garrett can glue as well and board better, but score? So far he doesn't seem half the threat Vick was. Forecast: If KU plays half court, Garrett might be an improvement, but if KU has to squirt and score, KU likely would be worse. Call it a wash, since we will have to do some of both.

On the whole, I'm with you about it being very tough to replace Frank and his FTs.

One the other beak, last year's team could never come down court and throw it inside and have a credible chance to score in close; this team could become formidable that way, if Buke and Preston learn to dance together even just 20 mpg. If they were to get like Astaire and Rogers, or the Morri, for 20 mpg, with this perimeter, it could be a very formidable bunch.

Quick, someone call Broadway and get a choreographer into Allen Field House as soon as possible.

@Kubie

Been there. Good add. Oversight on my part. Failing memory. I've got a lot more that I can recall, but didn't want to go on...yet. But I am grateful to you for the add. It would actually be in my top two astronomical sites for more going on than just astronomy. Kit Peak Arizona would be the other. Thanks for weighing in.

Graham and Newman are named to pre-season watch-list by the Naismith Award folks!

http://kuathletics.com/news/2017/11/9/mens-basketball-graham-and-newman-named-to-naismith-trophy-preseason-watch-list.aspx ↗

Don't you think its time they had a "watch list" for being watch listed?

@approxinfinity

Muchas gracias.

@RockChalkinTexas

Decourcy just rose sharply in my estimation. He gets the sunlight for the Saturday games. This separates those that make their livings at basketball from those with heart and love the greatest game ever invented.

I want to make this clear. This is the key formula of KU basketball. This and knowing our daddy is what holds it together. This is why Jayhawk Nation is like no other nation. This is the heart of the living myth. This is why AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN IN THIS BUILDING.

THE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT IN ALLEN FIELD HOUSE IS THE CONSTANT.

Here is a formula.

BC = AS|AFH

WHERE,

"BC" is the BASKETBALL CONSTANT

"AS" is the AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT

"|" is ON THE CONDITION OF, and

"AFH" is ALLEN FIELD HOUSE

Its the light.

Once you see it, you are changed forever. You are locked into a higher basketball consciousness. Something way deep.

Its like when earth moon and sun align in Kubrick's 2001.

Its a miracle and a mystery that it happens.

But in the winter, and very early spring, it happens every season.

And those that still have souls and that experience it know now and forever are intersecting there and a game is taking place. It is different than all the night games. It is different than any day game played to early, or too late. It is different than ANYTHING.

It is a sacred place. Period.

I have visited a number of sacred places and they all manifest the same way. You walk in and you first think what's the big deal? Its interesting. But it doesn't seem different from other's you've seen. You walk in the Pantheon. Its dome. It betrays a hint of perfection. But still you've been in a bunch of domes. And then boom! If you are there at the right time and the sun comes in at just the right angle and you are taken to another realm, another place, out of time, really. Sunset, Meteor Crater, Arizona. Sunset with a train rolling through on a trellis by where the Chumash spirits soar, Gaviota Beach, California. Dawn, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Sunset, Yosemite, California. Dawn, western edge, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah.

There ARE sacred places where light interacts with nature and/or the things humans build. I know it. I have been to them. They have spoken to me. Allen Field House on a winter Saturday when the light comes in at an angle is the first one I ever experienced, and I was so young I did not realize how special it was until I went to college at KU and attended games and saw the light and had read a book on sacred places. Boom! it wasn't listed in the book, but it was one for sure.

Bill Self knows the light.

Roy knew the light.

I believe every coach that has coached in the field house has known the light.

AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN IN THAT BUILDING.
--Bill Self

@approxinfinity

Can you throw me a link for it? I recall you posted, but I didn't get it saved.

BShark said:

I love how friendly this board is.

This is virtual basketball shangri la.

We fly in the face of all that is net in our love of hoops and each other.

We are small where they big (total numbers) but big where they are small (heart).

We know who are irreplaceable. They are two: @approxinfinity and @Red.Rooster.

Rock Chalk till no one can remember why.

Rock Chalk @Red.Rooster!!

@jayballer54

Morgantown is not for sissies; this much WE know now.

Let’em sweat!

@Crimsonorblue22

Nt unless it’s the tourney. It would break my heart to beat him, and I would hate losing, too. He is different the other guys.

He is Dan the Man!

@drgnslayr

You’ve distilled it: who is the third scorer?

The first two are Devonte and Vick IMHO.

Choices are:

Svi: he was supposed to be the guy, but is he? Got the gun. Proved it last year. But can he become a turbine generator, instead of a downed high voltage line that sparks sometimes, but electrocutes you others.

Malik: he was supposed to be the guy, but is he? Got the sweet stroke. Self says so, and Self is rarely wrong on who can ding it. BUT...the Self Legacy is full of Sweet Stroke Artists that could not become defensive craftsman and still have the legs to ding it the last ten when the men of steel come out of the phone booths. Malik has the tools to play defense, like Travis Releford, but does he have the will of steel to lock down a Blue Meanie that makes a lot of elbow-temple contact, and still toss grenades down the drain pipe?

Garrett: he was not supposed to be the guy. He CANT be the guy, but if he has to start for defense, and Preston/Azuibuke don’t get all Wayne Simeon on the low blocks, then he HAS to be the guy! Garrett is a good kid. He doesn’t deserve the difficult comes easy the impossible takes a little longer experience.

Preston: he’s got score all over him. He’s got drive the lane or trigger in a full body tattoo. He’s got b2b turn and bank stenciled in his jock. He’s got lob’n jam blue toothed to his dunk hand! But he is young and big men in diapers are rarely dandies, once the blue meanies start working them over. Who that has seen Preston play thinks he would survive a Morgantown mugging with 15 pts and 9 reebs this season? It’s possible, but this team needs a definite third point smith.

Azuibuke: Next season, YES. This season, only every other night at most. Unless he goes all Embiid on our heads. I’m not living in fear of my head....yet.

If Self were to unleash Preston vs UK and Billy gets 15 and gets + 5 on his man in scoring, then we know he is our man, and we can hunt ring. If not, it’s wait and see between Malik and Svi.

If Azuibuke were to turn into AzuiNUKE, and alternate dunking with a jump hook? Boom! then we aren’t just hunting ring, we are skinning and eating ring.

Rock Chalk!

Of course, Self undercut the team.

What are the chances he sits Malik and Svi for a walk-in vs. UK?

ZERO!

Self would stick with them unless the walked off the floor and quit the game.

But that doesn’t alter poor performance before Self undercut the team with a walk on.

We’ve got three starters—Malik, Svi and Azuibuke—that are the kind of players that need to play in a committee at each position, because of inconsistency.

Alas, KU is to thin for committed at 2 of 3 of their positions.

This is why I ran up the small caution flag.

These guys need to be 30 minute men every game.

Let's all cut cable and skip watching all the games this season and see how it goes with the commentary and analysis. It will be just like the Mainstream Media. We can just take the talking points emails from the Deep State and talk about whatever they tell us to talk about until wikileaks posts the emails and we have to do limited hangouts and move on.

@Crimsonorblue22

No doubt he will shoot the rock.

Consistency and rebounding...these are what he has yet to prove.

We'll see.

@HighEliteMajor

Going to be very interesting to see what happens with Newman's 'tude, if you are right and Garrett becomes Self's de facto glue three.

Svi will struggle with not starting, but he will be able to manage the adjustment, because he has already fallen farther from expectations than most players ever do in a career and hung in. Newman? I'm not so sure.

My right hemisphere agrees with your outside-the-cardboard thinking; i.e., that Garrett is the guy that fits best with Devonte, LaGerrie, Preston, and Azuibuke, and that Self is already steering the ship that direction. It makes sense in the abstract and in the 4-1 vs. 3-2 real world of hard choices. This team just lacks a Josh Jackson to play the 4-1 and rebound credibly against anyone but the Darby O'Gills (which the lesser half the schedule will offer, but which the greater half of the schedule will not).

Small was all for awhile, but big appears the beautiful redux in this season's version of Bill's basketball pretty-a-porter offerings from Haut Hawk.

If you were right, then its two teams this season. Team A (3-2) for Final Four Grade Opponents. Team B for the Darby O'Gills. I resisted this early, but I am trying to embrace the paradox a little early to get ready for still more flexibility later. :-)

To lend further support to corrugated extracurriculars, its pretty clear, though early, that, even when Preston finally fits in, Self does not see him as a sufficient force on the glass to go girlieman, debounding trey-boy at the 3. Thus, Self needs a board-smith on one wing to help Slim Billy with glass vaccing on the back side. For sure, opponents great and lesser will either be trying to ball screen with their centers to get Azuibuke unstuck from the paint, or at the very least forcing him to guard their post ball side, so he has at least to turn to board. No one will want Azuibuke back side rebounding; that would be curtains. So: Self is likely anticipating that and feeling that Slim Billy is not into backside garbology as an intro course in D1 Hoops. Hencely and thusly, Marcus of Garrett, who seems to have come out of the womb grasping shooting refuse seems ideally suited to be enrolled by Dean Self in an honors garbology curriculum. Apologies to Professor Irwin Cory and most Deep State apologists trying lamely with double talk, conflation, and other one-eyed, memetic games to mask a much indicated (and loathsome) pedophocracy.

ON THE OTHER DRIBBLING HAND...

As much as Self loves tradition and the high-low with three out and two in, he took the the three point drug the last two season, and it is as addictive as crack speed balled from a bent spoon solution mixed with 1/3 Antler's Meth, 1/3 nicotine, and 1/3 heroin.

Self is also strapped with two memory monkeys on his metaphorical back.

First, his role models Coach Wooden and Coach K won rings both playing big, and playing small, and Bill has only won one playing big. The embargo seems to have made matching their total wins unfeasible, so that leaves winning one small to at least conceptually join them as masters of the basketball universe.

Second, who is more likely to a fully accomplished player at his position this season: 6-4 Malik Newman at the 3 a couple of season into his D1 career, or 6-9 Billy Preston at the 4 and a true freshman? A betting man has to bet on a physically and mentally more mature perimeter player blossoming before a diaper dandy in the high crime area of a D1 free throw lane. Self's withholding of Preston from combat even against XTReme Cupcakes is a signal that launch pad gantry high as Preston's ceiling is, Self sees sneaker sushi instead of a lean, mean Space X rocket ready for repeated launch and recovery. This is of course, my left hemisphere weighing in.

Good thinking has to bring both hemispheres into some integration.

Self is preparing at this time for that fact that things could play out either way, and he wants to be ready to play both ways, as circumstance dictates, or commit to one way as injury and development dictates.

The above implies considerable internal division in the old coach, not just in @jaybate 1.0.

But if ever there were a coach up to this challenge, it would be Mr. Both.

First, this was the kind of game that puts the lie to Self saying he is focused on how the players play, not how many of their shots drop. He clearly got spoiled last season watching the ball go in the hole at such a high percentage. Tonight watching Svi and Malik shoot at the rim as if they were trying to fly 747s into an eye dropper, well, Self appeared unable to just shake it off as an off shooting night. He had had to jerk them both for a walk on. Oh, he implied their vile floor games were the driver, but, really, Self was a coach coming back down from stratospheric shooting of last years team into the freemason realm of bricklayers that most college coaches have to watch. And it wasn't pretty.

Shooting and vile floor games aside, I for one am most concerned about the number of split personalities on this team.

Any team can handle one split personality in a starting role.

But the majority of KU's starters (3) are basketball schizoids.

You've heard of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Well, meet Dr. Svi and Mr. Brickhailiic!

Dr. Svi plays for KU and sparkles. Mr. Brickhailic plays for the Shanghai Security Pact with stool hardener injected into his shooting hand!

Meet Dr. Malik and Mr. OLDman!!!!

Dr. Malik balls for KU and looks as good as his hype. Mr. OLDman wears a Mississippi state suit under his KU threads. He plays like William Faulkner wrote after the sixth day of a bender.

Meet Dr. Udoka and Mr. Debound!

You remember "rebounding"? Well Dr. Udoka can glass vac with the best of them every other game. But Mr. Debound? He shows up on the odd nights. I've coined a new term for underachieving at rebounding. Its DEBOUNDING. Yes, Doke got some caroms, but he's got to come to board every game for this team riddled with debounders. He should have had 20 against that opponent. Instead he debounded to single digits.

What the hell!

Schizoid is 3/5s of who we are this season...so far.

The other 2/5s is pretty chemically balanced. Vick struggled shooting the rock, but implode. He minded his game and "gotter done."

Devonte? No great moments. But he "gotter done."

But here's the bottom line: Self and all of us got used to great moments almost every game, even when some guys slipped over the event horizon into Steven Hawkingsville aka the basketball black hole of Calcutta. We got used to Grandpa Landon putting shoulder to wheel and laboring on through the tough times. We got used Frank Mason doing POY things. We got used to Devonte blowing sky high into a Super Nova to "change games." We got used to Josh Jackson playing like a junior, or senior, as a freshman. With all of that stability and rising to occasions, it didn't matter that Dr. Svi guzzled some weird juice and turned into Mr. Brickhailic.

But now it does.

@drgnslayr

I am waxing nostalgic about the sky in that picture. It was clearly taken before chem trails scuzzed everything up.

Those that believe in human driven global climate change are quite right. Weather modification to augment strategic droughts is a bitch!!!!

@jayballer54

I believe WSU makes Final Four only if DCIA POMPEO sends MSU, UNC, Duke, UK, and Oregon to PYONGYANG for an exhibition tourney during a nuclear exchange with Kim.

@drgnslayr

Fizzourah every year if I they donate the state’s illegal meth revenues.

Chita State every year, if Marsha agrees to wear a Goal zero solar panel on his forehead to cut down glare and donate kilowatt hours to charity.

Will agree to single digit victory margins over Shaka if he contributes half his salary to charity until he is fired.

Will play UNC every year if Roy makes them take real curriculum.

Play UK every season IF the Feds bust them.

Will play Duke every year if we get same number of dump truck tips.

Neural nets not fully connected till 23.

LARPing off the net.

Glad it wasn’t Singapore.

Caning hurts.

But what an irony if they were to get hard time in a PRC prison making petrobasketballshoes?!!!

@HighEliteMajor

I would also add the offer that we would play them every season in ColDUMBia, if the state of Fizzourah leaves the USA, and then welch and never play them again!

@HighEliteMajor

“University of Texas El Chapo, or whatever”

PHOF!!

@HighEliteMajor

I still say the way to raise serious change for helping the flood victims is to play Fizzourah only if they promise to give ALL meth proceeds to the cause!

BeddieKU23 said:

Duval didn't turn in a paper on time.

He should have chosen UNC.

@Crimsonorblue22

Have you (or anyone else) heard any numbers on what percentage of the money raised (by KU, or WSU) was supposed to get to the Texas flood victims, after overhead costs, vs. what percentage has actually gotten to them?

@jaybate-1.0

Buffer 1

JayHawkFanToo said:

@mayjay

KU could have played WSU at the Sprint Center and WSU would have sold out its ticket allowance faster than MU. Unless you are familiar with today's Wichita or have friends there, you really cannot comprehend the enthusiasms of the current WSU fan base. Wichita is basketball crazy about the Shockers and it bought them an invite to a bigger conference, even when they do not even have a football program. Marshall is one of the top 6-7 top paid coaches.

KUKUKUKUKUKUKU

I have had just about enough talk about WSU fan enthusiasms on this KU basketball web site. You can do better than this!

Should @approxinfinity create a separate WSU FAN ENTHUSIASMS page, so that all we KU Basketball fans can come here without having to read about WSU, Sign Board Forehead and WSU FAN ENTHUSIASMS!!!

Just having a little fun here between murder events.

But it really would be ok with me, if we create a separate WSU FAN ENTHUSIASM page, so I never have to read about them. And I would promise NOT to visit it and ask why this sort of thing is being discussed on a KU Basketball web site!

Yeeeeeee Hawwww! It’s time for some KU HOOPS!

@BeddieKU23

U have to wonder, if there are any non presstitutes left?

A first course in Journalism teaches one to focus the story on the most important issue and move that issue to the lead and/or top of the story. The most relevant and significant issue still appears to be that Pastner reputedly retained and paid a college friend (a reputed addict no less) to pass impermissible benefits to players, even if this were the upteenth story on the subject.

The next most relevant issue?

Well, that might require a choice among a reputedly noteworthy list of of career events at Pastner’s previous career stops.

I’m not even sure it matters, if his reputed “bag man” (pretty charged language) didn’t get a birthday call—maybe mention it late in passing. But slant a whole story to that angle? I don’t think so.

Doing so suggests a possible reason for emphasizing it might appear to be to marginalize Pastner’s role by shifting focus to a hapless scapegoat with a monkey on his back to mix some metaphors, and off Pastner. But who knows? It’s at least good they are getting something out.

Rock Chalk!

@mayjay

It is amazing what Americans can do, when they work together for causes they believe in. I suppose this is why our reputed oligarchy, its reputedly controlled MSM media, and its two reputedly controlled major political parties appear to have to work so hard at dividing us with identity politics. We would have most of the problems they create fixed, and the costs they shift onto us shifted back onto them, and push them away from the government hog trough in about a month, if we were ever not being actively divided with wedge issues and intimidated with orchestrated terror and mass casualty events.

I hope at least a modest share of this money makes it to those in need.

If this means of fund raising is as successful, as it appears, it will quickly become a target for corruption. I hope the planners have anticipated this.

Still, it reminds Americans what CAN be done. And though I would have much preferred Self and adidas and KU and KU fans simply writing checks, so as to avoid reengagement with Fizzourah, and to avoid creating a new cottage fund raising industry that will soon become targeted for abuse, IT DOES MY HEART GOOD TO SEE AMERICANS TRYING TO HELP AMERICANS!

Rock Chalk!!!!

@HighEliteMajor

But I also found you.

And it’s all not true too!

A= A.

A = not A.

Quantum reality is spreading.

It’s official.

It’s been said.

Best ever.

It’s also the worst.

And everything in between.

It’s all true now!

Does anyone else find it strange that KenPom has any opinion at all without any regular season data from the current season to model. He has to be modeling last season’s data, or aggregated prior seasons. Kenny Baby, stick to same season data. You’re good at it.

Oh, what was I thinking? It’s the Karl Rove age of making reality by simply saying something is so. Go ahead, Ken, everyone else is.

KUSTEVE said:

@HawkChamp I think KU, OU, Texas, TCU, T Tech, and WVU all get bids to the tourney. No doubt the conference is on a downward spiral, even with 6 bids to the tourney. The overall talent in the conference is the lowest its been in a long time. The Pac 12 dirty money is flowing like a river, two ACC teams are accused of making bids for recruits, and the grand FBI investigation that was going to straighten all this out is looking more and more like a planned hit on Adidas to benefit Nike. I'm certainly not saying that Pitino didn't deserve to walk the plank, but I wonder if we really knew the truth if it wouldn't reveal a whole bunch of big name Nike school coaches have done the same things as Pitino, if not worse.
—————-
PHOF!

approxinfinity said:

I'm having deja lose.

https://texassports.com/schedule.aspx?schedule=354 ↗

PHOF!

@RockChalkinTexas

Wow!! How persons change at that age sometimes!

@kjayhawks

This is important. It’s a start. Thanks for digging it out!

Here are my initial thoughts.

This guy has thought it through and presents relevant, but apparently still inconclusive evidence. He at least raises doubt that football is a trigger of brain damage in NFL football players.

I am willing to revisit this.

I dislike disliking football, but am quite capable of doing so to save brains.

This guy offers evidence doubting the positive results based on methodological issues and sampling bias. Good!

He also asserts research indicating NFL players are NOT showing signs of high levels of brain damage, which at least means his kid will be safe in the NFL, but he apparently found nothing on little league. He also does not explain what is right about the methodology and sampling techniques of the NFL research. What if the NFL research is masking a bias? What if most of the concussed players with brain damage under 21 are quitting the game before the NFL? What if the brain is most susceptible to BD under 21? I am all for researching these questions!

Wouldn’t it be great if it were found that football and boxing head trauma actually improved brain function. Teachers in schools could just have students wear helmets in class and bang them as they walk by lecturing? We never know what we’ll learn when we start really looking skeptically.

We know the Fellow is a voice alone among experts by his own admission. This can mean many things and skepticism helps assess all possibilities.

He certainly stands to benefit from expert witness testimony for the NFL and all other organizations needing an expert witness who questions brain damage from football. But then so do those that testify on the other side. So we need to be as skeptical of him as them. And we need to thank this man for courageously coming forward.

In this era of science and fake news about, it is not enough to reject it all as lies. We have to restore strong skepticism about all scientific findings, because of grant asymmetry between huge granting for original research and modest granting for testing replicability of original study findings. Many positive findings are reputedly being found to be unreproducible. Reasons are apparently varied but concerning. Skepticism is the most logical path. Reject nothing by knee jerk. Doubt everything.

Scepticism about science is good for science (especially science about big money sports with huge cultural significance that bad guys might wish to use as paths of cultural destabilization and surreptitious revenue capture) and all ethical scientists should welcome strong scepticism about all positive results. Scientific scepticism. It’s scien-tastic!

The finest scientist I know well says he has just never found Einstein’s theories very “understandable” and so he remains sceptical of Einsteinian explanations that are not understandable, I.e., as reliably being actually how things work, no matter how often predictions using the incomprehensible explanation prove accurate. He exemplifies with a gas giant in another dimension raising and lowering the sun once every 24 hours. It makes an utterly accurate, precise and repeatable prediction. But it makes no sense and is verifiable only in its effects, not in the mechanism of its effects. He even is skeptical of his own intellect. He says Einstein’s theories could just be above his ability to understand them. But he adds, he hasn’t had much trouble understanding other scientific theories of complex phenomena, so he is also sceptical of Einstein’s General Relativity. He says he doesn’t talk about it much, because he doesn’t need to use General Relativity for anything. He says General Relativity is so far best for making predictions to vindicate General Relativity; that it has been superb at that; and that sort of auto-verification of a theorized reality leads him to more skepticism. He says scientists do not use General Relativity for much of anything except investigating General Relativity. Scientists use Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics all the time. Handy tools for operating in the realms of the universe he has studied. His is an interesting, humble, profound scepticism. He wouldn’t think of discouraging work on Einstein. He just says he can’t understand it and is open to have it cleared up anytime.

Back to the brain tech in neuropathology.

It’s immaterial that he lets his kid play, of course. Many parents do stupid things and let their emotions cloud their thinking about what they permit their children to do. Ask any parent if they notice this about other parents, not about themselves, and most will recall many dubious choices by other parents. This guy even recalls being something of a dope himself prior to his recent research.

Science is about discovering new things and embracing them while retaining healthy skepticism about the meaning and implications of the new knowledge.

I’m skeptically ready for more on this subject of brain damage for college and under football.

JayHawkFanToo said:

Is social security politics? It affects every one of us regardless of political affiliation, right?

Howling!

I'm sorry. I just can't bring myself to read ESPN. :-)

Based on that photo, I am having a hard time believing that is the same Brannen Greene that played for KU.

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@JayHawkFanToo

Football is king? Kneeling rich guys in cleats are going to bring down the brain damage game?

Me thinks it goes deeper.

And me thinks you sound a wee bit reminsicient of those colonists that were telling Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, etc., "OMG! We can't start our own country! We've been a colony for two centuries. Everything is set in stone. Nothing can change, guys, unless the British aristocracy gets too much syphillus and in an insane fit frees us. We can't free ourselves, no way. A new country where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness replaces bowing to a king and taxation without representation? Fuggedabout it you bunch of dreamers. I'm moving to Canada, where you can still curl in peace. You'll get us all killed by second rate English generals."

Um...

Track and field has been around for a couple thousand years! Football for little over a century. Summer olympics emphasize it. Almost every high school and university in America has a quarter mile track, jump and pole vault pits, and shot and discus aprons. Many argue we're turning into a third world country economically and politically. Track and field is cheap. The Greeks competed naked. No uniforms needed. Just a colored sash. Some shoes. Piece of cake for a third world country. Petro helmets and petro pads and petro cleats and petro mouthpieces bare minimum. Outfitting a modern football player is almost as bad as suiting up a private in the Big Red One for some night fighting on an oil dome.

Football got a big underwrite from the robber barons looking for a way to pound a bunch of free men into soldiers willing to fight for empire expansion and exploitation after we false flagged the moribund Spanish Empire and took all their sugar cane islands (Puerto Rico, Cuba, a bunch of little rocks in the Caribbean, Guam, the Philippines and a bunch of other little rocks in the Pacific), pinched Hawaii from a hereditary King, or Queen, and a year later partitioned of American Samoa along with the Germans and Brits. Add them all together and we created the American sugar trust (aka Dominoe) and the maritime lines of communication needed to peddle enough Standard tins in the Americas, and Asia, to enable us to finish the Darien Ditch and call ourselves an empire deserving of a privately-owned central bank debt/currency cartel secured by Federal income tax in 1913-1914.

Football was only king as long as the robber barons wanted to pump it up with subsidies, broadcast monopolies, and controlled gaming, so that they could conform to factory protocols, administrate some colonials with a firm hand (and some water boarding), and field armies with some swag.

Well, guess what? The robber barons moved the industries to Asia. The colonies administrate themselves now. And the armies are no longer huge citizen armies. They are all volunteer and may soon migrate heavily to robots and AI systems. The swag is still needed, but the culture's institutions are now so heavily militarized that we hardly need football to ready young men's and women's minds for soldiering. And their bodies? How many special forces do we really need? So much of the rest of military employment can be done by soft bodies and techie minds that, well, ballet might be enough to toughen them for the task these days. TV can shape a kid to volunteer without need for a coach figure. Oh, and the TV networks fragged from internet competition. Not slighting our guys and gals in uniform right now. Talkin' 'bout the near future.

NWO baby. Boys and girls with head chips and embedded medical systems and limb augmentation tech that together can make a woman as formidable as a man in combat, given the weapons of today.Women may even make BETTER augmented soldiers, because they arguably have a higher tolerance for pain and privation due to millenia of suffering child birth and giving up the milk to the hungry young. Not certain. But maybe. Who needs football?!!!!

Of course, football CAN EASILY be jettisoned in USA. Just gotta wait to burn off some sunk costs, and for the next wave of Plunge Protection Team untraceable bailout monies to underwrite the migration from brain damage ball to track and field.

Heck, to really take identity politics the last ten yards to the goal line, TPTB actually may want to frag football players into victim groups of linemen, backs and specialty teamers and atomize the whole sport so that attack adds can better mobilize and energize and optimize into a winning constituency.

This is the brave new world, @JayHawkFanToo.

The NWO and its Deep State wants to break down families, and religions, and parties and online communities. Gender bending and transforming is now. They want to break down anything that might coalesce into a credible opposition. You know that!!!

We are talking Borg-ism here.

All human organizations are to be broken down into individuals and then connected not with coaches and huddles, but with in-head chips and microwave communications disseminating at least the illusion of orchestrated trauma events chased with pleasure and suggestion.

Football??? Its so 20th Century, dude.

TPTB can simulate a football season with FX, or robots, or some combination, much cheaper and easier than with bio units that are head injuries waiting to happen and class action suits looming.

Track and field is ideally suited to the 21st and 22rd Centuries.

Everyone in Track and Field is an individual competing as an individual with points tallied independently into a team score.

This IS the NWO baby!

:-)

@JayHawkFanToo

Why are we talking about this in a site section entitled “politics and world affairs”?

Howling!

I would really love to see track and field elevated to replace football. It’s a way better sport.

BShark said:

You can't drop football, don't be crazy.

I could in a blink.Zero loss. Football has seemed a net loser.

Suggestion: all the elite basketball schools should form a non football conference.

@kjayhawks

That would be great. Look forward to it. Hope the research is methodologically sound. I loved football once. Would comeback to it if it were empirically verified safe in reproducible studies.

Have known a number surgeons that were pretty monomaniacal. Would be most impressive if the guy were. a neurosurgeon and asserted such.

@Kcmatt7

The truth about what to do?

Here is one explation that I recall.

SS is not part of the government’s general operating budget. It is a separate trust fund that does not technically belong to Uncle. Uncle, who is reputedly just the effective trustee .

SS reputedly has no funding problem and never has. It has a fiduciary problem. SS is a trust fund that has reputedly always had more funding than it ever required for its intended purpose.

The problem has reputedly been (and remains) that the gubmint and it’s central bank owners run enormous deficits (for whatever mysterious reason) and somehow strip both the annual funding of SS and the corpus (if that were the correct word) of the SS trust to help pay for its overspending in other areas. It is thus always dependent on the trustee borrowing enough from the privately owned FED to make SS payouts to Americans at any given time

In short, the government TRUSTEE has borrowed social security’s money, left IOUs for the beneficiaries that pay in (each generation paying in for the next) and gone in big for domestic spying, undeclared wars abroad, massive appropriations gained through lobbying, and reputedly many trillions of Pentagon money simply unaccountably “lost”.

The solution appears obvious, and is, though it would hatch its own set of problems. Have the private owners of the Fed print enough currency (I.e., issue enough Fed debt notes) for the government to pay back SS all the money it has “borrowed” as trustee with IOUs, and, voila, the trust would be solvent and likely in a position to become a major lender and borrower in financial and capital markets. One infers SS was given IOUs instead of being allowed to keep its cash precisely to keep it from being such a massive investor inevitably reflecting the interests of its beneficiaries.

The SS problem is a kind of fake problem that obscures budget priorities Americans likely would not be willing to fritter away their retirement monies on.

Always reputedly has been since the 1960s, or 1970s.

To reiterate: its robustly solvent, if it were allowed to have its money back.

If one sets aside the major trust funds that are deceptively and incorrectly included as part of the Federal budget , which should never have had their monies drained and left with IOUs, then one begins to see the US budget for what it has become: a giantic national security sink funded by borrowing from the privately owned (but financially and militarily secured by the publc) FEDERAL RESERVE.

All roads lead to the FED and one road leads from the Fed to BIS (the bank of International settlements). But I digress.

Keeping SS effectively insolvent has the same net effect as keeping the USA insolvent. At any time, the American population can be threatened with catastrophic default for not going along with the hegemony building required for building a private global central bank system.

We are each a kind of PERMANENTLY INDENTURED SERVANT working pay off our national debts incurred by our government induced to run budget deficits and trade deficits to build a global hegemony for the private owners of the central bank, and enabled by borrowing from the PRIVATE OWNERS of THE FED.

There is zero conspiracy involved.

It’s all officially instituted.

SS is apparently one of many ways this indentured status has been accomplished.

This is the way I have had it explained to me.

@dylans

The 17 US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES need your interpretative ability. Apply. Competitive salary and benefits. Possible promotion to Deep State. Equal opportunity employer..

Buffer 1

@kjayhawks

But here’s the redeeming part: win, or lose, all the players are still getting brain damage.

@bmensch1

Fine take well turned. Thanks for the insights.