It was on ESPN last year and I assume this year also, the problem is that they don’t promote it so you have to search for it every week.
As to the guy who doesn’t like it, I agree there is much to criticize, but at least there is some creativity and novel strategy suggested. When I see NFL coaches do the same thing week after boring week in some situations, not because it is the most likely path to success, but because they fear the criticism if they try something different that is unsuccessful I get a little, oh i don’t know, upset? He calls them like he sees them and he sees diffferently than most observers. I enjoy a good 50 to 75% of every column and often more.
It takes a lot to repel me from reading anything about the NFL, and this column did it. I’m a Redskins fan and feel uncomfortable about the name, but that whole “Indigenous Persons” thing drives me batshit insane. I don’t give a flying fuck about the Rams but when he calls them Le Mouflons or whatever, it makes my skin crawl.
Ahhh, fuck it, I’m getting my knickers in a twist just thinking about it.
Yes, it was creative and novel the first time he wrote it, which was, by my count, nine hundred million columns ago. Hey, Greg? You think more teams should go for it on fourth and short-ish in opposing territory when outside realistic field goal range. Duly noted. But this “novel strategy” will appear in every column, probably three times, with exactly the same wording used each time. Ooh! And did you know, that when a player signs a long-term contract for X dollars, he probably won’t ever see all X? Did you? Because if you didn’t, has Easterbrook got half a dozen columns a year, just to lay it out for you, with identically worded examples aplenty.
And what’s worse, and as I mentioned, he absolutely butchers the science of statistics in providing support for his theories. This is problematic because you can make all the novel suggestions in the world, but if the evidence you use to support them is fundamentally dishonest, then the experience of reading about those theories is frustrating. And he refuses to acknowledge facts or circumstances that might mean that his pet theory doesn’t actually apply to a given situation, which makes it all the more irritating.
And those team names? Sorry, cognomens (bite me, Easterbrook; I own a thesaurus, too)? Annoying.
Not to mention the incredibly sophomoric and pointless crap, like relating a team’s success to the amount of skin shown by its cheerleaders (this would be funny and diverting, if he didn’t actually devote several inches of column to it every week, like, OK, Greg, we understand: you were a nerd in high school and the cheerleaders wouldn’t date you. I get it; I’ve been there. But you’re a grown man now with a real job and it’s hard to read your writing through the creepy haze of your slobber).
I don’t know why I hate it as much as I do, but boy do I.
One more who doesn’t get the love for TMQ. It’s just too long and repetitive. It needs to lose about 75% of the words and become a crisp quicker read. Ditch the cheerleaders, ditch the statistics, ditch the rambling and then there’s actually something interesting left.
In the first article I found on google he’s written about:
[ul]
[li]Atom smashers and particle accelerators [/li][li]A proposed script for the NYPD Blue finale[/li][li]Why ships in space always meet facing each other[/li][li]Fuel mileage[/li][/ul]