It’s back on Granada? Is Bamber Gascoigne still hosting?
College Bowl went off the air in 1970. It’s still around as an intercollegiate club activity, though, and there are doubtless more of its alumni than me on this board.
Granada no longer exists, and it’s on BBC2 anyway. And with Jeremy Paxman, who replaced the gentle “I’ll have to hurry you” with an impatient “Come on!”
it’s all about the almighty buck, altho i can’t vouche for the particulars behind this deal.
as most american football fans will recall, here in indianapolis about 20 years ago, we acquired the baltimore colts pretty much under cover of darkness. one day they were in baltimore – the next they were… here. complete with overpriced stadium.
not being a football fan i don’t even remember the whys of it other than i’d imagine irsay (the owner) must’ve gotten one hell of a sweet deal to bring his team to the wilds of indiana. anybody got a better memory than i?
baltimore fans were NOT amused, as you might imagine. now, it’s hard to remember when the colts weren’t in indiana.
We can all understand that money drives this kind of thing. What us Brits can’t figure out is why there’s money to be made from such a move in the first place. Plonk a new team into London, or Manchester, or Liverpool, and who the hell is going to support them? (I think MK Dons, the sole attempt at this type of move in Britain, have cropped up already - a town of 200k only supplies attendances of 5000 for their ‘home’ team.)
Sounds like Wigan 
Wigan get a lot of unfair stick about attendances - last season they managed 82% capacity. The same as Middlesbrough, and far better than Blackburn (68%) and Sunderland (69%). Admittedly Sunderland were a pile of shite.
We have colleges like that, too.
Usually they’re subdivisions by type of major- at my alma mater, the University of Maryland, there was the College of Engineering and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences (called CMPS), among others. The colleges were made up of departments- the Department of Physics and the Department of Math were part of CMPS. A college might have course requirements above and beyond the university’s course requirements for everybody that applied to anyone majoring in a department that was part of their college. They didn’t have their own dorms, though, or anything like that.
AIUI, the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge aren’t like that. UC Santa Cruz has colleges like that, though I didn’t really get to see how that works, since I was a grad student there.
No, they’re not. What you describe are called variously ‘faculty’ or ‘department’ in Britain.
The United States is a nation of 300 million people and an area of 3.7 million square miles. There are 30 major league baseball clubs. That leaves a lot of people who are not within a convenient driving distance of a major league baseball club.
Yes, there are a couple hundred minor league clubs in towns of all sizes, but nobody cares about them. Yes, you’ll go see a minor league game nearby if you really like baseball, and you might casually follow the local club, but only as a substitute for a major league team.
If you live in Durham, N.C., you might consider yourself a casual fan of the local Durham Bulls, but if you are a serious sports enthusiast, you’re going to pick a major league club as your primary interest. There isn’t one in Durham; indeed, there isn’t one in all of North Carolina. So you might go for one of the closest in distance – Atlanta or Washington, maybe. Or you might choose a club to follow based on other factors. Regardless, as soon as the major leagues decide to put a club (whether an expansion (new) club or a relocated club) near you, your primary loyalty immediately goes to the new local major league club.
Imagine if Britain was a much larger country geographically and if serious football fans followed only the Premier league clubs and they all wanted one within close proximity of their homes.
There are plenty of large-ish American cities that don’t have their own major league clubs. As soon as any existing club makes a move, they have hundreds of thousands of fans just dying to welcome them.
My bolding - these are what seem to be the huge cultural differences. More and more I suspect it’s totally intertwined with the presence or absence of a promotion/relegation system. And only if the first two of those paragraphs are true can the third one be.
Put it another way – Imagine that all of Britain was crazy about Premier League football only and nothing else. But there were only three Premier League clubs and they were in London, Birmingham, and Manchester and there was no possibility of relegation or promotion of clubs from the lower leagues. Wouldn’t then there be plenty of fans in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Belfast, etc., who would love for one of the existing Premier clubs to move into town and become their team?
Darn – should have previewed. Anyway, GorillaMan, looks like you’ve caught on to the key differences.
Without relegation or promotion, the only way to get your city’s team on national TV is to get a major-league team. So if North Maldon buys the Buffalo Bills, the name “North Maldon” gets broadcast to millions of people in other cities for three hours. Then when the North Maldon chamber of Commerce runs its ads encouraging business to relocate there, they already have a very high name recognition. Especially among football’s target market, males 35-50, who frequently happen to be the people making major decisions in corporate America.
The only university I know of in the US that has an English-style college system is Rice.
UC Santa Cruz does as well, at least as I understand the English-style college system. Undergrads live in their colleges. A college might be themed to attract people of certain types of majors, but I think in theory you could be part of any college no matter what your major was. Grad students weren’t part of that system, though, so I didn’t really get a good idea of how it worked.
My understanding of the Oxbridge system is that the colleges provide all services, including residence and instruction, to the students – the members of the faculty are employed by the college, not the university. The only thing the university does is award the degree. Am I mistaken about that? If not, I don’t think any U.S. university or college has a similar system.
Loyalties to sports teams are more divided here, with more than 1 top sport. You’ll have a favorite baseball team, a favorite football team, a favorite basketball team, and maybe a favorite hockey team, and that’s just the pros. College teams (which I understand are nearly unknown in the UK) can engender even stronger loyalties, since more people live near a college than to a major league town.
We’re also more transitory than you - it’s much more common for an American to move across the country, 4 time zones away, than it is for a Brit to move to the next town, as I understand it. It isn’t easy to follow your old team when you do that, especially if you can’t go to their games or even see them on TV regularly. There’s a strong inducement to cheer for the team that wears your town’s name on its uniforms, whatever that town may be. If your town thinks of itself as major league in most aspects, and wants the respect that the publicity of being listed among the other major league cities entails, you’ll want a major league team too and you’ll be willing to pay big money to get one. If you own a local business, you’ll be desperate to pay for advertising to associate yourself with such a strong symbol of civic pride.
That seems to be the primary source of income for the National Hockey League, for instance - selling new franchises to ambitious third-tier cities and pocketing the huge fees, until few fans can even name even a single player on many teams.
Slavery was not merely a “side issue.” Preserving the institution of slavery was the primary reason cited for secession. (The states which produced declarations of their reasons for secession spelled this out clearly.)
There were other issues, of course, but slavery was the 800 lb. gorilla.
I don’t want to hijack this thread into a debate about the causes for the Civil War, so I will direct you to an older thread wherein this topic was discussed at greater length, and with citations to primary sources: Is the Civil War only about slavery?
“401(k)”. What’s all that about?
“Wake up and smell the coffee [or other noun of your choice]” ?
Is quid the same thing as “bob” ?
Traditionally, employers would offer long-term employees what is known as a defined-benefit pension, which, after retirement, would guarantee the retiree X monthly income (based on some formula) and other benefits, such as health care insurance.
These defined-benefit plans have become very expensive for companies and so, these days, most of them offer instead a 401(k) plan, which allows you to designate a portion of your salary to be directed towards certain investments, the proceeds of which (if there are any) are available to you after retirement. This is much cheaper for employers, who are required to contribute nothing more than the regular salary (although many choose to “match” employee contributions to the investment portfolios).
I think recent studies have shown that 401(k) plans are pretty much scams – they generally result in very little for the employee to live on after retirement.
It’s “Wake up and smell the coffee.” Other nouns may be inserted as jokes, but “coffee” is the proper expression. It’s just an expression meaning, “Open your eyes and take a look at what’s really going on around you, you cloth-headed, foggy-brained, starry-eyed fool!”