Your 2.24.21 Playpen

One irritating thing about politicians, usually on the state or local level, is why they seem to go out of their way to court lawsuits.  Like this stupidity:

Tennessee Republicans are up in arms over a state college basketball team’s decision to kneel last week during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” prompting legislators to warn the public university system not to allow student athletes to do so again.

A firestorm of controversy has surrounded the action by players on the men’s East Tennessee State University basketball team, who during a Feb. 16 game at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga dropped to one knee on the court as the national anthem played.

Coach Jason Shay and ETSU president Brian Noland have said the team did not intend to disrespect that nation’s flag or military, but are seeking to prompt discussions about racial inequality.

After voicing their outrage in legislative meetings, local television news segments and social media posts over the players’ act of peaceful protest, Senate Republicans on Monday sent a letter to all presidents and chancellors of public Tennessee colleges and universities.

“To address this issue, we encourage each of you to adopt policies within your respective athletic departments to prohibit any such actions moving forward,” reads the letter, signed by all 27 members of the Senate Republican Caucus, including Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.

It’s an empty gesture.  Were it to be put into effect, it’s a guaranteed loser in court, despite astute constitutional scholarship like this:

“The First Amendment is sacrosanct,” said Sen. Janice Bowling who does not believe university athletes should be allowed to kneel during the anthem. “I would never resist anything that’s going to allow them to exercise their First Amendment on their own time, absolutely.

“They’re representing the school and the school represents Tennessee and Tennessee shows preference to our time-honored people and institutions who went before us. We respect our heritage and our history.”

Sen. Rusty Crowe questioned whether freedom of speech extends to athletes in uniform, while Sen. Mark Pody said he was concerned that student athletes would engage in an act of protest while “they’re taking state money, they’re in our state schools, in our state uniforms.”

The First Amendment is sacrosanct, except when it’s not.

This isn’t a left or right thing.  I’ve seen equally dumb stuff from liberal politicians.  But, not only is crap like this empty, it costs taxpayers money to defend the inevitable litigation it brings.  What’s the point?

Ah, hell, don’t answer that.  Thus endeth the vent.  Have at it in the comments.

Your 2.17.21 Playpen

Ron Courson is tasked with another tough job.

UGA athletics has a tentative timeline for when COVID-19 vaccines may be available for its nearly 550 athletes and about 300 staff members.

That could be as early as late March or early April, Ron Courson, the school’s longtime director of sports medicine, said last week.

Now Courson will be working to educate them about why they should get shots in arms.

The school on Monday sent out a survey to every Georgia athlete and their parent or guardian to gauge how they feel about getting the vaccine and what questions they may have.

“If you talk to people, there’s some fear about it,” Courson told the UGA athletic board’s student wellness committee Friday. “We don’t want to mandate the vaccine, but what we want to do is give them good information to make informed decisions.”

Courson is, if nothing else, realistic about what he faces.

Courson said reluctance by some to get the vaccine may be because of the speed the vaccine became available for use and misinformation on social media.

“There’s some concern right now about side effects, efficacy,” he said. “There’s concern in certain populations, some push back from African-Americans. We’ve got a lot of athletes in the South whose families may have been a part of the Tuskegee experiment or the Savannah experiment with the military.”

I get it, sad as that may be.  I hope the effort the school is putting into this pays off.  There’s a reason we’re seeing stories of the wealthy and the politically connected jumping in front of the line and it’s not because getting the vaccine is a status symbol.

I do wonder what Smart does if he winds up in a situation where a significant percentage of the team refuses to vaccinate.  Just like I wonder how the school plans for a full stadium in the fall if it turns out there’s similar resistance from the general population around the state.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.  I’m getting my second vaccination shot today and I encourage everyone reading this to get the vaccination as soon as it’s practical to do so, if for no other reason than it helps make a normal football season more of a possibility.  (I know there are more important reasons to do so, but, hey, it’s a football blog.)

I’m off my soapbox now.  Feel free to climb on yours in the comments.

Your 2.10.21 Playpen

Today’s Playpen topic is a reader request (thanks, Russ!) that I thought would be fun.

I was listening to one of my favorite albums the other day “Marscape” by Jack Lancaster and Robin Lumley (Brand X).  It’s an instrumental album from the mid 70’s based (obviously) on a trip to Mars.  I’m sure it was inspired by the Viking 1 and 2 missions in the mid 70’s.  Anyway, it’s a cool album that I still enjoy and the interesting thing to me is that it was basically just random chance that I found it.

I was searching the cut out bins at Peaches in the mid 70’s when I came across the album.  It has a cool cover painting of the Martian landscape and that, along with the track titles, were enough to get my teenaged dollars (probably $2.99 or so).  Took it home, listened to it, and found that it was just to my tastes.  So much so that I still pull it out now on occasion.

I’ve had a few others like that.  Jan Akkerman (guitarist for Focus) had an instrumental guitar/stringed instrument album which I also found in the cutout bin.  But I knew of Akkerman because I liked Focus, so that one wasn’t as much of a stretch.

Anyway, this got me thinking.  What are some albums/artists that you discovered almost by accident that you still enjoy today?  I wonder what others have found?

I will start, because mine is such an easy choice.  When I was a college DJ hosting a weekly radio show, I’d show up an hour early to go through whatever new records had been sent to the station for promotional purposes.  Mostly, it would be a mix of things I’d been anticipating along with crap I wasn’t, but every once in a while I’d find a record I knew nothing about.

Like, one week, this one.

This was obscure at the time, obscure enough that I discovered later it was actually a re-release of a 1972 compilation.  I asked around, to see if anyone else had listened to it and got nothing but blank stares.  (Three weeks later, the same people were walking around telling me how great it was.)  Anyway, to start my show that day, I slapped the first side on a turntable, dropped the needle, heard The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” and played the rest in its entirety for my first set.  I did the same thing with the remaining sides over the next few weeks.

It’s still one of my very favorite albums that I play regularly to this day.

Share what you’ve got in the comments.  Rock on!

Your 2.3.21 Playpen

In the new spirit of unity, I offer a sentiment that should be universally accepted, regardless of one’s political persuasion.

Are these people capable of embarrassment? https://t.co/FBRAObNKYM pic.twitter.com/FAEIxyClRi

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 2, 2021

GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville says he doesn't know anything about Marjorie Taylor Greene because bad weather has prevented him from reading the newshttps://t.co/vLNcKTvv0N

— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) February 3, 2021

Stupidity is bipartisan.

That’s it.  That’s the post.  Have at it in the comments, y’all.

Today, in reader blegs

I received an email from a reader, Matthew Allen, that kind of breaks my heart.  He asked me to share it with y’all, so here it is:

Senator,

This may be too far off the radar for you to consider, but I want to ask anyway. A family friend of mine (actually, his son, Zac Hendrix) is a recent UGA grad and mentored a young, at risk child in Athena while he was there. The child lived in a mobile home park, and last night his home burned, killing his mother, grandmother, and sister. He is now alone and needs help.

Zac is asking for donations for the little boy. I’m wondering if you could make a short post on the blog about it. If not, I understand.

Here is an article about the fire: https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/2021/01/27/house-fire-athens-kills-three-boy-escapes-flames/4276946001/

>Here is the GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/57f3a1e9

 Many thanks.

Please, do what you can to help.  Thanks, folks.

Your 1.27.21 Playpen

So, how much of 2021 is going to be devoted to undoing the dumbest parts of 2020?

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has been tasked with attempting to return a $2 million stockpile of a malaria drug once touted by former President Donald Trump as a way to treat the coronavirus.

In April, Gov. Kevin Stitt, who ordered the hydroxychloroquine purchase, defended it by saying that while it may not be a useful treatment for the coronavirus, the drug had multiple other uses and “that money will not have gone to waste in any respect.”

But nearly a year later the state is trying to offload the drug back to its original supplier, California-based FFF Enterprises, Inc, a private pharmaceutical wholesaler.

Alex Gerszewski, a spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, told The Frontier this week that the AG’s office was working with the state health department “to try to figure out a solution.”

Talk about your thankless tasks.

By the way, don’t miss the bonus stupidity at the article’s end.

In August, Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, promoted hydroxychloroquine as a viable treatment after he had contracted COVID-19.

Though the drug had been widely discredited at that point, Humphrey, who has recently made news for seeking to establish a Bigfoot hunting season in Oklahoma and made waves in 2017 when he referred to pregnant women as “hosts,” encouraged Oklahomans to “take courage and begin treating COVID with Hydroxychloroquine.”

Do you need a special weapon to hunt Bigfoot (Bigfeet?)?

If we really do get the politicians we deserve, Gawd help you people in Oklahoma.

And with that, the floor is yours.

Your 1.20.21 Playpen

Donald Trump has left the White House pic.twitter.com/qm8hA1Mqdu

— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) January 20, 2021

Again, I’m not even gonna try to pretend to change the subject.

Share your feelings about the transfer of office in the comments.

Your 1.13.21 Playpen

After what’s been a disturbing week of news for anyone who cares about this country, I (and a couple of readers who sent me suggestions via email) could use a little positivity, and this op-ed from Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who in 1961, along with Hamilton Holmes, were the first African-Americans to attend the University of Georgia is something of a salve in that regard.  It’s a good reminder that, while there are significant bumps along the way, we Americans do eventually grow and strive to make things better.

The trick is not to become so discouraged we give up on that.

We have many challenges ahead. There are times when, watching the news, I am brought to tears, not least when I see some of those I still think of as my fellow citizens, nevertheless exhibit awful behavior toward others who don’t look like them — the latest in the despicable behavior at the Capitol.

It is in these moments that I wonder: Why have they not learned from history? Is it because not all of our history is being taught in many schools around the country? And why is there no embrace of respecting differences of opinion?

As we make sense of these questions, history will continue to echo itself. As Georgia elected its first Black senator, Raphael Warnock, I thought back to Henry McNeal Turner, my high school’s namesake, and other Black officials freely elected to office during the brief period of Reconstruction over 150 years ago.

And so as I reflect on the 60th anniversary of my university’s desegregation — as a Black person and a woman, as a wife and mother, as a sister, aunt and citizen — remaining true to my calling as a journalist, I leave you with the question: What can we all do to keep working toward a more perfect union? Go Dogs!

Have at it in the comments.

Shall we play a game?, redux

Remember our little contest?

And here’s the contest:

Pick the winner and for the tiebreaker, predict the difference in QBR between Fields and Jones. Closest guess wins.

Alabama won the game.  Jones finished with a QBR of 98.0, Fields with 87.2, which made for a difference of 10.8.

And with that, here’s our contest winner.

Congrats, ant.  I’ll send your email to Spur21 and leave it for you two to make the necessary arrangements.

Fabris Bowl Pool results

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and such is the case with this season’s Fabris Pool.

The bowl pick ’em definitely limped to the finish, as we wound up with only 26 bowl games.  Reduced numbers or not, we still wound up with a clear winner:  mackeraldreams, who finished with an impressive 18-8 record.  Congrats to you!

Back again in eight and a half months, or so…