Total Access

A long time ago I read a book by Rich Eisen called Total Access. Eisen happens to anchor a show on the NFL Network called NFL Total Access. I imagine that the NFL Network offered Rich Eisen a bonus if his book served as a sales pitch for the NFL Network. If so, he certainly earned it. A central theme of the book is how awesome the NFL is and how great it is to be on a show that shows off how awesome the NFL is.

That aside, I genuinely like Eisen. I haven't seen his NFL Network show, but he was a great Sportscenter anchor and he's been great on a few podcasts where I've heard him. I like his energy and his ability to make you seem like your friend as you listen to him. Those qualities of his come out in this book, as well. He writes breezily and is entertaining as he describes the fascinating 24/7/365 activity of the NFL world.

The one big problem with this book, though, is that as much as Eisen is my friendly tour guide to the nonstop world of the NFL, he's a tour guide who is constantly reminding me that while I get to observe the goings-on at the NFL, he gets to live them. Instead of simply telling me about the continuous stream of NFL events that happen each year, he makes himself the subject of them, as if we're reading the book to first hear about how awesome Rich Eisen is and second to hear how awesome the NFL is. For example, all players at the NFL combine get timed running the 40-yard-dash. It must be an exciting event for the viewers and stressful for the performers, but how Eisen chooses to report on this is go on and on and on about getting to go to the combine and running the 40-yard dash in a full suit and dress shoes. He gets to do that because he works for the NFL and you don't.

It's a fun read, but won't make you want to hang out with Rich Eisen anymore.

Rob Neyer Then and Now

Last week I posted a question to one of Rob Neyer's chats:

You used to be the go-to person to connect Sabermetric ideas to mainstream baseball. Now you're the go-to person to connect current baseball events to baseball's history. Do you agree? Is it something you've done consciously?

I thought he might not like someone like me telling him what he is and isn't, but to my surprise, he answered:

Well, that's kind of you to say. But I've never done anything consciously in my life. Things have always just sort of happened, most of them positive.

I'd like to expand here on what I said and what he said. I first started reading Rob Neyer in high school in the late 90s. This was before Twitter and before RSS was common, so I went to ESPN.com every day to see if he had posted anything new.  Like many others, Rob Neyer was my introduction into the world of advanced MLB metrics (often called Sabermetrics). I wish ESPN had a better archive of his old work so I could provide an representative sample of his prowess in this area. Long before Moneyball was published in 2003, he was talking about the values of OBP and other "advanced" stats. He wasn't the person at the forefront of the research, but he was the one who knew how to present it to the masses.

As Sabermetrics became more mainstream and sites like Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus gained popularity, I think there was no longer as much of a need for that bridge between modern baseball research and the average baseball fan. They even mentioning OPS and WAR on TV now. Like Rob says, he's "never done anything consciously in his life," but I think that he naturally started gravitating toward other areas where there was a need for a bridge between what his expertise and what the average reader might not know.

Eventually, he arrived at where he is now (along the way switching companies a few times). Better than anyone else, he's able to take baseball's present and connect it meaningfully to its past.  He's even written some excellent books about this. Now he works at Fox Sports, and a lot of the things he writes have similar themes in the way they take a current baseball event and show how it fits in the overall history of baseball.

In short, his biggest skill is making connections. He made Sabermetrics accessible without being tedious. He now makes baseball history relevant without being boring.

Deal or No Deal vs. Jeopardy

I started this post back in 2008 (!) when a game show called Deal or No Deal was popular. Well, there's a reason why that show isn't on the air anymore while Jeopardy lives on. I like to summarize it with the following chart:

	Deal or No Deal	Jeopardy
Unique questions per episode	1	61
Seconds per question	300	5
Pct Artificial Drama	100%	0%
Pct of Decisions 2nd-Guessed by contestants	99%	5%
IQ of host	85	150
IQ of contestants	50	140
IQ of viewers	75	110

It's a Good Show. Why Does It Have to Insult My Intelligence?

This season I've watched The Biggest Loser since the first episode. It's a good show. It appears to be genuine, and the method for culling the participants every week seems a little more fair than most reality shows (i.e. there are fewer opportunities for producers to intervene). It can be really inspiring at times, and I don't doubt that it has helped a lot of people make good lifestyle decisions.

However, there are three things that really bug me about that show. Since nobody asked me, I thought I'd share:

1. The advertisements during the show. When the paid promotion scenes start, it couldn't be more obvious that it's a setup for an ad. For example, here's a quick paraphrase of a recent one. Bob the trainer walks into the kitchen and says, "Hey guys! What are you having for breakfast? Boring old oatmeal?" He opens the cupboard, and takes out a box of cereal. Positioning it carefully to make sure the camera gets the full product front, he continues, "You should try Fiber One Whole Grain Cereal. It's got 312 grams of fiber in every bowl. Make sure you make Fiber One Whole Grain Cereal part of your breakfast routine. Only 90 calories and 1 gram of fat in Fiber One Original Whole Grain Cereal." What? We wouldn't understand if he just said "Fiber One." You know – the way normal people talk?
   
   
2. The advertisements for the next episode. Today they're describing that kid from the brown team as the 18-year-old who "captured the heart of America." I don't even know the kid's name! I don't think anybody else does, either! Stop trying to tell us how we feel! (This is why I like Jeopardy, especially when contrasted against a show like Deal or No Deal – but that's a subject for another post.)
   
   
3. The way they can spend a whole hour just weighing people. It's fascinating and everything, but each episode represents a whole week of dieting and exercising. Between the weekly "challenge" and the trainers' yelling, they don't really show much of what goes on 99% of the time. Aren't there other aspects of the contestants' weight loss that are worth depicting? I for one would love to find out how their diet routine works at the ranch. For many of the contestants, I'm assuming that portion control is a big part of the reason they're fat. How do they handle that on the ranch? Do any of them struggle? Most of them seem to work hard during the week, is diet one reason they have such differing results at the weigh-in? Is the food catered (surely they aren't cooking for themselves)? Do they get to decide what to eat and how much to eat? It seems like the only time they focus on actual food consumption is for the "temptation" where they have to sit in a room with fatty foods for five minutes. Well, what are they eating (or not eating) the rest of the time that makes that temptation so hard?
   

You don't *have* to answer the phone

My first stupid rant of the blog: Why do certain people think that they always have to answer their cell phone? They could be in a meeting, in the car, in a class, watching their favorite TV show, or playing thumb war, but when that cell phone rings, they have to drop everything and answer it.

Worse is when it's in a bathroom. Today there was a guy brushing his teeth in the bathroom at work when his cell phone rang. He answered it (his mouth still full of toothpaste) and said that he would call back. More ridiculous is when the person is on the phone while using the toilet. When this happens, it always seems like the person talks softly -- not wanting the others in the bathroom to know he's on the phone, and not wanting the person on the other end of the call to know that he's in the bathroom. This is when I start flushing the toilet repeatedly, pulling the handle harder as if it will make it louder, trying to send the message that YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER THE PHONE ON THE TOILET!

So the message I have to my hypothetical readers is this:

1. Learn how to silence your phone when it rings. Don't be the guy that interrupts the class by walking from the front of the class to the back door, his phone playing some weird song (very loudly) the whole time, and then answering the phone as he walks out the door while everybody stares at him.
2. If you shouldn't answer the phone, don't. This covers everything from the bathroom to meetings with your boss.
3. If you don't want to answer the phone, don't. The call is likely not urgent. Besides, we've all made a few calls where we're hoping the person doesn't answer so that we can just leave a message. Maybe the person calling you is hoping for the same.

Yet Another One of Those Blogs

You have reached Yet Another One of Those Blogs (YAOTB). I guess that should be this blog's name. Speaking of which, when you started your blog, did you try to find a good URL that wasn't already taken? All the cool blog names were taken -- that's how I ended up with this one. Most of the blogs I found had only one or two posts that were several years old. Many of these posts said stuff like "More coming later" and "I'm going to use this blog to _____." Like so many things in life, we often have the best of ambitions, but we get distracted. Obviously, I'm intending for this blog* to be a permanent fixture, but we'll see how it goes.

*Have you ever read Joe Posnanski? Well, you should. He mostly writes about baseball, but his posts are always a good read because of his style. He likes to use Posterisks™ (he also likes to invent words), which is what this paragraph is. Much like a conversation with a good friend, he finds it hard to only discuss one thing at a time. So when he feels the need to go on a tangent, he just puts an asterisk in a paragraph and inserts the tangent in italics below the paragraph. It makes for a very disjointed blog entry, but he makes you feel like an old friend. Anyway, my Posterisk is that my short-lived blog has already been flagged as a spam blog. It's probably because to get things started I created a bunch of posts and saved them as drafts. Somehow that's a flag, I guess. Supposedly, some real person is going to take a look to see my petition to remove the flag. So if you're reading this, Blogger employee, I is a real person!

This blog is a chance for me to practice writing. That's pretty much my main motivation for doing this. The fact that somebody might read these words is motivation enough for me to make an attempt at editing and keeping the quality bar high. A secondary goal is to encourage me to do blog-worthy things. I'm sure you don't want to read about my Super Mario Galaxy adventures. I need to keep my life interesting.

This blog is not a reason you should care about what I have to say. I hope to eventually be able to write well enough that you'll actually read an entire post, but until then, I'll just be doing this for myself.