Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

Presty the DJ for Jan. 18

January 18, 2012

Music
The number one single today in 1960 was written by a one-hit wonder and sung by a different one-hit wonder:

The number 45 45 today in 1964 was this group’s first, but not last:

Today in 1974, members of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson formed Bad Company:

A Wisconsin moment today in rock history: Today in 1981, Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics was arrested on stage at the Palms Nightclub in Milwaukee on a charge of “conduct prohibited in a licensed premise” and resisting arrest. The charge: Simulating sex with a sledgehammer during the Plasmatics’ performance.

Williams was acquitted of the charge, but she lost her $6 million lawsuit against the city.

Today in 1989, Stevie Wonder, then 39, became the youngest living person to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (It helps when you start your career at 12.)

Today in 1991, three fans were crushed to death during an AC/DC concert in Salt Lake City.

Birthdays begin with David Ruffin of the Temptations:

Bob Rosenberg of Will to Power:

Tom Bailey was one of the Thompson Twins (which was an unrelated trio):

Luther Dickinson played guitar for the Black Crowes:
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A couple ice cubes short of an Old Fashioned

January 17, 2012

Culture, US politics
Psychiatrist Keith Ablow, member of the Fox News Medical A-Team:

According to the Centers for Disease Control, we’re becoming a nation of drunks. Booze hounds on benders.

New data reveals that one in every six Americans downs eight mixed drinks within a few hours, four times a month. Twenty-eight percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 binge-drink five times a month, putting away seven drinks in one sitting. And 13 percent of those between the ages of 45 and 65 binge drink five times a month, too.

News of the magnitude of this intoxication—resulting in frequently and dramatically altered states of consciousness for tens of millions of Americans—is no different than if we were to learn that a quarter of our young people were snorting half-a-gram of cocaine more than once-a-week or injecting heroin on that schedule. The psychological/cognitive effects of seven or eight drinks are no less intense, and, possibly, even more dramatic.

Think about that: A significant portion of our population wants to not be present for significant portions of every single week.

Well, think about this: The federal government mandated through threats to withhold transportation aid that states adopt the 21-year-old drinking age in the mid-1980s. The federal government last decade mandated through threats to withhold transportation aid that states reduce the legal level of drunk driving from 0.10 to 0.08. And yet, according to Ablow, “tens of millions of Americans” continue to seek “dramatically altered states of consciousness” through their favorite adult beverage(s). Federal efforts to reduce drinking appear to have been as successful as Prohibition.

And yet, as a fan of adult beverages (but you knew that), I’m skeptical. The three-martini lunch — forget that, the one-martini lunch — is something you see only on “Mad Men.” A lot of people go overboard once (or before) they reach legal drinking age, but when they mature they drink responsibly. Last decade we had a president who didn’t drink, and depending on the November results we might have another. (Mormons don’t drink, for those who didn’t know that.) I suspect post-college adults know more people who don’t drink at all than drink at Ablow’s specified binge level.

What Ablow says next is more interesting:

My theory is that Americans are on a flight from reality. Faced with painful facts—including the precarious state of the economy, the gathering storm represented by militant Muslims, in general, and Iran, in particular, the crumbling state of marriage in this country, the fact that our borders are being overrun, and the fact that our health care insurance system is in shambles (to name just a smattering of the troubles we desperately need to address)—we as a nation are drinking, drugging, gambling, smoking, Facebooking, YouTubing, Marijuaning, Kardashianing, Adderalling, Bono-ing (as in thinking of Chaz’s sad flight from reality as good), Prozacking, Twittering, and Sexting ourselves into oblivion. …

See, when you drug yourself five or ten percent of your life, that experience (or rather non-experience) can contaminate the rest of your life, too. Because suppressing your truth—including your anxiety and your resolve—for one day in 7 days is enough to tip the balance of your thinking away from introspection, away from insight and away from real involvement with others and the world around you. …

More laws could never solve this problem, by the way. A new Prohibition wouldn’t stem the tide of the clear desire of a significant percentage of Americans to anesthetize themselves a significant portion of their lives. The only antidote is the decisiveness of individuals to live their lives, to be present and to count—for real.

“To live their lives, to be present and to count — for real” involves focusing on the right things, by the way. (As opposed to the dominant culture in my hometown. Or, for that matter, Ablow‘s Facebook obsession with Casey Anthony.) “Think globally, act locally” is half-sound advice and half-silly. I hate to break this news to you, but you have no influence over “militant Muslims,” Iran, our borders (supposedly) being overrun, or, for that matter, global climate change. The world will not end if a majority of American voters compound their 2008 mistake and vote again for Barack Obama. You do, however, have the ability to influence what you do — your own life, and the people in your world. We’d all be better off if we focused on fixing our own lives instead of others’ lives.

Another thought Ablow might not want me to point out is that resorting to “experts” such as Ablow’s Life Coaches or Medical A-Team may actually make things worse. Someone with more knowledge than you is not necessarily smarter or wiser than you. (My late grandmother and father-in-law, each of whom stopped school after eighth grade, had more sense than people I’ve known with educational suffixes after their names.) Today’s popular culture appears more inclined to run to Oprah, “The View,” “The Talk,” “The Doctors,” “Dr. Phil,” “Dr. Drew” or anything involving the word “buzz” instead of using all those brain cells God gave us. Teachers, however, make their students work out things for themselves instead of telling them the answer, for a reason.

Of course, I don’t know any of the aforementioned paragraph personally. I don’t participate in the freak show that is reality TV, and the TV is off in the daytime. I do not know all the answers (or even some of the questions), but when I need advice, I know to not get it from TV.
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You shall be known by the company you keep

January 17, 2012

media, US politics, Wisconsin politics
Christian Schneider on with whom Sens. Jessica King (D–Oshkosh) and Tim Cullen (D–Janesville), supposed gubernatorial recall candidate, are hanging around these days:

If the recent controversy over collective bargaining in Wisconsin has done anything, it has lifted up a rock to expose how many cretins manage to slither below the surface of legitimate political dialogue. …

Then there’s liberal hero Ian Murphy, who impersonated billionaire David Koch while making a now-famous prank phone call to Gov. Scott Walker. Murphy, a blogger, was immediately lionized by union loyalists for supposedly “exposing” Walker’s ties to the Koch Brothers (whom Walker claims he has never met). …

On Tuesday, the 540,000 signatures needed to force a recall election of Governor Walker are due; and in advance of this momentous occasion, Democrats have sent Murphy on a barnstorming tour to drum up support for the recall. Local newspapers have photographed Murphy chumming it up with incumbent state senators, many of whom fled the state last February in order to block a vote on the collective-bargaining bill. Flyers offer attendees the chance to “meet special guest Ian Murphy of the Daily Beast, famous for his ‘Fake David Koch’ phone call.”

But that isn’t the only thing that has brought fame to Ian Murphy. In May 2008, he wrote a vile column titled “F*** the Troops,” in which he ridiculed the notion that we should honor those fighting for our country. Among Murphy’s “greatest” hits (warning: profane language):

● “So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo f***ing hoo. They got what they asked for — and cool robotic limbs, too.”

● “The benevolence of America’s ‘troops’ is sacrosanct. Questioning their rectitude simply isn’t done. It’s the forbidden zone. We may rail against this tragic war, but our soldiers are lauded by all as saints. Why? They volunteered to partake in this savage idiocy, and for this they deserve our utmost respect? I think not.”

● “The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bullshit need to stop s***ing off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees.”

● “As a society, we need to discard our blind deference to military service. There’s nothing admirable about volunteering to murder people. There’s nothing admirable about being rooked by obvious propaganda. There’s nothing admirable about doing what you’re told if what you’re told to do is terrible.”

● On John McCain: “Again, what is heroic about involving one’s self in a foolish war, being a sh***y pilot or getting tortured? Yeah, it must have sucked, but getting your ass kicked every day for five years doesn’t make you a hero—it makes you a Bad News Bear.”

● “But what kind of world would we rather live in: one where fools are admired for being fooled and murderers are extolled for murdering, or one where we have the capacity to step back and say, ‘I don’t care who told you to do what and why; you’re still an asshole!’ Personally, I’d rather live in a world where people who act like retards are treated like retards: executed in Texas.”

And on and on it goes.

Of course, anyone who is familiar with politics sees these reptiles trolling around on message boards and on Twitter. But Ian Murphy is now headlining legitimate events thrown by legitimate Democrats, none of whom will even acknowledge his puerile radicalism. (Very little, if any, of Murphy’s past has been reported in the state media, save for Milwaukee-area conservative talk radio.)

Miss Wisconsin won the Miss America pageant on Saturday night. She clearly represents the pretty side of the state. But Ian Murphy has given everyone a glimpse of how ugly it can be, too.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 17

January 17, 2012

Music
The number one album today in 1976 was Earth Wind & Fire’s “Gratitude” …

The number one British album today in 1999 was Fatboy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby”:

The long list of birthdays begins with Eartha Kitt:

One-hit-wonder Chris Montez:

William Hart of the Delfonics:

Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones:

Cheryl Bentyne of Manhattan Transfer …

… was born one year before Steve Earle:

Paul Young:

Jez Strode played bass for Kajagoogoo:

Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles:

John Crawford played bass for Berlin:

Dave Collard played keyboards for the Jo Boxers:

Who is Robert James Ritchie? You know him as Kid Rock:

One death of note, today in 1970: One-hit-wonder Billy Stewart, who did not die in the …
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The Bain of Romney’s campaign

January 16, 2012

US business, US politics
The Wall Street Journal’s Holmen W. Jenkins Jr. explains “private equity,” which GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich calls “vulture capital”:

As a rule, private equity takes on the most troubled companies because turning them around offers the biggest profit opportunities. That’s why private equity tends to generate more than its share of traumatic headlines. Look no further than Ripplewood Holdings’ decision to put the maker of Twinkies into bankruptcy this week. It’s the kind of decision that, were Ripplewood’s principals ever to run for office, would get them savaged in an ad.

But guess what? Ripplewood also bought the company, Hostess Brands, out of bankruptcy three years ago, when it was called Interstate Bakeries. Ripplewood is just the latest manager to wrestle unsuccessfully with the company’s fundamental problem, a unionized workforce in an industry where competitors aren’t unionized. …

But the best antidote to foolish thinking about job creation is the work of economists Steven J. Davis and John Haltiwanger. Their painstaking research has revealed a side of America’s dynamism that isn’t always pretty. Between 1977 and 2005, years roughly overlapping Mr. Romney’s business career, some 15% of all jobs were destroyed every year, even as total jobs grew by an average of 2% a year. Job creation and destruction are both relentless, the authors showed in paper after paper. The small difference between the two is what we call prosperity.

But now Republicans are worried. To fault Mr. Romney for being involved with businesses that both grew and shrank, that created jobs and destroyed them, may be to fault him for having eaten from the tree of knowledge in a way that, say, President Obama has not. But how will his story fare in November against Mr. Obama’s simpler story, in which ravenous capitalists destroy jobs and government creates them with things like the Detroit/UAW bailout, solar subsidies and health-care mandates? …

[Romney] put his talent for calm, careful analysis to work helping American businesses adapt to the onrushing challenges of globalization and technological change. Looking back, it may even be true that his ratio of jobs created to jobs destroyed was better than the economy’s as a whole.

What does this have to do with the presidency? Perhaps not much, but one thing he didn’t learn at Bain Capital was to twiddle his thumbs because taking action might make somebody mad at him. That’s not the worst qualification to bring to the Oval Office right now.

Patrick Brennan provides an example of “vulture capital”:

Since the 1960s, only one American corporation has independently begun to produce steel on a large scale, and Bain Capital deserves a good deal of the credit for its success. … Though it’s impossible to say what effect Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital has had on American industry overall, he can point to at least one success story in an ailing American industry: Steel Dynamics. …

Keith Busse, now chairman of SDI, made his reputation in the 1980s as an executive at Nucor, one of the largest steel firms in the U.S., pioneering a new type of steel mill, “mini-mills,” which use electric-arc furnaces instead of blast furnaces, an innovation that giants such as Bethlehem Steel had not embraced. After he was passed over for promotion in 1993, he and two of his colleagues began discussing the possibility of striking out on their own. They saw potential in mini-mill technology, which had typically been used for applications such as automobile manufacturing, as a way to produce higher-grade steel at a much lower cost. …

Just 19 months after the initial funding was raised, in January 1996, SDI began production. Seven months later, it managed to turn a profit, and the company held an initial public offering in November of that year. Bain held on to all of its shares as the company continued to grow, using the capital raised to open two new mills of different types in 1997 and 1998. …

In 1999, Bain Capital sold its stake in SDI for $104 million, generating an internal rate of return for investors of 55.4 percent (my calculation, without dividends and consulting fees). Since then, SDI has continued to grow, and it generated $6.3 billion in revenue in 2011 while employing more than 6,000 American workers. … SDI’s technology has provided a way for American steel producers to compete. The success of SDI has even helped fuel a virtuous cycle — a true job creator, Busse has used some of his wealth to endow a range of engineering professorships and entrepreneurial-studies centers at Indiana universities.

Larry Kudlow sees a troubled “company” that needs a Bain-style revamp:

There’s a very troubled company out there called U.S. Government, Inc. It’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And it badly needs to be taken over and turned around. It probably even needs the services of a good private-equity firm, with plenty of experience and a reasonably good track record in downsizing, modernizing, shrinking staff, and making substantial changes in management. Yes, layoffs will be a necessary part of the restructuring.

A quick look at the income statement of this troubled firm tells the story. Just in the past year (FY 2011) the firm spent $3.7 trillion, but took in only $2.2 trillion in sales revenues. Hence its deficit came to $1.5 trillion.

Just in the first three months of the new year (FY 2012), the firm’s troubles continued. Outlays for all purposes came in at $874 billion, but income was only $554 billion. So the shortfall was $320 billion. No hope of a self-imposed turnaround here. Indeed, both the senior management and the board of directors show no signs of making major changes to their business strategy. …

In fact, the total debt of this firm now equals its total income — an unsustainable position that suggests to many observers that future financing needs will not be met. …

Anyone operating in business knows full well that even the smartest reorganizing firms are prone to failure as well as success in our free-market capitalist system. But the customer base of the troubled U.S. Government, Inc. seems like it is desperate enough to go the takeover route.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 16

January 16, 2012

Music
The number one single today in 1956:

The number one single in Great Britain …

… and in the U.S. today in 1964:

The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1977 was sung by Hutch:

The number one single today in 1988:

The number one British single today in 1999:

The number one British single in 2005 was the 1,000th British number one, recorded by a performer who had died 28 years earlier:

Birthdays begin with Bob Bogle of the Ventures:

Raymond Philips of the Nashville Teens (who were not from Nashville, Tennessee, or even the U.S.):

William Francis played keyboards for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show:

Who is Helen Folasade Adu? You knew her as Sade:

Paul Webb of Talk Talk:

Maxine Jones of En Vogue:

One death of note, today in 2000: Will Jones of the Coasters:
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A Giant fall

January 15, 2012

Packers
Remember on Friday that I pointed out that the NFL regular season and the postseason are not the same thing.

If last Packer season didn’t prove that, Sunday’s 37–20 NFC second-round loss to the New York Giants did. All the Packers’ 15–1 regular season did was get them a number-one seed for what turned out to be a one-game postseason.

The irony is that the Packers’ much maligned defense, with the egregious exception at the end of the first half and the fourth quarter, didn’t play that badly. The defense forced three Giant field goals instead of touchdowns and two turnovers. Eli Manning’s last touchdown pass in the best postseason game of his career came right after Ryan Grant’s fumble.

Sunday’s problem was the one thing that had been excellent all season — the offense. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers looked as if he hadn’t played in three weeks, missing receivers with whom he would have connected in the regular season. The team that finished second in the regular season in turnover ratio committed three turnovers. The Packer offense played as if the football was made of molten lava, with eight dropped passes. As New Orleans (five turnovers) showed Saturday, you cannot turn the ball over and expect to win in the postseason.

As Packer fans recall after the Giants’ last postseason win at Lambeau Field, playoff losses suck because a return playoff trip does not necessarily follow. (Recall that half of the 2010 playoff teams did not appear in the 2011 playoffs.) As the financial types say, past performance does not necessarily predict future results. The chemistry of this year’s team won’t be the same next year, just because things change. Players get better or worse or leave, and assistant coaches leave to improve their own careers, and their replacements are not guaranteed to be improvements.

And so, as defined by my wife, winter begins. (And no, Miss Wisconsin’s winning Miss America is not better than winning a Super Bowl.) However, things could be worse: You could be a fan of Da Bears or the (headed-to-Los-Angeles?) Vikings.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 15

January 15, 2012

Music
Today in 1967 was not a good day for fans of artistic freedom or the First Amendment. Before their appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, the Rolling Stones were compelled to change “Let’s Spend the Night Together …”

… to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”:

The number one British album today in 1977 was ABBA’s “Arrival” …

… while over here number one was the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:

The number one British single today in 1977:

NBC-TV carried this premiere at 10 Eastern, 9 Central time today in 1981:

The number one single today in 1983:

Birthdays begin with Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart:

Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd:

Martha Davis of the Motels:

Melvyn Gale was the second cellist of Electric Light Orchestra:

Lisa “Lisa Lisa” Velez:

One death of note today in 1994: Harry Nilsson:
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 14

January 14, 2012

Music
The number one British single today in 1960:

The number one single today in 1978:

The number one British single today in 1995 came from a Swedish group that did a wacky country-ish song:

The number one British album today in 2007 was Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black”:

Birthdays begin with Tim Harris of the Foundations:

Chas Smith, who played horns for Madness …

… was born on the same day as Geoff Tate, vocalist for Queensryche:

Dave Grohl of Nirvana:

Pitbull:
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A Giant step

January 13, 2012

Packers
We have reached the NFL postseason and one of the oldest non-divisional rivalries in the NFL, the Packers and the New York Giants.

The Packers’ and Giants’ postseason history dates back to the Don Hutson years, when the Packers went 2–1 in NFL Championships (Giants 23–17 in 1938, Packers 27–0 in 1939 and 14–7 in 1944). The first two NFL championships of Vince Lombardi were over his former employer, 37–0 in 1961 and 16–7 in 1962. And then there was the 23–20 overtime abomination four years ago, the last game of Packer quarterback Brett Favre.

The New York Times appears to have some regard for their home team’s opponent:

The phone rang well after midnight in the Sports department. It was January 2008, and the Giants had beaten the Packers in overtime in the N.F.C. championship game.

A Packers fan was on the line, calling from a bar, after having had a few.

But he wasn’t angry. He was calling to congratulate the Giants and Giants fans. He said the Giants had won fair and square, had won the line of scrimmage, and on behalf of friends at the bar and of Packers fans, he wanted to wish the team well.

(He made a joke about not being so kind if the Vikings had beaten the Packers.)

Nothing like that phone call had happened in my time in our office and hasn’t happened since.

Fans must marvel at the NFL’s ability to rotate its playoff teams. Six of the 12 2011 playoff teams — the Packers (making only their third consecutive playoff appearance), New Orleans, Atlanta, New England, Baltimore and Pittsburgh —played in the 2010 playoffs. That means six teams are new — San Francisco, the Giants, Detroit (visiting the playoffs for the first time since 1991), Houston (making the Texans’ first playoff visit in franchise history), Denver and Cincinnati. That also means six 2010 playoff teams didn’t make the 2011 playoffs — Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Indianapolis, Kansas City and the New York Jets. Yet, since the Packers returned to regular playoff visits in 1993, only in 1999 have neither the Packers nor the Giants made the postseason.

I sarcastically called the 2011 Packers the worst 15–1 team ever because of the number of complaints about their defense, irrespective of the fact that their defense did not cost them a single game this season. Yards do not show up on a standard stadium scoreboard; points do. And as noted here before, the best predictor of winning an NFL title over the past 21 season is point differential; in 15 of the past 21 seasons, the team that finished first or second in point differential won the Lombardi Trophy. The Packers finished second in point differential last season and this season.

One sign of the Packers’ regular-season dominance is the fact that the Packers beat every NFC playoff team (twice in Detroit’s case) except the one team they didn’t play, San Francisco, plus Denver from the AFC. To paraphrase the financial types, though, regular-season performance does not necessarily predict playoff results, as the Packers showed by losing to Minnesota (who they beat twice in the regular season) in the 2004 playoffs, the Giants in the 2007 playoffs, and Arizona in the 2009 playoffs.

NFL observers have been comparing the Giants’ recent play to the 2007 Giants, which after a so-so regular season had to win playoff games on the road against higher-seeded teams before upsetting New England in Super Bowl XLIII. Grantland’s Charles P. Pierce:

It has been a revelatory month for the Giants, who are now playing better defense than anyone in the league. [Osi] Umenyiora and Justin Tuck are both back from nagging injuries. (Tuck had a come-to-Jesus meeting with coach Tom Coughlin a few weeks back that may have turned the entire season around.) The improvement in the front seven has taken the pressure off a dodgy New York secondary, which played with great confidence [against Atlanta], jamming the fleet Atlanta receivers and busting [quarterback Matt] Ryan’s timing to hell and gone. And on the other end of that defensive line is Jason Pierre-Paul, a man with no discernable last name, who might be the best defensive player in the NFL. Watching him play for the first time is utterly revelatory, like the first time you saw Tim Lincecum paint a corner, or Kevin Durant leave a defender groping at the air. You jump out of your seat when he makes a play, even in the relative anonymity of the defensive line. And with all that, he’s still incredibly raw. “It’s still amazing,” New York’s Justin Tuck told ESPN’s Johnette Howard recently, “what he doesn’t know.”

The more interesting comparison is to last year’s Packers, which had to win their last two regular-season games and then beat, in order, the third-, first- and second-seeded teams in the NFL on the road to get to Super Bowl XLV. The Packers’ three 2010 playoff opponents were all teams the Packers had played in the regular season.

The fact that the 2007 Packers beat the Giants in the regular season but lost in the NFC championship is an exception to the way Packer things usually are, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Since ’09, the Packers are 10-3 in rematch games against opponents, including 7-2 in the second or third meeting with their NFC North brethren. Before ’09, they were 6-4 under McCarthy – the only playoff loss the NFC Championship Game against the Giants – making them 16-7 overall in rematches.

McCarthy said last week that his staff believes it comes up with superior game plans when it meets a team for the first time, but the record obviously shows that it does pretty well the second time, too. Often, it’s just a case of the coaches noticing areas where they could have done better and adjusting accordingly.

The Packers finished 15–1 despite giving up the most yards in the NFL this season. Some claim that means the Packers have a terrible defense. If they’re saying that about the Packers, they also need to say that about the AFC’s number one seed, New England, which finished next to last in defensive yardage. And yet both the Packers (the first team to give up the most yardage and yet get a conference number one seed) and the Patriots were in the middle of the NFL pack in the more important statistic, points given up.

Why are the two worst defenses the two top seeds? Tuesday Morning Quarterback has an answer:

Green Bay and New England not only finished at the top of the heap with bad defenses statistically, they are on a combined 48-7 streak. Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships? …

Obviously, New England and Green Bay have top offenses, ranked second and third statistically, after New Orleans. What jumps out about the Packers and Patriots is their yards per pass attempt. Green Bay gains 9.3 yards per attempt, the NFL’s best, while New England gains 8.6 yards per attempt, second-best. The most efficient rushing team this season, Carolina, gained 5.4 yards per attempt, and finished with a losing record. The second-most efficient rushing team, Minnesota, with 5.2 yards per attempt, finished 3-13. Gaining the most yards per try with passing plays is the winning football formula of the moment. …

Are Green Bay and New England of 2011 flukes? Both pass the ball with such efficiency that it doesn’t seem to matter how many yards their defenses allow. Both often jump to big leads and don’t care if their defenses give up yardage late. In the 2010 season, the Chargers finished first on defense and failed to make the playoffs — take that, purists!

Defense is not about how many yards you give up. It is not entirely about how many points you give up, either. It is about making one more play than the opponent’s offense. That explains why, despite being dead last in yardage, the Packer defense was 14th in points given up. The “one more play” was often an interception, in which the Packers led the NFL. (Ask San Diego’s Philip Rivers or Detroit’s Matthew Stafford.) Turnovers are how yards don’t become points.

Another point in the Packers’ favor is not just their home field advantage, but the traditional home field advantage of the AFC’s and NFC’s top two seeds. While the Giants were holding off Atlanta, the Packers spent the past two weeks fixing various things and preparing for the two teams. That’s why the biggest home field advantage is in the second round of the playoffs, not the wild card round and not the conference championship round.

There is one other thing that must be brought up. That is the death of Michael Philbin, the 21-year-old son of Packers offensive coordinator Joe Philbin. ESPN Milwaukee’s Jason Wilde reports how McCarthy handled this with his team:

McCarthy had almost reached the end to his answer to Wisconsin State Journal columnist Tom Oates’ question – Do you have an idea of how this has affected the team emotionally? – about three minutes into the 10-minute press conference when his emotions got the best of him. (You can watch the press conference in its entirety on Packers.com.)

“We talked about that as a football team today and frankly the topic was the ability to separate. It’s part of our program. It’s nothing we haven’t spoken on before,” McCarthy replied. “We talked about the importance of having the ability to separate personal challenges and your professional challenges. And it really goes in line with the family-first philosophy. Everybody’s feeling it. There’s no question on what level. That’s really for the individual to speak on. But professionally, I’ve been very pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish. We had a very productive day Monday with everything going on on Monday. And today just a ton of energy (at practice). Clearly from a tempo standpoint, the execution was probably one of our finer Wednesday practices.

“And I think the reality of this just gave everybody a punch in the heart to let you know the reality …” That’s when McCarthy stopped, took a deep breath, bowed his head and then continued, his lip quavering. “… how fortunate to be where we are.”

Today is Michael Philbin’s funeral. As for Sunday, said McCarthy, “Frankly, Joe and I haven’t even talked about his responsibility and will not. He’s with his family and he’ll return when he feels he’s ready to return.”

McCarthy has obviously surrounded himself with high-quality assistant coaches and players. No one with any character would equate the importance of a football game with the importance of your child’s life. And yet you have to believe Joe Philbin would feel absolutely awful about the possibility of his absence’s adversely affecting his team to the point where it lost Sunday. I believe the Packer players won’t let that happen.
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