This being exam time in college (or winding up in some cases, and I apologize for creating post-college nightmares among readers), I present two political tests.
First comes from ABC News, Presidential Match-O-Matic, supposedly to predict your presidential choices. The first time I took such a test was before the 1980 Wisconsin presidential primary, when the Wisconsin State Journal ran a huge piece on positions of each of the presidential choices, which included Democratic candidates Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy and Republican candidates (among others) Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
At the time, I wasn’t a Reagan fan for a reason I can’t remember now. (It may have had to do with his age.) I couldn’t vote yet, but at the time I was supporting Bush. Just for the mental exercise, though, I read the several issues and positions and picked the position with which I most agreed on each issue. So it shocked me to find that I agreed with Reagan more than Bush, and the margin wasn’t close.
In the case of Match-O-Matic, I write “supposedly” because after taking the test, my first through third choices supposedly are:
Michelle Bachmann.
Mitt Romney.
Ron Paul.
Maybe it says something about me, but the theme of those three should be “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.” I find the test flawed because there was more than one answer I would have chosen for at least one question, and because, to be blunt, I will not be voting for Bachmann if she’s still a candidate when Wisconsin’s presidential primary rolls around. Bachmann is as qualified to be president as Barack Obama was.
The other test is the Political Compass test, a larger version of the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. On the latter, I’ve consistently scored 100 on the Economic questions and 90 or 100 on the Personal questions, which according to them puts me squarely in the Libertarian field.
On the Political Compass, I scored a 7.38 (on a scale of –10 to 10) on “Economic Left/Right” (minus would be to the left), and a –1.79 on “Social Libertarian/Authoritarian,” which I guess says I’m sort of a social libertarian. I would have thought I’d have scored more in the libertarian direction, but answers on these kinds of tests do vary based on the test-taker’s mood on a particular day.
Take them yourself and you can decide how exact, or not, they are.
Madison’s Sly in the Morning — on which you can find me at 8:35 a.m. — had an item last week about the 200 job cuts at Fisher Hamilton in Two Rivers, adding, in addition to his obligatory slam of Gov. Scott Walker, “This is a company that used to manufacture all of its products in Wisconsin.”
Those with an appreciation for the immeasurable contributions of Wisconsin’s industrial icons of 1910 will find the list of Wisconsin’s top ten employers of 2010 appalling:
Walmart, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Milwaukee Public Schools, U.S. Postal Service, Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Menards, Marshfield Clinic, Aurora Health Care, City of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.
This is what a century of progressivism will get you. Wisconsin is the birthplace of the progressive movement, the home of the Socialist Party, the first state to allow public sector unions, the cradle of environmental activism, a liberal fortress walled off against common sense for decades. Their motto, Forward Wisconsin, should be changed to Downward Wisconsin if truth in advertising applies to slogans.
There is no shortage of activists, advocates, and agitators in this State. If government were the answer to our problems, we would have no problems. The very same people – or people just like them – who picketed, struck, sued, taxed, and regulated our great companies out of this state are now complaining about the unemployment and poverty that they have brought upon themselves. They got rid of those old rich white guys and replaced them with…nothing.
Wisconsin ranks 47th in the rate of new business formation. We are one of the worst states for native college graduate exodus; our brightest and most ambitions graduates leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Why shouldn’t they? Our tax rates are among the worst in the nation and our business climate, perpetually in the bottom of the rankings, has only recently moved up thanks to a Governor who now faces a recall for his trouble. …
But, as Kurt Bauer of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce points out, Washington deserves credit (if that’s what you want to call it) too:
In fact, federal laws, policies and proposals are by far the biggest cause of uncertainty for manufacturers.
For example, Paul Driessen from the Washington Times recently called the Environmental Protection Agency “the biggest single job-killing agency in government.” Wisconsin manufacturers would agree. EPA’s war on fossil fuels hits Wisconsin harder than most other states because nearly 70% of our energy for residential, commercial and industrial use comes from coal-fired plants.
Pending new or expanded EPA rules include Industrial Boiler MACT rule, Cross State Air Pollution rule, Utility MACT rule, proposed new ozone standard and greenhouse gas regulations.
The Boiler MACT rule alone could lead to the closing of 11 paper mills in Wisconsin and the loss of up to 7,500 jobs by forcing companies to pay more than $400 million to meet new emissions standards.
During a visit to Madison in November, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was asked about the devastating impact of her agency’s rules on Wisconsin factory jobs. She responded that regulations create “thousands and thousands of jobs” for workers who must be hired to comply with the new requirements.
One of the many flaws in Jackson’s “job creation through regulatory burden theory” is that she assumes companies will just automatically spend the millions of dollars needed to update older factories. In many cases, the compliance costs are simply prohibitively high, especially in a weak economy. That means factories will close and existing jobs will be lost.
Manufacturers also complain about the aggressiveness of the National Labor Relations Board, particularly as it relates to streamlining union elections, and the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law, which is tightening credit availability.
Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that those who complain about shrinking manufacturing are aligned with those working to shrink manufacturing.
The next chapter comes this morning when I appear on said Madison media outlet, WTDY, and its Sly in the Morning show at 8:35 a.m.
A little Madison media history: WTDY is the former WISM, which was Madison’s top 40 station in the 1970s. WISM’s FM was an automated station playing euphemistically misnamed “beautiful music” while WISM was rocking. And then in 1983 WISM-FM became WMGN, “Magic 98,” and WISM became what initially was known as “Today Radio,” WTDY, now a news–talk station. (They should have kept the great WISM call letters for Magic 98.)
Back in the late 1980s, the University of Wisconsin decided to have one provider of football and basketball broadcasts instead of letting anyone who wanted to broadcast into the Camp Randall Stadium press box. The decision and the network’s selecting WTSO as its Madison affiliate eliminated WIBA and WTDY from carrying Badger games, which were still a valuable property despite the sinking Badger fortunes. WIBA’s response was to start carrying Notre Dame games back when the Fighting Irish were one of the country’s best teams. WTDY’s response was to start carrying, of all teams, Iowa.
Sly worked for years at WIBA-FM, Madison’s rock station. His morning show featured a talk segment, “Social Dilemma,” and “Vinyl from Hell,” featuring songs bad enough to make your ears bleed.
Perhaps the first thing we can discuss this morning is where on this blog I specifically advocated for the secession of Madison and Milwaukee from Wisconsin. (As opposed to asking what Wisconsin would be like minus Madison and Milwaukee.)
We begin with an entry from Great Business Decisions in Rock Music History: Today in 1961, EMI Records decided it wasn’t interested in signing the Beatles to a contract.
The number one single over here today in 1961:
Today in 1966, a friend of Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, Tara Browne, was killed when his Lotus Elan crashed into a parked truck. John Lennon used Browne’s death as motivation for “A Day in the Life”:
The number one album today in 1971 was Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Going On”:
The number one single today in 1982:
Birthdays begin with Chris Chandler, who played bass for the Animals:
Sam Andrew of Big Brother and the Holding Company:
Today in 1963, James Carroll of WWDC radio in Washington became the first U.S. DJ to broadcast a Beatles song:
Carroll, whose station played the song once an hour, got the 45 from his girlfriend, a flight attendant. Capitol Records considered going to court, but chose to release the 45 early instead.
Today in 1969, 50 million people watched NBC-TV’s “Tonight” because of a wedding:
The number one British single today in 1973:
Today in 1977, on NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” Elvis Costello stopped singing in mid-song …
… and played a song he was told not to sing:
The number one single today in 1994:
On that day, a remake of this song …
… reached the Billboard Hot 100 to ultimately set a record for the longest total chart appearance in history:
The number one British single today in 2000 (really):
Birthdays begin with Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations:
Jim Bonfanti of the Young Rascals:
Paul Rodgers of Free, Bad Company and the Firm:
Mike Mills played bass for REM:
Sarah Dallen of Bananarama:
Three deaths of note today: Grover Washington Jr. in 1999 …
… Denis Payton of the Dave Clark Five in 2006 …
… and Captain Beefheart of multiple sclerosis in 2010:
One of my eclectic (or, some might say, “strange”) interests is in athletic uniforms. It’s probably similar to my interest in announcing sports I was unable to play due to my tragic lack of athletic talent. (I think I may have the worst hand–eye coordination of anyone not suffering from a neuromuscular disease.)
An entire website, sportslogos.net, is devoted to interest in athletic uniforms and logos, with an active message board. On my previous blog, I once previewed a Cowboys–Packers game by noting the fact that the Green and Gold was once navy blue and gold, and that the Cowboys have two shades of blue (the blue numbers and trim on their white jerseys vs. their darker blue jerseys) and three shades of silver (helmet, pants that go with their white jerseys, and pants that go with their dark jerseys). That one blog entry got more hits than any other blog entry I wrote in the three years of that blog’s existence.
This subject comes up because the Rose Bowl will feature Wisconsin, which has a quite traditional look, with Oregon, which has, between helmets, jerseys, pants, socks and shoes, literally hundreds of different possible combinations. If tradition follows and Wisconsin is the home team this year, you might see one of these looks:
Others claim Oregon will be the home team because they’re ranked higher. If that’s the case, the choices expand to include green, yellow, black and “carbon”:
As you can see, what Oregon wears couldn’t really be called a “uniform” by traditional standards. (And one assumes Oregon and/or Nike will loudly announce what Oregon will wear at the Rose Bowl sometime before the game. What the Rose Bowl should do is allow Wisconsin to wear its home uniforms and Oregon to wear whatever they want, since they will unquestionably contrast.)
What difference does Oregon’s one-uniform-per-game look make? Michael Kruse credits the uniforms for Oregon’s rise to the top of college football:
Oregon clearly is the beneficiary of its unique relationship with Nike boss Phil Knight, a 1959 alum who has used his fortune to give the Ducks every potential material advantage. But the most consistently conspicuous portion of Knight’s lavish contributions are the team’s much-discussed uniforms — the yellows and the greens, the blacks and the grays, the highlighter neons and the stormtrooper whites, the many different helmets and jerseys and pants and socks and shoes, the more than 500 possible combinations in all.
The football Ducks of Oregon are something new. They didn’t get people to watch because they got good. They got good because they got people to watch. They are college sports’ undisputed champions of the 21st century’s attention economy. …
Tradition? Tradition is great where it’s a sellable, marketable commodity. Alabama can sell tradition. Penn State can sell tradition. Michigan can sell tradition. At those places, tradition is the differentiation, but at the schools where it’s not? They have to go in the opposite direction. And no one has done that better, or more consciously, than Nike and Oregon, which for the purposes of this conversation are essentially one and the same. Oregon’s tradition at this point is the overtly embraced lack of tradition. Change.
Wisconsin tried the alternate jersey once. UW ordered special jerseys for its bowl game after the 1994 season, but they didn’t arrive in time for the game. So UW used these, a mix of the San Francisco 49ers throwback (from the 1950s) and the first Dallas Cowboys third uniform, both worn in the 1994 NFL season:
Wisconsin lost to Colorado 43–7 that night. Rest assured you will never see those uniforms in use again.
It shouldn’t be surprising that UW coach Barry Alvarez sees little reason to change, reports the Wisconsin State Journal:
Would University of Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema ever channel his inner Joseph Abboud and get funky with the Motion W?
“It’s his team,” UW athletic director Barry Alvarez said. “But I think he recognizes that we have a brand.
“I look at us like a Nebraska or a Penn State, like an Ohio State or a Michigan. … Our brand is that it’s a clean uniform. It’s two stripes (on the helmet), two stripes (on the jersey), two stripes (on the pants).
“We make subtle changes, but the basics are going to stay there. We’d be foolish right now (to change) because people see us (and) they see the flying ‘W’ and they know who we are. We worked hard for that brand.”
The problem is that by Alvarez’s own standards, a lot of the “brand” doesn’t work:
This photo is from the UW–Nebraska game, pitting the Cardinal and White against the Scarlet and Cream. Note that “cardinal” and “scarlet” are the same color. (So are “white” and “cream,” but that’s Nebraska’s problem.) The aforementioned two-stripe theme is merely a thinner version of Nebraska’s two stripes. And the jersey stripes clearly don’t work (as in they don’t go all the way around the sleeve, nor are they straight) due to the continuing shrinkage of jersey sleeves.
The correct cardinal color can be seen better in a photo from Wisconsin’s 2000 Rose Bowl win over Stanford …
… or, for that matter, in UW’s throwback tribute to the 1959 and 1952 Rose Bowl teams, which also is a better example of Alvarez’s dictum about “clean” uniform looks:
Nebraska traditionally has worn red (sorry, “scarlet”) pants on the road. The all-white look makes large players look fat, and makes the wearing school appear too cheap to buy more than one set of pants. The Badgers had red pants in the 1950s (which included UW’s first Rose Bowl trip, in 1953) and the 1980s (when UW was respectable in the first half of the decade). They have red pants today (worn in the 1999 and 2010 Rose Bowls) but don’t wear them enough (i.e. with the white jersey).
Another feature that fits within UW tradition, believe it or not, is red helmets:
The upper left two helmets are from the 1950s, including the first Rose Bowl team. Photos from those years show that the Badgers generally (though not always) wore the red helmets with their red pants for road games, and the white helmets for home games. The top-row far-right helmet was worn between 1967 and 1969, with the black helmet awarded for superior defensive performances. (The 21-game winless streak of those days demonstrates that there were few superior defensive performances.)
With Alvarez’s stipulation about a “‘clean look” and branding in mind, here is how Wisconsin could update its traditional look:
This design incorporates several elements from past Wisconsin football history. The color is supposed to be back to the correct cardinal instead of the Ohio State/Nebraska scarlet of the past 30 or so years. The stripes are gone in keeping with going to the early-’60s contrasting-jersey-cuff look, and trying to look a bit less like Nebraska. (Hence the motion W on the stripe-free pant hips.) I also got rid of the most objectionable feature of the current look, the black shoes and black socks. (Black is not part of “cardinal and white.”)
The red shoes go back to the late-’90s teams, although I’d go for white shoes myself. (Black shoes make the wearer appear slow.) I’d put the numbers on the top of the jersey instead of on the biceps were it not for the fact that the cameras at Camp Randall appear to be aimed at the sleeves.
The “Wisconsin” on the jerseys was a feature of the early-’80s teams’ bowl jerseys. The lone veer from tradition is in the numbers, which are supposed to look like the Badger font UW uses on, among other things, their basketball jerseys.
As for the helmets, since two other Big Ten schools wear white helmets (Nebraska and Penn State), UW could use them for games against the Cornhuskers and Nittany Lions, and white helmets against others:
The blood-clot look could be reserved for Homecoming or other big games:
One more non-red note going back to the Packers: One win or San Francisco loss in the season’s final three games will clinch the NFC’s number one seed, which will mean home games through the NFC Championship for the Packers. That means the traditional home look …
… until Super Bowl XLVI, because the NFC is the road team this year. Given that Green Bay’s road uniform is lacking in much green, may I suggest …
The Packers are not the only ones in the NFL threatening to make history with their 13–0 start (and 19-game winning streak, second longest in NFL history) — three quarterbacks are, reports the Wall Street Journal:
It’s not that there’s one quarterback threatening to smoke Dan Marino’s 27-year-old single-season passing record. There are three.
Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, who’s averaging 336 passing yards per game, and Tom Brady of New England, who’s at 329, are both on pace to surpass Marino’s mark of 5,084 yards. Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, who’s arguably having the best season by a quarterback in NFL history, is projected to come within eight yards.
The trend of footballs filling the air shows the influence of the NFL and college football on each other:
Starting in 1978, the NFL tried to open up the skies by enacting a rule that prohibited defensive players from making contact with receivers more than five yards downfield. The rule sent passing totals soaring over the next five seasons, culminating in 1982 when San Diego’s Dan Fouts averaged 321 yards passing per game—another record that’s in jeopardy. Defenses have caught up at various points, but later rules tweaks (many of them designed to protect quarterbacks and wide receivers) continue to make passing better. The way the rules are, says Fouts, now a CBS analyst, defense may never regain the advantage.
Still, the performances of this season’s three virtuosos can also be traced to something many NFL coaches and players are too haughty to mention: the powerful shaping influence of the college game.
Brees, Brady and Rodgers—who are all between 28 and 34 years old—are products of a time in college football when offense was being reshaped by the spread: a scheme that features the quarterback taking shotgun snaps with as many as five receivers and an empty backfield. The 1990s—after decades of buttoned-up militarism—were college football’s version of the psychedelic ’60s. Free-thinking coaches finally stepped away from the bedrock values of the power-running game to fully embrace the pass.
What prompted the NFL to liberalize the passing rules? It probably reveals itself in a comment to the story:
As a fan, the passing game is a lot more fun to watch than seeing a tailback run into the wall at the line of scrimmage and gaining 2 or 3 yards. … Passing equals action, and action is what fans want to see.
For all those purist football fans who actually enjoy games like the LSU–Alabama grim defensive struggle of earlier this season (LSU won 6–3 in overtime), one need look only at the NFL’s TV ratings to see that fans like the most passing- and offense-dominated NFL in league history. Most football fans are probably agnostic about what the correct run-to-pass ratio is, but they do like to see big plays, and big plays are easier to accomplish through the air than on the ground.
Think of it as free markets and competition at work in two different areas, the entertainment dollar being the first. Want to get people to spend thousands of dollars on season tickets, mandatory–voluntary contributions for said season tickets to college athletic departments, and logowear? Give them something more exciting to watch than three yards and a cloud of dust. (Or rubber pellets, in the world of artificial grass.) But it’s competition for players too in a world of 12-month one-sport athletes. One of the newer NFL trends is signing college basketball players to play tight end, most notably San Diego’s Antonio Gates and New Orleans’ Jimmy Graham.
This season’s offensive trend initially was credited to the NFL lockout, which banned coaches and players from meeting from after Super Bowl XLV until a settlement was reached and training camps hastily opened. Consider that last weekend the Packers set a single-season scoring record, in their 13th game. (That’s more points in 13 games than any Glory Days team, in the days when NFL teams played 14-game regular seasons, or any Packer team since 1978, when the season grew to 16 games.)
Today’s NFL passing game is the merger of two NFL offensive schools of thought — the Sid Gillman vertical passing game of the ’60s American Football League (traditionally seen in the Oakland Raiders teams of Al Davis, a former Gillman assistant), and the Bill Walsh “West Coast Offense,” which used the pass to not just move the chains (usually by finding the holes in the opponent’s defense) but control the ball through short passes and screen passes. Running the ball now seems limited to two situations — when your quarterback can’t throw very well, and when you’re trying to maintain the lead. The third ingredient comes from the college spread offense, the concept of widening the field by putting receivers everywhere and forcing defenders to not only cover the whole field, but worry about receivers bunched together.
Packer fans may think the Packers as a premier passing offense began in the Ron Wolf–Mike Holmgren era. But the early ’80s Packers under coach Bart Starr were at least entertaining to watch because of quarterback Lynn Dickey, receivers James Lofton and John Jefferson, and tight end Paul Coffman. Holmgren’s predecessor, Lindy Infante, had teams that could similarly move the ball through the air, but could do nothing else.
Well before then, the Packers had Don Hutson, who even 65 years after his retirement is still in the conversation about the best receivers in the history of pro football, catching passes from Hall of Famer Arnie Herber, the NFL’s three-time single-season passing leader, and Cecil Isbell, who threw touchdown passes in 23 consecutive games. Vince Lombardi is known for “run[ning] to daylight,” but his two Super Bowl wins came not because of running backs Paul Hornung (who was injured and about to retire) or Jim Taylor (who departed for New Orleans), but because of Starr’s arm and play-calling abilities. (Starr was known for successfully throwing deep on third-and-short plays. And the Ice Bowl-winning 68-yard drive featured five passes for 59 yards.)
UW Marching Band members and alumni have an alternative verse of “On Wisconsin” that, believe it or not, was created before the Don Mor(t)on Veer from Victory Reign of Error; it starts with …
On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,
Bounce right off that line!
Run the ball three times a series,
Punt on fourth and nine!
Barry Alvarez’s UW football teams were exciting to watch because they won (including over teams UW wasn’t used to beating, such as Michigan and Ohio State), not because of the points or yards they put on the scoreboard. Winning tops all, of course, but in today’s entertainment world sports fans will not pay good money to be bored at the stadium. (Are you paying attention, Milwaukee Bucks?) Mor(t)on failed not merely because he won just six games in three seasons, but because his Veer from Victory offense was boring to watch, yet unsuccessful. That meant that UW games between 1987 and 1989 lacked both success and, except for the UW Band, entertainment value, which explains the precipitous attendance drop that threatened to destroy the entire UW athletic program.
(Side note: In a fit of … I’m not sure what, I purchased the book written by Mor(t)on and his former boss, former Minnesota coach Jim Wacker, The Explosive Veer Offense for Winning Football. This shows the value of the book: By the time Wacker got to Minnesota, he had dumped the veer for the run-and-shoot. I wonder what I should do with their book.)
While everyone thinks of the Badgers as a white-bread pound-the-ball team, it should be noted that four of the five Rose Bowl teams in the Alvarez–Bielema era wouldn’t have gotten to Pasadena without their quarterbacks. Darrell Bevell (1993) and Scott Tolzien (2010) were smart quarterbacks with enough arm to find their receivers. Brooks Bollinger (2000) and Russell Wilson (2011) were dual threats, able to beat teams with their arms or their legs.
Wilson, one of the best stories of college football this year, is the one player, I’d argue, that got the Badgers to Pasadena. Running back Montee Ball is about to set the single-season touchdown record, but if this play doesn’t happen, we’re talking about a bowl game somewhere other than sunny southern California:
When Alvarez coached the Badgers, they had one receiving threat at a time — Lee Deramus (who briefly played for New Orleans), Tony Simmons (who played for New England), Chris Chambers (who played for Miami) and Lee Evans (who plays for Buffalo). Under offensive coordinator Paul Chryst (a former Badger quarterback and tight end who played for the aforementioned Mor(t)on and son of a former UW assistant), teams now have to defend both the run and the pass, which makes either easier. Football is still about execution, but if defenses don’t know what’s coming, that leads to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to tentative play.
The aerial trend has even reached Wisconsin high schools, in a state with football weather frequently inhospitable to passing, or so you’d think. Football-power states such as Texas have had seven-on-seven summer passing leagues for several years. And yet earlier this year I saw something I hadn’t seen in 23 years of covering high school football in this state. I announced a game in which one of the teams opened with seven consecutive passes, throwing on 12 of its first 13 plays and 17 times (as opposed to seven runs) in the first half. And scored 28 points on offense, by the way.
I’m not sure that Fouts is right that NFL defenses will never recover from the current offensive onslaught. Every so often a team comes along that, due to players or superior coaching, appears unbeatable — the 1985 Bears, the 2003–04 Patriots, or the 2007 Patriots, for instance. (For that matter, the 1996–97 Packers.) The NFL should stand for “Not For Long” given how long dynasties now last. (The term “dynasty” now should apply to teams getting into the playoffs, not winning Super Bowls, given that exactly eight teams have ever won consecutive Super Bowls.
The offense vs. defense trend could be described by mixing your sports metaphors, as a jiujitsu match, a tug of war, or a two-person race. with continual back-and-forth. The difference is that offensive coaches figure out ways to respond to defensive plans, and defense always trails because, after all, offensive players know where they’re going; defensive players have to react to what the offense does. Enjoy the games, and bet the over.
The number one British single today in 1965 wasn’t just one song:
Today in 1970, five Creedence Clearwater Revival singles were certified gold, along with the albums “Cosmo’s Factory,” “Willy and the Poor Boys,” “Green River,” “Bayou Country” and “Creedence Clearwater Revival”:
The number one single today in 1972:
The number one album today in 1989 was Billy Joel’s “Storm Front”:
Birthdays begin with Ludwig van Beethoven, who inspired …
Tony Hicks of the Hollies:
Benny Andersson, one of the Bs of ABBA:
Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top:
Two deaths of note today: Nicolette Larson today in 1997 at 45 …
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 