Monday Skull Session

By Luke Zimmermann on November 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm
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Good Monday to you and yours. I know personally sometimes when I wake up after hitting the hay with a bit of the Sunday Blues only to wake up and realize it's garbage day and that I've got a full five days of work to look forward to, it makes things, well, frankly kind've unbearable.

Then I discover that Girl Talk's new album is not only out (SURPRISE!) but available for free from the artist direct and suddenly Monday seems like a pretty okay place to be. Seriously, if you're on a smart phone out on lunch, push over a couple of old ladies, hop a few mailboxes, and get from the train/subway/your car to your office computer, break every HR rule in the employee handbook, and cop this puppy ASAP. You can thank me later.

"So, besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" Natch that's directed towards our PSU educated/geographically allegiance aligning brethren. PSU played pretty mistake free football for about 28 minutes following a zany, unnatural (at least in 2K10) DeVier Posey catch before the wheels went off the spokes. Maybe the divisional era will fare a bit better than the 2000s did for the Lions against Ohio State. I suppose, at worse, they can always go back to tirelessly speculating that Terrelle Pryor is on the take and not understanding that varsity athletes actually wind up with pocket money after traveling per diems and especially after particularly lucrative bowls (remember A.J. Hawk and Bobby Carpenter's safe?).

 dMR/dQ < dMC/dQ I know personally after I finish shaking off the cobwebs my first thoughts on a Monday morning often drift to wondering which firms out there are determining the price and output levels that maximize their returns with the greatest of efficiency. Alright, so maybe not exactly, but the Lantern's Blake Williams greeted us this morning with a fun research project that accumulates a lot of the costs associated with putting on an Ohio State football game:

The department made almost $31.4 million on games last year, good for nearly $4.5 million a game. Department officials said they expect similar numbers for expenses and revenue for the 2010 season.

Profits from each game remain relatively constant throughout the season, but the expenses vary drastically, even though the price tag per game covers similar services. The difference between the most expensive game for the athletic department, Navy, and the least expensive, University of Southern California, was $945,784.

Because of agreements with contractors, the cost of electricity, cleanup services and payments to game officials is fixed. The disparity in overall cost comes largely from game guarantees.

We'll give ol' Blake a pass for the unakin reference to how many scholarships the Athletic Department making millions of dollars would "cost". Dude also does work graphically [via 'riding the USA Today waves']:

  

Pretty sure that makes Blake more productive this weekend than I was in all 4 years (and change) I was a student. Good work, sir.

 TROY! TROY! TROY! TROY! TROY! TROY! (E'RYBODY!) In his second start of the 2010 NFL season, Heisman trophy winner and lifetime Buckeye Troy Smith did what we're well accustomed with him accomplishing leading the once lackluster Niners to a 23-20 overtime victory. Troy completed 17/28 passes for 356 yards and a late go ahead score (that unfortunately would be undone to an extent by a Josh Brown field goal to force overtime). And speaking of undone, Smith had multiple impressive strikes that were negated by holding penalties each time. C'mon Niners o-line; don't do our boy like that. 

There may be better quarterbacks on the run in the NFL, but I don't want to know who they are:

Big ups, Troy. Don't ever change.

 mmmmmmmmMOXIE The Ohio State/Penn State game of this past weekend was quite an asset to the meme loving quotient of the internet. Besides Brent Musburger's (over)phenomenal use of said noun, the game also channeled Sad Keanu in the best way imaginable:

(H/T: Ramzy on the assist)

I strongly encourage any of the fark inclined amongst us to take Sad McGloin and run with it.

 HEY LAAAAAAAAAADIES It's been said before (and undoubtedly will be stated again) that we often overlook the non-money sports. This is probably true most days, but today is not that day. Special shout out to the 17th ranked Ohio State women's soccer team who advanced on penalty kicks, 4-2, over perennial power Dayton Sunday at JO Memorial. OSU moves onto women's soccer's version of the the Sweet 16 to face 2nd seeded Virginia (FWIW, the Lady Bucks were a 3).

Kudos are also in order for the women's field hockey team who earned their first Final Four berth in school history downing Syracuse, 3-2, in overtime yesterday. The ladies move their season mark to 18-4. Quite impressive. They'll now face highly regarded Maryland Friday in College Park (PAGING: DENNY MAYO).

 Where is your God now? If you needed a brief reminder this afternoon that the world is a dark, dark place and the universe is totally unfair, welp, here you go. Makes me want to go drink hemlock or worse, go read Ayn Rand or something.

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