Elvis (the Horse) Has Left the Building

Yahoo! today carried an AP news article about President Obama imposing new caps on executive pay for any financial firm yet to receive part of the $700B Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the first of many federal bailout programs. TARP specifically targeted the financial services sector of the economy, and caused much of the Wall Street vs. Main Street hand-wringing when it was proposed and approved last fall.

Since the approval of using federal funds to bail out huge mistakes on bad bets by investment bankers, hedge funds, and virtually any bank dealing in securitized subprime mortgage loans, many commentators rightly pointed out that C-level executives of those same firms were still clearing huge amounts of money in annual bonuses. The AP article pegged the bonus figure at $18B last year alone.

Those of us living on Main Street had every right to be angry at the payment of these huge bonuses, since we're familiar with the model of rewarding good performance with a bonus. If one of us made the bad bets and mistakes the leaders of these financial institutions made, we'd be fired, not enticed to stay with a handsome year-end bonus. Gregg Easterbrook even railed against the 2008 bonuses in several of his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) columns on ESPN's Page 2.

So, this action by Obama, stepping into a leadership void left by the collective members of the U.S. Congress, is a good thing, right? Right?!

I think the key paragraph to note is this one:

The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for "exceptional assistance" in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.

Sadly, the analogy that applies here is closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. The article does not mention just how much of the taxpayers' $700B remains unclaimed at this point, but I dare say not many banks will line up to take the bailout funding after today.

While this was a nice gesture by Obama, I don't think it will have a great impact on the TARP program (brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), on other federally-funded bailouts of the auto industry, on the upcoming "stimulus" package (really just a pork-laden spending bill by Congress; it's now up to $900B in additional spending not offset in any way by cuts elsewhere or higher taxes -- the shame!), or on other federal legislation.

He does get to look like he's providing leadership and make headlines, though. For whatever that's worth.

One thing I had to note, though: the POTUS makes an annual salary of $400,000. Plus such benefits as a $50K expense account, a $100K nontaxable travel account, and $19K just for entertaining or entertainment. Does he pay taxes on all the income other than the travel account?

I also had to laugh at the past salaries of U.S. Presidents table found on Wikipedia, under the Salary section of the page. I can appreciate they want to state what the equivalent "Salary in 2008 Dollars" is for the salaries established so many years ago. But there is an error in the math here. If you're talking about what something costs, adjusted for inflation, then something that cost $400K in 2001 would cost $471K in 2008 terms (using just the numbers on the Wikipedia page).

However, since the salary of the President has remained the same since 2001, the equivalent purchasing power of $400K is actually less than what it was in 2001, not more. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) own inflation calculator seems to provide the same type of analysis as what is found on the Wikipedia page. If the salary of the President were adjusted to account for rises in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) every year, then Obama would be earning $479K in 2009. But he's only making $400K. Put it this way, if you reverse the numbers in the BLS calculator, Obama's $400K salary in 2008 could purchase only the equivalent of $333,482 of 2001 goods.

That's still more than the vast majority of us living on Main Street earn, so I don't feel sorry for his diminished purchasing power. I just wish Obama could bring real change to Washington. It hasn't happened yet.

Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri...

I must not be very intelligent when it comes to matters of foreign diplomacy. Perhaps I should request a crash course in negotiating sensitive matters of national and international security from one of my good friends, who currently works for the U.S. State Department. Or is it the U.S. Department of State: Diplomacy in Action! as their website says?

See, I tend to think that if a person or a country is going to negotiate in good faith using bargaining chips, then those chips should already be on the table before the negotiating session begins. I may very well be wrong about that. Like I said, I'm not an expert.

I did see this article on Yahoo! news this morning, in which the Russians claim to make a wonderful conciliatory gesture towards a more cooperative and peaceful approach with the new Obama Administration. Look at us! We promise we won't deploy nuclear-tipped missiles on the Polish border because George W. Bush is no longer in office! Especially since Obama has not ruled out the possibility of continuing Bush's plans for a missile defense shield in Europe (he only promised to consider the policy on its merits before deciding what to do), Russia's move seems to be fairly magnanimous.

However, check out when Moscow originally announced the deployment of their Iskander missiles: it was 5 Nov 08, the day after Obama was elected President. So, this whole announcement of a new era of cooperation, of extending an olive branch to the Obama Administration, is really just a ruse designed to make the Russians look good. They created the faux crisis a day after our Presidential election for the sole purpose of being able to use that bargaining chip now.

That must be how international diplomacy is really conducted.

Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha...

Work-Life Balance is a Myth - Confirmed!

This entry from the WSJ's excellent Blog, The Juggle, proves it! Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo!, says so, and provided amplifying details in an interview she did with people at More magazine.

The sad thing is, Carol and More magazine focused solely on the work-life balance issues as experienced by women in the workplace. That's probably a result of More magazine's core audience, which I assume to be working women over the age of 40. I know I've never heard of it before today.

Not enough people either give credit to or think about the working men who experience the same types of work-life balance issues that I wrote about previously. Maybe our society still expects (or practically insists) its fathers be absentee Dads, slaves to the workplace in order to provide a solid home for our families. If a father requests consideration when it comes to work day hours, flexible leave schedules, or the use of the Family Leave Medical Act (FMLA), you can be sure that guy will get put on the "Daddy Track" at work, soon to be left behind promotion-wise by his peers.

It's a crying shame.

The Problem With the BCS

It is readily apparent that there is simply too much money sloshing around the current Bowl Championship Series system (formerly known as Division I-A AKA big-time football) to get anything to change in favor of a playoff system. We've all heard the arguments for and against a college football playoff system, which basically boil down to this:

For: Let the players decide who really is the best team on the field.
Against: A bunch of really specious arguments, none of which make any sense whatsoever.

I don't even want to get into the reasons why the arguments against a Div I-A playoff don't make any sense; they just don't. For those who say you can't take these players away from their studies for that long, who are you trying to kid? Many football factory schools don't make their star players attend classes anyway, and if the athletes in Division III (none of whom have a hope of playing at the NFL level) can have a playoff system, then why can't we have one at the Div I-A level?

There was a brilliant proposal last year on Yahoo! Sports, and I don't remember who wrote it, but it basically said this: put the top eight teams according to their rankings at the end of the season into a playoff system. (Sure, you'll get griping from the number 9- and 10-ranked schools, but that's better than the current system.) It would take three rounds -- three weekends -- to decide the champion, which is not much different from today's bowl game schedule. For the first two rounds, let the higher-ranked team play at home. That means additional home ticket sales, additional revenue for the school, and the fans don't have to travel ungodly amounts to see and support their team. Plus, wouldn't you just love to see a warm-weather team like LSU, USC, or Florida go north to play in Ohio Stadium or Happy Valley in December? It would remove a lot of the advantage those teams enjoy in warm-weather venues, that's for sure. For the final game, call it whatever name you want, and play it wherever you want, but then the fans only have to travel once for the actual championship game.

Now, a lot of the fans and sportwriters that defend the current system blather on about lots of different quality-of-life arguments related to Div I-A football. To wit: every week is important, even those September games (forget that very few non-conference games mean a darn thing as the football factories schedule Div I-AA patsies for easy victories, Appalachian State over Michigan notwithstanding); with 38 bowl games, you have 38 teams that finish on a high note (and only about two or three of those bowls mean anything -- hell, keep playing all the Armed Forces Emerald Nuts Poinsettia Aloha California Raisin Humanitarian Bowls you want); tradition, tradition, tradition (also forget that the traditional bowl pairings have really only been around since the 1920s or later [in the case of the "Grandaddy of Them All"(R) Rose Bowl, the Big 10 and Pac 10 have sent their conference champs to meet there only since 1947] -- in the entire course of human history, that's a speck of time); speculating on bowl matchups and who is in versus who is left out of the current system makes for great debate (for sportswriters and talking heads on Saturdays); etc. etc., blah blah blah.

Here's my problem with that. Can anyone follow what this writer is talking about relative to Oregon State and the BCS? Never mind for one instant that for Oregon State to crash the BCS system, they have to finish in the top 16 to win an at-large bid and they currently sit at 21 in the BCS rankings. I just get extremely tired with all the speculating about potential matchups and bowl pairings. Nothing is simple like: "Win or go home." A person can hurt his or her brain trying to keep up with all the possibilities.

Maybe the sportswriters want it that way, just to keep their jobs interesting. The bowl commissioners, who have no ties to the NCAA or college football other than being able to raise enough money to keep their bowl game afloat from year to year (seriously, check out how many commissioners from the Rose Bowl actually do anything at all related to college football), definitely don't want to upset their apple carts. Any playoff system would have to find a way of keeping those people happy, which would take a ton of money. They have a vested interest in keeping the current system alive and well, thank you very much.

I did like Barack Obama's response on MNF, when Chris "Ethel Merman" Berman asked him what he would change about sports, if he could change one thing as President of the United States (POTUS). John McCain delivered a very serious, thoughtful answer about stopping the spread of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sports. Obama went with a fan's response, in favor of a Div I-A playoff in football. Now that he is President, he still can't make that happen, but it is nice to dream.

Facebook Fantasy Football

When I learned a few weeks ago that Sports Illustrated had teamed with Citizen Sports to provide a free fantasy football application on Facebook, I thought "Eureka!" Finally, I thought, I can get my brother, who is incredibly busy running his own business yet still checks Facebook every day, into a league with me. He had always claimed to be too busy to keep up on fantasy football in years past. I also wanted to try my hand at being a league commissioner, setting the roster limits, tweaking the scoring rules, setting the playoff format, etc.

And yet, my league will not take off this fall. The problem seems to be inherent in a conflict between the social nature of Facebook and the social nature of fantasy football. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either, so let me try to explain.

From the outside, fantasy football probably seems like a totally loser thing to do. Team "owners" draft real players into a faux team, manage a lineup every week, keep track of the stats throughout the year, and determine a league winner from a playoff that ends before the regular NFL season comes to a close. Only a certain subset of NFL fans and geeks could possibly get into playing a game like this (see figure below). And before the internet came along, it was a really small subset of uber geeks getting together in their basements and tracking stats on spreadsheets, a la rotisserie baseball. Especially if there is no money involved, what's the point, right? Fantasy football is basically legalized gambling outside of Vegas and Atlantic City. Each owner is betting that his players will perform better on a given week than the opponent's players. Money doesn't have to be involved; plenty of fantasy enthusiasts play only for bragging rights. However, bragging rights are only valuable for a group of friends (trying not to be sexist here; women have been known to play fantasy football, too) who know each other and can give each other grief on a regular basis.

But there is still a social aspect to the game. As Bender might say, "...demented and sad, but social." If you have a group of guys who have grown up together, you're much more likely to care about who beats whom on a given week. The live draft is more enjoyable, because you can talk smack on almost every pick. "LT at number one? Norv Turner is killing his value!" For me, I started playing with a free Yahoo! league back in 1998. I was active on the waiver wire, and picked up players like Randy Moss, Randall Cunningham, and Fred Taylor as they exploded during that season. I won my league with 13 straight victories, but because it was a free league against people I didn't know, the victory was hollow. Plus, in free leagues, you almost always have at least one or two "dead" teams, where the owner has lost interest and simply stops setting his lineup or trying to improve his team every week.

In 1999, I played in a free league, but this time it was a private one with guys I knew at Dyess AFB, TX. We had the requisite 10 guys who stayed active, made roster moves, and generally had a great time playing against each other for that year and the next. We even played head-to-head and salary cap leagues at the same time for a change of pace. It was fun, and even though I didn't win, it thoroughly increased the value of the competition to play against people I knew.

Before the 2001 NFL season, I had moved away from Dyess and lost touch with the guys running that fantasy league. At my new base, I couldn't find another group of guys to play against, so I quit playing for the next five years. It was funny, walking away from a near obsession like that. I didn't miss it much, and figured I'd never really play fantasy football competitively again. Without the camaraderie of playing against people I knew, it wasn't worth the time and effort to be an active owner. But then I moved for work during the 2005 season to an office with a well-established fantasy league. I was unable to join them in mid-season, but the next year, I was one of 10 team owners competing once again for both cash and bragging rights.

I tell you all of this because I am no longer eligible to play in that league. They wanted to keep the league all under the same roof, and I understand that. Every week, they had two traveling trophies: a Nerf football for high score of the week, and a doormat for low score of the week. Even though I'm still in the local area, it wouldn't make any sense to try to rotate those trophies around to my new office since I no longer work for the same company.

Which brings me back to setting up my own league on Facebook. There are over 24,000 fantasy football leagues currently set up on Facebook, so you would think this would be a natural fit, right? Again, fantasy football is social, and Facebook is social, so what could go wrong? At first, I set up my league to be a private league with 10 owners, and I sent out only 9 invites to people I thought would want to play. Silence. I sent out a few more invites, plus a reminder or two. More silence. I sent out a few more invites, and finally got one of my old high school friends to join my league, even though he said he didn't know anything about how to play (see graph above). I made it so that anyone in the league could invite their friends to play, since friends of friends would make for a better social dynamic than playing against strangers. Still only two owners in the league. I flipped my league over to a public league, eventually got one more person to join, and then I discovered something.

Searching through all the public leagues on Facebook this fall, I saw a damning statistic: in almost every single public league, there were 1 or 2 of X teams in the league. I would say in about 95% of the leagues, only one or two teams had joined, like my own league. People on Facebook must either want to play just with their friends, or they want to run their own league. It's different from the public leagues on Yahoo!, ESPN, or NFL.com. Even when those leagues are public and free, there are usually enough players to fill up an open league. Not so on Facebook.

So, I will be deleting the teams and closing down my league on Facebook. I do have one team over on NFL.com's free public leagues this fall, and I'm in a 12-team league with guys who are mostly from Chicago, I think. Our "live" draft was interesting, and that's what I'll describe in a later post. I'll turn it into a strategy guide for other players, and I'll explain why in that post, too. Needless to say, I'm not happy to be playing against a bunch of guys I don't know, but I will still do my best to own this league.

The bottom line is that fantasy football can be a lot of fun, if you can find a group of 9 or 11 other like-minded souls who are active team owners throughout the season. I sincerely hope the SI and Citizen Sports guys do well with their application. There is too much money to be made on fantasy sports to not give it a try. The social dynamic of Facebook just seems to be a little off when it comes to fantasy football.