Fair warning: while TMQ annoys me every week, the haiku preview column especially infuriates me.
Who thinks a haiku
Is funny? No one but this
Pretentious asshat
Coaching Experience
Easterbrook likes to throw around half-arguments at the beginning of the column with the assumption that readers will take them at face value. This week, it’s a criticism of teams for hiring coaches with no head coaching experience (Spagnuolo, Ryan, Morris, McDaniels, and Haley). What’s the track record of NCAA coaches coming to the NFL lately? It sucks, right? So the problem with these guys is that they started as college assistants instead of high school head coaches 15 years ago? That’s the brilliant assertion you’re going to use to lead off your column? Do I have to keep asking rhetorical questions to get my point across?
Haiku
Every year TMQ does an all-haiku preview of the NFL. He writes a haiku for every team in the league.
Haiku were funny in high school lit class when the reaction was “Wait, that counts as poetry?” For an NFL column, you could maybe get away with using a haiku as a comedic device once or twice, but after 5 years and 30+ haiku a year, it’s worn a bit thin at this point.
You have to wonder about the thought process that leads Easterbrook to continue this lame “tradition” year after year. Combined with the repetition throughout all his columns, one can only conclude that the man doesn’t believe any joke ever gets old. Unfortunately, he’s sorely mistaken.
I’m not even going to bother explaining why none of the haiku are funny at all.
NFL Lottery Tickets
Do you really care so little about your name and prestige that you will sell your image to organizations which engage in socially damaging activities?
So now Easterbrook isn’t just getting all high-and-mighty about sports gambling, he has an issue with scratch-offs. Why am I not surprised. Eight paragraphs of bleeding heart self-righteousness.
Minimum Wage
Ugh, I’d rather not get into political arguments, but let’s just say this one struck me as unfair. Easterbrook’s claim is that a higher minimum wage won’t hurt employment. To test his hypothesis, he says that the minimum wage rose $7.25 in July, so unemployment will go down in the following 12 months.
You may have heard some news about a bit of economic trouble the country is having, what with unemployment at 9.5% and all. So if unemployment falls from a historic high, TMQ is proven correct.
This is emblematic of all the arguments he makes. Easterbrook always manipulates the statistics cynically to suit his purposes, and then poses as a humble sports columnist speaking truth to power. It’s dishonest and he should stick to sports (and sci-fi).
Stylistic hat-tip: Drew Magary and FJM
3 Responses:
The minimum wage point is doubly-dishonest. The unemployment rate is likely to drop in the near future because of the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts the unemployed population. Once an individual stops looking for work or they run out of unemployment benefits, they are no longer "unemployed" as far as the "unemployment rate" is concerned.
The net change in the number of unemployed is actually a result of three factors: Newly unemployed MINUS formerly unemployed but now employed MINUS formerly unemployed but no longer counted as unemployed.
I'd be happy to read Easterbrook's column, but it's apparently not on ESPN.com anymore. I wonder why it was pulled (if it was).
Actually, our link works but I can't find it on ESPN.com.
As of right now, the column is on the front page of espn.com and is the top item on espn.com Page 2. Not sure if it changed, or if you just missed it.
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