A tale of two halves

If last week was all about the upsets, this week was all about things going as expected, leading to a near-certain rematch of LSU and Alabama in the title game.

As expected, Stanford beat Notre Dame, 28-14.  If you’re an Irish fan, how you feel about the game depends on which half you believe.  The first half was 21-0 for Stanford, with Irish starting QB Tommy Rees playing poorly and getting banged up.  The second was 14-7 for the Irish (or 7-7 if we discount the final Irish TD, scored when the game was out of reach), with Andrew Hendrix in at QB for the full half and showing off his running and arm strength.  The defensive effort was also much better in the second half, though Stanford continued to exploit size mismatches with the Irish secondary (one of the iconic images from the game was a huge Stanford tight end dragging a helpless Irish defensive back into the end zone).  The Irish finish the regular season 8-4 and will probably play Florida St. in the “Maybe Next Year Bowl” (i.e. Champs Sports).  I think the most important question regarding that game is which QB will start.  There will be a lot of fans calling for Hendrix, but Coach Kelly has show a willingness to stick with Tommy Rees in the past.  I’m on the Hendrix bandwagon: he has the physical abilities to run the offense much more effectively than Rees, and his decision-making doesn’t seem that far behind Rees’.  The bowl game against another team with elite talent will also provide some insight as to how the Irish might fare against a brutal 2012 schedule that includes Michigan, Michigan St, Miami, Stanford, USC and Oklahoma.

Looking ahead to next year the biggest concerns are the QB and the secondary (assuming no one leaves early for the NFL).  Breaking it down, the O-line will return enough starters and talented backups to be good, and the running game will return a 1000-yard rusher, though the backs behind him are unproven.  The receiving core will be good despite the loss of Michael Floyd, and the Irish will have the best tight end in the country (with plenty of talent behind him on the depth chart).  The young d-line will be fearsome (Nix and Lynch are already very good, and each has three years left), and the linebackers will improve unless Manti Te’o leaves for the NFL.  Coming to the weak points, the secondary will be decimated by graduations, and though there’s lots of talent coming up it will be raw.  As for the QB, hopefully the competition will be between Hendrix and Golson, who have the abilities to take the offense to the next level.  How successful they’ll be facing a nasty schedule with little experience remains to be seen.

Don’t talk to the cops

They aren’t always the good guys, and prosecutors are even worse, more concerned with their conviction rate than with justice.  The prosecutor in this story is a particularly egregious example, who at the very least ought to be disbarred.

What is truth?

The Christian answer to Pilate’s cynical question is not a proposition but a person.  I wish more Christians would remember this instead of adopting the Enlightenment belief in objective propositional truth.

Timewasters

I’m afraid that I may have provoked my friend Mr. J.C. Sanders into a somewhat rash post slagging Nietzsche.  Leaving aside the opening point about the potential for “Great Books” programs to produce skepticism (a concern I find overblown, as such programs do not exist in a vacuum) there seem to be two contentions.  The first is that for the non-specialist Nietzsche is not worth reading over the many other options–better to study the Greeks or the doctors of the church.  The second is a critique of Nietzsche from which the first point derives its force.  Nietzsche, in this account, is a dangerous and anti-Christian philosopher, and a poor (though seductive) one at that.

Both of these points are pressed to an unreasonable extent.  Regarding the first, one should read other writers before Nietzsche, if only to better understand him.  That’s simply good scholarship.  And from a Christian educational standpoint it would probably be unwise to begin philosophical study with an avowed enemy of Christianity.  But Mr. Sanders takes this to ridiculous lengths, writing in a follow up comment on reading Nietzsche that “regardless of whether it is hobby, profession, or just plain entertainment, it’s not worth doing at the expense of reading Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Aristotle or even Adler (to stick to the A’s).”  This is absurd, even willfully blind.  Anslem, even Mortimer J Adler, over Nietzsche for those whose profession is philosophy?  Such dismissal can only be justified if Nietzsche’s works are so depraved and dangerous that they should be read only to be better condemned as error, a position that Mr. Sanders seems to endorse.

This brings us to the second point, which is difficult to debate because Mr. Sanders has himself read little Nietzsche and is relying on second hand accounts, all of which seem heavily biased against Nietzsche.  Still, I might begin by pointing him to another take by the same Father Schall Mr. Sanders quotes, found in a review/reflection of a book by a professor in my own department,

Walsh is quite aware of the sometimes obscure Christian overtones in German philosophy. I have always thought that something profoundly right circled about Nietzsche, whom so many would consider the end of the road. Walsh spells out what is right about him. Nietzsche’s disappointment with Christianity —“the last Christian died on the Cross”— is itself Christian in origin, however much Nietzsche underestimated the divinity’s awareness that all were sinners and in need of redemption, hence the Cross. The “will to power,” which, at first sight, is proposed as the replacement for reason, is not simply a voluntarism. It is an affirmation of being that is not confined by all that passed as unlived Christianity by the Christians themselves. Nietzsche was scandalized not by the Cross but by Christians who lived as if they did not believe it. Evidently, he would not have been scandalized by the One who died on the Cross, as we suspect most moderns would if it implied that they need to live differently.

The primary thrust of Mr. Sanders’ argument against Nietzsche is that his rejection of absolute truth is self-contradictory, an old argument that’s been used frequently (see Leo Strauss on historicism in Natural Right and History for a more professional deployment of it).  However, such an argument succeeds only by presuming the very conception of truth that it seeks to prove.  It reifies truth and treats it as objective.  But truth is not objective because neither man nor God is an object.

Once this objection is removed, the field is opened for an appreciation of Nietzsche’s greatness.  This is not to overlook his flaws, but one can appreciate his acute psychology, his artistic and cultural criticisms, and his tremendous advancement of philosophy, especially his penetrating critiques.

WTB QB

I didn’t see the college football chaos coming this week, with numbers 2, 4, 5 and 7 all getting upset.  The odds of an all SEC championship game look pretty good now, and Boise St. has to be kicking themselves over their inability to find a clutch field goal kicker.

Regarding the Irish, the foremost disaster was that of senior running back Jonas Grey suffering an apparently serious knee injury.  After struggling in previous years and starting this year with a disastrous fumble, he’d come back to have a great season and was making his way up NFL draft boards.  Now, he might not play again.  Unfortunate.

As for the game, Notre Dame eked out an ugly win over a terrible Boston College team.  This piece might seem overly caustic after a win, but it expresses what a lot of Irish fans were thinking during and after yesterday’s game.  I’d focus most of my ire on the quarterback and Coach Kelly’s handling of the position.  After all, it’s the one area where the team has very obviously regressed from where it was under the previous coach.  The run game is far better (had Grey not been injured, the Irish might have had two 1000 yard rushers this year, it’s been five or six years since they’ve even had one), the O-line is excellent, the receivers are good to great, and the defense, while still flawed, is far better than it was during the Weis years.  But the QBs have been a problem.  To be sure, Kelly inherited some difficulties, but his handling of them has made things worse.

Last year he had Dayne Crist, a highly-recruited pro-style QB (Kelly runs a spread offense) left over from the previous regime who lacked much game experience but was better than the alternatives (freshmen and one of Joe Montana’s sons who wasn’t showing his father’s skill).  Crist was ok last year, but was injured in the eighth game, forcing Kelly to turn to an undersized pro-style freshman QB, Tommy Rees.  On the strength of defense and running, the Irish managed to win out, leading to a swell of support for Rees from the fans, despite his flaws (apparent in his 4 turnovers against USC).

Going into this year, Kelly had Crist and Rees again, with spread-style QBs Andrew Hendrix (redshirt freshman) and Everett Golson (true freshman) behind them.  Crist won the starting job, but was quickly benched after a poor first half against South Florida (to be fair to Crist, it wasn’t entirely his fault, as receivers were dropping balls left and right).  Rees put up some points, but not enough to get the win.  He has started since then, and his limitations have become increasingly apparent.  He can’t run (not even to scramble) and can’t throw the deep ball.  He also makes several terrible throws each game, leading to a ridiculously high turnover ratio.  A good secondary will pick him off 2-3 times a game, a weak one will still likely get at least one pick (yesterday BC got only one pick, but should have had at least one more).  Hendrix looked good in his one extended bit of playing time, Crist has remained in the doghouse (a terrible fumble when he appeared against USC didn’t help, though he’s looked good the rest of his limited time), and Golson is redshirting.

Yesterday BC dared Rees to run the ball and he couldn’t, and didn’t even try, not even when given ten yards of green in front of him.  Unless the coaching staff figures out how to counter this, the Irish will be not only beaten, but humiliated by Stanford this weekend.  Perhaps an even greater problem is that there’s no obvious solution at QB for next year, when the Irish will face a brutal schedule.  Crist will graduate and take his final year of eligibility elsewhere (and I wish him luck, he’s handled the situation with class and is by all accounts a great young man).  Rees, who at this point has over a year’s worth of starting experience, seems to have hit his ceiling.  Meanwhile, the spread-style QBs behind him have very little playing time (and not even enough practice snaps).  Which will it be, experienced mediocrity ill-suited to running the spread or inexperience?

One of the arguments in favor of Rees (one Kelly made himself yesterday) is that he wins, having gone 12-2 as a starter.  That’s true, but I think a comparison to Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos may be instructive.  Tebow, despite being a poor pro-style QB, has been winning, going 4-1 as a starter this year after the Broncos started 1-4 with another QB.  Another similarity is that both are getting a lot of help from their defenses, which their critics can use to argue that it isn’t the QB who is responsible for the wins.  But there I think the similarities end.  Tebow, while a poor passer, is a great option QB and leader with a low turnover rate.  Whether that’s good enough for the long term in the NFL remains to be seen.  Rees, on the other hand, is a poor option QB and a mediocre passer with a high turnover rate and apparently lackluster leadership skills.  I don’t think the Irish would have been any worse than their current 8-3 if they’d stuck with Crist or just put in one of their spread-style QBs, while it seems that whatever Tebow’s flaws, he at least has helped Denver be better than they otherwise would have been.

Don’t go to law school

This piece in the New York Times today focuses on one aspect of the problem (law schools don’t teach you how to be a lawyer), but it manages to hit most of the other reasons as well: the poor job prospects, the crushing debt, etc…  There’s nothing new here to those who follow the field, but it’s a good summary for those outside of it.

Rethinking the mark of the beast

I’m not an eschatological literalist (far from it), but I have to wonder if there might not be a bit of the “mark of the beast” in anti-discrimination law.  Consider this case of an Iowa baker who refused to provide a cake for a lesbian wedding.  Hate mail, a boycott, and a possible investigation by the state Human Rights Commission have followed.  Or this case, where Western Washington University has booted a Christian law school from participation in a law school information fair because the law school’s code of conduct prohibits homosexual activity (among other sexual sins).  This campaign against Christians is simple: regulate everything in a way that prohibits Christians from conducting business (or even administering charity) while following their faith.  Force Catholic pharmacists to dispense contraception (and Catholic universities to provide it), Catholic hospitals to perform sterilizations and even abortions.  Force adoption agencies to place children with gay couples.  Require businesses to participate in gay weddings.  Force teachers to promote homosexuality.  These are not distopian predictions about a slippery slope, these are reality, and they will get worse.  Professional certifications will be contingent upon approval of homosexuality.  The goal is simple, the economic strangulation of Christians.

This is a problem

And it’s also part of why I don’t like the NRA very much.  I favor gun rights for law-abiding citizens; violent felons, not so much.

And yes, I know that this is the New York Times and presumably biased.  I don’t really care, unless the NRA wants to contest the claim that it supports making it easier for felons to have their gun rights restored.

Understanding JoPa

The actual playing of college football has been overshadowed this week by the sex-abuse scandal at Penn State, culminating in the firing of Joe Paterno, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport, and, until now, a coach renowned for doing things the right way.  I’m not interested in writing a defense of him, as I don’t know that he can be fully defended, but I am bothered by the easy assumptions of the many sports writers and commentators condemning him.

For those who haven’t kept up with the story, in 2002 a graduate assistant told Paterno that he had seen Jerry Sandusky, a former coach and defensive coordinator who retained ties to the school and football program, molesting a boy (around 10 years old) in the locker room showers.  Paterno told his athletic director, who ended up only limiting Sandusky’s access to campus and facilities.  No report to the police was made, and Sandusky continued to run his athletics-based charity for young boys.  Sandusky was arrested last week for a slew of charges of child sexual abuse, and maintains his innocence.  The graduate assistant continued on in the football program and is now an assistant coach.  The obvious complaint against Paterno is that while he fulfilled his legal obligations in passing the report of abuse on to this supervisor, he had a moral obligation to ensure that the matter was investigated fully and the police brought in, especially since a few years earlier there had been an investigation into improprieties involving Sandusky showering with young boys.

As I said, I’m not interested in defending Paterno per se, as it’s certainly possible that he took part in a cover up in an attempt to protect the school and the football program.  But I’m bothered by the self-righteous certitude of many of his harshest critics.  I doubt that they would be any more eager than he apparently was to sic the police on a long-time colleague and friend.  I think most people would pass the allegations (and the buck) along, and then hope that it was all a misunderstanding.  Obviously, the plausibility of this rests on how specific the graduate assistant was in telling Paterno of the abuse he saw, and what the athletic director told him after looking into the matter.  Maybe the exculpatory vagueness wasn’t the case; maybe this was a cold-blooded cover-up.  And even if there was vagueness in what Paterno was told, he presumably had a moral responsibility to press for the truth (again, this isn’t a defense).  But I doubt that the many writers condemning him would be any better, if, say, an intern came and told them that he’d seen a long-time friend and colleague doing something seriously wrong.

My observation is that most people will want to believe the best of their friends and those they respect, and are unlikely to want to take the lead in digging up their possible misdeeds.  People cling to the hope that there is a misunderstanding, and want someone else to sort it out or make it go away.  In this case, even the previous investigation could cut both ways.  It can be seen as evidence that Paterno should have known, or as an excuse of the “they’ve already looked into this sort of thing and nothing came of it” variety.  People rarely make the difficult choice if there is a plausible reason for them not to.

I also think the person most on the moral hook is the assistant who claims to have witnessed the abuse, and did nothing when it became clear the administration wasn’t doing anything either.  But that doesn’t let Paterno off.  He had the clout to make sure that this was gotten to the bottom of, and he didn’t.  The disgraceful end of his coaching career may be justice for that.  But I think what he did and didn’t do is a lot closer to what most of us would do than we might like to admit.

Awkward television

I’m not fond of awkward television.  Fawlty Towers, for example, never quite clicked with me because it relied so much on the painful, humiliating disasters that Basil always created for himself.  Watching impending doom tends to make me cringe more than laugh.

Consequently, Rick Perry’s debate disaster last night isn’t something I’m eager to review, but as it seems destined for campaign legend, here it is.  For a candidate whose mental wherewithal was already suspect, this should be the end.  Most us have had moments where we blank or freeze up, but a presidential candidate this prone to it is a liability to the party.

Overall, I remained convinced that Romney is the best choice.  Cain is a joke, sexual harassment or not, and hopefully his star will soon fade.