Are my eyes really blue?

USC is the West Coast version of Auburn or Alabama, albeit with a higher payroll and a higher risk of giving trophies back.  Dubious academics, a fan base that never set foot on campus other than for games, and the kind of mouth and attitude that makes you hate college football generally.

Last night, the team with a band somewhere on the autism spectrum for their musical preferences and “song girls” better suited for the pole at Mitchell Brothers came to San Francisco, led as always by a coach whose aspect suggests he was raised on Sunny D and lead paint chips.  The NCAA sanctions should have left the Trojans as nothing but a sheet of glass somewhere in South Central LA.  Instead, Cal came away without a win for the eighth consecutive year.

Notice I didn’t say SC won for the eighth straight year – that’s because some of those wins were vacated.  But much good it does Cal, whose sole loss in 2004 – costing them at least a Rose Bowl and possibly a national championship berth – came to a USC team whose win now no longer officially happened.  Where does Cal go to get back what USC’s cheating cost them?

But this is not the time to discuss the thin edge on which college football skates at the moment.  This is about Cal.  More to the point, this is about the fact that Jeff Tedford remains unfit for purpose as head coach.

The only thing saving him is 2011.  Playing a season away from Memorial was never going to be easy.  Playing it in a converted baseball stadium that provides a gimped game day experience at best?  Makes it tougher.  Add in the chaos of the Pac-12 expansion, the issues working around the Giants, the fact that Cal played its first five games in five different stadiums, the need to schedule Presbyterian – PRESBYTERIAN for Godsakes, a school barely in I-AA ball – this season is through the looking glass, and was always doomed to be such.

But this team is too flawed to ignore.  Special teams are a disgrace; Tavecchio is not and will never be a BCS-quality kicker and the ridiculous rugby-punt scheme Bryan Anger has been using is worse than worthless.  The two-return-man scheme isn’t paying any dividends and we aren’t blocking anything, and last night’s ill-advised fake punt is the sort of thing that gets assistant coaches fired overnight and left holding a box of their office crap standing outside People’s Park.  Or should be, anyway.

The defense gets a pass here; they are doing yeoman work with an injured roster and a green defensive backfield, and they handled their business about as well as could be hoped for.  No, the problem is that the offense is putrid.  Time was, a Jeff Tedford offense meant a powerful run game with two interchangeable tailbacks pounding the ball inside and out, with the deep pass always waiting as soon as teams inched too close to the line.  It’s a system that put Arrington, Lynch, Forsett, Best and Vereen into the NFL, catapulted Kyle Boller from obscurity to first-round pick and made Aaron Rodgers a superstar.

Now, it’s a mess.  The formations are a show – empty backfield, pistol sets, some sort of 1993-Florida-State fast-break  – and none of them seem to be effective, for three reasons:

1) Zach Maynard apparently decides in the huddle who his one receiver is, locks in, and never manages to check down.  And since it’s usually his brother, even a mediocre defense like USC can figure it out eventually, to the tune of three picks.

2) The management insists on using Isi Sofele as an inside runner, despite the fact that he gives away six inches of height and about a hundred pounds to the D-line into which he runs.  To their credit, it seemed like they were getting away from this – right up until they started running him into the pile from the shadow of Cal’s own goalpost.  Even my wife, whose tactical football expertise is younger than Facebook, can be heard screaming at the coaching staff to stop running Sofele inside.

3) Downfield blocking on the run game does not happen.  Period.  The quarterback and halfback run a weak-side option with NO ONE IN FRONT OF THEM – all the SC defenders have to do is run straight forward in a line and they’re guaranteed a five-yard tackle for loss no matter who winds up with the ball – and assuming it doesn’t wind up on the turf.

Of course, there has to be some accounting for the officiating as well, which seems resolutely stuck in last decade’s Pac-1 mentality: protect USC at all costs.  This is something Larry Scott needs to get on immediately, because not even the ongoing shenanigans of SEC refs have budged the Pac-12 officiating from it apex as a national joke and a disgrace to the conference.  Memo to the commissioner: you have a big-time conference in every other respect, and you’re ruining it with your WAC-caliber zebras.  You want to be the top league in America?  Quit running seven blind mice out there in stripes every weekend.

And so USC skates again, and Cal’s slow slide continues back into the 1990s swampland from which it was temporarily pulled by a coach who hadn’t yet lost his way.  Next year, that will stop, or else. If Tedford can’t win in 2012, he shouldn’t see 2013 with this team – and at the very least, someone should be installed who can lose without embarrassing the Old Blue faithful in the process.

So apparently the NCAA’s year of sniffing around Cam Newton and the Auburn Tigers came to nothing.  Sigh.  Now we have an eternity of indignant Auburn fans ranting about “HATERRRRRZ” and “FAMBLY” and basically claiming complete vindication for their particular brand of cracker paranoia.

I think the reason the story got so much traction is because it just offended reason on so many levels.  The notion of a vagabond player (third collegiate team in as many years) who shows up and wins everything before leaving straightaway seems like something out of a Marx Brothers college football picture.  More to the point, the notion that said vagabond could run a high school offense to a 14-0 record in the SEC is risible on its face – and points up the extent to which the SEC is not what it used to be, and hasn’t been for a couple of years.

Most of all, though, is the way in which one instance where Auburn was in the clear is supposed to suddenly render them purer than the driven snow, after the ages upon ages of Bobby Lowder running the school as his personal plantation and almost losing their collegiate accreditation as a result.  Nobody likes Auburn fans, and this is going to make them more unbearable than ever.

But yes, Auburn walks away with their trophy.  Just like Tennessee football reported a dozen violations under Lane Kiffin and caught no penalty for them.

Honestly, I’m about sick of being in the SEC if it means we play with both hands tied behind our back.  It’s not enough that we have to compete with schools that give away diplomas for rolling slowly through the parking lot, it’s that we play it straight and narrow and abide by the rules and put academics first and do everything we’re supposed to – and for our trouble we get to be the SEC’s personal doormat (with the exception of LOL Miss, our own personal doormat).  And now, unless you’re a big-time historical power that the NCAA wants to make an example of, well, forget it, you’re fine.  Especially if you’re doing well already.

If this is what SEC football has come to, then fuck the SEC.  Let’s find a conference that’s at least embarrassed to be a whorehouse.

I’m not having nearly the problems some seem to be.  Of course, I was downloading at 10 AM on a multi-gigabit connection to one of the original ARPANET nodes.  Speed kills.

Speaking of speed, I have not noticed a material drop in performance going to iOS 5 on an iPhone 4.  After the choke that iOS 4 put on my 3G in the day or so before getting my new phone last year, I was wary.  Everything seems to be fine, though.  I wouldn’t say it’s any faster (SNAPPY!!!!!!!!)* but it certainly seems responsive, even with using things like Notification Center or the new lock-screen camera launcher.

I’m actually drilling on that camera function.  Wake up button, double-click home button, tap camera icon and you’re live, then just volume-up to shoot – for some reason I keep flipping the camera around before hitting the volume button.  Which will suck if I wind up taking a picture of myself at those moments when I’m trying to snap a fast candid shot.  The trick will be hitting all the necessary mechanical buttons on the way out of the pocket, so all I have to do is tap the screen to go live…

Everything seems to be fine. New notifications are unobtrusive, the iMove Trailers app replaced about three others for me, iCloud backup seems to be working and sync via Wi-Fi is fully functional, even when a different account is logged in and mine is in the background. This will be critical to the long-term plans for the house.  It also doesn’t hurt that I can initiate a Wi-Fi sync from the computer, and keep using the phone normally while everything else updates.  Handy!

App updates are coming in by the bushel basket, for sure.  Everybody’s rewriting for 5 compatibility, which I presume mostly revolves around notifications.  Hell, I’m putting the ESPN app back on just to get score alerts on gameday now.  It’s that kind of tinkering that makes it impossible to gauge the battery-life impact…it’ll be a couple of days before I stop screwing around with it long enough to get a realistic measure of how long it goes between charges.

Now to test the Airport Utility.  That and WatchESPN would pretty much put the laptop to bed for good…

* Remote Desktop, running remote updates.

* Software Update, running local updates.

* Safari, surfing Wikipedia.

* Reeder, reading RSS

* Twitter, duh

* Mail, ditto

* Google Chrome Canary, playing a full-screen HD stream of last night’s USMNT match in its own Flash engine

* And whatever was active in the two other accounts that were logged in previously in the background.

This is the cheaper of the two processors, with 4 GB of RAM backing it.  In other words, the second-cheapest MacBook Air.  Now obviously this is all going to bleed the battery dry, esp. since I was on Wi-Fi the entire time.  One of the things I want to try next is metering this sort of thing without the power plugged in at any point and see how far we get.

ARD is not as ineffective as I expected, but it’s still trying to work with a large-scale display.  I also strongly suspect the battery life will suffer by comparison.  Still, the 11″ is a dandy little piece of work, and if I were only interested in a personal machine, it would be a tough option to pass up…

It wasn’t a good week to be a Bay Area pioneer/visionary/control maniac in black.

Steve Jobs and Al Davis probably never met, but both of them were in the same business: they were carving a path in their own image through an industry that was hidebound by conventional wisdom and safe practices.  Don’t hire the minority coach.  Don’t sign the maverick free agent.  Don’t try to compete with Blackberry and Nokia and Motorola on phones.  Don’t branch out into digital music.

Don’t be different.

Conventional wisdom, and its amen chorus of pundits, is the greatest threat to this country and to our way of life.  Everybody knows the truth is somewhere in the middle. Everybody knows you can’t raise taxes on anyone in a recession.  Everyone knows there’s no way Vanderbilt can be competitive in SEC football.  Bow to the status quo.  Accept the world as it is.  Be the way everyone thinks you ought to be.

And Steve and Al spoke, and they said, fuck you.

Everybody knew the AFL was a joke, and everybody knew beleaguered Apple Computer had no future.  And the moral, as always, is beware of what “everybody knows.”

Al Davis was one of a kind.  No other owner – not Mark Cuban, not George Steinbrenner, not Jerry Jones – nobody has embodied the franchise like Al Davis, who went from scout to position coach to head coach to AFL commissioner to “President of the General Partner” – for much of his career, his actual personal ownership stake in the Raiders was only about 15%, but he was the face of the franchise.

Teams, companies, organizations spend literally millions upon millions of dollars to craft the kind of brand and image that Al Davis achieved for the Raiders as a matter of course.  And they were all true for him.  Outlaw?  Absolutely.  Maverick?  Naturally.  Visionary?  When he took the helm of the AFL, it was with a mandate to force a confrontation and take on the NFL where they stood.  He testified on behalf of the USFL when they challenged the NFL in the early 80s.  He moved his team to Los Angeles, into the teeth of Rams country, and won a Super Bowl into the bargain.  First franchise to win the Super Bowl from a wild-card berth.  For years and years, the winningest franchise on Monday Night Football.

And famously, a guy who called Art Shell into his office, rambled for 20 minutes, and then said “They’re going to talk about you being first.  Ignore all that.  You’re getting this job because you’re a Raider.”  Which is how Art Shell found out he was the first black head coach in the modern NFL.  Al also made Tom Flores the first Latino coach in the NFL, and hired a woman as his CEO.  And by contrast, his was the last practice facility to still get by on old-school weights and barbells in an age of plyometrics and resistance training.  His was the last team to eschew Cover-2 and West Coast offense for vertical passing and “the quarterback must go down and he must go down hard.”

In a league that is the most hidebound, the most conservative, the most conformist in all of sports, Al Davis was a permanent middle finger.  A thorn in the side of three commissioners. A guy who was absolutely right about Lane Kiffin.  An NFL icon in five decades and change.

Clear skies, Al.  Thanks for the commitment to excellence.

The conference shuffle continues.  Texas A&M, for better or worse, is now part of the SEC.  Syracuse and Pitt have weighed anchor and jumped to the ACC.  Comes now the news that Texas Christian University (TCU), as successful a non-BCS football team as has played in recent years (if not nearly as hyped as Boise State or Utah), is flaking on its move to the Big East to join the Big XII instead.  This gets the Big XII back to 10 members and preserves a modicum of viability, assuming they hang onto Missouri.

However, the Big East as a football conference is in serious jeopardy.  The class of the remaining league in football is undoubtedly West Virginia, which has purportedly been rebuffed by SEC and ACC alike.  Then you have Louisville and UConn, both top-flight basketball schools with occasionally passable football.  Then Cincinnati, two years removed from a BCS berth but otherwise undistinguished in football and some distance from its Bob Huggins-led basketball success.  Then South Florida and Rutgers, with little hope of hanging on.

Because that’s only six teams.  By rule, a BCS conference must consist of no less than eight.

The Big XII may have saved itself for now with the TCU move, but the Big East is doomed, for BCS purposes.  The ACC would be happy to pick off Louisville and UConn and cement itself as the ultimate power in college basketball.  Maybe the SEC takes West Virginia after all, tired of the dithering from Mizzou and accepting that academic quality – indeed, quality in any aspect other than football – is no longer a critical criterion of SEC membership.  Cincy, Rutgers and South Florida are officially left grasping for something else – maybe the Sun Belt or Conference USA, maybe continuing in a non-football Big East and making their way in some sort of alliance of independents (this is where Notre Dame might be able to lend a hand by adding those three to their football rotation).

Ultimately, though, it’s going to be like this:  SEC/Pac-12/ACC/B1G (formerly Big Ten) are now the upper crust.  The Big XII (-2) will struggle to stay afloat, and the new-look Mountain West Conference (featuring Boise State, Nevada, Fresno, Colorado State, Air Force and others) will probably grab the former Big East auto-bid.  Expect the next round of the shakeout to involve the mid-major conferences – the WAC, the Sun Belt, the MAC and Conference USA – as they try to pick off Big East stragglers (and as some of their top-tier members try to battle their way up the ladder).

The key thing in all this, though, is that the current round of Russian Roulette all stems from Texas and their attempt to create their own network.  They wanted all the benefits of independence while still owning the Big XII as their personal fief, and enough schools have rejected it that the Pac-12 and B1G are now at 12 and the SEC at 13…which compelled Syracuse and Pitt to escape while they could, which crippled the Big East and made TCU flee, which sank the Big East and set everything on tilt-a-whirl again…

Texas Roulette is just like Russian Roulette, only with a semiautomatic.

Steve Jobs, in many ways, is the foundational myth of Silicon Valley.  Along with Woz, bashing together their homebrew computers in the garage, or Hewlett and Packard in that Palo Alto garage, or Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore leading the Traitorous Eight to found Fairchild Semiconductor – what they accomplished is part of our DNA as an industry, part of what we believe about ourselves.  This notion that two guys in a garage can take their dream and conquer the world with it.  That’s what Silicon Valley is.  That’s the dream.  And to lose Steve – and lose him early, despite accomplishment enough for two or three lifetimes – well, it feels like we lost a piece of that dream, part of the proof that what we believe about ourselves as an industry is real.  It pushed Larry and Sergey at Stanford, it pushed a kid in a Harvard dorm room, it was the 21st-century Thomas Edison-crossed-with-Henry Ford: you can dream the future, make it real, and sell it to the whole world.

And I think for as much as the effusive hyperbole around the iPad launch was mocked, Steve meant every word of it when he said it was “magical and revolutionary.”  It was the Dynabook, in every way that mattered.  Alan Kay’s original vision, made real after almost forty years.  Steve chased that Dynabook from the earliest incarnation of the Macintosh, and you can easily make a case that in 2010, he caught it.

The man dreamed big.  We got to dream his dream with him.  Lucky us.

Not much to say that I didn’t say the day of the resignation announcement.

I have a career because of Steve Jobs.

Between the Apple II and the Macintosh, he helped create the personal computer.  And between the iPhone and the iPad, he may have replaced it.  That’s a career, in any league.

Rest in peace, Steve.

Fred Shuttlesworth is dead at 89.

The obituary in the Birmingham News – a paper that fifty years ago had very little kind to say about him – doesn’t even begin to cover the enormity of what the man undertook.  What the Reverend did in 1956, in starting the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, was to stand up to an entire society with segregation at its very roots and hold them before the eye of God’s judgement.  And he did it in the face of bricks, bombs, and a government and police force that was rotten to the core, and he did it for seven years before Dr. King ever showed up in Birmingham.

If you don’t know about Brother Shuttlesworth, Google him.  And then thank God for his life.