1.25.2007

Calling Ron Mexico...

I've been waiting to do a sports themed blog entry for a while, so I figured I would start with the ever-controversial Michael Vick.

What makes Michael Vick a fascinating character?
-He's a news-maker
-He's controversial and polarizing
-He's the best running quarterback of all time
-He's a "coach-killa"
-He has the IQ of a zucchini
-He occasionally masquerades as Ron Mexico when he gets treatment for herpes

As a disclaimer I have to mention a few facts about my background, given that Vick attended Virginia Tech:

-Yes I'm a UVA graduate and fan
-Yes, I've never actually rooted for Virginia Tech in anything...ever, even when they are playing Maryland (unfortunately that match-up is not satisfying not matter who wins)

Do I take the UVA-Tech rivalry too seriously? I don't think so:

-I have many friends who go to Virginia Tech
-I've recently kept very quiet about the rivalry as we have gotten spanked in Football over about the last 5 years, and I am really worried that Tech may actually be better than us in basketball

So I think I can give a least a somewhat unbiased look at the issue:

Is he a good Quarterback?

I guess that depends on how you define good. I must say I don't think there is a definitive answer, but I'll look at three interesting statistics:

1) Quarterback Rating - Check out his official stat page on NFL.com, his career passer rating is 75.7. A great passer rating for a season is around 95, a good about 85, a 75 typically puts Michael Vick around 20-25th in the NFL. That means is typically worse than 2/3rds of NFL starting quarterbacks.

2) Wins and Losses - Michael Vick certainly fairs better in the wins/losses category than pure passer rating. During his tenor with the Falcons I think he is around 39-28-1, which is certainly a respectable winning percentage in the NFL. Although I wasn't able to get hard data on this, it certainly places him among the top 10 of active quarterbacks. The thing is, although I can't argue that QB is the most important position in football, I still don't think he deserves all the credit or blame for wins and losses. Great quarterbacks have lost on bad teams (Dan Fouts) and mediocre ones have won on good teams (Jim McMahon, Trent Dilfer). The thing I get annoyed with Vick apologists is they tend to give Vick all the credit for Falcons wins, but blame all the losses on the rest of the team. Note that the Falcon receivers, although you'd think would lead in the league in dropped passes for all the attention they received, were average in the league for number of drops (I feel like they need to hire a physiologist just to work with the bruised egos of the receivers as each drop they make gets replayed again and again).

3)Rushing yardage - No argument here...Vick is the greatest running QB of all time. He just broke NFL records for yards per carry and total number of yards by a QB this year. His athletic ability is almost unparalleled (I have to give Landian Tomlinson and Reggie Bush props here too) and he's clearly a cut above any other quarterback.

My take is that he is below mediocre QB in terms of decision making and passing, but potentially the best of all time at running. That puts him at a mediocre NFL QB because most offenses rely much more heavily on the pass than the run (although he was a great college player, where running QBs are more the norm). Can Atlanta eventually find a way to use his talents at the QB? I personally doubt it, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I also think his zucchini-level of intelligence will continue to get him in trouble one too many times, and eventually (like his brother) he will be out of football and give SNL more material like this:

1.14.2007

Working Hard or Hardly Working...

So what's my excuse for the sabbatical from blog entry writing - this time I'm going with "working hard." However, in an ironic twist, I'm basing this particular entry on the excuse for my latest layoff from blog writing. There are a few points about working hard that I have to make. First off, I've been very fortunate thus far in my almost 5-year career to essentially set my own hours and I've never been pressured to work more than a standard 40 hour week. As a salaried or exempt employee I don't get compensated for any hours I work overtime anyway on most projects. My general rule of thumb is as long as I am meeting my deadlines and goals and my managers aren't asking me to do so, there was really no need to put in needless extra hours. Doing a quick Google search (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils09.pdf) the average Male aged 25-54 in the US works for 44.1 hours a week. Counting holidays, appointments, and vacations I'm probably about or slightly below on average throughout my career.

My current project has been a little different, I've been asked to work weekends, holidays and put in long hours to meet some hard deadlines. I've been working more like 50+ hours a week, and although that doesn't sound like much more let me see if I can logically get back to my original excuse. Upcoming deadlines require a series of rather tedious tasks, and it hasn't been my choice to work longer because I've been "asked" to do so. This extra hour+ a day is spent working hard and efficiently on tedious stuff that I didn't want to do on my own. This requires an equivalent amount of "decompression" time when I get home from work (as Sarah likes to call it). Each extra minute past my normal baseline work day (a 9 hour day or less) causes an extra minute of staring at the TV blankly when I get home. Thus I have a least an hour less to devote to blog generating ideas and writing entries, and here we are back to my original excuse. The silver lining in all this is that it shouldn't last forever (deadlines are approaching) and this project will actually pay me for overtime. Otherwise I'd be in the same situation as Alice here:

Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), I appear to be getting somewhat more used to the longer hours (I certainly was able to do this during my college years), so I hope to get more back into the swing of things regarding blogging.

I guess it could be worse, according to the National Science Foundation if I had a PhD and worked at a university, my average work week would be 50.6 hours. This is opposed to 47.6 hours for PhDs in industry/self-employment, and 45.2 hours for those in government. Hope they get paid overtime...