THE POWER OF COMPOUND INTEREST.

During the World Series, Capital One called up a commercial that I have long enjoyed.

It touches on two of my pet themes, financial fitness and life after college being the revenge of the nerds.  Even when the kiddos don't call on the astronaut.  Stay in school.

That's all for this month.  The Packers didn't get the most satisfying win on Thursday, but football on any Thursday that isn't Thanksgiving is a foolish idea anyway, and they have work to do, win or not.  Safety Xavier McKinney did get fined by the league for criticizing the officiating in Detroit and Packer spokesman Wes Hodkiewicz, who, note, speaks for the Packer organization, noted "McKinney spoke the truth, and his words were worth every cent it may cost him."  The officiating crew in question have been exiled, if not to Siberia, from Sunday prime time to a game between New England and Miami.  "If this reassignment is actually a sign that the league is finally taking those complaints seriously, great. But if it's just an attempt to keep bad officiating out of the primetime spotlight, fans aren't likely to be all that impressed."

So mote it be.  Yes, there is a fraught election coming up, yes, people continue to write foolish things on Common Dreams, and yes, higher education continues to be run by terminally stupid people.  Those things will still be true come November.

Enjoy your Hallowe'en, and your World Champion Milwaukee Brewers.

YOU'RE AN INTERIM COACH WHETHER THE JOB TITLE SAYS "INTERIM" OR NOT.

Fourteen years ago, North Carolina State recruited Northern Illinois head football coach Dave Doeren right in the middle of Northern Illinois earning an invitation to play in the Orange Bowl.  "North Carolina State created the vacancy late last week, under circumstances that prompted Jane Shaw at Phi Beta Cons [the link is long dead — Ed.] to make invidious comparisons between the sacking of coaches and the sacking, or not, of professors."

North Carolina State University just fired its football coach. Tom O’Brien had a winning record over six seasons (but not in the school’s conference, the ACC). He had taken the team to four bowl games, and his team had beaten its chief rival, UNC–Chapel Hill, five times. But the athletic director, Debbie Yow, wants more “aggressive” recruiting. As one fan said, O’Brien was “pretty good,” just not good enough.

Nothing changes in Raleigh.  "NC State's McMurray Family Director of Athletics Boo Corrigan has announced that Wolfpack head football coach Dave Doeren has been relieved of his duties effective immediately."

REPLAY REVIEW MAKES THE REFEREEING WORSE.

Red State's Kyle Becker calls attention.  "Something Feels Very 'Wrong' About the NFL. Fans Are Noticing."

At one point, if you looked up at the myriad of big screen television sets one could see what can only be described as a herd of zebras.

On every set, a referee, calling a holding penalty on this play, but not on the fifty plays before where the exact same thing happened.

Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that sports gambling is "ruining" the sport, it has become undeniable that NFL games are being decided as much by the referees as the players.

If football is a game of inches, then you could say that is now 13.5". That is the length of an official NFL penalty flag.

The impossible has happened: NFL officiating is getting worse. A recent analysis by Warren Sharp drives home that this is not your typical season for bad officiating.

During the corona shutdowns, Dave Barry anticipated the phenomenon.  “We’re thinking of just showing 60 minutes of referees throwing penalty flags and peering at replay monitors.”  That was supposed to be a humor columnist calling attention to a bad situation in a humorous way.

The problem is the replay technology.  "Expect the officials to do their job, and they'll likely do a better job than they do now, when they can make mistakes and have them corrected by Mission Control."  There's less reason for a professional to do a professional job when there's a second-guesser ready to guess.  "What incentive, other than pride, does an official have to get a close call right as the half or the game ends, when there's always the eye in the sky to issue the corrections?"

LIVE BY THE PRAISE, DIE BY THE HATE.

Thus did Indiana Fever reserve Sophie Cunningham brush off the off-the-court noise inspired by her defense of Caitlin Clark and of women's sports for, well, women.

Speaking of off-the-court noise, how well did Marc Silverman's "The Bears are done being the Packers’ little brother" age?  Last week, he wrote, "The Bears have taken the North, and now they must practice what they preach and not give it back."

JOE MAGARAC'S NEIGHBOR.

Mike Ditka, the quintessential Chicago Bear, dies at 86.

Still revered as “Da Coach” and ringmaster of the 1985 Bears, one of the most dominant and perhaps the zaniest Super Bowl-winning team in league history. Ditka was enshrined in the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame and the Bears said during a ceremony in 2013 that his “No. 89″ jersey will be the last one retired by the team.

He was born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, the son of a welder who changed the family name from Dyczko. He grew up in nearby Aliquippa, close to the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing plants that dotted the western part of the state, a big, talented, three-sport athlete and All-American at Pitt whose bruising style made his first nickname, “Iron Mike,” a good fit.

In Western Pennsylvania, you learn to play through the whistle.

The Bears play at Green Bay this Sunday at noon.  R. I. P.

BUYING INTO AMERICA.

My position on immigration and assimilation has long been "Give these kids an America to buy into, and an America that buys into these kids, and we'll be OK."

That picture is from the 2016 Oktoberfest season at the Bavarian Bierhaus near Milwaukee.  The youth soccer players doing some fundraising for the Bavaria youth soccer program are now young adults, and, who knows, some might be starting families and bringing up the next generation of Bavaria's players.

Last weekend brought us Milwaukee's lakefront Oktoberfest, which shared the weekend with baseball playoffs, and buying into American cultural appropriation was in Ordung.

That's a candid shot, several of those festival goers had been posing together for photos to share alike.  As you see, they're serious about their beer, with a half-liter cup and a liter souvenir Maß or two on that table.

HOW'S THAT CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT GOING?

Last fall, ESPN's Ryan McGee's version of the Bottom Ten included Northern Ill-ugh-noise.  It's another year, another conference, and leading the list is Northern Ill-ugh-noise.

The Other Huskies were bitten by the Georgia State Not Southern Panthers 35-14 last week. Props to NIU for equally distributing its losses, with one each to teams in the Big Ten, Missouri Valley, Big 12 and Sun Belt. That is, as we say on "Marty & McGee" "apro-pro" because I can never remember which conference NIU is now in.

Not that it matters this Saturday, as they have the Flying Byes of Open Date U., to use Mr McGee's terminology, followed by an evening homecoming game with the Flying Falcons of Air Force, which also play in the Mountain West.  Off we go, into the bowl chase yonder.  Both the university's orchestra and the community symphony orchestra have performances scheduled for that Friday and Saturday.

YOU CAN'T RELEGATE US, WE'RE GOING INDEPENDENT.

The corona shutdowns led to the National Collegiate Athletic Association extending years of eligibility, primarily by allowing more generous "redshirting" or designating players for a variation of injured reserve status.  Recently the association reverted to its pre-pandemic eligibility and redshirting rules, but a few players who had corona-era eligibility left finished their collegiate careers and signed with the professional leagues.

At least for the time being.  Consider, dear reader, a college player who signed a pro contract, didn't make the team, and then treats that remaining year of eligibility as a kind of option to return to his college team.  Sounds like the sort of thing lawyers could litigate all day.

Does a collegiate coach, athletic director, or conference commissioner use a variant on "card laid, card played," to tell such returning players, NO, we are pleased to count you among our alumni, and our recruiting pitch offers opportunities to catch the eye of pro scouts, it does not guarantee it.

LET THE REPOSITIONING FOLLIES CONTINUE!

I've long been on record doubting using college football to attract enrollment.

The thought process of some university administrators must run something like this:  Flagship universities are visible in football.  There are lots of people in the stadium six or seven Saturdays in the fall.  So let's get some football visibility and play in a big stadium.

It hasn't worked so well for the University of Massachusetts.

Or Rutgers.

There was some controversy about turning back time in Ann Arbor, but I'm not going to get into that.  Rather, it's the follies that get administrators in New Brunswick thinking about playing in the Big Ten and administrators in Amherst seeking a return to the Mid-American.  "UMass turned a second-quarter takeaway into the decisive scoring surge and defeated Rutgers 37-21 for a Fly the Flag victory to open the 2026 season on Sept. 3."  Plus Pop-Tarts.

Those two programs are perennial poster boys for making relegation a thing in college football.

Yes, years ago Julius Erving played for the Minutemen, and their men's hockey team recently won a national championship, perhaps begging forgiveness from the wokies for that Minutemen. That "storied athletic tradition" also included the Minutemen serving as crash test dummies for the Northern Illinois football team, at least until the football-only affiliation with the Mid-American ended.

Massachusetts scheduled a home-and-home with Northern Illinois in 2024 and 2025 and they learned a lot.  Now Northern Illinois play football in the Mountain West, and their latest attempt to be the next Boise State ran into reality at Iowa City.

Over the years, our meditations on attracting students by offering that game day (note, not game night) experience have raised the possibility that offering beer-'n-circus doesn't attract the studious sort of student.

EXCESSIVE SPORTS HYPE?

In the course of a lament over gridiron parents taking the joy out of youth football, Pajamas Media's Tim O'Brien notes, "Little League baseball players should not have 'walk-up music' any more than youth league football players should have 'recruiting videos,' but they do."  I might still have some of my nephew's Greendale Youth Football trading cards (no, they did not come in Topp's bubble gum packs) but I digress.

Rather, dear reader, I want to consider a recent high school football game in which St. Joseph took an early thirty point lead over Mount Carmel, only for Mount Carmel to rally back and win the game.

It made for compelling television.  Television?  Television.  "Mount Carmel football stuns by overcoming 30-point deficit to win on national TV."  Specifically,  on ESPN.

There might not be another game as thrilling as Mount Carmel played on Friday night.

In a nationally televised game, New Jersey visiting St. Joseph Regional High School went up 30-0 on the Caravan just one play into the second quarter. It was the definition of a rout.

Until, the Caravan staged a comeback for the ages. They stunned the high school football world, as Jordan Lynch's Mount Carmel squad overcame that 30-point deficit to shock St. Joseph and win its first game of the season.

That's right, a nationally televised, if on sports cable, game, involving a New Jersey team visiting the Chicago area.

CULTIVATING THE FAN BASE.

The custom at Green Bay Packer training camp is for local kids to offer the players the use of a bicycle to ride back to the locker room, and the kid carries the player's helmet.

This photo, from a year ago, shows what happens when a very little girl offers the use of her trainer bike.

Instead of "this bike is way too small," "Here's my helmet, I'll carry your bike."

That's how Packer Nation continues.

The standard remains five titles in six attempts in eight seasons.

TOO EARLY TO PUT A PIN IN THIS.

A National Review fund-raising blurb opens, "The NFL draft has concluded and confirmed that the Jets are two years from a winning record, that the Bears still stink, and that the Packers will win the Super Bowl."  Whether that prompts Militant Normals in Packer Nation to open their wallets, or whether that will age like Philadelphia cream cheese, remains to be determined.  Apparently author Luther Abel owns a share of Packer stock.

In Packer Nation, the standard remains five titles in six attempts in eight seasons, and the special teams are a work in progress.

TODAY IN FAR-TOO-EARLY FOOTBALL PROGNOSTICATIONS.

"How close are the 30 other NFL teams to a Super Bowl?"  Recall, dear reader, that the smart money had little love for the Seahawks and Patriots, both coming off bad seasons.  For what it's worth, the Vikings are sixteenth out, the Bears twelfth, the Lions eighth, and the Packers fifth.  Put two of the late season outs, the Bills and the Rams, as the most likely pairing on Valentine's Day a year out.

Maybe I'll return to this story in about a year, as the playoff picture shakes out.  Who knows, because betting money is involved, the football season forecasts might be more accurate than the usually hysterical forecasts at the beginning of hurricane season.

LET THE QUARTERBACK CONTROVERSY BEGIN.

The Pittsburgh Steelers indeed did hire former Packer and Cowboy coach Mike McCarthy as their fourth head coach since 1970.  There might be a few academic hires from 1970 still in the common room, but there are freeway flyer adjunct faculty with longer times under contract than most coaches these days.

Part of the reason those guys could stick along so long was their relative youth as coaches. They could coach a long time and still not be overly old.

McCarthy is in a different boat, a very experienced head coach but one with a lot more years under his belt.

That doesn't mean it will or won't work. It's just an interesting breaking of the trend.

McCarthy is from Pittsburgh, which certainly gives him bonus points here.

Now, everyone wants to see if he'll bring Aaron Rodgers back to rekindle their relationship from their Packers days.

From there, Pittsburgh will hope to start winning playoff games again, something that hasn't happened there in about a decade.

I'm not sure "rekindle their relationship" is what either the coach or Steeler management had in mind.  Billy Heyen with The Sporting News reports that Aaron Rodgers is currently "a fan of McCarthy."  Danica Patrick was not available for comment.

LIFE IMITATES THE BABYLON BEE.

As professional football's regular season ended and the ritual sackings of coaches commenced, we noted them recognizing that coaches enjoy a form of tenure.

The Babylon Bee is not wrong in its satire.  "Losing Football Team Excitedly Introduces New Coach Just Fired From Other Losing Football Team"  The stock photo accompanying the article is of Mike McCarthy, who went from winning a Super Bowl with America's Team to coaching a Dallas Cowboys team that was excused, a couple of years ago, from the playoffs, by America's Team.  Subsequently, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones asked Mr McCarthy to clean out his desk.  But his name might still be on this off-season's dance card.

And lo, it has come to pass that Mike McCarthy might be on the dance card of the team America's Team beat in that Super Bowl.

When Mike Tomlin left the Pittsburgh Steelers, it seemed to increase the odds Aaron Rodgers would leave, either to retire or pursue a new team.

But the latest head coach rumors coming out of Pittsburgh, involving Mike McCarthy, could change things back in the other direction.

McCarthy was Rodgers' head coach with the Green Bay Packers when they won a Super Bowl.

And it sounds like McCarthy is one of the favorites to end up with the Pittsburgh gig.

What transpired in Green Bay in the years after that Super Bowl win was not pretty.  I wonder how much of that history Doug Whaley, former general manager with Buffalo and current general manager of the springtime United Football League, knows.

Former NFL GM Doug Whaley spoke on 93.7 FM in Pittsburgh to break some of this down.

He was asked whether Rodgers and McCarthy would make sense as a pairing.

"Absolutely, no doubt," Whaley answered, then continued. "Then they can seriously put a plan together and say, let's get a quarterback."

The suggestion from Whaley, it appears, is for Rodgers to spend one year with McCarthy as his starting QB so they can figure out where they are going next at the most important position in sports.

Yes, Mike McCarthy has experience as quarterback coach, and yet a transitional quarterback working with what might be a transitional coach to quickly develop a new quarterback might get ... interesting.

WHAT STANDARD CONSISTENCY?

The Green Bay Packers will continue with the same management team going into the 2026 season.

Matt LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst are set to lead the Green Bay Packers for years to come.

After nearly a week of negotiations, the Packers signed LaFleur to a multi-year contract extension that will guarantee he won’t go into 2026 with just one year left on his deal. At the same time, the Packers were also close to completing a contract extension for Gutekunst.

PackersNews confirmed the status of both deals and learned that executive vice president/director of football operations Russ Ball would also receive a contract extension.

Terms of the deals were not available and it's unclear whether LaFleur and Gutekunst will have matching years on their contracts.

Apparently headquarters had been inclined to continue irrespective of how the wild card playoff game turned out.

According to a person familiar with the talks with LaFleur, Gutekunst and Ball, the Packers' front office structure is staying the same. All three men will report to President and CEO Ed Policy, who made the decision to extend each of the three men's contracts.

The structure has been in place since 2018 when then-President Mark Murphy decided that the general manager would not have total authority over the football operation as had been the case since general manager Ron Wolf was hired in 1992.

LaFleur’s future with the Packers seemed like it was in question after the Packers suffered an embarrassing wild-card playoff loss to the Chicago Bears on Jan. 10. It was the third time in the past four playoff appearances that the Packers bowed out of the playoffs in their first game.

However, according to a source with knowledge of the talks Policy had with his leadership, there was no hesitation about bringing LaFleur back. As NFL Network had reported prior to the Packers' playoff loss to the Chicago Bears, the final game would not have a bearing on LaFleur's future.

It appears Policy had already decided that LaFleur would remain as head coach provided the two were able to reach a contract agreement. Although it took a week to get the deal done, it appears that it was mostly because Policy had three contracts to negotiate and not because there was any hesitation from LaFleur or Policy.

The challenge is always whether the turmoil of a coaching change and subsequent rebuild (Admiral Gallery's description of a command change at sea being akin to removing one head and grafting on another applies to coaching changes, irrespective of whether it's an internal promotion or the coaching square dance) is worth doing.

Part of Policy's decision was whether seven years was enough time for LaFleur to lead the Packers to a Super Bowl. Despite a 76-40-1 regular-season record, LaFleur has gotten the team to the NFC championship game twice, but no further.

Policy decided the Packers could win a Super Bowl under LaFleur.

At the end of Coach LaFleur's second season, we noted,

Every so often, a team management does go all in on making a Super Bowl run, and Tampa might have done so making Tom Brady the de facto director of personnel, and perhaps that will work out for them (this year) and perhaps the reckoning with the salary cap and free agency will not haunt them for ten seasons.  On the other hand, how often might a management make a big splash on free agency only to wind up with an angry locker room and no playoff appearances to show for it?  We know what the standard is, and being regularly in the mix is a better sort of frustration than regularly being out of the mix.

The Tom Brady - Rob Gronkowski farewell tour ended with a championship in Tampa Bay, but has anyone heard from them lately?  Or would you rather be the Bears, still shuffling after forty years?  The Vikings, going zero-for-Bud Grant?  The Lions, still carrying the curse of Bobby Layne?

MORE LIKE A COACHING SQUARE DANCE THAN A COACHING CARROUSSEL.

Thus did a Milwaukee news analyst describe the annual ritual of unsuccessful head coaches cleaning out one office only to fill another.  The Babylon Bee is not wrong in its satire.  "Losing Football Team Excitedly Introduces New Coach Just Fired From Other Losing Football Team"  The stock photo accompanying the article is of Mike McCarthy, who went from winning a Super Bowl with America's Team to coaching a Dallas Cowboys team that was excused, a couple of years ago, from the playoffs, by America's Team.  Subsequently, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones asked Mr McCarthy to clean out his desk.  But his name might still be on this off-season's dance card.

A losing football team excitedly announced today it had hired a new head coach, who was just fired from a different losing football team.

Though the team's previous coach was also hired from yet another losing team, the general manager felt confident the new loser coach would stop the losing.

"This will change everything," announced general manager John Ryans. "With seven wins and twenty-nine losses over the past three years, our new coach knows what it takes to win. He also knows what it takes to not win. He's got that knowledge, and bringing that knowledge is huge. With our group of players who generally lose, plus a new coach who's been losing, we've never been in a better position to not lose."

According to league sources, all of the losing football teams are once again participating in the annual mandatory coach swap. "This time will be different, I know it," said local fan Marcus Denison. "He really was the best coach available, because the coaches that win didn't get fired. He may be a loser, but he's lost in very different ways than our old coach. I think it's going to be a great fit."

At publishing time, one unlucky coach was left at the end of the annual coach swap, thus becoming the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

It's a ritual common in organized sports.  How many baseball teams did Dave Bristol or Leo Durocher or Gene Mauch or Harry Walker manage in their careers?  Sparky Anderson, who had two very good runs with the Reds and Tigers cracked wise about enjoying a sort of tenure.  And Ned Yost couldn't secure the main prize in Milwaukee but subsequently did so with Kansas City.

PALACE INTRIGUE IN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL.

Is anybody surprised?  Yesterday's round-up of the process that is the league's most important product included

There are seven head coaching vacancies as we publish.  The Ravens are not known for willy-nilly swapping out head coaches, unlike some other teams you might have heard of.  And Mr Harbaugh being available at the relatively young age of 64 is prompting speculation about additional teams making moves.

Sure enough, there is an eighth vacancy now.  "Dolphins fire Mike McDaniel after 4 seasons as coach."

AFTER FURTHER REVIEW.

Football: episodic violence interrupted by committee meetings.  It used to be that only the players would have those meetings, now the officials inject themselves into the delays.  It should not come as any surprise that a sport that has trouble defining what a "catch" is and yet in all earnestness can speak of "completing the process of the catch" can bog down in process worship worthy of a faculty meeting.

Consider, first, how the simple act of winning a game might not be sufficient to break a tie and get the team winning the game into the playoffs.  That came up Saturday and Sunday when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the [North] Carolina Panthers in their final game, on Saturday.  That gave both of those teams an identical, sub-0.500, record, but a third team in that division had a shot at the same record.  "Why the Saints and Falcons Will Decide Whether the Bucs or Panthers Win the NFC South."  Sports Illustrated offer a straightforward explanation.  Red State's Jerry Wilson sees the humor in the situation.

Should the Buccaneers beat the Panthers on January 3 and the Falcons beat the Saints on January 4, Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Atlanta will all finish the season at a robust 8-9. (Slight tinge of sarcasm there.) The Panthers would then win the division because they beat the Falcons twice and the Buccaneers once during the regular season, thus having the best record against the other two teams. However, if Tampa Bay and New Orleans both win, the Buccaneers win the division because they have a better record against common opponents than the Panthers. Glad we could clear that up for you, although I am now in dire need of an aspirin.

The league has contemplated contingencies more convoluted than a three-way tie for the lead, or for teams qualifying as a wild-card (meaning you start on the road and probably don't have a home playoff game) and after reading through those, something stronger than aspirin might be in order.

FOOTBALL IS A COLLISION SPORT.

A month ago, the Green Bay Packers were in a position to secure first place in the Black and Blue Division.  There are worse ways to lose a game in Denver than have a very good defensive back intercept a first-down pass intended as a knock-out score after the defense records a three-and-out to open the second half.  Later, as Denver rallied, Packer defender Micah Parsons suffered a season-ending injury.  The anterior cruciate ligament gets stronger only in geologic time, while player speed and mass increase in a generation.

As we posted our final Advent meditation for the Festive Season, we were anticipating a showdown between the Packers and Bears with that first place being held by the winner with two games to play.  But for some foolish penalties on the defense in what could have been the final Bear possession and yet another failure of the special teams to cover an on-side kick that everyone in the stadium knew was coming, the Packers might have had that division lead.