Chris Suellentrop: Slate: Who's #2?

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Recent-ish Articles

Wired
January 2013. "Great Expectations": "Here is an incomplete list of the things Ken Levine says have inspired BioShock Infinite: the presidential administration of William McKinley; the Spanish- American war; the blistering pace of technological change in the early 20th century, with the introduction of electricity, telephones, cars, airplanes, phonographs, and movies; the 1893 Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World’s Fair; Eugene V. Debs; Emma Goldman; a black-and-white photo of young boys sitting next to a dead horse on a cobblestone street in turn-of-the-century New York; The Music Man; It’s a Wonderful Life; the sequence in Back to the Future when Marty McFly first arrives in the 1955 town square; that scene in The Shining where the two little dead girls appear; Blue Velvet; the chest-bursting scene in Alien; Roman Holiday; the cover of X-Men #141; the sun reflecting off a metal mailbox during a jog on a sunny day; roller coasters; an off-Broadway play called Sleep No More; and a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 'Songbird' performed on Glee ('It’s so embarrassing that I’m almost tempted to say this has to be off the record,' Levine says)."
NewYorker.com
October 26, 2011. "The Video Game Art of Fumito Ueda": "As video games have become more and more popular, the medium’s defenders have developed a misguided tendency to point to the ways that games are useful, practical, functional. I do not know if Ueda’s games will make you smarter, or improve your vision, or promote world peace. I very much doubt, in fact, that they will do any of those things. Emphasizing the ways that games are tools for instruction—whether intellectual, physical, or moral—is an unfortunate residue of their origins as children’s playthings. Abandoning it will be the sign, maybe the last one, that this new form of storytelling is all grown up."
Grantland
July 7, 2011. "Hard Times on the Paris of the Plains": "The NBA lockout has begun, and 30 cities now fear the same sad prospect this fall: day after day of staring at a lovely arena built for the pleasures of watching grown men play professional basketball, with no actual professional basketball team around to play in it. Twenty-nine of those cities host actual NBA franchises. The 30th is my hometown, the place where I grew up and will always be from, even if I no longer live there."
The New York Times Magazine
September 12, 2010. "War Games": "Unless you regard something like 'Iron Man' as a film about Afghanistan, the movies inspired by America’s contemporary wars have consistently been box-office flops. Even 'The Hurt Locker' grossed only $16 million in theaters. Video games that evoke our current conflicts, on the other hand, are blockbusters — during the past three years, they have become the most popular fictional depictions of America’s current wars."
Wired
February 2010. "Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes": "The many hundreds — even thousands — of hours that athletes put into videogame football give them more game experience than Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, or Joe Montana were able to log in previous eras. And there’s the possibility, too, that all this electronic play is changing the structure of their brains, at least in some ways, for the better. For more than 30 years, sports videogames have been focused on simulating real-life athletics more and more perfectly. But over the past decade, games have moved beyond just imitating the action on the field. Now they’re changing it."
The New York Times Magazine
December 24, 2006. "The Right Has a Jailhouse Conversion": "The G.O.P., the party of Richard Nixon's 1968 law-and-order campaign and the Willie Horton commercial, is beginning to embrace the idea that prisoners have not only souls that need saving but also flesh that needs caring for in this world."
Wilson Quarterly
Summer 2006. "Playing With Our Minds": "The important thing to find out about video games isn't whether they are teachers. 'The question is,' as game designer Raph Koster writes in A Theory of Fun for Game Design, 'what do they teach?' "
Wired
December 2005. "To Boldly Go Where No Fan Has Gone Before": On Star Trek New Voyages, Captain Kirk "is a professional Elvis impersonator, with muttonchops and a hornlike pompadour, who lives in nearby Ticonderoga. Spock works at a Virginia videogame store. And McCoy is an Oregon urologist." Chekov? Still Walter Koenig, the actor from the original series.
Radar
Sept/Oct 2005. "Last Man Standing": "While some Democrats remain skeptical of candidate Hillary's chances in a general election, Republicans have grasped her biggest strength: The former first lady may be the only Democrat man enough to take back the White House."
Slate
My old stomping grounds. My most recent contributions are a few "Gaming" columns, including an annual, end-of-the-year email dialogue about video games, which I moved to The New York Times in 2012.

December 05, 2006

Slate: Who's #2?

Who cares? Slate published my instant "Sports Nut" column on the logical flaw underlying the debate over college football's Bowl Championship Series: People think they need to pick the two (presumed) best teams for the national championship game.

Shorter Slate: "Playoff systems are designed to determine, in a fair manner, which is the single best team in a particular sport. Their purpose is not to pit the two finest teams against each other in a season-ending game. The Yankees and Red Sox do not play annually in the World Series. The Indianapolis Colts will never be given a chance to play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl."

Recycled BCS complaining: A College Football Playoff That Works.

December 05, 2006 at 05:03 PM | Permalink

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Comments

You appear to confuse the notions of "playoff system" and "BCS system," or perhaps you merely fail to make your assumptions clear at the outset of your article.

You begin by asserting that "[t]he BCS was created in 1998 with the stated goal of pitting the nation's top two football teams against each other in a championship game." You then continue your analysis under the assumption that the BCS is the culmination of a year-long "playoff system." You reason that, because Michigan has lost to Ohio State, they are not the best team, and Ohio State is, and that Michigan has already been eliminated from the "playoff" by losing on the road, by three, to Ohio State.

Your assumption that the season is a year-long "play-off" is at odds with your stated purpose for creating the BCS. Your references to professional baseball and football do not advance your argument because these sports--unlike college football--do not have a system designed to pair the two best teams in one final post-season showdown.

Further, you imply that you believe that Michigan is the second-best team in the country ("The fact that the Wolverines are probably the second-best team in the country doesn't mean they've earned the right to play in the national championship game.). If you believe what you write, then assuming the BCS is a system to pair the two best teams, Michigan should be playing Ohio State again in the BCS championship game. Alternatively, you should clarify your explanation of why the BCS was created at the outset of your article to include the assertion that the college football season is itself a year-long playoff.
I might also observe that your "year long playoff" characterization is curious given that, unlike any other playoff system I've ever heard of, a team's schedule is not determined by some performance-based criteria, but instead is dictated largely by traditional conference allegiances. I could also point out that, two years prior to the creation of the BCS, few people complained when Florida played Florida State again in a rematch; query whether it is only very recently that the regular season has been a “year long playoff” knock-out.

Posted by: notadoctor | December 12, 2006 at 06:55 PM

" I could also point out that, two years prior to the creation of the BCS, few people complained when Florida played Florida State again in a rematch; query whether it is only very recently that the regular season has been a “year long playoff” knock-out. "

an even closer analogy:
1979 Orange Bowl: OU v. Nebraska, both from the Big 8, rematch, OU lost by 3 in regular season to Nebraska, OU ends up victorious, national champions, crowds go wild, people weeping in the streets, mother's selling their children. It was great.

http://www.orangebowl.org/OB.php?sec=years&year=1979

Posted by: stu | December 12, 2006 at 07:50 PM

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Chris Suellentrop