Category: Essay

College Coaches Fail In The Pros

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

College football coaches have a track record of failing in the NFL, with Urban Meyer being the most recent predictable casualty. The interesting question is “why”? The most stated answer is simple: Because the player-coach power dynamics are completely different.

In college, the coach is the centerpiece of the team, his players are short-term by the very nature of college, and he’s the one who gets the megadeal. In the pros, the players are the centerpiece of the team, most coaches are expendable and expected to be tossed aside at the slightest failure, and the players know it. Free agency and bigger player contracts have not exactly swung things in favor of the coaches, but as the tale of Lou Holtz and the Jets shows, the same dynamic existed long before 1993.

The other issue is that the gap between the best and worst pro players is a lot smaller than the gap between the best and worst Division 1 college players. There’s no “coasting through a week against the paid tomato can”, as the point spreads show. The biggest NFL point spread of all time was only 28 points for the Broncos against the Jaguars in 2013, and it was not covered by the favorite. Meanwhile seemingly every Week 1 (and many subsequent ones) power program game is so lopsided that most sportsbooks don’t even bother with moneyline (straight win-loss) options at all.

The Big Amphibs

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

There have been many proposals proposal to make large amphibious warships. One of the more interesting is the Project 11780 amphibious ship, proposed in the last days of the USSR. Nicknamed the “Ivan Tarava” because of its comparable performance to the American Tarawa amphib, its proper name was, in an eerie coincidence given the recent war, the Kherson class.

The Khersons would have been built in Nikolayev, not far from their namesake province. Besides the collapse of the Soviet Union, what doomed them even before that was that the yard was chosen to build the Kuznetsov carriers instead. One interesting quirk is that the Kherson designers reportedly loathed the idea of their ship being converted to a fixed-wing carrier and thus moved a gun turret in one of the drafts so it would block the flight deck and prevent a simple conversion.

The Khersons were designed to carry 1000 marine infantry and up to around 60-70 “pieces of equipment”. They could hold both helicopters and landing craft.

Frankfurt Football

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

I have a crazy alternate history idea to spread American Football. So,the NFL’s desire to expand outside of its comfort zone has been mixed. But still, this alternate history enables the powers of the other kind of football to cash in. Many if not most European clubs best known for their soccer teams are in fact multi-sports, all under one umbrella. So for the sake of local laws and convenience, they’re technically the American Football branch of the club. Even if everyone but the kicker is an imported player from the states.

Frankfurt, being in the American military sector in the Cold War, has some of the most exposure to American popular culture. Therefore, its dominant team, Eintracht Frankfurt, gets an American football franchise. Of course, one quirk of the German 50+1 structure that ensures (nominal) control over a club by its members means that it and other German entries to the NFL would theoretically have a similar organization as the Green Bay Packers.

Silly? But that’s what AH is for. And besides, their team emblem looks like it’d fit perfectly on an American football helmet.

Congratulations Astros

On By coilerxiiIn Blog Stuff, EssayLeave a comment

Last night, the Houston Astros won the World Series. I feel especially happy because…

  • It gives manager Dusty Baker a long-deserved World Series championship.
  • It’s a bit of schnaudenfreude for the firebreathers who mocked them for the 2017 scandal, which in my eyes was blown out of proportion purely because they beat the Yankees and Dodgers. If they’d beaten the Twins and Diamondbacks, no one would care. (Should we revoke the titles of any team who had a spitballer/steroid user on them?)
  • They beat the Phillies, my least favorite team in baseball even without Bryce Harper.

Congrats!

Operation Causeway

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

Operation Causeway was a proposed plan by the US military in World War II to land on Taiwan. It would have been a massive high risk, high cost, and high reward operation. In actual history, Causeway was shelved in favor of landing in Luzon.

The initial landing sites for Causeway would be in the south.

The Causeway documents are useful not just as an alternate historical reference, but also as a general guide to what a large amphibious invasion of Taiwan would entail (something that, for some mysterious reason, has remained relevant postwar).

The Bullpups

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

First, a description of what a “bullpup” rifle is: The firing chamber/action/magazine is located behind the trigger instead of in front of it. There have been numerous bullpup designs, and they came into a fad in the 1980s. Of course, this brought up the biggest issue with them.

Basically, it’s easy to make a bullpup simply by flipping around a conventional rifle. However, that doesn’t make for a good bullpup the way a ground-up design does. However again, rifles are such a small part of (especially high-intensity) war that the decision to make a big investment in them is not made lightly. However however again, the impetus for bullpups was basically “they need to be short so they can fit in vehicles more easily”, with performance being less of a concern.

Of course, shorter-barreled conventional rifles took most of the wind out of the bullpup’s sails. But they continue to be used. They just haven’t dominated.

The Boss Baby Effect

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

There’s an internet meme I think is surprisingly profound. This is the “Boss Baby” meme:

I’ve seen the “Boss Baby Vibes” effect in many an insular fandom. It seemed annoying, until I realized that I had fallen for it too with my initial reviews of Fuldapocalyptic fiction. Reading Red Storm Rising and third-tier knockoffs of that first had massively skewed my perception of that subgenre in particular and cheap thrillers in general.

So now I can sympathize with people who are just comparing what they see to what they know.