New York Triumphant

The final gun has gone off and New York has retained their spot, won in the conference championships, as the fourth all-time greatest team in terms of league, conference and Super Bowl trophies, with 12 wins.  Just by showing up, they move to number two in the number of championship game appearances, 24, with Dallas retaining their number one spot with 13 victories.  New England remains the fifth all-time greatest with 10 wins in the fewest tries, although winning would have moved them ahead of New York.  In terms of appearances, they are now number nine, having one more win than Chicago, who also has 16 appearances but only nine wins.

Here are the final rankings for the year.

NCAA Rankings

In doing my post on "The Big Game" I realize that I never posted my annual NCAA column.  A simple scan down the blog shows that I do it every year.  I did it this year, but left it on my laptop without posting it, copying it to the cloud or to my thumb drive.  Problem is, my laptop got a virus and I forgot I had never backed the file up, so I told my IT guy to go ahead and wipe the computer and rebuild it.  Oops.  So, I just spent the last few hours copying the data from the CBS Sports web page, doing my personal rankings and adding all three together.  Unlike the pollsters, the BCS loser does not get an automatic second in my book.  Usually, I rank the BCS loser below the other BCS bowl winners but higher than the non-BCS winners, with the other major schools who won their bowl games following after, followed by the BCS bowl losers, although I usually run out of votes before we run out of teams.  Some years, teams are close enough that my opinion matters in my ranking.  This year, not so much.

Without further ado, here is my composite ranking for this year.  Feel free to copy the table and put your numbers in instead.

The Big Game Cometh

It is now that time again - my annual pre-Big Game rankings of what's at stake as far as all-time rankings.  As people who follow this blog know, I count both Big Game victories, conference championships and league champships since an actual championship game has been played.  Prior to the first such game, the league championship was based on win-loss records, essentially a division championship.  To include those championships, one would also have to count all division championships in subsequent years as a "win."  Others can do that, however unless someone pays me to do so and gives me a really good data file, I am not going to that kind of effort, especially since my current database includes year by year rankings so that you can follow the history of who was top ranked - although after a few decades this gets mind numbing to even look at.

That being said, I have two sets of rankings.  The first stresses the number of wins in championship games, with ties broken by winning percentage.  The second stresses the number of appearances, with ties broken by the number that resulted in wins.  The reason I do separate stats is because the League ranks its all time greatest list by win-loss percentage in the last game, ignoring the fact that what was the league is now the conference - with conference championships still meriting a trophy.  By their logic, an expansion team becomes the greatest team ever by winning the Big Game once.  That is insane, but given that the alignment of divisions is geographically challenged, it is not unexpected.

Here is the first set of ranks.  Click on the image to expand the table.

Green Bay, Pittsburgh and Dallas are safe in the one, two and three spots.  New York is in number four and New England is at number five after last Sunday's game.  This is a change, as these wins have moved them both past Washingon and San Francisco, who were tied for fourth at ten wins and seven losses.  By losing yesterday, San Francisco moves down to seventh, while Washington moves to sixth by not losing.  Baltimore dropped down from 21 to 22 by losing if you accept the fiction that they left their previous record in Cleveland with their name, even though there is continuity of personnel and ownership that indicates otherwise.  If they have to leave their record, then they need to be given the prior record of a certain team in Indiana who used to be located there.

The winner of the Big Game will move to fourth greatest overall.  New York currently has eleven wins and twelve losses in championship games, while New England has ten wins and five losses.  A New England will give them eleven wins with fewer losses, moving them to the number four slot.  A New York win gives them twelve wins - one behind Dallas who has thirteen.

For those of you who think being in the championship is more important than winning it, we have the second ranking:

New York, by showing up, will move to number two overall, with 24 total appearances. The conference championship was their 23rd appearance, tying with Pittsburgh but with fewer victories, leaving them in third position for the next 13 days until they walk into the stadium (moving Pittsburgh to third, even if New York loses.  Dallas will still have more wins, even though they also have 24 appearances - so New York must go to one more champship game to get to the top spot (if they play Dallas, they have to win to overtake them).

New England was already in the tenth spot, with 14 appearances and nine wins, which is one more win than Denver and Indianapolis who are tied at eleven.  Had Denver won last week, they would have passed New England.  On game day, by showing up, New England moves up to ninth with 16 appearances, which is the same as Chicago, but Chicago has only nine wins, so New England already holds the tie breaker.

I prefer counting wins as more important than appearances, with winning percentage breaking the tie.  This year shows why, since if appearances are more important, the result of this year's Big Game will mean nothing in the overall rankings, which is a bit anti-climactic.

Economic Roundup

Economic Roundup by Bruce Bartlett

On the MLR gap between productivity and compensation, the degree to which it can be measured is the degree to which the labor market is in monopsony. One feature of monopsonies is that they are inelastic to minimum wage increases, since the monopsonist will simply absorb the increased costs rather than discharging employees. Of course, they may also up their contributions to the GOP in order to forestall these increases.

On the NY Fed Foreclosure Study, I would be interested to whether BAR had any effect on the behavior of ratings agencies. They did not look into it, but they did provide an email address.

The Football Top 10 All Time

Last weekend, I learned that Green Bay had more championships than I thought. From 1921 through 1933, the championship was awarded to the team with the best win-loss record. There were no playoffs, as the entire league was the size of a large division in baseball.

Should these champions ships count? Of course they do - however they should not be considered the equivalent of winning a Super Bowl in my view. You are, of course, free to think differently. My entire point in doing this list year after year is that everyone is free to conclude what all-time greatness means. There is no one answer to this question. Certainly the League's view that statistical championship percentage is more important than the absolute number of championships lacks common sense, which opens the door for better measures.

If the pre-1933 championships were counted, then all Division titles should also go into final rankings, since they are equivalent. I will leave that calculation to someone with better automated data, especially if it includes, as mine does, a flow of rankings throughout the years. As far as doing it manually, even I am not that OCD.

Without further ado, here is this year's top 10. Since I am feeling less OCD, I will only include rankings by number of trophies. 

The Conference Championships

Next weekend, Green Bay, Chicago, New York and Pittsburgh send teams to the conference championships. There may very well be a new number one all-time team when the dust settles - or after the Super Bowl two weeks later. This is because both Green Bay and Pittsburgh each have 13 tropies, along with Dallas - although Green Bay earned them with the fewest tries so can be considered the best. If both Green Bay and Pittsburgh win, they will each have 14, with one of them gauranteed to win a fifteenth trophy for their franchise. New York is not even close to the top, while with 10 total trophies to date, Chicago could pull within one game of the championship group if it takes bothe the conference and league titles this year - passing San Francisco and Washington.

It has been a strange season and this could lead up to a matchup of two of the ultimate giants in football history - the best of each conference.

I'm thinking Green Bay will ultimately win, but you never know. Check this space for updates next Sunday nite.

Aging Index: A Wake-Up Call for Policymakers - TheFiscalTimes.com

Aging Index: A Wake-Up Call for Policymakers - TheFiscalTimes.com by Michael Hodin

The answer is more kids and possibly higher taxes, rather than lower benefits. That expands GDP in the long term, so that in concert with more technical productivity, makes longer retirement - and indeed - younger retirement - more affordable.

Another piece of the long term sustainability puzzle is the development of self-sustaining environments with food production facilities. If people could grow much of their own food hydproponically, they could spend down their savings less quickly (and receive lower pensions where those still exist) - keeping active in retirement without taking a job away from younger workers. Indeed, as retirees age, they might even provide shelter and a job to younger workers so that they can assit them in growing their food while learning how to run a hydroponic house. This would be the perfect part time job for a young family or couple to take while still in training for a primary career.

NCAA Football Combined Rankings

Here is a chart of the combined rankings of the AP, the Coaches Poll and yours' truly. Some of the rankings are close, so one peron's voting does occassionally make a difference. If you want to see how your voting would do, go to one of the sports media web sites, copy the vote totals, add them and then add your votes (25 for first t0 1 for 25th). My last two columns are the vote totals for the AP and Coaches polls without my input and the resulting rankings. As you can see, I rearranged the 7, 8 and 9 ranks, raised Iowa in the rankings and added Pittsburgh at a spot higher than U. Conn. (as it should be, since UCONN and WVU lost their bowl games while Pitt won). Here is the chart (click to expand):

The Revelation of the Magi

Brent Landau has translated the Revelation of the Magi from Syriac from a manuscript found in the Vatican Library. In it, the Magi are said to have come in response to visions, rather than simply the promptings of astrology. They are said to come from the land of Shir, which the author speculates to be China.

This manuscript is in the tradition of other non-canonical works on the early life of Jesus which seem to be based largely on speculation rather than reportage, although they may still reflect underlying truths. The link to purchase the book is at http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Revelation-of-the-Magi/Brent-Landau/e/9780062020239/?pv=y&inframe=y. This work was recently reviewed in the Arlington Catholic Herald at http://www.catholicherald.com/detail.html?sub_id=14437

Whether the manuscript is true or not is lost to the ages, although the story it lays out seems more like pious wondering than a statement of what actually happened - although the Shir concept is interesting.

I would suspect that instead of China, the site of Shir is India, which like China had a developed system of astrology and also may have had a thriving exile community of Israelites. Recent analysis of the Romany lead to the belief that these people, who were in India at the time, were members of the lost tribes of Israel - the inhabitants of the northern kingdom who were taken in exile by the Assyrians. Might the Magi have been Romany astrologers? If so, it would upset the current understanding that they were Gentiles, but it would be consistent with prophesies of the return to Zion on dromedaries bearing gifts to the Christ child that are used on the Feast of the Epiphany.

What is even more interesting is relating this possiblity with the legend that Thomas the Apostle evangelized India and reached the Romany community there, who when they returned from India went to Europe rather than what was then Muslim Palestine. It adds a whole new meaning to the words of the song O Come, O Come Emmanuel if captive Israel refers to the lost tribes who were soon evangelized and are not lost at all but right in front of us all, especially in Europe. As I have written previously, this definitely has interesting implications for relations with Israel and the apocolyptic hopes of Evangelicals as part of that.

BCS Bowl Predictions - end of November

For what it's worth, here are my picks at this stage, which are obviously subject to change:

Rose: Wisconsin v. OK State

Sugar: S. Carolina v. TCU

Fiesta: Stanford v. Pitt

Orange: Michigan State v. VA Tech

BCS Title: Oregon v. Boise State