|
Digital Slob Curt Brandao |
In a numbers game,
bet on the computerSports-loving Digital Slobs can have just as much fun watching the Big Game as Respectable People. But after the final whistle blows, most Slobs are too lazy to do more than flip the channel or loot the fridge, while Respectable People have enough pent-up aggression to flip police cars or loot a Macy's.
This is why, last weekend, when the Bowl Championship Series computers kept the top college football team (as voted by coaches and sportswriters) out of the Big Game, many otherwise reasonable Respectable People were ready to reinstitute the Salem Witch Trials for BCS officials. Surely, they insist, a Sugar Bowl without the University of Southern California will be beset with locusts and frogs raining down on the field (an angry God won't care that the Superdome doesn't have a retractable roof).
Suddenly, the once obscure BCS debate broke free of ESPN2, satellite radio and the blog run by my cousin with the vitamin D deficiency and took over the nation's watercooler conversations in a hostile coup, catching office-dwelling sports novices unawares.
"Chaos theory states that a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can trigger a series of events causing Boise State to beat Hawaii, thus putting LSU in the Sugar Bowl," said one Respectable Person lecturing BCS Philistines in our break room, trying valiantly to explain it all until his synapses fused and he had to take a sick day.
Slobs, on the other hand, despise protracted, abstract watercooler gab so much we'll propose a quick-fix and even go back to work to avoid it -- "Just have all the bowl-game vendors give everyone giant, foam rubber No.1 gloves with giant, foam rubber asterisks attached to them, and everybody will be happy."
We'll cut and run from the discussion because, unlike Respectable People, Slobs are wary about naively talking over our heads. Some of us still have psychic scars from wandering into a 1982 Star Trek convention and taking the mic to ask Leonard Nimoy if his corrective ear surgery was painful.
But never mind trying to bash the BCS without the proper credentials or sports conundrums in general (somewhere in the Seventh Level of Hell are two sweaty guys arguing the merits of the designated hitter for all eternity), as a Digital Slob, I'm concerned this latest dust up might lead many to believe that letting computers do all our thinking is, somehow, a bad thing.
I gave the BCS computer poll a cursory Google search. "Baffling. Pathetic. Moronic," said one sportswriter. "It's un-American," said another. "That's why computers can't run the world," said a sports agent. "Somebody needs to take a flamethrower to those MIT eggheads," said my mom.
C'mon. Are they saying computers are fine for automatically landing 747s or detecting brain aneurysms, but picking a football champ is somehow too nuanced for a silicon chip?
Last time I checked, rankings involved numbers, and I'll trust a computer with numbers over a coach or sportswriter any day, even if CPUs can't defend their decisions during the postgame show (yet).
Consider this: Right now, my checkbook says I have $512.78, but my online bank statement says I have $7.12. Let's say I owe you $10 and I want to write you a check -- would you believe me, or the computer?
With that in mind, if LSU beats Oklahoma (assuming that butterfly in Africa sits still), maybe they should be sole national champs.
I might bet $10 on it, anyway.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's production editor. Reach him at: cbrandao@starbulletin.com