BehindTheNet.org

It's taken me over a month to post this. That's pathetic.

OUTBOUND

• Delta 8, us -4. That's hours, as in the hours taken from our vacation when the 6 AM CHO-DTW was cancelled on our taxi ride to the airport (as opposed to the night before when we could have known to sleep in!), converting CHO-DTW-MKE into a second, 2-hour DL-paid taxi ride and a 6-hour wait for DCA-MSP-MKE.
• Fixed cars in Charlottesville at 9 AM 1, J in Arlington -$n, J sense of humor -eleventy brazillion
• Hertz/UA 2000, us 0 -- as in mileage accrual that got lost when converting a weekly rental from a downtown location into a 6-day rental at MKE because we came in after hours.
• Radio gamble 5, luggage weight 0. I left my XM gear at home this time, hoping to get by with local radio or just scenery, but somehow the mess above ended with a well-equipped Mercury Milan with Sirius in our Gold stall.

Dateline this, say, January 1996. Any time after August 14, 1995 actually works, though.

• Number of NHL-capable arenas in Winnipeg: 0

• Number of NHL-capable arenas in Phoenix: 1 (AWA, while nowhere near ideal, was an order of magnitude less bad than Winnipeg Arena)

• Number of ownership groups with a plausible business plan in Winnipeg: 0

• Number of ownership groups with a plausible business plan in Phoenix: 1

As I've said over and over, the best comparison for the Jets' situation in 1995 is that of the Seattle SuperSonics in 2006 (pre-Bennett purchase). The fans were more or less present, although not exactly filling their small, outdated arena for some bad hockey teams. Civic willingness to spend money on a modern arena, though, was not.

And that's what makes the continuing "Phoenix stole Canada's team, let's steal it back" narrative so infuriating. It's a pile of ahistorical assertions (and the usual gross misunderstanding of Gary Bettman's actual job) stacked chest high, leavened with ignorance of the demographic stagnation-to-decline of the Canadian prairie, and topped off with misguided triumphalism. Those of us in remaining Sun Belt markets will have to batten down the hatches for more of the same, too. Monday's Ken Campbell column tossing out half-baked assertions about LA and Carolina ownership turnover was just a foretaste.

The New York Times's TV sports columnist Richard Sandomir examines how showing a complete sporting event is antithetical to NBC's Olympic programming concept.

A hockey game cannot be sliced easily into a series of short events, like ski or luge runs, figure skating programs or speedskating races. If the network cannot chop a sport into two-to-five-minute elements framed with a lot of ads, it is not likely to be shown from 7 p.m. to midnight.

A hockey game lasts at least two and a half hours. NBC never spends two and a half hours on any sport during the Winter or Summer Games.

The catch is that NBC doesn't pay a price for this against the credibility of its mainstream sports programming, because NBC has no such long-term sports programming to speak of. One NFL game a week and the dying gasps of Notre Dame football -- that's it. NBC presents as little NHL hockey as it can possibly get away with, selecting from a seven-team menu, and abuses Wimbledon fans nearly as badly as it does hockey fans.

With President Obama "throwing his weight around" this week as he promised immediately after his election, we're back to the BCS/playoff debate.

Abuse of the presidential bully pulpit aside, I think replacing the BCS with a playoff would destroy college football as we know it. In my perception, three distinct constituencies want a playoff for mostly distinct reasons:

• Fans of high-profile teams not in the BCS conferences, for the obvious reason that their teams can't make the BCS championship game; their conference schedules aren't good enough, and rarely can they schedule enough quality out-of-conference games to cover for it. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), whose state has two such teams, has abused his own bully pulpit for years on this group's behalf.
• Fans of the 6 to 8 teams that can count on contending for the national championship nearly every season.  They're tired of (a) not having a clearly defined path to the championship game before the season begins, and (b) even if they do make it, having their credentials challenged by talking heads taking the cause of the first group.
• People that watch college football on television and have either never been to a game or only went to home games in their student days.  They don't understand why I-A football can't act like NCAA basketball or pro football and give them playoffs to gamble on watch on the same weekday at the same time every year.

Group one we can give a pass to.  They're operating on pure self-interest.  The others, though?  Not so much.

Straight off the UPS truck this afternoon: my new Garmin 265WT GPS, complete with Bluetooth phone dialing. Information on the Internet about the 2x5 series's interaction with Palm OS Treos like my Sprint Treo 755p or the Centro is lacking, perhaps because we PalmOS users are the pathetic stragglers of the smartphone world.

Be that as it may, I still wanted to get as much connected use out of these guys as I could. So, here's what I've found that this combination can and can't do, categorized by appearance on the Garmin.

• Voice Dial is a no-go. Known limitation of PalmOS with all Bluetooth devices. The only way this would work is if the voice recognition were on-board the GPS, which it isn't.
• Call History works, no problems. Of course, this is probably the least important feature to have on-screen.
• Call Home has nothing to do with any entry on the Palm. This number is set independently.
• Phone Book pulls from the Favorites buttons within the Phone application. This pull happens about a minute after you turn the GPS on and it pairs with your phone. This is, unfortunately, not the same set of numbers as your Palm OS Contacts (the database that gets synchronized with Address Book.app, Outlook, or Palm Desktop per your platform preference). The only workaround is to load most of the numbers you're likely to call from the Garmin onto page 4 or 5 of the Favorites (where you won't see them in ordinary operation); you don't need to set a speed dial key. The primary problem is that the Favorites number won't change if you change the corresponding number in the Contacts database.
• Even when dialing from the Garmin, keep your phone at hand. The Garmin should display a red phone handset icon at top-right while you're on a call; tapping this icon doesn't hang up, though, but instead takes you to a call status screen. One more tap is required on that screen to hang up. Easier to grab your phone and hit the End button.