I like to travel, and I don't know why, but when I go places I always want to see college campuses. I'm not sure why. Maybe its because I had such a blast in college that it helps bring back those memories. Maybe its because college campuses usually have pretty buildings and cool bars nearby to hang out at. Maybe its just that there is a higher rate of good looking women.

But whatever. I like visiting college campuses and their surrounding towns. So I thought it might be fun to rank the Pac-12 college campuses that I've been to and to see what you folks think. This is an extremely subjective list, obviously. I'm putting lots of emphasis on things like beauty (natural and un-natural) and the place where the campus is set.

A couple of disclaimers. I've spent more time at some of these campuses than others, so I'm not really drawing fair comparisons here. Also, I haven't been to every Pac 12 campus, and for this reason, Oregon State, Colorado, and the AZ schools aren't on the list. I'd love to know what you think of the list and what your list might be.

Continue reading this post »

So today has been a pretty bad day, obviously. The Mariners seem so much worse than they were yesterday at this time. If you had asked me yesterday what type of team the Mariners were, I'd have told you they were a mid-large market club. Now they seem like a small market club. I'm not sure if that is accurate, but it is how I feel.

I've been trying to look for bright spots in the deals that the Angels made. The Wilson deal seems to be a very good deal. When Buehrle signed with Miami I thought for sure this would drive the price way up for Wilson. I was wrong. This seems like a good to very good contract.

There are, however, as far as I can tell some things to keep in mind about the Pujols deal that could make it a worse contract than it might seem. I don't know if I have thought these all the way through, and there could be mistakes in my thinking. Also, these are only potentially negative for Anaheim. They could be remedied with trades and things like that. But here they are:

• As Dave Cameron tweeted this morning, this is a smaller upgrade for Anaheim than it would have been for other teams. Trumbo was a 2.3 win player last year, so they are likely to pick up less wins with this deal than other teams.
• Speaking of Trumbo, he is no Pujols, but he is young and cheap and under team control for quite a while. Not the place you need an upgrade. Of course, this allows the Angels to trade Trumbo, but whatever. The point is that the Angels upgraded a position that wasn't in huge need of upgrading.
• If I understand things correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong) a first baseman is more valuable than a DH. If, for some reason, Pujols can't play 1B and has to switch to DH, this makes the contract slightly worse. How much worse? I have no clue.
• There are also going to be two wild cards from now on. Because it is now easier to get into the playoffs, there is less value in all major league contracts. Holy cow, did I reason that properly? I don't even know, but it might be something, right?
• This does handcuff them a bit moving forward and trying to resign players. Howie Kendrick was almost a 6 win player last year and he will be a FA next season. Erick Aybar was a 4 win player who will be a FA soon as well. Bottom line is, they likely have a lot of players at the league minimum in the coming years. I really can't see them holding this team together much longer. Of course, I couldn't see them signing Albert Pujols, so what the hell do I know.

Albert Pujols makes the Angels better, that is for sure, but he does not help them improve as much as he would have helped other teams improve. As a Mariners fan, this still scares me for the future, but not quite as much as it did this morning.

Did I mess up anywhere? Did I forget anything?

This is my first attempt at an analysis based fanpost, so please be completely brutal and use lots of curse words to send a message to me to not do it again if it sucks.

I was just looking at the week 29 attendance stats on the left-hand side of the page and notice that attendance seemed to be well above average that week.  New England, for example, had about 8,000 people more than their average, but LAG, RSL, Columbus and Chivas all had rather substantial increases.  Any clue why this is?  

I'd love to think that the increase in New England was because we were playing there, but I can't imagine it would increase by 8,000.  It seems very encouraging that a last place team could have drawn over 20,000 for a game, but I feel like I might be missing something obvious here.  Are they adding two games together or something?

Whatever it is, it is pretty good to see.

Attention Movie Buffs!  The Academy awards are just two days away!  Time for an Offtopic discussion thread!

In my opinion this has been a pretty good year for movies.  Although Best Picture is obviously the most interesting category there are many other categories that deserve attention.  Christian Bale and Geoffrey Rush both have stong cases for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and there are several strong candidates for Best Actress.

As for Best picture, here are the nominees, in no particular order:

1. The Social Network
2. The King's Speech
3. The Kids are Alright
4. Winter's Bone
5. Toy Story 3
6. The Fighter
7. True Grit
8. Inception
9. The Black Swan
10. 127 Hours

You can look at the rest of the nominees for other categories here.  I'm personally looking forward to "Best Original Score," which is my favorite category.  I think Trent Reznor did an amazing job with the Social Network, but Hans Zimmer might be the favorite for his work on Inception.

Here is an example of Reznor's work.  (Not sure why it won't embed. Sorry) 

Don't feel limited to these questions, but just to get the Ball rolling:

1. What was your favorite movie you saw this year?
2. Who do you think will win Best Picture?
3. Who do you think should win Best Picture?
4. Do you have any personal favorites you want in any category?
5. Which movie were you surprised to enjoy?

After our fun discussion yesterday, I was challenged by some commenters to put my money where my mouth is and do my own fan post.  This is an attempt to make a FanPost that will help us understand our team better.  It is NOT about me being correct in my assessment.  I'm not great with statistics, and out of the "Big 3" sports,  basketball is the one of which I have the least knowledge.  So I hope that those of you with higher basketball IQ and better analysis skills will either help support what I say or provide reasons as to why I am incorrect in my assessment.

Perusing comments in this community, there seem to be two great debates going on regarding the rotation.  One of them is whether or not Demitri Goodson is deserving of his role over the seemingly superior David Stockton.  "More Baby Stockton!" seems to be the dominant theme in Zag Nation.  The other is whether or not Steven Gray is deserving of many of his minutes and whether or not he has what it takes to be the "leader" of this team.  Some have pointed out that our best wins of the year (Baylor and Xavier) were largely without Gray on the court.

I argue that Steven Gray does need to be on the court and that this team would be better with him moving to the point guard position, with smaller roles for both David Stockton and Meech Goodson.

I get why everyone wants Stockton to do well.  He's local, he's "undersized," his Dad is John Stockton and, most importantly, he is a Zag and we want all of our Zags to play well.  But it seems that there is much to suggest that he isn't quite as good as he looks when compared to Goodson.  Although I'm not sure how much of a sample size we need to develop accurate judgments, Stockton does not seem to be anything above average at the moment (though there is many reasons to believe that he will continue to develop in the future).

I am assuming that there are several statistics that make for a good offensive point guard.  If my assumptions are wrong, please correct me.  These would be Turnover percentage (Turnovers/trips down court), Assist Percentage (Assists/Trips down court), and "Effective Field Goal Percentage" (Field goal percentage with increased weight given to made 3 pointers), and perhaps "Average Points per 40 Minutes."  Using percentages as opposed to raw numbers removes the important variable of playing time so that we can more effectively compare players against one another. 

When compared to other Point Guards in the WCC, which is a much younger group than I expected, Stockton is simply average (All statistics taken from Statsheet.com):

Points Per 40 Minutes:

• Roguemore (SC): 14.3
• McConnell (SMC): 18.4
• Doolin (USF): 9.3
• Lowery (Pepp):10.1
• Douglas (UP): 15.3
• Stockton (GU): 11.3

Assist %: (Assist percentage is an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on on the floor.)

• Roguemore (SC):25.3
• McConnell (SMC): 29.8
• Doolin (USF): 18.9
• Lowery (Pepp): 28.6
• Douglas (UP):  27.7
• Stockton (GU): 23.4

Turnover % (Estimate of Turnovers per 100 plays.  The lower, the better)

• Roguemore (SC): 19.2
• McConnell (SMC): 17.4
• Doolin (USF): 22
• Lowery (Pepp):26.2
• Douglas (UP): 26.8
• Stockton (GU): 26.3

If you were counting, Stockton came in at 4th, 5th, and 5th out of the 3 statistics and 6 players I looked at.  Certainly there are variables that these statistics can't account for, but the point should be obvious that Stockton doesn't give us a huge advantage over our opponents at the PG position.

Which brings me back to Steven Gray.  Steven Grays scores 18.5 Points per 40 which is good enough for first place on this list, just barely ahead of Mickey McConnell.  His Assist percentage is 25%, which isn't great but is an upgrade over Stockton.  His Turnover percentage is 19.2, which would place him well ahead of Stockton, and tied for second behind McConnell.  

Moving Steven to point guard and, perhaps more importantly, cutting down the minutes given to Stockton and Goodson would allow for other players we all seem to like to have more Playing time.  For example, we could start using Harris at the 3 more often which is a position many have claimed, both here and elsewhere, that he is more naturally suited for.  This could also generate more court time for Moenninghof, Carter, and Dower which is something that the average Zag fan seems to be in favor of.

Rather than calling for Stockton to get more time at PG, it seems more worthwhile to call for Steven Gray to move to the position and have Stockton enter from time to time as a sub, thus opening room for Carter, Moenninghoff and Dower to get more minutes.  Obviously, this could impact Gray's statistics negatively but we won't know until we try, and at this point of the season it looks like there isn't any reason not to.

Please fill out the poll below and let me know if you found this interesting in anyway.  Or just tell me off if you still think I'm stupid.  I'd also love to know if you agree or disagree with my interpretation and analysis.

Go Zags.

Dear everyone in The Slipper Still Fits Community,

This fan post will probably make me come off as a huge jerk and I intend to break several points of online/blog etiquette, so before I begin I want to sincerely thank Zach and Max for all the content that they've provided since TSSF came into existence some time ago.  This post is not in any way aimed at critiquing them and their work.  It is critiquing you.  Yes, you.  I have a problem with you and want you to know about it...

Continue reading this post »

I'm sure this has been discussed in other places, so I apologize if there is any redundancy here.  If there is another place I could get this information, please point it out.

I live in LA and would love to see my first ever Sounders game on November 7th, and I'm wondering if there is a Sounders section and how I might be able to get tickets in this section.  Do I have to look on Ebay or stubhub? or can I order tickets through the Sounders, somehow (if they aren't already sold out)?

Also, are there any plans for Sounders fans to congregate before the game?  I'd love to meet up with some people who plan to make the trip down here.

Thanks a lot!  Any help I can get is greatly appreciated.  Go Sounders!

Figured it might be nice to chat about everything happening.  BYU and Florida are just tipping off, which means that the best couple of days of the sports year have begun!  

Seems like Murray State is a popular upset pick, as well as San Diego State.  Oh, an Villanova will be sitting a couple of there starters, but they should still see plenty of court time.

Hopefully this has already gotten to 75 words, because I'm sick of telling you all things you already know.