Happiness For Blessing

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and...Dodge.

Thanks to all who voted.

The final list, from 1-64 (ties broken using a combination of voting results and original seeding):

1. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
2. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
3. Zoolander
4. Hot Fuzz
5. The Hangover
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
7. Elf
8. The Simpsons Movie
9. Shaun of the Dead
10. The School of Rock
11. Wedding Crashers
12. Napoleon Dynamite
13. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
14. Meet the Parents
15. Knocked Up
16. Kung Fu Panda
17. Stranger Than Fiction
18. Shrek
19. Super Troopers
20. Old School
21. The 40 Year Old Virgin
22. Hitch
23. Thank You for Smoking
24. 50 First Dates
25. Bruce Almighty
26. Little Miss Sunshine
27. The Royal Tenenbaums
28. Juno
29. The Replacements
30. Starsky & Hutch
31. The Emperor's New Groove
32. Shanghai Noon
33. Step Brothers
34. Get Smart
35. Tropic Thunder
36. Role Models
37. Monsters, Inc.
38. Accepted
39. I Love You, Man
40. Anger Management
41. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
42. Superbad
43. Click
44. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
45. Dan in Real Life
46. The Longest Yard
47. Ratatouille
48. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
49. Blades of Glory
50. Meet the Fockers
51. Be Cool
52. You, Me, and Dupree
53. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
54. Fun with Dick and Jane
55. Analyze That
56. Sideways
57. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
58. Finding Nemo
59. Pineapple Express
60. The Benchwarmers
61. Jackass Number Two
62. Orange County
63. Clerks II
64. Shanghai Knights

The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

Final 4

Championship Round

It comes down to this: two hyphenated titles that were released three weeks apart in 2004. Your finalists:

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy



The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

Final 4

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Final Four:












The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

My apologies for waiting so long to get this up. We're in the middle of a longer-than-we-ever-imagined move, so it's been kind of tough to get around to this. If you've missed any of this, here's a quick review:

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Here are the results from the last round of voting. This is your Elite Eight bracket (click to enlarge):



Finally, the new poll. Deadline is next weekend-ish - unless I'm actually moving stuff into our new house, in which case it will take longer.

8 - Loyalty to conference?

The bizarre ranking system (#3) and lack of a playoff (#2) means that your chosen team looks better if the other teams in the same conference perform better. This sets up some bizarre rooting situations. Fans end up cheering for their hated rivals when they play against teams from neighboring conferences. Last week I observed two fans cheering for Oklahoma State against Georgia. One fan was dressed head to toe in Oklahoma apparel while the other sported Texas A&M gear. They weren't rooting for Oklahoma State so much as against the hated SEC. But in what sport is it okay to cheer for a conference or division rival?

7 - The NCAA's ridiculous rules

Recently my alma mater was forced to vacate its wins from the 2007 season because of recruiting and amateur status violations. The crime? Allowing a student to take an admissions test on a computer in the athletics department. Apparently not going to the library was reason enough to erase a playoff season (this is Division 2). The sad part is, you're probably reading this and saying, "That's nothing. My school wasn't allowed to go to any bowl games for 5 years because our coach spent too much time on the phone with a kid." And that's ridiculous. I understand that the amateur status of student-athletes needs to be protected, but the NCAA ends up picking on small schools and letting others get away with highway robbery. The rules are not enforced evenly because some schools have boosters and money and all kinds of influence. Which leads us to...

6 - Student-athletes at big-time football schools are not really amateurs

This is the biggest open secret in college football. Once in a while, somebody like Rhett Bomar or Reggie Bush gets caught. The NCAA was forced to act on Bomar because he still had time to play, but in Bush's case, they basically left well enough alone. Meanwhile, small schools like mine (#10) are punished for minor violations. Neither USC nor Oklahoma had to vacate wins. The fact is, football factories use boosters like politicians do PACs - funnel the money somewhere else, and if something goes wrong, there's no accountability to the parties that are actually responsible.

5 - 1 foot vs. 2 foot, down when touched

Let's get to some on-the-field stuff. Some of the rules that make college football "distinctive" from the pros are simply ridiculous. Exhibit A is the rule that once your knee hits the ground, you are down. It doesn't matter if you were tackled or if there's nobody within 20 yards. If this is the case, why not call an incomplete pass if you bobble the ball before securing it? Exhibit B is the one foot inbounds for a completed catch rule. You cannot argue that this makes the college game more exciting. Inaccurate passes and lazy receiving is rewarded in this system.

4 - Parity

As I type this, I have a choice of watching 4 football games. Not one of them holds any interest to me, because the teams are so unevenly matched. I flipped to the Florida-Troy game to see how it was going, and Florida was winning by 32 points in the second quarter. You don't attend or watch that game expecting to see an actual competition. You watch it because (1) You went to one of the two schools, (2) You want to be watching in case Troy pulls off the impossible, or (3) You have money on the game. The gambling line for this game was -37. The biggest line in the NFL this week? -13.5, a game that involves the only winless team in NFL history, the Detroit Lions. The worst team in the NFL has a legit shot at winning every week. You cannot say the same for many teams in college football. Another way to say that is you can turn into any pro game and expect a fairly evenly-matched game. Of the 4 games I mentioned earlier, only 1 is what you might call competitive.

3 - Rankings & Schedule

It's hard to separate this from the lack of a playoff system (#2), but let me try with a hypothetical.

Let's say Prestigious Team A is ranked #8 in the preseason poll. Less Prestigious Team B is ranked #19 in the same poll. In Week 1, Prestigious Team A loses to Very Prestigious Team C (#5) by a small margin while Less Prestigious Team B beats Less Prestigious Team D (unranked) comfortably, but not in a blowout. In the Week 1 poll, Prestigious Team A drops to #13, while Less Prestigious Team B jumps up to #14. Both teams win out, and at the end of the year, Prestigious Team A remains ranked above Less Prestigious Team B, despite Team B having a better record. The reason? The teams never played each other, nor did they have any common opponents, meaning even computer formulas were useless and relied on things like margin of victory, which is code for running up the score. The entire season for both of these teams hinged how they were ranked in the preseason, before anybody settled anything on the field.

2 - Playoffs

I realize this is a contentious subject, but let me say this: I cannot respect college football as a viable competitive sport until it finds a better way to determine its champion. I probably don't need to make the case for a playoff system - that's been done numerous times. If you believe that the BCS is the best system for postseason play, you are either (A) a college president, (B) a retard, or (C) both.

I will say this: Less prestigious schools that continue to be forced out of the national championship discussion should form their own league or division.

1 - Logic

If I had only argument for the superiority of the pro game to the college game, it's this simple point: the pro game features the best athletes playing against the best athletes. Not many people argue that minor league baseball is better than the major leagues, and that's essentially what college football is: a glorified minor league system. At least in minor league baseball, the teams are fairly evenly matched!

4 Reasons I can see the other point of view:

4 - Overtime

Pro overtime is flawed. Each offense should get a shot at scoring. I like college overtime a lot, but there is one change I would make: move the starting position back from the 25 yard line. I think teams ought to have to work to get into field goal territory.

3 - The option

This is one of the most exciting plays in football, in my opinion, and you rarely see it in the pro game. The reason points back to my earlier point (pro players aren't fooled by the option), but I would like to see more innovation in the pro game like we see in college.

2 - Greed of the Shield

It is well documented that the NFL is a greedy league. Proponents of college football can point to NFL blackout restrictions, and I have no answer for that.

1 - Fans/Atmosphere at games

This is the number 1 argument I hear from people who "don't know anything about the NFL because I don't watch it." Seriously, is there anything more annoying than that? Except for Apple fanboys, of course.

Anyway, it's hard to argue against a college atmosphere, especially when some NFL teams have lame, gimmicky fanbases. I'm looking at you, Oakland, Washington, and New York (Jets). I suppose my response is that the product on the field is inferior.

Due to embarassingly low voter "turnout" this week, I am extending the voting period for the Sweet 16 round by an entire week. You may vote right here. I emphasize once again that you may vote as many times as you want.

Note: I did not write this. It was written by Dr. Jeremy Spinks, who used to work in the Emergency Room at Parkland Hospital (where Jodi currently works) here in Dallas, and I have reposted it with permission. I find it to be a very articulate argument for universal health care. I don't consider this to be the final word, but a start to healthy and reasonable discussion. Let me know what you think.

A striking phenomenon occurred in the emergency department at Parkland Hospital every morning around 6AM: about twenty to thirty patients with kidney failure would show up at the emergency department, would have their blood drawn and EKG checked, and each person would hope that he was sicker than the other, because only a lucky few would be selected to receive emergent dialysis that day. Patients with insurance who have kidney failure normally receive dialysis three times a week; without it, fluid builds up in their lungs, making them feel like they are drowning; nitrogen levels build up in their bloodstream, causing severe abdominal cramps and muscle aches; their blood pressure becomes drastically elevated, causing intractable headaches and putting them at risk for a brain hemorrhage; and their potassium levels grow unchecked putting them at risk for sudden death. The swarms of uninsured kidney failure patients that would come to the emergency department every morning were lucky if they were chosen to receive dialysis once every few weeks. The “lucky” ones in this scenario were the people whose potassium levels were the most elevated, the ones who might die from a heart rhythm abnormality at any moment. I once had one of these patients go into cardiac arrest while waiting to be seen in the ER. We rushed her into a resuscitation room, performed CPR and defibrillated her, and we were fortunately able to get her back, after which she quickly received the life-saving dialysis treatment that she needed. I later found out from her that she had consumed numerous bananas and soft drinks that morning in a deliberate attempt to elevate her potassium level so that she would be chosen to receive dialysis. That’s why her heart stopped. This is how desperate she was to get the treatment she needed, and the only way she knew how to do it.

This is the situation that millions of Americans face today – access to health care only when their situation has become so grave that they are knocking on death’s door. And what I came to discover very quickly in my training as an Emergency Medicine physician is this: the vast majority of people who do not have health insurance are hard-working, good people who simply cannot afford it. And because they cannot afford health insurance, they receive no preventative or maintenance health care, which leads to worsening of their illnesses. They are then forced to visit the emergency department where thousands of dollars are spent to deal with the complications and consequences of their untreated illnesses that could have been prevented if only these people had received access to regular, basic, and much cheaper health care from a primary care physician. The system, as it stands today, refuses to provide basic services to persons who need those services the most, but then is forced to provide far more expensive services to these same people when it is already too late.

When I finished my residency and started working at a private community hospital in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I was eager to see what it would be like to work in a system in which the majority of patients have health insurance and good access to health care. I’ve been here for two years, and I am still eager to see what that would be like. In talking to numerous colleagues that practice emergency medicine in a variety of settings, the consensus I get is that the situation is the same at all emergency departments across this country – a very large percentage of the patients seen have no health insurance and no decent access to health care once they leave the emergency department. I’ve seen far too many patients come to the ER in very difficult situations that shouldn’t be allowed to occur, like the gentleman who comes in with an arm splint that he has been wearing for months, originally placed for a broken bone. This splint should have been taken off and replaced with a cast a few days after his injury, and now his broken bone will never be able to heal properly, and he can no longer function in his job. But no orthopedist is willing to see this patient and provide this very basic service because the patient doesn’t have health insurance. And more and more, specialists are refusing to take call for emergency departments because they know that they will wind up having to care for numerous patients without health insurance. This results in a dangerous situation for emergency department patients because the expert help required for certain emergencies is no longer available. I often have to transfer patients who have a very treatable problem to other facilities because I have no specialist on-call to treat the patient. These transfers result in dangerous delays to patient care and are extremely expensive, putting a drain on the health care system’s valuable resources, and so the cycle of inefficiency continues.

I’ve been fortunate to experience health care in our country from many angles – as a resident training in a county hospital that serves the poor, as an attending physician working in a private, community based hospital, and as a patient who must fend for himself in the private health insurance system. The issue has become very dear to me – every day I see numerous patients that deserve so much more than what we as a country give to them. It is wrong to have to prescribe a man an inferior antibiotic for his pneumonia because he can’t afford the more expensive antibiotic that he really needs. (By the way, he will later come back to the Emergency Department and require admission for his pneumonia.) It is wrong to tell a patient to follow up with an endocrinologist to manage her thyroid condition when I know the endocrinologist will refuse to see her because she can’t afford his fees without health insurance. (She’ll be back, too.) It is wrong to have to intubate a patient who has a brain hemorrhage caused by uncontrolled high blood pressure that existed simply because the patient couldn’t afford to see a primary care physician. It is wrong to have to send that same patient by helicopter to another facility, dangerously delaying the patient’s care, because my hospital can’t convince a neurosurgeon to take call for the emergency department because he doesn’t want to have to deal with uninsured patients. Day in and day out, the inadequacies of our current system force me to do things as a physician that are not in the best interest of my patients.

I used to believe that healthcare was a privilege, but what I have come to discover is that when healthcare is treated as a privilege, only the privileged receive it. I now fervently believe that health care is a fundamental human right. It is morally wrong for a society to have the basic resources that are necessary to save lives and prevent suffering and to distribute those resources in a fashion that favors the lucky few and ignores the millions of people who need those resources the most. Furthermore, denying millions of uninsured and under-insured persons access to basic healthcare results in a system that is appallingly inefficient, costly, and impotent; it costs us more as a country to persist in restricting access to healthcare than it would cost us to provide that care. And health care, much like education, a police force, and a military, is something that is so crucial to the welfare of our society that it cannot and should not be relegated solely to a for-profit system whose goal is not the welfare of the public but the financial profit that can be made at the expense of the public. Every day that I work in my emergency department and see patients coming in whose needs I cannot meet because of the inadequacies of our system, I become more steadfast in my belief that it is our duty as citizens of this country and as members of the human race to work quickly towards finding a system in which we all have access to basic health care, a fundamental human right.

(If you agree, please contact your district's representative and more importantly both of your state's senators and let them know! Specifically, let them know that you support a public health insurance option as an alternative to compete with private health insurance. Here's a website where you can get your senators' and representative's contact information - just click on "contact elected officials": http://www.usa.gov/index.shtml )