HELP WANTED: Local firm seeking energetic candidates to fill exciting positions. If you love travel, meeting new people (and stealing from them) and the potential for HUGE paydays, we want to talk to you today. Physical infirmities, including possessing peg legs or eye patches, are A-OK with us!
That help wanted ad doesn't actually exist, but some of our friends to the north apparently think it does. As I frequently do, I was reading a couple of weird news stories this morning when I happened upon one dealing with what jobs folks in each state are most interested in. Someone did a Google search to find out which jobs are the most searched for in each state. In South Carolina, they came up with "sewer jobs." That doesn't mean "sewer employee" is the job title South Carolinians most covet, it just means no state searched for "sewer jobs" more than us. It's a pretty interesting list and a lot of the most searched job titles do seem to fit. No state searched for "tornado chaser" more than Missouri, a midwestern state that sees its share of tornadoes. No state initiates more searches for "Mt. Rushmore Tour Guide" than South Dakota, which is home to Mt. Rushmore. "Beer brewer" and "taxidermist" show up most frequently in Wisconsin, where they drink a lot of beer and shoot at things...hopefully those activities are done separately. A couple of the job titles really stood out, though, including in North Carolina, which is number one in the country for searching..."pirate jobs." I honestly didn't realize that being a pirate was something you could apply for. Man, my high school guidance counselor really fell down on the job. My assumption was that being a pirate was just an illegal activity you decided to undertake, like making moonshine or robbing banks. I suspect that is really case and that our friends up the interstate are just a little confused, but it got to me thinking, what if "pirate" was a job you could apply and interview for. "Hi there," a potential candidate would say as he walked in the office. "I have an 11 a.m. appointment to speak with Mr. Beard about a job opening." "I'll let him know you're here, but one tip, Beard is not a last name. His name is Captain Bluebeard and its best not to mispronounce it. He's already had a few tankards of grog this morning, so that temper is liable to flare up on him. Just letting you know." The applicant is then escorted into Captain Bluebeard's office. "OK Johnny, I've looked over your resume and there's a lot to like here. Good educational background, we checked your references and they said you were a hard worker. Couple of questions, though. Have you ever slain a giant sea monster? A Kraken, or a fire-breathing dragon that feeds on the flesh of sailors? Anything like that?" "No sir, I have not. However, you'll notice I listed 'problem solver' and 'embraces new challenges' on my resume. I would certainly be willing to learn." "Great. Glad to hear it. Now, do you have a fondness for wearing jaunty hats, jewelry and clothing that's job-inappropriate? You know, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to wear expensive silk shirts with flashy red sashes when you're in the midst of a sword fight or swabbing seagull poop off the deck, but that's sort of our thing." "I am willing to wear the uniform of the trade or follow any dress code." "Outstanding, this is going well. Now, out of curiosity, would you have any moral qualms about chopping off a man's head with a sword to get his gold? I guess technically some people would consider that 'stealing' and 'murder.' We wouldn't ask you to do that to any maidens, of course, but you would need to frighten them in such a way as to have them hand over their baubles. Or, let's say I deemed a fellow pirate disloyal. Would you have any hang-ups about forcing him to walk the plank, sending him to a watery grave?" "You know, I beat up kids in grade school and took their lunch money. Decapitating a fellow to steal his wealth is just a grown-up version of giving a fat kid a wedgie and stealing his Capri-Sun, the way I see it. Also, you'll see that recommendation letter I included from a former boss says 'takes direction well.' So if you, as my supervisor, said to throw someone off the boat into shark-infested waters, I'd certainly do as told." "Ever pillaged before?" "Not familiar with that practice but I'm always looking to add to my professional skills." "Great answer young man. Now, we do provide meals. They run the gamut...we hijacked a boat filled with steaks and ice cream the other week, so we ate pretty well for a few days. A lot of the time, though, it's whatever fish we can catch. On slow fishing days, it's gruel. It's not even good gruel, just between me, you and the wall. Lukewarm and brackish. Our cook is a solid sailor, but always wearing that eye patch, maybe all the ingredients get in the pot and maybe they don't. Always got that bird perched on his shoulder too. Can't be sanitary, but he works cheap and knows his way around sand bars." "You know what, one less expense is the way I look at that. Free meals is quite a perk." "We sleep in really close quarters, about 10 to a room and most of the fellows don't bathe much. They sort of smell like sardines and depression. Some of them, uh, are particularly unclean. Have bugs and whatnot." "I listed 'functions well in a team environment' on the application. I can adapt and, hey, I probably won't even notice the stench after a few days." "You sound like my kind of guy. OK, last question...adventure and travel are great, but most of the guys in this outfit, naturally, are in it it for the booty. They want to know what their cut of the booty will be and I..." "HAHAHAHA!!!!!!" "Why are you laughing?" "I'm sorry Captain Blueberry, but you said booty, and that just broke me up a little. It's a funny word, tee hee hee." "It's another word for 'treasure.' Booty means gold and diamonds to us pirates. It's fairly common lingo among nautical terrorists. Dangit, this always happens. Things were going so well...you know, you may not have the temperament we're looking for after all." "I don't wanna blow this. I'll take whatever booty I can get HAHAHA!!!!" "Sorry pal, the damage is done. We'll keep your information on file, but now if you'll excuse me, we have another interview lined up. I've got a Sparrow, Jack Sparrow, coming in for a noon interview. He may be a better fit for us, but hey, good luck out there."
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I remember one of my cousins telling me about the horrors of academic life on a big college campus. When he arrived at his first class in one of our state's top universities, he and his fellow students were informed by a professor that he, in a sense, graded on a curve. He had already decided how many students would get A's, B's, C's, D's and F's. Even if you worked really hard and and had numeric averages that warranted that you get a passing grade, you might flunk anyway because there were only so many passing slots. Had to thin the herd out a little, he said. Because of that grossly unfair grading method, my cousin was not in the passing group. I'm almost certain it had nothing to do with spending all his time skirt chasing and drinking cheap vodka, he was the victim of a horrible system.
I was reminded of that last week when I got a look at the brand new playoff formats for Class A athletics. Currently, Class A utilizes a points system in football, but in all other sports simply takes the top four finishers from each of Class A's eight regions. I knew things would look a little different. The points system could stay intact for football, but realignment will shrink the number of teams in Class A and there will only be six regions. There is no way to evenly distribute 32 bids amongst six regions, but with fewer teams overall, I also figured there might not be a need for 32 playoff teams in each sport anymore. I figured it would be 24, with with the top eight seeds overall (or the top four in the upperstate bracket and top four in the lowerstate) getting a first-round bye and on that count I was right. What I couldn't guess was how those 24 bids would be parsed out. I mean that literally...given one million guesses, I would not have correctly forecast how the bids would be distributed. In football, the committee that put together this bracket decided that the number of bids each region will receive is pre-determined based on the number of teams in each region. Regions I, II (where Lewisville and Great Falls will reside), IV and V, all of which have five football-playing schools, get three bids apiece. Region VI, which has six football-playing members, gets four bids and Region III, which has eight schools that field football teams, gets five playoff bids. Region I-III, which will be slotted in the upperstate playoff bracket, will get one at-large team (based on their winning percentage), while Regions IV-VI receive two. On its face that might sound logical, if you have more teams you get more playoff bids. However, the point of playoffs is to match up the best teams and allow them to play one another as a means of deciding a final champion. Just because a region has more teams than another does not mean it is superior in terms of quality. Regions are drawn up based on geography. It makes sense in terms of travel and traditional rivalry for the eight teams in Region III to play one another, that's why it is constructed the way it is. Under this playoff proposal then, teams are essentially rewarded based on their location. Congratulation Denmark-Olar, there are a bunch of Class A schools near you, here's your playoff ticket, Broham!!!! This proposed format actually gets worse from there. Not only are the playoff slots slanted towards bigger regions, so is the seeding process. In the upperstate, the three region champs will be seeded one through three, based on overall winning percentage and all will receive a bye. The fourth and final bye goes to the second-place finisher in Region III, regardless of their record. To demonstrate the faultiness of this plan, you need look back no further than this past football season. The champion of Region III would have been Williston-Elko, which put together a 7-3 record. The second place finisher, and thus the automatic bye-receiving fourth overall seed, would have been Hunter-Kinard-Tyler, which went 6-4 and failed to beat any team with a winning record. Region II's second-place finisher would have been McBee, a team that went 9-1 in the regular season, beat AAA Lakewood, AA Chesterfield and five overall teams with winning records. The records wouldn't matter and the quality of wins and losses would have no effect...the 6-4 team with no quality wins gets a bye and the 9-1 team with an impressive resume doesn't. The playoff formula for other sports follows much the same tact, with the number of playoff bids directly proportional to how big a region is and the final first-round bye always guaranteed to the runner-up from the largest region. Most coaches I've talked to have never heard of (and don't like) byes in the basketball playoffs. Consider that four of the teams in what will be Region II next year made the playoffs this year, two advanced to the third round and Great Falls, which went 13-9, didn't even get in the playoffs. Under this proposal, only three would have even made the post-season, ceding their bid to a team with a losing record from a bigger region for no reason other than the other team is in a bigger region. In baseball, playoff teams will be put in three-team districts with the top seed in each (the runners-up in bigger regions are assured of one of those spots alongside region champions) getting to rest valuable pitching by advancing straight to the semis of its bracket, a huge built-in advantage. The fairest way to determine playoff spots in football is with the points system that is currently in use. It could be tweaked to guarantee that each region champion gets one of the top three spots, but there could still be points based on wins and losses, with more points awarded to victories over teams with winning records or of a higher classification. That way, each team stands on its own resume and isn't given an artificial hand-up by the size of its region or its location. It also makes every game meaningful instead of everything hinging on region games. Some regions are inherently weaker than others, but if it's a big weak region, it will still get to pack the bracket. It's difficult to do a points system for other sports, since schools don't necessarily play the same number of games, as is the case in football. In that instance, Region III in the upperstate and Region IV in the lowerstate could be given four automatic bids apiece, the other regions get three and there would two at-large bids based on overall winning percentage. That gives the bigger regions a slight advantage, but not an overwhelmingly unfair one as is the case with the proposed new plan. With a points system not being feasible in sports other than football, though, that's about as good as you can do at making a slight accommodation for bigger regions without completely hosing deserving teams in smaller ones. This plan still has to be approved by the S.C. High School League's competition committee, but I hope that will not be the case. We can do better than a format that will often put inferior teams in the post-season and we can certainly do better by Class A than to stick it with a curious proposal that no other classification is being asked to deal with. Deciding who gets in the post-season based on something as arbitrary as size of regions is a craptastic grab bag of unfairness. Even graded on the most generous curve, this plan deserves a big fat F. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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