modern movie theaters ain't what they used to be

My childhood theater was torn down not long ago.  No, this is not one of those, “How dare they destroy the past to put up a grocery store?” stories.  The theater was not an architectural marvel, with rococo moldings and art deco furnishing; it was one of those Syufy domed monstrosities that probably no one thought was terribly innovative.  I suppose the domes were supposed to provide better acoustics, but I really don’t know.

But these were the theaters, first a four-plex but then remodeled into a 14-plex, that I remember going to the most when I was growing up and then in adulthood.  This was the theater I saw the original Star Wars in on its opening weekend, with no fanfare and no lines.  It is also where I stood in line for an hour a few weeks later to see it again.  I always get to movies about 15 minutes early, which means I probably spent nearly five days of my life in those theaters just waiting for films to begin.

They were torn down and replaced, not by a strip mall but by new, state-of-the-art theaters.  No expense was spared!  Digital projection!  Wide seats that are recliners!  Wide aisles so no one steps on your toes getting in or out!  Reserved seating so you can pick you seat in advance and get there a minute before the show starts!

I hate it.

OK, I don’t hate it, but my movie going experience is not as enhanced as I suspect they think it is.  For one thing, the popcorn is still ridiculously expensive, but I haven’t bought popcorn at a movie in over 20 years so that’s not really a factor.

Let’s start with the reserved seating.  As I said, I usually get to movies 15 minutes before the start of the previews in order to get a good seat.  I once had a movie buddy who would factor in the length of the trailers in estimating when we should arrive; I think she once picked me up after the trailer’s start time.  But when I am on my own I get there early to avoid having to sit in the seats down front or off to the side.

But that doesn’t work anymore.  No matter how early I get there before the start time, other people have already reserved the best seats by buying on-line.  Combine this with the fact that wider seats + wider aisles = fewer seats, then finding a good seat is impossible unless you are going to a weekday matinee of Jupiter Rising. I went to see La La Land on Dec. 24 only to find the only seats available were, you guessed it, down front.

There are a number of factors that go into selecting a seat; how far away from the screen, how centered it is, are there old ladies nearby who may talk during the film, are there small children who will insist on going to the bathroom every 30 minutes?  With reserved seating, if a couple near you starts chatting, you can’t move discretely away.  Now you have to choose a seat not knowing who you’ll be sitting with.

And there is the fact that fewer seats = earlier sellouts.  The theater I saw La La Land in only has 31 seats, not counting the first two rows and handicapped seating.  They could probably fit at least 60 seats in of the old variety.  So that means if you want to go to a particular show the odds are doubled that you won’t get a seat outside the front two rows. 

And what is the reason for the smaller number of seats?  They want you to sit in a nice recliner, just like you might have at home. They are trying to compete with the home viewing experience by making the theater more like home!  If I wanted to curl up and watch La La Land in a recliner, I’d wait for the Blu-Ray to come out.  You can try to make the theater experience more like home, but the $12 popcorn will be a definite tip off.

Movie theaters are facing their greatest threat since the development of television.  Home theaters can now replicate the theater-going experience at home with big screens, high-def pictures, sound that would make George Lucas weep, and no crowds or expensive popcorn.  DVDs are being released sooner and sooner, and the urge to wait for something to come out on disc is greater and greater.  Maybe having reserved seats is a good idea; on a date night, you don’t want to show up late and get stuck with bad seats.  But the changes I’ve seen just make me want to wait two or three months for the red envelope from Netflix in my mailbox.

Someone -- I’m not sure who, it might have been George Will -- once said that the conservative credo is that all change is for the worse.  I hate to think that I am getting more conservative as I get older, but all I know is that standing in line to see Star Wars is a childhood memory that millennials won’t have because they bought their tickets in advance on-line.  Not that there’s been a really good Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi; but don’t get me started on THAT.

Seeing is not necessarily believing

One thing lawyers learn about juries is that they are often irrational.  Jurors place a great deal of faith in eyewitness testimony that is often unreliable; conversely, jurors often disregard circumstantial evidence like DNA because it is, well, circumstantial.

In 2014 we had the debacle of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, where NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell botched the investigation of the Rice’s assault on his then-fiancée (he interviewed the two of them together, something no police investigator would do), then suspended Rice for two games.  This was greeted by general derision, after which Goodell issued a policy that the proper suspension was 6 games.  THEN the video of the assault came out, and suddenly the proper suspension was indefinite (it is two years and counting).

The video added NO NEW INFORMATION about the Rice assault; he had been perfectly candid about what happened.  He punched her, she went down like a sack of wet cement, and he dragged her out of the elevator.  Yet because Goodell now actually saw what happened, he decided a greater punishment was called for, a punishment that far exceeded the policy he himself established.

The tyranny of the video tape has once again reared its ugly head, not once but twice.  Two years ago Oklahoma player Joe Mixon punched a woman and was suspended for a season.  Now the video of the assault has come out, and Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops held a press conference and said in retrospect he didn’t think the one season suspension was enough.  Stoops presumably saw the video when the suspension was handed down, but he was reacting to the new outrage the video had engendered.

But again, the video provided NO NEW INFORMATION.  Everyone knew Mixon had punched a woman; seeing the punch is irrelevant.  I don’t want to argue about the adequacy of the punishment, as that is the equivalent of debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.  But, as with Rice, the punishment that was meted out shouldn’t be re-visited just because we have visual confirmation of what we already knew.

Video is also a factor concerning the Patriots signing of cut Arizona cardinal receiver Michael Floyd.  Floyd had a DUI and was immediately axed by the Cardinals, and was immediately signed by the Patriots.  Okay, the Patriots used to have a player on their team who is now serving time for murder, so a DUI seems like no big deal.  The immediate reaction was sort of praise for the patriots to make a business decision to bring in a slightly tarnished player who can help them despite off-the-field improprieties.

But the video was released of Floyd being totally wasted when he was pulled over, and suddenly people were second guessing the move by the Patriots, and Belichick admitted he hadn’t known what Floyd’s BAC was at the time of his arrest.  But once again, the video added nothing.  Reports were that Floyd’s blood alcohol level was .217, over two and a half times the limit for being intoxicated, 0.08.  Did people expect him to be slightly slurring his words, like Foster Brooks (okay, that reference is lost on anyone under 50; sorry)?  With a BAC of .217, you know he was very drunk; why should seeing how drunk he was change anyone’s perception?

We seem to be moving to a paradigm where if there isn’t video, it didn’t happen, and if there is video, that makes it worse that we imagined (because apparently people have pretty weak imaginations).  Decisions about issues like domestic violence or driving while intoxicated should be based on rational evaluation of evidence, not the visceral reaction to graphic footage.  A woman who is beaten by an NFL player doesn’t deserve less justice because the incident happened when no cell phones were around.

The irrationality of jurors is well known, and that is why there are rules of evidence that prevent the presentation of “evidence” that would confuse them.  But when it comes to the court of public opinion, there are no rules.  All we can do is hope that Commissioners and Coaches display more rationality than the great unwashed mob.

TV Review: the CW Crossover Event: Invasion!

TV Review: The CW Crossover Event: Invasion!

It’s a risk that happens whenever big events loom, like Christmas, birthdays, family reunions with that cute second cousin you hit it off with last year: the letdown.  The higher the anticipation, the bigger the disappointment when things don’t quite work out as expected.

It must have seemed inevitable that The CW would orchestrate a “crossover” event once Supergirl migrated from CBS to The CW.  After all, the Flash/Supergirl crossover on CBS was a hoot, with the meta-analysis of the Glee reunion of stars Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist adding to the, well, glee.  It also helped that Benoist’s sunny interpretation of the Girl of Steel nicely meshed with Gustin’s amicable interpretation as the Scarlet Speedster (although this season The Flash has been getting pretty angst-y; but that’s a topic for another time).

So the week after Thanksgiving was the week of the “4 night crossover event” on The CW where all four DC properties produced by Greg Berlanti would cross pollenate.  My first complaint is that it was a “3-night crossover event” as 99% of Supergirl was about a different plot and The Flash and Cisco Ramon only showed up in the last 30 seconds.  Classic bait and switch.

The event picked up on The Flash, where the team was “assembled” like so many parts to a child’s toy on Christmas morning.  The Arrow and his team showed up, then the “Waverider” from Legends of Tomorrow.  The reason for the assemblage was an invasion of Earth by Aliens who looked and acted nothing like ET.  So The Flash recruited his pal Supergirl to visit our Earth from Earth 38 (I think) to help in the resistance to the aliens, whom Supergirl recognizes as a race called The Dominators.

And what brilliant plan do all these superheroes come up with to fight the alien menace?  They will try attacking Supergirl and see what works and doesn’t work.  Really?  That’s the best plan a team of SUPER heroes can come up with?  There is no reason to think Supergirl’s powers are comparable to The Dominators; there is no attempt at reconnaissance to find out what The Dominator’s powers are; there is no attempt at staging an attack to look for weaknesses.  Who knows, maybe The Dominators are like the aliens in the movie Signs are can be driven away by a garden hose?

No, instead of attacking the evil aliens, Team Flash, Team Arrow, and Team Legends spend their precious time immediately after an invasion of Earth by attacking a friendly alien and getting their asses handed to them.  Again, really?  That’s the best use of your time, risking injury by practicing against a friend instead of attacking the real enemy?  Makes.  No. sense.

The Flash installment ended with the members of Team Arrow being captured, leading to the continuation on Wednesday night.  This was the episode I was most at sea with, as I gave up on arrow mid-way through its first season (they dropped the backstory of him on the Island, and Steven Amell’s wooden acting gave me splinters).  As pointed out in the AV Club coverage of the episode, this set up a familiar but effect trope of giving a hero everything he wants to be happy, robbing him of his urge to be a hero. 

The episode may have been effective for fans of Arrow, but those of us tuning in only because of the crossover event were at a loss.  The emotional impact of dead characters being alive again was lost on those of us who didn’t know they were dead, and meanwhile the Big Bad from The Flash were nowhere to be seen for most of the episode.  So now we were three nights in to the “four-night event” and in two of them the alien threat was pretty much on the sidelines.

The episode ended with a “humans being able to operate advanced alien spacecraft” ending that is nothing but extreme hand-waving that’s even more egregious than Will Smith’s “I’ve seen the enemy aircraft perform and I think I can operate one” from Independence Day; it’s like someone who’s never driven a car saying, “After watching the Indianapolis 500 I’m ready to get behind the wheel and drive in traffic.”

The final segment of the crossover event was on Legends of Tomorrow.  We finally had the aliens front and center again, but it turned out that their only demand was for Earth to turn of The Flash to them.  This . . . made no sense.  They were worried about humans becoming a threat because of enhanced powers due to meta-humans, and they had a weapon that would destroy all meta-humans, but instead of using it they ask Earth to hand over one meta-human?  Then why the “invasion?”  Why not just start off by asking Earth for Barry Allen, or just detonating the anti-meta-human bomb?  Once again, the task of creating a plot device worthy of spanning four programs seems to have exceeded Greg Berlanti’s reach.

This is not to say the “event” was without entertainment value.  Combining the sunny aspect of Supergirl with the light but increasingly somber Flash with the downright depressing Arrow and the contained chaos of Legends of Tomorrow created some interesting interactions (none more than when Mick Rory said to Kara Danvers, “Hey skirt, call me!”).  I also enjoyed Iris’s comment that finding out that Oliver Queen was Arrow made him even hotter (followed by Barry’s reaction).  The comic book world is all about these mega-events, and if the result isn’t that spectacular than the fun is in the process.

I sort of hope The CW tries it again, but maybe with Supergirl visiting Arrow, or Barry interacting with the Legends of Tomorrow.  If The CW wants to go through what must be a logistical nightmare, with actor on four series having to be available in the production cycle of other series, then I wish they would come up with a plot more worthy than aliens invading earth, but largely being ignored.

TV Review: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

TV Review: Gilmore Girls, A Year in the Life

Writing a review of the Gilmore Girls mini-series “A Year in the Life” is a lot like writing a thoughtful, considerate review of the latest Marvel Comics movie; no one who cares about it will have their opinion influenced by a third party’s independent perspective.  But as a fan of the original series I have to put my two cents in, something Lorelai Gilmore would approve of.

The series Gilmore Girls has been off the air for nine years, and there is always the risk that the voices that animated the original have lost their edge in the intervening 9/10 of a decade.  No such problem exists here, however, as Amy Sherman-Palladino’s and Daniel Palladino’s distinctive dialog comes spewing out of Lauren Graham’s mouth almost the moment the new mini-series starts.  For the most part the four 90 minute episodes track like four of the better episodes of the series, with the seams only occasionally showing where things were cobbled together to shoehorn in a cameo of a previous regular.

The episode pick up nine years after the run of the show, although time has stood still for most of the regulars.  Luke and Lorelai are still together, but not married; Emily Gilmore is still imperious, although stunned by the death of her husband (series regular Edward Hermann died two years ago); Stars Hollow is still filled with kooks and weirdos; and Kirk is still unintelligible even by Stars Hollow standards.  Rory has followed her end-of-the-series assignment of reporting on promising Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama (what ever happened to him?) by adopting a rootless existence of freelance journalism, which has been rewarding but has left her wondering in what city her underwear is in.

Each episode runs twice the length of an episode of the TV series, yet the pacing never flags.  Almost all the actors get back into their old characters with seeming effortlessness.  Liza Weill still manages to make Paris Geller both an abrasive know-it-all and an insecure little girl; one of the small pleasures of the mini-series is the amused look on Weill’s face in the background when Laine’s band Hep Alien plays a number.  Melissa McCarthy, who has had the most post-Gilmore success, not only shows up but recaptures Sookie’s inherent mix of super-competency and ineptness in the kitchen.

The best decision was to use some meta-references to guide the plot.  Some of them are throwaways, like making Danny Strong’s character Doyle a successful screenwriter (Strong won an Emmy for writing Game Change and co-created Empire).  But the main thread of the four episodes is triggered when Rory’s old boyfriend Jess suggests she write a book about her relationship with her mother.  She of course names the book “The Gilmore Girls” (which prompts Lorelai to give her advice from The Social Network to “drop the ‘the’”).  This plot line eventually leads to the famous final four words that Sherman-Palladino promised would end the show, which force a reconsideration of several plot points that had come before.

There are some legitimate criticisms.  One hates to tell an auteur about what her creation would or wouldn’t do, but having Lorelai decide to work out her problems by hiking the Pan-Pacific Trail (like in the BOOK Wild, not the MOVIE) is just plain absurd.  A 30-year-old Lorelai wouldn’t have considered hiking the 2,000-mile trail; the idea that a nearly 50-year-old Lorelai would buy a backpack and hit the trail is ridiculous.  The structure of fitting the episodes into four seasons causes some timing problems, as clearly the events at the beginning of Fall follow immediately upon the end of Summer.  And one has to wonder if Rory would really have a nine-year-long “friends with benefits” relationship with ex-boyfriend Logan even after he was engaged to be married.

And I couldn’t help but yell at my TV when Lorelai said to Luke, “I feel like we should already be married.”  Yes, because you had the wedding planned and he backed out because he felt you were rushing into marriage after nine years!  After which Lorelai promptly slept with her ex-boyfriend and married him.  So yeah, you should have been married ten years ago.

My biggest complaint is the fact that Sherman-Palladino has, for some reason, decided that Michel was gay.  For years I have been arguing that Michel was not gay, he was merely French.  I was pleased to see that one of the writers at AV Club referred to this as “retconning.”  There is also an odd scene where a town member tries to get busybody Taylor Dooce to out himself, which was legitimate but still a little creepy.

The acting is of course first rate, and one hopes that being in the mini-series/movie category will net a long overdue Emmy nomination for Graham.  Even more deserving is Kelly Bishop, who was never anything short of brilliant as Lorelai’s always correct mother, Emily Gilmore.  Her journey through these four episodes brings out multiple dimensions in the character that were always there but never allowed to surface.  Her last scene in the final episode, Fall, was one of the emotional high points of the series.

While the mini-series ends with the famous Final Four Words, the door is left open a crack for more Gilmore Girls.  If nothing else, the long look that Jess gives Rory after assuring his uncle Luke that he was over her could lead to something hoped for by Rory/Jess shippers.

Frankly, I never was a Luke/Lorelai shipper—I think they are a murder-suicide waiting to happen.  I may be the world’s only Lorelai/Digger shipper (she dumped him because he sued her father after her father cheated him in a business deal, saying she couldn’t date someone who was suing her family; that made no sense at all).  Be that as it may, Lorelai Gilmore will always be Lauren Graham’s greatest creation, and the same goes for Alexis Bledel and Rory Gilmore.  That Netflix for giving some closure to a great series that deserved better than the half-assed season 7 that the show was forced to end with.

Will the US Men's Soccer team have to wait longer than the Cubs to win?

If you know me, I eat, drink and breathe soccer.  Nothing gives me greater joy than the prospect of a 0-0 tie between Man U and Liverpool being decided on penalty kicks.

In case you an't detect sarcasm, that last paragraph is the final proof that we live in a “post-truth” world, as The Oxford English Dictionary determined this month.

I don’t know much about soccer, but I do know that an industrialized colossus with a population of 320 million people should not lose to a tiny third world nation with a population of 4.5 million by a score of 4-0.  With a 71.1 to 1 ration in population, the US should be able to field a pick-up team at a mid-sized college that would be up by three goals handily by half time against the likes of Costa Rica. So, I was not taken aback when US Men’s’ Soccer decided to fire Coach Jurgen Klinsmann after five years.

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Klinsmann took over a US team ranked 34th in the world and drove them to a ranking of 33rd in the world. Way to go, Jurgen.   Few things annoy me more than delusional sports figures claiming they will win the Super Bowl or World Series when they will be lucky to make the playoffs, but I still thought Klinsmann was an idiot for announcing before the 2014 World Cup that the US had no chance to win.  If you are planning on losing, why play the game?  You don’t have to predict victory, but say they team is coming together nicely, you think they’ll surprise some people, and determining who the better team is is why we play the game.  Telling your team they are doomed before the tournament starts will not earn you comparisons to Vince Lombardi (note to Jurgen—he’s was a coach of American football who, unlike you, was successful).

So, why does America suck at soccer?  That’s easy—we don’t have any good players.  It is really hard to win when all your players are less good than all of the other teams’ players.  And why are our players less good?  As Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.”

According to a comparative analysis of pro sport salaries, the median MLS player makes $117,000, less than one-tenth of the median salary in baseball ($1.5 million), basketball ($2.85 million) or even hockey ($1.48 million).  It is necessary to look at median salaries, not averages, as salaries in the MLS are highly skewed towards massively rewarding big name, over-the-hill foreign players like David Beckham, which makes the average look higher than what a mid-level player actually makes.

So, you are a young man with athletic skill—are you going to gravitate to baseball (minimum salary $500,000) or soccer (minimum $51,492)?  Let’s ask the same question of a young woman—her choices are soccer or tennis, unless she wants to go for Olympic medals in ice skating or gymnastics.  This partly explains why the US Women’s soccer team is one of the dominant programs in the world and the US Men’s program, well, isn’t.

I can’t say it is terribly encouraging that the US Men’s team rushed in to re-hiring Bruce Arena, whose main qualification for leading the Men’s Soccer team is that he did it before and failed.  Well, failed is kind of harsh; he took the team to its best World Cup finish in 2002.  But he isn’t exactly new blood or a fresh perspective.

There was no need to rush into this hire.  The next match won’t be until March, so the USMST could have taken some time, a week or two at least, and seen if there was another younger, more innovative candidate.  But after the tenure of Jurgen Klinsmann, maybe they wanted comfort food after a serving of that heavy German cooking.  Arena’s meat and potatoes won’t get the US to the World Cup finals in 2018, or 2022, or . . . well, it’s a long century. 

But if the Cubs can wait 108 years until winning a championship, then by gum so can the USMST!

So that happened

Dissections of the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election will be taking place until long after the 2020 election.  Despite the perception that Trump’s win was a bolt from the blue, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a reasonable chance even as they said that there was a 66% chance of a Clinton victory.  If the weatherman says there is a 70% chance of fair weather, is it fair to get mad if it rains on your picnic?  He didn’t say rain was impossible, just unlikely.

Speculating about the future is probably foolish, as no elected President has been as enigmatic as Trump is.  Is he actually going to start construction on a $5 trillion wall between the US and Mexico and send Mexico a bill, or will saner heads prevail?  As John Oliver said on Last Week Tonight, there are two terrifying possibilities: either he will try to implement the policies he advocated for in the election (cancelling international trade agreements, tax policies that will greatly increase the deficit, and so on), or everything he said during the election was just campaign rhetoric.  Those who voted for him are hoping for the former, while all the sane people in America are praying for the latter.

Let’s get down to brass tacks—who is responsible for the election result?  I place the blame at the feet of Hilary Clinton.  In the past, when parties anointed their candidate for the next Presidential election four or eight years in advance, it hasn’t worked out well.  The GOP nominations of Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008 produced weak candidates who underperformed.  The path was cleared for Hilary to get the nomination in 2016 after her loss to Obama in 2008, although I would fall short of repeating Bernie Sanders’ line that the contest was fixed (as opposed to “rigged”).  You don’t need to pre-determine the outcome if you can tilt the playing field and make Sanders run uphill.

Hilary knew she had the nomination assured based on her support by “superdelegates” that represented the Democratic Party elite.  Therefore, she felt no urgency to defeat Bernie Sanders, as no matter how many caucuses he won he was never going to wrest the nomination away from her.  Therefore, her risk-averse instincts kicked in and she didn’t make an effort to attack Bernie and alienate the left wing of the party.  This allowed Bernie to run an extended campaign against her, eroding her support on the left.  She should have been able to easily defeat an elderly independent crackpot socialist, but her inability tom make Sanders go away signaled her weakness as a candidate.

Similarly, I think she assumed she had the election in the bag once Trump secured the GOP nomination.  Her TV ads that I saw were overwhelmingly about painting a negative view of Trump and not about following up on the excellent message of the Democratic convention that presented the positive aspects of the Democratic policies.  Her pointing out that Trump was a nut was ineffective because the majority of Trump supporters were going to vote for him because he was a nut.  This was information readily available to all voters; she was not telling voters anything they didn’t already know.

Two of Hilary’s defining characteristics are her penchant for secrecy and her risk-aversion.  Both betrayed her.  Instead of coming clean about the e-mail mess, she stonewalled and did not respond to legitimate questions in an open manner.  She defended herself using words that even someone without a Yale law degree could tell were prevarications and obfuscations.  Instead of developing policies she believed in that might offend some of her constituency (particularly the left), it was easier and “safer” to portray Trump as a dangerous demagogue. 

My favorite line from the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol is when Scrooge’s fiancée asks if he would still ask her to marry him now that he had acquired some wealth, and he strategically replies, “You think I would not?”  His fiancée chillingly says, “Oh, what a safe and terrible answer!”  Clinton played it safe, and her answers were terrible.

After Hilary, I also place some blame with President Obama.  Throughout his administration, he was attacked as a Muslim, as a non-American, and Trump said he was the founder of a terrorist group attacking the United States (Trump also insisted that Hilary Clinton was a co-founder, although how a Caucasian woman in her 60’s who was a life-long Christian managed to become the leader of a Islamic terrorist organization was never explained).  Obama responded to these attacks by attempting to work with the Republicans and treating them as rational human beings.  This merely legitimized the more insane accusations of the GOP, providing them with credibility.  His support for Republican calls for budget cuts at a time of high unemployment was a betrayal of the legacy of FDR and Keynesian economics.

Where do we go from here?  A year ago many speculated on the death of the Republican party, with the split between the Establishment branch and the Tea Party branch; now many are predicting the end of the Democrats, who have a weak bench for 2020 given GOP control of Congress and a majority of state houses (when speakers at the Republican convention were describing the terrible state of America, they didn’t mention that the GOP controls most of America and is therefore responsible for most of the problems).  The fact remains that no non-incumbent Republican nominee for President has won the popular vote since 1980, yet the GOP will control all three branches of government once Trump fills Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Can Trump govern effectively?  No one on Earth can say.  Can the Democrats find a candidate who can make the case for Democratic policies, and how attractive will that message be after four years of Trump?  Let’s just hope that there is still an America existing in 2020 after The Donald gets the nuclear launch codes.  It would be a bad day indeed if he calls a press conference and announces, “They’re fired!”

The NFL MVP debate

One reason why the debate over who should win the baseball MVP awards is so interesting is the vagueness over the definition of “valuable.”  If the award was for the “numerically superior player” it would still be capable of being debated, but the arguments would be limited to how many significant digits to use when calculating a player’s WAR.  But value is in the eye of the beholder.

I am a fairly hard core believer that if your team didn’t make the playoffs, then you weren’t valuable.  Maybe back when only one team from each league made the post-season you could occasionally make an argument for a player on a team that fell a little short, but now that five out of fifteen teams get a post-season berth it’s a harder argument to make.  OK, I will begrudgingly concede that Bryce Harper deserved the award last year, because a) he had an historically phenomenal season and b) no one player on an NL playoff team stood out.  One of the ironies of my position is that really good teams rarely have an MVP candidate because they don’t rely on a single player.  Mike Trout may be the greatest player in the AL, but as long as the Angeles are below .500 he isn’t getting my MVP vote.

There is usually less of a debate over the NFL MVP decision than for baseball or basketball.  For some reason, the fact that the NFL only gives out one MVP award, instead of one for each conference, winnows the field significantly.  Last season was typical: the team with the best record was the Panthers at 15-1 (thanks to an extremely easy schedule) and that team’s best player, Cam Newton, had a great year.  Debate over.

This year may be different, because of what may be the most fascinating factor in an MVP debate I’ve ever seen.  The question is this: can Tom Brady win the MVP award after missing one-fourth of the season due to his Deflategate suspension?  ESPN’s Bill Barnwell has already made that call at mid-season.

ESPN’s Max Kellerman disagrees, arguing that missing four games means he’s missed too much of the season to make an MVP contribution.  He also argues that since the Pats were 3-1 without Brady, the marginal value Brady provides isn’t that great.  Former player Reggie Wayne adds the additional perspective that Brady’s missing games are not due to an injury but to a penalty for Deflategate, which should further cause him to forfeit a shot at the MVP award.

The marginal value argument is interesting.  In 2015 Yoenis Cespedes joined the New York Mets at the end of July; before that, the Mets were last in NL offense, but by the end of the year they were #1 in offense.  So Cespedes had a huge marginal impact on the Mets, one that most likely got them into the playoffs.  There was an argument to be made that he should be MVP despite playing for most of the season in the American League.

MVP voters didn’t buy it, with Cespedes coming in 13th in the MVP voting.  Obviously not contributing to the Mets from April through July hurt his consideration, even if he was largely responsible for the team’s playoff push in August and September.  So does this mean that Brady shouldn’t be considered for the NFL MVP because he missed 25% of the season?

Baseball players play on a team, but they rack up individual stats on their own.  Football players are cogs in a complicated machine.  I think slipping Tom Brady into the Patriot’s machine contributes more value than a baseball player compiling excellent stats for two months.  So I’d give a football player who misses a large chunk of the season more MVP consideration than a baseball player in similar circumstances.

I also reject the argument that since he missed the games due to suspension, not injury, Brady should be disqualified.  I have been a huge Brady critic on Deflategate (note: he’s guilty, guilty, guilty!) but his punishment was a four game suspension that was imposed (thanks to Brady’s trying to weasel out of his punishment) nearly two years after his infraction.  The penalty was the suspension; the Commissioner made no reference to ineligibility for post-season awards, and the rules also make no mention.  So I see no reason to treat the suspension differently than a four-game injury.

So, it comes down to this: is 75% of Tom Brady better than 100% of Matt Ryan, or Matt Stafford, or Derek Carr?  The answer is “Oh hell yes!”  Brady and Bill Belichick are on a scorched earth campaign, and they are rolling over the league like a cleansing plague.  Brady is like Doctor David Banner after he gets angry, and you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

The best argument against Brady’s MVP credentials is that the Patriots went 3-1 without him.  Obviously, with Belichick as coach, New England could put a leftover Halloween pumpkin at QB and still compete for the AFC East title.  But that does not diminish what Brady has done, and what he presumably will do over the next eight games.  If he goes 11-1, or even 10-2, over his 12 games and continues to put up excellent passing numbers, he will have earned the MVP award.

Hey, does Roger Goodell have to hand the award to him personally?  I might just tune in for that.