College Football Rankings – Week 7

Scoop, ... no comments.

This week’s AP Poll

As predicted, UCF did finally make the top ten. Do they belong there? I dunno. The computer ratings suggest they are still not at that level. Sagarin’s calculations place them 26th. There are two other undefeated teams in the East half of the American Conference, but UCF doesn’t play them until their final two games, so you can expect the Knights to stay undefeated for a while, and maybe even creep a bit higher on the rankings ladder.

With their win over Oklahoma, the Texas Longhorns vaulted over several teams into the #9 spot.

Florida leapt into the #14 spot with their win over LSU.

The top four remained unchanged.

Monday baseball in Brocktober

Scoop, ... no comments.

The Indians and Braves are gone. The Yankees are still alive, but limping.

It does not look good for the Yanks after the Sox pummeled them and their ace, Luis Severino, in front of a deeply disappointed Bronx crowd. The final score was 16-1, a historic beatdown which was the worst post-season loss in Yankee history.

The Yankees used six pitchers, not all of whom are actually supposed to be pitchers, and the Sox scored on every single one of them.

The Red Sox’s unheralded utility player, Brock Holt, hit for the cycle. In the entire history of MLB, no previous player had ever hit for the cycle in the post-season. He finished it with a homer off the Yankees’ second string catcher.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi handcuffed the Yankees and threw several pitches clocked in triple figures, including three against Aaron Judge in one at bat. Eovaldi has always been able to bring it, but so far has not been able to convert that into much of a career (44-53 4.16 for five different teams).

6 Outrageous Cons That Shouldn’t Have Worked (But Did)

Scoop, ... no comments.

“Conmen Set Up An Entire Fake Country And Fooled Thousands”

This is the first I’ve heard of the Dominion of Melchizedek, but I did once have a lunch conversation with a guy who was trying to establish his own country with him as king. He was some kind of phony-baloney claimant to some non-existent European throne, and he reasoned that several (rogue) countries would support his recognition as a nation if he could purchase a remote island, since those countries could use his new nation to launder money and other unsavory activities. To make things even more disagreeable, he was essentially a neo-Nazi.

I somehow ended up at lunch with this dude, one of our company’s outside consultants, and the Libyan ambassador to the U.N. (Libya was one of the countries he was pitching his plot to.) I was traveling with the consultant on another matter, but he asked me if I would like to join him at this lunch. I soon realized I was in way over my head, and I barely made it through the lunch with my mouth shut, since the entire meal seemed to consist of an hour of anti-Semitism. The scariest thing to me was that they all spoke so freely in front of me, since I was a total stranger. Creepy experience.