Was Tuesday’s weird brown cloud over Stapleton an early sign of Lime Gulch Fire?

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Tuesday was a strange day in Denver. After an awful week in which a terrifying wildfire down south, the #BlackForestFire, brought back the “state under siege” mentality of last summer, the drama shifted Tuesday afternoon from shadow and flame to lightning, wind and funnel clouds. This was a bit of a surprise. Although isolated severe weather was in the forecast, nothing too dramatic was expected for the metro area. But then, at 2:12 PM, my phone popped up an alert that a “Tornado Warning has been issued for Denver, CO.” #PANIC!

I promptly opened up the RadarScope app that, coincidentally, I had just purchased the previous day for $9.99 for use in exactly this sort of situation (without having any idea that I would need it the next day), to try and spot the tornado on the app’s near-real-time Doppler radar, and figure out where it was headed. While I was in the process of doing that, Becky texted me that tornado sirens were blaring in Stapleton; moments later, they started blaring downtown, too. Becky wanted to know if she needed to wake up the girls from their nap and take them to the basement:

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I quickly determined that, no, there was no threat either to Stapleton or to downtown. There were two possible tornado signatures on radar, including one looking pretty definite, but both were east of the city proper, and both were moving north or east – away from the main bulk of the metro area. The only reason “Denver, CO” was under a tornado warning was because the portion of Denver known as Denver International Airport, which is attached to the rest of the city by a snake-like connective arm, was under threat. The sirens throughout the rest of the city were simply the result of outdated warning technology that hasn’t been updated to respond to National Weather Service “polygons.”

But while those of us in the “non-DIA” part of Denver could rest easy, DIA definitely couldn’t. This was more than just a radar signature (although the signature was pretty wicked) – a real, confirmed tornado touched down very near the airport, on DIA property. (Just in time for International Panic Day!) Passengers took shelter and flights were grounded. Soon, social media was filled with dramatic photos of the twister:

That last picture, by Brian Horsfield (@Brister), is my favorite because it features the #demonhorse, a.k.a. Bluecifer. But what all three photos share is that they, and many others I saw, show the body of the tornado seemingly consisting of a fine brownish dust. That image was on my mind when, hours later, a few minutes before 9:30 PM Tuesday, I took the dog out to the back yard for her last chance to do her business before bedtime – and saw something very odd in the sky over Stapleton.

Because there was some lightning way off to the northeast, associated with another (non-severe) storm up near DIA, I had come outside with the dog, instead of letting her walk around the yard by herself, to watch the show. But then I looked up and noticed a very peculiar-looking cloud bank directly overhead. The sun had set an hour earlier, so it was getting quite dark, and it was hard to process exactly what I was seeing, let alone describe it accurately. But I tried to do so on Twitter, and sought guidance from KMGH meteorologist Matt Makens about what the hell it was:

What I was pondering, as my “not much wind” comment implies, is whether I could be seeing some sort of nascent tornado. The little filaments of dust-like material hanging down from the clouds reminded me of those DIA tornado pictures, although they were certainly far less substantial. Even so, they made me #PANIC just a bit. But I took a close look and eventually concluded there was definitely no rotation. If anything, they were moving in a slow, erratic way, and then seemingly disappearing. So, no tornado. But still – what were they?

I decided to grab my SLR camera and try to get a long-exposure shot, so I could show Matt what I was talking about.

Eventually I went back inside, and didn’t think much more of it. Then on Wednesday, the focus shifted from severe weather back to wildfires, as another nearby blaze broke out: the #LimeGulchFire, southwest of Denver. Also, a bunch of other fires broke out elsewhere in the state.

A few hours into the intense coverage of the #LimeGulchFire, news broke that the fire had actually started the previous evening:

That got me thinking:

So… did I, in fact, see an early sign of the nascent #LimeGulchFire, almost 30 miles away, in the form of a weird-looking brownish smoke layer clinging to a cloud’s water droplets (or vice versa) and parked at the bottom of a low cloud, many hours before widespread smoke and haze overtook the metro area the next day?

I can’t prove it, but it makes a lot of sense. And it would vindicate my feeling of unease. I knew something wasn’t right about that cloud! I was just thinking of the wrong kind of “thing” (i.e., severe weather and tornadoes, as opposed to wildfires).

Anyway, I’m gonna stand by my theory until someone proves it wrong. 🙂

We choose to put a webcam on the Moon in this decade and do the other things

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Earth From Moon

Above: Photo Illustration by Hana Gartstein, via NASA, of Earth during a lunar eclipse as seen from the Moon.

I’ve been saying it since at least 2005, when I wrote on my blog:

More than once, the thought has occurred to me: “Man, it would be cool if there was a webcam on the Moon.” I mean, seriously, put an iSight up there, and rig it with some sort of long-distance Internet connection, and it could broadcast a live picture of the Earth, as seen from the lunar surface, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How cool would that be?

I tweeted about it in 2010:

And again last August:

And last month:

Well, guess what? IT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!

A telescope that is set to launch to the moon in 2015 will allow the public to go on the Internet and view the Earth from the lunar surface.

The privately funded telescope, known as the International Lunar Observatory precursor (ILO-X), was designed and built by Silicon Valley-based Moon Express Inc. …

“We want to win the Google Lunar X prize so that is somewhat driving our schedule,” Richards said, adding his customers want Moon Express to land on the moon before the end of 2015.

“So I would say sometime in mid-to-late 2015 is when we’d be looking at.”

Let me be the first to say: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!

More:

[Moon Express CEO Bob Richards] said the shoebox-sized telescope will allow people to see images they’ve never seen before because they will be taken from the lunar surface.

“Depending on where you are on the Earth you may be seeing the moon up in the sky, taking a picture of you, which would be kind of a heady thing to think of,” he added.

Richards pointed out that people on Earth will even be able to manoeuvre the telescope by remote control, giving them out-of-this-world access to galaxies, stars and planets.

“The other thing that you’ll be able to do is turn the telescope down to the lunar landscape and take pictures of the landscape that’s around the (Moon Express) lander.”

Yes, well, that’s all well and good, but as Nathan Wurtzel tweeted in response to one of my prior #PutAWebcamOnTheMoon tweets: “And we’ll check back on the mooncam…still nothing happened. This marks the 8278th day nothing has happened.” Heh. As Nathan suggests, the view of the lunar surface isn’t going to be the most, uh, dynamic aspect of this. The view of Earth is where the real appeal lies.

More specifically, the view of Earth during lunar eclipses is the holy grail. Because, of course, what we call a “lunar eclipse” is, from the Moon’s perspective, a solar eclipse – with the earth’s atmosphere refracting the Sun’s light and forming a “ring of fire” around our planet.

It must be an incredible sight. But it’s one that nobody has ever seen in the history of mankind.

NASA made Hana Gartstein’s artist’s conception of a lunar eclipse from the lunar perspective its “Astronomy Picture of the Day” in 2007 – that’s the image at the top of this post – and NASA also published, in 2003, a fictional account of a lunar colonist watching an eclipse live from the Moon in 2105:

For the next hour he patiently waited, watching the sun’s disk glide behind something big and dark: Earth. From the moon, Earth looked three and a half times wider than the sun. Sometimes Earth was amazingly bright, blue and cloudy-white. Today, though, the planet’s night side was facing moonward.

imageFinally, the sun vanished. This is what he had been waiting for…. Lit from behind, Earth’s atmosphere began to glow around the edges, ringing the dark planet with all the colors of a sunset. And from there sprung the Sun’s corona: pale white, sticking out like Jack’s sister’s hair when she rubbed her stockinged feet on the carpet back in the lunar habitat.

Jack cleared his visor to enjoy the view.

The ground around him wasn’t bright any more. It was dim and deep red–aglow with sunlight filtered through the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. All at once every sunset on Earth was shining down on Jack.

I want to see that on a webcam, dammit. And, if the Moon Express project succeeds, we will – soon. They’re targeting “mid-to-late 2015.” Well, there will be a total lunar eclipse on April 4, 2015, and another on September 28, 2015.

After that, no more total lunar eclipses until January 31, 2018. (Here’s the full list of 21st-century lunar eclipses, total and partial and penumbral.)

So, Mr. Richards, there’s your deadline. Get this webcam on the Moon by September 28, 2015. And do the other things.

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Last night, during Loyette and Loyacita’s dance recital, there was an absolutely delightful moment when our 3 ½ year old daughter became that kid – there’s always one, or so it seems, at these little-kid concerts and recitals – who makes a hilariously adorable mistake, handles it with joyful aplomb, and instantly becomes the audience favorite. “She owned the show,” said a parent in the row behind us. Yup. And I was lucky enough to capture a sublime photo of the very instant when she became a star (which then, of course, became the basis for my “motivational poster” above).

Here’s what happened. About a minute into her ballet class’s “Cinderella” dance, Loyacita – who was standing at the very far end of the line of dancers, near stage left – mysteriously decided that it was time to leave the stage, and more specifically, to exit stage right. So, all by herself, with a smile on her face and a spring in her step, she started joyfully dancing away from the rest of her class. I think she expected them to follow her, but she was mixed up about where they were in their routine. It wasn’t time to finish yet, so they stayed put. Thus, by the time Loyacita got to the middle of the stage, she was all alone, looking and moving in the opposite direction from everyone else, and heading prematurely but unhesitatingly offstage. She, however, was totally unfazed by this. She just kept delightedly dancing off stage right, toward the teachers who were huddled backstage, just out of sight. The audience chuckled. It was really cute.

Then, just as Loyacita disappeared from view, one of the teachers could be seen emerging from the shadows and gesturing to her: go back on stage! After a moment’s delay, she turned around and started dancing right back across the stage in the opposite direction, still broadly smiling, completely unfazed and obviously having a great time. At this point the audience started really laughing – not at Loyacita, of course, but with her, appreciating her adorable, innocent joy amid her unwitting star turn. As she, followed this time by the rest of the class, disappeared off stage for good (exiting stage left), there were sustained and delighted cheers, some of the loudest of the night. It was truly a magical moment.

There were maybe two dozen dance routines during the recital, but I think for a lot of people in attendance, the most memorable parts of the show will have been, in order: 1) whatever their own kid(s) did; 2) Loyacita’s unplanned solo. As for Loyacita herself, I don’t think she has any concept that she became “the star of the show.” She seemed neither aware of having made a mistake, nor aware of having become an audience favorite for how cute it all was. She was just having fun dancing up there.

From my perspective as the proud dad of the accidental star, what makes this even greater is how well what happened – and the photo of it – meshes with Loyacita’s personality. If any of our kids was going to do something that fits the textbook definition of marching (or, in this case, dancing) to the beat of a different drummer, it would be Loyacita. In our trio of girls, if Loyette is the lawyer and Loyabelle is the comedian, Loyacita is the artist – the free-spirited, imaginative, footloose and fancy-free little sprite of a kid. So the whole thing was just perfect.

Over on Facebook, some of the comments encapsulated my feelings well:

  • “I love this. I feel like it needs to be an ad, or a meme or an inspirational poster or…just something!”

  • “This will be the star image at her rehearsal dinner…”

  • “That’s a senior year of high school yearbook family photo insert if I’ve ever seen one.”

  • “Yeah, you’re just going to have to show this on all of her first dates.”

  • “LOYACITA FTW!!”

  • “This is spectacular.”

Totally spectacular and awesome. I couldn’t be more tickled and proud. 🙂 And by the way, Loyette did a great job too. Becky and I both repeatedly complimented both girls and told them how proud we are of them. They did great! I love my kids so much. They’re the absolute best. #dadlife #sappydad

P.S. For posterity, the punch-line of the “motivational poster” refers to this meme.

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Becky and the girls walking on the beach this morning.

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

The view from our balcony in Miramar Beach, Florida, where we are on our first “real” family vacation since the eldest (age 5) was born. Yay!!

Dan Dinunzio wins #HiatusPool

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

My original 30-day Twitter #hiatus period ended last night at midnight (although the extended #sequester continues), and the final count is 823 tweets – 590 of them during the Boston/West/Ricin “Week From Hell” last month, 233 during the other 25 days.

You may laugh at a so-called “hiatus” that involves almost 20 tweets per day on average, and more than 9 per day even excluding the Week From Hell, but this was my most successful hiatus (or sequester) ever. Keep in mind that my long-term average is 115 tweets per day. So, yeah. #winning! 😉

FirefoxScreenSnapz080

Speaking of #winning, the #HiatusPool champion is Dan Dinunzio, whose guess of 777 tweets (the 8th-highest prediction among the 39 contestants) was just slightly closer to the actual number of tweets than Kenny Ocker’s 874. Dinunzio was 46 tweets off; Ocker, 51 off. Ocker probably would have won, except that I was too busy for most of yesterday (my final day at home/work before our Florida vacation) to even think about tweeting.

Anyway, congrats to Dan! I find your lack of faith… well-justified. 🙂

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

Two quick announcements about my Twitter “hiatus”:

1. In order to alleviate ongoing terminological confusion about the intended scope of the hiatus – which was never designed to result in literally zero or near-zero tweets; my original goal was 200 tweets in 30 days, and I’d be within striking distance of that goal if not for the #WeekFromHell – I am officially changing the name of this endeavor from a “Twitter hiatus” to a “Twitter sequester,” effective immediately.

2. Because I think my sequester-allowed habit of posting several pictures per day on my “social-media methadone,” Instagram, will be more than adequate as a tweeting outlet during our family vacation to the Florida panhandle next month, I am officially extending the planned end date of the hiatus sequester from May 9 to May 18.

That’s right: the 30-day hiatus is now a 39-day sequester. #PANIC!

This will not, of course, affect the #HiatusPool (or #SequesterPool, if you like), which will be judged based on my totals on May 9 at 11:59pm, as per the original plan.

Speaking of which, as of noon today, I have posted 712 tweets during the 19.5 days of the hiatus sequester (590 during the 5-day Week From Hell, 122 during the other 14.5 days since April 10). If I continue on my non-#WeekFromHell pace of 8.4 tweets per day for the next 10.5 days, I’ll end up with exactly 800 tweets. The primary contenders to win the pool would thus appear to be @kevinheaslip (wins if I finish between 741 and 763 tweets), @dinunziodjd (winning range 764-825) and @KennyOcker (826-936). Contenders like @AirborneGeek (937-1,099) and others with even higher guesses probably need another major news event to throw me off course again. If any of them is seen traveling to North Korea, call the FBI immediately. 🙂

Oh, and yes, this Tumblr post is itself a violation of the #hiatus, err,  #sequester. So sue me. 🙂

P.S. Regarding the “ongoing terminological confusion about the intended scope of the [sequester formerly known as] hiatus,” here’s a reminder – this is what I wrote before it started:

Definitionally, a “hiatus” is when I change my Twitter password to something unknown to me, thus locking myself out of web Twitter, and also disable my most commonly used apps (like Tweetbot). This forces me to reset my password (and then re-enable my apps) before I can effectively use Twitter again. That said, during a “hiatus,” I will still typically post a steady trickle of photos, Instagrams, Spotify tweets, etc. — those are allowed, because they are non-interactive when I can’t see replies and RTs, and thus they don’t open the door to Twitter becoming a massive time-sink, like it can when I get into conversations on it. (Plus, those occasional tweets keep my account “active,” dodging any unfollow scripts that track such things.)

So those Instagrams you see are not “cheating,” and do not mean the “hiatus is over.” True @hiatusfails (or #sequesterfails now) occur when I change my password back, as I did several times during the #WeekFromHell, and start tweeting again normally. 8 tweets per day via Instagram, Spotify and the occasional iOS photo or SMS text tweet do not qualify as a #FAIL; they are all part of the plan. Well, the SMS tweets are borderline…heh. But in general, those ~8 daily tweets are the “steady trickle” of third-party, non-interactive posts that are a planned part of this whole thing. (I recognize that, for most people, a tweet every 3 hours might not qualify as a mere “trickle,” but remember that I typically average ~115 tweets per day, or a tweet every ~12 minutes. So this is roughly a fourteen-fold decrease!)

Anyway, that’s all for now. We now return you to your previously scheduled #sequester, already (sort of) in progress. Hehe.

A Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very F***ing Bad Week

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

My Twitter hiatus was shot to hell last week by the Week From Hell – a week that, as Becky put it on Facebook early Friday, “started…with the gruesome story of Kermit Gosnell, moved on to the marathon bombings, had a deranged Elvis impersonator send deadly ricin to Congressmen and the president, watched a massive fertilizer explosion akin to the Oklahoma City bombing explode in West, Texas and capped it all off with a deadly firefight on the streets of Boston where the marathon bombers were throwing IEDs at police and now, a 19 year old is the subject of what promises to be an epic manhunt.” (“Next week better bring a cure for cancer,” she added.)

Actually, as it turned out, Thursday night’s deadly firefight – which coincided with the death of one police officer and the maiming of another – didn’t quite “cap it all off”: Friday saw the historic, disconcerting shutdown of the entire city of Boston (though the “epic manhunt” thankfully had a happy ending, as the surviving bomber was captured alive), and more locally, a bomb threat near my office (though that turned out to be nothing); and then Saturday, while Becky and I were enjoying rest and relaxation in Vail, Colorado saw its deadliest avalanche in 50 years and a shooting at Denver’s 4/20 marijuana rally.

So, yeah. It was a really shitty week – aside from the whole Vail thing, that is. (Actually, although planned long in advance, Becky’s and my weekend getaway in the mountains ended up being somewhat reminiscent of our day in Malibu the weekend after 9/11: an opportunity to escape from the week’s awfulness, and just relax and enjoy each other’s company.)

As The Onion put it:

WASHINGTON—Calling the last four days of American life just…I mean, talk about a goddamned punch in the gut, citizens across the nation confirmed today that, Jesus, this week.

This fucking week, sources added.

Christ.

(Also, this.)

You’ll forgive me, therefore, if I don’t exactly fault Red Sox slugger David Ortiz – who was, needless to say, far closer than most of us to the week’s heart of darkness, being in Boston and all – for summing up his emotions in a slightly impolitic way at the first post-marathon, post-manhunt Sox game at Fenway Park (which I had the privilege of watching live from Vail):

On Twitter, where I usually try to keep things PG-13 – self-censoring the worst curse words (as in the title of this post) – I dropped my own share of F-Bombs during the course of the week. So I feel where Big Papi is coming from. As I wrote afterward:

The FCC, thank f***ing goodness, agrees:

So yeah. Now, let’s hope for a better f***ing week.

By the way, I’ve been running a stealth liveblog throughout my #hiatus, which consequently became a liveblog of my Twitter coverage of the Week From Hell:

Twitter Hiatus April-May 2013

And now, I slink back into the digital underground, in hopes of a more successful third week of #hiatus. I shall defeat you, @thrashsoundly!

Boyd, Fort, Binder win LRT Pools

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Add three names to The Living Room Times Hall of Eternal Glory: Mike Boyd of Raleigh, NC; Scott Fort of Warrior, AL; and Ross Binder of Minneapolis, MN — champions of the 18th annual Men’s NCAA Pool, 16th annual Women’s NCAA Pool, and 9th annual NIT Pool, respectively.

pool-champs

Actually, Fort’s name is not a new addition to the Hall of Eternal Glory. He won the 10th annual Women’s NCAA Pool in 2007, and tonight, he clinched the 16th annual Women’s NCAA Pool when UConn won the national championship, as he predicted. (Fort had the Huskies beating Baylor; instead, they trounced Louisville, who stunned Baylor in the Sweet 16.)

Fort finished with 331 points out of a possible 477. That’s a bit low by historical LRT women’s pool standards, indicative of the unusual volume of upsets this year, several of them by Louisville. But regardless of point total, Fort is in elite company: he is one of seven two-time LRT pool winners over the pools’ 18 years of existence (and 42 pools in all). The double champions are Jenn Castelhano (2001 women’s, 2002 men’s), Todd Stigliano (2001 women’s, 2005 women’s), Rick Boeckler (2003 women’s, 2006 women’s), Matt Kagan (2004 men’s, 2004 women’s), Gary Kirby (2007 NIT, 2008 NIT), Michael Holtsberg (2009 women’s, 2012 women’s), and now Fort (2007 women’s, 2013 women’s).

Jeb McRary (@tatsumaki4ryu) of Washington, DC finished second with 228 points. Bonnie Stone, my newspaper adviser back in the LRT pools’ Newington High School days, finished third with 321 points, capping off a massive surge from the mid-60s in the 94-person pool just last weekend. She alone predicted Louisville’s run to the title game, and gained a ton of points from that, but fell just short of making up enough ground from her early-round stumbles to win the pool. Kevin Hauschulz, who holds the record for most LRT pools competed in without winning (39 of the 42 pools I’ve done), finished 4th with 320 points. Greg Kagan, who would have won the pool if Louisville had won tonight, and Gary Atkinson tied for 5th at 316.

Rounding out the Top 10: Bob Fisch (313); my dad, Joe Loy (308); 2011 champion and daughter of the national championship-winning coach, Jenna Auriemma Stigliano (306); and my lovely wife, Becky Loy (302), who would have won if Notre Dame had beaten UConn in the semifinals Sunday. Complete women’s pool standings here.

While the women’s pool went down to the final game, the men’s pool was settled on Saturday when Michigan beat Syracuse in the second Final Four game. That clinched the pool championship for Mike Boyd, husband of Karen Torgersen (@vtktorg), who was the only contestant to correctly predict a Michigan-Louisville title game. He also got the champion right — Louisville — but that only served to increase his point total, to 331 points. That’s exactly the same as Fort’s total in the women’s pool, which is a rarity; the women’s pool champ usually scores higher than the men’s pool champ.

Jimmy Smith (@smithadventure), executive pastor at Stapleton Fellowship Church, finished second with 311 points. He would have won if Syracuse, instead of Michigan, had lost the title game to Louisville. Ginny Zak, Becky’s mother, who briefly led the pool after her mascot-based entry successfully predicted the surprise Elite Eight runs by Wichita State, Syracuse and Marquette, finished third with 307 points. Steve Vivier of Connecticut finished fourth with 300, and Lief Olsen of Denver fifth with 293.

The rest of the Top 10: Jerry Palm, the CBS bracketologist and BCS guru, and a Twitter friend of mine, finished sixth with 286 points; Sarah Craddock had 283; Robert O’Brien, 282; and Patrick Cullen, Elizabeth Styles and Kyle Cologne tied for ninth with 279. Complete men’s pool standings here.

Finally, the NIT Pool. That one, like the men’s pool, was decided in the semifinals. Ross Binder (@RossWB), an editor of the SB Nation Iowa blog Black Heart Gold Pants, clinched the pool when his Hawkeyes beat Maryland in the second semifinal, as he predicted. “Woo! ETERNAL GLORY!” he tweeted afterward, adding, “Hooray! Rampant homerism pays off at last!” Binder also correctly picked the other finalist, Baylor, though he wrongly picked Iowa to beat the Bears. But he won the pool anyway, finishing with 232 out of a possible 317 points.

Steve Vivier finished second with 212 points, making him the only contestant to finish in the Top 10 (indeed, Top 5) of two LRT pools this year (you may recall he was #4 in the men’s pool). Jeff Freeze (@bigfreezer), winner of the 2008 women’s pool, and Daniel Pilz, co-champ of the 2004 women’s pool, tied for third with 207 points. Aaron Kinser (@AaronK_MN) finished fifth with 203 points. Freeze would have won the pool if Maryland had beaten Iowa in that decisive semifinal; Kinser would have won the pool if, in the prior semifinal, BYU had beaten Baylor, and had gone on to defeat either Iowa or Maryland in the title game.

Again rounding out the Top 10: Lauren Fowler (@ndlauren), 198 points; Michael Watkins, 194; Andrew Long, 187; Aaron Woodward, 185; and Andy Hunter, 183. Complete NIT pool standings here.

Redrawing the Red Line

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[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

“In the not-too-distant past, your conference was where you lived, but with all the illogical itinerancy that’s certainly not true anymore.” –Kyle Whelliston

With those words in the Season 9 Epilogue – combined with his previously-stated, now-confirmed decision that “we’re doing away with the Red Line after this season, because it’s both an outdated concept and an endless source of meaningless debate…[s]o we’re leaving the line-drawing to each of you next season” – the creator and founder of the Mid-Majority has, I think, given his blessing to those of us who believe teams like Butler and Creighton shouldn’t automatically be cast out of the Mid-Majority’s final season, #TMMX, just because they’re now in the same conference as teams like Georgetown and Marquette. In my personal view, if and when those schools eventually obtain the budgetary advantages of their new conference compatriots, then we wish them well as former members of the Mid-Majority. But until that happens, I think we can still claim them as part of Our Game.

So, with that said, here is my proposed Red Line for 2013-14, doing away with the concept of “your conference is where you live” and replacing it with a school-centric concept:

  • If your athletic budget is under $25,000,000, you’re a mid.
  • If your athletic budget is over $40,000,000, you’re not a mid.
  • If your athletic budget is between $25,000,000 and $40,000,000, that means you’re a straddler, and we look at your men’s basketball budget to determine your ultimate status. If it’s under $4,000,000, you’re a mid. If it’s $4,000,000 or greater, you’re not a mid.

I think these numbers are pretty logical (not to mention round), and not purely a kludge designed to achieve a specific set of results. That said, the results they achieve largely “make sense,” in my view. More on that in a moment.

Naturally, I’ve created a Google Doc spreadsheet to show the impact of my proposal. It shows a red line separating majors (athletic budgets >$40,000,000) from mids & straddlers, and a yellow line separating the straddlers from the all-mids list (athletic budgets <$25,000,000). In between the red and yellow lines, in the “straddler” zone, there are some mids and some majors. Each individual school’s spreadsheet cells on are shaded either pink (major) or light green (mid).

Crucially, sub-$40M “straddlers” that obviously, instinctively don’t belong in the Mid-Majority, like Cincinnati (athletic budget $39M), Georgetown ($34M), Villanova ($31M) and Marquette ($27M), are properly kicked back up into “major” status by their basketball budgets ($5.9M, $10.0M, $6.4M and $9.9M, respectively). Other excluded straddlers: Temple, San Diego State, St. John’s, Tulsa, and New Mexico (sorry, @albolte). Meanwhile, “straddlers” that obviously, instinctively do belong in the Mid-Majority, like James Madison (athletic budget $35M), Liberty ($30M), Lehigh ($28M) and *cough* Denver ($26M) are properly kept in the ranks of the #mids by their smaller basketball budgets ($2.3M, $2.3M, $1.4M and $2.5M, respectively). All of that “feels” right, IMHO.

There are a few weird outliers that might rub some people the wrong way, but only a few, and they are tolerable IMHO. The big ones: Welcome to the Mid-Majority, DePaul, Providence and Seton Hall! Yes, these three non-football-playing “New Big East” teams, with their athletic budgets of $24M, $23M and $21M, respectively, join Hoops Nation because they’re below the $25M cutoff for overall athletic budgets, and thus their large hoops budgets of $6.7M, $6.1M and $6.4M don’t come into play.

Good news for those who detest this idea: we’ll probably lose DePaul and Providence soon enough, once inflation and those new TV dollars kick in. They’re pretty close to the $25M athletic-budget cutoff already. As soon as they reach it, and they become straddlers, their hoops budgets will immediately make them majors. However, with an athletic budget of just $20.9M (which puts it between Princeton and Ball State), Seton Hall may be here to stay, at least for a while.

My take on the DePaul/Providence/Seton Hall “problem”? Whatever. (Or, if you prefer, Bqhatevwr.) As long as Georgetown, Marquette and Villanova remain majors, which they do, I don’t think it’s any huge sin (no “Catholic 7” pun intended!) to call those other guys mids, for now, in this brave new world of conference realignment.

That said, we could solve the “problem” by lowering the $25M athletic-budget threshold to $20M. But then we’d lose Rhode Island (athletic budget $23.5M, hoops budget $4.7M) and Gonzaga ($21.5M, $6.1M), and very likely Wichita State ($19.6M, $4.6M), VCU ($22M, $3.8M), Richmond ($22M, $3.97M) and Dayton ($21M, $3.98M) once the new budget figures are published. Not worth it, in my view. Gonzaga is a debatable case, but losing URI, Wichita, VCU, Richmond and Dayton?! No way. Plus, such a change would unnecessarily hasten the eventually-inevitable departures of Butler, Creighton and Xavier once all that Big East money starts pouring in. So, nope. I’m sticking with $25M for now.

Apropos of that, a chief advantage – at least, I think it’s an advantage – of my new proposed Red Line is that we don’t lose nearly as many mid-major teams to conference realignment next season as we would under the old system. And we gain a bunch of new friends to boot.

Specifically, under the old system, assuming there would be 9 above-the-Red-Line conferences next year – SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, ACC, new Big East (i.e., Catholic 7), American (Old Big East), Mountain West, and Conference USA – and everybody else below the Red Line, we would have lost the following unlucky 13 teams, all newly “realigned” into “major” conferences. I’ve listed them in order from largest to smallest athletic budgets:

  • Temple (A-10 to American)
  • Old Dominion (CAA to C-USA)
  • Florida International (Sun Belt to C-USA)
  • San Jose State (WAC to MWC)
  • Middle Tennessee (Sun Belt to C-USA)
  • Utah State (WAC to MWC)
  • North Texas (Sun Belt to C-USA)
  • Florida Atlantic (Sun Belt to C-USA)
  • Louisiana Tech (WAC to C-USA)
  • Creighton (MVC to Big East)
  • Xavier (A-10 to Big East)
  • Butler (A-10 to Big East)
  • Charlotte (A-10 to C-USA)

Under my system, by contrast, we only lose one of those teams – Temple – and also one additional team, BYU, whose $48.3M athletic budget and $5.7M basketball budget have always been a weird fit for the WCC. Many apologies to @zbloxham, @RealDSean and other #TMM-following Cougar fans. Love you guys (bro-hug…#NOH8), but those budget numbers just don’t work in a school-by-school Red Line world. (Case in point: it’s mathematically impossible, without an “exception,” to keep BYU in the #TMM fold without also including Ole Miss, which has smaller athletic and basketball budgets than BYU. Obviously, the notion of an SEC “mid-major” is intrinsically absurd, and the possibility of Marshall Henderson as Mid-Majority Baller of the Week is inconceivable. So we can’t have that. Sorry, BYU.)

Meanwhile, even as we lose just 2 schools instead of 13, we also gain 17 new friends, all from the lower-budget portions of C-USA, the MWC and the Big East(s). We’ve already discussed DePaul, Providence and Seton Hall. Here are the other 14 newly admitted members of the Mid-Majority, under my system:

  • Central Florida
  • East Carolina
  • Houston
  • Wyoming
  • Rice
  • Tulane
  • Fresno State
  • UAB
  • Boise State
  • Colorado State
  • Marshall
  • UTEP
  • Southern Miss
  • Nevada

And actually, you can add a 15th new friend, too: Air Force. For some reason, the budgets for Army, Navy and Air Force aren’t included in the report where these numbers come from, but I think we can safely assume that the Falcons – judged by their own budget rather than their conference’s average – would qualify as a #mid.

Most of those 15 schools “feel” pretty “Mid-Majority-ish,” don’t they? A number of them even were Mid-Majority teams during Conference USA’s one-year sojourn below the Red Line in #TMM7. Others, like Wyoming, Boise and CSU, are the sort of teams that often make people say, “Wait, that’s a Red Line Upset?” when they’re defeated by a #mid – and not just because people confuse “mid-major” with “bad,” but because those schools’ budgets are small enough to make the confusion reasonable. Indeed, even to me, it has always felt odd that, in a community where we supposedly use budgetary criteria (rather than success on the court) to judge a team’s status as a mid or a major, it would be considered a “Red Line Upset” if Denver ($26M athletic budget, $2.5M hoops) were to beat Colorado State ($25M, $2.4M), for instance.

So anyway, as I was saying, a bunch of the 15 “new” TMM teams have always felt to me like they belong below the Red Line, at least as much as long-time mid-major powers such as Butler, Gonzaga, Xavier and Creighton “belong.” Now, under my system, these “Mid-Majority-ish” teams are, well, actual Mid-Majority teams. As they should be, IMHO.

We’ll probably lose UCF, East Carolina and Houston soon enough, as their budgets swell due to the influx of American-Style Football Cash from joining The American (old Big East). Same goes for “New Big East” straddlers DePaul and Providence, and possibly Seton Hall too, as I mentioned earlier. But as for the rest, I say welcome to the party. Try the horchata. There are guacos in the fridge.

My system does create some new anxieties for a few teams that, while presently below the New Red Line, are uncomfortably close to it. Chief among these are Penn ($37.6M athletic budget) and Yale ($37.4M). Relatively small budget increases would put them above the $40M line, where their tiny basketball budgets ($1.1M, $831K) couldn’t save them from Mid-Majority exile. If that happens, it would be a pretty absurd result, but I think we can deal with it as needed, either by (1) adjusting the $40M line for inflation, or (2) instituting a rule that anybody below (say) $1.5M in hoops budget is automatically a mid-major regardless of their athletic budget, or (3) simply by creating an “Ivy League exception.” But we can cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

For now, I think the numbers work. $25M makes sense as an update of the old $20M line, given inflation in the economy generally and within the #sportsbubble particularly. Schools at the top of the heap have seen their budgets soar, so schools in the low $20s are at a similar disadvantage (when compared to the top-tier majors) to the disadvantage that teams in the high $10s used to face. $40M, meanwhile, is a nice round number, double the old Red Line, and accounts for the gobs of money that many non-BCS and even non-FBS football schools make from the pigskin without much trickle-down benefit to their basketball programs. I also like using $4M as the hoops-budget cutoff for “straddlers,” because it’s one-tenth of $40M, which matches the old Red Line tradition of $20M/$2M. And, as I explained above, it seems to “work” and “make sense,” for the most part, when put in practice. Adjust either number up or down right now, and things start to “feel” more illogical, whether by including teams like Ole Miss ($43M, $2.5M) or by excluding teams like Fordham ($25M, $3.3M) and Rhode Island ($23M, $4.7M).

So, in conclusion, I invite anyone who likes this New Red Line system to use it next season. I invite anyone who doesn’t like it to propose something else, and use that. And then, once we’ve each decided what we’re going to do, let’s all agree, in keeping with Kyle’s exhortation, to “please kindly then STFU about it” and enjoy the ride in #TMMX. 🙂

Again, you can find my spreadsheet at http://bit.ly/MyRedLine.

UPDATE: FWIW, the “official” Mid-Majority ruling on this issue – at least for purposes of Games! Of! The! Night!, Ballers of the Week, and so forth – is as follows: “the red line is dead… [TMM] will be bringing you news about all the teams that have been covered here the previous nine years.”

As a practical matter, the differences between this rule and “my Red Line” in 2013-14 are relatively small.

  • Included by TMM, excluded by me: Temple, BYU
  • Included by me, excluded by TMM: DePaul, Providence, Seton Hall, Colorado State, Wyoming

Of course, per Kyle’s edict, you’re free to follow whatever system you prefer – or no system at all – for differentiating mids from non-mids. For my part, I will confess that I don’t really consider DePaul, Providence or Seton Hall mids, despite what my system says. On the other hand, if CSU or Wyoming makes a run in March, I will totally rally ‘round the mid-major flag behind them. The same goes for Temple or BYU. #AOUEOU