today's news

A few very good things online today..


- From Jonathan Kaplan: Interesting post about the stock options activity at Apple with backdated stock options. What I didn't know, though, was that Al Gore served on the board of directors and didn't say a word. Kinda suprising and it will definitely kill any chances Al has of getting elected President. Interesting since I think that he is the most electable Democratic BY FAR in the next election.

I also posted a reply on why legal backdating of stock options is not necessarily a bad thing due to the inherent assymetry of interests between shareholders and optionholders.

- From Bill Simmons Lots of good stuff today from the huge demise of Dante Hall (Are you listen Devin Hester) to the why Chris Collinsworth is the best announcer in the business. however, the best part was his arguments of why all football teams should have a Assistant coach of strategy.

Which leads me to wonder: I've already made the argument for coaches hiring a clock-management consultant (Andy Reid clearly needs one) and a VP of common sense (to talk them into things like, "Definitely try to punch it in on fourth-and-goal, otherwise you're giving up either an extra four points or 30 yards of field position and you're showing no confidence in your offense" and "Maybe we shouldn't call that quick pass to Terry Glenn on our own 1-yard line and just run the ball three times; we have the lead, for God's sake"). Well, why wouldn't they also have some slacker college student who has played 250,000 hours of "Madden" the past three years and faced every conceivable football situation on hand to throw out advice like, "Dude, let them score here; we can get the ball back down eight?" With those three advisers flanking him on the sideline, even Bruce Coslet would have been unstoppable.

Other than being my dream job, it just makes good sense. What other company do you have a key executive making decisions with little to no analysis nor training in the area of risk? None. You need a specialist game theorist to make specific recommendations to the coach during a game. Especially in the NFL with no limit on coaches or coaching salaries. Kinda surprised little Danny Snyder doesn't do this. I know Mark Cuban would if he owned an NFL team.