Head Coach: Frankie Albert

Key Losses: DE Clay Matthews (Retire), MLB Hardy Brown (Free Agent)

Key Additions: G/DE Bruce Bosley (Draft, 15), TE/WR R.C. Owens (Draft, 160), TE Clyde Connor (FA)

Discussion:

I couldn’t get myself to cut this down, so I’m actually just moving my “Musings” section up to the top this week, instead of simply excerpting it. Enjoy!

Even though this wasn’t a good season for the 49ers, I really like the idea that Frankie Albert was brought in as the Head Coach. Then, doing my writeup on R. C. Owens, I loved remembering that he was a member of the front office for so long. As a fan, I often entertain myself thinking about what players I would like to see come back one day to coach. Usually I do this when I’m thinking about the SF Giants (what can I say, when there are a lot of players near retirement, you think of them as coaches…), but there are certainly a number of former 49ers who I would love to see come back to the team in some capacity. Steve Young seems like a guy who could coach, though I understand he’s more interested in owning (with Brent Jones, no less) – though fat chance that either of those DeBartolo guys come to the team in any capacity in the near future. I’d be surprised if there is a single fan who doesn’t want to see Bryant Young return to the team as a coach.

There’s just something about rooting for a player and then seeing that player move into a new role with the team or with the league after they retire. With the “York guys” / “DeBartolo guys” divide, we’ve been pretty unlucky in recent years in that a lot of the guys who we might want to see come back to the team simply won’t or can’t because of fundamental differences. What I’d like to talk about, though, is not strictly players who we would like to see return after retirement, but also players – not even necessarily 49ers – who have made careers in the league following retirement (after all, I don’t want to leave Singletary out, or, even more relevantly right now, Gene Upshaw).

So that’s where we are: Open Players Returning to the League After Retirement Discussion. Who do you want to see? Who did you love seeing come back? And why.

Continue reading this post »

I don't know if everybody has had their drafts yet, but I have the feeling that many of us have. With that in mind, I wanted to open a thread we could use to talk about our teams or smack talk about the teams of others before the season starts and 75% of us realize our teams suck.

Talking about my team: Hsawaknow

I was never going to be able to make my live-draft because I work when everybody else in the world not-works, so I had to leave things up to chance. I shuffled some of my pre-draft rankings around based on guys I thought would be sleepers and guys I thought would be wakers (new term: it means the opposite of sleepers), and then systematically moved every player who I hate, regardless of skill, down to the very bottom of my list. It's not exactly sound strategy, but if I have to win by using players I hate, I just feel dirty.

Even so, leaving the draft up to the pure chance that is auto-drafting by pre-draft rankings didn't inspire confidence in me about what I'd get back. In the end, it didn't turn out as badly as I thought it might. I'm heavier at QB (Manning and Roethlesberger) and thinner at RB (Willy Parker and Julius Jones starting, Ahman Green on the bench) than I would have liked. I picked up Pennington as super-sleeper insurance against Manning not being recovered early on (also because I just don't like most of the available free agents left over from the draft), but I imagine I'll be swapping him out for a depth filling tailback at some point. Most of the rest of the team is either steady-unspectacular or on-the-bubble filler, but I'm mostly just glad that I wasn't left completely bereft of talent thanks to an automated system that doesn't understand tiers.

I don't think I have one of the stronger teams starting the year, but I'm generally happy with my core.

Smack talking other teams:

Fooch's Frank the Tank: He's got a better balance than I do with his starters (nice RBs in Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch), but that won't stop him from SUCKING! Yeah! Take that smack talk! I win ths round, jerk!

jtoj's The Beannugets: I hope you enjoy winning, because you'll need to enjoy it more than the rest of us to get the same amount of total enjoyment out of your season as we're all going to get! Booya! Kyle Orton - you call that a backup! Psh!

I'm the best smack talker.

Also of note: The recent news for Kyle Orton, according to FleaFlicker, is "Lindsay Lohan Thinks Neck Beardsman and Bears QB Orton Is Soooo Totally Super Hot."

Best news update ever.

Head Coach: Red Strader

Key Losses: HC Buck Shaw (Fired), G Bruno Banducci (Retire), S Jim Cason (Contract Expired)

Key Additions: S Dicky Moegle (Draft, 10), C Frank Morze (Draft, 21), LB Matt Hazeltine (Draft, 45)

Discussion:

So let’s talk about coaches? We’ve got a few, and we might just have a new one in a little less than a year. Walsh, Siefert, Mooch, Erickson, Nolan… Who were you the most excited about at the time of the hiring? Walsh aside (for obvious reasons), who was your favorite over the length of their run? What did you like about what each one brought to the table? What didn’t you like? And, maybe most interesting, who do you think you want to see if/when Nolan is axed?

See my opinion somewhere after the jump!

Continue reading this post »

The one that's about baseball, not about poo.

Wait a minute... number 2... Zito start... crap, I was wrong.

Head Coach: Buck Shaw

Key Losses: No Key Losses 

Key Additions: HB John Henry Johnson (Unsigned Steeler Draft Pick)

Discussion Starter: 

The discussion starter today comes from my struggles with deciding to include John Henry Johnson as the player profile this week, and my decision to remember the disappointments with the successes. So, with Hall of Famer John Henry Johnson in mind (though not necessarily as the rubric), I want to talk about what players have just plain broken your hearts as a fan of this team. Unfulfilled talent, bonehead play, careers cut short, couldn’t stay on the field… take it in whatever direction you want, but keep heartbreak in mind.

Continue reading this post »

For anybody who is inclined to skim or skip this for length or disinterest, in the last paragraph I simply open things up for this to be an OPEN SCIENCE FICTION / FANTASY BOOK THREAD. So don't hold yourself to this whole "Hugo Awards" theme if you don't care.

I don't know that anybody noticed, or that many care, but the winners for this year's Hugo Awards were just recently announced.

For those who don't know, the Hugo is a literary award given out annually in a variety of categories (Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, as well as a few individual awards) to award outstanding writing within the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I used to be a big SF fan, and am currently still a big fan of Fantasy. SF fell out of my favor years ago not because I don't enjoy the genre, but rather because I was finding it harder and harder to enjoy the product, or rather harder and harder to find SF products, in print, that I do enjoy.

Which is why I was looking forward to this year's Hugos. I miss reading SF, and I want back in. So starting with the cream of the crop must be a good spot to jump back in. This is perhaps a prelude to where I am eventually going with this FanPost, but for the time being I'd like to get back on topic and discuss the awards themselves.

The nominees for each category have been announced for some time, and excepting the novels, each has been freely available for consumption online in anticipation of the awards (and still are, as of last night). The list of nominees for each of the significant awards was:

Best Novel

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Brasyl by Ian McDonald
• Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer
• The Last Colony by John Scalzi
• Halting State by Charles Stross

Best Novella

• “The Fountain of Age” by Nancy Kress
• “Recovering Apollo 8″ by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• “Stars Seen Through Stone” by Lucius Shepard
• “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis
• “Memorare” by Gene Wolfe

Best Novelette

• “The Cambist and Lord Iron: a Fairytale of Economics” by Daniel Abraham
• “The Merchant and the Alchemist”s Gate” by Ted Chiang
• “Dark Integers” by Greg Egan
• “Glory” by Greg Egan
• “Finisterra” by David Moles

Best Short Story

• “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter
• “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear
• “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken MacLeod
• “Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick
• “A Small Room in Koboldtown” by Michael Swanwick

The only thing on this list that I had read previously was Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union (currently being adapted for the screen by the Coen brothers), and that is a curious nominee for an award which claims its focus to be SFF. Though I suppose an alternate history can be termed "Fantasy" if you view the genre with a wider lens than most people who view genres liberally even might be inclined to do.

The winners, as announced the other day, were:

• Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Best Novella: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis
• Best Novelette: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang 
• Best Short Story: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear

And Michael Chabon won! Which disappointed me some at first. It's a very good book, yes, but it's also deeply uneven and stretches to even be considered for the award... my first instinct was to credit reputation for earning him the award. I found it hard to believe that over the entire year, there wasn't a better, more appropriate candidate. I've since reconsidered that stance and don't feel conspiratorial anymore, though I still think it's a weird choice altogether.

The other winners I quickly found online, pasted into a Word file, and saved for eventual consumption. I've read Connie Willis before and enjoyed her quite a bit (To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book are both at least as good as advertised), so I'm really looking forward to reading her 23,000 word Novella about Aliens and Christmas. It's the longest of the non-novel winners, though, and I haven't put the time in yet. I did read "Timeline," however (more or less straight SF), and found it remarkably and actively unenjoyable, cliched, sentimental, and cheesy. And today I put the time in to read "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (more or less straight Fantasy) which I enjoyed quite a bit (and would highly recommend for sure), though I wished it might have been a bit more open ended.

I began to read a couple of the other nominees last night, including "Dark Integers" and "Memorare," but I was too tired to keep up with Gene Wolfe's prose (though I'm looking VERY forward to introducing myself to it at long last), and couldn't read "Dark Integers" beyond an early hackneyed joke about an iWatch and some unintelligible techno-babble. Which is not to say that the story is bad on the whole, but rather simply to say that it didn't have the first page stuff to make me want to find out.

Has anybody read any of these? I'd be extremely interested to hear what you all have to say, or just to hear your impressions about the awards in general.

Failing that, simply assume this to be an Open SFF Thread, and go to town. As you may have surmised from above, I'm not simply looking to discuss the awards, but also to learn of any books in the genre that others have enjoyed and that I might be able to get into.

And I'll make a poll as well.

Last season we had a pretty good time doing the weekly prediction contest, and with the season looming roughly a month away I wanted to bring the games back to attention and introduce it to the newer members who might be interested in playing.

Here's how it works: Every week, Fooch will pick six games for the rest of us to lay predictions down for. For each game he picks, we predict the score. We don't do Thursday games because they make it much harder to deal with for the official scorekeeper (that's me!).

Scoring is based on two metrics: point totals and point differentials. The idea is that you get one score for predicting the point totals and one score for predicting the point differentials, and the combination of those scores is your final mark. The closer to zero your final mark is, the better your prediction was.

So, if a game ends 14-13, and you predict the game 27-0, then you will score a zero in the point totals category (for being zero points off the total). However, the point differential in the actual score will be 1, and the point differential in your prediction is 27, so your score in the point differentials category will be 26 (since you were 26 points off). Your total mark for the game will be 26 (since 0 + 26 = 26)

Essentially, the closer you get to the actual score, the closer both your point totals and point differentials will be to the actual score.

Rankings for the week are based on these individual marks. The person who gets closest to zero in one game will be awarded 3 points. Next closest gets 2 points. Next closest gets 1 point. And everybody else gets zero. There will be ties. Everybody tied for first get 3 points. Everybody tied for second gets 2 points. And everybody tied for third gets 1 point.

In the rare event that somebody predicts a score exactly, perfectly on the nose (and we've seen in practice that it IS rare - less than 10 in over 1000 predictions last season), that person gets 10 points for the game.

So, theoretically, with 6 games a week and up to ten points awarded for first place in each game, you COULD get up to 60 points a week. This is ridiculously unlikely, though. I think the highest single week total from last season was something like 15. Totals accumulate over the course of the whole season, and the person with the highest totals at the end of the season wins the game and gets the reward.

Last season the reward was a front page story on the blog. We might upgrade this season. I'm thinking that a free, custom, Niners Nation t-shirt might be cool this season... but I haven't mentioned it to Fooch yet and we'd have to get the thing designed and printable before we can make it official. So we'll see. Something with monetary value seems to be the most awesome reward, though.

I have done all the scoring in the past. I have an Excel spreadsheet that does all the math for me, so I just have to type in everybody's scores and go. This is not to say that there isn't human error (just that there is a MUCH SMALLER chance for it), so if you ever see me make a mistake, call me on it and we'll double check.

Last season, we had about ten to twelve regulars playing on a weekly basis. With more new people this season, I think that this could get more fun (and more competetive).

NOW, I know that this is a little bit confusing in words. If you don't understand anything about the scoring, feel free to comment and we'll be happy to explain.