A Thought on Game Shows

There is this theory floating out there that traditional game shows are being "dumbed down" to make them more "accessible" to everyday viewers. The lifelines on Millionaire, the lack of any skill whatsoever on Deal or No Deal, and the very title of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader are cited as evidence.

I'm not so sure.

What seems to be disappearing is not the quiz itself, but the "game" element. Deal or No Deal is one player against the Banker. Millionaire and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader are one player against the question stack. Even 1 vs. 100, a show which has come a long way since its dreadful early days, portrays the "Mob" as a faceless, nameless bogeyman present only to put an obstacle in the way of the One.

Not coincidentally, I think this is why so many of the other quizzes in the Prime Time Millioonaire era failed. 21, Winning Lines and their cousins had too much competition for the taste of the American consumer.

Even Jeopardy is not immune to anti-competitiveness. Remember when Jeopardy was the most-watched show on TV three years ago? Thank you, Ken Jennings. Ken turned Jeopardy into "one guy against the board," and America lapped it up. Since becoming an actual "game" again, Jeopardy's ratings have returned to their pre-Ken levels.

Need evidence? See if you can name these four Jeopardy legends. If you're a fan of the show, ask somebody who has heard of Ken Jennings but doesn't watch the show regularly.

1 -- Who won the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, breaking Ken's record for most money won?

2 -- Who finished third in the UToC Finals?

3 -- Who won the most recent Jeopardy Tournament of Champions?

4 -- Which Jeopardy champion won 19 games in a row over two seasons, second only to Ken Jennings?

As long as TV quizzes have "winners" and "losers," they will struggle in the ratings.

But if "everybody wins," everybody watches.

Blech.

Lipscomb All-Decade team

No, my blog is not daily. Deal with it.

So Lipscomb has been in Division 1 for 10 years now. Mostly. It's been 10 years since they quit playing post-season tournaments in Kansas City/Tulsa/Olathe or wherever they had the NAIA tournaments back in the day.

I thought it might be fun to compose an all-decade team for the NCAA era and compare them to the greats of the Don Meyer-coached NAIA teams.

So I went to the Lipscomb Athletics website. Guess what? There is NOTHING about the NAIA era there. Sure, the Lipscomb Hall of Fame lists come key names, but stats? Records? History? Nope. Nada.

So going from memory, here is my All-Decade team for the last ten years of the NAIA era:

PG -- Kenyatta Perry
SG -- Andy McQueen
SF -- Darren Henrie
PF -- Philip Hutchenson
C -- John Pierce

Off the bench -- Wade Sandrell, Jerry Meyer

The first ten years of the NCAA era:

Lorenzo Withrite, James Poindexter, Eddie Ard, Brian Fisk, Shaun Durant

Off the bench -- Ryan Roller, Chad Hartman

Now I admit on the front end that this is not an apples-to-apples comparision. Meyer and Sanderson play different styles -- Meyer coaches an inside-out game while Sanderson plays a Dutch soccer style "interchangeable parts" offense. Sanderson also places a much higher premium on defense than Meyer did.

Not to mention the differences in opposition. As Coach Meyer once said, "I'd rather play a cupcake than be a cupcake."

That said, my suspicion is that any of the best players from a Don Meyer-coached team could have started on Scott Sanderson's best team (05-06). OK, Kenyatta was 3 inches shorter and a step slower than Ard, and Durant and Poindexter more than held their own against Boomer Herndon (the closest approximation the A-Sun has to Pierce and Hutchenson), but Meyer's best against Sanderson's best is a pretty close contest.

The question for Lispcomb fans -- how much better is Lipscomb as a D-1 program? And it is worth the cost?

SILT -- 4/4/07

Stuff I learned:

Tito was Croatian.
The Sava River separates Croatia from Bosnia/Herzegovena.
Merton College is part of Oxford.
In Japanese, kohhi is coffee, kaji is fire, and atsui means "heated."
Cardial Wolsey was an advisor to Henry VIII.
Other Voices, Other Rooms is the first novel by Truman Capote.
The Christmas Rose has black roots.
Betty's Blue and Twickle Purple are varieties of lavendar.
Cameron Diaz was dating Justin Timberlake in 2006.
Stedman's last name is Graham.
Shannon Tweed is the wife of Gene Simmons.
Jackie Onassis once had a relatioship with a man named Maurice Templesman.
The Pierce Arrow is a kind of car.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is also a Broadway musical.
Harker and Morris teamed up to kill Count Dracula.
Jean Valjean dies in the presence of Cosette, his beloved.
Randall McMurphy is smothered to death in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Kingfisher is a brand of Indian beer.
The Battle of Inkerman was during the Crimean War.
There was a Czar in 1604 named "The False Dmitri."
Boris Coudanov's death triggered the "Time of Troubles."
Carl Sagan wrote the first scientific paper on nuclear winter.

One Shining Moment

Three favorite highlights from OSM:

3. The Belmont Baby. How cute is that?

2. Gus Johnson's call of the tying 3 in the Ohio State-Xavier game. Talk about capturing the emotion of a moment.

1. Rameses at the Sweet 16. Thoughts and prayers to the Ray family. RIP.