You know how it goes at this point: something is happening so the doomsday cult must interject itself like a nosy Karen
New Realities Of College Football Have Climate Change Lessons Too
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for people like me. It’s the start of the college football season. My beloved Florida State Seminoles take the field this weekend, and my equally beloved Georgia Bulldogs play next week. I am a three-time FSU alumnus, and a long-time professor at UGA. I often have converging thoughts in my mind. This morning is one of those moments. The world continues to experience extreme heat domes, flooding, tropical cyclones, drought and wildfires. The tragic events at the China – Nepal border, a place warming extremely fast, are fresh on my mind. While coming out of slumber this morning, an analogy hit me. The changing landscape of college football is also an analogy for climate change realities.
It’s not the perfect analogy but go with me. If you follow college football, you know that it has changed. Fan bases, university leaders, players and families are adjusting to a “new normal” that includes NIL, transfer portals, and forms of player compensation. At the Orange Bowl a few years ago, I sat next to a woman at the Florida State – Georgia game. She lamented the current landscape and romanticized the college football days of the past. (big snip through several paragraphs talking about how things in football have changed)
We now experience a “new normal” climate system too. The analogy is rooted in normalcy, expectations, and natural cycles of events. People understand that weather and climate have natural cycles. It rains. Winter comes and goes. Ice Ages happen. El Niño, like the strong one we are in right now, appears every two to seven years. Hurricanes are features of late summer months. By the way, Tropical Storm Dolly is headed towards the Leeward Islands right now but is expected to eventually weaken as it nears Puerto Rico.
Even with these natural aspects, human activities related to carbon emissions, land surface changes, air pollution and urbanization are rapidly, relatively speaking, changing the climate. Studies continue to point to the signatures of climate change in downpours, heatwaves, tropical cyclone intensity, drought, wildfires, and reduced extreme cold events. A 2026 report by the National Academies provides the latest assessment of extreme weather linkages to climate change.
‘Old Farts and Little Sh*ts’: Bill Maher Goes Off on Democrats’ ‘Big Tent’ – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/08/old-farts-and-little-shts-bill-maher.html
Colleges need to construct indoor football stadiums.
High schools to follow. At a game last night in Ladue MO, at least 8 players went down with leg cramps, delaying action. This even with mid-quarter water breaks.
Projected 100F in MO next week.
Or start the season later in the fall.
Football, for me, started in mid-August, for practice at old Legion baseball field. August, in Kentucky? Yeah, it was hot. Why do you think there was a law in Camelot that “July and August cannot be too hot!” I can just imagine what it was like in Alabama and Texas, where football truly is king.
The distinguished Mr Dowd wrote:
Some colleges have, but indoor stadia are far more expensive.
That’s at least a valid point, but high school and college football regular seasons are usually over by Thanksgiving. I would agree that the college football regular season is too long.
The most important college football season starts next Saturday, as Bryant takes on the Army Black Knights! Army home games are normally broadcast on CBS Sports Network, channel 221 on Direct TV. Go Army! Beat Navy!
Army will host our esteemed host’s East Caroline University Pirates on November 21st.
stadia v stadiums?
Stadiums is the modern, standard, and most common plural form used in everyday English.
Stadia is the traditional, Latin-derived plural form. You will mostly see it in formal, academic, architectural, or historical writing.
Stadia can also mean something else — it is a surveying term for an instrument or rod used to measure distance.
We had August practices in southern MO, too. Coaches told the players to “keep your hat (helmet) on”!! And a salt tablet taken with a sip of water. Head to head tackling drills with associated concussions.
August pre-season locker room freshman team football old-school Coach Vaughn…
Coach (shouting): “If you guys are looking for sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between shit and suicide!”
Young Phenom Smart-aleck: “Coach, actually it’s not.”
Coach: “OK, Smart-aleck, give me twenty”
Smart-aleck: “Twenty what, Coach?”
Coach: “Make it forty!”
The Phenom was kicked off the team after a hallway shouting match with Coach that resulted in Coach’s forced apology. They made up and by senior year, and Smart-aleck was made captain of Coach’s track team!!
Guess you dipshit Missourians have never heard of pickle juice.
Bwaha! Lolgf!
MAGA47 Motherfuckers!
Go on…
The pedantic Mr Dowd wrote:
Like datums is the new plural of data?
There are many “modern, standard, and most common” words these days of which I disapprove, the worst of which is “burglarize”, frequently used even in the professional media, when what a burglar does is burgle.
The pedantic Mr Dana typed: “There are many “modern, standard, and most common” words these days of which I disapprove…”
We agree.
And he added: “Like datums is the new plural of data?”
In 45 years of scientific reading and writing I have never used or seen the word “datums” or even “datum”.
Technically, “data” is a plural noun derived from the Latin word “datum,” but it is now widely accepted as both a singular and a plural word depending on the context.
I like burgle and burgled because it sounds funnier.
Pedants such as Mr Dana and myself use some words and constructs to show off or to slow changes – acceptable reasons, both!
The distinguished Mr Dowd wrote:
The Buffalo Bills just built their new stadium, and it is an outdoor facility. The
BostonNew England Patriots also play outdoors in the snowy northeast. There’s really nothing greater than football in the snow.Huh? There’s about 6,000 things better than football in the snow.
Of course, Science Denier Teach misses the point of the essay.
“The changing landscape of college football is also an ANALOGY for climate change realities.”
NIL and pay have caused a sea change in college sports!
analogy: a comparison between two different things to show how they are similar, usually to help explain a complex or difficult idea
Exactly what science being denied?
The evidence that CO2 from fossil fuels is causing the Earth to warm. But you know that.
Maybe you have Evidence Denial (ED). There are cures. Ask your health professional.
Maybe Rimjob could post this evidence instead of being a snotty little bitch.
But then again maybe Rimjob can’t.
Bwaha! Lolgf!
MAGA47 Motherfucker!
Before asking for citations you should make your own attempt to verify instead of asking for possibly compromised or inaccurate data
Don’t be lazy !
The Science Deniers (who do not understand scientific processes) should review:
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/
Only then could they possibly engage in a meaningful discussion.
One minor point on predictability. Around 1900, Svante Arrhenius was the first to use the principles of physical chemistry to estimate the extent to which increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for the Earth’s increasing surface temperature.
Wrote the professor:
“To a certain extent the temperature of the earth’s surface, as we shall presently see, is conditioned by the properties of the atmosphere surrounding it, and particularly by the permeability of the latter for the rays of heat.”
“That the atmospheric envelopes limit the heat losses from the planets had been suggested about 1800 by the great French physicist Fourier. His ideas were further developed afterwards by Pouillet and Tyndall. Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses.”
“If the quantity of carbonic acid [ CO2 + H2O ? H2CO3 (carbonic acid) ] in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°.” *
“Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.”
“Since, now, warm ages have alternated with glacial periods, even after man appeared on the earth, we have to ask ourselves: Is it probable that we shall in the coming geological ages be visited by a new ice period that will drive us from our temperate countries into the hotter climates of Africa? There does not appear to be much ground for such an apprehension. The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree.”
“We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.”
Professor Arrhenius thought the warmer future would have at least salutary effects, a better climate for humanity and the end of ice ages!!
He predicted around 1900 that the burning of coal and other fuels would cause a future increase in ocean and atmospheric CO2 which would cause warming. Bingo!
The Science Deniers of today are less informed than 18th Century Europeans.