Showing posts with label Carnegie Meloon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carnegie Meloon. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

It's Time for the NCAA BCS National Digital Football Championship - MIT #1!

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Move over college football jocks and fans, because after decades of outright bias against those who are too smart to play football fisticuffs, we at the Coltons Point Times are calling for the establishment of the NCAA BCS National Digital Football Championship to be fought out among the top two colleges or universities in America in terms of the combined poll standings in computer science, engineering and overall quality of education.

Today we are prepared to release the first BCS National Digital Football top 25 Poll of those hallowed academic institutions whose brains far outweigh their brawn. Our poll is loaded with the most scientifically revered colleges in America whose endowment funds exceed that of the top jock shops. No one else can make such a claim.

Now, I do have a confession to make. Ever since I realized as a child that a terrible mistake had been made when I was dropped off by the stork in Iowa City, Iowa and not Boston, Massachusetts where I was supposed to go, I have suffered greatly. You see, I was created with Ivy League or MIT DNA and the corn fields of the Midwest are no place to create Microsoft or Facebook like I was bred to achieve.


I mean you know you are in the wrong place when your family laughs at your genetic tendencies. Like when I ordered lobster at the local cafe, put an Italian opera on the stereo, declared the Yankees (New York) and Red Sox (Boston) instead of the Cardinals (St. Louis) or Cubs (Chicago) my favorite team.

You most certainly would have agreed that I was odd. Don't get me wrong, I was a pretty good jock in all sports and that ran contrary to my DNA but I did get good at chess and croquet. In school I did most everything from get good to bad grades, being a jock yet a member of the speech and debate teams, playing in a rock 'n roll band and the school non-marching band.

If I had been delivered safely back at birth to the Rothschild family my name would have been a lot longer, I would have the name suffix III I fully expected to have, and in time I would have possessed all the alphabetical scholastic titles like B.A., M.B.A., J.D. & Ph.D. Knowing you were switched at birth and being helpless to correct this huge celestial mistake is a terrible cross to bear.

So I hung out with the freaks, geeks and misfits so I could at least assimilate my lost breeding if not experience it up close and personal. Thankfully I was well received. And later in life it helped me in understanding and relating to the powerful East Coast establishment who were products of the Ivy League and other educational institutions of higher learning than the other schools.


It even helped me survive working for people from Harvard, Yale and Princeton and working with people from MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. In spite of being part of groups like Marvin Minsky's Society of the Mind (MIT Media Lab) and other intellectually challenging groups, without the proper breeding you are never really one of them.

I never got to make my supreme contribution to the elite and I hope this BCS National Digital Football Championship helps pay back what I felt I owed. Perhaps I can get the ascot out of storage if we are a huge success?


As for the BCS NDFC it is time we make a statement, show the world that eggheads and geeks have as much to offer to Main Street as we (oops, a Freudian slip) you do to Wall Street and Washington. We want a playoff of the top 8 BCS NDFC teams at year end, meaning New Year's Eve, for the right to be the first of many future national champions of the National Digital Football playoffs.

Teams of four players with two alternates will be eligible from each school in the top 8 standing at year end. They will collectively agree as to the version of digital football to be played throughout the competition. The winner will be crowned, a trophy presented for the school, and whatever other prizes we can get from sponsors will be given. Oh yes, we are searching for a title sponsor like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft or whoever.


Now, for the official unveiling of the first BCS NDFC poll, here are the standings.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology--Cambridge, MA
2. Stanford University--Palo Alto, CA
3. University of California, Berkeley, CA
4. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
5. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, IL
6. Cornell University--Ithaca, NY
7. University of Texas--Austin (Cockrell) Austin, TX
8. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
9. California Institute of Technology--Pasadena, CA
10. University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI
11. Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)--Atlanta, GA
12. University of California--Los Angeles (Samueli) Los Angeles, CA (UCLA)
13. University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI
14. University of Maryland-College Park, MD
15. University of California--San Diego (Jacobs) La Jolla, CA
16. Harvard University Cambridge, MA
17. Columbia University (Fu Foundation) New York, NY
18. Purdue University--West Lafayette West Lafayette, IN
19. University of Washington--Seattle, WA
20. University of Southern California (Viterbi)--Los Angeles, CA
21. Brown University--Providence, RI
22. University of Massachusetts--Amherst, MA
23. Rice University--Houston, TX
24. University of Pennsylvania--Philadelphia, PA
25. University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, NC

That's it folks. We have a Beaver, Tree, Bear, Scottish Terrier, Abe Lincoln, Big Red Bear, Longhorn, Tiger, another Beaver and Badger for mascots for the top ten. It gets better down the list.


If you know any students at these schools you should let them know they are in the top 25 poll of computer scientists, geeks and engineering freaks and we will be tracking the hits from each college town because in two weeks the number of hits from each college will be factored into the poll. Until the end of the season, year end, it will be the only way a college can move up through the ranks.

Marvin again?
The top 8, if sponsorship can be found, will play for the 2010 BSC National Digital Football Championship and full bragging rights to being the Other BCS National Football Champion. I want to see if anyone can knock off MIT and their Media Lab where Marvin Minsky should be coach.
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