The War on Christmas has been going on longer than we suspected!

Conservative commentators getting worked up over a so-called War on Christmas has become a cherished holiday tradition these days.  They are particularly upset about people wishing each other "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas."

Well as it turns out I belong to one of the millions of Facebook groups dedicated to local nostalgia, this one in particular being "You know you grew up in Cary, NC when..."  I think there is one of these for every burg or city in the nation.  Anyway, this year one member  has taken to posting scans of old holiday ads from the Cary News. They are great to see and great nostalgia.

 Here are a few samples, all from the early to mid 1960s:

Too bad we didn't have FOX News around then to tell us how awful these seasonal ads were because they didn't all specifically say "Merry Christmas"!

Maybe this is evidence that the War on Christmas started as a small guerrilla action and has taken 50 years to reach the full grown insurgency that we are told is going on now?  Or maybe right-wingers just didn't get their panties in a bunch as much back then.  Or maybe we just didn't have a provocateur class that profited so much from stirring up culture wars.  Anyway these ads are all perfectly charming and nice.

And btw it's also perfectly charming and nice for someone to wish you Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings today as well.

Why the Big 12 will get a conference championship game without expanding

There are few interesting tidbits in this article: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/dennis-dodd/21620974/acc/big-12-alliance-makes-sense-to-stiff-arm-conference-realigment

I'll concentrate on one here.  Apparently the B12 may soon propose allowing conferences to hold a championship game with only 10 teams, and not even requiring divisions.

In 2004 the ACC tried to get this through because it only had 11 teams, and it didn't go anywhere. Now I think it will pass easily.  The difference is that with the size of today's leagues, divisions no longer work.

Look at the ACC because I know it best.  Two 7 team divisions.  One protected cross-division rival.  8 conference games.   See the illustration above.  Do the math.  It will be TEN YEARS between times an ACC team plays a non-protected cross-division rival.  The SEC will be in the same boat, and the B1G will also have 14 teams soon.   This is not looking like a conference.   More like a federation.

The solution to this is to dispense with divisions and go to one big "division" in which the teams rotate games every year. So instead of having to play the same seven teams every year (your division mates plus your protected crossover rival) and only having 1  game to rotate between the remaining 6 teams on the other side, you now only have to play one team (your main rival) every year and can rotate the remaining 7 games among the other 12 teams.  Or with more than one protected rival, you only have 2-3 teams you play every year and have 5-6 games to rotate among your other 10-11 conference mates.  Either way the math shows that you only go 2-3 years between games with other teams, instead of a whole freaking decade.

The basic point is this:  these 14 team leagues (and bigger in the future) have made divisions obsolete if you want your league to look anything like a real conference where teams play each other with reasonable frequency.   And because of this, I think the proposal to eliminate the need for divisions and 12 teams for a championship game will come up and pass.