#If you can somehow manage to get a score of 95-100%

[synthshenanigans]

Hey do you wanna test if you know every chonny jash song? Like EVERY chonny jash song? Like all 107 songs on his channel?

Well now you can :}

[brainpoo]

I donno why I keep going, there's no future that I can't do adulthood and I don't have the capability of happiness. My brain is not just overthinking thinks it's hyper aware of things, every thing, every single action I do I can't truly be in the moment, I force myself to feel it and give it meaning but there are so few things I can think of that has meaning to me, I don't know if they even do anymore. I used to feel nothing, like there was a black hole sucking everything in me and everyone else could at least *feel* their lives, at least had ones. And I didn't, whatever happened whatever I struggled with I kept going because what else can you do?

At some point I decided I don't want to keep doing this and gradually made myself feel things, I knew what I was supposed to feel and tried to feel it, I made myself go out and go meet and plan meeting so my friends will actually be friends, I didn't feel and they didn't show they care about me, just drifted away more and more to the point I was terrified of conversations, I didn't know how people meet I couldn't meet and not feel existentially challenged every time but I made myself study how people interact and practice what they do for months with people until I could somewhat do it naturally. But this, and other regular experience human things I studied to be able to, it made me.too aware of every tht, every movement every thought every feeling I didn't feltz and made myself feel. In all fields. Friends, half some family and school. If I was struggling it was okay but I saw everyone else ask for help and if they show their distress someone would come to them and not just ignore or not try their best to help, so I started to show what I felt (which was crying due to stupid) and it sometimes worked, someone would come and try to help with the class problem but actually letting out what's inside made me even worst to this day, I can't stop crying and I cry from the littlest shit and I can't have conversations, I can't do things because I'll cry from them even if I SERIOUSLY don't care from them and then the person I front of me thinks I'm hurt and care but NO I fucking don't and this shits.

I can't see any future of adulthood. I can't see myself doing any of these things and the fact it's so close is fucking alarming. I felt like I wanted to die for years and somehow these few months (and a lot of healing was from going to an easier class in mathematics and excelling there, because the one thing holding me back is my memory issues and if in class you do things I already learned and remembered the simple questions then I fucking crash it. Because the hard questions I could 100% totally do /ser if I remembered how I did them in the past.) So I had a half school year to be good and have fun at math class and even actually finish early with the final score of 95! And another half school year to try to live with the new situation and take it in, try to talk with my family a little more and try to get over the mental that something felt like a physical block of talking, actually saying what I need. It didn't work... But I got a little bit better, and instead of nothing at all I could get some of the SCREAMING NEVER ENDING words that repeated and repeated in my head nonstop every time I thought of the conversation with a person and every time I stood in front of them talking about different things or the same actual subject and I talked but in my head the words were SCREAMING to get out and never did.

Which made me go insane and after a LOT of self fighting I managed to say some of the things, being crazy historical about it but I could, somewhat. And the connection with my friends and new friends were also nice, they were good but always made me feel behind and worse. They all could do these amazing things, or took the next adulthood steps, or could do the mathematics bullshit even if they struggled and they did, but they could do it, even the one that is not doing the computer and math and physics biology and all these other big subjects that are expected from most children because they count as a good starting point, the jobs in it are vast and the pay is good a lot of the time, and the computer jobs are always needed, so this guy is learning high level of dance, Dance choreography, it's history, art, mind, body, anatomy, a lot of things. And it doesn't matter that he's not doing any of the "good paid future jobs" he loves this and he excels in this because he cares and love, can really feel the love and passion he has to this for years. I used to love and be somewhat passionate about robotics and computer science, but I was behind I wasn't at the same level as people who literally learned the same things as me same time, even co classmates that didn't care about school and barley studied could do better then me, and I tried and some of them didn't even. The robotics class was actually garbage and made me see how useless I am, the past two years a always depended on someone to help me because I couldn't study any other way, I literally couldn't unless there was someone else there to help and most importantly tell me I'm not doing it wrong in the bigging and waisting time I don't have because I couldn't start until I had someone to be with me I literally couldn't and I don't know if I can now even. While everyone else could learn something and have it being learned unlike me who kept not being able to remember anything, stupid fucking me. Stupid fucking abnormal brain repressing so many things to the point everything is repressed. I wanted to learn coding because it's amazing how you can take some coding words or numbers and make a fucking program out of it. Make websites and video games and fun things, but everyone else knew more and I was fucking traumatized from that coding bullshit I was forced to participate in during 2020 with zoom school and major depression and lack of friends and no time and to add to that 4 hours of non helping class and several hours hw from that class not including school hw- (this started my bedtime revenge procrastination) AND that that I couldn't study alone and you need to study more then what they show you in class, WHY EVEN HAVE A 4 HOURS CLASS and, and- a lot of things. A LOT of things... I couldn't really know how I'm supposed to study. In 12th grade I

[makeste]

Oh right, I forgot to ask now that you finished the Yakuza/Overhaul arc but on a scale from Endeavor to All For One, where does Overhaul fit on the bad dad scale?

somehow this very simple ask which could have been answered in like three sentences turned into my definitive ranking of the top ten Known Dads in BnHA. I’m not sure how either. but here we go

(spoilers in this post up to chapter 165!)

10. Overhaul

dad score - [unknown] [the scale broke when we tried to measure him]

is asked to care for his boss’s granddaughter; proceeds to torture her for profit

constantly tells her that she’s cursed and all the bad things that he does are somehow her fault

doesn’t even bother to give this kid some fucking shoes

keeps killing her babysitters

I know I already said it, but it really can’t be stressed enough, this guy routinely disassembled her limbs on a molecular level, causing her excruciating pain and trauma, for the sake of trying to make himself the new drug-dealing kingpin of the underworld. he is sooo bad you guys

9. All for One

dad score - 11/100

is super creepy and manipulative and purposely brainwashed Tomura into hating All Might through a series of meticulously calculated encounters

decided the best way to help Tomura reach his full potential would be to step out of his life and get himself arrested

hasn’t even seen his other son, Izuku, since he was a baby! what a fucking deadbeat smdh

but on the other hand, he does seem supportive and indulgent towards Tomura and gives him lots of praise and encouragement

8. Endeavor

dad score - 39/100

abused his kid

abused his kid’s mom, in front of his kid

you wouldn’t even know it, but he actually has other kids, whom he never seems to acknowledge or pay even the slightest attention to whatsoever!

only had kids in the first place so he could raise his kids to beat All Might. has no problem telling this to said kids and even to All Might’s own face

having said that, the only reason his score isn’t in the negatives is because as of chapter 165, it seems like maybe? possibly? he just might be trying for the first time ever. or like. trying to try. if you can count showing up to Shouto’s supplemental course to shout “SHOOOOOOOOOOUUUUTOOOOOOOOO” at him from the stands as trying. but like, I feel like he is attempting to be encouraging. it doesn’t mean he’s not still a piece of shit, but if the guy is trying to be better then, like, it’s better than him not trying, you know?

but he’s still terrible

7. Kurogiri

dad score - 60/100

Tomura’s Actual Dad

is calm, rational, polite, and a respected doctor of medicine (probably) (idk you guys I just still get that vibe)

took Tomura and all the other kids on a character-building trip to Villain Island in an omake from chapter 149 which I consider to be canon

there’s nothing more dadlike than taking your kids camping and trying to teach them how to survive in the wilderness

taught Tomura how to get along with others

always seems to have his back, which is real important you guys

6. Gran Torino

dad score - 70/100

not the best score but a C is still respectable. mostly it’s just cuz he was out of the picture for so long. although we’ve since found out that Toshinori by his own admission had a habit of pushing away people who cared about him, so that may have had something to do with it

cares a lot about Toshinori even though he’s shit at showing it

made him into a man by beating the shit out of him until he got super strong

was right there in the thick of things with Toshinori during both of his fights against All for One. he straight up risked his life to back him up against the strongest villain alive

took it in stride when he found out he had a grandson that he’d never met, and took him under his wing as well and raised him for like three whole days and taught him how to use a microwave

5. Ochako’s Dad

dad score - 80/100

I probably should have given him a higher score, honestly. he seems really sweet. he’s probably a better dad than Bakugou’s Dad tbh, but Bakudad gets the edge just for the much steeper difficulty level. because let’s be honest, there’s a biiiig difference between raising a sweet baby angel like young Ochako, and raising a sentient roman candle with a potty mouth

but he works so hard to make ends meet, and somehow he and his wife managed to scrimp and save enough to send Ochako to U.A. because they wanted her to follow her dreams and they want the best for her

and they’ve always been so supportive of her on like the three occasions we’ve seen them in flashbacks or talking to her over the phone or visiting her after the sports festival

look at this thumbs up though

tell me that’s not the most dad thing you’ve ever seen in your fucking life

4. Bakugou’s Dad

dad score - 82/100

has like two lines in the entire series, but

as previously mentioned, raised Bakugou Katsuki and somehow survived to tell the tale. so honestly he probably deserves some kind of medal

also, since we know virtually nothing about him other than what was in the omake profile from volume 11, I’ve been imagining him as being kind of like Calvin’s Dad from Calvin and Hobbes

so he gets bonus points for that positive association

really there’s no reason for him to be this high up tbh except that I firmly believe he’s a great dad and I’m just waiting for canon to prove me right. I’ll be right here waiting, manga

3. RockLockRock

dad score - 90/100

he’s awesome

also, look. being a hero is inherently dangerous. you never know where you’re going to get called to next, and any mission could end up being your last. injuries and trauma go hand-in-hand with the job. most of the hero characters we’ve seen don’t have families, and I have to assume that’s not a coincidence. so to me, all of this means that if a hero character actually does go through with starting a family, it means they wanted that family more than anything, and you can bet they freaking love the shit out of said family. I have no doubt that RLR is and will continue to be an amazing dad

plus his kid is just too damn cute

2. Aizawa

dad score - 95/100

first of all, if this was a ranking of Hottest BnHA Dads, you better believe he’d be at the very top and it would be no contest

he has 20 kids and somehow he’s able to handle each and every one of them

risked his life to save the kids barely two weeks into the school year with no hesitation, even though he nearly died

did the same thing again barely two months later. this time thankfully without the nearly dying

has the total respect and trust of each and every kid in his class. and considering the personalities of some of them, that’s no small feat

specifically, it says a lot that even Bakugou doesn’t give him any lip and always listens to him without complaint and is even polite

speaking of Bakugou, he defended him to that Jerk Reporter during the Hideout Raid arc and proved that he understands his students better than anyone

isn’t afraid to deal out strict discipline when the situation calls for it, but it’s always for the students’ own good

isn’t above trolling the shit out of his kids on occasion when he feels like it

is good with kids of all ages and not just teenagers, as evidenced by how good he also was with Kouta during the forest invasion arc

lastly, as we saw in chapter 136, he has an untold repertoire of secret dad moves just waiting to be unleashed, such as (a) crouching down to a seated Deku’s eye level, and (b) gently punching him in the chest while affectionately calling him by a nickname. who knows what other moves this man has in reserve. I for one can’t wait to see more

1. All Might

dad score - 96/100

indisputable best dad. A+. although even he didn’t get a perfect score, because nobody is perfect and there’s always room for improvement

always knows exactly what to say. despite constantly seeming to stress about it. probably he only stresses because he cares so much and he’s worried about doing things exactly right

loving father to the two most difficult children in the whole series, Midoriya “which bones did you break this time” Izuku, and Bakugou “like I said, anyone who even attempts to parent this child automatically deserves a medal” Katsuki

this man literally got down on his hands and knees and begged Deku’s mom to let him try to be the Best Dad Ever to her child. he loves him so fucking much

gives THE best dad hugs

I need more All Might hugs

honorable mentions: 

Nighteye (I forgot about him until after I had already made the list and was too lazy to go back and insert him in his rightful place at number 3. 92/100. loses points for FUCKING DYING AND MAKING ME CRY)

Fat Gum (same deal as Nighteye in that I forgot about him. 75/100. he’s loving and jolly and gives out free candy, but he let Kirishima get all beat up. BE MORE CAREFUL NEXT TIME)

Vlad King (haven’t seen his dad skills in action much, but according to his profile he’s nicer to his kids than Aizawa is. okay but DID HE NEARLY MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THEM though. because Aizawa did. 85/100)

Present Mic (not a dad. is at best a Weird Uncle. 70/100)

Jirou’s Dad (I forgot about him too lol. he’s a wacky dad who likes to rock and roll! he tried to be a Stern Dad to impress All Might and Aizawa but failed miserably. took his wife’s last name!! so secure in his own masculinity. wants his daughter to live her best life and follow her passions. 93/100. he’s fucking great)

[junker-town]

The Chicago Sky are peaking at the perfect time

Photo by Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images

This is the Chicago Sky team we thought we’d see at the beginning of the season.

The Chicago Sky announced to the WNBA they were serious about going from a plucky upstart to a legitimate title contender when they signed living legend Candace Parker away from the Los Angeles Sparks at the start of the offseason. In adding Parker, the Sky didn’t just acquired a hometown icon (Parker grew up in suburban Naperville) and one of the most versatile players in the history of the sport. They also took on the burden of raised expectations.

When WNBA general managers were polled at the start of the year on who would win the championship, the Sky were tied for the second most popular pick after the Las Vegas Aces. While the Sky had a tantalizing mix of proven veterans and ascending talents on paper, they quickly learned how fragile contender status can be.

In their season opening win against the Washington Mystics, Parker went down with an ankle injury. The Sky had enough to win their next game against the Atlanta Dream, but the toll of losing Parker quickly set in. Chicago lost seven straight games without Parker, and didn’t break the streak until she returned three weeks later. Once it happened, the Sky couldn’t lose: they followed that seven-game losing streak with a seven-game winning streak, and showed signs of what the could team look like at its best.

It was that kind of season for the Sky, one defined by bouts of inconsistency. Chicago ended the year at 16-16 overall with the league’s No. 7 offense, No. 6 defense, and No. 6 net rating. In the 12-team WNBA, that is the definition of average.

The Sky have looked anything but average since entering the postseason, though. Chicago won two single elimination playoff games — first against the Dallas Wings, then against the favored Minnesota Lynx — to crash the semifinals. Waiting for Chicago was the league-best Connecticut Sun, a team that won the most games in the WNBA, finished with the best net rating, and also boasted the league MVP in dynamic big Jonquel Jones.

If the Sky were intimidated, you couldn’t tell from Game 1. The Sky won a double overtime thriller, 101-95, to give Connecticut only their second home loss of the season. The Sun responded by suffocating the Sky offense in the fourth quarter of Game 2 to even the series 1-1.

The Sky have their work cut out for them if they’re going to reach the WNBA Finals. Connecticut is that good. But after so much offseason hype, the Sky finally look like the team they were promised to be. With two Hall of Fame veterans, arguably the greatest shooter in the history of women’s basketball, and a pair of athletic wings flying up and down the court, the Sky are a team that’s hard to take your eyes off of. Here’s what makes them so much fun to watch.

Courtney Vandersloot is the Point Goddess

Courtney Vandersloot has a case as being one of the greatest point guards in the history of women’s basketball. If you think that sounds overly ambitious, just check the numbers.

Vandersloot has spent her entire WNBA career with the Sky after being taken No. 3 overall in the 2011 draft. She finished her college days at Gonzaga at No. 3 all-time in total assists. Now 32 years old, Vandersloot only seems to be getting better every year. She’s led the WNBA in assists five straight years, and is routinely putting up almost 100 more assists than her closest competition. She averages the most assists per game in league history by almost a full assist of No. 2 Ticha Penicheiro.

Game 1 against the Sun was Sloot at her best: 12 points, 18 assists, 10 rebounds, four steals, and two blocks in 44 minutes. It was only the second triple-double ever in the WNBA playoffs.

The greatest point guards seem to have a gift to pass their teammates open — not just pass to open teammates. Vandersloot has it. She sees the game two steps ahead of anyone else on the court. Having another basketball genius in Parker on her team has created some beautiful moments of symmetry all year.

This might have been the best of her 18 dimes with the Sky needing every bucket in overtime.

There have been some great passes in this game, like this Vandersloot feed to Parker pic.twitter.com/uaB1nO9syi

— Internet #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) September 29, 2021

The Sky posted the third highest assist percentage in league history this season, and Vandersloot’s imprint is all over that number. She has total control over every possession and a true gift for getting her teammates the ball in position to score. To watch her as a floor general is to see a master at work.

Candace Parker still has it

Parker has been a phenom since she entered the basketball world. She won the dunk contest at the 2004 McDonald’s All-American Game. She finished her career at Tennessee with two national titles, two Wooden Awards, and one very memorable dunk. She was the first pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft and won Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season — something only Wilt Chamberlain and Wes Unseld can say. She won another MVP in 2013, and her first WNBA championship with the Sparks in 2016. There’s also her two gold medals, her nine All-WNBA team selections, and her Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2020.

I think you get the picture: Parker is an icon in the game, and will be a Hall of Fame inductee as soon as her career is over. Now at 35 years old, she’s showing she still has a lot left in the tank.

At 6’4, Parker is the total package on the floor. She can handle like a guard.

Nasty crossover by Candace Parker in transition. Her layup extended the Sky lead to 3. pic.twitter.com/mBJkFIvOuq

— Positive Residual (@presidual) September 29, 2021

Pass like a guard.

watching this candace parker pass on repeat for foreverpic.twitter.com/ZdaQMhP1He

— whitney medworth (@its_whitney) September 29, 2021

Shoot like a guard:

Protect the rim like a center:

How many players in the history of the game can block a shot like this and immediately throw an incredible outlet pass the way Parker did in the first game of the season against the Mystics?

THIS CANDACE PARKER BLOCK AND PASS MY GOD pic.twitter.com/toG5kqCe77

— whitney medworth (@its_whitney) May 15, 2021

Parker is still so dynamic even late in her career. It’s not just her historic combination of size and skill that makes her so effective — she’s also one of the great basketball minds around.

Without Parker this season, the Sky struggled to win a game. With her, they’re going toe-to-toe with the league’s best team in the semifinals. Appreciate her while you still can.

Allie Quigley is a knockdown shooter off any action

Quigley is another Chicagoland legend who played her high school ball at Joliet Catholic and her college ball at DePaul. She’s a long-time staple on the Sky, and like her wife Vandersloot, she also seems to be getting better with age.

Now 35 years old, Quigley is a three-time All-Star (2017-2019) and two-time Sixth Woman of the Year. She’s also one of the best shooters in league history. She has three Three-Point Shootout titles to her name, and wowed fans with her run in the event in 2018.

Like so many of the greatest shooters ever, Quigley is extra difficult to contain because of her ability to off motion. The Sky run her in an endless loop of actions to free her from three, and she’s able to hit with just a tiny bit of daylight.

Watch how quickly she gets the shot up coming off this pindown:

Allie Quigley’s just so quick to her shot. She’s being denied under the basket, so she escapes and gets a pindown, which is all the space she needs to launch the 3. pic.twitter.com/UMTSHF6C6K

— Positive Residual (@presidual) September 26, 2021

All Quigley did in her age-35 season is hit 45.4 percent of her threes on 4.6 attempts per game. Playing off two historic passers this season has made Quigley even more dangerous.

Diamond DeShields and Kahleah Copper add athleticism on the wing

The Sky are led by their three veteran stars, but it’s a pair of younger players on the wings who give the team an added boost of defense, athleticism, and on-ball juice.

Kahleah Copper came to the Sky in the Elena Delle Donne trade. After being a bench player in her first three years, Copper made a star turn in the bubble by more than doubling her scoring average. This season, she earned her first All-Star team selection, and led the team in scoring.

Copper is a 6’1 wing who can pressure the ball defensively, and fearlessly slash to the basket on offense. Her jaunts to the lane have been incredibly fun to watch all season.

KAHLEAH OMG @kahleahcopper | #skytown pic.twitter.com/fY4wM7PONX

— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) October 1, 2021

As Copper has ascended, Diamond DeShields has taken a small step back. There was a time when DeShields looked like a future star — now she’s coming off the bench where she injects energy into any lineup.

At her best, DeShields can fly all over the floor and make highlight reel plays on both ends. There aren’t many wings in the league effortlessly elevating for a block like this:

Diamond DeShields said NOPE pic.twitter.com/T2gzBUi7rz

— ESPN (@espn) October 1, 2021

Just look at the explosion on this drive:

Diamond did THAT. @diamonddoesit1 pic.twitter.com/brbD2PHjry

— Just Women’s Sports (@justwsports) September 29, 2021

DeShields isn’t always the most efficient scorer, but when she’s on top of her game, the Sky are the best version of themselves. On a team with such a solid veteran foundation, it’s Copper and DeShields that have the potential to take the Sky to the next level.

For as talented as the Sky are, Connecticut can be even better

Jonquel Jones is a dominant offensive player in the middle who can bully her way to points inside, stretch the floor with her jumper, and attack the glass for tip-ins and put-backs. Alyssa Thomas is a physical force and somehow seems to be back at the peak of her powers after tearing her Achilles in January. Brionna Jones is a load as an interior scorer, and DeWanna Bonner is a 6’4 wing who can score from all three levels. It’s no fluke the Sun were the best team this season.

Sun vs. Sky is a wonderful stylistic clash with great players all over the floor. It was a winding road to get here for Chicago, but this is the team the Sky thought they had all year long.

[10moonymhrivertam]

A Wound Too Deep? An Academic Essay on authorial ethics and BBC’s Sherlock (The edited version)

Being asked to use one of my readings to complicate another has been a trial for me. With these readings, I’ve had no great breakthrough like I did with the last set. I must consider, though, that John Duffy’s “Writing Involves Making Ethical Choices” has struck a chord to do with my non-academic real life at the moment, if only because I believe Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss to have been unethical in their writing of BBC’s Sherlock. Duffy says a writer must ask themselves: “What kind of writer do I wish to be? What are my obligations to my readers? What effects will my words have upon others, upon my community?” I answer, as a fan, that whatever they wished, they were, in the end, deceitful writers; they did not fulfill their obligations to their viewers; and while the community that was created from fans coming together over their writing was a positive effect of said writing, their latest (possibly last) impact on said community was profoundly negative.

If one looks solely at the contents of Sherlock, it doesn’t appear deceitful. Up until series 4, it told a cohesive story that many people enjoyed! It was when you examined outside interviews or commentary that the relationship between Gatiss, Moffat, and their fans began to look deceitful. Many fans were growing confused by series three, except a small segment of their fandom that was reading the show through a queer lens - that the writers’ endgame was for John Watson and Sherlock Holmes to become explicitly romantically involved. These fans were told this wasn’t the case several times, but found it difficult to believe because of quotes like - “[W]e do our best to surprise you with a combination of lies and deceit. So we’re never going to tell you what we’re going to do.” (IGN, Jan 2014). So despite being told “I don’t think there is anything that suggests Sherlock is gay but if he was he wouldn’t fancy John [Watson]” by Steven Moffat (digitalspy.com), because the writers also frequently admitted they were lying to their audience, the audience took what they saw in the show and ignored what the writers said in “real life”, and when they heard in The Lying Detective (the second episode of series 4) that “romantic entanglement would complete [Sherlock] as a human being”, they were sure validation was coming. This was a show that had always seemed interested in separating man from legend, reminding everyone that the deer stalker was never mentioned outright in the original Holmes stories, just a flair by an illustrator that caught on like wildfire. The show had always tried its hardest to make Sherlock more human. Therefore, these niche fans were sure that despite the confusion they may have felt in the third or fourth season, the third episode of series 4 would end in a romantic arc, probably fighting against Moriarty, a prior big bad potentially brought back from the dead, or Sebastian Moran, who was Moriarty’s right-hand man in the books but who never showed up in the show. What they received instead was a secret psychopath sister, not even a hint of romance, and plot holes such as: an army doctor not recognizing human bones; John Watson chained to the bottom of a well but, despite still being chained, somehow managing to climb a rope to get out of the still-filling well; a well that was within sight of the Holmes’ house being used to drown a boy who was never found, except whose bones are still in the well, twenty or thirty years later, by the time the episode is set.

Gatiss and Moffat had a pretty playful rapport with their fans - everyone spent two years together waiting for series 2. The conclusion of series 2 spawned idea after idea after idea - there was a popular idea that Sherlock had jumped off to land in a laundry truck, or that somehow Moriarty’s corpse had been disguised as Sherlock and was what had fallen off the building. Fans were shocked and delighted to see both of these ideas pop up in the first episode of season 3, and that was when they began to wonder if the writers were aware of the fans’ social media presence, and therefore aware of what their fans believed their obligations were and what Moffat and Gatiss’ most dedicated demographic was - young, queer people. These young, queer fans believed that the writers’ obligations - as a gay man and a man who has several queer characters in his writing history (Jack Harkness, Madam Vastra, and Jenny, all from his time on Doctor Who), men who said that they were “correcting everyone else” (premiumhollywood.com) - were to “make television history” (This one comes from Amanda Abbington at a San Diego Comic Con) and make Holmes fandom history by explicitly pairing John and Sherlock together. The writers have teased endlessly at the idea (Sherlock’s brother, Sherlock’s landlady, and an old client of Sherlock’s - all people who have known Sherlock for an extended period - assume John and Sherlock are in a relationship within a day of each main character meeting the other; others don’t go that far but allude that our main characters do have feelings for each other - in A Scandal In Belgravia, Irene Adler - the baddie of the episode - remarks, after John has punched Sherlock, that “Somebody loves you. If I had to punch that face I’d avoid your nose and teeth, too.”) and therefore teased with fans’ expectations. Nothing has come of this teasing. It’s possible that something could happen, eventually - Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock, is contracted for five seasons, if I recall correctly - but I and many other fans are worried the writers have left the show in a place they cannot pick back up from. Moriarty, the traditional Big Bad of Holmes stories, is gone. Mary, who left our hero clinically dead on the operating table until he restarted his heart from sheer force of will, has been killed. The secret psycho sister, Euros, is neutralized. Who else is there to fight? How do you create character development without an antagonist? I suppose the antagonist would not have to be a person, but in a show that has always had Big Bads before, I find man vs. self an unlikely fix. The most sensible way to fix it would be to have had all of series 4 or at least parts of it taking place in a character's head - not unprecedented, given The Abominable Bride turning out to be a bizarre drug trip for one of our characters - but why would they not have told us within the series that it was “fake”, when the average wait-time between seasons is two years?

Sometimes I’m not sure what I did with myself before I started watching Sherlock. I suppose I must have talked to people interested in Doctor Who or Harry Potter, but I did not roleplay or publish my writing as often as I have for Sherlock. The community I have discovered is fiercely intelligent, and beautifully, unabashedly queer. It’s a very open community, filled with every letter under the queer umbrella. Sherlock brought together these young, intelligent queer people; both who were already intense fans of Arthur Conan Doyle’s version of Sherlock, and those who only had a background cultural awareness. It was a beautiful community, and I cannot deny that in creating it, the writers did a good thing. So one would hope the writers were aware that their audience was not exclusive cisgendered and straight and neurotypical. That there were people in their audience who were transgender or gay or depressed/had Asperger’s/were otherwise neurodivergent, who find one thing they can trust and cling to it as a lifeline. It is risky and, perhaps, unreasonable to blame writers for an audience’s reaction, but I feel the writers should have noticed the dissonance between this series and their others before their fans began passing around suicide hotlines. If series 4 turns out to be all in a character’s head, there should have been a textual indication left before the fans were put on hold for years. If series 4 is not all in a character’s head, and is indeed all “real”, I feel that someone at some point in the editing process should have noticed that this series would be getting a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 35%, as opposed to series 3’s 95%, series 2’s 98%, and the first series’ 98% (even the critics’ score drops from 100s or high 90s to a 63%). Alas, suicide lines were shared, and some of the loudest voices in the niche fan community have removed themselves, out of not being able to handle the hope of a “secret fourth episode”, or who feel awful for spreading “false hope”. It’s not only that they disappointed the fans with inconsistent writing, or that people didn’t see John and Sherlock confess their feelings, but that fans were sure they had found a bisexual man (John) and a gay, somehow neurodivergent man (Sherlock, and in the show, Asperger’s is offered off-handedly as an explanation for some of his behavior in The Hounds of Baskerville) who were finally going to have a happy ending. Instead, the only confirmed queer characters were antagonists or minor characters. Most notable are Irene Adler, who makes remarks suggesting Sherlock might be her ‘exception’ to her lesbian preferences and an antagonist in the single episode she shows up in; Jim Moriarty, who is introduced as a gay man trying to seduce Sherlock; Eurus, whose sexuality is introduced as she is talking about committing sexual assault and saying she wouldn’t have cared about the gender but no one could tell afterward whether her victim was a man or woman because she mutilated her victim so badly. So, yes, the writers created a wonderful, diverse, often divisive community, but failing to meet their viewers’ understanding of their obligations has left a lasting wound.

By Duffy’s definition of ethics and the philosophical questions he adapted to writing, Moffat and Gatiss have proved themselves to be unethical writers in the extreme. Just consider the dissonance between interviews in “real life” and writing on the show, not meeting their obligation of fixing what everyone else has done wrong and giving Sherlock Holmes a “romantic entanglement”, and hurting the community they created just before disappearing for at least another two years. Even if the writers return after those two years with a series 5 that fixes everything the fans were upset about - that plugs the plot holes, and has Sherlock and John talk about their feelings and perhaps even kiss - there will be some who are too wounded to return. Many who will stare, bewildered, from the sidelines, and wonder why there had to be gaslighting and the attacks on their queer reading before queer canon was handed to them on a silver platter.

Cornet, Roth. "Benedict Cumberbatch and Steven Moffat on Sherlock's Big Return for Season 3." IGN. IGN, 20 Jan. 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

Moffat, Steven, and Mark Gatiss. "The Lying Detective." Sherlock. BBC. 8 Jan. 2017. Television.

Posted by Will Harris (10/23/2010 @ 4:02 pm). "A Chat with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (“Sherlock”)." A Chat with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (“Sherlock”). N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

[michellelewis7162]

Why You Need To Play Online Pokies Instead of Bar Or Even Club Texas Hold'em Machines

Why You Need To Play Online Pokies Instead of Bar Or Even Club Texas Hold'em Machines

 Like many individuals who live in Aristocrat Pokies, you have actually most likely participated in the pokies at once or even an additional.

 You may also be a normal gamer? Or probably you merely use exclusive events in the course of visits to the casino site in your place. Whatever your pokie playing habits are, chances are you haven't however had a chance to take a look at internet pokies as an option. Aristocrat Pokies

 Why would you really want to participate in on the internet pokies?

 For starters, playing pokies in the pub or gambling establishment may be pricey. Think about just how much loan you must devote just before you also sit down at an equipment. Gas to the gambling enterprise or bar, car parking (if you can not obtain a free of cost one) and then you need to have to possess that alcoholic beverage very. Prior to you've even gone down a dollar in a maker, you've presently spent a few of your bankroll.

 Are you a tobacco smoker? Bad luck then, considering that currently with the new regulations, you may no more smoke while betting in a club or casino in Aristocrat Pokies

 The greatest cause however that you must take into consideration participating in on the internet pokies is completely for the payment amount which possesses a straight effect on your wins.

 You see, most land located devices in Aristocrat Pokies are actually scheduled to pay out 87-95% of what they take in. All pokies featuring Aristocrat and also IGT equipments in Australasia need to agree to strict governing policies set in spot due to the federal government of each nation.

 As clubs and also casinos possess higher expenses (power, staff, properties, carparks) you can be sure a lot of their equipments will be set to shell out on the reduced side of the scale. They need to purchase that amazing decor somehow! On the web casinos alternatively carry out not have the very same costs. They do not have the very same levels of team nor perform they have structures to pay rent on, so they pass these discounts on you such as higher pay portions.

 Yet another benefit of playing on the internet pokies is actually all the complimentary money that is on call to you.

 Yes, you read through that. Free of charge cash!

 You see, as the competitors for your patronage is actually so strong in the internet casino planet, they will certainly perform whatever they can just to acquire you in their gambling establishment, even giving away cost-free funds. When was the final time your local bar or casino carried out that?

 Typical on the internet gambling establishment promos involve offering you a 100% suit on your deposit. If you place $50 the casino will certainly match your $50, providing you $100 to participate in with. Naturally there are actually situations on this complimentary funds, however you'll certainly never obtain that type of promotion down at the club!

 Thus with a higher payment percentage (some as much as 98%), the ease of playing at home with the refrigerator nearby and all the free of charge money online gambling establishments use, why will you bother visiting the club or casino site to play pokies any more?

 Clearly it's not as social, yet lots of casino sites offer pokie competitions now as well where you can bet people for prizes as well as rewards.

 Aristocrat Pokies Slot Machines Or Even Pokies.

 In the 1950s, an Aristocrat Pokies firm got in touch with Aristocrat developed their first vending machine got in touch with the "Clubman." They modified it 2 years eventually along with a brand-new as well as improved gaming machine phoned the "Clubmaster." Nonetheless the very first fruit machine was initially generated in the United States of America by a man called Charles Fey.

 The next few many years supplied nothing new in terms of the activity innovation. They all possessed three rotating reels as well as either one, 3 or even five product lines. The pots were through today's standards small and the interactivity was limited to pulling the manage and also waiting for the reels to quit.

 It was certainly not up until the mid 1980's when the very first video clip ports spun off the assembly line and also were actually discharged to the general public. This was the greatest development in video gaming since Charles Fey had actually designed the initial video game. Certainly not simply did the activities have 5 reels yet the also had a lot more product lines and supplied extra technique to succeed including complimentary spin components as well as incentive functions.

 Nowadays, you are likely to find these coin-operated machine anywhere you use Aristocrat Pokies; coming from nightclubs to casinos. They are among the absolute most popular types of wagering and also entertainment.

 5 Best Paying Video Slot Machines When You Only Have $20.

 Over 90% of slot gamers are what I phone the non-high restriction group. Usually, it is actually described en masse of gamers that take anywhere coming from $50-$ 100 to a night out at the casino site. It is actually not a lot of funds to partner with, considering a pair elements like greater line bank on some devices and also a big assortment of different machines. Through this in mind, it's quick and easy to view just how fun most makers look, as well as a result really want the opportunity to play as much of all of them as feasible. Whether an enthusiastic slot player is participating in only for exciting, or even the possibility of bring in a great healthy yield, it is actually a good tip to recognize a number of the absolute most generous paying one-armed bandit so you can double, three-way or even more, the cash that you do have. After spending several top quality hours talking to gamers as well as watching others play some video clip fruit machine, here is what they state are one of the most regular paying games.

 5. Carnival Of Mystery (IGT)- A perennial timeless and also still a massively prominent game, Carnival of Mystery provides a lot to slot gamers. Wildly constant hitting bonus games with multipliers and also a multi-way paying reel format make this set of the top rate high reimbursement devices. The minimal wager is merely 25 for max lines, however I will directly ramp this up to 50 or perhaps 75 credit reports per spin to make the most of the succeed aspect. Not just are going to you enjoy the delicious graphics as well as symbols, however you'll be actually amazed at the big wins you'll obtain!

 4. Sunshine & Moon (Aristocrat)- Popular for a married couple main reasons. One, you win practically intermittent spin! And also second, the benefit is actually incredibly very easy to achieve. Succeed the incentive by acquiring pair of or even more scatter sunlight and also moon crazy icons from entrusted to appropriate and you initiate the spins function. Even with such a low bet, like 20 or even 40 credit scores, I've viewed manies dollars succeeded effectively as well as regularly! And also most importantly, you can gain up to 50 cost-free rotates! Probably the absolute most cost-free turns accessible on any kind of device!

 3. Sirens or Cave King (IGT)- Both video games are actually quite the exact same, simply a different sort of genre of personality. Both games include a massive paying for piled sign style with beautiful graphics and also liberal pays out like none other. The most ideal component regarding these machines is actually the bonus. Trigger it along with merely 3 or even more existing benefit signs and you'll prepare to participate in the free turns function. In the free of charge spins, there is actually a great deal happening. You can easily earn on product line succeeds coming from left to appropriate and right to left, so there is actually a whole lot to become anticipating even though you do not hit anything matching on the 1st couple falters. If you spell out bonus offer, you have the option to participate in a second game where you can gain big prizes. Around a thousand dollars sometimes !!

 2.50 Lions (Aristocrat)- Not a lot to be claimed below concerning this traditional online video slot. Some of the extremely prosperous releases through this company, 50 Lions acquires you excited from the beginning. The first activity play is actually understandable and also it pays for very regularly. Most of the amount of time you earn money your wager back and afterwards some. The perk is actually significant with the piled wild and also cougar symbolic representations that pays significant money just about continuously. If you only have $twenty, I very recommend providing this a try out when you to begin with get to the gambling establishment.

 1. Prairie Wolf Moon (IGT)- IGT possessed a runaway excellence through this device and very most others like it. Adding only an added row as well as carrying out piled wilds on a maker for the first time created this a scorching launch. Bet only 40 or even 80 and also you are going to certainly make 5-10 times your cash in mins, it is actually that great! Players just get 5 benefit spins when set off, yet it spends massive and the benefit retriggers really regularly. If you are actually attempting to win whole lots of money on only your $20, making this the utmost video game to participate in.

 Which rounds out the checklist of favorites that players mention makes all of them one of the most money with low wagers. In addition, the wonderful information is that you don't must bet a whole lot to win a lot, in most instances, merely 25-50 pennies a try will certainly do merely great! So the upcoming time you're in the gambling enterprise, look into these preferred video games and create them your first choice!

 For beginners, participating in pokies in the pub or even gambling enterprise can be actually expensive. If you deposit $Fifty the casino site will match your $50, offering you $100 to participate in along with. Along with this in mind, it is actually simple to see exactly how fun very most equipments look, and also for that reason really want the opportunity to participate in as several of all of them as achievable. Whether a serious port gamer is actually playing only for enjoyable, or the prospect of making a nice well-balanced gain, it is actually a great idea to recognize some of the most generous spending port devices so you can easily double, three-way or even more, the amount of money that you perform possess. After spending several top quality hours interviewing gamers and also watching others play some video clip port machines, listed here is what they say are the very most recurring paying for video games.

[studyblrland]

How Many Hours Should I Study For Class 12?

Trust me... My story will really give you some great motivation

Well.. Really depends on how quickly you grasp things... understand them.. And apply...

I really didn't study the whole.. Year.. Failed in half yearly... And then in the preboards that happened in.... January - February I guess... I scored

33/100 in Maths

32/70 in Physics

41/70 in Chemistry

81/100 in English

Didn't give P. E.... But in the past managed to score 50%...

But I always thought I can cover it up... And somehow.. Everyone trusted me.. As I was bright student until 11th started and a series a failures followed.. I can blame that to a new Wi-Fi connection that I asked for desperately.... But..

If you really want better results from your studying with less effort download this free audiobook 'Unlimited Memory' and get more done in less time.

Convinced my teachers that plz help in the practicals department and I won't let you down... They Trusted me... I'm glad....

And then when there was a 20 day break I started studying... Covered a bit of physics but.. Lost out on. Most. Of the parts... The real study stated when the exams started and there was no scope of procrastination... I tried... And then..

BOOM....!!!...

95 in maths and physics

94 in English... 92 in PE and 91 in chemistry...

pretty good leap I guess....

So the whole thing is.. You can do stuff.. But you just need determination.. And the right way of doing things...

I did this in 20 days.. You can do it too... but think of the possibilities when. You study the whole year.. 2 months surely would fetch better results than this you know.. 5 months. Even more.. But if for. Some reason you. Can't.. Then start.. Whenever you can... Goodluck..

Source: This question on Quora.

[freebestbettingtips]

FA Cup Tactical Analysis & Statistics: Wolves vs Liverpool

New Post has been published on https://bestfreebettingtips.com/fa-cup-tactical-analysis-statistics-wolves-vs-liverpool/

FA Cup Tactical Analysis & Statistics: Wolves vs Liverpool

At Etihad Stadium last Thursday, Liverpool suffered their first defeat of the Premier League season against fellow title contenders Manchester City, ending a 20-match league unbeaten streak. They were looking to rebound from this loss in an FA Cup third round tie against Wolves, and regain their momentum upon return to league play.

Line-ups

In the midst of a claustrophobic time in the schedule and with a glut of injuries to the squad, Jurgen Klopp opted to start a number of young players and back-ups. Amongst those were two debutants in Rafa Camacho and Curtis Jones. Ki-Jana Hoever would come off the bench early on for Dejan Lovren to become the third. This was of course risky, but it provided many key players like Virgil van Dijk, Andrew Robertson, and Sadio Mané some much needed rest. In total, the German manager made nine total changes to the starting XI.

Nuno Espirito Santo on the other hand sent out a full-strength starting XI, choosing to continue with the back-three system he has been utilising all season. The Portuguese manager has guided Wolves to ninth spot in the table after winning four of their last seven league matches, including a 3-1 win against Tottenham Hotspur. One of those seven matches however was a 2-0 loss to Liverpool at Molineux Stadium.

Camacho, James Milner, and poor build-up

Klopp’s organization of the starting lineup in a 4-4-2 formation suggested he wanted to have a defensively sturdy team. There were a number of reasons this failed however, one of them being a lack of discipline from the right-back Camacho. Although he is most frequently a winger, his movements in defence were at times too brash. This left the right side of Liverpool’s backline open for the opponent.

While some of Camacho’s intercepting runs were well-timed and with pace, they often left him too high up the pitch. Here, Camacho’s pass was too far behind Origi, and as a result was easily intercepted.

Camacho’s positioning left Vinagre with plenty of space ahead of him, forcing Camacho’s teammates to attempt to cover it. Another problem Liverpool had at the back was in the build-up of possession. With Lovren subbed off early due to injury, the 16-year-old Hoever was thrust into the match.

While he was composed on the ball throughout, this was a difficult task for the Dutchman. James Milner was often forced to drop back from midfield to both receive the ball and instruct Hoever on where to position himself or where to play a pass. Milner doesn’t usually control the midfield, let alone play almost as a midfield pivot in the build-up, and it showed. His poor reception of a back pass centrally led to Wolves’ first goal.

After dropping deep to try and aid in distribution, Milner moved forward to become a back pass outlet. He received the ball with a poor first touch however, and the Wolves players around him quickly took advantage.

Diogo Jota did a good job at timing his sprint so that his body was between Milner and Raul Jimenez, which gave Jimenez plenty of time and space to make a decision on how to shoot the ball around the keeper.

Another poor aspect of Milner’s play was his distribution. While he did complete 95 passes at a 90% completion rate, many of these were sideways or back passes, even when he dropped deep between the centre backs. The times he did play a pass forward, his slow turning and slow passing held him up.

After receiving the ball from the backline, Milner looks up while dribbling to find a forward player to pass to. He looks at his potential receiver, Jones, for too long, and telegraphs the pass. This pass was easily picked up by a Wolves player.

Perhaps the only positive that came from this match for Liverpool was the play of Fabinho. At Monaco, Fabinho played both at right-back at times and as a central defensive midfielder. With the lack of personnel this match, the Brazilian was forced to play as a centre back, and did so with poise, picking smart passes and controlling connections to the midfield.

Lovren’s exit could become a problem with Joe Gomez and Joel Matip already injured, but if Liverpool do somehow end up without those three for a match or two, Fabinho proved he is capable of stepping into that role in some form.

Lack of attack

At the other end of the pitch, Liverpool’s attack lacked both intensity and consistency. Naby Keita had a few effective dribbles through the midfield, but the connecting player rarely completed the end product. Origi’s equalising goal showed good control in a tight space, but the Belgian didn’t show much intent the rest of the match. Xherdan Shaqiri had a brilliant free kick that hit the post. His passes also failed to find a useful outlet, and he didn’t contribute much defensively when needed.

The last time these two clubs met, Wolves had a number of opportunities in Liverpool’s half, but were stopped by Virgil van Dijk and Alisson. This time around, the Liverpool defence didn’t have either player to rely on, and the Midlands club’s attackers got around the back four with relative ease.

This is too much space to give Ruben Neves, a midfielder known for shooting and scoring from well outside the box.Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah were subbed on with 20 minutes remaining, showing Klopp’s intent to advance in the tournament. The compact defending from Wolves was enough to limit the chances.

The organized 5-3-2 defending from Wolves late in the match prevented most Liverpool chances before they began.

Conclusion

There were numerous areas of disappointment in this match for Liverpool. Simon Mignolet was unsteady, the backline’s inexperience was evident, the midfield struggled to progress with the exception of Keita on occasion, and the forwards were underwhelming. Playing this level of a line-up, especially in a rather unlucky draw against another Premier League club, was always a risk.

While the loss was a poor one, the view ahead isn’t terrible for Liverpool. The loss against City intensified the league title race and the club is in the knockout stages of the Champions League. With these being the only competitions remaining for the Reds, you can be sure Klopp will go full steam ahead with first team players and make the remaining matches count.

If you love tactical analysis, then you’ll love the digital magazines from totalfootballanalysis.com – a guaranteed 100+ pages of pure tactical analysis covering topics from the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga and many, many more. Get your copy of the FIRST of two December issues for just ₤4.99 here, or the SECOND of the December issues with an annual membership right here.

[junker-town]

We got the greatest simulated video game ending ever with our upstart college basketball team

Western Illinois starts a new era in their quest for a national championship in ‘College Hoops 2K8’. This is Year 6 and Year 7 of the journey.

Thank you for returning to Western Illinois’ quest for college basketball immortality in College Hoops 2K8. We introduced this series a few weeks back and laid the foundation for the program with our first full recruiting class in Year 1. We finally made the NCAA tournament in Year 3, winning a thriller in the Summit League title game. Year 5 saw our program win its first NCAA tournament game.

We’ll have an announcement about the future of the series at the end of this story. But first, here’s a recap of what happened in the last post:

Finished Year 4 at 22-10. Was swept 3-0 by Oral Roberts during the season, including in the Summit League conference tournament semifinals. We ended up making the NIT, where we were blown out by Clemson.

Added two recruits after Year 4: five-star JUCO point guard Damon Hendriks, and five-star JUCO power forward Dawud Byfield.

Finished Year 5 at 28-4. Lost to Southern Utah in the conference tournament championship game, but still somehow got an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament as an No. 11 seed. We earned our first NCAA tournament win, beating No. 6 Miami (Florida) in the opening round. The dream ended the next weekend against Florida State, where we lost by one damn point in the Round of 32.

Graduated my first recruiting class, led by one-time Summit League conference player of the year Bud Richards.

Added two recruits: four-star power forward Ira Willis and three-star center Burton Ballinger.

Here’s a picture of the roster heading into Year 6:

Ballinger has B potential, the highest I’ve ever had at Western Illinois. Willis — my first top-100 recruit — also looks solid at 75 overall with C+ potential. I’d love to redshirt Willis, but I would only have eight scholarship players on the roster in that case, so I decide to make him my ninth man and let him backup both forward spots. I’ll likely redshirt him a year from now.

Here’s a look at the rotation:

It feels like we’re not quite as talented as last year, and we certainly won’t have the same team unity — one of the factors teams are evaluated by based on their playing experience together. I still like what we have, though.

You already know Tracy Hehn and Wilbur Messy, a pair of four-year starters who should both be sick scorers on the wing as seniors. I’m super excited about Hendriks — my first five-star recruit as a JUCO player — and the start of his three-year stint as starting point guard. My front court is a little green, with Byfield starting in his first season eligible and Van manning the five as a redshirt sophomore. Ward, a gigantic senior center — at 7’1, 260 pounds — will come off the bench. My eight-man rotation is still pretty damn good.

My team is an 89 overall, clearly the best in the Summit League again. No other team is better than 73 — Oral Roberts and Southern Utah.

I also have six scholarships to fill

We need everything, and we absolutely cannot blow it in recruiting like we did last year when we went 2-for-5 on available scholarships. Following our recruiting struggles last season, reader James sent an email proposing I overhaul my recruiting philosophy to purposefully limit myself to 2-3 open scholarships per year. Here are his words:

As an invested fan, I wanted to volunteer one thing, considering the limited number of recruiting points at your disposal. The approach that you took in recruiting the class which included Damon Hendriks and Dawud Byfield seems like an approach you could take every year: focusing on two or three more talented guys, and utilizing the redshirt religiously. Treating recruiting and roster management this way seems like it should do two big things for WIU:

1. That you never need to land more than three guys in a given year, and can devote more attention/points to fewer and more talented guys in each recruiting class.

2. It gives you a shortcut to developing regular upper-class depth and roster balance — seven or eight rotation-worthy true upperclassmen every season AND two or three redshirt freshmen to draw from.

He then included a scholarship chart:

It’s an intriguing offer — and possibly the greatest email I’ve ever received — but I decide to recruit for all six of our open scholarships instead.

I start off targeting four-star shooting guard Lubos Hatten (No. 66 overall, No. 16 SG) and three-star power forward Denver Lane (No. 158 overall, No. 30 PF). Lane is 6’10, 242 pounds and a 45 percent three-point shooter, so I’m thinking he could potentially play three positions for me if I get him.

Here’s my full slate of offers:

Four-star shooting guard Lubos Hatten (No. 66 overall, No. 16 SG)

Three-star small forward Adham Tyler (No. 107 overall, No. 15 SF)

Three-star power forward Joseph Bowens (No. 106 overall, No. 18 PF)

Three-star point guard Armein Amous (No. 155 overall, No. 61 PG)

Three-star power forward Denver Lane (No. 158 overall, No. 30 PF)

Three-star center Harlan Fullove (No. 195 overall, No. 17 center)

First game: @ Illinois

I’m scheduling these nerds every year until I beat them. As a reminder, they whooped my ass last year. Can I get revenge this season?

The Illini are ranked No. 13 in the preseason polls and are a 95 overall. Looks like video game Bruce Weber was able to parlay that 2006 championship game run better than real life Bruce Weber.

Oh my. Blown out, 99-57. Ugly start for my post-Bud Richards era.

Next game: UW-Milwaukee. We win, 76-56. Nelke and Messy each score 15. We have local rival Illinois State after that, and get a 95-69 win. Hendriks balls out with 18 points on 4-of-5 shooting from three — his first signature performance in what we’re expecting to be a long line of them. Ward also chips in 13 off the bench against the Redbirds.

We face Texas A&M next. AGGIES GOING DOWN.

Look at my boy Nelke with a team-high 17 points off the bench. Dude is going to be a stud. Unfortunately, the feel-good vibes from that win are short-lived: Southern Utah beats us by three the following week.

Back on the recruiting front, we’re sitting pretty with Hatten but don’t land him at the end of the early recruiting period even though he’s at 98 percent interest. Now I’m going to have to waste points calling him the rest of the year, which could have went to other players. Denver Lane ends up getting an offer from Central Michigan, so I drop him. The tough week for recruiting continues when Tyler gets a UConn offer and Fulllove gets a Penn offer. I need to find three new recruits.

Big game against Michigan this week. We take a 77-74 loss. Tough. That drops us to 4-3 on the year. Here’s the remainder of the non-conference schedule:

We blow out South Florida.

Play No. 24 Duke at Cameron Indoor and lose a heartbreaker, 77-72. Damn. Hehn (18 points) and Van (13 points) both play well in the loss.

Beat Belmont by eight and lose to Ball State by four. The Leathernecks are 6-5 overall.

Back to recruiting, I’ve maxed out interest in both Hatten and Bowens. I’m praying Bowens doesn’t get a North Florida offer because he’s a Jacksonville kid and his No. 3 priority is being close to home. As long as they don’t get a surprise offer late in the process, I should have two really promising recruits locked up as soon as the spring signing period begins.

The rest of my class currently looks less convinced. I’m still working on Amous, a solid but unspectacular point guard I offered on the first week, and I’ve identified three-star shooting guard Ljubisa Copeland as a potential backup plan if I miss on any of my other guards.

Mcgee gets an offer the next week, so I drop him and set out to find a center. I settle on Jordi Geli Holden, who is ranked only No. 24 at the position but has the right mix of size and AAU production. Full blown conference play is about to start.

I win my next seven games in conference, highlighted by Messy dropping 28 points on Fort Wayne and Byfield scoring 21 on South Dakota State. We hang 101 points on hated enemy Oral Roberts the next game, with Hehn going off for 26 points and Van scoring 22 in the win. The Leathernecks are starting to find their stride at 13-5 overall. Next game is at North Dakota State, and we blow them out, behind 29 points from senior star Tracy Hehn.

We win out the rest of the year and finish the regular season on a 16-game winning streak. We’re 22-5 overall and the No. 1 seed in the Summit League entering the conference tournament.

Here’s what my roster looks like entering the conference tournament — some solid internal improvement from the guys this season. Hehn leads the team in scoring at 15.4 points per game.

Summit League tournament

We have South Dakota State in the opening around — and beat them, 78-57, behind 20 points from Hehn. Next up: Southern Utah. Why am I so nervous for this?

We get a huge win, 103-53. Six Leatherneck players in double-figures, led by Van with 19 points and 12 rebounds. Now I have Oakland in the title game.

We beat Oakland, 78-66. We’re going dancing for the second straight year at 25-5 overall.

We’re an 11-seed against No. 6 Washington in the first round.

NCAA tournament

Wow, Washington is a 99 overall. How are they only a No. 6 seed? Classic Lorenzo Romar ball, to be honest. We’re a 92 entering the tournament, with seven players rated in the 80s. My team has come along really well, but I still feel like I’m a huge underdog. Going to need the seniors Hehn and Messy to play the games of their lives.

I settle down to watch this game (reminder: I’m not playing any of the games during this dynasty, just watching the computer sim). That was a big mistake, because I’m never getting that hour of my life back.

Blown. The. Hell. Out. Season over. Memphis wins the title. I don’t even get any new coaching points.

Hehn and Messy both graduate. Love those dudes.

Now it’s time to restock my roster for the future with these six open scholarships.

Recruiting

We open spring recruiting by landing two studs: No. 66 overall shooting guard Lubos Hatten and No. 106 overall power forward Joseph Bowens. Hatten immediately becomes the top recruit in program history, replacing Ira Willis, who was once ranked No. 82 overall. Bowens looks fantastic, too. Look at that three-point shooting!

A week later, I win a long recruiting battle for 5’11 point guard Armein Amous, who is ranked No. 155 overall. Three-star shooting guard Ljubisa Copeland (No. 140 overall) is another guy I’ve been recruiting since the fall, and I sign him as well. Jordi Geli Holden, the No. 24 center and No. 259 overall player, also signs on as my fifth recruit in the class.

I decide to take a big swing with my one open scholarship: 6’9 small forward Phil Powell, ranked No. 103 overall and the No. 15 player at his position. For whatever reason, this guy has very little interest from other programs, which is just what Ricky Charisma wanted to see.

To be fair, this guy’s offensive stats were terrible in AAU — 7.4 points per game on 25.6 percent shooting from the field and 19.2 percent shooting from three. He has great size though and has to be rated this highly for a reason, right?

I land Powell on the last week of recruiting. Super excited to see what he’s rated and where his potential is at. And with that, I have filled all six of my scholarships.

That’s a six-man class with three players ranked in the top 110 and five players ranked in the top 155. Centers are always lower in the recruiting rankings for some reason, but I landed a top-25 guy at that position, too. Huge class!

Now I have to set the schedule for next year. I decide to play every team in Illinois, because why not? The Leathernecks want to own this state. This non-conference schedule is beautiful:

Ahead to my seventh season.

Year 7

Here’s a first look at the roster.

Nelke is actually an 86 at shooting guard, but we have to move him to small forward because I don’t have anyone else at that position and he’s big enough to do it at 6’6, 217 pounds. Also, my five best players are my five starters, which hasn’t been the case previously in this dynasty.

Waller is my best player despite the fact that he hasn’t been a starter before his redshirt senior year because I’ve had so much depth in front of him. He goes up a couple points when I move him to shooting guard. We’re going to have three natural point guards in the starting lineup this year, which sounds extremely up my alley. Waller, Nelke, and Hendriks are all rated 88 or better as three-point shooters, too. Give me all of the high-IQ ball handlers who can shoot with range. I also decide to abandon my plan to redshirt Willis because I need him as sixth man this year who could play either forward position.

Here’s a look at how the freshmen are rated:

C Jordi Geli Holden: 75 overall, C potential (No. 259 overall/No. 24 center)

SG Lubos Hatten: 75 overall, B- potential (No. 66 overall)

SF Phil Powell: 73 overall, A- potential (No. 103 overall)

PF Joseph Bowens: 73 overall, B+ potential (No. 106 overall)

SG Ljubisa Copeland: 72 overall, C potential (No. 140 overall)

PG Armein Amous: 68 overall, C+ potential (No. 155 overall)

I decide to redshirt Holden, Powell, Bowens, and Copeland. Hatten is going to the first guard off the bench and the last player in eight-man rotation. The plan is to redshirt Hatten next year when I have more depth. I’m also keeping Amous active this year as my ninth man, even though he isn’t in the rotation, just for games when guys get into foul trouble.

Here’s a look at the rotation:

Western Illinois enters the season at a 90 overall. With four redshirt juniors in the starting lineup, we should be even better next year.

I only have one scholarship to work with. Since I’m not totally sure Amous will be good enough to eventually lead a powerhouse team even as fifth-year senior, I decide to put a bunch of point guards on my target list. Eventually, I offer five-star JUCO Darrel Ogunride, a 6’3 lead guard from Chicago.

First game: @ Illinois

An opening night tradition of getting my brains beat in unlike any other. The Illini are already 2-0 and ranked No. 18 in the country when I face them. One time, Leathernecks?

OH, HELL YEAH! 69-63! Holy shit!

Look at those three point guards do work. I’m counting this as a program-defining win. Could I have a chance to crack the top 25 this year?

We beat UIC by 20 (Nelke: 17 points, Van: 15 points, 10 rebounds) then beat Loyola, 62-51, (Van: 19 points) to end the next week. As the early signing period begins, we get revenge on Northern Illinois with a 30-point win (Byfield: 26 points, four blocks) and then beat Bradley, 82-56 (Van: 16 points). We’re 5-0 to start the year.

Our first loss comes during one of these weird early conference games, where I somehow lose to South Dakota State, 65-62. We scored 16 points in the second half. Was there a killer party in Macomb last night that no one told Coach Rick about?

As early recruiting ends, I have a lead for Ogunride but Illinois is now hot on his trail, too:

Two local heavyweights on the schedule this week: Northwestern and DePaul. First up is the Wildcats.

It didn’t go so well:

DePaul also beats me, 68-66. I really thought we could go undefeated two weeks ago.

I got Southern Illinois next, and win, 83-62. Unfortunately, that didn’t impress the point guard I’m recruiting: we go from first to third for Ogunride in the course of one week. Bummer, because he seems super good. I drop him and extend an offer to my backup plan, Nikola Stockman, a 6-foot point guard from local Peoria ranked No. 104 overall

I beat Illinois State and Eastern Illinois by 21 points each. Waller pops off for 19-5-5 against EIU. I’m 11-3 as I get into the thick of conference play. Can I run the table?

We start out 5-0 with my closest win being 19 points. I end up winning out. A lot of red dubs on the schedule this year:

We enter the conference tournament at 25-3 overall. Van somewhat surprisingly leads the team in scoring (15.2 points per game) and rebounding (6.4 per game). Waller (13.1) and Nelke (12.0), and Byfield (11.7) are my other double-figure scorers. Hendriks averages 9.9 points per game.

Summit League tournament

We have Southern Utah in the first round of the Summit League tournament. And we win, 64-59. Uh, that was kind of tight?

I play Fort Wayne next in the conference semifinals. Another win, 65-53. The only team standing between Western Illinois and another NCAA tournament berth is my old nemesis, Oral Roberts. I’m a 92 overall and they’re a 70 overall, so I probably shouldn’t be as nervous for this game as I am.

We win, 82-61. WE’RE DANCING AGAIN.

This is our third straight NCAA tournament appearance. The team is 28-3 on the year. Could I finally get a seed that isn’t in the double-digits?

To find out, I actually watch the Selection Sunday show, hosted by virtual Greg Gumble. Remember when I said this game is, like, insanely deep in terms of features in Legacy mode? This is one of them. Even after I eventually start skipping ahead, the show still runs for over nine minutes.

Please, enjoy this ridiculous video game TV show with me:

NCAA tournament

We get a No. 10 seed — our best ever — and draw a first-round matchup with No. 7 seed NC State. Winner is likely getting second-seeded Georgetown in the Round of 32.

Before I do this, I check out my roster again. Waller is now a 90, making him the first player in program history to hit that mark. I have seven guys rated at least in the 80s.

My team is pretty nasty: lots of shooting and ball handling in my three-point guard lineup on the perimeter, my lowest-rated starter is an 84 overall, and I have two guys in the 80s coming off the bench.

I think I have enough to make a tournament run this year, but NC State looks tough.

Of course I’m watching this one. Music is again provided by my bud Patrick Cosmos from his album Tonal Rotors.

Let’s do this.

***

***

***

***

***

***

***

I think I’m going to throw up.

I asked my forever colleague Mike Prada to GIF my fucking heart breaking.

Manning absolutely killed me all night (37 points on 15-of-24 shooting), and he ends up hitting a 35-foot dagger at the buzzer to win it. Unreal. We end the year 28-4 overall. I’m going to need a couple days to get over this.

Maryland wins the title. Van wins Summit League Player of the Year as a junior. Here’s a look at Coach Rick’s resume after seven seasons:

I get offered the Wichita State job and turn it down. I only have one available scholarship and that gets wrapped up in the first week when Stockman accepts my offer.

Time to set my schedule for next year. I figure I’m going to have a loaded team with four redshirt senior starters, so give us a real test before conference play? I’m going at UCONN, at Michigan State, at Arizona, at North Carolina, at Notre Dame, and at Wisconsin.

Year Eight

This is going to be a special season. Here’s a first look at the roster.

To be continued

This is unfortunately the last post on Western Illinois’ chase for a championship at SB Nation. I’m going to continue writing the series entirely for free over here. Please sign up to follow along.

If you signed up for email updates here, you should be transferred over. Year 8 is going to run Saturday or Sunday at the new site. I can’t wait to see what next year’s roster can do. I hope you continue following along. Thanks for reading and engaging.

[samuelfields]

The Rapid Depreciation Of A Harvard Education: How Private School Grads Can Still Save Themselves

When I was applying to colleges in 1994, I thought only extremely smart or talented people attended Harvard. I had heard stories about the rich buying their kids’ ways into Harvard, but I was unaware of the details.

As a public school kid with an OK SAT score, a 3.6 GPA, and unspectacular extracurricular activities (tennis team captain vs. eradicating malaria in a small village in West Africa), I decided to save myself hundreds of dollars in application fees and apply to mostly local state schools like UVA, Mary Washington, and William & Mary instead. Paying less than $3,000 a year in in-state tuition even back then felt like a steal.

After graduating from William & Mary, I got a job in the international equities department at Goldman Sachs in NYC. That’s where I got to interview hundreds of Ivy League and other elite private institution graduates as part of Goldman’s consensus-driven interview process where even grunts get to interview candidates.

We ended up rejecting over 95% of the candidates due to poor fit. It wasn’t that they were not smart, because they were. We only wanted people we could sit next to for 12-14 hours a day. It obviously helped if they had an international background, spoke multiple languages, and had a passion for equities. But we were mostly looking for great teammates.

Rejecting the majority of elite private college graduates made me realize they are no different from you and me. For the next 13 years, I’d compete with these folks on the ruthless battlegrounds of finance and smash them to bits most of the time because of my hunger. Coming from a non-target public school background with middle-class parents, I wasn’t going to squander my opportunity for financial independence.

Today, I am a small business owner with business owning friends. Recently, some of us have noted a growing negativity towards alumni of elite private schools. This is a problem (or a solution) for parents who plan to spend lots of money starting in grade school in the hopes their kid will attend a school like Harvard. This is also a potential problem for private university alumni who might unfairly be judged by the masses.

If you are one of these alumni, don’t be upset about the trend against the 1%. Instead, read with an open mind and pay attention as your future or your kids’ future might depend on it.

This article will address:

1) Why there is a growing negative perception about private university graduates

2) What we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American discrimination lawsuit

3) What you can do to fight back against the negative perception

The Harvard / Asian-American Discrimination Lawsuit

One of the reasons Harvard University fought so hard to keep its admissions process a secret was because it didn’t want the world to judge it for how it picked winners and losers. Due to social media and the internet, they knew that the jury of public opinion would come down on them like a guillotine.

Here are some interesting things we’ve learned so far from the Asian-American discrimination lawsuit against Harvard:

~5.9% overall acceptance rate

~33.6% acceptance rate for legacy (67% of students are not legacy)

~40% acceptance rate for children of donors

~70%+ if both legacy and donor

~86% if recruited athlete

Think about these statistics for a bit. If you are simply born into a family where one of your parents or grandparents went to Harvard, you have a 5X greater chance of getting into the University than someone who has no legacy status.

One can argue legacy admissions help create a stronger university culture, and that there should be some preference. Maybe a 1X boost to 11.8% would be fair. But a 5X preference seems excessive.

Meanwhile, if you donate money to Harvard, which already has the world’s largest university endowment at over $35 billion, your child’s acceptance rate chances go up by 7X the average admissions rate.

Based on intimate conversations I’ve had with a Harvard undergraduate and business school alum who also was on their fundraising committee for a couple years, between 2000 – 2010, you could donate between $250,000 – $500,000 and effectively help give your child a 7X advantage. Today, he says the donation figure is “in the millions.”

Now imagine you are a legacy candidate whose parents are also rich enough to donate millions of dollars to Harvard. You’ve got a 12X greater chance of getting into Harvard than some smart kid with great extracurricular activities whose parents are not as rich or connected enough to help. You are practically a shoe-in.

This is not a meritocracy by any means. This is affirmative action for the rich and connected – the very people who need the least amount of help. 

Another interesting thing we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American lawsuit is that the overall acceptance rate at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions was much higher in the past. For example, Harvard admitted 92.4% of applicants for the class of 1941 (1,092/1,182) while 14.6% were admitted for the class of 1992. (~2,107/14,430 with 1,605 enrollees.) See: The Chosen

In other words, it should be more impressive if you are a younger Harvard alumnus than if you are an older Harvard alumnus.

With the number of international students applying to US universities growing, it’s only natural to expect the acceptance rate to continue shrinking despite the reality that education via the internet is now free. In other words, the overall madness of paying enormous sums of money for a depreciating pedigree continues unabated. However, I believe this situation will eventually change, at least here in America.

But What About The Brightest Students?

We should all accept that Harvard and other private institutions have the right to craft their classes however they see fit. After all, as private citizens, we have the right to apply to wherever we want.

However, Harvard and other private institutions should at least acknowledge they use race, legacy, money, and athletics as determinant factors in their subjective crafting of an incoming class. To tell the world they they do not discriminate against Asian-Americans is an insult to our intelligence. They should own their decisions to discriminate with pride!

Source: Harvard, WSJ

But the real fallout may rain on those private university graduates who actually have no legacy connections and no donor parents. The majority who simply got in due to merit.

Further, what about the legacy and donor graduates who may have been able to get into Harvard without receiving massive, non-merit based advantages? They may be unfairly sullied as well.

As the reputations of such private universities decline with the wider understanding of how the system works, there is one clear solution to help the most deserving private university graduates:

Clearly state on your resume or job application: not a legacy or a donor graduate.

By clearly stating you got no help from what society hates most about the aristocracy, you distinguish yourself and enhance your accomplishment.

You may feel that highlighting you are not a legacy and not a donor might come across as too forward. It will, especially if the hiring manager comes from a private university whose parents did donate and go to such a university. This is why you must do background checks on your interviewers before making your case. Faced with a legacy or donor interviewer, consider not highlighting your merit.

It is also possible the privileged hiring manager wants to help you out because s/he feels guilt for gaining such an unfair advantage. There are people who continuously struggle with their privilege, unable to discern whether it was their talent or their parents that helped them get to where they are.

Given words matter, perhaps this is an even better way to highlight your merit on your resume: first generation XYZ university alumnus. By definition, if you were the first, you are not a legacy. Although this doesn’t solve any suspicions of you getting ahead through massive financial gifts by your parents.

Given only ~40% of Americans have a 2-year college degree or more, less than 1% of all Americans will have attended elite private school universities.

In other words, a supermajority is on your side so do not be afraid to stand up for meritocracy! 

The Gatekeepers Agree

As a small business owner, I want to hire the most collaborative, smartest, efficient, and hungriest person available. I do not care where you went to college. There is no room for nepotism in small business because the financial buffers are too thin not to hire the best.

All I care about is your attitude and willingness to learn and get things done. Are you going to be a prima-donna pain in my side? Or are you going to stay hungry and keep on hustling?

If I can find an Ivy League graduate with such attributes who got in 100% due to merit, I’m going to hire that type of person all day long, all else being equal. But if I can’t, then I will have to be more thorough in my interview and search process.

I’ve spoken with a couple friends who both employ over a hundred people, and one friend who employs over 3,000 people about the Harvard lawsuit. They all actively welcome graduates of elite private universities to somehow signal they are not legacy or donors. Two went to public university, while one went to an elite private university, but didn’t rely on money or connections.

Old money industries, like banking, private equity, venture capital, money management, and management consulting, are filled with elite private school alumni who will continue to have their biases, so tread carefully. But new money industries like tech and biotech are extremely focused on meritocracy. Over time, I’m confident old money industries will slowly remove their biases as well, starting by casting a wider recruiting net beyond specific private universities.

One of the end goals of going to college is to get as good a job as possible. If the gatekeepers are changing the way they hire, you best believe universities will change the way they accept students.

Related: Industries That Can Pay More Than $1 Million A Year

The Long-Term Trend Is Away From The Elites

In order live an easier life, you must recognize trends and adapt. Despite the massive accumulation of wealth by the rich in the latest bull market, the long-term trend is turning sour against the wealthiest people in our country who’ve received the most benefits.

The internet democratizes knowledge and access. Therefore, over the long-term, college degrees will be devalued. Elite private university degrees will be no exception.

Nobody wants to help the rich and powerful get more rich and powerful anymore because nobody roots for the armored gladiator with a sword versus a naked gladiator fighting with only his bare hands. Further, more people will be empowered to create their own fortunes through entrepreneurship or freelancing.

Some of the rich and powerful are clinging on to elite education as the last bastion of the aristocracy while the commoners are using battering rams to break down the gates.

If you will be or are an alumnus of Harvard or other similar institution, I encourage you to do the following:

1) Don’t voluntarily tell anybody where you went to college. If people ask, talk about the state or city where you went to school and then quickly change the topic.

2) Stay humble. Instead of talking about your wins, discuss your struggles. People already assume you have everything.

3) Build your giving resume (time and money). Eventually, people will find out about you. And if they realize you’ve received all this help while you’ve done little-to-nothing to give back, you will be skewered. Besides, helping other people is the greatest gift on earth.

4) Stop working at companies that create useless products or take excessive advantage of minimum wage laborers. Don’t let your education and family wealth go to waste. If you’re oblivious, you’ll know once you see your company being questioned on the news about their labor practices.

5) Let your kids earn their way through life. One of the worst things you can do is take away your kid’s sense of pride and accomplishment by giving them everything. Let your kids deserve what they’ve earned.

In Search For True Meritocracy

Source: Harvard. Compare the top decile percentages to the actual share of admitted class

Nobody should blame parents for giving their kids every advantage possible to get ahead. Meanwhile, no kid should be blamed for receiving every advantage possible either. They have no control over their parents.

There are plenty of fantastic people who graduate from elite private schools. Let’s just not fool ourselves into thinking there aren’t extreme biases in the system that put the majority of people at a competitive disadvantage.

We will never have a true meritocracy. The only thing I’ve found that comes close is being a solopreneur. But we can take steps to help even the playing field by fighting for our beliefs. It would be foolish to ignore the uprising.

As an Asian-American with no private school pedigree and no multi-millions to give, I’ve decided to keep Financial Samurai running as insurance until my little boy grows up and tells me he wants nothing to do with learning about or running a location-independent small business. Even then, I’ll probably keep Financial Samurai going just in case he realizes dad is right.

Readers, do you think the reputations of elite private schools will decline once the world knows exactly how rigged the admissions system is? How would you advise graduates who weren’t beneficiaries of donor legacy to standout? Why don’t private institutions own the fact they use race, money, and legacy to craft their class now that the information is out there? If you are a parent, what will you do to help your child get ahead?

Related:

The Real Reasons Why Asian Income And Wealth Is The Highest In America

Would You Accept $1,000,000 For The Opportunity To Go To Public School All Your Life?

How To Compete In A Rigged Game

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The Rapid Depreciation Of A Harvard Education: How Private School Grads Can Still Save Themselves

When I was applying to colleges in 1994, I thought only extremely smart or talented people attended Harvard. I had heard stories about the rich buying their kids’ ways into Harvard, but I was unaware of the details.

As a public school kid with an OK SAT score, a 3.6 GPA, and unspectacular extracurricular activities (tennis team captain vs. eradicating malaria in a small village in West Africa), I decided to save myself hundreds of dollars in application fees and apply to mostly local state schools like UVA, Mary Washington, and William & Mary instead. Paying less than $3,000 a year in in-state tuition even back then felt like a steal.

After graduating from William & Mary, I got a job in the international equities department at Goldman Sachs in NYC. That’s where I got to interview hundreds of Ivy League and other elite private institution graduates as part of Goldman’s consensus-driven interview process where even grunts get to interview candidates.

We ended up rejecting over 95% of the candidates due to poor fit. It wasn’t that they were not smart, because they were. We only wanted people we could sit next to for 12-14 hours a day. It obviously helped if they had an international background, spoke multiple languages, and had a passion for equities. But we were mostly looking for great teammates.

Rejecting the majority of elite private college graduates made me realize they are no different from you and me. For the next 13 years, I’d compete with these folks on the ruthless battlegrounds of finance and smash them to bits most of the time because of my hunger. Coming from a non-target public school background with middle-class parents, I wasn’t going to squander my opportunity for financial independence.

Today, I am a small business owner with business owning friends. Recently, some of us have noted a growing negativity towards alumni of elite private schools. This is a problem (or a solution) for parents who plan to spend lots of money starting in grade school in the hopes their kid will attend a school like Harvard. This is also a potential problem for private university alumni who might unfairly be judged by the masses.

If you are one of these alumni, don’t be upset about the trend against the 1%. Instead, read with an open mind and pay attention as your future or your kids’ future might depend on it.

This article will address:

1) Why there is a growing negative perception about private university graduates

2) What we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American discrimination lawsuit

3) What you can do to fight back against the negative perception

The Harvard / Asian-American Discrimination Lawsuit

One of the reasons Harvard University fought so hard to keep its admissions process a secret was because it didn’t want the world to judge it for how it picked winners and losers. Due to social media and the internet, they knew that the jury of public opinion would come down on them like a guillotine.

Here are some interesting things we’ve learned so far from the Asian-American discrimination lawsuit against Harvard:

~5.9% overall acceptance rate (all students)

~33.6% acceptance rate for legacy (67% of students are not legacy)

~40% acceptance rate for children of donors

~70%+ if both legacy and donor

~86% if recruited athlete

Think about these statistics for a bit. If you are simply born into a family where one of your parents or grandparents went to Harvard, you have a 5X greater chance of getting into the University than someone who has no legacy status.

One can argue legacy admissions help create a stronger university culture, and that there should be some preference. Maybe a 1X boost to 11.8% would be fair. But a 5X preference seems excessive.

Meanwhile, if you donate money to Harvard, which already has the world’s largest university endowment at over $35 billion, your child’s acceptance rate chances go up by 7X the average admissions rate.

Based on intimate conversations I’ve had with a Harvard undergraduate and business school alum who also was on their fundraising committee for a couple years, between 2000 – 2010, you could donate between $250,000 – $500,000 and effectively help give your child a 7X advantage. Today, he says the donation figure is “in the millions.”

Now imagine you are a legacy candidate whose parents are also rich enough to donate millions of dollars to Harvard. You’ve got a 12X greater chance of getting into Harvard than some smart kid with great extracurricular activities whose parents are not as rich or connected enough to help. You are practically a shoe-in.

This is not a meritocracy by any means. This is affirmative action for the rich and connected – the very people who need the least amount of help. 

Another interesting thing we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American lawsuit is that the overall acceptance rate at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions was much higher in the past. For example, Harvard admitted 92.4% of applicants for the class of 1941 (1,092/1,182) while 14.6% were admitted for the class of 1992. (~2,107/14,430 with 1,605 enrollees.) See: The Chosen

In other words, it should be more impressive if you are a younger Harvard alumnus than if you are an older Harvard alumnus.

With the number of international students applying to US universities growing, it’s only natural to expect the acceptance rate to continue shrinking despite the reality that education via the internet is now free. In other words, the overall madness of paying enormous sums of money for a depreciating pedigree continues unabated. However, I believe this situation will eventually change, at least here in America.

But What About The Brightest Students?

We should all accept that Harvard and other private institutions have the right to craft their classes however they see fit. After all, as private citizens, we have the right to apply to wherever we want.

However, Harvard and other private institutions should at least acknowledge they use race, legacy, money, and athletics as determinant factors in their subjective crafting of an incoming class. To tell the world they they do not discriminate against Asian-Americans is an insult to our intelligence. They should own their decisions to discriminate with pride!

Source: Harvard, WSJ

But the real fallout may rain on those private university graduates who actually have no legacy connections and no donor parents. The majority who simply got in due to merit.

Further, what about the legacy and donor graduates who may have been able to get into Harvard without receiving massive, non-merit based advantages? They may be unfairly sullied as well.

As the reputations of such private universities decline with the wider understanding of how the system works, there is one clear solution to help the most deserving private university graduates:

Clearly state on your resume or job application: not a legacy or a donor graduate.

By clearly stating you got no help from what society hates most about the aristocracy, you distinguish yourself and enhance your accomplishment.

You may feel that highlighting you are not a legacy and not a donor might come across as too forward. It will, especially if the hiring manager comes from a private university whose parents did donate and go to such a university. This is why you must do background checks on your interviewers before making your case. Faced with a legacy or donor interviewer, consider not highlighting your merit.

It is also possible the privileged hiring manager wants to help you out because s/he feels guilt for gaining such an unfair advantage. There are people who continuously struggle with their privilege, unable to discern whether it was their talent or their parents that helped them get to where they are.

Given words matter, perhaps this is an even better way to highlight your merit on your resume: first generation XYZ university alumnus. By definition, if you were the first, you are not a legacy. Although this doesn’t solve any suspicions of you getting ahead through massive financial gifts by your parents.

Given only ~40% of Americans have a 2-year college degree or more, less than 1% of all Americans will have attended elite private school universities.

In other words, a supermajority is on your side so do not be afraid to stand up for meritocracy! 

The Gatekeepers Agree

As a small business owner, I want to hire the most collaborative, smartest, efficient, and hungriest person available. I do not care where you went to college. There is no room for nepotism in small business because the financial buffers are too thin not to hire the best.

All I care about is your attitude and willingness to learn and get things done. Are you going to be a prima-donna pain in my side? Or are you going to stay hungry and keep on hustling?

If I can find an Ivy League graduate with such attributes who got in 100% due to merit, I’m going to hire that type of person all day long, all else being equal. But if I can’t, then I will have to be more thorough in my interview and search process.

I’ve spoken with a couple friends who both employ over a hundred people, and one friend who employs over 3,000 people about the Harvard lawsuit. They all actively welcome graduates of elite private universities to somehow signal they are not legacy or donors. Two went to public university, while one went to an elite private university, but didn’t rely on money or connections.

Old money industries, like banking, private equity, venture capital, money management, and management consulting, are filled with elite private school alumni who will continue to have their biases, so tread carefully. But new money industries like tech and biotech are extremely focused on meritocracy. Over time, I’m confident old money industries will slowly remove their biases as well, starting by casting a wider recruiting net beyond specific private universities.

One of the end goals of going to college is to get as good a job as possible. If the gatekeepers are changing the way they hire, you best believe universities will change the way they accept students.

Related: Industries That Can Pay More Than $1 Million A Year

The Long-Term Trend Is Away From The Elites

In order live an easier life, you must recognize trends and adapt. Despite the massive accumulation of wealth by the rich in the latest bull market, the long-term trend is turning sour against the wealthiest people in our country who’ve received the most benefits.

The internet democratizes knowledge and access. Therefore, over the long-term, college degrees will be devalued. Elite private university degrees will be no exception.

Nobody wants to help the rich and powerful get more rich and powerful anymore because nobody roots for the armored gladiator with a sword versus a naked gladiator fighting with only his bare hands. Further, more people will be empowered to create their own fortunes through entrepreneurship or freelancing.

Some of the rich and powerful are clinging on to elite education as the last bastion of the aristocracy while the commoners are using battering rams to break down the gates.

If you will be or are an alumnus of Harvard or other similar institution, I encourage you to do the following:

1) Don’t voluntarily tell anybody where you went to college. If people ask, talk about the state or city where you went to school and then quickly change the topic.

2) Stay humble. Instead of talking about your wins, discuss your struggles. People already assume you have everything.

3) Build your giving resume (time and money). Eventually, people will find out about you. And if they realize you’ve received all this help while you’ve done little-to-nothing to give back, you will be skewered. Besides, helping other people is the greatest gift on earth.

4) Stop working at companies that create useless products or take excessive advantage of minimum wage laborers. Don’t let your education and family wealth go to waste. If you’re oblivious, you’ll know once you see your company being questioned on the news about their labor practices.

5) Let your kids earn their way through life. One of the worst things you can do is take away your kid’s sense of pride and accomplishment by giving them everything. Let your kids deserve what they’ve earned.

In Search For True Meritocracy

Source: Harvard. Compare the top decile percentages to the actual share of admitted class

Nobody should blame parents for giving their kids every advantage possible to get ahead. Meanwhile, no kid should be blamed for receiving every advantage possible either. They have no control over their parents.

There are plenty of fantastic people who graduate from elite private schools. Let’s just not fool ourselves into thinking there aren’t extreme biases in the system that put the majority of people at a competitive disadvantage.

We will never have a true meritocracy. The only thing I’ve found that comes close is being a solopreneur. But we can take steps to help even the playing field by fighting for our beliefs. It would be foolish to ignore the uprising.

As an Asian-American with no private school pedigree and no multi-millions to give, I’ve decided to keep Financial Samurai running as insurance until my little boy grows up and tells me he wants nothing to do with learning about or running a location-independent small business. Even then, I’ll probably keep Financial Samurai going just in case he realizes dad is right.

Readers, do you think the reputations of elite private schools will decline once the world knows exactly how rigged the admissions system is? How would you advise graduates who weren’t beneficiaries of donor legacy to standout? Why don’t private institutions own the fact they use race, money, and legacy to craft their class now that the information is out there? If you are a parent, what will you do to help your child get ahead?

Related:

The Real Reasons Why Asian Income And Wealth Is The Highest In America

Would You Accept $1,000,000 For The Opportunity To Go To Public School All Your Life?

How To Compete In A Rigged Game

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[ronaldmrashid]

The Rapid Depreciation Of A Harvard Education: How Private School Grads Can Still Save Themselves

When I was applying to colleges in 1994, I thought only extremely smart or talented people attended Harvard. I had heard stories about the rich buying their kids’ ways into Harvard, but I was unaware of the details.

As a public school kid with an OK SAT score, a 3.6 GPA, and unspectacular extracurricular activities (tennis team captain vs. eradicating malaria in a small village in West Africa), I decided to save myself hundreds of dollars in application fees and apply to mostly local state schools like UVA, Mary Washington, and William & Mary instead. Paying less than $3,000 a year in in-state tuition even back then felt like a steal.

After graduating from William & Mary, I got a job in the international equities department at Goldman Sachs in NYC. That’s where I got to interview hundreds of Ivy League and other elite private institution graduates as part of Goldman’s consensus-driven interview process where even grunts get to interview candidates.

We ended up rejecting over 95% of the candidates due to poor fit. It wasn’t that they were not smart, because they were. We only wanted people we could sit next to for 12-14 hours a day. It obviously helped if they had an international background, spoke multiple languages, and had a passion for equities. But we were mostly looking for great teammates.

Rejecting the majority of elite private college graduates made me realize they are no different from you and me. For the next 13 years, I’d compete with these folks on the ruthless battlegrounds of finance and smash them to bits most of the time because of my hunger. Coming from a non-target public school background with middle-class parents, I wasn’t going to squander my opportunity for financial independence.

Today, I am a small business owner with business owning friends. Recently, some of us have noted a growing negativity towards alumni of elite private schools. This is a problem (or a solution) for parents who plan to spend lots of money starting in grade school in the hopes their kid will attend a school like Harvard. This is also a potential problem for private university alumni who might unfairly be judged by the masses.

If you are one of these alumni, don’t be upset about the trend against the 1%. Instead, read with an open mind and pay attention as your future or your kids’ future might depend on it.

This article will address:

1) Why there is a growing negative perception about private university graduates

2) What we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American discrimination lawsuit

3) What you can do to fight back against the negative perception

The Harvard / Asian-American Discrimination Lawsuit

One of the reasons Harvard University fought so hard to keep its admissions process a secret was because it didn’t want the world to judge it for how it picked winners and losers. Due to social media and the internet, they knew that the jury of public opinion would come down on them like a guillotine.

Here are some interesting things we’ve learned so far from the Asian-American discrimination lawsuit against Harvard:

~5.9% overall acceptance rate

~33.6% acceptance rate for legacy (67% of students are not legacy)

~40% acceptance rate for children of donors

~70%+ if both legacy and donor

~86% if recruited athlete

Think about these statistics for a bit. If you are simply born into a family where one of your parents or grandparents went to Harvard, you have a 5X greater chance of getting into the University than someone who has no legacy status.

One can argue legacy admissions help create a stronger university culture, and that there should be some preference. Maybe a 1X boost to 11.8% would be fair. But a 5X preference seems excessive.

Meanwhile, if you donate money to Harvard, which already has the world’s largest university endowment at over $35 billion, your child’s acceptance rate chances go up by 7X the average admissions rate.

Based on intimate conversations I’ve had with a Harvard undergraduate and business school alum who also was on their fundraising committee for a couple years, between 2000 – 2010, you could donate between $250,000 – $500,000 and effectively help give your child a 7X advantage. Today, he says the donation figure is “in the millions.”

Now imagine you are a legacy candidate whose parents are also rich enough to donate millions of dollars to Harvard. You’ve got a 12X greater chance of getting into Harvard than some smart kid with great extracurricular activities whose parents are not as rich or connected enough to help. You are practically a shoe-in.

This is not a meritocracy by any means. This is affirmative action for the rich and connected – the very people who need the least amount of help. 

Another interesting thing we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American lawsuit is that the overall acceptance rate at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions was much higher in the past. For example, Harvard admitted 92.4% of applicants for the class of 1941 (1,092/1,182) while 14.6% were admitted for the class of 1992. (~2,107/14,430 with 1,605 enrollees.) See: The Chosen

In other words, it should be more impressive if you are a younger Harvard alumnus than if you are an older Harvard alumnus.

With the number of international students applying to US universities growing, it’s only natural to expect the acceptance rate to continue shrinking despite the reality that education via the internet is now free. In other words, the overall madness of paying enormous sums of money for a depreciating pedigree continues unabated. However, I believe this situation will eventually change, at least here in America.

But What About The Brightest Students?

We should all accept that Harvard and other private institutions have the right to craft their classes however they see fit. After all, as private citizens, we have the right to apply to wherever we want.

However, Harvard and other private institutions should at least acknowledge they use race, legacy, money, and athletics as determinant factors in their subjective crafting of an incoming class. To tell the world they they do not discriminate against Asian-Americans is an insult to our intelligence. They should own their decisions to discriminate with pride!

Source: Harvard, WSJ

But the real fallout may rain on those private university graduates who actually have no legacy connections and no donor parents. The majority who simply got in due to merit.

Further, what about the legacy and donor graduates who may have been able to get into Harvard without receiving massive, non-merit based advantages? They may be unfairly sullied as well.

As the reputations of such private universities decline with the wider understanding of how the system works, there is one clear solution to help the most deserving private university graduates:

Clearly state on your resume or job application: not a legacy or a donor graduate.

By clearly stating you got no help from what society hates most about the aristocracy, you distinguish yourself and enhance your accomplishment.

You may feel that highlighting you are not a legacy and not a donor might come across as too forward. It will, especially if the hiring manager comes from a private university whose parents did donate and go to such a university. This is why you must do background checks on your interviewers before making your case. Faced with a legacy or donor interviewer, consider not highlighting your merit.

It is also possible the privileged hiring manager wants to help you out because s/he feels guilt for gaining such an unfair advantage. There are people who continuously struggle with their privilege, unable to discern whether it was their talent or their parents that helped them get to where they are.

Given words matter, perhaps this is an even better way to highlight your merit on your resume: first generation XYZ university alumnus. By definition, if you were the first, you are not a legacy. Although this doesn’t solve any suspicions of you getting ahead through massive financial gifts by your parents.

Given only ~40% of Americans have a 2-year college degree or more, less than 1% of all Americans will have attended elite private school universities.

In other words, a supermajority is on your side so do not be afraid to stand up for meritocracy! 

The Gatekeepers Agree

As a small business owner, I want to hire the most collaborative, smartest, efficient, and hungriest person available. I do not care where you went to college. There is no room for nepotism in small business because the financial buffers are too thin not to hire the best.

All I care about is your attitude and willingness to learn and get things done. Are you going to be a prima-donna pain in my side? Or are you going to stay hungry and keep on hustling?

If I can find an Ivy League graduate with such attributes who got in 100% due to merit, I’m going to hire that type of person all day long, all else being equal. But if I can’t, then I will have to be more thorough in my interview and search process.

I’ve spoken with a couple friends who both employ over a hundred people, and one friend who employs over 3,000 people about the Harvard lawsuit. They all actively welcome graduates of elite private universities to somehow signal they are not legacy or donors. Two went to public university, while one went to an elite private university, but didn’t rely on money or connections.

Old money industries, like banking, private equity, venture capital, money management, and management consulting, are filled with elite private school alumni who will continue to have their biases, so tread carefully. But new money industries like tech and biotech are extremely focused on meritocracy. Over time, I’m confident old money industries will slowly remove their biases as well, starting by casting a wider recruiting net beyond specific private universities.

One of the end goals of going to college is to get as good a job as possible. If the gatekeepers are changing the way they hire, you best believe universities will change the way they accept students.

Related: Industries That Can Pay More Than $1 Million A Year

The Long-Term Trend Is Away From The Elites

In order live an easier life, you must recognize trends and adapt. Despite the massive accumulation of wealth by the rich in the latest bull market, the long-term trend is turning sour against the wealthiest people in our country who’ve received the most benefits.

The internet democratizes knowledge and access. Therefore, over the long-term, college degrees will be devalued. Elite private university degrees will be no exception.

Nobody wants to help the rich and powerful get more rich and powerful anymore because nobody roots for the armored gladiator with a sword versus a naked gladiator fighting with only his bare hands. Further, more people will be empowered to create their own fortunes through entrepreneurship or freelancing.

Some of the rich and powerful are clinging on to elite education as the last bastion of the aristocracy while the commoners are using battering rams to break down the gates.

If you will be or are an alumnus of Harvard or other similar institution, I encourage you to do the following:

1) Don’t voluntarily tell anybody where you went to college. If people ask, talk about the state or city where you went to school and then quickly change the topic.

2) Stay humble. Instead of talking about your wins, discuss your struggles. People already assume you have everything.

3) Build your giving resume (time and money). Eventually, people will find out about you. And if they realize you’ve received all this help while you’ve done little-to-nothing to give back, you will be skewered. Besides, helping other people is the greatest gift on earth.

4) Stop working at companies that create useless products or take excessive advantage of minimum wage laborers. Don’t let your education and family wealth go to waste. If you’re oblivious, you’ll know once you see your company being questioned on the news about their labor practices.

5) Let your kids earn their way through life. One of the worst things you can do is take away your kid’s sense of pride and accomplishment by giving them everything. Let your kids deserve what they’ve earned.

In Search For True Meritocracy

Source: Harvard. Compare the top decile percentages to the actual share of admitted class

Nobody should blame parents for giving their kids every advantage possible to get ahead. Meanwhile, no kid should be blamed for receiving every advantage possible either. They have no control over their parents.

There are plenty of fantastic people who graduate from elite private schools. Let’s just not fool ourselves into thinking there aren’t extreme biases in the system that put the majority of people at a competitive disadvantage.

We will never have a true meritocracy. The only thing I’ve found that comes close is being a solopreneur. But we can take steps to help even the playing field by fighting for our beliefs. It would be foolish to ignore the uprising.

As an Asian-American with no private school pedigree and no multi-millions to give, I’ve decided to keep Financial Samurai running as insurance until my little boy grows up and tells me he wants nothing to do with learning about or running a location-independent small business. Even then, I’ll probably keep Financial Samurai going just in case he realizes dad is right.

Readers, do you think the reputations of elite private schools will decline once the world knows exactly how rigged the admissions system is? How would you advise graduates who weren’t beneficiaries of donor legacy to standout? Why don’t private institutions own the fact they use race, money, and legacy to craft their class now that the information is out there? If you are a parent, what will you do to help your child get ahead?

Related:

The Real Reasons Why Asian Income And Wealth Is The Highest In America

Would You Accept $1,000,000 For The Opportunity To Go To Public School All Your Life?

How To Compete In A Rigged Game

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from https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-rapid-depreciation-of-a-harvard-education-how-private-school-grads-can-still-save-themselves/

[yahoo-roto-arcade-blog]

Juggernaut Index, No. 24: As Trubisky goes, so go the Bears

If Mitchell Trubisky can make a leap in his second season, the Chicago Bears offense can get fun in a hurry. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Chicago Bears have won nine league championships and 749 regular season games since the franchise was founded in 1920. Twenty-seven former Bears are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and 69 have been selected as first-team All-Pros. The names of the greatest players in team history — Payton, Sayers, Butkus, Nagurski — are synonymous with excellence at their respective positions.

And yet somehow, as this franchise enters its 99th season, the Bears’ all-time leading passer is Jay Christopher Cutler.

[Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free!]

In fact, Cutler holds pretty much every significant career Chicago Bears record at the game’s most important position, including passing yardage, completions, passer rating, completion percentage and touchdowns. Remarkably, no quarterback in the history of this franchise has managed to throw for 4000 yards in a single season. Erik Kramer’s 3838 yards back in 1995 remains the team’s top mark. Jacksonville, Carolina and Tampa Bay have all had multiple 4000-yard passers while Chicago is still waiting for its first.

The Bears finished last in the NFL in passing last year and 30th in total offense, so things can only get better under the team’s new head coach. Matt Nagy arrives in Chicago after spending the previous decade climbing the coaching hierarchy under Andy Reid, first in Philadelphia and then in Kansas City. Nagy served as offensive coordinator of the league’s sixth highest-scoring offense last season, plus he oversaw the mid-career breakout performance of Alex Smith. There’s plenty to like in his coaching record. Nagy quickly hired former University of Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich as his OC, which adds another layer of fun.

When the Nagy/Helfrich offense is fully operational for Chicago, things should get legitimately interesting. It’s not crazy to think this team’s second-year quarterback has the potential to deliver the most productive passing season in team history, finally dislodging Kramer from the record book. Cutler’s career marks should not survive Mitchell Trubisky’s second contract.

Trubisky is guaranteed to make a substantial leap in 2018

It feels relatively safe to predict a Trubisky surge, because the team asked so little of him last season. We would say that John Fox and his staff kept training wheels on the offense, but that’s an insult to all the brave kids out there riding big-boy bikes with extra wheels for safety. At least those kids are moving forward. Chicago’s offense was basically inert in 2017. Trubisky ranked dead-last in the NFL among qualified starters in both deep attempts per game (2.5) and air yards (98.2) according to Player Profiler. This offense took no shots and gained nothing.

Whatever else happens this year, Trubisky and friends will definitely play a more entertaining game:

#Bears QB Mitchell Trubisky with us on @SiriusXMNFL now: “We’re going to spread the field and definitely use all our weapons.” Will see things from Matt Nagy’s #Chiefs days, have “twists and tricks” from Mark Helfrich/Oregon, mix in some tempo … more complex than he’s used to.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 2, 2018

Nagy was a big believer in Trubisky’s talent during the pre-draft process two years ago, and, by all accounts, the pair has clicked this offseason. Concepts and formations should feel similar to the QB’s college offense, and the system should generally take advantage of his live arm and dual-threat ability. Nagy has indicated the playbook will be 70-80 percent similar to what KC ran last year, with a few added flourishes. It was clear enough last season, despite the timidity of Chicago’s offense, that Trubisky has the necessary physical traits to thrive as a pro. His receiving corps is suddenly loaded with versatile athletes, too. Trubisky is essentially free in fantasy drafts (ADP 164.1, QB24). He’s worth targeting in super-flex and best-ball formats.

Let’s try to remember, however, that year-to-year continuity is critical to success in the NFL, and Chicago has none of it. That’s a small concern. This team has a first-year head coach working with a second-year QB, installing a new scheme. Every key member of the receiving corps is new. Bears fans and fantasy owners will need to be patient with this group. We should expect hiccups in the opening weeks.

OK, let’s meet the new receivers

Chicago revamped its receiving depth chart in a massive (and necessary) way during the offseason, both via free agency and the draft. The team gave a total of $61 million guaranteed to three veteran pass-catchers, then invested a second-round pick in a young receiver. We can safely ignore roster holdovers like Kevin White and Josh Bellamy in fantasy drafts. The new guys are clearly going to dominate the targets in this offense.

Allen Robinson inked a three-year deal with Chicago back in March, and he’ll be 12 months removed from his ACL injury when the season opens. Robinson was able to put in work during OTAs and appears on schedule for training camp. There’s been zero negative news on him, only negative spin from a few fantasy voices. At Robinson’s best, he’s a true No. 1 wideout with terrific red-zone skills, a player with ideal size (6-foot-3) and leaping ability. He was enormously productive at the collegiate level and he produced an 80-1400-14 line in his second pro season. Robinson’s efficiency plummeted in his third year (73-883-6 on 151 targets), but disentangling his performance from the horrors of Blake Bortles is no simple thing.

Robinson is a serious talent with an excellent history, and it’s reasonable to expect 75 receptions and 1100 yards in a healthy season. His draft price (ADP 47.1, WR19) reflects our collective optimism about this team’s offense, tempered by the expected ACL recovery worries. If camp reports on Robinson are positive, there’s a decent chance his ADP will climb 3-4 spots.

Trey Burton is the sleeper TE you need, fantasy owner. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Trey Burton landed with the Bears on a four-year, $32 million contract, and it kinda feels like we can pencil his name into the Pro Bowl roster right now. Assuming Trubisky achieves a reasonable degree of competence this season, Burton should feast. He’ll play a version of the tight end/wide receiver hybrid role that helped turn Travis Kelce into a star for the Chiefs. To be clear, Burton doesn’t have Kelce’s size or his exact athletic profile, but he has good hands and 4.6-speed. He’s a rough assignment for any linebacker or DB. Few defenses will have the personnel needed to check all of Chicago’s receiving threats. Burton should see 90-100 targets, a significant total for a tight end. He has a clear path to a top-six positional finish in any fantasy format.

Rookie Anthony Miller delivered back-to-back 95-catch, 1400-yard seasons at Memphis, so he had nothin’ left to prove as a collegiate player. He has an inside/outside skill set and he’s effective at every level of the field. He was a state champ in the 110-meter hurdles as a prep, too. His profile is plenty appealing and he shouldn’t lack opportunities in his first pro season. Miller is a fine late flier in redraft and a top-five-ish receiver in dynasty.

The Bears also signed the blazing fast Taylor Gabriel to a four-year deal, which allows this team to have at least one undersized burner on the field at all times. He and running back Tarik Cohen are both live-wire quick and difficult to contain. Gabriel isn’t likely to produce consistent weekly numbers; he hasn’t caught more than 37 passes in any of his four seasons. But he’ll deliver a handful of big plays, which puts him on the best-ball radar.

Tarik Cohen is a blur

Friends, let’s take a moment to appreciate Cohen’s ridiculousness.

“We’ll have some fun with him,” Nagy recently said.

Here’s hoping it’s true because Cohen’s playmaking ability is rare, even by NFL standards. He’s only 5-foot-6 (if that), but he bulked up this offseason, perhaps in anticipation of a larger role. Cohen handled 140 touches last season, including 53 receptions; it’s not unreasonable to forecast 170 and 65 in the year ahead. He’s compared himself to Tyreek Hill on more than one occasion, and, well … as comps go, it’s not the worst we’ve ever heard. Hill is faster than almost anyone on earth, of course, and clearly a more accomplished receiver. But both players are exceptional all-purpose threats, capable of scoring on any touch. Draft Cohen aggressively in any variety of PPR league.

Jordan Howard remains the featured runner, but…

Almost every time Nagy has mentioned that Howard is still the team’s primary rushing threat, he adds a caveat. Howard has been a notoriously poor receiver, so he’s not yet an every-down, all-situation player. His inability to catch leaves him particularly vulnerable to unfavorable game scripts. When Nagy suggests the Bears will use multiple backs, we need to take him at his word. Cohen’s expected increase in usage will almost certainly take a bite out of Howard’s workload.

However, we shouldn’t forget that Howard is a 225-pound dude who’s rushed for 2435 yards (4.6 YPC) and 15 touchdowns over two NFL seasons. He can play. Howard isn’t the perfect modern running back, but he generally makes great decisions with the ball in his hands. Stylistically, he’s nothing like Cohen, so these backs complement each other well. If Chicago’s offense can simply climb to the middle of the pack in 2018, Howard can again deliver second round value (ADP 18.2). Just please be prepared for a few 11-44-0 duds.

Ultimately, this season of Bears football is about the development of Trubisky and his indoctrination into Nagy’s system and team culture. Trubisky doesn’t need to make a Goff or Wentz-level leap (although that would be [profane] awesome), but he needs to finish the year in total command of his offense. He’s the key to everyone’s fantasy value in Chicago.

2017 Offensive Stats & Ranks

Points per game – 16.5 (29th in NFL) Pass YPG – 175.7 (32) Rush YPG – 111.8 (16) Yards per play – 4.9 (23) Plays per game – 58.4 (31)

Previous Juggernaut Index entries: 32) Buffalo, 31) Miami, 30) NY Jets, 29) Baltimore, 28) Oakland, 27) Cleveland, 26) Indianapolis, 25) Washington, 24) Chicago

Follow the Yahoo fantasy football crew on Twitter: Andy Behrens, Dalton Del Don, Brad Evans, Liz Loza, Scott Pianowski and Tank Williams

[graciouslittlethings]

Here’s What My Kids Taught Me About Happiness

Recently, Dozer has been going through a phase (I hope it’s a phase, please!) where we spend a lot of time negotiating. One day, after a particular trying session, I asked him, “What’s wrong with putting the colour pencils over there?” 

His reply: “It must be HERE or else I will be unhappy.” 

I can assure you that at that moment, I was nearing the end of my patience. I was also struggling very hard to modulate my tone of voice because any sharpness would have sent my toddler into a crying fit.

Incredibly, it was at this very trying moment that I had an epiphany.

I have been going through a pretty trying period myself. I could already sense the discomfort and a subtle discontentment creeping into my life. I was (too) busy and tired and I felt like this wasn’t what I’d signed up for, when I decided to become a stay-at-home mother 2 years ago. 

On the other hand, I remember that I wasn’t really very happy either, when I was just a stay-at-home mother with no other occupations to keep me busy. I frequently complained that I was bored, bored and bored! 

It seemed like either way, I wasn’t really happy. 

Funnily enough, I often get this feeling too when I talk to other people. The sentiment that often comes across is that “things are great, BUT...” 

And that kind of echoed my own sentiments too. 

“I didn’t have to get stuck in jams anymore, but...”

“I was lucky to have an opportunity to try my hand at starting something of my own, but...”

I finally made it to the Nuffnang Bloggerati list which I had previously dreamed of, but...”

“I have lovely kids but...”

Dozer’s simple statement of how things needed to be exactly as how he wanted them to be, OR ELSE HE WOULD BE UNHAPPY somehow pierced through my cloud of dissatisfaction. 

I felt like I was looking into a mirror. I’d been wanting things to be exactly a certain way in order for me to feel happy or even successful. 

My biggest problem was that there were so many ways for me to be unhappy, but only ONE WAY for me to feel happy. 

In short, if I were sitting for a test, I would have to score 100 marks before I felt happy. 90 marks, 95 marks or even 99 marks were unacceptable. 

Now that I think of it, this is probably why Baby Dino is always so happy. He doesn’t mind settling for the blue car if his brother wants the red car. He’s happy to have just one toy animal to play with, if his brother wants 3 toy animals. 

“Settling” probably isn’t the right word to use. 

I should say that Baby Dino’s happiness is truly from within. 

He’s content as long as he gets to play and if you think about it, the outcome is pretty much the same, regardless of whether he’s playing with the blue car or just one toy animal.

He’s still playing. 

It’s really amazing how being around with kids so much can teach a person about life. They usually drive me nuts and then, there are moments like these, where I learn so much.

Now, how do I make Dozer gain this insight?

As an ex-expatriate and management consultant in an international firm, Grace was a career-minded woman on a fast-track path in the corporate world. The birth of her first child changed her perspectives in entirety, and she made the life-changing decision of becoming a stay-at-home mum. In addition to being one of Malaysia’s top digital influencers on Nuffnang’s Bloggerati list, she is a Dr. Sears Certified Health Coach and the founder of Little Baby Grains and Petite Troopers.

- Facebook: facebook.com/graciouslittlethings

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[stephiime]

⛪️2017 In Christ!

February 18-20th, 2017

(P)retreat

Once again, it’s testimony time! And I want to say that these past few years have been a crazy ride of falling in and out of love with Jesus and God.  The thing is, a huge theme in most of these types of posts I make is that I lacked a spiritual community that I was devoted and inclined to be a part of.  But with our church-wide spring retreat, experiencing community on the opposite side of the globe at New Philly Hongdae, and winter conference, I found that 2016 was a year overflowing with blessings and with renewal in Christ and his family.  Even with 2016 being a thing of the past, God is still revealing himself to me at times and places I cannot even predict.  Be joyful, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).  I’m not sure when I prayed for this, but I did at some point pray that I could be closer to God and closer to Bethlehem fellowship.  Heck, I am not even sure if it was a serious prayer or one that was just half-hearted, but some years later, I look back and see how God has been fulfilling his purpose for me since the beginning.

It’s a strange feeling, but now have a greater desire and thirst for deeper relationship with God and his people.  Having fallen out and back into the habit of counting my blessings, I have come to realize that the small things I thought were just luck of the draw moments, were actually true blessings of love and grace from God.  Anyway, through many ups and downs in 2016, I was drawn evermore closer to God and was blessed that God had chosen for me to be on the fellowship committee this year.  There was no contemplation because I truly believed that this is God’s answer to my prayers, a purpose and role in his family.  

With nursing being a whirlwind of struggles, challenges, transitioning, chaotic scheduling, I was feeling hopeless that I wouldn’t be able to go to our committee retreat.  I prayed, but didn’t know what else I could do.  I am constantly fighting the fear that my preceptors don’t think I am rising up to challenges, meeting expectations, mentally/physically/intellectually equipped for the profession, and I was utterly hopeless and in tears almost everyday since the start of this semester.  On top of all that, I have two preceptors and I still lacked adequate hours to graduate.  I saw no purpose.  I wanted and prayed constantly for his purpose to be revealed to me.  Why has God brought me here when I see no way of glorifying him through what I do?  I want to serve God, but all I do is eat, sleep, work, fear.  Where is God in this picture?  Aiyah.  What a way to kickoff 2017, haha!  

At winter con, there was something I read in one of those daily bread books about developing spiritual habits for growth.  And something I interpreted from one of the chapters was that if we are asked to face the world with all of its challenges each day, shouldn’t we be starting each day by meeting first with our creator and God?  At first, I did this because the Holy Spirit had inspired me to do so and I was truly desperate to know more about God.  As with being human and of ‘unfaith’, this at times turned into a not-so-effective habit that was motivated by guilt rather than faith.  Despite that, I woke up at 4am before my day shifts to pray, read and meditate on God’s word.  It was all I could do that would bring me comfort.  Each day there seemed to be a different verse that would motivate me, but it was short lived.  Somehow I just kept looking to the bible for motivation and couldn’t be uplifted through simple, pure trust and faith in God’s sovereignty.  

As the days painfully and slowly progressed, I realized that only God knows exactly what I need and provides for me.  I felt that I just needed to get through the day and that in itself was already enough (temporarily), but God went a step further.  He reminded me to focus on eternity instead and also strengthened my need for community - people to rely on and pour out into.  He provided.  The people I used to believe were impossible to establish a meaningful relationship with, were now becoming the people that I longed to see most.  Every opportunity to worship, attend fellowship, hangout with them has become a blessing and something that I treasured greatly.  This was especially true every time I find out I have hospital shifts scheduled on one of those days and I can’t show up to church.  I know that the believer’s faith is supposed to have the ability to survive without the church, but it was so difficult to be removed from my community by something I’m ... not so passionate about.  God also managed to completely scrap the schedule that my preceptors made for me for reading week, and replace it with a completely new one that allowed for me to go to the committee retreat and achieve the right amount of hours to graduate (with extra hours).  I am not sure how great my faith was prior to this happening, but God sure rewarded me with more than I could have asked for.  

During

Now let’s talk about the retreat, haha long intro.  I am in awe at the way God works to restore and renew his children.  We as a fellowship have been struggling to mature spiritually and I think that with people my age group suddenly coming to the time where - what? we’re now the oldest people in the fellowship? What? There are 15-year-olds? - we’re suddenly in this weird position of leadership despite not necessarily having expected it.  

But even without our own preparation, I think God has been stirring something in all our hearts.  In 2016, He cultivated my desire to serve and be engaged in loving and caring for his people.  And in 2017 he has given me this chance.  Initially, I expected this retreat to be like most committee retreats: a time to sit down and discuss a bunch of logistics, attempt to schedule in a bunch of programs, find out God’s will for us in the present year, and the list goes on.  But to my surprise, we spent probably 5% of our time there doing just that.  The other 95% we actually spent getting to know God, one another, and ourselves.  

LIOB: Finding Our Gifts and Playin ze Guessing Game

Will had brought up that, maybe the newcomers in our fellowship feel distant because ... well ... we feel distant with each other. Amen.  And for us to all agree and acknowledge this weakness, was so amazing!  It was pretty cool that God seemed to have placed this burden on all our hearts.  And so we spent a lot of time during this retreat getting to know and build relationship with one another.  

Gordon led an activity: Steve Scott’s Five-Minute Personality Test.  Essentially you rate traits based on how well they define you, do some math, and your final score in certain columns reveals what dominant personality you have and the animal associated with that personality.  We asked for God to humble our hearts and be honest in scoring.  We had such a fun time guessing each others’ animals.  If you are reading this and do not know what I am, feel free to stop now, take a look at the descriptions, and GUESS MY ANIMAL!!! At times we were SUPER WRONG, but at times we were SUPER CORRECT AND FELT LIKE WE KNEW THAT BROTHER/SISTER 100%!!!!!!!!!!  No hard feelings though, it still is a blessing that others see strengths from other personalities that apply to you as well.  Iris also repeated that she found it very flattering that we all viewed her as a leader/lion despite her scoring highest in another category.  Perhaps the other category is who is truly is, but through God’s power to transform and mold you into a disciple fit to serve, anything can happen!  Through this activity we were able to ask others why they thought we were a certain animal, and we also gave ourselves the opportunity to express why we scored the animal that we did.  It was really motivating, and we encouraged each other for hours on end.  That is something that was truly inspiring, that we as committee were getting to know each other and feel better connected to one another.  Like Ricky had explained to me about their company (CPF), it is their moral to start from the basics - to look very objectively at what our gifts are, build upon them, and use them accordingly.  This reminded me of 1 Cor 12 where God reminds us of the body of Christ.  Let’s not make someone who’s blessed with the gift of worship through into someone who has to worship through dance.  God has revealed so much to us and I cannot see what I’m writing here to cover even half of how amazing this time was.

WOOFWOOF: I Am Pupper

I am a golden retriever, and to my surprise, I saw a mix of ALL numbers in their guesses.  This really revealed to me that although I was a golden retriever at heart, a lot of people saw me as an otter - having a natural tendency to attract attention and be enthusiastic (etc), which is awesome but also revealed something rather sad about myself which I will explain later, but I am pleasantly surprised that people also find me to have qualities of a lion (leader, etc) and beaver (someone very methodical, etc).  Iris asked us all to share what we think our gifts are and how we can use this gift in our positions of service.  I shared last I legitimately had zero idea, so I honestly just asked everyone else.  I said I don’t know, because this is something I pray for all the time “God, what is my gift? Reveal it to me so I can know where to go (hopefully not nursing *lol as you can see, I’ve really hardened my heart to this field*)!  I want to serve you with my gift but I don’t know what it is!!”  I am thankful because your community (something I didn’t have before) is an audience to your testimony and living worship.  I think it was said that people appreciate my willingness to serve in a fellowship despite the cultural and language barrier.  It was also mentioned that I am almost like a counselor or someone who likes to talk others through something, and always tries to tie stuff back to biblical knowledge and spirituality.  Maybe my words are of some use, haha! I don’t know, but I’m praying that we can build upon our gifts and glorify him using these gifts. 

God answered another prayer (kind of) that I’ve been praying constantly for and that is PURPOSE.  I was terrified, grieving myself, and so close to breaking.  I was desperate to get out of this.  If there’s one thing people may have noticed about me, is that I mix humor into my complaints and arguments with God.  This is how I cope.  The way I cope with strife is that I downplay it and externalize it using a ‘positive’/humorous/less-serious conduct.  I don’t know if that is too helpful because I think I keep a lot about myself from others. God has been taking this four year degree and especially these past two months to break my heart into tiny pieces to make me realize how absolutely weak I am and how much I need to rely on him.  I brought this forward to the committee and I was comforted when Angela said she also experiences the same thing.  I think everyone saw how desperate I was and even Pastor Alan responded.  Our pastor agreed that in his past he had experienced the same thing - not knowing his purpose, feeling frustrated and hopeless, but he responded to me saying that God will clearly show you what your purpose is. He was clearly told his purpose after he was let go from his previous job, but until that happened, he felt lost.  In the same way, perhaps God will reveal to me my purpose maybe in nursing - or maybe even somewhere else - but in the meantime and in my struggling, be patient, persevere, because only God knows what I truly need and he will provide it to me in his own measure of time.  I pray that God helps me to hold on to his promise and live each day having full faith in him.  God changes the heart of the person who is praying.  I kept asking for him to tell me what my purpose was, but his response was that he will and I must simply be still and believe that he will.

Overall, this retreat was amazing.  Everything leading up to it, during it, after it, was all in God’s great plan from the very beginning.  The place we stayed was gorgeous - almost otherworldly, yet simultaneously homey (we a theater with 13 seats, two living rooms, 3 and a half full bathrooms - like, come on).  The people I spent time with are genuinely feeling like a spiritual family - we are a perfect combination of imperfect people made perfect through Jesus.  I am so excited for God to reveal what our committee will accomplish through unwavering faith in him and praise be to him who loves us SO, SO MUCH!!!!

Sorry not sorry for a very long read.  I think I have a gift for being able to describe stuff to an audience through visual means, but unfortunately, I don’t think I have much of a gift in writing.  So ... if there’s anything anyone wants me to clarify ... please ask and I will try to explain better, LOL.

[junker-town]

Ranking the best 49ers QBs since Super Bowl XXIX

The 49ers have had 21 different starting QBs since Super Bowl XXIX.

From Jim Druckenmiller to Steve Young (duh).

For a stretch from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, 49ers starting quarterbacks could do no wrong. Joe Montana was the headliner of a group that ranged from above-average (Elvis Grbac, Jeff Garcia) to legendary (Steve Young).

But Young’s six-touchdown Super Bowl performance following the 1994 season began a slow slide from NFL royalty to a spot among the league’s also-rans. since 1995, 21 different starters have come and gone. None were able to stem what’s become a 25-year Lombardi Trophy drought — though Colin Kaepernick nearly rode a Superdome blackout to a title in 2013. Jimmy Garoppolo can end that streak by leading the club to victory in Super Bowl 54.

Who among them wore the crimson and gold the proudest? That’s what I set out to find by ranking every quarterback who has started at least one game for San Francisco since that Super Bowl win.

These rankings, which are entirely subjective, are based on overall impact, team success, and individual success. And if you’re wondering how this all broke down for the Chiefs, who wound up employing a whole bunch of former 49ers quarterbacks, you can see that ranking here.

With that said, here’s San Francisco’s post-Super Bowl XXIX quarterback rankings, split into seven different categories.

Jim f-ing Druckenmlller

21. Jim Druckenmiller, 1997 (0-1 as a starter)

Druckenmiller wasn’t supposed to be a backup; he was the 26th pick of the 1997 NFL Draft. He played in just six career NFL games and made one start thanks to a minor injury to entrenched quarterback Young.

In Week 2 of his rookie season, he needed 28 passes to throw for 102 yards. He completed just 35.7 percent of those attempts and threw three interceptions against one touchdown pass to somehow still beat the Rams, 15-12. He was replaced by a returning Young the very next week and would throw 24 more passes in his NFL career. Druckenmiller was out of the league by the year 2000, though he’d go on to a starring role with the XFL’s Memphis Maniax in 2001.

The backups it’s very difficult to care about

20. Cody Pickett, 2005 (0-2) 19. Steve Stenstrom, 1999 (0-3) 18. Trent Dilfer, 2007 (1-5) 17. Ken Dorsey, 2004-05 (2-8) 16. Chris Weinke, 2007 (0-1) 15. Brian Hoyer, 2017 (0-6) 14. Troy Smith, 2010 (3-3) 13. Ty Detmer, 1998 (1-0)

Pickett was, statistically, the worst 49ers QB since Bev Wallace in 1949. He made two starts for the Niners in 2005, including an epic 1-of-13, one-interception performance in a loss to the Bears. But he was also taken in the seventh round of the 2004 NFL Draft and carried zero expectations with his name, so he’s still better than Druckenmiller.

Stenstrom started three games for the Niners, who scored 16 total points under his guidance. Dilfer was brought in to mentor top overall pick Alex Smith in 2006, then forced into action for a bad Niners team at age 35 and compiled a 7:12 TD:INT ratio in just seven appearances.

Dorsey threw for significantly fewer yards per attempt as a pro (5.1) than Raheem Mostert has rushed for as a 49er (6.0). Hoyer was signed in 2017 to warm the throne for the team’s quarterback of the future ...who initially turned out to be C.J. Beathard. The former Patriot went 0-6 before getting replaced by the third-round rookie from Iowa, which went about as well as you’d expect. The good news was this convinced general manager John Lynch his situation was hopeless enough to necessitate a midseason trade for Jimmy Garoppolo.

Detmer and Weinke were former Heisman Trophy winners who were in their 30s and firmly in the “journeyman backup” phases of their careers. Fellow Heisman speech-giver Smith was only 26 when he came to San Francisco for one final NFL season, but he belongs right in that Weinke-Detmer range — at least spiritually.

The stopgap solutions who didn’t work out

12. J.T. O’Sullivan, 2008 (2-6) 11. C.J. Beathard, 2017-18 (1-9) 10. Blaine Gabbert, 2015-16 (4-9) 9. Tim Rattay, 2003-05 (4-12) 8. Shaun Hill, 2007-09 (10-6)

Dilfer’s retirement and Alex Smith’s season-ending shoulder injury meant the Niners played most of the 2008 season with O’Sullivan, Hill, and Jamie Martin on their QB depth chart. O’Sullivan, signed away from the Lions — which is never a good sign — started the first eight games of his career that fall after beating out a then-healthy Smith for the starting role in the preseason. He threw for 510 yards and three touchdowns in Weeks 2 and 3 to get San Francisco out to a 2-1 start, then quickly melted into a pile of guts as if the Ark of the Covenant had been opened in front of him.

Hill stepped into the smoking crater O’Sullivan left behind and overdelivered, leading the Niners to a 5-3 finish and 7-9 record that matched the team’s high-water mark since 2003. He’d finish his San Francisco career with a non-losing record in all three of the seasons he spent with the team, which is a borderline miracle given the state of the franchise.

Beathard was a flier third-round pick who threw for 139 yards per game in college. He’s been slightly more prolific as a pro, but is also 1-9 as a starter and failed to show enough to convince Niners brass not to trade for Garoppolo (though he can still earn a Super Bowl ring as a member of the 2019 squad). Gabbert redeemed some of his value after leaving Jacksonville as a first-round bust, though was never more than forgettable in three years and 13 starts as a 49er.

Rattay went from seventh-round pick to starter after the team released Jeff Garcia. He wasn’t especially good, but he once rallied San Francisco back from a 28-12 deficit with five minutes to play, so ninth place it is. If you want to make the argument someone like Dorsey or Smith belongs in this tier, I’d be willing to listen to it. The main thing we all need to realize is that these guys were all just different shades of bad.

Destined for better things elsewhere

7. Nick Mullens, 2018 (3-5) 6. Elvis Grbac, 1994-95 (6-3)

I’m overrating the hell out of Mullens here based on a small sample size, but he was good enough as a second-year revelation that he deserves separation from the Beathards and Dorseys of the San Francisco universe. He set a franchise record by being the only 49ers quarterback to throw for multiple touchdowns in his team debut — even if the Raiders didn’t exactly make it hard on him.

Nick Mullens was efficient in his first career start completing 16 of 22 (72.7%) for 262 yards and 3 TD. Mullens did not throw a single pass into a tight window (less than one yard of target separation), the first starting QB to do so in a game this season.#OAKvsSF #GoNiners pic.twitter.com/vFP5PpgzcY

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 2, 2018

In limited snaps, Mullens has averaged a shade under 285 passing yards per start. His 8.3 yards per attempt in 2018 ranked fifth among all qualified starting quarterbacks and was more efficient than players like Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Russell Wilson. If nothing else, he’s a high-value backup on an absolute bargain of a contract and a valuable insurance policy for the 2019 Niners.

Mullens could make his name as a sometimes-starter in the Bay Area and then thrive as a building block for another QB-hungry team. That’s what Grbac did.

Grbac made nine starts in three seasons as Steve Young’s backup before the Chiefs made him their Joe Montana Steve Bono replacement (Kansas City really, really likes 49ers QBs). It’s easy to see why they settled on the San Francisco product. He completed more than 65 percent of his passes filling in for Young, and his 8.0 yards per pass in 1995 was second-best in the NFL among quarterbacks with at least 100 attempts. While he was buoyed by a pocket-clearing offensive line and a receiving corps led by a still-prime Jerry Rice, his starting stints in Kansas City (and later, Baltimore) proved he was an above-average 1990s quarterback.

Alex Smith

5. Alex Smith, 2005-12 (38-36-1)

Taken as a whole, Smith’s 49ers career was ... underwhelming.

But Smith’s time in San Francisco was a story of triumph. The former Utah star seemed destined to go down as one of the biggest busts in league history after starting his career with 31 interceptions, a 63.5 passer rating, and a putrid 4.6 adjusted yards per pass in his first 32 games. A season-ending shoulder injury in his fourth year, which came weeks after losing his starting job to J.T. by-god O’Sullivan, seemed to seal his fate as one of the worst draft picks to ever grace the modern NFL.

Then Smith turned things around, albeit slowly at first. He went 8-12 in his first two post-injury seasons. He finally played up his his draft position in his seventh and eighth years in the league. His final two seasons in San Francisco saw him go 19-5-1 as a starter while recording a 30:10 TD:INT ratio — all despite playing behind an offensive line that got him sacked on nearly 10 percent of his dropbacks. His sudden competence snapped an eight-year playoff drought and pushed the 49ers to the NFC title game in 2011.

That wasn’t enough to hold off Colin Kaepernick’s rise to the team’s starting role, but it made him valuable enough to fetch a second-round pick via trade in 2013.

Please direct your complaints to my personal email, adam (dot) stites @ sbnation (dot) com

4. Jeff Garcia, 1999-2003 (35-36) 3. Colin Kaepernick, 2012-16 (28-30) 2. Jimmy Garoppolo, 2017-19 (19-5)

Statistically, Garcia and Kaepernick are pretty evenly matched:

Garcia took bigger risks downfield, while Kaepernick was more cautious with the ball. Garcia was the better big-number passer, but Kaepernick backfilled those gaps with his ability to run the ball. Both were Pro Bowl-caliber quarterbacks who were sometimes bad, mostly good, and occasionally great.

The dividing line between the two is postseason success. Garcia went 1-2 in the playoffs with five interceptions and a passer rating roughly 15 points below his regular season average. His Niners never advanced beyond the Divisional Round.

Kaepernick, on the other hand, went 4-2 in his two postseason appearances, scoring 11 touchdowns (seven passing, four rushing) and leading the Niners to two NFC title games and one Super Bowl. He threw for 229 yards per game in the playoffs and ran for 84.5 more. His 264 rushing yards in a single postseason are the most by a quarterback in NFL history. Those are outstanding numbers and enough to give him the edge over Garcia.

Garoppolo can cement his place in the penultimate spot on this list by toppling the Chiefs in Super Bowl 54. While he’s been blessed with possibly the most talented supporting cast of anyone on this list but Young, he’s also capable of turning around even an awful 49ers team. San Francisco was 1-10 under Hoyer and Beathard in 2017 before Kyle Shanahan promoted his newly acquired QB to the starting role. The former Patriot showed out with five straight wins, including over the playoff-bound Titans, Jaguars, and Rams.

He’s only got one full season of starting experience under his belt, but Garoppolo has proven he can lead San Francisco to an NFC championship. His 99.2 passer rating and 67.6 completion rate are both tops among Niners quarterbacks over the past 25 years. His four fourth-quarter comebacks in 2019 led the league.

He’s still got plenty of room to fall down these rankings (and not much room to move up), but his first three seasons in the Bay Area have been outstanding so far — at least when he’s been healthy enough to take the field.

The legend

1. Steve Young, 1995-99 (42-14)

Young remained extremely good at football even as the Niners faded around him. His post-Super Bowl XXIX run saw him lead San Francisco to the playoffs in each season except for his injury-marred 1999 finale. The dual-threat quarterback made it to the Pro Bowl each season he started at least 11 games for the 49ers and led the league in passer rating six times — including twice after destroying the Chargers for his third NFL title.

But, most importantly ...

Cameo roles on hit NBC sitcom Wings —

Steve Young: 1 every other 49er QB, ever: 0

Also, he’s a Hall of Famer.