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In the comments to my previous post about the WVU/Mississippi State game, Irishladdy wrote:

I will admit the game on saturday from the 2nd quarter on was extremely boring. Our offense was ultra-conservative because we didn’t want to run the score up.

As I’ve mentioned, I don’t feel like I’m particularly qualified to write about sports, but I’m going to paraphrase that. “After we got a decent lead, our players stopped trying so hard.”

I’ve never understood the aversion to “running the score up.” I don’t think that a team that has a comfortable lead should be attempting onside kicks and such just so they can keep the other team’s offense from ever touching the ball, but there’s nothing unsportsmanlike about winning by a large margin if that margin comes simply from allowing your players to do their best on the field.

Irishladdy points out that we brought in our backup quarterback, Jarrod Brown, and I think we brought in another backup even later in the game. I want to be clear here that I’m not against allowing some of our other players the chance to get some game time if we feel comfortable doing so. However, I am against putting any of our players on the field if they are not going to be doing the best that they can do. It is disrespectful to the other team, and it is lousy sportsmanship.

Over at Classical Values, Eric discusses the difference between pet ownership and pet “adoption”:

I do think that in general if you own something, you’ll tend to take better care of it than if you rent it, and in my callused opinion, adopting an animal (especially when you don’t have title) is more like a rental, while purchasing it is more like real parenting or home ownership. I realize people will disagree with me, and these things are emotional, so I thought I’d let the Ellen post die its natural death.

I have a great deal of respect for animal rescue organizations, and if I were going to get a dog, I would generally prefer to go to a rescue organization or shelter — assuming that I were going to be permitted to own the dog.

I think Eric has a pretty good point here. It isn’t so much that I would worse care of a dog that I didn’t completely think of as my dog, but I would have a harder time getting attached to an animal that I felt that I was only “renting”. I fully understand that private rescue organizations would want to make sure that their rescued animals only go to a good home, but I would be reluctant to do business with such an organization if, after they’d determined that I was a good owner, they didn’t trust me to completely take responsibility for the animal — which would include a responsibility on my part to make sure that, if for some reason I needed to get rid of the animal, the new owners would be responsible as well.

Or, at least, the hand that serves you drinks

The Charleston Gazette‘s Readers’ Voice never ceases to amuse. Here’s a good one from Friday’s edition:

I am glad that someone is finally interested in putting in a non-smoking nightclub. I enjoy listening to bands but I cannot go to any clubs because of the smokers polluting the air. I, for one, don’t like smelling like a cigarette. All public establishments should be smoke-free. That includes restaurants, bars, etc.

Translation: “I’m sure glad someone is interested in a non-smoking nightclub, but I sure wish the government would screw them over by making everyone serve that niche.” This new business owner should be thrilled to have customers who think like that.

I have no interest in nightclubbing, but I, too, am pleased to hear that capitalism and the free market are working and that some enterprising individual has found a market that he (or she) can tap into. Good for him (or her)! That’s the way the system is supposed to work.

I have little patience for people who, like this Gazette reader, think that because they like something a certain way, everyone should be forced to enjoy it that way. I have absolutely no qualms with the idea that all public establishments should be smoke free. The government has every right to set the rules for behavior in public establishments — courthouses, capitol buildings, and public memorials are the government’s responsibility, and they can set the rules.

“[R]estaurants, bars, etc.”, on the other hand, are private establishments. Sure, they’re open to the public, but they don’t belong to the public. If the owner of the building wants to allow smoking, more power to him. Patrons who don’t want to deal with smoke can go to a competing establishment. If there is no competing establishment, and there are enough non-smoking customers to keep a smoke-free competitor in business, start a competing business. Don’t go begging Big Brother to come and bully the business owner into doing things your way.

I have to wonder if they only watched the first quarter

Ordinarily, I don’t blog much about the Mountaineers. There are at least two other people who have permission to post here who know far more about the University’s sports teams than I do, and there’s another who’s been offered similar permissions if he wants them. Still, with the headline from the WSAZ RSS feed being so blatant (admittedly, the story, and presumably the headline, came straight from the AP), I had to write something. The headline reads: “West Virginia Impressive Against Mississippi State,” and I just can’t agree.

Now, I will confess that due to a mixup^[a], we were a bit late and missed the first two scores of the game. We did arrive in time to watch the rest of the game, though, and I will admit that, during the first quarter, the Mountaineers were impressive, on both sides of the ball. To be fair, the defense played well the entire game, holding the Mississippi State Bulldogs to only 13 points, but after the first quarter was over, it almost seemed as though the offense had decided it was time to stop playing. A quick field goal at the beginning of the second quarter was the last time we scored until very late into the game.

It was enough to bring up some significant worry about the Rutgers game next week.

Admittedly, I’m not an expert on this topic, and I generally know much more about video games and politics than I do about football, even when it involves the Mountaineers, but hopefully this post will draw in some more knowledgeable commenters. (I’m looking at you, Irishladdy.)

1. My cousin and his wife, who gave me a ride to the game, forgot their tickets at home, which we realized nearly a hundred miles into the trip to Morgantown. [UPDATE: I suppose, in the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I, too, forgot my ticket. However, I maintain that my forgetfulness did not have much of a bearing on our lateness -- if it had only been my forgetfulness, after all, I simply would've gone to a friend's house to watch the game on television.] [↩]