Hyper Links

There's a new made-for-television golf event called TGL. It's a golf league, though I'm disappointed it doesn't stand for, "The Golf League." I've watched a few times, even though I'm not really a golf fan. I was just curious what it would be like. Strangely, I find it's like looking at an edgy work of art: I'm not entirely sure if I'm enjoying it, but it's so relentlessly weird that I can't look away.

The idea is to repackage golf in a smaller, more viewer-friendly format, with everything taking place in an indoor arena. The courses are all computer-simulated. The golfers tee off, hitting the ball at a big screen showing the virtual fairway. Then the computer figures out from the ball's trajectory where it would have landed. They either hit another drive at the screen, or, if the ball landed on the virtual green, they move to a big putting green, and putt from where the computer said the ball landed. The green can be warped and angled to simulate the lie.

Oh, and it's a team game of match golf.  With fifteen holes for some reason. There's a bunch of other rules that are still a mystery. They sometimes throw a hammer on the green, but I'm still figuring that one out. 

But the basic idea is that it's deconstructed golf: all the parts of golf, but dismantled and crammed into a new form. The shocking part is that I jokingly suggested something similar years ago: I saw a driving range with a mini golf course, and realized it could be a substitute for actual golf. And now, here it is, turned into a televised spectacle.

The whole thing is pretty bizarre. On the one hand, it's like the future we imagined, with people playing simulated sports, surrounded by a wildly enthusiastic audience. Throw in some mortal danger and it would be Rollerball.

But on the other hand, it's lacking in the polish you would expect future sports to have. I can't help thinking there is a weird inconsistency using technology in simulating real golf. Like you have this big mechanical surface that can morph itself into any hypothetical golf green, but it also has sand traps, and they're just plain old sand. Not computer-controlled magnets in the turf increasing the resistance to the golf club to simulate the resistance of sand. No, just a big pit full of sand.

One good thing is that many of the made-up holes are arrangements that would be hard to build in real life, like the tee and the hole are on opposite sides of a canyon. That's fun, but it loses something when it's just simulated, and you're not really watching the heartbreak of the golfer watching the shot come up short and bounce all the way down. Though it might be better if they got even more impossible, like the tee and green are on the roofs of different skyscrapers.

Of course, I'm now wondering what other sports could be deconstructed and remade like this. Auto racing would be an obvious possibility, since it's also a sport that takes up an inconvenient amount of room, and is difficult to watch live. You could have cars on giant treadmills, but that would be dangerous and loud, and even sillier. It would be better if they were just driving simulated cars. But they already have simulated racing; it's been part of eSports for a while now. While it does attract viewers, I don't foresee people packing an arena to watch it. Though it might be fun if — like the simulated golf — they had them drive on crazy, unreal courses. It would also be nice if the drivers could have a casual interaction with one another, like the golfers do in TGL. Maybe people would pay to see live racing simulation if they could hear Verstappen swearing at Hamilton, live and in person. (Lewis Hamilton is an investor in TGL, by the way.)

Of course, that introduces the idea that there would be some sort of interaction through the simulation; a way to get revenge within the sport. Okay, I've just reinvented Mario Kart, haven't I? But seriously, the world's top drivers playing Mario Kart: I would watch that.

Branding New Cadillac

General Motors has been awarded a formula one team. Michael Andretti had been campaigning for an American F1 team, but now he's stepped aside and the team will be more GM than Andretti. And it's going to be called the Cadillac team, as part of GM's eternal effort to associate the brand with something other than your rich uncle Wally's land yacht.

I'm wondering if anyone is taking bets on how long this team will last — or at least, how long it will have the Cadillac name. I'm thinking the over-under should be about 5 years. In recent history, there have been several examples of companies slapping their name on an F1 team, then changing their mind a few years later. Toyota lasted eight seasons, and Honda only three, and I don't see GM being more patient than them. It won't take long for the suits to ask why they're spending tens of millions to finish fourteenth.

The fact is that Formula One isn't a real great investment. It's not just expensive, but it's also hard to get to the top even if you're willing to spend with the big boys: You also need people with specific skills that aren't always available. Worse, there isn't much of a consolation prize: If you don't make it to the top, the whole world hears your name applied to the irrelevant car getting lapped by the champion.

So Formula One is a weird kind of never-ending investment bubble, where new people buy a team expecting great things, then realize there's not much reward in glory or publicity, and give up. But somehow, there's always more investors ready to take any team off the owner's hands and begin the cycle again.

Having said all this, Formula One has been more competitive this season, with four different teams winning races, so maybe this was the best time to buy into the series. But having said that, the other six teams had a combined total of two podiums in the 24 races, so there's still a big gap between haves and have-nots, even if there are more haves than there used to be. That will be the big challenge: those years in the wilderness without success before any chance at a publicity payoff.

Super Andretti Bros.

With the Formula 1 season winding down, we're getting more info about the season for Formula E electric cars, which is run over the fall-spring. Probably the biggest change is that there are new cars with batteries that now have the capacity to run an entire race, so there'll be no more of the silly-sounding mid-race car change.

But another big change is the "Attack Mode" concept. What? you think that's a childish sounding name? Well it was almost called "Hyperboost." And nearly everyone is calling it what it reminds them of: Mario Kart. The premise here is that if you drive over a certain areas of the track, you get a temporary speed boost. The activation area will be off the racing line, so there'll be a bit of strategy on whether it makes sense to go for it.

Many people won't like this on the grounds that:

• it's an artificial gimmick, and,
• if you were going to import something from Mario Kart into real racing, surely it would be the exploding turtle shells.

But the fact is that artificial speed bonuses have been creeping into racing for a while now. Formula 1 has the Drag Reduction System (DRS) in which a driver can press a button to flatten the rear wing to get a temporary aerodynamic aid, though you can only use it for passing. And Indy Cars have the Push To Pass system, where the driver can get a temporary power boost, but only for a total of two minutes per race.

Add a long-time racing fan, I know I'm supposed to hate these ideas as a tarnishing of the pure and simple concept of auto racing. But actually, I'm okay with it. The fact is that racing is reaching the limits of what can be done within the constraints of human abilities and the current technology. It could certainly be managed better than the elitist mess that is Formula 1, but even Indy Car and NASCAR are running into a dull sameness.

When you listen to fans about how to improve racing, their prescription is usually to relax the rules and allow more innovation, but the fact is that rules are limiting money more than innovation, so that unconstrained approach would just lead to even more predictable results. The only way out that I see is to introduce strategic challenges outside of the engineering challenge of making faster and faster cars. Preferably, these would be:

• Strategic challenges that the drivers have to face on the fly, not something that the teams can calculate and optimize to the nth degree.
• Things that the viewers can see and relate to, rather than esoteric considerations that few relate to.

Getting these ideas implemented will be difficult, because Formula 1 has spent a generation promoting the idea that it's a pure challenge of engineering, and that's why it's okay that their races were just expensive parades of predictable order. Pivoting to a future where the cars are near-identical  and interest is generated by in-race bonuses as they do it in Formula E will take a while.

Kneel Before Sod

The situation in North Korea is still tense. And Puerto Rico's infrastructure was devestated by hurricane Maria. But here we are talking about football players kneeling. Well, that's what Donald Trump wants to talk about, and everyone else is following along. I'm guessing that's because unlike North Korea, Puerto Rico, and the Obamacare repeal, this is something where there's a chance to fight back.

Some have suggested that Trump made the condemnation of NFL players kneeling for the anthem as a distraction, so we won't notice the health care disaster, or because he knows that there's incriminating Russia evidence about to drop. But the world just doesn't seem to work that way any more. We're used to new megastories coming at us every few hours; we can easily drop one story for another whenever we need to. Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm writing this article late at night; there will probably be a new outrage by morning.

The real reason for Trump's attack is that it's a great issue for him to score points with his base. It's got everything he likes: nationalism, condemning dissent, and a racist subtext. The whole thing is not very surprising really. What is interesting, though, is that the way each sport has responded has illustrated the sport's personality.

Football

I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction. A lot of players protested, there didn't seem to be much anger. There was even some official sanctioning, including the anthem singer himself kneeling in Detroit. No one seems to have been fired over this, or even much anger expressed by the owners (though give them a few days.) And there was thankfully little of the feel-good avoidance I complained about previously.

Having said that, the guy who started it all, Colin Kaepernick, is still without a job. So teams and owners' tentative support of their players comes with a big dose of hypocracy. Which is typical NFL too.

Basketball

The NBA and Basketball's culture clearly won the weekend. Trump looked desperate when he revoked Steph Curry's unaccepted invitation to the White House. And the Warriors' decision to "celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion" in Washington in place of a White House visit was a bold response. And Lebron James's Twitter burn of Trump was something Kim Jong Un could only dream of. Come on, NBA stars, I'm trying to hate you. Stop acting like the only adults in the room.

Hockey

The NHL isn't really involved, but somehow managed to turn the incident into a public relations loss by choosing now to announce that the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins will still be visiting the White House. It's just like them to find a way to lose a controversy they weren't involved in.

Having said that, I will forgive the NHL and become a Penguins fan if Yevgeny Malkin spends the entire visit acting like he's only there to pass on Putin's latest instructions to Trump.

But this is also typical of the paradox that hockey culture hates to rock the boat. It's a sport that takes bravery to play, yet never seems to generate bravery away from the rink among its players.

Baseball

It seemed kind of separated from the rest of the sports world. After all, it is the most conservative, traditional, and increasingly the whitest sport. So it seemed almost like an afterthought when news came out that A's catcher Bruce Maxwell knelt for the anthem. We were like, oh, right, baseball players might be doing that too.

But going back to the hurricane: given Trump's lackluster reaction, you have to wonder how many Puerto Rican players don't feel like standing for the anthem right about now.

Nascar

In sharp constrast with the other sports, Nascar was totally on board with Trump. Legendary car owners Richard Petty and Richard Childress both said they would fire any employees who didn't stand for the anthem - to my knowledge, the only owners in any sport to follow Trump's advice.

Of course, this is just the latest example of how Nascar is fine with being exactly what everyone expects it to be. It's like they want to make it really clear whether you are welcome in the sport or not. Certainly I'm feeling happier with my decision to walk away from it.

Sunday Afternoon's Alright For Fighting

TSN and CTV news had an interesting report this week on the decline of fighting in hockey. Statistically, there has been a steady decline in the amount of fighting, particularly over the last ten years. Since the 2005 strike, the game has been changed by the crackdown on obstruction and the salary cap. Those two factors have conspired to reduce fighting: higher speeds and tight budgets have meant that teams can't spare a roster spot for someone who can't contribute with skill.

I always thought that was the biggest argument against fighting in hockey; even if you accept the belief that fights are a good way to rally the team, you're essentially talking about having a mascot who is actually a team member. Give the Phillie Phanatic a spot on the bench and a multi-million dollar contract and suddenly he doesn't seem so fun.

But what was also interesting in the report was how fighting increased in the first place. Back in the Original Six days, fighting was much less common, with about a fight every four games. In the expansion era, it skyrocketed, peaking in the 80's at more than one fight a game. Although there are fewer fights now, we're still above what it was in the sixties.

Of course, this goes against the Cherryist orthodoxy, which states that: (1) you can't have hockey without fighting, and (2) the Original Six was a golden era when everything was perfect, until it was contaminated by the Swedes and Gary Bettman.

So it's amusing that fighting may cure itself. But if you really want to see a sport where fighting is tolerated, have no fear, NASCAR is here. Fighting isn't new there; many say the sport was launched into the public consciousness with the Allison-Yarborough tilt at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500.

But in recent years there have been plenty of fights following races. And NASCAR seems to be okay with it, doling out surprisingly little punishment, while also relaxing punishment for the misbehaviour on the track that leads to post-race fights. Indeed, Jalopnik.com notes that in the most recent fight, no one was fined, but several mechanics paid the price for - wait for it - illegal lug nuts.

It can't be a coincidence that NASCAR has become more tolerant of fights during the time that their attendance is down, and their TV ratings are in free-fall. You can understand their thinking, since one of the many explanations for the sport's decline in popularity is that it's hard to care about this generation of drivers. You'll learn something about them after seeing them in post-race confrontations, even if it's just fighting style.

But I have always had my doubts about fighting as a way to popularity for a sport. The problem is that there's a difference between what people enjoy, and what they choose. Yes, the audience usually enjoys themselves during a hockey fight, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a large part of the public wanting to watch the sport. People are in a different frame of mind when they’re choosing how to spend their time and money, and a sport that gets a reputation as an uncivilized guilty pleasure will lose out.

A Rare Right Turn

I'm honestly trying not to write too much about Donald Trump. I don't want to turn off readers, and I want to maintain my own sanity. But it's hard; he's such a perfect demonstration of all that's wrong with humanity. I mean, people were comparing his presidential run to that of David Duke in the eighties to demonstrate the shift in America's acceptance of extreme ideas. And the next thing you know, David Duke actually endorses Trump, and he waffles over it, and there are no consequences. It's like political gods (or devils) are toying with us.

(And I'm glad to say that Android is still interpreting my swipe of "presidential run" as "presidential ruin.")

But sometimes something comes up that I just can't ignore, like when NASCAR endorses Trump for president. That had sports journalists wondering, has a major sports organization ever endorsed a presidential contender before? It's hard to imagine, say, the NFL endorsing a candidate, if only because they rely on fans from all parts of the political spectrum. But to be clear, NASCAR itself didn't endorse Trump; the CEO of NASCAR, Brian France, merely endorsed Trump, at a rally, accompanied by several current and former drivers. It was enough that many people thought it was an official endorsement from the racing series itself. Trump himself wrongly said that the endorsement came from NASCAR itself, but on the list of Trump exaggerations, that doesn't even crack the top thousand.

At this point, I must ask you to stop and get all the "France endorses Trump" jokes out of your system.

This whole incident says a lot about the Trump phenomena and the cultural split in America. France felt comfortable endorsing him, presumably because NASCAR fandom is uniformly behind Trump, or close enough that an endorsement will do more good than harm. As I've mentioned before, NASCAR may like to portray itself as part of the sporting mainstream, but they are also willing to play right into their own stereotypes. Indeed, the organization has put considerable work into expanding outside its traditional white audience, which makes this whole thing perplexing. But that just demonstrates how Trump's support is so divorced from his actions. The campaign is entirely about attitude, so Trump's enemies seem to be the only ones concerned about his actual words.

I'll Do My Driving In The Rain

I've mentioned before that I don't think highly of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone. I think it would be accurate to describe him as being like FIFA president Sepp Blatter, but without the selflessness.  So a few years ago, when he proposed making races more exciting by having sprinklers around the course randomly spray water on the track, I was neither impressed nor surprised.  Indeed, the idea got a lot of jeers from the racing community.

While that was a crazy idea from a terrible person, I can actually understand the thinking behind it. Today's American Grand Prix was one of the most entertaining Formula One races in recent years, and that was largely due to Hurricane Patricia, the edges of which dumped rain on the track in Austin, Texas. 

And that's nothing new: Formula One races have long been more exciting in the rain.  In perfect conditions, it's just a fast parade, with the cars ending up in order of who has the most money.  The lack of traction makes things unpredictable, cancels out a lot of the technology advantage, and rewards driving skill. In fact, today's race seemed to get noticeably less entertaining through the race as the rain stopped and the track tried out.

But sprinklers?  Surely there's a more sophisticated way to approach the problem.  Besides, I have the feeling that if all races were in uniformly wet conditions, the engineers would start to adapt and turn it into a predictable competition of technology again.

So here's an idea.  I have no idea if this makes sense or not, but I feel confident enough to put it forward, since it's already guaranteed not to be the dumbest suggestion anyone's made.  For a while now, Formula One has had just one tire supplier, currently Pirelli. They make a few different types of tires with different rubber compounds (crash course on racing tires: the tire compound is a trade-off, where softer rubber gives better traction, but wears out quicker.)  Currently they bring two different compounds to each race, and the teams are free to choose between them (aside from the rule that they have to use each type at least once during the race.)

So hows this: They bring just one type of tire to each race, but they don't tell anyone what it is. Qualification and practice could be done with standard tires, but the ones supplied for race day are a random formulation that no one knows until the race starts. Everyone has to figure out how much traction they have during the race, and adapt their driving and strategies to it. 

Would You Buy A Used Racing Team From These People?

Two of Formula 1's eleven teams have run out of money.  Marussia appears to be finished.  And Caterham is trying to raise money through crowdfunding. 

This story has been reported in the media as a reckoning for the sport, in which they will realize that the finances are unsustainable, and it will have to be remade.  Racing suffers from the same success-begets-success problem that a lot of sports face, in which good teams have greater income, which allow them to outbid other teams for top talent.  Auto racing has it worse for a couple of big reasons: one is that money doesn't just buy talent, it buys technology.  And there's the fact that no one has any reason to love the lesser teams:  In team sports, a bad team can at least count on at least some fans from their home town to support them even when they are uncompetitive. That's why I doubt the Caterham funding plea will work; sadly, there probably aren't many people around the world that will care.

Sports is a bizarro world where Americans are socialist and Europeans are unapologetic capitalists.  So NASCAR and IndyCar have low-cost, balanced series, while Formula 1 does little to keep lesser teams alive, never mind competitive.  So not only do winning teams win the big prize money and get the biggest sponsorship dollars, they also get the bigger share of the TV money.  So it's inevitable that lesser teams will get caught in a vicious circle.  Some people have suggested that the solution is to let the unsuccessful teams go under, and just have the rich and successful teams field more cars each.  But that won't work either, since the problem will just reappear: Even if there are fewer teams with more cars, someone has to finish last, and no one will want to sponsor them.

So eventually the sport will have to completely overhaul how it works.  But that will mean a radical shift in philosophy, as they drop the pretense that the sport is some ultimate technological competition at the bleeding-edge of engineering.  Instead, they'll have to tighten the rules to make the cars virtually the same, and sell it as a competitive sport.

But they won't be doing that any time soon.  In a world with many emerging markets, there is a constant supply of rich people and corporations looking for instant credibility and status.  Essentially, that's the case with Russian-owned Marussia, (formerly) Malaysian-owned Caterham, and the next candidate for bankruptcy, Force India. So expect all these teams to be back next year, under new names and ownership.

Next Is The E

This weekend was the first race in the new Formula E auto racing series. As you might guess from the name, it's kind of like Formula 1, but for electric cars. And it's organized by the same organization, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA).

There's been some scepticism, since this series will, of necessity be smaller, slower, and cheaper than the big series. But lesser racing series have survived in the past, so it could work out. Because it's really too early to tell whether it will be successful, most media reports have focused on silly questions like whether auto racing fans will take to racing that's so quiet, which just makes all of us in racing fandom look like fools. Of course, there have been complaints in Formula 1 about the sound of the turbo V6's used this year in comparison to the V8's that have been in use for years, so maybe we really are that simple. And the inaugural race ended with a dramatic crash at the end, so less sophisticated fans should be convinced now.

I think Formula E could be successful, because it has a couple of big things going for it, aside from its environmental credentials. One is the aforementioned lack of noise. That means a great deal of flexibility in locating races. Rather than go to tracks in the middle of nowhere, or street courses carefully positioned in cities but far from residential areas, you can have electric car racing anywhere. Street races have been successful; if you can find a good location, the community will really get behind them, even when the racing series itself is struggling, as we've seen with the IndyCar races at Toronto and Long Beach.

The more hidden advantage is that it gives the FIA an opportunity to start over, without Formula 1's baggage. As successful as the top series is, there's so much about it that needs reworking. They're constantly fighting the issues of high costs, lack of parity, and reining-in ever increasing speeds. I have to admit, they're making some progress on these fronts, but all the way they're fighting organizational inertia, and racing teams that benefit from the current situation. It doesn't help that series organizers spent about twenty years trying to ignore their problems, instead promoting their boring parades of delicate, high-speed contraptions as a competition of engineering. That trained a generation of fans to think of racing as being about fancy technical specs, not actual competition.  So now they too push back against tightening the rules for the sake of exciting racing.

So Formula E gives a chance to start over, and build a series on competition, not esoteric engineering. And it will work, but it will take time to build up interest. Will the FIA give it the time it needs? I have no idea. The FIA is an odd beast: a huge, highly profitable organization, but with a few eccentric and not-entirely-pleasant individuals in positions of great power. So I could believe that Formula E will get a chance to succeed because it is a sensible long-term investment, or because someone sees it as a personal legacy. But I could also believe that it won't get a chance because the short-term balance sheet won't look good, or because someone quickly tires of this hippy electric crap.

Don't Read This Blog! Look At My Friends And Family!

Today I had one of those careful-what-you-wish-for moments. Last week I praised the telecasts of Australian Rules Football for showing replays and reaction shots in a little picture-in-picture box on the corner of the screen. Today, the broadcasters of the Indianapolis 500 made use of the technique to show the wives and girlfriends of the contending drivers in the final laps of the race. I hated it, and even other sportscasters hated it:

Wonderful finish Indy 500..and TV shows me wife and girlfriends..I don't care..All those in car cameras and that's all they used..terrible
— Vic Rauter (@TSNVicRauter) May 25, 2014

I have to admit that it was not as bad as their usual practice of breaking away to show the significant others full-screen, sometimes in between every camera change. Trouble is, they decided that the facial expressions of the partners - while not worth ignoring the race for - was at least of equal importance to the race. So they showed each shoot side by side. That is, they showed the entire widescreen view of the race, with the widescreen view of the partner beside it. So with the graphics and borders included, we end up seeing the race on less than a quarter of the screen. I assumed that would be temporary, but they held that dual-view all the way around the track for the second-last lap. Fortunately they came to their senses then and at least gave us the final lap fullscreen.

What makes it extra silly is that on a sunny day, everyone at the track is wearing sunglasses, so we have to watch these oh-so-important reaction shots based entirely on mouths. Castroneves loses the lead - and look, his girlfriend is frowning. Oh, but Hunter-Reay's wife is smiling. Aren't you glad we have this human connection instead of just guessing what everyone is feeling during the race?

Moving Pictures

I thought I'd mention the upcoming movie Rush, since it's opening tomorrow and I'm sure the studio will reward me for helping them out with publicity.  That is how it works, right?

As a racing fan, I've always been disappointed that there's never been a good auto racing movie.  You'd think a sport that's such a visual spectacle would lend itself well to film.  There was Grand Prix, which offered great cinematography, but with self-consciously arty directing that was a distraction.  And a rather one-dimensional story didn't help. 

Days of Thunder was much worse: a talented cast and crew all underachieved, and the special effects were quite disappointing.  That is, they were disappointing because they weren't actually special effects: in those pre-CGI days, they had to use actual cars driving around actual tracks.  So how did it end up looking fake?

And the less said the better about Driven, the Silvester Stallone vehicle (Hah!) about Indy Cars.  I've seen parts of it on TV, but I don't think I could sit through the whole thing.  Though I did see the YouTube video someone put together of all its ridiculous crash scenes.

I was kind of surprised on the choice to focus Rush on James Hunt.  You have the budget and talent to finally make the good auto racing movie and you chose him as the best guy in the history of motor racing to tell as story about.  Of course, I got to know him in the eighties in his second career as a kind of annoying commentator rather than as an exciting and charismatic driver and playboy.  Niki Lauda on the other hand was already a legendary multiple-world-champion, rather than just being Hunt's frenemy as Rush seems to play it.

But I'm sure it's a good movie.  I should know, the ads have shown us pretty much the entire thing.

A Really Boring Post

There were a couple of big televised events in the U.S. today: the Daytona 500, and The Oscars.  Here in Canada, you can add the final of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (championship of women's curling.)  What links these three events?  All three are widely criticized for being boring.

As you might see from my Twitter feed, I got kind of tired by how many people were making sarcastic remarks about the race.  I don't really understand why you would say such a thing.  Sure, not everyone is going to enjoy stock car racing.  But as big media events go, Nascar races are pretty easy to ignore.  If you find football boring, then I could understand if you go a little crazy on Superbowl weekend.  But Daytona?  Just don't watch that channel on that Sunday afternoon, skip over that one page of the sports section with a preview the day before, and don't watch the Speed channel for the month before, which you probably avoid anyway.

Because curling and stock car racing are so easy to get away from, expressing your boredom with them reflects badly on yourself.  The fact that you seem to feel the need to tell everyone you're bored - and the fact that you're spending several hours watching a TV event you have no interest in - indicates that you are quite boring.  After all, you are the only common bond in all these boring situations.

The Oscar telecast, okay, I can understand if you're finding it dull.  And I can understand if you're feeling like you can't escape it: so many people insist on talking about it before and after the ceremony.  But it is on only one channel.  You don't have to watch it.  And making jokes about how long and boring the ceremony is are becoming as repetitive as the presentation itself.  It seemed like half of Seth MacFarlane's jokes in this year's show were about how long the show is.  So please don't make the ceremony seem even longer by talking about how long it is.