Counting Down to Kick Off

With a few days to go to the opening kick off on Thursday the 6th of September, many American football fans are ignoring friends and family to spend all waking hours combing through annual guides for inside information on which teams to back this year with their weekly pool selections.

If you feel you must bone up on football before the season, I recommend consulting award-winning University of Chicago Professor Steven Levitt's article:

http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittHowDoMarketsFunction2004.pdf


Professor Levitt is also the co-author of the best-seller, Freakonomics.

On another subject, I want to respond to questions about the on-line poll that appeared on this blog last month. How could a Coventry lass like myself born in 1977 possibly know about a cheesy show on American telly during the 1960s?

You have my new boyfriend Archibald to thank for our August Gilligan's Island survey. Archibald is a historian of popular culture who has just completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Syracuse, The Transatlantic Transmogrification of the Court Jester Archetype from British High Culture to American Low Culture: Falstaff to Connecticutt Yankee to Dobie Gillis. I can't believe anyone other than dear Archibald would be interested in such a topic, but he's now received a Bradley Foundation post-graduate fellowship to pursue his passion for telly history.

Archibald advises me that almost all football fans reading my blog will be interested in debating such weighty matters as Gilligan's choice between Ginger and Mary Ann. I've handed Archibald the task of coming up with a season's worth of poll topics on popular culture. During the footie season I will be polling my readers from Thursday to Sunday morning on which of my picks you think has the best chance to be a winner. Each Sunday to Wednesday, the poll question will be a TV quiz devised by Archibald.

In closing, I should mention that Archibald was taken aback by Mary Ann's overwhelming victory over Ginger. In fact, if Archibald had not himself voted twice for Ginger (his bad joke being that Ginger deserved at least a pair of votes) even the Professor would have finished ahead of Ginger in the hearts of Lady Godiva readers.