Pete Davidson is doing just fine.

 It was surprising to hear, a few years ago, that Pete Davidson was dating Ariana Grande, because he didn't seem like the type to have a famous girlfriend. And then he dated Kate Beckinsale, and it sounds like he has dated every famous daughter of a famous person, so maybe it isn't that surprising that he had so many famous significant others.

Now, he is apparently with Kim Kardashian, perhaps the most famous daughter of a famous person out there. It makes sense for her, I guess. If you are in a relationship that ends, sometimes you just want to find something completely different. Kanye West is one of the most self serious people out there, and Davidson is absolutely not. 

But I digress. What I really wanted to do was share last night's "Walkin' in Staten". I won't spoil it, but there were surprises, and they made me smile.

Who would have won a full season of 2020 college football?

 More than a decade ago when Steve Pallotto and I put together a series called "Blowing up college football". The premise was that people wanted a college football playoff, with teams then winning the championship based on actual games played on the field. Steve and I noticed that even when the BCS playoffs used a formula to pick the top 4 teams, the initial polls in the season carried a lot of weight. It wasn't actually fully won on the field. In hindsight, we have seen Central Florida go undefeated and still not be given a chance at the title, and Cincinnati, undefeated, is still not in position for the playoffs, because they play in the wrong conferences.

Of course, now, the imperative has changed thanks to the dawning of the super conference. People, especially in the southeast, are irritated that people would even think that a 2 loss Alabama would miss the playoff to an undefeated Cincinnati. "Why not put the 4 best teams in the playoff?" they say. So much for letting it play out on the field. 

Well, to me, solving it on the field still matters, and I think all those years ago, we figured out how to do that. To summarize, we broke everything up into geographically apportioned conferences, and every team played each other once. Out of conference games are played in order to help determine the strength of conferences and providing seeding for teams when the playoffs arrive. When I say things are determined on the field, I mean it. Everything we can think of, if we could solve it on the field, we would. 

I didn't touch on the 2019 simulated season, (Joe Burrow's LSU beat Georgia in the championship, with Oklahoma and USC reaching the semifinals) but I figured since 2020 was a wash, it would be cathartic to review the 2020 simulated season. 

Unless you are a Gophers fan. Their lackluster season was reflected in the simulation (done on Whatifsports), where the team went 1-11, and surely would not have earned PJ Fleck an extension. Conversely, Purdue win the Great Lakes conference (over every Indiana school but the Indiana University, and all the Michigan schools) perhaps fortelling their success in 2021. The Boilermakers were the 10 seed in the tournament and were felled by Florida. 

Florida eventually made the semifinals as well, joining Clemson, Brigham Young and Alabama. It was a banner year for Group of 5 schools, as Memphis, San Diego State, Louisiana, Air Force, Brigham Young, Marshall and Buffalo all reached the tournament. Alabama and Florida were the only two SEC schools, which is the same number of schools as the Mountain West. The Big Ten was the leader with 4 teams (Ohio State, Purdue, Indiana and Rutgers, which is not a ringing endorsement for football in the mid-Atlantic). 

Of course, none of the Big Ten teams made it out of the 2nd round, and the only time an SEC team lost, it was to another SEC team. Alabama won the entire thing, defeating Brigham Young for the title. The final 4 featured three quarterbacks that were drafted high into the NFL in Trevor Lawrence, Zack Wilson and Mac Jones, and I think that is a decent reflection of the state of the world American football right now. Quarterbacks are very important.

For 2021, the question of Cincinnati's inclusion in a potential playoff will be much more simple to navigate. They just need to win their conference, and they can figure it out on the field, and not rely on anyone's opinions. 

I'm ready for College hoops

 Tonight is opening night on the college basketball schedule, and if all goes as expected, this will be the first "normal" season, nose to tail since 2018-19. After two screwed up seasons, it will be good to level set one of my favorite sports after it was one of the first and most significantly disrupted sports by the Pandemic.

Covid-19 destroyed the 2020 NCAA basketball post season just recently underway when the whole world ground to a halt. First conference tournaments were scrubbed, then the rest of the league. While professional leagues later came back in bubbles later that summer, the 2020 NCAA season was just done and gone forever. Then, the beginning of the 2020-21 season was affected by the same problems the rest of the world was, with breakouts, delays and cancellations. VCU missed the tournament because of a late positive on their team.

This year? There shouldn't be as much, if any of that. College basketball will return to represent sports as chaos again, in such a good way. Today, there are a few big match ups, and a lot of games featuring huge disparities in talent, like Purdue's opener with Bellarmine, a small school from Louisville. It will offer the first samples of teams with big names choking away games against smaller teams, but will also be the first introduction to the best teams in the country. 

Purdue is one of the best squads in the country, and I'm excited about that, as you might imagine. Minnesota Gophers basketball was my first sports love, and even though they will likely be bad, they are a full on mystery, and I'm excited about that. St. Thomas is D-1 now, and I am excited to see them play. I have no Following the Compass teams for this season (it was the New York Giants and Colorado Rapids this season), but that's no matter, as I will still keep tabs on ever team I've tracked in the past, I'm sure, and I'm excited about that.

But mostly, I'm just excited that there will be basketball in gyms, at the right time of year again. I think that we have all learned a lot about preventing and mitigating the spread of contagious diseases, and of course, are finding more and more people getting vaccinated, so it will be safer this season. There will be games on my TV almost every night I want them to be on. We've been grasping for normal for almost 2 years now, and by God, tonight's excitement feels normal. 

A show that isn't Ted Lasso, but is still good.

 I'm not someone who binges TV shows. I don't have the patience or attention span to stay with the same show over the course of a week, or whatever, but I will watch the season of a show released every week (like The Mandalorian) but because a couple of factors, (I'm watching with my wife and the shows are really good) I've recently gone through two shows with the aggressive passion that we are supposed to this day in age.

The first show is Ted Lasso, but if Halloween has taught us anything, it is that we are all pretty saturated with Ted Lasso. If you haven't watched the show, I recommend it, because you will like it. It's widely acclaimed, so that is a pretty common opinion. I am not a fan of sports shows or movies, and even I like it. So yes, it's good, but you probably already know that, or are sick of hearing that. 

I am here to tell you to watch Netflix's Sex Education. Like Ted Lasso, it isn't quite what you would expect going in, and the first few scenes, and the first couple of episodes definitely lend to the belief that it is a raunchy, graphic show, that caters to the basest TV watchers, but as it progresses, you find that it is a smart character study of a diverse cast. 

Like Ted Lasso, Sex Education takes place in England and is smarter than one would expect. It looks at the lives of promiscuous high school students and their families. The show starts focused on Otis Milburne (Asa Butterfield) and his mother, Jean (Gillian Anderson) but expands its scope to include a vast array of characters that it never forgets, even if they were introduced in a seemingly secondary manner earlier in a given season. And all of the characters are complex.

The show is funny. It's a different brand of humor, certainly, than what Ted Lasso offers, but it also deals with very serious topics related to sexual health, gender identity, classism and bullying, but never feels as heavy as all that sounds. Still, it has a heart, brought to pass because it respects every character and allows us to connect with each of them. I'm surprised it hasn't ever received the acclaim of other shows, but that might just be because of the name.

I know that I've drawn comparisons to Ted Lasso at every turn, so here is one last one for you to take note of if and when you start watching the Sex Education. One of the main characters on Lasso has a small role on Sex Education as well. Can you spot them? Give it a shot, because you should give Sex Education a shot.