Weekend roundup: a Blowout trade, more You Complete Me and BCS and eBay rants

From Friday up until this evening I had an eventful few days of collecting.  Besides a couple forthcoming eBay purchases about which I'm pretty excited, there was this stuff:

BCS rant:

I'll keep this quick because it doesn't exactly relate to collecting, other than my foolproof comparison between the BCS and Topps:

• It completely ignores what the consumer wants
• It turns out a consistently terrible product
• It claims to value tradition, but blatantly ignores it in favor of the same old shit
• I want no further part of it until it's fixed

The fact that Alabama is playing in the NCAA football title game is a complete travesty and should mean the immediate abolition of the BCS for its failure to determine the two best teams that deserve to play each other for the national championship.  It's an inherently flawed system that has only once produced a reasonably satisfying champion in its history, and the corrupt human element of it has made it worse.  

But more than that, the hypocrisy of it kills me--Michigan was in the same boat in 2006 and we fans called for a rematch with Ohio State after losing by such a close margin on their field, our only loss.  We figured we deserved the rematch on a neutral field, but some people correctly pointed out that we hadn't won our conference title, not that it was officially mandatory for playing for the national title.  That was fine, but then the SEC and their propaganda factory, CBS, put on a shameless display of self-promotion that will forever be an embarrassment to anyone who isn't a NASCAR-promoting, Larry the Cable Guy-loving redneck with an IQ lower than the number of teeth in his gums.  The relevant point here is that the SEC was the loudest opponent of the rematch game.

Flash forward to 2011 and would you look at that?  Suddenly a rematch looks a bit more attractive to those Southerners--not as much as their sisters, but it's up there--and they finally have something to loudly and ignorantly yell about that doesn't involve Obama being a "seekrit muslin communist that weren't born in 'murica cuz I dun sawed it on the Fox News."  The hypocrisy is staggering, as is the fact that a one-loss Oklahoma State team was a perfectly reasonable candidate for the title game, as was Stanford, really.  For a formula that uses some complicated math, the BCS sure does benefit one specific region whose biggest numerical accomplishment was counting to potato.  The title game basically has an autobid for the SEC, and now apparently it has two.  Guess what?  They ALREADY PLAYED THAT GAME.  ALABAMA LOST.  END OF STORY.

So even though it won't happen, largely because Bubbas and Cleatuses would form an unruly mob hell-bent on seeing birth certificates of every NCAA executive, it's past due that we get a playoff going, even if it's only something as simple as four teams.  There's just not enough of a sample size to let a bunch of biased, corrupt and uninformed coaches and media select the two "best" teams to meet for the title.

End of that rant, Go Blue in the Sugar Bowl!

eBay:  the BCS of online auction sites:

Anybody else get one of these in the mail?:

Whiskey.  Tango.  Foxtrot.  This is why I hate class-action suits.  What's funny is I'm not sure how I even became eligible--I didn't sign up to be part of this because I rarely get in on these, and the whole $0.17, which eBay obviously spent more on to ship to me, isn't even enough to cover their exorbitant and extortionate fees.  Like the 20th Gio Gonzalez autograph you pull from a $300 Topps box, this is literally not worth the paper it's printed on.  Screw you, eBay, you dumb bastards.

On to lighter topics:  You Complete Me!:

I made another productive purchase through the always-reasonable Sportlots, so I thought it was time for another YCM post.  For under $15 shipped I got cards from these sets:

• Baseball:
• 2000 7-11 Coins (5)
• 2000 Upper Deck (24)
• 2005 Fleer Tradition (7)
• 2008 Topps Series II set 2 (5)
• 2008 Topps Co-Signers (3)
• 2008 Upper Deck Heroes (2)
• 2009 Bowman (2)
• 2009 Topps Update (6)
• Football:
• 2001 UD MVP (5)
• 2008 Topps (4)
• 2008 Upper Deck Heroes (8)
• 2009 Topps (1)

Total cards:  72

Sets added to:  12

Sets completed:  2

All of these cards were from one seller (the way to go with Sportlots) and all started with the 2000 7-11 coins, a set I've been wanting to finish for a while.  The guy had all five I needed, so I proceeded to pick up literally everything else he had from each of my set lists.  A nice consequence of that was also completing 2008 UD Heroes football, but I also made some strides in plenty of other sets, as you can see from the list.

No scans of these today, but I'm planning on getting up a post of the 7-11 hologram coins if I can figure out how to get them scanned/photographed so they look good.

Blowout blowo--wait, I actually completed a trade:

You read that right--I got through a Blowout thread without buying something and was able to complete a deal instead.  As I was looking through the mass of post-Black Friday box breaks there, I found a guy complaining about his bad luck with a cheap box of 2007 Playoff Contenders.  His three autographs were a guy I can't remember, Anthony Gonzalez (not too bad, plus he was able to sell it) and one that I thought was a great pull, but he lamented the quality of the hits, so I told him I'd take the third off his hands.  A couple of trade bait Aaron Rodgers RCs I no longer wanted later and this was in my possession:

This is Leon Hall's 2007 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket auto RC.  It's a great autographed rookie of one of my favorite Wolverines who's gone on to success in the NFL, and it pairs well with another I have from the set, Hall's college teammate David Harris.  I now have 18 hits of the budding star CB, every one of them an autograph.  This card also puts me 12 away from a nice, round 400 in that PC.

That's not all I got in the deal, though, since we both threw in a few extras.  As such, I ended up with this assortment:

It includes a 2008 Topps Chrome RC of Mario Manningham, Steve Breaston's 2007 Bowman Chrome RC, a 2007 Playoff Contenders Round Numbers insert of Hall and Reggie Nelson (#0241/100) and three Tom Bradys:  2006 Topps Draft and a couple 2008 Topps Chrome NFL Dynasties Tribute inserts.

I'm definitely happy with this trade, especially since no money actually changed hands and we both got something we really wanted, which proves that is possible once in a while.

Stay tuned for the previously-mentioned eBay pickups soon as they're both key cards as far as my PCs go.