John T. Reed’s news blog

Football games do NOT only end on the game clock buzzer or the final whistle. . Games also end when the LEADING team has POSSESSION and ENTERS THE TAKE-A-KNEE PERIOD. (When the trailing team is in possession, the game ends on the final whistle.) . My book Football Clock Management book has take-a-knee and QB-sweep-slide tables that tell you when you are in the take-a-knee or sweep-slide period. Sweep slide is a take-a-knee play but one that takes more seconds than the quick take-a-knee. There are high school, college, and NFL tables because of different clock-operation rules at each levels....

Today’s WSJ has a review of a new book In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio—a survey of all the major academic experts on such things—although I was surprised to not see Burton Malkiel mentioned. . But the review and the book piss me off as I have been pissed off before for assuming that “portfolio” refers only to stuff you can buy from a securities broker. Actually, if the review was comprehensive regarding the nature of the book’s contents, it is not even that broad. It is only about broadly-traded common stocks, no mention of bonds. . This is outrageous....

I recently did a zoom with the Chicago CCIA—Chicago Creative Investors Association. It is individual real estate investors. Among other things I told them no balloon payments. 30-year fixed-rate self-amortizing mortgages only. One guy asked what if you cannot find any such mortgages because all the lenders refuse to make 30-year self-amortizing mortgages on apartment buildings? So don’t buy apartment buildings. Balloon payments being all but universal in apartment buildings these days is one of the main reasons for my recent book An American Principal Residence is the Most Advantaged Investment on Earth: Maximize Yours! Chapter two is all the...

My Best Man sent me an article that said Madden changed the way TV announcers cover football. True. He introduced game film study to announcing. . The article also said he adamantly opposed youth tackle football recommending flag instead. In that, he did not know what the hell he was talking about. . You may think that being one of the greatest NFL head coaches means you are also a great college, high school and youth coach. Nope. I wrote the only book about coaching freshman and JV high school football. The assumption before my book was that freshman and...

John Madden died today at 85. He has the highest head coach winning percentage in NFL history: .759. (Guy Chamberlain had .784 but I guess his career was too short by someone choosing an arbitrary cut off above his total 81 games.) I often cite his and the other top NFL winning percentages like Vince Lombardi (.738) as evidence that football is a more coachable sport than baseball. The all-time highest win percentage there is .615 for Joe MaCarthy. Actually, I am not sure about that. MLB seems not to want us to know how low the highest win percentages...