Mike Greenberg, in this month's ESPN The Magazine:

I may be the lone holdout who likes the current system.  A college professor once told me the only interesting questions are the ones with no answers.  Every other sport wraps things up, but debates about which team was best continue long after a college football season is over.

Auburn went undefeated in 2004 -- can you say they weren't the best team in the country [they weren't - Ed.]?  We'll be discussing it for years to come. 

Hmm.

Few fans of the Premier League like to use the word "playoffs," and for good reason. English football emphasizes the league season above all else. You can only determine the best club in the league by having all the clubs play each other in a big home-and-away series. To give the league title to a club that got on a hot streak in a post-season tournament is tantamount to blasphemy.

In other words, their focus and attention is on the regular season just like college football.  It's a point of emphasis.  When you emphasize the postseason (as happens in the NFL, MLB, college basketball, NBA, etc.), the regular season is cheapened dramatically.

When you emphasize the regular season (like college football), the postseason is cheapened.  At least with college football, there are bowl games plus the big ticket BCS games and the BCS title game.  It's the best of both worlds, but because it doesn't look or smell or taste like the NFL some people are upset.

Look, this is how our game is played.  College football is what it is because it has found a way to produce an incredible regular season.  The EPL has their way of doing things, with great success.  To each their own.

Twisted, obviously.

Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel, on last week's BCS meetings that smartly shelved a proposal for a 4-team playoff:

In the end it was too much. The commissioners believed that just the taste of something that exciting would lead to demands to rewrite the rules and create more.

"Even though we could construct barriers at this time, we felt like there could be easily an erosion of that; more pressure to add more teams with an ability to get to the national championship game as we went over time," Dan Beebe of the Big 12 said.

Fear of success was enough for some to scream for silence.

This is so incredibly dishonest.  The people in charge aren't afraid of "success".  What they realize is something that I've harped on here (and initially expressed by Get The Picture): mission creep.  The four-team playoff proposal is a Trojan Horse and everyone knows it.  It's an entry into the gates from where you can never go back.  A four-team playoff would never stay at four teams.  In essence, if the conference commissioners had approved of the SEC's proposal, they wouldn't so much be agreeing to a "modest" four-team playoff but an ever-expanding playoff.

This was quite intelligent on their part.

Wetzel is an unabashed playoff supporter.  That's fine, but he's also incredibly insulting and demeaning to those who stand against it.  There are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose a playoff in college football (start here and then go here).  He refuses to acknowledge them in his zeal to change the game, which makes him a dishonest broker in all of this.

But if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.

Good work, (most) conference commissioners.  First round's on me if we ever meet.

Perhaps a regular feature, perhaps not, it's toe-in-the-water time with this.  And the name could probably use some pep.  Suggestions welcome.

• Craft beers are a gift to mankind -- enjoyed in moderation, of course.  For years it's been almost impossible to make or sell them in the state of Alabama.  The state's legislators have wrestled for years about whether or not to raise alcohol limits that would allow for greater variety of beer into the state.  Some legislators are hopelessly clueless.  Watch the video for more background, but scan to 5:33 for an entertaining speech from Rep. Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery).  (H/T: Get The Picture)
  
• Enjoy this 14-part stroll through North Korea (aka "crazyland"), made by the brave folks at VBS.tv.  Seriously, carve out some time in your day to watch this series of videos.

• Emo emu

• College Gridiron Boss emails in with his playoff take: "Nobody Will Ever Be Satisfied"

• Sam The Cooking Guy has gone big-time.  Sam Zien will be on the Today Show April 1.  Who is Sam The Cooking Guy?  He's someone who should be on FoodTV with his own show, but until recently was an incredibly obscure cooking show host playing before county television audiences in San Diego.

The Discovery Health network snagged his show and re-tuned it with a healthy angle (ehhhh, but its a promotion).  Good guy, interesting show, and someone with the potential to be really embraced nationally.  Check out some YouTube vids of Sam doing his thing.  Update: Sam's appearance was moved to Thursday.

• Coming next week: New Blogs.  Like, 100+ of them.  If you've emailed me in the last three or so months, this is probably the moment when your blog gets linked, woo hoo!  If you're not listed and want your blog up, now's a good time to send an email my way with a link and stuff.

• Also: I get a fair amount of emails to sites, blog entries etc. that I simply cannot accomodate into the normal theme of this blog.  This space may be a good place to direct such entries, so if you've tried before with little effect to get one of your entries mentioned on here, try again.  Casual Friday or whatever this will be called is a little more open to such efforts.
  

I'm not sure if he'll ever agree with me about the "means" of my anti-playoff argument, but after the occasional protestation, EDSBS' Orson Swindle has come to the same conclusion about the ends: to hell with a playoff for college football.

Glad to have you aboard. 

In its entirety (emphasis mine):

The net result for us in experiencing the NCAA tourney from the vantage point of deep inside the smoky anus of Vegas is this: college football must never, ever have a playoff. Nevah. That’s our gut instinct right now after having watched the weird dénouement of the tourney’s first weekend in Vegas and realizing that the NCAA cannot effectively coordinate the mating of two donkeys, much less a major football tournament.

Because we’re typing this off our phone while waiting in line to be told that we’re not making our connecting flight in Phoenix, we’ll be succinct: the season remains everything in college football, and a playoff would tangibly devalue the regular season’s value. Man on moon, yes; but seeing the dispassion of turning the game into a neatly compressed lump of productmeat suitable for easy heat ‘n bake consumption made us irrationally sad.

As it stands, every team with a decent body of work gets their one moment in the sun, unless they get the Motor City Bowl, in which case they at least get a moment of glory in the rain of fiery ashes and locusts that has been pelting Detroit for 40 years or so. A playoff kills that dead.

Onto the plane. It’s strictly working on the lizard brain level right now, but the image of a season easily ended in tidy fashion on four screens in Vegas makes us want to split the rails of a playoff train’s tracks and watch the wreck ensue.

It’s just this weekend’s Colbert gut instinct, but it’s there.

I wonder if this is playoff proponents' Cronkite moment.  If they've lost Swindle, they've lost middle America ... or something.

Anyway, welcome to The Coalition, Every Day Should Be Saturday.

* * *
For more of my thoughts on this issue, see my "Playoffs = Bad Idea" category here, and read my entry Le Playoffs.  If you're of like mind, send an email my way with your name or the name of your blog/website to be added to The Coalition (you're not alone!) of people against a playoff in college football on the menu at left.

The college basketball sycophants are back at it again, spewing about the greatness of their game (all three weeks of it) and just how terrible college football is.  Don't believe a word of it.

As is tradition here (fourth year now!), below is a reproduction of a list of The Sporting News' Tom Dienhart's 65 reasons college football is superior to college basketball.  Feel free to chime in with your own reasons. 

* * *
My annual March ritual is to post the following: "65 Reasons College Football is Better than College Basketball".  It's from an article written by The Sports News' Tom Dienhart, dated 3/6/2002 (and updated 3/8/2007).  Feel free to add to the list.  Take it away, Tom:

The NCAA Tournament will begin next week. It's a fun event, especially the first weekend. In fact, it may be among the four best days on the sports calendar. Still, college hoops pales in comparison to college football. Let me count the ways, 65 of them in all.

1. Homecoming queens and their screaming, crying sorority sisters.

2. Sea of pumping pom-poms on a Saturday night in the SEC. (It IS the nation's best conference.)

3. Crisp, cool autumn air in arrogant Ann Arbor, Mich.

4. Heisman Trophy.

5. Players doing the Heisman pose.

6. Flyovers at Air Force. Wow, it's loud.

7. Drifting blimps in a clear October sky.

8. Saturday morning. (The anticipation.)

9. Saturday afternoon. (The excitement.)

10. Saturday night. (The celebration.)

11. Holy trinity of Corso, Herbstreit and Fowler at YOUR campus.

12. Yell Leaders at super-charged College Station, Texas.

13. Mascots that could trample you -- and eat you: Ralphie and Mike the Tiger.

14. Marching bands (They're your band nerds. Hike up your pants, slip on your Drew Carey glasses, put on your pocket protector and show 'em some love! At least at halftime.)

15. Golden Girl, Girl in Black and Silver Twins in staid West Lafayette, Ind.

16. RVs as far as the eye can see in stately State College, Pa.

17. Candelabras and linen tablecloths at The Grove in lovely Oxford, Miss.

18. Old Brass Spittoon. (Quick aside: Whatever happened to the Bourbon Barrel?)

19. The "excellent" Bob Davie. (You know I love ya.)

20. Paul Bunyan's Axe.

21. "Simple Gifts" in explosive Morgantown, W.Va.

22. Floyd of Rosedale.

23. Cy-Hawk.

24. USC Song Girls.

25. Dawg Walk.

26. Tiger Walk.

27. Vol Walk.

28. The Fifth Quarter in rollicking Madison, Wisc.

29. Tunnel Walk in over-the-top Lincoln, Neb.

30. Our "Pardner," Brent Musburger. (Wonder what he's "looking live at" right now? Fascinating.)

31. Booming Big Bertha bass drum in way-cool Austin, Texas.

32. Rolling Toomer's Corner on "The Plains."

33. Welcome to Death Valley at LSU, and Clemson, too.

34. Clanging cowbells in dot-on-the-map Starkville, Miss.

35. Jingling car keys as toe meets leather. Anywhere.

36. Red River Rivalry in "Big D."

37. Third Saturday in October.

38. Tightwad Hill in bizarre Berkeley, Calif.

39. Trick plays in beautiful Boise, Idaho.

40. Water taxis at U-Dub.

41. Vol Navy.

42. Grave sites for Reveille and Uga. (Take off that hat and bow your head.)

43. Your buddy's Keith Jackson impersonation. Let me hear ya say "Whoa, Nellie!."

44. Fuuummmmbbbbllleeeeee!!! (Sorry about that.)

45. Hokey Pokey in bucolic Blacksburg, Va.

46. No Dick Vitale. (Awesome, Baby!)

47. Mountain views at Washington, Colorado, UCLA and BYU.

48. Civil War in "Orygun."

49. Hunkering down between the hedges in silver britches in awesome Athens, Ga.

50. Doting the "i" in Columbus, Ohio.

51. Notre Dame pep rallies. Yes, even when Regis is there.

52. Chief Osceola and Renegade in Tallahassee, Fla.

53. Tigers running down a hill in "the 25 most exciting seconds in college football" in crazed Clemson, S.C.

54. Duck! Flying tortillas in way-out-there Lubbock, Texas.

55. "2001: A Space Odyssey" entrance in insane Columbia, S.C.

56. Army-Navy.

57. Beano Cook's voice (Love it when he says "Notre Dame.")

58. Saturday morning drive from Spokane, Wash., to the Palouse (It's out of this world. Literally.)

59. Checkerboard end zones in nutty Knoxville, Tenn.

60. Flasks. (Where do hide yours?)

61. Running through the "A" in frenzied Fayetteville, Ark.

62. RUF/NEKS and the Sooner Schooner in abnormal Norman, Okla.

63. Year-round chatter/debate over polls that matter.

64. Iron Bowl. War Damn Eagle! Rooollll Tide! (You gotta pick a side. Be careful.)

65. Sweaty, bleeding, grass-stained, off-key BMOCs serenading fans with the fight song. Three words: Beaut. I. Ful.

Sorta makes you wanna crumble up that silly NCAA hoop bracket you'll fill out, mute Jim Nantz and start planning your first tailgate, doesn't it?

Sure it does.

* * *
Previous Editions:

• 2007 
• 2006
• 2005

"The greatest sporting even in all of America" . . .

Is playing to empty crowds.

The 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament has begun, with Xavier and Georgia the first teams to tip off, and it's a little depressing to look at the crowd at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

Or, I should say, the lack of a crowd.

At least in the portion of the arena that the CBS cameras are showing, there are many more empty seats than there are fans. The best seats in the house, up front and right at center court, are almost totally empty.

This happens every year, but folks keep on believing in the greatness of an event that doesn't inspire people to you know, actually attend the event.

I oppose a playoff in college football.

I do not oppose all playoffs.  The NBA Playoffs are an example of a fairly reliable playoff.  Major League Baseball has a well-structured playoff in concept, but it produces some strange champions, likely due to the nature of that game and just how much luck and other noise can override the ability gap between some teams (read Moneyball, kids).

The NFL's model is terrible.  Same with college basketball.  They're exciting, but they're basically dressed-up one-and-done tournaments, not championships. 

For various reasons already well documented, there's no reasonable way to achieve a meaningful, representative, true championship through a playoff in college football.

Being as this is a website called College Football Resource, it should be implied and understood when I'm talking about playoffs that I'm talking about them in college football.  I use examples from other sports to illustrate my arguments, but in reality I have no interest in advocating for change in their games.  They are simply the examples when I discuss them.  Sometimes I mock, but my real focus here is on college football, other sports be damned.

Wherever there's a trough, there's always more hungry mouths to be fed than available food.  In sports the solution seems to be: get a bigger trough.

The NCAA basketball tournament's about to begin, yet already some of the discussion isn't about basketball games but expanding the damn thing even further beyond its 64/65 team arrangement.

Some people want to be cute by a half, and expand the thing to 68 games.

Others?  Massive growth.  Sportz Assasin wants a 96-team field.  Bobby Knight's thinking 128 teams (!!!).  Enough is never enough.  If conference tournaments weren't already enough of a sham (hello, USD and Georgia, great stories both but c'mon), these kinds of proposals all strike at college basketball's already wimpy regular season.

What's interesting is that despite all this expansion talk, much of the talk of bubble teams has been about how weak a crop of back-end teams there are this year.  Isn't it sort of foolish to welcome in even more substandard teams?

If someone is seriously interested in carving out even more time for a postseason tournament, shouldn't "series" games be a consideration?  How about having teams in the "Final Four" play each other in a best of three, same goes with the championship?

The fact that I don't really hear that kind of talk leads me to believe that there's just no seriousness about this tournament.  People -- not just the fans, but those who have a responsibility to the game of college basketball -- aren't interested in a championship.  They want the chaos of the tournament.  It's Roman theatre over the idea of having a representative, meaningful championship.

That is the fate of college football if we even move towards any kind of postseason tournament.  If things go that way, at first everyone's going to go ok let's keep this thing limited, do this "plus one" thing.  Over time, too many other forces will demand a seat at the table and then it will be eight teams.  Then 16.  This is mission creep and is horrifyingly inevitable.

In the end, nobody will get what they really want and the college football game will be left with a monstrosity that is ultimately meaningless and created at the expense of several (meaningful) regular season games.

* * *
If you didn't already figure out by now, I'm against a playoff in college football.  This doesn't mean I'm against playoffs in general -- just bad playoffs.  Playoffs should actually count for something.  They should be a test for all involved but also spit out the best team at the end of the process.  This means having teams compete in several head-to-head series, not one-and-done games that leave way too much to luck, chance, and other outside variables.  Major League Baseball has the right idea, but even then it produces some questionable championship teams.  The NBA seems to get it right most often, but then they've got best of 5 and 7 game series.  That simply cannot happen with football when to be safe you're playing about one game a week.

Given the nature of 1)football and 2)college sports, it's simply impossible to have anything resembling a meaningful playoff for college football.  I urge people to abandon the notion.  The game has gotten smart by calling its "championship" mythical.  It is exactly that --- mythical, and I'm ok with that.  I'm more interested in the several hundred dramatic regular season games than a handful of postseason crap shoots anyway.  Give me LSU/Florida in September over LSU/Ohio State in January any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  We're the only game around with a compelling regular season and I'd like to keep it that way.

For more of my thoughts on this issue, see my "Playoffs = Bad Idea" category here, and read my entry Le Playoffs.  If you're of like mind, send an email my way with your name or the name of your blog/website to be added to The Coalition (you're not alone!) of people against a playoff in college football on the menu at left.

Are a bad, bad, bad idea.  Same with conference title games.  Regular season play should decide a conference champion.

Here's why.

It's not going to happen, but Heisman Pundit touched upon a more reliable and equitable way to manage the conferences in an entry from late November:

2. Conference Reform

This one is simple. There should be the same amount of teams in every conference. No more of the Big East having eight teams and the SEC having 12 and the Pac-10 having 10. This creates distortions in the schedules which in turn distorts the BCS rankings.

Every major conference should have 10 teams and there should be 12 conferences (mathematically easy with the coming edition of Western Kentucky to 1-A). Then, every conference should play a round-robin schedule, meaning that each team faces every other team within the conference. There would be no conference championship games, so the winner of the conference would be the true winner. Every team would have nine conference games and three non-conference games, which would be determined by the aforementioned scheduling system and a rotating series between conferences (Big Ten vs. SEC; Big 12 vs. Big East, etc.). At the end of the season, there would be 12 true conference champions and the top teams still standing will have truly earned their keep.

Anyone think the USD basketball team earned its keep in the regular season relative to Gonzaga or St. Mary's?

Selection time hasn't begun and already the NCAA Tournament is flawed.  Now, the BCS isn't much better, but that's the whole point.  The supposed model for all things right about a tournament has and always will be deeply flawed.  It's a one-and-done crapshoot that reveals little about anything other than chaos.  It's fun, but it's not representative of anything.  It's silly instead of serious.  It lacks depth, which perhaps explains why Billy Packer's there lording over all of it.

The BCS goes back to the alliance days which was a power grab and a money grab by certain conferences and it hasn't changed in its intent," Jackson said. "To add another game, will it resolve controversy over who's who and what's what? I really truly doubt it."

The Pac-10 and the Big Ten didn't start the fire.

They were plenty happy before the Bowl Alliance (or whatever it was called back then) came along.  They were less happy after it.  And they're a little less happy now with the BCS.  Here's guessing they'd be content with things going back to the way they were before the other conferences changed the composition of the game.  It was a bad move then and heading towards a playoff is an even worse move now.

Does anyone really think 12-team conferences are good for college football?  How about conference title games?  Schedules are finite.  College football simply cannot play a 16-week season like the NFL.  Flying in the face of logic, most of the same conferences that pushed us into this Alliance/BCS reality are also the conferences carrying twelve members.

It's obvious that round-robin play (or something close to it) is superior to split divisions (see SEC, Big 12, ACC) and possible repeat matchups in conference title games.  Can a team truly be its league champion if it hasn't faced all its league opponents?  Do you follow?

The major conferences most associated with sensible conference play (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big East) are the same ones treated as the villains in all of this, Big East excluded.  Amazing.  We had it right, once ...

Mission creep:

"We've never seen a four-team playoff stay as a four team playoff. So if you are concerned, and we are, about an eight-team, 12-team or 16-team playoff and what it would do to college football, we don't believe that you allow the camel's nose under the tent with a four-team playoff."

[Big Ten Commissioner Jim] Delaney said ABC executives presented a "plus-one" plan to the Big Ten, SEC, Big East, Big 12 and Pac-10 conferences two years ago, and all six rejected it.

We will not be snookered by a "Plus One" 

"The one thing [all] of us are in agreement on is there isn't going to be a playoff"

- Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese

Found a cool anti-playoff blog recently.  I'll give you just a taste of the author's point-by-point rebuttal of a Gene Wojciechowski column:

Wojo: "USC, playing as well as anyone these days, finished 10-2, but still gets no soup."

Author: A typical playoff guy. The hot team at the end of the season takes it all. The BCS is unique in sports. It attempts to assess a team's entire body of work over the course of a season, not just give the crown to the hot hand who gets the breaks at the end. True, nobody wants to play USC right now either, and they won't have to because USC lost to a 41 point underdog at home! Nothing is more appropriate than these guys not getting the second chance they would have gotten in a playoff system. We have the BCS to thank for that.

Truedat. 

Ugh.

Lose to Stanford and Oregon?  No soup for you, at least in my book.

I've sat quiet for a lot of the recent anti-BCS carping.  Time to mix it up a little.

Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram:

My hatred for the BCS exists in perpetuity, but there's no doubting that the college football season has it all over the NFL when it comes to sustained excitement.

All eight division leaders in the league have at least a two-game lead. New England is six games up and has clinched, Green Bay has a four-game edge, Tampa Bay and Dallas three, and the others have two-game leads.

The New York Giants and Jacksonville seemingly have a wild card berth in hand, too. Really, the only things left to ponder are New England's drive to perfection, Miami's stumble to ignominy and how injuries could impact the playoffs.

It's like he doesn't get it.

Maybe --- just maybe --- it's possible there's a link between a postseason tournament in a sport and its regular season being treated as nothing more than seeding?  Maybe that's why college football's the only sport with a truly compelling regular season, hmmmm ???

I'm telling you that fun regular season we have is going the way of the dodo bird if a postseason tournament is created.  It happened to college basketball and we've already seen the drudgery that is the NBA, NFL and MLB regular season.  The link is obvious and it's just bizarre that so many people can complain about the BCS and the bowls, yet still not understand that this great regular season is a product of not having a tournament.

If you want the great postseason, you lose out on the regular season, that's the trade-off, them's the breaks.  I want the regular season and frankly college football is the only game around with any semblance of one, it's an island unto its beautiful self.  Just stick with what we got people, it's not so bad.  Just know that a switch from BCS/bowls to a playoff means a move to being just like all those other sports, there's just no way to have our cake and eat it too.

What would you think of a BCS Title game between Missouri and West Virginia?

Personally, given the way this season has gone, I say "fine by me".  However, my opinion isn't universal so I'm curious what you CFR readers think?  This Chris Dufresne column is about where I am in terms of dealing with an unusual BCS title game matchup.

It's frustrating to see two teams with questionable non-conference loads slowly grind their way to the top, but it's not like both aren't highly respectable football clubs.  I think maybe we've been a little spoiled by the USC/Texas type matchups where there's some clearly qualified teams playing all season like they're the best then showing it once more in the title game.  Not every season is like that though.

Last year Ohio State and Florida were two very good football teams.  I wouldn't say either was anywhere near an all-time club, a sure-fire runaway blockbuster.  But that's football.  Great teams don't come along every year.  The same goes for this year.  Certainly USC and LSU had that runaway potential, but neither ever got its act together.  In the absence of a truly great team or even a reasonable approximation like what happened in 2006, we just have to wait this out and see who makes the best case at the end of the year.

I really don't know the alternative to this year if we don't want some combination of Missouri or West Virginia.  USC and LSU have flubbed it up over and over.  Ohio State is still marked with last year's Scarlet Letter after the Florida loss.  Those two are about as good as anyone.  Get mad not at the system but the handful of teams good enough to give us a more appealing title game that didn't get it done.

Speaking of teams that didn't get it done: USC coach Pete Carroll is on top of the world after his team's victory over Arizona State and is talking playoffs.

For six years, USC coach Pete Carroll said he never understood how the Bowl Championship Series worked . . . until now.

"It’s about who’s had the most attractive season rather than who had the best team," Carroll said. "It just dawned on me that’s how it works."

Carroll’s opinion might be influenced by the fact USC dismantled Arizona State, 44-24, on Thanksgiving and the Trojans appear to be hitting their stride, albeit 11 games into the season. He might have felt different after the Stanford game.

Carroll said he did not want his comments to be construed as sour grapes because USC is not going to play in the BCS title game. But he believes the Trojans would hold their own if college football held a playoff.

"I would love to be involved with a discussion of who is the best team in the country at the end of the season," Carroll said.

This isn't the NFL, coach.  Narrowly sneaking by the majority of your easier games and building a fat win-loss record doesn't put you in the title game in college football.  Ok, it did once recently (Ohio State 2002), but that team was a severe anomaly.  USC may very well have the best football team in all the land right now, but you gotta prove it weeks one through thirteen, not just weeks twelve and thirteen.

Carroll may have had a gripe in 2002 when his team was in my mind the best in college football, but even then USC won its last eight games by healthy margins and looked completely unstoppable on both sides of the ball.  Last weekend was the first time all year aside from the games against lowly Nebraska and Washington State that USC has even looked above average.  That won't cut it.

Who else but Get The Picture:

Braves and Birds

The third most vexing aspect of the [Michigan/Appalachian State] game yesterday is that it reminded me of the soul-crushing nature of college football. I love the sport because it is the only American sport with a meaningful regular season and as a result, every game means so much. The downside to this reality is that my team blew its season in the noon timeslot on the first day of the season. Where do I go from here (other than to decide that sports are a cruel bitch goddess that needs to be dumped)? Additionally, because college football games mean so much, fans remember them. No one remembers the Devil Rays beating the Yankees or the Hawks beating the Spurs, but everyone will remember Michigan losing to Appalchian State.

Get The Picture

Of course, if we had an extended playoff, Michigan wakes up this morning with an embarrassed grin on its face and gets on with the task of qualifying to be the twelfth or sixteenth best team in the country ...