Dave & Dana in Australia

…the Patriots are going to win the super bowl, but it will be within 10 points.  The Leafs will miss the playoffs, and it won’t be close.  The Raps will finish 4th in the conference with the third best record and make some noise in the playoffs, perhaps going to the conference finals. 

Oh, and so no one thinks I’m holding out I should announce that I finished somewhere in the bottom 1/3 of my NFL football pool this year.  After sharing victory honours for the past two years, including one in which I was able to watch 0 minutes of football apart from the Super Bowl, my lack of actual game footage has finally caught up to me.  C’est la vie.

That’s right, I’ve (jointly) won the annual football pool that I enter.  There are about 70 participants, mostly consisting of financial types from around Toronto. This is the second year in a row I’ve taken taken the prize, but this year I did it without seeing one minute of football all year!  This is proof that picking sports is a complete crap shoot.  As if more proof was needed, the person who tied with me picked nothing but underdogs all year. 

So here’s where I take 5 minutes out of my busy schedule in which I get to watch no Toronto (or North American for that matter) sports and offer my predictions for the Leafs and Raps this year. 

Leafs: 96 points - 7th playoff seed.  Mats stuns us all and gets 100+ points. 

Raps: 37 wins - 10th in the East but becoming the team that no one wants to play down the stretch. 

I could have just come out and said they were both going to win it all, but that wouldn’t have been realistic (plus, I got burned on that last year). 

Anyway, does anyone else think it’s funny that, without being able to watch any NFL I’m still near the lead of my football pool after 6 weeks? 

Arggh. It would appear that, despite a predictable (in hindsight) rally that kept us at the edge of our seats, the Buds have missed out on the post-season for the first time in several years. Bad luck I guess, but really I think it’s a bad cobble of players long on experience but short on the speed necessary to compete in the new NHL, and a bunch of young players lacking the experience, and in the case of the young defence corps lacking the speed as well. I think it’s time to blow the whole thing up and start over with the young group. That would be an option I guess, if they hadn’t traded away all sorts of prospects to get all those rent-a-wrecks at the end of seasons past. At the very least, I demand Aki Berg be deported.

And for those of you who actually read my re-assuring message in mid-season about “not panicking but not also getting your hopes up about the Leafs cause they’ll make the playoffs but only barely, just like they should” and are now thinking, “hey wait a minute, you did write that, and the Leafs didn’t make the playoffs”, I would say that yes, I did write that and I was indeed wrong - this rag-tag bunch Quinn (mostly) put together to keep the massed lemmings buying the highest priced tickets in the league fooled even me. They did a good job of making it interesting at the end though, didn’t they? And Mats really looked like a guy that should be making tons of cash too - scoring lots of goals and all. Where was that season ticket order form anyway… No! They’ve gone too far this time - I have more faith in the Raptors making the playoffs next year than the Leafs. There, I said it.

I know that sounds a bit self-evident, but it’s more than just standing up on the board that I’m talking about. That’s the glamour part of surfing, and it’s definitely tricky - picking, catching, and surfing on a wave - but that’s the (comparatively) easy part. The hard work is getting out of the white water and in position to surf. Believe me, paddling and duck-diving through crashing waves is tiring in the extreme. That’s still not the toughest thing though - the toughest thing is wiping out or getting rolled over by a giant wave, which tends to leave you under the water way too long with no idea which way is up, and when you finally do get to the surface there’s probably another wave waiting to do the same. That, and the fear such near-death experiences creates, is the hardest part.

All that being said, it sure is a lot of fun. Now that I’ve bought a board (a 7 1/2 foot mini mal) I’ve been surfing about every other day. I call her white thunder - ok I’m joking, but if anyone can think of something catchy, feel free to suggest it (spiro, colin?). Anyway, a workmate took me out to surf some real waves this morning, which has given me a healthy respect for how freaking ferocious and scary a wave with a 6 foot face is. We went up to Warriewood, which today was the best beach in Sydney due to the wind direction, normally a title held by North Narrabeen. I can’t say I really surfed those huge waves, but I sure did have some ridiculous wipeouts.

For those of you who are curious, I thought I might briefly explain what it is I do here at Mercer. My official title is: Senior Analyst, Manager Research. Basically, I’m part of a global manager research team of about 40 people that research all types of investment managers. We have 6 people here in Sydney, 5 in Toronto, about 15 in Chicago and Boston, 10 in London, plus some in Tokyo and Singapore. The managers we research invest the pension, endowment, and corporate funds of our clients. The manager researcher’s job is find these managers and understand just how they propose to earn a better return in their chosen area of expertise than one could earn without paying someone for their expert judgement. My job at this point is to make a judgement about whether I think their proposal has merit, is likely to succeed, is sustainable over longer time periods, and finally whether it’s more likely to succeed than other investment managers with the same specialty. So, if I’m looking at a manager who manages portfolios of Australian stocks, I would try to understand how they do it, decide if it’s likely to succeed, then decide if it’s more likely to succeed than all the other managers that manage Australian stocks.

The end result is that when a client comes to Mercer looking for help deciphering how to allocate and who should manage their pension fund, we’re at the ready with a ranking and a view on all the potential candidates out there. My specialty in particular is the catch-all term of “Alternative Investments”, which is made up of hedge funds of various types, infrastructure investments (airports, toll roads, parking lots, what have you), commodities and the like. I also have a list of Australian stock and bond investment managers to look after as well.

So there you have it - what I do in a very small nutshell. By now 90% of you are asleep, the rest I’m sure are mesmerized :). Most importantly though, I find it interesting.

Short and sweet, but what the heck was going on during that Super bowl. That was some of the most questionable officiating I’ve ever seen in football. I know mistakes can happen, usually they kind of even out over time. If it’s unlucky, one big call gets missed and puts a team at a disadvantage. Not this time - so one sided..well, I’ll stop short of saying it was fixed, but basically the refs just handed that game to Pittsburgh.

- In the first half: really weak offensive pass interference call to take away the opening td from Seattle. You usually have to be pretty sure to make a huge call like that - I don’t know how the ref could have been with that garbage.
- Also in the first half: The Roethlisberger bootleg on 3rd and goal at the 1. They call it a TD (anyone can make a mistake) and went to video to review it and left it as a TD. The video I watched was unequivocal - he didn’t make it into the end zone. No guts on this crew - and what the heck do they have replay for anyway?
- Second half, Seattle is driving for the go-ahead score and they complete a pass to the Pittsburgh 2, setting up 1st and goal. Again, a really weak holding call calls it back. 2 plays later Hasselbeck is intercepted and the game is over. That’s not quite enough apparently, as Hasselbeck makes a nice tackle of the defender who intercepted the ball…and is whistled for a completely mythical personal foul. 15 extra yards.

I’m kind of in shock - I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had paid $1200 for a ticket for that tripe, but I have an inkling it would be a bit disappointed. It’s a brave new WWE, I mean NFL world out there.

I was catching up on the Raptors a bit today and I was thinking “what’s gotten into these guys, they’re on fire”. When I left for Australia at the end of the year the Raps’ record was something like 6-22, and they had been hot just to get there. Then, as I checked in here and there I was really impressed at how they were playing. Chris Bosh is a monster - plain and simple. He may even get a spot on the US olympic squad given the folks that are dropping out - even then that’s saying something. The vets are starting to contribute - even Jalen - and that Alston for James trade is looking better all the time. Basically, the Raptors must have been starting to get it together to bring the record to 14-26. Babcock - you’re starting to look vindicated: first in the picks you made that got ridiculed, and unfortunately second in that the team is indeed worse than last year, although without that horrendous start things might look different.

But then again, there’s a reason things are this bad, and man o man did we see it on the 22nd of January. 81 bloody points for Kobe Bryant. Now, I didn’t actually get to see the game - there’s no b-ball down under - actually, there is but it’s Aussie league, which gets great coverage but is definitely not the NBA - but where was the D? Only one other person has scored that many points in a game - ever, and only once! That person was Wilt Chamberlain. That guy was 7 feet tall when everyone else was short and half the NBA was white still - and he slept with 10,000 women! He still only managed the feat once - and while 100 points sounds like a whole lot more than 81, they were basically feeding the guy easy entry passes all night cause he was 6 inches taller than everyone. Kobe Bryant has not slept with 10,000 women (we would have heard about it in court), nor do his talents, however great, command a scoring outburst like that. Raps - you’re going nowhere until that D improves. Babcock - where is the Araujo you promised me!?

So, it’s the Christmas break in the NHL season and the Toronto Maple Leafs are ensconsed in fourth place in the North East division, 1 point behind Montreal. This happens to be the toughest division in the Eastern conference, so fourth place ain’t so bad, although it ain’t so good either. In the conference standings, fourth in the NE puts us tied for 8th with the defending cup champs Tampa Bay, and a 3 point cushion over the 9th place Isles.

Since I’m leaving for Australia soon and will only enjoy a couple more games this year, I thought I’d lay out where I think the Leafs stand. Sure, a lot of people have gotten used to the Leafs duking it out for the NE and conference titles every year, and those people are not very happy with the Leafs right now. Here’s the point though: If you were expecting the Leafs to continue at that level in a faster, more wide open NHL with the roster they managed to cram under the salary cap, you are likely to be disappointed all season. Save yourselves some anguish and realize that the Leafs are roughly the team that has shown up so far this season: good enough to make the playoffs, but won’t be challenging the Sens for supremacy of the East this year. There is some serious cap room coming online next year that should allow them to make some additions to what is a shambles of a defense corps, but for this season just sit back and enjoy a team that on any given night can beat anyone or be beaten by anyone. Hey, everybody likes suspense. I’ll be watching from Australia (somehow).