When these two teams played Nov 10th Ohio State was a 15.5 point favorite over the visiting Illini. Unknown to most fans and bettors, the Big 10 allowed an officiating crew that had allegedly been sanctioned by the league office (the Big 10 won’t comment on these matters) led by a referee who has had some big controversy in his personal life, and could be susceptible to outside influence, to call the game.

The LA Times reported yesterday that the Las Vegas oddsmakers are now looking into this game due to “disproportionate money bet” on the teams that benefited from the non-calls and bogus calls. Interesting.

We’ll see what, if anything happens from here. But it’s disappointing that college football is going to get a black eye on this one and draw into question officials calls due to outside influence. I’d prefer that practice to stay in the NBA!

Earlier this week President Bush signed the Energy Bill sent to him by Congress. Major components to the bill were gutted by the Senate at the last minute, killing long-term production tax credits and renewable portfolio standards, and keeping the expensive and unnecessary oil subsidies. (Really, when a single company in the segment throws off $10 billion in profits a quarter, do they really need subsidies?)

The major achievement of the bill is to the increase in fuel standards to an aggregate of 35 miles per gallon, which means that in the year 2020 we’ll catch up to the rest of the world in fuel efficiency. That is, if the rest of the world stood still over the next 12 years. An nice side benefit is that Congress did agree to fund geothermal R&D to the tune of $95M, which is quite an improvement from $0. So there may be a baby step that this law provides, but on balance, it doesn’t really accomplish much.

With the recent hiring of Rich Rodriguez (which was preceded by the Wolverine poaching of basketball coach John Beilein last year) a snappy tune from Ryan Parker Songs has emerged. It made me chuckle and you might too.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you can tell I’m a pretty big college football fan and ardent supporter of the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Image Credit: Mike Harding

In this dead time before the bowls many online discussions shift toward recruiting, or should I say, rabid speculation about what decision 17-18 year old kids are going to make about their college choice (and more importantly, who they’ll play ball for.) Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t get the attraction of all this speculation.

They’re great athletes, sure, I get that. You want your team to get the best athletes possible. But these are kids in high school for pete’s sake. Cast yourself back to being 18 years old and tell me how sure you were about college and life choices. I know it was a muddle for me, why wouldn’t the same be true for these people? Just because they’re large and fast and can play football doesn’t mean they’re not afflicted with the normal teenage doubts, fears, and uncertainty about what comes next. They simply don’t have the first-hand experience yet.

I frequent a couple of communities where Buckeye football is discussed ad nauseam and there are daily meltdowns by the community because recruit A is going to school 3 and the team will collapse if recruit A doesn’t recant. There are mean and nasty things said about the kids themselves and their families. It’s really pretty repugnant. So, what’s the attraction? Does anyone have a theory? I guess it drives traffic which drives money, is it that simple?

Things continue to look grim for Calpine, the independent power producer struggling to emerge from bankruptcy protection. Squeezed between declining margins (real terms, not necessarily GAAP terms with special charges coming off the books etc.) demanding creditors, one has to wonder if Calpine will emerge from the proceedings now.

Earlier this week the company announced a reduction of their credit facility by $400M (the entire facility was $8B) and a revaluation of the company when it emerges from bankruptcy of $18.95B. Creditors believe the valuation should be north of $24B leaving a significant gap. The bankruptcy court has approved the revised plan and the company should emerge in January. But, this was true in June too and didn’t happen.

Why do we care? Calpine’s portfolio is dominated by natural gas-fired power plants. But, a small and profitable segment of the company is comprised of the 19 plants located in The Geysers region of California producing about 750MW of clean power. We’re very interested in seeing those valuable assets protected and not have them sink with the Calpine ship.

Note: The issue is gaining today, but the market cap is still sub-$200M down from ~$2B in June.

Disclosure: The author holds no position in Calpine (though he did consider it as a speculative investment at one time.)