Football and the color of your truck

            I keep saying that I don’t understand how a carmaker can put in a navigation system, 2 backseat DVD players, satellite and every other kind of radio, MP3 player, complete climate module, Bluetooth, and every other electronic thing possible, and yet can only offer about 6 colors.  Black and white, brown and gray.  Then you get some version of red. With modern technology, why can’t you get your choice of 256 colors?  It is as if we are progressing to texting/electronic crash dummyism and regressing to Henry Ford’s “You can have any color so long as it is drab.” 

            So I decided to do a little research.  Went to Wichita today and started logging semi truck colors.  I thought that if half of drivers are independents who spend their own money on a tractor cab, they paint it the color they want.  And the other half are either providing the tractor and using someone else’s trailer or they are hired drivers.  Even the guys just driving for a company will have a color that company has selected.  So here are the results of what was on the road.

            White-68

            Blue-48

            Red-27

            Gray-16

            Purple-13

            Gold-10

            Black-4

            Green-4

            Brown-4

            Yellow-1

            Orange-1

White is the color of a lot of company trucks.  The better to display a logo.  You see few white trucks that have no company advertizing.  "White" also includes some which have large color swaths and details.  Blue is a favorite male color and since almost all truckers are men, it stands to reason that this color predominates. There were a couple bluegreens which I called “green”. But there were some surprises.  Purple and Gold are fairly popular.  Green and yellow aren’t.  Gray is also on a lot of company trucks, mixed with other color banners and stripes.  Brown, and Black are unpopular. But those colors predominate on pickups that people drive personally.  So is Detroit and the industry missing something?  Why would 3 times as many truckers pick purple as brown? Maybe I’m not so wrong after all.  Detroit needs more colors.  They could see what the plebians choose. (Maybe they choose colors by focus groups who are all depressed and gloomy and live in Detroit.)

            I have also been looking at baseball stats this week.  It turns out that the National league teams which made the playoffs—Mets, Dodgers, Cards, Cubs, and Pirates—are exactly the top five pitching teams.  However, they are #5,6,10,13,and 14 in hitting. Very similar results for the American leaguers. Good pitching is what really counts.  And that gets interesting with about 8 terrific pitchers up for free agency this year.

            Now football is another matter. Football makes major state colleges more money than tuition. And to what effect?  At Missouri U. I guess a football strike can get a President and Provost fired for nebulous, unrelated reasons. Back in my days at the U., I was fortunate enough to have a series of jobs and mostly work my way through school.  But the darned hippies protested one year and robbed me of 3 weeks of shut-down classes.  That was money out of my pocket!  We didn’t finish Calculus III and that meant the next semester I struggled with Series and Differential Equations.  Those darned hippies still owe me for three weeks tuition.  So here’s my fix for Missouri U.  What I have learned over the years is that liberals don’t know what to do with you when you protest them.  They aren’t used to getting protested.  So show up at the next MU football game with some banners.  Hopefully ESPN or FOX sports is there.  Get at least 2 dozen people to sit together for protection.  Sign on one side says, “WELCOME TO FOOTBALL SELLOUT U.”  Flip it around and it says, “NEXT MU PROTEST: MATH VICTIMIZATION”.  A little academic taunting never hurt education. Evidently lack of football does.