It's the Gulf of Mexico, stupid

After assuming the presidency for the second time last week, one of Donald Trump's first acts was to sign an Executive Order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America." His order also reverts the name of the Alaskan mountain Denali to its former name of Mount McKinley.

Like everything else that Donald Trump does, this is stupid and performative. The Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water - the United States' jurisdiction over it extends only twelve miles beyond its coastline - and has been known as such for centuries:

The Gulf of Mexico has had its name for about 400 years. In his book, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, published in 1589, English geographer Richard Hakluyt calls the water body “Gulfe of Mexico”. In Mexico, the gulf is also called by its Spanish name, El Golfo de Mexico.

Trump can rename the Gulf of Mexico for his domestic audience, but the rest of the world does not have to go with that name change, since there are no international laws that decide what a common maritime space or a disputed territory is called universally.

The practical effect of this name change is minimal - most people I know, myself included, just call it "the Gulf" - but the idea that the 600,000-square-mile Gulf of Mexico's name can be summarily changed for the sake of political aggrandizement or "owning the libs" or whatever is mind-numbingly stupid. 

Aside from the fact that it needlessly causes confusion (especially given that the word "America" appears in the name of both of the Western Hemisphere's continents) and is wasteful (think of all the money the federal government is going to have to spend re-printing maps and updating geographic databases), it creates an unnecessary, even if minor, disruption to the lives and habits of the millions of people who live along the Gulf of Mexico and have always known it as such.

Other countries will not recognize Trump's new name for the Gulf. A lot of Americans themselves won't, either: a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated that 70% of Americans oppose renaming the body of water. The Associated Press will continue to refer to it as the "Gulf of Mexico" as well. 

One place where you will see the new name is on Google Maps; the company is caving to Trump's decree and will begin using the new name in their maps platforms. That decision is generating backlash here and abroad; it is unclear if other mapping platforms like Apple or Mapquest will make the name change as well. 

I will continue to refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico.

If you're looking for alternatives to Google Maps, here are some apps to consider. Texas Monthly offers some other possible names for the Gulf.

Snow Day!

Here are some obligatory photos of last Tuesday's winter weather event. 

We got about three inches of snow in my part of Midtown, which is as much accumulation as I've seen from a single snowfall in my 50-plus years of living in Houston. Other parts of town got even more.

On one hand, I find freshly-fallen snow to be very visually appealing and am loathe to step in it or disturb it in any way. On the other hand, few things are as pleasant as the sound of snow scrunching under one's shoe. (I also recognize I might not have the same feelings about snow if I lived someplace where it was commonplace; I have a lot of acquaintances from places up north who can't wait for the winter to end and the snow to disappear.)

Between the lack of traffic noise and the snow's sound-absorbent properties, it was eerily quiet as I walked around the streets of my neighborhood.

There were a handful of motorists who decided to ignore the warnings and drive in the slushy streets, but I certainly wasn't one of them. I normally work from home on Tuesdays to begin with, so not being able to travel to the office posed no disruption to me. 

At least a few people in my neighborhood made snowmen or snow angels, and a younger version of myself would have probably done the same. At my age, however, I was content just to walk around and take in the sights. The snow was a very beautiful treat, and one that probably won't occur again here for awhile. 

Expanded College Football Playoff Thoughts

The first edition of the 12-team College Football Playoff is in the books, with Ohio State's victory over Notre Dame last Monday bringing the 2024 college football season to a close. I have some thoughts.

Ohio State is legit. I've read grumblings on message boards that the Buckeyes should not have been national champions because they didn't win their conference (so what? Neither did Georgia in 2021 or Alabama in 2017) or because they lost to archival Michigan (so what? They're called rivalry games for a reason). In order to make it through the playoffs and win the title, Ohio State had to beat the #9, #4, #3 and #2-ranked teams in the final AP top 25. If you can pull off that feat, you deserve to be champions. 

It was too long. The playoff began on Friday, December 20; the championship was held a full month later, on Monday, January 20. This is well after the traditional bowl season (which used to reach its climax on New Year's Day) ends and a not-insignificant number of sports fans have moved on to the NFL playoffs or basketball. That may be why the 22.1 million viewers who watched last Monday's title game was less than the 25 million people who watch the 2024 CFP Championship game. Certainly the expanded CFP was not helped by the fact that it ran concurrently with - and had to be scheduled around - the NFL playoffs. But you can't help but wonder if viewer burnout was a factor as well. 

Ideally, the playoff should be shortened. But it won't be easy.

Four teams was too small, but is 12 teams too large? I'm not philosophically opposed to a 12-team playoff - the more teams, the merrier, right? - although I've always argued that eight teams is probably the right number. Given the way the four lowest-seeded teams - Indiana, Tennessee, SMU and Clemson - all got drilled in the first round, you can definitely make the argument that twelve teams is too many. An eight-team playoff would also shave a week off the schedule, at least partially addressing the length issue mentioned above.

That being said, Ohio State was seeded #8. In an eight-team playoff, they probably would not have even made it in because the ACC champ, Clemson, would have been assured a spot instead. So maybe more is better...

The first round home games were awesome. The atmospheres in all of South Bend, Columbus, Happy Valley and Austin were electric and encompassed everything that is good about college football. You almost wish that the four teams that got first-round byes - Boise State, Arizona State, Oregon and Georgia - could have held a playoff game in their home stadiums as well.

The seeding probably needs to be adjusted. Speaking of the aforementioned four teams that got first-round byes: they all lost in the second round (although Arizona State's scrappy battle with Texas in the Peach Bowl will go down as an all-time classic). The reason they got first-round byes was not because they were the best four teams in the playoff, but because they won their conference championships. It certainly makes sense that the teams that win their conferences be rewarded with better playoff seeds, but given that the five conference champions went 0-5 in the playoff, the argument can be made that teams should be seeded based on their overall strength (like the NCAA does for the basketball tournament).

Certainly there are still some tweaks that need to be made to the format, but overall I think the first "real" playoff went well. As a college football fan, I'm just glad that we've finally reached this point. I've lived through the old system of regional bowls and "who should be number one" controversies, the conference commissioners and bowl executives who fought tooth-and-nail to preserve their fiefdoms, the half-assed attempts to determine a "true" college football champion through the goofy Bowl Alliance and the cynically corrupt Bowl Championship Series, and the four-team playoff (which, while a step forward, was still unsatisfactory). At a time where so much is changing in college football, the twelve-team playoff is definitely a change for the better.

CNN's Kyle Feldscher, NBC's Nicole Auerbach, and CBS's Chip Patterson share what they think worked and didn't work from the 12-team playoff format. 

On to the offseason.