Introducing... the Drevnometer

The first few days after Jim Harbaugh was hired were heady days for fans of pun-based offensive coordinator rating systems. First we got to retire the Nussmeter - which, let's face it - was a bit of a stretch and, honestly, too painful to update on a regular basis by the end of last season. The less said of it, the better.

Second, rumors swirled that Harbaugh was going to bring 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman with him. While bringing an NFL coordinator to the college game is usually a recipe for disaster, in this case, it was a recipe for an endless smorgasbord of puns! Popes! Sins! Emperors! Orators! Numerals! It was such an embarrassment of potential riches that we had already worked out three possible ratings based on the speculation alone. To top it all off, Greg Roman totally looks like Craig:

As soon as we got our hopes up, those hopes were brutally dashed when Harbaugh hired Tim Drevno as OC. It's like he doesn't even consider the punnability of his assistants' names when making hiring decisions! But we here at HSR have been making horrible puns for so long that when we started, Adam Jacobi was still calling puns the lowest form of humor.

So, undeterred, we looks for ways to make puns on the name Drevno. It's an anagram of "vendor." There's a Gene Drevno school in Torrance, California. And, uh, that's about it. Not much to work with. A search of articles about his time at Stanford indicated that his offensive line earned the nickname "Tunnel Workers' Union". That had a little promise. Whatever the hell's going on under Seattle's the bottom of the scale, Detroit-Windsor's somewhere in the middle. But can you name 10 famous tunnels off the top of your head? Neither could we.

Desperate for ideas, we went to Google Translate, typed "drevno" into the box, and clicked "Detect language." There was a hit - Croatian! - where apparently "drevno" means "ancient." There are lots of ancient things! Ancient Ones! We can work with this. There are dozens to choose from.

The problem is that it's hard to fit a good ranking system. Is Cthulhu worthy of a higher ranking than Sheb-Niggurath? Where does Azathoth fit into all this?  There are two many choices and, frankly, Dave Brandon's fired now, so it's time to leave unspeakable terrors in the past.

A solution was finally found on the Civ Fanatics message board. They had a poll rating the ancient wonders, which provided a convenient full ordering of ancient history. Science demonstrated that the Hanging Gardens and +6 food is the best, and the Statue of Zeus and a 15% city attacking bonus is the worst.

We therefore introduce, with much fanfare and rambling, the Drevnometer! May it last more than two seasons.

The Drevnometer kicks of the 2015-16 season at 2 because when you have two quarterbacks, you get a two. The Great Lighthouse lets you see further, but it's no help on grass.