Holiday jeer

Holiday season is supposed to be rough on single people sometimes. I have not really felt this pain though I can see how some single people, especially chicks can feel lonely and depressed this time of the year. To me, Christmas pretty much means the NBA kick-off on ABC. Considering that the Lakers play every year, my mood is directly linked to them in some ways. I am happier if they lose and am a little sadder if they win! So you can imagine how I feel this Christmas day given that not only did the Lakers win, they actually beat my beloved Suns today fairly convincingly.

VERY, VERY disturbing loss for the Suns. They have now lost 10 games this season. I wrote a while back that their loss against the Warriors was disturbing because the Warriors might be the one team that might play the Suns style better and match-up very well with the Suns. This Lakers loss is even worse. First of all, this is not a fluke because the Lakers are now 2-0 against the Suns this season. They embarrassed the Suns at Phoenix in their home opener. At the end of that game, there was even some jawing between Mike D'Antoni and Phillip where D'Antoni said "we will see you again. we are good". Unfortunately, the Suns saw the Lakers again and they didn't see what wanted to see.

The Lakers are actually very good as well. Record wise, the Lakers were even better last year and then they faded away. This trend has been going on for a few years now. I hope it's similar this year, but this Lakers team is different. The reason they are different is their young guys Andrew Bynum and Jordan Farmar. These guys have taken a HUGE step forward this season and are taking the Lakers team with them. The scary part for the Suns is, this is a team on the up and up and they still have Kobe Bryant in his prime. The Suns on the other hand are supposed to win it all this season, but seem inadequate defensively as always and now they can't even handle the up and coming Lakers team. This is the scary part.

This game might have been a changing of the guard moment in some sense. Is it possible that the Suns window is closing shut and now even for the Pacific division crown, they have to fight with the Lakers? The Suns are not getting any younger and the D'Antoni's style can't withstand another non-finals season. There's huge pressure on him and this game exposed the same set of problems - defense, rebounding, lack of size etc. The Lakers look deeper, bigger, better defensively and more complete as a team. Sooner or later, you got to ask the question, "why can't the Suns be a complete team?" and back it up with the question "is this style impeding that?".

I love this style as much as the other guy and I want this style to succeed for the better of the league. NBA has become un-watchable before D'Antoni showed up. Even today, I couldn't watch the Heat-Cavs game despite wanting to watch the Wade-LeBron match-up. The style just sucks. So I want the Suns and D'Antoni to win desperately. Trust me, we will all be better for it. But is this a championship caliber style? Dan Bickley in the AZ republic referenced something I have been amazed by for a long time. Every day I look at the Suns box-score and am amazed that Leandro Barbosa routinely out-shoots Amare Stoudemire. Bickley has been raising a lot of "chemistry questions" and keeps saying that Amare is unhappy with the style. He recently said there's something wrong with it if LB shoots more for the season than Amare. Kind of my point. I don't know how Amare thinks or feels. May be Bickley knows more than me or may be he is just a pessimistic, negative kinda guy who is afraid something bad will happen with this team. But it is weird that this system doesn't really use Amare all that much. He gets killed for his defense, but to me, that only means you got to maximize his potential on offense even more.

I am still not giving up on this season or the style. But I have always been critical of D'Antoni on one thing - not using his bench enough. I think thats is still valid. He has to learn to use his bench -PERIOD. I don't know if he can go to a coaching school at ASU or something, he needs to learn to trust his bench. I have always felt like the Suns in the past have had good talent on the bench, but Mike doesn't use them. Now they may not have that good a bench, but he got to do something anyways. Secondly, he can't just play Diaw like he is some kind of a god. Diaw is not as good as D'Antoni wants him to be. Raja Bell is not what he used to be either. I am almost tempted to say put Raja on the bench and start Brian Skinner. But then again, with this offensive system, thats just not enough 3 point shooting.

Both Van Gundy and Mark Jackson made some interesting comments about these 2 teams towards the end of the game. Van Gundy says that the Lakers will beat the Suns if they play a 7 game series right now. Huge difference from the last 2 years when the Suns won in the playoffs. Mark Jackson also said how the Lakers are deeper and more talented top to bottom than the Suns. Amazing how far the dysfunctional Laker team have come in just 8 weeks since Kobe was rumored to be on the trading block.

As for the Suns, many questions and not too many answers right now. I would say D'Antoni should start with the 3 recommendations I made. 1) Use Amare more. 2) Use Diaw less 3) Use your bench. Infuse new talent.

Air Ball!

Suns lost today at Dallas. It was a fascinating game as always, but the Suns dug too deep a hole to dig themselves out of. They were down by 17 early and fell behind 10, 12, 13 points many times in the game. Still it was impressive how they kept crawling their way back. They were down double digits even late in the 4-Th, but they came back from nowhere and the next thing you know, they are down 3 with 8 seconds to go. This offense is impressive for sure. It can score in bunches. But the Suns couldn't get that tying 3 pointer which would have sent the game to overtime under almost similar circumstances to the game last year which the Suns won in double OT. I would have loved to see the long faces of the Mavs and their fans if that had happened. Speaking of faces, I didn't see Cubes today. But unfortunately none of that happened and the Suns lost the game. In fact, Nash threw up an air-ball despite getting a decent look at a 3 off a good fake. That never happens for Nash especially against the Mavs.

The MP3 did have a great game with 21-18 and setup Amare for some monster dunks. Speaking of dunks, Grant Hill's flush on Diop was beyond awesome though he didn't have a great game. Blur and 3-D didn't have good games either and I thought these two guys killed the Suns today with critical, stupid mistakes. I am getting sick and tired of Diaw turning the ball over. He can't make this many mistakes for a guy with such a high basketball IQ. And Blur seems to have slowed down a bit lately after a great November. Amare and Marion had great games. Marion was all over the place and was awesome defending Nowitzki though the German was unstoppable today. Matrix's effort level was off the charts.

The problem with the Suns is consistency. As good as their offense is, it's really painful to watch their defense. There are stretches when you feel like not a single guy on the floor for the Suns can stop the guy he is guarding and this happens a lot when they play good teams. They are too soft inside and it's just frustrating to see their lack of D and also seeing them get killed on the boards. The Mavs got 19 offensive rebounds today. Pretty ugly numbers for a Suns fan and it's been the same story year after year for this team with respect to defense and rebounding. The only way the Suns can overcome all these deficiencies is through consistent effort on the defensive side. For some reason they can do that in spurts and not consistently. That has to change.

The Suns defense and their rebounding still is not at championship level, not even close. Unless they show the consistency, commitment and high effort levels at that end of the floor, they can't win the championship. The offense is fun to watch, but thats about it.

First big NBA game of the season.

The first big game of the young NBA season happened tonight in San Antonio. Suns were visiting the Spurs and the game was as good as advertised. It was much more important for the Suns to win because they are always looking up at the Spurs plus the Spurs were without Tony Parker. But the Suns had their own handicap since this was a road game for them and they were in the midst of a surprising losing stretch having lost 3 of 4. I should have jinxed them because they had lost 2 of 3 before today since the day I wrote about them having only 5 losses.

They lost at home to Miami and then on the road to the Hornets. That match-up was billed as CP3-V-MP3, but Chris Paul got the better of Nash. There is one weakness of Nash which is getting harder and harder to miss as the Suns try to become a championship team and thats his defense. In any of these great point guard match-ups, he never defends the other star because he just can't. He can't stay in front of Chris Paul or Tony Parker or Baron Davis while those guys can guard Nash. They are not going to stop Nash either, but they can at least guard him as well or as bad as anybody else on their respective teams. The only exception are the Spurs where they put their defensive specialist Bowen on Nash instead of Tony Parker. Whereas with the Suns, we have to hide Nash and use Marion or someone else to guard these PGs. This is one weakness in his game that is big.

Back to the game today. The Suns fought their way through it and toughed it out. It was not easy. It never is with the Spurs. The Spurs were very good and it's just too easy for Duncan against the Suns. He had 36-17 on 15/25 shooting to totally dominate the paint. But the Suns did a decent job defending the rest of the guys and the game was really close the entire 4-Th quarter. Finally, Grant Hill and good free throw shooting took us home. How good has Grant Hill been for this team? He was huge today and he is doing everything. I saw him guard Chris Paul the other day and if he can add to the perimeter defense and free up Raja and Marion in that department, it's a huge bonus. I was not expecting that. His offense has been as good as I had expected but he means more to this team than his numbers suggest. He had 22-7-3 today and hit some big free throws. With Nash having just a mediocre game thanks to Bowen, LB, Diaw and Grant carried the day for the Suns.

Speaking of talented veterans, how good has Finley been for the spurs the last few years? Apparently he is getting 19 million this year from the Mavs and 3 mill from the Spurs. Thats nice. He seems to kill the Suns every-time we play and has just been a huge part of that team since he came in. He has been averaging 25 mins and 10 points the last 3 years. The Suns handled Ginobli, Finley and Barry fairly well today and their D carried the day because they just can't run and gun against this team. The blur had a couple of run-outs, but thats about it in the open court. So they had to dig in defensively to have any shot at winning. I wish the Suns play this kind of defense against every team. If they do, they may beat every other team in the league by 20 points! In any case, it was a big win for the Suns as the Spurs lost their first home game this season. Now on to the second big game of the season as the Suns play the Mavs on Wed. Should be another dandy. To be fair, it will be the third big game this season (and this week) because the Celtics play the Pistons just before the Suns game on Wed and thats a legit big game as well.

NFL week's highlights and low-lights

The real big news of the NFL week happened early in the week with the whole Bobby Petrino fiasco. I can't help but laugh every time I think or read about this. It's a pretty serious issue especially if you are associated with the Atlanta Falcons in any way, shape or form. But I laugh because I am amazed at how weird and strange people can be. They can also be incredibly selfish, utterly tactless and plain stupid. The guy packed up his bags and just disappeared in the middle of the night mid-season in year 1 of his NFL coaching career. I never thought I'll see something like this especially in this day and age with 24 hour news channels and eyes following every move of every sports figure.

Apparently he told Falcons owner Arthur Blank that his heart is still in college and would like to return to college. Blank probably thought he was just thinking aloud and told him we can turn this thing with the Falcons around and he would not give him permission to look at college jobs. Bobby still went ahead and interviewed and got a job and resigned, all within a matter of hours though I am sure he had already spoken to Arkansas before he broached the subject with Blank. It's all a big scam and Bobby just flat-out quit on his team. He got killed by his players in the media the next day. All they got was a note from him in their lockers and he didn't even talk to anybody personally. Weird dude. You have done something real bad when Joey Harrington is ripping you for not doing your job right!

Sen. George Mitchell saved Bobby's ass because by mid week people forgot Bobby and it was all about Georgie and his roid report. One thing that I don't agree with though is how the media over-dramatizes everything by saying things like "oh, how will parents entrust their 18 year old kids with a man line Petrino?". I am sure this is a valid question and there are enough decent families that look at things like that. But lets keep it real. College recruiting is all about cash and strippers. NCAA recruiting is so corrupt, even a man like Bobby Petrino cannot pull it's collective integrity any lower than the depths it has already reached.

On the field, my dream season ended today. I am talking about the Dolphins winning their game against the Ravens and making sure they won't go 0-16. The good news is, Brian Billick should be done in Baltimore after this year. The Pats won against the Jets, but the 50-0 drubbing everybody was expecting never happened. It was probably the weather, but they just squeaked past the Jets 20-10 with Brady throwing for 0 TDs. There were some wild winter weather across the league as teams won games with scores like 8-0. In San Francisco, some guy named Shaun Hill played real well at QB and might end up replacing Alex Smith. New hope for the wine-sipping Niner fans. While in Dallas, Romo actually played like Alex Smith in his rookie season. Don't know why he got so rattled just because Jessica Simpson was in the stands.

The real highlight of the weekend was Brian Westbrook taking a knee at the goal-line instead of going in for a sure TD. This guy is one of the most under-rated players in the league and today he showed he is also smart and unselfish. He broke through for a long run with the Eagles leading 10-6 and less than 2 minutes to go. Right at the edge of the end-zone, he gave up a TD for himself and just fell down and took a knee. Dallas had no timeouts and this sealed the win for the Eagles. He could have scored a TD and gone up 17-6, but then Dallas gets the ball and theoritically anything can happen. Dallas probably would have still lost because it was a 2-score game, but what Brian did was much smarter and surer deal. I wish more players think like this. The other feel good news is, Buffalo's Kevin Everett is recovering surprisingly well from the spinal injury he suffered earlier this season. Thats awesome.

Mitchell Reports

Sen. George Mitchell finally released his roid report on baseball. I didn't read it or get too too deep into it. I am sure it has some solid information and valuable recommendations, but I get the gist of it. MLB, the owners, the commissioner, players and their union did nothing to stop this abuse and they all need to do more, way more to stop the extensive drug use and cheating. What next? The senator is going to spend another 40 million and tell us the sky is blue or the fire is hot? Tell me something I don't know and thats where the names of the players come in! The most interesting part of this whole report for me are the names and I am sure it's that way for most people.

Anybody with a reasonable intelligence shouldn't find the rest of the report too surprising. Call me a sensationalist, but it's just fun to see the names, especially one Mr. Roger Clemens. In fact some people might even accuse Mitchell of releasing all these names just to grab some attention for his report, but who can blame him? He has nothing else to offer in his report that we don't already know. In fact, even Roid-ger Clemens was no surprise to me personally. I am happy this cheater finally got exposed. He is a arrogant bully and I was sick and tired of the media deifying him as a true American hero. I agree with a lot of black callers to radio shows who are saying this is a litmus test for the white media because we get to see how they treat Clemens V Bonds.

Anyways, here's the complete list of tainted players in the report. Mitchell had access only to 3 sources that are under federal investigation including Balco. This only means that the 89 names are just a small percentage of all the roid-heads in the entire game of baseball. It's ironic that at the end of the day, Jose Canseco is the only credible guy in this whole steroid saga.

The following players were connected to steroids, either use or possession, in the report:

Chad Allen
Mike Bell
Gary Bennett
Larry Bigbie
Ricky Bones
Kevin Brown
Ken Caminiti
Mark Carreon
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Lenny Dykstra
Matt Franco
Ryan Franklin
Eric Gagne
Jason Grimsley
Jerry Hairston
Phil Hiatt
Matt Herges
Glenallen Hill
Todd Hundley
Ryan Jorgensen
Wally Joyner
Mike Judd
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul Lo Duca
Exavier “Nook” Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Daniel Naulty
Denny Neagle
Rafael Palmeiro
Jim Parque
Luis Perez
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Adam Riggs
Brian Roberts
F.P. Santangelo
David Segui
Mike Stanton
Ricky Stone
Miguel Tejada
Derrick Turnbow
Mo Vaughn
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Todd Williams
Kevin Young
Gregg Zaun

The following players were cited under “Alleged Internet Purchases of Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball” in the report:

Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Paul Byrd
Jose Canseco
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Jose Guillen
Darren Holmes
Gary Matthews Jr.
John Rocker
Scott Schoeneweis
Ismael Valdez
Matt Williams
Steve Woodard

The following players were linked through BALCO in the report:

Marvin Benard
Barry Bonds
Bobby Estalella
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Benito Santiago
Gary Sheffield
Randy Velarde

Suns playing 762 ball, but could be better

Suns are 16-5 which translates to a .762 winning percentage. Thats pretty good by any standards, but a true Suns fan will tell you it could be better. They have lost so far to Lakers (home opener), Atlanta on the road, Golden State and Houston for a 2-game losing streak and the latest defeat at Minnesota. The last one was against a bad team, but it was one of those last game of a 5 game road trip on a back-to-back night against a bad team. Ultimate trap game. A true championship team should close the deal on such games, and thats where there is a slight concern about this Suns team. But any time you can remember all the losses a month in to a NBA season, your team is doing real good. It means they have not lost a whole lot of games.

The 2-game losing streak in the middle against the Warriors on the road and Houston was a little scary. Especially against the Warriors. The Suns have been blown out of Oakland the last 2 times. The Warriors have scored 45 points in the first quarter in both these games and have given Phoenix a bad taste of their own medicine. This is what is disturbing for me when you talk about the Warriors. They may be the only team that plays the Suns style better than them. It takes a lot out of me to say that some other team plays the run-and-gun better than us, but that could be the case with the W's in some sense.

Actually the Warriors don't necessarily play it better than the Suns, but they do play it better against the Suns. In fact lot of people call them "Suns-lite". They also don't shoot quite as well as the Suns. But they match-up very well against the Suns and are very athletic. I will take Amare and Marion's athleticism against anybody, but the Warriors are more athletic at every other position up and down the lineup. They score at ease against the Suns D and they are very active defensively. Their defense is nothing great, but if they put their mind to it, they can be better than the Suns on D. They are quick, athletic, they dig in and are just disruptive. Plus Nellie seems to be having the scoreboard on his ex-stars. After undressing Nowitzki in last year's playoffs, he killed Nash by making him play D. Baron Davis is too big for Nash and Monta Ellis is too athletic for most of the league. Nellie ran pick and rolls with Baron and Monta and just killed Nash on the defensive end. This is not a good match-up for the Suns or the MP3.

Speaking of the MP3, he has been in MVP form the last couple of weeks. His assists totals in the recent road trip were 15, 17, 18, 19 and 15. Thats amazing! He is now averaging 12.3 assists per game and I don't how he does it. Grant Hill has been an awesome fit as expected and Amare is coming into his own. His dunks are getting better and Dwight Howard is the only guy who has made him look a little weak! That will happen against Dwight. 35-20 easy for D12 against the Suns. The Brazilian blur has been good and Marion has been his usual Matrix-self. Diaw is up and down as usual, but Skinner has been a real revelation.

Overall the Suns are doing alright. Lets see how they do against the Spurs and the somewhat struggling Mavs. Until then, the following AD featuring Nash and Amare might be the highlight of this young season.

Close Call!

The Pats had another close call. They lost the game against the Ravens like 3 times before winning it at the end. They got stuffed on 4-Th and 1 only to see the play get erased by a Baltimore time-out. They got stuffed again, but the play was void because of a Pats false start. This might have been the best false start ever for an offense! They got a third shot at 4-Th down and now Brady converted on a QB run. They faced a 4-Th and change again a few plays later and Brady's pass fell incomplete. But wait. Holding penalty on the defense. First down Pats. This penalty was a killer. Sometimes you got to let the kids play when the game is on the line like that. I hate it when refs do more than their job. Just an hour after this game, I was watching the end of the Magic-Warriors game and they called a T on Dwight Howard for punching the hoop-support with just a few seconds to go. I had to make sure D-Stern had not let Tim Donaghy back in to ref this game. That was a ridiculous call since Howard was not even protesting against a call. He was just frustrated with himself. What are these refs thinking with just a few ticks to go in the game? This holding call was not quite that bad, but still a game-changing one. Since it was on a TE and not a WR I would say let the extra contact go.

Pats scored soon after and the game was over. Even the TD looked suspect with the receiver kinda bobbling the ball though both his feet were inbounds. To make matters even worse for the Ravens, they threw a hail-marry at the end that the receiver actually caught, but he was 2 yards short of the end zone. That should have been a fun game for the Ravens fan. I wish I had tuned into those calls on their post-game show. As for the Pats, the cheaters are still undefeated. They almost seem destined to go undefeated, but they have looked VERY shaky the last 2 weeks. Both Phily and Baltimore have made them look shaky and interestingly, those 2 teams have not made too many other teams look bad this season. I was watching this game in a gym and it was interesting how many people were rooting against the Pats! Not sure if it was an underdog thing or a spy-gate thing or just guys being jealous of Brady, but people outside of New England don't dig this unbeaten Pats team and I like it that way. I don't like Pittsburgh either, but I would be their biggest fan for 3 hours next week when they play the Pats.

Speaking of the Steelers, they were very lucky this weekend as well. It appeared like Willie Parker was fumbling the ball every other carry, but just like the Pats and their 4-Th downs, each fumble was reviewed or erased by something or the other. Either his knee was down a milli-second before he fumbled or his butt hit the ground before the ball popped out or something like that. Grandpa Madden was pining for the good old days when a fumble was a fumble and nobody cared about whether the butt hit the heel before the tongue licked your nose while the ball was rolling out! I guess good teams make their own break.

In other news, the McCown brothers were good on Sunday with Luke winning a game for Tamba Bay and Josh guiding the lowly Raiders against the hated Broncos. I think the Mike Shanahan era in Denver is winding to an end. Not sure what's up with that team. The Raiders used their rookie QB JaMarcus Russell for a few plays though it's running back Justin Fargas who gashed the Broncos. In Washington, Joe Gibbs got a penalty for back-to-back timeouts and pretty much gave the game away to the Bills. They went from a difficult 51 yard field goal to a friendly 36 yarder to win the game. That wraps up an interesting week for the Skins to say the least. The best clips from the NFL weekend was the moves that Adrian Peterson put on a couple of hapless defenders on his way to pay-dirt. This guy is an awesome running back.

Greatness in action

Greatness in action

I have not had the time to blog for a few days. The entire Thanksgiving weekend and since, I thought I have been seeing some tremendous performances on the football field and basketball courts. I am talking really impressive, out of the world type game here. The following guys have impressed me a lot over the last 2 weeks.

Tim Tebow - Florida. This guy is just awesome. A unique (white) double-threat QB. Dude has 29 touchdowns throwing and another 22 rushing this season. It's scary how good the Gators can be the next few years with this guy calling the shots. He is a top Heisman candidate though he is just a Soph.

Run DMC, Darren McFadden - Arkansas. As good as Tebow has been, I would say my Heisman is DMC. I couldn't believe what I saw him do against LSU last weekend. 206 yards rushing against the nation's number 1 team and guiding his team to a win single-handedly. It's amazing to watch the Razorbacks routinely line him up at QB and just directly snap to him without even pretending to have a passing game. I don't remember ever seeing the ball snapped to the RB so often. Thats how good Run DMC is.

The guy in the NFL who is dominating right now is Devin Hester. He scored 2 TDs last week on returns, both is the 3-Rd quarter, to single-handedly rip the hearts out of the Denver Broncos. They deserved every bit of their troubles because they brought it upon themselves. Why would anybody kick to this guy? I would give the ball to Rex Grossman and his offense at the 50 yard line every time rather than kicking it to Hester at the 20 or even in the end-zone. This guy is even more exciting than Dante Hall a few years back because at least that Chiefs team had an offense. The Bears have very little going on either side of the ball outside this guy.

D12, Dwight Howard. If you have not been following the NBA closely, you might have missed the growth of a new beast in the East. He is so good I might start calling the conference East again instead of LEast. Howard is a monster. The guy is so big and so athletic, it's a joke. This guy is almost unstoppable in the paint and he plays exclusively above the rim. He has more dunks this season than entire teams and his guards can just throw the ball anywhere near the hoop and he'll catch and crush the ball through the hoop. Double double is considered a good game and 20-10 is usually superstar numbers. But this guy routinely goes for 30-15 and 20-10 is actually a bad game for him.

Howard kind of reminds me of Amare from a couple of years back when he used to lead the league in dunks. Amare is still dominant, but the knee surgeries have definitely taken some juice out of Amare. Howard is now the vicious dunker and bigs like Amare have no shot against him in head-to-head match-ups. He is an inch or two taller than Amare, plus has a great wingspan for his height. He has never missed a game due to injury and can play defense as well. So that next great big man to follow Tim Duncan is D12. He is a cross between Tim Duncan, Shaq and Amare and in a year or two, he will make Timmy look bad. D12's offensive skills are still a work in progress and is nowhere near Timmy's but he has already started winning their individual match-ups. Imagine what happens in 09 or 2010. Scary!

King James. The other true stud of this young NBA season is Lebron James. This guy has become a triple-double machine and is the MP3 front runner. The Cavs didn't do anything this off-season to improve the team, but why should they if this guy keeps improving like this year over year! He just makes everybody around him so much better and his teammates are just growing in confidence playing with this guy everyday. Again, I think his offensive skills are nowhere near where it can be and it's scary to think how complete a player he will be when he gets there. He may never score like Kobe, but he is going to be a much better player if not already.

Packers are Favre real!

Turkey day means one thing - football. There were 3 NFL games today and they also had a big-time College game between ASU and USC. I would have rather taken the ASU-UofA match-up on Friday after thanksgiving like the old days after looking at this one. ASU looked completely out-classed by the trojans. From the first snap, ASU just could not wrap up the USC guys and bring them down. Awful tackling usually means one thing. The athletes on the other side are either quicker or stronger or both. Unfortunately that was the case today. ASU is still long ways from challenging USC. They had problems tackling and stopping them and on offense, ASU could not run against them at all. The USC pass-rush was also ferocious and with Rudy Carpenter holding on to the ball too long like he always does, the passing game was stuffed as well. The USC line almost killed Rudy. All things considered, this was a great season for ASU and Dennis Erickson, but they aint going to the Rose Bowl. They have lost to both USC and Oregon and that will stop them in most tie-break calculations.

In the pros, it was all about Brett Favre. Dude is looking as good as he has ever looked and he picked the Detroit defense apart with his quick passing. The Packers are spreading the WRs out and killing people with Brett's passes. He is playing at a very high-level and their offensive chemistry is off the charts. The kids are playing hard and their defense is no joke either. Mike Martz and Jon Kitna looked amateurish against the Packers D. Martz needs to go upstairs and do some real work. I don't see his offensive genius with this offense which has enough talent on paper to do some damage. Both their wide receivers are absolute studs - Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson and Kevin Jones and Jon Kitna aren't bad either. In the other game, not sure why the Jets even showed up at Dallas. That game was over long before it started. There's no way the Jets beat the Cowboys. Now the real game is between the 10-1 Pack and the 10-1 Boys next Thursday. It's like the mid to late 90's all over again! Unfortunately none of us can see it because NFL has this game on the stupid NFL channel.

Shake it like a Salt-Shaker!

Another weekend, another major shake-up in college football. 2 top-5 teams lost - Oregon and Oklahoma. Oregon's loss at the hands of Arizona opens the door again for ASU to win the Pac-10. It's still too early for ASU to dream about a BCS berth because they have to play the Trojans on turkey-day and then the slimy Wildcats, but how ironic would it be if Arizona helps Arizona State win the Pac-10? But really it was Dennis Dixon's injury that killed the Ducks. That team has got nothin' goin' on outside that QB. His backup Brady Leaf is pretty good for his last name, but he can't do what what double-D does for that offense. Now the ASU-USC game on Thursday becomes huge. It might be for all the marbles in the Pacific, at least for ASU.

The other big-shot team to lose this weekend was Oklahoma. They lost to Texas Tech and nothing wrong with that. I am not a big fan of Bob Stoops and I like the Texas Tech offense. They just seem to chuck it around year in and year out. This was the 11-Th time this year a top 5 team has lost to an unranked team. How awesome is that? I am loving college football like never before.

No major surprises in the NFL this weekend. New England beat up on Buffalo like a drum and ended with a 56-10 win. They look truly unstoppable. They did not punt the ball even once when their first team offense was on the field. Brady and Moss are playing pitch and catch all over the field, especially in the end-zone. Both Moss and TO had 4 TDs each this weekend. God must have slotted this NFL weekend as the "pure evil weekend" or something. The Colts barely squeaked past the Chiefs and looked mediocre. Pittsburgh lost to the Jets and had to deal with the proverbial "who the hell loses to the Jets?" question while the Chargers lost to the Jaguars and made the Jags look like the best team in the AFC for no reason.

All this means the Patriots have pretty much won the AFC for all practical purposes. Our only hope is for the Colts to get healthy and get good again in a hurry. Otherwise, we might be reduced to watching the hoody go for it on 4Th-and-2 in the 4-Th quarter of the Super Bowl leading 38-10 against the Cowboys. On the bright side, I guess we can get to know which of the 2 evil wide-receivers does the God really like to have a Super Bowl ring.

Celts, King and the Suns

Celts, King and the Suns

The NBA season is rolling and the only disappointing thing for me is the quality of the NBA league pass transmission. Seems like they are down-converting the HD transmission and sending it non-HD in most cases. Some games look horrible on my HD-TV. I wish the League pass moved to HD wherever available. Still it's NBA basketball and is real fun to flip the channels and see a whole bunch of games from all over. I love being able to TIVO every Suns game and watch it whenever I can.

Speaking of the Suns, they are one of the biggest story again with their 7-2 record. They look awesome with Grant Hill. They are fun to watch as always and MP3 Nash is getting better with age like fine wine and Heather Locklear. He is casually dropping 15 dimes a game and if Amare is out, put him down for 30 points as well. There is really not many surprises in the West except for the 9-2 New Orleans. The Spurs, Mavs are right there at the top and Denver and Utah are joining these teams up there as well. The West is BRUTAL as ever, but so far it sure looks like the Suns have nothing to worry about except Timmy and the Spurs. The only other real surprise in the West are the 1-6 Warriors. They sure can turn it around and probably will, but in the West you don't want to dig yourself too big a hole.

As for the L-East, it's all about the Celts. I am happy for KG, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce since I like all 3 of them. They are 8-0 and are looking as legit as any team ever can in Mid-November. Everybody knew they had the talent, but they have resoundingly answered questions about their depth and also how quickly and how well the stars can gel. They seem to have quickly found solid role players and a dependable line-up and are getting solid contributions from Rajon Rando, James Posey, Kendrick Perkins and Eddie House. I think Danny Ainge is well on his way to being voted the Executive of the Year. What he has done is simply remarkable. The reason their chemistry is so good and they are able to dominate this early is KG. I call him the "Nash among big men". He is so unselfish and plays so hard, that building a team around him is easier done than said. Unless you are Kevin McHale that is. KG also plays defense and what more do you want to play winning ball in the NBA? They have the Truth to dominate the scoring, they got Ray Allen hitting the 3's and KG takes care of everything else. It's a perfect mix right now.

The other big story for me is the King. LBJ has come out to play this year. There was some concern last year about how he has taken a step back and was also accused of sleep-walking trough the first half of the season. This year, he looks totally different. He is playing hard, he is playing great defense and is passing even more than before. I can't believe how willingly he sets up teammates for scores. If only Kobe had that skill. If LeBron plays with a high-level commitment, it might be game over for most of the other teams. The Cavs came out West and actually went back home with a 500 record. Thats like playing 850 ball at home against the L-East. LeBron was pretty impressive on the road and he then went back home to beat the Jazz with a ridiculous 40-10-9 game. That was after he had a 39-13-14 game against the Magic in a 117-116 loss. LBJ might take his game one more level higher this season and amaze us even more.

Call me when you are in my block!

There has been a lot of controversy recently around Don Shula calling the Patriots season "tainted" because of spy-gate. The 1972 Dolphins always come off looking petty and juvenile with their Champagne bottle popping celebration every year when the last unbeaten team loses. But I have to agree with Don Shula about the "taint". May be it's just because I hate the hoody and the Pats, but he does seem to have a point. But today, I think I found my most favorite 72 Dolphin - RB Mercury Morris. He was talking trash to the Pats about how they are barely half-way to perfection and all this talk about 17-0 is premature to say the least. He might have came out with the best quote ever. "Don't call me when they're in my town, call me when they're on my block." Thats awesome. I'll be adding this to my lingo pretty soon!

Speaking of the Dolphins, the league re-instated Ricky Williams. I am a big supporter of this yoga-loving, world-travelling, new-age running back. I welcome him back with open arms. The other big Dolphins news is that they are going to start rookie John Beck this weekend at QB. John who? It's amazing how bad the QB talent in this league is right now. Recently I was talking to my friend about our fellow Sun-Devil Jake Plummer, who is busy playing professional doubles handball with his elder brother. I told him that if Plummer comes back, he should have a starting job within 10 minutes. I am a big fan of the Snake, but even grading him conservatively and dispassionately, he is clearly in the top half (top 16) of QBs in this league. I was watching Alex Smith this Monday and could not stomach how low the QB play has dropped even with the proud Montana-Young 49'ers. Here's the list of QBs I would rank higher than Plummer

Peyton Manning
Tom Brady
Drew Brees
Ben Roethlisberger
Brett Favre
Tony Romo
Matt Hasselback
Donavan McNabb
Carson Palmer
Marc Bulger
Eli Manning
Jay Cutler
Jon Kitna

As you can see, I am trying to be real fair here. I have even ranked Jay Cutler and Jon Kitna above him. Why am I in such a giving mood? I really don't know. But the point is, aside from this list, I will argue for Plummer against any other starter in the league today. Give me Plummer over Jeff Garcia or Jake Delhomme. You can have your over-the-hill Warner or Culpepper or McNair or Trent Greene, I'll take Plummer. Leinart and Vince Young and Philip Rivers can't even Carry Jake's jock, at least not yet. Even if you rank some these guys over Jake, he is clearly a quality starter in todays NFL. May be he should come back and make one more team watchable on Sundays.

Steve Nashty!

The NBA season is heating up and Steve Nashty is one of the big stories again. He is already in MVP form and this is in an year when he says he didn't come in top shape like last season because he took time off and wanted to pace himself for the long year. But with Amare sitting out for 3 games after playing 2, Nash had to step up and boy did he ever. Tonight against the Heat, Amare actually played but was ejected in the third. Nash went on a personal 11 point run in the 4-Th to lead the Suns to a victory. Matrix had a 17-24 night. Thats amazing. Nash ended up with a 30-2-8 night. Here's his numbers in the season and more and more I look at these numbers year after year, I am convinced he is one of the top-5 guy in the league and is deserving of every praise he gets. He is averaging 22.2 pts, 8.6 assists, 4.4 boards and is shooting 55% from the field and 54% from 3. Are you kidding me! Is this a 6'-3" white kid from Canada or Wilt Chamberlain?

The Suns are now 4-2 and looking good. I was a little concerned about how they'll start but so far so good. Surprisingly the paper-clips are leading the Pacific and they lost their first game (against Detroit) only today. This shows how talented the Clips are. They can do this even without Elton Brand. Lets see how long they can keep this going. The other exciting team from the Pacific, the Warriors have started 0-5 and they can't win a game in-spite of Boom Dizzle playing like a madman. They played a fantastic game yesterday against their bete-noire Dallas and came up short again. Baron Davis had 37 points, but he needed at least 3 more to send the game to OT. Overall I think the W's will be fine and fun to watch.

In the L-east, Boston is as legit as advertised but Miami is struggling without D-Wade and are 0-5. Shaq scored 25 against the Suns D and that says more about the Suns-D than Shaq these days! Thats how much things have changed with Shaq. He is nowhere near his peak right now. Celts on the other hand are just having fun with the big 3. They have won in every which way possible and are the only undefeated team in the NBA. What's up with Boston and undefeated teams? The Pats are dominating the NFL. Redsox swept the rockies in the World Series and now this. One guy even had a 82-0 sign at their game. The other guy having some fun this season is Sacramento's Kevin Martin. This guy is now in competition with stars like LeBron James in scoring categories. Dude is averaging 26 points for the season with Bibby and Artest not playing.

Colts blow it!

This was a great sports weekend with the ASU-Oregon game on Sat and the Colts-Pats match-up on Sun. The football weekend was nicely sand-wiched between 2 Suns game for me - Fri against the Fakers and Sun night against King James. But now that the games have ended, I am not too happy with the results. I went 1-3 starting with the Suns losing badly on Fri in their home opener to the Fakers. Then ASU loses at Eugene in a rather disturbing fashion. The Colts look like they were going to shock the World by knocking off the Pats, but then with 9 mins to go in the 4-Th quarter, they lose the game by not scoring again as the Pats poured in 2 TDs. Finally, the Suns score a meagre 38 in the first half, but luckily turn it around to beat the Cavs on Jerry Colangelo's "ring of honor" night.

First, ASU. They played a frustrating game in Eugene as they blew some early opportunities and some late opportunities and just did not execute. As always they were behind 21-3 early, but it was not because of their offense starting slowly. The defense could not stop that dude Dennis Dixon and their offense, but the offense moved the ball. They just couldn't punch it in from the 5 yard line. Curious call by the coaches to run on all 3 downs instead of mixing it up even with Rudy Carpenter's sore thumb. So instead of starting the game 7-7, it was 7-3. Oregon scored 2 more times before ASU scored to get the game to 21-10. Suddenly the defense found a way to slow down double-D in the second quarter, This is when Rudy screwed up big time with the 2-min drill before half-time. He completely mis-managed the clock and ran just one play from the 25 yard line with 45 seconds on the clock. ASU had to settle for a field goal that was missed and the Devils who had an opportunity to go in 21-20 ended up with a 21-13 half-time score.

Still not bad for the Devils, but again Dennis Dixon could not be stopped in the 3-Rd quarter. They kept scoring and the Devils either stalled on their own or scored field-goals instead of TDs. The deficit was too high to overcome in the 4-Th even with double-D injured and on the sideline. We got to see Ryan Leaf's brother on the field, but Rudy Carpenter just did not have a great game. ASU lived off of it's running game and they just could not pass protect for Rudy. When he had the time, he did OK, but couple of turnovers in the fourth sealed the deal for Oregon. Great win for the program and a bad loss for the Devils. The championship game is out of the window now for the Devils, but they still need to win out and hope for a BCS bowl. You know what, that ain't all that bad considering where they started this season.

Similar story with the Colts on Sunday. They did great to bottle up Tom Brady and also rode Joseph Addai to to a 20-10 lead with 9 mins to go in the game. Then Brady went Brady. He connected on long bombs to Randy Moss and Donte Stallworth on 2 consecutive TD drives. Peyton just could not move the ball enough to score in that 4-th quarter. I wonder how the game would have looked if the Colts had Marvelous Marvin. I think Colts win if Peyton had one more weapon in Marvin. But even with all the injuries, the Colts looked very good today. They ran all over the Pats and were in control for 3 quarters. They intercepted Brady twice and all they had to do was close it out. That didn't happen and now they probably have to go in to a frozen Boston in Jan for another AFC championship game. But the Colts did show they are a real good football team and all this hype about how this game would be a Patriots blow-out turned out to be just that - hype. Chris Collinsworth is even saying the Pats are the best ever team in the history of the NFL! I think that boy needs to take it easy! May be now he can say that the 2007 Colts are the second best team in the history of the game since they only lost 20-24. In other games, I gotta tell you this Adrian Peterson is an absolute stud! Almost 300 yards rushing for a rookie against a decent Chargers D. This guy's burst and power is awesome to watch.

As for the Suns, they got embarrassed by the Fakers in their home opener on Friday. They looked listless and their offense is just not flowing yet. This offense takes a while to heat up every year and I don't think we should panic yet. Ballers need to get into "run and gun" game shape, incorporate new pieces like Grant Hill and also the shooters need to get their rhythm going with those 3-bombs. This is exactly why the Suns go on huge winning streaks often. It's kind of a streaky style they play that thrives on rhythm and chemistry. Tonight, they started badly against the Cavs as well, but the second half was much better. MP3 is in mid-season form, but the best is yet to come from the others. Amare missed tonight's game against the Cavs, but the Suns hung on instead of using that as an excuse. Colangelo's ring of honor celebration at half-time was pretty nice with Chuck, KJ, Majerle and the gang in the house. As for the Fakers, they start hot every year and this year seem no different. They look real good right now, but lets see how far it goes. Andrew Bynum is in top shape and looks pretty impressive. Boston looks like the real deal in the East and it should be a fun season.

Suns welcome Durant home!

Suns started their season on the road as Seattle welcomed Kevin Durant to the NBA. Durant was very impressive though the other rookie Jeff Green was a little up and down. Durant ended up with 27 pts on 11/23 shooting, though it was against our friendly Suns defense. The Suns didn't quite blow the Sonics out, but they did what they had to do in the 4-Th quarter. Sonics faded in the 4-Th like all young teams do for the second straight night. They have some young pieces and some size as well that bothered the Suns as usual. But the Suns offense got the job done at the end though their 3-point shooting was not quite there except for the MP3 and Marcus Banks. It was nice to see Banks come in and contribute.

Mike D used 8 guys with even a 9-Th guy, Brian Skinner, getting some minutes when Amare got in foul trouble. Grant Hill started and played 33 mins and had a 13-5-6 night. Good start for the vet despite going 1/7 from 3-land with an odd looking shot! Amare was awesome with 23-11 and Marion was Matrix with 14-11. It was business as usual for the Suns though I expected them to score close to 120 in this game. They got to 106 and thats good enough on most nights. In other games, Detroit took care of a Wade-less Miami as Ricky Davis scored 23 and Shaq looked lost scoring just 9 pts. Utah lost to Houston at home after dominating the Warriors on the road. Of course thats going to happen if T-Mac sets the house on fire with 47 on 17/27 shooting. Amazing night for T-Mac as he neutralized C-Booze's 30-16 game.

Anyways, now on to the Lakers for the Suns as tomorrow might be the last time they face Kobe Bryant in a Lakers uniform. It's going to be weird when he leaves. Here's the Suns game 1 box score saved here for posterity in this, their first championship season. Yes, I can dream.

Phoenix
Player Pos Min FGM-FGA FTM-FTA 3M-3A OR-TR A Blk Stl TO PF Pts
G. Hill F 34 5-12 2-4 1-7 0-6 5 0 0 2 1 13
S. Marion F 34 7-10 0-2 0-2 0-11 1 1 2 1 1 14
A. Stoudemire C 32 10-20 3-4 0-1 4-11 1 1 1 3 4 23
S. Nash G 34 6-13 3-3 3-6 0-7 12 0 1 7 1 18
R. Bell G 32 2-9 0-0 2-7 0-1 1 0 1 3 3 6
L. Barbosa 28 3-7 2-2 1-4 0-2 5 0 3 1 2 9
B. Diaw 26 3-5 1-2 0-1 0-4 6 0 2 1 0 7
M. Banks 14 4-6 0-0 4-5 0-1 0 0 0 1 2 12
B. Skinner 8 2-2 0-0 0-0 1-1 0 0 1 0 0 4
A. Tucker DNP -- COACH'S DECISION
E. Piatkowski DNP -- COACH'S DECISION
S. Marks DNP -- INACTIVE
D. Strawberry DNP -- COACH'S DECISION
Totals 240 42-84
(.500) 11-17
(.647) 11-33
(.333) 5-44 31 2 11 19 14 106


Seattle
Player Pos Min FGM-FGA FTM-FTA 3M-3A OR-TR A Blk Stl TO PF Pts
C. Wilcox F 35 11-17 1-2 0-0 4-11 2 0 3 2 2 23
D. Wilkins F 30 4-14 3-4 1-2 2-8 4 0 2 1 1 12
N. Collison C 32 4-8 0-0 0-0 2-7 1 1 1 1 2 8
K. Durant G 39 11-23 3-4 2-6 0-5 1 1 0 6 2 27
E. Watson G 31 3-8 0-0 1-2 2-6 8 0 1 4 3 7
J. Petro 22 2-5 2-2 0-0 0-6 0 0 2 1 4 6
J. Green 21 3-12 2-2 0-2 0-4 1 0 1 1 1 8
D. West 13 1-5 0-0 0-0 0-1 3 0 0 1 1 2
W. Szczerbiak 8 2-5 1-1 1-1 0-1 1 0 0 1 1 6
L. Ridnour 8 0-2 0-0 0-0 1-1 3 0 0 0 0 0
M. Sene DNP -- COACH'S DECISION
M. Gelabale DNP -- COACH'S DECISION
R. Swift DNP -- INACTIVE
K. Thomas DNP -- INACTIVE
Totals 240 41-99
(.414) 12-15
(.800) 5-13
(.385) 11-50 24 2 10 18 17 99

Suns ready to roll!

Suns go in to Seattle to open 07-08. It would be great to see the gang on TV with Grant Hill joining the party. What should the Suns fans expect from this game? First and foremost, a "W" is a must. I expect the Suns to blow Seattle out. The Sonics are playing on a back-to-back night and they couldn't quite hang with Denver tonight. The Suns better handle them easily. I want to see high-percentage shooting from the Suns. They should set the tempo early in the season. Look at Spurs and their 2-0 record. The big-3 in the Spurs are looking bigger than ever. Ginobli did the honors today for them against the Grizz in OT. Back to the Suns, I want to see strong games from Matrix and Amare for different reasons. Matrix, because he should show us he has put the trade rumors behind him Amare because of the surgery. It's also important Suns showcase some new talent. Grant is the obvious choice, but I wouldn't mind seeing some good contributions from Tucker or Strawberry or even Banks. Only thing better than the Phoenix Suns is a new and improved Phoenix Suns.

Thats my wish-list and check back tomorrow to see how it plays out. All of this is important because the West looks as brutal as ever. San Antonio and Dallas have started right where they left off last season. Dallas shut down Cleveland pretty easily, though thats not saying a whole lot. LeBron needs a lot of help. Utah handled the Warriors pretty easily and they are a load to handle. Too big, too talented, too disciplined for the Warriors or for that matter, the Suns. Denver should be better with AI and Melo having 1/2 season under their belt and K-Mart being back. Houston should be better with Adelman as the coach and with Steve Francis coming back and so should be the Warriors with an year of chemistry under their belt. So it's very important for the Suns to stay on top from day 1. The Pacific division doesn't look too difficult with the Lakers, Clippers and the Kings having huge issues. It might end up being a 2 horse race between the Suns and the Warriors. But the Suns need to show the future starts today

In other news, Gil did what he does best as he hit a game-tying 3 to send the game to OT. Wizards lost in OT though. Kobe rumors are still dominating the NBA chatter. I can't belive the Bulls won't give up Luol Deng even for Kobe! I still think Kobe ends up there. In San Antonio, the rich get richer as the Spus locked up Tim Duncan for 2 more years. Thats bad news for the Suns.

Season is here!

The NBA season is here. It starts today and this is the day I always feel like the Suns are gonna win it all. Either that or the Spurs will win one more! I think the Suns are primed for a take-off this year. It should be fun to watch the run-and-gun again. Marion's trade request notwithstanding, the show should be as good as ever. He ain't no trouble maker. He is probably good for a controversy or 3 this season, but I don't expect anything major. Can't wait to see Grant Hill in a Suns uniform. I think he is going to be a great influence on Amare and the gang both on and off the court. Of course the MP3 still runs the show. Lets see how Nash performs this season - year 4 in this contract. All in all, I hope it's championship time for the Suns.

Aside from the Suns, opening days are always fun. There are so many story-lines. I am expecting a lot from the association this season. Garnett in Boston, a new and (hopefully) improved King James, an injury-free D-Wade, a resurgent Warriors trying to continue that magical playoff run, Kevin Durant in Seattle and Kobe Bryant wherever he ends up. The last one was one of the big stories this off-season. Kobe coming out and just going nuts on radio stations across the country. He then went and met the owner in Spain and decided to shut-up. The trade talks died down eventually but then Buss came out of the blue during the training camp and suggested they may still trade Kobe. Now the fires are burning all over again in So-Cal, no pun intended. Apparently he still wants to be traded and just decided to not say so to the media. So Buss says they are trying to move him since he doesn't want to stay.

The biggest rumor has him going to Chicago in some package. I think that might work for everybody. Kobe will be in a big market inheriting the throne of no-23. If anybody can handle that, it's Kobe. The Bulls have the pieces to pull it off and the Lakers might even get better in the process. The problem is, LA is a show-biz town and I can't believe anybody caring about the Lakers even if they win without Kobe. It might take them a while to get out off "Kobe-withdrawal". He owns that town. It might take a few years before the Lakers win that fan base again if Kobe leaves.

All in all, I am saying bring it on!

The Good and the Bad.

Good and the Bad.

If you are in to the good, A for ASU and B for Brett Favre. If you are into the bad, A for A-Rod and B for Belichick. That pretty much sums up the Sports weekend. First, ASU stayed undefeated and recorded their first impressive win of the season as they dismantled the Cal Bears. I don't know why the Devils keep starting slowly, but they were again down 13-0 after the first quarter. It looked bleak, but they started to dominate as soon the second quarter started. From that point on, it was no-contest. The Bears had no answers to the Devils offense as Dimitri Nance and Keegan Herring gashed them for big yards almost every run. And this was without my main man Ryan Torain. Rudy Carpenter was more than adequate with the passing game, but once ASU established a running game, this game was over. The Bears were outscored 31-7 in the final 3 quarters and they scored 0 points in the second half! Thats domination folks.

The Bears only shot was in that first quarter where they could have basically gone up 21-0 if they had converted all their opportunities. But you know what, the Devil might have still won at the end. Thats how good they played the rest of the way. Their slow-stars are disturbing, but their half-time adjustments are heart-warming! That shows how good a coach Dennis Erickson is, but if they start this slow on the road at Oregon next week, it might be game over. It reminds me of great pitchers like Greg Maddux. You have to get them in the first inning. If you don't, you may be staring at a shutout. ASU is similar and I sure hope they fix this problem before they run into Oregon and USC. I think USC is over-rated but Oregon is where it's at right now in the Pac-10. Thats a huge game next weekend.

In other news, the RedSox swept the Rockies to win the World series. Nothing surprising here. The Sox were way better than the upstart rockies both on the mound and in the batter's box. But I was shocked to see Scott Boras come up right in the middle of the World Series with the news that A-Rod is opting out. Of all people, thats really dumb coming from Boras. As if A-Rod is not having enough problems as it is, now he is getting crushed for trying to take away from the World Series. I always thought the Yankees were posturing when they said we won't sign A-Rod if he opts out. Of course I knew they lose the 21 mill coming from the Texas Rangers if they sign a new contract with A-Rod. So the Yanks wouldn't just be paying the bump in A-Rod's salary but they'll be paying much more. Still, i thought they have to go after him because they need him as much as he needs them. Who else is going to pay A-Rod 32 mill a year? But apparently it's all over.

The Yanks came out and pretty much said good bye to A-Rod. The tabloids already had "get lost" in their front pages. The RedSox fans in Colorado started chanting "no A-Rod" during their celebrations. This could not be going any worse for A-Rod. Now he has walked away from 76 mill in guaranteed money and is hoping for a mega-contract without the Yankees in the bidding. I have no idea who can pay 30 mill a year, but the Yankees. The RedSox probably can and in my opinion they should, but I don't think Theo will. That guy knows how to run a franchise and I don't think he is paying 30 mill to anybody. They are saying A-Rod's suitors are the Angels, Dodgers, Mets, Giants, RedSox and believe it or not, the Rangers. Why are the Rangers even in the conversation? Anyways, I am very interested in seeing how Boras pulls this off and where A-Rod ends up.

The good B this weekend was Brett Favre. It was awesome to see this guy finish the Broncos off in OT with the very first play. Snap, long bomb to Greg Jennings, game over, drive home safe. Awesome! Typical Brett Favre. The bad B is of course Bill Belichick. This guy is now running up scores on everybody. They are throwing long bombs in the 4-Th quarter, not resting either Brady or Moss until very very late, going for it on 4-Th down in the third quarter while leading 35-3 or whatever. Its ridiculous. I can't believe he is getting away with this just because they are the Patriots and Brady and Belichick are the blue-eyed boys of the East coast media. Beli-cheat has fallen down a bit after the "video-gate", but he still gets off easy because of all the Boston lovers in ESPN and other media outlets. That team is full of "fake" class and I sure hope the real classy Tony Dungy kicks their behinds next week in the big game.

Number 4 baby!

ASU is ranked 4-Th in the nation. Awesome, considering that they didn't even play last week and still jumped up 4 spots. Thats how crazy this season has been. We have never had such parity in college football ever! For all the glitter and glamour of college football, parity was never one of it's strengths. Thats what set NFL and NCAA basketball apart from college football. But this year has been completely different. Week after week, undefeated and highly touted teams have been falling by the wayside and I love it. More on the reasons for all the parity in the game later, but just check out the standings below in week 1 and the BCS ranking in week 9. It's crazy beyond explanation.

Week 1
------
1. USC
2. LSU
3. West Virginia
4. Texas
5. Michigan
6. Florida
7. Wisconsin
8. Oklahoma
9. Virginia Tech
10. Louisville

Week 9
-------
1. Ohio State
2. Boston College
3. LSU
4. Arizona State
5. Oregon
6. Oklahoma
7. West Virginia
8. Virginia Tech
9. Kansas
10. South Florida

All the teams in the week 1's top 10 have lost one game, some of them more than one. There are only 4 teams from week 1's top 10 thats even in the top 10 now and some of them like Va-Tech actually dropped out of the top 10 and are now back in it because other teams keep losing and the rankings are getting jumbled up weekly. College football has never been so much fun. I can't wait for Saturdays this season. I hope the Ohio State Suck-eyes lose this week and continue the trend. Entirely likely since they are at Penn state. But of course I don't want ASU to lose rest of the way though. This is the highest ranking they have had since the Jake-the-Snake year in 1996. But in reality, they'll probably lose sometime soon because they have really not played anybody until now and their schedule is brutal the rest of the way. They play Cal this week and then @ Oregon and home to USC. They also play UCLA and U-OF-A. Lets see what happens, but until then, I'll enjoy this ranking along with the BCs and Kansases of the World.

Why so much parity in college suddenly? Apart from some recent scholarship restrictions, there are 2 major reasons, both of which are kind of related. 1) Money in sports and 2) Technology. Of course some of the technology is what brings in the new money. But the point is, there is so much money in Sports, especially the NFL right now, that they cover every inch to gain competitive advantage. So if you are a QB for a local junior college in Alaska and you have any kind of NFL ability, the scouts will find you. They have the money, the resources to come chase you. Multi-million dollar jobs could be won and lost based on your pick. It's that important and thats how high the stakes are. So they will assign 10 scouts just for a town in Alaska each making 100K a year if they have to. That was not the case 30 years back. This helps parity in college because the college recruits don't have to stay in the top schools to get noticed. A good athlete will rather start for Montana state than be the 3-Rd string RB for Florida State. They'll criticize the quality of competition at Montana state etc., but if you are good, they have the resources and systems in place to scout you, dissect you, draft you and train you for the NFL.

Secondly, technology. We now live in a global village. Internet, cell phones, youtube videos, satellite TVs etc. etc. etc. If you are good, you can't hide anywhere. Even 15 years back, people in California probably didn't know if Duke and Wake Forest even had a football program. Today, if you try hard enough, you can probably watch this game live in your living room in one of the 1800 channels that seem to carry college football these days. So there is no reason for any decent player to sit on the bench of big programs. Go start for Duke and make a mark for yourself. And this is exactly why parity is increasing day by day in college though some programs like USC are still loaded with depth. These situations are becoming an exception and is not the norm anymore. For the average fan, it's all fun.

There are no babies in these DBacks.

It's been week since I blogged anything. It has been one of those weeks where my work came in the way of my life! I hate when that happens :-) MLB playoff are in full flow now and I couldn't be happier about the results so far. The baby-Backs are in the NLCS. Thats awesome. Nobody including the fans in Phoenix gave them a shot at the beginning of the season, but they are at the mountain-top right now with the other improbable team, the Colorado Rockies. An all NL-West NLCS. Who would have thought 2 NL-West teams would make it and neither would be the Padres, Dodgers or the Giants. Brandon Webb set the tone as expected in game 1 and the over-rated Cubs never recovered.

There were all kinds of criticism of the baby-backs lack of pitching depth beyond Brandon Webb. But Arizona's pitchers gave up just 6 runs total in 3 games. Livan Hernandez shut the Cubs down on the road today. It was a true team win with a whole of bunch of kids contributing. Chris Young hit a home-run in the very first pitch of the game and that was a blow the Wrigley faithful never really recovered from. Eric Byrnes and Stephen Drew hit home runs as well. Drew had some series with a .500 average. The kids are playing big when it counts the most. It would be awesome if the DBacks win a World Series. After the Marlins won a ring, gutted the team, re-built from scratch and won again in a span of ten years, it would be funny if the DBacks do the same. Cubs and Redsox and even the Giants have been waiting 50, 60, 80 years for championships and these guys are winning one very 5 to 10 years. Ironic!

Colorado swept the Philies to sew up the other NLCS spot. The Rockies are on an absolute roll. Their one-game playoff tie-breaker against the Padres might have been the best game of the year. Trevor Hoffman blew 2 straight saves to keep the Padres out of the playoffs and is taking a lot of heat from the Padres fans. The Rockies on the other hand have been hitting on all cylinders. The Phillies won the division after the Mets choked away the division lead in a spectacular meltdown. Tom Glavine couldn't get the second out in the first inning in the final game of the season and is now rumored to be contemplating not picking up his multi-million dollar player option to play for the Mets next season.

This series was predicted to be a high-scoring one with little pitching, but the Rockies pitching staff stepped up and shut the Phillies down. Phillies scored a total of 8 runs in 3 games against some Rockies pitchers that the rest of the country have not heard of. A Rockies-Dbacks NLCS was my dream and the TV networks nightmare! I was hoping for a similar match-up in the AL between Cleveland and Anaheim. Seems like the Angels are not going to be able to handle the Redsox. Manny came through with a walk-off homer in game 2 to put the Sox ahead 2-0. Many is awesome and so under-appreciated. He may be the only major leaguer I like in that whole over-rated Eastern sea-board. My wishes for a no-Redsox, no-Yankees ALCS is still alive. Cleveland is up 2-0 on the Yanks behind some awesome pitching by Fausto Carmona in a classic game 2 that went to 13 innings. Classic games are even more fun for me when the Yanks lose. A-Rod is 0-for-6 in the series so far and you can't blame him with Carmona pitching like that.

Lets just hope the Indians finish the Yankees off against Roger Clemens in game 3. And the Angels win the next 3 to keep the BoSox out.

Green Bay Rocks!

Last weekend was a special NFL weekend for me as I took a roadie to Green Bay to check out the Lambeau field. It was a great trip. Lambeau was as good as hyped. It has it's outside and atrium re-modelled and looking new, but the core of Lambeau looks incredibly simple, charming, old and historic. The stadium has very few luxury boxes and press boxes and stuff, but the rest of the stadium is all bench. It's like a low-end college football stadium. No seats, no cushions and no cup holders. It's just a metal bench and seat numbers for 60000 people. The crowds at Lambeau were great as well. Fans filled the stadium up well before the game started and thats unusual in places like California. The folks show up hours before the game and tail-gate to heart's content. The people are so nice and the whole mid-western hospitality thing is no fabrication. Even 20 year old drunk guys treat their fellow fans with respect and decency.

The game was just the best game we could have picked. San Diego and LT was in town and the finish was one of the best in recent Lambeau history. Favre got the ball with 2:16 to go in the game and trailing by 4. We were all getting ready for a 2 minute drill, but Favre scored the game winner even before the 2 minute warning! He hit Greg Jennings on a short slant which he took to the house. The crowd went nuts and we knew Philip Rivers was not ready for a 2-minute drive, at least not yet. The crowd went nuts again when Nick Barnett intercepted Rivers to put the game away. Incredible game and an unforgettable experience at Lambeau. Great stadium, incredible history, nice people and my only request is, people in Wisconsin should drink a little less :-)

The other striking part of the trip to me was how Brett Favre absolutely owns Wisconsin. I mean I knew he was popular and the best thing going in the Packers roster, but did not realize how much the fan-base loves him. Of course you take him out of this team, the offense is utter garbage. I should have seen at least 30000 people wearing his number 4 jersey, It's like the entire town of Green Bay is wearing his jersey. I have personally never seen anything like this. After visiting Green Bay, I can't believe there has been rumors about him playing in another town. I don't even know how that'll work. I think it'll look as ugly as Marino would have looked if he signed with the Vikings at the end of his career. Favre belongs to Wisconsin and I don't know what those fans will do if he signs with someone else. Speaking of Marino, Favre tied his TD record in this game and that was a bitter-sweet moment for me because I was happy to be part of this historic game, but I am also a big Marino fan.

All in all, I would say go checkout Green Bay if you have a chance.

Say it ain't so Matrix!

The relative quiet of the Suns off-season was broken today, just a few days before the start of the training camp, by a disturbing trade request from Shawn Marion. He says he is upset at the unending trade rumors and the Suns refusal to extend him beyond the two monster contract years he has. He says the Suns almost tried to force him to Boston and he didn't like that at all. I kind of see his point regarding the trade rumors. It is kind of disrespectful. Of course ultimately all of this is about money. I am sure he will be happy if they extend him at whatever price he wants. He wouldn't be this bothered by the trade rumors if he gets paid. From the Suns side, there is no way they extend him. They just don't have the money to pay the luxury tax and thats the only reason he is even in half the trade rumors in the first place. It's not like the Suns really want to get rid of him. Essentially, it's more of a money issue on both sides.

I am upset that there's always something the last 3 years with this team. There is never a smooth season with the Suns even with all this talent and potential. If it's not Amare's stunning injury, it's trying to integrate him back. If it's not Amare, then it's Matrix asking for a trade. I am sick of this and it almost feels like their is a curse around this franchise. All this team is missing after almost 40 futile years is a catchy name for the curse. Matrix says he will show up and play if he is not traded and I totally believe him. I think he will be the same Matrix when he plays and he is just not wired to be a trouble-maker. But you got to wonder what this does to the already fragile chemistry of this team. If Nash takes care of that and Matrix doesn't go "operation shutdown" a la Derek Bell, I think the Suns will be fine. Matrix might actually have his best year this season because he will be playing for a contract. So I hope the Suns keep him and win one finally.

The trade rumors and options are flat-out scary. It's apparently either Lamar Odom or Andrei Kirilenko. I love both these players, but I just realized I didn't love them enough to replace the Matrix with them :-) The problem with both the guys is that they are injury-prone and the Suns don't have the depth to deal with that. I don't remember watching many Suns game without Marion and that'll not be the case with either of those guys. AK-47 will fit this style and will be awesome defensively but he can't shoot to save his life. Odom is a better offensive player and shooter than Marion but can't run. If somebody put a gun to my head and forced me to pick between these 2 options, I might go with AK-47 only because he is athletic and better defensively. Lamar is just not reliable or consistent. But the Suns lose something either way with these trades though both are younger and taller than Marion. There is only one Matrix and AK-47 is the closest imitation. Life will not be the same for the Suns fan without the Matrix.

Interesting weekend in both NFL and college

One of the interesting games in the NFL this weekend will be San Diego visiting Green Bay. I will be visiting cheese country and will be at this game to check out Lambeau field and Brett Favre and I am psyched about that. Plus, it's a San Diego team that needs the W badly against a Packers team thats a surprising 2-0. I would expect the Chargers to win, but you never know with Favre on the field. The Chargers are 1-1 after playing 2 tough games. I sure hope LT gets untracked since I own him in one of the fantasy leagues and have gotten nothing out of my NO-1 pick. He has had problems against 2 top defenses the last 2 weeks.

The best game in the NFC is Dallas visiting Chicago. Defense V offense at Soldier field. These are the top-notch teams in the JV conference also called the NFC. I am really interested in seeing how Romo and TO handle the Bears D. Cincy at Seattle should also be interesting with both teams at 1-1. There are 2 other match-ups between a couple of 2-0 teams that should be one-sided despite what the records suggest. Niners visit Pittsburgh and Indy visits Houston. I can't see the Steelers or the Colts losing, especially the Colts if Houston receiver Andre Johnson is out.

In college, Texas A&M got handled by Miami today 34-17. That should take care of the 20-Th ranking A&M is enjoying right now. This is especially bad for A&M because their Big-12 rival Oklahoma just dismembered Miami 2 weeks back. This weekend has few other match-ups involving some big name schools with not so much of a big game - Michigan State @ Notre Dame and Penn State @ Michigan. Penn State should take care of Michigan easily and one can just hope Notre Dame scores an offensive TD finally.

The game of the week should be the Ole' ball coach Steve Spurrier taking his Gamecocks to LSU. Tough one for South Carolina because LSU looks awesome, but they have to prove they are worthy of the 12-Th rank even in defeat. SEC also features another great top-25 matchup as 22 Georgia takes on No. 16 Alabama on the road. This could be Nick Saban's breakthrough game of the year.

Chargers lay an egg

The unpredictability of the NFL was on full display in week 2 as the football World turned over upside down over and over again. Good games ended up being bad, expected blowouts went to overtime and bad teams won while good teams lost. The biggest surprise was how one-sided the Chargers-Patriots game was. I knew the hooded spy will get his team ready and the Pats will win, but I was expecting more from the Chargers than a 38-14 drubbing. Pats scored first and they intercepted Phillip Rivers the very first Chargers play and the game was over soon after. The Chargers just could not stop the Pats on offense and they were pretty bad on offense themselves. Moss had another great game. The luckiest guys are those who got Randy cheap in fantasy drafts. His stock has dropped the lost 2 years and he was drafted pretty low this year. Those fantasy owners who "gambled" on him now have a top 3 receiver on their hands again. Chargers need to re-group and the Pats may just win the Super Bowl this season.

The greatest game of the week was actually the supposed dog of a game - Cincinnati @ Cleveland. Cleveland had shipped out Charlie Frye after a horrible week 1. Now they were supposed to tolerate Derek Anderson while waiting for Brady Quinn to get ready for the big show. Boy did Derek Anderson have other ideas. He came out swinging and throwing bombs to match Carson Palmer dart for dart. He may not have seen too many 51-45 games even in the Pac-10 at Oregon state. This game saw crazy scoring with very little defense and Palmer ended up on the losing side despite 401 yards and 6 TDs. Anderson had 328 and 5 TDs. Awesome game for the fans as Ocho-Cinqo had 209 yards and 2 touches for the Bengals while Braylon Edwards had 146 yards and 2 TDs for the Browns. I am sure the Browns fans were as shocked as anybody to see their team play like this and win.

Houston, Detroit, Green Bay, Washington and San Francisco are all a surprising 2-0. Keep an eye on Matt Schaub. This dude can play some QB and he has got a great weapon in Andre Johnson who had 120 yards receiving for Houston on 7 catches. Brett Favre is doing what he does best leading the Packers to 2-0 as the Giants fell to 0-2 despite Eli Manning suiting up and playing. Kitna lead Detroit to it's second win as he went out with a concussion, but came back and showed some serious leadership. This team might be the real deal. Again, he's got a stud in Roy Williams to goto anytime he is in trouble. I am not so sure San-Fran is the real deal despite a close 17-16 win over the Rams. Alex Smith looked horrible again and the Niners won again behind a crazy TD by Frank Gore on a 4-Th and 1. Gore didn't dominate either, but that big play took care of the game. Niners were out-gained 392-186 by the Rams, but the Rams as always hurt themselves with crucial turnovers. Washington is 2-0 after beating Philadelphia 20-12 on Monday night. They might have exposed Phily and Donovan McNabb. McNabb looked terrible and the Eagles are now 0-2. By the way, the most shocking 0-2 might be the Saints as they lost against Tampa Bay. Where are Brees and Reggie Bush hiding?

Arizona shocked Seattle with a 23-20 win. Seems like Seattle is going nowhere this season as they let Matt Leinart have a decent game and let Edge rush for 128 yards on 24 carries. As I had predicted, the NFC West games were close, but both games had different results than what I had expected. This is a mediocre division right now and is up for grabs. Oakland surprisingly took Denver to OT despite Josh McCown passing for just 73 meagre yards. Lamont Jordan carried the Raiders with 159 rushing yards and the D scored a late TD to give them a chance to win. Sea-bass kicked a long 52 yarder through in OT, only to see it wiped away by a timely time-out by Mike Shanahan. He made Janikowski kick it again and sure enough, he missed it this time. Denver got the ball back and moved the ball well to give Elam a 23-yarder to win the game. Elam doesn't miss too many of those. Only the Raiders can lose games like this after celebrating what they thought was a winning field goal.

It's all going down in Bean-town

As much as I don't like the East coast bias in the media and the whole New Yrok-Boston nexus, I have to accept that the centre of the Sports universe this weekend is Boston. I am told there's a Nascar race somewhere up there in New England, which I really don't care about. But I do care that the Yankees are playing the Redsox and the biggest game this NFL weekend is San Diego at New England. The NFL schedule is kinda weak this Sunday and this is THE game. Patriots looked awesome last weekend and they'll always be better coached than the Chargers under Norv Turner. Thats just the truth with the video-spying hoody at the helm in New England as much I don't like to accept that. The Chargers themselves won against a very good Bears team last Sunday, but they didn't do it in style. They are on the road here and I am afraid I have to pick the Pats. Vegas agrees since they have made the Pats a 4 point favorite. I just hope the Chargers have home field and win the game in the playoffs when these 2 teams meet again.

NFL schedule is otherwise soft this week. The other mildly interesting games are actually between NFC West rivals - Seattle @ Arizona and SF @ St. Louis. That might either be because the NFC West is so evenly mediocre or because of my West coast bias :-) But this game along with the Minnesota @ Detroit game do have the closest lines with 3 points. No other games are closer and most are at 6 or more. That proves my point about week 2 match-ups. So it might be wise to keep an eye on the Yanks-Sox game featuring Clemens and Schilling. Two talented, old pricks going against each other. These kind of pitching mach-ups rarely stand up to the hype. So lets see how this shakes out. The Sox won the game Saturday behind Josh Beckett's 19-Th win after a classic heart-breaking, late-inning choke job Friday. It was typical Redsox V Yankees because like clock-work, they gave up 6 runs in the 8-Th to blow a 7-2 lead to lose 8-7. Their bull-pen studs Okajima and Papelbon exploded spectacularly and crushed the Boston faithful's heart for the trillionth time in the history of this rivalry. It's amazing to watch this again and again and it never gets boring.

Speaking of baseball, I am cynic at heart as the very name of this URL should suggest, and even I got caught in the whole Rick Ankiel comeback story. How stupid and naive for me to fall for this as the inevitable steroid link comes out just a month later. He apparently got a year's worth of HGH (human growth hormone) and he is now part of the new wave of HGH accusations that are flying around involving a whole bunch of players. It's sad, but should I really be surprised? Baseball is tainted beyond repair right now and I shouldn't be believing or trusting anybody in the sport. I usually don't since I consider myself fairly smart, I am a cynic and I am not into the emotional, mushy, girly stuff that most of our Sports media shoves down our throat. But I really wanted this Ankiel story to be genuine because he seemed like a good guy and he had gone through so much trouble, mostly mental, and to overcome that is impressive to say the least. But this story is tainted beyond repair. It seems like a small injury and a minor surgery have become great excuses for MLB and NFL players to get HGH and explain it away as part of their recovery regimen. What a scam this is becoming.

Notre Shame!

Last week I asked how bad is Matt Leinart if he looks that much inferior to Alex Smith? This is the same question I have with Notre Dame. Hoe bad are they if they are losing 38-0 to Michigan? They look horrible right now and Charlie Weis should be in the hot seat, but he is not. For one, he is a good old boy who can talk his way out of anything. And also he has some goodwill in the bank after his first 2 years, except for the bowls that is. I wouldn't entirely blame the Domers for their Bowl troubles either. They just get invited to Bowl games way above their level just because they are the Fighting Irish and they end up getting exposed. It's kind of like how most people in corporate America raise up to their level of in-competence and not necessarily up to their level of competence. The Domers in Weis's 3-Rd are 0-3 and have had 2 bad blow-outs. It makes you wonder how good is his recruiting. Good programs drop-off, but never like this and thats all recruiting. You got to keep the pipeline filled and is Weis really doing that or did he just coach Tyrone Willingham's recruits to 2 good years? Makes you wonder.

The Big game of the week was USC going in to corn-country to face Nebraska. USC literally ran away with this game with 312 rushing yards. They won 49-31, but it was really not that close as the Huskers scored 2 garbage TDs at the end. 388 passing yards for Sam Keller, the ex-ASU QB now starting for the Huskers. Nick Saban's stock is rising now with Alabama at 3-0. Today his team beat the 16-Th ranked Arkansas team 41-38 with a great drive at the end. Bama lead big, lost it all, trailed at the end and came back to win. Saban is a factor again in college football. Another minor upset was Boston College beating 15-Th ranked Geogia Tech. But Boston college at 21 is a pretty good team. Fifth ranked Florida spanked 22-Nd ranked Tennessee 59-20. The better the Vols do, the better Cal looks since they beat them in week 1. The Vols look bad right now though Cal themselves took care of business today.

Ninth ranked Louisville lost to Kentucky 40-34 is a very interesting game. We know Louisville always plays high-scoring ball, but Kentucky one-upped them today. Few years back, Kentucky celebrated too early against LSU and doused coach Guy Morriss with Gatorade. But LSU quarterback Marcus Randall beat them with the last play of the game. This time that didn't happen as Louisville's stud QB Brian Brohm's 369 yards was not enough on this day. But the biggest upset of the day to me was UCLA losing 44-6 to Utah. Pac-10 has been looking good so far and then this happens to the 11-Th ranked team. To many turnovers killed the Bruins, but thats no excuse. As an ASU fan, I am happy a Pac-10 team is taking a back-seat, but still I don't like ranked Pac-10 teams losing like this. But I am happy this at least happened against another Western team in Utah rather than a East coast team from a big conference. Speaking of ASU, we beat San Diego state 34-13. So far so good for Dennis Erickson as Keegan Herring filled in for leading rusher Ryan Torain with two scores and 163 yards. Hope this keeps up in-conference.

Cheater busted!

After being busted for videotaping on the sidelines, the New England coach Bill Belichick was fined the NFL maximum of $500,000 Thursday and the Patriots were ordered to pay $250,000 for stealing an opponent's defensive signals. Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up next year's first-round draft choice if it reaches the playoffs and second- and third-round picks if it doesn't.

NFL rules state "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game." They also say all video for coaching purposes must be shot from locations "enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead." I think this is as clear as any rule can be. Anybody with an IQ over 45 should be able to read and interpret this right. So-called genius Bill Belichick says he always follows rules and in this case, only his interpretation was wrong. What the hell. How do you mis-interpret this rule? He also added "we have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress". Oh ok. That makes a lot of sense. So what was the video for? Was he making some short films for You-tube? Were they testing their new handy-cam? What is this dude talking about? I hate the Pats, Brady and the hoody and this is another reason to hate these guys. I love the fact there is this taint on this so called dynasty. They are good and they have run a good franchise, but I do believe both the hoody and Brady are way over-rated. Give me Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning any day.

NBA's off-season got worse as Greg Oden had a micro-fracture surgery on his knee and is not out for the season. Thats a shocker. Micro-fracture surgeries are coming out of nowhere these days. Amare's surgery happened 2 years back in the off-season without any warning just like Oden's. Oden went for a routine knee checkup and he is now out for the year. This is bad news for both the Blazers and the NBA which planned to showcase Greg Oden from day 1 against Tim Duncan. As bad an idea as that was - letting the whole World watch Duncan eat him alive on national TV, that season opener loses all lustre now. Wonder if the NBA switches it's schedule around because of this. This is real bad for the Blazers. Nothing to look forward to now.

Cards and Leinart

As a die-hard Suns, ASU and DBacks fan, I always wondered where exactly is my NFL allegiance. The Arizona Cardinals have been so bad for so long that they never got any attention when I lived in the valley of the Sun. They shared the Devils college stadium for years and I remember many, many weekends when the Devil routinely drew more people on Saturday than the Cards did on Sunday. There was really no reason to get too involved with this team as the biggest games of the year typically was when the old NFC East rivals Cowboys were in town and their fans filled the stadium. I even got involved with the DBacks who were not even in existent when I left town. They were still building that giant airplane hanger called BOB in downtown and we couldn't wait for the Baseball team to come to town. The golden years in the history of the Arizona Cardinals was when the local ASU boy Jake Plummer was in town making some serious noise. I loved those couple of years and I ditched the Cardinals again when they decided to ditch Jake.

They have moved to a spanking new stadium last year and I can't wait to check it out. Not so much the team. It's the same story with the team every year since Jake came to town. So much hope and so many people saying "this is the year" every August and so much heart-break and disappointment September through December. A new stadium, a rare big contract to Edge, great young wide-outs, young QB, new coach, nothing seems to fix this thing. This year was really supposed to be it and the league is even pushing Matt Leinart hard. But they started Monday night as always with a defeat - an ugly, inexplicable defeat. The Cards just make it hard for people like me to love them. They lost 20-17 to the Niners who had a grand total of 194 yards. Both offenses stunk it up and I don't believe either team's defense is all that good. It was just incompetent offense and ultra conservative play calling. The Niners spent a lot of money on their corners and they seem to do a good job on Monday containing Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. But the Cards passing attack was just lacking inspite of Edge rushing effectively for stretches.

At the end of the day it was a L for the Cards and they are 0-1. But my main concern is QB Matt Leinart. I have no idea what all the hype for this guy is about. He started the game with a bad interception and never played much better the rest of the way. I understand it's just his second year, but wasn't this supposed to be his breakout season? I have serious questions about his future given his lack of athleticism and arm strength. I also don't understand why the NFL is pumping this guy up like he is Peyton Manning's little brother! When did sleeping around with Paris Hilton in LA make you a great quarterback talent. Leinart better start playing some ball soon or else he will become a laughing stock in this league and end up in some bench sooner than later. I know I am being harsh on this guy, but he looked truly awful. He threw for 102 yards and was lucky to even cross 100 yards for the game. When you are a starting QB on the same field with Alex Smith, AND Alex Smith is having a bad day, AND he is still the better QB, you have some serious issues. Thats exactly what happened to Leinart on Monday. There are days when Alex Smith looks like a career backup and on Monday, Leinart looked like Alex Smith's backup! I sure hope he comes through for the Cards. Otherwise, they have another huge problem on their hands and that'll set them back another 3 or 4 years.

NFL off and running

Only thing better than the NFL is the NFL on high-def. As a new HD owner, I am just blown away by football on HD - both college and the NFL. The games look great and the hotties in the crowd look even better! Week 1 in the NFL was as usual interesting, eventful and gripping. No other league goes from season-opener to mid-season in literally hours quite like the NFL. The season is short, it heats up right away and there is no lull period in the NFL.

I was disappointed a bit with the final score Thursday night as the Saints lost 41-10. The game was close in the first half, but the Colts pulled away in the second. Peyton and the gang were impressive as always, but their defense surprised everybody. Colts D didn't take a step back like everybody had predicted. They look formidable and should be a true contender for sure. Bad news for the rest of the league. As for the Saints, I expected a lot more, but I think they'll be fine. Brees almost had the lowest passing average ever for somebody with that many attempts, but he won't be that ineffective every week. They are just 0-1 now and they should be fine in the NFC.

AFC is just going to be off the hook! The 3 best teams are all in the AFC. While the Pats and the Colts did it in style, the Chargers did it against a good team and a great defense. LT threw a TD and ran for another as the Bears were dispatched 14-3. I almost feel bad for the Chargers because I can see them again finding a way to lose to either the Colts or the Pats in the playoffs. Chargers and their new coach Norv Turner are known for losing games like that. The Pats milked Randy Moss more than any team has been able to in the last 4 years. Dude had 183 yards on 9 catches. Or you kidding me. Where was this last year and why do the rich (Pats) always get richer. Apparently the Pats are stealing signs and will be docked a pick or two in the near future. Nice! I like when bad things happen to bad people! I hate Bill Belichick, but he might just win another ring this year by the looks of it in week 1.

The other interesting game of the week was the Giants at Dallas. It was a shootout of epic proportions as Tony Romo and Eli Manning showcased their talents. I can't believe how good Romo is. That guy has got everything going for him in the sport and his life right now. Dude scored 5 TDs and threw for 345 yards to help the boys win 45-35. What a day for his fantasy owners. Speaking of fantasy, I won one league and lost the other. I won one because of Peyton Manning, but LT had a tough match-up and couldn't carry me all by himself in the other one. Unfortunately, LT has another tough match-up next week at New England.

There was a sad event in the NFL this Sunday in the Buffalo-Denver game which Denver won at the end on a Jason Elam field goal. Denver has a habit of losing season openers but they managed to steal this one at the end. But the story was reserve tight end Kevin Everett getting knocked cold after sustaining a cervical spine injury. It really saddens me to see these NFL athletes, especially bench guys who don't make much money, suffer such serious injuries. They are saying he may never walk again and I sure hope he recovers soon and somehow gets on his feet.

Week 2, same result for Michigan.

Week 2, same result for Michigan

Oregon went in to the Big House and Bicth-slapped the Michigan Wolverines. As a Pac-10 honk, I love that. If you think about it, I-AA Appalachian state beat them last week. So is it really a surprise that a 19-Th ranked Pac-10 team with a great offense like Oregon beat them? I guess the week 1 result could have been an aberration for Michigan, but they did look slow and ordinary. All those doubts were confirmed this Saturday by Oregon. That QB from Oregon Dennis Dixon is a great athlete. Michigan had no answer to him. It's funny how the Wolverines stayed close at 7-11 after the first quarter and even led 7-3 at one point. The fans were jacked up, but the wind was sucked out of them when the Ducks started scoring at will in the second quarter. It was obvious even to the faithful that Michigan is just not good, nowhere near the 5-Th rank they started the year with. Proof number 1758 that the college football pre-season rankings suck.

There were a couple of other big name games that ended up being blowouts as well. Miami lost at Oklahoma 51-13. I almost had to make sure it was not Miami of Ohio when I saw that score. The U stands for un-watchable right now. Notre Dame got crushed again, this time by Penn State - 31-10. The Domers suck this season and I am not complaining. Auburn lost to South Florida 23-26. Another win for the small guys. I am beginning to love this year's college football. It's almost like the NCAA tournament with all these upsets in this pre-season. Texas A&M at 25 almost lost one to Fresno State. You know I am always pulling for the left-coast teams! But A&M pulled it out in triple OT 47-45.

The other laugher was at LSU as Va-Tech lost 7-48. I was not really surprised because Va-Tech didn't really look good last week. They are over-rated at 18. Cal, took a step back after looking awesome in week 1. May be they had a letdown after that Tennessee win. DeSean Jackson had another impressive run on a reverse for a TD, but Cal just won 34-28 against Colorado State. Cal better pick it up when they play the Pac-10 teams. The other close game was the Ole' ball coach and South Carolina at 17 beating Georgia at 23 on the road 16-12. I think College football can use more of a successful Steve Spurrier.

ASU gave me a scare with a 0-14 first quarter. I like the 33-14 final score much better. Thats impressive to shut Colorado out the rest of the way after Q1. Only bad news of the day was the Arizona wildcats winning against Northern Arizona.