Bye Bye 2009

The sports year is ending and Tiger Woods and the Phoenix Suns are probably the happiest that the month of December is in the books. It has been a brutal month (plus a few days) for Tiger. Not only has he been busted for all kinds of "transgressions", he is probably not involved in any new "transgressions" the last 5 weeks and that in and of itself should be really tough for this guy considering his now impressive rap sheet! He will be back at some point in 2010 and I wonder if thats the first time we will see him in public or on TV. This Woods story will probably go down as the biggest story of the year. But even otherwise, it has been a very eventful year is sports as always. It's been so long and so interesting, I don't even remember what happened in the early parts of this year. The last few weeks and months have been very exciting to say the least.

In college football, Urban Meyer abruptly resigned last Saturday citing health problems, then decided he would instead take an indefinite leave of absence. I was shocked by that whole sequence and it showed us how everybody have their own closets in the cupboard and how we as humans take too much stress and pain on our shoulders for no good reason sometimes. I hope he changes his lifestyle and approach to coaching and life when he comes back. Otherwise, he should just stay retired and be happy - not that happiness is that simple to achieve even for a millionaire like Meyer. Texas Tech fired Mike Leach for mistreating a player and I can't even believe some of the things he has done is even possible in this day and age. Strange dude!

The Bowl Season is in full swing and seems like it has been in full swing since Thanks-giving for crying out loud! The best result so far has to be Arizona losing to Nebraska 33-0. Even as a Pac-10 honk, I can't help but rejoice when the wildcats lose this bad. The Pac-10 in general has looked bad so far, but Oregon should take care of the suckeyes tomorrow in the Rose Bowl and restore some West coast pride. Either that or lets hope LeGarrette Blount punches Jim Tressel in the face after the game. That would be a perfect start and end of the year for Blount and of course for me if a suckeye gets punched. Time to bring on the real bowl games though starting with the New Year. There are still enough garbage games including a Jan 6-Th matchup between Central Michigan and Troy. What are those 2 teams waiting for? Shouldn't that bowl game be played on Dec 6-Th instead of Jan 6-Th? I don't get it.

The other defining aspect of this month has been the Phoenix Suns' 7-9 record after a blistering 14-3 record in November (and late October). This was expected given their brutal December schedule. They did have 2 bad losses - at home against OKC Thunder and on the road at Golden State. Otherwise, they could have been 9-7 and that would have been a good record given the tough schedule. The scarier part has been how their defense has dropped back to the old pathetic levels. They were playing much better defense earlier in the year, but they can't stop anybody again these days. With all this said and done, the Suns should go 12-4 or 11-5 again in January against that weak schedule. But it won't matter unless they get back whatever little defensive mojo they had for some time. Lets see how it goes. Of course January primarily means the NFL playoffs and thats what we are all waiting for.

Happy 2010 folks.

The imperfect Saints

Interesting upsets in the NFL this weekend. It started with the Saints shockingly losing at home to the Cowboys last night. Nobody saw this coming and more than the loss itself, the way the Saints lost was surprising. It was not a shootout that the boys won 44-42. Instead the boys shut down the Saints offense. Brees was held to one TD and less than 300 yards passing. The Cowboys defense got to him early and often. It was a very impressive effort by the Dallas defense. I didn't see this earlier in the season. DeMarcus Ware showing up and playing in this game was in and of itself a big boost for the Cowboys after his neck injury last week. When you are 13-0, you are good, but you are also lucky. The Saints got their lucky breaks in this game as well, but the Dallas defense would not let them score. Now the talk is, what can the other teams learn and copy from the Cowboys to stop the Saints. The Saints will be fine. I still expect them to be in the Super Bowl. Not many teams can do to them what the Cowboys did on Saturday.

The upset special should have started Thursday itself when the Jacksonville Jaguars were leading the Colts late into the second half. They let the Colts off the hook and blew a golden opportunity. Now the Colts are the only undefeated team in a weak AFC. There are around 2 million teams in the league right now with a 7-7 record. Throw in a couple of 8-6 teams, thats a lot of mediocrity right there. But I guess it's fun for the fans to follow these teams. I expect some strange teams to make the playoffs over the next 2 weeks. It would be amazing if the Tennessee Titans made the playoffs after their pathetic start to the season. The Raiders added to the "upset-fest" by beating the Broncos in Denver. The Broncos are done for all practical purposes (I don't care if they even make the playoffs). In the NFC, Minnesota had a chance to put some pressure on the Saints for the top spot, but instead they put some pressure on themselves by losing to the Carolina Panthers and their QB Matt Moore. Both Favre and AP looked listless in this game. They have now lost twice on Sunday Night Football over the last 3 weeks. Apparently Favre and Brad Childress also had some arguments over Favre getting pulled out of this game.

Green Bay lost a WILD one in Pittsburgh. Big Ben threw for 503 yards and 3 TDs and A-Rod threw for 383 yards and 3 TDs. If the Packers had won, the Cheese-heads would have been all excited about passing Favre and winning the division over the next 2 weeks. Now, slowly the talk about Favre's age, shoulder and arm strength is starting back again proving once again our sports media is more fickle than a 15 year old girl. I am more amazed at what his addition to the team has done to All-Day. Adrian Peterson is not where he used to be or needs to be. All the passing has taken the ball away from AP's hands and he is not able to make an impact on the game anymore. He still had a powerful TD today, but nothing more. The Vikes have to put the ball back in his hands and use Favre selectively like they used to in the first few weeks. That should be the recipe. The stud RB in the league right now is Chris Johnson. Dude is unstoppable in the open field and is probably the biggest threat on a football field outside of Peyton Manning this season. Johnson is still under-rated and not many people will even recognize this dude on the streets. Arizona won at Detroit, but not that convincingly. The media is on their case for inconsistency. Just bring on the playoffs and shut these fools up.

Two teams moving in different directions

My favorite teams are in the midst of interesting stretches right now. The Arizona Cardinals played the Vikings Sunday night and absolutely dominated them. Kurt Warner showed us once again that when this guy is in rhythm and if you give him time, he is as good as anybody. Brett may be Favre but he wasn't half as good as Warner last Sunday. The Cards offensive line was brilliant and Warner sliced and diced the Vikes at will. Those 2 receivers - Anquan Boldin And Larry Fitzgerald are ridiculous! They are just too good, too big, too fast, too strong and too tough. They made the Vikings corners look stupid. The coners had no clue how to cover them. Fitz is also a classy guy who gives a lot of credit to Boldin despite being a superstar himself. This Cards team is peaking ahead of last year's schedule and I hope they are not peaking too soon. Nobody is beating Drew Brees in the NFC this year and the Cards are not viewed as a serious threat. But I will take Warner and these Cards over anybody else in the NFC, except the Saints.

The Suns on the other hand have lost 4 out of 5 and they have another brutal 6 game stretch with only Washington being an "easy" game. Yesterday they lost to the Mavericks. It's always tough for me to see the Suns lose to the Mavericks. Or the Lakers or the Spurs for that matter. It would be interesting to see how the Suns do at home against these cats. The Lakers are not quite 20-1 as like Reggie Miller had predicted, but they are a close 17-3. They are clearly the class of the league, but the Suns are suddenly 3 games behind them and have also dropped to the 4-Th seed in the West behind the Lakers, Denver and now Dallas. I think they'll stabilize and should still have a shot at the number 2 seed in the West. These 4 teams plus Portland are the elites in the West with San Antonio being the wild-card. I expect them to be an elite team by Feb or so, but for now they look mediocre. In the East, Orlando, Boston, Cleveland and Atlanta are at the top. I think those 4 teams are here to stay.

Here comes the road bump!

The Suns season has been flawless until this week. We knew it can't go this way forever and the inevitable bad stretch was coming, but it seem to have come already. They went on the road again and this trip did not go too well. They lost at New York yesterday and at Cleveland today. They are 0-2 in December after a smashing November. It's not that they are losing that is a cause for concern here, but the how, when and where they are losing thats disturbing. Both these losses were blowouts. In fact 4 out of the 5 Suns losses so far have been blowouts on the road. But who loses to New York? They are a horrible 4-15 and thats after the win against the Suns. Not only did the Suns lose to them, they got blown out by their ex-coach. If that was not motivation enough, they had a BIG game today against their old friend the BIG aristotle. Unfortunately, that was not enough to pick them up either. They got blown out again and they scored 14 and 15 points in the first 2 quarters for a grand total for 29 in a half. Thats pathetic to put it mildly. All of the Cavs scored and torched the Suns in this one. They didn't even need LeBron, who had a 12-8-10 night.

Whatever it is that the Suns are suddenly ailing from, they better snap out of it soon because they are entering a tough stretch including the Lakers at home on Sunday. Thats followed by Dallas, Orlando, Denver, San Antonio and Portland. Ouch! They may be lucky to come out of that stretch playing 500 ball. Lets see how it goes. Nobody seems to be in the same league as the Lakers right now, but the Suns at least had the record. That may not be the case when this stretch is done. The Lakers might put some distance in the standings too. Lets strap on the seat belt for this stretch. Lots of other news in the sports world right now. In college, Bobby Bowden has been forced out and Charlie Weis has been fired. Tiger Woods has been caught in some family "transgressions" and girls are coming of the woodwork with juicy stuff. TMZ might be all set for months with this story. Dude is busted. Tomorrow is the civil war between Oregon and Oregon state. This one is for all the marbles with a rose bowl berth on the line. The fans up there are nuts already and a game of this magnitude should pretty much drive them over the edge. It should be a good one, but Oregon should win.

No more answer

Kind of a sad day in the NBA today. One of my favorite players decided to hang up his sneakers in an unexpected move. Allen Iverson is retired. This may not be a permanent retirement because I am sure he will come back if somebody offers him a job. But unfortunately, nobody wants him right now and he has decided to retire at least for now. His reluctance and refusal to come off the bench is definitely stupid and it's sad he is not willing to give up on that. If he is willing to come off the bench, I am sure he will have a job. He was unemployed and it is definitely a more honorable option to retire than be unemployed for someone at his level. But as a fan, retirement hits you a little differently than him just being unemployed. I feel kinda sad and disappointed. AI was an exciting, fun, speedy, entertaining, small guard who played hard and hurt most of the time. You won't find too many "answers" like him under 6 feet.

AI is 34 years old and for a guard, he is a little old. I would compare him to a big guy like Shaq who is 37 now because small guys rely a lot more on speed than big dudes. But Shaq is still employed and is a starter. In fact, there is no question about Shaq ever coming off the bench, though that might happen now given how well the Cavs are playing without him the last few games! AI is at a stage where he is too old for young teams that are in a rebuilding mode. A team like Memphis had no business signing him in the first place. But then again, it's the same team that traded for Zach Randolph and traded away Pau Gasol. So who's really surprised if the Grizz wants to bring in AI for a year to sell tickets or whatever. But then why would you not start him? Thats a classic case of the front office and the coaching staff not being on the same page. AI should be willing to come off the bench, but for Memphis, I am not so sure. I think both sides were at fault on this.

If he is not a good fit for a young team, he would have been a great fit for a contender who can use a little offensive firepower. But 2 problems there. First, AI is refusing to come off the bench. Contending teams would love a player like that off the bench. Secondly, AI has always been a focal point in his team. He is also a guard who needs to have the ball in his hands a little too much. Good teams are probably afraid he would be too disruptive. Sometimes in life, perception is reality and AI definitely is a victim of how he is being perceived. With his off court issues and his history, teams were already reluctant to touch him and his refusal to come off the bench shoved the good teams away from him for good. Shaq is old, Shaq's game is disruptive too, but he is a good seed and a team player. Teams don't think the same of AI. I still hope somebody will pick him up and he'll un-retire. Dude is still quick and can cross fools over in a split-second, but he has to be willing to make some compromises. As you can tell, I am sympathetic to this guy and his style of play and his toughness is a big reason why people like me support him. He is a little guy with a lot of heart.

The Answer entertained us for years and I am thankful for that on this thanksgiving eve.

LSU's blunder

LSU lost a very interesting game yesterday after committing a comedy of errors. They were driving, trailing by 2 and with time running out. They first got into the field goal range, but the QB got sacked. Then they ran a bone-headed screen play that got stuffed well behind the line of scrimmage. These 2 plays took them back out of field goal range. Somewhere along the way, they also burnt a lot of clock because they apparently called a timeout that they thought was awarded, but it actually went unnoticed by the zebras. They eventually took that timeout later in the drive anyways. Finally they were left with a few seconds on the clock and were forced to go for a hail mary. The pass fell short of the goal-line, but was miraculously caught by one of the LSU receivers. The clock stopped with just a second to go. This is when all hell broke lose. LSU was just not in a position to get the field goal unit in there before the college clock restarted after the first down. So the QB didn't know what to do and he ended up taking the snap and spiking it. There was no way he could have saved a fraction of that remaining second by spiking the ball. I don't know what he was thinking. He should have just run a legitimate play and went for the TD. Instead the game ended on a spike by LSU. Strange indeed. I don't know how LSU did not have the field goal unit ready to run onto the field and kick the ball in that situation.

After last week's 4-Th and 2 call by Bill, there were more coaches in the news this college football weekend. There was the whole LSU mess above. Then there were two more head-scratching 4-Th down calls. Stanford's Jim Harbaugh decided to go for it on fourth-and-8 late during the big game and turned the ball over to Cal. In the Ivy league, Yale went for a fake punt on fourth-and-22 and failed miserably. They ended up losing the game too. But more than these 2 coaches, the coach in real trouble is Charlie Weis after Notre Dame lost to UConn. You are in trouble if you are at Notre Dame and you are losing to a service academy and a basketball school. Many casual sports fans may not even know Navy and UConn have football programs, but Notre Dame keeps losing to such powerhouses. I don't think he should survive this and I don't think he will. May be the Domers can go after Jon Gruden again. I like him on ESPN and I will miss him stretching out every syllable of every name (Tony GON-ZA-LEZ), but he might be fun to follow in college. But then again, Buffalo Bills also want him and I am not sure if he is really interested in working for less money in a college setting. It's a great idea for someone who wants to build a program and become a legend at a college town with slightly less pressure than the pros. But thats the only reason for someone who has NFL opportunities to go for it. You can become a hall of famer in the NFL and you can make a lot of money, but you can never become a legend at a single town in the pros. Ten years is the most a coach can survive at one place in pros these days.

Speaking of the pros, another NFL sunday in the books. Colts and the Saints win again to go 10-0. Colts win a close one at Baltimore. The Ravens had a shot in this one, but a late interception didn't help. A Ravens win would have fit in well with the other upsets this week. Kansas City stunned Pittsburgh in OT and Oakland beat Cincinnati. Oakland was just hoping for an OT, but the Bengals fumbled the kickoff after the Raider's game-tying TD. Raiders then kicked the field goal to win the game. There was another OT game this weekend prompting more discussions about the NFL overtime rules. Giants beat the Falcons to hand them their 5-Th straight loss. Matty Ice tied the game on a 2-minute drive, but he never saw the ball again after they lost the OT toss. There were more fun, close games this weekend compared to last week. Philly beat Chicago 24-20 in Sunday night football. Cutler seems completely off. I guess the coaches have him all confused after those interceptions. Now he seems to be over-throwing all his receivers all the time by about 5 yards. Nobody can catch these balls including his blazing fast receivers like Johnny Knox. The game of the week was probably between Detroit and Cleveland, 2 bad teams. Mathew Stafford threw for 422 yards and 5 TDs including his first game winning drive. This kid is good. Keep an eye on him. Brady Quinn had his first decent game of his career - 304 yards and 4 TDs. At the other end of the spectrum, Brett Favre had another phenomenal game throwing for 4 TDs. The worst game of the day was Dallas beating Washington 7-6. I think the Florida Gators can beat the Redskins by at least 10 points.

Kurt Warner left the Cardinals-Rams game because of a blow to his head. Cards won 21-13, but I hope Warner is back healthy soon.

Nelly strikes again

The Golden State Warriors are a mess again. The trouble started when they did not re-sign Baron Davis last off-season and got worse when Nelly stopped coaching or caring sometime during last year. Not that he is a great coach to begin with, but if he doesn't have top talent and is not interested in putting in the work, you got no shot. I didn't have a big problem with them letting boom-dizzle walk. He is injury prone and can go south on you both mentally and physically anytime. So I kinda saw the W's point in not paying top dollars over too many years. But the problem was, he took them to the playoffs for the first time in 13 years and the Warriors probably needed him more than any other team. In any case, Baron is gone now and Nelly doesn't have a top point guard in his roster.

Nelly is a very different type of coach. He definitely makes the game fun by playing a high-scoring style. Thats his strength. He brings a fun, attractive brand of basketball to town. But he does not quite run a specific system. His offense is very different from Mike D'Antoni's run and gun for instance. Nelly lets them run and shoot the 3, but in the half court, he pretty much lets his guys play one-on-one. He does not run many plays or draw up creative stuff. He basically relies on great talent or he tries to exploit mismatches - both are different forms of one-on-one basketball. So without talent, he is useless. When Baron left, the W's lost their prime talent and the leader on the court. Nelly over the last decade has basically been relying on Nash and Baron Davis and Dirk Nowitzki. He doesn't have that kinda talent right now. Nelly also doesn't trust young players. And he is pretty erratic with substitutions. You can see all these issues with the current Warriors and the impact of all these issues on a young team is not a pretty.

So Nelly doesn't have the talent and is not interested in putting in the work. The Warriors season really went south when Stephen Jackson went Jacko on the W's. Captain Jack had to be demoted and eventually traded to Charlotte - seems like you can dump anybody on MJ the executive. But apparently thats not the last or the only Warriors issue. Now there are rumors that Monta Ellis is unhappy and he complained to Nelly that he keeps blaming him for all problems. There are rumors that Anthony Randolph is not that happy either since he doesn't play much. If the Warriors are forced to trade either Monta or Randolph, it would be an amazing case of history repeating itself. Nelly would have the distinction of destroying the same franchise twice within a span of 15 years. He traded Chris Webber, his best player back then and now he will be trading Monta or Randolph, his best player on the current roster.

Warrior fans are too scared to even think of this scenario. They are very upset at Nelly and want him out. There' an amazing consensus that the coach got to go and the fans think he should take the GM and the owner out with him as well. It is an horribly run franchise top to bottom and Nelly is of absolutely no help. But who is going to fire him given that he hired the GM and not the other way around. It's pretty sad for the Warrior fans who are one of the most loyal fans in the league. Even now, more fans show up at the Warrior games than even some playoff teams in the league. I heard that the commish D-Stern is concerned about the Warriors (mis)management. It's basically a mess all around in the Bay.

Speaking of the Bay Area, the Raiders are also in the news for all the wrong reasons. The league's worst QB has been benched finally. Stephen Gostkowski has replaced JaMarcus Russell as the Raider's starting QB. The Raiders will be slightly better now, but nobody will notice anyways. Who cares if you lose 23-7 or 23-13. There was a Thursday night game tonight between Carolina and Miami. NFL needs to stop this Thursday game nonsense. Not many people are watching this and is messing up the fantasy games too. Back to the NBA. The Suns lost an easy one today at New Orleans who were without Chris Paul. The Suns dropped the ball on this one. May be they were still hung over from the big Houston win. Pau Gasol is back for the Lakers and is in mid-season form already. He had a 24-13 night today and this Lakers team looks scary good!

Dumb Belichick

It's a good thing Bill Belichick is Bill Belichick. He has the resume and those super bowl rings to survive the stupid call he made with the game on the line Sunday night. It was one of those typical Colts versus Patriots classic that was as good as advertised. Colts were trailing 34-21 in the fourth quarter when they scored once and kicked the ball away to the Patriots with less than 3 minutes to go. The Colts trusted their defense instead of going for an onside kick. Indy had all 3 of their timeouts plus the 2 minute warning. Pats got the ball and started the drive on the wrong foot by taking a timeout. It's very rare that the team thats ahead needs a timeout in that situation. They ran on the first down for minimal gain and gained 8 yards on a pass play on second down. Colts stopped the clock both times. Pats couldn't complete the pass on third down. Everybody, including the Pats special team thought hoody will punt the ball away. Instead hoody shocked the world by deciding to go for it on 4-Th and 2 from his own 28 yard line! On top of it, he took his third and last timeout to set the play up. They went for a short pass, that was completed, but Kevin Faulk juggled a ball a little bit after touching it well beyond the first down marker. He then caught the ball as he was being tackled backwards and he landed short of the first down with no clarity on where actually did he have possession of the ball. The ref did not give him the spot and the first down and the Pats turned the ball over to the Colts on downs.

I actually thought Faulk got the first down despite the bobble, but the ref was not in a position to see it. Hoody could have challenged the call if only he had a timeout. And the clock was just beyond 2 minutes and hence was not eligible for a review from upstairs. The ball went to Manning on the 28 yard line and of course he scored the winning TD after milking the clock expertly for a 35-34 win. This was a shocking end to a game that the Patriots seemed to dominate and it was a stupid coaching call for sure. I love aggressive coaching and going on fourth downs and I have always maintained that Belichick and the Patriots are one of the most aggressive teams in the league despite Belichick's defensive background. I have seen them going for it on fourth down under similar situations and actually making it. But that usually happens further down the field and not at their own 28 yard line. Most coaches would even be scared to pass the ball on those 3 downs, but may be they'll do it considering they are turning the ball over to Manning, one of the best QBs ever, if they don't get the first down. And of course the hoody is absolutely going to pass the ball around on the first three downs given that he has hall-of-famers Tom Brady and Randy Moss on that offense. But he took it too far when he chose to go for it on 4-Th down as well. And it was not 4-Th and 1 either. It was a good, long 2 yards. You cannot run the risk of giving Peyton Manning a short field with the game on the line. Of course Belichick is facing the music everywhere and most experts are ripping him apart the last day and a half.

The irony of the whole thing is that the Pats actually got the first down. The ref just missed the call and the hoody is paying the price. I love it! I can't believe how most coaches on TV are supporting him. I guess it's a fraternity and they want to stick together. Some of these coaches will never go for it on 4-Th and 2 even if their life depended on it and they are saying it was not a bad decision by the hoody. Even Gruden on monday night football was saying how going for it is much better than giving the ball to Manning even it that dude has to go 70 or 80 yards. Well, he just had to drive 28 yards because of this stupid decision and hows that better than making him drive 80 yards? Now we all get a new phrase - "don't pull a Bill Belichick". Speaking of MNF, the Cleveland Browns are horrible. They literally put me to sleep. I was watching the game and I suddenly woke up on my couch wondering what happened. Cleveland Browns offense is what happened and I turned the TV off to proceed with my night. The Chicago-San Francisco and the Dallas-Green Bay games were also pretty mediocre this week. Dallas and Green Bay were both surprisingly ineffective on offense and Dallas lost the game.

The other surprise of the week was Denver losing to Washington and now they are tied for first with the resurgent Chargers. San Diego will eventually win that division when its all said and done. Cincinnati is going to win it's division too after they went into Pittsburgh and punked them even without a great game from Carson Palmer and that offense. The Saints and the Vikings are still rolling. There was another interesting coaching call in the Jaguars-Jets game. The Jags were trailing 21-22 and were facing a second-and-6 from the 10 with less than 2 minutes to go. Maurice Jones-Drew took a handoff up the middle and could have easily walked in for a TD. But he went down and took a knee to give Jacksonville first-and-goal from the 1 with about 1 1/2 minutes left. Jets were out of timeouts and this move allowed the jags to milk the clock all the way down. They kicked the winning field goal with 0's on the clock. Smart move. Jags coach Jack Del Rio even mimicked Herm Edwards's "you play to win the game" in the post-game news conference. What's up with these coaches pulling references from legendary rants from fellow coaches? Last week, Arizona's Ken Whisenhunt made fun of Dennis Green's "we let them off the hook" line. Keep it up coaches. In other news, college basketball is kicking off and ESPN is doing a beautiful thing. They have a 24 hour kick-off marathon. Best idea ever. Unfortunately, I may not get to watch any of it. But I still love the idea.

TCU, Boise State and the BCS

The big game this weekend on campus was no. 16 Utah at no. 4 TCU horned frogs, whatever the words horned frogs mean. TCU dismissed Utah 55-28 to stay where they are. Number 6 Boise State crushed Idaho 63-25. Cincinnati won 24-21 and will probably stay at number 5. That leaves 3 mid-major schools in the top 6. I guess the parity in college football is for real. At least Cincinnati is in a BCS conference - Big East. Big East is not a great football conference after the whole ACC expansion a few years back, but it's still the Big East. But the BCS is being turned upside down by TCU and Boise State. They are saying Boise State may still not make a BCS bowl game because TCU is ahead of them and it will be too much to put both of them in. That would be a shame if these teams stay undefeated and still don't get a chance to play in a major bowl. But then again BCS has alway been a shame and a scam like this wouldn't be a major surprise. I sure hope both these schools stay undefeated and both get invited to the big dance. And I want both of them to defeat the major schools they would be playing in the BCS bowl games. I can definitely see them handling the Georgia Techs and the Cincinnatis of the World. I see only 3 elite teams in the nation right now - Florida, Alabama and Texas. TCU and Boise State should be given a shot ahead of any of the other mediocre schools.

In the Pac-10, the roller-coaster ride continued today with more somersaults and up and downs. Arizona lost to Cal, and I am of course happy about it. Actually, Arizona never had a real shot at the Rose Bowl given how difficult the last few games on their schedule was going to be including the rivalry game against ASU. Speaking of ASU, another week, another Pac-10 loss - this time at Oregon. They played with their 3-Rd string QB who was running around like a chicken with it's head cutoff. Athletic dude, but had a tough time at Oregon. The shocker was USC losing to Stanford at home once again. I guess no more hype for USC QB Matt Barkley on ESPN and thats a good thing, actually a great thing. Pac-10 currently has a reputation of being very deep. I guess it's because USC beat the suckeyes and the Domers and UCLA beat Tennessee and Washington almost beat LSU. Otherwise, the so-called experts will be trashing Pac-10 as always given the lack of a dominant team and since they don't have any idea who will beat who on a given weekend. I think Oregon will make it to the Rose Bowl and will handle the suckeyes easily. There are only 2 good weeks of college football left as far as I am concerned. The conference championship week where Florida plays Alabama and the BCS bowl week. Thats about it. The Heisman race has also turned upside down since the beginning of the season. Now it's Alabama's Mark Ingram's trophy to lose. He had another big weekend this week - 147 yards and 2 TDs in Alabama's 31-3 win at Mississippi state.

In the NBA, couple of rookies are on fire. Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings and Sacramento's Tyreke Evans are both having an awesome season. And thats not just by Rookie standards, but by "veteran standards". Today, Jennings blew up big time. He dropped 55 points on the Warriors. He scored 16 points in the fourth quarter and nobody is even talking about that because he scored an amazing 29 points on 12/13 shooting in the third. I have watched a lot of basketball, but that was one of the most amazing individual performance I have ever seen. I can't remember anybody on fire quite like this - not even Kobe or Melo or LeBron. 6/8, 10/15 may be, but not 12/12 before missing a 3 at the end of the quarter. That was fun to watch. This game was surprisingly entertaining and was one of the better NBA games this season. Both teams were pretty on with the Bucks taking it 129-125. The Suns are back tomorrow against the Raptors and that should be a high-scoring game too. They fell flat on their face against the Lakers on Thursday. It looked like they had mentally given the game to the Lakers and didn't really believe they can beat them that day. They are now 8-2 and since the Lakers lost the next day at Denver, they are still on top of the Pacific. Both of Suns losses have been blowouts on the road on the back-end of back-to-back games. I guess they got no legs on those days.

Lets bring on the Colts-Patriots tomorrow.

Big games all over

Lot of big games this week across the board. We had the Magic-Cavs contest today. For the first time since the start of the season, the Cavs seems to have gotten something tangible out of Shaq. He has really not been a differentiator up to this point. But he was brought in just to deal with the size at the top of the East, especially Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett. Tonight, the original superman went against the new and improved superman and the old veteran came through. Shaq put Howard in foul trouble early and that derailed the Orlando Magic. Thats exactly what Shaq is supposed to do. Shaq may not be what he used to be, but he is still a big man and you have to foul him to deal with him sometimes. Unfortunately for the Magic, the wrong guy was fouling him and Dwight got in foul trouble before he could even work up a sweat. Shaq was in foul trouble too, but the Magic need Dwight way more than the Cavs need Shaq. Vince had a good game, but between Bron and Mo, the Cavs got 64 points. This may be the recipe for Cavs if they want to beat the Magic and the Celtics - Shaq plays some D and gets some big bodies in foul trouble, some scoring help for the king from the role players and the king being the king. If all of this come together, Cavs can win a lot of games even in May and June against the elite teams.

The next big game is tomorrow between the 8-1 Suns and the 6-1 Lakers. This has been a rivalry forever, but the last few years have been fun until Lakers got too good for the Suns. Now the Suns have a tremendous record and would love to measure themselves against the Fakers. I think they got a shot given how good they are playing. Their 8-1 record is no fluke with Nash balling like a man possessed. Nash reminds me a lot of Peyton Manning. Both thse guys seem to know exactly what to do on the field at all times. They seem to have complete control over the offense and have the ball and decision making in their hands most of the time. Speaking of Peyton Manning, the real big game is in the NFL this weekend when Tom Brady takes him Patriots to play the Colts. This has been an yearly event for a while and these 2 franchises have been so good for almost a decade now that this game feels like an AFC championship game regardless of when it's played. I would like the Colts to win, but I think the Patriots are going to hand them their first defeat. The pats are coming together nicely and the Colts secondary is decimated. Randy Moss should have a field day against this secondary which is without Bob Sanders again. They have traditionally been bad whenever this guy is out. This game should be a good one and worth watching for sure.

Suns are rolling

The NBA season couldn't be going better for me. The Suns are looking awesome. They are 6-1 and that win on Friday against the Celtics in Boston was huge. This might be the best Suns team of this era actually. It is slightly better than the D'Antoni teams of 2004-2008. They took a step back last year under Terry Porter and the window seemed shut, but they seem rejuvenated and the new pieces fit them perfectly like a glove. So they have improved significantly because of the intangibles and chemistry though the talent has not been upgraded a whole lot since last year. In fact, on paper, the team lost a lot of talent with Shaq. But with this team and this system, give me Channing Frye over a 37 year-old Shaq any day of the week and twice on game days. Frye is just perfect for this system. He is tall, he can run and he can shoot the 3. He gives them much needed size after a long time.

Jared Dudley is the other piece thats fitting in nicely right now. He is averaging 8.5 points and 3.7 rebounds off the bench and plays good D and brings a lot of energy. Kudos to Alvin Gentry for playing the bench. Thats the difference between D'Antoni and Gentry and this is exactly why this team seems better than even D'Antoni's Western conference Finals teams. Of course Steve Nash is still the heart and soul of this team. He is playing better than ever. He is raining assists all over the court and is playing even better than his MVP years. Grant Hill and J Rich are doing good as well. Amare is getting back into shape and this team will get even better if Amare gets more explosive. Lets see how this team does long term. It is still the best show in the NBA. It's fun to watch these guys run.

I was watching the Warriors game the other day and I realized it was not even a NBA standard game. It felt like a crime to charge people 70, 90, 110 bucks for those tickets to watch a product like the current Warriors - bad talent, poor chemistry, horrible coaching and sub-par shooting. Of course watching Nash and the Suns everyday on TV doesn't help my perception of other teams. It' just a huge drop-off when you watch Nash do his magic and then go watch a dysfunctional team like the Warriors. Nelly might be destroying that team for the second time in 15 years and I think he should be fired. He doesn't have the talent in that roster to continue with his zero-coaching, one-on-one, jump shooting system. They seem legitimately confused and seem to have no plays or sets to execute. They came out of a timeout in one game with a shot drawn up for Mikki Moore. Are you kidding me?

This is no way to run a young team which doesn't have a legitimate point guard, but actually has some talent that could be coached and improved. There is no Nash or Baron Davis to run the show for Nelly on the court and no Nowitzki to hit the jumpers. He has a rookie point guard for God's sake, but Nelly still doesn't get off his butt and coach a lick. I love Nelly and I love the fact he always makes the game exciting. But at this time and place, with this particular Warrior team, he is a horrible fit and needs to be fired. No way around it. As for the rest of the league, the Lakers and the Celtics are rolling and so was Denver before losing 2 straight. Melo has started the season white-hot and so has Kobe. The King and the Cavs have started a little slow, but are playing slightly better now. May be that game in New York will wake him up for good. They should be fine when it's all said and done.

You get what you pay for

The Yankees proved again that you get what you pay for. They are scratching the check for the league's most expensive first baseman, third baseman, short stop, catcher, starting pitcher and relief pitcher. And yesterday, they won their 27-Th championship after a break of almost a decade behind all those horses. We expected the Yankees to win it all from day 1 of this season - or any other season for that matter. And then we spend the rest of the season hoping they won't win. This is what the sport of baseball has come down to these days. Yankees and 2 or 3 other teams spend all the money and accumulate all the talent. If that talent comes through, they win. If not, they go out and spend more money and accumulate more expensive talent next year. The rest of us just watch this spectacle with a profound sense of detachment.

This year, the Yankees stars delivered in the playoffs and they closed the deal. C.C.Sabathia and A-Rod were awesome. Mo, Jeter and Pettitte were their usual self and only Tex was a little down in the World Series. Hideki Matsui became the first Japanese-born player to win the World Series MVP award and we almost forget this guy in that roster. I guess he only hit .615 in the World Series and why would anybody talk about him? The Phillies played well and gave us some interesting moments, but Chase Utley could only take them so far all by himself. Ryan Howard was no good in this series and they absolutely need the big guy. Their pitching was good, but not as good as the Yankees outside of Cliff Lee. In game 6, Pedro had nothing to offer. Everybody was his daddy on this day. Cole Hamels finally got his wish and the season ended.

It was an interesting season for A-Rod for sure. He started with a full-blown steroid scandal and hit rock bottom in terms of his image and popularity. Ironically, this is the season he finally comes through in the playoffs and the Yankees win it all. Now the fans will finally start embracing him as a hero. Thats how unpredictable life is. Finally the half a billion dollar man has one championship. Lets see if he gets more. The new Yankee stadium has also come on board in style. In other MLB news, San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum is facing misdemeanor marijuana charges following a traffic stop in his home state Washington. I am normally not too exited or surprised by such news about athletes, but his one is shocking! Lincecum looks like a 12 year old and I can't believe he actually drives a car.

In the NBA, I am happy with what I have seen so far in the Phoenix Suns. They are 4-1 and are looking good. Steve Nash is carrying the team and he might be playing better than even his 2 MBA MVP seasons. They were undefeated, but then Orlando on the road on a back to back night killed them. This team will probably be bad on most of it's back to back nights given the age and the playing style. But so far, everybody is doing great. Hill and Nash are looking very good, Amare is coming around and Channing Frye and Jared Dudley are godsend for this team! Frye will probably never be as good as Shaq, but for this team he is a much better fit. This team might be better than what experts were saying initially. Tomorrow, they are playing one of the 2 undefeated teams, the Boston Celtics. If the Suns want to make statement, this is the game to do so. The other undefeated team in the league is Denver and they are good too. The Cavs are just 3-3. A .500 record is probably good enough to get into the playoffs in the L-East, but thats not what the Cavs are playing for. They better start putting up some numbers.

Packers worst nightmare

I never thought I would see the day when Brett Favre gets lustily booed on entering Lambeau field. Brett Favre is sitting pretty at 7-1 and might even make it to the Super Bowl this year, but one has to wonder how did he ever mismanage things to the point that he is the most-hated man in Green Bay. The dude used to own that town and state, but now they have to deploy additional security for his games at Lambeau. I visited Green Bay couple of years back and I wrote about Favre and Green Bay (http://goodcynicsports.blogspot.com/2007/09/green-bay-rocks.html). I feel weird quoting myself, but in that note, I said "The other striking part of the trip to me was how Brett Favre absolutely owns Wisconsin". Boy, how quickly things have changed. Today, the Packers wanted to beat Favre and the Vikings badly. But their worst nightmares came true. Favre threw for 4 TDs and played a great game. He has now thrown for 500+ yards and 7 TDs in the 2 games against Green Bay, both wins. He clearly gets up for these games and I can see how the Packers hate his guts now after these 2 losses. He is just being a massive pain in the butt for them. Aaron Rodgers probably wanted to win these games badly too, but he fell short again. The Vikings are clearly better than the Packers in most phases of the game, but not by much. I feel like the Pack could have won one of these games if A-Rod had taken some more risks and didn't hang onto the ball a little too long. That boy needs to roll the dice a little more. The objective of the sport is to win and not to throw 0 interceptions. In any case, the circus is over, but the Packer fans are even more pissed now. It is what it is I guess.

Speaking of interceptions, look at Kurt Warner - 5 ints and one fumble. Instead of bating Jake Delhomme, Warner became Jake Delhomme today! Cardinal's inconsistency is amazing and for the most part, it just seem to mirror Warner's inconsistency. If he is in rhythm and is given time to throw, he is one of the best in the league. But every now and then the bad Warner shows up and he can clearly compete for the worst in the league. After beating the Giants at NY last week, they lost to the lowly Panthers at home. The Panthers have pretty much handcuffed Delhomme and I think the coach has a heart-attack every time he steps back to throw the ball, but they didn't even have to pass today. They ran all over the cards. It's good the cards play in such a bad division. They will probably win the division with a 9-7 record just like last year. The second best team in their division - Niners, went in to Indy and almost pulled off an upset. But they fell short because the coaching staff didn't trust the passing game enough. Alex Smith drove them down for a TD just before half-time in a 2-minute drive. But it felt like the coaches wouldn't unleash him the rest of the way. They should have because the defense had bothered Peyton Manning enough to keep in check. Its amazing I am saying this because Peyton had 347 yards passing. He is one of those greats like LeBron or Kobe. We often say Kobe had a bad game, but you look at the box-score and you'll see 30 points and 6 boards. Same deal with Peyton. He looked a little off, didn't finish many drives and didn't even throw a TD, but he still had 347 yards. The Niners lost a golden opportunity to make a statement today. Indy is still undefeated. Denver lost today to Baltimore to drop out of the undefeated status and the Saints play tomorrow. At the other end of the spectrum, Rams won today after a loooong time and so did Tennessee.

Another frustrating game in the World Series. The Phillies fought hard and played catchup all night. They finally tied the game in the bottom of the eighth, only to give up 3 more runs in the top of the ninth. Brad Lidge looked awesome to start the ninth, but the Yankees mounted an attack after 2 outs. A-Rod drove in the winning run and Posada added 2 more to finish off the Phillies. They are now done and it doesn't really matter what Cliff Lee does tomorrow. The guy to blame to me is Cole Hamels, who really let them down yesterday. Spotted an early 3-0 lead, if only Hamels was even half as effective as the ace he was last year, the Phillies would have won yesterday. They played a great game today, but the Yankees came through in the ninth. Chase Utley hit one more HR against C.C.Sabathia. Thats now becoming a serious "ownage". But the series is pretty much over and the Yankees will win. On the bright side for the folks in Philly, the Eagles crushed the Giants in the morning as Eli and the boys have lost 3 straight. DeSean Jackson - the pride of Cal is awesome and this Eagles team is officially dangerous. No wonder they have turned it around. You lose to the Raiders, you get a serious wake-up call. Speaking of Cal, they beat ASU on Saturday. Devils lost a close one and was frustrating to watch the final few minutes. The Pac-10 now is firmly in the hands of the Oregon ducks. They crushed USC yesterday and the Ducks have recovered from their season opening loss at Boise State. If you really think about it, Boise is no mediocre mid-major. It's a legit top ranked team and the same can now be said of Oregon. Lets see how high they can get with their ranking.

Split is all the Phillies get

Whenever a team you like wins the first game of a playoff series on the road, you immediately get greedy and want a 2-0 lead going back home. I don't necessarily like the Phillies, but I hate the Yankees enough to be a full-fledged Phillies fan in this World Series. Cliff Lee was tremendous in game 1 and dominated the "Cleveland bowl". Both game 1 starters were ex Cleveland Indians and both pitched very well. But CC was no match for Lee on this day. I loved Lee's nonchalant plays on the field too with a couple of come-backers and popups. But in game 2, the tables got reversed. Pedro pitched good, but A.J.Burnett was better. He pitched 7 innings of 1 run ball and Girardi turned the game over to Rivera for the last 2 innings. Seems like Girardi has no faith in his bullpen outside of Mo and Mo shut the door on the Phillies. All things considered Phillies are probably happy to go back with a split and even happier to have beaten CC in game 1. Now onto Cole Hamels and Andy Pettitte. Great pitching match-ups and evenly balanced teams in this series. I think this is going be heck of a World Series.

NBA is rolling and Cleveland is 0-2. Thats the headliner. They lost at home to Boston and then lost again at Toronto despite the King's triple-double. Shaq is doing OK, but the team doesn't look sharper or better than last season. They better start winning soon or Cleveland will be in all sorts of trouble with LeBron's impending free agency and all other distractions. The teams that are looking good so far are the Celtics, Nuggets and of course the Fakers. Reggie Miller is saying the Fakers will be 20-1 after their first 21 games. That will make this NBA season a living hell for me. Hope they don't do that well and rather settle for something more mediocre like 17-4! Melo is playing like a man possessed for the rich and creamies. Following the footsteps of Kobe and LeBron, this guy has also become a truly committed professional with an eye on the prize. Of course KG is always a "man possessed" and his Celtics are one of the several serious contenders this season. With all that said, we need the Cavs to get in the mix and do their thing. The Suns are 1-0 after a close win against the paper-clips. Nash looked great in the money quarter. They open the home schedule tomorrow against the Warriors.

In the NFL, another Favre versus Green Bay weekend coming up. Thats always fun and never gets tired. I hope they meet again in the playoffs. I think A-Rod and the Packers take this one. Tennessee has named Vince Young their starting QB and the Niners have turned over the keys to Alex Smith. I am happy for Alex Smith. I don't know him personally, but from all accounts, it seems like he is a great guy. Of course he has not been a great QB up to this point, but he is going to be better now. How much better we will see. Denver-Baltimore, Atlanta-New Orleans and Giants-Eagles are the other premier match-ups of the weekend. We have never had 3 undefeated teams this late in to the season and 2 of 3 might win again this weekend. Denver might lose, but then again we keep under-estimating them and they just keep winning. There are still 3 winless teams as well in the league. The good news is one of the 3 teams will definitely not lose this weekend. Tampa Bay has a bye this weekend. Good for them and even better for us the fans,

NBA is back and so is Alex

The NBA starts tomorrow. Wow, time just flies! It just feels like yesterday that the 2008-2009 season ended. The good teams this year are loaded. They all got better. Cavs got Shaq, Lakers got Ron-Ron, Boston got Sheed and the Spurs got RJ. Even Magic minus Hedo plus Vinsanity should be interesting. These teams are going to fight it out from day one. There are truly 4 serious contenders and they are going to be focussed from day 1. And so should we as fans. The next week or so is the best part of the sports calendar. The World Series is beginning. NBA is starting and the NFL is in full flow. All 3 pro leagues that matter are in play and so is college football. Good times indeed. The Suns open their season Wed against the Clippers. SI has picked the Suns to be the 8-Th seed in the West. I expect them to be 6 or 7. They are going to score a lot a win a lot of regular season games this year. But I guess thats why I am called a fan.

Alex Smith is the other guy who is back. He subbed in for the Niners against the Texans and is now named the starting QB for next week. I think he is going to be much better this time around. There were way to many blowouts in the NFL last weekend. Too many bad teams these days. The Rams, Lions, Jaguars, Titans, Raiders, Bills, Redskins, Panthers, Bucs, Seahawks and the Chiefs are all horrible. And the Bears are fast joining this list. They got pummeled by their old friend Cedric Benson and Carson Palmer at Cincinnati. The league is so bad that the Jaguars lost 0-41 to the Seahawks a couple of weeks back and are still 3-3. Among he good teams, Favre and the Vikes finally lost against the Steelers at Pittsburgh. Now Favre is going to Green Bay next week and thats gonna be fun. The one surprise result of the weekend was Dallas beating Atlanta rather convincingly. I guess the boys came out of the bye week well prepared. They controlled Matt Ryan pretty well and Romo was awesome. Miles Austin is probably the find of the season for them. The two plays of the weekend were Adrian Peterson absolutely leveling that Steelers DB and Reggie Bush jumping and covering 6 yards in the air laterally to get to the end zone.

The Yankees took care of the Angels and are now in the World Series again after a few years. This is the first trip for A-Rod. He is on fire and is getting the ultimate respect on the field with things like the opposing team walking him in the ninth inning when leading by just a run. It's him and CC and Mo and Andy Pettitte and Jeter doing their thing - a healthy mix of the veteran Yankees and the new ones getting it done. But the Philles are no joke. They are loaded with guys who hit 30 home runs or more during the regular season up and down their lineup. And they wont be star-struck because they were in the World Series last year and they won it and they totally expect to win it again. I want the Phillies to win, but I am afraid the Yankees will win. Either way, I think the series goes 6 or 7 games.

Anyways, time to go get the NBA league pass on TV.

A-Rod is a Yankee God

On a rainy and chilly night at the new Yankees stadium, A-Rod continued his post-season heroics. What a difference a month makes. A-Rod went from being a choker to Mr.October in a matter of a couple of weeks. Rodriguez hit a tying homer in the 11-Th inning and the Yankees won the game in the 13-Th on a Maicer Izturis error. Angels are making a lot of errors these days. They better start catching the ball when they get back to Anaheim. They are playing a team thats loaded top to bottom and you can't give them many chances. Yankees are so loaded that even A-Rod doesn't seem to feel the pressure of carrying the World on his shoulders anymore and that may be the reason for his success. Mark Teixeira has been a God-send for A-Rod and every time they walked Tex to get to A-Rod during the regular season, I think A-Rod relaxed a little bit more. He was not expected to be the man anymore and he liked it that way.

But the truth is, there is no real basis for the "clutch player" and the "choke artist" tags. I understand sports, and even life for that matter, is mostly mental and guys handle pressure and the stress in different ways. But the bottom-line is, if you are good, you are good and if you are bad, you are bad. And A-Rod is very good. So it was just a matter of time before he came through in the playoffs. This is also why I think Derek Jeter is good, but over-rated. He plays for the Yankees and plays 10+ playoff game almost every year. Of course his post-season stats are going to be on-par with his career stats with such a large sample size. Most guys in other teams can't get to play in these many playoff games and their sample size is very small. So the stats are going to be hit or miss, but mostly miss because the playoffs also brings you good pitchers and great competition. Chances are, you are not going to have great stats if you just play 5 or 6 playoff games in your career. But if you play 100 games or so, things even out. So A-Rod's numbers will only get better as he plays longer for the Yankees and gets more and more post-season opportunities.

A-Rod and C.C.Sabathia are carrying the Yankees in these playoffs and A.J. Burnett was not too shabby today either. The Angels needs a masterful pitching performance in a game or two if they want to turn this thing around against A-Rod and this offense. May be Jared Weaver in game 3 can be that guy. Actually Teixeira is hitting just .100 and both him and A-Rod combined for a 1/11 night today. But that 1 hit was A-Rod's homer. If Tex gets going as well, the Angels will be in trouble. They lost a golden opportunity today and they can't afford to do this again and lose game 3. The Dodgers and Phillies play game 3 tomorrow. It's Cliff Lee against Hiroki Kuroda and you have to think the Phillies are the favorites. But thats why they play the game and lets see what happens. This might be a good time for Manny to come out of his .111 funk.

Pretty Passes

Another Monday night, another fun game. This one featured the Jets and the Dolphins and their 2 young QBs. They combined to score 5 TDs just in the fourth quarter and there were many pretty long bombs from both. Chad Henne is not as highly rated as Mark "Sanchise", but he has a strong arm and throws a pretty ball. I am not sure how good he is gonna be, but he sure looks like the QB of the future for the Dolphins right now. Couple of weeks back I wrote about the Dolphins being completely incapable of big plays and that hurt them against the Colts though they ran the ball great. With Henne, the same team looks different. Henne has a live arm unlike Chad Pennington and with Ted Ginn Jr. lined up wide, they have a legitimate deep threat now. Both Henne and Sanchez threw several deep balls in this game and both looked good. It felt like this could be a rivalry in the future and I am glad the Dolphins won. I love their wildcat. Once again, it couldn't be stopped and the Jets defense got killed. The rookie QB on offense was least of their problem. It was their defense that got pummeled in this game.

Speaking of pretty passes, the Manning brothers threw several more this weekend. Another 300+ yards for the older one and a filthy 36 of 44 passing night. Eli pretty much had an off day playing the horrible Raiders. But one of his long passes to Steve Smith in this game was the best pass I have seen this year. Both the Mannings are undefeated and so are Vikings, Saints and the Denver Broncos. Unusually large number of undefeated teams right now and there are also many bad teams in the league. The bad teams this season look really horrible and thats probably why so many of the top teams are undefeated. The Bills, Browns, Chiefs, Raiders, Titans, Ram and the Bucs are all HORRIBLE! This list doesn't even include the Lions and thats how bad these teams are. The Lions at least show up and compete and give people good games these days. The Browns beat the Bills 6-3 last weekend and put everyone of us to sleep. But the top-line in the league is great right now and I can't wait for the Saints-Giants game next weekend. The winner of that game probably will be in the Super Bowl, but the Vikings are very much in the NFC mix as well. So are the Falcons. They looked great last weekend crushing the Niners 45-10.

The big game of the weekend was Broncos hosting the Patriots. Denver came up big and shocked the Pats. Kyle Orton actually threw for 330 yards and outplayed Tom Brady. Wes Welker had a good game, but Randy Moss was nowhere to be seen in this one. The Pats are nothing great this season and I think the hoody might have out-smarted himself with his roster moves in the off-season. Too many shake-ups on the defensive side and now Junior Seau is coming back from retirement for the third time. Even Brett Favre is saying "Come on!". Cincinnati shocked Baltimore and the Bengals are now leading the AFC north. Carson Palmer is driving them down the field in the clutch every week and they are for real, especially given Pittsburgh's inconsistency. As long as Palmer is healthy, they will only get better and more consistent and confident. Arizona won and are beginning to look good. So did Seattle with Hasselbeck coming back and throwing for 4 TDs. Cards should now have a shot at winning this division given the Niners shocking embarrassment against the Falcons. But I expect the NFC West to be a 3 team race all the way to the end. In the East, Donovan McNabb came back from his injury and won in style - his very first pass was a TD. The Cowboys on the other hand needed overtime to beat the lowly Chiefs. The Boys are in trouble.

Sweep, sweep, sweep

The MLB playoffs are full of sweeps. 3 strong teams - Yankees, Angels and Dodgers swept three mediocre teams - Twins, RedSox and the Cards. The Eagles finished the quartet with a 3-1 win over the Rockies today. There have been some interesting finishes in these playoffs so far. The best and the most satisfying end was to see the RedSox and Papelbon blow the save in game 3 at home. The Angels scored 5 runs in the last 2 innings as Papelbon converted a 2 run lead into a one run loss. The inconsistent RedSox just picked a bad time of the year to have another one of their bad stretches. Now they are done and the TV dudes don't get their Yankees-Sox ALCS. Even I would have loved to see it. It's been a while.

As for the aforementioned Yankees, A-Rod is living large right now. Between dating Kate Hudson and batting .455 in the playoffs and the 6 RBIs in one series, it's hard to question this guy. All the doubters and haters have to be quiet right now. He is known for disappearing in October, but now he is the best player in the playoffs. Of course, he needs to be at least half as good as what he has been so far in the next 2 rounds to really cement his place in October, but he has started strong and without him, there would not have been a sweep. In game 3, he tied the game up with a homer in the 7-Th. Carl Pavano of all people was pitching a shutout in to the 7-Th, but A-Rod turned the tide for the Yankees.

Another 9-Th inning miscue happened today as Houston Street blew a save against Ryan Howard and the Phillies. Street had saved 35 out of 37 games, but now he has to deal with this loss the entire off-season. He lost the game on Saturday too and the Eagles stole 2 playoffs games on the road with 9-Th inning wins. Street has blown 3 saves this year and all of them are against the Phillies. Hope these 2 games don't affect his head permanently. It's tough being a closer in this sport. He probably feels like if not for his mistake, the Rockies could have forced a game 5 and even advanced. Matt Holliday probably does and should feel the same way too. His error in game 2 was a killer. The Cards never recovered and were eliminated at home. I was expecting a lot from that series, but the Dodgers cruised rather easily. Now on to the Eagles for the Dodgers. The Yankees have to face the dreaded Angels and they are hoping the result will be different this time around.

Clutch Troubles

The Yankees have been walking off on the the Twins at the new stadium all season long. Today in game 2 of their playoffs series, they did it again. This was the Yankees' fourth walk-off victory over the Twins this season and ninth win in nine games. Thats amazing to me. A-Rod has some serious post-season mojo going for him right now. He hit the game tying, 2-run bomb against Joe Nathan in the 9-Th to send the game to extras. The other stud, Mark Teixeira, hit a line-drive home run in the 11-Th to one of the shortest parts of the stadium to win the game. That thing reached the fence is no time. It was a short and low ride for that baseball. Suddenly A-Rod is a post-season savant. It would be interesting to see how the haters handle his success now. Me personally, I hate the Yankees more than I hate A-Rod and I can handle his success. The Twins are now in trouble. Down 0-2 and nowhere to go, but back home.

The Angels on the other hand are doing great against the BoSox. They are up 2-0 after 2 strong pitching performances by John Lackey and Jared Weaver. Both Lester and Beckett have now lost and the RedSox nation should be gripping big time. The Angels always lose to the RedSox, but win against the Yankees. May be it's going to be the reverse this post-season. In the NL, Matt Holliday was both the hero and the goat as the Cardinals lost a game they almost won against the Dodgers. He hit a home run in the second, but dropped a game ending catch in the 9-Th that turned out to be a rally-starting error for the Dodgers who ended up winning the game 3-2 instead of losing it 2-1. Brutal game for the Cardinal fans. In the other series, the Rockies and the Eagles are tied up and the series should be fun as it moves to Denver. I mean fun for us, but not for the players or the fans in the stadium and the temperature there is supposed to plummet to the thirties.

Tomorrow in College, Florida @ LSU. That should be a good one.

Game number 163

We always say the MLB season is a marathon and not a sprint. I guess Detroit and Minnesota decided the marathon was not long enough. They extended it by one more game today and then they extended today's game number 163 beyond the usual 9 innings. Minnesota finally won it 6-5 in 12 innings. Both teams let many chances slip away before Minnesota clinched it in the 12-Th on a hit by Alexi Casilla who is batting .198 for the season. Perfect end to a disastrous slump by the Tigers. I thought this race was over a while back. But the Tigers found a way to miss the playoffs after leading the division by 3 games with 4 games to go. Miguel Cabrera didn't help by partying with the enemy between games during that final weekend series and then coming home drunk and fighting with his wife. Too many controversies for one weekend. At the end of the day, or rather the season, Tigers loss ends up being Twins gain and they won the tie-breaker this year unlike last year when they lost to the White Sox. This is the third straight year with a one-game playoff in baseball. It's an interesting way to get us primed for the real playoffs.

The playoffs start tomorrow with 3 games. Twins have to go into the Bronx and face the game's top lineup less than 24 hours after winning an extra-inning game. I always thought the league was tough on these teams playing the one-game playoff by scheduling the real playoff game the very next day. But only today I learnt that the Yankees actually have the right to choose when they start their playoff - tomorrow or the day after. Of course they chose tomorrow because that puts the most pressure on the Twins. Not that the Yankees need these things on their side to win it all. They should be able to handle the Twins pretty easily. They have won all their 7 games this season against them and they should win 3 more though they may lose one game in the process. They better win the series. After all, they have the game's highest paid catcher, first baseman, third baseman, shortstop, starter and reliever ! No wonder the Yankees always say anything less than a championship is a failure. What a stupid system MLB is running. It's like a football team having the highest paid QB, RB, WR, linebacker and cornerback in the same team or a NBA team having the highest paid point guarrd, shooting guard and power forward in the league. I don't think that'll happen in those sports, but anything goes in baseball. It's not all about the Yankees though. The Rockies play the Phillies and the Dodgers play the Cards tomorrow as well. I pick the Cards, Rockies, Yankees and Boston to advance.

Bring on the playoffs anyways. Best way to spend the time between the NFL games is to watch playoff baseball. And did I mention the NBA pre-season has started too! Nothing wrong with that.

Mannings and Favre dominate

The NFL is slowly but surely becoming the personal property of the Mannings. Looks like the little one might be almost as good as the elder one. But then again nobody is as good as Peyton Manning these days. I love good QB play more than anything else in the NFL and I look for it in every game. I was a huge Dan Marino fan because he was the ultimate, pure QB. He still might be and I thought he will always be the best pure passer ever, but Peyton Manning is shaking my commitment to Dan-da-man. Manning is on top of his game like no other right now. His mastery of the mental aspect of the game is next to nobody. We have seen many great QBs and there are still a few good ones in the league. It's fun seeing Tom Brady and Brett Favre play and be in control, but nobody seems to know everything the defense is trying to do quite like Peyton. He seems to know what's coming even before the defensive coordinator on the other end calls the play. He often audibles and confuses the defense and gets what he wants out of them. It's usually the other way around with the defense confusing the offense, but not with this guy.

Peyton's physical talents are comparable to any of the other great QBs, though clearly slightly inferior to Dan Marino and the likes, but his mental capacity seems to be way beyond everybody else. It comes from hours and days and weeks of film study. It's no accident. It's a pure joy watching him play. Of course if you are puling for the other team he is playing against, then it's the ultimate torture. Like it was for me last weekend when the Colts played the Cards. Of course the Cards took it easy on me by completely sucking. That game deteriorated to a point very quickly where it didn't matter what Peyton did. I was not hanging on to his every pass. In any case, both the Mannings are undefeated and look unstoppable right now. Peyton is making stars out of Pierre Garcon, Austn Collie and Donald Brown and Eli is making stars out of Mario Manningham and the other Steve Smith. Archie should be a proud papa. Eli got a scare with a non-contact injury that looked bad. I think he should be fine.

Brett Favre had a breakout game today against his Packers. He looked awesome and after downplaying the game all week, he gave conflicting answers after the game which kinda proved the obvious - that this game meant a lot more than he would admit too. But he was awesome on the field - 24-31, 271 yds, 3 TDs. This team looks scary right now as the young receivers are learning to play with him. The Vikings D harassed Aaron Rodgers all night. Neither team could run the ball, but the Vikings D made it hard for the Packers to consistently mount an attack. A-Rod is very good and he still passed for 384 yards, but he needs better protection. He also needs to get rid of the ball quicker sometimes. He holds on to the ball a little too long. The Packers were still in the game and a critical 4-Th down call in the second half I think hurt them. They should have taken the 3 points instead of going for the TD and failing when they were trailing 14-28. That made it harder for the Pack. Of course Donald Lee could have and should have still caught that TD pass and A-Rod could have thrown a slightly better ball too. No such issues with Favre. He was on the money and was hitting everything. I also liked Sidney Rice going way up and catching both those on-side kicks. Thats some real athleticism right there and goes to show you how much of a team sport football is. While Favre gets all the press, it's little plays like that which clinches these football games. I am a big A-Rod fan and am disappointed for him and the Packers, but as always A-Rod looked good, but it was not enough. Favre looks more than enough right now for the Vikings.

The other great game of the weekend was Baltimore at New England. As always, it was close and as always, it was a frustrating, heart-breaking loss for the Ravens against the Pats. This time, Flacco was driving them cooly and assuredly towards the end zone when Mark Clayton dropped a pass on 4-Th and 3 deep in Patriots territory. The ball hit him between the numbers and he flat our dropped it. Lucky Patriots and Brady, who also got bailed out a couple of times with absolutely ridiculous personal foul calls. NFL needs to take another look at these stupid QB calls. In other games, San Francisco shut out St. Louis and Jacksonville embarrassed Tennessee. JaMarcus Russell still sucks and Derek Anderson showed us again that he is better than Brady Quinn, though neither of them can save the Cleveland Browns. San Diego and Dallas are still two of the most over-rated teams in the league, though Philip Rivers is a much more consistent QB than Tony Romo. Denver of all teams is 4-0 and I have to admit, I thought they'll absolutely suck. I guess I was wrong. They beat Dallas and if I was Wade Phillips, I would be getting ready to find another job next season. Dallas seems to be going nowhere and I am not sure what's Romo's problem either. Wonder if he is longing for TO in his team now.

Frustrating Loss

It was painful watching the Arizona State Sun Devils play on Saturday against the Oregon State Beavers. The Devils seem to have no problems moving the ball or eating yards in chunks. But they couldn't get the key yards when it counted on third downs and made too many mistakes. It was frustrating to watch them get 12, 15, 18 yards and then just stall. They out-gained the Beavers 413-299 yards and had 27 first downs to the Beavers 16. But the Beavers won the game almost by an identical number, but in the reverse - 28-17. It was Oregon State's first road win over the Sun Devils in 40 years and the Devils didn't need it after that close loss at Georgia last week. Not the best way to start the Pac-10 season and I am not sure where Dennis Erickson is taking this program. The Pac-10 seems wide open this year, but seems like the Devils will be looking in from the outside again.

Miami was once again the big newsmaker this Saturday. They went into Oklahoma and beat them 21-20 in a classic. They ran all over them and bounced back from a bad first half. Miami's QB Jacory Harris is a mature dude who recovered well after a bunch of early mistakes. Miami lost badly to Va Tech last weekend. Otherwise they will be in national championship contention after playing four straight ranked opponents to open this season. They are doing good even now with 3 wins considering they were not expected to do anything this season. As for Oklahoma, this defeat pretty much eliminates them from the national title contention. They may still bubble up the Big 12 standings and create some noise, but they won't be playing in the national championship game.

I was a little surprised by the Michigan loss to Michigan State. Tate Forcier looked good as always, but his pass in OT was deflected and intercepted and State cashed in. Tough loss for the kid, but he had a great 4-Th quarter once again. This was one of the few upsets this week which was not upset heavy. I guess the big upset might be next week when Florida visits LSU. Not that LSU Is any kind of powerhouse, but I am not sold on Florida either especially if Tebow is hurting. LSU was lucky winning against Georgia 20-13 and are hoping this will continue next week. It should be a great game. The big game this weekend turned out to be a clunker as USC blasted Cal 30-3. Pac-10 as usual is done in the eyes of the experts and the only savior left might actually be Oregon, who are now doing very well after the season opening loss at Boise State. They might even reinstate RB LeGarrette Blount and that would be the right thing to do. The week was quiet otherwise with Houston losing to UTEP being the only other "upset". No big deal.

In the MLB, Detroit somehow managed to turn a comfortable 3 game lead into a one game playoff with the Twins on the road this Tuesday.

Favre, front and center

The Favre hype is all over your TV. He is going to play the Packers next Monday and that should be awesome. But on top of it, he is coming of a game-winning TD last Sunday. It was a great throw and a better catch to beat the Niners who played a great game and should have won it. He was the story of the NFL weekend and the talking heads on TV were all sucking up to him big time. These were the same fools who were ripping him during the off-season. Of course this only proves my usual adage that two things that sound contradictory can both be true. I guess I can't blame these TV guys all that much. Favre's act during the off-season was stupid. But he is a great player and he is doing for the Vikings what they exactly want him to do. I am pretty sure they don't win that game last weekend without Favre. Regardless of what the other Vikings QBs would have or could have done during the course of the game, they definitely wouldn't have been able to do what Favre did with that fiinal drive.

I found that play still very interesting. As sports fans, we live and die by inches. If that throw was a few inches off or even if the throw was the same, but the receiver landed a few inches further away or if his defenders were a few inches closer to the ball and tapped it away, we wouldn't be hyping Brett Favre's performance in that game all that much. But the play worked out and we can't stop talking about him. Sports is such a bottom-line business that makes you the hero if you win and you are nothing special if you lose. Rest of it are mere details. The other thing that struck me with that play was, how one's reputation and who he or she is matters to the exclusion of everything else. Favre threw to Greg Lewis - good throw and a great catch. But Favre still walks away with most of the honors in our eyes. I was wondering what if it was Trent Edwards to Terrell Owens? TO would have garnered most of the kudos because he is TO. The sports world is strange like that sometimes, but we love it because real life can be even stranger.

Anyways we get to see Favre V Aaron Rodgers next Monday. Can't complain. Last weekend, Detroit won after a long time. It might get some people fired in Washington. The Lions had to win sometime since they can't keep losing for the rest of eternity. So I don't see why the Redskins are taking it so personally! In college, ASU lost a tough one at Georgia. It could have been a great win, but it was not meant to be. The only guy who is probably more hyped than Favre right now is Tim Tebow. Dude suffered a concussion last weekend and there's 24X7 coverage on him since then. In the MLB, the season is winding down, but the usual drama is missing. Teams have big leads and there is no real pennant chase. Where's the parity in baseball? The only drama the last couple of days has involved Detroit and Minnesota, but thats not very interesting as Detroit is leading by 3 after today's game. Time to bring on the playoffs already. MLB playoffs are fun, especially for me when the RedSox and the Yankees play each other and I am pulling for both of them to lose! In other news, the NHL season is starting already. Not that I care, but this means the NBA can't be that far behind. Good times!

Weekend of the Mannings

The Manning brothers owned week 2 of the NFL. They showed us once again why they are the number 1 football family in the World. Peyton Manning is one of the best ever and Eli is charting his own course and building his own legacy. First it was Eli on Sunday night cooly and calmly guiding the Giants past the Cowboys at that mega-stadium out there in Dallas. Romo helped him out by playing horribly, but Eli did have to drive them down the field for a field goal in the last 3 minutes. He threw for 330 yards and 2 TDs in the game and made stars out of Mario Manningham and the (other) Steve Smith. He proved once again that good QBs do more for the receivers than good receivers ever do to help QBs. That stadium and that scoreboard look gorgeous and they look even better when the Boys lose. I wish I can watch a game there one of these days. It was an event and LeBron was there prompting Chris Collinsworth to remark "it's not a party unless LeBron shows up these days". interesting. Is LeBron over-exposed? Thats a conversation for another day and time.

Peyton Manning owned Monday night as he won the game against the Dolphins under very unusual circumstances. Miami dominated the time of possession to the tune of 45.07 minutes to 14.53 minutes and still lost. How is that even possible? I guess Peyton's brilliance is the primary reason for this. He threw for a 80 yard TD to open the game and a 48 yard game-winner at the end, which meant the Colts scored 14 points in 44 seconds. The rest of the way, Miami ran and ran and milked the clock. Their wildcat ran to perfection again. Brian Billick calls it a gimmick and Steve Young calls it a fad, but the way Miami runs it, it seems to work every-time. The Dolphins are even selling jerseys with "wildcat" on the back! I wouldn't mind owning one of those. But when the time came for a big play at the end, Miami just had nowhere to go. I like Chad Pennington a lot, but that final 2-minute drive must qualify as the worst 2-minute drill ever. In fact, it was not even a 2 minute drive, he actually had more than 3 minutes to go, not to mention the 2 timeouts. But they ran a play a minute until Chad suddenly seemed to realize he was in the 4-Th and not the 3-Rd quarter. But to me, the Dolphins lost the game the previous drive when the game was tied and they were in field goal range. They had a 3-Rd and 6 and after Chad and Ted Ginn Jr. had converted on a trillion 3-Rd downs all day, they called a run and settled for 3. Even the Raiders with JaMarcus Russell would have called a pass play at that point. I don't know what the coaches were thinking and it serves them right that Manning scored a TD soon after (in 32 seconds) to take the lead back for good.

Great Monday night game again though. NFL has been even better than advertised so far. John Feinstein made an interesting point that a 0-2 hole in the NFL is like a 20 game losing streak in the MLB. Thats true if you consider the fact that the NFL season is 16 games long and MLB is 162 games long. Another data point to illustrate how and why the NFL is so intense start to finish. There were a lot of interesting games last weekend. I was happy to see Kurt Warner and the Cardinals get back on track. Warner completed 24/26 passes and thats just insane! There are some murmurs about L-Fitz not getting the ball enough, but I think it will all be fine soon. Jacksonville apparently can't sellout these games and they seem to be in a bigger blackout hell than the Raiders. Speaking of the Raiders, they beat the KC Chiefs 13-10 behind JaMarcus Russell who was his usual self completing just 7/24 passes for a robust 109 yards. Matt Cassel should have been depressed and completely shocked after this game. On the positive side, if Cassel can recover from this disaster, he can handle anything the rest of his career. New Orleans and San Francisco continued from where they left off last week and won their 2-Nd game. Saints are for real and the Niners will let us know next week when they go outside their division and take on Adrian Peterson, Brett Favre and the Vikings. I can't think of another runner quite like AP when it comes to seeking out contact. The guy just takes defenders head-on and never shies away from contact. And considering the speed at which he is coming at them, it should be a nightmare for the guys in the secondary.

The best result of the weekend was of course New England losing to the J-E-T-S. Those guys talked trash all week and then backed it up by crushing the mighty NE Patriots with ease. I can't believe how good they are and how strong Mark Sanchez is. Dude seems to be from the Matty Ice school of rookie QBs and he looks a lot more mature than the Jets QB last year - Brett Favre! The defense came after Brady and shut him down. They kept Moss bottled up too with just 24 yards. Impressive! The Pats are a stupid Buffalo fumble away from being 0-2. NFL can be an upside down World sometimes. Off the field, Niners are accusing the Jets of some tampering with Michael Crabtree and now the Jets coach is saying they want to play the Niners! These guys are not kidding around. They want to crush everybody. The other AFC superpowers - Chargers and the Steelers, both lost as well. Cutler played much better as the Bears beat the Steelers and Ray Lewis made an amazing game ending tackle to make sure the Chargers lost despite the 436 yards passing by Philip Rivers. More great early season games. Houston and Tennessee played a good one as well as the Texans got back on track. Chris Johnson had 284 total yards in the loss, but he couldn't overcome the Matt Schaub-Andre Johnson connection. This game featured some of the most wide-open receivers I have ever seen in the NFL. I am not talking "NFL open", I am talking "there is nobody within 20 feet of the receiver" open. Both defenses looked like San Jose state against USC in certain plays and in one play, Houston completely forgot about Chris Johnson and he was all alone running by himself along the sidelines. Tennessee is in trouble and @ NY Jets is the last thing they need. We will see what happens next week.

Better early than late?

Every year, USC looses a game that they are not supposed to. It's always to an unranked Pac-10 team. Yesterday, it looks like they decided it's better to get this obligatory yearly loss out of the way early in the season rather than late. They lost their Pac-10 opener on the road to Washington 16-13. Washington is unranked. As a matter of fact, they are just happy to be still in Division-1 football given that they went 0-12 last year. Now they have beat the big and mighty USC. This loss has dropped USC to number 12 - behind schools like Boise State, Miami, Oklahoma and Va Tech and way behind Cal. I wonder if USC is thinking that they can recover from an early season loss better than a late season loss when it comes to BCS berths. Unfortunately, such courtesies are only extended by our beloved voters to East Coast schools like Florida! If you lose to an unranked Pac-10 team, you are pretty much done.

But this goes to show that Pac-10 is usually better than advertised. Why would USC keep losing to unranked teams in Pac-10 even though they routinely crush Big-10 big-dawgs like Ohio State and Penn state. I think the Pac-10 teams are hard to beat especially on the road. Most of them have decent offenses, though this particular contest was a low scoring one. Also, while the West Coast has "weak" sports fans in general, that description fits California and Arizona more than the North Western states. They have higher levels of passion for college football since most of the Oregon and Washington schools are located in small, campus towns with very little professional sports interests and lots of rain! So going into those hostile environments and coming out with a W is easier said than done. Of course, there is something wrong with USC's mindset and their coach that this happens every year. For all the credit Pete Carroll gets for resurrecting the program at USC, I think he has under-achieved with what he has got. May be he should have 4 or 5 rings instead of the 1.5 he's got if only his teams played with the same focus every game.

Great win for Washington even though USC played without quarterback Matt Barkley and defensive star Taylor Mays. Now let's see if USC gets it's act together against a good Cal team in a couple of weeks. Speaking of Cal, my main (Heis)man Jahvid Best ran for 131 yards and five touchdowns in a 35-21 victory at Minnesota. He is on track. The other great game of the week was Virginia Tech V Nebraska. Va Tech's mediocre QB Tyrod Taylor clinched the game for them with a game-winner. Great win for the Hokies - 16-15. The other surprising results of the week were Oregon upsetting Utah and Florida State over BYU.
I knew FSU was good, but I was surprised that they crushed BYU on the road. Tennessee and Lane Kiffin had a good day. They lost 13-23 to Florida, but weren't they supposed to lose 60-3 or something? Not sure what happened to Florida there. I am now thinking they are going to lose a game this season if not 2. If they and Texas stay on course, the Championship game is all theirs as of now. Lets see what happens.

ASU beat Louisiana-Monroe 38-14, but they start their season for real at number 23 Georgia next weekend. I am nervous!

Is the U back?

Miami won again today. They played an interesting season opener against Florida State on Labor day and won the game at the end just like the good old days. And today they beat the 14-Th ranked team in Georgia Tech. I like their QB Jacory Harris. Both Harris and their coach Randy Shannon seem to have a decent and classy demeanor thats so rare at the U. More power to them. They are now ranked and should be moving up next week. I am already getting a little tired of USC and Matt Barkley. ESPN is constantly talking about him after just one good game. I said the hype machine will be all over this kid, but I didn't know it would be this bad this quick. The other story of the week in college is Tennessee @ Florida. Lane Kiffin's trash talking earlier in the year is the story here, but unfortunately, the game should be no-contest and a non story.

In the NFL, Monday night gave us two great games. We were reminded once again why NFL is the king in this country. These games are close, they are played at a high level and they matter. Every game - 1 through 16, matter. The offensive execution in game 1 is sometimes bad, but teams still play hard and give it their all for a W. Thats the beauty of a 16 game season as opposed to a 82 or a 162 game season. We were also reminded last Monday of the luckiest guy on the planet - Tom Brady. In addition to bagging supermodel Gisele Bundchen, he won his season opener at home last Monday when he had no business winning. Buffalo had that game locked up when they fumbled a kickoff return with a couple of minutes to go in the game. It's a cliche to say "you do not want to give that guy another chance", but you just do not want to give Tom Brady another chance like that. He went to Ben Watson again and won the game with a sweet TD. The Bills lost the game in the last 3 minutes after dominating the game all through. I am sure the Bills fans were thrilled about this loss.

In game 2, the Raiders were surprisingly competitive and even dominant in the trenches. They bottled up the Chargers for most of the night and ran all over them in the first half. But Philip Rivers took the Chargers down the field for a game winner. This has been an interesting sidebar of the early season football this year. A lot of offenses did nothing all game, but went down the field for a victory at the end. From USC to the Packers to the Chargers, it was the same story. Disappointing loss for the Raiders, but they have something to cheer about. They look much improved, but they still have a long way to go. JaMarcus Russell needs to develop a lot. He is quite raw and can't carry them to victories yet. They have to win despite him and not because of him and thats going to be tough. But to be fair to him, he did his job in this game and put the Raiders ahead in the 4-Th quarter but the defense let the Chargers score and win.

There seem to be many interesting off the field stories in sports the last few days. First there was the "Serena-gate" where she went ballistic on a line judge and got penalized a point on a match point. It sounds tough, but she earned it. She went nuts and deserved to be docked a point. Then Federer misbehaved during his finals on Monday. He used an expletive and got fined later and coming from Federer, it was a little surprising and became big news. He seemed frustrated to the point that he looked out of sorts after that argument and lost the Finals. It happens to the best I guess.

Michael Jordan is getting some grief too for his act in the Hall Of fame ceremony. People are saying his speech was bitter and angry. He went on and on about all the perceived or real insults he had to endure throughout his basketball life and thanked those guys for motivating him! That sure is an odd hall of fame speech. I thought the only interesting point was about Byron Russell. Mike told us how Russell met him during Mike's first retirement and claimed that he could have guarded him if he was still in the NBA. I didn't know about this and how ironic is it that Russell had to guard Mike in the NBA finals, not once but twice. Overall, the feeling is that Mike didn't give a classy speech. Stockton and Robinson on the the other hand gave us the usual humble speech. I especially remember Stockton saying that he was never the best player in his team his entire life. Thats humility and thats what we need more of in the Hall of Fame speeches.

Week 1 is a Brees!

Week 1 of the NFL is in the books, except for the 2 Monday nighters tomorrow. The story today was definitely the Brandon Stockley TD in the final seconds of the Denver-Cincinnati game. Denver ended up with one of the luckiest wins you'll ever see in the NFL. The Bengals were completely in control of this game with just seconds on the clock with Denver backed all the way deep and trailing by a point. Orton stepped back to make another one of his mediocre throws towards Brandon Marshall, who looked clueless most of the day and was not even in same book, let alone the same page as Orton. In addition to all this, he was double covered and since Brandon Stokley was also around the same area, Stokley's defender followed the ball and left Stokley alone. This came back to bite the Bengals in the butt, though you can't really fault the defender for aggressively going after ball. Marshall's defender jumped up and tipped the ball away and just when you thought it was going to fall incomplete, it went straight to Stokley. Stokley caught it and was wide open. There was nobody between him and the end-zone and he scored the game winning, 87 yard TD rather easily. The most interesting part of the play to me was Stokley taking a detour before stepping in to the end-zone since there were no defenders anywhere near and he wanted to burn some more clock. Some guys are just smart like that. Of course his coach Josh McDaniels has been kinda making dumb moves all off-season, but he lucked out with a huge win.

Jay Cutler on the other hand lost the Sunday nighter to Green Bay on a 4 interception night. Aaron Rodgers gets a big 4-Th quarter win and he sure looked like Brett Favre throwing that game winner to Greg Jennings. GB's offense looked horrible, but A-Rod closed the deal at the end. Then Al Harris finished Cutler off with an interception which looked eerily similar to his game ending interception in OT a few years back in the playoffs against Matt Hasselbeck and the Seahawks. The offensive stud of the week though was Drew Brees. This guy is a spectacular QB. It took him a while to kick-start his career, but he has been super lately. I didn't like it when the Chargers let him go in favor of Philip Rivers, but Rivers ain't bad either. I sure hope Rivers aint bad, because I have him in my fantasy roster. But Brees made his fantasy owners very happy today throwing for 358 yards and 6 TDs. Some of his throws are so crisp and on target, it' awesome to watch him play. Speaking of fantasy stars, Adrian Peterson helped his owners today with 180 yards and 3 TDs. AP is the top dog in fantasy these days, but we have been talking about LaDainian Tomlinson like he had a horrible 2008 and he is way past his prime. But you know what, he had 1500+ yards from scrimmage and scored 12 TDs last year. How much were we really expecting from this guy last season? Granted, he didn't run for 1900 yards like AP or close to 2000 yards like he himself did the previous 3 years, but he still had a good season despite the injury and all. He might do great again this season too. He starts off against the Raiders Monday night and of course he kills them. The poor Raiders will start tomorrow and hope not to lose to the Chargers for the 800Th straight time.

Favre didn't look spectacular today, but he didn't have to against the Cleveland Browns. I feel for the Browns fans. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be from another oncoming train. I don't know about this Brady Quinn dude. He didn't look good at all. Speaking of QBs who didn't look good, Kurt Warner looked very shaky today. The reigning NFC champs lost to the Niners, whose defense looks pretty robust. Their coach Mike Singletary seems to have really improved the team and he is getting a lot of run this season in the Bay Area. He has become the face of the franchise and it will be interesting to see how the Niners do. Matt Hasselbeck and the Seahawks seem to be healthy and good too this season. Cards and Warner better get their act together soon. Looks like the NFC West might be a three horse race. Mark Sanchez looked awesome today. I think the culture of rookie QBs are changing these days. After Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco did well last year - especially Ryan, Sanchez looked on target today (18/31 for 272 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT). May be more college programs are running real pro style offenses these days that prepares these talented guys. Matthew Stafford looked more like a typical rookie though. But he's got an awesome arm for sure. Both Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco did well today. They seemed to be continuing from where they left off. The other QB who seems to be continuing from where he left off is Big Benjamin Roethlisberger. I used to say he is over-rated, but he has become a great QB and in the season opener on Thursday, he did his 4-Th quarter thing again against the Titans after sucking for the first 3 quarters. He is fast becoming as big as the big boys Peyton and Brady. He is good! His pump fakes are awesome. Lets see how Brady does tomorrow coming back from the injury.

Ohio State's worst nightmare - USC and Michigan win!

The newest USC stud I guess is Matt Barkley. The true freshman, who was a surprise pick to start at QB over Aaron Corp JR. and the erstwhile superstar recruit Mitch Mustain, went into the shoe and beat Ohio State 18-15 behind a game winning fourth quarter drive late in the game. It was an impressive drive in the money quarter, though it was not all easy for Barkley. USC started strong and scored on a fourth down, but the buckeyes answered back. USC had trouble moving the ball after that. They seemed to a little more comfortable on offense than the buckeyes, but clearly the freshman had trouble moving the ball consistently. The USC offensive line looked impressive anytime there was a 3-Rd and 1 or a 4-Th and 1. Barkley could sneak behind them for a couple of yards whenever they wanted. But still things didn't all come together for the Trojans.

The game stayed close and in the second half, Ohio State actually started to control the field position battle. USC was constantly backed up and Barkley just could not move them forward. But finally he did what he had to and moved them 95 yards for the go ahead score. USC's shifty running back Joe McKnight was a big part of that drive and USC went home happy. They are legit and whether you like it or not, you are gonna start hearing about Matt Barkley as much as you did about Mark Sanchez, Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer. Dude is too young and sounds a little bit like a moron, but he became a star today. Kudos to Pete Carroll for rolling the dice on a true freshman and he was rewarded with a win today that took his record against the Big 10 to 7-0. I am happy every time the suckeyes lose and it's even better if they lose to a Pac 10 team.

Barkely was not the only true freshmen doing his thing today. Michigan's Tate Forcier was even more impressive in his second college game ever against the Domers. It was an instant classic as the Wolverines beat the Irish 38-34. Both offenses were spectacular and the game was tight most of the second half. This dude Forcier is an athlete. He can move and can make plays outside the pocket. It's fun to watch him. Not a bad loss for the Domers either. It was close and they looked good even in a loss. It might be another major bowl for Notre Dame and probably another embarrassing loss when all is said and done this season.

In other games, Oklahoma state beat Georgia last week and jumped to number 5 in the ranking only to lose to Houston this week 45-35. I love upsets and parity in college football and this game showcased both. This was Houston's first win over a top 5 team in 25 years. It's interesting to see many unheralded college programs crack the top 25 or beat top 25 teams - BYU, Boise State, TCU, Utah, UNC, Cincinnati and Houston. Of course Boise State is becoming a regular these days. The other interesting result of the day was UCLA beating Tennessee 19 -14 on the road. Good day for the Pac 10. Speaking of Pac 10, I am pulling for a Pac 10 Heisman this year as well - Cal's Jahvid Best. This guy is a stud. He is Usain Bolt in football gear. He has got pure sprinter speed and is averaging about 10 yards a carry so far this season. Of course number 10 Cal has not played anybody yet. I'll be keeping an eye on him all season long.