Life is going to get bizzy!

This is the time of the year when life gets busy. College football, NFL and fantasy football is already keeping us busy and occupied and then MLB playoffs start. This is pretty much the only time of the year when anybody really needs to care about baseball. My dream playoff lineup almost happened this year. I have always wondered how baseball will do if it goes all small market - specifically if you take out NY and Boston. I am probably never going to be that lucky, but this year came close. No RedSox, no Dodgers, no NY Mets, no Chi Cubs or Whitesox, no Anaheim Angels and just for added effect, no St. Louis Cardinals either. Of course, I didn't expect the NY Yankees to be kept out, but they crashed my playoff party and are still fighting for a division title with the Rays. Rays have been great this season and they gave away 20,000 tickets for free to fill up their 37,00 seat stadium. Sometimes I feel Baseball is in big trouble.

Anyways, the other party-pooper team for me are the hated SF Giants. They are now guaranteed a tie for NL West and are probably going to win it easily given their pitching and the fact that both Colorado and San Diego have choked away their season. The Giants have a September ERA as of today of 1.78. Thats just offensive ! Lincecum, Cain and now this kid Bumgarner are all killing me. If Lincecum looks like he is from high-school, Bumgarner looks like he is from the little league! I was hoping the Giants will do what they have been doing the last few years - pitch well, hit nothing, be mediocre overall, show some life on and off, but eventually fade into oblivion. But this year has been different. They showed some life and sudenly one thing lead to another, and here they are winning the division. Rookie Buster Posey was the catalyst who took this team to the next level. They better build a statue for this kid outside the AT&T park.

The Giants may be the biggest beneficiary of the divorce of the McCourts. The team that lost to the Phillies in the last 2 NLCS just disappeared with the ownership fiddling away. Of course the DBacks did nothing this year either, but thats neither here nor there. At least nobody expected the DBacks to do well this year. Speaking of teams that were not expected to do anything, The Cincinnati Reds are in the playoffs after many years and they took the division away from the Cardinals. The Reds are an interesting team and America will learn about some of their young stars like first baseman Joey Votto and relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman during this year's playoffs. It is fun to watch Aroldis Chapman pump in fastballs at 105 MPH. Texas Rangers have finally made the playoffs too after 11 years or so . Bad Vlad goes from the Angels to the Rangers and now the Rangers are in the playoffs and Angels are out after 3 good years. If I were him, I will hire LeBron James' manager and try to get all the credit I can for this reversal.

Thats a good segway to ex-king LeBron James. The hype continues. ESPN has put 3 fools plus Rachel Nchols full-time on the Miami Heat beat. I have never seen anything like this. Usually people don't even get know when the NBA training camps start, but this year it's not only news, it's tracked continuously. Rachel Nichols is interviewing the 3 dudes - Wade, LeBron and Bosh EVERYDAY! Leave it to ESPN to make a mountain out of a mole-hill and then sell that mountain to us as Mount Everest erected on top of Mount Whitney. Starting Oct 11-Th, they are going to have a special section called Heat Index tracking this team on ESPN.com. This is insane. I like it and hate it at the same time. I like the fact that there is focus on the NBA pre-season much like the NFL pre-season or even the spring training. But at the same time, this super team reminds me of the notorious Yankees in Baseball. I am afraid the NBA will be just about this team for the next 5 years.

The big 3 might have set a bad precedent for others to follow. For example, there is talk of how Amare, Melo and CP3 or Tony Parker will join forces in NYC. Multiple top money guys in the NBA could never play for the same team at the peak of their careers due to financial constraints. But LeBron, Wade and Bosh might have given the blueprint for everybody and this is not a good blueprint for the league in the long term. You could argue that Lakers were always that top team, but this is different. Even the Lakers had to grow their team organically due to NBA's economic rules, though it is true that success does seem to come easier for them than the other teams. They had Kobe and Shaq, but Kobe was drafted. They now have Kobe and Pau, but they traded for Pau. This is different from 3 of the top 5 picks in the same year coming together via free agency at the top of their game. This is the Heat "model".

The Heat are the most hated and the most intriguing NBA team right now. LeBron came out and said that race was part of the backlash against him. That ridiculous. You can't blame the white race for you going on a stupid "decision" show on ESPN and saying "I am taking my skills to South Beach". It's amazing that this once beloved home-town kid has become one of the top 6 most-hated sports personalities in the US. And he is now blaming others for his predicament. You left Cleveland, you went on TV and got all the attention you possibly can. Don't blame that on the white race. If you didn't milk your free agency like a poor third world cow farmer would milk his cow for the last drop of milk, the backlash wouldn't be this bad. And if you didn't have a bunch of high-school dropouts running your "global brand", you wouldn't have to learn that fact from this blog either! Your manager would have warned you so 24 months back when the attention started accumulating around your free agency.

Surprising week 3

Week 3 is usually when the NFL season gains some definition. NFL has been known for it's parity and hence there are always going to be a few surprising teams every season. And of course the first few weeks is when we are going to be surprised the most as these teams come out and disprove the expert's pre-season predictions. But there could be a few anomalies in the first 2 weeks as teams can catch a break with their schedule or run into a couple of tough teams. So week 3 normally ends up being a good indicator because as the number of games go from 2 to 3, the chances of fluke performances drastically decreases. Granted, it's still early days and teams can totally go from good to bad or bad to good from this point on to the end of the season. The San Diego chargers have done this many times and they are again on track for something similar with a 1-2 start. But by game 3, we typically get a good handle on most teams, if not all.

After week 3, there are 3 teams that are 3-0 and you could say 2 of them are surprises - KC Chiefs and the Chicago Bears. KC Chiefs one could argue have had an easy start to their schedule. Granted San Diego is tough, but they got them at home early in the season. Then they played Cleveland and San Francisco - 2 teams that are now 0-3, with San Francisco being the surprising 0-3 team. But Chiefs actually look very good. Thy have a lot of speed with their young guns and the Niners were exposed. They were not even competitive against the chiefs and it was funny listening to the Niners radio honks after the game still talking like they are some great team destined to win their division. One dude was saying they played down to their competition and was citing how they played well against the Saints and badly against the Chiefs and the Seahawks.

The niners were completely outplayed by the chiefs and it is pretty arrogant to talk about "playing down to the competition". Thats like me saying I didn't get a date with Angelina Jolie because I didn't use my best pickup lines on her :-) I love Mike Singletary, but I think his act is wearing thin and his job is under threat. He has now fired his offensive coordinator and that sounds like nothing but a defensive move to put the blame somewhere else. I hope he survives, but it is pretty clear that he is just an emotional, motivational type coach. His X's and O's is just not there.

There were several other surprising results last weekend. I was surprised by Dallas crushing Houston on the road. I guess Dallas showed up with everything they got to save their season. I still think Houston is the better team, but they can't play like that in a big game. Where were you Matt Schaub? Buffalo lost to the Patriots, but they made the game pretty interesting. The Patriots just don't have the defense this season to dominate teams. Brady better get ready to air it out and line up Moss behind him. The other surprises were Seattle running circles around the Chargers special teams and winning the game. Also, the rookie QB Sam Bradford is doing really well. The Rams shocked the Redskins at home 30-16. What's going on with McNabb and the skins? Minnesota saved it's season too behind Adrian Peterson against the now 0-3 Detroit. Jets beat Miami to go to 2-1 and Atlanta defeated the Saints in OT. There were a couple of games like the OT one which could have gone either way last weekend.

Raiders lost to Arizona, but the could have won if only the fatso sea-bass had made a 32 yard field goal. He is the highest paid kicker in the league and has such a strong leg, but he misses way too many critical field goals in my opinion. For his talent level, he is pretty inconsistent. The other close game this week was the Monday nighter between Green Bay and Chicago. It's funny to watch the Chicago offense. I don't think there has ever been a more risk taking offensive coordinator paired with a more reckless QB. Martz and Cutler just throw the ball wherever they want and surprisingly, the packers sill found a way to lose this gam via penalties. They still had a chance to win the game if only Greg Jennings hadn't fumbled ball away during the 2-minute drill. Aaron Rodgers played very well and his reputation is being cemented every time he takes the field. Cutler was not bad either, but some of his throws are interesting to say the least. He will be throwing some interesting interceptions this season.

Speaking of QBs, Vick is playing like the QB I thought he would be when I saw him play at Va Tech. I thought he was going to be the era defining QB for this era much like Dan Marino was for the 80's. And then he never became a great passer though he could run and had the arm strength. Now, it looks like everything is coming together. May be it's his maturity or may be it's the coaching at Philly, but he is making all the right reads, throwing precision darts and running effectively only when needed. It was fun just watching his highlights this week. Lets see if this continues when McNabb comes back to town next Sunday. Kyle Orton threw for 476 yards against the Colts and still lost. I am surprised he could do that. It probably was bad defense on the part of the Colts. Its funny that the top 5 guys yardage wise among the QBs (Orton, Rivers, Eli Manning, Brees and Henne) all lost proving once again defense wins championships. Well, unless we are talking about fantasy football championships, then it's great to have these QBs.

Week 3 is done and week 4 will only be better. In college, Arizona State played a frustrating game as they tried to come from behind and ended up throwing interception after interception after moving the ball well. Pathetic performance against a ranked team that couldn't actually stop them. The devils stopped themselves.

Flip-flop

In Philly, Andy Reid flip-flopped this week to go back from Kolb to Vick. He picked Kolb one day and switched sides the next. Now he claims that he has a great problem in his hands with 2 championship caliber QBs. First of all, neither him nor the Eagles should be talking about championships this season. Secondly, neither QBs are championship material. Vick has been playing well, but I think this is a bad decision. Granted, the stupid Philly fans will kill Kolb and Reid if Kolb started and faltered, but Kolb is their future. Vick's ceiling is set. He is a good runner and a mediocre QB. You traded away McNabb for Kolb and you have to set him up for the future. As somebody wrote on espn.com, seems like Eagles just wanted to replace McNabb with any QB NOT named Donovan McNabb! Kolb is young and talented and Vick's legs are not going to carry you that far. Sure, Vick is talented to win you a game or 2 all by himself, but this is becoming more and more of a passing league. There are more elite QBs right now than anytime in the recent past and Vick is not one of them. Let Kolb show what he is made up of before benching him for Vick.

I am not a Vick hater nor am I wedded to the "you can't lose your job to injury" philosophy, but there is some logic to that theory. You spent all your football intelligence and off-season training camps and OTAs and pre-season games to determine Kolb is your starter. Then he gets injured and Vick plays decent. Now you take the job and give it to Vick. So what if Kolb was indeed all that you told us he was? What if he was the next Peyton Manning? Are you going to derail his future just because Vick had 6 good quarters? I am not suggesting that Reid should be stubborn and stick to his decision, but he should let Kolb play and mature right now. It almost feels like Reid is afraid of his fan-base and would rather see Vick fail and then insert Kolb back instead of taking the tough, but right decision now. This might be a case of a fan-base influencing a head coach more than his common sense or football IQ. It's not a horrible decision, just a wrong one. Vick has played very well and he may even be better in the short-term than Kolb, but he doesn't do much for you long term and the Eagles have to think long-term here. Especially since they just got rid of Brian Westbrook and McNabb. This is the time to rebuild.

There are a couple of great games this weekend in the NFL. Houston is hosting Dallas in the Texas bowl and I am pretty sure they are going to whack the Cowboys. Schaub and the Texans are great on offense and are 2-0 after impressive wins. Schaub has been good for a couple of years now ever since he came to the Texans, though things never came together completely for him. This year might be the year where things jell together for him and the Texans. He threw for 497 yards (and crushed my team in fantasy) as the Texans beat McNabb and the Redskins 30-27 in OT. As McNabb and Shanahan and the rest of that team was walking to the locker room after this awesome game with all the yards and the twists and turns, I realized how draining NFL games should be. These guys spend the entire week preparing for this game and it should be hard to lose it in OT like that. It's a difficult, intense and physical line of work.

The Jets will be at the 2-0 Miami, who beat Favre and the Vikings last weekend. Jets payed a great game and shut down Brady and the Pats for a big win themselves. Darrelle Revis was injured on the play Randy Moss pulled in a superb one-handed catch for a TD. But the Jets did well anyways. Brady tried going to Moss on multiple occasions after the injury, but the strategy did not work. Chicago Bears will be facing the Packers next week to renew their long-standing rivalry. The Bears are a surprising 2-0 team and Culler and Mike Martz might get something going there. Cutler has the arm and Martz has the plays to use it. Last week, Cutler took care of the Cowboys in what was a great game. But the bears better be prepared for this one. It's one thing to stop Romo, but is a whole different ball-game if you want to stop Aaron Rodgers. Lets see how they do it.

In other sports, the Oregon State football team is going to Boise to supposedly give them their toughest game of the rest of the season. OSU actually painted their field blue to simulate road conditions. Not a bad idea, though a little newsworthy to say the least. If BSU wins, their BCS championship aspirations will not only stay alive, but look a lot more realistic. These mid-major teams always choke and lose these big games when it matters. But I think Boise state this year is different, In fact, they should not even be called a mid-major. Thats ofensive to a team like that. In basketball, Warriors coach Don Nelson is rumored to depart and turn the keys over to Keith Smart. This sounds like a great idea on paper and it probably upgrades the defense, rebounding and rotation. But Nelly's system provides a level of offensive success and excitement that sometimes translates into great fan and team energy and propels a team forward. This is especially true with young, talented teams and the only downside to Nelly leaving is that this offensive energy might dissipate unless Smart is smart enough to continue to tap into that well.

The Baseball pennant races are in full swing. The Yankees and the Rays are in a cut-throat battle for the AL East while the Padres and Giants are placed pretty close. With that pitching, Giants have had a season way better than expected. Hope they taper off and go away. They either win 13-0 or lose 0-1. That offense is feast or famine, but that pitching is forcing famine in a lot of cities around the National League. The ERAs of their starting pitching are 3 (Cain), 3.16 (Sanchez), 3.26 (Bumgarner), 3.6 (Lincecum) and 3.98 (Zito). Thats an awesome range even in this non-juiced, pitcher friendly year. They obviously have the best ERA in the league followed by San Diego, who is fighting them for the NL West crown. It should be a fun 10 days in this division, but unfortunately my DBacks have nothing to offer. Most of the other divisions are not competitive and the Twins actually clinched the division already and have the best record in Baseball. Ron Gardenhire is awesome! He and Matt Schaub may be two of the most under-rated talents in sports today.

Tough games

Two of my teams had a rough, rough day on the field last football weekend. Both these teams just gave away their game to the opponent and luck was not on their side as well. First it was ASU on Saturday going into Madison and outplaying the 11-Th ranked Wisconsin badgers. I was at a sports bar with some friendly, mid-western alums from Wisconsin and the grip was on for them once they saw how fast and effective the ASU running game was in the first quarter. But after both teams missed a field goal, the ASU receivers dropped a couple of catchable passes in the end-zone. Mistakes like that on the road are always costly. The badgers special teams had no answers to the Devils kick-off and punt returns and the Devils scored a TD through their special teams. But then they almost returned one more at the halftime buzzer. It was so hard to see them get tacked at the 1 yard line with no time on the clock. That was just bad luck. They could have scored if the guy got one more yard or if we had one more second on the clock for a field-goal kick or a play. They came back in the second half and the game went back and forth. The Devils fell behind, but came back to score a TD to make it 20-19. They then missed an extra point kick to lose the game. I couldn't believe my eyes. Tough way to lose the game.

Then on Monday night, the niners lose a great game in a similar way. I am not a passionate fan of any particular NFL team except my fantasy team, but I do have a soft-corer for the niners. They will probably be in my top 3 list in the NFL along with the Arizona Cardinals and the Oakland Raiders. They played very well and defended Drew Breezy and the Saints effectively. But 4 turnovers did not help their cause. Alex Smith had 2 interceptions, both of which didn't seem like his mistake exclusively. The first one was intended for Gore and was a little wide and inaccurate, but both INTs were tipped balls. Some of these turnovers were also in the red-zone and those are the worst. Despite all these mistakes, the niners had a chance to tie the game with a TD and a 2 point conversion. Alex Smith got them both in what was the best drive of his career up to this point. The 2-point conversion was denied by the refs initially, but a booth review overturned it and tied the game up.

The only problem was, Alex Smith left too much time on the clock for the Saints. Breezy did what Breezy do and basically won the game for the Saints 25-22. The game winning kick was actually tipped by the niner defender, but went in anyways. This was really unlucky for the niners. It's not often you see a tipped kick make it through the goalpost. That hurt. If not for the 4 turnovers, the niners could have beaten the champs 30-15 or something. The niners have now lost 2 games where they looked like the better team for 6 out of 8 quarters. May be Mike Singletary does have to take some responsibility for this. I like him a lot and I think he is a great professional and a great motivator, but I am not sure if he is a great Xs and Os coach. Also, his fire and brimstone approach can wear thin easily. The niners better start winning before the players start tuning out Mike. I like Alex Smith too. I hear good things about him as a person and this game might be the first time where fans and the media are also saying good things about Alex Smith, the football player.

Anyways, 2 days, 2 teams, 2 great games, but 2 heart-breaking losses.

Week to week

Life is flowing gently from week to week right now. Thats the beauty of the football season. You start following the rhythm of the football season - both college and NFL, and your excitement level picks up towards the weekend and settles down during the week. With some spike in excitement Monday night for MNF and Thursday night if you are a hardcore college guy. Week 1 was good in the NFL. Lots of low scoring games as the offenses are still trying to get into the groove. New Orleans beat Minnesota 14-9 and Washington beat Dallas 13-7 in 2 of the more surprising low scoring games. Baltimore beat the over-rated Jets 10-9 in a game which didn't surprise me at all. The one true upset of the week was Indianapolis losing 34-24 to Houston despite Manning throwing for 433 yards and 3 TDs. This was a huge win for Houston as we have all been waiting for them to take the next step. This victory might propel them to much better chemistry and performance down the road this season.

In college, ASU is playing Wisconsin tomorrow. Arizona is playing Iowa and the cats are ranked 24. Hope they lose and stay out of the rankings. No other major top-25 match-ups between ranked teams. Last weekend, Va Tech lost to James Madison 21-16 at home. This was shocking and embarrassing for the Hokies, but more importantly, this diluted Boise state's win over the Hokies the weekend before. So Boise lost some shine and may be some number 1 votes even without playing a game. Classic college football - broken system with questionable semantics. I always love how at the end of year talk shows are endlessly arguing about the relative superiority of conferences. Oregon state lost to Mississippi state which lost to Tennessee but Tennessee lost to UCLA which in turn lost to Oregon state. So is the Pac-10 better or the SEC? You can argue about all this till the cows come home and thats exactly what NCAA wants us to do. We are still a few months away from such discussions. Lets enjoy the games until then.

Bring on the NFL

The first NFL Sunday is almost here, It's like christmas-eve for sports fan as we get ready for the must-see TV over the next 5 months. America's top league takes over Sundays from now until early February and dominates some Mondays and Thursdays too. The season officially kicked off Thursday with the much awaited Saints-Viking matchup. The game didn't live up to the hype and neither did Brees or Favre, but it was still awesome to see football on TV and see these superstars play. Saints won as expected, but the scoring was not nearly as prolific as people expected. I was a little surprised at the Saints and Brees having trouble scoring. I am going to go ahead and give the credit to the Vikings defense. I think they are good and thats good news if you are a Vikings fan.

The Vikings offense on the other hand didn't look that great. Understandable considering Favre is just getting back into the groove and with Sidney Rice missing. Adrian Peterson had a few good runs, but Favre was clearly off on a few throws. He spoke about it in the post-game show and claimed that the game would have been different if he was not off on those throws. I would be pissed if I was a Vikings fan. He is talking about being a little off after missing all of training camp. Isn't that what practice is for? To get all of the timing and chemistry nailed down. Of course he is off and he can't use slugs like Cleveland and Detroit as training camp substitute this season since their schedule is a lot harder. But I think they are going to be fine given that defense and the fact that Favre is going to be fine eventually.

Favre's old team, the Packers are a trendy super bowl pick from the NFC this season. I am surprised, but happy about it. I have always been a fan of Aaron Rodgers and he is clearly one of the top QBs in the league today. Suddenly this era has become a golden era for quarterbacks after a few years of serious mediocrity at the position outside of a coupe of elite QBs. Now, there are more than a dozen high quality QBs with a lot of young guns like Rodgers and Rivers. I was happy to see A-Rod lead all QBs in the fantasy rankings. I don't always remember when I am wrong, but I won't forget to remind people if and when I am right. I told anybody who would listen that Rodgers will be good and same with Brees. I have liked both these guys from their college days and they had their ups and downs in the league, but they have finally arrived. Tomorrow, Rodgers and the Packers have a big start against Phily. Week 1 features a lot of good games and I am ready for all of them.

In college today, Penn state couldn't hang with Alabama and Florida state got embarrassed by Oklahoma. Miami lost to Ohio state and Georgia lost to South Carolina in the top-25. The biggest loser of the weekend didn't even play. Boise state was off after their impressive victory, but Va Tech made sure it was not that impressive anymore by promptly losing to James Madison at home. Not sure what it does to Boise state's championship aspirations, but it can't be good. In the Pac-10, my man - captain comeback Jim Harbaugh and his boys from Stanford undressed the Bruins 35-0. Thats a great start to their Pac-10 season. ASU won and the other great win for Pac-10 was with Oregon crushing Tennessee 48-13. USA barely sneaked past

Noisy Boise

Welcome back college football and aren't we all glad it's back! Boise State took care of business today against the 10-Th ranked Virginia Tech and validated their 3-Rd spot in the ranking to some extent. They looked good and dominated a legitimate, East-coast, ranked BCS team on the road. It was a neutral venue at Washington's FedEx field, but it was Hokie-town today all the way, given DC's proximity to Blacksburg. And of course, the media respects East coast teams more anyways. So Boise stands to gain a lot by beating the Hokies instead of some Pac-10 team. They busted out the special teams on Beamer ball himself and went up 17-0. But Va Tech crawled back into the game and Boise had to win it with a 2 minute drill at the end. Boise's remaining schedule is kinda soft with only a visit from Oregon State to the blue turn looking mildly challenging on their calendar. This means they may have a legitimate shot at the national championship game. It would be interesting to see what happens if they stay unbeaten. Boise did play the Fiesta bowl last year against the other highly ranked non-BCS team - TCU. Both teams are back this season ranked pretty high and TCU beat the 24-Th ranked Oregon state this weekend. Not happy as a Pac-10 honk, but it is what it is.

Speaking of Pac-10, ASU is ranked 9-Th out of 10 teams. What the hell is Dennis Erickson doing? They did beat Portland state in their season opener, but thats neither here nor there. USC won as well, but did not dominate. Oregon dominated New Mexico 72-0. It should have been brutal to be their mascot doing all those push-ups after every TD. I guess the message was "get buff or die trying". Pac-10 is viewed to be even weaker this year than usual and as if to prove that right, Washington State got crushed by Oklahoma State 65-17. Washington lost to BYU And UCLA lost to Kansas State to round off the weekend. And again, ASU is ranked 9-Th in this conference? Scary bad! The 2 top-25 upsets were Utah beating the 15-Th seeded Pittsburgh and 21-St seeded LSU beating North Carolina ranked 18. The second one was not a major upset, but it was one of the 3 big games this opening weekend and Les Miles comes through. Few high-profile teams involved in some big games in week 2 - Penn State @ Alabama, Miami @ Ohio State and Florida State @ Oklahoma. I would be pulling for the road teams in all those 3 games. Give me Joe-Pa over Nick Saban any day of the week. All in all, good start to the football season and it's only going to get better with the NFL kick-off on Thursday.

Speaking of the NFL, the Cardinals released Matt Leinart and he signed with the Texans today to backup Matt Schaub. Schaub is injury-prone though he is way better than Leinart. So we may even see Leinart play a little this year. As bad as Leinart has been, I still didn't want him to be released unceremoniously. Considering all the investment the Cards have put into him, they should have given him another shot. He was no comparison to Kurt Warner, but I don't think he deserves to be cut in favor of Derek Anderson - benched may be, but not cut. 14 TDs and 20 INTs doesn't make a great career yet, but the Cards should have given him another shot just because they don't have a great option ahead of him. Anderson is better, but only slightly and Leinart has slightly more upside. I think it was more a personal decision than a football decision. Matt coming out and complaining openly about the coaching decisions didn't help. The relationship was damaged and the Cards decided there was not enough talent there to put up with him anymore. TJ.Housh was the other big name who got cut and he got picked up by the Ravens. Baltimore now has a lot of big names on the flanks and lets see if it pans out. The Jets finally signed Darrelle Revis and it should be a good Monday night opener between the Ravens and the Jets. Let's see how Boldin does on the Revis Island.