First, you have to strip away your prejudices – Don’t pre-judge this with past football glory and lore of the SEC or Red River Shootouts. Granted, in the past the best football was played at gridiron powerhouses like Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, and ‘Bama, but Bear Bryant is dead and the limiting of scholarships has brought parity closer to fruition in the FBS.

Try and judge this strictly by these teams, this year – unless you want to consider that this is not Utah’s first big rodeo. They have already won a BCS Bowl game previously.

But, this year:

Utah played every game on it’s schedule and won each won. No other team did.

The above sentence is enough in every other sport, at every other level to declare a team a champion. If that is not enough for you, lets take it a step farther:

Utah won all of its games, did not play a cupcake schedule, and beat a storied football powerhouse from FBS’s premiere conference that was ranked number one for a large chunk of the season in a BCS bowl game.

Whew! Alright, if you can make it through that sentence and logic is you mental weapon of choice then you’ll have to agree that Utah should be Number 1!

I don’t care how close the games were – they won all their games against quality opponents. Winning all the games on your schedule is all you can do and something that Florida, USC, Oklahoma, all the other teams in the BCS could not do. Utah didn’t have an off night or a bad game, they were the superior team in every game the played.

Further, they did not just get lucky against Alabama. They did not need to run the statue of liberty against ‘bama in the last moments of the game. They straight up beat down the team that ran over the SEC in the regular season.

I might watch Florida and Oklahoma next week, but I won’t be watching the National Championship game, I watched the champs last night.

Here is a transcript of our latest:

JTk: So, right now, for this year only, I think the Jets got a STEAL in their deal for a QB… What’s his name

JTk: And Green Bay, well, they are at least not as good as last year

StevieB: but the jets aren’t as good as green bay last year, either

JTk: Oh, I disagree

JTk: If I were you I would be very worried it the Steelers have to play the J E T S in the first round they are dangerous

StevieB: every team is

StevieB: but we had just said that the titans needed to lose one

JTk: right – you are stubborn man

JTk: I am telling you, don’t sleep on the Fighting Farves

StevieB: favre gets remembered for his great games, but everybody forgets how many times he presses and INT’s games away

JTk: You are missing the big picture

JTk: can’t measure everything, he makes him team better

JTk: period

JTk: some people make their teams worse

JTk: ( you have the list I believe

JTk: Some make their teams better

JTk: Farve is at the top of that list

JTk: Dude, this is going on the blog, this is as good as Peter King’s stuff LOL

StevieB: call me a hater if you want, but favre just doesn’t have it for me but make sure you put that i didn’t like mcnair for many of the same touchy-feely reason

StevieB: granted, if you have a fantasy league that doesn’t dock for INT’s, he’s great

JTk: numbers, numbers, numbers

JTk: numbers != football

StevieB: but a lot of my favre hating is because i went to school with a favre – and they all hated that part of the family…

Congratulations on the great game Thursday night, I think that seeing a little of the vintage Brett Favre magic would have been a great way to restore interest and build excitement about your brand.

Of course I ( even though I have the interweb, cable, smart phone, etc. ) couldn’t watch it. Not that I am complaining, I think that most of the people you are trying to reach couldn’t watch it.

I am sure it’s not 100% your fault, but it is your league and like the man says the buck stops, well, with you.

Thanks for your time,

JTk

Beat Lithuania and then you can be news again.

Come in second in some international competition and then you can be news again, but for now no news for you.

These guys are obviously not the best basketball players in the world, hell they didn’t even make it to the final game of the World Championship. Spain and Greece beat the US “stars” – and in the Olympics 2 years before Argentina and Italy finished ahead of the US Ballers.

So, by my count US basketball is maybe #5.

I know that some foreign players like Ginobili and Gasol play in the NBA but that is not the point. The point is that the current system of basketball in the US is broken and the NBA is the pinnacle of that system. The NBA “superstars” can’t beat teams that can fundamentally pass, pick, and play defense.

So why is this inferior brand of basketball news? Maybe we just love style over substance.

With all due respect to Boston College I think that the ACC Atlantic division should be decided early. If FSU beats Miami in week 1 and Clemson in week 3 Look for the Noles to win it again. Since I think the Miami may very well loose 4 games I am giving the Coastal conference to Virginia Tech.

Auburn, LSU, Georgia, and Florida look like they are the cream of the SEC. So the Tigers vs. the Tigers on September 16 should determine the winners of the SEC West and the worlds largest outdoor cocktail party the winner of the east. I’m taking Auburn at home and it would be poetic justice if the Dawgs beat an undefeated, higher-ranked, favored Florida squad.

USC is still the best team out west. Cal could give them some competition but the smart money is on the Trojans taking the Pac 10 again – but losing a game somewhere along the line. Louisville and West Virginia are pick’ em in the Big East – they meet in Kentucky on November 2. This game will not only determine the winner of the weakest BCS conference it very well may have nation title implications.

The big question in the Big Ten is will Lloyd Carr be fired when the Wolverines loose to Ohio State again this year. I would take the Buckeyes to win their first four games ( including against Texas in week 2 ) and win all the rest after losing to Iowa on September 30. Yep, Kirk Ferentz leads the Hawkeyes to the Big Ten Championship and with the help of a week non-con schedule an unbeaten season. How’s that for a dark horse?

Texas will rebound from the early loss to Ohio State to win their half of the Big 12 with Nebraska winning the North. I bet all those boomer sooners are pissed -knuckeheaded QB…

Notre Dame gets a BCS game invitation.

As you probably have already guessed, I am going out to the very end of the limb with my National Championship predictions. Sure, it would be much easier to pick two of the pre-season top 5 teams and write them in – but I am not going to do that.

National Championship Game: Iowa vs. the winner of Louisville – West Virginia.

Come on, you saw that coming, didn’t you? This is just as much about schedules and conferences as it is about these 3 teams. The Mountaineers should destroy everyone but Louisville on their schedule with Maryland, Pitt, and South Florida being the only (small ) potential road bumps. Louisville has a tougher non-conference schedule but if they can close the deal on Miami ( so close last year ) they benefit from the same soft Big East conference schedule.

I’m picking Iowa over whoever gets the Big East bid. So there you go Iowa fans, Drew Tate leads coach Ferentz’s Hawkeye’s to the 2006 National Championship.

Trade Michael Vick.

Michael Vick is the World B Free of the NFL – he is exciting, even amazing, and sells a lot of tickets. What he is not, imho, is a championship caliber NFL quarterback.

Okay, maybe the World B Free reference was a low blow, and he seems like a good guy so I don’t want to be attacking him personally – but his trade value is not going to be any higher then it is right now. The falcons could get some defensive help up the middle for this year as well as a couple good future draft picks for him, and give themselves a chance to become a contender.

Matt Schaub is a good quarterback and I think he gives the Falcons at least as good an opportunity to win now as Vick does. Is Schaub as exciting as Vick? Not even close. Will he complete more third down passes then Vick on average? Yes. Schaub will be a starting quarterback in the NFL in the near future if the Falcons let him go and he is a better fit for the Falcons offense. If Schaub was given the offense and got all of the reps, I think that he would be a more efficient quarterback then Vick in short order.

Vick was the 25th rated quarterback in the league last year, that is 25th out of 34 – that is there were only 9 quarterbacks that qualified that were rated lower then he was.

By and large if you look at the list, the teams with the higher rated QB’s went to the playoff’s – only one quarterback in the lower half directed his team to the post season and that was Chris Simms who was in his first year at the helm and got significantly better as the year went on.

Vick starts the bottom quarter of this list.

Look at the division that the Falcons play in, the 2 top teams, the Bucs and the Carolina Panthers have both figured out how to stop Vick. Not even his dazzling running is effective against those teams. With Vick at the helm you can just about pencil in 4 conference losses for the Falcons.

Vick completed just 55.3 percent of his passes last year. The conventional wisdom is that a NFL quarterback needs to complete over 60% of his passes to be effective. His yards per attempt rank him 26th in the league and his 13 interceptions rank him 25th.

Vicks quarterback rating: 73.1
Schaub’s quarterback rating of 98.1

Not to mention that I am surprised every time Vick gets up from a hit and is not holding his knee or ankle. He has yet to prove that he can survive the rigors of the NFL season playing the game the way that he does.

Now, lets look at Vick’s perceived value – do you think that one of the other quarterback challenged clubs would not part with some really good players and or picks to secure Vick? Of course, because the egos of coaches are such that they think that the only thing Vick is missing is THEIR scheme or THEIR coaching.

And if you need proof of what a team can do by trading one superstar for draft picks, just look back at what Dallas did when they built their championship juggernauts by trading Herschell Walker to Minnesota for all those draft picks.

So the value proposition for fielding a winning football team is clear to me. Now Mr. Blank may be more interested in selling tickets then winning championships – and if so he should keep Vick. He is exciting as hell. But, if Blank, McCay, and Mora want to put together a championship team the solution is clear.

Trade Michael Vick

Steve Nash
Sam Cassell
Rasheed Wallace
Tim Duncan
Dirk Nowitzki

A little unoridox line up I know, but hey the Bullets won the championship with a 6′ 9″ center

Hey, I’m just asking. I guess it could be Byner’s fumble, or maybe the answer is the Drew Carey Show…

The pure innocent joy that I remember is like very little that I have experienced since, and even though my interests quickly turned away from baseball to other sports, girls, music, etc. baseball still has a very special place in my internal mythos.

I think this is why I have had such a visceral reaction to the farce that Major League Baseball has turned into, and in my mind is personified by Barry Bonds. About the same time I was learning how to turn a double play, I watched Hank Aaron hit that Al Downing pitch over the wall to break Babe Ruth’s homerun record and I will be damned if I am going to support an organization that is planning on celebrating the aforementioned Mr. Bonds breaking Hammerin’ Hank’s record with the (alleged) aid of performance enhancing drugs.

I say alleged because it has never been proven that Bonds has ever used steroids; he has never tested positive, but come on, anyone that is the least bit unbiased can look at the evidence and come to a fair conclusion that there is very little doubt that he is/was not juiced. If you need more evidence than his physical transformation, the fact that he has gotten significantly higher production at point in his career when all pre-juice era players production falls off, and his laughable grand jury testimony, just read the excerpt from Game of Shadows and I think that you’ll get all of the evidence you need.

Early in this MLB season, Bonds will pass Babe Ruth to become the second most prolific home run hitter in Major League history. But I won’t see it. I am not going to watch the first baseball game this year, I am not watching the highlights on Sport Center, I will not attend a game, read any baseball news online, nothing. I am boycotting MLB because they are complicit in allowing this to happen and I want nothing to do with it.

If Bonds hits homeruns at the same pace this year as he has in the last few seasons, he will pass Henry Aaron later in the season to be baseball’s all time homerun hitter. I don’t care if you put an asterisk next to his name, tell me that nobody is going to think about this record the same way as Hank’s, etc. MLB is not only going to let it happen they are going to celebrate it – and it is a travesty, a miscarriage of justice and I will not be a part of it. I am boycotting MLB and I ask each of you to look inside yourself and decide if you want to support this farce.

If you watch baseball on TV, go to a game, buy merchandise – then you are an accomplice in this ludicrous, empty show – this mockery, this sham. Join me in letting Bud Selig and Barry Bonds know that this is NOT okay, that we are not going to be part of this travesty.

Join me in my Boycott of 2006 Major League Baseball.

1. 16% chance Duke Wins it. Although any of the one’s have as good a chance at winning it, yes even Memphis. And Memphis out in the Oakland bracket looks pretty good – UCLA is the second weakest 2 seed imho ( Tenn first ). And Duke getting GW in the 2nd round could be the most competitive 2nd round games for a one seed.

3. 10.6 % Gonzage wins it all, 9.33% chance Iowas wins it all

5. 5% Washington wins it all, 4.77% Nevada Wins it all, and this may be high seeing that they are playing Boston College in Round 2 if they get that far….

7. 2.28% chance Georgetown wins it all, don’t like the other 7 seeds.

9. Wisconsin is the best 9 seed and it has a 1.7% change of wining.

Other thoughts:

The Beast from the East: Syracuse from the bubble to a 5, and 8 teams from the big east – more then even from back in the Chris Mullins / Patrick Ewing Heyday

If the first round seeds hold West Virginia vs. Iowa; Kansas vs. Pittsburgh; and Michigan St. vs. North Carolina could all be classic second round games. Arizona vs. Wisconsin is easily the best opening round game.