College Gameday

Whether they're trap games or marquee matchups, today is a great day in college football. At 11 o'clock, Northwestern visits Kinnick Stadium as the Hawkeyes try to keep the dream season alive. This will be a tough game for the Hawks, don't know if they come out undefeated.

At 2, Oregon visits Stanford. Again, just one of those games that could surprise the better team. Georgia Tech looks to continue their hold of the ACC crown against an above average Wake Forest team. But the highlight game are Ohio State- Penn State in Happy Valley and LSU-Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Penn State's defense will be dominant, and Dwight Clark will make more plays than Terrelle Pryor. It's so hard to call the LSU-Bama game, if LSU can stop the run, I think they win though.

In the evening, Oregon State and Cal will at least entertain the audience. Nebraska can gain a solid hold in the Big 12 North if they beat Oklahoma, not that a hold of the Big 12 North is saying much about your team.

Well, there it is. Hope you guys have a great Saturday watching the games, but get your homework done too!

Championships Bought and Sold

I have never gotten to riled up about the whole "Yankees buy championships" talk. To me, as much money as the Yankees have, the team chemistry really does matter. I think that Nick Swisher's outgoing, vibrant personality changed the Yankees this season, and even though he makes $5.5 million a year, I think Andy Pettite's contribution this season is critical to the Yankees championship. That said, some recent trends do bother me. Specifically, contending teams using smaller market teams as pseudo-farm systems.

I guess I should clarify the origination of this post. Last night, I saw that the Red Sox signed Jeremy Hermida from the Florida Marlins in exchange for 2 minor league pitchers. I think it's a great signing, but I can't help but feel that my Red Sox are turning into the Yankees by buying emerging free agents to contend rather than growing most of their talent. When I first became a Red Sox fan, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez were the stars of Fenway. In fact, I have a T-shirt with both of them on it, one of my favorites. But the difference back then was Nomar was the home grown star and Pedro was the marquee free agent. I am by no means arguing that teams should not seek a marquee free agent in the offseason to put them over the proverbial edge. But there is a difference between going after that one guy that puts you over the edge and signing Mark Teixeira, arguably last year's best bat in free agency, and CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, probably the 2 best arms in free agency.

It's quite alarming to see how many of the Yankees and Red Sox players have come from smaller market teams (I'm calling Japanese teams these too)out of free agency or minor league trades. So here we go:
Yankees
Sabathia, Burnett, Bruney and Marte in the pitching staff.
Matsui, Damon, A-Rod, Teixeira, Swisher in the field/at bat.
Red Sox
Bay, Drew, Ortiz, Martinez, Baldelli in the field/at bat.
Beckett, Schilling (during their championship run), Matsuzaka, Okajima (maybe) in the pitching staff.

To have eight key players from free agency seems ridiculous to me, specifically how they are simply bought out by the Yankees or Red Sox from other teams. It's scary to think what baseball would be like with a salary cap, but clearly the makeup of teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox is concerning to baseball enthusiasts.

Statistical Imbalance

I was just perusing NFL stat leaders for the 1st half of the season searching for ideas for a new post, and came across the QB rating leaders. Like I'm sure most of you have done forever, I have only looked at QB rating with a general knowledge that 100 is pretty good, the 60s are kind of the Mendoza line of ball-hurlers, and 120 or higher is a great game. So, I decided to look into it some more. First, I found out that Aaron Rodgers is the leader in passer rating, which seemed odd to me considering how many times he has been sacked.

Then I found out that QB rating doesn't even take sacks into account! This really disturbs me. I recognize that a quarterback can't help a terrible offensive line, so I don't think that it should be a huge factor in the calculations, but the simple fact is that some quarterbacks, like Rodgers, hold the ball for way too long! If QB rating is meant to be referenced as a complete statistic, it has to involve sacks to me. It's absurd to me that Aaron Rodgers is considered the best quarterback in the NFL above Manning, Brees, and Favre this year. While I recognize that the difference between the four is only four points, that is exactly why a sack/attempt ratio of some sort should be employed in calculating the rating. Quarterbacks holding the ball can cost their teams valuable points and even games, and so if we are rating their performance, doesn't it make sense to include some reference about how frequently the quarterback is sacked? I do not pretend to be mathematically inclined enough to offer a statistical improvement on this, but I don't think that completions, yards, touchdowns, and interceptions per attempt are the only factors of a quarterback's success.

So, for what it's worth I think that Manning, Brees, and Favre have clearly had better years than Rodgers as NFL quarterbacks and the rating considered to be the ultimate barometer of quarterback success should reflect that.

HCS Week 3

Real quick post for Week 3.
1. Florida: Win vs Georgia is no longer impressive, but it's a win in the SEC
2. Texas: Win against Oklahoma State is impressive in my book.
3. Alabama: Will leapfrog with a win against LSU
4. Iowa: Classic comeback will make a great highlight reel for our argument for a title shot
5. Cincinnati: Big East is just a bad conference
6. Boise State: WAC is worse
7. Oregon: Only reason they aren't higher is because their one loss is to Boise State
8. TCU: Oregon has more an impressive resume so TCU gets bumped for now.
9. LSU: Big game next week in Tuscaloosa
10. Georgia Tech: Has one better win than Penn State, but will get jumped if the Nittany Lions beat the Buckeyes in Columbus.
11. Penn State: Opportunity to break the Top 10 next week if they take care of Ohio State and LSU loses.
12. USC: Quality wins give them the nod over Pitt, but they will get jumped if Pitt keeps in the win column. The Trojans weren't even competitive in Eugene this week.
13. Pitt: Stuck here because of the Big East lack of competition
14. Utah: One loss was to a great team, can't argue with that.
15. Houston: Barely edges out 2 loss Arizona for this spot.

Random side-note: The Hawkeyes actually have a chance at leaping the Longhorns for the title berth if and only if Arizona wins out and Penn State beats Ohio State, while the Hawkeyes end the season undefeated. Not saying this will happen, but that's the only way they could get the shot.

NFL Knockouts

This week is clearly highlighted by Favre's return to Lambeau, but the early games should be entertaining as well. Houston will dominate the Bills, I wish the Cowboys would lose to the Seahawks, but Seattle is not good. 49ers-Colts will be the most compelling game if the 49ers defense can give Peyton fits; plus Alex Smith in his first start in a coon's age is worth taking a peek. If Peyton is Peyton though, we can at least count on division rivals Philly and New York to play a close game. I seem to be a minority on this call: but I think Denver stays undefeated against Baltimore. Later Carolina-Arizona will be forgotten almost entirely (justifiably so, that game sucks) because of the Packers-Vikings game. Then on Monday, New Orleans stays undefeated against the Atlanta Falcons. Halloween lesson of the day: Don't drink and dial.