TruffleShuffle

there were probably other teams interested but the key is that brees signed a 6 year, $60M deal there. i'd like cubbiebum to show me where brees left better money on the table to go to new orleans because they were recovering from hurricane katrina.

This is just vague hand waving and meaningless rhetoric. What do "sending a message", "token effort", and "coming down really light" even mean? It is a convenient way of giving yourself wiggle room to criticize whatever penalties come down as being too lenient though. and lets be honest, no college fb fan really wants the NCAA to really promote amateurism. The just want it enforced at schools who do better then the team they cheer for i'd like a level playing field. there are rules in place and if the school i root for chooses to abide by those rules, i don't want school to suffer competitively because other schools are looking the other way and letting their athletes get houses and cars and money. if that's going to happen and you're not going to enforce the rules, then just get rid of them altogether and let schools pay athletes whatever they want.

Ripken? Rickey [expletive] Henderson ryne sandberg, wade boggs, nolan ryan, robin yount, paul molitor, carlton fisk...

yeah some of the patriot league teams do that for swimming (we did not, which was why we sucked relative to the other teams). a friend of mine was on a half-"academic" scholarship to lehigh while swimming there. when he quit swimming before his senior year his "academic" scholarship went away. another guy i knew was on partial "academic" scholarship to lehigh even though he scored under 1000 on his SATs. non-athletes don't get into lehigh with SATs that bad, let alone getting an academic scholarship.

No I didn't. I am saying that they should quit the pre-tense that these guys are students. they are money maker so unless they really want to they don't have to go to class. don't take up a seat that could go to someone who wants to learn, then they can concentrate on football and basketball and bringing in money for the University. There is a college in Alabama that dropped there football program and the enrollment went up as well as the overall grade point average, not only that but the secondary sports participation skyrocketed despite a fee needing to be paid. major college sports - like u. of alabama at tuscaloosa - is completely different than small colleges. my alma mater (holy cross) loses over a million dollars a year on their football team; alabama probably funds their entire athletic department with their team.

yes i'm sure that brees signed with new orleans because of hurricane katrina, not because they offered him the most money and had the most confidence that his shoulder was fine.

peyton manning being awesome at football has a lot more to do with the game than katrina or who dat.

Less important to whom? Aren't we talking about the football program here? The Tim Floyd stuff is more important to whatever punishment the NCAA hands down on the football program than the Reggie Bush stuff? That doesn't sound reasonable. i'm just thinking about the athletic department as a whole. how can usc's punishment be a handful of forfeited wins, loss of a few scholarships and the basketball team bowing out of ncaa postseason play in a year where they aren't good? you have guys who are either lower or middle class driving nice cars, getting new clothes, new plasma tv's and their parents are living in nice new pads. even if usc's athletic department wasn't complicit with all this - and i don't think they were - there had to be lot of hands over the eyes, fingers in the ears to miss what was going on.

Tim Floyd should effect the football program? What a reach. you're well on your way to not reaching that 60% mark required by your socialist spelling teacher.

the reggie bush thing is probably less important than the tim floyd and rodney guillory stuff. if you have a star player whose family is being given a nice house and a coach giving money to a booster, and a booster buying a star basketball player all kinds of things, doesn't that kind of scream "lack of institutional control"?

depends on his bonus demands. if the dude wants $25M then pass. you can drop that amount on super-slot draft picks and international signings and get 15 good prospects, a few of whom should turn into good players.

i'm trying to figure out how three of carlos' gomez top four pecota comps are dwight evans, carlos beltran and grady sizemore. those three guys were/are (a) really good at walking and (b) much more productive at this age than gomez has been.

fwiw, i looked up some projections for blanco and this is what they have: pecota: .267/.320/.377/.697 bill james: .256/.301/.349/.650 CHONE: .265/.314/.368/.683 Marcel: .268/.333/.410/.743 Averaging those, you get .264/.317/.376/.693. Theriot's projections: pecota: .284/.356/.370/.726 bill james: .284/.352/.357/.709 CHONE: .280/.350/.367/.717 Marcel: .281/.348/.363/.712 Averaging those, you get .282/.352/.364/.716. i guess it comes down to a couple of things. one, with theriot you are fairly certain that you're getting a line like the ones you see above - he's been a regular player for a couple of years now and you know what you're going to get. blanco might be able to hit at that line above, but he's been a pretty weak hitter for much of his major league career and is largely unproven against major league pitchers. the other question is, how much better is blanco's defense than theriot's? the metrics seem to suggest they're pretty close in terms of ability, but the scouting reports on blanco's defense have always been very positive, and he looked really strong with the cubs last year. i dunno, blanco's recent development gives me some optimism. you can also look at omar vizquel's first eight years as a professional player, if you want more reason to feel optimistic. vizquel basically could not hit for beans until he reached his mid 20s, but then he became a very useful player. he always had a pretty good eye and the ability to make contact, but did not hit the ball with any authority. that said, blanco doesn't have as good an eye as vizquel had as a minor leaguer, and there is also the example of rey ordonez, who made contact and drew a few walks but was a God-awful hitter. but he never flashed the power that blanco showed with iowa last year. when it all comes down to it, i'm not convinced that theriot will be that much better than blanco this year. theriot has tended to wear down during the second half of the season, and we have castro coming along, so maybe the most prudent thing to do is keep theriot around through midyear and then shop him around. but if blanco is hitting the ball with authority in spring training and castro looks like he's not far from the majors, i'd look seriously into dealing theriot away.

he was a little lucky on balls in play, but his line drive rate is up the last couple of years. it seems he's able to square the ball up and hit it with a little more authority than he did earlier in his minor league career. still, i don't think you give blanco the job hoping he puts up a .250/.350/.425 line (plus there is no way he walks enough for that to happen). i think you hope for something like .260/.310/.375 and very good defense. that would be good enough to not be a black hole.

Lord knows that college football and college recruiting have enough seedy stories; here's one that's actually nice: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/football/ncaa/02/03/clemson.commitment.lb.ap/index.html

i always took "chucker" to mean someone who takes lots of jump shots, doesn't make enough of them, and doesn't do much else (rebound, pass, play defense) on the court.

also qb paul jones... scout had him rated higher and he has already enrolled, so there's a decent chance he'll be the backup as a true freshman (unless they really like the walk-on who's currently backup). they got some nice recruits at D line, center and TE, which they all needed... their depth at DT is thin though. people on the message boards were griping yesterday because a couple of the real highly-regarded guys (lattimore, floyd) didn't pick psu, but this recruiting class got 2 very good qb's and was ranked by pretty much everyone as the best one in the big ten, and around #10 in the country. that's fine.

i'm assuming people will hurl bottles at his head.

wow i assumed it would be red sox-yankees and red sox-yankees.

way to lose to the [expletive] worst team in the nhl and get shut out tonight, flyers.

or, since it's jim hendry spending the money, a mediocre middle reliever or utility infielder.

Yeah that seems to be more of an SEC trait. they do get into some fierce bidding wars.

hahaha he also spelled it "trogans" yesterday

my prediction is that iowa and wisconsin will get recruiting classes that nobody thinks is very good, and then will continue to do better than everyone thinks they should.

cut their payroll