Andy

My picks: TAMPA BAY (+5.5) over Cincinnati ATLANTA (-3) over NY Giants Tennessee (+10.5) over WASHINGTON DALLAS (-13) over Houston Carolina (+3) over BALTIMORE DETROIT (+1) over Buffalo ST. LOUIS (+3) over Seattle Philadelphia (-3) over NEW ORLEANS Miami (+2.5) over NY JETS PITTSBURGH (-7) over Kansas City San Diego (-10) over SAN FRANCISCO DENVER (-15) over Oakland Chicago (-10.5) over ARIZONA (largest road favorite I've ever seen)

Other teams don't want our used trash? Egads!

I'm not surprised at all that a random conversation about juco baseball broke out during a game of this amazing theater.

BELTRAN!

Well, this is unexpected.

WTF? Why would he assume that Girardi = rebuilding? Why would anyone assume that? Assume that you're Jim Hendry and are completely incapable of understanding more than two things at once. Wouldn't you think that "15 million dollar payroll" + "competing for the playoffs into late September" would not make Girardi a rebuilding type candidate? And Piniella couldn't get a 70-win team out of his last job. How is he a "win now" candidate? Damn it if we hire Lou that is the most asinine reasoning I've ever heard.

New rule: Teams that start Jeff Freaking Weaver in game 1 of a playoff series are not allowed to go to the World Series.

It was pretty much gospel in Tampa that he hates young players if he can have an alternative and doesn't understand the importance of OBP, and if you don't believe me listen to him talk on Fox, it's pretty clear that's where he stands. The last thing I want is a white, insane version of Dusty Baker.

Soriano will be this offseason's Beltre. I guarantee it. And he will sign for not much more than 5/70, if at all. I just don't think he wants to play in Washington.

TBA's are now updated.

The Trib says: If we get Lou, and then the Sox get ARod, my interest in baseball will severely deteriorate. :(

It's a dead horse, but as long as our team keeps playing at WRIGLEY Field, this type of complaining comes off a bit ridiculous. Pretty much since the beginning, baseball fields have been field with signs advertising commercial products. Baseball and advertising go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back. I actually think naming parts of the stadium or the innings, etc. is actually LESS intrusive than most of the advertising baseball has been a part of and invited in over the last 100+ years. Wrigley Field is named for the former owners of the franchise, not for the gum. It just happens that the former owners also owned the gum company.

Hahaha, this picture from Paint the Town Red just had to be posted. http://www.nba.com/media/bulls/nocioni_061010.jpg

What a job by the Tigers to take the first two. Back to Detroit we go!

SPEED KILLS

I think we can all agree that it's going to be incredible to see the atmosphere back in Detroit for game 3. Uh oh...come on Jones, shut the door.

He just called Neifi, Neifi PAIR-ez. I complained about this earlier this year but evidently it's the correct pronunciation. I still like per-EZ better though.

Haha, thanks Chavez. And Neifi with the old Pierre-ish AB, proving he's still got some Cub in him.

I don't harbor ill will towards the Mets either. On the contrary, with Jose Reyes and David Wright among others, they're a fun team to watch.

This is why I said the Sox were a joke earlier. If you were going to pick one baseball team to have a 7-Eleven tie in, it would've been them. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Culver was a running back (and a very good one) for Notre Dame in the early 1990s. My grandparents still have tapes of games he played in at ND. I knew he had died but didn't know it was like this. Demetrius DuBose, who played LB for those teams, died a few years ago in a Tampa police shootout. Anyway, I hadn't heard anything about this (not about the original crash, nothing) until I got back from seeing a movie tonight. Turned on ESPNEWS as is my custom and Kurkjian is saying Lidle's dead. Really sad.

From the sounds of it Morgan's probably going to have to retire. He's suffered five concussions. It's a shame because he was among the best in the league when healthy. The Panthers need to keep winning since the Saints and Falcons aren't coming back to the pack yet.

ND's not going to be any good. The keys are going to be if Kyle McAlarney can be as good as he looked in spurts last year running the offense. It'd be foolish to hope for a Chris Quinn type season (Quinn was among the most underrated players in all of basketball last season thanks to his miserable team), but if he can score 10-12 points a game and run the offense well that'd be more than acceptable. Russell Carter has the most talent by far on the team, but he's a senior and has yet to put that talent together consistently, though he was getting there at the end of last season. Rob Kurz is a decent big man who can shoot 3's as well as anyone on the team and is a ballhawk on the boards. Oh, and Colin Falls is the best pure shooter in the country. The main problem is going to be depth. Beyond the starting five (assuming Luke Zeller is the fifth), there's really no one with meaningful game experience other than Ryan Ayers, who played plenty in the Irish's two NIT games and looked good. Definitely a rebuilding year but it will be fun to see what happens. Ball State is in the same boat as ND - young team led by a couple of good seniors who has major size deficiency. With one added wrinkle: This is the first year of the Ronny Thompson Era at BSU. The good news is that we managed to get a 6-10 260-pounder, Micah Rollin, to play center. The bad news is that he scored 4 points a game in NAIA play last year (granted it was his first season of organized basketball in his life). The team's going to be led by the guards Skip Mills and Peyton Stovall. Skip led the MAC in scoring last year and piled up 38 points in a valiant but losing effort in the first round of the MAC tournament last year, and Stovall was the leading returning scorer in the conference coming into last season when he tore his ACL in the 2nd game. Backing them up will be Brandon Lampley, Anthony Newell and Jalon Perryman, who all had one game each where they looked incredible but couldn't produce consistently, unsurprising since they were all freshmen. D'Andre Peyton will be the main source of inside scoring, he is a 6-6 220 pounder that plays bigger than that and really began coming on nicely at the end of last year. On the whole, I'd be surprised if either of my teams finished above .500 in conference play, but both have bright futures. And wow that wasn't supposed to be that long a post.

Yeah this couldn't possibly be why I'd want to see ND beat that overhyped conference. I actually think ND would match up better with SEC teams because ND's weakness is their defense and the SEC isn't known for having potent offenses. ND-Florida and ND-Auburn would be good games. I think Tennessee would pose a bigger threat to ND than any other SEC team. SEC teams that I think would beat ND: 1. Florida 2. Auburn 3. LSU 4. Tennessee 5. Arkansas 6. Georgia 7. Alabama 1. Probably 2. Possibly 3. Possibly 4. Probably 5. It'd be a good game 6. Are you freakin kidding me (see: home against Colorado, home against Tennessee) 7. Are you freakin kidding me (see: home against Vanderbilt, home against Duke)

Hahahahahahahaha, the White Sox are a joke