Andy

Mind-blowing stat posted to Twitter: Clayton Kershaw is now the only pitcher in MLB history to give up 7 or more earned runs in consecutive playoff appearances. Three guesses who he faced in his last postseason start to accrue those numbers.

The Bills' usage of Spiller is infuriating. They put Fred Jackson on the field in 2-minute spots, which seems to be exactly when you'd want Spiller on the field. In an unrelated story, I have owned Spiller every year of his career.

Who is 'they', exactly? This is a map of Facebook people's fandoms.

Yeah, but he did it with class

I would love to see that happen for several reasons, most of them comedic.

Oregon has sucked in this game, but if they lose after that ticky-tack celebration penalty after a 3rd-down spot...

I had a good feeling about the Packers defense in fantasy.

I fear Sunday Ticket will get even more expensive as DTV tries to cover the cost. I used to find radio streams before I had Sunday Ticket and might consider going back to that.

Carolina DE Frank Alexander, who was about to return from a four game suspension for substance abuse, has been suspended 10 more games for substance abuse. Down to Kony Ealy, Mario Addison and some dude named Horton at DE (Charles Johnson also out injured).

Both started over the weekend as the Pirates tried to catch STL for the Central.

I'm guessing Samardzija gets dealt this offseason so they can begin to rebuild their farm system. I kind of assumed (and I think several others did too) that was the plan all along.

Feel awful for Oakland and Beane. Rooting like hell for KC to beat the Angels now.

I was 16 and the pitcher abuse thing wasn't as prevalent as it was now (and I wasn't on any message boards like this one), so I didn't notice until Prior and Wood started getting hurt all the time and people started bringing it up retroactively as the reason. Retroactively my ass. I'm speaking only from my own POV, and like I said, I wasn't as into baseball, nor did I have a message board to educate me, at the time. I never heard about pitcher abuse until after our guys started getting hurt.

Looking at the programs you mentioned, the common theme seems to be poor coaching decisions in the face of a variety of circumstances. Tennessee and Texas had long established coaches who were more or less forced out due to fan/booster pressure, with inadequate replacements coming in. Penn State had the opposite issue, with Paterno overstaying his usefulness (scandal aside). USC had some mediocre years, but even when they were going 7-5, they were beating good teams and not losing by 5 scores like Michigan is. I'm not sure what the heck AD's at these schools are doing, but there is really no excuse for a blue blood program to settle for anything less than the elite coaching options available to them. Rolling the dice on an up and comer or settling for a guy with school-ties is a little dumbfounding. That said, the fans are as fickle as ever. They're already turning on Urban Meyer here in Columbus. Elite coaching options aren't as cut and dried of a category as you make it appear. Clearly not, but in many cases, everyone can see a disaster coming. Whiffing on Les Miles and settling for Hoke was such a case It's not as easy as it may seem to find an elite coach, but it's probably not as hard as Goony implies either. The key is substantive, long-term head coaching success. Hoke didn't have that. He only had one great season at Ball State (against a wildly easy schedule), then had two good-but-not-great seasons at SDSU. There aren't guys like this available every year, but the ones who have proven they can do it, often repeatedly, like Urban at BG and Utah and Brian Kelly at CMU and Cincy, generally are the safest bets to have success at the blue-blood level. James Franklin, Charlie Strong and Chris Petersen were all hires from last off-season that fit that mold.

I was 16 and the pitcher abuse thing wasn't as prevalent as it was now (and I wasn't on any message boards like this one), so I didn't notice until Prior and Wood started getting hurt all the time and people started bringing it up retroactively as the reason. That said, as you mentioned, the two aren't exactly the same. Soccer mentioned what was my biggest problem all along - if you wanted to limit Strasburg's innings, and you had designs on contending (and the Nationals did right from the start, their 2012 run wasn't totally unexpected), then there were all sorts of options to make it happen without shutting him down in the playoffs. If we had a similar situation with an ace pitcher in a playoff run and the Cubs decided not to be flexible and just run him out on regular rest and shut the guy down for the year in September, it would drive most of us here insane, I'm guessing.

NFL's Michael Signora just tweeted that the praying should not have been penalized. Apparently there's an exemption for praying in the rule.

Stupid garbage? WTF? And even if that was stupid, which it wasn't, why would that make you hate them? Flags fly forever. Meatball? Certainly. But harming your own chances of winning a title is infuriating to me. (Doesn't help that STL benefited from it.) Hasn't there been a glut of studies showing there's not really anything to the whole strategy of capping pitcher innings after TJS? Or am I nuts?

Personally, I kind of want to see the Nationals never win after the stupid garbage they pulled in 2012 with Strasburg. Rather them than STL, but they're probably second to last among my rooting interests in the playoffs.

Well if you are gonna be like that about Ole Miss' defense, then you should similarly discount Bama's offense because they've played the 80th, 85th, 110th, and 120th ranked defenses so far this year. Amari Cooper, TJ Yeldon and Derrick Henry, just to name three, have already proven themselves to be pretty awesome in prior seasons against good defenses, so I don't need them to have faced good defenses this year to know they're supremely talented. Ole Miss I need to see more from.

Bama -6.5 strikes me as free money. I would love to see Ole Miss stun Bama, but I just haven't seen anything from them that leads me to believe that's possible. This game strikes me as similar to the 2012 game where Bama played Miss State, who hadn't really done anything of note but had somehow risen to #12, and Bama smacked them around. I expect something similar here. Free money? That's a bit much. What has Bama shown you to think they are all-world this year? They duked it out with West Virginia (80th in defense) and beat a hapless Florida team (85th in defense). Bama (26th SOS so far) has outscored their opponents 168-56 and Ole Miss (35th SOS so far) is at 156-34. Neither have played anyone and they are both currently beating the dogpiss out of whoever they play. History will always point to Bama winning the contest, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that a touchdown difference is easy money. It'll be close. The Ole Miss defense is really, really good. Only a fool would bet on any SEC West game at this point in this season. There is a lot of parity. There are two sides to football. Alabama has ridiculous offensive talent including the best receiver in the country. Mississippi probably has a good defense, but stopping the likes of Boise State (just got rolled by Air Force) and Memphis does not mean they'll do the same to Alabama. It's dumb to guarantee anything, but I'd be extremely surprised if you won. Like I said, I'd love to be wrong.

Bama -6.5 strikes me as free money. I would love to see Ole Miss stun Bama, but I just haven't seen anything from them that leads me to believe that's possible. This game strikes me as similar to the 2012 game where Bama played Miss State, who hadn't really done anything of note but had somehow risen to #12, and Bama smacked them around. I expect something similar here.

SECRET WEAPON, THE PLAN IS FALLING INTO PLACE Seriously, we're going to get massacred

I don't even watch their games. I still get angry when they win, but at least it's just for that few moments and not for 3 hours or whatever.

Top 25 games ------------------------ Wake Forest at (1) Florida State (3:30 pm, ABC/ESPN3) Arizona at (2) Oregon (10:30 pm Thursday, ESPN) (3) Alabama at (11) Ole Miss (3:30 pm, CBS) (4) Oklahoma at (25) TCU (3:30 pm, FOX) (15) LSU at (5) Auburn (7 pm, ESPN) (6) Texas A&M at (12) Mississippi State (12 pm, ESPN) (7) Baylor at Texas (3:30 pm, ABC/ESPN3) Utah at (8) UCLA (10:30 pm, ESPN) (14) Stanford at (9) Notre Dame (3:30 pm, NBC) (19) Nebraska at (10) Michigan State (8 pm, ABC) Vanderbilt at (13) Georgia (4 pm, SEC Network) Arizona State at (16) USC (7:30 pm, FOX) (17) Wisconsin at Northwestern (3:30 pm, ESPN2) Utah State at (18) BYU (10:15 pm Friday, ESPN) (20) Ohio State at Maryland (12 pm, ABC) Iowa State at (21) Oklahoma State (12 pm, FS1) SMU at (22) East Carolina (12 pm, ESPNU) Texas Tech at (23) Kansas State (7 pm, ESPNU) Other nationally available games --------------------------------------- UCF at Houston (7 pm Thursday, ESPN) Florida Atlantic at Florida International (7 pm Thursday, FSN) Louisville at Syracuse (7 pm Friday, ESPN) San Diego State at Fresno State (10 pm Friday, CBSSN) Purdue at Illinois (12 pm, ESPN2) Florida at Tennessee (12 pm, SEC Network) Marshall at Old Dominion (12 pm, FSN) Ball State at Army (12 pm, CBSSN) Virginia Tech at North Carolina (12:30 pm, ACC Network/ESPN3) Eastern Michigan at Akron (2 pm, ESPN3) North Texas at Indiana (2:30 pm, BTN) UMass at Miami (OH) (2:30 pm, ESPN3) NC State at Clemson (3:30 pm, ESPNU) Navy at Air Force (3:30 pm, CBSSN) Buffalo at Bowling Green (3:30 pm, ESPN3) Ohio at Central Michigan (3:30 pm, ESPN3) Kansas at West Virginia (4 pm, FSN) Oregon State at Colorado (4 pm, Pac-12 Network) Kent State at Northern Illinois (4 pm, ESPN3) South Alabama at Appalachian State (6 pm, ESPN3) Michigan at Rutgers (7 pm, BTN) Memphis at Cincinnati (7 pm, CBSSN) Georgia State at UL Lafayette (7 pm, ESPN3) Idaho at Texas State (7 pm, ESPN3) UL Monroe at Arkansas State (7 pm, ESPN3) Toledo at Western Michigan (7 pm, ESPN3) Miami at Georgia Tech (7:30 pm, ESPN2) South Carolina at Kentucky (7:30 pm, SEC Network) Pittsburgh at Virginia (7:30 pm, FSN/ESPN3) UNLV at San Jose State (8 pm, ESPNEWS) Georgia Southern at New Mexico State (8 pm, ESPN3) Boise State at Nevada (10:30 pm, CBSSN) California at Washington State (10:30 pm, Pac-12 Network)

Unless STL wins, this playoffs has the potential to be a lot of fun, which means STL will probably win. Fun fact, other than the Royals, STL has easily the worst 1st/2nd/3rd-order win percentages of any team in the playoffs.