Andy

I'm trying to just enjoy the season for now. If we're in it in late July or August I'll get excited. Right now I'm just glad to have baseball.

Dusty Baker just said 'dude, baseball ain't fishing'

There would be if we weren't so eager to have Colvin up (and probably rot on the bench after Lou forgets about his edict to play him 3 times a week by April 20th).

BCVM's annual missive (and listening to the library of BCVM-posted Cubs highlights on my iPod) has gotten me fired up. Let's do this.

No idea how to react to this. Won't speculate on the cause - obviously, this sucks.

I haven't spent a ton of time in Chicago, but from my memory those types of shirts aren't so widespread that you can find them in malls. That's the case in St. Louis. Good point. I haven't been to STL since I was a kid (and I'm a better man for it), so I have no frame of reference there.

There are stupid anti-Sox and anti-Cards shirts at Cubs games regardless of opponent too. That's a poor judge because these independent vendors aren't representative of the fan base.

I've been to a couple of ND spring games, and to the best of my knowledge they're not on TV. I wouldn't watch them if they were, but if it's a nice day on the day of the game, going to a spring game can be fun.

As a Notre Dame fan, making the tournament is a cool accomplishment, because it doesn't happen every year. This last season, we had a crazy 6-game win streak to cement our spot in the tournament (and, it turned out, get overseeded). In a 96-team field, we'd never have been on the bubble to begin with at 6-8 in the Big East. Fans of teams like ND, or Iowa, or whoever else are who this thing is probably intended to make happy, but I personally like that making the tournament is still something of an accomplishment. Now anyone from a big conference is pretty much in.

There are only 12, and 6 seeds from a conference have won the Super Bowl. No one seeded in the bottom half of a 64-team NCAA bracket has won the tournament, or even made the final, and only 2 teams in the bottom half have made the Final Four.

Far too many ND fans don't like Jimmy Clausen enough, if you ask me. Me and GR aren't exactly the minority, but I wouldn't say we're part of an absolute majority either. From what I heard, the guy accosted Clausen (and his girlfriend) unprovoked and when he didn't like Clausen's response, he hit him. I guess one could somehow spin that into an attitude problem if they wanted to see it that way but if you ask me it sounds like a drunk guy acting like an ass. maybe it's just the JIMMEE stuff that annoys me. i would make fun of any ou fan that freaked out when someone talked about bradford's shoulder like "SAMMEE!" What, like me referring to him by his first name? I don't know, I do that when I talk to other ND fans and it just sort of carries over.

Why not just put everybody in? I'm sure we can make that happen.

Oregon's spring game will air on May 1st, 5 pm on ESPN2.

I wish he was from Cincinnati. If he had gone there instead of Central Michigan, Ball State would likely have won the MAC championship in 2007.

I agree. Would love to see that. Would also love to see Carolina trade into the 1st round if he fell that far...but Carolina only trades into the 1st round for guys who I don't like, so that won't happen.

Far too many ND fans don't like Jimmy Clausen enough, if you ask me. Me and GR aren't exactly the minority, but I wouldn't say we're part of an absolute majority either. From what I heard, the guy accosted Clausen (and his girlfriend) unprovoked and when he didn't like Clausen's response, he hit him. I guess one could somehow spin that into an attitude problem if they wanted to see it that way but if you ask me it sounds like a drunk guy acting like an ass.

Why did I say 'torn tendons in his knee'? I meant his toe, obviously.

The Royals-Cards rivalry is, in a sense, like the White Sox-Cubs rivalry. If the White Sox had been baseball-irrelevant the last 15 years and were finishing last in their division 9 times out of 10, maybe.

It's just some of the complaints have been so specious. "He's cocky"...there is not a single good starting NFL QB that's not cocky. You'd better be cocky if you're going to run my team. "He got punched outside a bar"...there still hasn't been one accepted account that said he did anything to bring that about, and living in South Bend, I can tell you that there are ND fans stupid enough to feel like punching Clausen was justified. "He had tons of talent around him"...yeah, he had some good receivers, but except for Tate, a lot of them were injury-prone, as GR mentioned he had basically no running game, his offensive line was atrocious his entire career, and his defense was an insult to the word "atrocious" his final 2 seasons. And playing on good teams didn't stop Mark Sanchez from being picked 5th overall, nor did it stop Mr. 80-Yards-From-His-Knees JaMarcus Russell from being picked 1st. And surprisingly little mention is made of his playing 9.5 games with torn tendons in his toe and still putting up a video-game-like 28:4 touchdown to interception ratio (which could've been more like 33:2 if you factor in drops, deflected interceptions and bad calls that took away a couple of his TD passes). I can see why people would be leery of taking him - I'm becoming more and more convinced that taking a QB in the top 10 is about as much of a roll of the dice that there is due to all the factors that play in to whether a guy succeeds - but the reasons being thrown about to justify not taking him don't make any sense.

All one needs to know about Clausen is that Jon Tenuta, after getting fired from ND, with no incentive to compliment anyone at the school (and not a man prone to complimenting anyone anyway), ripped those that think Clausen has an attitude problem and said that if everyone on the ND team had an attitude like Clausen's, the Irish would've won a lot more games. That being said, I have been trying to be muted in my praise of Clausen because I thought Quinn would be a great pro and that's landed a lot of egg on my face. I would say that if Clausen can't succeed in the NFL I'm not sure what ND quarterback can, because he's as good as I've seen at the college level.

The "Clausen won't be a high pick" parade continues. I don't think anyone with a national voice likes the guy except for Mel Kiper.

SI has us 2nd and out of the playoffs.

Why would you want to see a bunch of .500 schools from the Big 6 conferences in the tournament? The tournament is perfect the way it is. No need to change it. Most fake bracketologies done this season for a 96-team tournament had UNC making it in as one of the last four in. UNC finished 11th in a 12-team, weak ACC this year. I don't want any part of a tournament like that.

Not really necessary (like the Ernie statue was), but what the hey. Good for Billy.

Awful Once this happens, I have no plans to watch the 32 'play-in' games. I'll watch the 64-team tournament like always and unless ND is in one of the other 32 games I'll ignore it. No reason to encourage idiocy by giving these people another pair of eyeballs.