Sammy Sofa

I'm not sure if it's half-assed, or not half-assed enough. I think the Bears are actually going 100% in the "this is Lovie's team and he can make all decisions" department, when they really shouldn't be. Everybody is calling him a lame duck, but the Bears have done nothing to indicate he is. He's got 2 years left on his deal, and if a good OC comes in and the team does well in 2010, he will be back in 2011. This isn't a situation where Lovie is as good as gone. It probably won't take much for him to keep his job. They've been extremely patient with all their head coaches since Ditka took over. This isn't a team that fires a guy for failing to make the playoffs, they fire guys for sustained losing and 10 loss seasons. I think this is much more about people not wanting to be Lovie's offensive coordinator, rather than not wanting to go into an unstable situation. No coaching situation is stable. Head coaches are on the hot seat in their first season, some coordinators don't even make it throug their first preseason with the team. Lovie has all the power in this situation, but he shouldn't have it. His defense has been allowed to flounder in the bottom half of the league for three years, but it's the offense that has taken the fall. I think the difference between the usual hot seat and something like this is that with a "normal" first year after a regime change you arguably have more power to effectively control your own destiny. Yeah, if everything goes wrong you're potentially screwed, but if it works out it's also all on you. This is this weird nebulous situation where it's very likely everyone is moved out in 2 years regardless of individual result.

The problem is they need that person to be somebody who could conceivably take over the Lovie if he's canned next year. But since Lovie has the authority to hire the OC, he's not going to be all that excited about bringing in his replacement. The OC hire should be Angelo's call. Lovie doesn't know offense. He doesn't know how to hire coaches. His staff throughout his time in Chicago has been guys with very limited NFL experience, with the exception of Marinelli last year. And that was just him hiring a friend. Angelo is the one who traded for Cutler. Angelo is the one who should be telling Lovie who his OC is going to be. Or, as I said from the start, Lovie should be gone already. Lovie being gone is really the only thing that makes sense. Bringing in someone who is likely just going to take over after Lovie is gone just potentially makes it even more of a mess and a crappy situation people will still steer clear of until the dust settles. The way the Bears are approaching it now is just halfassed and will accomplish little so long as they refuse to do what needs to be done and fire Lovie.

newspapers are desperate; they'll take the ad revenue however they can get it. La whoosh.

It's pretty clear to anyone with a functioning brain that Lovie is as lame a duck as one could find, and few people will willingly step into such a situation.

Sure, but why would you want him even just for one year now? He's been on a steady decline for 3 years and his defense has been craptacular for some time now, which offsets any "serviceable" offense he'd be offering.

Which numerous years were those? Looking at his career he's got like 3 years where he was "serviceable," and one of those he missed a ton of games.

Go away, Favre. Peyton Manning, your dinner has been served.

Definitely. Of course, it's better than the alternative which is the Vikings winning. This is true.

In an odd way I'm let down that the Vikings are denying us more Favre picks with all this fumbling.

Not really. They are probably Bears and Packers fans and it's understandable. Plus, Favre's lover, Joe Buck, is annoying. If he says something along the lines of "Favre is just a gunslinger -- just throwing the old pigskin around in the backyard in his Wranglers" I'll barf. He's just laughing and smiling and having a good time out there.

I'm starting to think that Cooper Manning could pick these two teams apart, much less Peyton.

Good challenge.

It'll be a nightmare if the Vikings end up winning this after Favre's "injury." The fawning and fellating over him by the media will be beyond insufferable.

Well, he's been such a [expletive] drama queen for so many years it's hard to tell the difference.

Sure, sure, act like it wasn't a ton of fun to watch. It's not like all of that vanished because of cranky sportswriters who didn't do their jobs at the time bitching after the fact. I mean, I'm not the one in denial that this was relegated to a relatively small period of time. It's cute how you refuse to accept the idea of widespread PED use outside of what everyone wants to limit the "Steroid Era" to. It's even more adorable how you think you grew up outside of the actual "Steroid Era," or that you witnessed some mythical era of baseball where tons of players and coaches didn't do what they could all the time to bend or break the rules to their advanatge. Your indignation is transparent, completely unrealistic, hypocritical and pathetic.

I'll bet the VoR claims he hated baseball in the 90's.

I want the Colts to win just so the insanity of Eli having as many rings as Peyton ends

That's not the "common OPS theory" of this board at all. If there's anything close to that (and even with this you'll still find plenty of disagreement) it's the general idea that it's ideal to have your best hitters in first 4-5 slots of the lineup as opposed to making room for someone like Theriot. You'll find very few people here, if any, who think you just automatically drop your best OPS guy at their top.

That's some grown man isht right there. Plus he was donating $1,000 for each of his 32 points to charity for Haiti last night, too.

Stay strong in the dark times ahead. Those "I Love NY?" fakes will be real soon enough.

Wait, what is the "common OPS theory" of this board?

I hate to break it to you but teams sign bad pitchers all the time.

You guys are screwed this year man. Jaramillo only hit .258, and he never made it out of Double A. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Though I'm sure he'd just say that Rudy got screwed because all of those steroid-using thugs kept him from making it to the big show.

Well, I'm sure Busch will next list the scores of guys with amazing averages who became hitting coaches.

Huh? What history do the Knicks have on a handful of other NBA teams? A .498 winning percentage Tied with the Hawks for 5th for most playoff appearances 10th in Division championships with 8. 2 NBA titles, less than the Pistons, Warriors, 76ers, Bulls, Spurs, Celtics, and Lakers Yeah but John Starks dunked over Jordan once. Outside of the fact that they play in the largest media market in the world and the media somehow feels it's a disservice to sports when NY teams are bad (and not only do they deserve the best players but everything about them is overblown), they are a very AVERAGE NBA franchise over the course of their history. Alright, people seem to have misunderstood what I meant by history. Yeah, I shoulda clarified. They are not a storied championship team. In terms of longevity and "historic recognition" they're a historic team. That's why I lumped them in with the Celtics and Lakers like that. Of course I'm not putting them up as being a dominant team like the other two have; there's a laundry list of teams who have won more than the Knicks. That's kind of my point: it's ridiculous the Knicks have the recognition and reputation that they do (globally, even) for as ultimately unremarkable as they've been. And yet, they do. Go figure.