apete6

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-spt-1211-brite-winter-meetings-cubs-chicago-2-20131211,0,2946032.story If it's true that they're doing everything as a package and are nearing an agreement with two rooftops on the RF signs AND there have been indications from the team that they want to move forward with the new Budweiser signage in RF this season, would that mean the JumboTron is a possibility for 2014 as well? Seems unlikely. It'd be really nice to have a clearer idea of where things stand. [expletive] the Ricketts family. They couldn't have handled this entire process any worse and the fans and players are the ones paying for it. I honestly hope the [expletive] it all up, don't get anything approved, and have to sell the team. They have literally done nothing right since taking ownership besides hiring Theo, but the even fucked that up by basically neutering him with a lack of payroll/investment. There has been nothing on or off the field that has gone well unless you count moving up in the mythical prospect rankings that ultimately could end up meaning nothing. They pissed away a ton of money in the Dominican Republic just in time to be boned by international spending limits. The radio booth is a disaster. Obviously the major league team is complete garbage. I'm sure the new Spring Training stadium will suck dick also just because they hate doing things correctly. In a previously unfathomable point of view, I'd rather have the Tribune back. At least they had the sense to bring in McDonough and play up the nostalgia garbage correctly. Fuuuuuck this whole situation.

This is either false or Towers should be put in a room with padded walls. Cahill AND Skaggs for a guy who hits home runs but does nothing else notable? FWIW, I saw this exact same rumor somewhere on the Twitters and also on BBTN last night. Let's send them Rizzo for that package... Uh, no, thank you. Trumbo has been worth 2.8, 2.7, and 2.2 WAR and will be 28 in January Rizzo has been worth 2.3 and 2.6 WAR and will be 25 in August Obviously Rizzo is better and has a better future, however, everyone thinks that Cahill and Skaggs is a ridiculous trade for Trumbo, but, objectively, it's more of a match for Rizzo--maybe they throw in a lower level prospect. 1B is a fairly easily replaceable position. At the end of the day, it would be tough to give up on Rizzo this early because of all of the potential, but this is probably his value at the current time. That being said, Theo & Jed won't do it because they clearly love the guy.

This is either false or Towers should be put in a room with padded walls. Cahill AND Skaggs for a guy who hits home runs but does nothing else notable? FWIW, I saw this exact same rumor somewhere on the Twitters and also on BBTN last night. Let's send them Rizzo for that package...

Everyone has different ambitions. Petersen's been at Boise for close to 15 years now, makes 2 million a year, and has a ton of job security. Fair enough, but hard to believe that someone that has worked so hard for so long in something that they obviously love not want to get to the top of their profession to have a better chance to win a title. In basketball, you don't need to be in a major conference to do that, football is different. Good for him and I'm sure he lives an extremely nice life, but it's so rare to see someone in this position just basically settle.

What the hell is Petersen waiting for? This is a top 10-15 job and Boise's ship has sailed in terms of winning a title. They have to go undefeated AND have all hell break loose in front of them. That will happen about once every 10 years, especially with no one wanting to schedule them. Unless they somehow keep being awesome and get invited to the Pac 12, this may be the best chance he ever has to coach in a major conference for one of the top tier teams.

Excellent response. That was exactly what I was thinking as well. Only Wiggins and Parker, IMO, are franchise changers. Randle and Smart are excellent players, but wouldn't be the long term franchise player like Rose was? is? could still be? Edit: I obviously don't know enough about Exum to make any logical argument one way or the other on him.

Another excellent 2nd tier position player signing by Jed. Goes along well with Navarro, Schierholtz, Valbuena, Ransom, DeJesus, Reed Johnson, Baker, Murphy, Bogusevic, and Sweeney. Not to mention solid record with 2nd tier SPs (Wood, Maholm, Feldman, Arrietta, even Baker wasn't terrible when he finally pitched). Now, if they could just make some superstars appear out of thin air and figure out how to not have an atrocious bullpen, they'd have something. Hopefully the minor league guys are those superstars at some point.

That's kind of what I was thinking, too, but it would be an interesting call. If the Cubs would have traded Mark Prior for Miguel Tejada or whatever that proposed deal was in 2005, they might have won the title in 07 or 08 even though about 1% of Cubs fans would have done it at the time. This entire DRose situation is going to be a fascinating 30 for 30 someday, regardless of if it ends up positive or negative for him.

Ok, so say it's after the season you are the GM of a lottery team that has, say, the 7th best chance in the lottery. This team has been bad for a long time, has a bad fan base and no real hope of being great in the future unless they get a top-3 pick. do you trade your lottery pick (before the actual lottery drawing) to the Bulls for an injured Derrick Rose and his $20MM/year contract? So, basically, do Michael Jordan and the Bobcats trade the 7th best chance in the lottery for Derrick Rose in May 2014?

Maybe its because the players of my teenage years are on the ballot but I could vote for like 20 players on that ballot, especially if you ignore steroids and HGH. I believe that if stats alone were the decider, it would be 18 players based on the Baseball Prospectus HOF indicators. 18!!!!!!!

The official tweet from Gammons is @pgammo nvarotwnsblajysmirlns I thought it also included accusing someone of being a terrorist? Gammons is awful at Twitter.

It's pretty well known at this point that the non-semifinal major bowls are going to more or less operate this way. There will still be tie-ins, but the committee will place the qualifying teams into what should be attractive matchups. So we'll have that going for us at least. So no more Big 10 vs. Pac 12 in the Rose Bowl? Yes, still B1G/Pac-12 in the Rose Bowl, but the selection order has been scrapped and the tie-ins have largely been widened (Orange, for instance, is now ACC vs SEC/B1G/Notre Dame depending on who is ranked highest). I can't really explain it well, so here is Stewart Mandel's projection for what the non-semifinal bowls would look like if they had the playoff this year: Basically, the new system will use the tie-ins to create the best matchup in the non-semifinal bowls, as opposed to giving the bowls a selection order and the ability to pass over better teams for 'better draws'. Ok, that's a lot better than it has been in the past, particularly for the at-large/group of 5 teams.

Agreed. I understand it's nice for the big conferences to have that guaranteed revenue, but it does get pretty old after a while. If you're a fan of, say, Michigan State, what would be your incentive to go to Tampa or Orlando or Jacksonville year after year for the Outback, Gator, or Capital One bowls? Wouldn't it be cool to get a chance to go to the Cotton Bowl or Holiday Bowl or something every once in a while? With the new playoff, I think there is a "2nd tier" list of bowls that will have available picking for all teams, but it would be so much more awesome if the whole thing was just a straight up pecking order of bowls with the 2 next best teams outside of the playoff/BCS. So, lets say that the top 12 teams are in playoff/major bowls and then the Chick Fil A bowl gets the 2 next best teams and so on and so forth. The games would be so much better and it would then probably kill the lowest 2-5 bowls, which would be a good thing. However, this will never happen because $$$$$ is really the only reason for these bowls to exist and by not allowing them to select regionally friendly teams over more deserving ones, the system won't generate enough revenue.

Football: Rex!!! white, Urlacher blue, Faulk Rams white, Faulk Colts blue, Tomlinson Powder Blue, Pat Tillman White Baseball: Prior white-got it in August 2002 and thought it was the greatest investment ever, Santo 1968 gray, Ryno 1984 blue, Shirsey's for Wood, Zambrano, and Soto Hockey: Whalers white, Oilers blue, old Buffalo blue, blank Hawks white, Toews red, Kane white Basketball (none since 1996), but would fit right in at Lollapallooza if I still had them all: Jordan black, Barkley Suns white, Harold Miner black, Larry Johnson teal, Shaq magic black. Only ones I bought since graduating college in 04 were the Toews and Kane ones because I wanted them with the Stanley Cup 2010 logo on them. Only way I buy another jersey is if one of my teams win the title, I'll buy a jersey of whoever the MVP of the game/series is, probably, if they are a key member of the team. Didn't do that with Kane this year since I already had one.

Come on, why not throw the Florida State doing Florida State things and losing to the Gators in there as well? Then you'd have it be Auburn vs. South Carolina for the right to play OK State, who lost to West Virginia. LOL.

They did, in 94-95 they were awful and Coach K faked a back injury so he didn't get all of the blame. It was also the year Capel hit that magical half court shot to tie UNC...and Duke lost in OT. They also were pretty crummy the next year and then they started paying players like everyone else and became good again. True story. http://www.dukeupdate.com/Seasons/19941995_duke_blue_devils.htm

Been a rough start for old Brucey. Combined with their awful end to last season, I'm sure many UI fans are cackling with happiness.

I think the family has already sunk a lot of money around the park. I don't think anyone would take them seriously. True. You would think that a family of billionaires would, you know, be good at business. Apparently not. These clowns are making it look more and more like they are the dumb rich kids that are just living off of the old crazy dad's smart business decisions. Trust fund kids run my favorite team (and a lot of franchises in sports, I know). Awesome.

If this doesn't get resolved this off-season, they HAVE to at least release some renderings of a Rosemont stadium, don't they?

Hot tip: Probably not as good as OK St. Smart just wrecking shop right now. Jeez. Ya think? Ha. Not trying to be a dick. Just saying you can't really take stock of your team when you are playing a team that will probably kick your ass either way. Purdue could be very good, but playing OK State wont tell them anything unless they somehow beat them. If they lose by 10-15, doesn't mean they aren't a decent team.

Which makes those Washington and Detroit games even shittier in retrospect. They win those 2, they're 8-2, guaranteed of the playoffs and Super Bowl contenders. [expletive] sports.

Hot tip: Probably not as good as OK St. Smart just wrecking shop right now. Jeez.

Are you seriously using the preseason rankings as justification for 1 team being better than the other? I may have heard it all, now. Preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing.

This means zero. TCU is a bad football team. They are 2-6 in conference and 4-7 overall. They [expletive] lost to West Virginia. In Fort Worth. When the guy is saying they've only played 2 road games like they won't have anymore, it does mean something. To think that the B1G is better than the Big 12 this year by any significant margin would be completely incorrect. TCU, while bad, is certainly better than Illinois and Purdue and probably a couple of other B1G teams.

I don't see what Chicago has to do with it. It is universal that large portions of a fan base will both be hung up on predetermined storylines about a player, and will blame the QB disproportionately for all struggles prior to winning a super bowl. The backup QB is the most popular player on a team is a saying that has held true for decades, by all fan bases. You and I have talked about this before, IIRC. Chicago fans eat their own; they gobble up any idiot narrative our idiot media wants to assemble and would never change their minds. If Cutler took them to a Superbowl they'd still bitch about him. That's where you're wrong. Chicago fans will hate all day long, but if you win, you are golden forever. The mid-80s Bears underachieved big time when considering their roster, but there is not 1 member of that 85 team that will ever pay for a meal in Chicago. If Derrick Rose or Cutler, or whoever the whipping boy of the day is ends up winning a title, they are golden forever.