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Yeah. Officially, the OT ends as soon as the play ends. So the facemask belonged to the OT previous, while the personal foul is officially listed in this OT. It is quite a splitting of the rules though.

That almost was one of the strangest 2 point conversions ever if that Kentucky player could have recovered in the end zone.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that LSU should not be given another shot even if the KU/Mizzou winner loses next week and WV loses today. Since the middle of the season, they lost to Kentucky, beat Auburn at the buzzer, had to come back late against Alabama, easy win against La Tech, struggled against Ole Miss, and lost to Arkansas. Even in the 2 games before that, they were in a tight battle with Tulane at halftime and they were a 4th down conversion away from losing to Florida. If it comes down to all flawed 2 loss teams, I think it should be the one who's best right now, and that's not LSU with how they've played their last 7-8 games.

Only a 13 point win? That seems like a pretty close game for them considering they were playing ISU. It's hard to say. Projections have Illinois State anywhere between third and seventh in the tough Missouri Valley. This is one that probably can't be accurately judged until much later in the season when we see how good Illinois State really is, but all the buzz is that they are supposed to be much better than normal.

That shows you how crazy this market is. It's considered good when a suspended Mike Cameron can be had for only 2-3 years for less than 10 million a year.

You sure? If UT and OU both win, they will be 6-2, and OU won the head to head. If they both lose, they'll both be 5-3, again with OU claiming the head to head. I'm pretty sure Texas has to win and OU has to lose. In the second scenario, Oklahoma State would also be 5-3, and Texas has that 3 way tiebreaker. EDIT: Turns out that I'm wrong. In that 3-way tie, all the tiebreakers tie down to the BCS standings. So I guess Texas does need to win, since they aren't going to pass OU in the BCS by losing to aTm. That's not what the Big 12 site says: http://www.big12sports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/tie-breaker.html Texas should win because of tiebreaker number 2 because they only lost 1 game against the division while Oklahoma and OK State both lost 2.

If the Cubs had signed him for that deal, this board would have melted down with the people who hated the deal. Many people on this board don't like committing a decent percentage of the payroll to the bullpen to the first place. They also don't like multi-year deals for relievers. They also don't like signing guys in their 30's to long-term contracts. Finally, many think the position of closer is overrated to begin with. Cordero fits under all of the above, and while he'll likely be pretty productive he's not productive enough to be that big of a percentage of the Reds overall payroll. What? You are talking about a team that was 29th in baseball in blown saves last year. A blown save can occur pretty much anytime a starter leaves the ballgame. Most are not necessarilly even the fault of the "closer." Ya think? The Reds issue really wasn't closer last year. Weathers was 33/38 in saves. However, this allows the Reds to move Burton to the 7th, Weathers to the 8th, and Cordero to the 9th. It lines up the middle innings nicely. That's the point. but you're paying 12 mil a year for it! that's what makes it a bad idea. Yeah, if we could have signed the cheap stud closer I'm sure we would have. You could have traded one of your OF's though and gotten a cheap elite reliever plus probably another piece or two. Then you could have taken the money that you saved from trading that OF plus the money you had to spend this offseason and spent it on either a starting pitcher or more offense.

If the Cubs had signed him for that deal, this board would have melted down with the people who hated the deal. Many people on this board don't like committing a decent percentage of the payroll to the bullpen to the first place. They also don't like multi-year deals for relievers. They also don't like signing guys in their 30's to long-term contracts. Finally, many think the position of closer is overrated to begin with. Cordero fits under all of the above, and while he'll likely be pretty productive he's not productive enough to be that big of a percentage of the Reds overall payroll.

With Hendry, you know the latter is what is going to happen. Has there been an offseason with him in charge where he didn't throw a 3 year deal at a reliever? Kerry is just as good an investment as anyone else is out there, and bringing him back for 2 years opens up a lot of flexibility for Hendry. Last offseason he didn't throw a 3 year deal at a reliever. When was Ryan Dempster extended? Dempster got a 3 year deal before the 2006 season, the same year Howry and Eyre were signed (all 3 come off the books after this year). The only reliever Hendry signed last year was Wood for 1 year 1.5 million.

With Hendry, you know the latter is what is going to happen. Has there been an offseason with him in charge where he didn't throw a 3 year deal at a reliever? Kerry is just as good an investment as anyone else is out there, and bringing him back for 2 years opens up a lot of flexibility for Hendry. Last offseason he didn't throw a 3 year deal at a reliever. I don't see Hendry signing a huge deal for another reliever without Wood. One, by the time Wood would walk many of the higher priced relievers on the market will be gone. Two, the bullpen hasn't been mentioned as a concern once by Hendry in the last couple months (at least that I've heard), and that wasn't the case in some prior offseasons in which he handed out multi-year deals like candy. I do see him maybe paying a little too much for a left-handed reliever if Wood falls through, but that deal will almost certainly be less than 5 million a year. His budget sounds to be such that after possibly signing Matsui and Fukudome that he wouldn't have enough money to sign too much of a high priced reliever.

All well and good, unless, or until, Jim goes out and spends more on another reliever. It would be a mistake to give any reliever in this market a 5 million dollar per year deal for multiple years. It would be a big mistake (as far as percentages, not saying it couldn't work out) to do it for Wood. So if Hendry went out and signed another reliever instead of Wood for 2/10, he would have done his job wrong but not made the big mistake. I agree with Cuse. You offer him a deal, but it has to be heavily incentive laden.

I would choose the 80-150 range for a couple of reasons. 1) It's a better situation for the later innings IMO. With a bunch of slightly above average hitters, you can't play situationally as much. When you have some great hitters and some poor hitters, you can replace a poor hitter in a key situation with a pinch hitter or structure the situation for a poor hitter to get a runner over for the great hitters to drive in. Great hitters and poor hitters are much more consistent than average hitters. If you know what you're getting on a consistent basis, it's much easier to put a plan together to maximize the production of the team. 2) If I'm looking to how to improve long-term, I now know what my weaknesses are and can much more easily fix them. If you have a bunch of average players, then the only upgrade you can make is to try to get great players and other organizations don't often give up great players at any cost. While if you have an imbalance between great and bad, it's much easier to find average players to fill in those weaknesses through trades or free agency. 3) For my pitching staff, I'd like to have an imbalance in my starting rotation but be balanced in my bullpen. I'd rather have 3 great starters and 2 below average starters than 5 decent starters because the first scenario lines up much better for the playoffs. The bullpen is so variable that I'd rather have several good arms that I switch in and out during the season to keep them fresh rather then 2-3 great arms that could be prone to overuse.

name one Randy Moss There have been plenty of others who were willing to take lower salaries even after trades in order to get into better situations for them (including A-Rod willing to give up 30 million in Boston), and even more than that who were willing to do it in free agency (Randy Wolf is a great example of that). I don't think we're going to agree if Kendall is one of those players or not. I believe starting in Milwaukee is a much better situation than riding the bench in Chicago. You think he'll take the money wherever it is.

Well, maybe. Kendall has a better CS percentage, but you have to remember 2 things about that: 1) It includes pickoffs by the pitcher. Do you really think Kendall threw out 20 baserunners by himself last year? 2) Kendall had a base stolen on him every 10.3 innings while Estrada only allowed a base stolen on him every 13.2 innings, and that doesn't even begin to address the fact that the Cubs and Athletics allowed less people on 1st and 2nd base than the Brewers did per inning.

Maybe he "seems" like that kind of player to you, but virtually no player willfully takes a 50% paycut (assuming that's the difference). Kendall loved everything about the Cubs. I'm sure he'd view playing here as a satisfactory fallback. The Yankees have done this before, so have other teams, coming to an agreement but not signing. Plus, we're talking Jason Kendall, a worthless piece of crap of a ballplayer. Milwaukee could fine somebody just like him in a heartbeat. Kendall was none too happy about being benched in the playoffs. If the Cubs told Kendall that if he accepted arbitration the Cubs weren't going to let him be anything more than a backup who got very little time I doubt Kendall would accept that arbitration. There have been plenty of players who have cared more about playing time than salary especially near the end of their careers, and many players in all sports who have demanded trades and sometimes were even willing to re-negotiate lower salaries (in situations where the union allows them to) in order to increase their playing time. The Yankees and other teams have done it when it actually caused them to lose a draft pick. That's a big difference in risk/reward. Plus, most people may have that opinion of Kendall as a ballplayer, but the Cubs didn't and Milwaukee apparently doesn't either to give him the starting job this early in the offseason.

OJ Mayo > Eric Gordon and its not even close... On the college level, I disagree. Gordon is probably the slightly better player. As far as projectability to the NBA, Mayo is the better prospect because of his size, while the comparisons to Gordon as a "better Ben Gordon" is probably a good one. Gordon will likely always be a very good player but a tweener in the NBA while Mayo has the size and skills to be a superstar. Right now, Gordon's a lot more polished than Mayo is.

The Brewers would be then running the risk that the Cubs would offer arbitration and Kendall would accept. Considering that they just traded their starting catcher and that whole process could take weeks (where most of the other catchers on the market are getting picked up by other teams) it's too risky for the Brewers to do that. Besides, even if for the extra money I doubt Kendall would come back to a team that didn't want him in any form when he has a starting job lined up somewhere else, so he'd probably sign with the Brewers even if the Cubs did offer him arbitration at this point. It's not just extra money, it's most likely a tremendous amount of extra money. I know it's unlikely, but it's what the Yankees would do if it involved the Red Sox. Yes, it is a tremendous amount of money, but remember 2 things. Kendall seems to be the type who would rather be paid 4 million to play than 10 million to go home and sit on the couch. Also, what was reported earlier about a now max 40 percent decline in arbitration means that the club would only have to offer him 7.8 million instead of 10.4 like the 20 percent decline would have been. Still a lot more than Milwaukee probably gave him, but probably not enough to make Kendall go back on his word to the Brewers and come to the Cubs and at best sit on the bench. I'm not sure it would be what the Yankees would do. I think the Yankees would sign him now because they wouldn't want to lose their starting catcher back to the Red Sox when the Yankees wouldn't really have any great options otherwise.

The Brewers would be then running the risk that the Cubs would offer arbitration and Kendall would accept. Considering that they just traded their starting catcher and that whole process could take weeks (where most of the other catchers on the market are getting picked up by other teams) it's too risky for the Brewers to do that. Besides, even if for the extra money I doubt Kendall would come back to a team that didn't want him in any form when he has a starting job lined up somewhere else, so he'd probably sign with the Brewers even if the Cubs did offer him arbitration at this point.

An extra draft pick for the Cubs and allowing Kendall to further decline with our major division rival? Sounds good to me. Well, it does make one good thing now if Matsui comes to town. Every time he gets on 1st against the Brewers, it's an automatic triple. :D

I'm sure Wade thinks that, but I don't know if Stark would go to him for the quote :D. Bowden's a good choice. It sounds like something an experienced G.M. would say (at least in the phrasing and especially the island comment and how comfortable this G.M. is in his job). That throws out most of the G.M.s in the National League. It also has to be somebody who keeps his wishlist from ever leaking out. It also sounds like somebody who the Phillies wouldn't really want to deal with, and that's in the division. So that leaves Minaya and Bowden, and the quote sounds much more like Bowden than Minaya.

Well, let's see here. Last year the Cubs were desperately looking for a CF that could be a stopgap to Pie coming up midseason and so they could trade Jones. Finley, knowing this, made it very clear that he was interested in coming to the Cubs and refused to sign any other offers for months. Every time Finley said he was interested the board predicted that the Cubs would sign him. The Cubs never took a look at him because they weren't interested! So now that they've committed to Pie in CF and Finley has been out of baseball for a year, and now Jim's going to sign him? There are plenty of shots at Hendry that are deserved, but this one really isn't.

The problem with Wood is that his arm is still mostly untested. He has pitched back to back days all of 1 time in his career in 2005. He has pitched 3 out of 4 days all of once in his career, also in 2005. Both on the second day of the back to back, and the 3rd outing in 3 out of 4 days he was ineffective. Now he did have outings in both halves of a doubleheader once this year, which is important to note but hard to translate being able to do that into being able to pitch back to back days repeatedly. Plus, there is that little issue of that there was that somewhat miracle recovery of his arm in the middle of the year when he was experiencing pain. Who knows when that pain will come back because they didn't do anything to fix it. It randomly went away on its own, and it may come back in the same way next year and have him on the DL most of the year. I hope Kerry comes back. He was always one of my favorite Cubs, and the injuries are not his fault. At the same time, the club has to have protection if they are going to sign him. Signing him for 2/10 guaranteed is way too risky, even if that means Hendry turns to another reliever from the outside. At least then it will be a big contract for a guy who likely will not have the flexibility and injury issues with Wood combined with a similar upside to Wood.

LoDuca is a free agent, and the Mets have been trying everything they can to not sign him.

I like the news about Wood as I feel that's a fair offer to alleviate the concerns. The news about Matsui is of course concerning. The worst note I saw in that was the sentence that Fukudome may not decide before the end of the year. If the Cubs have to wait that long for him and then he decides to stay in Japan, I'd be worried about what management would do next to try to fill the hole in January with limited options.

All because he changed his mind on Illinois? How many times did you change your mind as an 18 year old? Meanwhile there are two individuals in Illinois' program who are lucky they are still able to walk. That "decison" was worse than Gordon ever made. i keep telling you, i don't know who that is. even if i did, right or wrong makes no difference to me on this issue. i don't care what the rules say, i don't care what the whole state of indiana says, i'm going to hold a huge grudge and you would, too--regardless of how old a kid is. IU knows the feeling of being deserted after supposedly landing major recruits. May did it, and then Josh Smith did it. So it's not like IU's fanbase is completely foreign to being left at the altar at the last minute. I happen to disagree that there needs to necessarily be a huge grudge towards the kids that do those sorts of things, but to each his own opinion. Good luck this year. The Illini should have the best defensive squad in the conference and that makes them dangerous. If anybody is going to shut down Gordon and White in the Big 10, it will be Illinois.