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Congratulations everyone. Color me very upset-not only did the Bears remain the other undefeated team, but I needed Muhammad to get 12 yards to tie in my fantasy league tonight, and 18 to win! Come on! That's automatic! No, he gets 2-and I go down in flames.

I definitely do. I turned to my wife just now and said that I couldn't believe that the Cardinals dominated for 3 quarters, and now the Bears are going to win. Well, I guess I deserve it for sitting here and thinking about how the Colts were going to be the last undefeated team again.

They still play Michigan, USC, and at least a few decent to good teams other then that every year-not quite the WV model.

They are also doing it for alumni. Their schedule is going to be super easy for the next few years. White decided that in order to compete they had to have a schedule filled with a bunch of weak teams. And I'm not sure I like that. Hell, just last year they were 6 points away from an undefeated season, and they at least tried to put together a strong schedule. The upcoming games with SDSU and Nevada are just going to rally the haters to say "Look at this, they whine every year about our soft opening games, look at who they are playing to open up". Isn't one of those two games not entirely ND's choice? I seem to remember that one of those two schools required us to schedule them 1 time in order for ND to rearrange the schedule. It was the year where ND was scheduled to open with Michigan. At the last minute, ND decided to try to move the BYU game in front of Michigan to give them a warmup game, but one of Nevada or SDSU was in the way-and in order for ND to make the scheduling change, they had to schedule that school for a game. Of course, they lost that BYU game. Does anybody remember which school that was?

No, you have it right. Bruce confirmed that Dusty did not listen to Rothschild, and Larry was one of the only coaches who worked hard (I believe he said 1 of 2, but he didn't mention who the other one was). Everybody just has a different opinion on how much of a factor that was. I'm willing to see how he is this next year, but I can understand if some people are unwilling to give him another chance.

Some of his decisions in Tampa Bay may be clouding my judgement, but it's hard to act like they didn't happen. Also, his pitcher usage has me worried. I'd say that is probably my biggest concern when seeking to hire a manager. What proof is out there about his pitcher abuse? I know he used the pen quite a bit in Cincy but I don't know his habits pitching wise in Seattle. I know Wikipedia is a less than reliable source, but I thought this sentence was interesting about Piniella (the use of had in the sentence was becuase right now he is not a manager). Looking through the pitcher abuse points lists, Moyer and Fassero appeared one year for the older pitchers. Hamala appeared as one of the least abused pitchers of that year. When the full lists came out in 2001, the highest Mariners were Abbott at #28, and Garcia at #36. The next starter for the Mariners was a long way down from that. In 2002, Valdes and Garcia are #21 and #24, with a little ways down until you get to Sele. In 2003 for TB, Jeremi Gonzalez was #15 and Victor Zambrano was #20, with no other TB starter in the top 50. I could not find the 2004 numbers other then I think Victor Zambrano was #4 that year. In 2005, Casey Fossum was #11, and Kazmir was #31. I simply don't see that much evidence that Lou abuses pitchers. He certainly does not abuse them to the point that Baker did at all, as referenced by only having one instance of his pitchers being in the top 10 of PAP.

I will go on record and agree with this right now. Way to cover your butt. The comments of some on this great board are starting to diminish the quality it once had. Too many people jumping on the opinions of the outspoken. I think if the Cubs win in '07, it will be 95% due to the players and 5% to the manager, no matter who they hire!! I totally agree. I stated in one post that I doubt that there would be a swing of more than 3 games no matter whether they hired Piniella, Bochy, Girardi, or Brenley. Whether we want to admit it or not, these guys are all competent enough to win with the right players. I agree. The amount of crying on this board has reached a epic-like proportion. Any of the 4 above mentioned managers I'd would be fine with. Piniella is just as proven as Bochy and Brenley so what's the problem here? Having said that, I think the reason you are seeing people react so negatively to the Piniella hiring is that, to many, it symbolizes more of the same. Hendry is making the "safe" pick. He's going to say, "Lou is a proven winner", he's "been there before". Lou is (seemingly) a manager with a strategy style very similar to Baker's. The thing I don't understand is the theory that Lou has a strategy style similar to Baker's. First is the lineup issue. I've been going back to some of Piniella's Seattle teams in the mid 90's (I've been selecting random years). First, Piniella liked to bat Joey Cora leadoff. Cora had decent speed (one year I'm looking at he had 13 SB) but what he was was the teams highest OBP guy without slugging. In fact, their top 5 OBP guys batted in the first 5 spots in the order, and 3 of those were their top slugging players as well. (this is 1998) Looking through some other years, it seems to be much of the same thing. Lou seems like he will most of the time fill out a proper lineup. Also, look at the BA/OBP numbers of most of his players (everyone with over 300 AB's): for example, here's the 2000 team: .285/.392 .245/.353 .247/.316 .316/.420 .238/.362 .267/.365 .253/.361 .324/.423 .275/.351 So, that's only 2 players out of 9 who don't have at least a 98 point higher OBP than BA (and those 2 have a 69 and 76, which is still much, much better than our squad) and 8 of the 9 have an OBP of .350 or higher. To get that kind of results, that team had to be instructed to be very patient.

Do you think a team loses 90 games on accident? It's a series of moves. Hendry re-upped Alfonseca with a big raise when it was unwarrented and unnecessary. He brought in guys like Macias, Perez, Rusch and Estes who all sucked and received way to much playing time. He's overpaid for mediocrity repeatedly, and avoided the opportunity to acquire difference makers, unless those players came with an asterisk (like the banged up Nomar, or the getting dumped by a payroll slasher Ramirez and Lee). He focused on the bullpen last year when the lineup and rotation were huge question marks, then he filled in the lineup and rotation with mediocre players like Jacque Jones and an injured Wade Miller. The Cubs have lost a ton of games with Hendry. That doesn't happen if all but 2 of your moves are good. I think with Hendry (and what Goony is alluding to) it is more of what he hasn't done than what he has. Most of his really bad moves that have been talked about are really just bench moves or things like that which have little bearing on a ballclub. In the past two years though, for whatever reason, Hendry has not brought a single impact player to the ballclub. The closest are Jones, Erye, and Howry, who are all decent to nice pieces of a ballclub, but none of them are an impact player. This team needs more impact players to be highly successful, and Hendry has to go out and get them this offseason. If he does that, the little moves will be seen as much less important. Right now, they have to be seen as important, because that's all we've seen for 2 1/2 years now.

Does a manager's salary come out of the budget? I think the player budget will likely be the same regardless of the manager's salary. It shouldn't be that way (since all money really comes out of the same budget-a cutback in one spot should mean in an increase in another spot), but I think that major league teams like to separate those two areas completely and try not to let them affect one another.

BTW, since I know most of you don't read the Indy Star, here is a pretty decent article on Rex Grosssman from this morning's edition: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061016/SPORTS0303/610160396/1004/SPORTS

One quick fantasy request for tonight's game-and this isn't a stringent one. Please throw it to Muhammad a little more than last week-I need 18 yards and no fumbles out of him, or any length TD would do also. That's all I need-18 little yards!

Yeah, and then you get like I had this weekend with a double bye week. ND was off yesterday, the Colts were off today-a whole weekend where my football teams don't even appear once. It has been a strange weekend.

I think the two leagues do have an arrangment-I can't remember a Sunday night game during the World Series for a few years at least.

I think you meant this week :D

At least you aren't 0-11 which I think I am Didn't you win the Carolina game?

Aside from a couple SEC teams, there's no team in the country that has really played anyone if you take away their 2 toughest games, especially with nearly half the season to go. There's a big difference between the rest of the teams for Texas and other teams rest of the teams. Let's take 2 non SEC teams that are the closest to Texas (ND and California) ND: 2 toughest games: Georgia Tech, Michigan Rest of Games: Penn State, Michigan State, Purdue, Stanford Texas: 2 toughest games: OSU, Oklahoma Rest of Games: North Texas, Rice, Iowa State, Sam Houston State, Baylor California: 2 toughest games: Tennessee, Oregon Rest of Games: Minnesota, Portland State, Arizona State, Oregon State, Washington State Texas has had 4 teams so far that are terrible-North Texas, Rice, Sam Houston State, Baylor ND has one: Stanford (Michigan State still gets rewarded in the computers since 3 of their 4 losses were to top 10 teams) California has one-Portland State That's the difference-Texas's terrible games really drive down their SOS at this point in the season.

Philly? Rams? It's 24-21 Seattle over the Rams, and Philly is tied 17-17 with the Saints.

See, I don't understand this line of thinking. WHO CARES if a WC makes/wins the World Series? They were obviously a good team to begin with, and if the other teams were truly better, they'd prove it. Second place teams win championships in the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Why is it such a travesty when it happens in baseball? I think the problem is that it happens so often in baseball. A WC team in the NFL who had to go on the road for all 3 games has only ever won the SB once in the NFL (last year's Steelers). In basketball, a team ranked 5-8 has only won 1 title (I'm pretty sure about this stat-I know the #6 ranked Rockets in the mid 90's were the lowest seed to ever win the title). Baseball has had a few wildcards win the WS in just over 10 years. WC's are just as likely as the 1, 2, or 3 seed to win in MLB, while that hasn't been true in either the NFL or the NBA.

6 pm, I believe. ESPN projected a top 5 of OSU, USC, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia if I remember correctly. Wow, I thought Michigan would be ahead of USC. If Florida had won, USC was supposed to be clearly ahead of Florida-so I'm not surprised that they would be ahead of Michigan either. One computer ranking I saw this morning had USC 1, Michigan 2, OSU 3. Note on the computer ranking-not overall BCS projected ranking I saw, but just one of the individual computer rankings.

6 pm, I believe. ESPN projected a top 5 of OSU, USC, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia if I remember correctly. Don't they come out tomorrow? No, this year they decided it would be better if the BCS standings came out on Sunday instead of Monday-I'm not sure if that 6 p.m. number is right though, I haven't heard exactly what time though, so it could be right.

Don't expect a lot of company. Sure, we'll start out with just a few, but there will always be room for cub fans ;) I'll save you a window seat so you can keep building the autograph collection. Funny, but it was just a few days / weeks ago that I was firmly against Lou. Same with me that I was completely against Lou. After doing some research into him, I'm fine with him. I wasn't actively rooting for Piniella to get the job (my top preference was probably Bochy) but I think that the commitment to winning now makes this a good sign.

Well, at this point it is simply that they are undefeated with a better schedule then Louisville and WV..I'd put them #3 behind OSU and Michigan now-I just can't see who else would be above them right now based on their performance (even though I think USC might get beat by several teams right now)

A couple of interesting twists and turns in the Florida-Auburn game. Auburn had a first down at the Florida 7 when the tight end fumbled, and Florida recovered at the 3. On the next play, Florida got called for holding in the end zone, Auburn collects the safety, and gets the ball with good field position. 10-5 Florida right now.

Cincy marches all the way down the field, but stalls in the red zone-Louisville holds on, 23-17.

Alabama catches a TD in OT to beat Ole Miss, and Cincy has to try to drive 92 yards to beat Lousiville in just over 2 minutes.