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I'm surprised that Iowa would be showing USC/Washington on ESPN 2 over the ND/BC game. I'm not surprised at all that ABC chose the Stanford game for just over half the country. For those who are getting the ND game in the Midwest and East, it looks like the Stanford-Oregon game should be on ESPN2 which bumps USC-Washington in those areas. You can tell him that the game will be on ESPN3.

USC-UCLA?! Really? It's a huge deal out west. Way bigger deal than Knicks-Heats is...anywhere. Yeah, I can probably name 5-10 teams in the NBA that have bigger rivalries with the Knicks than the Heat. Hell, the Bulls probably have more of a rivalry with the Knicks than the Heat do. Yeah, the Knicks-Heat was one of those 10 year rivalries. It was maybe one of the best 5 rivalries in sports when it was incredibly heated but when the Knicks tanked any interest in the rivalry went away. It's kind of like the Colts-Patriots rivalry right now. That's still incredibly heated (not quite as much on the national stage as it was 3-4 years ago but still pretty big) but I just am not sure about the staying power once the key people leave the stage (Belichick, Brady, and Manning).

Tonight? Rodgers wasn't even close to a perfect passer rating. His rating was 92 something tonight.

I'm just throwing it out there now because it has become a serious problem in the past with Bears fans calling for suspensions/bannings for invading their thread. To both sides: please be respectful and know this is a big game for both sides with lots of emotion involved. Let's make it about the teams and not about each other.

They can if they want to be. They have as much right to this thread as anybody else. The Bears thread has been split off to keep Bears discussion from overwhelming a general NFL thread. It's not a Bears fan only hangout. If there was another team that generated that much discussion they would be split off as well no matter where they were located.

That might not be true. Boise could very well have 2 (I think it will be Virginia Tech and Nevada at the end of the year). Last year, Alabama had 3 (the 3rd one being in SEC championship game). Texas had 2. Obviously Boise's schedule is worse than any of the other contenders so they'll have to take a backseat to any other undefeated major conference teams. But is their schedule really that much worse to take them behind a team with a loss? Especially since the WAC is much closer to the major conferences this year than normal?

His numbers improved but his peripherals got worse as the season went along. He actually should have been worse in the second half than in the first half. He was a little unlucky in the first half and he's been very lucky in the second half. I would agree with you that there is still a wide range of possibilities for Nady next season and this season doesn't completely dismiss him as being done. But the deeper numbers don't show a player who is recovering. It's showing a miserable season that is getting worse and worse as it goes.

NO signs? He seems to be doing what you would expect from a player of his level coming back from that kind of surgery in mostly limited playing time. What signs has he shown? His power is down, his strikeouts are up, his line drives are down. The only thing we have is his track record and the hope that he still has potential to recover. This year has been a total bust though. I think the Cubs were hoping that Nady recovered the next year the way Colvin did but that simply hasn't happened.

He's probably capable of flirting with an 800 OPS again. He was an 800 OPS player in the prime of his career. He'll be 32 next year with a major injury in between and has shown no signs of rebounding so far this year. He has never walked much at all. His strikeout rate is actually getting worse as the season has gone along. His power is getting worse as the season is going along. He's shown really no signs of recovering. His improvement has been a mirage. I was actually somewhat supportive of Nady coming back because I bought in to the he's returning to the player he was as he continues to recover. But when I took a deeper look it simply isn't true. And I'm not willing to sign him based on the 5% chance that he could be a very good bench player.

He's shown a lot offensively over his career but he hasn't really shown anything offensively this year. Having 1 month where he puts up good numbers because of a .426 BABIP and striking out a lot without showing that much power is not a good combination. He's at best an average corner OF defensively. He won't hurt you much there (especially in left) but he's not a good option either. As for injury prone, it's not a big concern, but it does worry me a little bit when a player has two different episodes of needing TJS. What's the realistic projection for him next year? .710 OPS with possible upside and also possible downside? .725? I'd rather a bench player do something well and Nady is probably below average in every single area. Now if the Cubs don't sign any 1B Nady becomes a little more valuable because of the extreme uncertainty of the position and as a starter his possible upside becomes a little more important. But all indications are that the Cubs see that as their first area of concern and as a bench bat there are better options than Nady. That's especially true since you'd be lucky to get him for 1 million and probably would require a little more than that.

I understand the negatives. But the guy has a history of being able to hit and has improved the further away from surgery. I think he's a nice bat off the bench and potential fill-in starter if need be. If they are going with only 1 or 2 vets on the bench, he'd be a solid option. He has improved sure but that's to the tune of a .719 OPS in the second half. And that's with a .388 BABIP over that time frame and terrible ISOD's (.043) and ISOP's (.096). If he had followed up August with at least a decent September the case for his improvement might be better but right now it just looks like he got lucky one month. The Cubs are also going to carry only 5 bench spots again next season. One is for the backup catcher. Hopefully Fukudome stays and one spot is for Colvin/Fukudome. One spot is for a backup MI. Of the two spots remaining, do we really want one spot to go to a backup 1B/corner OF that really has shown very little offensively, doesn't have much to offer defensively, and may be injury prone?

Not Indianapolis local time it didn't :D

Through almost 2 games now, Houston's opponents are averaging 31 yards per game on the ground. But the 2 QB's have also thrown for an average of 407 yards per game.

He's most certainly not the long man (not sure if that part is a joke or not). As for the strikeout pitcher, apparently he's become one this year as he's averaging 11 K's per 9 innings this year.

I was hoping for a second that the reason ND wasn't moving was because they had heard a whistle for the delay of game penalty that MSU was going to get after snapping the ball late. Unfortunately that wasn't it. It looks like from rewinding the play that he would have been still been very open regardless but a MSU player got tangled up with the 2 ND players who might have run back to cover and after all 3 of them hit the ground that left no chance for anybody to get back there.

Looking through the teams receiving votes Michigan has as good of case as any right now...there haven't been very many impressive teams so far. Really? How many of those teams have given up 450 yards to an FBS team? Not sure. But behind Michigan is a team who will drop out of the poll this week in California (lost by 3 TD's last night). Receiving votes: Clemson (best team they've played is North Texas so far..has a test against Auburn tonight), Florida State (got destroyed last week against Oklahoma), Oklahoma State (best win vs Washington state), Air Force (beat BYU but has Oklahoma today), Pittsburgh (already lost to Utah), Georgia (now with 2 losses), Michigan State (best win against Western Michigan plays Notre Dame tonight), Oregon State (only game is the loss against TCU), Texas Tech (best win against SMU and plays Texas tonight), Georgia Tech (lost to Kansas), North Carolina (lost 2 games now), BYU (lost to Air Force), Washington (lost to BYU), Nevada (beat California just last night), etc, etc. If things go according to plan today, there aren't many cases for those receiving votes to be in the top 25. I honestly think Michigan isn't that good (caught a major break with Crist missing a half last week) but right now they still have as good of a resume as the other options. Who out of those teams should be in the top 25 instead? Nevada probably. I'm not sure who else unless somebody pulls an upset.

Looking through the teams receiving votes Michigan has as good of case as any right now...there haven't been very many impressive teams so far.

They scored those points because of turnovers...not because of any offensive efficiency. They went 36 yards after an interception, and 45 yards after a fumble. Hill had two drives longer than either of those. The drive charts has the two TD drives as 42 and 60 yards. The final drive for Detroit went 58 yards. The next longest drive of the game for them went 11 yards.

That football statistic would include all middle school football teams though which is probably a significant percentage of the players playing football. A lot of communities also don't play "Little League". Their champions or their travel teams never get to compete to try to go to the LLWS.

Yeah, that's the first time I've ever seen that. Lots of people have given Hendry somewhat of a pass on Soriano by saying the suits made him do it. People have speculated on it because it does make sense based on what else was happening at the time, but it's never been backed up before by somebody who may know how it actually happened.

There's also an interesting comment on the Soriano contract in there:

Value and production are different things, though. Kosuke is likely to be just as productive as Crawford if the Cubs hadn't decided to bench the superior player for an extended period of time - that's not Kosuke's fault. Out of the 200 extra AB's Crawford has over Fukudome, 140 of them have been against left-handers. Kosuke would likely have a decent drop in his numbers if he had to play as much against left-handers as Crawford has. are we positive that Fukudome is a flub against lefties? He's been very good this year (few PAs) but it's not like he has hundreds of MLB PAs on which to base the conclusion that his ability to get on base plummets against LHP. He's had a couple hundred PA's against them at this point and there definitely seems to be a couple trends in his numbers. He struggles in the power department against left-handers with a career ISOP of 105 compared to 159 against right-handers (although he does have 2 of his career 3 home runs against left-handers this year which are propping up his 2010 numbers). He has also struck out at a 25.5% clip against left-handers compared to 19.8% against right-handers. It's certainly possible that he changes those trends with more AB's but it's probably not very likely.

Castro ran into Brett Wallace at first base last week and has a hip bruise that the Cubs have been careful with. They did put him in for defense late tonight so he must be close to returning.

Houston always had a decent following. It doesn't really matter the size of the cities because most of the Steeler or Cowboy fans around the country have never lived near either one of the cities. The fact that they liked the teams probably had nothing to do with the city that team happened to be in. Although if size of the cities was important, Pittsburgh was much closer to Dallas as a city in the 70's then it is now.

Same reason as why the Cowboys have so many fans. They were both great during a time when TV had fully penetrated into market but there still wasn't a whole lot of football that was featured and it was more acceptable for fans to latch onto front runners.