jersey cubs fan

I'm all for dumping Hendry yesterday, but I have no problem with what Ricketts is doing. It's not all about 2010. The long time health of the franchise matters. They could go nuts and dump a bunch of people, but if the end result is they are going into 2010 with virtually the same team, what's the point? They are giving Hendry one season to make his roster work, and if it doesn't, they will be able to go into 2011 with a clean slate and a new regime in place and much greater understanding of who is available for the job. They can't really just pour a bunch of money into this offseason and find some magic pills to guarantee better performance for next season. Roster spots are filled and the free agent market just isn't all that meaningful. I don't get how you can accuse him of thinking everything is great. He's giving Hendry a year, and indicates Crane can keep doing his business side of the job for a while. With guaranteed contracts to Jim and almost all of the players, that really is the only realistic option. Most owners don't like showing up and giving people the axe on day one.

Play action does nothing when you can't run the ball. And it takes more time for playaction passes to develop, leaving Cutler even more vulnerable to the rush. The few times they used it on a roll out gave Cutler the most time to pass, though. And just because they weren't successful running the ball doesn't mean they didn't try, meaning it was easy for the defense to recognize run vs. pass right after the ball was snapped. Designed roll outs are a seperate issue than pure play action. The benefit of the play action is very subtle in the NFL, it can give a TE a step on a LB up the middle, however, if the defensive lineman are getting a huge push anyway it just isn't going to help. If they can get to the QB at will, they are going to get their by the time his finishes his fake handoff and turns to throw. The bootlegs worked well and I wouldn't mind seeing more of that.

Chicago opens as a 3 point favorite against the schizo Arizona Cardinals. You would think it benefits the Bears to have this game in Chicago, however, Arizona looks like they may be better on the road. They beat the previously well-respected Giants in the Meadowlands then turned around and got spanked against a bad Carolina Panthers team at home. Arizona's ride to the Super Bowl was on the road last year, and they are undefeated in away games this year, while all 3 of their losses are at home. One would think they could shred the Bears passing D, with multiple weapons and a big time QB. They are a top 10 passing offense by yards gained, but have only 11 TD to 11 INT. And their rushing offense remains dead last in the league, gaining nearly 30 fewer yards per game than the feable Bears rushing attack. Defensively they are solid, but not great, against the run, and beatable through the air. Mediocre sack and INT totals and they give up more than 7 yards per attempt to rank 20th in the league. This game is a fairly even matchup of potential first round playoff foes, with Arizona possibly becoming the de facto NFC West champion again and the Bears fighting for a wild card. Coming into the season this was a must win if the Bears were going to win the division, and now it might be a must win if they want a wild card. A loss would leave them at 4-4, and I'm not sure there are 6 wins on the schedule after this week. A win leaves 11 wins as a possibility.

Play action does nothing when you can't run the ball. And it takes more time for playaction passes to develop, leaving Cutler even more vulnerable to the rush.

Great point. That Philly D is tough. They are alright, but they aren't world beaters. They are similar to the Bears. Philly has one win against a non-incompetent team this year, the Giants, and NY has been sliding fast. The other wins are Carolina, Tampa, KC and Washington, and they lost to Oakland. They got dismantled against New Orleans. They've had a lot of turnovers, but they've also played against the worst QB's in the league.

The line stinks, but a lot of what happened yesterday was what most referrees are calling late hits in recent years. Fatboy wrapped up and dragged down Cutler well after a pass and they didn't do a thing about it, yet in the "you can't finish the tackle after the pass" era that gets called 90% of the time. It was clear those refs were just going to let everything go outside the blatant shot to the head. Also, on one replay of a sack the booth was ripping into Orlando Pace for getting mauled when nothing of the sort happened. The pressure came from up the middle, Pace kept his guy in front of him, albeit he was moving back, but since Cutler could not step up properly from the middle pressure, they blamed it on the tackles. But neither tackle got burnt on that play. This booth was horrible. Salomon Wilcots is incompetent. These guys miss stuff in live action all the time (calling something a catch when it was clearly not caught, unnecessarily naming the offensive lineman they think did the most blocking on a play during the live playbyplay call) but Wilcots couldn't even see obvious stuff on replays. They drove me nuts all day. I was not happy with the red zone play calling. Why are you doing a play action pass with only one receiver option? Why was Olsen on the sideline for so many of those plays? If you bring in 2 extra fatties to block on the end of the line it doesn't help when your middle 5 get no push at all. You either add backfield blockers or spread everybody out. An extra wide body on the end does nothing. The Bears need to go to the spread in the red zone. Their best play is the 5 yard slant to a WR or out to a TE, get 4 of Bennet, Hester, Knox, Olsen and Clark on the field in tight and run quick pass plays. And it may have been cute to have your TEs shift to the outside with WR going in the slot as a different look, but when that is your standard passing formation, you aren't going to trick the defense into a mismatch in coverage.

I'd definitely call that putting a guy on notice.

Well, the question that started this discussion was why wouldn't they leap at the opportunity, so that is why the issue is being discussed. And the reason their happiness matters is because they pay money. You can talk about the theoretical money involved, but right now such a system is not in place so one can only speculate that it would be a gold mine. I have serious doubts about a multi-tiered playoff, with or without the bowls' involvement.

Those games are the dumbest thing about college football.

Dew how do you not see the difference between a road game planned years in advance and a last minute bowl trip? Seriously, give me a break with the SEC road game nonsense.

you guys are missing the point. The question was raised about why wouldn't the current bowl hosts be happy to take part in something like this. The answer is because it would destroy the bowl games that matter. The Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta bowls would cease to exist if they went to a multi-tier playoff. Sure people who plan a generic bowl would love to be a part of a major tournament, because they don't currently matter, but that was not the question. But it wouldn't work for the big guys. They would no longer get a team and their fans coming for a week with the sole purpose of enjoying that bowl game. Now, if you take the current system, with 4 major bowls and a NC game at one of those sites a week later, and tweak it so that each year 2 bowls are designated for the top 4 and the winners play the NC game a week later, then they'd probably be on board.

Right, and there are also bowl games currently played in Detroit and D.C. I do agree that logistics would be an issue, but it's not something that should just eliminate the possibility altogether. those bowl games aren't in the discussion. The big ones are what matter.

Regular season SEC games are a meaningless comparison, as are regular season Big Ten or other conference games. Having Alabama go to Florida isn't the same thing as having Penn State go to Pasadena or Washington go to Miami, let alone trying to get a team like Boise State or Utah to travel with a crowd to multipe post season destinations. First off, regular season games are scheduled far in advance and you know exactly where you will be each week. A multi-tier playoff system will involve multiple destinations where people will not know where they are going until a week in advance, and it will be much longer than typical in conference road games. And you are still selling the vast majority of those tickets to the home crowd, that doesn't work in the bowls. The only way to sell-out is to grant a de facto home game to the select few teams who have the advantage of being in warm weather and near a preferred destination. You cannot incorporate bowls into a deep playoff system. It will never work. 4 team tourney with 2 bowls and a predetermined NC site probably would, but not an 8 team, and absolutely not a 16 team field. Still, in the end you are still going to have the same people whining about the 9th team that didn't get included or the 17th team that got left out. That crap happens every march for a freaking 65 team tourny. And your definition of meaningless is silly. Every game played is meaningless under your definition. What's meaningful is people getting the enjoyment out of going to, playing in, and winning these bowl games. The weed eater bowl might not matter much, but the big bowls absolutely do matter to everybody involved.

There are many different ways you could set it up, I'm just throwing some options out there. I don't see any reason why fans would travel for a meaningless game and not travel for a game that means something. Big bowl games still matter. Tell the Rose Bowl participants and the fans who travel there they don't matter if it's not for the NC. You go to the Orange Bowl and win and it's a really big deal. The SEC Championship game isn't a good comp either. The fact that fans travel to road games is meaningless. A bowl game is a different beast. They need to put butts in seats en masse, and it just won't happen if it's a big tourny where you are sending them across the nation three weeks in a row. Fans will not travel to three consecutive locales as their team advances. NFL games sell out because one of them is a home game. If you talk about one game before a NC, then you can probably swing it. Fans will have a month to plan knowing exactly where that first game will be and exactly where the 2nd game will be if they win. But if you add a third round, the only way you can swing it is by giving the Gulf Coast/SoCal teams a home game every bowl season and then you run into even bigger problems of fairness. It's tough enough for a Big Ten or Big East or one of the northern Big 12/Pac to go into a bowl game where they are almost always at some sort of away team disadvantage. But then you add on the difficulty of having to play 3 such road games, while their competition likely maintains a significant home field advantage and it becomes a mess. Send Iowa or Notre Dame fans somewhere in Florida to play the Gators, have them get by them and then go play USC in Pasedena, then if they win there they get to play LSU in the Super dome? Even if it's not that drastic of an example, every southern team will have a huge advantage. If you disregard the north/south thing, you really think you are going to get a ton of Florida fans to watch their team play in Florida, then travel to California for another game with plans on attending the next in Arizona? It's just not going to happen. The only way it works with a big tourny is if you seed teams and give them a home game, which eliminates the bowl system entirely. The 4-team playoff is the only realistic way to incorporate the bowls with a NC game.

Dusty had a 4 year deal and was successful in the 2 years, very few, if any, baseball owners would have fired him in 2005. I dislike Hendry very much, but the team was going through an ownership change, and still winning, it would have been very hard to cut the guy loose then. The Trib hired some very successful baseball people to run the team. Green and MacPhail are two of the most well respect guys around. They are currently run by the wrong people, but it's hardly incompetents. Hendry was a successful minor league coordinator and a very logical choice to take the position, and again, they had success early on in his tenure. They let him work through his 2 year down time and then they started winning again. I feel he should have been able to do much more with what he was given. However, the point is it's not a bunch of nonense leadership phrases that will determine if this team gets better. "Holding people accountable" just doesn't mean much of anything. Guys were fired or let go all the time under the Trib.

How so? If anything, people have been held more accountable in the past 15 years than in Cubs history. Lynch was shown the door fairly quickly. They realized Dusty was the wrong guy and let him go despite an "unprecedented level of success". They made a change in the draft room after a couple down years. They've fired hitting coaches and base coaches and have had 6 different managers. Something as arbitrary as "holding people accountable" isn't particularly meaningful. The thing that has held the Cubs back for so long has not been ownership, or accountability, but the wrong people making the wrong personel decisions. It's as simple as that. All this other stuff about putting the focus on winning and concentrating on the product on the field and all the rest are just words to keep the media busy. It all comes down to who they acquire to play baseball games, and they haven't acquired enough good players.

I don't see how the November-April timeframe will give us a good idea if he will follow through on what he says. It will be the next couple offseasons before you have any idea.

February/March are fairly dry in Naples, driest part of the year. It's the wettest time of year in Mesa. AZ still gets less rain, but it's not an issue for either place. The bigger problem is they move their minor league headquarters there all summer, because that is when the weather sucks.

It got them Derrek Lee earlier this decade, a productive CF for the past 2 seasons and has produced 2 of the Cubs top 10 or 15 prospects thus far. It got them one year of a productive CF. Fukudome was an unproductive RF the year before, unless there is some Asian tie-in with Johnson/Edmonds that I missed. Although the general point still stands. The Cubs ventured into Asia and then seemingly went away, so the break between Choi and the current crop came up empty, but being there now is a good thing, and investing heavier is even better.

I don't think there's a chance it'd be half empty. If Ole MIss/Texas Tech in a meaningless game could pull 88,000, then Florida/Ga Tech for a chance to advance to the semi-finals of the playoffs would draw that many or more. That's a home game for somebody. You don't need to get 30,000+ from each side to travel thousands of miles, get hotels and pay for a more expensive than usual game ticket. Fans go to bowls as one off events, they will not go to multiple venues like they are following the Dead on tour. I think you could get away with a 4 team tourny with 2 bowls in which the winners face off in a championship game. But there's no way you are going to get fans to three seperate games in a multi-team playoff. It would have to be home games, which would be the end of major bowls.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that sounds like they expect Hendry to do well this year or he's gone. Good catch. Give him a chance in 2010. It made sense all along that they would give the incumbents a season whenever they finally did get the job. I'd cut the guy lose today, but I understand a new owner wanting to wait on that move.

Why? You can't just decide you want to win a World Series. And any timeline would be a meaningless date. They could win it next year, or not win for several.

I think the odds are high, but will probably go down every year. The closer they get to the final year of the deal, the easier it might be for them to figure out a deal.

An 8 team playoff would be really good this year. This would be THE perfect year for it. Again, I still don't understand the reluctance to a playoff system. So many people have said "well the powers that be who control the Bowl games don't want this to happen". Well why the hell not? You can keep "the bowl" aspect of it. For example, have the Cotton Bowl be a quarterfinal, Rose Bowl be a semifinal, etc. I guarantee you more people would watch a bowl game if it meant something. So I don't know why the promoters of the bowls would have a problem with something that would give them MORE viewers. Because a major part of the bowl system is to get hordes of people to travel to a destination and spend money in that destination. If the bowl games were not the final game of the year, and there was a chance your team would go on to another bowl game, lots of people would skip out on travelling, especially to the first round in hopes of spending their one trip on a more important second round or final. Also, you couldn't really guarantee more viewers.

and that's quite ridiculous. Sports are good. I can see J.R.'s point. Who wants to hear whether or not the Jacksonville Jaguars improved their offense in the draft in the middle of June? Some of the crap ESPN puts on to kill time is, well, crap. It's a sports network with several stations dedicated to sports 24/7. Whining about having to hear about the NFL draft is just plain stupid. If they only talked about baseball during the summer that network would suck even more than it already does.