Derwood

GEOVANY SOTO

what are the times on these games? i got roped into working on Sunday at 1pm

Or to a much, much lesser extent, Felix Pie, if you change everyone wants him to some teams kind of want him. the difference is that Ellisbury and Cabrera have at least been sorta okay at the major league level

He was the Bayou Basher because "Dandy Little Glove Man" was already taken

I think the Giants vs. Baltimore was one of the worst in recent history, and while Tennessee vs. St. Louis was one of the greatest Super Bowls in recent memory, that game was extremely regional in terms of national (dis)interest

if LaRoche can refind the stroke he had in Atlanta, he's a great piece for that team. he just really looked clueless for a lot of 2007

Jacob Ellisbury is the Melky Cabrera of Boston. The organization calls him untouchable, so suddenly everyone wants him

i never went, so i don't really get the excitement. i think it would be more fun if it was the week before the season (impossible, i know).

i would be hesitant to trade that many bodies in one deal

Yes, but your average American had never heard of him before those incidents, that's the point. But I don't think that was frostwyrm's point, which is where this spinoff discussion began. He was referring to Clinton's "easy circumstances" compared to Bush, and how no one had heard of Bin Laden, and while Bin Laden's status as a target has certainly increased since 9/11, it's not like he magically appeared that day. The Clinton administration was well aware of him and had about as much success getting him as the Bush administration has. No argument here. My point was just in response to Derwood's comment about him being known as a rebel that we funded. I think most Americans first heard about Bin Laden when Clinton tried to kill him via airstrike after the embassy bombings. i didn't mean we knew about him pre-terrorism, i'm just saying i learned about him in the context of "he's a terrible terrorist dude who we funded and trained woops lol"

Penn State can rebound, but they can't shoot foul shots, so Wiscy just needs to "hack-a-shaq" them and they'll win Unless the Badgers are down towards the end of the game, they just don't foul. They are very sound fundamentally, don't reach, and move their feet. They play great man to man, position defense. I hate them. Wisconsin has always been fundamentally sound. I think Bo Ryan could coach a team of walk-ons to 20 wins. Always a tough matchup for IU because they don't make mistakes. Bo Ryan is the best coach in the conference. Wisconsin is superbly coached. Interesting games for both 3-0 Big Ten teams this week. Wisconsin at Penn State tonight, and Indiana at Minnesota Thursday night. The Barn has been a veritable house of horrors for IU historically, and Tubby has had great success against the Hoosiers (though mostly against the incompetent Davis). This will be IU's toughest, most likely loss since playing Xavier. If either team moves to 4-0, they'll be ahead of the curve. Ohio State at Michigan State tonight is also a big game. Minnesota really hasn't beaten anybody to date, unless you count Penn State, which didn't play very well. I think IU wins that game easy, D.J. White and Gordon will have big games. Minnesota didn't win so much as Penn State lost. If Penn State shoots even 60% at the line, they win

http://www.gearsandwidgets.com/external/wherethisthreadgoing.jpg

i am looking forward to some creative signs in New England....you have to imagine they are foaming at the mouth to get under Phillip Rivers' skin

Penn State can rebound, but they can't shoot foul shots, so Wiscy just needs to "hack-a-shaq" them and they'll win Unless the Badgers are down towards the end of the game, they just don't foul. They are very sound fundamentally, don't reach, and move their feet. They play great man to man, position defense. is the game on ESPN or BTN? I know it has a weird 9pm local start, which indicates it's probably a TV game

Penn State can rebound, but they can't shoot foul shots, so Wiscy just needs to "hack-a-shaq" them and they'll win

in your opinion. in my opinion, it would be the most wildly popular playoff in sports, even bigger than the men's basketball tourney No, I'm talking about the sport in general. College football as a whole would not be as wildly popular if it had a full on playoff. And there's not a chance in the world that a college football player would be more popular than March Madness. There's just no way that's possible and there are a ton of reasons why. not to mention that it's not always true that the "best team won" at the end of a tournament, even though everyone says this. was NC St better than Houston in 1983? how about villanova-georgetown in 1985? villanova won the ncaa title as an 8 seed, which is the equivalent of the ncaa football championship going to a team that isn't ranked in the top 25. more than an insignificant amount of the time, the team that wins the title in ncaa men's basketball is the team that happened to get hot and lucky at the right time. i like the ncaa tourney for what it is, but i also like that the team winning the ncaa title in football is the team that was the best for 4-5 months, not 3 weeks. so LSU was the best team all year, eh?

Being decent for a long period of time does have value. Whether Vizquel could be considered a decent hitter for that time is up for debate I guess. i have a tough time using 3000 hits (for example) as a standard for induction if it took the player 22 years and 10,000 at bats to get there that's still a .300 batting average. true, but why is 3000/10,000 somehow better than 2,500/8,333?

this might have been a great deal 5 years ago. Andruw Jones to Mark Kotsay is some kind of downgrade. yikes

in your opinion. in my opinion, it would be the most wildly popular playoff in sports, even bigger than the men's basketball tourney

yes, there's also the regular season, which concludes with teams like indy, gb and dallas sitting a lot of their regulars for the last week or two because they're already locked into their playoff spot. 95% of people who don't want a college football playoff (16 teams, say) feel that way not because they think a playoff would be boring, but because it would cheapen what is the most important "regular season" in major sports. and I contend that it the regular season being so "important" is ruining what could be a good thing And I can't figure out why it's more important to have an important regular season than an important postseason. Seems to me like sports are played to win in the postseason primarily, so why cheapen that to make the regular season more important? i made this point before, but i think that the importance on the regular season (this season being the exception) usually kills your team's chances for a title really early. If USC, for example, loses to OSU in the first few weeks next year, they may be eliminated from title contention. It would be like being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in April of the baseball season Exactly. It's more exciting for fans whose teams are lucky enough (or have a weak enough schedule Ohio State) to make it through the season unbeaten. For those who play in a tough conference a lot of teams are screwed early in the year. A postseason deciding a champion is better than a regular season doing so because, in theory, everybody has similar strengths of schedule in a postseason. OSU getting to play Youngstown State, Akron and whatever other crap they played non-conference was a built-in advantage over a team like Tennessee, for instance, which played Cal plus a tougher SEC schedule. In a postseason though, Ohio State and Tennessee both would have to make it through tough teams. and the current system discourages teams from scheduling tough non-con schedules It's really kind of silly that this system is in place in a major sports atmosphere. You'd think a sport as wildly popular as college football would have at least a mediocre championship season. It's a shame. you can blame: - "tradition" - a spineless NCAA - too much power given to conferences - different conference sizes - different scheduling - small schools being allowed to take money from big schools to come get the snot beat out of them - multi-million payouts by corporate sponsored bowl games

i would like, someday, to be in a position to say "no" when someone offers me $1 billion for something

the difference is that santo actually deserves to be in the hall of fame; rice doesn't. Player A) 15 seasons and mediocre outfielder: 83.2 WARP3 Player B) 14 seasons and excellent infielder: 119.7 WARP3 I'm going with B there. Player A also DH'ed.... a lot

Being decent for a long period of time does have value. Whether Vizquel could be considered a decent hitter for that time is up for debate I guess. i have a tough time using 3000 hits (for example) as a standard for induction if it took the player 22 years and 10,000 at bats to get there

yep, he was the guy we helped train and arm so that Afghanistan could fight off those pesky Russians No, I knew him as the guy who killed hundreds of people in US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and killed several US Sailors on the USS Cole. that too, but my part was true as well

yes, there's also the regular season, which concludes with teams like indy, gb and dallas sitting a lot of their regulars for the last week or two because they're already locked into their playoff spot. 95% of people who don't want a college football playoff (16 teams, say) feel that way not because they think a playoff would be boring, but because it would cheapen what is the most important "regular season" in major sports. and I contend that it the regular season being so "important" is ruining what could be a good thing And I can't figure out why it's more important to have an important regular season than an important postseason. Seems to me like sports are played to win in the postseason primarily, so why cheapen that to make the regular season more important? i made this point before, but i think that the importance on the regular season (this season being the exception) usually kills your team's chances for a title really early. If USC, for example, loses to OSU in the first few weeks next year, they may be eliminated from title contention. It would be like being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in April of the baseball season Exactly. It's more exciting for fans whose teams are lucky enough (or have a weak enough schedule Ohio State) to make it through the season unbeaten. For those who play in a tough conference a lot of teams are screwed early in the year. A postseason deciding a champion is better than a regular season doing so because, in theory, everybody has similar strengths of schedule in a postseason. OSU getting to play Youngstown State, Akron and whatever other crap they played non-conference was a built-in advantage over a team like Tennessee, for instance, which played Cal plus a tougher SEC schedule. In a postseason though, Ohio State and Tennessee both would have to make it through tough teams. and the current system discourages teams from scheduling tough non-con schedules