SouthSideRyan

The South Padre games are on Fox College Sports which pretty much nobody anywhere gets(unless you have DirectTV.) A sports bar is probably your best bet.

oh yeah they did Yes, I can vouch for this. The Ramirez/Lofton trade was met with a lot of mixed emotions and the overall tone at the time was negative. The Lofton part of the trade excited me at the time. I sure don't remember any mixed emotions. It seems to me that everyone (including the writers) thought that the Cubs were the big winners in the deal. I'm just talking about the reaction here on NSBB. I distinctly recall more than a little negative reaction here. I was surprised because I considered it a pretty good deal at the time. What I remember most was some guy in one of the power rankings saying "the Cubs will find Ramirez and Lofton aren't enough, and will fade out of the race" or something like that. Which was pretty funny when we began our run and won the division. Neyer had a comment along those lines.

That line on the ND/IU game(15 points) was absurd. I know IU has a national fanbase which tends to overrate a team when it comes to pointspreads, but so does ND. Kind of surprised Brey still had the starters in when I got back from work (~5:00 mark) I guess they've gotta compete for Indiana kids, so may as well drive the point home.

We've the shift in recent years by some players. Many of them want long-term deals for security, and that has been the push and standard. But in the last two years we've seen several players opt out of lucrative deals, only to sign more lucrative deals because the salary inflation is so rapid, such that the back end of a 4 or 5 year deal may not maximize value. You end up with possibilities where you could argue someone was underpaid at the back-end of his contract. Wood is 31. A one-year arbitration does nothing to hurt his value next off-season at age 32, unless a season-ending injury occurs. So as Goony points out, it's not crazy at all. 3/24 this off-season or next, there is little Wood could do to damage that value, again barring a season-ending injury. If he makes it through the season healthy, thus showing he can handle the bullpen workload 2 years in a row, 5/50-60 wouldn't be out of the question next offseason. And if he hurts his arm, his future contracts would be zero. It's a gamble, but he's at a point that he needs to think about long-range security. Also, this discussion was based on him being offered 3/24. What if there's a 3/32 or 4/40 offer this year? He has long-range security. He doesn't have to work another day in his life. He's at a point where he can easily afford to take a 1 year gamble to gain one last giant paycheck.

This argument is similar to what I heard around Knoxville the past few years that Fulmer has done a worse coaching job recently because he's gotten a little fatter. No offense, but it's rather silly. Just because the man is fat and looks a little lazy doesn't mean he's not motivated to win - he just doesn't show intensity on the outside and he's not in great shape. Interestingly, I've never heard anybody say Mike Leach is unmotivated, yet he's fat and doesn't appear to be extremely intense. my comment has nothing to do with his girth. Then what the hell did it have to do with? How he lays on a couch during games??

This is ridiculous. Because he's morbidly obese his team plays lazy?

Hasn't Washington kinda sucked this year?

This is silly. 32 points in conference play is enough to be impressive. You don't have to selectively remove a game to make them look better. Oh and has anyone made the joke yet that Cal Poly beat Wisconsin cause PATs don't count?

I assume you are basing this off of my LewJack stuff. I find it funny how you can misinterpret a post and then run with it as if you are right. I said LewJack could become a 15 point scorer. He very well could because he is very talented. I don't think he will. I would say he probably averages 10 pts or so his senior year but he could score 15 a game. Oh and that's not a projection its an evaluation of his potential. Big difference. LewJack has talent, but you're talking him up like he's a top 50 recruit, he's not. What are you basing these evaluations off of, the 3 games he's played against low-major talent thus far? He can be a solid Big Ten point guard when he's an upperclassman, but he's never going to be a scorer.

Lilly, DeRosa, Ramirez, Dempster, Reed, Edmonds. You really shouldn't be counting Dempster in there yet He's been a Cub for 5 years. I think he's referring to the coptract he just signed. either way, it still has yet to be determined if he handled dempster well. he's had one good season as a reliever and one good season as a starter. if that one good season as a starter leads to a 4 year contract and he bombs during those 4 years, then he willed have handled it poorly. I wasn't referring to the contract just signed, that'd be goofy. It's also goofy to count these next 4 years as far as determining whether Dempster for 3/15 was a good contract(it was great)

That can easily be misinterpreted.

Lilly, DeRosa, Ramirez, Dempster, Reed, Edmonds. GEOVANY SOTO And Ryan Theriot

On the CubbieBum projection system, Kramer is set to average 25 points per game by next year.

Oakland cut it to 2 points late against Iowa, but isn't going to get it done.

Bastard. Where?

IIRC, defensive win shares are crap.

Speak for yourself. Anyone knows how to work ESPN 360? It appears as though my Internet provider doesn't allow access to it... This is why I was listening to Illinois on the radio last night. Not all ISPs carry 360, it's a ISP by ISP basis. I searched most of the game looking for a stream and found nothing.

YMMV on the first 2 paragraphs, so fine, I don't see how I'm any bigger a Big 10 homer, than you are SEC, but I can't think of many arguments that would be less compelling to read. This looks to me to trace back to me calling the SEC total ass last year. It was total ass. I'm pretty sure it is this year too. I also went out of my way to say Tennessee was a damn good team last year.(And they're pretty damn good this year too, though likely a smidge overrated) The SEC was the best conference in football last year. It's probably the 2nd best conference in football this year(though I don't have them particularly close to the Big XII) SEC fans are a minority around these parts because it's a Cubs board, yet EVERYONE hates them. It's not because we don't like people talking about non-Big Ten schools. Raisin posts box scores of UCLA's women's field hockey championship. Andy wouldn't shut up about Ball St. even when they were terrible. Soccer10k is still fighting the good fight with UC Davis, Truffle with Holy Cross, etc. etc, Oklahoma, Kansas, incessant shameful talk about Mizzou. But nobody hates any of these conferences. Nobody feels the need to crow about these because these people are generally sane fans of their team.

And body of work my ass, I spend so much time arguing against the SEC because of people like Hosak and RedFlash who feel Sylvester Croom is at worst the 12th best coach in college football. Was that question about which conference was worse really that hateful? This was coming from a guy who thought the Big Ten was as awful as its ever been heading into this season. I have all of 4 Big Ten teams making the tourney.

I'm stunned that the SEC homer snapped because I asked if they were worse than the Pac 10. Odd that Raisin didn't snap at the question.

yeah you've got the wrong poster with that one. Like there's ever a wrong time to bring that up.

Oh [expletive] you Northern Arizona.

Assuming Miami beats Southern Miss tomorrow, the UM-Duke game will leave only 1 conference as unbeaten. So who's worse, SEC or Pac 10?

I am stunned.

At least North Florida(+34) paid off.