SouthSideRyan

Not that it was a ridiculous thing to post at the time, but... It doesn't take a lot of skill to toss 20 yard passes to wide open WRs.

Forget the refs, I think IU's defense has money on Iowa. Just horrendous tackling attempts on those huge TDs

Everyone's wrong but you... HAHA STANZI!!! Everyone else is rooting for Indiana.

They are overrated by default like LSU earlier this year. they'll probably win by a field goal. they're like ohio state's "championship team" from the earlier part of the decade (in quotes because the PI call against miami was bogus and osu should have lost). it seemed like they won every game by a touchdown or less, including some really close calls against some bad teams. That OSU team was way better than this Iowa team. That Ohio St. team was really [expletive] good.

lol IU

Im an Illini fan but its not hard to see that Iowa isn't a top 10 team. If they go undefeated they will get their clocks cleaned in their bowl game. This reminds me of ku in 2007 when they had such an easy schedule and they squeaked by some teams to get their high rating. of course, they somehow won the orange bowl that year (still kinda bitter about that). This is kind of ridiculous. Oh, this is just like when Kansas got lucky all year beating some teams, and then they beat a really good team in the orange bowl, man they sucked.

No they can't. It's not to insult the Bulls, they're just not on the same level as the top 3.

Conference championship games usually suck.

I can only imagine the teeth gnashing from Pete Carroll when he gets sent to Detroit for his quarterfinal matchup.

Would they have the slightest idea what questions to ask in a sabr conversation? I'd imagine numbers guy to B&B(at least Boers) means BA with men on 3rd < 2 outs, Day cERA, etc. I'd like for Ricketts' first order of business to be the firing of Wasserstrom. Not at all. Bernstein cites SABR stats all the time. Yeah I realized after the fact that Bernstein isn't an idiot. Probably should've just put Boers rather than the parenthetical safeguard.

Would they have the slightest idea what questions to ask in a sabr conversation? I'd imagine numbers guy to B&B(at least Boers) means BA with men on 3rd < 2 outs, Day cERA, etc. I'd like for Ricketts' first order of business to be the firing of Wasserstrom.

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. You can get 20,000+ fans for regular season road games without an issue. The SEC Championship game two years ago had half the Superdome filled up with Vol fans who made the trip. There is no doubt in my mind you could get 20-30 thousand fans from each side to travel to each game plus another 10-20 thousand local fans (both fans and non-fans) to come out to a game. There would also be little reason to make fans travel from Florida to Texas. Keep the games more regionalized (similarly to the regions in the basketball tournament) and the issues with getting fans out would be far less. For instance, put the hypothetical Florida/Ga Tech game in the Georgia Dome and fans would flock to it. Or if you want less of a home game, put them in the Superdome and the fans would still turn out in droves. If fans will travel in the regular season, they'll travel in the postseason as well. And if the tourney breaks down to an Ohio St./Boise St. 1st round game? Are you going to shift teams' seeding around to get close geographical matchups? Are you going to keep 20 stadiums on call in case you need to have a game there for closeness sake?

The AL/NL rotation currently has the AL hosting the ASG in 2014... They doubled up the NL a few years back cause the NL was opening new taxpayer funded stadiums faster than the AL was.

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. Bowls are events. It's the final game of the year, it's an exotic locale, it "means something" even if it really doesn't. Do you think a lot of NFL fans spend money to go see their team on the road in the divisional playoffs?

I don't recall a big "Big Ten is better than Big East" argument last year. More along the lines of "Big East isn't as good as people think and Big ten isn't as bad. " I mentioned the tourney because everyone based the Big East = best conference ever stuff based on their top end teams, and they wound up striking out with them.

The racism is all good with Butters.

I beg to differ

How's that possible with Blair getting 80 boards per game? Is this going to be a season long thing where you're nowhere to be found when Blair plays well and constantly yapping when he doesn't? It's not like he was even the problem for the Spurs tonight. Anyway, good win. Rose looked about a billion times better on defense. The Bulls didn't really shoot it very well from the floor or the line but it seemed like there was a good cutback on wasted possessions (e.g. Gordon dribbling off his foot 3x a game). And I'm not complaining about Vinny which is nice. So you'll hear him yapping at least 70 times this season. He's a petulant whiner when it comes to basketball so I guess it wouldn't matter either way. hehehehe

How's that possible with Blair getting 80 boards per game?

Somebody who realize Joe Girardi was a colossally stupid manager. Hairston and [expletive] Molina????

Pujols: I can't wait to get da [expletive] outta here!

I'm happy you guys are ranked. 6 of 11 teams are ranked. Sweet. Damn it, you just reminded me how annoying it is that this whole thread is going to be Big Ten slurping. (They'll likely deserve it, granted, but it'll still be annoying.) The Big Ten has a good argument for being the best conference in basketball. 9/11 of the teams have tourney hopes to start the season, they have top end teams in MSU and Purdue, the only argument against them is Iowa and Indiana, but I'm not really sure there's a conference that doesn't have an IU and Iowa. Actually, I'm not sure another conference does have an IU. I haven't researched this, but I think you'd struggle to find a next-to-worst team in any league with as much talent as IU has. They do have three 4-star players and eight 3-star players. DePaul.

There are some pretty interesting rumors being floated, especially by Levine. Sounds like Hendry may be trying to trade Soriano. If Soriano is moved, maybe Burrell makes sense in LF. But I agree, Burrell doesn't seem to have a place on the team as it stands. He can try but no one with any sense will take Soriano without eating a bunch of the contract. So I guess that leaves Brian Sabean. Don't worry about getting a mlb player for Bradley get a prospect and eat the contract. Make a concerted effort to get Upton or Crawford and use them as the centerpiece of a rebuilding effort after this season. The only way I could see the Soriano contract getting moved would be for Vernon Wells. I'd much rather hold on to Soriano.

As for Texas they are pretty much bringing most everyone back outside of Abrams, had maybe the 2nd best class behind Kentucky (Jordas Hamilton and Avery Bradley) and a transfer of Jai Lucas from U of Florida. Damion James and Dexter Pittman should be very good this season too. IIRC, the thing about Texas is they didn't have a trustworthy PG last year. That (and Abrams not being quite the player they expected) really hurt them. The addition of Bradley alone will improve the Horns dramatically. How does Bradley help the problem of not having a PG? I was under the impression he could handle the ball. Is that false? EDIT: I thought he was more of a ball handler. Still, they added Lucas, too, who is a true PG. Richardson ran the point at Findlay, Bradley was the shoot 30 times per game guy. Not that he wasn't worthy of shooting 30 times per game, he's an incredible scorer, but he wasn't a PG type.

I'm happy you guys are ranked. 6 of 11 teams are ranked. Sweet. Damn it, you just reminded me how annoying it is that this whole thread is going to be Big Ten slurping. (They'll likely deserve it, granted, but it'll still be annoying.) The Big Ten has a good argument for being the best conference in basketball. 9/11 of the teams have tourney hopes to start the season, they have top end teams in MSU and Purdue, the only argument against them is Iowa and Indiana, but I'm not really sure there's a conference that doesn't have an IU and Iowa. It's certainly better than the Big East slurping that went on last year because of all their high end teams(all the while ignoring the utter dreck at the bottom) which amounted to 0 teams in the Championship. I think ND(and Georgetown) makes the tourney btw on a dead cat bounce and a down year for the Big East.