UMFan83

Of the seven teams ahead of them, who do you put behind them? I could see New Orleans...possibly. Utah had a better week. I don't know, I just wanted to bitch about power rankings like I do for every sport every week. They are all slighting my teams. I didn't really look at the other teams. Bulls are #5 in Hollinger's ratings. Are the Heat still #1 in Sagrin? They dropped all the way to 9th in Hollinger's

Yup...just waiting for that first idiot to somehow still have the Bucs (0-4 vs. +500) ahead of the Bears in their power rankings. But realistically no one will. Enjoy being the "team with good record that has beaten no one" Tampa!

Well, there is already a UIC (Illinois-Chicago), so that would get confusing. They are part of the same system. He's simply asking why the Champaign-Urbana campus gets the "University of Illinois" title over the Chicago campus Isn't the Champaign campus the main one? Seems that would be the obvious reason. Yup, as is the case in many state colleges where one gets "University of ____" and the others get "University of ________ - ______". That was my point.

I was about to say that tonights MNF game is one of the most meaningless MNF games ever, being between two 3-7 teams, but then I realized that the winner will be only 1 game out of a home game in the playoffs.

The Bulls drop from 7 to 8 in the ESPN weekly power rankings. I guess they lose a spot due to losing a close game in LA against the Lakers. Or maybe its because they lost by 1 point in Denver without Derrick Rose. Either way the Bulls sure do deserve to drop in the rankings based on their performance last week.

Does it have anything to do with the fact that the game was seen in something like 85% of the country? That's awesome either way.

Dodger Blues indeed.... LOL

Also its annoying how the big story of the game seems to be "the Bears FINALLY" got a win over a legit team, basically pretending that the Packers are garbage. Everyone respects the Packers and some still put them ahead of us in their rankings (which I'm fine with), but like I said earlier, the record of the teams the Bears beat and the Packers beat is even, except for the fact that Chicago's extra (8th) win is over the 1-10 Panthers.

That article annoys me because they imply that Lance Briggs (and Urlacher) is not an elite LB.

This is true. Heck, I'd almost rather have the 5th seed then win the division with the 3rd seed. Either way you are playing on the first weekend and either way, you are playing on the road in the next round and likely the next 2 rounds. I'd trade a home game against the Saints for a road game against the Rams or Seahawks anyday, and I don't care if both teams have good home records.

Actually I made a big mistake. It actually goes: 1) Record, 2) H2H record, 3) Division Record, 4) Record vs. Common Opponents, 5) Conference record. I forgot that common opponents goes ahead on conference record in divisional ties. An easy way to figure that out is to look at the records of the 2 teams that are not common to each team. Bears: W - @Carolina L - Seattle Packers: L - @Atlanta TBD - San Francisco So in a way, a win against SF is not a bad thing for the common opponents tiebreaker, as it means the Bears would tie the Packers in record vs. common opponents. Imagine this crazy scenario: Bears: @ Det - W NE - L @ Min - W NYJ - W @ GB - L 11-5 (OVERALL), 1-1 (H2H), 5-1 (DIV), 10-4 (COMMON), 8-4 (CONF) Packers: SF - W @ Det - W NYG - L @ NE - W Chi - W 11-5 (OVERALL), 5-1 (DIV), 10-4 (COMMON), 8-4 (CONF) Then it would come down to strength of victory....so this is how that looks right now: Bears: 2-9 (DET) 3-8 (DAL) 7-4 (GB) 1-10 (CAR) 2-9 (BUF) 4-7 (MIN) 6-5 (MIA) 7-4 (PHI) ----------- 32-56 (TOTAL) Packers: 7-4 (PHI) 2-9 (BUF) 2-9 (DET) 4-7 (MIN) 9-2 (NYJ) 3-8 (DAL) 4-7 (MIN) ----------- 31-46 (TOTAL) Right now the difference in strength of victory is solely in the Bears extra victory over the Packers being over a 1-10 Carolina team. Otherwise, their other 7 victorys each even out (5 common victories, plus the Bears beating GB and Miami evens out over Minnesota (#2) and the Jets). Unfortunately the Packers don't have any 1-10 teams to beat. If the scenario that produces this tiebreaker being needed happens, the Packers would win this tiebreaker easily with the remaining teams they beat having a 26-28 record (factoring W/L to the Bears and Packers) and the Bears 15-22. Even if these teams won all remaining games not against the Bears and vice versa for the Packers, the Packers would still win the SOV tiebreaker.

Disagree. Because we won the 1st game against the Packers, the Bears can come into that Packers game, with a 1 game lead, tied, or down 1 game to GB and still be in a position where a win would give us the division and a loss would lose it for us. Even if we lost 3 of the next 4 games and limp into the Packers game at 9-6, and the Packers win 3 of their next 4 and come in at 10-5, a win in Lambeau will still win us the division. Now if we came into the game up 1 game and the Packers lost to the Lions and we beat the Lions and Vikings, then the game wouldnt matter as we would already clinch the division based on division record. If we came into the game up 1 game and the Packers lost 2 of their 3 remaining conference games (@ Det, SF, NYG) and the Bears won both of theirs (@ Det, @ Min), it would be the same scenario, except this time the Bears would win the conference record tiebreaker. We are in a pretty good position right now where as long as we win 1 more game, that last game will be necessary unless the Packers win their next 4. If we win 2 more games, that last game against GB is guaranteed to mean something.

The Pats lost by nearly 3 TD's on the road in Cleveland. They aren't unbeatable. And neither GB or Chi plays NYG this season...unless I'm misunderstanding your post? The Bears already played NYG. The Packers play them later. Yeah, the Packers play the Giants and the Bears play the Jets, both at home.

Stewart Mandel's bowl projections has Iowa falling all the way to the Insight Bowl to play Mizzou while Michigan would get selected to the Gator bowl to play the last team they faced in a bowl game, Florida. Yay that's actually a team that Michigan would have a slight chance of beating.

This is just payback for the Stanley Cup Finals. ...oh wait we won that one too!

Might be the best thing to happen to DePaul basketball and the Big East at this point. I can't see the point of having 17 basketball teams in the conference.

From Steve Johnson's twitter:

And he's a poor talent evaluator, takes too long to adjust when his personnel stinks (Tommie Harris), bad at challenges, forced out good coaches (Rivera) and so on and so on. lovie is a pretty good evaluator of talent as it relates to his scheme. Mark Anderson and Tommie Harris were both terrible and Lovie refused to take them out of the lineup until it was obvious to everyone that they couldn't play anymore. Manning was his personal project and not until this year has he showed anything. But he really hurt the team last year. The Mark Anderson love is a little weird. He had an amazing rookie year and looked like a legit pass rusher. I found it odd that he demoted Alex Brown for some reason despite Alex doing a good job as the starter. After Anderson proved he is not starter quality, Brown was moved back in there. Eventually Brown was released when we signed Peppers, a move I still hate, but the justification was that Anderson had somewhat of a bounceback year the year before (albeit nowhere close to the year he had in 2006) and probably figured with Peppers taking the pressure off of things (like Tommie did in his rookie year), he would be able to play off of him and get a bunch of sacks. Didn't happen, so he was outright released. As for Tommie, I don't blame Lovie for trotting him out there as long as he did. In 2005 until his injury in 2006, Tommie Harris looked like one of the premier DT's in football and was quickly becoming if not the best, top 3. Then the injury occured and Tommie looked a bit slow for the next year or two as he battled more injuries. Lovie, knowing what kind of talent Tommie could be when healthy had to wait until he injuries finally went away, trying to do things like suspend him to motivate him. Again, all because everyone knew that Tommie's ceiling is higher than any alternative DT has. So there was definitely justification fro both calls although I do agree he stuck with them both slightly too long.

Now for the weekly Peter King update: He has moved the Bears from 13th to 5th in his "Fine Fifteen". Instead of being below every team with the same record as them, the Bears are now above every 8-3 team, although strangely he still has Green Bay (7-4) ahead of the Bears. Whatever.

i completely agree with you. but what does "depending on who you are" mean? fans of the program v. rival fans (or disinterested fans). or did you mean by geography or age? I guess I've never thought of any particular group using any of those terms, though I've heard them regularly. No real distinction, just whichever you've heard enough times that it comes to mind at a particular moment. If I've been reading Every Day Should Be Saturday, I'd probably use Ole Miss, but if I'm talking with co-workers and they use the other one, then I might use Mississippi next time I reference them. As for the others, I pretty much always use Mizzou like OleMiss uses, uh, Ole Miss, but I've never really thought of it as strange if people refer to my school as Missouri. Well it is strange to us. I went there for seven years and am fourth generation alum and I've absolutely never heard anyone associated with the school say Mississippi. And like I said earlier I can't recall ever having an in person conversation where someone said that. Perhaps it is entirely a southern thing because of everyone's knowledge of the SEC down here. I don't necessarily have a problem with it, but I'm just not used to seeing people use it, that's why I asked about your use of it. It's pretty interesting -- but I'm sure there are some people who don't know that Ole Miss is the University of Mississippi. Same for Mizzou. Almost like Cal. My dad asked me where the University of California was the other day. I realized he was talking about Cal, but why does Berkeley get that title when there are so many University of Californias? I don't know why is University of Illinois-Champaign Urbana considered University of Illinois and not UIC? I would guess Cal-Berkley is the main campus or something.

Well Illinois plays Fresno State next week, so if they win that would probably give OSU and MSU a very slight bump. I really don't feel like getting into the opponent's opponents thing but I'm sure somewhere out there, there is a game or two that would affect one or more of those teams. Enough to bump one over the other? doubtful

Yeah I think so. People forget they were a halfway decent playoff contender last year. It's certainly impressive that in their last 4 games they lost to Orlando by 4, won in Miami, beat up on Cleveland, lost to Oklahoma City in OT, and then won in LA. I think the Bulls are a better team, and are still 1.5 games better than the Pacers despite the Bulls having the hardest strength of schedule in the NBA so far. But this Pacers team seems to believe in themselves, and have a decent starting lineup with Collison being a decent PG (bit of a disapointment so far though IMO), Granger who is an All-Star, Hibbert who is quietly becoming one of the best centers in the East right now (24 pts 12 boards, 6 assists tonight), Dunleavy as a legit 6th man, Ford as a quality backup PG, etc. I think they are pretty much a playoff team and probably the biggest challenger for the Bulls in the Central division unless Milwaukee makes the typical Skiles 2nd half surge.

Go South Carolina. Our last hope to see a Non-AQ in the National Title game. Go Oregon State as well I guess. But I prefer Oregon to Auburn and Oregon State pretty much has no chance to beat Oregon. I guess crazier things have happened and it's a rivalry game but....nah.

Wow, he must not respect the Bears as opponents if he reacts that angrily to losing to a fellow 7-3 (now 8-3) team.

lol, they lost by 5 because the Bears played a near prevent defense the entire 4th quarter in an attempt to run out the clock. This is what you are able to do when you have an 18 point lead entering the quarter. As it was, the defense stepped up and stopped the Eagles when it mattered, having them settle for FGs in the red zone 3 times I believe. But yeah, keep believing you didn't just get dominated by the Bears.