UMFan83

Writers and sports prognosticators just good off trends. Very rarely do they take chances unless they are purposely trying to be "out there" Right now based on an 0-4 preseason and i guess people observed major issues on the oline as well as a slow adaption of the Martz offense. So right now the vibe around the Bears is negative. More negative than before the preseason. So most people have the Bears somewhere in the 19-24 range in power rankings. Banks is just taking it to the extreme. Peter King had the Bears 32/32 before their 2005 11-5 season, so these predictions have little correlation to the actual season results. The only thing they are good for are retroactively seeing what the general public opinion of a team was before the season started.

Seriously. Especially because baseball spring training is about 7 weeks long, and football training camp is about the same. It's weird to see training camps wrapped up in 3-4 weeks.

I'm pouring through this schedule and I just cannot see better than a 6-10 season with this schedule. It's too tough. In order to win 8 games and finish .500, they need AT A MINIMUM 3 wins to come from these teams @ Dallas vs. Green Bay @ NY Giants @ Carolina vs. Minnesota @ Miami vs. Philadelphia vs. New England @ Minnesota vs. NYJ @ Green Bay And that's if they go 5-0 against Det, @ Det, vs. Sea, vs. Was, @ Buf 3 of the first 4 games and all of the last 4 games are extremely difficult, making it very hard to start out or finish strong. Basically if you want to be a believer for the playoffs, you need to hope the Bears play .500 ball in the first 4 and last 4 games, and dominate the middle 8 where the teams are a big easier. Of course some of the teams we think will be good might not be (Giants, Panthers, Dolphins, Eagles, Patriots, Jets). By the end of the year, the schedule could look crazy easy, and/or the Bears could turn out to be very good. But it looks quite daunting sitting here in the eve of Week 1.

Can't wait for Michigan-ND this weekend. Last year both teams came into the game with the expectations that the winner is on track to a good season. That didn't happen. This year they are saying the same thing. There have only been like 4 Michigan games in the last 2 years that I've looked forward to because it was actually meaningful. This is number 5.

Dammit, my boss gave me 2 free tickets to the game in section 111. I'm gonna go but I was hoping for a much better lineup. Blah.

The Bears don't get treated like the Cowboys in the media because they are simply not a very colorful franchise. Cowboys: 5 championships in the last 40 years Bears: 1 championship in the last 40 years Cowboys: 8 Super Bowl appearances in the last 40 years Bears: 2 Super Bowl appearances in the last 40 years Cowboys: Owned by a very media friendly owner who is vocal and fairly colorful. Does things like envisions and eventually builds (with public and NFL help) a $1.5 billion stadium Bears: Owned by the McCaskey family, whose figurehead is a 90+ year old woman. It is almost impossible to get any sort of quote or message from the ownership that isn't relayed through Ted Phillips or other figureheads. Cowboys: Known as unafraid to gamble, take chances on malcontents or players with issues, all (mostly) for the sake of winning. Bears: If the Bears were an ice cream flavor, there's no doubt they would be vanillia. They don't want distractions, they don't particularly want players to make headlines for anything other than winning, and if they do they can most likely count their remaining days on the squad. (there have been exceptions - McMahon being the most obvious) Cowboys: Have won with many different styles over the years Bears: Have been known as a defensive team with a conservative offense based heavily on running the football. In this age of fantasty everything, the Bears haven't had much in the way of fantasy studs other than their kicker and defense most years. Cowboys: Have had several popular Quarterbacks in their history (Staubach, Aikman, Romo), who are good, and for the most part embrace their celebrity. Bears: The Bears may have had some colorful QBs from time to time, but they haven't had many good ones, that's for sure. They might have the worst historical collective QB talent of all 30 franchise. Fair or unfair, the QB is to most fans the face of the franchise, and by having names like Craig Krenzel, Cade McNown (entertaining but bad), Rex Grossman, Jim Miller, etc. manning the QB position, the face of the Bears franchise is empty. So there is a ton of reasons why. I'm not saying what the Bears do is bad, and/or what the Cowboys do is good. I'm not saying that the Bears can control all of those things, and I'm not saying that the Bears need to even be where the Cowboys are in terms of visibility. All I'm saying is that those are several reasons why the Cowboys almost have their own ESPN show, and the Bears are only heavily talked about when they are good. Ironic that despite all this, the Bears had one of the most popular, colorful and entertaining teams in the history of american sports in the mid-80's. And they did it with mainly defense, the same invisible ownership, a QB that was not hall of fame caliber (but was pretty good and clearly colorful), and relied heavily on the running game (I believe?). And everytime the Bears are good, suddenly the media, not just in Chicago, wants to bring up and relive that team. Because that's what the media wants.

Oregon State is the only chance. The WAC is awful. how much is the coaches poll worth in the BCS? If Boise State goes undefeated, I'd expect 3 of the 4 teams above them to lose at some point this year. If South Florida was able to make it to number 2 before (albeit in a BCS conference), I'm sure BSU can.

Thank you Quade for taking your name out of the running for manager of the 2011 Chicago Cubs.

Ouch, not the best game for Castro. 0-4, K, 3 GIDPs

yeah as in, if they're ranked then they're way too high. I don't think either of these teams gets into the top 25 starting 2-0. There are a lot of people that are skeptical of both. Plus, I'm not expecting a clean win for either next week. Probably a close, somewhat sloppy game. Disagree. Not sure about the coaches, but the media is always looking for a reason to rank ND and Michigan when they aren't ranked.

Lolz. A towel joke. More or less a joke making fun of towel jokes which is the in thing in Prior threads on NSBB.

Dallas area Linens and Things are thrilled with this development.

Im surprised to see both go. Especially with how bad special teams was in the case of Shaw. Cutting Awfulava shows how bad our safeties were last year.

Sure the record doesn't matter, but the performance was very disappointing regardless. The fact that previous teams went 0-4 and ended up really good also doesn't matter. Yes the performance was disapointing, but its hard to not look disapointed when going 0-4 in a 4 game span. I can't see a scenario where any football team would lose all 4 of their preseason games and their fans saying "im more optimistic about my teams chances after watching this preseason". My point was that it doesn't necessarily mean they are going to be horrible. I'm sure a lot of decent teams that went 0-4 in the preseason probably lost becuase of their reserves performances, while their starters played decent. And other 0-4 teams probably play bad all around and then went on to have a good regular season. And some 4-0 looked awesome in the preseason only to be horrible in the regular season. I was disapointed with a lot of what i saw in the preseason too, but im not necessarily ready to throw in the towel either. They looked pretty bad in the 06 preseason as well if I remember correctly.

I'm not buyin the Lions love. I hear it every year, and every year its a new acquisition or two that is going to make the Lions turn the corner. I do like a lot of their additions they've made but I'm thinking 5-11 looks good for them.

My point was that there is no link between preseason record and regular season record. I'm sure if there were stats for 2-2 and 1-3 they would be hovering in the 9-7 to 7-9 range as well.

I don't think anyone here is actually worried about the Bears finishing the preseason winless, but just in case they are, I'll point out that the Colts were also winless this preseason and were outscored by 70 points in the 4 games (Bears were outscored by 38). Also, since 2006 the 9 teams that went 0-4 in the preseason had an average record of 7-9 in the regular season. The 7 teams that went 4-0 in the preseason had an average record of.....6-10. Heavily skewed by the 2008 0-16 Lions but without them it comes out to 7.5-8.5 (so 8-8).

lol @ 0-4 preseason.

You say goodbye, I say hello.

Hahahahaha It was an awesome appearance too. Did you see how we almost beat Oklahoma!! Well we lost by 20 or so but we were only down a couple at half time. I waited a long time to enjoy those 2 games, and I will not be mocked for it.

I guess so. I became a Michigan fan watching the Wolverines knock OSU out of the championship game in back to back years. The trill of ruining their championship aspirations is worth dealing with stretches like this when OSU is dominating UM. Now we can still beat them and derail their championship hopes, but they have another game to prove themselves and get back on track. It's possible that there is a year when OSU can win a national title and lose to Michigan in the same season. That's sacreligous

If that were true, based on the last decade MSU is going to year in and year out be seeded higher than a team like OSU or Illinois just based on the fact that everyone in their division has had little or no basketball success over the last decade. Look at this: NCAA TOURNAMENT APPEARANCES OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS: Minnesota - 3/10 Iowa - 3/10 Northwestern - 0/10 Nebraska - 0/10 Michigan - 1/10 Michigan State - 10/10 Michigan state has 2 more tourney appearances over the last 10 years than the rest of their division combined. And they get to play 10 conference games against these bozos. Michigan State is going to consistently steamroll over that division of powderpuffs.

As for me, as a Michigan fan, I find myself mildly annoyed about the division set up. Maybe a little is OSU and Michigan splitting up because I don't just want to play OSU every year I want to compete with them. And that's not gonna happen anymore unless its in the Big Ten Championship game. TBH, I bet if you looked at the last 40 years and actually counted how many of them were for the Big Ten Title, it would probably be less than 6 times. I mostly had the divisions because as a Big ten fan, I identify with all the teams in the other division a lot more than I identify with teams like Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Northwestern. I've been to pretty much all the campuses in the other division besides PSU and I know fans of all of those 6 schools. In UMs division, I've been to Minneapolis once in my life, the state of Iowa twice maybe, Nebraska never, Northwestern a ton but its not a historically exciting team (sorry Jon). At least we have little brother tagging along with us to the frontier.

Do these divisions have any bearing on basketball at all? If so, that's a mighty tough division that Illinois finds itself in, and an insanely easy division MSU finds itself in.

HUh? Was the out a sacrifice? I didn't know he had another AB in the game yesterday (which was an out) until after I posted it.