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That's actually the argument I've heard mostly to support that silly line of reasoning. It's mostly Tennessee fans that I've heard express this, but figured there'd likely be some Michigan, Ohio State, Bama, Auburn, etc, etc fans who believed it.

That's what I would have thought too. But every college football fan I've asked has replied 2-10. It's utterly befuddling.

I've been a bit stunned by answers I've received to this question, so I figured I'd pose it to NSBB. If you were given the option, which would you choose between these options. You're not guaranteed a championship, only two wins over your biggest rivals or a 10 win season. The championship may come, but it's not a certainty.

IE for the longest time, but I finally got around to using Firefox. I now have it on both my home PC and my work Mac (Macs suck by the way).

That's great news! Hopefully they'll be as good a coaching staff as they are a recruiting staff (Monte obviously is).

Hard to blame you. How has the offensive line been this year (if you've been paying enough attention)?

Know anything about this guy soccer? No idea, never even heard of him. That being said, I love anything that pisses the Raiders off, so good job James. I figured you'd like that the Raiders got pissed off. But it's not really a good thing that you've never heard of him before.

I still think a big jump will wait til the year after next. Give Sarkisian at least a year to turn that thing around.

U-Dub's going to be pretty good next year. They're going to go bowling and will probably finish in the top half of the Pac 10. They were You think Sarkisian is that good? Your post just cuts off mid-sentence by the way.

If he does, Al Davis will tire of him three or four games in and then he'll get fired too. Maybe Norv Turner will be available for them by then.

Oakland offensive line coach James Cregg has departed the Raiders to take over (I assume) as the offensive line coach at Tennessee. This pissed Oakland Head Coach Tom Cable off quite a bit, apparently. Know anything about this guy soccer?

Wasn't Hoke a darkhorse for Michigan? And Michigan's a much better job than Auburn. Gill was a darkhorse for UCLA last year. Not that UCLA is a better job than Auburn or Michigan but they aren't the worst BCS football program around. Indiana says hi. Excuse me while I cry in the corner . . . Don't cry too long, though. Washington/WAZZU trump Indiana by quite a bit (at least in recent history). The last two years, sure, IU has been better than the Apple Cup pair. But both have been to three bowls this decade -- including a Rose Bowl appearance each. IU has one embarrassing Insight Bowl appearance since 1993. Vanderbilt and Duke are perhaps IU's saving grace on this front. Good point - especially on Duke. They haven't won much more than 10 games this decade before this year.

Wasn't Hoke a darkhorse for Michigan? And Michigan's a much better job than Auburn. Gill was a darkhorse for UCLA last year. Not that UCLA is a better job than Auburn or Michigan but they aren't the worst BCS football program around. Indiana says hi. Excuse me while I cry in the corner . . . Don't cry too long, though. Washington/WAZZU trump Indiana by quite a bit (at least in recent history). Washington State is in a far worse spot than IU right now and Washington is probably a little behind them too. I would say that whoever UW hires will probably be a better coach than Bill Lynch, though. Unless UW pries Norv Turner away from San Diego . . .

Wasn't Hoke a darkhorse for Michigan? And Michigan's a much better job than Auburn. Gill was a darkhorse for UCLA last year. Not that UCLA is a better job than Auburn or Michigan but they aren't the worst BCS football program around. Indiana says hi. Excuse me while I cry in the corner . . . Don't cry too long, though. Washington/WAZZU trump Indiana by quite a bit (at least in recent history).

I wasn't necessarily arguing the merits of Dunn v Morneau there. Just the merits of looking at BA solely in determining a player's worth. Any time a player gets on base, it's productive. Is driving the man in more productive? Sure, but you can't just disregard the times he gets on base and gives the team (in our case Aramis Ramirez, one of the best hitters in the game today) a chance to drive in multiple runners. Yes, but in that same situation, a guy like Bradley is better then Dunn at a 3.2 PAw.RISP/RBI. On top of that, Bradley provides better defense and speed on the bases... and only falters by .010 points lifetime in OBP. And if you wanna talk about how Bradley will be injured, our little Mike Fontenot in his short career has 2.9 PAw.RISP/RBI(.369 OBP). And Reed Johnson is at 2.8(.344 OBP). Now, it's hard to argue that I would want Fontenot instead of Adam Dunn in my lineup, I will say this though. I do in fact prefer Bradley in the lineup and I personally don't mind taking the gamble on Bradley with the fact that Fontenot and Johnson would be the backup options. I love Fontenot as a backup/platoon guy at second, but with how much Bradley is likely to miss, I worry that his production might drop off too much - especially if one of Bradley's many DL stints happened in the playoffs. And Bradley has more speed on the basepaths, but he's more likely to get hurt should he run. I just wonder if it's smart to sink 10+ mil and multiple years into a guy who might play 275-300 games tops during a three-year deal (that's out of 486 games).

Of course, and I understand that. BA is NOT a king stat. No stat is. Using numbers like OBP/OPS, and other saber driven models...is a way of analyzing player value, but not the only way. There is no player more polarizing in these situations than Dunn, because he plays heavily to those numbers, while lacking in many other areas. Like I said...if he comes at a decent enough price, bring him along. But if we are talking some sort of multiyear, 13-15mil per year deal...pass. I've given my reasons why, people disagree. That's fine. But these numbers are NOT the only factor in determining his value to this team...far from it. OPS and OBP are not "saber driven models" though. In basically every situation, OPS overrides BA because OPS takes into consideration what BA tells you and then tells you even more on top of that. BA tells you simply how often a guy gets a hit - not what type or anything else. OPS, on the other hand, tells you what kind of hit the player has executed and how often he gets on base. So if you're going to point out one stat, OPS is probably your best bet without getting heavily into saber stuff (sorry for the lack of technical terminology). Looking at Dunn's BA in the situations you describe is less valuable than looking at his OPS - and his OPS is quite good in those situations. I appreciate what you are trying to say...you don't need to explain it to me. I completely understand what that stat is telling me. We just disagree on the value of BA w/RISP...that's all. I'm not some sort of anti-OPS, all original baseball stats guy. I just prefer not to rely solely on these statistics. I've seen quite a bit of Dunn actually...probably more than most people here. I got to watch him every night here in AZ, as I would watch D-Backs games while listening to Cubs games. And obviously, I've seen quite a bit of him while in a Reds uniform. He drives me ape balls crazy. Sometimes, I just want a guy to walk up to the plate looking to drive in a run because a situation dictates that need. And sometimes, you need to adjust your hitting approach to do so. Dunn simply refuses to do that, and it bothers me. Now, one positive you could take from this approach is putting him in front of a guy who DOES look to drive in runs when needed, like A-Ram (2007-08 playoffs aside, of course. :banghead: ) In that case, Dunn's patience would be beneficiary to us, and I wouldn't mind it whatsoever. So if the price is right...OK. Sure. The outfield defense would look damned awful, but the lineup would be nice. I agree with a lot of this. Dunn would be very good for our lineup because he would be surrounded by other good to great hitters. Thus, when he took a walk with a man on third, whoever is hitting behind him (DLee, ARam, Soto) has a very good chance of driving in at least one, if not two. I do worry about the defense, though. He's disgustingly bad out there.

Wasn't Hoke a darkhorse for Michigan? And Michigan's a much better job than Auburn. Gill was a darkhorse for UCLA last year. Not that UCLA is a better job than Auburn or Michigan but they aren't the worst BCS football program around. Gill should, and I think will, get a BCS conference job very soon. UCLA would have been a very interesting job for him - a lot of tradition with a great recruiting base, but hasn't been great nationally really since Karl Dorrel took over (correct me if I'm wrong on that, I'm going purely off the top of my head).

It's extremely impressive, but when you consider it's the MAC that he did it in, you have to take it with a grain of salt. I would have probably put Gill only behind Mike Leach considering the list of coaches Auburn was linked to at some point. But I may have an irrational love of Mike Leach, so I may be wrong on that one. It would have been, at least, defendable to hire Leach, Muschamp or Spurrier over Gill, though. It's not defendable at all to hire Chizik over Gill.

QFT Whatever you guys want to believe, no team is gonna sign Bonds. I'm still a little surprised an AL team hasn't put their conscience on the back burner to sign him as a DH. I agree that no NL team would seriously consider him, though. I'm still not entirely convinced that it isn't a conspiracy. Wouldn't shock me in the least if it was. Or, it could just be a bunch of conservative owners not wanting to piss off their fan base (which the fans mostly would be until Bonds started producing like crazy). If he didn't produce immediately, the owner could risk taking a massive hit.

I wasn't necessarily arguing the merits of Dunn v Morneau there. Just the merits of looking at BA solely in determining a player's worth. Any time a player gets on base, it's productive. Is driving the man in more productive? Sure, but you can't just disregard the times he gets on base and gives the team (in our case Aramis Ramirez, one of the best hitters in the game today) a chance to drive in multiple runners.

Of course, and I understand that. BA is NOT a king stat. No stat is. Using numbers like OBP/OPS, and other saber driven models...is a way of analyzing player value, but not the only way. There is no player more polarizing in these situations than Dunn, because he plays heavily to those numbers, while lacking in many other areas. Like I said...if he comes at a decent enough price, bring him along. But if we are talking some sort of multiyear, 13-15mil per year deal...pass. I've given my reasons why, people disagree. That's fine. But these numbers are NOT the only factor in determining his value to this team...far from it. OPS and OBP are not "saber driven models" though. In basically every situation, OPS overrides BA because OPS takes into consideration what BA tells you and then tells you even more on top of that. BA tells you simply how often a guy gets a hit - not what type or anything else. OPS, on the other hand, tells you what kind of hit the player has executed and how often he gets on base. So if you're going to point out one stat, OPS is probably your best bet without getting heavily into saber stuff (sorry for the lack of technical terminology). Looking at Dunn's BA in the situations you describe is less valuable than looking at his OPS - and his OPS is quite good in those situations.

there will be blood Not trying to be Mr. Smart Guy, but why the comparison of Dunn to either A) guys we already have(the Soriano comparison, they aren't even remotely similar) or B) guys were never going to get( Morneau) I'm more interested in how he compares to Bradley, which has at least been addressed some, Abreu, Burrell or any other guy that there's at least a minute possibility of playing RF for the Cubs next year. Dunn: 129, 136, 114 OPS+ the past three seasons. He walks alot but strikes out a lot (largely due to his great patience causing him to get behind in counts quickly) and has hit 40 HRs in each of the past four seasons and 46 in 2004. His defense is despicably bad, so much so that it takes some of his offensive value away. Bradley: 163, 153, 114 OPS+ in the past three seasons. Never had a season near 100 walks (Dunn almost never walks less than 100 times) and actually walks very rarely (80, 31, 51 the last three years). He also strikes out a whole lot less than Dunn, though. His highest number of HRs in a year was 22 last year and never reached 20 before. Slugging is similar to Dunn, though. His defense is average to above average. The key for me between them is that Bradley is pretty much a guarantee to miss close to half the season and could be out indefinitely at any moment. He hasn't played 100 games in a season in the field since 2004 (with seasons of 20, 62, 94 and 73). Dunn, on the other hand, hasn't played less than 150 games in a season since 2003. The question is, do you take the gamble that Bradley would be healthy for the playoffs (and assume we've got the offense to reach the playoffs in good shape without him) or do you go for the guy you know will be healthy, but will likely not be as valuable overall.

I couldn't possibly disagree with this more. Devaluing BA to the point of nothingness is just plain stupid. But hey, maybe we can just walk our way around the bases all day, that'd be fun. Batting average has its merits, but not on its own. Take this for example: Both Dunn and Justin Morneau have 10 at bats with a runner on third (completely hypothetical). In 5 of those 10, Dunn hits a home run. The other five he strikes out. Morneau, on the other hand, hits a single in 8 of those 10 ABs. The other two he strikes out. In this example, Dunn has a batting average of .500 and Morneau has a BA of .800. Who is more productive solely on that stat? Morneau. Problem is, Dunn actually created 10 runs, whereas Morneau created just 8 - therefore Dunn truly was more productive even with the lower batting average. That's why it's extremely important to not just look at how often a player gets a hit (what batting average shows), but what kind of hits those are (what slugging percentage and OPS show).

Buffalo won 7 regular-season games and needed a hail mary miracle to beat Temple, but yeah, the ONLY reason not to hire Turner Gill is his blackness. I'd go out on a limb and say that if a white coach had Turner Gill's current resume, he'd never have been interviewed at all for that job. Gene Chizik was a horrible hire, but there had to be other reasons in play here, and Chizik's previous employment at Auburn was doubtless one of them. Turner Gill is ten times the coach that Gene Chizik will ever be. While I'm not 100% certain Gill was the best candidate for the job, I agree completely with your statement. Chizik was a terrible hire and Gill would have been worlds better.

I'm hoping Tennessee fans haven't wrought this on themselves.