XZero771679666304

No. I've noticed that Scully has real problems with a lot of names.

No but they'll probably need to beat Indiana now. I'd say they'd absolutely have to beat IU to even have an outside chance. I think they were a longshot before today.

I agree. It looks like a Fourth of July display.

Yeah, that would be perfect. http://i531.photobucket.com/albums/dd358/Cloudstrife219/34251c80-8d54-4ae1-b8d3-2752d0b79579_zps12b1ae53.jpg

The wall behind it wouldn't have to be blue, you could change it back and still create contrast. I like the blue marquee so much better that the red one. Blue is the predominant Cubs color, and I think having the marquee be blue would only be natural. Plus I just prefer blue to red in general.

No double meanings in that commercial at all. BECAUSE CITY FOLKS JUST DON'T GET IT. I've been seeing those on and off for a while. They're so bad that if I were a farmer I'd take offense at them.

I totally agree. I like the blue marquee much better.

I'm not sure which bothers me more, the stupidity or the "Cub's" and "fan's". I suppose the two are related.

Because many people can't reconcile "summer in California" with "cold".

Of course you are.

Even as an Illini fan, I think that the 5 is a bit high. But despite the conference record, they have a fairly strong resume, with a handful of RPI top 15 wins. But personally, their Jeckyll and Hyde nature has me slightly skeptical.

I agree whole heartedly with this. I think this relates to Illinois too though and I think there's a couple of UofI fans that are dangerously close to being in the looking-down-your-noses crowd. For sure. But I can tell you that personally, I haven't felt a whole lot of bluster about Illini hoops for a few years now. I think things are definitely headed in the right direction, but we haven't been very good for a while now. But homers will be homers, and we all have a few. That said, I'm not about to take any crap from Purdue fans (no offense).

"So-called experts"? Anybody who has said anything about the guy says he's 1b/DH, if not simply just DH. I don't see the point in insinuating he may play some other position other than 1B, and then back off that statement. That video still shows a kid with B-cups and backboobs. He may not be a giant slob, but he's huge for a baseball player and there isn't any reason to pretend otherwise. Yeah, he's never going to be lean, but seeing him lose that weight is a positive, even if he never moves off of first (which is a near certainty). If he can get down into the 220 range, that's a lot better news for his knees/legs/back than the 300 he was carrying around.

Sorry, the wife likes the stand-up of Gabriel Iglesias and it's rubbing off on me (in case you don't know, he's a fat comedian who refers to himself as "fluffy").

I apologize if this has already been posted, but Tim Sheridan posted a video he shot of Vogelbach, and while he is still fluffy, he does look a lot thinner. http://boysofspring.com/daniel-vogelbach/

About what I was thinking. This all sounds so very familiar... I honestly wasn't around much during da bum's heyday so I'm no bum expert. All I can say is I'm posting facts to support my arguments. Thinking Keady is a coach that Purdue should be embarassed of somehow is just weird. He had success over an extended period of time in one of the toughest conferences in basketball. The point isn't that Keady was an embarrassment (he wasn't). I think the point was that Purdue isn't an elite Big Ten program, and has as many or more middle of the pack, "bubble" finishes in its recent history than top of conference finishes. Bum famously tried to make a case that Purdue should be considered on the same level as Indiana, MSU, UM, etc. when it comes to basketball prestige (well, more precisely that it was somehow historically unbalanced to have Purdue and another one or two of them in the same conference division), and he made his "argument" primarily on the back of conference titles won before the shot clock era. It was a pathetic, flailing and delusional display. To spell it out plainly, your program is in good shape, but isn't (or hasn't been) so good you can look down your noses at anyone else in the conference, save maybe PSU, Nebraska or NU.

About what I was thinking. This all sounds so very familiar...

The Scout board is a joke. I stick my head in there from time to time for news, but as far as actual conversation/debate/analysis goes? Yikes.

Ugh.

You can name worst-case scenarios for every contract out there but at some point you need good players on a team to compete. Believe it or not, it's possible to get good players without giving out bad contracts. Possible, but pretty hard to do. I might argue that it's possible to get good players without giving out awful contracts, but not bad ones. It's semantics, but virtually every FA contract is an overpay. We all know that there is inherent risk in any contract, it is the most important variable. Where I agree somewhat with Tim is in that the risk assumed when giving long contracts to pitchers is much higher than with position players, and being more hesitant to give them out, even to elite talents, is a prudent position to take.

More years? I don't think so, he's 30 now and will be turning 32 in his FA offseason. I doubt he'd get 7 years right now. More AAV? It depends on how the next couple years go.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I was just making a hypothetical choice comparison to illustrate how I felt about comparative risk.

It's not a slam dunk in and of itself, but it makes you wonder if the decline will continue, and where the point is when it will start to seriously impact his performance. He has proven he can pitch and not succeed solely though just blowing people away, but I don't think he's Greg Maddux, either. I'm kind of half in Tim's camp on this, at least with regard to the general notion that giving long term contracts to pitchers is a bad idea, and far more ill-advised than giving them to hitters (I'd probably feel safer giving a soon to be 31 year old Cano a similar deal when he's a FA than I would giving a 26 year old Hernandez this one). You just don't see a lot of longevity + dominance combos happen with pitchers, and it's in no way a slight to or a diminishing of Felix's enormous talent. It's just the nature of the beast. Pitchers are a volatile commodity, regardless of their talent level. But the part of Felix's deal that bothers me is that the Mariners didn't seem to get any kind of discount by signing him now. The contract is probably equivalent to the best deal he could have gotten on the open market. In that way, it is much like the deal Votto got last offseason. I expected the M's to sign Felix long term, but I really thought they'd have gotten a better rate for being proactive. All that said, I'd probably have done this deal if I were the Mariners, though I might have waited another year. Felix is an icon in Seattle, and beyond that he's young (though he's got a lot of miles on his arm for his age) and really, really good. But I would have felt very conflicted about it, and Mariners fans should probably have mixed feelings about it as well. It is a ton of risk.

A team should absolutely strive to be as efficient as possible, as it makes it more likely they'll be a winning team. Signing a player for "the fans" is so dumb. Fans only come out to see one thing: a winning team. Or Wrigley field? Except attendance at Wrigley hasn't always been great. Prior to the last 10 years or so, it was at or below league average for a long, long while.

Of course this was the first game all season I forgot to DVR when I wasn't going to be home.