CanadianChris

And the crowd goes mild.

C'mon, Vince would never do that.

Arabs. Apparently, they're related to Apu.

Now if only he could teach how to not cut a 20 minute promo to HHH, we'd have something.

The Texas/Texas A&M game likely won't matter, since it will add one win and one loss to OU's SoS regardless. The only team in the BCS it would affect would be Utah (which is why I'd love to see an A&M win). The only realistic matchups I can see at this point are Auburn/OU and USC/OU. Auburn/USC looks pretty much impossible if all three teams stay undefeated. Even Auburn/OU would take some pretty weird stuff happening in the computers and the polls to come true.

True, but it was a drastically different system then, too. USC or Oklahoma is going to have to get absolutely shocked for Auburn to make up the deficit, I think.

You can't be serious. An OPS of over 1400 doesn't earn MVP? The Cardinals argument doesn't hold water, either, unless the voters are allowed to vote for a guy named Pujolsrolenedmonds. All three of them gone would be devastating, sure, but losing only one doesn't have nearly the impact on the Cards that losing Bonds would to the Giants.

No. The NFC is so bad that the Vikings should be able to limp in at 9-7. Seattle and Minnesota should be the wild card teams.

My favourite parts of the ESPN.com story previewing the voting were where they mentioned that, had Barry gotten no hits this year, he still would've had a higher OBP than the NL batting champ, and that Barry got more intentional walks than the AL walks leader had, total. How long can he keep this up?

Nonsense. Fans and owners were complaining about the New York teams buying championships all the way back in the 1920s. The dominant New York Yankee teams from 1949-64 were chiefly the result of the Yankees buying amateur players. People have always complained about the team with the highest payroll trying to "buy" a championship. That's much different from what I'm saying. The Mets have been bad because they had a bad front office, which goes back to the earlier point I made. Same with the Yankees in the 80s. The Mets had the fourth-highest payroll in baseball this year, at least triple that of four other clubs. They were second in 2003. In fact, they've been in the top 6 in payroll every year this century. They've lost because they've spent money on the wrong players, but they've at least been able to spend money, much moreso than other clubs. The top 7 in payroll this past season all come from either Chicago, Los Angeles, or a big east coast market (New York, Philadelphia or Boston). That's not an accident.

Let it be on record, then, and stop posting. When you proclaim yourself a brick wall and then wonder why nobody likes talking to you in these threads, it's time to give up. Because I don't see how I'm wrong and you people can't see how bias you are. And you wonder why people get on your case all the time? I can just picture you at your monitor with your fingers stuck in your ears, screaming "LALALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING I'M NOT LISTENING!!!!!!!" Discussions are about, you know, DISCUSSING stuff, not making up your mind and proclaiming to everyone, "This is how it is, and if you disagree with me, you must be biased!!" Seriously, do you not see how absolutely ridiculous that sounds?

I could not disagree more with this statement. The difference is, the learning that goes on in football is done on the field, instead of learning to try to produce a good team on the cheap (see: Moneyball). In the last 20 years alone in football, we've seen the West Coast offense, the 46 defense, and innovative zone blitzing schemes, to name just three. Football is constantly evolving; much of what is known about baseball is and has been known for years, to anyone who bothered to try and look. See Cardinals, Arizona, and Hawks, Atlanta. Those teams have completely incompetent front offices. Every sport has those. What a salary cap is supposed to do (and often does, especially in the case of the NFL) is make the game be about talent -- in the GM's office, on the sideline and on the field. In baseball, you can have the best front office in the entire league and still not win a single playoff series (Oakland), but you can have a team with an incompetent manager win the World Series because the owner spent zillions of dollars to win for one year (Arizona). The Toronto Blue Jays were highly competitive in the 1980s and early 90s. They drew over 4,000,000 fans three consecutive years. They won a division that included the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, and in a system that offered no legitimate salary constraints. In fact, the Yankees' payroll only became a problem after the MLB owners started whining about salaries, and but bullshit salary mechanisms in place. How many revenue streams were available to teams in the 80s and 90s? Not many. The Blue Jays had the highest payroll in the league both years they won the World Series, but their payroll wasn't such an obscene multiple of the lower-payroll teams that it was an issue. Because the Red Sox and ESPECIALLY the Yankees now make gobs of cash from cable revenues, they can afford to spend so much more than anyone else and still turn a profit. Other teams could never command the type of rights fees that those teams can, because they don't reach enough people and never will. Being able to compete should NEVER be dependent on the city a team inhabits. Let the owners figure that out then. The NHLPA is not responsible for the owners being a set of jackasses. And if the owners collectively wise up and tighten the screws on salaries, what happens? COLLUSION!!! The players can't have it both ways. They can't say the owners should be smarter while at the same time not giving the owners a chance to actually BE smarter. The most sensible solution is to dictate it to both parties in advance, while ensuring the players still receive a certain percentage of revenues. Left unchecked, greed will corrupt us all, even those with the best of intentions.

Well, anything except BEAT FUCKING KANSAS STATE, anyway. I honestly don't get all this "woe is me" crap about the system when it was the system that got you into a national title game last year in the first place.

UTTER BULLSHIT Its bullshit because Bettman hasnt bent at all and yoru in denial. Plus, I was wrong. The player roll back was for 150 Mill. not 90. That would cover all losses for the unbiased report of Forbes. Not the paid off report by Levitt. In other words, "It's bullshit because I say so." Read what I actually said and get back to me. And take an English class sometime. And on second thought, don't get back to me. I honestly don't give a shit.

It's because they were the preseason #1 and haven't lost. Just like Oklahoma was the preseason #2 and hasn't lost. It will be USC/Oklahoma if both teams win out, I'm sure of it. This begs the question of why there are preseason polls...or, for that matter, why there are polls more than two or three weeks before the BCS comes out. The BCS this week is going to look like this: 1. USC 2. Oklahoma 3. Auburn 4. Cal 5. Texas 6. Utah Wisconsin losing has pretty much assured Utah of a BCS bowl if they can win out. Remember that Utah only has to be ranked in the top 6 to be assured of a BCS bowl -- it doesn't matter what the national championship game is, or which bowl gets to select a team first.

UTTER BULLSHIT How is that utter bullshit? I see it that way. The vast majority of people I know see it that way. Just because you don't see it that way doesn't alter what public perception actually is. The players' last proposal, to put it lightly, was crap. A luxury tax on salaries over $51 million is bailing out a sinking ship with a thimble. And the $95 million saved would a) not begin to cover leaguewide losses, according to the Levitt study, and b) would be temporary -- a one or two-year fix. This league can't afford just a one or two-year fix. The league needs major cost certainty built into the system, because it's impossible to obtain at this point without the players' union crying collusion.

Is that right? For some reason I flashed back to a rule that gave forfeits a 0 for everyone. Good one, then.

Can he use them this week, so my SOS doesn't get destroyed?

In your rush to condemn the salary cap as the bane of everyone's existence, did you consider that Forbes might be the problem here? After all, they didn't have access to anyone's books -- their audit is based on what amounts to hearsay. Just because it's Forbes doesn't mean they're automatically right. There's this little tidbit, too (source: TSN.ca): I don't think the owners are nearly as in the wrong as everyone's now making them out to be. Regardless of this, the players are still seen as barely willing to budge from the status quo, and aren't going to get much positive public opinion out of it.

Dammit. Once again, who you pitch for matters more than how you pitch. Johnson got shafted.

From ESPN.com: I honestly don't know what to believe. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, but Maurice Clarett is one of the last people I would trust on anything. I'd have trouble believing him if he told me the sun would go down this evening.

I'm probably going to lose any chance of making the top 2 this week, when I win by forfeit. Wonderful. THURSDAY Florida State FRIDAY Memphis Fresno State SATURDAY Minnesota Indiana North Carolina Texas A&M Georgia Tech Colorado Louisiana-Lafayette Auburn Virginia Oregon Oregon State Purdue Eastern Michigan BYU Nevada South Carolina Tulane Tiebreak #1: 56 Tiebreak #2: 185

No, you have a bad, meaningless statistic. New York state ranks third in donations per capita, and tenth in percentage of gross income donated -- both much more meaningful than the contrived stat cited on the website. Looking at % of gross income donated, which makes the blue states look kind of bad, but not as horrifically bad as they ended up looking, would be much better than what they decided to do. My biggest pet peeve with the media? Blind acceptance of bad stats.

It was, if memory serves, based on per capita donations. That takes into account. -=Mike No, it wasn't, and now I see the problem. They calculated average charitable contribution OF THOSE WHO DONATED ANYTHING. In other words, they eliminated all the people who contributed nothing from the calculation. If you rank them on per capita donations, the top 10 look like this: 1. Utah 2. Maryland 3. New York 4. Georgia 5. Connecticut 6. California 7. New Jersey 8. Virginia 9. North Carolina 10. Alabama And the bottom 10 looks like this: 41. Montana 42. Louisiana 43. New Hampshire 44. Alaska 45. New Mexico 46. Vermont 47. Maine 48. South Dakota 49. North Dakota 50. West Virginia A much better representation than the original bit of piffle.

Yes, but the money was given by fewer (in many cases, far fewer) people.