iggymcfly

OK, I'm registered. For the record, I was against weekly roster updates until I got used to it last year, but in the long term, it's actually better. Otherwise, people just stop taking care of their team by the end of the year, and there's only about four teams really putting in the effort to have a chance at the championship.

Well, if nothing else, it means that some fans that don't normally see Raw saw the absolute best that they have to offer right now. I'd expect the WWE to see a surge in business lasting at least until Backlash. Whether it continues past that pretty much depends on who they program with Batista after HHH. A hot Orton heel turn due to jealousy of Batista's ability to beat HHH could keep the momentum going, but if Batista faces Edge on the undercard while HHH headlines against Angle or something, everyone will probably lose interest again immediately.

Well, Duke held on. And for the record, if they don't make it deep in the ACC tournament, GT's probably looking at more like a 9 or 10 seed. It's just frustrating to see this team play so far below their potential. They've got three of the most talented scorers in the country, and they couldn't even get the 61 points they needed to beat Duke tonight. I still think that BJ Elder's the biggest problem. He's really not back in the flow of the game at all yet. I mean, he was the leading scorer on the national runner-up last year, and tonight he was 1-7, fouling out with a total of 2 points. Without that extra scorer, they just start to force things with Jack or Bynum throwing themselves at the basket, and they don't work the offense for open shots. If they turn things around, they still have plenty of potential to make a run deep into the NCAAs. They've still got the scorers they had last year, and they've actually been playing even better defense lately. The thing is that they're running out of time to do that right now. If they win two of their last three, and Maryland loses to Carolina and at VT, they'll still get a first round bye in the ACC tournament, and should be able to win a couple games there to get some momentum going into the NCAAs. As soon as they start playing like their old selves, they'll pick up confidence in no time, playing in the tournament they came a game from winning last year. However, if they get stuck with say a 6 seed in the ACC tournament, they'll have to play a fresh Duke team on no rest, and then they'll probably get stuck playing someone like Illinois in the second round of the NCAAs if they even make it. GT has to turn it around before the NCAAs start if they can realistically be expected to make a run deep into March.

BJ Elder's still not back at all. He's only got 2 points tonight, and he just got a crucial traveling call. The Jackets are still only down two though. I think they're gonna get this done.

A quick heads up for fans of good basketball, we've got a Final Four preview going on on ESPN2 right now. It's a pretty good game too, Duke's up 42-39.

Of course I do. The point of the match was to turn Jericho heel. And for a change, they actually did it an interesting way that made sense by having him hesitatingly cheat when he couldn't pin Super-Rock clean. If you think about it, the character evolution was pretty much the same as for the Austin heel turn, and when people were raving aout the match afterward, it was mainly due to the finish. It was only when Rock hammered on how cheap it was every Raw and Smackdown for a month, started pinning Jericho with DDTs, and basically did everything he could to make Jericho look like a jobber, that the finish started to look bad.

Out of the ideas proposed for Masters, the one that I think could really work is the gay fireman angle. He's just a little too short and round to look like a real stripper, and it would be absolutely hilarious if he sprayed foam when HHH was going off in an Evolution promo or something. He could liven up the boring diva segments a little bit too. Another thing he could do would be to repeatedly go into heels locker rooms, knock on the door, and say something like, "I'm sorry, you're going to have to evacuate, there's been a fire reported....... (heel starts to leave) in my pants!" (Cue techno music) It could be the running joke that they always treat it seriously until he starts dancing. I seriously think there's some mileage on that gimmick. He could get at least a three month run with the IC belt if he was a face with that gimmick.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Northwestern plays Illinois since they're in the same damn conference. If you're going to do a sports analogy, at least do a decent one.

Nah, for No Mercy, the finish was perfect. That was the whole reason behind the heel turn was that he couldn't beat Rocky clean. However, after cheating his way to the undisputed title, and with his credibility faltering, it would have been great if Rock had tapped out when he was in the Walls at the Royal Rumble.

I hear that Batista guy's been doing all right too.

Yeah, when I took my driving test with my actual driver's ed instructor, he had me drive around for like 40 minutes, and docked me points whenever I hit a pothole or didn't stop long enough at a stop sign. Then, when I went over to the DMV, he basically had me go around the block and parallel park the car and then come back. I couldn't believe how quick and easy it was.

Oh well, on the bright side, after Tennessee goes 3-13 this year and picks up Reggie Bush, their offense will be unstoppable.

Nah, when they do give Cena the belt, they need to have him face real, established main eventers. They desperately need to erase the memory of Bradshaw's abortion of a reign, and restore credibility to the belt. If they bring someone over from Raw to face Cena, he should be a little more established than Christian.

Tomko works OK as Christian's enforcer but I'd rather see him as Edge and Christian's bitch. I don't see any good coming out of a Tomko face turn any time soon, so I say just leave him in that subservient role for three or four months, and let Christian get a little more over by being seen more like Edge and truly above Tomko. God, I really hope E&C stay together for a while. Just watching that match last night, it was poetry in motion. Edge doesn't really have the heat for a one-on-one main event right now anyway, so you might as well leave him in a role where he can be consistently entertaining as tag champ.

They charged fans for tickets, parking, etc. for 1500 games that turned out be utterly meaningless. With hockey, it was like "OK, there's no season this year", but with the baseball strike, it's like "you mean we followed this crap for four months, and now they're just going to quit in the middle of the season?" Also, I agree that the fact that the NHL is in real financial difficulty makes a huge difference. The players are offering to give back 24% of their salaries as well as making long-term changes, and the owners still have a legitimate concern that they'll lose more money playing the season than cancelling it. In 1994, the players and owners ended up burning millions of dollars because they were too selfish and greedy to split it equitably.

Well, it's just a seed. It only means that he's Top 20 overall.

Batista/HHH hs the epic quality already that it would be a shame to make it anything other than a singles match. JBL/Cena on the other hand, would still work fine as a singles match, but it might help them to throw in a special guest referee or something as well. On the one hand, they could use the guest ref to keep the cabinet away, and help JBL finally lose, or they could use him to help Cena lose the match without losing his heat. BTW, as for what they should actually do? Just give Cena the belt and get it over with. They can have him come out and join Batista at the end or something and play off how they're the future if they don't want him to get lost, but they really can't afford to have JBL win a main event for the WWE Title at Wrestlemania if they have any hope of restoring credibility to that belt or the Smackdown brand in general in the near future.

The reason they didn't go too far with the build yet is that Kurt was still involved with the No Way Out tournament, and they didn't want to make it painfully obvious that he wasn't main eventing Wrestlemania. Now that Shawn's officially challenged Kurt, I'm sure it will move along faster. If you think about it, there's really no reason for the Edge/HBK street fight except for Angle to interfere. That will be a big moment for the marks who have kind of forgotten on the feud, and I'm sure at some point, HBK will go to Smackdown to get his revenge on Kurt. The thing to remember is that there are still over 40 days until Wrestlemania. There's no need to have everything absolutely set in stone yet. Also, because I was so excited about Batista last night, I somehow didn't mention the reunion of EDGE AND CHRISTIAN! They were my favorite tag team of all time, and they came back together and had an absolutely awesome match. That was probably the best tag match I've seen on Raw in a long time. Given that they really don't have anywhere to go for Wrestlemania, I'd really like to see Edge and Christian wrestle for the tag titles, maybe even against former champions Benoit and Jericho.

Yeah, I think that if Houston were in the Big XII instead of Baylor, they'd be about as competitive as...... Baylor. They're not competing in C-USA which is a four or five bid conference at the moment, so there's no reason to think that putting them in a slightly better conference would have helped at all.

I'll play if there's a spot open. Last year, I did two leagues on Yahoo, and I got 1st in the one i took seriously, and 2nd in the one that I didn't.

I was just thinking, remember when everybody was all pissed that they "jumped the gun" on the Orton turn, and should have saved it for Wrestlemania. Well, boy am I glad that they didn't. Rather than hold the business back for six months with an angle that may or may not work, they tried it, and found out that Orton was better suited for the upper midcard. While the execution of the Batista turn was obviously done much better, you have to admit that Dave fits the part better too. The subtle gestures and calm quiet manner contrast really strongly with the way that Orton just runs off at the mouth and seems to have no idea whatsoever what he's going to say. They say that all the really good stars or made by the fans rather than the WWE force-feeding someone. Well, they tried Orton, the fans pretty much rejected him, and they actually listened to the fans and moved Batista in instead. Sorry, if I'm kind of rambling, but I'm really excited that the WWE's actually doing something right for a change. One more thing. Remember how the whole front office thought Batista was too old to even bother training in OVW and JR kept pushing him through until he finally got on TV? I guess crazy old Jim Ross actually knew what he was talking about. It's kind of crazy to think that Batista is looking like he'll be the most over face the WWE has created since The Rock.

It was nice to give the Penn State fans what they wanted, but I tend to agree. After Batista gave the thumbs down, Triple H should've realized what that meant and headed for the hills, reacting with Flair as Batista signed the Raw contract and handed it over to a smiling Bischoff. No way. They've had way too much of that lately, and nothing pisses off the fans more than watching the face stand at the edge of the ropes while the heel slowly backs up. The turn needed to have impact, and that impact came when HHH got powerbombed through the table. This was where Batista officially became a face, and he needed to take the offensive and do something. They've still got over a month until the actual Wrestlemania match, and that's plenty of time to make us hungry to see Batista beat the shit out of HHH again. Besides, the payoff that everyone wants to see is Batista winning the title which has plenty of drawing power whether he's hurt HHH already or not.

OK, I just saw the end of Raw now and it was fucking awesome. That thumbs down thing was absolutely classic. I don't even watch Raw regularly anymore, but I still marked the fuck out for it. Batista's clever subtleties are something that haven't been seen in the WWE since The Rock was at his peak. If they could string together a few Raws that are even close to as good as this one, the ratings would climb a very significant amount. Batista may not be the next Austin or Rock, but he's the closest thing the WWE's had in a long time.

Well, when GT beat Wake, BJ Elder was still out, and I'd say that they're not any better than Maryland without him. As for the Big XII, I'd say they get six teams as long as Iowa State and Texas Tech keep it together down the stretch.

1. Definitely has to be the Black Sox. They didn't just cancel a season. They fixed the World Series like it was wrestling. 2. Steroids in baseball. They're using illegal drugs to rewrite the record books. It's not just Jose Canseco and Jason Giambi. It's not even just Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds. I think Ken Griffey Jr. might be the only player in the league who's hit over 50 HRs in th last few years without steroids. 3. Munich Olympics. Much more culturally significant than something like a fight in a basketball game. However, at least it was an outside influence instead of a conspiracy within the sport. 4. 1994 strike cancelling the World Series. The players intentionally waited until they'd played over 100 games to strike so that they could hold the owner's hostage, and cancelled the World Series due to completely unnecessary labor demands. 5. College football players dying until Teddy Roosevelt made them clean up the game. It's a long time ago, but it's still hard to imagine a major sport where double digits of people died each year.