It all went our way, and we STILL blew it

With a 31-24 loss at the hand of the Houston Texans, the Bears put the cap on a 9-7 season, and really didn't look like a playoff team out there. Most of the miracle to get the Bears into the playoffs had already happened, with the following happening in Week 16:

• Dallas losing to Baltimore 33-24, becoming 9-6
  
• Tampa Bay losing to San Diego 41-24, becoming 9-6
• Minnesota losing to Atlanta 24-17, becoming 9-6
• The Bears winning the Monday Night Football finale against the Packers, becoming (you guessed it!) 9-6
  

I'll give you that the Ravens might be a better team than the Cowboys, but the Bolts (currently 7-8) over the Bucs IN Tampa Bay?! And the Vikes couldn't even protect their own Dome against a Falcons team that had already locked up a playoff spot.

So going into Week 17, all the Bears needed was a win and:

• A loss by Minnesota (to NYG) for the NFC North
• Losses by Tampa (to Oak) and Dallas (to Phi) for a Wild Card spot

OK, so the Vikings DID win against the Giants, but in ANOTHER game in Tampa, the Bucs lay an egg and lose to the 5-11 RAIDERS 31-24. The path was set! The door was open!! All the Bears had to do was go into a Reliant Stadium that was actually heavily speckled with Bears fans and beat the 7-8 Texans. Could they do it? NO. And what do they do? Give up 31 goddamn points. So much for a vaunted defense.

And since this was written before the Dallas-Philly game, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Philly wins, which would have given the Bears the 6th wild card spot.

Oh well...I guess Illini Basketball is on the upswing. They should get into the Top 25 after that win against Mizzou.

When will the Yankees learn?

With the New York Yankees putting the ink on an 8-year, $180 million deal with switch-hitting first baseman Mark Teixeira, I wonder when they will learn that signing big name free agents doe not equal championships. I jokingly said after the A.J. Burnett deal that the Yankees should "cut the crap and just sign the entire country of the Dominican Republic."

Now the Yanks will owe north of $60 million to just 3 players. To put that in perspective, in 2008, at least Oakland ($48M), Florida ($22M), Washington ($55M), Pittsburgh ($49M), Tampa Bay ($44M), Kansas City ($58M), and Minnesota ($58M) had a smaller payroll to their entire team than New York has to Sebathia, Burnett, and Teixeira. In another perspective, the top nine money-makers on the Yankees: Sebathia, Burnett, Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Hideki Matsui, and Johnny Damon, will combine to make a combined salary of just over $159 million, which alone is more than any other team.

My point here is that just because you have the highest payroll in baseball doesn't mean you have the best team on the field. Take the Rays this year for example. They relied on their farm system and took rode their $44 million payroll and (most importantly) their TEAM CHEMISTRY on a run all the way to the World Series. Remember those 9 = 8 t-shirts? 9 baseball players working together equals one of the 8 teams that make the playoffs. Why don't the Yankees take that 2009 payroll that will probably be close to $225 million and hire someone to come up with a gimmick like that.

Final prediction: New York will return to the playoffs, but will come up short again to stay 0-for-the 21st century.

The Blackhawks...are they for real?

This is probably my most ill-informed post up until this point, but I'm really liking what I'm seeing out of the 2008-09 Chicago Blackhawks. They just finished up a 3-game road trip in western Canada at Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver undefeated, including a 9-2 domination of the Oilers last Tuesday night. This also brings their winning streak overall to 7 games, and a scant 5 points behind the division leading Detroit Red Wings in the Central.

To which I say, is this for real? If the playoffs started today, the Hawks would play host to the Canucks in the first round. Patrick Kane, who by the way is barely 20 and , is 9th in the NHL in assists, 4th in points, and is the LEADING vote-getter not just for forwards, but the entire Western Conference. While ESPN (aka: the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network) touts Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby and Washington's Alex Ovechkin, Kane has quietly become one of the NHL's elite. Chicago captain Jonathan Toews, also, by the way is just 20 years old, is 3rd behind Kane in all-star voting for Western Conference forwards, and leads the team in goals with 18.

With my lack of full information, the only issue I see is the goalie carosel between Nikolai Khabibulin and Cristobal Huet, pretty much playing half and half all year so far. I also would have kept Hawks legend Dennis Savard a bit longer, but now I stand by that decision given the teams blast off since then.

I will definitely make sure to find some time between the 5 college football bowl games on January 1st to watch the Hawks take on the Red Wings at Wrigley Field in the annual NHL Winter Classic.

Bob's Official Bowl Picks

Date	Bowl	Team 1	Team 2	Pick	Actual Winner
12/20	New Mexico	Fresno	Colo St	Colo St	Colo St
12/20	Eaglebank	Wake	Navy	Navy	Wake
12/20	Las Vegas	Arizona	BYU	Arizona	Arizona
12/20	St. Petersburg	USF	Memphis	USF	USF
12/21	New Orleans	Troy	SMU	Troy	SMU
12/23	Poinsettia	TCU	Boise St	TCU	TCU
12/24	Hawaii	ND	Hawaii	ND	ND
12/26	Motor City	Cent Mich	Fla Atl	Cent Mich	Fla Atl
12/27	Meineke	West Va	UNC	West Va	West Va
12/27	Champs Sports	Fla St	Wisc	Fla St	Fla St
12/27	Emerald	California	Miami	California	Cal
12/28	Independence	N Illinois	La Tech	N Illinois	LT
12/29	Papa Johns.com	Rutgers	NC State	Rutgers	Rutgers
12/29	Alamo	Mizzou	N'Western	Mizzou	Mizzou
12/30	Texas	Rice	W Mich	W Mich	Rice
12/30	Humanitarian	Nevada	MD	Nevada	MD
12/30	Holiday	Okla St	Oregon	Okla St	Oregon
12/31	Chick-Fil-A	Ga Tech	LSU	LSU	LSU
12/31	Sun	Oregon St	Pitt	Oregon St	Oregon St
12/31	Music City	BC	Vandy	BC	Vandy
12/31	Armed Forces	Houston	Air Force	Houston	Houston
12/31	Insight	Kansas	Minnesota	Kansas	KU
1/1	Gator	Clemson	Nebraska	Nebraska	Neb
1/1	Orange	Cincinnati	Va Tech	Cincinnati	VT
1/1	Outback	Iowa	S Carolina	Iowa	Iowa
1/1	Capital One	Mich St	Georgia	Georgia	UGa
1/1	Rose	USC	Penn St	USC	USC
1/2	Liberty	E Carolina	Kentucky	Kentucky	UK
1/2	Cotton	Ole Miss	Texas Tech	Texas Tech	Ole Miss
1/2	Sugar	Alabama	Utah	Alabama	Utah
1/3	International	UConn	Buffalo	UConn	UConn
1/5	Fiesta	Texas	Ohio St	Texas	Texas
1/6	GMAC	Ball St	Tulsa	Ball St	Tulsa
1/8	BCS	Florida	Oklahoma	Florida	Florida

Bob's Take on....The BCS

#1 Oklahoma v. #2 Florida. January 8, 2008. Miami, Florida.

To me, the two best teams in the country are playing for the National Championship, but too much of it by chance. Technically, it's the Bowl Championship Series National Championship. I found out that the BCS actually has no official affiliation with the NCAA. It's actually the FCS (formerly Division I-AA) title that is called the NCAA Division I football championship. They've got it right, and they've been getting it right since 1978. 11-game regular season, 16-team tournament (which will go to 20 teams in 2010), and there is really no one who is in the know that would have a valid opinion that has a problem with it.

Especially in the last handful of years there's been so much controversy involving who should be there, why another team shouldn't be in there, and what's going on with undefeated mid-majors? As the talent level has stepped up so much, so has the controversy. Many are advocating a 8-team playoff with the conference champions of the 6 BCS conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, ACC, SEC, Pac-10), and 2 at-large bids, but I really don't think that would work.

This 8-team playoff would include the ACC Champ Virginia Tech, who went an abysmal 9-4, and is ranked a mere 19th in the BCS Standings. It would also include Big East Champ Cincinnati (#12 BCS), who although sits at 11-2, beat the likes of Eastern Kentucky and barely squeaked by Akron 17-15. Why am I not bashing the rest of the powerhouses who put cupcakes on their nonconference schedule? Because the ACC and Big East were incredibly weak as a whole this year, at least for a BCS conference. Hell, the Mountain West has more teams (Utah, TCU, BYU) ranked in the AP top 25 than the ACC (Va Tech, Ga Tech) or the Big East (Cincy, Pitt).

And what about those 2 at-large bids? Taking out the 6 BCS conference champs (Va Tech, Cincy, Penn State, Oklahoma, USC, Florida), here's a list of who you have left to vie for the last 2 spots, with current BCS standing:
#3 Texas
#4 Alabama
#6 Utah
#7 Texas Tech
#9 Boise St
#10 Ohio St
This system would take teams like the aforementioned Cincy and Va Tech over a team like Texas Tech, whose only blemish in their 11-1 season was a 65-21 drubbing by Oklahoma. I'll admit it was a bad loss, but I would take that 10 times out of 10 against a 4-loss Va Tech. And I will be one of the first in line to say that an undefeated team (Utah and Boise St both at 12-0) should at least have a shot at the title. Even #10 Ohio St (and this is hard considering my die-hard Illini fandom) deserves some credit, because they lost to the BCS #5 USC and #8 Penn State.

Therefore, if you go with 8 teams, you would have to go straight up BCS standings, without regard to making sure certain conferences get in or the number of bids per conference. This would give you the following matchups:
#1 Florida vs. #8 Penn St
#2 Oklahoma vs. #7 Texas Tech
#3 Texas vs. #6 Utah
#4 Alabama vs. #5 USC
Maybe you move around Texas Tech to make sure that there's not a conference matchup for the first round, or find a way to put Boise in there, but as it stands you have 8 quality teams, each of which have no more than 1 loss, and each of which were in the national championship conversation (with the possible exception of Utah) at some point during the year. You also have 3 weeks of games, which is still shorter than the current 34-bowl schedule in place this year.

To me, if you wanted to include the 6 champions of the BCS conferences, you have to go to a 16-team playoff, giving you 10 at-large bids, and giving you the exact format of the FCS, although, as stated before, the FCS is going to 20 teams in 2010. It would also give teams like Oklahoma State, Georgia (who by the way seemed like everyone's pick for the BCS Championship in the preseason), and Ohio State a chance to make a run. Even 16 teams, if you started at the same time the bowl season started, would take you less time than to play 34 bowls.

And to those who say you would lose the pageantry of the more classic bowls, I say you can still have it. Name a bowl game for every game in the playoff...it's that simple. That's 7 bowls (in the 8-team playoff) and 15 bowls (16-team playoff) right there. You can fill the rest with the less classic bowls such as the ever-popular San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl or the always riveting magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl.

This would also make it hard to actually get into a bowl, with some teams playing 2 or 3 bowls. I can't really find solace in the fact that there will be 34 teams this year that will end their season with a postseason victory, or that a 6-6 team is considered bowl-eligible. If you can't finish a season with an winning record, your season should not be extended. This also means that if a 6-6 team were to make it to a bowl and lose, that means they made the postseason but finished with a LOSING record. Pardon my French, but WHAT THE FUCK?!

I really wish a had a few followers, not for the fact that I could say I have fans, but I would like to hear what others have to say.