I don't want to brag, but after bravely picking the Patriots to win last night, I am once again perfect (at 1-0) in my NFL pick 'em leaggue. I fully expect this to hold up for another day or so.
The Cardinals' magic number is 10, and they're essentially a lock to win the NL Central. This in spite of losing the season series to the Cubs. No offense Cubs fans, but if the best thing you can say about your season (in which you will finish roughly 20 games back and may not even break .500) is "at least you beat St. Louis" (as I've seen on a couple message boards), I'd point out that Tampa Bay (59-82 overall) also has a winning record against the Yankees this season.
Meanwhile, the Astros are certainly making a race of it in the wild card. I'll continue to pull for them, in the hopes St. Louis will face a relatively quick Division series against the Padres, while Houston and Atlanta can beat each other into easily dominated jelly.
Moving on the football...boy howdy. Biggest regular season game of the year tomorrow night between Ohio State and my Longhorns, and OSU is a 1-point favorite. Young looks like he has command of the offense, and OSU's D is a beast. There's really no way to gauge how this will go, since both teams played creampuffs in their first games. If Texas wins, there will finally be some legitimate talk about a national championship. If not, I suppose we can always try beating Oklahoma for a change.
That'd be something.
Turning to other sports, I plan on taking Jeremy Roenick's advice with regard to the NHL:
"I say personally, to everybody who called us 'spoiled,' you guys are just jealous...we have tried so, so hard to get this game back on the ice," Roenick said.
Hell yes I'm jealous. Your maximum individual salary "dropped" to about $7 million, while the minimum went up to $450,000. I'm incredibly freaking jealous.
Thieving owners, crybaby players...the only pro sport I follow anymore is baseball (out of genetic imperative, I think), and yes, I realize this makes me a hypocrite.
Well, and football, but mostly because I stand to profit personally.
Feh on the NHL. Give me the AHL (Go Aeros) and the Weremonkeys.
thanks for the shout out - we're hoping to lure scott stevens to the treehouse now that he's left the devs for retirement. ;)
i feel the same - the only nhl $$ i was going to spend this year was to actually go see the devils play in order to watch scott stevens play...once. oh well. go aeros, go weremonkeys, bring on the local AA league.
Hey Pete, what's the quote at the head of this entry from?
Good luck to your Cards this post-season. I think another series with the Astros would be great, that was really good baseball last year.
I think a lot of the blame lies with the owners and the league. They expanded into places they had no business being, then cried poor and tried to shaft everybody else.
The real losers are people who don't get Outdoor Life Network, since ABC/ESPN dropped their NHL contract and the only network to carry hockey now is OLN.
The hell?
What kind of a world do we live in where the only place I can see hockey is shelling out for another 300 channels I don't need? Oh yeah, it's kind of crap.
I was at the Cubs-Cards game at Wrigley last month where Prior pitched and Wood came in in relief. Great game, Cubs won, much Old Style was consumed and I had fun taunting Cards fans. In other words, yes, we're sad.
Cubs = Gay
Cardinals = Slightly Less Gay
And I don't think V. Young is a solid enough QB to carry the Longhorns over the Buckeyes. But I'll be rooting for Texas.
Hey Pete, what's the quote at the head of this entry from?
Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The real losers are people who don't get Outdoor Life Network, since ABC/ESPN dropped their NHL contract and the only network to carry hockey now is OLN.
The hell?
Man, did you see the ratings for the last two Stanley Cup finals on ABC? I think Guatemala v. Honduras in the Americas Cup did better.
Great game, Cubs won, much Old Style was consumed and I had fun taunting Cards fans
"It was the Old Style talking, I swear!"
Cubs = Gay
Cardinals = Slightly Less Gay
Says the Salt Lake Stingers fan.
"At least we beat the Cardinals" is exactly what I've been saying - repeatedly actually. The rest is just gravy.