WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The totally jumbled National League Central

St. Louis Cardinals - The world champs come into the 2007 season once again as the favorites in the central division. They have a bonafide MVP in Albert Pujols in the lineup, and a bonafide ace in Chris "soul patch" Carpenter in the rotation. However, the most interesting thing about the Cards is the fact that they have decided to turn Braden Looper and Adam Wainwright into starters. Wainwright we guess we understand. He has at least two excellent pitches in his repotoire, and with the return of Jason Isringhausen, he is probably more useful to the team in the rotation rather than coming out of the pen. But Braden Looper? He was a disaster as a closer for the Mets two years ago, and average performer as the set-up man for the Cards last year. What is it with this team and bizarre position changing? Between these moves and the whole “Rick Ankiel as an outfielder” experiment, it makes you wonder if the manager of this team is drunk. Sorry, too soon?

(Quick aside: what is it with teams taking failed closers, i.e. Looper, Byung-Hyun Kim, and making them starters? What is the thinking there? “This guy can’t get hitters out when he only pitches one inning at a time, so let’s send him out there every fifth day and see if he can get hitters out pitching five or six innings at a time.” We have never understood the logic there.)

Milwaukee Brewers – the Brewers have seemingly become the trendy pick to challenge for the wild card, if not the NL Central division title. If that is the case, call us trendy. The Brewers have a lot of young players who are maturing at the same time and are poised to have breakout seasons in 2007. Ben Sheets and Chris Capuano are becoming a powerful 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation, and the addition of Jeff Suppan, if he can pitch all year the way he pitched in the playoffs last year, should add depth. Prince Fielder and Bill Hall in the middle of the lineup should be able to provide good run production, and how can we forget the “grittiness”, “guttiness”, “scrappyness,” and “grind-it-out-ness” that they acquired when the picked up Craig Counsell.

Chicago Cubs – The Cubs, or as we like to call them, the Redskins of baseball, once again won the off-season by overpaying for what we think will be an ill-conceived and ultimately disappointing lineup. Alfonso Soriano will be the everyday centerfielder for this team. We do not see that ending well. The Cubs also acquired Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis in the free agent market. Do you know what their combined records were last year? 29-29. And Marquis had an ERA over 6 and didn’t even make the postseason roster for the Cardinals. The bad new is these guys are scheduled to be the #2 and #3 starters for this team. The good news is this team's disappointing season should produce plenty of this

and maybe, if we are lucky, some of this

Cinci-Tucky, er, Cincinnati Reds – Aaron Harang has got to be the most underrated pitcher in the National League, and we think he will be a solid #1 on a surprisingly decent rotation. Did you know they are switching Ken Griffey, jr. to right field? That has got to be a shot to the ego. We have no idea who is going to close games for this team, so we can’t quite make them a wild card contender.

Houston Astros – The only hope for the ‘stros is Roger Clemens returning. Carlos Lee will provide some much needed pop in the middle of the lineup, but we just don’t think this team has enough depth in the rotation or bullpen to compete over the course of the season. They will also miss Willy Tavares.

Pittsburgh Pirates – Jeez, how many teams are in this division?! Jason Bay is a stud, and Adam LaRoche and Xavier Nady should provide good production, but this is a 90-100 loss team.

Peyton Manning on SNL

MUCH funnier than when Tom "Baby Daddy" Brady was on

Sweet Indeed

This weekend the entire sports world will be focused on college basketball as the sweet 16 (now 12 actually) is trimmed down to the final four. Eyes will be focused on the NCAA tournament not just for school spirit and bracket pools, but the regional semifinals and finals will be crawling with NBA scouts looking for the next big star.

Perhaps she

will be one of them. A tip of the hat to the guys at our book of scrap who have discovered Bonnie Jill Laflin, a cheerleader, turned model, turned actress, turned animal rights activist, turned sports broadcaster, turned NBA scout. Laflin is a scout for the Los Angeles Lakers and is also the assistant general manager of the Lakers developmental league affiliate. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.

So if you are at the games, as we will be tonight at the regionals at the Meadowlands, keep an eye out for BJL.



On a different subject, Gisele Bundchen has announced that she is (not) preggo. First of all, we told you so! Well, sort of. Second of all, we are very disappointed that Mr. Tuck Rule will have only one baby’s mama giving birth this fall. Anyway, that gives us an excuse to another picture of Gisele.

Enjoy the weekend sports fans. And go Buckeyes.

Wow

Thats all we can say right now. Wow. Down 20 in the first half, Greg Oden in foul trouble the entire game, and they still pull it out. Wow.

Saturday night against Memphis. Lets keep it rolling.

Good For You Tubby

Orlando Smith, you probably know him as "Tubby," decided today that he was going to leave the University of Kentucky and take the head coaching job at the University of Minnesota. This is probably because if you coach the Gophers to 29 wins per year for 9 years, five conference regular season championships, five conference tournament championships, three elite 8 finishes, one perfect regular season, and one national championship, they won't hate you and call you a failure. He should have known he was never going to survive at a school where they name arenas after his most racist predecessors.

By the way, Wildcat fans, if you hire Tom Crean, and rumors are saying he is at the top of the list, just know that besides the year he had a spectacular sophomore named Dwayne Wade, he has never won an NCAA tournament game. Plus he looks like one of these days he is going to kill somebody.

Good luck with all that.

Will Ferrell is in the Process of Jumping the Shark

We know, we know, this blog is usually devoted exclusively to sports commentary, and scantily clad women who are tangentially associated with sports, but we cannot stand idly by and allow this to happen without saying something.

Will Ferrell comedy movies, beginning with Old School, have gotten progressively worse and less funny. And this new skating movie, co-starring Jon “comedy suicide” Heder looks like it is going to be his undoing. Ugh.

We will probably still plunk down $11 to watch it, but based on the commercials, and our experience at Talladega Nights we are expecting the worst.

At least The Office's Jenna Fischer is in this piece of crap. We are big fans of hers, and we think she is the only hope for this movie.

OK, we promise the next post will go back to sports.

There is No Crying in Basketball

Found this on Deadspin today. It is post about an embittered Xavier fan’s hate letter to Greg Oden. It mentions Oden’s mother by name and even makes mention of his parent’s divorce. Classy.

But it struck us because it points to a larger issue: blaming Greg Oden for Saturday’s loss. We don’t quite understand this. Why it is that Oden is receiving blame for the loss instead of:

The Refs – let’s suspend reality for just a second and assume that Oden’s fifth foul was indeed a flagrant or intentional one. In this case, shouldn’t the referee who was four feet away from Oden at the time and made the call be to blame? Oden made the foul, but it was the ref who actually made the call, right? Why don’t you call him out rather than trashing a 19-year old and his parents who may or may not be divorced?

Justin Cage – If Cage makes the second free throw, then Xavier goes up by four points with nine seconds left. Instead, he missed it, and left the door open for Ron Lewis’ buzzer beating three-pointer.

Sean Miller – These Cinci-Tucky crybabies are so focused on Oden that they have neglected the fact that their head coach completely fell asleep at the switch in the final seconds. He should have been SCREAMING at his kids to foul Mike Conley or Ron Lewis as soon as the ball was advanced over half-court. This would have put a Buckeye on the line with somewhere around four or five seconds left and only two free throws. OSU would have needed a miracle missed second free throw and a tip in just to tie the game at that point if Xavier had done the smart thing.

The entire Xavier team – Because lets call a spade a spade here, they CHOKED. Not only did they completely cough up a double-digit lead in about five minutes of game time, but once the game went into overtime, they folded up like tent. Xavier completely fell apart in the face of the OSU rally.

So please Xavier fans, if you are going to whine about your own shortcomings, leave Oden, and his mom out of it.

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The surprisingly uninteresting American League East

New York Yankees – Stop us if you’ve heard this before: The Yankees are stacked. Their lineup reads like an all-star team, as it usually does. But the scary thing is that they are developing the pitching to match. Chien-Ming Wang is the official WCT pick to win the Cy Young in 2007. The addition of Andy Pettite will add depth to an already solid, veteran rotation. God help us all if Roger Clemens decides to pitch for New York this year. We see the Yanks winning close to 100 games again. The whole Alex Rodriguez contract option will be a distraction that will build as the season goes on, but this team is so loaded that it shouldn’t matter.

Boston Red Sox – Maybe we are alone in thinking this, but we aren’t as enamored with the Red Sox as most people are. Yes they have added Daisuke Matsuzaka, and yes from all accounts he has been dominant in his spring training appearances, but he is still a relatively unknown entity. Aside from Matsuzaka, this is virtually the same team that completely fell apart down the stretch last season and actually ended up in third place (behind Toronto) in the division. Curt Schilling is a year older, and, by most accounts, significantly fatter. We seriously don’t see what others seem to see in Josh Beckett. He is 8 games over .500 for his career, and last year had an ERA over 5 and allowed 36 home runs. That bears repeating. He gave up thirty-six home runs in 33 starts. Tim Wakefield is a train-wreck, and how will Jonathan Papelbon fare as a starter? Not only that, but who on earth is going to close games for this team? Didn’t they try the “closer by committee” strategy like three years ago to horrific results? We know that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz will mash as they usually do, but we don’t see this team winning more that 90-95 games and that isn’t going to be good enough to beat out the Yankees.

Toronto Blue Jays – Vernon Wells has got to be the most underrated player in baseball. He plays one of the most important positions on the field, and he plays at a brilliant, gold-glove level. He hits for power, he hits for a decent average, and he drives in runs. Why is he so anonymous? Is it because he plays in Canada? Anyway, between Wells, Troy Glaus, Lyle Overbay and Frank Thomas, who the Jays picked up in the off-season, this team will have plenty of offense. The problem here will be pitching depth. Outside of Roy Halladay, who can’t seem to stay healthy by the way, there isn’t much of a staff there.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays – Ugh.

Baltimore Orioles – Double Ugh.

Hire this Woman. NOW.

This is Ivon Gaete. She has been a sideline reporter for the Little League World Series on ESPN, and done some work on ESPN Deportes. She is clearly underused by the network. We need to do something about that.

Whew!

Wow, what a game yesterday.

Greg Oden and the Buckeyes danced their way into the sweet 16 by winning a game they had absolutely no business winning. WE have no idea how you OSU won a game in which they

- trailed by 11 points with just under seven minutes to play

- trailed by nine points with three minutes to play

- trailed by two points with nine seconds left with Xavier shooting two free throws

- lost Greg Oden who fouled out at the end of regulation

On a different subject, a quick memo to Dick Vitale and others of his ilk who continue to live under the misguided assumption that the ACC is the "best conference in America" every year: seven ACC teams entered the NCAA tournament, and six of them have been eliminated by Sunday evening.

We Told you They Sucked.

Dumb Cheerleaders

here is a video of dumb cheerleaders to get you in the mood for the games. Enjoy the basketball games this weekend everyone.

Duke Loses!

Its already a great weekend, because Duke has lost in the first round.

Enjoy the weekend, and the tournament.

NCAA Tournament Memories Volume 2

Let the Madness begin... Gus Johnson completely loses it at about the 6 minute mark

NCAA Tournament Memories Volume 1

The day is finally here. Volume 2 coming later

Thanks for Playing Florida A&M!

This is the message that the NCAA has sent you.

Greg Oden: "I'm not NBA ready yet"

music to our ears.

The Play-in Game




What is the deal with the play-in game?

(By the way, the fact that the NCAA doesn't want the world calling it the "play-in game" means we will attempt to say “play-in game” as many times as we can.)

Why do they even have this game? The tournament was fine with 64 teams, why did they have to add this stupid extra game in the middle of the week in Dayton between the two worst teams in the field?

Also, why do automatic bid qualifiers play every year in the play-in game? These teams have “earned” their spot in the actual tournament by winning their conferences. If we are going to have this ridiculous game, why not have the two last at-large teams play for the 64th bid? Last week Niagara and Florida A&M were celebrating their wins in their respective conference tournaments, and were getting ready to be displayed on the national stage against one of the “big boys.” Now one of them isn’t going to get that chance because they are going to lose to another small program in a random play-in game before the official start of the tournament. One day you’re dancing at center court and getting ready for your 40 minutes in the sun as you are slaughtered by Kansas, but just happy to be able to one day tell your kids you shared the basketball court with Brandon Rush, and the next your headed home, with nothing to show for your efforts besides a free trip to Dayton.


And while the NCAA continues to pee on these teams shoes and tell them its raining, the coaches are less than pleased. Niagara coach Joe Mihalich said he was "shocked," and even "insulted" to be placed in the game. Florida A&M coach Mike Gillespie (whose team will be playing in its second play-in game by the way, they won the 2004 play-in game) said tonight's losing team will feel "cheated."

Why not let Stanford and Arkansas play in the play-in game? That way the loser goes home and says to themselves, “you know, we really didn’t deserve to be in the tournament anyway.” And slot the winner in as the lowest ranked 10 seed or something.

All that said, we’ll probably still watch tonight.

(quotes:Palm Beach Post)

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The surprisingly interesting National League East


New York Mets – We feel like this Mets team is going to be a lot like the Indians teams of the 90s that we watched as a kid. They have one of the best lineups in baseball, but very few sure-things in the way of starting pitching. Pedro Martinez is STILL rehabbing his shoulder after surgery LAST WINTER. Optimistically, he is expected to join the rotation in August.

(Quick aside here: Is it just us, or is Pedro Martinez the only pitcher in baseball history to take nearly a full calendar year to recover from shoulder surgery? How is this possible? We are not saying that he is a malingerer, but people like Kerry Wood get clowned for not being able to stay healthy, but a guy like Pedro gets off scot free when he has been as injury-prone as any player in baseball since like 2004. Did you know Pedro is only 35? Should a pitcher’s body be breaking down the way Pedro’s has over the last 3 seasons this early? When the Mets signed him as a free agent they pretty much knew that he probably would not see the end of the 4-year deal he signed, and he was 32 at the time. OK, back to the preview.)

The Mets will try to get by with Tom Glavine, who will turn 41 later this month, Orlando Hernandez, who has got to be damn near 50, and a bunch of young unproven kids. That being said, their lineup is stacked with three legitimate MVP candidates. Jose Reyes is quickly becoming one of the best all-around shortstops in baseball. David Wright is streaky, but when he is on, he is one of the best clutch hitters in the NL. And Carlos Beltran is coming off of a career year, and finally realizing the superstar potential that the Mets thought he had when they signed him. The Mets bullpen is also very deep. The Mets will have to try to win a lot of games 9-7 because the starting pitching will be so shaky. We see them winning the division solely based on their ability to out-bash people in high scoring games.


Philadelphia Phillies –Jimmy Rollins threw the gauntlet down a few weeks ago when he said that he thought that the Phillies were hands-down the best team in the NL East. We admire his optimism, but we don’t quite agree with him on that one. The Phillies are a solid team, and everyone is expecting Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels to emerge as superstars this season. They have a powerful lineup but we are not sure that it is strong enough to cover up some of their other weaknesses in the same way we think the Mets’ lineup will. They have the deepest starting staff in the division, but they can’t feel too comfortable with Tom Gordon closing and Antonio Alfonseca setting him up. We think that the starting pitching will keep this team in contention for the wild-card, but the shaky bullpen will end up being the difference between wild-card contention, and division contention.

Atlanta Braves – Did you know the Braves scored the second most runs in the National League last season? When we peruse their everyday lineup, we don’t see a whole lot of guys that make pitchers shake in their spikes, but somehow they actually outscored the Mets. We can’t see this repeating itself again this year. The Braves also lost the production Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche in the off-season. The pitching took a step back last year without Leo Mazzone, and we don’t see it holding up this season. When is John Smoltz going to finally realize that he is not supposed to still be this good? Incidently, he turns 40 this May.

Florida Marlins – They fired the manager of the year. Simply amazing. This team is comprised mostly of kids, and will be very good very soon, but not yet.

Washington Nationals – what a joke. Looking over their roster, we will be shocked if they lose fewer than 105 games.

The Worst Jerry, the WORST!

We are not huge college basketball fans, but we love the NCAA tournament. The tournament is probably the best single sporting event of the year, in as much as 64 basketball games can be considered one single sporting event. But for some reason, it brings out the worst from sports media every year. Actually, we take that back. It doesn’t bring out the worst in the sports media as much as it exposes exactly how brainless most of these analysts are in a public forum. Just a few snippets:

-Why is it that as soon as the brackets are released the talking heads have to rush to the forefront and weigh in on this ridiculous notion of "which bracket is the toughest?" There are like 6 teams that seem to be legitimately above the rest of the field: Florida, Ohio State, Kansas, UCLA, Georgetown, and North Carolina. There are also a handful of teams that just pretty much happy to be there. The other 40 or 50 teams are bunched up somewhere in between and evenly distributed among the 4 brackets. That is why the ESPN.com’s analyst symposium on the brackets turned into a giant cluster-fuck with Jay Bilas calling the East the hardest and the South the easiest, Doug Gottlieb calling the South the hardest and the West the easiest, and (this is our favorite) Dicky V calling the West the hardest (incidentally, Duke is in that bracket) and the easiest as “none.” None. Thanks Dick.

- Speaking of Dicky, Shocking that he would pick an ACC team to win it all. Truly shocking.

- Speaking of the ACC, how the hell did the committee make Duke a 6 seed?? Did you know that they haven’t beaten a tournament team (we don’t count BC) since December 21st?? In case you were wondering, the other 6 seeds are Louisville (3rd in the Big East and 8-2 in their last 10 games), Notre Dame (4th in the Big East and 7-3 in their last 10, including a trip to the conference semis) and Vanderbilt (10-6 in conference and the first SEC team to beat Florida this year). Duke, as you should know by now, was 8-8 in a weaker than normal ACC, tied for 6th place, and lost in the opening round of the conference tournament to a 5-11 NC State team. Anyone else would have been “on the bubble” but Duke is a 6 seed.

- Joakim Noah acting like an ass makes it easy to cheer against Florida, and we aren't the only ones who think so.

HUH??

Ohio State is the number 1 team in the nation in both polls coming into this weekend, they roll through the Big 10 tournament winning every game by at least 11 points, and win in the title game by 17 over the #4 ranked Wisconsin Badgers, they have not lost since January 9th and have only lost once by double-digits, (back in December mind you) and they are not the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament?

The #1 overall team is Florida, who lost games by 13, 10, and 10 points late in the season. Amazing.

Who Dat is? Dats Just our Baby Daddy!


are we the only ones that remember that horrible song?


Much to our surprise, The Big Lead and Deadspin both reported Thursday that Tom Brady was apparently not quite done impregnating starlets.




The blogs cite a Brazilian report and a Boston Globe report that state that Gisele Bundchen, current squeeze of the Patriots quarterback, is now pregnant with his child.

As TBL astutely points out, this would mean that Tommy Tuck Rule would have two children born by two different celebrity women within a few weeks of each other, sometime late this summer.

Is he trying to go after some kind of record? Is he going to become the new NFL Shawn Kemp? Or is he just trying to one-up Matt Leinart? And what about the two half-brothers/sisters that will be born? What kind of fucked-up relationship are they going to have?

Anyways, in honor of our Friday T&A feature, we know present you with some pictures of Gisele.

Savor the flavor

because she is not going to be looking like this for much longer.

We still are not convinced that we aren't all being had with this whole story, so if this all turns out to be false, we would like to say "we told you so" ahead of time.

In any event, happy conference tournament weekend everyone.

And as you venture out into the nightlife, please, please, for the love of God, bring a rubber (or two) with you.

America Held Hostage:24 Days


24 days 'till baseball season and still no word on the MLB Extra Innings Package...

This Just In...

LeBron James is re-goddam-diculous. I would love to hear what all of those Bron-haters on TV have to say about tonights performance in Detroit.

Jamal Lewis!!!

If you can't beat 'em (or if they piss on your defense for 600 yards in two games) Join 'em (or in this case sign 'em as free agents)

Welcome to Cleveland Jamal! We hope you enjoy running the ball without blockers.

5 we like, 5 we don't like: SportsCenter Anchors




We do a lot of thinking on the treadmill, and we watch a lot of SportsCenter on the treadmill too. Therefore, we do a lot of thinking about SportsCenter. Today, we got to thinking about SportsCenter anchors.

5 anchors we want to see less.

Stuart Scott

Easiest one on the board by far. In like 1994 he was new, original, really a breath of fresh air on a somewhat stagnate SC anchor lineup (plus we were only 13 at the time so maybe we thought his act was cool). It is now 13 years later, and he is doing the exact same act. He mugs for attention during other anchor’s highlights, and his writing is tired and painfully unfunny and uninteresting. But enough bloggers have taken their shots at Stu, so we will move on.

Kenny Mayne

We actually forgot how much we hated Kenny until he mysteriously re-appeared to do the Sunday night SC with Stu-yah last weekend. What a combo that was. They were practically elbowing each other out of the way to steal camera time. They kept trying to outdo each other with inane blather through every highlight. He just doesn’t understand that he is there to narrate the highlights and provide little stats and tidbits to enhance the viewer’s enjoyment. He is not there to try to be funny and come up with the next stupid catchphrase. He even tries to use a dry, monotone delivery to try to be even funnier. Truly annoying.

Neil Everett

Every time SC starts up and we hear “howZIIIIIT??” we roll our eyes and check to see what else is on. What are “PF Flyers?” And why does he mention them every time a runner gets thrown out at home?

John Buccigross

What Mick Jaggar is to the Rolling Stones, John Buccigross is to annoying sportscasters. Imagine hearing analogies like that 5 or 6 times during a SC broadcast, except with much more obscure bands. THAT is his catchphrase. GUH!

Brian Kenny

We hate sabermetrics. And he has to make some allusion to sabermetrics every time he does a baseball highlight.

5 that ESPN should use to replace those flunkies

Chris McKendry

Very understated, doesn’t get in the way of the highlights, or her co-anchors, and even clever at times. She also seemed perfect for The Big Picture's “who would you do” competition. Right on the fence so there would have been good two-way debate. I think the fact that she constantly makes bedroom eyes at the camera would have put her over the top. But anyway, she is also a very good anchor.

Scott Van Pelt

Funny, but without getting in the way. It is a very delicate balance between an anchor being funny and an anchor trying to be funny and calling too much attention to himself/herself. Van Pelt he never seems like he is trying to be funny. Also, good writing during his lead-ins, and most of all, he gives you good info during a highlight.

Dave Revsine

ESPN has buried this guy because he doesn’t arouse that much passion one way or the other. Ideally, SC anchors should like sports officials, if you hardly know they are there, then they are doing a good job. Revsine does a good job of fading into the background and letting the highlights do the job, while still throwing a quip in every once and a while to keep the viewer entertained.

Linda Cohn

What the hell happened to her? Why has ESPN buried her? She is like the female Revsine.

Josh Elliot

He is new to the anchor’s desk, but pretty good so far.

YouTube Clip of the (last) Week!

Sorry for the re-post, but here is the YouTube clip from last week that we accidently deleted.

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The Utterly Maddening American League West

The Los Angeles Angels – This team drives us crazy. When you consider hitting, starting pitching, bullpen, defense, managing, this might be, top to bottom, the best team in all of the American League. On paper, they really don’t have many weaknesses. But they go through long stretches when they struggle, and it really must be frustrating for their fans.(Luckily for us, we are Indians fans…nothing frustrating about cheering for that team… but that’s neither here nor there) The Angels have the best pitching rotation in the division, and one of the top three in all of baseball. Colon, is either the worst ace in baseball, or the best bad pitcher in all of baseball, but either way you look at him, he is solid. Figuratively speaking of course. John Lackey is a good #2, and Jared Weaver is only going to get better. Ervin Santana and Kelvim Escobar are very underrated. The bullpen is also solid, and guys like Orlando Cabrera and Chone Figgens are guys who always seem to come up big in big spots. There is no reason this team shouldn’t run away with this division as long as everyone stays healthy. But inevitably they won’t. They will likely underachieve, again, and let lesser teams like Oakland hang around.

Oakland A’s – we hate sabermetrics (sabremetrics?). We hate Billy Beane. We hate to go all Hater Nation on you, but screw the A’s.

Texas Rangers – The Rangers seem to refuse to try to put together any semblance of a pitching rotation. They have a very good lineup, with Michael Young getting on base and Mark Teixeira and Hank Blaylock driving in runs, but their pitching staff will be, as it always is, awful. Kevin Millwood is decent, but Vicente Padilla, Brandon McCarthy, John Koronka, and Kameron Loe aren’t going to get it done in the AL. The only interesting thing about watching this team all year will be seeing if Sammy Sosa and Eric Gagne can stay healthy enough to provide any production. Look for them to finish in third.

Seattle Mariners – The Mariners are not good enough to compete, but not bad enough to be comically bad. They have a few players that make them somewhat interesting, like Ichiro, Felix Hernandex, and Richie Sexson, but in many ways they are like a forgotten team. We can’t see them finishing anywhere other than last place again.

The End of the Dead Zone

March is FINALLY here. With the end of February comes the end of the worst month on the sports calendar. It also brings the beginning of March, by our count, the third best sports month on the calendar (behind October and September in that order. We are willing to argue this point).

In honor of the beginning of meaningful college basketball games at long last, we bring you pictures of hot college basketball cheerleaders!

Whoops!! Sorry... Don't know how that got in there. Lets try this again, Hot college basketball cheerleaders!!

She is a University of Florida "Dazzler." We have trouble containing our contempt for the Florida basketball team, but we do love us some Dazzlers.

UCLA is a team that people seem to have forgotton, we hope they hang around the tournament long enough for their cheerleaders to make an appearance

And we leave you with two Texas cheerleaders. We have no idea what the hell they are doing, but we love it.

Happy March Basketball Fans!

Duke Should Not be Ranked

Last night, as we settled down on the couch with a cold one (and by “one” we mean 12-pack) for a night of college basketball, we were taken aback by something that had apparently completely slipped by most of the hoops-viewing world. Duke is ranked #14 in both polls.

First, let us say that we were surprised to learn this before the game, as we pretty much assumed that they would be handled by unranked Maryland (UM won 85-77). So this is not a case of 20-20 hindsight. Also, we should preface our comments by letting any new readers know that we previously took great joy in Duke’s struggles in early February.

We were not surprised to see Duke ranked when we tuned into ESPN last night, we were just puzzled as to how they could possibly go from unranked one week, to ranked #14 two weeks later, without any quality wins (BC was laughably overrated as they are just about every year. We aren’t counting that as a quality win).

Lets examine the ACC standings. Coming into last night’s game, Duke was 8-6 in conference, tied with Maryland, and two games behind the leaders. The ACC leaders were, again as of last night, North Carolina, 10-4, and ranked #8, who beat Duke in their only meeting so far (they play again in Chapel Hill on Sunday). Virginia Tech, 10-4, and -here’s where it gets screwy- ranked #21 who beat Duke in their only meeting of the season in Durham. And UVA (we know, UVA??), 10-4, and ranked #25 and also beat Duke in their only meeting of the year. So to recap: that’s two teams ahead of Duke in the standings who hold a head-to-head edge over Duke ranked seven and eleven spots BEHIND them in the polls respectively.

Right, we forgot to mention something. That UVA #25 ranking is in the Coaches Poll. The Cavs are unranked in the AP poll. Right now they are second among the “others receiving votes.”

So back to Duke. After being left out of the polls two weeks ago, wins over BC and Georgia Tech vaulted them to the rankings of #18 and #17 in the AP and Coaches Polls, leapfrogging teams like West Virginia, who was coming off of a win over then #2 UCLA, Vanderbilt, who was coming off of a win over then #1 Florida, and Texas, who we firmly believe is one of the more underrated teams in the nation and would smoke Duke on a neutral court. So in other words, beating BC and GT was more impressive to voters than WVU going to L.A. and beating UCLA, or Vandy giving Florida their first conference loss.

All of this brings us back to last night. If we found someone who didn’t know any better, and told them that one of the two teams we were watching was unranked, and the other was in the top 15, needless to say we could have won a lot of money from them. We know there is a bias in the media towards Duke, but this is really getting out of hand. So if the rankings come out next week and Duke is still ranked, we will just simply have to laugh and shake our head. If they come out and Maryland, who has now swept Duke, and beat UNC on Sunday and is really picking up steam, is ranked behind them, we will blow a collective gasket.