College Football Predictions - Week 1

Last year, I came out of the season with a 60% Win percentage against the spread.  This year I have to lookout for rooting for the home underdog too much.  A 5-11 Road Underdog record last year needs to be reversed this year as well as my Road favorite percentage.  (All odds courtesy of 5Dimes.eu)  Anyways, here are my picks for Week 1 and no rankings will be shown until the BCS rankings come out :

2012 - A Big East Preview

The Big East had lots of defections to deal with and finally came with 8 teams into this season after letting Temple back into the conference.  The Big East will have more teams next year with Boise State and San Jose State joining.  Although I believe that those two teams will do the TCU thing and not join if there are any other attractive offers out there for them. 

The bad thing is that West Virginia is no longer in the league.  Pittsburgh is leaving after this year.  And if it is true that the Big 10 and Rutgers are making googly eyes at each other, then this conference might be going the way of the WAC.  We shall see as conference realignment continues into the forseeable future.

2012 - A Big 12 Preview

This is a conference that is getting a second chance.  There were a couple of times the past two or three years when it looked like the Big 12 would be ripped apart.  But the two major anchors of the conference, Texas and Oklahoma could not find deals with the SEC or PAC-12 that were suitable for them.  So the conference exchanged Missouri and Texas A&M for West Virginia and TCU.  That trade is a plus for the conference, but the power in the conference is still decided in the Red River Shootout.

2012 - An ACC Preview

For the past couple of years, the changing landscape has caused conferences to ebb and flow.  The ACC has tried to be a part of this, but they haven't been able to land the schools that they have wanted.  On the flip side, they haven't lost schools to other conferences.  There have been rumblings about Miami, Florida State, and Clemson leaving the conference though.  For this year, the status quo is refreshing.  The problem for the league is that the haves and have nots disparity is growing.

2012 - A WAC Preview

This looks like the end of the WAC for a football conference.  After this season only Idaho and New Mexico State will be football playing members of the league.  Conference USA, The Mountain West, and the Sun Belt Conference are picking the bones off this league pertaining to football.  Let's predict the final season.

2012 - An SEC Preview

I figure that I will do previews for all the conferences in BCS subdivision of Division I football.  This is in anticipation of doing football picks this year yet again.  I am starting out with the best conference in football (Boo!), the SEC.

RIP Johnny

L-R Dom DiMaggio, Williams, Doerr, Pesky (those 4 were the best of friends) and Joe Dobson.

Today we lost a gentleman of the game.  Johnny Pesky died today at the age of 92. I dare say no one has spent longer actively in professional baseball -- 73, to be exact, 61 of them with the Red Sox. His #6 is retired by the Red Sox (the only player they made a few exceptions for to do that) and the famous Pesky pole in right field at Fenway is named for him (even though he only hit 6 career homeruns at Fenway.) The link below is a pictoral through the years of his career.
Johnny Pesky through the years - Sports - Baseball - Red Sox - Boston.com

Nobody, and I mean nobody, loved baseball more than Johnny; and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the game, ever, who was loved more by the fans and the players.

It's About Time!

People have complained for years in NASCAR circles that they hate road racing.  Well, as a long time NASCAR fan I've always liked road racing, turning left AND RIGHT.  This year I've been suffering through one follow-the-leader race after another.  That includes the kinds of tracks where passing was the norm.  Well, if you watched the Watkins Glen race today, especially starting at the last restart, you would've seen some of the best racing in years on the NASCAR circuit.
The fact that a Richard Petty Racing driver, Marcos Ambros, came out on top just adds a cherry.  It would've been fantastic even if the 2 car or the 18 had won instead.
Obviously it's too early to have an embed video to share.  So hopefully you got to see it live.  If not, watch the highlight shows tonight and check in here when I do get to add a video.  Suffice to say there were several lead changes, beating and banging, and fantastic driving throughout the last few laps.
Nascar.com doesn't do embeds but here's a link to the final lap.

Third Time’s Not The Charm

In approximately five weeks I have to figure out what I’m going to do with myself on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights. For the third time in eighteen years the NHL may lock out their players on September 15th and I have to prepare for life without hockey.

In 1994 I was too busy with real life to care. It was my last year in college. I was engaged. My grades weren’t the best. I was working full time and struggling to both keep up with my studies and balance work, school, a fiancée and fun. Not good times.

In 2004 I was heartbroken there wouldn’t be NHL hockey but I had a fallback. We still had minor league hockey, and I ended up watching more San Diego Gulls games in person than I did in previous years.

Now that it’s 2012 things are different. San Diego hasn’t had minor league hockey in six years, and the closest ECHL team is about a two-hour drive away and affiliated with the Los Angeles Kings, whose ownership I loathe.

What’s a fan to do? Stay away. And this time around I may never come back since there are more programming options on cable television than ever before.

Will I disown the Leafs and the NHL if the league locks out the players? Ever since baseball had the audacity to cancel the World Series in 1994 I haven’t attended a game unless someone else bought the ticket, so anything’s possible.

We’ll see what happens on September 15th and the days afterward.

Hit Somebody

What do you do when the game's getting dull, the players are going through the motions and the crowd's sitting on their hands (just like in this place lately...

Miss you, WZ!