Sports Notes
-Since the Red Sox lost, I'm glad the Yankees lost as well. It's just not fun to have only one of the two, because without each other they're boring. I'm pulling for the Cards and the White Sox, and I think both will win, setting up a fascinating series between the two best teams in baseball. I like that. I still think there are too many teams in the playoffs, and that a second place team shouldn't be able to win a championship. Yes, although the Wild Card creates excitement, it's still illogical, so I still don't like it. Yep, still in the minority there.
-I'm not sure what we learned from the NFL this weekend. The Bengals are good, but not great. The Patriots have the heart of a champion, but can't do it every week. Steelers close to the same. The Titans can beat a bad team. The Texans are a bad team. The Redskins are okay, and could make the playoffs in the NFC. So could three quarters of the league.
-I would consider the NFC East to interesting if I could get excited about anything in the NFC. It just looks like random mediocrity, which doesn't thrill me.
-Mike Martz is out next week. If the Rams start winning, could he be encouraged to take a few extra weeks off? Same goes for Matt Schaub over Mike Vick. I know who I'd start, and it's not the superstar. Can we get Schaub on the Titans?
-Doesn't KC fool everyone at some point each year since Vermeil took over? I thought they were the real deal after two weeks, and then they just start blundering. Will they ever have a complete package?
-It's nice to see the Pack get a win, and they're not out of it just yet. I had the feeling that Favre was getting older and trying to make plays that he just couldn't make anymore. Now he's playing to his strengths, which still include his strong arm, and I like that. I hope they don't fall off in the next few weeks, which I think is likely.
-If Jamal Lewis tanking my fantasy team means that he tanks the Ravens season as well, I accept.
posted by Mike @ 10/11/2005 04:50:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I've always been mixed about the Wild Card. It waters down the regular season and it penalizes teams who battled to win their division into playing a dangerous 5-game series with them.
On the flipside, the Wild Card team often is the team that is playing the best towards the end of the year, which I think should count for something.
This year, though, we had 3 teams better than the division-winning Padres who didn't go to the playoffs. Clearly, the only fair thing to do is to have all the teams in the same division and take the top 4 (or hell, just the first place team like the old days). But business-wise, that would be a disaster. Baseball has enough problems.
Mike, what is your stance on the wild card regarding the NFL?
The wild card doesn't bug me so much in baseball except for the fact I think they should play a seven game series in the first round. Too often it has proven that if you have two better starters than the other team you win easily because you only need one more win after that. It was like Chris said a couple of years about no one being able to beat the Cubs in a five game series, and he was right on. A seven series, as the Marlins showed, made a little more of a difference.
In the NFL, the wild card makes more sense since there are only sixteen games. 162 games with only four teams proving to be the best seems pretty definate to me. With only 16 games there should be a couple of teams thrown in that showed they deserve the post season even if they couldn't win their division due to one close game or two. I don't know if that worded that as well as I meant to, but I hope it makes sense.
As Mike has pointed out in the past does anyone really think the Marlins were the best team in baseball when they beat the Indians in the World Series? Probably not. Can most people say the Ravens were the best team in 2001 when they beat the Giants in the superbowl? I would say most definately.
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