In this podcast Adam’s talks about:
-Steve Sarkisian being in trouble at UW
-Nadal and Federer in a Tennis Final again
-Pujols wants Manny in St. Louis
-The Giambi’s are set to testify against Bonds
-Dennis Felton gets fired, who’s next for Georgia?
-A small Super Bowl Preview
-Kobe charging to access his website
In this podcast Adam discusses:
-Kay Yow
-Duke will be #1 for a while
-Is Mike Shanahan right for Kansas City?
-Are we Heading for a Lakers-Celtics rematch in the finals?
-NHL rule that other sports should adopt
-Is the move from Phoenix near for the Coyotes?
-Girls High School basketball team wins 100-0
-Kentucky football coach indicted for player death
Thanks for listening and reading.
The Cardinals might be in the Super Bowl, but it will be a distracting two weeks with many questions about Anquan Boldin. Let me set this up for you if you do not know. Now, alot of people saw the blow up that Cardinals receiver Anquan Boldin had late in Sunday’s win over the Eagles with offensive coordinator Todd Haley. This, however, was a long time coming. Earlier this season Boldin had complained to Haley about his declining of passes being thrown to him, and now with Sunday’s incident it’s obvious that the Super Bowl will be the last for Boldin in a Cardinals uniform.
This is going to snowball into an avalanche for the Cardinals, who have a big task at handling the pressure from their franchise’s first Super Bowl. Right now you don’t hear alot of it, but with two weeks before the game, and day in and day out break down of the game, many sports analysts and newspapers are going to get into this and have plenty of time to ask the Cardinal players and cause what will be another distraction to the Cardinals.
This is setting up perfectly for several teams. First the Steelers, who know that if Boldin doesn’t get involved early in the game, it will start to cause a distraction during the game by Boldin’s actions that could ultimately bring down the morale of the team. For the Giants, they’re looking intently into this situation, knowing that than can get Boldin away from Arizona in the offseason to be the replacement to Plaxico Burress.
For the Cardinals, win or lose, they’re going to be in the news more than the result of the Super Bowl.
Here it is folks my Championship Games prediction. We’ll start first in Arizona where the Cardinals have put up a good run to date in the NFC, as they have taken out two red hot teams in Atlanta and Carolina. But, the Eagles have done just as good, taking down the Vikings, and the Giants, both on the road. Last season saw the NFC’s six seed go to the Super Bowl, and I think we’ll see it again this year, Eagles 24 Cardinals 13.
In Pittsburgh, the Steelers saw an offensive explosion in the second half. I doubt they’ll get much of the same here today. The Ravens have slowed down two offenses in a row by handing Miami a shocking first round loss, and then playing good defense and just enough offense to get by Tennessee. Both of the two regular season games were tight one’s and I think this one will be as well. Expect a low scoring matchup, expect a hard hitting game, and expect two six seeds in the Super Bowl, Ravens 17 Steelers 9.
College Football is ludacris for giving a 1-loss team the National Championship over a 0-loss team. That’s right Utah, not Florida should be National Champions of the 2008 College Football world.
College Football needs to start treating its so called smaller conferences like the so called big conferences. I hear it all the time about ‘the reason why they don’t put the smaller undefeated teams in the National Title game is because they’d get pounded.’ Oh really?
Then how come out of four BCS appearances, the non-BCS teams are 3-1? Come on Utah beat Pittsburgh 35-7 in 2004, Boise State beat Oklahoma 43-42, and Utah pounded Alabama 31-17. The only one who didn’t of course was Hawai’i who lost to Georgia. Also, if the smaller conferences couldn’t play teams from the bigger conferences, then how come non-BCS teams won 26 games against BCS teams in the regular season? With 14 of those wins coming on the road. Even the schools that are ranked near the bottom of the smaller conferences are beating BCS teams, case in point Wyoming beat Tennessee, the Cowboys finished 4-8. Middle Tennessee State beat Maryland, and finished 5-7. UNLV beat Iowa State and Arizona State and finished 5-7. New Mexico beat Arizona and finished 4-8. Akron beat Syracuse and finished 5-7. Toledo beat Michigan and finished 3-9. Not only that 10 of the 26 wins were against teams that finished bowl eligible.
The NCAA and BCS conferences are afraid, both are afraid for different reasons though. The NCAA is afraid of Georgia-Hawai’i games in which they will lose a ton of ratings, and thus money. The BCS conferences are afraid of getting beat by these smaller teams and then turning into the laughing stock of College Football as Michigan did after getting beat by Appalachian State.
If you don’t think the BCS teams are afraid, I’ll give you a couple of examples. First, let’s go back to preseason 2007. Now everyone knows that Michigan played, and lost to Appalachian State. However, did you know that Michigan was actually slated to play Hawai’i in that opening week instead of Appalachian State? But, when Michigan saw that Hawai’i had a really good football team heading into 2007 they quickly called up the Warriors and said ’sorry boys, we don’t wanna take a shot at getting beat, so we’re replacing you with Appalachian State. Here’s a nice parting gift.’ Most fans outside of Michigan and Hawai’i did not know that. Another example is the big BCS teams won’t even bother playing good non-BCS teams, let alone play them on the road. I’m talking Texas going to Boise State instead of UTEP, or Oklahoma going to San Jose State instead of Tulsa.
The BCS teams are afraid of getting beat, and the NCAA is afraid of losing a little extra money that they don’t even need. On top of that the NCAA doesn’t want to go against their big money makers in the BCS conferences. They’re afraid and College Football’s way of determining the National Champion is paying for it.
Well now we have 34 bowl games in College Football. Which means 68 teams get to play in a bowl game, and just how far are we now digging for bowl teams to fill up the 68 slots. Well let’s take a look:
South Florida finished 7-5 in the regular season and 8th in the Big East
Nothern Illinois finished 6-6 in the regular season and finished 4th in the MAC West
Colorado State finished 6-6 in the regular season and 5th in the Mountain West
Kentucky finished 6-6 in the regular season and last in the SEC East
Fresno State finished 7-5 in the regular season and finished 5th in the WAC
Florida Atlantic finished 7-5 in the regular season and finished 3rd in the Sun Belt
Now, granted some of these teams won their bowl games, but that’s the problem, there shouldn’t be bowl games for these and several other teams to get to.
The question is who is responsible for so many bowls. The NCAA is just part of the answer, but the other part may shock you and we have to go back to 1996 to get the answer. Anyone have a guess? Would you believe the Big West Conference is the one to blame. Now there’s so much speculation from sports radio talk show hosts, to fans, to athletic directors, to you name it see the Humanitarian Bowl as a bowl created for Boise State to get in when they had a winning season.
Now back in 1997, which was the Humanitarian Bowl’s first year, Boise State finished 5-6. Even the year before they finished 2-10. Now the bowl talks had been going on for quite a while between the Big West and several locations in the western part of the U.S. for a bowl game that would pit the Big West Champion versus the Conference USA Champion, the Conference USA had itself just began. The Big West decided on Boise, as officials liked the uniqueness of the turf on which Boise State played on (which is blue in color), as well as the town of Boise.
With the Humanitarian Bowl now set in Boise, the conditions for a perfect storm were set. The final condition in the perfect storm arrived in 1999, when Boise State won the Big West Championship, and was able to play on their home turf for the bowl game. Boise State’s success was not limited as they went onto win the 2000 Big West Championship as well. When the 2000 season came to a close, so did the Big West Conference, but it was only the start.
Western Athletic Conference Officials saw it fit to recieve the perverbal go ahead from the NCAA to pick up the Humanitarian Bowl after Boise State joined the conference in 2001. Officials from the WAC were then delighted to have another bowl tie-in, which meant another team from the conference would be going to a bowl game. Of course, Boise State going twice more helped pump money into the WAC. Soon word got out of the money that the conference was making, and those who didn’t hear were shielded by Boise State making it to the bowl game that they got it into their mind that the Humanitarian Bowl was made for Boise State in case they didn’t get to a bowl but yet were bowl eligible.
Then the thing exploded. The other conferences soon used lobbyist’s to go to the NCAA to lobby for more bowl games, while other universities saw their team being left out of bowls, but yet being bowl eligible. The universities of note were New Mexico (6-5 in 2001 no bowl appearance), and Hawai’i (9-4 in 2001 no bowl appearance). Now, Hawai’i had a good case, how could there be no bowl in Hawai’i? But the WAC helped them out by not only getting a bowl there, but got the NCAA to award a tie-in to a WAC team, at least making sure Hawai’i would be in a bowl when they finished with a bowl eligibility mark.
That, accompanied with the conferece lobbying, which still is going on, and we have gotten to 34 bowl games. Unless the NCAA decides enough is enough, there might be more on the horizon, and we have the now defunct Big West Conference and the NCAA for putting a bowl game in Boise.
Jason Garrett needs to get out of Dallas, and fast. I mean as soon as someone offers him a coaching job he needs to leave. The once “future head coach” of the Cowboys is being all but run out of town, and the offseason is not even a week old.
Early in the season it was Terrell Owens dishing out the criticism towards Garrett’s offense. Then Ray Lewis knocked Garrett’s offense by calling it one of the most simplistic offenses in the NFL, that came after the Ravens beat the Cowboys 33-24 in week 16. Following that same game Tony Romo also blasted the offense, in saying that it took over three quarters for Garrett to figure out the Ravens defense.
Soon following, wide receiver Roy Williams sounded out his frustration by saying he wanted to be more of a contributor to the Cowboys offense. Then, following a 44-6 blowout loss to the Eagles, a loss that knocked Dallas out of the playoff race, Romo once again blasted the offense stating that the Eagles exploited a weakness in the Cowboys offense and that Jason Garrett made no attempt to adjust the offense.
Then earlier this week it was the Dallas Morning News’ turn to blast Garrett. For Garrett, it is setting up to be bad news in “Big D”. Your key players are blasting your offense, opponents defensive players are calling your offense simple, and exploitations of that offense are resulting in turnovers for your offense, and big wins by the opposition, there is no way to win this fight. You can claim that you’ll make changes for next season, but that’ll be difficult to institute because your key players are already questioning your abilities as a coordinator. Also, what if you do implement changes and they don’t work, then you’re right back where you are right now.
For Jason Garrett, the time to leave Dallas is now.
The question has been asked by many, and many don’t have a clear answer for it. How do you fix the Detriot Lions? Here’s what they need to do.
First, they made a great move by making Martin Mayhew the GM, and giving him the power to make the final say so on football related issues. Mayhew needs to then hire an assistant from inside the league to be the next head coach. Going to the collegiate ranks would set them back even farther.
Next, let’s get rid of Culpepper, and Jon Kitna. Make Dan Orlovsky the back up, and draft Matthew Stafford to be the quarterback. Kevin Smith will be a great back, but is Rudi Johnson a quality back up? The Lions should dump Johnson and try to get a deal to get Tashard Choice out of Dallas, or if he’s still on the board, Shonn Greene would do. John Standeford was slowly getting better as the year winded down, so the Lions should try to live with him as the opposite to Calvin Johnson. Plus you still have Mike Furrey and Shaun McDonald.
For the offensive line, one word: Training. Strength training, and blocking scheme training. As David Carr and Houston found out earlier this decade, nothing is worse than having your rookie quarterback getting knocked around every game. If he has time Stafford will tear up a defense with the receivers the Lions have.
The defense is where the Lions need the most work. They have Ernie Sims, who is going to be a great linebacker, and Stuart Schweigert will be a good safety. Outside of those two guys it’ll be a matter of who they can pick up though the draft and free-agency, as well as who they’ll retain and try to work with. Clay Matthews would be a good second round pick for the Lions if he’s still there.
The last will be patience, it’s easier to fall off the top than to get to the top. Lions fans, and upper management need to be patient it may be a two to three year climb back to the top.
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