RANDOM RANTING

BASEBALL, AMERICA’S PAST PASTIME
I love baseball. As many of you know, it is my favorite professional sport. However, once again I am amazed at how poorly the sport is being run. Bud Selig is killing Major League Baseball. Not only is it the only professional sport in America in which money is the biggest factor to fielding a winning team (Yankees 2009 payroll is $201,449,189, Phillies is $113,004,046. Both in the top quarter of the league), but now Selig is apparently in support of not always getting the right call on the field.
Today Bud came out and said that he is not a fan of expanding replay, “I do like the human element and I think the human element for the last 130 years has worked pretty well.” Well that is great, let’s never move forward for the betterment of the sport. The playoffs this season have been scattered with blown calls and this is how the commissioner of the league reacts to it, unreal! What is more shocking is that the owners just extended his contract and he will continue to be in charge for another 3 season, minimum.

Hey Bud, if you are looking for things to not change about baseball due to the way it worked over the last 130 years, here is a list I have put together for you:
*Do away with the DH. It is a joke of a position and is not how the game was meant to be played.
*Don’t play until November. Who wants to sit outdoors in NY, Philly, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Denver or Chicago to watch a game that will drag on early into the night? Sorry, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and Cubs fans, I know you will never play in November due to the financial set-up of the game (and for simply never winning for the Cubs fans) but those were the cold weather cities with outdoor stadiums that I could think of.
*Cool it with all the off days during the playoffs. These guys play for weeks at a time during the regular season they don’t need a day off every time they get to a new city. The Yankees will have more off days in the month of October then they will have played games by tomorrow night. Not only do they have off days every time the travel, but twice they had off days to stay in the same city.
*Speed up the game. I know that MLB will do just about anything for the TV networks, but can’t you put a limit on the length of time between innings. You know it is bad when the game ended last night, I thought to myself, “wow, that was a fast game,” and it took 3:25!

PARITY IN THE NFL IS GONE, IT WENT BACK TO COLLEGE
In the past 10 years or so the NFL has been about as even a playing field as you can get. In that time every team has had at least a little success, I mean even the Browns have made the playoffs in that time frame. In the last 10 Super Bowls 14 different teams have been represented. Not this year. This season parity has only grabbed hold of about 10 teams that are incredibly average. This season, there are more bad teams then I can ever recall at one time. We are approaching the eighth week of the season and there are still six teams that have not won more then once so far. And if it weren’t for the Washington Redskins (2-5) there may be more. Last week was the first game of the season that the Redskins opponent had a win coming into the game.

While this is happening in the NFL the college game has gone the opposite direction. What happened to the 66-3 wins that Texas and USC used to put up on teams? What happened to Urban Meyer being up by 40 on his conference rivals? What happened to Ohio State dominating every game until their BCS game? This stuff just isn’t happening anymore and I can’t decide if it is good or not for the sport. It is always fun to be able to watch a team play and be in awe of how easy they make the game look. You also can’t match the excitement and tension as you watch a team about to pull off an unthinkable upset versus someone in the top 10. Unfortunately we haven’t seen much of either this season. The dominate teams, just aren’t that dominant and the upsets aren’t happening because ranked teams seem to do just enough to squeak out a win despite playing terribly all game. Here is a brief overview of my thoughts of the BCS conferences this year and how disappointing they have been.

ACC- Minus Georgia Tech they have nothing. It is a bunch of teams that beat each other up, but nobody that could win against anybody near the elite level from another BCS conference.
Big XII- This conference was supposed to have all the fireworks and be the one to challenge the SEC, guess what, they haven’t! Texas is good, but no one really knows how good, because everyone else in the conference has just been BLAH so far. If OK State can hang with UT tomorrow we can add them into the group, but right now it is completely just a one team conference.
Big East- Cincinnati, West Virginia and Pitt are carrying the torch this year for the Big East, but after those three there is nobody. USF did its annual rise to the rankings before getting pasted by Cincy and Pitt (WVU tonight). Rutgers was a huge disappointment as well.
Big Ten- Iowa? Really you are going to give me Iowa? With all the hype behind Terrelle Pryor and Ohio State or Rich Rod at Michigan or Penn State when the season starter how is it that Iowa is the face of the Big Ten this year? And after Iowa (which looks as vulnerable as any top 5 team in history) you have a very good Penn State defense (not sure about that Spread HD this year, looks like low definition so far), a very inconsistent Ohio State offense and a RichRod led Michigan team that doesn’t know what they want their identity to be.
PAC-10- I’m going to actually utter the words, The Pac-10 is the second best conference in college football this season. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that, and that it is actually true. You can’t argue the depth though. USC, Oregon, Arizona, Stanford, Washington, Cal and Oregon State can all play with just about anyone on any given day.
SEC- Yes, we all know the SEC is the best conference in college football. I’m glad to see that the folks at Sports Illustrated are finally catching on too. But to be honest, the powers in the SEC aren’t looking so powerful. Florida is 5-0 in conference play, but four of those games have been decided by 10 points or less, compare that to the fact that their closest win in conference play last year was a 30-6 win at Tennessee. Alabama is solid too, but their offense is full of question marks. They have not scored a passing TD in their last 3 games and have struggled to beat average Tennessee and South Carolina teams. After those two, I think LSU, Georgia, Arkansas and Mississippi can be good, they just haven’t been consistent enough or showed me enough to prove it.

IT’S BACK
Every year around Labor Day I get duped into believing that my favorite sport is college football. I enjoy college football as much as just about anything, except college basketball. I attended the Pitt Blue-Gold scrimmage on Tuesday and now I can’t wait for the rest of the games to get here. Sunday is their first exhibition game vs Slippery Rock. What a great way to spend a non-Steeler Sunday. Heck, in my opinion that would be a great way to spend a Steeler Sunday too. I can’t wait for all of the preseason tournaments to kickoff and all the big-time non-conference match-ups. Heck, I won’t even mind hearing Dickie V yell some incomprehensible non-sense about how AWESOME everything is for the first few times. Because for once he is right, college hoops is AWESOME BABY with a capital “A”!