Thursday, August 28, 2008

Thursday 08/28 A.M. Quickie:
CFB 08, MLB Replay, NFL Preseason, More

Vacation continues, and I'm warily eyeing Hurricane Gustav... meanwhile, not even the threat of another hurricane can stop my enthusiasm for college football kicking off tonight.

My SN column today leads with a summary of my "BCS Mess" theory for this year, along with my annual argument that college football's regular season is unmatched in sports.

Meanwhile, I think the Yankees are finished -- you might say that's premature to say before we even get to September; if we learned anything last September, it's that 7-game playoff leads aren't safe. But this ain't the Mets or the NL West -- it's the Red Sox and they're 7 games up on the Yankees...and that's just for the Wild Card.

NFL: Happy to see Derrick Harvey sign with the Jags (finally), but here is a scenario where both sides came out as huge losers -- Harvey for holding out (only to finally get some contract bonus clauses) and the Jaguars for trading up only to not want to pay for it.

Wait: Shawne Merriman is going to play? I appreciate his tough-guy mentality, but his leg is going to snap off, right there on live TV.

Percy Harvin out for Florida's season opener: I kind of saw this coming, but as I'll be sweltering in 100 degree swamp-ass on Saturday at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, I would have liked to see him -- but not at the expense of aggravating his problem heel. He can save it for the SEC season, as far as I'm concerned. It does basically spike his Heisman hopes, though.

(Tonight's CFB openers: Spurrier is always fun to watch, but I'll be tracking the performance of Central Michigan QB Dan LeFevour, who should be a "20/20" player this season. Oh, and I'll be doing my weekly Top 25 picks, and I'm taking Wake to win tonight, with complete Top 25 picks coming tomorrow. Don't forget to sign up for the CFB and NFL Pick 'Em groups -- group name: Daily Quickie Readers.)

Does anyone care about Oscar De La Hoya anymore? I suppose he drives PPV sales, but boxing feels so...anachronistic.

Michael Phelps to host SNL: Do they know that the guy, while incredibly nice-seeming, isn't exactly a dynamic personality?

Jay Mariotti, Cont'd: Per Deadspin, it looks like he left in a huff over a column snafu, which makes his "newspaper is dead anyway" seem even more petty.

(God, there was a time in my life back in college when all I wanted to be was a lead sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times -- no joke. And that was before it came with TV benefits.)

Full SN column here with a ton more in it. (I'm posting to the main archive link; the column isn't up as of 8 a.m., but I'm offline for a bit. Will update with a direct link later.)

-- D.S.

2 comments:

DougOLis said...

Are you saying that because the Red Sox are the Red Sox
they are innately better than the Mets and NL West teams and not subject to the same concept of collapse/choking?

Remember that until recently that is exactly what would be expected of them.

Ben Rice said...

re. newspaper is dead

I wrote a paper my freshman year at Medill (about 3 years before Mozilla launched, mind you) about the advent of news on the Internet and other technical advances such as electronic paper and such. Got a C- on that paper largely due to the prof's assertion that "No one will ever want to read news on a computer screen over reading it on paper."