Draft Recap

-I watched way too much of the draft.

-Why do people who are there boo the entire 3rd and 4th rounds? Just because they are idiots and don't know the names of the people getting picked doesn't mean they are bad picks. Most of them are pretty good. Can we get intelligent fans to attend the draft for a change? What would that take?

-The draft nowadays is visually tiring. How many tickers and comments and videos does one need? You used to be able to watch the draft in fast forward and catch all the information you needed. Now, watching in fast forward will make you dizzy, give you seizures, and scramble your brain. It's too much information to take in at once. Believe me, I tried.

-I was glad to see that the shorter time period didn't inhibit trading and still made for an 'exciting' draft. I didn't think it would, but overall, I was pleased with the new 10 minute format for the 1st round.

-Overall, I think most people did well. Detroit still screwed up their first round pick, so did Baltimore. It's hard to screw up the 1st and 2nd round too bad, the real differential comes in the 3rd - 5th rounds, that's where you get your role players that make a difference down the road and it way too early to tell how teams did there.

Draft diary

Jon Stewart to the Panthers at 13?  Who's running that team?  They have far bigger needs.

Jared Mayo becomes the first player selected that wasn't even in my 1st round mock draft.  Surprised it took that long.  Bill knows what he's doing, I trust him.

Detroit is on the clock.  Now there's a team I could run.  I took turn them around.  Just need a QB to throw to all those receivers.

Draft diary pt 2

Does anyone go back and check to see how Kipers assessments pan out?  For example, he just criticized Jacksonville for moving up that high to get Derrick Harvey.  He thinks its a giant reach.  If he were so good at assessing talent, wouldn't he have been hired by a team by now?  They weren't that far from the Super Bowl last season so they obviously have some idea what they are doing.  I wish we could grade him instead of just being submitted to his grade.

Draft diary pt 1

I'm 4 for 4 so far on my mock draft.  That'll never happen again.

What is Michael Irvin wearing? Plaid pocka dots, AND stripes.  And his hankerchief doesn't match anything he's wearing. 

Quote from the wife referring to Mel Kiper:  "His hair is deeply distrurbing to me"

Darren McFadden has family members in gangs and a mom who is a recovering crack addict?  Him getting rich isn't going to help that situation.  I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just saying, I'm putting the over-under on his arrest at 2 years.

Mock Draft

Everyone else gets to have a mock draft, so I get to have one too, right? In the age of the Internet, everyone gets to make their opinion known.

1. MIA - Jake Long - Michigan
The draft is just no fun if we know the first draft pick on Tuesday.

2. STL - Chris Long - UVA
This will go down as the draft of the offensive linemen. In other words, no one will remember it in 10 years.

3. ATL - Matt Ryan - BC
Putting the final coffin in the Mike Vick 'experiment'

4. OAK - Darren McFadden - ARK
Could be an interesting young team next year with Russell and McFadden

5. KC - Glenn Dorsey - LSU
They will be thrilled if he falls this far.

6. NYJ - Vernon Gholston - OSU
Can play and contribute immediately

7. NE - Keith Rivers - USC
A big help to this aging LB core. Wouldn't be surprised to see them trade down and take someone else with this pick though.

8. BAL - Ryan Clady - Boise State
This year, picking o-linemen will be stylish. It's the new black.

9. CIN - Sedrick Ellis - USC
Quietly almost as good as Dorsey

10. NO - Leodis McKelvin - Troy
Could pick Mike Jenkins here, I think McKelvin is the better player long term and fits better on this team.

11. BUF - Devin Thomas - MSU
12. DEN - Derrick Harvey - FLA
13. CAR - Brandon Albert - UVA
14. CHI - Rasheed Mendenhall - ILL
15. DET - Felix Jones - ARK - Overrated, typical DET pick
16. ARI - Mike Jenkins - SFU - Could spurn run on CBs
17. KC - Jeff Otah - PITT - need to address both lines with draft
18. HOU - Dominque Rodgers - TENN ST
19. PHL - Chris Williams - VAND
20. TAM - Philip Merling - CLEM
21. WAS - Malcolm Kelly - OK -
22. DAL - Jon Stewart - ORE - will get lucky to get him here
23. PIT - Gosder Cherilus - BC
24. TENN - Limas Sweed - TX - the perfect compliment for Young, already familiar
25. SEA - Dustin Keller - PUR
26. JAC - Kentwan Balmer - UNC
27. SD - Aquib Talib - KAN
28. DAL - Antoine Cason - ARI - Typical pick that Jerry Jones trades away
29. SFO - Brandon Flowers - VT
30. GB - Kenny Philips - MIA
31. Pick removed from NE - They should make them sit there in silence, while Mel Kiper and Berman repeat, "I hope they learned their lesson".
31. NYG - DeSean Jackson - CAL

Day 1

Well, Day 1 was pretty lackluster. For the most part, no upsets. Sure,a 9 beat an 8 and Kansas St upset USC, but neither of those games surprised anyone. We all knew Beasley was a great player and had the possibility to carry that team a round or two. The biggest upset that could have happened didn't. From what I saw of Belmont v Duke, the refs bailed out the Dukies again.
In fact, the average margin of victory yesterday 16 points. If that wasn't scary enough, here is what freaks me out:

The first 3 games of the tournament, the losing team scored 61 points.
Four teams scored 71 points to win.
Two teams (Winthrop and Miss Valley State) scored so little, that their combined points (69) wouldn't have been enough to win all by 2 games. I never remember two teams scoring that low on Day 1.

So much for parity in college basketball, this year, the gap between the haves and have nots looks larger than its been the last 10 years.

The Hope of Neutral Refs

I know that officiating has been down across the board this year, but one of the main reasons I'm happy the post season is here is the chance to play a few games with non-biased refs. Here in ACC Country, we all dread playing Duke or North Carolina because we know you can't be aggressive at all and you can't defend in the paint. However, they are allowed to tackle your players and then the announcers praise them for their toughness and not draw the foul. You think UNC shot 108 more free throws than their ACC opponents this year because they just got fouled that much? I don't think so.
I know Pac 10 fans are screaming for the heads of several of their officials. From what I'm reading, UCLA won about 4 extra games because of officiating bias towards them.
I look forward to the mixing and matching of the best officials out there and the bias isn't as strong toward the powerhouse teams from a conference.

The story that never leaks

Ah, March Madness is back. The time of year when pens are once again relegated to second class material and good, old fashioned pencils (and most importantly, erasers) get brought out of the closet to help fill out those NCAA brackets.

One of the interesting things to me that just dawned on me this year, the selection committee has no leaks. It seems like almost everything these days gets leaked to the media before it actually happens. We've known the #1 draft pick the last 10 years or so, I almost always know which bowl game my Alma mater is playing in prior to the announcement, all trades get leaked and circle the Internet a dozen times, and so on and so forth. But no one ever knows those bubble teams. No one even posts the #1 seeds on the Internet at 2:30. It's all speculation right up until 6 pm.

It pretty amazing they've been able to keep everything that quiet for this many years. You'd think that surely someone is texting their best bud who's a alum that they are in or out. They won't let anyone near this selection committee and when questioned, they never mention any names of any schools about who the last team in or out was and why. You know what that means, Congress will launch a full scale investigation on that soon. Let's see, Virginia Tech was left out, so was Arizona State, Illinois State? What about that four bubble teams that got in all had a Wildcat as a mascot (Arizona, Kentucky, Villanova and Kansas State), sounds like conspiracy to me. That's several eligible senators right there to lead the charge against the NCAA. We have Congress investigating the MLB and NFL, the NCAA seems like a likely next target. I'm sure in a couple months, they'll be investigating the shady move of the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City. It's not like our country has any real problems for them to solve, they might as well spend 100% of their time tearing down the establishment of American sport. It's obvious that it has done well on its own and needs governmental intervention to lead to its downfall, that may not occur if left to govern itself. They've done well at deconstructing the American government so that it operates nothing like it was designed to, we are stuck in a war we can not win nor get out of easily, we have a huge debt problem, immigration is a mess, obviously, these are not the people the commissioners of these leagues want investigating their sports. If they can't run a country, why stretch themselves further and try to investigate and poke into privately owned and operated sports leagues and screw those up too?

Anyway, I completely digressed there, all that to say, I think it makes it all the more special and unique that the seeds don't get leaked to the media beforehand. Maybe some of the other sports could get a clue and tighten down their security or the media could respect the information is does get and not publish it until due time. I don't see the media changing its evil ways though, better work on battening down the hatches at league headquarters.

Possible Four Team Playoff in College

Cross-posted from The Roundtable

Incoming BCS Chairman and ACC Commissioner, John Swafford, is mentioning that four of the major BCS conferences are now open to just that - a four team college football playoff, according to ESPN.com.

Each commissioner also stated that the SEC, ACC, Big East and Big 12 are open to discussing the "plus-one" format. The Big Ten and Pac-10 have been opposed to it.

Swofford, who is the incoming BCS chair, said the nature of the 2007 season and its weekly upheaval has motivated his presidents and athletic directors to reconsider a plus-one model.

"A lot of people look at it and say ... maybe it would be better if more than two teams had the opportunity to play for the national championship," Swofford said.

"There's a comfort level with what we're doing today," Swofford added. "In our conference, there's much more open-mindedness about the plus-one than there was two years ago. There's an interest in it ... and a willingness to discuss it in full."

However, change will not happen for at least a couple years:

[Outgoing BCS Chair Mike] Slive acknowledged "logistics" and multiple television agreements will take efforts to work through for the possible format to become a reality. Two years remain in the current BCS contract with Fox Sports.

No changes are expected before the 2010 season.

NFL Playoffs

Every year, I try to predict the winner of every NFL Playoff game. I've been close (missed by 1 game in 2002, and 2 games in 04). Maybe this will be my year.

Wild Card Round
Seattle over Washington
Jacksonville over Pittsburgh
NY Giants over Tampa Bay
San Diego over Tennessee

Divisional Round
New England over Jacksonville (although, the Jags scare me more than any other team as a Pats fan)
Indianapolis over San Diego (another game that could go either way, SD may want it more too)
Green Bay over NJ Giants
Dallas over Seattle

Championship Round
New England over Indianapolis
Green Bay over Dallas

Super Bowl
New England over Green Bay