Get On With It

It's the middle of September and I've not posted for two months, despite all my favourite games starting. OK, I went on holiday for a couple of weeks but this is pathetic.

So let's jump in straight away with some headlines.

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Angels for winning the American League West. I've made a stunning 16p profit on that for a £2 bet on B*tfair. Well done me.

Not doing so well is my pick for the National League West, the Arizona Diamondbacks who are now 4.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, I had bets on the two Chicago clubs, who are both leading their respective divisions although the Cubs eight game lead over the Brewers is a little more comfortable than the slim lead the White Sox have over the Twins.

All the football seasons are now underway and I shall be nipping down to Ashton Gate in about an hour's time for the game against Birmingham City. We're fifth, they're second, we've not lost at home and they've not won away...so it's a big game. Don't want to make any predictions, so I won't. Well, maybe a little one. It won't finish scoreless. I could lay that outcome on B*tfair, but knowing my luck...

College Football has been running since the end of August and thanks to B*tfair I can download my results in a handy spreadsheet format to see exactly how crap I am at predicting winners.

Starting with Week 1, Clemson to beat Alabama, Michigan to beat Utah, Pittsburgh to beat Bowling Green, Virginia Tech to beat...ah well, you get the picture and I'm sure you're tired of bad beat stories already but there's only one that can really be put down to overwhelming stupidity. In an incident comparable to backing Florida State to win the ACC last season, I pressed the wrong button and backed UTEP to beat Texas a couple of weeks ago. I'm trying to think of a suitable Association Football parallel but the only thing I can come up with is something like Chelsea playing Luton, Chelsea being given a two goal start and me still backing Luton to win. Hey, did anyone notice that Luton fails the blogger.com spellchecker?

Professional Football is approaching Week 3 and the main regular season story is that Tom Brady is out for the season*. This does not mean the Patriots have suddenly become fallible: far from it. There are ten 2-0 teams right now and they're amongst them.

The others are Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Denver, the Giants, Dallas, Green Bay, Carolina and Arizona. Including the Patriots, six of those teams made the playoffs last season - Buffalo, Denver, Carolina and Arizona didn't.

Thanks to the research by the good people at Football Outsiders (in particular the win expectancy charts published in Football Prospectus 2008), these ten teams currently have a 65.2% chance of making the playoffs, which can reach 79.5% if any of them win on Sunday. I'm pushed for time now, but as part of my selection process for my Sunday picks I'll be thinking out loud later in the week on the games the teams above are involved in.

But right now, I'm off to be a fan.

* As opposed to the main pre-season story, which was the Brett Favre saga.

This Year's Model

Barry Bonds has exactly the same birthday as me and my team was known as the Bristol Bondsmen for several years until he was shown the door by the San Francisco Giants at the end of last season...I won't go into too many details, but at one point I was going to call the team the Balco Bondsmen.

So it only seems fitting that my fantasy baseball team is renamed and after...well, minutes of deliberation...I give you The Arlen Spectres.

That's the infield done.

But lo - it's actually a triple entendre! A 6-4-3 if you will. So if Boomhauer, Hank, Dale and Bill are the players, here's the manager...

OK, a quick bit of background: Senator Arlen Spector (R, Pennsylvania) has been the most vocal critic of the Spygate Scandal that ran during the American football season. I'm not going to elaborate on Spygate because I already made my feelings known (scroll down to 'Beating Charstards') and the football gods got their revenge by letting the Giants win the Superbowl.

Of course, every sporting franchise needs some kind of evil GM (an Al Davros/Ge*rge Stoneburner type) and here's the third layer of...irony...nah...errr...'entendre'...oh I don't know...but here he is, the head of SPECTOR, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

So there we go...my team has cartoon players, a republican senator as manager and a Bond supervillain as GM. I'm very happy with that as I try not to take this stuff seriously but this year I am a defending champion rather than trying not to finish last. Let's take a look at the pitchers who are going to help me defend my title - outfielders to follow.

Pitchers

I didn't plan my draft with as much precision as I did last season, so if anything I'm a little short on pitchers. Three starters, three closers so at least it's symmetrical.

2007 Line:

Collectively they worked under 1400 innings (good) for 61 wins, 115 saves, 800 strikeouts with a combined ERA of 3.45 and a combined WHIP of 1.21. I must admit, that looks a little short on wins right now. As for projected numbers, Baseball Prospectus sees a drop of across the board so I think I probably need another starter at some point. When we get to outfielders you'll be able to see that I've plenty of trade bait.

Starters:

CC Sabathia (Indians) - back for another year of 200+ innings!

Cole Hamels (Phillies)

Danny Haren (Diamondbacks)

Closers:

Francisco Rodriguez (Angels) - did OK with the Angels I had last year (Guerrero, Escobar, Lackey, Kendrick and Cabrera), probably a good idea there isn't a post season in my league.

Mariano Rivera (Yankees, below) - cartoon character players, republican manager, evil GM and a Yankees closer!

Joe Borowski (Indians) - here's the risky one. Loads of saves, but dreadful ERA - he was actually on my Anti Watch list last season. Looking forward to seeing some Tribe games where CC starts and Joe finishes.

More later, thank you for reading...

Elitism

I'm not going to bother with the bottom two divisions in the Football League this season as I no longer have any interest in them. I hope I don't look back on this in a years' time and regret writing this. Early indications show that I might not, but 'football...bloody hell!' to quote Alex Ferguson...which brings me nicely on to...

Division 1 Game Of The Week: Everton v Man Utd

United basically won the championship last season with their come from behind win at Goodison Park. Although it's a bit early in the proceedings for this game to have that kind of impact it's still a must win for United and a must win for Everton if they're going to be taken seriously. ESPN Soccernet is reporting that Wayne Rooney will be in the ManYoo squad although whether he's there to play or to wind up Everton fans is another matter.

Division 2 Game Of The Week: Coventry City v Bristol City

And deservedly so. First v Third; we knocked Cov out of the FA Cup last season and they won't have liked that.

Division 1 One Sided Nonsense: Derby v Newcastle

Anti-game of the week because Derby are probably this year's Watford and Michael Owen is on a hot streak after scoring a brace against the Soviet Union on Wednesday. Not surprisingly, Newcastle are favourites.

Division 2 One Sided Nonsense: Leicester v QPR

But only because there are four points between them...which isn't saying much.

Division 2 Down Upside Is League Football The: Preston v Sheffield Wednesday

Both these clubs were either in or hovering around the playoffs last season and now they are the bottom two. You wouldn't expect this to last, but you never know. The Wendies looked poor when we beat them a couple of weeks ago.

So what, who cares:

Orient are top of Division 3. Some team called Nottingham Forest are currently 20th, which is worse than Bristol Rovers (who lost 3-0 at home to Leeds last night). Colin 'Fcuk Off' Calderwood is still Forest manager, but for how much longer?

If anyone cares (and I don't anymore) Darlington and Chesterfield are top of Division 4.

Futbol Americano

This season I'm just going to concentrate on the teams who I've backed in the NFL and the BCS and so far - after one game - things are decidedly mixed.

The Packers, Steelers, 49ers and Broncos all won in Week 1 and all have a reasonable chance of doing the same thing this weekend. If the Packers beat the Bears, the NFC Central becomes extremely interesting as there will be two teams with 2-0 records: if they don't the winner of Minnesota v Detroit will lead the division. Despite Chicago reaching the Superbowl last season, this division is not a strong one - hence the bet on Green Bay.

The Raiders travel to Denver. Josh McCown is allegedly out for three weeks so I imagine Dante Culpepper will start, backed up by Andrew Walter and with newly signed JaMarcus Russell as the third option. Great. The Broncos by about a zillion.

Tampa, Jacksonville and Philadelphia all lost. The Buccs have a tough game against the Saints, the loser will be 0-2 and it'll be time for all those statistical cliches to appear on Tuesday. The Jaguars should beat Atlanta and I expect Philly to beat a Redskins team that only won in overtime last weekend.

There are a couple of other games worth keeping an eye on. The Cheating Yankee Bastards have San Diego at home but arguably the most intriguing game of the week is the Jets travelling to Baltimore. The loser drops to 0-2 and although Jets QB Chad Pennington will not be playing, there are all sorts of wild rumours that Ravens LB Ray Lewis may be out for the season. I'm conflicted by this. I have the Ravens D in my fantasy league (I also drafted the Packers D for 'insurance purposes') and hopefully Baltimore will play well - but not well enough - to stop the Steelers from winning the division and therefore preventing me from collecting my bet.

The Cheating Yankee Bastards got their reward (sorry, punishment) yesterday and now - not surprisingly - their Superbowl wins are under scrutiny.

In a parallel sporting universe, another cheating case came to something of a conclusion this week. This will probably be the first and only time that Formula One makes it into this blog but the McLaren team and the CYBs were both caught doing something they shouldn't in order to increase their 'competitive edge'. This is what can happen when you don't play nice.





Arguably the simplest way to increase your competitive edge is to win a game. So it's rather bemusing to report that Michigan plays Notre Dame later in a game that one of them has to win. Both teams are 0-2 and although I saw the Michigan/Oregon game last week I've not seen ND yet...but both teams may be really awful.

LSU welcomes Middle Tennessee. This could get ugly early but although they lost the Blue Raiders put 42 points on Louisville last week. LSU will still win and there will be a lot of points.

FSU is in Boulder, CO for a game at...well, Colorado. Both teams are 1-1 and this is Colorado's home opener.

I'm going to a wedding party tonight so the next post may well be on Monday. I've got a day off and I'm going to fritter it away ;-)

Oh yeah, England Egg Chasers were shut out to the tune of 33 points by Sarth Effrika in the Ruggery World Cup on Friday. I can gloat at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wales get stuffed by a similar score by Oz today.

Beating Charstards

It's all very well having multiple divisional championships, conference championships and Superbowl wins, but the N*w Engl*nd P*triots are also (allegedly...so far) a bunch of cheats.

They were caught stealing Jets defensive signals last weekend and according to this slightly tongue in cheek article, this isn't the first time this has happened. The Football Outsiders thread on this issue is worth reading too.

My take on this: anything that can help the rest of the league stop them is a good thing. I've never liked them and I don't intend changing that now. Here's the main reason I don't like them:

And here's a reason to rejoice:

To close the matter for the moment, this is what class looks and sounds like, Patriots fans. I was lucky enough to see Walter Payton play in person, at the inaugural American Bowl in London about six months after this interview.



Finally, a story that seemed bleak at the start of the week has now improved somewhat. Good luck to Kevin Everett.

I'll attempt some sort of round ball football update tomorrow as I've got a half day off.