Happy Holidays to All from the BLR

Happy New Year, everyone! Hopefully the college bowl season has treated your pick’em leagues well, because they surely were not kind to me. Plenty of upsets, plenty of drama.

The college football season is almost over, but the “granddaddy of them all” has yet to be played in the BCS National Championship between Alabama and Texas. Let’s not skip too far ahead, though.

Tonight we’ve got an intriguing BCS matchup between TCU and Boise State. This one might as well be called the leftovers bowl as no one wanted a piece of them in other possible bowl matchups. I feel bad for them, in a way, that these two “giant killers” ended up playing one another and didn’t get the chance to showcase what they have against a major football program. If you have to hire a PR firm, like Boise State did, that should tell you that a tougher regular season schedule is needed. One tough game a year won’t get you any sympathy votes to go the national championship.

This game should be fun to watch though. I’m wondering if Kellen Moore will be able to replicate his regular season efficiency against a fairly stout TCU defense. How the TCU defense plays against Moore in the first couple Boise State drives should go a long way in determining who has the better shot of winning this game.

Despite the letdown of not playing for all the marbles, I still expect these teams to give it all they’ve got to show America that one of them was deserving of something more.

Today is the last day of a decade.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard that phrase on the radio on my way to work this morning. But it’s true. And what a decade it has been. Now I have only had one other full decade to compare it to, and I only remember probably about a quarter of it, but this decade sure has been memorable. From the tragedy of 9/11 to the hiring of an African American President, this decade has seen it all.

There have been some great sports moments as well. I think in the sports world, 2000-2009 might have been the decade of the press conference. Here are some of the best:

And thanks to the joys of technology, we have things like these that somehow make them even more amusing:

Now that I think about it, this decade is probably more like the decade of youtube, considering anything and everything is, has been, or will be on youtube at s0me point.

Well, we here at the BLR hope that all of you have a great and (more importantly) safe New Year’s Eve! We will see you guys next year!

The Mets have signed free agent Jason Bay to a four year $66 million contract.  They probably overpaid him by a lot but they were desperate to acquire a power bat for their lineup.

Citi Field, being as pitcher friendly as a park can get, should lower Bay’s home run numbers considerably.  ESPN had a projection for next season with him having only 10 home runs at Citi Field and 20 on the road.  Despite this, a lineup with Reyes, Wright, Beltran, and Bay appears quite formidable if you ask me.

As much as I hate the Mets, I have to admit that there is no possible way for them to play as poorly as they did last season.  They were plagued by injury all year (especially Jose Reyes, who haunts me to this day for having drafted him 2nd in my fantasy league) and were forced to play mediocre talent.  From all reports, everyone should be healthy to go for the ‘10 season and I expect a strong bounce-back from them.

A hole in the Mets team is still one of major concern.  After Johan Santana in the rotation, they’ve got nothing.  Unless they make a big splash in the trading market for a pitcher, I can’t see them challenging the Phillies for the division.

Remember Agatha Trunchbull from Matilda, the abusive teacher that would lock kids up in the torture contraption called “the Chokey”?  I still have nightmares about that woman, especially the scene where she makes that kid eat a whole chocolate cake.

The modern day Trunchbull has been found.

When we first heard of Red Raider’s coach Mike Leach’s obsession with Pirate paraphernalia it seemed wacky enough.  Everyone learned yesterday that this guy really does live by a pirate-like code when it was reported that he’s been abusing player Adam James.  What did he allegedly do to the kid?  Well, first off, James had received a concussion and was not able to practice.  Leach didn’t like hearing this very much and told trainers to lock him in “the darkest, tightest spot. It was in an electrical closet, again, with a guard posted outside.”

That’s beyond wrong.  I don’t see a possible way out for Leach in this situation besides getting his ass booted out the door.  This is a kind of thing that should not only get you fired, but put you in jail.  Call it whatever you want, but I’m calling it torture.  Leach should never be allowed to coach again, and who would want him anyway?  Yeah he might be a good coach, but would you really want your kid at a place where he might be tortured?

No one is off limits either.  After all, Adam James is the son of ESPN Analyst Craig James.  I bet ESPN is going to have a field day on this to get revenge for their colleague.  Schools wanting a piece of Leach will get slammed by ESPN for hiring a soulless person.

Hi there everyone. We at BLR.net hope you had a great Christmas and we hope that New Years is enjoyable as well.

Lots of exciting stuff happened this weekend, and unfortunately I have to choose one of them. While I was closer than I thought with my post a few weeks back about Urban Meyer’s “I’ve gotta get outta here!” mentality, I would rather focus today on the Colt’s squandering of a chance at history.

With a 5 point lead in the 3rd Quarter, Colts head coach Jim Caldwell decided it was time to sit what seemed like every key starter. Subsequently, both sides of the ball for the Colts laid the proverbial egg, and the Colts ended their bid for perfection.

I think Adam Shefter put it best on Mike and Mike this morning when he said that he felt “dirty” when he was watching this game. I tend to agree with him. That is a great word to describe what happened in that game. If a coach was, say, gambling on his team losing, wouldn’t taking out all your best players do the trick? The result was that Colts fans who spent their hard-earned money on tickets were cheated, plain and simple. Instead of seeing their team go out and try to win a game, they saw their team take the easy way out. Maybe the fans and players wouldn’t have been as upset if the Colts hadn’t done the same thing a couple years ago and ended up losing their first game of the playoffs. Just a thought.

What do you know, you’re just a mindless supporter of our team. WE know what’s best for our franchise.

Another group of people who are upset with this move live far away from Indianapolis. Take the Texans for example. They had to take 2 losses to Indy. Now how is it fair that they have to play Peyton Manning while the Jets have to play some guy named Painter and a bunch of second-stringers? It’s not, not at all. So now the Colts have gone from affecting their chemistry and fan support, and have stepped into the realm of the integrity of the game. I understand the threat of injury and so on, but that is a part of the game. That’s like saying we should stop driving 5 minutes from work and walk the rest of the way since driving is so dangerous. But we drove the first 45 minutes of the way, and everyone else is still driving. The Colts organization better hope this doesn’t end up costing them the Superbowl, or there will be Hell to pay.