Just sitting here contemplating the first full weekend of the winter’s sports calendar. Now that college hoops are back, you’ve got a full palette of football, basketball and hockey to color your waking hours (especially here on the West Coast – I still can’t get used to 9:00 a.m kickoffs on Saturday). So I watched the spectrum over weekend, and came up with the following observations. Remember, before the hate tweets, these are solely slightly formed opinions; use at your own discretion.
So now that you’ve been warned . . .
1) There is no “D” in Dallas.
The NBC brass thought they had a good one for Sunday Night Football; SNF took a week off from covering the Denver Broncos (spoiler alert – you’ll see them the next two weeks on SNF) to show what Al and Cris thought would be a competitive game between the Saints and the Cowboys.
One small issue – the (lack of) defense in Big D.
625 yards by Drew Brees and the New Orleans offense showed the tarnish on the Cowboy star. This onslaught, coming after the 600+ yards the Lions put up two weeks ago, proves that the Dallas defense needs an upheaval in the quickest way possible. If I were a Cowboy fan, I’d be crying, too, over effectively losing your linebacking corps and the terror that is DeMarcus Ware, but they’ve still got a shot to win the NFC East – if they can stop anyone. Time for defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin to become the mastermind he’s supposed to be and put patches where they belong. Dallas has a week off to regroup, but if I’m Jerry Jones and Jason Garrett I’m looking at the waiver wire and unsigned free agents just trying to get warm bodies out there. The Saints are really good, but tonight the nation got a good look at the Cowboy defense – and they were unprecedented awful. With the Giants alive again after three straight wins (well, kind of at 3-6) and the Philadelphia Eagle track squad putting a hurt on the Packers in Green Bay today, Dallas needs to find the D again, or Jerry Jones is taking the post-season off . . . again.
2) Ohio State is going to go 12-0 for the second straight year and have no chance to win the national championship.
Woe reigns in Buckeye land, and really for no reason. Ohio State is the class of the Big Ten, and should run the table the rest of the way (Illinois, Indiana and Michigan aren’t going to stop them). The Buckeyes have not lost a game since 2011, and Urban Meyer is not just an urban legend in Columbus – this is a program set to rule the conference for years to come. So what’s keeping them out of the BCS title game in Pasadena in January?
Southern football, or the perception of it, anyway.
Look, full disclosure – I’m a Big Ten guy. The conference has some really bad teams (hello, Purdue and Illinois, and Indiana’s defense is in a class of bad on its own). But the omnipotence the national media bestowed on Alabama and, in the last two weeks, Jameis Winston and Florida State, belittles what Ohio State has done on the field. Jim Tressel kept them out of the picture last year, due to years-old NCAA violations, but this year there is no excuse. I simply do not think that Florida State is as good as the Buckeyes, and I would love to Ohio State play the Crimson Tide to settle the issue once and for all. Braxton Miller is a multi-threat quarterback, and the Ohio State defense is very good. Given the national love affair with the SEC and the freshman sensation/Heisman probable Winston, however, it appears the Buckeyes are on the outside looking in again, unless either Alabama or Florida State stumbles. What does Meyer have to do – lose a game to get into the national championship? Seems like a perfect waste of 24 wins.
Oh, for 2014 and the nirvana of the NCAA playoffs.
Ohio State will represent the Big Ten in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl this year . . . just not the week they wanted to do so.
3) There is no way to predict the NCAA men’s basketball champion at this point in the season.
College basketball opened this weekend, and with the notable exception of the Georgetown-Oregon game in Korea (very cool camo uniforms for both teams), the innocent victims began to be sacrificed at the altar of the big conference power schools. I don’t care if Kentucky thinks they win the darn thing in the offseason, there’s no way John Calipari’s rent-a-player system proves itself until March.
Meanwhile, the slaughters will pile up until conference play begins in January. Sometimes the little guys will surprise you (I’m sure Steve Alford didn’t expect Drexel to come 3,000 miles to give UCLA a fight before losing by three), but mainly it’s Indiana – Chicago State, Kentucky – Northern Kentucky, Ohio State – Morgan State, Washington – Seattle, Oregon State – Coppin State. Even mid-majors who are usually being fried are doing the frying – Georgia State beat a team called Southern Polytechnic State, which sounds like a team made up for a TV drama (CSI gave us Western Nevada as school in one episode last season, if memory serves). Essentially it’s a payday for the visitors with lovely parting gifts from the home school – just one that doesn’t tell us anything about the talent involved.
Please get me to January, when the games mean something.
4) Last, the best hockey in the NHL right now is being played on the West Coast.
I know most places love to talk about Chicago, Toronto, Detroit and the remainder of the Original Six. But with over one month into the season, I’d take Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver and Phoenix over the big boys back East.
I know, blasphemous to a pure Eastern or Midwestern hockey fan.
But just look at the numbers and the teams involved, purely from the Pacific Division. The Ducks have the most points in the league as of tonight; they’re now seven points ahead of the Tampa Bay Lightning, the East’s best, but only five points up on Phoenix in the Pacific. The Sharks, Canucks and Kings trail Phoenix – but Los Angeles, in fifth place, has the same number of points right now as the Metropolitan Division-leading Pittsburgh Penguins (where did the NHL come up with that division name? The only Metropolitans in the league should be in Seattle’s likely expansion team, echoing the 1917 PCHL and Stanley Cup Champions from the Emerald City). The fact is the West is deep, talented and better at this stage, and full of surprises – did anyone think that Patrick Roy would have Colorado ahead of the Blackhawks now? Or that Dallas and Winnipeg would have the only losing records of the seven teams in the Central Division? Me neither.
Guess we’ll get our suntans here in California on our way to a charmed NHL campaign.
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