And the Winner is – The Week That Was

And the winner is the College Football Playoff Committee.   Not really.  I am pretty sure that they are ruining college football.   The Saints got blown out by the Cowboys.  What?  It was only Cowboys 13 Saints 10?  The way the talking heads were speaking of the game the Cowboys totally destroyed the Saints.   All of football was crazy time this week.  In College and in the NFL.   Hockey What a week.   Not really.  College Basketball is getting into some interesting games and the NBA is getting into its groove.  All this and more in the Week That Was.

College Football The Final Four

The College Football playoff was decided this week.  The Committee did as expected after what happened in Championship Weekend.   All of the Bowl games were decided as well.  Not sure the Bowls mean what they used to mean.   That could be a good or a bad thing.  As long as the games keep making money it really does not matter.  It is still a reward for having a season.

With it being championship week we know this is the week that ends with who is going to be in the playoff.  Whether you agree with the direction the committee went or not.  It really does not matter.  Since is is a subjective ranking we get a subjective result.  After the early game was over in the Big 12 we already knew that it did not matter what happened in the Big Ten game.   Oklahoma was going to be in and Ohio State was going to be out.  And what do you know that is exactly what happened.

We do not know and will never know what the criteria is that the committee used.  They came to their result and that is what we have.  The Bowl games are all out there as well.   There are some alright matches.  There are some not so good ones.   I have not checked what the ratings have been for the bowl games.  They must be alright or they would not keep adding more games.   I am ok with how ever many they add.  Funny how they can add more and more bowl games but they can’t figure out how to get more then four teams in the playoff.  LOL

 

The NFL A loss breaks a back

The NFL gets more and more exciting ever week.  In a league where every week truly counts.  You never know what is going to happen.  Most years even the worst team can come up and beat the best team in any given week.  It just happens.  You are dealing with amazing athletes.  Every game comes down to a few plays.  LOL  Not always but bad teams can get lucky and win.  With the Packers and the Cardinals you had to bad teams that bit each other.  The Packers managed to take what started out as a promising season and turn it into what may end up a bottom ten team.  Then this week they lost to a two in team in Arizona.   The Packers were so bad that they got their coach Mike McCarthy fired.   He should have probably been fired a few years ago.  Not all of this has been McCarthys fault.  The Packers let Ted Thompson stay too long and his last few drafts were a mess.   Sometimes it happens   It will be interesting to see where things go for the Packers from here.

Football Gods Punishing the Mid West

In what was quite a weekend for the mid west and in Big Ten country.  Not only did Ohio State get kept out of the college football playoff.  The Lions, Bears, Vikings, Packers, Bengals, Browns, Colts, and Steelers all lost.  If you include Philadelphia and Washington as teams being in Big Ten country now you will get one more loss and finally one win.  But only because they played each other on Monday Night.   Thing about the odds of that happening on the weekend that the Big Ten is kept out of the playoff.  Those are some crazy odds there.  If you were a betting person and could have picked the one team that would have won you would have cleaned up.

Four Games to go

We are now three quarters of the way though the NFL season.    At the three quarter mark.  One team has clinched a playoff spot.  That is the Los Angeles Rams.   With the Huge loss by the Saints (3 points)  the Rams are now in prime position for home field in the NFC through the playoffs.  No team in the AFC has clinched yet.  It does look like the AFC West is going to get two teams in.   The Chiefs and Chargers are looking pretty good.   It will be interesting to see what happens with the Chiefs after the crazy week that they had.  The Patriots and Texans are also looking good for the playoffs.  As in any year the Patriots will be the team to beat.  Regardless how good the rest of the teams are.

The NFL Still has not Learned

With what happend in Kansas City this week.  You have to wonder what the NFL is really thinking about.  Oh I know what it is.  Money and doing anything to keep that money rolling in.  To keep the money rolling in you have to have the best talent on the field.  So when Kareem Hunt got in trouble back in February.  The NFL and the Chiefs did the absolute minimum to look into it.  They found barriers with the basic investigating they did.  Then they said looks like no one will find this so they let it drop.  TMZ, love them or hate them, kept digging.

They were able to buy the video of the incident and then released it.  This is not a moral question about buying video.  It is a question of finding the truth and then sticking to what you say.  The NFL and the Chiefs failed completely here.  I don’t understand how players let themselves get in these situations.  It makes no sense to me.  I suppose some of it is because they are young and feel invincible.   Their careers are short.  Why wouldn’t you watch out for trouble and steer clear of it.  Guess I can’t really answer that question.  The NFL and the teams have to do better though.  If there is smoke when a problem comes up.  More than likely there is fire.

 

NBA Toronto – Warriors

And the Winner is the Toronto Raptors.  The Raptors look like they are for real.   The Raptors are four games up in the East.  It is still really early and we are only 24 games into the season.  Just past the quarter mark it looks like the Raptors made all the right moves this off season.  The big one was the trade for Kawhi Leonard.  There was no way to know for sure how that was going to turn out after he missed the season last year.   He has come back to the player he was two years ago.  Probably better.

Hopefully he can stay healthy and drive this team deep into the playoffs.  He can get this team to the finals.  At least to the Eastern Conference Finals.    The win this week against the Warriors was pretty impressive.  Even with the Warriors missing Curry and Green.  They are still a really good team.  It is also still early in the regular season.  So how much do the Warriors really care about this game.  This is a team that is all about the playoffs.   They had the one season where they went for the win record and then realized that records like that really don’t matter.  It is all about the championships.

NHL Who is on top and does it matter yet

The NHL is approaching the half way point of the season.  The Buffalo Sabers have slowed down a bit.  Last week we were talking about their amazing turn around from last year.  While they are still one of the top teams in the East.  They are on a three game losing streak.  In this case the winner is — Seattle.  Seattle will have the 32nd team in the NHL and be playing in the Pacific division.  After adding the Knights last year to go to 31 teams.  The NHL really needed to add one more to have an even number again.  This is a huge win for the the Pacific North west town after they had lost the Super Sonics a decade ago.  The New Seattle team has not announced its name yet and will start play of the 21-22 season.  That is about as much excitement you can generate in the NHL at this point in the season

Entertainment I mean TV

The winner here is all of the Holiday Baking shows.   Not sure how I got hooked on these but they are very interesting a fun to watch.  The participants are usually pretty interesting and come up with quite an array of unique ways to finish the tasks.  If you are not watching these I would highly recommend them.  The one that we are excited about is the Great American Baking Show.  Most of the ones we watch are on the Food Network.  They are mostly mindless fun to watch.

It is a good thing that these are filling in now that most of the fall shows are in a winter break now.