College Football and NFL Football rule NBA Has a Problem. College football is rolling on. The NFL never slows down. It was another crazy week with some really unexpected results. Seems like you can always count on something major happening in the NFL. The same thing in College Football. These last few weeks of the regular season get down to some really good football games. I am still having issues finding the NHL games that NBC seems to want to hide. Not sure why they wanted the right when they do not seem like they want to show the games. NBA is trending toward a crisis. Players don’t seem to get that they are in the entertainment business and their pay is dependent on people watching the games. If they want to take nights off they should have to let people know. You don’t see that happening in other sports. Maybe a bit in Baseball but they play 162 games. NASCAR is finally down to its last week. Not sure how many people even know that it is still going on. All this and more in The Week That Was.
College Football Playoff for the Win
College football had a crazy weekend. There were amazing College Football games on all day on Saturday. At one point I was watching games on the TV my tablet and my phone at the same time. Even with all that I still had to flip channels. I almost had to look for another device to put a game on. Pretty amazing that all those good games were on at the same time. It does not get much better than that. With two of the top four going down there will be a huge shake up. It will be really interesting to see what the College Football Playoff committee does this week. I have said before about how I do not watch a lot of ESPN other than live sporting events. I did catch College Football Final with Matt Barrie, Joey Galloway and Jesse Palmer. It was not like back in the day when there was Mark May and Lou Holtz going at it but I have to say it was pretty good. Had a really nice rundown of the games and some good insight. Nice to see that ESPN has not screwed every thing up.
We are now down to five undefeated teams. LSU, Ohio State, Clemson, Minnesota, Baylor. There is no chance that all those teams can remain undefeated. Ohio State and Minnesota would have to play each other in the Big Ten Championship game. It is unlikely but there is a possibility that you have four undefeated teams to end the year. LSU, Clemson and Baylor can all win out. Then if you have an undefeated Big Ten Champion that would give the four. If that is the case I do not see the Committee being able to leave an undefeated power five champion out of the playoff. That would leave their sole job down to seeding the teams. If they did leave one of them out that would help to push toward an expansion of the playoff. Which I am all for. Lets go to eight. That sounds like a good number to me.
Five things of note in College Football
- The Playoff Committee will have a fun time this week. Alabama and Penn State both go down. Two of the top four teams from last weeks CFP rankings. It will be interesting to see what they do with that.
- Minnesota is a team of opportunity. Clearly Penn State had more talent but this past Saturday Minnesota was a better team. They played well and created opportunities and then took advantage of them. It was a good day for the Big Ten West
- NCAA Dropped the Ball on the Chase Young Loan issue. This is really something that they should not have punished Chase Young and Ohio State. Chances are high that few if any players knew this was against the “Rules” The money was paid back and it was so his girlfriend could go to the Rose Bowl last year to watch him play. I know right what a missive abuse of the system. NCAA – FAIL
- ACC Second best team lost. This sets up a similar scenario that the Big Ten has last year with Ohio State playing Northwestern last year for the Big Ten Championship game. If Clemson stumbles at all down the stretch the ACC could get left out. Especially if Oregon comes on strong in the PAC 12 and Baylor manages to stay undefeated.
- BiglakeSports top five college teams 1. LSU 2. Ohio State 3. Clemson 4. Alabama – The first three I stand by for sure. Alabama I am not sure about but it is more that they made a huge comeback against the number one team in the country. This game could have been a blow out and it ended up being a five point game. A lot would have to happen for Alabama to make the Playoff.
NFL The Second Half of the Season Kicks off with a Bang
The NFL as we say every week is on a huge roll. It really does not seem like they can do any wrong. Every week the refs are horrible. Replay is in shambles. Coaches make strange calls that even a football novice would not make and yet the game rolls on. Every single game is ratings gold. Even the Bengals. They may not fill their stadium but they still draw huge numbers on TV. There is still one team that has not had a win yet. No it is not the Dolphins. LOL. Amazingly the Dolphins have two wins now. The Bengals with out even making any effort to tank have taken their losing streak nine games into the season. I don’t think that anyone expected big things from the Bengals but no one expected them to be this bad. The Browns finally go another win. The Browns were the darling of the pre season with people saying they were going to make a playoff run. I was not sure about that but I did not expect them to be the usual hapless Browns. If is funny that the Baker Mayfield commercial where the Stadium is his house are more interesting than the offense the Browns are running. The Chiefs are looking very ordinary. Patrick Mahomes came back and played pretty well but they probably rushed him back by a week. The Packers recovered nicely after the Chargers housed them. Seattle ended the 49ers win streak and we no longer have any undefeated teams in the NFL. The Cowboys managed to take Dak’s best performance of the year and toss it on the trash heap with a loss to the Vikings.
Five biglakesports key NFL observations for the week
- Miami ruined the loser bowl that everyone was looking forward to. The Dolphins need to take a look at the Bengals playbook and figure it out. It will be difficult for the Dolphins to drop to the first pick in the draft now. Not sure it really matters. There are going to be at least five game changing players in the draft. The only way it will matter is if the Bengals want the player the Dolphins want. If it is that big a deal they have the draft capital to make a trade with the Bengals to get the player they want.
- The Steelers have somehow managed to climb back into the playoff picture. If the season ended today they would be the 6 seed in the playoffs. That would match them with Houston who they would have a chance to beat. This is all without the Killer B’s. No Ben no Brown no Bell. That is pretty impressive. They have the Browns twice the Bengals, Cardinals and Jets down the stretch. All of those could be games they could or should win. If they win all five of those that would give them ten wins this season. They are not going to catch the Ravens but that would probably give them the 5th seed. Pretty crazy to think they are in this situation after the way the season started.
- Jeff Bezos has said that he wants a team in the NFL. It would be smart of the NFL to do what ever it takes to make that happen. He basically has unlimited funds and would provide another avenue for watching games. Since Paul Allen died the Seahawks would make sense. Personally I would like to see them force Dan Snyder to sell the Redskins. That would be a great landing spot for Bezos. If they have to create another expansion team. I would be good with that as well. The owner would be crazy to not make this happen.
- Lamar Jackson is the real deal for the Ravens. He is putting up Madden like numbers. At this point there is no defense that has an answer for him. To every one that though he could not throw the ball – You were wrong. With the amazing ability has has to run the ball it opens things up for him to throw it. He has 15 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions. He has 702 yards rushing though 9 games. Still the only worry I have here is that he gets hurt. He is so much fun to watch the way he plays and sees the field. I hope he can keep it up and stay away from injury.
- Cam is done in Carolina. With Kyle Allen at quarterback the Panthers are putting together a pretty nice season. Allan has show that he has the potential to be a better than average quarterback in the league. With Christian McCaffrey you no longer need an all in one player like they had with Cam Newton in the past. Cam will be on a different team next year.
NBA Players need to Play
This has been something that has always annoyed me. If you are healthy and do not have a family emergency when it comes to game time then you have to play. Last week Kawhi Leonard of the Clippers took a game off against the Milwaukee Bucks. I get it 82 games is a long season. The game he took off was the front half of back to back games. They called it load management. I am sure that can be difficult. Playing back to back games can take its toll on a player. But there is a lot more to consider here. First the only reason this sport exists is because of the fans. They want to see their favorite players play. If a player is injured then fans understand it. In this case he just wanted to rest. That I do not think is acceptable. They already have days off built into the schedule. There are not as many back to back games as their used to be. Leonard makes over $390,000 a game. He has never played a fill 82 game schedule in his career. The closest he came was in the 2016-2017 season with San Antonio when he played 74 games. I don’t know the break down of how many of those games he was out due to an injury or how many he just needed some rest. In contrast LeBron James has played in over 74 games in 13 of his 16 seasons in the NBA. I don’t know for sure how the rest of the breakdown goes for NBA players. I am not saying this to pick on Kahhi Leonard I am just using him as an example. You are getting paid way to much money to take a day off just for the sake of taking a day off.
it is still less then ten games into the season but it is pretty interesting the way the first few weeks of the season have played out. A few strangely quiet good and bad things are happening at the same time. While Boston leads the east Toronto is very quietly in second place. This is pretty amazing considering the players they lost in the off season. Believe it of not but if the season ended today the Cavaliers would be the seven seed in the playoffs. That is almost as impressive as what Toronto is doing. Granted a team in the east with a losing record is probably going to make the playoffs but come on it still counts. On the bad side. The Knicks, Wizards, Pelicans Grizzlies and Warriors are BAD. There is hope for the Pelicans. When they get Zion back that will change. This will still be a major growing season for them. The other four. Who knows. I don’t think that the Warriors are going to recover this year. So much for announcing their presence with authority in their new stadium. Still a long way to go so who knows.
NASCAR the end is here
NASCAR had finally made it to the end of their season. The four drivers driving for the championship in Homestead are Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex, Jr. and Kyle Busch. So we will have a new champion this year. I am ok with any of these drivers winning other than Harvick. I am not sure how many people will even be watching this race. I am sure the number will not be that big. I still have a lot of trouble even finding what channel the races are on. I know I can search the guide but why bother when there is good football on.
NHL Identity Crisis
The NHL needs to find a way to make the games that happen before January exciting. The usual problem we talk about of course plays here. NFL and College football take all the viewers away from their games. Even then you just don’t get the feeling that these games really matter. This has been happening for a while now. Probably ever since ESPN decided not to bid on the NHL rights and the games ended up on NBC. The NHL is still trying to recover from the Strike year. At no point in the past can I remember a lock out or a strike hurting a league so much. In the last 20 years the NHL has been through two catastrophic lock outs. They lost the entire 2004 – 2005 Season. They then rewarded fans in the 2012 – 2013 season with another lock out that shortened the season to 48 games. You just cant survive doing that. They need to get it together and find a way back. Player pay has been stagnant and the lack of a big tv contract hurts. The game is still great and exciting but with the partners they have they are just not getting the attention they need. It is really not worth talking about who is leading and who is trailing in each division till we are in January.
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