Full Force crazy going on in the sports world. It seems that there is always something going on Full Force in sports. There are only a few weeks a year where there is something not going on. This past week is one of the most crazy. Just with the start of the NCAA tournament that makes it one of the most interesting weeks in sports. Everyone filling out their brackets and seeing how many upsets they can guess correctly. It is pretty amazing that you have better odds of winning the Mega Millions and the Power Ball than you do of getting the elusive perfect bracket. In the NBA and the NHL you have teams either clinching a playoff spot or clinching a spot. Teams that are already looking to what their plans are for the next season. All this and more in the Week that Was.
NCAA Basketball tournament – Brackets Busted
It happens every year. People think that they can pick the perfect bracket. The truth is you can’t. Maybe someday someone will accidentally do it. I started this post before the perfect bracket mania happend this past weekend. For the first time ever. Someone got every game correct for the first week of the tournament. There was almost two perfect brackets. On Sunday there were two prefect after Sunday there was only one. That is pretty impressive since it has never been done before. You would think that when it gets down to the sweet 16 that the chances of getting to the coveted perfect bracket would get much better. The truth is it does not. We do not yet know who has that perfect bracket. We do know that they have picked Gonzaga to be the winner.
Even with a lot of the brackets going mostly chalk there was still a lot of interesting and exciting things that happened. The ACC, SEC and B1G are all doing pretty well. The ACC has 5 teams in the sweet 16 the B1G has 3 the SEC has 4. That makes seventy five percent of the Sweet 16 participants coming from 3 of the power five. Guess that is really not much of a surprise there. The B1G really got the short end of the stick with two teams having to play each other in the second round. Really the committee should try to avoid that from happening till they get to the sweet 16. Possible that it was unavoidable. The other strange thing is the seeding that was given to Michigan State. It is arguable that Michigan State should have been a one seed. They were a two. Not only were they a two but they were the lowest two. They are in the same bracket as the overall one seed in Duke. In the end you have to beat who it put in front of you so guess can’t complain too much.
AAF Second Half full force
There is only three games left in the first season of the AAF. It has been a surprisingly exciting season. There are a few things that we know for sure. The Orlando Apollos and San Antonio Commanders will make the playoffs for sure. The Atlanta Legends and Salt Lake Stallions will not make the playoffs. That leaves four teams for two spots. I guess with three games to go in the regular season no one is actually completely eliminated but it really looks like those tow teams will be out.
It is nice to see players get a chance to prove themselves. The best example of that is Trent Richardson. His yards and yards per carry do not look that great how ever he has scored 10 touchdowns through 7 games. That is still pretty impressive. Will he make it back to the NFL? Probably not but he can do well in the AAF and will probably be able to play a few more years. I did not get to see the Memphis Express game this week. Johnnie Manziel was able to get in for part of the game and with not having much time to practice he was 3 of 5 for 48 yards. Which almost puts him to the stats of Christian Hackenberg. Which is pretty sad. I guess not really. It is just one of those things. Hackenberg has shown that after college he really can’t play quarterback. Manziel just needs to show that he will not self destruct again. Not sure that he will get another chance in the NFL either but like Richardson he can probably have a pretty good AAF career and get to keep playing football for a while.
NBA Closer to what really counts
Did I talk about the Lakers being eliminated from the playoffs already? Yes I did and they are still out. LOL. Of course they are. they can’t just magically get in after going out for the season. In the East the Bucks are still just rolling along. They now have a four game lead for the top spot in the East. If they can pull this off and then make it to the final that is a huge win for the NBA. Most people are probably sticking with the mantra of small market teams making the finals are not good for ratings. Most of that comes from Collin Cowherd. He is about the Stephen A. Smith and just likes to yell a lot. Oh well good for him. I can’t even catch his show anymore to see what the stupid thing he is complaining about each day. The station that was playing his show crashed and burned.
Anyway The Bucks are a feel good story with a great team and players are are very likable. They are a great alternative to the teams that have been making the finals. I do think that they have a great chance to make the finals. Can they beat the Warriors? Difficult to say. It is really looking like this could be the last finals appearance for this team as it is. They will be going full force for this playoff run to get one last Championship in before this team is split up.
NFL Second round of Free Agents
Even after the big push the first week of Free Agency the NFL is getting great attention. Some of it not so good but in the long run it really will not matter. The NFL is a beast and all attention for them turns out well. Then with perfect timing. The Patriots are able to redirect attention from Bob Kraft with the retirement of Rob Gronkowski. This is a blessing and a curse for the Patriots at the same time. The blessing is that it takes the headlines away from Kraft. The curse is that they are going to be with out possibly the best Tight End to ever play the game. While I am sad to see him go I am glad that he is walking away on his own and not because he has to. After his first two seasons and playing in all 16 games he has missed at least one game in every season he played after that. He played hard and was rewarded for that. He just retired this week and already some are talking that he could play again. I suppose anything is possible but those people are saying that now as a just in case he does type of thing. So they can go look at what I said. Told you he was going to play again. There really is no downside since if he does not those comments will just be forgotten.
The NFL is talking about some new rules that they are looking at. One of them is changing the on side kick. They are proposing that each team would be given one chance a game to convert a 4th and 15 from their own 20. I think that it is better than what the on side kick is now. The conversion would still not be great but I am pretty sure that is would be better than the 3 percent conversion rate now. Not sure about only being able to try one but think that it would still be a good change. The other rule changes being proposed I have not looked at yet. That is the only one that really seemed to stand out for me.
NASCAR
NASCAR is far off from going full force. They were at least back in the East Coast so they had a regular start time. I have not checked the ratings for this season yet so not sure where they stand. The apathy I have had for NASCAR last year has translated to this year. I have watched parts of the races and keep up on most of them on the NASCAR web site. At least they are still doing the leader board on their web site so you can follow along. Not sure when or if we are going to get back into watching. They still really need to fix how the races are run. The stages are still annoying and do not actually make the races anymore interesting. Hopefully something happens soon.
MLB Money Everywhere
For all the worry that baseball players had about the top players getting blackballed. That is all over now. In the last two weeks Baseball has spent more money on three players than the Tampa Bay Rays have spent in their whole existence. This is led by the deal that Mike Trout signed last week for $430 million over 12 years. Talk about being set for life. If you were to break his pay down to how much he would make a day for those 12 years it comes to $98,000 a day. Fifty percent of the United States makes just under $30,000 a year. That is a year not a day. The money we are giving out to these players is truly crazy. If the players are making that kind of money think about what the owners are making. I am not faulting any of them for making this kind of money. In the end it is our fault for supporting them the way we do. We allow them to make this kind of money.
On the other side of that I don’t want to hear these players complain about how much they are making if someone is making more than they are. If you make it to the pro level of any of these sports you have set yourself up for live and in many cases your family. You still have to be smart about your money. You can’t just go crazy with it like many of the players do. But if you do things right you are set up for life.
The MLB season starts next week. As you know I am not the biggest baseball fan. The games are long and boring. The season is even longer. But I get why people like it. I do follow the league to keep up with how the teams are going. Baseball is not the American past time anymore. It never will be again. The money is still there and the fan base is still very large. The start of the season is always very exciting. The end of the season is exciting. It is the middle part that I mostly ignore.
On the Tube TV not You
I think that is what I am going to call the entertainment section for The Week That Was. I know that Televisions are no longer tubes but it sounded good to me. If you are not watching American Idol this year. Why not? We have been faithful watchers of American Idol since the beginning. I am enjoying the show so far this year. I am not a huge country fan and it seems that at least half of the contestants are country singers. That is fine but I really can’t judge them since I don’t like the music that much and I can’t really tell one from anther. They all seem to sound the same to me. They do have some interesting stories so that is nice. I was disappointed to see one of the country singers get cut during Hollywood week. His name is Colby Swift and he seemed like a really nice guy. He was a pretty good singer and Luke Bryan gave him the boots he was wearing since Colbys boots had holes in them. It was a pretty touching moment. Maybe he will try out again in a few years.
The Waling Dead was pretty intense this week. If you used to be a fan and have stopped watching because of the blah story lines from the past few seasons. You really should come back and check it out. They have really stepped it up this year and the latest episode really was a unifying episode. It was a bummer they way they had to do it but wow it was intense. We did almost miss it though. We have been having problems with our cable service and the DVR that we have. It stopped recording the episode one hour into it. We thought it was over. Turns out the episode was an hour and a half long but A&E marked it wrong for the DVR;s so you had to adjust your recording to get the whole thing. We did not get the Memo so we almost missed the last half hour. Luckily we had a friend that informed us that there was more to it so we were able to record the second showing and then catch up. We would have been really confused watching the season finally next week if he had not gotten that information.
You can read last weeks Post here
I am trying to figure out if people like the long post like this or if they would rather have each section broken out into individual posts. If you have any ideas on that though let me know in the comments. On that note. When you are posting a comment there are two check boxes under the comment section. One of them is to notify you when a new post is made. If you check that box a notification will be sent to the email address you put in every time a new post is made on biglakesports.
I am also looking for people that are interested in writing posts on biglakesports.net If you are interested you can send me an email at jbigalke at biglakespots.net and we can go over what I am looking for and see if you are a fit. There would be no pay at this time but you would be able to put your writing out there and could post it on other sites if you wanted to.
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