Saw*Kick Media

This has just been an emotionally exhausting week for me as a sports fan. I have been sitting in front of my blank computer screen for a few hours attempting to come up with some funny little quip to make “Florida International over Middle Tennessee” interesting. Frankly, with the Notre Dame transfers, my Red Sox collapsing, the Patriots cheating, and Michael Vick smoking pot (more on those in a moment) I’m so distraught that I found myself watching three hours of pool on ESPN2 the other night just waiting to hear that Larry Bird had decided to come out of retirement and lead the Celtics to their 17th title. It was that type of week that something like that could happen. I still have hope that some huge story is going to break tonight and hopefully give Skip Bayless a stroke.

But first, I’m here to talk about the story of the week. Paul Westhead deciding to give up the head coaching position of the WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury to be the ninth assistant for P.J. Carlesimo for the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics. Not since Mike Krzyzewski flirted with the Los Angeles Lakers has a coaching move shocked this country. Who would you rather coach, Diana Taurasi or Kevin Durant? Jeff Green or Cappie Pondexter? In a league that is on the brink of something special (the WNBA) Westhead slides back to the lowly NBA. This is like Swan joining the Rogues at the end of “The Warriors” level treachery. ESPN can have a town meeting on Vick, but Westhead’s cowardly departure nets nothing but a blurb on the bottom line? Where are priorities in sports reporting these days?

Ok, that last paragraph was just to test what it would be like if an American sports writer actually cared about and noticed the WNBA, and it gives me some pull with David Stern.

On to baseball for a bit, which unless you are a Cleveland Indians fan, this site offers you no other alternative, so I figured with a potential Red Sox/Indians series looming large in the playoffs, I had to put in SOMETHING about baseball. The bottom line is that my Red Sox are just going into the shitter at the worst possible time … pure and simple. Unfortunately, the Tribe is hotter than an advance copy of Halo 3, and there’s no curse I can put on the Indians, this team of fate as Double C likes to believe. In what is becoming a nasty trend as of late, Double C and I agree. The Indians have what it takes, chemistry, to win a World Series. As a Red Sox fan, I know that it took the whole “Idiot” mentality to put our team over the top and actually think they could take four straight against the Yankees in 2004. We’re done for, as long as Tito Francona keeps playing the corpse known as J.D. Drew instead of Jacoby Ellsbury, we are doomed for a first round exit. Speaking of my Red Sox man crush Ellsbury, to put this in comparison for Cleveland fans, he’s our Brady Quinn. Ellsbury is our dreamboat that flashes just enough in spots that don’t really matter all that much that we salivate over him and are ready plant Vick’s weed on Drew. Bill Simmons’s buddy John McConnell summed it up best when he rebuffed Simmons’s claim that “Remember, J.D. Drew is a five-tool player” with “Too bad one of those tools isn’t a heart.” The bottom line is that we just don’t have “It” this year, and the Indians do have “It”.

I put the Larry Bird comment in there because last night I actually had a dream about this happening. Through the first few games of the season, the Celtics were missing what Reggie Miller would have provided them, an outside threat. They were losing close games as the Celtic fan base was growing incredibly irritable when a mystery press conference is scheduled for the next day. At the presser, Doc Rivers says, “With our lack of outside shooting, there is only one man on earth that could help the Celtics and lead us to a championship … Larry Bird!” Bird then takes the podium and proceeds to call out Reggie Miller as a pussy, and he would know because he coached him in Indiana. He continued on about how much he missed the Boston fans and would kill himself to bring another title home to them. This actually happened with me … on a side note, there isn’t a girlfriend to be seen here. I’m 24 years-old, single, living alone, and having dreams about a Larry Bird comeback.

Here are my scaled down picks for the week. As always, the home teams are in caps. Since I have cursed every player that I put a picture in of, I figured I would make it a little easier on the eyes and post pictures of the fans. I love college football.

Big 10

Notre Dame over PURDUE

This last week, Notre Dame dropped two more players due to transfer requests. Highly recruited tight end Konrad Rueland and highly recruited offensive lineman Chris Stewart both decided to part ways with the sinking ship known as the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. I know I’m biased, but frankly, neither one of these guys leaving bothers me. Rueland was recently beaten out by freshman Mike Ragone and was sitting at #4 on the depth chart. Stewart was third on the depth chart behind a few true freshmen … not good times for anybody. It also looks as if the Enigma known as Demetrius Jones is going to land his butt at Cincinnati. I’ll openly admit to praising Jones’s potential as a game breaker on offense for the Irish, and it still pains me how he left.

That being said, I think the Irish make enough progress to beat a ridiculously underrated Purdue team. I have no reason or rationale for picking Notre Dame, as Purdue is better than Michigan State and they might be on par with Penn State. This pick is based solely on my blind Irish faith believing that it usually takes five weeks for an offensive line to properly gel. CHARLIE I’M DRINKING YOUR KOOL-AID, PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!

Ohio State over MINNESOTA

The Buckeye$ suffered a tremendous blow when the fan favorite Antonio Henton was arrested for solicitation of a prostitute. And as Double C so elegantly put it in his wonderful column yesterday, “You are a quarterback at THE Ohio State University. Do you know how much sex that sentence is worth?” It has been a while since an Ohio State football player was arrested … it’s good to have the world back on its proper axis.

In the interest of full disclosure (and to be fair as I promised in my first column), Notre Dame football player Derrell Hand was arrested for the same offense before the season started and given a three game suspension. If Ohio State suspends Henton longer for the same offense, you will no longer hear a peep from me about Tre$$ell’s lack of discipline. My favorite example of this was when then Freshman phenom Alex Boone, 19 at the time, his a parked cop car while he was drunk driving. His punishment? He didn’t get to start the next game, but came in after a series.

Anyways, Buckeyes over Golden Gophers … pretty easy pick.

Michigan State over WISCONSIN

I’ll go ahead and call Michigan State frisky. They could sneak up on some people in the Big 10. Dantonio is bringing back what only George Perles had before him … discipline.

Michigan over NORTHWESTERN

Michigan will go through the Big 10 undefeated until the Ohio State game … mark it down. I’m openly campaigning for Mike Hart for the Heisman at this point. The guy is absolutely carrying this team!

Penn State over ILLINOIS

Both teams surprised me last week; Penn State on how poorly they played and Illinois at how well they played. Penn State just has too much talent for Zook’s boys to keep up with.

IOWA over Indiana

Both of these teams aren’t nearly as good as I thought they were. Looks to be a rare reloading year for Kirk Ferentz, and just another year for Indiana.

SEC

LSU over TULANE (Home Team)
SOUTH CAROLINA over Mississippi State
KENTUCKY over Florida Atlantic
GEORGIA over Mississippi
Alabama over FLORIDA STATE
ARKANSAS over North Texas
FLORIDA over Auburn
VANDERBILT over Eastern Michigan

Big 12

TEXAS A&M over Baylor
Oklahoma over COLORADO
NEBRASKA over Iowa State
TEXAS over Kansas State
TEXAS TECH over Northwestern State
OKLAHOMA STATE over Sam Houston State

PAC 10

OREGON over California
USC over WASHINGTON (Home Team)
Arizona State over STANFORD
UCLA over OREGON STATE (Home Team)
ARIZONA over Washington State

ACC

VIRGINIA TECH over North Carolina
MIAMI (FL) over Duke
BOSTON COLLEGE over UMass
Clemson over GEORGIA TECH
Louisville over NORTH CAROLINA STATE
RUTGERS over Maryland
VIRGINIA over Pittsburgh

Big East

CONNECTICUT over Akron
Syracuse over MIAMI (OH)
Cincinnati over SAN DIEGO STATE

Conference USA

ARKANSAS STATE over Memphis
BOISE STATE over Southern Mississippi
UTEP over SMU (Home Team)
UCF over LA-Lafayette
TULSA (Home Team) over UAB
HOUSTON over East Carolina

MAC

ARMY over Temple
BALL STATE over Buffalo
CENTRAL MICHIGAN over Northern Illinois
OHIO over Kent State
Western Kentucky over BOWLING GREEN
TOLEDO over Western Michigan

Sun Belt

Florida International over MIDDLE TENNESSEE
TROY over LA-Monroe

WAC

UTAH over Utah State
SAN JOSE STATE over UC Davis
UNLV over NEVADA (Home Team)
Hawaii over IDAHO
NEW MEXICO STATE over Arkansas-Pine Bluff
FRESNO STATE over Louisiana Tech

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