Yanks get Damon-ized...

News today that Johnny Damon has signed with the 'hated' Yankees...
and the Red Sox 'Nation' (which stretches as far as 495, last I heard) weeps with the 'defection.'
As though Damon were born a Red Sox...

God Bless Joe Paterno...

Gotta love this note from the Dayton Daily News coverage of ESPN's College Football Awards show:

The zinger of the night came from Penn State's Joe Paterno, the Home Depot coach of the year. After he gabbed on the air with Herbstreit, a former Buckeye and Centerville High School quarterback, Paterno cracked, "It sure is great to be interviewed by a guy from Ohio State who can speak English."

Sleepy SleepyDad!

Well, it may be bowl season-- odd that that means that there are actually NO college football games for weeks and week...

But this morning, I am, as my pseudonym implies, very very sleepy.
The younger of our two boys, 19 months old now, is still battling the last of this latest round of winter-time sniffles.. and last night seemed to be the worst of it-- he just could not get himself to sleep.

Add to that the stress of settling into a new job-- not to mention getting up at 4:30 this morning so I could be in the office by 5:30 (don't ask).. and it just was not a good night all the way around..

Coffee, coffee, coffee...

Sickboys

The boys have both come down sick this weekend-- stuffy, runny noses, little coughing, sneezing, and not a lot of sleeping... and I've started having to go into work at 5am.. why do these coincidences always happen to me like this?

Video iPod

Conan O'Brien's got a pretty funny little parody of a video iPod commercial... it's worth a look.... (courtesty of MacTV)

Congress gets into the BCS-bashing act...

Okay... now I KNOW that Congress, and politicians in general, are an easy target for this kind of thing.. but I just couldn't believe my eyes when I read this headline on ESPN.com:

"Congress to look into 'deeply flawed' BCS system"

HOUSTON -- Calling the Bowl Championship Series "deeply flawed," the chairman of a congressional committee has called a hearing on the controversial system used to determine college football's national champion.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, charged with regulating America's sports industry, announced Friday it will conduct a hearing on the BCS next week, after this season's bowl matchups are determined.

[soapbox]Not that anyone asked, but the real problem with college football isn't the BCS.. the BCS is just the symptom. The real disease here is the Conference system. If the BCS just took the 8 top-ranked teams, who would be complaining? (Oh, well, I guess #9 would.)

But instead, the major conferences only agreed to the BCS because they each get an automatic bid.. meaning a Florida State team with 4 losses could go to a BCS bowl this year...

So while ESPN will have you believe that Notre Dame is really the best example of why the BCS is flawed, I'd argue the Conference system is really at the heart of the problem.

Playoff system? Maybe... but I think a playoff system would become unnecessary if Top 25 teams would play MORE Top 25 opponents...

Get rid of the BCS, get rid of the Conference system (in College football, at least).. and create a super-conference of the top football programs.. and require teams to play a certain percentage of each year's schedule against opponents from that pool of teams. Don't play at least 7 games against top-tier programs? No BCS consideration for you.

Oh.. and no more games against I-AA teams.. not that count, anyway...

[/soapbox]

Apologies and thanks for indulging me in that rant.
Have a happy rest of your Saturday.