Football

For @PTI and @RealMikeWilbon: The Case Against Hines Ward for the Hall of Fame

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So I don’t know if you heard (apparently some guy named Manning was also in the news today), but Hines Ward has officially called it a career. As the relationship between Ward and the Steelers slowly sputtered to an end over the winter, every time it was brought up on Pardon the Interruption Tony and Mike described him as a surefire Hall of Famer. Back in February, he didn’t appear on my Top 50 Active Resumes, and honestly didn’t come very close – in other words, I had him just as surefire not to get in. The last time the PTI guys brought him up, when the Steelers finally cut him, they expressed incredulity that anyone would disagree with their assessment. He has all the receiving records for the vaunted Steelers! He’s eighth all time in receptions and 18th in receiving yards! He has two Super Bowl rings! How can you not put him in the Hall of Fame?

Two words: Passing. League.

Prepare to hear those two words a lot for the next few decades and possibly the remainder of the history of the league whenever the Hall of Fame merits of any wide receiver to play this century come up. Simply put, it’s hard to overstate how inflated today’s passing and especially receiving stats are compared to earlier eras. Every single one of the players ahead of Ward on the all-time receptions list played at least four seasons as Ward’s contemporary (you have to go down to #12 Art Monk to find someone who retired in the 90s) and only Cris Carter didn’t play during at least half of Ward’s career. Only four players ahead of Ward on the receiving yards list didn’t play at least one season as his contemporary. Even discounting that, being the best receiver on the traditionally-run-heavy Steelers doesn’t mean as much as you might think – only two Steelers receivers are in the Hall, and not only did Lynn Swann have a very long wait he seems to have gotten in mostly on the back of his memorable Super Bowl catches, not his actual career.

The smoking gun on Ward’s resume is this: although he made the 2nd-team All-Pro three times, not once was he named to the first team. Over the course of his career, the following receivers were named 1st-team AP All-Pro (and thus, were considered better than Ward) at least once: Randy Moss, Antonio Freeman, Marvin Harrison, Carter, Terrell Owens, David Boston, Torry Holt, Muhsin Muhammad, Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Wes Welker, Roddy White, Reggie Wayne, Calvin Johnson. Moss, Owens, Harrison, Chad and Andre Johnson, and Welker were named multiple times; Jimmy Smith, Rod Smith, Wayne, and Fitzgerald were named 2nd-team All-Pro in at least two different years Ward wasn’t; Holt, Steve Smith, and Calvin Johnson were also named 2nd-team All-Pro in a year Ward wasn’t. Throw in the Hall’s infuriating inability to pick between Andre Reed, Carter, and Tim Brown, and how can you even find room for Ward to get in at some point?

Shouldn’t a Hall of Famer make more than four Pro Bowls in a 14-year career, especially if they were never one of the two best receivers in the league in any year? Do Super Bowl rings even matter for non-quarterbacks? Would Tony and Mike disagree with my February post that, just among active players, the Johnsons, Moss, Fitzgerald, Steve Smith, Welker, and Wayne are all more deserving of the Hall of Fame than Ward – before you even get to retired players who aren’t eligible yet like Owens, Harrison, Holt, or Isaac Bruce, or the aforementioned eligible players that haven’t gotten in yet?

Perhaps, like Swann, another beloved Steeler receiver can get in late in his eligibility despite a questionable career. It is, after all, the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Great. But if you still want to read more, you can browse through this post from January and the associated comments.

The REAL calm before the storm. Hopefully.

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I’ve already gotten tired of Da Countdown, and I think I was already starting to get tired while I was still setting it up. It works a lot better in Excel, not so much when I have to wade through a morass of meta tags, and change the ID on each one every time a countdown expires. So I’m probably not going to add many new countdowns to the Countdown Page from now on, nor am I necessarily going to transfer over every countdown on the page to the widget. I expect to start a new countdown on the widget about once a month from now on, with a bigger emphasis on site stuff.

I’m hoping I can get Part I of the Future of Content written tonight and up tomorrow (Thursday), but I’ve already dilly-dallied far longer than I ever intended…

Oh, and I’ve updated Da Countdown Page to reflect next year’s actual Thursday Night Football schedule.

2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

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Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady
  3. LB Ray Lewis

No one else has been quite as productive for so long as these three. I can’t imagine this is the end of the line for Manning, partly because he just has to play one game to reset the clock, partly because of who else would be up at the same time as him. More on this below.

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. TE Tony Gonzalez
  2. RB LaDainian Tomlinson
  3. S Ed Reed
  4. CB Champ Bailey
  5. S Brian Dawkins
  6. QB Drew Brees
  7. DT Kevin Williams

Gonzalez would ordinarily be a surefire first-ballot guy, but tight ends getting in on the first ballot is rare to unprecedented, and he’s pretty close to the end of the surefire territory. More likely than not, LDT is going in on the first ballot as well; Reed and Bailey are far iffier and probably depends on who else is out there their first ballot. It’s kind of hard to believe the lofty territory Brees is climbing into, where he’s arguably the fourth-best quarterback of the past decade behind Brady, Manning, and Favre. He probably needs to stick around a few more years to really threaten the first ballot, though.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. CB Charles Woodson
  3. DT Richard Seymour
  4. S Troy Polamalu
  5. LB Brian Urlacher
  6. DT Jason Taylor
  7. TE Jason Witten
  8. DE Julius Peppers
  9. DE Dwight Freeney
  10. CB Ronde Barber
  11. G Steve Hutchison
  12. LB DeMarcus Ware

Realistically, given his position, Gates’ chances of getting in on the first ballot are basically nil at this point. Getting to the Pro Bowl this year improves his case, but he didn’t really deserve it. Charles Woodson had an All-Pro year that gets him much closer to the first-ballot conversation. Jason Taylor is retiring, and while some people may only know him from Dancing with the Stars, he has a resume to make it into Canton pretty quickly. Ware isn’t higher because he hasn’t actually been doing this for all that long; who knows what his ceiling is?

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Chad Johnson
  2. QB Donovan McNabb
  3. RB Adrian Peterson
  4. C Olin Kreutz
  5. WR Andre Johnson
  6. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  7. WR Steve Smith
  8. QB Aaron Rodgers
  9. DE Jared Allen
  10. WR Wes Welker
  11. QB Michael Vick
  12. P Shane Lechler
  13. WR Reggie Wayne
  14. DE John Abraham
  15. DT Kris Jenkins
  16. CB Darrelle Revis
  17. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  18. KR Devin Hester
  19. QB Eli Manning
  20. K Adam Vinatieri
  21. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

Will the HOF voters bring themselves to vote for someone who named himself “Chad Ochocinco”, resume aside? McNabb’s career appears to be over with some pretty good quality production for a number of years, but never quite great, with no All-Pro team appearances and no rings; he’s going to be hotly debated. Peterson is getting pretty close to punching his ticket to Canton already, despite playing for a number of bad Vikings teams; ditto Fitzgerald and his only good Cardinals teams coming with Kurt Warner at the helm.

Rodgers is interesting, as he’s shockingly elevated himself in just a few years into one of the best QBs in the league and a surefire first-ballot HOFer if he keeps it up… but that’s a pretty big “if”. If he somehow falls off the face of the Earth next year and never gets it back, he’ll be remembered as a flash-in-the-pan who was, for a brief time, one of the best QBs in the entire league, a figure on par with Brady and Manning who picked up a ring along the way, and one of the great what-could-have-been stories. Would that be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame? Maybe… but it’d be a pretty long wait. Even more interesting would be Vinatieri: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, they all have substantially better resumes than Roethlisberger and Manning (only two Pro Bowl selections apiece), which is why those two are so low.

Devin Hester has stated his intent to become the first kick returner in the Hall, but his already long-shot candidacy may have actually taken a hit this year, as Patrick Peterson beat him out for the Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors. Worse, Peterson’s a rookie; what if Hester isn’t even the best kick returner of the next decade? Dante Hall already beat him out for first-team honors on the all-decade team for the last decade. What Hester may have going against him, no matter how gaudy the numbers he puts up, is that he came in an era where more people than ever were returning more kicks for more yards and more touchdowns than ever, at least before the NFL moved up kickoffs this season. If he’s returning kicks in an era more like past eras, he probably still stands out, but he’s probably not breaking records left and right.

Need work:

  • S Adrian Wilson
  • DE Haloti Ngata
  • LB Lance Briggs
  • QB Phillip Rivers
  • CB Nnamdi Asomugha

G Brian Waters would be next. Not long after this comes a lot of offensive linemen with mediocre resumes all bunched up, including some potentially surprising names, Jeff Saturday and Flozell Adams, the latter of whom has never made an All-Pro team. Saturday’s only been a class lineman since 2005 or so, not quite long enough for a HOF career. Considering his late start, could this lost season for the Colts prove to be poison for his Hall of Fame chances?

Players to watch for the future (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • LB Patrick Willis (5th year)!
  • OT Joe Thomas (5th year)!
  • OT Jake Long (4th year)
  • RB Chris Johnson (4th year)
  • LB Clay Matthews (3rd year)
  • RB Arian Foster (3rd year)
  • DT Ndamukong Suh (2nd year)
  • C Maurkice Pouncey (2nd year)
  • TE Rob Gronkowski (2nd year)
  • TE Jimmy Graham (2nd year)
  • QB Cam Newton (Rookie)
  • LB Von Miller (Rookie)
  • QB Andy Dalton (Rookie)
  • WR A.J. Green (Rookie)

Cam Newton set the single-season record for touchdowns by a QB, as a rookie, three-fourths of the way through the season. He may do more than any other single quarterback, more than Vick, Young, or Tebow, to redefine the position.

Players to watch for the Class of 2016:

  • QB Brett Favre
  • WR Randy Moss
  • WR Terrell Owens
  • G Alan Faneca
  • S Darren Sharper

Why are we looking at the list for 2016 instead of 2017? Because if we looked at players who retired after the just-completed season, we wouldn’t have looked at Moss or Owens last year, and we’d have looked at Favre the last four seasons at least.

Despite how he’s acted in recent years, Favre is going in on the first ballot unless Peyton Manning is done. That would make it interesting: two all-time first-ballot quarterbacks, seemingly from different eras, set to go in at the same time. Would one go first-ballot at the expense of the other (probably Manning at the expense of Favre), or would a huge rarity happen and two players at the same position go in in the same year? It once seemed unthinkable that Favre or Manning wouldn’t go in first ballot, but unless Manning can play again it could happen solely because of timing. Some might consider it karma that Favre’s constant retirement-delaying could cost him first-ballot status.

Moss is borderline and his attitude issues, combined with going in the year after both Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt (only one of whom at most is going in in 2015), could cost him, although Moss is considered one of the best wide receivers of his era, which you can’t quite say about Bruce and Holt. Everyone else is going to have to wait. Although both Moss and Owens have attitude issues, Owens’ issues are perceived to be worse and he generally isn’t considered as good a player, so Moss is going in first. Faneca will more than likely get in, but expect him to wait a while. Sharper’s chances I’m really skeptical of. Five Pro Bowls in a fourteen-year career doesn’t really cut it; if he gets in it’ll be because his All-Decade team membership saves him.

What does the NFL Network’s expanded schedule mean for the NFL’s efforts to sell some of it?

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Roger Goodell’s announcement at his Super Bowl press conference that the NFL Network would get an expanded slate of primetime games isn’t really new news by itself. But when the NFL first announced that the NFLN would get this slate, it sounded like they would get 10-12 games, which allowed for speculation that the NFL was expanding NFLN’s slate as a short-term move to ease people into a full-season Thursday Night slate and goose NFLN distribution for one last time before the NFL sold half of that full-season slate to another entity.

So to hear that NFLN will have a 13-game slate, starting the second week of the season, taking only Week 16 off among weeks NBC doesn’t already have and that the NFL would be willing to schedule a Thursday night game on, effectively going to a full-season slate already… should that shock us into realizing that the plan the NFL seemed to be floating during the lockout is off the table?

When you combine it with NBC’s Thanksgiving night game, and NFLN seemingly abandoning Saturdays, which would mean that there are now, at most, 14 games to go around where before there were 16, it certainly should look like a distinct possibility. The NFL could very conceivably maintain this schedule indefinitely if they really wanted to. If you really wanted to engage in wishful thinking, you could say that NFLN is only serving as a placeholder because the NFL didn’t sell the Thursday night package this year, and they’ll have a package in place for next year… but there’s only so long you can maintain that notion. (And I don’t even want to dignify the notion of selling a Saturday night package.) The best chance for the NFL to eventually sell half of its Thursday night slate is if they administer an even bigger poison pill: an 18-game schedule, which the owners clearly still want.

At this late stage, it’s not as though losing that contract would be a disaster, at least not for the media companies. This year will see a number of high-stakes rights battles go down, including MLB, NASCAR, and the BCS, and I wonder if part of the reason the NFL is doing this is because several media companies have lost interest and intend on scaling back their bids in the near term. As much as Comcast, the company with probably the most interest, would love to use NFL programming to grow its NBC Sports Network, they could do the same thing with an MLB or NASCAR contract, possibly (I haven’t looked up the numbers) for cheaper, and attract a smaller but broader audience more days of the year and possibly get some big events on top of it. ESPN, which I had ranked third-most likely, was probably only really in it to keep Comcast from getting it. That leaves Turner and Fox; as much as Turner would love to get back into the NFL, they’re in a strong enough position as it is that they don’t really need it (unless they intended to put games on truTV), while Fox continues to be hamstrung by its inability to raise subscriber fees for FX.

The NFL would be leaving a lot of money on the table if they didn’t sell off those games, but they already extorted a lot more money out of their broadcast partners, and it’s apparent they’re more pissed that there are still some big-time holdouts for NFLN distribution even after the RedZone offer – although color me skeptical that throwing more third-tier primetime games on the pile is really going to bring Time Warner Cable around at this point if they weren’t brought around already. (This may be why Roger Goodell talks about putting every team in primetime… but the games will be shown on broadcast in the local markets, so those people won’t be motivated to call their cable provider, and showing every team means you’re going to be putting on some pretty crappy teams with apathetic fanbases, which may underline the cable companies’ point and, considering apparently every team will play a Thursday game following a Sunday game, might even further devalue the half of the package you sell because the scheduling ends up being so restrictive.)

On another note, did the NFL just kill Thursday as a viable college football night?

An Early-Week Super Bowl Preview

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Median Expected Score
Giants 26
Patriots 29

Four years later, they meet again. The last time these teams did this it resulted in one of the best Super Bowls of all time, and quite possibly the best game of the entire last decade. Can the rematch live up to the original?

Probably not. Last time, the Patriots were trying to become the second team in NFL history to go completely undefeated in the regular season and postseason, while the Giants were the scrappy underdogs that just barely squeaked into the playoffs and shocked the world in the Super Bowl. This year, the Giants made another Cinderella run, but they aren’t quite shocking the world the way they did four years ago; they actually won their division, more than a few people noted how hot they were playing down the stretch, and they’ve already beaten the team that tried to go unbeaten this year. Meanwhile, the Patriots were the class of a rather inferior AFC, hardly showing the dominance of four years ago and showing a decided weakness on defense, admittedly like most of the league’s best teams. Both teams needed miscues from their championship game opponents to get here, and we already saw this year’s sports movie. None of the context that went into the game four years ago is there, and that alone will probably keep it from living up to that level.

That the Giants are playing as well as they are does throw in a few storylines of its own, however. Probably one of the bigger ones involves Eli Manning. Four years ago, no one thought he would ever be anywhere near as good as his brother. He’s since become one of the league’s better quarterbacks, but still raised eyebrows in the preseason when he claimed that he should be considered an elite quarterback on par with Tom Brady. While he didn’t put up the gaudy numbers Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, or Brady put up this year, he still managed to silence the critics and prove that he really is that good a quarterback, being named the NFC’s quarterback in the Pro Bowl behind Rodgers and Brees. Now he has a chance to actually double his brother’s Super Bowl count, possibly for all time. And who does he have a chance to beat to do it? Why, Tom Brady, of course.

Brady has already cemented a Hall of Fame resume, but it’s still interesting how another Super Bowl would impact his legacy. For the past few years, we thought that night in Glendale was the last night of the Patriots dynasty, as, while the Patriots remained one of the league’s elite teams, injuries and underperforming teams kept them out of even the conference championship game. It’s been something like seven years since Brady’s last Super Bowl, and at his age it’s fair to wonder how many more seasons he has left in him. Seeing Drew Bledsoe, the man whose injury set the stage for his entire career, handing out the Lamar Hunt Trophy, you had to wonder if it was a fitting bookend to his career. How would one last postscript Super Bowl to tie Joe Montana be seen when we look back on Brady’s storied career?

Throw in the game being played in Indianapolis, home of Eli’s brother and the Patriots’ main rival over the past decade, and it’s easy to see why Peyton Manning’s shadow hangs over the game, and why there are still plenty of storylines for Giants-Patriots II.

Da Blog is back, baby!

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Well, I can’t say this was the happiest 36 hours Da Blog has ever had.

First, I found out I’d deleted the plugin I’d used when first setting up Da Blog to hide it from public view, and couldn’t find it again. Then I downloaded a plugin that just coughed up a 503 error whenever I went to a WordPress-powered page – even my admin section, meaning I wound up having to disable all my plugins in my database administration just to undo the damage. Then, after finding a working plugin, I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, only to discover too late that the plugin I was counting on to pick up the slack for the old one didn’t actually work that way.

So now we’re back on the road, and the Sports and Webcomics subsites are running on the last developmental version of the old plugin until I can find a longer-term solution. There are a few quirks, most notably that the main pages of both sites are currently serving up all my posts instead of just the ones in those categories, but it should still be functional. If you see any other problems, give me a holler in the comments.

However, now I have a new problem: the power went out at our house this morning and might not be back until partway through the weekend. As such, I’m going to queue up a quick post to go out tomorrow to continue the streak and won’t be able to do any more work on Da Blog or the site until Monday at the latest (and I really hope it can be sooner). I know I promised a full-fledged preview of the conference championship games, but the MXSes will have to suffice: Ravens 21½-28½ Patriots, Giants 19¾-22¼ 49ers.

More to come on Monday, including – hopefully – the much-delayed launch of the forum.

2011 College Football Rankings – After Bowls

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After all is said and done, I must, begrudgingly, accept Alabama as my national champion.

Perhaps if LSU had kept it closer, they might have an argument for a split title. Perhaps if Oklahoma State didn’t need overtime to beat an overrated Stanford team, they might have an argument for a split title. But Alabama did what they need to, and now they’re the national champions.

Frankly, this is one of those years where the best solution might be no national champion. None of the teams involved are all that attractive. One good thing about a potential playoff system is that at least any potential champion has spent time building an aura of “champion-ness” by winning the games we consider to have the most value. Perhaps Alabama, or Oklahoma State, or even LSU would seem more legitimate by beating some number of teams along the way.

How the C Ratings are tabulated: First, A Ratings are tabulated by multiplying the total score ratio, which is expressed by (points-opponents’ points)/points, by the winning percentage. Score ratio minimizes the effect of running up the score. Next, B Points for each game are tabulated by (margin of victory)/(opponent’s A rating)+/-1 for wins, and -(margin of loss)/(1-opponent’s A Rating)+/-1 for losses. The “+/-” is + for road games and – for home ones. The total number of B Points is multiplied by the A Rating to get the B Rating. Finally, the C Rating is tabulated by taking one-tenth the difference between the team’s B Rating and the average of his opponents’ B Ratings and taking the result off the B Rating. The three ratings go A, B, C across. Click here to see the complete ratings.

1 Alabama SEC ’06 Boise St.
12-1 LW: A Rat: .796 B Rating: 67.874 C Rating: 59.634 AP: 1 BCS: 1
Say what you will about the BCS system, it is true what the Tide fans are saying: they won the one that counted.
2 LSU SEC SEC Champ.
13-1 LW: A Rat: .720 B Rating: 64.064 C Rating: 56.912 AP: 2 BCS: 2
On the plus side, Les Miles proved this year that his first national championship wasn’t just the result of inheriting Nick Saban’s players.
3 Oklahoma State B12 Fiesta Bowl
12-1 LW: A Rat: .651 B Rating: 55.805 C Rating: 47.798 AP: 3 BCS: 3
Sorry, but national championship teams don’t need overtime to beat teams that didn’t win their conference. Can I seriously expect you to have beaten Alabama?
4 Boise State MWC Maaco Bowl
12-1 LW: A Rat: .717 B Rating: 47.456 C Rating: 38.482 AP: 8 Coaches: 6
Kellen Moore ended his college career with a bang, blowing out an Arizona State team that looked like the third-best team in the Pac-10 at one point this season.
5 Wisconsin B10 Big 10 Champ.
11-3 LW: A Rat: .594 B Rating: 36.909 C Rating: 29.645 AP: 10

 Coaches: 11
The Badgers kept it close enough against the Ducks that they don’t move below them.
6 Houston USA TicketCity
13-1 LW: A Rat: .695 B Rating: 38.024 C Rating: 29.006 AP: 18 Coaches: 14
Houston proved their season wasn’t a fluke in demolishing a good Penn State team.
7 Oregon P12 Rose Bowl
12-2 LW: A Rat: .611 B Rating: 34.317 C Rating: 28.226 AP: 4 Coaches: 4
The win over Wisconsin wasn’t impressive and the Pac-12 didn’t do that great in the bowls, but it took Stanford losing to a top-3 team for people to realize, “Wait, Oregon won this conference and Stanford didn’t for a reason.”
8 Oklahoma B12 Insight Bowl
10-3 LW: A Rat: .534 B Rating: 31.655 C Rating: 26.064 AP: 16 Coaches: 15
Big win over Iowa didn’t do much to impress the voters in the final standings.
9 Michigan B10 Sugar Bowl
11-2 LW: A Rat: .586 B Rating: 22.677 C Rating: 18.480 AP: 12 Coaches: 9
Yes, it was Virginia Tech. Yes, it took overtime. But Michigan did their darndest to prove how deserving of a BCS bowl they really were.
10 Stanford P12 Fiesta Bowl
11-2 LW: A Rat: .617 B Rating: 23.190 C Rating: 17.428 AP: 7 Coaches: 7
Luck and the Cardinal gave all they could, but Oklahoma State, in the end, was the better team, even if marginally so.
11 Southern Miss USA Hawaii Bowl
12-2 LW: A Rat: .586 B Rating: 21.956 C Rating: 14.893 AP: 20 Coaches: 19
The win over Nevada did move them up a couple of spots in the polls, even though it was by only a touchdown.
12 South Carolina SEC Capital One
11-2 LW: A Rat: .576 B Rating: 15.962 C Rating: 12.501 AP: 9 Coaches: 8
Big win over a good Huskers team isn’t enough to put the Cocks in the top ten, but Spurrier has definitely built an elite program.
13 Arkansas SEC Cotton Bowl
11-2 LW: #14 A Rat: .557 B Rating: 16.227 C Rating: 11.767 AP: 5 Coaches: 5
Arkansas didn’t quite blow K-State out of the water, and South Carolina is still ahead of them, but they do move up across the board even if they were overrated already.
14 TCU MWC MWC Champ.
11-2 LW: #12 A Rat: .606 B Rating: 17.332 C Rating: 11.036 AP: 14 Coaches: 13
Sorry, but I’m not going to give TCU the benefit of the doubt when they needed a fourth-quarter comeback to beat Louisiana Tech.
15 USC P12 ’09 Boise St.
10-2 LW: #15 A Rat: .559 B Rating: 11.199 C Rating: 6.697 AP: 6 SBNBlog: 12
As I expected, with almost everyone back and the team off probation people are talking up USC as a preseason national championship favorite… so why am I hearing about so many transfers leaving?
16 Florida State ACC Chmps Sprts
9-4 LW: #20 A Rat: .483 B Rating: 9.244 C Rating: 5.335 AP: 23 Coaches: 23
It was a low-scoring, tight game, but it was over a very good team, ranked ahead of them in the rankings, so a big move for the Seminoles.
17 Toledo MAC Military Bowl
9-4 LW: #19 A Rat: .422 B Rating: 8.725 C Rating: 5.136 — —
Bit too close for comfort against a 7-6 team to justify ranking them for half the year, but at least they won, which teams below them can’t say.
18 Georgia SEC
10-4 LW: #16 A Rat: .462 B Rating: 7.658 C Rating: 4.876 AP: 19 Coaches: 20
Georgia fought valiantly for three overtimes before falling to a very good Spartans team.
19 Notre Dame  
8-5 LW: #17 A Rat: .361 B Rating: 6.954 C Rating: 4.242 — —
The Golden Domers should have mixed feelings about their season. On one hand, they’re 8-5. On the other, their losses were like their Champs Sports bowl: they fought hard to the end.
20 Texas A&M B12 Meineke C. C.
6-6 LW: #23 A Rat: .336 B Rating: 6.519 C Rating: 2.957 — —
A&M not only showed Northwestern how good they’ve really been, they did so in a big way, albeit close to home. But still no one is noticing.
21 Virginia Tech ACC
11-3 LW: #18 A Rat: .502 B Rating: 5.976 C Rating: 2.893 AP: 21 Coaches: 17
Virginia Tech fought hard to prove they belonged in a BCS bowl, but the only reason it went to overtime was that people had doubts about their opponent too.
22 West Virginia* BST Prncton/Yale
10-3 LW: A Rat: .470 B Rating: 4.565 C Rating: 1.812 AP: 17 Coaches: 18
What an embarrassment for the ACC. What a statement by the Mountaineers.
23 Northern Illinois MAC GoDaddy.com
11-3 LW: #27 A Rat: .473 B Rating: 4.414 C Rating: -.614 — —
One of the Huskies’ strongest seasons during their recent run even earned them quite a few poll votes.
24 Missouri* B12 Independence
8-5 LW: A Rat: .380 B Rating: .432 C Rating: -1.991 — —
The Tigers say goodbye to the Big 12 on a high note with a big win over North Carolina.
25 Rutgers
(9-4, .428, -.361, -2.804)		 BST Pinstripe


2010 TCU Title: Baylor (10-3), .447, -1.730, -4.030

Off Top 25: #26 Michigan State (was ), #27 Nebraska (was #21), #34 Penn State (was #25), #37 Clemson (was #23)

Watch List: #26 Michigan State

Other Positive B Ratings: Ohio, #30 Temple* (*=Newly Positive)

No Longer Positive: #27 Nebraska, Louisiana Tech, Utah State, #37 Clemson, #40 Arkansas State

Best game of year: LSU @ Alabama / BCS Championship Game: Alabama v. LSU (tie)

A Miniature Preview of the Divisional Games

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All games are listed with their respective median expected scores.

Saints 25½-21½ 49ers
Fox, Saturday 4:30pm ET, announcers: Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, Tony Siragusa
Most people still haven’t seen enough of the Niners to trust them enough, but the Saints are playing better than they have been all season. Then again, they’ve always been a different team at home than on the road; only time will tell if the Niners have the defense to stop Drew Brees and Co.

Broncos 18½-32 Patriots
CBS, Saturday 8pm ET, announcers: Jim Nantz, Phil Simms
If I was a betting man, I’d put good money on the Broncos, and maybe put a little on the under as well. Forget about Tebow for a second. The Pats’ defense… isn’t that great, while the Broncos have been winning with their defense. Even if you don’t think the Broncos are going to win, that MXS doesn’t make much sense to me, especially if you think what we saw last week from Tebow is a sign he’s becoming an actual quarterback.

Texans 14¼-21¾ Ravens
CBS, Sunday 1pm ET, announcers: Greg Gumbel, Dan Dierdorf
That’s one of the lower MXS scores I’ve seen all season (though not the lowest of the playoffs – Denver had an MXS of 13 for their game with the Steelers). I know the Ravens have a vaunted defense, but the Texans offense isn’t chopped liver, even with T.J. Yates as their quarterback. Despite how well the Texans played all year, this game has the feel of the Texans being the sacrificial lamb to allow the Ravens to move on in a game no one will watch, but if I was a betting man, I’d split the Texans with the over, with more money on the over.

Giants 22¾-30¼ Packers
Fox, Sunday 4:30pm ET, announcers: Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Pam Oliver, Chris Myers
The Giants are on such a winning streak, looked so dominant against the Falcons, and looked so good against the Packers that people have forgotten that they needed to beat the Cowboys the last week of the regular season to make the playoffs at 9-7 and are talking about them maybe possibly giving the Packers a hard time if not upsetting them. Actually, people have kind of forgotten that the Packers almost went undefeated. Really, people tend to forget everything about the regular season once the playoffs start.

It’s the MorganWick.com National Championship Pregame Show!

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I’m frantically running around trying to make sure I have classes for the coming quarter (as in, the quarter that’s almost a week old already), so I only have one thing to say about the national championship game, which I won’t be watching.

The MXS for the game is Alabama 21¾-19¾. No, I have no idea why Alabama is favored when LSU won the first game on Alabama’s home turf and is playing closer to home.

Final college football rankings coming Tuesday, hopefully, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2012

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 44 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 11 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2006 season will be eligible for induction in 2012.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2012 is:

Curtis Martin
Andre Reed
Dermontti Dawson
Cortez Kennedy
Charles Haley
Jack Butler
Dick Stanfel

Hall of Fame Game: Steelers v. Jets