LittleHurt05

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 01:43 PM) It seems to be worklng out ok for the new league MVP. A+

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 03:14 PM) The team that matches up best with Oregon is probably USC...hopefully we will see that rematch in the Pac 12 Championship game. My favorite storyline of the next few weeks is that the SEC's championship streak mostly rests on the shoulders of their old friend Lane Kiffin. If he wins his next 3 games, there will be an SEC team in the final.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) IIRC, when Matt Lottich went to Stanford in 2000, I heard he had a 26 on the ACT. Basically, they just want you to show that you're reasonably intelligent, but you don't have to be up to their regular admission standards. Matt Lottich? That name sounds familiar, wasn't he like a 3-sport superstar? New Trier was it?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 02:03 PM) I've watched all 3 teams play. I'd put KSU slightly ahead of ND and both of them quite a bit ahead of Oregon. Their defense is terrible. And yes, it has everything to do with pre-season rankings this late in the season. Go back to previous years and look at how the rankings of undefeated teams in week 9-10 compares to their preseason rankings. That terrible defense shut out a top-15 offense last month. (Arizona) When you talk about how many more offensive possessions Oregon has, that also goes towards the defense. Of course they will give up more points & yards because they are on the field for more drives. Yet they are still in the middle of the pack nationwide in the rankings. It's not Notre Dame's defense, but it's not terrible, although they are pretty banged up now.

I remember hearing a story that back in the 90s Tommy Amaker interviewed with Northwestern for their head coaching job. He handed them the full transcripts of two potential recruits and asked if he could recruit them. Northwestern said no, they didn't meet the academic requirements. Those two recruits were Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 11:30 AM) Only if you believe he can stay healthy, which I don't. Getting old, fat and injury prone is not a good combo. Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son!

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 10:38 AM) To me MVP = best player no matter what team they are on or how they finished in the standings. If Trout was on a last place team and put up the same numbers he would still be the best player in the league. That's the issue with baseball's MVP as opposed to the other major sports. One player can only have so much effect on a team's success. If Cabrera has a similar year for the Astros, they still would be lucky to sniff 70 wins. Put LeBron on the Pistons, that would make them at least a playoff team.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 12:02 PM) A lot worse. I don't think it will be that bad once he has a full week of practice. I'm not saying the Bears are gonna win, but he Campbell will be better than the Checkdown Master we saw Sunday night.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 11:34 AM) Campbell is starting.... Cutler's the 24th rated passer in the NFL, so how much worse can it get? I mean, Campbell has to be better than Caleb Hanie, right? Right?

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 10:01 AM) Sooo uhhh...Someone just broke in my house, opened a dresser where my mom keeps her money yet none was taken....Weird s***. Maybe it was SoxMan?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 09:20 AM) Speed and defense is the one thing that made the decision harder. But for comparison sake, here is Trout down the stretch... .289/.400/.500/.900 5 HR 9 RBI in Sept/Oct. That is 171 OPS points difference during the stretch run. Trout did cool down offensively during the stretch run, but obviously his defense was still there. Looking at the whole season, Anaheim was 6-14 when they called him up. They went 83-59 the rest of the way.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 08:55 AM) Cabrera put up .333/.395/.675/1.071 with 11 homers and 30 RBI during Sept and the couple of days in Oct. His July and August were just as good, if not better. If he didn't have one of the best rotations in baseball on his team, those stats wouldn't matter. And they had to pitch around his bad defense at 3rd.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 08:26 AM) I think his performance in September during the stretch run, compared to what Trout did during the same stretch, is what made the difference to me. I felt that he was the reason that the Tigers made it. The Tigers made it because of their starting pitching. 4 of their 5 starters were lights out for the month of September. September ERA Verlander - 1.93 Scherzer - 2.17 Fister - 2.34 Sanchez - 2.43

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 07:57 AM) Like it or not, propelling your team to the playoffs has always been a key component of the MVP award. It is not the best offensive player, or the highest WAR award. The unmeasurables have always been a large part of the award. I know, and I actually predicted Cabrera would win it. I'm annoyed that it was such a landslide, that so many writers couldn't look at in more detail. The Angels had a better record than Detroit!

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 16, 2012 -> 06:44 AM) ND's offense is more run-oriented and thus runs more clock, resulting in fewer possessions. The goal of coaches is to win games, and they really care zero about margin of victory. Of course winning is the bottom line, but coaches game plan to win by as many points as their team is capable of. Brian Kelly didn't walk into the Pitt game thinking, "Margin of victory doesn't matter, so no point in blowing out this s*** football team. Let's go to double OT for the hell of it." He would have liked an easy win, but his team wasn't good enough.

Since I grew up a few miles from DePaul's "home" arena, I've always hoped they could be good again, I enjoyed the years with Q, Williams, & Simmons. I guess this is not the year, ouch, that's a bad loss.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 09:31 PM) Good job at ignoring the clarification. I saw that after I posted and edited mine. But it helps prove my point that the s***ty division contributed to Cabrera winning the award as much as anything else. In any other division, the Tigers don't win, and the writers don't give him as much credit.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 05:49 PM) Wow...Trout with only 6 first place votes. BBWAA is still stuck in 2003. And somebody put Trout THIRD. Some writers don't deserve the right to vote. It's like the writers didn't notice that the Angels won more games than the Tigers. Cabrera needs to thank the Sox for collapsing and the Angels bullpen for sucking as bad as it did.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 05:48 PM) And if Cabrera isn't on the Tigers, they probably finish 3rd. Yes, if the Tigers did not have Cabrera, they would have finished 16 games worse. Absolutely. It's not like they had Verlander, Scherzer, Fielder, & Jackson. The 3rd place team in the Central won 72 freaking games, come on now.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 04:27 PM) Cabrera was serviceable at 3B. Coming down the stretch run of the season (30 games) while Detroit was in the process of overtaking the AL Central lead, he had 1 error. You always heard people whining about how the opposition should just bunt towards 3B, yet it never happened. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that he was willing to slide over to 3B in order to accommodate Fielder at 1B. That was a pretty valuable thing to do in itself. I still don't understand why that's such a big deal. It was a position he had played before, and it's not like he switched to catcher. If he wasn't capable of playing it, they wouldn't have asked.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 03:52 PM) Not quite that. Oregon plays a faster pace that produces a lot more possessions. The bigger the gap between them and their opponent, the more it inflates their margin of victory. Oregon is going to beat bad teams by 40 when ND and KSU are going to beat them by 20. Oregon is going to beat decent teams by 20 when ND and KSU are going to beat them by 10. This is going to make Oregon look like they're a lot better than ND and KSU when they really aren't, and that is borne out in the bowl games when they play evenly matched games against teams that they have been made significant favorites against because of their style of play. ND only beat Purdue, BYU, & Pitt by 3 points each.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 03:32 PM) Yes, they lost 2 of 3 bowls against tough teams in low scoring games after running up scores all season long, thus proving that their huge margins of victory didn't mean a whole lot. They weren't any better than Big Ten teams that had been winning a lot of games by smaller margins. Wisconsin's 11 wins last year came by an average of 33.5 points, while Oregon's 11 wins came by an average of 28.1 points. 2009 Ohio State's 10 wins came by an average of 21.6 points, while Oregon's 10 wins came by an average of 18.9 points.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 03:04 PM) Well, last year ND's SOS wasn't very relevant, and the MAC teams winning all those games aren't getting on the schedules of Top 25 teams. If NIU calls up Alabama, Alabama hangs up on them and calls back Akron instead. NIU was on BIG 10 champion Wisconsin's schedule last year on a neutral field. Toledo played at Ohio State. Western Michigan played at Michigan last year. Michigan won the Sugar Bowl. And Akron is playing @ South Bend in 2015.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 02:53 PM) Navy wins more against the same schedule than those teams. That's what makes them higher-rated. A team that goes 8-4 against a crap schedule is better than a team that goes 4-8 against the same schedule. Last season 4 Sun Belt & 5 MAC team won 7 or more games. Navy went 5-7.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 15, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) MDRSportsManagement ‏@MDRSportsMgmt We are pleased to announce today that Dioner Navarro is the newest member of the Chicago Cubs! Congratulations! @Cubs have they announced a job title yet? Usher? Bleacher bum? Catcher? Consultant?