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Philadelphia Eagles

Eagles 2010: Farce or Tragedy?

When the news flashed across the wires that Michael Vick was the new starting QB of the Philadelphia Eagles, I could only shake my head in disbelief. Just last week, I wrote:

“[Reid] is not going to wither under media and fan pressure to start Michael Vick. First, because he knows Michael Vick is not the long term answer at QB… More importantly, because admitting he made a mistake in anointing Kevin Kolb the future one game into the season would mean that Andy made a mistake in evaluating Kolb’s talent. For four years. … His concussion might force Kolb to sit versus the Lions but as soon as he’s healthy, Kevin Kolb will be back under center.”

Oops.

This isn’t about being wrong. This is about being wrong about Reid as a coach. Despite all the complaints about Reid as a head coach (poor clock management, passing too much, lack of a running game, arrogance, etc.), the one positive trait that always stood out was his ability to remain calm and steer the ship towards his destination. We might not have always agreed on the course he chose, but we knew that he would never panic and overcorrect. After all, that’s the type of knee jerk behavior that gets other coaches around the league fired.

So what does Andy do? He throws everything out the window and makes a knee jerk reaction. What in the name of Rich Kotite is going on here?

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College Football

CFB Recap of Week 3: Blowouts, Close Calls & Everything Else in Between the 20s

Week 3 finally brought us some interesting games and at the same time offered us the equivalent of paint drying excitement. For twelve hours there seemed to be an intriguing game on, from the SEC battle between the Hogs and Dawgs to kick the day off to the nightcap out west between Big-10 opponent [Iowa] and Pac-10 foe [Arizona]. Get your popcorn ready because we’re about to roll!

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College College Football

Long Live The BCS

You can thank the 1987 Fiesta Bowl. You can thank Don Myers. You can thank Sunkist. Hell, you can even thank Penn State and Miami. The highest rated game in the history of college football put the BCS on the map and controversy on the horizon.

For the past 6-8 years, teams from non-BCS conferences have started to make some noise: Utah, Boise State, BYU, Hawaii and TCU for the most part.  These teams have started to match the perennial powers of college football and even win against them. These teams are so intimidating that 2 teams from non-BCS conferences were ranked in the top 6 for the first time in BCS existence. Are they deserving of such a ranking? Perhaps.  And to a lot of college coaches, preseason rankings are irrelevant, and for the most part they are correct. The BCS conferences flux during the season; rarely do a handful of teams run the tables.

However, a non-BCS conference team such as this year’s Boise State and TCU are very likely to go undefeated. The competition of their respective conferences is somewhat pitiful. This means for these teams, preseason rankings are everything. Boise has a clear path to the national title game, as does TCU. No BCS conference team can say that.

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NFL General

2010 NFL Week 2 Picks and Podcast

OK. No more of the “it’s hard to pick week 1” excuses. It’s week 2 and we’ve all had a chance to see what every team is made of. Week 2 separates the contenders from the frauds and we’re here to pick them out. Were the Jets all bluster? Will Seattle come back to earth? Is Houston over the hump? We debate all those questions and more on the podcast this week.

The featured games this week are Baltimore @ Cincinnati, Houston @ Washington, New England @ NY Jets, and New Orleans @ San Francisco.

You can download the podcast directly (running time 90 mins) or subscribe to the feed.

If you use iTunes, just click here and then click subscribe and iTunes will take care of the rest.

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General Sports

Cleveland’s Got Nothin’ On Me

Hi, my name is JDWC and I’m addicted to sports. I was hooked from birth, because my father is an addict too. Like him, my drugs of choice are the Dodgers, the 49ers and the Oakland A’s. But, like most addicts and sons, I pledged to be better, to be more. So I surpassed my father…I became a basketball fan and chose the most depressing depressant known to man: the Golden State Warriors. The high school years were a brief, four-step recovery program. I graduated from the program in 2007, proclaimed clean and cured!

Alas, tragedy struck again. I was thrust into the real world and sent up to Pullman, WA to educate myself in the arts of Journalism and Creative Writing. From the first time I tasted Washington State University football, I was hooked again. Years passed and I drifted back into my addictive haze. Over the last week, I have hit rock bottom. If only I had chosen St. Louis. New York. Boston. Even Seattle. Instead, I got what I deserved. My teams have taken years from my life I will never get back. This is the uncut, untold story of my struggles:

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Categories
College College Football General Sports

After Week 2: What We Know and What We Think We Know

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. We can finally relax knowing the calming feeling of our College Football season is with us. It’s like our pillow, very comforting, even more so if you reside in or around the Tuscaloosa or Columbus area and very UN-comforting if you’re in the booming Metropolis of Boise (we’ll get to that later.) These past two weeks have literally taught us nothing and at the same time taught us nothing; wait. Didn’t I already say that? It sounds funny but we have honestly learned nothing while getting Xed and Oed at the same time like we’re on Rex Ryan’s JV squad from Hard Knocks. I feel like I should be ranting a testimonial into the camera (looking left and right……DAMN! No camera.) Oh well. We’ll talk NFL in another column, right now we’re talking about CFB…..I mean Hell, I’m 40! I’m a MAN! Let’s get to it.

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Philadelphia Eagles

In Defense of Kevin Kolb

kevin kolb gets sacked(or Quick! Everyone Panic!  Kolb fails to win Super Bowl in week 1.)

There’s no getting around it: Kolb was absolutely dreadful on Sunday. 5 for 10 passing, 24 yards, 2 sacks, and a 56.3 rating. Not only were the stats bad, he looked jittery and confused in the pocket, something that we were told by Eagles brass would not happen with the quick decision making Kolb.

So is it time to call it a season, or even worse, start Michael Vick at QB? Of course not. While a QB controversy is good for websites, sports radio, and even something called newspapers, it’s not good for the Eagles. Furthermore, there is no quarterback controversy. Kevin Kolb is your starting QB.

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NFL General

2010 NFL Preview

Like NFL football, I am back. Let me first apologize for my extended absence. And admit that I’ve missed the Sportscolumn community. I swear, there is a method to my madness (reasons for hiatus: pursuit of double major at Washington State University, new puppy, new girlfriend, and inebriation due to lackluster performance by the Dodgers). College classes are no longer fun, my puppy is no longer cute, my girlfriend is no longer…well, my girlfriend, and I’ve completely run out of Keystone. So, it is my privilege to finally be back on my computer, trying to convince and persuade everyone to read my annoying articles and accept my biased viewpoints as fact.

As always, I am pushing the deadline of journalistic timeliness by posting this preview literally ten minutes into the Saints-Vikings season kick-off. Anyway, with my baseball team out of the picture, it’s time to get excited for football season. Here is how I see the season playing out:

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NFL General

2010 NFL Week 1 Picks and Podcast

It’s football season! Every season, I give the excuse that week 1 is the hardest week to pick. But looking at the results from last season might give us some insight into what will happen this week. Opening day 2009 gave us only 3 underdogs winning outright and they were all away: Jets @ Texans, Niners @ Cards, and Broncos @ Bengals.

As far as against the spread goes, it was an even split between underdogs and favorites. But 7 of those underdog winners were away. Vegas tends to lean towards the home team a little so the trick here is to find those dogs.

The featured games this week are Cincinnati @ New England, Indianapolis @ Houston, Dallas @ Washington, and Baltimore @ NY Jets.

You can download the podcast directly (running time 90 mins) or subscribe to the feed.

If you use iTunes, just click here and then click subscribe and iTunes will take care of the rest.

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NFL General

A More Accurate Strength of Schedule for 2010

It’s been recently theorized that the strength of schedule used by most media outlets is inaccurate because it uses the previous season’s record and NFL teams tend to change over the course of an offseason.  So what should we use to determine strength of schedule?  Why Vegas of course.

It actually makes perfect sense.  Vegas bookmakers make their living on accurately predicting the number of regular season wins for each team.  Or at least setting the number and the vig so that they make the most money off of it.   But in general, they’re pretty good at picking that number.

There’s two things we have to examine: 1) is using the number wins set by Vegas more accurate than using previous year wins; 2) if so, what actually are the rankings for strength of schedule for 2010?

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