I Pick College Football Games 2010-11 - Week 1

As was the case last season, I'll pick college football games in this space on Fridays.  I was successful last year.  I try to do ten a week; this is an abbreviated schedule, so I'll just pick five.

Cincinnati +2 Fresno St. (loss)
Clemson -27 N Texas (loss)
Georgia -28.5 La/La (win)
E. Carolina +7.5 Tulsa (win)
TTech -13.5 SMU (loss)

No lock this week, but going forward, I'll usually give you one.

2-3 for the week.

The 100 Greatest Players in Pro Football History 100-91

Beginning this week, the NFL Network is starting a roll out of their top 100 players in NFL history - if it's been leaked I'm unaware of it.  They're doing ten at a time, so, I put together a list and will do the same; I'm going to beat them to the punch if I can each week, but then will go in and fill in their selections next to mine, for the sake of comparison.

It's largely a subjective list - it starts with good, objective intentions - my lists (with the underlying methodology) of best QB, RB, WR of all time can be found here
                                                                                           here
                                                                                           here

Those lists were based entirely on regular season and contained no element of peak value as opposed to career - additionally, those are just skill positions, and didn't attempt to cross evaluate one position with another.

But this list here does all of those things - mixes positions, eras, adds peak and postseason.  Just a whole mess of nonquantifiable elements. 

But I'm right of course.  Right! Right!  'Cause that's how I get down.

I don't know specifically who #101 is - but here's who made my short list from each position but didn't wind up making the cut:

QB Steve McNair
RB Edgerrin James
WR Charlie Joiner
TE Shannon Sharpe
OL Willie Roaf (he might be 101)
DL Andy Robustelli
LB Dick Butkus
DB Eric Allen
ST Dave Jennings (there are no punters on the list)
    
100. Larry Allen OL 1994-07 Cowboys
-Hard to evaluate offensive lineman separate from their teammates; what you're left with is team offensive statistics and the best you can do evaluating film and reading thoughts of experts you value.  The numbers of different positions on the line Allen played gets him the nod for me over Larry Little and Ron Mix. (NFL Net Pick - Joe Namath. He wouldn't be in my next hundred players.  Maybe Top 250.)

99. Tom Mack OL 1966-78 Rams
-The player with the top comp to Allen is Mack, the player with Mack's top comp is Steve Wisniewski, who I really considered for this spot.  Jim Ringo was on this list until about eleven minutes ago. (NFL Pick - Michael Strahan.  On this list, just a couple notches ahead)

98. Ozzie Newsome TE 1978-90 Browns
-I've only got 2 TE on the entire list, and only really looked at 4 as real candidates - Kellen Winslow's slightly shorter career got him edged, and I do mean edged out here. (NFL Pick - Lee Roy Selmon. Did not make my list; would make Top 150.) 

97. Steve Van Buren RB 1944-51 Eagles
-I prefer longer as opposed to shorter careers; Gale Sayers is nowhere near this list, and I'm assuming that won't be the case for the NFL Network - but Steve Van Buren; he started 48 games and scored 77 touchdowns.  There's just not a question in my mind he's one of the hundred best players of all time.  (NFL Pick - Derrick Brooks. He's on the list and significantly higher.

96. Michael Strahan DL 1993-07 Giants
-41 of his career sacks came in just two seasons; his top comp is Gino Marchetti, who just misssed the list - and not too far away is Andy Robustelli, a Giant from a previous era, and he and Strahan fought for this spot. (NFL Pick - Mel Hein.  This is a NYG spot apparently.  He's not on the list)

95. Norm Van Brocklin QB/P 1949-60 Rams
-Reading stats and watching tapes, I'm a big fan of Tobin Rote and Roman Gabriel - those guys don't quite make the final version of this list, and neither did Steve McNair, NVB's top comp. (NFL Pick - Larry Allen, #100 on my list)
94. Donovan McNabb QB 1999-   Eagles
Only active player in this section; the rushing totals and the likelihood that he'll add to his body of work for at least the next couple of seasons squeaks him through.  Roman Gabriel shakes the fist.  (NFL Pick - Lenny Moore, not on my list)

93. Lance Alworth WR 1962-72 Chargers
-Career numbers depressed given the era in which he played; his top comp by a wide margin is interesting - Keyshawn Johnson. (NFL Pick - Sam Huff, he's on my list and not far away)

92. OJ Simpson RB 1969-79 Bills
-Top comp is Tiki Barber and Ottis Anderson actually edges him out for career value - Juice's productive career was relatively short. (NFL Pick - Michael Irvin - on the list)

91. Lou Groza K/OL 1948-67 Browns
-Not only one of the top kickers of all time, but an elite offensive lineman; Groza beats out his top comps: Richmond Webb, Jim Parker, Art Shell for this spot. (NFL Pick - Fran Tarkenton - higher, and much higher)

Ten down.  90 to go.  The list of the top 100 professional football players ever marches on.  See you next week. (Tuesday night is the next ten reveal from NFL Network, so I'll get to it Tuesday morning).

2010 College Football Top 25 Preseason Prediction

My Trojans kick off Thursday night.  So here we go.

1. Boise St. (they got one first place vote in the AP poll; no, I am not that vote)

2. TCU (I essentially see Boise and TCU as interchangeable; I like one of them to run the table, the other one to lose one, win their bowl game, and finish second)

3. Ohio St. (number two in both major polls; I'd argue they're the most talented team in the country)

4. Florida (I think of Florida, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma in a lump one could re-order in any way one liked; I was surprised Bama got the top spot in both polls given how similarly I see them)

5. Alabama

6. Texas

7. Oklahoma

8. Virginia Tech (my lowest ranked team that I wouldn't be surprised if they won the title)

9. Oregon (their over/under is 9 wins; if you do worse than push betting the over that would be a surprise)

10. USC (14th on the AP poll, not eligible on the coaches poll; they won't get any poll breaks this season, but I think we win ten games)

11. Nebraska

12. Penn St. (why 19th on the writers poll?  9 win team, right?)

13. BYU (biggest disparity between my rankings and the other polls; BYU and Texas Tech are unranked by both writers and coaches - BYU over/under is 8 wins, that's a number I like - I don't love any of the win/loss numbers, except maybe..maybe USC since we play 13 games and the number is below 10, but I understand that number. I'm not advising mortgaging anything)

14. Texas Tech

15. Wisconsin

16. Iowa

17. West Virginia

18. Clemson

19. Cincinnati

20. Boston College

21. Pitt

22. Utah

23. LSU

24. Georgia

25. Houston

There are a few season win totals that you should consider.

Oregon (over 9)

Florida St (under 7.5)

Texas A&M (under 7)

Michigan (under 7)

BYU (over 8)

USC (over 9.5)

TBOR Athlete of The Month - August 2010

Josh Hamilton

Runners-up: Brandon Morrow, Alex Rodriguez, Adam Wainwright

Hamilton joins the other 7 monthly winners in the race for TBOR Athlete of the Year.  You can get to them here.

Back in '97, that winner was Tiger Woods.  He won the AP award as well.

Jan - Desmond Howard (Natrone Means, Dorsey Levens, Desmond Howard)
Feb - Dominic Hasek (Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Mark Jackson)
Mar - Mike Bibby (Keith Van Horne, Tony Gonzalez, Bobby Jackson)
Apr - Tiger Woods (Larry Walker, Kenny Lofton, Wayne Gretzky)
May - Roger Clemens (Tino Martinez, Tim Hardaway, Karl Malone)
June - Michael Jordan (Mike Vernon, Ernie Els, Tony Gwynn)
July - Martina Hingis (Pete Sampras, Roger Clemens, Justin Leonard)
Aug - Jeff Gordon (Roy Jones, Davis Love, Mark McGwire)
Sept - Barry Bonds (Ken Griffey, Charles Johnson, Mark McGwire)
Oct - Livan Hernandez (Gary Sheffield, Orel Hershiser, Charles Johnson)
Nov - Charles Woodson (Nick Van Exel, Barry Sanders, Terrell Davis)
Dec - Barry Sanders (Corey Dillon, Jerry Rice, Brian Griese)

1st and Ten: The Weekly Tendown August 22-28 2010

Dear Internet:

There are segregated middle school class elections in Mississippi.  In 2010.

Here's Tendown 41.

First: The Simplest of Jacks

Glenn Beck's I Have a Dream Speech was yesterday; it's hard to get overly agitated by Beck; he seems so transparently craven.  If the American public wants to buy his John Birch society wine in new bottles, I suppose they can.

Except his aren't just simple arguments about American history; they're outright falsehoods, like the separation of church and state was a myth; I had a conversation with a student awhile ago who believed such, she offered quotes from Madison and Jefferson that didn't seem remotely plausible, and it turns out they're fabricated by David Barton, Glenn Beck's "historian".  The student disbelieved this, instead taking the position that my education at "secular schools" disabled my ability to see the truth. 

There is an agreement we need to make about facts; as members of an academic community, as citizens of a democracy, as thinking reeds; there have always been those on the fringe of American thought who wore tinfoil hats, now we put them on Fox News and call them real Americans. 

The guts of Beck's March on Reality yesterday are his stated claim that King didn't fight for economic justice; you can see over and over again Beck's argument that the entirety of the King legacy is about color blindness (and who better to deliver that message in 2010 than the man who said the first African-American President has a "deep seated hatred for white people").  This is just factually incorrect.  At the time of King's assassination (he was in Memphis supporting a garbage strike, a month before he spoke to 1300 striking sanitation workers, "Don’t go back on the job until the demands are met. “Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed....If we are going to get equality, if we are going to get adequate wages, we are going to have to struggle for it.) he was organizing the Poor People's Campaign:

King spent the last months of his life organizing a popular movement aimed at disrupting the machinery of the United States until the passage of an Economic Bill of Rights;
“The dispossessed of this nation—the poor, both white and Black—live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to lift the load of poverty.”

These are not King quotes that you would have heard from Beck's stage yesterday. 

The flaw is not entirely, or even largely, Beck's.  Our national consciousness has almost entirely erased King's economic radicalism, focusing only on the elements of his civil rights work now largely considered benign; King's a commodified, beatified marker for the notion that all men are created equal.  A notion that, when it comes to race, is accepted by even the most fact-free of the Simple Jack nation.

Except in Mississippi, that is, where the middle school class President has to be a white kid.

Like Muhammad Ali, King's had his edges dulled.  Our collective understanding of him has been limited to a greeting card, "gosh, wouldn't it be great if little black boys and little white boys could hang out together and stuff and there'd be no more fighting.  Boo on fighting!  I have a dream where people won't be mean anymore."

And we can all get behind that.  Corporations, elementary school teachers, Tea Partiers, Simple jack.  You.  Me.  We're all against mean people in the abstract.  Thanks, Dr. King.

But the guy who said:

 “It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty.”

and

The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.

and

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

and

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.

and

Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion.

That's a voice we could use more of in our national debate in 2010.  Not to mention in Mississippi middle schools and tea party rallies on the Washington mall.    

And in Tennessee - where they set fire to the mosque site last night. Probably though, Howard Dean will tell us that's due to good faith issues that good, well intentioned Americans have with the placement of a mosque at...er....Ground Zero...in Murfreesboro.  Where they've had a mosque.  For 30 years.  Without incident.  Until now. 
 
After the jump - the rest of Tendown 41