Merry Christmas, yo.

Good will towards me. I mean men. Maybe both? Here is the best Christmas video. Merry Christmas everyone!

One week and counting.

I am getting pumped for Christmas. The food, the presents, the people, sneaking off to watch bowl games: I love it. To get into the mood for a Christmas feast here is a "helping hands" clip from Whose Line. I wish we all could have a dancing turkey with our Christmas dinner.

Welcome to baseball's vacation home.

One chapter in Cardinals history was closed this weekend as the Cardinals traded one of the "big three." Surprisingly it was Jim Edmonds, not Scott Rolen. (I still feel Rolen will be gone by the start of the season) With Jimmy's declining power and average and a giant salary I can't disagree with the decision. Personally, Jim was on my "possible steroid use" list. But as he wasn't in the Mitchell Report it was a good time to pull the trigger on this deal. I don't think the Cardinals will miss Jimmy: this deal feels like the Ray Lankford deal we also pulled with the Padres. At least he got sent to San Diego. It could have been somewhere like.....Pittsburgh. (our regrets to Matt Morris.)

But Edmonds was a huge part of this team for the past 8 years, and without his leadership I don't think we win the World Series. And for that, we salute you over-the-hill-centerfield-man. My favorite mmemory of Jim was the walk-off homerun against the Astros in the 2004 NLCS. Here is the "I Live For This" commercial Jimmy shot in 2005 including some of his best catches.

Dark, Dank and Dreary.

Yesterday the weather was gray. I woke up today, AND IT WAS GRAYER! (props to Lewis Black). It feels like the sun went on Christmas break early. And with the Mitchell Report ready to rock the baseball world, it looks like things are just going to get darker.

So I will provide a pick-me-up. This is a live performance from The Polyphonic Spree from a show in Japan. You may have seen them in a Scrubs episode. I always refer to them in my head as "The Hippy Orchestra." I have heard them be called "prozac for my soul." Good stuff. And yes, the lead singer is very weird.




ps I will be very impressed(and slighty embarrassed) if anyone can figure out where I got my post-title from.

All alone in my white-boy pain.

If you are like me, this is how your sports weekend went.
Saturday night was spent without Mizzou football, which only re-opened the wounds of Oklahoma and the BCS. The Cardinals have only signed a poor hitting shortstop in the off season. The Rams trotted Brock Berlin for his first NFL action as we lost to a under-achieving Bengals team. Even Arsenal lost in England.

I got a little frustration with my sports world, so I felt a de-stresser was needed for my white-boy angst. This is one of Weird Al's polkas where he takes radio songs and makes one giant polka out of it. Totally awesome even if you don't know the songs. Takes me back to 2002.

The BCS are bum-lookers.

The BCS is set and clearly this season didn't end for Mizzou fans the way we wanted it to. Last week we were headed to the National Championship, this week we are not in a BCS bowl. But everything is not as bad as I first thought they were. I like that the Rose Bowl kept their tradition and picked Illinois out of the Big 10 to play USC in the Rose Bowl. I hope Illinois upsets USC just like they did with Ohio State.

The Orange Bowl has no excuse. If they can't see through Kansas like Mizzou fans did they will get what they deserve. Virginia Tech will kill them, and Mizzou fans will have a good time watching it. I hope KU fans travel as well as they think they do, cause I wouldn't expect their team to show up.(yeah, I said it.) On the other hand, Mizzou v. Arkansas is a good matchup for Mizzou. We play a bowl on New Years day in a game that will feature two Heisman finalists. If we win we finish the season in the top 5. Not so bad in the end.

As for the BCS itself, I am in favor of a playoff. There are 3 options in my mind.
1) 4 Teams. This is my favorite. Keep the current BCS rankings and have the top 4 teams play 2 games to decide the championship. In any given season there are only 3 teams that would have a claim to be in the championship game, and this format gives them a chance. This year would be Ohio State v. Oklahoma, LSU v. Virginia Tech. Pretty good games if you ask me. Also, it would make teams play hard each week, because any loss would most likely push you out of the top 4.

2)8 teams. I don't like this one so much. 8 teams could mean alot of things. 2 or 3 teams in a conference qualifying(SEC and Big 12). Teams who have easy schedule making it (KU). Would teams like Hawaii make it? Would there be a selection commitee? Could a team take it easy in the final weeks because they have "qualified?" Too many questions for me.

3) 11 teams. 11 teams? Yes, one for each conference champion, both major and mid-major. This is the most fair option: it gives absolutely every FBS school a chance at the national championship (much like basketball) Also, each game is still meaningful because most of the time one loss will lose you a conference. The problem is it makes the non-conference schedule less important. But maybe that's good. Maybe teams will play other teams for experience and not just an easy win.

The NCAA will probably go with a "plus 1" format which means they will pick the 2 teams after all the "normal" BCS bowls. It's better than what we have, but until football lets the student-athletes win on the field (like every other sport) there will still be flaws.