cabiness42

Yes, if Mark is re-signed, then I think one of Danks/Floyd is traded but not both, and the most logical one to trade is Danks because he is a free agent sooner and also probably gets a better return than Floyd. I really don't care if there are 3 lefties in the rotation. If Mark is not re-signed, then I can see both getting traded.

If the Sox are going to re-sign Mark, then they probaby aren't trading both Danks and Floyd. Probably one of them since Peavy, Sale, and Humber are locked into the rotation, but I don't see the Sox shelling out money for Mark and then sticking Stewart or whoever in the rotation.

* Move the season up one week so that the last week of the season is Thanksgiving weekend. * Keep the BCS standings. * 12-team playoff, consisting of the 8 highest ranked conference champions and the 4 highest ranked non-champions. * Teams are seeded 1-12 based on final BCS standings, except that the top 4 seeds, who receive byes, must be conference champions OR the highest ranked independent * First round is played 2 weeks after Thanksgiving Saturday. Second round is played the following Saturday. Semifinals are played on January 1. Finals are played on the second Monday in January. First two rounds played at home stadiums. Last two rounds at pre-determined sites. Based on this season, teams and seeds would have been: 1 LSU 2 Oklahoma State 3 Oregon 4 Wisconsin 5 Alabama 6 Stanford 7 Arkansas 8 Boise State 9 Clemson 10 TCU 11 Southern Miss 12 West Virginia Round 1: West Virginia at Alabama, Southern Miss at Stanford, TCU at Arkansas, Clemson at Boise State Round 2: WVU/Ala winner at Wisconsin, USM/Stan winner at Oregon, TCU/Ark winner at Oklahoma State, BSU/Clem winner at LSU

Unless the Sox have given up on trying to re-sign Mark, I don't see any trades going down until they find out whether or not he's back. That's probably the first domino that has to fall.

My Heisman vote would be 1)Luck 2)Griffin 3)Ball, but I would not argue with anybody who wanted to put those three in a different order. Any of the three would be a deserving winner.

Michigan is much, much better than VT, and that is coming from somebody who went to Notre Dame AND Michigan State.

Five Big Ten teams are higher-rated than their opponents in Sagarin: Michigan, MSU, Illinois, OSU, and Wisconsin. Though Michigan is the only one with an edge > 3 points.

The Bears defensive line sent him into his last retirement. Now the Bears offensive line can have the chance.

There are 10 available BCS slots. Six go automatically to the champions of the six BCS conferences. Two more automatically went to Alabama and Stanford for finishing in the top 4. That left two slots where the bowls could actually pick from among eligible teams. The Sugar Bowl ended up with both of those picks and took #11 Virginia Tech and #13 Michigan. #6 Arkansas and #9 South Carolina were ineligible due to the SEC already having two BCS teams. Eligible teams passed over were #7 Boise State, #8 Kansas State, #12 Baylor, and #14 Oklahoma. I'm not in any way a fan of the Big 12 (minus 2) but they really got doubly screwed over by the BCS this year by not getting OSU into the championship game and by not getting a team ranked #8 into any BCS game. Just as a matter of principle, I'm going to make it a point to watch Boise State and Kansas State's bowl games and not the Sugar Bowl. First of all because the Sugar Bowl didn't pick the most-deserving teams and secondly because Virginia Tech really blows and will probably lose by 20+ points.

I don't think that a team should be automatically disqualified from the NC game due to not winning its division/conference, but I do think it's fair to use it as a factor when considering teams that are very close otherwise, such as OSU and Alabama. If the choices were Alabama and Oregon, I would take Alabama because they have a better record and higher computer ranking even though Oregon won its conference. But the choices are Alabama and OSU, and in that case I would give OSU the edge due to being a conference champion.

My 3 year old is left handed. If he develops ADD on top of that, then he's pretty much a lock to become a major leaguer.

Isn't that even more reason to shell out the money for Mark? To have one more team in the bidding war for Danks?

My two cents: The SEC is a better conference than the Big 12 (minus two), but Alabama didn't have to play two of the better teams in the SEC in Georgia and South Carolina. Yet Alabama seems to be getting credit for having these teams in their conference. If you go by the BCS standings, OSU's best wins were against #8 KSU, #12 Baylor, and #14 Oklahoma. Alabama's best wins were against #6 Arkansas, #22 Penn State, and #24 Auburn. Yes, Alabama's second best win is against Penn State. South Carolina has beaten two teams better than Penn State. I'd rather see them play LSU before I'd want to see another LSU-Alabama game. Yes, OSU's loss is worse because it was to a 6-6 team, but it was on the road in overtime less than 24 hours after the tragic death of two OSU basketball coaches.

http://www.midwestsportsfans.com/2011/12/w...is-your-answer/

I think the best situation for a child is to be raised by a mother and father, but I think a gay couple raising a child is only slightly less ideal and certainly far, far better than being raised by a single crackwhore who has children by 3+ different men. So I'm not at all opposed to gay couples adopting, but my only disclaimer is that if the parents giving up the baby have a moral objection to it, they should be allowed to place that restriction on the adopting parents.

This needs to be a multi-response poll, because we are doing option #3 and that is likely at some point to necessitate option #5.

The only surprise I really want from a woman is for her to be naked when I'm not expecting it.

A good chunk of my list came from musicals, and given the past several comments, I can see why I'm probably the only one who had those on his list.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...3138,full.story

Slight tangent on that subject: My uncle was a civilian employee of the US Army as a forensic chemist. He told me a story once about some soldiers who were on court marshall for killing some people (I think it was in Somalia). The people they killed were armed, but a dozen witnesses (possibly coached by your humanities professor?) all testified that the armed men were running away from the soldiers and had their backs to them when they were shot and thus they were not a threat and so the shootings were not justified. My uncle needed about 10 minutes with the clothes of the victims to determine with 100% certainty that the bullets entered from the front and exited from the back.

I'm still mad at Brooks for the money and time I wasted to watch him play s***ty basketball.

At some point during last year's tournament, I went back 12 years and did an analysis of how ACC and Big Ten teams, and Duke and Michigan State specifically, performed compared to their seeding. I will try to find the exact results, but the ACC and especially Duke underperformed their seeds by quite a bit and the Big Ten and MSU overperformed by quite a bit.

No trades, signings, or extensions are going to happen with any pitchers until Buehrle signs somewhere.

There are 70 bowl berths available. There are currently 70 bowl-eligible teams (excluding Miami, who is bowl-eligible but has banned themselves from a bowl). Pitt and Syracuse are both one win away from being bowl-eligible and play each other, so that gets the total to at least 71. Connecticut, South Florida, UCLA, and Hawaii all need to win to become bowl-eligible, but all are underdogs. So with at most 5 bowl-eligible teams being left out and more likely only 1 or 2, I don't see any Big Ten team being left out, even one on a 6-game losing streak.

Sure, that's possible, but my point is that Quentin gets hit so much more than other players that when he gets hit, it's hard to argue that the pitcher is hitting him intentionally.