College Football is having a crazy season, for the third straight week in a row the #1 ranked team in the country lost. First it was Alabama going down to South Carolina, then it was Ohio State going down to Wisconsin, and this past week it was Oklahoma going down to Missouri. Now the question is going to be who will the new #1 ranked team be? Most people feel that it will be one of three teams, Oregon, Auburn, or Boise State with most leaning towards Auburn. Those who were hoping for BCS chaos, you are on the verge of getting your wish because right now no one can confidently say who is the best team in college football. No need to beat a dead horse, but can you imagine if there was a college football playoff and all these teams had to face each other? It would probably be the biggest and best sports spectacle out there.
The World Series has been set, and it was not the two teams everyone expected. You can make the argument that no one had Texas and San Francisco in the World Series, even at the start of the playoffs. The Texas Rangers out played the Yankees all series, and in the clinching game they kept the Yankees off balance, and were finally able to break through against Yankee pitcher Phil Hughes. The NLCS saw the Giants play enough defense to get Roy Oswalt out of the game, and Juan Uribe hitting an improbable home run off of Ryan Madsen to give them the decisive 3 – 2 lead. The World Series starts on Wednesday and it will be the Rangers Cliff Lee vs. the Giants Matt Cain, it should be an interesting series as both teams have contrasting styles.
Cain Velasquez beat Brock Lesnar at UFC 121 to win the heavyweight title. Velasquez won because he was the better fighter, but he was aided by a dumb game plan used by Brock Lesnar. Lesnar, who has relied on brut force to defeat his previous opponents rather than any sort of real skill, and against a technically sound and highly conditioned fighter like Velasquez that was a mistake. Velasquez was expecting the Lesnar rush, and set him up for a rope a dope and let Lesnar punch himself out. After that Velasquez took Lesnar down, and with his great cardio set a pace that Lesnar could not keep up with. I never liked Lesnar as the champion; he was just a big guy who covered up like a smaller man when punches rained down on him. Velasquez is a more legitimate champion who actually has some form of martial arts skill.
Brett Favre returned to Lambeau field to play the Green Bay Packers for what may be his last time, and unlike last season where Favre was seemingly unstoppable he put up a pedestrian performance in this match up. The Vikings fell to the Packers 24 – 28 on the heels of two Favre interceptions, one of which was returned for a Green Bay touchdown. Favre tweaked his ankle again and was noticeably limping in the fourth quarter, couple that with him admitting to the Sterger voicemails (but not the pictures), and the Vikings horrible start this season, and you have a scenario where it might be time for him to hang it up for good.
The NFL’s new enforcement of illegal hits did not take away from the games on Sunday. Now everyone is praising the NFL this morning that it did not change the game, and the NFL was right the whole time. These people are missing the point of everyone’s argument with the new “enforcement” which was not defined by the NFL initially, and giving officials a free pass to “judge” whether a hit was devastating or not was disturbing. The fact that they sent a DVD to each team and to officials outlining clean hits and illegal hits was good thing, and the fact that it was only hits that were to the head and neck areas helped to lessen the impact. Although like I predicted several defensive players over compensated and avoided hits, or lightly hit someone and threw their hands up hoping the hit was not illegal. We will see how this progresses, but I don’t think the solution is legislating hits over creating a better helmet.
