Charlie Manuel was fired today as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s an unfortunate move, but also hardly surprising, given how much the Phils have disappointed for two consecutive years. I don’t see it as Manuel’s fault—the organization shoved all its chips on the table with big contracts to veterans and those vets just couldn’t stay healthy consistently—but it’s hard to deny that it’s time for the Phils to take a new direction.
It’s all eyes on the Boston market tonight in the world of daily sports, as the feature game in both baseball and preseason football will be in the Hub.
Perhaps this new era beginning in 2013 will be the start of a good, more stable run for the Mountain West. They won the battle for survival in the West—the WAC folded up shop and its best teams folded into the Mountain West, giving the league 12 teams, two divisions and a conference championship game.
The Mountain West Conference’s West Division is split into two evenly divided classes—there are three teams for whom you can make an almost equally credible case to win the division and advance to this new-look conference’s first-ever league championship game. And there are three teams for whom no reasonable case can be made.
The progress of the Boise State program over the last ten years is such that now when the Broncos go 10-2, as they did last year, but fail to make a BCS game or win the conference championship outright (they shared a three-way crown), and just nip a power-conference team (Washington) in a bowl game, it’s treated with a certain amount of ho-hum.
The cameras of the MLB Network go to flyover country today, with big games from the Central Divisions in both leagues keying a day-night doubleheader on the network and highlighting Thursday’s daily sports docket.
The AFC North shapes up as the best division on the conference, and the second-best in the entire NFL, with only the presence of the Cleveland Browns relegating the foursome behind the NFC West. It’s also going to be a little quieter, with Baltimore Ravens’ legend Ray Lewis now retired, off his team’s magical Super Bowl run to end the 2012 season.
The Cleveland Browns haven’t made the playoffs since 2002. They haven’t even contended seriously for postseason play since 2007. They have not advanced to even the second round of the playoffs since 1994. Maybe that’s why the recent ruckus over the comments of radio analyst and former quarterback Bernie Kosar weren’t such a bad thing—if nothing else, they reminded us a day when the Browns were relevant.
In the AFC North, the media oxygen is sucked up the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, but the Cincinnati Bengals have quietly lurked and snuck into the postseason for two straight years. Last year the Bengals beat out the Steelers for that final AFC playoff spot, winning a big head-to-head game in Week 16. Cincy hasn’t been able to move out of the first round. Has their time finally come in 2013?
The Pittsburgh Steelers suffered through their first non-winning season since 2006 in going 8-8 last season and seeing a late-season drive for the playoffs come up short in disappointing fashion. In spite of some high-profile free-agent departures, the Steelers have been priced as a slight favorite to win a competitive AFC North. TheSportsNotebook’s NFL analysis looks to see whether that’s justified.
This isn’t a question our NFL analysis would normally ask of a team that just won the Super Bowl, but it applies to the Baltimore Ravens—can they get better? Not just a little bit better, but this team will need to make substantial improvement if they hope to make another serious run at the brass ring.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have gotten more TV coverage in the last three weeks than in the entire last twenty years combined. With justification of course, since is the first time the Buccos have been relevant since 1992, but it still seems strange to be regularly noting that a Pittsburgh baseball game is the highlight of TV’s daily sports options.
