The NASCAR Chase For The Cup has been realistically down to two drivers—Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski for a few weeks, even if TheSportsNotebook has been manufacturing ways to give other drivers a chance. But as Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 (2 PM ET, ESPN) awaits, there’s no denying that JJ and Keselowski are the only ones standing with three races to go.
The big four unbeaten teams—Alabama, Oregon, Kansas State & Notre Dame—will all be on national TV on Saturday. While ND’s home game against Pitt (3:30 PM ET, NBC) shouldn’t be much cause for concern, the other three all have tough challenges and all will be aired on prime-time. Set aside whether it’s at all fan-friendly to put all the best games on at the same time of the day, and instead let’s focus on the three biggest battles of college football Week 10—Alabama-LSU, Oregon-USC and Oklahoma State-Kansas State.
It’s the NFC East that gets the spotlight in NFL Week 9, as the Giants play the marquee late Sunday afternoon game, the Cowboys play Sunday night, the Eagles play Monday night and the Redskins’ game early Sunday will be seen by the largest portion of the TV audience. So it’s here that we’ll start our breakdown of the Sunday games, going top-to-bottom in the standings.
The Miami Dolphins don’t have the pedigree of the New England Patriots. They don’t have the soap opera quality of the New York Jets. But what the Dolphins do have is at least a contender in the watered-down race for the AFC wild-card spots and you have to give Miami at least a puncher’s chance of upsetting New England in the AFC East race itself. With the Patriots on a bye this week at 5-3, Miami, at 4-3, can move into a tie for first. Let’s look at the overall trajectory of the Dolphins’ season—what they’ve done and what’s to come to get a handle on how seriously we should take their shot at a division title.
The ACC football race is one of the most intriguing in the major conferences—perhaps no other league has as many varied outcomes that can realistically happen in November. This conference still has a longshot chance at getting a team in a national title game and earning an at-large spot in one of the BCS bowls. That’s one extreme. The other is that probation and a weak division could give them an incredibly weak champion to send to the Orange Bowl, where the league goes if its champ isn’t in the top two nationally. There are five teams with a realistic chance at the conference championship. Let’s break them down….
We might look at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-12 win over the Washington Redskins on Sunday, their second straight victory and just dismiss it as the fruit of a soft schedule—beating the Bengals and Redskins two straight weeks can’t count for that much, given the teams are a combined 6-7 in games when they aren’t playing Pittsburgh. But it’s the way the Steelers are winning that has to give the rest of the AFC pause.
The NBA season tips off tonight with three games, highlighted by a TNT doubleheader of Boston-Miami (8 PM ET) and Dallas-LA Lakers (10:30 PM ET). TheSportsNotebook ran its NBA previews for the Eastern & Western conferences this past weekend, offering brief thoughts on each team and a projection for how they would fare against the Over/Under win total posted for them in the Las Vegas sportsbooks. Now it’s time for the final preview, with picks for how each conference will stand up and who eventually claims the title in June.
The month of October is in the books for college football and the crazy season is about to begin. November has a way of throwing a monkey wrench in everyone’s BCS bowl projections. From the strain of a long season to the challenges college kids have with keeping focus as media spin swirls around them to playing high-quality opposition looking to make a name for itself, November almost never goes as planned. Still, TheSportsNotebook is undeterred in making its BCS bowl projections five weeks from the finish line.
It took four games, but the World Series finally produced a high-caliber baseball game on both sides, as San Francisco and Detroit traded jousts for ten innings. In the end, the result was a familiar one though—the Giants got the key hits, and with a 4-3 win San Francisco completes a four-game sweep and secures its second World Series title in three years.
The Detroit Tigers had three legitimate cracks at breaking through against San Francisco Giants’ starter Ryan Vogelsong in the first five innings. All three chances went by the boards and the Giants’ pitching dominance of this World Series continued, as a second straight 2-0 shutout win gave them a commanding 3-0 lead in games and a chance to lock up their second title in three years in Game 4 tonight (8 PM ET, Fox).
The NBA season starts on Tuesday night, with Boston-Miami being the opener of a TNT doubleheader, and then Dallas-LA Lakers going in the 10:30 PM ET slot. TheSportsNotebook has already run the Eastern Conference section of its NBA previews, and now we’ll focus on the Western Conference. As we did with the East, each team’s Over/Under win total, as posted in Las Vegas, will be listed and analyzed.
The NBA season starts up Tuesday night with the Miami Heat getting their rings and hoisting a championship banner in a game against the Boston Celtics. That means it’s time for TheSportsNotebook to run its NBA previews. Unlike baseball or football, where we give each team a complete a preview all its own, pro hoops will just split into conferences.
The league, like hockey, is more postseason-oriented, and we’ll use between now and Christmas Day—a now-traditional showcase day for the NBA—to dig deeper into the strengths and weaknesses of each contender. For now, we’ll start with a basic overview of each conference race, and an Over/Under pick on each team’s projected regular season win total by the Las Vegas sportsbooks. This post focuses on the Eastern Conference.
