With the Cardinals and Red Sox each having won two World Series relatively recently (2004 & 2007 for the Sox, and 2006 & 2011 for the Cards), what’s at stake is nothing less than the honor of being baseball’s top franchise of the still-young 21st century.
Peyton Manning’s homecoming falls flat, thanks to a big difference in supporting cast performance. The Jets get a win both lucky and deserved all in one, the Cowboys grab first place, the Bengals win a wild one in Detroit and the improbable Chiefs are the last unbeaten team. These games lead up TheSportsNotebook’s NFL analysis as we run through all the action of NFL Week 7…
TheSportsNotebook’s college football coverage has been doing BCS bowl projections all year, and now have something substantive to go on. The first edition of the official BCS rankings are out
Even for those who picked Florida State to win this game (a group that did not include me), the size and scope of this rout had to be shocking. Let’s consider this stat–the Seminoles committed twelve penalties. In other words, FSU didn’t even play a particularly clean game and still won a road blowout where Clemson scored a touchdown with 13 seconds left.
Let’s take a look at the hows and whys of “Black Saturday” in the SEC and then discuss what the long-term implications are in both the national and conference picture.
Throughout Game 6 it had the feel of a night that didn’t quite belong to the Boston Red Sox. Dustin Pedroia missed a three-run homer by inches when a ball just went foul down the left field line. David Ortiz and Mike Napoli missed chances to tie a 2-1 game in the sixth. Max Scherzer wasn’t as dominating as he’d been in Game 2, but the Detroit starter and presumptive Cy Young winner was still pitching extremely well.
The St. Louis Cardinals solidified their status as the major league baseball version of the New England Patriots or the San Antonio Spurs. Just ruthlessly efficient, always in the mix and moving forward like a steamroller. That’s exactly what St. Louis was on Friday night, burying the Los Angeles Dodgers 9-0 and clinching the National League pennant for the fourth time in ten years
Everyone else has a lot of ground to make up, and Talladega Superspeedway is the place where dramatic things can happen. “Restrictor-plate racing–or pack racing means a big crackup, more often than not,” said TheSportsNotebook’s resident NASCAR advisor, my brother Bill. “Someone who drives a nice safe race can win.” He further added that if someone–for example Greg Biffle at (-58) off the pace, where to win in such fashion, while the leaders got caught in a wreck they couldn’t recover from, it would change the dynamic of the race.
TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage looks back on the middle trio of the ALCS and ahead to the weekend’s conclusion in Fenway Park.
After a couple weeks marked by several good matchups, but nothing really spectacular, college football Week 8 has two big-time battles set for Saturday. An ACC showdown will decide the conference favorite and have national title implications. And on the opposite coast is a Pac-12 game that will likely have repercussions on the BCS bowl picture, and may yet impact the national championship race.
TheSportsNotebook.com’s march to the opening of the NBA season on October 29 has begun, and today we’ll take a look at the Pacific Division. We’ll go over each team’s starting lineup and measure them against the NBA win futures–the Over/Under win totals–posted in Las Vegas.
TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage reviews the three games from Los Angeles, and then looks ahead to Friday night, and possibly Saturday night in St. Louis…
