Bartender Banter: Stay Classy Ron Mexico!

Enough already. Michael Vick will never be the superstar quarterback that you claim he will be. Yes, he's a tremendous athlete, but having a great physique and being athletic isn't the only thing you need to succeed in the NFL. Hell look at Peyton Manning. He's a walking potato for Christ's sake, but he has remarkable field vision and can lead his team to wherever they need to go*.

Wait, isn't this the same site that completely trashed Peyton a couple weeks ago? Yes it is, but if you read it carefully without being blinded by your rage towards us and your homosexual tendencies towards #18, you'd see that we never deny that Manning is ultimately a very talented quarterback. Well Chaim did, but he is also one of only 47 people that actually bought Paul Stanley's last album.

When all is said and done, what will we have learned from the Ron Mexico Era? Probably that 1) You're never going to be a championship team with a running QB that can't maintain a role as a pocket passer, and 2) Herpes doesn't seem to affect your speed but does greatly affect your throwing accuracy.

*Except the Super Bowl.

Bear Dignity in Foxboro
Jesus, is it bad when watching your team, you expect them to more likely score on defense and special teams than on offense? I cringe every time Grossman leads a drive now, just waiting for the pick or fumble. This is not good folks. The last thing we need is a myriad of "Is Rex hurting the Bears?" articles, right before the playoffs. Yes we all have probably punched something or someone after watching one of Grossman's 18 turnovers this season, (For those that can't do math that's 1.64 turnovers/game) but handing things over to Brian Griese isn't going to improve the situation.

Hot Stove Burning Fans' Asses
Well the Cubs made the biggest splash by locking up Soriano until the Rapture. Lots of people were shitting on the deal in how ridiculously huge it is for a 31-year old player, who's defensive skills are far from remarkable. Thankfully plenty of other teams have begun to make large signings to help take the edge of the absurdly huge Alfie contract. Some of the more notable ones are the Dodgers taking Juan Pierre for $44 million for 5 years, the Astros signing Carlos Lee for $100 million over 6 years and the Angels in what may or may not have been a panic move, signing Gary Matthews to $50 million over 5 years. The Matthews contract astounds me. Don't get me wrong I was a proponent for the Cubs trying to get him, but at $10 million a year? You can't look at that with a straight face if you were one of the ones that ripped on the Cubs' DeRosa contract. And speaking of overpaid infielders, how about the Reds signing Alex Gonzalez to the tune of $14 million for 3 years? Sure he's got a great glove, but how do Cincy fans feel about paying a shortstop that has a .246 career average $4.67 million a year?

More Like Ala-blow
Congratulations to the Iowa Hawkeyes for completely shitting the bed in November en route what is quite possibly the most disappointing seasons in recent memory. So what's their reward for squandering several games? A trip to the Alamo Bowl! Screw you Minnesota, our fans travel well so we get to go to the more prominent bowl game. Any team that loses to Indiana (who by the way lost to I-AA Southern Illinois!), doesn't deserve any bowl bid.

Speaking of Bowls...
Hooray it looks like USC vs. Ohio State for the national championship! Here's to hoping both teams contract ebola, resulting in a dual forfeiture. That's the only possibly outcome I could think of that would make me happy.

I'm sorry, the BCS is a crock of shit and the cockweasels that support it kill me. How is this possibly a better system than a playoff? How? Even more irritating are the people that rag on the playoff idea, saying it would never work. Really? So something like this could never happen? Oh, my bad. I guess I'm the asshole for thinking it would. The arguments that the BCS is better than a playoff are absurd. One argument is that the BCS puts more emphasis on a team's record. In the BCS system one loss would have a heavier factor than it would in a playoff system, thus making teams try to win every game. Huh? If I may for a moment, let me steal a line from the immortal Herm Edwards when I say, "YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME!" A team would have to have shit for brains to go out and play thinking, "It's OK if we lose this one, we'll still make the playoffs." Bullshit. Sure, teams in the NFL rest up guys once they've clinched the playoffs, but with 100 some odd teams in I-A, I don't think you can relax that much. The second argument is that teams would "tank" to possibly play a weaker team in the playoffs. That is equally absurd. Let's say that there was a 16 team bracket for the playoffs. Now let's say that each of the 11 conferences gets an automatic bid to their conference champion. That would leave 5 at-large bids to be determined. With only 5 spots open for teams that don't win their conference, that leaves a pretty narrow margin for error if they decide to tank a game.

I went ahead and put together what a possible 16 team bracket would look like. I filled 11 spots with the conference champion. Since the championship for a handful of conferences is still undecided I just picked the team that had the best record. Now to fill the remaining 5 spots, I simply went down the BCS rankings (Hey, it's good for something!) and picked the top 5 teams that hadn't already received a bid. This is what it looks like.

The first round of games could be played at the higher seeded schools while the latter rounds could take place at some of the current bowl sites. The 4 BCS bowls could rotate who hosts the title game like they currently do with two of the others hosting the semifinals and whichever bowl hosted the championship the year before hosting a quarterfinal game the following year.

So looking at this the at-large bids went to LSU, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Louisville. That means teams like Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Auburn, and West Virginia are left out. While some would probably bitch that one of those teams deserves a spot over Houston, Ohio or Middle Tennessee, so what? Every conference in the NCAA basketball tournament gets a shot at the title, so why can't football? While every Sun Belt team would more than likely be trounced in the first round, who wouldn't love to see a team from the WAC, MAC or CUSA pull off a first round shocker? It would be awesome to watch. Who wouldn't want to see Louisville and Rutgers duke it out in a rematch? Or see if Boise State was legit enough to hang with the big boys? A playoff would be infinitely better than the BCS. For once the title could honestly be settled on the field, rather than by the coaches, the media, and some lousy computers.