Bartender Banter: Hot Stoves, Daredevils and BCS BS

So the baseball hot stove has really heated up in the last week. The Yankees and Red Sox are nearly to the point of offering sexual favors to the Twins for Johan Santana, the Angels are trying to land their future DH, Miguel "El Gordo" Cabrera from the Marlins, the Mets ditched Lastings Milledge to Washington for Brian Schneider, Ryan Church and some crack rocks, and several other rumors are swirling all over the place...

...and none of them seem to be involving the Cubs.

Maybe they're just keeping their talks on the down low, I don't know. What I do know is that all we've gotten so far is a mediocre middle infielder, nearly got another one (Thank you Houston!), Ryan Dempster apparently is our #5 starter at the moment, and we don't have anyone to start at CF or RF (Although there's a certain redhead that could take the one spot). The only thing I have heard is that we're trying to land #1 Slugger. That's great, but what if said deal is never realized? Why do I have this feeling we're gonna be heading into opening day with Mike Cameron at CF? Mike Cameron, if ever there was a guy worthy of an overrated post, it'd be him.

Remembering Evel
As you probably already know Evel Kneivel passed away on Friday at the age of 69. What can you say about the guy? It's amazing he lived that long. He jumped numerous things on a motorcycle, he broke an insane amount of bones, he had a walking cane that doubled as a receptacle for his Jack Daniels, and he once beat a man bloody with a baseball bat. He was the face of extreme sports well before anyone was tossing that term around. Plus with no Evel Kneivel, there would've been no Super Dave Osborne. Godspeed Evel.


On the Death League front Daft Funk has scored 7 points and taken the early lead. Here's an update of the standings.

1. Daft Funk - 7 points
2. GovernorGrayDavis - 5 points
3. Six people with 0 points

BCS Bowls Announced
Ohio State and LSU will duke it out for the National Championship. I guess this is better than Missouri vs. West Virginia. The other bowls I'm just confused with. How does Kansas get to play in a BCS bowl but Missouri gets the shaft? So much for being rewarded for playing a tougher schedule. Illinois in the Rose Bowl? Huh? I cannot condone any team that lost to Iowa being worthy of a BCS bid. If this bizarre season proved anything it's that not having a playoff is still absolutely absurd.

Last year I went off on the BCS and made my proposal for a 16 team playoff instead.

"But Chip, then there wouldn't be any bowls for the other teams to go to."

As of right now there are 32 bowls. That means in Division I-A football, which has 120 schools, more than half go to a bowl game. Does anyone else find this a bit ridiculous? Either way, I say keep some of the bowls. 16 teams can play in the playoffs and the other 48 teams can play in a bowl game. Look, unless you're a fan of that school or a compulsive gambler, the vast majority of the bowls are completely pointless anyway, so why not just keep them? Cincinnati can play Florida Atlantic in the Heinz Ketchup Bowl or whatever, that's great. I'll be over here watching the playoffs not paying attention like I would have done anyway.

My proposal for the playoff format consisted of automatic bids for the 11 conference champions, plus 5 at large bids. Looking at the final standings, and using the final BCS rankings for the at larges, this is what the playoff bracket would look like.