The Wide World of Sports* (10/07/14)

*Well, only the ones I care about.

MLB

I love me some baseball and October means one thing: playoffs! Go Braves! Oh they had a horrible year? Never mind. They did fire their GM though and their hitting coach resigned (thank God!).

American League: The Royals won their one game wildcard playoff against the A's to advance to take on the California Angels (you can change their name all you want, I will always call them this). This was not exactly Mike Trout's coming out party as the Royals swept the Angels in three games.

In the other match-up we have the Baltimore Orioles against the Detroit Tigers. Bullpen explosions hampered Detroit and they just never seemed to get things in gear with their great starting pitching. They went and got swept too y'all.

So now it's down to Baltimore vs. Kansas City with the winner going to the World Series.

National League: The Giants won their wildcard game against the Pirates. They now play the Nationals and as I write this they are up two games to one.

The big series is actually the Dodgers and the Cardinals. Both aces, Kershaw and Wainwright, were shelled. The Cards surprising lead this series 2-1 also.

NFL

Meh. I am a Falcons fan so that's all I really care about (and I don't even care that much). I do keep an eye on the teams from Florida though, but that has not been very pretty.

The Falcons can't win on the road and are currently 2-3, but in second place in the division. Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa are a combined 3-11. Ouch. They need more Bama players.

NCAA Football

Well, this is what the Top 25 looked like before Saturday:

1 Florida State (27) 4-0 1416

2 Oregon (13) 4-0 1405

3 Alabama (13) 4-0 1387

4 Oklahoma (7) 4-0 1357

5 Auburn 4-0 1272

6 Texas A&M 5-0 1206

7 Baylor 4-0 1149

8 UCLA 4-0 975

9 Notre Dame 4-0 972

10 Michigan State 3-1 944

11 Ole Miss 4-0 906

12 Mississippi State 4-0 848

13 Georgia 3-1 788

14 Stanford 3-1 643

15 LSU 4-1 636

16 USC 3-1 560

17 Wisconsin 3-1 502

18 BYU 4-0 450

19 Nebraska 5-0 445

20 Ohio State 3-1 298

21 Oklahoma State 3-1 246

22 East Carolina 3-1 237

23 Kansas State 3-1 216

24 Missouri 4-1 145

25 TCU 3-0 109

Then a lot of upsets happened, including one I am not even going to talk about (Ole Miss? Are you freaking kidding me?). Anyway, the new Top 25 now looks like this:

1 Florida State

2 Auburn (23) 5-0 1459

3 Mississippi State (2) 5-0 1320

3 Ole Miss 5-0 1320

5 Baylor 5-0 1258

6 Notre Dame 5-0 1186

7 Alabama 4-1 1060

8 Michigan State 4-1 981

9 TCU 4-0 979

10 Arizona 5-0 951

11 Oklahoma 4-1 904

12 Oregon 4-1 888

13 Georgia 4-1 854

14 Texas A&M 5-1 731

15 Ohio State 4-1 534

16 Oklahoma State 4-1 527

17 Kansas State 4-1 486

18 UCLA 4-1 460

19 East Carolina 4-1 344

20 Arizona State 4-1 325

21 Nebraska 5-1 283

22 Georgia Tech 5-0 235

23 Missouri 4-1 212

24 Utah 4-1 206

25 Stanford 3-2 143

There's still a lot of season left to make it into those four top spots for the NCAA's first ever playoff at the end of the year. To paraphrase Dory, "just keep winning, just keep winning..."

Auburn is an illusion y'all. Don't buy it.

Roll Tide anyway.

Weekend Update

Audio/Video/Telly

 

 Doctor Who - Journey to the Center of the Tardis. Basically a Clara episode where we don't learn much about her, but she does come across some interesting things while she is being chased through the interior of the Tardis. The pool, the library, that telescope thingy that killed the werewolf in that one episode. She also finds a book called "The History of the Time War" and learns the Doctor's name, only to have it erased later. Grrr.

 Community - Troy and Abed do the whole swapping bodies bit like in Freaky Friday. It has its moments.

How I Met Your Mother - Damn I wish Lilly would take the job in Italy and be gone forever.

Movies - Of all the Pixar movies, The Incredibles is my favorite. Reminds me of happier times when things were all about family. My oldest daughter is so Violet, and my youngest is very much Dash (for a girl). Unfortunately there is no Elastigirl in my life anymore. As awesome as this movie is, it hurts to watch it sometimes.

Books - Finally got Homeland, and promptly finished it in one day. Yeah, I read like that. It was a continuation of the book Little Brother. Within the first 50 pages there were references to The Pirate Bay, torrents, X-box and Doctor Who. And yeah, Will Wheaton makes a character appearance. Unfortunately, the book left me with a feeling of non-closure. I wanted the evil bitch to pay, but she got off the hook again. Double Grrr.

Sports

Braves - Went to Colorado and took two out of three (after having a game cancelled because of snow), and then got swept in Detroit. They have played just two home games in the last three weeks. Scheduling sucks. Finished the week with a record of 15-9, which is still good for first place.

NFL Draft - The draft finally happened and all I was concerned about was where my Bama boys were going and who the Falcons would pick. Well the Falcons didn't "wow" me, but Alabama made some noise in the first round with three straight picks (9-11) with CB Dee Milliner going to the Jets, OL Chance Warmack going to Tennessee and then OL DJ Fluker picked up by San Diego. The rest of the draft went like:

• RB Eddie Lacy, Green Bay Packers
• LB Nico Johnson to Kansas City Chiefs
• OL Barrett Jones to St Louis Rams
• DL Jessie Williams to Seattle Seahawks
• DL Quinton Dial to San Francisco 49ers
• TE Michael Williams to Detroit Lions
• DB Robert Lester to Carolina Panthers
• DL Damion Square to Philadelphia Eagles
• OL Carson Tinker to Jacksonville Jaguars

Considering just a few years ago, Bama had not one single player drafted at all, Nick Saban is worth every damn penny he is paid (maybe more).

P.S. And do not forget to recommend this blog continues.