For the last two years at my regular blog, I’ve made predictions for the coming year. I thought I would do that here but concentrating on sports only.

Here we go-

1- The Miami Dolphins have a losing season

2- The Florida Marlins have a winning season
3- Tiger Woods wins at least one major on the way to being Player of the Year again.
4- Ernie Els returns to form.
5- Se Ri Pak completes the women’s Grand Slam by taking the Kraft Nabisco
6- Bobby Bowden retires.
7- Roger Clemens retires but this time for good.
8- Charges are totally dropped in the Duke Lacrosse case.
9- Nick Saban leaves the Miami Dolphins to be the head coach at Alabama.
10- The Miami Heat and Florida Panthers both miss the 06-07 season playoffs.
11- Chicago defeats New England in the Super Bowl.
12- Michelle Wie wins an LPGA tournament.
13- Mike Tyson gets arrested.
14- 2024 is Joe Torre’s last season as manager of the Yankees.
15- Bill Cowher quits coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers
16- The Buffalo Sabres win the Stanley Cup
17- Bill Parcells, Marty Schottenheimer and Joe Gibbs all retire or are fired from their present coaching jobs.
18- Bret Favre retires.
19- The Chicago White Sox win the World Series
20- More than half the above predictions are wrong.
 
We’ll check back at the end of 2024 and see how I did.

Cross posted at OTB Sports

 

Note- I want to thank Steven for letting me blog here. Since last May I have been a regular poster at OTB Sports. My favorite sports are Baseball, Football and Pro golf. Favorite teams- The Marlins and Mets, Dolphins and  Jets(I grew up in New York  till age 15. That accounts for my split allegiances.)  and most pro golfers but I do tend to like the Korean ladies headed by Se Ri Pak. You’ll see me blog alot on the above, but  occasionally on other topics.

 

On a personal note I am 46 years old(as of January 12th 2024) and live in Florida with my wife of 17 years.(We have two children but both are angels  in heaven). I do tax prep during the winter and accounting work and handyman work all year long.  My job is out of my house except for some of the tax work, so I blog at almost all hours. 

 

My main blog is The Florida Masochist where I talk Sports, Politics, Florida News and give out Knucklehead awards.

Via ESPN: Alabama to make formal offer to Saban later today

Alabama has only floated numbers that will be in the $4 to $4.5 million range, but over an 8- to 10-year term.

There are 11 colleges coaches who make over $2 million a year. There are four coaches in the $3 million-plus range, if you count USC’s Pete Carroll, who made $2.93 million this year and should be over $3 million next year. Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops are over $3 million.

I am not sure what constitutes an appropriate or fair salary, but it seems to me that a public institution signing a contract in the range of $40-$50 million strikes me an too much.

James Joyner at OTB Sports has additional comments.

One has to wonder, as a quote from the Dolphin’s owner in Joyner’s post suggests, as to whether Saban is using this situation as a way to up his salary with the Phins.

Via SI.com: McCoy ties freshman record; Texas takes Alamo

Colt McCoy was supposed be a placeholder for Texas at quarterback this season. Now, he’s a record holder.

The redshirt freshman who replaced Vince Young turned in another gritty performance with two touchdown passes to rally the No. 18 Longhorns to a 26-24 victory Saturday over Iowa in the Alamo Bowl.

[…]

McCoy finished 26-for-40 for 308 yards. His 29 touchdown passes this season tied the NCAA freshman record set by Nevada’s David Neill in 1998.

Indeed, McCoy has been a very pleasant surprise this year. His impact is underscored by the fact that Texas’ two loses this season came in games where McCoy was hurt and was unable to play the entire games in question.

[Cross-posted at OTB Sports]

(18) Texas 26, Iowa 24

So, I wonder when Texas is going to show up to the Alamobowl? As it is, they seem not to have arrived yet.

Ugh.

No, not the USC Trojans, the Troy Trojans for winning their first bowl game (in their second try) by beating Rice 41-17.

Via Yahoo Sports: Colt McCoy cleared to play in Alamo Bowl

Time to deal with a pet-peeve of mine regarding the BCS, although it may not be the normal one: the complaint that the system doesn’t work. Let me state, I would prefer to see some sort of playoff system, but that’s not the issue before us at the moment.

It is an oft- repeated sentiment on sportstalk radio that the BCS doesn’t work (indeed, I heard it on ESPNradio this morning). However, those who make that claim are incorrect. While the system is inferior to a playoff, it does work. Those who claim that it doesn’t don’t understand what it purpose is in the first place.

The basic purpose of the BCS is to make sure that the teams ranked #1 and #2 in the country play each other—and that is what happens. It is isn’t perfect, but it beats the way it used to be where #1 basically never played #2 and it was possible to have multiple national champions (of course, as we saw with USC and LSU a few years back, that is still possible).

Still, under the old system the winners of specific conferences would go to specific Bowls and play invited at-large teams. Under such a system you would essentially never get #1 v. #2 and so as bad as things may be now, under the old system the National Champion was exclusively a matter of polls and opinion.

For example, without the BCS we would not have gotten last Year’s Rose Bowl: USC v. Texas, which will go down as one of the great games of all time. Instead, USC would have played the Big Ten winner in the Rose Bowl as per tradition and I am not sure who Texas would have played in what I think would have been the Cotton Bowl.

The only time the BCS utterly fails is when there are, as was the case the year before last, three major schools with undefeated records. That year Auburn was screwed out of any chance to play for the title because they were 3rd in the BCS despite their perfect record.

At a minimum we need a plus-1 system wherein the top four teams play one round during the bowls to earn the two slots in the Championship game.

Of course, such a system will spark debate over which are the four best team, but then again with the number of teams that compete in IA football, any system, even a playoff, will cause some debate—not that that is a bad thing.