Leyland Gets Defensive

The Detroit Tigers had their 12 game winning streak snapped last night against the Oakland A's. It wa the Tigers' best stretch since 1934. They have simply ran away from the American League Central. despite what the Tigers have accomplished, well they still have to clinch the division, there are some non believers out there that believe their current hot streak is a byproduct of being in a bad division and playing against lesser competition recently.

Manager Jim Leyland doesn't want to hear any of it. Leyland was asked about the quality of the division and exploded.

"Let me remind you of something," Leyland said. "It was three months ago, two months ago, that the Cleveland Indians were the talk of baseball. Everybody was saying they were pretty good.



"Now all of a sudden, because we beat them, they're bad? That's not fair. I'm not falling for that.


"The Central is the division we play in. Nobody is going to take anything away from my team. When they had to step it up, they stepped it up.


"Nobody can take that away from us. I'm not going to let anybody put a damper on what those guys have done.


"We have a pitcher out there with 23 wins. We have a guy with 40-some saves. We have three or four guys hitting .300. We have an All-Star catcher and other All-Stars. We're OK."

"I can't help what happened with the White Sox and Cleveland. But I'm not going to get sucked into the division being bad so that when you play other divisions, you're going to have trouble.



"We might. We might not. But I guarantee you one thing, and this you can print. It's not like everyone is lining up to play the Tigers. We're pretty good, too.


"I'm not going to let anybody take away from what this team has done up to this point — and we really haven't done enough yet. I'm not counting my chickens.


"But don't give me that bull about the Central. I'm not going to answer silly questions and to me, that's a silly question.


"The Central is what it is. That's the division we play in. Right now, we have the best record in the Central and we've earned where we're at. That's the way I look at it."

Leyland is correct. You only play who they put in front of you. They can't help it if Cleveland and Minnesota ran into some bad luck with injuries. It's not their fault that the moves the White Sox made didn't pan out. On paper Chicago was supposed to win the division and was a fring World Series contender. The Twins are always held in high regard and the Indians are ahead of schedule.

Instead of saying how bad the AL Central is, the Tigers should be applauded for taking it up a notch when they had to, considering their recent run of late season fades.

The Blue Court

There have been teams that have tried to mimic Boise State's blue turf field. No one has tried it in college basketball until now.

Cal State Bakersfield may have started a new trend by making their home court a blue court.

I don't know how much of a home court advantage it will give them, but it's good to see a school be innovative and try to get people outside of their city and campus to take notice of the program. With CS-Bakersfield on the lower rung of Division I hoops this is a way to gain national interest, a little gimmicky, but it might work. I'll wait and see if there will be others that try to follow suit.

Sapp Calls Steelers Old And Slow

If you want to awake a sleeping giant this is the way you do it. After receiving a thorough thrashing by the Baltimore Ravens in week one, Warren Sapp went on Showtime's "Inside The NFL" and trashed the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Now everyone is entitled to a bad day and the Steelers just happened to have one in the first week of the season. Don't tell Sapp that, because he has a different take on the Steelers.

"The Pittsburgh Steelers. I have three things: old, slow and it’s over," Sapp says. "It’s just that simple. James Harrison told us that he was 70-to-75 percent. It looked more like 40 percent to me if you are looking at the ballgame I was looking at. And Hines Ward, Mercedes Sapp can cover Hines Ward right now. You have to be kidding me ... Mercedes is my 13-year-old daughter. She will cover Hines Ward in a heartbeat.

"And Troy Polamalu, Ed Dixon runs this crossing route. Troy Polamalu is trying to grab him to have a pass interference and he can’t even get close enough to grab him. [It] looked like he was dragging a wagon behind him. Touchdown Baltimore. Pittsburgh Steelers done."




Wow. Old, slow, and done. It's a bit early to write off the Steelers isn't it? They are the defending AFC champions and if they're old, slow, and done, the Ravens aren't too far behind them. I'd just say they came into the season limping a bit and the Ravens took advantage of it. They also played with a lot of emotion and a chip on their shoulder. The Steelers will be motivated by that loss and what Sapp had to say about them.

Harbaugh Wants More TV Time For The 49ers

Jim Harbaugh might want to "win with cruelty" while he's with the San Francisco 49ers if he's going to serve notice to various media outlets.

Harbaugh was a little miffed when he noticed that there weren't too many Niners highlights while he was doing a little channel surfing.

“Kind of flipped through the channels, the NFL Network, the highlight express, and the ESPN blitz, and never caught one highlight of the 49ers on any of those,” Harbaugh said today.



Harbaugh said the lack of 49ers highlights on TV demonstrates the perception that the 49ers aren’t a good team.


“I mean, just kind of documents what you know. What the perception is of our team around the league and around the country,” Harbaugh said. “It’ll be up to us to do something about that. We can take control of that and that’s something we need to do.”

I can't blame network execs for the lack of 49er highlights. They've been borderline horrible for the past decade. Besides, the only highlights they had yesterday were the Ted Ginn kick and punt returns. Other than that there wasn't too much to recap. Harbaugh should worry more about winning games rather than how many highlights get on television or risk being shown the door like his predecessors (Mike Nolan, Mike Singletary)



  

Jerry Kill Has A Seizure On The Sideline

Minnesota Golden Gophers head football coach Jerry Kill had to leave the game with New Mexico State after collapsing on the sidelines. Apparently Kill had a seizure and taken from TCF Bank Stadium by ambulance Saturday night after collapsing on the sidelines with 20 seconds to go in the game.

Team doctor Pat Smith says Kill "was at no time under any risk in any way.''


Smith says the 90-degree temperature coupled with dehydration might have played a role in the seizure.

The Golden Gophers were driving for a potential tying score when Kill fell to the sidelines, his legs kicking and his head moving back and forth as medical personnel rushed to his side, according to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune report.


Kill was taken to a local hospital and is reported to be in stable condition. He had a previous seziure in 2005, which had been his second in four years.

This would be a blow to the Gophers who are trying to rebuild their program. The Gophers have been crippled since they decided to jettison Glen Mason as coach. When you are perpetually rebuilding, you need any kind of stability you can get. Having something like this happen doesn't make it any easier to lure recruits to a school that has a hard time getting quality, big time players.

A Fan Refers To Baylor As "She"

With the demise of the Big 12 nearly coming to fruition, Baylor is determined to be the fly in the ointment. They won't let Texas A&M go without a fight which sets up for an interesting football game. Now Baylor is "confident" they will be able to latch on with the Big East if the Big 12 folds.

There are some, including me, who feel that Baylor is talking out of both sides of their mouth. They weren't talking about preserving decades of Texas football when the old SWC disbanded and left Houston, Rice, TCU, and SMU on the side of the road.

One fan sums up how they feel about Baylor and likens the school to a girl.

artisan3m says:



Sep 8, 2011 4:38 PM

Baylor doesn’t belong in the Big 12 ~ never has and never will be a perennial powerhouse in football. Basketball and baseball/softball, yes. Football, no. She should be in a conference where she has at least an even chance of earning a football championship. That will never happen in a league where Baylor has a hard time finishing 1-4 in its own division on an annual basis. This will not be warmly received, but Baylor is a leech on the state universities she competes with. Her fans are fair weather supporters and if the Bears lose two games before October, it is not unlikely that the visitors will put more butts in the seats than Baylor will. She ought to be in CUSA or MWC and she is hardly a BcS contender in any conference.
 
All of this is football driven and it's true that Baylor wants to save it's own hide and keep their AQ money. The football program would be better served building themselves up in the Mountain West or Conference USA. They might be able to contend in the Big East with their current edition of teams there. The basketball program is up and coming so that could balance out what the Bears lack in football. But in all of this, who cares about basketball? 





    

Nets Owner Prokhorov Has His Bank Raided

New Jersey Nets Owner Mikhail Prokhorov has major money. So much he can sign Travis Outlaw to one of the most ridiculous contracts in the offseason and not miss it. Contracts like those are why the NBA is in a lockout right now.

Even with all that money bad things can happen. Like when your bank is raided. Prokhorov co-owns the International Finance Club bank, known by its Russian acronym MFK, with a 27.7 percent share.

Information from Reuters.com.

The head of the International Finance Club bank, known by its Russian acronym MFK, said the evening raid on the bank's office in central Moscow had nothing to do with Prokhorov's Right Cause party or even with the bank's operations.



"Investigative actions were conducted in relation to one of our borrowers. This has nothing to with Right Cause or Onexim," the bank's chief, Oksana Lifar, told Reuters by telephone. Onexim is Prokhorov's investment vehicle.

A lawyer for the bank, Dmitry Kharitonov, said he could not rule out a link to the party, which Prokhorov took charge of in June, making a controversial political debut ahead of the parliamentary vote and a March 2012 presidential election.



Several luxury cars drew up outside the bank on a busy boulevard near the Kremlin and law enforcement officers, some wearing masks and carrying guns, entered and ordered employees and clients not to leave, Kharitonov said.


"They put all the employees in one area and kept them there for an hour without explaining what was going on," he told reporters. "After an hour, they said there were no claims against the bank, and no searches were carried out."


Asked whether the raid could have been related to Prokhorov's involvement in Right Cause, Kharitonov said, "I cannot rule it out. I don't know, but I think nothing can be ruled out."


So this could all be a political power play. Who really knows the truth.I'm kind of speechless about it. This was straight out of Hollywood all we were missing was Bruce Willis to come and save everyone.