College baseball super regionals have finally started.

First game today is Florida v Mississippi St, as I am writing this Florida is laying the smack down on Miss St in the top of the 5th 9-0.  Later this afternoon Stanford and North Carolina will square off.  Then this evening there will be two more games;  Texas v Arizona St., and Vanderbilt v Oregon St. Should be some pretty exciting games today. My predictions are UNC, Arizona St, and Vandy all come out winners today.

Wow! Jason Terry and Jason Kidd with huge shots in the final minutes.

Looks like its going to be another exciting finish in the NBA finals. Let's see who comes up bigger, Lebron or Dirk.

QB Terrelle Pryor declines Canadian Football League offer.

Terrelle Pryor, formerly of Ohio State University, has declined an offer to play for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL. It seems as though he is going to wait for the NFL supplemental draft later this summer. That's not necessarily a bad move as long as he didn't out right reject the CFL offer. I personally do not believe he will be drafted in the NFL supplemental draft. I think he should have taken the offer from the Roughriders even though they probably didn't offer much more than what local memorabilia dealers where offering him while he was at OSU. He seemed to have no problem taking the money while he was in college, he should have continued to take the money the CFL offered him. If he really wants to play in the NFL, he should strongly consider switching to wider receiver. With his size and athleticism he could make a quality possession receiver in the NFL. He won't make QB money, but he will probably make more than a CFL contract, if he is willing to work at the WR position. I think the only real question left is,  how little is the Pryor memorabilia worth now. The tattoo parlor owner can't possibly get a good return on investment in this deal. Especially considering most of Pryor's wins as a QB at OSU are about to be vacated by the NCAA, if not all of them. Oh well, maybe a lesson can be learned from all of this. Although, I highly doubt that this sort of behavior will stop. 

LSU gets snubbed by selection committee

So at the end of the season after all the conference tournaments nation wide are finished, LSU baseball has a final record of 36-20 with an RPI ranking of #26. Still they aren't considered one of the best 64 teams in the nation.  Some notable teams that were selected are Cal St. Fullerton, Southern Mississippi, Mississippi St., and Princeton.  I mention those teams because LSU beat all of those teams head-to-head only losing one game to Mississippi State in a three game series. While this year was a sub-par season for LSU standards; LSU still deserved to be in post season play in my opinion. Some say that the SEC is by far the best baseball conference in the country this year. If this is true then LSU definitely deserves to be in a regional somewhere. Everyone acknowledges that Vanderbilt, Florida, and South Carolina are great baseball teams, but what remains to be seen is just how good are Mississippi St, Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas on the national level. If any number of those four teams make it to a super regional that only lends more fire power to the argument that LSU was snubbed by the selection committee in my opinion. LSU's resume is on par with those four SEC teams and certainly on par if not better than the likes of St. John's*, Baylor*, Jacksonville, Troy, and a few other teams that were selected. I'm going to stop this rant here, I'm only making myself even more angry as I go along. In closing, I feel this whole selection committee process is about as biased as the BCS is made out to be. The NCAA needs to make a few more definitive guidelines for post season eligibility to help the selection committees in their decisions.  Any and all comments are welcome on these matters.

*I feel fairly certain that having a Big XII commissioner and a St. John's AD on the selection committee helped these schools get selected for regional play. But I guess I can't really prove that.



edit:  LSU also lost one game to Princeton in a three game series. Still shouldn't have made that big of a difference.

LSU Spring game

The LSU spring football game will be televised live tomorrow on ESPN at 3pm CDT.  Here is a link to the rosters.  Admission is free to the game.  I'm really looking forward to watching the game. This will be the nation's first look at the "new" offense for the Tigers after the addition of offensive coordinator Steve Kragthorpe.  There are plenty of things to look for during the game but a few will be:
1) The running game.   Who gets the bulk of the carries? How many yards from scrimmage will each running back get?
2) Quarterback rotation/playing time.  Which qb gets the most reps with the first string offense and who actually moves the ball? Also something to watch for is qb Jordan Jefferson's mechanics. Especially his footwork and timing with the receivers. That will be a very good indicator of improvement on the offensive side of the ball.
3) Injuries.  There are already quite a few minor injuries to key players. Those players will not be participating in the game tomorrow. These are players that need to be healthy by the start of the season in September. Hopefully we will not see any more injuries tomorrow during the game.
All in all this should be a good game and I'm can't wait to watch it. In case your going to miss the live airing at 3pm, the game will be replayed throughout the rest of the weekend on ESPN2 and ESPNU. Check local listings for times.

So U of Alabama is cheating... again.

Apparently, Jeffery Lee of Auburnsports.com  has accused an Alabama booster of paying a recruit to sign with the University of Alabama to play football.  The full story is at MrSec.com and the article goes on to list accounts of money and a car being given to the player and other recruiting misconducts. Alabama has been caught in this sort of behavior before, so it wouldn't surprise me if all this were true.  But the real problem isn't necessarily the universities, it seems to me that the problem is with boosters.  Too many die hard fans with a little too much money, so they want to ensure that their respective teams have good players for them to root for and maybe to brag to their close friends how they "got that player" on the team. The coaching staffs and universities for that matter have a hard enough time keeping track of all the incoming freshman, let a lone the boosters too. Often times college football coaches will pay recruiting services to provide game tape of potential recruits from other states to save on the costs of traveling to see the recruit first hand and to save time.  College football coaching staffs have a very busy schedule, they certainly don't have time to babysit every incoming recruit. But don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily defending this sort of behavior. This could certainly be some sort of loophole being exploited, and most likely is with some universities, so as to keep the university name and coaching staffs clean from an illegal recruiting activities. The boosters will end up with a slap on the wrist and be out whatever money they invested into the recruit should they be caught.  Right now the blame goes to the NCAA.  They will have to change rules regarding athletic scholarships to allow for some spending cash for players, much like many high end academic scholarships provide.  It won't have to be a lot of money, just enough for small stuff like a plane ticket back home once a semester/summer or a laptop or enough money to go out to eat every now and then.  Plus this might teach young athletes to be a little more responsible with their money in the future should they go pro. But only time will tell. Until then I guess it's Cheat Tide Cheat, or is it Roll? Either way, same difference.