This blog has nothing but a few random thoughts primarily focused on things that have disappointed me and things that have pleasantly surprised me this Fall across sports.

As a glass is half empty type guy, I'll start with the disappointments.  For the sake of my own sanity, I'm not even going to discuss my former favorite team, The Baltimore Ravens, since my feeling towards them goes way beyond disappointing.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

REGGIE BUSH - Is it just me, or does Bush not look very fast anymore.  Hislack of production is not just an inability to effectively run between the tackles.  He doesn't seem to be able to get around the corner and is always getting rundown by linebackers and safeties.  Given how prolific the Saints passing game can be, you would think this would help Bush get some big yards per carry stats, but he's had just 5 games in his regular season career with over 5 ypc for the game. 

THE CHICAGO BULLS - My pre-season pick to win the East sucks.  I specifically wrote that the Bulls would be different this year because they'd wouldn't start out slow like the past few seasons.  Boy was I dead wrong on that one.  I don't even like the Bulls.  While I thought he was the greatest, I hated Michael Jordan.  I was a Hawks fan.  Right now, it looks like I would have been better off picking the Hawks to win the East than the Bulls.

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND TERRAPINS BASKETBALL - March 2004 was a wonderful time for me.  I met my wife and our second date was a brunch the morning before Maryland beat Kansas in the Final 4.  We went on to win the NCAA Tournament.  I knew we somewhat lucked out getting miraculous performances out of no-name recruits like Juan Dixon, but I thought that our string of success would result in better recruiting and the emergence of Maryland as a perennial Top 10 Team.  It seems like Gary Williams decided to rest on his laurels and we still don't come close to getting top-tier recruits and now we're probably going to lose to Duke two or three times a year for the next 10 years.

THE ST. LOUIS RAMS - My preseason pick to win the NFC West.  Who knows, if they hadn't had a ton of injuries, most notably to Orlando Pace, maybe the team doesn't start out so lousy.  The team has the offensive talent to win 9 games in the NFC West and I still feel that's the case. 

LACK OF DOMINANT COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAMS - While all the upsets have been thrilling to watch, I hate knowing that there will not be a clear answer to the question:  who is the best College Football team in the country?  I like ESPN's John Saunders.  He used to be a local Baltimore sportscaster when I was a kid, but now he's the only prominent analyst who is not in favor of a playoff.  His argument is a playoff would devalue the huge upsets that have occurred.  He's right, but that's not a bad thing.  If there was no March Madness in hoops, regular season match-ups would be enormously big games, but that doesn't mean having huge regular season games is better than huge playoff games. 

PLEASANT SURPRISES

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS - I actually put some $$ down on the Jags to win more than 9 games.  After their Week 1 loss to the Titans where Chris Brown ran for 150+ yards I was about ready to kiss that $$ goodbye.  Now they are sitting at 8-3.  It would take a disaster to end up with anything worse than a push. 

TIM TEBOW -  Back in August, I had a somewhat bitter dispute with some colleagues over how good Tim Tebow was and would be this season.  I was flabbergasted that they thought Tebow wouldn't be better than Chris Leak was last year.  I anointed Tebow as the next John Elway, only Tebow has all his knee ligaments.  I think I was right.  The guy broke the single season rushing touchdown record in the SEC as a quarterback.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL BETTTING - While it's very early in the season, there have already been 450 games, 900 point spreads and over/unders and so far a tremendous 55% betting accuracy.  While everyone likes to hyper-focus on the NFL and College Football, it's sweeter for me to on the under of a Navy @ Seton Hall game that no one cares about.  I bet Vegas Oddsmakers don't care much about these games either and I've noticed a lot of the totals don't get posted until minutes before game time.  Vegas is struggling with setting early lines and it's fun capitalizing on their confusion.

GILBERT ARENAS' KNEE INJURY - As a Wizards fan I should be pleasantly surprised by a star players' injury, but I am.  The Wizards refuse to play defense and I knew that with Gilbert we'd be headed for the same year as the last 2 seasons - win 42 to 46 games, lose in the first round of the playoffs, etc.  With Arenas opting out of his contract he probably would have left after this year.  I figure without him, we could finally suck, maybe get a #1 draft pick a little better than Kwame Brown, recognize that we need to get serious about playing defense and rebounding, and then get Arenas to re-sign since the injury will scare off other teams.  On a much smaller scale, I'm hoping we get the same type of boost that the Spurs got when David Robinson missed a season.  He went out, the team sucked, they got Tim Duncan and the rest is history.