By Natasha Julius

OK, everyone. It’s time for the only Super Bowl wager that really matters: the half time entertainment bracket. It’s not actually a bracket, but that sounds more sports gambling-y so I’m going with it.
You don’t have to know a thing about football to participate. You do, however, have to know a little about the kind of vaguely wholesome, arena-packing, fully-clothed, non-nipple-baring musicals acts that are invited to play during the part of the Big Game most of us use to go to the bathroom. The rules are simple: choose three songs that will be played by the Super Bowl half time entertainment. Why three songs? Because that seems to be the standard number, other than last year when Tom Petty played his entire back catalog. For the record, Smitty remains the only person ever to go three-for-three, correctly predicting Prince would perform “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Baby, I’m a Star” and “Purple Rain.”

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Posted on January 30, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Okay, definitely nothing else left to say that impacts the fantasy football outlook for next season – only my prediction that Mewelde Moore and Steve Breaston score more touchdowns than either Willie Parker or Larry Fitzgerald. Enjoy the Super Bowl and the off-season.
Now let’s join the fantasy basketball season in-progress and ponder Jason Kidd; then we’ll take a stab at an early first-round draft prediction for the upcoming fantasy baseball season.

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Posted on January 29, 2009

By Jim Coffman

It took a week to at least begin to process the headline: “The Arizona Cardinals have won the NFC Championship and are going to the Super Bowl.” Thank goodness really for the (usually ridiculous) two-week break between the conference championships and the Super Bowl because America needs this extra time to start to re-orient itself to a sports world turned upside down. I know I won’t fully accept this state of affairs until . . . ah . . . I just don’t think I can do it at all. The Tampa Bay Rays made the World Series and I just shrugged. They’d only been around a little more than a decade. The Giants were certainly a longshot to make the Super Bowl last year. They were playing barely mediocre football all season before heating up late.
But the football Cardinals . . . as I have noted once or twice before . . . the Cardinals have sucked for six decades. Sixty years! They won a title in 1947 and have barely sniffed the playoffs since, let alone a championship game. I am nothing less than aghast at the arrival of the Cardinals at this highest of pro football heights. And there’s a decent chance they’ll win. My confident friend Jim R. pronounced last week. “The Cardinals are going to lose by 21 points,” and then added, “Of course, I’ve said they were going to lose by 21 before all their playoff games.”

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Posted on January 26, 2009

As the fantasy basketball season drifts deep into January, a lot of fantasy owners are starting to take a detailed look at weekly head-to-head stats in an attempt to figure out just which weak categories have kept them mired in fifth- or sixth-place. Some teams might be great in most offensive categories – points, assists, field goals, free throws – but they keep getting beat in three-pointers. Meanwhile, maybe they have plenty of rebounds, but are hurting specifically for steals and blocks. Can such problems be solved with one waiver wire pick-up, rather than rebuilding half your team?

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Posted on January 21, 2009

By Gary Silbar Communications

ELITE SNOW CARVERS GATHER IN LAKE GENEVA, WI TO COMPETE FOR NATIONAL CROWN
LAKE GENEVA, WI – While most Midwesterners choose to hit the beach or head to the mountains for a week of escapism, a winter vacation for a select group of individuals means battling days of subzero temperatures to create works of art that endure as long as temperatures remains below freezing.
For elite snow sculptors, the dead of winter means packing up the tools of their trade and heading to Lake Geneva, WI to compete in the U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championship, the top snow sculpting competition in the country.
Traveling from as far away as Alaska, the teams labor for three bone-chilling days and nights to create intricate, gravity-defying sculptures from three ton, 10-foot-tall cylinders of snow. The sculptors, men and women of all ages and from all walks of life, relish the opportunity to work side-by-side with the best in the business, each hoping to be crowned national champion.

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Posted on January 20, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Dwight Howard is officially trade bait. The NBA’s leader in rebounds and blocks may earn his “Superman” nickname most nights, but he’s falling well short of the all-world status I was hoping for this year.
Howard is No. 1 in two categories, within the top 10 in free throws-made, and near the top 20 in total points. So why am I complaining? Well, that free throw mark is terribly deceiving. Howard is only making 57 percent of his free throws, so to make that many, he is taking more free shots (and missing more) than almost everyone else in the league. And, when you are shooting 57 percent from the line, but taking more attempts than anyone else on the typical fantasy team – well, count on losing the FT% battle every single week.

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Posted on January 14, 2009

By Marty Gangler

Okay, it’s been a little more than three months since the debacle known as the 2008 National League Playoffs. And I guess this is as good a time as any to again think about the perpetual losers that inhabit the North Side of Chicago. I tried not to think or talk about these losers but was rudely reminded on January 1st when another somewhat perpetual losing Chicago team (at least before this season) played a game at good ol’ Wrigley Field. But it’s time to start thinking about the Cubs again. I mean, as much as any Cub fan said, “I’m done being a fan of this team” after the last two playoffs (dis)appearances how can you not come back? I mean, seriously. C’mon. After all this time you think that you’re out? And if you really can get out now, maybe you may have never been in.
Off-Season In Review: – The Cubs ditch one of their most lovable players in Mark DeRosa and pick up quite possibly one of the most unlikable guys in baseball in Milton Bradley. Maybe they are on to something, the more I think about this. DeRosa understood what was going on and probably felt the pressure of 100 years whereas Milton Bradley is a friggin nut-bag whack-job who isn’t going to get it and will not feel the pressure of 100 years. Ever wonder why guys like Manny Ramirez come through in the clutch so well? It’s because he has no idea what’s going on and doesn’t care. Now, Bradley isn’t Manny but maybe he’s, um, Mini-Manny? The Cubs also got rid of Jason Marquis. He won’t be missed.
Rest of the Off-Season in Preview: Whatever.

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Posted on January 13, 2009

By Jim Coffman

Nice playoff-type win for the Blackhawks on Sunday over Nashville’s finest (they of the unsettling Predator logo featuring a saber-toothed tiger with front teeth so long they would make its neck look like an electrical outlet if it ever closed its mouth) but not a great week overall. It featured a Thursday loss to the average Avalanche followed by one of the worst performances of the season Saturday in the first half of the back-to-back with the Preds. Ominous tidings perhaps?

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Posted on January 12, 2009

By Jim Coffman

Time to zero in on the winter sports around here, is it not? And a month-plus until pitchers and catchers report, hmm? Oh, and I do have a fine little college football note with which to cap off the bloated, blotto bowl season that finally, mercifully, ends later this week (and it really does end – I promise).
The Hawks bounced back in a big way on Sunday after all the Winter Classic hullabaloo slightly obscured the fact that they got their hockey pants kicked twice in three days by their primary rivals. They scored a beautiful flurry of goals late in the second period and then hung on in the last 20 minutes (thanks largely to red-hot goalie Nikolai Khabibulin stopping 19 of 20 in the third period alone) to beat a very good Calgary team 5-2. They did so without reigning rookie-of-the-year Patrick Kane, who missed his first contest of the season as a precaution after an ankle sprain a few games prior.

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Posted on January 5, 2009

By Eric Emery

Let’s take a look back at my preseason predictions and see how I did – complete with excuses. And we’ll take a look at the post-season.
*
Team: Jacksonville
Line: 10 wins
Prediction: Over
Result: 5 wins
Excuse: I thought Jacksonville would genetically engineer jaguar/human hybrids to win games.
*
Team: San Francisco
Line: 6 wins
Prediction: Over
Result: 7 Wins
Why I’m smart: I always knew Mike Singletary’s habit of dropping his pants would pay off someday.

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Posted on January 2, 2009