By Mike Luce

Other 25 Update: Going into Week Three, the College Football Report Preseason Other 25 has posted a respectable record overall (34-13) and has posted a .500 winning percentage (10-10) against schools from BCS conferences (including Notre Dame) highlighted by South Florida’s win against the Irish in Week One. In view of ND’s last-second loss to Michigan on Saturday, the Bulls upset over Notre Dame might not look as impressive as the season rolls on.
The Other 25 has not fared nearly so well (2-5) against ranked teams, although we would be hard-pressed to consider that failing. After all, the ranked teams are supposed to be better, right? Against “the number,” the Other 25 has struggled as well, posting only 19 wins against the spread versus 28 losses. Later this season, we will do a bit more analysis to see how well The Other 25 fares in various situations: at home, on the road, as underdogs, etc.
Rearranging the Deli Counter or How the College Football Report Free Range Chicken Would Handle Conference Realignment: We think the experts should stop trying so hard and turn the realignment over to The College Football Report Free Range Chicken. After making short work of the BCS bowl predictions, the CFR FRC has been sharpening his beak for the next challenge. After reviewing his options, he pecked out the four new super conferences and divisions within each.

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Posted on September 13, 2011

By Don Best TV

Jay Cutler is much improved and Mike Martz has figured out how to use Matt Forte, but the Saints will be able to move the football against the Bears in a way the Falcons couldn’t.

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Posted on September 13, 2011

By Jim Coffman

Mike Martz has still got it.
In retrospect, the primary question for the Bears’ offense going into this season wasn’t whether the offensive line would hold up or whether Roy Williams would take the receiving corps to the next level. The No. 1 question was if Martz could prepare an offense and then make all the calls necessary to put a team in contention for a championship.
Because – and I’ve been harping on this for a while now – the Bears have a championship-caliber quarterback. Hello, NFL! The Bears have a championship-caliber quarterback! It is time for all of the experts to acknowledge what they should have figured out way back in the second half of last season. Maurice Jones-Drew and the rest of the short-attention-spanners who questioned Jay Cutler’s desire and toughness during and after the NFC championship game hadn’t paid enough attention to the Bears season until the final few games.
They hadn’t watched as Cutler survived a disastrous first third of the season in which his unbelievably bad offensive line literally put his life in danger. They hadn’t watched as somehow this team, with no receivers anyone would place in the top 30 in the league, somehow pulled itself together with Cutler at the helm and claimed the second seed in the NFC playoffs. The second seed in the NFC playoffs!
Now Cutler is back for more, and for the first time in four years he is playing in the same system for a second year in a row. It is amazing what just a little familiarity and a little comfort in a system will do, as evidenced by the Bears’ delightfully comprehensive 30-12 thrashing of the Falcons (last year’s No. 1 NFC playoff seed) in the season-opener Sunday.

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Posted on September 12, 2011

By Marty Gangler

Okay, meaningless September baseball is something that Cubs fans are pretty used to. But extra inning meaningless September baseball is just the pits.
I mean, these guys have angered us all season, can’t they do us a solid and just end the game in the normal allotment of innings? Isn’t that fair?
Can’t we ask baseball to institute some sort of rule where teams flip a coin after nine innings when both teams are officially out of the pennant race? Would anyone not be a fan of this?
Or maybe just use computer simulations the rest of the way. This season needs to end so the Cubs can actually get someone in charge of the baseball operations. Like walking and chewing gum, this franchise can’t do both at the same time.

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Posted on September 12, 2011

By Roger Wallenstein

Let’s assume, for a moment, that Paul Konerko leads a long and healthy life. Imagine also that he reaches a ripe old age when his reflexes and awareness aren’t what they used to be. His adult children begin to worry about his driving skills.
This is not an uncommon experience for folks whose parents get to a point where operating a motor vehicle poses a risk to themselves and other motorists. At least in the eyes of the Baby Boomer “kids.”
In Paulie’s case, he might confront this situation with something like, “Hey, I’m not going to drive at night. If I take the highway, I’ll stay in the right lane. I never exceed the speed limit. And you would never catch me texting or talking on the phone when I’m behind the wheel.”
The point of this is that Konerko knows how to adjust and adapt. He’s a wonderful fastball hitter, who can pull the ball into the left field seats or line a double into the left field corner with regularity.

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Posted on September 12, 2011

By Emory Hunt/The Czar of the Playbook

I don’t trust these Bears wide receivers. I’m going with the Falcons.

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Posted on September 9, 2011

By Carl Mohrbacher

Is Carlos Marmol still a good closer?
-Rick, Springfield IL
The Law of Diminishing Returns:
“The tendency for a continuing application of effort or skill toward a particular project or goal to decline in effectiveness after a certain level of result has been achieved.”
Example:
After you started hanging out with that hot chick from the community college a couple times a week, she stopped looking so hot.

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Posted on September 8, 2011

By Dan O’Shea

The NFL season is about to kick off and already we find lingering injuries and injury rumors to be a factor in our Week 1 plans – and perhaps longer.
The most notable boo-boo belongs to Peyton Manning, who is not recovering from neck surgery as expected. In the span of a couple weeks, Manning has gone from being questionable for Week 1 to being likely to start to now being formally listed as doubtful.
His sub, Kerry Collins, is not a viable fantasy play. Alternative plays still more than 50% available in Yahoo! leagues: Donovan McNabb and Ryan Fitzpatrick, or if you really want to gamble, Colt McCoy and Cam Newton.

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Posted on September 7, 2011

By Jim Coffman

The tightly packed thin gray waves of clouds marched across the sky over Wrigley Field all Labor Day afternoon, blown along by a persistent chilly wind out of the north. It is easy to overdo the weather metaphors but this one was too insistent. Summer was on its way out. Or should we say the summer sport. We’ve had a couple weeks of high school football and a weekend of collegiate gridiron action but the transition to football really begins this Sunday.
The Tribune’s Paul Sullivan notes that Monday marked the last day of the “summer tourist season” at the North Side ballpark. Before it went, new Cub first baseman Bryan LaHair provided one final memorable highlight. The 28-year-old first baseman, who had 38 homers in Triple A this year but is not considered a top prospect (?!), stepped into the lefty batter’s box in the eighth inning against the Reds’ Aroldis Chapman, a left-handed flame-thrower. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.
Except LaHair promptly zeroed in on Chapman’s 97-mile-an-hour heater and launched a double down the right-field line. Sure Geo Soto, who had reached on an error, was then thrown out at home as LaHair advanced to third, but that didn’t diminish the promise embodied by LaHair’s hit against the guy who is probably the hardest thrower in the league. Later, Chapman hit 100 on the radar gun as he struck out a pinch-hitting Darwin Barney.
And that’s enough about baseball.

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Posted on September 6, 2011

By Marty Gangler

After attending the game at Wrigley on Saturday, I am more confused now about the state of the Cubs than I was last week, when I wrote about the difficult adjustment to no longer having Jim Hendry to blame..
This time, it’s Cub fans themselves who have me bewildered. And I’m a lifelong Cubs fan.
Who are these people, and what do they want now?

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Posted on September 6, 2011