By Jim Coffman

Numerous professional yakkers spent this week asserting that the Bears had found success the past few weeks because Mike Martz had changed. These were the people who wouldn’t shut up about what a bad offensive coordinator he was, what a bad coach Lovie Smith was and what a bad general manager Jerry Angelo was (despite the team having made the NFL’s final four the year before) when the team started this season 2-3.
The talkers had to try to find a way to justify the fact that if you went back and listened to what they were saying during the weeks leading up to the Bears’ current four-game winning streak, you would conclude they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Perhaps in the aftermath of the Bears’ dominant, 37-13 victory over the Lions we can get a few things straight and then maybe avoid sounding like idiots the next time the Bears suffer the horrible indignity of a couple losses in a row with the current leadership team in place.

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Posted on November 14, 2011

By A Person Who Wishes To Remain Anonymous

I could sense him staring at me, watching me from around the corner. He had done it a few times.
I was 12 years old, and I worked at a newsstand in a northern suburb that summer. He was an older man with bad skin and a wispy combover. He creeped me out, but I was smart, I thought. I wouldn’t let anything weird happen.
Then he came from around the corner and approached me. He started talking to me – asked my name, what I liked to do. He bought a newspaper and tipped me a few bucks. Then he asked if I wanted to earn some money. Oh, and he’d give me some pot. I said okay. I knew it was weird, but I thought I was worldly enough to handle whatever he did. I was 12, after all.

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Posted on November 11, 2011

By Thomas Chambers

I’ve put a lot of faith into Thoroughbred horse racing.
Faith, by it’s very nature, includes, even requires at times, at least some blindness. The acceptance of shortcomings, denial of imperfections. Blinkers, if you will.
I’ve used a lot of superlatives to describe the sport and nature of horse racing; its richest of histories, unparalleled pageantry, unsurpassed power and speed.
But like a kid with only one candy store in town, when the candyman keeps pushing you away with the likes of surly service, inconsistent or sometimes non-existent access, and even poisoned gumdrops, you get the hint to develop a taste for something else.
Racing’s apathy for its fans and itself was already evident to anyone who pays attention, but after the debacle of the 2011 Breeders’ Cup, audacious enough to call itself the “World Championships,” the blinkers have fallen off. The faith is lost.

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Posted on November 11, 2011

By Carl Mohrbacher

Ad-Vandy-ge Bears
Apparently Vanderbilt University can produce some decent athletes through its football program and not just the Intramural Sports squad, as we had all assumed. Thanks to a healthy chest and a corresponding dip in the price of industrial pork emulsion futures, Earl Bennett and the McRib are back!
As a fan of both third down conversions and as a guy who brushes his teeth with KC Masterpiece, I couldn’t be happier.

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Posted on November 9, 2011

Lions Up Next!

First the highlights. Then the Philly locker room.
1. Must be the shoes.

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Posted on November 8, 2011

By Dan O’Shea

I feel like I’ve been writing a lot lately about quarterbacks, but can you blame me? It’s been a banner year for QBs so far, with Drew Brees threatening to break his own single-season passing yardage record and Aaron Rodgers hovering around the pace of the single-season touchdown pass record (Tom Brady’s 50 in 2007).
Aside from a slew of great QB performances this year, we are also seeing the acceleration of a recent interesting trend: The running QB. The resurgence of Michael Vick, since last year, along with the arrival of Cam Newton and Tim Tebow points to a running revival of sorts among field generals (Rodgers, too, was an early harbinger, though with his arm working so effectively this year, he is way off his usual pace for rushing yards.)

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Posted on November 8, 2011

By Steve Rhodes

I grew up in Minnesota listening to Al Shaver broadcast North Stars games. Now his grandson, Jason, is in his third season doing play-by-play for the Chicago Wolves. Here’s a little profile put together by the team.

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Posted on November 8, 2011

By Pro Football Weekly

On the other hand, can they hang with that Philly offense?

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Posted on November 7, 2011

By Jim Coffman

The tricky part of the Blackhawk game experience is that if they don’t play well, the fact that the whole thing peaks before it starts is even more glaring. Jim Cornelison belts out the anthem as the crowd cheers and veterans are honored and everyone is fired up for several minutes before the first puck is even dropped.
Even in the best of circumstances, the actual game is a bit of a come-down. But Sunday’s contest, a 6-2 setback, was especially so. Coming in, the archrival Vancouver Canucks had lost two in a row and were determined not to make it three.

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Posted on November 7, 2011

By Thomas Chambers

Over at The Bright One, the newest racing story is two months old and isn’t even about a horse or a race.
Up the river at The World’s Greatest Newspaper, we learn through a bland canned piece picked up from the Los Angeles Times that trainer Bob Baffert really wants to win, and don’t worry about Chantal Sutherland aboard Game on Dude in the Classic, a sexist question if ever there was one.
It ain’t much, and we’re glad Lance Louis, in typical Alfred E. Neuman style, isn’t worried about anything on the Monsters’ OL.
But, heads up, it is the biggest weekend in American sports as 178 horses in 15 races compete for $25.5 million in purse money in the 27th Breeders’ Cup World Championships at Churchill Downs Friday and Saturday.

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Posted on November 4, 2011