By Dan O’Shea

The 2011-12 football season was not a good one for many quarterbacks not named Rodgers, Brady, Brees or Newton.
For some, the problems stemmed from injuries and missed games (or missed seasons). For others, the season began with confirmation that they had starting jobs, but ended prematurely in demotion.
All of this made it a difficult season for fantasy owners to navigate. Now, a new season finds predictable names among the top-ranked QBs, but a host of others looking to rebound from injuries and other disappointments.
My top 20 QBs:

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Posted on August 15, 2012

By Marty Gangler

The Cubs clubbed the Houston Astros last night at Wrigley Field but consider that the Astros have 10 more losses this season than our hapless Scrubbies. That’s not much fun to watch, and in fact, it’s not even fun to pay attention to with a modicum of hope for the future anymore since the trade deadline fiasco that delivered middling prospects to Class A and not much else. You’re losing us, Theo.
We get the whole “get worse to get better” thing, but if the “better” is a huge bet that today’s prospects will become tomorrow’s superstars in . . . 2015 and counting, we’re gonna need to see more than balls rolling between Starlin Castro’s legs sandwiched by Brett Jackson’s strikeouts. Are we truly any better off than when we started the season? It would be a lot easier to believe in the plan if Alfonso Soriano wasn’t still starting every game in left field.
You can build for the future while remaining competitive – or at least simply respectful of your paying customers – at the major league level. That’s what good organizations do. The free pass is just about expired.

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Posted on August 14, 2012

By Jim Coffman

I tried. I tried to take satisfaction from the final of the men’s metric mile (4 X 400) relay a few nights ago. Likable underdog the Bahamas pulled it out for the country’s first-ever Olympic gold medal and it was the sort of story that I would imagine a mature viewer of the Olympics could enjoy without reservation.
But at this point, ensconced as I am in middle age, I still can’t do it. I still care almost 100 percent about whether the team from the USA has done all it can. And in this event, the good old red, white and blue came up historically short.
It all goes to the overall experience of the London Olympics, which came to an end on Sunday with a big event featuring the Spice Girls (!) among others.

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Posted on August 13, 2012

When the season started it seemed as if John Danks – he of the huge new contract and implicit designation as staff ace – would be one of the major keys down the stretch if this team (implausibly) found itself in contention.
Instead, it’s baby brother Jordan – at 26, he’s 17 months the younger – who, at least for a week, proved pivotal while John was riding out the season on the DL.

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Posted on August 13, 2012

By Thomas Chambers

My intensifying moral and ethical dilemma between enjoying one of the world’s greatest of sports and rejecting it outright as the multilayered cesspool it has become is well documented here.
It’s such a tangled mess that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know where to start. And then comes along a blockbuster like the one from Michael E. Miller of Miami’s New Times documenting the utter corruption at Calder Casino and Race Course in Miami Gardens, Florida, located between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, and you just want to give up.
Activities so heinous, not even Undercover Boss can handle the truth.
Keep in mind Calder is owned by Churchill Downs Inc., also the owner of our beloved Arlington Park.

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Posted on August 9, 2012

By Dan O’Shea

This is a little bit later in the summer than I usually take a crack at my fantasy football preseason top 20, and I think I’ve spent more time mentally preparing for this year’s unveiling than in any previous season. I don’t say this because I’m that proud of my effort, but because with so many questions surrounding some of the top players, it’s been that much harder to figure out where to place everyone.
We have at least three top running backs who are potential injury concerns, another who as of this writing was still a contract holdout, and still another who held out for part of the season last year and never quite regained form.
Meanwhile, there’s a second-year quarterback I’d really like to rank higher, and now fewer than two tight ends in my top 20, which I think must be a first.
One other note: Matt Forte has made many preseason fantasy top 20 lists, but backup Michael Bush has great sleeper potential, and Jay Cutler will pass deep early and often.
See if you can figure out who’s who:

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Posted on August 7, 2012

By Marty Gangler

Well, that didn’t take long.
The slashing of the roster has had an immediate impact on the Cubs.
As Cub vets were moved at the trading deadline for a look to the future, the present started to really stink up the joint again.
And for a season that started with let’s-see-what-we-have-now, to boy-we-don’t-have-too-much, to now-that-Rizzo-is-here-they-aren’t-horrendous, it has moved back to let’s-see-what-we-have-here.
But it’s already close to we-don’t-have-too much and could turn into, sheesh-what-else-is-on?
With this in mind we here at The Cub Factor would like to provide some pointers to watching the rest of the season.

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Posted on August 6, 2012

He pitched 18 seasons in the big leagues, winning 211 games of which 189 came in a White Sox uniform. A 20-game winner both in 1956 and 1957, much of the time Billy Pierce finished what he started.
“When they gave us the ball, they expected us to pitch nine innings,” Pierce said last week when I called him. “[If] we had a bad day, then somebody would come in in relief. Very rarely did they have someone [come in] for the eighth or ninth inning. Usually you finished.”
He did just that to the tune of 193 complete games in his career, including three straight years (1956-58) when he led the American League.
Tonight the Sox are simply encouraged that Chris Sale will start – let alone finish – against the Kansas City Royals. The kid is being treated with kid gloves, having last pitched 10 days ago. On that occasion he wasn’t as sharp as usual, yielding five runs to the Texas Rangers. However, Sale did get into the seventh inning to earn his 12th win.
I’m no anthropologist, but I do know that 55 years ago when Billy Pierce was pitching, the human anatomy wasn’t much different than today. Homo sapiens sure weren’t ambulating on all fours. Yet the approach to pitching has radically changed.

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Posted on August 6, 2012