The Big Ten is Officially Down

Every year when that classic debate arises of which football conference is the strongest, Big Ten supporters always point to the bowl games and its surprisingly good bowl record. And with good reason. Bowl games are always a good measuring stick for conferences because teams are playing competition from other conferences that they don't face very often. It actually makes the bowl season a little more interesting to watch. So Big Ten fans make it a point that the conference isn't really down because of what they do in bowl games over the last couple of years. Well, they won't be doing that this year.

Everyone knew that the Big Ten was down this year during the regular season and now you are getting real proof at just how bad it is. The Big Ten is an awful 1-6 in bowl games so far this season and with Ohio State left to play Texas Monday...I'm not really expecting much out of them. If OSU loses, it will drop the Big Ten to 1-7. If that wasn't bad enough, Penn State, who for most of the season looked like an explosive team that had a good shot at the national title, got leveled by USC in the Rose Bowl. The only conference with a worse winning percentage this year is the MAC, which is 0-4 with one game to play.

Iowa is the only Big Ten team to record a win so far while Wisconsin was blown out by Florida State, Michigan State lost to Georgia, Minnesota was hammered by Kansas. Northwestern was the only team to put up a close fight, losing to Missouri in overtime. Maybe the record wouldn't seem as bad as it is, but then you look at how the majority of the teams lost, it's not a good sign for the conference. I don't think it'll get any better for the Big Ten in the next couple of years either. The SEC seems to get better every year, the Big 12 has four to five elite programs now and the PAC-10, who is another conference the rest of the country writes off, went 5-0 in bowl games this year.

The Jets are Classy

In sports, you win as a team and you lose as a team. Apparently, the New York Jets haven't figured that out yet. It's bad enough to go in the proverbial downward spiral, losing your last four out of five games to miss the playoffs. But it's another whole story when your players start throwing their teammates under the bus not even a week after their season ended. Thomas Jones and other "anonymous" teammates have been doing a lot of talking this week saying things like Brett Favre was distant from the team, his careless interceptions should have warranted a benching and coach Eric Mangini wasn't the reason the team missed the playoffs. Jones has since backtracked his comments, saying he has nothing but respect for Favre, but the damage has been done with his and other players comments.

I'm not going to say that Favre wasn't horrible down the stretch. He actually stunk, throwing seven picks in his last three games. But Favre wasn't the only one stinking it up on this team in December. There were a lot of dropped passes by Jet receivers in their final game against Miami so you can't put it all on Favre. Maybe Jones should point the finger at himself...he didn't run for 100 yards in his last four games while managing only 67 yards against Seattle and 23 yards against the Dolphins. Also, the Jets defense was an absolute joke the past month so there's plenty of blame to go around. Favre has always thrown picks throughout his career and still racked up wins all the time. The Jets knew what they were getting themselves into and the owner has already stated that he wants Favre to return next year.

The Jets were 8-4 with Favre and despite what happened at the end of the season, let's be honest...the Jets would not have been leading their division in Week 13 without Brett Favre. Who else were they going to turn to? Kellen Clemens? Come on. I wonder what kind of year Jones would have had running the football with Clemens behind center? He had a more productive season because defenses were accounting for Favre. Jones should think about that before opening his mouth.

Then there's anonymous players talking crap toward Favre about him being distant. All I have to say to that is if you aren't man enough to put your name behind what you are saying then don't go spreading rumors to the media or anyone. There's a better way to handle these issues. The Jets were already set up for an interesting offseason with the Favre retirement issue, but now these comments should make for a fun couple of months especially if Favre comes back. Jones and these anonymous players need to spend the offseason looking at themselves and figuring out what they can do to improve the team for next season.

The Year 2008 in a Blog Post

Can you believe the year 2008 is almost over? Another year passes by and I still feel like it was just yesterday that it was 2003 when the only care in the world I had was if I was going to finish that research paper by deadline. But here we are on the final day of 2008, and there's no better time for The Wheelhouse 2008 Recap! I'm going to do a quick rundown of the top five sports stories in 2008 that held my interest the most. We'll start with ol' numero uno...

1. Super Bowl XLII - Easily the number one story of 2008, at least for me, was the Giants stunning win over the Patriots in SB XLII. This game had it all. Undefeated team, upstart six seed from the NFC, stars like Tom Brady and Eli Manning. We wrote a lot about the game on this blog leading up to the game about how everyone wrote off the Giants and how the media had already handed the "greatest team ever" title to the Patriots. Well as the saying goes, that's why they play the game. Eli Manning's scramble through about five New England defenders to launch it in the general direction of David Tyree and Tyree's unbelievable catch on the Giants game-winning drive will go down in Super Bowl history as one of the greatest catches ever. If you watched this game and hated the Patriots, you were going absolutely ballistic when the Giants pulled this game out. I remember telling my friends that I was more excited at the end of that game than I would have been if the Steelers had won it all. That probably wasn't true, but it proved how thrilling of a finish it really was.

2. Michael Phelps Mania - No one can really explain how it happened, but in mid-August 2008, the country fell into Michael Phelps mania. Phelps dominated the swimming competition at the Beijing Olympics, rolling to an Olympic-record eight gold medals while shattering world records in the process. Suddenly everyone was into swimming, terms like individual medley, butterfly, freestyle, world record were being thrown around by people who I don't think ever watched a swimming meet in their life. Phelps captivated millions during his amazing run at Beijing and easily was the story of the Olympics...if not the entire year. Out of his eight gold medals, none was more exciting than his seventh in the 100m butterfly as he rallied to win the gold by 0.01 second over Serbia's Milorad Cavic. The replays were analyzed over and over, but clearly showed Phelps touch the wall just before Cavic. I don't know if we'll ever see someone dominate like Phelps again at the Olympics, but I'll always remember where I was during Phelps mania in August '08.

3. Penguins Stanley Cup Run - While this subject gets buried in mainstream sports media, if you were a fan of hockey or the Penguins this run to the Cup Finals was a memorable one. Even though the Pens came up short in the finals, losing to the Red Wings in six games...it was an exciting Stanley Cup finals that did its best to save hockey and excite newer fans to the game. This had been building in Pittsburgh since the strike ended and a salary cap was in place in the NHL. The Pens got the number one pick in 2005 and drafted the phenom Sidney Crosby. They also had drafted Evgeni Malkin in 2004 and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in 2003. Everyone was waiting for the team to finally click and put it all together and they exploded toward the end of the 2007-2008 season and rolled through the Eastern Conference in exciting fashion. Everyone in Pittsburgh had Cup fever for the first time since the early '90s. I had the opportunity to attend Game 2 of the Cup Finals in Detroit and while the Pens forgot to show up to the game, I don't regret it for a minute. While the first two games ended up being one sided, the Pens got their act together and made the next four games all close games, including their thrilling 4-3 victory in three OTs in Detroit for Game 5. The series posted the best ratings since the NHL had returned from strike in 2004 and was pretty much a 100 percent increase from the previous finals.

4. The Brett Favre Saga - Not all these stories can be things that were good for the sport. The will he or won't he question for Brett Favre continued on even after his "official" retirement in March of 2008. After sitting around for four months, the Favre rumors started hitting in July that he contacted the Packers about the possibility of coming back. And what followed for the next month was something I don't think the sport has ever seen. ESPN basically camped out in Green Bay and Louisiana for weeks and in the process, we heard about secret meetings, phone calls, text messages between Favre and coach Mike McCarthy and GM Ted Thompson and then the owner flying down to Louisiana to talk him back into retirement and on and on and on. And then there was the press conference that sealed the deal and the Packers finally stating that they met with Brett and that they were moving on in another direction with Aaron Rodgers. Thompson sat there looking like a deer in highlights while all McCarthy could do was say the word "mindset" more times than Allen Iverson said practice in his famous clip. This whole farce finally ended with Favre being traded to the Jets and that was that. Packers moved on with Rodgers and the Jets got their man in Favre. And as we now know, both teams aren't going anywhere but home for the playoffs. Just for the record, this was not a story I enjoyed hearing about, instead it was incredibly annoying and come July I didn't really care who Favre played for, but the story was a memorable one. Get ready for the Favre question to come up again in 2009...I can't wait.

5. Tom Brady's Injury - Unless you are a Patriots fan or a female, you were cheering Tom Brady's injury in week one of the 2008 NFL season. You purchased your Bernard Pollard shirt and secretly or publicly stated that Brady deserved it. Even if he did or not, you loved every moment of it and you were waiting for the collapse of Bill Belichick this season. While the latter didn't happen, the Pats still went 11-5 with a high school quarterback, but missed the playoffs anyway. How far the mighty has fallen. Just 12 months ago, the Patriots were undefeated and cruising to their fourth Super Bowl title...then came fate with the Giants in the Super Bowl and then the devastating injury to Brady. It was about time things fell apart for once for the video-taping cheaters.

As for me, 2008 was just another year to add to the madness. I had the good fortune of making it out to Chicago a couple times for a White Sox-Pirates game and also a Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field. Like I stated above, I went to Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Dtown. I also went to Central Michigan's primetime game as they hosted Ball State (random, yes I know). I was in attendance to watch Ohio State roll Sparty and Michigan State in East Lansing. And I made my second trip to the Sky Dome...er Rogers Centre for a Blue Jays-Red Sox game in September. Also, 2008 will be remembered as the year Todd and I launched this site after years of talking about it. Overall, not a bad year at all.

What does 2009 have in store? We'll find out shortly. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!

So This is Christmas!

Everyone here at The Wheelhouse would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Have a fun and safe time in your travels to visit family and friends today. And remember it's better to give than to receive...or at least that's what they say. I'm giving our readers one of my favorite Christmas clips that's posted on youtube...it's the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special performed by the cast of Scrubs. It's worth a watch even if you've seen it a million times. Have a great Christmas!

JoePa is Going to Die on the Football Field

Hey, I love Joe Paterno. He's one of the greatest football coaches in college football history, if not the best considering he's the winningest coach in Division I-A history with 383 victories and his longevity at Penn State is a remarkable achievement. He's been involved in Penn State football even as an assistant since 1950. Think about that for a minute. That's 58 years he's been at State College yelling at college kids trying to turn these players into a solid college football team. Of course, I don't think he's actually coached a game for the Nittany Lions in about 10 years while posing more as a figure head for the university lately. Everybody knows defensive coordinator Tom Bradley has really been coaching the team the past decade, but everyone ignores that fact because it's JoePa. But I've also said in jest that JoePa is going to die on the football field...and with the news that came out today, it might just happen.

Penn State and JoePa agreed to another three years of coaching. That makes him the coach of the program through 2011. JoePa turns 82 this Sunday. 82 years of age! He has to be the oldest coach in the history of college football and if he isn't, he probably will be in 2011. We are talking about a coach that made more headlines in the news about whether or not he would be on the sideline or in the coaches box this year then actually coaching decisions.

I don't think Penn State will ever tell JoePa no, and I don't think JoePa will ever say he doesn't want to coach. And since we have these two things happenings, he is going to die on the football field...during a game sometime in the future. It'll be one of the biggest stories to cover in years. ESPN will be there for weeks after and Lee Corso will be crying like a baby. It'll be a tragic and incredibly sad day in Happy Valley as well as everywhere around the country, but I think he would be happy with it all because I don't think there's any other place JoePa would want to be when his time is up then on a football field doing what he loved.

Buffalo, Don't Play Football in Toronto

It's time to discuss this whole Buffalo Bills playing football games in the SkyDome (Rogers Centre) in Toronto and what do do with the roof. If you aren't fully aware of the situation, here's a quick update. Last offseason the Bills decided to strike a deal with the city of Toronto and the Rogers Centre to play a certain number of games in Toronto over the next couple of years. The idea behind this is that Buffalo is attempting to lure people from Canada's largest city to extend their fan base and gain some extra revenue as well. I always thought the Bills had a great and passionate following already in Buffalo, but whatever...they want more. They played a preseason game against the Steelers in the summer and last week was their first regular season game in the SkyDome, and it was against Miami.

The problem arose when the Bills thought that the retractable roof would be open in an obvious cold, snowy weather game against a team from sunny Florida. Not too mention a Dolphins team that has struggled heavily over the years in Orchard Park. The roof ended up staying closed and the Dolphins rolled to a 16-3 win in the climate-controlled atmosphere. While the Rogers Centre people agreed that it would be great to open it, they said they just couldn't and listed two main reasons. One being that the SkyDome does not have the proper drainage system on the field because when it rains for baseball games, they close the roof. Makes sense. The second reason was that the roof is "locked" into place once the Blue Jays season ends. Now, you can say both parties are to blame for not discussing this roof scenario from day one when this contract was agreed to, but I think the blame falls on the Bills. Blame Canada? Nope, not this time. If you have a problem with the roof, don't play the games in another venue, period.

They took a marquee home game against a division rival in Miami and took it out of Orchard Park and into a dome in a foreign city and did not think to even mention if they could have the roof open for these games. Memo to Buffalo, don't play games in another city two hours away. Yeah you want extra revenue, but at the same time, you risk alienating your own fans for taking home games away from them.

Guess what Toronto is getting out of this deal? They want to showcase their city as a future NFL team home. The Bills front office are playing a very dangerous game with this Toronto deal because Toronto obviously wants a team in the future. There are two ways I see this playing out. One is that Toronto does get an NFL franchise in the future and being only two hours away from Buffalo, the Bills are going to lose fans, lose revenue, lose sponsorships, lose merchandise sales and have to compete right in their own market for coverage. The second thing that could happen is that Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who is 90, dies in a couple years, the team goes up for sale on an open market and some executive in Toronto buys them, moves them to Canada and just like that Buffalo is out of a NFL franchise.

The Bills need to rethink this deal for next year. Stick to playing games in your own city and country...not two hours away so a different city can show off how into football they are. If I were a Bills fan up in Buffalo, I would be very uneasy about this current arrangement. Instead of spending time moving games to Toronto, they need to start figuring out how they can hold onto the team and keep them where they belong in Buffalo once Wilson passes on.

The Burgh Blog Ends

The online blogging community lost one hell of a blogger today as The Burgh Blog decided to cease operations. You can read the final post here. The Burgh Blog ran for three years and though I did not become aware of the blog until earlier this year, it was one that I checked almost daily since then to read PittGirl's latest stories and happenings in and around Pittsburgh.

Living outside of Pittsburgh for the past two years, reading the Burgh Blog always made me feel that I was staying in touch with the city and its people. PittGirl shared a love for Pittsburgh that many readers knew all too well and made others long to return to the city. Her writing was intellectual, witty, honest, humorous, real and in short, fantastic.

We here at The Wheelhouse know the inordinate amount of time it takes to put into something as simple as a daily post. And how a various number of things get in the way of writing with the biggest obstacle being life. Life gets in the way: That 9-5 job, the commute to and from work, family, old friends, new friends, kids, significant others, emergencies, etc. So for whatever reasons she chose, we can understand the decision to stop the blog with everything else going on in life. As I'm sure it will be hard on PittGirl to stop doing what she loves after three years, it'll be almost as tough to not be able to check it anymore and read the insightful writing. PittGirl, thanks for the daily breaks from our lives...you will be missed.