1. The Red Sox should never get knocked out of the playoffs before the ALCS. It’s just bad for baseball.

2. Wade Phillips will not be a head coach in the NFL next season unless he can orchestrate a Tom Coughlin like turn around. Thanks to Miles Austin and Jay Ratliff, that might still be possible.

3. No team should ever win a game when their quarterback (Derek Anderson) has a 15.1 passer rating. Derek Anderson was so bad, he had nearly as many completions to the opposite team as he did his own (2 completions, 1 interception).

4. If the NHL is able to successfully thwart Jim Balsillie from buying the Minnesota Wild, the NFL should be able to stop Rush Limbaugh from buying the Rams… Right?

5. Fantasy Football stops being fun when you’re 4-0 but your team underperforms so woefully that you lose to an opposing team that didn’t start its quarterback, number one wide receiver, tight end, and opposing defense. I started Willis McGahee, Calvin Johnson, John Carlson, and Neil Rackers who combined for an incredulous 7 points between them. I also sat Roddy White against the 49ers in favor of Steve Smith with a matchup against the Raiders. Three points would have won me the week.

We all have to come to terms with the fact that:

1. Tim Tebow is the poster boy of sports in America. Move aside Lebron and Shawn Johnson, Brett Favre and yes, even you Michelle Wie, America only cares about Tim Tebow and how many chapters of a book he can read before his headaches set in. I cannot remember the last time media covered the health of a collegiate athlete as actively as they have pursued the status of Tim Tebow. And while reporters critiqued Tebow’s every breath, a much better quarterback named Sam Bradford returned to the football field as well. And I don’t buy this Florida-LSU national championship showdown either. The Tigers offense isn’t BCS bowl worthy and this definitely won’t be their last SEC loss….
Oh and this just in, Barack Obama’s main competition for the Nobel Peace Prize? Yup, you know it. Tim Tebow.

2. The Broncos are better than we thought they were. Nobody wants to jump onto the Kyle Orton bandwagon but it’s time to face the facts; they’re 5-0, allow an average of 8.3 points a game for opposing offenses this season and have wins against the Patriots and Bengals–a Cincinnati team that would be undefeated themselves if Brandon Stokely hadn’t plucked Kyle Orton’s batted ball out of the air and raced 87 yards for a game-winning touchdown.

3. The Cowboys are just really mediocre. Miles Austin bailed out Tony Romo and the rest of his teammates by almost single-handedly winning the game against the Chiefs on Sunday. Don’t be fooled by Tony Romo’s 300 yards of passing either. 250 of them were to Miles Austin and almost all of those yards came after the catch.

4. J.P. Losman will lead the Las Vegas Locomotives to the UFL championship this year. After watching a gritty come from behind win to beat his California Redwoods, coach Denny Green said of Losman and the Locomotives, “They are who we thought they were!” Just kidding. He did however say, while analyzing his ground game, “We were really chasing the rabbit into the rabit hole in the second half.”
I don’t know which is more comical, Dennis Green coaching a team called the Redwoods or JP Losman getting his first UFL win while teams in the NFL with quarterbacks named Jamarcus Russell, Marc Bulger, and Kyle Boller have one win between them.

5. It’s time to usher in the Vince Young era in Tennessee. With all due respect to Kerry Collins, there is simply no way the Titans will contend with him behind center. Jeff Fisher has to realize that he’s playing in the AFC and that, even if he won the remaining 11 games on his schedule he still might not make the playoffs (as the Patriots learned last year). If this was the NFC it would be a different story, but the Titans are now all but done. If Jeff Fisher needs more motivation, all he has to do is look into the stands where his fan base is begging the organization to make a change. And why not just run straight wild cat formation the rest of the year with Young and Lendale White in the shotgun and Chris Johnson running the motion route from the wide position? The Titans could be the first team ever to rush for 3,000 yards and it would probably sell tickets.

6. Chad Pennington is probably done in Miami. Out with the old Chad and in with the new. If you missed Monday Night’s game, Chad Henne did an excellent job managing the Dolphins offense. Henne however, displayed not only the ability to spread the ball across the field and hit open receivers for first downs, but also the strength to stretch the middle of the field, as evident on Ted Ginn Jr.’s 53 yard touchdown catch. Most impressive however, was that Henne led three come from behind drives during the fourth quarter against one of the best defenses in the NFL.
6.a. If in fact Chad Pennington’s days as a Dolphin are over, is it merely setting the two-time Comeback Player of the Year Award to win it for the third time?

Final Thoughts About the Weekend:
Football reigns supreme in America right now. For the most part each individual game in the Division Series was interesting, but the Series themselves were all short without much major drama. Alex Rodriguez has quieted his critics who have termed him “un-clutch” in the past for now, but he better realize that Yankees fans equate performance in the ALDS roughly with that of the regular season. With expectations in New York as high as they are right now, the only way A-Rod can permanently quiet his critics is by leading the Yankees to a World Series. I’m much more excited by the second round matchups in the MLB playoffs and especially a potential showdown between Joe Torre and his former team. While things in baseball have been going more or less as predicted (all four favorites winning short series’) both the NFL and College football have had their share of surprises and great matchups. The week ahead features more of the same for football fans and the start of two potentially great series in baseball. Early indications all point towards a great week of sports ahead.

But that may change. Before we go farther, I want to point out that it has not been made clear what exactly Ortiz tested positive for. While everyone assumes that Ortiz was on steroids, it may not be the case. Regardless, Ortiz has said that he doesn’t know what he could have tested for and the idea of a false positive has been floating around. For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that so many past users have denied usage or claimed they didn’t think they could have tested positive. What is far more important here is that PED experts have said that the over-the-counter supplements that Ortiz was using during the 2003 season could have caused a false positive in the 2003 tests. Likewise, Major League Baseball has said that there were in fact false positives in the 2003 testing, meaning that some of those 104 players who tested positive may not have actually been PED users.

So does that give Ortiz, and me, a glimmer of hope? Well, yes it does. Actually I started to feel that hope when Bronson Arroyo spoke out saying that in 2003 it wasn’t like it is now. He said there wasn’t a list of what was okay and what wasn’t, everyone was just taking supplements and he wouldn’t be surprised if he was on that list. That says a lot to me about the culture of baseball at the time. And there’s a big difference between Ortiz/Arroyo and A-Rod right there too. At least in my book, pleading innocence when your cousin is injecting you is entirely different from taking oral supplements that anyone can pick up in a GNC and sparking a false positive. A huge difference.

Now I’m not saying that Ortiz definitely didn’t do anything wrong. He may well have. But when we should take away from this is that the issue isn’t settled yet. We don’t know enough to rule on whether Papi is guilty or not, or somewhere in between. But if there was ever someone insistent upon his lack of usage, and they were innocent, it would be David Ortiz.

But have no fear, at least for now. While I have no way of truly knowing the accuracy of this list, it would strike me as being extremely unlikely that this is the list is correct.

For starters, the list has only 103 names on it. That might be great if this was the 103 players who tested positive for steroids other than Alex Rodriguez, but A-Rod is on the list (as is Sosa), so apparently this list just happened to leave someone off? Seems fairly unlikely.

Furthermore, if you look at the list, yes, there are a lot of players that you would probably expect to be on there, but if you look closely, virtually every star is on the list, and there are few no-name guys that appear. It’s not like only superstars take steroids, guys who aren’t quite as talented have always taken steroids as well, just to keep up. So it seems pretty preposterous that while just over 1000 players took the test, I am very familiar with almost all 103 (but actually 104) players who tested positive.

Lastly, if you look at the list, it just looks fake due to the lack of care setting it up. There is no space between the period and the name (e.g.  55.Alex Rodriguez). It also doesn’t seem to credible that Rotolist.com, is the only source. While it at least appears to be a reasonably credible site, no other sources claim they have it as well, and particularly no major news outlets. It’s too bad that someone went to the trouble of making a bogus list just to spread rumors.

But let us remind ourselves of one fact. A-Rod has played in just 43 games this season. 43. In the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing, and I would expect someone like Olney to realize that. Usually baseball statisticians are looking at year’s worth of evidence and trends, and frequently scoff those that read to much into small sample sizes like this one. Drugs, or no drugs, let’s be reminded of the fact that A-Rod is one of three baseball players who you could say are the best in the game right now (Pujols, Santana), and it takes a lot more than a slump to take him off that list.

A little farther down in the column, Olney discusses how David Ortiz and A-Rod are going in “different directions” now that Papi started hitting the ball again. Just three weeks ago, wasn’t everyone saying the same thing about Ortiz? We heard it constantly, he’s done, he’s finished. I even wrote about it. But now all everyone can think about is how he yet again is the Red Sox’ savior, and he had a longer slump than A-Rod’s had.

Furthermore, if all A-Rod’s success came from PEDs, wouldn’t he have struggled a long time ago. I know some don’t believe that he stopped taking steroids until recently, but assume he was telling the truth for a second, and realize that he hit .302 with 35 HRs last year, and .314 with 54 the year before that.

I’ve never like A-Rod and I never will. But I also realize that he is one of the most amazing players to play the game, and it’s going to take a lot more than 43 lousy games to convince me that he isn’t going to produce ever again. A-Rod will be back, trust me.