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.