I'll be perfectly clear that Basketball is not a sport of mine.  Basketball ranks just above soccer as a sport that I would actually follow, and this goes for both college and the pros.  That being said, I couldn't help but notice that USF has gotten off to a 7-1 start, with their only loss against South Carolina on the road, in their tournament.  USF has looked like they might possibly be better then awful the last couple of years, but oddly enough, their victories this year have been universally decisive, and their loss was a close one.  So I did some digging around and found a couple of statistical predictors.

First, USA Today's Jeff Sagarin has a conference and team analyzer which gives every 1A team a rating based on percieved quality; the higher being better, lower, worse.  The Big East is the most powerful conference in this predictor, with USF ranking 50th in the country.  This is countered a bit by the fact that USF is 12th in the conference.

Also, Ken Pomeroy has been featured in the WSJ around bracket time and hosted a chat on Baseball Prospectus and is considered to be a quality basketball numbers guy.  His current analysis ranks USF 40th in the nation (Pomeroy doesn't have a confrence strength predictor).

Now, if these numbers heald up, would that mean USF might make the NCAA tournament?  Probably not; taking 12 teams from the Big East would be downright absurd, and getting beat up by your conference opponents would probably take that possibility out of the equation.  But an NIT berth might not be out of the question.  Here's to hoping we're number 66!

After a near-death experience, Dethklok realizes they would rather be sick and not know then face the brutality of going to a doctor. After home remedies including drinking bleach, Dethklok learns that their ultimate fear will be realized, one of them has a terminal illness. Meanwhile Nathan tries to brave the brutality of going to the dentist and Murderface faces the possibility of being gay after accidentally ejaculating on a doctors face. Part of Season 3.

Things I liked about yesterday's game:

Calling the 32 yard Packer TD pass
Seeing the Defense finally sack up for once, and in the 4th quarter none-the-less
Freeman showing a considerable amount of poise when pressured
More interceptions
This team's special teams outside the field goal kicker are arguably the best in the league, and THEY won that game yesterday.


Things I didn't like

The announcing.  They did a piss-poor job yesterday calling the game.
14 points didn't come from the offense, and another 21 were practially given to them on excellent field position
The 3 headed monster apparently isn't a monster, nor does it have 3 heads (Graham)
No sacks until the 2nd half against the worse pass-protection in the league.
We still don't have a kicker

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"This is not about the NFL, it's not about the St. Louis Rams, it's not about me," Limbaugh said. "This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative.

"Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we're going to have.

 - Rush Limbaugh

This quote came on his radio show yesterday shortly before it was announced that the group that he was a part of that was attempting to buy the Rams dropped him as a partner of the ownership party.  They will have to find a replacement partner for him that can contribute funds.

I detest Rush Limbaugh.  He is a breeder of hate; a cultivator of fear.  A man whose sole purpose in life right now is to till the collective consciousness of the radical right wing to flare up their strongest desires of the absolute worst, in an attempt to manifest those feelings into radical actions.

It was becoming clear pretty quickly that with Limbaugh on board, that ownership group had no chance of getting approved by the NFL owners, so dropping him was the right thing to do.

But in imaginary world, what if Limbaugh not only was approved as an owner, but a majority owner and decision maker?  There's a good amount of evidence to suggest that Limbaugh is at least moderately intolerant to race, and there's evidence based on his radio shows to identify him as a full-blown xenophobe.  I'd love to see how absolutely horrible a team he could put together with 53 white-only players, and if he could get the KKK or the Aryan Nation to sign on as sponsors.  That would've been fantastic.

For you gamers, Brutal Legend drops today, as well as Fallout GOTY Edition.

Apparently, the Bucs are going to work out former Jacksonville WR/cocaine fiend Matt Jones.

Last month, GM chairman Bob Lutz issued an open challenge to any press publication that he could lap a CTS-V around any track faster then any other publication could with any other stock production sports sedan.  Jalopnik.com responded to the challenge with an AMG C63.  Mercedes-Benz whined like a bitch, but they managed to work it out; the throwdown will be done in NY with the Jalopnik guys using a Jaguar XFR instead on October 29th.

Note to the Lightning: If you're going to copy the Tampa Bay Rays style of performing in endgame, might I suggest you mimic the 2008 Rays, and not the 2009 ones?  I've had my heart ripped out enough times for one year from them alone, I'd prefer to see you not continue the trend; I'm already dangerously close to not caring what you do anyway, this'll just push me over the edge.

I've grown to absolutely hate the overtime loss setup the NHL has; not so much shootouts preventing ties, but the 2-or-3-point system, where a team is awarded a point for a regulation tie but only 2 points for a win.  A point for a tie gives the deception that some teams are better then they actually are.  Getting one point for a loss is stupid when the winner in regulation only gets 2 points.  My preference would be that the NHL changes the scoring system so that a team gets 3 points for a win, 2 for an overtime win and 1 for an overtime loss.  You penalize teams for not winning in regulation but winning in overtime, and you take away some of the advantage that a team has for an OTL.

Another way to think about it is a team could lose 81 games in a season and finish with the same number of points as a team that goes .500.  That's not acceptable.

Though I missed it last night, apparently Twins/Tigers was a classic game.   Second year in a row that the Twins had to play a tiebreaker game.  The ALE may be the best division in baseball, but the AL Central looks to be the most competitive.

Toyota revealed their FT-86 pre-production concept yesterday, a car many are calling a "Toybaru" because of the car being a result from a design and manufacturing partnership between Toyota and Subaru for a RWD 2-door sports coupe.  The reported specifications are that it will run on a NA version of the Subaru boxer-4 similar to what's running the current Impreza and will have a price point of 'less then 25k'.  It looks sexy enough, but for that kind of money, I can get myself a V6 camaro, V6 Mustang, turbo-I4 Genesis coupe, a Mazdaspeed 3, or a WRX, all of which will put out more power and more then likely handle better then this thing.  Color me unimpressed.

Rush Limbaugh has thrown his hat into the ring to buy the St. Louis Rams.  That's a hell of a lot of work just to get an Oxy fix, isn't it?