The BCS is out and nothing of importance has changed.  With a win over Miss. State, Alabama stays in the number one spot.  In second, with a week off, is still a surprising Texas Tech team waiting for a chance to play in the FedEx championship game.  Still in third place is a Texas team wishing it had been able to finish against that same Texas Tech team comfortably in second.  In fourth place, a fired up Gators team coming off a big win against South Carolina.  Giving the Old Ball Coach the worst loss of his career.  either as a player or a coach.  I was surprised not to see Texas and Florida swap spots in the final rankings, but it makes for good drama these last few weeks.  And before I forget, Oklahoma still has a good shot at screwing everything up for these top four teams.  If they can beat Texas Tech this weekend and Oklahoma State the following week, then they’ll be right there at the end, possibly playing in the title game.

Week 10 in the NFL did little to change any bodies mind about any team.  No up-sets, and no big shockers.  The top story might be Tennessee’s march towards perfection.  With nine wins already, they have all but guaranteed themselves a ply-off berth and more than likely a first round bye.  The Jets continue their impressive start with another win which sets up a huge Thursday night game against New England who also won on Sunday.  Beating a floundering Buffalo team that started hot and had play-off hopes which are quickly going up in smoke.  Miami posted another win, bettering their record to 5-4.  With such an awful start, I don’t think anyone predicted a winning record at this point in the season for the fish.  The Colts also got back on track, beating a Steelers team that has been riddled with injuries.  Even with the win, it is highly unlikely that the Colts will win their division because of the undefeated Titans.  The NFC south has its own Cinderella story with he Atlanta Falcons winning their sixth game.  After such a debacle last season, I didn’t think that they could pull it together in just one season.  They still should come in third to the Bucs and the Panthers in the division.

The BCS is out and there has been a little change in the rankings.  The top spot is still held by Alabama who narrowly escaped with a win own in Baton Rouge.  Les Miles almost pulled the upset as the Tigers eventually lost in overtime.  Number two is still occupied by a surprising Texas Tech team bent on playing for a national championship.  They killed an OK State team that was supposed to make a game out of it.  They didn’t.  Then we get to number three Texas, which takes over for the missing Penn State team that lost a heart breaker to an unranked Iowa team.  They fall all the way down to the ninth spot.  Florida moves up a spot to number four with an easy win over Vandy.  Oklahoma rounds out the top five and with just a couple weeks to go, anything can happen.

The Bucs are not as good as I hoped they were, but they at least showed enough self respect to not let the Chiefs beat them.  Everybody knows how hard it is to win on any given Sunday in this league.  It has always been difficult to win at Arrowhead Stadium, especially for a visiting team that doesn’t play there very often.  The Chiefs jumped out to an early 14-0 lead, taking advantage of a total of 4 turnovers by the Bucs.  Just a few minutes before half-time, the Chiefs led 24-3 before a 97 yard kick-off return for a score.  It was an uneventful third quarter, and the Bucs held KC to only three points in the fourth.  With only 19 seconds the Bucs converted a two pointer to tie the game and eventually went on to win the game on a Mat Bryant field goal in over-time.  They must play better if they want to go anywhere in the playoffs if they even get there.  They get a rest with the bye week the weekend.

It’s always fun to watch a team or player that you don’t like get beat to a pulp.  Such is the case in the stomping that the Giants laid down on Dallas this past Sunday.  If you think that it’s just a quarterback that the Cowboys need, that would be overly optimistic thinking.  Although the play from the quarterback position has been lacking and unproductive, the rest of the teams faults have been exposed.  The defense has all but given up, and I predict a couple more losses and TO will come out of his shell.  With all the problems that the Cowboys have had, I would have to admit that that Romo guy they have is pretty good if he could hide them so well.  And I am not a Tony Romo fan.

The Gators have put themselves into a good position for the final stretch of the season.  With their thumping of rival Georgia this weekend, beating them 49-10 in Jacksonville Saturday.  It was payback for the beating the Gators received from the Bulldogs last year.  When the Georgia players danced in the end-zone after scoring the first touchdown of the game.  The Gators players and coaches have a long memory and did not forget the disrespect.  But, bigger than that, they have put themselves in the top 5 in the BCS, if they can run the table with three winnable games coming up and presumably playing Alabama in the SEC title game, they could play for the national championship if everything falls into place.

The World Series.  It is a dream for all young baseball players, a dream that goes unrealized for almost everyone of them.  The Rays did something that nobody thought was possible, and I include the Rays players and management too, they made it to the series.  In only their tenth year of existence, and what makes it even more remarkable, is the fact that they finished dead last every other year.  Until this year, 2008, the magic year when everything finally came together.  Think about this- the Cubs have not gone to a series in 50 years or so and have not won a championship in over a hundred years.  This will be the third time in 11 years that an expansion team from Florida plays for the title.  Just something to think about.  Also another thing that makes this series compelling is the match-up.  Not just the players on the field, but the cities they represent.  Once again Tampa has to go through a Philly team to win the championship.  In 2003 the Bucs had to beat the eagles to go to the superbowl and the next year the Lightning had to beat the Flyers to go to the Stanley Cup finals.  It almost seems like destiny that the rays will have to beat the Phillies for their championship.  Which will happen.

Sports movies have a certain way of not feeling like the real thing.  They have a hard time feeling and looking authentic and realistic, and at the same time being entertaining.  Some movies can do one of these things, but not the other.  Rocky, for example.  Completely unbelievable, but also not just one of the greatest sports themed movies of all time, but one of the best movies period.  The fighting, while choreographed, was not believable.  Nobody could take or dish out the punishment that Rocky and Apollo Creed took and handed out.  They would have been killed.  But, the story and the setting and characters were so well balanced and compelling, the un-reality of the actual fights could be overlooked.  It wasn’t about the fights anyway, it was about taking a chance, trying to do something that nobody thought was possible and believing in yourself.  Most movies can’t pull of the brilliance of Rocky, but can be entertaining as well.  Major League, Any Given Sunday and Slap Shot come to mind.  But some movies can transcend their sports theme like Rocky and be classic movies.  Raging Bull, Chariots of Fire, BASEketball to name a few.  These movies don’t need the sports to help them along, but use the sports as a way to tell the story, which is usually bigger than the sport it uses.  Many people say that sports can be an analogy for life, that we can use these types of events and happenings as metaphors for the everyday ups and downs and what we learn from sportsmanship, competition and learning to lose can somehow be translated to the concepts of winning and losing not only on the field of play, but in life as well.

The BCS rankings will be coming out next week, and like every other year there will be controversy and discontent.  It is a mixture of three polls each worth one-third each.  The coaches poll, the Harris poll and a computer generated concoction the makes almost nobody happy.  I know that they are student athletes and they can’t be playing all sorts of playoff games to find out who the best team is, but you’d think that they could come up with something a little better.  With a good schedule, a decent team and a little bit of luck, your team could end up as a top two ranked team and get to play for the championship.  But what about third place which might have just as good a record, but the computer ranked them lower because of some obscure tiebreaker?  The teams should be ranked on how good they are against the competition that they play against if this system is going to continue.  They shouldn’t just be ranked by wins and losses.  A two loss Florida team is almost always better than a one loss Boise team.  A two loss USC team is almost always better than a no loss Missouri team.  Right?  Otherwise, if they are going to be ranked by wins and losses, it would not be a problem setting up a 16 or 32 team playoff schedule over the course of three weeks at the end of the season.  I think then that a real winner could be found and the computers could be left to more important things like Metal Gear games and Grand Theft Auto games.

I thought that it was all hype.  There was no way that HDTV was as good as everybody was saying.  That was my thinking last week.  Before my new best friend, the cable guy, hooked up my new HD receiver.  I didn’t think that it would make such a difference, but I really don’t think that I can ever go back to the way it was.  Sorry regular t.v, no disrespect, but your time is over.  The new king of watching sports is HD.  I say new king, because I didn’t jump on the band wagon sooner.  Oh, all the games I’ve missed being so naive.  I could have watched the Gators trounce the Ohio Buckeyes in the championship two years ago.  I could have watched the miracle Giants beat the Patriots last year in the Super Bowl.  It is 100 percent better in HD.  I can see the sweat and dirt and grime and feel like I’m on the field.  Even NASCAR looks exciting.  It would have even made the Olympics bearable.  It would  have been glorious.  It should have been glorious, but I was stubborn.  After all, why should I get a new fancy television when the one I bought ten years ago was still working?  It didn’t make any sense.  I was wrong.  Big time.  I know that now and I take full responsibility for my actions.  Now, that I’ve forgiven myself and moved on; let the MLB playoffs start, let the NFL continue and hockey season can’t get here soon enough.  All hail HDTV!