Armadillo Sports
Thursday’s 6-pack
— Eastern Illinois 92, Iowa 83— Panthers were a 31.5-point underdog.
— Florida State 73, Notre Dame 72— Seminoles won three of last four, after a 1-9 start.
— Nets 143, Warriors 113— Brooklyn led 91-51 at halftime.
— San Francisco 97, Arizona State 60— Dons made 15-29 on the arc.
— QB Nick Foles is going to start for the Colts this week against the Chargers.
— Tennessee Titans’ QB Ryan Tannehill (ankle) is likely out for the year. Rookie Malik Willis is the new starter, with Josh Dobbs the backup.
Quote of the Day
“Every time I walked in, he would have the Cubs game on. He just loved baseball so much. … Being a Cub means more to me than people will realize. It’s no secret I left my hometown team to be here.”
Cubs’ SS Dansby Swanson, talking about his late grandfather, who was a Cubs’ fan
Wednesday’s quiz
When Michael Jordan played minor league baseball for the Birmingham Barons in the Southern League in 1994, who was the Barons’ manager?
Hint: He later won two World Series as a manager
Wednesday’s quiz
Matthew Stafford played his college football at Georgia.
Tuesday’s quiz
They play the Holiday Bowl every December in San Diego.
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Thursday’s Den: In a perfect world, where I made the decisions……….
In a perfect world, where I made the decisions……….
— Higher-seeded NFL teams would choose their opponents for playoff games.
Eagles are the #1 seed in the NFC right now; they would get a first round bye, which leaves Minnesota as the #2 seed. They would get the choice of playing the 5-6-7 seed in their first playoff game, then San Francisco would get their choice of the two remaining teams to play.
This would be a tremendous TV show, when teams announce who they choose to play. Great TV means more $$$ and we know NFL owners love $$$.
Second round of the playoffs would be the same thing; #1-seed would get to choose which of the two lowest-remaining teams they’d like to play.
They used to do this in the G-League; we do it in our fantasy baseball league now— it is fun.
— Long time ago, in the early 70’s, NBA had a 1-on-1 tournament; this would be an awesome idea for the offseason, to raise $$$ for the charities of the players’ choice.
Imagine a 64-player bracket, with games on national TV in the summer; it would be excellent. Would be fun to sit in a sportsbook and watch people who bet on these games.
Two players per team would get in, and then you could have fan voting for the last four spots. It would create a lot of interest.
— Major League Baseball has to have a salary floor; we pretty much know there will never be a salary cap, but for the love of God, if you own a big league team and you don’t try to win, why do you own the freakin’ team?!?!?!
A site called Spotrac estimates that the Mets will wind up paying a luxury tax of $84.2M on next year’s payroll. $84.2M tax on a payroll of $353,900,339. With Carlos Correa’s signing, the salary tax goes up to the $100M level.
Here are the bottom five estimated payrolls in MLB
26) Royals $96,280,809
27) Reds $86,491,989
28) Orioles $81,787,001
29) Pirates $72,965,709
30) A’s $61,930,158
Mets’ payroll TAX will be higher than five teams’ entire payrolls. Awesome.
So let’s suggest a $100M salary floor; you’re not up for that, then sell your team. Competitive balance is what makes the NFL great; baseball could use more of it.
— You know how they have four play-in games at the start of the NCAA Tournament? Those eight teams should all be at-large teams, not conference champs from cruddy conferences. Reward the conference champs by letting them all get to the first Thursday/Friday round.
Let the last teams eight who survive the bubble have to play in Dayton.
— Once a quarterback gets past the line of scrimmage running with the ball, he should lose his special quarterback protection. You see a guy run, then he slides down when he seems a tackler coming, and whines to the ref if he gets touched. You pass the line of scrimmage, you’re just another player.
— With USC/UCLA bolting the Pac-12 for a midwestern league (the Big 16?), Pac-12 will be back to Pac-10, unless they listed to us and add two teams:
UNLV, and either San Diego State/Boise State. BYU would’ve made sense, but they’re bolting to the Big X instead. Adding both San Diego State/Boise State would help the football side a decent amount, but how do you add teams and ignore Las Vegas?
— NFL should scrap Thursday games (except Week 1/Thanksgiving) and go to doubleheaders on Monday nights, that’s the better idea. Amazon Prime could still show a game every week, and the players wouldn’t have to play games on three days’ rest.
— One week every season, NBA games would use the red, white and blue ball the ABA had back in the day; the four former ABA teams that still exist (Pacers, Nuggets, Spurs, Nets) would play each other that week. A good way to honor the sport’s past.
— If I ran an NFL team and we had a good quarterback, I’d let him call plays and use no-huddle offense. Teams have all week to work up a game plan; let Sunday be the players’ day. Think that defenses would have harder time defining trends and they couldn’t substitute as much.
— Baseball should re-align geographically; the five California teams could be in one division, the two New York City teams should be division rivals, it would just be more fun.
Cubs-White Sox, A’s-Giants, Dodgers-Angels would be good division rivalries.
— High school basketball players should be able to jump right from high school to the pros; they used to do this. Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant; none of them played in college.
This would help the college game; people would become more familiar with the players who play college ball.
— There are readers out there who just LOVE IT when I talk about politics, so let’s do that for a minute. My idea: once any politician turns 72 years old, he/she cannot run for office again. We need younger people more invested in our government; having 80-year old senators makes zero sense. Who would be against this idea?
— When a college football/basketball coach takes more $$$ and moves up the coaching ladder, his new team should have to play a road game at the coach’s old school, to compensate them for poaching the coach.
Last spring, Shaheen Holloway bolted from Saint Peter’s to Seton Hall; under my plan, Seton Hall would have to come to Jersey City and play a road game against the Peacocks. Big money teams don’t like to play true road games.
— There is absolutely no need for baseball managers/coaches to wear uniforms; let them dress like football coaches, with pullovers/khakis.
— College basketball has no official starting point; they should bring back the 24-hour college basketball marathon that used to be on TV. It was awesome; it was actually 28 or 29 straight hours of college hoop, with a game from Hawai’i at 4am, then small college East Coast games at 6am/8am. Maybe the night before Election Day, so we have a solid TV option instead of results of elections.
