Sports Lessons from 2008

A few things we should have learned from this past year of sports. Lessons that I hope we will not soon forget.

1. The smaller conferences should pull out of the BCS. They have fielded the only undefeated team and were not allowed to play for a national title. They won their bowl game and will not be given the national title. Why stay? Let us also not forget that they had a second undefeated team during the regular season and that team was left out of the BCS altogether in favor of two loss Ohio State. Come on.

2. Brad Childress is the worst coach in the NFL. I will not call for him to be fired because I hate that. However, it cannot be denied that he has the best running back in the NFL, a serviceable quarterback, and a defense that is average, and the team stinks. He should never have benched Tavaris Jackson. And he should run a few roll-out plays when Jackson is in the game. The last possession of the first half in the play off game says it all. There is just under a minute left. They could have taken knees and gone into the half, and no one could complain. They could have made a few attempts to get a first down or two with their two remaining time outs and no one would complain. But Coach Childress runs on first down and the other team takes a time out. He throws incomplete on second down and then runs on third down. The other team takes their last time out and gets the ball back with a full 20 seconds left. That is unacceptable. That is the worst coach in the NFL.

3. The Yankees will continue to fail and will continue to do so spending giant amounts of money. I will go ahead and go on record. They will lose the American League East this year. They will add all sorts of new players, and they will still find ways to mess this up. That is the Yankee tradition. Since they have gone Free Agent crazy they have not won the World Series. They did win it when they relied on their own home grown talent like Jeter, Rivera, and Bernie Williams plus a few random old timers. Since they pay the big bucks for A-Rod and whoever else is on the market they stink.

4. MLB most valuable player awards are a joke. This year in the American League they gave the award to Dustin Pedroia. Why? Because he is from Boston. That is the only good reason. I think Justin Morneau had a better year and Josh Hamilton from Texas makes a better story. However, the guy who deserved the award led the league in Average. He is the only catcher to ever do it. Now he has done it twice. I am talking about Joe Mauer. This guy is the best in baseball. He took the Twins to heights no one thought they would be this year losing out on the playoffs on a tie-breaker game, #163 for the year. Mauer has gold glove quality defense and was leading a bunch of rookies on the mound. Glen Perkins, Nate Blackwell, and Kevin Slowey. He also had two second year players in Scot Baker and Nelson Lirano. That is a resume that screams MVP. I don’t care that Pedroia hit in four different spots in the line up. That is pointless. If you can hit in one you can hit in them all. Mauer could do that too, but his coach is not that dumb.

5. Tom Brady is the most overrated quarterback of all time. The debate about whether he is better than Peyton Manning is now over. Manning wins. Brady is worth about six wins more than a high school quarterback, maybe. Is Brady a system quarterback that thrived on being in the worst division in the history of the National Football League last year? Absolutely. Just as he took his job via injury, he has now lost it for good. So long Tom, it was nice knowing you.

6. I was right that the Nuggets were better off without “Ball Hog” Alan Iverson. They actually have a chance to do something good this year now that their big man is uninjured and they have a point guard. This is perfect. J.R. Smith can now play shooting guard, Melo at the wing and a champion point guard who knows how to play defense can anchor the point. If the NBA were not a league of thugs and pointlessness, I would be excited to watch the Nuggets this year.

Feel free to add your own lessons learns in this past year of sports. Although China being a nation of cheaters is not allowed because we have know that communism cheats in the Olympics for many, many years.