- Jim Clark

Can we for once come to the agreement that while it is great football is back, we can’t wait for the pre-season to be over?  Oh there was some bad football played and, if you are like me and have the NFL Network, I saw a lot of it.

The third game of the pre-season is supposed to be when the teams play their first-stringers into the third quarter.  If that is the case, I feel bad for Oakland Raiders fans out there.  Until the Panthers came along, I was a die-hard Raiders fan.   I still root for the “Silver and Black” but it has gotten tougher and tougher since 2002.

Ddi you see the Raiders’ best take on the Saints Saturday in Oakland?  Raiders fans were in awe.  Never before has team sucked that hard in a meaningless game.  The Raiders scored in the last minute to narrow the gap to 45-7.  It was 31-0 at halftime.  Are you kidding me?

One thing that puzzles me about football is how the teams go through OTAs, have been practicing for six weeks (not to mention the players have been playing the game for a decade and are the best of the best) and some teams continue to look like absolute garbage.

On the positive side, the Lions got a win, the Philadelphia franchise is not adding a “B” to their nickname for irony purposes, and Tom Brady is still able to play.  There will be plenty of football columns in the coming ten days.

It’s 12:45 am Monday night/Tuesday morning and I can’t tell you how cool it is to hear Vin Scully calling a game.

No team is gonna catch the Yankees in the American League regular season.  That line-up is solid 1-9, but the starting pitching has a couple question marks.  A.J. Burnett has not looked good the last couple times out and Joba Chamberlain is on a pitch count that only Yankees brass understands.

The Yankees will have home field advantage as long as they are in the playoffs, but the beauty of the playoffs is one or two bad outings or innings by your pitching staff and you can be in big trouble.

If the playoffs were to start today, the Yankees would face the Detroit Tigers.  That would mean Justin Verlander (15-7, 3.38), Edwin Jackson (10-6, 2.96) and Rick Porcello (11-8, 4.27).  I don’t know if any teams relish facing Verlander.

The other American League playoff series will be the Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim in Orange County but not too far from Disney and the wild card winner.  Right now it is the Boston Red Sox, but they will have their hands full with the Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays.  Tuesday the Sox head to Tampa Bay for a three-game series that will make things interesting.

Over in the National League, the division winners are pretty well set.  The Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, and Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles are pretty much locked in.  If there is one team who could falter, it is the Dodgers.  They are playing .500 ball since the All-Star break.  That might be why the Dodgers traded for slugger Jim Thome.

The wild card race has the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies tied.  The Giants probably have the better schedule down the stretch but both the Giants and Rockies have the Atlanta Braves and Florida Marlins knocking on the door.

There isn’t much drama for the division titles, but there is plenty of good baseball to come.  Commissioner Bud Selig was onto something with this wild card thing.

Speaking of wild, did you see UFC 102?  Holy crap, there were some awesome knockouts.  Nate Marquardt hit Demian Maia so hard Maia went horizontal.  Todd Duffee knocked out Tim Hague 7 seconds into the fight.  Seven seconds?  Yes, seven seconds.  Duffee even missed on one of his four thrown punches.  Thiago Silva’s KO of Keith Jardine was no fluke either.  Silva is a rising force at 205.
The main event saw Randy Couture take on Minotauro Nogueira.  At 46, Couture is a phenomenal athlete and fighter.  But against a healthy Nogueira, he was no match.  By no means did Couture embarrass himself, but it was obvious that Couture was a little slower and didn’t have the explosive power needed to compete at the top level in the UFC.

College football starts this week, the NFL has its final week of pre-season games,   the baseball playoffs are not too far away and the Carolina Hurricanes will be lacing up the skates soon.

This Fall is gonna be fun.