Sports Roundup

College Football: No more upsets, Return of the Stars

Just two weeks after seven top 25 teams got upset in a single weekend, this past weekend saw only one team, the Auburn Tigers, get knocked off by a weaker opponent. A number of other top 25 teams went down to the wire, but only Arkansas was able to pull off the upset. That might have more to do with the fact that preseason polls artificially prop up teams that don’t deserve to be ranked so high. Now we are seeing a top 25 made up of the 25 best teams and not just the 25 most popular teams. As conference play progresses I have little doubt that we will see weeks with multiple upsets, but I doubt we will have another week this season with as many as seven or as few as one.

Yesterday the last two Heisman Trophy winners, Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford returned to action after suffering serious injuries. Tebow didn’t miss a game due to a bye week, but was a game time decision last night against the 4th ranked LSU Tigers. Tebow was efficient and did enough for the Gators to pull out a win on the road, but he didn’t seem like he was 100%. Bradford on the other hand hadn’t played since week one, had a big game yesterday in his return. He was off on some throws, and wasn’t nearly as efficient as he usually is, but he still threw for almost 400 yards (it was against Baylor so keep that in mind). I think within one more week both Bradford and Tebow will be back to mid-season form and lighting up scoreboards at will.

Baseball: Dodgers sweep the Heavily Favored Cards

So did people underestimate the Dodgers or just overestimate the Cardinals, because their series didn’t play out like anyone expected. I understand that at the end of the day Vincent Padilla and Randy Wolf, are still Vincent Padilla and Randy Wolf, but both pitched great for the Dodgers this year. The Dodgers were the best team in baseball the first half of the season, and that was while Manny was suspended and before Padilla, Jon Garland, Jim Thome, George Sherrill and Ronnie Belliard were on the roster. No team strengthened their pitching depth and bench more than the Dodgers did at the trade deadline. Those moves came up big in this series, Sherrill pitched in every game, Belliard had a big hit in game two, and Padilla pitched seven strong innings yesterday. Yeah the Dodgers weren’t playing their best baseball when the season ended, and they definitely weren’t the hottest team as the playoffs began, but they were the best team 1-25 on their roster can match up with any other team, and they showed that this series.