We really are the best fans

And now some magazine says so. Excellent. Although for some reason this really feels like an award for constantly gutting it out with a terrible football team, but at this point moral victories are all the Browns have to look forward to, so why not the fans?

LeBron #1

ESPN.com senior NBA wizard John Hollinger unveiled his 2006-07 player rankings. LeBron James leads the way, which should be no surprise. If he keeps improving at his current rate in four years he’ll be averaging about 57 points, 27 rebounds, and 31 assists per night. Second on the list is Kobe Bryant, a somewhat obvious if slightly curious choice. Dirk is third. Whatever. Amare Stoudemire is fourth, which is absolutely nuts. I’ve never liked John Hollinger and this is a prime example of why. Last season Amare played about 50 minutes, looked like a cripple when he was on the court, went 0-6 in 14 minutes in his last game, and from that Hollinger is projecting him to be the fourth best player in the Association. Sounds reasonable to me. Dwayne Wade rounds out the top five.

Damon Jones is the 57th ranked PG. He’s also the highest-ranked PG on the roster. Eric Snow is 70th, which means that every team on average will have two better point guards than the starting point guard for the Cavs. Lovely. Good luck resting LeBron, coach Brown.

Larry Hughes is the 11th ranked SG. I don’t know if this is good or bad. Seriously.

LeBron is the 1st ranked SF (obviously).

Drew Gooden is the 14th ranked PF, coming in just ahead of Dwight Howard. Someone needs to explain this to me. I find this incredible. Howard average 15.8 and 12.5 last season. He also dreams about there being a cross on the NBA logo, but no matter. Here’s to hoping Gooden out-performs Howard this season. I wouldn’t put money on it, but I know a guy who would.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas is the 3rd ranked C. Apparently Z found his game. It had been missing since the playoffs.

For the complete Cavs roster click here.

Worst week ever

With out a doubt October has been the absolute worst month for Cleveland fans for quite some time. First, there is no baseball, which is made even worse from time to time by good Indians teams that squander playoff hopes in the last week of the season–the twist of the knife to an otherwise painful stabbing. Second, there is no basketball, which has been increasingly difficult to handle now that the Cavs are a legitimate team. Third, there is the Cleveland Browns.

Watching the Browns since their return to the NFL is its own monster. From Monday through Saturday the quotient of denial coursing through the minds of Browns fans accumulates at a preposterous rate, to the point where many fans would categorize themselves as “hopeful” or “optimistic” or “quietly confident” about the team’s chances. Then on Sunday, from quarters one through four, the blind optimism that accumulated over the weak is drained from the system (it’s usually gone midway through the third quarter), replaced not with an emotionless void but with utter despondence accented by fits of anger and confusion. And then we go to sleep and wake up Monday morning and the process starts anew.

How this doesn’t result in mania or suicide is a question the folks at the Case Western Department of Psychology ought to take up. Most sports fans function roughly the same way–all games result in loss for one team, there is only one championship to be won, usually the Patriots win it–but for Browns fans this pattern seems more potent than it is for others (another member of the club: Cubs fans). It’s probably the football tradition in Ohio–high school, college, professional. Switching from OSU on Saturday to the Browns on Sunday is a mean trick played by a merciless god.

That said, I’d still take the Browns (and all the baggage) over no Browns. When you toss no Browns into October, you get the worst week in Cleveland sports. What happens when there is nothing to do? Fans grow complacent and set up (worthwhile) websites calling for members of the professional sports community to be fired. Ok, so that’s not always a bad thing.

But nonetheless, last week was the worst week in the worst month for Cleveland sports fans.

Now that it’s over, I’m starting to have a pretty good feeling about the Browns’ chances this week against the Broncos.

The stage is set…or not

Michigan is now ranked #2 in the newly-released AP poll. Ohio State is still ranked #1 and still has 63 of the 65 first place votes. West Virginia has two first place votes, both votes coming from California: Kevin Pearson of the Riverside Press-Enterprise and Scott Wolf of the Los Angeles Daily News.

For questions, you can contact Mr. Wolf via his email address or you can call him at (818) 713-3607. Mr. Pearson is a bit harded to track down, but this email address for the sports desk at the Press-Enterprise is a good start.

The first BCS poll comes out later tonight.

And now the BCS poll is out and…Michigan is #3. USC is #2. OSU is #1. Michigan trails USC by .0618 points. The way USC is playing I can’t imagin that they’ll finish the season in the top two. Looking farther down the list, West Virginia, #5, actually trails Auburn, #4, even though Auburn has lost a game and West Virginia is undefeated. The computers hate West Virginia. If it weren’t for human voters WVU wouldn’t be in the top ten. The computers actually like Boise State, a team ranked #15 in the BCS despite not being ranked higher than #17 in a human poll. The surprise team is Tulsa, ranked #25 even though they aren’t ranked in the top 25 of any human poll. The USA Today poll actually has Tulsa 38th.

Ohio and Michigan agree: Michigan sucks

In this week’s AP poll the Ohio State Football Buckeyes are ranked #1, with 63 of 65 first place votes. Florida is #2, followed by USC. Michigan is #4.

65 writers and broadcasters vote in the AP poll. Three are from Ohio: Kirk Herbstreit (WBNS-AM/ESPN), Doug Lesmerises (The Plain Dealer), and Matt McCoy (WTVN-AM). Two are from Michigan: David Birkett (The Oakland Press) and Angelique Chengelis (The Detroit News).

Here are the top five teams from each writer:

Herbstreit: OSU, FLA, MICH, LOUIS, WV
Lesmerises: OSU, FLA, MICH, WV, LOUIS
McCoy: OSU, FLA, USC, WV, MICH
Birkett: OSU, FLA, MICH, WV, USC
Chengelis: OSU, USC, MICH, WV, FLA

Not only does everyone love OSU, but no one loves Michigan. Look at the Wolverines, all the way down in the third spot, once even in the five hole. If the top five were the NL Central, Michigan would be either the Reds or the Pirates. OSU would be the Cardinals, who cruised into the NLCS over the weekend.

I think it’s also fair to say that Angelique Chengelis hasn’t watched a football game since last January.

Oh, and by “sucks” I mean not as good as OSU. I recognize no other standard.

Charlie Frye: QB Score: Week 5

Through the first five games of the season Charlie Frye has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. After yesterday’s loss to the Carolina Panthers, Frye has only further solidified his place with the Andrew Walkers and Ben Roethlisbergers of the league, namely, Andrew Walker and Ben Roethlisberger. It’s a select group of the absolute worst quarterbacks this season that still have starting jobs.

Yesterday Frye posted his worst QB Score of the season, -122, and his second-worst QB Score per play of the season, -2.6. Carolina has a solid defense, to be sure, but Frye is utterly prone to turnovers–he now has 12 on the season–and three times in the first five games Frye has committed three turnovers and not once has Frye turned the ball over fewer than two times. I doubt we are approaching a record for turnovers, but winning games when the quarterback averages 2.4 turnovers per game is exceedingly difficult.

Fortunately the Browns have a veteran backup to mentor Frye.

In other Ohio quarterback news, Brad Gradkowski Rock Stiffler, former Toledo and current Tampa Bay QB, started the first game of his career yesterday. His QB Score was 71 and his QB Score per play was a very respectable 1.8.

[NOTE: QB Score does not necessarily represent an accurate account of a quarterback’s skill. Charlie Frye having low QB Scores could easily be a reflection of the quality of players surrounding him. This should be noted. Now it is.]

OSU vs BG preview

I went to the BG-Wisconsin game in early September, and from that game all I know about BG is drawn. The salient fact for the OSU-BG game is that BG runs the ball a lot, often the quarterback, sometimes the running back. This should be a nice, easy game for the defense in that regard: stop the running game to stop Bowling Green. It should also be a nice, easy game in this ragard: BG is not good.

OSU is a 35-point favorite. Take OSU. Wisconsin dropped 35 points on BG and Wisconsin was far from impressive. This was supposed to be an off-week for the Buckeyes. It will probably have that feel after the first half.

OSU 45, BG 9

Never too soon to look ahead

In Stewart Mandel’s mailbag this week he published a numer of questions concerning the OSU-Michigan game. Here are two interesting facts:

If Michigan ascends to #2 in the polls and OSU wins the game, then OSU would have a chance to become the first team in history to beat three #2 seeds in one season (the BCS opponent being the third #2 seed).

If Michigan is #2 and OSU #1 when they meet it will be the first time in the modern poll era in which the #1 and #2 teams would play each other in the final game of the season before the bowl game, so this would be “the first case where a 1-vs.-2 game truly ‘preempted’ the title game,” as Mr. Mandel puts it.
With this in mind, I think it’s worth considering what should happen with respect to the championship game if a) OSU and Michigan are both undefeated entering the big showdown, b) if the teams are ranked #1 and #2 in the BCS, and c) no other team finishes the season undefeated other than the winner of that game. That is, if every team other than the winner of the OSU-Michigan game finishes the season with at least one loss and Michigan and OSU are #1 and #2 when they play (the final week of the the Big Ten). In such a scenario there is a strong case to be made that the loser of the OSU-Michigan game deserves to play in the championship game. Unless one of the teams is completely blown out, you would be hard pressed to convince me that another one-loss team had a better resume than either OSU or Michigan and was therefore more deserving of playing in the championship. If a team’s only loss comes at the hands of either the best or second best team in the nation–and if no other team can make such a claim–and if until that loss said team is ranked in the top two, then how another team should be able to leapfrog said team in the polls is beyond me. Right now only Texas is in a reasonable position to complicate the BCS order, having lost to the #1 ranked team and still having a reasonable chance to go undefeated.

My point is that another milestone might be reached this season: the first time two teams played in the last game of the regular season and then went on to play each other in the championship game.

The only thing better than beating Michigan once in a season is beating Michigan twice in a season. And the only thing better than that is beating Michigan for a national championship. If there is any self-serving reason for OSU fans to root for Michigan to win every game until that fateful last weekend, this is certainly it.

Aston Villa addition

According to Soccernet, Aston Villa has picked up Chris Sutton. Soccer Spot is all over it.

Chris Sutton is a good addition to the squad, though he’ll never be more than a stopgap. I doubt he’ll do particularly well, being 33 and somewhat washed up (he wasn’t a free agent through the end of September for nothing), but with Luke Moore out of the picture for the season due to a dislocated shoulder it’s good that O’Neill has found someone to replace him until the January transfer window. Expect a play for someone like Jermaine Defoe (though that’s probably a little lofty) in late December and January.

The loss of Luke Moore is a pretty big blow, but it could herald a faster return to the starting lineup for Milan Baros if he can somehow work out a way to play alongside Juan Pablo Angel up front (which is basically like asking Shaq and Yao to play together — I think that analogy works). That’s not likely, thus the contract for Sutton. Again, stopgap, nothing more.

That Sutton says “First and foremost, I want to get fully fit and get into contention,” is probably the most important part of the article since it shows Sutton is still not match ready. Hopefully this
international break (for Euro2008 qualifiers) will do him good and get him up to speed.

If your option was picked up, please step forward. Not so fast, Boonie

The first meaningful action of the 2006-07 Indians off season (it promises to be better than the 2006 Indians actual season) happened today as the team picked up the options on Jake Westbrook ($6.1 million) and Casey Blake ($3.75 million). Aaron Boone, meanwhile, will become a free agent. The Indians declined to pick up his option.

This is a good start to the off season: Westbrook at $6 million is great value, as is Blake at $3.75 million. Boone not on the team official opens the way for Andy Marte (most likely), an obvious improvement. All the moves were expected.