Weekly Sporties

-The fallout from last week's mega salary dump from the Miami Marlins continues, as now there are reports that before Jose Reyes and Mark Buerhle signed with the team they had requested full no-traded clauses and were told by the Marlins that while they couldn't put it into the contracts, the players had their word they wouldn't be traded. Well, cut to a year later and those players are on their way to Toronto where taxes are significantly higher than in Florida (which I'm willing to bet is the only reason they are annoyed at being moved). Now, I have no sympathy for either player because they have both been in the majors for several years which means they should have known better than to trust anything a front office says. That should go double for a team like Marlins, which has a history of trading their best players as soon as times get tough. However, I do wonder what news like this will do for the Marlins going forward. As I said last week I was going to hold off on judgement regarding this trade until I saw whether or not the Marlins used the salary flexibility to bring in a new crop of free agents. But now you have to question whether or not they will even be able to bring in any new free agents, because who is going to sign with a team that won't keep its word? Sure, there are always going to be middle-of-the-road guys and aging vets who will be willing to take any job they can find just to stay in the majors, but no marquee free agents are going to seriously consider signing with the Marlins, even if they are willing to significantly overpay them. Once again, it appears that if they ever want to get a consistently solid baseball team on the field, the biggest trade the Marlins have to make is in the owner's box.

-After a couple years of teams shifting conferences with no regard for geography or math, there hadn't been any movement for a couple months so I thought we had reached a sort of uneasy peace within the college ranks. Apparently that was naive of me, because on Monday the University of Maryland announced they will be moving to the Big Ten starting in 2014 and were followed in by Rutgers on Tuesday, bringing the conference to 14 teams (still no word on a conference name change, but I wouldn't count on it). Normally, I would be numb to this kind of stuff - I think we are all starting to realize that everything we thought we knew about college conferences is irrelevant and inevitability there will be 4 super-conferences. Rutgers leaving the Big East isn't the story here - they weren't one of the first-generation programs, so they had no real loyalty to it and that conference is slowly being picked apart. But I am shocked that Maryland is leaving the ACC, which they have been in for over 50 years. I know lately they hadn't had the success of schools like Duke or UNC, but I still considered them one of the flagships of the conference. And unlike Rutgers, which is most likely moving to guarantee they will play in a conference with an automatic qualifier, it feels as though Maryland is making more of a lateral move than anything. I can only assume there is more going on behind the scenes. Normally, I leave the final word on stuff like this up to alumni, but I can't really tell what they think because reaction, as it always is, has been mixed. Some think it is time to leave the shadow of Duke and UNC while others are lamenting the loss of traditional rivals. Personally I think it time we all start realizing that things like rivalries are way behind the true meaning of college athletics - making as much money as you can.

-Of course, the big fear about Maryland and Rutger switching conferences is that it will set off yet another round of program musical chairs. You know the ACC will have to bring it at least one member to fill the void or risk appearing weak and ripe for further poaching. (Reportedly, they already have an eye on UConn.) Plus, the Big 12 is still trying to find enough teams so they actually match their conference name (they currently only have 10 teams). But I think my favorite story about conference realignment came in the middle of the week, when reports started to come out that Boise State, San Diego State and BYU had talked to the Mountain West Conference about possible re-joining the league. When all this realignment first started BYU went Independent while San Diego and Boise planned to join the Big East next season to try and get in the best position for a major bowl bid. But at this point the Big East is a shell of itself and if UConn follows through on its plan to leave the conference may very well become basketball-only. Plus, under the new playoff format which was announced after Boise and San Diego committed to the Big East the BCS no longer guarantees an automatic bid to the Big East champion - it goes to the highest-ranked conference champion from a pool of the five "other" conferences. I guess these schools figure that if they can get the same deal and not have to travel as much it would be worth it to buy out of their Big East agreements and go back to the way things were. The thing is, if I were running the MWC I wouldn't be in such a hurry to take them back. I would make them pay a pretty hefty penalty in addition to the money they have to pay to the Big East to break an agreement which hasn't actually started yet. After all, they wanted to leave to make the most money, so the MWC should remind them they aren't running this conference for the fun of it either.

-Last week's thumping of the Indianapolis Colts did not come without a cost for the New England Patriots. Star tight end Rob Gronkowski broke his forearm late in the game and is expected to miss several weeks as a result. Of course, this started the debate of whether or not Gronkowski should have still been playing that late in a blowout. This is a common talking point whenever the Patriots win by a large margin. (Though, and I'm sure this is just a coincidence, it never seems to come up when another team appears to be piling on the points. Also, my feelings on this are quite simple: there is no such thing as running up the score in professional football. These guys do this for a living and it is not like Florida taking on some low-level team trying to get a paycheck.) Besides, it is not like Gronkowski got hurt while catching a pass - he broke him arm while blocking on an extra point, something which could have just as easily happened at any time, regardless of the score. Of course, not about to let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good talking point, that was ignored by some analysts, who then started to question why Gronkowski was on the field goal team. Again, the answer was pretty simple: he's the best blocking tight end the Patriots have and tight ends are almost always on the field goal team. Additionally, two of the Patriots tight ends were inactive for the game, so even if Belichick wanted to to take him out he didn't have the personnel to do it. It just goes to show that no matter what he does, some people are going to question coach Belichick's decisions. But as long as he keeps winning most of the criticism will fall on deaf ears. And if their Thanksgiving day drubbing of the Jets was any indication of how the offense is going to be moving forward then the Patriots should be just fine.

-The other interesting NFL moment which happened on Thanksgiving came during the first game between Houston and Detroit. In the middle of the third quarter and with Houston down by 10, Texans running back Justin Forsett spun off a tackle and ran 81 yards for a touchdown. However, replays showed that while Forsett's knee never came down during the play, at one point his elbow was touching the ground. In the NFL an elbow is just as good as a knee and the play should have been stopped there. The good news for Lions fans should have been that since it was a scoring play it was automatically going to be reviewed and would have been overturned. The problem for those same Lions fans is that head coach Jim Schwartz is an impatient man. Schwartz threw the challenge flag anyway, which is against the rules. When the NFL implemented the policy of automatic reviews of scoring plays and turn-overs it was half to make sure the play was right, but also because they didn't want the refs to be shown up by the coaches. To make sure they didn't do that, they included a clause which stated that if a head coach throws a challenge flag on a play which is already being reviewed it negates the review and the team is hit with an unsportsmanlike penalty. So, thanks to Schwartz the play was allowed to stand even though everyone knew it was wrong and the Lions eventually lost in overtime. Now, I'll agree that Jim Schwartz is a bad coach, but that doesn't change the fact that they need to fix this rule and fast. It is one thing to give out an unsportsmanlike penalty, it is entirely another to then not review a play we can all see needs to be reversed. I appreciate what the NFL was trying to do with this clause but they need to amend it right away, because trying to right one wrong by creating another doesn't help anyone in the long run.

-With every passing day the NHL finds itself closer to the zero-hour - the point at which they won't have time to pull everything together and will have to call off the entire season. Already this week the league was forced to cancel games through the middle of December and the All-Star game. They continue to call off games in two week chunks and if they don't have an agreement in place to have games started by February than there probably won't be any professional hockey until next October. That is why Commissioner Gary Bettman's idea of a two-week "cooling off period" after a tense negotiating session was so idiotic when it was suggested - these people don't have two weeks to waste. However, this week I saw a bright spot when Donald Fehr, the executive director of the NHL Players' Union, said that the last proposal exchanged had the two sides $182 million dollars apart. Now, I know a difference of almost $200 million doesn't sound like an optimistic sign, but I'm looking at it as progress because just a few weeks ago these two sides were even further away from one another. Now that there is a number in place they can start to whittle it down even more. I'm not saying an agreement is imminent, but at least now there is hope they have established a few of the ground-rules and at this point all that remains is to haggle over a price. On top of that, you would imagine that $182 million is the kind of money the sides would be able to make up if they got back to the business of playing hockey, so it would be in their best interests to get back to work and actually have that money to divide between themselves rather than fight each other until the profits they are fighting to divvy up become nothing more than hypothetical.

-At this point most sports fans acknowledge that Division III athletics aren't much more than a minor step above high school athletics. You give the kids credit for playing without the benefits of scholarships, but these schools also have to realize they are getting what they paid for. So, if you want to get national attention playing at one of these schools you are going to have to do something really amazing or really embarrassing. Fortunately for Grinnell College basketball player Jack Taylor he fell into the amazing category, as he scored 138 points, by far the record for most points scored by one player in a single game at any level. Now, I'm not about to crap all over the kid because I wouldn't score that many points if you let me stretch it out over several games, but it needs to be pointed out that he didn't exactly get there easily. Taylor needed 108 shots (71 one of them from 3-point range) and his team was passing up much closer shots to get him the ball so he could try score more. Also, they don't play much in the way of defense, as a kid on the other team scored 70 points. Apparently, this is simply Grinnell's style of play, as last year a player scored 89 points. If anything, that should give Taylor more credit because numerous kids have had the opportunity to score like this and only he has. I'm just trying to figure out how they decide who will do all the shooting that day (Taylor is not the coach's kid, I checked). I can only imagine they do some kind of game during the shoot-around to see who has the hottest hand that day. I'm just wondering why the coach on the other sideline was willing to play along. Unless he wants to be coaching at this level for the rest of his life he may want to go back and read a manual about defense. Honestly, switch to zone or a box-and-1. You have to try something, because man-on-man obviously wasn't working.