Who's Going to the Fall Classic?

We’re about a week away from the conclusion of the major league baseball season.

Most of the pieces of the playoff puzzle are known, but it’s going to take a few more days before we know how they fit together.

Still, it’s possible to make a few assumptions at this point.

• In the National League, for example, it seems pretty clear that the Chicago Cubs are going to represent the Central Division in the playoffs. And they’ll probably wind up with the best record in the league, so they’ll have homefield advantage through the playoffs.
  
  The Cubs have a nine-game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers, who, while technically still in the race in the Central Division, are locked in a three-way battle for the wild-card spot.
  
  The Brewers’ two rivals for the wild card are also fighting it out for the Eastern Division title. The odds are that one of those two teams — Philadelphia or New York — will win the division, leaving the other one to battle the Brewers for the wild card.
  
  Mathematically, there are a few other teams that could make things interesting at the end if the Brewers, Phillies and/or Mets get cold and lose the rest of their games. Or someone else gets hot at the right time.
  
  And that’s certainly not unheard-of — it was only last year, after all, that the Colorado Rockies, after plodding along through most of the season, won 14 of their last 15 regular-season games, as well as a one-game playoff for the wild-card spot, and went on to play in the World Series.
  
  The Rockies are out of the picture this year, but a similar hot streak could propel Florida, Houston, even St. Louis into the playoffs. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.
  
  Over in the lackluster N.L. West, the Dodgers appear to be on the verge of winning the division title. But even a 3.5-game lead with about nine left to play isn’t necessarily safe in that division.


• In the American League, the Los Angeles Angels have already clinched the Western Division. The Angels are the front-runners for the homefield advantage, although Tampa Bay or Boston still could overtake them for that.
  
  The Devil Rays and the Red Sox are battling for the Eastern Division title. The loser almost certainly will be the wild-card team.
  
  In the Central Division, the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins are the last ones standing, but only one is likely to remain standing after next weekend.
  
  The Chisox have a 1.5-game lead today, but my guess is they’ll settle the matter once and for all next week when the teams meet in a three-game series in Minnesota.
  
  The numbers probably favor the Twins. They’ve won 65% of their home games, whereas the White Sox have won only 44% of their road games.
  
  And, after this weekend’s series in Tampa Bay, Minnesota plays all its remaining games at home.
  
  Again, there are a few teams that still have a chance — mathematically. If you’re a fan of the Yankees or Blue Jays, there’s still a chance. But the odds get longer each day.

Still, as Yogi Berra said, ”It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!”

The Playoffs -- A Tale of Two Days

You thought Hillary Clinton's comeback in the New Hampshire primary was stunning?

Imagine how NFL fans are feeling this morning.

Sure, the unbeaten New England Patriots are keeping their date with destiny and will appear in the AFC Championship game next Sunday. And the Green Bay Packers will host the NFC Championship game next Sunday after hammering Seattle in the snow.

But those were Saturday's winners, doing what was expected of them in their playoff games.

It was a different story on Sunday.

In the AFC, the defending Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts couldn't get the job done at home against the San Diego Chargers. And in the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys failed to complete a three-game sweep of the New York Giants this season in their playoff game at Texas Stadium.

In the Indianapolis Star, Bob Kravitz writes that the Colts' recent playoff woes (with the noteworthy exception of last year's Super Bowl victory) meant Sunday's loss to the Chargers "shouldn't come as such a great surprise."

And, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Randy Galloway looks at the Cowboys' lengthy streak without a playoff win and says, "Let the count continue. It’s 11 years, with the calendar still active, since the Cowboys have won a playoff game. And after Sunday, is it better to ask 'when,' or 'ever?'"

In New York, Newsday's Shaun Powell gives credit to a much-maligned defensive unit that, in the past, "broke more hearts than George Clooney."

And in San Diego, Tim Sullivan contends, in the San Diego Union Tribune, that the Chargers are "pro football's most pragmatic provocateurs."

But Peter King may have provided the most fitting postscript to the weekend's action in his "Monday Morning QB" column in Sports Illustrated:

"There is nothing like Green Bay on a playoff weekend. You've got to go. You just have to."

After Saturday's game in the snow, who can argue with that?

News From The Sports World

The first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy is Tim Tebow of Florida. He was crowned the latest Heisman winner in New York last night in a ceremony that was carried live on ESPN.

The Gainesville Sun says Tebow is "tightening his grip on history."

But you didn't have to be in New York to make sports news -- or to be speculating on it.

* Barry Tramel writes, in The Oklahoman, that a four-team playoff in college football is "possible" in the near future. Four teams, he says, is about as many as you can expect.

His column today, however, points out that a playoff in college football is not a new idea. Such a proposal was brought before the NCAA convention more than 30 years ago. There was little discussion and the proposal was dismissed. And, in the 1990s, Division I-A voted heavily against a playoff proposal.

But Tramel contends that the current BCS "has the structure to expand its playoff from two to four teams. When the current Fox television contracts expire in 2011, the BCS bowls could establish a four-team playoff with no major reconstruction."

Meanwhile, Blair Kerkhoff of the Kansas City Star says forget it, a playoff system won't succeed in college football.

Who's right?

* In pro football, the teams are marching steadily toward their playoffs. Most of today's games have been played and we're getting a clearer picture of who will be in the playoffs -- in the NFC, anyway.

In the NFC, three teams clinched division championships today -- Dallas, Green Bay and Seattle. Tampa Bay could have clinched the fourth and final division title, but lost its game to Houston.

Things are a little more unsettled n the AFC, where it's been a given for most of the season that New England, still undefeated at 13-0, would be in the playoffs. The Patriots are playing against history these days. The Steelers, Colts and Chargers are close to clinching their divisions, but they haven't done so yet.

* Tom Dienhart of the Sporting News looks at what he calls college football's "coaching carousel."

He says Michigan has plenty of options left, but the other schools that are looking for new coaches may not find much to address their needs.

Many of those schools, Dienhart says, may have to hire assistant coaches rather than guys with experience as a head coach.

The prospect he mentions that intrigues me, as a graduate of the University of Arkansas, is East Carolina coach Skip Holtz, the son of Lou Holtz. If Skip Holtz is being mentioned as a possible coach at Arkansas, as Dienhart implies, he would be a candidate for his father's old job.

Lou Holtz was coaching the football team when I was a student there. And Skip was a student at Fayetteville High School with my brother.

College Football Needs a Playoff System

In a few hours, it will be announced on national TV which bowls will host which college football teams this year. And it will be announced which teams have been chosen, through computer rankings and poll ratings, to play for the national title.

For a long time, it has seemed to me that we needed a genuine playoff system to resolve the question of who is the best team in college football.

After all, all of the other NCAA sports have some sort of playoff mechanism in place to crown a national champion at the end of the season.

The BCS was created, in large part, to end the possibility of having divided championships. But, as the BCS is “tweaked” after every season, it just seems to get worse each year.

And this season, with its many upsets and directional shifts, has dissolved into “chaos,” as ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit said last night.

In case you missed it, #1 Missouri lost the Big 12 title game to #9 Oklahoma. And #2 West Virginia lost to unranked Pitt. So now, we’ll have to see which two teams are blessed, via the computer analyses, and get to play each other for the national title.

Most experts believe Ohio State will be one of the two, but there seems to be a good case to be made for many teams, such as LSU, Oklahoma, Georgia, USC. No matter which teams are selected to play for the national championship, you can bet there will be at least three or four other teams, maybe more, who will argue that they deserved to be there.

And who’s to say they’re wrong?

Jennifer Floyd Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram says it all adds up to an argument for an ”honest-to-goodness, 16-team, NFL-style, winner-take-all playoff.”

I’m inclined to agree.

In sports, you have to earn the title on the field. I know the bowl system is solidly entrenched, but I see no reason why the site for the national title couldn’t rotate each year, as it does now, and the rest of the bowls be used for the earlier round games.

Money is what the bowls are all about, anyway. Bowl games that match teams with a chance to play for the national title will create interest -- and interest is what brings people to sporting events. As it is now, only a school's fans have any real interest in any of college football's postseason games -- except the last one between #1 and #2.

But the early games will have as much interest as the late games because of the opportunity they represent. Because the dream, however tenuous, still lives for each school. Even if most of them probably don't have a realistic chance of winning it all.

Sure, it might take us deeper into January, or require scheduling that would overlap with final exams for the fall semester in December, but we already have a basketball playoff system that keeps its participants involved during spring break in March, and we have a baseball playoff system that requires players to compete during final exams for the spring semester and keep playing into June.

Those sports don’t have “mythical” national champions, but football always does.

It’s way past time for college football to do the smart thing.

Even though Ohio State is generally picked to be one of the two teams playing for the national title, there are people out there, like The Sporting News' Matt Hayes, who say that Oklahoma and USC should play for the championship.

If that comes to pass, you can expect to hear arguments to the contrary from Ohio State, LSU, Georgia, Virginia Tech, probably a few others.

And until college football crowns a winner of a real playoff system, we can expect more of this.

Will There Be A Game 7?

It's still really early in the Cleveland-Boston Game 6 in the American League Championship Series.

It's the first inning, but J.D. Drew of the Red Sox just ripped a grand slam and Boston is up 4-0. A four-run lead doesn't seem to mean as much in major league baseball as it did when I was a kid, but if Boston holds the lead, the teams will play the deciding seventh game tomorow night.

By nature, I'm a National League fan. I like the Dodgers and Cardinals, and I've been in St. Louis to see them play each other on several occasions. With neither of those teams involved in this year's playoffs, I haven't had a strong rooting interest. And it's been hard to build an interest in the other series when they've all been over so quickly.

Now, it will be kind of fun to watch the Colorado Rockies playing in their first World Series, no matter which team they play, but there wasn't much drama in their series with the Diamondbacks. It was four and out.

Now we might finally be treated to a Game 7.

So I'm pulling for the Red Sox to win tonight.