The sports talking heads have hyped up two big games this week:  Steelers vs. Jets and Vikings vs. Seahawks. 

To a point, they're right to hype these games.  Steelers/Jets is a potential AFC playoff game, and the Steelers have shown they are vulnerable to a defeat in the last three weeks.  Minn/Seattle is for playoff contention, and chances are that whoever loses this one will not make the playoffs (Although I think both will end up making it anyway.).  Also, both Mike Tice and Mike Holmgren are in the hot seat this year to make the playoffs.

One that's going under the radar is Tampa Bay/San Diego.  Let's see if the Bucs are as good as everyone is hyping them to be.  I haven't been impressed, and it's irked me that people are picking Tampa Bay to get that sixth spot in the NFC playoffs when Carolina is on a four game win streak and beat Tampa Bay in the process.  Considering both Tampa and Carolina are 5-7 every game is crucial from here on out.

Could we see another upset from Marvin Lewis and his Bengals?  It's possible.  They snuck the Ravens last week.  Now they face the defending Super Bowl Champions.  The only chance they have lies on the arm of newly-hyped Carson Palmer.  Will he show he's on the level of Rothlisberger, or as shaky as Kyle Boller?  I know one thing, I'm not screwing up my picks by betting on a youngster.

Here's what I got:

- Atlanta over Oakland (although this one will be close)

- Baltimore over Giants (this will be an ugly game)

- Buffalo over Cleveland

- New Orleans over Dallas (once again, people are hyping up Dallas too much.  Jones cant do it on his own)

- Indianapolis over Houston (Peyton will break the record today.  Watch.)

- Jacksonville over Chicago

- Minnesota over Seattle

- New England over Cincinnatti

- Denver over Miami

- Jets over Pittsburgh (the woo-ride is over)

- Detroit over Green Bay (yup.  I said it)

- San Francisco over Arizona (yup.  Said that too)

- Carolina over St. Louis (this needs to be a blowout.  Wrap up Chandler's career, guys)

- San Diego over Tampa Bay

- Philly over Washington

And Monday Night...Tennessee over Kansas City.

Key games are Steelers/Jets, Minn/Seattle, San Diego/Tampa, Det/G.B., Carolina/STL, and Cinn/N.E.

All in all, this should be a great week of football.

Now that the regular season of college football is over, I suppose it's time to go into another rant about the highly flawed and elitist BCS system.

As I was telling others earlier this week, I would have preferred the old independent bowl system over this tripe.  At least they were trying to maintain tradition rather than claiming to solve a problem.  For the second straight year, we have three or more undefeated teams (it's five this year).  And we have a major problem where a previously unranked team gets a BCS bowl bid with three losses (Pitt) gets in over a team that only had one loss, which was to the undefeated defending national champions (Cal-Berkeley).

On OkayPlayer I've been pedding around an idea that would eliminate this whole situation by creating a new BCS playoff system.  Tell me what you think about this:

- 14 teams.  The top seven from the West, and the top seven from the East.

- Keep the BCS polling system, but change it to two polls ranking the top 15 from each region every week, instead of 25 within the nation.

- Give the top team from each region a bye from the first round.

- Allow the teams to have playoff games in their respective regions, using neutral bowl sites for the playoff games.

- The New NCAA Championship Game would pit the Western Regional Champion vs. the Eastern Regional Champion.

- Allow the individual bowl committees to organize and run the playoff games.

- The BCS committee could decide which bowl sites would host playoff games, as they do the BCS bowls now.

- The major bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Cotton, Orange...am I forgetting one?) get specific dibs on the Regional Championship games and Championship games.

- NO AUTOMATIC BIDS FOR CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS.

Now, let me explain why I decided on some of these provisions...

First, 14 teams.  Most want 16, but I think giving the top team from each region a bye in the first round would create incentive for teams to continue playing hard throughout the season up to the end.  In other words, the number one team in the nation would have a good reason to play hard  through their conference championship game and get a week off.

I think it shouldn't be less because that way it covers most - if not all - of the teams with undefeated or one-loss records.  I think there should be an attempt to create a system that includes those teams.

The "new" poll.  The dynamics of the current BCS poll wouldn't change.  But it would be structured to show the teams from the two regions where they are in the standings week after week.  The design would also help to make the postseason look like two actual regions, and thus help to eliminate some of the controversy of having one national poll, as it is today.

Regions.  One of the biggest oppositions (or excuses, which ever way you want to see it) to a playoff system is the travel time and cost to the fans and to the teams.  Keeping it at regional sites would at least prevent Miami from having to travel to, say...Pasadena to the Rose Bowl for a first round game.

Will this mean that on some years one region will be stronger than the other?  Sure.  In fact, I expect one of the regions to possibly have to dip down to grab teams that might be ranked 20 or possibly 25th in the AP or ESPN coaches' polls to get that last playoff spot in the region.  But ask yourself; is it really any different than the NFL, where the AFC has been far more superior this year to the struggling NFC?  Is it fair that more than likely an AFC team will be lucky to get in the playoffs at 10-6 this year, while it's possible that the NFC West champion could have a 7-9 record?  No.  But it's the rules of the game, and it's created to keep the same rivalries and matchups dating way back in yesteryear.

Besides, you have to show you are able to be a force in not only your conference, but the region.  This would make sure teams maintain strength of schedule on both sides and not just rely on their conference schedule to pull them through.

Bowl/Bowl committee participation.  These guys generally do a great job running the bowls, and are able to hype the bowls and get people out to the stadiums.  It's important to allow them to continue.  And it's still allows some sort of tradition within the playoff system.  And since the major bowls have a lot more to lose from switching over to this type of system, it only makes sense that they would have dibs on the regional championship and national championship games.

No automatic bids.  That's one of the biggest reasons why the BCS is so fouled up.  There are six conferences guaranteed to receive an automatic bowl bid:  the ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10.  While their means of obtaining conference champions are fair for the most part, it isn't in regards to seeding playoff contenders.

In an actual playoff system, would Pitt get in it?  No.  Especially not over Cal.  But due to the weakened Big East, and the fact that all they had to do was have a better conference record, they received an automatic bid and thus the $14 million dollar BCS spot over teams who were no doubt better than them.  And before people think I'm just picking on Pitt, under the current BCS system all it would have taken was a Pitt loss on Saturday for 6-5 Syracuse to get in.  If Oklahoma had been upset in the Big-12 title game on that night, unranked 7-4 Colorado would have gotten a BCS bid.  And the automatic bid rule guarantees that each conference will collect BCS money no matter how poor their conference is.

Before you say, "Yeah, but in the playoff system you suggested, an unranked team could possibly get in the playoffs."  True.    But it's much better for a team to get a first round game and possibly lose than get a big $14 million dollar payday at the expense of a one-loss team.

Take the Texas controversy this week, where there was an plea made by Texas coach Mack Brown last weekend and an email campaign made by Texas fans to AP sportswriters to put Texas over Cal for a BCS bid.

I suppose you can say it worked, although there's really no way of telling how much Brown's pleas and Texas fans emailing sportswriters influenced the lot of the sportswriters in the AP poll or the coaches in the ESPN/USA Today poll (especially since the coaches poll is done by private ballot).  And a lot of criticism has fell on Mack Brown for what happened.

But this goes back to the old 90's saying, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."  The fact is, if there wasn't so much money and prestige on the line for only 2 coveted spots created by this system Brown would not have had to do that.  In fact, a number of people felt Brown would have been on the hot seat for next season or even fired at the end of this one if Texas (10-1) did not make a BCS bowl this year.  So it was real simple; either pander to the writers and coaches or risk being fired now or next year.  He chose to pander. 

People can complain all they want, but the bottom line is, Mack Brown has a job.  And Texas is $14 million dollars richer.  I can't get mad at him for working the system to his advantage.  And don't be surprised if others don't follow his lead in the years to come, as this failed system has been renewed to 2010 with Fox Sports.

There are six automatic bids and two at-large ones in the current system.  If you aren't a member of one of those six conferences that can get an automatic bid, you have to fight the members of the other conferences and the teams that don't win their conference (Texas is in the Big 12, Cal is in the Pac-10) for those two spots.  And to show how hard it is to do that, this year Utah will be the first non-major conference team since this system has been created to go to a BCS bowl.  And they had to go undefeated in order to do so.

My solution isn't perfect.  No doubt some teams will get salty if a team that got into the playoffs over them had a lower rank in the AP or coaches' polls.  But it's better to have this than a system that is elitist-driven and only focused on a handful of teams.  This will make college football more fair and gives teams from all conferences a real chance at a national championship.

It's only 13 games in four weeks:  six for the first round, four for the regional semifinals, two for the regional finals, and the NCAA Championship Game (call that whatever you want).  The most that one team will have to play and run the table is four games.  That's not unreasonable at all.

Of course, I don't expect this to be implemented.  The conferences are making too much money for doing too little.  But a brotha can dream, cain't he?  If you have any other suggestions or complaints about this solution, feel free to address them in my comments section, the tagboard, or email me.

Ha.  MoveOn.org was making some noise yesterday.

Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back."

A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn's political action committee to the group's supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats.

For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base," said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC's Eli Pariser. "But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers."

Sounds like a declaration of one within the Democratic Party to me.  As I and others have stated before the election, there will be a clash within the Democratic Party between the far left (Dean, the 527's, etc) and the corrupt moderates (The Clinton machine).

This won't create a ripple immediately.  But it is a sign of whats to come in the next couple of years.  Next month we'll see who will have the upper hand when Howard Dean and Harold Ickies contend for the DNC chairman seat.

Here's what's really funny, though:

"In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive," the message continued. "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."

MoveOn.org thinks it's any different than any corporation or special interest group.  Right.  Ask them who their biggest contributors were?  The answer:  the heads of corporations, particularly J. Peter Lewis and George Soros.  They act like they're different from any other corporate or special interest group out there.

And some good all of that money did.  They outspent the Republicans, and the Republicans still beat them, and pretty badly I might add.  Maybe I'm wrong, but that might mean you can't just place any dope out there to run for office and expect him to win because you got a ton of money.   Aw, what the hell do I know...

It's gonna be fun watching them destroy the Democratic Party.  They are so blind and ego-driven that they don't realize that they were part of the problem in 2004, not the solution.

Reynolds at Instapundit is tipping readers to a blog post over at Democracy Project about Zell Miller's decision to join a law firm in Washington.

The sad part about this was that this wasn't Miller's original plans after he leaves the Senate in January.  He wanted to teach at his alma mater, Young Harris College in northern Georgia.

However, once he publicly announced his support of President Bush in the spring, a letter from David Franklin, a history professor at YHC who's wife is the academic dean at the college, wrote a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution trashing Miller:

"You, Zell Miller, are a disgrace to your city, your county, your state and your country," Franklin wrote. "Your attack upon the U.S. Senate that you sit in now was so unpatriotic it boggles the imagination."

Disgusting.  After Miller read that he announced that he wouldn't return to the small college to teach.

I don't think people realize the tribulations and sacrifices Miller has suffered for his convictions.  If anyone had read A National Party No More they would know Miller really has a very strong love for the place he has lived virtually all of his life, and had talked about studying and teaching at Young Harris.  It's a shame that this prick's mouth stood in the way of his dreams, but I don't blame him one bit.

And is it a surprise that this guy was a part of John Kerry's Georgia campaign?  Didn't think so.  In fact, it's easy to see why Kerry bombed so badly in Georgia, with guys like this on his staff.

I can see Eugene Volokh's point.  But it should be noted that as acadamic dean Miller would have to work with his wife and possibly him in some form or fashion.  That the college didn't condemn or at least back away from Franklin's statements shows there was possibly a problem with Miller returning there.  And it didn't seem as if they were eager to encourage him to come back.  Considering that the college isn't much larger than a number of community colleges (in fact it only has 600 students) there is no doubt that this would have been a bigger problem that, say, the University of Georgia.

The Weblog awards, albeit a decent idea and was created through honest intentions, is not crucial enough to have people engaging in a blogosphere civil war.

I forgot to make my picks Saturday night.  Sorry.  I was watching the first season of Samurai Jack on DVD and got caught up.

Speaking of which, if you have never watched it, do so if you get a chance.  It's a great cartoon for all ages.  The emotion and depth that goes into it is unbelievable.  And it's not drawn out like anime.

Anyway, on to the NFL.  Once again, the top teams stay untouchable, although Pittsburgh shows signs of weakness.  It's only a matter of time before they get their second loss, and they were just wide right of a 60 yard field goal of catching it against the Jaguars on Sunday night.

The Jags showed a lot of heart in that game, but offensive consistency seems to be a problem.  Leftwich will be an NFL quarterback for a long time to come, but until he can get the ball to his receivers accurately the Jags will be on the outside looking in.  However a lot of people feel the Jags could get a wild card spot, especially since Baltimore and Denver both lost this week.

A Time Magazine press release (via Reynolds at Instapundit):

New York – President George W. Bush’s cabinet is more diverse than National Public Radio, Tavis Smiley tells TIME in an exclusive interview. “It is ironic that a Republican President has an Administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-élite network,” Smiley says.

Heh.

Actually Tavis, it's not ironic at all.  It's becoming the norm rather than the exception.  Most of the leftist media bastions have always been dominated by middle aged white people - from NPR to PBS to Pacifica on up.  The only ironic thing about your comment is that these organizations actually highlight diversity from organizations and criticize the ones they claim aren't diverse enough.

Hold up; that would actually make them hypocrites.  Never mind; forget I said that.

It's about damn time.

She's about a week or so late, but I'm glad she did it.

Her column is very good as well.

Not a bad week.  Not bad at all.

Thanksgiving was as good as could reasonably be expected.  We detailed that in the preview.  But as for Sunday, New England proved why they were the defending champs, Philly clinched the NFC East in November (as if that wasn't expected), and Pittsburgh is still on top of the mountain, albeit not without some challenges.

That's what Tuesday seemed like.  A lot of people either resigned or were given a pink slip.

Tavis Smiley announced that he wasn't renewing his contract with NPR and his last day is December 16th, claiming that he couldn't draw enough young people to talk radio.

Someone should ask him when has he ever drew young people to anything.  Only older folks watched his show on BET, and young people never listened to NPR or PBS before.  So I don't know what made him think he would be successful with that show.  It seems to me that Smiley and others want to force young people to accept them and follow them everywhere they go rather than actually listening to what they have to say and making decisions based on that.  But if those guys actually did that, they would have shows that are a lot different than what they have now.

Smiley is a good guy, when it comes down to it.  But he is just the same voice in a somewhat younger body (not too young...he is 40).  The fact that he engages in joint ventures with Tom Joyner, a middle-aged dj that targets older audiences, should be a testament to how out of step he is towards the younger audiences.

Next, Kwesi Mfume "resigned" as President of the NAACP, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, and was possibly aiming for a Senate run in Maryland (good luck with that one). 

Word is that there was a rift between Mfume and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.  A number of people blamed Bond for an IRS investigation into the NAACP's tax exempt status due to political partisanship.  At the heart of the matter was a hatchet speech that Bond made this summer, bashing Bush and the Republican Party.  Comparing the GOP to the Taliban before September 11th didn't help things either, I'm sure.

Rumors are going to start soon that Smiley might be interested in taking the NAACP post.  While that would give the NAACP a new look, and Smiley might envigorate the grassroots effort, I don't think it will solve the problems of the NAACP.  The organization is partisan, and it doesn't address the issues of African-Americans today, nor does it prepare them for the future.  Personally, I think the whole organization should be dismantled.

There was one hiring...Mel Watt will be the head of the Congressional Socialist Black Caucus.  Watt -who looks like Michael "Flash" Turner from The Five Heartbeats - said he is ready to repair relations with the Bush Administration.

Isn't it interesting how all of these organizations now claim to want to repair relations with Bush, instead of the other way around?  As I was saying earlier in the year, Bush doesn't need them, they needed Bush.  Now it seems that all of the Bush-bashing has put a lot of folks in these organizations in a pickle.

That's a shame, ain't it?  Not.

And Tom Ridge resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security this afternoon.  He will stay on until February 1st.

Not surprising, considering it's a stressful job, as the first term has been to a lot of people.  It would be nice if Bush nominates someone that wants to enforce our immigration laws and close the borders to illegal immigration, as Michelle Malkin wishes, but I guess that's asking too much.

---

In sports, Ty Willingham was fired from Notre Dame after three seasons.

That sucks, but the bottom line is that he couldn't bring in the money.  Notre Dame doesn't believe in having a extensive rebuilding period.  They believe in winning NOW.  And if you don't win, you get fired.  It's as simple as that.  When a college puts the kind of money into their football programs as Notre Dame does, you better pull off that $14 million dollar BCS bid.  If not, you're assed out.

To be honest, I wouldn't envy anyone that had to coach at Notre Dame.  It's probably one of the worst situations to have in college football, because

(1) there is so much pressure to succeed and

(2) Notre Dame is an independent school, meaning they do not belong to a conference.  That means that they have a harder time getting a BCS bid because of the automatic conference championship bid clause, which I explained to a point here.  You see, the champions of the major conferences get an automatic BCS bid no matter what their records are.  Since Notre Dame doesn't belong to any of those conferences, that means they only are viable for two at-large bids.  That makes it even harder for Notre Dame to be successful.  In fact, they've been to maybe one BCS bowl since it's been implemented.

So that means Willingham didn't have a real chance unless he went undefeated.  And to make matters worse, he went 5-6 and wasn't bowl eligible last year and went 6-5 and is headed to the lowly Insight Bowl this year.  He's also been blown out by USC, a hated rival, by 31 points each of his three seasons.

While I thought he would have one more chance to save his job next season, it was obvious that he wasn't going to pull in the recruits to be able to get a BCS bid, and that's the only way his job would have been saved. 

Meanwhile, Notre Dame should seriously think about joining the Big East, who has a 7-3 team (Pitt) and a 6-5 team (Syracuse) vying for a BCS bowl bid.  Notre Dame might be salty because they would have to give up some money if they did get a BCS bid, but at least they'd be there.  And it would be a hell of a lot easier getting in through the Big East, considering that Boston College is leaving for the ACC next year and there really isn't much competition.  Do it now before the NCAA strips the Big East of it's automatic bid eligibility.

In the NFL, Butch Davis resigned from the Cleveland Browns.

I'd rather say fired.  Everyone pretty much knew this was his last year.  Cleveland hasn't been a playoff threat in about two seasons.  This would make number three.

But Davis might land on his feet like Pete Caroll did and get a decent coaching job in college football.  Davis was the coach at Miami, in which he took over a scandal-plagued football team and led them to victory against Florida in the 2001 Sugar Bowl and finishing with an 11-1 record.  Caroll is now gunning for his second straight national championship and undefeated season after being fired by the New England Patriots in 2000 for Bill Bellichek.

Some say Davis might look at the job at Notre Dame.  I doubt it, as it looks like Utah's Urban Meyer, who has Utah looking at a possible BCS bid and an undefeated season, will get the job.  He was a former assistant coach and he has said that Notre Dame is his dream job.