Some Musings & Observations

I've had a really hard time coming up with blog topics lately.  It's not that I don't have anything to say, it's just that it's too hard to narrow it down to something specific.  Then I realized it's been a while since I shared some of my random musings.  Since that's a nice catch-all that will give us a nice little hodgepodge of stuff, we're going with that instead of sticking purely baseball-related today.

• The Packers and Lions are both 5-0 while the Brewers and Tigers play in their respective LCSes.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's gotta be great to be a sports fan in either Milwaukee or Detroit right now.  (It's also crazy that both teams are 5-0, yet, since they're in the same division, neither team is in outright possession of first place.  Meanwhile, San Francisco already has a two-game lead in the NFC West.)
• TCU actually joined a conference that makes geographic sense for the school.  What a concept!  You're telling me TCU fans and alumni would rather play traditional rivals like Texas, Texas Tech and Baylor than random Big East schools like Louisville, Rutgers and South Florida?  This is shocking news!  But yeah, Texas A&M that had the right idea.  Obviously playing the likes of Florida, Vanderbilt and Kentucky will be exactly the same as taking on Texas and Oklahoma every year.  I'm sure Syracuse fans will feel the same way about those exciting conference matchups with Clemson and Wake Forest.  That's much better than rivalry games against UConn and Georgetown.  Sure.
• The Boston Red Sox (and more importantly, their fans) don't even realize that they've become that annoying, arrogant, "entitled" organization they claim to hate so much.  You don't win for 86 years, then do it twice in four years and suddenly anything less is unacceptable.  One bad month got Terry Francona a ticket out of town that he probably didn't deserve.
• Speaking of Terry Francona, I've got a career option for him if he doesn't get a managing job next year.  He was outstanding as a guest analyst for FOX during Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS.  Granted, it's not hard to be better than Tim McCarver, but he wasn't just good in comparison.  He was good good.
• One last note about those people from New England.  Theo Epstein has left to become GM of the Cubs.  I think this is actually a good move.  There was nothing left for him to do in Boston.  He ended the "Curse," then won another title.  (I'm not going to talk about his questionable and kind of weird obsession with starting pitchers and first basemen right now.)  Meanwhile, how could you NOT want the challenge of trying to finally make the Cubs a winner?  For him, it would be the ultimate achievement.  For the Cubs, who better to give it a try than the guy who finally won a World Series in Boston?
• The first two weeks of the NBA season have officially been cancelled because of the lockout.  Is anyone surprised by this news?  No.  So why did they build up all this false suspense for something that we all knew was inevitable?
• In other basketball news, the Minnesota Lynx beat the Atlanta Dream to win their first WNBA championship.  I know nobody cares, but did anyone even know that the WNBA Finals were going on?
• Hockey season has officially started.  The Rangers lost their first two games (against the Kings and Ducks) in Sweden and the Artists Formerly Known as the Atlanta Thrashers actually played a home game that fans attended and cared about.  (Or should I say aboot?)  Either way, welcome back Winnipeg!
• The NFL lost a great man with the passing of Raiders owner Al Davis.  Few, if any, franchises are more identified with just one person than the Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders.  He was a pioneering maverick who helped make the NFL what it is today.  That ought to be his legacy.
• The 2011 Pan American Games get underway this weekend in Guadalajara, Mexico.  Not that any Americans will notice.  The only network showing them is ESPN Deportes.  I don't understand why the Pan Am Games are simply ignored in this country.  Americans can't get enough of the Olympics.  Team USA is even more dominant in the Pan Am Games, which are basically a mini-Olympics (and an important tune-up).  The Pan Am Games are an incredibly important competition to Latin American nations.  It would be nice if the United States even remotely cared.
• On the subject of the Pan Am Games, I find this year's event to be incredibly late, and unnecessarily so.  Why are you holding such a big Olympic prep event only nine months before the Olympics?  Most summer sports are in their offseason, so athletes will either be tired from such a long season or won't even show up in Guadalajara so that they won't mess with their Olympic prep.  I can't think of a legitimate reason to have them at the end of October instead of early August, which was the one-year mark and would more closely replicate the Olympic schedule.
• Random other things: the U.S. women won the team gold at the Gymnastics World Championships, archrivals Australia and New Zealand are playing each other in the semifinals of the Rugby World Cup, Sidney Crosby still hasn't returned from the concussion he suffered in January, and the White Sox evidently considered Paul Konerko for player-manager before realizing that was a bad idea and going with Robin Ventura instead.