Baseball and Football thoughts...

How ridiculous has CC Sabathia been with Milwaukee? I feel like I have been asking myself that about twice a week the last month and a half. He is now 9-0 in 11 starts with 6 complete games and 3 shutouts. CC is also up to 88 innings pitched in 11 starts. An eight innings per start average will really help a bullpen in August and September.

Does he have a legit shot at NL Cy Young? If he wins 5 more starts and is something like 14-0 with an ERA around 1.50, he should. Webb will have 20+ and will get a lot of votes and Lincecum has been the best pitcher in the NL all year, but you can't discredit numbers like that.

Cliff Lee has all but locked up the AL award. He would have to fall apart for someone like Halladay to take it from him. What if Cliff figured out how to pitch last year? Would Cleveland have won the World Series? That rotation with CC, Lee, and Carmona would have been pretty stout...

Anyone have any interesting thoughts on Week 1 of college football? There weren't too many close games until Monday night's Rocky Top meltdown, but this week looks like some teams will get better tests. Georgia (C.Mich), Florida (Miami), Auburn (S. Miss) and others will get much bigger tests this week.

Teams I watched that looked really good:

USC
Wake Forest
LSU
Alabama
Kentucky

Teams I watched that looked really bad:

Michigan
Louisville
Clemson
Virginia Tech
Tennessee
Rutgers

There has been way too much talk this week about scheduling amongst BCS conference teams. You can't just look at one school's non-conference opponents versus another and make any general statements without looking at both situations closely.

Some schools (Southern Cal) have to schedule 2-3 big conference opponents out of conference because they play all of the other 9 Pac-10 schools each year. Recently, that means that 5 of those games (Stanford, Arizona, Washington, Washington St, and Oregon St) are complete duds. Of the other 4 (Oregon, Arizona St, UCLA, Cal), maybe you will have 2-3 that are legit top 25 teams. The only way to get your team ready for a BCS game is to find a few other top games that are out of conference.

Alabama is an example of a team on the other end of the spectrum. They have scheduled this year Clemson, Tulane, Western Kentucky, and Arkansas St out of conference. WKU is by far the weakest with Tulane being from a decent conference (USA) and Arkansas St usually fielding a competitive team (Beat A&M Saturday). Clemson was the only major BCS conference team the Tide scheduled this year. The reason? They are already at Georgia, Tennessee, and LSU in conference and host Auburn to close the season. Those four games plus Clemson gives you plenty of big-time games on the slate. In the USC example, getting Virginia, Ohio St, and Notre Dame are needed to get the 5-6 big games you need to legitimize your team.

So, when someone brings up USC's bottom tier opponents, don't let "USC fan" tell you the SEC has Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Vanderbilt. It is a different situation because USC gets to play all the bottom feeders, while a team like UGA doesn't play either Mississippi schools or Arkansas.

That being said, I sure am glad USC is ranked #1 now in both polls. This UGA team is too young to deal with those expectations each week. It is good experience for the 2009 team though, the one most true fans have targeted the past 3 years as the Dawgs best shot at a BCS title...