Odds on favorites

The Clarion Content vigorously disputed this notion last night, only to awake this morning dispatch our crack research staff and find out the readers had been right and the editor wrong.

According to everywhere we checked today the Los Angeles Lakers are the oddsmakers favorite to win the 2009 NBA title. Truly we can't believe it. The Celtics, though the second choice, are getting no respect! Did people not see the dismantling the Celtics put on the Lakers in the Finals? Andrew Bynum, who has never started sixty games in a season and never averaged more than the 13pts, 10 boards he put together last year, is supposed to make that big a difference? Coming off of knee surgery? How will he, Gasol, and Odom all play at once? Sure, Odom's gonna be happy coming off of the bench in a contract year, right. And Kobe's gonna share the ball and be a better person. You will have to forgive us if we don't believe the hype.

We believe the Pistons are a better second choice than the Lakers. Kobe just went over the 1,000 games played mark for his career. He played 106 regular season and playoff games last year, then without a break headed on to the Olympics. No Olympics for the leaders of the real favorites Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Rajan Rondo.

The oddsmakers in one book have Hornets as the third choice and the Pistons as the fourth. The Clarion has heavy respect for Chris Paul, David West and the boys. We could easily see them knocking off the Lake show in the playoffs. We will tell you that we are pretty darn confident that the Spurs every other year thing finally comes to end. If Duncan and Pop can somehow pull it off with a banged up Ginobili and the aging cast off spare parts, it will be an amazing feat. Don't sleep on the Pistons, as Bill Simmons warns in his NBA fantasy preview, they need an in-season trade to avoid becoming the Atlanta Braves II, but they have a great core.

The oddsmakers in another book have the Houston Rockets as the third choice, which just goes to prove P.T. Barnum's old line, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Celtics coach Doc Rivers had the best answer for the lack of respect the defending champs are getting, "We pick us. We picked us last year, too."

Rich Stadium power outage

Just a day after the Clarion Content blasted TBS and Major League Baseball for the snafu that prevented them from getting the first inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series on the air another sports power failure hit. This one felt rather more like bad luck than piss-poor planning.

Three small mylar balloons became entangled in wires across from the Buffalo Bills' Rich Stadium thirty minutes before game time. Power failed throughout the stadium. CBS was unable to broadcast the game. The Jumbotron did not work. Time was kept on the field, the play clock was signaled to the quarterbacks by hand. There were no television timeouts as the game was unable to be aired without power to the stadium. The crowd cheered without prompting as the usual electronic noise was not pumped through the stadium. The teams sat in darkened locker rooms before the game and at halftime.

Power was restored during the third quarter. Television coverage resumed shortly thereafter and the Bills won with a late goal-line stand and two turnovers by Chargers QB, Phillip Rivers.

TBS screws the pooch

Turner Broadcasting Systems or TBS screwed up big time last night. Somehow they managed to cut the power to both their router and their back-up router carrying the American League Championship Series Game 6. Well done, geniuses. This meant nowhere in the country were the first twenty minutes of the game available on television. Sports bars everywhere faced near riots, as TBS showed "The Steve Harvey Show," and ran a crawl on the bottom of the screen saying, "We are experiencing technical difficulties."

Of course, Bud Selig's force of used cars salesmen had their collective heads up their asses again, claiming that they were, "unaware there was a problem until the broadcast failed to come on the air." That is Major League Baseball's administration in a nutshell for you; clueless, helpless and oblivious. Good work nimrods!

Valiquette 2-0, shuts out Leafs

You'll remember about a week ago, when we called your attention to the hot start of the New York Rangers and their all world goalie, Henrik Lunqvist. After last night, back-up goalie, Steve Valiquette is 2 and 0 following a regulation shutout and a shootout win for the Blue shirts in the world's most famous arena.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, the ghost of an original six team, which hasn't won a Stanley cup since the Johnson administration, were the victims. Valiquette who had a strong year as the back-up last year, played nine of the ten games he started on the road. He was especially gratified to get the shutout at home. The crowd stood and chanted "Valee! Valee!" as he turned back five Toronto shots on a later 3rd period power play. He said later, "That gave me goosebumps. And now I know how Henrik feels."

The Rangers are off to a 6 and 1 start.

Syracuse coach

The Clarion wanted to weigh on the Syracuse football coaching job, which rumor has it, will be available at the end of this college football season. Greg Robinson has the Orangemen at a lowly 1 and 5 right now. The Clarion hopes they have a little bit more class than Clemson and wait until the end of the season before they break their coach off, that should be SOP. It is an ill-advised example to the young scholarship athletes to do anything else.

The Clarion was less than favorably predisposed to Robinson to begin with because we opposed the Paul Pasqualoni firing. We believed that Coach Pasqualoni, who had brought the program back to such renewed heights, was just going through a down cycle. Some alumni thought that they were a bigger deal than the reality. They thought that an USC guy could recruit to upstate New York.

We hope that they don't make the same kind of mistake again. We felt compelled to weigh in, even though Coach Robinson still has his job, just because we'd heard they might be heading down the same misbegotten road. One of the leading candidates is Florida, Assistant Head Coach and Offensive Line Coach, Steve Addazio. Now at least Addazio is from Connecticut rather than from a sunshine state, but we have no idea what makes folks think that just because he can recruit to warm weather Florida that he can recruit to Syracuse. He also has Notre Dame experience, but during one of the most unsuccessful stints in their history.

The Clarion strongly prefers renown motivator Turner Gill. The former star Nebraska quarterback and more recently Nebraska Quarterbacks Coach has resurrected nearby Buffalo's program from their status as, quite literally, the worst team in Division I-A to a MAC contender. They are coming off an overtime loss to 6 and 1 Western Michigan, but Gill has the program poised to turn around and is ready to make the leap to the next level.

Give the Phillies their due

We at the Clarion have to give the Phillies their due respect. Congratulations to the Phillies and their fans in the city of brotherly love!

Clearly, we were rooting for the Dodgers, but not out of any animosity for the Phils, rather we just wanted to see old Joe Torre make it to the World Series. We wanted Torre and Manny to give the jerks running the Yankees brain trust (Brian Cashman excepted) their comeuppance for so callously and arrogantly dismissing Torre's efforts. (Yes, we mean you, boot-licker, Randy Levine.)

But today is not the day to talk about the Dodgers or the Yanks. How about them Phillies!?! The Clarion loves and respects that they built from within, count'em three different N.L. MVPs have come up through their farm system to win the MVP with the big club, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. That is impressive. Moreover, several other Phillies players came from within, too, including starting pitchers Cole Hamels, (the N.L.C.S. MVP) and Brett Myers, as well as catcher Carlos Ruiz and outfielder Pat Burrell. It takes terrific scouting and tremendous patience to win this way, the Phils deserve credit. They built slowly and incrementally, the team has won 80 or more games for seven straight seasons. Last year they finally made the playoffs only to get swept by the scorching Colorado Rockies. This year they came back even more determined.

The guy who carried the series from their side, in the Clarion's view, was the flyin' Hawaiian, Shane Victorino. He made pivotal catches in game 2 and game 4 with runners on base to preserve the lead. In game 2 he added four RBIs. He had two more nice catches in center in game 5. He did not back down with the Dodgers threw one over his head in game 3, but he also wisely did not escalate so much as to get ejected or suspended. And finally he snuffed Dodger dreams with a huge game tying homer in game 4 without which the well traveled Matt Stairs never would have seen the plate to hit his dinger.

Good luck to the Phils and their fans in the World Series.

Philadelphia is starved for a championship. It has been 25 long years since Moses proclaimed, "Fo', fo' and fo'." And then led the Sixers to the promise land along side, Hall of Famer, the Doctor, Julius Erving and the underrated backcourt tandem of Mo Cheeks and Andrew Toney.

In the market for a pitcher?

If your favorite baseball team is in the market for a pitcher this off-season, you gotta figure a new franchise joined the fray this week after the way the Boston Red Sox pitching staff has labored in their American League Championship Series versus Tampa Bay.

"Dice K" Matsuzaka is the only Sox pitcher performing up to snuff. Their ace Josh Beckett got shelled again, after having been clobbered in the previous series against the Angels, too. They are being tight lipped, but he is clearly injured. Beyond that, John Lester is a back end of the rotation guy that has been covered by their prodigious offense. (Which is now missing not only Manny, but aging and injured World Series MVP Mike Lowell.) Further down the bench, knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is 42, and though his arm never gets tired, he looks like he couldn't throw it past Don Zimmer at this point. We can't imagine that Boston is counting on a comeback out of the nearly 50 year old Curt Schilling. So what does that mean?

Well, Indians, Yankees, Mets, Braves fans and any other pursuers of good starting pitching, beware Red Sox nation has entered the fray. Selling out Fenway over and over again has given them the revenue to chase C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, or reacquire Derek Lowe. They also have the prospects to compete in the Jake Peavy sweepstakes if the Padres are truly making him available.

Lundqvist 3 and 0

The New York Rangers are 3 and 0 for the first time since 1989. It must be a pleasure to play in front of the best goalie in the world. Despite being the gold medal winning goalie in the Olympics with his native Sweden, Henrik Lundqvist remains underrated. ESPN the magazine gave the cover, on the week of their hockey preview, to Washington's Capitals star left wing Alex Ovechkin. The New York area media continue to defer to the future Hall of Fame goalie playing in New Jersey, Martin Brodeur. Will this be the year the NHL wakes up and gives Lundqvist his props? The Clarion hopes so.

Rivera doing it right

No surprise, but the classy Mariano Rivera, the Yankees closer extraordinaire, has handled his shoulder surgery the way a professional should. Rather than, hemming and hawing, and waiting through half the off-season, Rivera got it taken care of right away. We are always reading about players who deliberated for months before finally electing to have surgery, only to miss substantial chunks of the following season. Not Rivera, he is scheduled to begin throwing in January and should be ready for spring training.

Believe it!

Derek Lowe, a playoff veteran, pitched a solid game in a big spot for the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, and in the postgame locker room he referenced Jose Lima! Lowe, tongue-in-cheek, said he wants a statue erected for he and Lima.

If he keeps it up...

Manny kept it up, drawing a crucial walk after being down 0-2 in the count, two batters before James Loney had the big grand slam that won the game. Manny added his own dinger a couple innings later, golfing a ball that was shoelace height twenty rows deep into the left field bleachers at Wrigley.