That Creaking Sound You Hear Is Me Going Out On A Limb

I'm just full of new SHS traditions! Here's the latest: My first annual end-of-the-year Big Ten basketball predictions. (And yes, I know that it's logistically impossible to be the first annual anything. I'm being whimsical; relax.) Here's my predicted order of finish, just days before the conference season starts.

Michigan State: Not only will this team win the Big Ten, but they could go very deep in the NCAA tournament.

Indiana: This team is vulnerable, but it’s a very weak Big Ten this year.

Purdue: Matt Painter has these guys playing extremely well. I may be overrating them a tad at No. 3, but they will definitely finish in the top 5.

Ohio State: Greg Oden will be a little harder to replace than some people were anticipating.

Wisconsin: There’s a pretty clear dropoff after this spot.

Illinois: Yeah, I made these rankings before they lost to Tennessee State. Still, things will get better, Illini fans. Some of those freshmen are starting to play well.

Minnesota: This team is still hard to figure. They definitely beat everyone they should, but how many Big Tem teams are in that category?

Penn State: If Minnesota (and maybe even Illinois) isn’t careful, these guys could sneak up on them.

Iowa: Well, you’ll always have wrestling.

Michigan: Here’s hoping that stealing a West Virginia coach works out just as well for you in that other sport.

Northwestern: First in GPA, last in our hearts and basketball standings.

BEARS 33, Saints 25: Whoop-De-Freakin'-Doo

When two teams combine for five fourth-down conversion attempts, you know you're watching the last game of the season between two sub-.500 teams.

And when Adrian Peterson is flinging touchdown passes in the ugliest trick play ever seen (or at least the ugliest successful trick play ever seen), you know you're watching the last game of the season between two sub-.500 teams.

And when one team starts a drive with 26 seconds left in the half after the other team fumbled, only to have its drive killed by a goal line interception, which is returned and then fumbled back to the driving team while still within field goal distance, you KNOW you're watching the last game of the season between two sub-.500 teams.

But hey, a win is a win. Seven and nine feels a heck of a lot better than six and ten, even if it does remind us just how tantalizingly close to being a playoff team these BEARS were this year.

After all, this was the BEARS' first two-game winning streak of the season. So now we know they were capable of it all year long. Just ONE win against the Lions OR Vikings -- combined with 60 solid minutes of defense against the Redskins OR Giants -- and this season would have had a very different ending.

But, it's over now, and it's time to look ahead to next year. If the BEARS can be as dominant on defense and competent on offense as they were in the last two games, they could do quite well indeed against a last-place schedule.

The former is quite plausible. Even with Lance Briggs gone, this team should be OK if it doesn't have the injuries it did this year.

The latter is a much better question. In fact, it's at least four questions ...

* Is Kyle Orton the answer? Well, he sure as heck looked like it against New Orleans. He threw the deep ball, he didn't make mistakes and in general he looked like he belonged on a good NFL team. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed, though.

* Can the BEARS get a marquee receiver? It's possible that they already have one in Devin Hester. He's had a year to learn how to play the position, and he certainly has the potential. I wouldn't quite count on that one either, though.

* Where will the running game come from? Here I don't have an answer. I love Adrian Peterson and Garrett Wolfe, but jiminy jillikers, you put the two of them together and you still don't have a feature NFL back.

* Will the offensive line finally get too old to be effective? I'm afraid the answer here is a resounding yes. This, of course, raises the obvious question of where will the replacements come from. Given the BEARS draft history, I'm not hopeful -- and that's complicated by the fact that it will be very, very difficult to pass on Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan when the BEARS' pick comes up. We could looking at a year of watching him get tossed around by opposing defenses, with no protection, while he learns about the NFL.

So at the end of the day, this win may have been little more than a tease. But at least we can savor it for eight more months.

A New Tradition

It's always a good time to institute a new tradition. I've arbitrarily decided that the deal for Sweet Home Sports will be to name a Chicago Sports Scene Person Of The Year each year. And because it's on Sunday morning that I finally got around to knocking this out, I hearby declare that the SHSCSSPOTY Award will be given out on the last Sunday morning of every year.

First, some ground rules: I get to pick whoever I want. To be fair, though, I will implement a strict policy that the Chicago Sports Scene Athlete Of The Year does have to play or coach a sport somewhere in the Chicago Sports Scene. The Chicago Sports Scene is defined as the sports and teams I follow. (So yes, Notre Dame counts. Deal.)

Now, without further ado (and because anyone who's remotely paying attention knows there's a clear winner this year anyway), the inaugural winner of the Sweet Home Sports Chicago Sports Scene Person Of The Year Award is ...

Devin Hester.

What more can be said about this guy? He's an electrifying presence any time he's on a football field. He's setting records in a fraction of the time it took his predecessors. He's the only person ever to run back a kickoff for a touchdown in the Super Bowl. He's clearly the best player on the most beloved team in this town, a team so beloved that it's the only one I make it a point to spell out in all capital letters every time I mention it in this blog, the BEARS.

Yes, for innumerable acts of sheer coolness, Devin Hester is the first ever SHSCSSPOTY. I'm thinking I might send him a nice certificate or something.

The only other guy who's even in the discussion is Lou Pinella, for seemingly instituting a winning attitude on the long-suffering Cubs. I'll be more impressed if he can do it consistently, though. I can't help but remember that Dusty Baker, Don Baylor, Don Zimmer and several others had some early success, too.

Jim Thome was also on the radar screen for his 500th career home run, but most of those came in Cleveland.

Write in and tell me why I'm wrong! Or, to make it fun, tell me who else you might put on the ballot.

Sports Notes, 12/30/07: Holiday Edition

OK, this is two years in a row that the holidays have prevented me from writing a recap of a late-season BEARS-Packers game. Looks like now we're even, Tim. Maybe my real end-of-the-year tradition should be to declare this blog on vacation the last two weeks of the year.

That said ...

* Congrats to Ron Zook on his well-deserved Coach of the Year Award. It won't mean much on Tuesday, but it's always nice to be recognized.

* About that BEARS game ... after watching their team disintegrate in the frozen-tundra-like winds of Soldier Field, do you think there might be some Packers fans out there who are willing to take their chances in Dallas?

* Did Scott Skiles sleep with someone's wife? I mean, I understand firing a guy on Christmas Eve if it needs to be done, but not if you're just going to replace him with an interim for the rest of the year. Now, Skiles has never been a sympathetic figure throughout his entire highly publicized basketball career (ask me about the Antoine Joubert "fatboy" incident), but if you're going to punt the season away anyway, throwing the coach under the bus on Dec. 24 instead of Jan. 2 is nothing more than a public humiliation.

* I am SOOOOOOOOOO a Colts fan right now.

* Of course, I could easily be convinced to also become a fan of the Steelers, Chargers, Jaguars and Browns or Titans.

* I got my high-def TV hooked up on Wednesday. This may be just what I need to re-ignite my long-latent but cherished love affair with my Blackhawks. I'm tellin' ya, if you haven't bought a high-def TV yet, hockey fights alone make it worth the price.

* Bye-bye, Mark Prior. Not that I think you're on steroids or anything, but don't let the door hit you on that gigantic, horse-shaped ass of yours on the way out.

Sports Notes, 12/23/07: I've Got A Cold And I Feel Like Complaining Edition

-- So, I like to joke about how the Illini are going to land in the NIT. But seriously, you do have to be above .500 to get in, which is not at all a certainty when you start losing at home to mid-level MAC teams.

-- Even if you upset Missouri two nights later.

-- In fact, especially if you upset Missouri two nights later, ya inconsistent bastards.

-- But things will get better for Illinois. Coach Bruce Weber is giving the freshmen a lot of playing time this year, and Kentucky transfer Alex Legion landed in Champaign on Friday. Legion started as a freshman for Kentucky, which certainly used to mean something, and while it doesn’t necessarily mean anything this year, in this case it might.

-- You know how the Miami Dolphins always get up a little bit more to play undefeated teams, to protect the legacy of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins? The Bulls should do that when they play the Boston Celtics, who are threatening the 1996 Bulls’ 72-win record. You know, instead of losing by 25. If that’s not too inconvenient, that is.

Shout Out To Dicke V

Some things just transcend the local sports scene.

As you’ve probably heard by now, decades of breathlessly screaming into a microphone have taken a physical toll on ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale, who had to undergo surgery for ulcers on his vocal chord.

Apparently the surgery was a success, although Dickie V will be in recovery mode until February. Of course, for the hard-working Vitale, who tends to broadcast college basketball games in a different location night after night for nights on end, “recovery” means scaling back to web postings with his keen insight and observations.

Still, his effervescent presence will be missed on the college basketball scene. He could make any game interesting to watch because he never, ever, ever stopped talking, going so far as divulging mundane personal details like where he planned to eat dinner when scores got out of hand.

It's never about himself, though; it's about sharing everything he has with his audience. To wit, on his tangents of personal revelation he frequently offers very public kudos to people in his life for various levels of accomplishments.

Whether you love him or hate him, you always know that Dickie V loves you. Here’s wishing him a speedy recovery.

Vikings 20, BEARS 13, To The Best Of My Recollection

So, here’s the story, sports fans. Seeing as how the BEARS were out of it even before last night’s game, and seeing as how I had some friends celebrating their birthdays, I ended up watching the game in a bar with no sound, instead of in my normal position of prone on my couch, paradoxically in rapt attention. (I did TiVo the game to catch up on the details, but then I thought … nah.)

Anyway, here’s what I could glean:

Kyle Orton is not the answer. That’s OK, since no one really expected him to be the answer. But because the BEARS have so many other glaring needs, it would have been nice if Orton had somehow magically metamorphosed into an actual NFL quarterback.

Still, it was the right decision to give him a chance, because he’s the only one of the three quarterbacks it even remotely makes sense for the BEARS to keep around next year.

The BEARS offense is very, very bad. At one point in the third quarter, Brandon McGowen came up with what seemed like it could have been a key interception. Then I was talking to someone for what I swear couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds, and then I looked back up at the TV, and the Vikings were on offense again. Apparently, the three-and-outs were coming around a lot quicker than our server last night.

Along those same lines, a Colts fan friend of mine pointed out that Devin Hester with a quarterback the caliber of Peyton Manning would be a deadly combination. Teams couldn’t afford to kick “safely” and wind up putting the BEARS on their own 40-yard-line, because, as the Colts fan pointed out, Manning would put the ball in the end zone on every damn drive with that short a field.

Someone else suggested trading Hester for the entire Colts’ offensive line, and as old as the BEARS line is getting, that actually didn’t sound like such a bad deal -- until you realize that the BEARS still wouldn’t have a quarterback and running back to block for.

When healthy and playing at their peak, the BEARS defense is still pretty darn formidable. “Healthy” and “playing at peak” are two things the BEARS defense definitely have not been this year.

The BEARS just suck. This is the NFL, guys. Let’s see a little effort.

Sports Notes, 12/16/07: Change In Personnel Edition

-- Say it with me now, Cubs fans: "Aww, Fuk!"

-- Or -- hopefully -- "Fukin'-A!"

-- Seriously, though, I thought the Fuk-U-Dome was Mayor Daley's, shall we say, creative interpretation of Soldier Field.

-- Brace yourselves, BEARS fan, because this is not a pretty thought. If the Patriots are 18-0 going into the Super Bowl, and a win would mean no one could ever again argue that the 1985 BEARS are the greatest team of all time, and in the Super Bowl they should meet a certain team from Green Bay, who do you root for?

-- Yeah, I take the Packers too. But it sure isn’t easy.

-- Why is Mark Prior hastened out of town when his power-pitching pal Kerry Wood, who arguably had the more disappointing career, is still a fan favorite 10 years after his one good season? I don't know, but I sure as hell agree.

-- Confidential to Rex G. and Brian G.: Gentlemen, don't worry about a younger up-and-comer temporarily filling your job position. I'm sure it means nothing. On a totally unrelated note, though, if you were thinking about selling your home I am a licensed Realtor.

Prior Bad Acts?

This is a short post to slide in a quick prediction before 1 p.m. CST:

I'm guessing the Cubs' abrupt release of Mark Prior will make a lot more sense when we see MLB's Mitchell Report on steroid abuse.

Check the time stamp! That's all for now.

Sports Notes, 12/9/07: What A Drag It Is Getting Old Edition

-- Wow. Michigan can’t possibly be used to getting turned down by one coaching candidate in a week, let alone two. The cosmic revenge for driving out Lloyd Carr has begun.

-- Speaking of the Fighting Helmets, Appalachian State will get a chance to beat another team with that nonsensical design on their brain buckets when they play Delaware (at right; photo swiped from Mark Campbell off the official U-Delaware website) in the Div. I-FCS final. This gives me a perfect opportunity to remind Michigan fans that their helmet design is not in fact unique in college football.

-- My buddy Scott, who you may remember from last week’s notes, commented the other night that Adam Archuleta “should be in jail for all the money he’s stolen from NFL teams.” Yep, that about sums it up.

-- And let this be a lesson to the rest of you: If you don’t stop by and comment on my posts, your comments are going to show up in the blog as my own.

-- Here’s why it sucks getting old: I was getting ready to go to the Illinois game at the UC on Saturday, and I found myself excitedly thinking, “I get to have NACHOS! ’Cause I don’t have anything to do tomorrow!!!”

-- Speaking of getting old, I was also reminded of how old I am this week when I noticed that Jenny McCarthy recently starred in a made-for-TV movie on ABC Family. Yes, the same Jenny McCarthy who was in Playboy when I was recently out of college. Apparently that was long enough ago that nobody watching ABC Family would remember it. (Except, technically, for me. Hey, my guilty pleasure is Step By Step reruns – what can I say?)

-- (And I know I’m the only one old enough to remember this, but Jenny McCarthy was also a pretty good high school athlete in her days at Mother McAuley, so there you have it – another Chicago sports connection!)

-- Speaking of Playboy, it occurs to me that Anna Kournikova’s career has been dead just about long enough for her to show up there any day now.

Arizona 78, Illinois 72, OT: I-L-L, N-I-T

Going into Saturday’s game, I wasn’t expecting Illinois to beat Arizona. But to have the game in your back pocket for 39 minutes and give it away is a hell of a way to lose.

In a game that will probably turn out to have been a must-win for Illinois’ NCAA tournament hopes, the Illini kept Arizona scoreless for the first five full minutes with stifling defense, then maintained a double-digit lead until midway through the second half, then slowly let it slip away and fell apart in the final minute, giving Arizona its first lead with exactly 60 seconds left.

You can blame the officiating – more on that later – but Illinois had plenty of chances to put the game away without letting it slide into overtime, where Arizona got a win by outplaying the Illini for five minutes after failing to do so for the better part of 40.

So this game will serve as the symbol of what is quickly becoming Bruce Weber’s legacy: Teams that play their hearts out and fall just a little bit short of potential. From the 2005 championship game, to the failure to secure a Big Ten title the next year, to the first-ever quarterfinal loss (to lower-seeded Michigan State) in the year’s conference tournament, to the last-minute upset by Washington in that year’s NCAA tourney, to the giveaway of the 2007 tourney game against Virginia Tech, to this year’s Arizona game, Weber’s teams fall just short as consistently as a Shaun Pruitt free throw.

And that brings us to the chief way in which Illinois could have secured a win: by hitting free throws late. Illinois shot 10 of 22 from the line – 10 of 22! – with seniors Pruitt and Brian Randle both missing shots late that could have put the game just out of Arizona’s reach. OK, so Arizona made more free throws than Illinois shot, but the Illini still had their chance to win.

And that brings us to the officiating. They clearly blew it at the end of the game when they failed to call a technical on Arizona’s attempt to call time out with none left. While Illinois may have only one player (Trent Meacham) who can actually hit a free throw, you only need one to win right there. But overall, while Arizona had a 10-shot advantage in free throw attempts (32 to 22), I left there were blown calls and non-calls both ways.

All of this, incidentally, negated an outstanding effort by Illinois on the defensive end. I’m not going to bother looking up the last time Arizona was held to a mere 61 points in regulation, but it hasn’t happened this year (although, in fairness, Kansas held them to 62 in a game the Jayhawks would go on to win in two overtimes). Several players deserve individual accolades for the effort, but the most surprising to me was Randle, who was finally starting to play like a senior until he kind of disappeared down the stretch.

So now Illinois will go 9-4 in the non-conference season, because there’s no way they’re going to beat Missouri. They could manage to build a 10-8 record in a soft Big Ten, but that still leaves them with no signature non-conference wins on their NCAA resume. With so many mid-majors playing well this year, that will be not even close to enough. Needing a strong showing in the Big Ten tournament, I predict the Illini will lose in a quarterfinal, probably to Purdue and former Weber assistant Matt Painter, in a snapshot of what the Illini could be.

Redskins 24, BEARS 16: BEARS Suck, Therefore They Lose

What more can I say about the BEARS? They played poorly in almost every facet of the game Thursday night.

The offense failed to convert deep in the red zone on several occasions. Brian Griese was ineffective in place of the injured Rex Grossman. The running game, despite Adrian Peterson’s heart, managed a mere 60 yards. Bernard Berrian and Greg Olsen made couple of acrobatic catches on one third-quarter drive, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

The defense was suspect, too. Sure, they held Washington to 31 net yards rushing, but the passing defense was non-existent in the fourth quarter, allowing the Redskins to march down the field and into the end zone behind a backup quarterback after the BEARS had clawed to back within four points late in the game.

Even special teams was suspect, letting the Redskins block a field goal attempt and botching an onside kick in the final minute.

So the defending NFC champions bow out of the playoff picture with a whimper. It doesn’t really matter – losses in the next week at Minnesota and against Green Bay are pretty likely.

Of course, the BEARS will beat New Orleans in the last week to drop their draft position. But then again, a lifetime of watching the BEARS take the likes of Cade McNown, Daid Terrell and John Thierry in the first round has made me see why it’s better to learn how to win with the guys you’ve got.

Stop! Do I Smell ... Roses???

The last time Illinois played in the Rose Bowl, Sam and Diane were on the throes of a passionate love/hate affair; early adapters were listening to their music on the new-fangled compact disc; nobody had yet heard of Mikail Gorbachev, who’s since been largely forgotten; nobody had yet heard of the Internet, which has not quite been forgotten; and I was a seventh-grader watching Linda DiBennidetto blossom into a young woman.

That was one seriously long-ass time ago.

But here they are again, with a surprising BCS berth to cap off a surprisingly successful season. The Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl will be Illinois’ first trip to Pasadena in 24 years -- or, one would assume, since before any of the current players were born.

No one could have foreseen this a little over three months ago, when Illinois was starting the season with a loss to lightly regarded (relative to now, anyway) Missouri. But this team has clearly improved as the season went on. From a grinding, unconvincing win over Western Michigan, to the upsets of Penn State and Wisconsin, to the destroying of Minnesota, to the unimaginable win over No. 1 Ohio State, this team has set progressively higher standards throughout the season and then went out and surpassed them.

Will it be enough to topple USC in the Trojans’ back yard? That is a tall order. My guess is that the bettors will favor USC by about a touchdown, but the final will be a little worse than that. I say USC 31, Illinois 20, but with a very bright future ahead.

Giants 21, BEARS 16: No One Ever Is To Blame

How do you lose a game like that?

No, seriously, I’m asking: How did the BEARS manage to lose a game in which they largely outplayed the Giants and won the turnover battle by four? That’s just not supposed to happen.

You can’t blame Rex Grossman for the 21-16 loss to the Giants. He had 296 yards with no interceptions and no fumbles lost.

You can’t blame the running game. It was certainly no worse than it’s been with Cedric Benson, and there were a couple series where Adrian Peterson fought through tackles to pick up first downs that Benson probably wouldn’t have made.

You can’t really blame the defense. Although they did give up a few too many yards (154) to Derrick Ward, and two long touchdown drives in the fourth quarter (which is yet another case of the defense only playing three good quarters this year), they also forced four turnovers.

The first one of those, an interception by Brian Urlacher, led to the BEARS’ first touchdown, as Grossman confidently led the offense down the field with the help of a competent running back. That’s how the BEARS found success last year, and that’s the way things were supposed to work this year, but they never got into the end zone again on Sunday.

So maybe things would have been different if Devin Hester had caught that second-quarter bomb from Grossman when he slipped behind the defense. That would have given the BEARS a 14-0 lead; instead, the drive ended with a shanked punt from the BEARS’ 1-yard line and the Giants took advantage with a game-tying touchdown drive.

But you can’t blame Hester for anything, because if you were to make a list of the BEARS players ranked by how much each had to do with what went wrong this year, Hester would be the absolute last name on that list.

Things certainly would have been different if the offensive line had given Grossman more protection. He was hurried all day and sacked six times – twice with the BEARS in the red zone. But it’s hard to tell if that was truly because of poor offensive line play or just a playoff-worthy defense for the Giants.

At any rate, the bottom line is that the BEARS had any lingering playoff hopes extinguished on a day in which they probably played their second most complete game of the season (the win over Green Bay being the first). And on the day when I need to blame someone most of all, there’s no blame to go around. I think I want a no-fault divorce from this team.

Sports Notes, 12/2/07:

-- First, a shout-out to my favorite Washington Redskins fan, Scott Rowan, after the tragic death of Sean Taylor. Scott’s probably not the only Redskins fan who also graduated from Virginia Tech, making it a double-whammy of senseless gun violence this year for a lot of people.

-- Of course, just four days from now I have to turn around and root against him when the BEARS and Redskins meet on Thursday night.

-- Seriously, though, with the emotional toll this incident must be taking, you have to think the short week will be harder on the Redskins than the BEARS, breathing yet another thin wisp of oxygen into this flickering flame of playoff hope.

-- Speaking of the BEARS, check this out: Devin Hester has 12 kick returns for touchdowns in 27 regular-season games. Only three other guys have 12 or more (Brian Mitchell has 13), and they needed … well, I didn’t catch the exact numbers off the ESPN graphic, but it was in the neighborhood of 200 games each. Devin Hester is the Babe Ruth of kick returns.

-- In case anyone’s wondering, it turns out that the 12 kick returns do include the Giants’ missed field goal and the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl. Still, Hester is pretty good.

-- Kirk Hinrich got booed for an errant pass, with the game on the line, to Joe-Kim Noah in a 2-on-no-one breakaway Tuesday night in the Bulls’ win. What I can’t believe is, now that Noah is a Bull, that it’s taken me this long to get around to making fun of his hair.

-- I saw a headline Saturday that said Chicago Wins Behind Byfuglien's 4 Points, and I thought, what the hell is a Byfuglien and what sport could that possibly mean? Turns out he had a hat trick and an assist Friday night for the surging Blackhawks. I have GOT to get back on the Hawks train.

-- Remember all those things I said would have to happen for Ohio State to play for the national championship? That scenario is actually looking pretty tame compared to what really did happen.

-- The other day on PTI (or maybe it was Around The Horn), Tony Reali referred to the University of Pittsburgh head football coach, and former BEARS head coach, as “Wannstache.” How come none of us thought of that?

-- For a guy who has stuck by the Cubs through thick and thin and accepted his bullpen role with grace, I sure wish Kerry Wood is wildly successful as the Cubs’ new closer.