Sports Notes, 1/20/08: I'm Moving To Somewhere Warm Edition

Short list this week, as Chicago's sports scene is almost as cold as its weather right now ...

-- Welcome back, Jon Leiber. Were you really the Cubs’ last 20-game winner?

-- I mean, I can believe it’s been since 2001 since they’ve had one, considering that the leader in each of the playoff seasons since then has been 18 (Mark Prior, 2003, and Carlos Zambrano, 2007). It’s just that sometimes I wonder how you and your 80-odd mph fastball managed to put together 20 wins in a career, let alone a season.

-- I wonder if Illinois would be able to beat Illinois State this year.

-- No, I seriously wonder, considering that Illinois State’s RPI has them in the same class as Indiana and Miami-Ohio, both of whom have taken down the Illini this year. (And you don’t want to know what Illinois’ RPI is.)

-- The Fire are awfully excited about drafting Virginia Tech forward Patrick Nyarko in the MLS draft, as everybody expected him to be long gone well before the seventh pick. (Or at least everybody who follows the MLS draft, which has got to be upwards of eight or nine people.) I'm reporting it just because I think it's funny that there's a major league sport in America where you can obtain a draft pick by trading a coach, as the Fire apparently did to get Nyarko.