Pennington better than Farve...???

Is it possible that the Jets made a mistake in letting Chad Pennington go to Miami and trading for Brett Favre? To the casual fan, that question seems preposterous. But is it really? Obvious, Favre is one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever walk this earth and Chad...well, Chad isn't. He's really been just a slightly above average quarterback his entire career. Yes, Brett Lorenzo Favre (yes that's his real name) has all sorts of records like most career touchdown passes (457), most career passing yards (63,266), most career pass completions (5,538), most consecutive starts(282, including playoffs), three consecutive MVPs, and a Super Bowl ring, just to name a few of his accomplishments. But the question is who is better THIS year. To really determine who's been the better quarterback so far this season, you have to look at this year's stats. The Jets are 4-3, the Dolphins are 3-4. Winner-Favre, slightly, but only because his team is better. Favre has a 89.5 QB rating, Chad a 100.5 QB rating. Winner- Chad. Farve has thrown for 1611 yards, Chad 1710. Winner-Chad, barely. Favre has 15 touchdowns, Chad 7. Winner- Favre. Favre has thrown 11 interceptions, Chad 3. Winner- Chad, by a landslide. Favre's completion percentage this season in 68.5, Chad's 69.3. Winner- Chad, by a little.

Favre in his last three games has had QB ratings of 73.9, 47.8, 76.0. What were Chad's in his last three games, you ask? 122.8, 92.0, 117.9. In fact if you take out Favre's career game against Arizona where he threw 6 tds, 1 pick, and his 123.7 QB rating, he has 9 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, while his QB rating for the year is 83.6, good for 20th in the NFL. Forget who he is for a moment, because that right there folks, is what you call a below average quarterback. Chad, meanwhile, has four games with a quarterback rating of over 100, with only one under 82.

Now, Chad isn't the sexy choice to have as your team's quarterback, he doesn't have a Hall of Fame bust waiting for him in Canton, and he doesn't have that rocket arm that Favre does (in fact, I bet Brett can probably throw farther sitting down than Chad can standing up). But what Chad does do is manage the game quite well, he doesn't make mistakes, and he has given a team that won only one game all of last year, a bit of hope. Brett, on the other hand, seems to have gone back to his 2005 and 2006 form(when people began to think he should hang it up for good) where he just threw balls up for grabs and hoped his receivers would catch them . Now, I don't think he is finished, but stats don't lie, and the stats say Chad is better, this year.

Abolish the BCS

With the first BCS rankings coming out this week, I feel obligated to share some thoughts about this flawed system. Flat out, the BCS system sucks. Colleges refuse to get rid of it and the bowl system because of the tens of millions of dollars these colleges make off of their "student" athletes. These same college presidents that are in favor of the BCS are the same ones that say a playoff wouldn't work because it would interfere too much with the student part of student- athlete. However, we all know these to be lies. I guess 1-AA, Div. 2, and Div. 3 football players don't have to go to class, because a playoff system works quite well for them. If the NCAA and these schools were so worried about the student, they wouldn't allow Monday, Tues, Weds, Thurs night games. But they do. Why? One word:MONEY. Is anyone really surprised? I doubt it. These colleges make more money off these athletes than any other thing they do. I understand that these colleges need to make money of their sports teams, particularly off of football, in order to support their school's other sports. I understand this, so I have a solution to make everyone happy. Have a 16 team playoff. Those 16 teams will be the winners from the 6 major conferences as the automatic qualifiers and then the next best 10 teams taken from the AP poll. These 16 teams would form the playoff for the National Championship. The teams that don't make it into the playoff still will have a postseason as well. The lower tier bowls will take their pick from the teams not in the playoff and still have their bowl games and still make money for both the school and the bowl sponsors. What about the top tier bowls such as the Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, etc. Well we would have them. In a 16 team playoff, that is 15 games. So take the top 15 bowl games, which would be all the ones after Jan1 and a few before Jan1. Think that won't make the bidding go sky high for these games? Imagine the bidding war companies such as FedEx, Tostitos, All-State, Citi, etc. would have to get these bowls. The semifinal games and the national championship and one of the quarterfinal games would be the original 4 BCS bowls (Sugar, Rose, Fiesta, Orange, there is no need for the BCS championship game) with each of the four rotating so every four years, each bowl will have had the National Title game. And back to the whole student athlete issue, there isn't an issue with March Madness when classes are is session. The majority of these schools competing year in and year out for the college football title game are on Winter Break anyways during the bowl season. A four week playoff would be from Dec7-Jan7 and not a single kid would miss class.Problem solved.

This past weekend was the 2nd Annual Nicholas Colleluori Classic. The tournament is in honor of former Hofstra lacrosse player Nick Collelouri, who passed away in November 2006 from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of blood cancer. 13 teams participated including top teams Maryland, Princeton, Loyola, Penn State, Hofstra, and many other teams. The tournament was a great success and a lot of great lacrosse action took place. Hofstra played 3 games on the day. In the first game against UPenn, Hofstra really took it to the Quakers as defense was the story of the day and the Pride won easily. Up next for Hofstra were the Greyhounds of Loyola. In a sloppy game in which the Pride looked sluggish and tired, Loyola really took it to the Pride and dominated from start to finish. Luckily for the Pride, they one more game to show what they were made of against Maryland. Hofstra came out firing on all cylinders and showed the Terps what they were made of. The Pride dominated play and came away with a big win. However, the story of the day was of course the Headstrong Foundation, started in honor of Nick Collelouri. The Pride wore green shorts, helmets, and sticks to honor Nick's memoryand represent the foundation, whose goal is promoting and raising money for blood cancer, specifically leukemia and lymphoma, reaseach. If you're interested in learning more and/or donating to this great cause, please visit Headstrong Foundation.Org.