The Boston Red Sox Collapse

I'm a big time Red Sox homer, and that is the primary reason I wanted to wait to post this blog.  Red Sox fans are known to overreact about everything involving the Sox and I'm no different, so I can't lie this collapse upset me.  While it upset me, watching them and times this season, I'm not surprised.  For this post I'm going to break down the responsible parties and why they should be responsible.

Players
Not all of the players are the problem.  First off Dustin Pedroia(pedey), is the lifeblood of this team.  If everybody in the league had the heart he does, everybody would be better off.  He gets there early, leaves late and works his butt off like he still has something to prove.  Too many times you get guys that once they get their big deal, they don't care anymore, so it's refreshing to see a guy like him.  Jonathan Papelbon(paps), really rebounded this year and proved, along with the terrible season of Daniel Bard, proved why the Sox need him next year.  The catchers, tek and salty, improved as the year went on and Lavarnway looked like he could be a star in the future.  Ellsbury deserves to be the mvp, or at the very least comeback player of the year.  Last season he only played a few games in the season and critics, including myself questioned if he really cared, he showed he cared this season.  Josh Beckett also had a nice rebound year, showing he's still the ace.  Now the negatives, Adrian Gonzalez put up stellar numbers in the first half but looked like a completely different player in the second half.  At times I really questioned if he wanted to be out there and he started to make excuses.  Not sure what happened with Jon Lester, he really took a step back this year and he looked far too hittable and times.  The biggest disappointment by far was Carl Crawford, he couldn't get his bat going this season and went from being a gold glover to maybe the 4th or 5th best outfielder on his own team.  I think the pressure of playing in Boston got to him this year.

Terry Francona(Tito)
I think most people, myself included, have really enjoyed listening to him do the color for the ALCS on Fox, and I'm not surprised.  Tito has a great personalty and really loves the game and he brings that to the booth.  I really liked Tito and I'm really sad that he's gone from Boston, he brought us 2 titles, what's not to like?  Boston's media market is one of the toughest and he was great at handling it.  I believe he was fired, they said it was mutual, but I don't agree.  They had to find someone to blame the fall on, and he was the easy target.  He even said he felt that he didn't have the ownership's full support.  It's not his fault the players wouldn't listen to him and some of his pitchers were more interested in drinking beer then supporting their teammates.  They would rather film this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDKwpbkIpQ4   This isn't his doing, these are guys that need to learn to grow up.  He doesn't need to be their babysitter.  He can only use the players the GM gives him.

Theo Epstein
This is the man who needs to be held responsible.  He put this team together, he's the one who failed to make the necessary moves.  The Red Sox could tell at the trade deadline that they needed more starting pitching.  Dice-K was already done for the year, Clay Buchholz didn't look like he was going to come back, so who does he trade for, Erik Bedard.  I like Erik, but he's said over and over that he doesn't want to pitch in this type of market.  It wasn't like they were Cleveland, having a nice season and not expecting to contend this year, this team was built to win the world series.  I don't care if you need to trade star prospects, you go get that pitcher no matter what, worry about next year, next year.  John Lackey got a joke of a contract, along with Dice-K and now we are stuck with them.  The Sox don't need more hitters, they need pitching and Theo needs to realize that or he needs to go.

College football realignment

   I've tried blogging before, but it was on the MLB blog site so all I could blog about baseball.  While this was fun, I'm interested in blogging about other things too, so I came here.  For my first post I decided to talk about something that has been on my mind recently, college football realignment.  College football realignment isn't a new thing, but it seems to be happen more now then in the past.  How do I feel about it, I actually think it's necessary for athletic and academic reasons, but it's mainly because of monetary issues.  Pitt and Syracuse just moved to the ACC, a move to a much better football conference and market.  It's hard to argue with this, because other than West Virginia on occasion this hasn't been a good football conference.  It's a basketball conference, and is one of the best if not the best, but it's not a football conference.  The ACC is a more well rounded conference and has more prestige, which is important in recruiting.

While talking about some good moves it's important to talk about the completely boneheaded ones to like BYU going independent.  You go ahead and call yourselves the Notre Dame of the West, you're not!  That model worked in the past, ask Notre Dame how they feel about it now?  According to some sources they've been interested in the Big 10 and the ACC.   One of their big arguments is they have a TV network that shows all of their games just like Notre Dame, but here's the big difference, Notre Dame has NBC, a channel anybody with a TV gets, BYU has their own network they hardly anybody gets.  Well maybe people get it, but can anyone tell me what channel it is?  I'm sure everybody can tell me what channel NBC is.

Here are some moves I would still like to see happen.  BYU and Boise should move to the Pac-12 making it the Pac-14, with BYU going to the South and Boise to the North.  TCU should forget about the Big East and go where they belong, the Big 12.  Joining them should be Houston and SMU, both natural fits, this would make an even 12 teams, with Texas A&M joining the SEC.  Also joining the SEC would be Florida State.  Connecticut would join the ACC.  I personally don't care what happens to the Big East, it's a useless conference which keeps getting an autobid they don't deserve to a BCS game, look at Connecticut last year!  Finishing out the move would be Notre Dame and Cincinnati to the Big 10, both natural fits for the conference.  Who knows maybe Navy and Army could join the Big East and Villanova might move up.

Anyways thanks for listening to my rant, hope you enjoy it and fill free to comment