The Goal Line

As if we needed more reasons to love college football, folks. Rivalry week did not disappoint, far from it. From "The Game" to Bedlam, chaos reigned supreme in the final week of the 2021 regular season. The College Football Playoff picture is far from set in stone, and with a season like this one, anything is possible heading into conference championship week. Let's recap a weekend for the record books and look ahead to an ever-so-important championship weekend.  ACC Championship We'll start in the ACC, where there will be a championship game that doesn't feature Clemson or Florida State for the first time since 2008. Pitt clinched the Coastal Division en route to a 10-2 regular season, Pat Narduzzi's best season with the Panthers. It'll be Pitt's second-ever ACC championship game and their first since 2018 when they got blown out by Clemson.  The Coastal Division had their champion, but the Atlantic Div...

Hard to believe the Olympics are only a few months out. While nothing is guaranteed, the NHL and IIHF reached an agreement to allow NHLers to play in the 2022 Olympics after skipping the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018. The NHL has valid concerns about not wanting to risk its players, especially during a pandemic. But this is something that the NHLPA reportedly pushed for. It's a massive win for hockey fans. International hockey between the best players in the world, what's not to love? USA Hockey is still searching for its first gold medal since Lake Placid in 1980. They won silver in 2002 and 2010, but no team has reached the pinnacle since Herb Brooks' "Miracle on Ice" team did it almost 42 years ago. I get chills every single time I watch  Miracle,  and I'll be watching it before the puck drops in Beijing this coming February.  Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin is tasked with assembling what is essentially an NHL All-Star team. The USNTDP (and NCAA) has been chur...

"I'm paid to score big goals and paid to do that type of stuff." was the response of Oilers captain Connor McDavid after putting his name in the hat for  Goal of the Year  against the New York Rangers last week. The goal was further confirmation of what most of us already knew, McDavid is not human.  The goal was the ultimate "F*ck it, I'll do it myself" moment. McDavid corrals the puck in the neutral zone and delays just long enough for his teammates to exit the offensive zone. In a position where 99% of NHL players would dump the puck in or wait for reinforcements, McDavid did the unthinkable. In no more than 3 seconds, he effortlessly stickhandles through four Rangers defenders before freezing goalie Alex Georgiev and sliding it past him on the backhand.  I love everything about this goal. The burst of speed he gets when he first enters the zone, the skill to stickhandle through multiple s...

College Football has a problem, a playoff problem. The playoff committee released their first rankings of the season Tuesday night and exposed the flaws with the playoff system in doing so.  The committee sent a message to undefeated Cincinnati and Oklahoma, placing them outside of the playoff picture as it stands. It should come as no surprise that the Bearcats are ranked behind three one-loss teams. After all, no Group of Five teams has made the four-team playoff since its introduction in 2014.  What the committee did to Oklahoma was arguably worse. Not only is Oklahoma, an undefeated Power Five team, outside of the playoff. They are outside the top six altogether.  My issue with where Cincinnati and Oklahoma were ranked is that it sets the precedent that almost losing is worse than losing. That Alabama losing to Texas A&M is better than Oklahoma and Cincinnati beating every team in front of them.  What this first set of rankings tells us is that four teams si...