Coming into the season, anybody who is anybody would have told you that the NFC North is the worst division in football, with one semi-legit team followed by a number of wannabes. The Bears went into the season banking on Rex Grossman, Jon Kitna predicted ten wins, Brett Favre put off retirement yet again and the Vikings looked just as bad as Tarvaris Jackson's front teeth. In the other conference, the AFC West looked to be not just the best in their conference, but perhaps the best in all of football. San Diego and Denver were supposed to win at least 12-13 wins, Kansas City still had LJ and Oakland was supposed to be on the way up.

Come Week nine, the North has the Packers sitting pretty at 7-1, the Lions at 6-2 and both the Bears and Vikings at 3-5. Menwhile, the Chargers have already lost more games than all of last season, the Broncos are down to Patrick Ramsey and the Raiders are a little better than last year, but still the Raiders. Only he Chiefs seem to be living up to their hype, but thats not saying much. Then the biggest surprise of all hit. The Adrian Petersons ran all over the Chargers, Favre stole back a win from the Chiefs after basically giving it away and the Lions embarassed the Broncos. LT, who came into the season as the best back in football, may have lost that title to a rookie. Cutler, who has drawn endless comparisons to Brett Favre, was outplayed by the latter. Aside from the Patriots and Colts, maybe the conferences arent that far apart anymore.

On a different note, the NFC West, which was supposed to emerge as the clas of the NFC, now is a bunch of garbage. The Rams are winless, the Niners have regressed severely, the Cardinals are who they always have been and Mike Holmgren has done his best to hold the Seahawks back. But as bad as the West has been, the South has been ten times worse. Is there a worse team in the league than Atlanta? Is there a worse quarterback in the league than David Carr? Who is Earnest Graham and how did he become the starter in Tampa? The Saints, declared dead just a month or so ago, are now the favorites in this division. What about the East? Everybody knows about the Cowboys and Giants, but are the Redskins or Eagles any good? The answer is most likely no. 

That leaves the North. Has the North, so ridiculed in the preseason by experts and analysts, possibly tops in the NFC? Not only are the Lions and Packers a combined 13-3, but the Bears and Vikings cant be called bad teams, not yet. Despite their 3-5 record, the Vikings may be the scariest team in the division. If Peterson is on his game, and all signs point to him improving by the week, they can beat anybody. If he didnt fumble against the Cowboys, they could have won that game. The Vikings can beat any team in the league, but they can just as easily lose to those same teams. The Bears, easily the most dissapointing team in the NFC, still can play some football. Their offense blows, but the defense is now healthy coming off the bye. Their offense is punchless and predictable, but they can beat any team in the NFC outside of Dallas.

So you tell me, do you buy into the North? I do.

In a season where the Lions are 5-2, the Titans have won despite throwing for under thirty yards and a regular season game was played in London, the wackiest thing that has taken place so far is the bitching and crying of the numerous opponents the New England Patriots have run up the score against. That term in and of itself bothers me. At any given time ni a football game, their will be two teams on the field with two seperate agendas. One team wants to score, the other wants to prevent them from scoring. Obvious, right. Apparently not. Certain guys have voiced their distaste for Bill Belichik and his alleged disrespect for the game. Quit crying and suck it up. If you cant stop them, thats your problem. Why should the Patriots go easy on anybody? As i see it, when a team is up and brings in their replacement players, there is no reason not to allow those guys to run an offense as if the game were on the line. The Patriots backup, Matt Cassell, gets no in ga,e experience ever, and rightfylly so. But when that rare oppurtunity arises, why shouldn't A) Matt Cassell get to play real minutes in the game he loves and B) Coach Belichik get to evaluate his backups and decide whether or not they are to his liking? In my opinion, no reasons should be needed to go out and put up points. That is the purpse of an offense, at any time, whether up or down. Bellichik said that in the game of football you never know, but i doubt even he believes that stuff. He has his offense out there when the game is over because he can. In a game where players take pride in who can harm an opponent most, big, beastlike defenders turn into little girls because Tom Brady and Bill Belichik are bullies and are running up the score. With that attitude, you deserve it.

Is there anything worse than the hit and run blogger? I have seen numerous blogs on this site where someone posts something absolutely controversial and just when i get worked up enough to drop a comment, i see the writer has disabled the comment option. If you are gonna take time to write an article and post in an online forum like FoxSports, odds are you wanna get some feedback. If not, why post at all. Just had to voice my opinion, because these hit and runs just get under my skin.

When, not if, the Red Sox win the series(I predicted in 5, but a sweep is more likely), there are going to be some half-assed excuses thrown out there on the behalf of the Rockies. The eight day rest BS was already used by everybody analyst from Corlorado to Bangledesh, and there are probably more to come. But before people start mistaking the Rockies for the Yankees of the 90's, realize just how mediocre this team is outside of their offensive studs. The fact that their pitching staff is so mediocre speaks volumes of how poor the NL is as a whole. Everybody knows the NL is bad, but to have the NL reps go out and lay three straight eggs like the Rockies have makes the NL look like the minor leagues. In reality, could Colorado contend with any of the AL playoff teams? The answer is most likely not.

Boston is stacked up and down their lineup, is strong 1-5 in their rotation and has an excellent back end of the bullpen. Colorado has some really good offensive players and a solid defense, but Francis, Jimenez, Fogg and ??? will never, ever win a series against Beckett, Schilling, Matsuzaka and Wakefield. Never. The scariest part about the Sox is that they will probably get better next year. Ellsbury will probably take over in center, Pedroia will have a full year under his belt and both Lester and Bucholz will be upgrades in the rotation. Baseball may have a dynasty on it's hands.

The Cubs have been, and still are the most inept franchise in pro sports over the last century. The Cubs, regardless of which players are on the fiels, seem to get a laugh out of kicking their own fans in the stones on an annual basis. But this past season was different. The Cubs have always sucked, make no mistake about it, but they have never sucked with such little effort like they did just a few weeks ago against an Arizona team that got demolished by the Rockies. Maybe the sale of the Cubs will trigger a chain of events that somehow leads to the world series, or maybe it wont, but if Cubs management wants to put an end to the drought, here is what they need to do before next year starts, position by position. Very rarely does a team completely need to clean house and virtually rebuild from nothing, and this Cubs team is no exception. They have a bunch of very good players who are locks to play at their respective positions, and these are the locks: 1B- Derrek Lee- Despite putting up fairly respectable numbers, he had a dissapoining season for a guy with his power potential. Nevertheless, he will be at first on opening day. 2B- Mark Derosa- Although he will be remembered for his double play ball against Arizona in the DS, he did have a pretty solid year. 3B- Aramis Ramirez- Mr. Clutch, like the rest of the Cubs, forgot how to swing the bat in offseason, but is still a top 5 third baseman. C- Geovany Soto- Yes, he is young, but from the looks of things, the Cubs will put all their eggs in the Soto basket after being named MVP of his AAA league. LF- Alfonso Soriano- No matter how bad this guy plays, Lou Piniella seems to see things in Soriano that nobody else sees. He stinks, but with his fat contract, he will be stinking as the starting left fielder for the Cubs for a very long time. SP- Carlos Zambrano, Ted Lilly, Rich Hill- The only really good thing the Cubs have is a strong top of the rotation. HIll will only get better, Lilly will be steady and Zambrano will be Zambrano. RP- Carlos Marmol, Bob Howry, Michael Weurtz, Kevin Hart- Those four guys were really good last year, but aside from them, i dont feel comortable with anybody else in the bullpen, and neither should Cubs' management. These are the needs for the Cubs: SS- I kind of got sucked into the Ryan Theriot lovefest, but as the season winded down, it was clear that this guy is not the answer at SS. His OBP% is bad, his fielding is decent and he seemed to wear down badly as the season went on. RF/CF- The Cubs dont have a viable starter at either of these positions. It would be foolish to enter the 08 season banking on Felix Pie and Jacque Jones, especially consider the fat free agent class of outfielders that will be out there this offseason. SP- The back end of the rotation is up in the air. Rumor is that Steve Trachsel might be resigned to be the fourth or fifth starter. The minute that happens, the season is over. Jason Marquis was what we expected, but his terrible second half killed the Cubs. If the Cubs can find a taker, pull the trigger get Marquis, and his 7 million per, out of town and I thought Sean Marshall did a decent job and is one of the better fifth starters in the game, but Lou doesnt seem to have faith in him. Why, i have no idea. Mark Prior is also due for a comeback, but management knows better to rely on him, but if he shows flashes of the old Prior, he needs to be in the rotation. At this point he is an insurance policy. RP- Ryan Dempster needs to be traded. He is terribly inconsistent and doesnt have closer stuff. If the Cubs could get a decent bench player for him, do it. Will Ohman and Scott Eyre need to go to, and maybe they can take Lou's lefty-lefty matchup lovefest with him too. Righties CAN get lefties out. Some Possible Replacements: SS- The free agent class at SS is very shallow. There are no good shortsops in the group. Eckstein, Uribe and Vizquel are all below average, and there is some Cuban kid that nobody knows about as well. The other option might be Ronny Cedeno, who had a great year at AAA. If the Cubs cant get a replacement for Theriot, I would give Cedeno a shot. His defense is much better than Theriot's, and he has much more upside. RF/CF- The free agent class is chock full of outfielders. The Cubs need to end up with at least one of the following players: Milton Bradley, Mike Cameron, Torii Hunter, Kenny Lofton, Aaron Rowand, Jose Guillen or Bobby Abreu. I like Bradley. He will probably be on the cheaper side and he is better than advertised. Lofton still has another season left in the tank and would be great influence on the Felix Pie, who has similar tools to those of Lofton. Jose Guillen wouldnt be a bad option either. Odds are thet Hunter, Jones and Rowand will be too pricey for the Cubs, and they arent all that much better than those other guys. The Cubs really need to tap into the outfelders market, bigtime. SP- Not much doing here in free agency. Like i said before, i wouldnt mind having Marshall take the mound every fifth day. I dont wanna see either Trachsel or Marquis at the fourth spot, and a possible replacement could end up being Prior or somebody from their Minor Leagues. They could try and sign either Josh Fogg, Jason Jennings or the new steroids man, Mr. Byrd from Cleveland. Something nees to be done at the four spot, fast. RP- Free agency is not the way to go for relief pitching. They are too unpredictable and there is no way they wanna end up with another money eating nobody like Scott Eyre. Looks like the Minor Leagues is the way to go here. That or either trading for another cheap, youngster, perhaps danglig a guy like Jacque Jones as trade bait. The Cubs have some serious work to do, lets get after it and do something for a change.