Early Bowl Predictions

This was pretty hard to do with it being so early, but I went for it. I have the bowl, the two teams I predict to be playing in that bowl and then who I predict to win the bowl. The games in bold are the BCS games. I have also posted My Preseason Top 25.

Bowl Game	Team 1	Team 2	My Pick for Winner
BCS Championship Game	Georgia	USC	Georgia
Rose Bowl by Citi	Arizona St.	Ohio St.	Arizona St.
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl	Oklahoma	West Virginia	West Virginia
FedEx Orange Bowl	Clemson	Wisconsin	Clemson
Allstate Sugar Bowl	florida	Missouri	Missouri
Capital One Bowl	LSU	Illinois	LSU
Gator Bowl	Wake Forest	Notre Dame	Wake Forest
AT&T Cotton Bowl	Texas	Tennessee	Tennessee
Outback Bowl	Auburn	Penn St.	Auburn
International Bowl	Miami (OH)	Louisville	Louisville
AutoZone Liberty Bowl	Houston	Mississippi	Mississippi
Meineke Car Care Bowl	florida st.	Pittsburgh	Pittsburgh
Chick-fil-A Bowl	Virginia Tech	Alabama	Alabama
PetroSun Independence Bowl	Oklahoma St.	Mississippi St.	Mississippi St.
Brut Sun Bowl	Oregon St.	Texas A&M	Oregon St.
Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl	Miami	South Carolina	South Carolina
Pacific Life Holiday Bowl	Oregon	Texas Tech	Texas Tech
Emerald Bowl	California	Boston College	California
Valero Alamo Bowl	Kansas	Michigan St.	Kansas
Texas Bowl	Nebraska	South florida	South florida
Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl	Fresno St.	Maryland	Fresno St.
Insight Bowl	Colorado	Purdue	Colorado
Champs Sports Bowl	Michigan	Virginia	Virginia
Motor City Bowl	Ball St.	Iowa	Iowa
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl	North Carolina	Nevada	North Carolina
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl	TCU	Southern Mississippi	Southern Mississippi
Pioneer Pure Vision Las Vegas Bowl	UCLA	BYU	BYU
SDCCU Poinsettia Bowl	Air Force	Arizona	Arizona
GMAC Bowl	Central Michigan	Tulsa	Central Michigan
R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl	florida Atlantic	East Carolina	East Carolina
PapaJohns.com Bowl	Kentucky	Cincinnati	Kentucky
New Mexico Bowl	Boise St.	New Mexico	Boise St.
St. Petersburg Bowl	Central Florida	Memphis	Memphis
Congressional Bowl	Navy	Kent St.	Kent St.

All-Star Solutions

As I’ve written here before, I have a big problem with the way Major League Baseball picks their members of the All-Star Team. In that post, I never really came up with a solution for how it should work, it was more of me complaining about how bad it was. Well, with today being the last chance to vote for starters, I figured I’d throw out a couple of things my roommate and I brainstormed while on our way back from a concert in St. Louis.

The first thing we decided was that if the game matters, it shouldn’t be up to the fans to pick the lineup. Then, we just decided it shouldn’t count for anything anyway and to let the fans vote all they want. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen any time soon, so these ideas are for the All-Star Game as it is.

We decided that the players should be the voters, since Joe Torre has proven that managers aren’t very good at picking All-Stars (no more of this all Yankees and Red Sox nonsense). We came up with different variations on this idea, like having pitchers vote for hitters and vice versa. It would be interesting to find out who pitchers would like to face the least. For example: Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, Derrek Lee, or Adrian Gonzalez at first for the NL? The players would know better than anyone who truly is deserving of the honor. Of course, there would be rules associated with this, like they can’t vote for themself or for teammates so every players doesn’t get 25 votes. At the very least this would eliminate injured stars from winning the vote.

The second idea is re-tooling the rules saying every team must be represented. I doubt many Royals fans tuned in back in 2006 when Mark Redman donned their jersey in Pittsburgh anyway. Our idea was not to eliminate this rule, but to have the respective managers announce their lineups a week earlier than they do and leave the spots open for the teams only represented by one player. For instance, instead of naming Redman the Royals representative, Ozzie Guillen would have just released “Royals Representative” on his roster. Then, in this extra week, fans at Kaufmann Stadium can vote for which player they want to represent the Royals at the All-Star Game. This presents a couple problems, obviously, but it would give Bud Selig that voting thing that he loves so much. The managers could also submit a list of 5 players for consideration from the team or the voting could not be binding; this would mean the manager wouldn’t end up with all outfielders from this system.

Clearly these are not perfect solutions, but it would add some interest if the popularity contest was taken away. There would be several kinks to be worked out, but this would be considered a general framework for a solution. Have any suggestions on making the All-Star game better? Let me hear them in the comments.