Rants and Rambles

Happy October!  The weather has finally cooled off to more seasonable temperatures and fall has finally checked in where I live.  Instead of highs in the low 90s temperatures are now in the upper 50s.  I welcome fall, but wait until this winter and I will bitch about how cold it is.

In no particular order here are a few things I have been thinking about.

-NCAA Football.  My beloved Missouri Tigers are 3-2 on the young season and play at Tuscaloosa this Saturday night against the top rated team in the country; the Alabama Crimson Tide.  'Bama is a 28 point favorite and the over under number is 74.  I think if I were a betting man I would take the over number.  Mizzou has generated offense in every game it has played this year, but it's secondary leaves a lot to be desired and will have a hard time getting stops against the Tide.

-Times of games.  The NCAA still needs to figure out a way to speed up its games.  They are way too long and I am getting tired of sitting in the stands at Mizzou games watching the teams stand around and do absolutely nothing.  For starters, when a 30 second timeout is called, make the teams stay at the line of scrimmage and start play 30 seconds after the timeout is called.

-Baseball has done absolutely nothing and despite all of the hype about limiting the number of visits to the mound the games are still way to long.  The playoffs have brought the games to a crawl, with too many now taking over four hours to play.  This is ridiculous.  As I wrote earlier this year, keep the hitters in the box and the pitchers on the rubber, and limit the number of commercials and the games will have more action.  Oh, and have the umpires call the strike zone as it is written in the rule book.

-Baseball Predictions.  I think it will be the Red Sox and Brewers in the World Series.  And I think the Red Sox will win it all.  The Sox won 108 games this year and seem to have it all.  I look forward to both of the League Championship series too. While I like the Sox and Brewers, I may be wrong since Houston and the Dodgers seem to be peaking at the right time.

Well enough for now.  But, I will leave you with a picture I took while on vacation of a spot I had always wanted to visit.  It is the new Yankee Stadium at 161st Avenue in the Bronx.  The view is looking down the first base side of the ballpark.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Games are Too Long

I am a fan of Major League Baseball and a fan of NCAA Football.  Each sport shares the same problem.  The games are too long and getting longer.

I've watched as much of the MLB post-season as I can, but I just don't have four hours a night to invest in a baseball game.  Last night's Game Five in Houston will go down as a classic, but because I was tired I could not stay awake and went to bed in the eighth inning.  When I watched the highlights this morning I saw what all the shouting was about. The game which started at 7:10 p.m. where I live, didn't finish until after 12:30 a.m.  Sure, it lasted ten innings but the time to play it was way too long.  Baseball needs to cut back on the amount of commercials between innings and keep the batters in the box and the pitchers on the mound.  That will go a long way to speeding things up.  But, something else that will help is having the umpires call pitches as the strike zone is defined in the rule book.

The NCAA is now apparently owned by ABC / ESPN.  That TV network keeps adding commercials to each TV timeout it imposes on the game.  Again, if the NCAA would cut back on the number of commercials allowed in its breaks and make the teams stay on the field when play is stopped, the games would not last three hours and 45 minutes on average.  I love college football, but the length of the games has me thinking about not renewing my tickets next year.