Who has a better chance at winning thier next Championship, Tiger Woods or VCU?

Well, the Final Four is set and are no #1 or #2 seeds have made it. Two Cinderellas, VCU and Butler, are there along with two other heavy tradional programs in Kentucky and Uconn. VCU has to be the most surprising team of the four. This team was on the outside looking in on selection sunday and when thier name was announced, Jay Bilas, Dick Vital and company were first in line to critize the committee for putting VCU into the field of 68. They argued that VCU had lost to teams like Georgia State, Northeastern, James Madison and Drexel in the regular season. But here we are, 2 weeks later, and VCU has gone on a remarkable and historic run by beating powerhouse teams such as USC, Georgetown, Purdue, Florida State and Kansas. How did this happen?

VCU, as a team, did not watch the selection show because they didnt think they were getting into the tournment but when thier name was announced, word spread quickly and the team was excited. They quickly turned on the TV and listened to so-called experts like Vital and Bilas rip thier team and calling them garbage! Hearing these experts say all of these things was plenty of motivation to go on this run. I even predicted that VCU would come out in thier first game with something to prove but I didn't think they would go on this furious run.

While VCU was pulling off this run, Tiger Woods was teeing off at Bay Hill. He was looking to win his first event in a year and a half. He started off well after shooting a 68 in the second round but tailed off in rounds 3 and 4, shooting a 74 and 72. He hasn't won an event since the '09 BMW Championship. Who would have thought that Tiger Woods would have not recovered from a scandal like this? Afterall, we hear scandals similiar to this all the time in sports and most athletes overcome the adversity, but I think Tiger Woods has fallen so far from grace that the greatest golfer in the game will never recover emotionally and mentally from the greatest mistake of his life.

So, when its all said and done, I think you will see VCU winning a Championship before Tiger Woods wins another event of any kind!

Bo Ryan lacks tournament success at Wisconsin

Bo Ryan has taken what Dick Bennett started at UW, turning the Badgers into a yearly contender for the Big Ten title and March Madness participant but now it is time to take the next step.

In 10 seasons the school has made 10 NCAA tournaments under Bo Ryan, advancing to four Sweet 16s and one Elite 8. Since the regional finals appearance in 2005 however, the tournament runs have been marred by hollow endings.

In 2007 the 2 seed UNLV bounced Bucky in the second round. Then came that stunning loss to Davidson in the Sweet 16 in 2008 and the 2010 loss to 12 seed Cornell after barely surviving 13 seed Wofford to open the tournament.

Now, here in 2011, the 8 seed Butler, who lost twice during the season to UW-Milwaukee, out-performed Big Red in the Sweet 16, leading to another premature exit.

The fact is that college basketball has changed. It is not the pure game that it used to be. As much as I love to see them play like a team, the problem this season was no star to turn to when times got rough. In the game today you need at least a couple of playmakers to go along with all the unselfish role players.

You could argue that Butler is much like Wisconsin and played in the championship last season and is in the Final 4 again this season. I think that is the exception,not the rule. Quite frankly their team has more heart than Wisconsin. The style of play used by these two teams is perfect for Butler but Wisconsin is a big-time program and needs to start acting like it.

Four of Wisconsin's last five losses in the big dance have been to teams seeded lower than it. As a fan I am sick of seeing my team ousted by inferior teams. To take Wisconsin to the next level, Bo Ryan needs to scrap his "system" offense and recruit some playmakers: watching this team throw up bricks on basketballs biggest stage is as frustrating as it gets

March Madness

It is that time of year. A week ago everyone was excited about filling out their brackets and now a week later everyone talks about how bad their brackets look. It is the same thing every year but fans like me still love it!

What makes the college basketball tournament so great is all the upsets. Picking the wrong upsets is what ruins everyones brackets. I had Pittsburgh and Notre Dame in my final 4 and they did not survive the first weekend. So yes, my bracket is a mess but so what?

Assuming that the top 4 seeds from each region are expected to reach the Sweet 16, lets take a look at who is left and who might win each region and qualify for the Final 4.

WEST REGION: This region has gone pretty much as planned. (5) Arizona is a small surprise but I picked them to take out (5) Texas and now (1) Duke. (2) San Diego State should beat (3) Connecticut and go on to win the region. The Connecticut Huskies have played 7 games over a 12 day period and now face a more talented opponent.

EAST REGION: (11) Marquette has played great and made it here along with powerhouse programs like (4) Kentucky, (2) North Carolina, and (1) Ohio State. I will continue to root hard for the Golden Eagles but the Buckeyes appear to be the best team in college basketball and should win this region and possibly the championship.

SOUTHWEST REGION: This is the crazy one with (12) Richmond, (11) VCU, and (10) Florida State taking 3 of the 4 Sweet 16 slots. Should be a cakewalk for (1) Kansas to get to the Final 4 now right? NOT, this is March Madness where anything can happen. The Spiders are looking real good and make a great Cinderella story.

SOUTHEAST REGION: Last years runner up (8) Butler is not nearly as good as they were last season but they did knock off top seeded Pittsburgh to get here. (4) Wisconsin should end the season for the Bulldogs on Thursday night but the (3) BYU/(2) Florida winner should win the region. The Gators have been this far often but the Cougars have JIMMER.

Obviously I am as excited as can be that two Wisconsin schools have made it to the Sweet 16 this season and if they would keep winning, could meet in the NCAA Championship game. Anything is possible in March Madness and in sports in general. The Badgers football team was in the Rose Bowl on the first day of 2011. The Green Bay Packers won the Superbowl. The Milwaukee Bucks have come to life and could qualify for the NBA Playoffs. The Milwaukee Brewers have a promising outlook with a solid pitching staff now to go along with a decent lineup. With all of that and the Golden Eagles and the Badgers doing as well as they are, what a great year in Wisconsin sports!

To recap here is my Final 4: San Diego State, Ohio State, Richmond, and BYU.

My dream Final 4 would be: Arizona, Marquette, Wisconsin, and Kansas (Why Kansas you ask? because I want the Badgers to win a Final 4 game as a big underdog to make it even better)

Las Vegas for March Madness!

I have always wanted to go to Vegas and it is finally about to happen. As a sports fans who knows enough about sports not to gamble on it, the time has come to gamble a little. My main focus will be college basketball. Some friends of mine and I will be betting on and watching many games of Rounds 1 and 2 of March Madness (Tuesday-Friday March 15-18) while we are there.

Do you have any Vegas stories and/or advise to share? This is the place to do it!

Collective Bargaining: Is it Just for Professional Sports?

I realize that this is a sports blog but the topic I am about to address touches on everything from sports, to law, to politics, to religion. In Wisconsin, sometimes it's very difficult to separate any of those four things from each other.

The term "collective bargaining" is normally reserved for professional athletes. It's almost impossible to turn on ESPN without hearing the latest update on the NFL's collective bargaining agreement (or lack thereof). Lately, however; in the state of Wisconsin, the term "collective bargaining" has taken on an entirely new meaning.

This past week, newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has launched an assault on collective bargaining by calling for legislation designed to strip the teacher's union of its power. At the same time, teachers throughout the state of Wisconsin have called in "sick" to protest the new legislation in Madison, essentially sacrificing the children they are responsible to educate in order to make a political point. I am very interested to see how many of these teachers will sacrifice their personal time and continue to protest in Madison over the weekend.

I actually think that both sides are wrong; however, one side is clearly more wrong than the other. First, I will address the lesser of the two evils. Each and every teacher who called in "sick" to protest the newly proposed legislation should first of all be ashamed and secondly should examine why they decided to become a teacher. If they decided to teach for the money or for the summer vacations, they should have given up the occupation long ago because teachers work way too hard for their salaries and the good teachers don't get a summer vacation because they are too busy improving their classrooms for the next school year.

More disturbing than the behavior of the teachers is the behavior of our Governor. For those of you who have supported him blindly because he ran as a Republican, Scott Walker is no conservative. Instead, he is one of many pseudo-conservatives masquerading a malignant political agenda around and calling it "fiscal conservatism." Politicians like Walker are the reason a smooth talker without any real substance, like Obama, can find a way to get elected to public office.

The barometer for every true conservative on any issue should always be "what would Reagan do?" The answer, in this case, is certainly not this. Although Reagan refused to compromise on his principles, always sought ways to unite the country by compromising on how his principles were implemented. Instead of chasing Democrats south of the border he reached across the aisle to develop diverse solutions that required a bi-partisan perspective.

Instead, Walker's tactics resemble the far left approach that Saul Alinsky advocates for in his book Rules for Radicals. Walker is attempting to use Wisconsin's economic crisis to force citizens to surrender their individual rights for the good of society as determined by Walker's ideology. More importantly, Walker has failed to account for the devastating effect his decisions will have on Wisconsin's children for years to come. Taking away rights from Wisconsin's teachers in an attempt to balance the state's budget will further divide the "haves" from the "have nots" in terms of education.

The most basic law of Economics holds that when any econimically motivated system is forced out of equilibrium it will always regain equilibrium when substitutes exist. In this instance, what that means is that the best teachers in the state of Wisconsin will find a way to regain appropriate compensation for their abilities and either leave the public school system or leave the state. Either scenario would devastate a public educational system that is already strapped for resources.

Similarly, the best and the brightest students entering college in Wisconsin will no longer consider an Education Degree as a viable option since it typically takes between one semester and one year longer to complete than other degrees due to Wisconsin's stringent student teaching requirements.

No matter how one dissects this issue, the conclusion is the same. Wisconsin is headed for disaster in terms of its public education system if Walker's legislation passes. I, for one, hope that it does not.

World Series or Bust!

As a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers for 31 years now, I go into every spring training with an excitement of maybe this is the year that the Brewers will surprise and contend for a world title. But every year, they some how find a way to let me down. As the years wore on, I began to lose faith and started to wonder if I would ever see my favorite baseball team play in October. Major League Baseball is set-up like no other sport. Only the teams with money can contend because there is no salary cap. It's an unfair system and I can't believe they haven't fixed it yet! Bud Selig has been given so much credit for creating the wild-card berth but I think his legacy will be remembered for the steroid era and not getting a salary cap for baseball.
With that being said, I'm putting all my chips into the middle on the Milwaukee Brewers playing in the fall classic and winning it! In my opinion, they have a one year window to make a run in the postseason because they added some critical pieces through trades. They added a 2009 Cy Young award winner in Zach Grienke and Toronto's ace Shawn Marcum, who was thier opening day starter last year. They strengthened thier bull-pen with the signing of Takashi Saito, who had a great year with the Braves last year after posting a 2.83 ERA! The Brewers took a lot of heat from the media because they thought adding Yuniesky Betancourt was a down grade from Escobar. But, if you compare thier numbers, Betancourt exceeded Escobar in almost every category. And lets not forget, Escobar was shaky at times on defense last year! The last piece to the puzzle that the Brewers added was Manager Ron Roenicke. It's hard to say wheather or not this guy will be a good Manager because there is no history to go by.
ESPN experts Buster Olney and Tim Kirchen have picked the Brewers to finish second and third in thier division and I think thats an outrage! I'm not sure what else the Brewers have to do to get some national respect because I give the Crew an A+, in terms of offseason additions. I truely believe that if the Brewers don't win it all this year, I will die an old man without ever seeing the Milwaukee Brewers win a World Series!

PACKERS WIN 13TH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

We did it Packer fans, we really did it. Our Green Bay Packers just won the Superbowl without playing their best game. After the veterans Donald Driver and Charles Woodson went out in the second quarter this team did what they did all year and fought through it, fought through mistakes like all the dropped passes and some misfires by Aaron Rodgers. It was a 31-25 victory over the Steelers to win Superbowl XLV, that is all that really matters. Also Aaron Rodgers has now tied Brett Favre with ONE SUPERBOWL TITLE and just won SUPERBOWL MVP, something #4 never did. Aaron Rodgers is already the better quarterback in my book!

This is really just the beginning. This team is mostly young and will have many more opportunities in this decade to win championships. It is never easy to repeat but it looks like this team is still improving. They will continue to grow together and with the injured players back will have more great players on the roster than they can keep.

I think the 2011 Packers might just blow out a lot of teams when they learn how to stop making these mistakes. The first goal will be to win the NFC North division title that we failed to earn this year. Earn the home field throughout the playoffs and take an easier route to the next World Championship, this one in Indianapolis. I need to earn some money and go to Superbowl XLVI. I feel very confident that the Packers will be there and be a much better team than they are right now!

Finally, the day is here, Superbowl XLV (Packers/Steelers)

After 13 years the chance to bring the Lombardi trophy back home where it belongs is finally here. All Packer fans remember January 25, 1998 when a heavily favored Packer team lost it in San Deigo to the Denver Broncos is an entertaining but heartbreaking Superbowl. Most of us thought at the time that our Packers would be back many more times. As it turned out, over the next couple of years players and coaches went to other teams and some retired. Green Bay suddenly had less talent and lost the team concept.

The 2003 Packers had a great chance with a great Offensive Line and my favorite Packer of the 20th Century, running back, Ahman Green. From coaching mistakes to 4th and 26th to our Quarterback throwing that playoff game in Philadelphia away with an overtime INT, our chance was gone. The 2007 Packers made it to the NFC Championship but were upset by the Giants when the Quarterback again, threw away the season with an overtime INT.

Finally, the Packers were able to start fresh with a young Quarterback in 2008. A lot of roster turnover made the Green bay team the youngest in the league for 3 years and with that came a lot of mistakes. The 6-10 season was rough but the two years that followed were better and now these 2010 Packers were able to fight through many injuries and get hot at the right time. A five game winning streak has landed them in Dallas to play the Pittsburgh Steelers in Superbowl XLV. That young quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, is about to become a legend.

The Steelers consistently have a great team but I do think our Packers are up to this task and will prevail. With seemingly about 90% of the so called "experts" agreeing with me, I can't help but be a little worried now, 17 hours before kickoff. It reminds me of Superbowl XXXII when it seemed so obvious that the Packers would win but they disappointed us all so much.

Still, as I go off to sleep now, I feel really good about this team. I think it is going to be a great game and a Packer victory. No matter what the outcome however, it looks to me like GM Ted Thompson has put together such a great young roster in Green Bay that the Packers will contend every year for this entire decade. It is very possible that we will have more Packer Superbowls coming up. Fact is though that you never know when it will happen again so this team need to seize the moment and I predict that they will.

Here are my Superbowl predictions: (guesses really because in the NFL anything can happen)

FINAL SCORE: Packers 34 Steelers 24

MVP: Aaron Rodgers throws for 350 yards and 3 TD's.

EXCITING PLAY: Fake field goal first down pass by Matt Flynn

BIGGEST PLAY: With so much attention being paid to Greg Jennings, the Steelers give up a 92 yard touchdown pass from Rodgers to Jordy Nelson

KEY MOMENT: Down 14-13 in the 3rd quarter Aaron Rodgers escapes the furious Steeler pass rush that has been knocking him around all game long and finds Donald Driver to convert on a huge 3rd and 14th. The drive finishes later on the first play of the 4th quarter with a TD catch by James Jones. Green Bay winds up outscoring Pittsburgh 21-10 in a wild final quarter.

DAGGER: Clay Matthews nearly gets his third sack late in the game but BigBen Rothlesburger is able to get the pass off only to have it turn into a pick 6 by Charles Woodson.

Okay, that was a little crazy. Just predicting a score is hard enough but the part I really think we will see is a fake field goal by the Packers so be watching for that. Above all, enjoy the game. The Packers can win the Superbowl for the first time in 14 years. ENJOY IT!!!

Packer Fans: Part of Wisconsin's Social Fabric, or an Embarrassment?

As those of you who follow this blog probably know, I am not a Packer fan even though I have lived in Wisconsin my entire life. Last night, one of my friends asked me "Why don't you like the Packers?" My immediate response was "Honestly, it's because of their fans." After reading his expression I felt the need to clarify that my comment was not directed at him. I articulated that I just get sick of how obsessed people in Wisconsin get about the Packers. Watching some of these fans represent the state of Wisconsin on the national news is embarrassing because they provide the rest of the nation with a glimpse of what people from Wisconsin are like. I do not want to be connected to the stereotypes that Packer fans create for the rest of us.

Point in case; this week, the city of Milwaukee experienced the worst blizzard it has seen in over 25 years. Of course, the storm was backpage news in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which featured a photo shopped picture of Aaron Rodgers next to the Lombardi trophy on the cover. After flipping through four different Milwaukee television newscasts which all featured reporters broadcasting live from Dallas, I had to resort to the internet to find weather updates. Only after watching the weather forecast for the Superbowl was I able to find an update on the snow forecast for Milwaukee. This is the dark side of the culture that is Packer nation. Fans get so obsessed with their team that they forget or ignore everything else happening in the world around them.

On the flip side, these loyal fans are the reason there are NFL games played in Green Bay, WI when other cities of similar size and stature have lost NFL franchises. Even much larger cities such as Los Angeles, CA, which boasts a population roughly 13.5 times larger than that of Green Bay, has lost several NFL franchises.

The Packers franchise reciprocates the love the Green Bay community shows it by drafting and signing players who are also quality people and who embrace the community and get involved in it. Although other professional sports franchises encourage their players to get involved in a similar fashion in their respective communities, volunteer efforts and community involvement reaches a deeper level in Green Bay.

Many of these athletes are excellent role models for citizenship and hard work and Packer fans take advantage of pointing out these players to their children. I do not believe that this is a bad thing as long as it is kept in perspective. Positive role models that provide great examples of behavior for our children are tremendous assets for any community.

Teaching children the value of hard work and dedication to a team and a cause at an early age is a wonderful thing. Teaching them that there is more to life than Packer football, even when Packer football involves the Superbowl, is where I feel far too many Packer fans fall short.

Troy Polamalu wins by a hair!

Clay Matthews lost out by two votes to Troy Polamalu for the 2010 NFL Defensive Player of the Year. I did not see this one coming. I thought Clay would win almost every vote, Troy did miss two games but hey, the real prize will be won on Sunday. Human nature tells us that Troy might lose his edge just a little while Clay apparently has more to prove. Not that they needed any more motivation but Matthews and his teammates just got some.

Troy received 17 votes, Clay 15, James Harrison (also a Steeler) 8, Julius Peppers (Bears) 6, his teammate Brian Urlacher 2, and the Ravens Ed Reed and Haloti Ngata both received 1 vote. Interesting to see how both of this years Superbowl teams have such dominating Defensive players. Pittsburgh has Troy and James while Green Bay has Clay and last years' Defensive Player of the Year, Charles Woodson. These four stars will be trying to stop two of the most elusive quarterbacks in the game in the biggest battle of all on Superbowl Sunday!

Now is the time for Troy Polamalu and Clay Matthews to take their competition to a new level in Dallas Cowboys stadium. They already are considered marketing adversaries, with Polamalu's jersey the top seller in the league, and both representing hair products.

Who will win superiority on Sunday?

Troy Polamalu has had a good run, known as one of the best players in the game now for several years.

Is it time for Clay Matthews to take over?

I think so!

Aaron Rodgers is right but it is time to quiet down!

This is the time of year when the media is just begging for a story to take and run with for Superbowl week. Surely the Packer and Steeler players have been warned about how everything will be blown out of proportion during Super Bowl week. When it comes to "off the field" stuff, you DON'T want to be the team being talked about. So what looks to be the story as Superbowl week begins? It might be the back and forth between Aaron Rodgers (leader of the Pack) and Nick Barnett (injured linebacker). I think if they keep talking, there will be a perceived feud between them.

Nick and the other 15 Packers on injured reserve wanted to be part of the team photo. The team leaders Charles Woodson and Aaron Rodgers talked to the coach and GM on their behalf to make sure this would happen. The issue was resolved and this could have ended the story. However, some reporter was able to get Aaron Rodgers to say more. What Rodgers said basically is that if you want to be in the team picture you should stick with the team. It seems that some players including Barnett and Jermichael Finley did not stick around to support the team after being placed on IR. They chose to rehab elsewhere. I feel like they should stay around and be as much a part of the team as possible but I wish Aaron Rodgers would just become quiet on this issue. Now Barnett and Finley are tweeting about this again. Their tweets are how this whole thing started first started.

My guess is that this will get portrayed all week as some feud between players. Perception is reality so the questions to these players will include this story, no doubt. I am sure they will say there is no feud but the Packers have made the first blunder of this Superbowl week and the Steelers would love to just fly under the radar. Seriously, you don't want to be the team that gets the most coverage, just the team that scores the most points. Aaron Rodgers made a little blunder here but hopefully will more than make up for it on Superbowl Sunday.

Twitter having an effect on the NFL

Who is that guy on the left and why have I posted this picture from his facebook photos? Does he play in the NFL? What does he have to do with this story? Read on and find out!

All the tweets during and after the NFC Championship game on Sunday have caused quite a stir. I don't think people in general think while tweeting, or doing a status update on facebook, about the fact that everyone in the world could find out what they were thinking at the time. The Jay Cutler situation was the first incident that became a huge story but this has been going on for a while now. With social networking we are truly living in a whole new world.

Two of the 16 Packers on I.R. were tweeting back and forth the other day about how they would not be included in the team picture at the Superbowl because it would be taken on Tuesday and the the injured players don't fly in until Friday. Word quickly got out to the media and it became a controversy that the Packer organization quickly rectified. The team picture will now be taken on Friday. This was an easy fix that possibly would not have happened if there was no twitter.

Gone are the days of having to read about the game after the game is over. You can get play-by-play stats and opinions. Everything is immediate and sometimes conclusions drawn too quickly. To people over 40, like me, this is crazy. I am glad that I am using the Internet for so many different things these days. Some post 40 people don't use computers very often, or even own one, and are really missing out.

I have found through use of facebook that my friends and I are much more brutally honest with each other in facebook comments that we would be in reality, face to face. This can cause some unnecessary disagreements that would be less likely to exist without facebook. As a matter of fact, Paul Eggers (one of our great sportswriters on this blog, pictured above) seems to have two different personalities. In person I think he is an okay guy with only the one big fault (being a Viking fan) but on line...well, I will leave it at that.

Anyway, this new world has some great advantages including things like this blog. No newspaper ever wanted my writings but I can blog all I want. The facebook stuff can be fun and keep friendships alive with miles between us BUT it can also be a huge time waster and one of my New Year's resolutions is to be on facebook less. I am not doing so well so far because I love commenting about the Packers. A week or so after the Superbowl is over I think I will be able to cut down my facebook time. I have a twitter account as well but almost never use it because facebook has already used up my free time. Anyway...I am just kind of curious about what you all think about this new world with the social networking.

How often do you facebook and twitter?

Do you agree about the effects it has on professional sports?

Superbowl XLV (Packers/Steelers)

Congratulations first to both the Bears and the Jets for coming back from way down to make these games entertaining. Both the Bears and Jets looked over matched today but kept on fighting, never gave up, and had a chance in the end. These teams have been underrated all season by many people, including me, let me say now that they both earned the right to be part of football's final 4.

Green Bay 21 Chicago 14

Pittsburgh 24 New York 19

Congratulations to the Packers and Steelers. They now head to Dallas for what should be an epic Superbowl. The Packers are an early two point favorite. It is like Vegas now sees the Packers as the #1 seed they should have been. In fact if the Packers would have been able to win at Chicago and Atlanta in the regular season they would have won the North, finished in a 12-4 tie with the Falcons and therefore would have been the #1 seed in the playoffs. The road less traveled has been difficult for the Packers but possibly even more rewarding.

As a Packer fan I can honestly tell you that I thought they would make it to Superbowl XLV from the very beginning. When injuries threatened to kill the season I said hey, it is still early enough in the season to fight through and still make it. When some wrote off the Packers at 8-6 when the Bears won the North, I told everyone the path the Packers would take to make it to Dallas. It all played out as I expected, except for one thing. I expected the championship game to be at New Orleans. I thought it would be sweet to knock out the champs. After the Seahawks took care of the Saints, the collision course was set. The Packers took out the rival Bears to get to the big one but I must say two things about the Bears. "They are better than I thought they were" if they had a better option at quarterback than Jay Cutler they could be a championship team. They might have found that better option in the forth quarter today in Caleb Hanie, a guy I know nothing about. He gave his team a chance today, that is all I know. So, Chicago faces another off-season unsettled at the most important position, cool!

The Pittsburgh Steelers are consistently a great team. The Green Bay Packers have been through a lot and become a great team. BOTH TEAMS ARE FAR FROM PERFECT, this has a chance to go down as the greatest Superbowl because more now than ever in the NFL, anything can happen!

CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAY IS FINALLY HERE

Today brings us the biggest ever game in the Packers/Bears rivalry as they battle for the NFC Championship belt.

It also brings us an AFC title tilt. This Steelers/ Jets contest should come right down to the wire and might even bring us our first NFL playoffs overtime under the new overtime rules.

The result of it all might be Packers/Steelers in Superbowl XLV. These are the leagues two largest fan bases, how cool would that be?

This would set up what might turn out to be the most watched television event ever.

No matter what, today's championship action is going to be great.

My best guesses are:

Packers 23 Bears 7 in a game that might be a defensive struggle early and a Packer blowout late!

Steelers 23 Jets 17 in a game that will go on for a while and be an absolute classic.

Performance Enhancers: Are they good or bad for sports and where do you draw the line?

The latest internet buzz surrounding the topic of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) involves a spray derived from a substance found on deer antlers. Similar to Human Growth Hormone (HGH) when it was first used as a PED in the late 1990's, it is very difficult to test for naturally occurring IGF-1, the active ingredient in this new PED. In order to test positive, a blood test must be conducted at the right time because the substance does not stay in a human body for extended periods of time like other PEDs. Currently, neither the NFL or MLB use blood tests to test for PEDs.

Although this PED is new, the discussion about the use of PEDs in sports is not. Athletes have always looked for competitive advantages and the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. How do you differentiate between what should be a legal performance enhancing substance (such as a protein shake) and an illegal one (steroids)? More importantly, is it possible for leagues to eliminate the use of PEDs since as soon as effective tests are developed for one PED a new PED takes its place? The biggest questions about PEDs though are: are they good or bad for sports, and what message are we sending to our children by embracing their use in professional sports?

After the baseball strike of 1995, attendance of MLB games plummeted by over 20%. By 1998 in the midst of a home run chase fueled by the use of PEDs, MLB attendance hit a record of 70.6 million fans, up 12% from 1997. With its popularity on the rise, MLB and Commissioner Bud Selig did not address the steroid issue until 2003 and MLB did not impose stiff penalties for PED users until after Congress became involved in 2005. Despite the fact that several top tier players (e.g. Alex Rodriguez, and Manny Ramirez) have tested positive for steroids, attendance at MLB games has remained well above post-strike attendance marks notwithstanding the economic recession the country finds itself in.

This begs the question, have leagues and fans accepted the fact that athletes will use PEDs? Are we willing to allow athletes to use PEDs so they can perform at their best and we can be more entertained? Most importantly, what message does this send to our children? Should we tell our children that PEDs are not for them but that professional athletes play by a different set of rules? Is that message really different than the reality that professional athletes are afforded certain privileges by society that the rest of us are not (Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger)?

It's an interesting discussion but if the purpose of sports is to entertain us and PEDs provide a way for them entertain us more, maybe it is time for us to embrace their use in professional sports. Since the use of PEDs seems to be widespread, allowing their use in professional sports is possibly the only way to truly level the playing field. There will always be athletes who figure out ways around PED testing. Is it fair to punish the athletes who play by the rules since they are at a disadvantage against the ones who find ways to take PEDs?

If it isn't then professional sports need to do one of two things. Either legalize PEDs or impose even stiffer penalties on those caught using them. I'm not talking about a 50 game suspension, I'm talking about a lifetime ban. If we as fans believe that PEDs are detrimental to sports then let's make the punishment so severe that it actually deters athletes from using them. For those of you who feel this is too harsh, it really isn't any different than what would happen to most people if they were caught one time for felony use of a recreational drug. Most people would be terminated from their current job and have a difficult time finding new employment. Why should a professional athlete be treated differently?