The Week in Sports.... Welcome!

Welcome to the first edition of The Week in Sports with Brian. I love sports, if I wasn’t on track to make millions on Wall Street, I would consider a career in sports. Who are my teams? NFL – Jets. Like all of my fellow Jet fans, I have been trained to expect collapse. Everything will go wrong, and it usually does. BUT, I love them and will continue to crawl back year after year with the faint hope that “things will be different this time.” MLB – Yankees. They have won 5 World Series in my lifetime, and while I worry about George’s degenerate sons running the franchise (and tightening that loose Steinbrenner wallet we’ve all grown so accustomed to), I’m confident that success will continue. To all you Yankee haters out there that argue that the Yankees win only because they spend….I have no defense here except to say that 1) There is no salary cap so deal with it & 2) while they have handed out some questionable contracts (Kevin Brown & Carl Pavano), they have been pretty smart with their personnel decisions. Money doesn’t always buy success in this sport (see the New York Mets). NBA – Casual fan with no true alliance. I live in New York and love seeing the Knicks beginning to become relevant again…. it’s good for NYC and it’s good for the NBA. But, I’m not going to claim to be a huge fan just because Melo and Amare came to town. College Sports – I’m a graduate of The University of Maryland so follow all things Terps but haven’t had much to cheer about in recent years. I’m a huge SEC football fan… nothing better than sitting down on a Saturday afternoon and watching Alabama-Auburn on CBS. NHL – I don’t watch it and will never mention the sport again in this blog – it’s an inferior product and there’s nothing else to discuss here. Finally, big golf fan… Masters weekend is clearly in the top 3 sports weekends of the year (following NFL’s divisional weekend & the first weekend of the NCAA’s).

Alright so we’ve survived February, which is by far the most depressing sports month of the year. Football is over so instead of nursing a hangover with a day full of NFL games, you’re forced into watching trashy reality TV and checking out the latest in adult entertainment that the web has to offer…. Ok maybe it isn’t so bad but you’d still rather be watching a game. The NBA is right in the middle of its marathon season and college ball starts to get good but not tournament good. So March is here, the weather is starting to turn (reminding all warm blooded males that the first “skirt day” is almost upon us) and the greatest sports tournament in the world is only a week away. By the way, don’t give me that “come on man, the World Cup is the best tournament in the world”…… We get it, your parents were afraid you’d get hurt in football so you played soccer and only complied because you enjoyed the orange slices after the games. We get it.

Let’s talk a bit about conference tournaments and leave the NCAA’s for next week. The Big East Tourney is by far the best of the bunch and is so every year. I look at the other conferences and it’s obvious that they are all relatively top heavy: The ACC (Duke & Carolina), the Big 12 (Texas & Kansas), the SEC (Florida & Alabama) and the Pac 10 (Arizona & UCLA). The Big East? No doubt there are some quality squads at the top (PITT, ND, LVILLE & CUSE), but there are 11 teams that I can see winning this thing. And this isn’t a fluke, it’s like this every year. Some people say that navigating your way through this field every year is just as tough as winning the NCAA tournament. It’s that good. Throw in the fact that it’s held at the Garden and you’ve got yourself a tournament!

Here are my picks for this week:

ACC – DUKE

Pac 10 – ARIZONA

Big 12 – TEXAS

SEC – KENTUCKY

Big East – SYRACUSE

Parting shots (Yes I took this from PTI but it fits so deal with it)……. I’m already sick of the Heat and “cry-gate” – bottom line is the Heat thought they would stroll through this season but it’s obvious that until they figure out who their go to guy is in crunch time, they will continue to lose close games (I think it’s pretty obvious Wade has to be that guy). Also, I’m a huge fan of putting any word in front of “gate” when referring to anything sports related…. If nothing more than to just remind everyone that the Patriots cheated and haven’t won a championship since slimy Belicheck was exposed……..I think I’m siding with the players in this whole CBA mess but in the end I just want this thing to get figured out ASAP. We should be talking about free agency and the draft right now and not what piece of the pie the corpse of Al Davis deserves to take home (if you’re confused with this reference, click here http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/123234/AL-DAVIS.jpg ......... Enough Said.

See you next week……..