#-1 (tie): Gopher volleyball and Gopher soccer (Last Week, respectively: -1 and -2). In a suddenly huge survey (but only for this week; it'll get back to its bulging self next week, barring the unforeseen), I really couldn't decide which of these two teams would get the top spot. I went to a game for each program, the volleyball team against Cal-Irvine Friday, the soccer side vs. Nebraska-Omaha Sunday afternoon. Both teams won those games handily: Volleyballers swept the Anteaters, Footballers destroyed the Mavericks 9-1. (I missed the last of the Gophers' nine goals because I was checking my Twitter for NFL scored; I would blame the boring game for it, but I realize that I check the Internet on my smartphone a lot during games I attend nowadays, and that's a bad habit and I should do something about that.) Both teams won their other games over this weekend as well: Volleyballers swept both North Dakota St. and Central Florida on their way to winning their Diet Coke Classic Saturday, Footballers nipped New Mexico 1-0 Friday. Both teams had decent wins but also played patsies. The footballers had an historic ass-kicking (too bad the press release didn't give the last time the club scored nine goals or won by eight), but the volleyballers are now ranked. I couldn't distinguish the two, so I gave them both the top spot -- but only a -1 because it's early in the season for both.
This week the volleyballers go to Charleston, S.C., for their fourth and final tournament, the Charleston Invite, where they are clear favorites against Bryant, Sam Houston St. and hosts College of Charleston. (I'm sorry, this squad should not be playing these teams. They had better been paid money for doing this.) Meanwhile the footballers will begin conference play this weekend on a very tough road trip: Ohio St. tonight (Thursday night), conference favorites Penn St. Sunday.
#-2: Gopher football (Last Week: -5). OK, so building this program "Brick By Brick" (their slogan for the year) is going to get a little harder this season. The defense, obviously the better half of this team, yielded a 37-yard Field Goal to send their game against Colorado St. to Overtime. Luckily, on the first play of OT, Minnesota recovered the fumble when Rams Running Back Dalyn Dawkins was stripped of the ball by Defensive Tackle Scott Ekpe. Ryan Santoso kicked the ball through the uprights from the 1, and the Golden Gophs escaped Ft. Collins, Colo., with a 23-20 win. The offense remains a problem; Quarterback Mitch Leidner, despite throwing two Touchdowns, still has difficulty throwing.
This team is hard to read, and back-to-back home games against Mid-American Conference opponents probably won't clear things up. Versus Kent St. early Saturday afternoon.
#-3: Twins (Last Week: -3). Well, they completed their goal this screening week: With their 6-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox on 9/11, they won their 73rd game -- which ensures they will not lose more than 89 games, which means they won't lose 90 games for a fifth straight season. Moreover, they are still hanging tough in the Wild Card race, still lagging only 1 1/2 games out of A.L. Wild Card 2 ... which is now held by the Houston Astros, who have conceded the A.L. West Division lead to the Texas Rangers.
Nevertheless, opportunities continue to be there for the Twinks and they keep blowing them. They finished a 3-3 screening week, losing two-of-three at Target Field to the Detroit Tigers, who came into this season with World Series aspirations only to close that door for good by the trade deadline. They should be so demoralized enough to be welcome door mats for playoff contenders like Minnesota. But games like Wednesday's 7-4 defeat, where the Twinks came back from a 2-1 deficit with two runs and came back from a 4-3 deficit in the bottom of the ninth, will (and should) haunt them for the rest of their lives. They had runners in scoring position in both the ninth and tenth innings with nobody out and were unable to score the game-ending runs. They relented with three in the top of the twelfth inning and couldn't muster up one more response. It's games like this, rare games where they came back (not once but twice) but failed to pull it out that they need to look over, regardless of how young this team is. What a goddamn neckbreaker.
They continue their final homestand of the regular season by hosting The Anaheim Angels Of Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Angels Of ..., who remains in the fringes of ALWC2, for four games starting Thursday. This may be the most dangerous series the Twinks face the rest of the year. They then host Cleveland for three starting on Tuesday.
#-4: Vikings (Re-Entry!). Yes, it's a long season. And if they continue to play this shittily, it will be a long season.
You know, most of the statistical people thought that the San Francisco 49ers had a 2-in-3 chance of winning that game. This despite the return of Adrian Peterson, the continuing education of Teddy Bridgewater, a vastly improved run defense, a new Head Coach on the Niners' side, and turnover after virutally half of last year's San Fran roster decided to retire after Jim Harbaugh left to coach the University of Michigan. I was one of those chumps who thought they were going to win. No way did I think All Day would be an afterthought, that Bridgewater would suddenly get the football equivalent of the yips, and that the D would let Carlos Hyde run over, around and through them. I was ready to watch the game on Channel 4, but it was so boring that I fell asleep. (Oh, and I had to mute the ESPN feed and turned on the radio to hear the game through KFAN. I couldn't stand Chris Berman and Trent Dilfer calling the game.) For most of the first half both teams were playing ineptly, but apparently San Francisco did more than enough to win the game, albeit ugly. And we should have listened to the game runs after all.
The oft-repeated stat is that, like, 10% of all teams that start the season 0-2 make the playoffs. So, ostensibly, they should try and win their next game Sunday. It is at "home," TCF Bank Stadium, where they will be playing for their second and final season. But it's against the surprisingly good Detroit Lions, which came back from an 18-point deficit to beat the Chargers in San Diego. (ETA on September 24 8:33 a.m. at that I should have known that it was the other way around, that it was in fact San Diego which came back from 18 points down to beat Detroit. Sorry, really sorry about that.) For all the hype that the ViQueens are a team on the rise, it's possible that they are still only the third-best team in the National Football Conference North Division, and well behind both the Lions and Green Bay. We'll see if the staid defeat in Week 1 is a trend or a mirage.
#-5: Lynx (Last Week: -4). It's already over for the Jynx. (They lost their regular season finale at Seattle, but Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen took the night off. Blah-blah-blah.) Despite going "all-in" by trading for Ashja Jones and Sylvia Fowles, they lost home-court advantage to the New York Liberty, of all fucking teams. That means that if these two teams somehow make it to the WNBA Finals, they will be playing in Madison Square Garden for a potential Game 5.
They're not going to win a potential Game 5 away from Target Center in the WNBA Finals. They are too old, too banged up (I don't think Seimone Augustus is 100%, and she may never be ever again), and too shallow off the bench to be a title team. I think they'll have big problems with the winner of the Phoenix-Tulsa series in the Western Conference Finals. Shit, they face the Los Angeles Sparks with Candice Parker in a best-of-three, and you don't know what the hell could happen. (Although for Game 2 on Sunday the Sparks are vacated from the Staples Center and are forced to play at the Pyramid in Long Beach. Women, still being treated like second-class citizens.)
This truly is The End Of An Era. In retrospect, this team was running on borrowed time from the beginning of the year. And we all got swept up in the belief that this old team was invincible. They are quite vincible, I'm afraid. They will be exposed, at some point in the WNBA Playoffs, and they will have to face some very serious questions about the future of this franchise. The dark days are coming, Jynx fans -- be prepared.
#-Infinity (tie): Saints and Swarm (Last Week, respectively: BRAND NEW, NEVER PUT THEM IN THE SURVEY BEFORE!!! and Re-Entry!). I have to talk about the demise of these two franchises -- although, to be fair, "demise" has a different definition for these two squads.
The St. Paul Saints, in the first season in their brand-new stadium in Lowertown St. Paul, CHS Field (I went to a game there this season; great minor league ballpark, but it has a lot of very dark wood accents for a stadium. Very sleek), they finished with their best record ever, 74-26. I had heard that they were really good all summer; oftentimes they were the team that buoyed the local sports season when the Twinks and Jynx lost. Things were looking really good for them.
But then they lost steam. I had assumed that their lauded record meant that they also had the best record in the American Association. Turned out they didn't; by one game, a 75-25 record, the Sioux City Explorers topped the Aints for the best record in the AA.
So that meant that, when they met in their semifinal series in the AA playoffs, that the Explorers would have home-field advantage in their best-of-five series. But they didn't; St. Paul did, even though in independent baseball, to cut down on travel costs, the team with the home-field disadvantage got to play their two games at home first before travelling to the other team for the last three. That may have given Sioux City momentum; they won the first two games and was able to take Game 4 on the road. Meaning that the Saints' greatest record would wind up in failure.
But at least the team will still be in the Twin Cities. The National Lacrosse League Swarm announced that they are leaving Minnesota for the greater Atlanta area and becoming the Georgia Swarm. Smarm Owner John Arlotta said that they cherished the fans here, but there were three factors that ultimately forced them to leave the area: Eroding corporate sponsorship and season-ticket holders; continuing difficulties competing in an oversaturated Twin Cities sports market; and new lease terms that would have taken away Saturday evening slots, seen by Arlotta as the most lucrative.
Two things here. First of all, I still believe the adage that markets don't fail teams, teams fail markets. In their 11-year history, they never won the Champion's Cup. In fact, they never even reached the NLL Finals, losing in the division finals twice. And Arlotta knows darn well that the reason he was losing season-ticket holders is because the Swarm missed the playoffs the last two years as the team continually tried to field a team on the cheap, trading away veterans (and fan favorites) in exchange for unproven rookies. That is a recipe for disaster, and the silver bullet that somehow a young team could crash its way to the title didn't work, not even close. I'm not saying the other factors didn't make it difficult to compete; I'm saying that fielding a better team could have resolved so many problems.
The other thing I want to talk about is the market that they're going to. I have no idea what the lacrosse "scene" in Atlanta is like, but I doubt it's much different than it is here. In fact, I'll say it's worse. Atlanta is not a sports town. They don't go to Falcons or Braves games because -- well, partly it's because their teams have been historically mediocre, but also because the area is so sprawled out it takes too damn long to get to a ballpark or arena. And remember, this is the metropolitan area that lost not one but two National Hockey League franchises. So I doubt Arlotta when he says he's "capitalizing" on the "burgeoning community" there. Meanwhile, there was one lacrosse community here, and it'll probably shrivel away without Swarm support. All because he took the best deal that was dangled in front of him.
The Georgia Swarm won't last two years. Good fucking riddance to your club and your obnoxious DJ who blasts a song for five seconds before switching it to another song.
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