Week in Review

A new piece that we will have on the Upper Bowl is the "Week in Review" and will be posted on Tuesday's after the end of the NFL week. We will talk about the week in sports and any newsworthy issues. So lets get to it.

The NFL:

I am not sure I remember a crazier time in the NFL. Coaches are losing their minds. Shanahan in Washington benched Donovan McNabb when his team was down 1 score to the Lions with only a couple of minutes left in the game. What?!? Brad Childress decided to waive Randy Moss. Which on its own doesn't seem so bad, except they traded for him 1 month ago and gave up a 3rd round draft pick for him. The Vikings are dismal right now, Brett Favre can't decide if he wants to send inappropriate messages to former Jets employees or just throw TD's. Look for Childress to get fired sooner or later. Tampa Bay keeps winning, the Rams are decent and the Lions might actually be building in a positive manner. The Elite appear to be rising to the top. The Patriots, Colts, Ravens, Steelers, Falcons and Saints look like the only teams to take seriously right now. The Giants might make a push over the next couple of weeks to join that group, but right now that is how I see it. Speaking of the Giants....

The Worlds Series:

Typically we don't talk much baseball here at the Upper Bowl, mainly because it is an antiquated sport that is pretty boring. But lets give the San Francisco Giants their due. Their hodge-podge line-up and stellar pitching staff went out and dominated the Texas Rangers (the overwhelming favorite) in 5 games. Good for them, good for San Francisco.... Now they get to have another parade, something that San Francisco is awfully familiar with.

The NBA:

The first week of the NBA was an interesting one. The Heat went out on opening night and got spanked by the Celtics, but then railed off 3 wins by playing suffocating defense. If they defend like that all year long then beating them is going to be awfully difficult. The Lakers are unbeaten, and look good but not invincible. The Jazz are Jekyl and Hyde, they lost two games by 20+ points each game, but then ended the week by beating the tar out of the Thunder in Oklahoma City. I think that we will see the Jazz become more consistent with time but don't be surprised if this inconsistency continues for a couple of weeks. If the Jazz are sitting at .500 or better after next weekend then I would consider that a positive since the Jazz have a roadie next week at Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, and Charlotte. The real question for the Jazz comes from their bench. CJ Miles and Gordon Hayward are not enough from the bench, they need Watson or Francisco or Fesenko to contribute something.

College Football:

A couple of the pretenders of college football were eliminated last weekend. Missouri was blasted by Nebraska, and Michigan State was routed at Iowa. So now there are 5 unbeatens left in College Football: Oregon, Auburn, TCU, BSU, and Utah. Those 5 teams are ranked in that order in the BCS, which good for the BCS I actually completely agree with these rankings based on schedule and impressiveness to this point. Oregon doesn't look like the are going to lose any time soon. Auburn plays in the crazy SEC and still has to play 2 ranked teams, including Alabama. If both Oregon and Auburn go unbeaten then they will play for the national championship, no question about it. The question is what happens if one loses. Well then we have a problem. Either TCU or Utah will lose this weekend, we know that since they match up in the monster match up this weekend in SLC. But BSU is not going to lose, unless they stub their toe at Nevada or at home versus Hawaii. I doubt it though. But the winner of the TCU/Utah game has to stay ranked above BSU, don't they? And don't forget Alabama, the 1 loss, 6th ranked team in the BCS. If they beat Auburn and finish off the rest of the year with just one loss, they will jump up into the top 2 and then possibly 2 non-bcs teams will get screwed, the winner of the TCU/Utah game and BSU both hosed again.

Now for a quick breakdown of the games to come for our local teams.

BYU vs. UNLV: UNLV is bad, really bad and BYU is not terrible at home. I would expect after the bye week for BYU that the offense will look a little better. Now I am not saying that they are going to go crazy and score 40 or something but 28-35 isn't out of the realm of possibility. Look for Heaps to have a 2 TD 0 Int day and somewhere around 200 yards passing.

Utah vs. TCS: Now for the big game, ESPN is bringing Gameday to SLC again, even though they don't have the rights to the game. Craig Bolerjack even managed to get CBS to let him call the game on CBS College Sports. This game pits a phenomenal defense (TCU) against a very very good offense (Utah) and a great defense (Utah) against a versatile offense (TCU). I feel confident in saying that neither team will get into the 30's. We know that the crowd at Utah will be insane. The blackout will get fans extra excited, not to mention ESPN Gameday's presence. One issue I have here is with the Mountain West, how in the world is this game on at 1:45 pm? This needed to be a night game, a 6 pm start time under the lights, they really dropped the ball on that. But despite that look for this game to be intense and close. I am predicting that Utah will win at home 28-24 on a late drive to seal it.

That is all I have from now. Expect a NCAA basketball preview on Thursday. For now enjoy the View.