2017 AFC West Preview

We've made it to the end of August, which means football season is almost here! As such, I'm well underway in my set of previews for the upcoming season.

I've spent the last few days going division by division, rounding my way around the country before ultimately ending in the division of the defending champion. After today, we'll be halfway home.

With a week until the start of the NFL season, there is still time to get in on picking NFL games against the spread. Adam Quinn will join me once again in a weekly feature where we'll pick the games, and you can join our fun here.

Let's get on to the preview.

2017 NFC West Preview

It's Wednesday, and we're shifting things over to the West Coast as we continue our preview series for the upcoming NFL season.

Today is day three of eight straight weekdays of going division by division, alternating conferences, until I've hit all 32 NFL teams. So far, we've done both the NFC and AFC North, and no wild card spots are accounted for quite yet. We'll see if that changes today.

Before I get into the previews, I'm making yet another shameless plug for the upcoming season and my continuing Pigskin Pick 'Em series that Adam Quinn will join me for once again. You can come pick against us here.

And now, onto the NFC West.

2017 AFC North Preview

The NFL preview circuit rolls on as we swap conferences, but stay in the north!

I'm hitting up every division over the next several weekdays, with Saturday and Sunday off, even though Monday is Labor Day and a holiday because that's just how the timing works out.

This is also shameless plug time, as Adam Quinn and I will be picking games against the spread once again this season. If you would like to join us and try to beat us, you can do so here.

On to the previews.

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 1

Officially, the college football season is underway thanks to Week 1 Creep. Five games were played on Saturday, and for many of these teams, they'll play their second game this coming weekend as part of Week 1 because I don't know.

Pretty much everyone else is beginning sometime between Thursday and Monday, and this post will measure the schedule strength as far as non-conference games are concerned.

Each week I will take a look at the schedule, pick out the non-conference games, and assign the involved teams a score ranging between -1 and 3. Most weeks, because a majority of team schedules are built around conference games, a team's score will be zero. For the other three or four weeks of non-conference games, this is where these measurements come into play. You can view a full primer on how the scoring system works back in my season preview post.

These scores are then averaged out across full conferences, and those averages get posted below. Each team and conference will get an aggregate score at the end of the season, but week by week I'll update the numbers for each team. At the start, some of the Power Five conferences will be towards the top, but they'll shrink towards the bottom over the next couple weeks. This is partially based on how the formula works (the Group of Five conference teams tend to travel to face Power Five opponents in non-conference, which boosts their scores more than the Power Five teams do for hosting these games).

Without further ado, here are the week's rankings, with average scores in parentheses. Writeups for each conference explaining how they arrived at those scores are included.

2017 NFC North Preview

We're only a week and a half away from the start of another NFL season, and I'm starting to get excited again. As such, I need to get the previewing into high gear.

I'm continuing my annual tradition, working my way around the country, only this year I'm going counterclockwise, and alternating conferences until we end with the division of the defending champion.

I also take this opportunity to invite you, dear readers, to join me in picking NFL games against the spread. We're in Year Six of this contest now, with Adam Quinn joining me for a fourth season of a weekly post with our picks. You can join our ESPN group here.

I'm beginning at home again this season with the NFC North.

Football Announcing, The Worldwide Leader, and Political Correctness

Photo by Robert Lee (robertleepxp.wordpress.com)

I try to avoid political topics on here. Part of it is I don't like politics, I don't like politicians, and I hate the extremists on both sides of the aisle who just scream back and forth at each other, seemingly now louder than ever. But I heard about this story last night, and now that it's been confirmed, I feel like I had to say something.

By now you've heard ad nauseum about the evils perpetrated around the rallies and counter protests in Charlottsville, Virginia as part of the ongoing craziness that is the United States in 2017. It's prompted many places in southern states to take down statues of figures from the Confederacy or for opponents of these statues to take them down themselves. At the end of the day, this is probably for the best, but this isn't the point of this post... as I'm sure you guessed by the title.

A week from Saturday, the University of Virginia's football team will be playing FCS school William and Mary at home in Charlottesville. Ordinarily, all that would come of this is Virginia losing an NCSS point for the purposes of the Death to the BCS Playoffs, and that would be the end of it because they don't have any other lower level opponents on their schedule at the time of this writing, and thus they won't get a one year ban from the postseason. Virginia will probably win, and William and Mary will take home a decent payday, and everyone goes home none the worse for wear. Instead, in this heated political climate, all hell broke loose last night.

MLB Tournament of Champions: All Star and All Tournament Teams

After 1,422 games we were able to narrow down 30 teams, one representative from each franchise, to one. The 2016 Chicago Cubs are the Champion of Champions. But I wanted to wrap up the Tournament of Champions with one final post.

In prior Tournaments of Champions, I have named an All Tournament Team, or at least an MVP. I did the MVP's in the post for the title round, but I wanted to build a 25 man roster around said MVP.

I also decided that, because I have a problem, that wasn't enough. I also did a Consolation Bracket of all the teams that didn't make it to the postseason, and I wanted to make sure that they were all represented as well.

So based on the stats from consolation play, I built National League and American League All Star teams. They had to max out at 25 players, and every team had to be represented by at least one player. This made it a little tricky, but it was fairly easily doable.

More importantly though, I also had to run through the postseason, compiling all of the stats from there, and once again building a 25 man roster with at least one representative from each playoff team. This was also a hard decision between trying to figure out the starting lineup and making sure that I wasn't leaving anyone deserving out.

Let's take a look at the teams.