Wednesday, December 30, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #85: December 30, 2009

By Rick Morris

The 85th episode of THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) is of course our final one of the year and the decade and it will be one to remember.

Last week, we devoted our entire program to the release of our eBook DISSECTING THE DECADES: THE FDH LOUNGE LOOKS BACK AND AHEAD AT THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM. You can read the book's explanatory statement and Table of Contents here. If you haven’t checked it out already, we urge you to partake of the free download here. Tonight’s program is a bit of a counterpoint, as we narrow our focus to a review of 2009.

After we look at This Week in The FDH Lounge and The Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries, we move into a breakdown of the political scene in this first year of the Obama Administration with one guest we welcome back – Colin Delany of ePolitics.com, who has just made this eBook available – and one new guest, the first practicing CPA ever elected to Congress, Joseph DioGuardi. As one of the few people who really understands the scope of what we are up against with the huge debt this country has piled upand has chronicled these matters in a book – the perspective of the onetime congressman will be greatly welcomed along with Colin’s.

In Hour Two, we move into the year in movies with two great return guests, Ben Lyons of E! Entertainment Television and countless other outlets and a man who certainly covers a wide array of cinema, S.T. VanAirsdale of Movieline and The Reeler. At that point, due to a special guest at the top of the third hour, we move a bit earlier than usual into THE FANTASYDRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER with a look at NFL Week 17.

That guest in Hour Three? None other than investigative journalist Irv Muchnick, author of a number of books having to do with pro wrestling, including one on some overall horrors of the business and a new one specifically on the Benoit family tragedy. He’ll help us examine why the biggest story of the decade in this business was so easily contained, relatively speaking, by the WWE.

Our GOON SQUAD then concludes with a look at the present NHL standings as well as a review of the top stories in hockey in 2009.

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Urban Meyer press conference liveblog

By Rick Morris

"Retirement" was short-lived. Now Urban Meyer is moving towards a leave of absence. We will cover the press conference live.

Video Clips: Yacht Rock

By Rick Morris

It's difficult to sum up these videos, so I won't try very hard. Suffice to say that they are faux-histories of developments in some of the cheesier 1970s and 1980s pop music. If you aren't laughing so hard that you're reaching for a pair of Depends, you probably don't have a very good sense of humor. Enjoy!

















Sportsology: Fenway history & The Winter Classic

Posted by Rick Morris

As was the case last year, we'll be getting updates about the NHL Winter Classic from our good pal Russ Cohen of Sportsology, who will be covering the event as he always does. To get you ready for that, here's a column from him about the historic ballpark hosting the event and the nature of the game itself.

Bowling Preceded Hockey at Fenway Park
By Russ Cohen

The Winter Classic is just around the corner and I can’t wait. I have covered every NHL outdoor game, not counting the Rangers-Kings in Vegas, and this one should be a classic. So as I searched the annals of Fenway Park, I looked to see what other major sporting events they’ve had over the years that didn’t include the Boston Red Sox and I was able to find out that they once had Professional Bowling there. This tale was told to me. I couldn’t find it in print. So I believe the source, since his recollection seemed legitimate.

Back in the days of Don Carter, bowling’s first million-dollar man, he ended up bringing other top bowler’s of his era, in the late 50’s and they had an exhibition in Fenway Park. The lanes were setup outside and the park wasn’t sold out, but there were quite a few attendees. In a weird six-degrees-of-separation connection, Carter was actually signed to a baseball deal, as an infielder, by the Philadelphia Athletics.

The stadium is the oldest baseball MLB stadium that’s currently in use in the states; it first opened in 1912. It cost $650,000 to build the entire baseball palace and now the one hockey game will certainly exceed that price tag since the truck and equipment that the league purchased in 2008 cost more than $1.5 million.

In these games, it doesn’t matter which team has the better record. It doesn’t matter if they are Stanley Cup-bound, what matters is that they have fun. I have never seen one hockey player that didn’t have a ball at this event. They loved every minute of it.

“Maybe we’ll have other chances to do this, maybe not,” Sidney Crosby said back in 2008, hoping that he would get a chance to do this again. “Maybe there will be other teams.”

“I had fun today,” said Wayne Gretzky, back in 2003 at the postgame press conference for the Mega Stars Game during the Heritage Classic. “I think it’s great and what happened this weekend I wouldn’t trade in for the world, it was pretty special. Again, how do you duplicate this weekend? The fans were wonderful and the players were excited.”

For Wayne, this was a real family event. His wife Janet was sitting with her young sons as they got to see their dad play hockey one more time. Wayne had a son with him in the locker room after a practice the day before.

Mark Messier was shoveling the snow off the ice when he got a chance to experience outdoor hockey once again, and he knew it was special.

“As a kid, losers had to do the ice for the next game coming on,” said the Famous Number 11. “I think it’s kind of the way the whole weekend was supposed to be…it’s supposed to be getting back to the grass roots of hockey. What it’s supposed to be, where it s come from and what it should be even at this level.”

Ty Conklin won’t be playing in this one, but he is most known for playing in the previous three. He talked about how cold each of them was and now we’ll see if Boston can have that distinction.

“It wasn’t nearly as cold as the Edmonton game. It got colder as the game went on. It was colder than in Buffalo last year,” he said, talking about Chitown.

This year, the Flyers and Bruins will create new memories. Their fans will spend an unforgettable New Year’s Day watching hockey the way it was for so many of us when we were kids.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

NFL picks Week Sixteen

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays.


STEVE CIRVELLO (0-3 last week, 22-23 overall)
New Orleans -14 over Tampa Bay
NY Giants -7 1/2 over Carolina
Green Bay -14 over Seattle


DAVE ADAMS (0-3 last week, 22-23 overall)
Cleveland -3 over Oakland
New Orleans -14 over Tampa Bay
Indianapolis -4 over NY Jets



RYAN ISLEY (1-2 last week, 21-24 overall)
Baltimore +3 over Pittsburgh
Indianapolis -4 over NY Jets
Minnesota -7 over Chicago

RICK MORRIS (1-2 last week, 1-0 with my best pick, 20-25 overall, 7-8 on best picks)
Dallas -7 over Washington (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
NY Giants -7 1/2 over Carolina
Indianapolis -4 over NY Jets


SEAN TRENCH (1-1-1 last week, 17-26-2 overall)
Cincinnati -13 over Kansas City
Green Bay -14 over Seattle
New Orleans -14 over Tampa Bay


My remaining picks (7-7-2 last week, 113-112-3 including win on Thursday night game called on The FDH Lounge Twitter page):

Seattle +14 over Green Bay
Oakland +3 over Cleveland
Kansas City +13 over Cincinnati
Atlanta -8 1/2 over Buffalo
Miami -1 over Houston
Tampa Bay +14 over New Orleans
New England -10 over Jacksonville
Baltimore +3 over Pittsburgh
Philadelphia -7 over Denver
Detroit +14 over San Francisco
Arizona -14 1/2 over St. Louis
Minnesota -7 over Chicago

NFL Week Sixteen power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous ratings in parentheses.

FIRST TIER: BEST OF THE BEST
1 New Orleans (1)
2 Indianapolis (2)
3 San Diego (4)
SECOND TIER: SOLID PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
4 Minnesota (3)
5 Arizona (5)
6 Philadelphia (6)
THIRD TIER: POTENTIAL PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
7 Cincinnati (7)
8 New England (8)
9 Green Bay (10)
10 NY Giants (11)
11 Denver (9)
12 Dallas (16)
13 Baltimore (13)
THIRD TIER: BARELY ABOVE-AVERAGE TO AVERAGE
14 Tennessee (17)
15 Miami (12)
16 Pittsburgh (19)
17 Houston (18)
18 Jacksonville (15)
19 NY Jets (14)
FOURTH TIER: VERY BAD, BUT NOT THE WORST
20 Atlanta (20)
21 San Francisco (21)
22 Carolina (24)
23 Chicago (25)
24 Seattle (22)
25 Washington (23)
FIFTH TIER: TEAMS WITHOUT ANY REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER
26 Buffalo (26)
27 Oakland (27)
28 Kansas City (28)
29 Tampa Bay (29)
30 Cleveland (31)
31 Detroit (30)
32 St. Louis (32)

BIGGEST RISERS: Dallas (4 spots), Pittsburgh (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: NY Jets (5 spots), Jacksonville, Miami and Tennessee (3 spots)

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLXI

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas

By Rick Morris

The FDH family wishes all the best to you and your family on this most important day on the calendar. To help you celebrate with a smile on your face, enjoy this mashup of a Run-DMC classic and Charlie Brown.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #84: December 23, 2009

By Rick Morris

From time to time, our "nothing is off-topic" program THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) spends an entire night on one compelling theme and this episode is one such occasion. The end of a decade only comes up once every ten years, if our rudimentary grasp of math is correct, and we've got a heck of a way to celebrate that.

Our labor-of-love eBook DISSECTING THE DECADES: THE FDH LOUNGE LOOKS BACK AND AHEAD AT THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM has been completed and is now available to be consumed. You can read the book's explanatory statement and Table of Contents here.

This entire show will revolve around this theme, looking back at where we've just been and peering over the horizon to see where we're going. This should be an amazing and memorable night, because The Dignitaries of The FDH Lounge love to break down a wide variety of topics and we've got a great many to address on this show.

The show is more or less divided with the first half being non-sports and the second half being sports-related. Part I flows like this:

^ biggest news stories
^ pop culture/entertainment
^ "sports entertainment"
^ interview with Liz Claman of Fox Business News (her second appearance on the show) to discuss finance and the economy

And here's Part II
^ miscellaneous non-sports that falls outside the purview of the "Big 4"
^ hockey
^ baseball
^ hoops
^ football

It's going to be a great night; we will reference some of the features from the eBook in the course of the evening as reference points, but the discussions will also stand on their own. We believe we will break down the first 20 years of the 21st century like nobody else could -- or would even attempt to try.

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Our eBook is released: DISSECTING THE DECADES

By Rick Morris

Our massive project is now complete! DISSECTING THE DECADES: THE FDH LOUNGE LOOKS BACK AND AHEAD AT THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM has been completed and is now available to be consumed.

I will replicate here my introductory statement in the book and also our Table of Contents.

"We welcome you to DISSECTING THE DECADES: THE FDH LOUNGE LOOKS BACK AND AHEAD AT THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM, the first of our FDH eBooks to verge far beyond the realms of fantasy sports and sports in general. As is the case with our FDH Lounge Multimedia Magazine (at TheFDHLounge.com) and on our FDH LOUNGE weekly web TV show (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com), we verge into several additional areas, including music, movies, pop culture, politics, geopolitics and general news. We also worked with many of our fellow members of The 21st Century Media Alliance and we are grateful for their contributions.

We are very confident that you will find our coverage of the last decade and our look ahead to the next decade to be interesting, whether or not you agree with every assessment or prediction that is made. We pride ourselves on delivering a wide variety of smart content without ever taking ourselves too seriously. It is a formula that has worked very well for us, and we anticipate strongly that you will find this labor of love to be entertaining and thought-provoking."

2 FDH Top 50 NFL Players of the 2000s & Top 50 Projected Players of 2010s, eBook General Preview
3 FDH Top 50 MLB Players of the 2000s & Top 50 Projected Players of 2010s
4-6 FDH NBA All-Decade Roster for the 2000s & Projected Roster for 2010s
7 FDH NHL All-Decade Roster for the 2000s & Projected Roster for 2010s
8 Top 5 NFL Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
9 Top 5 MLB Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s & Small-Market Superstar Lists, Past/Present
10 Top 5 NBA Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
11 Top 5 NHL Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
12 Top 5 NCAA Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
13 Top 5 Motorsports Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
14 Top 5 Individual Sports Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
15 Top 5 International Sports Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
16 Top 5 Combat Sports Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
17 Top 5 Sports Entertainment Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
18 Top 5 Sports Media Storylines of the 2000s & Projected for 2010s
19 Top Sports Entertainment Stars of the Recent Past
20-32 Roundtable on the NFL in the 2000s and Expected Developments in the 2010s, Jason Jones Top 50 for 2010 NFL Draft
33-34 Top 10 Newsmakers of the 2000s Decade
35-36 Projected Top 10 Newsmakers of the 2010s Decade
37-38 Top 10 News Stories of the 2000s Decade
39-40 Top 10 Projected News Stories of the 2010s Decade
41-45 Roundtable on Top Politics/Geopolitics/Economic Stories of the 2000s and 2010s
46-48 Interview with Technology Expert/Futurist Simon Applebaum About the 2010s
49-56 Roundtable on Top Pop Culture Stories of the 2000s and 2010s

Friday, December 18, 2009

NFL picks Week Fifteen

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays.

STEVE CIRVELLO (2-1 last week, 22-20 overall)
Minnesota -9 over Carolina
Arizona -12 ½ over Detroit
Houston -11 over St. Louis

DAVE ADAMS (3-0 last week, 22-20 overall)
New Orleans -7 ½ over Dallas
San Diego -7 over Cincinnati
Arizona -12 ½ over Detroit

RYAN ISLEY (3-0 last week, 20-22 overall)
Kansas City -2 over Cleveland
San Diego -7 over Cincinnati
Green Bay +2 over Pittsburgh

RICK MORRIS (2-1 last week, 0-1 with my best pick, 19-23 overall, 6-8 on best picks)
Cincinnati +7 over San Diego (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
Pittsburgh -2 over Green Bay
Kansas City -2 over Cleveland

SEAN TRENCH (1-2 last week, 16-25-1 overall)
Minnesota -9 over Carolina
New England -7 over Buffalo
Philadelphia -7 ½ over San Francisco

My remaining picks (10-6 last week, 105-105-1 including loss on Thursday night game):
Dallas +7 ½ over New Orleans
Pittsburgh -2 over Green Bay
Tennessee -3 over Miami
New England -7 over Buffalo
Detroit +12 ½ over Arizona
San Francisco +7 ½ over Philadelphia
Atlanta +4 ½ over NY Jets
Chicago +11 over Baltimore
St. Louis +11 over Houston
Oakland +14 over Denver
Seattle -6 ½ over Tampa Bay
Minnesota -9 over Carolina
NY Giants -3 over Washington

Thursday, December 17, 2009

2009-2010 Bowl season predictions

By Rick Morris

If you're in any bowl pools, whether they are against the spread or straight-up, we've got your guide right here to help guide you through it. With games where the underdog is the pick, we will note if the picks are straight-up or merely against the spread. We will also note the picks against the spread for the FDH New York Bureau Steve Cirvello.

December 19
New Mexico Bowl - Albuquerque, NM
Fresno State -11 1/2 over Wyoming
FDHNYB: Fresno State

December 19
St. Petersburg Bowl - St. Petersburg, FL
Central Florida +2 1/2 over Rutgers
Central Florida straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Rutgers

December 20
New Orleans Bowl - New Orleans, LA
Southern Mississippi -3 1/2 over Middle Tennessee State
FDHNYB: Middle Tennessee State

December 22
Maaco Las Vegas Bowl - Las Vegas, NV
BYU +2 1/2 over Oregon State
BYU straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Oregon State

December 23
Poinsettia Bowl - San Diego, CA
Utah +3 over California
Utah straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Utah

December 24
Hawaii Bowl - Honolulu, HI
Nevada -15 over SMU
FDHNYB: Nevada

December 26
Little Caesars Pizza Bowl - Detroit, MI
Ohio -2 1/2 over Marshall
FDHNYB: Ohio

December 26
Meineke Car Care Bowl - Charlotte, NC
North Carolina +2 1/2 over Pittsburgh
North Carolina straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Pittsburgh

December 26
Emerald Bowl - San Francisco, CA
USC -9 over Boston College
FDHNYB: Boston College

December 26
Music City Bowl - Nashville, TN
Clemson -7 over Kentucky
FDHNYB: Kentucky

December 28
Independence Bowl - Shreveport, LA
Georgia -7 over Texas A&M
FDHNYB: Georgia

December 29
EagleBank Bowl - Washington, DC
UCLA -4 over Temple
FDHNYB: UCLA

December 29
Champs Sports Bowl - Orlando, FL
Miami -3 over Wisconsin
FDHNYB: Wisconsin

December 30
Humanitarian Bowl - Boise, ID
Bowling Green -1 1/2 over Idaho
FDHNYB: Bowling Green

December 30
Holiday Bowl - San Diego, CA
Nebraska +1 1/2 over Arizona
Nebraska straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Nebraska

December 31
Texas Bowl - Houston, TX
Navy +6 1/2 over Missouri
Missouri to win straight-up
FDHNYB: Missouri

December 31
Armed Forces Bowl - Fort Worth, TX
Houston -4 1/2 over Air Force
FDHNYB: Houston

December 31
Sun Bowl - El Paso, TX
Stanford +8 over Oklahoma
Oklahoma to win straight-up
FDHNYB: Stanford

December 31
Insight Bowl - Tempe, AR
Iowa State +2 1/2 over Minnesota
Iowa State straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Minnesota

December 31
Chick Fil-A Bowl - Atlanta, GA
Virginia Tech -4 1/2 over Tennessee
FDHNYB: Tennessee

January 1
Outback Bowl - Tampa, FL
Auburn -7 1/2 over Northwestern
FDHNYB: Auburn

January 1
Gator Bowl - Jacksonville, FL
Florida State +3 over West Virginia
Florida State straight-up as well
FDHNYB: Florida State

January 1
Capital One Bowl - Orlando, FL
Penn State -2 1/2 over LSU
FDHNYB: Penn State

January 1
Rose Bowl - Pasadena, CA
Oregon -3 1/2 over Ohio State
FDHNYB: Oregon

January 1
Sugar Bowl - New Orleans, LA
Cincinnati +11 over Florida
Florida to win straight-up
FDHNYB: Florida

January 2
International Bowl - Toronto
Northern Illinois +6 1/2 over South Florida
Northern Illinois straight-up as well
FDHNYB: South Florida

January 2
Papa Johns Bowl - Birmingham, AL
UConn +4 1/2 over South Carolina
South Carolina to win straight-up
FDHNYB: UConn

January 2
Cotton Bowl - Arlington, TX
Mississippi -3 over Oklahoma State
FDHNYB: Mississippi

January 2
Liberty Bowl - Memphis, TN
East Carolina +7 1/2 over Arkansas
Arkansas to win straight-up
FDHNYB: Arkansas

January 2
Alamo Bowl - San Antonio, TX
Texas Tech -8 over Michigan State
FDHNYB: Texas Tech

January 4
Fiesta Bowl - Glendale, AR
Boise State +7 over TCU
TCU to win straight-up
FDHNYB: Boise State

January 5
Orange Bowl - Miami, FL
Georgia Tech -4 over Iowa
FDHNYB: Iowa

January 6
GMAC Bowl - Mobile, AL
Central Michigan -3 1/2 over Troy
FDHNYB: Troy

January 7
BCS National Championship Game - Pasadena, CA
Alabama -5 over Texas
FDHNYB: Alabama

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLX

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #84: next Wednesday, December 23

By Rick Morris

No new episode of THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EST on SportsTalkNetwork.com) tonight as we are on pre-Christmas vacation; instead, Super-Producer and Valued Lounge Dignitary Ryan Isley put together a wonderful "Best Of" episode comprised of recent segments:

Segment 1 (30 Mins):Our discussion of the ACC as a football conference followed by the interview with Casey Moore
Segment 2 (30 Mins):NCAA Bowl Draft
Segment 3 (hour):MLB Hot Stove
Segment 4 (30 Mins):Interview with Pat O'Connor
Segment 5 (30 Mins):Interview with Tom Wilson

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

NFL Week Fifteen power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous ratings in parentheses.

FIRST TIER: BEST OF THE BEST
1 New Orleans (1)
2 Indianapolis (2)
3 Minnesota (3)
SECOND TIER: SOLID PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
4 San Diego (4)
5 Arizona (5)
6 Philadelphia (7)
THIRD TIER: POTENTIAL PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
7 Cincinnati (6)
8 New England (9)
9 Denver (8)
10 Green Bay (11)
11 NY Giants (10)
12 Miami (16)
13 Baltimore (14)
14 NY Jets (17)
15 Jacksonville (15)
16 Dallas (12)
THIRD TIER: VERY DISTANT PLAYOFF POSSIBILITIES
17 Tennessee (18)
18 Houston (20)
19 Pittsburgh (13)
20 Atlanta (19)
21 San Francisco (21)
FOURTH TIER: VERY BAD, BUT NOT THE WORST
22 Seattle (22)
23 Washington (23)
24 Carolina (24)
25 Chicago (25)
FIFTH TIER: TEAMS WITHOUT ANY REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER
26 Buffalo (26)
27 Oakland (27)
28 Kansas City (28)
29 Tampa Bay (29)
30 Detroit (30)
31 Cleveland (32)
32 St. Louis (31)

BIGGEST RISERS: Miami (4 spots), NY Jets (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: Pittsburgh (6 spots), Dallas (4 spots)

NBA power rankings for mid-December

By Rick Morris

TOP TIER
1 LA Lakers
2 Boston
3 Orlando
4 Atlanta
5 Cleveland
6 Dallas
7 Denver
8 Phoenix
9 Utah
10 Portland
11 San Antonio
12 Houston
13 Oklahoma City
14 Miami
15 Minnesota
16 Detroit
17 Toronto
18 New Orleans
19 Memphis
20 Sacramento
21 LA Clippers
22 Charlotte
23 Chicago
24 Indiana
25 Washington
26 New York
27 Golden State
28 Philadelphia

SECOND TIER
29 Minnesota
30 New Jersey

NHL power rankings for mid-December

By Rick Morris

TOP TIER
1 Washington
2 New Jersey
3 Pittsburgh
4 San Jose
5 Chicago
6 Los Angeles
7 Buffalo
8 Colorado
9 Calgary
10 Phoenix
11 Nashville
12 Detroit
13 Boston
14 Atlanta
15 Montreal
16 Ottawa
17 Vancouver
18 Dallas
19 Columbus
20 Philadelphia
21 Edmonton
22 NY Rangers
23 Florida
24 NY Islanders
25 Tampa Bay
26 Minnesota
27 Anaheim
28 Toronto
29 St. Louis

SECOND TIER
30 Carolina

Sportsology: Baseball's 2-Cy trade

By Rick Morris

Our good pal Russ Cohen at Sportsology has done it again with an excellent column about the biggest blockbuster pitching deal in several years. Courtesy of our content-sharing relationship with The 21st Century Media Alliance, here is the analysis.

Russ's Rants - Halladay and Lackey Fuel The League's Arms Race?

By Russ Cohen

The Phillies are locking down starter Roy Halladay as we speak, and most of the free world believes that Cliff Lee will be headed to Seattle. I give Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. tremendous credit for making moves he believes will help his club, but the team is still running a huge risk here.

Is Halladay better than Lee? I say yes, but I think the bigger question is this: is Cole Hamels the same? Even though we won’t know the answer until next season, I believe that his better days are behind him. Age doesn’t matter here and his stats dropped off dramatically last season. I don’t think you can say he was tired because C.C. Sabathia (265 total innings) pitched as much as Hamels (262 total innings) last season and he had plenty in the tank in the World Series. Could Hamels change his fortunes by learning another pitch? Maybe, and I think he’ll need to do that in order to make this trade a success. Otherwise, fans will ask why didn’t the Phillies keep both pitchers? The answer is simple: the Phillies have a budget of around $140 million, no matter how much revenue they bring in. Will that plan backfire on them?

Lee wasn’t making a lot of money and he could have walked after the season, but in the end, his salary – coupled with Halladay’s – was more than Phillies ownership was willing to swallow. The other important part of this deal will reside with the prospects. My feeling is that the Phillies prospects are better than the Mariners kids, but we’ll see how that shakes out over time.

I can guarantee you that there didn’t need to be a three-way trade and the Blue Jays would have taken some great prospects like outfielder Michael Taylor and pitcher Kyle Drabek. Last season, we were told that the reason the Halladay trade fell through was the Phillies’ refusal to part with the second-generation pitcher. If he gets dealt now, then that means one year later, and one unfulfilled World Series later, the Phillies now find themselves in a desperate arms race against the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

Now are the Red Sox crazy for signing John Lackey to a deal that will pay him $16-17 million a season for five years? Lackey hasn’t thrown his usual 33 games since 2007. The league got a hit an inning against him, but he doesn’t walk too many players and he doesn’t give up the long ball. Well, that was in Anaheim, this could change in Fenway. I would say the Red Sox took the biggest risk so far, they landed their big fish, but we’ll see if that gets them back to the Fall Classic.

The Phillies, Yankees and Red Sox are certainly the favorites to win it all this year. Let’s see how this will shake out.

Look for my first baseball book, Strike Three, which will be released in the coming days.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

NFL picks Week Fourteen

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays.

STEVE CIRVELLO (0-3 last week, 20-19 overall)
New England -13 over Carolina
Tennessee -13 over St. Louis
Baltimore -14 over Detroit

DAVE ADAMS (1-2 last week, 20-20 overall, including his submitted pick of the Browns over the Steelers on Thursday night)
Houston -7 over Seattle
Tennessee -13 over St. Louis

RICK MORRIS (0-3 last week, 0-1 with my best pick, 17-22 overall, 6-7 on best picks)
Arizona -3 1/2 over San Francisco (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
NY Jets -4 over Tampa Bay
Green Bay -4 over Chicago

RYAN ISLEY (0-3 last week, 17-22 overall)
Indianapolis -6 1/2 over Denver
Green Bay -4 over Chicago
Philadelphia -1 over NY Giants

SEAN TRENCH (1-2 last week, 15-23-1 overall)
New Orleans -10 over Atlanta
Minnesota -6 1/2 over Cincinnati
San Diego -3 1/2 over Dallas

My remaining picks (5-11 last week, 95-98-1 including loss on Thursday night game):
Indianapolis -6 1/2 over Denver
Minnesota -6 1/2 over Cincinnati
Kansas City +2 over Buffalo
New Orleans -10 over Atlanta
Detroit +14 over Baltimore
Miami +2 1/2 over Jacksonville
Carolina +13 over New England
Houston -7 over Seattle
Tennessee -13 over St. Louis
Washington -1 over Oakland
San Diego -3 1/2 over Dallas
Philadelphia -1 over NY Giants

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLIX

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Heisman Trophy preview

By Rick Morris

We previewed the Heisman Trophy award show on our FDH LOUNGE program this week (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) and opinions varied. As for mine, I would give the award to Nebraska DT Ndamukong Suh (even if I can't pronounce his name, as I definitively proved on the program!) with Stanford RB Toby Gerhart as my top pick among the "realistic candidates." While Suh had a truly dominant year, realistically, defensive players are lucky to even get invited because of the insane bias towards offensive skill position players. 'Bama RB Mark Ingram is my third pick.

However, these do not align with my predictions, which are as follows:

1 Ingram (bolstered by a TON of late votes who were no doubt impressed by the SEC Title Game)
2 Texas QB Colt McCoy (a close second)
3 Gerhart
4 Florida QB Tim Tebow (nominated as the Heisman equivalent of the Lifetime Achievement Award)
5 Suh

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #83: December 9, 2009

By Rick Morris

As we round down both the calendar year and decade and mark the end of THE FDH LOUNGE’s first year on Wednesday nights (7-10 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com), we bring you our mind-boggling dose of variety once more.

We lead off with This Week in The FDH Lounge and our Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries, then we make our Heisman predictions and examine the (all-too-large) celebrity death picture of 2009.

From there, good friend Simon Applebaum from the hit webcast and blog Tomorrow Will Be Televised will be on to discuss major developments from the year in TV and those to come in the next year and decade.

In Hour Two, we break down the game of the man who everyone is talking about in the NCAA hoop game, the incomparable John Wall. Then, we bring back another of our varied takes on the fantasy spots genre, our annual college football bowl pool: a ten-round standard serpentine draft of teams playing in the bowl games. It’s 5 points to correctly pick the winner of the BCS Title Game, 4 points to correctly pick the winners in the BCS Bowl games and 3 points for the winners of the other bowls. Here’s your lines for those games.

In Hour Three, THE FANTASYDRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER breaks down NFL Week 14 and we then bring on KFFL Senior Editor Cory J. Bonini for his thoughts on the fantasy football landscape. Our GOON SQUAD then concludes with a look at the present NHL standings as well as Puck Daddy’s take on optimism in Toronto and Martin Brodeur’s latest flirtation with a big record – tying Terry Sawchuk for most career shutouts with 103.

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

NFL Week Fourteen power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous ratings in parentheses.

FIRST TIER: BEST OF THE BEST
1 New Orleans (1)
2 Indianapolis (2)
3 Minnesota (3)
SECOND TIER: SOLID PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
4 San Diego (8)
5 Arizona (7)
6 Cincinnati (6)
7 Philadelphia (8)
THIRD TIER: POTENTIAL PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
8 Denver (13)
9 New England (5)
10 NY Giants (15)
11 Green Bay (11)
12 Dallas (10)
13 Pittsburgh (9)
14 Baltimore (12)
15 Jacksonville (17)
16 Miami (19)
17 NY Jets (21)
THIRD TIER: VERY DISTANT PLAYOFF POSSIBILITIES
18 Tennessee (14)
19 Atlanta (16)
20 Houston (18)
FOURTH TIER: VERY BAD, BUT NOT THE WORST
21 San Francisco (20)
22 Seattle (25)
23 Washington (22)
24 Carolina (24)
25 Chicago (23)
FIFTH TIER: TEAMS WITHOUT ANY REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER
26 Buffalo (26)
27 Oakland (28)
28 Kansas City (27)
29 Tampa Bay (29)
30 Detroit (30)
31 St. Louis (31)
32 Cleveland (32)

BIGGEST RISERS: Denver and NY Giants (5 spots), NY Jets and San Diego (4 spots), Miami and Seattle (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: New England, Pittsburgh and Tennessee (4 spots), Atlanta (3 spots)

Monday, December 7, 2009

Bowl slotting aftermath thoughts

By Rick Morris

Everything was put in place for college football's postseason last night (well, almost everything, more on that in a moment). Here's how it all shook out:

Note: All times are EDT.

BCS Games
Jan. 7 BCS Title Pasadena, Calif. ABC 8 p.m. Alabama (13-0) vs. Texas (13-0)
Jan. 5 Orange Miami FOX 8 p.m. Georgia Tech (11-2) vs. Iowa (10-2)
Jan. 4 Fiesta Glendale, Ariz. FOX 8 p.m. TCU (12-0) vs. Boise State (13-0)
Jan. 1 Sugar New Orleans, La. FOX 8:30 p.m. Cincinnati (12-0) vs. Florida (12-1)
Jan. 1 Rose Pasadena, Calif. ABC 5 p.m. Oregon (10-2) vs. Ohio State (10-2)

Non-BCS Games
Jan. 6 GMAC Mobile, Ala. ESPN 7 p.m. Central Michigan (11-2) vs. Troy (9-3)
Jan. 2 Alamo San Antonio ESPN 9 p.m. Texas Tech (8-4) vs. Michigan State (6-6)
Jan. 2 Liberty Memphis, Tenn. ESPN 5:30 p.m. East Carolina (9-4) vs. Arkansas (7-5)
Jan. 2 Cotton Dallas FOX 2 p.m. Oklahoma State (9-3) vs. Mississippi (8-4)
Jan. 2 Papajohns.com Birmingham, Ala. ESPN 2 p.m. Connecticut (7-5) vs. South Carolina (7-5)
Jan. 2 International Toronto ESPN2 Noon South Florida (7-5) vs. Northern Illinois (7-5)
Jan. 1 Gator Jacksonville, Fla. CBS 1 p.m. West Virginia (9-3) vs. Florida State (6-6)
Jan. 1 Capital One Orlando, Fla. ABC 1 p.m. Penn State (10-2) vs. LSU (9-3)
Jan. 1 Outback Tampa, Fla. ESPN 11 a.m. Northwestern (8-4) vs. Auburn (7-5)
Dec. 31 Chick-fil-A Atlanta ESPN 7:30 p.m. Virginia Tech (9-3) vs. Tennessee (7-5)
Dec. 31 Insight Tempe, Ariz. NFL Net. 6 p.m. Minnesota (6-6) vs. Iowa State (6-6)
Dec. 31 Texas Houston ESPN 3:30 p.m. Missouri (8-4) vs. Navy (8-4)
Dec. 31 Sun El Paso, Tex. CBS 2 p.m. Stanford (8-4) vs. Oklahoma (7-5)
Dec. 31 Armed Forces Fort Worth, Tex. ESPN Noon Air Force (7-5) vs. Houston (10-3)
Dec. 30 Holiday San Diego, Calif. ESPN 8 p.m. Nebraska (9-4) vs. Arizona (8-4)
Dec. 30 Humanitarian Boise, Idaho ESPN 4:30 p.m. Idaho (7-5) vs. Bowling Green (7-5)
Dec. 29 Champs Sports Orlando, Fla. ESPN 8 p.m. Miami (Fla.) (9-3) vs. Wisconsin (9-3)
Dec. 29 EagleBank Washington D.C. ESPN 4:30 p.m. Army or UCLA vs. Temple (9-3) [If Army beats Navy on Dec. 12, it will play in the EagleBank Bowl. If Navy wins, UCLA will accept the bid.]
Dec. 28 Independence Shreveport, La. ESPN2 5 p.m. Texas A&M (6-6) vs. Georgia (7-5)
Dec. 27 Music City Nashville, Tenn. ESPN 8:30 p.m. Kentucky (7-5) vs. Clemson (8-5)
Dec. 26 Emerald San Francisco ESPN 8 p.m. Boston College (8-4) vs. Southern California (8-4)
Dec. 26 Meineke Car Care Charlotte, N.C. ESPN 4:30 p.m. North Carolina (8-4) vs. Pittsburgh (9-3)
Dec. 26 Little Caesars Detroit, Mich. ESPN 1 p.m. Ohio (9-4) vs. Marshall (6-6)
Dec. 24 Hawaii Honolulu ESPN 8 p.m. Nevada (8-4) vs. SMU (7-5)
Dec. 23 Poinsettia San Diego, Calif. ESPN 8 p.m. Utah (9-3) vs. California (8-4)
Dec. 22 Maaco Las Vegas, Nev. ESPN 8 p.m. Oregon State (8-4) vs. BYU (10-2)
Dec. 20 New Orleans New Orleans ESPN 8:30 p.m. Middle Tennessee State (9-3) vs. Southern Miss (7-5)
Dec. 19 St. Petersburg St. Petersburg, Fla. ESPN 8 p.m. Rutgers (8-4) vs. UCF (8-4)
Dec. 19 New Mexico Albuquerque, N.M. ESPN 4:30 p.m. Wyoming (6-6) vs. Fresno State (8-4)

THOUGHTS:

^ No New Mexico in the New Mexico Bowl this year? No Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl? We saw a little creativity for once.

^ Selfishly, I wish that my alma mater of Ohio might have received a more glamorous matchup than former conference foe Marshall, but at least it is a very winnable game for the Bobcats. The team should at least be mostly healthy, which they were not against a very lucky Central Michigan squad.

^ USC ends up playing in Frisco the day after Christmas? How the mighty have fallen!

^ With this weird deal of Army and Navy not playing until December 12 (!), we don't actually know if Army will qualify for their bowl game or if UCLA will take their place. Now there is a "vast" gap of five days between the last regular-season game and the first bowl game and the bowls now resemble the 65-team NCAA hoops bracket with a play-in game. Madness.

^ I always love the Humanitarian Bowl; nothing like watching two teams freeze their arses off on the frozen smurf turf of Boise. This year, Idaho invades the house of their archrival to face Bowling Green. In terms of traveling strong to bowl games, I guess we're going to find out just how much Falcon fans want to see their team play, huh?

^ The Holliday Bowl is always compelling and this year will be strong as well with two ascendant programs in Nebraska and Arizona. Also, the A-T-L always gets a great matchup on New Year's Eve and the Virginia Tech/Tennessee tilt will be very interesting.

^ The first sporting event of the new decade pits Northwestern against Auburn in a must-win game for the Tigers. The mega-success of 'Bama puts the coaching regime at Auburn on a short leash; a team incapable of beating the Wildcats will face a brutal offseason of scrutiny back home. The SEC's "other Tigers," LSU, will also face a game they dare not lose against Penn State in Orlando. Les Miles' act is wearing thin in Cajun Country and dropping one to JoePa won't cool off the hot seat.

^ The "Bowden Bowl" ends one of the game's greatest coaching careers in Jacksonville on New Year's Day as Bobby's past and present teams collide.

^ Can Ohio State finally contend with the speed of a team like Oregon? We're about to find out.

^ Tim Tebow ends his college career against a Cincy team that will win if Florida comes in with the "SEC Championship Game hangover" that Alabama had a year ago.

^ The first Cotton Bowl in "Jerry's Palace" will be a worthy affair with two disappointing but still very potent teams in Oklahoma State and Old Miss.

^ I am in the minority in terms of the "Mid-Major Super Bowl" in Glendale; I love it! Sure, TCU and Boise State could make huge statements if they were able to bump off major conference teams, but seeing them play each other will make for a great game and I'm happy that the winner will be able to campaign afterwards for a split national title (won't happen, but the controversy is nice and maybe it makes the case for my beloved "Plus One" a bit more).

^ Bo Pelini has every right to cry conspiracy about the circumstances that put Texas in the national championship game. The call may have been right, but follow the money, as the old saying goes. The BCS would have been screwed, blued and tatooed had the Longhorns choked in the Big Twelve Championship (TCU would have gotten the nod, with Boise State, 'Nati and half the country screaming their heads off). On paper, Texas took care of business during the season and did what they had to do to advance to Pasadena -- and they overcame even bigger odds to win the national championship in their last trip to the Land of Roses -- but they looked so much less impressive than Alabama, who steamrolled #1 Florida. Given Mack Brown's record (uneven at best, formerly a complete disaster) in big games, Nick Saban has to be counted as the favorite to have his smug grill accepting his first undisputed national championship when the dust clears.

MLB free agency forecasts

By Rick Morris

The FDH New York Bureau Steve Cirvello came up with a great idea for last week's 82nd edition of THE FDH LOUNGE program (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com): previewing MLB Hot Stove action in the context of a game where the Dignitaries of the Lounge attempt to rack up the most successful predictions about where players will land. We chose arguably the 15 most consequential free agents of this offseason; we will award one point per successful prediction with the tiebreaker being whoever gets the highest-salaried contract correct.

Predictions were made by me, Ryan Isley, Mike LaGuardia and FDH Baseball Analyst Tim Foust.

MATT HOLLIDAY
Rick: Cardinals/re-sign
Ryan: Mets
Mike: Cardinals/re-sign
Tim: Cardinals/re-sign

JASON BAY
Rick: Red Sox/re-sign
Ryan: Red Sox/re-sign
Mike: Red Sox/re-sign
Tim: Rockies (!)

JOHN LACKEY
Rick: Mets
Ryan: Yankees (!)
Mike: Mets
Tim: Cubs

RICH HARDEN
Rick: Rangers
Ryan: Red Sox
Mike: Nationals
Tim: Mets

JOHNNY DAMON
Rick: Yankees/re-sign
Ryan: Rangers
Mike: Yankees/re-sign
Tim: Yankees/re-sign

ADRIAN BELTRE
Rick: Astros
Ryan: Orioles
Mike: Twins
Tim: Phillies

JOEL PINEIRO
Rick: Twins
Ryan: Cardinals/re-sign
Mike: Cardinals/re-sign
Tim: Red Sox

ADAM LAROCHE
Rick: As
Ryan: Braves/re-sign
Mike: Braves/re-sign
Tim: As

HIDEKI MATSUI
Rick: Yankees
Ryan: White Sox
Mike: White Sox
Tim: back to Japan (!)

VLADIMIR GUERRERO
Rick: Blue Jays (!)
Ryan: Angels/re-sign
Mike: Tigers
Tim: Red Sox

JERMAINE DYE
Rick: Giants
Ryan: Braves
Mike: Royals
Tim: Giants

RANDY WOLF
Rick: Nationals
Ryan: Cubs
Mike: Mets
Tim: Royals

JOSE VALVERDE
Rick: Phillies
Ryan: Orioles
Mike: Phillies
Tim: Rays

FERNANDO RODNEY
Rick: Tigers/re-sign
Ryan: Rays
Mike: Tigers/re-sign
Tim: Tigers/re-sign

JASON MARQUIS
Rick: Rockies/re-sign
Ryan: Rockies/re-sign
Mike: Mets
Tim: Angels

We also threw out two more options on the spur of the moment during the show. These will not count in our competition, since Tim was not on live with us (he had submitted a list ahead of time), but we just wanted to see if we would get these right. By the way, it should be obvious that our forecasts about Mark DeRosa came before the Phils signed Placido Polanco. Better that they had listened to us!

MARK DEROSA
Rick: Phillies
Ryan: Phillies
Mike: Phillies

JIM THOME
Rick: White Sox
Ryan: Rays
Mike: Indians (!)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Time Magazine Person of the Year fantasy draft

By Rick Morris

Our beloved FDH New York Bureau came up with a tremendous twist on fantasy sports games -- which we at FDH are of course not shy about applying to areas outside of sports. On last week's 82nd edition of THE FDH LOUNGE on SportsTalkNetwork.com (Wednesdays 7-10 PM EDT), we held a Time Magazine Person of the Year fantasy draft: three-round standard serpentine draft with four owners, with the winner of course being the person who guesses the awardee. Here's how it went:

ROUND ONE
1 Mike LaGuardia: Michael Jackson
2 The FDH New York Bureau Steve Cirvello: Cap'n Sully
3 Ryan Isley: Oprah Winfrey
4 Rick Morris: President Obama

ROUND TWO
1 Rick Morris: The Field (all undrafted possibilities)
2 Ryan Isley: Taylor Swift
3 The FDH New York Bureau Steve Cirvello: The top Twitter executives (collectively)
4 Mike LaGuardia: Bernie Madoff

ROUND THREE
1 Mike LaGuardia: Lil' Wayne
2 The FDH New York Bureau Steve Cirvello: Sarah Palin
3 Ryan Isley: Usain Bolt
4 Rick Morris: Ben Bernanke

NFL picks Week Thirteen

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays.

STEVE CIRVELLO (0-3 last week, 20-16 overall)
San Diego -13 1/2 over Cleveland
New Orleans -9 1/2 over Washington
Pittsburgh -14 over Oakland

DAVE ADAMS (1-2 last week, 18-18 overall)
Indianapolis -6 1/2 over Tennessee
San Diego -13 1/2 over Cleveland
Minnesota -3 1/2 over Arizona

RICK MORRIS (1-2 last week, 0-1 with my best pick, 17-19 overall, 6-6 on best picks)
Minnesota -3 1/2 over Arizona (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
New Orleans -9 1/2 over Washington
San Diego -13 1/2 over Cleveland

RYAN ISLEY (2-1 last week, 17-19 overall)
San Diego -13 1/2 over Cleveland
Minnesota -3 1/2 over Arizona
Houston +1 over Jacksonville

SEAN TRENCH (1-2 last week, 14-21-1 overall)
Cincinnati -13 over Detroit
Tampa Bay +5 over Carolina
Indianapolis -6 1/2 over Tennessee

My remaining picks (7-9 last week, 90-87-1 including loss on Thursday night game):
New England -4 1/2 over Miami
Denver -5 1/2 over Kansas City
Pittsburgh -14 over Oakland
Houston +1 over Jacksonville
Tennessee +6 1/2 over Indianapolis
Philadelphia -5 1/2 over Atlanta
Detroit +13 over Atlanta
Tampa Bay +5 over Carolina
St. Louis +9 1/2 over Chicago
Seattle +1 over San Francisco
Dallas -2 1/2 over NY Giants
Baltimore +3 over Green Bay

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLVIII

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

FDH Lounge Dignitary with exclusive LT interview

By Rick Morris

Recently, we have been glad to have onetime terrestrial radio co-host and producer Ryan Isley with us on Wednesday nights to round out our FDH LOUNGE crew. In addition to performing these roles with SportsTalkNetwork.com, he also contributes columns to their blog and this week he had an unbelievable exclusive: an interview with LaDainian Tomlinson as a part of his Chargers-Browns preview.

It's a fascinating look at "what might have been," as Botch Davis chose to select "Hennessey'n'Blunts, Hennessey'n'Blunts, Yo!" Gerard Warren over LT - which tells you everything you need to know about him and "Shoebox" Pete Garcia right there. Ryan explores where the Browns were, where they might have gone and sprinkles in LT's thoughts on how everything materialized. Read it here.

NCAA football picks Week Fourteen

By Rick Morris

Last week 5-0 (!), 37-37-1 overall (so you're only down the juice!).

Cincinnati -1 1/2 over Pittsburgh
Florida -5 over Alabama
Texas -14 over Nebraska
Georgia Tech -1 over Clemson
Arizona +7 over USC

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #82: December 2, 2009

By Rick Morris

Tonight's 82nd episode of THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) has the usual high amount of variety but starts with one of the most topical first hours in the history of the show.

We lead off with This Week in The FDH Lounge and our Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries, then we bring in a fellow member of The 21st Century Media Alliance: Steve Kallas, our go-to guy for matters at the intersections of sports, law and ethics. He'll give us his thoughts on the Tiger Woods situation from all angles. From there, Tallahassee Democrat sports copy editor Casey Moore comes on to discuss the Bobby Bowden situation that his newspaper was first to report, the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and our FDH Lounge Forum Question that we just tackled last week about why ACC football has been a letdown over the past several seasons.

In Hour Two, our examination of Hot Stove Baseball comes with a typical FDH competitive twist as our Dignitaries try to forecast where the most interesting 15 free agents will land -- we will each score one point for every one we call correctly, with the biggest free agent contract scored right being the tiebreaker:

Matt Holliday OF
Jason Bay OF
John Lackey SP
Rich Harden SP
Johnny Damon OF
Adrian Beltre 3B
Joel Piniero SP
Adam LaRoche 1B
Hideki Matsui DH
Vladimir Guerrero OF
Jermaine Dye OF
Randy Wolf SP
Jose Valverde RP
Fernando Rodney RP
Jason Marquis SP

After that, we move into a brief fantasy-style draft trying to correctly forecast the Time Magazine Person of the Year, which will be unveiled in two weeks.

In Hour Three, THE FANTASYDRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER breaks down NFL Week 13 and we then bring on KFFL Senior Editor Cory J. Bonini for his thoughts on the fantasy football landscape. We wrap with our other show-within-a-show, THE GOON SQUAD, and a look at the present NHL standings as well as the injury that Keith Ballard inflicted on his own goalie (video included at this link if you have a strong stomach). We are very glad that Tomas Vokoun is apparently OK. Also, one of the league's core young megastars, Alex Ovechkin, is at the center of controversy after another knee-on-knee hit and we'll break that down as well.

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

NFL Week Thirteen power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous ratings in parentheses.
FIRST TIER: BEST OF THE BEST
1 New Orleans (1)
2 Indianapolis (2)
3 Minnesota (3)
SECOND TIER: SOLID PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
4 San Diego (8)
5 New England (4)
6 Cincinnati (6)
7 Arizona (5)
8 Philadelphia (10)
9 Pittsburgh (7)
10 Dallas (11)
THIRD TIER: MORE MARGINAL PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
11 Green Bay (12)
12 Baltimore (14)
13 Denver (16)
14 Tennessee (19)
15 NY Giants (9)
16 Atlanta (15)
17 Jacksonville (13)
THIRD TIER: VERY DISTANT PLAYOFF POSSIBILITIES
18 Houston (17)
19 Miami (18)
20 San Francisco (22)
21 NY Jets (23)
FOURTH TIER: VERY BAD, BUT NOT THE WORST
22 Washington (24)
23 Chicago (20)
24 Carolina (21)
25 Seattle (27)
FIFTH TIER: TEAMS WITHOUT ANY REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER
26 Buffalo (28)
27 Kansas City (25)
28 Oakland (26)
29 Tampa Bay (31)
30 Detroit (29)
31 St. Louis (30)
32 Cleveland (32)

BIGGEST RISERS: Tennessee (5 spots), San Diego (4 spots) and Denver (3 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: NY Giants (6 spots), Jacksonville (4 spots), Carolina and Chicago (3 spots)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

NFL picks Week Twelve - Part II

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays. NOTE: Dave Adams' picks were all for the Thanksgiving games, in which he went 1-2.

STEVE CIRVELLO (2-1 last week, 20-13 overall)
Atlanta -12 over Tampa Bay
Carolina +3 over NY Jets
Cincinnati -14 over Cleveland

DAVE ADAMS (3-0 last week, 1-2 on Thanksgiving, 18-18 overall)

RICK MORRIS (0-3 last week, 0-1 with my best pick, 16-17 overall, 6-5 on best picks)
Miami -3 over Buffalo (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
Seattle -3 over St. Louis
Cincinnati -14 over Cleveland

RYAN ISLEY (1-2 last week, 15-18 overall)
Indianapolis -3 1/2 over Houston
Cleveland +14 over Cincinnati
Philadelphia -9 over Washington

SEAN TRENCH (0-3 last week, 13-19-1 overall)
Atlanta -12 over Tampa Bay
San Francisco -3 over Jacksonville
Philadelphia -9 over Washington

My remaining picks (6-10 last week, 1-2 on Thanksgiving, 83-77-1 overall):
Indianapolis -3 1/2 over Houston
Jacksonville +3 over San Francisco
Chicago +11 over Minnesota
Washington +9 over Philadelphia
Baltimore -2 over Pittsburgh
Tampa Bay +12 over Atlanta
NY Jets -3 over Carolina
Arizona +3 over Tennessee
Kansas City +13 1/2 over San Diego
New England +1 1/2 over New Orleans

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Video Clips: Fun Timewasters

By Rick Morris

From time to time, we try to accommodate our Lounge content consumers who just want some fun, light entertainment. Hence this edition of our Video Clips series, entitled "Fun Timewasters."

These are simply some video clips that you can enjoy and consume in the form of good, mindless entertainment. On with the show!

Playing soccer ... with actual cars? Yes, it's true.


Here's some of Pete Maravich's greatest shots from the HORSE competitions back in the '70s:


And how about this Pistol Pete/Iceman showdown!


From the outstanding StepBrothers movie, here's the great "business pitch" scene. Boats'n'Hoes!


From The Sopranos, Richie Aprile lays the smack down on Beansie - repeatedly and painfully!


And to close, here's two promos from a 'rassler who really knew how to bring the goods back in the day, Captain Redneck Dick Murdoch!


Sportsology: Prematurely burying rookie QBs

By Rick Morris

Our good pal Russ Cohen at Sportsology (fellow members of The 21st Century Media Alliance) made some very good points about rookie QBs in a recent column, which we replicate here. The only note that I would add is that most teams having issues with first and second-year QBs regressing recently have been turning them loose way too quickly. The sane instinct at the first sign of success is not to treat these passers as veterans, but to continue to bring them along slowly.

Now, on to Russ's excellent column:

Take It Easy On Rookie Quarterbacks
By Russ Cohen

While watching the Mike and Mike show recently on ESPN2, I heard some alarming statements from Tim Hasselbeck when he was analyzing Matthew Stafford and Mark Sanchez and how their rookie campaigns are going.

Thankfully, I didn’t hear his entire spot because this hatchet job was too much. Stafford had some amazing heroics and actually came back on the field after his shoulder was clearly killing him by avoiding the medical staff. As a result, he threw the game-winning touchdown and led the Lions to their second win. WOW! I was impressed. Hasselbeck was too, but after that quickly faded, he talked about how he has trouble completing short passes.

“Quite honestly, when I’ve seen him play, I haven’t been really impressed,” he quipped. “We see the live arm. I’ve seen him miss guys, wide open, so many times, for a guy who was a #1 overall pick You would expect him to make certain throws that he’s missed a lot of this year, quite honestly.”

So now Sanchez gets ripped for his interceptions and “ball security” that Hasselbeck said he didn’t want to say he called, but he did when he started talking about it. He had “concerns” in Week Two when he was winning. So what, he’s a ROOKIE. In Sanchez’s case, he never talked about the positives.

Mark Sanchez – His pass completion percentage is low, but for a rookie 52.1 isn’t too bad. Matt Hasselbeck was 52.2 last year. I’m sure this will improve over time. His ten touchdowns are two more than David Garrard, and just one behind Kyle Orton and Tim’s brother. Stafford has done better than Sanchez in both of those categories, but his team is pretty bad, so I give higher marks for sure.

What wasn’t talked about are the terrible play calls. How about that 4th and 1 call by the Jets against New England? Tony Richardson, who has 12 rushing yards all season (and three carries at the time), gained nothing. Or what about that dropped pass on third down, by Braylon Edwards, when the Jets were trying to get back into the game?

Sanchez has three rushing touchdowns, and that’s tied for the league lead, but that wasn’t mentioned. One other thing about Sanchez, he has made an awful lot of QB sneaks this year to keep drives alive, that takes guts, and he has guts. He will go out there and mix it up strongly. He has moxy, and he will be a solid NFL quarterback, I’d say somewhere between Richard Todd and Ken O’Brien.

So let's keep this in mind: these guys are rookies! This kind of criticism is too harsh, and quite frankly, it’s too easy because they are at the beginning of their careers. Forget about the money they make, or where they have been drafted, that means nothing when they are on the field.

Let's remember:
Peyton Manning had 28 interceptions in his rookie season.
I saw John Elway fall down out of the huddle in one of his first attempts in his first game.
Joe Namath’s rookie season pass completion percentage was 48.2%, he had 2,220 yards, Sanchez will beat that (I know it's a different era but Joe threw the ball a lot for back then). He had 18 touchdowns and 15 interceptions. The numbers are similar, folks. I am not comparing the two, but nobody threw him under the bus in his rookie campaign.

The future of media and technology

By Rick Morris

We at FDH are preparing a big project dealing with the turn of the decade; there's a special edition of our FDH LOUNGE program and a special publication coming out through our website.

One interview that we will have in that publication will be with our good friend Simon Applebaum. He disseminates his Tomorrow Will Be Televised brand on different platforms: his blog at JackMyers.com and his weekly webcast (Mondays/two Fridays a month, 3-4 PM EDT on BlogTalkRadio and podcast at Sonibyte.com). He is one of the foremost authorities on the convergence of technology and entertainment.

As a preview of our conversation with him, here are some snippets of an interview with journalist Charlene Weisler.

These are some thoughts on broadcast cable models moving into the future:


Here, he speaks about the ramifications of Jay Leno's move to 10 PM EDT on NBC:


These are some thoughts on issues of the Internet, TV and privacy:


And here are some predictions for the next five years:

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLVII

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

Friday, November 27, 2009

NCAA football picks Week Thirteen

By Rick Morris

Last week 1-4, 32-37-1 overall.

Ohio +2 over Temple
West Virginia +1 over Pitt
Auburn +10 over Alabama
Nevada +13 1/2 over Boise State
Colorado +10 1/2 over Nebraska

Thursday, November 26, 2009

NFL picks Week Twelve - Part I

By Rick Morris

We continue posting FDH Lounge NFL picks on the site each week - here's a look back to Week Eleven for the full rundown of how we do this - and we've got a few for you today. Dave Adams' picks are his three for the week in our Dignitary Pick Contest and mine are not, simply part of my effort to pick every game this season. We will repost these picks as part of our full rundown this weekend.

Dave:
Green Bay -12 over Detroit
Oakland -13 1/2 over Dallas
NY Giants -6 over Denver

Rick:
Green Bay -12 over Detroit
Oakland -13 1/2 over Dallas
NY Giants -6 over Denver

Happy Thanksgiving

By Rick Morris

From all of us at FDH, we wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your bountiful turkey dinners today with your families as you ponder your blessings as we will be doing -- and enjoy this great MADtv skit celebrating the holiday.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

FDH Lounge Show #81: November 25, 2009

By Rick Morris

After our vacation last week, we return tonight with Episode #81 of THE FDH LOUNGE (Wednesdays, 7-10 PM EDT on SportsTalkNetwork.com) for our Thanksgiving Eve blowout.

We lead off with This Week in The FDH Lounge and our Opening Statements of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries, then we bring back one of our all-time favorite guests: second-generation Ziggy cartoonist Tom Wilson. Check out our coverage of Tom’s ZIGGY MILLION DOLLAR LIVESTRONG CHALLENGE, because we will be talking about this great initiative to fight cancer, as well as everything going on in the world of Ziggy. Then, towards the end of Hour One, our FDH Lounge Pigskin Report examines the most recent events in college and pro football, as well as our latest FDH LOUNGE Power Rankings.

Shortly into Hour Two, we welcome back another guest we’ve enjoyed in the past, Ken Palmer of the Scout.com site The Giants Insider. He’ll have observations on that team’s huge win from last week and the overall state of the NFC playoff chase, as well as the other team he covers – the New Jersey Devils – and his alma mater (Penn State) being on the BCS bubble at the moment. Then, the return of our FDH Panel Question offers the Dignitaries an interesting query that people have wondered since the expansion of a few years ago: Why is ACC football such a disappointment?

In Hour Three, THE FANTASYDRAFTHELP.COM INSIDER breaks down NFL Week 12 and we then bring on KFFL Senior Editor Cory J. Bonini for his thoughts on the fantasy football landscape. We wrap with our other show-within-a-show, THE GOON SQUAD, and a look at the present NHL standings as well as a preview of one of the big early games of the season: the Thanksgiving Eve showdown in San Jose between the Sharks and the Hawks (now with 100% more Hossa!). Also, with the Olympic break mere weeks away, we’ll examine the remarks of Team Canada Executive Director Steve Yzerman (for the record, FDH Managing Editor Rick Morris’s favorite athlete of all time). He indicated that his squad may see a fair number of combos at both forward and defense that have played together in the NHL. That seems to make a lot of sense.

As always, we urge you to watch the show live (or listen if you’re on dial-up), but if you can’t catch this as it’s happening, you can always catch the FDH archives 24-7 right here or catch us now on iTunes!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

NFL Week Twelve power rankings

By Rick Morris

NOTE: Previous ratings in parentheses.
FIRST TIER: BEST OF THE BEST
1 New Orleans (1)
2 Indianapolis (2)
3 Minnesota (3)
4 New England (5)
SECOND TIER: PLAYOFF CONTENDERS
5 Arizona (7)
6 Cincinnati (4)
7 Pittsburgh (6)
8 San Diego (8)
9 NY Giants (9)
10 Philadelphia (11)
11 Dallas (10)
12 Green Bay (17)
13 Jacksonville (19)
14 Baltimore (12)
15 Atlanta (14)
16 Denver (15)
17 Houston (13)
18 Miami (16)
THIRD TIER: VERY DISTANT PLAYOFF POSSIBILITIES
19 Tennessee (23)
20 Chicago (21)
21 Carolina (18)
22 San Francisco (22)
23 NY Jets (20)
FOURTH TIER: VERY BAD, BUT NOT THE WORST
24 Washington (24)
FIFTH TIER: TEAMS WITHOUT ANY REDEEMING VALUE WHATSOEVER
25 Kansas City (27)
26 Oakland (28)
27 Seattle (25)
28 Buffalo (26)
29 Detroit (30)
30 St. Louis (29)
31 Tampa Bay (31)
32 Cleveland (32)

BIGGEST RISERS: Jacksonville (6 spots), Green Bay (5 spots), Tennessee (4 spots)
BIGGEST FALLERS: Houston (4 spots), Carolina and NY Jets (3 spots)

Saturday, November 21, 2009

RIP Ken Ober

By Rick Morris

I'm dating myself horribly by mentioning this, but MTV's REMOTE CONTROL used to be playing all the time back in the dorms at Ohio University. It was a revolutionary show, the first game show to really embrace the irony in that genre and not take itself so seriously. It was also the first non-musical program on MTV, thus setting the stage for its present-day descent into no music and all-crap programming (but we won't blame the show for that!).

Great talents like Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn and Denis Leary got their first big breaks on the show. But it was built largely around the talents of comic Ken Ober, whose sarcastic-yet-smooth style made the show what it was, even more than the creative MTV gadgets that populated so much of the set.

Ober was just so great in that role on a show that really never got a chance to overstay its welcome, remaining forever attached to our memories of the end of the 1980s. He was so talented that many people almost took him for granted because he made it look so easy. I know that when I examine the people who helped shape my persona and approach for our FDH LOUNGE program that I've tended to overlook him myself (generally citing Tony Bruno, Steve Czaban and Glenn Beck -- when his show was goofier and less political), but I can see now how much I absorbed from him. I can't imagine how many other broadcasters of my generation can say the same.

It's tremendously sad that he passed away suddenly this week at age 52, with natural causes being strongly suspected. It is at least comforting to read that he had to know how respected he was based on the outpouring of people who did apparently have the opportunity to tell him that.

In the realm of giving credit where credit is due, we at FDH salute Matt Berry for an eloquent piece about what Ken Ober meant to him. We disagree with Berry's fantasy advice from time to time, particularly when we feel that it crosses over into advocating overmanaging, but he hit a bulls-eye with this tribute and it backs up what I said about how Ober influenced the broadcast style of our generation.

Ken's colleague at MTV Kurt Loder wrote a wonderful piece about his friend and co-worker.

And also, just to make this piece concrete and demonstrate just how easy Ken Ober made his job look, here's a clip from the first-ever edition of the show on MTV back on December 7, 1987. Take a trip back 22 years and relive the fun of that great program. There was only one REMOTE CONTROL and there will only ever be one Ken Ober. RIP to a true great and, from what his friends say, a truly nice man off the air.

NFL Picks Week Eleven

By Rick Morris

In addition to posting my weekly picks, I will post those from other members of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries' Football Challenge Contest. Each week, we will single out our three strongest plays.

STEVE CIRVELLO (2-1 last week, 18-12 overall)
Pittsburgh -10 over Kansas City
New Orleans -11 ½ over Tampa Bay
Minnesota -10 ½ over Seattle

RICK MORRIS (1-2 last week, 1-0 with my best pick, 16-14 overall, 6-4 on best picks)
Houston -4 ½ over Tennessee (my 1,000-Star, Gold-Plated Lock of the Millennium for this week)
Detroit -3 ½ over Cleveland
Pittsburgh -10 over Kansas City

DAVE ADAMS (1-2 last week, 14-16 overall)
Tennessee -4 ½ over Houston
Indianapolis -1 ½ over Baltimore
San Diego -2 ½ over Denver

SEAN TRENCH (1-2 last week, 13-16-1 overall)
Houston -4 ½ over Tennessee
Cincinnati -9 ½ over Oakland
Pittsburgh -10 over Kansas City

RYAN ISLEY (2-1 last week, 14-16 overall)
Pittsburgh -10 over Kansas City
Indianapolis -1 ½ over Baltimore
Detroit -3 ½ over Cleveland

My remaining picks (7-8 last week, 76-67-1 overall, including the Thursday night pick posted on The FDH Lounge Twitter account:

Buffalo +8 ½ over Jacksonville
Baltimore +1 ½ over Indianapolis
NY Giants -6 ½ over Atlanta
San Francisco +6 ½ over Green Bay
Minnesota -10 ½ over Seattle
Washington +11 over Dallas
Tampa Bay +11 ½ over New Orleans
Arizona -9 over St. Louis
NY Jets +10 ½ over New England
Cincinnati -9 ½ over Oakland
San Diego -2 ½ over Denver
Philadelphia -3 over Chicago

Friday, November 20, 2009

FDH Fantasy Newsletter: Volume II, Issue XLVI

By Rick Morris

For the most part, we keep our fantasy content on our fantasy website and fantasy blog and keep this site for content on all subjects. It allows our readers to find specific content more easily that way. However, it has come to our attention that because our new fantasy sports newsletter is published on the older Blogger platform that our readers may be limited in their ability to subscribe to it. There does not appear to be a way to have content on the FantasyDrafthelp.com blog forwarded to an aggregate news reader -- however, we know that we have that ability here. So we will link to that newsletter each week right here when it is published. Here is this week's newsletter.

NCAA football picks Week Twelve

By Rick Morris

Last week 2-3, 31-33-1 on the season.

Northern Illinois +1 over Ohio
Notre Dame -6 over UConn
Ohio State -11 1/2 over Michigan
Mississippi -4 1/2 over LSU
Texas Tech +6 1/2 over Oklahoma

Thursday, November 19, 2009

A Ziggy-related challenge we want to promote

By Rick Morris

The chance to meet great people and form relationships with them has been so valuable to us as we have built the FDH brands. One of the great thrills thus far was to interview Ziggy cartoonist Tom Wilson (as one of only two in-studio interviews in the history of our FDH LOUNGE program!) and get to know him and form a friendship.

As such, we would be inclined to promote Tom's latest good work even if we at FDH did not have our own difficult family run-ins with cancer.

Here is Tom's initiative, in his own words:

"My wife, Susan Shephard Wilson, died in my arms on November 18, 2000. She was forty-four years old. From the moment she was diagnosed with Stage 3b invasive breast cancer, Susan, who had always been my strength, began to teach me what it truly means to LIVESTRONG ...

Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life, came from the journaling I did in an effort to make sense for myself of the seven years my family battled the consuming, insidious disease that is cancer. The decision to publish the raw, emotional, and painful story of our personal war against cancer and my personal struggle against the crippling grief, was in the hope that telling it might bring comfort to someone else struggling along a similar path of cancer diagnosis ...

ZIGGY’s MILLION DOLLAR LIVESTRONG CHALLENGE is OUR opportunity to come together to make a real difference! Through this campaign starting November 18, the anniversary of Susan’s death, to January 19, her birthday, I am donating 100% of my personal royalties to LIVESTRONG, and coupled with the HCI affiliate program, that averages out to roughly $4.50 from every purchase of Zig-Zagging to the LIVESTRONG organization when ordered from this link. My HOPE is that together we will raise a MILLION dollars (or more!)for LIVESTRONG over the next two months!

With love,

Tom Wilson

…and Ziggy"

This book would certainly make a wonderful Christmas present. I found it very inspiring and I plan to have a review up on our site well before the challenge period is done so that people can learn more and thus put themselves in a position to benefit from reading it.

Please consider taking part in this challenge by purchasing the book. You will certainly gain from it and you will be helping a great cause as well.

Sportsology: Tiffani Theissen & the new White Collar show

Posted by Rick Morris

Courtesy of our good friends at Sportsology, fellow members of The 21st Century Media Alliance, here is a great profile about an excellent new show on the USA network.

Tiffani Theissen Loves Her New Role
By Russ Cohen

Tiffani Theissen will always be remembered for her roles on “Saved By the Bell” and “Beverly Hills 90210” but now she is playing a role that she absolutely loves. She is Elizabeth Burke, and her new show is the USA hit White Collar, which airs every Friday at 10/9C.

“Ever since I read the script, which has been a little over a year ago now, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the characters. I fell in love with the show, and more and more, when the cast was brought together, the more excitement I had for the show and wanting to be a part of it,” she said joyfully. “This is really the first time I feel like in my whole entire career which has been over 25, 26 years of doing this that I finally feel like I’m kind of playing a role a little closer to home for me, which is kind of exciting.”

Wow, that is a strong statement from this veteran actress, who is expecting her first child, and now this entire experience puts her in uncharted water.

“You know, that’s a very good question in the sense that I really don’t know being that I am a first-time mom, so it’ll be a very different kind of thing for me being that I’ll be working and being a mother at the same time. There are millions of people who do it. My mom did it herself, so I know I can handle it, but it’ll be a very new experience, so it’s hard to say what is going to be like. It’ll be all brand new for me.”

Why should viewers tune into White Collar?

“Oh gosh, well, besides having really cute guys on the show, it’s definitely the type of TV and movies that I like to see. I’m a huge fan of The Thomas Crown Affair and those kinds of feels of movies and shows and 48 Hours, which is so interesting, Catch Me If You Can, things like that,” she said playfully. “If people are really into those kinds of movies and those kind of story-telling, they have to watch this show. It is so absolutely entertaining. The characters are so rich and so fun to watch and follow.

“As well as you see New York City in a completely different way. It’s shot in a beautiful way. It’s interesting, a lot of shows that are shot in New York City can be a little more dark and gray, and this show really, I think, kind of captures New York City in a really beautiful light, and it’s nice.”

Theissen has embraced her past and now looks forward to the future.

“Yes, well, it’s bittersweet at times. There’s good and bad. There are people who of course followed my career and who have loved the shows that I’ve done in the past and are always up to seeing something new of myself or any of my past co-stars, which is really wonderful. Then there’s always people who have opinions, and of course, that’s how the world works, and that’s A-OK.

“Some people were really open and loving to the fact that I’m actually playing a role that’s quite different than what I’ve played in the past. Like I said, it’s definitely much more close to home for me, this character, but some people had a hard time with it. Some people didn’t believe the relationship between Tim and I, which is so funny to me because we had chemistry from day one, but that’s how the entertainment business works. That’s how people are, and that’s okay. Everybody has their opinions.”

Our opinion is this show is a hit. Check out the video of Lisa Marie Latino interviewing stars Tim DeKay (Peter Burke) and Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer).

Stratfor: Breaking down the KSM trial

Posted by Rick Morris

This column is courtesy of the great geopolitics site Stratfor, which remarkably allows for some of their great articles to be syndicated to other sites with full credit. Fortunately, this is one such article.

Deciphering the Mohammed Trial
from Stratfor

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York. Holder’s decision was driven by the need for the U.S. government to decide how to dispose of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Naval base outside the boundaries of the United States selected as the camp in which to hold suspected al Qaeda members.

We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held there, but also due to uncertainties in international law, particularly with regard to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Were the U.S. facility at Guantanamo a prison, then its residents would be criminals. If it were a POW camp, then they would be enemy soldiers being held under the rules of war. It has never really been decided which these men are, and therefore their legal standing has remained unclear.

War vs. Criminal Justice

The ambiguity began shortly after 9/11, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush defined two missions: waging a war on terror, and bringing Osama bin Laden and his followers to justice. Both made for good rhetoric. But they also were fundamentally contradictory. A war is not a judicial inquiry, and a criminal investigation is not part of war.

An analogy might be drawn from Pearl Harbor. Imagine that in addition to stating that the United States was at war with Japan, Franklin Roosevelt also called for bringing the individual Japanese pilots who struck Hawaii to justice under American law. This would make no sense. As an act of war, the Japanese action fell under the rules of war as provided for in international law, the U.S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Japanese pilots could not be held individually responsible for the lawful order they received. In the same sense, trying to bring soldiers to trial in a civilian court in the United States would make no sense. Creating a mission in which individual Japanese airmen would be hunted down and tried under the rules of evidence not only would make no sense, it would be impossible. Building a case against them individually also would be impossible. Judges would rule on evidence, on whether an unprejudiced jury could be found, and so on. None of this happened, of course — World War II was a war, not a judicial inquiry.

It is important to consider how wars are conducted. Enemy soldiers are not shot or captured because of what they have done; they are shot and captured because of who they are — members of an enemy military force. War, once launched, is pre-emptive. Soldiers are killed or captured in the course of fighting enemy forces, or even before they have carried out hostile acts. Soldiers are not held responsible for their actions, but neither are they immune to attack just because they have not done anything. Guilt and innocence do not enter into the equation. Certainly, if war crimes are in question, charges may be brought; the UCMJ determines how they will be tried by U.S. forces. Soldiers are tried by courts-martial, not by civilian courts, because of their status as soldiers. Soldiers are tried by a jury of their peers, and their peers are held to be other soldiers.

International law is actually not particularly ambiguous about the status of the members of al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them because they have not adhered to a fundamental requirement of the Geneva Conventions, namely, identifying themselves as soldiers of an army. Doing so does not mean they must wear a uniform. The postwar Geneva Conventions make room for partisans, something older versions of the conventions did not. A partisan is not a uniformed fighter, but he must wear some form of insignia identifying himself as a soldier to enjoy the conventions’ protections. As Article 4.1.6 puts it, prisoners of war include “Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.” The Geneva Conventions of 1949 does not mention, nor provide protection to, civilians attacking foreign countries without openly carrying arms.

The reasoning behind this is important. During the Franco-Prussian war, French franc-tireurs fired on Prussian soldiers. Ununiformed and without insignia, they melded into the crowd. It was impossible for the Prussians to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, so they fired on both, and civilian casualties resulted. The framers of the Geneva Conventions held the franc-tireurs, not the Prussian soldiers, responsible for the casualties. Their failure to be in uniform forced the Prussians to defend themselves at the cost of civilian lives. The franc-tireurs were seen as using civilians as camouflage. This was regarded as outside the rules of war, and those who carried out such acts were seen as not protected by the conventions. They were not soldiers, and were not to be treated as such.

An Ambiguous Status

Extending protections to partisans following World War II was seen as a major concession. It was done with concerns that it not be extended so far that combatants of irregular forces could legally operate using their ability to blend in with surrounding civilians, and hence a requirement of wearing armbands. The status of purely covert operatives remained unchanged: They were not protected under the Geneva Conventions. Their status remained ambiguous.

During World War II, it was U.S. Army practice to hold perfunctory trials followed by executions. During the Battle of the Bulge, German commandos captured wearing U.S. uniforms — in violation of the Geneva Conventions — were summarily tried in field courts-martial and executed. The idea that such individuals were to be handed over to civilian courts was never considered. The actions of al Qaeda simply were not anticipated in the Geneva Conventions. And to the extent they were expected, they violated the conventions.

Holder’s decision to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to federal court makes it clear that Mohammed was not a soldier acting in time of war, but a criminal. While during times of war spies are tried as criminals, their status is precarious, particularly if they are members of an enemy army. Enemy soldiers out of uniform carrying out reconnaissance or espionage are subject to military, not civilian, justice, and frequently are executed. A spy captured in the course of collecting information is a civilian, particularly in peacetime, and normally is tried as a criminal with rules of evidence.

Which was Mohammed? Under the Geneva Conventions, his actions in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out without uniforms or other badges of a combatant, denies him status and protection as a POW. Logically, he is therefore a criminal, but if he is, consider the consequences.

Criminal law is focused on punishments meted out after the fact. They rarely have been preventive measures. In either case, they follow strict rules of evidence, require certain treatments of prisoners and so on. For example, prisoners have to be read the Miranda warning. Soldiers are not policeman. They are not trained or expected to protect the legal rights of captives save as POWs under the UCMJ, nor protect the chain of custody of evidence nor countless other things that are required in a civilian court. In criminal law, it is assumed that law enforcement has captured the prisoner and is well-versed in these rules. In this case, the capture was made without any consideration of these matters, nor would one expect such consideration.

Consider further the role of U.S. covert operations in these captures. The United States conducts covert operations in which operatives work out of uniform and are generally not members of the military. Operating outside the United States, they are not protected by U.S. law although they do operate under the laws and regulations promulgated by the U.S. government. Much of their operations run counter to international and national law. At the same time, their operations are accepted as best practices by the international system. Some operate under cover of diplomatic immunity but carry out operations incompatible with their status as diplomats. Others operate without official cover. Should those under unofficial cover be captured, their treatment falls under local law, if such exists. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them, nor was it intended to.

Spies, saboteurs and terrorists fall outside the realm of international law. This class of actors falls under the category of national law, leaving open the question of their liability if they conduct acts inimical to a third country. Who has jurisdiction? The United States is claiming that Mohammed is to be tried under the criminal code of the United States for actions planned in Afghanistan but carried out by others in the United States. It is a defensible position, but where does this leave American intelligence planners working at CIA headquarters for actions carried out by others in a third country? Are they subject to prosecution in the third country? Those captured in the third country clearly are, but the claim here is that Mohammed is subject to prosecution under U.S. laws for actions carried out by others in the United States. And that creates an interesting reciprocal liability.

A Failure to Evolve

The fact is that international law has not evolved to deal with persons like Mohammed. Or more precisely, most legal discussion under international law is moving counter to the Geneva Conventions’ intent, which was to treat the franc-tireurs as unworthy of legal protection because they were not soldiers and were violating the rules of war. International law wants to push Mohammed into a category where he doesn’t fit, providing protections that are not apparent under the Geneva Conventions. The United States has shoved him into U.S. criminal law, where he doesn’t fit either, unless the United States is prepared to accept reciprocal liability for CIA personnel based in the United States planning and supporting operations in third countries. The United States has never claimed, for example, that the KGB planners who operated agents in the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union were themselves subject to criminal prosecution.

A new variety of warfare has emerged in which treatment as a traditional POW doesn’t apply and criminal law doesn’t work. Criminal law creates liabilities the United States doesn’t want to incur, and it is not geared to deal with a terrorist like Mohammed. U.S. criminal law assumes that capture is in the hands of law enforcement officials. Rights are prescribed and demanded, including having lawyers present and so forth. Such protections are practically and theoretically absurd in this case: Mohammed is not a soldier and he is not a suspected criminal presumed innocent until proven guilty. Law enforcement is not a practical counter to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A nation cannot move from the rules of counterterrorism to an American courtroom; they are incompatible modes of operation. Nor can a nation use the code of criminal procedures against a terrorist organization operating transnationally. Instead, they must be stopped before they commit their action, and issuing search warrants and allowing attorneys present at questioning is not an option.

Therefore — and now we move to the political reality — it is difficult to imagine how the evidence accumulated against Mohammed could enter a courtroom. Ignoring the methods of questioning, which is a separate issue, how can one prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without compromising sources and methods, and why should one? Mohammed was on a battlefield but not operating as a soldier. Imagine doing criminal forensics on a battlefield to prove the criminal liability of German commandos wearing American uniforms.

In our mind, there is a very real possibility that Mohammed could be found not guilty in a courtroom. The cases of O.J. Simpson and of Jewish Defense League head Rabbi Meir Kahane’s killer, El Sayyid Nosair — both found not guilty despite overwhelming evidence — come to mind. Juries do strange things, particularly amid what will be the greatest media circus imaginable in the media capital of the world.

But it may not be the jury that is the problem. A federal judge will have to ask the question of whether prejudicial publicity of such magnitude has occurred that Mohammed can’t receive a fair trial. (This is probably true.) Questions will be raised about whether he has received proper legal counsel, which undoubtedly he hasn’t. Issues about the chain of custody of evidence will be raised; given that he was held by troops and agents, and not by law enforcement, the chances of compromised evidence is likely. The issue of torture will, of course, also be raised but that really isn’t the main problem. How do you try a man under U.S. legal procedures who was captured in a third country by non-law enforcement personnel, and who has been in military custody for seven years?

There is a nontrivial possibility that he will be acquitted or have his case thrown out of court, which would be a foreign policy disaster for the United States. Some might view it as a sign of American adherence to the rule of law and be impressed, others might be convinced that Mohammed was not guilty in more than a legal sense and was held unjustly, and others might think the United States has bungled another matter.

The real problem here is international law, which does not address acts of war committed by non-state actors out of uniform. Or more precisely, it does, but leaves them deliberately in a state of legal limbo, with captors left free to deal with them as they wish. If the international legal community does not like the latter, it is time they did the hard work of defining precisely how a nation deals with an act of war carried out under these circumstances.

The international legal community has been quite vocal in condemning American treatment of POWs after 9/11, but it hasn’t evolved international law, even theoretically, to cope with this. Sept. 11 is not a crime in the proper sense of the term, and prosecuting the guilty is not the goal. Instead, it was an act of war carried out outside the confines of the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. goal is destroying al Qaeda so that it can no longer function, not punishing those who have acted. Similarly the goal in 1941 was not punishing the Japanese pilots at Pearl Harbor but destroying the Japanese Empire, and any Japanese soldier was a target who could be killed without trial in the course of combat. If it wishes to solve this problem, international law will have to recognize that al Qaeda committed an act of war, and its destruction has legal sanction without judicial review. And if some sort of protection is to be provided al Qaeda operatives out of uniform, then the Geneva Conventions must be changed, and with it the status of spies and saboteurs of all countries.

Holder has opened up an extraordinarily complex can of worms with this decision. As U.S. attorney general, he has committed himself to proving Mohammed’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt while guaranteeing that his constitutional rights (for a non-U.S. citizen captured and held outside the United States under extraordinary circumstances by individuals not trained as law enforcement personnel, no less) are protected. It is Holder’s duty to ensure Mohammed’s prosecution, conviction and fair treatment under the law. It is hard to see how he can.

Whatever the politics of this decision — and all such decisions have political dimensions — the real problem faced by both the Obama and Bush administrations has been the failure of international law to evolve to provide guidance on dealing with combatants such as al Qaeda. International law has clung to a model of law governing a very different type of warfare despite new realities. International law must therefore either reaffirm the doctrine that combatants who do not distinguish themselves from noncombatants are not due the protections of international law, or it must clearly define what those protections are. Otherwise, international law discredits itself.